Date: 2024-02-05T15:36:18.310000+00:00

Information

Table of Contents URL: https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/25561/rupegia

Rupegia
by
Manasong

Original HIATUS LitRPG
Portal Fantasy / Isekai
Psychological
Male Lead
Slice of Life
Action
Fantasy
Romance
Harem
Magic

Warning
This fiction contains:

- Graphic Violence
- Profanity
- Sensitive Content
- Sexual Content

"You may now kiss the bride."

But no kiss ever came.

I'm ripped from my wedding and thrown into a medieval fantasy world with game-like elements. It may seem like a game, but that doesn't matter to me, because this is my reality. The pain, the hunger, the cold, the fear, it's all real to me.

Alone, without knowing why I'm here, in a world where I know nothing and nobody, I decide to buy a Blood Slave to have someone I can trust. She brings me comfort and so much more. She helps me raise my head high again and bravely move forward. Together, we'll grow stronger. Together, we're unbreakable. But she won't be the only one by my side. We need more than just each other, for I know that my purpose in this world can't be accomplished with only her help.

Monsters and dungeons plague the land, forcing civilization to protect themselves from the hordes with tall walls and fierce determination. Killing monsters is a daily need, but they aren't the only enemy here. I have a powerful "Gift" that allows me to change my "skill points" at will, but if others were to know about it, there would be many that would try to use me by any means possible.

Step by step, moment by moment, day by day, we keep moving forward, always aiming to improve our strength. One day, we'll meet our Fate, and we'll be ready for it. Swords held high, shields tightly strapped to our arms, wings spread apart, spells at the tip of our tongues, minds focused like blades, and our hearts hardened like steel. We'll take on whatever comes our way!

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New chapters Monday, Wednesday, and Friday at 8PM US East. At least 3k words each.

Additional Tags: Psychological, Romance, Magic, Male Lead, Portal Fantasy/Isekai/Transmigration, Polygamy, Slaves

Content Warning: gore, profanity, sexual content (most of it has been censored) (male/female, female/female, and human/non-human(not for the faint of heart)), traumatizing content

What to expect: Slow story focused on the day-to-day life of a transmigrated man rather than on the plot.

The plot exists but it very slowly becomes relevant.

Also, slow character progress. It's a long journey, so don't expect a hero to grow in just a few chapters.

Detailed environments and extensive world-building.

Realistic and tactical combat instead of flashy.

Protagonist with a cheat but far from overpowered.

Lots of descriptive sex scenes (though most got censored here). It's treated as just another part of life instead of merely fan-service.

A harem where the members actually enjoy living with each other.

Occasional weird wording and grammar, English isn't my first language.

Currently uploading on: Royal Road (most sexual content censored), Scribble Hub, Novel Updates Forum, Wattpad, Hentai Foundry, Webnovel, MoonQuill, Nobles, Archive of Our Own, and Literotica.

This story is also on Scribble Hub, Novel Updates, Hentai Foundry, Webnovel, MoonQuill, Archive of Our Own, and Literotica.

Chapter 1: First Day

A note from Manasong

Many thanks to reader ZeroDays for switching the dashes (-...-) dialogue notation for the quotation ("...") dialogue notation.

"You may now kiss the bride."

But no kiss came. The warmth of her hand suddenly vanishes; the feeling of standing on the stable ground switches to the stomach-churning pain of free-falling, and then my consciousness is severed.

"Lily…" I murmur.

My back hurts, my whole body feels like stone, nausea prevents me from trying to get up, and my nose is filled with the musky smell of nature. I finally realize I'm laying down with my eyes closed and my belly up.

Once the nausea subsides, I decide to open my eyes, and I see huge trees that almost cover the entire sky. Like cracks on a wall, the crown shyness of the canopies let only small streaks of light pass through.

After regaining control of my body, I manage to sit and look at my surroundings. This is a forest with trees bigger and thicker than anything I have ever seen before, but bushes prevent me from seeing too far. The air is damp and slightly hot, reminding me of the subtropical climate I was born in.

I get up and notice my body feels weird, then I look down and see I'm not wearing my tuxedo, but instead, I have a leather jacket lightly padded with a gambeson, a woolen white shirt, woolen black pants, and some rather uncomfortable leather shoes. On my waist, there's a belt where a sword and scabbard are hanging.

I draw the sword and notice that it's rather light. Oddly, I don't find it difficult to handle, and it's almost as my arm moves on its own as I swing it. Its blade is straight and double-edged, about 90cm in length. There's space for only one hand on the hilt, which has a cross-shaped guard. The edge is sharp and can easily cut the bushes I swing at. This is not a prop.

"Am I in a renaissance fair?" I ask the air, astonished.

I don't remember how I got here. Did I hit my head? The last thing I remember is being at my wedding ceremony.

Then a small amount of panic enters my heart.

"Lily…!? LILY, WHERE ARE YOU!?" I scream in panic, but no response comes, I'm completely alone. After a few moments, I calm down and continue taking in my situation.

My body still feels weird, and I don't know why. At least I'm not nauseous anymore, but now I'm starting to feel scared.

I don't know where to go because there are only trees as far as the eye can see. I also don't remember how I got here and in which direction I can go to find someone. I'm truly lost in the woods with no idea of what to do.

Besides, I've never seen a forest like this. I'm a Canadian living in the cold north where it should be winter and the trees are much smaller. Did I travel to a faraway place to the south, or is it summer and I simply forgot the passage of time?

Time passes while I think about what to do, and I start to feel an itch slowly growing inside my head. It's not on the outside, on my hair, but actually inside. Like when water gets on your ear and it gets uncomfortable. It feels like I can almost "touch" it, but it's barely out of reach.

I keep trying to "scratch it" while shaking my head, and little by little, it feels like I'm getting closer. Then, suddenly, I somehow "scratch it," and a menu opens.

Like a light projection in front of me, I see various columns of black squares with white letters on them, similar to a touchscreen on a phone.

Now I feel like I'm going insane. There's no source of light or medium where the light hits to explain this as a mere projection. It's a floating object that passes through the bushes near me as if it's non-corporeal, and as I move around I notice that It follows my torso but not my head.

Curious and scared, I use my finger to touch the square that says "Status".

A new black square opens with a lot of information written on it.

Info

Name | PRESS HERE TO CHOOSE | Age | 19 | Race | Human
HP | 100 | MP | 100 | Magic Power | 175
Level | 0 | Experience | 0/100

Stats

Strength | 7 | Endurance | 8 | Dexterity | 9
Speed | 10 | Intelligence | 20 | Wisdom | 15
Willpower | 11 | Charisma | 10 | Piety | 0
Perception | 15 | Sanity | 9

Other

Status Effects | 'NONE'
Titles | 'NONE'
Affiliations | 'NONE'
Companions | 'NONE'
Crimes | 'NONE'

I can't believe this. Mom told me this would happen but I didn't listen. I have now officially gone insane, I'm seeing a video game "status" in real life.

I start panicking a little. This situation isn't funny. Compounding on my loss of memory and waking up in an unknown place, now I'm seeing something impossible to explain: a ridiculous looking menu that makes me believe I'm into some ultra-realistic virtual reality game.

I can feel the pain in my body; I can breathe in the smells of the forest; I can perfectly see a level of detail only a real eye can; I can feel a slight hunger in my stomach; I can feel how uncomfortable these ridiculous clothes are; and I can taste my saliva inside my mouth. Just to make sure, I lick my hand and taste the salt of my cold sweat. All of my senses tell me that this is real.

Is this the future where I purposely erased part of my memory and entered this virtual reality just to feel like I've been transported to another world? This is the only logical explanation that does not involve a supernatural event. But if this has really happened, then there's a huge problem: I see no "Quit" or "Logout" button.

My heart beats like crazy, my vision loses focus, and I start to gasp for air because I feel like I can't breathe. My mind is slowly filled with fear, then my vision darkens, and my knees start to buckle. I'm having a panic attack.

I blink, and suddenly I regain my awareness. It seems like the worst has passed.

Apparently, I had laid down at one point, and at least I didn't collapse and hit my head against the ground.

I sit up and look around, still a bit dizzy, but dismay hits me as I notice that I'm still in the same stupid forest as before.

Fuck!

I need to focus on my only ally here: logic. Logic is my friend, logic is my ally, and logic will help me get through the insanity and ridiculousness of my situation so that I can make a proper decision and that won't get me killed in this horrible world.

First things first, I have to explore my options. There are more buttons to press on this menu, so let's just pull off the brakes on my skepticism of this fantasy.

On the left of the menu, there are buttons on a column, they are: "Status", "Items", "Skills", "Magic", "Notes" and "Messages".

"Messages" has an exclamation point near it, and I assume it signifies that there's an unread message. I open it, and it shows me the only unread message.

Sender: God.

"I'm sorry about this, but there's no way for you to go back."

Logic doesn't help when God fucks you over. My vision is darkening again, I'm having another breakdown.

Then I see my "Sanity" in my "Stats" window going down a point.

This time, I forcefully bring myself back from the stupefied state I was in.

No, no, no, no, no, no, no~~! I can't get mad, this is a prank, someone is messing with me. A camera is hidden and soon someone will jump out of a bush and laugh at me. I have to keep calm so the entirety of the internet, and then the world, won't have a reason to point and laugh at my situation. It's okay, keep calm, it's all a prank.

Since this is a prank, why not use magic? I want to see what kind of special effects they're going to use.

I press the "Magic" button and… a blank black box appears.

So, I guess I don't have any magic skills yet. Well, let's see how "Items" works. I don't have a backpack, so how are the items going to appear? Hah, it's going to go *poof* and materialize from thin air or something?

I press the button and a list appears.

Items

Item Name | Quantity | Item Name | Quantity | Item Name | Quantity
Empty backpack | 1 | Spare clothes bundle | 1 | Rock bread | 10
Dried meat | 10 | Deer waterskin | 5 | Sleeping bag | 1
Flint | 1 | Kitchen knife | 1 | Skinning knife | 1
Cooking pot | 1 | Whetstone Q100 | 2 | Wool cloak | 1
Firewood | 10 | Rose coin | 1 | Gold coin | 10
Silver coin | 50 | Copper coin | 100

"At least you gave me money, you shit stain of a god," I grumble to myself.

I press the "Sleeping Bag" button and the menu suddenly closes, then a transparent sleeping bag starts to hover above my finger.

Scared at the sudden apparition of a ghost sleeping bag, I step back and pull my hand away, but the ghost follows my finger as if it's glued to it, even going through the nearby bush without disturbing it.

I swing my hand trying to unglue it, then I press my finger against my jacket, and the sleeping bag suddenly materializes in front of me with a *poof* and falls on my feet.

I think I'm starting to get used to the insanity. A sleeping bag materializes from absolutely nothing and I don't really feel anything. Is this "shock"?

Now… how do I put it back?

I notice that there's an icon on the corner of the item screen that's animated. It shows a hand grabbing a sword, then bumping a button, and the sword disappears, then it loops.

I grab the sleeping bag, press the button shown in the animation, and *poof*, the sleeping bag disappears. Then I see the entry "Sleeping bag" appear on the item list.

So is there an item limit? Or a weight limit? Is it limited to things I can carry on one hand? Maybe I should write these on my "Notes" and test them later, it should be a priority to understand this if I'm going to be stuck in this fantasy land.

Finally, let's see the "Skills" menu. On the right, there's a column with the writing "Skill Points: 10". Below it is written "Acquired Skills," and below that there is [Sword Use 1], which has a minus and a plus sign beside it. It seems I can increase or reduce the skill points at will with these ten "Skill Points."

On the right of this column, there's a large box with the tabs on top: "Physical," "Magical," and "Miscellaneous." And each of these tabs shows an uncountable number of skills.

"Physical" has things like [Sword Use], [Axe Use], [Shield Use], [Block], [Parry], and [Bow Use]. Some of these look like they might be overlapping, so perhaps the benefits stack, but it sounds troublesome to test. There are others where the name isn't very descriptive, like [Antushi Style], which is probably related to martial arts schools. Then there are some like [Enhanced Reflexes], [Muscle Explosion], [Hawk Eyes], and [Battlefield Perception] which are interestingly named. There are also dozens of crafting skills like [General Blacksmithing], [Armor Smith], [Weapon Smith], [Jewel Crafting], [Woodwork], and [Bow Crafting]. And finally, there are some ridiculous ones like [Enhanced Sexual Stamina], [Oral Technique], [Enhanced Genital Control], and [Enhanced Semen Recharge].

"Magic" sounds extremely interesting to me. It has all of the standard elements like [Electric Magic], Space, Light, Dark, Fire, Water, Earth, Wind, and Nature. Then there are more exotic skills like [Spirit Magic], Summoning, Conjuring, Blessing, Cursing, [Undead Creation], [Bloodwork], and many more. There's magic enhancements like [Mana Control], [Mana Efficiency], [Mana Recovery], [Mana Absorption], [Mana Reflection,] and [Reduced Mana Cost].

Mana seems to be the name of the source of magical power in this world, so maybe MP means something like "Mana Points."

Continuing, there are resistances, like [Poison Resistance], [Fire Resistance], and so on. Then crafting, like [Armor Enchanting], [Weapon Enchanting], [Jewel Enchanting], [Alchemy], [Potion Brewing], [Magic Tool Carving], [Poison Brewing], and [Golemancy]. The last one seems extremely interesting to me since I have a degree in robotics. And there are ridiculous ones too like [Slavery Magic], [Sexual Charm], and [Sexual Metamorphosis].

"Miscellaneous" contains things like [Weapon Appraisal], [Jewel Appraisal], [Metal Appraisal], [Ore Appraisal], [Flute Playing], [Lute Playing], [Musical Improvisation], [Singing], [Oratory], [Acting], [Writing], [Housework], [Cleaning], [Washing], and even [Folding]. Then there are some interesting ones like [Sense Presence], [Hide Presence], [Quiet Steps], [Quiet Action], [Intimidation], and [Charm]. There's even a bunch that's related to language proficiency, but I don't know which one to choose, so I'll leave it for later. Some look like they belong into the "Physical" category, but with things like [Charm] and [Sense Presence], maybe they revolve around some weak form of magic, so they are a mix of both physical and magical skill.

Luckily, at the top, there's a search function, but typing on this menu is very awkward. Unlike a keyboard, where you can feel the feedback of pressing a key, this keyboard passes through the finger, so I don't feel anything when I press a button. The feedback is even worse than that of a smartphone.

I can add and remove skills at will, and since I already have one point in [Sword Use], I actually have eleven skill points I can use if I remove this skill.

"Notes" operates like an office computer software where you create and organize documents, and simply write things in them with the awkward, floating, non-corporeal keyboard.

Now that I have seen it all, I need to decide on my next step.

I have some food, and although something like "rock bread" doesn't sound appetizing, I don't think I'll starve to death so soon. But still, if there's no civilization nearby, then I need to secure a source of food and water.

Perhaps [Conjuring Magic] will give me something to survive, but I'm not sure relying on it is a good idea. I have no idea what kind of nutrition magically created food has, and I also have no idea of the mana cost of conjuring it, or how fast mana recovers. I'll need to test it, but testing it now might cost me precious time.

Since I have no idea where to go, maybe it's best to find a vantage point where I can look over the surroundings and search for a river or a man-made structure. The problem is that I can't see very far in this thick forest, so I might have to wander about for a long time before I find a hill. I'm also scared of sleeping in an unknown forest and what might hunt at night, so I absolutely don't want to waste time.

Suddenly, an idea comes up to me. Since I can add or remove skill points at will, I can see which magic gives which spell, so maybe there's something useful in there. Once I put one point into a magic school, it gives me at least one spell. Most magic schools seem to require ten points until the next spell is unlocked, but some require five, and I don't know what's after level eleven since I don't have enough points.

Although [Golemancy] seems interesting, it doesn't look like it's useful right now. [Conjuring Magic] gives me [Conjure Water] at level 1 and [Conjure Bland Meal] at level 5, and [Conjure Dirt] at level 10, so at least I have a source of water, but I'll have to test it later for how much water it gives me. It might also be a good idea to have at least one offensive magic since I seemingly have good stats for magic if it's based on "Intelligence" or "Wisdom" like most RPGs.

I wanted some healing magic, but since my "Piety" is zero, I'm uncertain if it's a good idea since healing magic is tied to religion and piety in plenty of games.

I'm starting to wish I wasn't an atheist.

If this truly is a different world, then I better start believing in the divine seeing how supernatural things are happening around me.

After I look at [Summoning Magic], I get an excellent idea. The first spell for Summoning is [Summon Small Bird], which might be my best way of finding my way around this forest, so I put a point in it, go to the "Magic" tab, and press the spell's button.

For a second, I feel like my blood is being sucked out of my body through every inch of my skin, then a ball of light appears in front of my finger.

Not knowing what to do, I decide to touch the ball, and gravity suddenly starts to apply on it, so it falls on the ground and then stops shining. Suddenly, I'm looking at the sky again.

When my head stops spinning, my senses are overwhelmed by the oddest combination of feelings I've ever felt. On one side of my vision, I can see the sky, and on the other, I can see the sole of my own boots as I appear to have fallen on my back; my body feels really weird and tired while also light and energetic at the same time; I feel like I've "grown" more limbs, yet I can't "control" them; everything sounds a lot noisier and louder than before; and my stomach feels both hungry and full at the same time.

After getting a little bit used to the situation, I raise my upper body. On one side of my vision, I see a small brown bird that looks like a fluffy ball, on the other side of it I see… myself? I don't remember looking like this. I'm younger, much younger. This baby face that I didn't see for more than a decade is staring at… me?

After a long minute staring at the bird, all the weird feelings start to make sense and I get over this mind-fuck. This little bird in front of me is my summon, and I'm "sharing" its senses. Things like sight, hearing, touch, taste, proprioception, heat, and maybe even more. There are so many that a headache starts to flare; my mind isn't ready for so much information.

I wish that I wasn't sharing all of those senses

Suddenly, the sharing stops, and I feel so sick that I almost puke.

A flush of information followed by a sudden cut is too much for me to handle. I have to spend a few minutes controlling my stomach so that I can keep whatever's in there.

After getting my stomach under control again, I look at the bird and notice that it's still in the same spot, with its beady little eyes staring intensely at me.

If all I need is to wish for this "sense sharing" to stop, then I wish that I could only share the sight.

And now my vision is back to seeing two images.

It's not like my vision decreased, it "expanded," and now I can see much more, which puts a strain on my brain and makes me feel a little queasy. At least now I'm sure that this little guy is the perfect thing to help me find civilization.

I look at my "Status" and notice that my max MP has been halved, and that my current MP is now at fifteen points. It seems that either summoning is an advanced form of magic, or I'm just bad at magic even though I have good stats. Also, I didn't put any points into things like [Mana Control], [Mana Efficiency], or [Reduced Mana Cost], so maybe that's why this magic is so expensive. That was a mistake, so I wasted a lot of mana points.

But it doesn't matter now. What I need to do is learn how to control this bird.

First, I try to wish for it to move like I wished to stop the sense sharing, but nothing happens. Perhaps it only works with voice commands, which makes it impossible to use it as a puppet.

"Sit on my hand," I order, then I open my palm, and it obeys.

Seeing the bird suddenly take flight makes me nauseous again, but I guess it's just a matter of getting used to it.

Now, with the bird closer to my face, I can finally see myself properly.

I'm truly much younger than before, I'm really nineteen again. Round face, protruding jaw, full cheeks, traces of pimples, a few characteristic freckles, complete lack of the stubble that made me look manly, and short black hair neatly combed to the side, now slightly disheveled.

That's me, the young, baby-faced me. Considering how I'm seeing my younger self through the eyes of a little bird, I can feel my "Sanity" dropping another point.

I need to get a hold of myself! I'm not supposed to be affected by this anymore, and my safety is the top priority right now. If I really am inside some sort of video game, then just by looking at the large number of combat skills I can assume that this is a dangerous world. Not only that, but I'm alone in the woods, which is the most commonplace for enemies to appear, so I need to prepare myself and focus back on finding civilization.

While calming myself, I notice something odd inside my head. It's like an "itch," and it's similar to the "itch" that I have to scratch to open and close the "Menu," but maybe this is related to the [Summoning Magic]? I feel like I don't have to make an effort to scratch it, so I'll leave it like this, otherwise, it's possible that I could accidentally dismiss the summoned bird and lose the mana I'd already spent.

Finally, it's time to scout the area.

"Fly high in a circle and come back after two minutes," I order.

Hopefully, it knows what two minutes are. I also defined a time limit since I'm afraid that it won't come back unless I tell it to.

The bird quickly flies upwards and crosses the canopies, giving me a breathtaking view.

A sea of trees, that is how this place looks from above. There are some trees that are much taller than the rest, allowing me to see their trunks, and they show huge vines hanging from their branches. There are huge roots thicker than a house that twist around the ground and disappear among the trees. Blue, red, yellow, orange, white, and black patches of leaves color the sea as if they were drops of paint on a green canvas. The sky is completely clear and blue, showing me that this isn't a completely alien world. But the most beautiful detail of all is the sunlight reflecting on the leaves, which creates beautiful twinkling lights as the bird flies around.

Based on the position of the sun, it looks like it's either a few hours before noon or a few hours after it because I don't know which direction is north or which direction the sun is traveling towards.

Far away, near the horizon, I can see a grassland, and beyond that, just on the edge of my view, I see something that makes my heart stop: multiple black lines stand on top of another black line. It's not a mountain or a weird tree, and it kind of looks like towers behind a stone wall, but it's definitely man-made.

Finally, I have a direction to go. After the bird comes back, I'll order it to fly towards that to investigate more closely.

But wait, that doesn't look like anything modern; it reminds me of drawings of medieval fantasy towns… Just another piece of evidence I'm not in a normal situation.

Suddenly, the bird's view gets shaky and blurry, and a shadow blocks part of it. The bird has been captured by the claws of a large, scaled animal.

I don't know what happens if it gets killed, but I fear that a painful feedback could be sent to me if that happens, just like in some games.

I immediately "scratch" the "itch" inside my brain, and the vision of the bird instantly gets blurry, then it slowly goes black. My field of view returns to normal size and the discomfort of double view goes away. It seems that I just "unsummoned" my familiar.

This hits me like a bucket of cold water. It shows again that this world is dangerous and I need to prepare for battle.

So far, I only have 1 point into [Summoning Magic] and [Sword Use], leaving me with 9 unused points, so I better prepare.

First, I test the melee skills. Taking off [Sword Use] instantly removes all the "intuition" I had when holding a sword.

I slash with the sword, then I put the point back on and slash again. I instantly feel a difference as my second slash feels much "smoother," but I have no conscious idea of what I'm doing, it's all just "intuition."

I test [Parry], [Dodge], and [Block], but the "intuition" they give me is incredibly weaker than [Sword Use]. Then I test [Sword Use] again and notice that it also gives me some small intuition in how to parry, dodge, and block just by itself. There's some overlap in what the skill gives me, so I don't necessarily need to spread my points around to multiple skills, at least not yet.

The Style skills don't give me any noticeable changes, so I have no fucking idea how to use them, and their names don't give me any clue about what weapon they're about.

Once I put on [Muscle Explosion], I instantly feel like I can do a "power punch" or an "instant dodge." In fact, every muscle of my body feels ready to move with "explosive" speed.

I try out the punch, but I pull a muscle on my arm and it takes a few minutes to stop hurting, then I try the "instant dodge" and also pull a muscle on my leg. I don't remember being that physically inept, but it seems like this younger body is pretty weak.

Is this a fucking Deprived start?!

[Hawk Eyes] allows me to "focus" my vision, basically reducing my FOV to allow me to see better, but after a few seconds of using it I feel mentally tired, so I don't think I need it right now.

The "enhancement" skills like [Enhanced Strength] also use "mental energy" to work, but instead of actually making me stronger, they just make it slightly easier to "use" these attributes, as in, easier to push me to my limits.

For example, [Enhanced Strength] doesn't actually make me stronger, it just allows me to better use my (I assume) meager seven points of "Strength."

Curiously, [Battlefield Perception], doesn't give me any noticeable changes, so I don't understand how it works.

"Sneaking" skills like [Quiet Steps], [Quiet Action], and [Hide Presence] also need me to "focus" to feel any noticeable difference, though [Hide Presence] doesn't visibly do anything besides draining my mental stamina, but at least it's a lot less straining than [Hawk Eyes].

[Sense Presence], on the other hand, instantly gives me a response the moment I put it on. I "know" that there's a "white dot" ahead, which I locate with my eyes and identify as a little squirrel going up a ginormous tree. A few seconds later, the small "white dot" disappears from my mind, though I still see the squirrel moving, so I guess the range of the skill is limited.

It's kind of like a mind radar, with plants being extremely faint white "dots," and other animals as properly discernable "white dots." These "dots" start to gain weird shapes the more points I add to the skill, but I have no idea what these shapes mean, and the skill drains me exponentially more with the number of points, so I can't test it for long.

Overall, I'm a bit disappointed with the "Physical" skills. They don't give me any significant benefits besides [Sword Use], so that skill is the one that has the most use to me right now, pun intended.

Now, magic, on the other hand, seems a lot more impactful.

First, I want healing magic. I bite the bullet and put 10 points in [Light Magic]. I have a suspicion it uses "Piety," and since I have zero in that stat, it might be useless to me.

I go to my "Magic" tab, press [Heal]… and nothing happens.

I guess I was right. If zero "Piety" means that I can't cast it, then maybe it works like a multiplier. If I assume that "ten" is the normal value for the average person, then I might need at least that much "Piety" before it becomes cost-effective.

Well then, at least there's another healing spell I can use. I put five points in [Nature Magic], and it gives me two spells: [Constricting Vines] at level 1 and [Regeneration] at level 5. Both seem very useful for someone like me that doesn't really want to fight. I put one point in [Electric Magic] so I at least have one offensive spell: [Lightning Bolt]. I don't want to use [Fire Magic] in a forest since I'm not confident I won't start a forest fire.

Now, how do I use the last five points? I should at least always have one on [Sword Use]. One on [Hide Presence] just for safety, one [Sense Presence] to let me see ahead leaving me with two points left. It's straining to keep these two skills "active" at the same time, so it'll be impossible to use a third like [Quiet Steps].

There's nothing that helps me fight better than adding two more to [Sword Use], so I'll go with it.

Now there are six "itches" inside my mind and because of some sort of subconscious understanding, I can differentiate between them quite easily. One is the "Menu," two are for the [Nature Magic] spells, one is the [Lightning Bolt] spell, and the last two are [Sense Presence and [Hide Presence]. With a little bit of familiarity, it seems that it'll be very easy to quickly use the one I want.

My mana is back to twenty, so I think I'll rest some more until it's back to full.

While I wait, I focus on calming my heart so I can do what I need to do, then I notice my "Sanity" going up one point, and it's now at eight. I guess that forcing myself to prepare for danger has repaired my mind, somewhat.

I assume that the average is ten, so being at eight isn't necessarily bad, but I believe this means that I have to work harder on keeping calm.

This is possibly a medieval fantasy world with swords and magic, which means that it's different from my society. I need to be mindful of things such as respecting the nobility, avoiding triggering the superstitions of locals, understanding local laws, adapting to the food and etiquette, understanding the economy, understanding the common sense, and dozens of other small things.

If I fail with this first contact, then I don't know if I can survive until I reach the next town. I can't bring attention to myself, so I should avoid things like [Slavery Magic], [Bloodwork], and [Necromancy Magic], which sound dangerous and potentially illegal. [Summoning Magic] also seems advanced and exotic, and it's best that people don't ask where I learned it, so I should hide it, too. Also, the skill system seems abusive. I could turn from a swordsman, to a mage, to an assassin, to a craftsman, and to a negotiator, all in a small amount of time. It doesn't seem normal for people to be able to do what I did with this skill system. Even the menu and things like "Items" could be abnormal here, so I have to be cautious of that, too.

Now I'm starting to accept this might really be another world. "God" may have sent me a message that I can't go back, but there's no evidence of that, it's just the words of a suspicious being that I have never seen before. Perhaps I can go back, or perhaps not, but first, I need to search for knowledge about this world, about teleportation, and about other worlds, only then can I truly decide if it's possible or not.

Even if this world is only a game, I can still feel a lot of pain, I can feel the pleasure of the wind, I can feel the hunger in my stomach…

Now that I think about it, I feel like I should eat a piece of meat.

This "dried meat" is too salty for my taste, too hard to cut, and too rubbery to chew.

I really want normal food now.

I didn't even get to taste the buffet that I ordered for my wedding, and there were so many choices of chocolate candies that I never got to enjoy.

I slap my cheeks to get away from these idle thoughts.

Going back to the previous train of thought, I can feel the satisfaction of eating something, and everything else that I should normally feel. For me, this is reality, not a game, so I don't want to live a poor and hard life. If I can basically do anything with this skill system, then maybe I can use it to my advantage and have a quiet, but fulfilling life while I search for knowledge about how to get back.

I sigh and lay back on the cold, hard ground. I can see the sun on top of the canopies now, so I guess it's about noon. Also, my MP is now back to full, and it took at least an hour of waiting, so I think I should conserve my MP as much as I can.

I just wanted to hug you one more time, Lily…

I try to eat a piece of "rock bread", but it's really as hard as a rock. Well, I guess this is why it won't spoil easily. Then I try to wet it with my saliva and it easily turns into mush.

Bland, wet, white bread, delicious.

I have to test [Lightning Bolt], too. It's best to know your tools, even if I'm going to waste the mana right now by firing it at nothing.

I scratch the "itch" of [Lightning Bolt], and immediately the point of my left finger starts feeling hot while the sensation of blood leaving my body comes again, so the spell must be charging.

I look at my finger and see that it's shining faintly. I point it forward, and after two seconds of holding it still, a lightning bolt flashes from my finger towards a bush ahead.

After the flash and thunder, I see that the bush has been partially carbonized while the rest has caught on fire.

I have no idea how to measure damage, but this spell feels dangerous, though a small, rather dry bush would burn extremely easily. I'm not sure if it can kill someone in one hit, and there are also the status values and HP values, so maybe people can get resistance through "Endurance," or something.

I cast [Constricting Vines] and feel my finger getting hot, so I point to another bush, and once the spell fully charges, green vines burst from the ground and wrap themselves around my "target." It takes a few seconds for them to wrap around it completely, so I don't think I can use this on an enemy that's moving.

These spells cost me around 1/4th of my mana, and my MP isn't at max, so I only have four more uses or so of [Lighting Bolt].

I think I'll wait again until my mana is full since I don't know what happens if I use all my mana. In some games, you can feel sick, faint, lose health, or even die, so I'm unwilling to test my mana to the limit.

Finally, after resting again, I get the motivation to move on. Now I need to walk in the direction of town and reach safety.

I walk with [Sense Presence] and [Hide Presence] activated and just power through the tiredness that they give me.

The skills make me tense, but I can still appreciate the environment. The trees are all ten to fifteen meters tall, with a girth that would require at least five people to make a human chain around it. There's also the occasional huge root snaking around the trees, randomly going above or below the ground, and they make me wonder if they're the roots of one huge tree.

There're also plenty of different bushes and small trees with fruits, mostly colorful berries and grapes. I try to put the fruits into "Items," but they all show a "??? fruit," so I'm not sure what they are or if they're even edible. They look quite appetizing, though.

Then, as I walk through a small patch of blue-leaved trees with a white trunk, my [Sense Presence] picks up something different from the animals. I sense a "red dot" a few meters away and to my right. Not only is the color ominous, but I actually do feel like the skill is telling me that it's something "dangerous."

Then my heart skips a beat when I notice that the red dot is coming directly towards me.

Did it notice me? Does it also have [Sense Presence]? I can't even see it because the bushes are on the way.

I hide behind a bush and crouch. If possible, I'd like to avoid combat. In games, killing monsters gives experience, which will increase my "level," but I don't have confidence in my abilities, and I also don't even know what kind of "enemy" is coming.

The presence continues towards me. I notice the intercept route is a little off, so maybe it's just a coincidence that our paths would cross, but it'll still be very close. I can't afford to move and make a noise.

I put my hand on the hilt of my sword.

As I wait for the enemy to come closer, I start to hear footsteps. The pitter-patter makes me think that the red dot is a quadruped, so perhaps it's a dog? Then I hear the sound of someone sniffing the air. It's smelling me. There's no escape now that it caught my scent; it's going to find me.

A bush ahead of me rustles, then a small wolf-like animal comes out of it. It has a long snout that gets thinner at the nose, fangs coming out of its closed mouth, and a round body with spines covered in moss. What's not covered in spines is covered in grey fur. It's certainly not an animal that I know.

I freeze for a moment as I'm still not used to the ridiculous things that happen to me, but that was a mistake.

The monster has noticed me, and it immediately bares his fangs, then lunges at me.

It's coming, it's gonna bite me, it wants to kill me, I'm going to die.

"AAAAAAAH!" I scream in fear.

The fight or flight instinct kicks in, and this time, I decided to fight.

When the monster gets close enough it jumps, aiming at my face.

Like the noob that I am, I forgot to draw my sword, so all I can do is aim the blade at the monster while it flies towards me, and it hits the side of its snout. This isn't a katana capable of Iaido, so I only manage to give it a mere cut, but at least I deflected the tackle.

It passes by my side and falls two meters away.

I turn immediately to face it, and the animal does a move that sends chills down my spine. It lifts the hind legs and lowers the front legs, then the spines move their pointy ends directly towards me and start to shake. In the next moment, they shoot out like arrows.

Through some incredible reflexes or luck, I lunge to the side, hiding behind the nearest tree, but it isn't a perfect dodge. The side of my left leg is assaulted by a wave of pain as the mossy spines enter my skin.

My heart was already pumping adrenaline a few seconds ago, so I manage to ignore the pain, but still panic and decide to use my trump card. I charge [Lightning Bolt].

I hear the rushed footsteps of the monster chasing after me. It has to go around the tree, so it doesn't reach me instantly, but its speed is still faster than I can cast.

I see it, and it immediately jumps again, its open, fanged mouth aiming towards my face, then the Bolt flies.

The lightning roars and the animal screams. It tackles me, but it doesn't bite. I protect my face and manage to grab him by the snout. It isn't very heavy, so I manage to not fall back from the impact. Then I slam it against the ground in rage.

Part of its fur is burned, there's smoke rising from its body, and its eyes are both cloudy and possibly fried, then it starts to convulse, but it's not dead yet.

Anger runs through my body and I pierce its head with my sword, letting the skill do it all for me.

The monster twitches for a few seconds, then it stops moving.

I killed something, I actually fucking killed something…but the feeling of my sword piercing through flesh is disgusting.

"You are now level one," a female voice echoes around me.

"W-what? Who's there?" I question and look around, but there's nobody around. I blink as I process what I heard, and after a few moments, I recognize that the voice was inside my head, like a video game announcer.

I stand still for some time, thinking about what just happened, but the adrenaline goes away and the pain of the spines piercing my skin starts to grow.

I quickly pull the spines out, but it just makes the pain worse. Now, my skin trickles with blood and stains my clothes, then I notice that four spines got stopped by the leather jacket.

I guess armor really is useful here, though it's a bit lacking in padding.

I cast [Regeneration], and a ball of light appears, floating above my left palm. I push it against my body and it sinks like it was ethereal, and I remain still for some time as I feel my mana steadily drain, then I start to calm down as the pain slowly subsides, and a slightly pleasurable feeling courses through my body. It seems that this is a continuous or "channeled" spell.

It takes ten minutes, but the blood stops completely, then the wound starts closing, and the pain goes away completely. I guess this magic isn't something you use during battle, but it remains in effect for a minute after I stop channeling it.

My mana is now at twenty. I guess I really need that [Mana Efficiency] skill for magic.

While waiting for my mana to recharge, I look at my stats, but disappointingly, they didn't change. Perhaps, like "Sanity," stat values change based on training or other conditions instead of level.

Then I look into my skills and notice that I have four new Skill Points to spend. I use two for the [Mana Efficiency] skill and two for [Sword Use]. Even though I barely used the sword, it was because I made a mistake and kept it sheathed before the battle. The monster was fast and magic has a short delay to cast, so I need to defend myself with a weapon if I get into melee.

I test a [Dismantling] skill, but it seems it just gives me "intuition" in how to butcher it, but at least it gives me the idea that the corpse of monsters might be valuable.

I decide to put it into my "Items," and it shows as "Hedge-wolf? monster corpse." I don't understand why there's a "?" there. Maybe it's like the fruits and the naming is based on my knowledge, so it picked the most appropriate name I could think of.

I also change my pants since the smell of blood could attract more monsters. The bloodied pants are put into "Items" and get named as "bloody black woolen pants."

I take out the "spare clothes bundle." It's a neat stack of clothes tied by a small cord. Maybe it needs to be like this so that it can "stack" and be considered as one item instead of each piece of clothing being separate. The bundle also has some linen underwear, which is the same as the one I'm wearing. It's loose-fitting and a little uncomfortable for me.

Now I start to think about this world. It's clear that there are monsters different from animals and that they're hostile.

This one likely discovered me by smell, so I guess [Hide Presence] was a bit useless, but maybe there's some magic that can help mask my scent. The loud roar my [Lightning Bolt] made when I tested it might've also alerted it of my presence, so that could be why it came towards me, to begin with.

But the main lesson here is that I need to fight and I need to kill what I fight, there's no other way to survive here.

After recharging my mana, I start moving again. Now I feel a little more confident since I calmed my heart, but I'm still feeling rather stressed. The [Sense Presence] skill is taking its toll on me.

After walking for what seems like half an hour, I get another hit on my radar. The red dot feels "different" this time, and it's not coming directly towards me.

I hide behind a bush with a good vision ahead and wait until I can see it. After a minute or so, a bush rustles and the monster comes out of it.

It's a skinny, little green man with an ugly, oversized bald head full of wrinkles, a large, pointy ear, and a curved nose. It's a goblin, a standard enemy of fantasy worlds. It's completely naked, and its disgusting genital is dangling around, waving as he moves. He's also wounded as I can see a few bruises and cuts all over his exposed skin that are lightly bleeding. In his left hand, he is dragging a long, thin dagger, probably used for piercing, not cutting.

This is a golden opportunity. A single Hedge-wolf gave me one hundred and ten experience points and let me level up, now I need two hundred points, but every single point counts.

Just a single level in [Electric Magic] was enough to be the difference between life and death, or at least life and a nasty bite on my face. If I want to survive, I need more skill points, so I need more levels, and, therefore, I need to kill this goblin. The chance of success on this is high unless I'm mistaking the strength of this little green thing. He's not even a meter tall, so he should be weak.

Yes, that's it, I'm charging.

I draw my sword and dash towards him, holding it high above my head. The goblin barely has a chance to react before I'm into range, and I chop downwards.

The goblin's face instantly warps into a scowl as he raises his dagger and tries to deflect my sword with his dagger, but he's too weak in comparison to me. He's not fast or strong enough to parry, but he still moves my sword sideways a bit. What was supposed to be a single hit kill by a chop to the head becomes a deadly wound as the tip of my sword sinks into his shoulder. It passes through flesh and bone, entering his chest, then it gets stuck.

"GYEEEEEH!" The goblin screams. A nasty scream so loud that it hurts my ears.

With this, the color drains from my face. He could be calling for allies, and now I might be in a bit of trouble.

With anger fueling my movements, I dislodge my sword from its body, then bring it back and slice horizontally. The skill helps me do a simple, but perfectly executed cut, and the blade smoothly slides along his neck sinking deeper and deeper until it comes out on the other side, decapitating him, and his head rolls away. This is an awfully sharp sword, though his neck was pretty slim.

I don't have time to be stunned by the bloody scene. If a wounded goblin appeared, maybe there are others who just finished fighting. Even if they're wounded, I have no confidence in fighting more than one enemy, especially if they can just throw things at me, like spears.

Leaving a corpse will attract more monsters sensitive to smell, so I quickly add the goblin's body, head, and knife to my "Items," then I dash into a right angle from where the goblin came from to maximize my distance from where I killed it.

After a minute or so, I slow down and catch my breath. I look at the sword in my hand and realize I forgot to clean it, so it should've left a trail of blood directly towards me.

Fucking…!

I pull the already bloodied pants from "Items" and use it to clean the blood, then I resume moving towards my destination.

This goblin gave me one hundred and eighty experience points, now I only need ten more for the next level. This is good progress.

Just two more points into [Sword Use] allowed me to properly swing the sword twice and get a kill, so I'll soon be able to increase the skill some more. But this battle went so well because it was a surprise attack against a small monster armed only with a knife, so I hope I don't find anything worse.

But I do, find what that goblin had fought.

After another hour, I get another hit on my radar, and it sends chills down my spine. I feel that this red rod is considerably larger than the previous ones, and I estimate that its body size is as big as me, but much longer and thick.

I immediately crouch behind a bush and hide in fear, then I make sure that [Hide Presence] is constantly on.

The monster is just going to pass nearby, and there's no risk of it getting too close. It's slowly strolling around, and it seems like it doesn't even have a fixed destination, so I assume that it's not searching for me, specifically.

After two minutes, I start to hear the monster walking. It's another quadruped with a very heavy body. Then I hear a small growl, an unmistakable bear growl.

I start sweating cold. Even in my world, a bear is not something you fight with just a sword and a party trick spell.

Then the bear suddenly stops.

Did it notice me? How? I can't hear it trying to smell the air.

Then I hear it turn in my direction. I wait for a few seconds, my heart trying to escape my mouth, then it growls again, and this time, it sounds angry.

Yeah, it noticed me. [Hide Presence] must've failed!

I should've walked away, I should've taken [Quiet Steps] so that I could walk away from any dangerous encounter, but I didn't think this would happen, I didn't expect that it could so easily detect my presence. I thought the Hedge-wolf was an exception, but I was naive.

Now, what do I do, flee? I'm getting tired, the bear is in the way of my destination, and I'm not sure if I can outrun a bear. Maybe I should fight and test the waters, then flee if the situation gets worse. The problem is, if I get hit once, then maybe I'm dead, so there's no room for a mistake here.

I need to at least look at what kind of enemy this is. The hedge-wolf was just bizarre, but maybe I can see something that'll help me defeat it.

I get up and peek from behind the bush and regret doing so. The enemy is truly a bear, a frightening bear staring at me like a ravenous beast. It has five claws the size of my hand on each paw, fangs the size of my head protruding from its open, salivating mouth, and grey fur covering its body.

But then I become surprised as I notice that it's wounded. I can see more than a dozen shafts of what seems to be spears stuck to its body, there's a strong trickle of blood dripping from its face, one eye is closed, and there are multiple bloodstains all over its grey fur. It's heavily wounded, so it's probably what the previous goblin was fighting.

I think that there's a chance of victory, but I can't get hit. If I do, I'm dead, so I have to use everything I can to win.

I draw my sword and start casting [Lighting Bolt], then the bear immediately starts charging. I don't want to use [Constricting Vines] because the spell is too slow, and I also have a feeling that simple vines won't stop the charge of something that big.

He's fast, but so is my casting, I manage to cast my bolt twice before he gets into melee range. Each hit slows him down considerably and the smell of burnt flesh fills the air, so I successfully stop his charge.

He gets on his hind legs and tries to use his huge paws to swipe at me, but they're too slow, so I jump backward and release another Bolt, making him roar in anger.

Now he's angry. With a sudden burst of speed, he waddles a little closer and swipes with a speed that catches me by surprise. All I can do is defend myself with the sword as the claws hit the blade and its massive strength sends me flying.

I hit my back against a tree and air leaves my lungs, then I feel a blinding pain that immobilizes me for a second.

My vision becomes blurry, but I manage to cast the Bolt again. The spell hits the bear on the snout, then it stops its attack and starts convulsing.

An opportunity! I could run away, but the bloodlust clouds my mind. Anger makes me move forward, and the sweet deal of getting a large amount of experience fills my thoughts with greed. I charge forward.

How long are his convulsions going to last? I don't know, but since this is low-level magic, it's likely to be short, so I start casting again.

A strong headache attacks me, so I think this is my last spell.

The bear stops convulsing and roars again, then I finish my cast at point-blank range.

The bear flinches in pain from the spell, then I let the skill take hold, and I lunge. The tip of the blade sinks through the eye and continues on until it reaches the hilt, then I feel the tip hitting the back of its skull.

The bear twitches once, then his body gives up and it falls limp on the ground.

"You are now level five," the female announcer reports again.

I look at my stats, my MP is at minus four. A massive headache flares and my vision goes dark.

I slowly recover my consciousness. My back hurts a lot, I'm shivering, I have difficulty breathing, and my head hurts so much I don't think I can even stand.

While laying down, I look into my stats and see that my MP is at ten but my HP is at ninety.

Even though I blocked the attack I got damaged. Scary.

My "Magic Power" grew by five and my maximum MP by ten. I now have twelve new skill points, so I put them all on [Mana Efficiency] and cast [Regeneration] on myself.

It takes another ten minutes, and I heal myself until I have only one MP left. The spell helps with the back pain, but the headache worsens, and I'm still feeling very tired.

I simply rest on the ground until my MP reaches twenty, then I use [Regeneration] again and the back pain subsides enough to let me stand.

I look around and see that the bear is dead with my sword sticking out of its eye.

I did it, I fucking killed a huge bear, a monstrously large bear. Fucking hell.

I take the sword out and clean it on the bear's own fur, then I grab a paw and store the bear on "Items. Now I need to properly distribute my points.

I have thirty-one points total, so I put them like this:

PRESS HERE TO CHOOSE Skill Report

Physical

Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level
Sword Use | 5 | Dodge | 3

Magical

Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level
Mana Efficiency | 3 | Mana Recovery | 3 | Electric Magic | 4
Nature Magic | 5

Miscellaneous

Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level
Sense Presence | 4 | Hide Presence | 4

I should at least be able to use [Lightning Bolt] five times without fainting, perhaps one more and then fainting. I don't know which is more efficient, [Mana Efficiency] or [Reduced Mana Cost], so I'm just going to bet on efficiency. I also don't have time to test them since it's way past noon now and I need to keep moving. I prefer to spread out my capabilities a bit instead of focusing on only one thing since no skill has a significant impact on my fighting capabilities because they seem to be heavily limited by my stats. I need to be versatile and adaptive here.

With unsteady steps, I start moving again. I'm still hurting, my HP is at ninety-eight, and my MP is at forty, but I shouldn't linger any longer here lest another monster find me, attracted by the sounds of our battle.

The range of [Sense Presence] is noticeably higher now and it makes me less tense to use it along with [Hide Presence], which is good since I still have a headache.

I can see my MP gradually going up even while moving, so [Mana Recovery] is a good investment. Now I can heal myself again while walking, then the headache and back pain gradually stops, but I'm still feeling very tired.

After another hour, I get another hit. This time, I know it's a goblin.

It seems to be standing still, so I could test using [Quiet Steps]. I don't want to fight and I'm really tired, but I need this knowledge!

In games, goblins usually attack in numbers to compensate for their lack of intelligence or equipment, so finding a single goblin is lucky. Maybe not so lucky since I also met what made them scatter, but still, this situation is a lucky find.

I switch [Sense Presence] for [Quiet Steps] and activate it, then I sneak closer to the goblin. Like [Sword Use], [Quiet Steps] gives me "intuition" in how to move quietly, and my footsteps become noticeably softer. It seems that the skill isn't straight-up magic, but it's close.

I manage to catch a glimpse of the goblin, and he seems to be looking downwards, distracted with something, so I circle around to get behind him and continue approaching.

From an opening in a bush, I notice he's treating a wound. He has a nasty cut on his shoulder, and he's wiping it with a seemingly clean cloth.

How smart is he?

Then I notice that he's wearing a small leather jacket and that he has a wooden spear with a shining metal tip next to him.

He's not the same as the previous goblin. This one is more experienced, seemingly smarter, and also has better equipment. I need to kill him with one attack.

I carefully approach, inching closer, little by little.

I must have patience.

My heart beats so fast I can hear my own pulse.

I inch closer.

My hand shakes with anxiety and anticipation.

I inch closer.

He's barely within reach of my sword.

"Gah?" He leaks a sound and looks behind, but it's too late.

I lunge forward and stab his throat, then he immediately pressures the wound as he writhes on the ground. All he can do is garble some words and gasp for air while slowly dying from drowning in his own blood.

He stares at me intensely. His beady little eyes don't contain anger but only surprise. Maybe he's surprised he got attacked, or just surprised he's going to die.

I stand over him and stare back, but the bloody scene makes me feel nauseous. He's way too human for me to just watch him slowly die.

Perhaps I made a mistake. Perhaps he's sapient and a person who belongs to a community in this world. Perhaps I committed a crime. I never allowed those two goblins to attack first; I ambushed both of them.

I can't look at this anymore, so I decapitate the goblin.

Shit, I feel even worse now.

He gave more experience than the last goblin, but it's not enough to level up again. I look at my status and see that my "Crimes" section is still saying "NONE." This gives me a little comfort, but only a little.

I put him and his spear in my "Items," then I turn around towards my objective again and see something frightening.

A human skull, multiple bones, and a skeleton torso are laying at the foot of a huge tree. The bones are small, but they're definitely human, or at least I think they are. Goblin heads are seemingly much larger than this skull.

Then I see something besides the skeleton, a ruined backpack.

I now remember that the goblin's equipment was rather dusty and old-looking. The spear was clean, but it was chipped. It seems that the previous owner of this equipment was the skeleton remains. The goblin had just found it by chance.

When I look inside the backpack, I see a small ruined notebook. I open it, and while it's mushy and the words are blurred, I can still discern some foreign characters every once in a while, so I remove one point from [Sword Use] and start adding it to each of the language skills in my "Miscellaneous" tab.

After a few minutes, I finally find the language this notebook was written in, it's Norvok.

I have to put five points in the language for me to be able to make sense of what's written. Also, it seems that the maximum for language is ten.

This notebook is a diary. A dwarven young man was traveling to the other side of the continent and writing about his travels. There are tellings of what was eaten, killed, who he talked to, and minor random details. I can't absorb anything from the culture just by reading this, but it helps me discover that the language used by the locals is called Andraste.

There's no identification in the backpack or notebook, so I don't know the name of this dwarf. I feel like I should bury him, but I don't have a shovel and neither the energy nor the time to waste here, so I just put all his bones in a pile and continue on towards my objective.

After another hour of walking, I finally see something glittering beyond the trees. It's grass, grass touched by the sun. I've finally reached the border of the forest.

I start to run. I don't care if I find another monster, I just want to see what's ahead. If it's really a town, then the last stretch of my journey is close, and with that, comes safety.

The view opens up, and the forest finally ends. I'm now in a grassland, and I see a beautiful sight. The green tall grass reaches my waist and waves with the wind, painted with the gold of the reflected sunlight. It's a calming picturesque view that makes me wish to just lay down and relax, but the most beautiful sight is beyond the grassland.

I see the stone wall, around twenty meters tall, with towers double its size behind it. Very far away, to the left of where the wall ends, there's a cobble chest-high wall, and behind it, I see a few wagons with dozens of people walking around them. Beyond the chest-high cobblestone wall, I see plantations, so they must be farms.

Finally, civilization!

I remove [Quiet Steps] and [Hide Presence], and reduce [Dodge] by two, then I add ten points to [Andraste Language]. With preparations done, I start running towards the wagons.

Suddenly, my energy runs out as I realize something. I haven't thought of a story to tell them yet. Even if I can communicate, it's best that I don't tell them I came from another world or tell a shitty lie like I lost my memories or something similar. There's a probability that I will be taken advantage of if I do that, so I need to decide on a believable story.

I kneel and try to hide under the waist-high grass, then I take out my backpack from "Items" and fit a few things on it, like the sleeping bag, cooking pot, change of clothes, pieces of food, knives, and some coins. Now, my backpack is full and heavy, so I continue moving forward. I hope nobody noticed I didn't have it on me before.

As I approach the wall, I attract attention from the people ahead, then some men with cloaks lean on the chest-high wall as they watch me.

Then I get close enough to discern the details of the men watching me. They're all wearing a hauberk with a grey tabard on top, and a mail coif. A few have spears, but all of them have swords hanging from their waists and kite shields strapped to their arms. The tabards are black with a simple white kite in the middle, which has a golden sword and a rose crossed over it. This must be the heraldry of the town's lord.

Is this really Earth? It looks like I'm in a medieval fantasy world.

When I get close enough, I count four male and two female soldiers watching me.

"Ooi, are you okay?! Are you an adventurer?!" Shouts one of the men.

Adventurer? No, that sounds dangerous, I'm just a traveler.

Their speech sounds really odd to me. I hear foreign words, but in my mind, I perfectly understand what they mean. This must be the effect of the language skill.

"N-no, I'm just a traveler. I got lost in the woods and got attacked!" I answer in the same odd speech as them, clearly not English.

The soldiers start murmuring with each other, looking slightly surprised and confused.

Once I get close enough to properly see their faces, one of the soldiers starts talking out loud as he frowns, "Uh, you're too small to be traveling by yourself, and you don't look like a dwarf, but I guess the forest should be calmer right now since the last culling was just two days ago."

The other soldiers snort and chuckle.

"Kids are always looking for a cheap way to get levels, even if it's dangerous," another comments, and the soldiers hum in agreement.

I tense up, unsure what to say, but if they think I'm just a dumb kid then I guess it's acceptable.

"Anyway, are you going to enter the town?" The first soldier casually asks.

"Yes, please. I'm tired, and I really need some rest," I quietly answer.

"Don't go out again, you got lucky this time, kid," a female soldier advises me with a reproving tone.

Lucky? Pff. If that's being lucky, then please wake me up from this nightmare.

The first soldier ignores her and continues, "Alright, I'll process your entry, come with me. Now everybody, back to your stations!" He barks as he glares at the other soldiers, and they all disperse immediately. I notice that this man wears a golden armband on both arms, so perhaps he's the leader of the watch.

I could only look at them for a short time, but these men and women are all tall, burly, and have attractive faces. I'm rather surprised they aren't uglier.

I jump over the wall and fall on a raised cobblestone road, then I follow the leader. We pass by two stopped wagons, and each has another soldier writing something with a… pen? It looks like a thin metallic cylinder with a very small jewel at the tip.

Both the civilians and the guards that are talking are wearing such finely embroidered woolen clothing that makes mine look like rags. One even has a beautiful silk cloak. I guess they must be merchants.

We walk through a long, wooden bridge lowered across a moat, then we pass through a huge portcullis, and we finally enter the town.

Ahead of us, there's a short row of boring and bland buildings. After that, a spectacle of crooked, bizarre, and beautiful buildings starts. Perhaps the boring ones are barracks.

The man leads me into a small office stuck on the wall. Inside, I see a few simple wooden chairs around a wooden table with a few sealed scrolls on top of it.

"Alright, sit," he casually orders and motions to the chair. Once I obey, he continues, "Do you have any identification?"

I sweat a bit. I don't even know what this "identification" is, so I need to lie here.

"No, I lost it when I got attacked. I had another bag, but it got torn," I stiffly answer, doing my best to keep a poker face.

He lazily raises a black eyebrow. "Right. Well, we'll just use the Inspection Crystal, then. Is that alright with you?" He sternly asks.

I have no idea what this "Inspection Crystal" is so I'm just gonna go with the flow.

"It's ok," I calmly answer and flash a shy smile.

"Then wait here. Let me grab it in the other room," he replies and leaves without waiting for an answer.

Perhaps this stone will see my status window. The name is obviously suggestive.

When I open my "Status," I notice that I haven't written my name yet, so I hastily try to awkwardly write down my own name on the floating, touchless keyboard.

Wait no, my name sucks. Fuck that shit. It's time to choose a cool name my parents were too boring to pick for me.

I choose "Wolf Ryder."

A few seconds later, the man comes back with a simple box that cushions a crystal ball and a tablet. It looks slightly expensive.

"Alright, put your hand on the ball and keep it there until I say otherwise," he orders.

I obey, and when I touch the ball, the transparent crystal tablet changes color to black, and white letters start to appear in a style that's exactly like the "Menu"'s, then I notice that the letters are in Andraste, but my "Menu" is in English.

Curious.

The man carefully reads the tablet, and I notice that my new name is written right at the top. I'm glad I took the time to write it.

He knits his eyebrows and comments with a worried tone, "Hmm… there's nothing wrong here, but you're awfully low level for someone of your age, and what's up with those skills? No Conjuring, Fire, Space, or even [Light Magic]? Also, no life skills, and though you have a language skill, you don't have [Writing] like a scribe should…" -He raises his head and looks at me bemusedly as he stifles a laugh- "What kind of sheltered child are you? I've never seen a combination of skills like yours."

"Well… uh, I’m…" I desperately search for an answer and look away.

Well, he's not lying. My life on Earth could seem sheltered in comparison to the people of this world. Also, I could come up with an excuse, but that would just give more rope to the conversation. Even if he looks down on me, I shouldn't speak carelessly.

"I'm a bit sheltered, yes," I admit and blush in embarrassment.

"Hah! it's kind of a miracle you survived the Sea of Trees… Well, anyway, since you have some combat skills, go to the monster hunter guild or the dungeoneering guild if you want to survive here. The Sea isn't like the Mainland, so don't go out there alone or without preparation again," he talks down at me with a tired tone as if I was a stupid kid, which he knows I am since he saw my age in my "Status." Then his tone instantly shifts into a commanding one as he adds, "Now, let me see what's in your backpack."

The way he said Sea of Trees makes me think this is the true name of that forest.

I open my backpack and show all the things that I have inside.

"Alright. The ball says you don't have an [Item Box], so the tax is just going to be one silver coin for entry, and five copper for using the status stone."

[Item Box]? Perhaps it's different from my "Items" ability. There was something called [Space Magic], so perhaps [Item Box] could be found there?

I silently pay him the amount.

He advises me like one advises your little brother, "The guilds give free IDs, so go register there, and you don't need to pay tax depending on which ID you show." Then a subtle glint appears in his eyes. "Also, is this your first time here? I can sell you a map for ten copper coins," he offers with a grin that shows a set of very white teeth.

"Alright, I’ll take one."

I pay him and he hands me a sealed scroll made from roughly textured paper.

He shows a business smile and says with a practiced tone, "Then that's all. Welcome to Rabanara, the great fortress on the shore of the Sea of Trees."

I ask for an inn recommendation within the middle price range, and he tells me to go to the Resting Spring's Inn, then he waves me away.

The map is quite crude and lacks beauty, but it gives the location of all the important locations. The Bazaar, the Flea Market, the Farmer's Market, the Guild's Corridors, the Crafter's Corner, the Gambling Den, the Theater, the Carnival Field, the Colosseum, the slums, the commoners' area, the Nobles' Quarter, the multitudes of inns, and the brothel district. After some searching, I find the Resting Springs.

As I walk through the streets, I see a large amount of weird-looking people. People with animal ears, tails, claws, snouts, patches of fur, animal-looking digitigrade feet, and hands that almost look like paws in any sort of combination imaginable. People with horns, tails, wings, and plenty of other weird body parts. Skin colors of all the colors of the rainbow. Most wearing very revealing clothing, and plenty are floating around or flying slowly. Their clothes go from delicate togas and kimonos, to rough and boring medieval clothes, and some even use straight-up animal pelts like stereotypical barbarians. It's a carnival of people with mismatched armor and weapons, and with body types ranging from big, burly, and tough, to small, cute, and scrawny.

Not only is the populace interesting, but the town itself is also fascinating. It's like someone partially demolished a cobble building, then used whatever wood they had to rebuild it but also used a different architectural style. It's like the town is a patchwork.

All of the buildings have odd, crooked shapes, and they're made of a mix of a dark and light wood with white and dark-blue cobblestone. They don't look hastily made, though, as both the stone and wood are full of relief, details, and decorations. Some buildings have heavily jettied floors, giving it a comfy look as they "lean" towards the street, and others have an assortment of statues and other decorations on supporting pillars, and some even have vines growing directly from the beams.

Truly an odd town.

All those things in combination with the bizarre architecture makes me feel like I'm actually the normal and well-dressed one. I see even a few small animals that look a bit human-like in their behavior. They run around like children, appearing and disappearing out of thin air.

Surprisingly, the town looks clean and doesn't smell even though horses are everywhere. Behind nearly every wagon, there is a floating yellow broom that sweeps the floor by itself without even lifting dust, it's like it just makes shit disappear. Perhaps these are spells that keep the roads clean.

The inn is close by, and there are still a few hours until sunset, but my body and mind are exhausted. All I want is to rest for a little while.

The inn is a large building. It isn't as crooked as the other ones, and it's made entirely out of cobblestone. It has three floors and gives off a rustic feeling. There's no spring, though. I've been lied to.

Once I enter, a middle-aged man with a small chin, brown hair, and small circle glasses greets me from behind a desk while he writes in a book with an ink quill.

"Welcome to the Resting Springs Inn. Would you like a room?" He asks with a kind tone and a gentle smile.

"Yes, please. What kind of rooms do you have?" I calmly reply.

"We have a only few single-bed rooms on the third floor, but on the second floor, there's still a lot of space in the communal room."

The communal bed might be one cheap room where multiple people sleep together. No, thank you.

"Single bed, please," I politely request.

"That'll be one silver a day, would you like to reserve the room for multiple days?"

Uh… my brain is not working properly.

"Ten days…" I come up with a random number.

He nods and smiles again. "We also give breakfast and dinner, five copper for each meal. During dinner, the public bathhouse is open, and the bath is included with the meal, but personal bathing rooms can be reserved by ten copper. There's also a magician responsible for the bath that you can rent personally for fifteen copper at any time."

Food is cheap, a bed is not...

I (try to) think for a moment, then I answer, "I'd like both meals for each day. Also, what's the exchange rate for silver and copper coins?"

He stares blankly for a moment, likely surprised at my question, then he recomposes himself and answers in his usual gentle tone, "Avgi silver coins are equal to ninety copper coins."

Perhaps this is not something people normally ask him. Also, now that he said "Avgi coins" I notice that there's something written on the coins. It's written in the [Andraste Language], but it's only a few letters and some numbers, so perhaps it's some identification?

I pay the innkeeper and he gives me a key with the number 304 on it, and a smaller black key.

He assumes a practiced tone and recites, "Here it is, room four on the third floor. The smaller key opens a safe. Once you leave, give me the room key, but keep the safe key, and don't leave anything valuable outside of the safe. The safe can only be opened by us after your stay ends. Finally, would you like to be called for breakfast and dinner?" He gives me a business smile.

I don't have a watch or an alarm clock. I'll never get up at the right time without them.

"Yes," I awkwardly respond with a nod.

He turns the book around and hands me his ink quill, then points to a blank line. "Please write your name here."

I start to write my name and my hand just moves by itself. It's a very odd feeling, like I'm doing things by reflex only. I don't really know what I'm writing until it is done and the language skill tells me that I've written "Wolf Ryder." The squished characters are a bit difficult to tell apart, but something tells me that my calligraphy is perfect.

"Thank you for your patronage," he adds and bows slightly, then I nod and walk towards the stairs.

The inside of the inn is made entirely of light brown wood. It's simple and a little cramped, but perhaps they just wanted to maximize the number of rooms. I notice that shining jewels on the ceiling are illuminating the inn; they're basically weak light bulbs.

I enter my room and lock the door, then I take off my sword belt, boots, and jacket. I sigh in relief, then I drop on the bed and fall asleep.

I dream of the unpleasant sensation of cutting flesh with my sword.

A knock on the door wakes me up.

"The dinner is ready, and the bath is hot," the muffled voice of a young woman reaches my ears.

I don't know what the bed is made of. It's not hard, but it's not really good for my back. I might need to search for a proper bed if I'm going to stay here for a while.

I put my clothes back on and go downstairs.

On the first floor, there's a communal hall with a few square tables and chairs. A small number of commoners are sitting about, waiting for the food, and I see more people are coming down the stairs.

I sit and wait, and soon, a plate comes to me. Vegetable stew, a piece of roasted mutton with spice and herbs, and a piece of fluffy, white bread. It tastes okay, the stew lacks some spice, but the mutton is well done. Perhaps due to the prominence of woolen clothing sheep are a staple food.

After eating, I go through the back door and reach the baths. Contrary to every single fucking medieval novel, baths aren't that rare. The Romans loved baths, you know, bathhouses were a thing throughout history, you know.

I ask the attendant at the front about how it works. They use the heat of the kitchen coupled with the help of a mage to heat the water of the bath, so that's the source of the mist coming out of the doors ahead. It makes me quite happy that I'll be able to get some hot water to sink in and not just a towel bath.

For four pieces of copper, I'll get a towel, a very small piece of rough soap, and a sponge. The bath is divided into three parts: men, women, and mixed. Using the men or women's costs another piece of copper. Curiosity gets the best of me and I enter the mixed one, which is free for the patrons of the inn.

Let's say that some light prostitution is going on over there. I immediately leave and pay for the men's bath. I'm not a puritan, but seeing sex live is too awkward for me right now.

The etiquette is that you first gather a bucket of water, then use it to wash away all the dirt with the sponge and soap, then you're allowed to relax in the pool of hot water.

So I start washing, but I start to feel conscious of my body. Most men here are somewhat handsome. I'm not ugly and I have a cute baby face, but damn, are all the people in this world at least somewhat attractive?

When I get out of the bath, it's already night, and the people are either going to bed or to a tavern to drink. I don't really drink, so I go to bed early today.

I lay down on my not so comfortable bed and spend some time reflecting on what happened today. I got sucked out of my wedding into a painful, dangerous, magical, insane, and ridiculous world. I killed two humanoid beings in a very gory way, I killed a bizarre animal, and I killed a huge bear that almost killed me. If not for [Regeneration], I think I would be dead now.

What kind of god would throw me here at this precise timing? Fuck you, God. Or help me, help me because I want to go home, I want to see my wife, I want to hug her, kiss her, and have sex with her, then have her fall asleep in my arms and wake up seeing her smile. Fuck this world. Either help me, please, or get yourself fucked, God!

I feel something "change" inside of me. I open my "Menu" and look at my "Status." My "Piety" increased from zero to two.

I break down and cry myself to sleep.

A note from Manasong

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Chapter 2: Second Day

A knock on the door wakes me up.

"The breakfast is ready," the muffled voice of a young man reaches my ears.

The nightmare didn't end. I'm still here, stuck in this world.

I didn't sleep well because my back hurts, but since I went to bed soon after sunset, I've at least managed to sleep for a long time, so I'm not that tired. I had a few nightmares, though, and one of them was simply me staring at the goblin drowning in his own blood. That scene was way too brutal for me; it still creeps me out.

I look at my stats and see that my "Strength" increased by 1 (now 8). I guess yesterday's effort was rewarded.

My mouth feels horrible. I have to buy a toothbrush, a hairbrush, some soft sleeping clothes, a better blanket, a proper pillow, more spare clothes, and underwear. I also have to clean the bloody pants.

I saw that there's a well outside for cleaning, so I can just buy soap from the bath attendant yesterday, then I can pay her to use magic to instantly dry my clothes. Sounds convenient, but also not.

Now that I have a "Piety" of two, [Light Magic] seems to work, and its first spell is called [Clean], but even that spell isn't powerful enough to completely clean my clothes or my mouth, so I still need some utensils.

I spend long minutes staring at the ceiling, trying to muster the energy to get up. Even though the bed is uncomfortable, getting up and facing reality feels like a worse deal than staying here, cooped up in a dark room.

But my survival instincts are seemingly stronger than I gave them credit for.

I'm not going to wither and die of depression. My "fuck you" to this world will be to die of old age!

With a tired groan, I sit up, then I put on my clothes and go downstairs to eat breakfast.

Today, the main course is bean paste, which reminds me of the Brazillian staple, though it lacks rice. There's also roasted vegetables and a loaf of slightly sweet bread. I realize sugar might be expensive so this bread is actually high quality, but, as a sweet tooth and a chocolate addict, the only thing I can call this is "boring."

While eating, I think about what I should do next. The guard said to get an ID at the guilds, and depending on what ID I have I don't need to pay customs tax. But first, what exactly should I do in this world?

I want to go home, but to do it I need knowledge. I saw that there's a magic university here, so perhaps they have a library that I can use, but I don't think it's going to be free. I think that, historically, religious buildings like churches could have people knowledgeable about the world, so perhaps I could go to them for advice. The map shows that there's a temple in the middle of the town.

Regardless, I'm going to need to find a job and acquire money for a steady living. With my skill system, I could start a crafting business, but factories in this age might not have good workers' rights laws, which might make it easy for others to exploit me. Also, I'm more of a creative type, I'm not good with manual labor.

Perhaps I could bring technology from my world here, but that's risky and it's really going to call attention to me. Inventions take a lot more than just being the first to do it, I need knowledge of economics and security to safeguard the profits of my inventions, and I know nothing about either of these.

If we're going to assume this is an adventure and role-playing game, the most straightforward method of acquiring money is killing monsters. The map shows that there's a dungeoneering and a monster hunters' guild, so adventuring might be a risky but also valid way of work. Seeing how my skill system works, I have an incredible advantage in combat.

I also need Experience to increase my level and get more skill points. I don't know how to acquire Experience besides killing monsters, but perhaps there's another way to acquire skills like training or taking an apprenticeship, though I need connections and a proper career path for that.

So, in the end, my first move should be to go to the monster hunters' and dungeoneering guilds. But first, I'll buy a hairbrush and a toothbrush. My breath still feels a bit bad.

Now that I'm rested and much calmer, I notice that this city is bizarre but also kind of inspiring. The different architectural styles are all very interesting, and even the contrast between them has a charm of its own.

The people also have their own sense of fashion. It's like this town is a hub for travelers from all around the world, and they all bring their own piece of home with them. Some alleys are dark and ugly, others are comfortable and calming, some have vines and unidentified plants growing all over, others have lights and moving metal parts that remind me of steampunk. The people are all energetic and positive interactions are abundant.

Maybe it's just that I'm in the good part of town, or maybe I'm just feeling lonely.

Yeah, let's go with lonely.

After some walking, I get to the monster hunters' guild, and my first impression is that it looks menacing. Fangs and bones decorate the protruding pillars, skins and scales of all kinds decorate the walls, and an even bigger carnival of colors than the rest of town makes me question the sanity of the architect. A large skull with a long snout and huge teeth but lacking a jaw is hanging over the entrance with the teeth sunk on the wall as if the skull is biting the building itself.

I cross the tall double doors and I'm greeted by a large number of people chatting around tables decorated with the same ridiculous style as the building's walls. Most of them are drinking unknown liquids from tankards, but there's no way it's not alcohol, and it seems like some people are drinking it like water even though we're still in the morning.

The first floor of the building is one large hall filled with tables. Over one wall, there's a set of large boards with pieces of paper stuck on them. If this follows the traditional game template, those are the bulletin boards and the papers are requests for extermination.

On another wall, there's a row of booths filled with men and women wearing a dark blue velvet uniform with some simple yellow embroidery to make the uniform prettier, and they also have a badge on their chests of a crossed fang and sword. That's the symbol of this guild, and it's the same one on the double doors.

I walk towards one of the booths.

"Welcome, how may I help you?" A middle-aged female attendant greets me. She's a beautiful short-haired brunette that shows an air of experience.

I smile gently and answer, "Hello. I'm a traveler and I just got into town. I came from a small village, so I'm rather ignorant of the way things are done around here. Can you explain this guild to me? What I was told might not be fully correct."

The attendant opens her eyes in surprise. I guess this is something that's unusual to ask.

"Well, this guild is very simple," she starts with a kind tone, then her eyes gloss over and her voice becomes robotic

Oh, here it comes…

"This is a place for people that hunt monsters to gather, party up, and trade or sell their spoils. The Townsguard does regular cullings to keep the monsters in check, but they also sometimes employ hunters from the guild to help with it. Outside of the culling, other parties also hire hunters to catch monsters for their ingredients that can be used to create valuable items, potions, and food; as escorts for a merchant caravan; for expeditions inside the Sea of Trees or dungeons; or to simply protect something. Every once in a while, a special and dangerous monster appears, and hunters specialized in tracking are then sent to hunt it down. In cases of emergency, the hunters are also called and duty-bound to help defend either the city, the people, or the buildings in the vicinity of Rabanara. Those are the main functions of hunters on this guild."

She takes a breath and immediately continues, "On our side, we buy any monster corpses or organs, intact or not, then we evaluate them and give out the proper rewards. The advantage of selling to us is that we have experts in dismantling and evaluation of monster parts. We do not haggle and only buy at a fixed price. We also buy parts without the need for a buyer since we're able to stock them. If you were to go to the merchant guilds you could sell for higher, but there might not be anyone buying it at the moment.

"On the second floor, you can use the meeting rooms to discuss things with your allies, and we guarantee a [Silent Room] enchantment on each room; on the third floor, there's the administration personnel that you can consult for more serious matters; and behind this building, there are the training grounds, and for ten copper, you can use it and train with our instructors for a full period."

I assume period means from morning till noon or from noon till dusk.

"We're a sister guild to the dungeoneering guild, but we're the ones who manage and organize the hunters. We also help assess the danger of monsters and the ability level of hunters to minimize death or harm. The dungeoneering guild holds all records of dungeons, monsters, and they help acquire the tools necessary for expeditions.

"People who register at the dungeoneering guild are called explorers, those that have registered at both guilds are called adventurers. Finally, registering at either or both of the guilds allows you to enter or leave any town without paying tax as long as you don't hold any export good on you or in your [Item Box]. If you acquire the favor from the guildmaster or someone with equal or higher authority, then you can pass the gate without having the contents of your [Item Box] read." The woman finally finishes and takes another breath.

She seemed surprised at my question, but she was able to answer it perfectly. I guess they're prepared for ignorant people like me, and it's just that I'm a rare find.

"Hmm… So, how do I register?" I shyly ask.

"Two silver coins, a drop of your blood, and we give you your crystal ID tablet. Also, during registration and afterward, we periodically ask to inspect your tablet. This is to make sure that no criminal and no person who learned forbidden skills are using our facilities."

I frown and ask reflexively, "My blood?"

She smiles sweetly and soothes me with a motherly tone, "[Slavery Magic] needs you to ingest the blood, and there's nothing a Blood mage can do with your blood that'd affect you."

"Oh…" I mumble awkwardly. I guess I just made myself look like a superstitious dolt. I quickly move on to another question, "Forbidden skills?"

She diligently replies, "[Necromancy Magic], [Bloodwork] and [Undead Creation] are the only ones whose names we're allowed to mention. [Slavery Magic] and [Blood Magic] are also forbidden unless you're registered."

Registered? So slavery is also sanctioned in this world.

"Alright, I'd like to register."

The guard already saw my entire "Status" when I entered the town, so there's no problem here, but I need to be careful of which skill I choose or I might accidentally pick something forbidden. There are tons of skills with dangerous or suspicious names.

I turn around and fiddle a bit with my skills as I pretend to look for my coins. I put one point into [Space Magic] so my usage of "Items" is less suspicious. The crystal tablet the guard used for customs didn't show the level of my skills, so this should be fine.

I pay the price, then the attendant gets a transparent crystal tablet and a needle from below the table. She pinches my finger with dexterity and lets a drop of blood fall on the tablet.

She picks it up, spends a moment to read it all, then turns to me and reports, "I'll register this at our books. Please wait here for a while." She leaves the booth and disappears deeper into the building.

I turn around just in time to see a fight break out. Two drunk-looking men start punching each other with unsteady postures, then two large attendants with clubs at their waists immediately jump in and forcefully break the fight.

They hold the men in position while they scream abuse at each other, and after a minute or two they tire out, then the attendants drop them in place. They both fall down on the floor like boards and the hall resounds with laughter.

This is a very ruthless but surprisingly friendly atmosphere. Still, I don't really feel comfortable here.

Soon, the attendant comes back and gives me the tablet. It's a small rectangle made of a transparent crystal that fits well in my hand, like a mini smartphone.

She shows me that all of the entries can be hidden by touching them, but that's just a convenience in case I want to show something to someone. The customs guards will reveal every entry and look at all my skills in case I've learned something forbidden.

I'll just put it in my chest pocket for now, then I'll store it in my "Items" later.

"How do I register at the dungeoneering guild?" I ask.

"Just show them your ID and they'll register your name for free."

I knit my eyebrows in confusion. "What, if it's free, then why do I also need to register there? Can't it be done automatically?"

She answers with a perfect business smile, "It depends on the town, so not every hunter and dungeoneering guild is integrated."

I scratch my head in confusion. "Oh, well… Anyway, now I want to sell some monsters I killed."

Her smile becomes gentle and genuine. "Oh? You already killed something? Well then, please follow me to the disassembling room."

Ah, fuck, I made a mistake, I forgot my "Items" is a special thing. I know that [Item Box] probably works similarly, but I've never actually seen it in use.

I need to make an excuse so that I can remove all my points and put them into [Space Magic] to see if I get an [Item Box].

The attendant takes me into a room with multiple cushioned chairs along the walls and a closed door with a sign "In use" hung on it.

"There's someone disassembling a monster. Wait here, and when they're finished, you'll be called," the attendant quickly advises then leaves with a small wave.

I just got a life jacket. I sit and immediately put all my points into [Space Magic]. The first point gives me the [Telekinesis] spell, at 10 points I get [Gravity Crush], and finally, at 20 points I get [Item Box].

I immediately cast it, then a little mana goes away, and it opens the exact same menu as "Items," but now there's nothing inside of it.

Well, then.

At least now I know the truth, so I put all my points back how they were.

After a good thirty minutes, the door opens and a big, bald, and burly man with a bloody apron and gloves greets me with a smile.

"Good morning, young man. Are you here for dismantling?" He energetically asks.

"Yes, I am," I obediently reply with a nod.

He pats his apron with pride. "I'm Gordon, the chief butcher. We're ready now, so please come in, and sorry for the wait."

I nod silently and follow him across the door, then we enter a large, cooled room with a large number of metal tables where a few are still bloodied. There's another person with a bloody apron and gloves that's scrubbing the blood off of everything.

"Now, pull out on the table anything you want to sell," Gordon instructs.

I pull the monsters out of my "Items" one by one, and neither of the men comments anything. I notice that the monsters are still warm and bleeding, so this means that whatever is in the [Item Box] or my "Items" gets frozen in time. When I pull out the bear, the two men freeze and let their jaws hang open, then the assistant stops scrubbing and mutters a soft "Wow."

"Yo, call Sonny. This one is valuable," Gordon requests to the assistant, then smiles creepily while staring at the corpse.

Gordon touches his palm with his indicator, and a large knife materializes in his hand with *poof*, then he ignores the other monsters and starts removing the pelt of the bear.

"You killed this one alone?" He asks while vigorously slicing the monster.

"No, I found him weakened. I think he was fighting the goblins that I killed," I confess.

His laugh echoes across the large room. "Hahaha, now that's a jackpot. You see, this one also has a bounty on him, so when we get Sonny here you'll get a bonus. Also, did you kill it by stabbing it through the eye? That's some creative method you got there." He glances back and shows me a bloody smile as some of the bear's blood has squirted on his cheek.

Do they have poker here?

"Creative? How are you supposed to kill him normally?" I curiously ask.

"Crushing the head. His skin is too hard to kill with an axe or spear, and magic ruins the meat and the pelt too much. I see you used something like [Electric Magic], yeah? That's good to stun him, but it still damages the pelt a little."

The door suddenly opens and I see Sonny come into the room. He's a small man with yellow eyes, white hair, pasty white skin, white spiral horns on his head, and a thin, white tail with a pointy tip. When he sees the bear, his eyes shine behind his oval glasses, his lips curl into a creepy smile, and he excitedly whispers, "Ooooh, excellent."

Thankfully, he ignores me and goes towards Gordon. He examines the butcher's work and starts talking to him, then the assistant comes back and helps Gordon.

After Gordon finishes the bear, which they tell me is called a Grey Berserker, Sonny says that the reward for killing him is two gold pieces while the body is worth another seven. If the hide was more well preserved it could be sold up to ten coins. Each goblin's body is worth forty copper. The "hedge-wolf", which is called Mossy Fangpine, is worth one silver coin.

Since the money isn't excessive, they give it to me immediately, otherwise, it's necessary to wait for the money to be transferred to the guild.

Sonny turns to me and comments with a subtle smirk, "So this is your first hunt, eh? Starting your tally with a surprise. But don't let other hunters use you, now. They might be too easily impressed by a lucky kill on the Grey Berserker."

I awkwardly smile and reply, "Well I don't plan on bragging about it, so nobody will know."

He holds back a chuckle. "Oh, no. We publish hunt results, so people will know your name pretty soon."

I wince and look away. "Argh… Is that so?"

Even this I have to be careful about so that I don't stand out too much.

Gordon's laugh echoes again through the cold room and he asks, "Hehehe, you don't want fame? What kind of hunter are you?"

"It's rather troublesome to be too famous too quickly," I tiredly answer.

He points the bloody knife at me like a finger and nods. "Haha, the boy got a good head on his shoulders."

"Anyway, we'll be waiting for your next surprise," Sonny politely adds and gives me a small bow.

He seems to be a delicate man as he moves with measured movements that give him an air of dignity.

I say my goodbyes and leave. Now I need to go to the dungeoneering guild since they might have some interesting information about monsters and dungeons.

Since the two are related, the dungeoneering guild is close by, so I quickly get to my destination.

This guild also boasts an extravagant facade. Black bricks reflect little dots of light from the sunlight, ceremonial blades slowly swing along the wall through magical means, and exposed clockworks show a very familiar clock above the double door. This clock is exactly the same as the ones on Earth, with twelve hours and sixty minutes. Maybe I can buy a pocket watch somewhere and cosplay as a steampunk Victorian British noble.

On each of the large double doors, there's an engraving of a gear and an upside-down bardiche. The symbol probably represents the cliche of a trap of swinging blades in a corridor being activated by a mechanism. The dress code for the uniforms of the attendants is exactly the same as the hunters' guild except that the badge is different.

The door is on a corner of the building, so when I enter it I'm faced with a rather small hall with a few cushioned chairs and tables. The rest of the building is separated by a chest-high wall, and past it, I see rows and rows of bookcases, tables, and chairs. There's also a considerable number of people studying there. It seems that I have to put a coin in a booth to enter the library area.

The small windows let little light in, giving it a moody illumination, and couple that with the almost absence of any sound, and the atmosphere is one of calmness and seriousness. All in all, this place seems much more refined than the hunters' guild.

I approach a booth and ask to register. The attendant takes my tablet away and comes back a few minutes later.

"How do I enter the library?" I ask.

The attendant responds in a low and serious tone, "There's a toll of two copper coins, and you have to put a deposit of one gold coin. If you damage a book, then your deposit is forfeit."

"What kind of books are there here?"

His tone seems more detached than the previous attendant's, but at least he's not unwelcoming to questions. "Strictly magic, traps, dungeons, monsters, and artifacts. Anything else you need to go to the temple or the university."

"Artifacts?"

"Rare magical items with dangerous uses."

O~h… that sounds interesting.

My imagination runs wild for a second, but the attendant's stoic stare prevents me from daydreaming, so I ask my last question, "I also heard you sell supplies for expeditions."

"The item shop is through that door." He immediately points to a closed door.

How's a room full of shops so silent even though it's right next to a library? I'm going to bet on magic.

I'm not interested in buying items right now, so I just leave the guild. Next, I'm going to the temple.

The temple is in the middle of the town, so it takes quite a while to walk there.

It might be a few hours before noon, but the food stalls are already opening around me, and soon, the smell of simple, roasted and fried food fills my nose.

I'm actually kind of hungry, and I'm too curious to let this chance pass by, so I buy a cheap stick of goblin meat. It's quite a lot of meat for a single copper coin so it makes me a bit anxious to eat it because it's probably bad-tasting meat that the poor eat.

I bite into it and barely feel any taste, though I'm not really surprised that it's this bland. The only real flavor on it comes from the spices: a mix of garlic and oregano with salt. Still, I thought spices would be expensive for a middle-ages society, so to see it wasted on this meat stick gives me a small amount of hope for the future.

After finishing my stick, I throw it in a "garbage hole," which seems to lead to the sewers, and I'm surprised again with how clean the town is.

Nothing else catches my attention, so, after a long walk, I finally arrive at the temple.

The temple lot is a large square divided into four smaller squares with four thin towers rising at the corners, and the temple itself is a gigantic half-sphere made of what seems to be white marble at the center of the lot, taking up nearly half of the land available.

Two divisions of the lot have buildings on them that look like living quarters, and one of those buildings is full of children, so perhaps that's an orphanage while the other one is the priests' dormitory. The third sector is a grass garden with a dirt field, and the last is a small but lush plantation full of weird plants.

I notice that while the orphanage and the dormitory have a lot of charm, the temple itself doesn't seem to have any sort of decoration, giving it an air of austerity.

I cross the stone path and enter the temple proper, leading me into a huge circular hall. Along the outer wall, I see sixteen statues, each depicting a different human-like bust, and in the center of the hall, there's a single huge statue depicting a sphere, which is the biggest statue of them all.

It seems that the entirety of the first floor is a place for prayer, and it's divided into two rings. On the outer ring, there are benches spread all over that point towards the outer statues; and on the inner ring, the benches are pointed towards the spherical statue. Beside each entrance, there's a large stair that runs along the circular wall in a clockwise manner and leads to the second floor.

I see all kinds of people praying in a variety of manners to the statues. Some are on their knees, some have their hands up in the air, some are holding themselves, some are clasping their hands and have their eyes closed. I can even see a few people crying, and those are all accompanied by a person that I assume is a priest. They wear a loose white robe with a colored vertical line on the side of the arms and legs.

This scene stuns me for a few seconds. It seems that this is a polytheistic world, so it might be a good idea to learn about the gods and choose one to pray. Since "Piety" exists as a stat, might as well use it. I'm a pragmatic agnostic, so, if there's a benefit, then I might as well convert.

I look around and go for the closest priest that's not doing anything. A woman with tied black hair, tanned skin, and full lips. On Earth, she could be called a "Latina."

"Excuse me," I call her attention a little awkwardly.

She turns to me and smiles kindly. "Oh, hello," she greets back.

I lean on my awkwardness to make my words more believable. "I'm a traveler, and I just came to this town from a small village where I could barely learn about the world. Could you spare a moment and teach me about these statues?"

She spends a moment in silence looking at me with a mix of confusion and amusement. "Oho… an inquisitive person. The Gods favor minds like yours." She nods gently, then motions to the stairs. "How about we go to the second floor to not bother the commoners praying? There are plenty of rooms for private consultations over there."

"That sounds good," I softly reply.

"My name is Ciel, what's yours?" She asks with a smile.

"Wolf Ryder."

She nods respectfully. "Pleasure to meet you, Mr. Ryder. Follow me, then."

"Mr. Ryder"? Feels weird to hear that.

The second floor seems to have consultation rooms along the outer walls while administration rooms are in the center. Small holes in the ceiling and shining crystals on the walls light up this building, reminding me of hospitals due to the sterile white everywhere.

I look down a corridor that leads to the center of the floor and see a spiral stair that probably leads to the third floor.

She takes me to an empty room, and like everything in this temple, it's made of white marble slabs with black cement on the seams. There are a few simple cushioned chairs and a table. Ciel sits at the other side of the table, then motions for me to sit on a chair in front of her.

"Now, then, what would you like to know?" She kindly asks.

I scratch my head in thought.

I didn't think this through…

I just shake my head and go for the most basic thing I can think of, "Well… could you start from the beginning, like, the beginning of the world?"

She looks at me with eyes open in surprise, and I blush in embarrassment.

Goddammit, she's looking at me like I'm a weirdo.

"I think what I know is full of holes, so let's start from the beginning. This way, I won't miss anything important," I hurriedly add.

She chuckles then smiles kindly at me. Honestly, her smile is quite charming. Then she stares at the ceiling in thought for a moment and accepts, "Understood. Let's see… the Tale of Creation starts like this.

"The Overseer is the most powerful god that has ever been, but even with all his power, they desired 'something.' They, with their immortality, didn't know what it was to live and die, they always existed. To observe how it would be to not be immortal, they created 'something,' and to govern that 'something' while the Overseer observed, they created two gods: the God of Beginning, and the God of the End. And so, that 'something' would be born, live, and die, becoming the first living being, the Original Life.

"But the Overseer wasn't satisfied. 'It was a waste to let that Life die and disappear,' they thought, so they created ten gods that would govern over that Life. It lived and died inside one of the governing gods, then moved on to the next one, and so on and so forth. Thus, that Life wasn't wasted and lived in a cycle, which was called the Original Cycle of Life.

"But the Overseer wanted more. The Cycle repeated again and again endlessly without change, so the Overseer created the God of Change, whose purpose was to alter that Life little by little, making it different every time, and thus, ensuring that no two Cycles would be the same again. But that was dangerous as the God of Change didn't know restraint, so Change could eventually break the Cycle with their power. To prevent that, the Overseer created the God of Order, whose purpose was to restrain the God of Change and to prevent them from breaking the Original Cycle of Life.

"But Change also wished for more. The Cycle was changing and its integrity was secured, but there was only one Cycle, one Life, and now even the God of Change wanted something 'new.' So the God of Change created a new subordinate god, the God of Creation, whose purpose was to create new Cycles for Change to exert its power upon. Since the new god was a subordinate, they didn't have the authority to interfere with the Original Cycle of Life, so there was no risk of the new god breaking it.

"But Order was there to restrain Change. The God of Order was displeased with the new creations, so they copied the God of Change and created a new subordinate god, the God of Destruction, whose only purpose was to stop the God of Creation. And so, the four gods battled for an incalculable amount of time.

"But even their battle grew stale. As they were immortal beings, they couldn't kill each other, so they used the only thing that could die, the new Cycles of Life birthed by Creation. The Gods wielded them like weapons to create and destroy, spawning an endless sea of Cycles as their battle raged on, and inside each Cycle, uncountable battlefields were created.

"But creating was easier than destroying. As Change used their power to alter the Cycles, they grew and became increasingly complex, and even the Life inside them was affected. When our Realm was created, Life had become what we now call 'mana,' while the Cycles that governed over it turned into the ten base elements of everything: Light, Darkness, Earth, Water, Wind, Fire, Electricity, Nature, Space, and Spirit. And so, as the Gods battled using mana, they created our land, our sea, our skies, our souls, our plants, our animals, our sun, and our night. The battlefields inside the Cycles became the Realms.

"But now it was Creation's turn to yearn for more. They wanted to repeat what his superior god did, they wanted to create something that could create things themselves and change the flow of their battle. After much thought, Creation realized that simply creating another God wouldn't do, they needed something that had the unlimited potential to grow stronger, smarter, and spread their existence far and wide. They created humans and the Genderless God of Existence to watch over us, bringing forth the Dawn of Mankind.

"But Destruction was there to restrain Creation. Destruction created humanity's worst enemy to counter Creation, the monsters. They're beings specialized in killing humanoids, and their only purpose is to grow stronger and kill. In response to the monsters, the God of Creation changed humans into different forms to act against the monsters. They created the other races of humanoids: the halflings, elves, dwarves, gnomes, pixies, beastfolk, wereanimals, merfolk, dragonkin, chimeras, and finally, the demon race, bringing forth the Dawn of Civilization.

"But this time, Destruction had the upper hand. The people the God of Creation birthed were smart, but they couldn't grow fast enough to counter the monsters, beginning the Age of Oppression where humanoid life was almost wiped out. To save the humanoids, God of Creation gave us the power of improving our soul by killing monsters and absorbing the fragments of their souls to create new layers, which we call 'levels.' With more layers, our soul expanded and allowed us to grow further and faster.

"But Destruction had to answer that. They cursed the land, making it so that the free mana in the environment would be used to create monsters. With this, any sort of abandoned land would birth hordes of monsters, which could eventually overrun all civilizations.

"But Creation would not give up yet. Seeing the power of the 'levels,' the God of Creation gave us another boon, a way to share our greatest advantage, our greatest gift, our knowledge. They created the 'skills,' which allow us to quickly learn what others had already learned if we train our bodies in similar ways. This was the decisive move that allowed us to push the monsters back and kill Ender, our Nemesis. And with that, the land was safe, bringing forth the Age of Glory."

Share the knowledge? Then the skills aren't decided by the gods, but instead, by the mortals? I see. This way, skills can be modified and new ones added, otherwise, the progress of society would be almost entirely dependent on the Gods.

"But Destruction was relentless in accomplishing its job. They took their time, but they managed to create something that would rival the power of civilization: the immortal Monster King, a copy of a humanoid that has high intelligence, the capacity of growth, and the power to command monsters at will. With this, civilization was pushed back again, and the endless battle with the Monster King started, which continues to this day. Currently, the battle could be said to be in a stalemate; we keep the monsters in check, while the Monster King pushes us back whenever we gain some ground."

In the stories I've read, this type of villain would be called Demon King, but since there's already a demon race I guess it would cause confusion to call him that.

"The creation of the Monster King started Age of Discord, where the races fought each other all over the Realm as they couldn't agree on a way to unite and fight the Monster King. Then came the first emperor of Avgi, Ajax Doxa, who united our continent, Gilios, and presented a front strong enough to prevent the Monster King from taking over the Realm. After the emperor's death, he Ascended and became the first Humanoid God, the God of The Sun. Thus, he brought forth the Age of the Sun.

"As a response to the creation of the Monster King, the God of Creation enabled the birth of dungeons, sky fortresses, and monster ships. When the mana gets too thick at a certain area, a mana storm is born, but its destructive power did nothing but help the God of Destruction. Thus, to control that, the God of Creation blessed the land so that whenever a mana storm occurs, a dungeon is created to absorb its power. If it happens below the ground, it's called a dungeon, if in the sky, it's called a sky fortress, and if below the sea, it's called a monster ship."

I suppress a smile.

And finally, the most standard element of any fantasy story, the dungeon, has finally shown its face coupled with the reason why it exists.

"These dungeons are manifestations of our culture coupled with the power of the nearby monsters. This contains the power of the mana storm with the drawback of creating powerful monsters, but considering how dungeons are limited spaces, dungeons are the perfect training grounds for civilization. With the creation of the monster hunters' guild and the dungeoneering guild, we manage the monsters and the dungeons so that we can acquire power and items in ways we never could before."

"After that, the God of Creation left this Realm to continue their job, and he created many other Realms along with ours in this Cycle. Though we don't know their names, we do know that the name of our Realm is Rupegia, and the name of our Cycle is Reigurando."

"Wait, what? Can you explain a bit more what Realms and Cycles are?" I interject.

She smiles kindly. "Well… see it this way: a different Realm is a place where the laws that govern Life, or mana, as we call it, are different than ours. Perhaps it's a land where you don't have a ground to fall to, perhaps it's a land where you fall up instead of down, perhaps it's a land where monsters and people changed places. Do you understand what I mean?"

So, in essence, it's a different "reality."

I nod and answer, "Yeah, I think so. And what about Cycles?"

"Cycles are the collection of Realms as well as the path of mana. When things are destroyed, like our spirit, the earth, the flame of a spell, or anything else, the mana doesn't just 'dissipate' like some would believe. It simply moves on to the next step of the Cycle as all Life is preserved eternally. In the case of our spirits, they move on to be born again on the next Realm of our Cycle."

So my soul kind of moved on through the Cycle but I retained my memories?

I grab my chin in thought and question, "You say there are different Cycles, but how do we know this?" -An idea enters my mind and it makes me quite excited- "How do we know there are other Realms? Can we see other Realms? Can we move between them?"

She smiles and lifts her hand, gesturing for me to slow down a bit. "Woah, calm down, that's coming on the next part of the tale."

I lean back on my chair and smile embarrassedly. "Ah, oh… sorry. Please continue."

"After the God of Creation left, certain humanoids started to acquire immense power. They were called heroes during their lives, but their time on the Realm eventually ended, like all things should. The God of Creation took notice of such souls passing through the Cycle, and they didn't want to waste the experience of these honorable heroes that achieved so much, so Creation turned them into subordinate gods, and thus, the Humanoid Gods started to Ascended. Counting the first emperor, we know of sixteen Humanoid Gods so far.

"These gods give us Blessings and Messages to us when necessary, and this is how we know about the other Realms as they occasionally give us bits and pieces of information. They can see beyond our Realm and told us a bit about what's out there, but even they can't leave Rupegia.

"We think there are other Cycles because it fits the teachings of the God of Creation to always grow and expand, and the Humanoid Gods tell us the God of Creation is not currently in any Realm of this Cycle, so there's bound to be other Cycles. Also, this means that, fortunately, the God of Destruction isn't here as they should be chasing after Creation, which brings stability to our Realm.

"That's the total of the Tale of Creation," she finishes with a smile, then she pours water into a cup and wets her dry throat.

I blink blankly as my brain returns from "story mode," then I blurt out, "Wow, that's a lot of information. Is this written in a book? Do you have other books with tales about this world that I could read?"

She looks at me curiously. "You know how to read? Well, we do have books, but they require special permission. Though, if you join the temple, you can read them at any time."

I narrow my eyes in suspicion. "What do you mean by joining the temple?"

"Working as a priest. There's always the need for more people helping in the orphanage, or cooking the meals, or spreading the word of the Gods in the streets."

That doesn't sound like easy work, or work that pays a lot. I need to acquire money for research and to get a lot more power so that I can live an easier life, and I don't think I'll get either by working here.

I frown and respond, "Hmmm… I don't think I want to become a priest. Is there any other library that I can access?"

Her mood slightly sours for a moment as she becomes a bit disappointed, but then she returns to her gentle and genuine demeanor and answers, "If you help the temple, maybe you can catch the attention of the head priest, and he's the only one capable of giving special permission, but our books are rather limited. Besides that, you can try the library at the magic university. It has a much wider variety than ours, but it costs a lot just to enter, and the books available to non-members are also limited…" She plays with her hair adorably as she reflects on something for a moment. "Are you perhaps a scholar? By your clothes, you look just like another commoner or starting adventurer, but you are way too smart to be either. You also can read and your curiosity is rather impressive."

Well, I guess this was unavoidable. I needed information, and there was no other way besides stumbling in the dark. Time to lie a little.

I give her a gentle smile as I lie, "Well, I'm from a very far away land, and I had to give up a lot just to come here, but I'm no scholar, I'm just a naturally curious person."

Half-truths. It may sound mysterious, but I don't have the knowledge required to craft a well-built lie where I give information such as birth-place, family names, and etc.

"Hm? Hahah…" She tilts her head and laughs awkwardly. "Well, I'm sorry for trying to pry into your business, but I can say one thing for certain, you're an interesting person."

It seems she understood I don't want to talk about my origins in detail. A person who hides his past is suspicious and untrustworthy, but I think I acquired enough goodwill that she can just let this pass.

This talk gave me some comfort, so perhaps I can keep coming here and asking more questions. It seems that the God of Creation encourages the sharing of knowledge, so I can ask questions more freely than I had imagined. The priests also don't seem oppressive, so I feel like I don't have much to fear from them.

Right now, I've heard enough about religion, and I still want to go back to the dungeoneering guild to look for info about the monsters around here. I've decided I'll carefully hunt as a primary way of making money until I'm more accustomed with crafting and the laws. I'm not a fighter, but I also know very little about trade and economy, so I'll need a lot more knowledge to get into that area, and fighting seems easier in comparison due to the skill system having so many combat skills in comparison to everything else.

I may not be a warrior, but I have a bit of knowledge about tactics and warfare, so at least I don't feel completely helpless when I think about where to start.

"Well then, I think I've heard enough for now," I announce and nod respectfully. "Thank you for your time. I really enjoyed this talk, so, can I come back another day and ask for more?"

She nods emphatically and replies, "It's part of our job to inform those who listen, so I would enjoy talking to you again. If I'm not at the temple, just ask for any other priest that's on standby."

"Well, if it's not too much, can I continue talking to you, specifically?"

I'd rather not talk to different people, and she looks much better than the wrinkly old priests I saw around.

She twitches in surprise, then smiles gently as she accepts, "O-okay, that's not a problem. During the morning, I either work at the clinic or the orphanage, and I help prepare lunch and dinner most days. Every two days, I rest during the afternoon, so I'm not at the temple every day."

I return the smile. "Alright, then. I don't know when I'm coming back, but it's going to be soon. Until then."

"Goodbye, Mr. Ryder," she gracefully says her farewell.

"Goodbye, Miss Ciel," I reply with decidedly less grace.

Since it's almost noon, I look for some cheap food. It seems it's the bean season, so most stalls are selling a variety of bean dishes.

I enter a restaurant and eat a green bean soup that reminds me of green peas. All they have here is goblin meat, though. Previously, I felt that my inn was expensive, but after tasting this meat, I feel like the price is justified.

I'll postpone going to the university for a while until I have a better grasp of magic and the life around here, so now I'll go to the dungeoneering guild to gain more knowledge of the area.

I still feel it's dangerous to say I'm from another world, so I'll avoid places where they might ask my background. If I told them the truth, I'd certainly cause a lot of ruckus, and in no novel would that end well.

As I'm walking back to the dungeoneering guild, I have some time to reflect on what I learned. Ciel said that the Humanoid Gods give blessings and messages, so there's really no question about the presence of gods here, therefore, being an atheist is just idiotic. Some "God" sent me here, but simply reneging all Gods would be an infantile decision, especially because I'm dealing with fucking Gods. It's just not something to take lightly.

I saw that there are sixteen gods, so maybe I should learn more about them and start praying to one. Since they also communicate, and they were once people of this world, then perhaps they're reasonable. It also gives me a little comfort in knowing there's a being that could help me if I show a little faith.

I notice something change within me. I open my stats and see that my "Piety" has increased by 1 (it's now 3).

It seems that the peepers in the sky can even read my mind.

I enter the dungeoneering guild and ask for the section with information on monsters and dungeons around this area. The attendant guides me to the second floor and shows me a section with dozens of cloned books. This seems to be a common inquiry around here, so the guild prepared a large number of copies of the books: "Monsters of Rabanara," "Dungeons of Rabanara," and "Advice for New Adventurers". The creativity in naming is heartwarming.

After taking a look at them, I learned that I'm one lucky motherfucker. The Grey Berserker is the most powerful type of monster in the region, and I met one when it was at its weakest. There's always a large bounty on them because they're smart enough to avoid the culling, so they're always a danger in the forest. The advised strategy to defeat it is a group of at least three fully armored people and one healer. The aim is to use blunt weapons to break the bear's bones since they're much more fragile than the hide, which makes most cutting or piercing weapons useless.

Goblins are like in any other game. They grow like weeds and require constant care so they don't choke your plants, which means your life. They give little rewards, but it's possible to sell a whole corpse for a considerable amount of money. The problem is that most people don't have enough carrying capacity to bring a lot of corpses into town. Goblin meat is tasteless and sinewy, but it's the base meat for the poor so they always sell, though most hunters don't bother with the corpses and only bring a proof of extermination, which is the right ear.

Mossy Fangpine is another dangerous enemy. There's a chance the mossy spines will poison the person; another evidence I'm actually lucky. They hunt in packs of three or more, and the one I fought was alone only because of the culling. The strategy is to hide behind a shield and wear at least leather armor, then counter stab it in the face after it jumps to bite, or just use magic since they are vulnerable to it. Arrows are okay to use, but they are fast and the spines can deflect arrows if you're unlucky. They have extraordinary noses, so they're likely to appear whenever a monster is killed because of the blood.

Another enemy is the Rabid Rabbit. This one, like the Fangpine, only charges and bites. The bunny acts alone and is extremely vicious. Their bites are poisonous and can even make a person go berserk. The meat tastes delicious and is considered a delicacy while the saliva glands are used in potions, so this monster is always hunted, making it hard to find.

In the sky, there's the Dragolite, a small dragon that doesn't have a fire breath. Their meat is somewhat hard to cook and has a strong taste, but it's still valuable. The farmers hate them since they like to kidnap the sheep around here but they don't kidnap the children and instead just try to kill them, so everyone who lives in a farm around here is trained in archery the moment they can hold a small bow.

The last part shocks me a little. This is really a brutal world. Also, this is the enemy that captured my summoned bird.

There's also the Giant Dragonfly. It uses its legs as spears and attacks with high speed. The easiest strategy is to just use a spear longer than their legs. They're weak but annoying to deal with because they are agile, and it's difficult to dodge or escape them, so it's advised for hunters to always carry a simple, disposable long spear in their [Item Box]. Due to the monster's nature, they mostly appear along rivers or lakes, and they don't fly too well among the trees, so that's why I haven't met one yet. Their wings and eyes are valuable crafting items, so they sell quite well.

The occasional migrating flock of wyverns is a threat. Different from dragons, who have wings on their back, a wyvern's forelegs are their wings. Also, this monster looks more like velociraptors with wings, while dragons are lizards with wings. Wyverns attacks are the most common threat to this settlement, so, sooner or later, I'll be called to defend the town against them.

They only fly as a way of long-distance movement since their huge bodies and low magical capability makes flying awkward for them. Unlike dragons, who can manipulate the wind with ease, wyverns tire easily if they have to be agile during flight, so fighting against them is always done on the ground. The best strategy against them is to fight behind shield walls using pikes and ranged attacks. Finding and destroying wyvern nests is heavily rewarded since this means that the attacks on the town reduce in frequency.

These are the common monsters that are born here, but the thing is that migrating monsters are extremely common, so the chance of meeting a random monster is quite high, which means that a monster hunter really needs to read a lot about their prey to be prepared for anything. This discourages me a little about hunting monsters in the forest for money. I also have little experience in tracking, so I think that looking at the nearby dungeons might be a better choice for now.

Dungeons have a lot of variety. There are some that are maze-like, whose floors can be many times larger than entire towns. Others are just large underground environments where monsters roam around copied fragments of the world above. Some even have artificial lights, allowing them to sustain some form of plant life. Plenty are mere dimensional doors to some unknown space, possibly full of traps, randomness, and constant change. The most popular among hunters are the small labyrinths, especially the ones that create a floor exclusively for a single party, which guarantees that no other party will influence your progress, but unfortunately they're much rarer. Most dungeons have some sort of "elevator," which allows adventurers to move to any floor they've previously explored.

Dungeons increase in depth the more they're allowed to remain undisturbed. Damaging the core forces the dungeon to reduce in depth to repair itself, while destroying the core makes it fall apart. The nobility is the one responsible for culling the forests and managing the dungeon depth, and in the book, it is implied that a noble that doesn't fight doesn't deserve their title. It sounds quite interesting, so I need to ask more about this later.

In the book "Advice for New Adventurers," there's some simple info about "Stats" and magic, which is extremely valuable to me. It says that the average stat for a commoner should be ten and that anything below that is concerning.

"Strength" is self-explanatory, but it says that the number represents overall muscular power, so the book advises adventurers to train their entire body instead of just a few muscles because the "divine system" gives people a little power boost every time the stat increases.

"Endurance" is like physical stamina, but it also helps with resisting magic or poisons. To increase it, I only need to do aerobics, and the book advises to never try training [Poison Resistance] without an authorized healer.

"Dexterity" pertains to the precision of muscular movement. It's the main stat for sharpshooters, but it also helps quite a lot with martial arts, so it's a secondary stat for warriors. There's no mention of a "thief" or "rogue" fighting style, though.

"Speed" is self-explanatory.

"Intelligence" is said to help with the speed of learning skills, which is excellent news to me since mine is pretty high. It's also a main stat for mages since they need a lot of skills to be effective, so the faster they learn, the more powerful they can become.

"Wisdom" is more mysterious, but it generally correlates with life experience, so mine is at the appropriate level for someone of my (counting Eath's) age, but I'm a bit of an odd 19-year old for Rupegia standards. This is the main stat for mages because the subconscious of their brain uses their knowledge of magical theory to do all the minimal adjustments and calculations that a spell needs to work, so I guess I might be kind of a good mage?

"Willpower" is all about mental endurance, and while I was never a slob or sedentary, I'm also not a super disciplined person. This stat helps with resisting spells that affect the mind and is also used by mages to "brute force" their spells, supplementing their lack of theoretical knowledge with pure will.

"Charisma" is a very mysterious stat and not much is known about it, though someone with high "Charisma" is instantly recognizable. The book also advises that adventurers should always be wary of merchants with a honeyed voice.

"Piety" is another obvious one, but it also tells how well divine power can channel through a mage's body, so that's why [Light Magic] didn't work when I had zero "Piety."

"Perception" is simply attention to detail. It seems to help with detecting spells and illusions, the "light-bending"-kind and not the "mess with your mind"-kind. I'm a bit surprised mine is considerably high, but I guess it's because I'm quite attentive and reflective.

"Sanity" is too complex for a simple book to explain how it's calculated, but all I should know is that it provides a good gauge of one's mental health along with their susceptibility to mind-affecting spells. Twelve is a good number for a well-adjusted citizen, and the book advises one to talk to priests if it's lower than that.

There's no way I can tell Ciel about my problems, at least not yet…

Since it's actually viable for someone to learn magic on their own, the book explains that "Magic Power" is simply how much one can alter reality with a single point of mana. It's advised to keep it at half of the max MP because, otherwise, the spells either become too weak and ineffective or too powerful and hard to control. My MP and "Magic Power" are still both too low to affect me like that, though.

There's also a short description of the magic skills. [Sense Mana] is self-explanatory, but the book says that all spells leak mana, which is what the skill picks up once the particles touch the senser's skin; [Mana Control] allows a mage to put more or less mana and modulate the spell's power, making it mandatory for powerful spells; [Mana Recovery] increases natural MP regen; [Mana Efficiency] helps with the natural mana leak and reduces the cost of continuous spells; [Reduced Mana Cost] affects only the initial cost of casting a spell, so it doesn't overlap with Efficiency. There's also some info about mana overuse, which happens when a mage uses too much mana too fast, and blackout, which is when a mage's MP goes negative, but the book only says to avoid these conditions because they're unhealthy even if someone has the Resistance skills to deal with them.

Lastly, the book gives me a small formula to calculate one's "soul potential." If the total number of skills (and their levels) some has is less than four times the person's level, they have "positive soul potential," and it's easier to learn skills; if the total is higher than that, then they have "negative soul potential," and it becomes increasingly harder to gain skills, the deeper into the negative numbers the total is.

I'm not sure how this relates to my cheat since I can just zero my total skills at any time, effectively giving me a positive soul potential any time I want.

It's quite tiring and time-consuming to keep reading all this information, so I don't really have time to go out of town today. I decided to go to a nearby dungeon tomorrow, Royd's Kerfuffle, a labyrinthine dimensional door dungeon that has an "elevator." The adventurer that discovers a dungeon gets the right to name it, and most of them have quite an eccentric naming sense.

This dungeon in particular isn't that popular since the monsters there do not reward much, but it could be a perfect training ground for me. Only at the lower levels that I need to be careful and look out for traps, and the worst of them teleport their victims to a random place on the same floor, so things only start to become difficult after the tenth floor, but the floor traps are always on the same spot, so it's easy to avoid them.

It's also a good place to train "Willpower" due to the monsters that spawn there, but they're pretty physically weak, and I have a cheat that lets me counter them.

Right now, I still have some free time until sunset, so I decide to go do some physical training.

The hunters' guild training grounds is a large dirt field. There's a large area for sparring; an archery range; a wide, long, and secluded place where I can see some mages throwing some flashy spells; a place where a few freakish; floating pieces of armor fight some people; a small building with barred windows; and a small fountain for people to drink.

Is that fountain magical or is there plumbing in this town?

I pay the toll to enter and approach one of the idle men with the symbol of the hunters' guild engraved on his leather armor.

"H-hello, I'm new around here. Could you tell me how I can use this place?" I stiffly ask him.

He's not big or burly, but he has a menacing gaze. He sports a buzz cut, his face is full of small scars, and his posture is intimidating.

How does one get scars in a world with magical healing?

He replies in an eerily calm voice, "Hm? Well, the archery range is free, and we can lend you a bow and arrow, but you'll pay for anything you break. The magic range is free, too, but you need a safety briefing so you don't hurt other people. The Living Armors are rented, and the manager deals with that. I'm an instructor, and I can give you training with weapons, but you can't monopolize me, so we have the students spar with each other once you're at a proper level." I listen intently and remain tense under his unwavering gaze, which makes me want to spontaneously look away, but I manage to resist it.

"Then, could you teach me the sword?" I anxiously ask.

He nods energetically. "Alright, let's spar so I can measure your skill. Put away your sword, and I'll give you a wooden one."

He goes into what I assume is the warehouse while I put my sword in my "Items," then he comes back with two wooden swords and throws one at me.

"What's your name?" He casually asks.

"Wolf Ryder."

Now that I've said it again, I think that I've made a mistake. This name certainly doesn't suit me. My parents were right, my original name was better.

He taps his chest with a closed fist and replies, "I'm Toga. You make the first move, and I will start attacking after a while."

So I start my session. I rush and attack, but I have no idea what I'm doing. Because the skill system takes over some of my movements I'm at least confident that I know how to slash and thrust.

Toga effortlessly blocks, parries, and dodges my attacks. It feels like I'm a child throwing a tantrum while he holds me back by simply holding my head. Then he starts attacking and in three strikes my sword falls out of my hand.

"Well, your technique is a mess, who taught you the sword?" He questions with a deep frown.

"Self-taught," I answer meekly.

"Mystery solved," he responds and laughs out loud. "You know how to attack, but you're lacking a 'flow,' so it's easy to find openings to counter, which means that the first thing you should learn is how to defend yourself. Now, what sort of training do you want?"

"How many types of training are there?" I reflexively ask back.

He sighs softly and gives me an odd look. "Depends on what job you want. Adventuring warriors want any 'Physical' skills that they can get their hands on, and their role in a fight depends on which skills they have an affinity for; soldiers train to have a balanced selection of weapon and defensive skills like [Block] and [Parry]," -he scans my body up and down- "but they need 'Stats' more than they need skills, which you're lacking; and knights train mostly their weapon skill and other enhancement skills like [Muscle Explosion] and [Enhanced Strength] since they use enchanted weapons and wear heavy armor, so they don't need defensive skills as much. Archers have it easy, though, since all they need is [Bow Use] until they're high level."

"I want to work as an adventurer," I immediately confess.

Then he smiles a bit creepily. "I see. So, do you want to train the proper way, or the easy way?" And his words give me a chill.

I know what's coming. It's going to be painful, but this is an opportunity to see what true sword fighting is like, and what kind of man or boy would say no to that?

"The... proper way," I weakly answer, starting to waver.

He grins evilly and commands, "Then defend yourself like your life depends on it, because it does."

Then he beats me up.

My body is bruised and bloody. I didn't imagine that a blunt wooden sword could make such a cut. Toga crushed me and he's barely out of breath. He's certainly a scary man. Did I choose the worst instructor by any chance?

While I'm sprawled on the ground, Toga calls for someone. Another instructor comes by and touches my arm, then he starts singing something like a prayer.

"[Heal]," he softly sings after finishing the strophe, then my body suddenly hurts a lot less, the bruises return to normal color, and the cuts stop bleeding then close up, all in just a few seconds.

This is [Light Magic], and it's much faster than my [Regeneration] spell.

Oh wait, was that a chant? Do people normally need to sing something so that the spell activates? I don't know anything about that, but it's a common trope in video games to balance magic, and they make it so that powerful magic takes a long time to chant.

I get up and notice there's a small number of people watching me, and quite a few of them are grinning, then embarrassment fills my heart and makes me blush.

What's so funny?

"Good job surviving, boy," one of the grinning men praises me half-ironically.

I fail to hold back a small smile. They're making fun of me for getting beaten up, but I just can't deny it must've been a spectacle.

Toga stops in front of me, and I notice a hint of kindness in his tone as he reports, "Your body is weak and your technique is poor, but you got enough 'Willpower' to withstand the training. Keep coming and you'll be a proper swordsman in due time."

I had noticed people greet each other with a clear nod, so I mimic that and politely state, "Thank you for the session, teacher. I'm very tired now, so I'm going to retire."

I'm not sure what's the etiquette when dealing with the instructors here, so I just call him "teacher" instead of saying his name.

"Goodbye," he calmly replies with a nod.

I turn around and wash my face in the fountain, then I leave. Now I'm just going to pass by the hunters guild for a quick look.

Near the entrance, I notice something I had ignored the first time I came here due to nervousness. On one of the walls, there are two large black boards where I can see something written in white. The first board is named "Notable Hunts," and it displays a magically scrolling list of hunter names with monster names next to them, and I get a chill when I see my name with "Gray Berserker'' right next to it. The second board is named "Confirmed Kills,'' and it displays a list of the hunter names coupled with the number of monsters they've killed that scrolls much faster than the first one.

I walk towards the notice board and see that most of the notes there are about the prices for the bounties or corpses of the common kills around here, like the goblins, Dragolites, or monsters from the dungeons, while the rest are bounties on specific monsters sighted. Some contain a rough drawing, but they all contain the name, the last seen location, a short description of the monster, and a threat level.

From what I understood by reading monster books, the threat level goes from 0 to 10, the numbers have the following meaning: 0 = harmless, 1 = capable of killing a child, 2 = capable of killing an untrained adult, 3 = capable of killing the common soldier, 4 = capable of killing a soldier squad, 5 = capable of killing a knight squad, 6 = capable of killing veteran hunters, 7 = capable of killing a soldiers company (100 men), 8 = capable of killing a division (10,000 men), 9 = capable of destroying a fortress, 10 = unkillable.

Why are knights ranked lower than veteran hunters? Is it a matter of specialization? I see that there's a permanent bounty on the Grey Berserker, and his threat level is four. Dragolites are threat level one and Mossy Fangpines are threat level two.

When I decide to leave, I notice that there are a few people looking at me, then I recognize that at least two of them were here in the morning when I sold the bear.

Do these people do nothing besides sit here and drink?

It's probably what Sonny said: other parties will be interested in me since I killed a Grey Berserker all by myself. It doesn't matter that it was half-dead, they don't know that.

I decide to quickly leave and go back to the inn to rest.

Dinner is a red bean paste with minced meat and spices to put on the bread. Feels like it's spiced with paprika and cumin, so now it only needs some spicy pepper for it to be just like chilli.

After dinner and a bath, I go back to my room and reflect upon today. I look at my skills and see that they all have two numbers on their level separated by a "plus" sign. [Sword Use], [Dodge], [Parry], and [Block] all have a 1 on the right side of the plus while the rest have a 0.

The fuck?

I try to manipulate my skills, but only the number on the left of the plus sign changes, and I seemingly can't remove the skills with the 1 on the right side.

Did I "learn" these skills? Does this mean that trained skills are different from the ones assigned with the system?

I guess this also means that I can't learn [Parry], then remove the skill, then learn it again, and repeat as a way to accumulate skill points.

No exploits in this game eh? Mine not included.

This is how my skills are right now:

Wolf Ryder Skill Report

Physical

Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level
Sword Use | 5+1 | Dodge | 2+1 | Parry | 0+1
Block | 0+1

Magical

Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level
Mana Efficiency | 3+0 | Mana Recovery | 3+0 | Electric Magic | 4+0
Nature Magic | 5+0

Miscellaneous

Skill Name | Level
Andraste Language | 10+0

Info

Name | Wolf Ryder | Age | 19 | Race | Human
HP | 100 | MP | 110 | Magic Power | 180
Level | 5

Stats

Strength | 8 | Endurance | 8 | Dexterity | 9
Speed | 10 | Intelligence | 20 | Wisdom | 15
Willpower | 11 | Charisma | 10 | Piety | 3
Perception | 15 | Sanity | 9

Other

Status Effects | 'NONE'
Titles | 'NONE'
Affiliations | 'NONE'
Companions | 'NONE'
Crimes | 'NONE'

After that, I almost doze off thinking about the Tale of Creation. The name "Reigurando" keeps coming back to my mind, as it reminds me of something, but I just can't put my finger on what.

Then something hits me. The Japanese language lacks some things required for them to pronounce foreign words properly, and their way around it creates an accent that some even find funny. After a while, I've started to notice the patterns in their speech and now it's become easy to understand what foreign word they're trying to say.

The Japanese way of pronouncing the English word "Playground" is "Pureigurando," while RPG, Role-Playing-Game, is pronounced "Arupegi," which is incredibly similar to Rupegia.

Oh, no.

I'm truly stuck in a fantasy video game, and it's made by the Japanese. Then it also hits me that "Demon King'' is a very common trope in Japanese light novels.

I really am an "isekai" protagonist…

A note from Manasong

Leave a rating or a review to help me rise to the top or fix my shameful understanding of prose.

Take a look over my blog where all information of the world of Rupegia will be posted.

Join the Discord and discuss, or rant, or meme, or try and fight me so your waifu gets more screentime.

Become a Patron and read chapters in advance, or read the side-stories, or leave your mark on the story, or help choose the next artwork or the next side-story.

Chapter 3: Royd's Kerfuffle

A note from Manasong

Many thanks to reader q00u for switching the dashes (-...-) dialogue notation for the quotation ("...") dialogue notation.

I'm not really shocked, you know? My "Sanity" didn't go down, so I guess this is proof I'm adapting to the situation. It also didn't go up, so I guess this is my limit. I'm just fated to remain half-sane in this shitty world.

Being introduced to magic and monsters so abruptly certainly shocked me and didn't help with my mental state. Though the biggest shock I had so far was the message from God. It was incredibly cryptic and suspicious, but there's nothing I can do about it besides dealing with it and moving on.

Oh wait, it's morning already? Did I sleep? I don't remember sleeping, so maybe I just fainted and then suddenly woke up.

My thoughts are drifting endlessly, preventing me from reflecting upon anything important. I simply can't focus because my mind is swimming with the possibilities.

It's like I'm living inside an isekai novel. There are so many tropes being thrown at me that I can just predict what's going to ha-…

I hear a knock on the door, then a muffled female voice reaches my ears, "Breakfast is ready!"

That must be the innkeeper's daughter. She's a really cute girl with blonde hair in a ponytail and a very feminine small face. She seems to be very bubbly and kind, and she looks like she's my age, by that I mean this-world-age, not original-world-age. She has a brother, and they kind of look like twins. I've caught a few patrons and even myself staring at her absentmindedly, but did she notice our stares? She's just a bright spirit, and she always comes to us with a warm smile, ma-…

No, wait, I can't run from this, I need to finish that train of thought. If I think this world is like a novel, I can predict some developments about my reason for being here and what could happen next. Ciel said that the God of Creation is not in this Cycle, so the God of Destruction must've followed him, and because of that, this realm is more or less stable. This means that, if in the future, The God of Creation comes back, or if something calls theirs or the God of Destruction's attention, then shit will hit the fan.

So, I think I need to prepare and get stronger while not messing with the balance of this world. But am I really supposed to be a "hero"? The message that "God" sent me is suspicious, why not tell the reason I'm sent here? Why apologize? Did something go wrong? Was I not supposed to come here?

I guess that doesn't really matter in the end. In the isekai stories, a "hero" is sent for whatever bullshit reason just to create a story. It's used as an impetus to return to the previous world or save the current world, but in the end, the "why" doesn't matter, what matters is what I do next.

There are too many possibilities and zero answers or evidence. The best I can do is simply prepare while trying to keep the balance of the world. There's a possibility that I might have to fight the Monster King, so information on him is essential.

The possibility of a realm transfer is another thing I need more information on. Maybe my original world is part of this cycle, so it might be best for me to raise my "Piety" and communicate with a humanoid god.

Lastly, there's a possibility that this is all just an ultra-realistic VR game. If I die, will I return to Earth? Well… there's just no way to test that, so I think I should ignore this line of thinking.

Now, let's get back to the present. Training at the hunter's guild is going to take a long time to yield results, so I want to enter Royd's Kerfuffle to quickly gain a few levels. Those skill points can turn me into a master swordsman whenever I want, so I need levels more than anything right now. But before I leave town, I'm going to buy some equipment and supplies, then take a look at the dungeoneering guild for tools.

Today, breakfast is a simple vegetable soup with a small piece of mutton and some sweet bread. Honestly, it's kind of nice.

After eating, I go to the Crafter's Corner. Walking around town is rather tiring, but I'm not a sedentary person, it's just that I'm not used to this amount of exercise. Yesterday, I fought until I collapsed, so my muscles are still a little bit sore. Maybe I should rest, but I can't stay still due to my anxiety. I need a stable source of income before I can relax properly.

I see a few pieces of Gray Berserker leather armor on the market. They're, unsurprisingly, gray, and they're three gold pieces each. It seems expensive, but considering how that bear is known for being tough, I decide to part with my money. I get a jacket and pants.

The armor is quite flexible and well-padded, so I feel snug and safe in it. I do have to moisturize then oil it so that it doesn't dry and harden, but the cost of doing that is nothing in comparison to how much more I'd have to pay for metal armor.

I notice that good padding is quite expensive, and all of the stronger ones come from monster fur. It seems that cotton is rather flimsy in comparison to monster-based textiles, but it's still more expensive due to a variety of reasons.

There are more expensive pieces of leather armor I could've bought, like Hell Wyvern, Kite Dragon, troll, ogre, and Dragon Lord, but I feel like this one should do for a small dungeon.

I let the merchant appraise my old armor, and he tells me that it's made from Hobgoblin. It's a good low-budget armor, but it doesn't last long, so an adventurer shouldn't bet their life on it.

After observing the merchant, I switch my skills to Armor and [Weapon Appraisal], and they give me two spells each, [Appraise] or [Appraisal Eyes]. The former is the more commonly used one since it's cheaper, but it's flashy, and I don't want people to know I'm using it. The latter shows me the information of the equipment on the usual black screen of the "system" after I stare at it for a few seconds, though the spell continuously consumes mana, so I can only use it for a very short time.

With 10 points in Appraisal, it seems that it only shows me the "Material" and "Quality" info of the equipment. There are still a few instances of "???" on each piece of equipment.

I choose a "high" quality steel one-handed sword with the same design as my current one, which is made of iron. I also choose a "high" quality small, round, iron shield iron painted entirely in black. I'll use it by holding a handle instead of strapping it to my arm so that I have more flexibility with it.

Finally, I pick a pair of Hobgoblin leather mittens, a Hobgoblin cap, the cheapest bow, a quiver, and twenty arrows. Even if I don't know how to use a bow yet, I can put some points in archery once I level up.

All of this costs me three gold. It's a bit pricey, but I can't skimp on my safety. I also see a few, much more "fashionable" versions of the same equipment I'm buying, but they cost a lot more, of course.

Then I go look for supplies like blankets, cloth, cutlery, plates, bowls, rope, lantern, food that's easy to eat, spare clothes, whetstone, and finally, oil for equipment maintenance.

There is straw pail that can be used as toilet paper, but it seems like even children are trained to learn [Conjuring Magic] and [Light Magic] level 1, which give them the spells [Conjure Water] and [Clean], respectively, so they can clean themselves after heeding the call of nature. I guess this is what the entrance guard meant when he said I had no "life skills."

I also buy a few of the lowest-grade health, mana, and antidote potions. They aren't for use during combat since they only act after five minutes and work up to thirty minutes. I notice that the HP and MP potions have a small shine to them, so I guess that the standard way of knowing if something is magical or not in this world is to see if it shines.

The potions all come in glass flasks, so I can't carry them in the pockets of my armor. Because of that, the merchant advises me to buy a few metal flasks so that they can survive melee combat. It wouldn't be funny if I passed out and died due to poison because I couldn't focus enough to pull an antidote out of my "Items," so I get three of these "battle potions."

Then I go to the dungeoneering guild for tools for the expedition. All adventurers need items that keep them safe from monsters while they sleep, eat, or answer the call of nature, especially if they're alone. The most common item is scented candles to keep monsters away, but there's the danger of the wind snuffing them while someone sleeps, which would make them vulnerable to being attacked while sleeping, so at least a [Monster Repellent] magic tool is necessary. This magic tool is a crystal that uses mana to reproduce the effect of a scented candle, so there's no risk of it being snuffed out, but the downside is that it's more expensive and requires mana to recharge. To use it, I need to put 1 point into [Mana Control], then I can turn it on or off, or recharge it.

Another important tool is the Escape Bomb. It's a more concentrated version of the scented candle and it's used to run away from monsters. The seller tells me it stinks horribly, so I should throw it on the monster or at the ground and not on myself if I don't want to pass out from the smell.

Talking about smell, there's an anti-scent powder that's commonly used by explorers since a lot of monsters hunt humanoids using scent. It's basically a magical deodorant since it removes any smell. There's a magic tool version, but the powder is very cheap, so I can save some money until I'm more comfortable with my income.

Then there are the [Proximity Warning] crystals. Thieves occasionally prey on adventurers, so monsters aren't the only danger in a dungeon. If I'm going to sleep inside the dungeon alone, then I need something to warn me if something or someone is getting close.

And finally, I buy a map of only the ten first floors of Royd's Kerfuffle. I don't plan on going to the eleventh floor anytime soon.

The stone and crystals are expensive, five gold total, but it's something I'll never have to buy again.

A huge hole opened in my funds, and more than half of my gold coins are gone. I still have the rose coin, but I have no idea what is the exchange rate to gold coins. I'm also afraid to exchange it because I still haven't seen anyone use it, so I might get scammed. Perhaps another day I should go to the merchant guilds or bankers and see if there's a place for money exchange.

The dungeoneering books mentioned that Space magicians normally ferry people between the dungeons' entrances and the town. I already noticed a few huts spread around town with "[Gate] services" written above the entrance, so I guess that's where I can get a teleport. But teleportation gets more expensive depending on the weight of the contents of your [Item Box], so I don't want to expose that I have nothing in my [Item Box] to random people. It's suspicious to walk around without an [Item Box] because this spell seems to be another thing that everyone learns when they're a child so that they can at least carry coins in it.

I don't think everybody has level 20 [Space Magic], so it must be possible to learn spells before you have the required level. Must be why the [Item Box] starts small and why magicians are normally the ones that carry the most supplies. Even if the magician isn't an offensive one, the dungeoneering book always recommends having one just for the [Item Box]. They're basically human pack mules.

I don't want to hire a magician yet, so I'll go to the dungeon on foot with the crude map that I got from the dungeoneering guild. It shows me that the Sea of Trees is to the south of the town, the farms are to the north, and to the northwest is the entrance to the dungeon. It takes one hour on foot, so I'm going to arrive there around two hours before noon.

I put all my points in [Space Magic] so that I can use [Item Box], then I put in it my silver coins, copper coins, and some things like the sleeping bag and some food.

I walk to the west gate, the same one that I first came in from, then I start customs. I show my ID and the guard at the gate uses a crystal ball to read the contents of my [Item Box], but at least I don't have to pay for anything because of my adventurer ID.

I take a look at his crystal tablet and notice that at least they can't see the number of coins that I have.

I assume customs are just an anti-smuggling measure. Since trade goods are taxed, they don't let people just put anything they want in their [Item Box] and then travel to wherever.

I walk out of town and see a line of multiple wagons with groups of people in between, all waiting to enter the town, and by their worn armor and weapons, they seem to be mostly adventurers. It looks like this is quite a busy town.

After I'm a little ways away, I put everything back into my "Items" and spec my skills for fast movement and stamina. I have 31 points, so I put them like this:

Wolf Ryder Skill Report

Physical

Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level
Sword Use | 5+1 | Dodge | 2+1 | Parry | 0+1
Block | 0+1 | Sense Presence | 3+0 | Enhanced Stamina | 5+0

Magical

Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level
Electric Magic | 1+0 | Nature Magic | 5+0 | Blessing Magic | 10+0

Miscellaneous

Nothing

With 10 points in [Blessing Magic], I can use [Swift Foot] on myself, and with [Enhanced Stamina], I can walk much faster without tiring.

Though the Enhanced skill drains my mental energy, I can still enjoy the sights as I follow the cobbled road west. To my right, there are the farms, endless fields of green that wave with the wind; and to my left, there's the Sea of Trees, an ominous wall of huge trees where dangerous monsters lurk within.

I recognize that most plantations are of beans. The plants are short sprouts with uncountable bean pods hanging from them, the short height of the plantations giving me an unimpeded view until deep within the farmlands.

I recognize water wheels near the edge of my vision, so there must be a river that runs close to the town. I also can't see any sheep from the small amount of livestock in my view, so maybe they're deeper in because this area is more dangerous due to being so close to the Sea of Trees.

Very, very far away, beyond the plantations, I see the snowy peaks of a mountain range. I know that at the bottom of the mountains there's a valley with quite a few dungeons, so I might go there one day.

On the side of the Sea of Trees, the trees are so tall that I can't even see what's beyond them. The area around the town is a plateau surrounded by mountains, but nobody fully mapped the Sea of Trees, so it's unknown what's out there.

After a long walk, the road turns north, which means I'm close to my destination, then a few minutes later, a small forest starts to peek above the farms as I come for the final approach. The trees surrounding the dungeon's entrance grow very fast, so this area is a source of cheap lumber.

As I approach, I see that a small wall surrounds this forest, and a single squad of guards protects the entrance to the small grove in the rare chance a monster comes out of this dungeon.

When I get close, they just nod at me, uninterested in the common adventurer passing by.

Then I finally reach the entrance to Royd's Kerfuffle. It's an ominous black vertical rectangle that glows faintly, a dimensional door. I change my skills towards combat and make them as follow:

Wolf Ryder Skill Report

Physical

Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level
Sword Use | 5+1 | Dodge | 3+1 | Parry | 0+1
Block | 4+1 | Sense Presence | 5+0

Magical

Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level
Mana Efficiency | 4+0 | Mana Recovery | 4+0 | Electric Magic | 1+0
Nature Magic | 5+0

Miscellaneous

Nothing

This way, my main attack is the sword, [Lightning Bolt] is a backup, [Entangling Vines] is for utility, and [Regeneration] for healing. Since [Parry] already has a good overlap with [Sword Use], I chose [Dodge] and [Block] to give me more options.

With that, there's only one choice here, I step inside the black door, and I suddenly find myself standing in an eerie black void as even the door that I came from is now gone. Curiously I can see my own body though I can't find where the light comes from.

Suddenly, a small, black window appears in front of me as if I opened my "Menu." It has only two lines of writing on it: "1st floor" and "Exit." I touch "1st floor."

A familiar feeling strikes me. Like when I first got transported to this world, the ground vanishes under my feet, then I feel like I'm free-falling, but this time, I remain conscious. After a long second, the ground reappears under me, then the darkness is lifted instantly.

I'm now in an empty room made out of gray square tiles with black seams. There are two exits out of this room, one ahead of me that takes me to an unremarkable corridor, and one behind me, the same ominous black door that I came from.

Every few tiles, there's a small gem that glows faintly, illuminating the dungeon with a weak light. There are areas and even entire levels without light higher up, so it's another reason to keep on the low levels for now.

There are three types of enemies around here. The first are the goblins, which carry a variety of conjured weapons that disappear when the monster dies. The goblins are so weak that even a greenhorn like me can take them down in a duel.

Though it's annoying that the goblins' weapons equipment disappears, finding loot in a dungeon is actually rather rare as most of the items inside them are fakes created by the dungeon.

Anyway, the second enemy is the Mandrake, a small walking root that looks like a baby. It'll scream while attacking to disturb the enemy, but it's a very weak monster. Its feet are used for potions or cooking, but the rest of the body isn't valuable, though the more mature ones have leaves growing out of their heads that have some value for potions.

The third enemy is the Bush Baby. It's not the animal bush baby, but an actual baby-looking monster that has a bush on its head. It's a relative to the Mandrake that doesn't scream. It attacks with piercing vines, and there's a chance to be poisoned by them if the wound is deep enough. It's even less valuable than the Mandrake, but it's more dangerous.

These are the enemies on the first ten floors. They're horrible for making money, but I'm here only to acquire Experience and levels.

It's time to start exploring.

After locating myself on the map, I start walking around the labyrinth while keeping a close watch to where I'm going. It'd be very embarrassing to get myself lost in the first dungeon that I've entered. I also don't want to stumble upon one of the stairs to the next level, so I keep near the border of the maze. But the size of this floor actually surprises me, it's about half as large as Rabanara.

The mazes in this dungeon are made of multiple corridors and small rooms, with most of them leading to dead ends with a monster waiting, but there's still plenty of paths that I can take to navigate the floor. Occasionally, there's a monster roaming the paths, but they generally don't enter a path that leads to a dead-end, so the dead ends are the most common safe spot for resting after killing the monster waiting there, though it's possible to be corned in them if one's not careful.

I detect a goblin ahead of me with [Sense Presence]. There's no way for me to sneak around it in these tight corridors, so I decide to face it from the front.

I first hear its footsteps, then it comes around the corner, and I wrinkle my nose in disgust. The first thing I notice is that it's naked, and it's a male. He's a green ugly thing around one meter tall wielding a crude spear. He doesn't have any clothes or armor, so his genitals are exposed, freely dangling about. I feel sick just looking at him.

Once he notices me, he immediately charges forward and braces his crude spear, but he shows no emotion.

There's no room for hesitation, I have to fight him, to kill him. My sword is shorter than his spear, so I decide to fight cautiously.

He seemingly doesn't know how to use his weapon as he simply thrusts with dull movements and continues to advance, getting within the range of my sword.

I easily deflect his attack with my shield then counter, and the blade sinks into his chest with little resistance.

He drops his spear and tries to grab my sword, but I kick him with the sole of my boot and he falls on his ass.

He tries to grab his spear again, but it's too late. I chop downwards and my sword gets stuck midway through his skull.

He immediately goes limp, and the red dot in my [Sense Presence] fades away. He's dead.

I use my foot to dislodge my sword and brain matter drips out of the wound.

Fucking hell.

Now there's blood on my boots, but just a quick [Clean] is enough to remove most of it.

That was easy. This sword cuts cleaner than the previous one, so it's like a hot knife through butter. I'm also not afraid anymore of taking a hit after Toga taught me how to defend myself. The wonders of healing magic may be affecting how I think about wounds, though.

I'm getting kind of hot with the leather mittens, cap, and pants, but considering how safe I feel, I can't complain.

I cut the ear as proof of extermination and wipe my blade on a piece of cloth. The reward is only five copper if there's no corpse, but I can't really appear with dozens of goblin corpses in my [Item Box]. Showing the Gray Berserker might have been a mistake, and I won't repeat that again so soon, though I think that Sonny and Gordon were so happy with the Berserker that they've ignored my strangeness.

In a few minutes, the dungeon will completely reabsorb the goblin corpse, but I think it'd be a waste to leave it there, so I'll just store it as emergency funds, and I also want to try to find the limit to my "Items."

As I explore a dead-end, I encounter another naked goblin, this one wielding a dagger. I kill it before it reaches me with a single chop to the head and move on. A second appears soon after, and this time it's a female with small breasts. She also wields a dagger, so I dispatch her with ease.

The gore coupled with the free nudity is making me feel sick.

Then a fourth goblin appears. It has a spear and a loincloth.

Finally, some decency. But does this mean that he's more experienced?

He charges at me and his spear slides off my shield. I try to counter, but he keeps his distance this time.

Question answered, he really is smarter.

It takes a few hits, but I manage to deflect his spear with my shield in a way that he opens up his guard, so I lunge forward and slash his face.

He trips and falls, then tries to bring his spear back, but I put my foot on his arm, and I stab his heart. With his free hand, he grabs the blade of my sword and his face distorts in pain.

"Grah…" He lets a small groan and dies.

That was odd, the first three didn't show any emotion, but this one did.

I'm getting creeped out by the flashbacks of the goblin drowning in his own blood.

I cut the goblin's ear and store the corpse, then I quickly move on.

Soon after, I meet another naked goblin, this one with a sword. I want to try something out, so I let him hit my shield with his sword, then I riposte and kill him.

The hits don't hurt, but they tire me out. The spear doesn't have much weight behind it, but the sword does. If I want to last in this dungeon, I can't let myself get tired after every fight. Just because I can block, doesn't mean that I know the most efficient way to mitigate the weight of a weapon, so I need to be careful since I currently have low physical stamina.

I wander about without meeting anything for a while, then I finally encounter a Mandrake. It's an ugly thing about half a meter tall, just like the books said.

Immediately after seeing it, I get dizzy and almost fall as my ears get attacked by an extremely high-pitched buzzing, then I hear a horrific scream in the background. It's not just my ears that hurt, this thing is also magically attacking my mind.

This is fucking terrible I don't want to meet this little shit ever again.

The monster immediately charges, and I can see it pointing its two spear-like arms towards me.

I barely regain my footing in time to desperately slash at it before it collides with me. I feel the sword sliding along its chest, but it doesn't sink as deep as before. Its skin is much tougher than a goblin's.

With the slash, I send it back to the ground, then a greenish, transparent fluid starts pouring out of its chest wound.

The little fucker is tenacious, it immediately gets up again and points its arms towards me. In my rage, I do a savage chop, and my sword gets embedded into its head, then it goes limp.

"You are now level six," the familiar female announcer's voice echoes in my mind, then I quickly get to work and chop off the monster's head.

"What the fuck…" I whisper as I stare in horror at the decapitated baby head in my hand that drips greenish blood on the dungeon's floor.

Then a sigh escapes my lips.

Fuck this world.

I suck it up and cut off its two ugly distorted yellow feet because they're valuable as ingredients, then I open my skill window and put my four new 4 points in [Mental Resistance]. This way, the next Mandrake will be more bearable.

I could put these points in [Sword Use], but the difference each point makes seems to be decreasing drastically. Just knowing "how" to swing a sword won't help me if I can't physically swing it the way I want. I have to raise my "Stats" some more, I think.

I continue forward and meet another goblin with a dagger. This time, I test my [Lightning Bolt] on it, and it takes four hits before it dies.

Took too long and used too much mana. I need to put more points into magic before I can use it as a main source of damage.

A few hours pass, so I start to become hungry. I sit down and pull out some meat and vegetable sticks to eat.

After that, I heed nature's call. The dungeon absorbs anything I leave around, so it's going to be okay. It's really embarrassing to be so vulnerable in the open like this, but with [Sense Presence], I know when someone is coming.

I temporarily put a point into [Conjuring Magic] and [Light Magic], then I use them to clean myself. It takes one-fourth of my mana since I want a much "deeper" cleaing, so the mana cost is kind of high.

After moving a good distance away, I decide to sit down and wait for a little until my mana is back to full.

While resting, a wandering goblin appears. This one has a loincloth and a sword.

He screams while charging, but his skill can't compare to mine, and I easily decapitate him. I wasn't fully rested, so I change resting places again.

I notice that the enemies are giving less experience than before, so I guess I'll have to go to the next floor once I level up.

The next monster that I meet is a Bush Baby. Its vines are long, about three times the length of a spear, so the strategy is to cut the vines multiple times until I can approach it safely. If I rush it, the vines will bend and pierce me from the back.

This monster is quite annoying to deal with. The attacks are fast and start to tire me out. My [Block] isn't good enough, and neither is my "Endurance," so my body complains from the exertion. It's taking me too long to cut the vines, so I cast [Lightning Bolt] three times, and after the third spell, it gets stunned.

An opportunity!

I jump forward and cut off the first vine, but the second escapes my following attack. At least now I just have to deal with one vine until its body is in range of my sword.

The vine slams against my shield once, and I slash the air, then it slams a second time, and I miss again. On the third slam, I get the timing right and cut it off in a perfect counter. Now I can reach it with my sword.

I dash towards it, then I slash across its face, opening a long and deep cut. It loses its balance from the pain, and that's enough of an opening for me, so I chop, and my sword gets stuck midway into its head.

It's a bit of a shame that the leaves got damaged, but I have no time to care for it. I cut off its head and apply [Regeneration] to myself, easing my tiredness.

After a minute, my muscles feel relaxed again, and I move on. I go towards the stairs to the next floor because the monsters around it are stronger.

Two Mandrakes appear side-by-side, then I'm forced to my knees by their combined scream.

Fuck!

I was overconfident. Even with [Mental Resistance] I'm just barely able to remain standing up. This is a problematic situation.

I instinctively cast [Lightning Bolt], and it hits one of the monsters, slowing down its charge. The other jumps and aims for my heart with its pointy arms.

Good thing that they're dumb. I just slash at the first one, then the second comes right behind, and it slams against my shield. Its attack packs more punch than the Bush Baby, so I grit my teeth and hold my ground.

The first one falls back due to the push from the slash, and the second one falls by my feet. Feeling the danger, I kick the second one and it flies away a few meters. The little shit is tough as fuck, and it hurts my toes even through my thick boot.

The first one gets up and jumps again, then I bash its head with my shield. It falls backward on the ground, then I pierce its face with my sword, right through the forehead. It wriggles for a few seconds then stops moving.

I look forward and the other Mandrake is mid-jump, so all I can do is block with my shield. The impact makes me step backward, and I lose the grip of my sword that's still stuck on the body of the dead Mandrake.

This is bad.

I kick the Mandrake again and feel an immense pain on my toes. This time it doesn't fly far.

I cast [Lightning Bolt] twice, and on the second time, it gets stunned. That's enough of an opening for me to wrench my sword free from the corpse.

The Mandrake stops convulsing after a short moment, then it charges again, but it's too slow. I chop down with all my strength before it can react, and my sword sinks into its skull until it touches the nose.

I dislodge my sword and sit on the ground while trying to avoid looking at all the gore. My head is spinning, my right toe hurts, and my arms are tired from my savage chops, so I cast [Regeneration] again.

That was brutal. My heart is racing and fear courses through every inch of my body.

Mandrakes are a weak enemy, but two at the same time is no joke. I need to go back to near the entrance and keep killing goblins. If it wasn't for my [Mental Resistance], I think I would have been forced to use my Escape Bomb.

I harvest the enemies and notice something change within me. I open my "Skills" and see that I got [Dismantling] level 1.

That was easy, shouldn't I need to practice more? Or was it because I had already acquired some knowledge through books? Eh, whatever…

I store the bodies, then I hurry back to the entrance and hunt goblins. After the sixth one I hear, "You are now level seven."

I put all my points in [Sword Use] (now 9+1). Even though the skill isn't increasing my combat effectiveness as much as before, it's still the most important one for me to raise.

I decide to rest, but my break is interrupted a few minutes later as I get three large hits on my [Sense Presence], and they aren't monsters.

Soon enough, I start to hear footsteps, then I see three adventurers coming towards me from down the corridor, so I quickly put points in [Andraste Language].

"Oh? Greetings," the man at the front politely greets with a smile. He seems young, perhaps slightly older than me. He has neatly combed brown short hair, giving him a refined air. He carries a shiny short sword, a pristine large kite shield, and he's wearing some really-well made black leather armor with thick padding. He seems wealthy.

On his right side, there's a rough-looking man wearing chainmail and a bastard sword. He looks a few years older than us, and I see short light brown hair peeking from below his chain coif.

Behind them, there's a woman in a dark blue robe wielding a simple wooden staff with a blue gem at the tip. She's a fully grown woman with straight brown hair that reaches her shoulders. She has a cute and calm face with a button nose and a small chin.

"Hello," I answer in kind, then I get up and nod as I believe this is the standard neutral greeting.

"You're here for training?" The young man gently asks.

"Yes, I'm practicing my sword," I respond calmly, then I eye his companions, but they seem mostly uninterested in me.

He flashes a smile. "Well then, be careful when you meet more than one monster. It's easier to just run away because it's really hard to fight while alone. Be well." He waves and moves on.

"T-thank you. Goodbye," I answer meekly, then I roll my eyes at my own awkwardness.

What an odd exchange, but I also wish had I met him about an hour ago.

Are they planning on staying here for the night? It's going be dusk soon, so starting to explore now isn't efficient time-wise.

I shrug and continue hunting goblins.

I meet another Mandrake, and it's alone this time, so my current level of [Mental Resistance] is enough to make this fight bearable. I'm no longer dizzy, but my ears still hurt a lot.

It seems that the extra points in [Sword Use] make it much easier to slit its throat in a single slice. This takes some aim, but at least this way it's much harder to get my sword stuck in the body like what happened last time.

Then I meet another Bush Baby. This time, I make steady progress and shave away its vines until I can bury my sword in its head. It's still tiring to fight them, but at least I don't need to use magic.

This is considerable progress for just one day. It's very motivating, but I have a feeling that the people of this world don't level up as fast as I do.

I kill two goblins and rest again.

The Experience they're giving me is very low, now, so the diminishing return is painfully obvious. I need to kill forty goblins just to level up, so the best way to grind Experience is to find Mandrakes or Bush Babies, but it's already late, and I'm way too tired to continue hunting.

I go back towards the dimensional door, then I exit the dungeon, and I'm teleported right beside the entrance. I see that it's already night, so at least my sense of time wasn't completely screwed by staying so long inside the dungeon.

The squad of guards has changed. There are five of them and they mostly stay inside their small hut while a single one stays outside, near the entrance to the dungeon.

We trade a nod, then I go towards the grove to find a secluded corner. I find a pair of adventurers making a tent in a small clearing, so I move away from them and set up my own camp.

I pull out of my "Items" a ready-made meal. Near the Crafter's Corner there are plenty of stalls that sell small boxes with food that's easy to eat, so I bought a few. This one has a loaf of bread with bean paste inside, a handful of a vegetable that reminds me of broccoli, and a few pieces of fried Rabid Rabbit meat. I feel a little uncomfortable with eating anything with "Rabid" in the name, but it actually tastes really good. It's slightly marbled, which surprises me with how cheap it is.

I brush my teeth, put a lot of points into Conjuring so that I can fill a bucket of water to wash, turn on my [Monster Repellent] crystal, position my [Proximity Warning] crystals around me, bring out my sleeping bag, and finally, I try to sleep. Let's put emphasis on try because this bag is really uncomfortable. I should've bought a tent and a better sleeping bag.

The dungeoneering guide says to sleep with your armor on, or at least have leather armor if you can't sleep in your plate or chain. So I guess this can't be helped, adventurers are just fated to sleep badly.

I stare up at the sky, but I only see clouds, not even a single star. Eventually, my tiredness overwhelms my anxiety and I fall asleep.

I dream again of the goblin drowning in its own blood.

The sun wakes me, and I feel that my body is sore and stiff. This was a terrible night.

Fuck, is this going to become a trauma? I'm already uncomfortable sleeping in the open like this, I don't need recurring nightmares screwing with me.

I break fast with a goblin meat stick. It's very salty and dry, but I only have water to drink. I need to buy some fruit juice when I go back to town.

I miss coffee, I miss chocolate milk, I miss tea, I miss soft drinks (diet only).

I look at my "Stats" and notice that my "Magic Power" and MP have risen by 5. It seems that using spells slowly builds up your mana and power. Unfortunately, no other stat has risen, so I guess I need to nearly kill myself every day to raise my "Strength" or "Endurance."

I stretch a little, recover my crystals, store my tent, and turn off my repellent stone, then I get ready to go back inside the dungeon.

I decide to get closer to the stairs again. Mandrakes or Bush Babies are too rare, and it's taking too long to level up, so I'm getting greedy.

I meet two Mandrakes in sequence and easily dispatch them. I'm really getting used to handling their shrieking. My strategy to deal with more than one is also ready, but I'm a little dubious about how to deal with two Bush Babies.

My theory-crafting is cut because I detect a goblin coming towards me. I meet it head-on and see that it's wearing a full set of padded leather armor: jacket, pants, mittens, boots, and a cap. It wields a small round metal shield and a shortsword.

I need to aim for the neck or face, trying to cut through that armor just won't be possible.

"GYEEEH!" The goblin screams and charges forward.

I deflect the first blow and attack with my sword, but it dodges backward and evades. I try to follow up with an upwards slash, but it blocks my attack with the edge of his shield.

It tries to slash sideways towards my face, but I evade by jerking my body backward. The goblin is short, so his sword barely reaches me, but still, it was dangerously close.

The goblin overcommits and swings wide, creating an opening for me. I bash its shield and it loses its balance, then I follow up and thrust at its neck.

It jerks its body and avoids a fatal wound, but I still manage to inflict a nasty cut on the side of its neck, and blood starts pouring profusely over its shoulder.

It jumps backward and tries to regain its balance, but I cast [Lightning Bolt] and immediately slash towards its face. The bolt hits and its entire body twitches. The goblin didn't get stunned, but its reaction is dulled enough that my slash cuts at its cheek deeply.

"GAAAAH!" The goblin screams and loses its balance again.

This time, its guard is fully open, so I lunge and jam my sword into its eye socket. It groans as its body twitches, then goes limp and dies.

"You are now level eight."

Now, what do I need, exactly?

I clean my sword and sit down to think.

Perhaps more [Mental Resistance]? The two Mandrakes were rough to deal with, but maybe there's another way to deal with them that doesn't involve Resistance. Mandrakes are vulnerable to fire, so maybe one point in Fire and then the rest in [Mental Resistance]? Also, [Blessing Magic] level 1 sounds good. I'm not using a lot of spells, so maybe I could spare some MP for a self-buff.

Hm… Blessing will be left for later. I'll put one point in [Fire Magic], and the other three in [Mental Resistance] (now 7). The biggest threat to me right now is reduced mental capacity during a fight with a Mandrake leading me to make a bad decision. There's also what the wealthy adventurer said, I can just run if I meet two dangerous enemies, but I have to be capable of making the correct decision. In the lower levels, monsters don't generally work together, so it was a coincidence that I met both at the same time.

With that done, now I need a target to test my [Fireball].

The first guinea pig to volunteer is a naked goblin with a dagger. I cast [Fireball] and I hit it right on the face, then he falls backward and screams in pain.

Weren't the naked ones supposed to be emotionless? I need to revise this theory.

Ah, exposed flesh is more vulnerable to fire than lighting, so [Fire Magic] is more useful here than lightning.

If the stunning effect of [Fireball] on the Mandrakes and Bush Babies is stronger or equal to [Lightning Bolt], then I'll take the point in [Electric Magic] and put it in [Blessing Magic].

I thought that fire damage only did more damage to enemies in comparison to [Electric Magic], but I ignored the physical aspect of burning something alive. I didn't think about it because the book spent more time talking about harvesting and the fact that the monsters are vulnerable to [Fire Magic] was only mentioned in passing. Perhaps it's because it's an easy enemy. Magic seems pretty powerful here, so I find it difficult to believe mages would spend their precious mana killing such small fry when the front line could effortlessly hack their way through.

I think this sort of information would likely be found in magic books, but I didn't look too deep into the ones at the guild because they were a bit too esoteric. I need to go to the university's library for that.

I continue grinding monsters, and after half a dozen goblins, I finally find a Mandrake. Its scream was really painful before, but now it's easily bearable, so I think I'm ready to fight two Mandrakes without much risk.

I immediately cast [Fireball] at the monster.

The ball hits its face and the screaming reduces in intensity. It's super effective! The Mandrake slows down and almost stops, then it pats its head with its pointy hands in a desperate attempt to stop the small fire that the spell created.

A perfect opportunity. I charge forward and easily decapitate it.

Also testing this spell on a Bush Baby might be prudent, but I'm feeling confident it's going to be even more effective. The Bush Baby's leaves seemed very dry, so I believe them to be a weak point against [Fire Magic].

I remove [Electric Magic], put a point into [Blessing Magic], and cast [Wind Armor] on myself. The magic creates a ball of light on my palm, then I touch myself, and the spell is cast on me. This magic creates a sort of wind-based "kinetic shield" that protects my entire body, slowing down physical attacks by using air resistance. Every few seconds, I can see small distortions around my body and also feel a slight breeze whenever that happens.

Unfortunately, the spell has a huge cost, and half of my MP is gone. Coupled with the two [Fireballs] I used, I barely have any mana left, so I spend some time resting.

I notice that meditating really does increase the rate that my mana recovers, but I need to make sure that I don't fall asleep since I have to keep my eyes closed.

I get up and move forward. I think I'm ready for the next level, so I move steadily towards the closest stairs and kill a few goblins on the way.

The stairs are just a simple downward set of steps that ends in the same ominous black rectangle like the one of the entrance and exit. I cross it, and the floor select menu appears, but now it has a "2nd floor" option, so I press it, and I'm teleported to the new floor.

It looks exactly the same as the previous one: drab and boring. The goblins aren't naked anymore, but the Mandrakes and Bush Babies are still the same.

After a few kills, I notice that even the Mandrakes and the Bush Babies are giving little experience. So it seems that the enemies ramp up in power little by little.

I'm thinking that now that I have [Fire Magic] I'll be okay on the third floor.

After a few more kills, I find another armored goblin. I think it's a male, the females seem to have a slightly smoother skin and fewer wrinkles.

He's wearing the same leather armor as the one from before, but the shield is bigger and he's taller, so now he's just a little bit shorter than me. I'm 165cm, by the way. Yes, I'm short, I know, it's hard to forget.

I'll have to be more careful with this goblin since it looks like he has much more skill and intelligence than the others. Just to confirm my theory, he smiles before he charges towards me.

We trade even blows, but his attacks are heavier than the Bush Baby vines, so I have to focus on deflecting more to tire me less. This leaves me with little openings to strike back, so I start to get pushed back.

I have to do something.

I notice his attacks follow an obvious timing, so I prepare myself, then I bash his shield right before he winds up his slash. He wasn't expecting me to counter with such power, so I manage to break his posture.

I bash again, putting all my body into it, and he loses his balance then falls on his ass.

I strike his shield while he desperately tries to crawl away backward. His sword hand is busy supporting his body while he defends himself with his shield, so he can't get up, and his smile turns into an angry frown.

I step on his sword hand, making him drop it, then I drop my shield, grab his, and open his guard. He tries to wrench free, but I have the physical and mechanical advantage, so I stab him in the face until he dies.

This one tired me out, so I need time to catch my breath and apply [Regeneration] to my arms.

Curiously, his shield doesn't disappear like the rest of his equipment did. I put some points into Appraisal, and it tells me it's a simple iron shield. It has no painting or decorations on it, and it's of "medium" quality. Average at everything, but I guess it might be worth something, so I put it into my "Items."

I have to kill at least another ten of these goblins to level up. My Experience gain seems to be dropping really fast, or is it actually my growth that is too fast? Perhaps killing the same monster has diminishing returns, rewarding me less Experience each time I kill them.

I eat my lunch away from the goblin corpse, then I move on and reach the entrance to the third floor. I'm getting a little nervous, but I decide it's worth the risk.

On this new floor, I meet my first mature Mandrake. It has valuable green leaves on its head, and it's nearly a meter tall. The pain from the scream is slightly stronger, but only slightly, so I'm still okay. It's a good thing that their power seems to increase slowly, or else I'd have to put all my points in [Mental Resistance].

It charges forward like the other Mandrakes, but it's faster than the younger ones. I spread my legs, grit my teeth, and ready my shield.

Like I had predicted, it jumps towards my chest with its pointy arms aiming towards me. Once it's in the air, I wait for the perfect moment to bash it with my shield.

Pain flares in my hand as my whole shield resonates with the strike, but my attack was perfectly effective. The Mandrake flies far away, one arm broken, and the screaming stops, so, I guess I succeeded in stunning it.

I give chase and slash at the downed Mandrake. Its defenselessness allows me to execute a perfect slash, and my sword slices clean through its neck, then its head drops from its shoulders, and a fluid greener than the one from the younger Mandrakes spews out.

I look at my shield and notice that the tip of one of the Mandrake's pointy arms is stuck in it while the other arm left only a small dent.

Holy shit, I guess I need a better shield now.

That bash sure packed a good punch, but I don't think it's the best choice. If they charge and jump, the best option still seems to be to just slash.

Maybe a spear is the most effective tool here against these charging enemies, but if I meet more than one, I need a backup weapon in case it gets stuck in an enemy. Thinking about this, I pull out a dagger I got from a goblin, then I hang it on my belt behind my back. Considering it's my life on the line having a few backup weapons doesn't seem to be excessive.

I feel something change within me, so I open my status screen and see that I've gained the skill [Shield Bash] with 1 point.

Hmm. Shield bash seems to be effective at stunning enemies, so I guess this is another skill that's nice to have.

I move on and notice that the goblins are now stronger and require more effort to kill. They all graduated from loincloths and are now using basic woolen clothes. A few even have one or two pieces of leather armor.

So, the ones fully armored are rare occurrences? The dungeoneering book didn't tell me much about these abnormalities, and the only thing I remember is that monsters can go up a level of the dungeon in rare instances. Maybe they're from a lower level, then? "Lower" as in a level deeper "down" that has stronger monsters. The fact that the stairs go "down," but the floor select screen goes "up" is a bit confusing.

The mature Mandrake is still rare, and the Bush Babies didn't increase in power, so my experience gain isn't increasing, making me rather frustrated. The speed of my progress is dropping sharply.

It's annoying not having an idea about what's the proper rate of growth in this world. There's a skill called [Inspire Growth], but it doesn't seem to be very useful with such an ambiguous name. I don't really have the time and the points to test it, either, so I just ignore it.

I can't remove my mana enhancements because I'm starting to use [Fireball] more often to make the fights less tiring. I can't remove my physical combat skills, otherwise, I feel like I'll lose the skill advantage against the goblins.

Is my best choice to just find a partner? I've only sensed pairs of adventurers coming here, and no solo explorers like me. The problem is that I can't really trust anybody to pair up. I think that my adaptability and rapid growth will be extremely suspicious.

My body gets increasingly tired, and I decide it's time to leave the dungeon. My legs are aching, my arms are hurting, and I feel like my body is swaying. I've been fighting all day, after all, and at the rate that I'm gaining experience, tomorrow before noon I might get another level.

When I get out, I see the sun and understand that there are still a few hours until dusk.

Now, what do I do while I wait? I don't really want to talk to the guards, and adventurers normally don't interact with others.

I should've bought a book. There's no internet or computers here, so my two main sources of entertainment are gone. Can I maintain my sanity without my games? This might be the true trial of the hero in this world.

I pass the time by maintaining my weapon and exploring the other magic skills, making a note of every spell, but I don't have the MP to test all of them. "Notes" is a rather terrible interface to use, so I think I'll keep most of my notes on actual paper.

Most of the magic skills only show me spells up to 15 points, but after that, I can only see "???". The only level 20 spells I can see are [Item Box] from [Space Magic] and [Purify Body] from [Light Magic], so I guess I'm missing something. Is it mana pool? Is it "Intelligence" or "Wisdom" stats?

The spells are mostly self-explanatory, and while some sound useful, I lack the MP and "Magic Power" to make them impactful enough to justify using them in combat.

From [Fire Magic], I can use my "cheat" to cast the spells: [Fireball], [Fire Whip], [Fire Arrow], and [Firestorm].

[Earth Magic] has the spells: [Earth Bullet], [Earth Wall], [Dust Storm], and [Soul Sand].

[Water Magic] has: [Torrent], [Water Wall], [Water Blade], and [Water Breathing].

[Wind Magic] has: [Wind Blade], [Wind Hammer], [Wind Wall], and [Perfect Arrows].

[Electric Magic] has: [Lightning Bolt], [Shocking Touch], and [Rush].

[Light Magic] has: [Clean], [Spirit Light], [Heal], and [Inspire].

[Dark Magic] has: [Torment], [Ghost Images], [Inflict Pain], and [Soul Siphon]. I got chills just from putting points in this magic school, and I don't want to do it ever again.

[Space Magic] has: [Telekinesis], [Gravity Crush], and [Item Box].

[Summoning Magic] has: [Summon Small Bird], [Summon Dog], and [Summon Small Golem].

[Blessing Magic] has: [Wind Armor], [Sharp Blades], [Swift Foot], and [Rainbow Shield].

[Nature Magic]has: [Constricting Vines], [Vine Weapon], and [Grow].

[Conjuring Magic] has: [Conjure Water], [Conjure Bland Meal], and [Conjure Dirt].

[Spirit Magic] has: [Spirit Eyes], [Spirit Link], [Soul Touch], and [Materialization].

[Illusion Magic] has: [Ghost Lights], [Double Image], [Ignorance], and [Pacify].

[Cursing Magic] has: [Weaken], [Sap Power], [Befuddle], and [Demoralize]. This one makes me uncomfortable to put points in, but nowhere near as bad as [Dark Magic]

These are the only ones that give me actual spells, and the other magic schools don't, for some reason. Aside from [Torment], there doesn't seem to be any simple spells that can compare to the stopping power of [Fireball], and I really don't want to use [Dark Magic], so I'll stick with my little stove flame.

As I theorycraft and play around with my magic, dusk comes, and I suddenly feel a small breeze run against my whole body. I look at my "Status Effects" and see that the entry "Wind Armor" has disappeared, so my [Wind Armor] has run out.

I decide that I'll put four points into [Blessing Magic] the next time I level up so that I can get the [Sharp Blades] spell. It might help me with cutting the armor of the goblins or ensuring a one-hit kill on the Mandrakes and Bush Babies.

Night falls, and I look up, but I only see a cloudy sky again, and I can't see the moon.

Wait, is there even a moon here? I think there are stars, but I didn't pay attention to the moon.

I turn off my lights, but it takes a few hours of restless tossing and turning until I finally start to feel sleepy. The uncomfortable sleeping bag makes it harder to sleep, but I'm going back to town tomorrow, so I'll just deal with it again today.

This time, I don't see the Gargling Goblin again, but I have a very unpleasant dream. I only remember the disturbing sensation of slicing flesh with my sword.

I wake up feeling stiff, but at least I don't wake up as tired as yesterday. I get up, stretch, eat breakfast, recover my things, brush my teeth, and put on some anti-scent powder to mask my growing stink of sweat. This powder is essential to prevent the monsters like the Mossy Fangpine from tracking someone's scent, so my first meeting with it was just inevitable. Curiously, there's a magical anti-scent powder that has a faint perfume, but of course, I wouldn't waste money with that, I can still endure the smell of leather.

I wash my dirty clothes with magic, but I don't think that this was a good idea. With the [Mana Control] skill, I can hold a [Fireball] in my hand and slightly change its size, so I use it for fast drying, but it seems that the spell has damaged the fabric.

After that, I return to the dungeon at the same time as another adventuring duo. They kind of look like a couple, and I start to feel very uncomfortable.

I feel so lonely… I don't even want to think about how things are back on Earth. I just… don't want to think about it.

Whenever I think about Earth, I start to feel depressed and I lose my motivation, so I think that it's best to bury those thoughts until I can deal with them better. Doesn't sound like a healthy thing to do, though.

I slap my cheeks and enter the ominous black rectangle, then I choose "3rd Floor." I appear in the same drab room as before, but I'm completely alone. Fortunately, it seems that the couple didn't go to the same floor as me.

Progress is smooth but slow since I don't encounter any armored goblins or mature Mandrakes for bursts of Experience.

"You are now level nine," the announcer finally says after half of my morning is gone.

I put my new four skill points all in [Blessing Magic] (now 5) and cast [Sharp Blades]. Like [Wind Armor], a glowing ball appears on my palm, so I push it into my sword. The blade subtly changes and now looks like it's been polished, but at least it doesn't shine ridiculously.

I touch the edge with my finger and feel that it's dangerously sharp. It's impressive, really.

I take a short rest because the spell used half my MP, then I move on again and butcher my way through the monsters.

It makes me happy how easy it is to decapitate the monsters now. I can basically kill anything with one good hit. I even manage to cut a goblin in half at the waist!

Ok, the sight of his guts spilling on the floor is gruesome and traumatizing, and now there's just blood everywhere, but holy shit, I cut a goblin in half.

Fuck, am I enjoying this? I either have a mental problem or a natural talent, depends on which world you're from.

Unfortunately, the experience gain continues to drop. It becomes a waste to fight monsters on this level, so I decide to go to the fourth floor.

The mature Mandrakes are much more common now, though not all of them have leaves that can be harvested, which is a shame since it's their most valuable part. Unfortunately, the goblins and Bush Babies didn't get stronger, so I decide to keep going down levels until at least the goblins give me good exp again… or is it "up" a level…?

After lunch, I get to the fifth floor, but it isn't much better. The Bush Babies are now one meter tall and hit harder, but my strategy is polished, and I easily cut my way through their vines.

I decide to risk it and go to the sixth floor.

Finally, the goblins are now giving good Experience. Since they're still the most common enemy by far, they need to worth killing or else it's a waste of my time. Now most of them are wearing at least two pieces of armor.

It seems that monsters evolve in a very predictable pattern.

The rate of Experience gain is steady, but I'm getting tired much more often now, so I have to take multiple breaks.

While I'm waiting at a dead end, I get three familiar hits on my [Sense Presence]. I immediately remove [Mental Resistance] and trade it for [Andraste Language]. I need to research the difference between each level of the language skill, I always go for 10 but 7 will have to do this time.

The three adventurers enter my room and notice me.

"Hoho, greetings again. You progressed a lot haven't you?" The wealthy adventurer casually asks.

His party is still the same, but now I see dirt, blood, and tired eyes on the three of them, though the woman is the only one without a drop of blood on her clothes.

I respond with a faint smile, "Yeah, I got the hang of dealing with these monsters. They're quite dumb and weak, so I had to come to this floor for a challenge."

He nods and smiles back. "Indeed, my teacher instructed me to come to this level because anything below is just too weak. We went much deeper into the dungeon, but after this level, the goblins got stronger much faster, so we came back here for an easier time." He puts a hand over his chest as he politely introduces himself, "I'm called Nour, what's your name?"

"Wolf Ryder."

He nods respectfully and asks, "Then, Mr. Ryder, would you mind if we take a rest with you? Is this area safe?"

Again with the "Mister." Also, he didn't say his last name, so was it a blunder to say mine? Do normal people not have a second name?

I get a little nervous, but I decide to be friendly and reply, "Y-yeah, no problem. I killed the monster at the dead-end."

The three of them sit down near the wall, Nour sits by a wall facing me while the woman and the other man sit at the corner, then they pull out canteens and start to drink.

Nour introduces his companions as he motions to them, "This woman is my sister, Rania, and the man is my slave guard, Liam."

"Hello," Rania greets in a monotone.

"Greetings, Grand Ryder," the man follows with a more diligent demeanor.

"Grand" Ryder? That feels even weirder, but I assume this is how a slave respectfully addresses others.

The words that I hear are foreign, but because of the language skill, everything is being translated to its closest meaning in English. The words they speak also sound slightly garbled, so I need to focus to understand what they're saying. This must be the effect of not having 10 points in the language.

I wave my hand to them and smile.

Then I feel a faint breeze, and Nour narrows his eyes as he inspects the visual distortion of my [Wind Armor]. "You know [Blessing Magic]? I didn't see you using [Wind Armor] the first time we met," he casually inquires.

Oh, shit. Quick, time to lie.

I force a smile and answer, "I didn't want to… train with enhancements on. I thought it'd be best to train my sword without using magic first until I got a few levels with it"

"Bahahah!" Nour suddenly laughs out loud, then he looks at his companions. "That's the exact same advice that Teacher gave us!"

"Told ya it's good advice," Rania replies with a wry smile.

"Agreed, master. The path to glory is a long journey," Liam adds with a serious tone.

He sounds like a sage.

Nour raises his hands and lowers his head in defeat as he admits, "Alright, alright. I'm not going to rush out into a dungeon or anything like that. I learned my lesson…" Then he lifts his head and crosses his arms as he stares at me. "But anyway… exploring dungeons alone is uncommon, why don't you partner with somebody? [Blessing Magic] is valuable for any fellowship."

The advice book said that fellowships are like parties.

"Don't pry into the business of others," Rania warns him.

He flinches and smiles wryly. "Geh... I'm sorry. Mr. Ryder just piqued my interest."

Rania turns to me and smiles wryly. "Forgive my brother, Mr. Ryder. He's far too curious and carefree."

"That's not a problem… " I answer and awkwardly rub my neck. "I don't mind answering. I'm traveling alone because I'm new around here, and I… pick my partners carefully."

"Rania, I think he's Teacher's son," Nour teases and chuckles softly.

"That just means that Teacher's mentality leads to a longer life," she replies flatly.

There's nothing I can do but smile at this exchange. Nour might be a little nosy for me, but it's hard to be mad at him because he seems good-natured.

Nour rolls his eyes at his sister's teasing and turns to me again. "Well, okay… but Mr. Ryder, have you thought about buying a slave as a companion? Blood Slaves can be more loyal than even sworn knights," he suggests with a subtle smirk.

"Blood Slave?" I blurt out a question, but then Nour raises a curious eyebrow at me, so I try to salvage my question, "I mean, how can a Blood Slave be that loyal?"

He smiles subtly at my awkwardness and answers, "Well, you can use [Slavery Magic] to make sure that they always obey, but that doesn't inspire loyalty. The important thing is that the Gods watch over the Blood Slaves, so you can be certain that they're always the best servants. Just like my companion, Liam."

So, is it related to [Blood Magic]...?

"Hmmm… can you ex-…" My question gets cut short. I get two hits on my [Sense Presence], one small and one huge, both monsters.

Just what the hell is this.

I instinctively get up and draw my sword. "Monsters are coming," I somberly report.

All three of them look confused, but they stand up and draw their weapons. Liam looks at me suspiciously.

"I didn't hear anything," he states, but I ignore him as I recognize what's coming at us.

Oh no... This enemy is dangerous, extremely dangerous.

The monsters suddenly start sprinting as they've seemingly detected us, then we start to hear a jingling in the distance.

Liam turns his head towards the noise and questions in confusion, "Chain mail?"

"Run!" I shout and dart towards the corridor. It dawns on them what's coming, and they immediately follow me.

I run as fast as I can, but it's too late. When we get near the entrance to the corridor, the monsters are already at the doorway, trapping us inside.

We stop and our blood runs cold as we see the two figures coming to kill us. These monsters are the reason I don't want to go to the eleventh floor: the Orc Headhunter and the Swamp Goblin.

There's a trap on the eleventh floor, a roaming duo of monsters much more powerful than the ones normally found in the area. They hunt weaker adventurers and prey on them, so this is why nobody spends any time on that floor. The worst thing is that the Escape Bomb doesn't work on the orc, its endurance is too high. The duo is a terrifying combo.

The Swamp Goblin is a brown, filthy goblin that wears simple rags. It uses a blowgun that shoots poisoned darts that weaken the physical capabilities of adventurers. It's physically weak, so it's the priority target.

The orc is a green ugly monstrosity around two meters tall. It has a pig snout, large eyes, and huge tusks coming out of his mouth; its strength is superhuman; it wields a claymore that he uses with a single hand, and a large kite shield; and it wears a hauberk with a metal cuirass, vambraces, schynbalds, and cuisses. I'll be lucky if I survive a single strike from this thing.

"MASTER! RUN!" Liam screams while he charges the orc.

That was the wrong move. Nour and I have shields, so we can defend against the goblin and dodge the orc while Rania snipes the goblin, but we never agreed on cooperating, so Liam must be thinking of sacrificing himself instead of betting on us defeating him.

I just can't let him commit suicide, so I charge behind him. I cast [Entangling Vines] at the goblin's feet and hide behind my shield.

Lucky for us, our timing is accidentally perfect. The orc is occupied with Liam, so its reaction is slow, and I manage to duck under the quick slash it sends at me, slipping past it without a hitch, but as I pass, I feel the orc's gaze on me. I think it knows what I'm doing.

I ignore him and completely hide behind my shield, blocking my vision of what's ahead, then I hear a soft *ptoon* as a dart hits my shield and bounces off.

Good, now that goblin is dead.

The vines grab both of its legs and hold them in place. It fired its blowgun and didn't dodge, so now I'm going to make it pay for it.

The goblin screams in terror and anger, then I reach it and savagely slash down diagonally. My sword slides through its skull and lops off a part of its head.

I stop and stare as the life in the goblin's eyes is snuffed, his brain matter exposed by my attack, then he collapses, and I immediately turn around, just in time to see Liam getting blown away several meters.

"NOOO!" Nour screams. He's attacking the orc, but the monster is just effortlessly defending with its shield.

The orc has one big weakness, its metal armor, which is vulnerable to electricity. I frantically remove a point from [Sword Use] and put it into [Electric Magic] while I pray that Nour doesn't die in the next attack.

Now with a free hand, the orc savagely slashes sideways. Nour defends with his shield, but he gets splattered on the wall and all the air from his lungs is forcefully expelled.

The orc doesn't finish him and instead dashes towards Rania. I cast [Lightning Bolt] at the orc's back and it immediately stops moving, then its body starts convulsing. It's stunned, but for how long?

I do a mad dash towards it and prepare to strike. I try to slash its neck, but it turns towards me at the same time, and I only wound it as it gets out of my reach. His shield suddenly comes towards my face, and all I can do is meet it with my own.

A loud noise of metal hitting metal fills the dungeon, then pain flares in my shoulder as I feel it almost gets dislocated from the impact.

I'm forced to take a few steps back to maintain my footing, then I cast [Lightning Bolt] and the orc gets stunned again.

"[ICE LANCE]!" Rania screams with a cracked voice.

I see the orc jerk away with a speed I didn't think was possible, then a spear of ice suddenly pierces the orc's shield shoulder. It's a complete penetration right at the bone joint, and the spear is a good 10cm wide, so the orc drops the shield as its arm is now completely useless.

From behind the orc, I see Rania fall to her knees.

Was that an advanced spell? It certainly did a lot of damage to the orc.

Maybe she's inexperienced and is now suffering from mana drain like I did once, so this means I can't rely on her anymore. I need to kill the orc myself.

The orc roars in pain and anger, then he grabs the lance and pulls it out without hesitation.

I get up and cast [Lightning Bolt] again. The monster twitches, and even though it doesn't get stunned, that's enough of an opening.

I stab the orc in the groin, and I feel my sword sinking into flesh. It seems like this is a vulnerable area where the chain and plate mail don't have proper coverage.

The orc screams again and gives me a weak blow with his claymore that I defend with my shield, but it's enough to push me backward.

My sword gets jerked around, but I don't lose my grip on it, so it does even more damage to the orc as it's violently ripped out of its body.

"RAAAAAAH!" Liam screams his lungs out as he charges.

A dagger flies towards the orc's face, but it deflects it with its claymore. Liam reaches the orc a second later and slashes at it. The orc parries the attack, but that's another opening for me.

I jump and slash towards its throat, but it evades again with an impossibly high speed, so I only manage to wound it.

The orc is bloody. Its chest is completely stained from the blood that's pouring from its two wounds on its neck, its legs are red as a large amount of blood flows from its groin, its shoulder has a large gaping hole that bleeds even more than the other wounds. But even with all this, it's still fighting like a barbarian.

It kicks Liam again, who seems to be too slow to react, and he gets blown away a few meters, then the orc tries to counter my attack with its claymore, but I manage to parry it!

Is it losing strength? It did counter from an awkward angle, though.

"[SHOCKING TOUCH]!" Rania screams again with an even more cracked voice. That's a level 10 [Electric Magic] spell.

Suddenly, the orc starts to convulse, now completely defenseless as the spell wracks through its body, and I see Rania collapse behind him. She must've run out of mana.

I'm too far to immediately slash at its neck again, but it's enough for me to aim for the groin. This time my sword pierces deeply, and I quickly try to pull it out, but it's stuck.

The orc roars while still convulsing from the spell. I give up on the sword and grab my dagger, then I jump and aim for its neck.

The monster is stinky and filthy. My right hand grabs onto the back of its huge head, and it gets coated in something sticky, then its smelly breath hits my face. I ignore my disgust and savagely stab his neck. The skin is incredibly tough, and the dagger's blade isn't sharp enough to penetrate deeply, but I keep stabbing into the previous wound to widen it.

The orc stops convulsing.

Oh no, he's going to hit me. Is it going to be a punch? Or a stab? Or a slash? Or is he going to just grab my head and crush it?

I have no time to get away, so I just have to bet the lack of blood pressure will save me!

"STOOOP!" Nour roars, and with the corner of my eye, I see him throwing himself on the sword arm of the orc, then hugging it with all his strength.

Thank you, Nour. You've bound the monster for me, so I'll use your opening.

I stab the orc's neck even more savagely, causing blood to spurt all over my face and chest. The orc's roar starts to die down as I split its neck open, then it falls on its knees. Its angry expression goes blank, and it starts to fall backward.

Oh no! Not that way, you'll crush Rania!

Both Nour and I pull the monster towards us, then it falls face down in a pool of its own blood.

"You are now level ten."

Nour and I stare at him for a few seconds as we catch our breaths, then reality comes back to me, and I rush towards Liam.

I kneel before him and apply [Regeneration]. He's alive, but unconscious. I have no idea if he's bleeding internally, so I'm just going to heal him until he wakes up, then I should try to wake up Rania next. It's best that everyone is awake, even if in pain.

Nour kneels beside Rania and pours a glowing blue potion into her mouth.

Isn't she going to choke on that?

She suddenly wakes up and coughs a few times, then she opens her eyes weakly and starts swallowing the potion properly. After she finishes drinking, her body starts shivering, and Nour hugs her tight.

Oh, okay. I guess that worked.

Liam wakes up a few seconds later, but he's too weak to get up. He slowly turns to me and mutters, "Poison…"

I think he got hit by the Swamp Goblin. This is why that monster is killed first while everyone hides behind their shields. Liam got poisoned during the fight and lost most of his physical strength.

I pull out a battle potion from one of my chest pockets and pour the thick dark liquid into his mouth.

I got a little scared of the Mossy Fangpine and the Bush Babies, so I have three. It's going to take around ten minutes for it to work, though, so I'm going to continue healing Liam meanwhile.

After a minute, I drink a mana potion as my MP steadily drops. My shoulder hurts, and Nour could be wounded too, but Liam is much worse, so he gets priority.

Rania stops shaking and Nour helps her sit, then he comes over to me.

"Is that [Regeneration]?" He weakly asks.

"Yeah. I don't have a lot of mana, and I'm not very experienced, so this is going to take some time," I softly respond.

He shakes his head gently. "Oh no, you already did a lot. Here, let me give Liam one of my potions." He kneels and helps Liam drink a red potion. I see that its glow is much stronger than the ones I have.

Nour returns to Rania, then a few silent minutes pass, and Liam gets strong enough to sit. "Thank you, kind Sir, but it's enough for now. Please heal yourself," he pleads.

I don't want to argue since my shoulder is hurting, so I just do as he says and use the last of my mana to ease my pain. The potion is still acting, so my mana is recovering faster than normal.

Once I stop healing myself, Nour turns to me, his face still pale, and praises me with a weak voice, "Thank you, Mr. Ryder. You could've run after killing the goblin, but you didn't, you saved us, and most of all Liam, who was going to sacrifice himself for us."

True… throwing myself on the orc's chest was certainly reckless.

I awkwardly rub my neck and reply, "I just… I didn't think I should run away."

"You have a noble soul," he whispers with a smile.

"Indeed, I owe you my life," Liam affirms solemnly.

"Thank you..." Rania chimes in with a hoarse voice.

I'm getting a little overwhelmed, and I have no idea how to react, so I just smile weakly and nod.

But then the adrenaline starts running out, and the reality sinks in. The orc should be on the eleventh floor, and I don't know why it came here. I'm scared I'll meet another one, so I just want to go home as fast as possible.

"We need to leave this place. fast. These two monsters shouldn't be here; there's something wrong with this dungeon," I nervously plead.

"He must have entered the exit… multiple times," Rania supposes.

"And crossed multiple floors?! That's insane, how could such a rare thing happen repeatedly?" I retort bitterly.

A monster could indeed enter the exit door on a dimensional dungeon like this one and appear on a lower floor, but that's something rare to happen even once, so for it to happen multiple times is a miracle. We won the lottery of bad luck to find him.

"Perhaps the Lord has been skimping on his duties," Liam suggests dispiritedly.

The Lord manages the dungeons. If the monsters aren't culled often, then dangerous ones can appear, or like in this case, an extremely dangerous monster goes to a floor it's not supposed to be on.

"We need to report this," Nour asserts, then he stares at me intensely. "Mr. Ryder, do you have space in your [Item Box]? We need to bring these corpses to the guild. Since you did the most, the least we can do is to let you take all the rewards for these kills."

I raise my eyebrows in surprise and ask, "Is that really okay? I didn't kill them alone."

Nour nods and insists, "Yes, it's the least we could do for now."

I don't want to argue, so I just collect both corpses, then Liam and Rania stand up, and we start walking towards the exit, which is fortunately nearby.

Since I'm the one in the best condition, I lead the vanguard with Nour at my side. Liam is still too weakened from the poison to lead.

We kill two goblins on the way effortlessly. Having two people in the vanguard means that one tanks the attack while the other flanks. Our swords are also sharp enough that we can kill the goblins in a single hit.

We get to the exit soon after that. The guard near the entrance jumps in place when two completely bloodied adventures and two exhausted-looking ones suddenly appear before him.

Nour does the talking. He retells what happened, and the guards' faces pale. Meeting the Orc Headhunter is a nightmare for the people around here.

Two guards escort us back to town, and we wipe ourselves while walking, but enough blood has seeped through our clothes that even a [Clean] can't remove it.

Luckily, the customs officers don't ask to look into my [Item Box] since I made a blunder and put the corpses in my "Items."

When we enter the hunters' guild, one of the guards runs towards the closest attendant and murmurs something, then they both hurry up the stairs.

The presence of the guards and the bloodied adventurers attracts quite a bit of attention. Liam and Rania are looking better now, but they still seem very tired, while Nour and I look quite ghastly because we couldn't fully clean our armor.

A minute later, an old man and Sonny come down. The old man is short and skinny, his pure white beard protrudes from his jaw and makes men envious with its magnificence, and though he lacks hair on the top of his head, the pure white hair on the sides is well maintained. He wears simple velvet clothing, the same color as the uniform, with only the guild symbol embroidered on his chest as decoration.

The guards signal to us, and we all go towards the dismantling area. Over there, Gordon and his assistant are processing some meat and stare at us in surprise as we enter.

"Well then, could you show us the corpses?" The old man gently asks, then he gracefully motions with his hand towards the large, empty tables.

I pull out the bodies, and I hear a few gasps of surprise. The orc and goblin lost their equipment, but they're still recognizable as the dangerous duo because of their physique.

Curiosity gets the best of me, and I take a look. The orc's genitals are completely shredded, and I feel pain between my legs just from looking at it.

"So, it's true. We really need to send a complaint to the Lord," the old man mumbles, then he turns to me and smiles gently. "Now, then. My name is Silas, and I'm the guildmaster. Could you all take a seat and tell us the story in detail?" He motions towards the benches on the wall.

We obey and retell our fight.

"Quite the predicament, Sir Nour," Silas comments with a worried frown.

"Sir"? So it's really true that Nour is an important person. I just wonder why he didn't use his last name.

Silas turns to me and smiles as he adds, "And we all benefit from having someone like Mr. Ryder among us."

I'm bad at being praised. Should I say something in response?

Sonny smiles wryly and continues, "A Gray Berserker and now an Orc Headhunter. You're giving us a surprise after surprise, though I wish it was of a different kind when talking about the orc."

I chuckle and reply with a tired grin, "I think I just have bad luck."

The fact that I've been isekai'd should be enough evidence of my bad luck.

Sonny glances at the corpses and ponders, "Depends on the perspective. Those two monsters are really valuable, and the prestige that comes from killing them isn't small."

"I just want a calm life," I mumble and frown.

Gordon laughs while butchering the orc, then Sonny murmurs something and casts a spell. I don't know what spell it is, but he starts talking towards nobody while looking at the orc. He suddenly turns around and reports, "The spirit confirms it, he was killed on the sixth floor."

So mages can talk to monster spirits, too? I know that I only need a few points in [Spirit Magic] to be able to communicate with spirits, but a monster spirit being able to talk is new to me. I guess this is really useful for information gathering.

"Have you decided how the bounty is to be shared?" Sonny asks us with an impassive tone.

Nour shakes his head and immediately replies, "Oh, we aren't taking the money. Mr. Ryder saved us, so all the reward goes to him. Now, if the talk is over, we'll take our leave. We're all extremely tired, and all we want is to rest."

"Oh, it's done. The rest is with us," Silas agrees with a nod.

They didn't even let me reply.

Nour turns to me and smiles gently as he says his farewell, "Then we'll be off, Mr. Ryder, but one last thing. Could you come here to the guild tomorrow before noon? I'd like to properly give you my thanks and reward you."

I'm taken aback, and I stumble a little during my response, "I-Is that right? Sh-shouldn't the bounty reward be enough?"

He gives me a warm stare. "That's just money. You saved our lives, so I should at least reward you a bit more. Please, just come tomorrow."

I sigh and relent with a nod, "Alright then. I'll come."

He grins, pleased with my response. "Thank you. Then I'll see you tomorrow. Goodbye, Mr. Silas."

Nour and his companions give Silas a quick bow and leave.

Sonny comes towards me and reports, "Now, then. The reward for a runaway monster of threat level five is five gold. His corpse is going to sell for three gold and the goblin for one gold."

That's a huge amount because runaway monsters are a serious threat to everybody. The orc skin sells for a lot, and this one, especially, is way tougher than normal.

I also take this opportunity and bring out all my remaining proofs of extermination but not the bodies I collected. It all sums up to four silver and a bunch of copper coins. A pittance in comparison to the orc, but at least I recouped the loss from the days that I didn't sleep at the inn.

Silas spends this short time simply observing me. It seems that I've already caught the eye of the guildmaster, but I'll be laying low for the week, so no grand feat will come while I simply relax and train safe and sound inside these walls. I also don't believe in jinxing, so I can say this with confidence.

After I take my money, I say my goodbyes and leave.

It's almost night, so I go towards the inn's bathhouse and get a few concerned glances when they see my bloodied armor. I'll leave the cleaning of the blood for later, so I take out a fresh set of spare clothes after I take a wash.

Today, I order a drink while eating. They only have something similar to apple cider currently since nearly all fruit juice ran out, and there's not much wine in the town.

I eat my meal with happiness, not necessarily because it's good, but because I'm happy to be alive. Once I left the guild, I felt like a huge weight was lifted from my shoulders. All I want is some comfort and love, away from being in situations where I have to frantically stab a disgusting orc in the neck.

The innkeeper's daughter seems to be extra lovely to me this dinner. I learn that her name is Selina, and she starts some small talk, but it doesn't last long because she's too busy.

Once she leaves, I just decide to enjoy my meal: a vegetable salad with a lot of cooked beans and some chicken sauce. The vegetables of this season seem to be slightly sweet, similar to carrots and pumpkins. They go well with the beans and extra well with mutton, but today the meat is different. The inn is serving the delicious, marbled Rabid Rabbit meat, and it's of a much higher quality cut than the one sold at a stall.

After eating, I drop on my bed and immediately fall asleep.

A note from Manasong

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Chapter 4: Nour's Gift

A knock on the door wakes me up, then a female voice calls out, "Breakfast is ready!"

My body is light, but my soul is heavy.

I don't want to get up.

I can still smell the orc's blood. It has been imprinted upon my heart.

I didn't dream of the Gargling Goblin, but now I think I might have acquired a bigger trauma. The scene of stabbing the orc in the neck keeps flashing in my eyes when my mind wanders. The fear of something coming to attack me from my back assaults me repeatedly, giving me chills with each attack.

If it weren't for Nour, the orc would've grabbed my head and crushed it…

Eventually, hunger wins over fear, and I go down to eat.

The meal is a simple vegetable soup with Rabid Rabbit meat and toasted bread. The vegetables are savory this time, so it goes well with the meat.

Selina comes to my table and concernedly asks, "Say, what was all that blood you had on you yesterday?"

I give her a slightly bitter smile as I answer, "It was from an Orc Headhunter. I had a very unfortunate encounter with it yesterday."

Her jaw hangs in surprise, then she takes a seat and looks at me worriedly. "The one inside Royd's Kerfuffle? Why did you fight it? I only heard stories of people running away from him."

I nod. "It was a runaway. I met it on the sixth floor."

She gasps and covers her mouth with her hands.

How cute.

"Did you fight him alone?!" She exclaims, and I see a few customers start to listen intensely.

Please lower your voice, Selina.

I shake my head while smiling wryly and answer, "Heavens, no. I fought it with three other people. We were cornered and couldn't run away, so we were forced to fight it. I ended up being the luckiest one and got hit the least while one guy got poisoned, and I'm sure that he broke a few ribs since the Headhunter kicked him twice."

"Wow. But to come back that bloody… did you have a knife fight with him, or something?" She giggles softly.

Please stop being cute, I'm not in the mood to smile.

My faint, involuntary smile gains a subtle smugness to it as I reply, "Actually, I did. My sword got stuck in its body, so I had to use my knife to stab it in the neck."

I won't say that I got it stuck in his groin, that's a sight I want to forget.

She lets her jaw hang loose again while she stares at me with shock in her eyes.

Did I brag too much?

I awkwardly massage my neck and explain things properly, "Well, the most important person was the magician woman. She cast [Ice Lance] and pierced the Orc's shoulder so it couldn't use its shield arm anymore, then she used [Shocking Touch] and fainted. With that, I had a good opening to stab it until it died. There was also another guy who helped by throwing himself onto the arm of the orc and holding it in place so that I could finish it. Then there was the poisoned guy who fought while weakened and got kicked twice. It really was a desperate fight."

She closes her mouth and her eyes shine while she smiles. "Wow. That sounds amazing…" She whispers in wonder.

I knit my eyebrows in worry at her sudden shift. "Really? Is fighting so interesting?"

She nods repeatedly, and rests her elbows on the table, leaning a bit too close to me as she stares with dreamy eyes. "Yes! I know that I'm not strong, and I don't like fighting, but to think that there are people who work so hard, who can achieve so much to protect us, that makes me really happy."

Oh, boy, stop, my heart is melting.

Even the eavesdroppers smile at her innocence.

I become awkward again and reply, "I-Is that so… well… your enthusiasm makes me a little happy."

She giggles girlishly and gives my hand a comforting squeeze, surprising me. "Thank you for your story. I gotta continue working now, so come back later to talk." She winks then gets up and leaves.

Honestly, that conversation healed my heart, just a little, but still healed.

I guess this is why some people fight, because if it weren't for us killing that runaway, then someone else would have to suffer.

I finish my meal and go back to my room.

I have some time to kill, so I think about what I should do with my new skill points. I open my "Status" and see that my "Willpower" increased by 1 (now 12), my [Sword Use] also increased by 1 (now 8+2), my MP increased by 20 (now 135), and my "Magic Power" by 5 (now 190).

How does this magic increase work? It just increases with use, or do I have to "exercise" something within my body like a muscle?

I put my four unused points in [Reduced Mana Cost] because I need to be able to cast magic more often. Perhaps at the next level, I should get more [Mana Efficiency] to balance things, then later improve my melee skills again.

I think I'll waste another hour here at the inn. Nour said to be at the hunter's guild just before noon, so there are still a few hours until then.

I really have to steel my heart because that won't be the last time that I have to fight so desperately. I'm going for the life of a warrior, so my weak and soft Earth-born heart won't survive. This is a brutal world, and after thinking about Selina's words, I understand that there's a need for strong people who protect others.

This skill system gives me the potential to grow quickly and become extremely strong, and I think that whatever god threw me here probably won't let me lead a peaceful life, so going for the crafter's route might not be the best idea. Besides, it's a bit "romantic" to be a warrior in a monster-filled world.

My motto has always been: "do the thing you won't regret in the future," so, becoming a selfish hermit hoarding all this power to myself doesn't sit right with me.

Well, saying is different than doing. Even after this period of reflection, I still feel pain and fear, which is a bit laughable. Perhaps I need some time to let the fear subside. I'd already decided I should take a week off, anyway, so there's no need to keep thinking about this.

I spend some time massaging my sore muscles, and it actually feels good.

Is there perhaps a massage parlor around here? I know that there's a [Massage] skill, so it could be a common profession. I'd definitely go there if I found one.

After relaxing for a while, I decide to go meet Nour.

The hunter's guild has its usual rough atmosphere, but the number of people around the hunt report boards is larger than what I expected. I quickly find Nour at the tables along with his companions. Liam and Rania are drinking something while Nour is simply chatting with them.

They notice me and wave as I approach.

"Good day, Mr. Ryder," Nour greets casually.

"Good day, Sir," Liam greets formally as usual.

"Morning, Mr. Ryder," Rania greets more energetically than the last time we talked.

"Good day, everybody. I hope you all slept well," I respond with a smile.

Nour grins and confesses, "I don't even remember going to bed, I just blacked out from drinking too much. We partied a bit too hard, and even Liam was quite drunk."

"We have to let it out once in a while. It's not every day we fight so hard," Liam calmly defends himself.

"Well, little brother, it seems that your next lesson is about how to hold your own liquor," Rania teases and shows her tongue cheekily.

Nour's eye twitches, then he smiles with a faint pout as he replies, "That's… not true. I can hold it just fine."

"You did just admit to the contrary a few seconds ago," I comment with a wry smile.

He turns to me and exclaims in disbelief, "Even you…!" Then he grits his teeth and declares dramatically, "You know what, I'll drink every day until I learn my lesson!"

"Please, don't!" Liam suddenly pleads.

"I retract my previous statement," Rania calmly replies and chuckles.

I let out a few shy chuckles along with her. Seeing them all like this makes me feel a little silly I got so scared.

Nour calms down and his expression softens, then he continues, "But anyway… let's get down to business. I wanted to reward you, and I knew that you were going solo, so I prepared this." -He pushes a sealed letter towards me with a sly grin- "You see, I'm a stupid son of a wealthy merchant, and although I decided to take on adventuring, I still have my own connections, so I made a letter of reference. This will open the doors to you to the most expensive Blood Slave trader of this town, and I obtained a heavy discount for you there, so you might be able to choose among the best that they have to offer."

I lift my eyebrows in surprise, then I tense up a bit as I awkwardly reply, "Oh, wow… that's incredible, but… I don't really know much about Blood Slaves…"

I know that level 1 in [Slavery Magic] there's the spell called [Contract of Servitude], then at level 10 there's the spell [Mark of the Master], and at level 20 there's the spell [Tongue of Obedience], but that's absolutely all of the information that I have on it.

Rania raises an eyebrow and curiously asks me, "Your parents didn't teach you about Blood Slaves?"

I force a smile and look away. "They did… I just didn't pay attention," I lie and try not to blush in embarrassment.

Nour and Rania chuckle, while Liam holds back a smile.

"It's why I'm here. I'm a bit… 'free-spirited,'" I lie again and chuckle at myself. My own awkwardness and embarrassment only serve to improve the character I'm trying to sell.

"I see…" Nour mutters while smirking, then he leans back on his chair and taps his temple in thought.

Rania clears her throat and starts, "A Blood Slave is a specialized servant that you buy to perform a specific duty. Their performance is assured by the seller, while their loyalty is enforced through [Slavery Magic]. They ingest your blood, and then a spell is used to bind them to your Fate."

"Fate"? What's that? Can I eat it?

I hold back the urge to ask about Fate, and instead ask about something else, "What types of 'duties' do they perform?"

Nour shrugs as he answers, "Anything. If someone thinks that they're skilled enough in something and that they're worthy of becoming a servant, then they could sell themselves as a Blood Slave. Take Liam, by example." He pats the older man's shoulder, then smiles at me proudly.

Rania pats his other shoulder and continues, "Liam has a real talent for the sword and protecting others. He cost a lot, but he was worth every coin." She smiles warmly at him, and I get suspicious about these two.

Liam stiffens for a second, then nods respectfully towards me and adds, "I was having trouble making money through adventuring, so I decided to sell myself for ten years. By the end of my contract, I'll have a small fortune, so I'll go back to my hometown in Faium and inherit my father's smith. If the smith fails, then I'll still have enough money to live comfortably for a while."

"Contract?" I reflexively question. It seems slavery has some sort of structure or possibly laws behind it.

Rania rolls her eyes at my question while Nour smiles. I believe they're thinking I'm a country bumpkin due to my lack of knowledge.

Nour leans forward and happily answers, "The person selling themselves stipulates limits to what their duty entails and the length of their servitude. Usually, the fewer the limits, the more expensive the slave is, but few put strict limits because if there are too many, then it's easier to just buy a traditional slave, instead. A lot of women sell themselves as sex slaves, so the most common limitations are related to that."

Uh… sex slaves…?

I glance at Rania, but she's just casually sipping her drink, she doesn't show a single reaction.

"With the discount in this letter, you can get yourself a young female warrior, if that's your thing, of course," Nour adds, then he smirks when he sees my awkward reaction.

Holy shit.

"You're pretty versatile yourself, but I recommend you think carefully about what kind of warrior will work well with your style," Rania casually advises.

Nour nods and continues, "You got some good skill with the sword, you can heal yourself, you can sense monsters, and you have a spell you can cast chantless, so you can choose basically whoever you want and they'll still be useful to you."

Ah, shit. I guess mages should chant before casting their spells, but I know nothing about that. At least now I know why it took Rania so long to cast her spells and why she screamed their names.

"You're not very tall or physically strong, if you forgive my bluntness, so I recommend someone more robust instead of a mage like Dame Rania," Liam adds and lowers his head respectfully.

"No offense taken," I reply and politely smile.

Rania's gaze becomes slightly stern and measuring as she gives me another piece of advice, "Keep in mind that the Gods watch over the Blood Slaves, so if the master is being abusive, they can interfere and nullify the contract without the intervention of a priest. It's rare, but it happened before."

I stiffen instinctively and nod.

The 'Gods'? So it's god-sanctioned slavery? That's… a little concerning.

Since they're already thinking I'm a dumb peasant, I'll just lean on it and ask whatever I'm curious about. "What's [Tongue of Obedience]?"

Rania doesn't seem to have the patience for this, so Nour answers, "That spell prevents the Blood Slave from spilling your secrets. There are a few others, like one that prevents the Slave from hurting you, or another that gives you full control of their body, allowing you to even kill them with a word, but that's illegal, of course."

Full body control seems worse than normal slavery, but my curiosity makes me want to ask questions like: "Can I control their intestines?" Can I control their eyes? Can I stop the blood flow of certain veins?" Maybe I can perform surgery without the need for anesthesia or blood loss if I can cut blood flow or nerve response at will.

"That sounds a bit much," I comment with a wry smile.

Nour shrugs, Liam chuckles once, and Raina nods in agreement as she takes a sip of her alcohol, then she explains, "Yeah, but it's really useful. Most aides of nobles and Lords are Blood Slaves because they're much more reliable and trustworthy than free men."

Nour happily takes Raina's hook to interject, "Of course, there are loopholes to their contracts and these spells, but they're so roundabout and require so much effort that you need a slave who really hates their master for them to do that. It's easier for them to concentrate the effort in breaking the contract than for them to go around those limitations. Any contract can be broken by a slave that hates its master enough, by the way."

"Which is why it's important to treat them well," Rania adds and glances at Liam, who nods subtly.

So, leaving the moral question aside, I guess this is a really thoughtful gift from Nour. He put some thought into what I needed and delivered something that's really valuable.

After allowing me a few moments to think things through, Nour gets to the final point, "I know that you got some good money from yesterday's rewards, so, with my discount, you can get yourself a pretty good fighter. You might even get lucky." -He shrugs- "Sometimes there are Blood Slaves with specific circumstances, and these sell for much cheaper than they would normally go for."

Well, I got a trump card: my rose coin. It should be really valuable. Well, at least I hope it is.

I nod in understanding and smile gently as I express, "Thank you, Nour, I really appreciate this. I think this will help me a lot."

Nour gives me a wide smile, and even Rania seems pleased. He tells me where the slaver is, and I write it down on my rough map of the town.

Nour loudly hits his palms against the table and announces, "Now, then. With this business done, I have a personal request for you." -His face turns serious- "How about you join us? A man with skills such as yours is a rarity."

I smile bitterly. I knew that this was coming. I honestly would like to join them because they're good people, and even if I don't know what their goals are, I'd like to spend more time with them. But no, I can't. They already saw a lot of my skills, so I can't really show them more.

"I'm sorry, but… I'd like to walk my own path," I politely answer and lower my head for a second.

"Told you," Rania mumbles to Nour and they both smile bitterly.

Nour shrugs, and his tone gains a hint of sadness as he replies, "Well, I had to try. It's a shame that we can't walk together, but I don't want this to be the end. I'm going back to my hometown for a short trip, but I'll come back here later and continue my adventuring. When I come back, I'd like to meet you again, if you wish."

"Oh, yes. Please, let us meet again," I eagerly agree and give him a genuine smile.

"I live in Hurfa, the capital of the Faium Principality. If we don't cross paths again, then come visit me. My family runs a magic tool shop, and we produce a lot of the Wind stones used in the country. My last name is Asaf, so you can search for my family with this. You... shouldn't have much problem finding the family shop there." He smiles awkwardly.

I have no idea where Faium is, but I'll write it down later so that I don't forget to look for it on a map. Also, his last name sounds Arabic, but he's as Caucasian as they come.

I nod and affirm, "Understood. If we don't meet here again, then I'll search for you. I don't really have plans to leave this place for quite some time, though."

He taps the table loudly and gets up. "Then it's decided! I look forward to meeting you again. For now, we have to prepare for our trip, so we must take our leave. See you again sometime, Mr. Ryder." Then he gives me a quick bow.

I immediately get up and return the bow. I have no idea if this is the custom here, but it seems to please them, so whatever.

Nour grins and gives me his blessing, "One last thing, Mr. Ryder. I wish you good luck in the future. You'll need it since you seem to be making waves already." Then he points towards the small crowd near the hunt reports.

I wish I wasn't, Nour, I wish I wasn't.

Rania and Liam also bow and say their goodbyes, then I'm just left with a few curious gazes, a letter, and a head full of thoughts.

I leave the guild and take a stroll along the streets looking for books while thinking about what they told me. A companion would certainly be helpful. If I had someone to watch my back, then there'd be no need to fear the Orc Headhunter crushing my head. If I had someone like Nour to help me, then for sure I'd feel much safer, and it's not because of his skill, but because of his actions. I might be considered the one who saved them, but the moment that Nour threw himself at the orc's arm was when he saved me.

And it's not like Blood Slaves are completely miserable people. They seem to have their own rights, the ability to escape abuse, and they need to be treated well. Take Liam, for example, he seems pretty proud and content with his job, and he seems no different than a knight or a retainer with the task of protecting his lord. If I just hire someone for a few years, then it might be the same as hiring a bodyguard, or something like that.

The concept of depriving someone of their freedom might put people off, but I'm a bitter realist. Blood Slaves are merely mercenaries that come with a magical contract. Hell, even the gods are monitoring us so that they're not abused.

Oh!

I found a small book telling the Tale of Creation. It even has a lot of cute drawings in it.

It's just two silver, I'm buying it!

Now that I think about it, I should ask Ciel about what the gods think of slavery. It seems odd to me they are getting involved with Blood Slaves, but if the gods themselves say it's okay, then who am I to go against them?

But this also means that society won't really progress. This world might be safer by having the gods watching over the people, but it's like an overprotective mother. The people won't suffer, but they won't learn.

Adding that to the skill system, and I think that the social progress here might be slow. I want to take a look at the chronology of this world, and I bet that it'd show how slow this world develops in comparison to Earth. This world's "Cycle" is called a "Playground," after all. If things change too much and too fast, the genre of the game changes to sci-fi while you're not looking.

I think the best thing about Blood Slaves is that I can prohibit them from talking about me. This way, I don't have to worry too much about my abilities showing. I could even tell the truth that I'm not from this worl-…

What the hell?

I see a man flying around on a literal carpet, darting up and down the street repeatedly while making quick turns and barrel rolls.

What's the matter Aladdin, looking for Jasmine?

Once the passersby start to stop to stare at him, the man lowers the carpet close to the ground and stands up.

"Good day, gentlemen and gentlewomen!" He exclaims in a loud voice that has the characteristic buzzing of someone talking on a microphone. He waits a moment to make sure that everyone is looking at him, then he continues, "I have shown you all just a small glimpse of the newest magic tool developed! The true [Fly] crystal! This gem is incomparable to that common fake jewel that only allowed you to slowly float around. Now you can fly as gracefully as a bird, turn so fast a dragon would be envious, and make tricks that could impress even the Emperor! This gem is the bleeding edge of technology. Even the imperial army is buying it in droves to construct a new generation of the dream of every adventurer: the airships!"

Ooooh, airships, my nerd heart is pounding.

"Come to the Quizzical Emporium at the Bazaar for the latest [Fly] gems. We have magic tools so big you can build airships that can hold as many as eight people! I hope to see you there, honorable citizens!" And he darts away, this time for good.

The street starts buzzing with people excitedly talking, and I even feel like clapping my hands. I add this flying gem to my notes as research options. Airships and the [Golemancy] skill are the two things that I'm most eager to research.

Wait what was I thinking about?

Uh… oh yeah, I think that I could even tell the truth about my origin to the Blood Slave. It's risky, but if I make a contract of at least twenty years, it might be enough to get the trust or goodwill for them to keep quiet about it. At that time, I might even find a way to deal with it if the word gets out, and if I acquire enough power, I might be able to squash the rumors, too.

But do I have to tell the truth…? It's not like a slave needs to know everything about their master, they're just there to serve. I also can't just tell them that I came from another world and leave it at that. If I tell them the truth, then I'll need to tell a lot more than just that to answer their doubts. It's not a kind of conversation that I'm looking forward to.

Regardless, I see little reason to not buy one.

I don't really have an idea of the price a good slave might go for, so I should go look for the value of the rose coin.

The banker is near the Nobles' Quarters, so I need to go across the town. I'll first go to the temple, eat something nearby, talk to Ciel about the gods and slavery, and then go to the banker to see the value of the rose coin.

I think I might visit the slave trader tomorrow morning. It's near the castle in the north, so it's another long trip there. It's a bit tiring walking everywhere, so maybe I should look for the price of that magic carpet. I also don't feel like paying for a Space mage transport; I always hated taxis.

I look for a better restaurant this time, and I find one serving Great Boar meat. They aren't commonly found here, but a hunter expedition deep into the Sea of Trees found a pack there, so some restaurants have a lot of Boar meat to offer for the next few days.

The beans are good, but I miss rice, too. I'm a Brazilian who immigrated to Canada, and I miss the staple food of my homeland once in a while: rice, beans, and Brazilian-style barbecued meat.

I waste some of my time in a tea shop. They serve something similar to black tea with an unidentified citric fruit. Is this Earl Grey? It tastes similar, but it's closer to the average orange than the bergamot. They serve a few simple butter cookies that go really well with it.

Then I go to the temple and search for Ciel. I take a walk around the outer ring looking for her while also taking a closer look at the statues, but she's not down here. I ask a standby priest and he tells me that she's at the orphanage. Luckily, today isn't her free day.

The orphanage looks exactly the same as the priests' living quarters, with the only difference being that instead of priests, there are children entering and leaving all the time.

The orphanage is a large, box-shaped white building with a brown tiled roof, which looks a little expensive for a religious institution. It has flowery carvings covering all of its walls, and the channels are filled with a gradient of colors. The orphanage and the quarters seem to be the only buildings where some decoration is allowed. It's quite pretty and makes me feel like I'm looking at one of these "trendy" and "artsy" places back on Earth.

There's only a brown picket fence surrounding the orphanage and the priests' quarters, but is it really okay for me to enter uninvited?

The orphanage is in the middle of the plot, covering most of the available land. At the front, there's a simple grass garden with a cobbled path towards the entrance, but I can see some sort of small flower garden behind the building. On this grass garden, there's a metal swing, a merry-go-round, and a raised goal where the children are playing some sort of game of hot potato with a small leather ball.

I gather some courage and enter the area. A few boys look interested in my sword while the rest ignore me. Then I quickly enter the building and look around. The inside is made of gray square stone while the floor is made of light brown wood with the only decoration being some wooden pillars around.

Just as I finish observing my surroundings, an old male priest walks by.

"Oh, hello, can I help you?" The chubby priest asks as his small eyes look at me warmly. His voice is so gentle that it tickles my ears.

"I'm… looking for Miss Ciel," I reply, a little mesmerized by him.

His expression brightens and he smiles. "Oh! The sister is in the kitchen. I'll call her over for you. What's your name?"

"Wolf Ryder. Uh, if she's busy, I'll just come another time; it's not an urgent business."

He shakes his head gently. "She's not really busy, so don't worry. Wait here in the guest room while I call her over."

Then he takes me to a really cozy room. There are a few simple sofas around a low coffee (do they even have coffee here?) table; a small fireplace that crackles with burning logs, yet I smell no smoke; and a "Last Supper"-style painting of the multiple Humanoid Gods hanging above it. I like this painting more than Earth's because it's full of different, colorful races and people, and has both genders instead of just boring, bearded men.

After a few minutes, Ciel comes into the room carrying a tray with a tea set and cookies.

Oh, no, I just drank tea, but I don't want to deny her hospitality, so I'll just pretend I'm not full.

"Good afternoon, Mr. Ryder. I was wondering when you'd come back," she greets as she sits, then immediately pours tea for me.

"I spent the last few days training in a dungeon, and I only came back last night," I respond with a gentle tone.

She nods and smiles warmly. "I'm glad you're okay. Every day-cycle, we have news of someone disappearing inside a dungeon, so please, be careful."

I smile awkwardly. "My motto is 'don't die,' so I have no plans of dying soon."

She chuckles softly and lays back on her seat, then sips her tea. "So, what did you want to talk about?"

I swallow heavily. There are a few things I want to ask, but I'm sure she'll be thinking I'm a weirdo after I tell her.

Fuck it. Curiosity wins.

I clear my throat and start, "There are a few things I want to understand better. The first thing is, what's a day-cycle?"

She exhales loudly in amusement and raises her eyebrows in surprise as she replies, "Well, a day-cycle is a period of ten days and a half-cycle is five days. Every day-cycle you are advised to deeply bathe once, to pray once, and to make merry at least once; every half-cycle you're advised to make love to your partner at least once and to change the ingredients of the meals, and that's also the time between the monster cullings that the Townsguard is responsible for."

"How about months and years? How many days a month has and how many months a year has?"

"A month has thirty days and a year has ten months, so a year has three hundred days."

So, a day-cycle is equivalent to an Earth's week. Perhaps ten days is chosen because of the ten "base elements" in the Tale of Creation. I don't know why thirty and three hundred are chosen, though. Maybe it was made this way just so it's somewhat similar to Earth. I don't think the Japanese believe there's anything special about the numbers three or ten.

I look at Ciel and see that she seems both amused and confused by these questions.

I nod in thought and reply, "Hmm, I see. In my homeland, we say weeks instead of day-cycle and it was seven days, not ten."

She knits her eyebrows and holds back a chuckle. "How curious…" She mutters.

I quickly change the topic to not let her think too much about it. "Anyway, I also heard about Blood Slaves, and I got curious about why the Gods would get involved with this matter."

Her face softens as she starts thinking more seriously. "An interesting thought…" She spends a moment thinking, then assumes a teaching tone as she answers, "The Humanoid Gods are chosen to be our guides. They keep us on the correct path so we don't make a mistake so terrible that we destroy ourselves. We need to keep united and strong so we can always put a front against the Monster King. Therefore, it's their reason for existence to get involved with every aspect of our lives."

I'm not sure how safe it is to push these sorts of questions to a priest of all people, but I need to get a "feeling" about how slavery is treated in this world. "But why do the Gods accept slavery?"

She raises her eyebrows in surprise for a moment and asks back, "What do you mean by that? Why wouldn't they accept it?"

I awkwardly scratch my head as I rethink this question.

It's better to be direct.

I breathe in and start my speech, "Isn't it cruel to chain innocent people into servitude regardless of the reason? Isn't it too much to have absolute control over someone's life? To be able to toy with their bodies, to force them to do anything and everything you want against their wishes? Even if it's not immediately harmful, why should anyone have this much power over others?"

She leans forward and her face becomes serious as she asks, "Do you believe people should be able to sell their bodies?"

I'm taken aback a little. "You mean… like… prostitution?"

She shakes her head. "No, not just that. A bodyguard is someone who sells their sword and their health to protect someone or something important. A craftsman is someone who sells their hands to their employer. A slave is someone who sells their time and loyalty to their master."

"But… are all slaves voluntary?"

She nods, and her face softens. "Most are. Debt slaves, criminal slaves, and war slaves are involuntary, but they make for bad workers and they lack loyalty, so they aren't as popular."

Wait… it's like this world's slavery is the inverse of Earth's chattel slavery.

I blink blankly and immediately ask, "Why wouldn't they be popular? It's free labor."

She knits her eyebrows in worry as she responds, "They're being forced to work in something they don't like and to a master they hate, of course they'd be horrible workers. Because of this, the masters have to spend more making these slaves happy than voluntary slaves."

Make them… "happy"…?

I awkwardly retort, a bit uncomfortable with what I'm suggesting, "Can't they 'motivate' the slaves to work harder with lashings? By that I mean, can't they punish the slaves if they don't work hard enough?"

She frowns and her tone becomes slightly indignant, making me think that I might be pushing too far. "I sincerely hope you aren't thinking that slaves should be treated like that, Mr. Ryder. We aren't in Bestiaram; committing the Sin of Torture is punishable with death."

I force an apologetic smile and quickly deny, "N-no, no. I was just asking to satisfy my curiosity. It's hard to truly understand things without asking questions from all angles."

She opens her eyes wide in surprise and looks away as she coughs awkwardly. "I-I see. It's always good to be curious…" -She turns to me and lowers her head for a moment- "I apologize for doubting you. I didn't realize what you were doing, and it's bad form to assume the worst of someone during a discussion."

I wave my hand. "It's fine, it's fine. I should've been careful with my wording." And we share an embarrassed smile.

Her tone becomes more casual and amused. "Are you sure you shouldn't call yourself a scholar? I remember going through these same arguments when being taught about philosophy and morals."

I blush faintly. I only have a surface-level understanding of philosophy, but it might be above the average for the commoner in this world.

I shake my head and deny, "I'm not a scholar, I'm just a curious person."

She smiles warmly and takes another sip. "Then continue as so. The Gods like people like you."

I nod and bring us back on track, "So, why would anyone sell themselves voluntarily?"

"To have a better life; to serve a better purpose; to aid a better person. The reasons are endless."

I frown. "A 'better person'? What do you mean by that?"

She assumes a teaching tone again as she explains, "We aren't all born as equals, but we all have a capacity to grow. Some people grow faster and further than others, so it's your duty to find these people and aid them. Those who can protect others, lord over those who can't, and the weak aid the strong, so that the strong can protect the weak."

Okay, I like the last part, but…

"Why is it our 'duty' to aid others?"

She smiles smugly like a teacher about to lay unto their students a long lesson. "We are all children of the God of Creation. Regardless of where you're born and what you believe, our mission is to survive and keep the Cycle going. That is our main purpose, our reason for existence, but we're still subordinates of the God of Creation, so our second purpose is to create as many new and interesting things as possible. Lastly, we've also inherited the will of the God of Change, so our third purpose is to keep civilization moving forward and progressing.

"Do you understand it now?" She kindly asks with expectant eyes.

I nod confidently. "It's the will of the God of Change. If you can't aid others yourself, then at least aid someone who can."

She smiles brightly like a mother who's proud of her son's school grade, making me blush again. "Perfectly stated."

I cough and recompose myself, then I continue, "But what if we want to abolish slavery and institute a democracy?"

She chuckles once, amused at my suggestion. "The strong serving the weak? That wouldn't work very well. The Gods won't stop you from trying, but you'll have to face the consequences if you fail."

"'Consequences'?"

She nods sternly. "The nobility exists to protect us, but if they fail, they have no reason to exist anymore, so they're deposed, if not outright killed as punishment. The same will happen to anyone trying to bring about change."

Oof, that's harsh…

She seems amused with my surprise and continues, "Remember that, just like the God of Creation is a subordinate of the God of Change, we are subordinates of the God of Creation, and the slaves are subordinates to us. To abolish slavery would be meaningless since we'll always be compelled to serve our betters due to our reasons for our existence. You can run and hide from that reason, but the gods will find a way to guide you back to the path or simply kill you. 'Slavery' is just a system to aid us in fulfilling that purpose."

"What do you mean by 'kill you'?" I ask with a worried frown.

Her tone becomes so gentle and certain that I feel a chill due to the contents of her explanation, "Exactly that. The Genderless God of Existence is a subordinate from the God of Creation that watches over us and kills those who stand in the way of our reason for existence."

"What do you mean by 'stand in the way'?"

And her tone becomes serious again. "Those who only want to spread chaos, those who cause the realm to wither, the Sinners who go too far, and the heretics that stand against the Gods. These are the kinds of people that are killed by the God of Existence."

So, being smited by the Gods is a real possibility. I better not antagonize them… but wait…

"If they can do that, why don't the Gods govern us like a king does?"

She leans back on her chair, seemingly slightly amused by my question. "Because that goes against the main purpose of the God of Change: to keep things moving forward. If a God, who exists only for a single purpose, is given the power to govern us, then civilization will be forever bound to that God's mentality, impeding us from growing or evolving."

"And that would be the wish of the God of Order? To have things stagnate and decay?" I question tentatively.

She nods and smiles. "Indeed, but remember, the God of Order and Destruction are still Gods, so we can't ignore their wisdom."

"Huh? What do you mean?"

She chuckles softly at my confusion, then she assumes her teaching tone again and explains, "They may be trying to destroy us, but the principles they're based on are still very important to us. Just because our purpose is to create, it doesn't mean that we can't destroy. It's necessary to kill a monster or an animal before you can cook a delicious steak. Just because we are to cause change, doesn't mean it has to be in every single aspect of us. We're encouraged to kill bad kings, but a kingdom still needs peace to be allowed to grow and thrive. The Overseer created the Gods to maintain the balance on the realm so that the Cycle could continue, therefore, we must preserve this balance, too."

Oh, I understand… they don't see the God of Order and Destruction as "evil," only as an "opponent."

I grab my chin in thought and deliberate, "So it's all a hierarchy. No matter how we're pitted against one another, we're to keep the balance, not eliminate the other."

She nods emphatically, very pleased. "Precisely. It goes from the Overseer, to the God of Change, to the God of Creation, to the Genderless God of Existence, to the Humanoid Gods, to the royalty, to the nobility, to the commoner, to the Blood Slave, to the normal slave, and finally, to the criminal slave.

"The God of Order rules over the God of Destruction, who rules over the monsters. They're opposed to us, but that's just their nature, so we accept that their presence is necessary to force us to adapt and grow."

Though there's a certain amount of freedom, the overall structure of this society is still controlled by the gods, and if I want to change it, I'd basically have to destroy half the gods in this world. Social progress must be truly stagnating because of this.

"Going back a little, do the gods specify when they intervene?"

She takes a sip and observes me intensely as she answers, "To prevent people from abusing the line if the criteria are known, we're never told exactly why someone received Godly punishment."

This is a bit worrying, but I kind of understand the reasoning.

"So, the only safe choice is to keep being as good as you can to avoid punishment?"

She smiles warmly and hums, "Exactly."

"But what does it mean to be a 'good person'?"

She becomes quite happy and energetic, and I feel like her demeanor is quite cute. "Well, you basically follow the teachings of the Humanoid Gods. Don't waste food, don't hurt others against their will for pleasure, don't commit crimes like theft or extortion, help others whenever you can, things like that. It depends on the God, and there are many, many teachings, but you aren't required to follow them all perfectly. The Gods are reasonable and understanding, so you won't be punished just because you wasted a piece of food, but if you keep doing it, then the Gods will send messages and warnings, and if you still defy them, then you get punished."

Alright, reasonable, but inflexible. Morality really is defined by the gods, but since they're chosen from the mortals, then, in a way, morality is actually defined by us. It just depends on the criteria of how the gods are chosen.

"Are there any known criteria for the Humanoid Gods being chosen?"

She shakes her head."That's not known to prevent it from being exploited, but we know that all Gods were once people who achieved something great."

Eh, maybe it isn't so bad.

I massage my neck to dispel some of the tension that has accumulated. Talking about religion to a priest where you don't know what their reaction to questioning will be is a little frightening.

I finish my tea and start to wrap things up, "Well, I think that's enough about slavery for me today, but I have one last question: I want to choose a god to worship, so can you tell me a quick resume of the Humanoid Gods?"

She suddenly brightens up and giggles. "That's a good idea! Most people choose around three that might help their lives the most, but if you have the time to study what they represent you could choose more.

"Anyway, their names are quite self-explanatory, they are: Genderless God of Existence; God of the Sun and Sister Goddess of the Moons; Goddess of Fertility; Goddess of Piety; Goddess of Will; Goddess of Love; Goddess of Growth; God of War; God of Law; God of Festivity; God of Endurance; God of Luck; Goddess of Knowledge and Brother God of Intelligence; Goddess of the Plants and Twin Brother God of the Animals."

"Moons" as in, there's more than one moon? I've realized I haven't seen the night sky yet. I had no reason to since I immediately went to sleep after getting dark, but now I have to remember to check the sky tonight, otherwise, my curiosity will kill me.

"What does the Goddess of the Moons and the God of the Sun do?"

"They were the first Gods, so their teachings are broader and more general because of that. These days, their focus is bringing happiness for those who work below the sun or the moons, but they aren't worshiped as much as they were before, though they're still the ones who talk the most to their worshipers."

So, I guess I should choose one of them if I wanted to talk to a God.

I hum in thought, then I lower my head for a moment and express, "Thank you for your time, Miss Ciel, this is really enlightening. I'll think about choosing one for now."

She giggles cutely and replies, "Thank you for choosing me to talk to. I enjoyed talking to you quite a lot because you made me remember the basis of my faith and stimulated my thoughts."

I smile back and get up. "Then I'll be off. I'll see you another day."

"I'll be waiting." She waves goodbye, and I leave.

As I make my way out, I see that the old priest I talked to when I first came here is in the room beside ours, casually reading a book. Perhaps he was eavesdropping? Well, it doesn't matter much to me.

Now, I have to go to a bank and look at the conversion rate for the rose coin. The bankers are all over the noble quarters as a safety measure, and since it doesn't matter which one I go, I'm just going to choose the closest one.

The walk there is quite long, but it allows me to observe the carnival that the adventurers wear gradually turning into the more delicate clothes of the wealthy, who at least have a better sense of style than them. It seems that cloaks, sleeveless velvet jackets, and thin cotton pants and shirts are in fashion right now, while their wealth is shown through lavish decorations on the side of the arms, flanks, and legs.

I think about passing by the university's library, but after taking a look at my clothes, I realize that it might be a very uncomfortable experience. From what I understood, the university is either for the gifted, the wealthy, or the noble. I don't have any of these three to show, so I need at least a better set of clothing before I even try to go there.

This thought gets reinforced when I enter the bank. This is a fancy, fancy place. I see spiral pillars with details in gold and purple, black floor tiles with a perfect shine, couches that make my ass tingle just from looking, uniforms that make the employees look as fashionable as nobles, and a large line of decorated booths where attendants wait with a perfect smile.

I don't belong here. I need to finish my business as quickly as possible and then leave.

I find the nearest attendant and shyly ask for the conversion rates of the coins. I feel that he looks at me coldly, but responds in a perfect tone without any hint of rudeness, then he points me towards familiar black boards hanging on a wall. They're just like the ones at the hunters' guild.

These boards hold conversion rates for a variety of coins, and while most are for foreign coins, the board in the middle with the decorated borders is the one for the local coins. They explain the materials that the coins are made from, and the conversion rate between each of them.

All coins are made with alloys, and their value depends on the alloy composition and weight. Governments might change their alloy and weight as economic measures, so it's important to always know the precise make-up of each coin. For example, they could reduce weight to save costs, introduce cheaper metals to dilute the alloy, or completely change the alloy when new mines are found or old ones are exhausted.

To my extreme happiness, rose coins are very valuable.

The normal exchange rate that the empire aims to maintain is that copper, silver, gold, and rose coins have a 1:100 exchange rate. This means that 1 silver equals 100 copper, 1 gold equals 100 silver, and so on. I guess this is to prevent high-value transactions from becoming cumbersome since coins can get quite heavy.

The attendant explains that a few months ago, a mine that holds a massive amount of platinum was discovered, which is the metal used for the rose coin. This coin is just an alloy of gold and copper for color-coding the coin, giving it its rosy color, while a small amount of platinum is added to give it value because it's too small to make it into a coin by itself.

This rose coin is also never used without someone who has the [Metal Appraisal] skill because that's the only reliable way to see the percentage of metal in an alloy, and if you're dealing with rose coins, then you have enough gold to hire an appraiser for the transaction.

The current version of the rose coin is worth seventy gold, but the empire will soon mint a new coin with a higher platinum content to adjust the price. The attendant says the value is going to drop one or two more gold before it stabilizes, but my rose coin won't be as valuable as the new one once it's out, so there's little reason for me to hold it.

I tell the attendant that I want to exchange my coin, and he looks at me visibly shocked for a moment. I just hope I don't get accused of stealing from somebody, but considering the price of some of the adventuring equipment, I wouldn't be surprised if an adventurer eventually finds something worth a rose coin or two.

The attendant points me to the end of the line of booths where a few attendants deal with money exchange. There's no queue, so I go there, present my coin, and get the gold counted in front of me, then I take it and leave immediately.

Once I get out, I start to relax a little. The lavish atmosphere was making me uncomfortable.

There are still a few hours until dusk, so I kill some time by browsing through books. I buy three about random hero tales and one about romance. I'm not the romance type, but I feel interested in knowing what love is in this world. I also find a very fluffy pillow, which I'm going to use to sleep from now on.

Then I decide to buy a middle-range set of clothes and a cloak. It's a dark-blue woolen shirt with golden lines running along the sides of the arms, black pants following the same design, black leather shoes, and a fashionable dark-blue velvet cloak. The cloak is a bit stylish. It has a bracelet that fastens its bottom to my wrist, so it reaches my waist, then turns to the side, covering only one arm. I've seen a few people using it, so I don't think it's too out of the norm, even if it looks weird to me.

After that, I find a stall selling Dragolite meat on a stick. It tastes like chicken, but there's a strong lingering taste of something that reminds me of a herb. I don't know if it's the seasoning or if that's just its usual taste.

Back at the inn, Selina seems cheerful as usual, but the innkeeper seems to be observing me.

Shit, I'm not trying to steal your daughter.

He doesn't seem to be cold to me, though.

Then I relax and go to sleep feeling very content in my choice of pillow.

I have a short nightmare with the Gargling Goblin that wakes me up in the middle of the night, making me feel rather frustrated. After that, I dream of killing goblins, but it isn't another nightmare, it's just a memory of the adrenaline rush of a fight.

Today, breakfast has a salad with a dash of vinegar that tastes like apple, and this makes me want to look at the Farmer's Market for some fruit or something to make juice. If I buy some, I can just ask the inn's cooks to prepare it for me.

After filling my stomach, I put on my new, more fashionable clothes and start walking towards the castle.

Today, I see a few pamphlets advertising the Quizzical Emporium. They have a pretty detailed hand-drawn airship on them. They're going all out on the advertising.

The airship design is that of a horizontal egg, and the top half of the egg is smaller, which creates a deck for people to walk on. At its back, I see what looks like a dozen propellers, so does this mean that this world has a concept of aerodynamics?

I move on and look ahead. After a few minutes of walking down the main road, the castle starts to peek over the roofs of the houses, and I gradually see it in its full glory for the first time. It's made of blue-gray bricks and looks more like a super thick square tower than the usual medieval castle. It starts massively thick and gets smaller the higher it goes, towering twice as tall as every other building and tower in this town, then it ends with a huge flag hung from a pole.

Even at this distance, it's possible to discern the details on the flag. It's the same as the heraldry on the tabard of the guards: a black background with a simple white kite in the middle, which has a golden sword and a red rose crossed over it.

It takes a while until I can see the castle entirely since the streets are pretty crowded with crooked multi-story buildings. It only clears once I get on the main brick road that goes to the castle.

The stores around here are of high quality and with a lot of variety. Restaurants, tea shops, bakeries, bookstores, magic shops, magic crafters, smiths, magical smiths, potion sellers, high-class inns, taverns that remind me of modern rustic restaurants, furniture shops, real estate, and the closer you get to the castle, the more perfume shops appear.

I don't resist and buy the cheapest men's perfume I can find. Forty silver coins. It's damn expensive, but I need something to mask the smell of leather if I'm to enter a high-class establishment.

Then I finally find the slave trader. It's a large white and black building with the words "Golden Necklace" written in gold on a sign above the entrance.

I stare at the sign for a moment to gather my courage, then I get inside and immediately wish I had bought even better clothes.

The slave trader is as lavish as the bank. It has an incredibly glossy dark floor and golden seams connecting the tiles, while the walls are adorned with dozens of crystal statues of naked humanoids. The building is large, but the lobby is small as the walls are covered with doors to other rooms.

An old man wearing clothes that are strikingly similar to a suit and tie comes to me. "Welcome, Grand Sir. How may I help you?" He politely inquires as he bows in a right angle.

I still have no idea how formal greetings are done around here, so I just stiffly respond, "Good day. I have a letter of recommendation here."

I extend the letter to him, and he delicately takes it. He looks it over but doesn't open it, then he turns to me and gently asks, "Could you follow me? I'll take you to a private room and then take the letter to the Head so he can verify its contents."

"Understood," I accept with a nod.

He opens one of the nearby doors and leads me inside. The room is rather wide, but there are only two lavish couches around a glass table in the middle of it, making the room rather bare. There are no windows as the illumination is magical, coming from shining jewels embedded in the ceiling, and I see a small vent at one of its corners.

Seems like they even have ventilation technology here.

The old man motions me to one of the sofas and then leaves.

I awkwardly sit there and wait. After a minute, another door opens on the other side of the room, and a middle-aged man comes out. His face is so manly and gentle that it makes me oddly uncomfortable. He's wearing a lavish, purple silk robe, and a jeweled ring on each of his fingers.

The old butler comes after him, carrying a tray with a tea set and cookies, which makes me a bit excited.

Are those chocolate cookies?!

The man sits on the sofa in front of me and does a quick bow. "Welcome to the Golden Necklace. Your name is Mr. Ryder, as the letter says, correct?" He calmly asks, his voice is surprisingly deep and stimulating.

"Correct," I answer with a nod.

He shows me a handsome smile and continues, "My name is Ghulam Bhatt, and I'm the Head of this establishment. I'm surprised at the contents of the letter given to me. You've made a powerful ally, Mr. Ryder."

He actually makes me blush, for some reason. This man has a perfect tone, the perfect face, and even the perfect body language. If I were a woman, I'd easily fall in love with him.

"H-hello, Mr. Bhatt. I just did what I thought was right," I awkwardly reply.

He nods slowly. "And a reward was given… Now, the letter says you're looking for an adventuring companion, is that right?"

I swallow heavily and steel my nerves. "Yes, I have no real requirements. I only want someone who can help me fight, so show me your best."

"Any preference on gender?"

That's a dangerous question.

"No…"

He simply nods again. "Then excuse me as I have to leave to collect the best and bring them here. We'll start with the women." And I suddenly feel a bit uncomfortable.

I nod and he leaves then comes back again in a few minutes with five women following behind him. They're all wearing a loose-fitting and small white silk dress that keeps their legs bare, showing up to half the thighs. It's also open at the sides, and two of the women are so well endowed that the breasts spill through the openings, and the cloth is so thin that I can even see the form of their nipples. This is way too dangerous and stimulating.

What am I doing here…?

When I see the last woman enter, I freeze completely.

No, no… this is too much.

A slender body that shows a hint of muscle, a light brown skin, slightly wavy black hair that goes a bit below the shoulder, and a small feminine face.

That's Lily…

No, it's not! It looks like her but it's not!

I want to jump and hug her then kiss and make love to her.

I miss Lily so much…

I want to go home.

The seller follows my gaze and turns to me. "That one is a mage with knowledge of Blessing and [Dark Magic], and an inkling of knowledge in the rare [Summoning Magic]. If you wish to study exotic magic, she's the one you need. She was also trained in simple [Potion Brewing]. She's not a front-line fighter, but she'll be a perfect support for you. Even in bed."

A shiver runs along my spine.

"Please remove her," I request with a flat tone, holding back my emotions.

The seller gets taken aback, but he nods to the old man, who guides her away.

"Was she not satisfactory?" Ghulam tactfully asks.

I clench my fist and lock up again the emotions that are about to burst out. "It's not that… she just reminds me too much of someone."

"I see…" He whispers in a soothing tone, then he continues introducing each woman.

The first is a raven-type demon race woman. She's tall and well-endowed. Her skin is a beautiful pure black, her charming straight white hair falls on her shoulders like drapes, and her bright red eyes stare with interest. She can materialize a huge blade that comes out of the back of her hand, and she can even fly by summoning bird wings. She specializes in spear fighting and knows [Wind Magic] to support her flight. She allows being used as a sex slave.

Oof, that last part is scary. I'm just going to ignore her for now.

The second is a dwarf woman, but she looks like a short teenager. She has brown hair styled in a bowl cut, and a round, funny nose that makes her look rather adorable. She uses the traditional dwarven shield and hammer combo, and she has a racial skill that converts mana into "Strength," but without it, there's no way those thin arms of her would be able to lift a tower shield. She has a few levels in [Earth Magic] for utility and [Light Magic] for healing, so she's rather self-sufficient and lasts long in a fight.

The third is a human woman. She's well-endowed, and her face looks mean but sexy at the same time, enhanced by her short boyish blonde hair. She's tall, strong, and can hold her own against a knight. She used to be an adventurer, and her body shows plenty of scars as evidence of her experience.

The fourth is a human girl. She's average-looking but has pretty brown hair. She excels in Water, Fire, and [Wind Magic], but only that, so she's basically a glass cannon. I'm slightly interested in her since she has such a large magic repertoire.

Then the women go away, and he brings three men.

The first is a large dragonkin. A tall and rather ugly man with short brown hair. He has dragon wings that he can use to fly for a short amount of time, and small patches of sharp scales protruding from the side of his arms and legs. These scales can act as armor or even be used as weapons since the edges are sharpened. His specialty is that he can breathe a sand storm and blind his opponents, and he's also experienced with all sorts of melee weapons. Truly the greatest warrior of this establishment.

The second is a dwarf man. He looks the same age as me despite his real age being double of mine. His skills are similar to the dwarf woman, but he can't use [Light Magic]. He may lack the healing magic, but he has his experience as an adventurer to his advantage.

The third and final is a bald human man with a boring face. He specializes in [Blessing Magic] and [Light Magic], knows a little bit of [Wind Magic], and has some training in sword and shield. He allows being used as a sex slave, even for other men.

Oh, boy…

I blink repeatedly to clear my mind from the weird thoughts.

All of their contracts are for either one or two decades, which is perfectly acceptable to me.

So, who is the best: the girl mage, or the dragonkin? The dwarf woman is also attractive because of the healing magic. With the amount of money I have, I can buy more than one, but can I really take care of more than one person for now?

I think hard and thoroughly, but I don't think that I should make a decision right now.

Seeing my indecisiveness, Ghulam suddenly suggests, "Mr. Ryder, would you be willing to wait two days before you make a decision? I have a new shipment coming, and there are two great jewels there, even better than the ones here."

This takes me by surprise. Who could be better than the dragonkin and the genius magician?

"What about these ones, aren't they going to sell in the meantime?" I inquire.

He gracefully shakes his head and responds, "I can hold them until the shipment arrives, and you have priority because of your recommendation. Also, the ones I've shown to you are my jewels, and slaves of this quality normally take a few months to sell. It's unlikely anyone capable of buying them is going to come so soon."

I see no reason not to wait, and I was already going to relax for a few days, anyway.

"Alright, I'll wait," I accept.

I want to come back and eat these cookies again. The brown one isn't made of chocolate, but it's still a delicious mix of vanilla with a fragrant fruit that goes perfectly with the tea, which seems to be a mix of ginger and cloves, and it tastes really good.

I leave the Golden Necklace and waste time until noon by window shopping on the main street, then I change back to my normal clothes and go to the hunters' guild for training.

"So, you're still alive?" Toga sternly questions me, mildly surprised.

Not even a greeting, just a mean gaze and straight words.

"Uh, were you expecting the contrary?" I ask worriedly.

He snorts, looking a bit peeved, then nods and answers, "You didn't come back for more training. That usually means you recklessly delved into a dungeon and got yourself killed."

I chuckle self-deprecatingly. "Wow, that's not far from the truth, but I played it safe and went to Royd's Kerfuffle."

He purses his lips reprovingly. "Even that was dangerous. Did you hear an Orc Headhunter was found at the sixth level? That could've been you."

So, this means you care about me, Toga? Awn, I'm touched.

I smile wryly and confess, "Well… t-that was me. I fought the Orc Headhunter with three other people."

Toga doesn't even twitch, he just stares at me, judging my words, then he looks at one of the guys at the bench, the same one that healed me after the last beating I got.

"Harper! Who was the guy that killed the Orc Headhunter?!" He yells.

"I think it was some Wolf Ryder!" The healer yells back.

Toga slowly turns his head towards me in a perfectly creepy movement, then he stares at me even harder, as if his eyes could pierce my soul, and I see a small smile forming on his mouth.

"So, Mr. Slayer, are you here for more training?" He sternly asks, his voice sounding even more threatening than before.

I avoid his gaze and tense up. "Y-yes… I would like to spar again," I meekly answer.

He immediately throws a wooden sword at me. "Pull up your guard!"

And then he beats me again, even harder this time.

The other students and teachers start cheering me, encouraging me to not give up, crying in joy every time I manage to block, and flinching with every blow I receive. I think some are even betting, but I can't pay any more attention to them because my life and dignity are on the line.

This time, Toga doesn't just beat me, he turns it into a marathon of a beating. He wears me down until I'm about to break, then he lets me rest for a precise amount of time, only to wear me down to my limit once again. He makes me last the whole afternoon and only ends it when I can barely stand anymore. The beating is so bad that I even get bloodied.

Then he suddenly stops and lowers his sword. "That's enough. Today was a productive day, and I'm pleased with the results," he calmly states, and I swear his voice is tinged with sadism.

More like pleased in seeing me suffer.

"Thank you… for the session." Those are all the words I can say until I'm fully healed, and it takes two instructors to heal me back to full HP.

I got back to the inn, and Selina cheerfully greets me.

"Welcome back, Mr. Ryder, did you fight something fearsome again today?" She asks with a slightly teasing tone.

"Just a bloodthirsty instructor," I answer with a wry smile.

She raises her eyebrows in surprise, then immediately exclaims, "Ah! I-I'm sorry…" And covers her mouth with her hand as she giggles.

I shake my head tiredly. "Don't be, it's training… it's a life I chose."

"Thank you for your effort." She bows and sends me a wink, then walks away while smiling.

When I get back to my bed, I take a look at my stats. My "Endurance" and "Willpower" increased by 1 (now 9 and 13), and [Block], [Parry], and [Dodge] increased by 3 (now 2+4, 0+4, and 2+4), which is rather impressive. Though I guess I just didn't have much of a chance to use my sword for attack during this beating.

Then I remembered that there's a skill called [Shield Use], so why didn't I learn it, already? Is this an offensive skill like [Sword Use]? Do I need to attach a blade and kill something with it so it doesn't count as [Shield Bash]?

Whatever. If it isn't increasing, then I'll just ignore it for now until I learn more about skills.

This is my progress so far:

Wolf Ryder Skill Report

Physical

Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level
Sword Use | 8+2 | Dodge | 2+4 | Parry | 0+4
Block | 2+4 | Shield Bash | 0+1 | Sense Presence | 5+0

Magical

Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level
Mana Efficiency | 4+0 | Mana Recovery | 4+0 | Reduced Mana Cost | 4+0
Fire Magic | 1+0 | Electric Magic | 1+0 | Blessing Magic | 5+0
Nature Magic | 5+0

Miscellaneous

Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level
Andraste Language | 10+0 | Dismantling | 0+1

Info

Name | Wolf Ryder | Age | 16 | Race | Human
HP | 100 | MP | 135 | Magic Power | 190
Level | 10

Stats

Strength | 8 | Endurance | 9 | Dexterity | 9
Speed | 10 | Intelligence | 20 | Wisdom | 15
Willpower | 13 | Charisma | 10 | Piety | 3
Perception | 15 | Sanity | 9

Other

Status Effects | 'NONE'
Titles | 'NONE'
Affiliations | 'NONE'
Companions | 'NONE'
Crimes | 'NONE'

After that, I go to sleep, and I have a few confusing dreams about fighting, so I don't sleep very well.

Today, my body is way too sore for training, and it hurts to even walk around.

Since I don't have much to do, I wanted to talk to Selina, but she's way too busy this time. Our relationship is kind of awkward. It's not like we're close friends, and I can't call her anytime I want. Also, we only talk during mealtime, and I don't even know where she goes outside of that.

Since I don't know what to do, I eat my breakfast and spend the morning in bed, dozing on and off until it's almost time for lunch, then I get the energy to walk around and search for some exotic food.

I find a place with a super spicy Dragolite soup, and it has a hint of curry in it. The problem is, it's hotter than Satan's butthole, so it takes me some effort to eat it, but I do it. I'm not weak to spicy food, so I wonder what the hell was the cook thinking when he made this.

Then I decide to go to the hunters' guild to train magic. People should already know I have Fire and [Electric Magic], so I'm just going to train my mana pool.

I tell the manager that I'm going to train with [Fireball], and he gives me the ok, so I go to the furthest corner of the magic training area. Over here, people won't notice that I don't chant, and I can also stay far away from Toga's sadistic gaze.

I observe the other mages as they cast [Fireball], and I notice that they can cast a very small one almost instantly. I think about putting points in [Mana Control] so I can change the size of the [Fireball] and mimic them, but I don't think it'd be necessary to go to this level of deceit.

I put all my points into combat skills and start casting [Fireball] until my mana is exhausted. I can only cast it twelve times until my MP is gone, then I put all my points in [Mana Recovery] and meditate until I'm back to full. I try casting it thirteen times, but I nearly faint from the blackout, and due to embarrassment, I decide to not do it again.

I feel tempted to put on [Blackout Resistance] to get used to the pain of casting spells with negative MP, but the adventurer tips book also said that this lowers one's lifespan since it uses the caster's souls to fuel the spells, so I think I might pass it.

Training [Mana Overuse Resistance] might be more useful, though, since I only need to let my MP fall too low or use it up too fast to risk suffering from loss of senses, painful headaches, or sore muscles due to mana overuse. The tips book also advised that mages should exhaust their mana every day before going to sleep until they develop [Mana Overuse Resistance], but it doesn't seem like a lot of people follow this advice.

If I keep practicing my magic like this every day, then maybe I could learn it in a year, but it'll take a lot of diligence.

I quickly realize that this sort of training is really taxing mentally. A headache always flares when I start running low on mana, so it takes quite a lot of effort for me to concentrate on meditating, but I manage to keep a steady rhythm going until it's almost dusk, then I go back to the inn.

I'm starving.

It seems that using mana makes you more hungry than normal as I have to ask for a second serving of the already generous meal the inn gives.

"What's gotten you so hungry?" Selina gently asks as she puts down the plate for me.

"It seems training magic makes you super hungry," I quickly answer and dig in.

She sits down and coos in wonder. "O~h? You can use magic, too? That's amazing. What spells can you cast?"

I swallow hurriedly and reply, "Oh… it's nothing, just a small [Fireball] and support spells for myself, like [Regeneration] and [Wind Armor]."

She giggles cutely. "'Nothing'? You're quite humble. A magician who knows the sword is such a romantic way of fighting."

I stop eating and frown in confusion. "Uh… what do you mean by 'romantic'?"

She cutely rests her chin on her hand and starts talking excitedly, "Most stories of heroes are about people like you: melee fighters with a trump card in magic. They live dangerous and exciting adventures that give them the wisdom to push their powers to the limit.

"My favorite is about a mage whose entire strategy revolved around finding the chance to cast a single [Shocking Touch] on his enemy's most vulnerable spot. His way of fighting was all or nothing, and he bet it all on that spell when he fought a dragon. A huge, dangerous, and feared monster being brought down with a single, simple spell. He was so witty he convinced the dragon into getting close, even though it knew what the adventurer was capable of. I got chills when I read that book."

Is this what a normal girl of this world thinks about or are you just special?

"Indeed, it sounds like a poetic fight," I coolly reply and chuckle.

Selina gives me a smile that melts my heart and continues telling her stories excitedly.

But then I remember Lily…

It's hard to admit this, but I believe I'll have to live in this world for a long, long time. My growth is slow, transmigration is something unknown to the natives, and I have absolutely zero idea about why I'm here. I don't even have a mentor figure to guide me and then get killed in the middle of the story to give me an impetus to fight.

I'm stuck here, and if "God's" message wasn't a lie, then it's for the rest of my life.

What happened on Earth? Did time stop? Are they looking for me? Are they even still alive?

The way Selina looks at me is quite obvious. The signs are there.

I know that Lily wouldn't wait for me, and I shouldn't wait, too. We aren't idealists who believe in the existence of "true love," we're bitter realists who just found happiness with each other.

The subtle glances, the brief smiles, the slow inching closer, the dozens of excuses Selina finds to touch me. I can't ignore it.

Lily and I wouldn't want the other to spend who knows how long waiting for me to return. We love each other to the point we'd want the other to find happiness, even if it isn't together. We're just that pragmatic.

Selina makes me laugh and lightens my mood, but there's nothing she can do to fix the storm of emotions brewing within my heart.

I can't just do this all by myself forever. I need someone to rely on… but I'm too scared to get close to anyone.

Then I remember the raven-type woman and shiver.

I'm so goddamn fucking lonely I think that's what keeps my "Sanity" so low.

I drop on my bed with a sigh, then I curl up into a ball.

It hasn't been even a month, and I'm already breaking down, but to be fair, in just a few days I've already gone through enough life and death situations to last an entire lifetime on Earth.

I need to think only about myself, otherwise, I don't think I'll last long. I'm the only thing that matters right now! I should think only about my survival!

I clench my fists in anger.

This world will have no mercy for someone delicate like me, so I need to change, but I don't want to.

Silent tears run along my cheeks, and I cry myself to sleep.

Lily, I'm sorry…

I have a nightmare of the Headhunter staring at me with his beady little eyes. It does nothing to me except stare like an ever-present threat.

Today, I wake up with my body feeling better, but I'm still not good enough to be beaten into pulp again. My "Strength" didn't increase, too, so I think I should start a muscle training regimen. I can just do some quick exercises before bath like I did on Earth, but I need something to replace dumbbells.

I look at my MP and see it increased by 30 (now 165). That's a nice amount. I can certainly cast [Fireball] one more time now. No "Magic Power" increase though, so I wonder what's needed for that.

Breakfast is bean salad with not-corn crumbs and a leg of Rabid Rabbit. Honestly, the cuisine around here is not bad, but I just really miss rice.

Now, what do I do today? I'm not really in the mood for exploring the town since my head is still heavy with the thoughts from last night.

I feel like I've mentally cornered myself. I'm stuck in a dilemma caused by two conflicting parts of my beliefs. Any decision I make will end up hurting a part of me, so how should I even start to make this choice? It's easy to find the logical path to follow, but it's hard to actually go through with it.

I try to pick up the romance book to read, but I can't concentrate, so I just absentmindedly turn around the pages without absorbing anything.

After wasting my morning, I just pick a random stall and eat lunch on the street. I barely even pay attention to what I'm eating, I just know that it's bland.

After that, I decide to hurt myself and go to the training ground to increase my MP again.

This time, Toga doesn't stare so much at me. He seems satisfied with the amount of pain I'm giving to myself.

Besides forgoing shame and losing my senses five times from blackout, nothing really happens, and I just robotically repeat my training sequence with [Fireball] followed by [Mana Recovery]-enhanced meditation. It gives me a bit of a headache from overuse, though.

After dusk, I come back and absentmindedly eat my dinner. Selina isn't serving today, and I don't ask why.

I go to sleep with my mood worse than when I woke up.

I dream of the Gargling Goblin again. This time, I tell him to fuck off, but it doesn't help, and I wake up in the middle of the night sweating cold.

Selina wakes me up, and I immediately look at my MP. It increased by 50 (now 215). It's quite a large amount, so I believe I did well on yesterday's training.

Now, it's finally the day to buy a slave. I anxiously eat my breakfast, then I go to the Golden Necklace.

I don't even know what I want from it anymore…

The same butler-like old man greets me with a bow, "Welcome again, Grand Sir. Would you like to go to the meeting room immediately? I'll call the Head; the new shipment is ready for inspection."

"Sure, please do," I whisper back, a bit aloof.

The moment I enter the room, I remember the heavenly cookies and tea, and my sweet-tooth aching takes some of the edge off.

The not-butler comes a few seconds later with a tray of cookies and tea, then leaves me alone to devour them, and I notice that there's double the amount than the other day.

Did he notice I liked them?

Then Ghulam comes in and does a quick bow. "Welcome again to the Golden Necklace, Mr. Ryder. I'm glad you waited. I'm sure that you'll be pleased with the new shipment, they're astounding."

He sits and claps his hands, then the not-butler opens the door.

Two women come in, two beautiful women. I suck in a breath and freeze.

Astounding indeed.

The first is a fox girl. She has light brown, almost orange hair styled in a cute bob cut, a diamond-shaped jaw, thin lips, a small nose, round, orange eyes, and pointy orange fox ears on top of her head. Such an incredibly cute face.

When she walks, I see an orange fox tail dangling about, and it even has a white tip. It looks so soft I want to hug it.

The second is an elven girl. She has silver straight hair that's so glossy it almost shines, an adorably short stature, skin as white as snow, an oval face, upturned blue eyes that look almost Asian, a small and pointy nose, small red lips, and the unmistakable long pointy ears of the elves protruding at a right angle from her head.

That's honestly not what I thought he meant when he said the new slaves would be even better than the previous ones. I imagined a bigger monster than the dragonkin would appear or something like that. And judging my current state, I don't think I should be in this room with these two girls.

Ghulam smiles at me with grace, making it hard to look away from him as he announces, "These are my two new prizes. The werefox is Alissa. She's an offering from an exclusive deal Rabanara has with the Misty Low Forest. They raise and train a slave every five years, then sell them to us. It took me a lot of luck, but I managed to acquire her.

"She has been taught since she was a child that her destiny is to be a combat slave, and due to her beauty, she has also been trained on how to serve a man. She's the most skilled archer and hunter of her clan, and you won't find someone better than her outside of a Lord's retinue. Her 'Speed' and 'Dexterity' are very high, which gives her pinpoint accuracy and high lethality. Her olfact and hearing are extremely sharp, and she even has the rare [Sense Presence], making her the perfect scout. She was also trained in the traditional lifestyle magic, so she's ready to live even among the nobility.

"The other one is called Silvane. She's the daughter of a fallen noble from the elven lands of Elaria, so she has no relation to the elves on this side of the continent. Her father, mother, and brother were executed as punishment for failing to fulfill their duties as nobles, so she hopes in finding a master who achieves heroic feats to regain her honor, and perhaps even her noble status. Like all nobility, she was trained in serving men and women, and how to care for and manage a house or a business.

"Her skills are in [Light Magic], [Blessing Magic], [Wind Magic], [Nature Magic], [Earth Magic] and [Fire Magic]. She has an amazing mana pool since she was training to help her family in managing the dungeons in their territory. She's guaranteed to become an amazing magician in the future, if you train her right.

Then his tone becomes deep and husky as he adds, calling forth feelings I'm not proud of having, "Both accept being sex slaves, and they're virgins. They also have contracts for life."

Oh, boy.

I need to leave this place. I'm not in the right mindset to make a rational decision right now. Only one of the women from before talked about being a "sex slave," so I tried to not think about this, but now, seeing these girls who are ready (and willing?), my body aches for comfort. This craving fights against my fragmented will and my guilt from my love for Lily.

What am I supposed to do…? Wait, there's a way out! They must cost an exorbitant amount, so there's no way I can buy them, right?

"W-What's the cost? They must be too expensive for me," I stiffly ask, barely containing my anxiety.

Ghulam whispers honeyed words to me, "With the discount from your recommendation, sixty gold for the elf, seventy for the werefox."

NO!

He chuckles softly and gently adds, his silky tone causing his words to slither into my ears, "There's no rush. If you want to talk or observe them closer it's allowed. Such an investment shouldn't be done hastily." Then he grins perversely.

He noticed how I'm desperately holding myself and trapped me here. Now there's no way I'm leaving without buying one of them now.

I force myself to breathe deeply, managing to calm down a little.

I'm weak… I'm sorry, Lily… but I'm far too weak. Being alone in this world hurts too much, and I'm far too scared that I'll die to pass on the chance of some happiness.

There's a devil disguised as a man that's tempting me. He threw two wonderful women in front of me and said: "Here! Pick one, grab her, fuck her, make her yours. She will be your thing, your toy, forever. No strings attached, no messy relationships, no love dynamics, no anxiety from rejection, she's your perfect woman. Even the fucking gods tell you it's okay to do it, now fucking choose!"

I'm sorry Lily… I'm a horrible husband. I'm sorry you fell in love with me, and it's okay to not wait for me.

An undercurrent of anger rises to the surface, clouding my mind further.

I'll do what I want in this fucking world because there's no one fucking else that'll help me! I was abandoned here without care, so I'll abandon whatever is holding me back from my previous world! This world will be mine…! Wait no, too far.

"I'll take Alissa."

A note from Manasong

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Chapter 5: A Companion's Promise

A note from Manasong

Attention: to conform to the limit of mature content (more than just sexual content) allowed in a novel, I've censored this chapter. You can look for the uncensored version here.

"Now, please cut your hand with this knife and fill this with your blood," Ghulam asks, then he gives me an adorned dagger and a small bowl. "If you can't do it yourself it's not a problem, Sebastian will do it for you and immediately heal you."

Nah.

I cut my hand.

Shit! IT HURTS!

My face cramps, but I manage to retain my dignity and hold back the tears of pain.

I fill the small bowl with my blood, then Sebastian chants something and touches my hand. A faint pleasing cold covers my wound as the pain stops, then he releases me, and it looks goods as new.

Is this a thing that all butlers must be called Sebastian?

The old man Sebastian gives the bowl to Alissa, then she immediately brings it to her lips and drinks my blood while Ghulam chants something.

"[Contract of Servitude]," he whispers and touches Alissa's head. "Now, point the location where you want the symbol of slavery to appear. It'll be a small circle with your name on it, but If you don't want to show your name I'll hide it."

"It's okay to show. Put it on her left wrist," I respond.

She's right-handed, so it shouldn't show too much.

Ghulam gently grabs her wrist and chants. "[Mark of the Master]," he casts, and a faint light shines from between his fingers.

He releases her and shows to me that a small black circle has appeared, and I read "Wolf Ryder" written in Andraste with small letters. Around the black circle, there are a few letters from an alphabet I don't recognize.

"Now, do you want any additional spell? For you, it's for free," Ghulam offers with a gentle smile.

"Only the speech limitation."

He touches Alissa's throat and starts chanting again. "[Tongue of Obedience]," he casts, then a small orb of light comes out of the tip of his finger and enters her throat.

He smiles graciously and turns to me. "There, now she won't be able to tell others about anything you consider a secret. Anything else?"

I smile back. "No, thank you."

He gently nods and says, "Then it's done. I really appreciate doing business with you, Mr. Ryder. Though the letter only allowed for a discount this one time, I'll gladly do business with you again." His charming smile now seems like the devil's.

"I'll certainly come back," I happily admit. I've crossed the point of no return, so there's no reason to say no anymore.

He makes a signal with his hand, and Sebastian comes forward. "Here's the gift we give to anyone who buys one of our women." -The butler hands me a ring- "It's a Ring of Fertility. Put some magic into it, and the man or woman that wears it won't be able to impregnate or get pregnant." Ghulam smiles kindly, his words cause a chill to run down my spine.

He stands up and nods respectfully, then Sebastian picks up the documents I signed and the gold, then they both leave me alone with Alissa.

"Master, may I change to my other clothes now?" Alissa respectfully asks and looks at me with a neutral expression. Her voice has the perfect pitch to my ears, not too high, not too low.

"Y-yes, please do," I respond awkwardly.

She immediately pulls up her one-piece, and she's not wearing anything below.

GAH! Too much stimulation.

Even though I want to see, I'm not in the right state of mind to stare at her.

She changes into the normal clothes Ghulam gave to her: a white and slightly loose shirt, black pants, and some cute looking black shoes. I could only stare at her feet, and god, even they are cute.

"I'm ready now," she says in a low tone.

"Then let's go."

We silently make our way towards the inn, and she walks slightly behind me, but still pretty close. She maintains a neutral expression, but at least she doesn't look sad.

I don't know what to say. Am I supposed to make a conversation? I guess not since I'm her master now, so I don't need to be her friend, but it'll be lonely if I'm not friendly. I guess there's no need to rush or force anything, we'll get used to each other with time.

We get to the inn, and I talk to the innkeeper.

"I'd like to change rooms. I need one for two people, now," I request.

"Single bed or double bed?" He asks, then he glances at Alissa and fails in containing his smile.

Please, stop. I'm already embarrassed enough.

"Double," I respond nervously.

He nods gently and hands me two keys. "Second room on the second floor. Remove all your things from the safe, then return the key to me, please."

"I don't have anything in it, so here's the key."

After that, I immediately go towards my new room.

It's almost mid-day, and I'm starting to feel hungry, but I want to talk to Alissa in private first.

We enter the room, and I just fall face-first onto the bed. My nerves are killing me.

What did I just do…? I'm a slave master, now…

I turn around and look at her. She's just standing there, looking at me with her calm and neutral expression. I guess she isn't going to do anything unless ordered.

I clear my throat and say, "We're going to be living here… and we'll be sharing the same bed. You can come, sit, or lay down if you want. I don't want you to tire yourself by standing all the time."

She nods respectfully and obediently responds, "Yes, thank you, Master." I notice that her tail is standing still.

I pat the bed. "Then come and sit beside me."

"Y-yes."

What was that?

She has been calm and collected so far, but that voice just now wasn't congruent with her expression. Is she a master of poker face?

She sits beside me in a lady-like way and starts observing the room.

I sit up and gently grab her hand, making her twitch in reaction, then she looks at me curiously.

I knew it, she's tense and scared, but she looks so cute I feel like teasing her. Oh god, my shyness already went away, and the sadist is coming out.

"Well then, what have you heard about me?" I politely ask as I enjoy the softness and warmth of her hand.

She obediently responds, "Seigneur Ghulam said that you're a powerful and upcoming adventurer. You've gained the favor of someone with influence after saving them and showing your valor. Now you're in need of a companion for fighting, and that's likely why you bought me. I'm sorry, but he didn't say more than this."

Nour, please, that's too much.

I release her hand and massage my neck awkwardly as I say, "There's… no need to be sorry." -I shake my head in tiredness- "Well, then. The first thing I want to talk about is that I have a lot of secrets. That's why I bought a Blood Slave: I need a companion that can keep a secret."

She turns her body to face me, and her orange eyes stare onto mine with her full attention. "Then there's no need to worry about it, Master. Please use the [Tongue of Obedience] as you wish, and your secrets will be safe even during torture."

"No, no, no, no" -I look away for a moment as I cringe slightly- "There's no need to go that far. My secrets are just things that will attract attention, and I don't want it, at least for now."

Those were dangerous words, Alissa. Nobody is going to get hurt because of me.

"I see… I think I understand." She looks away and puts a finger on her chin. Cute. "Master is powerful, and other people might want to try to use you or interfere with your business, so you want to hide this power. Is that right, Master?"

I smile at her cute expression and nod. "That's right, it's like that. Now, we aren't leaving the town for two days. Today, I want to buy your equipment, and tomorrow, I want you to train at the hunters' guild to get used to it. If I'm lazy, we'll rest for a third day, and then on the fourth, we'll work again."

"I'm alright with whatever you wish, Master." She smiles back.

Oh, god, that's even cuter, please stop.

"Also… there's something I'm dying to do… can I touch your ears and tail?" I childishly ask her with puppy eyes.

She stiffens, making her fox ears perk up, then smiles shyly. "Y-you don't have to ask… but please be gentle, they're sensitive." She blushes and lowers her head for me.

Her fox ears are on the top of her head, and she doesn't have human ones. It looks weird if you pull back the hair, so I guess that short hairstyles aren't really a thing with wereanimals.

I rub her ears and I get filled with bliss. They are made of a very soft cartilage, and along with its furry parts, they're very comfy to touch.

Her hair makes even me envious. It's so soft to the touch and glossy. It flows perfectly when she tilts her head just slightly.

After getting enough of her ears, I tell her to turn around so that I can play with her tail. I notice that it has vertebrae, so she can move and wag it the same way a dog can, and its fur is even fluffier than that of her ears.

I want to hug it! Animal ears, animal tail, kemonomimi! This is really a Japanese game.

"A-ah… Master. Gentler, please," she whispers.

"Sorry, does it hurt?"

"No, it's just sensitive, and it tickles a lot," she responds while squirming.

Thank god it isn't an erogenous zone… Wait… some people also do erotic things with places like the armpits or earlobes. Just because it isn't immediately erotic, doesn't mean it can't become erotic.

I stop playing with her tail and say, "I'll get you a very good brush. We need to keep this tail and your hair as beautiful as possible."

She nods respectfully and shows a small smile. "Thank you, Master. I'll take good care of them."

I hug her from behind and pat her head. She freezes, then gradually relaxes, melting in my arms.

"I'd also like to help care for it myself. It feels good to touch," I whisper in her ear.

I used to brush Lily's hair once in a while. I liked to help keep her pretty for me.

I keep patting her head and ears for some time, and it seems to help us a lot in calming our nerves. I also can't deny that it feels good to hug a girl like this.

Her perfume has a faint fruity scent that feels slightly nostalgic, and my heart tightens as I try to grasp onto this nostalgic feeling.

I have to buy her more perfume.

After a few long and comfy minutes, I stop the patting and release her, then she almost falls down on her own. She must've gotten sleepy.

"Nah?" She lets out a small sound in surprise.

Stop with the cuteness.

"Let's go out and eat lunch," I gently suggest, and she nods silently while blushing.

I find a nearby restaurant and ask for a table for two. I sit down, but she remains standing by my side.

"Please, sit," I motion. "We'll eat meals together from now on."

This must be standard slave behavior that I need to nip in the bud.

She blinks in surprise for a moment and asks, "Is it alright, Master? I'm a slave, so I don't need to be treated equally."

I purse my lips and respond sternly, "Well, I want a companion that I can trust, not just a slave to order around, so I'll treat you equally."

She stares at me for a moment, then nods and smiles gently. "Thank you, Master. You're very kind." As she sits, I see her tail sway a little.

Being called "Master" is making me feel uncomfortable, but it also tickles a part of me that I didn't acknowledge before. Is it alright to let it come out of the dark?

Bah, screw it. I already said before that I'd abandon things that were holding me back.

I don't want to deal with her choosing a simple meal because she's a slave, so I order the same for both of us, but when the meal comes she hesitates.

"You also don't have to wait for me to start eating," I promptly say.

And so we dig in.

After our meal, we go out and talk as we walk.

I start counting with my fingers as I enumerate what we need to do, "First, let's buy you a pillow, some proper blankets, spare change of clothes, a hairbrush, a toothbrush, and spare shoes. We'll go to a first-hand store because I don't want to see you use hand-me-downs."

She seems slightly concerned with the amount of stuff we have to buy and frowns as she questions, "Is it really alright to treat me like this, Master? I'm a slave, and I'm trained to have strong endurance, so treating me softly might… negate this training."

I can't resist and entwine my arm with hers because I'm starved for skinship, then I pat her hand as I answer earnestly, "Yes. I'm sorry if your training ends up wasted or dulled, but we'll lead similar lifestyles, so I don't need you to retain your 'endurance'… Think of it like this: giving you hardships makes you tire more easily, which means you're more likely to die in battle. If you die, I'll be wasting the money, the huge favor I used to buy you, my feelings will be hurt by losing you, and my time training you will be wasted. So, this is why we need to keep you happy and well-rested: You need to be always at your best performance so you don't die or disappoint me.

"I'll give you two rules: the first one is 'don't die' because I don't want you sacrificing yourself for me; the second one is 'let's never get into a situation where someone needs to die' so you won't even have to think about sacrificing yourself for me if we don't even get in a situation that needs it. Now, do you understand your value to me?"

She turns her face away and reflects on my words seriously.

We continue walking in silence for a minute, then she turns to face me again and nods energetically. "Thank you, Master. I understand," she finally responds with determination.

Did that make you emotional? Well, I don't think that my philosophy makes me a "good person" because I still bought you… and I'm going to abuse you tonight. Might be even earlier if you don't stop acting cute.

After getting the essentials, I decide to buy her a simple but cute white, frilly dress. I'd like to buy her more, but money is short, and I need to buy her equipment.

I thank the God of Luck because I find a cheap perfume that I can give to her. Later on, I'll definitely get her a more expensive one like mine.

Damn, I feel like I want to dress her up like a doll the same way I used to do with Lily.

This time, I grit my teeth and don't buy a high-quality sleeping bag, but we buy a larger one for both of us.

Then I get her Young Ogre leather armor. It's a red-brown color, it's tougher than Hobgoblin leather, and it's also very flexible, which is good for an archer.

We get her a cheap iron short sword as a personal defense weapon, then we buy a good composite bow because it's compact and deadly. On the matter of bows, we can't hold back because archery is her main way of killing.

Warbows or longbows are a bit difficult for her to use. Sure, the penetration is unparalleled, but she has problems fully drawing them. She isn't a standard army archer that fights at long distances and whose job is to cover an area with arrows. She's a hunter, which means she needs to draw fast and accurately, so penetration isn't that important.

I sell my old equipment, but it's pretty shitty, so we don't get much money in return. I buy an upgrade to my shield: a black heater iron shield. It's slightly bigger and of a higher quality iron than the previous one.

My previous shield has three dents and a nasty scratch from the fight with the Orc Headhunter, so we'd need to spend money to repair it, anyway. The damage makes the smith curious, so I tell him how that happened, and he gives me a small discount in sympathy.

Alissa's [Item Box] isn't big, so she only keeps her arrows there and some small personal items, like the toothbrush and hairbrush.

Now that we bought what we need, we go back to the inn, then I reserve a room for us to take a bath, together.

We enter the room, and I lock the door behind me. The reserved bath is rather small, and it only has a simple wooden bathtub for a maximum of three people.

"I'll wash you, Master," she volunteers, but I see that her tail is stiff.

She starts taking her clothes off, and I just stare at her. No man should ever look away when a woman undresses.

Her nakedness is instantly arousing. Her body is very athletic, and she's slightly more muscular than me. Her breasts are a bit small, but I don't know the size. Perhaps it's C? I just know they're perky and cute, and they'll fit nicely in my hand. Her bush is actually orange, and I see that it's well kept.

She comes to me and her steps become awkward once she notices my stare.

She grabs my shirt and pulls it up, then she unfastens both my belts and pulls down my pants. She hesitates for a moment, then leaves my sword on the ground and undoes my shoes.

"You don't really have to do it like this, I can undress myself," I say, slightly amused, but also feeling a bit awkward.

"I want to do it, Master," she diligently responds.

Oh, boy, don't say things like that. I'm already excited.

Then she pulls down my underwear. She's crouching, so it's right in front of her face in its full glory. She stares at it for a few seconds then gets up.

She leads me near the tub and grabs a bucket of water, then she makes me sit on a stool and starts to wash my body with the soap and sponge the receptionist gave us.

Her hands are delicate and she moves with certainty, eliciting a faint groan of pleasure from me as I close my eyes and enjoy it. She certainly knows how to wash.

She washes my face with such delicacy that it's almost like she's just gently patting it, but I can still feel it's effective at cleaning my body. This is heavenly.

Then she washes my front. There's no way around it, she has to come in front of me, and she touches my dick.

"E-excuse me, p-please tell me if it hurts," she stutters, her voice trembling from the nervousness.

She pulls back the skin and rubs the sponge on the head with even more delicacy than my face. It's so stimulating I have to control myself from pouncing on her. I imagine her tightening her grip and giving me a handjob, and my dick twitches in her hands.

Suddenly, it finishes, and now she's done washing me.

"Now it's my turn," I say with a husky tone.

She swallows heavily. "You don't need to concern yourself with me."

"But I'll enjoy it." I smile mischievously.

She immediately nods, and we switch places.

"Sorry if I'm not as delicate as you, I'm not trained in washing others," I wryly inform her.

"No need to apologize for it, Master. You're allowed to enjoy yourself," she replies earnestly.

Ohohoh! Then don't mind if I do!

Her skin is soft, and there's absolutely no hair on her arms and legs, so my hand just glides along her perfect skin. I can feel the hint of muscle in her athletic body as my fingers trace her abs. It's a mix of toughness and softness.

Seriously, what is going on in this world? Nearly every person I've seen can be considered beautiful. It's just… "weird."

Now, look at her. Her skin is so perfect it makes me worried. Where are her veins? Does she even have veins? It's like she's artificial, and it's unsettling me.

She tilts her head adorably and innocently asks, "Something wrong, Master?"

I wipe away the stupid thoughts, then I smile mischievously. "Nothing… it's just that your skin is too perfect."

"Don't exaggerate like this, Master…" Her voice seems a little sad, but her tail twitches.

"I'm not exaggerating, but whatever…." I shrug and continue washing her.

As I slowly caress her skin, I leave her tail and ears alone. I don't know how to wash them, I'm sorry, Alissa. But I take special care of her hands and feet. They're just so small and cute.

Then I start working on the best part that I left for last. Her breasts are soft and bouncy, a delight to my hands. Lily had small ones, so I don't know what bigger breasts are supposed to feel like. I guess this is like jelly? I can't describe them perfectly, but I sure can enjoy them. Flat is justice, anyway, so size doesn't matter.

I work on her nipples, and I feel them poke against my palm, showing me that she's aroused. I just rub them gently, avoiding pinching them, for now, then her breath starts to get heavier.

Good…

I pull her closer, hugging her from behind.

She feels so warm, and I realize how much I've been missing this feeling. I want her to hug me, to make me feel safe… No, that'll come later. Right now, I need to show her my sensual touch.

My hand glides downwards, reaching her neat little bush, and I start to play with it. It feels good on my hand since the hair is a little thicker there.

I don't want to waste any more time, so I pass my hand over her entrance, and her breath immediately becomes haggard.

Her pussy lips are small and slightly wet, so I just delicately rub them until they start to feel warmer, then I penetrate her with my finger. She flinches backward, and I pinch her nipple at the same time.

"Ahn…!" She lets out a cute little moan. This is a holy sound that men hear when the gates of heaven open, and I shall never forget how hers sounds.

I slowly move my finger in and out, and I feel her legs quiver. With one hand, she grabs the side of my head while I breathe down her neck, and with the other, she grabs my hand on her breast and squeezes it.

My hand pleases her with steady movements, and I increase the speed little by little. The typical lewd sounds and smells of sex come out, then she closes her eyes and lets out her voice. It's a piece of beautiful music to my ears.

I bite her neck, I lick it, I kiss it. I keep going for a few minutes until she arches her back and her body tenses, then she slowly relaxes and nearly collapses in my arms.

"What… was… that…?" She asks, out of breath.

"You don't know? That's a... climax," I mischievously answer with a smile.

She looks away, a little embarrassed. "Oh… that was much… stronger than I imagined."

I smile a little sadistically and caress her cheek. "There's still more, but I'll let you rest until later."

She grabs my hand and nods while smiling, then she looks at me a little anxiously. "T-thank you… Master… but, I haven't done anything for you."

I get an idea that makes my dick twitch. "Do you know how to use your mouth?"

She needs a little stiffly. "Yes… I was taught that."

I wonder how.

I release her from my hug, and she leaves the stool, then I sit down on it, and she gets on her knees.

She stares at my cock and blushes, then resolves herself and grabs it delicately. She opens her mouth wide, revealing her four cute canines, then slowly swallows it all. That was slightly scary, but she seems to know how to keep those teeth away from my skin.

Her mouth is warm and soft, but to be honest, the feeling isn't special, it's the view. A cute woman with a dick in her mouth is one of the most erotic sights I can imagine. You shouldn't watch too much porn, it'll rot your brain and make you fantasize wildly about sex, only to be disappointed at reality when you finally get laid.

She starts to carefully move her head, and I feel her tongue moving around. Now that feels good.

"Rougher," I whisper, and she moves her tongue with more vigor.

What a good girl.

She grabs the shaft and moves her hand along with her head, which just adds to the eroticism.

The pleasure; her face; the tension of these past few days fading away; my fears and guilts surfacing; my dark desires that I'm forced to face; my wish for comfort and skinship. All these things contribute to me just wanting to let it out, so I don't last long, barely two minutes. This is the fastest I've ever came.

"I'm coming," I warn her.

She doesn't pay attention and chokes on it. She only partially swallows, and the rest is wasted on the floor.

"Sorry, Master," she apologizes, sounding disappointed with herself.

I laugh and pat her head as I respond, "There's no problem, you were perfect."

I see a white trickle coming from the corner of her mouth and smile. This scene is just so erotic.

Oh, shit, I still haven't kissed her yet. What kind of gentleman am I if I got the order of things wrong? Now there's no way I'm kissing her like this.

I awkwardly ask her, "Sorry, but can you brush your teeth? I want to kiss you, but I don't want to do it like this."

She widens her eyes for a second, then pulls out her toothbrush with a *poof* and starts brushing her teeth. After a few seconds, she murmurs something and casts [Clean] on her mouth.

Now that she's ready, we finally get into the bath together. She sits on my lap, and I hug her tight, then she relaxes her body against mine.

I look into her large orange eyes lustfully, then I finally kiss her.

She doesn't move her tongue much, so I work for both of us. I explore her mouth and cautiously avoid her sharper-than-normal canines. I'm really glad she's trained because those four teeth could've given me a nasty cut and a new trauma that I don't need.

She slowly gains confidence and starts moving her tongue energetically, rubbing it strongly against mine, asking for more pleasure. Our tongues wrestle for a long time until they finally tire out. Kissing inside a hot bath is truly therapeutic.

I break the kiss, then she hugs me tight and leans her head against my mine. It feels so good that it warms my heart, and I almost cry. This is honestly the thing I needed the most: a hug. I just want to fall asleep like this.

I'm not alone anymore.

My eyes start closing in sleepiness, then I hear a knock on the door. Our time is up, and we have to leave.

While feeling like I'm lifting a ton of concrete, I break our hug. She suddenly twitches and wakes up.

Oh, hell. How're you so cute?

"S-sorry, I fell asleep," she sleepily says and rubs her eyes.

Is she blushing or is it the hot bath?

I yawn and pat her head. "No need to apologize for that," I whisper gently.

We quietly dress ourselves and go back to the inn to have dinner. She hugs my arm as we walk, then sits right beside me. I missed cute acts like this.

Selina comes into the dining hall, and she sees us both. I instinctively freeze as if I was caught red-handed, and I clearly see her mouth move into an "ohoho~" kind of laugh, then she smiles and goes back to work.

What was that…?

I shake my head and stop thinking about it.

I don't have the mind to think about it right now, and I don't even know what I want my relationship with Selina to be.

Basking in a post-apex glow, we don't talk much and just enjoy our meal, then we go back to our room for round two.

I lay down on the bed first and smile at her. She skips forward, then lays on top of me, and we start kissing.

We spend long minutes just kissing while my hand slowly explores every centimeter of her body, then I finally reach between her legs and start moving the same way as before.

Her tongue moves with a new thirst she hadn't shown yet, then she suddenly breaks it and motions to take my clothes off. I stop playing with her, and in a flash, we're both naked again.

I suddenly grab her and switch positions, putting her below me. She looks at me in surprise and freezes from my sudden action, then I smirk, and she relaxes again.

Sorry, I'm the one in charge for our first time.

We immediately resume madly kissing, and I feel her down there. Lewd noises come out as her wetness sticks to my fingers.

I untangle her from me and sit so that I can pull out my Ring of Fertility, which I promptly wear and turn on.

I like this name.

Then I pull out a towel, and put it below her because you never know. She just patiently waits for me, but her body fidgets with anxiety.

I smile suggestively, and she spreads her legs for me, and her pussy lips part, showing their wetness to me.

I look her in the eye and scooch closer so that the tip of my dick touches her lips. She stares intensely at it, then her tail starts wagging slowly.

I whisper sultrily, "I'm putting it in, okay?"

"Okay…" She responds shyly, her eyes glued to my cock.

I like how she's straightforward and doesn't hesitate. I guess this is the result of her "training," which makes things so much easier.

I control the sadism inside me and softly add, "If it hurts, tell me, please. We'll do it slowly."

She nods, then I push my hips forward and I slide in. She's tight, so deliciously tight I almost grunt with pleasure.

She lets out a faint moan, then I feel some resistance. I put a little more strength in it, and I get through.

She makes a pained face, so I stop and apply [Regeneration] on her.

"W-what? Magic?" She asks, completely surprised.

I nod and caress her cheek. "Yes, I don't like seeing you feeling pain."

She puckers her lips cutely, a little embarrassed. "Thank you. It's alright now."

I feel her vagina relax, reducing the tightness just a little.

I lean forward until I can feel her hot breath on my face, then I whisper sultrily, "Tell me if it hurts again. I can apply [Regeneration] for a long time."

"Regen-... that's okay." She nods repeatedly and smiles.

I push until I'm as deep as I can inside her, and we both moan, then I start moving my hips, and she doesn't complain about discomfort. It seems the spell did a little more than just healing and helped her vagina get comfortable with my thick cock spreading her small flower.

I don't try to hold it in to last longer. It's her first time, I'm tired, and I just want to enjoy myself, so there's no pressure for me to perform.

Alissa's cute moans gradually become voiceless as the pleasure builds up inside her. She starts writhing, then she closes her eyes and hugs me, digging her nails deep on my skin.

I cast [Regeneration] again on her just to be sure, but she gets so consumed by the pleasure that she doesn't even notice it.

She starts to move her body to impale herself harder on me. Her desperate thirst for cock is just delightful. I want to burn in my memory her cute, moaning face. I want a painting of it.

She bites her lip, then she turns her head away and opens her mouth, letting her moans freely escape. Her pretty little red lips are so captivating that I feel like biting them.

She opens her eyes, and her two pretty orange irises stare deeply into me, then she grabs my head, and we kiss wildly.

You're my precious treasure.

I don't last much longer and release it all inside her, then we let the embers in our hearts slowly cool down as we just stare at each other's eyes. Our hot and quickened breaths slow down, then we kiss one more time.

Alissa conjures some water into a bucket to clean us both. Her finger turns into a faucet as a substantial trickle of water comes out of it. I guess this is what Ghulam meant when they said she's trained in "lifestyle" magic. She knows enough magic that it's useful in the day-to-day.

I take a look at the towel and see a small drop of blood on it. She notices it a moment after and quickly snatches it to give it a wash.

After she washes us both, we go back to hugging on the bed and sleep together naked.

This time I don't have a nightmare. I just dream that I'm back on the bath, hugging her.

Someone knocks on the door.

"The breakfast is ready," I hear Selina's voice.

I open my eyes and see Alissa's face. Her pretty orange eyes stare lovingly at me, then her ears twitch, and she smiles adorably. Cuteness, first thing in the morning.

"Good morning, Master," she whispers, and I see her tail swaying from behind her.

"Good morning…" I whisper back, then I cup her cheek, and she closes her eyes in delight from my touch. "Were you awake for long? You don't have to keep hugging me if you were uncomfortable."

Her arms push me closer, and she pouts. "I wasn't uncomfortable. I've never slept like this before, but I enjoyed it a lot."

I nod gently and caress her. "We'll always sleep like this from now on. I don't want to sleep alone ever again."

She smiles and nuzzles her face on my chest. I want to close my eyes again and go to sleep like this, but hunger wins. We get up and start getting dressed, then I stretch and yawn happily.

I slept like a baby. I didn't toss around my sleep, and my back doesn't hurt. It seems the best medicine for sleep is Alissa.

I turn around to put on my pants, and she gasps.

"Master, I'm sorry about this," she apologizes worriedly.

I look at her and raise an eyebrow. "What?"

"Your back is scratched," she mutters, then looks down, and her posture shrinks.

I chuckle softly. At least whatever compels her to not "harm" me isn't that sensitive. Then I shake my head and reassure her, "That's proof that a man did his job, so don't worry about it."

She nods, still worried, but lets it go.

We happily eat our breakfast in silence, but I just want to stare at Alissa eating, though.

Did they put extra spice? The soup tastes better today.

Once she finishes it up, I say, "If you're hungry, it's okay to ask for more. If you get malnourished, your performance will fall."

"Understood, Master," she responds with a happy nod.

Good girl.

"Also, are you okay?" I probe and watch her intensely. "Thinking of last night, are you uncomfortable or feeling pain somewhere?"

Her ears stand up in attention and she shakes her head emphatically. "I'm fine. Your spells eased any pain I had. Thank you, Master."

We smile at each other like two silly lovebirds and finish our meal.

After breakfast, we go back to our room. I'm starting to feel like doing it again, but I need to take it easy with her. She was a virgin just yesterday, after all, and we also have to talk about something serious.

We sit on the bed facing each other, and I assume a more serious tone as I ask, "Now, then. Can you open your own status window?"

"Yes, Master," she diligently replies.

I open my own "Status," and see that under "Affiliations," there's the entry: "Alissa (Blood Slave)."

"Then tell me every-…" I stop mid-sentence.

Ho-ho-ho, Christmas came early.

There's a new button below all the other "menu" options I have, it's named "Followers."

I click it.

Info

Name: | Alissa | Age: | 19 | Race: | Fox-Type Wereanimal
HP: | 100 | MP: | 125 | Magic Power: | 24
Level: | 24 | Experience: | 245/6500

Stats

Strength: | 11 | Endurance: | 18 | Dexterity: | 22
Speed: | 20 | Intelligence: | 11 | Wisdom: | 12
Willpower: | 16 | Charisma: | 10 | Piety: | 15
Perception: | 17 | Sanity: | 15

Other

Status Effects: | NONE | Titles: | NONE
Affiliations: | Blood Slave (Owner: Wolf Ryder)
Companions: | NONE
Crimes: | NONE

Damn, girl. Those are some high stats. I'm jealous.

I also have the option to look at her skills and magic.

Alissa Skill Report

Physical

Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level
Sword Use | 9 | Bow Use | 20 | Parry | 4
Dodge | 2 | Sense Presence | 5 | Hide Presence | 3
Enhanced Olfact | 5 | Enhanced Hearing | 3 | Pain Resistance | 2
Hawk Eyes | 1 | Muscle Explosion | 1 | Quiet Steps | 3
Quiet Action | 2 | Tracking | 2

Magical

Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level
Sense Mana | 1 | Mana Control | 1 | Fire Magic | 1
Light Magic | 1 | Space Magic | 1 | Conjuring Magic | 1

Miscellaneous

Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level
Housework | 3 | Cooking | 2 | Cleaning | 2
Washing | 5 | Riding | 2 | Oral Technique | 4
Hand Technique | 2 | Fox Transformation (innate) | 4

Holy shit girl, you're strong.

[Tracking] is a skill that goes up to level five, so I guess it's not a bad thing she's at level two. Miscellaneous skills like [Cooking], [Cleaning], and [Housework] go up to level ten, so she's not inexperienced in them. Oral and [Hand Technique] are clearly "bed skills." Also, now I know why she's so good at washing. And what's that (innate) skill? I never saw it on my skill list. And finally, I'm really worried about how she got that [Pain Resistance].

Her magic is:

Spells

Clean | Spirit Light (weak) | Conjure Water | Conjure Bland Meal (weak) | Fireball | Telekinesis
Item Box (weak)

I guess that "(weak)" means she learned [Item Box], [Conjure Bland Meal], and [Spirit Light] even though she doesn't have enough skill points for it.

I see she has four unassigned skill points, and I can edit them, just like I can do for myself. I can add and remove points, but I can't remove from trained skills, and I can't add to that (innate) one.

Still… This. Is. Damn. Amazing!

"Master, what is it?" She innocently asks and tilts her head cutely. Heart damage.

"Hmm…" I rub my chin in thought and tentatively ask, "Is it possible for someone to see someone else's status screen?"

"You mean, like the Inspection Crystal?"

"More like seeing someone else's screen like you see your own."

"Huh…" She mumbles, and her ears flick. "Never heard of it. Only the Crystal should be able to look into someone's soul."

"Well. Here's a secret you have to keep." -I smile excitedly- "I can see your status screen like it's my own."

"Wha-wha-what?!" She stutters and stares at me incredulously.

I shrug. "That's how it is. To prove it, let me tell you something personal: you have four skill points in [Oral Technique]," I teasingly say with a smirk.

She gasps and her eyes widen, then she starts blushing heavily.

I tease her further, "Tell me, how did you learn that skill?"

"I-I didn't!" She suddenly exclaims and her arms twitch in exasperation, her tail goes stiff, and her voice cracks, seemingly about to cry. "I mean, it wasn't real… I swear! I-it's wood…! Please!" She's in a full-on panic.

I grab her shoulder and look straight into her eyes. "Calm down! That's not what I meant."

She freezes completely and starts to control herself again. "Y-yes… that's right… I'm sorry, I lost my temper, Master. I-I deserve punishment for this." She suddenly bows and keeps her head low.

"You don't deserve punishment," I flatly respond, slightly annoyed at her behavior. I grab her shoulder and gently pull her straight, but she still keeps her head down.

"Thank you, Master," she mutters.

"Now, you said wood?" I ask, trying not to giggle.

She raises her head and looks at me nervously, then her eyes shift about. "Y-yes… The Chieftess brought wooden 'swords' for us to practice on. She showed me the act, and I copied it. It was so embarrassing…"

I wonder how she'd feel if she had to show her skills during customs. Well, anyways… I at least have to give my thanks to this "Chieftess" for her thoughtfulness. Alissa's blowjob felt really good.

I simply smirk at her, and she starts pouting from my teasing, then something dawns on her, and she asks, "But, Master, how are you doing it? I've never heard of such a skill."

I awkwardly massage my neck and look away.

I don't want to tell her the truth yet, and she doesn't need to know everything, so I'll just tell a small part of it.

I turn to her and answer seriously, "It's only possible with you because you're my slave, but I can't tell you how I do it. Also, remember that this is a secret, so don't tell anyone."

"Understood," she nods energetically. Even her nods have their own charm.

Shit, I'm way too crazy about her right now.

I clear my head of these silly thoughts so I can focus on continuing the questioning. "Now, how did you learn [Item Box]?"

She hesitates for a moment, then she responds unsurely, "I copied the Chieftess' mana manipulation until I was able to cast the spell." My questions may be confusing her, but she's not comfortable enough in asking what the hell is wrong with me, yet.

"Hm… let's start at the beginning. How is magic learned, in general?"

She nods slowly, and her voice becomes even more hesitant. "It's common to start learning spells while one's still a child. In my case, I hugged the Chieftess while she practiced magic until I learned [Sense Mana], then I copied the feeling I had when hugging her until I learned [Mana Control]. After that, I trained to increase my mana pool until I had enough mana to use [Item Box], then, finally, I copied her mana manipulation until I was able to cast it. It went the same way for [Conjure Bland Meal] and [Spirit Light]. It's essential for a hunter to have those spells, so I trained more intensively than a normal child to learn them."

Then I'll do the same thing with her until I learn those skills and spells. Possibly at night, before I abuse her body.

I rub my chin in thought. "I see… Now, what is [Muscle Explosion]?"

Her voice now becomes completely robotic. "It's a skill that lets me do a really strong or really fast movement for a split second. It's useful in avoiding a fatal strike that you can't avoid entirely."

I guessed so from the test I did on the skill, and it also seems to be how the Orc Headhunter might have been able to dodge the [Ice Lance] from Rania.

"How did you get [Pain Resistance]?"

"That's…" -She looks down worriedly and her ears go flat- "Please understand that I'm the one who insisted on it." If she wasn't talking in such a serious tone, I'd be squealing at her cuteness.

I frown in confusion. "What…? What does it mean?"

"I asked for the Chieftess to torture me."

Wow.

I let my eyebrows shoot up and stare at her very worriedly. "Uh… and why would you do that?"

She straightens her posture, and her ears perk up, then she puts her hands on her lap in a lady-like way, and proudly declares with a practiced tone, "I'm supposed to be a tool. I'm to be used in combat or as a 'bed' slave as you see fit, so I can't afford to fail because of pain. It would bring great shame to my clan if the soldiers they train can't reach the utmost of their potential due to such a simple weakness. The Chieftess was too soft, she didn't want to do it, but I insisted until she gave in, so please, don't think she's a bad person. It's just my duty to be strong."

That's excessive. She really takes her duty seriously, but I'm starting to feel bad about her. That Chieftess also sounds like a mother, but I don't think I should ask her about that right now.

I straighten my posture, too, and assume a more serious tone. "Well, again, I must say I'm sorry because I don't plan on putting you in any sort of situation that will require you to have that skill."

She stays still for a few seconds, then lowers her head, bites her lip, and clenches her fist. After a few seconds of emotions building up, she leans forward and rests her head against my shoulder.

The composure from before is completely gone as she softly whispers, "Thank you, for being so kind. I… am glad you bought me. I know it's my duty to be a tool, but I'm still glad you're my master."

Even if she's brainwashed into wanting to fulfill her "duty," it doesn't change the fact that she'll feel better if she's treated like a human… werefox, I mean.

I hug her and pat her head, then we stay like this for a while. This position is a little uncomfortable, so I turn her around and adjust myself so I can hug her from behind.

My cheek rubs on hers, and I can clearly smell the perfume I bought for her. She slowly recovers from her emotional state, and I feel her cheeks burn against mine.

After a while longer, her embarrassment subsides, so I continue, "What is [Fox Transformation]?"

She turns her head to the side and sends me a subtle confused glance. Then she speaks and her breath tickles my neck, "It's the racial skill of all wereanimals. My type is fox, so I can turn into a large one, and I'm really proud of its size" -she smiles excitedly- "and since you're small, you can even ride on me."

Argh, emotional damage. I'm conscious of being small and thin, but still, that's cool as heck.

"That's amazing, I really want to see that," I approve and give her a warm look.

She smiles back, then faces forward and returns to our previous hugging position.

"Master… do you allow me to ask one question?" She asks tentatively.

I pat her head. "Yes, you may. You can ask anything you want, actually."

I'll likely lie because I still don't want to explain everything to her. I also don't feel like talking about home because explaining my background might be really hard and not that important in the end. Creating a rather believable lie might even be useful in the future if I have to explain myself to others, so I can determine its believability by her reactions.

She frowns slightly and her ears twitch cutely as she asks, "The questions you ask me are… odd. Forgive me for saying this, but why haven't you learned these things? Even a commoner's child would've learned from their parents a simple spell like [Clean]."

I gently caress her head and calmly lie through my teeth, "Think of it like this: I'm a foreigner from a really, really far land. The common sense here is just way too different from the one in my homeland, so I've been trying to get the general sense for how things are done here to not stand out."

Her ears perk up as it dawns on her. "Oh! I understand, Master, but how far is it that you never met another wereanimal?"

I look away and think for a moment. "I'm… well, it's difficult to give you a sense of distance since even I don't know because I teleported here. My origin is another secret, so let's just say that I come from somewhere far and poor when asked. Also, it's okay to say I never told you its name."

Her tail stops swaying as she mutters, "I see…" And I feel a hint of disappointment in her voice.

Can't let the awkward atmosphere settle, so quickly I move on. "Next topic. Do you pray?"

Her tail starts swaying again, and she answers earnestly, "Yes, I do. I pray to the God of War for glory in battle and the God of Endurance to allow me to fulfill my duty." -I'm not really surprised with her choice of gods- "Do the people of your homeland not know about the Humanoid Gods, Master?"

"Correct. Which is why I think I should start praying to them, but how should I do it?"

She tilts her head cutely and I pat her harder. "Hm… just ask for help? The gods may have lost their mortality and bonds with the land, but they still have their own personalities, their likes, and their dislikes. The God of War and the God of Endurance were simple men during their lives, so I just ask them for glory in battle and the power to keep standing after."

I scratch my head as I think. "Do you like, hold your hands to pray or do some sort of ceremony, like, get on your knees? Do you give them offerings or something like that?"

"There's no need. Praying is the way you tell them how you wish to be helped, and they're gods who focus on results, so they'll help you when you need and become happy when you succeed."

How practical. I like these gods.

I pat her head absentmindedly. "Hm… I'm thinking about praying for the God of the Sun, the Goddess of Growth, and the Goddess of Knowledge. What do you think?"

She sends me a curious glance. "God of the Sun? I don't know why people would pray for him unless you're royalty."

I smile wryly. "Yeah, well, I have my reasons."

"Okay…" She mumbles, still a bit awkward with my ignorance. "Then the Goddess of Growth is a good one to pray to if you're training hard. She's also known to help the Goddess of Fertility and the Goddess of Plants."

I guess the interpretation of "growth" is quite liberal, then.

"But why the Goddess of Knowledge? Wouldn't the God of War be better for an adventurer?" She continues probing. Her curiosity has led her to forget her slave training, which pleases me greatly.

"I'm actually more of a mage, so I want to improve my magic, and I also think knowledge should be helpful in understanding this place since I'm a foreigner." I smile wryly.

Her ears twitch again and I almost squeal. "Oh! You're a mage who can use the sword? Ah, yes, you did use [Regeneration] on me last night. But that's amazing, Master!" She looks at me wide-eyed. That's enough praise, please. "Then I think the Goddess of Knowledge is a good choice. If we please the God of War enough, then he could bless you even if you don't pray to him."

What a nice guy.

"Then how should I pray for them?"

I pat her head more intensely, and she closes her eyes for a moment to enjoy it before answering, "I don't know much about the God of the Sun, but maybe you should ask for a hard day's work? For the Goddess of Growth, you have to wish to improve with all your willpower; that's how the priest taught me. The Goddess of Knowledge is very fickle, so you should ask a scholar about it. From what I understood, you need to wish to seek knowledge without 'cloudy eyes' and to always write a book about what you know."

"Cloudy eyes"? Is that bias? I guess I should talk to Ciel about it.

I give her a little squeeze in appreciation. "That's all I had to ask. Do you have any questions about me?"

She grabs my hand on her belly and also gives it an appreciative squeeze. "Not right now, Master."

"Then let's form a fellowship."

A fellowship of the rin-... nah. Anyway, it's like a game "party." It allows us to share experience and to always know the position of each other. The dungeoneering advice book said it's the first thing a group of people working together should do. Also, I feel like I don't want to ever break this fellowship with her.

We interlace the fingers of our right hand with each other and recite the phrase in unison, "We swear to share our war and our soul and to always keep each other's company."

On my menu screen, under "Companions," the entry "Alissa" appears. If I concentrate and think about her, I should be able to sense the direction and her distance from me. But since she's too close right now it doesn't work properly.

I release her hand and crawl close to her. I caress her cheek as I say to her, "Let's go to the hunters' guild after lunch. Right now, I want to savor you." I suddenly hug her tightly and throw us onto the bed.

"YAH!" She screams in surprise at the sudden attack.

I kiss her deeply as my hand explores her body, then her tongue starts to respond.

I've always considered myself the "clingy" type, and it was so bad that I'd hold myself back because I always wanted to touch and hug Lily whenever possible. I feel like Alissa won't say no to me, even if she doesn't want to cuddle, so I'll have to learn her limits with skinship, too, even though I don't want to.

Shit, thinking about Lily makes me feel guilty, but I told myself I'd enjoy this world, dammit. I'll do whatever I want!

The kissing escalates, and soon we're sans clothes again.

"You want it?" I whisper in a husky tone.

She doesn't answer, but she licks her lips.

"Tell me what you want," I press her further.

She looks at me with a mix of a pout and a shy look on her face. Her delicate whisper makes my friend twitch as she pleads, "P-please put it in, Master."

If a phrase could be considered art, that would be it.

I wake up feeling hungry. By the position of the sun, it's not even noon yet. I slowly detach myself from Alissa's body and get up, then she also gets up immediately after. She must've been sleeping lightly.

This time, I have her teach me how to brush her hair and tail. I'm a little bit afraid of damaging her fur or hurting her, so I let her finish the job after learning the basics.

We get up, and she cringes again at the new set of love marks she left on my back.

We go downstairs, and I see something that melts my heart.

"What is that… animal?" I point to the cute little creature.

I see a forty centimeters tall cute little squirrel with a cute little apron and a cute miniature broom. It sweeps the floor of the inn while humming in a cute little voice and smiling cutely. It has a slightly oversized cute hand with rather long fingers that let it grip things easily.

Alissa hums mirthfully and assumes a teaching tone as she educates me, "That's a nature spirit. They're souls of people who didn't want to leave the land, so they fused with the souls of nature and materialized like this. If you give it something it likes, it might help you. Also, it's a good omen to see an inn being able to make one happy…" -She squeezes my hand and lowers her voice- "But, Master, they're everywhere, how come you never saw one?"

I scramble to search for another lie. "Erm… perhaps the souls in my homeland never linger long. I guess our priests are just good." I shrug.

She gives a look of wonder. "I see, so it must be a place full of good Spirit mages, then."

I grin and whisper, "Can I pet it?"

Her expression becomes a bit pitying. "It'll just dematerialize if you try. You have to win its trust first."

Awn… let's just move on and have lunch.

Every so often, we find a minstrel on the streets, singing about something random. This seems to be a profitable job since most of them have quite a bit of coin in their tipping hats. Though, for me, they sound kinda bad. The instant translation inside my brain prevents me from enjoying the poetry, and the instruments they use, mostly lutes or harps, are rather crude.

"Curious about the minstrels, Master?" Alissa asks, failing to hold back a slightly smug smile.

I smile wryly. "Uh, yes. Seems profitable to sing on the streets."

"Only because it's the month of Song. Because of the Festivals of Seasons, the temple encourages us to tip the singers."

"Huh, curious…"

Alissa smiles at my innocence.

Money is short, so we buy a cheap meal with some Rabid Rabbit meat, then we go to the hunters' guild.

I'll register Alissa because that gives the guild a paper trail that she's with me. This also marks that she's reliable so she can do business in my stead in the future.

The attendant raises an eyebrow when she looks at Alissa's ID card.

It's the bed skills, right?

I also register the fellowship. It's just a courtesy, but the guild likes it because they can better organize the hunters in times of crisis.

For some reason, you have to name your fellowship. I think about naming it "Fellowship of the Ring," but I worry about copyright laws in this game, erm, world, so I try to think of something more appropriate.

Alissa tilts her head in confusion and questions, "Master… why are you looking so serious? It's just a name isn't it?"

No, little one, this is my banner, my heraldry, my legacy, my legend. I can't screw up and end up like I did with my new name where I feel uncomfortable when people call me Wolf Ryder. I need a strong name that instills pride when it's uttered.

"You wouldn't understand," I wryly answer.

Alissa gives me a troubled look while the female attendant shrugs. She has seen this scene more than once.

Honestly, nothing feels appropriate, but it's not like people are going to laugh at this name, so I'll just pick a reference to something I like. I kind of like astronomy even though it's not my area, so I pick something in reference to that.

"Helios," I write down the name. Maybe the God of the Sun will get the reference.

The attendant takes the papers away, and under "Affiliations" on our status screen, the entry "Helios (fellowship)" appears.

With that, we move towards the training grounds.

I give her hand a gentle squeeze and state, "I want to see you train the sword and the bow a bit to get a feel for your strength. I also want to spend the afternoon here so that I can train my magic."

Her ears point up and her tail sways faster as she gives me a slightly proud smile. "Understood, Master. I'm sure you won't be disappointed with my skills."

We enter the grounds, and Toga's gaze immediately finds me.

Nope, not today. I'll be training magic on my corner veeery far away from you.

But first, I watch Alissa spar with an instructor, and thankfully, it isn't Toga. It's a much gentler man, but he's no less skilled.

Alissa flows with the sword, making dodging and parrying seem effortless, then she smoothly weaves in attacks with blinding speed. She's truly fast, though the instructor is still faster.

I'm actually curious why she's so good at dodging and parrying since her level in those skills are lower than mine. Perhaps it's the "Speed" and "Dexterity" that combine with the skill and work as some sort of multiplier, so she doesn't need a high skill to be effective.

A few men stare at Alissa intensely.

Shoo, go away, that one is mine. There are other women here that are also training, so go bother them.

After a few minutes, I go to my corner and continue watching from afar. I ask the Goddess of Growth to help me increase my MP so I can always have mana to heal and support Alissa, then I start my [Fireball] routine.

After an hour, Alissa switches to the bow and she quickly starts drawing a crowd with her archery skills. Her speed is comparable to the instructors, but her accuracy is unmatched. She's my own female Legolas.

She looks ferocious as she fires arrow after arrow, her eyes staring towards her target like a hawk does to its prey. It's a complete reverse of how she is in bed, kind of the inverse of me.

Alissa keeps taking my concentration away with her beauty and magnificence, so my training routine is sloppier than before. But it's okay since I enjoy watching her very much.

When dusk starts to come, we go back to the inn and reserve another bath. I'm way too tired for anything, so we just cuddle and kiss in the hot water.

After dinner, I ask her to use her mouth, and she happily gobbles it up, eager to show her skills.

She gives me a constant and smooth pleasure, and I close my eyes to enjoy it to the fullest. This time, she understands my warning and doesn't choke.

Then we sleep together while hugging each other again.

I dream of Alissa shooting goblins while I laugh and drink tea.

I wake up quite well-rested and get a deep kiss from her as a greeting. I think this should be a morning routine.

My MP increased by 40 (now 255). That's kinda high since I didn't train very well yesterday, so could this be the result of prayer?

I decide to look at the extermination requests at the hunters' guild. With Alissa's tracking, we can hunt for some of those juicy bounties.

We walk along the streets with our arms entwined. She's a few centimeters taller than me, so it's a bit awkward at first until we get used to each other's rhythm.

We enter the guild and start looking at requests, then I hear footsteps approach.

"Hello! Are you Wolf Ryder?" A chipper and gruff male voice greets me. We turn around and see a short and wide man in full chainmail armor. He has black hair and droopy eyes that make him look like he's always thinking. "I'm Targua, from Honest Shield." He adds after a moment and gives us a diplomatic smile.

"Uh… hi, hello, yes, I'm Ryder," I confusedly return the greeting.

Another voice comes from further back in the guild, "Oi! don't listen to him, join my fellowship, instead!" A blonde and lanky man with a bow slung over his shoulder comes running and interjects. His face seems a bit roguish, and he sports a considerable nose.

"What?" I mumble, dumbfounded.

Stop, rewind, and start from the beginning this time.

Targua facepalms and chides him, "Bug off, mate. I haven't even asked him yet and you just jump in the middle."

The lanky man stops in front of me and gives me a business smile while extending his hand for a handshake. "I'm Simon, from Swift Wind. Pleasure to meetcha, yeah? How about you join my fellowship?" He quickly introduces himself and immediately announces his offer.

Where did you two even come from?

I hesitantly shake his large and rough hand, then Targua sends us a strained smile and continues, "Uh… sorry, but yeah, how about you join my fellowship instead?"

I frown in confusion and sincerely ask, "Why are you guys asking me to join?"

"No shit we're looking for you, mate," Simon grunts and snorts. "A magic swordsman who can kill and carry a Grey Berserker or an Orc Headhunter is no joke. And then yesterday, everyone at the training grounds was raving about your new companion who's a crazy pretty lass with an extremely deadly bow."

His speech sounds weird. Is this the effect of the [Andraste Language] skill trying to translate casual slang?

I look at Targua and he shrugs.

The thing that annoys me is how they want us to join their fellowship. No, thanks.

I shake my head and reject their offer, "Sorry, but I prefer to keep walking my own path for now."

"Ehh. Really?" Simon frowns reprovingly, and I nod at him. "Well, that's a shame, mate. We could make a killing with you and the girl."

I feel Alissa's grip tighten in subtle anger.

Targua takes a step closer and clasps his hands in a subtle pleading gesture. "Is that so? Is there no room for negotiations? We could always search for a good deal that'd benefit both of us."

I kind of like your attitude, but back off, you're too close to Alissa.

I look at them sternly and stand my ground, "No, sorry. It's not a question about money, it's personal."

Simon shrugs and makes a sour face. "Well, I tried," he mumbles and walks away.

Targua gently nods in understanding and accepts, "Sorry to bother you, then. Be well Mr. Ryder" Then he also leaves.

"I fully agree with your decision, Master," Alissa whispers while sending a mean gaze to the two men walking away. "Those men would exploit you. It's almost always what happens when getting scouted by veterans. Fellowships are bonds made of trust, and those which are made of money are weak."

How romantic.

I nod in agreement, then we turn back and continue searching for a request.

There's a good one. It's a bounty for an Oodogloo which was found yesterday. This monster is a threat level three. It's a large, transparent slime with a human skeleton inside. Because it can walk with the skeleton, it's faster than normal crawling slimes that move like caterpillars or worms. It should have a distinctive ammonia scent, so it's easy to track with Alissa's nose, but it's a very annoying enemy to catch because it runs away from everything and preys on livestock. It was last found half a day away northwest from here, at the farms past Royd's Kerfuffle.

Alissa follows my eyes and sees the request I'm interested in. "I can take you there on my fox form," she suggests.

Oh, yes.

I smirk and reply, "Want to go there right now?"

She smiles brightly and her tail sways. "Yes! I want to test my bow. The Oodogloo is good for target practice because it's so nimble."

"Then let's go."

I want to go not because I'm excited to fight, but because I want a reason to ride Alissa. We already have all the requirements for sleeping outside, so we're completely ready.

We pass through customs with ease since we're both adventurers.

A few meters away from the crowd trying to enter the town, Alissa turns to me and excitedly says, "I'm skilled enough to absorb my clothes after transforming, but you'll have to hold my weapons, Master."

I hold them for her, and she turns around.

Here comes the trademark of magic in this world: she starts to shine. Her skin turns black, and her armor disappears inside her body, then orange fur starts to grow everywhere and her limbs warp. In just a couple of seconds, she turns into a one-meter tall orange fox.

Her big orange eyes look at me, then she opens her mouth and talks, but her jaw doesn't move, "Master, get on me, please." Seeing her speak like this is really weird.

"Uhh… shouldn't we get a saddle?" I question.

"There's no need; just grab my fur. This form is made of mana, so I don't feel pain."

I shrug. "If you say so."

I awkwardly mount her and delight myself with her incredibly soft and warm fur. I immediately notice that a big part of her body is pure fluffy fur and that she isn't very muscular.

I nuzzle up to her neck and secure myself.

Once I'm comfortable, she starts walking forward and explains, "I'll increase speed slowly, so tell me if it shakes too much."

"Alright, let's go."

Then she starts running, and I start to feel weird from the rhythmic swaying. She's fast, though, so it's really advantageous for us to move this way. I've never ridden a horse, so I need some time to learn how to deal with this.

During the trip, I keep thinking about what to do with her skill points. She has six free points that I can assign, and that's kind of a lot.

It's going to be hard to explain this ability to her, though. I can just use the "it's a secret" excuse, but this is kind of a big and weird secret because it seemingly violates the laws of the skill system. She could even think I'm a demi-god, or something, and I'm not comfortable with that.

I think I'll lie to her, again. I'll look into the skill she wants to improve the most and slowly put those points there. It's just the less messy way, I believe.

Well, I could just do whatever I want and shrug if she notices something wrong. It's not like she's going to assume I'm the one doing it. But I'll tell her the truth, one day… just not now.

To test things, I put one point in [Enhanced Stamina].

The landscape remains the same all the way: long plantations on one side of the road, and a small wall on the other with the Sea of Trees behind it. It's a rather calming trip through a soothing scenery.

It takes us less than half the time to walk there, and we reach our target location a few hours before midday. We stop in front of the farm that was attacked, Woodwick Ranch.

Alissa slows down and stops under the shade of a tree by the road, then I drop down, and she reverses the transformation. She graciously gets up from being on her fours and looks at me, then I notice her posture seems a little droopy from tiredness.

I sit down on the roots and pull out the old sleeping bag beside me. I return her weapons to her, then she ties the sword and quiver to her waist and slings her bow over her shoulder.

"Lay down here, please," I ask and pat the bag.

"Thank you, Master," she diligently obeys.

She's so polite. She's always thanking me, but it does make me a bit uncomfortable, though.

"This is odd, I'm not as tired as I thought I'd be," she remarks and lays down.

So she noticed.

I pat her head, then she closes her eyes, and her tail twitches under her.

"Is that so? Didn't you miscalculate the distance? Or perhaps just by sleeping with me you got stronger?" I suggest with a grin.

She opens her eyes in surprise and stares at me.

"That was a joke, my body is no miracle drug," I add flatly and snort.

She awkwardly looks away for a moment. "Y-yes. That's not what I was thinking, though."

"Then what were you thinking?"

"It's what you said about being happy increases performance. It could be true."

So she's actually happy, now? I'm glad.

"Well, I wasn't lying," I tease her with a pout.

Her face warps with fear. "I'm sorry! That wasn't what I meant. I wanted to say that I just noticed it for the first time."

I chuckle at her, and she immediately pouts at my teasing. "It's okay, I understand," I whisper and pat her head faster.

She calms down and closes her eyes again.

She gets up after a good half-hour, fully recovered from our trip.

"Oh? I got a new skill, [Enhanced Stamina]," she observes and knits her eyebrows in confusion.

I hold back my grin and respond, "That's great. It means you can stay longer in your fox form right?"

"Yes, precisely," she mumbles with a puzzled face.

"Something wrong?"

Her tail lazily sways. "It's just that it was too easy. Like 'Endurance,' these sort of skills are hard to come by."

"Maybe you put more effort than you thought. I think you're a serious and hard worker, so this isn't unexpected for me." I give her shoulder an assuring squeeze.

She shrinks her posture, feeling a bit shy, but her tail starts wagging.

"Perhaps…" And her voice trails off while she looks into the distance.

Now that she has a better [Sense Presence] than me, I decide to remove it along with [Mental Resistance] since there's no need for it here. I increase [Blessing Magic] to level ten so I can use [Swift Foot] to give us a boost in speed. I increase [Electric Magic] to five and [Mana Control] to one so I can use [Lightning Bolt] more effectively to stun the Oodogloo because it's likely to run away.

My skills look like this:

Wolf Ryder Skill Report

Physical

Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level
Sword Use | 6+2 | Dodge | 2+4 | Parry | 1+4
Block | 2+4 | Shield Bash | 0+1

Magical

Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level
Mana Efficiency | 3+0 | Mana Recovery | 3+0 | Reduced Mana Cost | 3+0
Mana Control | 1+0 | Electric Magic | 5+0 | Nature Magic | 5+0
Blessing Magic | 10+0

Miscellaneous

Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level
Andraste Language | 10+0 | Dismantling | 0+1

Now I need to explain my skills to Alissa, it's time to lie… again.

"Alissa, strategy meeting. Time to tell you another secret," I call her attention, and she sits down again obediently. I clear my throat and continue, "I have a power that basically allows me to use all kinds of magic, but it takes time to switch between magic types, and I'm not exactly proficient in any of them."

"Wow… that's amazing, Master," she innocently coos in wonder. "So, you're actually a genius magician."

Not true, but it's convenient that you think like this, so I won't tell you otherwise.

I awkwardly massage my neck. "Well, err… perhaps it is so. I just know it's something I'm capable of. But like I said, I'm not very proficient in magic in general. I'm a jack-of-all-trades, master of none."

"'Jack-of-all-trades'?" She tilts her head. Her confused face is adorable.

"An expression from my homeland, it means 'a person who can do anything,' but I'm not particularly good in any of them, therefore, I'm a 'master of none.'"

"I see…" She nods in understanding.

"Then, for this hunt, I'm going to use [Blessing Magic] and [Electric Magic]. I'll give us [Swift Foot], and when we meet the monster, I'll use [Lightning Bolt] to try to stun it. You just turn it into a pincushion."

"Pin… cushion. Ah, with the arrows. Another reference, I think." She looks puzzled, then smiles faintly once she gets it.

The pincushion isn't a thing yet?

"Ready?" I ask.

She gets up and hums confidently, "Yes, let's start looking for the monster."

Since Alissa has [Sense Presence] and the bow, she'll be basically assassinating every monster while I kind of do nothing until the battle, but there's no way around it, that's how trackers work.

Still, we're going to search the Sea of Trees during the day, so we could meet something that won't go down so easily. That's when I'll have to protect Alissa from getting into melee.

I cast [Swift Foot] on both of us, and two-thirds of my mana disappear.

We'll search the Sea of Trees for the Oodoogloo during the day while it sleeps, then we'll return to the farm to protect the livestock when the night falls.

This monster is the annoying kind that preys on large animals, but it isn't smart, just cowardly. It attacks the farms at random, so finding it before it leaves its nest is a better option than waiting for the night to come.

I bought a small compass, which will help with navigation, but we're basically going to wander around until Alissa catches its trail. If a farm gets attacked tonight, then it might leave tracks for us to follow, but the reward will drop a bit if it kills anything, so we don't want to rely on that.

As we make our way into the Sea of Trees, a familiar scenery appears before me: huge trees, damp air, dark atmosphere, unfamiliar fruits, gigantic entwining roots, hanging vines everywhere, and random patches of weirdly colored trees. I'm surprised there aren't more insects here considering how warm and wet this place is. Thank god for the Japanese devs who must hate bugs.

I lead the way with the compass, and we go directly west, deep into the forest.

After half an hour of walking, Alissa stops me. "Something is coming. Two small monsters," she whispers soberly.

We hide and wait for them to get into visual range, then Alissa ID's them: two lightly armored goblins. They have leather jackets, loincloths, a stone-tipped spear, and a crude wooden shield.

I give the order, "Fire at will. I'll block the second one if it reaches us."

She nods vigorously. "Understood." Then she gets up and fires two quick arrows.

Both goblins silently die with an arrow between their eyes before they can even react.

"Well…" I shrug and smile wryly.

I collect their ears and return to her.

"Likely scouts. There could be a small group camping nearby," Alissa guesses.

"Let's not get close to their camp."

"Understood."

Her demeanor has become as serious as when she was training, and I guess it's because she's fulfilling her "duty."

We move west again, and only a few minutes later, we have our second encounter. This time, there are three enemies coming, fast.

Alissa doesn't recognize what they are, and she doesn't believe they've detected us, but our paths are going to cross, and they're too close to safely avoid.

I decide to ambush them, so I'll get the one on the right, and Alissa will try to quickly kill the two on the left.

We patiently wait for them to approach, and I start to hear the pitter-patter of multiple small feet scurrying closer to us.

Alissa gives me the signal, then we spring out of our hiding spot and attack. Our enemies are three Mossy Fangpines.

I immediately cast [Lightning Bolt] at the first Fangpine, and the second receives an arrow on its head. A second arrow immediately flies towards the third Fangpine, but it's way too agile and manages to dodge, then it charges towards us.

I cast another [Lightning Bolt] at the stunned Fangpine, then an arrow sinks into its forehead and it dies.

I prepare myself to receive the charging monster. With my sword hiding behind my shield, I wait until the last moment, then I thrust.

The Fangpine is stupid and jumps into my sword, which sinks into its body, then it falls on my shield and I nearly lose my footing.

It starts to wriggle wildly, so I cast a [Lightning Bolt] with my shield hand right at its face and it goes limp, then I use my shield to push it off from my sword.

It falls on the ground with a thud, but it doesn't get up.

"Dead. You must've pierced its heart," Alissa comments.

"Lucky strike, I guess," I respond nervously.

"Perhaps… you could use a spear?" She suggests tentatively.

I scratch my head. "Perhaps… I feel a bit more comfortable with the sword, though."

She gives me a rather pitying look. "Your sword has a small reach, and I don't think you have the 'Strength' to use anything bigger."

I feel like pouting, but I hold it back.

I'm working on it.

The Fangpines are valuable, but their price varies depending on the stocks of ingredients for the alchemists or meat for the restaurants. So far, I haven't seen their meat being sold, so maybe the stocks are low.

"They must've sensed the goblins' deaths," Alissa speculates.

"Then let's change our direction. Let's move towards the north a little."

I collect all of their bodies and we move on.

There are no encounters for another hour, so we decide to have lunch early.

I spread a large cloth over the ground, and we sit down on it.

Our meal is a bean paste and Rabid Rabbit meat sandwich on a not-baguette. Unfortunately, the crust is not as crunchy as I'd like, but at least it doesn't make a mess. I forgot to buy fruit for juice or to even bring tea, so the meal is kind of boring.

"Next time, we should buy tea," I mutter.

Her ears twitch and her tail wags. "Oh? You like tea? You didn't tell me."

I smile awkwardly. "I forgot…"

My mind was too busy with abusing your body.

After our meal, I cast [Wind Armor] on both of us and [Sharp Blades] on myself. After the next break, I'll cast [Sharp Blades] on her. It's kind of annoying that I don't have enough MP to cast all my [Blessing Magic] in one go, but that can only be solved with more training.

We get up and move southwest since there's not much sense in going north too far. The Oodogloo nests deep in the forest during the day, but it's not smart enough to move diagonally to purposely avoid those chasing him.

We walk for another half hour before Alissa detects the next enemy.

"This one is large. I don't think it's a Grey Berserker, but I don't know what it is," she reports.

"Then let's observe."

Alissa leads ten meters in front because I don't have [Quiet Steps].

She makes the signal for me to stop, then sneaks ahead, circling a large root. She sights our target, then comes back to report.

"It's a Young Ogre."

A threat level 4 monster. It's capable of wiping a squad of soldiers, but we should be able to deal with him if we follow proper tactics. A simple plan is the most powerful power multiplier.

They're becoming a common sight after the culling, it seems, and this must be why their leather is cheap. The new monster is emigrating into the empty territory. They'll likely remain a common encounter until the next culling.

I store my shield inside my "Items" and give up on using a spear. Neither of these will be useful in this fight.

"Standard formation. For your first arrow, aim for the eye," I order, and she nods in acknowledgment.

Our "standard formation" is her being the damage dealer while I'm the bait and controller. She'll fire the first arrow, then I'll cast [Lightning Bolt] repeatedly and keep it busy while she aims for the vitals.

She sneaks towards it again without making a single sound, then she draws her bow and releases.

"UGOOOOH!" The ogre's scream makes the trees tremble. If this is a young one, then the adult will cause an earthquake.

It rushes from behind the root with an arrow sticking out of its right eye. I observe it and wait until it gets into range.

The ogre is a two meters tall red-brown skinned humanoid with ridiculously thick arms, legs, and a six-pack that makes bodybuilders jealous. He's bald and his face is round, flat, and deformed, making him look like a cartoon character that hit a wall.

He's especially resistant against blunt force attacks, but his vulnerability is slashing and bleeding to death. His body is very thick, so he's not fast or dexterous. For me, the best strategy is to just avoid him and counterattack by slashing whenever an opening appears.

Alissa runs past me and stops a few dozen meters away, then carefully aims her arrows. Even for proto-Legolas, she can't hit the eyes of a moving target, so she's aiming for the neck. The other vulnerable spot would be the groin, but I'm in the way, so the neck it is.

I try to ignore it, but it's impossible, he's way too tall. The worst thing about this monster is that it's naked. A long, dangling, disgusting thing sways threateningly almost at eye-level as it comes towards me. Screw this world.

With [Mana Control], I can put a little more or less mana into the spell and control the discharge for a second or two, so I charge up the stronger version of [Lightning Bolt] while wrinkling my nose in disgust.

I release it, and the Ogre grunts, then decrease his speed a little. It's subtle, but I noticed that the bolt is stronger.

I cast it again, and his speed reduces even more, falling to more manageable levels.

Because of my spells, he ignores Alissa, and focuses solely on me. He gets into melee range and tries to kick, but I jump sideways and slash his leg, drawing blood.

He growls, then tries to do a sweep with his arm. I duck, and an arrow appears on his neck.

Another kick with the other leg, another dodge and a slash.

He tries to smash downwards with both hands held together, and this time, I dodge further away to get out of counterattack range.

Once his hands hit the ground, a second arrow appears next to the first.

I dash towards his blind eye, and he loses sight of me for a second. That's enough of an opening, so I charge forward and slash his flank.

I immediately run away, and he sluggishly turns towards me.

I realize this is not a good position for Alissa since the back of his neck and head are more protected than the front due to his spinal bones and thick skull. Ogres are built like tanks, it seems.

I stop and let him approach, then he tries to do an arm sweep again. Since I'm further away this time, I easily dodge and counter with a horizontal sweeping slash.

My sword sinks into his left forearm, opening a huge wound, but it's almost ripped from my hand as he yanks his arm away. I'm not sure I should do this again.

He growls even harder, and now things might amp up in difficulty. Like the Grey Berserker, he becomes faster the angrier he gets.

I circle him to give Alissa a good angle again. He remains in place while sluggishly turning, then a third arrow appears on his neck, and a considerable trickle of blood starts to seep from his wounds.

I cast Bolt again, and he twitches in pain. It's enough of an opening for a fourth arrow.

"UGOO-BLEH!" He tries to shout while punching but coughs.

His punch comes too slow and sloppy, so he gets another deep cut on his other arm. The blood starts pouring faster than the other wounds, so perhaps I cut a large vein or something?

I need lessons in anatomy.

He protects his neck with his right arm and glares at me hatefully.

It's kind of late now, you dumbass.

Alissa can't act, but now his actions are more limited.

He sweeps with his arm, using the back of his hand, and it creates a huge opening. I jump forward and cut near his armpit, drawing a spurt of blood.

He kicks me in response, but the angle is awkward for him. I twist my body and block with my sword. The force of his kick nearly makes me trip, but I jump backward and recover.

He becomes cautious and stops attacking.

I cut his leg once and start to circle him.

After a few laps, he sways slightly, seemingly becoming dizzy. I must've cut something important, so I'll just wait for now.

After a minute or so, his skin gets covered with vibrant blood. His punching arm slows down to a laughable speed, and his kicks completely lose accuracy. His body starts to sway heavily, and he becomes out of breath.

Then he finally falls on his ass. He's near death, but his eyes still spell anger instead of fear.

An arrow pokes his last eye.

"Ugooo…!" He lets out a weak scream.

I jump forward and slash his neck where his thick fingers aren't covering. A large amount of blood pours, and then he falls on his back.

We wait another minute in silence.

"He's dead," Alissa finally announces.

That was damn brutal.

As the adrenaline runs out, I start to get very anguished at the sight in front of my eyes. I clean my blade and quickly put his body on my "Items," Then I look away from the large pool of blood.

"Let's move, quickly," I order, and we jog away from here.

"Master, we shouldn't encounter anything this far…" Alissa points out, and I stop. She walks closer to me and lands a hand on my shoulder. "May I ask you a question?" She requests soberly.

I turn around to face her and reply hesitantly, "Y-yes, what is it?"

Her serious gaze turns to concern and worry. "Are you okay? Your expression changed, and your face is much darker now."

I look away from her and stay silent.

"Are you tired? Let's rest," she tries to comfort me.

"No, it's… not that…" I mumble tiredly.

"Then what is it?"

"I just..." I sigh and frown. I just don't want to admit this, but I also don't feel like forcing her to stop probing my feelings. "I feel bad about the ogre we killed."

"What?" She asks with a deliberate gentle tone to not hurt my feelings.

"He looked too human, and I didn't want to make him suffer."

"But he was a monster."

"Still…" Another sigh escapes me. I didn't want to say it like this, but I have to now. I face her and confess, "My homeland was too peaceful, so I didn't have to fight there. I'm not used to seeing so much blood, to hear the death cries of things, of… living beings that look so human. It makes me feel sick and guilty."

She stays silent as she reflects deeply on my words, but her gaze is still gentle and reassuring.

After a few moments, she suddenly pulls me into a hug and whispers into my ear, "That's okay, Master. Forgive me for saying this, but I'll selfishly ask for you to continue being the way you are even if it makes you suffer. I think that the realm needs people like you, someone with a truly kind and merciful heart. I'll support you, I'll help you, I'll heal you, and I'll give you my all just so you can continue being like this."

That was completely unexpected, and I don't know how to answer, so I just remain still.

Aren't you naive? How long have you known me? It's been just a few days. No matter how close we are, or if we did or not, it's just not enough time for you to say things like that.

But still… I want to believe this. I tried to throw away what held me back, but some things are harder than others. I needed someone to support and love me, so I changed, but now I want to keep this part of my humanity.

I want to believe that she's right… No, I will believe in her.

I hug her back and rest my head against her shoulder. I must not cry.

After a few minutes, I start to feel better and awkwardly break the hug. She lets me go with a slightly smug but still adorable smile.

I clear my throat and propose, "Let's go back. It's still early, but we should take another less direct route, so it'll take more time."

"Understood. Please rely on me more, Master," she obediently responds, then clenches her fist over her chest.

I nod and smile.

We move southeast with a gentle jog.

[Swift Foot] is a really nice spell. It lets us walk almost effortlessly, so we can maintain this pace for a long time. Even in this forest full of roots and bushes, we quickly cross the obstacles without any problem.

Then Alissa gets another hit.

"Four goblins," she reports.

I knit my eyebrows in worry. "Hmm… they're increasing in number."

"Perhaps there's a nest nearby?" She supposes again.

"Let's observe them."

We get closer so we reach visual range, and we see four fully armored goblins. Two use spears, and two use swords, but all have shields.

I don't feel comfortable using a spear against shields while outnumbered…

They seem very aware of their surroundings, but since we're hidden in the bushes, they can't detect us. They cautiously explore forward at a very slow pace.

"They look awfully intelligent," I comment.

Are they searching for something?

"You think you can kill two if we ambush?" I whisper.

She matches my volume, "Unlikely; they're alert for something. One is guaranteed, the other I'm not so sure."

"We'll sync our attacks. You kill the one on the right, and I use a Bolt on the one on the left. It might stun it long enough for you to fire another arrow."

"I'll use [Muscle Explosion], but I can't use it repeatedly."

"It's alright. I'll be bait, and once the first strike is launched, you sneak around them until you have a shot. When I remove my hand from your shoulder, we attack."

She responds with a steady and unwavering voice, "Understood."

I charge the spell, then I get up and let it loose as I take my hand off her shoulder, and the forest resounds with the roar of the thunder.

The first goblin doesn't even react, it gets hit by lightning and its body locks in place for a moment, then the other goblin falls with an arrow through its temple.

The stunned goblin raises its shield to defend itself, then the brim touches the shaft of the arrow stuck through its face. It's already dead.

The two sword goblins hide behind their shields. They're teardrop-shaped and taller than mine, and with a goblin's small stature, they can easily cover their entire bodies with it.

I get in the open and wait for the goblins to come, then Alissa starts sneaking around them.

Since they're not charging forward, I have time to cast [Lightning Bolt] again. The left goblin twitches and groans, but it doesn't fall. It's likely that the shield reduced the damage to its body.

Suddenly, the right goblin falls with an arrow poking out of its forehead. The last goblin notices it, then turns towards where the arrow came from. That's enough of a distraction; I charge forward.

I thrust towards the goblin, but it suddenly reacts and blocks, then counters. Our shields and swords get tangled in a messy battle, but we're both too cautious to score a hit on the other.

It growls and gets into a rage, then wildly tries to stab me.

Its ferocity gives me pause, and I fight defensively, but I keep it occupied so it doesn't notice Alissa.

The goblin is smaller than me, so when it foolishly decides to hide its eyes behind the shield to dodge my attack, I follow with a kick, and it staggers backward.

Its eyes lock with mine, then an arrow sinks into its temple. It winces for a second, then it goes limp and falls down.

Alissa comes back, and we inspect the bodies.

They may be armored, but it's all shitty, old, and tattered. The weapons must've been pillaged from some adventurers because they look relatively new, so they might be worth something. I grab the weapons and shields, then I cut the ears from the goblins and move towards Alissa.

"Honestly, we make a pretty good team," I happily comment.

She smiles faintly, but she sends me a worried look. "I'd prefer it if you weren't used as bait. We need another companion to act as the front line, Master. Preferably a spearman."

"Yeah, well…" I shrug.

She's not wrong. I don't really have the stats to be front line, it's just that I don't have the money. I used it all on her and her equipment, but I don't regret it, though.

We keep moving forward and meet two other duos of goblins. The first duo one isn't alert, so Alissa kills them both with ease, but the second one is, and it takes a bit more effort. By that I mean I shoot lightning twice, stunning them long enough for Alissa to finish the job.

If you don't have a shield, you're screwd against Alissa.

Then we meet a group of four Mossy Fangpines. They aren't coming directly towards us, so this means that the anti-odor powder is working. But perhaps they're searching for the trail of blood we're leaving behind us?

Killing monsters attracts more monsters, so being a good hunter takes a lot more than just winning the battle. You also have to survive the following encounters.

I start debating whether or not to fight them when Alissa gets another hit: another two-meters tall Young Ogre.

"Now, we wait. They aren't going to get too close to us, right?" I question.

She nods and agrees, "Yes, we'll be safe if we wait here. No need to endanger ourselves unnecessarily."

The two monsters end up meeting, and something interesting happens: the Fangpines attack the Ogre. We decide to move a bit closer so we can see.

With his back against a huge tree, a red-brown ogre swings his arm around while fast and small monsters dash all around him.

"Wow, can they really kill him?" I wonder.

Alissa whispers in a teaching tone, "If they can avoid getting crushed, they can certainly poison him slowly until he dies."

"Hm…" I rub my chin in thought as a dirty idea enters my mind. "Let's third-party this fight."

"'Third-party'?"

I scratch my head awkwardly. "Erm… Let's wait until the ogre is almost dead, then we jump in and kill the Fangpines."

Alissa nods, content. "Oh, I see. Yes, that sounds like a good idea."

"I want the Experience more than anything, so we need to be near the Ogre when it dies by the Fangpines."

Her expression instantly turns serious. "I see. Once he starts to move slower, we should get closer and prepare for the ambush. I'll warn you once his movement pattern changes."

"Alright," I agree and nod. Alissa has better eyesight, so she'll be able to notice this detail easily.

The fight takes a while. The Ogre gets bitten multiple times, but he just can't catch the Fangpines as they're smart enough to let go before they're crushed. I see the ogre growing hair all over its body. It's stiff, slightly green hair, the spikes from the Fangpines.

The fight could be said to be entertaining if I was into blood sports. The orc is surrounded, and the Fangpines maintain a continuous attack towards his blind spots. The small monsters get plenty of close calls, but none of them get hit even once, a testament to their nimbleness.

The ogre stops trying to punch and kick them, then he tries to grab their heads when they come for a bite.

"The Fangpines are salivating, I think they're starving," Alissa comments.

Makes sense. The culling removed food sources, and the ogres are the ones who are moving in, so they became the new targets of the predators here. Though a huge monster like an ogre becoming "prey" seems "wrong," somehow.

Suddenly, the Ogre stomps behind him, and the head of a Fangpine becomes mush.

"Oh!" Alissa whispers in surprise.

The Ogre managed to predict the attack, but I think it was pure luck.

"The rest of the body is still valuable, so it's a good thing that it was only the head," I remark.

It takes around ten minutes, but the Ogre's movements finally start to slow down.

"It's time," Alissa reports.

We sneak forward, and I manage to catch a better view of the battle. I can finally see the Fangpines, and they're all out of breath and salivating.

Just how much saliva can they produce?

"You take the one on the right, and I'll stun the one on the left. Same thing, hand on shoulder," I order, and she nods obediently.

The ogre falls to his knees, then I charge my spell, get up, and take my hand off her shoulder.

Thunder roars through the forest again, then a Fangpine rolls on the ground as smoke comes out of his body, and another dies with an arrow through its eye. The last one turns around and charges towards me without hesitation.

Really vicious, these pieces of shit.

The monster jumps towards me, and I skewer it with my crude goblin spear. The body falls heavily on me, but I can deal with it, just barely.

With a grunt of effort, I throw the spear, and it falls a few meters away. While it writhes in agony, an arrow sinks into its throat.

It screams like a wounded dog and writhes, then I draw my sword and dash forward.

The zapped Fangpine weakly gets up, then an arrow ends its life.

I kneel and stab down, and my sword sinks into the Fangpine's head, ending its life.

I immediately get up and dislodge my sword, then I turn around and see that the ogre is still on his knees, but his eyes can barely maintain focus.

"Ugoo~..." He lets out a faint groan.

I dash and slash his neck. He doesn't even resist, and I open a deep wound that lets a stream of blood pour out.

He falls on his back, then he dies after a minute.

"You're now level 11."

I collect the ogre and Fangpines.

"I leveled up," I dryly say.

Alissa grabs my hand and reassures me, "That's good. Our plan was perfect."

"Indeed," I whisper and smile, trying to remove the image of the dying ogre from my mind. "Let's move. I have something to think about, so I'll just follow you."

"Understood, Master," she obediently responds and takes the lead.

My skills are like this now:

Wolf Ryder Skill Report

Physical

Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level
Sword Use | 6+2 | Dodge | 2+4 | Parry | 1+4
Block | 2+4 | Shield Bash | 0+1

Magical

Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level
Mana Efficiency | 4+0 | Mana Recovery | 3+0 | Reduced Mana Cost | 3+0
Mana Control | 4+0 | Electric Magic | 5+0 | Nature Magic | 5+0
Blessing Magic | 10+0

Miscellaneous

Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level
Andraste Language | 10+0 | Dismantling | 0+1

The next level, I'm increasing my melee skills. Possibly [Block] and [Sword Use].

We're past half the way back, so we turn towards the north-east. We're likely to exit the forest near our point of entry this way.

The trees slowly thin out, and no more encounters are found, then we exit the forest.

"I think we're a few minutes south of the farm," Alissa estimates.

"Yeah, let's just go north along the road."

"Want to ride me again?" Alissa suggests with an innocent smile.

"No man will ever say no to that," I reply and smirk mischievously.

She takes a moment to understand, then she starts blushing. "What…? Ah, M-Master!"

I shrug. "You set yourself up, don't blame me for easy pickings."

She whimpers softly and pouts.

"Let's go," she mumbles embarrassedly and transforms into a fox.

The farms are surprisingly orderly, so there's always a sign telling their names, and a road leading to the manor, making it easy to find the house of our employers.

We find the sign for the Woodwick Ranch, then Alissa enters the trail towards the manor. It's made of packed dirt, so Alissa kicks up some dust.

The large golden plantations of something similar to wheat pass by our sides in a blur as Alissa dashes down the road. Moments like these remind me of road trips, making me feel nostalgic.

After a few minutes, we reach the manor. The plantation opens up, and I see a large blue and purple three-story house. It's timber-framed with purple beams and blue stone, which is a rather odd choice of color. The stones and the logs aren't painted, so perhaps they're found in the valley north of here.

A large grass garden surrounds the house, and I see a not-apple tree with a swing and a clothesline at the front; far behind the house, there's an enclosure where the livestock grazes; like a golden wall, the plantations surround all sides of this open field.

We make our way towards the porch, where a pale old man in simple clothes is dozing off.

He hears Alissa's footsteps, and opens his eyes, then jumps out of his cushioned chair from the odd sight of a large fox being ridden by a young boy quickly approaching.

"Oooh! Oh…? OH!" The man lets out multiple sounds as his brain processes what his eyes see. "YOU BE THE HIRED HUNTERS!?" He yells excitedly.

Why yell? We are coming, so just wait for us to get near.

Alissa slows down near the porch, then I dismount.

I clear my throat and serenely greet him, "Yes, we're the Helios fellowship."

The guild has a variety of ways of contacting people when someone accepts a request. Like magic stones, spirit messaging, telepathy, summons, and many others. Depends on the price paid.

Our employers chose a homing carrier-pigeon, so they should've gotten word of us an hour or two after we accepted their request. We could've reached this place faster than the pigeon if we came directly without searching the forest, though.

Alissa transforms back and I return her weapons.

The old man grins and laughs excitedly, "Ohohoho. How nice, a wereanimal. Impressive, too…" -His excitement suddenly fades and he clears his throat awkwardly- "Erm, anyway, you're here to spend the night, right?"

I nod and politely answer, "Yes. We were roaming the Sea of Trees, but we didn't find the Oodogloo."

He clicks his tongue. "That would be some damn luck if you found it like that, but did you find anything interesting, instead?"

"Two Young Ogres and a bunch of goblins. There might be a goblins' nest nearby because we found a squad of four that were well-armed and intelligent."

He claps his hands and scowls. "AH! The little shits made another nest! You're going to report this to the guild right?"

I twitch and almost recoil from his overly-energetic demeanor. "Yeah, but only tomorrow."

He waves his arm dismissively. "Eh, that's fine. We can find a passing traveler to send word or something." Then he goes inside the house, and a scream suddenly booms through the entire house, "OI, BELTA! THE WHACKERS ARE HERE!"

"I HEAR YE!" A female voice screams back.

I knit my eyebrows and whisper to Alissa, "Whackers?"

She obediently instructs me with her teaching tone, "Slang. Farmers always have to keep hiring hunters to kill pests that come back all the time, so they started calling it 'whacking' monsters instead of 'exterminating' them." She shrugs.

A chubby, round-faced, and well-tanned woman appears. Then we see a girl which is a mini version of the woman and a pale-faced boy coyly hiding behind the stairs.

The woman smiles brightly and greets, "Ah, welcome. You must be the Helios duo, am I right?"

"Yes, that's us." I nod respectfully.

She motions for us to come in and returns the nod. "Enter, please. I'll make you some tea and we can wait until my husband comes back. He's at the nearby farms sending word you came."

The Oodogloo might attack a random farm, so the man must be warning the other farms to come here if the monster appears tonight. They'll likely stand guard all night, waiting for it.

Belta lays out for us a simple weak tea with a little bit of sugar and some simple nice cookies. Alissa gracefully eats the snacks, showing more class than I do, and making me feel like a smelly adventurer. The tea and cookies are pretty good, though, so they're worth the awkwardness.

As we tell the woman of our small survey of the forest, a small, wide, and pale man suddenly comes in. He seems to be a man of excess. Excess black hair on his head, excess hair on his chin, excess fat in his belly, and excess muscles in his arms. I see a shortsword hanging on his waist, which should be enough to keep the usual naked goblin away, but not much else.

He doesn't want to make small talk, so we immediately discuss the simple plan for the night. We'll stand guard near the livestock and sleep in turns. The other farms have a bell alarm system, so when the monster is sighted, they'll sound the alarm. The monster will run from the alarm, but since we have a tracker, we can follow its trail.

Then we continue our tale of the expedition until dusk comes. The woman lends her bathtub to us, and we're very thankful for that since bucket baths are quite awful, then she invites us for dinner, and we fill our bellies with a simple but tasty meal. After that, we leave the house to stand guard.

I look up into the night sky and get stunned at the sight. I see a giant moon with a storm of colors raging all over its surface. Each blotch of color is in constant movement, changing every few seconds to another random color. They create waves and crash against each other, causing ripples upon ripples, like a lake's surface under the rain.

Then I notice seven smaller moons, each a different color of the rainbow, orbiting the bigger moon at a visible speed. They seem to make a full turn every minute, which is blindingly fast for a celestial body.

Are they even actual moons?

"Hm? What is it, Master?" Alissa curiously whispers.

Just what the hell is this? Why a rainbow? Why is the moon… moons so different from the sun? I slept two days under the night sky and didn't even notice this? Oh, yeah, it was cloudy…

"I'm just wondering why is the sun so simple and the moons so colorful," I casually lie.

She laughs girlishly. "What kind of thoughts are you having? The sun is the same as the moons, but he gives us light instead of life."

I blink repeatedly in surprise and look at her. "Wait, what? Remember, I'm very ignorant about things."

Her ears go flat and her posture shrinks shyly. "Oh, I'm sorry, Master." -She quickly recomposes herself and assumes her teaching tone again- "Well, scholars have found that the sun looks the same as the moons. The God of the Sun gives us light to work during the day, but with that, we can't see him properly. The Goddess of the Moons gives us a blessing that replenishes our life, increasing our HP and MP recovery during the night. This is why we sleep when she's watching over us: it's so our recovery is even greater."

Well, at least it ain't just some boring old rock.

I look back at the moon and imagine what an acid trip would be to land there. "But why does the moon look like this storm of color, and why are these seven smaller moons orbiting it?"

"That is the Goddess' avatar in our realm. We don't know exactly why it looks like this, and it's said that we can't really understand something that is above our existence. I think I heard that the smaller moons and colors are said to represent 'aspects' of the god. What 'aspects' are, I don't know, so you should ask a priest." She shrugs.

I'll need some time to process this, so I motion for us to keep moving.

The livestock grazing area covers a large corner of the backyard, and we set up camp as far as we can from it so Alissa doesn't suffer from the smell. Her nose is quite sensitive.

I tell her that I'll switch [Blessing Magic] for [Summoning Magic], then I put ten points in it.

The spells of this magic school give me a ball of light that I can throw to summon things, so it kind of feels like I'm using pocket monsters. If I put a little more "effort" in summoning when I press the "cast" button inside my mind, I can instantly call a summon in a small radius around me.

I press the [Summon Dog] spell in my mind, then force a German Shepherd to appear beside me, and Alissa coos in wonder and claps.

With that, half of my MP is consumed and my max MP is reduced by one fourth. This is quite an improvement in comparison to the bird I summoned for the first time.

I keep the dog's hearing sense, and tell it to patrol the farms in search of the Oodogloo's scent, which is ammonia. If it finds the monster, then it should bark for a while to warn me and the farms, and also chase after it if it runs away.

I take the first watch and put down an hourglass. It'll mark one hour, and once I turn it three times, I'll switch with Alissa. It's kinda sad to see her sleep alone, but it'll be even sadder when it's my turn.

My watch goes without a problem, and I practice my [Mana Control] while staring at the moons, then I wake up Alissa and switch with her.

This tent is cold, not physically, but it makes my heart feel cold. I just want to sleep hugging my cute fox.

I wake up to the sound of angry barking. Through my dog's eyes, I can see it staring intensely at some weird, black humanoid outline frozen in fear. The dog's vision is monochrome and poor, but there's no mistaking it, that's the Oodogloo.

"Alissa! The dog!" I exclaim.

She's in front of the tent, maintaining my sword, and she immediately stores the oil in her [Item Box], then hands me our weapons and turns into a fox.

In a hurry, I sheath my sword, strap on my shield, store the tent and sleeping bag on my "Items," grab her equipment, and mount her.

"To the Jolly Ranch!" I command, and she darts forward.

Even though Alissa can see well in the moonlight, I can't, so I add one point to [Light Magic] and cast [Spirit Light]. A small, light-blue, glowing ball appears above my head and illuminates the whole field with eerie colored light.

This color really makes me feel like it's a "spirit" light.

A minute later, Alissa casts her own [Spirit Light], but hers is white, and it reduces the spooky air caused by mine.

The dog stops barking, and I start to hear the bells being rung from the farmhouses.

I cut the hearing sense, then I turn on the olfact, and I immediately sense the ammonia.

Suddenly, the shape turns away and runs into the plantation. The dog gives chase but keeps its distance.

I take my melee skills off and put them on [Blessing Magic], then I cast [Swift Foot] on Alissa, and she speeds up a lot. We fly through the dirt roads between the plantations as she runs with the wind.

She shakes so much that it becomes rather uncomfortable for me, but the trip only lasts a few minutes, and we reach our destination.

The bells all around the neighboring farms quickly reach full blast, creating a painfully loud cacophony.

Like a fellowship bond, I know at all times the direction and distance my summoned dog is, so I guide Alissa into the plantation.

"I got his scent!" She suddenly announces.

It's a bad idea to fight it in the middle of the plantation, so we slow down and wait until it enters another open field.

I switch my points back into combat mode. I also won't be able to use the spear this time, not unless I want the Oodogloo to use a tentacle to steal it from my hands and use it against me.

After a minute of painfully running through the middle of the plantation, we enter another backyard. We can see another manor to the side and a dark humanoid figure awkwardly running away with the dog chasing a few meters away.

I dismiss the summon and see it instantly turn into a cloud of smoke that completely disappears in a few seconds, then I cast [Lightning Bolt] at the Oodogloo and hit its back.

The figure falls, then Alissa slows down and keeps her distance.

Not yet.

The figure gets up and starts to run away. I cast [Lightning Bolt] again, now with the full power of level three [Mana Control]. The figure falls again, but it doesn't get up, and its shape starts to melt.

"Now!" I give the signal.

Alissa stops and I dismount, then put her equipment on the ground.

As she shifts back to humanoid, I unsheathe my sword and jog towards the enemy.

I hear a commotion near the manor, but I ignore it. They won't help us because they could get in the way, so they just leave it to the "pros." The farmhands can deal with the occasional naked goblin, but this monster is way above their level.

I cast [Lightning Bolt] again to provoke it, then the now unidentified black mass comes in our direction.

"OOOOO...duh… GLOOOOO!" It lets out a long and dull scream.

This sound is what gave it its name. This ridiculous slime who wishes to be human tries to imitate our vocal cords, but it can only let out this silly sound. It runs away whenever it sees an enemy, but can it be enraged if provoked repeatedly, then it loses its human form and attacks with the bones it has inside.

The slime reaches our Lights, and we see its transparent gooey mass sliding forward at a frightening speed. An amalgamation of human bones floats inside it, constantly moving in a wild storm, reflecting the slime's mood.

An arrow sinks into the slime with a watery "thunk" sound.

I cast [Lightning Bolt] again and it convulses wildly, stopping its advance for a second. Another two arrows enter it, and the slime starts losing liquid like a leaky water balloon.

A tentacle shoots out like a bullet, and I block it with my shield, then my shield resonates loudly. Its attacks are tough like a hammer strike.

I counter with a slash but it whiffs, the slime is just too fast.

I dodge a few smaller and slower tentacles, then a third and a fourth arrow creates more places for it to leak.

I see a thick tentacle is forming, telegraphing a massive attack. I grit my teeth and charge [Lightning Bolt].

The next moment, a huge tentacle flies towards me, and I release my Bolt. The shield resonates again and I stumble backward as my shoulder flares with pain.

I steady my feet, then I jump forward and chop without even looking.

My sword sinks into the huge, convulsing tentacle and splits it in two, then a large amount of liquid and a variety of human bones drop from the wound.

It uses a mass of bones like a sledgehammer, while the small, pointy ones are used as piercing weapons. Fortunately, the small tentacles aren't as powerful as the large one.

Grievously wounded, the slime tries to run. It's leaking water from everywhere, and Alissa continues free-firing, increasing the number of holes.

I cast a short [Lightning Bolt], stunning it again, and I take the opportunity to attack.

I slash open an even bigger wound than the one before, then its whole body wriggles in panic, and an uncountable number of little tentacles appear on the surface of the slime.

I dive backward and the tentacles absolutely fill the area where I just was.

I immediately get up and start retreating, keeping my distance from it.

The slime tries to chase, but it has lost too much water, and its surface has become wrinkly, greatly reducing its speed.

For the next half minute, it tries a desperate last effort to hurt me, but it has trouble moving due to the number of arrows poking out of its entire body.

The tentacles lose power and speed, then the slime finally stops moving.

Everything becomes completely silent as the bells stop ringing, then I see seven heads peeking out of the windows of the manor.

"Hell yeah! It's dead!" I cheer and throw my arms up.

Alissa laughs girlishly, then I hear cheering from the manor.

We collect the bones and the remaining slime skin, then we give a short greeting to the family inside the manor, and the man of the house gives me a bottle of wine as thanks for dealing with this pesky monster. I don't drink, but Alissa whispers for me to accept it, so I try to do it graciously.

Then we leave and return to the manor of our contractor. Belta is ecstatic, and her husband gives me a painful pat on the back then laughs with a booming voice. Alissa squirms from seeing my pain but says nothing this time.

They let us stay the night in the guest room, which has two single beds, but we can't stand to sleep separately anymore, so we crowd on a single one. It's a little hot and cramped, but we manage to fit in.

"Honestly, I don't see any problem with our teamwork. We do well together," I comment.

"Aside from you being in the front," Alissa responds worriedly. "I can see you struggling to defend against the monsters' attacks. No shield-bearer should struggle so much."

I awkwardly massage my neck."Well… I'd already decided to train my body and skills more. With this reward, we can spend a good time training without worrying about hunting monsters. Also, I'll level up soon, and that should help a lot."

Alissa pouts and retorts. "Still, I don't think I'll ever be comfortable with you in the front line. Your talent is magic, so you shouldn't need to spend so much time training melee." She lazily traces her finger on my chest as she talks.

I smile warmly at her. "Your concern makes me happy, but my real advantage is versatility. We just have to hold on and be careful for a while longer," I reassure her and kiss her nose.

"A while longer…" She repeats, then she kisses my lips lightly.

After some light kissing, she breaks it and turns her face away.

"What is it?" I ask.

"Hm…" She pouts again, and I see her tail is swaying.

She stays silent for a few seconds, then she moves down, below the covers. I feel my pants going down, then something warm and wet wraps around my friend.

She's really good at this, so I don't last long again.

Intermission 1

Now I'm sure that Master is someone special. He's a kind and calm, but a completely different person in bed; he has the knowledge and curiosity of a child, but the wisdom of someone much older; he has mercy and compassion for monsters, but the resolve to keep fighting. Those aren't things you find among the common man, but those are things that must be protected.

Master is alone, that much I'm sure, but I'll do what I can to fill that hole. I'm already happy enough that he depends on me in battle and in bed, but I'll show him I can do much more. Even though I know he's letting out his lust on me, I'm content with being able to help with this. Once the lust subsides, his heart will be ready for a deeper bond with mine.

He tries to look collected and composed, but I know he's anxious about something, and he has no one to confide on, so I can only try my best to lower his burdens. He doesn't trust me enough to tell me his secrets, but I'll support him regardless until he opens up one day.

I thought that my endurance training would be wasted living such a lavish lifestyle, but now I know it's merely going to be used in a different way than what I'd imagined. His mind is fragile and precious, his will is so strong he's bound to hurt himself, and his code of honor will soon have him face the wicked, which will leave a wound on his soul. All I wish for is the ability to support him through whatever destiny the Gods have for him. I'll stay by his side, no matter what.

A note from Manasong

Well then. I swear this won't turn into erotica but there are tons of other sex scenes coming.

Leave a rating or a review to help me rise to the top or fix my shameful understanding of prose.

Take a look over my blog where all information of the world of Rupegia will be posted.

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Chapter 6: Expedition

A note from Manasong

Attention: to conform to the limit of mature content (more than just sexual content) allowed in a novel, I've censored this chapter. You can look for the uncensored version here.

If certain parts with sexual content look off or with paragraphs missing, it's likely that they were censored.

The body of the slime is worth five silver; the Young Ogres and Fangpines are worth four and one silver each, respectively; and the reward for the extermination is forty silver, which is quite high because the Oodogloo is an incredibly annoying enemy to find.

The usual strategy for dealing with this annoying slime is to have one person at each farm waiting for it, then use a signal flare when the monster is found. This is a dangerous strategy because a single person will try to engage the monster and keep it occupied until more people arrive. To defeat it in a single night with just two people is a commendable feat, and with that… my fame gets annoyingly higher.

For two days, I do nothing but abuse Alissa after waking up and during the bath, train [Sense Mana] and [Mana Control] in the morning, and spar with someone who isn't Toga in the afternoon.

I buy a tea set and try to teach Alissa how to make tea, but she's more of an expert in that than I, so I just let her do her own thing. We find the not-earl-grey I drank once in a tea shop near the temple, and then we get some cheap cookies to go with it, so my mood improves a lot in these two days.

My [Block] increased by 2 (now 2+6) and [Parry] increased by 1 (now 1+5) from the sparring, but it's exhausting to fight so much, so I don't think I can keep up training like this for long.

Surprisingly, I easily learn [Sense Mana] with 2 points and [Mana Control] with 3 points. I think the magic skills are easier because I already have a lot of contact with magic on a daily basis, so this is just a solidification of my foundations.

Spending an entire morning hugging Alissa while she practices her [Mana Control] is heavenly, though. I wish we could do it every day, but today we need to go to the guild, and I notice that she seems a little disappointed when I tell her that.

We enter the guild and start checking the requests, but "coincidentally," there's an annoying duo waiting for us. Something tells me that certain people have a second house inside the guild.

"Yoo! Ryder!" A familiar and annoying voice calls to me. I turn around and see Simon, the leader of the creatively named fellowship Swift Wind. "Join me~, mate. There's an Orc Lord request 5 days away. With your girl, we can find him in a day or two, so it'll be eeeasy money!"

This time, Targua isn't here but there's someone else to annoy me.

"Do you want to kill him, Mr. Simon? Orc Lord is a monster of threat level six!" Dennis exclaims, astonished. He's a wealthy-looking, black-robed mage from the fellowship Thunder Storm. His normally disheveled black hair and beard look even more disheveled when he talks to Simon, making him seem "unhinged" to me.

Simon is unfazed by the mage's intense glare. "We got enough firepower to deal with even a dragon around here, we just lack a tracker like the fox lass." -he points to Alissa and smirks roguishly- "You don't even have to do anything mate, just order her around and we can even carry your ass!" Then he laughs out loud.

Dennis' eyes twitch, bewildered and annoyed, but he reigns it back almost perfectly. "Mr. Ryder isn't a greedy person like you, he has potential and I can give him the support he needs." -Then he spins on his heels and gives me his wild, intense stare- "Mr. Ryder, join me, and we can grow far together!"

Dennis seems to have heard the tale of how I used [Electric Magic] to stun the slime during its heavy attack so that I could counter immediately. He has a "thing" for electricity, which means I'm like a flame to this weirdo moth.

He wants to work close to me as a duo of sword and magic, but he has an annoyingly strong sense of duty and justice. He also wants to be the leader of the party, and by looking at his two tired-looking companions, I don't think that's a good idea.

I hold back a sigh and try to be a bit diplomatic, so I gently apologize and firmly decline, "Sorry guys, I want to work slowly on my own with Alissa. I still have my own personal reasons to not join a bigger party, but one of these reasons is that I want to take things safe and slow."

"What a shame, mate," Simon grumbles and shakes his head as he walks away.

"Be sure of this, Mr. Ryder: stay true to the right path, and we'll surely meet one day in glory," Dennis states and bows, then also leaves.

What…?

I think he's a bit crazy. I have no idea what the hell he means by that. Alissa's still looking at the request board, but I can see she's discreetly facepalming.

"Persistent…" She mutters with a hint of anger, her tail stiff and upright.

I smile wryly and turn around.

I think I'll take a day off from training, and maybe tomorrow we'll look again for work more seriously.

An attendant posts a new request and it catches my attention.

"Alissa, you know about the Moon Turtles?" I casually ask.

She follows my gaze and reads the request I'm looking at. She seems mildly intrigued by it as she recollects what she knows. "I don't know where the Moon Turtles are found around here, but I know they're an easy kill inside a dungeon," she confidently states and starts recollecting, "They can only attack by pushing out spikes from their shells, but they move so slowly it's trivial to blind them, and then they're barely a threat anymore."

I rub my chin in thought. "What about this request? Do you think it's doable?"

"That's going to depend on luck. Not every turtle has Moonlight Moss."

The request I'm interested in is a gathering one, where the requester wants an escort to where the Turtles can be found. It pays two gold coins as a reward, and since the Turtles are so easy to kill, so I assume that it's the journey there that's likely to be the problem.

The requester is a mage, so they'll help fight monsters and kill the turtles, but we'll still need to keep the area secure ourselves since collecting the moss is a very delicate process.

The kill rewards will be spread evenly among all members, and the pay is kind of high, but I guess our profits will depend on how long it's going to take to collect all this moss. Still, this is a pretty attractive request, so I better take it before someone else does.

"I think it'll be okay," Alissa assures me and gives my hand a loving squeeze. "As long as we avoid being surrounded, no enemy inside the caves can catch us if we use an Escape Bomb to retreat. It's really rare to find a monster that resists it."

Her words are a little bit reassuring, but just to be thorough, I'll research the cave monsters around this area. I haven't looked into them yet because I didn't think I'd enter a cave on the Sea of Trees.

It's the dungeoneering library that saved my life so far. The Orc Headhunter, the goblin squad intelligence pattern, the Mandrakes, the Bush Babies, the Young Ogres, the Mossy Fangpines, and the Oodogloo. All these enemies I knew their attack patterns and their weaknesses, which allowed me to create strategies that maximized my safety and guaranteed a kill.

The hunt for the Oodogloo was the prime example of that. My instant counter was possible because I knew it had a predictable heavy attack and that it was extremely vulnerable to slashing weapons. I could've assumed these things on the fly just from observing, but it's just waay easier when you know what to expect. Even the dance around the Young Ogre was only possible because I researched first.

"Excuse me, when is the scheduled negotiation for this request?" I ask the usual older brunette attendant.

On requests like these, there's a "negotiation" that will happen at a predefined time and place once the requester is informed that a hunter is interested in fulfilling the request.

"Tomorrow morning. The meeting will be here at one of our rooms," she answers with a kind smile.

So I only have one day to prepare. Also, it's possible that the requester will ask to depart immediately.

I think for just a moment before I make the decision, "Alright, send the message that we're interested in this request." Then I turn to Alissa. "I'll go to the dungeoneering guild and research the cave monsters. What about you, do you want to do something by yourself?"

"Hm…" She murmurs, and frowns gently, looking troubled.

She has been glued to my side every day since I bought her. Not that I dislike it since I'm the super clingy one, but I think that it's best for her to do what she wants once in a while. I learned how important this was from Lily.

I may have abandonment issues…

She looks at me like an abandoned puppy, and I almost immediately cave in. Cuteness is my weakness.

I pass my will saving throw and add, "If you don't ask you'll never ever leave my side ever again because I'm very clingy, but you should because it's good for your mental health to have some private time for yourself. Believe me, I have experience in this matter."

"Experience…?" She asks confusedly.

I look down and rub the back of my head. "Well it's… a matter I can't tell in detail." -I look at her and smile apologetically- "Sorry you'll just have to believe me."

I don't want to talk about Lily right now.

She pouts shyly and relents, "Okay… but I don't know what I could do by myself." Then she tilts her head, and like always, it melts my heart.

I list a few ideas, "There's the juice that I always forget to buy, there are more tea and cookies that you could search for, there's the dress that I wanted to buy for you that might be better if you just choose something for yourself, there are the bookstores where you could find a book you're interested in, there's just sightseeing or looking into the Flea Market or those crazy magic tool shops. Oh, there's the theater, and I have no idea what's being played over there, so I'd like to know more about it. Well, two things are my requests, but there's plenty that you can do."

Her ears suddenly perk up. "How about spending time in the training grounds?" She asks with an innocent smile, her tail wagging lazily.

I frown worriedly. "That's… not relaxing though, find something to relax that isn't just training," I plead.

You'll make me feel guilty from taking it easy if you're always training.

She smiles a bit smugly. "But you're going to read books to prepare, isn't that considered work?"

Ya cheeky…

I narrow my eyes reprovingly. "Just barely, and I kind of enjoy the books. There are the combat reports, the beautiful drawings, and even a few anatomy lessons."

"Ooh, is that so? Maybe I should also read them and help with the research!" She smiles and claps her hands, her tail is wagging.

Heh, this girl…

I relent and decide to just accept her submissiveness, "Then I'll at least ask you to buy cheap juice, tea, and look a bit for clothing before joining me, ok?"

"Understood, master," she smiles and nods diligently.

The juice and tea are for me, the clothing is also for me but also for her. Which middle-ages girl dislikes shopping for clothes?

I actually wanted to go to Ciel and ask about the moon…

So, I kind of don't want to go inside those caves. It's not like I have a phobia or something, I just hate spiders…

The most common enemy over there is the Giant Tarantula, so things start just peachy. It's extremely territorial, so there's no way we won't fight one inside these caves.

They block the entrances with transparent webs, and once you get caught in one, the more you move, the more it wraps. The only fast way out is to set it on fire and possibly burn yourself to escape.

The webs are very elastic and sticky, so swinging a sword is useless, but swinging a spare spear or just a long stick to get the web to wrap on it is the best way to clear the way. The progress will be slow, but it's better than nothing.

A common strategy is to have the one in full plate to just walk into them with a torch in hand. Things might get hot, but only if they walk too fast.

That's just to get near. The Tarantula itself is a heavy monster that pounces on its prey and injects them with a fast-acting venom that's difficult to dispel. The tarantula doesn't normally prey on people, so the venom isn't as effective as it is on the Tarantula's favorite food: goblins. Though a person's limb could still become paralyzed for an average of five minutes if injected with the venom.

Both goblins and Tarantula's love caves, making the latter the natural predator of the former, and once the Giant Tarantula eats enough, goblins it evolves into the Arachne race of monsters, a half-human woman, half-spider monster. There is a report of a demon race who looks like the Arachne monster, but it's only a rumor. The only reason it's mentioned in the book is to prevent adventurers from accidentally killing a fellow humanoid.

The Arachne is highly intelligent and cunning, but it's like a deranged human who can only torture, kill, and eat. It's even more frightening than the Tarantula because they toy with their prey. They are adept at sneaking and illusion magic, and they like to slowly poison the enemy from afar with things like small traps and thrown weapons, then attack when they're weakened.

I'll need [Mental Resistance] for this, and I think that I should just tell Alissa about my skill system manipulation so that I can also give her [Mental Resistance].

An enemy to look out for is the Sludge, a parent of the slime-type monsters. It's a mass of living feces, mud, and blood, it's basically the janitor of the caves. It's vulnerable to fire, and it'll harden when heated but slow down. This makes them more vulnerable to attacks, otherwise, they move too fast and can completely overwhelm a person by absorbing them inside their disgusting bodies. They're much bigger than normal slimes and even special ones like the Ooodogloo, so they're hard to kill and even harder to escape.

Another common monster is the Giant Mole. They used to keep creating and destroying the tunnel system inside the Ant Hill, but when they broke into a dungeon they stopped digging, allowing the tunnels to be mapped. They destroyed the tunnels precisely to keep humanoids from doing that, but it's unknown why they stopped

They're aggressive and move by sound, so while it's easy to deal with a lone Mole, they can call for more, which creates a chain reaction until the party is overwhelmed and wiped out. The usual strategy is to kill one and then retreat unless someone is capable of assassinating the Mole before it can call for its allies.

Through the fellowship bond, I sense that Alissa has entered the building, so I go downstairs and see that she's at the lobby, carrying an earthenware jar and a cloth bag.

When our eyes meet, she lets out a sweet smile that melts my heart.

I get closer to her and smell something sweet and fruity coming from the jar. "Oooh. Is that the juice? What is it from?" I eagerly ask, then she hands me the jar, and I store it in my "Items."

"Gorgon fruit. I didn't know what fruit you liked, so I got something that tastes mild," she diligently responds, then waits for my reaction.

Gorgon fruit is a small blue berry with a white pulp that looks like an eye. Its taste reminds me of blueberry and lychee.

I smile apologetically. "Ah yes, I actually forgot to tell you about that, my bad, but this is a good choice."

She smiles proudly then becomes bashful, and her tail wags slowly. "And… I also bought some clothes…" She suddenly pulls me closer. "There's something for the night," she whispers into my ear, making my heart tingle.

I did give her too much for a single dress, so I was wondering if she was going to bring an expensive dress or not. I guess things ended up just right for me.

I pull her bag into my "Items," then I bring her to my research station. I'm looking through multiple books, like the dungeoneering advice book, the local monsters book, the local caves book, the local dungeons book, and two other monster books. The first gives more in-depth battle reports about the monsters and their anatomies, while the second gives dismantling tips to maximize profits.

While Alissa curiously inspects the books, I continue my research.

The Moon Turtles live inside the dungeon that the moles dug into, which is called Spiral Springs. The Turtles got this name because the Moonlight Moss that grows on their backs glows when the moon is full.

They're slow but sturdy, they breathe jets of fire or water as offensive means, and they grow spikes on their flanks if attacked. The best way to kill them is to fire inside their mouth once they start breathing or to slowly chip away at their sturdy necks while being careful of the spikes. But since Alissa is such a good shot, it's going to be an eye-popping galore.

The path to get to the Moon Turtles is a pain. First, there's the wall of tarantulas; then there are the hunting grounds where the arachnes like to prey, which are large open spaces where they can freely move above intruders and away from danger; third, there's the maze of mole tunnels, where even if we pass through the shortest path, we'll certainly have to backtrack when we meet a Mole; and finally, we have to cross the dungeon to get to where the Turtles are, which is filled with Spriggans.

The last enemy we're likely to encounter are these Spriggans, devilish imps that inhabit Spiral Springs. They like to sneak about, play pranks, and set traps. They're one and a half meter tall, male-only, human-looking monsters who have green skin, thin arms, and bark that grows from a variety of spots, which serves as armor for them.

The bark that grows on their head is even cut and fashioned as if it's a hairstyle. An elven tale tells of a Spriggan haircut contest where the elves would hunt Spriggans to find the one with the most ridiculous "haircut."

They aren't the kind that immediately goes for the kill, they'll use hit and run tactics with increasing frequency the deeper we go until we reach the floor of the Turtles. The Spriggans and the Turtles hate each other, so they avoid meeting whenever possible, making the floor of the Turtles a kind of "safe area."

The Spriggans will first try to steal, then they'll annoy and torment, followed by increasingly violent raids until they finally fight to kill once the party is tired. To deal with these imps, we'll have to be always ready to retaliate immediately with deadly force. The more Spriggans we kill, the slower they increase their attacks, and the less they'll try to torment us.

They won't be that big of a problem since Alissa can easily keep them at bay, and I can just increase her [Sense Presence] skill if she's having trouble detecting them.

So, the expedition will likely take three or four days. Starting from the entrance of the Ant Hill, it'll take one day for us to cross the caves and to reach Spiral Springs. After spending the night at the entrance, it'll take half a day to go down to the floor of the turtle and another half to do our business there, we hope. The turtles themselves will be easy to kill, but we don't know how long it'll take to collect all the moss. Then, on the third day, we'll make our way back with ease since we'll have an open path to follow.

The shitty part is crossing the territory of the Moles, and it might be safer if we just leg it, otherwise, we could be backed into a corner with the Spriggans on one side, and the enraged Moles at the other.

I trace a path for us to take and copy the maps. There are multiple routes to the dungeon that we can take and even more routes from there to the floor of the Turtles, but in the end, it's just luck if the route will be good or not.

"Wooah," Alissa coos in wonder. "All these anatomy drawings are so interesting. Now I'm sure I can kill any Tarantula and Arachne that I find. I'm glad I came." She smiles and gently sways her head from side to side in excitement, making her hair and fox ears bob.

What kind of girl gets so excited when talking about killing giant spiders and a giant half-spider, half-humans? No, not even the average adventurer likes spiders.

I smile warmly and shrug as I say, "Well, I was going to share the info with you anyway, but I guess this is fine since now I don't have to explain things to you."

Just as we finish eating our dinner at the inn, Selina comes to talk to us.

"Hello, Mr. Ryder," she greets with her usual bright smile.

I motion her to the free chair, then Alissa and I both greet her back in kind.

She delicately sits down like a lady and asks with barely contained curiosity, "Father said you're going to leave on an expedition again, is that true?"

I nod and explain, "I'll meet with the employer tomorrow to negotiate the terms, but we're likely to depart immediately."

Alissa adds on, mirroring Selina's excitement, "Miss Selina, we're going to the Spiral Springs at the Ant Hill. We're going to meet arachnes and Spriggans!" She exclaims as her fox ears twitch and her tail wag. Selina and she shared a few conversations these last few days and have become quite friendly to each other.

"Oh! Bring me a Spriggan head with a nice haircut, I want one for my room," she innocently asks and lets out the sweetest smile.

Girl, just...What in the hell.

Alissa turns to me and gives me expectant eyes.

"Uh… sure, you pick the one we bring back. I'll just store it in my [Item Box]," I respond coolly, trying not to show my disgust.

I don't want to be the one to give to a girl the head of a humanoid monster as a gift.

Alissa gives a quick bow. "Thank you, master." Then she turns to the cute blonde waitress. "I'll surely bring you a great one, Selina. I heard that Arachne eyes are also red and shiny, so maybe we'd encounter a nice pair."

What is this conversation, I'm glad I already finished eating.

Selina giggles girlishly, and hides her mouth with her hand. "Thank you, Miss Alissa. I'll be waiting eagerly. I'll also prepare something sweet for you two once you come back," she kindly offers.

Alissa becomes uncomfortable when Selina calls her "Miss," but I already told her it's okay to be treated as an equal if her master is also doing it, so it only lasts for a second.

Then Alissa starts telling Selina of the preparations we're doing, and I just watch with a warm smile, consciously ignoring the contents of the gruesome conversation. They talk so innocently they seem like two friends talking about toys or action movies.

After that, we retire to our room and lay on our bed.

Alissa cuddles up with me and I wrap an arm around her, landing my hand on one of her black-tipped fox ears, then I immediately start playing with it.

"You have a good relationship with Selina," I comment amusedly.

She closes her eyes in delight and smiles cutely. "She's always so eager to hear our stories, so I like talking to her," she explains with a whispery voice then sighs as she lets her body relax on mine. "She's also a good girl, and it's exactly for people like her that someone like me is trained to fight."

I guess they just have perfectly compatible personalities. The girl who's eager to fight and protect, and the girl who's eager to hear and cherish those who do.

I pull out the bag with the clothes she bought and inspect it. There's a frilly, flowing yellow dress that goes to her knees. Its color and design fit her well, so I just need to buy her some cute boots to make it perfect.

Before I can inspect the other set of clothes, she nabs the bag and tells me to close my eyes while she changes. When she tells me to open them again, I start salivating like a hungry dog.

She's wearing the one piece from the slave trader shop, barely covering her delicious curves; a pair of semi-transparent white thigh highs, teasing me by only partially showing their alluring, athletic shape; and on her arms she's wearing long-sleeved white gloves of the same material, like the ribbon on a gift, making it seem cute and special.

It's just so exciting my brain restarts to load the "do_it.exe" program, making me freeze for a moment.

The gloves and thigh highs are simple, they have no frills or special design, but they mix well with the simple silky one piece. It's the beauty of simplicity, and it makes her look angelical. The ears and the slowly swinging tail are just the cherries on top of this foxy cake.

Like a starving wolf lunging for a slab of roasted meat, I grab her and throw her on the bed. Tonight, I won't be gentle.

This is your punishment for overly stimulating me.

Today, the wake-up kiss is twice as long, followed by her giving me a wide smile. She's still wearing her clothes as she was too tired to take them off yesterday, though at least we cleaned ourselves before collapsing

I wonder where she found this, but I'll definitely have her go there again for more. The texture is just too amazing. It feels almost like a synthetic cloth from Earth, but it seems like it's way weaker, and it might only last a few more nights considering how aggressive it made me.

"Did you enjoy last night?" I teasingly ask with a big grin.

"Yes… but my back hurts a little," she shyly admits.

I frown worriedly. "Oh, sorry, you should've told me it hurts."

She blushes and assures me, "I know, it's just that I wasn't paying attention to the pain at the time."

How can you still blush after what we did?

I cast [Regeneration] on her, and she sighs in pleasure, "Oh… that feels better. Thank you, master." -Her ears twitch cutely- "Ah… Now that I think about it, you never chant, do you?"

Ah, shit, now what do I say…? I guess it's time for another lie.

"I was taught magic in a way that I don't need to chant, but it's like I said: my magic is weaker than the usual spell precisely because I don't chant," I come up with an excuse that would make sense if we were talking about the balance of a game. "But why do people chant, specifically?"

I see no hint of suspicion as she answers, "It's to help with the mana flow. The words and the voice resonate with the mana, and it also helps the mind align with spell, improving its efficiency. Casting without chanting requires a lot of familiarity with the spell, but it's definitely less mana-efficient."

Now that I think about it, chanting is the same as singing. Perhaps it's related to harmony, or something like that, I'm not too knowledgeable about sound physics.

The Clothes of the Berserker are safely stored in my "Items," and we reluctantly get out of our bed to eat breakfast. The Clothes will be forever with me so I can always pull them out when Alissa requires a savage punishment.

Selina gives us her blessing for the expedition, making Alissa even happier, then we set off for the hunters guild. Once there, the attendant guides us to the meeting room because the requester isn't here yet, so we wait.

The room has multiple cushioned chairs surrounding a round table with a tea set, a magical heating stone, and a bunch of cookies all waiting for us. On one of the walls, there's a blackboard with plenty of chalk, and on the opposite wall, there's a large comfy sofa.

I lay down on the sofa and put my head on Alissa's lap, then she runs her fingers through my hair, and I almost fall asleep.

The door opens, and a woman walks in, so I immediately sit up.

Black hair on a ponytail with two side bangs; small oval glasses; a diamond jaw; small lips; a pointy nose; upturned eyes; and a pale white face. My first impression is that she's stunningly beautiful. Then I see spiral black horns on her temples protruding forward, and a long black tail with a dagger-like blade at the tip swinging about. She's a demon race woman.

She wears a long black robe and silk black gloves. The robe shows a few of her curves, and it has shining purple flowers embroidered all around it. I can see a pair of high-heeled black boots peeking from under it, and I believe they'd be perfect with Alissa's yellow dress.

This woman is the definition of cool and alluring, until she opens her mouth.

"Goo~d morning! I'm Roxanne, and I'm your client for today!" She happily exclaims as she clasps her hands under her chin and grins, then she tilts her head to the side and giggles girlishly.

Alissa and I share a glance. It seems we both had a similar impression of this woman.

Without waiting for an answer, Roxanne starts walking towards me with confident steps, a swaying body that tickles my heart, and a bright smile. The cool and alluring is back.

Her approach cleanses me of my dumbfounded state, so I get up and shake hands with her as I introduce myself, "I'm Wolf Ryder, and this is my companion, Alissa. Our fellowship is named Helios."

She nods energetically and responds with happiness brimming from every word, "Yes! I saw your record. Grey Berserker, Orc Headhunter, and the Oodogloo caught in a single day. That's so impressive!"

Whenever she speaks, a cool and alluring voice comes out, but that impression is quickly ruined as her tone gets increasingly high-pitched and bubbly.

I blink blankly and stumble to find words in my stunned state, "Uh… well, thank you… Should we sit and talk about the request?"

"Yes, ple~ase!"

Her hands move constantly and her body squirms whenever she speaks. While her demeanor contrasts a lot with ours, at least she's quite expressive and easy to talk to.

We move towards the table and she sits right next to me. It's so close I can perfectly smell the perfume.

It's kind of awkward to talk to her like this. She's beautiful up close, but her atmosphere burns my eyes with her bright smile.

I tell her the route I had planned and she seems satisfied. There's not really much to complain about it since whether the route is good or not is based on luck, anyway.

Then she shows me the jar she wants to fill with the moss. It's basically a small 200ml bowl. Looks small, but it's moss, it's something that doesn't have a lot of volume, to begin with, but she assures me it's doable to fill it with a dozen or so turtles.

She also tells me that in the last report from a few days ago, an adventurer saw that the Turtles had a large amount of moss growing on their backs, so there should be enough for what she needs. The moss requires special care to extract it properly, so only a few people have the knowledge to take it. Since there's no Moonlight Moss on the market yet, then that means the report is still accurate.

With that part done, I change the topic, "Now tell me about your abilities."

She shows us a grin that I'd actually describe as evil as she excitedly gives us a rundown of her abilities, "I'm a Fire and Water mage! And I have two Unique Spells that I so dearly love: the first one is [Explosion]. If you hold an enemy in place for three or so seconds, I can blow them to pieces! Ah…" -Her excitement goes away and she suddenly cringes- "But if you're going to be on the front line, I'm going to have to say I'm sorry, but you will be drenched in guts and blood…"

Hahahahaha, I can already feel my "Sanity" stat going down.

Alissa and I are speechless. Apparently, she can also imagine what [Explosion] looks like as she's as stunned as me.

Seeing that we aren't going to comment on it, Roxanne clears her throat awkwardly and continues, the happiness from before coming back in a split second, "Then the other one is [Melt Skin]! I can throw a ball of water so hot that their skin will melt! This spell doesn't do a lot of direct damage, but I haven't seen an enemy that doesn't writhe in pain when it hits, so it's perfect for support." Then she nods in satisfaction, proud of herself.

"You definitely seem like a powerful mage," Alissa comments, seemingly impressed.

Aside from the gruesome image, these are two interesting spells. Since she's a Fire and Water mage, is she using these two elements combined to create a steam explosion? That'd be actually impressive.

I haven't tried manipulating two spells at the same time, but it seems taxing. I understand that with high [Mana Control], you can do plenty of crazy things, but to do it with two different magic schools at the same time seems a level above the rest.

Roxanne giggles softly and continues, "But anyway, my second ability is [Alchemy] and [Potion Making]. Since the caves are filled with enemies that use poison or venom, I can supply us with antidotes and anti-venom. I can even make it on-site with the body of those Tarantulas."

Yeah, she's special. Aside from the obnoxiously high level of happiness, she seems very useful. It's not going to be an escort job, it's gonna be a temporary fellowship kind of job.

We discuss battle tactics for a bit, with Alissa taking the lead since she seems the most experienced in fighting alongside others.

Roxanne easily agrees with everything, bringing us to the last question of this meeting. "Then, do you want to leave right now?" I ask.

She nods vigorously. "Ah, yes! Just let me gather a few last things and close down my house, then I'll meet you at the east gate. Is that all?"

I smile gracefully. "Yes, that's all."

I haven't tried to bargain too hard on the pay. I don't think I can improve the situation since the reward is already high, and the spoils will be split fairly since she's going to be an active fighter. I'm also a terrible negotiator, to be honest. I have no heart for making a deal that isn't fair or that gives me the most benefits.

Roxanne bows and leaves, then I turn to Alissa.

"Alissa, there's something I have to tell you. It's going to be another secret." It's actually going to be another lie.

Let's see how this lie goes, I'll gauge her reactions from this.

She looks at me curiously and asks, "Oh, what is it, master?" She tilts her head cutely.

I cringe for a moment before I steel my heart and start, "Well, on my homeland, there's a tale. It says that there's a special person who's born every few generations or so. This person has the ability to read the souls of people and guide them so they may fulfill their desires."

"Hmm..." Alissa hums in thought and narrows her eyes suspiciously.

Did she get where I'm going?

I grab her hand and lie earnestly, "You see… I think I'm one of those people, someone who's called a 'Guider.'"

"But what do you mean by 'guide them to fulfill their desires'?" She asks skeptically.

I think for a moment and decide to confess, "Well, you know that skill you got, the [Enhanced Stamina]? I gave it to you. I can see you have some sort of 'unlearned skill points,' which I can turn into actual skills and then back to 'unlearned skills' again at will."

Alissa opens her eyes wide and lets her mouth hanging in surprise. Oof, that's a little bit off from the reaction that I wanted, maybe I should have left it vaguer.

"I can't give or take any skill, just the ones that belong to these 'unlearned skill points.' Their number increases with levels and decreases with each skill you actually 'learn,' but I can only take away skills that I gave," I add hurriedly.

Her mouth moves wordlessly for a few seconds, then she suddenly grabs my hand and stares at my eyes with wonder as her tail wags wildly. "Th-th-that's amazing, master! I-imagine the things we can do with this!" She shouts excitedly.

Shit… It's nice that you accepted it so easily, but you're a little too excited about it.

"I-I can only do it to you though, so I think it only works with people close to me," I hurriedly add again, already regretting telling her anything.

She stops and thinks for a second then resumes her wide smile. "Still, that's a powerful ability. You really are blessed!"

I sigh and mumble, "Perhaps…"

I don't feel that blessed though, more like cursed and then sent a consolation prize.

I decide to reveal another secret and just be done with it, "My magic works the same way, I can move my own potential into different magic types."

"Ooh, I understand," she nods as she coos in wonder.

I smile wryly at her cute reactions. "So, you have six unused points that I can assign to skills. If I'm riding you, I'll put them into [Enhanced Stamina], but you'll need to tell me where to put them for when we're in combat. Though, for this expedition, I'll put them in [Mental Resistance] so we can resist the illusions of the Arachne."

She nods again. "Yes yes, I concur. But for the average battle, I think you can put it all on [Bow Use] since there's no other skill that'll benefit me as much. I need to focus on my strong points… Ah, can you put them into [Fox Transformation]?"

I check quickly, but I don't find it on the list. "No, I don't know why. Maybe because it's specific to your race." I shrug.

She puckers her lips in thought. "Hmm… that's a shame. At higher levels, I could use the Transformation to fight in melee or to easily run away. I also think that if I increase it just one or two levels, I might be able to absorb my weapons inside myself, too, and that would be quite useful."

I feel a little uncomfortable putting you into melee range. Wait, is this the same feeling you get when I'm fighting in melee? I think I understand you a little better now.

I reassign her extra points and she grins when she notices it, then I wrap things up, "Well then, I think things will be fine the way they are for now, but keep in mind your extra points because they're a trump card for you."

"Understood, master," she responds diligently.

I smile gently at her. "Then let us be off."

I'm glad she accepted and understood things so easily. I guess she trusts me even though I'm such a bad liar. Maybe because this world is so full of unknown and crazy things, me being just another unknown is okay to her.

We cross the town and reach the east gate. It's closer to the Noble's Quarters, so the landscape is much more beautiful, and the buildings are way less crooked. It kind of loses the charm of the city, though. The clashing architecture was growing on me, and I miss the small, cozy, and rustic atmosphere of the inn.

We get in line and wait for our turn at customs for a good then minutes, then we suddenly hear the characteristic sound of heels hitting the floor rapidly approaching. It's the cool and alluring Roxanne.

She's wielding a simple black metal staff with a flat ring on the top, and a perfectly spherical gem in the middle of the ring, which slowly pulsates as it changes it's color from blue to red. She's also wearing a small backpack, and I can see multiple unknown plants and monster parts dangling from it.

Once she sees us, she waves vigorously by swinging her arm high in the sky.

"OOI! RYDER!" She shouts excitedly.

Wh-what are you doing? I already saw you, just come here quietly.

Alissa and I freeze on the spot, then Roxanne jogs a short distance and stops before us.

She immediately unslings her backpack and starts rummaging through it. "Alright, then! Here are six antidotes and four anti-venom." She bubbles, then she hands us multiple small flasks in quick succession. The anti-venom are in the standard flat metal flasks for combat use. "Keep the anti-venom on a chest pocket because you won't have time to use it if you store it in your [Item Box]. Also, the anti-venom is magically enhanced, so it works instantly. And here are two of my own HP and MP potions. They're very valuable, so they're only for emergencies."

Alissa and I silently receive the flasks, then we reorganize our inventories. After that, we wait until it's our turn for customs.

When the guard sees that I have nothing in my [Item Box] he gives me a curious glance but makes no comment on it. Alissa has things in her [Item Box], so even if it's just me and her, we only look like a duo of adventurers less prepared than usual. Now with Roxanne carrying a backpack, he might have thought she's the servant carrying my things, or something like that.

Once we get out of town, the landscape turns into the exact same as the west side: farms on one side, and the gigantic trees of the Sea on the other side of the road. The only exception is that, on the horizon, I can see a brown mountain peeking from above a small forest far away. That's the Ant Hill.

The Ant Hill is a failed [Meteor] spell that didn't disappear, for some reason. This spell creates a huge flaming rock that falls from the sky, which is supposed to blow up when it hits something, but this one didn't, and it just got embedded in the ground. Eventually, nature grew around it, then the Giant Moles started making a cave system inside because the environmental mana is quite high and they love that shit.

It's called "Ant Hill" because when attacked, the Moles would rush out like hundreds of ants. Then, the lord of Rabanara at the time got tired of it and properly subjugated the Hill, so now it's maintained as if it's a dungeon, which means that there are a lot of Moles inside, but it isn't an infestation that endangers passersby or even that particularly dangerous to the average adventurer.

When we get a good distance away from the wagons trying to enter the town, Roxanne turns to us and strikes a pose.

"Alright! So it's time to test this!" She exclaims as she messes with the system, which we can't see.

She suddenly touches the ground with her finger, and a large carpet appears with a *poof*. It's dark red with lots of yellow geometric patterns, and it has a large, round, green stone near the edge with what seems to be a wooden bike handle coming out of the top.

"A flying carpet?" I let out a question reflexively.

She smiles proudly. "Mhmm. It's made with the new super-fast flying stone, and I'm dying to test it out! It can certainly carry three people, but it'll be slower than its max speed."

How rich are you? This request already pays a lot, and now you just pull out the expensive new hot thing everyone is talking about so casually.

Though I'm actually kind of concerned about the safety of this thing. Where are the seat belts…? I've now realized that Aladdin was an incredibly irresponsible guy.

I smile wryly and try to find an excuse, "Erm… How about this: I'll just ride Alissa since she can transform into a large fox. This way it'll be faster, right?"

Alissa immediately agrees with me as she eyes the carpet suspiciously, "Yes, master. My fox form is really fast, and it'll be more secure for all of us this way."

Is she concerned for my safety or did this carpet hurt her pride as a runner?

Roxanne adjusts her glasses and raises her eyebrow in surprise. "Oh, you can ride her? Well, that's fine by me since it's faster," she answers casually and jumps on the floating carpet. It looks as if it's as stiff as a stone floor. She grabs the handle and starts floating up as she shouts, "Then let's goo! Let's race!"

"Who~a, hold on, it might be dangerous," I try to calm her down.

Alissa's hand lands heavily on my shoulder. "No, Master, it's perfectly safe. It will be fine," she assures me, though I feel a little bit of aggressiveness in her tone. So, it really is a matter of pride.

I shrug and give up, then Alissa turns into a fox.

I grab her equipment and mount her, then I breathe in.

"Go," I breathe.

And we go. We go fast.

"I'm sorry, master. I got carried away," Alissa apologizes with a heartbreakingly sad tone as she looks down at me.

Indeed, you got carried away, but I'm not really mad since you won. Well, I can't say anything right now, I need to hold in my breakfast.

"It's… fine…" I manage to let out a weak groan.

It takes me a few minutes, but eventually, my stomach stops churning. I get up from the grass and see Roxanne trying to stifle a laugh. I try to be mad at her but she's such a happy-go-lucky woman I just can't.

"I'm fine now, let's keep moving," I order.

The trip that should have taken one or two hours was done in less than half an hour. The cost was my dignity as I had to spend a few minutes sprawled on the floor to hold myself back from puking.

When Alissa goes all out, the shaking of her body rises to unbearable levels, which shows how considerate she is of my well-being, and I'm really thankful for that.

The scenery has changed a little. We're on a slope at the border of a normal forest, not the Sea of Trees. The road we were on deviates south a bit to go around the Ant Hill, so we've just abandoned it. The normal-sized trees with a normal-sized canopy, the normal atmosphere, and the faint humidity all reminds me of the parks I went to on Earth. I'm not a nature guy, but it's actually pleasant here.

The Sea of Trees is a fantastical and often beautiful forest, but it's very oppressive and filled with memories of battle. I think soon this forest will also have bad memories, but at least I'll enjoy it while it lasts.

I put my skills like this:

Wolf Ryder Skill Report

Physical

Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level
Sword Use | 6+2 | Dodge | 2+4 | Parry | 1+5
Block | 2+6 | Shield Bash | 0+1 | Mental Resistance | 8+0

Magical

Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level
Sense Mana | 0+2 | Mana Control | 0+3 | Mana Recovery | 3+0
Mana Efficiency | 2+0 | Reduced Mana Cost | 2+0 | Fire Magic | 4+0
Light Magic | 5+0 | Nature Magic | 5+0 | Blessing Magic | 5+0

Miscellaneous

Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level
Andraste Language | 10+0 | Dismantling | 0+1
OBS: Level means (free point)+(trained point)

I cast [Wind Armor] on all of us and [Sharp Blades] on my sword.

"Ooh, [Blessing Magic]. I knew you were a magic swordsman, but this is really good," Roxanne comments while inspecting her forearm for the faint magical breeze that the spell produces occasionally.

I smile gently at her, then I meditate to refill my mana.

Once I get up, I remember something. "Ah, Miss Roxanne, can we make a temporary fellowship? It'll be good for us to share Experience."

"Sure thing!" She responds cheerily.

I grab her delicate, pale hand and savor its softness, but Alissa's feels better.

Then we start moving.

The trees around here seem to grow in any direction they see fit, and their trunks are so thin and long that multiple trees huddle together in a sort of oversized bush. There's also too many actual bushes and too much tall grass, making traversal through here very annoying.

I pull out a spare short sword and use it to cut a path forward. It's fortunate my sword skill helps in cutting grass.

The cave entrance is not far away, and in a few dozen minutes, we're already touching the brown rock of the failed meteor, but just before we find the entrance, goblins get in our way. Alissa detects a group of three barely dressed goblins with crude wooden spears appear.

"Target practice," I whisper with an evil smile.

Alissa lets arrows fly, and two are already dead before the third even notices.

He actually gets scared and freezes on the spot at the sudden death of his companions, allowing Alissa to fire a perfect arrow towards his forehead.

"I can feel the difference," Alissa to me as she plays with her bow.

I put the six extra points she had on [Bow Use] just for this battle, so I'll put them back on [Mental Resistance] when we reach the cave.

"Impressive," Roxanne praises as we walk past the dead goblins.

Alissa looks away so I can't see her reaction, but I can still see her that tail swaying for a second.

Just a few more minutes, and we reach the entrance to the cave: a round, ten meters wide hole. Its size is rather impressive considering the moles are normally only one meter tall. Perhaps they dug it so wide so they could flood out of their caves more easily.

I pull out the spear with a torch tied at the blade. It's something we prepared beforehand.

Alissa lights the torch, and we start moving forward while I lazily wave the spear ahead of us.

Not even five meters inside the cave, a fire suddenly spreads through multiple lines in the air. We've hit the first transparent web.

It burns for a few seconds before fizzling out, then we keep moving.

As the natural light from the sun is left behind, we all cast [Spirit Light]. I imagine a white light, and this time it comes out just as I wished instead of the usual ghostly light blue.

Our progress in these tunnels is slow. Once in a while, Roxanne or I cast a small [Fireball], but the webs have quite a lot of space between them, so sometimes the spell just hits nothing.

It can barely be called a "net" or "web," though. It's made to imperceptibly cling to the body, adding layers upon layers the further the prey walks in, and when they notice the web, they're already deep inside the cave and partially wrapped.

The cave is an unending boring brown maze. The tunnels twisting and turning, they go up, down, and over. It's a chaotic mess without sense or rhyme. Maybe someone could make a random number generator just by analyzing this cave system.

The map is rather nightmarish to understand without 3D visualization. The tunnels end up in rooms that are either square or round, and there's no logic for their shape or location. The cave was just randomly dug in in random directions and rooms were randomly added in just to randomize the randomness further.

After half an hour of progress, Alissa suddenly stops me.

"Something is coming," she whispers sternly.

It must be a Tarantula.

I drop the spear and draw my sword, then I feel Roxanne start gathering mana behind me. This [Sense Mana] skill is quite interesting.

I start to hear the sound of something scurrying about, and the many nimble, small feet are coming directly towards us.

An arrow and a fireball fly ahead.

"HISHAAAA!" Then a hiss comes back.

Hard to believe a spider can make a sound like that.

I see something reflect ahead, then, a few moments later, a many-legged thing enters our light, and it comes flying towards me.

I steel myself and put my shield up, then I feel Roxanne release her spell.

Two things hit the shield and my view is covered by eight furry legs twitching wildly. I push back and immediately slash as a counter.

My sword breaks something hard, then cuts through something fleshy like butter, and I feel something wet and hot fall on me.

The Giant Tarantula is split into two, and I'm bathed in its inner fluids. It's a mix of some transparent, sticky substance with red blood. It's disgusting, disgusting, disgusting, disgusting, disgusting, disgusting, disgus-...

"[Clean]."

Oh, this feels nice…

It didn't have enough time to soak into my clothes, so everything just disappears in the blink of an eye. I'm better now.

"Thanks, Alissa…" I mumble with a weak voice, and she pats my shoulder in consolation.

"Are you okay now, master?" She asks concernedly.

I force a smile. "Yeah… I just hate spiders…"

"I'm sorry, Mr. Ryder, I understand your situation," Roxanne sympathizes.

You don't really need to apologize but it made me feel a little better, so it's okay.

This Tarantula is just half a meter tall, and it looks to be a young one, which means it's dumber. That's why it didn't even stop the charge even after receiving an arrow and a [Fireball] on its face.

I cut a fang as proof of extermination and pick up the flaming spear, then we move on.

"There's two waiting on the fork," Alissa cautions me.

Not a good idea to continue. Tarantulas are very nimble, so we have to deal with one at a time.

A simple scenario, so I come up with a simple plan, "We'll lure them out. Miss Roxanne, use [Torrent] on the one on the right and make sure you don't miss. I won't be able to keep both away if you do."

"Yes, sir! Don't worry, I have perfect aim with my magic," she confidently states and puts a closed fist over her heart. Considering she uses glasses, I'm nowhere near as confident as she is.

We move forward a little bit so we can see the fork ahead. The tunnel opens into a square room with two other tunnels at the end of it, so the spiders must be just around the corner if we can't see them.

Do they sleep? Do they hibernate or something? The book didn't talk about these things. I'll have to make noise so they understand we know they are hiding, then they'll either retreat or charge depending on how smart they are.

I throw a [Fireball] to clear any remaining webs nearby, and we move to around twenty meters from the fork, then I ask Alissa to get near the wall and a few arrows the furthest she can into the corner of the room ahead.

Three arrows hit the stone ground and break near where one spider should be.

We wait a few seconds, but nobody hears anything.

"Nothing?" I whisper to Alissa.

"Nothing," she responds in the same tone.

I throw a [Fireball] where the arrows hit and we wait… but again, nothing.

I grit my teeth in anger. "Well… DAMN STUPID SPIDERS COME OUT YOU LITTLE SHITS!" I let out an outburst.

"Oh…! That did it!" Alissa exclaims and nocks an arrow.

Seriously? Whatever…

I pull up my shield and prepare.

Two, one-meter tall spiders come out of the fork and dash towards us with frightening speed. One charges towards me, and the other towards Roxanne.

Once they're a few meters away, Roxanne fires her magic.

The spider is hit in the face with a thick jet of water that pushes it all the way down the corridor until it crashes onto the wall of the fork ahead.

That was actually a really strong spell; I'll be surprised if it's unscathed. I little more power and it would've been an instant kill.

The other spider jumps towards me, and I remain immobile, just waiting for it to come.

An arrow whistles past my right ear just as the spider readies its fangs, and an arrow sinks into its mouth.

It's mid-flight and can't stop, but it starts writhing in pain, completely giving up on the attack.

The back of the arrow hits my shield and goes deeper into the spider but doesn't kill it, then its legs hit me and it pushes itself away from me.

I try to counter with a thrust, but it's too fast and my sword hits nothing. That's okay, though, as it's part of the plan.

I cast [Constricting Vines] at the spider far away who's writhing about on the floor. It's honestly the first time I have a good opportunity to use it because it's kind of hard to time it right. Green vines burst from the ground and wrap themselves around every limb of the Tarantula, keeping it secure to the floor.

This spell can be very useful, but it takes time to get a grip on the target, so most intelligent monsters are either strong enough to ignore the vines, like the Orc Headhunter or the Young Ogres, or it's smart enough to dodge it, leaving few situations where it's worthy of trying to combo a stun with this spell.

The remaining spider backs off as it realizes I'm too hard to kill and tries to circle around me to jump on Alissa.

Like hell I'm going to let you do that.

I jump forward and slash towards it, forcing it to retreat as it hisses at me, then another arrow pierces its face, taking out one of its many eyes.

"HIIIIII," it lets out a high-pitched scream in frustration.

I retreat back to the middle of the tunnel, and now I wait.

Roxanne releases a [Fireball] at the Tarantula, but the spell is too slow, so the spider jumps backward and dodges it. When it falls, it meets another arrow that pierces its mouth again.

Shit Alissa, that was good. I didn't even tell you to combo with the [Fireball].

I cast my own [Fireball] along with Roxanne's. The spider dodges one, but its leg gets burnt by the other, then another arrow hits it, though this time it hit the hard exoskeleton, so it only penetrates shallowly.

"SHAAA!" It screams and charges forward. Now it's angry and making a suicide charge, so I start preparing a [Fireball] in response.

I take the charge head-on, and I feel its two fangs hit the shield with power. It hurts my shoulder, but I stand my ground, then I open my shield and point the [Fireball] directly at its face. It has no way of dodging point-blank.

It lets out a disgusting high-pitched scream as it pushes itself away from me and rolls backward on the floor.

I feel the vines are dissipating, so we have to finish this now.

The burned spider stands up, but it's blind and writhing in pain, making it completely defenseless. Another arrow hits its mouth, and it starts to get dizzy, losing its balance.

I jump forward with a thrust, and my sword hits its head. I crush the exoskeleton and the blade enters the flesh, sinking deep into its brain, then it immediately goes limp. It's dead.

In the distance, the other spider comes charging. Two of its right legs seem to be broken, so it's lacking in balance and its charge is slow.

Alissa immediately fires two fast arrows, and it isn't even capable of dodging, so one penetrates an eye while the other enters the mouth. Meanwhile, Roxanne is charging another strong spell.

Before the girls can attack again, the Tarantula reaches me and leaps forward.

I receive its attack with my shield, but it's weaker than the previous spider. I easily push it back, and Roxanne lets out her spell.

She swings her arm vigorously as a fire whip flares in her hand, and its tip whistles past me in the blink of an eye like an arrow.

The fire whip wraps around the body of the spider, and the sizzling sound of burning reaches our ears as the spider desperately struggles to free itself from it.

I take the opportunity and slash at its body. I miss the head, but I sever three legs on the right at the base, and now it can barely muster the strength to resist anymore.

I slash again and the last leg on the right side is gone, so it turns upside-down and struggles to right itself.

I pierce the soft head from below, then it goes limp and dies.

I sigh and start winding down, then Roxanne approaches and inspects her work as she casually comments, "That was interesting. I rarely have the opportunity to use [Fire Whip], but it's always extremely useful when the opportunity for it arrives. It's like your [Constricting Vines]: it needs to a distraction to make it work, otherwise, they can dodge it, and these Tarantulas aren't very strong, so I can hold them all by myself."

"I prefer that you save your mana for a strong [Torrent], but let's try [Fire Wall] next. I really want to see it suicide jump into that spell," I confess with a sadistic tone.

Screw these spiders.

[Constricting Vines] is good as a follow up for a stunned Tarantula, but we lack strong openers. [Fireball] is too slow, while [Fire Arrow] doesn't do much damage and Roxanne needs Alissa-level accuracy to be effective with it.

"Perhaps [Water Blade] could work?" Roxanne suggests.

I nod in agreement and add, "Let's try it after [Fire Wall]."

As we get near the fork, I notice the symbols on each of the tunnels. It's the system explorers developed so someone could locate themselves inside this maze of featureless tunnels. Each fork has a unique symbol, so if we get lost, we can just move to the next fork and then search for the symbol on our map.

After a while, we reach another fork, a circular room with six exit tunnels.

"Wait, master," Alissa stops me.

"What is it?"

She scans the tunnels ahead, her eyes narrowed in suspicion. "There's a strong smell of spiders around here, but they're too far for my [Sense Presence], so let me investigate a little."

"Sure," I whisper.

She stops before each tunnel and sniffs the air with cute movements that really do remind me of a fox, making me get so distracted I almost drop my guard.

"The smell is stronger on these tunnels and lower on these others," she reports and points as she points at the respective tunnels.

"Let's take a detour and go through that one, then. Less spiders on the way," I order.

As we walk towards the tunnel, I notice something odd at the entrance. The tunnels are all half-circles and the floor is normally rough and slightly curved, but on this tunnel, the ground is completely level for about ten meters, then it becomes round again.

My spidey senses are tingling.

"What's wrong?" Roxanne when we both suddenly stop.

"The ground is suspicious," Alissa answers, reliable as ever.

"Indeed," I agree.

I crouch in front of the tunnel and hit it with my hand, and it makes a hollow sound.

I pull out a small broom from my "Items" and bush the dust away, revealing right in the middle of the tunnel a small channel. The floor is actually two slabs covering a hole almost perfectly made to look seamless.

"Oh, wait, the ground changed," Roxanne comments confusedly.

I turn around and frown at her. "What do you mean? All I did was dust it a little."

"Perhaps it was an illusion?" Alissa suggests.

I snap my finger and exclaim, "Oh! An Arachne trap."

"But it isn't their territory yet," Roxanne replies.

I shrug and point out, "They're known to be cunning."

Roxanne crosses her arms and thinks. "This tunnel is the one with the faintest smell of spiders? Perhaps the smell itself is a trap."

Goddamn mind games.

I tap my temple in thought as I consider, "We have a few options here: trigger the trap then find a way to cross it, though that could alert the monsters that we are here; try not to trigger the trap and cross, but I don't really know how to do that; go towards the next tunnel with the faintest smell, but the smell might also be a trap; or go to our original tunnel with the strongest smell of spider. Any opinions?"

"Well, aren't you the leader? Do you really need our opinion?" Roxanne asks with a teasing tone as she smirks.

I categorically state with a snobbish tone, "I take it upon myself to make the decision, but I want to hear the opinions of both of you before I act." Then I smirk at her.

She smiles and coos, "Ohh, I like that."

Alissa clears her throat and follows up in the same tone as me while smiling faintly, "Well then, Master, I prefer to risk fighting the spiders on our original path, that's where our strength lies."

Roxanne nods repeatedly. "I also prefer that. I really don't like arachnes and I don't wanna play their games. I prefer when my enemies charge into my spells," she speaks her mind.

I nod and grunt in acknowledgment. "Then it's unanimous, let's go," I order.

We enter our original tunnel and walk for ten, silent minutes before Alissa notices something.

"There's something ahead; a single monster," she reports.

"Okay, I'll try to attract it," I reply and lower the flaming spear, then I release a [Fireball] forward.

No response…

So annoying.

"COME HERE YA GOBLINHEAD!" I suddenly shout.

"It's coming," Alissa warns.

Do they really understand our language?

A single Giant Tarantula appears. This is going to be easy.

The Tarantula charges forward madly. It receives an arrow on one of its eyes and a [Fireball] on one of its fangs before it even reaches me.

The Tarantula loses some of its momentum, weakening the charge, and only a single fang hits my shield. The attack is solid but weak enough that it's bearable, and I even manage to cut a leg during the counter.

"SHAAA," It shouts angrily.

As it retreats a short distance, an arrow pokes another eye, then it decides that Alissa is the bigger threat and tries to go around me, but I cut another leg and it backs away.

With one way closed, it tries to charge past me towards Roxanne.

"[Fire Wall]!"

And the spider jumps through the wall without hesitation.

"HIIIIII!"

"Oh shit," I mutter.

Somehow, the spider has turned into a bonfire.

That's dangerous.

"Back off!" I yell to Roxanne.

The spider almost tramples me as it hisses and thrashes about from the pain, and I have to bash my shield onto it to keep it away.

Roxanne releases a [Torrent] and it flies away as it's partially extinguished.

The spell was hastily cast, so it isn't as too strong as the previous time. Add that to the monster's tenacity, and the spider manages to quickly get up again. This time, it charges directly at me while half of its body is still burning.

"Try the blade," I order Roxanne, and I start to feel a lot of mana gathering behind me.

Rage fuels the Tarantula's charge, allowing it to reach a higher speed, and even after losing another eye to Alissa it still doesn't slow down.

I just defend from its attack, focusing on keeping my feet on the ground, then I slashing to force it back, but it charges again immediately.

"[Water Blade]!"

An incredibly thin blade of water shoots towards the face of the spider. In it's rage, the Tarantula doesn't even notice the spell and takes the hit head-on.

The blade disappears inside its face, then its body goes limp, and it rolls on the floor. It's dead.

Through an imperceptible small slit, blood pours out of its exoskeleton, and a few twinkles of moisture in the air show where the blade passed through.

"Wow, that spell is deadly," I remark in amazement.

"I think we were just lucky because it was completely enraged, so it didn't even try to dodge," Roxanne rebuts with a face full of skepticism.

I rub my chin in thought, the rough texture of my gloves making this act not very pleasant. "Hmm… then let's try one more time. At least we know it pierces without a problem."

Alissa suddenly voices her doubt, "Master, one thing: are my arrows helpful? I keep hitting their eyes, but I'm not sure if that's a very effective target."

"Yes, they are. The ones in the mouth make them hesitate when they charge. The ones in the eyes make them slower to react, it's subtle but I can notice the difference."

"Oh, I see…" She hums, a little content, but I can't see her tail right now.

Then I turn to the half-burnt corpse that smells rather awful. "But now I want to know why it burned so much like this. Was its hair so flammable?"

Alissa tilts her head cutely and asks, "Flammable?"

I hold myself from gushing and nod. "Yeah, it means something that catches fire easily."

"We'll have to examine the corpse," Roxanne points out.

I shudder. I don't want to touch the spider.

"Any volunteers?" I ask with a guilty smile.

"I'll do it," Alissa immediately responds without hesitation.

No, you're too pure. I have to do it myself…

"But this corpse is all charred, let's find another one," Roxanne suggests, looking like she's pitying her a bit, and I agree with her.

We walk for a short while and find another corpse. Five corpses, actually.

"What is this?" I blurt out, bewildered

The Giant Tarantula corpses are brutalized. Their legs are bent and broken, their sternum is open and dripping, their abdomen is crushed, and their fangs have been ripped and scattered about. They're all hanging in the air by thick white webs like some sick modern art display.

Roxanne wrinkles her nose in disgust and questions, "Ugh… what would do something like this?"

"Arachnes?" Alissa suggests.

I snap my fingers and exclaim, "Yes! That's it. It's part of the trap to make us not come here. Arachnes are very violent and prey upon tarantulas occasionally, so maybe this is their handiwork."

"Can we never fight an Arachne, please? This is way too brutal for me," Roxanne pleads, her pale face even paler from disgust.

I agree wholeheartedly, "Yeah, I'll try to steer us away from them. Now, let's continue for a short while and then rest a little."

We find a nice large room a good distance away from the massacre and sit down for some tea.

I bring out the small broom from before and clean the dust around us, then I bring out a large picnic blanket. With multiple *poofs* I pull out sandwiches and a few berries Alissa brought along with the juice. She pulls out a tea seat, the cheap cookies, and starts warming the teapot with a small [Fireball] she holds at the tip of her finger.

"This is adorable," Roxanne comments with a smile.

"Master gets grumpy when there's no tea," Alissa shyly teases.

It's kind of true, though.

Alissa seems to love making tea for me, and she took it upon herself to always carry the tea set with her. I like coffee with chocolate more, but I'll take what I can get.

Roxanne follows up with the teasing, "If you told me that you were a noble, I wouldn't be surprised."

I simply shrug. I know I can be a bit snobbish sometimes.

Roxanne pulls out a small red crystal and offers it to Alissa, "Here, use this magic stone."

"Oh, thank you, Miss Roxanne, this is more efficient," Alissa gracefully accepts.

Then we share our food with Roxanne. She only had a simple sandwich, so she enjoys our cookies quite a lot.

She finishes her tea and exhales loudly, "Ah~! This is nice…"

My heart warms up as it feels quite nice to share a nice meal with someone. "It can get even better if I find something high-quality though," I comment.

She raises her eyebrows and smirks. "Oh? Now I'm interested."

I look at my cup as I articulate, "Well, first I need to find it. I don't know where, but I know it exists. I've tasted it once, and I'll keep looking until I find it again."

I still remember the tea and cookies at the Golden Necklace, those were as good as the ones on Earth.

"Please share with me when you find it, then." And she lets out a cut giggle.

The sandwiches are our lunch. Though we don't know the time since we're underground, we can still follow our stomachs.

We move on and meet another lone spider.

"[Water Blade] this time," I order.

We keep walking until Alissa tells us it's moving, then we get ready for battle.

It comes straight at me like the previous fights and loses an eye to Alissa before it even reaches me. Meanwhile, Roxanne gathers her mana.

I receive the charge with practiced ease, then I counter and cut the tip of a leg. Since I didn't cast [Fireball], the spider is less cautious, and it immediately starts another charge, but Roxanne releases her spell before it hits me again.

The Tarantula immediately stops in its tracks once it senses the spell flying, then it nearly falls over as its legs scramble, desperately trying to dodge, but the spell still hits.

The blade opens its thorax and blood splashes all over the floor, but it isn't dead yet.

This is so annoying; just die, already!

The spider stumbles, struggling to maintain itself upright, and Alissa takes the chance to pop two other eyes.

The Tarantula switches to the defensive and becomes cautious, so I charge forward and slash. It doesn't react in time, and I manage to sever a fang.

I feel Roxanne gather her mana again, so I just threaten the spider and then back off. Roxanne releases another [Water Blade], and the Tarantula's reduced vision causes it to fail to dodge in time.

The spell enters its head and its body instantly goes limp. It's dead.

I clean my sword with a piece of cloth, then I walk to the Tarantula to inspect it. "Well, I guess [Water Blade] really is the most effective way to kill these things," I note.

"[Fireball] makes them wary, so they slow down their attack, but [Water Blade] does the most damage," Roxanne elaborates further.

Without hesitation, Alissa walks to the spider's body and touches it.

I squeak in surprise and pity, "Ah! You didn't have to do this."

Alissa shakes her head energetically. "I don't mind it, Master. I told you before to depend on me."

Does she mean what she told me after we killed the Young Ogre? Is this her way of taking care of my mental well being? Well, I'm just being a pussy, so I don't think she really needed to do this, but I don't have the willpower to stop her now.

She turns to the Tarantula again, then pokes and prods it as she inspects it. "Hmm… the hair is stiff and rough, and it seems oily and damp, but it doesn't seem to be something 'flammable.' What's this…? It's sticky…" -She raises her head and shows me her hand as her eyebrows rise high in surprise- "Is this the transparent web?"

I get closer to her and grab her cute hand. I can't see very well, so I grab the [Spirit Light] floating above my head and bring it closer to her hand.

After taking a very close look, I notice a slight shine. It's the ultra-thin and nearly transparent web of the Tarantulas that we have been burning up until now.

"Hmm… why is there a web on its body?" I wonder.

Alissa turns to the Tarantula again and starts to feel its body. "It's not everywhere; only some parts of it are sticky like this," she notes.

Roxanne scratches her horn in thought as she wonders, "Why did nobody know about this? It's kind of hard to believe that nobody used [Fire Wall] to stop their charge."

"Yeah, that's very odd," I mumble.

Nobody has anything more to contribute, so reach an impasse in our reasoning.

I shake my head dismissively and suggest, "Let's just go. We can still inspect more spider bodies and look for anything different."

"Let me burn this web on my hand first," Alissa says and starts to chant a [Fireball].

I forgot the web is super sticky. "Hold on," I stop her and grab her hand.

With subtle movements, I quickly remove her [Mental Resistance] and put it all on [Pain Resistance].

"It's all good," I whisper.

Alissa's ears twitch, then she turns to me and smiles. It seems she noticed what I did. And Roxanne just watches us with a confused face.

Alissa casts [Fireball], creating a flame above her finger, and moves it closer to her sticky hand until the web catches fire.

It burns for a few seconds, then I approach her and cast [Regeneration] as I return her [Mental Resistance].

Once she's fully healed, I give her hand a kiss, and she returns a sweet smile, then we move on.

We meet five spiders in succession, but only two had the web on their bodies. This time, I give Alissa a small piece of cloth for her to check the bodies.

"Could it be a difference between the sexes?" I propose.

Alissa tilts her head cutely. "I don't understand, Master."

I adjust my non-existent glasses and start the lecture, "The male spider coats his body in the web because it's sticky, then uses the stickiness to help hold down the female for mating. I know there are quite a lot of animal species that basically rape their partner during mating, so they use whatever they can to help tie up their mate."

Roxanne hums in wonder, "Hmm, that's interesting, but I don't know much about animals… are you perhaps a scholar?"

Alissa nods earnestly, then shares some of her knowledge, "I also don't know much about this, Master. Though it's known that the spiders reproduce, adventurer knowledge doesn't go much further than that since it doesn't help in killing them faster." Then she smiles wryly.

I just casually respond, "I'm not a scholar, just a curious person who reads a lot of books."

"To me, that's a scholar," Roxanne retorts with a cheeky grin.

I shrug, then we move again.

Alissa suddenly tells us to stop and reports, "This one is bigger than normal."

"Arachne?" I question.

"I don't know, I don't recognize the signature." She looks ahead with a serious look on her face and her tail hanging low. Her ears twitch from side-to-side, trying to catch any small sound, but she hears nothing.

The [Sense Presence] skill is like a radar. It tells the distance, size, and direction with a certain amount of precision depending on the level of the skill. Each type of living being has a "signature," so it's possible to differentiate the types of monsters by their signatures, but if the tracker hasn't sensed a certain signature before, then it's nearly impossible to know what it is.

I start giving out orders, "Okay, standard formation. No need to worry too much because it's either a bigger spider or an Arachne. It's certainly not a Sludge because there's no disgusting smell." And they both nod in acknowledgment.

We carefully move forward because we could still sneak past it or enrage even before we meet if we make too much noise. Most monsters are more cautious during the first meeting, but if they know there are humanoids close, they can work themselves into a bloodlusting rage just by themselves.

We keep moving while still using the flaming spear and we slowly inch closer until we see an outline being revealed by our light.

It's a two meters tall spider with a red bulge growing out of its head that twitches and pulses creepily. It's so enthralled in eating the corpse of another spider that it doesn't even notice us approaching.

I give a signal and start to charge a [Fireball] while Roxanne charges her own spell, then the spider turns to us, attracted to the mana.

As it turns, an arrow pierces one of its eyes.

"SHIA!" It shouts in anger and pain.

It scrambles to retreat a few meters in surprise, but it still manages to dodge all the following arrows as they hit its tough exoskeleton and don't penetrate. This one is seemingly smarter and tougher.

Then it suddenly charges.

I release my [Fireball] before it reaches me, and it hits the right side of the spider's face, burning one eye. Roxanne doesn't release hers yet, so it's a stronger spell than normal, which is good since this enemy will need more firepower to bring down.

Then the huge spider hits me, and I'm pushed back a little. I try to counter, but my sword simply slides ineffectively along its legs, simply cutting hair as I struggle to find a fleshy opening to strike.

I get an idea, then I brace myself and wait for the second charge. The moment it starts dashing forward again, I charge my mana and point towards the spider as if I'm going to cast [Fireball]. The spider falls for the bluff and dodges to the side, so the charge slows and its attack doesn't have the same strength, but I still cast something.

I jump backward as it hits and cast [Constricting Vines] on the spot I was just at. The spider stops on it, then vines burst out of the ground and grab its multiple legs.

It remains stuck there for a short while, which is enough of an opening for Alissa to put an arrow in its mouth, but it's also the perfect moment for Roxanne to end it all.

"[Water Blade]!"

A long and wide blade of transparent water erupts out of her staff and flies towards the monsters in the blink of an eye.

The spider tries to dodge it, but it's still stuck in place, so the blade sinks into its flesh and exoskeleton in a diagonal, severing the red bulge and all its right legs.

The spider falls to the side, then writhes in pain and desperation, but it's over. I lunge and pierce its head, killing it instantly.

Then we all frown in disgust as the red bulge splashes on the floor, releasing a gush of a transparent liquid, then revealing the skinless top body of a woman

I'm starting to feel sick.

Alissa grabs the flaming spear and assertively hands it to me, her face completely serious. I sheathe my sword and grab it, then she silently pushes me forward, and we quickly pass the dead monster.

After a few minutes, the disgust passes away, and I finally realize the obvious. "That was an Arachne being born," I blurt out.

"Yes," Alissa answers tersely.

And that's all we say about it. Even Roxanne has no jokes to tell.

We walk for a whole hour without any other encounters. It seems that the previous almost-Arachne cleared the area for us. Then we reach a fork.

"Master, there's a disgusting stench coming from that way," Alissa reports.

I frown as I detect a faint smell of shit. "That's probably the sludge, let's not go there."

This enemy I'll avoid with all my power. After reading the battle reports of this monster, I think it'd be a miracle if we don't puke when we get near.

After that, we only meet one lone spider, so we must be deep in Arachne territory now.

We start seeing suspicious mists, and Alissa catches unknown smells, then the occurrence of the invisible webs drops drastically, allowing us to greatly increase our pace.

We find two bear traps and two other suspicious-looking floor designs that we avoid at all cost. We just avoid anything out of the ordinary, really. It's not confirmed that it's an Arachne trap, but why risk it? There's also no need to rush, we can just take another route if our path is blocked.

"This is the third time you've sighed in just a short time," Alissa suddenly whispers, her voice showing some concern.

I look back at her and raise an eyebrow questioningly. "Uh? Why are you counting?"

"To understand your mood," she answers matter-of-factly.

I facepalm and sigh again. "Is that… really necessary?"

"Yes, Master," -she suddenly grabs my hand- "I'll protect your mind and body," she confidently whispers as her tail wags gently.

Girl, you're too good to me, I don't deserve this. You're actually making me feel guilty, and I also want to sigh again.

No, wait, even for me, this is too much.

I stop walking and look at the other girls. "I'm starting to feel like this is not normal. The sighing, I mean."

Alissa lets out a small smile and nods. "That's what I thought," she agrees.

"Let's just take a break. I'm feeling really tired," Roxanne pleads, her shoulders drooped in drowsiness.

This is suspicious; even Roxanne is downcast.

We all immediately sit down on the dirty floor without much care to dust it first.

I put twenty points in a skill called [Diagnosis]. It takes a token amount of mana to activate it, and I use it on myself.

Roxanne notices me staring at my hand intensely and gives me a curious look.

A floating black screen appears before my eyes, and it tells me that I'm suffering from [Lethargy (small)].

So, we got poisoned or something like that?

I turn my points back to normal and turn to Roxanne. "Miss Roxanne, do you know of a pacifying poison or something similar that saps energy or stamina?" I politely ask her, trying not to sound too suspicious.

"Uhh..." She mumbles absentmindedly with a sleepy look. It takes a few seconds for her to process my words, then her eyes suddenly go wide. "Yes! There is a pacifying poison! It gradually lowers one's energy, reducing their will to fight. I believe we might be poisoned with it."

I've read something about poisons, so I need to make a distinction, "Is it a 'want' or a simple 'can't' fight because the person is exhausted?"

"'Want', it's a mental poison," she states confidently.

A-ha!

Then I remember something important that slipped my mind, so I question Roxanne, "Now that I think about it, did you bring something for [Mental Resistance], Miss Roxanne?"

This was an oversight. I should've asked what her countermeasures for the Arachne were, but I couldn't tell her my countermeasure was "I will just learn a rare skill whenever I want," so I think it was best that I forgot about it.

She nods happily and pulls a necklace hidden below her robes. "Yes. This is a small amulet blessed by the God of Endurance."

So the Gods can also enchant objects; that's quite interesting. I wonder if he'd be mad if Roxanne ever sold it.

I turn to Alissa and smirk. "I have an idea, so I want to test something, and I'll need your help, Alissa." Then I stand up and offer her my hand.

"Anything, Master," she obediently responds and takes it.

I pull her closer and hug her waist, then I turn to Roxanne and smile apologetically. "Also, I'm sorry if this looks inappropriate to you, Roxanne, but this is in the name of science… or rather, in the name of the Goddess of Knowledge."

Roxanne looks at me confusedly, then I turn to Alissa and look her in the eye lovingly as I cup her cheek. She relaxes in my arms and smiles faintly as she realizes what's to come.

I pull her face, then give her a deep kiss, and she immediately hugs me back. I start slow, but then our tongues entwine, and we start kissing passionately.

Energy starts to fill my heart and I get anxious. I want more, more! I want to be warmer, I want to hug Alissa harder, I want to undress her right here and take her. I reminisce about her beautiful body being adorned by the Clothes of the Berserker, her body being caressed by its silky texture.

My heart beats madly with love and excitement, then my muscles warm up and itch for action as I feel the poison being cleansed from my mind.

I slow down the kissing, then we, unfortunately, break away.

Alissa is blushing, her breath is quicked, her tail is wagging rapidly, and her eyes stare into mine with expectancy. What have I done, she's in the mood, but we can't do it right now. This is torture, I say.

I clear my throat and smile as I report, "I feel like this confirms it, we can break a mind poison by stimulating each other."

"Eh…?" Alissa suddenly makes a funny noise then immediately clears her throat and assumes a forced composed tone, "Oh, ah, yes. I feel much better now, which means the kiss really did counteract the poison." Then she looks away embarrassedly.

"Hmm…" Roxanne lets out a mindless sound as she stares at us blankly.

I smile guiltily at her and suggest, "Miss Roxanne, you're still under the mind poison, so perhaps you should try to stimulate yourself, like slapping your face."

"Not fair…" She mutters dejectedly, then follows my suggestions and slaps herself, hard. This is the standard way of breaking spells that affect the mind, which really isn't pleasant, so I feel some pity for her.

Here's a quick complaint. No hero story ever tells you how stressful and embarrassing it is to answer the call of nature in a dangerous place while in a group. You can't go too far too so you don't endanger yourself, but you can't do it too close, otherwise, it's embarrassing if your comrades can smell or hear you. Even if we have incredible conveniences like [Clean] and a portable bidet with [Conjure Water], it's still a horrible experience.

We avoid another Sludge and a few more traps, then we finally reach the territory of the Giant Moles. We just passed the most dangerous part of the trip, successfully avoiding all adult Arachnes. It's quite a feat, and it's all thanks to Alissa's nose.

We're sure we've passed the Arachne territory because the traps and mists suddenly stop, and soon after we meet our first Giant Mole.

"If I use [Quiet Steps] and [Quiet Action], then it's possible for me to assassinate it," Alissa proposes.

I thought before about the possibility of her becoming an assassin with her skills, but it makes me uneasy to put her in direct danger. She's my only companion, and I must admit that I'm rather possessive.

I cross my arms and think.

"Be happy that at least he cares about you," Roxanne comments with a kind smile after seeing my hesitation.

Alissa nods and states confidently, "I know Master is very reasonable, so I know he'll accept it, eventually."

I'm uncomfortable with how easy I'm being seen through, and it's also true I'm just stalling. I don't want to let Alissa go while I'm forced to wait here and twiddle my thumbs in the dark, but it will be so convenient if she kills it by herself.

The Mole is a burly enemy with a weak skull, so Alissa should be able to kill it with a single arrow, but I'm a bit scared of being mauled by its huge, heavy claws. If Alissa can kill it before it can even call for backup, then it'll save us so much time while also being much safer. I just have to trust she won't get herself killed.

I let out a sigh of tiredness and relent, "I surrender. Go kill it, Alissa."

They give each other a brief smile, then Alissa walks away without making a single sound.

I stare at the tunnel anxiously, my body too restless for me to sit down and rest.

After a minute in silence, Roxanne suddenly comments, "You two are very close."

I feel something off about her statement. "We don't know each other very long; I'm just clingy," I deny.

Roxanne shrugs. "Still, your relationship is enviable."

I turn and raise an eyebrow at her. "Even though she's a slave?"

"Does it matter if she's happy?" She retorts with a cheeky smile.

I knit my eyebrows in skepticism. "You can tell she's happy even though you've just met her today?"

Roxanne nods happily. "She's been smiling most of the time, except when you're under attack. You're always in the front, so I guess this is why you don't see it."

I suddenly start to feel insecure as I look back to the short time we've been together. I sit down beside Roxanne and facepalm with both hands. "What does she even see in me to be so happy?"

"You should ask her that yourself," Roxanne responds with a troubled tone.

I release my face and lean against the wall. "She's young and naive, so she might really be in love with me, but…"

"'But'?"

How do I say to her that in my world I would be called a pedophile in certain countries, a creep in others, arrested for slavery in most of the world, or be seen as two idiot teenagers in heat if we consider this-world-age as my real age?

Seeing my hesitation, Roxanne gives me a piece of advice, "I don't know what is on your mind but you should at least accept her feelings."

I cringe and try to put my feelings into words, "It's that... I'm from a faraway place. In my homeland, we'd be called idiot teenagers who don't know what love is. Slavery also isn't legal, so our relationship is even more absurd. What kind of thing is love between a master and a slave, anyway?"

She raises her eyebrows high and adjusts her glasses. "Slavery isn't legal? I'd like to visit that place, one day. But still, I say it again: at least accept her feelings. It's not like there's anything wrong with either of you, so you don't need to be so harsh on yourself, and just enjoy what you have."

I'm being harsh on myself? Heh, I said I was going to abandon what held me down, but it's harder to do it when I'm not thinking with my friend.

"Perhaps…" I mutter as I reflect on her words.

I like this cool, older-sister-like Roxanne, though. Why can't you be like this normally?

Anyway, I think I've understood what's making me worry. If I don't change who I am, then I'll suffer, but I'll keep my humanity like Alissa pleaded, though it might hurt her, too, seeing me suffer. If I do change, then I won't suffer, but Alissa might lose her hope in me, so it might hurt her anyway. Now that's a dilemma.

While I think, Alissa comes back silently like a ghost, scaring us both.

"Ah-...!" Roxanne squeaks, but she immediately covers her mouth, muffling the sound.

Alissa's ears go flat as she apologizes cutely, "I'm sorry, Master and Miss Roxanne, I forgot to stop using [Quiet Steps]. Anyway, the mole is dead."

I quickly recollect myself, then I calmly question so she doesn't think I'm criticizing her, "Took you some time."

Her ears shoot up and she becomes serious again. "It was wary, so I had to move very slowly or else it would've heard me."

Even though these are weak monsters, they're still blind moles that rely on hearing, so it takes quite some skill to sneak up on one.

I grab her hand and give her a kind look as I plead, "I know skills like these make you stressed, so please tell me if you get tired. There's no rush, so we'll rest as much as we need."

She smiles sweetly and nods, making her ears sway. "Thank you for your consideration, Master."

Alissa kills five more Moles without a hitch. She's my own little assassin.

"You are now level twelve," says the soothing female voice.

Finally, it took some time. The spiders and moles are annoying, but they don't give much experience. The only real good source of experience was the almost-Arachne.

I put my new four points in [Sword Use] (now 16+2).

Alissa assassinates two more Moles, and we finally reach one of the entrances to the Spiral Springs dungeon.

The dungeon has a completely different atmosphere from the boring and unending dark tunnels of the Ant Hill. The walls and ceiling are made of cobble with patches of raw stone or exposed mineral veins; the walls are warped and full of curves; the ground is made of soft moss over raw stone, and it'd be nice to lay down on it if it wasn't so damp. We'll end up with wet clothes if we sit on the floor without a blanket to protect our asses.

A weak blue-green light coming from mana crystals illuminates the dungeons. They're cheap crystals that shine when they absorb mana, and since the dungeon is a solidification of a mana storm, mana crystals shine faintly forever. It's against the etiquette to take or sell these crystals since they're a huge convenience to all adventurers that come here.

We're currently at the top floor, and like the other dungeons, the floor is massive in length; possibly the size of a town. It's made of multiple large rooms randomly interconnected, and with the occasional shallow water pool occupying part of them. The top floor is safe, so we're going to sleep here.

The stairs are what gives it the name. They're merely slopes with faded steps where a channel runs and water trickles through, creating a nice and continuous sound of falling water. The slopes are in a spiral, and there's no railing, so the inner part of the spiral is open. That's where Spriggans like to put traps to make adventurers lose their footing and fall down. Each stair is around twenty meters in height, so a drop could be fatal, and we have fifteen sets of stairs to go down through.

I point to a corner, and Roxanne burns a large patch of moss, drying the floor. We sweep the ashes, and now we finally have a proper stone floor to sleep on. I pull out my tent while Roxanne pulls hers.

She conjures water on a bucket and heats it by herself so she can take a bath. Once she's done, we stop our watch and switch places with her. Alissa conjures the water, then I heat it, and we take a towel bath together.

I've found that the fastest way is to cast [Fireball] on my palm, then submerge it into the bucket. It wastes a lot of mana, though.

Then I get to wash Alissa, and she washes me back, but, unfortunately, we can't make too much noise, so make her bite into a gag, and we use our mouths. There's no way I'm going to spend a night without touching her, so we have to do it this way.

Then we pull out our dinner. It's fried chicken! I mean, fried Dragolite. After a few bites, I finally remember what Dragolite reminds me of: chicken with rosemary. Then we eat our hot vegetable soup with toasted bread. Thank you, "Items." The convenience you bring is unmatched.

One of the more interesting parts of the meal, though, is that I have my first taste of juice in this world. Gorgon fruit tastes and looks a bit like blueberries mixed with a hint of lychee.

"Ah juice, thank you. No alcohol though?" Roxanne asks with a cheeky smile.

I shake my head. "I don't drink, and besides, we shouldn't drink on an expedition."

"Alright, alright..." Roxanne immediately gives up and rolls her eyes dramatically, then she gives me a curious look. "Honestly I'm envious of how big your [Item Box] is, Mr. Ryder."

Well, here we go, insert "sword" joke here. I can't really spend points for an actual [Item Box], though, and training with Alissa to learn this spell has been really hard.

"It's a natural gift, so I learned it super fast," I casually lie.

She snorts and remarks, "It's like you were born to be an adventurer."

"That's true," Alissa agrees wholeheartedly.

I give them a painful wry smile and deflect, "Well I'm envious of your [Mana Control], Miss Roxanne. This [Explosion] spell is the mix of Water and [Fire Magic] at the same time, right?"

Roxanne opens her eyes wide and shouts, completely astonished, "My secret! How did you…"

I smile proudly as my guess was spot-on, then I give her a smug answer, "Knowledge from my homeland."

"Unfair!" Then she pouts cutely.

Alright, I've teased her enough, now it's time to retreat a bit. "But I can't use two magic schools at the same time, so you still have one secret, right?" I politely ask.

She crosses her arms and grumbles, "It's not like [Explosion]; it's something every expert magician would have to learn one day."

That's interesting. Maybe one day I'll control all elements at will and become a demi-god? Well, anyway, it's time to change the topic. I'm curious about Roxanne's background.

"Say, Miss Roxanne, can you tell me about your race or your continent?" I gently ask, no hint of teasing in my tone anymore.

The pout fades away instantly and she brightens up. "Gladly! But first, I want to talk about the misconceptions a lot of people have about my race."

I blink blankly in surprise. I still have no idea about race dynamics in this world. "Oh? What are they about?"

She adjusts her glasses and assumes a teaching tone as she starts to recite, "Well, the first thing is that since we have 'succubus' as the name of our race, people think we're promiscuous, but that's not true! We were created based on the myth of the succubus, but we aren't actual succubi. It's just we just have a higher libido than other races, but we still choose our partners very carefully. Also, we're more carefree and open-minded than the other races, but that doesn't mean we are dumb and unreliable."

Just by looking at her, I can certainly see how the last one might've come into being. Curiously, the demon race seems to be the most common adventurer race on Rabanara aside from humans.

"The second misconception is that our horns and tails are sexual organs. Some have feelings when you touch those parts, but it varies from person to person and from type to type."

I can see that causing some misunderstandings.

"The third is less common, but some people think we're descendants from monsters. That's definitely not true. The God of Creation made us just like all other humanoids. They might've used monsters as the basis for some races, but we don't have a single drop of monster blood in our bodies."

I see. Being lumped together with their biggest enemy might hurt their pride.

Then she smiles, satisfied with our acceptance, and becomes more casual again. "These are the three things I always tell other people. Now, you do you want to hear something specific?"

"What about your birthplace?" I start.

She nods sagely and crosses her arms. "Ohh~… that's far away from here. I was born on the Maoka continent, on the west coast, in a small village inside our HolyLands. If you want a more precise location, it's at the west of the Death Valley, if you have heard of it."

Nope, I haven't.

I tilt my head like Alissa and curiously ask, "Holy Lands? Death Valley?"

Alissa smiles awkwardly while Roxanne chuckles softly and answers, "Well, the Holy Lands are a place that no outsider can enter without a permit. It's not a large piece of land, but it's the place that our first ancestors were given by the God of Creation after their birth, so it's a sacred land for us. The Death Valley is a large piece of desert that's very famous among adventurers because there're a lot of very valuable monsters there." -Then she smiles bitterly- "It's also a dreadful place, so hot and dry nobody has ever crossed it, and all the monsters there are horribly dangerous."

I think there's a place like that on Earth, too, minus the monsters.

"So do you have kingdoms, too?" I question further. The idea of "Holy Lands" makes me think they're religious, so maybe it's a theocracy.

She shatters my imagination with a shake of her head. "No, it's just a Council of Elders that's elected from among the aristocrats and clergy." -Oh wait, "clergy"? So they are religious, somehow?- "We do it the same as the elves, so we always had a good relationship with them. Human and dwarven nobility drama books are famously complex, and nobody wants any of that for our race."

We all share some chuckles. I watched Game of Thrones and House of Cards, and I don't want any of that drama, either. I'm way too straightforward to survive on that backstabbing nightmare.

Then I turn to Alissa and ask, "What about the wereanimals? How do you govern yourselves, Alissa?"

Her tone becomes energetic as she seems happy to talk about her people, "We have a Council of Elders, too, but they serve as advisors to the Chief of the Forest that they elect, which is the one who governs all the other clans, though the position generally stays within the same family. The Council is supposed to be composed of the wisest among us, while the leader should be the strongest man or woman of the tribe, but the clans choose their own candidates, so it varies between them."

I hum in thought. "The Chieftess you mentioned was that leader?"

She smiles a bit cheekily and giggles softly. "Yes and no. She and the current Chief were the two best candidates for this generation, so they decided to marry and share the title."

Roxanne laughs like a haughty lady and excitedly claps the tip of her fingers. "Hohoh, how romantic."

Alissa's smile turns wry. "Well, yes. I wasn't born when they married, but the Council of Elders was very amused. They even made their story into a play, to the embarrassment of the Chiefs.

"You think it could come to Rabanara? I'd watch that," Roxanne comments.

Alissa shrugs. "I don't know about that, but you might have more luck if you enter my clan's territory."

Roxanne leans forward, showing a lot of interest. "Oh, do they accept foreigners?"

Alissa stares at her cup as she recollects, "Only adventurers and merchants, but I think there are ways to get permits for other types of business. I have little idea how that works, but I know that they don't allow those who aren't werefoxes to settle on the land."

Roxanne nods in understanding. "Ah, then it'll be okay, I guess, so I might visit one day. Where is it?"

Alissa's eyes become faintly nostalgic. "West, beyond the mountain range, it's called the Misty Low Forest."

Roxanne brightens up. "I saw it on a map once. It's not far, so I'll definitely go."

I think for a moment. Her homeland is actually really close. Though we have to go a bit of a roundabout way because there are only a few spots where it's feasible to cross, I think it'd take only a few days to cross the mountain range in her fox form.

Would it be too cruel to make this question…?

I'm not able to hold myself back, so I tactfully ask her, "Alissa… would you like to go visit your homeland one day?"

Her ears go flat and her tail stops wagging as she thinks for a while, then she shakes her head in refusal. "Not yet, I'm not worthy of returning. I still need to work more, but… I'm really grateful you offered, Master." And she gives me a sweet smile.

I release my breath in relief. I guess that wasn't a bad choice to ask this.

Roxanne turns to me with a cheeky smile. "Ah, Mr. Ryder. I see you're reserved, but do you mind telling us more about your homeland?" She politely asks.

Ah, shit, now that I asked about her homeland it's obvious she might ask about mine. There's no way I'm telling, though. I haven't prepared a proper lie for it yet, so I'm just going to avoid this.

Even Alissa seems interested in knowing more, so it hurts my heart to do this.

I take a sip of my juice to stall, then I gently shake my head as I apologize and explain myself, "I'm sorry, but I don't like talking about that place. It's not that I'm a runaway or a criminal, I just don't like talking about it."

Alissa nods obediently. She respects my feelings about this.

Roxanne raises an eyebrow in confusion, then she adjusts her glasses and returns to being cheeky. "Well then, if you don't wanna talk about your homeland, then let's talk about mine!" She exclaims with pride.

Well, okay, her personality might not be that bad.

Her stories are mainly comedies about the stupid things the people of her village do. They seem to share her carefree and positive mentality, and they also like to party a lot.

We talk for a long time, and we eventually get tired, so we go to sleep and start the watch cycle. We'll do three-hour cycles, starting with me, then Roxanne, and then Alissa. Roxanne drew the worse one since she'll have to sleep, wake up in the middle of the night, and then sleep again. It can be bad for the body to interrupt sleep like that, but them's the breaks. I could put out a summoned guard dog, but I don't want to show that magic to Roxanne yet.

They all go to sleep and I sit down outside the tents. Now that I'm all alone, I start to feel a little bit lonely.

Hello, Goddess of Knowledge. How do you feel about today? I think it was pretty interesting. We found how a Giant Tarantula turns into an Arachne even though I want to forget that image; we found that the tarantulas are likely using the web as a way of mating, though I'll need to make an autopsy if I want to be able to discern their sexes and confirm this; we also found that love, or perhaps just plain spicy thoughts, or maybe even just "doing it yourself" is enough to break a mind poison, and we don't need to slap ourselves until we nearly bleed.

I feel like this world is somewhat interesting, and I'm still thinking about the [Golemancy] skill. Maybe in a few levels, I could put some points into it and try it out. Perhaps that skill could start an industrial revolution in this world?

I'm still trying to keep the balance, so I don't attract too much attention from others and from the God of Destruction, but I could leave my knowledge behind after I die or something. I do have a degree in robotics, so it's likely to be my biggest contribution to this world.

What do you think about this? Isn't this your reason of existence?

Suddenly, I feel something change within me, so I open my stats and see that my "Piety" increased by 3 (now 6), then I see that under "Status Effects" there's a new entry: "Blessing of the Goddess of Knowledge."

Oh, boy.

A note from Manasong

Chapters are getting quite big, I only had loosely planned their size but it seems they are too big in comparison to the other novels here. I kinda like the way they are though, not sure if I should put much effort in breaking them down.

Leave a rating or a review to help me rise to the top or fix my shameful understanding of prose.

Take a look over my blog where all information of the world of Rupegia will be posted.

Join the Discord and discuss, or rant, or meme, or try and fight me so your waifu gets more screentime.

Become a Patron and read chapters in advance, or read the side-stories, or leave your mark on the story, or help choose the next artwork or the next side-story.

Chapter 7: "Good Luck"

A note from Manasong

Attention: to conform to the limit of mature content (more than just sexual content) allowed in a novel, I've censored this chapter. You can look for the uncensored version here.

They both look excitedly at me, their eyes brimming with awe and respect.

"That's amazing, master," Alissa coos as her tail wags excitedly.

"Not unexpected," Roxanne calmly states with a nod.

And I awkwardly rub my neck. "But what does this blessing do?" I shyly ask, a bit embarrassed about my own ignorance, but it seems they don't care or notice it this time.

Roxanne assumes a teaching tone and excitedly claps the tip of her hands as she explains, "It means the Goddess has her eye on you and will influence your Fate to help you. If you continue to follow her path, then you'll certainly become a famous scholar one day."

The way she said "Fate" sounded suspicious, as if it was a capital "F."

Well, anyway, that's fortunate for me, I guess. Maybe now I should look to see if I can join the University. After this job, we'll have some money saved, so I can probably spend some time studying.

We dismantle our camp after breakfast then move on, and in just a few minutes, we reach the first stairs. The sound of falling water tickles my ears, but the vertigo from looking down the hole in the middle of the spiral stairs makes me a lot more anxious.

Like planned, I pull a metal spike, a spool of rope, and a hammer, then I hammer the spike on the ground and tie the rope on the spike. I use the bowline knot to tie the rope just like the dungeoneering book taught me.

This dungeon "heals" itself, but it doesn't do so immediately, so the rope will stay here for at least two days if the Spriggans don't mess with it, but if the little shits do, there's always the alternative of using Roxanne since she can materialize two small bat wings on her back that allow her to magically float around, so she can fly up here and then put the spike and rope for us.

We tie the rope to our belts and carefully go down, but the descent is slow because the steps are wet and worn. Roxanne also uses the rope because her wings consume mana, so it's better to preserve her MP.

"What's that thing?" Alissa whispers as she points.

I look more carefully and notice that there's a vine loop on the floor, and the rest of its length goes down over the edge.

I pull a small wooden bowl that we use to eat soup and throw it on the vine. The loop immediately tightens around the bowl, gripping it tightly, then pulls it over the edge.

"Well, first trap successfully dodged," I announce with a wry smile.

We continue down and reach the floor unmolested, then we remove the rope from our waists and move on.

This time, the rooms have no identification, so I have to pay attention to the map, forcing Alissa to take the front of our little column.

We cross a few rooms, then she stops all of a sudden.

"There's an enemy observing us," she announces with a chilling tone.

"Can you take the shot?" I whisper.

"Yes, but I'm sure the monster will dodge it."

I give her shoulder an assuring squeeze. "I'll leave the decision up to you. We have to be aggressive towards the Spriggans, so killing them is the best option, but scaring them is also an alternative. We can't waste too many arrows, though."

She nods diligently. "Understood, I'll wait until I have a better chance to hit."

"That's fine."

We cautiously move on, and after a few more minutes, Alissa suddenly stops and lets an arrow fly.

We wait a couple of tense seconds in silence, then she reports without looking back, "I smell blood, but it must've done little damage as he ran away quite fast."

I nod and smile kindly. "That's okay. Good work, Alissa."

Her tail wags once then immediately stops.

I should praise her more often.

It's good that we engaged the Spriggan because if we'd ignored him, the little shit would've likely tried to sneak up to us to steal something.

That's the only enemy we find on this floor, but we also find an iron bear trap, making me wonder where they'd get one of these.

Another stair, another vine trap. Fourteen more levels to go.

"Now there are two Spriggans," Alissa apprehensively reports.

I grab my chin in thought as I ask, "Is it the same one from last time?"

She nods positively. "I smell blood, so it's possibly the one I've wounded."

"Let's wait until we can see them, then Roxanne will launch a [Fire Arrow] at them."

From what I understood, the Spriggans are staying one or two rooms away from us. They can see in the dark, so they have no problem seeing us, and Alissa only knows about them because of [Sense Presence]. It's actually impressive she managed to fire an arrow accurate enough to harm a Spriggan while only using the skill to guide her.

We cross three more rooms, then Alissa points to a small shadow peeking from the doorway ahead.

I narrow my eyes in thought and hold back a grin as I point out, "Miss Roxanne, can you see that? On the right side of the doorway, there's a small head peeking."

Roxanne squints her eyes and adjusts her glasses, but then she shakes her head as she denies, "I don't see it. Can you point my finger towards where I need to fire?"

I get close to her and she crouches slightly, lining up my head with hers and our cheeks so close they almost touch, then I delicately grab the hand that grips the staff and point it towards the shadow. I sense a very faint smell of sweat and something sweet coming from her, the cheap anti-scent not enough to hide it all. Her pale hand is also very soft and thin, as if she never had to do a day of rough work in her entire life, though Alissa's is also like hers, so I believe magic might be involved.

I have to hold myself back from inhaling deeply. Call me whatever you want, but I enjoy moments like this.

Then I swallow heavily and focus back on the now. I make a stern expression and order, "Alissa, shoot your arrow the moment Roxanne releases her spell. Hopefully they're bad at sensing mana."

Alissa nods obediently and Roxanne starts chanting the spell quietly.

She grips her staff harder, and I sense mana gathering at its tip, then Alissa pulls back her bow.

"[Fire Arrow]," Roxanne casts.

A flame shaped like an arrow suddenly appears at the tip of her staff and immediately shoots forward, illuminating the room as it flies alongside Alissa's, but the magical arrow passes the doorway and continues on along the tunnel, a miss.

"Got one," Alissa whispers, her tone with a hint of joy and pride.

"Nice," I coo with a grin.

"Impressive as always, Miss Alissa," Roxanne praises her earnestly.

Alissa squirms and her tail shivers, threatening to wag.

Ah, such cuteness.

We move towards Alissa's quarry and find a thin green man collapsed on the floor with an arrow sticking out of his forehead. His eyes are of a pure white color with a green web pattern covering nearly half of it; his chest and arms are partially covered by pieces of mossy, dark bark, and, thankfully, so is his groin; his hair is made of a bunch of small pieces of bark protruding upwards; and the soles of his feet look disgustingly filthy.

"Let's take his head," Alissa happily suggests, and I glumly nod.

She draws her sword and grabs the head by the bark hair, then starts sawing the neck. Warm blood pours out as the meat splits open, but I find myself unable to look away. While Alissa calmly works, I glance at Roxanne and see her wrinkle her nose then sniffle.

"I dislike the smell of blood," she admits and smiles wryly, but I'm too tense to reply.

Alissa quickly finishes the job and I immediately store the head in my "Items." This is the proof of extermination, so I'll have to watch this horrifying scene again a considerable number of times.

I'll be fine…

We quickly move on again to distance ourselves from the pool of blood we left behind, and we soon reach another stair down. At least there were no bear traps on this floor.

I pull out another spool of rope, and we do the same thing we did before.

As we go down, Alissa suddenly stops and points out, "Master, this moss is suspicious."

"What do you mean?" I mumble as I try to look over her shoulder.

She kneels on the floor and touches the step. "The stone is cracked under the moss."

I hum in understanding and suggest, "Oh~… Let's hit it with the hammer and see how it goes."

With a *poof*, I pull the hammer out and hand it to Alissa, who immediately slams it on the mossy step, then we take a step back as a hole suddenly opens up on the steps.

I pat her shoulder and smile. "Well, this trap wouldn't be dangerous since we have these ropes, but it'd certainly be scary. Thanks, Alissa," I kindly praise her, and she starts acting cute again.

"Yeah. I'd rather not be thrown around by a rope. Thank you, Alissa," Roxanne piles on, just making Alissa even happier.

We continue down the stairs and reach another floor. Only thirteen to go.

I wonder what's below the ground in this world. Is it like Earth where there's the mantle and things get hotter the deeper we go, or is there impassable purple bedrock? Maybe it just "ends" at an infinite hole.

Focus.

On this floor, the shallow pools of dark, dirty water are much bigger, leaving very little dry land. There's barely enough room for one person to walk in between them.

"I smell something funny in the water," Alissa warily reports.

"Let's not touch it," I immediately caution.

Roxanne sniffs the air and walks closer to one of the pools, unnerving me, then she crouches and ponders, "I guess the water is corrosive. I don't think it's poison because it'd be really hard to poison every single pool in this dungeon unless the Spriggans have an unbelievable supply of it."

Corrosion is even worse than poison. It hurts my soul to even imagine something hurting Alissa's cute little feet.

"And there's another vine ahead," Alissa points out.

"Alright…" I mumble as I search my "Items" for the bowl again, then I pull it out and throw it on the vines. They immediately tighten around the bowl and pull it into the water, then we hear sizzling.

Roxanne nods in acknowledgment and states, "Corrosive. It wouldn't kill us, but it'd hurt."

We find no Spriggan on this level, so maybe the corrosive pools are dangerous for them, too.

Another stair, another vine trap, and now the pools are back to normal size. Twelve floors to go.

We cross a few rooms, then Alissa stops us again. "There's a small mound below the moss over there," she soberly reports.

I remember something from the dungeon reports and frown worriedly. "I don't even want to trigger this trap, so let's just go around," I firmly suggest.

We take a small detour around the room and circle the pool.

"There's another mound ahead of us," Alissa reports, starting to sound worried.

I let out an annoyed sigh and mumble, "Well, shit."

I pick a spare iron spike because it's heavier than the bowl and throw it at the mound, then a white flash blinds us. I immediately push Alissa back and pull up my shield in front of us, getting ready for an attack.

Only our vision was taken, not our hearing, so I focus on any footsteps approaching, but the only sounds we hear are the ones we produce ourselves.

A few seconds pass, and our vision returns, but nothing else happens.

I lower my shield and sigh. "They're just messing with us," I grumble.

"Just like the book said," Alissa remarks, her tone a little tense.

We encounter a few more mounds, which trigger a few more flashes, but we don't get blinded a second time. I wish I could dig the mound up, but I'm scared it might turn into an actual mine at some point.

Another stair, another vi-...

"It's moving!" Alissa exclaims warily.

The vine slithers towards us like a snake, but it isn't particularly threatening, so Alissa and I awkwardly slash at the ground a few times to kill it. The vine stops moving after a dozen chops, but using a sword this way isn't good for the blade

"The Spriggans can control vines, the first real attack is coming soon," I warn them, and they nod obediently.

Then we reach the bottom of the stairs without another incident. Eleven floors to go.

There are no traps, so we grow a bit restless.

"Three hits, it's the Spriggans," Alissa suddenly reports.

Finally.

I immediately strategize, "One for each of us. I'll take the middle, Alissa the left one, and Roxanne the last."

We continue forward, and when we enter the corridor, we see something blocking our way. It's a wooden chest-high wall.

"They're behind that," Alissa whispers.

We brace for battle and slowly move closer, but then I get an idea.

I smirk and turn to Roxanne. "Uh… Miss Roxanne, [Fireball], please," I politely request.

Her expression lights up and she grins evilly. "Yes, sir!" She energetically replies. She was rather quiet all this time, but now that there's an actual enemy in front of us instead of just traps she seems a lot happier.

I turn forward again, then I feel a lot of mana gathering behind me as Roxanne chants softly.

"[Fireball]!" She suddenly casts.

A ball of fire bigger than my head flies past me, then it hits the wooden wall and explodes, leaving a large hole in the middle.

"Erm… they're moving… downwards?" Alissa confusedly reports and cutely tilts her head to the side.

"What…?" I grunt reflexively.

Alissa scratches her fox ear. "Yeah, they ran away... downwards. There must be a stair or something there."

"So, another feint," I whisper tiredly and drop my shoulders dejectedly.

"Ugh~..." Roxanne groans and rolls her eyes.

The numbers of stalking Spriggans are increasing, but they're not attacking. Scaring works, for now, but it won't last, so I want to kill some to set fear in them already.

We walk up to the flaming wooden wall and see a dark hole in the ground behind it. There are vines hanging from the hole like ropes, which is what I believe they used to climb down, and the hole goes down a few meters, then opens into a dark room.

"This must be how they sneak about the dungeon," I guess.

The room below seems claustrophobically small, so nobody feels like exploring it.

We move on and soon reach the stairs down. Another stair, another vine trap.

"Master, the stairs are slippery," Alissa cautions me.

We take extra care and reach the bottom of the stairs without a hitch. Just ten more to go.

As we cross a narrow corridor, Alissa suddenly stops me, then she kneels and observes something close to the floor.

"I see… oh, it's a wire," she curiously mutters, and only when she runs her finger along the wire that I finally notice it.

Now, wire traps are a mind trap too. This trap could trigger something that makes the whole corridor collapse, or it could just be a faint, a dud to make us tense, or there could even be another, different trap right after this one as our mind becomes hyper-focused on finding wire traps. It's right up the Spriggan's alley to play mind games like these to tire us out.

I look at the walls and narrow my eyes in suspicion. "Are those slits?" I notice.

Alissa follows my gaze then nods in agreement. "Yes, Master. It's likely there's an arrow trap behind the walls," she concludes.

Triggering this trap will cause uncountable arrows to come flying out of the walls. Don't ask me how it works, it's just "magic."

I grab my chin in thought and guide her, "Alissa, look ahead of the wire, is there any other trap nearby? Like, a pressure trap, a mound, or another wire?"

Her eyes carefully scan the mossy corridor. "Let's see… there's a suspicious square tile over there," she points out.

Heh, I knew it.

And I calmly order, "Then let's slowly move across this corridor. If you trigger something, immediately drop to the floor."

We cautiously get past the traps, and Alissa spots a second suspicious square tile, then she suddenly stops.

"There's one watching us," she tensely whispers.

Just one? And this corridor is rather long… This is suspicious.

I sternly order, "Alissa, shoot an arrow at him, then we should all increase our speed."

An arrow flies, and I hurry us forward, then we feel a small tremor that lasts a couple seconds.

"Run!" I immediately yell. I don't even care whatever it is, we just need to run.

I glance behind us and see the floor starting to split, opening into a deep, dark hole.

"FASTER!" I scream and look ahead again.

I can't see Roxanne behind me, so I just hope she exercises regularly.

Alissa and I reach the end first, then I look back and see that Roxanne is still some distance away.

Dammit, girl!

I desperately open my "Items" and pull out a spool of spare rope, then Roxanne's footing disappears under her and she jumps.

Bat wings suddenly appear on her back, then they lazily flap, and she starts to float. She crosses her arms and legs as if she was sitting in the air while she slowly flying towards us.

I forgot about that. Thanks for the heart attack.

"So… I'm really thankful I can float," she casually remarks while giving us an embarrassed smile.

I facepalm and massage my eyes. "I'd have thrown you a rope if you couldn't," I wearily reply.

She giggles softly as she steps on the floor before us. "That's a little reassuring, but I'm still pretty pissed at the Spriggans. That was some major trap! We evade a dozen of them, and then a little shit comes here just to trigger one last trap himself," she irritatedly remarks.

I nod as I coldly explain, "That's why we need to brutalize them. If they attack, then we leave no survivors, and that puts some fear into them."

She holds her waist and strikes a sassy pose. "Then I'll use [Melt Skin] to make them terrified of us!" But I shudder at the thought.

Help me, Alissa, she's threatening my mental health!

"Let's not deviate from the plan, effective ways of killing come first," Alissa soothes her.

Thank you for being so reliable.

Roxanne crosses her arms and pouts. "Hmph, alright," she grunts back.

Then we reach the stairs down. Another stair, another… moving vine, and we easily cross it. Nine to go.

"There's one on the left corridor and two on the right," Alissa tensely whispers.

And I strategize, "Hm… If we chase them, they'll run away, and if we ignore them, they'll come from behind and ambush, so I want to force a fight..."

But there's no time to think.

"Master! Three coming from the front! Ambush!" Alissa frantically shouts.

I grit my teeth and grip my sword harder. "Shit. Alissa, right! Roxanne, left! Kill sides, then support me!" I immediately bark orders.

I draw my sword and ready my shield, then I charge a heavy [Fireball].

I notice something being thrown. It's a crude wooden spear, but it just clangs against my shield, not sharp enough to pierce it.

"Projectiles! Watch out!" I warn them.

Roxanne is bad at dodging, so she's the one in the most danger. I need to kill that spear-thrower since there's no cover here.

Shadows come into range of our light, revealing three skinny green men. Two of them are wielding crude metal swords and crude wooden shields while the third has a spear in his hand and a dozen more on his back. The shield users have a large amount of bark covering their arms and legs, but their chest is still vulnerable.

I charge forward. The spear-thrower must die.

The shield users stop and brace themselves.

I bash the one on the left, and he staggers backward. A spear flies and hits my shield, but that's enough of an opening. I let out the [Fireball] towards the spear user and parry the incoming blow from the one on the right, then I hear a masculine scream. His voice is similar to a human's, but it's like there are two voices overlapping each other.

My spell hit!

The spear thrower's arm and part of his chest burst in flames, and he starts running around, too stupid to put out a fire in the middle of a damp room full of pools of water.

I immediately back off and glance at the girls.

Alissa is on the ground being pulled by a vine towards the pool, there's a Spriggan on fire near her, but Roxanne is sprinting towards them, dagger in hand.

No, no, and no!

I dash towards the one on fire, then he drops his flaming shield and moves towards the defenseless Alissa as her sword is on the ground, out of her reach.

I don't have time to stop, so I tackle the Spriggan and my sword pierces his back, then we both fall on the ground in a messy way.

He thrashes about, trying to hit me with punches and kicks, but I can't finish him off since my sword is stuck in him, so I draw a dagger from my back and stab his chest multiple times, right in the heart.

After a few stabs, he slows down and quickly loses strength, then stops resisting entirely and becomes limp.

"[Melt Skin]!"

A chilling, guttural scream fills the room. I look towards its source and see a Spriggan rolling on the ground while white steam rises from his body while Roxanne stands near him, holding her dagger threateningly. Luckily, I can't see much more than that due to the steam.

Alissa is beside her, clashing swords with a shield user Spriggan. His attacks suddenly slow down, and he starts to retreat, so I dash after him.

Like hell I'm gonna let you go now, you shit stain.

He's not fast enough, so we manage to surround him. Roxann's hair is disheveled, making her look very angry and stabby, while Alissa faces him with a serious, murderous look.

I come from the side and slash at his flank. He doesn't react in time, and blue blood is drawn from his ribs.

Roxanne starts chanting, so the Spriggan turns around to run again, and Alissa slashes at his back, making him fall from the pain, then I kick his face, stunning him.

Alissa's boot presses down on his chest, then she beheads him with a clean chop. [Sharp Blades] can make swords become frighteningly sharp.

I look around and notice that the spear-thrower is already far away, though he's still burning. There's also a Spriggan with an arrow poking out of his forehead, a carbonized body, and a passed-out one with his skin melted.

I don't even want to look at the last one right now, but then Roxanne walks up to him, and I hear the wet sound of flesh being sliced open.

Jesus.

Alissa starts collecting the heads, but she stops for a moment to stare at one with a mohawk made of bark, then she laughs and stores it. I just spend the whole time staring down, cleaning my sword and shield while Roxanne pats her robes and brushes her hair.

Once she's done, Alissa comes to me and regretfully apologizes, "I'm sorry, Master. I got caught in a vine trap and dropped my weapons."

I shake my head and give her a kind smile. "Don't apologize for this. Mistakes happen, and we deal with them as a team. It was good acting by Roxanne to come and free you, but I was also a bit far, so it was partially my fault you were so close to danger."

She frowns concernedly. "T-that's not-..."

"Don't argue. We're companions," I assert with finality. I don't want her to apologize like this for every mistake.

She bites her lip and nods. "… Understood, Master," she reluctantly relents.

I store my rag and stand up. "Now let's go, I don't like this smell."

It's the smell of barbecue.

We reach the stairs down and take a small break to eat an early lunch. At least it seems so since we have no idea of the time.

I drink my tea with my lunch, which isn't customary. Though I like to drink tea during the afternoon snack, there's no time to take another break after this, so it has to be right now.

Alissa is content to make tea for us, which also soothes Roxanne's bloodthirst, so I guess this was the best choice, after all.

We only hear the faint sounds of running water and our quiet chattering, making this place quite a nice spot for a picnic. The atmosphere is also nice, and the girls are happy, almost making me forget the imps planning our deaths nearby.

Another stair, another vine trap. Eight to go.

This floor has a few wooden walls blocking the way here and there, but no enemies, so we can just blow them open if they get in our way.

It seems we scared them off with the last fight, which is excellent to us. Perhaps that attack was a test to see how we react, and it doesn't seem unlike monsters to sacrifice a few for the "greater good."

Another stair, another two moving vine traps. Seven floors left.

Mounds and bear traps appear again, and this time, I have a bad feeling about them, so we throw a spike from far away, then it blows up.

Finally, the mines have appeared.

We move extra carefully on this floor, but we reach the stairs without any dangerous encounter.

Another stair, another… empty stair?

No traps. Suspicious.

Six floors left.

Pitfalls, pitfalls galore. We have to keep looking for cracks in the ground and hammering anything remotely suspicious. Alissa has the best eyes by far, so I tie a rope around her waist, then Roxanne and I hold it from a bit far behind while she explores.

Another stair, another no trap descent.

Five floors to go.

"A Spriggan is watching us," Alissa soberly reports.

"Hmm…" I stroke my chin as I think of a nefarious plan, but the Spriggans are too slippery for what I have in mind. "I want to chase him and give him a scare," I tone down the evil.

"There have been quite a lot of traps on these floors, so it's better that we don't rush forward and stumble upon one," Alissa counters.

"Let me try a small explosion near him," Roxanne evilly suggests.

"Isn't that a waste of mana?" I question her skeptically. I know this spell's mana efficiency is kind of bad.

"If it's small, it'll only startle him, so it won't waste too much mana," she explains as she adjusts her glasses.

And I shrug. "Fine, then."

Roxanne claps the tips of her hands excitedly and turns to Alissa. "Please, point me towards the Spriggan, Miss Alissa."

I savor the sight of a cute girl and a hot woman rubbing cheeks and holding hands. I want a picture of this scene.

Roxanne grins evilly as she casts, "[Explosion]!" And I hear a boom, then I feel a faint breeze.

"He actually got pushed away quite a bit, so I think the explosion wounded him," Alissa reports, sounding quite impressed.

I nod in approval as I hum, "Hm, nice. We should use this spell more often, then, because it seems that he couldn't detect the spell until it was too late."

Alissa finds another Spriggan, but he runs away immediately when we stop to aim.

Heheh. They're scared now.

A mix of traps appears on this floor, which is quite annoying since it slows us down.

Then we reach the stairs. Another stair, another no vine trap descent.

Four floors to go.

Vines, vines everywhere. We walk forward slashing at the ground repeatedly, but I fear my poor sword will get ruined like this. Vines try to grab us from multiple angles, but they're too slow to be effective now that we're wary of them.

They're not like the Bush Babies that can strike hard and with weight, these vines can only move and entangle us then push us towards the pools. If a vine catches us and we fall, as long as we have a sword or dagger at hand there's nothing else they can do.

Honestly, this is the most annoying room so far. I almost feel like just running past all these vines.

But we eventually reach the stairs.

Then I look at Alissa, and she looks at me.

"Something is odd," she points out.

"Even I think so," Roxanne agrees, squinting as she stares at the stairs intensely.

The stairs look… too well done. All the other stairs looked worn out and uneven, but this one? Every step is perfect.

I ponder for a moment, but I eventually just give up, "Hm… If something happens, we always have the rope, so let's just go."

We start descending, and we don't meet a single vine trap.

But once we reach the middle, we hear a *clunk* sound.

Ah, shit, here we go again.

The stair suddenly changes into a slope, then a large amount of water gushes out from the walls in jets.

There's no time to react, so we're pushed towards the edge and start losing our balance.

I slip and slide down, so the rope pulls on Alissa, making her slip, and Roxanne follows a second after, then we're all pushed over the edge by the strength of the jets.

The rope holds, and we dangle above the pit a good ten meters above the ground, but right under us, I see dozens of pointy shadows at the edge of my light.

"These little shits…" I grumble.

"My robe…" Roxanne whines.

"Annoying…" Alissa growls.

We slowly crawl down the rope and land avoiding the spikes embedded on the ground, then we use [Fire Magic] to dry ourselves.

Three floors to go.

Another floor full of wooden walls, and it also seems empty.

But Alissa eventually finds one. "One monster hiding ahead," she calmly informs us.

"Hm… have they all not ran away?" I think out loud as I squint to discern what's up ahead. At the end of the corridor, I see the outline of a chest-high wall. "Well, whatever, he's behind that wooden wall?"

"Yes, Master," Alissa obediently replies.

I turn to Roxanne and grin. "Miss Roxanne, you can see that, too, right? Do you think you can cause an explosion right where his head would be?"

She matches my grin and adjusts her glasses as she chuckles like an evil lady, "Ohohoh! I like that!"

Then Alissa helps Roxanne point her finger again, scoring another hit on my heart. The two beauties together are truly a sight to behold.

Oof.

"[Explosion]!"

I hear a boom followed by a wet, fleshy sound, making me giggle.

We walk up to it and see a headless Spriggan laying on the ground with his back against the chest-high wall. The surroundings are completely covered in blue blood and small bits of brain matter and bones.

Roxanne leans down to inspect the damage closer. "Ohoh~… I'm quite satisfied with the result, though it's a shame that I destroyed the proof of extermination."

But then I start chuckling.

"Master, what's so funny?" Alissa asks concernedly.

I can't control myself, and the chuckling grows into laughter.

I try to speak, but I'm so distressed that I can barely keep it together, "I'm not… ahahah… going insane… hahah… it's just that… hah… it's just so… AHAHA… ridiculous…"

Both of the girls look at me worriedly as I bend over and wheeze, but then my stomach starts to hurt, making me even more agitated.

"L-let's go, Master," Alissa hurries us, and the fit of laughter quickly subsides.

I don't want to think about what just happened.

Soon after, we reach the stairs.

Oh, look it's back. Another stair, another vine trap.

Two floors to go.

We're thankful the journey across this floor is short. It's filled with even more traps, but the small distance to the stairs down means we only have to deal with them for a short time.

Another stair, another vine trap.

Last floor.

"The smell of Spriggan is really strong here," Alissa warily points out.

"Perhaps they actually live here?" Roxanne wonders.

I look around and notice small mushrooms and bushes with fruit, so I cite, "This floor has food for them, so while it's not known if they actually live here, they do come often."

There are forty more floors after the one of the Moon Turtles, and it's thought that the Spriggans are hunter-gatherers who don't live in a single place for long.

We quickly move on, eager to reach the end of this stretch of our journey, but after a few rooms, Alissa stops us.

"I smell burnt wood," she whispers, sounding puzzled.

"Oh? So they do use fire," I mumble back.

"Well, this means they're close by," Roxanne explains, and it puts my curious mind back on track.

I smile wryly. "Yes, right…"

Then Roxanne looks at me with an eager glow in her eyes, just waiting for the order to fight.

"Let's not fight them," I stop her immediately.

"Awn…" She coos cutely, contrasting with her alluring style.

I give Alissa a worried glance, but she doesn't seem to understand. "You can only blow their heads if they're standing still, you know," I try to appease Roxanne.

"I can still use [Melt Skin]," she casually replies, giving me a shiver.

I'm surrounded by sadistic women.

"Miss Roxanne, that spell is only for emergencies because it's too dangerous to be used so carelessly," Alissa warns her, finally coming to my rescue.

"Hmm~..." Roxanne groans with a pout, seeming a bit vexed.

Alissa isn't wrong. That spell has quite the short range, and I'm not letting Roxanne get close to another Spriggan again.

"Oh! Master, there's nine of them right ahead!" Alissa suddenly exclaims.

Then I notice that the room they're supposedly in is quite small.

I suddenly get so giddy I start to grin evilly, "Heheheheh… Miss Roxanne, [Firestorm] please..."

Roxanne's expression turns crazed and murderous. "Yes… yes… YES!" She shouts hysterically.

The Spriggans thought they could ambush us again. They thought they could outnumber us. But they've underestimated our power.

You don't mess with a Fire mage.

"They aren't coming, they're waiting to ambush," Alissa declares, confirming their death sentence.

Even the kind and forgiving me is pissed at these imps, and if we can crush them from afar without even being able to see them, then my heart is safe. It's just more numbers on my experience bar.

I hug Alissa's waist, and she rests her head on my shoulder, then we watch the show.

"[FIRESTORM]!"

In the distance, we see the room lighting up. Wisps of flame appear from nothing, creating lines in the air that twist into spirals. The number of flames suddenly explodes until they cover the entire room in just a few seconds, creating a hellish tornado of fire.

A strong gust of hot wind blows on us, bringing the smell of burnt wood and flesh with it.

"GET ROASTED!" Roxanne screams triumphantly, then she pants and leans on her staff.

"They're all dead. Good job, Miss Roxanne," Alissa praises her cheerfully.

The last stair is a few rooms ahead, so this was our last encounter with the Spriggans. After this, the journey back will be simple since the way is clear.

We inspect the damage, but no corpses are left behind. The entire room is completely black and charred.

Then we reach the stairs down. Another stair, another vine trap.

And we finally reach the floor of the Moon Turtles.

"MOONLIGHT MOOOOOSS," Roxanne lets out a long scream as she falls on her knees, her eyes watery, and her hands on her cheeks.

Our prize is finally within sight. Shining in the nearly completely dark cave, a glowing patch of white moss covers the round back shell of a monster, illuminating the surroundings, and revealing the figure of the huge turtle.

The Moon Turtles turtles are just literally giant turtles with a shell covered in either blue or green moss. They have small little spikes growing out of their shells, like a certain famous kidnapping turtle, that thrust out like a porcupine when it's angered. Fortunately, they aren't aggressive, and they'll only attack on their own if someone stands in front of them.

We take a break to let Roxanne recover the mana she used for [Firestorm], and once she's ready, the massacre begins.

This floor is damper than the others, and the pools of water are much deeper, but not wider. The Turtles like to hide in the pools, thinking they're safe since nobody wants to touch the filthy water, but that just makes them more vulnerable to ranged attacks.

We move fast and ignore most turtles since only a few of them actually have the Moonlight Moss. Once we spot our target, Alissa uses [Muscle Explosion] to shoot two arrows in quick succession to blind it. Knowing that it's going to die, the Turtle becomes enraged and shoots fire everywhere in hope of scoring a lucky hit.

Though it's lashing out wildly, it's still a slow-moving turtle, so I put on tall, thick boots and enter the shallow pool, then I carefully approach it from behind and slash its throat. Once I confirm that the bleeding is satisfactory, I return to Alissa to recharge my mental energies while we wait until the Turtle dies from blood loss.

It dies after a few excruciatingly long minutes, then Roxanne happily floats towards it and starts working.

The only problem is that all this blood is bad for my heart, making me queasy. I guess the stress of the trip and the danger of this dungeon keeps me sane, but it's not easy to watch the slow death of these Turtles.

Roxanne's work is a bit fascinating, though. She first spreads a measured amount of a drying powder on the Moss and waits as it reacts until it becomes crumbly to the touch but not enough that it becomes like sand, then she finally pulls out a silver spatula-like scraping tool and collects the Moss.

The Moss is quite corrosive to most materials, forcing her to use thick gloves. The only thing that can resist the corrosion is silver, which is absorbed by the Moss when they touch, creating a fine layer that shields it from touching other things. This layer is what allows the Moss to be safely transported, and it also helps that silver is already an ingredient she wants to use in her potions.

The process takes a few minutes, and by running from room to room, we manage to kill nine Turtles in an hour. We work for three hours, rest, work another three hours, and Roxanne's jar finally gets filled.

"Contract complete!" She exclaims and happily bounces around while holding her jar.

"Uh… we still have to escort you back," I point out.

She stops and grins embarrassedly. "Oh yes, that's right, eheheh."

How can you be so carefree?

Exhausted, we set camp in a quiet, empty room.

Roxanne takes a bath first while we keep watch, and she happily hums a cute little tune as we hear the splashes of water.

Alissa and I both smell of sweat, but we still sit on the floor right next to each other as we hold hands and stare out of our secluded room.

"It feels like we have been so long down here," Alissa suddenly comments wistfully.

I gently caress her hand as I admire how perfectly smooth her skin is and explain, "It's because we can't see the sun, so our notion of time is messed up. Now that I think about it, is there a shop where we could buy a clock?" I raise my head to look at her.

She looks at her hand and smiles at my loving touch. "I've seen them a few times at the Flea Market. The Crafters' Corner should also have them, but the magic tool shops are more guaranteed to have it in stock."

"You think it's expensive?"

Her tail lazily wags as she thinks for a moment. "Yes, that's why not many people have it. Looking at the sun or the sun dials is enough for most commoners."

I start to feel mesmerized by the movement of her fluffy tail. "We should have some good money after this, so we'll rest for a few days, and I'll use the leftovers to buy one."

Her tail wags faster and I smile unknowingly. "A few days with only us would be nice," she whispers with a dreamy tone. "I want to learn more about the local teas, and I also want to practice cooking again."

I raise my eyes back to her face and stare at her orange jewels. "Oh, yeah, you have the [Cooking] skill, but you haven't made anything for me yet. I'd love to eat something you made." -She gushes adorably and gives me a sly glance- "I used to cook, too, so let's do it together."

She tilts her head cutely in surprise as she hums, "Oh? Yes, let's do it together." Then she squeezes my hand lovingly. "You also haven't told me what dishes you used to eat in your homeland."

I hum absentmindedly as I reminisce about the past, about how Lily and I used to cook together…

Bath time goes the same as before with gags, fingers, and mouth only. Alissa holds her voice better this time, so I put a lot of energy into it.

After having my taste of her, we eat the same dinner as yesterday and go to sleep again in turns. I get to sleep for three hours while hugging Alissa, but we have to do it while armored, which dampens my enjoyment a considerable amount. Well, Roxanne's robe can barely be considered armor, but I think she has some light gambeson under it.

We wake up feeling a bit stiff, then we eat breakfast, and prepare to leave.

Roxanne spends a long moment looking out of our secluded room, staring at the distant glint of more Moonlight Moss. If she wants to go, she'll do it alone because I just want to go home.

Eventually, she snaps out of it and we move out.

Once we get to the stairs, we see that the rope we used is still there. Being able to reuse it makes it worth having spent so much money on a whole spool.

Then we move through the rooms at a hurried pace. We know where the traps are, and not only do the Spriggans take a long time to change the trap layout, they're also far too scared of us now to attack again.

We blaze through the floors and leave the dungeon before it's even noon, I think.

After a light snack, we wait a short while for digestion to do its thing, then we start to stretch. We're going to run, screw sneaking about again. The moles won't chase us into the Arachne territory, so we can just run past them because they are way too dumb and slow to react fast enough to block us.

I'll keep Roxanne in front of me because I can't let her alluring slow ass fall behind like last time.

Then I have Alissa memorize the order of the markings on the tunnels to guide us through the path that takes us outside, and now we're ready.

"RUN!"

We simply run past four Moles. We throw a few arrows and spells at them the moment we meet, scaring them off and clearing the path for us.

"Five more markings," Alissa reports, not even out of breath, but we still have about ten more minutes of running, then she suddenly stops. "Wait, someone's coming."

I get in front of her and pull up my shield. "What is it?" I warily ask.

"Three humanoids are coming towards us. They're likely just adventurers, but… they're running from something?" She questions, unsure herself.

"Running from what? Actually, it's pretty obvious, get ready to fight an Arachne," I order as I glance at the girls, and they nod solemnly.

Just our luck. This expedition didn't have any real incident so far, so it was about time something unusual happened.

We wait for a few seconds, then we start to hear footsteps. I quickly become anxious, thinking that the Moles are going to come running from behind now that we've stopped, so I warn Alissa to keep an eye on our backs.

Sorry you have to work so much.

Then a line of adventurers comes from the tunnel ahead. The first one is a black man in a hauberk and chausses with a large kite shield and a sword sheathed on his waist; the second is a blonde bearded archer with black leather armor and a red feather cap that looks kind of tacky, and I see a white, thin, furry tail coming out of his back; and the last is a short-haired redhead woman with a black robe, a wand in one hand and a small, round, iron shield on the other.

They all look deathly pale, their faces blank with fear, and their bodies glistening with sweat.

"SYMBOL OF HATE!" The man in chain mail bellows and we all shudder in fear at the name.

We're screwed, that's a threat level 7 monster.

The Symbol of Hate is an aberrant legendary monster that appeared about two hundred years ago. She's a five meters tall Arachne with twelve spider legs, black human torso, and blood-red eyes. The hairs of her spider body are so stiff that they can puncture the skin with their sharpness; her spider exoskeleton is almost as hard as metal, making sword and spears nearly useless; her black human torso is her weakest spot, but it's still as tough as an ogre's, making my sword almost useless; her frightening large mouth has hundreds of sharp teeth that shred anything she eats; and her nails are as large and sharp as a dagger. Her appearance isn't exactly frightening, but what makes this monster so horrifying is that she has an incessant thirst for inflicting pain and misery.

She literally feeds on pain. She captures any living being, brutalizes them, nurses them back to health, and brutalizes them again until their mind breaks apart, then she eats her prey alive. There's only one report of her nest and the only words to describe her are "a hell where the only sound is the cry of pain of tortured souls".

She's the embodiment of misery. She's a berserking, cunning monster that eludes extermination task forces as long as she has lived. Her aberrant nature means not even the Monster King controls her as she's grown too powerful and too twisted to be considered the same as a normal monster.

It's that damn nightmare that's coming towards us.

But we can't run or we're going to get sandwiched. We're still at the edge of Mole territory, so they might still be chasing after us, and we don't have the firepower to break through their horde if we fight them head-on.

We can either fight one enemy right now, or we can run and most likely get sandwiched between more than one, so, to me, there's only one choice: we have to fight the Symbol head-on.

"YOU THREE, STOP RIGHT NOW, THE MOLES ARE COMING AFTER US!" I scream back.

They immediately brake and almost tumble, then the woman and the chain guy freeze like deers in the headlights while the archer grabs his own hair and falls on his knees, his face wracked with despair.

Now's not the time to panic!

"WE HAVE TO FIGHT!" I scream once again, and they turn their heads towards me. "You, mage! What are your spells!?"

"Hiiii..." She shivers and lets out a small scream, but my imperious tone prompts her to stutter an answer, "F-f-fire, b-ball, arrow, w-wall. W-wind bla-d-de, ha-hammer, a-armor."

I nod sternly and command, "Ignore wind! Focus only on [Fireball] and [Fire Arrow]. Don't miss, so take your time, and don't waste mana!"

She nods in understanding while shivering like a rabbit before a wolf.

I turn to the weremonkey man. "You, archer! Focus only on hitting the eyes. The skin is too thick for anything else!"

"Y-yes!" He obediently responds and stands up.

Good, he's not completely helpless.

Then I turn to the last one. "You, shield! We stand in front. Block and protect, and cut legs only if we have a chance!"

"YES!" He roars with a surprising amount of energy.

I turn around and look at the girls. "Roxanne! Same as the mage, save half your mana for an explosion!"

"Understood!" She soberly replies.

She trusts me, that's good.

And to the last one, I give an intense look that she mirrors back at me. "Alissa, same as the archer. We need those eyes popped!"

"You can count on me!" She confidently declares and clenches her fist over her chest.

Reliable as always. Marry me, please.

Then we get in formation and wait.

I think I'm actually damn lucky.

It was simply by chance that I saw the entry for Symbol of Hate, which spiked my curiosity, so I spent a long time searching for tales about her, and they told me the best way to deal with this fiend. Her skin is tough but it's still skin, so fire is extra effective, and if we burn her enough, she'll lose interest and run away. That's our only chance of survival.

Then I notice that the chainmail guy is shaking.

"It's okay, we'll survive," I lie, then I give him an exaggerated smile and a thumbs-up. Hopefully, this gesture means the same as on Earth.

He lets out a nervous laugh, and his shaking reduces a little.

A few seconds later, we hear a stampede coming, then a maniacal laugh fills the tunnels, and I grit my teeth

The laughter quickly becomes louder, and the mages start charging their mana.

I look around and wonder if this is the best place for this fight. We're in a large square room that's tall and long, but not very wide.

Unfortunately, there's no time to think anymore. At the entrance to the tunnel ahead, a large shadow appears.

The Symbol of Hate charges at us while grinning like a mad woman. Her twelve legs are as sharp as a spear, leaving small holes wherever they step on. Normal Arachnes have the human body replace the spider's face, but the Symbol has her bare human body on top of the thorax of the spider, so she has eyes on her human head and on the spider's face, which are quite a lot of eyes to pop.

A second after I scan her body, two [Fireballs] and two arrows are launched towards her. She blocks one spell with her dagger-fingers while the other grazes the right arm, leaving a small scorch mark. The left arm deflects an arrow aimed at the face but the second arrow sinks into one of the spider head's six eyes.

She easily deflects the following arrows while the mages gather mana for more [Fireballs], then she reaches us, the front line.

She tries to trample both of us at the same time, but we face her with determination and hold back the charge. Her front legs slam against our shields, making a small bump in mine as she tries to crush both of us, but she doesn't retreat immediately, leaving her legs exposed, so we both counter with a slash, carving grooves in them.

She pulls back and raises her two forward legs, then uses them like spears. Her arms block more [Fireball]s, but the spells still burn her skin. The center area between me and the shield guy is clear, giving the archers a perfect shot to her eyes, and another one on the spider's head is pierced.

I dodge, parry, and block, slowly wounding the forward legs some more, but even my sword arm is quickly tiring from having to deal with the brute force of this monster. My [Wind Armor] is so weak against these attacks that the spell makes no difference.

The shield guy is doing better than me, though, I just don't have enough "Strength" for this fight.

But I won't fall first!

The arrows miss and both [Fireballs] are blocked. The shield guy gets lucky and cuts off the pointy tip from the Symbol's leg, but it can still be used as a blunt tool.

I start to lose my breath and my arms become heavy. I won't last much longer. The fire damage is too little, and the monster is too heavy.

Another spider eye goes away, three more to go. The eyes lost are all on my side, so its attacks slow down and I can get a small breathing room, but I don't have the luxury to rest. I counter and cut the tip of a leg.

"URAAAAAAA!" The shield guy screams. He makes the Symbol's forward leg even shorter, then a large [Fireball] hits her chest and one of her saggy, ugly things is completely carbonized.

"AAAAAAH!" This time the spider is the one who screams, but then her face warps into a scowl as she becomes enraged.

Her attacks become wilder and heavier, so we take a step back, and another spider eye goes away, leaving only two more and the pair on her human head.

The Symbol is slowly losing her sight advantage, making it difficult for her to dodge or block all these simultaneous attacks, so she changes tactics.

She jumps sideways, away from me, and she falls down nearly on top of the shield guy. With three legs, she does a sideways sweep, sending him flying towards the wall.

This is bad, she turned around the situation, I can't hold her back on my own!

I take the chance. I dash towards her and slash one leg at the joint, cutting it off completely.

Heh, easy, only eleven more to go!

She counters by doing another sweep, and there's no room for me to dodge. I receive the sweep against my shield and feel a shiver run down my spine as I fly away backward.

I crash on the floor and roll, but I spread my arms and legs out, stopping me from flying further as I land on all fours, then the Symbol turns towards Roxanne.

Oh no, no, no, and no. NO, YOU WON'T.

I dash with my all, adrenaline pumping into my veins, and forget all about my tired legs and arms. The only thing I feel is the anguish in my heart while looking at Roxanne.

A shadow appears in front of her as she merely remains standing still while muttering something, and completely defenseless. A spider leg pierces her stomach, and I can see the tip coming out of her back.

The leg stops in the air for a second, then I jump and slash down, using my body weight to sever the leg clean through.

"WAAAAAAAAAAH!" The spider screams, but not because of my attack. I look up and see an arrow coming out of the human head's right eye.

GOOD, ALISSA!

The spider thrashes about as it screams in pain, but it narrowly misses both Roxanne and I, then I see an opportunity.

Her legs are open, desperately trying to find anyone close to her, too blind with pain to see properly. Once she sweeps her legs to one side, I dash forward and get under her, then I raise my sword and open a long wound along the soft part of the underside of the spider's thorax.

Blood flows down and coats my arm, and even a piece of mangled intestine dangles out.

Suddenly, my head bursts with pain, and I lose my hearing as the spider screams so loud it makes my body shake.

I stumble and look back, only for my eyes to meet with the Symbol's last human eye, and fear fills my spine as the blood-red circle stares at me with evil intent.

Behind the Symbol, Roxanne still stands, leaning on her staff as she mutters a chant and gathers a huge amount of mana. She's going to use her last card, and the Symbol is too enraged with me to notice her.

I have to do something, I have to keep the monster still, but I only know of one way.

I run away as I change my skills in desperation, then I hear the spider start moving.

"STOOOOOP!" The shield guy screams. He reaches the spider and severs a leg, but then he immediately gets blown away again by another sweep.

A [Fireball] hits the Symbol's human back, making her groan in pain, and she spins in place, now staring at the mage girl.

Like I'm going to let you do that!

They bought me enough time. I turn around and dash as I charge my spell, putting as much mana as I can into it.

I'm ready. There's no other way, no second chances, this is my best bet and I'm going to see it through the end!

"RAAAAH!" I scream in desperation to grab her attention again.

The Symbol's legs are too wounded for her to be faster than me, so I catch up with her, then she stops to switch targets to me again.

I jump and use one of her legs as a stepping stone to lunge towards her head.

The spider swings her right arm at me as she turns, and the dagger-fingers slide across my shield, then I suddenly stop mid-flight and an extremely uncomfortable sensation penetrates my left flank.

I look down and see her five dagger-fingers have penetrated through the left side of my torso cleanly, skewering me completely. The pain is so overwhelming I drop my weapons, and the left side of my body stops responding.

The Symbol looks at me with a triumphant grin, and instead of throwing me away or finishing the job, she brings me closer, then she opens her disgusting mouth, and the smell of rot that wafts out makes me want to puke.

Thank you, you scum, now go die.

I grab the top of her head with my only working hand and release [Shocking Touch].

The chaotic lighting sparks crackle all over her head, and her whole body freezes, then she twitches uncontrollably as her brain is overwhelmed.

I kick her body and slide out of her dagger-fingers, then I fall heavily on the hard ground, and the Symbol's dumbfounded face is the last thing I see before her upper body explodes.

"You are now level fifteen," the comforting female voice announces inside my head.

I close my eyes as I feel a rain of hot droplets splash against my skin, which is followed by a blast of hot wind.

A splitting headache suddenly flares, then my ears start to ring, and I lose my hearing. I'm in so much pain I can't move, so I just wait on the floor for someone to come help me.

After a long, agonizing moment, something soft touches my cheek, and I open my eyes, but my vision is blurry, then I cough blood.

Something cold touches my lips and my jaw is forced open, then a warm, tasty liquid enters my mouth. I almost choke, but I try to drink it as best as I can. My throat is dry, anyway.

Someone does something to my body, but I'm in too much pain to understand what's happening, then the ringing in my ears starts to lower and my hearing slowly returns.

"Master! Can you hear me!?" I hear Alissa desperately call to me.

"Ye..." I let out a rough sound.

I focus my eyes and discern Alissa's crying face before me. The pain pulsates, but it quickly reduces, allowing me to move my right arm.

I raise my hand and cast [Regeneration] on myself.

After a long moment, enough of my awareness returns that I can take stock of my own situation. My leather jacket is open, my shirt has been ripped apart, and the archer guy is holding down a bundle of cloth against my left flank while Alissa pours a red, glowing liquid on it to heal me faster, but the cloth is quickly turning red with blood. I'm bleeding quite a lot.

"Rox… an?" I croak.

"She's still unconscious but… we've done all we could for her," Alissa solemnly replies, her face warped in a frown.

Shit… Roxanne might be dying.

I can't waste time with [Regeneration]. I hastily put my new twelve points into [Light Magic] and a sort of "internal pressure" tells me I shouldn't put any more.

Let's see if those "Piety" gains were worth something.

New spells appear inside my mind, then I cast [Heal] on myself.

I see a flash of light, then my vision goes dark, and pain flares again in my head. It hurts so much my whole body tenses up.

I hear a lot of muffled sounds, but I'm barely conscious due to the pain, so I don't understand what they're saying.

I feel something cold touch my lips and my mouth is opened again. A different, warm and tasty liquid enters my mouth, and I drink it eagerly.

After a long, tortuous minute, or less, pain warps the perception of time, my headache subsides, and I can hear what's going on again, but I only hear sobs.

"Alis…?" I weakly ask, my voice coming out a little better than before.

"M-Master?! You're awake!?" She cries back, her voice cracking from anguish.

"Yes… what. Happen… can't… see," I mutter.

"You overused your mana! WHY DID YOU DO THAT?!" She shrieks, her voice filled with rage.

"Sorry…"

"AAAH!" She screams hysterically in exasperation.

I want to laugh, but it hurts too much.

Oh shit, I can't laugh, I have to heal myself and then heal Roxanne before something bad happens!

"Will… meditate…"

"You want to meditate? Yes, please do that. You need to rest!" She exclaims, exasperated.

No, I need mana. Roxanne is in danger, and no potion is going to close a wound like that fast enough. I can't let her die, not after she killed that nightmarish being, not after we went through so much trouble to get the Moss, not after I started to like her obnoxiously happy personality.

I can't see, and I can't move, so now I'll block my ears. Meditating helps recover mana? Well, I'll meditate as hard as I can! But that might not be enough… I need something better.

I can see my system with my eyes closed, but I can't move my arms to change my skills into [Mana Recovery]. I could wait until my body recovers, but I'm suddenly struck with an idea to fill the time while I wait.

[Mana Recovery] and meditation are passive methods, so they aren't as effective as active methods, of which I know one. Dwarves can pull mana from the environment to strengthen their bodies, but unfortunately, that's a racial skill of theirs, so I can't learn it with my cheats, though maybe there's a way to replicate the skill's effects.

When a mage lacks the knowledge to properly cast a spell, their "Willpower" is used to brute-force the mana to do what they want, so I just need to visualize what I want with crystal clarity and bend the mana to my will.

The world naturally produces mana as do all living beings, and right now, my [Sense Mana] is telling me that there's a highly magical corpse next to me exuding quite a lot of it, so I just need to force that mana to come to me!

I focus on my [Sense Mana] and wish really hard for that mana to be mine.

I suddenly feel something stir within me, but I wasn't expecting anything to happen, so I stop in sudden fear and surprise.

After a second of processing the feeling, I decide to resume what I was doing, but with more intensity.

The stirring comes back and it feels incredibly similar to when I "scratch" the "itch" to activate things inside my mind.

Come to me!

I focus more on the feeling inside my mind and the stirring continues to grow, as if I was kicking up a storm within me, then I start to feel a resistance, like a smooth "force-field" trying to push me back.

I don't understand what it is, but it means that something is happening, and it makes me too curious to stop what I'm doing.

I push against the force field and it seems to gradually give in, then I start to feel it "stretch" as if it was like rubber, and an even odder feeling strikes me.

It's like my head is expanding, ballooning out of control, yet my real body has not moved an inch since I started this madness.

I have no damn idea what I'm doing, but it's something! And since I'm "stretching" out of my real body, I aim this growth towards the Symbol's corpse.

After a few seconds of this, my [Sense Mana] triggers as my "forehead" crosses with a thick stream of mana.

This is what I need! Come to me!

The stream stirs in a way that reminds me of a drop of paint falling in water, creating small vortexes of mana as it spins.

Come to me!

The stream stirs harder, turning into chaotic clouds that surround my ballooned head.

COME TO ME!

I open my mouth, trying to "eat" the mana, trying to force it to enter my body, then my MP suddenly ticks up, recovering ten points in one go.

YES!

Now it ticks up again, recovering twenty points in a single second, but then my body is wracked by pain, making me groan.

I WON'T STOP NOW! THIS MANA IS ALL MINE!

I "chew" the clouds of mana, and my MP skyrockets, recovering to the maximum in just a few seconds while my body burns with pain, complaining about what I'm doing, so I stop, and everything returns to normal, though the burning remains.

"Roxanne...?" I force myself to ask through gritted teeth.

"She is here. We brought her beside you. What do you need, Master?" Alissa unemotionally asks, a dash of concern in her tone.

"Let me… touch her…" I order, mustering all my strength to speak.

"What?! Master, you need to meditate to gather your mana!" Alissa explains, exasperated.

"I got it… let me touch her…" I insist and scowl from the pain.

"That's not possible, please rest, Master," Alissa tries to soothe me and lands a gentle hand on my forehead.

Anger gives me the energy to put even more weight to my words. "Alissa… that's an order…"

I can't see her because my view is blurred, but I can hear her squirm in anguish.

"Wound…" I grumble sternly.

She silently grabs my hand and moves it sideways, putting it on top of something warm, hot, and slightly sticky, which is right beside something cold, hard and prickly.

"Remove… spike…"

Someone fiddles with the cold thing, then it's pulled out with a disgusting fleshy sound followed by the dripping of a liquid.

"Done…" A male voice replies.

I press the [Heal] button within my mind and charge it with all my mana, then I release the spell and pass out for good.

The first thing I feel is that I'm laying on something soft, then I weakly open my eyes, but my vision is blurred by the intense glow of a [Spirit Light] floating above me.

"Hey..." I let out a weak groan.

"He's awake," a man calls out.

My view quickly regains focus , and I see the shield guy's upside-down face looking down at me with a frown, then I feel a soft hand touch my cheek, and I turn my eyes down to see Alissa's red-eyed and disheveled face staring at me.

"How are you feeling?" She tiredly asks with a hoarse voice.

"Better… my muscles are feeling heavy, but better," I answer and cough.

She smiles softly, then her thumb caresses my skin. "Stay still, the bleeding just barely stopped."

I cast [Regeneration] on myself, and Alissa gives me an exasperated look, but she doesn't say anything. She knows I have to do this.

A few minutes pass, and I start to regain control of my body, then I detect a strong scent of blood.

I look beside me and see that Roxanne is on a makeshift stretcher. She's unconscious, her robe is completely bloodied below the waist, and I can see a bloody bandage wrapped around her belly, but her breathing seems to be normal.

"Is she still bleeding?" I ask Alissa.

"The wound is almost closed but she's still bleeding," she anxiously answers.

I heal myself a little more time until I can sit, then I cast [Regeneration] on Roxanne until my mana runs out. Her bleeding stops, but we'll have to hope that she doesn't have any internal injuries.

I drink another mana potion and ask, "Can you bring me to the spider's body?"

The shield guy looks at me dumbfounded, but Alissa nods and asks for help.

They carry me on the sleeping bag and let me down near the Symbol, then I grab a spider leg, open my "Items," and store it. The body disappears, and only a huge pool of blood is left.

"Carry us back," I tiredly order, then I lay down and immediately fall asleep.

I wake up feeling a light shaking. I open my eyes and they slowly focus, then I see Alissa's back in front of me and recognize that she and the shield guy are carrying me in a makeshift stretcher through the brown tunnels.

Alissa notices me stir and looks back at me, then she gives me a warm smile, and I try to smile back, but I'm still very uncomfortable.

"Roxanne?" I softly ask.

"Stable and sleeping. She woke up once, but now she's asleep again," she calmly reports.

I move my points into [Mana Recovery] and start using [Regeneration] on myself again, then I notice that Alissa is wearing a dark-red cloth armband.

"What's that cloth?" I question her.

She diligently answers, "The Symbol's blood. It has a characteristic scent, and it seems to scare away the monsters, so I made one for everyone. It has worked well so far."

I nod and smile at her. "Smart." And she gives me a brief proud smile. I'm glad she's back to being confident. Her desperate and disheveled appearance was heartbreaking.

It's quite likely that the Symbol's blood is what made the Moles pull back from chasing after us. If there are no dumb monsters around, we might even be able to walk back to the entrance without a problem.

We continue our slow trek in silence for a long time.

I maintain [Regeneration] on myself and meditate twice to recover my MP until I can walk slowly again, but Alissa doesn't let me stand up yet, so I just meditate one more time and cast [Regeneration] on Roxanne to finish her healing.

The health and mana potions used on me are still working, but they're slow, and they heal basically at the same speed as [Regeneration]. Drinking more potions could fasten the healing, but there's a risk they'll poison us if we overdose.

After the last [Regeneration] treatment, my head starts to hurt again, and my body tires out. I must be using too much mana, so I'll need to rest a long time until I can cast magic without hurting myself again.

We stop for a break and Alissa gives me bread, which helps give my body a small surge of energy. As I eat, I look at the others and feel a bit of fear from their ghastly appearances, but then I also wonder how I look if they're that bad. Roxanne is looking even paler than normal, but at least she's sleeping peacefully.

After the short rest, I convince Alissa to let me walk so the others can conserve their energies.

We move forward slowly, and I quickly regret my decision as my legs whine loudly about tiredness, but I endure and move on.

All I can think about is putting one foot before the other and continuing forward in this seemingly unending tunnel, then my mind becomes hazy as I slowly become a walking zombie.

After an eternity, I finally see the light of the sky.

"AAAAAAH!" The mage girl and the archer guy let out a long, anguished cry, then the shield guy hugs the archer while Alissa pats the back of the mage. Roxanne suddenly wakes up, confused and scared, and Alissa scolds them for making so much noise.

I sit down to rest, but I lack the energy to stand up again, so we rest again until I manage to force my body to continue marching.

We meet a goblin duo in the small forest, but Alissa kills them before they even notice us. I use [Regeneration] on Roxanne just for a short time and stop before my body complains again, but it's enough to wake her up, though she still lacks the energy to say anything.

Then we reach the road.

Since there's usually a lot of traffic here, we wait for anyone to appear, and a simple wagon answers our prayers after a minute. It's a local farmer carrying a few barrels of alcohol towards the town.

He turns pale when he sees how bloody and haggard we are, then he immediately agrees to help, and Alissa gives him a few coins for his trouble.

Now the worst is over, and I doze off in the rocking wagon.

When I wake up, I see two unknown robed men carrying me on a proper stretcher as we quickly cross a simple corridor, then I recognize that the men are wearing the temple's priest robes.

Shortly after, I'm gently put onto a comfy bed with Roxanne put onto another beside me, then Ciel suddenly rushes inside.

"S-sister!? What's wrong?" One of the priests asks in confusion.

"I know him. Please, let me treat him," Ciel requests.

"If you wish so," the priest defers and goes towards Roxanne.

Ciel rushes to my side and exclaims, "Just what happened to you?!" Then she touches my wounded flank and starts chanting [Heal].

"We met the Symbol of Hate," Alissa grimly responds from my other side.

Ciel stops chanting and stares at her, her jaw hanging open in surprise.

"S-sister… please continue healing him," Alissa begs worriedly.

Ciel blinks and snaps out of it. "Y-yes! But can you say that again? Explain it to me, please," she pleads and starts chanting again as she inspects my chest wounds.

While Ciel casts multiple [Heal]s on me, Alissa retells our encounter, starting from when we decided to run through the mole territory.

After three [Heal]s I don't feel any more pain, just tiredness. With the treatment done, Ciel just stares at Alissa, dumbfounded.

"Why was the Symbol there? That's way too far from its territory!" Ciel suddenly exclaims, bewildered.

Alissa shakes her head and explains, "Gunther and the others don't know. They were investigating the report of a White Arachne when they suddenly met with the Symbol. They knew they had no chance to win, so they ran towards the Moles to possibly slow the Symbol down, then maybe hide inside the small rooms of the Spiral Springs."

The White Arachne is a twisted version of the normal Arachne. It can possibly create undead, so both the temple and the monster hunters' guild pay a lot for any information on it. Also, the idea to hide in the Spiral Springs was sound until we came. If they had run towards the entrance, they'd likely get tangled in the Tarantula's webs, which would be their death.

Ciel massages her temples as she shakes her head in disbelief. "Of all things, why-…" -She sighs tiredly- "Mr. Ryder, please pray to the God of Luck because your life is just too eventful."

"Hah… I have a feeling praying won't really help, though," I wryly reply.

Ciel stares at me in confusion. "Why would that be so?"

I shrug weakly. "I'm still alive, right? For an adventurer, you could say it was only bad luck if I actually die."

Ciel expresses a mix of laughter, anger, and defeat while Alissa just sighs, but I think she agrees with me.

I hear a chuckle from the side and see Roxanne staring at us with a tired face, then the priest casts [Heal] one more time on her and takes his leave.

Healing magic is so powerful that our treatment is done in just a few minutes, so now we just need to rest our tired bodies because the spells didn't replenish our energy reserves. There's the spell [Refresh], but at most it's like taking a short rest, and our muscles need more than that to fully heal. There's also the need to let the body adapt to the healed flesh, so no more strenuous activities for today.

That doesn't mean Alissa can't use her mouth to give me some release.

After the bath, the temple gives us a rustic vegetable soup with some tasteless goblin meat and as much toast as we want. Overall, it tastes quite nice even though it's such simple food.

Then we're given a room with two beds to sleep for a night while Roxanne also gets a room for herself. Thankfully, they let Alissa sleep in the same room as me, but they don't have a double bed for patients.

The treatment and the bed cost us merely two silver since much of the cost is subsidized by the Lord, which is surprisingly nice of him. For those who can't pay, the treatment is free, and I feel like there's few people who can be shameless enough to lie in front of someone as angelic as Ciel.

With the day finally over. Alissa and I huddle up together in the small bed, and I finally get a good night's sleep with her in my arms.

Intermission 2 - Roxanne

How am I still alive? I have no idea how to deal with this situation. In a split second he made the decision to trust me even though I was wounded and half-dead. We barely know each other, yet he has the bravery to jump into the claws of the enemy and trust that I can finish the battle.

The older and experienced me tells me that the young boy is insane, but my young and impressionable side shouts that he's a hero. In the end, all I know is that he's dependable and not someone you let escape because even though he's young, he's not a boy, he's a man. Now, imagine how much he'll grow in a few years…

What I truly feel is hard to say. He acts like a newly-wed with her and yet he doesn't admit his love. What kind of relationship is that? Though, the trust and dependability that they show for each other actually made me jealous. If even after all this he's still unsure of his own feelings towards her, how am I going to be sure of mine?

All I know is that I want to stay close to him.

A note from Manasong

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Chapter 8: Guts and Glory

A note from Manasong

Attention: to conform to the limit of mature content (more than just sexual content) allowed in a novel, I've censored this chapter. You can look for the uncensored version here.

The morning light seeping in around the blinds wakes me up, and they illuminate our small room just enough to allow me to notice Alissa's orange jewels staring right at me.

We smile at each other, but we don't make a sound or move a centimeter. We just want to enjoy this moment a little longer.

I get the feeling that something changed within me, so I open my "Stats" and "Skills" while we rest.

My "Endurance" raised by 1 (now 10), my "Willpower" raised by 2 (now 15), my MP raised by a whopping 100 (now 355), my "Magic Power" raised by 10 (200). My [Sword Use] raised by 2 (now 12+4), my [Dodge], [Block], [Sense Mana] and [Mana Control] raised by 1 (now 0+5, 0+7, 0+3, and 0+4). I learned [Light Magic] and [Mana Overuse Resistance] with 1 point. The most interesting of all is that I learned [Redirect Mana (creator)] with 1 point, and I can't add or remove points in that skill.

My right hand instinctively searches for Alissa's furry ear, and I notice that my muscles still ache, but I let the hand do as it pleases.

Her other, lonely ear twitches, and the imp within me suddenly takes over. I pull her into a tight hug and playfully bite her ear.

"KYAH!" She lets out the cutest scream I ever heard.

I release her and stare at her embarrassed expression in surprise. "Oh? What was that?" I hum teasingly as a grin slowly grows in me.

She pouts and gives me a mild glare as she complains, "M-master! I told you my ears are sensitive!"

My grin turns into a smirk. "But you didn't hate it, right?"

"N-no… but be gentler," she bashfully replies.

Ah, it's good to be alive.

I nod in understanding, then I gently massage both her ears, and she closes her eyes in happiness.

Suddenly, she opens her eyes and exclaims, "No-no good. I should be the one massaging you!"

I open my arms wide. "Then by all means."

She crawls up to me and kisses my lips, then she raises her chest, mounting me, but unfortunately it doesn't become spicy, and she only uses her hands to massage my muscles.

It feels good because my whole body is still sore and the pressure is nice and stimulating. Alissa doesn't have the [Massage] skill, so I wonder how good it'd feel if I gave her the skill.

While I'm enjoying a good massage, someone knocks on the door and tells us that breakfast is ready.

Her stomach rumbles, and we both stop and stare at each other.

"Let's go eat," I suggest, and she silently nods as her skin grows scarlet.

We get dressed, then Alissa guides me to the mess hall, a very wide room with a dozen wooden tables and benches. There are a few priests about, coming and going with trays of surprisingly tasty-looking food.

As we observe the area, the priest who started to treat me yesterday comes to us.

"How are you today?" He kindly asks.

I pat my own arm and wince. "Sore all over, but I'm fine. Seems like everything has healed already," I answer with a smile.

He nods and hums, but then his expression starts to become worried, "Yes, that's expected… wait, no. The state you came in was quite stable considering how desperate your battle was."

Well, shit. I used [Light Magic] to heal Roxanne and myself a good deal before coming here, so it's impossible to not notice.

"Well, I fainted multiple times while using [Regeneration]. It really was by a thread," I try to make an excuse.

He nods and soberly states, "Certainly seems so. You're a lucky man."

Could I spend a day without hearing something like this? I'm not lucky, I know this now more than ever. Even if the universe is conspiring for me to be "rewarded," I don't consider that "lucky".

I awkwardly laugh and look away, "Hahah, that is something I doubt a little."

"Oh yes, I know some would agree with you." He wryly replies, then returns to being professional again. "But now, you should rest at least for a day-cycle. Also, make sure your body is ready before you begin training. Internal wounds like yours are difficult to see, and can continue to do damage in the future if you're not careful."

I hum and give a quick bow. "Thank you for your advice. There's certainly nothing I want to do more than just rest right now."

The priest gives us a brief smile, then leaves to get breakfast, and we also get some. Bread, a nutty spread, jerky, a not-apple, and some tea. Quite nice, really.

Mid-way our meal, Roxanne comes in with Ciel helping her walk because she seems unsteady.

They notice us and Ciel waves, then they take a seat in front of us.

"Good morning, Mr. Ryder. I feel like the sunlight has never been so refreshing," Roxanne greets with a pained smile, then she takes a deep sigh while Ciel asks for one of the priests to get them a tray of food.

"Your positivity is unbreakable," I remark, rather impressed.

She cheerfully nods and readjusts her oval glasses. Her childish cheerfulness may look jarring against her sensual beauty, I'm starting to grow fond of her. "Of course, I couldn't be happier, I finally have the chance to use Moonlight Moss on my potions and grow rich and famous!" She makes a fist and begins to raise her arm, but then immediately lowers as she makes a pained face.

"Miss Roxanne, please don't do that, your body is extremely weakened now," Ciel pleads and gently lands a hand on her shoulder.

"You'll have difficulty keeping Miss Roxanne quiet, Grand Ciel," Alissa calmly states matter-of-factly.

Grand Ciel? There's that weird honorific again.

"Please, Miss is fine," Ciel replies with a smile.

Alissa nods and relents, "As you wish."

Then Ciel turns to me and gives me a stern, but caring stare as she cautions me, "Now, Mr. Ryder. You too should be resting, your wound wasn't any less worse than hers."

I smile back at her kindness and reply, "Well, I lost way less blood than her because I could heal myself up to a point, so I'm mostly just sore, but don't worry, I'll take at least one day-cycle of rest. I have a lot of things I want to do in town, and I'd also like to talk to you again, Miss Ciel."

Her gaze softens and she mirrors my expression."Certainly, I'd be glad to."

Roxanne receives her tray, and she immediately goes for the tea, then she gives me a curious look as she asks, "Mr. Ryder, are you leaving today? If so, can you come to my house in a couple of days? I'd also like to talk to you and properly thank you for saving me. Do you have a pen? I'll tell you my address."

Oh, how nice of her.

I pull out a cheap magical fountain pen. It generates ink if you put some mana into it. Then I ask Alissa to write because my calligraphy with these pens is horrendous and my hand is kind of shaky.

I softly exclaim as I suddenly remember something, "Ah, I still have the body of the Symbol with me, so I'll give it to the guild today, then I'll share the bounty with you."

She opens her eyes wide. "Wha-well, that's… unnecessary. I owe you far more."

I smirk as I casually slice my not-apple. "Say that again and I'll pinch you. You're the one who actually finished it, I just gave you the chance, so I'll follow our previous agreement: I'll negotiate our share, and you take one third of the bounty."

She sighs and drops her head, and I get the feeling her spiral horns suddenly look oddly bouncy. "If you say so…"

We chat a little longer, then I finish my meal.

I stand up and announce, "We'll meet again in a few days, then. Rest well, Miss Roxanne."

"You too, Mr. Ryder and Miss Alissa," she weakly replies and smiles.

Ciel gives us a small wave. "Goodbye Mr. Ryder, goodbye Miss Alissa."

Then we wave back and leave.

The walk back to the inn is slow, but I feel that my body enjoys the light exercise.

I'll sleep in for the rest of the morning, then we'll go to the guild during the afternoon. Silas sent word to Alissa when I was sleeping that he would like to talk to me as soon as I was able, I can just guess what it is.

When I enter the inn, the innkeeper opens his eyes wide and simply stares at me for a couple of seconds.

What's that about?

"Mr. Ryder! You are back already?" He suddenly exclaims.

"Uh… Yes, I finished my expedition," I awkwardly reply.

"I think he means you were supposed to stay at the temple longer," Alissa whispers in my ear.

I hum in understanding, "Ah, that? Well, I can heal myself somewhat, so it wasn't that bad for me. But no matter that, how did you know I was wounded?"

"You're the talk of the town, Mr. Ryder. Everyone knows you're the one who killed the Symbol of Hate. I couldn't believe my ears when I heard the story."

Oh shit, the entire town knows, already?

"Master is very tired now, and he still needs rest, so let's talk later," Alissa saves me.

"Ah! Yes, certainly, please forgive me." He smiles embarrassedly and bows.

You don't need to bow, though.

We enter our comfy little room, and I just drop on the bed. Alissa lays down next to me and hugs my head, and I feel the softness and warmth of her skin on my face.

"You don't have to stay all day by my side, though. I'm going to sleep for a while, so you should do whatever you want," I declare, my voice slightly muffled due to where my face is buried.

"I want to stay here," she asserts, and I leave it at that, then I fall asleep in her arms.

I have a pleasant dream about golden fields and a blue sky, then I gently wake up, and once again the first thing I see are Alissa's orange eyes stare into mine as she plays with my hair.

I smile like a fool madly in love, but she returns only a sad, anguished look.

"I don't want you to do that again," she whispers sternly.

"Do what?" I blurt out, caught by surprise.

She frowns and looks down as she rests her hand on my chest. "To jump… To throw yourself into the enemy like that, to use your body and harm yourself."

"You know that was our best shot at surviving," I calmly point out.

She gives me an anguished look and exclaims, "I know! I just don't want you to do that again."

I'm not the one to make empty promises, so I carefully word what I'm going to say next. "I can't say I won't do that again… but what I can promise you is that I'll do everything that I can so that we're never in a situation like that again. Remember my two rules?" I gently ask and smile.

She obediently answers, "'Don't die,' and 'let's never get into a situation where someone needs to die.'"

My smile grows wider, and I pat her head as I whisper huskily, "Good girl."

She bites her lip, and then I see her eyes water. I'm thankful she cares so deeply about me.

I kiss her hand, and she lets out a few silent tears.

Looking back after the fact, it's easy to be calm and collected, but I dread thinking about what next trial will befall us. I have no intention of dying before we grow old together, but I'm sure our lives won't be easy, and that scares me.

We stay like this until my stomach growls, making it my turn to blush.

We go down the stairs, and I walk up to the innkeeper.

"Excuse me, is Miss Selina around?" I calmly ask, but he subtly opens his eyes wider and then averts his gaze.

Hm…?

Then he looks at me again and flatly replies, "She's… not here today, but she's coming back tomorrow."

"Coming back"? Suspicious.

I smile politely. "Oh, I see. Then I'll meet her tomorrow." Then I say goodbye and leave.

We eat some tasty fried Dragolite again with noodles! Unfortunately, noodles are not as popular as pasta, so only a few restaurants seem to be serving it. What a shame.

Then we go to the hunters' guild.

We enter the noisy hall, and the first thing I see is Targua is drinking with a group of rugged adventurers, then he notices me and mutters something to the people around him. As we walk in, the gazes of most of the guild slowly turn to us.

Then I recognize the trio that we fought the Symbol with quickly approaching us, and so we wait for them.

The first one to come is a wide black man with dark hair in a buzz cut, the shield-bearer. "Hello, Mr. Ryder. I don't think we were properly introduced, I'm Gunther from Hauberk," he politely greets with a bright smile. His face is oval and youthful, but his enviable stubble ages him up quite a bit.

Then the mage girl cheerfully greets next, "I'm Minerva." She's wearing an average green dress today that goes well with her boyish, short, red hair and her adorable freckles. She's pretty, but nearly everyone in this world also is, so you could say she's "average."

"I'm Lorthar, well met," the weremonkey archer soberly greets. He's wearing his tacky, red, feathered hat again, and coupled with his rather fashionable black and red clothes, he seems rather eccentric. His thin, white tail happily sways about, which makes him actually a bit charming.

I nod and smile politely as I return the greetings, "Well met. Thank you for your help yesterday, we'd all have died if a single person wasn't there."

They nod, except Lorthar, who looks away. I think he was literally useless during the fight, but he helped out by carrying back Roxanne and me, so he still saved us.

"Everyone is staring at us; let's just go meet the guildmaster," I request, then the three awkwardly look around and quickly nod.

We go towards the nearest attendant, and she leads us towards a meeting room, then we wait for a minute before Silas comes in.

The short, bearded guildmaster greets with a wry smile, "We meet again, Mr. Ryder. Mr. Sonny is happy with the surprise you prepared for him."

"Ugh… I just want a quiet life…" I whine tiredly, and Alissa gives me a sympathetic smile.

"Fate says otherwise," he promptly replies and chuckles softly then takes a seat before us.

I frown and grumble, "Maybe I need to change jobs."

"I don't think that'll make a difference," immediately replies again and flashes a smile. "Now, let's talk business. First, I'd like to hear a retelling of the fight. I heard what happened, but I want all the details."

And so we retell it.

We all agree that the most likely reason the Symbol of Hate was there was because she was looking for the White Arachne too. It was known that the Symbol liked to hunt and fight, and she went after other Aberrant monsters or weak adventurers if they got too close to its territory, excet the Arachne was spotted far from the Symbol's nest. This means that it was just an "unlucky coincidence" that she went so far from her nest to hunt the Arachne, then switched targets to Hauberk, chasing them until they stumbled upon us, who had a train of Giant Moles behind us, effectively boxing us between two choices of death.

Our only salvation was that the Symbol was actually a physically weak monster compared to others of the same threat level. She was just very cunning and brutal, and quite capable of running from subjugation forces, so everyone was quite afraid to deal with her.

Considering how she was maniacally laughing while leisurely chasing Hauberk, she was just playing around until we faced her head on.

Just the thought that we met such a sadistic being makes me shiver a bit.

Once we're done, Silas eyes each of us as he announces, "Are we all in agreement that what has been said here is completely factual?"

We nod.

He hums and continues, "Then let's discuss the reward. The bounty on the Symbol of Hate is two rose coins, but price for the body is undetermined as there are no previous records to go by, so we'll need to bring all the interested parties here and auction the body parts."

Holy shit.

Everyone is speechless, and the gazes of the Hauberk trio even go blank.

"We don't really deserve the reward, we barely helped," Gunther meekly declares, his face warped with guilt.

"That's… dumb," I reflexively point out. "You'll get your part, too."

It's honestly a good idea we met so soon after the battle. If we had waited, greed might've come upon their heads, telling them to demand more. I want my deserved share, but I don't want them to go away with nothing. They risked their lives for us, too.

"For the bounty, how about ten gold for each of you?" I propose. That leaves us with 110 gold coins, which drop to 73 gold coins after Roxanne's share.

Lorthar opens his eyes wide and nods. Gunther and Minerva take some time but nod too.

"What about the body auction?" Silas questions me as he strokes his envious, protruding beard.

"Twenty percent goes to them?" I ask out loud.

They nod in agreement. It's possible they'll profit a lot more from the auction than they ever could from the bounty.

Then Silas moves on, "What about Miss Roxanne?"

And I happily answer, "We follow our previous agreement: one third of all we earn is hers. She did kill it, afterall. Without her magic, we'd all be dead."

Silas waits a few seconds to see if we have anything else to say, then he brings the finisher, "Do you want the Guild's opinion on this matter?"

The guild doesn't force the agreements, but it acts as the mediator since it's the one paying the hunters. They also prefer that hunters work together and build bonds, so in times of need, like in town defenses, there's way less drama. The guild offers their opinion on agreements, and it's generally a good idea to take it. The way profits are divided are generally made public, so, if you negotiate a bad deal, you'll get a bad reputation among the hunters. The world isn't perfect, and unpopular hunters die in "accidents" considerably more often than the popular ones.

"Yes, please," I accept.

"It's a fair deal," Silas announces with finality.

Then we shake hands.

Next, we go to the dismantling room, and I present the body. Alissa collected the arms and head that survived, which she promptly turned over yesterday to the guild as proof of extermination, so that's why they all already believe our story.

Once we enter the room, Gordon's expression goes blank, then he swallows heavily and nods to me.

Why are you so serious right now? I prefer teasing than silence.

I pull the body out of my "Items," and everyone stares in silence.

The silence is broken by Sonny, who barges into the room, almost breaking the door, then immediately stops and stares wide-eyed.

"Mr. Ryder… I'm speechless..." Sonny whispers in awe.

Even you! But, technically, you aren't speechless.

Then Gordon chuckles and finally teases, "This is a bit much for a surprise, eh? But I gotta say, you got guts boy."

A two hundred years old murder machine that gave the town nightmares while it lived is now finally dead and killed by a random young boy who just a few days ago was suffering while killing goblins by himself. Yeah, I agree, now I've done it.

I just smile wryly while Alissa hugs my arm and pats my hand comfortingly.

Then Gordon turns to Silas and gives him a serious look as he refuses, "Boss, I won't touch this. Who knows what's inside. I also don't wanna lose my ears hearing the complaints of some old quack who says I did my job wrong."

Silas strokes his beard twice, then he nods. "Agreed. We'll just auction it off intact if no one has the knowledge or courage to do it." Then he turns to me. "Mr. Ryder, would you like to keep it with you or would you prefer to let us store it? For this monster, we'll store it in a way so that it remains intact until the auction."

I immediately accept his offer, "Please store it, I don't want to touch this anymore."

He flashes a smile. "Understandable."

I look behind me and notice that a small crowd of attendants and adventurers have gathered at the entrance.

Well, shit.

Then Sonny walks up to me and soberly states, "Let me say this Mr. Ryder: you're unbelievably lucky."

Alissa and I share a look. I think she wants to say she agrees with him, but only on the part that I was lucky to survive jumping into the Symbol's claws.

Gordon laughs and joins in, "Hahah, that's true. What's up with that, boy? You got a good luck amulet or something? Grey Berserker, Orc Headhunter, and now Symbol of Hate. That's no mere luck you have."

"He's a walking good luck charm," Sonny flatly adds.

"The 'good' part is debatable," I awkwardly reply.

Gordon hums and states, "That should be his nickname then, 'Good Luck.'"

I immediately interject, "No. No, no, no, I don't accept this."

He gives me a shit eating grin. "Too late, boy. That's your new name."

Then I feel something change within me. I immediately open my status, and see that under my "Titles," there's the entry: "'Good Luck' nickname."

I groan and close my eyes as my heart pangs with pain, "Nooo~… that's it, I'm going home."

Sonny and Gordon say their goodbyes with a smirk while Silas keeps a neutral expression, then we quickly leave, walking past silent gazes of fear from the spectators.

We've already received the bounty and split the money, and Roxanne's share will be stored until she comes to collect it, so there's nothing else for us to do here.

I'm already feeling tired again, so we return to the inn. There are still a few hours until dusk, so I just play around with Alissa to pass the time.

"Master... please…" She whispers as her body begins to writhe.

"What?" I huskily ask with a smirk.

She gives me a pleading look. "Please…" She begs again and again.

But I say nothing else and continue playing with her.

"Master!" She suddenly exclaims, starting to sound annoyed. "Please, give it to me!"

I smile sadistically and happily oblige.

I think about giving her the Clothes of the Berserker again, but I might hurt myself if she wears it. We're rich now, so another day I'll tell her to go back to that store and bring more.

When we bathe, I notice that my wounds left scars: five horizontal lines along my left flank. Healing magic normally doesn't leave scars, but since I mixed it with potions, different spells, intermittent healing, and a long walk without rest, it left imperfections, scars.

I look a bit badass, though, and the way Alissa touches them makes me believe she's inclined to agree.

Then we have dinner and go to sleep.

I wake up feeling quite energetic and almost fully cured, so we fool around a bit more intensely, then go down to have breakfast.

After we eat, I decide to train my [Spirit Light] with Alissa this morning.

Ah, the feeling of hugging her while I sense her mana swirl around is just great… But anyway, I feel like I can cast this spell if I practice for a few more sessions. My one point in [Light Magic] seems to be helping me a lot in understanding this spell. I'm still just copying her, though, so it's not like I suddenly understand magical theory, just like how [Sword Use] works.

Then someone knocks on the door. Alissa opens it and reveals a very anxious Selina.

"Would you like to come in?" I politely ask with a smile, then motion to the chair in front of the only desk in the room.

"Y-yes, please, excuse me," she shyly replies and walks forward, then she suddenly gives Alissa a tight hug. "I'm glad you are safe!" She cries out.

Alissa is taken by surprise and freezes, but then she wraps her arms around Selina and starts to soothe her, "A-ah, yes. I'm happy you were worried for me, but I wasn't in much danger since I was always at the back."

Selina disentangles and gives her an anguished frown. "T-that's not true, just by facing that monster you…" -She sadly shakes her head- "What horrible luck. I can't believe the things you two went through!"

I smile bitterly and reply, "Luck is a funny thing. Some say I'm lucky I survived, some say I'm unlucky I met that monster."

She lets out a nervous laugh while knitting her thin, blonde eyebrows, "Hahah… don't joke about such things, Mr. Ryder."

And Alissa politely retorts, "That's the life of an adventurer. We have to look back and laugh to be able to move on."

Selina stays silent. She still looks a bit sad but she's quickly calming down. She seems to have understood that we're past the point of being bitter or fearful of what happened.

After a few awkward seconds, she decides to move on to the main topic, but she lowers her head and her tone gains a noticeable amount of guilt as she announces, "Mr. Ryder, I came here to tell you something… I was proposed to, and now I'm going to get married."

Alissa raises her eyebrows high, and a hole opens in my stomach.

Well…

What do I even think about this girl? I just… don't know. She's cute and funny, and it makes me happy to talk to her, but what would our relationship be? This world is very different, people are marrying at fifteen while I was marrying at thirty. I can't just keep standing around, talking and being friendly, and slowly build a relationship like on Earth. That's not how things work here, and that's why Selina is being stolen away.

But then again, what kind of relationship I would have with her. An inn girl that doesn't fight and will likely never leave Rabanara? Certainly wouldn't be a good match.

Alissa gives me a pitying look, and it snaps me out of it. What the hell am I even thinking? I have Alissa, why would Selina even accept me?

Anyway, I have to focus on the now. A girl is telling me she's going to get married with a sad face, and that's just not how things should go. The fact that Alissa isn't jealous or angry just makes this scene even more bizarre. What, exactly, should I be feeling right now?

A deep sigh escapes my lips. I still need to act like a man, an adult, and fix this mess. I can't make Selina unhappy, she's Alissa's friend.

I force a pained smile and politely reply, "Selina, I give you my congratulations and my blessing. I just want you to be happy."

She raises her head and shrinks her posture like a frightened small animal about to cry, then she looks at Alissa who nods at her.

A bit of courage returns to her and she returns my smile. "Thank you, Mr. Ryder. I definitely will," she whispers and sniffles.

"Please, be happy, Miss Selina," Alissa adds, and now she's the one who gives a tight hug.

Selina lets out a girlish laugh and hugs back. "Thank you, thank you…" They remain still for a few seconds, but Alissa lets her go before things get awkward, then begins excusing herself, "That was all I had to say. Now, if you'll excuse me, I still have to go back to work."

She bows, and we wave, then she leaves, and I plop down on the bed.

Alissa kneels before the bed and gently lands her hand against my chest as she concernedly asks, "How are you feeling, master?"

"A little bit confused…" I mumble tiredly.

That scene of sadness is just too grating for me. I have to ask her.

I turn my head to the side and stare into her beautiful eyes as I ask, "Alissa, don't you feel a little odd about my relationship with Selina? Even though I already have you, I was thinking about Selina, too."

She opens her eyes wide and her face flushes. "Master? D-do you see me like this?" Then she inhales, but her breathing starts to become erratic, and she stumbles upon her words, "I-it'd make me very happy, if you w-would l-l-love m-m-me…"

I just blink blankly in surprise.

Okay… things are getting messier.

I collect my thoughts and decide to confess, "I find it kind of difficult to separate love from 'the act,' and thought it's not the same as a true, deep love, I do feel something very strong towards you."

Her tail starts to wag uncontrollably as she grins like fool. "I-I-I-I also f-feel something v-very strong, Ma-Master," she stutters again, completely flustered.

I sigh and get off the bed, then kneel and give her a tight hug.

What do I even feel? Is this love, possessiveness, or lust?

Does it... matter what I feel? Do I need to truly love this girl to make her happy?

She closes her eyes and happily hugs me back.

Relationships in this world are confusing. I barely had a grasp on them back on Earth, and now I learn it all over again.

An impish thought appears in my mind, and I blurt out before I can hold it back, "What do you think if I were to bring more women?"

"The strong s-should protect the we-weak. Y-you are very strong, Master," she happily replies, still stuttering a bit from elation.

"I think you could easily kill me if you wished," I wryly retort.

She pouts and exclaims annoyedly, "Not that! Your heart is stronger than any other."

I frown and grumble, "What does that even mean?"

And she just chuckles. "You don't have to reason everything, just accept it," she warmly affirms and hugs me tighter.

I feel like I've heard something like that before.

I don't feel like training anymore, so we go outside. I need to repair my armor and shield, upgrade my and Alissa's equipment, upgrade all my tools for ultimate comfort, buy better tea and cookies, and then visit Ciel. I want to send Alissa to the night clothing merchant while I talk to Ciel, but she seems to like the latina priestess, so maybe I should have her make a new friend.

We end up spending fifty gold coins, but at least now Alissa has Grey Berserker armor like me.

The armor and [Wind Armor] are what saved me, I think. The dagger-fingers didn't even fully penetrate my body, they just got stuck midway, and they'd have sliced me in half if I was naked. [Wind Armor] may be as if it was a small, flat reduction in damage, but it's better than nothing, and still, I had five punctures along my body, so it really was pretty serious. It was one in my shoulder, two in my lungs and two in my stomach.

Alissa now has an enchanted, small, composite bow made of white wood with pretty, wavy, golden carvings. She thinks it's a bit excessive but it really is a good bow. It has a small enchantment called [Loosen], which lets her draw the bow easier, but it's really simple, so not really expensive.

She needs to be rewarded for her good work and amazing accuracy. She actually hit one of the Symbol's main eyes and saved Roxanne from being fully skewered, so she really deserves it.

And she actually blushes when she receives it, which just encourages me to praise and reward her even more.

As a luxury, I get a perfumed anti-scent for her, which is oddly contradictory, but it's a magical perfume that disappears after a few seconds so that it doesn't leave a trail in the air. And for me, I got a pocket watch for one gold coin, which we both think was kind of expensive, but not having a clock on me at all times was making me feel very anxious and "naked."

We also buy a comfy large tent, a comfy large sleeping bag, comfy clothes, comfy shoes, a high quality brush for her hair and tail, magic stones for warming tea, cooking, and roasting, and good knifes for cutting. Even though we can just (seemingly) put infinite food in my "Items," Alissa wants to cook.

For me, I get a new steel kite shield covered in young Emerald Dragon scales; a white Young Emerald Dragon fang sword, which has a one-sided blade curved bulge to it. I thought about getting a magical sword, but those things are the cutting edge of technology, pun intended, which means they cost a few rose coins each, so nope, not today.

It's kind of ridiculous the breadth of the level of equipment here. There's some expensive stuff being sold right next to the Gray Berserker armor, which is also right next to average, mass-produced stuff, all marketed to adventurers. It goes to show this is a proper "adventurer town."

I notice there's a bit of a lack of metal equipment in comparison to monster-based stuff.

"Why aren't there more plate armor around here?" I question Alissa.

Her pointy ears flick cutely as she enters deep thought, but then she shakes her head as she replies negatively, "I don't know, Master. I passed by a mountain fort on the way here, and there were plenty of dwarves, but perhaps it's too dangerous to mine too deeply around here."

Curious…

"Do monsters appear inside mines?" I move on.

She nods once and replies robotically, "Yes. The deeper it is, the more ground the monsters have to appear." I think she acts like this when I ask something too weird that's common knowledge for her.

Anyway, I guess monsters sprouting from the ground must make mining much more dangerous than on Earth, and the abundance of monsters makes using them for equipment that much more common.

We have twenty-three coins left from the bounty and a few more that I'd saved, but we'll also receive the reward from Roxanne's request, and there's still an unknown amount coming from the auction. It's enough to live comfortably for quite a long time, but I don't think that I should try.

At 3 o'clock, we go to the temple.

Inside the temple, we find Ciel on a bench talking to a commoner. She notices us and smiles, then she quickly finishes her talk and comes to us.

Oh, we would've just waited…

"Good day, Mr. Ryder, Miss Alissa," she cheerfully greets with a bright smile.

"Good day, Miss Ciel," I politely reply.

The two girls share a cheerful smile, and Alissa follows, "Good day, Miss Ciel. How's Miss Roxanne?"

Ciel's smile becomes strained, and she answers with a rather defeated tone, "Prancing about, trying to turn her room into a lab because she doesn't know what 'resting' means."

That sounds like her.

I share a smirk with Alissa.

"Tomorrow morning we're freeing her," Ciel adds wryly.

Not releasing or discharging, "freeing" her.

I hum in acknowledgment and continue, "Then I'll visit her in the afternoon. But anyway, I wanted to have another talk session with you, is that alright?"

She nods repeatedly. "Oh, yes, it's fine. Let's go to a consultation room."

We go up the stairs and enter an empty room, then Alissa pulls out the new tea set and the cookies.

"Oh my," Ciel hums, pleasantly surprised, then she turns her eyes to Alissa. "So… is she…?"

I know you're trying to be cautious since I'm a reserved person, but there's no need to stall, just ask it, already.

"Yes? What is it?" I hum back.

She awkwardly wrings her hands. "Well, is she the slave you were considering buying?"

I hum and explain, "Ah, well. At the time, I was only considering the merits and ethics of buying a Blood Slave, and I only met her a few days later."

She slowly turns to Alissa, and the two smile at each other. "I see. It seems it was the correct choice then."

"Yes, she's extremely helpful." I caress Alissa's hand and notice her tail wagging a little with the corner of my eyes, then she blushes but retains her poker face.

Cute.

I clear my throat and continue, "Now, I want to talk about the gods again. Well, first I have to say I got a Blessing from the Goddess of Knowledge."

Ciel raises her eyebrows in pleasant surprise. "Oh! that's surprising, well, not really considering it's you, but it's still amazing."

I awkwardly look away for a moment at the sudden praise. "Hm, yes, well. What can you tell me about it? I know nothing about the Blessings."

She nods and clears her throat, then begins her exposition speech, "A Blessing means that you've pleased a god. Whatever you did that pleased Knowledge, you should keep doing it, and she'll help you fulfill your wishes in the future. The Humanoid Gods have subtle powers to alter Fate, and there has been no hero in history who got there without a Blessing. Be it a simple arrow that misses its mark, to a lucky encounter that completely changes their Fate, Blessings are extremely powerful."

I have a small suspicion that meeting the Symbol of Hate was her doing, or at least a small push into the correct tunnel. Isekai protagonist's rotten luck strikes again.

After a small pause she continues, "Also, a Blessing is a symbol of trust in society. You'll quickly lose your Blessing if you do something evil, so you can trust the honor of those who carry them. Since yours is a Blessing from the Goddess of Knowledge, you'll certainly find it much easier to enter the magic university now. I don't know how they treat those who have a Blessing but that one isn't uncommon among scholars."

High school slice of life arc, other world version.

"How would they know I have a Blessing?" I ask.

"A modified Inspection Crystal can show it. It's also how we verify Titles and those who received Messages from the Gods."

How convenient, but it also seems that I won't be able to hide my new nickname.

I smile to hide the pain and continue, "Seems like I have my next objective in sight. But there's something else I want to ask, what are the Humanoid Gods like? Alissa says it's a good idea to find out their likes and dislikes to better please them."

Her gaze loses focus as she collects her thoughts. "I see, that's the correct idea. Well, about the Gods…" She clears her throat and prepares to give us another flood of information. "Let's start with the Genderless God of Existence. They're the only one who wasn't once a humanoid, and you can't really say they have a personality. They like those who cherish life and dislike those who kill carelessly. It's rare, but adoptive parents are known to receive their Blessing.

"The Goddess of Fertility is similar to the God of Existence, and she works closely with the Goddess of Love and the Goddess of Growth, but her power is more broad. She's known to help pregnant women and animals, to increase the bounty of the lands, and even help those who manage the monsters and dungeons so humanoid life could prosper. People commonly pray to her to ask for the gender and race of their children to be what they want. She was born a human with a happy and carefree personality, and her biggest work was to spread her knowledge of farming, water wheels, and windmills.

"The Goddess of Piety sees all prayers, and she helps those who seek guidance from the Gods, even those who are ignorant of the Gods, so perhaps she's the one who guided you here. Her Blessing is common among priests or others who guide people. She was born as a human who was known to be a kind but strict person, and she's responsible for creating the temple organization.

"The Goddess of Will is a goddess that keeps the mind of humanoids intact. There are many horrors brought by the monsters, so, to keep the people united and strong, she Blesses the nobles and heroes so they, in turn, can inspire others. She was born a dragonkin, and contrary to how her race usually acts, she's famous for being a neutral and composed person. She's credited with creating the skill of [Mental Resistance] and [Poison Resistance] along with being a famous adventurer."

Thank you, Goddess of Will, you helped me a lot in the Ant Hill and Royd's Kerfuffle. Maybe I should pray to you, too.

Ciel's tone becomes noticeably more energetic as she talks about the next God, "The Goddess of Love rewards those who make others happy, not just in a sexual way, and she helps us create bonds with each other. Receiving her Blessing is very rare, but it was most often given to emperors or kings who have large harems, orphanage caretakers, and rarely to mere simple lovers. She was born a Pixie, and she was famous for being very touchy and extremely amiable. She also wrote the 'Treatise on Acting' and created the imperial orphanage along with the Goddess of Piety.

"The Goddess of Growth helps not only the plants and animals to grow, she also helps humanoids who want to grow in any way. Be it physical growth, martial growth, magical growth, artistic skill growth, intelligence growth, or society's growth, the intent of her Blessing varies a lot. She was a dog-type wereanimal and she was a strict and serious person. She created the Nemesis, a group of one hundred elite soldiers that personally serve the emperor, and they're known as the best monster killers of the entire Realm.

"The God of War is a straightforward god. Kill monsters, and he'll bring you glory; give it your all, and he'll reward you; challenge yourself, and he'll give you the tools to kill and protect. Obviously, his Blessing is most common among adventurers and soldiers." -Alissa nods diligently- "He was a typical boisterous and willful dwarf, and he became famous when he defended a fort with just five hundred men against a whole army of monsters for an entire month.

"The God of Law is the god that keeps order in our society. He seeks the Wicked among us and strips them of their power. He doesn't do justice with his own hands because the law is for us to uphold, so we're also being judged by him while we do our own "justice." He has given his Blessing only to Lords and Judges so far. He was a golden elf, and his personality was of a perfectly stoic and calm person. He instituted our law system, becoming the first Judge.

"The God of Festivity works closely with the Goddess of Love. Together, they spread the happiness that keeps us moving, and he also gives us the glory that the God of War promises, making sure all heroes have their own happy beginning, middle, and end. He has rarely given his Blessing, and only to famous artists or cooks. He was a krampus demon race who was infamously loud, but his happy demeanor made him loved. He used his fortune to create the coliseum and spread the Ten Festivals of Seasons.

"The God of Endurance is the god that helps the servants, so they have the power to continue to serve their Lord. He's a god that helps those who don't have the power to reach glory but can help those who can. He's the one who gives the most Blessings among all of the Gods, and it's usually to good workers, indicating to their employers that they're quite valuable.

"Then Alissa will surely get her Blessing soon," I state, and Alissa blushes a little again.

Ciel smiles and continues, "He was a gnome, though quite solemn and thoughtful considering his race. The work of his life was to create darksteel through much toil and effort, which is an incredibly useful alloy since it can resist even dragon fire.

"The God of Luck is a very misunderstood god. He doesn't like gamblers or those who abuse luck, and he gives luck only to those who deserve it. Not much else is known about him, and his Blessing has never been recorded."

Maybe I should actually pray to him? He sounds… reasonable? Though he's a little too mysterious.

Then Ciel smirks. "I have a small suspicion he's the one helping you, Mr. Ryder. He was a halfling, but little else is known about his life, except that he's known for killing an ancient dragon by using [Shocking Touch] on its eye."

Oh, I see it now. He must be the one who sent the Symbol of Hate to me, so now I'm conflicted about him. Also, I think I heard that story about the dragon somewhere before.

"The Goddess of Knowledge is a goddess who likes to spread knowledge, and she helps those who write down any sort of knowledge to then share it with others. The commoners also call her the Goddess of Books, though plenty of priests will be displeased if you say that." -She flashes a smile- "She usually gives her Blessing to prolific scholars. She was a silver elf, and she's believed to be a stoic and curious person, though there's little information about her personality since only scholarly articles mention her. She created the first magical university and became the Head of Magic of the empire.

"Her brother is the God of Intelligence, who has helped anyone trying to unveil the mysteries of life, be it understanding monsters, the land, the plants, or magic, he's the one who seeks answers to everything. He gives his Blessing quite often to inventors and researchers, and he occasionally works together with the Goddess of Growth. He was also an elf and he was famously inquisitive and innocent. Your personality seems similar to him, Mr. Ryder, so perhaps you should pray to him."

Huh? Innocent? Do I give that aura?

"He was a prolific researcher in his sister's magical university, being credited as the one to finish most of the system magic schools we now use regularly in our daily life.

"The Goddess of the Plants and her twin brother the God of the Animals are very obscure Gods. They work with the Goddess of Growth and the Goddess of Fertility, but they rarely give their Blessings, and only botanists and animal caretakers have ever received them, but none of them seemed to have done anything special. There was a legend of a monster tamer who received a Blessing but he died before achieving full potential, so our knowledge on monster taming is lacking. These Gods were lizard beastfolk, and the only thing known about their lives is that they were hermits. They're credited with creating the first HP potion and creating the spell [Animal Tongue].

"The God of the Sun is the one who gives us light so that we can work. He's the one who has sent us more Messages than all of the other Gods combined, and we speculate that's only possible because his Avatar, the sun, is always watching over us. But, on the other hand, not much is known about his Blessing. He was a human whose jovial personality charmed everyone, and his hard-working mentality led him to rise further than anyone else before him, which gave him the tools to conquer and unite the continent, becoming the first emperor of the Avgi Empire."

He's the sun?!

"How did the world look like before he ascended?" I ask, suddenly dying of curiosity.

"The days and nights were not stabilized like now, they were dependent on the forces of Light and [Dark Magic], or deliberately manipulated by extremely powerful rulers. The more wars and death that happened, the longer the nights were. It was a very chaotic age, but because of such influence, the magic power of everyone was greatly increased. After the God of The Sun ascended, he took control of the multiple suns and stabilized our cycle of day and night. His sister ascended later and took control of the moon, then she stabilized the flow of mana across the Realm."

"Multiple suns?"

"The sun is the same as the moon, it has many smaller ones orbiting it, but the light that the sun gives hides that from our view."

I nod as I hum, "Ah, right. Moving on, isn't the sun necessary for plants to survive? I know that if animals and humanoids live in caves and away from the sun for too long we can get sick."

Vitamin deficiency happens without sunlight.

Ciel raises her eyebrows and smiles faintly, seemingly pleasantly surprised. "Well, not all plants need the sun, and though plenty will lose their color and grow weaker, only some of them actually die without the sun. On the matter of animals and humanoids, I don't know anything about that. Is that common knowledge in your homeland?"

"Somewhat. There were plenty of people who lived indoors and worked only from their homes, and they'd often get sick."

Talking from experience.

She leans back on her chair, deep in thought. "Hmm… curious but it's something quite 'difficult' to test and find evidence of…"

I wave my hand dismissively. "Well it's nothing important, let's continue."

She nods and moves on, "The Goddess of the Moons is the sister to the God of the Sun. She's the one who helps us heal and gives us mana, and her Blessing is given to accomplished healers and magicians. There's a lot of speculation about what exactly are the smaller moons orbiting her Avatar, the 'aspects,' but it's all mere conjecture. She was also human, and contrasting with her brother, she was extremely introspective, but also quite selfless. She was the first Lord of the capital, and through her brilliant management abilities, she brought forth a golden age for the empire."

Oh, now I know why meditation helps with mana recovery.

"But what exactly is known about her 'aspects'?" I interject.

She smiles faintly at my question, as if she already knew I was going to ask this. "The leading theory is that since the moons are the Avatar of the Goddess, they must be some internal 'organ' of her soul or her mind since she doesn't have a physical body anymore that can be exposed. There are many theories about what those seven moons represent, but the most popular one is that the moons are all parts that make up the basis of her personality, and the multi-colored moon is the combined result. Each color represents an aspect of a humanoid's personality. Red is irritability, orange is sociability, yellow is presence of mind, green is friendliness, blue is openness, indigo is otherwordlyness, and purple is wickedness."

I raise an eyebrow in confusion. "'Otherwordlyness'?"

"It's the unknown, the deeper parts of our mind that makes us move. Some say it's our 'creativity,' but since it's so close to purple, which is wickedness, the true nature is somewhat darker."

I smile as I pompously state, "Even art can draw upon our wickedness."

Alissa and Ciel chuckle softly, then the priestess slowly shrugs as she replies, "Perhaps, but I don't participate in these discussions, so I can't argue on that matter. If you want to know more about it, I can guide you to one of the priests who holds debates about this."

I wave my hand with a smile. "No, thank you. I've heard enough about it."

"Suit yourself." And she flashes a smile. "That's all I have to say about the Gods, unless you want to ask me something more specific."

"No, I have no more questions for today."

Alissa suddenly leans towards me, then she shyly whispers, "Master, may I speak with Miss Ciel for a bit?"

I put my hand over hers and reassure her, "Alissa, you can always speak with whoever and whenever you wish. Do you want to speak with her in private?"

She smiles, looking a bit excited. "Y-yes. I only want to ask questions about the Gods, but I feel a little embarrassed sharing that."

I pat her hand and announce, "It's fine, I'll leave you two alone."

"Also, fine by me," Ciel kindly chimes in.

I go out and wander downstairs, then I take a look around, and notice that the statue of the Goddess of Knowledge is close by. It's a bust of a woman who has a really alluring air, which is actually quite similar to Roxanne's, but the Goddess has the iconic long elven ears, giving her a more heavenly look in comparison to Roxanne's demonic horns.

Being around so many people fervently praying makes me rather uncomfortable, so I go outside to kill some time.

I still haven't broken the fellowship with Roxanne, so I know she's nearby at the clinic. I think about visiting her, but she's likely tired and in need of rest, even if she doesn't want to.

Then I decide to walk around the building of the priest's living quarters.

Behind it, I see a small flower garden with a few wooden chairs and a table below a glass porch, which is quite lovely and irresistible to me, so I sit on a chair and stare at the garden while my conscience slips away.

"Master..." A gentle voice tickles my ears.

"Hmm…?"

Do that again…

"Master, I'm back," the voice tickles my ears again.

I open up my eyes and see Alissa is sitting beside me, a beautiful smile on her pretty face.

"I'm still a little tired," I hum and yawn.

She grabs my hand and gives it a reassuring squeeze as she remarks, "You don't seem to like taking a rest, Master, which is just like Miss Roxanne."

More like I'm anxious about the future and just want to level up.

"I guess…" I reply noncommittally with a shrug.

After I bought Alissa, I thought about just training for some time, but the Oodogloo request was too tempting, and then after that, Roxanne's request was also too good to pass up.

"Let's go back," she suggests, and I nod, then we both stand up and she entwines her arm with mine.

We begin walking, and I take a look at my watch. It's five o'clock now, so dusk will begin in a minute. They talked for quite some time.

Alissa sees me raise my eyebrows in surprise, and she gives me a guilty smile as she explains, "I'm sorry, Master. We took a long time because we started talking about our adventures, and I got carried away."

I wave my hand dismissively to soothe her. "It's no problem; I had a pretty good nap here. But anyway, is Ciel interested in adventuring?"

"Somewhat. She seemed to have become worried about how you were doing after she learned you killed the Orc Headhunter."

I smile embarrassedly. "Oh, she told you about that one?"

She nods happily and her fluffy tail starts to wag. "Yes. Master's growth is amazing. From training at a low level dungeon, to killing the Symbol in such an incredibly short time."

"That was mostly Roxanne's work, I just used myself as bait," I immediately retort.

Her gaze suddenly becomes warm. "Still…"

Eh, whatever.

Then her expression returns to normal as she remembers something, "Ah, Ciel said thanks for sharing the tea and cookies, and she'd like to know where you bought them."

I snort. "Considering the price, maybe it's better she doesn't know." And she gives me a worried smile.

We return to the inn and reserve a bath. This time, Alissa teaches me how to properly care for her tail and hair, which I enjoy thoroughly. It's something I used to do for Lily when we were winding down after a good night of playing games together.

I put some effort into forgetting her to not ruin my moment with Alissa.

Anyway, this new brush is really good. Alissa almost melts on the chair as she confesses to me all of her weak spots. Since she wants to be pampered, it'd be a crime to not give her what she wants.

After the bath, we have a simple dinner, then I fall asleep while hugging her as I train [Spirit Light].

I wake up feeling quite "breezy" down there, and I quickly notice that I'm naked, though I have no memory of how I lost my clothes. I don't have the habit of sleeping like this, but since Alissa seems to enjoy the view, perhaps I could indulge her.

After our good morning deep kiss, we go downstairs, but then the innkeeper calls our attention and motions for us to get closer.

"Good morning, Mr. Ryder. Two messengers asking for you just came by, and here are the letters," he politely explains.

"Oh? Well, thank you," I awkwardly reply. I want to learn his name, but I'm too embarrassed to ask.

Anyway, I just open the letters. The first is from Silas, and he says that the auction will happen in a half-cycle at the theater, which is quite fast, I think. Then I open the second one, and the contents give me chills. Ghulam, the slave trader, is asking me to come to his shop for he has a "business proposal" for me.

"Oh, that's great, Master. Mr. Bhatt has deemed you worthy," Alissa happily coos.

I raise an eyebrow at her. "Worthy of…?"

"A special slave, most likely, one he thinks will serve you well," -her smile becomes coy and her cheeks start to redden- "and I believe his ability to pair masters and slaves is unquestionable."

I also blush softly at her implication, so I immediately question to deflect, "But I don't understand why he suddenly thinks I'm 'worthy.'"

"Your battle with the Symbol must've impressed him or one of the slaves, so they've decided to sell themselves to you."

"Our battle," I sternly correct her, but she just smiles happily, so I shake my head and continue, "Can slaves choose their own masters?"

"It depends on their contract. I could refuse anyone who I… didn't find attractive," she stiffly replies, her face twitching as she strains to remain calm and professional, but the color of her face betrays her efforts.

I frown in concern. "Seems like selling Blood Slaves is quite the involved affair."

She nods and hums, "It is. That's why they're so expensive or valued."

I'm extremely lucky I managed to acquire Alissa, then…

Then I let a sigh. I'm scared about Ghulam's "proposal," but I'm also interested. That man is a devil in disguise. He can see the darkest parts of my soul, and he uses that knowledge to abuse my weaknesses.

My heart is not ready, though, so I make an excuse, "Would it be okay if I saw him tomorrow? I want to train this entire morning and then visit Roxanne after lunch."

"Yes, it's not urgent, but it'd seem disrespectful to take more than a half-cycle to go."

I nod and move on. We've already embarrassed ourselves enough in front of the innkeeper.

I try to ignore the looming darkness inside my heart and focus on eating my breakfast. Selina is also busy today, but she sends a warming smile to us. Thankfully, things aren't awkward with her.

Then we go back to our room, and I focus hard on [Spirit Light].

"OOOH!" I suddenly shout in awe.

There it is, a blue ball of weak light floating above my head. I open my info and see [Spirit Light (weak)] in my "Magic" window.

Alissa looks back and whispers warmly, "Congratulations, master,"

I grin like a child. "Finally! Next is [Item Box]!"

And she gives me a surprised look. "What? Don't you already know [Item Box]?"

Gah! My tongue slipped!

I reflexively make up an excuse, "Actually… it's… not [Item Box], it's a different spell… from my homeland. I want to learn [Item Box] because of customs since it'll attract a lot of attention if people knew I can hide anything inside my different [Item Box]. This is another secret you have to keep."

She immediately accepts my flimsy explanation, bless her soul, then hums in understanding, "Ooh… now things make sense. In any case, Master, I have to warn you that this one was very difficult, and it took me three months to learn it. Though, your progress with [Spirit Light] was extremely fast."

Crisis averted. It seems I'm good at lying, but I'm not sure if I should be proud of this.

I shrug and reply, "Eh, it's okay. I'm going to learn it, eventually."

I thought about learning [Conjure Water], but it wasn't as inconvenient as having to waste 5 points into [Light Magic] like [Spirit Light] was, so it makes sense to choose [Item Box] next. Besides, I can just mess with my skills real quick whenever I need water.

We fool around for a bit, and after that, Alissa starts to read one of the hero books I bought.

I'll make a small library one day, Alissa, you just wait.

We just chill for a while, but I'm still too anxious to just do nothing. I have to investigate [Redirect Mana], but right now, I feel way too attracted to [Golemancy], which I've never even put a single point in to investigate, so I lay down on the bed, then I take out my points in [Light Magic] and put them into [Golemancy].

With one point in [Golemancy], I get a spell called [Infuse], and with fifteen, I get a spell called [Mold], but I can't add any more points past that. There are a few skills with low limits, like [Cooking], which tops at level ten, but I expected more out of [Golemancy]

I decide to cast [Infuse], and my hand suddenly glows, then my mind gets hazy, and I begin tripping balls.

I see geometric shapes that I can't even describe, colors that I've never seen before, and I even feel things that I can't explain, all constantly shifting and warping in a mad kaleidoscope that hurts my brain just to look at.

I see a simple, boring square, something so mundane that I focus on it to anchor myself, and then I feel like I've "grabbed" onto it, somehow. I turn it around, and it suddenly becomes a cube, then I keep it still, but it shifts into a sphere, then warps into something that I can only describe as "insanity," then it goes back into being a boring square.

I start to get annoyed at the chaos, so I try to "grab" onto things and force them to remain still, but I don't know how to actually do that.

It's like there are multiple overlapping songs, and I'm trying to discern one from another, but I don't even know what the song is supposed to be like. It's noise, but I know that there's something below it, I just can't grasp it.

My head starts to hurt, so I wish to go back, and the cacophony suddenly stops, then I feel like I'm returning to my body.

My vision focuses, and I see Alissa's pale face a few centimeters away from mine.

"Wow," I mumble, a bit stunned at what I've just gone through.

Her orange jewels open wider as she grabs my shoulders and exclaims, "Master!? What happened?"

I realize she was worried for me, so I guiltily admit, "I, uh… I cast a spell from the [Golemancy] skill, then I saw something really weird."

Her thin eyebrows knit in worry, but she begins to calm down. "[Golemancy]? What's that?"

I shrug as I sit up. "I don't know, but it's one of the magic skills that I can use with my powers."

And she immediately becomes understanding again. "Ah, with your guide ability? I see, but please tell me before you do something like that again. You scared me!" Then she frowns and puffs her cheeks cutely.

I pull her face towards me and kiss her forehead, then I earnestly apologize, "I'm sorry, I just had no idea it was going to be like this. By the way, did I do something while I was unconscious?"

"Well, you lifted your hand, and it started glowing like a rainbow, then you froze up and stopped moving your eyes as if you were a statue. I poked you many times, but you never reacted, so I started to become worried."

So, this explains the faint pain I feel on my ribs.

I hum in understanding and continue, "Wow, well… I want to study this spell some more, so I'll do this again a few more times, but, unfortunately, it seems that I've used up all my mana in just a minute."

But Alissa seems to become anxious as her ears go flat. "Hmm… it could be dangerous, Master. I've never heard of something like [Golemancy] before. What if it's forbidden magic?"

Her cuteness makes me feel a bit guilty. "Oh, that could be a problem. Alright, I'll look into it at the magic university before I use that spell again."

The name looked innocent enough to me, though.

She smiles adorably and nods. "Thank you, Master."

"Why are you thanking me?" I confusedly ask.

Her tone gains an earnest kindness that just pulls on my heartstrings. "For listening. Forgive my insolence, but I don't want you doing dangerous things. I can deal with monsters, but I can't help you if you hurt yourself with magic."

The way she acts just straight up appeals to all my weaknesses. I'm totally vulnerable near her.

I grab her hand and appease her, "Oh, well… Don't worry, I'll be as careful with magic as I am with our expeditions."

"After the Symbol, your words give me doubt," she quietly replies and lowers her head.

"Geh!" I grunt exaggeratedly as her retort is super effective.

I meditate and practice [Telekinesis] until 2 PM, then we get ready to visit Roxanne. I choose to wear my formal clothes while Alissa picks her yellow dress with heeled boots.

Through the fellowship bond, I know exactly where Roxanne is, and it seems that she has moved somewhere close to the noble's quarters, so she must live in a relatively wealthy area.

When we reach her house, the first thing we notice is that it's quite a bit excessive. It's a large, gated house with a tall metal fence, a wide grass garden with a flower patch under the windows, and a tree with a swing. It's made of dark brown boards and cobble for the pillars while transparent glass covers the windows. It has two floors, and a small veranda on the second floor where we can see two cushioned chairs and a decorated mono table.

The house has a rustic style, but everything looks very well made, and its size is considerably larger than the average home in this town.

We cross the gate and knock on the door, then I sense Roxanne coming down from the second floor.

Did she not notice we were approaching?

The double doors suddenly swing wide, and Roxanne throws her arms above her head as she yells, "Welcome!"

She's wearing a body conforming black straight dress, and open high heel sandals, which makes her look like a model straight out of a runaway. She actually looks a lot more attractive like this than with her robes, which is impressive since she was already rather stunning.

I pull my thoughts out of that place and force a smile. "U-uh, yeah. How are you doing, Miss Roxanne?" I awkwardly ask.

She grins, once again ruining her alluring image with childish excitement, then she cheerily exclaims, "Perfect! I'm back to perfect health and fully working again, not that I wasn't working hard since I just couldn't stop thinking about the Moonlight Moss. I actually worked so much that Ciel got angry at me!"

I actually feel a bit bad for Ciel.

She stands out of the way and motions for us to come in. "Oh, yes! Please, come in."

I sigh internally, and we enter, then we find ourselves in a carpeted dining hall with a large table that could easily sit eight people. On the wall ahead of us, there's a large painting of the town castle, on its right there's a door to another room, on its left there's a chest-high counter that reveals a nice kitchen, and on each of our flanks there are stairs going up, leading to the bedrooms.

Aren't chest-high counters kind of a modern design?

"Sit, sit, please," she requests and motions to the table.

We comply, and she goes to the kitchen, then she opens a large, black, metal box, and I see a bit of fog coming out. She hums as she pulls out a metal tray that has a black with white frosting.

Oh boy.

She rushes back and deposits it before us, then she opens her arms wide and laughs, "Ha-ha~! I had this arranged to be made by the baker when I came back, so it was finished just yesterday. Since I kept it cold, it's still perfectly good."

Alissa breathes in, taking in the faint and sweet smell of the cake, then her tails starts to wag.

Roxanne wastes not another moment and pulls out three sets of plates and cutlery from her [Item Box], then she immediately cuts the cake, revealing that the filling has a suspiciously brown color.

She hands the first slice to me and suddenly starts to act a bit shy and embarrassed as she declares, "This is a thank you for a job well done. I wish I could do much more for you since you saved me, but this will do for now!" Then she grins and returns to being the silly woman that I know.

I smile embarrassedly and earnestly reply, "Thank you. I appreciate what you're doing for us." Then I eagerly take a bite.

OOOOH~… this is… this is…

I cover my mouth with my hand and shout, "CHOCOLATE!"

"Yaa, what?" Roxanne mumbles, and the two girls stare at me in fear.

I hold back tears and try to explain between sniffles, "I… missed this taste… so much… I couldn't find… chocolate… anywhere…"

While Alissa pats my back to comfort me, Roxanne switches her frown into a grin and begins laughing like a lady, "Ohohohoh. I wanted to surprise you with something new, but this reaction is just as good."

Alissa gives her a worried look, but then she also takes a bite of her slice and her tail starts wagging furiously. "This is delicious. Is this something from your homeland, Master?" She asks without looking away from her plate.

I hold myself back from wolfing my slice down and answer, "Yes, it's the most delicious sweet ever made, 'The Chocolate'. Well, it wasn't created there, and I don't know where it comes from, but it's the best sweet I ever ate there."

"Unfortunately it's not imported here, yet," Roxanne remarks and flashes an exaggerated frown. "A peddler caravan from the Faium Principality brought it here, and it all sold in an instant. It seems to be the new craze over there."

Faium…? Nour… I'm coming…

She takes a bite and eats it like a posh lady, then she adds, "Since they're still learning how to use it, only cakes like these are available, but they'll run out of ingredients soon."

"What a shame…" I grumble.

Then Alissa starts to wonder, "The fruit merchants commented how the first harvest for the elven sugarcane is coming. If chocolate and sugar gather here…"

I hum in delight just from imagining it, "Ooh… all the sweets that will come… This is too much teasing!"

Roxanne chuckles amusedly, "Hahah, I didn't know you were such a honey bee, Mr. Ryder."

I think she's calling me a "sweet tooth."

And Alissa factually adds, "I can see why Master gets grumpy when he doesn't have tea and cookies."

I shrug. They aren't lies. I know my weaknesses, and chocolate is one of them.

Alissa pulls out a mild and faintly bitter tea that goes well with the rather overly sweet cake. It seems she understands quite well the subtleties of tea.

After we all take a sip, Roxanne assumes a serious expression and begins, "Now, there's something really important I want to ask you, Mr. Ryder."

I blink blankly and hum, "Oh?"

She lowers her head and clasps her hands as she begs, "Please, let me join your fellowship!"

Honestly, I was expecting that.

After buying Alissa, I've become a lot more confident in working with other people, and at least now I know that I won't be burned at the stake if some of my powers were made known, so I think I can risk it. I don't think Roxanne is the kind to look too deeply into my lies because she's kind of an airhead, and she already owes me her life, so it's unlikely that she'll blabber about my powers.

"Oh, well. Okay," I calmly answer and smile as I take another sip.

"Wha… that easy?" She mutters, flabbergasted.

I happily nod. "Well, you're trustworthy and reliable. Also, people are praising me too much; you're the one who blew up the Symbol of Hate with a single spell, so you're a really powerful mage, and we'd certainly work well together."

Roxanne actually blushes, and her unnaturally pale skin becomes a deep crimson red.

That's a first.

The rush of emotions coming to her makes her stutter adorably, "T-t-t-thank you! I have been looking for a fellowship for such a long time, but I rarely found anyone trustworthy, but those who were never let me join. I've been lonely for such a long time!" Then she realizes that what she just shouted is actually quite sad, and her posture shrinks in shame.

Well, I can kind of guess why people wouldn't want her to join. Her carefree personality would definitely put off the more serious types.

To prevent an awkward silence from settling in I immediately move on, "Well, but what do you mean by 'trustworthy'?"

She frowns and readjusts her glasses as her eyes shine with anger. "Greedy, backstabbing, abusing, harassing, ignorant, and arrogant ugly little men and women. If you're an unknown hunter, it's really difficult finding someone good."

"Even with your powers?"

Alissa puts a hand on my arm to grab my attention, then she kindly explains, "Master, remember Dennis and Simon? Even if you are powerful, it takes a while to build trust. The first ones to come are most likely trying to use you instead of building a bond."

I raise my eyebrows in surprise. "You thought Targua was trustworthy?"

She shrugs. "Perhaps."

I scratch the side of my head as I deliberate, "I guess I understand your situation now, Roxanne. But, what are your objectives? I plan on continuing adventuring as I learn more and grow stronger so that I can travel around the world. Would you be ready to come with us and leave this house?"

She nods repeatedly, then readjusts her glasses as she exclaims, "Why, yes! This house is a rental, and I already crossed an ocean to come here, so I'm not too attached. I..." -She looks away and cringes- "don't really have a real goal yet. I just want to keep creating more potions, and I love all the incredible things I can do with this magic. I can heal, change, improve, and purify the body without even touching a person. I can leave my mark in the world without even being there." And she begins smiling innocently as she spills her heart out.

But something catches my attention. "Wait, go back. This is a rental? Isn't it… super expensive?" I concernedly inquire.

This is a large house with what looks like many bedrooms and a large kitchen. She was living alone here? How does she clean all this? I haven't rented a house yet because it's much more economic to just stay at the inn… Why is this a rental?!

She freezes like a deer in the headlights. "Well… uh… I w-wanted to use this house as a benefit to-to recruiting me, but I never joined any fellowship, and I… I didn't want it to go to waste, so I kept the house." Then she gives me a shit-eating grin.

That's a bit irresponsible. I think this would be a point against her instead of in favor when she asked to join other fellowships.

I facepalm as I smile wryly. "Well, then. I guess we can use it, right? Since we're kinda rich now, we can live here for a while."

Perhaps we'll have to find work again sooner than I thought, but at least this is a really comfy house, so it'll be a nice place to rest for a few days.

Roxanne suddenly shouts as she remembers something, "OH! I'll give you the master bedroom. I feel a bit lonely on that huge bed. Also, all rooms are soundproof so there's nothing to worry about." Then she grins and winks at Alissa, who tries to keep her face as neutral as possible, but she can't stop herself from blushing.

There's no need to be embarrassed after everything we've done together.

Roxanne recollects herself and continues, trying to make herself look better, "There's a bath upstairs that fits six people. Whenever you want, I can easily fill it up and heat it for you. There's also no need to clean because I hired a maid to do this for me every half-cycle. I can even cook my own meals, so I can also cook for you, too."

"No, I'll cook and clean," Alissa proudly states.

But I interject, "I'll allow you to cook, but to also let you clean might be too much. We'll keep the maid for now, this is a big house, after all."

She pouts, but those cute lips pursed together just makes me want to kiss her.

"I want to spoil you to death, not overwork you," I kindly add, and she faintly blushes again as her tail wags.

So easy.

"I'll just move my things, and in an hour, the room will be ready for the two of you," Roxanne affirms.

I nod and announce, "Then I'll go back to the inn and end my reservation. Alissa, you should help her and prepare things while I'm out."

"Understood, Master," she dilligently replies.

And Roxanne offers, "The hunter's guild might now be a bit too far for you to walk, so I can lend you my flying carpet if you need it."

Eh, no, thank you. I feel like that thing is really unsafe.

I frown and deflect, "I…think I'd rather start riding Alissa around town. It might attract a bit of attention, but I don't mind it anymore."

Alissa smiles smugly and immediately accepts, "Please do, Master. There's no need to walk around so much."

The feeling of her fluffy fur against my body makes me change my mind, "Actually, I'm already starting to feel lazy, so let's go to the inn together, Alissa. Also, you should say goodbye to Selina. You can visit her occasionally, but you'll see her way less often now."

"Yes! Thank you, Master."

I can see a few gazes follow us as Alissa flies through the streets. Wereanimals aren't exactly rare, especially with the werefoxes living rather close by, but to have a person riding a large fox is still an interesting sight.

"Hello, I'm here to say I will be ending my reservation," I cheerfully inform the innkeeper. I really wanted to say his name right now, but I don't remember!

He's taken by surprise and frowns worriedly. "Oh! Y-yes, at once. But… is Selina, uh…"

I wave my hand dismissively as I interrupt him, "Ah, no, don't worry. I wish Selina happiness, but I recruited another member to my fellowship, and she's already renting a house, so we'll be moving there."

He immediately calms down and lowers his head apologetically. "Ah, I see. I apologize for insinuating such things."

"It's no problem. Is Selina here? I'd like to say goodbye for now."

"She's in the kitchen, let me call her for you."

The innkeeper hurries away and quickly comes back with Selina, who's wearing a lovely apron and removing a toque.

Alissa explains the situation, and they hug each other, then Selina turns to me and respectfully bows. I'll surely miss her beautiful face.

Then she says she's going to marry in a day-cycle and gives us the date of the ceremony. After that, she'll live with her husband and help his shop, a simple cloth store near the Bazaar.

I keep quiet while they talk because I'm hurting a little. I really did start to like her.

We leave soon after, and since we're nearby we pass by the guild to register Roxanne in our fellowship, and we also update our house address.

It's not even five in the afternoon and the drinking here is already heavy, but it's not like adventurers have a time where it's appropriate to begin drinking.

There's a minstrel playing some songs on a lute, and he actually makes me miss music from Earth because of how loud and crude his playing is. Some people obviously enjoy it, but it's not for me. Perhaps the theater will have shows with better music.

The gazes on us are actually quite annoying this time, so we quickly finish our business here, then we return to our new home.

The house has six bedrooms on the second floor, and a study with a large, but mostly empty book stand that gets a little bit less empty as I put my few books in it. Roxanne works in her own bedroom, leaving the study unused, so I decide to put my research notes on the desk.

There's a basement, but it's completely empty. There's also a back garden where we could make a small plantation, but no one knows how to do it.

I take all of my and Alissa's clothes out of my "Items" and put them into the large wardrobe, and it gives me a chill. This reminds me of when I started to live together with Lily, and the nostalgia makes me a bit emotional.

This is no time for these feelings, so I shove them into the dark drawer where they belong. I don't want to keep wallowing in the "what could've been."

Aside from the painting and some horizontal relief lines around the interior walls, there's no other decoration, which makes even I believe that it needs some sprucing up. The house is comfy, but boring.

The lower floor has a kitchen with a large table, lots of cutlery, a large magical stone oven, a magical stone sink, and a magical stone fridge, and it looks quite modern and archaic at the same time. We have to refill the mana of the fridge every day-cycle, which is a bit of a heavy mana cost for the average person, but it's nothing for a mage like Roxanne. The bath and sink water go to the sewer below the town as only the poorest parts of town don't have a sewer exit. There's no plumbed water, though.

The last room on the first floor is the living room, and it's quite large. It has a small, empty book stand, three really comfy sofas around a small table, and a magic tool fireplace, but there's still a chimney for real firewood.

The back window gives a nice view to the garden, too. A small wall separates the end of our garden with the start of the garden of the back neighbor, which is another house very similar to this one. It seems this block is all rentals, which must be why I saw both nobles and wealthy-looking adventurers around.

The bath is huge, which is a big plus in my book. It has a magical stone to fill it, but it takes a while to do it while Roxanne can just use [Water Wall] and a [Fireball] to make it ready in just ten seconds, and it seems she practiced that a lot. The toilet is a small little room beside the bathroom.

Alissa will start cooking tomorrow, so today is still an "Items"-ready meal. After the three of us fill our bellies, I cuddle with Alissa in the living room while she reads a book. It's quite warm today, so we don't need to light the fireplace. Roxanne retires to work in her room, and once in a while I hear the twinkling of glass, metal hitting each other, and some mutters.

I'm honestly somewhat bored in this world. The lack of games and internet makes me quite the pervert since it's the last big source of dopamine that I have available to me. I guess this is why people drank so much in the past.

The book Alissa is reading is a bit boring. It's an epic, but I could find more interesting light novels on the internet in a few minutes back on Earth.

I guess I should keep practicing magic, so I choose to train [Mana Control] while I think about [Golemancy]. The [Infuse] spell was such a mindblow I'm still processing that experience.

Our evening ends quite fast, and I suggest to Alissa some fooling around before we go to sleep.

We eagerly enter the Master bedroom and drop on the bed, then I notice that it's actually enormous. I think three people could easily sleep here together. Ridiculous.

Then we test the cushioning of the bed and the soundproofing of the wall with the Clothes of the Berserker.

Today, I'm going to meet Ghulam, and I wake up feeling nervous. While I build the courage to get up, Alissa goes down to make breakfast, and I begin to hear Roxanne working again.

I slap my face and power through my anxiety. I can't let Alissa do it all by herself.

I help make ground meat dumplings while Alissa fries them and makes a salad with some cider vinegar Roxanne has here.

Once the smell of good food starts wafting out, she comes down looking disheveled and sleepy, though even that isn't enough to make her not-gorgeous.

We sit down to eat, and I curiously ask her, "Miss Roxanne, how often did you cook?"

She smiles both wryly and embarrassedly as she answers, "Erm, rarely. There was no time, so I made a lot of steamed or roasted vegetables and stored them for the day-cycle, then I'd buy meat from nearby and eat it with bread."

That's kind of boring, so I pity her a bit.

Better not dwell on such a topic, so I change it to something more neutral, "I'll be going to the Golden Necklace today with Alissa. Will you stay home?"

She nods slowly. "Yep, I still have finish my new work with the Moonlight Moss."

"What are you trying to make with it?" I reflexively ask.

Her face lights up with childish happiness. "Heheh. Secret!"

I just shake my head and focus on my meal.

But now it's her turn to curiously ask, "Ah, Mr. Ryder, are you going to buy another slave there?"

I shrug. "I don't know. Mr. Bhatt called me there to 'conduct business,' but I have no idea what to expect."

"It's a woman," she states matter-of-factly.

I almost choke on my tea and give her a surprised look. "W-why do you say this?"

She smirks suggestily. "What else would it be? You're the town hero for now, so you'd certainly be worthy of a powerful Blood Slave. Also, if he called you, it means he found someone really good," then she turns her teasing gaze to the quiet foxgirl- "and after Alissa, it'd be difficult to sell a man to you."

That's… absolutely true. I don't want a man near Alissa, slave or not. I think I've become overprotective, but I'm happy! That's what counts.

We arrive at the Golden Necklace at 8 AM, then we enter, and Sebastian greets us with a wide, polite smile.

"Welcome, Grand Ryder. Would you like to meet the head now?" He calmly inquires without even glancing at Alissa once, which annoys me a little.

I simply nod, and he leads us to the same room from before. Alissa wants to remain standing, but I make her sit beside me. After a minute, Ghulam comes in, wearing his wide and handsome smile. Sebastian follows behind him, and offers us the heavenly cookies and tea again.

"Welcome again to the Golden Necklace, Mr. Ryder," Ghulam calmly greets with his deep and stimulating voice, then he takes a seat before ours. "I'm glad you came so soon. I thought that the reclusive hero would take a long time to leave his nest, but I'm happy that he has chosen to spend his precious time here."

He puts so much emotion in each word it's almost like watching a play. How high is his "Charisma"!?

"Uh… hero?" I concernedly question with a frown.

He gracefully nods and amusedly explains, "Yes, you should know by now you're the talk of the town. There are even some voices asking for you to appear before the lord and get a commendation for your service, but it's rather refreshing seeing how you aren't that concerned about such matters."

I snort. "I try to live quietly, so I don't want to get involved with nobility and neither do I need to bask in glory. I'll just embarrass myself greatly."

He hums thoughtfully and categorically points out, "You have the guts to face the Symbol of Hate without hesitation, but not to face the crowd that's giving you glory?"

Well, how am I supposed to answer that? I just stay quiet and smile, and I feel Alissa's hand twitching as she holds mine.

After an awkward couple of seconds, he briefly bows and apologizes, "Ah, forgive me, that was rude of me. It's not guts you lack, but self-importance. It's good to live a quiet life, but unless you're a priest, it'll be helpful to be mindful of the importance of receiving your deserved rewards."

I get what he means. You can't just ignore tradition in a warrior society. "Well… what you say isn't wrong, it's just difficult for me. I'm actually really shy."

And he very kindly replies, "No shame in that, just make sure you live without regrets, Mr. Ryder." Then he flashes to me his unnervingly handsome smile.

I chuckle. That's kind of my motto already.

"I try, I try…" I mumble and sigh.

Then he slowly becomes more serious as he continues, "Now, Mr. Ryder, you may not be basking in the glory others want to give you, but accept a little bit of mine. I know how your party is rather lacking in front line power, so I have the perfect addition to your party." Then he claps his hand twice.

Oh, boy. I knew it.

The door opens and a nearly two meters tall dragonkin comes in, and it's a woman. She has red, wavy hair with such volume it's almost a mane; yellow, lizard-like eyes with a naturally intense stare; a slender and sculpted body that'd make anyone envious; a large and perfectly round pair of pillows, too perfect in fact; a fearsome face and narrow eyes that makes her look like a model. The worst thing is that she has one of my weaknesses: faintly tanned skin.

I shudder when I see the jiggle under her white silk one-piece that barely covers her body. She also has small, round patches of neatly-arranged, shining, emerald scales on the back of her hand, side of her cheeks, top of her bare feet, and at the side of her arms and legs.

All the slaves shown so far, even Alissa, had their eyes and posture slightly lowered to show their submission, but this woman is different. Her eyes pierce me, her gaze makes me feel small, as if I'm a prey and she's merely toying with me, then a small grin appears in the corner of her mouth.

She's not a slave, she's a man-hunting woman, and I feel like prey. Is this how women feel when men leer at them?

I don't know how long we stare at each other as I lose myself in her striking yellow eyes, but then Ghulam's honeyed voice pulls me back to reality, "This is Hanafuria. She's a dragonkin with affinity for fire. She is twenty-three years old, and an experienced adventurer. But don't worry, she's still a virgin as certain types of dragonkin normally wait until they're past their physical prime to marry and have children.

"Her skills are in the martial arts, and she's extremely sturdy even for normal dragonkin. She can use the spear, sword, bow, and pole arms with ease. If she doesn't know a weapon, she can learn it as she has a talent for learning new weapons. She has enough 'Endurance' to use full plate armor for extended periods of time, lasting even longer than lightly-armored soldiers, though she isn't able to fly with such heavy equipment.

"Her magic skills are ordinary and forgettable, so her specialty is being the front line of any sort of attack. As she is a dragonkin, she can fly for short bursts, so this means she can also be used as a swift shield to protect anyone anywhere as long as it is within flight distance. Lastly, she can also use this power to charge towards enemies and empower her attacks."

"Master… she's perfect..." Alissa whispers, her tone full of awe.

You aren't supposed to say things like this. How is a man supposed to think rationally when there's such a meal in front of me…? I agree with you, Alissa, she's perfect, now come to me and strip!

"W-why are you offering such a woman to me?" I stiffly ask, sweating cold.

He answers with absolute calm and composure as he knows I've fully fallen into his trap, "Your party is extremely unbalanced right now. Miss Roxanne is weak in close combat, as the reports of your battle say, and if you don't bring a proper front line warrior, she'll be put in danger once again. I'm sorry, Mr. Ryder, but you aren't enough to protect her and Miss Alissa at the same time.

I stare at him in fear. "How did you know that Roxanne had joined us?" I only registered her yesterday.

And he gives me a perfectly innocent smile. "Fellowship records are public, also, extremely easy to learn this kind of information about hunters if you just ask a little. Since my job is to find the right clients, it'd be shameful if I did any less."

And suspicion of him gives me just enough courage to question, "And you are offering her to me just because you think my party is unbalanced?"

He shakes his head and soberly states, "It's only one of the reasons. Your subjugation of the Symbol of Hate demonstrates you have enormous potential, your behavior shows you have strong character, and Hanafuria herself is interested in serving you."

"She can choose?" I blur out.

She grins excitedly at me, making me feel a shiver, and Ghulam politely explains, "It's part of her contract. She's too powerful to be sold to just about anybody, and she needs someone with the potential to give her the future she deserves."

I get a chill when I hear the word "sold." She's not a companion to join a fellowship, she's considered another object that will serve me, just like Alissa.

"And if I don't do my job to my best, then the Gods will punish me," he chipperly adds, but I ignore his tone as a sudden realization falls upon me.

The gods are indirectly telling me to create a slave harem.

"What's her price?" I ask, suddenly feeling quite sharp.

"One rose coin."

Oof.

"I don't have that money."

He shows me his infuriatingly handsome smile again as he had already foreseen this. "It's no matter. The auction is coming soon, and the lowest predictions say you'll earn at least two rose coins, so we can defer payment until then."

I don't have a way out. I'm cornered, and I'll be left alone with the man-eater as not even Alissa wants to save me from her.

Why am I hesitating? I'm already past the point of no return.

"Then I'll take Hanafuria."

A note from Manasong

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Chapter 9: The Good Days - Part 1

A note from Manasong

Attention: to conform to the limit of mature content (more than just sexual content) allowed in a novel, I've censored this chapter. You can look for the uncensored version here.

I silently sign the documents, and Ghulam peacefully smiles after successfully corrupting me further, then Sebastian receives them, and the devil in disguise calmly continues, "Then it's done. I'm certainly glad Nour sent you my way, and I'm also honored to have done business with you, Mr. Ryder."

My morals have been thrown away long ago, so I just smile politely and reply in kind, "Thank you for choosing me, and I'll be forever grateful to Nour for sending me here." Then shameless takes over me and I add, "But, just one last thing. That silk one-piece, does it come in black?"

I grin, and he grins back. I knew it, he's the devil.

"Sebastian, please," he calmly orders.

The old man goes outside, and after a few seconds, he's back with a beautiful black silk one-piece that he gives to Alissa, who folds it on her arm.

And Ghulam graciously finishes, "That will be a gift, and if you don't have any other questions, then I'll be off."

I silently shake my head, barely containing my excitement.

"Until our next business, Mr. Ryder," he bids farewell and leaves.

Then I turn to Hanafuria, and we stare at each other for an awkwardly long couple of seconds. She's "aggressively" beautiful, and I just want to drown in her yellow, vertical-slitted eyes.

"You can change into those clothes," I stiffly instruct and point to the bundle of clothes on the table. They're the same design that Alissa got when she left, though bigger.

Hanafuria doesn't even hesitate, she unashamedly takes them off and then slowly puts on her new clothes in front of me, and this time I stare to my heart's content. The first thing I notice is that she has absolutely no hair anywhere aside from her head, then she bends over, showing me her perfectly round behind, and once she straightens her chest bounces alluringly, making me wish to confirm their firmness.

Once she's done, she stands proudly before me and gives me a subtle smirk, seemingly pleased with my wandering eyes.

A domineering mood takes over me, and I assuredly announce, "I'm Wolf Ryder, and this is Alissa, my first Blood Slave. I'll call you Hana for short."

"Understood, Master," Hana obediently replies. Her voice is powerful but still feminine, and it doesn't betray her intimidating beauty.

I touch my fox girl's delicate hand and ask, "I'll walk home with Hana. Alissa, can you buy the basic necessities for her on your own?"

She lowers her head as she complies, "Yes, I can, Master."

Then we leave the building and split with her.

We leisurely walk side by side while I begin laying down the rules, "Hana, I'm very clingy, and I love touching, so, if it isn't inconvenient, we should always walk holding hands or with an arm wrapped around the other's body."

I'll be strict and decisive with her because I get the impression that if I'm not, she'll crush me with her domineering aura.

Hana nods slowly as she accepts then politely explains, "Understood. My scales may look rigid, but I can control the hardness, so please, don't be afraid to touch them, Master."

I grab her hand and feel her emerald scales. They're surprisingly soft and warm, so it isn't uncomfortable to touch. I also find the neatly-ordered circular patches of scales quite beautiful and fitting with her more "wild" aura.

I ask her to show how hard they can get, and she flexes her arm, which raises the scales a little bit, then they suddenly become hard and rough. I also run a finger along the edge, and I believe that they could cut as easily as a blade.

"Do you sharpen your scales?" I curiously ask.

"Yes, but though they stay sharp naturally, they can become a secondary weapon during battle if sharpened even further."

I raise my eyebrows in surprise. "That's impressive."

She lets out a beautiful, boisterous laugh, "Hahah! Thank you, Master."

I stop playing with her scales and interlace my fingers with hers, then we start walking closer to each other, allowing me to smell her faint perfume.

I'm actually quite surprised with how feminine her hand is. It's big but soft, while her fingers are very slender, and her nails are well done, so there's nothing that tells of her warrior background.

"Why is your hand so soft? Shouldn't your skin be rougher from training so much?" I ask, trying to sound as genuine as possible to not offend her.

But she seems happy to answer, "Dragonkin can harden skin at will, not just scales. Also, our skin never grows calluses and our nails never chip unless we wish so."

I'm surprised once again. "I feel envious of you."

And she lets out another uproarious laugh, then cheerfully exclaims, "You and every other woman in the world!"

I like her carefree attitude; it makes it easy to talk to her.

And so I happily continue my questioning, "Your wings, they're summoned like those of the demon race?"

She adjusts her fiery hair behind her ear and casually answers, "Somewhat. Ours are actual physical wings while the demon race's are made of mana. Ours need 'Strength' and 'Endurance' to fly, and theirs need 'Magical Power' and MP."

I'm fascinated by her race, so I promptly continue, "I see. Can any dragonkin fly for long distances?"

She lets out a low chuckle, amused by my curiosity, then glances at me. "There are those who can, but they're rare. Real dragon wings control the air around them, but dragonkin wings can only faintly control it. Our bodies just aren't made for flying like a true dragon's is."

A dragon's body isn't really made for flight, but whatever…

We stop by a clothing shop and buy her some pretty casual clothing. She looks stunning in straight dresses, but not so much in frilly dresses like Alissa does.

The man-eating eyes she gives me while showing off her clothes makes me feel things, man.

"You like what you see," she teases with a grin then puffs her chest. The way the loose emerald dress barely covers her body is just amazing.

"Very much," I huskily reply, then I smirk as my sadistic and domineering side starts to come out. "But what do you think of me? I'll dress you up and play with your body every day from now on, so, do you think I'll be a good master?"

"I'm eager to service you," she breathes seductively, her yellow eyes staring unwaveringly at me.

My smirk stiffens and I almost choke on my spit. "W-what?" I grunt, blindsided by her response.

She laughs heartily and holds her sides, bunching up her pair, "Hahahah! Was that really unexpected?"

"Yes, don't you just barely know me?" I ask, incredulous at her straightforwardness.

She takes a step forward, almost shoving her chest in my face. "Don't you also just barely know me, and yet here you are, telling me you'll 'play with my body every day'?"

I stand my ground and look up at her face. "Touché."

I was getting a bit carried on.

But she just blinks blankly and confusedly mumbles, "What…?"

I quickly recover my composure, then I shamelessly look at her valley as I explain, "Sorry, it's an expression from my homeland. It means 'you got me' or 'you scored a hit on me.'"

She laughs heartily again. She laughs a lot, it seems.

Then she takes another step, and now my face is just a couple of centimeters from sinking into it. "There are plenty of women, especially among the dragonkin, who enjoy small men like you," she seductively states and licks her lips.

I stare at her again and her man-eating gaze gives me a chill. I'm not even going to comment on "small men."

But I won't be bullied by a virgin!

I hold on to the "Master" persona and cheekily retort, "If so, then why were you a virgin until now?"

She smirks then looks away, seemingly faintly embarrassed, and I savor my small victory by breathing in deeply her scent.

But she quickly recovers. "For the same reason why nobody bought me until now: I didn't find anyone worthy of it." Then she wrinkles her nose in disgust and frowns. "Haughty nobles or crude and stupid mercenaries. Bah! I knew I could do better…" -Her large hands cup my cheeks- "And I did."

I'm starting to get used to her aggressiveness, so I calmly reply, "You seriously think I'm worthy?"

"I think you're worthy of testing," she confidently states and releases me then takes a step back, reducing the strain in my pants.

I tilt my head confusedly. "Oh? What if I fail the test?"

"I have enough 'Willpower' to break the slavery and run away," she casually answers, then drops the dress.

"Wow. That's impressive," I reply in kind as I stare, both meanings of the phrase intended.

I don't really feel like I should fear that she'll run away. Breaking the contract isn't instant, and there's a lot of wiggle room between her deciding to run away and her actually running away.

She picks up a red dress and easily puts it on. "Hah! I know! That's why I sold myself so easily," she cheerfully states then models for me.

Should I ask the actual reason she sold herself? I feel like it's too soon, but her personality tells me she wouldn't mind.

Screw it. I'll ask, but at least I'll be tactful about it.

I stare at her face and solemnly ask, "This isn't an order, so you don't have to obey, but would you tell me the reason you sold yourself?"

She stops presenting her behind then faces me while holding her hips and explains rather uninterestedly, "Well, it's no matter. My family were merchants, but they fell to a conspiracy, and to avoid jail, I had the option to either marry someone or be made into a Blood Slave so that I could abandon my family name."

Were merchants.

"I'm sorry to hear that," I solemnly reply.

She shrugs. "Don't be, my father was a fool." Then a hint of anger seeps into her tone. "He fell for the trap and turned to crime to pay off the debt he accumulated, but because of that, the entire family suffered. I got off lightly, though. I was told I'd make a great Blood Slave, so I sold myself for cheap to make it easier to find a Master, then I just had to wait for you."

"Cheap"? If that's cheap, I don't want to know Alissa's real price.

What kind of discount did Nour prepare for me, really?

I hum and continue, "I'll be taking a break for around a day-cycle so that I can focus on studying magic. Is that alright with you?"

"I'm yours for life now, Master." She calmly affirms and spins, lifting her dress and showing me her shapely legs, then she gives me a sobering stare. "I'll be fine with whatever you wish. Now that I'm here, it might actually be best for you to focus on magic, too. I heard you made a small miracle when healing your companion, so you seem to have some talent for it."

I cringe and look away. "Did everybody hear about my fight in detail?"

She gives me a refreshingly hearty laugh, "Hahahahah! This is an adventuring town, Master! People around here live for this kind of story! The minstrels might garble some of the details to add more flavor, but the real story should be out there."

I sigh and stare at her again, then she smirks and continues to seduce me.

In the end, she successfully charms me, and I splurge a bit. I buy her the two dresses and a couple of spare casual clothes, but unfortunately, there's no alluring underwear, those are only luxury items.

During the walk back home, we remain silent and just enjoy each other's presence with our arms and fingers entwined. My mind wanders to the image of her body, and I start to get impatient.

I'm actually glad I bought her. There might be various reasons why her purchase makes me happy, but more than anything, it's because she seems like an amazing person.

We reach home by 9:30 AM. Once we open the door, Roxanne immediately comes out of her room, then Alissa stops her cooking and also comes to greet us.

"Oooh. Told you it was a woman," Roxanne comments wryly while examining Hana like one analyzes a beautiful statue.

I clear my throat and introduce them, "Well, this is Hanafuria, Hana for short. Hanafuria, this is Miss Roxanne, a companion."

Hana looks at Roxanne, then at me, then at Roxanne again and smirks.

What…?

"Well met, Miss Roxanne. It seems from now on I'll be your shield," she huskily returns the greeting, then grabs Roxanne's hand and gives it a gentle kiss.

Roxanne's voice rises an octave as she laughs like a lady, "Hohohoh, I already feel safer. I'm happy to meet you, Miss Hana."

The fiery warrior retorts with poise, "There's no need to use honorifics for me, I'm just a slave of Grand Ryder."

And the succubus coyly waves her hand dismissively. "Nonsense. Mr. Ryder barely treats Miss Alissa as a slave, so there's no need to treat you any less."

"Then I gladly accept it," she politely states with a bow.

I stare at Hana in awe.

Holy shit, this woman is majestic.

"Excuse me, I have to go back to work," Roxanne bashfully announces, then walks back to her room, an alluring sway to her hips and thin black tail.

While Hana and I stare at her, Alissa walks up to me.

"Master, I bought more of that cloth that might fit Hana," she eagerly whispers in my ear.

Now you've done it.

"Give them to me. We'll be staying upstairs until lunch," I sternly state, feeling the blood go down once again.

"As you wish, Master," she obediently replies and bows, but I see a mischievous smile grace her pretty face.

Then I turn to the gorgeous beauty beside me. "Hana, should we wait for tonight?" I huskily ask with a suggestive grin.

She notices my growing bulge, and her vertical pupils widen in excitement. "There's no need, is there?" She replies in kind.

I grab her hand and lead her to our room. Once we're in, she immediately goes to the bed while I lock the door.

She sits down and waits, so I approach her, then I grab her chin and pull her up into a deep kiss.

There's no hesitation on her part. She receives my lips, and we share gentle kisses for a moment, but she becomes impatient, and her tongue parts my lips, then she eagerly explores my mouth.

I hug her body, but she hugs me back harder, squishing my chest against her large, elastic mountains, and I notice that they're much firmer than Alissa's. Is this due to the dragonkin's special skin?

My hands explore her muscular back, but then I move them to the front and grip both breasts. She moans softly in my mouth then lets out a chuckle.

But touching just isn't enough. I pull her away to break the kiss and desperately lift her shirt.

Don't tell the US, but I found two weapons of mass destruction.

Her areolas are darker than lightly tanned skin, and I find them almost irresistibly luscious, but her nipples are already erect, begging to be pinched, so I immediately compromise and pinch one while I lick the other.

She moans again, her lower voice making it sound almost like a growl, then she grabs my hair and pulls me towards her chest, asking for more, so I give her a small bite, and she yells in surprise.

"Ahn~…! That's… that's so good…" She whispers with a heavy breath.

"Did you ever touch yourself like this?" I teasingly ask and continue sucking.

Her strong fingers run through my hair and massage my scalp. "Hahah, my nipples had never been touched before you."

I bite the other nipple, and she moans delightfully. "Then I'll teach you a lot of things today," I soothingly whisper and kiss her breast, then I push her down and go for her belt.

She raises her head and stares at me with her man-eating gaze while I pull down her pants, then I notice that there's already a wet spot in her panties.

Jesus, how eager are you?

She kicks off her boots, then I remove her pants, and she immediately spreads her legs for me, presenting herself to me like an appetizing meal.

I gently pull her panties to the side, revealing her sticky pussy lips, then I cover them with my mouth and penetrate her with my indicator.

"Yes…!" She breathes as her legs quiver with desire.

I savor the sour taste of her arousal as I slowly rub my tongue between her lips, going up until I reach the small nub of her clit.

She squirms and moans loudly in response, then grabs my head and pushes it further in, trying to get my tongue to penetrate her deeper. It seems she likes it rough and intense.

I move my finger in and out of her and her voice grows louder. Her moans have a lower pitch in comparison to Alissa's, but they aren't any more or less sexier. Every moan of a woman is just perfect.

I take my time with increasing the speed of my movements just to make sure she understands I'm in control. But after a couple of minutes, I curl my finger upwards in search of the sacred spot, and it doesn't take long to find it.

She suddenly stops moaning and releases my head, telling me that I'm right on the mark, then she begins trembling and grabs the sheets.

I rub my finger against the subtly rough patch, and she starts screaming in pleasure, then my mouth becomes wetter and wetter as she leaks even more lewd fluids.

Now my tongue focuses entirely on her clit while I play with her G-spot, and she suddenly finds her voice again.

"AAHN~...! YES…! YES…!" She shouts in ecstasy, her strong thighs quivering as she struggles to not crush my head.

But soon she reaches the peak, and a massive orgasm takes a hold of her body. Her insides clench and her body convulses, so I hug her waist and hold on. I'll give her the best orgasm she ever had!

I bask in the glory of my victory, enjoying how I've made this proud warrior into a shivering mess, but after long seconds, her voice begins to lower, so I decrease the intensity of my movements to match her, then her body suddenly goes limp.

I release her and notice that my finger is now covered in a small amount of white cream from her climax, so I lick it clean while I wait for her to catch her breath.

"What… was… that..." She mutters, her eyes open wide in amazement.

Two kicks, two goals.

I smugly explain, "I played with your 'G-spot,' which, as you can see, is a woman's greatest weakness."

"That's..." She tries to speak, but she's at a complete loss for words, so I crawl up to her and come face-to-face.

"Now then…" I whisper seductively then kiss her scaly cheek. "It's time for the main meal."

Her fearsome grin starts to return, which is my sign that I need to continue before she tries to assume control of this situation.

I pull a piece of cloth from my "Items" and slide it under her, then I pull down my pants and present my hard cock.

She stares at it with anticipation and wiggles her hips towards me, but once my tip touches her entrance, I grab her waist and hold it still.

She looks up at me and gives me an expectant look, but I take a moment to admire the view. A wild, powerful, ferocious, big-titted, red beauty is right before me, almost begging to be fucked.

And she's all mine. She's my… property.

I've been completely corrupted.

I rub the reddened head of my cock against her entrance and she twitches, but then she becomes fascinated by my precum mixing with her lewd juices.

I tease her again and begin pushing it in, but then I pull out and tease her a bit more before I enter her further. I'll penetrate her little by little.

But she has other plans.

She suddenly scowls angrily and grabs my hips as she impatiently shouts, "You tease too much!" Then she pulls me, and I easily slide in.

I chuckle softly, but then the pleasant warmth of her insides gets to me, and we moan in sync.

My penetration is stopped by some resistance, but she just pulls me more strongly and we break her hymen. She winces in pain, so I cast [Regeneration] on her.

"What? You're healing me?" She grunts confusedly.

I smile warmly and cup her cheek as I reply, "There's no need for you to feel pain. Also, I can keep this spell on all the time to help you adjust to me."

"I like the pain," she growls defiantly while staring into my eyes.

Ooh~? Then don't mind if I do!

I pull out, cast [Clean] on us to clean the blood, then I immediately thrust again with all my strength. She releases my hips, closes her eyes, and grits her teeth as I inflict deliciously painful pleasure upon her pussy.

I penetrate her roughly, again and again, our thighs smacking loudly against each other, and she squirms and grunts with each thrust.

I pull her waist closer to the edge, and she gives me a confused look, but now I have the proper support that I need to give her the punishment she wants.

I resume my thrusting with renewed ferocity, grunting in delight as my sadism gives me sweet sweet pleasure, then her jaw goes slack while her voice disappears.

She rests her head against the bed and swallows heavily as she tries to regain her composure. The strong and proud, unbreakable shield of our fellowship is currently squirming as her defiance steadily crumbles by my hands and cock.

She glances at me, her eyes filled with awe, the man-eating gaze and her domineering aura now nothing more than a joke. She knows who's the real man here, who's the actual Master.

"Harder..." She softly breathes, and I raise an eyebrow questioningly.

Are you serious?

"Harder…!" She hisses, suddenly finding her strength once again.

I snort and slow down. "You know what, one sec…"

"What?" She growls, angry that I'm not giving her what she wants, but then she gives me a confused look as I open my "Stats" and move my points around.

I put ten in [Enhanced Stamina], ten in [Enhanced Strength], ten in [Enhanced Sexual Stamina], and it only allows me to put one in [Enhanced Genital Control].

I close the window and grin sadistically. "You fucking asked for this," I whisper huskily.

Then I grip her waist and thrust with all my might.

"AAAAHN~...!" She screams, but it quickly shifts into a moan, then she gives me a tight hug and digs her nails into my skin.

She gives me a very stable leverage point to just unleash all my anger onto her pussy through wild, uncontrolled, rough fucking. But her nails dig so deep that I actually take a point of HP damage; she must be making me bleed.

This position is amazing with her. We pant almost in sync, making our hot breaths mix, and we rub our sweaty bodies against each other for maximum penetration. The way she grits her teeth with every thrust, the bounce of her large breasts, and how her abs flex along with the tightening of her insides, it all looks amazing. It feels almost a pity to switch positions, but I want to assert my dominance by making her bend for me.

I turn her sideways and fuck her while hugging her muscular leg, then I force her into doggystyle and wreck her pussy while gripping her nice ass.

Then I hug her from behind, mounting her like an animal, but I'm still not satisfied.

I grab her legs and spread them, then I pull her up with me into a standing reverse cowgirl, making me wish so hard that we had a mirror.

She's tall and heavy, so while this position is amazing, I soon throw her back onto the bed, then I mount her again and pull her hair like reins.

The way her pussy tightens on my cock tells me she enjoys that one, so I press her neck down and bend her spine backward, forcing her to perk her ass up to me as best as she can, and it allows me to reach so deep inside her even I feel amazing.

But she takes it so well I start to feel like abusing her more, and just pounding harder won't do. I put her on a chokehold, and that makes her instantly orgasm, leaking fluids everywhere and increasing the amount of cream coating my shaft.

I use Hana's body as I wish, doing all the hardcore stuff that I couldn't do with Alissa. I slap her ass until it's as red as her hair, I dig my nails into her skin and thrust with all my power, I bite her back to leave my (very brief) mark, I pull hard on her hair, and I bend her body to make her even sexier to me.

Unfortunately, all good things must come to an end, and I feel my stamina finally beginning to decrease, so I take off [Enhanced Sexual Stamina], and my balls immediately feel like they're ready to explode.

After a few last thrusts, I unleash the biggest load I've ever done all inside her. My cock simply pumps rope after rope for long seconds, and my muscles all tense up from the amazing orgasm, but then the pleasure quickly subsides.

I slap her ass and push her onto the bed, then she simply collapses, her abused, reddened pussy slowly leaking from my massive cumshot.

The dragon has been tamed.

She remains still for a long moment, splayed out like a used doll, but she's also face down, which worries me, so I turn her around.

Her eyes are simply glossed over, with a complete lack of focus as she gasps for air, so I just sit down beside her and caress her mane-like hair until she's back.

She slowly gets her breathing back under control, and her eyes start to focus again, then she notices me, and we smile at each other.

I conjure some water into a cup and offer it to her. She remains still for a couple of seconds, then summons enough energy to weakly sit up and drink it.

"I may be… inexperienced… but that… wasn't normal…" She hoarsely states.

"Yeah, you could say I'm a bit special," I smugly reply.

She chuckles softly, then coughs. "If you do that… every day… I'll die."

I let out a very amused laugh. "Hahaha, no I can't do that every day. It's just that you asked for it."

She clears her throat. "I certainly did." Then she also laughs.

We stay silent for a moment, just basking in the post-amazing-sex afterglow, but then I take stock of our situation. Our bodies are sweaty and reek of sex, the sheets need washing, and the cloth I put down has a rather considerable blood spot even though I had used [Clean]. Thankfully, her insides are quite resistant, so my dick doesn't look like a murder weapon.

I lay down next to her and use her breasts as a pillow, then she starts caressing my hair just like I was doing to her.

Then I wonder out loud, "Your breasts are quite firm and elastic; is this because of your dragonkin skin? Alissa's are much softer and squishier."

She soothingly replies, "I don't know. I'll need to feel her breasts to compare."

And a depraved idea comes to me.

"Would you like to fondle a woman?" I question with a suggestive tone.

"Hm? I don't have any particular desire to do it," she answers absentmindedly.

"But do you feel disgusted at the idea?"

"Hmm~... no." And I know she's smirking just from her tone.

"Would you kiss Alissa if I asked?"

She whispers huskily in my ear, "If it'd please you."

Ho-ho-ho, Christmas came twice this year. This response almost makes my friend stand up again, but the adrenaline is running out, so my muscles are beginning to complain.

"Don't you feel any shame at being so lewd?" I teasingly ask her.

And she answers without hesitation, "Of course, I do, but I don't allow it to get in the way of what I want."

I grab one of her hands and give it a kiss. "Your straightforwardness is rather charming."

She intensifies her scalp massage with her strong fingers. "Hah! Thank you, but I know I have two other things more charming than that." Then she grabs my head and presses it against her chest.

I just close my eyes and enjoy the pillow massage, but then I turn around and start fondling these monsters, lightly teasing her sensitive bits. She starts to get a bit excited again, but her flower is still in pain, so I stop torturing her.

Eventually, our strength returns, and I tell her we need to take a bath, then we walk out of the room, but Alissa immediately approaches us.

"The bath is ready, Master," she obediently reports.

"How thoughtful. Thank you, Alissa," I kindly praise her, then she returns an adorable smile and bows.

Bowing isn't necessary, though.

"Oh, what a nice bath. We could all get in together," Hana cheerfully remarks.

And I emphatically affirm, "I'll definitely bathe with you and Alissa whenever I can."

"What a luxury."

"Thank Roxanne. Her magic makes starting a bath something trivial."

She grins and cops a feel of my ass. "I certainly will."

I'm not gonna let her peg me, so that's as far as she'll go.

I cop her ass and push her forward, then I begin washing her, and she'll wash me next.

I delicately soap her scales. They need to be hardened during washing, so I have to be careful not to cut myself. Hana seems amused at being cared for, but she doesn't try to stop me. This isn't how the usual Master-Slave relationships are supposed to go, but neither of us really seems to care to behave like it.

After her delicious and muscular body is perfectly washed, I let her do me, but she's very rough, so I keep her away from my sensitive parts. Her eyes seem to be drawn downstairs, though, so I let her play with it a bit.

Then we soak in the warm water, but not for long because we have to help Alissa cook.

The half-cycle has changed today, so the food should, too. My helpful fox girl was testing a few recipes while Hana and I did it, and she has settled on something interesting: an orc meat pie with not-palm-heart and not-corn. There's also plenty of salad, and bean paste on toasted bread.

It feels refreshing to eat something so elaborate, and now that we have a kitchen, we can prepare meals like this one all the time.

Hana sits on the chair and grunts, "Oof."

I touch her arm and give her a concerned look as I cast [Regeneration]. "Are you hurting? You should always tell me if you are; there's no need to be in pain when I can heal you immediately," I kindly plead.

"It shouldn't be a bother, but I'm not used to pain in that place," she suggestively answers and flashes me a smirk.

Roxanne grins while Alissa gives me a worried look, making me sigh.

I clear my throat and lay down the rules, "Even if it's bearable, you should always tell me." -I grab her hand to tell how serious I am- "Here, let me tell you the same thing I told Alissa. Being in pain drains your mental stamina, tiring you more easily, which makes it more likely for you to die in battle. If you die, it'd be a waste of my money, a waste of such a strong companion that you are, and my feelings will also be deeply hurt because I'm not one to just treat you like a tool. So, this is why we need to keep you happy and well-rested: you need to always be at your best so you don't die or disappoint me.

"I'll give you two rules: the first one is 'don't die' because I don't want you sacrificing yourself for me, and the second one is 'let's never get into a situation where someone needs to die' so you won't even have to think about sacrificing yourself if we don't ever get in a situation that needs it, to begin with. Now, do you understand your value to me?"

Roxanne and Hana stare blankly and raise their eyebrows in surprise while Alissa nods repeatedly in agreement.

Then the pale demon coos and agrees, "Hoo~, I guess that's why Alissa is so dedicated." And I start to feel embarrassed.

"Obviously…" Alissa hums.

And Hana suddenly bows and passionately exclaims, "I-I understand, Master. I'll always remain on my best performance for you!"

I awkwardly smile and nod, then we finally start eating.

"Master, forgive my improper behavior, but do you have alcohol?" Hana timidly asks, but the question seems to irk Alissa.

"A slave shouldn't ask for such things!" She scolds the junior slave.

But I appease her, "I don't mind, Alissa. I don't drink, so I don't have any alcohol, but I can buy some for you if you want. Just don't drink too much, I don't like to deal with drunk people."

Roxanne happily confesses, "Ah, there's some wine in the ice box. I was so busy working I didn't drink anything in a while." Then she runs to the kitchen to grab it.

"Ice box" is the creative name the people in this world gave to the fridge.

Hana smiles and casually remarks as she watches Roxanne leave, "For me, it's difficult to become drunk with human alcohol due to my 'Endurance,' but I still enjoy a drink once in a while."

"Well, I don't mind, then," I hum.

Roxanne quickly comes back with the bottle, then she pours for Hana and herself, and the two share a smile.

They give Alissa and me an inquisitive look, but neither of us want to drink, so they just nod at each other and down their glasses.

Roxanne takes it slower while Hana just drinks it all in one go, then the red dragon woman raises her empty glass and exclaims, "Seven months of boredom, seven months waiting for someone worthy, now finally over! I feel reborn!"

"Considering Mr. Ryder's record, we won't be bored for long," Roxanne quietly states and gives me a cheeky glance.

"But what can we kill that topples the Symbol of Hate?" Hana asks with a dangerous glint in her eyes.

Roxanne sips her wine and then casually suggests, "There's always the ancient dragons."

Hana leans back on her chair and relaxes. "Ohh~, now that's every dragonkin's dream."

The cheeky demon leans forward and excitedly shares, "Ah, I heard the last expedition into the City of the Damned failed again." Then she claps the tip of her fingers like a silly happy seal.

Hana crosses her arms, deep in thought, also bunching up her massive pair. "Hmm… the undead are an interesting foe. I never fought one, but how do you kill something that never dies?"

Roxanne shrugs. "Don't know. You could use them for an endurance battle, though."

"Seems so. It'd be the perfect enemy to challenge myself."

And the succubus gently lands a hand on the dragon girl's muscular arm. "Ah, we could just gather them all in a single place and then I blow them all up! Hohohoh," -she laughs like an evil ojou- "there's no way they will revive if there's nothing to revive."

"You can do what?" Hana questions confusedly, and Roxanne explains how [Explosion] works. "Diamond dragon scales! That's amazing!"

"Of course, I'm amazing," Roxanne smugly replies, and the two chuckle loudly.

Alissa seems rather impressed with this exchange, but I'm uncomfortable with these outrageous ideas and dangerous words.

Though, I look forward to seeing how much more lively our meals will be from now on.

After everyone is finished, Alissa cleans the table while Roxanne returns to her room.

I'm eager to look at Hana's "Companions" tab, so I call her, "Hana, come to our room. I have to explain a few things to you about our teamwork."

"Understood, Master," she chipperly replies and follows after me.

We sit on the bed, then I open her stats window.

Hanafuria Skill Report

Physical

Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level
Sword Use | 19 | Spear Use | 14 | Bow Use | 9
Two-Handed Sword Use | 9 | Polearm Use | 6 | Dagger Use | 4
Shield Bash | 6 | Block | 7 | Parry | 6
Dodge | 4 | Tatesomu Style | 3 | Muscle Explosion | 4
Battlefield Perception | 2 | Taunt | 3 | Intimidate | 2
Enhanced Reflexes | 2 | Enhanced Stamina | 4 | Enhanced Strength | 2
Enhanced Endurance | 4

Magical

Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level
Sense Mana | 1 | Mana Control | 1 | Light Magic | 1
Fire Magic | 1 | Space Magic | 1 | Conjuring Magic | 1

Miscellaneous

Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level
Housework | 2 | Cooking | 1 | Cleaning | 1
Washing | 1 | Riding | 3 | Pain Conversion | 1
Dismantling | 4 | Fire Breath (innate) | 5 | Summon Wings (innate) | 4

Info

Name | Hanafuria | Age | 23 | Race | Fire-Type Dragonkin
HP | 100 | MP | 28 | Magic Power | 10
Level | 35

Stats

Strength | 19 | Endurance | 24 | Dexterity | 10
Speed | 13 | Intelligence | 8 | Wisdom | 9
Willpower | 19 | Charisma | 16 | Piety | 11
Perception | 9 | Sanity | 17

Other

Status Effects | 'NONE'
Titles | 'NONE'
Affiliations | 'Wolf Ryder (Master)'
Companions | 'NONE'
Crimes | 'NONE'

Now those are some stats… but could her "Charisma" be affecting me? I did become fond of her suspiciously fast.

Eh, whatever…

I tell her my "Guider" lie, and she responds with an excited grin, but then she leans forward, our noses now almost touching, and she slowly whispers seductively, "Seems like there's no way I'm leaving you, now, Master. I'll marry you and have your children. Whatever you wish, I'll give it to you. This is too good of a gift to let it slip."

No need to be so eager…

I clear my throat to give me time to gather my courage, then I pat her scaled cheek and calmly whisper back, "There's no way I'm letting you go, too."

I flash a smile, and she suddenly steals my lips, putting me off balance once again, then she smirks seductively and wraps her arm around my waist while straightening up her posture.

I sigh at her endless eagerness, then I begin the questioning, "Now, what is [Pain Conversion]."

She cringes and looks away for a moment, "Well… [Pain Conversion] is something I acquired one day after a long… long day of fighting. I can use it to feel pleasure from the pain, but I still feel the pain."

I blink blankly. "What…"

But she just shrugs while grinning.

God, woman… can you be normal for one second?!

I massage my forehead while mumbling wryly, "I guess… that explains some things..."

And she awkwardly laughs, "Hahahah, I guess so." Then slaps my back.

But an idea pops up in my mind.

I stare her in the eye, and a smile slowly creeps up on my lips as I realize, "Wait, no, this is actually good. I can abuse you in any way I want and you'll enjoy it."

She remains still and sustains my gaze, allowing for my words to sink in, then she slowly licks her lips…

Oh boy, my heart.

I grab her thigh and put a stop to this before we start doing it again, "Hold on, we have to stop here, we're getting sidetracked. Business comes first. Anyways, why do you have one hundred and fifty HP while I only have one hundred?"

She clenches her jaw in irritation, but after a short moment she seems to get her wild tendencies under control, then she assumes a more thoughtful expression. "Hm, from what I understand, HP is only a loose representation of human 'health,' while dragonkin have a lot more resiliency than you humes, and we can also fight with wounds that would make any other race faint, so the system says we have more HP."

"Wow, it seems like your race is really strong," I casually remark, actually impressed.

She puffs up her chest and hits her fist against it as she exclaims, "Hell yeah! Dragonkin are the toughest race and the bestest warriors! Only the dwarves can compete in toughness and the dog wereanimals as best soldiers."

Her confidence is infectious and makes me smile.

"But… we're kind of terrible at anything else," she hurriedly adds as she awkwardly scratches her emerald cheek scales.

I let out a short laugh and move on, "Next one, what's [Tatesomu Style]?"

"It's my fighting style. It revolves around bashing, countering, and trading my higher HP and stamina to overwhelm the enemy."

I don't know much about fighting to make any insightful comment on this topic, but to me, she really does sound like a tank.

I just continue, "Hmm… what is [Taunt]?"

"I can yell curses at the enemy to make them angry and turn their focus towards me. I use it to make sure monsters don't attack the mages or archers, but it also sometimes works on humanoids, I think."

Wow, there's aggro management here, too. Also, I guess this is why swearing at the spiders worked.

"What about [Intimidate]?"

She snorts softly. "It's a skill I can't really control. It just makes people afraid of me if I get annoyed, but it's quite useful because these two balloons have made too many men fall for me." -She casually fondles her chest- "So I guess I developed this skill after crushing enough balls."

O~ka~y… I don't want to hear that story.

I clear my throat and quickly continue, "Alright, next, [Battlefield Perception]?"

"It helps keep an eye on other people even when I have my back to them, but it doesn't work well when I can't actually see the person, like if they're behind a wall. My job was escorting, so I'm extra sensitive to when other people are in danger."

Sounds interesting. Almost like a sixth sense, but perhaps it uses peripheral vision since it can't see through walls. I should add it to my build later on when I have room.

"You say your wings are physical, but [Summon Wings] is a spell?" I question confusedly.

"Well, it costs a little bit of mana to grow and use the wings, but it's still mostly stamina."

"Alright. So, what skills do you want to improve with your spare points?"

She turns her face away to think, and her hand on my waist starts to wander around my back, tickling me.

After a good minute, she suddenly nods and answers, "Divide them between [Sword Use] and [Block]. Those are my most useful skills to help you."

I smile warmly and pat her thigh. "Alright, this is all for now. Again, this is a secret, and even Roxanne doesn't know about it, though at some point I think I'll tell her."

She gives me a bright, confident smile. "No problem, Master. I'll take this to the grave."

I feel like I should correct her eagerness to die, but then I remember something, "Ah, I guess you don't know yet, but I got a blessing from the Goddess of Knowledge a few days ago. This is why I'm deciding to enter the university now."

She gives me a hug and happily hums, "Oh~! Just another reason why choosing you was a good idea."

I shrug and bury my head in her chest. I'm not going to say no to a god-sanctioned harem.

When 1 PM arrives, I put on my expensive clothes. It's time to go to the magic university. We'll buy Hana's equipment and register her tomorrow because I'm too eager to look for info on [Golemancy].

I'll ride Alissa there while Hana will stay at home, so she'll clean the house and train a bit.

But before we leave, we give the last piece of the chocolate cake to Hana, and for a moment, the man-eating woman disappears, replaced by a smiling little girl with a red mane.

Adorable.

Then I mount my fluffy fox, and it takes us only a few minutes to reach the university.

It's hard to miss the entrance because there's a metal arch above it with the glowing golden words "Rabanara's Magic University" written in Andraste's greek-like alphabet. Then my eyes are attracted to the glowing symbols on each side of the gate, a vine staff with a trillion-shaped gem at the top.

Why does everything magical needs to glow…?

The grey brick walls are pretty high, hiding everything else visible, so I look past the open gate. Right ahead, there's a majestic rectangular fountain with water gushing around in rhythmic fashion. The jets slowly float from one tube to another, and sometimes they sync, creating pretty patterns in the air.

Once the jets pass by floating metal rings, they produce cute musical sounds, and the melody reminds me of background music for sleep you could find on YouTube.

Flanking the brick path that goes around the fountain, we see long patches of pretty flowers, and the occasional breeze brings about their gentle perfume. It's very faint, and I believe it's intentional so that you don't get sick of smelling it from coming here every day for years.

There are plenty of students about, and they're all wearing a simple gray uniform that reminds me of British schools. Occasionally, we see someone flying in a magical carpet, magical chair, magical broom, magical bathtub, or just simply flying or floating around. I also find it curious that nobody goes over the wall, always choosing to pass under the arch, instead.

What's most interesting about the students is the assortment of eye-catching staves and wands of all shapes and sizes, shining, glowing, or non-corporeal.

Alissa notices my child-like wonder and cautions me, "Most of these staves and wands are just expensive decorations, really."

I awkwardly admit, "I'll trust you to help me spot scammers, then."

And she diligently replies, "Always."

After the fountain, we're faced with a wide, rectangular building made of white bricks, and our eyes immediately fall on the glowing yellow words "Reception" above its entrance. Curiously, the roof is made of colorful and ornate tiles, giving it a bit of a whimsical air.

We see the roofs of multiple other buildings peeking from behind the reception, and far in the distance, there's a thick, ominous, black tower rising into the sky. I'd like to just spend my time looking around, but we'd stand out too much, so we quickly move on.

The guards look quite impressive with their black velvet uniforms, and I notice that they all have both a wand and a sword hanging from their belts.

We do feel faintly underdressed for the location, so we timidly enter the reception and stiffly look around.

We're now in a large hall made of glossy wood with a glossy counter where multiple attendants sit behind. A few potted plants near the walls give this place a rather modern air, tho.

There are a few people sitting on comfy-looking chairs or sofas in the waiting area at the corner of the hall, but their attire doesn't seem too different from ours, so we start to relax.

Then we approach one of the attendants. She wears a grey, velvet uniform with a golden pin of the university's symbol on her chest, and a cute grey beret to finish the look.

The wealth being displayed is still a bit overwhelming, tho.

The attendant notices me, so I clear my throat and begin, "Good afternoon. I'm a traveler who's researching magic, and I'd like to know the ways I can join the university. Just recently I acquired a Blessing from the Goddess of Knowledge."

She immediately equips a perfect smile, then she puts on the counter a transparent crystal ball and a transparent crystal tablet. "Please put your hand over this crystal while I analyze your condition," she politely requests.

I put my hand on the crystal, and the tablet instantly becomes black, then words in white slowly appear on it, and the attendant lets out a soft gasp. I made sure I had removed all suspicious skills, like those I used on Hana, so I don't know what she's surprised about.

She looks up and slowly nods as she reassures me, "Everything looks good. I'll check if there's an advisor who's free right now, and if there's not, we can schedule an appointment. Please wait over there." Then she motions to the seats near the wall and scurries away.

We just sit down like we're told, and I play with Alissa's tail to pass the time. After a few minutes, a robed, middle-aged, balding man with a nice belly and a very round face energetically struts into the hall, and I notice that he's holding the crystal tablet with my information.

He spots us then quickly comes our way with a wide smile on his plump face.

We stand up, then he introduces himself with a short bow, "Good afternoon, Mr. Ryder. I'm Mathias, an advisor for potential applicants. Would you come with me to a meeting room?"

I politely respond, "Good afternoon. This is Alissa, my Blood Slave. Let's go, then."

He nods towards Alissa, and she bows respectfully, then we follow him.

Aside from the large entrance hall, this building is all offices, and we follow Mathias into a simple one with a few chairs, a tea set, a potted plant, and a tall document drawer. It feels oddly nostalgic as it's very similar to modern cubicle culture, but not quite there yet.

Mathias sits heavily on his chair, then pours tea for the three of us, and it makes me quite happy to see that he doesn't ignore Alissa just because she's a slave.

We all take a gentle sip of the flowery tea, then he begins, "Now, Mr. Ryder. The process to join is dependent on what the entree wants. You mentioned research, but what sort of magic do you intend to research here, specifically?"

I clear my throat and make my case, "Well, I have a little bit of knowledge about [Golemancy], and I'd like to study it further, if it isn't forbidden magic."

He makes a thoughtful expression and rubs his round chin. "[Golemancy], hm…? I think there might be some records about such magic here, but it's really obscure. I'll have to put up a query to the archivist. From what I remember, it isn't forbidden, so don't worry, but since you don't have the skill, even if it's forbidden, it isn't unlawful to be curious about it."

That's very reassuring.

Seeing my relief, he claps his large hands and continues with a business smile, "Now. We know that you have a Blessing, and we give a large discount on the tuition to those who have it. What other facilities do you intend to use besides the one for research?"

"Can you tell me my options? I don't know much about the university after all."

"Let's see…" He hums and pulls out a pamphlet from a drawer in his desk, then he reads it out, "We offer courses in all of the elemental system schools. Fire, Water, Wind, Earth, Electricity, Nature, Light, Dark, Space, Spirit, Conjuring and [Blessing Magic]. We offer beginner, intermediate and advanced courses for all of these. There are also three levels inside each class difficulty, but it's unnecessary to complete all three as they serve only to help the slower learners.

"We offer theoretical studies like astronomy, farming enhancements, monster anatomy, ancient languages, ancient history, lost knowledge, and many other, more specific classes, not to mention all of the crafting-related classes." -Then he pulls from a drawer a small booklet- "There are actually too many to count, so you better read this yourself."

He pushes forward the little book, and I guess that it has about twenty pages.

I take it and start browsing through it as I clarify, "I'm only interested in the magic schools for now. Do you offer classes on Illusion and [Summoning Magic]?"

There are a few magic schools that he didn't mention, like Cursing, so I'll keep quiet about them for now.

He shifts in his seat and gracefully gesticulates with his hand as he continues, "Those are fields under research, so there aren't enough teachers knowledgeable in them to create a standard teaching plan that ensures skill gain. If you enter as a researcher, you can look for those who research into that area and hire them if they're offering to tutor."

I definitely will.

He points his chubby finger to the booklet. "We also offer training courses in practical magic skills, like [Reduced Mana Cost], [Mana Control], [Sense Mana], [Mana Efficiency] and [Mana Recovery]."

I raise my head and blurt out, "What about [Redirect Mana]?"

He frowns confusedly. "The crystal says you're its creator, so only you have any knowledge about it." -Then I see an excited glint in his eyes- "If you share how you acquired that skill, it'd count as another point towards us accepting you."

Oh, duh…

I nod and accept, "I could definitely share that. What about [Mana Overuse Resistance] and [Blackout Resistance]?"

He shakes his head negatively. "Those skills require inhuman effort to acquire, so hardly anyone has the courage to learn it. It's actually very impressive you acquired [Mana Overuse Resistance]." Then he flashes a sympathetic smile.

Yeah… I did get that one after a near-death experience.

And I gloomily explain, "I can tell you what I did to acquire [Redirect Mana], but it's similar to [Mana Overuse Resistance], I had to work so hard I think I nearly killed myself."

Alissa turns her head towards me, looking slightly horrified. Too much shit was happening at the time, so I forgot to tell her about this skill.

"Is that so…?" Mathias hum thoughtfully, seemingly surprised that I have two special skills, then he gently claps his hands and moves on, "Well, that's regrettable, but it'd still be a point in your favor if you told us what it does and how to get it."

"I haven't properly used it, so I'll test it for a day-cycle and then tell you the results."

"That'd be great," he chipperly replies.

"Now I need to choose what courses I want…" I hum, then I glance at Alissa. I need her help.

"Can we speak in private?" Alissa politely requests. I'm glad she's always so reliable.

Mathias happily leaves the room, and we begin discussing my skills.

Mages generally specialize in one or two magic schools, and since the number of skills they can reasonably get is based on their level, they balance access to the more impactful, higher level spells they can get from specialization, with the versatility of the lower level spells they can get from learning multiple schools at a low level.

The problem with high-level spells is that they need a good amount of "Magic Power" for them to be effective, or a considerable level of [Mana Control] so that they can pack more power into it at the cost of MP.

Unfortunately, I have neither MP nor MPower to go for this strategy, so the only choice left is choosing multiple schools based on the utility of their low-level spells. Considering how my power allows me to instantly cast any spell, having a wide enough repertoire of spells for every situation seems like the best way to utilize this cheat.

But I can also increase the performance of this strategy further by using mana-enhancing skills. [Mana Control] is useless since I don't plan on increasing or decreasing the power of spells; I can put some points in [Mana Recovery] in between battles, so that's also useless to learn; [Mana Efficiency] is for channeled spells, like [Firestorm], or for long-lasting spells, like [Entangling Vines] and [Fire Wall], but I don't really need longer duration; and that leaves [Reduced Mana Cost], which affects the initial cast cost, and that's exactly where most of my mana goes to whenever I cast a spell.

With this, it becomes easy to decide the best schools for me.

"I want to enter a beginners course in [Reduced Mana Cost], Space, Blessing, Electricity, Light, and Nature," I request to Mathias.

"Beginners?" He hums confusedly and lifts his eyebrows in surprise.

"Most of my magic is self-taught, so I want to learn from the basics and solidify my foundation."

He nods in understanding, making his round face jiggle a bit. "Oh, I see. Well, your attitude is commendable," he kindly affirms, but then his expression becomes serious. "Also, let me tell you that you can only learn the [Gate] spell from the [Space Magic] school if you want to become a certified 'Portal Master.' In the whole empire, the use of this spell is heavily regulated."

"I see… I'll keep that in mind," I soberly reply.

I still want to learn that magic school, and I can just remove my points in [Space Magic] if I come close to learning [Gate].

Then he cautions me, "Also, that's quite a lot of classes. We recommend a maximum of five classes since we work with half-cycle teaching."

"What do you mean by 'half-cycle teaching'?"

"You have a different class each day, and after a half-cycle, you repeat your classes. After a day-cycle, you get a half-cycle without classes where you're supposed to deepen the knowledge of what was taught or to simply rest. The professors are all available for consultation during the rest days."

I just need to remove one class, then. Though [Heal] is very useful, it's still expensive mana-wise for me, and the lower level spells aren't as useful as the ones of other schools.

"Then I'll remove [Light Magic] from my list. How long do these courses last?"

"Three months. The next course is to start in two day-cycles, but you could get some pointers from the teachers and start pre-studying until then."

I hum in agreement. "That's fine by me, but what will be the price?"

He smiles, a bit of greed tainting his expression, and starts writing down some notes while he happily deliberates, "With your Blessing, a full half-cycle of studying will cost two gold per three day-cycles, or rather, two gold per month. If you can show us the [Redirect Mana] skill, we'll lower it to two gold per four day-cycles. If you join right now, then in two days we'll have a small office ready for you so you can begin your research. The office is free for those with the Blessing, and the gold cost will only start counting once you start your lessons." Then he finishes and daintily rests his hands on his desk.

Spicy, but we can afford my studies.

"I accept these terms," I confirm.

Mathias takes us to the treasury where I make the payment for the full course, and if I get the discount, part of the money will be returned.

By the time my office will be ready, the archivist should have already finished my query, so I should be able to start working on [Golemancy] then.

Today is the 10th of the 6th month of the year, and my classes will start next month, so we have twenty days to rest until then.

We leave by 4 PM, and Alissa takes me home.

When we arrive, Roxanne tells us that Hana has been diligently sweeping the entire house, and the fiery woman's bountiful chest visibly grows as she fills it with pride.

Alissa offers to share the work, and Hana obviously accepts, then the two begin a casual talk as they sweep.

Since everyone is working, I decide to start studying [Redirect Mana] now.

I want to understand how I created this skill, so I have to mimic the conditions from that time. I couldn't see, I couldn't feel my body, and I decided to shut down my hearing, so I go to the bedroom, lay down on the bed, and meditate.

But this is still far from enough. I was in a life-or-death situation, so I can't hold back on my efforts.

I had used [Sense Mana] to locate a powerful stream of mana, then I wished really hard for it to come to me, but not a single particle of mana even twitched until later. The first feeling I had was a "stirring" within my mind, and as the feeling grew stronger, some sort of "resistance" pushed back, but then I managed to overcome it and felt my forehead start to "balloon" towards the mana stream, yet my body didn't move, and neither did my head physically inflate, so it was something else.

What about my soul…?

Since [Sense Presence] doesn't work on yourself, maybe I should recruit Alissa's help, but first, I need to properly grasp how that "inflation" works.

Now that I think about it, the initial "stirring" feels awfully similar to the "scratching" that I need to do to instant-cast a spell. The "itches" that I need to scratch to cast also seem to have a specific position within my mind, so I choose the two furthest spells and try to scratch them without actually casting while I pay close attention to my internal feelings.

After a few tests, I'm left with no doubt that there's a goddamn "cursor" in my mind that I use to press "buttons" which activate my instant-cast spell cheat. Thinking back on what I did to create [Redirect Mana], I must've pushed this "cursor" out of my body, and it allowed me to forcefully absorb mana, somehow.

I focus on manipulating the cursor, but it's very difficult and tiring. It's a muscle I've never used before, like trying to raise an individual eyebrow. I know it's there, I can feel it now, but my brain seemingly doesn't have the correct synapses to properly control it, so it's sluggish and awkward.

Eventually, it becomes so tiring that I have to stop, so I open my eyes and notice an hour has already passed.

That didn't really feel like an hour.

I guess I succeeded in shutting down some of my senses, like the sense of time. Maybe meditation has more mysteries and powers than I'd previously thought. I'll try to focus on killing my senses for now.

A low, sensuous voice suddenly tickles my right ear, "Master, the bath is ready."

I jump and grunt as I open my eyes, "Wh-what…?!" Then I notice Hana's amused face centimeters from mine and finally process what she said. "Oh, right. I guess I lost track of time again."

She straightens up and raises a red eyebrow at me. "What were you doing, Master?"

I feel my cheeks burn, but I still calmly answer, "Meditating and trying to kill my senses. There's a skill I want to train that needs it."

"Ooh, sounds interesting," she warmly replies.

I just chuckle, and we leave.

Alissa is waiting for us inside the bath room, ready to wash our bodies.

It's kind of fun taking a bath together because Hana makes things more lively, but I'm way too tired for anything spicy.

Then Hana starts unashamedly fondling Alissa while washing her, and the cute fox girl acts scared at first, but she quickly gets used to it, though she remains a bit embarrassed by the intimate touch. I'm a bit of a shameless man, so it excites me to think of Hana and Alissa together.

So much so that my friend comes alive, and Hana instantly notices it.

The majestic woman grins as she watches it twitch in excitement, then she gives Alissa a nice squeeze as she affirms, "I totally understand why you like these things so much, Master. While mine are firm and elastic, hers are so much softer and conform better to the shape of the hand."

Her strong hands are deliberately avoiding stimulating Alissa's bits, making me wish real hard to order her to pinch those alluring, pink, pointy bits.

"I-i-is t-tha-that so?" The fox girl stutters as her breath rapidly quickens.

"Alissa, if you don't like it, you can say it, do you understand?" I soberly instruct her. I'm not letting my F/F fantasies override my morals.

But Alissa reassures me, "I-i-it's o-ok-okay, m-master, i-it f-feels good." Then she makes to grab my hand, but actually grips my friend, instead.

Oh, boy.

The mind is willing, but the body is tired and bruised. Alissa starts, but even with this sight, I'm still hurting from the time I had with Hana, though I endure for now.

I breathe in deeply to rebuild my composure and continue, "In any case, if you want it, it seems like Hana would be happy to comfort you."

Alissa increases the intensity, but then she starts blabbering, "W-wha tha-n-w-u-as…"

It seems that her mind broke.

Damn, I'm close…

I feel my energy draining away, but I soldier on. "Alright… Hana, let's not push Alissa too much… That's enough for today."

The molester pouts and grumbles, "Awn… she actually feels really nice to play with."

Then she releases the trembling fox girl, who also releases me, but now there's a meal dangling in front of a predator, so Hana immediately lowers her head.

Daamn…

I let her finish, but then I push her head away before she starts draining my HP. She smirks as she swallows, and her eyes tell me she'd seriously drain me up if I let her.

Alissa is a lot weaker in the legs than I am, so I grab her with a sigh and carry her into the bath.

Hugging her tight in the warm water seems to calm her down quite quickly, then Hana comes in and hugs me from behind, creating a spooning train. It's actually quite comfortable because Hana's chest is as good as pillows.

This is Heaven.

After a good soak, we get out and prepare dinner.

Hana is a master of the knife, and she chops faster than a chef, which is a scary sight to behold. She doesn't know any recipes, though… or how to season, or any cooking techniques, actually, but she's a pretty good helper.

We make orc meat dumplings seasoned with a faintly sweet and spicy root that I shall henceforth call "not-ginger." It tastes pretty good, and it'd feel right at home in an oriental restaurant.

"Master, may I ask you a question?" Hana politely inquires.

I casually answer, "Sure, you can always ask anything, and I'll judge if it's possible for me to answer."

She nods obediently. "Understood. Well, I was wondering, are you a noble?"

And I give her a confused look. "Why do you ask that?"

Roxanne and Alissa remain silent because they seem very interested in hearing my answer.

Hana's emerald cheek scales twitch as she thinks, then she hesitantly explains, "Well… you're smarter than the average adventurer, you have quite a bit of knowledge no commoner has, you have skills no commoner or adventurer normally has, you lack skills that commoners or adventurers should have, you speak too perfectly, and finally, you don't seem to mind that everyone calls you by your last name."

Oh, wow. Busted.

I awkwardly look away for a moment as I try to come up with an excuse, "Well… no, I'm not a noble. I'm just special, I guess. But only nobles have last names?"

"A lot of people have a last name, but only nobles or rich families care about them."

I shrug. "Oh, well. Since I didn't know this tradition, I always gave my full name, then everyone started calling me 'Mr. Ryder,' and I just went with it. Do you all have last names?" I shyly look at the three girls.

Roxanne is the first to chime in, quite eager to explain, "In the demon race, everyone's last name is their race, so, while mine is technically 'Maneedeev,' which means 'succubus' in the [Southern Maokai Language], everyone just writes the translation in Andraste."

"Why don't you have family names?" I ask confusedly.

"Only important families are allowed to have one, and they're treated like the nobles from around here."

That's quite peculiar.

Then we turn to Alissa, and she stoically shares, "I had a last name, but I've known I was going to be a slave since I was a child, so you could say I never had it for long."

I'll give you mine, then.

Hana hums in agreement, "Same. I had one but abandoned it when I turned into a slave."

I'm feeling quite curious about this topic, so I ask, "Are there other races that use last names like the demons?"

"People in villages and small towns don't use last names, as far as I know," Alissa shares.

And Hana asserts, "I don't know what the beastfolk do, but I think that most of the human, dwarven, and elven large towns require everyone to have a last name. Though, if you aren't a noble or a rich merchant, there's really no reason to ever say it. That's why I thought you were a noble."

She seems well-traveled.

I conclude, "Then maybe I should ask people to call me by my first name, I don't want to be confused with a noble."

Roxanne indifferently chimes in, "I think things are fine the way they are now. You're already famous, and now you have a Blessing, so people will definitely respect you a lot more if you have them call you by your last name."

I sigh and accept, but then I retort, "Well, at least you could call me by my first name since I do the same to you."

She smiles sweetly and readjusts her oval glasses. "Is that fine?"

I nod and insist, "We're companions now, it's fine."

Her smile widens and she offers me her pale, delicate hand for a shake. "Well then, Mr. Wolf. It's a pleasure to meet you!"

But I shake my head. "No need for 'Mr.'"

"Alriii~ght." She pulls back her hand and clears her throat. "Well then, Wolf. It's a pleasure to meet you!" Then she offers it again and shows me a surprisingly charming smile.

I swallow heavily and take it. "Uh… yes, it's a pleasure to meet you too, Roxanne." And I'm briefly mesmerized by her beauty. Because of the way she behaves I sometimes forget she has the body and face of a supermodel.

I release her soft hand, then she turns to my slaves and cheerily adds, "Oh, you two can also just call me Roxanne, then. No need for 'Miss' anymore."

"T-that's a bit much," Alissa stiffly replies then looks down meekly, but her tail starts wagging slowly.

While Hana just shrugs and hums, "If that's a request that comes from her, then..."

"Fine..." Alissa relents.

I like this. I still think that Alissa is far too submissive, so I want her to be a bit more selfish.

After dinner, we move to the living room to spend our evening. Alissa reads her book while I cuddle with Hana as I practice my [Mana Control], and her strong hands are so good at massaging my scalp that she brings me bliss.

Once it starts to get late, the three of us go to sleep in the same bed. Good thing it's ridiculously large. Otherwise, Hana wouldn't fit.

Today is the 11th.

I wake up in heaven with pillows on my front and back, and I thank the Gods that we all sleep without clothes. It's warm, but it's worth the slight inconvenience.

I get a gentle wake-up kiss from Alissa, and a stimulating storm from Hana. They feel so good that I start to feel peckish, so once we're all awake, I eat Alissa up since I didn't do it with her yesterday, and Hana leaves to prepare breakfast.

The obedient dragonkin prepares everything herself, and when I finish Alissa, all we have to do is fry the dumplings and season the salad. Minced orc meat dumplings, bean soup, vegetables, and not-corn crumbs. A weird combination, making me think that we need more ingredients.

Alissa will buy food while Hana and I go to the hunters' guild to register her and buy her equipment. Our destinations are close, so Roxanne lends Hana the flying carpet while I ride Alissa.

Roxanne remarks that there are actually safer versions of personal flying vehicles, but she got the smallest and simplest one so that it could fit in her [Item Box]. Having something better than a suicide carpet will do us some good, so I guess I'll look for one that fits all of us after the auction if we have money left.

Outside of adventuring, I want my women to wear their best clothing, so this time, Hana puts on one of her straight black dresses and simple sandals, but once we enter the guild, I kind of regret this decision.

Well, at least the eyes aren't on me this time… Eh, screw it, Hana is too majestic to not show off, so I'll proudly walk beside her.

We quickly register her with the guild, but then I get an idea, and Hana responds with a menacing smile after I whisper it to her.

We go to the training grounds, and she uses the small booth inside the warehouse to change to workout clothes.

"Hello, teacher," I calmly greet Toga.

"Hello, Mr. Slayer," he coolly replies. His gaze is as stern as always, but I see a hint of a smile.

Then I gently grab Hana's hand. "This is Hana, my newest Blood Slave. Would you like to spar with her? I want to see her fight."

He slowly turns his eyes towards her, and his subtle smile greatly widens. Hana takes his intense stare head-on and grins fearsomely, challenging him with just her yellow eyes.

"Sure," he hums, a dangerous edge in his tone. "You warm up first, then we'll have our 'spar.'"

News spread like wildfire, and a small crowd quickly forms while they prepare

Toga is a man of average height, but he looks small near Hana, making it seem like it's a David versus Goliath scenario.

Toga picks a wooden longsword while Hana picks a bastard wooden sword and a kite shield. Her sword is at a length between a short and a longsword, trading reach for the ability to use a shield because it's really hard to use a longsword with only one hand.

Then they assume combat positions, and their menacing gazes towards each other makes me sweat cold even though I'm just watching.

Do they both have [Intimidate]? Is this the result of the skill?

Toga strikes first. He goes hard, attacking repeatedly and immediately putting Hana on the backfoot. Their battle is so fierce that the sounds of their clashing fill the entire training grounds, attracting even more curious onlookers.

Hana is a defensive fighter, so for her, it's just another day's work, and she blocks and parries repeatedly, waiting for the perfect moment.

She suddenly deflects and counters, pushing Toga back.

The experienced instructor effortlessly switches gears and fights defensively, seemingly not even feeling the pressure from Hana as he parries and dodges until he gets his chance and counters. This time, Hana has to work hard to dodge.

Wooden weapons don't have an edge, and swords are used mostly with slicing rather than chopping motions, but even then getting hit hurts, and the vibrant red welts start to appear.

A rhythm between attacking and defending starts to become clear, and Toga is the one setting pace of the song.

Suddenly, their swords lock, and they both take the challenge, ignoring that they're in a battle just to have a small strength contest. They grit their teeth and push as they grunt and stare fiercely at each other, trying to overwhelm their opponent with both glare and muscle.

Hana grins ferociously, greatly enjoying this situation, and seeing her like this with another man makes me anxious.

This isn't cheating, right? This doesn't count as cheating, right?! Right…?!

I, uh… I want her to look at me like this…

Then they suddenly break the lock and resume their fight.

Toga sweeps her leg, and she almost loses her balance. As a first, Hana is required to use both her sword and shield defensively in desperation as he begins to consistently find ways to sneak his blade past her guard.

He uses a combination of quick and precise strikes, leg sweeps, and shield kicking to keep her off balance and clearly take the upper hand in the fight. He's expertly using all of his tools, and he even tries to audaciously grab her shield.

Hana gets angry and starts bashing back, and the sounds of battle get even higher as her shield clashes with his sword. Then he takes a bash with his arm that pushes him back, but his posture is broken.

This is it!

With a movement that defies human speed, Toga dodges her strike and counters. His legs blur as he jumps, no, flies upwards, then his sword goes down on Hana's shoulder, and the flimsy sparring weapon breaks in half.

The sudden development interrupts the spell cast on us, and the observers scream and cheer while I regret my idea and rush over Hana.

She kneels and grips her shoulder while grimacing in pain, but once I inspect it I notice that… it's fine?

"What are you made of? This should've broken a bone and you are just bruised!?" I exclaim, stupefied.

She snorts defiantly, then grumbles between breaths, "I'm a dragonkin… Master… I hardened my skin… but if the sword was sharp… I'd be dead…"

I put points into [Light Magic] and use [Heal] on her, but the spell bites a big chunk out of my MP as it's still very mana inefficient for me.

Her grimace clears, then she stares curiously at the red welt as she hums, "Thanks… it doesn't hurt anymore, Master."

"You got a proper shield this time, Mr. Ryder..." Toga calmly remarks. He's sweating, but he's not even out of breath. "Now you won't die if you meet something worse than that Symbol."

Then Hana gives me a proud smirk that makes me a bit shy.

"Heh… I guess so," I whisper warmly, embarrassed by her intensity.

It makes me proud to see her being praised by Toga, but I'm still a bit jealous of how she glared at him.

Once she's fully healed, a bunch of students come to try to spar with Hana, but we have other business to finish, so I accompany her to the warehouse's little bath so that she may wash her body.

The way everyone was looking at her makes my spidey senses tingle, so I put on [Sense Presence] and detect two young men sneaking close to the warehouse. I won't let anyone spy on her, so I throw some scalding water over the high window.

"SHT!" I hear them whine as they run away.

Now that she's back on her glorious dress, we go buy her equipment.

There are a few things we have to be mindful of when buying heavy armor for an adventurer. Those things are defense, weight, mobility, price, maintenance, and convenience in more or less that order of importance.

Plate armor would offer the best protection, especially against attacks like fire breath, but it reduces mobility because it's too heavy for Hana to use her dragon wings while wearing it. It also has an exorbitant cost as metal is seemingly quite an expensive material, and it requires specialized maintenance, which we don't have. Some adventurer groups employ a personal armorer for things like this, but we're still not at that level.

Leather armor offers okay protection, and it's good enough to save your life against most monsters, like how my Grey Berserker armor was probably the difference between life and death for me, but it's disposable as it's not possible to "reforge" leather once it's been cut or torn. Mobility depends on whether it's hard or soft leather, but in general, it's still the best. The price is also very affordable since it's made from the hordes of monsters that are killed every day. Maintenance is cheap, but once again, it's disposable. It's also very convenient to have because it's much easier to sleep in than with other types of armor.

I buy a Young Ogre set of armor for Hana to sleep in.

Chain armor offers very good protection against slash but you need proper padding to stop pierce and blunt damage. Mobility is similar to soft leather, but it's more expensive. It requires specialized maintenance, but it's still easier to do than plate. It's kind of comfortable to sleep in, but it's rather noisy, so no sneaking.

Scale armor is very similar to plate, but its advantage is its higher resistance to magic. It's more expensive than chain, but very popular among adventurers since it's cheap and easy to do maintenance on.

Brigandine is in between (padded) chain and plate in all accounts, so it's a clear step up unless you require something specific from the other types of armor.

Metal armor is overall just better made as it's more standardized and well-researched, but it's considerably more expensive since monster parts are overflowing all over the town, making scale and leather cheaper.

Padding is also another concern as it's required in all types of armor to defend against blunt attacks, but there's a big difference in price between good and bad padding. The lack of space for wool and fiber crops is the main driver for its high price as there are actually few monsters that produce good padding.

For now, we reserve a steel-lined brigandine with tassets, a hauberk with okay padding for the arms and thighs that will be used below the brigandine, schynbalds, metal vambraces, and a padded chain coif.

As a tank, she needs good peripheral vision to keep an eye on everyone, so she doesn't like to use helmets since it reduces her vision, and the coif will ruin her hair, but we still get a padded one that I'll force her to use if she refuses.

With this, she has perfect protection against slash, but protection against blunt is limited, so she'll have to rely on the shield, which we'll buy only after the auction.

I wanted to get her scale armor, but I think that even with the auction money it'll be too expensive for now, so perhaps in the future I'll get it as an upgrade.

I want the best armor for her since she's certainly gonna use her body as a shield if necessary, but I'll have to hold it for now.

I also want to get her a longbow since she has a few skill points in [Bow Use], and the brigandine offers enough mobility to use it without a problem.

And finally, we get her a plain iron bastard sword, a large kite shield, and a simple wooden spear with a metal tip. Later on, when we have the auction money, we'll upgrade her sword to an emerald fang and give the shield emerald scales… and I'm choosing these scales because it makes maintenance easier for all of us, not just because the color will go well with her scales.

A note from Manasong

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Chapter 9: The Good Days - Part 2

A note from Manasong

Attention: to conform to the limit of mature content (more than just sexual content) allowed in a novel, I've censored this chapter. You can look for the uncensored version here.

If certain parts with sexual content look off or with paragraphs missing, it's likely that they were censored.

We reunite with Alissa then go back home to have a proper meal for lunch, orc meatball pasta with an oniony, creamy, white sauce. Alissa bought fruit, too, so we have not-strawberry juice and some wine that Roxanne asked for.

After we eat, I hang on the wall a small clock I bought on the way home, and now everyone can look at the time, but I still want to give a pocket watch to everyone one day.

Then I go back to studying [Redirect Mana], Alissa installs an archery target in the backyard for practice, Hana does physical training… and Roxanne returns to her room once again. I'm starting to get worried that the alchemy nerd only leaves her room to eat and take a bath.

Anyway, I return to my bedroom and start moving my "mind's cursor." I feel like there's something more to it than just "move," and "push button," as if it was more like an internal limb than just a cursor.

I don't make any significant progress with new "gestures," so I focus back on trying to find the border of this "inner mind" space, but after an eternity pushing the cursor away from my "buttons" in search of the border, I start to get the feeling that there's something missing. When I was half-dead, I was starving for MP and trying to forcefully absorb a mana stream nearby, so maybe I have to recreate these conditions.

I waste all my MP by casting and dispelling [Wind Armor] on myself repeatedly, then I go back to meditating once most of my MP is gone, and I instantly feel a stark difference. My "mind's cursor" feels more like a mouth now, and it's thirsty for mana, so thirsty that the stray particles of mana released when I cast [Wind Armor] now feel… delicious.

This is it!

I focus on the thirst because I know this is the secret to [Redirect Mana], so I need to grasp this feeling as best as I can.

I want mana, I need mana, but I can't reach the particles.

Then my "mind's mouth" starts moving on its own, and after just a few seconds, it reaches the "barrier," the "edge" of my mind's space that prevents it from moving further.

I need it… I need it. I need it! I NEED IT!

The barrier starts to "stretch" as my "mind's mouth/cursor" pushes out of my body, giving me that familiar but still very odd sensation as my body "expands," ballooning out of control towards the streams of mana while at the same time I feel like I haven't moved at all.

As my soul expands, I envelop the streams of mana around me, allowing me to feel their "taste" so much more clearly than before. Then I feel a weird tasting stream coming out of the wall. I can't explain what exactly it tastes like yet, but I know it's "weird."

From the direction it's coming from, it's likely that its source is Roxanne's room, so I expand in that direction, but when I touch the wall, it blocks my advance.

I stop to inspect what's going on, and another weird sensation strikes me. I can feel the air, almost as if I can control it, like it's a part of me even though I have no actual control over it, but this doesn't happen when I touch the wall, it… "refuses" me.

Is it because the wall is solid?

Air is just atoms floating around and colliding with one another while solid matter is a group of atoms bonded together, so this means that it's probably the bonds that impede me from getting through. I don't get why, though. It's not like my "expansion" is actually physical…

"Master?" Alissa's sweet whispery voice tickles my ears.

I open my eyes in surprise and smile at her as I hum, "Oh? What is it?"

"The sun is setting, and Roxanne got the bath ready for us."

Wow, I've completely lost track of time again…

Then she becomes adorably shy as she boldly asks, "What is that thing you were doing? I felt your soul acting 'strange.'"

But I'm overtaken by my scholarly curiosity. "Does [Sense Presence] detect someone's soul?"

She nods diligently. "Body and soul, but since the soul is always hiding within the body, I rarely see someone's soul."

I rub my chin in wonder, glad that Alissa helped me confirm one of my doubts. "Hm~… Well, to answer your question, I was using [Redirect Mana], and the skill allows me to 'move' my soul, somehow."

But she only shows me a concerned frown. "Be careful, our souls are very vulnerable."

I guiltily look away. "I'll keep that in mind…"

This time, our bath has no groping of Alissa. I'm also saving myself for tonight because I want to use the special clothes Alissa got for Hana.

Dinner is an orc meat pie and roasted vegetables. Orc is a staple here as it's fairly tasty and common enough that the price is always low.

And then we do a bit of cuddling after dinner. I use Hana's pair as pillows, and Alissa lays down on my lap while she reads, the sweet smell of their perfumes filling my nostrils with their intoxicating aromas. A heavenly moment.

But after that, it's finally time for some fun.

I lay down on the bed and cover my eyes while they change, but the wait is short.

"Open your eyes, Master," Alissa coyly requests.

A draconic succubus (but not an actual succubus-type demon) and a foxy angel (but not an actual angel-type demon), both of them staring at me with hunger. The sight arouses me so much that I freeze, overwhelmed with the desire to pound.

When I lay back down on the bed, a sharp pain hits my junk with such force I fear I might've broken something, but it quickly passes away, leaving me quite confused.

I guess I overdid it.

I sigh and properly lay my head on the comfy pillows so that I can stare at my handiwork. "I'm surprised I still have my Blessing after doing things like this to both of you," I wryly remark.

Alissa [Clean]s her mouth and crawls up to me with a confused look. "What do you mean, Master? You might actually receive a blessing from the Goddess of Love if you keep ravaging us like this," she replies with such pure honesty it hurts. If the Goddess of Love is like that, then count me in as a pious follower.

This fucking world… or rather, this world is about fucking.

Hana stirs and turns around. "Master… can you heal me up? My back hurts," she casually requests.

I nod and give her a hand. "Sure." But Alissa's worried look reminds me that I didn't explain everything to her, "Ah, Alissa, Hana has a skill that allows her to turn pain into pleasure, so that's why I'm rougher with her."

"Rougher…?" Alissa repeats with a conflicted tone, then she stares at me intensely. "Master, I thought you gave me your all when I had worn these clothes for the first time."

I share a look with Hana, and she struggles to hold back a chuckle. "Well… uh… I kind of… go easier on you since I know you're more sensitive," I try to delicately tell the truth.

"Oh..." She mumbles as her ears go flat, looking quite dejected.

With my heartstrings pulled, I rush to appease her, "P-please don't look at it like this. I don't want to do it roughly all the time, and you've pleased me greatly."

And Hana finds it in her to help me out, "Even I would die if he did it like this every day. I'll still be sore tomorrow." Then she gives Alissa's shoulder a reassuring squeeze.

"I-I see… I'm happy to hear this," my dear fox shyly hums with a smile, and her tail starts slowly wagging again.

Crisis averted.

I give Hana a brief thankful look, then I happily move the conversation on, "Now, the Clothes of the Berserker are a bit too stimulating, so let's leave them for special days. I think I'll also be sore by tomorrow, so let's take it easy."

"The wha-... never mind," Alissa stops herself then shakes her head while smiling wryly. "Master, didn't the priest tell you to rest from physical activity for a day-cycle?"

I awkwardly laugh while I look away. "Hahahah… I'll apologize or whatever, but no way I'm abstaining from this. You two are far too delicious to leave alone." Then I give her a suggestive look and she becomes a bit coy.

Hana shrugs and chimes in, "Something tells me he'd go insane if he abstained for a cycle."

That's a bit much, I'm not addicted… I'm not.

"That sounds like a possibility," Alissa quietly agrees and avoids my inquiring gaze.

Ah, whatever. I wasn't such a shameless man on Earth, so it's this world's fault that I'm like this because of how thoroughly it screwed with my life. But I'll be damned if I won't enjoy it to the fullest until I die.

I enter the acceptance stage as I casually reply, "Think it like this, I could die tomorrow, so I should just do what I want. This is one of the rules I live by."

Alissa skeptically knits her pretty eyebrows. "Isn't the first rule 'don't die'?"

But I just shrug. "Those rules concern decision-making, while living without regrets is a general life lesson. One is for future planning, the other is for present enjoyment."

And her eyebrows unknit as she reflects. "I… kind of understand."

Hana shrugs again and lays down beside me, then we cuddle for a bit to rest before we wash ourselves again.

After that, I have another perfect night's sleep among goddesses.

Today is the 12th.

We break fast with some thick meaty sandwiches. I put in mine dried orc meat, Rabid Rabbit meat, and pickled vegetables, while I have some nice tea to wash it all down.

Then I try to learn how to shave with a straight-edge razor, but Alissa and Hana have to help me out because I give myself enough cuts I need to use [Regeneration]. Luckily, my beard grows very slowly at this age.

"Mom and I helped Dad shave once in a while…" Hana quietly comments with a wistful tone, so I give her hand a comforting kiss, and she cheers up again.

I'm too tired to train, so I help clean the house, ignoring Alissa's protests. We also dismiss the maid now that Hana is going to help, and while [Clean] is useful, it isn't strong enough, so I quickly learn that heavy-duty cleaning is much harder here without all the chemicals we have on Earth.

We send the casual clothing and rougher textiles to the nearby washer, and I notice that we seem to be going through the sheets quite quickly, for some reason. The washers have magic tools and a good variety of strong chemicals that help washing, so it's worth paying them to do it for us, but the sensitive clothing, like some of the more expensive underwear and dresses we bought, have to be washed by hand because the cleaning ladies charge too much for custom clothing.

Hana is the one who volunteers to do most of the washing since her skin is tougher, so it won't be damaged as easily due to the chemicals, but I'll still cast [Regeneration] on her to not ruin the beauty of her feminine hands.

Manual washing, sweeping the floor, cutting and preparing food, carrying loads, and etc., she really is the best for hard labor. Alissa has much softer, but also very dexterous, hands, so she does everything else Hana isn't as apt at. She's the manager of the house and deals with the delicate things that would be better if Hana doesn't touch.

I do my part and help, but it isn't much. My modern knowledge of cleaning isn't as useful in this world where things are either old school or solved by magic, though I do my best to learn how things are done.

For lunch, Alissa blanches Dragolite meat. It removes a lot of the natural rosemary-like flavor it has, so it tastes much closer to actual chicken. We shred the meat then fry it in not-chicken dumplings, and all that's left is some Catupiry for it to be just like a Brazilian Coxinha.

And once our bellies are filled, Alissa and Hana leave to retrieve my armor and scour the shops for a few more ingredients and tea. It warms my heart seeing them work together, and I have a very strong desire to see them kissing one day.

I have no idea how to categorize my feelings for both of them, but I know they activate many of my "desires" pretty hard.

I continue my [Redirect Mana] training while they're out. This time, my focus is on penetrating the wall, but while I quickly tire myself out, I make zero actual progress. It feels quite literally like banging my head against the wall, so I think I need a change of perspective.

I focus on the air and how my soul expands through it by trying to move as slowly as I can while forcing myself to pay attention to as many details as possible. It's all just pure mental imaging, tho, so it's a bit hard to understand what's going on, but my senses don't lie, I hope.

I feel… a breeze, the wind, the smells, even. It's… odd. I get the impression that all of the air that my soul is enveloping is inside my lungs, but I know it isn't.

Then I have a familiar sensation. It's like when I cast [Entangling Vines], I have a faint "awareness" of where the spell is, and I can make the vines loosen or tighten their grip on my target with my will. But this isn't the only spell that acts like this, basically every spell is like that, it's just that it's easier to notice this "awareness" when the spell lasts long enough.

Suddenly, an idea comes to me as I remember something, so I open my eyes and decide to try it out. I open up the window and cast [Entangling Vines] on the backyard, then I pay attention to the "awareness" that the vines give me. It's there, but what's more striking is that it reminds me of Roxanne's spells!

I shift a few points around into [Earth Magic], then I press the [Earth Wall] button inside my mind and hold it. I feel a faint "awareness" form where I'm aiming, and it's very similar to what I sense when Roxanne points her staff and starts casting [Explosion]. It's almost like a red dot from a gun announcing that someone is aiming a spell somewhere.

Once I release the button, a wall of dirt rises from nothing, then the "awareness" becomes clear as day. I own this wall, just like how I "own" the vines, and how Roxanne "owns" her spells, and it's this "ownership" that allows us to control them.

I dispel the [Earth Wall], and the "awareness" fades, then the wall crumbles and gradually disappears into nothing again. This sensation is also exactly the same as when I dispel a summon.

When I balloon my soul, I also get the sensation that I "own" the air inside it, so maybe the reason why I can't push into the wall is related to it.

I return to the bed and focus again on how my soul expands through the air by moving my soul as slowly as I can.

At first, I feel stupid for doing this, but then I start to notice that my "mental perception" of what's going on is becoming sharper, so I continue on this path for a long while, and I start to make out more details.

The edge of my soul expansion isn't a straight or curved wall, it's a jagged or spiky edge made of hundreds of little cones that push it forward, dragging the rest of the soul with them. It's like there are uncountable little "cursors" pushing against the soul, giving it its pointy shape.

But while this is interesting to look at, I see my goal in these cones. In one of them, specifically. I continue to focus on moving the slowest that I can, just now I also try to move a singular cone individually rather than all at the same time.

My view perception continues to "zoom" in, impressing me with the amount of progress I'm making. Even though all I "see" is a blurry mental image, it's still impressive that I'm able to make out this amount of detail, unless it's my brain lying to me, but we'll soon find out the truth when I test this for real.

The rest of the cones gradually disappear from my mind as I focus on an increasingly smaller number of them, then I notice something odd. It's like they're made of little pyramids of blocks, and they move by growing a new one at the tip, and then a cascade of blocks follow up, "growing" the pyramid further. It's a bit hypnotizing, and the usage of blocks gives me Minecraft déjà vus, but I don't waste too much time enjoying the view because I still have work to do.

I return my focus to my whole soul, then I push it against the wall and reduce my control again to just a few "pyramids." If I can't push through the wall with all of the pyramids at once, then I'll try to pierce it with the smallest number that I can. A single pointy thing instead of a clumsy bundle of sticks.

As the area that I control decreases in size, I feel the "resistance" of the wall change as it becomes more "rubbery." Then, suddenly, I push through.

FINALLY!

I expand my soul into the other room through the small hole, and my "awareness" tells me that it's one of the empty rooms, but then I detect the stream of weird-tasting mana coming from the wall, and I push into the next room, then one more time, each attempt becoming easier than the one before, and I suddenly find myself "inside" Roxanne's room.

This is the first time I "see" what's in her room. I sense her clothes spread on the floor, the multitude of glass flasks spread around the shelf, their unknown and very weird tasting contents, the smell of multiple unknown ingredients, the smoke that fills the air. The large amount of information is a bit dizzying, really.

Then I finally sense her, working at a desk, holding a spoon in one hand and an ornate monocle against her eye with the other while staring at a beaker. She's working, and she's wearing only her bottoms.

I'm not "seeing" her, I'm "sensing" her, feeling her, tasting her. I taste her cute, well-manicured feet; her soft thighs; her lacy clothes; her bare flower; her flat belly; her tender, small mounds; her ghost bits; her sensuous lips; her delicious tongue; her cute nose; her alluring eyes; her charming glasses; her silky black hair; her fine spiral horns; her thin and mischievous tail. It's so much information so fast that I feel dazed, and it all makes me very excited.

Then I regain my sanity and pull out.

I slowly open my eyes and groan as I sit up, then I reflect on what I've done, but I barely have time to begin before I hear a knock on the door.

"Hey, Wolf, did you do something? I felt some weird mana enter the room," Roxanne's casual and muffled voice comes out from the other side.

SHIT, SHIT, SHIT. Now, what do I say?!

I don't have a lie prepared, so I decide to tell the truth… only partially, "Ye-ye-yeah, I… am testing [Redirect Mana]. I saw… a lot of mana coming from your room… so I tried to redirect it, but I didn't think you'd be able to feel it."

She coos amusedly, "Oh? It's that skill you used to get mana to heal me, right?"

"Yeah, that's the one."

"Hah. You have to tell me how it works some time. I felt a really nice tickle all over my body."

No, no, no, no, and no. I'll take this secret to the grave.

I immediately try to move on, "A-a-anyway, I don't know how it works fully yet, so I won't use it again on you."

And her tone becomes a bit… intense. "Oh no, please do, it felt really good."

I scream internally as my mind becomes overwhelmed with stimulation and greed, then I decide to take a risk and ask, "Is… that so? D-don't you think it's weird for me to make you feel like that?"

She hums for a couple of seconds as she thinks, then she answers in her usual chipper tone, "Hmm~… if it's you, I don't care. Anyway, I'm going back to work."

"Okay, work hard…" I flatly answer, feeling very overwhelmed, then I stare at my friend and frown.

I don't really understand Roxanne, and I'm a bit scared of trying to find out, so I'll ignore this for now until my mind is in a better place.

I could use this skill on Hana or Alissa, though… But I'm kind of playing with fire here. What will they say if they learn how I found out about this property of [Redirect Mana]?

And the answer to that question scares me even more, so I just go back to meditation and focus on playing around with the mana streams. No more exploring for me today.

I feel something warm wrap around half of my body, so I open my eyes and notice that Alissa has snuggled up on my side. I immediately give her head a pat, and I see her fluffy tail lazily wags.

"How did it go?" I gently whisper.

She closes her eyes and replies in kind, "We found a good charcuterie shop. Lots of good meat, so we filled half the ice box."

I massage her ears, and she shivers from the stimulation.

As I let my mind calm down from all the intense training, I remember that I have something important to talk to Alissa, so I calmly ask, "Tomorrow afternoon I'll go to the university, so, can you come and pick me up for dinner?"

"Hm… can I stay with you there?" She bashfully responds.

Oof, I knew it…

I want her there, but she'll be bored, most likely. She also has other things she should do, like trying to be more selfish.

I smile at her adorableness and soothe her, "No. I'd like it, but no. You and I need to learn how to be far apart from each other once in a while."

She opens up her orange jewels and gives me puppy eyes that grip my heart. "I don't want to learn that."

Okay, you are being more selfish, but that's not the way I wanted!

I kiss her forehead and cry internally while I insist, "Neither do I… but we have to. Maybe if we had a way to communicate from long distances…"

She promptly replies, "There are the Emergency Rings and Bound Lithographs."

And I blink blankly. "What are these?"

"Emergency Rings are a pair of rings with a small magic tool in them that you can use to send a signal to the other ring in case of an emergency, but their range isn't that great. Bound Lithographs allow you to make a small drawing that appears on the other lithograph and vice-versa, but they're very expensive."

They sound so useful that I actually want one, so I immediately request, "Can you buy a pair of Emergency Rings for me? If we can have at least two different signals then it'd be perfect. Lithographs can be left for later since you said that they're expensive."

"Okay…" She responds dispiritedly.

What's up with you today?

"Did something happen?" I soothingly ask and inch my face closer to her.

She assumes a more impassive tone and replies, "Nothing happened, Master."

But I knit my eyebrows in worry. "You're more… in low-spirits right now."

She stays quiet for a moment and looks away, allowing me to notice a hint of tiredness and anxiety in her expression.

"Say it," I command. I won't let her bottle up her problems.

She presses her lips together in unease and hesitantly complies, "I just had a… thought. I… uh, I felt like I didn't want to fight again."

I kindly reassure her, "That's normal. I think the same every day."

She turns her eyes to me, and I see that they're full of conviction. "I trained my entire life to fight, I'm not supposed to think like this."

I just sigh and slowly explain, "Even if you try as hard as you can to act like a tool, you'll never be perfect. You're still just a huma-… I mean, just a person, so it's okay to have some doubts."

She looks away and stays silent for a long moment, but I don't know if she's reflecting or if she just doesn't want to talk about this anymore.

I smile encouragingly and meme, "Don't believe in yourself. Believe in the me who believes in you."

"What?" She hums and gives me a confused look.

I laugh awkwardly and avoid her stare. "Hahahah… it's just another reference to my homeland."

"I… think I get it." But her tone isn't very convincing.

I grab her hand and rebuild my confident smile. "How about this, you don't have to reason everything, just accept it."

She chuckles softly and gives me a sweet smile, then she buries her head on my chest, and I notice that her fluffy tail is starting to wag.

This damn world… You're still just a teenager, and you're already being forced to think about serious things like this. Our relationship isn't helping her state, it's totally unhealthy, but I don't think I want to correct it. You cling onto me, and I cling onto you.

We stay like this for about an hour, then bath time arrives.

Today, Alissa washes Hana, and the cheerful way they interact shows that our fox girl is back to her usual mood. Alissa touches Hana's body all over, making my heart tingle, but there's no real tension as it seems that Alissa simply doesn't swing that way.

During dinner, Roxanne pulls out another bottle of wine, and I notice that her drinking is increasing with each day while her appearance takes an opposing dive.

"Roxanne, is everything okay? You look tired today, again," Alissa kindly asks, thinking the same thing as me, and even Hana gives the workaholic succubus a worried look.

She looks a bit haggard, but since her normal skin color is already unnaturally pale white, I can't gauge how bad it is aside from the vacant look in her eyes.

"I'm so close… I can feel it, and I can even smell it, but I just can't touch it," she mumbles absentmindedly.

"What?" I hum confusedly.

"The elixir from Moonlight Moss… I'm almost finished. It's so close."

The weakness of her voice concerns me. "Don't you think you need a bit of rest?"

"No!" She exclaims and jerks her head towards me, then her bloodshot eyes stare intensely into mine. "Not now. I'm so close that I don't want to drown at the shore. If I stop now, I'll lose my train of thought."

I frown at her intensity and caution her, "Erm… I think you might be a bit too eager. Just be careful, Roxanne, you don't need to isolate yourself too much. It's okay to come to us and enjoy yourself a little."

She sends me a suspicious glance, then she sighs.

What was that?

"Perhaps… I'll keep that in mind. Thank you all for your concern," the workaholic relents a little, and Hana pats her back reassuringly.

After dinner, we have our normal cuddling session. Alissa as my smaller spoon, and I as Hana's smaller spoon. I try to practice some [Mana Control], but Hana has improved her hair stroking technique, quickly putting me to sleep.

I wake up in her strong arms in a princess carry as she takes me to the bedroom, making me feel all giddy.

She lays me on the bed and then slowly uses me, and for the first time, we do it slowly to not break my back, but it still feels actually quite passionate.

Once she finishes, I notice that Alissa is on the other side of the bed, doing herself.

She totally awakened something.

Since I'm fully awake now, I do her while Hana strokes her hair, but the second finish is enough to exhaust me as I'm still feeling drained from yesterday.

Today is the 13th.

I want these days to continue forever. This is heaven, no more, no less.

We have sandwiches for breakfast with plenty of ingredients to choose from, but Alissa has a surprise for me, and I give her a deep kiss as I love it.

"Cheese!" I happily exclaim as I pounce onto the white goodness. "I love cheese. What is this one from?" I eagerly eat a slice, and it tastes buttery and nutty.

"Well, sheep," Alissa hums with a smile.

And I absentmindedly comment as I take another, "I used to eat a lot of cow cheese in my homeland. Now that I think about it, why are there no cows here?"

As the one who has lived the longest here, we all turn to Roxanne, who promptly explains, "The farmers lost their cows in the last wyvern attack a year ago, or so I've heard, but the cow ranchers didn't feel like coming back until they were assured that all nests were found and destroyed."

I raise my eyebrows in surprise. "Oh, I heard that wyverns attack often."

"Yeah, they migrate from deep within the Sea of Trees and create nests further north year after year. They eventually reach the town and attack regularly until all nests are destroyed, but then it's just a matter of time before they come back."

For some reason, I feel a sudden urge to kill wyverns grow within my heart.

After breakfast, Alissa approaches me.

"Master, you should buy at least two more sets of good quality clothes for you to go to the university with pride," she advises with a serious tone.

"Hm..." I awkwardly hum and look away, making Alissa frown subtly. I'm actually too lazy to go buy more clothes for myself.

"You look well in good clothes, Wolf," Roxanne compliments, and even though she looks quite sleepy, there's no way that receiving a compliment from a beauty like her won't give me stomach butterflies.

Oof.

"Agreed, you look very handsome in good clothes, Master," Alissa adds with a diligent nod.

Double oof, but still, laziness.

"Thinking about dressing you up makes me very excited," Hana seductively states with her man-eating gaze.

Oooooof.

"Alright..." I concede.

We go out to buy some clothes and a pair of Emergency Rings, but the Rings are popular enough that we can find them in any enchanted items shop, so we just go to the nearest one and take a look.

The cheapest pair in this shop is a simple metal ring with a white stone on top. If I rotate the stone clockwise, the stone on the other ring glows green, and if I rotate it counterclockwise the other stone becomes red. Green will be the signal for Alissa to come to me, and red will be for emergencies or danger. A pair for one gold piece.

I gently grab Alissa's hand and put the ring on her left ring finger, but she shows no reaction, making me slightly disappointed. I have to ask Ciel about how marriages work in this world.

Then we buy clothes. The girls choose for me a black velvet vest and pants combo, and I actually find it quite nice, especially the purple rose embroidered on the chest. It seems that velvet is the current fashion, and both of them liked the style of Roxanne's clothes, so now we have matching outfits, which I don't know what to think about.

They also chose a black cloak with small gray dots, but while the color is nice, the design is weird. It has a very wide hem, but it doesn't touch the ground, and one of the corners of the hem has a bracelet that goes on my wrist.

The second set of clothes is a white, frilly, light wool shirt paired with black, straight, silk pants. It makes me look kind of pompous, but the girls like it, so whatever.

At least now I have two sets of black shoes that I like.

We spend the rest of the morning looking around, and we end up passing by magic tool shops. The items we find in them make me think that some modern inventor must be stuck in this world like me, but I eventually lose hope because all these tools are actually incredibly inconvenient to use, and none of them have the modern simplicity I'm so used to.

For example, a simple bedside lamp could be enchanted to have the ability to change the color of the light, or play a little song while it's turned on, or random animations, or even allow the user to write reminders in the light. The problem is how the process to use these features is incredibly complicated, obnoxious, and abstract.

To change the color of the light you have to dislodge the magical tool and spin it as hard as you can with your whole arm, then put it back on to confirm if the color is what you wanted; to play the song you have to play it very loudly for hours until it's somehow "printed" onto the tool; to change the animation you have to literally pray while holding the stone, and there's a considerable chance that the new animation won't be what you wanted; and to write in the light you have to feed the tool mana at different angles almost like using a 3D etch-a-sketch.

It's just quacks trying to scam commoners by selling them junk they don't need.

Then we go back home at 11 AM and prepare lunch. Roasted orc meat with fungi sauce, and a creamy soup of sweet vegetables to eat with soft bread.

After the meal, Alissa takes me to the university, and then she leaves to deal with housework. Hana goes to spar in the training grounds, making me feel a bit jealous again. I know it's completely irrational, and I need to stop being so possessive, but still.

I talk to an attendant in the university's reception, and she calls the chubby Mathias for me, then he takes me past a few buildings and deeper into the university.

The designers of the university seem to love pools of water with squirting jets since they're everywhere. I also hear musical notes playing with each squirt, kind of like a wind chime, but some have a bit of melody to them, and I find these pools quite nice even though there are so many of them.

There's also plenty of trees giving lots of fruit, but then I see a not-apple fall, and once it stops rolling, it starts shrinking until it disappears.

Is that safe to eat…?

The archivist building is nearby, so I don't get the chance to observe the view for long before we reach the large box of bricks that is the Archives. The windows are all very small, and they're covered up with thick black curtains, enhancing the boxy air of the building. The interior is very much a warehouse, and the strong smell of old books sets me at ease with how nostalgic it is. I've read my fair share of old books.

We're greeted by the archivist himself, a man who's so old and thin you'd think he's using magic to stay alive. He has one assistant, a young man who's probably going to be succeeding him soon.

And the walking skeleton talks in such a slow and soft tone that his voice almost makes me fall asleep. "There's only one surviving record about [Golemancy], it's from the diary of a mage who was also a philosopher. He was a famous researcher of [Summoning Magic] and he established many of the more widely accepted ideas of the inner workings of the soul. It's believed he succeeded in the creation of a single golem, but he died soon after of old age, and the golem he created seemed to have expired before his body was found.

"Many summoners have tried to mimic his experiments, but none have succeeded, bringing doubt whether the claims in his diary are true or not. The investigators that inspected the expired golem noted that the corpse was indeed infused with a spell that had a signature very similar to [Summoning Magic], so he succeeded at something, it's just unknown in what, exactly."

The old man finishes his long, long, speech, then raises his eyes and stares amusedly at me behind his small round glasses. "I hope you have more success than your predecessors."

I blink blankly, waking up from my zoning out, and start processing his words, but his assistant saves me before an awkward silence settles in by pushing a roll of a rough scroll towards me.

"Here is the transcript of his notes. If you need the original text, you'll need special permission from a head of department or higher," the assistant explains.

"That's fine by me, thank you," I politely reply and take the scroll.

Then Mathias takes me to my new office. It's pretty small, with only enough space for a desk that two people could have dinner at, a potted plant in the corner, and a tall document drawer by the wall, but the university provides all the paper or scrolls that I could need, and a better magical tool pen than the one that I have. He also hangs on the door a cute little wooden plaque engraved with my name, and under it, I see I have the title of "Junior Researcher."

Honestly, this is so nice I almost feel like clapping the tip of my hands in excitement just like Roxanne. Back on Earth, I didn't have the time to publish anything under my name, so I couldn't really call myself a "researcher," but now I finally have the opportunity to fulfill my dream here.

After I'm done daydreaming, Mathias gives me a piece of advice, "Mr. Ryder, one thing you should know is that these offices are protected from burglary by [Space Magic]. If you want to practice [Space Magic] inside, please warn the building manager first so your office's protection isn't impacted."

I nod. "Understood."

"That is all that I have for you. By the way, Mr. Ryder, is there any progress in [Redirect Mana]?"

I eagerly reply, "Quite a lot, actually. I have a better understanding of the skill now, but the thing I'm most certain of is that it requires a tremendous amount of 'Willpower' to use it."

He rubs his chubby chin in thought. "It's a bit unfortunate that it requires so much 'Willpower' as it greatly limits its uses, but there are a few people interested in seeing the results of your skill, Mr. Ryder, and I believe they'll still be happy to know that you're progressing with it. Well then, I'll be off, until next time." Then he nods respectfully and leaves.

What? I barely entered the university and I'm already attracting attention…

I sit at my desk with a sigh and start to read the query results.

I flip through the more obscure theorizing until I find snippets of generalized thoughts, which help me understand the context of his experiments. Potro Phaustus, the mage who wrote this journal, was a summoning specialist who was studying the mysteries of the magic school, which mostly revolve around the inner workings of the soul.

"Where does this conscience come from? The summoned beings clearly have a soul since they can be detected by [Sense Presence]. If that's not true, then a few hundred years of our knowledge on the soul is simply wrong, so I'd rather assume that summoning magic truly creates an actual soul, a very peculiar soul, actually.

"I've been training my [Sense Presence] for years just to understand more about this summoned soul, so I have a little pride in saying no one else in this Realm has this skill as high as I have, and I've looked quite far for someone better. So believe me when I say that what I see inside the soul is something that does and doesn't make sense.

"The skill [Sense Presence] can sense an entity's size, direction, distance, and the possible identification of the soul type. We unconsciously ignore the details of the identification information and instead immediately associate that information with known types of living beings, but with a skill level as high as mine, and with enough patience for extremely careful analysis, I can say that the identification information is actually a ‘shape.'

"This ‘shape' is often incomprehensible, and it actually gives strong headaches just from trying to look deeper into it, so perhaps this is why we instinctively ignore the details of the identification information. I can say that the 'Willpower' required to be able to fully grasp the whole shape all at once is ridiculously high, and you can look into my status crystal, I actually do have a pretty high 'Willpower.' The fortunate thing is that not all souls are incomprehensible messes, and most of them have parts that are clearly defined 'shapes,' leading me to identify patterns.

"I've looked into the souls of hundreds of different kinds of humanoids, and I managed to identify nearly a hundred patterns throughout my whole life. The most common pattern is 'cubes,' and curiously, every single summoned creature always has a cube in a specific location, their mind. Considering how the main characteristic that every single summon shares is that they're always unquestionably loyal and obedient, I believe this 'cube' shape is related to that. If we're to believe that the soul is a representation of the body, then these 'shapes' are mere organs, and the 'cube' controls a summon's loyalty.

"From among the humanoids, I noticed how the same 'cube' patterns appear on their souls the higher their skill level with [Summoning Magic] was, but always in a different location from that of the summon. The two 'cubes' are obviously related, but I couldn't infer much from that. Other high-level and high-skill people also had prominent patterns within their souls, but I only focused on summoners due to practicality, so this could be a vector of research for anyone interested.

"As every mage should know, all of the elemental magic schools have a spirit that you can summon, except for [Space Magic]. These spirits are commonly used as assistants to the mages, who also had this 'cube' shape in their souls the more they used the spirits, though it was nowhere near the same size as the summoners'.

"But not only that, I also found that there are innumerable other shapes that the summon and summoner share, most of them found where I believe the 'mind' part of the soul is. We know that summons possess the memories and knowledge of their summoners, but why would it be limited to only that? What if they're copies of a summoner's soul?

"It'd certainly be easier to copy the whole mind instead of just a part of it, and while studies of the brain have shown that it's possible to literally remove parts of it and remain living, it's extraordinarily easy to cause so much damage to one's HP that they die instantly, showing that we don't know enough about the mind to just slice it up on a whim. This, I believe, proves that the creator of [Summoning Magic] simply copied their own mind into an artificial body, then added the 'cube shape' that controls a summon's loyalty and obedience. [Illusion Magic] already has mind control effects, so one only needs to adapt them into the brain itself to make them permanent.

"And now I can finally ask the question that has been burning in my mind for my whole life. If summoning creates a temporary body from mana and copies the summoner's soul onto it, can we simply create a soul and infuse it into a new, permanent, body? Considering how I'll be testing this on clay figures, I'll name this magic [Golemancy], in honor of the [Summon Small Golem] spell."

The notes detail a bunch of experiments and other conjectures about summoning magic, but I'm not sure if they'll be helpful in training [Summoning Magic] due to how full of jargon they are.

Well, at least I've solved the mystery of my acid trip when I used [Infuse]. I was "molding" a soul.

But now the next mystery to solve is: how do I know what the changes are going to do to the soul I'm molding? Perhaps I could start by copying the soul of a summoned creature, but first I have to memorize the soul through using a high [Sense Presence], though maybe I can use [Redirect Mana] to help since it gives me some sort of "awareness" of what's inside my soul, so this seems doable, just time consuming.

I summon a bird and begin meditating in my comfy chair. After a minute, I manage to move my soul towards the bird on the desk then envelop it completely, then I gradually start to receive information about the bird as my soul pushes against its feathers. I can feel them, taste them, and it's a particularly disgusting sensation. It only felt nice to "lick" Roxanne because she is a beautiful woman and I'm a shameless man.

Just because I'm curious, I decide to share my feelings with the bird, and oh boy, it feels really good, so good I start to get a bit excited. It's just… bliss, and for some reason it makes my heart beat faster, though it isn't necessarily that kind of sensation, so it doesn't really do it for me.

Ok, bad thoughts, I have to concentrate.

I cut the sense sharing with the bird, and the pleasure instantly disappears, making me sigh in mild frustration.

Anyway, I can certainly feel the bird, but I can't penetrate it, just like the wall back home, so I pull back my soul a bit and shrink the area that I control as I push it against the bird's chest.

I share my senses with the bird again, and I start feeling a tickling sensation that gradually gets stronger the more I shrink my soul. It starts to get annoying, but not enough to distract me, so I endure it.

Then I suddenly penetrate the bird. It tastes even more disgusting than its feathers, and I actually manage to discern the taste of raw meat, but the bird itself isn't feeling much besides a tickle inside its chest.

Now that I'm in, I envelop the outside while spreading through the inside until I cover every single inch of the bird with my soul. I start to receive so much information from it that I can basically tell where every organ and major artery is, making me think this could be a good diagnostic tool.

This is a bit frightening, really, but I can't stop myself. Now… where's the soul?

I can sense everything about its physical body, but I get no sort of information that reminds me of [Sense Presence] or the geometrical shapes of [Infuse], though I do have a feeling that there's still more information that I can get from the soul touch. Potro did say that our minds instinctively ignore details about the soul.

I need to concentrate harder. I'm starting to feel tired already, but I can still push myself one more time. The itching is also starting to annoy me, so I cut my senses and clear my mind, then I start to feel like something is… odd with this bird.

I latch onto this feeling and continue to meditate, then I begin feeling like I'm gradually diving deeper, like there's something that's hidden from me, but I'm getting closer. I just need to force a bit more. A bit… more…

Then I feel something starting to assemble in the darkness of my mind, like the pieces are rising to the surface. I instinctively press them together, but they resist and try to slip away, like magnets of the same pole, then they start to warm up.

I'm so close that I ignore the heat and press the pieces together harder and harder. I know that they fit, I can see how they fit, but it's like a puzzle, I need them together to see the whole picture.

The heat starts to grow too uncomfortable levels, but I'm close, I'm too close to stop now! I press them harder… and then they "click."

Yes! I can see it! It's… well, shit, it's just a damn cube.

I let the pieces go, and a strong headache flares, making me groan in tiredness and pain.

What I just did was super tiring even though I didn't move a muscle. My body is fine, but my mind is just done, like a day-long session of programming. I don't even want to think anymore, so I send the green signal to Alissa.

Alissa, come save me.

"Master, are you okay?" She kindly asks and grabs my hand.

"Hm…?" I sleepily mumble as I raise my head from my plate and turn to her.

"You're very absent-minded," she concernedly states then gives my hand a comforting squeeze.

I just smile warmly at her, a bit happy that she cares so much about me. "Oh… I'm very tired. Working on [Redirect Mana] is very draining mentally."

Roxanne chuckles and gives me a thumbs up. I guess I look just like her right now.

Alissa sighs then releases my hand, and even Hana sends me a worried glance. Seeing both of them like this warms me up inside, and that awakes something that was sleeping.

Oh, shit. I barely paid attention to them during the bath. That was shameful of me.

Tonight, I need comfort. I don't let Alissa read in peace and keep her occupied with kisses while Hana massages both our heads, but once the dragon girl has enough, she takes me upstairs and abuses my body, taking from me what she couldn't during bath time.

Of course, I take it like a champ and satisfy her completely, then it's Alissa's turn. The awakened peeper is ready for me just from watching us. I'm actually super drained today, but I endure because even if it hurts, I will please my women. I didn't receive such glorious gifts from the gods to let them stay unsatisfied.

Today is the 14th.

I wake up in heaven, feeling very refreshed even though I was completely drained yesterday, and I immediately start to reflect on the soul experiment while I lay on the bed. The bird's soul was just a cube, but there's still more info below that, there are more intricacies that I can look for.

Once the girls leave to make breakfast, I summon the bird again and repeat the experiment, then I grip the cube and keep it in place while I try to observe it further.

The first thing I notice are intricate carvings on its surface, so I focus on them and feel my view zoom in like using a microscope. The first thing I notice is a simple circle, then I see a web inside it, then a grainy pattern appears, and the previous carvings become too large for me to see them.

I continue to zoom in, and I gradually notice a new pattern appear, a circle, just like the first, and then the sequence of patterns repeat. This makes me feel weird, so I stop and ponder on what's going on. "Zooming" doesn't feel like it's actually getting me closer, so I need to change my focus.

But I have no idea what to focus on right now, so I just observe the cube, and I notice that my mind seems to be slowly adapting to what I see, allowing me to sense more details from the cube. Then it suddenly strikes me that I don't even know what color this cube is actually like. It's not "black" or "transparent," it's like my mind simply doesn't register it.

What a mindscrew…

It seems like I'm making some progress, so I continue on this train of thought and continue observing the cube, but then my "eyes" start to hurt the more I look, as if I was staring at something too bright. But I have a feeling that there's actually something under the geometric patterns… something like a language…?

I have to look harder!

I force myself to look, the heat from the cube and the pain from "staring" rising to very uncomfortable levels, but I can't stop now. I need to solve this mystery!

Progress is slow while the pain outpaces it, hurting so much I feel like I'm diving into a fire, but I can see it! There's something there! I just… need… to get… closer…!

"Master?!" Alissa's desperate shout pulls me back to reality, and I find myself disoriented as she shakes me strongly.

"What?! What?!" I cry back, completely confused.

And she stops shaking me now that I'm responding. "You-… you were moaning and writhing about."

"What?" I whine, even more confused.

She releases me, then I notice that my whole body feels heavy like it's made of stone, and I let out a groan of pain as I try to move, but of course, she notices this, making her even more worried.

"What were you doing?" she asks softly as she sits back, her pointy ears starting to go flat.

I slowly sit up and try not to show my tiredness as I explain, "I'm trying to… unveil some knowledge about the soul, but it's hard to get to it."

"You're hurting yourself," she replies, sounding anguished, which makes me feel a bit guilty."

"I… yeah, I was forcing myself a bit in this experiment, but I don't know why my body did that. It just moved on its own."

She frowns disappointedly. "Master… please be careful. This looks dangerous."

Yeah, it does. My heart is burning, my body is heavy, and my head is spinning… but this is so exciting. I'm doing something nobody has ever done, or at least pushing past what Potro had seen.

"I know, I'll stop pushing myself so much," I reassure her. I'll find a way to continue exploring without killing myself.

Then I notice that Hana is at the doorway, and the worried face both of them are making breaks my heart. I have a feeling that even the Goddess of Knowledge won't approve of me hurting myself.

After calming them down, I go downstairs and reflect on what I saw while we eat.

That was feedback. My way of "seeing" inside the soul requires some sort of contact, and that was like checking how the bread was rising with my hand while it was still in the oven. I need a way to "see" the soul from a distance, or at least wear "gloves" that would protect my "naked" soul from feedback. But there's still the fact that our minds weren't made to see the inner workings of the soul, so I have to be careful not to push myself on that part, too.

The mage managed to see a bit of the soul just with [Sense Presence], so maybe I can use it and even [Sense Mana] to aid my "sight." These two skills don't seem to be passive sensors, but at least they seem much safer than what I did.

[Sense Mana], for example, is quite a curious skill. I can "sense" that there's mana in a direction, but I need to actually feel the particles go through me to find out what their "flavor" is. It's almost like a sense of smell, but I'm sensing the mana particles before I actually encounter them, so it isn't the exact same thing. Same goes for spells, I can sense when someone casts them even though they're far away from me, but the Spriggans couldn't due to being horrible at magic.

I have no damn idea how [Sense Presence] actually works, so I should ask Alissa about it sometime. It certainly feels like having a radar inside my mind, but I can only see other living beings, so, do I emit magical radio waves that only reflect on things with a soul?

So many abstract concepts, and I want to somehow merge them all together into something like a [Sense Soul] skill. I have no idea how I'll do it, but I bet it'll be by accident seeing how things went with [Redirect Mana].

And it kind of scares me how much progress I've achieved in just a few days. Why am I so good at this? Why has nobody managed to replicate Potro's research? There's also [Spirit Magic] that people could use to explore this area, so they could've just put a little bit of "Willpower" into it and done something similar to what I did, right? Is my analytical mind so rare here…?

No… it was my instant-casting that allowed me to discover the "cursor" within my mind, and then I created [Redirect Mana] because of it, allowing me to breach a new boundary in magical research.

"Your grin is a little creepy," Roxanne remarks with a frown.

I hum and raise my eyes from my plate, "Oh? Sorry, I'm just happy that I made a breakthrough in my research, and now I'm digesting things…" -I frown back at her- "but your face is even creepier. You look like a ghost."

"Hahahah…" She chuckles heartily, and her sickly appearance lightens up a bit. "I also made a breakthrough, but this means that I now have more work to do as I need to brew a lot of potions, so I'm feeling quite tired right now."

I give advice that I'll soon follow, "You really should rest, I'm worried about you."

She smiles sweetly and exaggeratedly bats her eyelashes at me. "Awn. Thank you, but I have gone through worse. I'm fine."

"Yeah, but that still shaves off years of your life," I bluntly reply.

"Ugh..." She grunts and flinches as my words strike a weak spot for her. "I… will take a break…"

"Yes, do it, please," Alissa backs me up.

After we eat, Roxanne lays down on a sofa to chill, so I tell Alissa to bring her some good tea and cookies, then I tell Hana to keep her company, and the dragonkin is quite happy to oblige.

But as the girls start talking, I swear internally because I start to itch to touch another soul "bare-souled" again. I guess I'll laze around with them while I reflect upon what I saw.

Their conversation quickly turns into bragging, and Hana mentions how she can make Alissa and I sleep with just her hands. Roxanne asks for a sample, and then promptly collapses on Hana's lap, fast asleep.

Feeling indirectly challenged, I massage Alissa's ears, and she also quickly falls asleep, though there was no way it'd be as fast as Roxanne seeing that the former is well-rested, so I feel like it's a draw.

And now that each of us has a beautiful woman resting on our laps, we're forbidden from getting up, so we just lay back on the sofa and spend the rest of the morning petting our respective "cats."

For lunch, we have sweet bread to go with sweet vegetable soup, and more orc meat with fungi sauce.

We gorge ourselves on Alissa's wonderful cooking, so we have to once again rest in the living room to allow our stomachs to properly digest the food in peace, but then a messenger appears, interrupting our lazy moment. Silas has invited us to participate in a subjugation force for a large goblin camp found a day from the town.

"This could be the one we reported some time ago. Don't you think so, Master?" Alissa happily asks.

"Yeah, it's possible. Wait… so this is a request we can't turn down?" I worriedly ask and look at the girls.

Hana immediately becomes alarmed and pleads, "Please, Master. We have to go."

"It's just a question," I calm her down.

She flinches back and awkwardly adjusts her mane-like hair behind her ear. "Oh, sorry. Well, yes, we can't turn it down."

And Roxanne cheekily chimes in, "Technically, we can, but we can be kicked out of the guild if we do that."

"I see," I hum as I rub my chin in thought, then I sigh in resignation. "Well, what does 'shock squad' mean?"

"It means we'll be the ones doing the slaughter," Alissa replies with mild enthusiasm.

"We'll come in like a [Lightning Bolt] and then finish them off while they reel back from the shock, hence 'shock squad,'" Roxanne happily analogizes, and I'm surprised she didn't go for something even more gruesome.

"Blessed with good luck," Hana remarks with a grin, her voice low like a purr.

But my only response is to frown, so Alissa grabs my hand and squeezes it reassuringly, which brings me a bit of comfort.

"We'll actually be in a good position since everyone will be watching us," Hana also tries to comfort me, but that makes things even worse.

"I'm actually pretty shy among strangers, so I don't feel blessed," I whine.

"That's no problem, Master. Stay near me, and I'll brush away anyone who tries to bother you," the reliable dragonkin tries to reassure me, then she displays her best dashing smile… which is a bit comforting. Having a hot beauty like hers protecting me like a bodyguard and keeping everyone else away sounds really nice.

"Master, your strength is your kindness and wisdom. If you don't want to deal with problematic people, just leave them to us, we'll keep you safe," Alissa joins in, and I admit, it's starting to work.

Then Roxanne smirks evilly and teases, "Even I understand that Wolf is a precious and fragile gem that needs protecting."

Oh, please, that had the opposite effect.

"Miss Roxanne! That wasn't something nice to say," Alissa scolds her, then hugs me protectively.

Roxanne giggles like a child as she escapes to her room, and her antics make Hana laugh out loud.

To be honest, I actually do feel blessed. Blessed to have these girls.

The departure will be on the 16th at 1 PM, so we have plenty of time to collect our money from the auction and then get our reserved equipment.

Since a big fight is coming up, everyone, except Roxanne, who we lock out of her room to force her to rest, goes to the training grounds to brush up on our skills.

Alissa draws a crowd with her archery, and a line of students form to challenge Hana. I even hear some people betting on the girls, but they're too good, so there aren't too many fools who'd bet against them.

I just go to my corner, where nobody will pay attention to me, and practice my fireballs, silently.

After a couple of hours, I suddenly feel some big changes happening within me, so I open my "Stats" and notice that I gained 4 points in [Mana Efficiency], 2 in [Sense Mana], my MP increased by 100 (now 455), and my "Magic Power" increased by 10 (now 210).

Wow, that's sudden.

I guess this happened because my knowledge of magic gained quite a boost, but I hadn't actually practiced in a while, so all the level-ups must've accumulated until now. Or maybe this is the Goddess of Growth helping me prepare. Regardless, I guess I should thank her.

Thank you, Goddess of Growth.

We take a bath together, and Hana attempts to brush Alissa's tail, but it ends badly, and I have to do it to make up for it. Hana gets sad she failed at brushy-brushy the fluffy-fluffy tail, but I guess her talent lies in brain massages.

Dinner is a sandwich with a fried orc meat patty, arranged in a sort of proto-hamburger. I use lots of leaves and squishy vegetables to make it as close to an Earth's burger as I can, and the girls love my selection. "Refreshing," they say. They were going to put some heavy sauce in it, which would make the bread too soggy and impossible to eat with just our hands, so they appreciate my reimagination of this common dish.

Our evening is rather quiet as we all just chill while Hana and Roxanne drink lightly. I cuddle with Hana this time and brush her voluminous red hair, which makes her fall asleep, so I try to carry her back to our bed, but I fail, to my utter shame.

I gently put her onto the floor before my arms fall off, waking her up, and she quickly realizes what I was attempting to do.

She stands up and soothes me, "Awn, that's cute, but don't feel bad. I'll play with you lots today, okay?" Then she pulls my face into her massive pair and runs her fingers through my hair.

Maybe it isn't so bad.

And she shows her appreciation by asking Alissa to teach her how to use her mouth. She knows how to make a man happy.

After Hana's lesson, I have them both at the same time because how could I not? But then I feel my jewels start to shrivel.

Today is the 15th.

The first thing I notice when I wake up is that my tool is back inside Hana's mouth, and the moment she sees that I'm awake, she begins the storm, trying to suck my soul out. I still haven't recovered, so I endure the pain until she finishes, then I feel something change within me.

I gained the skill [Enhanced "Fluid" Recharge].

What the hell.

Hana laughs her way out of the room while Alissa assumes a poker face and freezes, staring off into the distance. Then I hear a loud, wheezing laugh as Hana tells Roxanne, too.

You know what, screw this. I'll wear it with pride. What kind of man has his balls drained every day for so long that he develops a damn skill? Not a damn weak man, that's what. I know that I'm a shameless man, but I can become a god in bed whenever I please, so why shouldn't I lean into it? This is my talent, and also my biggest source of dopamine, so I won't be shamed for the thing that makes me happy. Bow to me, unworthy men who can't even please your own women.

I crawl up to Alissa, feeling my jewels starting to recharge already, and I pat her head as I sensuously state, "Rejoice, Alissa. This means you have to hold back less if you wish to do me."

She turns her head to me, then to the wall, then to me again and opens her mouth as if to say something, but then she closes it and blushes.

How can you still blush like this after everything we've done?

After everyone calms down, we eat toast with pâté or butter accompanied by tea. Roxanne sends me a few teasing glances, Hana cheerfully eats her food, while Alissa keeps her poker face. I'm actually feeling quite fulfilled right now, so it'll take a lot more to ruin my bliss.

The auction will start accepting bids at 3 PM, and we aren't required to be there at the start, but I'd like to. The whole thing shouldn't take more than a couple of hours, and then we'll immediately take our money after it ends.

I start to get anxious, so I try to waste time by sparring with Hana. We also lock Roxanne out of her room again, and she decides to watch us from the window of the living room.

I [Clean] my forehead from sweat, then I suddenly remember something, so I turn to Roxanne and ask, "Roxanne, did you ever get your share of the bounty from the Symbol?"

She blinks once, then facepalms and readjusts her glasses. "Oh, shit, I forgot! Can we pass by the guild before we go to the auction?" She asks with a guilty smile, and I just shrug.

"Sure."

Then the airheaded succubus starts laughing at herself as she leans on the windowsill again.

"How did you forget about so much money?" Alissa worriedly questions as she oils her bow.

"I was… busy," Roxanne answers with a grin, but at least she has the decency to blush, which becomes very noticeable on her unnaturally pale skin.

Hana frowns and earnestly advises her, "You work too much Roxanne. You have to clear your mind once in a while, or your thoughts will just hang, and you'll stop growing."

The workaholic tilts her head to the side in confusion. "Hm? What do you mean?"

"Mental training, skill training, and muscle training are all similar. You normally only level up skills after a day's rest, and the same goes for martial training and muscular growth. If you overdo it, you can hurt yourself, and that can even make you lose progress."

Roxanne becomes pensive. "Hmmm… I guess there's some truth to that."

"Hmph," the fiery woman grunts while she casually parries my attack, then she counters me without wasting a beat.

"We all care about you, so don't overdo it, ok?" Alissa kindly states.

And that finally gets the cheeky girl as she lowers her head in guilt.

"Thank you. I… I don't know how to work as a team properly, so I guess I'm a bit hard-headed sometimes. Thank you for caring about me…" She timidly admits, her spiral horns looking weirdly bouncy and rubbery, for some reason.

"Awn..." Hana stops the spar then runs towards Roxanne and gives her a sweaty hug through the window.

"Eck!"

The workaholic eventually joins us and practices her Water and Fire spells a bit. She shows she didn't go rusty by displaying her impressive control over her magic. She makes a few very small spells, which is actually hard to do without enough [Mana Control], and then also a few very big ones, though she doesn't fire the latter as they'd destroy the house. They take a while to make, though, so it seems like it's easier to just use the "default" spell settings instead of molding them at will, but her default is a lot bigger than all of ours.

I also notice that her [Explosion] feels (to my faint magical senses) similar to her small [Fireball] and something else combined, so I ask Alissa about it.

She hums thoughtfully, then glances at the lively succubus as she tries to wow Hana with flashy [Fireball]s. "Hmm…? Oh, that's likely why her [Explosion] is an actually viable spell in combat. Casting something directly in the body of another living being is extremely inefficient, so she might've gotten around it by decreasing the size of her spell, reducing the cost in mana, though it still seems to be expensive."

"What do you think is her second spell?"

"I felt some mana related to [Water Magic] leak from it, so I'm almost certain it's from that magic school."

Roxanne's staff does glow both red and blue, and she's pretty good with [Water Magic], so it makes sense.

For lunch, Alissa makes a meaty pasta sauce that reminds me of Madeira sauce.

Then we all get ready to go, and holy shit, the women look hot. Alissa melts my heart with her cute, white, frilly dress and small, white shoes; Hana looks majestic with a risque, red, straight, silk dress open in the back; and Roxanne makes me uncomfortable with a black, slightly gothic dress with a huge valley, and black knee socks. Sometimes I forget she's actually an alluring woman due to her demeanor, only to be suddenly reminded that she's a literal succubus.

Roxanne and Hana go by magic carpet while I ride Alissa, and because Roxanne asked, we pass by the monster hunters' guild.

When we get to the entrance, I start sweating cold as I realize that three juicy pieces of steak are about to walk right into the middle of a pack of hungry wolves. Alissa also seems to tense up in distaste, but Hana and Roxanne unhesitantly walk in, and almost everyone in the hall stops to stare at the delicious trio.

Thankfully, Roxanne doesn't waste time and immediately goes to the attendants, who quickly deliver her rewards as it was all ready for her, then we're finally off to the theater.

We go to the far north side of the town, the high class area since it's far from the south wall, where the monsters come from. The houses grow to a few stories tall, but none are as high as the theater itself, so we see it far before we reach it, and once we do, I'm awed at its beauty.

It's a simple half-circle, where the entrance is on the circular side, but the architecture has a strong Gothic air, and the blood red color of its bricks makes it even seem ominous. The walls are full of deep relief, like arches, flying buttresses, ornate columns, and statues of all kinds of humanoids in different postures. With a sword in hand, reading a book, shaking a flask, holding an orc head, putting on a crown, tilling the land, and many others.

There are plaques under all of them, and they tell me that these statues are supposed to represent historically famous works. Alissa's gaze is attracted to a statue of a human offering a spear, and I give her a curious look.

"Just a story I once read when I was a child," she whispers with a nostalgic smile, then moves on.

But "The Tragedy of Vron" doesn't sound like something a child should read.

We enter the theater, and the bricks turn yellow, giving a majestic feeling to the architecture. The statues by the walls become paintings on huge canvases, which depict the plays that are performed here, like old school, hand-painted movie billboards.

It might be interesting to come here one of these days, but the luxury is putting me off a bit.

We walk up one of the very wide sets of stairs that lead to the stands, but ours is to the top, so we put those legs to work. I do feel a bit bad for Roxanne since she's wearing heels, so we wait a bit after our climb to let her rest her thin thighs.

We ask a guard for directions, and he takes us to the specific stand where Silas is. Since we're expected, we're allowed in, and I immediately recognize that we're in the exact center of the upper viewing stands, giving us a view of everything.

Then I recognize Silas, who's sitting in the front row and talking to a majestic man in a huge, red, fur cloak. The black clothes he's wearing under it are also very lavish with the gold stripes and the jewels sewn into the fabric.

"That is the Lord of Rabanara, Alaraste Anara," Alissa whispers into my ear.

Oh shit, oh shit. It's the Lord!

Silas notices us entering and points to chairs beside him. Alissa entwines her arm with mine then pushes me forward, and I feel my gait become robotic in tension.

"Good afternoon, Mr. Ryder. It's good to see you here," the wrinkly old guildmaster greets me with a sly grin.

"G-good afternoon, guildmaster. I was curious to see how it would go," I try to answer in kind as I sit down to his left.

"It's just a small event, nothing special," he wryly understates.

Alissa sits on my other side, and Hana and Roxanne sit down in the row behind us.

Then he looks at each of the girls and greets them with a nod, "Good afternoon, Miss Alissa, Miss Roxanne, and Miss Hanafuria."

The girls quietly greet him back, and I find a bit of comfort in also hearing a bit of tension in their tones.

Silas then motions to the lavish man at his side. "This is the Lord of Rabanara, Alaraste Anara. My Lord, this is one of the fellowships who fought the Symbol, but Miss Hanafuria, the dragonkin, wasn't present at the battle. They're called Helios."

Alaraste finally shows a reaction and slowly turns to look at each of us. He's a dark-haired man with a square jaw and a well-kept stubble. He has a deep, stoic demeanor, and the moment our gazes cross, I feel like his dark eyes pierce through my heart, and not in a pleasant way. Once he looks at the girls, I almost breathe in relief, but the way Alissa tenses up when he looks at her annoys me.

The man is a prime specimen of a noble. He's so majestic it's like he has an aura of authority. But the effect is so noticeable I wonder if it's a skill or a spell.

"Greetings to you all," he finally speaks, his voice as powerful and cold as his gaze. I mimic Alissa and give a small bow, and he continues with a faintly lofty tone as he stares at me, "I see it now, the man, the mage, the archer, and now a strong shield. You'll do well tomorrow. Look for my elite squad; you should work together with them."

"Elite squad?" Alissa whispers, then nudges me.

"Elite squad?" I repeat reflexively, and I notice that I'm sweating.

Alaraste does a small nod. "Yes. They'll be the main power in the subjugation tomorrow. Your mage and your archer are very powerful killing forces, so have them work with my elite squad."

"Say 'as you wish, my Lord,'" Alissa nudges me again.

"Y-yes, as you wish, my Lord," I obey, then she gives my back a subtle push, and I do a quick bow.

It's so fast I almost think I imagine it, but I swear I see the Lord smile for a split second.

Then Silas promptly continues, "It's likely that a large number of goblins are amassing in that camp, but we couldn't find its exact location, so we're calling every reliable fellowship that has a tracker. We'll also require quite a lot of firepower to take it out, so we've called for the Lord's help, and he'll lend us a number of knights along with a genius magician. The elite squad, your fellowship, and two others will be the main killers of this operation. But let's leave the details for tomorrow."

I simply hum and nod, so the short old man flashes me a grin, then turns forward again and starts whispering to the Lord.

Alissa gives my hand a reassuring squeeze, and I sigh as quietly as I can, the tension finally leaving my body. I glance behind me, and the two little shits return a teasing smile.

Silas politely makes some small talk with me when he isn't whispering with the Lord, but the latter doesn't, and I'm grateful for that as the Lord's presence is so strong it's draining.

And after a good half hour, the theater fills up completely, then the lights in the audience dim a bit, and the auction starts.

A mature man walks onto the stage, and I notice that his clothes seem like a neat proto-suit, but it's still far from the minimalist style of Earth as the people of Rupegia have a love for overly designing clothes and covering the textiles with a wide variety of decorations.

"Gentlemen and gentlewomen…" The auctioneer begins and makes a dramatic pause, his voice echoing perfectly all over the theater, not too loud, and not too quiet. "Good afternoon to all of you, and also to our Lord Anara, who's watching over us today." Then he motions to the balcony.

Alaraste gets up and waves once, then he promptly sits down. The lower floor can't see me when I'm sitting, but the other balconies can, and I can feel the gazes burning a hole through my face.

The audience murmurs in response for a brief moment, but they respectfully stop, allowing the auctioneer to continue, "Tonight we're all here gathered for an auction of curious knicks, knacks, oddities, sundries, and other valuables, but pay attention for this session has a truly exceptional treasure, the body of a legendary creature, the Symbol of Hate!"

The audience has an excited reaction, and the auctioneer milks it up perfectly, suddenly continuing the moment the whispering starts to die down.

"This creature is an Aberrant monster that has lived for two hundred and three years! We know that its soul is so deformed that it wouldn't obey even the Monster King, and it preyed on every kind of monster, the average, the leader, the breeder, other Aberrants, and even the undead. Many of you surely have heard of this infamous threat that haunted the deeper parts of the Ant Hill, so I bet you're all curious to see the damage that was done to bring it down, but fret not for the jewel of this session will eventually have its turn. Until then, feast your eyes upon the treasures that were uncovered all over the Sea of Trees and Shore of Leaves!"

The auctioneer claps his hand with a graceful motion, and the first item is brought up to him, a crystallized gargoyle head. Apparently, it's the only intact part from the corpse of a Crystal Grotesque, a fitting name for it's a fugly thing, yet it sells quite quickly, and Roxanne mutters something about "exotic ingredients."

Once the bidding starts, it progresses with lightning-fast exchanges as the auctioneer switches from pomp to machine gun as he rapid-fires the bids in a way that'd make the Earth cattle auctioneers and even Eminem proud.

More items are brought in quick succession, and I struggle to understand what they even are. There are plenty of rare monster parts, ingredients, and ornate weapons, but a good deal of the items are said to be "mysterious Artifacts" from dungeons, but the auctioneer describes them only with obscure jargon. A discreet question to Alissa reveals that he's likening the Aritfact's mana to "elemental magic," which I assume are the [Fire Magic] and other magical schools. It seems that the Artifacts don't do much by themselves, but they might be helpful to mages, like how the gem on Roxanne's staff likely helps her with her magic.

I just nod and hum sensibly along with everyone else. The advantage of being introverted is that nobody expects you to freely comment on the spectacle, so my absolute ignorance of everything that's being shown is easily camouflaged by my personality, allowing me to focus on absorbing as much information as I can.

Even though the biddings progress extremely fast, there are so many items that it still takes a whole hour and a half before the time for the Symbol comes.

The auctioneer makes a dramatic pause after the last item, then he glances at each of the balconies with an amused smile, playing it up for effect. "And now, it's time for what you've all been waiting for, the Symbol of Hate!"

With a flourishing motion, he points to the back of the stage as a group of men pushes forward a huge cube covered in a red velvet sheet.

"This dreadful Aberrant reached an impressive height of five metri and twelve centimetri in a normal posture. It has twelve spider legs with a hair so sharp that it can draw blood from the naked hand. Its spider body is as tough as a plated knight while the human upper half has a skin as tough as an ogre's. Its mouth is composed of hundreds of small teeth that painfully tear and shred anything it eats, but don't try to smell them, you'll puke. Its hands sport such long, sharp, and tough nails that it used them in combat as a weapon similar to a dagger. They're so sharp that the hero who was stabbed by them barely survived his wounds."

Oh, that's me… but don't call me "hero," please. Roxanne is the one who did most of the damage to it.

"It is a being that literally fed on pain. It captured its prey, tortured it, wounded it, and then nurtured them back to full health like a caring mother, only to start the cycle of pain again. Only when someone's mind is truly broken is that mercy is given, and the prey is finally eaten alive. It was the embodiment of misery. It was so deviously cunning that it had eluded all who were sent to exterminate it… until it underestimated the destructive power and mettle of two humble fellowships…" -The men push the cube right to his side- "I present to you the corpse of the Symbol of Hate!"

He pulls off the velvet sheet, revealing a floating cube that seems to be made of solid glass, and inside it are the remains of the Symbol, just like how we'd delivered to them the guild, though less bloody.

What puzzles me is why did they need five men to push a cube that floats.

Anyway, the audience explodes in murmuring, and even Lord Alaraste leans forward in interest.

"Impressive carnage. What a fierce battle it must've been," he coolly remarks.

"It was… it was…" I bitterly reply. I'd rather not retell it.

Every single piece of the Symbol is there. The legs and the tips that we cut off, the bloodied and partially burned arms and head, the massive spider body, and the human half completely open like a gruesome, fleshy flower. The dagger-fingers on one of its arms are still stained with my blood while one of the tips seems to have Roxanne's blood, and neither of us seems particularly comfortable with that. The head has its mouth open to showcase the rows of teeth, but one of its eyes still has an arrow in it, the artwork of Alissa, and the intestines also hang from under the spider body, which is my artwork.

I hear some shifting behind me, so I glance back and see Roxanne looking down, her expression blank as she tries to get over the painful memories. Hana reaches over and gives her hand a reassuring squeeze, just like how Alissa does to me, but Roxanne shows no reaction.

I think she just needs some time, so I turn forward again as the auctioneer continues, "You can all see the damage required to stop such monstrosity: nothing short but complete obliteration. Not even the incredible accuracy of the arrow that went through its eye was enough to stop it, or the fearsome swordsmanship to cut off the legs or their tips, or the bravery required to open up its entire thorax, no. They had to unleash hell! The hero needed incredible courage to throw himself into these frightening daggers on its fingers to give the genius mage the chance to blow the Symbol up with a single spell. Fortunately for us, most of its body actually survived such a gruesome fate."

Roxanne is being praised, but she still shows no reaction, keeping her eyes on the carpet. Now even Alissa turns around and gives her knee a comforting squeeze.

"Indeed it was most fortunate for all of us that the more valuable parts survived: the human head, and the spider body. Even with an arrow in its skull the brain wasn't damaged very much, the innards may look mangled but most of them are still inside the body, and also, a large amount of blood has been recovered. A treasure trove for those who are looking for two hundred and three years old monster parts that have been soaking in mana and pain longer than most of us have been alive."

And the "genius mage" who saved us all finally recovers, showing that she is, indeed, made of stronger stuff than her frail appearance indicates. She sighs, then readjusts her glasses on her small nose and slowly lifts up her head as she gains the courage to stare at the monster of nightmares once again.

The auctioneer makes one last dramatic pause to rile up the audience. "Let us start the bidding! The body will be sold in its entirety along with all the severed parts. And the initial bid is one rose coin!"

Then he enters "rap-God mode" as I almost choke in my spit.

"One and ten!"

"One and twenty!"

"One and fifty!"

"Two coins!"

Oof… it's starting well.

"Two and thirty!"

"Two and forty!"

"Three coins!"

Oh, boy.

"Three and fifty!"

"Four coins!"

It's getting spicy!

"Four and twenty!"

"Four and thirty!"

Keep it going!

I lean so far forward I get on the edge of my seat.

"Four and forty!"

I can even taste the money.

"Four and forty-five!"

It's slowing down. Oh, no.

"Four and fifty!"

The bidders pause, allowing the auctioneer to breathe.

"Five coins!"

The murmuring grows louder. Even the audience can't get a grasp on how much money that is.

And the silence stretches.

Oh…

The auctioneer looks at each individual balcony with a very satisfied smile. "Is that all?"

I shyly glance at the other balconies and see a few lavishly-dressed people looking quite annoyed they don't have enough money.

"It's a one."

"It's a two."

"It's a three!"

"SOLD!"

Then a bell rings across the entire theater.

177 gold coins for us. 107 after paying for Hana.

I'm rich, bitches!

I look back excitedly at the duo, but then I notice that "Hauberk" is a few rows to the side and behind us. I was so enthralled by the auction that I have no idea when they arrived.

Gunther has his eyes closed, his face completely expressionless. Lorthar has his hands clasped, praying to the Gods above. Minerva is doing an ugly cry with snot dripping from her nose. It's quite a heartwarming sight. Twenty-two gold coins for each of them is still a lot, and from what little I understand of Rupegian economics, it's enough they could even retire and buy a farm somewhere.

The Lord stands up and nods at us, his gaze making me briefly uncomfortable again, then he silently leaves.

"Congratulations, Helios," Silas gently states as he strokes his enviously long white beard, then he motions to the door as he slowly stands up. "Follow me and we'll promptly deliver your rewards."

Everyone follows the wrinkly old man into a nearby room, and we wait in luxurious sofas that grip our buttcheeks like heavenly hands.

Soon after, a posh old man comes in, followed by two men in proto-suits, and he sits by the table while the two not-butlers wait by the wall, then he pulls out a thick magnifying glass, and I notice inscriptions in gold all over the lens and handle. He must be the appraiser.

A couple of minutes later, a very old man walks into the room with a slow and wobbly gait, but a young man with a proto-suit holds his arm, keeping him upright. The old man wears a rather gaudy black and purple trailing robe and a ridiculously wide-brimmed pointy hat. He also carries a jeweled metal staff with a giant shining yellow jewel at the top, which is a lot bigger than Roxanne's, and Hana quietly teases her about it.

"Grand Rizek. A pleasure to have you here," Silas cheerfully greets.

"Hoh. It's a pleasure to be here, and I'm even more pleased that I lived long enough to see such a legend be killed," the old man replies in a raspy but very energetic voice. Though he looks physically frail, there's a strong vigor and savagery in his eyes and tone, and it's just so "magical," like the Lord's aura, that it also makes me wonder if he's using a spell or a skill to create this effect.

Silas simply smiles back while grandpa Rizek is slowly walked to a chair, then he turns to us, his powerful stare catching me by surprise.

"Hah. I wouldn't have imagined such squirts like you would bring that thing down. The tortured souls that were victims of that abomination thank you," Rizek politely states with a nod, then flashes us a grin.

We don't know what to say, so we all sheepishly nod back, slightly overwhelmed at his vigor.

And Rizek doesn't even wait for an answer before he prompts the young man, "Now, Sebastian."

Another butler, another Sebastian. He pulls out five rose coins out of his [Item Box] with a *poof* then puts them on the table, and the appraiser inspects the coins with his enchanted magnifying glass. Quick thing, just a couple of seconds for each, and then he nods to Silas.

"Then it's done," the guildmaster announces and snaps his fingers, then one of the not-butlers by the wall steps forward. "Please take Grand Rizek to the storage area."

Grandpa and the two butlers leave, though slowly, giving enough time for the old man to flash one last grin at us.

"Who was that man?" I quietly ask.

"A famous mage that belongs to the Lord's court. He's a genius of [Electric Magic]," Roxanne answers, her usual cheerfulness completely held back now that she's in the face of someone important.

Electric, eh…?

Silas stores the coins in his [Item Box], then pulls out a huge sack of gold coins, another with silver coins, and a third one with copper coins. The last not-butler counts the coins and separates the parts for each of us, with the guild taking 5%.

After everyone has their share, Silas stores back the rest and smiles politely. "Glad to do business with you. We'll see each other again tomorrow,"

Gunther comes up to me and offers his huge hand. "I'm glad I met you. Even if it was because of a… desperate situation, I'm glad I met you," he remarks as we shake.

"What are you going to do now?" I curiously ask.

He glances at his companions and smiles, then answers with a dreamy tone, "Move to a calmer area. We can take it easy now and possibly find a nice place to retire. And you?"

I snort. "Way too young to retire." And he snorts back.

But it's not because I don't want to, I just don't believe I'll be allowed to retire for a long while.

"Be well," I say my goodbye, and we finally leave.

Tomorrow, we'll pay Ghulam and retrieve the equipment we reserved for Hana, then we'll immediately begin our next adventure.

I'm actually a bit excited, but only a tiny little bit.

A note from Manasong

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Chapter 10: Duty

A note from Manasong

Attention: to conform to the limit of mature content (more than just sexual content) allowed in a novel, I've censored this chapter. You can look for the uncensored version here.

If certain parts with sexual content look off or with paragraphs missing, it's likely that they were censored.

We start to get a bit tense due to the oncoming battle, so even Roxanne decides to skip work and join us on the sofas for the evening. Though she steals my chest pillow and cuddles with Hana, and that makes me notice how they seem very… friendly with each other.

Anyway, I play with Alissa's tail while we chit-chat, and she starts to get drowsy, so I also play with her ears to put her to sleep, then I successfully carry her to our bed. She happily wakes up mid-blow from Hana, and then I give both of them my all.

It might be hard to get my sword wet during the expedition, so I have to enjoy it while I can. My new skill also helps a lot with satisfying both of them, and I finish it up feeling reinvigorated rather than drained.

Today is the 16th.

We only have a quick breakfast, then we leave in the early morning to buy the rest of the supplies, and we spend most of our remaining time looking for the last few things we need.

We still have those sleeping bags that we bought and didn't use even once, but now that we have money and the harem got bigger, I need a bed that fits everyone. My sleeping quality is just too important to be cheap on, so I get one that fits us three. But our tent is too small for the new bed, so we also buy a bigger tent that's tall enough for us to stand on and even has enough space left for a small table.

We then buy a lot of different "Items"-ready meals, and a new flying vehicle for all of us, a polished wood dinghy with wheels and a windshield big enough to fit six people. It's thirty gold, but most of the price comes from the magic tool as it's quite big, almost the size of a basketball.

The tool is a faded-green-tinted polyhedron crystal ball with a bike handle glued to its top. The handle doesn't move, but it responds to pressure, allowing the driver to control the yaw and pitch. To apply propulsion, the driver has to insert mana into the crystal in the direction you want to go. For example: to move forward I have to insert mana on the back side of the crystal, to go backwards I have to insert it on its front, and to go up I have to insert on the underside, basically allowing me to fly in any direction, but that's not advised. The seller says that at most, I should only switch between applying force upwards to float or forward to speed up.

Roxanne and Hana have a little experience with this type of magic tool, so they'll fly if necessary until I learn how in the future. It's a bit different from flight sims since there's no roll and very little in the form of safety, so I have no hurry to learn since I definitely can't be reckless with flying.

I send Alissa to pay Ghulam, and after she returns, we walk to the west gate, where a row of wagons and a crowd of adventurers are waiting to leave. It's already 11 AM, so we have an early lunch at a nearby stall. Then we see Silas coming with five knights and two robed figures.

The knights wear a surcoat with the heraldry of the Lord on top of black scale armor. And in the middle of them, we recognize a familiar face. Black hair, square jaw, the hint of a stubble, and a piercing, stoic gaze. He's the Lord, or rather, a younger version of him.

Behind him, there's another familiar face, an elven girl. Silver straight hair that's so glossy it almost shines, an adorably short stature, skin as white as snow, an oval face, upturned blue eyes that look almost Asian, a small and pointy nose, small red lips, and the unmistakable long pointy ears of the elves protruding at a right angle from her head.

Silvane notices us and smiles at Alissa, who immediately returns it.

Then Silas walks to the crowd and announces out loud, "Gather here, hunters! We will begin a roll call! Bring your leaders for a strategy meeting!" And his voice has the characteristic distortion of someone speaking on a microphone.

Once my name is called, I'm told to enter a nearby building and sit around a large table. Burly men, scarred faces, crazy eyes, stoic gazes, and threatening auras. These are the leaders of the fellowships called for this subjugation force, and then there's me. Aside from Silas, I'm the smallest and also the youngest here.

I wanna run away! Help me, Alissa!

Thankfully, the strategy has already been defined, so there's no need for me to speak. The Lord's son, Haaran, is the leader of the expedition, and he has the Lord's knights at his command, so he explains the plan, and nobody has any significant concern about it.

Haaran's voice is softer than the Lord's but it's like he's a younger clone of him, and I just wonder what kind of genetics is at play here.

Anyway, there'll be one fellowship responsible for the vanguard, one for the rearguard, and four duos responsible for scouting, all to protect the main force as we travel across the Sea of Trees. After we reach the place chosen as our base of operations, all fellowships will contribute towards finding the exact location of the goblin base.

Once found, our strike will begin after the terrain around it is properly mapped. There are two fellowships of mages that will act as artillery and rain magic from distance as the first strike. My fellowship, the Lord's knights, and two other fellowships are the shock troops, so we'll enter the enemy base and engage in melee after the artillery raises chaos. The scouting troops will make sure as few goblins escape as possible, the vanguard fellowship will protect our backs during the attack, and the rearguard fellowship will guard our base of operations.

The plan is simple, swift, and decisive. We'll take half a day to get to the entrance to the Sea of Trees, camp there, half a day to move to our base, most likely take half a day to scout, half a day to fight, and another day to get back, which means we'll likely be back before Selina's wedding. Then the meeting ends, and we're ordered to board the wagons.

But before we embark, my eyes are attracted to a glowing smile as Silvane approaches us. "Greetings, Mr. Ryder. I hope you remember me," she gently greets. This is the first time that I hear her voice and it's pleasantly delicate and feminine.

I actually do remember your curves, or the lack of them, when I saw you wearing that one piece.

"Greetings, Miss Silvane. It'd be difficult to forget a face like yours," I smoothly reply and smile back.

Damn, I nailed that line.

She covers her mouth with the tips of her thin fingers in playful surprise as she giggles girlishly. "Oh, my." And her adorable demeanor is super effective on me.

Oh, my heart!

Then she turns to Alissa. "It's good to see you well, Miss Alissa."

"You too, Miss Silvane," Alissa warmly replies as the two nod at each other, making both elven ears and fox ears bob. "What happened to you? You're part of the Lord's soldiers now?"

And the silver elf girl brims with happiness. "Oh, yes. Grand Haaran bought me, and I'm to marry him at the end of the year."

Alissa beams back with innocent brightness. "That's amazing! This means he'll look to conquer a dungeon soon, right?"

"Yes! I'm also under apprenticeship with the court magicians, and I'll enter the university next month," the pretty girl warmly continues.

Oh?

"You might study with Master, then. He's also joining next month," the other pretty girl warmly replies.

And the two young beauties turn their heads to me, making me instinctively tense up as I almost got lost in their eyes.

Silvane's gaze becomes playfully curious. "Ah, so Grand Ryder is really the one with the Blessing, then? The skill you created, [Redirect Mana], caught the attention of many people." And her pretty eyes stare at me intensely.

Well… I really didn't want to bring attention to myself.

I just smile wryly as I think it's better to not say anything, so she just adds, "How's your research on that skill?"

Then I sense Roxanne's and Hana's teasing smiles on my back, so I smother my shyness and properly answer, "It's going very well, actually, but because of the subjugation, I had to stop before I reached a real breakthrough."

"That's unfortunate, but this is our duty," she solemnly replies as she nods, and Alissa follows along. "We can't let that goblin camp get any larger, for the sake of our people."

But then she's quickly back to smiling adorably.

"It seems you found your happiness," Alissa quietly remarks.

"And you did yours," Silvane slyly replies and glances at her, making the cute fox blush. But then pretty elf ends the conversation, "Let's go. We can speak more when we reach the campsite."

"Certainly!" Alissa happily exclaims.

We enter the wagons, and I ask my pretty fox how she knows the silver elf. They met in the Misty Low Forest when both of them were to be brought to Rabanara, so they spent a day-cycle together during the trip and became friends. Their dreams and goals were similar: to find someone strong for them to serve so they could honor their families, or restore the family's honor, in the case of Silvane, so they bonded over it.

Alissa doesn't say it explicitly, but the lack of mention of love or marriage is quite jarring to me. They're all about duty, and I don't know how to take it… Rupegian culture is still so alien to me.

Double horses pull the wagons down the road at a high speed, yet there's not much shaking, just noise. The road seems to be really well-built, less maintained than the one inside the town but it's still impressive engineering. It's made of large square blocks of stone set in a slightly curved way to push rainwater to the channels at the sides, and there's some sort of cement holding the blocks together, creating a very smooth surface. Fairly Roman-like.

We share our wagon with Akros, one of the shock troop fellowships. They have four members: a red-skinned demon race man who has a single horn coming out of his forehead in a truly Japanese oni fashion, and he uses a tower shield; a large, tanned, and bearded man that uses a greatsword as tall as he is; a lanky white man with an ugly black bowl cut who uses a longbow; and a scrawny and cute dwarf girl with boyish black short hair, who uses a small composite bow.

From my amateurish understanding of their tactics, the guy with the shield is the tank, the greatsword dude is the DPS, the longbow dude is for monsters with a thick hide, and the dwarf girl is for quick-firing at easy or numerous targets. Alissa follows the same doctrine as the dwarf girl while the rest of our fellowship doesn't really match with anyone else in Akros.

And honestly, they aren't very pleasant to talk to. They're too crude, and they keep talking about the ways they'll disembowel the goblins while the dwarf girl wants to compete with Alissa on how many eyes they'll pop. Roxanne and Hana deal with them just fine, but I don't enjoy talking to them.

Hana has to save me by interjecting in the conversation, and they eventually ignore me, so I just zone out and practice my meditation for [Redirect Mana]. It's quite hard to cut your senses with so much stimulation going on, but it serves to shorten the trip, and before I notice it, Alissa tells me it's time to leave the wagons.

I stretch and massage my muscles to help with the soreness. Half a day inside that wagon, and I spent all of it meditating. It's kind of an amazing feat, really. I wish I had this sort of skill back on Earth so that boring trips would be done in a second.

It's now 5 PM. We left earlier than planned, and we reached the border even earlier than predicted.

Haaran tells us to start marching, and the scouts run ahead first, then the vanguard enters the Sea, and we follow after them. Behind us are ten [Space Magic] mages, and they're basically humanoid pack mules as their only purpose is to carry things around in their deep [Item Box]es. The rearguard is tasked with protecting the mages, and I recognize Targua leading the rear.

He notices me and waves at us but keeps to his business.

What a nice fellow.

The atmosphere of the Sea of Trees is always a bit fantastical to me, charming even. It's a gloomy and dangerous place with an air of mystery to it, so a nerd like me definitely enjoys this kind of mood.

After studying the books in the dungeoneering guild, I now recognize quite a few plants and fruits, and we discreetly collect them as snacks for later. My "Items" is seemingly bottomless, so I'm the only one who can afford to increase my load.

While we walk, I reflect upon my skills and realize that [Summoning Magic] would be quite useful here. We're going to face a large number of goblins, and having summons to watch our backs would be a great help. I'll have to lie to Roxanne, though.

Our safety is more important than hurt feelings, so I decide to tell her that I've managed to acquire [Summoning Magic] while studying [Golemancy] at the university. This way, I can use my bird for scouting and my dog for guarding us.

I slow down so that I'm beside her as we walk, and she flashes me an innocent smile once she notices I want to talk. "So, Roxanne, my research of [Golemancy] is actually pretty close to [Summoning Magic]. So close, in fact, that I've learned a few spells already," I casually remark.

"Hm?" she hums absentmindedly and tilts her head while holding her wide-brimmed hat against her head. Then she realizes something. "Ah! Yes! There's a spell called [Summon Small Golem], right? Kind of obvious the two schools intersect somewhere."

Not the angle I was going for, but okay.

I just go along with it, "Y-yeah. Well, so far I've only managed to summon a small bird and a dog. Also, I want to tell Lord Haaran about my skills, but I'm not sure how to go about it since he's pretty intimidating."

"It's okay to not tell, Master," Alissa kindly interjects and comes up to my other side. "Not many hunters tell others their secrets. You can just use it whenever you wish and most people won't bother. Elementals are a bit conspicuous, though, so be careful with them."

Elementals sound interesting. It's been a while since I tested whether new spells unlocked, so perhaps I can use summons now, but I don't know what level I need for them.

"But isn't it a rare magic? I don't want to bring attention to me," I question worriedly.

"You're already the town hero," Hana points out and grins.

I turn to the other two, but they just both shrug, then Alissa adds, "The news of you gaining a Blessing from the Goddess of Knowledge should be spreading, too. You can't stop your fame from growing, Master." Then shows a wry smile at my dismay.

This is bad, but also good. It means I can more easily say "screw it" and do what I want without caring about what people might say, but the problem is the ID checks. I need consistency, and if I keep adding or removing skills, it might cause problems if someone tries to record my skill progress and notices how bizarre it is.

I hum thoughtfully then share my idea, "Alright, I'm thinking about summoning one or two dogs and using them as guards. This way, maybe we won't need to participate in the watch."

"Oh, oh! That's a great idea, Wolf! Please do!" Roxanne exclaims, then she excitedly grabs my hand and gives it a squeeze. "Mages need a good night's sleep to achieve peak performance, so standing guard will only make me weaker." Then she releases my hand and continues happily strolling forward, leaving me stunned at the sudden physical contact.

This woman is such a tease…

Hana raises an eyebrow at me, and absentmindedly remarks, "Hm, yes, we'll all be able to sleep together this way."

Alissa says nothing, not paying attention to Roxanne's eccentricities, but I see her fluffy tail wagging gently as she's likely imagining how a night together would be. Nobody likes to stand guard in the cold and alone.

After half an hour of walking, a small gray fox appears to our left and quickly approaches the leader of the vanguard, then it glows and becomes a gray-skinned-and-haired man. His appearance is quite striking, too, as he has claws, fox ears, and a small black snout in place of a nose, but no tail.

I feel like bragging that Alissa can become a much bigger fox, but I don't want to be an ass to a stranger, so I keep quiet.

"His color is unusual," I very quietly remark to Alissa since I know that werefoxes have good hearing.

"He could be a mixed descendant of a White Stalker with something else, or just a clanless fox mixed with another race with gray skin," she casually replies.

Interesting… there does seem to be some racial dynamics.

I give her a curious look. "What about you?"

And she seems happy to answer, "I'm pure Misty Fox, though my parents allowed my fur and hair to be a lighter brown instead of the usual bright orange."

She said "allowed," as in, they didn't pray to the Goddess of Fertility to give her a certain color and allowed genetics to do its thing.

I stop the conversation there as I don't want her asking where I'm from, and with her very submissive personality, she doesn't even entertain asking me about it.

Anyway, the gray fox man talks to the leader of the vanguard, a short and wide man who uses a poleaxe, then they rush ahead. They come back a couple of minutes later, the leader now looking a bit winded and with his poleaxe dripping with blood.

But blood attracts monsters, so one of the members of the vanguard discreetly chastises the leader, who then finally cleans his weapon. This area is still crawling with monsters, so the vanguard actually has to pull their weight and clear the area ahead of us.

Then the sun sets to the sound of dying goblins, and Haaran tells us to set camp at the next clearing. Not the most tiring day, but I'm glad that it's finally time to rest.

I sweat a little when I notice that everyone pulls out tools and begins actually building their tents. There's no avoiding this, so I just puff my chest full of fake courage and pull out my large, square tent, which was stored already completely built, then we hurry inside to hide from curious looks.

The tent is roughly 5x10m, but our bed fits perfectly, and we have enough room to comfortably sit at the small table with four chairs. I'd rather not let anyone see the inside, though, as this is a bit luxurious for adventurers.

"This is actually nice. I should have bought one as big as yours," Roxanne remarks in wonder.

"But you wouldn't be able to carry it yourself, right?" I reply with a grin.

She pouts and sassily puts her hands on her hips. "With your stupidly big [Item Box] it'd be pretty easy. But after seeing, this I don't just want a bigger tent, I want to sleep on your bed too. The bag is pretty bad."

My grin becomes cheeky. "Sorry, my bed is only for my lovers."

I won't sacrifice my privacy even if you're a companion.

Hana smirks at Roxanne, who simply pouts harder, and Alissa puts on her poker face, but I saw that tail twitch, I saw it!

"It should be okay to leave now, Master. Let's take a bath," Alissa obediently suggests.

We leave the tent, then I discreetly pull out a foldable partition and put a simple wooden bathtub at the center. In just a minute, Roxanne fills it up with [Water Wall], then heats it up with a measured [Fireball], and now the bath is ready.

As the one who made this possible, Roxanne goes first. Since the water was recently created with magic, she can "de-conjure" it after she's done and prepare another bath for us.

With that, I get to wash the girls and enjoy myself. I also have a proper gag now, and it muffles their sounds almost entirely. It gets a bit cramped with all of us inside it, but since I have two ravenous women to screw, we don't have much time to spend soaking in the water.

We're careful not to show or say that we have a bathtub. The partition isn't excessive, it's something any fellowship with two different sexes should have, but nobody except nobles brings a whole damn bathtub to an expedition.

Once we're done cleaning up, everyone has finished pitching up their tents, the bonfire is already crackling, a Space mage cooks some stew in a large pot above it, and the adventurers are now eating at a long wooden table with benches.

Silvane sees us approach and waves for us to come to sit beside her. She's not wearing her usual mage robe, but a thick woolen red dress that shows her adorable pink legs. It's not something that's meant to be very fashionable, but she still looks cute in it.

We sit down, and I bring out our "Items"-ready meals: toasted bread, bean paste, fried veggies, and beef stew. Silvane also seems to be eating something prepared beforehand and not the soup from the Space mages. Her food is a large selection of unknown veggies, something that looks like greenish baked potatoes, and a nice slab of roasted meat.

I don't recognize most of her food, but I can't pay too much attention to it as it'd be impolite, and then she promptly starts a conversation.

"Say, Mr. Ryder. Were you the one who gave the guild the info that the Giant Tarantulas were covering their bodies with flammable web?" she curiously asks, her eyes brimming with excitement.

I blink blankly a few times.

"How did you know that?" I blurt out confusedly.

And she gives me a rather foxy smile, proud of her correct guess. "Your fellowship and Hauberk were the only ones hunting there for the last half-cycle, and since I heard you have a Blessing from Knowledge, you're the most obvious candidate."

I shrug and snort, "Hah, I guess that makes sense. So, was it useful?"

She nods excitedly, making her long ears sway.

I damn love non-human ears.

Then she quickly tells her story, "Yes. We explored the Ant Hill after your encounter with the Symbol of Hate to investigate the battle site, and then we hunted down the White Arachne. Along the way, we tested your info and burned to death about half the spiders, which is quite the peculiar number, but the tip was very helpful, though the smell is terrible." And she flashes a grimace.

I smile warmly and hum back, "Amazing. I'm glad that helped."

And her eyes become sharp as she moves on to what she really wanted to talk about. "But what made me curious was the second part of your info. You said that it might be only one gender of the Tarantulas that were doing this, so we did a few autopsies and discovered that's precisely what's going on. We didn't know how to even differentiate one sex of spider from another, but we noticed that the ones who have rounder, uh… facial fingers, are the ones who catch fire easily, and after some experimentation, we've discovered that they're the males who use the web to stick to the female and inject semen onto her with its… fingers."

All the while she describes the mating habits of Tarantulas she has an innocent and eager scholarly air to her, but once she mentions the "fingers," which are actually the equivalent of spider dicks and I believe are actually named "pedipalps," something changes on her face, but I can't describe what, exactly. She seems "tense," but no less eager to talk about spider dick, so maybe she's just being awkward?

Regardless, I'm still impressed by her knowledge.

"You seem to enjoy this sort of thing quite a lot. Do you plan on becoming a scholar?" I ask, genuinely not wanting to make fun of her for mentioning spider dicks.

And she assumes a dreamy look. "Perhaps one day. I like to think about the details, and there are so many things that we just seem to overlook. This one detail you found, for example, helped us kill these spiders twice as fast, so what else can we discover that will make our lives easier?"

So I give her something to think about, "But why didn't anybody discover this first?"

And she was ready for that one. "Perhaps it's mating season. Lord Anara is going to send a squad to investigate every half-cycle to see if it's true."

"That's good news," Alissa chimes in.

Indeed, both the Lord getting more involved in the culling and the confirmation of another tool against monsters are good news.

"You telling them about the spiders, Silf?" A gentle voice comes from behind us and we turn our heads to see the young Haaran approaching us.

"Silf"? Is that kindness I hear in his voice? It's rather hard to imagine a stoic man with such a piercing gaze being so gentle and casual like this.

"Yes. It was Mr. Ryder who gave us the info on the spiders," she happily gushes at him as he sits beside her.

He turns his chilling gaze to me and states with a respectful nod, "Hm. You have my gratitude, Mr. Ryder. It was quite an odd piece of info, but it turned out to be true and quite useful."

Silvane suddenly giggles girlishly then her pale skin becomes pinkish as she remembers a rather salacious detail, "Oh, the info on how to break mind poison was also useful. We… confirmed it works." Then she turns her eyes away while Haaran freezes momentarily with a suggestive smile on his handsome face, and Alissa and I smirk back in return.

I had also told the guild that the Arachnes' mind poison can be broken by "passionately kissing a loved one".

After the pink moment passes, Silvane clears her throat and changes the topic. She asks about my adventures with Alissa and then tells tales of her own with Haaran while the young future Lord and I just listen to them in silence while we eat.

Hana starts a conversation with another fellowship nearby, and she quickly gets herself a beer tankard even though we aren't supposed to be drinking heavily. I also notice that Roxanne stays by the fire, discreetly drinking from a bottle of wine she carries in her [Item Box] while she listens to the more boisterous adventurers loudly tell their stories.

I'm okay with not making conversation with strangers, but I still enjoy talking with my two girls while eating, so I feel just a little bit lonely right now. Eventually, I start to get more comfortable, so I gather some courage and talk to Haaran.

"Ah… Lord Haaran, about the watch. I can summon dogs to stand guard, and I think that two dogs and a bird are the maximum that I can keep without straining my MP. So, may I use them to replace my fellowship during our turn to keep watch during the night?"

He gives me a measuring look as he hums thoughtfully, and his piercing eyes make me feel almost naked in front of him, but then his gaze softens and he accepts, "One of my own knights uses a dog as a substitute for the watch, so I can't deny you. Just make sure it's a breed with a good hearing and sense of smell."

His unnatural gaze is hard to deal with, but he's not ill-intended. I just give a short bow and excuse myself.

I summon two Dobermans and a small bird, which wipes away almost every single point of mana that I have. It's a bit risky to do this, but the camp is safe, so I have time to recover my MP. I'll share my senses with one of the dogs, which will guard the entrance to our tent, and Roxanne's tent is right beside ours, so it'll protect her tent too. The other dog will patrol the camp while the bird hides in the trees, and they'll make noise if they detect any monster or suspicious person approaching.

After my summons are ready, I see Haaran grab Silvane's hand, then they both say their goodbyes to Alissa and retire to their tent, so my foxy girl joins me on our bed. We immediately begin kissing gently, our tongues slowly caressing each other, and I savor her body with my hands, slowly increasing the intensity of my touch, which she responds with her tongue.

Then Hana comes back. When this fiery dragonkin drinks she doesn't get drunk, she gets excited. She suddenly pulls down my pants and demands that Alissa continue her oral lessons.

After they [Clean] their mouths, we fool around a bit more, then we go to sleep. We have to wear our armor in case of attack, so no bare touching or chest pillow for me, but since we're on an amazing bed, I still get a wonderful night of sleep.

Today is the 17th.

As soon as the sun comes out, Haaran's knights wake up everyone and then hurry us to break camp so we can start marching.

Since storing our tent is just a matter of a simple button press, we take our time with getting out of bed, and Hana decides to start her morning by sucking my soul through my sword.

"Sorry, master. But this is my first battle in seven months, so I'm really excited," Hana explains while caressing me then continues.

I grin as I caress her head, her yellow eyes locked with mine. "You really don't need to be sorry for this. The maximum you can do is give me another level in [Enhanced Semen Recharge]."

She smirks with my sword still inside her mouth, and I spend a few more minutes kissing Alissa, who seems to be in a good mood considering how energetic her tongue is.

Is she eager for battle, too?

But Alissa soon breaks the kiss as she detects my pleasure nearing the tipping point.

I stare at Hana's eyes as she does it, and I decide to share a small piece of wisdom, "I heard that men-… men and women should sleep with their loved ones before battle. Thoughts of regret or unspent desires have no place on the battlefield."

Then I grunt as I release down Hana's throat. The red woman promptly gathers it on her tongue to show it to me for a moment before she swallows with a grin.

"I agree with that. Unfortunately, I never had someone to use my desires on," she remarks with a seductive tone.

"You're free to make up for lost time," I reply with a smirk.

"Master, be careful. One day Hana might break you," Alissa jokingly advises, and if she's saying s-x jokes, then the world is one step closer towards world peace.

After a quick laugh, we get up and eat our breakfast, then we finally come out and we're immediately faced with a bored Roxanne, sitting on a little stool as she watches the others dismantle the camp.

Once the bubbly succubus sees us, she immediately stands and brightens up. We share cheerful morning greetings, and Hana strikes up a conversation with her, but I just take a look around and see Silvane helping out by storing a few things, then I notice that her skin seems to be glowing as she brims with happiness.

Her mood seems awfully similar to my two girls, so I guess that Haaran is a fellow vigorous man in private.

As we march on, the screams of dying goblins gradually become more frequent, and we even cross paths with two ogres. We don't have to do anything but march, though, so we actually get so bored that the moment a group of four dumb Mossy Fangpines comes into view they're zapped, burned, crushed, and shot by every single hunter of the expedition.

Haaran has us keep a fast pace, but I cast [Swift Foot] on my party and put [Stamina Enhancement] on the two girls, so we have a pretty sweet time. I just wish I could help Roxanne a bit more, but if she gets too tired, I'll have Hana carry her.

The landscape begins to change, becoming more inclined and uneven, which makes travel more difficult. Haaran's map is quite accurate, so we stick to the little valleys between the small hills that dot the landscape as it's the fastest route through the Sea of Trees.

As we pass by a little hill, the view briefly opens up, allowing me to spot a small mountain to our left, and it makes me curious enough that I summon a small bird, which I tell to keep close to the canopies of the trees to avoid Dragolites.

The bird takes flight and gives me a breathtaking view of the green sea, perhaps the very same one that earned its name, and I wish I could share my senses with the girls as this view is one of a kind. Endless green from the leaves with colored patches here and there along with a constant flickering of gold as the sunlight reflects on the leaves, and the bird even has to fly up and down as if it were swimming across frozen waves.

The bird spots a crack in the treetops, revealing a river nearby, which we avoid due to the likely presence of monsters and dangerous animals who drink from it. Then the bird also spots a small hill far to the south with such a huge tree I can't grasp what its actual size may be. Its leaves are a shade darker than the rest, making it stand out, and it seems to be covered in vines, which must be huge and thick since they're visible from this distance.

My adventuring spirit wakes up from this view. A landmark like this is begging to be explored, and who knows what might be further south from there? The depth that the Sea of Trees has been explored is only puddle deep, so this expedition is already nearing the edge of known territory, but the fact that I've never heard of a tree as huge as this one in the books that I've read about the region is very suspicious.

But we don't have the luxury to make a detour, and even coming this far requires experienced fellowships to deal with the monsters, so the mystery of that tree will remain unexplored.

To the west, in the direction we're marching, we can already see a hint of a snowy mountain range on the horizon, the Rakontagne Mountain Range, and past it is actually Alissa's homeland. It's incredible how close the Misty Low Forest is to Rabanara, but to get there requires a large detour as the Rakontagne is simply impassable except in a single location far to the north.

After a couple of minutes of wonder, I return from my trance and focus on my surroundings again, and I notice that Alissa is smiling at me while walking by my side.

Was I showing a stupid face?

I ignore any embarrassment and happily share my experience with her, "I saw a huge tree through my bird summon. I've never heard of such a tree before, so I'm really curious about it."

She raises her eyebrows in surprise then delicately cautions me, "It might not be the best idea to explore it. Such a conspicuous place could be the home of the forest's guardian."

"Guardian?" I curiously ask.

She smiles softly as she enjoys educating me. "Places with a lot of magic can give birth to intelligent magical beings, and they protect and preserve their home, so it's difficult to believe that a place as big as the Sea of Trees wouldn't have a guardian. In forests, dryads are the most common being who become guardians, and they can be hostile to those who don't know of their customs."

Interesting… though now I'm a little more scared about this expedition.

But my curiosity is still higher than my fear, so I continue, "Could I learn those 'customs' at the university?"

She shrugs softly. "Perhaps. Since the Sea of Trees is right next to Rabanara, it makes sense that they'd teach Nature mages how to safely interact with dryads."

Nice. Maybe one day we'll actually come here again.

We maintain our pace, and we eventually get near the river I spotted earlier. Haaran has us divert a little to the north since the scout reports the presence of Giant Dragonflies over there, and there's no need to fight them, to Hana's disappointment.

Then Haaran has us climb a steep hill, and with the tight pace, some hunters start complaining about tiredness, which is understandable since we have a considerable number of mages who are known to have low physical stamina. It actually surprises me that Roxanne isn't part of the complainers, but she does have my [Swift Foot]. Anyway, once we make it to the summit, we're finally allowed to rest as this is a very defensible location.

We make camp and have an early lunch. It's still 9 AM, but an adventurer doesn't always have the luxury of eating when they want, and it's never a good idea to skip a meal. Then the trackers are called for a meeting.

Haaran shows us a map of the surroundings and points out the locations where intelligent goblins were sighted. Taking into consideration the terrain, there are three possible locations for their camp, so the trackers are tasked with investigating them.

Alissa is the fastest of them all due to the size of her fox form, so she'll investigate the second location, which is the furthest, and she'll have to go alone since she has [Hide Presence] while I don't (officially) have it. The idea of not being able to protect her as she goes across the Sea of Trees makes me very nervous, but one of the reasons our fellowship was called here was because of her skills.

"I've traveled across the Misty Low Forest on my own, Master. I'll be fine," she kindly reassures me.

I simply sigh then silently nod in acceptance. She is trained, specifically, in hunting monsters, so I have to at least trust her on this matter.

We tie her bow, quiver, and sword with a belt, which she'll carry in her mouth since she can control her saliva, so it won't get dirty.

Alissa gained 1 level from the Symbol (now 25), and she increased her [Bow Use] by 2 (now 22), her [Hide Presence] by 1(now 4), and her [Quiet Steps] by 1 (now 4) so she still has 4 points left. I put 2 in [Quiet Steps] and 2 in [Hide Presence], making her quite the budding assassin.

Alissa Skill Report

Physical

Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level
Sword Use | 0+9 | Bow Use | 0+22 | Parry | 0+4
Dodge | 0+2 | Sense Presence | 0+5 | Hide Presence | 2+4
Enhanced Olfact | 0+5 | Enhanced Hearing | 0+3 | Pain Resistance | 0+2
Hawk Eyes | 0+1 | Muscle Explosion | 0+1 | Quiet Steps | 2+4
Quiet Action | 0+2 | Tracking | 0+2

Magical

Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level
Sense Mana | 0+1 | Mana Control | 0+1 | Fire Magic | 0+1
Light Magic | 0+1 | Space Magic | 0+1 | Conjuring Magic | 0+1

Miscellaneous

Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level
Housework | 0+3 | Cooking | 0+2 | Cleaning | 0+2
Washing | 0+5 | Riding | 0+2 | Oral Technique | 0+4
Hand Technique | 0+2 | Fox Transformation (innate) | 0+4

It's all on the trackers, now, so the rest of us can only rest, and I decide to train my dogs by sparring with Hana. While I don't have them bite her enough to hurt, they can still hinder her movements. It does take a bit of effort to fight this way since I can only communicate with voice commands but it's doable, especially if I bring two dogs versus a single opponent. The spell is limited to dogs, though, so no wolves, but a huge Kangal is almost the same thing.

Due to the unusual sight and our unorthodox fighting style, we attract some attention from the other hunters, and their gazes start to feel a little uncomfortable. Adventurers are quite competitive, and while they don't straight-up taunt us, I see in their eyes that they're judging our every move.

But I manage to keep the others out of my mind as I reminisce upon the memories of the dogs that I had back on earth. I had two, one was like a taller corgi who was lazy and liked to be scratched at the base of its tail, while the other was more energetic and looked like an orange beagle who loved belly rubs. They loved playing with each other, and it was the cutest thing ever.

Unfortunately, these summoned dogs don't have personalities, so they're like robots. Maybe I can order them to act cute, but now's not the time for it, not to mention what the other adventurers would say if they saw me playing with the summons.

We don't spar for too long though, as, at 3 PM, Alissa returns. Her beautiful and fluffy fox form breaks me out of my reminiscing as she quickly approaches me, then she turns back into her humanoid form, but the fearful expression she has makes me very concerned.

"Master, this is bad. The camp is a full-blown village."

Few monsters naturally work together, and goblins are a kind that do work together sometimes, but most of them simply act like animals who predate upon one another and become frenzied when they meet a human. Once in a while, though, a special kind of monster is born.

The most common type of "special" monsters are the leader-types. They have a natural ability to organize and command a large group of monsters, even those of other species, and the Orc Lord is a prime example of such a monster type. But all monsters can also become breeder-types, which are the nightmare of hunters and the most hated of all kinds because they capture both men and women, break their minds, then use them to breed more, stronger monsters.

Men are used for their sperm and women for their wombs. The bodies and souls of humanoids are naturally stronger than that of monsters, so the monsters born from a humanoid are stronger, bigger, more powerful, and much, much smarter. Humanoid men can be used to impregnate many female monsters, and while the humanoid womb is slower, it can give birth to an even stronger variant.

Monsters grow and mature many times faster than humanoids, so if a breeder-type captures humanoids, in a year or two, depending on the monster race, they might give birth to a whole army, one that could even topple a town. The presence of breeder-types creates a grave emergency that must be dealt with as fast as possible, and no cost is too big when faced with the prospect of annihilation.

A goblin camp doesn't mean that there are breeder-types around, just a leader-type, but breeder monsters attempt to copy humanoid society, so they don't just stop at mud huts. The monsters grow small farms, care for livestock, build houses, weave cloth, smith tools, hug children, and make love at night. They train their guards and soldiers to stand watch and protect their fellows from attack. They sing and dance when they're at peace and curse and fight when attacked. But they still can't change that they're monsters, and they'll continue to grow until one day their leader orders an attack on humanoid civilization. There's no negotiation and no diplomacy because the reason for their existence is to kill humanoids while ours is to survive, so we have no option but to fight back. Such is life here.

But back to the expedition, a "camp" is just a collection of shitty huts where the monsters sleep, a "village" is a small settlement defended by simple walls and fortifications that are constantly manned and on the watch for attackers. Therefore, the difficulty of this request just increased by a few levels.

That's just my luck. Isekai protagonist rotten luck strikes again.

Alissa then reports to Haaran, who immediately gathers the leaders for a strategy meeting. The village is small enough that the monsters can pick their things and disappear in the Sea of Trees if they find out that we know where they live, and we'll only find them again when they have an army ready to march onto the town.

This is a risky situation no matter what we do because if we leave, we risk losing their location, and if we attack, we risk dying since the difficulty is much higher now. Though it's impossible for us to completely fail, at what cost will we succeed? The hunters follow the guild, but they're not sworn to the Lord and the land like the knights are, so we can still retreat and retain our honor.

But Haaran doesn't want to retreat, and neither does Silvane.

"You ain't paying us enough to die," one of the hunters grunts.

The handsome Young Lord stares back at the gruff man, who becomes eerily still, possibly tensing up at the nobleman's piercing eyes. "So it's all about money? I'm the son of the Lord, and Rabanara is rich, so I can easily double your pay. But it's not about money, and you know that. You're just afraid," Haaran taunts with a slow and deliberate tone.

The hunter scowls and grumbles, "Shit, of course, I'm afraid."

"Then say it from the beginning," Haaran barks back.

And the man cringes but doesn't reply.

Then Haaran sweeps the entire table with his stern gaze as he continues, making us shudder, "We're all afraid, all of the time. Just like how the population is afraid, too."

Silvane continues, her gentle tone helping us be at ease after Haaran's intimidation, "If we don't fight here and simply go back, how can we look the townsfolk in the eye and tell them we did our best to protect them after an army of monsters sieges our home?" And the pretty silver elf girl seems to be quite effective at shaming the rough men.

"We're not going to die here, this isn't a suicide attack," Haaran states reassuringly, easing off the intimidation in tandem with Silvane's gentler approach.

And she states the truth out loud, "For the first time since the start of this expedition we're in actual danger, yes, but it's also the same for the town. Everyone is in danger."

Then Haaran's tone becomes stern but inspiring as he speaks with such clarity, such charisma that I even get chills, "These monsters are far too dangerous to be left alive; they must be exterminated. Think of your friends back in Rabanara, your loved ones, and your family. Think of your home…! You may not have sworn to die, but you've sworn to fight! The town and the guild have given you everything you have, and now it's time to give back!"

The hunters uncomfortably shift in their seats as they show a variety of reactions, and it quickly becomes clear that not everyone was so easily convinced, but then we also realize that we've actually come to an impasse. A good number don't want to budge, but they can't find the words to explain themselves, they're simply stubborn and afraid, and their arguments fall flat on their faces.

It's incredible how Haaran's straight truths and Silvane's warmth backed us all into the corner. Either choice we make is justified and also has grave consequences, it's just a matter of what we value more: our lives, or that of an entire town.

I can feel that the scales will tip towards the latter soon, they need just a little push.

As for me, I've already agreed with Haaran. This world won't be kind to me, so I can't be kind to it in return. I have to fight, I have to grow, and I can't back down when things get serious. All things point to me being brought to this world for a stereotypical isekai reason, and my encounter with the Symbol of Hate cemented my belief that trouble will always come my way, so I have to deal with it as it comes.

I also can't simply see these people as NPCs, and I can't see Alissa and Hana as just toys, even if I do occasionally treat them like that. They're a part of this world… and now… so am I.

Then I see in the eyes of the girls that they also want to fight, and even Roxanne seems to want to blow shit up. We're hunters, and we all agree that it is the duty of the hunters, of the strong, to protect the weak.

But I'm the leader, and I'm here to make the rational, sensible decision for the best of all of us. The problem is that there's no simple answer here, and even my pragmatic realism isn't strong enough to go against this "duty."

This is a world where the strong are tasked with protecting the weak. And we are strong. Helios is strong.

I look at Targua, the leader of the aptly named Honest Shield, and the stocky man looks back. I nod, and he stares for a moment, but then he also nods.

We turn to the other hunters and stare until they notice us, then we nod, and they nod back. A silent agreement begins to form, then it slowly spreads around.

One hunter suddenly attempts to encourage the others, "We should fight. Even if we are scared, even if we feel like we're being forced, this is one of the times that we must fight."

His words strike true, causing sighs to be released and heads to be dropped in resignation.

Then I gather the courage to join in, "We should fight."

And the others echo one after another, "We should fight."

Alissa got close enough to see the village, so she describes the surrounding area the best that she can. It's actually at a rather defensible location, so it's going to be difficult to enter it, but at least the goblins don't have an easy way to escape.

The village is on a raised plateau with a single entrance where you have to cross a shallow river with wide banks to get to, so the monsters have a clear view of anyone who tries to approach the entrance, which means that the ground troops like us are screwed. The only saving grace is that the hill on our side of the river is higher than the plateau, allowing for the artillery group to safely rain hell on the village from far away.

The plateau is surrounded by mountains, so the goblins can't escape if we siege the entrance as the only escape is through the edge of the plateau that leads to the river bank, and that's a eight meters vertical drop that goblins might not survive.

But we still have one trump card: magic.

"Silvane, you can use [Earth Wall], right?" I suddenly ask, and all eyes turn to me, momentarily making me freeze.

"Yes, I'm very proficient in [Earth Magic]," she answers earnestly.

And I grin as her words give me a boost of confidence in my plan. "I can also use [Earth Wall], so what if we make a ramp?"

I get a few confused looks since this spell isn't really common among adventurers, but Silvane and Haaran know of its usefulness, and they open their eyes wide in realization.

"You can use it too? Then it's a valid plan. With both of us casting it together we might reach the top of the cliff…" She excitedly replies, but then she frowns in concern. "But we might need to use all of our mana…"

And Haaran becomes skeptical, "Then this might not be that good of an idea. Silf is a healer, and isn't Mr. Ryder also a healer?"

"A bad one," I quietly reply and also frown.

But it's true. If I use my mana, I can't heal anybody, and even if my [Heal] is inefficient, it can still save lives. Silvane can definitely save a lot of people since she's more experienced, but the alternative is storming that death corridor…

Maybe if I use [Redirect Mana]…

I didn't want to reveal this because of how useful it is, but I have to. "I'm developing a skill called [Redirect Mana], and I used it once to quickly recover mana. I never tried it again since it's very straining, but I'm certain it'd work. If I have someone to guard me, then I can meditate and forcibly recover the mana on the spot."

"'Forcibly'?" Haaran repeats, one handsome eyebrow raised questioningly.

I shrug. "That's how it is. I forcefully absorb the mana dispersed in the environment. It takes a lot of 'Willpower,' but it's doable."

"It's one of those abnormal skills," Silvane remarks, and they both become pensive while the hunters nod in understanding.

After a moment of thought, Haaran decides to question me, "Then, will you have your companions wait for you?"

I didn't think of that. They'll be fighting without me, and it makes me very anxious.

Hana lands a strong hand on my shoulder and reassures me, "It can't be helped, then. I'll keep everybody alive until you come back, so don't worry about it, Master."

I don't want to accept it, but I have to.

Damn hell…

I hesitate for a second, but then I nod in agreement and look Haaran in the eye again (which is a bad idea due to his piercing gaze). "I only need one person, and it doesn't matter who. I cut my senses when I meditate, but I just need the guard to shake me to pull me back in case we're attacked."

"We will have one of the scouts stay with you, then," Haaran promptly states.

"Understood."

Then he turns to the other hunters and begins outlining a plan, "We'll have to divide the squads. The vanguard and one shock squad will hold the real entrance so no one escapes while the scouts clear the area of guards or returning patrols.

"We also need a clear line of communication as this will be a long and bloody battle. We have to kill all of them, no one must be left alive, " -his damn stupid piercing gaze makes shivers run down our spines- "so the scouts need to be able to reinforce if necessary, and even the artillery group needs to rest and recharge so that they can rejoin the battle after the initial barrage."

Haaran keeps going on about the plan, but we're not required to pay attention to everything. It seems he really is trained in warfare because he knows exactly what he's doing and he does it with confidence. He has a different atmosphere from the hunters, and especially from me, the quiet, small, and a bit cowardly man.

We just rest for the day, but the atmosphere becomes tense during the evening, and the lack of alcohol doesn't help things. At least the hunters are mingling, so it isn't that bad. They're just getting to know each other, and they talk about how they fight, what they like, and what their past is. They want to know who their comrades are so if someone dies by their side, they'll at least feel something.

I sit by the fire next to Roxanne, but I stay quiet as I just want to chill and she seems to be leisurely practicing [Mana Control]. Hana is talking with some hunters and laughing loudly, Alissa is having some girl time with Silvane, and Haaran is further away with his knights.

Then Targua suddenly sits beside me. "You are pretty reclusive. It's quite hard to get close to you," he quietly remarks.

"I'm not very talkative," I answer in kind.

"So it seems. But still, you can't stop bringing attention to yourself, eh? Seems to be quite a predicament," he wryly remarks as he flashes me a smirk, and I can't do anything else but groan softly. Then he becomes serious again. "But I want to know, why do you fight?"

A philosophical question?

I look away, towards the fire, and mumble as I fall into deep thought, "That I can't say…"

I fight because I have to, but I don't really have to be here, do I? I'm endangering myself and my women because… they'd think less of me if I just left. But did I even try to leave? I simply accepted Haaran's words and decided to fight.

Even when it's time to make an important decision, I can't take the cold, rational choice that puts my safety above others. I guess Alissa would be happy to hear this, but I just feel conflicted.

Seeing my silence, Targua gives me a measuring look and then confesses first, "Well, I fight for myself because I enjoy it and because it's my talent."

"You enjoy it?" I curiously hum and glance at him.

He nods and cryptically replies, "Some are meant to burn like a candle, some are meant to burn like a [Firestorm]." Then he flashes a smirk.

Through the murmurs, I hear that the other hunters are having the same conversation as mine with Targua. Knowing why a warrior fights is knowing the heart of that person, so these various fellowships are asking these questions to understand the person they're going to fight alongside… or maybe even die with.

But for me, even though I have conflicting thoughts, there's one singular reason that has been present in all my decisions. "I fight for my women... because I love them, and they can't live without fighting," I wryly confess.

Saying "love" makes me cringe because I believe that true love only blossoms with time, but there's no real reason to be picky with words.

The stubby man glances at Roxanne and smirks suggestively. "Oh, I see…" he hums and takes a sip of his tankard.

Wait, he's misunderstanding something…

Roxanne shifts in her seat, then I sense her judging eyes stabbing at me, and I feel like correcting him would just make things worse. But she quickly returns to her [Mana Control], and I feel that it's safe to relax.

"I just want to help keep the town safe so we can go back to our quiet days…" I quietly add.

I also can't run forever because I've likely been called here to protect this world, so I guess it's fine to grow a bit fond of it, right?

Tonight, I take my women with all of my heart, and they take me with all of theirs. We go hard at each other, but not because of lust. We're risking our lives tomorrow, so we have to live like it's the last, and we open our hearts to each other.

Alissa is the first, and she's eager. She wants me, she needs me, she depends on me… and I depend on her.

Then Hana comforts me. She keeps me safe and happy, so the least I can do is give my all to keep her happy, too.

Today is the 18th.

We wake up before dawn. The chilly air, the faint mist, and the darkness create a gloomy atmosphere. Everyone is quiet and serious, and there's no time to waste, so we move out as the first sun ray hits our faces, but Targua and his fellowship stay to guard the camp and the Space mages, and he waves to us as we march out.

We can't chit-chat as to not alert the monsters that we're coming, so the silence gives me time to reflect on things, and I suddenly feel like playing a bit.

Hey, God of War, I guess this is the first time I talked to you, but I really need your help. I don't like fighting, and I don't want any glory or spoils, but I have some women that I deeply care about.

I know that I have a duty to protect these people because of the power I've been gifted even if I didn't ask for it, and even if I might hate whoever brought me here, but I'll accept this power and ask for more. I want to protect, I want to fight, I want to kill, and I want to live a long life after it's all over.

I know you're listening, so that's why I know you can help me. I know what I want, and if you know what you want, you know you should give power to me. You should give me what I need to protect others. Because I will… I will succeed.

And I soon as I'm done, I feel something change within me. I immediately look at my stats and see that my "Piety" has risen by 4 and it's now 10. This is exactly what I needed for [Heal] to become more efficient.

Thank you. I'll keep everyone alive with this.

But then I almost freeze in the spot as I feel that there's more, so I check my "Magic" tab and notice that I can now instant-cast level 20 and 25 spells, and there's one spell that puts a smile on my face: [Summon Elemental].

There are nine choices of elementals, one for each of the base elements except Space, and I have a good hunch on how they might be useful, especially the earth one, so I catch up to Haaran to speak to him.

"Excuse me, Lord Haaran," I politely greet, my excitement overriding my meekness.

"Yes?" he stoically hums back, and his piercing gaze almost kills my mood.

But I still boldly ask, "For this battle, I want to call earth elementals, if my mana allows. Is that alright?"

A subtle smile appears on his face for a split second, but then he turns stoic again. "It'll be a great help. Use them well."

I give a quick bow, then I go back to the girls and tell them that the plan has been lightly altered. I also test out the mana cost of an elemental, and it's about 150 MP plus my mana pool is reduced by 20 points while the summon is alive. With mana reduction skills, I can possibly reduce the cost a bit more, but these skills have complex rules, making it difficult to calculate by hand, so I'll only know the true cost when the battle comes.

Along the way, I cast [Wind Armor] and [Swift Foot] on all of us, and [Sharp Blades] on Hana and me. My mana isn't sufficient for casting everything all at once, but my recovery is quite good, so I manage to do it before we reach our objective.

It takes us an hour of forced march, but Haaran wants to use the morning laziness to our advantage. If the goblins have personalities like ours, they'll also be weaker just after waking up.

The scouts take out multiple sentries, and we reach our target without being discovered. But now, we are inside their territory, so it's only a matter of time before the enemy gets alerted.

A good half hour later, we start climbing up a small hill, then we begin to hear the sounds of running water, and once we reach the summit, we get a good view of the monster village.

Ahead of us, there's a small cliff, then the shallow river followed by a wide sandbank and another cliff. We can see past the cliff, but a small palisade covers most of our view of the village, and we confirm that the only entrance is protected by the flimsy wall, which was built to transform the entrance ramp into a death trap.

If we can get past the cliff, which is about eight meters tall, then we can freely enter the village and start the carnage, but making a ramp to bypass it won't be an easy task. Past the village, there's only a very steep cliff, and this one is impassable even for us, but it also means that there's only one way in or out.

The village itself is a collection of ugly, filthy, hastily-made wood huts. They lack any sort of fashion or architecture, but they're all neatly organized in a grid. The important thing is that there doesn't seem to be any significant movement in there, only a few sentries by the palisade.

"Artillery, stay here. Wait for the signal," Haaran quietly orders.

The Space mages pull out suits of full plate armor from their [Item Box]es, then the knights and Haaran help each other put it on, and they all look fearsome with the heavy, shining plate. The adventurers are all armored with mismatched sets, but Hana's figure looks majestic, frightening even, with her red brigandine, though unfortunately, it hides her perfectly round large pair.

Once they're ready, the Space mages return to camp, and we go around the cliff then sneak past the shallow river, away from the sight of the sentries. Now we move up closer to the village while sticking close to the cliffside to avoid getting within sight of the monsters.

I have 71 skill points, so I put 21 in [Earth Magic], 20 in [Mana Control], 20 in [Mana Efficiency], and 10 in [Blessing Magic] so my blessings keep active. This is all just to reduce the mana cost of what I'm about to do.

Engage maximum power.

Silvane and I walk away from the cliff, a good twenty meters until our boots are immersed in the shallow river, and I wait until she finishes gathering her mana, then I cast [Earth Wall] at the same time as her. A rectangular cube of sand in front of us immediately solidifies and begins to rise out of the river, then I feel that I gain "awareness" over the block, and with just a thought, I tell it to tilt forward, and it obeys.

The tilted sand wall slowly grows into a ramp, and SIlvane and I touch our spells, causing an odd sensation as our "awareness" interfere with each other, but we perfectly align the spells, creating a good five meters wide ramp. Little by little, centimeter by centimeter, we aim it toward the cliff's edge.

But my mana is going down fast. I don't have a large mana pool because I didn't practice magic since I was a child like most mages in this world have done, so I have a clear disadvantage here. Even with this magic-focused build, creating a large and sturdy ramp isn't easy or mana-efficient.

Silvane also seems to suffer a bit with mana drain but soldiers on. She's young and inexperienced, and even her talent isn't enough to reduce the difficulty of this task. Normal [Earth Wall]s are about two meters tall, but we're aiming at eight meters high while the cliff edge is a good twenty meters away, so you do the math. Unfortunately, we're the only ones who have [Earth Magic], so it's us or nothing.

Suddenly, we hear a commotion coming from the monster village. The clinking of metal, hurried footsteps, and weird, throaty screaming. Their sentries have noticed us, likely because of the mana Silvane and I are releasing.

A knight ignites a wick, which is attached to a small pouch at the tip of an arrow, then he fires the arrow directly up, and it explodes in the sky with a thundering noise. That's the signal for our artillery group, and I immediately begin to feel a large amount of mana gather far behind us.

A few seconds later, the wall finishes, and the group of heavily armed and armored men of the elite squad immediately run past me and up the ramp. Hana turns her head and sends me a kiss as she runs past me, then I'm left behind.

And now it's their turn.

My heart hurts, but I hide behind a tree and sit down on the ground, then a bowman also hides nearby to keep watch for me. Silvane has gone back to the Artillery position to meditate, and she'll take a long time to recharge because it's quite likely she doesn't have the same skills as me that increase mana efficiency, so she has a lot more mana to recover.

Then I close my eyes just as a huge firestorm begins razing the village.

Now I fully focus my will on meditation. The girls need me, so I must recover as much mana as possible to keep them safe.

I start the same process as that one time in the Ant Hill. I push my soul out and towards the sky, in the direction of a cloud of mana that gathers above the village. I don't even want to know how my soul can extend that far, but it does, and once I touch the stream of mana coming from the firestorm, I sense a "heat" coming from it. It's this sensation that tells mages what kind of spell is being cast, and it still lingers in the mana long after the spell is finished.

But to me, mana is just fuel, and any will do.

Come to me. I need you to kill and to heal.

And the stream instantly responds to my call.

Come to me! I'll use you to win this battle then continue on to living a happy life with the women I care about.

And the stream starts moving towards my soul.

COME TO ME! OBEY MY WILL FOR I NEED YOU TO FULFILL MY WISHES!

And the mana floods into my soul, quickly filling up my MP to the brim!

Then I open my eyes. It's time to move.

At level 15, I have 60 Skill Points to use plus 11 I got for free, so I put on this build:

Wolf Ryder Skill Report

Physical

Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level
Sword Use | 11+4 | Dodge | 2+5 | Parry | 2+5
Block | 0+7 | Shield Bash | 0+1

Magical

Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level
Sense Mana | 0+5 | Mana Control | 0+4 | Mana Recovery | 0+0
Mana Efficiency | 4+4 | Reduced Mana Cost | 8+0 | Mana Overuse Resistance | 0+1
Light Magic | 9+1 | Blessing Magic | 5+0 | Summoning Magic | 20+0

Miscellaneous

Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level
Andraste Language | 10+0 | Dismantling | 0+1 | Enhanced Semen Recharge | 0+1

Info

Name | Wolf Ryder | Age | 16 | Race | Human
HP | 100 | MP | 455 | Magic Power | 210
Level | 15

Stats

Strength | 8 | Endurance | 10 | Dexterity | 9
Speed | 10 | Intelligence | 20 | Wisdom | 15
Willpower | 15 | Charisma | 10 | Piety | 10
Perception | 15 | Sanity | 9

Other

Status Effects | 'NONE'
Titles | 'Blessed by the Goddess of Knowledge'
Affiliations | 'Helios (Fellowship), Alissa (Blood Slave)', Hanafuria (Blood Slave)
Companions | 'Alissa, Roxanne Succubus, Hanafuria'
Crimes | 'NONE'

My greatest strength is my versatility, so I make a balanced build to take advantage of that.

I suddenly stand, surprising my bodyguard, then I rush past the river and go up the ramp, but the moment that I get past it I feel like I've entered hell. The air is hot and stuffy, the smell of smoke overpowers everything else, glowing-hot cinders fall like snowflakes, a massive fire rages all over the village almost like one huge bonfire, and there's blood all over the green grass along with dozens of corpses of goblins strewn about. The scene is so shocking that my courage vanishes for a second, but only a second, and then I rush into the fray.

I follow the fellowship bond, which takes me around the fire and deeper into the small plateau the village is on, then I find the girls, and I stop dead in my tracks in surprise. I see Haaran engaged in combat with a huge, three-meters tall, bronze-skinned orc wearing dirty plate armor, and the four knights and Hana are fighting ten other smaller green orcs wearing gambesons and leather.

The big guy is an Orc Chief, a leader-type, it seems.

What the hell are orcs doing in this village?!

I turn to Hana and see that one of her legs is slightly lowered, obviously hurting, and her sword swings are slower than usual, so her arm must be bruised. Though she doesn't have any cuts thanks to the armor, she's clearly being pushed back by her two opponents.

Alissa is in close combat with a goblin, and there are more goblins nearby rushing toward her. Her armor has a nasty cut on her right flank, and I even see a small amount of blood trickle out.

Damn hell.

At least Roxanne is still safe behind everyone as Alissa keeps the goblin busy, so she's allowed to freely chant and charge her mana.

We're outnumbered 2-to-1, and while we can fight the orcs to a standstill, the constant stream of goblins tilts the battle against our favor. We need something to deal with the little shits. Something… big, bulky, and durable… so I summon an earth elemental.

A storm of sand kicks up, and the grains quickly glue together into multiple pieces of rock, then the rocks arrange themselves in a roughly humanoid shape. The elemental grows and towers above me, reaching over two meters in height, and with huge, round, rocks bigger than my head for hands.

"Protect Alissa," I order, and the elemental's floating rock head silently nods, then it immediately rushes after her.

Now I charge towards the orcs. The ugly, muscular pigs on legs seem to wear cheap gambeson and leather armor, which is now full of cuts, but you won't even slow down an orc unless you inflict a deep wound, so all Hana can do is get slowly pushed by the 2-on-1 while she waits for the opportunity to strike back.

One of the orcs has a sword and shield while the other has a two-handed sword, so I go for the shield user since his reach is similar to mine. He notices my approach and deflects my slash with his shield, then both orcs take a step back to analyze me.

"Hah! Things got a bit interesting, Master," Hana cheerfully remarks as I stop beside her.

"Orcs? What the hell?!" I exclaim in shock.

"I know, right?!" she shouts back, and I can just hear the grin in her voice.

The orcs resume their attack, but we counter and score small slashes that get absorbed by their armor. These monsters are very aggressive and quick to anger, but all they have is their stupid strength while they're slow and generally unskilled with weapons, so their counter is… to counter them.

On a 1-on-1, we have the advantage due to higher skill, and I manage to score a deep cut on the sword arm of my opponent. The edge of his round wooden shield surges toward my face as he attempts to bash me, but I [Block] it with my shield at the same time that I [Dodge] backward.

He tries to lunge forward to increase his reach and give more power to his bash, but that leaves one leg extended and vulnerable, so I slash at his shin, and the [Sharp Blades] spell allows me to cut so deeply that I feel my sword scratch his bone. The problem with wounding orcs is that the pain makes them angry, which makes them even more aggressive, and so my opponent roars in rage.

He savagely chops downward, so I use my shield to [Block] and deflect the dull attack as I [Dodge] and jump sideways to the left, then I slash again at his exposed arm, scoring another deep wound. He tries to swing again upward but his angle is awkward, and his blade simply slides across my shield.

"Eat shit, you disgusting scum!" Hana taunts her opponent.

Her opponent makes a rookie mistake, so she lunges forward, getting inside his reach, and uses her shield to keep his long weapon away so he can't wind up a powerful attack, but her shorter weapon allows her to easily drive her blade into his shoulder with a savage chop.

He answers with a kick to her shield, pushing her back and dislodging her sword as she lacks the leg power to withstand the hit, but she doesn't lose her balance and maintains her grip on her sword. This orc is barely a threat to her anymore even though she's wounded as he lacks the skill to make proper use of his longer reach.

I feel a surge of mana coming from behind us, so both Hana and I jump backward to give Roxanne a clear view of the orcs, then a [Fireball] flies toward my opponent. He raises his shield towards his face, blocking the spell completely and only singing the wood, but now his view is completely blocked, so I lunge forward and deliver a long slash at his flank, shredding his armor further.

Hana assumes a defensive posture, hiding her sword behind her shield, and waits for the orc to strike. The pig monster, predictably, charges forward, combo-ing a slash with a shoulder check, but this time, Hana has the footing to take his charge head-on, and she counters with a stab on his shoulder from above her shield, making the orc retreat.

I [Parry] a slash and [Block] a bash, but my opponent is starting to go berserk, tiring out my arms as I lack the "Strength" and "Endurance" to go toe-to-toe with him. I need to use my "Speed" and [Dodge] more to fight against such a beast.

"MASTER!" Alissa's warning cry reaches my ears, and I reflexively jump sideways, then an arrow sinks deeply into the upper left arm of my opponent, which should be enough to weaken his shield bashes and slow his blocks. Her attack also gives me a breather, so I keep my distance for a couple of seconds

"Prepared to be screwed!" Hana taunts.

Why anger an orc? Is she trying to incite him so that he makes more mistakes?

Then she summons her beautiful, emerald, fleshy wings. The bones are covered in emerald scales that shine in the sun and the flames, creating a stunningly beautiful green glow.

She flaps her wings and gains instantaneous speed that propels her towards the orc, and the monster isn't strong enough to take her charge. He's blown away a few meters and rolls in the grass, then she loops in the air and charges at him again.

The monster immediately starts to stand up with impressive nimbleness, but he doesn't see her attack coming, and her blade sinks under his right armpit as she slices upwards. His armor is so tattered that it gives away, and her sword cleanly slices his arm off, then she follows up with a shield bash to the face.

My opponent then charges at her to aid his comrade, turning his back to me, but this gives Alissa a clear sight, and she lands an arrow on his back, then even Roxanne helps out with a [Fire Arrow] to his shoulder, the sudden pain making him trip and fall face-first onto the wet grass, and I'm right behind him.

Hana's opponent falls on his back again, and his helmet falls off, revealing his ugly green face and pig snout. She immediately steps on him, right on his left shoulder so he's unable to protect his face with his shield, then she slashes his throat and steps back.

My opponent immediately rolls on the grass and faces me, expecting my attack, but I'm much faster, so I lunge forward, getting past his defense, and jab my sword under his chin. I meet a little bit of resistance, but I put all my strength into my weapon, and even though the orc tries to grip the blade, I feel the tip pierce through the bone. My sword sinks further in, going through something fleshy and the orc begins to have a seizure, but it ends after a couple of seconds as the pig monster goes limp, finally dead.

Now that both our threats have been neutralized, I look behind me and see that the earth elemental is by Alissa, crushing small goblins with its hulking size and body of solid rock. But the important thing is that Alissa's wound has stopped bleeding as she likely drank a potion and also that Roxanne is also completely untouched, already charging another spell.

Haaran and his knights are holding back the other orcs for now, and the other shock troop squad is further away, dealing with a swarm of goblins, but they seem to be doing worse than the knights. The elemental has to remain beside Alissa and Roxanne because the stream of random goblins isn't letting down, so it's on Hana and me to tilt this battle in our favor again.

I rush to her side and cast two small [Heals], one on the sword arm and one on the lame leg.

"Better?" I ask as I land a hand on her shoulder.

She hits the arm and the leg with a closed fist then nods, and I can just hear the grin in her voice as she answers, "Better."

I summon another earth elemental, leaving me with only a small amount of mana left, then I order, "Crush those goblins!"

The elemental makes the ground tremble with its heavy footsteps, and a small number of goblins even run away in fear of it, but the rest are too frenzied to stop, so they're turned into soup.

Then I turn to the orcs and shout, "CHARGE!"

A [Fire Arrow] and a normal one fly past us as Hana and I rush forward.

Alissa's arrow sinks shallowly into an orc's thigh while another orc blocks Roxanne's [Fire Arrow] with his shield, but they both lose their momentum, and the knights immediately switch gears and go on the attack.

Now the situation has changed. Before, it was four knights versus eight orcs as Haaran and the Orc Chief duel, but now the battle turns in our favor as my fellowship comes to their aid. Unfortunately, the Chief is smart enough to understand this, and he immediately becomes enraged.

"KIIILL…!" the massive monster roars, and his orcs repeat as they become more aggressive.

Wait, what? He can speak Andraste?!

"URAAA!" Haaran roars back, and his knights repeat his warcry as they suddenly gain a second wind, almost as if his voice was magical.

"Hana! This one!" I order as I point to the nearest orc. The knights can hold on, so it's better if we take out the enemies one by one.

She takes the monster head-on while I attack from the side and slash his flank, scoring a long cut in his armor, then he tries to step back, but Roxanne surprises us with a [Fire Whip] that wraps itself around his calf.

The flame rope immediately begins to burn through the leather and gambeson, and it'll take a few seconds until the orc start to feel the heat, but the monster is scared of the fire and desperately steps back. Roxanne isn't strong enough to hold onto the whip while the orc pulls on it, but he's too clumsy and falls down on his ass as she releases the spell, which is enough of a distraction.

"Meet your death!" Hana taunts and launches a flurry of attacks, keeping the orc occupied and on the floor.

This gives me enough time to go around him and slash at his neck. In a desperate attempt to survive, he uses his sword arm to block my attack as he can't physically bring his weapon back for a parry in time, and I feel my blade scrape against his bones as it almost severs his forearm.

But with his muscles and tendons cut, his hand loses grip on his sword. Another orc comes to help, and he pushes Hana back before she can finish off the wounded one, but the newcomer receives an arrow to the shoulder in response, weakening his shield arm.

A knight comes to our aid and keeps the second orc locked in battle as the warrior has an easier time against the wounded monster, so Hana and I focus on the first orc as it stands up again, who now wields a sword with his shield arm. If an orc was unskilled with weapons before, now that he's using his non-dominant hand he's almost a non-threat.

He even receives an arrow to the chest, making him grunt in pain, but he still attacks us as it's in his nature to be unyielding. It feels like fighting a brutish amateur, so I just easily deflect his attack and counter with a slice to the belly.

Hana attacks him repeatedly to keep him busy and he actually manages to parry her, but he simply can't deal with a 2-on-1 as he forgets to keep an eye on me. So I lunge forward and sink my sword into his chest so deeply that I feel his disgusting breath fall on the top of my head, but I missed his heart.

"Grruh…" he grunts, staggered for a second by the pain, but this is a dangerous situation for my sword could easily get stuck in his body. Fortunately, Hana is smart enough to help me out, and she bashes his face while I kick his belly, and thanks to the [Sharp Blades] Blessing, my blade simply slides out as I yank it back, and then the orc stumbles backward.

Hana and I lunge forward at the same time, and we sink a sword into each of his eyes. He barely has time to struggle before his brain is sliced up, and then he goes limp. Seven more to go.

One of the orcs isn't fighting as he keeps an eye on Roxanne, his shield already singed and even glowing with a few embers. Meanwhile, Alissa launches multiple arrows at the Orc Chief's helmet, and though they only cause dents, the monster goes on the defensive, wary of receiving one in the eye, which gives Haaran a moment to breathe.

A tired knight is suddenly pushed down by an orc and he loses his shield. He desperately puts up a fight against his two opponents, and Alissa even helps with an arrow to the shoulder of one of the orcs, but he's still pulled by his legs, and the second one performs a mordhau, the murder-stroke, by hitting the knight's helmet with the guard of his sword.

The power in the strike is comparable to a mace's, and his helmet caves in. Another arrow hits the already wounded orc's arm and a knight rushes in to save his fallen companion, but the knight on the ground doesn't get up, passed out though not dead yet.

Three knights left.

Now that Alissa has changed targets, the Orc Chief resumes his attack. Haaran's white helmet is dirtied and tainted with blood (that's unlikely to be his), but he still stands strong and parries every blow.

We charge towards the next orc, and now it's a 3-on-1 as the knight easily keeps the wounded orc busy, but Hana charges the monster head-on, taking over the battle and allowing the knight to breathe for a moment. Alissa and Roxanne are supporting the knights that are outnumbered, so even with one casualty, we can still win.

"I fought goblins with a bigger sword than you!" Hana taunts.

The orc immediately goes berserk on her, and she takes him on without much problem, leaving me free to slash at him. His shield arm is already weak as he has an arrow in his shoulder, so I focus on his legs, cutting through the armor and then inflicting a deep wound on his left thigh.

He tries to step back and gain distance, but another orc is right behind him so he doesn't have anywhere to go. The resting knight joins in and the three of us gang up on the orc, then Hana continues my work and nearly severs his wounded leg off, making him fall down.

The orc behind him switches target and engages the three of us while the wounded orc crawls away, but the newcomer is no better fighter than the other orcs, and this time nobody comes to his aid. For his attempt to protect his ally, he gets a sword to the neck, and now there are only six orcs left.

The crawling orc turns around and gives us a defiant glare as he scowls, saliva dripping down his tusked mouth with every heavy breath. But all the bravery in the world isn't enough to stop us. Five orcs left.

"UROOOOO...!" the Orc Chief suddenly roars, his voice so powerful and loud that I feel my bones shake. Then the monster leader ignores Haaran's stab at his waist through an opening in his metal armor, and the huge beast leaps forward with a frightening amount of speed, surprising even Haaran.

The Chief lands in front of the nearest knight and strikes down with a flurry of savage chops, forcing the knight to fall on a knee. The orc he was fighting stabs him in the armpit, right at an opening in his armor, and the knight's arm goes limp, then the Orc Chief strikes down again, and his sword simply crushes the man's helmet.

Shit, shit, shit, shit! He's dead!

Two knights left.

I can see a dent in the Chief's longsword, but that doesn't matter since this damn monster can just use his weapon like a club with his inhuman strength!

Haaran desperately stabs the Chief in his kidney from the back, but the monster is so enraged he doesn't even feel pain anymore. He simply forces his way back to his orcs, causing a short lull in the battle as both sides reorder their lines.

The passed-out knight is recovered and splashed with an HP potion, so maybe he can still wake up. Now it's just two knights, Haaran, and us versus Five orcs and the Chief. We still have the advantage, especially if the third knight recovers.

"Alissa! Suppress the Orc Chief!" I order.

It's too hard for her to hit the little gaps between the plates of his armor, harder than hitting an eye, but the Chief is wary of her arrows and will fight more defensively if he has to keep an eye on her, so this should stop him from rushing recklessly like he just did.

Then I point to the nearest orc and shout, "Hana! This one!" And she throws herself at him.

This one is unwounded and is a bit better at defending himself, so we don't score any significant hits as he steps back continuously. Then the Chief suddenly gets in our way and we both back off. A single one of his strikes could send me flying, so even Hana is cautious.

He swings his longsword once and it clashes loudly against the emerald scales of her kite shield, and she's so surprised by the strength of his blow that she almost loses her posture. She won't receive his strikes like this again.

In a surprising maneuver, the orc we were fighting is now engaged with Haaran, but this isn't an optimal engagement. We have to gang up on the smaller orcs first.

I cautiously circle around Hana, then I start to circle around Haaran to flank the orc he's fighting. The Chief continues to push Hana back further, gaining some distance from Haaran's opponent, so now the big beast is vulnerable again to flanking attacks.

But then, suddenly, the Orc Chief leaps sideways, and a huge shadow falls over me.

Oh, no.

[Battlefield Perception] triggers and I raise my shield, but the force that hits me is so great that I'm thrown to the ground. The impact forcefully takes out the air in my lungs, but I roll with the fall to gain some distance, and I get a mouthful of moist grass and dirt.

"Don't ignore me, you worthless c-m stain!" Hana taunts, but it has no effect for the shadow falls upon me again.

I raise my shield, holding it with both hands, then the sword hits, and my left wrist locks in place, but the weight is so heavy that my hand bends in a way that it shouldn't as my wrist breaks, and all I feel is a blinding pain.

"AAAAAH…!" I hear a scream, but a second later I realize that I'm the one screaming.

I roll to the side and start to crawl away, but then I remember the Chief and look back. He's still standing over me, but now there's an arrow in his armpit while both Hana and Haaran stab him in the kidney.

Multiple arrows hit his helmet in quick succession, leaving only dents as Alissa's arrows don't have the proper tip and her bow the draw to pierce plate, but he still looks away from me, scared of receiving one through the eye. Then he suddenly turns as he swings his longsword, and both Hana and Haaran have to jump back to not get hit. The orc behind them almost skewers Haaran, but his [Battlefield Perception] is high enough to save him from being stabbed in the back.

I cast a strong [Heal] on my wrist, and my hand straightens up again with a sickening crack, but now most of my mana is gone unless I unsummon an elemental. I also feel that my wrist is sensitive and weakened, so I can't use [Block] to its fullest.

Suddenly, a huge volley of [Fireball]s fly towards the orcs, forcing them all to defend, and that brings the battlefield to a standstill for a few seconds. I look back and see that the artillery team is back, though they aren't fully rested, so they don't have a lot of mana left.

Then Silvane starts to gather an impressive amount of mana as she quietly chants, her voice too low for me to hear. The Orc Chief is so wary of spells that he immediately jumps backward, far away from his line of orc soldiers.

I stand up and prepare to rejoin the fight, but a mere couple of seconds later and the ground under the orcs turns dark-brown, then hands emerge from the earth and grab the monsters, holding them in place. That's an [Earth Magic] spell called [Soul Sand].

Hana doesn't hesitate and uses her wings to slam herself against the nearest orc stuck to the ground. He doesn't have the posture to receive her, so the impact makes him bend backward on his knees as the spell's hands keep his feet firmly in place. Then she makes a loop and lands on top of him, giving her the perfect position to stab his face repeatedly until he dies.

Four orcs to go.

The artillery squad has two melee hunters with them, and the mages are enough to keep the goblins at bay, freeing up an earth elemental, so the battle with the orcs is almost over. The other shock troop squad is holding on against the goblin swarm as they rally around the second earth elemental, and they'll be fine until we mop up over here.

Silvane runs to the unconscious knight and starts to heal him as he still hasn't woken up yet, and Haaran briefly gathers his breath then makes his way toward the Orc Chief while the rest of us deal with the trapped orcs. This is almost over.

But you should never underestimate the devious intelligence of a leader-type monster.

The Chie's ugly little eyes scan the battleground, and he gets a horrible idea. The purpose of monsters is to kill humanoids, whatever way it may be, so the Chief decides that he will kill someone, and his eyes fall on Silvane.

The pig monster suddenly charges forward, but instead of stopping to meet his charge, Haaran starts to sprint at full speed toward him, and I get a bad feeling about this situation. The young man throws himself at the Chief, and Haaran is shoved down onto the ground as the huge orc has a lot more mass, but his desperate attempt almost makes the Chief lose his balance, slowing his mad charge.

Hana also slams herself against the Chief, but her wings are losing power, and she's unable to do more than slow him down for a second. And now there's nothing between the monster and Silvane.

We lack the physical power to stop him, so I bet on magic. I unsummon Alissa's earth elemental and replace it with an electric elemental, and that triggers mana overuse, causing my head to explode with pain as I lose my hearing, but that's a fair price to pay.

"STOP HIM!" I shout, though I can't hear myself, and point at the Chief as an orb of plasma and spark appears before me. It immediately darts forward, so I follow after it.

The Chief swings its arm to bat the elemental away, but it's simply absorbed by the metal gauntlet, then it travels up its arm and starts to shock its head. The Chief's whole body goes stiff and falls down, then skids along the wet grass.

I feel my vision start to go dark, so I have to finish this up before I go blind. I lock my eyes onto the Chief's helmet as I drop my sword and shield and dive forward, then everything goes dark, but my hands touch something hard, so I grab it and pull.

There's a bit of resistance, but it quickly gives away and comes free, so I run away as I palpate it, and yep, that's the Chief's helmet.

I stop where I think Silvane should be and drop to the ground, exhausted. I can't see, I can't hear, and I'm out of mana, so I'll trust that Alissa will turn the Orc Chief's head into a pincushion.

A moment of absolute silence and darkness later, I feel a warm hand gently grab my head and push it up, but the fingers are too long to be Alissa's, so maybe they're Roxanne's? They certainly don't feel like they're Hana's, either. Then something cold touches my lips and a warm liquid slowly pours into my mouth. It's an MP potion, so I happily swallow the tasty magical water.

Once I'm done, Roxanne squeezes my hand reassuringly, and I feel something moist touch my cheek, then she releases me, and I'm allowed to rest as I wonder what did she just do to me.

Time passes awfully slowly in this silent darkness, but after an eternity, I feel my hearing start to come back first. First, I hear a buzzing, then murmuring, then a few words here and there, and then finally a proper phrase.

"How's his condition?" a male voice asks impassively.

"Still unconscious. His skull was cracked, but he'll survive," Silvane answers, sounding slightly hoarse.

"That's good. How much mana do you have?"

"Enough for a single deep wound."

He grunts in understanding, "Understood. You can start meditating, and we'll have some hunters guard you."

"Thank you," she whispers with a sigh, then I hear heavy footsteps as the supposed knight leaves.

They're quite calm, so I think that things are fine, and I'll just focus on meditating. I also can't exactly give orders to the electric elemental right now, so I dismiss it.

"You're now level sixteen."

I put all my new points into [Mana Recovery]. Even blind or with my eyes closed I can still see the system menu, somehow.

Eventually, the sounds of clashing start to die down, so I open my eyes. Things are still blurry, but I can see movement and outlines. There's a group of people around me, all sitting down, except for two that seem to be standing guard.

I meditate for a few more minutes, and now I can see things properly. The artillery squads and Silvane are beside me, meditating, while the unconscious knight is on a medical litter in front of her, and we have two melee hunters guarding us. The Orc Chief is a few meters away, dead from multiple arrows to the head, including one in each eye, and the dead knight is also nearby, a gray blanket covering his body.

My body feels fine and the headache is gone, so I stand up and ask, "What's the situation?"

"Wow..." one of the guards grunts in surprise and nearly jumps on the spot, but he quickly recomposes himself and solemnly answers, "There are still goblins around, so the shock troops are dealing with them, but the orcs are all dead, and now it's just a slaughter."

My earth elemental is still alive and killing, so I have it share its vision with me, but all I see is sickening blood and gore, and I immediately cut the sense sharing. Then I tap the fellowship bond and sense that the girls are further ahead, near the cliff wall at the back of the village.

The vision made me a little unsteady on my feet, so I sit down again.

Another ten minutes pass, and the sounds of dying goblins dwindles further, then Silvane suddenly opens her eyes and gives me a surprised look.

"You can see again?" she quietly asks, her voice less hoarse.

"Yeah, I have some resistance to overuse," I proudly answer.

She nods in understanding then gives me a tired, but still beautiful smile. "Let me just say it now, thank you. You saved me from the Orc Chief." And she lowers her head respectfully.

This is the third time I save someone… and I still don't know how to respond to it.

"You're welcome," I whisper with a gentle smile as I try to look cool, but it still comes out awkward to me. It isn't even my job to save people, so I can't use the doctor/fireman response of "I'm just doing my job."

What would a superhero say…?

No, that'd be too corny, even for me, so I just stay quiet. At least this way a simple "You're welcome" allows me to look a little bit cool.

And then I notice that I have most of my MP back, so I summon another earth elemental, but then my head starts to hurt.

Oops, I overdid it again.

"Go help my fellowship," I order as I wince in pain, and the hulking mass of rock "nods," then immediately runs towards them, its footsteps causing small tremors.

"You really should rest; the battle is already won," Silvane concernedly advises.

"I can't just stand still while my women are fighting," I answer reflexively. At least this time I do sound a bit cool, though it's rather embarrassing to call them "my women."

The pretty silver girl gives me a warm, rather teasing smile, then shrugs and uses her staff to stand up. "Very well, then I'll join Lord Haaran, too," she calmly declares then takes the same path as the elemental.

Now that there's nothing to do, I take a quick look around. The wood huts that goblins use as homes are extremely basic and also extremely weak. The flames are still raging and the wood crackles from the heat, but one wouldn't even be able to guess that a village once existed here as all the huts have already collapsed into piles of embers.

And now that my life isn't in danger anymore, the heat and smell of smoke is starting to get annoying. At least the view has a grim allure to it as the wind kicks up clouds of sparks that then fall down like snowflakes.

But even staring at the flames isn't enough to calm down my anxious heart, so I decide to take a quick look at one of the elementals' vision again. It's side-by-side with Hana and a knight, crushing a group of dozens of frightened goblins cornered against a cliffside.

Alissa and Roxanne must be behind them for I see arrows sink into the heads of the ugly green monsters with frightening accuracy. But then I notice that there are women and children among the goblins… ugly, green, monstrous women, children, and even the elderly.

Some weakly clutch spears as they desperately attempt to defend themselves, but none of them even gets close to scoring a hit, and those without weapons can't do anything but wait for death as they cry in grief.

I feel sick, and now even worse than the last time I took a peek, so I cut the sense sharing. But my mind becomes so agitated I have to meditate to calm myself down again.

My head slowly stops hurting as the sounds of battle finally come to an end. Then there's only silence, occasionally broken by the crackling of wood as the fire still consumes the remains of the village.

A few minutes later, I hear footsteps, so I open my eyes and see a group of ridiculously bloodied warriors slowly approaching us. Then my eyes meet with Alissa's, and she immediately starts running towards me, looking quite relieved to see me awake, but also exhausted from the battle.

She takes off her leather cap then falls on her knees before me and pulls me into a hug. "You overdid it again," she poutily complains.

"Yeah… couldn't be helped…" I guiltily reply as I hold back the urge to bury my head in her furry fox ears.

"I know…" she mumbles with a sigh. "But it's over now."

She smells of blood, ashes, and sweat, but I don't care. We're safe now; it's over.

Then I notice that one of the hunters is carrying in his arms a body covered in cloth, and I believed that the diseased is the red-skinned oni from Akros. Their fellowship was the shock squad responsible for holding back the goblin swarm at that death trap of an entrance. Because we were held back by the orcs, we took too long to relieve them, and they paid for it with a fatal casualty.

There's also a wounded hunter being carried in a medical litter. He's missing his right arm, but a reddish skin seems to cover the wound, and he carries his severed arm on his lap. With either [Heal] or [Regeneration] it can still be reattached.

We slowly break the hug, then we stand up again and I scan everyone's faces. I see a mix of happy and solemn expressions, but everyone is relieved that this is finally over.

Then Haaran arrives, also dripping with blood. He removes his helmet, revealing a bruise on his left cheekbone, then he also removes his gauntlet and takes Silvane's hand, giving me a craving for Alissa's touch.

"We're done here; let's move," he declares, and we're all eager to obey.

"I'll use my elementals to carry the bodies," I solemnly offer.

He flashes me a grateful but painful smile. "I'd appreciate it…"

So I give the order to my summons. They both look a bit beaten and cracked, but they'll hold on, and a single [Clean] on each is enough to remove all of the blood since stone doesn't absorb liquids like cloth does.

The MP we save on the elementals is used by Hana as she requires a couple of [Clean]s to not attract every monster in a kilometer as the blood has seeped deep into her brigandine. Then I also [Heal] her and the unconscious knight once, but it gives me a headache again and exhaustion creeps in.

Silvane reattaches the wounded hunter's arm, but just like my broken wrist, it's best if he doesn't use it for a while. I drink half an HP potion and splash the rest on my hand, but internal wounds like broken bones are slower to heal than cuts.

As we make our way back through the woods, everyone starts pulling out snacks like skewered meat to eat as we walk. It's only 10 AM, but even I'm feeling hungry after so much fighting, and a bit of water to go with the food is enough to give me a second wind.

The scouts killed all monsters that were anywhere near our path, so the way back is clear, and our journey is uneventful.

At around 11:30 AM, a scout suddenly appears and rushes towards Haaran.

"The camp is under attack! Orcs!" he yells desperately.

Time freezes for a second.

That's why the Orc Chief was in the village. He was visiting the goblins to negotiate, likely trying to establish an alliance, but this also means that the rest of his orcs must've been camping nearby, and now these leaderless monsters have stumbled upon our camp. Different monster types don't mix so easily unless they're of a higher species, so he could've even been a breeder-type, too! We were so tired from the battle that we forgot to think about this!

Haaran turns to us with an intense stare and starts to bark orders, "Ryder! Drop the bodies! Artillery, you'll take them along with the wounded! Everyone else, run!"

And we obey.

"I'll ride Alissa and go on ahead! Elementals, follow me!" I order as I look back, and Hana gives me a conflicted look.

But there's no time to argue. I grab Alissa's equipment, and she transforms, then I mount her, and she immediately dashes forward, the earth elementals running beside us with a surprising amount of speed as their massive weight leaves deep imprints upon the soft dirt.

We spend tense minutes in silence, but I can't find anything to say as I'm too tired to think of a strategy.

"We just need to keep them occupied," I blurt out.

"Yes, Master," she obediently answers.

And then we reach the camp soon after. We see a chaotic mess as the tents are burning, and there are benches, tables, cooking wares, clothes, and food strewn about everywhere. It's just part of the orc nature to start destroying things even before the battle is over.

Honest Shield, the fellowship responsible for defending the camp, is a group of five hunters, with three shield users, including Targua, one archer, and another archer-mage hybrid. They're fighting against nine orcs, and we see that they've already lost three, so they were originally twelve. The Space mages are also fighting, but they only have simple swords and leather armor, so they're on the defensive, and two mages are already dead.

"Elementals, protect the Space mages!" I order as I dismount, then I immediately hand Alissa's equipment as she transforms back.

We arrive behind the orcs, who are slow to react as they're too into their battle to understand the danger of an archer shooting from their blind spot. Alissa draws her bow and launches an arrow, which sinks into the back of the head of one of the monsters, killing him instantly. Eight orcs to go.

Only now that one of theirs is dead that they understand the danger and decide to attack us. But Honest Shield doesn't let the orcs disengage as the brave warriors go on the offensive, so only two orcs come our way while the rest of their line turns around to not get another arrow in the back.

Alissa scores a few more hits, but no more kills, and I stand in the path of the approaching orcs, ready to take them head-on, but my wrist is still fragile and my mind is drained. All I can do is stay on the defensive.

One block, two blocks, a parry with my sword, and a deflection with my shield. I bash the face of the orc on my left with the edge of my shield, but my wrist complains, so I won't do that again.

The orc on the right becomes more aggressive, and he tries to circle around me, but a quick arrow to his flank tells him not to try that again. We're in a standoff as they could try to rush Alissa, but that'd leave them vulnerable to being stabbed in the back, while trying to surround me will leave them open to Alissa, and the orcs lack the teamwork to commit to either.

One earth elemental suddenly crumbles as it was too weakened, but the other one is enough to protect the Space mages from the two orcs attacking them. Honest Shield is unable to help as they deal with four angry orcs, but then I notice that Targua is barely holding onto his position as his posture begins to crumble, likely tired since they did already kill three orcs.

My two opponents resume their attack, and I manage to hit the butt of the protruding arrow in one of the orcs with the flat side of my sword, forcing it further in. He squirms and roars in pain as he steps back, but he's starting to become enraged and soon won't care for the pain anymore.

The orc on the left doesn't let me rest as he lets out a flurry of savage chops, making my shield wrist explode in pain. It won't hold like this, and Alissa seems to notice my struggle for she unleashes three arrows in quick succession into his chest, which don't sink too deeply due to his gambeson, but at least he stops his attack and steps back.

I cast [Heal] on my wrist, and my head starts to hurt again, but then my vision becomes a bit blurry.

No! I have to hold it in! I can't lose my sight right now!

In anger, I slash at the orc on the left, making him retreat, then the orc on the right leaps forward as he strikes. I meet his sword with mine and nearly fall on a knee due to his strength pushing me off-balance, but I deflect his blade away and counter.

I connect an upwards slash at his armpit, slicing through his flimsy armor and cutting open his green flesh, then I [Dodge] backward and feel the tip of his sword slide down along my left cheek.

Too close. I almost lost an eye.

But I must've cut a tendon for the orc slows down and his attacks become weaker. Then I feel something wet run down my neck.

The orc on the left stops attacking completely for a moment, his breath heavy and erratic. I can see under his cotton cap that he's growling as he salivates, likely in pain from Alissa's arrows in his chest, and I bet one must've pierced a lung too.

An opportunity appears before me as I see his eyes lose focus for a second, so I lunge toward him. The orc on the right tries to stop me with a slash to my shoulder, but it lacks so much power that my [Wind Armor] Blessing is enough to push the blade away.

I bash the left orc's face, hiding my sword under my shield so that he doesn't see the thrust, and I feel the tip sink into his chest. The [Sharp Blade] Blessing makes itself useful again by letting me almost fully ignore his armor.

But I can't risk getting my weapon stuck in the orc, so I pull back after sinking a good length in, and I assume it was enough to pierce his lung again as the tip comes out quite bloody.

[Battlefield Perception] triggers, but I'm not fast enough, and I wince in pain as the orc on the right manages to land a proper stab at my flank. Only a couple of scales of my armor break, and his sword doesn't get through the padded gambeson under them, but the attack still hurts my ribs quite a lot.

He pays for it with an arrow to his gut, and he retreats as he doesn't want to give the chance for Alissa to put another in. He's already hurting, and he barely managed to wound me, but he shows a modicum of intelligence by becoming quite cautious, not giving me another opening.

We spend a long minute staring at each other, trading weak blows and feints as both sides wait for another opportunity. Then I notice that they're actually growling, trying to intimidate me. I've just been so focused on the battles that I didn't pay attention to their growls, but now that I do… I couldn't care less.

Then I see Targua fall to the ground.

Shit…

But a moment later comes the roar that brings me relief, "URAAAAAAAAH!"

Haaran and his men charge from behind the trees, the rest of the hunters following after them, and I notice that nobody is wearing plate armor anymore, only scale.

Hana suddenly lands in front of me, and I simply drop my shield, too tired to hold it anymore.

The battle is over for me, and everyone is safe, so I just retreat back to the nearest tree, then sit down and drink another HP potion as I watch.

"I'll butcher your shriveled thing for daring to hurt Master!" Hana taunts as she launches herself onto the wounded orcs. They step back in fear as they're fairly wounded, but they still fight back once Hana engages them.

Then a [Fire Whip] holds the right orc by his leg. He stumbles just like the orc she previously used this spell on, and this time Hana decapitates him in an instant with a glorious, perfect slash. His head goes flying, spilling blood everywhere, and even I am awed by this scene.

But she doesn't stop and thrusts her sword into the belly of the other orc. He tries to bash her with his shield, but she easily [Block]s his attack with hers, then she pulls out her sword and immediately stabs him again, this time under his armpit, and maims his sword arm.

"GRAAAAAH…!" the orc pushes her back with a roar, becoming fully berserk now that he's about to die. He even throws his shield at her and draws a dagger, but he's too wounded to pose a threat to her. If I was the one fighting, then I would've been in a bit of trouble.

He decides to literally throw himself at her to push her down and use his bigger size and mass to his advantage, but she crouches and receives him with her shield. He lands right on top of it, and so she just has to tilt backward as she stands to throw him away.

The heavy orc falls on his back with a heavy thud then even rolls twice. He tries to get up quickly, but now he's shieldless, and there are two deadly accurate enemies with a clear line of sight to him.

He raises his head, growling and scowling, and a [Fire Arrow] arrow pierces his forehead at the same time that a normal arrow pierces his eye, then he promptly drops dead.

The other knights and hunters make quick work of the remaining orcs as they are heavily outnumbered now, so I unsummon my last elemental and use the rest of my mana to cast a [Heal] on my wrist to make the pain stop.

I see Silvane rush toward Targua, then Alissa and Hana turn to me, and I believe that now it's all over, so I close my eyes and let myself lose consciousness for a while.

Next thing I know, I'm looking at the blue sky with the sun up high, which means it must be past midday now. I raise my head to look around, and I see Alissa and Hana taking a nap beside me, with a number of other hunters all over the clearing also laying down on sleeping bags.

Five of the hunters are covered in bandages as they're wounded and there isn't enough mana to heal everyone. My head still hurts and my muscles are so sore I can barely muster the energy to cast a [Heal], so I just close my eyes again and properly fall asleep.

I wake up feeling stiff but a bit more rested. Alissa is right beside my sleeping bag, staring into the forest as her hand plays with the scales of my armor. She doesn't notice me waking up, so I just look around and find Hana eating at a half-burnt table, then I see that Roxanne is inside her personal tent, also resting.

"Okay, now it should be over," I quietly remark, almost making Alissa jump in surprise. Then I lay down my head on her lap with a wry smile, and she immediately starts stroking my hair as she pouts.

But her expression quickly softens, then she looks ahead again into the nothingness as she tiredly remarks, "I hope so. There should be no more loose ends unless there are more orcs hidden somewhere for some dumb reason… or something."

Even her brain is starting to give up.

I notice that her fingers feel a bit rough and her caressing is rather weak, so I cast a small [Heal] on her hands, but then my heart starts palpitating.

Oh…! I think the overuse is stacking, so maybe I shouldn't cast any more magic for a while.

"You should've saved that mana for the wounded," she quietly complains with a frown.

But I smile guiltily. "Sorry, not sorry. I'm selfish. Also, it was just a small [Heal]."

She pouts again for a second but then sighs and caresses me harder. "Thank you, Master."

Then my stomach growls.

"Oh… well. I guess I should crawl to our tent," I hum embarrassedly.

Unfortunately, Alissa has to help me walk because I'm too unsteady on my feet. Fortunately, our tent was undamaged in the fire as it was the furthest away from the others.

And so I slowly eat my meal. Roasted veggies, mutton, and bread filled with bean paste. After I'm full, I take out my armor, drop down on the bed, and rest a little bit more.

Intermission 3 - Hana

I'm really glad I chose him. The story I heard about the Symbol was neither a lie, an exaggeration, nor a fluke. He's actually someone dependable.

He gave his all to protect someone he barely knows, someone he has no duty to help, yet he goes to battle until the end, then he put his trust in me to protect him when he's vulnerable. If I don't follow him into the depths of hell and bring him back safe and sound, then my life has no value. If I can't do at least this much, then I'm simply unworthy of serving him as he rightfully deserves someone better.

But there's also a side of him that's really cute. He's so shy that he needs me to save him from a conversation with a stranger, and I don't find this to be a bad trait. It's just too adorable that the hero who's brave enough to save strangers is such a small man with a weak impression on others.

But it's all a lie. He's a scholar, a warrior, a mage, a kind man, and a hero. He's someone I want to protect with all my power, and may the gods help me do as much.

A note from Manasong

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Chapter 11: Vows - Part 1

A note from Manasong

Attention, 23/Oct/2022 edit: My writing skill improved a lot along the way I wrote this novel, and the early chapters have noticeably worse quality than the latest ones, so I'm reviewing the grammar, fixing small mistakes, and overall improving the earlier parts of the story. Please keep in mind that from this chapter on the story can seem quite clumsy, silly, weird, a bit cringy, and just badly written at times.

Also, attention: to conform to the limit of sexual content allowed in a novel, I've censored this chapter. You can look for the uncensored version here.

If certain parts with sexual content look off or with paragraphs missing, it's likely that they were censored.

It's 3PM. I wake up and Alissa is besides me while Hana is stroking her hair.

I still can't properly cast magic.

"Is Roxanne okay? I wanna take a bath," I ask.

"She was helping wash the wounded so I know she's at least way better than you, master," Hana says.

"I'll go get her," Alissa says and gets up.

I slowly move outside and pull out the bath items. I sit down next to the bath and wait. Roxanne comes over, she's disheveled, her robes are dirty and one of the glass lenses is cracked. I want a mirror, what do I look like if I'm worse than her?

"Well, you look like shit, Wolf," she says.

"Thanks… I way overdid it, I can't cast magic."

"That's… just like you, right?" She gives me a wry smile.

She casts [Water Wall] and then throws a single [Fireball] in the tub and the water is steaming.

She leaves and Hana and Alissa help me take a bath. It feels immensely refreshing, much of the soreness goes away. Alissa shows me her hand technique while Hana kisses me. Honestly Alissa's hand is as good as mine but her hands are softer and more delicate, I feel like I will melt and pass out on the bath.

We get out and Roxanne has her turn. After a while she finishes and I recover the equipment. Then I go back to bed and rest, I don't feel sleepy now, though.

"That will leave a scar," Alissa says, she traces her fingers on my cheek.

"Don't use [Regeneration] on it, it will make you more handsome," says Hana.

At 5PM I crawl out of bed, I'm strong enough to use magic again.

"Who's the worst?" I ask.

"Targua," says Silvane. She's sprawled on a chair, she looks exhausted.

"You should go rest and sleep. I can heal them until the wounds aren't threatening anymore," I say.

"I won't say no to that..." Silvane gets up and leaves.

There's still a knight here watching the wounded. Silvane goes to her spare tent, which is much smaller than the other they had.

Targua is unconscious, he has a deep cut on his belly that's still bleeding a little, I think he got skewered. He has a few cuts on his arms and a nasty bruise on his ribs. I go for the cut and the bruise. I cast two heavy [Heals] and my head is back to hurting again. My mana is full, it's just that I have been overusing my magic.

I look at the others, I heal the space mage with a lung puncture, I heal the head of the knight who got a concussion, I heal the space mage who had a diagonal cut through his entire front and I heal the broken ribs of the hunter who got stepped on.

Done, they are all saved for now. My head is splitting and I need to rest again. I go back to bed and ask Hana for a head massage, it actually helps a bit.

I eat dinner and go to sleep. I don't let Alissa participate on the watch, I'm afraid of nightmares, but Hana has to because I can't summon my dogs tonight.

Today is the 19th.

My charisma increased by 1 (now 11), was that because of the scar?

We wake up and break camp. Targua and a hunter with a broken leg still need to be carried so we use a makeshift stretcher. Me and Silvane heal them more but we are still tired and our bodies overused mana. I have to cast [Swift Foot] on myself to keep up with the walking speed.

Alissa participates on the scouting to help the tired scouts. There weren't that many monsters since we came through the path we cleared. A few naked goblins, a single Young Ogre and two packs of Mossy Fangpines. I have no energy to focus on fighting so I just make sure to keep straight and walking. Soon enough noon comes but Haaran doesn't tell us to stop, we are close to the border, we will rest once we are out.

The trees open up and finally we see the short grassland. On the other side of the grassland is the road, beyond the roads are our wagons and a small group of city guards. They come running to us when we appear.

Haaran explains the situation to them and their expressions go somber. We eat a quick lunch and I don't waste anytime and get on my wagon. The rest of Akros enter but they remain mostly quiet this time, it seems Alissa won the competition with the dwarf girl.

"What happened to the bodies?" I whisper to Alissa.

"A space mage must be carrying it, the bodies don't rot on the [Item Box] and it's also a more dignified way of carrying it," she answers.

Well, that's interesting, but it makes me uncomfortable to think of a human body inside of my "Items".

I rest my eyes and take a nap while the wagon rocks on.

We reach the town by dusk. Silas, the Lord, and a group of priests wait for us at the city gates. They likely thought the worst since we are late in our schedule.

Haaran, still with a bruised face comes forward and shakes the hand of his father. They gaze at each other so powerfully it even affects me who's just observing from far away, it's like seeing a Renaissance painting in real life. I see a faint smile form at the face of the Lord.

Silas takes us to the barracks and an army of scribes wait for us. We sit in front of the scribes and they collect our reports. I'm so tired I absentmindedly answer their questions and retell our story. The scribe loses some of his composure when he hears about the Orc Chief and he frowns when we reach the part of the attack on the camp.

When it's over it's already 10PM. I just pull out the flying dinghy and Roxanne pilots us home. We take a quick bath, then dinner and direct to bed. Today was blur.

Today is the 20th.

It's over. Another crisis, another nightmare, another fight. It's over and now we are safe. The scene of Hana being suppressed keeps in my mind, I don't want to see that repeat but I know I'll have to fight again. If it's not because of me it's because of them, I can't change that these women are warriors. I'll just have to enjoy the moments we have and make sure they never suffer, make sure they never die.

I'm the one who wakes up first, I slowly wake up Alissa by caressing her ears. At the same time I caress Hana's arm scales with the tip of my fingers. Then Alissa turns and I kiss her deeply. I want you so much Alissa.

Hana wakes and moves her hand over my body. I turn around and it's her turn for the kiss. I get on top of Hana and fondle both of them.

"You look energetic today, master," Alissa says while she grabs my member.

"I'm just happy we are all here, together," I say, breaking the kiss, "I'm glad I have you two… I really am. I love you, both of you, a lot."

I always believed love is something that grows on you with time, that it should be a deep feeling that you shouldn't rush. But the thing that I feel about these two women is not just lust or obsession, I trust them, I know I can risk my life together with them. I want to make them happy from the bottom of my heart and I know they are doing the same for me.

Is this the "Suspension Bridge Effect"? I don't know, I don't care anymore all I know is that I'm happy and safe with them and I want to keep it this way.

Hana grins and looks at Alissa, then back at me. Alissa is frozen and her eyes are wide open.

"I love you too, master," Hana says without a hint of shame.

"I-I l-lo-ve-ve y-you t-too, m-master!" Alissa stutters and shakes.

"Then show it to me," I say.

I push my hand between Alissa's legs, she pulls my head and kisses me. This time it's she who's eager and pushes her tongue inside my mouth. I move my body a little and push my hand towards Hana, too.

I bend Alissa and hug her from behind, then I reach her ears and bite them.

"HMNYA!" She screams amid moans. Hana laughs.

I hug Alissa from behind and put my head besides her ear.

"I love you, Alissa," I whisper.

She squirms and her tail freezes.

"I love you, deeply within my heart, I trust you with my life," I whisper again.

Her breath is erratic, she's trying to mutter something.

"You don't have to say anything right now, tell me when you can," I whisper again and she stops talking.

I take a minute of rest, then it's Hana turn, who's waiting for me with her legs spread.

"I love you too Hana. You are mine, forever. I will make you happy and I will entrust you my life," I say.

"There's nothing else for me to... say, master. I already said I would give... you my everything. I love you, master," she smirks amid moans.

I'm spent, my body strength isn't fully recovered yet. I flop down between Hana and Alissa.

Alissa hugs me tight from behind.

"I love you, master. I love you, I love you, I love you, I love you..." Alissa repeats and her voice dies down, she's almost crying. I hear hear tail hitting the sheets rapidly.

Hana brings my face to her breasts and kisses the top of my head.

I let some silent tears, I wanna stay like this forever.

After a long time Alissa breaks the hug, she and Hana have to go clean themselves and make breakfast, also another sheet needs to be washed. I stay to look at my stats.

[Mana Overuse Resistance] increased by 1 (now 2), incredibly [Summoning Magic] increased by 5, is this because I have a lot of knowledge on [Summoning Magic] now? [Light Magic] increased by 1 (now 9+2), [Sword Use] increased by 1 (now 9+5), [Redirect Mana] increased by 1 (now 2) and [Mana Control] increased by 1 (now 0+5). My "Magic Power" increased by 5 (now 225) and MP by 35 (now 490).

Wolf Ryder Skill Report

Physical

Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level
Sword Use | 9+5 | Dodge | 2+5 | Parry | 1+5
Block | 2+7 | Shield Bash | 0+1

Magical

Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level
Sense Mana | 0+5 | Mana Control | 0+5 | Mana Recovery | 7+0
Mana Efficiency | 2+4 | Reduced Mana Cost | 3+0 | Mana Overuse Resistance | 0+2
Blessing Magic | 10+0 | Light Magic | 9+2 | Summoning Magic | 20+5
Redirect Mana (creator) | 2

Miscellaneous

Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level
Andraste Language | 10+0 | Dismantling | 0+1 | Enhanced Semen Recharge | 0+1
OBS: Level means (free point)+(trained point)

Now that I think about it, were there any humanoids at the goblin village? If it truly was a breeder village then it must have, but I didn't see anybody… oh… I don't want to think about this anymore. The hunter advice book says that people are considered dead the moment they are captured because they never come back, neither in body or in mind. There were no humanoids in that village.

I get up and go help with breakfast, thinking about this will ruin my mood.

We have a nice selection of cold meat cuts, bread, sheep cheese, and butter. With a few leaves and a mild herb sauce similar to ranch the sandwiches we can make are pretty good. Alissa also prepared a strong black tea, we have sugar now and we use it sparingly on tea.

Roxanne seem very content this morning, she will go back to work on Moonlight Moss now.

"Actually, I have an idea. I thought about an interesting way to process the moss," Roxanne says.

"The brain needs time to rest so it can process information and develop. Regular breaks should always be part of your routine. Did you ever get an interesting idea during the bath or before sleep?" I ask.

"Well… yeah, it happened a few times..." She says.

"Same principle, take your mind off things for a while and your brain will have the time to grow."

"Huh… No wonder you have a blessing. Alright! I will work hard and rest even harder!" Roxanne says jokingly.

"Something like this would be on par with your personality," says Alissa.

"Ah, Alissa. The wedding is gonna be at 5PM, how's it gonna be? I know nothing about marriages here," I ask.

"There's a small ceremony where they say their vows towards each other in front of the priest and write their names on the registry. Then it's a party," she answers.

I get a shiver.

"I… don't like parties… ," I say.

Hana snorts, Roxanne shrugs.

"Well we don't have to stay long. Just enough for dinner and some talk."

"I should leave early, you should stay longer."

Alissa turns her head away and thinks.

"Do we have to take some gifts?" I ask.

"If you wish, but since we don't know how are the needs of the house we have to think of something special."

"Perhaps a decoration? Or maybe some expensive tea that you like," Roxanne suggests.

"Tea? Does she even like tea? Shouldn't it be something that's useful for her or something she likes?" I ask.

"I don't know. But it's not about whether she likes it or not, a present should be something that you enjoy and wants to share," Alissa answers.

I guess I'm too practical with gifts.

"Then I guess tea might be okay. I would prefer if it was coffee or chocolate, though."

"Coffee?" Asks Roxanne.

"A bean that you brew and make coffee, somewhat like tea."

"Never heard of it," she continues.

"Anyway, let's go in the afternoon and get the tea," I say.

"Ah, master. You should visit Ciel now then," says Alissa.

"Really?"

"Yes, she was interested in your adventures. If she hears you participated in the extermination and didn't even show up after she might get sad."

Well, she's a good person, I guess.

"Then, do you want to come?" I ask.

Alissa thinks for a bit, she looks a bit worried. What is going on?

"Alright, let's go together then," she answers.

I ride Alissa to the temple, we ask for Ciel and she's healing at the clinic, it's a in front of the temple. We wait at the lobby for half an hour until she starts her break. Then she invites us into an empty room.

"Sorry to bother you during your break," I say.

"No bother, a break is to be used relaxing or talking to others," Ciel says with a smile.

"Well, anyway. We just came back yesterday, we were on the goblin extermination request the guildmaster organized.

Ciel opens her eyes wide and then sighs. She could have healed someone from the expedition yesterday and seen the damage.

"Surprising, but not unexpected," she chuckles.

I shrug.

"Yep. I might have to really accept my nickname."

"Nickname?"

Alissa tries to contain a smile.

"After the Symbol I gained the nickname 'Good Luck'. Nobody is using it but it's just a matter of time before it's known."

Nicknames appear on the guild "Notable Hunts" and "Confirmed Kills" boards.

"All heroes had nicknames, there's no option but for master to accept it."

I cringe at these words.

"I don't wanna be a hero."

"Well, a hero is title given to others, there's no way you will have a choice in this matter," Ciel says.

"Se-seriously, let's stop talking about this it's giving me chills," I ask.

"Okay, okay. Tell me how it went, I only heard how the wounded got hurt, I don't know much else," Ciel relents.

"Ok, but. Why are you interested in my stories?" I ask.

"Well..." She looks away for a second, "I did say you were an interesting person, right?"

I don't feel like probing her further. We retell the story of the expedition, Alissa seems excited and proud. We end up also telling her about how the research on [Golemancy] and my small talent with [Summoning Magic] is going.

"Hohoh, you will get your 'Scholar' title soon enough," says Ciel.

"What you mean? Does 'Scholar' appear on my status like my nickname?

"Yes, there's a few titles like 'Scholar', 'Knight', 'Great Merchant' or 'Great Adventurer' and many other unique ones that appear once you accomplish something."

"What does a title do?"

"It's just recognition."

I'm rather ambivalent about it then.

"The story of your expedition gave me a bit of nostalgia," Ciel says.

"Hm? Were you an adventurer, Miss Ciel?" Asks Alissa.

"No, but I was warrior priestess. Once in a while we join the guard and explore the Sea of Trees. I also traveled for a little while with the Templar Knights."

"Oh, now that's interesting. What weapon did you use?" I ask.

"A glaive."

Me and Alissa lift our eyebrows in surprise.

"What's with the surprised faces? This robe doesn't show my figure, I'm pretty strong," and she lifts an arm and flexes, nothing can be seen behind the loose robes.

"They certainly don't," I say.

Ciel looks dejected.

"I'm sorry. That was rude, it's obvious you are beautiful," I correct myself.

"T-that's not e-exactly what I was talking about, but thank you."

Damn, I'm smooth.

Alissa smirks at me. What's with you today?

"Do you miss those days, Miss Ciel?" Alissa asks.

"W-well, no, I'm fine with healing people here," Ciel says while averting her eyes.

"That wasn't a very confident answer," I say.

Ciel shrugs.

"Those weren't bad days, it was just a choice I made… well anyway, my break time is over. Thank you for visiting, please come again Mr. Ryder and Miss Alissa," she says with a smile.

We say our goodbyes and leave.

"Master, I know this is presumptuous of me but would you invite Miss Ciel to the fellowship?" Alissa asks.

"Wha-what?"

"You have seen it too, she misses the fight. She only needs a good reason to go back."

"Ok, but what reason would she have to join us, specifically?"

"Well. First, you are basically the town's hero, after this expedition the Lord should have his eyes on you and he will likely try to reward you with something special, which means you are a competent adventurer. Second, she's already very interested in your personality, you two have a good relationship with your religious talks so I'm she believes you are a good person. Third, you already have plenty of women in the fellowship, this means you are trustworthy around women. Fourth, she's unmarried."

"W-wha n-no w-we, ah, oh, uh…"

Alissa looks at me confused.

"What made you confused?" She asks, tilting her head.

"Why did you mention marriage?!"

"Ciel is getting past normal marriage age, you could easily pursue her. I'm a bit surprised you didn't, even Roxanne would accept you."

"Master?"

"Yes?"

"Are you okay?"

"Yes."

"You don't look okay."

"Is that so?"

"Can you pull a chair and sit down?"

"Ok."

I pull a chair from my "Items" and sit, it's quite comfortable.

"Master…"

"Yes?"

"We really need to talk about this."

"Oh, what is it?"

"You should pursue Ciel and Roxanne."

Hm.

"I don't understand why you are so confident with me and Hana while you act like this with Ciel and Roxanne."

Huh.

"Perhaps it's because we are slaves? Now you are scared of the real thing?"

"AH! NO!"

"C-calm down…"

"I'm not… a bad person… I'm not… using you…"

"What are you saying? You are not a bad person, what are you talking about 'using you'?"

"I…"

Alissa won't let me escape, Alissa won't let me run. It's true, because Alissa and Hana were slaves I took their feelings lightly. It's why it was difficult for me to accept that their love is real, it's why I was feeling guilty of abusing their bodies, it's why I'm so scared right now, it's why I think I'm a bad person.

I used Alissa and Hana as a way to find comfort and safety on this fucking scary world, then I fell in love with them, it doesn't change the fact that I used them before that. But now that we are talking about marriage, how a real relationship might start, I get reminded of what I did, of what love should really be. Alissa and even Hana do not see themselves as my lovers, even if they say they love me they are still my slaves and now we are casually talking about marrying and bringing more women to my bed while they stay as my slaves, below my wife.

That still doesn't even touch how I already had a wife on Earth and I cheated on her with these two. That was just a problem I decided to forget, to push it away so I could remain sane and happy. Can I do the same to Roxanne and Ciel that I did to Lily? Could I abandon them if I found a way back to my world? Marriage means creating permanent roots here. Now even worse, I didn't even consider Alissa's and Hana's feelings, I still wished for a way back even while I was with them, even I didn't consider them to be my real lovers.

"If I were one day to return to my homeland there might be a chance I can't take back you, or Hana, or any woman I marry."

Alissa freezes.

I feel like crying.

"I just ignored it because I wanted company, I wanted comfort because I was scared and lonely. I bought you and Hana but I didn't consider your feelings if I were to ever abandon you. I'm sorry… I don't know what I should do," I lower my head and let the tears run.

Silently Alissa hugs my head.

I have a responsibility, I have a decision to make. Whoever I abandon will be hurt.

God might have fucked me over but it's still my decision to make.

I'm the weak one who cried for help, who then got saved and protected.

I have to take responsibility over my actions.

Neither choice is perfect, neither world is simple, neither outcome is desirable.

There's no logical choice.

I just have to follow my heart.

And my heart tells me one thing.

"I will stay with you. I won't go back, I will stay with you forever," I say.

Alissa hugs me tighter.

I don't know how long we stood there. I don't care how many eyes looked at us, all they saw was a young couple crying and hugging. All I know is that on this day, I become a different person, I cast out my old name. From this day on, I'm Wolf "Good Luck" Ryder.

I don't really know why I never told Alissa the truth. I guess I was just running from it, trying to forget Earth, trying to forget what I did to Lily...

"I will tell you the truth of my homeland."

"W-what?" Alissa says in a hoarse voice.

"Why I left, why I don't talk about it, why I don't know anything about this world, why I'm so different, and why I won't go back. I think Roxanne should hear it too and if we want to invite Ciel she will also need to hear it. Let's go back home."

We reach home at 10PM and call Hana and Roxanne to the dining table.

"Master, your eyes are red. What's going on?" Hana asks, worried. Roxanne looks the same.

"I wanna tell the truth."

They stay quiet and sit down.

"First of all, the thing that explains me the most is that I might come from another realm."

"What do you mean by that?" Asks Roxanne.

"Exactly that, the gods can see other realms, right? Well, my realm is different. There's no magic, humanoid gods, other races or monsters, there's only humans there. My realm is called Earth."

I tell them my life story. I was born in 2019 in Brazil, I grew up playing games and reading stories, I entered the university and graduated with a robotics degree, then I immigrated to Canada and married Lily at 30. During the ceremony I was transported here. I explained games as board games but much more advanced, they kind of understood it, there's magical board games that are similar to table-top Warhammer 40k. I explained robotics as similar to [Summoning Magic] and possibly very similar to [Golemancy].

It was very hurtful to talk to them about Earth, my past life. Remembering my few friends, my family, my Lily. All those people that I have decided to abandon, everything I built on Earth will remain unfinished. I will never be able to feel the happiness of those whom I loved, or the things I loved to do. I'm sorry Mom, Dad, Sis and Bro, Tito and Lala. Goodbye.

Then I told them how I appeared on this world and survived, my strange abilities to manipulate skill points and how I can change Alissa's and Hana's skill points. How my world has an entirely different common sense and how I was as careful as I could to keep a low profile. How I might be cursed/blessed to be a hero or to live an "interesting life", even though I want none of that I can still see and predict the "isekai hero" tropes. How I had nightmares about the monsters I killed until I slept with Alissa, this also explained why I'm so attached to her. And now that the talk of marriage appeared my emotions that I kept locked reappeared. I didn't tell them that Alissa suggested pursuing Roxanne and Ciel, I have no idea how to deal with that yet.

"A hero from another realm..." Says Hana.

"A hero indeed..." Says Alissa.

"OHOHOH! How exciting!" Says Roxanne, clapping the tips of her fingers.

"NO! I'm no hero, please… I don't want this kind of life..." I plead.

"It's not for you to decide, you are already being guided by the gods," says Alissa.

"And we will support you," says Hana.

"Certainly!" Roxanne agrees.

I feel like crying again but I don't want this kind of support, be indignant with me and help me escape this fate! But that's what I get, I surrounded myself with warrior women.

"I don't want to be a hero…"

"You kinda already are, I'm almost sure you meeting us might be part of your hero's 'reward'," says Alissa.

"I agree, it's difficult to think we would find a master so perfect for both of us and even as a companion for Roxanne," says Hana.

"Ugh… I can't really deny that."

I also agree they are perfect to me.

"But you are a total cheat. Infinite inventory? I will make you carry all my stuff now! Any skill at any time? That's insane, you will be a demi-god if you keep increasing your level!" Says Roxanne excitedly.

"But I don't wanna be that powerful… also, I won't carry everything, it will be a bother to have to keep all the stuff of everyone."

"That's fine, but you will carry most of my clothes now. Anyway, this also means you really are a scholar! A scholar from another realm, at least."

"Yeah, well, I can't really deny that also."

Alissa coughs.

"Hm… I'm sorry about your wife, master," she says.

"Yeah, it's quite an experience, we understand your pain. That also explains a few things..." Hana says and looks at Roxanne who nods.

I accepted my place in this world now.

"But you said you will remain?" Asks Alissa with expectancy in her eyes.

"Yes, I will live my life here to the fullest, I can't abandon you both now."

"What if there's a way to take us with you?" Asks Alissa.

"That will be difficult, it's a different world, or rather, a different realm. You and Hana will call attention with your bodies and there's no magic, you will have a hard time adapting."

"Perhaps, but it's not like it's impossible. For you we would do anything."

"Even give up fighting? There's no monsters to fight in my realm."

"Well, first, I'm quite sure the gods won't allow you to return to your realm until we save this one, so we'll be fine as long as we are with you," Alissa says with a confident smile.

That's comforting, but not the part about "save the realm".

"There's also no polygamy in there, we would have to hide our relationship somehow."

"That's not a problem," Alissa shakes her head.

"Agreed," Hana nods.

"Yeah, also, now that we know this you definitely should invite Ciel to the fellowship," says Alissa.

I shudder, it's coming.

"You should also pursue her for marriage," Hana says.

Oof.

"What, even you...? Marriage is something different in my world, it's a pledge for life and we take years to choose someone as we can only choose one. I don't know how to deal with it in this world. Everything here happens too fast, I'm still adapting, I know that I lost Selina because I'm slow, it's just... everything is a bit confusing."

Roxanne props forward.

"Hmm… Marriage here is a partnership, in a sense it's a fellowship between lovers where they form a team to work together. A team isn't forced to have only 2 people, neither it is required for love to already be there before it starts. There can be more people on the team as long as everyone agrees with it. In the end, teams can be broken too if it's not working out. The Humanoid Gods ask only that the married ones do their best to work together to keep each other happy and raise their children properly," says Roxanne.

There's even divorce here, how progressive.

"So in a way, it's like I'm already married to Alissa and Hana then..." I say.

Alissa freezes, her gaze goes to the distance.

"Hah! That is certainly true," Hana grins, "A Blood Slave for life is too similar to a marriage if there's love."

"Well, it's not like you are going to ask Ciel to marry you immediately, you know. You would have to invite her first," says Roxanne.

Marriage is talked so lightly here it makes me uncomfortable, it's difficult to accept it since it's conflicting with my values from Earth. But still, I keep remembering Selina, even though we weren't a good match, if I lose because I was slow...

"Talking about that..." Hana mutters and stares at Roxanne.

Roxanne shudders, she turns her head away. Hana sighs.

Oh boy.

"H-Hana, d-don't s-..."

"I'm sorry, Roxanne but I think this shouldn't wait any longer, now's the best time. Master… do you wish to marry Roxanne?"

"Hana?! As a slave you shouldn't say such things!" Alissa strikes the table in anger.

Oh... boy…

"She's not a virgin but I don't think you are the kind that will not marry her just for that. Also, there's one last thing…"

"HA-HANA!" Roxanne is desperate.

"I have to ask, it's master! It would come up eventually!"

Roxanne's mouth moves up and down without making a sound.

"Master, I ask that you share me with Roxanne."

OOOOH BOOY...

Oh, the image, those two, together. NO! Now is not the time, gimme back my blood, other me, my brain needs to think.

Okay, breathe in, breathe out. Calmness, it's time for logic.

Marriage is definitely something more casual here, more practical, the high death rate of people must have some influence of that. Roxanne also is not denying Hana's words, she's only shaking in fear, she was unprepared for this.

"Is this normal?" I ask after a minute in silence.

"What do you mean?" Hana looks at me worried.

"Well, on Earth marriage would only happen after a few years of dating, I know things are different here but is it normal to ask for marriage like this?"

"A slave would never ask for such thing, at least not in the way Hana did, without any tact..." Alissa says and glares at Hana who grins back, "But if you are talking about time then some would say you are slow, that you took quite some time to look at Roxanne in this way."

"Still, isn't marriage a big decision, what if we end up hating each other?"

Alissa smiles, then she corrects her posture and cleans her throat.

"'It's best that you show your love and try and fail to make something instead of wallowing in the what could have been'. That's one of the teachings of the Goddess of Love," Alissa says.

"'It's best that you leave your mark in the world, even if for a little bit, even if only on a single person instead of being forgotten the moment you die'. That's one of the teachings of the Goddess of Fertility," she finishes.

I chuckle, no, of course it's not fast, I'm actually slow. People have to live without regrets here, of course they would end up being somewhat immediatist. Anyway, me and Roxanne? I could have a chance with Alissa since I managed to snatch Lily on Earth, Hana is just winning a lottery since she's a freak in bed and has a fetish for small men. But Roxanne? Holy shit.

"Why me?" I say after another minute in silence, "Aren't you too beautiful for someone like me? Couldn't you find a tall, strong, handsome man for you?"

"Master… you need a bit more confidence on yourself," Alissa says with disappointed face.

"I know small men are very self-conscious, that's why I told Roxanne to be aggressive. It worked for me, but she was too reserved," says Hana.

"W-wha-what? Since when have you two talked about this?" I ask.

"Since the first day. She has no courage, this woman!" She looks indignated at Roxanne, "It frustrated me that she didn't do a move yet!"

Roxanne hunches over a little more.

"I… think I'm somewhat perceptive of these things and didn't notice a single signal from her, only very ambiguous reactions," I say.

"I was… a bit scared to move," Roxanne says, hugging her arm, "Your relationship with Alissa intimidated me a little… if even her you wouldn't admit you loved, would you have accepted me then?"

Alissa looks concerned.

I told them I didn't know what I considered my relationship with Alissa and Hana to be, but now I know I love them.

"That's true... I think I would have denied you if you asked me then…"

"And now you changed?" Says Hana, leaning forward with expectancy.

"Yes… I would have hurt someone no matter what I did, so I chose to be happy here and not hold a far away hope to return to Lily. I think Lily knows I would come to this if she knew I was here."

I look at Roxanne, her beautiful face looks worried. That charming smile and her bright personality, it's growing on me. She's someone reliable, someone you can trust your back to even though she's a bit of an airhead. She's someone I desire. There's no reason anymore to say no.

"I would like to marry you, Roxanne. Would you accept me?"

A rare sight, Roxanne is blushing.

"Y-yes! Yes!" Her face brightens and she claps the tip of her hands.

Dear god, I'm greedy. I have 3 women now.

"S-should I say something like vows right now? I-I'm not sure how to ask someone in marriage on this world."

"If you wish," Alissa says with a smile.

I get up from the chair and move towards Roxanne, she's sitting still, frozen for a moment. I grab her hand and kiss it. I can smell her sweet perfume. I spend a moment to think on my words, can't disappoint now.

"I will protect you, I will keep you happy, I will fight with you and defend with you, together we will adventure far. I will entrust you with my life. Do you wish to do the same for me?" I ask.

She smiles and gets up.

"I will protect you, I will keep you happy, I will fight with you and defend with you, together we will venture far. I will entrust you with my life," she repeats.

Should there be a ring here? I don't know.

I put my hand on her chin and pull her downwards. She's 170cm, I'm 165cm, she's even higher since she wears heels all the time.

I kiss her. A sweet taste on her lips. I kiss her again but harder, I push my tongue and her mouth opens, I hug her and she hugs me. We explore each others mouths and the tingling feeling of her tongue makes me excited. I still remember the taste of her body, it's even better when it's the real me.

We break the kiss and look at each other. She's blushing again, she looks incredibly sexy. This face is mine now.

"Ah, Master. So… how about… ,e?" Hana asks bashfully, now that's another first.

I nod.

"It's okay, I'll accept the relationship of you two. I admit I'm a pervert, I, uh... I wanna watch…"

Hana smiles, Roxanne squirms a bit in my arms. Then Hana slaps the table.

"We have to celebrate! Bring the alcohol!" Hana yells and laughs heartily.

"Oh, I still have that wine I got from killing the Oodogloo."

I pull it out with a *poof*.

"Yes! That's a good wine! Let's open it!"

"Wait, we still have Selina's marriage to go to. It's 1PM, we have to eat and then leave soon," Alissa says.

Ah, that's right.

"Anyway, let's celebrate another day then. The day after the ceremony is good, let's buy a cake too," I say.

Hana sits down a little disappointed. Roxanne hugs me tighter and rubs her cheeks on the top of my head.

"Yes! Cake for the celebration! Finally! Also, I'm gonna get married!"

Your priorities in celebration are a bit off.

"I admit, this household is interesting..." Says Alissa, she's chuckling and her tail is swaying slowly.

"Is that a bad thing?" I ask.

"No, it's like I said, master. You are likely to gain a blessing from the Goddess of Love like this."

I shrug. I won't complain.

"What should I do now? On Earth we use rings to signify someone is married, there's also the ceremony, how should we arrange that?"

"We use matching rings, pendants or bracelets. A few use piercings but that's somewhat unfashionable," says Alissa.

"The ceremony could wait for Ciel," says Roxanne.

"I-I'm sorry, w-what? Already talking about adding another?" I say, stupefied.

Roxanne shrugs.

"Hana told me a lot of things, I may have a higher libido than the average human but we might need another woman for you."

"Wha-what, Hana?!" I look at her and she shrugs, "I'm not a monster, I don't need sacrifices or something, I can control myself. I-I wasn't like this on Earth you know, this world messes up with my libido."

"Yes, yes. But still, what reason is there to wait?"

"I'm the kind that thinks calmly and slowly."

"But you are just gonna accept this in the end, right?"

I desperately search for a counter argument. There's none. It's true, I like Ciel. If I'm gonna be like this and accept the speed people marry here then there's no reason for me to not go for Ciel too…

I sigh.

"Let's just ask her to join first, then... I will deal with it if she actually likes me."

"That's reasonable, master."

"No problem, master."

"Sounds good… husband."

I shiver. What am I doing...? I feel guilty since not even Lily called me "husband".

No! It's too late to go back, I already know these women are my life and I can count on them, I will make them happy!

I hug Roxanne harder. All this time I didn't release her, she feels too good, her body is actually softer than Alissa's, who has an athletic body. Hana's body is the sculpture of a goddess, but aside from her breasts she's not very soft.

"Let's eat something quick, we have to go soon," I say.

We go out and buy the tea and cookies I ate at the Golden Necklace, these are heavenly, I hope Selina will like it.

This time the dresses are cute but contained, no reason to steal the show with the 3 goddesses. We reach the house just before 5PM, we used the flying dinghy so we didn't get sweaty from walking around.

Selina's husband-to-be is a cloth shop owner, it looks simple but it's still quite a good house. It's a 2-storey timber framed house with blue bricks and dark wood. The second floor is jettied and a small veranda on the corner of the second floor can be seen.

We enter the building. The shop is cleared, there are plenty of benches and chairs on the walls and a group of 20 or so people are around. There's a clear division in types of people found, the first type are light-blond smaller framed people while the other is tall black-haired people. I recognize one brown-haired man, it's the innkeeper.

We approach and introduce ourselves, I stutter a little but introduce Roxanne as my fiancee. The innkeeper and his family are surprised with us, they recognize we are the ones who killed the Symbol. One of Selina's uncles, an athletic looking but short blond man, is a hunter who knows we participated in the latest goblin extermination request. I'm uncomfortable here, as the questions start being asked about us Hana and Roxanne save me and I slip from the conversation.

I'm still a bit shocked I introduced Roxanne as my fiancee, I decided to live my life with the Goddess of Cuteness, the Goddess of Sexiness and the Goddess of Sexuality. It's all happening so fast.

As I day-dream for a while a priest appears on the hall along with the betrothed couple. Selina is wearing a yellow silk cloak and a gold and white frilly dress embroidered with symbols of wine, grapes, wheat, and bread. Her hair is braided and decorated with a crown of leaves and wheat.

The groom is a tall, black haired man with a square and handsome face, I'm jealous. He looks to be between 17 to 20 years old. He wears a black velvet jacket and straight velvet pants. His cloak is like it's made of feathers, each feather made of a different cloth.

"Is there some symbology going on?" I whisper to Alissa.

"Sometimes people make their clothes represent their occupation," Alissa whispers back.

So bread and wine represents the inn?

The priest stands in the middle of the hall while the couple face each other. Everyone gets up and surrounds them.

"Today, this couple, Selina Ludor and Thomas Hymel are to be married. From this day forth they will work together for the sake of each other's happiness and safety. They will work together to further prolong the gift of life given to us by the God of Creation, they will work together to fulfill their duties as members of the humanoids and create a family, be it of blood or not. They decided their lives together hold more value and so, we will listen to their vows."

"I, Thomas Hymel, swear loyalty to you Selina Ludor," his voice is confident and unwavering, "I swear to give my all to keep you happy, safe and secure. I swear that I will give my all to provide for us a life worthy of you, that I will give my all to provide the place for our children to grow and gain their place in this world. I swear I will fulfill my duties as a member of the humanoids."

"I, Selina Ludor, swear loyalty to you Thomas Hymel," her voice is as soft as always and her smile is endearing, "I swear to give my all to serve your needs, to help you achieve your goals. I swear that I will give my all to keep a safe haven for you to come back to after your daily labor or any hardship that appears, I will give my all to ensure our children grow and gain their place in this world. I swear I will fulfill my duties as a member of the humanoids."

With a *poof* the priest pulls a large book, a table, and a white pen from his [Item Box]. Thomas writes on the book followed by Selina. The priest chants and casts a spell while touching their foreheads.

"No evil is present on this ceremony, no lie was spoken between these two. Those present accept this wedding as valid and now the gods will watch and judge as you progress. May happiness and success befall the two. You are now husband and wife."

Selina and Thomas stares at each other while the priest speaks. Once he's done Thomas grabs Selina in a princess carry and they kiss, then everyone claps. I'm jealous again.

But I realized Selina really wasn't the best choice for me, she is a traditional housewife, she will work and serve her husband from home. Her vows are completely different from mine, I swore my life to Roxanne and she swore hers to me. I wouldn't be able to bring Selina with me on my adventures if I had chosen her, it would be a painful marriage. This eases the pain in my heart.

Alissa was staring at them intently. I grab her hand and she quickly wipes a tear forming on the corner of her eye. She's still a girl behind all the bravery and servitude she shows to me, I need to acknowledge her feelings.

A few tables are pulled out of [Item Boxes] while a group of people go into the second floor and bring out a banquet. A roasted Dragolite the size of a medium dog, 4 different meat pies, 2 are sweet fruit pies, a large pot of bean paste that reminds be of chili, a selection of breads and toasts, roasted and cooked veggie salads, croquettes and dumplings, a variety of fruits and berries, lots of wine and cider, and Selina's own vegetable stew that I ate a few times on the inn.

After eating Alissa manages to bring us to Selina.

"Hello Mr. Ryder. I'm glad you came," she says with a smile and a small bow.

"T-there's no way I wouldn't come."

"Master is shy but he still makes the effort to please his friends," Alissa says.

I smile wryly.

"You have to tell me of your newest adventures you two, I heard you fought in the goblin extermination!" Her eyes gleam.

"Certainly, I know Alissa is eager to talk to you. Anyways, this is Roxanne, my fiancee. She's a mage."

"Ohoho~."

"Hohohoh."

The two greet each other with a smile and a weird laugh. Just what?

"This is Hana, another Blood Slave, she's the main front line of our group."

Selina is dazzled by Hana, I don't even have to try to slip away from the conversation, Selina only has eyes for Hana now.

I greet Thomas, he seems a cheery person but when he greets me I sense a sharp gaze. I know, I know, I would do the same but I have no intention of stealing her now. Though after the greeting Thomas seems interested in hearing about us, I'm not the best at conversations like this but I force myself to answer his curiosity for the sake of Selina.

Alissa brings our gift to Selina and she loves it. Thomas is another tea drinker, we nod to each other from a distance. After that I recuse myself to a corner and soon Roxanne sits by me to keep me company.

"Their vows are completely different than ours," I say.

"Each marriage is a different deal, each team works on different conditions," she says.

"Why do you know so much about marriage?" I ask.

Roxanne looks away.

"Sorry, I shouldn't have asked."

"I would have to tell you one day… I had a fiancee once," she says in quiet voice.

"Fiancee", not "fiance", since it's in Andraste there's a difference in pronunciation.

"She… was a hunter. She died of venom from a monster of the Death Valley."

I wait for her to gain confidence to continue, there's no need for me to interrupt.

"It's a venom too powerful, nobody could have done anything. I decided to leave the continent after that, I looked for a cure for that venom."

"Is the Moonlight Moss that cure?"

"Hah… no, I never found the cure. The Moonlight Moss has incredible properties, but even that would not work," she looks at me and lets out a half-smile.

"I'm sorry for your loss."

"Thank you… but I'm over it now, she wouldn't want to see me wallow in a pointless quest for too long," she hugs her arm.

"Searching for a cure is not pointless."

"It is when I let the search have a bigger priority than my life. Moonlight Moss was the first thing that I got interested on after abandoning the search. If I hadn't abandoned it I wouldn't be here, I gotta thank the gods for that..." She lets out a pained smile and grabs my waist.

"Since when… did you start to like me?"

"Well," she scratches her cheek in shyness, "Kinda after the Symbol, I thought you would propose to me after all you had done to save me."

"I… was just following my code of honor, I couldn't let you die."

"I understood that after a while, it actually… made me like you even more, you are someone I can truly depend on. While on my search for the cure I had my fair share of bad encounters, you are a rare find. Then I saw how you treated Alissa and Hana and, well I got envious. What about you? When did you come to like me?"

"Well. At first your personality was obnoxious," -she makes a pained face- "but it grew on me. There's no way to not see you as a woman, you are the embodiment of sexiness and coolness, even though you don't act like it most of the time…"

"Wow, 'coolness'? Hmm… you are warming my heart like this!" She rubs her cheek on the top of my head.

Just going to ignore the last part, eh?

"Then I saw you were reliable and a good companion, life with you around would be fun. I didn't want to separate from you, I knew we could work together and keep each other safe. But at first I didn't think you would like someone like me, I thought you were way out of my league."

"'Out of my league'?"

"Ah. It's an expression of my world, it means that you are too beautiful for me. On Earth people try to find partners with a similar level of beauty. It may sound vain but that's how it is."

"Yeah, it's vain, there's much more that you have to look at for a partner than just beauty. It's nice to have a beautiful partner but your value is much more than just your cuteness."

I can't avoid blushing at this.

"It seems this world needs reliable and powerful people, compatibility of lifestyle also seems much more important than beauty. On Earth life is pretty simple and there's not that many hardships, so beauty becomes much more important."

"Oh, I see. It's like a realm made of vain nobles."

"Hahahah, sounds like it."

Even though on this world the nobles have the duty to control the monsters and dungeons they still have the tendency to grow lazy and hedonistic.

"To be honest, I think I was forcing myself to be happy," she sighs and leans on me, "I just thought I was losing out so I had to 'catch up' on all the time I lost brooding. But now I'm calm, I'm happy with this and I don't feel like I need to force myself anymore."

I just smile and hug her more.

A note from Manasong

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Chapter 11: Vows - Part 2

A note from Manasong

Attention: to conform to the limit of sexual content allowed in a novel, I've censored some parts of this chapter. You can look for the uncensored version here.

If certain parts with sexual content look off or with paragraphs missing, it's likely that they were censored.

We stay until 8PM and then we fly back home. Hana became the soul of the party and Selina got a new friend.

Now we can all take a bath together. I eagerly wait for Roxanne to undress, most of her underwear is lacy and cute, she's the one who uses the most delicate clothing, I will ask her to buy the casual clothes for the other two. She looks a little nervous but at this point I completely switched my attitude, the meal is ready.

Roxanne is thin, she could be a model on Earth with that body, she shows no muscles and a bit of bone even but that's her charm, her neat patch between her legs is just as well kept as Alissa's. Even Roxanne's collarbones look sexy, with her small breasts, smaller than Alissa's, and her pale skin she looks so frail. Her tail is something mostly ignored, it doesn't sway like Alissa's and Roxanne makes the crime of keeping it below her robes most of the time. The tail tip stands still in the air while she walks, giving it a rather mesmerizing feel to it. The only imperfection is the circular scar on her belly... no! That was a sin, the scar is not an imperfection, she's perfect as she is.

"Why do you hide your tail so much?" I ask.

"It's bothersome, it serves no purpose, and only calls more attention to me."

"And your horns don't?"

She shrugs.

"It reduces the attention."

"But I find it very sexy."

She looks down and fails to hide her smile.

"Please put it out more, also let me touch it."

"F-fine… b-be gentle, it's sensitive."

It's thinner than her little finger, its texture is of rubber and the consistency is that of jelly, the tip is a sharp dagger the length of her hand and could be used for cutting. It's a mana solidification, it will grow back if cut.

I run my fingers through it. I cover my hand with a bit of soap, grab the tail and run my hand through the entire length.

"AAHN~!" Roxanne lets out a loud moan.

"What…?"

Alissa and Hana were washing each other but they stop.

"It's… sensitive..." Roxanne mutters.

"Roxanne… this is an erogenous zone, right?"

She does not answer, her expression is frozen.

"Are your horns like that?"

She squirms and looks to the side.

"Hana… you work on her tail."

"Yes."

"N-no, w-wait!"

"Why wait? This is the perfect situation," I smirk at her.

Roxanne seems scared but she doesn't move. I move in front of her and grab her horns and push her face towards mine, I caress her horns just as I did her tail. She kisses while moaning, I wonder if I can make her orgasm just like this. Hana works her tail but Alissa comes and teaches Hana how to use her hands better.

Roxanne hugs me and kisses me harder. Suddenly she grabs my dick and pulls it forward. I break the kiss and bring her to the edge of the bathtub and fuck her. I hold her horns as support while thrusting on her. Her face is amazing, the cool and sexy is back and her moans are the perfect pitch and loudness, it's like she's made for sex. I guess it's somewhat expected of a succubus.

She grabs my hips and pushes it harder. She twitches and I can see the white of her eyes. Is this okay? Is she okay?

"R-Roxanne, are you okay?"

"Don't stop!"

I guess she's okay.

I let out her horns and Hana takes it over. Alissa got excited and rubs Roxanne's tail with vigor. I pinch and lick her nipples, they are barely visible since they have the same color as her skin.

Her back arches and she convulses, her insides tighten so hard I flinch. I can barely hold it in and cum just as she gets out of her orgasm.

"W-wow, what was that tightness?" I say.

"Hohohoh…"

Roxanne waits a few moments for her breath to normalize.

"That's the succubus secret," she says, she gives a wicked and sexy smile.

"I'm a bit spent now. Hana, she's all yours."

Hana turns Roxanne around and eats out her cum-filled pussy. Alissa and I just relax at the bath, she was masturbating so I use my fingers on her until she cums, then I have her ride me slowly while she watches the two. The other two girls put out a show, they kiss, they finger, they eat each other, two goddesses having sex. The spirit is willing but the meat is in near coma. This is so much depravity I'm speechless, I just want to put my dick in something until I pass out.

After finishing Alissa and getting hard again I go for Hana and fuck her from behind while she eats out Roxanne. I quickly release another shot and fall back on the water. Alissa keeps my mouth occupied with hers, eventually I get hard again. Hana looks at my new erection and decides to mount me. She contorts and kisses Roxanne while slapping my waist and making the water spill all over the floor.

When I'm about to cum Hana sucks it out of me with her mouth and she shares another cum-filled kiss with Roxanne. They don't stop, these two are drunk with depravity. Just by watching them I get up again and have Alissa suck me, she's too tired and doesn't want anymore fingering.

I grab Roxanne's tail and rub it while they fuck each other. Then Roxanne pushes Alissa and mounts me again. My dick hurts, my balls are shriveled but this woman is gonna suck the soul out of me. I have to put [Enhanced Stamina] and [Enhanced Strength] to keep up with her, Hana helps me move my hips while Alissa kisses me. I just close my eyes and cum for a 4th time, I feel like my soul is shrinking.

Roxanne digs out my cum from inside her and shares one last cum-filled kiss with Hana. Then she drops back into the water and relaxes on Hana's arms.

"Ro-Roxanne… that wasn't normal… right?" I ask.

"The tail… you rubbed the tail too much. It's… my weak point, it makes me unleash the succubus nature," she says bashfully.

"If I ever want to die from sex I will just ask Alissa to rub your tail again then."

Hana laughs and even Alissa is smiling.

I feel something change in me. I gained another point in [Enhanced Semen Recharge]. Succubus indeed.

We crawl to bed. I kind of feel sad but we have to rotate the women on the bed, tonight is Hana and Roxanne. Maybe if we get an even bigger bed we can all fit together, the room will be a little cramped but the benefits make up for that.

I close my eyes and sleep as a man who's completely satisfied with life, at least for today.

I see an ugly goblin woman, she's wearing a simple and dirty woolen dress. She's laying down while holding her throat, it's bleeding profusely, she's gurgling and choking on her own blood. She stares at me with fear in her eyes. A child cries, it's an ugly goblin child, it's holding the woman's dress.

"MAMA…! MAMA…!"

The goblin repeats, cries and sobs.

A sword decapitates the child.

I wake up sweating and out of breath.

"Wolf? Wha-what's wrong?" Roxanne asks.

"Master?" Hana grabs my arm.

"A nightmare…"

"Didn't those stop?" Says Roxanne.

"They had."

She shares a look with Hana.

"Could it be…"

"That's ridiculous," I say, "Why would it be like this?"

But it makes sense, this is the first time I'm spending an entire night without Alissa. What kind of trauma is this that I need her, specifically, so I don't have a nightmare?

"We will have to test it for at least another night," I say, "I'm just gonna go back to sleep."

And I slept, badly.

Today is the 21st.

I wake up stiff, my shoulders hurt, my muscles are sore, my head hurts, and it's not just because of the yesterday's orgy.

I crawl to the table to have our breakfast.

"Master, are you okay?" Alissa says. She's already awake preparing breakfast.

"I had a nightmare…"

She keeps quiet and looks at me with eyes filled with worry.

"After this, can you lay with me for a while? I didn't sleep well…"

"Okay, master..." She answers me in a soft voice.

We eat and then I take a nap, a warm and comfortable nap. This isn't good.

Is this trauma? Is this a curse for not taking her feelings seriously until now? How ridiculous it is that I can't sleep without Alissa. What are we gonna do if Alissa has to stay away from me for a few days? This is too much…

I wake up at 9AM, Alissa was stroking my hair. She smiles when I wake up.

"I slept well this time…"

"I will always be by your side."

I cringe a little.

"But I wish you didn't have to. Also, it's not confirmed, let's sleep apart again tomorrow."

"Okay..." She says on a sad tone.

"Master, a message came to you," Hana comes inside and says.

We go downstairs and sit on the table.

"I, Alaraste Anara, True Noble, Enemy of Wyverns, Lord of Rabanara, ruler of the Shore of Leaves, invite you, Wolf ‘Good Luck' Ryder, leader of Helios, and your companions to a rewards ceremony where your deeds of bravery and skill will be recognized and rewarded."

"Enemy of Wyverns" must be because the wyverns attack regularly but he must really have butchered them to get a title like this. Shore of Leaves is the name of this piece of land that borders the Sea of Trees. And finally, since the lord himself used my nickname it's probably going to spread.

"Now it's time for some recognition, Wolfy," says Roxanne while hugging me from behind.

"Indeed, about time, master," says Hana.

"Agreed," says Alissa.

"Wait, what's up with 'Wolfy'?" I ask.

"Well, 'husband' is too boring, 'love' is a bit embarrassing, and to keep calling you as usual wasn't right, so I think 'Wolfy' is much cuter," Roxanne chuckles, she rubs her cheek on the top of my head.

I shrug. I actually like it.

"Actually, I think you 2 don't need to call me 'master' anymore. It doesn't feel right, just call me 'Wolf'... or 'Wolfy'," I say.

"N-no, that's n-not right, we are your slaves," Alissa stutters.

"We are kind of a bit more than that now," Hana says.

"Just marry everyone already!" Roxanne says and throws her hands in the air.

You know what? Fuck it, I don't care anymore, I want these women and they want me, I feel it, I know it, that's all the motivation that I need. Let's do it.

"Well..." I get up and cough, "Alissa, Hana... would you like to marry me?"

Noo, that sounded lame, I screwed up! REDO.

"No! Not yet!"

"W-what…"

Everyone looks at Alissa dumbfounded.

"I… still have to complete my duty," Alissa says, she looks down and her voice tells me she's about to cry.

I steel my nerves, I have to get to the bottom of this.

"What is that duty?" I ask.

"To be used as a tool, to serve my master for life, to fight until I'm dead, to bring honor to my clan, to help my master achieve great deeds," she forces herself to not cry.

"Does that means you are not allowed to marry?"

Her face remains unmoving.

"Does that means you are not allowed to be happy!?"

Her mouth twitches and her eyes narrow in a sad expression.

I'm angry at Alissa, her submissive behavior, her denial of her wishes, I don't want it. I know what you want, even if you don't want to admit it. Even if I'm scared of this future, scared of commitment, I won't let you run away from your happiness, not you. You have been brainwashed into being a tool, I won't let you keep like this!

"Alissa, tell me what you want."

"To serve as a tool-..."

"Tell me what you really want, don't make me order you," I interrupt.

Her face turns into stone again.

"Alissa, please… you know I love you…"

"I… want to… marry you..." She starts to tear up and sob.

I get up and hug her.

"I am yours and you are mine," I say.

She sniffles and her expression breaks into tears.

"Repeat after me, I am yours and you are mine."

"I am… Y-yours and yo-you a-are mine…"

"There, those are our vows, there's nothing else needed."

Alissa lets out all her remaining tears.

I will take care of you, Alissa.

Hana and Roxanne hug us both. We stay like this for a while until Alissa's tears dry. I play with her ears and she almost falls asleep.

"We will be together, forever," I say.

"And ever..." Hana finishes.

"You don't have to worry, you will fulfill your duty. Just because you marry, doesn't mean you are abandoning it," Roxanne says, she grabs Alissa's head and kisses her forehead.

"Thank you, everyone. Thank you..." She finally says.

We break the group hug. I sit down next to Alissa and hold her hand.

"Wolf..." Hana says.

"Yes?"

Hana is standing besides me with a serious face. She grabs my hand.

"I swear to you my body and soul, my sword and shield. I swear to protect you and keep you happy forever."

Quick and direct.

"I swear to you my body and soul, my sword and magic. I swear to protect you and keep you happy forever."

She kisses me lightly. There's no need for a deep and passionate kiss, we already confirmed our passion to each other.

After this, there's no mood to work. We just cuddle in bed, the sofa is not big enough.

Three proposals in two days. And there's the possibility of more coming. This is crazy, what the fuck is going on.

"We should all have one ceremony together," Roxanne says.

"Yes. Perhaps we can wait until Alissa is satisfied with her duty, then we can all break the contract together," Hana says.

"Hana! We shouldn't ask these things, we are slaves," Alissa rebukes.

"There's no need for my wives to be also slaves, it is mutually exclusive," I say.

"Is that so..." Alissa resigns.

"Would becoming a noble be enough for you, Alissa?" Roxanne asks.

"Eh?" I'm confused.

"Destroying a dungeon gives you the title of 'True Noble', it allows you become a lord.

"That… would be acceptable but it's not required, if mast-… Wolf, doesn't want it then we could do something else," Alissa says.

"Hmm… I was thinking of regularly going into a dungeon to gain power anyway. If we reach the end then perhaps we could… but I have no intention of becoming a lord."

"The dungeons that are allowed to be destroyed aren't many, they don't last too long too since the current lord would deal with it," Roxanne says.

"I heard there was trouble at the High Forest. Seems the nobles are slacking over there, there should be plenty of dungeons to explore there," Alissa says.

"That would be a bit far for us," I say.

The High Forest is a land of the elves north of here, it's a few days away. I want to go to the dungeon in my spare time from the university.

"Actually… if I learn [Gate]… I can't see [Gate] in the [Space Magic] school yet but it should be soon. I don't know what allows me to see more advanced magic but it should increase with my power, I believe. If I use skill points to learn [Gate] then I can hide it when necessary."

"Hmm… I could make some strong MP potions and with your power you could change your skills to pure mana enhancements," Roxanne says, "Then you should be able to transport us by [Gate], we can even put all our equipment on your 'Items' just for a moment"

"I haven't tested that [Gate] does not considerate my 'Items' as extra weight, I just assumed it would because 'Items' is not influenced by any skill on this world."

[Gate] costs more mana the more weight you have, that includes the items inside [Item Box] spell.

"Well, it sounds we have our next goal then," Roxanne says with a smile, "Ah, the Moonlight Moss has some MP recovery properties, if I finish working on it we could use the potions I make from it. But they would also sell for a good price…"

"We aren't really in need of much money right now. We are going to get bounties from the dungeons and we could always look for a subjugation since Alissa is good at tracking," I say.

"Hm, sounds like a plan!" Roxanne hugs me harder.

"Agreed."

"Yep."

I feel like I have my small piece of heaven when I'm with these women.

We cuddle until lunch and I take another nap since I need it. We have plenty of perishable food now but with my "Items" we just put there anything close to going bad.

Alissa found a good amount of Dragolite eggs, they are twice the size of a chicken's egg but they taste the same. With that and flour we make some good Dragolite Milanese that goes well with simple pasta and a sweet veggie salad. Most of the time I don't let Alissa make lunch or dinner without at least a salad, it's not healthy.

After lunch we clean the house.

"Ma-... Wolf, we should visit Ciel as soon as possible. There's no point in waiting," Alissa says.

Inviting Ciel with second intentions makes me a little uneasy, but… I'm getting greedy.

Me and Alissa go to the temple together. We enter the priests quarters and find an old man.

"Ah, it's you," says a priest with gentle voice that tickles my ears. His face is familiar, his eyes look at me warmly.

"Ah, sorry, I don't remember your name," I say.

"We weren't introduced. I'm the head priest, Arantos," The priest says with a bow.

He's old and chubby with folds on his neck. He has barely any hair, black or graying, on his balding head. He has a ball for a face and a round nose. His face, his half-circle glasses, his small eyes and his voice overflows with kindness, I feel like he's releasing an aura.

"P-pleasure to meet you, I'm Wolf Ryder and this is my fiancee Alissa," I bow back and Alissa twitches but also bows.

"Hoh?" He looks at Alissa and coughs, "I only saw you in passing but Sister Ciel told me you are an interesting fellow and you two have been having enlightening conversations. Ah, wait, you are the fellow who killed the Symbol, right?"

"Ah, yes, that's me."

"Now that's even more interesting," he lets out a chuckle, "You are looking for Sister Ciel?"

"Yes, if it's not a bother I would like to talk to her again."

"Today is her free day, she could be on her room, otherwise I don't know where she would be. Let me look for her."

He takes us to the same guest room I was on the last time.

After a minute or so Ciel appears wearing a blue flowery dress that reaches her knees. This is the first time I saw her without the priest robes, she has quite a voluptuous body, I see no large muscles but also no hanging fat. Wide hips, thick legs, a protruding ass and large breasts that get accentuated by the belt tying the dress to her ribs. Her face was always pleasant, round and cute with fleshy lips, quite baby-faced. Also, it's the first time I see hair loose, it's straight and well kept. I'm much more conscious about her right now, she looks beautiful and cute on these clothes.

"H-hello, Mr. Ryder, Miss Alissa," Ciel says with some embarrassment on her voice.

Shit, I stared too much.

"H-hello, Miss Ciel."

"Good day, Miss Ciel."

With a *poof* Alissa pulls tea and cookies."

"Thank you Miss Alissa."

"Ah, so," I cough, "I have a proposal for you, Miss Ciel."

"Oh? What is it?"

"Would you like to join our fellowship."

Ciel finishes her sip, she looks at me, then at Alissa, and then her gaze wanders. After almost a minute frozen she says.

"Why… me?"

"First, you are quite the skilled healer, second you have good support skills with the glaive and [Wind Magic], third you are a person with quite the knowledge about gods and m-… Wolf is looking to get closer to the gods, and finally, we know you miss adventuring," Alissa says with confidence, she practiced those lines.

"W-wow. This is…"

And she falls silent again.

"You don't have to answer now, we will be staying here a long time since I'm entering the university," I say.

"I see… I understand."

"In any case you should know that… me, Hana and Roxanne are… going to marry Wolf," Alissa says while blushing. Refreshing cuteness.

Ciel looks at me with wide eyes, I can almost hear her saying a sassy "really?". Then she twitches and averts her gaze. Is she blushing? I can't tell due to skin color. Perhaps she understood there could be second intentions on the invite.

"But really, t-three women, Mr. Ryder, you are quite the man to manage to snatch those three so quickly," Ciel looks at me with a mix of reproachful and amused eyes.

"Roxanne says he was a slow..." Mutters Alissa.

I just shrug and let a wry smile.

"Can't control the heart, if it's love then I will accept it," I say.

"Still, three women, and now… anyway, I guess it's actually an interesting proposal but I won't be able to answer you now, it's another big change in my life."

"I understand, if you have any questions about our fellowship and our objectives I will answer you."

"Hm..." Her gaze wanders again, "What do you plan to do to make money?"

"Dungeon exploration, we are also going to look for extermination requests since Alissa is a good tracker. But we do have quite some funds already stored, Roxanne is also a potion maker who can make money by herself."

"Do you have plans to leave town?"

"Yes, I have a plan to become a noble one day so I will search for a dungeon to conquer. After that I also want to explore the world a bit so I will look for interesting places to enjoy and to also grow stronger."

"What role do you want me to take?"

"Support for Hana, you have a good reach with [Wind Magic] and the glaive. We will both support Hana and protect Alissa or Roxanne."

"Where will we live?"

"We have a luxurious rental near the nobles quarters," I try not look embarrassed since our house is a little excessive, "Alissa and Hana clean and cook and I help with cooking. Roxanne helps with steady income with her potions."

That is, once Roxanne finishes the Moonlight Moss she will have enough time to make standard potions to sell.

"Division of spoils?"

"All equal, no questions asked."

"What if we find a useful item?"

"We will likely not sell then, we are not strapped for money. You should know by now that I'm also a very reasonable person too, if we discuss things we will reach a proper solution."

The biggest danger to dissolve a fellowship is deciding who gets what item and what gets sold. Since we are unlikely to sell useful items we will just discuss who gets it.

"I have very little money saved, I don't have equipment to compete with your emerald fang sword."

"We can give you, no strings attached. We want you alive to help us, after all."

"Wow, that's quite generous."

I shrug.

"That would be least we should do since it would take quite some time for you to earn enough money for good equipment."

She crosses her arms and chuckles.

"So I guess in the end it's a question of whether I feel like changing my life again or not."

"Seems so."

"Let me just add this," Alissa interjects and smiles at Ciel, "You know Wolf's life is bound to be interesting, he already has a blessing and I would wager he will get another one at some point."

I cringe a bit, I wouldn't consider this a plus. Ciel laughs.

"Interesting indeed."

The conversation dies down.

"Well, anyway that's all we have to say. We will leave you to your rest then."

"Thanks for visiting again, Mr. Ryder, Miss Alissa. Congratulations on your engagement."

Alissa blushes again. I think I don't want you to ever not blush at things like this.

"Thank you," I say.

We say our goodbyes and leave, that was quick which is good since it was rather nerve-wracking for me. Then we go back home.

I drop on the sofa. What a day. Today is the 31st day I'm in this world and I already have 3 fiancees, a fortune and I'm considered a town hero. Please slow down, world.

My research on [Redirect Mana] got interrupted, I gotta catch up. This was supposed to be the day I presented my results to the university. I leveled it once so it should be easier to use again.

I close my eyes and focus on expanding my soul again, it's getting easier. I see a small mana stream passing by, it's not Roxanne's. I keep flying my soul around it, it's a rather pleasant feeling, this free-flowing mana.

I stop and repeatedly cast [Wind Armor] on myself to use some mana. I meditate again and go back to play around the mana stream. I notice it changed a little, like slowly stirring a soup it starts to follow my soul. This mana has some attraction to my soul but why is it so difficult to command it to enter me?

This mana has a different feeling to the Symbol's, Roxanne's stream, and also the stream above the goblin village. It's subtle but now I can feel it, the symbol's felt "spicy", Roxanne's felt "sweet", the goblin's felt like "dirt" and this one feels "tasteless". Is this some sort of identification? The mana from someone holds a bit of the previous owner's "essence" on it? It's plausible since this mana is the "spill" from bad [Mana Efficiency], perfect efficiency makes the spell invocation imperceptible.

This mana stream is actually not resisting me, I don't think it's the skill level. Perhaps it's mana generated by the environment so it doesn't have a previous "owner"? Then how do I "break" the owner barrier more efficiently?

I move my soul upstairs and find a stream of mana from Roxanne. I wanna "taste" her and the others with this. Ok, back to work. Her stream is resisting me now, I can feel her "sweetness", it's hers alright. I have an idea, I know that moving my soul is not everything I can do with it, my soul can change in various ways that I can't really explain, it's like trying to raise only one eyebrow, it's a muscle that's there and you know it exists but you don't have proper control of it.

I keep trying to change my soul and notice a small change in the stream. Ahah! So I can do it, I have to keep trying. Move it, this… way… just a little bit… Closer. It twitched again. I gotta… bend it, like this. Open up… like this? Oh, another twitch, it's bigger. Yes, like… this.

Oh! The stream is not resisting, I have to hold it like this. I feel pain, it's pulsing. It's like a cramp, my soul isn't supposed to be like this. But the mana keeps coming. I could only last a little while but it came, without forcing myself it came to me spontaneously. This could be a powerful skill if I can develop it, it's somewhat scary. Like holding a gun without the safety and without knowing how to fire.

I try to relax. I also need to create [Sense Soul] to properly copy a soul and create a golem. [Infuse] is basically infusing an object with a soul that I create during the acid trip, but I don't know what any of that does so it's very dangerous to go with trial and error. I'll keep [Sense Presence] and [Sense Mana] on all the time, maybe I can come up with an idea if I combine them both, they work in similar ways to what [Sense Soul] should be like.

I feel a kiss on my lips.

"Wolf, Roxanne wants to take a bath. Let's enter together," Alissa says.

I kiss her back.

Roxanne washed Hana and then both of them put on a show for us. Hana will be sleeping alone tonight so we gotta compensate her. I will buy a bigger bed after the award ceremony, hopefully we can all sleep together then. Nobody dared to touch Roxanne's tail.

At night we were all tired and uninspired, emotions flew too much these last days. I did Alissa slowly while we spent all the time just kissing and caressing. Then I did Roxanne the same way, she spices things up a bit with unexpected bites, kisses and pinches. She's not the raw power fucker that Hana is but she likes to use her charm. I got excited and asked for the two to cooperate while working downstairs. Roxanne needs teaching, she never had a dick in her mouth before.

Today is the 22nd.

I slept like a baby. I wake up with Alissa playing with it. She wants to copy Hana's wake up play. Nothing makes me happier than to wake up to those orange eyes looking up on me while her cute face bobs up and down. Roxanne was hugging me from behind but she's a heavy sleeper, only when I got up she woke. I make sure to give them all a deep kiss when waking up, it lifted Hana's mood from sleeping alone.

We will probably spend the whole day in negotiations. All the hunters are healed and ready so we will discuss payment and who takes what spoils. I'm not that interested in it so I selfishly asked Alissa to keep me company, she actually volunteered first but it's still selfish to accept it.

I decide to summon a bird and keep it always at home. I will share sight and touch so if someone wants to say something to me it's very convenient, it also serves as training so I don't get dizzy when my view increases.If I'm to be a summoner then being capable of sharing the senses with multiple summons is very advantageous.

We get to the guild meeting room and there's already an argument. The artillery team is having trouble discerning who killed what since there's only carbonized bodies and some even got carried away by the [Wind Storm].

The guild attendees had to recount the number of dead bodies, estimate the number of houses, then estimate the number of total goblins, and finally deduct from the dead bodies the number of kills attributed to the artillery team. Then they compromised and split the rewards evenly.

The counting of the other kills was easier since the bodies are present and we already gave a detailed report. I didn't bother to argue the number of kills of the girls and neither of my elementals, the orcs were the most valuable ones and the Orc Chief kill was attributed to me while Hana was the one who decapitated it. From the shock troops Alissa was 4th in number of kills, Hana was 7th and Roxanne was very low on rank since she was mostly supporting us.

I spent the entire time discreetly stroking Alissa's tail until she fell asleep in my arms. I also kept playing around with her soft hands. I'm completely intoxicated by her, this level of attachment isn't healthy for both of us but I don't care.

We had to stop the meeting and have a fast lunch nearby because the meeting took us until 3PM. Then we finally went back home.

At some point both Roxanne and Hana were petting the bird so I managed to keep awake during the entire meeting and felt way better than I thought I would.

I have my afternoon tea and go back to working on [Sense Soul]. I will keep [Redirect Mana] like this for now, I explored much of the mysteries and I think it's enough to give a good outline of how this skill works.

Keeping both [Sense Mana] and [Sense Presence] on is tiring, [Sense Mana] works passively but using it actively gives it much more sensitivity. I truly think now that the combination of both these skills is the key to [Sense Soul]. I bring the bird to the living room and focus all my efforts on sensing it.

Little by little I gain more control over the abilities. They are like a focal lens where you keep changing the field of view and it gets you a better image. I'm starting to be able to see the details that I could only see by using my soul, but unfortunately the focal point is very, very small.

I can see how the soul "patterns" repeat, then they lose its form and it becomes an abstract mess. I try to look inside but it starts to shift as I look, is this the "brain"? The constant learning and changing and synapses being created and broken? It's useless to look deeper I have to focus on the outside patterns.

"Wolf? I'm sorry to interrupt but it's getting late, let's take a bath together," Alissa says.

"It's no problem, my wives take priority over work."

Alissa blushes.

She did interrupt but there's no hurry, I want to enjoy these days until we are dragged by the gods into the next conflict.

Today I did Alissa in the bath until she came. I didn't cum too because I will destroy Hana tonight, I used a combination of dick, tongue, fingers and g-spot to make Alissa scream.

The meals keep getting better, Alissa controls the menu and I just happily help, it's therapeutic. Tonight we have a large roasted Dragolite that Alissa wanted to copy after Selina's wedding.

"Is this… basil? Ohh…"

"What is it Wolfy?" Asks Roxanne.

"One of these herbs is basil, I need to know which, I love basil."

We can make pesto and if we find tomatoes we can make caprese and so much more. Italian cuisine revolution incoming!

Alissa smiles, she loves when we find something that reminds me of Earth.

Then we go to bed and I do Hana, then Roxanne, then Hana again. This woman is a complete freak, she might be even more degenerate than me. I won't suggest anal to her because I don't really like it but I think it might be just a matter of time with the way her masochism is progressing, she's having me choke her and spank her.

Hana doesn't want it inside her, she likes to take it in her mouth and share it with Roxanne. Roxanne is actually embarrassed with it when she's not on her "sex demon" mode but she obeys, Roxanne is Hana's plaything. I just don't wanna imagine what she would do to me if she were my master instead.

I have to put points into strength and stamina to keep up with Hana, I slap her face as she sucks the soul through my member. It's just a matter of time for her to get the oral skill like this.

Exhausted, I go to sleep.

"YOU FUCKING MONSTER!" The goblin woman screams.

Her spear stabs my belly. She pulls it out and thrusts again, I try to hold it and my hand is cut. I don't have the power to stop and my belly is stabbed again.

"AAAAH!" The goblin kid screams and stabs my chest with a knife.

I try to grab the knife but the spear stabs me again and I lose power.

It hurts. It hurts. It hurts. It hurts. It hurts. Stop, I don't wanna die.

Today is the 23nd

I wake up stiff again.

"I don't want another nightmare again," I say.

I feel sick and afraid. These nightmares are too real, this is not a trauma, this is a curse.

"It's okay, we will find a way to deal with this," Roxanne says and hugs me, she looks worried and Hana looks even worse.

"I'm sorry, Wolf, I don't know how to deal with the matters of the soul," Hana says and looks down.

"You already protect me enough. It's like Roxanne said, we will find a way to deal with this, it's not that serious," I console her.

Feeling sad we go have breakfast, Alissa looks worried too. After that I ask Alissa to stay with me for a little while so I can get a nap in the morning. At 3PM is the ceremony in the castle, I don't want to look bad in there.

At lunch Alissa makes me a strong and cold black tea. If we find lemons and peaches then I can get ice tea, just need guarana and matte tea to complete the set.

Then the goddesses get ready and we go to the castle.

Alissa wears a cute silk orange straight dress with flowers at the top, Roxanne wears a dangerously short gothic lolita black dress and Hana wears a simple red velvet dress with a large cleavage. The sense of fashion in this world is all over the place, it seems it mixes quite a number of time periods. Not really complaining since they all look perfect to me.

Once we reach the castle gates we lower our flying dinghy and show our invitation to the guard. A proto-butler appears and leads us inside. I can still feel the gaze of the guard on Hana. She smirks, she likes the attention.

The castle is a large square tower. It wasn't made to defend against land sieges. It's a simple tower in the middle of the grassland built to defend against aerial attacks and intercept migrating flying monsters. Each floor of the castle has at least one line of anti-air siege engines, floating metal scorpios and balistae.

The castle has defended against innumerous wyvern attacks, a considerable number of harpies and other monsters and even against house sized dragons. The castle might be a bit more effective if it was rounded instead of a square but then the floor plan wouldn't have been so perfectly made. The Anara family governs this town for a few hundred years and their fame of pragmatism and simplicity shows at every step.

After passing through a second gate and a large garden we reach the entrance to the caste. A large double door decorated with the lord's heraldry. Crossing it we are inside a large hall full of columns. There's lavish chairs in the middle of the hall pointing towards the throne and benches on the walls.

We are oriented to sit on the chairs and we recognize the other hunters are also sitting with us. On the benches a large amount of well dressed people are coming and sitting, possibly nobles and other important people. The throne is above a small set of steps, it's a large black cushioned chair decorated with golden swords and roses.

After a dozen or so minutes it seems all hunters have gathered. I see Targua is completely fine and walking with pride, he has a nice set of velvet clothes with a short black cloak. He waves at me and I nod. The nobles also stop coming from the entrance.

Then Silvane, Haaran, and his knights appear from a side door, they are wearing their combat clothing but no one is wearing a helmet. They stand in front of the chairs and kneel. After that the lord Alaraste appears from behind the throne, he's wearing lavish black silk clothes and a black and gold cloak that drags on the ground. He goes up and sits on the throne. Everyone gets up, bows, and sits back down.

"People of Rabanara! Today we are gathered here to reward the deeds of bravery and skill accomplished by this group of hunters and knights," The voice of the Lord is being magically amplified.

"As you should know we discovered a large goblin camp to the west of our town, deep in the Sea of Trees. To exterminate them, we assembled an expedition composed of experienced and talented fellowships, lead by a group of hand picked knights and mages and whose leader was my own son, Haaran Anara.

"As the expedition found the location of the goblin camp, a shocking fact was discovered. It was not a camp but a full-blown village with nearly 200 goblins and a small fortified gate."

A few gasps could be heard. A normal monster leader doesn't create wood huts and fortifications, only breeders do.

"Even though some were afraid, even though some wanted to leave, even though some were skeptical of the safety, even though some wanted reinforcements. They didn't back down, they didn't retreat, and they all were convinced that risking their lives for the safety of the town was the best choice."

Not sugar-coating it, are we?

"They attacked the village with great ingenuity. Two mages created a bridge that passed by the natural wall that is the cliff the village was located on. After a massive magical attack that put the village in chaos, our brave warriors charged and started the slaughter. But alas, there was another surprise, a group of orcs lead by an Orc Chief was there, he was possibly another breeder."

More gasps and now murmurs.

"But they didn't retreat! They fought! And with great effort, paying with the lives of one of my knights and one of the hunters, the whole village was massacred and not a single goblin or orc survived!"

The crowd cheers but the lord raises his hand to stop.

"When they were exhausted and retreating they heard that there were orcs attacking the camp, there were orcs that didn't follow the breeder to the village and went berserk after their leader died."

The crowd gasps again.

"The rearguard defended the camp with fearsome resolution, even though they suffered great injuries they defended the camp. In the end, only 2 attending space mages were lost. Now finally, the huge threat of two breeders was destroyed," he raises his hand and the crowd cheers.

"Now it is time to reward their efforts."

He grabs a long scroll.

"Haaran, my son. As a leader of the expedition I thank you for your achievements. As a knight no reward is given to you."

Haaran gets up and bows then he goes back on his knee.

"Silvane, my son's betrothed. As the expedition's healer and support mage, I thank you for your achievements. As a knight no reward is given to you."

Silvane repeats the movements of Haaran and one-by"-ne the other knights do too. Then they move to the side and stand by the columns near the benches.

The lord starts calling the name of the fellowships and giving their leader a small shining metal medal. It holds the heraldry of the town on one side and a small goblin and orc head on the other, on that side you can see written "exterminated" and the date, 23/06/68,599. Then he names the other members of the fellowship.

"Torgua, leader of Honest Shield, rearguard and protector of the camp. For your bravery in defending the camp and your sacrifice by receiving a grievous wound, I thank you.

"Wolf 'Good Luck' Ryder, leader of Helios, shock troop. For your great skill in creating the land bridge, for your timely help to my son and his knights, for your great effort in defeating the Orc Chief, for your great skill in summoning the elementals to support the other hunters, I thank you.

"Come see me after the ceremony," Alaraste whispers when he gives me the medal.

"Yes, my Lord," I respond reflexively.

In a blink I'm already sitting down, I don't remember getting up or coming down, I just remember the moment Alaraste gave me the medal.

"Alissa, member of Helios, shock troop and scout. For your great skill in killing innumerous goblins with your accurate archery, I thank you.

"Hanafuria, member of Helios, shock troop. For your bravery in defending your allies with your shield and your skill in cutting down your enemies with your sword, I thank you.

"Roxanne, member of Helios, shock troop. For your great skill in supporting with your magic not only your own fellowship but also my own son's knights and other fellowships, I thank you."

The naming continues.

"And now, to honor the fallen. Faaran, knight of the town, died in battle in the hands of the berserking Orc Chief. Your effort will be remembered, your family will be rewarded, and your honor in the afterlife is guaranteed.

"Tarsuan, attendant space mage, died in battle defending the camp from orcs. Your effort will be remembered, your family will be rewarded, and your honor in the afterlife is guaranteed.

"Cartaan, attendant space mage, died in battle defending the camp from orcs. Your effort will be remembered, your family will be rewarded, and your honor in the afterlife is guaranteed.

"Ornstein, member of Akros, shock troop, died in battle in front of the village's gates, hit by seven spears on his chest. Your effort will be remembered, your family will be rewarded, and your honor in the afterlife is guaranteed.

"And now, the reward for this extermination was supposed to be a single gold coin for each participating member. But seeing how much more dangerous the battle was and to reward the sacrifices of all participants, each member will receive 10 gold coins as reward!"

A few awestruck sounds.

"The names of all involved will be spread by the town criers for two days so your bravery is recognized by the populace. And thus we conclude the ceremony, enjoy your gathering and small party created for you, brave hunters."

The lord gets up and leaves the room, a large amount of proto-butlers and maids pull out long tables and plenty of simple dishes. They are all to be eaten by hand and standing, self-service buffet seems to be a thing here too.

My stomach, which felt it was made of steel, starts to loosen and relax. I hated this ceremony, I feel some pride but I still hated it, stage fright. The reward was given by the guild yesterday so this is the last we hear about this expedition. I still have to talk to the lord though.

I see a considerable number of the adventurers talking to the nobles. I guess this is the point of this ceremony, give a foot in the door for the adventurers to become knights. I try my best to keep to myself, I don't want to get involved with the high society yet.

After eating a bit I see in the corner of the room the lord appears, now wearing much more discreet black clothes and no cloak.

Alissa grabs my hand and takes me to the lord. Oh boy, I can already feel his gaze burning through me.

"Mr. Ryder. It's a pleasure to meet you again," he flickers a smile and goes back to his stoic expression.

"I-it's my pleasure too, my lord," I say what Alissa taught me in a hurry.

"As I heard the reports you not only saved my son's beloved but you also worked well with him and possibly saved his life. I don't think even him could take on the Orc Chief by himself."

"Y-you think so? I-I was ju-just doing my d-duty," I stutter.

"And duty needs to be rewarded. Tell me, do you wish for something? I would like to reward you."

I freeze. Oh boy, not even Alissa prepared me for this, what's a reasonable thing to ask from a lord. There's only one thing I want right now.

"T-then perhaps a-a town pass? I-it's very bothersome to keep passing through customs all the time."

The truth is hiding my lack of [Item Box] makes me very nervous whenever I enter or leave town.

"That can be arranged, you won't be able to avoid the regular check of your guild card, you understand?" His gaze pierces me even more.

"Y-yes, I j-just want to waste less time o-on customs," I manage to spit out.

"I see. I can arrange the pass to work on the entire empire, that would be a more fitting gift. Also, if you are found smuggling a single item, no matter what it is the pass is revoked immediately, you understand?"

"Yes! Perfectly!"

"Then it will be arranged," he flickers another smile and leaves.

I feel like collapsing from the released pressure. What an odd man, I never thought he would interact with me in such a straightforward manner

"That's a wonderful gift, Wolf," Alissa says, trying to cheer me up.

"Can you call me 'Wolfy'?

"A-ah… yes… W-Wolfy…

Oof, my heart, my mood is back.

A note from Manasong

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Chapter 12: Morning Dew

A note from Manasong

Attention: to conform to the limit of sexual content allowed in a novel, I've censored this chapter. You can look for the uncensored version here.

If certain parts with sexual content look off or with paragraphs missing, it's likely that they were censored.

We take a bath together and this time there's only light playing. We need to establish a proper rotation on my bed, we have to switch Roxanne and Hana since Alissa can't leave but Hana and Roxanne also wanna sleep together once in a while. So tonight is Hana and Alissa, then tomorrow it's gonna be only me and Alissa. Good luck, Roxanne, I hope you survive a night with the freak.

Hana is satisfied so we only do it slowly and lovingly while Alissa helps herself, then I use my fingers on her until she's satisfied. I wonder when I will get [Hand Technique], I know I'm at least competent with it since I've done Alissa many times with only my hands.

I slept well again.

Today is the 24th.

I wake up to two mouths on my lower member, I think this should be a morning routine.

I feel like trying one last time to sleep without Alissa but I'm scared of the nightmares.

In the morning me and Alissa go to the dungeoneering guild to search for dungeons to explore. Alissa slips out for a bit and goes to look for basil and more spices to bring. I know there's cinnamon, cloves, and curry around so maybe she can find something good.

It's rather lonely without her, she's quiet, unlike Hana and Roxanne, so I don't mind always being near her. I delve into the books and focus on the descriptions. I find one that piqued my interest, it's the Roulette of the Morning Dew, a dungeon with a large variety of monsters, mostly huge animals, mutations and the base magic elements. Monster Hunter story arc begin!

The dungeon is a variety of forest and mountain environments and rather pleasant to walk through. The monsters are a variety of large predators which the corpses fetch some good money, we can even use them for cooking since the meat here is a little limited. There's a minotaur that we can kill for meat and the female version we can extract milk, weird to think it like this since it's a half-person but everyone in this world does it so when in Rome do as the Romans do.

The plants are mana solidifications, unfortunately. There's plenty of interesting plants there but they disappear quickly after you cut them, you can taste them briefly if you eat them as soon as you cut them, though.

The dungeon is another dimensional door with an "elevator" but the levels are even more massive than Royd's Kerfuffle's and have quite the height variance too. The ceiling is filled with enough mana crystals that it looks like day at most of the floors.

"Hana will like this dungeon," Alissa says.

"Yeah, she will likely be the one working the hardest since the monsters all have a lot of strength."

"Which will make her like this even more."

We go back home for lunch. On the trip I hear my name being screamed around town, the criers are already divulgating the names of the fellowships involved in the subjugation. Well, now everyone around town will have heard about me, nothing I could have done about that one except failing on the subjugation.

After lunch Roxanne went to the bakery and ordered a cake that will get ready at the end of the day. I spend the afternoon sparring with Hana and Alissa, as we get tired the sparring turns into mere play and even Roxanne joins.

"Oh, actually I forgot to look at your status Roxanne," I say, "I will put some of your extra points into [Sword Use] so we can play."

"I guess these days were just a bit hectic, eh?" She says.

I take a look at Roxanne stats:

Info

Name: | Roxanne Succubus | Age: | 21 | Race: | Succubus-Type Demon
HP: | 100 | MP: | 1105 | Magic Power: | 359
Level: | 30 | Experience: | 7059/9000

Stats

Strength: | 8 | Endurance: | 8 | Dexterity: | 11
Speed: | 8 | Intelligence: | 18 | Wisdom: | 17
Willpower: | 14 | Charisma: | 15 | Piety: | 10
Perception: | 10 | Sanity: | 12

Other

Status Effects: | NONE | Titles: | NONE
Affiliations: | Helios (Fellowship), Wolf Ryder (Fiance)
Companions: | Wolf Ryder, Alissa, Hanafuria
Crimes: | NONE

Roxanne Succubus Skill Report

Physical

Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level
Dagger Use | 2

Magical

Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level
Sense Mana | 3 | Mana Control | 24 | Reduced Mana Cost | 3
Mana Efficiency | 9 | Fire Magic | 22 | Water Magic | 20
Light Magic | 1 | Space Magic | 8 | Conjuring Magic | 5
Alchemy | 3 | Potion Brewing | 9 | Poison Brewing | 2

Miscellaneous

Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level
Housework | 1 | Cooking | 1 | Cleaning | 1
Washing | 1 | Riding | 1
4 Remaining Skill Points
OBS: Level means (free point)+(trained point)

Spells

Explosion | Melt Skin | Fireball | Fire Whip | Fire Arrow | Firestorm
Fire Wall | Torrent | Water Wall | Water Blade | Water Breathing | Drown
Clean | Spirit Light (weak) | Synthesize | Extract Ichor | Extract Pus | Conjure Water
Conjure Bland Meal | Telekinesis | Item Box (weak)

"Oh, it shows here that you are my fiancee already. Even on the other girls."

"Even the gods recognize us," Roxanne says with a smile.

"You are quite the high-level, you are close to Hana.

"I spent most of my time escorting caravans, they don't give that much experience," says Hana.

"And I spent most of my life hunting monsters for ingredients," says Roxanne.

"Huh, you have quite a high [Mana Control]."

"That's my talent! Without it I can't cast my explosion magic," Roxanne looks proud.

"I guess [Extract Nectar] and [Extract Pus] is from [Potion Brewing] and [Poison Brewing], right?"

"Yeah, kind of an unpleasant name."

"Agreed."

I reduced my points in [Sword Use] and we had some fun playing around. I need to setup a strength training regimen, I ask Hana to help me train my muscles, I need more strength to last a proper amount of time in melee.

When the sun was coming down we all took a relaxing bath together, too tired for anything sexual. Roxanne went to get the cake and we roasted a large rib of Grey Berserker that Alisa bought, we ate it with garlic bread. After we were done we took out the cake, a meringue and not-strawberry cake with a very sweet and creamy filling.

"To glory in battle!" Hana raises her cup.

"To great achievements!" Alissa raises her cup a bit tipsy.

"To happiness!" Roxanne raises her cup and laughed.

"To a long life!" I raise my cup.

I'm a bit dizzy.

"Waaait, what's this, iit's… lemon?"

"The cake? There should be a hint of Tonsel in it," Roxanne says.

"Aaaah, Alissa, buy Tonsel and put it into black tea, it's gonna be great!" I say.

"Tonsel? Okaay, we put it on fishh tooo, heh," Alissa responds, her voice is garbling.

"Yes! Fish! We should eat fishhh! Fish with lemon, now we need shoyu too!"

"Masteeerr-he-he-he-herr~… I love youu, I-I will do anything, because... be-because I love youu! Ok?" Alissa hugs me, I can see tears in her eyes.

"That's enough drinking for you two," Hana says and grabs out cups.

"Thanks Hana, wine sucks, I want my chocolate miiilk!"

"Okay, okay we will get chocolate one day, alright?" Roxanne strokes my head.

Alissa starts crying and hugs me harder.

My head hurts, I'm still dizzy. We are in the bed and Alissa is hugging me hard, she drank waay more than me. I hated the taste so I just drank a few cups but that's enough to make me dizzy since I never drunk before, literally.

I wanted to watch Hana and Roxanne doing it on the table, Hana gets more even more hornier when she drinks. Next time they drink I will join, I just wanna cuddle with Alissa now.

Today is the 25th.

I wake up first and Alissa goes for the blowjob immediately once she awakes.

"So, could this be a morning thing for us? I really like it."

Alissa smiles with my dick in her mouth.

"Okay," she says after taking it out.

She didn't feel like doing it so we stopped at this. I kinda feel bad that I abused her so much when it was only the two of us but she says she never felt like she was forced, but I'm still conflicted.

Roxanne walks slowly and without energy, Hana is the opposite and she seems even more energetic.

"How was it Roxanne?" I ask.

"She rubbed my tail and outlasted me," Roxanne answers with a sigh, "I would be in bliss if my muscles didn't hurt. I also have a hangover, that's the only reason she won, I get weak when I'm drunk."

Not even magic can heal that, I just smile and give my thumbs up to Hana who grins with pride.

"Hangovers are caused because you didn't drink enough water, alcohol steals water from the body and the lack of water causes the headache."

"Oh, is that knowledge from your Earth?" Roxanne asks.

"Yes, you can trust me on that one."

"Heheh, thanks, now I can drink more without problem," Roxanne gives an innocent smile.

I facepalm but I know she's joking, I hope. Thankfully Hana and Roxanne don't drink much because I don't really like it.

Alissa had a few Tonsels she wanted to use in a salad but she put it in the tea, it really is lemon. It comes from the High Forest so the supply varies, it seems it's not part of the culture here to drink it cold.

At the morning we clean the house, Roxanne is even worse than me at cleaning but now that they are all (soon to be) wives Alissa organized us all to work together and clean.

I have some free time and so I analyze the summoned bird's soul again. The patterns are really complex and I'm trying to find a way to write and describe them more precisely but it's almost insanity, really, the soul is a complete psychedelic mushroom trip. How the hell did that mage manage to complete an experiment without trial and error? His research notes on the soul were lost, unfortunately.

I spend all my time just scanning the soul little by little, maybe I can make some sense out of the madness one day.

We have some simple lunch, yesterday's dinner was a little too heavy on our stomachs.

At the afternoon there's not much to do. Alissa and Hana go out to buy books and see what's new, even Hana enjoys shopping around. I want Roxanne to go with them but she wants to finish her work with the Moonlight Moss. I keep scanning the bird's soul, no real progress.

"Wolf, a letter came to you," Roxanne whispers.

I snap out of the meditation and open my eyes. I reflexively kiss her since she tickled my ears with her voice and her face is so close. She chuckles.

"The town pass is gonna be ready tomorrow, the guildmaster will deliver it to me," I say.

"Oh, that's amazing, let's go explore a dungeon tomorrow then!"

"What about the Moonlight Moss?"

"I did it!"

"What?!"

"I did iiiiiiit!"

She jumps and hugs me. We cuddle and kiss until the other girls come back. Then there's more kissing coming from Hana.

"So what does the potion do?" Alissa asks.

"It's a performance enhancer. It boosts speed, strength and endurance for a whole hour, I believe, gotta time that. It also doubles as a strong health potion. There's also another potion that I made with it that heals a massive amount of MP but it seems it makes the person unable to move..." She looks away and cleans her throat.

"Well. That's interesting, when we can use [Gate] the second potion will certainly be useful," I say.

"Yes, right now it's not that great but maybe until then I can refine the potion."

"We should all carry the booster potion, in case of emergency a boost of speed is a life-saver," says Hana.

"Understood, I will prepare at least 2 for each of us. The MP super-potions use a lot less ingredients so they will last a while, but if we keep using the booster a lot I think I can make only 30 more potions out of the moss."

"I don't think we should be relying on the booster a lot, it should only be kept as a trump card so you shouldn't have to use all the moss on it," I say.

"Yes, consumables like this aren't reliable for long use," Hana adds.

"Ah, when we get [Gate] we could teleport directly to the floor of the turtles," Roxanne says.

"Another good idea," I say, "Well, then. With the pass let's go to the Roulette of the Morning Dew. Tomorrow in the morning I will report my progress to the university then after that let's prepare in the afternoon and depart after tomorrow."

We all agree to the schedule.

The bookcase is getting a few more books. Alissa and Hana found a few tapestries to put on the walls and windows. We only had black curtains to cover our diamond-shaped leaded panes windows. Now there's a few with single colors like crimson red and a few embroidered with simple patterns. We are putting a carpet in every room and 2 potted plants on the entrance to the living room, they are peace lilies. I suggested to Alissa to get some ivy-like plant to put on the walls.

Tonight again I go to sleep with Hana and Roxanne but I call Alissa to play in bed. Since the two exhausted each other last night it's just me relaxing in a sea of breasts, tongues, and hands. We need oil for some proper tit loving, but still, this is heaven.

The goblin woman and her child killed me again. Twice, I woke up from the nightmare and then had it again.

Today is the 26th.

"Alissa, today it happened again, it was worse."

"I told you I don't mind, we will just keep sleeping together."

I cringe. This stupid curse.

"We will find help one day for this, perhaps when Ciel joins she could help, the priests help with problems in the mind too."

That's true, Ciel might help.

Today I can't take a nap in the morning. I drink a lot of lemon ice tea hoping for a caffeine boost and go to the university with Alissa.

"This is amazing, Mr. Ryder, if you can create your [Sense Soul] skill I believe we can fully remove the need for your tuition fee," Mathias says.

Now that Roxanne is pooling her money with ours we have even less money problems, but I guess this is nice.

"I will focus on [Sense Soul] for a while, I want to at least be able to use [Infuse] successfully once."

"Yes, yes. Your progress is great and your skills are very interesting, at this point you are free to research as you please. I will report this to the council but I see no reason they will ask you to prove yourself further."

I waste no more time and come back home to take a nap until Alissa wakes me for lunch. Simple vegetable soup with fried not-potatoes and blanched Dragolite milanese.

Then we all go to the guild, in there they inspect our crystal ID tablets. I made sure I removed any odd skill first but I still saw the attendants mouth twitch for a moment. Then she pulls a flask and let a single drop of ink fall into each of our tablets.

Now when we touch that drop of ink the tablet changes and some writing can be seen: "The adventurer named Wolf Ryder has gained the favor and trust of the True Noble Alaraste Anara, Lord of Rabanara, and therefore has no need to stay in line or pass by customs. If known that the adventurer in question is smuggling trade goods from or to a town then this pass is to be immediately removed".

"Congratulations to you all," Silas says, "This pass works on the entirety of the empire so there's no need to worry about how other towns will react. In any case it also works to prove your reputation, if you show it to any other guildmaster they should know you are a reliable person."

That's good and that's bad, if we are known to be reliable more people are going to come running asking for help.

"Thank you for your help, guildmaster, we will not misuse it."

We take our leave and go back home. Hana and Alissa are going out to refill our traveling necessities while Roxanne stays to replenish our potions. Honestly, there's so many potions that Roxanne can do that it's amazing how well prepared we can be now, "a potion for every occasion" she says.

I work into [Soul Sense] without much progress. There's so much information it's like trying to rewrite a book just from memory. I can't reproduce the birds soul using [Infuse], it's too much info to write at once. I need to find the overall pattern on how this soul is constructed.

"It's time," Hana whispers.

I reflexively kiss her since Hana tickled my ears with her voice and her face is so close. She stops for a second then kisses back. I have to stop her, it's time for my strength training.

We start with jumping jacks then jogging. She prepared dumbbells and makes me do the usual biceps, triceps and forearm, then legs and calves, then abdominal, and then I don't even know the name of the muscles that we are exercising. I just know my muscles hurt and they are sore.

Hana makes my exercises be fast and heavy. Right after it we take a bath and Hana rewards me by sucking my soul through my dick. I have to teach her how to use her breasts though.

Lots of meat for dinner for my muscles. I cuddle with Roxanne this time and Hana puts Alissa to sleep with her gift of stroking heads. Then I go to sleep with Roxanne and Alissa.

"Well, uh. I can't really move too much right now," I say.

Roxanne grins. She throws her clothes away and jumps, my view is obscured and the typical smell of a woman invades my nose.

"Careful not to suffocate him like this," Alissa says.

I can barely move right now so I use my last functioning muscle, my tongue.

Today is the 27th.

Woken up by Alissa while being deeply kissed by Roxanne, heaven.

I'm a little sore but it's okay. We have a quick breakfast and we close the house. This time I'm flying the dinghy.

If an aircraft engineer finds the one who built this dinghy he will kill him. The biggest problem with this dinghy is how ridiculously over-maneuverable it is. What's the point in being able to do 2 barrel rolls per second if you are going to destroy the structure of the vehicle with this amount of force? You can easily destroy the entire boat if you fly at full speed because a small change in pitch will suddenly increase the air pressure and it simply will break a part.

Bottom line, this world has no concept of aerodynamics. It's not my area but now I feel like I will have to be the one to jump-start it.

We pass by the castle to our right and reach the north gate. You are going to get shot down if you fly over the gate so we land and show the new function of our ID's, the guard reads each one and escorts us outside immediately. I wonder what's the literacy rate of this world.

Once we cross the gate we pull out the dinghy and start flying again. The environment is a little different, I can see the water wheels and the large river crossing the farms, it comes from the north, turns to the east and disappears in the horizon. The farms continue for a long time until they reach the horizon. There's barely any guard patrols over this side but we see a lot of archers around, it seems this area is most often attacked by the Dragolites.

I concentrate on flying. Slowly the mountain range on the horizon gets closer and the end of the farmland appears. We reach the edge of the valley at 11AM.

The valley is called The Smirk, it is a deep scar in the land. The well-made road we are on suddenly stops and only a beaten serpentine path goes downwards until it disappears into a Sea of Trees. We can see the mountain range so close to us, on the other side of that range is the elven wetlands, much further than that is the elven High Forest.

The valley is not wide but it's deep and long. The ground level the Sea of Trees is completely dark, it's normally a dangerous part of the forest but we will walk only a small distance to the entrance of the dungeon. To our left and right the valley goes on until it disappears in the horizon, eventually the valley ramps upwards and the land returns to normal elevation.

Sea of Trees is both the name of the area south of Rabanara and a type of forest, it's a land so filled with mana that the trees themselves also use it as a form of energy.

We lower the dinghy and fly close to the ground on the serpentine path. There's a small fortification there with a squad of 10 guards at the entrance lazing about, very rarely something comes out of that path, but when it does it's always something really bad. The lord takes great care in keeping this valley always culled so the farms nearby aren't in danger.

We nod towards the guards and I feel an envious gaze on me. Yep, stare all you want you will never get something close to my heaven.

I put my skills like this:

Wolf Ryder Skill Report

Physical

Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level
Sword Use | 10+5 | Dodge | 4+5 | Parry | 4+5
Block | 2+7 | Shield Bash | 0+1

Magical

Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level
Sense Mana | 0+5 | Mana Control | 0+5 | Mana Recovery | 7+0
Mana Efficiency | 3+4 | Reduced Mana Cost | 5+0 | Mana Overuse Resistance | 0+2
Blessing Magic | 10+0 | Light Magic | 9+2 | Summoning Magic | 15+5
Redirect Mana (creator) | 2

Miscellaneous

Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level
Andraste Language | 10+0 | Dismantling | 0+1 | Enhanced Semen Recharge | 0+2
OBS: Level means (free point)+(trained point)

The remaining 5 points will be left for magic resistances.

We reach the entrance of the Sea of Trees and get out of the dinghy. We all cast our [Spirit Light] and move on. We still need to go lower on the path until we reach the ground, the total height of the valley might be around 100 meters.

This Sea of Trees is damper, stinkier and has no small plants, only the trees and a moss covered ground. The complete darkness and our magical lights makes the scenery very creepy.

Another 20 minutes walking and we find the dungeon entrance, it's a simple floating ominous black rectangle. There's no point waiting, we are safer inside, so we cross.

All 4 of us enter the dark room and the familiar menu appears with the options, "1st floor" and "Exit". I see the girls disappear in front of me, then I press "1st floor".

"It looks like a starry night sky," Roxanne says with wonder.

"Yep, it's quite beautiful," I say.

The sky looks black with innumerable little shining points, these mana crystals that give so much light it seems we are under the sun. We are in a boreal forest, there's coniferous trees, hints of snow, freezing cold wind, and two extremely steep mountains, one blue and the other red.

We take out our winter clothes and put them on, Hana only needs a jacket since her brigandine is quite hot already.

The dungeon drops us randomly into one of the dozens of random exit points. Now we have to find ourselves in the map by first using the two landmark mountains and then we move towards the nearest stair. There's no exit behind us.

Roxanne had supplied the mana for the dinghy while I flew, I had enough time to cast most of our buffs so now I just finish casting the last ones and we both meditate to refill our mana. I still have 10 points in [Blessing Magic] so we all have [Wind Armor], [Sharp Blade] (except Roxanne) and [Swift Foot]. Then we have lunch.

Not even 5 minutes into the dungeon and Alissa detects the first monster. We sneak close to it and take a look.

It's a Zinotue, threat level 3. A nearly two meters tall bengal tiger with spikes on his stripes, this is an electric type monster. It's much more muscular than a normal tiger. I put all of my wives extra points in [Electric Resistance], I have 5 unused points that I put in resistance.

Hana takes out a spear and stands in front of Roxanne while I summon an earth elemental and have it guard Alissa. The training with the bird went well, I can still use the bird's and the elemental's sight without making me dizzy, it's all about focus. The bird is currently on Roxanne's shoulder.

The Zinotue is on a small clearing walking slowly towards us, Alissa fires the first shot from the bushes and it goes directly to the eyes. This monster is incredibly fast, it's reflexes allow it to dodge the shot but it still hits the side of its face.

"I'll thrust my spear up your ass!" Taunts Hana.

It gets up on its hind legs and roars, with that I can already feel a slight tingling in my body. Its base attack is making the air electrified, small shocks occur on the body regardless of where you are as long as the Zinotue keeps pumping mana to its fur.

A normal arrow hits its chest, Roxanne is casting magic.

It leaps and lands near Hana, it tries to charge but a quick jab on its face gives it a wound deep enough for it think twice. It tries to swipe the spear but it misses, the second swipe gets closer but just slides off the scale shield. Meanwhile I jump forward, slash the front left leg and jump back near Hana. Alissa puts two arrows on it's lower flank.

The monster turns towards Alissa and leaps. It receives a stone mace to the face and stops midair. The elemental's hand-mace is inside the Zinotue's mouth, you could hear the sound of rock being scraped by the monster's fangs. Then the elemental kicks the monster and it flies away a few meters.

At that distance Alissa's arrows can be dodged. The monster starts charging mana and keeps its distance. Roxanne jumps on Hana's back and dragon wings appear from the slits on Hana's brigandine.

The monster stops for a moment and opens it's huge mouth towards Alissa. Alissa dodges and on the place she was a lightning bolt hits, it wasn't at the speed of a normal lightning so it's dodgeable.

Then he turns to Hana and she uses the wings to dodge the bolt. Then he looks at the elemental and the bolt hits it right on but it causes only a small scorch mark on the chest of the elemental.

The monster gets angry and roars again with much more strength. Roxanne drops from Hana's back and then the monster charges Hana. He doesn't care about the spear and jumps towards her.

"[Water Blade]!"

The entire left flank of the monster gets a deep cut. It doesn't stop and crashes on Hana, she uses her wings to counter the momentum but she still gets her feet dragged on the ground. The monster huge mouth bites the shield and he gets a spear deep on his right side. Hana is splashed with blood.

I jump and slash at the neck, the wound is shallow. The monster disengaged from Hana to dodged me but he still received two arrows on his flank for this. He runs away to the trees. Enraged monsters don't run away, he's preparing something. His spikes point up.

"Roxanne! [Drown]!" I yell.

We scatter. Hana and the elemental go forward, I stay still and Roxanna and Alissa run back. Water droplets start appearing floating around the monster. Sparks appear from the spikes. The water droplets all congregate and surround the monsters body in a bubble. The sound of thunder can be heard.

"AAH!" I scream, I got shocked heavily but it's only pain, it didn't burn or even decrease my HP.

That was [Lightning Strike], that one is instant and can't be dodged. But [Drown] surrounds the target with water so it can't breathe, this water disrupts the strike and lowered its power greatly. Only I got hit, luckily or rather, unluckily I got chosen.

The monster is twitching, the water caused it to also get shocked. It turns towards us and an arrow enters it's eye, the monster twitched and falls, it's dead.

I cast [Clean] on Hana.

"W-what? That's the first thing you do?" She asks, amused.

I shrug.

"I would rather not let my wife's clothes get stained with monster blood," I say.

Hana laughs.

"I would do the same," Roxanne says and shrugs.

Alissa seems in deep thought, I don't know if she agrees or not with me.

We pick the fangs of the monster and help Roxanne harvest the best spikes. The meat of this monster tastes ok but it's not too valuable. We still have to be cautious and selective with the corpses we bring back so people won't suspect of my infinite "Items".

I feel something change within me, [Dismantling] increased by 1 (now 0+2).

I guess skills are a combination of technical knowledge and real life experience, that's why just reading the books on anatomy won't increase my skill immediately.

I dismiss the earth elemental then we stop for me and Hana to rest a bit. The elemental costs a considerable amount of mana but it's the perfect defense against this kind of monster. I don't have enough strength like Hana to take on a charge and keep standing so Alissa needs better protection than just me.

We start moving again and Alissa steers us away from the smell of an adventurer party. This place is somewhat popular for hunting so it's not uncommon to meet others but it's just unnecessary to get close to each other.

After an hour of walking we reach the end of our plateau and we are faced with a gentle slope of a valley, we are going towards the river at the bottom. Alissa senses a group of small enemies.

"Wysalites," I say.

The Wysarie is a large but thin velocir-... Wyvern. It has feathered wings and a scaled body but it does not fly, it uses the wings to increase it's land speed and mobility. The Wysalite is a smaller version of the Wysarie.

"I'll get them," Hana says.

We can't hide our approach, there are no bushes this time so they notice us from afar. We stand in place and let them come towards us, charging upwards is less effective.

There's 6 half-meter tall Wysalites approaching and letting out high pitched screams. Hana lowers her shield and puffs her chest, I hear the sound of someone breathing in.

*FOOOM~*, Hana breathes out and flames violently spew from her mouth. The fire covers a large area in front of us, dozens of trees go up in flames, the high pitched screams of rage become even higher-pitched screams of pain. A terrifying barbecue happens in front of us.

One survived the hellfire and Alissa ends its misery. They are the goblins of this dungeon so it's barely worth it to get their proof of extermination. We just move on from the bonfire we created, the snow and the good distance between each tree will make sure the fire doesn't spread on this forest.

"Isn't your [Fire Breath] tiring?" I ask.

"Not really, I can use once every 2 hours or so, if I used less then it would recharge faster," Hana says.

"I think it was a good use, [Firestorm] is somewhat inefficient," Roxanne says.

"It seems so," I finish.

We reach the river and move along the valley, we will be reaching the stairs soon. The advantage of going through the river is the higher encounter rate, we are here to fight monsters, the more the merrier.

Soon enough we find another Zinotue, it's smaller but I still summon an earth elemental again. Same strategy. We move closer to it and fail to sneak attack first, it was wary of something and spotted us from far away. Immediately it casts the lightning bolt.

The monster is quite far.

"Hey! Hide behind the elemental!" I yell.

We all share a "why not?" look and shrug, we form a line behind the elemental and keep walking forward. The elemental takes 3 bolt hits like it's nothing, it didn't even flinch. Earth is rather strong against [Electric Magic], [Fire Magic] is much more effective at melting earth and metals than electricity.

The monster immediately enrages and charges at the elemental. We just keep hiding behind it and Hana readies her spear from behind the elemental. As the monster jumps and bites the head of the elemental it hugs the monster and doesn't let it escape.

We stab and slash and shoot at his throat until Roxanne finishes [Water Blade] and decapitates it.

"Pff…" I let out a chuckle.

"Guess it was young and dumb," Roxanne says.

We move on.

We meet another group of 7 Wysalites and Hana creates another bonfire, it wasn't full strength so Alissa finished 2 of them. The smell is that of roasted chicken and it opens my appetite, but the meat isn't good, so I have heard.

We reach the stairs, it's like a ruin in the middle of the forest. A half"ruined mossy arch stands alone in the forest and past it is a set of stairs the leads to the expected rectangular black barrier. We cross it.

We reach the 2nd floor.

This floor is another boreal forest but the mountains are many and not easily identifiable, I bring my bird to the sky and survey the area. We are at the foot of a snow covered mountain to our east, there's a v-shaped valley without a river to the west of us that turns around and goes south, a prairie surrounded by mountains to the north, and to our south is a steep and impassable mountain. Again the best option is following the valley and then going south.

The prairie is infested with Wysalites, it's not worth our time. The snow-covered mountain has strong monsters but no stairs. These lower floors don't have many strong monsters so we have to use a balance of progress speed and encounter rate to test our strength on the new level.

We start moving again and meet 2 even smaller Zinotues.

"Probably siblings, they work together until they are strong enough to be independent," says Hana.

"Don't taunt them, Hana, I will take one."

"Is that really necessary?" Alissa says.

She does not approve, they are still 1-meter tall monsters.

"Not really, but I wanna test coordination with a dog, you can fire an arrow at it and it will disrupt the charge."

Alissa pouts.

"Fine..." She mutters.

We move forward and they spot us. I start to feel bad for them, until I see them both stupidly charge towards us with their fangs bared. I summon a pitbull and steel myself for the charge.

The small Zinotue leaps at me and hits my shield and my arm explodes in pain. Shit they are heavy. I try to counter stab during the defense but it's quick enough to dodge my sword.

It's quick but not enough to dodge everything, a second after it hits my shield the summoned dog leaps at it's throat and latches on. The monster is strong but it can't get out of the bite, it thrashes about and gives me enough of an opening to split its head open, ew.

I look at Hana and she's playing whack-a-mole with the other monster. The smaller it is the faster it becomes, that's the advantage they have to compensate for their stupidity and inexperience. It retreats away from Hana's reach, she changes grip on the spear and throws it at the monster. It hit its flank and pins it to the ground. Hana dashes with her wings, then draws her sword and slashes it's head off in a single movement.

"Ohohoh, that looked so cool!" Exclaims Roxanne.

I nod.

"Say that again during the bath," Hana responds.

"No, thank you," and she smirks.

We move along the valley and encounter a group of 5 Wysalites, no fire breath this time. I bring out a fire elemental, it's weak physically but it has good ranged magic. The fire of the elemental burns in a very specific form that resembles the shape of tall, busty woman with mane like hair. Hana smirks at me when she sees this.

I pull my shield besides Hana and we wait for the charge. The bottom of the valley has very little trees so we spotted each other from afar.

1 monster already falls to Alissa, they get wary of the accurate arrows and focus on evading them. But that means they don't focus as much on the magic and a fire arrow pierces one, who falls to the ground and receives a normal arrow as a follow up. 3 left.

They enrage and increase speed.

"Whips!" I yell.

"Here, chicken-chicken, heeere chicken-chicken," taunts Hana while hitting her shield with her spear.

As they are getting close 2 [Flame Whips] grab 1 Wysalite each. They fall and trash around trying to undo the burning whip. I dash and stab the heart of one, the other one receives an arrow to the chest. 1 left.

I look at Hana and she's proudly waving about her chicken on a stick.

The light from the mana crystals is dwindling, it must be sunset on the surface. We move away from the valley and find a place to camp, we settle on a small clearing with a thicker amount of trees around us that provides good cover for us. I pull out the already-built tent and the bathtub with the partition, then I summon 2 dobermans and tell them plus the bird to patrol. I'm actually feeling safe with these dogs around me.

We got a new bathtub, it's just a wood tub with a step so we can sit. We all enter and Roxanne brushes Hana's mane, it's my request because otherwise she might let that glorious hair get ruined. Alissa mounts me and we slowly enjoy each other.

"Hey… Are you two fucking?" Hana asks.

"Well, yeah," I answer.

"Alissa, finish him soon, I want my turn."

She closes her eyes and pouts.

"Don't wanna," she says, bashfully.

And she didn't.

We have dinner then we cuddle inside the tent, Roxanne pulled out her personal magic stone air warmer so it's kinda cozy inside but a little stuffy.

Alissa reads her book while Roxanne cuddles me and strikes my hair and Hana rides me twice. The skill is working, I'm barely tired.

Hana grabs me on one side, on the other I grab Alissa and we go to sleep. Unfortunately this bed only holds 3 people but we managed to fit a smaller bed for Roxanne to sleep besides us.

I summoned another bird and made it guard the entrance to our tent.

Today is the 28th.

I wake up to an awkward triple. There's too many heads and too little space, but Alissa and Hana teach Roxanne how to do it. It seems she doesn't like the taste.

We eat breakfast and break camp. The stairs are nearby, only an hour to reach them.

We reach the 3rd floor.

This floor is the last boreal forest for a while. We exit on the shore of a fjord, two mountains cover our surroundings. There's only one way and it's to go between the mountains. Behind us there is only a dark sea that ends on a black cave wall.

Most exits end here and since it's a cramped space it doesn't have many monsters so this ends up being a popular camping spot. For us who are searching for enemies while delving deeper, this fjord is just a waste of time. We change Hana's brigandine for her spare leather jacket and start jogging, with [Swift Foot] we can clear this fjord in an hour.

Alissa leads us away from crashing into 3 adventurer camps and we finally reach the valley. There's only small hills and a dense forest ahead, we have to follow the compass closely so we can find the stairs.

"This one is huge, it's another Zinotue," Warns Alissa.

I think for a moment.

"Means lots of experience," says Hana.

"We can go all out once in a while, maybe we could give the Moonlight Elixir to Hana?" Says Roxanne.

"Agreed, let's go with the Elixir, it's gonna be a trial run. First sign of trouble and we use the Escape Bomb, understood?" I say.

"Yes, yes," Hana surrenders.

"Alissa and I will hide behind the elemental, I will make it heavier. Alissa, can you hit it through the trees from this distance?"

"Yes, but I can't guarantee where it will hit."

"That's enough for a first strike."

Roxanne gives a glass flask with a shining silver fluid for Hana to drink.

I concentrate and start casting [Summon Elemental]. The summoning can be influenced by your [Mana Control] skill and your will so I imagine this one has a lead metal core, with this it's extra heavy and can hold on against such a huge monster. It's not gonna be super agile but it will have enough strength to not be crushed in a single strike.

A heavy *toon~* sound is produced when the earth elemental appears.

"Do it," I say.

An arrow flies, a roar is heard and the uncomfortable little shocks start.

Heavy footsteps are approaching. Hana readies her shield and her spear, her wings are spread wide in wait. She looks fearsome in this posture, her gaze has a mix of anger and amusement. I hide cowardly behind the golem, Alissa is to the side so she can fire an arrow, Roxanne is gathering mana.

"WROOOO~!" Screams the monster.

A 3-meters tall Zinotue leaps from the trees, it has 50 cm long spikes coming out of its stripes and they are already letting out sparks. It has an arrow on it's left flank.

"HAAAAAAAAA!" Hana screams back. Her scream makes my bones tremble.

What is this? A battle between monsters?

Mountains collide. Hana didn't bashed its snout so it so he couldn't eat her shield. She didn't even flinch and her feet got dug into the ground. What is this elixir? Her spear comes out of the chest of the monster completely bloodied, it didn't even care.

It steps back once and swipes at Hana. She bashes the huge paw and it flies backwards, her feet dig deeper into the ground. She thrusts again and the spear cuts the skin of the cheek as the monster tries to dodge the stab.

It goes in its hind legs and strikes Hana downwards with both paws. She blocks both and is forced on her knees but she gets another stab, this time below the mouth but it was not enough to reach the brain.

Meanwhile Alissa put 4 arrows on it's flank and it just ignores it, I slashed at the left paw but it barely cuts through. Then I jump and try to slash at its neck but it's too massive, my sword won't reach for a proper wound. It's all on you Roxanne.

The monster jumps backwards and start charging a lighting strike, my muscles start to cramp a little just from the increased power to the shocking aura. This one is going to hurt.

"[Water Blade]!"

A massive cut appears on the monsters body, it's right ear is cut, it's shoulder bleeds profusely, and the cut goes up to his back. The electricity it was charging disperses, it shocks and burns anything nearby, luckily we are far away.

It roars, it gets ready to charge again and this time it's aim is Roxanne.

I have an idea.

"Roxanne! [Explosion]! We will hold it!" I yell.

I tell the elemental to stand besides Hana while I stand on the other side. The monster charges. It's gaze is so powerful it sends chills to my spine. Hana readies herself again with all her might.

"WROOOOOAR!"

"HAAAAAAA!"

They compete in who can hurt my ears the most.

This time Hana jumps and her wings make the air behind her kick up a storm. She meets the monster and stabs him in the mouth just as an arrow also pierces him there, now it can't close it so it just uses its snout to tackle Hana's shield. They both stand still mid-air, then they fall down with perfect posture.

The monster prepares its legs to jump over Hana, she won't be able to stop it. The monster jumps and falls back to the ground.

The slow elemental threw itself into the body of the monster and grabbed it, its massive weight doesn't allow the monster to run. An arrow pierces its tongue, ensuring his mouth doesn't close down so soon.

I slash at its right side while Hana stabs it in the face. It tries to wiggle out of the grip but it's failing. I feel the mana level reaching dangerous levels.

"Back!" I yell.

"[EXPLOSION]!"

I go back a few steps and my vision goes red, my body gets hit by something wet and warm and I hear a loud explosion half a second later, I lose my hearing after that.

I cast [Heal] on myself and I get my hearing back, I rub my eyes and now I can see again. The Zinotue's body was divided in two, one part has the hind legs and the other has the forelegs and the head. Much of its midsection is gone, it's entrails are all over the place. I turn around immediately.

I cast [Heal] on the women so they can hear again and move behind a tree so I can clean myself. It's actually so much blood [Clean] doesn't cut it anymore. I call them and we get Roxanne to throw hot water on all of us so we can remove the blood. Walking around with bloodied clothes is not a good idea and we don't have time to remove it and wash it properly. Doing it like this it's much faster but rather unpleasant.

A few minutes of frantic scrubbing and many heavy [Clean] spells and Alissa tells us the scent of blood is gone from us. Alissa guides me towards the body while I keep my view down and I store both parts inside "Items". There's no comment from them towards my weak stomach but I'm still quite ashamed.

"Wolfy, it's okay," Alissa says and grabs my hand.

Oof, calling me that makes me happier.

"Thanks..." I say.

We leave the horrifying scene of blood and gut stained trees and move on.

Once we get far away enough so that Alissa can't smell the blood anymore we sit down and rest.

"That elixir is insane, Roxanne," I say.

"Praise me more," she responds.

"I felt invincible," says Hana.

"That's a bit much..." I mutter.

"More!" Roxanne asks.

"It looked glorious seeing Hana fly, even she looked small against that monster and she stopped it mid-air," Alissa says.

"Hohohoh, yes, glorious indeed!" And she hits her cheeks with her palms.

Of all of us, Hana seems the most happy in this expedition while I'm still feeling sick. I remember the fight with the Symbol and I think Alissa must have cleaned the place, it wasn't as horrifying as this.

Alissa hugs me from behind while I meditate. A few seconds later Hana hugs my left arm and Roxanne my right.

"Uh… sorry Wolfy, my spells make you ill," Roxanne mutters with a hint of sadness.

"Don't be sad for me, go back to being happy for your elixir. I have to deal with this, it's a problem that I have, not you."

She hugs me tighter and I get a kiss on the cheek. I really didn't wanna bring down the mood.

We meet a group of 4 Wysalites going towards the smell of blood.

"I'll make each of you give a blowjob to my sword!" Yells Hana.

They all enrage and charge blindly towards her, it seems this one was a critical success.

"[Fire Wall]!"

The 4 of them start burning and running around like headless chickens, target practice for Alissa. I didn't even do anything, I was going to call a fire elemental but they all bunched up like this so it's pretty much Christmas for us.

We keep moving and finally reach the stairs, it's another ruin.

We reach the 4th floor.

This floor is divided into a jungle on one side and a volcano on the other. The jungle has plenty of Giant Dragonflies so I don't want to go there and the volcano has an interesting enemy we have to fight.

The jungle is simply a large are covered by thick jungle and a few hills, rivers run between the hills so there's plenty of space for the Giant Dragonflies to live around. The volcano is a series of canyons and caves surrounding the very steep chimney, the map is quite serpentine and we will have to be careful not to get lost.

We are on the border of the jungle, a few steps and we touch the hard volcanic soil. A minute of walking and we reach a cliff with the first cave.

The cave is dry and hot, very unpleasant. You see bones and feces scattered about every 10 meters or so, this cave is the nest of monsters.

I put Roxanne's 5 free skill points in [Water Magic] and that allows her to cast [Filling Waters]. It recovers mana, stamina and gives a small regeneration, but the best is that it prevents us from getting our cavities too dry.

The Wysalites turned into Wyqualites, smaller versions of the Wyquasy. These are slightly bigger than Wysalites, they don't have feathers but they spit out fireballs and cook their prey alive. They are red colored because color-coding is a thing for monsters it seems.

We meet a few of them but since they aren't fast enough me and Hana simply block the fireballs, Alissa uses them for target practice, and Roxanne knocks them out with a simple [Torrent].

We find a relatively safe and not smelly cave and have our lunch. It's a proto-hamburger again, a piece of a cheesy not-eggplant casserole I taught Alissa and a large not-pear.

"I don't praise you enough for being so good at cooking," I say.

"You don't," Alissa mutters and then looks away.

Getting sassy, eh?

"I don't. You are an amazing cook Alissa."

She blushes, so easy.

"Agreed, I never ate such good food during my trips," says Hana.

"I feel like I should have proposed to her too," says Roxanne.

She gets silent and fidgety, she's holding her tail still deliberately.

"Alissa, you are perfect, the perfect wife," I whisper to her.

She starts shaking, her eyes lose focus, and her tail wags uncontrollably.

"Too far, you broke her," Roxanne smiles.

We continue our journey and Alissa smells something peculiar.

"There's only one other enemy here," I say.

We all let out a smile. We are close.

Alissa follows the smell and soon enough we find the monster. Alissa sneaks into its nest and confirms it, it's the Burkanolf, threat level 4, almost 5. This monster is a 2-meters tall black wolf with a very long snout and very thin, sharp fangs. It's tail is made of fire like a fire elemental and its claws are magically made of lava.

"Alissa, you are in charge of the Escape Bomb," I say, she nods.

I sit down and concentrate, this is a powerful enemy and I need a good elemental against it. It needs to protect against fire breath so I make it extra wide, the body itself will be a shield. On heat resistance I make it so it has a titanium coating so it protects against melting, followed by a cement layer so it insulates against heat, and the bones I make them out of onyx for hardness.

The weight of the body is carried by the skeleton, if the bones break it loses its power. If the entire body is considered "bones" then it moves faster but it also gradually loses power with every crack or piece of rock that gets scraped off. If I make only the internal parts considered bones then it can maintain performance while losing pieces of the outer layer at the cost of speed. The onyx is much more costly mana wise than the titanium or cement so I have to use it sparingly.

"Bring it," I say.

Alissa sneaks into the next cave, shoots an arrow, and comes running back. I hear a yelp, a growl, and the footsteps of something heavy coming. Roxanne is already charging mana.

The tunnel lights up in red light and out of it comes the Burkanolf with it's mouth already open, I see an arrow sticking out of where his genitals should be, wow Alissa.

We line up behind the elemental and a huge fire breath flows around us. It hits the chest of the elemental, and it didn't even flinch. A whole minute goes by and the breath dies out. The elemental is red hot but completely unharmed, I can feel that not a single point of HP dropped.

Immediately the monster jumps and bites the head of the elemental.

"[Torrent]!"

The monster is hit on the shoulder and flies backwards while spinning, it lands on its legs perfectly. The elemental only has small dents where it was bitten. Alissa lets out an arrow.

A fire wall appears in front of the monster, only its amber eyes are visible behind it. Alissa's arrow gets burned and disintegrates when it touches the fire wall. The monster stops and starts circling around us, its firewall moving along it.

"Hana, bait," I say.

She moves away and gets ready to receive a charge. Roxanne gathers mana.

"Hahahah, what a little candle, I can extinguish your tail with my spit!" She taunts.

The monster howls, critical success. The fire wall extinguishes and he charges. Hana meets his charge with a bash and stab, she pushes his huge mouth sideways and tabs his chest. An arrow appears on his flank and then he jumps back.

The fire wall appears again and his eyes gaze at Hana with malice.

"Oooh, doggy is scared? Come here, let me pat your cute ears," she taunts again.

The fire wall extinguishes and he charges again. This time he goes low and Hana has to use her wings to fly upwards and away from his bite. An arrow appears on his neck and he jumps backwards again.

"Bad doggy! No biting allowed!"

The flames of the fire wall grow uncontrollably, he's enraged now.

"Roxanne," I whisper.

He charges.

"[Water Wall]!"

He leaps and his whole body meets a huge, thick wall of water. He gets stuck in the middle of the whirlpool, his flame tail extinguishes, his lava claws crumble, and he writhes about trying to escape the wall. The water stops gushing from thin air and the monster jumps back to regain its composure.

Without its tail it can't create a fire wall, Alissa pumps arrow after arrow. The monster starts feeling the pain and gets desperate. I sense he's going to attack so I make the elemental shed its outer layers, now only a thin, strong, and fast black onyx skeleton is visible, I tell it to charge.

The monster tries to bite the bones but they are made of onyx and withstand it easily. This was a mistake for the monster, now the elemental grabs it and does not allow it to run. The arrows on its flank are making it harder for it to breathe and it chokes on blood.

"Now!" I yell.

Hana draws her sword and flies. Her long sword is raised high and without caring for her own safety she slashes off half the neck of the monster and crashes into it. Now again she's covered in blood.

The monster trashes but quickly loses power and gets choked by the elemental. It slows down, weakened allowing Alissa to finish it off with an arrow through the eye and into the brain.

"[Clean]!" I cast.

"Thanks," Hana says with a bitter smile.

"Oh, I leveled up," Roxanne says, "I got 1 point into [Potion Brewing] and 2 in [Water Magic]."

"You got the points now?" I ask while storing the body of the Burkanolf and quickly moving away from the small blood lake, "Now that I think about it, when does the skills level up, exactly? I know it's not instant most of the time."

"Yeah, most of the time it happens when you sleep, sometimes it happens after you level up or you reach a certain condition. Perhaps it's part of your knowledge that resting helps the brain develop?"

"Could be," I shrug.

We continue moving and soon we find the stairs.

We reach the 5th floor.

This floor has a huge cliff in the middle where a waterfall feeds into a river, along this river are a large amount of hot springs and a few lava lakes. Since we take a hot bath everyday thanks to Roxanne we don't waste any time on the springs.

Roxanne was a little disappointed, she heard that dungeon-created hot springs have special properties that help with beauty, as if they all already didn't have perfect skin. Wait, was the hot spring for me then?

We move along the river towards the closest stair. This also means we have to face a considerable number of Giant Dragonflies.

"This is a bit ridiculous," Said Roxanne while throwing a [Fire Arrow] through the body of a Dragonfly.

"What do you mean?" I ask while putting a dragonfly body inside the [Item Box].

"It took me a huge effort to find a fellowship big enough to handle a hunt for the dragonflies, then it took us hours to dismantle everything and the profits were so disgustingly low," she says and starts to charge another arrow.

"And now we are just casually strolling around through them," I say while collecting a Dragonfly body with 2 arrows pierced through it.

"[Fire Arrow]. Exactly! It wasn't even two months ago!"

"All thanks to our precious little Wolfy," Hana says, she didn't even draw her sword.

"Well… it's just that the elementals are too effective," I say, a little embarrassed.

"A little..." Alissa mutters and fires another arrow.

Another Giant Dragonfly appears and darts forward with his pointy legs aimed at us. 2 Semi-transparent green women with fox tails, fox ears, and a bob cut graciously floating around swing their arms, causing the Dragonfly to veer of course. It ends up stuck on the ground, then an arrow pierces its body and it dies before it can get itself free. I go towards it and collect the body.

"We still have to dismantle them," I say.

"But we can do it at our own pace, safe and sound. This is ridiculous, there's barely any danger in hunting anymore," Roxanne says and throws her hands in the air.

"Don't say such things, we shouldn't grow overconfident," Alissa says while a staring at the elementals, "Wolfy… aren't theirs bigger than mine…?"

"N-no… also, I'm not controlling their appearances, this is not my fault!" I hurriedly answer.

I can control the appearances of the elementals to a certain extent but they cost more mana if I do so.

We continue casually strolling until the Dragonflies stop appearing. Then we meet a group of 4 Wysalites. Hana uses [Fire Breath] and we start a small forest fire.

"What's this smell?" I say, feeling nostalgic.

"There's some aromatic fruit burning," Alissa responds.

"Yes… it's… it's… coffee," I say with pleasure.

None of the girls ever felt this heavenly smell.

"Smells kinda good though, if you ignore the smell of burnt flesh and plants," Roxanne says with a wry smile.

I look around us and find an unburnt bush with small red berries hanging. I grab one and open it up, the characteristic 2 little coffee beans are inside.

"Wow, it's really fucking coffee," I say as the fruit melts and disappears on my hand.

I eat one and it tastes sweet but very acidic, doesn't taste like coffee…

"Alissa, remember this smell. If you ever find it again in town follow it until you find the source.

"As you wish, ma-Wolfy," Alissa responds, almost relapsing at my strong command.

We reach the 6th floor.

It's the last jungle before the roman-style overgrown ruins of the 7th to 9th floors. There we will find minotaurs and there we will… milk them…

This floor is divided into a canyon that opens up and various mesa's appear, the mesa's are popular camping spots. They are safe since there's only one entrance and no flying monsters here but they can become crowded. With 3 women in this group I prefer risking a night attack so we can have full privacy.

The sun is setting so we find a low-traffic area near a mesa and set up camp. Before noon tomorrow we will have reached the 7th floor. Our progress is amazing.

After dismantling disgusting giant insect dragonflies Hana makes me do my strength routine, not as hard since we are still inside a dungeon but still hard enough that I feel like sleeping during the bath. But Hana doesn't let me, we exercised together and she got excited, she does the same as Alissa yesterday and slowly rides me during the whole bath. I kiss Roxanne and Alissa plays with my hair, this is my daily piece of heaven.

Today Alissa decided to cook a few of the Wysalites we didn't burn. They taste like chicken but they have a note of something fresh, almost minty, deep on it.

Near the bed Hana maintains our equipment, Alissa reads her book, and Roxanne slowly caresses my body, her slightly wet hair caresses my chest and the lack of ponytail gives her a new sensuality. Quiet moans fill the tent as I slowly tease her, Roxanne bites her finger and moves her hips. She closes her eyes and enjoys all of it while her horns shake about uncontrollably.

"Uh, Roxanne… your horns are a bit… soft?" I ask.

"Hm? Ah… I can… ah… soften them…ah… and move them around..." She says between soft moans.

I grab her horns and spin them around so they are facing backwards, they sway like they are made of rubber. I fail to suppress a chuckle. Roxanne punches me in the chest and kisses me to stop me from laughing.

I use Alissa's mouth to not make a mess and help her a bit since she was slowly touching herself while reading.

Tonight Roxanne wraps her tail on my leg, I feel scared to touch it but she says it makes her feel safe.

I wake up in the night, the dogs found Wyqualites roaming nearby. They are not strong enough to bypass my monster repellent stone but they can attract other monsters that could. This floor has the Burkanolf and a few rare Zinotues that can hunt at night, they could bypass the stone if old and strong enough so they could stumble upon us if they chase the Wyqualites.

I wake them up and we spend an hour on guard until neither Alissa nor the dogs can smell the Wyqualites. We sleep until a little later to compensate.

Today is the 29th.

My wake up alarm is having my soul leaving through my dick, today Hana seems extra proud of my surprised reaction.

Alissa cooks the remaining Wysalites again. She feels she could make a proper dish of it but they are annoying to hunt them on their own so it's gonna be a rarity.

We break camp and move on, we avoid the adventurers coming out of the mesas and create another small coffee-scented forest fire with a few Wysalites. At 10AM we reach the stairs.

We reach the 7th floor.

We are on an overgrown city ruins. There's partially destroyed concrete buildings, arches, and domes, with an overuse of columns. There's also ivies, vines, and moss covering any still-standing wall. Tall grass everywhere that's not a paved road, pieces of rubble spread all over. This town is called Tigurum.

At the distance we can see a very steep blue mountain surrounding us while a small sea is at the north of the town. On the outskirts there's an oak forest where the stairs of this floor lie.

We could hunt for minotaurs at the town, but since most exits end up here many other adventurers also hunt on this place so I prefer to have some privacy. We move west where the oak forest is the thickest.

We bump into a few fellowships on the way, these roads are tight and there's not many routes we can take to avoid them. All of these adventurers groups look like dirty brigands, they likely stay a long time here to collect valuable parts like proofs of exterminations and harvest organs. This dungeon is one of the easiest ones to overflow, if not for the constant number of hunters here there would certainly be a few Zinotues roaming The Smirk.

When we pass by the hunters I can feel gazes of envy on my back. That's right, they are all mine.

We leave town and enter the oak forest. It's quite beautiful. Large, mossy oaks and plenty of shrubs and flowers compose this forest. I feel like having a picnic here and enjoying the breeze and smells.

"Oh look, it's the morning dew. The monsters are weakened on this floor," I say.

This is why this dungeon got this name, the morning dew is the sign the monsters are weaker and slower, so people would pick a random floor and hope there's dew.

We walk a little happy, but Alissa starts frowning the more we walk.

"Ah! We are surrounded, nine people are coming," she exclaims.

My heart sinks, you can easily discern monsters and humanoids with [Sense Presence]. Adventurers don't come surrounding people, that's an extremely threatening move, there's only group of people that do this, brigands.

How do I deal with them? The advice book told me that thieves sometimes prey on smaller fellowships exploring dungeons, but a well maintained dungeon is rare to have thieves. The Orc Headhunter problem was a single mistake, they happen in every region. This doesn't mean that this is a badly managed region, we are just unlucky, again.

The problem with thieves is that you never know what they have. Poison, archers, mages, berserkers, magic tools, whatever you think someone somewhere is gonna use it, they might have it. Thieves are the masters of ingenuity, a horrible surprise box. If they have a mage how do I deal with him? We are outnumbered and they are not orcs, it's gonna be difficult for Hana to hold off more than one. I have to protect Alissa, she doesn't have a shield but she can keep the enemy at bay. What if they have Spirit or [Dark Magic]? Those are incredibly nasty schools of magic, I never encountered a monster that uses it, actually I never even fought against a single mage, not even for practice. How do I deal with mages? Interrupt chanting? But some chant super fast. My shield is my best friend now, but I'm still not very strong, I could get thrown away by [Torrent] easily. If they have poison I will have to use [Diagnosis] to know which, or maybe I should just drink a few of Roxanne's potions and hope of the best, I don't have time to put points in [Diagnosis]. What if they have archers? Wind elementals work but [Wind Wall] would be much more mana efficient, what points do I take out for it? Support magic can't go, all my buffs are working and they are very useful. What if I just put a point into some magic? I don't have [Fireball], [Lightning Bolt] is useful and I can get them by surprise with [Entangling Vines], even [Dark Magic]'s [Torment] could work. But we are surrounded and outnumbered, I need something to hold them off, how do I judge when to help Hana or Alissa? Roxanne can't get into melee at any cost so she's easy to judge but if I make a mistake and a blade pierces a chest it's over, a decapitation and it's over, anything on the brain and it's over. How about our formation? Should we fight back to back or should we charge the enemy? Our flanks get exposed if we charge but if we stay we can be more easily crushed and we have no place to fall back. I don't have eyes on my back I can't deal with the-...

"Wolfy," Alissa grabs my face and she looks into my eyes.

I'm hyperventilating, my heart race is racing, and my mind is dizzy.

"We will deal with them, Wolfy," Hana says.

"Everyone, drink the Moonlight Elixir," Roxanne reminds us.

"Wolfy, bring two wind elementals and give control to us," Hana says.

I obey.

"Block projectiles first and if there's an opening strike the enemy with the [Air Hammer] to disrupt them," Hana orders the elementals.

"Wolfy, you have to stand in front of me, understand? You don't have to kill but you have to defend me, okay?" Alissa tells me while looking into my eyes.

"Okay..." I mutter.

"Take a point out of [Sword Use] and put it into [Electric Magic], Wolfy, you need [Lighting Bolt] for a surprise stun, okay?" Roxanne says.

"Okay," I obey.

I'm slowing down, things are okay, things will be okay. Hana dealt with thieves all the time, she used to do lots of escorts. Roxanne dealt with bad people once in a while, she will be fine. Alissa is here to protect me and I will protect her. Everything will be fine, everything will be fine, everything will be fine, everything will be fine.

We drink our potions and draw our weapons. I'm facing east, Hana is west, Alissa north and Roxanne south. Alissa is close to me and Roxanne is closer to Hana. The elementals are in front of Alissa and Roxanne, I have to block arrows coming to me or they might hit Hana.

I hear footsteps and soon after a man comes walking out of a bush ahead. He's a golden"blond man with a square jaw, disheveled hair, and a stubble. He would be handsome if he did not have dirt all over his body. He loosely hangs a shield and walks forward with his head down. He notices us and looks up, he freezes for a moment, he looks confused.

"Ah! Uh… c-can you help me? My fellowship met a really strong minotaur and we lost. I-I wanna go find them but I'm alone and this floor is dangerous," he says, almost crying.

"What about the other eight guys around us? Aren't they part of your fellowship?" Hana says with a mocking tone.

The man frowns.

"Well shit, I tried. Dunno how but they noticed us."

"Oi! No one mentioned a summoner, these two elementals are trouble," Says another man coming from another bush in another direction.

"It's the mage girl. She shouldn't have much mana left with two elementals out, she's scared," Says another man coming from another direction.

"Whatever, just don't waste arrows on them then," says another man.

"If you lay down your weapons and the whores spread their legs we won't kill any of you. We gotta cut the hands of the mage lass, though," Says another man.

The last man comes forth besides the blond man. He is big and wears chain armor that barely makes a sound when he moves, he has a bastard sword and a round metal shield. His face is covered by a hood, I can see an ugly burn mark on the little skin he shows.

Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck. They are not here for money, a scout on the city must have seen us and caught their attention. 3 goddesses walking around with me? NAIVE, I was so fucking naive to think I wouldn't attract attention!

"You dare try to rape adventurers? Is that really worth your life?" Hana says.

Rape? That's right, that's what they are going to do. This is bad, bad, bad, bad, bad.

"You might be strong but you can't deal with all of us. A single fucking dragon a fucking archer and a fucking mage, we killed worse," the hooded man answers.

"You underestimate us, we are Helios and this is Wolf Ryder. You wanna blow up like the Symbol of Hate did?" Hana says and laughs.

"No fucking way that little twat is Ryder."

"You want him to pull out his ID?"

"Like fuck the 'oh so glorious' town hero is going to let his women do the talking. Look at that fucking scared piece of shit."

I can't speak, I just can't, my body doesn't move, I'm shaking. I can't control the shaking, my heart is in my mouth. I'm sorry, I'm frozen, I'm weak, I'm a coward. I won't let you near my women.

"You pieces of orc cum, I will rape your asses with my spear and make you give a blowjob to my sword then I will peel the skin out of your dick and roast it to give it as a treat to the dogs! Come at me if you are men!" Hana taunts, "NOW!"

I hear a sound of someone breathing in. I feel mana being gathered and the blonde man falls dead with an arrow on his head. The hooded man raises his shield just in time to defend himself from an arrow.

I won't let you touch my women.

"FUCK! GET THE MAGE!" The hooded man screams and charges towards me.

Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck. Defend! I hear the sound of fire running loose.

I block his slash, my shield arm explodes in pain. That was a bad block.

"Fuckin whores…"

He slashes again and again and again and again.

I parry, I block, I deflect, and I block again. I hear screams.

I won't let you hurt my women!

"Just, fucking, die!"

I parry, I bash, I deflect and I slash.

I WILL FUCKING KILL YOU!

I charge my mana.

"You gotta be fucking…"

"[LIGHTNING BOLT]!"

"AAAH!"

The hooded man twitches, I slash at his shin, I cut some bone. The men continues screaming and bashes my shield, I fall backwards.

"DIIIIEE!"

I block with my shield and my arm hurts again. I lose power in my arm. I throw my shield at him and kick the ground up.

"RAAAAH!" I scream.

I charge my spell and slash and slash and slash and slash and slash and slash.

"[LIGHTNING BOLT]!" I scream again and use all the mana that I can on the spell.

The man convulses and I cut one of his legs off. He falls on the ground and I jump and stab him with my sword, it goes through his chain mail and gets stuck on him. I grab my knife and stab and stab and stab and stab.

"You are now level 17."

"YOU WON'T TOUCH HER."

And stab and stab and stab and stab.

"I'LL KILL YOU."

And stab and stab and-...

Something held my hand. I lose the dagger.

"Ah…"

I get hugged from behind and carried. I want to struggle but it's too strong, the hug is crushing me. I need to get away, he's still alive, he's still alive! I GOTTA FUCKING KILL HIM!

I struggle until my strength goes away, then I accept death. Just cut me down and end this, please.

I get lowered on the ground and forced to keep down. A sweet scent fills my nose as another shadow gets up on my body and holds me.

I can feel the shaking of my body, I can feel the pain in my shield arm, I can feel the dryness of my throat, I can feel the pain in my heart, I can feel the lack of air in my lungs. My breathing regulates and my heart slows down. I'm feeling dizzy right now, too dizzy.

I force myself to the side and puke. I feel something pleasant on my mouth and the bitterness of the vomit goes away. My body is so tired and heavy, I close my eyes.

Slowly my hearing comes back and I understand the words again. "Wolfy, calm down, I love you. Calm down please", I hear those words being repeated into my ear.

"Yes…"

I smell Alissa's hair perfume and see her nearly orange hair on the side of my vision, I feel the warmth of her body pressed into mine. I let the tears run through my face.

"Wolfy, we have to leave, now," I hear Roxanne, there's hurry in her voice.

"I'll carry him," Hana says.

I'm lifted up and carried like a princess for a few minutes. I stop crying and my heart calms down. Then I feel like puking again.

"Put me down… I'm feeling sick."

I hastily struggle and nearly fall down, immediately I bend and retch but barely anything comes out this time.

"[Clean]," Alissa casts and my mouth gets cleaned again.

I walk a few steps and sit down besides a tree. Alissa comes and hugs me again. Hana sits besides me and strokes my hair. Roxanne gets on the other side and grabs my hand.

A few minutes passes.

"I'm sorry..." I mutter.

"Don't be," Alissa responds.

Hana sighs.

"Didn't you say there were no monsters in your realm? No fighting, no killing, no wars? Even a scholar on this world would react worse than you, I saw men get cut down without even lifting a finger," Hana says.

"Once I had to... kill a man who tried to push me down once, I exploded his head and don't remember what I did after that. My next memory was taking a bath back at home," Roxanne says, she looks away and Hana pulls her into a hug.

"I had to train by executing criminals, I puked the first few times. Now I don't feel anything anymore," Alissa says.

"Thank you..." I let out a weak voice, I'm holding back my tears.

I feel dirty, disgusted, sick. I feel angry, I feel like killing again, I want to make him suffer. Those feelings bring a storm inside me, I killed a human, what if that was me? What if I was killed and my wives had to suffer? What if it were them that were killed?

Why did you make me do this? Why did you have to be such a shitty human being that you just fucking had to try and take these women by force? How can such evil people exist? Why did you make me dot this!? Even though you didn't succeed you still hurt me so much. Why?!

It's because they are evil, that's why. Evil people need to die, that's all that there's to it. That's all, they need to die.

I look at the girls, I smell blood.

"Are you all okay...? Do you need healing?" I ask in a weak voice.

"You don't have to do anything, just rest."

"I will… after. I smell blood."

They break down the hug. Hana shows me her hand, it's reddish and swollen, it's broken. Her shield arm is hurting a lot and she has a bruise on her left flank. I remember the elementals are still out so I dismiss them and heal her.

Alissa shows a slash on her left shoulder, it penetrated the Grey Berserker armor. Roxanne was unscathed.

"I'm sorry… someone got near you Alissa."

"Don't be!" She answers immediately.

"I barely helped, if it happens again y-..."

"We will deal with it again!"

"I was useless i-..."

"You weren't! Stop it! You aren't trained like us, you didn't go through the same things we did! It's unfair to think you would react well on the first time, we still love you and we will protect you."

"I don't want to be protected like this."

"Isn't this part of my vow?" Hana says.

"So is mine," Roxanne helps.

"Your body and soul is mine, I won't let you die," Alissa ends.

I'm cornered, there's no way out. I'm blessed to be loved by these women. Next time I will protect them better, they keep me safe and I will keep them safer!

Intermission 4

We are a team now, we can't be selfish and childish, we have to put our pride aside and work together, to treat each other with respect and fairness. We all have a desire to monopolize him but we can't act upon it, Wolfy loves us all and to exclude one of us would only serve to hurt him, in the end it would just come back and hurt us all.

More than that we know that we are not enough. We give our all, we do not put each other down, we know we are not useless, but still, we know, we agree. that we are not enough.

Even our experience and effort combined is not enough to match someone with a life in a different realm. We need to understand the points in which we fall short so we can understand where he needs help and then accept whatever help we can get.

We vowed to him to live together forever and help each other, and we will do just that, we will all rise together. We know he has the potential to go far and even though he doesn't want the tile of hero we vowed to each other we will do our best to help him achieve great heights.

A note from Manasong

Leave a rating or a review to help me rise to the top or fix my shameful understanding of prose.

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Chapter 13: Growth - Part 1

A note from Manasong

Attention: to conform to the limit of sexual content allowed in a novel, I've censored this chapter. You can look for the uncensored version here.

The symbol "-" denotes a section that got cut for containing sexual content. Also, if paragraphs seem missing, they were also likely censored in an earlier pass where the symbol wasn't used.

That man was strong, I was using the elixir and still almost went down, I seriously need more "Strength" and "Endurance". But he really didn't expect me to be able to use [Electric Magic], I was his worst opponent since he was wearing chain mail. I'm thankful for Roxanne.

The girls told me how it went. Two of the men got caught unaware by [Melt Skin] and then the elementals finished them off. Alissa killed the blond man instantly but the other two near her weren't so distracted and she was forced into melee. She held on until Roxanne dealt with her side, then turned around and used [Fire Whip] on one and an elemental knocked down the other, then Alissa managed to finish them at the cost of a shoulder wound. She even had to use an anti-venom, she was going to get paralyzed.

Hana burned 1 to death with her [Fire Breath] and dealt with the other two by herself until support came. One got an arrow to the eye and the other got stunned with a small explosion near his head and then skewered by Hana's winged charge.

In the end the taunt didn't really work since they were frenzied by their lust and evil desires. Mentioning my name might also have had the contrary effect since I was far from being threatening to them.

"Why did they attack us like this? They all threw their lives away..." I ask.

"Their bounty plates say they did some pretty heinous things," Hana answers.

"Bounty plates?"

"A simplified ID plate. You put a lot of blood in it and it tells you the name, the crimes of the person and if they are still alive when the blood was taken," Roxanne explains.

"They weren't mere thieves, they would have tried to extort us if they were. Only the wicked would throw their lives away so easily," Hana adds.

"So it's my luck that strikes again…"

"We all knew what you meant with 'isekai protagonist luck' and we don't regret it, don't think about blaming yourself," Alissa says with a strict tone.

"Okay..." I let out a weak smile, "Ah… my 'Sanity' went down a point."

"What value is it now?" Alissa asks.

"Seven."

They all look concerned.

"Is it bad?" I ask.

"Yes… you should seek guidance from the priests," Alissa says, Roxanne nods.

We rest for a while and I feel hungry, my stomach is empty so we take an early lunch. I meditate to regain mana and it really calmed my heart.

We move again in search of a minotaur. After half an hour Alissa finds one and we sneak close to investigate.

I see a 2-meters tall monster. It has a black bull face with two large and sharp looking horns pointing forward, an incredibly muscular black human body that would make a bodybuilder blush, - no underwear, and muscular black horse legs.

We immediately turn away, Alissa and Roxanne are blushing, Hana shrugs.

"If it's too big it's no fun you know, pain is still pain," she says.

After 2 more embarrassing encounters with male minotaurs we find a female. The embarrassment is not much better, the female has 4 large human breasts and a visible vagina between the legs, no pubes.

"Maybe this wasn't such a good idea," I say.

"W-we can handle it. I-it's not so bad, we will get used to it," Alissa says while blushing.

I breath in deeply and summon a very large and tough earth elemental. Once Hana and Alissa let out their arrows I let it charge and stay back.

"MOOOOO!" The female bovine roars.

The minotaur immediately charges towards the elemental with its horns pointed forward. The two clash and the horns get stuck in the chest of the elemental who grabs the minotaur while Hana and Alissa fill it with arrows.

I cast a few [Lightning Bolts] and it helps stop the minotaur from struggling for a while. The minotaur can't escape, this is the strongest elemental I can make, it's made specifically to be used to bear-hug the enemies to death. It has arms made of lead and there's a hook on one hand and a loop on the other, once the lock is made there's no escape.

The minotaur receives multiple arrows to the chest, flank, and neck. It starts to choke on blood and has difficulty breathing. The elemental hugs harder and ribs crack. After a few minutes the minotaur stops struggling and goes limp, it's dead.

"That was easy," Roxanne says, stretching.

"Well, it did use a huge amount of my mana. Also, the dew made it weaker," I answer.

"Ah well, I guess I can't start relaxing yet," and she lets out a smirk.

I store the body in my "Items".

"Let's go home, I wanna rest tomorrow, the classes start at the 1st."

They all nod and we move towards the town again. Alissa evades the monsters easily. We go back the way we came and enter the black door.

We get out and the ground is incredibly wet and muddy.

"It rained while we were inside," Alissa says.

"I had actually never seen it rain since I came here," I say.

"Dry season is ending," Roxanne says.

We move away from the exit when Alissa senses an unknown monster.

A cute little thing appears. It's a half-meter tall white bunny, its cute pink paws appear when it jumps forward, its cute little pink nose twitches when it smells us, and its cute little eyes look at us. Then it charges towards Hana and opens it's mouth, showing an impressive set of bloody and sharp teeth. Hana skewers it at the same time Alissa puts an arrow through its body.

"Aaahh..." I let out a moan.

"Ooh, a Rabid Rabbit, lucky we found one, they are always being hunted so much around here," Hana says while waving the body around.

"Oh, I leveled up. A-anyway, just store it in your [Item Box]," Alissa says in a worried tone.

Hana stiffens for a moment and stores the corpse, she cleans her spear and we continue moving.

We finally reach the border of the Sea of Trees and we see a cloudy grey sky.

"A bit depressing," Roxanne says.

"I like rainy days. Specially with some calming music," I say.

"Hm, I understand," Alissa says.

I pull out the dinghy and we go back home, I just cuddle with Alissa on the back row while Hana and Roxanne cuddle on the front row. My heart still feels messy, I need some time to recuperate my energy.

During bath, I make out and enjoy Roxanne while Hana puts Alissa to sleep with her hands. Roxanne has something very alluring on her that I can't explain, when she puts in some effort she can look so sexy I feel intoxicated, is this the effect of "Charisma"? I just know she healed my heart a little more, when the airhead goes away she can be quite gentle and loving.

It was nearly sunset when we passed the north gate. We are all tired so I ask Alissa to not make dinner, we just eat an "Items"-ready meal.

I go to sleep immediately with Alissa in my arms, Hana and Roxanne are together tonight.

Today is the 30th.

I wake up moaning, I feel a wet and pleasing sensation between my legs. Morning piece of heaven again. It reinvigorates me.

My [Summoning Magic] increased by 3 (now 15+8), my [Mana Control] and [Mana Efficiency] raised by 1 (now 0+6 and 0+5) and my MP increased by 20 (now 510).

Alissa gained 1 point in [Bow Use] (now 23), 1 point in [Sense Presence] (now 6) and 1 point in [Hawk Eyes] (now 2). She has 5 points left.

"Wolfy, you should visit Ciel. Tell her about the dungeon," Alissa says.

"You are not coming?" I ask.

"No, you should talk to her alone. I wanna visit Selina.

I smile, I like that she's wanting ro do things on her own, though right now it makes me a bit sad to be away from her.

"I'll go deliver the bounty plates to the guards," Hana says.

"Leave the minotaur in the backyard, I'll milk it," Roxanne says.

"You can do it by yourself?" I ask Roxanne.

"Yeah, it doesn't require [Dismantling] so I'll be fine, then you can take it to the guild later."

"Thanks, you are all so helpful," I say.

"No thanks needed, we are your soon-to-be wives," Alissa says a bit proud.

Hana goes to the guards HQ with the carpet and I ride Alissa to the temple, she will get me back once I finish. Hana doesn't have much mana so she can't use the dinghy, it's not really mana efficient in comparison to the carpet.

I get inside the temple and anxiously look for Ciel, not only I'm anxious to talk to her but I'm very conscious of her lately. I find her on the clinic and wait for a while until she has a break.

"Good morning, Mr. Ryder. You wanted to talk?" She comes with a smile.

"Y-yes, please…"

She stares at me for a moment then leads me to an empty room. I pull out some cookies and the hot tea Alissa prepared beforehand.

"Thank you, I love these cookies. Now, is something bothering you?" She asks.

I tell her about my encounter with the rapists. She looks at me very worried.

"You froze and then you went berserk. It's not uncommon but it's rather unfortunate for you I guess, though finding wicked scum like that is a bit of… Bad luck," she cringes, she knows my nickname, "But what are your concerns about this?"

"I don't want to freeze again, I'm the leader and I'm supposed to call the strategy for how to deal with them."

"Doesn't Miss Hanafuria have the most experience in dealing with these things?"

"Still. I have my pride as the leader, I want to have a clear head to make the right decisions, I want to change and become someone capable of protecting them on all situations."

"I understand. Then what did you feel that made you freeze?"

Fear, anger, self-hate, disgust, the image of them being raped in my mind, it's such a storm of emotions I don't know what to say.

Ciel understands I'm hesitating to answer.

"Then let's think like this, what did you feel after you killed that man?"

"Disgust. I felt dirty, I felt I did something wrong and I was afraid of something doing the same to me."

"Even though that man was considered evil by everyone in the world and would be executed on sight?"

"It's just… yeah, I feel bad even though I knew he was evil. I also feel the same with monsters, I don't wanna hurt them, I feel no pleasure in giving pain I just want to keep others safe."

"Even monsters? Even though they have an unstoppable instinct to kill us all?" She seems a bit surprised.

"Yes… I was born on a peaceful place, I never fought until I came here. I just can't let myself not feel guilty about it, I think I will lose a piece of myself if I don't feel like this."

"I see..." She nods, "Then why do you fight?"

I have been thinking about this a lot.

"Because I can, because I would feel bad if I didn't try. I know I have talent so I have to help people to a certain extent, I won't throw my life away but if I don't at least try to fight I will feel bad about myself. And now I have something to protect, those warrior women depend on me and I depend on them. I have to fight and grow so I can be stronger for them."

"Oh, so you are a peaceful man who realized your talent, your power. You fought for others even though it hurt, fought for your lovers even though you might fail. You have compassion for your enemies and feel no joy in giving them pain. You want to grow and fight more even though your heart wants to stop."

I remain still, stunned.

"I kind of understand why you have 3 wives now," she smiles, "You are someone worthy of protecting and who can also protect."

"W-what? Why does that make me 'worthy'?"

"Plenty of monsters are made mirroring some property of us, this is why many of them look humanoid. Our minds and those of breeder-types are extremely similar, the main difference is that they have the instinct to kill us while we have an instinct to survive. This is why there will never be peace between us. They will always try to kill us, no matter how intelligent they are.

"So when we fight for our lives and exterminate with extreme prejudice some of us start to enjoy it. The feeling of your heart beating fast, the feeling of taking a life, the glory of winning, those things are addictive. But even the God of War wasn't like this. Those who revel in the pain lose what makes them different from monsters, they acquire the instinct to kill and lose the instinct to survive. Among the hunters, it's difficult to find someone who's not like this."

"I fight for myself, because I enjoy it, because it's my talent". I remember Targua's words.

"To keep your humanity intact, to fight for others instead of yourself, to have a sense of duty in protecting others, to not throw away your own or your loved one's lives. These aren't really the marks of a hero, they are the marks of a great person. You don't have to, or rather, you shouldn't change to protect them, you shouldn't change the core of who you are, but you should learn to control your emotions."

"Control…"

"It means you have to continue feeling this pain, this guilt, you shouldn't look to discard it, you should look to control it."

It's the same things Alissa told me after we killed our first Young Ogre. They don't want me to change since that's who they fell in love with, they want me to suffer, to continue this way and they will ease my suffering. They succeeded for the most part.

"You will need willpower, meditation, self-reflection, and self-control."

Wait, one of these is a bit…

"W-what falls under this 'self-control'?"

"To not let yourself exaggerate on your hedonism to the point you hurt yourself. For this, you need to be self-conscious about what is your limit, what is bringing you harm, and what is actually that 'harm'."

I cough.

"I-indulging myself… in my women, would be… considered lack of 'self-control'?"

Ciel stops for a moment, she thinks and turns her head away. She's blushing.

"T-that would be for you to decide."

"T-their love is w-what keeps me sane so… I don't think it's harmful."

"I understand…"

I sigh. This world is painful, it's full of death and grief. There's no way out and I already created my roots here, this is my choice, my path, and I will see it through. I will live here and die of old age and have a big family and many children with each of my wives. I will protect them and keep them happy and they will do the same for me. There's nothing else to be said, we will suffer yes, but we will do it together. Such is my vow to them and to this world, I will see it through!

I feel something change within me.

"My 'Sanity' increased by one."

"Oh? If you don't mind can you tell me the value it is right now?"

"Eight."

Her eyebrows scrunch in concern.

"It's good it's increasing but it's still low."

I know that Roxanne, the one who lost a fiancee and wasted a part of her life has a value of 12, so mine really is low. Though it's a bit convenient that my mental health can be analyzed with a single number.

"Whatever you did that increased it continue doing. You had a change of heart or something a moment ago?"

"I renewed my determination to live in this world and remembered my vows to my fiancees."

"That is good. Pray to the Goddess of Love then and she will help your loved ones in finding a way to support you better. Also, pray to the Goddess of Will and she will help your mind stay together."

"I will. Thank you. But my 'Willpower' is already 15, isn't my problem something else?"

"Hm… perhaps. Since you are also a mage meditation shouldn't have that much effect, then your problem could be either self-reflection or self-control."

I think its self-control, I already think to myself a lot.

"Ah, why doesn't the God of Existence kill wicked people like those rapists?"

"The humanoid gods aren't omnipotent, the God of Destruction is also interfering with their powers, so praying is the best way to catch their attention. Wicked people like these would eventually meet their demise, but unfortunately, they will bring a lot of pain until they do. Pain and suffering is also a part of our core, a realm with only pleasure and happiness would wither like the God of Order wished. And finally, the humanoid gods want us to grow and find new ways to deal with the pain, not just depend on them for everything."

"I understand. It seems there's no escape, this is just how life is."

No matter which world or realm it is, evil will always exist.

"But... how do people get branded as wicked?"

"There's the Three Sins. Rape, sadistic torture and senseless murder. Perform any of these and you might get instantly branded. Branded as in, it will show in your 'Crimes'."

Gotta pay attention to the wording here, "sadistic" and "senseless", which means it's not an absolute.

"The Lord or the temple can also perform a ritual to mark crimes in their status. Though I don't know how it works, only that a Judge is the one with the authority to allow it to happen."

Well, these things aren't really of my concern.

"Thank you for your help, Ciel. I'm grateful for your guidance."

She lets a warm smile that tickles my heart.

"I'm only doing my job. Thank you for talking to me and bringing me these cookies, they are delicious."

I chuckle and say my goodbyes.

It's still early to call Alissa, I have to kill a bit of time.

I go inside the temple look at the statue of the Goddess of Love. She's a half-meter tall woman with butterfly wings coming out of her back, a pixie. She has a round face, plump cheekbones and a round nose. She's smiling and looks friendly, like someone who overflows warmth out of her eyes. I should pray to her.

Hello, Goddess. I never prayed to you yet but I think you are already helping me. The women that I met, those 3 that became my fiancees and even Ciel, they are wonderful people, aren't they? I don't think I could have met such people in such a short amount of time if it wasn't for someone interfering with my fate, my life is too good right now for it to be a coincidence.

I found 3 women who believe in me, trust in me and are in love with me, even the flawed parts of me. I found a woman who has such a good heart and she even guides me on this scary world. Life is too good right now. Thank you for this and I hope you can help them, guide them, so we can help each other more.

I go to the back of the priests quarters and enjoy their small garden again. I sit on a chair and start thinking.

"Ah, so you were here," says a voice that tickles my ears.

Arantos sits on a chair in front of me.

"Good day, Mr. Arantos."

"Good day, Mr. Ryder."

He turns towards the flowers and observes them.

"You were looking for me?" I ask, after a minute.

"Yes. I wanted to ask you something," he slowly turns to me, his face is serious.

"What is it?"

"What are your intentions with inviting Ciel?" He says, expressionless.

I freeze. This man is serious, he's looking at me intently, he's measuring my response, he's measuring my soul. I don't think I should lie to him, I don't think I can lie to him.

"I think she would be really useful to the fellowship and also, if our relationship progresses… p-perhaps I could propose to her..." I say, sweating. I placed my bets.

"Oh what a relief!" Arantos breathes out and smiles.

"Eh…?"

"If it's you perhaps you can make her leave this place."

"Eh…?"

"Hohoh, it seems you are completely unaware. Mr. Ryder, Ciel is 21, she's passing the normal marriage age, it's gonna be very difficult for her to find someone if she keeps running away."

I blink blankly at him.

"That girl… that woman, actually. She lived in the temple, then she fought for the temple, and now she lives for the temple. It's time for her to do something for herself."

"You… think she would be fine with me?"

"Yes, it seems you are the reason she found a new happiness and a new piety. But she still doesn't want to cut the umbilical cord. Because she's a priestess, if she doesn't find love then the Goddess of Love will be very disappointed in her."

"Why would that be the case?"

"The Goddess of Love is her favorite god, she prays for the children every day to give them happiness but she never prays for herself. It is very frustrating seeing her forgo her happiness for others, it is not fair no matter how virtuous she looks."

"Self-sacrifice is not seen as a good thing?"

"That's not self-sacrifice that's merely running away from happiness," he frowns.

"If the head priest says this why doesn't she listen?" Now I'm curious.

"Because she's running from her fears. This is her business so I can't tell you more, but if it's you she will come around and join you. I'll put in a little bit of effort," he winks.

"So you really trust me that much?"

"She told me you have a blessing. Who am I to mistrust the gods?"

Wow, blessings really are convenient.

"You may not be the best man there is, since you know, you already have 3 others," -I repress my urge to cringe at his sharp gaze- "but you should be the best for her right now. Now I only wonder if you are trying for a blessing from the Goddess of Love, Mr. Ryder, four women! That's a bit much, I sure hope you have the vigor to keep them all happy," and he smirks.

Not even the priests are prudes in this world.

"I can only thank you for your help and trust, head priest, I will certainly work hard to make her happy," I give a light bow.

"Make sure you do. When she joins I would like for you to remember to have her visit once in a while, she's like a daughter to me, I will certainly miss her," he looks at me with warm eyes.

"Understood."

"I will be taking my leave, until later, Mr. Ryder," he waves and leaves.

I stay there for a while, thinking. The head priest himself approved of me, ain't that lucky?

At 10:30 AM I call Alissa back with the ring. When we reach home I see she's in a really good mood. I guess I wasn't the only one who benefited from a talk.

Hana got a good bounty, around 80 silver for each head. These guys were really scum, they called themselves Red Smile. They were acting on another dungeon and stealing from adventurers but they started killing people, that's when the gods marked them as "wicked". Once the guards started hunting them they moved to this dungeon and got greedy. Bounty kills aren't publicized but the word still gets out, so our fame grew a little more.

After a simple lunch, we go out to buy some new things. I found a bed big enough for 5 people. It costs 1 gold, a little expensive but I'm already thinking of Ciel. It's called "Harem-sized". The vendor gave me a few smirks when he saw all of us.

Alissa found an ivy to put on one of the outside walls of the house and 2 string-of-hearts to hang on the stairs to the second floor. We found a magic stone candelabrum, bedside lights and we also bought a few more books of children tales.

Hana got a decoration sword and shield to put in front of her room (that she barely uses) and with that we decided to order pieces of embroidered cloth to put in front of our rooms, Roxanne's are going to be potion bottles, Alissa is gonna be a bow and arrow, and mine rows of elemental heads. Though the dark elemental is only a black circle, no one wants to draw that nightmare.

Alissa got a few sets of tablecloths and I found a nice painting of the fantastical roots and color patches of the Sea of Trees that we will put on the second floor.

Alissa brings us to a narrow street and Hana smirks. Alissa lowers her head a bit and I think I saw her blushing. We stop in front of a store and I widen my eyes. I see lingerie.

"How did you find this shop?" Roxanne asks.

"I was taking a shortcut when… these clothes called my attention. I knew that Wolfy would like them as soon as I understood what they were for."

"Oooh yeah, we didn't get some for Roxanne yet," Hana says and chuckles.

"What?" Roxanne looks confused.

She looks at me who's frozen, then at Hana who has an evil smile, and then at Alissa who's blushing and looking away.

"Oh..." She realized, then she looks a little nervous.

"Nobody touches Roxanne today, tonight she will be mine. We better find some lotion for her tail too," I order.

Roxanne squirms as fear and lust fight inside her heart.

"Let's go inside," I order again.

Lingeries, costumes, scents, oils and a separate section with toys that bring fear into my heart. Yes, this is a sex shop.

"Buy panties for each one too," I whisper to Alissa, she nods and they all go to the lingerie section.

I look around and buy a few scented candles and oils, they really help when you want something more comfortable and sensual. I go to the lingerie section and grab one of the not-synthetic pieces of lingerie.

"Excuse me, what kind of cloth is this? How was it made?" I ask a female attendant who's wearing a uniform a little too revealing.

"This is Snow Weave, it was made by the elves at the High Forest. It uses an extremely small needle moved entirely by [Telekinesis]. Since it's very weak it's not popular but its spreading among the nobility around the continent."

No surprises there, nobles are gonna be perverts like me no matter where you go. But now I have another reason to go to the High Forest.

"You heard that Alissa, if we go to the High Forest we gotta remember to stock up."

Alissa's head rises from the clothing racks and she nods with a serious face. My fetishes are not something to be taken lightly.

I don't see which clothes the women got so I'm getting anxious, I don't want to ruin the surprise though so we go back home.

The bed took some effort to fit, we had to move the wardrobe and now there's barely room for the bedside lamps, we can't even walk beside the bed but at least we can all sleep together.

After the strength exercise routine, we take a rather quick and tense bath since nobody is touching anybody else and we have dinner. Alissa found not-cinnamon and introduced us to a very fragrant orc meat dish, it even impressed me, I only know one recipe with cinnamon and meat. Her cooking is improving.

-

Today is the 1st of the 7th month.

Alissa wakes me up excitedly.

"Wolfy, Wolfyyy! Hana! Roxanne!" She jumps on all of us.

After making sure we are all not groggy anymore she tells us.

"I got a blessing from the Goddess of Love! Also, 2 levels in cooking. But a blessing! I never expected this, specially from her!"

Her tail wags excitedly and the others applaud in happiness. I'm dumbfounded.

"Not even the gods see you as a slave anymore, Alissa. For them you are the loving wife who needs to support her soon-to-be husband," Hana says.

Alissa freezes.

"That's right! I thought it was a bit wrong for me to be the one to propose first, so I'm glad you got the recognition for your efforts, you are the one with the deepest connection to Wolfy," Roxanne adds.

I just smile and hug her. I don't care what anyone might say, if even the gods recognize us then there's no doubt we have true love between us.

I feel I changed too. My "Strength" increased by 1 (now 9) and my [Enhanced Semen Recharge] increased by 1 (now 3), my "Piety" increased by 2 (now 12) and most important of all, my "Sanity" increased by 4 (now 12).

It's like I'm seeing more colors, the world is more vibrant and my mind is clearer, this is such a heartwarming feeling. I tell them what I feel.

"The blessing..." Alissa looks at me with wide eyes.

"It must be the blessing," Roxanne nods.

"You are fated to be together," Hana says.

I laugh, such a crazy world. We are bounded together and I think it's intentional. I have a curse that I can't sleep without her and now she has a blessing that helps when she's near me.

"Well, thank you Goddess of Love. I prayed to her yesterday and she already answered."

This morning Alissa and Roxanne are beaming with happiness while Hana and I are tired but satisfied.

I use [Summon Small Golem] twice, it's a level 15 spell while the elementals are level 20. These golems are yellow clay dolls the size of a toddler but with the dexterity of an adult. I never used it before because they are useless in combat but now I understand they can be somewhat useful servants, we can use them to slowly clean the house and to help in preparing some ingredients. Our own little Roombas.

This morning they are going to make mayonnaise for us, surprisingly people don't know about it here. Perhaps they are afraid of using raw eggs but I can use [Diagnosis] and level 20 [Light Magic] [Purify Body] if it really makes us sick.

Alissa and I go to the hunters guild first. We will report to them the blessing and then sell the monsters, after that we will report to the temple too. Even if it keeps attracting attention to me I learned it's good to let people know about blessings, doors open much easier with them.

We enter the guild and we spend some time looking at the requests. It's busy right now because this is the time most new requests are posted and the hunters look for jobs. I feel Alissa stiffen and I turn to her.

"Are you 'Good Luck' Ryder?" A raspy male voice asks.

Alissa is glaring at a tall, muscular, tanned, and scarred man. He has a buzz cut and a jaw so sharp it could cut. His eyes glare at me.

"Why do you ask?" My posture stiffens but I manage to maintain a poker face.

"A small boy like you got the Symbol and now the Red Smile? Gotta be a joke," he scoffs.

"Why do you care?" Alissa says in a cold voice.

"Can't let the others get fooled by lies, if someone where to rely on a fraud they would only meet death," he takes a step forward.

Alissa stands between us.

"There's no need for master to prove himself or to waste time with low-life's like you."

He takes forward another step.

"You let your women do the talking for you? Do they also hold your cock as you take a piss?"

"She's right, though," I say.

He takes another step.

"You should know I'm a magic swordsman, if you take another step I will sic a dark elemental on you."

His scornful expression turns into a glare. The guards put their hands on their swords. Dark elementals are born out of nightmares, they attack by inflicting pain and suffering to others, they are especially strong against humanoids.

The man stares at me, he's trying to see if I'm bluffing or not. The people around us already gave us a large space.

I summon a large Kangal dog, he growls at him.

"You still doubt me?"

The surroundings gasp, I know summoning magic takes a while to chant but I can do it instantly, this should be enough to make me look dangerous.

I notice a pang of fear in him but he quickly controls it and his fearsome expression returns. He laughs and shrugs, then he turns away and leaves, finally the guards relax. I let out a sigh and control my rapidly beating heart. After the rapists dealing with a bully seems easy.

Using offensive magic is the same as drawing your sword, it's a serious offense, but magic is all mages have. Mages are bad in close quarters but fighting them bare-handed is impossible, so picking a fight with a mage is either suicide or you are about to do something serious. Summoning an elemental here would be right on the border of crossing the line.

Still, if I didn't do it like this the other bullies around will think I'm easy pickings. Hunters are proud and competitive, they like to brawl and measure their dicks, this town is specially aggressive because of the Sea of Trees. I tried to avoid spending too much time here as this situation is something that could happen but I guess I got too famous too quickly. You have to nip it in the bud or they will come back.

"Let's never come here alone," Alissa says.

"Agreed. But I'm surprised he knew about the Red Smile so quickly."

"Perhaps they had accomplices. Groups like these don't sprout from nothing," she whispers to me.

Bounty hunting is a dangerous job, it attracts much more attention than hunting monsters.

I see a request asking for confirmation of sightings of a dragon, I have a bad feeling about this.

"Why did you call me 'master', though? You can call me by my name in public."

"Ah… um. I slipped, eheheheh," she scratches her head.

I shrug at her adorableness.

"Let's finish things here quickly," I say.

We find a female attendant and give her Alissa's ID, she inspects it and then frowns, it's the sex skills, right? Then her eyes open wide. The attendant hurriedly goes away and then comes back a minute later and returns the ID.

We go to the dismantling room and enter since its open.

"Oh, good morning Mr. Ryder. Should I call Sonny?" Gordon asks with a smirk.

"Sorry to disappoint but I only got normal monsters this time."

Gordon makes an exaggerated disappointed face.

"But anyway, do you ever take a break? You are the only one I ever saw here."

"Why should I since I can get a share of the meat the hunters bring? I'm getting my lunch and dinner right here, right now," he says with a smile and spreads his arms.

I guess this job might be heaven if you are a meat enthusiast.

I pull out the proofs we got, the needles and the bodies of the Burkanolf, the huge Zinotue and the milked minotaur.

"You said 'normal' but these are quite the catch. Hahaha, even you have your expectations warped by now."

I shrug.

There's nothing special so we take our rewards and leave. We get 20 silver per body.

Every so often there's a priest about reciting some prayer out loud. There's always a few people praying along. Alissa tells me today starts the month of Prayer and this is one of the traditions of the Festivals of Seasons.

We go to the temple and we find Ciel at the orphanage refereeing a game with the children. She looks at us with curiosity when we approach. We greet each other.

"Miss Ciel, this is amazing, I got a blessing from the Goddess of Love!" Alissa excitedly tells her.

Ciel opens her eyes wide and slowly gives a wide smile. Then she looks at me.

"I can only guess why."

We let out shy chuckles.

"You want to register it? The temple would be very interested in hearing your story."

"Yes, we came here to do this."

Even though the story is personal since it's mostly about my mental health, Alissa will tell it without sharing too much of the embarrassing details.

"I don't think the temple registered your blessing too, Mr. Ryder. Would you like to tell your story also?"

I get a little uncomfortable. I got the blessing because I told I was going to help and bring some of the knowledge from Earth, this is not something I can tell the temple yet and I can't lie to them. Alissa knows this.

"I can't, it's too personal for me."

"I understand, there's no obligation to do it," Ciel hurriedly responds. She knows I'm reserved.

Ciel calls another priest to continue as referee to this strange game and leads us to a consultation room inside the temple. She brings 2 other priests, Arantos and a scribe.

Alissa starts her story. She was born as a slave and trained on how to be a tool, she abandoned her dreams of living a quiet life, of marrying and having children, of exploring the world in an adventure, of learning arts and crafts, of indulging in books and plays. She made peace in her heart that she will be forever a tool, a slave, she only wished to bring pride to her clan. She always prayed for the God of War and the God of Endurance to have the power to become the perfect servant. Then she was bought by me and started serving me with pride.

She quickly realized I'm not someone who treats others like tools, which made her feel insecure in her duty. She found the kindness in me when she saw that I felt pity for monsters and hated hurting them. She pleaded to me to rely on her so she would keep my heart protected, which she believed it is something precious in this world and needs to be protected. She didn't need power to protect my body, she needed power to protect my heart.

It worked, as I had no more nightmares about killing and felt secure near her. As I relied more on her and the other women, our love progressed and we decided to marry. She no longer simply saw herself as a tool, she wanted to grow her heart so she could share it with me. That's how she would help my heart keep together.

But it wasn't enough and I felt a deep wound when I was forced to kill the Red Smile. So she guided me to Ciel again, she knew that only her love is not enough, she needed more help from the outside. Ciel guided me to pray, not to gather more power to myself, but to the ones who helped me. As I acknowledged the effort of my lovers and prayed to the Goddess of Love, she saw we understood each other and granted Alissa her blessing. This blessing wasn't just the Goddess showing her appreciation, it was a true gift that now helps my mental well being.

Even though the most embarrassing details are hidden I'm still blushing heavily. Even though Alissa is also blushing her voice is strong and she continues the story without shame or fear. I have to control my heart every time Alissa mentioned she loved me, it moves my heart too much.

A female priest hides her face and I hear her sniffle. Arantos is smiling at me and gives me a wink. Ciel is both embarrassed since she's part of the story and happy at what has been told.

"There's not much else to say besides a heartfelt thank you, Mr. Ryder and Miss Alissa," Arantos says," For sharing such an intimate story you give us the knowledge and security in confirming that we are guiding others in the right path. Your names will be blurred but the story of this blessing will help many others in the future. Please come back and tells us more one day.

The scribe finishes writing, then Arantos motions and they all leave, except for Ciel.

"I'm shocked… You truly are someone special Mr. Ryder," she says.

I want to deny but me and Alissa having a blessing is a bit much, if my women decided to call me Mr. Hero I would have little strength to stop them.

"I wish I wasn't, I'll just deal with it and move on quickly."

She laughs.

"Sounds like you."

We say our goodbyes and go back home. We warn the girls about what happened in the guild and give a quick retell of what happened at the temple, their worried faces turn into embarrassed smiles. Even though we are not embarrassed near each other, telling others these things makes even Hana shy.

The summoned golems are being helpful so there's not much to do. We just enjoy a calming cooking session.

After lunch Alissa will take me to the university, there are morning classes but they aren't popular though, no one here is as insane as those on Earth who think 7 AM classes are a good idea. Roxanne will make some potions for selling and Hana will train in the guild's training grounds.

"Hana, you only use [Pain Conversion] with me right...?" I shyly ask.

"Ahn? Yeah, it would be disgusting to do it with anyone else. Wait… are you jealous...?" She stares at me. I try to make a poker face, but I fail, "Hah! Yes, that's it!"

She comes and buries my head in her - chest.

"This freakish woman is all yours, body and soul. No one will ever give me the same pleasure as you do, except Roxanne," she coughs.

"Your choice of words concerns me but I understand the sentiment."

She laughs.

This helps in reducing my anxiety.

The university is bustling with activity, young and old, cute, to strange, to tough, traditional clothing, to uniforms, to exotic. There's an even bigger carnival of colors here.

I'm rather lucky I'm considered a researcher, normal students requires a uniform. A grey jacket with the symbol of the university woven over the heart, a grey jumper with a black stripe at the collar, a collared plain white shirt, plain black low leather shoes, and grey pants. For women the dark red skirts with black thighs are optional. A black robe with the university's symbol and a pointy hat is given to everyone to use, even after they graduate.

Alissa drops me in front of a classroom building, I wish I had more time to explore the many other facilities here but I'm always busy.

We share a goodbye kiss and Alissa runs away. I sigh and stare at the building for a while. I feel a change within me, my sanity dropped back to 8 and the world gets blander.

Well shit, it seems the range of that blessing isn't very long. I half expected something like this. I'll tell Alissa later, but she's probably gonna be concerned in leaving me alone from now on.

The classrooms are concrete buildings with a bit of Gothic decoration over the windows and door archways. The statuary is very warm and awe-inducing, it has knights, mages, depictions of weapons, ingredients, books and magic tools. It has plenty of colored shining stones and the walls are painted with warm colors around the range of blues and greens.

My schedule is [Space Magic] today, then [Nature Magic] tomorrow, then [Electric Magic], then [Blessing Magic] then finally training for [Reduced Mana Cost].

I enter the class and feel a somewhat nostalgic but also distressing feeling. The classroom is full of uniformed teenagers and children, most are near my age, there's not a single researcher there. I'm back in high school.

I stop and scan the room for an empty seat. The whole class turns to me, a few students hastily sit down. Hold on…

"Good morning, professor," says a girl on the first row.

I reflexively cover my eyes with my hand and cringe.

"I'm not the professor, I'm a researcher."

Murmurs and snickers start. Yep, high school. I sit down on the last row, no need to put more eyes on my back. Soon enough the class is completely full, there must be nearly 100 chairs here.

I pull out my notes and the introduction book I was lent, you have to pay a deposit that will cover any damage to this book. It's a hardback leather book, a little yellowed and old but still perfectly usable and even has that nice smell of old book.

It's exactly 1 PM, a nostalgic bell chimes and in a minute a gnome appears. Gnomes are half-meter tall, white-bearded, pink-skinned, chubby, cute, and round-faced little men. They are a male-only race who depends on pixies, a female-only race, to procreate. It's rather rare to find one away from Gnomeria. This one has their cultural red cone hat with a simple blue baggy robe. A garden gnome, I have to work very hard to suppress my laughter.

He walks towards the front and floats towards the professor's table.

"Good afternoon, little ones. I'm professor Ludwick Wicksloptcut," his voice is rather high pitched and raspy, "My specialty is [Space Magic] and [Earth Magic]. As you can see, I'm a gnome and we have very little physical strength, on the contrary of dwarves who absorb the powers from the earth and acquire strength, gnomes require to use [Telekinesis] and [Item Box] to move nearly everything worth moving, so we became masters of [Space Magic]."

He scans the room and his eyes pause on me for a moment.

"Let's do a quick introduction, please say your full name if you have it, where you come from, and if you have any specialty you already acquired please announce for us. It is always a good thing to share what we know," he smiles while looking at me.

The professor gives a remark or two after each introduction and quickly moves on. Most have one or two skills, likely one or two points in a magic from one of the 5 basic elements, earth, wind, fire, water and electricity. It seems these are the most common magic schools because they are easier to understand.

"I'm Wolf Ryder and I come from a far away land. My specialty is Summoning, and I know a bit of Light, Blessing, Electric and [Nature Magic]."

"You are the newest researcher with the blessing from the Goddess of Knowledge, right?" He asks with a smile.

Murmurs start again. What's the point of this?

"Yes."

"I see, we eagerly await the results of your research."

He smiles and continues the introductions.

"I'm Lyle Rizek, I was born in the capital Mac Gantus, my specialty is [Electric Magic]," says a young boy with a round face, black disheveled hair and a very well made uniform. He's the poster child of innocence.

Rizek? Could it be a relative of the old mage who bought the Symbol at the auction?

We finish the introductions and the professor starts the lesson. Space magic is basically manipulation of gravity. [Telekinesis] is the manipulation of gravity to every single atom on the target object at the same time, [Gravity Crush] is self explanatory, [Item Box] is a cut in our space by opening a temporary hole where neither gravity nor time exist, [Gate] is basically a "wormhole" from science fiction.

The explanation is very roundabout, it seems they do not have such a clear understanding of this magic. But I have actual knowledge of physics from Earth so it becomes much easier to understand.

Since gravity bends space and time, perhaps this magic school should be called "Gravity Magic" instead. Though so far there's no mention of a spell that manipulates time except [Item Box] which freezes an object in time.

Perhaps I could create a "Time Magic" school if I dedicate myself to it, though I'm not that knowledgeable about this part of physics. Creating new magic skills require a strong will, good [Mana Control] and a deep knowledge about what you want to create, I'm not exceptional in any of these requirements.

This class has been basically an introduction to math, kinematics and mechanics. They don't seem to have any deep knowledge about astronomy, which would help in understanding the principles of gravity since it's the most visible when observing the stars.

Perhaps this is a limitation of this world, the stars could be just a simple background instead of gigantic balls of burning matter. Is this world even round? Do we even have an orbit around the sun? Before the God of the Sun existed the length of days and nights could be influenced by magic on the surface, so perhaps "space" is a bit different here.

While the teacher talks I start to get bored so Ipractice [Telekinesis] on my magic pen. Its different than moving it by hand, you apply gravity and the pen accelerates on the direction of the gravity you applied. Turning is very awkward, you have to apply a counter gravity do decelerate and then the gravity in the direction you want to go. It's basically flight in zero-gravity plus a bit of drag from air. Reminds me of space-flight simulators.

I feel the world gets brighter and a minute later the bell chimes, it's exactly 3 PM. I go out and Alissa is waiting for me at the entrance to the classroom building, we have a 30-minute break. We go to the buffet nearby, it's basically a bakery mixed with a restaurant, the restaurants in the universities on Earth got nothing on this one.

The buffet is a square building where each side has a covered area with enough tables and lavish cushioned chairs for at least 1000 people. The second floor is actually a restaurant as the tables can be reserved and a waiting staff is ready to serve. An engraved path shows the directions the students should move through and were the lines should form, like a car road for people.

Inside there's a myriad of expensive snacks and sweets along with tea and juice choices. I don't stare much since it's just going to provoke my stomach. The prices are all rather expensive and Alissa could actually make a good deal of them if I wished to, also, aside from the afternoon tea and chocolate I'm not that much of a snack person.

I don't buy anything. With the milk from the minotaur Alissa prepared a small cupcake with cream for us and some mild tea to go with it, it's citric with tones of lemon. The other girls already got their cupcakes, we have to share fairly everything Alissa makes.

"The blessing stops working if you go too far," I tell Alissa.

She looks dejected. I let out a small chuckle.

"There's no need to be so sad, it's not like I'm gonna go insane just because you aren't nearby, the only change is that the world looks a bit blander. I believe the only problem would happen when you are far away for a long time, but then I would already be suffering from nightmares."

"Still, I thought my love for you would be enough to heal you."

"I'm a bit uncomfortable to say this but I think I'm cursed," I smile bitterly, "This situation with my nightmares and 'Sanity' level is just too ridiculous to be just a trauma. I have some knowledge of psychology from Earth and this is too much."

"You think so? But why doesn't it show on your 'Status Effects'?"

"Perhaps it's related to why I was sent here and why I have the ability to manipulate skills, it's something beyond the laws of this realm."

"Something beyond…"

Alissa looks at the distance and thinks. Someone is approaching us.

"Hello, Mr. Ryder," says a student. It's Lyle Rizek, he's followed by another boy and a girl.

"Sorry to interrupt your break, but I had to talk to you, brother Dennis didn't tell me you were the one with the blessing."

"Dennis? From Thunder Storm?" I ask.

"Hoho, he will be happy you remember."

Well, I'm not happy to have to remember him.

"Hm, oh, is there an old mage in your family specialized in [Electric Magic] that's part of the lords court?"

"Wow, you met grandfather Werner?" He smiles wildly.

"Not really, just saw him from a distance."

"Still, must have been a very interesting occasion. Ah, was it during the auction of the Symbol of Hate?"

"Yes, that was it."

Alissa keeps a poker face but I know she's annoyed by looking at her tail, I share your sentiment.

"Please have a seat," she motions to them.

"This is my fiancee, Alissa," I present her.

I told Alissa to never show the slave mark, they don't know she's (still) my Blood Slave.

They sit but look at me dumbfounded. Lucky for us the cupcakes are already gone, Alissa pulls average cookies for them.

"I-I'm Garanae Taranoa," says the male student. He's tall and strong with square face and thin eyes. He has white-blond short hair combed backwards. He has a strong and confident atmosphere. His gaze is locked on Alissa, I already don't like him.

He said his last name, is he a noble too? Also, what's with these names full of a's, is this part of the local culture?

"I'm Ha-Hatara," A thin girl with black hair, green eyes and a long ponytail. She has a protruding thin chin and large lips, rather cute. She looks scared and twitchy. She's also staring at Alissa, don't tell me you swing that way?

"I'm Lyle Rizek."

"Pleasure to meet you Mr. Garanae, Miss Hahatara, Mr. Rizek," Alissa says and nods towards each."

"No, i-it's actually Hatara."

Alissa tilts her head in confusion. Cute.

"Oh, I see, Miss Hatara," she corrects herself, "Tea?"

Only Garanae accepts.

"Mr. Ryder, why are you at the beginners courses?" Lyle asks.

"I learned magic differently, I have to make sure I'm not missing anything important in my foundation otherwise I will suffer in the more advanced courses."

"Differently? Where do they teach magic differently than the one taught here?"

"On my homeland, a faraway place," I smile innocently.

They raise their eyebrows.

"Where would that place be?" Lyle insists.

"A faraway place," I keep my smile frozen.

Garanae glares at me. I have no intention of lying about my past, even with Roxanne's knowledge about her continent it's not enough, it would be difficult to create a convincing lie. Instead of lying I prefer that people think I'm reserved and unapproachable. Adventurers don't care about each other pasts or birthplaces, but other people aren't like this, specially people like Lyle and Garanae, who seem to come from noble families or at least rich households.

"I see… Are you a noble?" Lyle stares me.

"Something like this," I lie.

"What…?"

"On my homeland, I'm not a commoner but not really a noble, it's difficult to explain."

The lord of this land is very pragmatic since Rabanara is basically an isolated small piece of land, he can't deny the help of the adventurers so he has a close relationship with them. But that's not the same for other nobles, specially for someone like Lyle who was born in the capital, he might not be comfortable talking to commoners. Not being seen as a commoner is the best but I can't lie that I'm actually a noble, nobles have the title "True Noble" or "Noble Descendant" on their status screen.

Lyle furrow his eyebrows and sighs. Did you finally decide to stop prodding me?

"Then perhaps you are like me, I'm a mage knight's daughter," says Hatara.

"Yes, something like that," I say and smile to her.

Thanks for the help on my lie, knights are above commoners but not considered nobility.

She's shy, she immediately looks away and Garanae glares harder.

"Oh, I understand," Lyle looks pensive.

"Did you truly defeat the Symbol of Hate?" Garanae suddenly speaks.

"Yes, what did you hear about me?" I raise an eyebrow.

"You bravely took the sword to the Symbol, you cornered it but due to its inhuman agility it managed to land a blow on one of your companions. To not risk anymore lives you charged into it and held it in place long enough for the mages to destroy it with a powerful and fearsome spell," he retells the tale with a stern expression."

"From the way you speak you only heard it from a bard. It's a bit of an exaggeration."

Bards exaggerate everything to make it more dramatic and to fit the song better.

"So it seems," he says and narrows his eyes.

Alissa and I send a glare to him.

"Did you ever fight a monster before, Mr. Taranoa? Fights are never glorious like the bards tell."

Garanae grunts and looks away. His clothes are as fine and impeccable as Lyle's, he's likely a noble who had a life more sheltered than even Earth-me.

"You shouldn't forget the others who where there. The man who valiantly held against the Symbol along side me, he threw himself at the monster to give me a chance. The mage girl who kept hitting the monster spell after spell and distracting its attention. Alissa who was there and kept hitting its eyes with her arrows, reducing its speed and even saving my other companion from death. And finally Roxanne, my other fiancee who endured a spider leg going through her stomach and used her genius magic to explode the Symbol."

Oh shit, I forgot about the other archer guy.

"Ooh~..." Lyle is a bit interested.

"Oh..." Hatara looks scared.

"..." Garanae is silent "… Wait, another fiancee?"

I blush slightly, can't help it.

"Well… after fighting to the death together it's easy to develop feelings towards each other."

Alissa nods and the others look surprised. Garanae then turns his surprise into a frown, he looks at Alissa then at me.

"How shameless! How many other women are you going seduce?!"

"G-Gara, that's rude," Lyle interjects.

"I actually have a 3rd fiancee," I say and smile.

"T-three… h-how do you..." Lyle stutters.

Hatara is blushing. Garanae is even angrier. Should I tell them I plan on adding another?

"There's still room for one more," Alissa says and winks at Hatara.

Her face goes red and she looks down.

"L-Lyle! Let us go, It's better not to associate with men with such warped morals," Garanae stands up and leaves in a hurry, the other 2 follow him while stunned.

I watch them go away and look at Alissa, who looks satisfied. I'm enjoying her slight personality change.

"Thank you, that last attack was perfect."

"Eheheheh," she shows her tongue, "I enjoyed it, too. People with such sense of honor won't mix well with us."

"I agree. But why are they like this? Doesn't the gods approve of polygamy?"

"Not explicitly. From what I understood some people believe that adding more than one person turns love into pure lust and they don't accept that as a valid marriage."

"Even if the gods are present during the wedding ceremony?"

"It's not like that, the gods only interfere when things turn really bad, so a not-so-bad marriage can exist while still being invisible to the gods."

"I guess it's why wicked people still exist."

"Exactly."

We spend the rest of the break cuddling and getting stares. Then the bell chimes and the class resumes.

Garanae sends me a glare when he enters, Lyle looks a little sad and Hatara avoids my eyes. Oh wait, Hatara might actually believe Alissa was serious, this is kinda bad.

I sigh as the world loses color again and focus on the lesson. The professor actually taught us integration and derivation to calculate loads, I kind of didn't miss this from my graduation on Earth. It's somewhat surprising that the amount of students having problems is small, there's not really a well-made public school system here so they all must have had been taught this at home.

At 6 PM the world gets color again and the bell chimes. School's over, time to flaunt my cool mount to the other teenagers and bask in the glory I never had during my teen years.

Some of them have their own flying tools and immediately bring them out with a *poof*, filling the air with flying robed figures, but no one has a large orange fox that they can ride and run among the crowds. Alissa can show off her acrobatics by jumping over people or jumping on the wall and jumping again. I'm a bit worried the guards might complain, though.

We get home and soon enough Hana appears, all sweaty and tired, but with her traditional fearsome smile. With that, we can have our usual bath together.

"Welcome home son, how was you first day of school?" Asks Roxanne in a childish tone.

"Mommy~, someone wanted to bully me because I have 3 fiancees," I answer in the same tone.

"Oh? What a naughty child, don't mind him, he's only jealous of all the filthy and freaky sex we are having," Hana enters the stupid joke.

"That might actually be true," Alissa says.

The season of the starchy vegetables is starting, we get not-french fries and some minotaur meat that Alissa found now that she's confident in her cow meat appraisal abilities. After that, it's more cuddling while Alissa and Roxanne read and then bed, nobody has the stamina because of yesterday.

A note from Manasong

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Chapter 13: Growth - Part 2

A note from Manasong

Attention: to conform to the limit of sexual content allowed in a novel, I've censored this chapter. You can look for the uncensored version here.

The symbol "-" denotes a section that got cut for containing sexual content. Also, if paragraphs seem missing, they were also likely censored in an earlier pass where the symbol wasn't used.

-

I learned [Space Magic] and it's now level 2. I guess that having privileged knowledge about physics from Earth is not enough, I need to understand precisely how [Space Magic] works here and acquire practical knowledge of it to truly gain the skill.

I have an idea and I get Hana to help me with the test.

"So just defend, like really defend, it could end up using a lot of power so it might be a bit dangerous," I tell Hana while she readies her shield.

"Hah, did you become a dragon overnight? I find it hard to believe you could seriously hurt me with a wooden sword," Hana responds with a half-smile.

"I-I just can't properly control it yet so I'm not sure how much power it has.

"His concern means he loves you!" Roxanne yells from the window.

"Awn… I will use [Pain Conversion], so come at me with all you got!"

I sigh. I swing my practice sword to get the hang of it, it's a bit awkward but I think it's doable.

I charge my spell, I rush towards Hana and do a downward swing with all my power. I cast [Telekinesis] on the sword.

*DOON~*. The sword explodes and the shield reverberates.

"YAH!" Roxanne protects herself but with her quick reflexes Alissa stands in front of Roxanne.

"Ho-holy shit," I mutter.

"Okay, yeah, I get what you meant," says Hana lowering her shield, "It wasn't a really strong hit but if the sword was made of metal then it would reeeeally hurt. The fuck did you do?"

Hana is panting and looking at me with hungry eyes.

"I cast [Telekinesis] on the sword."

"Bahahah! Every mage must have done that once," Roxanne laughs with her hands in her belly.

"Uh… so why is don't people use it in combat normally?"

"You have to be a magic swordsman for it to be worthy. People prefer to specialize and hire a mage when necessary, you are a rare find these days," she answers.

"'These days'?"

"When the last hero was alive people wanted to copy him since he was a magic swordsman too but now that he's gone for a long time this trend has died. It takes way too long to learn how cast a spell chantless."

Hana crosses her arms. "Hm, I understand," she says while nodding, "Specializing would be better for me. I can use [Telekinesis] but there's no way I can use this amount of power, you need to learn [Mana Control] and [Mana Efficiency] for it to be doable in battle. Costs too many skill points."

"But for me this is the perfect skill to compensate my low strength," I say, "if I make [Telekinesis] part of my combat style then I could hit as hard as Hana. I have an incredible advantage since I don't chant."

"Hard as me? Please, mages are ridiculous. If you train you will crush a dragon's skull with ease, you will easily surpass me."

Heh, linear warriors, quadratic mages.

I bring out another sword and ask Hana to keep helping me practice. I broke 3 other swords but I'm getting the hang of it. It's quite mana intensive, I need to increase [Space Magic] quick so the efficiency of [Telekinesis] increases.

Time flies and soon enough it's time to stop. -.

Today is [Nature Magic], I get to the class and quickly find a seat before anyone mistakes me for the teacher. There aren't even 40 students on this class so there's plenty of free seats, I go by the window this time and keep observing the rows of trees outside.

"Good morning students. My name is Tanya, I'm your professor for [Nature Magic], I'm also a herbalist and potion-maker."

Tanya is a gloomy looking woman. She has simple long brown hair, droopy eyes, a tired voice, and a boring face. She wears a loose fitting black dress with very wide cuffs. The most interesting part of her are the 2 nature spirits on her shoulders, one is a mini koala and the other is a mini Plom, a rodent which looks like a green ball of fur with 4 arms that look like sticks protruding out of it and two small black beady eyes.

The koala hums a song and the Plom wiggles its legs to the rhythm of the song.

"A-are those nature spirits?!" Asks a surprised student.

"Yes. They are not from here, the Koala is from the Summer Isles and the Plom is from Gnomeria," Tanya says in an even more tired voice, "They are literally useless pets, they do nothing but be cute and follow me wherever I go. They don't accept petting from anyone else so there's nothing else to ask about them, all you can do is look."

The student sits down disappointed. That makes us 2, mate.

I want a pet too. I let a corgi along with the 2 clay golems in the house, I had to cut the touch feeling because the girls don't stop petting it, but when I pet it it feels weird even when I cut all senses. I miss my dogs.

Aside from glancing at me the professor wastes no time asking us our names. She immediately starts teaching us.

[Nature Magic] is crazy, it's just so fucking crazy even I am starting to blush alongside everyone here. The professor never stops, she keeps going on and on, saying crazy upon crazy phrases. I feel like my sanity will drop.

"During this moon cycle the ‘wickedness' aspect is hidden so you don't have to worry your lewd thoughts will be interpreted as bad influence by the nature spirits".

"During this moon cycle ‘irritability' aspect is hidden so kissing your vegetables on their mouths will improve yield during harvest but only certain parts of the vegetable are considered the mouth".

"Touching the petal of the flower carelessly is offensive since it's like touching the lower lips of a woman and arousing her, then leaving immediately after. Make sure you are ready to please the flower before touching it".

"The mating season is a time of pride for animals, as their master you have to watch them while they procreate to give them confidence otherwise their children will be born shy and weak".

"You can know if an animal is in heat by the smell, if you can't smell it then you have to put your finger inside the vagina of the female and taste the liquid that comes out, if it tastes like tart honey then she's in heat".

"Most horse hybrids like the hippocamp or the hippogriff are very mistrustful, to be able to mount them you have to stimulate their genitals in whatever way you can, after a few sessions they will end up trusting you".

The only interesting thing here is that griffins, hippocamps, and hippogriffs are animals and not monsters.

"Only have sex with a dryad at your own risk, they do not know the concept of stopping and they will turn you infertile due to their poisonous sexual organs if you do it too much".

"While the merfolk are capable of mating with most underwater animal species, anyone else who tries to mate with animals will likely have your innards ripped out. The evolution of animal reproduction after the introduction of monsters was very fast, plenty of monsters use animals as not only fodder but also used them as sex objects. Orcs are specially notorious for that. So with the millennia the only animals who survived the introduction of monsters are those who have incredibly vicious genitals that only work with other animals of the same species".

Why is everything revolving around sex in one way or the other!?

As the color returns to the world the bell rings and everyone runs away from the Nest of Depravity of the Gloomy Pervert. I immediately hug Alissa to clean the filth that has been dirtying me.

After the break, the flurry of background knowledge started to make a bit of sense, only a bit. The professor started talking about the soul of nature and I could concentrate enough to keep a very small [Regeneration] acting while listening.

Every plant, every tree and every animal has a soul, but it's not a complex soul like ours. Due to the plants nature of symbiosis, a plants soul connects with each other and they communicate, creating a huge network. Their communication is slow and their intelligence is nearly nonexistent, but they can communicate with the entire height and width of the hierarchy of beings inside the ecosystem.

Animals aren't as connected with nature as the plants are but they still have a good communication link. Animals are the "agents" and "feelers" of nature, if you want to be accepted in nature you need a good relationship with the animals. Nature is almost like a hive-mind while we are completely individualistic and animals are the middle term.

Some places nature acquires a higher "conscience", they are normally magical beings/animals that have enough power to deal with intruders or other people who want to destroy nature. The most common place where they are found are in forests or swamps, generally places with lots of plant/animal life but little humanoids. While very reclusive, they can also be reasoned with, possibly leading even to negotiations.

Now I wonder who's the guardian of the Sea of Trees.

It's on this that nature spirits are important. Once you start acquiring points in [Nature Magic] nature spirits are much more likely to appear before you. Since the spirits are a fusion of animal and humanoid souls they can somewhat communicate with both, so finding a spirit that could act as a diplomat is very beneficial to any Nature mage. It is better to use spirits because while animals are agents of nature they can be easily tempted and tamed due to their low intelligence, which is not useful for a diplomat, while nature spirits are much more independent and reliable due to their higher intelligence.

Nature doesn't have the same principle of self-preservation that we do even though they were also created by the God of Creation so you have to be delicate when dealing with nature. Nature might put pride, duty, pettiness, or hate above their instinct of self-preservation, even though nature isn't fast acting or powerful they can still do much to hurt you in the long term.

With the world being filled with mana there's a large amount of plants that absorb mana and convert them to energy, I know Roxanne told me these plants are the basis for all mana potions. Eating these plants led to people acquiring the [Sense Mana] skill and with that they tried to copy the way plants manipulate mana, this became the origin of the magician profession and the magical tools.

Magic is manipulating mana in a way to convert it into something else, magical tools merely copy the manipulation of mana so all you have to do is feed it mana. By observing what plants do the very first spell created was [Manasynthesis], which uses mana and converts it into energy for the body, there are a few other uses for it, like using the sunlight to replenish your mana. It's an advanced spell since I can't see it yet.

With that another day ends and I snuzzle up to Alissa's fur as I ride her home.

"Wolfy, I think that the corgi was a bad idea, Roxanne barely worked the entire day," Hana says with her arms folded.

"Hanaa~… you traitoor!"

I decide to keep the corgi out only when we are all home. After my strength training, Roxanne pouts during the bath, so I give her extra attention and Hana melts her by brainwashing her with her fingers.

At night Alissa gives me a new set of scratches on my back and a hickey.

Today is the 3rd.

-

Today my [Space Magic] increased by 4 (now 0+6) and I learned [Nature Magic] with 6 points, I guess my experience using a lot of [Regeneration] in the past helped.

When we walk outside to continue [Telekinesis] training I see something that takes away my breath. It's a mini griffin rolling around on the grass, when he sees us he stops and stares. He tilts his cute little head and then dematerializes.

"Awn… I hoped I could at least approach it," I say.

"Ooh, train more [Nature Magic], I wanna touch a nature spirit!" Roxanne says while clapping the tip of her fingers.

"M-me too..." Alissa mutters bashfully.

This time I explode only 1 wooden sword. -.

For lunch Alissa brings a fish with a literal human face, it's a monster called Amabie. This one is a male with long black hair. After decapitating it the body is the same as that of a spadefish with zebra stripes. I didn't enter the kitchen until the face was nowhere to be seen. It tasted good, not too strong.

Today is [Electric Magic]. We meet Lyle and his friends while I'm giving a goodbye kiss to Alissa and I feel an angry gaze on my back. Hatara enters the building while Garanae continues to another.

The bell chimes and at the same time I hear the crackling of thunder. When I look up there's a thin man wearing body conforming red leather clothing in front of the blackboard.

"Good morning, children! My name is Nellan Berryson, I'm here to teach you all about lightning!" Says the professor with a dashing smile.

He folds his arms and moves his feet apart. He neatly combed his short black hair sideways and his clothing has yellow embroidery of thunder. He has a young face and sharp eyes, he's barely over 30.

Lyle opens his eyes wide and sits at the edge of his chair, he found his new hero.

"Thunder is speed! But not simply doing things fast, thunder is a 'path'. It's a way to find the shortest route to your destiny. It's the best route to your enemies heart or to the place your heart desires. That is thunder!"

He turns into lightning and moves to the back of the class at a speed nearly impossible to see, he leaves sparks crackling behind him.

"But thunder is not everything, thunder is merely a part of [Electric Magic], the true form of thunder is energy, pure, raw energy. It's not mana, mana is soul energy, electricity is physical energy."

He turns into lightning again and moves to the front of the class. He brings out an odd-looking round light bulb and extends his hand towards the class.

"[Shocking Touch]!"

Sparks come out of his hand and the light bulb gives out a faint light. The class looks astonished.

"Converting mana to electricity to then convert it into light is inefficient, but this is just one of the uses of electricity. The advantage of electricity is that it is much easier to manipulate it and measure it, electricity runs well in a variety of metals while mana requires expensive materials for it to work. Another advantage is how it is possible to preserve electricity on metals like this."

He brings out a cylindrical object, it's made by a pile of metal plates and has two metal ribbons coming out of each end. He connects each end to the bulb and a very faint light can be seen.

"This battery costs 1/10th of a mana crystal, or 1/100th of a mana potion, but it outputs less than 1/1000th of the power. This is the untapped power of electricity, perhaps one of you will improve our knowledge of it in the future!"

Although I have knowledge of electricity I have near zero knowledge of chemistry, only when someone invents the transistor will I be able to start an electronics revolution.

In here the Ohm's law is called the Law of Power, voltage is called speed and current is called strength. Charges are called "beginning" and "target" while the current is called "pathway". The idea of electricity is that there's "power" everywhere and when the differential becomes large enough a discharge occurs to balance the environment. A spell like [Lightning Bolt] is the transformation of mana on the world to the "power", creating a differential that discharges through the path you created once you release it.

In truth [Electric Magic] is the manipulation of electrons from the atoms, from stealing them to giving them. There's even magnetism manipulation, which is a bit mind breaking for me since I never understood magnets very well, how do they work?

After the eccentric introduction we started learning about simple circuits, calculating mana to electricity power conversions and magnetic fields. There's no way the students didn't learn a lot about algebra before these classes, things are moving way too fast and the math is not simple. Too bad I can't practice magic here without calling the attention of the professor.

Soon after the color returns to the world the bell chimes and I see Hatara steal a glance at me, then turns around immediately.

I approach her.

"Hey, Miss Hatara. Just to make sure, Alissa was joking that time, she just wanted to embarrass you guys a little. Sorry about that."

"Hm, I-I understand."

Lyle looks at Hatara with amusement.

"There's no worry about that, she will never take her eyes off Gara," he smirks.

"L-Lyle!" Hatara mutters with surprise.

I'm starting to feel somewhat more positive towards Lyle.

"Oh? Then go for it, someone like Mr. Taranoa should be easy to seduce."

"Why is that so?" Asks Lyle, raising an eyebrow.

"Seeing how easy it is to embarrass all of you shows how vulnerable and inexperienced you all are," I smirk.

Lyle and Hatara redden a little.

"A-anyway, she's a lost cause, she's too shy to make any move," Lyle shakes his head.

"Just be aggressive, you can still be shy and cute while aggressively seducing someone."

Hatara looks at me and opens and closes her mouth without any sound.

"If you don't do that he's gonna get stolen, you know? Isn't he a noble? Don't the arranged marriages start becoming a thing at our age?"

"True, even you are engaged," Lyle says.

"But mine wasn't arranged."

They both lose their voices. It's so easy to mess with them.

"Anyway, start by trying to grab his hand or hug him or something. Once you manage to get his attention then you push him into a bed and do what you can, that for sure will tie down any man," I wave and leave.

I can see them blush again.

I meet up with Alissa and she tells me a guy tried to intimate Hana and Roxanne when they went to check the requests at the guild. Since Hana has [Intimidate] the guy almost pissed his pants. The real danger of this town starts to appear when we gather enough attention, I really am living on the safe part of town.

The rest of class is more math, electricity is nearly pure math so it's harder than kinematics. When we get back home I spend some time wasting my mana by casting [Electric Magic]. At level 15 I can use [Rush] and move really fast but nowhere near as fast as the professor. At level 20 there's a spell called [Discharge] which throws electricity from my fingers in a cone in front of me, it has less power than [Lightning Bolt] but it has stronger stunning power, the bad part is that it's easy to cause friendly fire. I felt an urge to scream "Unlimited Power" while using [Discharge], though.

- I cuddle with Roxanne and she sleeps hugging a corgi I summoned. Alissa doesn't want to disturb us so this time we invert positions and she cuddles me.

Today is the 4th.

-

My [Mana Control] increased by 1 (now 0+7), my [Space Magic] increased by 3 (now 0+9) and I learned [Electric Magic] with 2 points.

The nature spirit griffin is out again and he has a small cat with an oversized head besides it. They are both sitting on the wall and look at us curiously when we get out.

I wave at it and the griffin turns its head sideways. If cuteness could kill I would be dead. I pull out a plate and leave on it a piece of raw mutton I prepared just in case. Griffin's are carnivorous, though a spirit could basically eat anything.

I practice [Telekinesis] again and I don't break a single practice sword. With that Hana switches our swords to dull iron swords so we can properly spar. The cat spirit leaves but the griffin stays, I don't let Roxanne get anywhere near it.

- Hana and Roxanne have their fun since I'm tired today -. It's a weird feeling, I do feel a little jealous but it makes me happy seeing them happy together. They are like 2 old friends who keep sharing stories, my relationship with them is different, we are about our dependency and trust on each other.

The girls loved mayonnaise and I even added pieces of cooked egg to improve it. Alissa has been making a lot of roasted meat which goes well with the mayo.

When we leave for the university the nature spirit griffin is eating the meat while shaking his butt in happiness, oof.

Today is [Blessing Magic]. Less than half the seats are occupied, this school of magic is not that popular since it requires a shit ton of mana. It's powerful but very difficult to use so not that many people have a talent for it. Hatara comes and sits besides me this time.

"Good day, Mr. Ryder."

"Good day, Miss Hatara."

She seems much less shy today.

The bell chimes and soon a tall, blonde woman with rosy skin and blue eyes comes. Her skin tone seems a little odd to be human. She wears a yellow greek-style toga with thicker cloth, the weather is chilly around here so using the thin togas wouldn't be appropriate. Her hair is absolutely fabulous with drills all over and a large volume, her face is beautiful and gives an aura of kindness. An angel.

"Good day my children. I'm Alciel Angel, I'm an angel-type demon. I'm your professor for [Blessing Magic]."

I knew it. Her voice rings like soft bells on my ears, it's pleasant but I prefer my sex demon succubus over an angel.

Before this magic school existed the Humanoid Gods used to give simple powers to heroes when the time was right. The mages soon discovered that these blessings were simple spells and decided to copy them, the priests were concerned over copying the gods but when the skill [Blessing Magic] was discovered they realized it was a magic school actually created by the gods and gifted to us.

When a skill is created, be it magical or not, the qualifier of "(creator)" is added to the skill of the person that created it. For most schools the creators are known, but not [Blessing Magic]. Then there's the fact that all other magic schools require tons of theoretical knowledge before the skills increase in level, except this one. This discrepancy in skill growth and the lack of a known creator led credence to the fact that this was a magic school created by the Gods. Then after [Blessing Magic] was discovered and accepted the gods stopped these kinds of blessings and the permanent blessings like mine started to appear.

So in this class there's not that much theoretical knowledge to learn, it's mostly practical.

[Blessing Magic] is basically a mixture of already existing magic. Like how level 1 spell [Wind Armor] is part of the [Wind Magic] school but it's morphed into something different. The basis for [Wind Armor] is [Wind Wall] but morphed by willpower to follow the skin of the wearer.

Level 5 spell [Sharp Blades] uses [Manipulate Metal] to sharpen it in a temporary way.

Level 10 spell [Swift Foot] uses [Electric Magic] to create a "path" that makes it easier to walk.

Level 15 spell [Rainbow Shield] uses all the defensive elemental magic spells to create a single shield that's effective against most magic.

Level 20 spell [Rainbow Crystal] uses the principles behind elemental attack magic to boost nearly all types of magical attacks.

Level 25 spell [Reinforce] is an improved [Sharp Blades] that also improves magical defense, physical defense, and magical attack.

Level 30 spell [Warrior's Respite] is similar to [Filling Waters] but it recovers only stamina. [Filling Waters] conjures water that increases recovery of stamina and Mana Points.

Level 40 spell [Mage's Respite] is the mana-only version of [Filling Waters].

Level 50 spell [Haste] is the fusion of [Perfect Intake] (perfect breathing) and [Rush]. From then on the spells are original.

Level 60 spell [Reflection], reflects physical attacks.

Level 70 spell [Mage's Mirror] reflects magical attacks.

Level 80 spell [Unbreakable Skin] blocks all attacks.

Level 90 spell [Time Stop] stops the target in time, though this spell was added later to the [Space Magic] school as [Slow].

So there is time magic, I think "Chronomancer" would be an amazing title to have. I will ask the gnome professor the name of all of the known spells of [Space Magic].

Level 100 spell [Undying Flesh] is the ultimate spell that prevents death as long as a single cell of the target still lives.

None of the other magic schools are as well researched as this one. Though perhaps there's only one living person who can cast [Unbreakable Skin], the other spells have such an unbelievable high cost it requires dozens of rose coins in mana crystals to be able to cast it.

The bell chimes and the class breaks from the trance of her voice. As people prepare to leave I strike a conversation with Hatara, I know I'm a pervert but there's no ulterior motive here, I just prefer to talk to women than men.

"What are you going to do once you finish your courses, Miss Hatara?"

"Huh? Oh, I will join the knight's order like my father and join the subjugation squad."

"What role will you do?"

"I-I'll be the field healer and support. I'm learning Blessing, Light, Water and Wind, I'll likely be part of the long distance squad. What about you?"

"I'm going to look for a dungeon to conquer, possibly at the High Forest, I'll remain as an adventurer and explore the world."

"Ohh… that sounds nice, I always wanted to visit Goloria or Elaria. But I don't want to leave the Shore of Leaves, my family has a duty to this land."

"You wanna come with us? Lets have some tea," I ask her as we approach the exit where Alissa is waiting.

"S-sure…"

Alissa is curious why I invited her, I mostly want to leave a good impression since Garanae obviously dislikes me. She doesn't bring out the cupcakes, those are reserved only for me and my lovers, no exceptions.

"What kind of duty your family has?" I ask.

"One of my ancestors was the child of a fallen noble, to keep his life he swore allegiance to the lord and became a knight. Since then our family always trains one child per generation to serve the Lord as a knight and our family is taken care of by him. Because I have talent in magic I have been chosen as the inheritor of this vow. If I bring glory to my family then perhaps..." Her voice trails off.

"Perhaps…?" I prod.

"I could… marry a noble…"

"Ooh, and the one you are aiming for is Garanae?"

She blushes and nods.

"I see it now," Alissa says and nods to me.

"Like I said, you need to catch his eyes, you know who he's looking at?" I ask.

"What? Who?" She looks at me wide eyed.

I point at Alissa. Hatara drops her head, dejected.

I see Lyle walking about looking for someone, I get up and meet with him.

"Oh, Mr. Ryder? I see you are with Hatara."

"Yes, well no. Let's leave them both together for a while, Alissa has a bit of work to do."

"Huh?" He looks at me with narrowed eyes.

"It's not about me, but rather it's about her future with someone else."

Lyle looks a little confused but I believe he understood, somewhat. I bring my tea and the rest of my cookies and lonely eat them somewhere else. A few minutes before the end of the break I buy 3 little cupcakes and bring them to eat with the girls.

When I join them Hatara is nodding while blushing and Alissa has a bewitching smile on her face. After we eat the bell rings.

"T-thank you for the advice, Miss Alissa."

"Don't mind it."

The disciple of the Goddess of Love guides the first lamb.

We resume class and the professor teaches us about chanting. There's not that much depth to it, it's mostly about practice and increasing your mana capacity.

This is the first time I learn about chanting. Each school of magic has their own style of chanting, it starts as simple humming or sounds that help control mana and progresses to being songs or poems about the spells. Each person can develop their own chant but most mages will know what you are chanting if they pay attention, even if you are humming. The most advanced mages shorten their chants and end up not chanting at all, but it requires extreme control and efficiency otherwise the spell is lost and the mana is wasted.

The professor sings a song with such a lovely and warm voice it gives me chills, she could be a choir singer with ease.

"Gentle breeze of the wind, give us your affection, stop the sword of the unkind, change the arrow's direction, [Wind Armor]!" She yells the name of the spell with a stern tone.

The entire class gains the [Wind Armor] spell. That's impressive, I haven't cast an area spell like this yet, I need to learn this asap. [Blessing Magic] drains too much of my mana, it's annoying to use with [Summoning Magic], I need every improvement I can get. Saying the name of the spell seems to be the cherry of the cake, it helps the mind keep control over the mana and not spill over any excess.

After casting it again a few times to the class she conducts us to sing as if we are a choir. Soon enough we are all singing in sync and she tells us to start focusing our mana. The air fills with such a strong mana it's almost suffocating.

"[Wind Armor]!" I yell and feel my mana draining.

On the 3rd time I manage to do it. I feel like all those times I cast the spell it was as if I was doing this procedure on fast forward.

Suddenly a new song appears on my head. I look at my stats and see that I immediately gained 6 points in [Blessing Magic]. This is actually the magic I used the most since I never fought without it, I don't even wanna know how my wounds would look like if I didn't use it.

This time I don't know the words but I start humming another song, it's almost like I'm improvising a new song. I hum, fail to keep the rhythm, start again and move on. Then I get the note right, I fix my beat, and start to increase the volume.

"[Sharp Blades]!" I yell. I finished the spell about 4 minutes after I started humming.

"Ooh, congratulations, it seems you have a talent for this magic," The professor claps to me.

I notice the class stopped singing and they are all staring at me, I did hum a bit too loud. My cheeks redden and I force myself to maintain my poke face.

"I-it seems so, the song just came to me."

"That's always how it happens. [Blessing Magic] is the most beautiful magic school I have seen, it gives us such a desire to sing beautiful songs it's almost like the words come out by themselves."

The class continues singing and I decide to keep humming quietly, I manage to reduce the chant to 30 seconds. It takes less mana than doing it by the system but it still takes a huge amount of mana, I have to try casting it in an area in the next class.

The singing stops with the bell and I feel my throat hurt. Hatara waves goodbye to me and Alissa and we leave.

At home, I have to do the strength training -.

"How did you survive before you met me?" I ask Hana -.

"Huh..." - "Now that I think about it I was basically traveling around all the time escorting merchants and fighting every other day. You know, I actually definitely prefer riding dick than slashing throats. Maybe this is why our culture is to have children much later, we would get addicted to sex and stop fighting if we were like the other races."

"Seems you are all a race of extremes. At least you live without regrets."

"That's right, nobody lives prouder than the dragonkin!" -.

"I think the Tale of Creation tells us the dragonkin were responsible for repopulating the continent after the Age of Oppression," Alissa says.

"Hahah, I will agree that this makes sense," Hana nods.

"If it weren't for the Ring of Fertility you would have been pregnant since the first day you met Wolfy," Alissa says.

"I agree, there's no one more depraved than Hana," Roxanne says and she and Alissa share a smile.

"O-oi, I have a feeling I should deny this," Hana says.

"Pff..." I scoff.

"Wolfyyy!"

"Well, it's not like I consider it a negative, I love you as you are."

"Awn..." She kisses me -.

After dinner I play around with Alissa while she reads her book -.

Today is the 5th.

-

I got 2 points in [Space Magic] (now 0+11), 1 in [Sword Use] (now 9+6), 1 in [Blessing Magic] (now 0+7) and my MP increased by 30 (now 540). With this I can use [Gravity Crush] from [Space Magic].

My growth is incredible, the possibility of using spells before I have the knowledge required for them is a huge cheat. Even my physical abilities like [Sword Use] benefit from it since I know how the "better" way of attacking is, it's like I always have half the experience necessary to increase my skills.

Today Hana wants me to learn [Muscle Explosion] so she uses Alissa to give me super fast strikes. I put a point in [Muscle Explosion] and it gives me a lot of clarity in learning it.

At 10:30AM Roxanne appears on the window to the backyard.

"Wolfy, Ciel is here."

Oh boy.

A towel and a strong [Clean] is enough to remove the sweat and any smell. I go to the living room and Ciel is sitting by the sofa. She's wearing a dark red sundress with white flower embroidery, she really likes flowery dresses.

"H-hello, Mr. Ryder."

"Hello, Miss Ciel, good morning."

"M-morning."

Ciel is nervous. Alissa pulls out the tea and the good cookies.

"Oh my, these are always so delicious, thank you."

"So, what brings you here?" I ask.

"I have made my decision..." She looks me in the eye and speaks in a resolute tone, "I wanna join you."

We all smile. I look outside and the spirit griffin is eating meat again cutely, today is a good day.

"It really makes me happy that you agreed."

"Honestly, it should have been an easy decision to me but I was running away from it. Any priest would be happy to be able to accompany two people who have been blessed by the gods," she says while looking down.

I just hope this isn't the only reason you came.

"Then, Miss Ciel, welcome to Helios, this is your home now."

I stretch my hand and we share a handshake.

"Let's form the fellowship, Ciel."

"S-sure."

Her hand is very soft, softer than Alissa's and plumper than Roxanne's. Is she using [Heal] on her hands? She should have much rougher hands because of the hard work of helping in the orphanage.

"Do you need help bringing your luggage?" I say, regretting leaving the warmth of her hand.

"I-if that's not too much, it's only two trunks but I can't fit one on my [Item Box] so I have to carry it by hand."

"We'll go with our flying dinghy and then register you at the guild."

"Ok."

Me, Alissa and Ciel go flying to the temple. Over there the children notice Ciel and rush to hug her.

"Sister Cieeeel! I will miss you!"

"Cieeel!"

"Sisteeer! Come back soon!"

Good thing they are not asking her to stay, that would be heartbreaking. But this is the first time I saw Ciel interacting with the children, she gives such a heartwarming smile it tickles my heart.

I understand why me and the children like Ciel, she's a warm and lovable person, it's the kind you don't want to hurt but also know she will never hurt you. She's an angel on earth.

After a few minutes Ciel manages to calm the children. Alissa hugs my arm and I see jealousy in her eyes.

"That's a bit too soon for you but don't worry, our house will be much more lively one day," I whisper in her ear.

She shudders and I see her tail wag. I think that fox tails shouldn't wag like a dog's or am I misremembering it?

Ciel goes inside and brings her trunk, it's quite big and heavy so I just store it inside my "Items". She knows I'm a talented mage so I don't think I should bother telling her about it.

We go to the guild and I see plenty of eyes on us, most are curiosity, a few are lust, and the last bunch are hate. It seems Hana's intimidation worked, nobody dares approach us. After that we simply go back home.

Ciel immediately helps Alissa in cooking.

"Oh my, so many spices," Ciel says with wide eyes, "I'm afraid I don't know much how to use them, but I do know how to make food for a lot of people taste good."

"Wolfy taught me how to use each of these spices but I have been experimenting a lot with them," Alissa says.

"Wolfy…? Ah, Mr. Ryder is a gourmet then?"

"You can just call me Wolf, I'm just addicted to experimenting new kinds of food."

"Well then, Wolf, you can drop the 'Miss'. Anyway, I wish the children were like you then."

I was a picky eater as a child too so I'm not the best role model.

With the clay golems and Ciel, the 2 housework duties I had have basically disappeared. I'm feeling a little guilty about this, I have to find some way to help around the house.

"But this house is amazing, it feels so comfortable to live in, did you buy this?"

"No, it's a rental."

Ciel opens her eyes wide again, Roxanne looks a bit shy.

I feel somewhat guilty that our lifestyle is so much better than the one of the orphanage. The temple has the clinic so they are not starving for money but still they have to spend a lot just to sustain the children.

After lunch and praises from Ciel, Alissa is going to let me at the university and the girls are going to go buy Ciel's equipment. I made it very clear that the equipment defense should be between mine and Hana's, Ciel is likely to pick something cheap if we don't force her, I really don't want her hurt on our first mission.

We have a good amount of money saved and Roxanne's potions barely cover our living expenses but with Ciel we are going to have to look for jobs seriously now. I told Hana to look for one.

Before we leave I give a corgi to Roxanne to carry but soon enough Ciel manages to steal it from her.

At the university the class today is [Reduced Mana Cost], the classroom is full. Today Lyle, Hatara and Garanae appear, Hatara pulls Garanae to sit somewhere near me but she couldn't get a seat too close since Garanae pulled back.

After a while 2 researchers enter the class and sit. The first is an owl-type wereanimal, she has brown hair with white streaks, long spiky eyelashes and eyebrows, round yellow eyes, feathers coming out of the top of her hair that resemble cat ears, claws on her hand and a small mouth. She looks solemn and a bit cute, she looks to be in her 20's. The second one is a small and cute boy with a square jaw, green eyes and long black hair, he seems disinterested in everything. I bet he's a dwarf, his face is too oblong to be a halfling. He looks young but his eyes look old and tired.

The owl woman sits behind me.

"Hoo, Good day," her voice is high pitched and she speaks fast.

"Good day, first time I'm seeing another researcher here."

"Hoh? That's a bit difficult to believe? What classes are you taking?"

"Ah, it's just beginners, I learned magic by myself so I'm creating a strong base."

"I see, hoh. My name is Toroo, I'm researching [Illusion Magic], what about you?"

Illusion? Interesting, the spells that I can see on this school relate to aggro control like pacifying, enraging or disturbing the vision of enemies. But it's also an incomplete school of magic.

"I'm Wolf Ryder, I'm researching [Golemancy] and a skill I made, [Redirect Mana]."

"Ohoh, so you are the one with a blessing, fascinating. Tell me more about your skill later," her eyes stare into my soul but her kind voice and attitude makes me happy.

"Only if you tell me about illusions."

"Deal."

Straightforward, I like it.

"Do you know him?" I point to the supposed dwarf who sat at the opposite of the class.

"He's Gimbo Bombur. He's researching enchanting, I wanted to pay him to enchant a staff for me but he's a bit reclusive. It's a pity since the craftsmen of the university have much more interesting enchantments than those from the market," the way Toroo talks is full of grace, she's a lovely woman.

The bell chimes and a simple middle-aged man with black hair and a plain black robe appears. Is he gonna be the first professor that's not a complete eccentric?

"Good day, class. I'm Vareto Amvlyson. I'm the professor for [Reduced Mana Cost]," The man speaks on a monotone.

I guess a complete lack of flavor can also be considered an eccentricity.

Reducing mana cost is one of the core skills of mages, it reduces only the initial cost of the spell, which is good for single spells with a large initial cost or casting many spells in fast succession. Mana efficiency is another core that reduces the amount of mana spilled over from charging large or continued spells, charging large spells is different than just casting a spell with a large base cost. Mana control is the last core that allows you to cast larger or smaller spells and control better it's effects while active, like controlling the direction of a [Fire Arrow] during flight.

For me who has a ton of spells from different schools this skill is really useful, increasing the level of the magic school also reduces the base cost but only for spells you cast a lot. But even for mages who specializes in one school the reduced cost is very good for large spells.

The first problem is surviving this class, the monotone voice has a sleep-inducing effect and soon enough the class has a few heads bobbing up and down. The second problem of this skill is that it requires a deep understanding of mana and magic. The third problem is that the actual practice for it is something very abstract that requires deep concentration and lots of imagination.

Mana is the concept of power and life of this world. Mana lives and then dies and turns into something else along the cycle. Everything is made from mana on a deeper level, this is why we can conjure basically anything on this world and manipulate it. When we destroy something the law of conservation applies, it doesn't get destroyed it simply turns into the next mana type of the cycle, this is why something like [Summoning Magic] is so expensive, it turns mana into matter and when dismissed the remaining matter is turned into mana again, Unfortunately I can't reabsorb everything, the rest dissipates due to my lack of [Mana Efficiency].

The only things that are not made of mana are the gods, they are pure "consciences". The conscience of living beings is attached to souls and given a form on this world. The Gods and even the Humanoid Gods don't have a physical form, allowing them to look over us all the time, they only can't act due to the lack of power. Once a soul dissipates that person is truly "lost", if you can keep the soul together them maybe you can recreate a new vessel for the soul.

The matter of revival is controversial, there's research on it but nobody ever succeeded. The biggest problem is the moral question of forcing the soul to be bound to a new vessel. The soul is morphed into the vessel that is our bodies, so giving it a new vessel will have unknown effects on it. But this is getting off-topic for the lesson.

The source of mana is the sun and the moon, they are the 2 sources of energy for this realm, they take the mana from the outside of the realm and pour it here at a stable rate, before the God of the Sun ascended this rate varied wildly. The sun gives physical power that many plants convert either into chemical energy or into magical energy to survive. The moon gives pure mana but it focus on the humanoids.

Mana that spills from magic has a bit of a zero-gravity movement style, they keep moving until they hit something, but they are infinitesimally small so they can actually miss a solid wall and move forever in a single direction. Mana has also a bit of gravity in itself and tends to accumulate, if it gets too big it collapses on itself and creates a mana storm. In a way mana works like particles in the vacuum of space, it's just that not many things can interact with it. Spirits are the most sensitive to stray mana, making them actually very vulnerable to spells.

The bell chimes and I feel like I'm pulled out of a deep dark well into the light.

"Wanna have a break with me?" I ask Toroo.

"Hoh, sure."

"This is my fiancee, Alissa."

"Pleasure to meetcha. I'm Toroo."

"Pleasure to meet you too," Alissa answers with elegance.

We discuss [Illusion Magic] first, from what I understood it's a magic to read the part of the soul related to the connection to the brain and break this connection and mold it at your will. It's related to [Spirit Magic] but it's not the same since it works on the brain-soul connection instead of directly interfering with the soul.

For me [Spirit Magic] isn't that useful to learn [Sense Soul] because the spirit is actually a membrane made of mana that protects the soul. There's one spell that could be useful called [Soul Search] but I can't see it yet and it's more of a brain invasion than actual search of the soul since it focus on knowing the "intent" of the person instead of understanding what a soul is made of, which is what I want.

I explain the principles of [Golemancy] and how [Redirect Mana] works. The difficulty is explaining the way to move your own soul, it seems nobody has the "inner muscle" necessary to force the soul to change shape, perhaps because everyone chants instead of using my cheat "instant cast".

"Huh, to move your own soul certainly seems intriguing," Toroo taps her small chin.

She doesn't doubt the skill exists because of my blessing that guarantees my character and the fact that skills can simply be seen by using an Inspection Crystal.

"Think of how [Sense Presence] works, you can guess the size of a monster because the soul expands to try and cover the whole body. It's not that the soul is bigger, it's simply deformed."

"Hoh! I understand," her eyes open wider than I thought possible, "But to reproduce something that you achieved on a life and death situation sounds a little too difficult, what a pity."

"Indeed, just for me to improve this skill takes a lot of effort. I had to put training it on hold since I have a lot of other things to study too."

"What actually makes me excited is the damage from two souls touching, it's something never seen before. Imagine the possibilities, we have [Spirit Magic] but perhaps we can evolve it into something deeper and create [Soul Magic] and directly interfere with the soul of the living."

"I'm rather concerned with the ethical implications of it since this could be a dangerous weapon. I'm going to continue studying [Golemancy] but I feel I don't want to touch [Soul Magic]."

"I agree. We could be touching into a new magic soon to be forbidden. Hohohoh, I will remain working with my illusion magic, no thank you."

Alissa has been interested in our talk but she can't chime in, she knows little about magic unfortunately.

The bell chimes.

"Well then, thank you for the tea, I also loved those cookies, I will repay you sometime."

"That's my own creation, I have been trying to copy the baker's but I ended up creating these instead," Alissa says with a hint of pride.

These cookies uses not-cinnamon, not-cloves and not-nutmeg, the strong taste goes well with a weak not-black-tea.

"My, how lovely, I wish I had a cook like you with me. Unfortunately our hired cook is too much of a meat head to work with sweets like these and my husband would likely set our house on fire," she smiles bitterly.

Alissa's tail wags. We go back to the class.

The professor moves us outside to a nearby magic range like the one on the hunters guild. The idea is that we have to cast a spell and meditate and look for ways to reduce the mana used. This is a really hard part since the skill system gives me no help, it just gave me a flat discount when I put points into it.

We aren't here to work on the mana spill that happens when you cast a spell, that's part of [Mana Efficiency]; we are not here to change the size of the spell, that's [Mana Control]; what we have to do is build more with less. Instead of building a spiral stair we have to create a ladder directly to the target, it's gonna be more fragile and more difficult to traverse but it's gonna use less materials. This is fine for a single spell but we have to understand the rule that lets us apply this method to every single spell to conserve mana.

The bell chimes and nobody makes any progress. I look behind and Alissa is nearby watching from afar. I wave goodbye to Toroo and Hatara and go back home.

The girls got Ciel's equipment. Another Grey Berserker jacket and pants, steel vambraces and gauntlets, she also has a light small-sized leather targe to protect against arrows, and a backup iron short sword. The glaive blade is a green dragon fang, not emerald, this one has affinity with wind so it helps her wind magic.

The glaive has a long wooden shaft, a single-edge blade at the top and a small hook at the back. It is a mid point weapon, slower than a spear but faster than a halberd, less slashing power than a halberd but more than a spear, less piercing power than a spear but more than a halberd. The range is also mid point, it definitely wins against a long sword so her advantage is still range and dexterity, she can use the sword for close encounters, though.

Ciel was pouting since the equipment is expensive but it's a gift from us, it's also quite literally the same quality as all our equipment so we are all even now.

Hana found a good request for us, a nest of dragons was found and now a merchant is offering a group subjugation request. When a dragon nest is found it's the responsibility of the local lord to subjugate it but since dragons are really valuable (considering our most valuable equipment comes from an emerald dragon) there's always a merchant who will post a subjugation request for it. This one is also an escort request since the merchant will extract the scales and meat on"site, a dragon corpse is too heavy to carry without enough space mages. The meeting to negotiate and choose from the interested fellowships will happen at the 9th.

"S-so… you all take a bath together?" Ciel asks.

"Yep, it's a tradition now, even during an expedition we all must take a bath together. Our bath is sacred," I say.

"Our bath is sacred," Alissa adds.

"Our bath is sacred," Roxanne joins and laughs.

"Our bath is sacred," Hana finishes with a nod.

Thank god even the bath has sound protection -.

For dinner Alissa brings out the premium Grey Berserker fillet steak and Hana opens a fine blue wine. Ciel is another lightweight with alcohol.

"Hohohoh, it's like I left one family and already joined another," Ciel says while wobbling her head about.

"Well… you did, quite literally, since these are all my fiancees," I say.

"Hm, yeah! Quite happy to join the hen house, hohoh."

"We are happy to have you here, as an equal," Alissa says, she's a bit flushed.

"Yes, as an equal," I say and smirk.

Ciel chokes a bit. Gotta be subtle.

We spend some time on the living room and Hana puts Roxanne to sleep with her brain massage. I teach Ciel how to massage Alissa's ears and with me working her tail she soon falls over her book. Ciel is very amused with this sight, she has to stifle her laugh not to wake up Alissa when she sees we all sleep on a huge bed.

Today is the 6th.

-

During morning practice Ciel joins too, she has quite a lot of dexterity and speed. It has been a while since she used the glaive so she's a little rusty but she's definitely gonna be able to defeat me, that is if we don't use magic, once she gets back in shape. Not that I'm implying she's fat, good thing she can't read my mind.

The griffin is watching us again and he brought a platypus with him this time. He seems particularly interested in Ciel.

"Awn, there's even a nature spirit here. They never come near the temple, there's way too many people there," Ciel says while pouting.

"I gained some levels in [Nature Magic], perhaps I could befriend him soon."

"Please do! They bring good fortune to people who treat them well," she pleads.

"We all wish the same, but here he is practicing the sword again," Alissa says smirks. Roxanne laughs and nods.

"Oh you…"

Ciel is quite excited so she and Hana go practice on the hunters training grounds. I secretly told Roxanne to look for a dress for Ciel, I want to reserve one to give to her on a special occasion.

Class is [Space Magic] again, today we learn how the chants for this magic school works. The chants are basically whispers that follow a cadence that increases in speed, for [Telekinesis] it takes 5 seconds to say the words, which normally makes it inconvenient to use in combat like I use. My style is to only cast the spell when I'm striking and then end it after the strike. Trying to swing around an object under the effect of [Telekinesis] is a quite odd since it's not under the same gravity as I am, so I have to adjust the force on it to match the environment after the strike otherwise it becomes a waste of mana.

I can also use [Gravity Crush] now but it's a rather destructive spell so I just practice my [Telekinesis] on the small block of metal we have been given. An object too light would be difficult to control, but I can easily do fine movements with the amount of [Mana Control] I have now.

"You were already practicing [Telekinesis] last class weren't you?"

"Dyuh~!" I let out a dumb noise in surprise.

The gnome professor is floating besides me and looking at me with curious eyes. I was concentrating so much on my spell I didn't notice him silently float towards me.

"Uh, yes, I was. How did you notice?"

"My [Sense Mana] is very high. Impossible for me not to notice, but I never saw you chant."

I try to not cringe while I force an innocent smile.

"I have a bit of a talent for [Space Magic], I never need to chant," I lie.

"Hmm, so are you aiming to learn [Gate]?"

"No please, the last thing I want is to be chained by the empire."

"Heh, it's not like they enslave you," he discreetly rolls his eyes, "You can get permission to walk free if you serve long enough or someone backs you."

"Backs me? Is the blessing of a god not enough?"

"Not really, but aren't you an adventurer? If you get enough achievements a lord is a good enough backer for exemption. I know a few of the famous fellowships around can use [Gate] freely."

Hm, that's a good idea, but I'm not sure Alaraste would give me such a favor, this exemption sounds like a much bigger thing than the town pass. Bypassing customs might allow me to bring illegal goods into town and such things but being able to freely use [Gate] means I can transport anyone I want nearly anywhere. I know there are ways to block [Gate] from being used but these countermeasures aren't so easy to use.

When I get back home I see Ciel with an exhausted face, she slowly walks around the house, it seems she won't be able to help with cooking today. Hana is beaming a smile -.

"How was training?" I ask while Hana massages my brain.

"Wonderful as always, but I'm having to spar with the instructors more, the other students aren't a match for me. Maybe I will fight those living-armors, they sound interesting. Oh, the best was Ciel though, people asked about her and if she was 'Mr. 'Good Luck's' new woman'. She was way too flustered to answer them properly so I just left it like that.

"Oh, that sounds good," I say. Except for the nickname.

"Ciel is a wonderful woman, I wonder why she was single for so long," Alissa says.

It seems Alissa and Ciel are getting along well.

-

After dinner I see Ciel cuddling Alissa and playing with her ears.

"Hm… I'm feeling envy," I say.

"Heheh, those ears are way too cute to let them alone," Ciel answers.

"That's not exactly the envy I feel.

Is it harassment if I keep saying things like this? Ciel doesn't seem to dislike it, I can see her cheeks redden. I guess flirting on this world needs to be more straightforward.

Today is the 7th.

- I don't want these days to ever end, this is a small piece of paradise. -.

-

My [Space Magic] increased by 1 (now 0+12) and I learned [Muscle Explosion], Alissa's [Muscle Explosion] also increased by 1 (now 0+2).

Today I decided to look into the university's library for the first time. I want to look for a [Light Magic] book and see if there's at least a small introduction on it. There's light rain today so I don't feel like sparring, even when Hana and Ciel teased me about it.

The first part of the library is a large corridor where there's 2 floors filled with tables and chairs dedicated for study. The chairs here seem more comfortable than those on the classrooms.

After the large corridor there's a huge spiral staircase that goes up 10 floors, each floor has a long corridor that makes it impossible for me to even guess the amounts of books. There are no windows along the corridors of the bookcases, the light there is only a dim artificial light. In the middle of the staircase [Telekinesis] powered glass elevators ferry scholars around, looks beautiful if you are not afraid of heights.

The architecture here is quite grand, following the baroque style of excessive columns, twisting designs, gilding and, sculptures of famous figures everywhere. The ceiling of the spiral staircase is a large glass dome with stained glass with the symbol of the university and the heraldry of the lord, a black kite with a golden sword and rose crossed. I can hear the pleasant tip-taps of the rain on it.

With my ID as a researcher I don't have to pay to enter, but I will pay a hefty price if I damage the books. I walk past the study corridor and near the start of the bookcases there's a counter with the name "Reception". I go over it and there's a man with his back to me, he's bent over collecting some papers from archives.

"Excuse me."

The man raises his body and his head instantly turns 180º and faces me, large grey eyes stare into my soul.

"HYAH!"

"Oh sorry…"

The man turns his body and aligns it with his head. His large eyes look apologetic to me. He's an owl-type wereanimal with grey hair with white streaks and a small curved nose.

My ears are burning with shame, in this silent library my scream echoed around the entire building.

The man coughs," Sorry about that, I'm new among humans and I forget doing such thing scares them.

"N-no problem, I understand. A-anyway, I'm looking for an introductory book to [Light Magic], do you have any?

"Let me see… ," he brings out a large book and sifts through many pages.

"7th floor, corridor D, section 4, that's where the [Light Magic] books are," he says.

I say my thanks and take the elevator. I take the slow elevator and enjoy the view.

The nostalgic smell of old books makes this place so comfortable to be in. Next time I study monsters I think I will come here and bring Alissa too, this place is much more pleasant than the dungeoneering guild.

I find many books and treatises on [Light Magic], things like proposed new spells, research of known spells, diagnosis, epidemiology, psychology of wicked and evil beings, analysis of undead and how to fight them, beneficial effects of magic and pairings of potions with spells. Finally I find a small section with a few small books, it's "Teaching Light Magic to Children".

The book mainly teaches about child songs that stimulate the spell chants so a child can at least use [Clean] and stimulate the learning of [Spirit Light], for those who might have talent there are a few tests to see if the child can possibly learn [Heal].

For the parents there's some explanation on how to keep the house clean, it seems they have a basic notion that things like bacteria and viruses might exist since the spell [Clean] impedes wounds from festering and [Purify Body] can heal diseases and even drunkenness. It's possible they over rely on using the "Status" windows to identify wounds and diseases, the "Status Effects" window gives symptoms and treatment is based entirely on what is said there, even though I know there's times symptoms don't show, like the mind poison from the arachne. It seems [Diagnosis] is a rare skill and practical tests are not that developed. Magic is convenient but it's blocking the progress of technology.

I copy the chants and go to my office to practice them. The way you need to sing [Light Magic] is upbeat and with a fast tempo, it reminds me of nursery rhymes. So far I managed to cast [Clean], [Spirit Light] and [Heal] through chanting, it takes from 30 seconds for [Clean] up to 3 minutes for [Heal], the book says [Light Magic] is the one who takes the longest to chant.

Alissa brings lunch for me and we eat together at the office.

"Isn't it tiring coming and going all the time?" I ask.

"Not really, I feel that my stamina in the fox form is increasing, perhaps I will level my skill soon. Also… I really enjoy when you ride me…"

"I do too, you are so fluffy."

Alissa blushes and her tail wags.

It seems Hana and Ciel quit trying to spar in the rain and they are now drinking hot tea after a hot bath.

"Tease them in my name," I say.

"You don't even have to ask."

I spend the rest of my time until class cuddling with her. If the walls were soundproof I would definitely make love to her here, perhaps I can use the gag again, but it will have to wait for next time.

During class the Gloomy Pervert brings us to a place with lots of plants, since it's raining we use the greenhouse. There's plenty of dangerous and poisonous plants around so we are confined into the flower section. I see all kinds of flowers, from the common ones like lilies and poppies, to exquisite colored roses, and others with complex and mesmerizing arrangement of colors. There's even a few very precious flowers that glow, which we are not allowed to go near.

Chanting [Nature Magic] is almost whispering, it's very slow tempo but there are not many words so it's faster than [Light Magic]. The idea is literally whispering to nature and since the "conscience" of nature is not very complex you have to reduce the amount of words to the minimum possible to get your idea across.

I successfully cast [Entangling Vines] on a dummy in front of me and [Regeneration] on myself. Most people also achieve the same, being so close to nature helps a lot in casting such magic. At the end of the class I manage to cast a weak version of [Vine Weapon], it creates vines, manipulates them in a shape and hardens them. In a pinch it might be useful to have a vine sword or to create a throwing weapon, though I have no skill with it.

-

Today is the 8th.

-

Today my [Light Magic] and [Nature Magic] increased by 2 (now 9+4 and 0+8), my MP increased by 20 (now 560) and my "Magic Power" increased by 10 (now 235).

The backyard is muddy so Roxanne heats the ground and drains the water, with a magic skill high enough you start to be able to manipulate the elements at your will though it's much less efficient than casting a spell.

With that I train [Battlefield Perception] by being surrounded and attacked by the 3 girls. It was really painful, Hana massaged my brain during the bath to compensate me.

Under a covered magic range we learn how to chant [Electric Magic], it's basically fast rapping. I manage to chant [Lightning Bolt] but I couldn't chant [Shocking Touch] yet. Lyle was one of the few who completed [Shocking Touch], but after doing it once he cast the bolt repeatedly until he fainted, he was like a child during Christmas.

- Tonight I ask Alissa to put me to sleep with her hands. With the rain it got chilly so we turned on the fireplace and we are all around the living room cuddling.

"Every time I see you you are hugging or touching someone, it's like you are made of glue," Ciel comments to me.

"This is the dream of every man, to be able to be in touch with a woman you loved during all times."

"Pff, no wonder you have three women."

"And I couldn't be happier."

After I fall asleep on Alissa's arms Hana carries me to bed. I enjoy this, I have no shame anymore.

Today is the 9th.

-

Today my [Electric Magic] increased by 3 now (0+5), my magic progress is amazing.

Alissa and I go to the guild. A large room has been prepared for this meeting and a long line of interested parties waiting for an interview is on the way. It seems a dragon subjugation is really profitable.

I see Simon on the line, we trade a nod. I hope he doesn't participate.

We have been discussing negotiation tactics during our meals, Hana or Roxanne can't really give me advice during the talks or I will look weak so they have been guiding me. As the girls instructed me, I put 10 points into [Acting] and 10 into [Mental Resistance] temporarily. Hopefully it's enough to prevent people with high "Charisma" from messing with me.

When it's my turn we enter and the first thing I see is an elegant woman with fiery red-hair, she has asian eyes and a delicate triangular face. She wears what looks like to be a red qipao with yellow roses embroidered near the bottom. Her eyes tell me she's bored and she lifts an eyebrow when I arrive. I still haven't fixed my image, even with a scar on the cheek I look like a baby who had an accident instead of a reliable an experienced hunter.

Beside her is a small girl with a pale face, droopy eyes, and straight black hair with bangs. She looks expressionlessly at us yet she still looks cute and feminine. She has a simple black dress with a bit of frills. On her neck is a black metal necklace with a tag, she's a traditional slave.

Behind her are two tall dog-type wereanimal women. They are wearing a simple hauberk, leather pants, and a longsword on their belts. They have a snout, square jaws, and a sharp gaze. One has black hair and long pointy ears of a doberman while the other has white hair and furry white ears, the doberman has a thick black tail standing upright while the other has a furry and curvy tail standing low.

"Good morning. My name is Wolf Ryder, I'm the leader of Helios, this is my fiancee, Alissa."

"Good morning. I'm Hildegard Roth, I represent the Armorer's Guild who's funding this request. This is my slave assistant, Lina."

The girl sifts through a stack of papers and then pulls out one.

"Helios, 5 members.

"Wolf 'Good Luck' Ryder, summoner, magic swordsman, possess the blessing from the Goddess of Knowledge.

"Alissa, blood slave, expert archer, possess the blessing form the Goddess of Love.

"Hanafuria, blood slave, experienced adventurer and merchant escort, skilled with many weapons, capable of dueling with the instructors of the guild.

"Roxanne, mage, experienced adventurer and potion-seller, posses an original and very powerful magic called [Explosion].

Ciel, former priest, experienced in polearms, wind mage and a main healer of the temple, also participated as warrior priestess in the past.

"Notable hunts: Grey Berserker, Orc Headhunter, Oodogloo in a single night, Symbol of Hate, Orc Chief," Finishes the girl, even her voice is cute.

"Symbol of Hate..." Hildegard mutters with eyes wide open, "So you are that one... well then, besides what has already been said, what else can you bring to us?"

"Alissa is an expert tracker and capable assassin, she can work as a scout or with us as the vanguard during the travel. I'm very versatile, I have some knowledge of Electric, Light, Nature, Space and Blessing magic. Roxanne's potions can enhance strength so it gives us a chance of standing toe to toe with a medium dragon for a short while."

Hildegard smiles.

"What is your price?" She asks.

"1 gold and half for each member."

Hildegard frowns.

"You should know killing the Symbol of Hate is not a small feat. We can protect you even if a large dragon appears but we are not specialized in killing dragons, so we can only protect."

"The Symbol was killed by your mage by a stroke of luck, her ridiculous magic is the only reason you are alive," Hilde says with a dismissive tone.

Pff, only now Roxanne gets the credit.

"And yet we killed a 200 years old creature. It wasn't just luck, I still have the scars on my body, my point is we are not gonna get scared so easily."

"I can get tons of squirts who are ready to throw their lives away on a bargain, bravery is cheap," she says and motions dismissively with her hand

"And bravery is not all we have. During the battle with the Orc Chief it was our versatility that saved the fiancee of the Lord's son, even the Lord himself showed his gratitude to us. My elementals became the stability points in both battles we had during that expedition."

"Such feats by a small man are hard to believe, you didn't even exist 3 months ago," she says and narrows her eyes.

"Then perhaps we shall test him," says the doberman woman with a grin, I can see sharp canines.

I summon a titanium skeleton earth elemental. The guards grasp hilt of their swords and the small girl gasps.

"I'm a very skilled summoner, my feats aren't a lie," I smile innocently.

"N-no chanting..." Mutters the white weredog woman.

"You can strike it with all your might and test his durability," I say and motion to the elemental.

Hilde nods to the doberman woman. She draws her sword and gives a savage overhead strike to the head of my elemental. A loud *ding* resonates on the room, the elemental didn't even flinch and the woman draws back her hand in pain. There's a chip on her sword.

Hilde and her attendant trade whispers.

"We will offer you the role of vanguard during the trip and protection during the hunt," she says.

"Sounds good to me."

"70 silver."

"1 and 30," I say with confidence.

"75 silver."

I narrow my eyes.

"1 and 30."

"85."

"1 and 10."

"90."

"1 gold, final."

"95 silver."

"Final," I repeat with hint of anger.

Hilde bites her lips.

"Deal."

I let a long sigh in my mind, I'm so tense. I just followed the script, first brag about our accomplishments, then assure our bravery, and finally show off since my magic is quite impressive. The price you want has already been set but you always aim higher to gauge the desperation of the other party, I almost buckled and accepted 95 silver.

"Half now, half after completion," she says.

The day of departure wasn't defined so I ask for it to be on the 11th. We will take a full day to reach the target and we will spend 2 days at the nest, then we return on the 14th. With this I have one last day of rest before classes start again, the lessons have been easy so I don't need a long rest.

Today I increase my [Blessing Magic] by 1 (now 8). After class I complete my knowledge of dragons up until late at night, it seems the library is a popular place for owl wereanimals after sunset. Alissa was like a small child looking at the grandiose of the library with wonder.

Dragons are a very smart race, depending on their lineage they can be as smart as humanoids and even hold conversations with humans. They still have the unstoppable need to kill humanoids whenever they meet but some are capable of temporarily suppressing it and allowing conversations to happen. Orcs are another race who are smart enough to talk and they are even born with innate understanding of Andraste and a few other languages, but they are incapable of controlling their bloodlust so hardly anyone ever talked to an orc. For the orcs there's no need to waste breath on someone who's about to die, either the orc or the humanoid is dying soon anyway.

For me it raises questions about the morality of killing and eating monsters, is it not cannibalism to eat orcs? Apparently there are monsters who are born without such bloodlust, because of that Dragolites were domesticated and there's even a dragon knight squadron on the empire using domesticated dragons, so is it fine to kill indiscriminately? There's barely any debate about "tamable" monsters, it's like people do not really care whether or not monsters can talk or that you could actually befriend them, monsters are monsters and they get killed and eaten if they are hostile.

In my obsession with trying new foods I ended up ignoring how human looking orcs and goblins are, it's like how easy it is to eat chicken but hard to watch how it's prepared. I'm not sure it's cannibalism but even if it is, it's not bad, is it? The whole world eats goblin meat and there are orcs in most places of the world. I guess in the Age of Oppression you had to eat what you killed or otherwise you starved, so it could have been then that the tradition of eating any sort of monster must have started.

While I think I feel something change in me, my "Wisdom" increased by 1 (now 16), with this I can see spells up to level 30. Fucking awesome!

There are a few interesting spells now, like [Gate] from [Space Magic], [Detect Evil] from [Light Magic], [Soul Search] from [Spirit Magic] and [Fly] from [Wind Magic]. Unfortunately the only 2 viable spells for me would be [Detect Evil] and [Gate], the others I have no trained levels in it so it would be a waste of my skill points and only [Gate] has immediate use. [Detect Evil] is interesting because I can use it to detect wicked people when I touch them or "feel" harmful intent from people around me.

I still don't understand how I "unlock" spells. My guess is that it's related to maximum MP, "Intelligence", "Wisdom" and soul level.

Today is the 10th.

I train [Battlefield Perception] again but I only increase my [Block] by 1 (now 8). Hana improved her [Tatesomu Style] and [Sword Use] by 1 (now 4 and 20) and much to her happiness gained [Oral Technique] with 1 point.

At the [Reduced Mana Cost] class nobody progresses. I have another tea time with Toroo, she's a magic craftswoman who's trying to create illusion magic tools. When I tell her of our expedition she asks for dragon eyes, if she studies them she might find out if dragons have a weakness for certain illusions.

-

The first day-cycle of my school life ends up quite uneventful, it seems I have been reading too much manga and my expectations became quite warped.

A note from Manasong

This chapter was mostly about the wonders of the magic university so I left dialogue to a minimum, otherwise I felt like the chapter would drag on for too long.

Leave a rating or a review to help me rise to the top or fix my shameful understanding of prose.

Take a look over my blog where all information of the world of Rupegia will be posted.

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Chapter 14: Responsibility

A note from Manasong

Attention: to conform to the limit of mature content (more than just sexual content) allowed in a novel, I've censored this chapter. You can look for the uncensored version here.

The symbol "-" denotes a section that got cut for containing sexual content. Also, if paragraphs seem missing, they were also likely censored in an earlier pass where the symbol wasn't used.

Today is the 11th.

-

Here's my progress:

Info

Name: | Wolf Ryder | Age: | 19 | Race: | Human
HP: | 100 | MP: | 560 | Magic Power: | 235
Level: | 17 | Experience: | 386/3500

Stats

Strength: | 9 | Endurance: | 10 | Dexterity: | 9
Speed: | 10 | Intelligence: | 20 | Wisdom: | 16
Willpower: | 15 | Charisma: | 11 | Piety: | 12
Perception: | 15 | Sanity: | 8+4

Other

Status Effects: | NONE | Titles: | "Good Luck" Nickname
Affiliations: | Helios (Fellowship), Alissa (Blood Slave, Fiancee), Hanafuria (Blood Slave, Fiancee), Roxanne Succubus (Fiancee)
Companions: | Alissa, Hanafuria, Roxanne Succubus, Ciel
Crimes: | NONE

And my skills:

Wolf Ryder Skill Report

Physical

Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level
Sword Use | 9+6 | Dodge | 4+5 | Parry | 4+5
Block | 1+8 | Shield Bash | 0+1 | Muscle Explosion | 0+1

Magical

Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level
Sense Mana | 0+5 | Mana Control | 0+7 | Mana Recovery | 6+0
Mana Efficiency | 1+5 | Reduced Mana Cost | 5+0 | Mana Overuse Resistance | 0+2
Electric Magic | 0+5 | Light Magic | 6+4 | Space Magic | 19+12
Summoning Magic | 12+8 | Blessing Magic | 2+8 | Nature Magic | 0+8
Redirect Mana (creator) | 2

Miscellaneous

Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level
Andraste Language | 10+0 | Dismantling | 0+2 | Enhanced "Fluid" Recharge | 0+3
OBS: Level means (free point)+(trained point)

With this, my trump card is [Gate]. This skill has an extra part that's called a "coordinate" that stores the location of wherever I'm standing. I can store up to "(skill level/5)+1" "coordinates". I then choose a coordinate and when I cast the spell one black circle appears on the ground in front of me and one appears on the "coordinate". Whatever touches the black circle gets teleported to the other one just like when you teleport between floors on a dungeon. If my mana is not enough then the object just doesn't get transported. Since my [Space Magic] is level 11 I can maintain 3 "coordinates" and not lose them when I remove all my points on it.

I believe most mages must learn a weaker version of [Gate], the prices for a space mage teleport are quite high, it must cost them a lot of mana then. With 30 points on [Space Magic] it's not really expensive and I can use it a lot for all of us. Those tests were made hiding from Ciel, of course.

Before we leave, I put more points in [Nature Magic] so that I can use the level 20 spell [Animal Tongue] and speak to the spirit griffin that was waiting for us on the back wall.

"We will be gone for a few days, ok? I'll leave this last piece of meat here but we will give you more when we come back."

The griffin turns his head sideways and then he looks down, he at me with sad puppy eyes.

We move to the west gate. The dinghy is still comfortable enough for us, I hug Hana and Alissa on the back while Roxanne flies it besides Ciel. When we registered Ciel she got the town pass too so we just have to spend a few seconds at the gate. The meeting place is directly outside the town past the chest-high wall, we are the first to arrive.

I concentrate and chant [Wind Armor]. Repeating the chant a few times I get an inspiration and manage to find the way to cast it in an area, it ends up saving a lot of my mana. The way to cast it in area feels very similar to the way I expand my soul to use [Redirect Mana], I guess this is why this was easy to me.

"Oh my, you truly are becoming quite the mage, Wolf," Ciel says.

"Hmhm, every day I fall for you even more," Roxanne says while she rubs her cheeks on my head.

I don't feel that proud though, I'm kind of a cheat, my Earth knowledge and point reallocation is a huge advantage here.

I cast [Sharp Blades] in an area and after about 30 minutes chanting I also manage to cast [Swift Foot] in an area, instantly my [Blessing Magic] increases by 2 (now it's 2+10). Unfortunately this cost me 1/4th of my mana and I start to hear a ringing in my ears signifying I overused my mana. Casting mana intensive spells really screws with your body, even my throat hurts.

Ciel can cast [Inspire] that reduces physical, magic and mental damage slightly and gives us a small stamina and mana regeneration boost. For Alissa, Ciel casts [Perfect Arrows], which reduces a lot of the drag on her arrows. You have to get used to it but Alissa has talent with the bow, she adapted quickly and now her arrows can penetrate deeper.

I look around and nearly everyone is already here. Hilde was observing me, I see she brought 2 mercenary space mages.

Unfortunately, Simon is here too. His fellowship, Swift Wind, is composed of 6 people. There are 2 gold haired elven male archers that look like they are constantly smelling something bad. There's a large muscle head who carries a greatsword and his face reminds me of ogres. There's a small mage with a forgettable face who looks like he's always sleepy. And there's an average brown-haired halfling who uses a sword and dagger.

Alissa told me halflings are humans who reach a maximum of 1 meter tall. They have round faces and noses and are very adept at hunting and farming, with most of the (in)famous assassins in history being halflings. Don't ever confuse a dwarf with a halfling you don't want to anger a person who is in arms reach of your jewels.

A man approaches us and speaks.

"So you are the boy," he says. I don't like the way he talks.

He's the leader of Escutcheon, a fellowship that has 4 shield users, one mage, and one archer. He's a big burly fat man with a tower shield, his skin is slightly darker than Ciel's, his black beard cover most of his round face and his small beady eyes look at me with a slight hint of wildness. In essence, he's a big black bear.

I just raise an eyebrow and stare at him.

"Tell the truth, how did you kill the Orc Headhunter?" He says and crosses his arms. Even Ciel glares at him.

I point my finger to the side and expressionlessly cast [Lightning Bolt]. He jumps backwards in surprise.

"What the hell," he mutters.

"I don't have to chant, you know what that means, right? I don't chant and I use the sword, you know what that means, right?"

"Hahah, so I guess there's no way for me to ask for a spar without magic?"

"Hell no, that's asking a swordsman to fight with half a sword."

"Festivity's balls, I guess you are fine then. And all your women can at least lift their weapons?"

"Logan, remember they killed the Symbol of Hate and subjugated the goblin village," Hilde says, approaching us.

"You always get yourself the weird ones. The boy got his own harem," he says to Hilde with a crooked smile.

"Yes yes, this fellowship is quite valuable and expensive, go back to your place and let them work," she says while waving her hand dismissively.

"Tch, alright," he clicks his tongue and leaves.

"… Damn magic 'sword,'" I clearly hear him mutter.

At 7:40 AM we depart south.

Alissa goes far in front in her fox form while Roxanne guides us with our map. After drinking one of Roxanne's high-grade MP potions I control 2 german shepherds on the flanks. Hilde and her party walk between Swift Wind and Escutcheon. At the back a 2-man scouting party makes sure nothing sneaks on us.

By putting the 5 free skill points Alissa has in [Sense Presence] she can sense things from pretty far away, nothing will get past her.

The goblin population is still down, we only met 4 of them.

Suddenly my ring glows green. We bought another pair of Emergency Stones, this one is for Alissa. The green means she found something she can't deal alone, it's a Young Ogre.

Alissa fires an arrow perfectly into an eye, again. The Ogre charges towards us.

"UGOOOOO!" He yells.

"URAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!" Hana yells harder. The ogre decides to charge her.

Hana grips her sword with two hands, she dodges his charge and slashes, cutting one of his legs clean on the knee. He falls down heavily and skids on the mossy dirt. When he stops Ciel stabs him on the throat mercilessly, then she grimaces. She seems content to be on this trip, she's eager to fight but I know she's not really enjoying the killing part.

I didn't even have to fight.

After a while, the ring goes green again. We carefully approach Alissa, it's a Grey Berserker.

"Hm… I wanna try something. Hana will distract him, I will summon an elemental with a mace and if it gets stunned Alissa will fire an arrow on its eye, if it doesn't die you girls cast [Wind Hammer] and [Torrent] at his head in this order. If all fails we mob him and go for high-damage."

"Why do it like this? Isn't it a bit risky?" Roxanne asks.

"I wan to preserve the fur the most I can, it's very valuable and I also wanna test the blunt force of the elemental. So I will go right, Roxanne behind me, Ciel left and Alissa is free.

We all agree to the plan and rush forward in formation. The Grey Berserker immediately turns and looks at us warily, it's deciding whether or not it's worthy to fight us, he's more clever than the average monster.

"Come here, you big fat ugly shithead!" Hana taunts.

It roars and its eyes focus on Hana, then he charges. I summon a 3-armed metal earth elemental, the more my skills increase, the less human I can make it. This one has one arm sprouting from the top of its head with a mace for a hand.

The bear gets up on its hind legs and swipes at Hana, she dodges and then blocks the second attack, a scale flies from her shield. Holy shit these claws are sharp, this is the first time our scale shields got damaged.

The elemental runs awkwardly towards the bear and bends its whole body down while swinging its head-arm. The attack hits the bear and brings him down but since he was standing up there wasn't enough momentum to kill him. The elemental hugs the bear who was stunned for a second, then the bear starts thrashing about, he can't break the hug.

"He's moving too much, I can't get a shot," Alissa says.

"[Wind Hammer]!" Immediately Ciel lets out her spell.

The spell hits the cheek of the bear-like a boxer punch, the bear stops for a second and resumes thrashing but weaker.

"[Torrent]!" Roxanne lets out a thick but short burst of water from the tip of her staff.

The bear is hit on the other cheek and now he's groggy. Alissa fires her arrow and it hits his eye, the arrow goes so deep you can only see the feathers remaining. The bear twitches and his body goes limp.

"Oh, I leveled up," says Hana.

"Look at this, the fur is perfect!" I cheer and rub my hands, I can feel the gold coins.

"W-what's with you Wolf?" Asks Ciel, her eyebrows knit in worry.

There are 4 women in our house, all I want is enough money to play dress-up with all of you.

"Well… uh, I have certain things I want to buy."

Roxanne and Alissa share a look, they know my expensive hobbies are either tea or clothes for them.

I approach the corpse. The fur is perfect, we will get the full price for this body. I store it all.

"Wow, your [Item Box] is pretty big, Wolf," Ciel says.

I had to stop myself from saying a dirty joke.

Hilde seems satisfied with our actions since we have a good forward scout the others don't have to stop until we deal with the monsters. Even when a group of Mossy Fangpines appeared we engaged them before they threatened the expedition. Logan just scoffs and looks away, he won't admit we are skilled, what a tsundere.

We make a stop for a quick lunch, Alissa and Ciel cooked a lot of food for us so we have proper meals and not the simple stuff from the food stalls. Corn is not as important to the local culinary so I taught a few recipes with cornmeal to Alissa and now she's putting it in everything.

After lunch orcs start to appear but they are all naked and unarmed, it's just target practice for Alissa.

With such a small amount of monsters appearing we had no hangups but we still barely made it to the campsite before it was sunset. It seems Hilde overestimated her own stamina as she slowed down a few hours after lunch. If she had asked for [Swift Foot] we would have been on time, maybe I should have offered first. With this, there's no time for Alissa to scout the numbers of dragons on the nest so we just make camp.

Our camp is at the edge of a mountain range, brown rock protrudes from the ground with white diagonal streaks, this is the Pavees Mountain Range, a delicious name that reminds me of a dessert. Inside the mountain range, there's a cave system where the dragons made their nest. A warm, covered, and secluded place is the best nest for dragons, there are a few monsters who love to eat dragon eggs.

My women and Hilde don't mingle with the other fellowships, considering they are all composed of men there's a real unbalance here and their gazes make me burn with jealousy.

"Holy shit Ryder, are they all yours?" Simon says while we pull out our tents.

"Hm, yes, they are all my women."

"Last time I saw you you were just with the small lass there, the hell is your little 'sword' made off?"

I force a wry smile.

"Last time I saw you you were looking for someone to track the Orc Lord, right? How did that go?" I ask, trying to change the topic.

"That was focking rough mate. We got the 'halfshit' assassin over there to track the orc for us and he actually did a good job, the orc had ran away from The Smirk and was marching back southeast to the Sea of Trees but we found him. The problem was getting near the green shit, his guards were good sniffers, we had to roll up in literal orc shit to be able to approach him. Hah, you should have seen the 'halfshit' cut off the little thing of the Lord and then run away like headless chicken because he enraged the green shit."

Orcs are proud of their "tool," cutting one off will make it go berserk until it dies. Since it has no other purpose in life besides reproducing and fighting, once reproducing is cut off it will fight to the death with whatever comes in his way.

"He actually cut it off and survived? Is he lucky or stupid?" Hana interjects and saves me from the conversation.

"How about both? The Orc Lord actually cut down his own guards, made things easier for us until the whole orc camp woke up from the noise."

Hana keeps the gruesome conversation until I escape and call her to the bath. Ciel keeps watch, though it's unnecessary since I can now summon 4 dogs for guarding and a bird for spying. -.

After we get out Ciel is blushing. I'm pretty sure we didn't make any - noises so I'm not sure why she's blushing, maybe she's just imagining things? I'm pretty sure she knows we do it all the time during the bath.

After Ciel takes her bath Roxanne uses her magic to dry her hair and brushes it. Ciel integrated with us so well that basically the only difference between her and the other is that we don't touch each other, yet.

We gave the orc corpses to the other fellowships to eat. If one didn't know about this world they would see this scene as a bunch of cannibals roasting 2 ugly green men. Orc meat is slightly green and tastes like pork. The ribs, abdomen, and arms are considered the best parts.

I ate orc before but seeing things like this makes me a bit sick, the people here sincerely do not consider monsters to be any close to humanoids at all.

I keep 2 Rottweilers as intimidating guards in front of my and Ciel's tent and the 2 other german shepherds keep making rounds around the camp. My bird is a small owl that I hid in a nearby tree with a good view of the camp, if anyone tries to sneak about I will know.

-

Today is the 12th.

-

Oh, the horror, our table is too small and the tent doesn't have space for a bigger one so the charcuterie board that we are used to make in the morning is much smaller.

Ciel enters and starts blushing. Really, again? I was wondering why she was like this when I noticed Alissa is cooing softly while I brush her tail, I guess I got too good at it.

When we break camp only my group and Hilde and her assistant have bright expressions, everyone else suffered because of the guard, bad food, and bad beds.

Alissa doesn't waste time and sneaks into the cave entrance. Yesterday she was supposed to observe the number of dragons and how many are leaving the nest, but because we were late she couldn't do it.

Dragons are social creatures and live in nests with around 20 others until they are mature enough to live alone and reproduce. The strategy is to wait for most of the dragons to leave to hunt and kill the remaining few, then we wait until the rest comes back one by one and ambush them inside the cave where they can't fly away. With 2 space mages perhaps we can kill the entire nest.

We break camp and move closer to the cave entrance. If you pay attention every once in a while you hear the flap of wings, it's the dragons moving about, this makes everybody tense up.

At around 8 AM Alissa sends me the signal, the gem on my Emergency Ring turns green.

"Let's move," I tell Hilde.

This time we will have very little to do. My party will stay in the back while everyone else helps kill the dragons remaining in the cave. It's not like we are useless, the noise and smell of blood could attract other monsters that we would have to deal with, we could even end up facing a dragon by ourselves if we are unlucky.

Alissa joins with us and the party leaders.

"I saw six dragons leave, they are all barely two meters tall. There's three at the cave, they are guarding eggs. There's two hatched and one weird signature.

"Weird signature?" I ask.

"Yeah, I don't know how to explain. I'm not sure if it's an animal or a monster but it's small like the other hatchlings."

That's new.

"I know a bit of [Nature Magic], perhaps I could use [Animal Tongue] on it."

Hilde shrugs.

"Suit yourself, but if it's another dragon per our contract you will have to buy it from me."

It's not like I want it or anything, I'm just curious but whatever.

"I will only pay the standard price for a dragon child, if it weren't for Alissa you would never know it was special."

Hilde thinks for a moment and narrows her eyes. She knows it's fair and she has no way to scam me out of more money, [Sense Presence] is a fairly rare skill so the discovery was truly only possible because of Alissa. She sighs and resigns.

"Fair enough."

Escutcheon leads, followed by Swift Wind, then Hilde, and then us. The scouts will stay outside and try to warn us of anything dangerous coming, Alissa will stay at the entrance.

This place is a cave system, it has one large tunnel that bends sneaks deeper in the mountain and multiple side-branches that goes on for a kilometer or so. The ground is uneven and full of protrusions, but you can see the effects of dragons going in and out of it every day, there's plenty of spots that got flattened by their huge feet or scraped by their claws.

I take one point out of [Sword Use] and put it on [Sense Presence]. Without Alissa, everyone realizes how convenient her sensing is. As the main party goes forward cautiously we check plenty of the side branches.

There's an annoying enemy in caves called Scritter due to the "scritt" noise they make. It's a 30-centimeter tall black crab-like monster that can stick to walls. It's attracted to light sources and if not dealt with they will eventually swarm you and nibble you to death so we regularly go around the side branches to exterminate them.

We also found a few normal slimes, which are amoebas that spit acid and eat anything organic. For those Hana uses her bow and we kill them with ranged attacks. It deflates like a water balloon and leaves a rubbery outer layer that people use to make jelly.

After Roxanne collects a few mushrooms we finally reach the cave guardians. I hear a roar and the ground shakes, the battle has started, we finish clearing the back and move forward. We reach a large open space filled with bones where the smell of animal and shit is noticeable to me, good thing Alissa isn't here.

There are three 2-meters tall blue dragons fighting, one already has an arrow on its eye, another has a deep slash on his neck and is bleeding profusely and the last is being pushed back but is unharmed. The dragons are large quadruped lizards with long claws and thick bodies, their wings grow from their backs to over 5-meters in length, and they have long necks allowing it lots of dexterity during a bite. Their teeth have edges, allowing them to cut down whatever they bite and also carve those teeth into swords, like mine.

Escutcheon has spread themselves and they are taking care of two dragons while the muscle-head and the halfling from Swift Wind suppress the last dragon. One or two arrows bounce off the front scales of the dragons, which is the hardest place, but most arrows penetrate the wings, making it difficult for them to move it. Some arrows hit their mark which is the back and sides of the dragon, those are the soft spots.

A few arrows hit the right spot and the front legs of the second dragon lose their power. It tries to swipe one last time but it's so slow that the man on the front manages to cut it off, the dragon roars in pain and retreats a bit. The first dragon gets angry and charges mana, he's trying to breathe fire.

I notice that Simon is the only one who didn't try to hide behind a mage or a shield user, he aims his bow and remains perfectly still. Once the dragon opens his mouth Simon lets out his arrow and strikes to the roof of the mouth of the dragon. It chokes and uncontrolled flames fly around but they get so weakened no one gets threatened with a burn.

The dragon gets confused and desperate which gives an opening for the others to slash his neck. He gets completely decapitated once one of the mages uses a [Water Blade] directly on a deep cut. 1 down 2 to go.

With new support for the halfling and the muscle-head, they go into the offensive and quickly the 3rd dragon is drenched in blood flowing from its neck. It starts to slow down and tumble when the muscle-head charges and does a savage downward slash with his greatsword. The head of the dragon flies as its cut off from its body.

With one dragon remaining the halfling decides to be retarded and jumps into the back of the dragon. He stabs his knife and sword into the back of the dragon and uses them to hold on while the dragon goes crazy trying to shrug him off, this is bad because no one wants to approach a rampaging dragon.

"That's enough ya halfshit!" Yells Simon.

With a maniacal laugh, the halfling jumps off his back and the others finish killing the dragon. With only cuts and bruises, the first fight was a complete success. Ciel, the Angel runs around and heals the fighters, pure and thankful gazes share room with a few "suggestive" and evil ones.

I take a clean look around the nest. There's a spring nearby, this is why the nest was so deep inside the cave, there's enough water here to sustain all the dragons. Making a nest on top of trees or mountains is not a good idea for dragons since they need a nearby source of water for their young, which are very weak and can't fly until a few years later.

Hilde immediately starts moving and with a *poof* she pulls out a huge, scary-looking knife. She starts cutting down the leather of the dragon, Lina receives the scales, cleans them and give them to the space mages. Hilde's guards bring out huge axes and start chopping the limbs and cutting the meat. Nobody else knows how to do this so we all just watch.

I move towards the back of the nest and look at the eggs and hatchlings there. There are 4 black eggs with light blue spots on top of a bunch of dry leaves and sticks. Beside them there are 2 small dragons that are the size of small dogs, roaring to anyone who comes close, their scales move up and down like a wave, the borders of these scales are sharp like blades. The last dragon is curled and shaking at the furthest point of the cave, it's obvious which is the special one.

"Hey, I wanna try something, don't kill the hatchlings yet!" I yell to the guys suppressing the aggressive hatchlings.

"Eh? Why? These shits are dangerous," says one of the men.

"Just stay back, child monsters aren't aggressive, they have a strong sense of self-preservation.

"This is such a bother, why sh-..."

"Just do it!"

Hana approaches and lets out a bit of [Intimidate]. Thanks, honey, that helps. The guys back off with a frown and Hilde lifts an eyebrow.

After the hunters leave and the angry hatchlings calm down, I approach the scared hatchling and put points into [Animal Tongue] and [Sense Presence]. Using these skills I observe how the soul of this little dragon works. It is truly different from the soul of a normal monster, it feels closer to an animal.

"Ciel, stay near me, I will meditate to try to understand more of this dragon, I will try something that might tickle you a bit. Hana and Roxanne cover the entrance."

"Oh? Sure."

Ciel sits close by me. I didn't tell you to sit but ok. I can feel her warmth since she's basically touching my shoulder, quite pleasant.

I extend my soul to all the hatchlings and Ciel. The dragons tastes salty and dirty, once I start to feel the delicious taste of Ciel's skin I suppress my sense of taste and focus on observing their souls. There's a clear similarity to the souls, it's like there's a "layer" that's covering the souls of the monsters but it's covering only half of the scared dragon, it's like an orange half-peeled.

Monster behave like animals until they meet a humanoid, when this happens their bloodthirst prevails over all other senses, aside from children and the smarter ones it even topples self-preservation. So could that last layer be the override that makes monsters aggressive? If so this explains why this little dragon doesn't attack and is instead completely scared.

Dragons are one of the smartest race of monsters, so it's self-aware enough that knows we are humanoids who killed its parents and are about to kill it and its siblings. The fact that it's scared instead of angry tells me it's special, it's like the ID we use to differentiate monsters from humanoids is part of the "code" that makes monsters behave the way they do.

I look at my side and Ciel is hugging my arm. There's no softness because of her armor but there's a considerable squish on her bust, her face is red and she's breathing sensually. Oh boy, I knew it felt good but I forgot how much it felt good. I know Ciel looks favorably at me so I felt like teasing her more but I think this is borderline harassment, she's not as depraved as the others.

She notices I'm looking at her with a smirk and she quickly gets up and moves away towards the girls. Fortunately, nobody noticed her little moment.

"Alright, kill the others, I will buy this one and keep it safe," I say.

The guys shrug and with a frown, they draw their swords and decapitated the hatchlings. The last dragon looks even more terrified at the swords and cowers again, I draw its attention by tapping on the ground.

Well then, I have no idea what to do but let's try to improvise.

"Hey, look at me, I will keep you safe ok? You are special, you are different, I won't hurt you, ok?"

The dragon locks its eyes on me and I feel it starts to reduce the shaking.

"You understand me? I know you are not a monster but you aren't an animal or humanoid either. Can you nod if you understood this?"

The dragon stares at me for a few seconds and it gives me a shy nod.

"Excellent! I'm sorry about your parents but this is how life is here, they were monsters and they were dangerous to us. I can protect you, do you want my protection?"

The dragon nods again with more confidence.

"Here, you hungry?"

I pull a plate and put a piece of raw mutton on it then back away. The dragon shyly unrolls itself and moves around, observing the piece of meat.

"You can eat, if I wanted to poison you it would be easier to just use magic or cut you."

The dragon looks at me and narrows its eyes. What? I'm telling the truth. Then I swear I hear it sigh and it starts to eat. Once it's done it stares at me with renewed courage.

"Do you understand that you are special? These other dragons are not like you."

The dragon looks at its parents being butchered for a while then looks at me, with a sadder look.

"The world won't wait for you to mourn, you have to be strong and stay by my side if you want to live, ok?"

The dragon nods. Jesus, how smart is it? I feel I'm talking to a human child.

"Can I touch you?"

It coils a bit but nods then I pass my hand over its scales. It's the same as Hana's, rough and round with a pointy tip, would be a perfect blade when raised and makes a clacking sound when you pass your hand over it. There are spots that have much smaller scales like the back of the head, back of the neck, and spine, these spots I felt like it enjoyed more when I passed my hand.

[Animal Tongue] creates a mental connection between caster and animal so it understands when I speak and we can share some very simple emotions when close together, but I think that this one might still understand me even without it. Right now I feel that the little dragon is getting calmer, though I know its heart is hurting.

"I can't stay here long, I'll have to carry you, if we get into battle you will have to move by yourself and stay close to my group, ok?"

It nods.

"I also can't keep [Animal Tongue] all the time. It's a spell that helps me speak to you so sooner or later you might not understand what I say anymore, ok?"

It thinks for a moment and then nods. Honestly, I have no idea what I'm doing, it's just luck that I didn't traumatize it or something like that.

"Come here."

I grab it and carry it in my arms as if it's a baby. It's still shaking lightly.

"Miss Hildegard, this dragon is more of an animal than a monster, it can understand me so I'm taking it as a pet."

"We will negotiate the price at the town, but a live dragon child is going to be at least 3 gold coins."

"Alright, you can deduct it from our pay later."

I know blue scales aren't special so this one is average and 3 gold coins is a good price. I go back to the entrance to reunite with Alissa and I introduce it to the girls, Hana seems to be the one most happy to touch it.

"Now, we need to give you a name, ah, do you have a name?" I ask.

It shakes its head.

"Hmm… Are you a boy or a girl?" I ask.

I frown.

"What?" Roxanne asks me.

"It's a girl…"

The women share a smirk. Alissa snorts.

"Alright, how about Aoi as a name? It means blue or azure in one of the languages of my homeland."

Aoi is a Japanese word and the names the dragonkin use are clearly Japanese.

"Sounds cute," says Roxanne. The others nod and Aoi seems happy.

"Ah... oh... ih!" Aoi tries to speak.

"Wow, those vocal cords seem good, maybe one day she will talk to us?" I ask.

"Sounds plausible. We know that ancient dragons can speak with us," says Alissa. It's quite common to find talking dragons in her hero stories.

Because of how we fight, Aoi will normally follow me or she will stay near Roxanne. After a few minutes talking Alissa makes a serious face.

"A dragon is coming."

We run back inside and tell the others so they can prepare an ambush. We hide in a branch tunnel ahead of the ambush so Alissa can sense if something else is coming behind.

The ambush ends quickly since the dragon was completely unguarded, it was simply surrounded and decapitated. I don't let Aoi look at the corpse, I feel she has the same mindset as me.

We take another pass clearing the branch tunnels. Aoi can hurl small fireballs capable of killing slimes, but the Scritters are too fast for her. Her body is quite long so she curls into our necks like a scarf. She had been licking Hana's scales and when she felt my jealousy she came to lick my cheeks too. So damn adorable. Then the others also wanted a lick, her tongue is extremely slippery.

Alissa comes back and warns us of another dragon. When it passes by our tunnel Aoi cowers in fear.

"What's wrong?" I ask.

I feel a coldness in my heart, a pain as if it's being repeatedly stabbed, distant from the light. It's Aoi's feelings, I believe she was being abandoned for being different. Even though we are killing her parents she didn't feel an attachment to them, she felt fear of being killed along with her siblings. Sounds a bit screwed up to me but this is one of the least brutal ways of life among monsters, orcs and goblins are way way worse.

We stop for a quick lunch and Hilde comes to me.

"So you want that dragon as a pet?" She asks.

I remove [Animal Tongue].

"Well yeah, she's different from the others, she's like a small child abandoned from her parents," I say."

"You can talk to her?" She looks surprised.

"Kinda, I can make questions and she understands a lot but she can't speak and I only feel vague emotions from her."

"Hm, she looked like she was shaking with fear when we entered the cave, I have never seen anything like that."

"Monsters feel fear and have a self-preservation instinct but when they see humans most of them go berserk and sacrifice their lives to kill us. It seems this one doesn't have any bloodthirst for humans.

"Oh, isn't this how Dragolites were tamed?" Asks Roxanne.

"Precisely, which is why I'm keeping her, I can study her soul and understand the differences between monsters and humanoids. Also, she's a nice pet."

Hilde looks amused, her sharp gaze and business personality is melting a little. I guess everyone loves puppies.

I know the empire has a dragon knight squad so they already breed dragons somehow, which means Aoi is not unique but she's still valuable. I think the royalty and plenty of the nobles like to have a dragon mount for fast travel. But to think that Hilde is not trying to haggle the price of Aoi is making me nervous.

Considering the color of Hilde's armor and the dexterity her subordinates have when dismantling the dragons, this is clearly not the first or even second time she does this. Rabanara is a good source for wyvern and dragon parts so she must be making a career on this.

We continue our work and successfully ambush 3 more dragons, 8 in total. When it starts to get late we wrap it up and return to the camp. The remaining dragons that come back are unlikely to come during the night. They must be on a very long trip and even if they do they will only enrage for a while but go back to hunting again after a while. They aren't going to abandon a good nest like this so easily.

Aoi loves the bath and looks curiously at - me play with Roxanne. Wait, this is kinda bad, she's like a child, but nobody seems to think the same as me, for the others she's just like an annoying pet who keeps staring -. After a while, she seems to lose interest so I finally concentrate on pleasing Roxanne.

I actually started to understand Alissa's book since I'm always cuddling her while she reads, it's not an interesting story since it's too poetic and heavy to read but I can understand the outline. I feel like I will shed my bias soon about the literature of this world and get me a book to read.

Alissa suddenly closes her book and pushes me down -.

"I have been imagining you all day, you know," Alissa whispers into my ears.

"Oh? Why is that?"

"The way Hilde is looking at you is turning to be just like Ciel's," she says while rubbing her hips on me, a mischievous smile appears on her face.

"And… how does Ciel looks at me?"

"Anxiety, curiosity… desire," she chuckles.

"How can you know?"

"Who wouldn't? The town hero that killed the Symbol - pleases three women and roped up another, a reliable presence even though he looks so young and small, recognized by the lord for his bravery and yet has a shy personality. - Any woman would have her eyes on you," she says -.

"And seeing how they look at me makes you excited?"

"Hmm, yes… I wanna see them try to steal you from me. I know it's useless because I know how your heart belongs… to… me," she kisses me and chuckles again.

-

What have you done Goddess of Love? The innocent Alissa is becoming warped. She unleashed her feelings now that she has the approval of everyone and even the gods. What is she gonna become?

But the most messed up thing of all is that I'm enjoying it. -

-

Today is the 13th.

A scene of heaven on hell, 3 goddesses satisfied by me in the middle of a deadly forest and near a dragon's nest, this is far from my idea of what an "adventure" would be.

-

My [Nature Magic] increased by 1 (now 0+9) and incredibly I learned [Sense Soul (creator)]. Aoi must have pushed my knowledge about souls to a new level. Alissa also finally increased her [Fox Transformation (innate)] to 5, she's a bit bigger and can fit her weapons inside her transformation.

It's like things finally clicked and they started making sense. A soul is divided into "layers", this is why we require more experience, or rather, more "soul parts" to increase the level. The "circumference" of the soul gets bigger and bigger, requiring more and more parts until another "layer" is completed. Aoi's half-baked layer gave me such clarity.

[Sense Soul] is an extremely interesting skill, it concentrates a small amount of mana on my eyes and it allows to see the level of people up to 10 meters, it opens a square black screen like my menu when it activates. If I level this skill perhaps in the future I can see more information. It would be incredible if I could read other people's skills, it would give me a good idea of combat experience others have and allow me to make better decisions on engagements.

I look at Ciel and see that she is level 29. I tell the girls about my skill and they share the same thoughts as me, this skill is incredible. Aoi is confused when I thank her but she's happy to help, somehow.

Ciel looks a bit absent-minded so I take this opportunity to sit close to her and nudge her shoulder, this gives her a jolt.

"What's the matter? Did yesterday's experiment awaken something in you?" I tease her.

"Wha-wha-wha-what? N-no, it wasn't that… wait no, it was nothing, nothing happened, I'm not thinking anything, a-a-actually I was thinking something it's just that it's nothing important..." She's completely flustered, her face twitches as she can't settle on a single expression," A-anyway you never explained what that thing you did was!

"Oh right, I can expand my soul, it allows me to collect information about body and soul. Something like touch, taste, composition, and a ton of information about the soul that a simple [Sense Presence] can't do."

"T-t-taste!?

At least she didn't care about touch, she's hiding something massive beneath her clothes.

"Haha, I'm just messing with you. I could do that but I just used the soul analysis properties. I used it on Roxanne once by mistake, she told me it felt good so I didn't think too much about it later, sorry about that. I have to try it on the girls though, the 'bed' potential of that is interesting."

Alissa's ears and tail twitch, Hana smirks, and Roxanne smiles and blushes. Ciel seems to be at a loss for words and simply blushes while her jaw swings without a sound.

With Alissa's words I'm conscious of Hilde's gaze, she doesn't show shyness but I feel she's staring, I'm likely biased now. But then again everyone seems to be looking at us, you can smell the envy in the air.

Alissa goes into the cave and returns soon, it's empty so we will only wait in ambush. I take the time to walk around with Aoi and practice some combat maneuvering with her, she runs pretty fast but she tires easily. I believe she can stay safe during the battle but during all other moments, it might be best if she's being carried by someone. Aoi also seems starved for attention, so she won't run away willingly.

At 9 AM a duo of dragons appears, this will be risky. The hunters are splitting in two, there will be less support for each side if the dragons decide to trample, but I'm not paid to help them so we stay with Hilde at a branch tunnel. Perhaps I could help if someone gets injured but my reaction time is going to be slow, jumping into the middle of a fight is dangerous.

As soon as the dragons pass us their rhythmic ground pound slows down, they noticed something. I look at Alissa and she shrugs, she doesn't know what happened. They walk for a few seconds more and stop, I hear a whistle mixed with grunts, that's not a human whistle, must be the dragons.

Silence…

"ROOOOO~!"

"CHARGE!"

What the hell is going on?

I hear loud footsteps, a dragon passes us and 3 men run after it but you can't outrun a dragon, he's already escaped. We move out and in a minute the ambushed dragon is dead.

"What the hell happened?" Hilde asks the group, she's pissed.

Shrugs abound.

"I honestly have no idea, we didn't make a damn
sound, not even a pebble moved," Simon says, he's dumbfounded.

"I heard nothing too and I have excellent hearing," Alissa chimes in.

"What about smell?" Hilde continues.

"Nothing," Chimes in a fox wereanimal from Escutcheon, he's grey-haired with black spots.

Hilde grumbles and facepalms.

"Perhaps it was too quiet?" Says Alissa.

"What do you mean?" I ask.

"There's not even the noise of Scritters around, the entire cave is deadly quiet, there should be a few dragons guarding the hatchlings and they should be making at least some noise."

"Shit, you are right. Hell, 2 years hunting dragons and I never had such a situation," Hilde says with a wry smile.

"Considering how smart Aoi is, perhaps these dragons are of a higher intelligence, which means they are more perceptive," I say.

Hilde sighs.

"We have to remake our ambush then, let's go closer to the entrance and perhaps we can capture a Scritter or two," she says.

"I advise we leave, they could be bringing a swarm here," I say.

"Hell no, I paid you for 2 days here and you are all staying," Hilde responds with anger, "There's another exit on this cave system, that one the dragons don't know about so we can escape that way if they really do come."

"There's a lot that could happen between the swarm coming and us escaping, there's still a lot of danger if we stay. But in the end I'm paid to protect you, it's the others who are going to have to fight the swarm.

"Yer right, if we stay I'm going to ask for a raise, I'm here to ambush dragons not fight against a swarm," Simon pitches in.

Hilde negotiates with the other hunters, in the end, my suggestion fails and she strikes a deal with them. I wanted to leave and tried to use the hunters to convince her but they are too greedy. It's difficult to abandon her because even if the other hunters disagree with her, her guards and the space mages might help her enough that she can return alive. Which means I can't use her life as a bargaining ship. She didn't entrust her life to me she just hired me as insurance against harm.

We go around and collect 4 Scritters, tie them up, and throw them near the entrance. This way there's some noise at least. Hopefully the dragons don't recognize that the Scritters are making noise because they are distressed.

The dragon that ran away had a few arrows on its back so he dripped some blood around, because of that 4 Mossy Fangpines wandered into the cave to look for the source. They are dumb enough that they think that something capable of wounding a dragon is a potential food source. Hana and Ciel took care of them on a tight corner. They just charge and get skewered, Hana skewered two in her spear and waved it about, bragging to the other hunters.

Before lunch a single dragon appeared and got ambushed, with this there must be less than 5 dragons remaining on this nest.

Alissa gives me a green signal, something is coming. I feel she is running here in her fox form in full speed, something is wrong. She comes around the corner and her fox mouth opens.

"IT'S HUGE, A HUGE DRAGON IS COMING!" She screams.

"TONNNNN~!". Something unimaginably heavy falls down on the ground and the ground shakes.

"RROOOOOOOOOOOAAA~~!" I feel my bones shake with this roar, it's a huge dragon and it's angry.

Hilde fell on her knees and even her guards are shaking, the other hunters are already running. Aoi crawls up to me and cowers in my arms, shaking. I hear lots of heavy footsteps.

"A SWARM!" Alissa screams again, she's desperate.

I pull Hilde on her feet and push her forward.

"Get the hell back on your feet and start running! I'll cover your back but I won't die for you!" I yell.

Hilde gets a shock and starts moving after the hunters.

"Roxanne! Map!" I yell.

Roxanne takes her map out and makes sure we don't take a wrong turn. With a swarm on our backs a dead end is a death sentence.

We start running. The ground immediately turns from the beaten path into jagged and uneven rocks, making it hard to move. The paths twist and turn and become smaller. The footsteps that were getting closer start to get lower and lower until we can't hear it anymore. The tunnel reduces in size so much we have to squeeze around it to pass, thank god Hana and Ciel can pass by with their mountains.

We are safe for now but we still have an angry huge dragon after us so nobody stopped for a rest until we reached the exit and a small light could be seen. We all stop on a small room to take a breath, we have to squeeze a little.

"Holy shit boy you were right, I regret everything, hahahah!" Simon says and laughs.

How can you laugh...

"Well shit, that thing must have hundreds of years of age, why did it never leave its nest until now?" Logan says.

"A few dragons live their entire lives in their nests until they are so old they are near death, then they go die in battle," I answer.

"What, so it's old and weak?" Asks Simon.

"Hell no, that thing is gonna berserk on us until it dies, Rabanara is in danger, these ancient dragons can command wyverns."

"Shit, so did we bring that monster to Rabanara?" Asks Logan.

"No, it was gonna rampage sooner or later, we just have the good luck to be in its path," says Hilde with a wry smile.

"Good Luck" indeed.

"Normal formation, we will be jogging all day until dusk. Here, [Swift Foot]," I cast the spell on Hilde and her assistant. That little girl is quite strong, her face is stern.

"Everybody ready? Let's go!"

Alissa rushes out first and everybody follows.

We are reaching the first trees when Alissa yells in desperation.

"TONNNNN~!" Again something unimaginably heavy falls down on the ground and the ground shakes. We are outside the cave at the entrance of the forest, behind us is a monstrosity. Shiny dark blue scales the size of my head, fangs the size of my body, a head the height of a truck, a body the size of blue whale, two huge horns protruding out of its head, innumerous scars on its body, one huge eye is cloudy white and the other one makes you wonder if there's a universe inside them.

It looks at me and fear fills my mind, it hates me, it knows I'm using the bodies of its kin as armor and weapons but its gaze turns somewhere else. Hilde, she's wearing the same scales as the dragons family, she's a known dragon hunter who's been killing dragons for 2 years, the dragon knows her and it feels immense hatred for her. It didn't even glance at Aoi.

Hilde falls down on the ground and pisses herself.

I feel mana gathering, an amount I never felt before, an amount that gave me the chills of what's about to happen.

Hahah, I hate this damn world.

"FIRE BREATH, HIDE BEHIND A TREE!" I scream, other voices yell the same.

I have no time to rescue Hilde, I only hope she finds a tree. Unfortunately, she chose the one beside her while I chose the one away from the dragon. Alissa jumps beside me. I summon 2 titanium elementals and tell them to run in front of Hilde's tree.

"FOOOOMMM!", the fire ravages the fire-resistant Sea of Trees, our tree goes in flame and we nearly get burned by the heat intensity. My elementals slowly lose power and melt, Roxanne is panting trying to keep a [Water Wall] up.

The fire stops and I look outside, a hellish landscape of fire that only lasts a few seconds, the magic fire burns out quickly and the forest's resistance makes it burn out quicker. The ground is red hot and the trees are almost entirely burnt, only a small spot behind them is still intact.

"Roxanne, water!"

I point towards where Hilde could be and Roxanne sprays a [Torrent] in that direction. White smoke rises and mixes with the black, but the way is passable. Ciel uses [Air Hammer] and the smoke clears. Hilde is there, hugging Lina, and her guards are curling on the ground.

The dragon notices us and Hilde, I feel its anger coming back, it starts to move forward. I open [Gate] to the campsite.

"GET IN NOW! I WILL BRING HILDE BACK!" I scream.

"Wol-..."

"NOW!" I scream again and push Alissa into the black circle along with Aoi, they disappear. I store the coordinates for my current position.

"FOR THE MISTRESS!" Charges one guard.

"FOR HOUSE ROTH!" Charges the other.

WHAT IN THE HELL ARE YOU DOING. I rush towards Hilde.

The dragon doesn't even slow down and swats the guards who fly away into the distance. The space mages make a distorted face of fear and disappear. The dragon looks at me and lunges towards Hilde. Lina and Hilde aren't hugging anymore but they are close, I can get them both with each hand, as long as I can grab them.

I jump, I cast [Gate], the dragon bites.

"Wolf!" Alissa yells.

I take my face out of the dirt, on my right hand I'm holding Lina, on my left hand I'm holding the upper body of Hilde.

Hilde looks at me, her mouth is half-open, her eyes stop moving. From below her armpits her body is missing.

"ROOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOAAAAAAA...!" The dragon roars again in the distance and I lose my footing, I look away from Hilde and puke.

I failed, I failed, I failed. If I was one second faster, one breath faster, one millisecond faster, one damn moment faster, I could have saved her.

"AAAAAAA..." Lina screams but Hana covers her mouth.

"The dragon is still there! Quiet!"

The little girl lets out muffled screams and squirms on Hana's body but she doesn't try to break free from her.

Alissa casts [Clean] and hugs me.

"The guards!" It dawns on me, "They might still be alive."

I wobble a bit but I manage to stand.

"What!? You wanna go back!?" Alissa chastises, her voice nearly cracks.

"I have a [Gate] coordinate there, we can jump and search for them safely if the dragon is not there anymore."

"They must be dead, they are the only ones still there, the dragon would have killed them."

"The dragon didn't care about them he only cared about Hilde and me."

"That's even worse! You are not going back there!" Alissa hugs me with all her strength.

"Alissa..." Ciel touches her shoulder, "I didn't know about [Gate] but if I and you go there we could save them. How much mana do you have Wolf?"

"Nearly half, the [Gate] is so close we barely used mana, leave your armor and weapons here and for certain we can rescue them."

"P-please…*hic*, t-they are go-good, *hic*, p-people," Lina mutters between sobs, she broke free from Hana and is moving towards Alissa.

"Nnngh~… FINE! But we do it quick and you obey me, when I say we are leaving, WE ARE LEAVING!" Alissa yells at me while she grabs my shoulders. I think she's traumatized after the Symbol.

I nod and cast [Gate]. After we remove our heavy gear we walk into the circle. The hellish scene is more subdued, the fires have almost all stopped and the ground is a little less red hot, but the most important is that the huge dragon is not here.

"This way," Alissa leads us.

Away from the destruction about 100 meters from where we were in, is where the white fur woman landed. She's unconscious and one of her arms is bent in the wrong way. Ciel touches her and closes her eyes.

"She will be fine, she's got a concussion, a few broken ribs, and a broken arm."

She straightens the arm of the woman and chants something, a few seconds later she casts a spell.

"Done."

I open a [Gate] below the woman and she disappears. Alissa makes us cross the destruction and 200 meters is away is the Doberman woman, both her legs are broken, her head hit a stone. and she's bleeding profusely.

"The swarm is here!" Alissa warns me.

I immediately cast [Gate] below all of us and we return. Lina gasps.

"She's almost dead, Wolf, help me!"

With a shudder, we straighten her legs and I put nearly all my mana on my [Heal]. I immediately drink a mana potion and sit down to meditate. If we are found while I don't have mana for [Gate] we are dead.

When I open my eyes my mana is on half, Lina is crying with Ciel and Roxanne besides her, the white fur woman is awake but still laying down, the Doberman woman is sleeping, Alissa is beside me, Hana is on the lookout and the corpse of Hilde is covered with a bloody cloth.

I store Hilde's corpse in my "Items" and get a chill when I see the entry "Hildegard Roth upper body". The girls put her belongings inside a bag. When you die the contents of your [Item Box] slowly appear around you. She had her ID tablet, coins, cloth, underwear, some unknown magic stones, cutlery, cups, and emergency food.

"How are they?" I ask Ciel.

"The white woman will be fine, if we heal her a bit more she should be able to walk by herself, the other woman is unconscious and will take a lot more mana."

"Use the rest of your mana on the white woman, I need to save mana for an emergency [Gate]. Alissa let's go, we are not exactly at the campsite and there could be other people there at the site."

We walk for two minutes and we reach the campsite, the space mages and the scouts are there huddling behind bushes.

"You came back! Thank you!" Says the first space mage. He's a man with black skin and white wool coming out of his arms and neck, he has a pair of ram horns. He's a demon-race, ram-type.

"My life is in your hands, please help us go back!" Says the second space mage. He's a lanky man with greenish skin and a pair of green arms coming out of his back with scythes on the place of his hands. Another demon-race, praying mantis type.

"I don't think the other fellowships are coming back, they will survive the forest easily but they have no reason to come back now," says one of the scouts. They are both twins, they have blue skin, and a spiky bony webbed mohawk coming out of their heads. They are not merfolk, they are demon-race, seahorse type.

"Miss Hildegard is dead, I couldn't save her, we rescued the guards and the assistant girl so we might have to carry one of the guards," I say.

Everyone makes somber faces.

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry I didn't have enough mana! We are carrying so many scales and meat that I could only barely get myself out!" Pleads the mantis man.

"It's okay, what's done is done, we just need to get out alive."

I have no energy to talk to them or encourage them more, they just need to follow orders and stay with us for them to live.

It is 3 PM. We are gonna carry the Doberman woman on a makeshift stretcher. The white dog woman is good enough to walk and jog for a little while but she's in pain, I heal her on specific spots to ease her pain and she looks at me with puppy eyes.

"I can't believe I'm still alive, I don't know how you did it but thank you for saving us, my name is Tadita, my comrade is Andrea," The woman bows to me and Ciel, "Thank you for your magic. I will definitely endure so I don't slow you down but please don't hesitate to leave us behind in case of danger, we already lost our master so we failed in the most important mission of our lives."

If you hadn't charged I could have saved you 2 without wounds, though. I'm not really blaming them, they were very brave and loyal to that woman.

"Ehrm… I won't sacrifice you two so easily, you should put more value on your life."

"My life is already worthless since I lost the master I swore to protect," she frowns.

"Then you should find something new that will give it value, the gods won't be happy with a life wasted as a sacrifice," I pat her shoulder.

She frowns a little harder but I feel a bit of motivation gathering on her eyes, honorable sacrifice isn't really popular among the gods here.

We move forward with Alissa far in front scouting, 2 dogs protecting our flanks and the scout duo behind. We rotate the carrying of Andrea but the space mages offer to carry her the longest. After an hour walking Ciel healed her enough that she could wake up, but because she still has broken bones we use a sleeping potion that Roxanne has to keep her knocked out.

We find no other monsters until nightfall, not even the Mossy Fangpines are dumb enough to be around after hearing such a dragon roar. All tents now are near ours, they are way too scared to be away from us since we are basically their lifelines.

We healed up most of the wounds from Andrea so she got strong enough to wobble around. The girls wake her up and help her take a towel bath. Tadita never left her side. The space mages have the tents for themselves and for the women so it's really a good thing to have them around. Alissa is organizing the dinner and cooking the provisions the space mages brought. Lina was sullen the entire time.

"How are you feeling?" Ciel asks me while I watch Alissa cook. She sits beside me on the table in our tent.

I suppress a sigh.

"Depressed, disappointed…"

"Do you blame yourself?"

Well, I guess Ciel is now my therapist.

"Not really, I know telling people about [Gate] would be a problem, but I still feel sad about it. Because I couldn't show my power someone died. I hate feeling like this."

"Such is the life of an adventurer. Because you made a certain decision someone died in a split second, that doesn't mean you are responsible for their deaths, it just means you were unable to save them."

"Such is the life of an adventurer..." I smile bitterly, I chose this life, "Thanks for coming talk to me."

"It doesn't seem like it was really needed," she smiles wryly.

"No, really, thanks."

She smiles, a pure smile that squeezes my heart but I feel a hint of sadness on that smile.

"Did something like this happen to you?" I ask.

She keeps still and her eyes look away.

Bingo. Then I will be your therapist too.

"I'm sorry if it's personal, but I really wanna know more about you," I insist.

She makes a pained face. It's just like removing baby teeth, gotta do it all at once or it will hurt more.

"It's nothing special. I just… failed…"

"How do you feel about this?"

She looks at me and narrows her eyes, I just smile innocently. She sighs and gets serious.

"When I was a warrior priestess I once escorted a caravan up to Sommerland. During the trip our scouts failed and we got ambushed by a group of Dream Eaters, before we could draw our weapons there were already dead people. There was no way we could win. Our captain gave us the order to hold off the enemies long enough for the merchants to run for their lives then we would escape, if we could. In the end, I survived… So I know how you are feeling."

Something is missing. I stare at her and frown.

"Ciel, aren't there more details on this story?"

"W-what do you mean?" Her eyes dart about.

"You aren't telling me everything, there's something else that's hurting you."

She looks at me angrily.

"You are running away from something," I say.

She stiffens. This is cheating, I know Arantos told me she was running from her fears so I wanna press her on that.

"I left him…"

I pat her back.

"Let it out, you know that talking about it helps," I say.

She remains still.

"Come on, it's your turn."

She grimaces.

"I left him to die… I could have saved him, I had mana but I got scared and ran… I survived, he could have survived, but I left him…"

"It's okay."

"It' not."

"Yes it is," I rub her back, I feel like hugging her.

She goes quiet again.

"Do you blame yourself?"

She smiles bitterly.

"Yes, I abandoned him."

"Did you forgive yourself?"

At one point you have to forgive yourself for your mistakes otherwise you will never move on. It seems this is the case with her.

Quiet again. I have to keep pushing.

"How long do you deserve to be punished for it?"

"How should I know!? It's not like I'm doing it willingly..." She looks at me teary-eyed.

"Then do you at least recognize that you shouldn't be suffering for it anymore?"

"I… Yes, I don't wanna feel that pain anymore," she looks away.

"Tell me, why did you join this fellowship? Truthfully."

"The reasons I told you before weren't lies."

"But there should be something more, right?" I smile innocently.

She groans in frustration.

"I thought… that you wouldn't run, that I could trust that you would never make me feel like I abandoned someone again," she glances at me.

"Hm… well, I don't want you to throw all the responsibility at me, I want you to share it with me, so we can all agree on something and be capable to make our own decisions."

"I know… I was just… running," her voice trails off.

I grab her hand. She didn't even flinch.

"Then it's time to take a breath and look around, you have another path you can take."

I squeeze her hand and let it go. She bites her lips.

"How old are you, Mr. Therapist?" She asks in a playful tone.

"Nineteen."

"Bullshit."

True. I smile wryly.

The girls notice our conversation is done and awkwardly come have dinner.

At the bath even the cheerful Roxanne was depressed but my mood has been getting better so we have a productive cuddling session. We don't do anything more than that, nobody is in the mood. Before going to sleep, Ciel and I use most of our Mana to heal the guard duo.

Today is the 14th.

-

During breakfast a disheveled Ciel gives me a pure smile and I return it. My relationship with her feels odd. Unlike the others, I developed an affection for her before doing it with her so I'm unusually - anxious right now. -.

Ciel finishes the healing of Andrea so now she can walk and even fight, although it's unadvised since her body is still adapting to the healed bones. If I were to cast [Regenetation] for half a day on both I could get them back into normal shape but we don't want to spend any longer here, the swarm could be nearby hunting for us.

I manage to cast [Swift Foot] in an area after 10 minutes of chanting, I still need practice but it's getting better.

Most monsters are still far from this area so we only meet 2 naked goblins who likely just birthed on this part of the forest yesterday and then 3 Fangpines who are idiotic enough to think the area is safe.

Because we jogged we reach Rabanara by noon, we ignore our hungry stomachs and rush towards the town.

"Ah! Grand Ryder, p-please a moment," I hear Lina call for me.

"Oh? What is it?"

"P-p-p-please, bu-buy me!" She bows to me at a right angle.

I'm dumbfounded, the women gather around me and the guard duo put their hands on Lina's shoulders in solidarity.

"Uh, why ask me?"

"Hm, Mr. Ryder, I'm sorry to say this about the family of my late master but… the Roth family is in a tight spot..." Says Andrea while cringing.

"Yeah..." Tadita cringes along, "Miss Hildegard was a good merchant and a hard worker but the rest of her family isn't anywhere as good as her. If I were to guess they are going to be driven out of the market in a few years without her".

"Wow, that bad? Why is that?" I ask.

"They are… lazy, dumb, and wasteful. I'm sorry Miss Hildegard but it's the truth!" Andrea claps her hands in prayer and bows.

"So you think I will be a better master?" I ask.

"Y-yes!" Lina looks at me with teary eyes," Considering your personality, the way you treat other women, and your feats it's my dream to serve under you!

"Hm… What can you do?" I ask. I'm a little concerned over the "dream" part.

"I can manage a business, help with administrative tasks, enchant equipment, perform maintenance on equipment, craft basic items, and I can fight, a bit… I-I a-also c-ca-can g-give you m-my b-body!" She stutters as her pale face gets red as a lobster.

Adorable. She looks young, younger than me, is she even of legal age in this world? Is there a legal age?

The space mages and the scout duo who were desperate to enter the town stopped and came back to us, even though we are in front of the town they still respect me.

"Let me consult with my fellowship," I say.

I gather everyone in a circle far away from everybody.

"Alright, opinions."

"I think this is fine, she will be useful," Alissa says, then she comes closer and whispers in my ear, "I wanna see you break that tight one."

I will just consider her opinion as "biased".

"She will be perfect to maintain my armor, the metal plates of the brigandine are a bitch the fix once I get hit, besides our shields are taking damage, she's experienced in manipulating dragon scales, perhaps she could help. She could even be trained in combat, dwarves have good strength because of their [Stonebody]," says Hana.

"Another helper would be nice, she seems to know something about the market so she could help me sell potions," says Roxanne.

"I… feel a little guilty leaving her alone, if she gets back to the Roth family she will likely be sold to a pervert somewhere. She seems smart and dedicated, surely there's plenty of jobs we can give her," says Ciel.

Well… I'm the biggest degen around, so I don't know what you are thinking. Though I have no plans on touching her.

"So, there's no good reason to deny her..." I mutter.

"What, why are you hesitating? Wouldn't having another woman be good for you?" Ciel says in a joking tone.

That hurts a bit.

"I'm not like that, Alissa and Hana are exceptions because I was incredibly lonely. I won't take her just because she's offering her body to me," I say a bit sad.

"Oh, uh… sorry," Ciel apologizes awkwardly.

"Anyway, I agree that there's no reason to deny her, if she was the private helper of Miss Hildegard then she must be competent enough," Alissa intervenes.

"But can I really buy her? Isn't she property of the Roth family now?" I ask.

"Not really, slaves aren't something you can inherit so easily. By law, they have a chance for freedom or to be bought by others when their master dies, but you will still have to negotiate with the Roth family. It's only a chance, not a guarantee," Alissa says.

"But since you brought her corpse and her belongings you actually have some leverage over the Roths. You risked your life to save her, even if it wasn't successful..." Hana says.

"You are also someone with a blessing, that's even more pressure on them to give you a fair deal," Roxanne adds.

I sigh. Is this part of the god-sanctioned harem? I'm not lonely or scared anymore so I don't need another slave, it just gives me a bad taste in my mouth to think about using her like this. I know she will be useful but I don't really like the prospect of slavery. It's somewhat different from a Blood Slave, where there's personal responsibility and a close watch from the gods. I feel like a hypocrite but I don't have the energy to put my thoughts in order.

"You don't have to accept her if you don't really want to," Alissa says.

"No I… actually want to protect her, let's accept her," I answer. I feel like she's a puppy that needs an owner, I can't leave her alone.

We go back to the group waiting for us.

"Lina, do you want me to buy you and release you?"

She straightens up and slowly her eyes open wide in fear.

"P-please d-don't."

"What? You don't want to be freed?" I raise an eyebrow.

"I..." She can't really find a way to explain herself.

"Perhaps she's afraid you will abandon her," Whispers Alissa.

"Why would she think that?" I whisper back.

"If she's your slave you have to treat her responsibly. If she's not a slave then her position might actually worsen."

I kinda understand but it's still a bit ridiculous.

"Slaves who find a good master don't really adapt well to being freed," Ciel whispers.

Fine then. I sigh.

"I won't release you. I'll buy you," I tell her.

"T-thank you!" She clasps her hands and jumps in joy, she was expressionless most of the time but now her cute smile melts my heart.

We enter the town and walk to the guild. Once inside our weird group causes a bit of a commotion, I'm not sure why. I go to the nearest attendant and request a meeting with the guildmaster. After a minute he comes downstairs.

"Oh, a pleasure to see you again, Mr. Ryder. Actually, no, every time I meet you a lot of work falls on my shoulders, you are shaving off years of my life this way," Silas smiles wryly.

"I have come to accept my nickname is the truth, but I'm sorry for giving you too much work. And it's a pleasure to see you too, guildmaster."

"Well then, let us go to a private room. Swift Wind and Escutcheon already gave us an idea of what happened but your report is the most important one."

Silas led us to the biggest meeting room. After a while, 7 scribes appeared and started collecting the reports. Only Lina knows about [Gate] so we coordinated with her a plausible lie to how we escaped.

"Poison cocktail? Never heard of such a thing before."

I shrug.

"Desperation births creativity, I think we caused an allergic reaction to that dragon."

Silas laughs heartily, it's the first time I see his calm demeanor crumble.

"What in the… hell… a dragon with... allergic reaction...! The bards will love this!" Silas says while catching his breath.

Silas coughs and recovers his composure.

"So the only casualty is Miss Hildegard, this is quite a miracle seeing how intelligent that dragon was. Also, his vengeful attack towards Miss Hildegard means he will likely command the wyverns to attack us, send word to the lord immediately," Silas motions to an attendant nearby, he hurriedly leaves the room.

"There's no contradiction in any of the reports, I see no unclear matter over it too, I consider the reporting as finished. Now I must tell you a representative of the Armorer's Guild is here, he wants to speak with you."

He likely wants to abuse my mental state to drive down the rewards since my protection target died but they don't really have an advantage here.

"Ah, can you contact the Roth family? I wish to buy Miss Hildegard's slave, Lina."

"Hm, yes I can, you have her possessions and her corpse right? No need to give it to us, you can return it in person then. This concludes our business, do you wish to talk to the Armorer's Guild representative?"

"Yes, please."

Silas and the guild personnel leave the room.

"Thank you for not abandoning us, if you ever need the services of space mages we will give you a discount. This is the least we can do to you," says the ram space mage.

"Thank you," says the mantis space mage.

We say our goodbyes and they leave. They leave a leather trunk with Lina's belongings.

"You look young but you clearly know what you are doing. It was a good opportunity to work with you," says one of the scouts.

"You have a good heart, it's no wonder people say you are the town hero. To face the dragon with just poison bottles requires some massive pair of balls, I'm glad I met you and your fellowship," says the other.

This makes me a little embarrassed. We say our goodbyes.

"Well then, I guess this is goodbye," says Tadita.

"Indeed, I don't think we will meet again so soon. But once again, thank you. I don't have much to repay you but let me serve you in exchange for saving my life," says Andrea while bowing.

"A-ah, there's no need for that, it was part of our job to keep you two safe," I answer hurriedly, Ciel nods along.

"You are troubling him, Andrea, if you really want to be with him then just ask for marriage," says Tadita.

"N-n-no, t-that's no-not what I-I meant!" Stutters Andrea while blushing. Tadita taps her back and grins.

"Anyway, we will be in your debt. We will go back to the capital and join the guard or a mercenary group, we aren't hunters so staying here is not the best choice. If you visit the capital, come look for us," says Tadita.

Everyone gives them a goodbye and they leave, only Lina stays with us.

"I thought she really was going to ask for marriage," Alissa says, disappointed.

What's with you, how many women do you want to add to this harem?

"She likely thought she wasn't strong enough, we are not really lacking in firepower," Hana says.

"A-anyway, Lina, are you going to leave now or do you prefer to stay with us?" Asks Ciel.

"C-can I stay? I would rather not meet any other Roth for now," she answers shyly.

"Sure, no problem," I say.

I put 10 points into [Acting] and [Mental Resistance], we are going to need this for this part. After about 10 minutes we hear footsteps. An old man with graying black hair and two large guards enter the room. The man has a long nose and a wrinkly face that gets even wrinklier due to his frowning. He's carrying a few papers, likely the report.

"Greetings, I am Tanquara, senior representative for the Armorer's Guild," The man says and sits down.

"I am Wolf Ryder, leader of Helios."

"Well then, Mr. Ryder, let's talk business. You have failed your job, Miss Hildegard is dead, al-..."

"Hold it, my job was not simply protecting her, I was to protect her and her subordinates and secure the return of the collected materials."

Tanquara grinds his teeth. Interrupting him was impolite but I can't let him declare the job as a failure like that.

"Yet the most important person there was not returned," he says while narrowing his eyes.

"She went against my advice, I even tried to use the other hunters to persuade her but greed clouded her judgment. It's unfortunate we met such a rare dragon but it still ends up being her fault."

"But you could still have saved her. If you were faster and didn't hesitate you could have pulled her away from the dragon in time!"

"What do you think I am!? A miracle worker!? Did you even read about the size of that monstrosity? Every other fellowship ran away the moment they could, the guards were swatted as if they were flies! It's not my onus that she died, it's my luck that I even survived! The poison cocktail was a stroke of luck, even if I had pulled her away the dragon would chase us to the end of the world if we didn't get such a reaction from him. Do you understand, it was not skill that we survived, it was just sheer dumb luck!" I shouldn't yell but this made me angry. I can't let him get to me, making me say dumb things is his goal.

"If it was just luck perhaps choosing you as the vanguard was a mistake as you lack the skill to survive such encounter," he turns his head away in contempt.

"You do not have the authority to judge my skill or of my fellowship, you know very well that such a dragon requires an army to deal with. It all goes back to Miss Hildegard ignoring my advice for greed. In the end, I recovered part of her body, her belongings, saved her slave, her guards and the subordinates, the only thing missing on this expedition was her returning alive."

He stares at me and grinds his teeth. There, I closed all the ways of attack.

"As she ignored my advice her death is her own fault, I did everything I was asked to perfection and even went beyond, I demand full rewards, deduce the price of this young dragon from it," I point to Aoi, sleeping while curled to Hana's neck.

"I can't give you full rewards, your target of protection is dead."

"I can't protect those who have a death-wish, she broke the contract on her own. I demand full rewards," I had put 1 point into [Intimidate] and let out a bit of my power. I see his mouth twitch, he's a tough one.

"Fine, here's your rewards... A young dragon costs 3 gold on the imperial market, even though yours looks like it's tamable I will respect your agreement with Miss Hildegard."

He gives us a sack of coins, I use [Metal Appraisal] on them and nod to him, he quickly leaves and I sigh. Such negotiations leave me with a bitter taste in my mouth. I didn't like to bad-mouth Hilde but merchants in this world are ruthless, can't give them even a centimeter.

"That was a really good negotiation, master. I didn't believe the representative would buckle like that," Lina says. I shudder at hearing the words "master" again.

"I had some good teachers. Hana and Roxanne are experienced in this."

"Yep, a little bit of intimidation at the right moment and any merchant will buckle, they try to put up a strong front but they are all cowards," says Hana.

"I see, it's a negotiation tactic different from when merchants deal with each other, it's all about a war of information and connections," Lina says with a pensive expression.

"Remind me to never become a merchant. This seems like a nightmare to me, I'm way too straightforward," I say.

"Well you can always use representatives if you become a merchant," she continues.

I still don't wanna deal with that, even through someone else.

"I'll go sell the monsters we have killed, you girls can go to a restaurant and have lunch."

"Ah no, let's all eat together, it's not fair to you," Alissa says.

"Hmm… anyone with a different opinion?" I ask.

Silence.

We move downstairs and enter the dismantling room. Gordon and Sonny are chatting.

"Oh, Mr. Good Luck! I heard about your exploits, you are always doing something interesting," Gordon greets me.

"I wish I wasn't. Anyway, good to see you Mr. Gordon, Mr. Sonny."

"Uh, yes. Good to see you too Mr. Ryder," Sonny is a bit distracted.

"Oh, looks like you got a pet dragon eh? Now then what surprise you have for us?"

I pull out the Grey Berserker and the Young Ogre.

"Oh! Such pristine fur! What an achievement Mr. Ryder, I'm impressed. How did you do it?"

"I held it with my earth elemental, after that we hit his head until it got dizzy and Alissa finished it."

"That's amazing, only the best fellowships specialized in hunting Grey Berserkers can achieve this. Oi, Sonny, help me here."

Sonny got out of his stupor and went appraise the bear. He kept stealing glances at us, no, he kept stealing glances at Roxanne. He's a demon race, after all. I think he's a succubus too, maybe the name is incubus for men.

I grab Roxanne's tail at twirl it around my hand, Sonny shudders. Roxanne looks at me with curiosity but then she looks at Sonny and smiles mischievously, she hugs me from behind and leans her body on me. Her hand enters my jacket from the top and she caresses my chest. Sonny's white skin turn red and he turns around, he focuses on appraising the monsters and the proof of subjugation.

"Here are your rewards," Sonny says between gritted teeth.

"Keep bringing those bears to me, boy, I love Grey Berserker meat. Also, don't tease Sonny too much, eh?" Gordon says and winks.

Sonny chokes on his spit, I just smile and leave.

"Finally, let's eat something and go home."

Intermission 5

A man that doesn't tell his birthplace should not be trusted, a man that hides many secrets should not be trusted, a man who lacks the common sense of the populace should not be trusted, a man who hides mysterious skills should not be trusted. And yet I can't follow any of this advice, I feel hopelessly lost in the darkness where the only light comes from his back, making me follow him. When I was used to the darkness, to the sameness and safety, he comes like a curious and innocent being who opens a path for me. It's not the same old life I yearned for but something new with a hint of nostalgia.

He should be younger than me but I feel nothing that leads to believe it to be true, only his face and his love for women says the contrary, but that's not enough, I almost feel like stealing his ID card just to confirm his age. Logic tells me I should stay away, even though there are 2 blessings around him he's far too secretive or mysterious, but my instincts tell me otherwise, they tell me of an opportunity, of an adventure, of a new beginning. I thought I could help him but he might end up helping me more instead.

Besides, what kind of man can please 3 women and still wake up with vigor every morning? One of them being a dragonkin no less. I only hear occasional the muffled ruffling and vocal noise but still, my imagination is making me embarrassed. Those have been some hard nights... and days, and mornings. Do they ever stop?

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Chapter 15: Stand Beside Me

"I-is it alright for me to eat with you?" Asks Lina.

"Did you do any different with your last master?" I ask.

"No… but Miss Hilde was special, As her personal attendant, it would be very inconvenient to keep eating away from her.

"Then see it the same way, it's inconvenient to treat you worse, it's just easier to treat you like everyone else."

"Thank you, master..." She bows.

"You chose the right person, little Lina, Wolfy is a really kind master. Just get prepared for the night, he's a sadistic sex beast," Teases Roxanne.

Lina freezes, Ciel looks away.

"Roxanne! Stop that, she's gonna get scared. I didn't accept you because I want your body, I already have enough women around me."

"I see..." Lina says, did I notice a hint of disappointment?

"Besides, Roxanne and Hana are the predators you should be scared of."

"No thank you, the only ones I want inside of me are Roxanne and Wolfy," Hana says shaking her head.

"Same, but inverted… I think..." Roxanne says and pulls out her tongue.

Ciel is massaging her eyes. I cough.

"Lina, do you like books?" I ask, changing the topic. Her eyes shine at my words.

"Yes! Whenever Miss Hilde would take on a peddlers job she would bring some books and let me read them during the trip. She would bring about every kind of book possible so I always had a wide variety to read."

"Well then, you know I'm studying at the magic university, right? I wanna let you use the library and research some things for me. Do you like reading about the legends and history of the world?"

"Oh, the magic library… yes! I want to! But, is it okay to let a slave inside? If I ever damage a book, the price for it might be even higher than the price to buy me..." Her voice trails off.

If that happens most masters would sell the slave, some might even go as far as executing the person.

"That's alright, if something happens I might revoke your right to use the library but I'm not unreasonable, just don't be careless."

"Yes!"

I feel like patting her head, she's so cute. When she's working she kept a firm expressionless face, but now she seems earnest and happy.

"Why do you want to research legends?" Asks Ciel.

"You know I'm from a faraway land, I just wanna know more about the life around here, perhaps there might even be similarities in the myths from my land and the local's."

Ciel seems interested, the other girls know where I'm from so they know why exactly I'm doing this. I have no information about the history of this world so using Lina to collect it for me might be the best way to go about it, I still have so much magic and training to do I can't spend time reading fairy-tales.

"So your job is maintenance of our equipment and research. I think we can carry you with Alissa so we might as well go to the university together," I say. She's so small I don't think Alissa will mind the extra weight with her increased level in transformation.

"I can also help with housework," she says raising her hand.

"Not really necessary, the other girls already help a lot and my clay golems keep the house clean from dust. Ciel and I also have a strong [Clean] so we can just use magic whenever the clay golems aren't enough."

Her hand falls down.

"Ah yes, you are a summoner, the golems sure seem convenient," Lina says in a pensive tone.

We start eating our meal. It's white sauce pasta with grated cheese and roasted Dragolite, we eat lemon pudding for dessert. This is a good restaurant, not too expensive and they didn't mind letting Aoi eat with us too, her intelligence and cleanliness are higher than some people. Lina melts when she eats her pudding, as a slave she didn't have many opportunities to eat sweets, even if Hilde was kind she was a bit spartan on her way of life.

When we get home the griffin nature spirit is sleeping on a column of the gate of our house. I put points into [Animal Tongue] and approach it.

"Helloo! Missed me?"

The little griffin opens his eyes and quickly gets up, he lets out a happy chirp. I pull out a piece of raw meat and leave it near the gate. The girls wave to it but no one has the courage to touch it yet. It happily eats while his cute ass shakes. Aoi is very interested in the spirit.

When we enter I summon 3 clay golems and get them to work on the dusty house, I don't let anyone else help, today is time for us all to rest.

"So Lina, where are you from?" Asks Ciel.

We are in the living room, the fireplace is crackling, the tea is hot, the cookies are delicious, Ciel is chatting with Lina, Alissa is reading, Hana is massaging my brain and Roxanne is brushing her mane.

"I was born on a surface village at the foot of the Mountainhome. Before Aremut fell to the undead the road around Mountainhome wasn't as popular and our village was only a small hub for adventurers. I was being trained as an enchanter like my father but all our tools got stolen, father had to sell me so he could buy new tools. Hilde bought me and we traveled as peddlers for a long way until we came here."

"Wow, Mountainhome is on the other side of the continent, that's quite the distance. Where does the Roth family live?" Hana says.

"The Roth family didn't have a home, it was only 2 years ago that we settled around the Shore of Leaves and the High Forest for hunting dragons. They bought a house in Goldcross but Miss Hildegard has a brother staying here so we should get a response from them soon," Lina continues.

"What about you Ciel, born here?" I ask.

"Yes, I never knew my parents but I believe they came from Sommerland since I have this skin color. I joined a Templar unit that was moving there when… the battle happened and I quit being a warrior priestess."

"What about you Hana?" I say, trying to distract her from that memory.

"I was born in Sommerland, I used to make escort caravans from there to Ryutake on the far south but unfortunately I never went into Gnomeria, the pixies at Betoverd Bos weren't allowing many people at the forest. If we ever get the chance, let's go to Gnomeria, the gnomes are just so huggable," Hana loses her composure a bit and her eyes go wild, then she coughs, "Once dad screwed up I decided to sell myself at Rabanara because there's a wide variety of strong adventurers here."

The other 2 retold their stories. Alissa was born at the Misty Low Forest but never left until she came into Rabanara. Roxanne traveled a lot on the Maoka continent then she came through Goldport, she went as far as Goloria then she went back and moved to Rabanara so she never traveled much on this continent.

"Do you wanna visit your home, Lina?" I say.

"I… do. Even though my parents sold me I know they had no alternative or we would starve, I know my body is rather childish so at least I'm thankful I wasn't sold to a perverted noble."

"Sorry to ask but how old are you?" I ask.

Ciel and Roxanne glare at me.

"I am your slave, master, there's no need to worry about such things. I am eighteen."

"What… that's just a year younger than me," I say. She looks younger.

"Dwarven women are like that," Lina shrugs, "Where do you come from, master?"

"My homeland is a secret, just like how I know [Gate] I have many other secrets we have to keep," I smile.

Ciel smiles bitterly.

"O-oh, I see, forgive me for prying," Lina bows her head in respect.

"No need for forgiveness, ask anything and I will judge if I can answer."

"Now that we are talking about it, how did you learn [Gate]?" Ciel asks.

"That's another secret, but you should know that I have a talent for [Space Magic]. Just like how my [Item Box] is huge I can easily learn spells from that school."

"Yet another secret..." Ciel mutters and even Lina looks pensive.

I think I will tell the truth to them soon, but I think I want to propose to Ciel before that. First I need to create a romantic situation with her, I don't wanna a repeat of the last proposals I had. Even though Alissa's was heart-wrenching I still feel embarrassed at the suddenness of it all, I appreciate Hana's help but I want to do it right this time.

"Considering his talent with using [Telekinesis] in combat I can see why this is true," Hana helps me.

I haven't had the opportunity to fight using [Telekinesis] but Hana assures me it's gonna be a powerful strike.

After a while Hana spars with Lina to test her combat capability, luckily Hana has a wooden warhammer for sparring. The dwarves use a long hammer, almost as long as a halberd, it has the traditional flat part of a hammer, a hook on the back and a spear at the tip, quite versatile but it lacks in slashing power.

"She has a bit of skill, around level 5 I would guess. She can kill most normal goblins around here but will struggle against orcs, her agility is not enough to face a Young Ogre yet and her [Stonebody] is average for her age," Hana says. Lina is dropped down on the ground, completely exhausted. Her white shirt is sticking to her body.

[Stonebody] is a spell all dwarves have, it works similar to the dragonkin skin that hardens their bodies and even gives them physical strength. While the dragonkin is something innate and physical, the dwarven [Stonebody] is purely magical.

"The wyvern attack is all but confirmed to come in one or two days," Ciel says, "That dragon was far too smart and strong, it will easily command the wyverns. With that I think it's best to leave her out of the fight, keep her protecting Roxanne and Aoi, she doesn't have the power to face a wyvern yet."

"Even so I would rather not let her use her body as a shield," I say.

She seems very submissive so I have a feeling she would needlessly sacrifice herself to protect Roxanne since she's a slave and Roxanne is my fiancee.

"Lina, I will bring you to fight but your first order is to not die, understand that? I don't want heroic sacrifices I want us to put all our effort into avoiding a situation where a sacrifice is necessary, to begin with."

"Y-yes! Understood, master!" Lina says in high spirits.

Alissa and Hana share a warm smile.

"You say that but you are the one who has a tendency to do put yourself in danger, right? The Symbol, the Orc Chief and this dragon where all you jumping in danger, literally," Roxanne says with her hands on her hip.

"Well, uh..." I'm at a loss for words.

Today is strength training, now that we are back home Hana pushes me hard, in both meanings.

"Lina, Ciel, do you mind taking a bath together?" Alissa says with a suspicious glint in her eyes.

"Not really, the bath is large for this reason, right?" Ciel says.

"I'm a slave, you shouldn't be concerned with my embarrassment. But shouldn't I wash master?"

"It's best you not, the bath is… a place for, uh, bonding," I say.

Ciel sighs and Lina stares blankly for a few seconds and then her cheeks reddens.

Today is the 15th.

Roxanne wakes me up, she doesn't have the skill but she's mastering sensual expressions with my dick in her mouth. After she's done I have to cast [Heal] on my lower back, Hana didn't unglue from me during the entire bath and then Roxanne wanted her share. Alissa, the pervert, masturbated in the corner all the time so she's happy by herself.

My [Blessing Magic] and my [Summoning Magic] increased by 1 (now 0+11 and 11+9). It seems skills increase much faster when you are purposely training them.

I spend my morning playing with Aoi in the sofa like you play with cats and a blade of wheat. Alissa had an idea and collected a few blades from the nearest farm yesterday, she lived with a few animal foxes and they have similar instincts to Aoi, it seems. Though I will need something stronger than the blades since Aoi completely destroys a blade with a simple swipe of her incredibly fast claws.

At 9AM Alissa appears in the living room, she's smiling.

"You have a visitor, his name is Nour Asaf."

Ooooh. I go out to meet him. Nour is by the front door, he's observing the house with curiosity. It's the first time I saw him using casual clothes but there's no doubt he's rich, he's wearing red woolen clothes with a shining velvet waistcoat and a green cloak.

Behind him is a tall dragonkin woman, she has pale white skin, shining emerald hair and ruby scales. Her nose is small, her chin is pointy and her eyes look sharp, a very feminine face. She has a chilling smirk that reminds me of my own man"eating woman. She's using a revealing red dress below a brown fur coat.

Besides the dragonkin woman is another woman. She's short, a bit shorter than me, she has long brown hair with a few drills, freckles and a cute round face. She shyly looks at me and then turns away. She's wearing similar clothes to Nour's but with frills and a more feminine look.

"It's been a long time Mr. Nour, I see you changed your companions."

"Yes, well, a lot happened back home, but you changed more, Mr. Ryder."

I stretch my hand for a handshake.

"Just call me Wolf."

"Then just call me Nour."

I'm a bit glad to meet Nour. I'm not really a person that spends much time with friends, especially since now I have 5 women around me, but I'm still happy.

I invite him over and we sit at the living room with Aoi at my lap, Alissa calls the others and soon the room is full and smelling of tea and cookies. Only Lina didn't know about Nour since I told them all in passing about my journey here, they all seem curious about who is the person that managed to befriend me.

"This is Midori, my first wife and this is Safiya, my second wife," Nour says, embarrassed.

Midori and Hana share a grin, Safiya blushes, bows and keeps looking down towards the cookies.

"Uh, wait what," I say.

"Well then," Nour immediately starts blushing, his voice is fast paces as if he just wants to get this over with, "I was sent home for an arranged marriage. My father got a deal with a mercenary company and they will provide escorts exclusively for our products so we can branch out of the Principality, Father is aiming to enter the market of the capital. The condition was to marry Midori, the captain's daughter, together we will train here in Rabanara for a few years and get stronger then we will inherit the mercenary company. During the ceremony Safiya interrupted, she's my friend from back home, one thing led to another and I married her too…"

Nour averts his eyes in embarrassment while I blink blankly for a few seconds. Well then, it's my turn.

"A-anyway, this is Alissa, my fiancee. She's the Blood Slave I got thanks to your gift and I'm really, really grateful for it. This is Hana, my second Blood Slave, she's also my fiancee. This is Roxanne, we met on a request, she's another fiancee. This is Ciel, she was a priest at the temple and now she's part of our fellowship. This is Lina, she was a slave for my employer during my last request but she died and I decided to buy Lina, we will negotiate for her soon. And this is Aoi a small dragon I tamed on my last request," I failed in being different from Nour, talking about things like this I realize having so many women around me is a little excessive. Though I made sure I didn't put "first" or "second" on the fiancee order.

At my words, Nour opens his eyes wide and even Safiya looks at us. Nour chuckles.

"I guess you win, your 'troubles' are much more than mine."

I cough.

"W-well, uh, what happened to your sister?"

"Ah. When we got back home she eloped with Liam and married him," I knew it, "I broke the contract with him and Rania swore she's gonna repay me someday. Dad was furious, he wanted her to inherit the business and marry a craftsman, but then he got an idea and managed to rope the lord into marrying his son to her, when eventually she came back to talk she got interested in the idea and accepted. Unlike me she's strong enough to fight alongside the lord's son and clear dungeons, perhaps in a year or so she might even turn into a True Noble. Liam is quite happy too, he was thinking about retiring but he enjoys fighting alongside her more."

"I understand the sentiment," Hana comments.

So she actually has 2 husbands, what an interesting world. I know Raina is a powerful mage, she was tired and still managed to cast [Ice Lance], which is a level 30 [Water Magic] spell. This spell is basically a one-hit kill for anything that doesn't have disgusting agility like the Orc Headhunter had.

"Here's something I brought from home," Nour pulls something out of his [Item Box], it's a small basket and inside…

"Chocolate!"

"W-what?" Nour looks confused.

"He's addicted to chocolate," Alissa says.

I immediately grab a black cube and eat. It's semi-sweet chocolate, not my favorite and not the best taste but it's the first chocolate I ate in a long time. It melts into my mouth and I feel bliss.

"Huh, where did you eat such a thing?" Nour raises an eyebrow, "It's quite a new find that's popular on the Principality. When I left the emperor had requested an urgent caravan with chocolate for the capital so it's going to take some time for it to spread."

"I uh, ate it once beyond the Maoka continent," I lie.

Just saying "my homeland" and keeping quiet about it might not cut it. Ciel raises an eyebrow.

"Well that's quite the journey, the Maoka continent itself exports a good amount of interesting products so I'm not that surprised."

He should know I'm a bit reserved about my past.

The girls eat and even Hana and Midori look pleased. Chocolate is love, chocolate is life.

"You brought more chocolate with you?" I ask, "The last of chocolate in the town has been for a long time."

"Yeah, I came with a small caravan. I will tell you where they are selling the cocoa, the chocolate they make there will sell fast."

"Say, Nour, what exactly your family works on?" I ask.

"We are dealing with the new version of magic tools for flight. We have a few craftsmen that achieved a breakthrough in copying the tools of the chimeras. Dad has been working with the empire in building an airship fleet."

Everyone is wide-eyed.

"That's... your family must be quite powerful," I say.

Nour cringes.

"Yeaaah. Kind of... well you know how it goes, when people get too much money the others start to covet. I came here to get away from all that nonsense, in Rabanara nobody really cares where you are from."

Boy, am I thankful for that.

"So, are you two from the same family or something?" I ask Hana and Midori.

"I think so, the color of our scales says we are related somehow but your skin color is rare over at Ryutake," says Midori.

"I was born at Sommerland but mom is from Ryutake. Did you know the Yokubo family?" Says Hana.

"Hm, I think I heard this name before…"

"Well the last Yokubo at Ryutake was my grandmother so it's no surprise you don't remember much."

With that, we talk freely. Nour is planning on hiring an archer or tracker and another vanguard and delving into dungeons, he's never going to set foot into Royd's Kerfuffle again, though. Hana is older so Midori has some things to learn from her, Hana's route passed through Faium so they had some stories to share.

Safiya is quite shy but she did well with Roxanne and Ciel, she's a fire and wind mage. She started training when Nour left for the first time, then learned she has quite a magical aptitude, so she entered the magic university there for a basic course.

At 10 AM a letter came to me, Dietgard Roth, Hilde's younger brother, will like to meet me to receive Hilde's remains, her belongings and to negotiate Lina. He asks to meet in the afternoon. At 11 AM Alissa, Ciel and Safiya go prepare lunch and we eat with Nour, good thing we have spare chairs as the table is getting crowded. I notice Nour is a bit uncomfortable around Midori, or rather, he's scared of her, in a cute way.

"Thanks for the lunch Wolf, or should I say, Mr. 'Good Luck'," Nour laughs, "Stay out of trouble, I didn't think someone as careful as you would be involved in so much fighting."

"Maybe it's because I'm careful that I can fight so much."

"Certainly seems so."

"One thing," I get closer to Nour and whisper, "The dragon is a wild animal, you have to grab it and make it submit by force if you want to tame it. A dragon answers to power and if you don't tame it and ride it, it will tame you and ride you."

Nour squirms and I smirk. We shake hands and he leaves. It's interesting how the act of shaking hands is present on this world.

At 2 PM we leave house and go towards the inn that Dietgard is at, it's on the nobles quarters so it's close by. To enter the quarters you have to show your ID and I suspect that if your clothes are too low quality the guards won't let you pass.

The houses here are all mansions or inns that look more like mansions, the shops even show their products behind glass panes allowing the beginnings of window-shopping to appear. Ciel and Roxanne show the most interest while Lina and Alissa hide their curiosity but I can still notice it. Hana only shows interest in the weapons shops but she scoffs at the weapons on display, they are all fashionable but of low quality.

"Damn pompous nobles," she mutters.

We reach a pretty building made of pale yellow concrete and salmon-colored roof tiles. With the small flower garden in the front, this inn looks so sweet I puke in my mouth. Bright colors seem to be the style of choice around the Quarters. The receptionist wears a matching pink and pale yellow uniform.

"I'm looking for Dietgard Roth, my name is Wolf Ryder, he's expecting me," I tell the woman.

With a fake smile, she looks at the register and then goes out to call for him, in a minute Dietgard comes downstairs.

Dietgard is a medium-sized man who looks like Hildegard but with bob hair, quite the androgynous face. His clothes are a similar qipao and pants that Hilde used in the first meeting. Oh, wait… he's a "trap".

"Ah, Mr. Ryder, good meeting you, I'm Dietgard Roth," he says with a somber tone.

"Good meeting you too, I'm sorry for your loss," I say and shake his hand.

"I read the reports, it's such an unfortunate encounter. My sister was such a good person, I'm thankful you risked yourself to bring her remains. Please come with me, I prepared a room to receive her," he lowers his head while speaking.

We go upstairs and enter a room, there's nothing besides a table with a thick cloth. A simple man with plain black clothes is standing at the corner.

"Please put her here," Dietgard points to the table.

I put her corpse in the table, it's wrapped in cloth but there's still blood dripping so the table cloth immediately gets bloody. I leave the sack with her belongings beside the table. Dietgard pulls the cloth in her face and grimaces.

"Take her and prepare the ceremony," he says. The man in the corner wraps her corpse in the table cloth and stores it in his [Item Box] and then leaves.

He grabs the sack and investigates its contents.

"Thank you for bringing her belongings too. Ask me anything and I will reward you if it's on my capabilities."

"Thank you for your consideration but I don't need rewards for this, I only did what was right."

His lips curl in a small and painful smile

"You are a good man, Mr. Ryder, pity we meet under such circumstances."

"Indeed."

He sighs.

"Let us go downstairs and talk about Lina's future."

We sit by a table at the restaurant. It seems that even though the outside is completely different the design of inns is all the same.

"Now then, you wish to buy Lina?" His somber expression disappears and the sharp gaze of a serious merchant covers his face.

"Yes."

"50 gold coins," he answers immediately.

I'm so dumbfounded I lose my voice, Lina's expressionless face turns into one of disbelief. The rest of the girls frown. Lina was bought first by 5 gold coins, this is not a reasonable amount.

"Why do you think she's this valuable?" I ask.

"She's a hard-working slave with a keen business sense and much experience, she will bring a lot of value to any merchant that gets her," he says. His stare is so strong it's as if he wants to stare into my soul.

I look at Lina, she pinches my thigh, this is a signal he's lying. During negotiations she used this kind of signal a lot with Hilde.

"She's merely 15 and most of the credit goes to Miss Hildegard's business sense. Lina was merely a dedicated assistant, you can find such slave in the market for 1 or 2 gold coins," I say. Lina was more expensive because she's young and cute.

It's mostly the poor that sells their family to temporary slavery. A few gold coins can change the life of a commoner.

"Acquiring the experience of living with such a talented merchant like my sister is the most valuable aspect," I can feel his poker face straining.

"Oh please, do not inflate Miss Hildegard's talent so much. She was capable but far from being such a genius that just by staying near her you could acquire talent by osmosis."

"Os-osmosis?

"Oh oops, expression from my homeland. I mean, acquire talent by just rubbing on it."

"Still, her talents are more than just in business, she's quite capable of combat and crafting."

"She's below average for combat and her crafting apprenticeship barely started," Hana says, "I sparred with her personally and appraised her crafting using our equipment."

"Oh if she's so average then why do you wish for her?" He pushes in a mocking tone.

"If she's so average why are you asking so much for her?" I push back.

"Because I see talent in her!" He's losing his temper, good.

"And so do I. But I have plenty of other experienced individuals and the capabilities to help her. Hana is experienced in combat, Roxanne is experienced in magic and alchemy, Ciel is experienced in combat and healing, Alissa is experienced in tracking and archery, I'm experienced in magic and combat. Not only that but I have a blessing of the Goddess of Knowledge and I will let her use the library of the magic university that I'm currently enrolled in. What kind of future can you give her that's better than what I'm giving?"

He bites his lip in frustration, it would be sensual if he was a woman. He inhales and exhales, trying to calm himself.

"Lina… please marry me..." He says.

I choke on my spit and Lina sighs. She looks at me while I recover.

"Uh… you wanna speak? Please do," I say.

"I'm sorry Grand Dietgard, I do not wish to marry you," she says and bows.

I don't want to ask why.

"Please, I can give you anything, you will be my first wife and we will inherit the house name. Ever since I first saw you when Hilde bought you I have been in love, I will treat you nicely and never marry another, we will be happy together, just the 2 of us," he says, his voice increasing in pitch, I'm not sure if it's a man or a woman talking anymore.

"Please understand, I do not wish to marry you, I'm sorry," she says and bows again, this time her head keeps down for a long time.

Dietgard sighs. He massages his eyes with his hands.

"Name your price Mr. Ryder," he says in a defeated tone.

"Fifteen gold coins."

He opens his eyes in surprise.

"I told you she's valuable, but not that much," I say.

"Fine…"

I give him the money and he takes it without looking. I pass him a thick piece of paper, it has the name, description, date, and place that Lina was bought, this is the proof of purchase. It's in the name of Hildegard Roth but since she's dead the closest family member, Dietgard, has authority over her sale. Lina was sold for 40 years, by the time she finished her contract she would be 50, by then it would be unlikely she would ever find someone to marry.

In a small space Dietgard writes his signature and the words "Sold to Wolf Ryder", now I have to go to a Slavers Guild to register her in my name. We share a weak handshake and we leave immediately, he didn't even look at Lina again. Having a slave decline marrying him must have hurt his pride.

Once we are some distance from the inn Lina stops and grabs my arm.

"Thank you, thank you. I won't disappoint you, I will work hard and make myself useful. I don't think Grand Dietgard was a bad person but I do not wish to be with him, thank you again for keeping me."

With teary eyes she hugs me, her head barely reaches my chest. I pat her head, she's so cute, so cute. Wait, no, put that phone away, please.

Ciel looks at her with warm eyes as one looks at a puppy. When Lina releases her hug she's blushing like a tomato.

"Don't need to overdo it, it's no good to be all work and no fun."

"Well… I think going to the library might be more fun than work..." She says bashfully.

On the way back we pass by some stores to buy a high-quality set of clothes for Lina. Walking around with Aoi on Hana's neck is rather eye-catching.

We end up passing by the Slavers Guild, it looks the same as the Golden Necklace, but less well decorated. Registering Lina is quite simple, with the paper, my name, and a small fee I get a new paper that proves her purchase. Then the tag in her metal collar gets changed to a new one with my name. On my "Affiliations" the entry "Lina (slave)" appeared.

After that we enter a luxurious store outside of the noble's quarters and Lina freezes inside, it takes Alissa to whisper something to her that she accepts to buy something from it. I see the store's owner is a middle-aged man holding back a smirk, I get an idea and approach him.

"Excuse me, I know this might not be the best place to ask but do you know of a romantic place where I could spend an evening with my women?" I ask, holding back my embarrassment.

His face lights up.

"I know just the place. Here's my favorite restaurant, I take my wife there every few day-cycles, what's special is the siren that sings there, there's also a lamia and a scylla that play instruments. If you are not going there for the singing at least go there for the view, these race's charms affect even the women so they are marvelous to looks at," his voice lowers to a whisper and he gives me a small paper.

"The theater has a new play every day-cycle, most of them are aimed at women so perhaps you should go there. Coming next is 'Roberto and Judea', I greatly recommend that one, my wife cried the first time she saw it.

Sounds familiar.

Well I gotta treat them better, I have been a bit too absorbed in working and not given them that much attention besides sex and cuddling.

When Lina gets out of the fitting room she's blushing. I massage my forehead and pray Alissa isn't going overboard. In the end, I see they chose a cute short white and black dress with a silver lining, some stockings, a pair of low wedge black shoes and a cloak with bunny ears. I tap Alissa in the shoulder and kiss her cheek, that cloak is something special, such cuteness needs to be rewarded.

The merchant stores are not something I had paid much attention to but now I'm starting to enjoy them. Most are a bit cramped and with their odd architecture it seems every single one tries to appeal with charm. There are wind chimes that play sounds that resemble the chirp of birds. Perfumes filling the store with a pleasant scent seem to be common among women's stores, the glands of monsters help a lot in creating perfumes. Every shop related to food seems to have a specialty, they probably hire a specialized hunter to catch a specific monster. The Smirk has so many different dungeons with so many different monsters that I didn't even read about them all, I had just chosen the closest one because it fit what we wanted.

On a store I found a set of not-chess called Noblesse Oblige, one side has humans and the other has goblins and orcs. Instead of king and queen it's lord and lady, the bishop is warrior-priest, the tower is a mage, the pawn is soldier, the horse is a knight. Mage and knight have inverted move types and some other rule changes. There's a more advanced version that's humanoids versus humanoids, it uses more mages and weird, complex rules, it's called Civil War. I bought it and a set of not-backgammon.

Alissa explained to me about the Lord and Lady titles. The title Lord is a little weird, it's given to any noble that holds land and it can be given to a man or woman. Lady is given to the wife of the noble regardless whether she fights alongside the noble or not. The title Gentleman is the Lady counterpart that's used only for when the man does not fight but even so it's rarely used aside for addressing amorphous groups of people. Even though this society does not put women down there are still some weird things in regard to gender differences.

Before we go home I sneak out and make a reservation on the restaurant for the 19th. They certainly know where I went since the party radar is still working but hopefully they didn't pay much attention. I told them to wait for a surprise for the 19th.

When we get home Lina tries to help with the kitchen but Alissa and Ciel get her out, seeing her dejected I give her a random book we have and her eyes sparkle. She can use our small library anytime but she seems reluctant, she must not have had much free time and is too used to having a lot of work to do.

I'm actually quite content today so I reward Alissa and receive my love marks on my back.

Today is the 16th.

Every day I have been awaking by a small piece of heaven, today I woke up to hell falling on earth. Waking up by air raid siren is bound to give an old man a heart attack.

"W-where's the bunker!?" I ask.

"The what?" Questions Alissa.

"It's the wyvern attack, get up," Hana says. She's already putting on her clothes and armor.

It's not even dawn yet, it's 5 AM. Ciel explained to me how it's going to work so I just go to the hunters guild with Alissa while the girls prepare and wait at the house. We run through the town, the magical lights give an eerie atmosphere, the cloudy skies block the colorful moons, and the light rain is the cherry on the gloomy cake of today.

When it's starting to feel chilly we reach the guild, there are adventurers coming from everywhere. The guild extended a large tent outside the building and everyone is huddling inside of it.

"Silence! Speak only when necessary!" Yells an attendant with a magically enhanced voice.

She repeats this every so often and the incessant talking dies down to murmurs. I can see Silas is at the middle of the tent on a table while one of his attendant is searching both on a map and a list. A line forms and I get on it.

"Fellowship name?" The attendant asks.

"Helios," I answer.

"Farm protection. Number 3, east side."

"We have great expectations upon you, Mr. Ryder, don't disappoint us on this time of need," Silas says, rubbing his magnificent beard

The murmuring dies down completely and all eyes are on me. I expected a dangerous position but number 3 is worse than even Ciel imagined. Anyway, it's time to look cool.

"Helios will not disappoint, we are ready and willing to fight for this town," I say, with a clenched fist over my heart.

We will fight but we will not die, I will use [Gate] the moment any of us gets too close to danger. But my words seem to have the intended effect causing Silas to smile, then the murmuring exploded again making the attendant yell for silence.

There's not much else to do, we return home.

"By the gods, Wolf, you owe that guildmaster some favors or something?" Ciel asks.

No good deed goes unpunished.

"I think he owes me, actually, after this I expect some good rewards. We did bring quite a lot of proof of subjugation of strong monsters so I guess he really thinks we are strong," I say.

"Zinotue and Burkanolf are stronger than the average wyvern, the problem here will be the number," Roxanne says.

"Well, you don't seem too worried about this fight," Ciel says.

"I will keep [Gate] ready for us, any sign of real danger and we are leaving. I don't care if we have to escape the continent to avoid shame I won't let any of you die."

"Awn..." Roxanne hugs me and sniffs, "When we marry we can just live inside the succubus sacred territory, no one will question you there."

"I hardly think we will have to go that far," Hana says, "With Roxanne's elixir and a defensive position we will last a long time, we even have a good window to ask for assistance."

We review our strategy. Ciel, Hana and me at the front, 3 water elementals behind for support, Lina for any stragglers, and Roxanne and Alissa on top of the chest-high wall beside the road. Aoi will stay besides Roxanne, I have no confidence in ever leaving Aoi alone, a tamable dragon is valuable.

"I am sorry for not being useful," Lina says and bows.

That was uncalled for. I throw a hand chop on her head.

"Gueh!"

"Don't be silly, we will train you and you will certainly get strong enough to be a vanguard," I say. I hate such submissive behavior.

"Yes, I will work hard!"

"Now, give me your hand, it's time for the party."

She extends her pale, frail hand. Such delicate hands, hard to believe she can wield such a large war hammer. Once I release her hand her pale face is as red as Hana's hair.

We move towards the east gate, it's fully raining now. Above us, a huge wooden platform floats towards the southern wall.

"On top of that is the Lord's heavy ballista, the Dragon's Bane. We won't be able to see it but at position 3 perhaps we can see when the bolt fires," says Ciel.

We reach the gate and there's a long line of soldiers marching through it. Groups of adventurers are also leaving but in much smaller numbers. Once we cross we see the soldiers going south, they will be positioned to defend the wall. The soldiers are all holding rectangular scuta shields and long pikes.

Any attack by monsters who are not breeders or led by a monster of the type of the Orc Chief will be just a horde attacking the biggest concentrations of humanoids, whether these humanoids are combatants or not. On Rabanara this means that hiding behind the walls will only cause the wyverns to fly over and enter the town, creating chaos.

To counter that the lord brings out his army outside the south wall as bait and starts massacring any monster that gets close. They use mages to create ditches and moats, they put palisades to funnel them, traps at choke points and random spikes and rocks. The way they modify the terrain to maximize extermination efficiency could almost be considered art.

There's also the main weapons, the ballista array, they are magic tools that fire giant arrow upon arrow that almost seem like a machine gun from Earth, these terrifying weapons have a kill count that makes a hunter blush. And then there's the final weapon, the Dragon's Bane, a huge ballista that killed any dragon it met with a single shot. This strategy and organization is what gave the title Enemy of Wyverns to the Anara family and to the Lord Alaraste. No one alive in this continent killed more wyverns than him.

While the army butchers the main force of wyverns, we, the adventurers, either patrol the town for any invaders or protect the farming fields behind Rabanara. Without the farms Rabanara will surely wither and fall. Protecting the farms is a rather dangerous job because there's an unknown number of wyverns that will detach from the main force and come towards the farms. The hunters are arranged on a line along the road, starting from 1 being the closest to the gate and 2 further away and so forth. Since we are number 3 we are rather close to the main force of wyverns, meaning we will certainly deal with a considerable number of them.

Our position is marked with a banner, far away we can see the number 2 and number 4 fellowships, they are too far to help in a timely manner if we screw up. The number of competent and reliable fellowships is not large, every wyvern attack the adventurers are spread thin, but the prestige from success won't be small. Being called here means we are considered a very strong fellowship, which will net us a good reward in the future, if we survive.

We stay at our positions trying to concentrate while shivering in the cold rain. Ciel casts [Inspire], I manipulate Roxanne's extra skill points so she gives us each a cup of [Filling Waters]. I give us all area blessings, summon 3 water elementals, drink an MP potion, and sit down to recover mana. Before I close my eyes I see Roxanne smirking, my water elementals are women that have a distinctive ponytail, side bangs and wear oval glasses and high heel boots.

Hello again, gods. I'm not directing this prayer to anyone in particular right now since I'm not sure who I should ask for help so please listen to me a little. This will be a dangerous fight, we don't know how many are coming so it's hard to prepare. I ask for a bit of mercy on this fight, I want to grow and get stronger but it seems every time I fight, something dangerous is thrown at me. I don't want these women to suffer but I realize it's useless to protect them up to this degree, they are all warriors who made their decisions. So I ask that you at least give them enough power for them to stand beside me, I want us all to fight and go back home together.

Another air raid siren is sounded, two tones, the monsters are coming. I stand up, dawn is here, 70% of my mana is recovered. We all drink Roxanne's elixir. I put the 2 extra points I had into [Battlefield Perception], I don't gain eyes on my back but I always get an "intuition" about the state of the others. The ground shakes and we hear the noise of a large amount of footsteps.

"GUAAAAH!" We hear the cry of a wyvern. Multiple cries follow it.

"Two Hooknoses approaching from the sky!" Alissa yells. In the distance, I see 2 black dots above the treetops.

Hooknose is a type of 2-meters tall brown wyvern that has no claws but it has a curved sharp horn at the tip of its face, it uses it to launch its prey in the air and kill it by gravity. Its jaw is wide and flat, good for crushing if the nose is not enough.

A wyvern appears from the middle of the trees, it's a Deathclaw, a 1 and a half meter tall black wyvern. It has bat-like wings with 3 half-meter long claws at the wing bone, it uses these claws to rip the meat of its prey.

"COME HERE YOU LITTLE CHICK, MAMA WILL GIVE YOU A SPANKING," Hana taunts.

None of us have a shield, there are no projectiles coming so no need for that. Hana is going to be one of the main killers of this battle, without a shield her [Sword Use] and [Two-Handed Sword Use] add to each other, allowing her to show the true strength of the dragonkin.

The Deathclaw is going to arrive first, he's charging straight to Hana. To conserve mana only the elemental behind her starts charging a spell.

100 meters.

80 meters.

60 meters.

40 meters.

20 meters.

[Water Blade]! I hear the elemental cast in my mind. Through Hana's side a large, thin blade rushes towards the frenzied wyvern and hits it on the shoulder. A deep gash appears, blood pours and mixes with the rainwater. Its charge is disrupted and it tumbles forward.

Hana jumps forward and her spear lands into the already open wound, it goes halfway in and she releases the spear.

"GUAAH!" The wyvern cries in pain. Its head slowly moves in a dramatic way, a perfect target.

Alissa wastes no time, with [Perfect Arrows] and her slightly enchanted bow she has no problem in the rain. Her first arrow is a hit and goes through the eyes of the wyvern, it goes limp and dies.

"Holy shit Alissa, you are awesome as always," Hana says. I "feel" Alissa fidget.

I'm a bit amused that "holy shit" is also a swear here.

Hana goes back to her spear and pulls it out. I store the corpse in my "Items". We can hear sounds of battle at the distance.

The two Hooknoses land 60 meters in front of us and charge towards Hana.

"ALL THREE!" I scream. The elementals all charge a spell.

Like they are in sync, the 2 Hooknoses try to skewer Hana from each side at the same time. Hana summons her wings and jumps up, the Hooknoses collide with each other and the 3 Water Blades wound both, the left one loses his horn.

Me, Hana, and Ciel strike at the same time after the [Water Blades] do their job. I make a downward strike with all my strength and increase my sword's weight with [Telekinesis], I cut the neck of the wyvern deeply and blood spurts on my arms. I jump backwards.

Ciel's thrust penetrated the side of the neck of the wyvern, she pushes down and keeps his head in place. Hana falls down with all her strength and her spear lodges inside the skull of the left wyvern, it's dead.

The wyvern I cut lashes out and tries to bite me, my [Dodge] skill makes itself useful until an arrow pierces the roof of the mouth.

"GUYEH!" It screams in surprise and retreats.

"HAH!" Hana yells and slashes downwards with her sword. It receives another deep cut on the other side of its neck.

The wyvern writhes in pain and tries to run but collapses midway, it will die soon due to blood loss. I store the closest wyvern in "Items" after I help Hana recover her spear with [Telekinesis].

"You are now level 18."

I put all my points into [Sword Use] (now 13+6).

"The way I'm using this spear it will break soon," Hana says.

"It's low quality anyway, we should have gotten you a high quality one," I say.

"Look forward! Three Coming!" Alissa yells and our short break ends.

2 Hooknoses appear with a Deathclaw in the middle of both.

"Ciel! Together!" Roxanne yells. I feel them both charging a spell.

"Remember that you are light, don't let the Hooknose lift you!" Hana yells to me.

Actually… I have an idea. I charge [Lightning Bolt].

When in range, Ciel lets out [Wind Blade] and Roxanne [Water Blade]. The Hooknose loses the right wing to it and rolls around in the ground in pain, Ciel rushes to skewer it. Hana throws her spear into her Deathclaw, it pierces its chest, making it stagger and lose the speed of charge. I cast [Lightning Bolt] but mine barely slows down, I cast another and it reduces speed to a walk, 2 arrows pierce its flank, but not deeply.

My wyvern bites 3 times, I swing my sword to keep it from trampling me, I land a few cuts. It swings its tail and I dodge, once its back is turned it receives a painful arrow in the back that sinks deep. Hana is having a sword fight with her Deathclaw and she cut off 2 claws already, Ciel is stabbing the Hooknose and slowly pushing it back, filling it with wounds.

My wyvern growls and bites at me again, I have to make sure my sword doesn't get caught or I'm screwed. This time Alissa hits the tongue of the wyvern, it gets angrier and decides to try to skewer me. It lowers its head and pushes forward. I jump, slash downwards, and increase the weight of my sword as much as I can. The sword pierces the wyvern through the head and buries itself up until the hilt, it falls limp on the floor. With a little effort, I manage to dislodge my bloodied sword.

I go help Hana and slice off the foot of the Deathclaw, it falls down on the ground and Hana pierces its heart with her sword.

Roxanne casts [Water Blade] towards the chest and finishes off the suppressed wyvern Ciel was fighting.

We quickly collect the proof of subjugation of each monster.

"Hana! Taunt them!" Alissa yells and points.

There's 2 Jazars trying to sneak through our left side. The Jazar is a 2 and a half meter tall bright red wyvern, it has no wings but it has long and thin freaky arms, at its fingers are 10cm long claws with an edge. Hunters harvest those claws to use as knives.

"OVER HERE, SHITTY GECKOS, I NEED NEW TOOTHPICKS!" Hana taunts.

The running monsters make an emergency stop and immediately change course towards Hana.

"ALL THREE! GIRLS, WAIT FOR THE SPELL!" I scream, the elementals obey.

We gather near Hana and wait. The wyverns run with their arms raised high, it's really creepy.

When they reach 20 meters three [Water Blades] fly through us. The right arm of the left wyvern gets cut off, the other wyvern receives one long cut through its flank and dodges the last blade.

Hana charges with her spear and skewers the left wyvern, it gets stopped in place and her spear breaks, following the break Ciel stabs the wyvern and it tries to escape. My wyvern ignores me and I run my sword through its flank, due to [Telekinesis] the wound is much deeper than I could ever cut. The wyvern screams and tumbles down past me. When it raises its head it receives an arrow through the eye and dies.

Hana moves past her wyvern and blocks its escape. This wyvern got desperate and it's swinging its remaining arm wildly, blocking any of us from getting close.

"Four more are coming!" Alissa yells. She can't do anything, the scales of this one are too tough for her arrows.

"Roxanne! Finish it!" I yell, she starts gathering mana.

"[Water Blade]!" She yells.

The wyvern gets hit in the back and staggers, it was a really deep wound. Hana and Ciel waste no time, they both slash towards its neck and blood gushes out. We retreat, it wobbles a bit and collapses a few meters away from us.

"EVERYONE…! BARRAGE!" I scream, trying to catch my breath. Everyone gathers mana, I charge [Lightning Bolt].

The wyverns land 80 meters from us and pick up speed, they are all Hooknoses.

"FIRE!" I yell.

I let out my charged [Lightning Bolt], the one I hit falls down and eats dirt. Before he even stops moving an arrow goes through his eye and he dies. The others get multiple wounds, one is wobbling and can only walk towards us, the last 2 keep their charge.

Hana and Ciel get ready to receive the charge.

"[Wind Wall]!" Ciel yells.

An area in front of her gets blurred and the wyvern slows down, it struggles but passes through. This delay was enough and Ciel thrusts at its chest, the attack misses the heart but it goes deep. Ciel follows it with a slash, the already wounded wyvern gets cautious and stops moving just to receive an arrow at the flank. It enrages again and charges, receiving Roxanne's [Water Blade] on the skull, making it wince. Ciel then slashes downward with her glaive and the blade buries itself on the already wounded part of the head, the wyvern goes limp.

Hana summons her wings and receives the charge by thrusting her sword at the chest of the wyvern and holding it in place. The monster tries to bite at her but she kicks it off her sword and pushes it to the side. It falls near me and I slash at its neck aided by [Telekinesis], blood spurts out again and reaches my face. The monster whips back and tries to skewer me. Hana dashes forward and buries her sword into its skull through its eye, it's dead.

The last wyvern limps forward and receives an arrow in the last leg, it falls down and pitifully tries to crawl towards us, its eyes glare at us with hate and evil intent. Then the shine on its eyes goes away as an arrow pierces one eye and kills it.

We get a small breather. Hana pulls out a spare shitty spear we have.

Lina collects the proof of extermination for us, she's quite anxious about not being able to do anything so she insisted on doing this. I'm sitting down trying to meditate but the cold from the rain is making it difficult.

"Lina! Five coming!" Alissa yells.

Lina cutely scurries back towards us and we get ready again.

From multiple places 5 wyverns appear, 2 Hooknoses, 2 Deathclaws and a Jazar.

"EVERYONE! FOCUS JAZAR! FIRE AT WILL!" I scream.

Alissa lets out multiple arrows, the Jazar slows down. The elementals finish casting and multiple wounds cover its body, it stubbornly keeps moving. Ciel unleashes her [Wind Blade] and it barely dodges, opening a long cut on its flank. Alissa fires another arrow and it stumbles, Roxanne takes the opportunity and unleashes her [Water Blade], it goes through the skull and it dies on the spot.

"DEATHCLAWS? MORE LIKE KNIFECLAWS, YOUR CLAWS CAN'T EVEN SCRATCH ME!" Hana taunts.

The Deathclaws aim at her and the Hooknoses aim at me and Ciel, one for each of us. Mine seems a bit big though, I'm just slightly scared.

"CIEL! JAZAR COMING!" Alissa screams. I "feel" that Roxanne is capable of assisting her, she will be fine.

The Hooknose is coming too fast for me to face it head-on. I don't wanna waste more mana on him and Alissa is busy covering Ciel, I will just avoid him until I get an opening.

The wyvern comes with such a force the ground trembles. I dodge towards the side, I slash as I dodge and I manage to give a shallow wound, then my view goes dark…

I blink, I see the sky and rainwater goes into my eyes. My head hurts. I immediately cast [Heal], the pain goes away and I lift my body, I see the Sea of Trees in front of me. I feel a chill on my back so powerful I almost piss myself, "death" is coming. Fucker had spread its wings and hit me in the head as I moved past it.

I roll sideways and I hear a pound, I roll again and I hear a clack, I get into a crouch position and jump, I feel the wind on my back as a tail swipes at were I was. I turn around and a pointy horn is thrusting towards me. I use [Telekinesis] on myself, reducing my weight, I put my foot on the nose besides the horn and I'm lifted upwards like a feather.

I'm flying, kinda. I don't have a lot of control over [Telekinesis] when I use it on myself so I'm still kinda screwed when I fall down. I look at my hand and luckily I'm still holding my sword, convenient.

I don't want to fall slowly into the open mouth of that monster so I increase the gravity of my sword as much as I can, it pulls me down fast.

The monster opens its mouth and ignores my sword, fucking retard. I cut through its mouth like butter, its flesh, bone, and fangs were nothing to stop me. The sword was angled in such a way the lower jaw is left hanging by a small piece of bone. I fall down heavily on the ground, couldn't manipulate my gravity skillfully enough, my legs and spine hurt. I "feel" Hana is hurt, but I hear her laugh so I guess she's fine.

The monster roars and shakes its head, spewing blood all over, its tongue falls down on the floor. For his temper tantrum, he receives an arrow down his throat. The monster chokes and retches dramatically.

I rush forward and slash at its leg, it falls down on one knee and tries to swipe at me with its tail. I block with my sword and I'm thrown back a few meters ass down into the mud. My muscles ache, I'm getting tired.

I "feel" Ciel get hurt, my heart aches but I have to finish this one first, I believe Roxanne won't let her die.

I dash forward and the monster tries to skewer me but it lacks power. I dodge and slash at its nose, a shallow wound. It tries to sweep me again but I'm too far, a small step back and I'm fine. Once its back is turned I slash at the other leg, it cries in pain again and nearly falls.

It tries to squash me with its head but I dodge sideways and slash again, this time I make a deep wound at the neck with [Telekinesis].

The girls are fine, the wounds are just like mine, acceptable. The monster tries to spread its wings again and hit me but I just duck and stab it. The monster tries to retract the wings and I pull my sword causing a large and painful tear on its wing. It gets cautious and glares at me, trying to retreat.

An arrow on its back and it gets desperate, trying to trample over me. I crouch and use [Telekinesis] on the sword and thrust it upwards, the wyvern steps on me but it screams and retreats its huge foot, now bleeding.

The monster stops for a second, perfect, I raise my free hand with a clenched fist and the elemental casts a [Water Blade] on the back of the monster. It roars and falls, I dash and slash at its already wounded throat.

"GUAaaaah~," The wyvern cries weakly.

It tries to wobble away and collapses, I thrust my sword down its skull, it's dead.

"You are now level 19."

Damn, that's a lot of experience. I put all my points into [Mana Recovery] (now 10+0).

Hana and Ciel are fighting one Deathclaw each, the Jazar is already dead from the elementals and Roxanne. I rush towards Hana and cast [Lightning Bolt], the wyvern freezes, it's stunned.

Hana's elemental unleashes a [Water Blade] and a wing is cut off. The monster roars and Hana takes the chance, she inflicts multiple deep cuts on the wyvern, her spare spear is already broken and half embedded into its chest. It flails its wings in vain, I slash at its leg and it falls on one knee.

"HAAAH!" Hana yells.

She slashes downward and the wyvern tries to defend but it's not strong enough. Its wings bend before Hana's slash and her sword gets embedded into the skull of the wyvern, it's dead.

Ciel pierces the jaw of Deathclaw and holds it in place, Alissa unleashes her arrow and it pierces the eye, killing it. She frees her glaive and crouches down, I rush towards her. She has 3 slashes across her chest, some blood and a little bit of chocolate cleavage can be seen.

I hear Ciel murmuring.

"How are you?" I ask, and touch her shoulder.

"… [Heal]. Ugh, I'm okay, just a flesh wound," she says and looks at her bloodied clothes.

I cast [Clean].

"Still bleeding?"

"Hm, nope, I'm fine," she says while feeling her clothes and armor," Don't look at me like that, I have been worse.

I sigh. I get too anxious when I see them bloodied.

"Heal Hana too please, I'm using too much of my mana already."

Hana is also fine just a scratch and bruises. She has 3 slashes on her flank and one on her shoulder, cutting the padding of the brigandine and exposing the metal plates. Her only flesh wound is a slash on her cheek, though it won't scar, dragonkin skin is just that good.

Wagons and horsemen rush around the road, wounded, news, replacement requests. This is a city-wide effort and their experience shows, for hundreds of years they have been doing this every year or so.

The rain is thinning but I'm still shivering with cold.

"SEVEN COMING!" Alissa yells.

Fuck me, they keep increasing.

"BATTERY!" I yell.

150 meters. They are not out of the woods yet.

Hana brings out her bow and arrows. We all charge mana.

"FIRE!"

Hana actually hits her arrow even in the rain with an average bow. No kills.

"AIM!"

120 meters.

"FIRE!"

No kills.

"AIM!"

90 meters.

"FIRE!"

1 down. 6 to go.

"AIM!"

70 meters.

"FIRE!"

1 down. 5 to go.

"FIRE AT WILL!"

My mana is low, I have to save my spells.

"YOU ARE JUST EXPERIENCE FOR MY SOUL! COME TO ME!" Hana taunts, she fires one last arrow and throws her bow.

A Deathclaw comes to me, it has 2 arrows on its chest, it's bleeding from the lower body and it has a long tear on a wing. I draw my knife on my back and throw it. I'm actually bad at throwing so I use a bit of [Telekinesis] and turn it into an arrow. It sinks heavily into the shoulder of the wyvern and slows it down. I charge forward.

I slash upwards and the wyvern parries with a claw, the other wing comes and I dodge back, the wyverns are awkward at fighting close range, they rely on overwhelming strength instead of skill. I lift my hand with a clenched fist and a weak [Water Blade] slashes the wyvern at the neck, it's a shallow wound.

I gotta buy time for the elemental to charge a blade strong enough. Alissa is busy trying to support Hana, the 2 Jazars she's fighting are being tough, Roxanne is also busy helping Ciel fight 2 Hooknoses.

The wyvern coughs blood, good, it's weakened so I can parry its attacks more easily. I say that but when I parried its claws it's still stupid strong like an orc. I use my skills and deflect the attack allowing me a quick slice on its wing. The wyvern is not enraging, perhaps it's smarter than the others.

We trade a few blows and I dodge back to catch my breath, it coughs blood again. It charges forward, I dodge sideways and it slashes at me at an odd angle, weak. I push back and jump forward to slash, I put weight into my sword and start to cut over its chest. Something hits my flank and I see the sky again.

I fall down on something hard and the air escapes my lungs. Holy shit it hurts.

"ALISSA! HELP MASTER!" Lina screams.

I try to stand up and fall down in pain, I use nearly all my mana on [Heal], something is definitely broken. I had fallen on a rock, my ribs still hurt even after healing. If I use any more overuse symptoms will start.

A shadow covers me and I look forward, the wyvern is going to bite me. A large orange fox tackles the wyvern and bites it on the wing. The wyvern struggles and shakes around, the fox suddenly flies away and lands on its feet, it has a bloody mouth and spits a lump of wyvern muscle.

"Master, are you alright?" Lina asks, she brings a red potion to my mouth and I drink it.

"I'm out, I can barely fight."

The wyvern suddenly turns to me. Oh fuck, did it hear me? Can it understand me?

It moves towards me. Alissa charges after it and bites the leg, the wyvern tumbles but doesn't fall.

"HAAAH!" Lina screams.

She immediately jumps forward and her long war hammer hits the head of the wyvern, it slashes back at the same time and Lina flies away. The wyvern struggles to keep moving, its head is wobbling. Thanks, Lina.

I lift my hand in a clenched fist. The elemental lets out a blade, it buries deeply inside the neck of the wyvern. It falters and Alissa incredibly manages to throw it backward, it twitches and doesn't get up.

"You are now level 20."

There must be some bonus for killing monsters the first few times.

Hana is hurt again, I'm worried now.

"Help Hana!" I yell to Alissa and regret it since pain strikes me again.

She turns around and transforms back. With incredible speed she fires two shots and moves sideways to flank the wyverns.

I look at Lina, she's getting up, she's just bruised and dirty with mud. With the help of Roxanne, Ciel finishes her last Hooknose, she immediately jumps forward and slashes at Hana's Jazar. It's too weak to dodge and defends itself with its arm, which gets cut off.

Alissa circles around the last wyvern and puts 2 more arrows on its back, it struggles to move due to pain. Hana summons her wings and jumps, she lets gravity act and slashes downwards, she splits the head of the wyvern in two.

Hana falls on her knees, Ciel rushes to heal her. Hana's armor is ruined, she must have plenty of bruises now. I wonder what would have happened if we didn't have [Wind Armor] or Roxanne's elixir.

Roxanne is tired, her mana is nearly gone, the elementals regenerate fast on this rain but they are still not that strong against these wyverns. They are the most stable to use in the rain, electric elementals are the most dangerous and fire elementals are useless, even earth elementals get weaker in the rain. We need to ask for a replacement.

I feel mana gathering far away, it's a lot of mana.

5 wyverns appear on the forest line, it's a group of Jazars. They are rushing towards us but they slow down and stop.

The mana gathering is so high the monsters are feeling it, even Hana who has the weakest [Sense Mana] stopped to look at the mana gathering. It's coming from the wall of the town, something is happening there.

I feel chills down on my bone, it's like I'm being pressured by the mana, it's the fear of what kind of spell requires so much mana. I feel like I could be dragged into a hole if I went there, I feel an instinctive urge to run away. The wyverns freeze and Alissa kills one with an arrow through the eye, hah. The other wyverns retreat.

I look back at the town and see black clouds gathering, our cloudy day turns into a frightening night as a thunderstorm starts. I don't feel much strength in my legs so I sit down.

I hear something resonate into my mind… [THUNDER STRIKE]!

The world turns white, day has come for a split second, the ground shakes and my ears hurt at the sound of a thunder so strong I wonder if it wasn't just a bomb instead. The cloudy day comes back after a few seconds.

A black dot on the sky starts to become bigger, it's falling down. I see the familiar blue shine of dragon scales. The falling dragon gets so large there's no doubt about it, it was the ancient dragon that killed Hilde.

Suddenly a thick black rod appears from the town and pierces the helpless falling dragon. As if it was nothing, the rod pushes away the dragon and it falls down far deep into the Sea of Trees.

"GUEEE!"

"GUOOO!"

"GAAAAA!"

The wyverns cry. The ground shakes and we hear again the beat of a large number of footsteps. The sound grows faint and distant until the only thing we can hear is the rain, no more sounds of battle.

"We won!?" I ask.

"YES!" Ciel cries and jumps.

"WE WON!"

We hear cheers in the distance.

"KWEEH!" Aoi yells.

"WE WON!" Alissa jumps at me.

"AH! My ribs!"

"Sorry! Sorry! Ciel, heal him please!"

After my ribs get put back into place we do a group hug. It's 9:00AM, we won the battle against the wyverns.

A note from Manasong

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Chapter 16: Trust

A note from Manasong

Attention: to conform to the limit of sexual content allowed in a novel, I've censored this chapter. You can look for the uncensored version here.

The symbol "-" denotes a section that got cut for containing sexual content. Also, if paragraphs seem missing, they were also likely censored in an earlier pass where the symbol wasn't used.

I kind of leveled a lot. Could it have been help from the Goddess of Growth? I have been giving her small prayers every day, perhaps she answered. There's also what seems to be a boost to the first few kills of a new type of monster, the same thing happened with the goblins at Royd's Kerfuffle. Or is it just diminishing returns? Perhaps it's an anti-grind mechanic. It's all just speculation, I got nothing.

We wait a little longer and a squad of soldiers appear, they look winded but capable of fighting, they are here to hold the area and replace us. Soon the townspeople will be let out to recover the corpses of every wyvern killed. We will receive a bonus for each proof we bring but the price of wyvern ingredients will fall drastically so even if we bring all corpses the extra money isn't that great.

There are still hunters inside town patrolling, a few wyverns decided to fly over town so they helped keep the town safe. The town is still silent and the populace is slowly coming out of their homes.

With that everyone goes into the bath, except for Ciel and Lina. I'm feeling a little bad about them but they got magic tools to warm themselves so it will be fine. Alissa gets clingy during the bath, she's getting a bit too overprotective, which just makes me feel bad because I think I'm even worse.

Too tired to make a proper meal we just eat a lot of meat with bread.

"Let me just say, I'm glad you are all here. This was a tough fight, but we survived, we succeeded and I'm very proud to fight alongside you all," I say and lift my cup for a toast.

"Awn..." Roxanne tilts her head.

Alissa sniffles and Hana gives me a bear hug.

"I'm glad I decided to join," Ciel says.

"I'm glad you are my master," Lina says.

"Now… what are you doing?" Alissa asks.

After surviving the bear hug I kept my cup raised waiting for the others.

"Erm… a toast?

"What? Bread?" Alissa tilts her head in confusion, cute.

"No, uhm… here, in my homeland we celebrate by hitting the sides of our cups to make noise," I grab her cup and mimick a toast, "Then we go like this and say 'cheers'!"

"Ooooh, a 'Brother's Pledge'," says Lina.

"What's that?" I ask.

"Dwarven warriors hit their cups together and share their beer before a battle. This is a pledge that since they will spill blood together soon they might as well share alcohol too."

"Curious, it's somehow similar," I say.

"Well then, cheers!" Hana says and we clink our cups.

We leave Aoi home with Hana and go to the university, the rain is very light so we just use a simple cloak. I'm not tired enough to skip classes and Lina is excited to enter the library. The problem is riding Alissa along with Lina, I have to hug her and she fits perfectly between my arms. This is quite stimulating.

I enter the class feeling a little more tired than when I left home. I sit down on my chair and touch my ribs, the discomfort is still there. Healing magic leaves your body confused after you use it so you can still get some discomfort and reduced performance for a while even if you are perfectly healthy.

"Oh, Ryder! You are here! Aren't you supposed to be fighting?" Lyle asks as he enters the room.

"What are you talking about the battle ended a few hours ago."

"Is that so? Father had me locked in the room all day so I have no idea what happened," he says and scratches his cheek shyly.

Wow, I can actually imagine him running out to try out his lightning on the wyverns.

"What position were you in? Did you see grandpa's magic? Did you see the Dragon's Bane? Did you see the army fight? What about the other fellowships, did you see who had position one?" He rushes towards my desk.

"Jesus, calm down. One question at a time."

The entire class starts murmuring.

"Erm, who's Jesus?"

"Reference from my homeland, ignore it… Anyway, I was position three, east side."

"What?!" This time its Garanae who's surprised.

"Ah, you said 'grandpa', so it was he who used [Thunder Strike]?"

"Yes! Tell me how it was!" He's like a child at Christmas.

Suddenly there's a circle of students around me waiting to hear the story.

"Oh, what's with this commotion," says professor Ludwick, he just arrived.

"Professor! Ryder fought at position three!" Says a random student.

Save me!

"Wonderful! Tell us how it went!" The professor smiles widely and floats towards us.

Seriously!

After a distraction class resumes as usual. Today we will have a group learning session about [Item Box], we will use the method of staying close to someone who knows the spell and observing how his mana behaves. This method is easier if you don't know the theory of how the spell works. [Item Box] has a chant but it's like trying to sing a song on a language you don't know, you are just going to butcher the chanting. Learning with this method also cuts the need for a chant.

We push back the desks and gather in a circle around the professor, everyone here should have enough levels in [Sense Mana] that we don't need to hug him to observe the spell. I feel a little sad though, for some reason this cute little old man is very hugable.

As expected half the class pass with no one acquiring the skill. I kept quiet the entire time since people already saw me use "Items" but no one seems to remember. Possibly because "Items" uses no mana and so nobody paid attention when I used it.

We sit by the usual spot at the buffet. It seems Garanae is acquiring some respect for me after he heard of my battle with the wyverns. He's still someone who never saw real combat and while we are (on the outside) at the same age I'm already the town hero with plenty of notches on my experience belt. His family is rather protective of him as the sole child with combat prowess, but then again, neither Lyle or Hatara has experience in battle. I kind of understand their family's reasoning, Rabanara is a rather ruthless place to live so they are only going to fight after they finish their courses.

After a few minutes of talking Lina finally appears.

"This is Lina, my newest slave."

She bows and sits and I introduce the others to her. Alissa pushes a plate with cookies for her and gives her a strong gaze. Lina is likely to not eat anything in front of these nobles so I guess she needs a little push.

"Another?!" Garanae erupts. His respect for me waves goodbye, it was short but we had a good time.

"She's just a slave, I'm having her read books at the library and soon I will get someone to teach her enchanting, hopefully."

Lina was confused at Garanae's outburst but now she's perking her ears to my statement.

"Still, another woman! How many are you gonna have around you until you are satisfied?!"

I shrug, Lyle sighs, Hatara squeezes his arm but he does not notice.

"I actually never went after any of the women around me, we just met and they decided to love me."

"That's... shameful!" He stands up and looks down on us, "That's not how love should be, love is dedicating yourself fully to another person. How can you say you are giving all your heart to Miss Alissa when you have to cut it into pieces to any woman that approaches you. The Goddess of Love would be disappointed."

Lina clenches her fist and her face muscles twitch, she's struggling to keep her poker face. A slave shouldn't argue with a noble, though it would please me if she did.

"I have a blessing… from the Goddess of Love," Alissa says in a chipper tone.

Garanae's mouth hangs open.

"You lie," he finally lets it out.

"I do not. You can check at the temple, we verified it there and told them how I got it. Perhaps they can even tell you the story if you are oh, so curious," Alissa says with poison on her tongue.

Hatara finally manages to push him down. Garanae seems to be lost for words. He finally makes his mind and leaves silently, seemingly stunned. Hatara follows him close.

"I apologize on his behalf, Mr. Ryder, his family is very pious and takes pride in that," Lyle says with a small nod.

"No offense taken, we just have an irreconcilable difference on morals. I really don't think he's very knowledgeable, he's just repeating what he learned. But what about you? Do you share his opinion or will you have a harem of your own? If your grandfather is a powerful court mage then there might be a wide number of women that would be pleased to marry you."

"I… well, this is… something…

"Let me tell you that there's nothing better than waking up surrounded by women, especially when one wakes you up using her mouth," I smirk.

"Wha, mou, huh, wake, dic-, hah…"

Lyle broke. He gets up.

"See, uh, see you l-later, Mr. Ryder…"

"See you later, Mr. Rizek."

Lyle leaves with robotic movements. Lina is blushing.

"See, little Lina, your master is a proper sadist, even his friends aren't safe from his teasing," Alissa says with a grin.

"Alissa, I-I'm not that bad."

"So you say."

"And you are just like me!"

"I take that as a compliment."

Lina blushes harder.

"Master, what did you mean by teaching me 'enchanting'?"

I'm glad the topic changed.

"Well, there's a dwarf in one of my classes that's researching enchanting. Perhaps he could help you increase your [General Enchanting] skill."

"Oh, a dwarf! Perhaps we could use the dwarven pride against him, he would likely accept if we goad him in the right way," her smile is mischievous.

I'm a little concerned about your choice of words.

We get back to class and Garanae avoids my eyes, Hatara is annoyed and looks apologetic, Lyle is back to normal but a bit shy.

The rest of the class is free, most people use this time to talk to the professor about the theory. If you are having trouble increasing your skill by practice then you need to touch up on your theory. It's nice that this university isn't hand-holding you with lengthy and boring classes, if you are here you are paying to learn, not to just get a useless degree to fill a checkmark on a list of things necessary for you to succeed in life.

Back at home, Alissa had passed at the bakeries Nour talked about and brings the first wonder, chocolate chip cookies, my heart melts. With the rest of the minotaur milk, I dunk my cookies in the milk and eat them in front of the fireplace while light rain pitter-patters on the windows. Comfy.

Ciel laughed at the idea of using milk like that but they all agreed it was wonderful, only chocolate chip cookies are worthy of being dunked.

Aoi seems to dislike chocolate. Whatever, more to me then.

During the night I talk to Lina and she tells me the resumed version of what she found. I'm telling her to focus on the story of the High Forest for now and then expand. I plan on visiting there once so I want to know all about the lands on the way there.

Today is the 17th.

I wake up refreshed as always and notice a lot has changed. My strength, endurance and speed increased by 1 (now 10, 11 and 11), my [Space Magic] increased by 4 (now 18+16), my [Blessing Magic] increased by 1 (now 0+12), my MP increased by 40 (now 600) and my "Magic Power" increased by 5 (now 240).

Roxanne leveled up once and her [Water Magic] increased by 1 (now 23) and her [Mana Control] by 1 (now 25). I put all 7 remaining skill points Roxanne had into [Water Magic], with that she can cast [Ice Lance].

Alissa leveled up twice, her [Bow Use] increased by 2 (now 25), her [Hawk Eyes] increased by 1 (now 3) and she gained the title "Blinding Arrows".

"Blinding Arrows, why did you receive that?" I ask.

"She did hit a lot of eyes with her arrows, perhaps the townsfolk that got the corpses recognized her kills," Ciel says.

"How do titles work anyway?" I ask.

"It's a way to reward those who accomplish great deeds with some glory. It has a bit of an effect like blessings do, though much, much more subdued. It's no surprise for an experienced fellowship to have people with titles."

"But hers is different from mine, mine is a nickname."

"Yeah, unfortunately, yours is not about great deeds. Nicknames are special but don't be ashamed when people use it, someone calling you by your nickname means well," Ciel says with a snicker.

"Then why are you laughing?"

"I'm not laughing at you, I'm laughing at your shy behavior when people mention your nickname."

Well, whatever.

In the morning I go to the hunters guild with Alissa to sell our corpses and submit the proofs of subjugation. When we enter the whispers start, most eyes are now on Alissa. Although I'm happy I'm not the attention I get jealous at a few of the clearly lewd stares.

When she sees us a familiar brunette attendant hurries out of her booth to greet us.

"Mr. Ryder, good morning. I have a message addressed to you," she says with a bow, "It's an invitation to the celebration party for the battle against the wyverns. The Lord is hosting it. Here.

She hands me the envelope. The same as last time he invited us, only that the location is going to be on an estate owned by the Lord's family. This estate is behind the castle, so we will have quite the scenery to look at when we go there."

We deliver our spoils to Gordon, who seems content at the number we killed. Sonny appears for delivering the rewards and I'm sure he looks a little disappointed. The reward for participation in the battle as position 3 was 40 gold coins, quite a good sum. But the guildmaster still owes me a bit.

We go back home to spar.

I have been putting some points into [Inspire Growth] but aside from my ridiculous growth none of the girls seems to have noticed any difference. Maybe it's because I'm not teaching them, the skill might need me to actually inspire them. I will put their extra points into [Increased Growth] when they are training.

After my sparring session, I finally acquire [Battlefield Perception] at level 1.

Today is nature class, the professor teaches us [Regeneration], [Vine Weapon], [Grow] and [Animal Tongue]. We are to train individually any spell we want.

Level 10 spell [Vine Weapon] creates and harden vines until they are usable as weapons. At first, we can only use it to make blunt weapons but with higher levels, you can make usable swords and make them last even when you release the vine. I learn the chant and try to copy the mana flow the professor is leaking. It was rather easy to make a club even though I'm not level 10. With a bit of effort, you can easily make other things, like shields or armor.

The next spell at level 15 is [Grow], it is the secret of the elves of the High Forest and the halflings of Lorei Laurelai. They are so good at these spells they just look at a plant and they can make it grow any way they want. No wonder the halflings are considered experts in farming. The elves of the High Forest use this spell to mold the trees so they can live inside them. They can model walkways and roads high up on the trees and even make things like furniture and weapons from the wood.

Level 20 is [Animal Tongue], it is the one I'm most interested in, I need this to talk to Aoi more easily. It's like a [Blessing Magic], which you cast once and it lasts a long time. It's odd because casting it from the skill system without chanting is like flipping a switch. When the spell is on it consumes my mana very, very slowly, so I see there's more than one way the same spell can be invoked. I gotta research that, I never heard about such a thing before.

We go back home and my discomfort with Lina increases. I use the skill every man should learn and achieve absolute mental purity while her cute little ass shakes and presses on my crotch. To make things worse I'm sure she intentionally moved backward just to press her own body into mine.

There's already plenty of wyvern meat on the market, it tastes exactly like turkey. Alissa bought a lot since it's dirt cheap.

Aoi seems extra happy today, when we were gone she managed to approach the griffin nature spirit. Being part animal herself the spirit seems to not mind her presence, but even she won't dare touch it yet.

Today is the 18th.

My nature magic increased by 2 (now 0+11).

In the morning we all leave to go shopping. I want to upgrade mine and Ciel's armor into scale armor, she nags me that it's a waste but she got cut last time in the chest by the claws, our armor should at least protect us against slashes.

I feel like I wasted my time looking at other shops, the Bear Hug is the one we previously bought our equipment at and again it seems to have the best deals around. The owner is a friendly, large fat man with a round black beard and curly hair. His aura makes him seem very hugable but his eyes are of a predator and no one dares hug such a man, I only feel death by crushing will be the result.

Lina's trivia: Mining in this world is a dangerous job. Not only can monsters spawn inside long mines but the mines themselves get regularly attacked. This seems to explain the high price of metal armor and the comparatively low price of leather or scale armor. Even cloth armor is expensive in comparison.

We settle down with adding emerald scales to our leather armor, quite literally an upgrade. Now it's heavier, more difficult to move in and makes more noise but it's nearly impervious to slashing. With the rewards for the wyvern battle, this armor didn't even cost us half the reward, the market is overflowed with dragon and wyvern products right now.

We give Roxanne a Grey Berserker jacket, she had an older Young Behemoth she got on her hometown. We wanted to give her a hauberk or something like that but she lacks the muscle for it, Hana will force Roxanne to exercise a bit with aerobics so she deals better with the increase in armor.

I finally buy bodkin arrows for Alissa and a warbow with a strong draw. It's much bigger than the current one and requires a lot more strength to draw it so she won't be able to use it for eye-popping, it's going to be used for enemies with much stronger armor, like dragon scales or plate armor. I have a plan for it that involves Lina.

Alissa bought a cabinet to put in the hallway and another in the living room with glass to display some fine plates, cutlery, and a tea set we bought along with a potted flower plant. Little by little our house gets comfier, too bad its a rental.

Lina starts to show her usefulness as she shows us she can repair Hana's armor with time, she knows how to sew and with her [General Smithing] skill she can basically repair anything not magical or made of wood. Though right now Hana's armor was too damaged so we replaced the cloth entirely instead of just fixing it.

I notice Rings of Fertility are rather common among shops, common and cheap. I saw a panty enchanted with [Regeneration], apparently it's for regenerating the hymen. Now I understand why sex before marriage seems to be dealt with so casually.

I go early to the university and report my [Sense Soul] to Mathias. He verifies it and claps his hands in excitement, he fills some papers and finally, I don't have to pay for my education. We pass by the treasury and they return what I already paid.

The skill [Sense Soul] seems dangerous, I can just imagine that with levels I will be able to know the skills and even the stats of other people just like I can see that of my lovers. All this information is stored into the soul and this skill interprets what I see into information that I can digest. In the end, information is power.

In [Electric Magic] class the professor teaches us [Shocking Touch] and [Rush]. [Rush] is a spell that gives you a burst of speed. You have to be careful as it's possible to hurt yourself if the burst is high enough because it stresses the nervous system. [Haste] is a level 50 spell from [Blessing Magic] that has a similar effect but you can't hurt yourself as it's more of a time dilation for yourself.

The professor talks about how [Shocking Touch] is an amazing spell and gives examples of tales where the spell is used, including the one where a man uses it into the eyes of a dragon. The last example he gives is me and my fight with the Symbol, thankfully he didn't ask me to demonstrate as I had used the system so I can't chant it yet.

When the bell chimes I get confused as Alissa is not waiting for me but instead, she's behind another building. Lyle accompanies me, he seems to have recovered from the last tease, perhaps he's an M.

I turn the corner of the building just in time to see Garanae steal a kiss from Alissa's lips.

*Slap!* I was about to castrate someone when the incredibly satisfying sound of the slap filled my ears. Such a glorious sound must've traveled through dozens of meters.

Garanae falls and freezes, and I smile at such a beautiful sight.

I see Alissa twitch and her hand goes towards her back, under her shirt. I get alarmed, like me that's where she hides her dagger. I desperately turn my Emergency Ring counterclockwise 3 times, it should turn red and give her a sting of pain so she shouldn't miss the signal.

"Aren't you... going to do something?" Says Lyle looking at me confused.

"No, this is the breaking point of Garanae. After this, he will never look at Alissa again."

"'Breaking point'...?"

She stops and looks at her ring on her right hand, then she takes her hand out of her shirt. She says some things I can't hear since she's too far and points to the direction the exit of the university is. Garanae gets up and talks a bit more with his posture hunched. Alissa stamps her feet talks some more. Garanae shudders and looks away, then he drops his shoulder in defeat and leaves.

Alissa immediately turns and runs towards us.

"Wolfy~! You gotta reward me with your di-..." She stops mid-sentence. She notices Lyle beside me, with his mouth hanging open.

Why are you yelling such things in public?

"You gotta reward me with your -! I need you to - directly in my throat so the taint of that man gets out of my lips!" Alissa says with a wicked grin.

Goddammit.

Lyle squirms and closes his eyes. Not as bad as last time, perhaps he's adapting.

I cough, "Alissa, why did he do that?"

"Oh my, he's such a..." She makes an angry face and a crushing motion with her hands," Well you know. He saw my blood slave symbol and he assumed I'm being forced to marry you. He simply can't believe 'someone as pure as you would be in love with someone as corrupt as him'," she mimics his voice mockingly.

"It seems he got the roles inverted."

"Yep!" She jumps on my arms and hugs me.

"I see, he never had a chance then..." Mutters Lyle.

"What did you tell him to go away?" I ask.

"I told him I wasn't a virgin and that I like to masturbate while watching you fuck other women," she answers in a flat tone.

I cringe, "That was a bit... too much information, right?"

"No, better just be over with it. He didn't seem to understand unless I was completely brutal with him. Besides, I was very angry too, I couldn't just hold back," she smirks.

I sigh.

"What did you mean by 'breaking point'?" Lyle asks again, forcing himself to gloss over what just he heard.

"Well, he's obviously infatuated with Alissa and Hatara has been making moves on him. Unless he's a completely dense idiot he has to make a decision soon enough. Unfortunately for Hatara, he chose Alissa first, but whatever, he'll go to her now and all's well that ends well."

"You seem oddly calm at this," Lyle says with a frown.

"That's trust, I love and trust Alissa," she smiles and kisses my cheek, "Also there's no need to castrate him when Alissa already did it to his pride."

Lyle shudders and we go to the buffet have our afternoon tea.

We continue our class and I succeed in casting [Rush] that lasted for a second, I immediately smacked my hand on my face due to the lack of control of my speed. Lyle shocked himself with [Shocking Touch] and nearly passed out so I think I had the less shameful accident.

On today's strength training I noticed the difference a point in my stats makes, I can basically increase all the repetitions by 10 and during the bath, I have more power to keep Hana tamed.

At night, I reward Alissa as she asked. Choo choo, full steam ahead. - She draws blood from sinking her nails on my back. She apologizes for that and I actually have to heal the wounds, can't go around with my back bleeding.

Today is the 19th.

My [Electric Magic] increased by 2 (now 0+7).

Today is a free day for Selina so Alissa and Hana go visit her. Lina and Ciel are sparring and I spend the morning with Roxanne, she strokes my hair while reading an alchemy book and I practice [Sense Soul] on my summons.

I can see where the "layer" boundary is on my soul, I can count these "layers" and get the level of my soul. I can see how the "layer" is the same as on Aoi, though hers covers only half her soul. There are no other layers on Aoi's soul and neither there is on the summons. It's something I expected since only humanoids should have the capability of gaining levels.

The skill doesn't give me a full picture of the soul but I have a much deeper knowledge than I ever did without it. I have been identifying the similar patterns between them and I think I found what controls the limbs. All mammals and humans share many similarities in bone structure, we are all basically quadrupeds that slowly evolved their bodies into different forms. Like how a bird's wing is just a thin arm with very long, webbed fingers; a dog's leg is basically a human arm where they walk on their fingers, their digits, instead of their feet sole/hand palm, which is why they are called digitigrade; a whale's flipper is just a very small arm with long fingers turned into a single roll of muscle.

Looking at the clay dolls I see there's a difference in how the "limb" part of the soul connects to the rest. While animals use muscles, which are controlled by electrical impulses from the brain, the clay dolls' bodies are hollow and they use some form of "magic muscle" to move their bodies. There are similarities to what this "nervous system" is connected to, which I believe is the "brain", but the interesting part is that this "brain" is merely a small part of what makes the soul.

Something I want to understand is, is the soul a reflection of the body or is the body a reflection of the soul? Due to how [Illusion Magic] works, I believe it's the latter. A soul has no sensory input, [Illusion Magic] hijacks the input the body receives and modifies it at its own will, then the soul receives the warped input, creating an illusion. And there's the fact that [Illusion Magic] doesn't modify anything on the body. This makes me interested in knowing how brain surgery would affect people here.

I'll tell Alissa to find me some dolls of different materials, I will try to copy the clay golem's soul and see what happens.

When we are getting ready to go to the university I see Lina and Alissa smile to each other before Alissa transforms. When we get on top of her Lina moves back into an uncomfortable position for her just so she can have her entire body touching mine. There's no doubt Alissa is influencing her to seduce me, but she's underestimating my willpower!

Blessing class the professor taught us the chants of the spells I already knew so I just focused on shortening the chant.

Hatara seems a bit sad today so I let her and Alissa talk alone. I ate my small piece of cake by myself, feeling lonely.

After class we quickly go back home and take a bath, it's time for our special dinner.

"Ciel, here's something we got for you, a gift," I present her a dress.

A red velvet dress, just the way she likes, embroidered with white flowers. It covers her whole body so there's no cleavage but there are two straps that you tighten around the waist and below the bust. This dress will show all the curves of her body, she's going to look magnificent on it.

"W-wow, thank you, Wolf. But why?" She looks at the dress, marveled.

I smile.

"Why not? You deserve as many dresses as you want, those priest robes really didn't show much of your beauty," I smile.

She sighs and shakes her head then turns around. I can see a hint of a smile.

The other girls don't hold back when it's time to look beautiful. As expected, Lina is totally on the camp of super cute along with Alissa and their frilly dresses while Hana and Roxanne are on the camp of super hot with their silk dress with cleavage.

I don't want to stare but I think Ciel's breasts grew, I'm just a bit confused right now.

"She was hiding them because she was ashamed of them and it was kinda inconvenient to fight with them bouncing around," Alissa whispers to me, noticing where I'm looking.

A crime against men.

"Why would she change now?" I ask, knowing the answer.

"Now there's someone who's worthy of looking at them," she says in a joyful tone.

I shiver. Those are two mountains I want to climb, they are even bigger than Hana's!

We go by flying dinghy. The girls quickly find their seats and leave me, Lina, and Ciel with the back seat. Ciel keeps a calm expression but Lina quickly snuggles up to me and grabs my arm.

Discreetly I put [Battlefield Perception] at 4 and I notice Ciel is stealing glances at Lina, slowly she gets fidgety. I guess she's jealous. I entwine my arm with Ciel's, she jumps in surprise but does nothing, her fidgeting stops.

We quickly get to the place and Ciel tries to run in embarrassment but I grab her by the waist and keep her close, Lina doesn't even release my arm.

The restaurant is a 3-story building with a white cupola on top. It has silver gilded corbels and windows, white quoins on the corner of the yellowed brick walls and a loggia on the second floor where our table is at.

The first floor has a reception and a normal buffet. On the second floor, the lights are dimmer and there's a ceiling light projecting directly on our tables, making it much more difficult to look at others but very easy to look at our food.

Lina is still a bit anxious that she has her own seat, which by coincidence ends up being beside mine. Her necklace is visible so everyone knows she's a slave, but it's quite common to have slaves being treated well. Perhaps they think she's my sex slave, which is… Ah screw it, who cares, let her be happy.

At this loggia we get a nice view of the castle, every window shines with light and the stone gleams with the moonlight. The lonely castle up on the night sky make up for quite the picturesque scenery.

We are high enough to see pretty far so we can see there's still a considerable number of people walking around the night streets, where only the main streets have light. The sky is clear and the psychedelic moon shines to us, though the roof of the loggia covers part of it. I can see the blue moon is shining brighter than any other.

Inside the building there's a very well lighted stage with a large open area in front of it, just waiting for the show to start.

This restaurant has seafood coming directly from Goldport so I take my chances with squid(?) rings accompanied by a sweet leafy salad and a thick not-shrimp soup. Roxanne seems delighted to eat crabs again, freshwater crabs from mangroves were a popular dish at her home.

In a few minutes, the wine is brought along the grape juice because screw getting drunk. The tables get filled and 3 women appear on stage.

One of the women is a lamia, she has from the waist up the body of a woman and the rest is the body of a blue serpent. Her hair is the same color of her snake body and it flows down like silk up to her waist, her eyes shine light blue. Her delicate hand with long nails carries a large harp.

Another is a Scylla, like the lamia she's part human with tanned skin, and the other part is a mess of purple octopus tentacles. Her hair is curly flows to her shoulders with the same color of her tentacles. Her hair along with her large chest jiggles with every movement she makes. She carries a lute as she glides through the floor.

The last woman is what I believe, a siren. She's the one who looks the closest to a normal human, her ears are spiky and webbed, her hands have a bit of webbing, her skin is so unnaturally white it reminds me of the demon-race. The most inhuman thing about her is her hair, it floats in the air as if she was underwater, it's as black as night and has no reflections, it feels like no light ever comes out of it.

The siren scans the audience, when her eyes meet mine I feel my heart beat faster and my body gets hotter. I look at my stats and see that there's "Charmed (small)" under "Status Effects". Being able to see your "Status Effects" is based on your "Perception". I guess this is why she was scanning the audience, she's the reason this place is so popular.

She lifts her hands and the floor goes silent. She starts singing and I feel my ears are being massaged, I feel she's directly whispering in my ear while the instruments cloud my mind every time a note is played. The singing of professor Alciel of [Blessing Magic] does not compare to this, this is truly a magical song.

The siren sings and dances, the Scylla glides around and the lamia slithers among us. The siren sings in a language I don't understand but I know what she's singing about, for some reason. She sings about the bittersweet life in this world, of the warm and innocent first love, of the pain of growing up and getting stronger, of the difficulties to fight for survival, of the happiness of going home to your loved ones and creating a new family with them, only for the cycle to repeat again.

The next song is lighter and more whimsical, of a traveling person scraping by and exploring the world. With this song our food comes.

Roxanne and Hana go dance in the middle of the floor. I don't dance, so no way I'm going to follow them. Ciel goes upstairs to the cupola. Lina goes to the edge of the loggia to look at the outside.

Aoi is curled up on a chair and sleeps soundly. It seems most places in this world do not care about pets, when you can easily talk and transmit feelings to them they become way less messy. I see a dog and a scaly mini horse beside other tables, pets from other rich people.

"What a wonderful place you found, Wolfy," Alissa says to me, snuggling close.

The current song is about each of the Festivals of Seasons.

"Just by luck, I guess I have to thank the man who recommended this place."

"Thank him a lot, I never imagined I would one day be coming to a place like this," she looks warmly at the siren.

Each month has a theme. Birth, Dance, Drink, Food, Color, Song, Prayer, Love, Combat, and Death.

"To a slave that wished only to treated as a tool to young woman snuggling to her fiance. You really came a long way," I smirk.

She kisses my cheek.

"That doesn't mean I abandoned my duty. It's just like you said, I can be happy while I stay true to my purpose."

I'm glad she understood.

"What do you think about the other girls?"

"Hm? What do you wanna know, specifically?"

Each month the temple tells the people to make a festival once a month in honor of these themes.

"Well just, talk about what you think about each of them. I want your opinion on how everyone's doing."

"Hm… At first, I thought Hana wasn't fit to be a slave but she was reliable and she could protect you so I thought it was fine. After you asked to marry her, her behavior didn't matter anymore so I guess she's fine."

Rabanara is a rather chaotic town so the Lord doesn't organize a single festival, instead, he encourages people to keep up the festive mood the entire month.

"Roxanne is fine too. She's powerful and she needs someone watching over her so I think you are the perfect choice for her. She won't ever think about leaving you."

"Ciel I think is the most important. I feel you will get lost in this world even with my help, I'm..." She frowns slightly, "Not fit to advise you, so I think someone with the experience of Ciel will help you the most. Just make sure you seduce her properly, she seems to be playing a bit hard, eh?"

I smile wryly, Ciel just needs a few more pushes.

The song tells us to embrace this, to keep living our lives with vigor every day instead of only once a month.

"And Lina is Lina. She's adorable and a hard worker. There's plenty of ways she will be helpful to us."

"So why are you throwing Lina to me?" I say with a sharp glare.

"You know what I want you to do to her, besides, she's getting attached to you. You are the first real man in her life so why not just enjoy her?" She says with a mischievous grin.

The song tells us of a hero, a very pious hero who lived his life like this and achieved great glory.

"Well, I don't want to just keep adding women to our life anytime someone interested appears. You might not mind but what about the others?"

"They are fine with it."

"What?"

"They are fine with it. Everyone thinks Lina is adorable, even Ciel likes her and wishes her to be happy."

"Just… don't any of you have the want to monopolize me or something? Why do you keep throwing women at me?" I'm dumbfounded.

This hero ended up fighting to save a kingdom. After the biggest fight, he was left standing alone, the sole survivor.

"Ciel and Roxanne certainly do. Well, Roxanne likes women too so I don't know much about her… Ciel is just too soft. I know she's a bit jealous of us, she keeps giving us stares and pouting. But what can you do if the man you love also gives his love to others? You just learn to share."

"But… what about you? Why do you not feel jealous?"

She puts a finger in her chin and averts her eyes in thought. Cute, argh, focus.

"Just me is not enough. It's like I said, the others have their strengths and their ways of helping you. Those days where it was just the 2 of us were the happiest I ever had, but also the most dangerous and anxious."

"Then why not hire people, why couldn't we join a fellowship with people that could help me?"

The hero felt lost for losing so much, he endured the pain and decided to go back home. Little by little his soul healed and he didn't go back to being like he was, he became someone better.

"It wouldn't be the same thing. To begin with, you are really not the type to make friends. How long do you think it would take for a stranger to have the same amount of trust towards you as Hana has? Roxanne, Ciel and now even Lina, they are all ready to fight and work hard, to shed blood for you because they love you or are starting to love you. Having to fight alongside those you love is much safer than fighting alongside those whose bonds are only as deep as a pocket."

"But what about the danger? If any of you die I will be devastated."

"We just do as you always tell us. No need for sacrifices, we will just go in a way where such a situation will never happen to begin with," she grins.

I sigh, I lose. I might as well just throw myself at these women then, what reason is there not to?

"What about Hana? Doesn't she gets jealous?"

"Hana is a freak, as long as she gets her share of your dick she's fine, I think."

I laugh, I guess it's true.

"Well, that's a bit rude to her. She does feel some jealousy but you do a good job with her so she's happy," Alissa adds, "Anyway, we talked too long, go after Ciel."

She pushes me away.

"Yes yes, just making sure where you stood before I went to her."

The cupola is a large round room with tall and wide windows, there are sofas pointed outwards and a few tables were a waiter keeps hot tea and cookies. There are a few couples around, displaying some envious public affection. Ciel is sitting alone on a sofa.

"This place is even better than the loggia," I say sitting close beside her.

"There's no wind here so it's very comfortable," she says with a smile.

I grab a cup of tea and stare towards the view for a few minutes.

"I'm glad you are here Ciel. You are the first person I befriended in this town."

She chuckles.

"So you were completely alone here before meeting me?"

"Yeah. I'm really not the kind that makes lots of friends. I just don't talk that much."

"Except for women," she glares.

"Come on, not just any women."

"That's what they all say."

I feel a hint of mockery, she's not completely serious.

"Oh? So you have experience?"

She smiles.

"You are not the first that invited me."

"But I'm the first you accepted, why is that?"

"Because you are interesting. I already said that before."

"Is that all?"

"..." She looks away I see the hint of a smile.

"I feel like I really do care about you. Call it whatever you wish but I care about you as much as I care about the others," I say.

"You care about Lina too?" She sends me a sharp gaze.

"One step at a time, I know Lina for far too little time to say such a thing."

"But you will eventually buckle."

I shrug.

"Who knows. Would that be a bad thing?"

"For Lina? No. But what about the future?"

"What about it?"

"Are you just going to accept any woman that throws herself at you?" I notice a hint of poison on her voice.

"No. First of all, I won't accept any woman the others also do not accept, I just need one of them to disagree. I don't own them, we are a team, a fellowship. I just make the decision most of the time but I want, no, need their opinion on this, we are all equals and we all love each other. And so will be you, if you join us."

She looks away and I grab her hand.

Oh boy, it's now or never.

"Ciel... would like to marry me?"

She bites her lips and thinks. I'm getting chills.

She stares into my eyes, her tone turns decisive and leaves no room for question, "No. You have to tell me your secrets first. Only then will I answer."

I breathe a sigh of relief.

"I was planning on that, but I have to tell Lina too so perhaps we should wait until we are home, it's a long story."

Ciel looks at me confused, then her eyes change to that of concern.

"I'm not a bad person. You should know I'm alone here and I come from very far away, I just didn't come here walking."

"Hm... so you teleported here? But how?"

"That's the difficult part to explain."

Her expression freezes for a few moments.

"Will you go back?" I feel the anxiety in her voice.

"No," I smile bitterly, "I decided to keep here, to make a family here."

She sighs. She interlaces her fingers with mine and squeezes my hand.

No need for modesty, I pull her close and kiss her. She seems surprised and resists at first but then she melts. I push my tongue and a few seconds later we are passionately kissing each other, I grab her waist and pull her closer. Her delicious flowery perfume, the sweetness of the moisturizer she uses on her lips, the taste of Gorgon wine on her tongue, the slight breath of alcohol. I take it all and enjoy it, this woman is now mine, she didn't answer yet but it's not needed, I know she's mine.

We break the kiss and spend some time cuddling. She pulled me in so I just enjoy it. Her massive breasts are a better pillow than Hana's, I'm sorry but it's the truth.

It's getting late so we go down and bring back the girls. Alissa was dancing slowly with Lina, they refused other men who asked for a dance. Roxanne was at the table sleeping in Hana's arms. Aoi is biting Hana's cheek scales playfully.

When we leave Roxanne wakes up and wants to drive, so I give her a head chop. Don't drink and drive. I'm the one who drives this time.

Back at home, Roxanne sobered up a bit and we all sit down at the table.

"Time for the truth," I say.

Ciel is looking at me with her mouth open, Lina is expressionless.

"You can't possibly believe we will just accept this," Ciel says.

"Just like this? No. Here, look at my ID card, look at the magic skills, specifically."

I hand them the card. Lina blushes.

"[Enhanced Sem-..."

"Not that! The magic! Look at the magic!" I interrupt Ciel.

"Oh, uh, okay," she blushes a bit.

I put 15 points into [Water Magic] and cast [Water Breathing] on them both.

"Wait, what?! This is [Water Magic] and you didn't even chant!"

"Look at the card again."

"Oh... it's true…"

I end [Water Breathing] and remove the points.

"Look at it again."

"The skill is gone..." Ciel is stunned.

Ciel covers her eyes with her hands and keeps quiet.

*Slam!* Lina hits her hands on the table, "YOU ARE AMAZING, MASTER! I always knew there was something special about you, your power is amazing!" Her mouth hangs open.

"Erm... the power is good, I agree but don't need to praise me this much. This system helps me learn things much faster than normal."

"Precisely! No wonder you received a blessing from the Goddess of Knowledge. But how does the point manipulation works? Can you manipulate my skills? I don't have many skills so after the wyvern battle I have a lot of unused soul potential."

"Well I didn't pay attention when it happened with Alissa but with the others, it was after we... had sex.

She stares blankly for a moment.

"Master! Please take my virginity!" She looks at me with fierce eyes.

I facepalm. I knew it.

"I don't want to use my power this way, sex is only for someone I love."

"Ah... forgive me, master, I understand, I got carried away. It would be shameful to use you in such a way," she bows.

The girls are chuckling while Ciel keeps thinking.

"It actually makes sense..." Ciel finally talks, "Two blessings, these coincidences, the women around you, the type of enemies you fought so far. You are being trained and tested, Wolf, you are going to be a hero in the future."

Not again...

"I don't wanna be a hero…"

"A hero is not something you choose to be, it's a destiny that's given to you. But in the end, it's the actions that you take that make you a hero."

"Then I will just run and hide someplace safe!" I throw my hands in the air.

"As if you could. You actually want to be a hero, right?" She says and grins.

"Ok, who doesn't want to be a hero? Sure this power sounds nice but I'm scared, scared of fighting and losing any of you."

"This is why the gods put us all together. It's Because we can bring you forward and help you fight," Alissa says.

The others nod, even Lina. Hopefully, a hero's curse comes with enough plot armor.

"Please don't tell me you are all here just because you believe that's what the Gods want," I say with a crooked smile.

"Wolf!" Alissa yells with reproachful eyes, "What the Gods want does not matter, I love you and you know it!"

Hana pulls me and gives me a bear hug.

"Don't say such things, Wolfy, I love you," says Hana.

"Don't make me repeat my vows," says Roxanne, pouting.

Aoi comes and curls herself on my lap.

"Kweeh!" She makes a cute noise towards me.

Yeah, I guess I said something stupid.

"I'm sorry…"

Ciel sighs.

"Anyway, don't ever tell your powers to anybody. The empire would enslave you in an instant if they knew you could use [Blood Magic] and leave no traces. This is how they make our Identification Crystals and ID's, there would be a long line of criminals wanting your power," Ciel says.

I break Hana's hug.

"Yeah, I know. This is why I took so long to tell you, I wanted to know you more before I could trust you with this. It scares me too much that someone could tear us apart," I say and look at the girls.

"But now that you know it, you owe me an answer," I stare at Ciel.

She blushes and starts flustering. After a minute she calms herself, "Wolf, I... I accept…"

"Even though I told you of how dangerous my life might be?"

"Yes, I'm not a coward, Wolf, well I was but... I trust you, I trust you will do everything to keep us safe. Even if we end up failing, that... That will be enough," she says, her face is pained but her tone is resolute.

I go towards Ciel and grab her hand.

"I will take care of you, support you, fight with you, and love you. I swear to be always at your side and that I will always work towards a better future, together."

"I will take care of you, support you, fight with you, and love you. I swear to be always at your side and that I will always work towards a better future, together," she repeats and smiles.

I kiss her.

"Now please call me Wolfy from now on, it really tickles my heart."

"Sure, Wolfy, I agree it's cute," Ciel says and laughs.

"C-can I call you that too...?" Lina asks bashfully.

"Sure, I'm uncomfortable with 'master'."

Lina smiles.

It's too late, we all just go to bed immediately.

God, I'm greedy, 4 women now.

A note from Manasong

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Chapter 17: Eyes

A note from Manasong

Attention: to conform to the limit of mature content (more than just sexual content) allowed in a novel, I've censored this chapter. You can look for the uncensored version here.

The symbol "-" denotes a section that got cut for containing sexual content. Also, if paragraphs seem missing, they were also likely censored in an earlier pass where the symbol wasn't used.

Today is the 20th.

-

My [Sense Soul] and [Blessing Magic] increased by 1 (now 2 and 0+13). Now I can see someone's race with [Sense Soul].

Ciel seems to have gone back to being an innocent maiden, she's blushing every time our eyes meet. I steal a kiss from her and sit close, she nearly loses her composure. I see she looks a bit tired, perhaps she didn't sleep too well last night.

After breakfast she goes to the living room and keeps fidgeting about, I guess she wants to talk.

I give a piece of raw meat to Aoi and she brings it to the spirit griffin that's on our back wall like always, watching Hana and Lina spar. The griffin shyly gets closer to Aoi and chirps happily, then it starts to eat, I can feel Aoi is quite happy watching him eat. I turn to Ciel.

"What's the matter with you now? Suddenly so shy."

"It's nothing."

A switch has been flipped.

"Oh? You certainly wouldn't become so shy suddenly if you weren't thinking of something... 'naughty,'" I smirk, "Come on, tell me, you know we should talk about anything bothering you."

"W-well... you, uh, you d-did it with the others, right?" She says looking down.

"Did what?"

"That…"

"What is... 'that'?"

"Y-you...! The thing, at night, together…"

"What thing? We do a lot of things at night, we cuddle, read, talk, play board games," I get closer to her.

She groans.

"Damn you! Sex, you had sex with the others, right!?"

I hear a chuckle in the distance. Ciel turns into a tomato. I actually wanna eat a tomato, I haven't found it in the farmers market or on the imports, I have to ask Alissa if she remembers if something similar to a tomato exists here.

"Yes, I did it with the others, except Lina, of course."

"T-then…"

"Then?" I get very close to her.

She grits her teeth. She starts to breathe heavily.

I kiss her.

"You know, the ceremony is merely a formality, our vows have been traded and they are valid. So... there's no reason to wait, right?"

She fidgets. I kiss her again and push my tongue in her mouth. I bring her close to me and I can feel the softness that would make men go to war to have a piece of. Her shyness quickly disappears and a thirst takes hold, she moves her tongue with vigor.

I break the kiss. She almost lost herself on it.

"Let's go upstairs," I say.

She nods shyly.

I lead her by hand and push her down on the bed. She seems very anxious, she's breathing heavily again. I look back and the wardrobe is ajar, a hungry eye watches over us. I immediately look forward and do my all to ignore what I saw.

"What's wrong?" Ciel asks.

"N-nothing."

I kiss her to keep her quiet.

I start to run my hand through her body, she squirms and locks her legs around my waist. I put my hand below her shirt and run up her body, I immediately grab her breast and she makes a noise in surprise. Such powerful softness was hidden behind a tight sash. I pull it down and play with her nipple.

She moans and breaks the kiss. I pull up her shirt and grab the other breast. Black nipples, they look delicious, I put my mouth on one and play with them. She moans and closes her eyes.

"What a crime hiding these two mounds of joy."

She doesn't respond but purses her lips.

Slowly she starts rubbing her crotch on me, I can feel its heat on my legs. I move a hand down below her pants, I reach the sacred place and feel her wetness, I push my finger inside and she opens her eyes. She's a little scared, she shivers and tries to squeeze my hand by closing her legs.

I slowly move my finger, her resistance slowly melts and she opens her legs. She's moaning constantly now and my finger makes wet noises as I quickly move it inside her.

I pull her pants down and remove her shirt, now she's completely exposed to me. Dreamy breasts with a bit of sag, only a dragonkin could have skin so perfect they would never sag. Her delicious light chocolate color makes me want to kiss her all over, her shy face waiting for me to make the next move, her hair sprawled all over the bed, large dark chocolate nipples waiting for attention, her body with curves and softness all on the right places, those damn thick thighs, the perfect trim, lips spreading out from its home. This woman is mine and I love her.

I take off my shirt and she traces her hands over my body. I have been getting fitter, even though I'm small I look manlier with this amount of muscle, I hope. When I take my pants off she freezes.

"Never seen one before?" I smirk.

"N-n-not like this."

"Oh? Scared?"

She fidgets.

I pull out the towel and put it below her.

"I'm putting it in, okay?"

She nods.

It slides in easily, such a wonderful feeling.

"Eh?" She makes a sound and her eyes open wide.

"What?"

"S-shouldn't... shouldn't it hurt? Shouldn't it have some resistance? I-I am a virgin! I swear!" She panics.

"Calm down," I pinch her cheek, "Even if you weren't it wouldn't change anything. You were a warrior priestess, the, uh, the hymen could have torn during training or fighting."

I'm actually surprised Hana still had hers.

"O-oh…"

She calms down. I smile and start to move slowly, she winces and arches her spine, then she starts to moan. That face, those sounds, those are things no other man will ever see, they are the mark of her trust in me, the mark of her love.

I kiss her, grope, finger her, suck her. I do everything I can, everything I want with her delicious body, she's just so sexy I want to bite and lick her all over. She sings for me with her moans. I flip her over, do her from behind, and pick up the pace. Dat ass, son, I sink my nails on the large peach.

"Ah, T-too... ah... too much... slow down," she barely manages to speak.

I slow down and take that moment to hug her and grope her harder. I kiss every part of her that I can reach, her face, her cheeks, her neck, her shoulder, her back, then I flip her over again and kiss her breasts, her nipples, her legs, damn those thighs. She giggles amid moans.

"Ciel, I love you."

"I... ah, love you, ah, too."

I shut her mouth with a kiss. I feel something very warm on my heart. I love this woman, I cherish her, I want to make her happy, I want to giver he pleasure, I want to keep her safe, I want to keep her by my side. It's the same thing as the other girls, I don't care if it's too soon, whether it's real love or not, I just want to open my heart to them and live a happy life together. I will take all our vows to heart.

I reach over and play with her clit as I thrust, making her sing louder. I focus on keeping a steady pace, slowly she moans louder and louder. She arches her back, her insides squeeze me, she loses her voice and she looks to the distance. She came.

After she recovers her breath I start to move slowly again, I don't hold back and squeeze both her legs together. Such tightness is going to make me cum.

"I will cum inside your mouth, ok?"

"O-ok."

She locks her eyes with mine, she's a bit concerned. I guess not everyone is a freak.

Her pained face as I pierce her puts me over the edge. I remove it from inside her and press it down her mouth. She awkwardly sucks on me and I cum down her mouth, then she swallows and grimaces.

"A bit bitter…"

"Gotta drink too much juice to make it sweet."

"Wait, you actually can do it?" She laughs.

"Secrets of my world."

I collapse beside her and pull her close. My arms and legs tie her up in place with a hug.

I can finally look at her stats:

Info

Name: | Ciel | Age: | 21 | Race: | Human
HP: | 100 | MP: | 705 | Magic Power: | 250
Level: | 30 | Experience: | 8302/9000

Stats

Strength: | 14 | Endurance: | 13 | Dexterity: | 17
Speed: | 18 | Intelligence: | 15 | Wisdom: | 18
Willpower: | 12 | Charisma: | 17 | Piety: | 21
Perception: | 12 | Sanity: | 19

Other

Status Effects: | NONE | Titles: | NONE
Affiliations: | Wolf Ryder (fiance), Helios (Fellowship), Templar Knights (Honorary Member), Temple Priestess (Former Member)
Companions: | Wolf Ryder, Alissa, Hanafuria, Roxanne Succubus, Lina
Crimes: | NONE

Her skills are:

Ciel Skill Report

Physical

Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level
Glaive Use | 15 | Sword Use | 5 | Parry | 8
Dodge | 6 | Block | 4 | Imperial Hasterrum Style | 2
Muscle Explosion | 2 | Battlefield Perception | 1

Magical

Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level
Sense Mana | 2 | Mana Control | 6 | Reduced Mana Cost | 1
Mana Efficiency | 4 | Wind Magic | 15 | Fire Magic | 1
Light Magic | 23 | Space Magic | 3 | Conjuring Magic | 1
Diagnosis | 7

Miscellaneous

Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level
First-Aid | 3 | Housework | 3 | Cooking | 2
Cleaning | 1 | Washing | 1 | Riding | 1
2 Remaining Skill Points
OBS: Level means (free point)+(trained point)

Her spells are:

Spells

Clean | Spirit Light | Heal | Inspire | Purify Body | Wind Blade
Wind Hammer | Wind Wall | Perfect Arrows | Fireball | Conjure Water | Telekinesis
Item Box (weak)

I caress her beautiful black hair, she closes her eyes and nearly falls asleep. I look to the wardrobe and give it a thumbs up. A very happy and naked Alissa with a glistening flower leaves the wardrobe in complete silence, must be [Quiet Action].

I hug Ciel tighter.

"Ciel, I really wanna know. What happened with you and the Templars that day?" I ask.

She bites her lips and looks pained.

"Please, you didn't tell me everything yet."

"I guess it's only fair…"

"You know everything about me, quite literally."

She takes a few breaths.

"What do you know about the Templars?" She asks.

"Very little, Lina didn't research this for me yet."

"Well, Templar Knights are known as 'Rabid Dogs', that's because of the system they use. Most of the knights fight alongside a lover, or more..." She coughs, "This makes them have a very tight bond, they are one of the strongest of this realm. But the real strength comes when one of them dies, the way they are trained that only fuels rage, a rage that they can channel and fight even harder. This is why they are feared, they fight to the death and more."

Kind of like what we are doing.

"I joined a unit one day and was interested in... one of them. He was a good fighter, had more honor and grace than a noble, had the curiosity of a scholar, and a killer body..." Her voice trails off.

I roll my eyes even though she can't see.

"When the time came, when the enemies were many, I couldn't follow him, I couldn't do what was almost suicide. There was a chance to live, but only a chance, when the order came to retreat I ran as fast as I could and I... I left him to die..." She makes a pained face.

I hug her tighter and kiss her neck.

"I don't want to ever be in a situation like this again, I don't want to have to run to survive, I don't want to fight against such impossible odds. I'm a coward, I know you have the destiny to fight and I will do my best to help you with that but I'm a coward," she turns around and hugs me tight, her eyes water.

"Then I'm a coward too, let's be cowards together. I don't want to put ourselves in such danger, I know I have to fight but I don't have any divine guidance saying I have to kill myself for others. I just want to live happy and safe with all of you," I pull her face up and kiss her, she smiles bitterly and snuggles up to my chest.

We cuddle and she naps on my arms. Her face is of complete bliss, it almost makes me get overwhelmed with emotions. I love you, Ciel.

We ask Roxanne for a bath and she's grinning while Ciel is blushing. As I wash her body and her beautiful ass shows itself to me, I'm not an ass man but damn. That puts me in the mood again, I play around with her body until she's ready and we do it again while inside the water. We move slowly while facing each other, my tongue never leaves her mouth. We keep like this until I finish inside her. Now I'm tired, really tired.

On the trip with Lina to the university, she tries to stimulate me again, which only makes me feel the pain of doing it too much.

Today is mana cost class. I sit down on the magic training range and an owl flies through the students, it does a spin and lands beside me. In an instant, it turns into Toroo.

"Hahah, impressive."

"My, thank you. How are you doing, Mr. Ryder? How was your expedition?"

"I'm fine, thank you. Well, we had some problems on the expedition but anyway, I got a few dragon eyes for you. What about you, how you doing?"

"Wonderful! I'm doing fine. I have been practicing hard my illusions but I reached a wall, I have to go back and brush up my theoretical knowledge, I have to study how light is perceived by the eyes."

We cut our chat short as the professor arrived. Garanae and Hatara both didn't appear for this class, oh boy.

As the bell rings for recess Lyle decides do accompany us. Toroo smirks when I introduce Lina to her and laughs lightly behind her hand. She graciously bows when she meets Lyle, embarrassing him.

"These are the eyes, they are from young dragons of blue scales, I don't know the name of the species, though."

I put down on the table a cloth where 4 large eyes are resting. The sclera of dragon eyes are any color from black to white and the iris is formed by a swirl of colors and bright dots, it reminds me of galaxies. These ones the sclera is pure black while the swirl is a mix of blues and reds.

"Wonderful, just by the eyes I can say its the common 'Azurite' species. Now, here's your book, I will give you a few pointers and teach you the chants of [Ghost Lights] and [Double Image]."

Chanting [Illusion Magic] has a sort of "waltz" rhythm to it and includes plenty of laughs. Rather curious magic.

"I simply cannot understand how such magic works," says Lyle. Alissa gives him a sympathetic look.

He's been trying to stay on the same level as our talk but failing. I guess people have certain affinities they can't ignore, Lyle certainly knows more about [Electric Magic] than I do.

Another class passes and no one makes any progress with this skill.

When the last bell rings Alissa and Lina approach us, we go towards the dwarf Gimbo Bombur. So far I haven't seen anyone ever talk to him.

Lina's Trivia: The gnomes, dwarves, and elves are undoubtedly the best craftsmen of the continent. They attribute their talent as an "inheritance" from the God of Creation, they call it the Spark of Creation. A dwarf would gladly teach another dwarf crafting skills, but Lina is a slave, the dwarves see slave craftsmen as having sold their Spark, they believe only a free person could truly achieve the greatness in their craft. Because of this Gimbo is unlikely to teach Lina, unless we do as Lina suggested, appeal to his emotions.

"Excuse, Mr. Bombur?"

"Yes," he turns to us and speaks in a sleepy voice.

"My name is Wolf Ryder, as you can see I'm also a researcher here, I'm studying [Golemancy]," he lifts an eyebrow, "This is my fiancee Alissa and this is my slave Lina, she's a dwarf too and I'm searching for someone who could teach her enchanting."

He narrows his eyes.

"Not interested."

He turns his head away.

"Erm! Please, there must be something you are interested in, even if you don't, could you allow a fellow dwarf to be like this? She was sold as a debt slave and I took her in as her second master. I want to fully raise her to be a proud dwarf, something her previous master neglected."

He looks at me, then at Lina, then at me again, and finally, he stares at Lina. I don't know what's happening but they are having a staring contest.

"The Spark of Creation resides within me, I only lack the means to do so," Lina says with a bow.

"And you would submit your Spark under your master? Let him control your heart?" Gimbo says with poison on his tongue.

"My Spark is my own but I will use every tool available to help my master, I owe him that much."

"But you still submit."

"Should we not pay our debts? Mine will be for life, there's no better way to repay it than with slavery."

He furrows his eyebrows.

"What could another do that even your Spark is up for sale?"

"Again, I didn't sell my Spark. Master gave me a new life, a new hope, a new way to see the world, and this is just the beginning. This collar is a mere formality, I feel freer than the time I wasn't a slave."

She hugs my arm. I nearly flinch in surprise but I maintain my poker face.

Bimbo stares at us for a few seconds more.

He sighs.

"Very well, child. Two gold in total, every other day she should come towards my house for training starting on the 22nd. I will only teach her until I finish this course at the university. Deal?"

"Deal."

We shake hands.

I wait until we are far away.

"If he ever tries to touch you inappropriately even for a second don't even think about it and just tell me, I will deal with him. Understood?" I say in a decisive tone towards Lina.

"Understood. Though I hardly believe he will do so, I'm actually stronger than him."

I don't know how she measured this but I guess it must be a dwarf thing.

"S-should we all enter together?" Ciel asks.

"There's room even for Lina," Alissa says.

"Please, Lina would be a bit much," I say.

"Eh, she's gonna be lonely taking a bath by herself, you know," Roxanne says with a grin.

Yeah, I'm totally gonna buckle and accept Lina soon. Hopefully, she's the last.

"Let her deal with it... for now," I say.

"A slave servicing her master is a common thing," Alissa says and turns her head away.

Ciel tries to cuddle up with me but Roxanne stops her.

"Now now, Miss Ciel, lately you have been a bit too close to him, don't you think? It's time for sharing the load," Roxanne says, grinning again.

-

"Y-you are gonna do it? Here? In front of everybody?" Ciel mutters.

"Well... it's the most practical way," I say with a shrug.

"There are no secrets among us," Hana says.

"I'm sorry but you will have to get used to it," Alissa says and rubs Ciel's shoulders.

"Didn't you have to take a bath with the other priestesses?" I ask.

"Well, yeah. But no one would do it with each other... at least not in public," she turns red and sinks on the bath, trying to hide.

-

We have the lord's party to go to so we just get a snack and leave early.

As we fly low through the town I just stare at the night sky. The lack of light pollution makes the night sky absolutely dazzling, I can see a nebula that reminds me of the Pillars of Creation from Earth. There's another that looks like a red eye with blue sclera and another that's a swirl of colors like a striped tornado.

At the gates, there's plenty of proto-butlers to guide us and a few groups of people are coming behind us.

After the first gate, there's the guest houses for royalty or other very important people, it's a rather small strip of land filled with mansions. After the second gate, I feel something weird, I don't know what so I have to ignore it for now.

We cross by the flower gardens, hedge gardens, tree gardens, pool garden, and finally, we finish passing by the side of the castle. Behind it is a row of mansions owned by the lord where his extended family lives. After the mansions, there's another wall and then the town continues for a bit more until it ends on the north gate.

We are led into a very large victorian mansion. We pass by a circular fountain and a small circular steps, then enter the mansion and after a small corridor, we are led into a huge ballroom. The floor is made of tiles painted with swirls that lead you over the available paths. The ceiling has paintings that remind of the Sistine Chapel and the walls are covered in embroidered fabric and gilded with gold. This is the most luxurious building I have ever been to in this world.

At the ballroom, there's a fiddle, some big drums, a harp, a clavichord, a few flutes, and surprisingly a hurdy-gurdy. They are playing a light and low tone as background music while the guests still arrive.

We see a few heads turn to us and a princess comes towards us in a hurried pace. She wears a long frilly dress with a wide crinoline. Her silver dress, her silver gloves, her silver tiara it all goes well perfectly with her silver hair and blue eyes making her seem angelical.

"Alissa!" Silvane calls.

"It's good to see you, Miss Silvane," she replies.

"Likewise," Silvane gives a short ladylike bow.

"Glad to see you are all fine, the battle with the wyverns was fierce," she continues.

"Did you fight too?" I ask.

"Certainly! I wouldn't dare leave my beloved to fight alone," she grins, "Ah, but let me ask something, Mr. Ryder. Weren't you supposed to be attending the university? I couldn't find you there."

"Hm? Yes, I am attending, but I decided to start with beginners' classes first to brush up my knowledge."

"I see. Because I'm already under apprenticeship I took intermediate classes. Perhaps we could meet during recess?"

"Certainly, I'm always at a certain spot at the buffet."

Alissa seems very satisfied with this arrangement.

"Excuse me, let me fully introduce you to my companions, my fiancees."

Silvane looks at me wide-eyed.

"My, my, Mr. Ryder... the emperor would be proud," she gives me a wicked smile.

"A-anyway, I have someone I want to meet, excuse me," I take my leave.

The girls stay to talk with Silvane, only Lina decides to follow.

"Wouldn't you enjoy more talking to Silvane?" I ask.

"Not really, I'm not good at making conversation during parties."

"You and me both."

I'm glad I won't be left alone then.

I notice the shining bald head among the crowd and find the glorious beard of Silas, the guildmaster.

"Good evening, Mr. Silas."

"Good evening, Mr. Ryder. My thanks to you, you and your fellowship helped us so much during the wyvern attack, the performance of your archer was astounding."

"Yes, indeed, I'm very grateful," I say through gritted teeth, "that someone such as me who has been known here for such a short time managed to be given the honor of the position three."

Silas was quite reckless to put us at position 3. From 1 through 5 are only given to experienced and known fellowships, ours is quite young to be put at such a place.

Silas grins.

"I pride myself on my ability to put the right people in the right place. Someone as reliable as you is hard to find, I am certainly in your debt for your efforts."

Ciel told us Silas wants us dead or he really trusts us, it seems it's the latter.

"I am glad to be of help to Rabanara but I greatly value the safety of my companions and fiancees, I would rather keep them away from such danger," I send a light glare to him.

"I understand," his expression fades a little, "But the next attack might be on the next year, someone like you would certainly be much stronger until then."

"Well, before next year I wish to leave town, we will likely go to the High Forest to conquer a dungeon and then explore the world."

Silas looks disappointed.

"Oh, what a shame, Rabanara would certainly benefit from your fellowship. But no matter, good fortune on your future adventures."

"Thank you."

We leave the conversation and go eat something. The food has been brought and the music is on full power. Self-service buffet seems to be the norm when dealing with adventurers because they likely do not know the etiquette necessary to have a proper meal with a noble.

I'm eating some delicious fried sweets when I feel a shiver. I look around and a presence catches my eyes, it's a vicious gaze that looks through my soul.

A princess in a red and black dress as beautiful as Silvane's comes forward. She has long glossy black hair tied up with brooches in a dignified way, her eyes look sharp and her thin lips curve into a smile when she sees me.

"Good evening, you must be Wolf Ryder, correct?" She asks, her voice rings in my ears with both authority and softness.

"Yes, I am, forgive me as I do not know your name."

"I am Vanea Anara, daughter of Lord Alaraste Anara."

I shiver. I manage to give a proper bow. She's a few centimeters taller than me, must be the high heels.

"A pleasure to meet you, Miss Anara. This is my slave, Lina."

She gives a short nod.

"I have seen your other companions, four women, all your fiancees," she sends a sharp gaze towards me, "Quite a strong and brave fellowship you have Mr. Ryder to even achieve the position three in the defense, you will certainly achieve much more in the future."

"You praise me too much. The battle was hard-fought and I would pray to not have to repeat it, I'm not as brave as some stories tell."

"Please, to throw yourself into the claws of the Symbol is enough proof of your bravery, surviving the battle with the wyverns is enough proof of your strength and such scars," she leans closer and brushes her fingers over the scar on my cheek, "is proof of your experience, besides other things."

She gives me a wicked smile. What is this woman planning? Lina is very anxious and holding herself.

"What is so interesting over such a boy," says a voice beside us.

I look to my side and there's a tall man glaring at me. He has a square jaw, golden-blond hair, and a stubble. He's wearing a proto-suit so well it's like he was born to wear it. I gotta admit, he's quite handsome.

"Are you jealous Mr. Darean? He's a new hunter and yet he's the one who killed the Symbol and even saved brother's little flower."

Darean's mouth twitches.

"The symbol was killed by the mage, he just used himself as bait."

"And what kind of man has the courage to face death in the hands of the Symbol like this?" She chuckles with her hand in her mouth.

Just what is going on?

"A fool, most likely," he says between gritted teeth.

"How rude! Dare not disrespect my master in such a way. Master's bravery is what saved all of those present during the fight!" Lina lets out her anger.

I let a sigh escape me. I don't feel anger, I'm just tired someone so bothersome is here. I put my hand on Lina's shoulder and she quiets down.

"Excuse me, Miss Anara said your name is Darean is that right? Did we meet before? I don't remember your name or your face."

"Yes, I am Darean, leader of Great Destiny, position one," his tone shows pride, his eyes show disgust.

"Then what did I do to deserve such treatment from someone as yourself? As was said, I am someone new here so I do not know what I did towards you."

"Nothing you should concern yourself with, I'm just making sure there's no fraud scurrying about near Lady Anara," he gives her a dashing smile.

She chuckles graciously.

"Please, Lady is a title, do not use it so carelessly."

Before I can speak again a huge lion appears behind Darean. His mouth is so large he could bite my head off, his hand is the shape of a human's but his fingers are furry and with claws the size of my thumb, his short tail swings about wildly. He's wearing a fur coat that tells me he's the same social level as Darean. He's a beastfolk, they are very rare around here as the continent they come from. Bestiaram is on the west of this continent, Gilios, and we are at the eastern end of the continent.

The lion puts his large furry hand on the shoulder of Darean, he turns around and they trade a few hurried whispers, the lion man is very nervous.

"Excuse me, Lady Anara, Mr. Ryder," he glares at me and ignores Lina, "I must go, for I have some business to attend to."

Go away and never come back. He bows slightly and leaves with the lion.

Vanea bites her lip in a sensual way and sighs.

"What a shame, Mr. Ryder," Then she turns towards me, her expression turns somber, her voice becomes devoid of emotion, and for a second I see the real person behind her mask, "If only he wasn't such a fool…"

Her gaze gives me chills. I have to strain myself so much to keep a poker face.

"W-what is the matter with him? Why would he be so aggressive?"

"Who knows?" Her voice returns to ringing in my ears, "his reputation is much to be desired, perhaps you had a run-in with the underworld?"

Only the Red Smile... Oh? Was he a sibling of that golden-blond man we killed? He certainly resembles him, but could an adventurer at position 1 really be related to such a wicked person?

"Tell me, Mr. Ryder. What do you plan for your future? Will you remain here?"

"Well, I plan on conquering a dungeon in the future," her eyes gleam, "But I'll leave to the High Forest for that, then I will travel through the world."

"Hm. Won't you stay at the Shore of Leaves? There's much to be gained on this land, on the contrary to certain parts of the empire, the situation here is stable but very dynamic. There are many more opportunities here for an adventurer than in any other place in this realm."

"I'm not chasing high positions, I'm only doing what I wish from my heart and one of those wishes is to see the world."

Her expression freezes for a moment.

"What a shame, if you ever change your mind remember that Rabanara is always open to the strong, no other place in the empire has the same values as ours."

"I will keep that in mind. Excuse me, there's someone I wish to talk to."

"Please come and visit me sometime, Mr. Ryder, I would love to hear about your tales of combat."

We share a light bow and I leave. I will certainly not visit.

"Master, I'm afraid of that woman, it's best we do not talk too much to her," Lina whispers to me.

"Agreed. Anyway, didn't you say you would call me 'Wolfy'?"

"N-not in public, please."

"Alright…"

I find the shining bald head in the crowd, Silas. I wait until he leaves his circle to get more food and approach him.

"Guildmaster, could you spare a minute?"

"Certainly."

"What do you know about the fellowship Great Destiny?"

He stares at me for a second, perhaps he's thinking about my motives.

"Not much and it's not good. Why do you wish to know?"

Bingo.

"Well, the leader, Darean, might have some... disagreements with me."

"You best keep away from him. He's position one so even the Lord depends on him but he's involved in far too many coincidences for him to be truly trustworthy. But do not worry too much, the temple has their eyes on him and they guarantee he's not wicked."

A consolation prize.

"What about his family? Any information on that?"

Silas frowns.

"Even if we did we wouldn't be able to tell such things. I'm a guildmaster for the hunters, I don't run a spy network, you might want to talk to the Lord or the temple for that. But if even they haven't made a move then there's not much else there," he shrugs.

"Then he's just an unpleasant person to associate with."

"Yes... for now."

"Oh?"

"He's becoming worse. It's been a month that he started to become a bit, unhinged."

A month eh? It seems quite obvious now that he confronted me. Why would he do such a thing? Well, they say that the true criminals are those you never hear about so perhaps he's not as smart as he thinks he is.

"Hm, thank you for this, guildmaster, it's enough to put my mind at ease. Not that I will put my guard down, though. I still don't consider this as a favor repaid."

"Hah! You are more cunning than your age shows. I half expected you to confront him again."

"What kind of stories have you heard about me?" I frown in disbelief.

"Those that tell of your bravery, you even bragged about it once to the late Miss Hildegard, didn't you?"

"That's just a small part of what I am," I smile innocently.

"I would have to agree," Lina says.

Silas grins, we take our leave.

"Who was that woman?" Ciel asks in a sharp tone.

"Erm, what?" I lose my train of thought.

"That beautiful brunette with that luxurious dress that so delicately traced her fingers on your cheek," I feel a bit of poison in her voice.

Wow, such sharp eyes, we were on the other side of the ballroom. Silvane is chuckling.

"That was Vanea Anara, daughter of the Lord and I mean no offense Silvane but I truly do not wish to associate with her."

"None taken. She's a remarkable woman, I believe she would be capable of making the emperor ditch his own harem if she married him."

This time Alissa shudders.

We sit down upon a table and pass time. I mostly talk to Lina about her research like we are doing every night. Apart from her burst of jealousy, Ciel is pretty happy talking to Silvane. Hana and Roxanne are out dancing again, Hana is always leading. Aoi is sleeping on Silvane's lap, it seems even Aoi trusts the pure heart of the elf princess.

Haaran and the lord passed by a few times but they were a bit busy talking to groups of people, nobles, merchants and even hunters were pestering them about something all the time.

There's a number of nobles talking freely, another opportunity for hunters to get a step in the door of upper society.

It gets late and I carry an exhausted Roxanne like a princess. A bit of an odd sight since she's taller than me but I'm proud of my increased strength. Ciel takes the lead to drive since she didn't drink and she's been practicing it enough.

I tell the others of our encounter with Darean and warn them not to ever walk alone. The only one who has permission to do it sometimes is Alissa since she's the fastest of us all.

Not enough time or energy to take another bath we just used [Clean] and go to sleep. For the first time, I sleep hugging Ciel. Hana and Roxanne are going to sleep together and then cycle with Ciel every day.

Today is the 21st.

-

I gained [Illusion Magic] with 2 points. It's a wonderful thing, but I don't have time to keep training it yet.

Lina is wearing a very loose and thin white shirt. When it presses on her body I can see the outline of her bits. When she gets close to me I can see down her shirt and into her (non-existent) valley. Flat is justice.

Roxanne has a hangover, so she spends her morning cuddling with me again. I pull out the dolls Alissa found for me. There are a teddy bear, a girl's cloth doll, and a hollow clay statue of a toddler. I put the maximum points into [Golemancy], 15, and cast [Infuse].

I'm tripping balls again but now I have some idea of what's happening. I try to remember what I saw with [Sense Soul], it takes some effort but by far the most difficult part is making the soul look the way I want. It's not as simple as imagining the pattern I want, souls aren't really "geometric patterns", it's just that my brain interprets this kind of "data" this way so just imagining the pattern is meaningless, I have to "manipulate" the soul so it forms what I want.

Little by little I manipulate it by trial and error, like a puzzle where you have to copy the solution. Eventually, I reach it but it's incomplete, the deeper parts are unknown, but whatever, let's do it. I press the imaginary "Complete" button of this spell and my vision returns to normal.

There's a small shining ball on my hand, Roxanne groans and covers her eyes.

"Wolfyy~"

"Sorry, just a second."

I touch the teddy bear, the ball disappears and nearly all my mana is gone.

I wait a few seconds, we are both filled with anticipation.

It twitches. It falls down from its sitting position then it twitches again and again. The twitching increases in intensity and it starts to move its body. Like a baby, it kicks around and rolls then the kicking slows down and it stops.

"Is it dead?" Roxanne asks.

"I hope not…"

It suddenly jerks and stands up, then it loses its balance and falls. It stands up again and falls just to stand again, little by little it gains balance and manages to stand. Then it turns away and turns his beady little eyes towards me.

"Hello? Do you understand me?"

It nods awkwardly.

I clap my hands.

"Alive. It's alive! IT'S ALI~IVE! AHAHAHAH!"

"Wolfyy!" Roxanne clutches her head in pain.

"Sorry. You should have drunk more water, remember, it prevents hangovers.

"You should have reminded me of that…"

The girls appear on the window, Lina's sweaty shirt is clinging to her body. Roxanne conjures water directly on her mouth and chokes, I thought she was proficient in swallowing by now.

"What's going on?" Hana asks.

"Behold! My first golem!"

The teddy waves awkwardly.

"Oh, my, god…"

Alissa jumps over the wall and hugs the teddy, it squirms but surrenders to its fate.

In the end, the golem behaves similarly to the small clay golems I created but it has a bit more personality than the summoned ones, that act like robots. I think the inner parts of the soul got filled with something, I don't know exactly what.

It has very little dexterity and even though it learned how to use its body it does so poorly and walks like a toddler, it also has no strength. I will have to develop an intelligence training course to determine how smart it is, perhaps I can get the university's help for that.

After recharging my mana I infuse the cloth doll and the clay statue. The cloth goes the same as the teddy but the clay statue doesn't move, it only shakes about until it falls on the ground and shatters. It's dead, Jim. The other golems look at their fallen comrade and shrug, almost giving me a heart attack by cuteness.

The golems also need a recharge every hour or they just stop moving. It seems there's plenty I need to improve on. There's also the need for vocal cords, the elementals can grunt but I don't know how to copy it or how to improve it so they can talk. I will have to work with signs, the golems don't know how to write.

Curiously they do not have a sense of self-preservation. I told the teddy I was going to kill it and it just nodded, I asked if it was sad and it shakes its head, I asked if it's capable of being sad and it shakes its head. I think there are no ethical concerns about using them as test subjects then, I certainly need to keep them without this sense of self-preservation or the capability of feeling pain.

During lunch, I remember something.

"Ciel, why don't any of you have the [Andraste Language] or [Writing] skills?" I ask.

"Oh, you didn't know? Well, to learn the skill you need a very strong conscience, you learn the language mostly when you are a child so you end up never learning the skill and going about it the normal way. Once you get older your parents tell you to wish to never learn this skill not to waste your soul potential," Ciel answers. She has a different tone when she's explaining things, it's sweeter and calmer than her normal.

"So you can 'not' learn skills?"

"Yeah, you can also 'unlearn' skills but that's a very difficult ritual the temple can do."

"So who learns the language skill?"

"Language teachers, you need deep knowledge of the grammar to actually learn it."

"Can you teach me Andraste? I have been using the skill so far but I want to use the points I put on it."

"Well sure, I don't think I'm the best teacher but I can teach the children at the orphanage at least," she smiles wryly.

I will try to read things without the skill when we are resting, though it will make talking more difficult.

[Space Magic] class brings a surprise, an awkward Garanae comes with his arm entwined with a woman. With confident steps and the dignity of a high noble Hatara leads him forward and she sits beside me. A wicked smile fills her lips and she looks away. Mission accomplished. Lyle looks surprised but then shakes his head, it seems he accepted whatever transformation Alissa did to Hatara.

The class is a continuation of theory, most students should be hitting a wall now so we have to go back to theory. Things get a bit more advanced and algebra starts to annoy even me.

We all have a break together at my usual spot. When Hatara and Alissa's eyes meet they share a wicked grin. Garanae tries his best to keep his eyes away from Alissa or else Hatara pinches his arm, he's completely tamed. Lyle is becoming adept at ignoring awkward situations and focuses on talking with Lina, to her surprise. He comes from the capital and has a few recommendations of books that teach history. Since it was a required study for a noble, he was taught it when he was younger.

"Anyway, Mr. Rizek, where's your brother, Dennis?"

"Ah, just call my Lyle already. Anyway, my brother is traveling, he met a group of Templar Knights and left to who knows where. Last time I saw him he was muttering something about 'future of glory'. Do you want to meet him?"

Ack! No!

"No need, I was just curious since he asked me to join his fellowship sometime ago."

"I don't really understand him, he had plenty of arguments with his companions and ended up changing some of them. I also have no idea what he wants, it's unlikely he wants to succeed the family and join the Lord's court. I kinda do miss him, though, not even grandpa can match his love for [Electric Magic]."

What a family of eccentrics. I don't even want to ask about his father or mother.

"Old maaan! How cruel, Ted told me you were going to dispose of him!" Ciel yells at me.

"W-what? Who?"

Alissa glares at me as if I hurt her.

"Ted! Our cute little golem."

Oh, I see. It's actually impressive how you managed to get that info from him.

"You already gave him a name... anyway if you want to keep him ok, but I don't know what golems can do, they are different from elementals, they could even hurt you."

"Ted is incapable of hurting a flower!" Alissa joins.

"T-Ted is a pure soul," Lina mutters.

I look at Hana, she shrugs.

"Ted is nice. Also, Suzy too, he will be lonely without his girlfriend," Hana says.

"Kwee! Teh!" Aoi yells.

I sigh. Future tests must be done in secret.

Today is the 22nd.

Every morning I have been cleaning my face with [Clean] ever since I got a level in [Light Magic]. I had some hints of pimples appearing but since then my skin has been basically perfect, I guess this is the secret for the perfect skin that nearly everyone seems to have on this world.

I got my first level in [Golemancy]. I will try to level it by using [Mold] on Ted. Hopefully, the girls won't mind.

"Wolfy, there's something I remembered," Ciel says.

"What is it?"

"It's about 'Gifts' there are some tales that tell of people who can do things no other person can."

Alissa tilts her head.

"I never heard of such tale before," she says.

"It's not something circulated to the populace. People with gifts are very sought after so they are generally protected, either by the empire or the temple."

"Then perhaps my abilities can be explained as Gifts?" I ask.

"Yes, precisely. I remember there's an 'Oracle' at the temple in the capital, supposedly she could look into your soul and discover what kind of Gift you have. But since a Gift is something that doesn't come for hundreds of years I don't know how true it really is. It's only something I read about by curiosity during my training as a priest. I guess those higher at the hierarchy would know more."

"Remind me of that when we visit the capital. I don't think you should ask Arantos about it, it would be extremely suspicious."

"Yeah, it would."

Ciel drives Lina to the house of Gimbo, he's a noble so they have to pass through the gate. Fortunately, our town pass also makes entering the noble's quarters easy. We got an Emergency Stone for Lina and Ciel will be in charge of the receiving end.

This morning I spend with Alissa, I'm using the [Sense Soul] to try and understand where in her soul are the vocal cords. I summoned a small earth elemental and it had distinctive long black hair and bangs, much to Alissa's amusement. I used this elemental to understand the part of its soul where it could make grunts and compare it to Alissa's.

I see something different on Ted and Suzy's souls, there's a new, small protrusion that wasn't there before, I'm sure of it.

What changed? I looked into our own souls and see a similar protrusion, the elemental doesn't have one, though. How curious, could it be the place where the name is stored? The little golems didn't have a name before yesterday and I noticed no other changes in their souls, from what limited vision I have. I'll leave it for later.

There's only a very minute similarity between the 2 vocal cords, I couldn't identify anything else. So I put 15 points into [Golemancy] and cast [Mold]. My hands glow and when I touch Ted I'm put back into the "Soul Creation" mode. I look for the part where vocal cords are and see only straight lines. Slowly I try to change the soul to be the same way as the elemental.

When I'm done Ted can mutter vowels with a voice similar to a dying old man. I try some trial and error and he improves to only an old man. Suzy ends up the same but I can't make her voice sound more feminine.

Curiously I can store Ted and Suzy inside my "Items" but when I do it with the elemental it gets destroyed. For the little golems, time completely freezes so they don't mind being stored. Once their "batteries" run out they feel like they go to sleep so they also don't mind.

When Lina comes back she's rather happy with her lesson. Gimbo is actually a very old retired adventurer and he's planning on getting more apprentices once he finishes his research. He's a Noble Descendant and lives with his wife.

At the class, I train [Animal Tongue] exclusively and manage to cast a weak version of it. It lasts less time than when I put all the points required.

At the break, Lyle and the others were waiting at our spot at the buffet. Hatara asked how nature class was and everyone except Alissa regretted listening about the Gloomy Pervert, as the class nicknamed the professor.

Alissa and I suddenly turn our heads at a frightening presence. I feel like I'm a rabbit in the open field while a hawk is approaching. The source of such gaze is Vanea Anara, beside her is Silvane, the devil and an angel are walking side-by-side towards us. With the corner of my eye, I see Lyle sweating cold and I can feel the fear Alissa is trying to suppress.

"Good afternoon, Mr. Ryder," says Vanea.

"Good afternoon. Finally found you, Mr. Ryder," says Silvane with an innocent smile.

After awkward introductions from Lyle and the others, the two girls sit down. Clearly being acquainted with the Lord's daughter and the fiancee of Lord's son is no trifling matter.

"I see you have good taste in tea, Mr. Ryder," says Vanea.

"Thank you."

Alissa diligently and graciously serves both of them.

"Mr. Ryder, everyone is amazed at the two skills you managed to create. The court mages are giddy with excitement trying to acquire [Sense Soul], they are desperately searching for someone who can teach them [Sense Presence]," says Silvane with a giggle.

"W-wait, he created two skills?" Asks Lyle, his eyes open wide with incredulity.

"Precisely, and that's not even his aim as a researcher, it was the so mysterious [Golemancy]. By the way, how goes the research on that area?" Silvane continues.

I'm getting uncomfortable, Vanea seems a bit too pleased.

"Ah, I already managed to acquire it. I can't show the results now since I left the two golems I created back at home."

The girls didn't want to let me take them.

"Ohoh. That's great news, say, are you going to share your knowledge about this magic? I know someone who would be very interesting in learning about it," Asks Silvane.

"Not for free. I think I will ask for a permanent chair in trade for my knowledge."

"Oh, that's a great idea," says Vanea.

"Hm. Have you ever thought about joining a circle of magi?" Asks Silvane.

A what?

"What is a circle of magi?" I ask.

Silvane lifts an eyebrow. Another thing I should have known about if I were a native.

"It's normally an organization of mages who share knowledge of magic, work together for a common goal, and develop Unique Spells. They also make it very easy to become a court mage."

Ahah, I knew it, she wants me to become a court mage. Everyone wants something with my power. The guildmaster, Vanea, and even my women would never fall for me if I was weak. Well this is a world made for the strong so I don't really blame them, you either live or you die at the belly of a monster.

Lina's Trivia: Unique Spells are original magic spells that do not belong to a school and because of that they never show on the skill system. There are plenty of spells that need specific conditions for casting so even if they belong to a school of magic they won't show on the skill system. These spells are really sought for because they can be extremely powerful, but they are extremely dangerous to research. A good amount of magic tools are Unique Spells.

"That sounds great, but what are the detriments of joining such an organization?" I ask.

Nothing good comes free, especially in this world.

Silvane frowns and Vanea smiles.

"You know how space mages who know [Gate] are treated right? Well it's the same thing, it all depends on how useful you are and how much backing you have," says Vanea.

"Vanea, don't exaggerate. [Gate] is a very dangerous spell on the wrong hands, the circles certainly do not put as many restrictions as the empire do."

"That all depends on the mage."

Silvane narrows her eyes, she certainly can't refute that argument.

"Well, I don't feel like restricting myself yet, I have a long way to go until I settle down," I say.

"Keep it in mind that the hunters guild and the university can give you some protection but their influence is limited," Vanea says, "The further you are from Rabanara the less that influence works on keeping interested parties away. Be careful with whom you associate with Mr. Ryder," she smiles innocently.

"I will take this advice to heart Miss Anara," I say.

"... Anyway, Mr. Ryder, did you meet with Nononya yet?" Asks Silvane.

"Who?" I ask.

"It's the summoning researcher here, she complained to me once she couldn't find you. You want to meet her now?"

"Sure."

We stand up and Lyle's group freezes, they have been very tense during this conversation. I guess I'm developing a little amount of resistance to Vanea's eyes.

"Mr. Ryzek you and your friends should come too," says Vanea with a wicked smile.

Lyle and the other immediately stand and follow us.

Silvane leads us to a large white building, it almost reminds me of a hospital. I smell pure alcohol and other cleaning agents, I believe this means there's a lot of biological contaminants here.

We enter a room and the first thing we notice is the smell of animals and the noise that comes with it. They are all caged in the walls, a variety of birds, dogs, and monsters that resemble birds and dogs. In the middle of the room, there are a few operation tables and on one of them, there's a woman with a light blue hospital scrub operating on a dead dog. I see a small and round white bunny tail protruding from her back.

"Hello Nononya, I brought guests," says Silvane.

The woman turns around and removes her head protection. White and long bunny ears stand up, white short hair raised in a way that makes her head look very fluffy, large turquoise eyes stare at us in surprise. Her whiskers cutely twitch when the expression on her cute round face turns from surprise to happiness. A human with bunny characteristics, a werebunny.

"He-he-hello Miss Silvane. Oh, Miss Anara, hello to you too," she answers with a slight bow.

"This is Mr. Ryder, the other researcher who knows about summoning magic."

"Ah! Finally, I searched for you everywhere. I went into your office but it looked abandoned."

"Uh yeah, I work at home, I don't really need an office," I say shyly.

"If you took your breaks at the appropriate time you would easily find him at the buffet," Reproaches Silvane.

"B-b-b-b-but you also don't go to the buffet!" Responds Nononya.

"That's because I'm always with Haaran. As his fiancee, we should always treasure our private time together."

"But you always have plenty of time together at night…"

"Nono!"

"Hihi. Sorry, sorry," she lets her tongue out.

Silvane massages her eyes.

"Anyway, I'll be taking my leave. Until another day."

"I'll be going too," says Vanea.

She gives me a last sharp gaze and a smile, then leaves with Silvane. The atmospheric pressure immediately decreases a few psi.

"Greetings Mr. Ryder. As Silvane said my name is Nononya. I was born on Conchononoi and came here as my lack of noble blood kept me from progressing," she says and bows.

"No need for bowing, I'm no noble."

Because I'm known by my last name people assume I'm a noble. After a bit of confusion, we finish our greetings.

Lyle and the others finally start talking. As a future healer, Hatara seems interested in anatomy and asks to see some of the drawings Nononya did from her dissections. Garanae is more of an animal person and got interested in the animals here, it must be the first time I actually saw him talking casually.

Summoning magic is basically two parts: the body and the soul. Nononya's research was based around understanding the body of the summon, which is actually a perfect copy of a living being. My knowledge of the soul is much more advanced than what she has, she couldn't get much out of [Spirit Magic] so she was stumped in where to go next. In exchange for my knowledge of the soul, she will share her knowledge of summoning.

Nononya's research goal is on improving the [Summon Small Bird] and [Summon Dog] spells, she wants to increase control over it. She's trying to summon a condor bird, which is too big to be summoned by the spell, and she wants to summon wolves.

Our time ends and the bell chimes, In the middle of the way back I turn to Lyle.

"Why were you so afraid of Miss Anara?" I ask.

"Hm... since you aren't a noble you couldn't have known. Every noble here is actually afraid of her, or rather, afraid of what she wants. It seems it's her life's goal to have Rabanara acknowledged and have her family receive the recognition they deserve. Everyone is too afraid of what she might actually do to accomplish this."

"Why would the empire not acknowledge Rabanara?"

"Well, there are a few reasons. It's too far, too isolated, too troublesome to control, and I think the most important is that the Lord is far too close to the commoners, the adventurers."

Heh, I kinda guessed that Rabanara had an odd relationship between nobles and commoners. My time here at the university as a commoner was far too peaceful.

"Human nobles that want to escape the cloak and dagger of the capital come here, so plenty of the nobles here are considered 'outcasts' by the royalty. Even grandpa was laughed at his face when he said he was going to Rabanara and you saw how much power he has," Lyle shrugs.

"Hm, so everyone is afraid they will be dragged into a war or something?"

"Well, yes and no. An actual war would be too much, the nobles are far too afraid of a real war with the threat of the Monster King. Miss Anara's real power is her cunning, she could easily sail around the power games of the royalty but anyone that follows her will have an uncertain fate."

That is certainly frightening.

I'm glad I kept a rather low profile so far. If someone like Vanea found me when I had just come into this world she would surely sink her fangs on me and drag me into her fight. Well, the more I fight the more I get involved with those sorts of people, it feels like I can't escape this. It seems useless and foolish to run, so if I can't run then I better prepare to fight, at least now I feel prepared.

I sigh. Vanea's gaze gives me shivers every time I think about her, I'll have to put some points in [Mental Resistance] next time I meet her.

At home, I start copying my notes for Nononya.

"Why don't you use the study anymore?" Asks Alissa.

"Ain't it obvious?"

I grab a chocolate tablet and eat it, then I rest my head on Hana's - pillow and pull out a blanket to cover my legs. I use [Telekinesis] to hold a wooden board in front of me so I can copy my notes for Nononya while I listen to Lina continue talking about the books she read today, she absentmindedly plays with my feet with her own cute little ones. Ciel puts a few scented logs in the fireplace and Aoi tries to sustain a flame breath to try to light the logs. Roxanne plays with Ted and Suzy, she seems to be teaching them how to wrestle.

Today is the 23rd.

My [Nature Magic] increased by 2 (now 13), my [Golemancy] increased by 1 (now 2), my [Sense Soul] increased by 1 (now 3) and my "Intelligence" increased by 1 (now 21). I was right, the small "bump" in the soul is where the name is stored, now I can see everyone's names with [Sense Soul].

I have decided to improve my MP. I have some mana problems because [Summoning Magic] uses so much of my mana and even limits the maximum, I really need loads of mana to summon a proper squad of elementals.

I will use [Earth Magic] and see if I can get a few levels on it. Level 10 [Sand Storm] and level 15 [Soul Sand] are some really useful support spells. I can also teach Lina [Manipulate Metal] and that will help a lot when she's repairing our equipment or enchanting.

As level 20 I have 80 skill points to use and 11 extra. I put 10 points into [Mana Overuse Resistance] 20 into [Increased Growth] and divide the rest into [Earth Magic], [Mana Recovery], [Mana Control] and [Reduced Mana Cost]. I assume that [Increased Growth] requires quite a lot of points to make a difference since so far the girls didn't notice faster growth when I put this skill on them.

I raise an earth wall and use [Earth Bullet] on it until it crumbles. Once my mana runs out I meditate and try to use [Redirect Mana] to speed my recovery without overexerting myself. Aoi and the griffin nature spirit sleep at the wall, uninterested at my repeating training regimen.

I don't really understand much about what Aoi thinks, I can feel that she's content most of the time but she still doesn't talk much. She seems to very observant but aside from being petted, there's not much she does. Monsters grow physically and mentally much much faster than any humanoid, this might explain how she has a high intellect, lots of knowledge about the world, but low emotional intelligence.

"What have you done!?" Yells Ciel.

I'm thrown off my meditation and feel as if a bucket of cold water was poured on me.

"Hm... what do you mean?" I ask innocently.

"The garden is ruined!"

Hana stops her training and slowly sneaks away.

"I-I need to train my mana, so I thought training w-with [Earth Magic] might be a good idea."

"A good idea? The living room is filled with dust, the flowers bellow the windows are wilting, and the backyard is a mess filled with mud!" Ciel huffs at me, her angry face is not scary, it's heartbreaking.

"I-I'm sorry... I can fix the garden…"

"You better!"

She closes the window with anger. From the kitchen window I see Alissa narrow her eyes, she closes the kitchen window slowly.

I'm sorry~~...!

I create a new shielding wall and don't let the earth hit the flowers or spread through the backyard. After I'm done I increase my mana control until I can destroy all earth I created and to lower the walls. With the spell [Grow] from level 15 [Nature Magic] I can fix the garden.

I don't feel any pain from overuse but my morale is broken. I put 10 points into [Massage] and put Alissa to sleep through her ears, then I bring Ciel to the bedroom and massage her feet. She pouts for a little while but after a sigh, she returns to normal. I had to ask Hana to take care of the lunch and make sure nothing burns while I work for forgiveness.

Hatara seems elated and doesn't stay very far from Garanae, he's getting more comfortable with her and is responding to her affection. To the delight of everyone around him, he's less uptight and rude to others.

We are all reaching walls and progress has been slow, though I have been focusing on [Rush] since it's the most useful spell for now. I need to shorten chant time and then increase duration. Using the system and adding my free points to it so I can instant cast is easier to use, but it's not as useful for training my [Electric Magic].

On the way back I feel like I'm starting to lose my control with Lina, Alissa has been teaching her very well how to - tease me. Loose clothes that let me see up her (non-existent) valley, hugging my arm tight whenever we walk, dropping her head on my lap whenever we talk about her books at the living room, wearing a very subtle and pleasing perfume on her hair that fills my nose every time we ride Alissa, and I swear she changed the way she looks at me, she went from expressionless to an abandoned puppy.

Right now she's between my legs as I use [Manipulate Metal] while she feels the mana circulation in my body and tries to copy it. Every time we shuffle a bit she presses her butt harder and harder against me, just a little more and the Buddhist monk will turn into a beast.

Unfortunately, I can't deal with her right now because Alissa told us something disturbing.

"We are being stalked."

A note from Manasong

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Chapter 18: Shadows

A note from Manasong

Attention: to conform to the limit of sexual content allowed in a novel, I've censored this chapter. You can look for the uncensored version here.

The symbol "-" denotes a section that got cut for containing sexual content. Also, if paragraphs seem missing, they were also likely censored in an earlier pass where the symbol wasn't used.

"Start from the beginning," I say.

"Well, I have always been going to the same few stores since they always have a steady of the things we eat normally. So yesterday, before we found your little... accident," I wince, "I sent Ciel to buy some more wyvern meat but I forgot to tell her to get the smoked sausage, so I went after her. That's when I noticed an inconspicuous woman with a hat, the important part is that she was too inconspicuous, she's certainly using some magic that makes it harder to look at her."

"Then what really called my attention is that I couldn't see her with [Sense Presence], she was using [Hide Presence], she's deliberately hiding. She followed Ciel and I managed to get a small look into her jaw before I hid. Then I decided to pass by her and got a sniff of her smell. Both the jaw and the smell jostled my memory, I had seen a few glances of her for a few days but never really paid any attention to her, I was too confident on my [Sense Presence] being infallible," she looks down and her ears flop.

"Don't feel down, no one would imagine we would start being stalked," Ciel says rubbing Alissa's back.

"Then I saw glimpses of her when I dropped you both at the university and when I went to get you back. I didn't see her when Ciel went to drop or pick Lina from Mr. Bombur but she could just be waiting in the middle of the way or at Bombur's."

"But why?" I ask.

"Red Smile?" Hana says.

I sigh. I hope not.

"There's also the circle of magi that Vanea mentioned," says Lina. She rubs the right spot with her ass but the tension of the situation keeps me contained.

Roxanne shudders.

"Oh no, the Dawn of Fire is a circle of magi that used to stalk me at the High Forest. They stopped once I moved into Rabanara," Roxanne says.

"But why would they stalk Ciel or Alissa?" I ask.

Roxanne lowers her head.

"There's always those hunters that want to know more about you, who think you could be a fraud. They could be jealous of your magic sword," says Hana.

"Well... stalking would be a little too aggressive for them, wouldn't it?"

"Probably..." Hana sighs.

"Then it most likely is about Red Smile, Darean," I massage my eyes.

"Is she all day there? We could follow her when she goes home and murd-... Capture her or her accomplices," says Lina.

Don't tell me you too are being corrupted.

"If Alissa can't feel her presence then she's an expert spy or assassin, who has enough experience to stalk a stalker?" I ask.

"You," says Ciel.

Ah shit.

"Not experience, but you can use your skills to increase your [Hide Presence] and stalk her... " She continues, she's cringing at this idea, but it's an idea, "What about [Illusion Magic], do you know something that could help?"

"There's the level 10 spell [Ignorance], it makes it harder to be noticed by others, possibly what that girl was using. Which means they already have the support of a magician, it makes things even more dangerous," I respond.

"Still, Wolfy, we can't let it stay like this. Being stalked is something very, very offensive to do. Nothing good will come out of it if we ignore the problem," says Hana, she looks solemn.

"Kweh..." Aoi makes an unhappy noise.

Alissa comes to me and grabs my hand. Lina finally releases me from her claws, then sits somewhere else and she looks at me concerned. Alissa doesn't say anything, she stares at the ground. I bring her closer and hug her.

"Yeah... we have to do it, you girls will follow me from a distance," I say.

"Understood..." Alissa says dejectedly.

"Should we do it tomorrow?" Asks Ciel.

"I... think we better wait a little more, perhaps after tomorrow. We can all spend some time thinking on a plan or on what might happen," I answer.

"You mean, mental training?" Asks Hana.

"I guess it's something like that. It's gonna be more difficult than just fighting monsters, we need time to get used to the idea of following the stalker and possibly ending up fighting her. Actually, the one who needs this training the most is me," I say.

"Ciel, did you ever kill someone?" Alissa asks.

Ciel looks away and grimaces.

"Yes. As an honorary member of the Templars, we killed a few bandits."

"What about you Lina?" She asks again.

"N-never. But I won't back down, if it's for defending Wolfy I will do anything it takes!" Her eyes glare in anger.

"Careful. Don't let yourself be consumed by rage, to kill another humanoid you need a clear mind," says Hana.

"I killed once and I went berserk. I would rather not feel like that ever again," I confess. It still pains me to think about that.

Alissa kisses my forehead. Ciel gives a knowing look.

I pat Lina's head.

"It's mostly us two who need time to think. But I'm sure we will be able to do it."

Lina nods and smiles.

Screw Darean.

We end up the night with a group hug. Tonight Ciel is with us on the bed and I'm feeling like I want some comfort.

"So, Ciel…"

She looks at me expectantly.

"You see…"

She looks a bit impatient.

"Alissa is a pervert…"

"Well, all of you are," she smiles wryly.

"Yes but she's a bit different. She... likes to watch."

Ciel slowly turns to Alissa, who's blushing.

"So... can we do it in front of her -?"

Ciel is expressionless. Alissa is trying to hide her smirk.

"No," she says flatly.

"Please... you already saw us doing it in the bath or the bed."

"T-that's different," she looks exasperated.

"Please. We are a family, no secrets among us and being open-minded like this only makes things easier for all of us. When we go on a trip we might not have room for everyone to have their own tent, it's going to be easier if we all share one and get comfortable doing things in front of each other," I make the best puppy eyes that I can.

Ciel facepalms. She massages her forehead and groans. After a minute she responds.

"Okay…"

Alissa claps her hands -.

"Remember that I'm doing this because I love you, I really do love you, Wolfy."

"Awn... I love you too."

I hug her tight and kiss her.

"But don't ever think that I'm depraved, okay? I'm doing it because I love you and I love Alissa too, but I'm not completely shameless," she glares at Alissa.

Alissa squirms in happiness and - Ciel groans again.

Tonight I'm extra gentle with Ciel -. Alissa was incredibly happy.

Today is the 24th.

I learned [Earth Magic] and [Andraste Language] with 1 point, I guess that skills level very slowly if I don't learn the theory behind it. I increased my [Electric Magic] by 1 (now 0+8) and increased my MP by 30 (now 630).

Ciel wrote for me some basic grammar rules and I have been trying to read without the language skill but it's very hard, using the skill really is a complete crutch for me.

I'm impressed with my MP growth, yesterday I wasn't so focused because of shame so I'm going to do the same today and focus much harder. I'm gonna need the mana for confronting that stalker.

We risked it and didn't change a thing in our routine. Today we won't be attacking, but tomorrow we will.

With renewed vigor and caution, I train my mana again and make sure the backyard doesn't get destroyed. To the happiness of the girls, the griffin spirit drops down from the wall and frolics on the grass beside Aoi, this way she might end up being the first one to touch it.

On the break of the [Blessing Magic] class, we have some time to speak with Hatara.

"So, everything succeeded?" I ask.

"Yep, he's mine, only mine," she answers with a giggle.

"But do you have guarantees?" Alissa asks.

"Heheh," she shows us a necklace, hidden under her clothes, "This is his family's symbol, his father gave it to me. Once we graduate we are to marry immediately."

It's a simple metal medallion, polished until it's almost a mirror. It has a flame and a drop of water engraved on it.

"His father was a bit..." She cleans her throat, "Annoyed at what I did to him but he relented when Gara told him I'm a mage. His father was looking for a court mage's daughter to introduce to him but he told us 'she'll do'," she smiles bitterly.

She doesn't seem very happy with Gara's father but it's understandable, considering their situation.

"Wolfy, can you give us some privacy? There's still some... things I have to teach her," Alissa says with a wicked smile.

Hatara blushes but her eyes show expectancy.

I shrug and leave. I take this time to visit Nononya.

"Do you ever take a break?" I ask.

"FUAH!" Nononya crops the scalpel with a clang.

"That was an incredibly cute noise you made."

"P-please, don't tease me like this, Mr. Ryder," she hunches over, her cheeks red in shame, "Anyway, how can you be so silent?"

"I don't have [Quiet Steps], you are simply far too absorbed in your work."

"That's... yeah, Silvane told me this once," her whiskers twitch, her ears drop. Cute.

I chuckle.

"Here are my notes on the soul. I'm still far from done, I can certainly improve more but I have many things I want to train so I have to keep a certain priority."

I hand her my papers.

"Ooh, impressive handwriting. Do you have the [Writing] skill?" She asks, swiping through my notes.

"Well, no."

I did put the skill on while writing the notes, my handwriting is some ugly noodles without it.

"Even more impressive."

I smile wryly.

"So, here is a copy of my research. I didn't write them myself, I hired a scribe to copy them, too many drawings that I will never torture myself to remake them."

She hands me a large stack of notes, most of them have anatomy drawings covering most of the page.

"Say, do you know anything about the level 30 spell [Summon Monster]?" I ask.

She squints her eyes and crosses her arms. Cuute.

"Well [Summoning Magic] is very rare to acquire since there's no living teacher for it," she increases her speed and pitch after every word, "To even reach level 30 on it would make you a master of summoning. You already have level 20 right? I heard you can summon elementals. Oh! This means you already reached level 30!?" She gets up from her chair and gets so close she's almost falling on top of me.

"N-no. I'm just asking since I heard this is the next level," I lie. Well, half lie.

I can see the spell now that I unlocked level 30 spells but I haven't used it yet, it sounded rather... Dangerous.

"Hm..." She returns to her chair, "Well this spell is incredibly useful, especially for hunters. You can summon any monster that you killed because part of their information was absorbed in your soul as experience. Though it won't be as strong as the original if your level in magic is not high enough."

I'm straining myself in keeping up with her speed.

"Please, speak slower."

"Oh? Hahah, sorry, Silvane keeps telling me this and I always forget about it," her speed turns back to normal.

"Back on topic. The monster that I summon works the same as an elemental, right? It won't attack others?"

"Yes, that's the curious thing. Anyone with [Sense Presence] will think it's a monster, though if they get real close they might sense the mana that's leaking out of it, which is unnatural for a normal monster, but not many people would know that. Though if you don't tell them to act, anyone will immediately see there's something wrong with the monster if he doesn't attack humanoids on sight."

Her whiskers keep twitching, she's making an effort to keep her talking speed constant. Cu~ute.

"Sounds incredibly powerful. I heard there's one more spell at level 40, you know what it is?"

"Nope. Nobody does, if you ever reach that level you might as well call yourself the most powerful summoner in the world."

I see. If people have difficulty reaching level 20 then [Summoning Magic] is actually a rather limited magic school, no wonder they don't teach it here yet. But if we can teach people how to get [Summon Monster] like we do [Item Box], then it could greatly influence civilization.

There are a few monsters that could give me some massive benefits if I ever killed them, seems we are going to collect some monsters for my pocket.

I look around at the cages, it seems there's less than half of the animals and monsters of last time.

"What do you do with all these animals?"

"Oh, I don't kill them all, Silvane would hit me if I did. Most of them I use to understand their behavior, I take them for a walk, give them different food, observe their mating habits," -I shudder, Tanya's flashback- "or just play with them. You can learn a lot about their anatomy when you discover all their tickling spots, can't do that with the monsters, though."

She giggles again.

"You seem very close to Silvane, how did that happen?"

"Well, Conchononoi is next to Elaria. The silver elves have a good relationship with us. Silvane also seems to adore rabbit wereanimals, my ears, specifically..." her voice trails off and a silly smile appears in her mouth.

Those fluffy ears and hair seem alluring. They seem so soft, so cute. They are asking to be petted.

"And you seem to adore them too," she says with a smile.

I clean my throat and recompose myself. I have Alissa's tail and ears, even Hana's hair is comfy, there's no need to lose myself in anyone else.

Nononya chuckles.

"Payback," she whispers.

"A-anyway, thanks for the notes, I will let you keep working."

"No problem, come back anytime. I always end up forgetting to talk to other people so Silvane is the only one who I talk to regularly."

I wave goodbye and go back to the buffet, this time there's a simple chocolate cake there, oof. I get one of the last pieces, those cakes are selling fast.

A few minutes before the bell I go back to our place and see two evil beings plotting something and laughing. A succubus with a glint on her green eyes and a fox-demoness with a bewitching tail swaying about. When I sit by them Hatara snaps out of it and blushes.

"How about we have a quick dinner and go to the theater?" I ask the girls while we prepare the meal.

"Oh? Some interesting play there?" Roxanne asks while washing leaves.

"Yeah, there's a play there called Roberto and Judea, I heard it's pretty good. I think it would be good to relax a bit, you know, like we do before a battle."

"Hm. Alright, then let's just fry so meatballs, don't wanna waste too much time making dinner," Alissa says, grabbing some ground meat from the ice box.

Lina looks at me with wonder, she might have never seen a play before. Roxanne claps the tips of her hands in excitement.

During the trip to the theater, Lina grabs my arm and leaves my hand on her thigh, dangerously close -, her thin skirt doesn't help. I'm dealing with her tonight, it's very clear the other girls are giving her space like they did with Ciel.

"Did you see her?" I ask Alissa, trying to clear my mind.

"Yes. In the morning I saw her, or rather, felt the magic that made things difficult to see so I assume it was her. When we left I saw her a few blocks away from our house," she answers.

Tomorrow after dinner we will stalk the stalker.

I breathe deeply to calm my rapidly beating heart.

I already made my resolve, I will do whatever it takes to keep my family safe.

It's 8:50 PM. The ticketmaster is working non-stop as a line of people enters the theater. I'm happy that our clothes aren't out of the norm, we blend well with the average person here, though Hana and Roxanne are more risque than the average woman. There are a few who clearly have very expensive clothes, with their ridiculous embroidery, what looks like to be gems embedded in the clothes, even shiny scales, and most ridiculous of all a few have some very flashy feathers protruding out of their clothes.

I assume that since there's no industry, having everything hand-crafted, and the use of magic allows for some very advanced fashion, like Snow Weave, but makes it very limited in supply. The nobility also doesn't seem to have a monopoly on fashion, creating this carnival of time periods where the most "fashionable" person is the one with the most unique or well-crafted clothes. Though official positions seem to follow a standard in uniforms, like how Rabanara's attendants seem to like velvet.

We enter the theater and pay 50 silver per person. Lina and Ciel grimace at the cost.

This time we are on the main floor chairs, the balconies are ridiculously expensive and the main floor gives enough of a good view. Most of the ridiculous looking people go to the balconies.

It really is Romeo and Juliet. The families and Paris are put into a very bad light for trying to force Juliet to accept Paris. Prince Escalus is seen as a strict and foolish Lord who deals judgment without a Judge or listening to the circumstances. And Romeo and Juliet are seen as foolish for choosing suicide, though their love for each other is respected.

Alissa and Ciel are sniffling. Roxanne is simply entranced and Hana looks at her with warm eyes. Aoi fell asleep in the first few minutes. I would be paying more attention to it but Lina is absentmindedly caressing my hand, taking my focus away.

What do I even see her as? She's clearly smitten by me and following all of Alissa's advice on how to seduce me, but why? What does she want from me?

Every girl is with me for a reason. Alissa needed a master to follow, someone to honor her clan, she did not need to be a tool for this so she changed her personality to please me. Hana wants to stay safe from the scheming that tore her family apart, it might be impossible to stay away so we all have to work together. Roxanne was a lonely woman who wanted the happiness she denied herself, I can give her a strong reliable family where we rely on each other. Ciel wanted adventure but she wasn't ready for the ultimate sacrifice, like me she wants to help but doesn't want to tread too close to death.

Is Lina looking for safety? Is she looking for the power that I give? Does she simply love me? Does she want to seduce me for better treatment? Or is it just lust since I'm the first real man in her life (Dietgard does not count, in more ways than one)?

Does it matter...?

Love is different here, the weak love the strong. As a slave marriage is a far-fetched dream for Lina, marrying someone you truly love and being exclusive is an even more impossible dream. For her, I must be a prince.

So why did I reject her advances until now? I'm not sure, I think it's because now that my mind is in a better place I regained my resistance to women. After putting a ring on my hand due to Lily certain women became much more flirty and I took pride that I was unaffected by them, it's regrettable that such homewreckers exist but they do. I guess this is why I rejected her, pride, pride that I was immune to women that threw themselves at me.

But now I actually like Lina, of all the other girls she's the one with the personality the closest to mine. Quiet, reserved, introverted, curious, a bit cynical. While she enjoys reading about every book at the library I enjoyed going into my blue link adventures on Wikipedia. Even our outlook at life seem similar, we are both bitter realists.

Then there's the fact that she's a slave. Different from a Blood Slave that can escape if they have enough willpower or are being treated bad enough, the traditional slave doesn't have a chance for this, unless if she runs to the temple. To treat her well, to give her the best life she could wish for, those things are entirely my responsibility.

I guess I should do as Alissa said, I will just enjoy her, protect her and keep her happy, just like I do with the others. Though I'm not sure how our relationship will end up as being, she seems very insecure and has difficulty expressing her feelings, perhaps her feelings for me will evolve.

Once we go back home I grab Lina's hand and lead her, she seems completely surprised at my action. I guess all the coaching in the world won't change her shy nature. When on the jaws of the beast even the bravest warrior can falter.

"Let's talk a bit over here," I say and pull her to the living room.

The girls go upstairs to the bed and I see Ciel smirk. I can't really discern their positions inside the house but I bet Alissa is outside by the door.

I sit on the sofa and she sits on my lap without hesitation. Her aggressiveness becomes adorable because she completely stiffens when I hug her.

"What do you see in me?" I ask.

"W-wha-what...? I..." Her voice trails off.

"Hmm... maybe that wasn't fair to ask. If you can't tell me then show me what you want from me."

I turn her around. She's trembling and avoiding looking at me, her face is beet red. She's straddling me and her skirt is riding up, if I look down I will see something wonderful.

"I... I want you..." She mutters and keeps her head down, then she starts to breathe heavily.

"Show me what you want."

I grab her chin and bring her face up. I stare into her eyes, her expression shows fear. She swallows and her breath normalizes, she calmed herself. Her fear turns into courage and she kisses me.

She freezes during the kiss, after a few seconds she breaks the kiss. She starts breathing heavily again. So adorable.

I kiss her and now I push my tongue. Her mouth opens easily and I explore her mouth. Her tongue twitches and slowly she starts moving. Her hands that were hanging loosely beside her desperately grab my body, then she hugs me tight and intensifies the kiss.

She starts whimpering and I break up the kiss.

"What's the matter?" I ask.

She's almost crying. She looks down again.

"I just... I felt so…"

"Lonely?"

She shakes her head.

"Scared?"

She doesn't move.

"Because you thought I would abandon you?"

She squirms, I feel her heart beating faster.

I bring her chin up and her expression shows fear again.

"I won't abandon you. Not now, not ever, understood?"

She nods.

"You don't have to worry. We will grow old together, even when your contract ends I will keep you with me. If you would still like it," I smile warmly.

She nods furiously.

"Then there's nothing to worry about."

Her breath quickens again and this time she kisses me, her tongue explores mine. She hugs me tight, as tight as those twigs she calls arms can without using magic.

I push my hand up her shirt, slowly I go up until I find some very small softness and a very stiff nipple. I slowly rub it and she squirms.

She breaks the kiss and hangs her head on my shoulder. I use my other hand and play with her other nipple.

She moans so softly and high pitched it's almost like a cat meowing. I push her away and she keeps her eyes closed, her face scrunched up in embarrassment. I lift her shirt and start licking her nipples, pink and small, only barely noticeable breasts.

She slowly stops trembling and fully enjoys my tongue. I slowly drift my hand downwards and when I get in the border of her panties, she starts trembling again. I keep drifting my hand until I reach the entrance, she needs a bit more time so I slowly rub her.

Her meows grow louder, her breath quickens even more. She hugs me tight and forces herself to keep her legs from closing.

I get up with her hanging on me and lower her properly on the sofa. She's quickly getting wetter and wetter. I pull out a towel with one hand.

I pull out her delicate shoes and kiss one of her cute feet. She opens her eyes and giggles. Then she goes back to moaning, I didn't take my hand off the middle of her legs.

I lower my pants and she looks at me with fear.

"I will put a bit of oil, won't hurt... as much."

Thank God "Items" keeps the temperature of the objects I put. I pull out some warm scented oil and rub it on my member.

I see fear turn into a bit of anticipation. I pull down her black laced panties and raise her skirt. A trimmed black bush just like Alissa's, a very pink slit glistening with moisture.

"Ah... D-don't look."

"Sorry, but I will look, I will look at every nook and cranny of your beautiful and cute body."

She covers her face with her hands and whimpers. I slowly pull her hands apart.

"Look at me, Lina."

Slowly she opens her eyes. She's still cringing in embarrassment.

"Look at me."

She bites her lips, I kiss them and she smiles. There we go.

I bring her waist up and angle it right. I turn on my Ring of Fertility, I never take it off. Slowly I push it in, a barely perceptible resistance is effortlessly pierced through. She's tight, very tight. She meows loudly.

I'm intoxicated with lust, it's taking me a lot of self-control to keep myself from simply ravaging her innocence. Hana has been having quite an effect on me.

"If it hurts tell me, if you want to stop tell me, understood?"

"U-understood."

I hold her face towards me and touch our foreheads. Our breaths mingle and we stare into each other as I push. She bites her lips but endures.

I get inside her completely and I stop. Her face, tense from pain, slowly loosens and relaxes.

"I will start to move, okay?"

She nods.

Very slowly I move. Even for me, it's gonna be difficult to hold on, it's so tight.

I play with her nipples while I move. She's holding her voice or otherwise, I think she would be screaming, not from pain, I just know she wants to be loud.

She looks so frail, so small, so weak, so vulnerable, so cute. She tickles my heart and all I want is to protect her, to hug her tight.

Slowly her voice starts to escape and she starts to yell, which turns into screams as I pick up speed. The tightness is so amazing I don't last, I pull it out and finish all over her body and face.

Defiled Angel, this is the name of the painting, the name of the scene she is in right now. Her cute face is that of bliss, her pure body dirtied by me. She grabs a small glob on her face, she tastes it and grimaces.

"I-I'll get used to it..." She mutters.

I chuckle. I cast [Clean] on her and wipe the rest with the towel, there's no blood on the towel, thankfully.

"Thank you…"

"You wanna sleep on my bed? I think Ciel is in her room."

I can't really discern the exact position she is through the fellowship connection, though I'm pretty sure Alissa is on the stairs, going back to our room.

"If I can," she mutters again and looks away.

I hold her hand and she gets up, she wobbles a little.

"It might feel weird to walk, so let's go this way."

I grab her and carry her like a princess. She doesn't say anything and just buries her head on my chest, I can see a smile on the corner of her mouth.

Today is the 25th.

-

My [Earth Magic], [Redirect Mana] and [Blessing Magic] increased by 1 (now 0+2, 3 and 0+14), my MP increased by 40 (now 670) and my "Magic Power" increased by 20 (now 260). Impressive gains but I'm a bit tired, I will "rest" this morning, the other girls need attention.

Now I can finally see Lina's status:

Info

Name: | Lina | Age: | 18 | Race: | Dwarf
HP: | 100 | MP: | 200 | Magic Power: | 105
Level: | 14 | Experience: | 223/3000

Stats

Strength: | 7 | Endurance: | 8 | Dexterity: | 12
Speed: | 11 | Intelligence: | 16 | Wisdom: | 11
Willpower: | 17 | Charisma: | 10 | Piety: | 10
Perception: | 14 | Sanity: | 11

Other

Status Effects: | NONE | Titles: | NONE
Affiliations: | Wolf Ryder (master), Helios (Fellowship)
Companions: | Wolf Ryder, Alissa, Hanafuria, Roxanne Succubus, Ciel
Crimes: | NONE

So she's legal even though she looks so young? Nice...

Her skills are:

Lina Skill Report

Physical

Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level
Hammer Use | 6 | Parry | 1 | Dodge | 1
Block | 3

Magical

Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level
Sense Mana | 1 | Mana Control | 2 | Mana Efficiency | 1
Fire Magic | 1 | Light Magic | 1 | Space Magic | 1
Conjuring Magic | 1 | General Enchanting | 3 | Magic Tool Carving | 1

Miscellaneous

Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level
General Blacksmith | 3 | Sewing | 3 | Housework | 1
Cleaning | 2 | Washing | 1 | Math | 4
Riding | 1 | Stonebody (innate) | 3
15 Remaining Skill Points
OBS: Level means (free point)+(trained point)

Her spells are:

Spells

Clean | Spirit Light | Fireball | Conjure Water | Telekinesis | Item Box (weak)
Enchant | Carve | Spirit of Gaia

With 15 skill points remaining she will learn [General Enchanting] much faster. The amount of free skill points you have is called "soul potential". The more skill points remaining you have, the more your "potential", the "easier" it is to learn a skill. You can even have negative skill points, which will greatly reduce the speed you learn new skills. Lina was actually in the negative before the wyvern battle.

So it's not necessary to level to learn to craft. You can also learn anything the normal way and just ignore the skill system, it just takes much longer.

[Stonebody] passively increases your "Strength" and "Endurance" by the level of the skill so Lina actually has the same strength as me. [Spirit of Gaia] gives a boost to the passive at the cost of mana. This is why dwarves are so strong even though they have very little body mass.

Lina's Trivia: Gaia is the name of the human that gave birth to the first dwarf, feeling blessed by the God of Creation she took upon herself to lead the new dwarves. She founded a kingdom, Mountainhome, and became their first queen.

Now I'm quite sure that we can surpass human strength without the proper muscle mass for it. Hana is incredibly strong but her body is lean, she's toned but she's far from looking like a weightlifter. Lina also has the same strength as me when I first came to this world and I was a bit more toned than the delicate twigs she calls arms, so there's more to this stat than pure muscle mass. Perhaps its growth is also related to level, I did get extra points after the wyvern battle.

Lina comes back from the enchanting lessons looking very proud, she presents Alissa's warbow to us.

"Mr. Bombur actually thinks I'm a genius now," Lina says, smiling.

"You are just a cheater," Ciel says.

The skill system gives muscle memory, intuition, and guidance, but it gives no real knowledge. Putting all Lina's extra points into enchanting made her life much, much easier but it didn't make her an expert in enchanting, she still needs someone to teach her the enchantments. Today she succeeded at enchanting the warbow with [Loosen], an enchantment that makes it easier to draw the bow.

Right above where you grip the bow a small ring with a transparent crystal was added, this is where the spell is stored. Parting from the crystal, silver lines run through the wood. A small ring with another transparent crystal is put just above the place where you rest the arrow. This way once you nock an arrow and feed it just a bit of mana the bow will loosen and get easier to pull. Once you loosen the arrow it will stiffen back and throw the arrow just like a normal bow.

"It really is a cheat," I say.

We also have properly fitted Lina with armor. We used the older Grey Berserker armor set we had and had it reduced to her size and gave her a coif. We also got her a metal kite shield with a boss in the middle for gripping and bashing. She's smaller than me so a small shield is enough to protect her whole body. Her war hammer is a long wooden shaft with an expensive steel head. Her eyes gleamed when she saw it, must have been the most expensive thing she ever used.

The stalker didn't change, he's still watching us go. The class was a blur, as always no one has any progress with [Reduced Mana Cost].

"Are you okay, Wolf?" Lyle asks.

"Uh? What you mean?"

"You are very quiet, well, quieter than usual and your expression is very neutral. Normally you seem like you are always smiling a bit, even with your eyes," Lyle looks at me concerned.

"Seems he's ruminating on something," says Toroo.

"Wow, didn't think you were this observing. Well, I just have a lot on my mind so I have been thinking a lot."

"Hmpf, I'm a noble from the capital, Wolf, if I wasn't at least observant enough to know your emotions I would be considered a failure," Lyle says with his chest swelled in pride, "In any case, you can always count on my help, though I'm not sure I can help a lot."

Lyle looks away embarrassed. Hatara looks concerned while Garanae keeps a poker face. Toroo smiles warmly. Alissa and Lina know what I'm thinking about so they keep quiet.

"Thank you for your concern, Lyle, really. It's something that I will deal with so there's nothing to worry about, I'm just a little anxious," I smile warmly.

When we go back home Alissa tells us she's a few blocks from our house. It's time.

I have 91 skill points. I put my skills like this:

Wolf Ryder Skill Report

Physical

Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level
Sword Use | 0+6 | Dodge | 0+5 | Parry | 0+5
Block | 0+8 | Shield Bash | 0+1 | Muscle Explosion | 0+1
Battlefield Perception | 2+1 | Quiet Steps | 10+0 | Quiet Action | 10+0
Sense Presence | 11+0 | Hide Presence | 10+0

Magical

Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level
Sense Mana | 0+5 | Mana Control | 0+7 | Mana Recovery | 0+0
Mana Efficiency | 0+5 | Reduced Mana Cost | 0+0 | Mana Overuse Resistance | 0+2
Electric Magic | 0+8 | Earth Magic | 0+2 | Light Magic | 6+4
Nature Magic | 0+13 | Space Magic | 14+16 | Summoning Magic | 11+9
Blessing Magic | 0+14 | Illusion Magic | 8+2 | Golemancy | 0+2
Redirect Mana (creator) | 3 | Sense Soul (creator) | 2

Miscellaneous

Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level
Andraste Language | 9+1 | Dismantling | 0+2 | Enhanced Semen Recharge | 0+3
OBS: Level means (free point)+(trained point)

I feel naked without my melee and the mana enhancements skills. I have to wear a cloak over my armor and I can't carry my shield. This is so dangerous.

"Be safe," Alissa tells me.

"We will be right behind you," Hana assures me.

"It will be alright," Roxanne comforts me.

"You can do this," Ciel cheers me.

Lina seems lost for words and merely looks at me with anxiety.

"I'll come back," I tell her.

Each gets a kiss. I cast [Ignorance] on myself.

"This is a bit odd, my eye wants to look away, as if it hurts to look at you," Alissa says.

"I can't see shit, it's like you are invisible," says Hana, the one with the lowest "Perception".

"I can feel the mana when I'm near you, though," says Roxanne, the one with the highest [Sense Mana].

"Even though this does wonders to hiding, it would be extremely suspicious to walk around with it, you only need one person to feel the oddity and you are screwed," I say.

No more time to waste, I move towards her last known position.

"Turning on" all those sneaking skills makes me feel like my body is made of lead but I can actually move normally, it just takes a lot of mental effort. I wonder if Alissa feels the same, probably not otherwise she would be mentally exhausted. Is this a limitation of the system? I see that the range of my [Sense Presence] isn't that much far, each level gives less and less range. Because I have a lot of skills I shouldn't have it's giving me some sort of diminishing returns? I should have tested this before but I didn't think such problems would exist, right now I gotta deal with it.

Less than a minute after leaving I see her. The only person currently walking on this street. I can sense her presence, I turn the corner and see her walking away. Grey cloak, straw sun hat, lowered head, a hint of a thin jaw. With a bit of difficulty, I keep my eyes on her and stare long enough to use [Sense Soul].

Soul Info

Name: | Farana Uiara | Race: | Human | Level: | 37

The level of an experienced adventurer. She's dangerous.

I keep my distance and stalk her. Only a few people are wandering about, drunks, people about to become drunk, bored guards, late adventurers, workers closing shop. Very few people on the street as the sun has now set and it's dark. Slowly the magical street lights turn on.

I follow her for a long time, we are crossing town and I'm not liking the direction she's going. It's the slums, the part of the town I avoided and never ever got any close.

Slowly the crooked and mixed buildings turn less crooked but more battered and run down. The mixed architecture goes away and only simple, weak-looking wooden buildings remain. I think that this part of town would get completely destroyed on an attack so this is why the buildings look relatively the same.

The street gets dirtier and slowly I start smelling something I never smelled on this town. Piss and shit. The brick roads get worn down and patches of dirt appear.

I see a curious group, 4 guards protecting a duo of priests. It seems they are casting [Clean] around town but it does little amidst all this filth. None of them even spared a glance to either of us, we are both completely hidden in plain sight.

The buildings get even worse and I start to see sick homeless sleeping around the buildings. Children and old people, cripples and the not-so-sane, drunks and drug users. Screw me I live in the really good part of the town.

We enter a narrow alley and my heart stops, a perfect place for a trap. I nervously follow, I can sense the people inside the houses and no one makes a move, they are mostly sleeping or eating, or possibly plowing.

We leave the alley and I let out a breath of relief. But the place we are now is worse, there are no homeless here, it's a wide-open space.

Farana runs. Shit. Six bleeps come running from the alleys towards me. SHIT!

I turn the Emergency Ring red and draw my sword. Someone cloaked appears in front of me, he's walking straight to me. I see a slight rainbow shine, he has [Rainbow Shield], [Ignorance] doesn't work as well against him.

"You! Stop right there, if you come closer I will kill you," I warn the cloaked person.

The man stops but the other 5 don't.

"Same goes for your five other friends!"

Now they stop. Wait a second, I get the weird feeling again before the party.

"You have 10 seconds to drop your weapon and come with us, quietly, or we will force you," says the man in front of me."

"10."

Oh no.

"9."

"8."

"7."

It doesn't work.

"6."

"5"

"4."

IT'S NOT WORKING!

"3."

"2."

"1…"

[Gate] IS NOT WORKING!

The 4 rush forward, 2 stay back and I sense mana gathering.

Shit,shit, shit. I'm going to die.

I summon 4 earth elementals, can't concentrate they are all made of dirt and stone with a head full of long black hair. The group stops for a second.

"Protect me!" I order them.

My head hurts, this was too much to cast on a single second. I cast [Lightning Bolt] on the man in front and follow with [Entangling Vines]. Now my head explodes in pain, overuse. Keep it together!

The man pulls a small shield and blocks the bolt, it did nothing, but the vines tangle on of his foot and he falls once he tries to walk again. I rush towards him.

With the help of [Telekinesis] I bury my sword on his head, it goes through mail and leather up to halfway to his skull, he's dead.

I can't stop, I gotta move, gotta move, gotta move.

With a bit of effort, I take my sword away and look around. 2 elementals are fighting a sword and shield duo to my right, in front, an elemental is getting hit by a huge [Earth Bullet] and it's now skidding on the ground. To my left another elemental is on the ground, cut in half vertically, a huge man with blue dragon wings is charging towards me, he has a dark two-handed flamberge, there are jagged edges at each wave.

I'm going to die! I gotta survive this charge!

I cast [Vine Weapon] and create a small shield. I jump sideways to dodge and use my shield to deflect the blow. The sword ignores everything and cuts my hand away.

"AAA-..."

My scream of pain gets interrupted, I feel "death" approaching. I use [Explosive Muscles] to move my upper body to the side, I feel a gust of wind and mana from my [Wind Armor], then a horrible pain surges on the right side of my neck. I fall on the ground and put my hand on my neck, it's wet and warm, I'm bleeding horribly, I cast the biggest [Heal] I can in a second.

"You aren't supposed to kill him!" Yells the dragonkin.

"HE KILLED NARIAN!" Someone screams.

"SCREW NARIAN, WE AREN'T SUPPOSED TO KILL HIM!" Screams the dragonkin from the bottom of his lungs.

I cast [Lightning Bolt] on the dragonkin, it doesn't work, it won't come out of my handless arm. I use the other, the bolt flies.

"Heh," Laughs the dragonkin, the bolt arched towards the sword and disappeared.

WHY DOESN'T IT WORK!

I cast [Earth Bullet], it hits him square in the chest and the dragonkin flies away. A flying rock is still a flying rock, block this spell you bastard.

"What the hell," says someone.

A small breather, I can survive a bit longer.

One elemental dies, the mage got him.

My vision is foggy, too much mana in too little time, my head is splitting open. I get up, my stump is bleeding profusely, my legs are shaky, my neck is still bleeding.

I see a hooded archer looking at the dragonkin, who's slowly getting up. The archer looks at me with fury and draws another arrow, I feel "death" coming again.

*Thunk*. I hear an arrow getting embedded in flesh. The archer falls on the ground with an arrow behind his head, he's dead.

"You dumbasses took too long!" Yells the dragonkin.

Another elemental dies, one of the two swordsmen destroyed an elemental.

"SCREW YOU SHITSTAINS. I WILL KILL YOU, I WILL KILL YOU!" Screams Hana, I guess she's too angry to be creative.

She lands in front of the dragonkin with a savage overhead slash. The dragonkin grunts and parries Hana.

The mage gathers mana, it's a robed woman. She's ignoring me, the taunt worked.

I rush her, you don't let a mage cast freely. Once she hears me it's too late, I jump on her and bury my sword on her chest, then I collapse on top of her.

I feel mana gathering away, I hear footsteps and sounds of blades hitting shields.

I see her yellow skin, backward-pointing horns, her hooves, and fluffy goat legs, she's a krampus demon. The mage is still alive, trying to crawl away with the sword on her chest. I draw my dagger, I bury it on her back and twist it.

"HYAAAAAAH...!" She shrieks and squirms below me. I feel horrible, I almost puke.

"Please... help me... I don't... wanna die," she pleads.

I can't, it's you or me, I can't. I remove the dagger again and stab her on the back of her neck, that did it. She gargles on blood and goes limp a few seconds later.

I look in front of me. The dragonkin has an arrow on his chest, bodkin arrows doing work, he's being hit by a [Torrent] and falls on the ground. Hana is mid-flight and ready to skewer him, her face showing pure anger, something I never saw before.

Ciel is slashing at one of the swordsmen, he's suppressed and moving backward. The other is still fighting the elemental who's missing an arm and plenty of the dirt on its chest is missing.

I hold my stump. It hurts too much, it's bleeding too much, my body feels cold.

Hana falls on top of the dragonkin, her sword pierces him and gets embedded on the ground, he struggles and tries to grab the sword. Hana stomps on his neck repeatedly, I hear the bones breaking.

Roxanne casts [Fire Whip] on the swordsman fighting Ciel, she grabs his foot and he loses his balance. Ciel stabs him in the shoulder and he drops his shield, screaming in pain. He tries to parry the next stab but lacks strength, Ciel stabs him in the heart and after a few seconds of struggling, he goes limp.

Alissa runs as a fox behind the last swordsman, he looks deathly pale, he's desperate. He tries to run away but falls on the ground with an arrow on his thigh and screams in pain.

"MERCY! PLEASE, I YIELD!"

Lina comes running towards me, she has my hand with her. Her face is wet with tears. I turn off [Ignorance].

"Get Ciel... I don't have much mana..." I mutter, my voice is hoarse, it's painful to talk.

I'm shaking uncontrollably. I feel my legs are wet and warm, it's the blood of the mage that's pooling below me.

I crawl away from the blood and nearly collapse. I drink an emergency MP potion.

I hear the man scream again, Hana stepped on his other leg and crushed his knee. Alissa, Ciel, and Lina rush to me.

Alissa casts [Clean] while I hear Ciel hurriedly chant a [Heal], Lina brings my hand and holds it on my stump.

I feel a little bit of pleasure and almost cry, the pain on my stump fades and I regain the feeling of having a hand. For now, I can barely close my fist, tomorrow it will be much better. Ciel casts another and my neck stops hurting. Alissa and Lina hug me and cry.

I almost died.

I don't feel like puking, progress, but I can't feel my legs, adrenaline is one hell of a drug. It seems infinitely easier to kill monsters than humanoids, or maybe I'm just the weird one.

I don't know how long we kept the hug. The screaming man got muffled, sometime later I hear him mutter something and then he stops talking. Slowly I regain my movement, the girls help me walk.

The other 3 are surrounding the last man and notice me, their eyes hold nothing but coldness to the surviving man. Aoi is on Roxanne's shoulders, there's smoke coming out of her nose, I can feel through [Animal Tongue] that she's grumbling. I wobble towards them, I'm still sweating cold.

"You okay?" Asks Roxanne.

"I think so," I answer. I look at my hand and see it's trembling a little.

"It's okay, it will pass," says Ciel. She holds my shoulder and rubs my back. It helps, gives me a bit of comfort.

Lina grabs my other side, she's still silently crying.

My breathing is erratic, I focus on controlling and slowly it turns back normal. My head is still hurting a lot.

"Did you interrogate him?" I ask.

"Yeah, they don't know anything significant, just hired swords," Hana answers with poison on her voice, "The stalker would come here every day and make the same routine while they wait. The stalker probably didn't even know you were following."

"Anything about who paid them?"

"Nothing, just shady middle-men that only go by nicknames and masks. No wonder nobody gets a lead on Darean, he must have lots of money to buy silence and lackeys."

Being a hunter pays well in Rabanara, we are proof of that.

"Kill him," I mutter.

Ciel sighs and nods to Hana. She lifts her sword and the whimpering man screams in fear, it gets cut short as his head falls from his body. I'm starting to feel sick again.

"You are now level 21."

That was necessary. Darean shouldn't know about my chanting speed and the extent of my magical knowledge, neither should he know about how close to failure we were. If he does, next time he's going be fully ready for us.

"Bring me the bodies," I say.

"What? Why?" Asks Ciel.

"Infinite space," I answer.

"Oh! Clean all the blood you can and get all the items. Not many people should know what happened here," Alissa says.

"Why!? Let's talk to the guards!" Ciel yells, confused.

"It's because we collected a bounty that we are in this mess, to begin with. Let's lay low for now," says Hana.

"Oh. I remember... Gods help us, let the wicked stay away from us, let this family be safe," Prays Ciel.

I look at the headless man. I don't feel anger, he's just a hired sword. I feel pity, pity his life ended like this. The Gods tell us not to waste our lives, to work together for a better future, for a better chance of surviving the monsters. Yet here we are, hurting each other for money.

"Let your next life be on a better place for this one was wasted here," I pray.

I feel something change within me, my "Piety" increased by 2 (now 14).

"This sword is special, this guy must have been famous," says Hana.

The two-handed flamberge is beautiful and frightening. It's made of black metal with small monster teeth embedded into it. The metal looks glossy and it faintly sparkles in the light.

"That's 'emellanat', a metal that absorbs magic," Lina says, "It must have come from either Mountainhome or the silver elves. There's not much metal in Rabanara and definitely none of the special kind."

So this is why [Wind Armor] and [Vine Weapon] did nothing against it.

"Why does it use monster teeth?" I ask.

"It doesn't hold an edge very well. It's good against mages and magic beings but it needs something else to cut."

"There's a guy over here with another sword like that one, it's smaller though," Alissa says.

"This shield has that metal behind it," says Hana.

This is how they killed my elementals so easily and why my bolts didn't work. They were prepared for me.

"They knew I could use elementals and [Electric Magic], but they didn't know how fast I could chant. If it weren't for that I would have been kidnapped already," I say.

Alissa grinds her teeth and the other girls look down. We underestimated them hard.

"Why didn't you use [Gate]?" Asks Roxanne.

"Oh yes, I couldn't, I tried but something blocked me."

Roxanne opens her eyes wide.

"Search the mage girl corpse, she must have a magic tool there."

Lina rummages through the corpse without hesitation. She brings out a small disk. It's made of onyx with lots of circular silver inscriptions on it.

"Wolf... I'm sorry, I-I forgot these things existed," Roxanne looks down, tears on the corners of her eyes.

"What?"

"The disk is a Gate Scrubber, it blocks [Gate] and removes any 'coordinate' someone would have put down on the area affected," she clutches her staff harder.

"Oh, the Lords use it to protect their castles. Didn't know it could be used like this," Hana says.

"You use it in the middle of a town and you screw over the entire transport system, this is why it's not talked much."

"This mage girl is a runaway space mage," Lina says, bounty plate in hand.

This is why she had it then. I grab Roxanne's shoulder.

"It's okay. None of us would have imagined this," I say to her.

"But, we should have, I should have warned you this could happen."

"And the plan likely wouldn't have changed. It's okay."

Ciel hugs her from behind.

"We don't blame you, alright?"

Roxanne calms down and nods.

"So, I guess now we really don't want the guards involved?" Hana says.

"The empire would certainly investigate and use lie detectors on all of us," Roxanne answers.

"That's... a bit risky," I say.

"One thing is certain. Darean is not just a normal adventurer," Roxanne adds, fear in her voice.

We use bounty plates on the other corpses, they were kidnappers and illegal slavers. The woman likely used [Gate] on the victim and teleported it to a cell or something. They weren't branded by the gods as wicked so they wouldn't be executed but the crimes they committed spelled a long sentence as a criminal slave. Except for the mage, the empire does not mess around.

I store everything on my "Items".

"Let's go home," I say.

I cast [Gate] to our living room. We go to sleep immediately after a quick wash. I hug Alissa tight and Hana hugs me from behind. Roxanne looks undecided for a second but then she drops beside Alissa and hugs her from the front.

Today is the 26th.

-

My [Mana Overuse Resistance] increased by 1 (now 0+3). Ciel leveled up to 31 and increased her [Light Magic] by 1 (now 24).

Aside from the morning lewdness, we wake up without much energy, Roxanne more than the others. Everyone is slowly taking in the reality of the danger we were in. I have two new scars now, one on my wrist and the other on my throat. These don't have some glorious memory of it, just a reminder of the danger of overconfidence.

I just feel so weak, both in combat and in spirit. I was so close to being kidnapped, I now know they certainly wouldn't have killed me. It seems Darean is avoiding being branded as wicked by not killing me, but he wants to do something to me, what exactly I do not know.

"What now? You think it's safe to stay here or should we leave town?" I ask Hana.

"I don't know, I fought the underworld a few times but I never got involved like this," she answers with a frown.

"I think we need help," says Ciel.

"From whom?" I ask.

"You tried talking to the guildmaster?" She asks.

"I asked if Silas knew something about Darean's family but he said he wouldn't tell me even if he knew."

"Tch, after all this he isn't giving much back," Ciel frowns.

"What about Nour?" Alissa asks.

"He came here to train, away from his family's schemes. I doubt he could help much," I answer.

"Silvane?" Lina asks.

"I don't think she has that much power, she's still a Blood Slave. We also don't really have much of a connection with the Lord's son or the Lord himself. Except…"

"Vanea," Lina finishes.

I sigh.

"She's dangerous, who knows what she's going to ask in return," I say.

"But she's our only bet. From what you told us she has something against him," Ciel says.

Alissa looks concerned.

"I... don't wanna deal with her," Hana says.

"Why is that?" I ask.

"You know... nobles and schemes, this, this is why father..." Hana looks down, a lot of sadness in her eyes.

Roxanne grabs one hand and I grab the other.

"We don't really have much of an option, except running away," Roxanne says, caressing Hana's hair.

Hana closes her eyes.

"Wolfy, can you promise me that... that we will be safe?" She looks at me.

"I can, those are my vows, to keep you all safe."

"Dad said the same thing..." She mutters.

Her voice shows a weakness she didn't have before. A weakness, a pain that I don't want her to feel ever again.

"I'm sorry Hana, but you know we don't have many options. There are things we just can't run from, we have to fight," Ciel says, calming confidence in her voice.

"We need to trust each other, not just trust Wolfy. We will deal with this, together," Alissa says, a sweet tone that gives us motivation.

After a few seconds Hana breathes in deeply and nods, her face resolved, the weakness and pain gone from her face.

"Should we go and meet her immediately?" I ask.

"Vanea said she wanted you to visit, right? But did she give you a token or something?" Ciel asks.

"No, she did not."

"Then perhaps she meant you should visit her at the university? Visiting a Lord's daughter at her home is a privilege that shouldn't be taken lightly, even she wouldn't just give it to someone she just met."

"Then we wait until classes are back. But should we just wait here?"

"Perhaps... we should flaunt our strength to Darean, show that we are not scared," Alissa answers.

"Uh, what do you mean?"

"We could collect the bounty on those people. If Darean has more spies he would think we are confident in our power."

"Or he might think we are overconfident and attack again."

"I find it hard to believe he has two Gate Scrubbers. If he does we might as well assume he's funded by the royalty of the empire," Roxanne says.

"He won't attack to kill us, he wanted to kidnap you. He will have to find another way to ambush you again, he won't be able to do that so quickly," Ciel says.

"Well, in the end, it's a bluff, we could see if it works," says Roxanne.

"Then what? Go waltz around town and show we are not scared?" I ask.

"Well, we could go to a dungeon. We still need to keep earning money, my potions won't sustain us all forever. Especially because someone has some curious spending habits," says Roxanne.

I squirm and look away, the gazes are too much right now.

"Oh, let's go to the Spiral Springs again. We can put a portal on the Moon Turtles floor and get more moss whenever we need," she says excitedly, but then she cringes, "Though we have to go through the Ant Hill again."

No pleasant memories there.

"We could throw off any pursuers by teleporting back home, this could also serve as a trial for how much mana it's going to cost to teleport us far away," I say.

"I don't think he's going to pursue us for some time, but yes, I think we should go to the Spiral Springs," Alisa says.

"There's also something I wanna get on the Roulette of the Morning Dew."

A note from Manasong

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Chapter 19: Coincidences

A note from Manasong

Attention: to conform to the limit of sexual content allowed in a novel, I've censored this chapter. You can look for the uncensored version here.

The symbol "-" denotes a section that got cut for containing sexual content. Also, if paragraphs seem missing, they were also likely censored in an earlier pass where the symbol wasn't used.

We just buy simple food and ingredients from the current open shops and leave, there's not much else to do. We gave our goodbyes to the griffin spirit in our backyard and it chirped sadly.

Lina is very depressed, going from losing her master to falling for me, and then nearly losing me must be getting to her. I spend the trip hugging her and kissing her neck and hands.

"I'm sorry, I shouldn't be making you worry about me like this," she says.

"I'm the one who should be sorry, I got overconfident."

"You are both sorry and that's it," Alissa interjects, I think she's getting jealous right now.

I gotta give them all attention, we are all needy after facing terror.

When the road looks clear we land behind a tree and I mark it as a "coordinate" for [Gate].

We reach the Ant Hill pretty fast and in much more comfort than last time.

I put my skills like this:

Wolf Ryder Skill Report

Physical

Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level
Sword Use | 9+6 | Dodge | 5+5 | Parry | 5+5
Block | 2+8 | Shield Bash | 0+1 | Muscle Explosion | 0+1
Battlefield Perception | 2+1

Magical

Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level
Sense Mana | 2+5 | Mana Control | 0+7 | Mana Recovery | 7+0
Mana Efficiency | 2+5 | Reduced Mana Cost | 7+0 | Mana Overuse Resistance | 0+3
Electric Magic | 7+8 | Earth Magic | 0+2 | Light Magic | 6+4
Nature Magic | 7+13 | Space Magic | 14+16 | Summoning Magic | 11+9
Blessing Magic | 0+14 | Illusion Magic | 0+2 | Golemancy | 0+2
Redirect Mana (creator) | 3 | Sense Soul (creator) | 2

Miscellaneous

Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level
Andraste Language | 9+1 | Dismantling | 0+2 | Enhanced Semen Recharge | 0+3
OBS: Level means (free point)+(trained point)

I feel safer when my skills are properly distributed again.

Everyone except Lina puts a Ring of the Servant, it's a ring that blocks experience gain and gives it all to the one without a ring. It's used by nobles for training but we will use it to power"level Lina, she's currently the weakest and can't properly fight beside us.

I summon a spirit elemental, a light elemental and a fire elemental. The spirit elemental is invisible if you don't have [Spirit Magic], you can only sense the mana if you get too close. It's good for scouting, we will tell it to keep behind us a good distance away and warn if there's anyone following us. The light elemental is a shining outline of a curvy woman, it will give us light and it has a positive mental effect on all of us, something we are in need. The fire elemental will walk in front burning all webs.

"Why are they all women?" Asks Ciel while frowning towards my light elemental.

"Don't you see any similarities?" Asks Alissa.

"To whom?" Ciel frowns harder.

"Well, you?"

Ciel takes a few seconds, then she opens her eyes wide and blushes a bit.

"Now that we are talking about it, why are my elementals women? They come like this when I don't put any effort into changing them."

"T-the elementals search the heart of the master for something to copy. They look for someone they... hold deep in their heart," Ciel says bashfully.

I smile and kiss her lightly. Lina looks at me with expectancy, I summon a small earth elemental and she covers her face with her hands.

"Hahahah, well, it's not that different from you, it's you know, flat," Roxanne says and pulls her tongue.

Lina groans and Alissa pats her back. Ciel is glaring at Roxanne who hides behind Hana.

I go to Lina and grab her hand.

"Remember, flat is justice," Then I kiss her.

The trip is rather calm. The Giant Tarantulas are no match for any of our group. My shield hand still hurts so I hang back.

We reach the Arachne territory and Alissa tenses up. I put all our extra points into [Mental Resistance].

"I hate this smell. I know it's not poison but it messes up with my smelling ability, again I won't be able to tell if we get poisoned," Alissa says, frowning.

"Ciel, use [Diagnosis] on us every 10 or so minutes," I say.

She nods.

Aoi seems quite content, I thought she would be more afraid but she's very comfortable on Roxanne's shoulders. She even dared walk beside us until she got tired. She tried to fire a fireball into a spider but the spider was too agile to hit, but it's good to know she can give a small help in a pinch.

"There's something... odd," Alissa frowns.

"Oh, what is it?"

"Well, I'm feeling some 'flashes' with [Sense Presence], as if pieces of souls are moving near us."

"Hm... you are poisoned, it's a weak confusion," Ciel says.

"Well then, it's another mind poison, right?" I grin.

"Yeah, it's not affecting her body, only her mind," Ciel lifts an eyebrow.

Roxanne smiles, she grabs Hana and they both kiss deeply. Alissa flinches and smiles, she remembers.

A mere kiss won't do, to break any mind poison I have to pour my feelings into it.

I grab Alissa by the waist and pull her. I kiss her and pour my love, my trust, my happiness for having her always beside me. I grab the back of her head and comb my fingers through her silky hair.

When we break Ciel and Lina are lightly blushing and staring blankly.

"Mind poison can be broken by the power of love!" I spread my arms wide and pull Ciel.

I do the same for her, I feel the squishiness of her body through her armor and remember all her delicious spots, her tight hug, her kind eyes, her sweet voice. I feel calm in her arms.

I break the kiss and grab a fidgeting Lina and kiss her too. Her cute demeanor, her endless curiosity, her dedication to me, her innocent soul. All I want is to hug her and keep her safe.

Once I finish I notice Roxanne is still kissing Hana. Roxanne is desperately trying to undo her armor, her robe is already on the ground.

"Uh, Roxanne...?" I ask.

"W-what?" She asks and immediately goes back to kissing.

"What are you doing? Now is not the time."

I grab her and pull her away. Hana sends me puppy eyes wanting more and Roxanne glares at me.

"You okay?" I ask.

She turns her head away and starts fidgeting.

"Well she, uh, is still poisoned, it's medium arousal," Ciel says.

"What? No, can't it be just normal arousal? Does it means I'm poisoned?" Roxanne says -.

"Well, sorry Roxanne," I say.

A shining hand touches Roxanne's shoulder and she stops fidgeting, her anxious face turns into one of displeasure.

"Noo, this feels so frustrating," she drops down her head.

"Well, - doing it in the middle of the Arachne territory isn-..."

I get interrupted by an unpleasant feeling. I draw my sword.

"The spirit elemental is dead, something is coming."

Everyone gets ready for combat immediately, Roxanne lets out a long sigh.

I stare at the tunnel and wait for it to come. I hear nothing.

I hear my breath, it's slowly becoming heavier in anticipation. Adrenaline runs through my body. I feel my muscles creak as I hold my sword harder. The tension brings fatigue, my body is still weary.

It's tiring to keep my head up, I will just look with the corner of my eyes. My posture is hurting my back, I will just hunch a little, it will be easier to stay like this. I look down, my head is too heavy to keep up, I gotta save energy. I feel sleepy.

A shining hand touches my shoulder and I feel the pleasant sensation of mana coursing through my body.

I look up and see Hana defending a strike from an Arachne. It's a giant spider with the upper body of a woman on its head, on a normal posture it's around 2 meters tall, this one is bigger, nearly 3 meters. This one's spider body is black while the human body is sickly white and full of blue veins with disheveled black hair.

Holy shit I think this was a spell similar to [Illusion Magic]'s level 15 spell [Pacify], how terrifying that I never felt it coming.

Alissa hits two arrows on the Arachne's human chest. Ciel keeps in front of me while I recover my senses. Lina is beside Hana, she crushed a spider leg. Hana is countering a blow from a very pointy spider leg, she opens a long cut on the Arachne's body. Roxanne is gathering mana and besides her Aoi is staring at me, I feel her worry.

I feel the Arachne gathering mana. I charge a bit and release [Lightning Bolt] at the same time the fire elemental and Roxanne lets out [Fireball]. The Arachne stops and convulses for a moment, it gets hit square in the - chest -, opening a large wound.

"HIREEEEE!"

The Arachne recoils in pain and covers her eyes from the explosion. Hana takes the opportunity and charges with her wings, she decapitates the Arachne, which falls limp on the floor. That's how a sword fight goes, you look away from a second and you say goodbye to having a head on your shoulders.

Lina falls down on the ground and starts crying.

"Masteer! Don't leave me~!"

"Awn, she just fell for an illusion too. It seems to be a strong nightmare," Ciel says.

A shining woman hugs Lina from behind and she slowly stops crying. Her eyes regain focus and she looks at us confused.

"What? You are back! Wait, where's the Arachne?" She asks, her eyes blinking repeatedly.

"It's dead, she cast an illusion on you just before she died," I say, rubbing her hand.

"Oh... that's good... what I saw was..." She looks with a pained face, tears still on the corner of her eyes.

I interrupt her and give her a kiss. She stiffens and I give a few more all over her face until she giggles.

After she recovers her composure the light elemental releases her and we move on. I summon another spirit elemental.

"So, I think that one was really powerful, well magically, not physically. It didn't expect us to all have resistance, otherwise it wouldn't have attacked," Ciel says.

"Yeah, I was a bit surprised that me, Lina, and Roxanne had the worst with these illusions and poisons," I say.

"You three have the lowest 'Sanity', that makes you all more vulnerable," Ciel says.

Roxanne sighs again. She must still be feeling frustrated.

We don't have another encounter with an Arachne, it seems our party size makes them wary of us and the last one who we met severely underestimated us.

With the elemental we are ahead of schedule, we reach the mole territory and have lunch. Sandwiches and some hot tea do just fine here, you don't want to spend a long time eating on these dusty and oppressive brown tunnels, it is seriously depressing and sours the mood of the meal.

After lunch, Alissa goes to work. With her warbow, she just one-shots every mole, their thick skulls are now useless to the penetrating power of an enchanted bow.

Not long and we reach the springs.

"Ah! How I have not missed this stuffy and moist atmosphere," Roxanne jokes, taking a deep breath.

"If it weren't for the little devils around here I think it could be a bit comfy," I say.

It's not so stuffy, at least not for the almost hermit me.

The girls frown at me, except Lina who grabs my hand and nods with happiness. Aoi seems displeased at the wetness of the ground and decides to stop walking beside us.

I dismiss the fire elemental and bring a lead earth elemental. He will strut in front of us, stepping on all traps and simply ignoring everything. Aoi loved the elemental and decides to nest on top of its flat and hairy head.

When we reach the stairs Hana grabs me like a princess and we jump down. With her wings, she slows the fall and we safely touch the ground. Then I open a [Gate] for the other girls and the elemental struts through the stairs. A vine trap grabs its leg and then snaps while the elemental continues as if nothing happened.

I drink an average MP potion so I can use [Gate] more times.

Floor 2. 1 Stalker, dispatched by Alissa.

Floor 3. Multiple bear traps latch on the elemental, they just scratch his feet before being crushed and falling off.

Floor 4. 1 Stalker appears and Roxanne wants to try something.

She gathers mana, she stretches her hand forward and points her staff. She makes gestures with her hand as if she's trying to crush something. She's not chanting.

With a crackling noise, a small ice stake grows out of nothing. I feel Roxanne's mana is coursing a few centimeters outside her body, this is not normal. Roxanne relaxes and the stake flies towards the stalker, I hear a thud in the distance.

"Nice aim and you didn't even chant," I say.

"Thanks. Yeah, I understand now how the system works, how that 'itch' you explained can be 'scratched'. I never felt it before you put the points for me, I still feel the urge to chant but if I hold it in I can cast it without chanting and I still have control over it. [Ice Lance] is very mana intensive but with some effort this time it cost me 3/4th of the normal," Roxanne says, she seems very proud of herself.

"This 'itch' might be the reason I can 'expand' my soul, see if you can move whatever is inside you like you moved a muscle or a finger to try and 'scratch' that 'itch'. But try to do it when you are lacking mana otherwise it doesn't work properly. Maybe you can learn [Redirect Mana]."

"I see, I will try it," Roxanne says with a happy nod.

"I also felt your mana coursing outside your body, is this an enchantment?"

"My robe has a [Mana Control] enchantment that improves it a bit."

Lina's Trivia: mana boosting enchantments flow better on loose clothing than on metals or stiff leather, other enchantments work the opposite. Mana has to flow and harmonize, loose clothing allows the robes to flow where they are needed and aid mana flow. Chanting works similarly, it harmonizes the mana inside us and prevents it from running wild. The other enchantments have to control mana in a very specific way to form the spell required, which is why gems are more useful than metals, their crystalline structure guarantees a specific behavior.

Floor 5. The puddles of water are bubbling and releasing noxious fumes. I put [Poison Resistance] on everybody and we just stroll through. With Ciel and Roxanne's potions, it would be quite simple even without the Resistance. Only certain puddles aren't bubbling so I guess we would need to go around these if we wanted to not get poisoned. Thanks, skill system, it's basically cheating.

Floor 6. A stalker is following us from too far, can't really get an angle for a shot. I summon a german shepherd dog and sic him on the stalker. After a minute or so I hear a death scream. The doggy latched on the neck of the Spriggan and snapped it. I tell him to pant and wag his tail and everyone gives him a pat.

The lead elemental steps on a crumbling floor and gets stuck on the floor. He manages to look adorable as his huge leg dangles from the stairs.

Floor 7. We enter a suspicious corridor.

"Go past the corridor and torment any monster on the other side," I tell the spirit elemental.

It goes through the wall and I get glimpses of mechanisms as I share my vision with it. Yep, it's that godsdamned trap again.

"I could go ahead and kill whatever is in the other end, this corridor is nothing for my flight," says Hana.

"There are other traps in this corridor, better not risk it. If anything happens I will use [Gate] to send us back here, understood?"

Hana shrugs.

A few seconds later we hear a painful scream. I share my vision and see the spirit is hurting the soul of a Spriggan.

"Hihihih," Roxanne giggles evilly. She coughs and recomposes herself.

With Alissa in front, we dodge all traps. On the other side, the Spriggan is rolling on the floor screaming in pain, these monsters are completely vulnerable to magic.

"You know what. Hana, can you tie him up?"

"Oh, I see. Lemme try something," she grins.

Hana first ties his hands and legs then she gets a very long rope and makes some very odd patterns with it. Once she's done it looks like the Spriggan is using a harness made of rope, it leaves him with very little mobility.

"Hana... Where did you learn this?" I ask.

"That's uh... a book my mom had, there were some very interesting... illustrations," she looks away."

Me, Ciel, and Alissa massage our eyes while Lina looks confused and Roxanne shivers.

The lead elemental carries the tied up monsters as it struggles to break free. I can hear it cry, though I'm not sure if it's from the pain or humiliation.

Floor 8. Alissa noticed the Spriggans come near every once in a while just to run away soon after. It seems they got the message and know what will happen if they get close, capturing a Spriggan was the best idea I ever had.

Floor 9. The Spriggan stopped crying but it's now fidgeting weirdly.

Floor 10. The floor is filled with traps, now that the elemental is carrying the prisoner we use random rocks we had collected to set off the traps. Instead of blowing they cast a spell, either a water blade or an earth spike attacks whoever steps on it. We waste a lot of time on this floor.

Floor 11. It's the floor full of vines. We keep the lead elemental in front but it gets slowed down by the number of vines, though it made things easier for us.

Floor 12. I just can't ignore the way the Spriggan is acting.

"By the Gods don't tell me he's... aroused?"I ask.

"T-this pattern the rope is supposed to... rub - senstivite areas" Hana says, she fidgets and looks away.

"Put it on the ground," I order the elemental.

I cut one of the ropes that's limiting its movement the most.

"Let's go," I say.

Nobody says anything.

Floor 13. There's heavy mist on this floor. We tie a rope to all of us and walk slowly.

"Wolf, put all my points into [Wind Magic], at level 20 I can use [Wind Storm], it should clear the mist if I put some effort into it, though I won't be able to attack."

"Good idea. In case we get attacked release the rope connecting us and surround Ciel and Roxanne."

We slowly walk through the floor but nothing happens. When we reach the stairs they turn into a slide and gush water like last time. The elemental slips and slides down, he crashes into the spear trap at the ground and crushes them all.

I touch the elemental and send a bit of mana, with this all the scratches and light penetrations get cleaned up.

"Boy, am I glad you have [Gate]," says Hana.

"It's almost a cheat," I say.

"Well, it is," Ciel says.

I shrug.

Floor 14. The mist continues, it gets even heavier, I can barely see a meter in front of me.

"This is bad," I say.

"It is. Eight are coming, we are surrounded!" Alissa yells.

The girls huddle up on the elemental. Ciel starts gathering mana.

"You know what, Hana, spread your fire around us," I say.

She inhales, "FOO~M!" The fire spreads. I hear screams of pain.

"[Wind Storm]!"

A strong wind makes it difficult to stand, at least we aren't being cut up to pieces like [Wind Storm] is supposed to work. The mist clears up around us and we see 4 Spriggans on fire and rolling on the ground in pain. The other 4 are frozen, watching their allies burn to death.

"You guys seriously don't remember me?" I ask.

One of the Spriggans runs away.

"I will use your bark to smoke my meat!" Hana taunts.

The 3 remaining Spriggrans charge and scream.

"YAAAH!"

"HYAA!"

"HIII!"

Hana drops her shield and does an overhead strike on the first one. The second one blocks a small [Fireball] and gets bashed by Ciel, once he falls he gets his throat pierced by her glaive. The last one gets an arrow on the leg and his head stepped on by the elemental.

"Huh, I think I understand too how that 'itch' works," Ciel says.

Aoi wakes up and smells the air. She gets down from the elemental and walks through the embers as if they were nothing, then she stops in front of one of the burned Spriggans and starts to eat his stomach.

I turn around and wait until I hear a burp, Aoi comes running back to the elemental and returns to sleep on its head.

"We have been giving her lots of raw meat but I guess a dragon would prefer barbecue," Hana says.

"Her fire breath is getting more stable perhaps soon she should be able to roast her own meat," Ciel says with a smile.

Alissa rubs my shoulder.

Floor 15. We reached our target.

Roxanne drops down on all fours, her staff clacks as it falls on the ground.

There's no Moonlight Moss here.

"There, there. With the [Gate] we can check here every few days and see if there's any more," I say, tapping Roxanne's shoulders.

"Yeah, don't worry, we still got enough of the elixir for a while," Hana says, tapping the other shoulder.

Roxanne groans and gets a kiss on the cheek from each of us, this makes her giggle.

It is 9 PM. We make camp in a small, empty room and set up our bath.

-

After that, we relax around the cooking magic tool. Alissa starts cooking a blue soup, we found a blue-grey moss that can be used as a seasoning, it reminds me of annatto, nostalgic. Hana is taking care of a spit roast of large slabs of wyvern meat while Aoi watches it spin, completely entranced. Ciel is cutting some vegetables. Lina is huddled next to me, reading a book. Roxanne is studying some moss with Ted and Suzy at her lap. I'm studying andraste.

"What are you doing Roxanne?" I ask.

"Well, I'm trying to look for the specific signature of the mana in the moss. There's always a mix of a few signatures and the mark of a good potion maker is how well he can separate those signatures," she shows me a small lens with a few black inscriptions.

Lina stops reading and starts listening.

"What are these signatures?"

Roxanne smiles wildly.

"Plenty of substances like say, meat, have a lot of mana signatures, this huge amount of signatures makes the potion have unknown interactions. You could be making a healing potion that ends up poisoning the person in the long run. Or it could have adverse effects like nausea, confusion, loss of mana control. Or like my Moonlight Moss MP potion, it paralyzes you."

"I have been looking at the moss of this dungeon and it's incredibly similar to the Moonlight Moss. Unfortunately, it's not corrosive, it's this corrosion that makes it useful for MP potions. It bonds with silver and corrodes most signatures on common mana crystals, allowing it to refine MP potions to much better levels. The byproduct of this corrosion, unfortunately, is what causes the paralysis."

Lina's trivia: Every atom can "absorb" mana, so when casting a spell you can "gather" this mana on the environment to aid you during chanting. Having a mana charged object close to you can affect your casting, positively or negatively. Crystals have predictable behavior, making it beneficial when they are close. Since mana has a "signature", you can use a crystal to make it easier to convert mana into the type you require, like a filter for mana.

"So we are drinking minerals on those potions? What happens to the silver?"

"Silver and gold are the metals that mana flows through the easiest, this is why enchanting lines are done with them, on potions they are used to make the mana flow easier from the crystals to the body. Because of how quickly a potion is absorbed, the solids end up being destroyed when the mana is taken from it or from when the mana passes through them, so the potions we drink should end up completely disappearing when inside our bodies."

"How do you know a mana signature is harmful?"

"There's a large encyclopedia detailing every signature," With a *poof* he pulls out a large, thick book, "If you ever find a new one you can publish it and the empire might make you rich with the reward for that."

Unsurprisingly, potions are rather complicated and not that different from real medicine.

I pull out a large tent. This one has a flap that we can raise to cover the table and the inside fits beds for everyone.

"Come over here my brown angel," I say, pulling Ciel to cuddle with me.

"What was that, old man? What a horrible flirt. Do people of Earth flirt like this?" She raises an eyebrow at me.

"N-no. I really am bad at flirting, I'm much better at cuddling and kissing.

"I don't really have anyone to compare to, but I will take your word for it," she smirks.

"There's the other girls…"

"They do not count, their opinions are biased."

"If they don't count then who would? I only ever kissed the ones I loved."

"Well…"

She thinks and when she's about to talk I strike and kiss her. -.

She turns her face away and frowns.

"What's wrong?" I ask.

"Well, I just didn't think we would have an audience for this…"

Everyone is just staring at us. Lina is the one staring the most intently.

"Well, that's... how things are going to be, kinda. Can you try to ignore them? Look at me, don't take your eyes off me."

I grab her face and turn her to me. I kiss her repeatedly, this mellows her out a bit.

-

I drop to the side and almost immediately fall asleep. I feel softness and warmth getting closer before my conscience fades away.

Today is the 26th.

-

I increased [Space Magic] and [Summoning Magic] by 1 (now 14+17 and 11+10). I also increased [Enhanced Semen Recharge] again (now 0+4). Boy, whoever thought that satisfying 5 women was easy was wrong, very, very wrong.

"Ciel, can I bring out the spirit of a dead person through its body?" I ask.

She stares at me for a moment.

"Yes. You can use [Soul Search] for that, with [Spirit Eyes] and [Spirit Link] you can talk with it privately. With [Materialization] you can even have it talk with other people. I just gotta tell you to never use [Soul Touch] to harm a spirit, that is almost a Sin and the Gods will quickly hate you if you do that," she says with concern on her voice.

"Well, I'm counting on your help so you keep me from doing anything stupid."

Ciel shrugs.

"Don't have to ask."

We all move away from camp. I sigh, I'm not eager to do this. Alissa gives me a kiss on the cheek and it gives me a small boost in motivation.

I put 30 points into [Spirit Magic] and pull out the dragonkin corpse, he's only wearing underwear. Seeing him gives me chills.

I cast [Soul Search]. My hands glow and I touch the corpse, the cold skin makes me feel disgusted.

I feel like I grew another arm, except this arm is inside the dragonkin. I move this new arm and feel everything is empty.

"How long does a soul linger on a body?" I ask.

"Not long, but since you put his body on 'Items' it should still have a connection," Ciel says.

"Where should this connection be?"

"I don't know."

I search all over his chest, then I move up his neck and feel something solid at his brain. I grab it, instinct tells me to pull so I obey.

I feel my new arm move outside of the body, though I can't see anything. I cast [Materialize].

An ethereal arm protrudes out of my body. On its hand is a cloth-like protrusion that connects with a floating and ethereal body of the dragonkin. His hair is purple and his scales are the color of Lapis Lazuli. His neck is crooked and there's a cut that goes through his chest, allowing you to see through it.

"Whaaat!" He grabs his crooked neck with one hand and his wound with another. His eyes open wide, "Oh shit, I'm dead. You! You killed me. Wait no…"

The ghost points to Hana.

"You killed me. Fuck! What's going on, why are you calling me…"

He looks at the cavern and his expression turns into fear.

"Oi, oi. Y-you shouldn't mess with a spirit, the Gods will be mad, I wanna leave, please let me leave."

I drag myself out of my stunned state.

"Quiet!" I yell.

The dragonkin winces.

"I wanna know about your employer, any information about him. Any, little, detail," I say, threateningly.

"You can torture me and get yourself branded as wicked, I don't care. I won't betray the others, they could even go for a necromancer and bring my spirit back, you know," he turns his head away and huffs.

"I know you are not wicked so you won't go to hell, but you should know this person here is blessed by the Goddess of Knowledge," Ciel taps my shoulder. The dragonkin looks at me with curiosity, "If you help him I'm sure the Gods could reward you with a little bit of time in paradise."

I never asked Ciel, but apparently hell and heaven are a thing here too.

The dragonkin forgets he doesn't need to breathe and starts breathing heavier in anticipation.

"Hm... burn my corpse right now and I will help."

Through [Soul Search] I feel he's not lying. I look at Ciel, she nods.

"Roxanne, that's you," I say.

I pull away from him, making sure to maintain my [Soul Search]. If I release him and he doesn't have a body to return to, he will immediately disappear, forever.

Roxanne concentrates and creates a very small [Firestorm] that consumes his body entirely. When it's over there's only a small pile of ashes and the smell of pork in the air.

"There, now complete your side of the deal," I say.

"Well then. I have some info but truth be told we don't know much about our employers. We only accept masked payers and they know where to find us, they only come by reference so this way we keep away from their business and they pay us extra," he scratches the back of his head, "The only info I have is on the girl we had to watch. She came every day at the same time and did the same things, I kinda started to watch her closely, you know, that cute little ass shakes so well I almost screwed the job just to get closer to her…"

He coughs. Oh boy, here we go.

"She's small but she's not a dwarf. One day her hat flew and I got a good look at her, I burned her in my memory, she's just so cute. She has some traces that remind me of the elves, her chin is thin, her lips are small and red, her face is very pale and freckled, her brown hair is always braided and curled inside her hat. She doesn't have any breasts but her ass is big and her hips are wide, by the Gods I wanna put my dick in that ass."

I massage the bridge of my nose and struggle to keep [Soul Search]. He's a dragonkin alright...

"The only time I got near her I had a sniff of her perfume, it's a citrus fruit, what do you call it... Ranja, I think it was from the High Forest."

Alissa opens her eyes wide.

"Yes! That's the smell I felt, I couldn't remember where I knew it from but now I'm sure. It's very, very faint, I think it's just a residue from her hair products. How did you smell her? I have a very good nose but I had to get close to her to feel that smell."

The dragonkin looks embarrassed.

"Well, I... I have a good memory for smells, every pussy smells different, you know?"

Ciel groans. He looks at the girls then smiles at me.

"You should know, right?" He asks.

"Is that all you have?" I ask.

"Yes. We di-..."

I release him.

"That could be helpful in finding her. But we won't be able to do it alone. Not when she seems to move in the slums with ease. She also has someone cast [Illusion Magic] on her, she has help," I say.

"Yeah. Just another reason talking to Vanea will be helpful," Alissa says, shuddering when she mentions that woman, "Ah. Since his connection lasted this long then perhaps the body of the woman space mage should be valuable. The empire could interrogate her soul."

"Another bargaining chip for Vanaea?" I ask.

"Could be," Ciel answers.

There's nothing else to do here so I prepare for [Gate]. The girls put on bags all the personal items they are carrying on their [Item Boxes]. I keep their armor and weapons just in case. I dismiss the elementals and I divide all my points into [Space Magic] and [Mana Efficiency], [Reduced Mana Cost] only helps on the first cast so efficiency is the way to go.

"Alright, first Hana and Ciel, then Roxanne, Aoi and Lina, then me and Alissa."

After it's done it took 2/3rds of my mana. If we want to go to the High Forest and be able to come back I'm going to have to keep increasing my mana, a lot.

I pull the dinghy out and we go back to the Roulette of the Morning Dew.

We reach the entrance before noon. I feel a chill remembering the 7th floor, thankfully we don't have to enter it. The floors we can go are shared with Lina so we all enter the 8th floor.

The theme of this floor is mountaintop towns. There are 5 mountains connected in an 8 pattern, we are at a bridge connecting the two southernmost towns. Below us is only an ominous mist.

The brick bridge is overgrown and falling apart, there are plenty of holes around we have to move around. It's 20 meters wide and full destroyed carts, wagons, blockades, and skeletons, both civilian and those with ruined purple lamellar armor.

"C-can we please move fast? T-these holes are giving me chills," Lina says, grabbing my arm.

"Are you afraid of heights?" I ask.

"I don't think there's a dwarf who isn't," Alissa says, patting Lina's head.

We move with me holding one of Lina's hands and Alissa the other. If we were older we would look like a married couple walking our child. I kiss Lina's hand and she stops trembling.

"I'm starting to get a bit jealous," Roxanne says with a smirk.

Hana grabs her hand and kisses it, Roxanne giggles.

"You guys would flirt in the middle of a battlefield," Ciel says, massaging her eyes.

"Gotta keep the tension down somehow," Alissa shrugs.

We move a few minutes west when Alissa looks north and narrows her eyes.

"Harpies."

I think I see black dots coming from the central mountaintop. I summon a wind elemental, Hana takes out her bow and spear.

We reach halfway to our target when Alissa stops us.

"They are coming towards us, no mistake."

"Fire when in range. If we see a Needler then Hana, Lina, and I will stay in front. The rest focus on ranged attacks."

Harpies are human-looking women with hawk legs and wings instead of arms. They predate upon smaller humanoids and attack in groups. The standard harpy only attacks by diving and gouging meat with her claws, the Needler variant can summon feathers that act as projectiles, if they hit and get embedded in flesh, they limit movement and disrupt mana flow, monster acupuncture.

Alissa lets out the first arrow. The harpy tried to dodge but it got hit in the wing, with trouble flying she falls down into the mist.

Hana fires but her arrow is dodged.

Roxanne fires a [Fire Arrow], it brushes the wing and starts a small fire, the harpy struggles to put it out.

Alissa fires again. 2 down 11 to go.

Ciel fires a [Wind Blade]. Three harpies have to stop to contain the blade.

Alissa fires another arrow and kills one of the harpies that had stopped. 10 to go.

Hana fires an arrow. It grazes the flank of a harpy, it shrieks in pain.

The wind elemental waves its hand at a harpy, it starts to struggle to move. I cast [Gravity Crush] on it. Now the harpy is basically locked in place, it shrieks as its bones creak and crack. An arrow ends the shriek and I stop the spell. 9 to go.

[Gravity Crush] is useful but due to the nature of acting directly on another living being's body, it's rather mana intensive.

Hana fires a last arrow and hits the gut of a harpy. It shrieks and has trouble moving, Alissa finishes it off with an arrow on the throat. 8 to go.

"[Wind Storm]!"

3 Harpies get nearly cut to shreds inside of it. They survive but they won't be much help on the battle.

One wounded harpy gets a [Fire Arrow] to the face and dies. 7 to go, 2 are wounded.

The harpies are close. Hana drops her bow and grabs her shield and spear.

"[Ice Lance]!"

A harpy gets a large hole on its chest and coughs blood, slowly it falls towards the mist. 6 to go, 2 wounded.

A harpy gets an arrow to the face. 5 to go, 2 wounded.

Another harpy gets caught by my elemental, another [Gravity Crush] and it receives a [Wind Blade] to the face. 4 to go, 2 wounded.

A harpy tries to dive on Hana, she blocks the claws and tries to riposte. The harpy contorts its body and avoids the spear, receiving only a slight cut on the flank.

A harpy tries to dive on Lina, I feel the mana coursing through her body and she defends against the claws as if it were nothing. On her riposte, she swings her hammer wildly and it catches a retreating claw, which gets shattered. The harpy shrieks.

An arrow kills a wounded harpy. 3 to go, 1 wounded.

Aoi fires a fireball at the harpy that tried to hit Hana. One wing gets singed and the harpy gets distracted, receiving a small [Wind Blade] to the chest, it struggles to recover. 3 to go, 2 wounded.

"Needlers!" Alissa yells.

I look into the distance and see 3 harpies are approaching fast. They have small feathers floating around it.

I cast [Lightning Bolt] on a harpy. It struggles to maintain flight and gets a [Fire Arrow] on the wing. It flails about trying to put it out. 3 to go, all wounded, 3 Needlers.

"Incoming!" Hana yells.

I feel a hint of mana on the distance. I pull my shield up and Alissa hides behind me.

Multiple clinks of something solid hitting metal can be heard. I feel a few hit my legs that aren't fully covered but the scale armor holds.

A harpy screams just as the sounds stop. Hana perfectly skewered a harpy that tried to attack as soon as the barrage ended. She swings the spear and smashes the harpy on the bridge. Aoi inhales deeply and fires a fireball at the struggling harpy, its neck explodes. In a few seconds it passes out due to bleeding. 2 to go, 2 wounded, 3 Needlers.

Alissa fires an arrow and gets the harpy with the [Fire Arrow] on the wing. 1 to go, 3 Needlers.

The last harpy charges at Lina again. I cast [Lightning Bolt] and it convulses, failing to retreat in time. Lina swings her hammer sideways, it connects with the harpy and it gets thrown into the bridge. Ciel jumps into it and pierces the heart of the harpy, it struggles for a few seconds and goes limp. 3 Needlers to go.

"Incoming!" Hana yells again.

I feel the slight mana gathering and raise my shield again.

"Elemental! Hold them all in place once the barrage is over!" I order.

I hear an ethereal grunt in response.

The clinking stops and I cast [Gravity Crush] on all harpies. To cast area magic you have to focus on a point in space and unleash your mana towards that point. Casting in the middle of the air is really difficult due to depth perception but since they are clumping I just cast it on the middle harpy.

I pull all my effort into keeping them in place. "Willpower" does wonders for these types of spells.

"[Wind Storm]!"

The harpies get cut up and blood flows off them, the blood swims in the air and slowly the tornado gets tinged red. The harpies shriek and they gradually lower the volume. Soon the Needlers turn silent.

Unfortunately, we can't recover the bodies or the proof's from the harpies, Needlers can give some good money. We end our spells and sit down on the ground. I grab Ciel's hand and give it a kiss, she shakes her head but I see her smile.

After an MP potion and some meditation, we are ready to go again. I recall the elemental.

"You know, I think I can understand how your [Redirect Mana] works. Though I think it will take some good amount of effort to actually get it to work," Ciel says.

"Well yeah, I would be depre-... impressed if you managed to get it so easily. I did get it after a life or death situation," I say.

"You better put some effort to get it. It's what saved my life," Roxanne says and gives me a kiss on the cheek.

"A mage that can regenerate mana at will is almost cheating," Alissa says.

"Good thing some of his cheats are rubbing off on us," Ciel smiles.

"It's still not so easy to do it," I say.

"It's still an unfair advantage no one else has," Ciel replies and shows me her tongue.

We finally reach the end of the bridge. This town is called Mons Meridien. The mountaintop is circular so the town is divided into circular layers, we are at the middle layer. The same overgrown ruins full of partially destroyed concrete buildings, arches, and domes, with overuse of columns. There's also ivies, vines, and moss covering any still-standing wall, tall grass everywhere that's not a paved road, pieces of rubble spread all over. A few not-olive trees on a garden or other.

We walk down the steps, the only sound is the rustling of leaves and our footsteps. This floor is not very popular due to the harpies and the height.

"I hear snoring," Alissa says.

"Can you go check? Don't fight it, please," I say.

"Yees," she smiles and goes off.

She takes a minute and silently comes back. If I wasn't looking she could easily sneak on all of us.

"It's a minotaur, female. Thankfully it's wearing a dress."

"Still sleeping?"

"Yes."

"Then I have an idea."

We get closer, trying not to make any noise. It's starting to get misty. On a plaza I see a pile of rubble has two horns protruding out of it, the pile rises and lowers, if I concentrate I can hear it snoring.

I put 5 points in [Throw].

"Well then, here goes nothing."

I cast [Summon Elemental]. Instead of making it appear instantly beside me I use the traditional way of creating a small ball of light. I pick this ball and throw it into the rubble.

When the ball touches the rubble a large lead elemental appears and hugs the sleeping minotaur.

"MOOOOO~!" It yells, trying to break free.

"RAAA!" Hana yells, she charges forward with her emerald wings open wide.

Hana falls beside the struggling minotaur and does an overhead slash with both hands. The minotaur tries to dodge but there's no room, all it does is that instead of being decapitated its neck gets cut halfway.

In less than a minute the minotaur passes out. We just wait a little more and Alissa confirms the kill.

"A cheat as always," Ciel sighs.

"Oh? We got another one," Alissa says.

Here comes the problem with this town. It's too small, other minotaurs might end up hearing the sounds of battle in this quiet town.

The lead elemental awkwardly gets up and stands in front. Out of the mist, a male minotaur appears, it's wearing a ripped, filthy shirt and a filthy loincloth.

"Thank the Gods," I pray.

"The bulge is still visible," Hana says.

Ciel shudders.

The minotaur pierces its horns into the chest of the elemental. I feel the metal bent slightly.

For this, he receives an arrow to the chest, a [Water Blade] to the flank, a [Wind Blade] to the belly, a hammer on the right knee, and a spear to the left thigh.

It pushes the elemental away and I cast [Earth Bullet] on its chest. The air goes out of its lungs and it staggers back. It raises its head and an arrow pierces the eye.

"MUOOOOH!" It roars again and jumps back. Alissa clicks her tongue, she's not using the warbow.

Hana drops her spear and charges with her sword, she slashes towards the neck and the minotaur defends with his arms. Hana jerks her sword and the blade slides through the arms instead of getting stuck midway.

Lina swipes sideways at its legs and it's forced on its knees. Blood pours through all its wounds, yet it finds the strength to swipe at Hana, sending her flying backward. She uses her wings to stabilize in the air and lands gracefully.

"Lina! Come back!" I yell.

Lina turns and runs as awkwardly and adorably as a dwarf can. Her face is pale, she does not want to be swiped at by this minotaur.

I charge the biggest [Earth Bullet] that I can. The minotaur stands up.

"[Wind Blade]!"

"[Water Blade]!"

I let out my spell at the same time an arrow pierces its throat. He is hit in the face with a rock, and a deep wound on its chest opens from both spell blades. It falls backward, unconscious.

Hana joins us in the front and the elemental awkwardly gets up again. We wait a minute or so and it dies from blood loss. I recall the elemental.

"Catching it by surprise really does make things easy," I say.

"What, you thought this was hard? I was thinking we barely have a challenge here," Hana says and grins.

"Don't start…"

She laughs.

We continue our way down, the town slowly disappears into the mist and we plunge into near darkness. Our path that is circling around the mountain edge ends and we find a small door on the wall. We open it and it's the stairs down.

We reach the 9th floor.

This floor is kind of bad, it's called Tower of Melancholy, for the sake of our minds it's best we don't spend much time here. This whole dungeon floor is a single tower full of holes and crumbling ground, broken furniture all over making it difficult to walk, cobwebs make it horrifying to move, dust everywhere makes it difficult to breathe. It follows the same architectural style as the other floors, coupled with even more ominous skeletons around, including those of children. Outside there's only white mist. There's no known ground floor.

We all cast [Spirit Light]. Lina is even more scared on this floor.

I summon a nature elemental. It's a dryad, a green woman with moss-like skin, leaves for hair, and bark instead of nails or teeth. Thankfully she wears a modest ivy dress. The nature spirit is light, so she won't crumble the floor like an earth elemental and she has enough physical strength to help with combat.

We move out and start exploring. There are no maps of this dungeon floor, the floors are thought to be infinite and so there are only incomplete maps available. Also, a single floor is the size of a village, making you waste time until you realize where you are.

We spend a good amount of time mapping the floor so we don't get lost. Fortunately, Ciel is good at drawings, so she and Roxanne work on that.

"I got something. Seems like it has a bit of knowledge in [Hide Presence]," Alissa says.

We enter a room and our lights reflect on the eyes of a monster, a Shadow Satyr. Satyrs are humans with horse ears and horse legs, the shadow version is a monster that is eerily and completely black, it has a straight, featureless face. It wields a very curved scimitar, almost a crescent. It can cast bullets of darkness that hurt like a bitch. This is supposedly a rare monster, we are just that lucky.

I immediately cast [Lighting Bolt] and it dodges, no it teleports sideways.

"Motherfuc-..."

It charges Lina.

An arrow flies and it dodges, I feel Alissa's anger. Roxanne lets out a weak [Fire Arrow], it singes his hair and embers fly. Hana slashes towards it and it dodges but it stops the charge. The elemental times the opening perfectly and manages to grab it with a vine.

The satyr jumps around, trying to get free but it's not strong enough. It slashes the vines only to get its arm grabbed. The elemental pulls him and he falls on the ground, an arrow pierces his arm and it drops the scimitar.

It decides to jump towards the elemental and scratch at its face. The elemental screams and turns into vines, entangling him more. Hana charges and slashes sideways cutting the satyr in half by the waist.

In the middle of the air, it fires a small dark bullet towards Lina. I extend my arm and block it with my shield.

"AAAAARGH!"

I feel like my arm is crushed. I instinctively cast [Heal] but nothing happens. Lina grabs my arm and looks at me horrified.

"Wolfy... why would you do such a thing..." Lina mutters to me.

"Well, I don't know..." I wince in pain, "I just thought it would be better... if I felt the pain... instead of you."

The pain pulses but with each pulse it reduces. I feel a light chop on my head.

"Wolfy, that's rude, Lina isn't so weak she can't handle some pain," Alissa says to me, reproachfully.

I feel another chop on my head, this time it's Lina.

"Alright, I get it."

Just our luck, the stairs are in this room. After healing the elemental we move on.

We reach the 10th floor.

Once in a while you get filled with excitement and wonder at what a dungeon can show you, this is the prize explorers are looking for. This floor is a sky archipelago, floating islands in the middle of the sky, just like the sky lands of the chimeras. This floor is called Proud Memory.

We are at grassland at the edge of an island, there's only a wooden fence between us and the infinite blue. There's no ground, there's only a blue abyss below us.

Lina's Trivia: The sky lands are camouflaged magically. An ancient spell that was given to them possibly by the first emperor as a token of friendship. Anyone who looks towards the sky lands sees nothing, they are invisible. Anyone on a sky land who looks down only sees the infinite blue, they don't see land until they leave the spell's influence.

Around us, we see a grassland with a few pink willows and at the distance, there are white and black marble ruins. The other islands follow a similar pattern, there are dozens around us, above or below. We see from above a few have lakes with fish that we could eat. Above, we see the green crystals bellow the island that glows harmonically, they keep the islands afloat. White clouds once in a while pass through an island.

A few wooden bridges and spiral stairs connect the islands. On these bridges we can see the Marker Kites, they are long squares of very light cloth where each corner is tied to a long, light rope. These markers than are left to fly about, most keep upwards as the wind normally comes from below. If you see one of these markers flailing about you have to stay away, a rogue gust of wind is passing through and you don't want to be hit by it while you are vulnerable near the edge of the blue abyss.

Ciel runs up to the fence.

"Wow..." It escapes her lips.

"Hatara would love to come here," Alissa says, coming up beside Ciel.

I grab Lina's hand and lead her to the fence, I feel her hand tremble.

"Hold my hand tight, I will keep you safe."

She nods and squeezes tighter. A few steps more and her trembling reduces a bit.

We stare at the blue sky for a few minutes. It feels odd that there's no sun here but the beauty of the environment is entrancing.

I look behind us. In the middle of the island, there is a 3 story building with a cupola and a small tower on the top.

"Let's go there, we can locate ourselves better on top of that building," I say.

As we walk I feel an itch on my head. It's somehow similar to the "itch", of using magic, it's just stronger and makes me want to scratch it immediately. I squirm, trying to scratch it.

Alissa jumps to my side and slashes near my shoulder with the scabbard of her sword. I look to where she tried to strike, a Plom floats about, Alissa tries to strike it again but it slips away and creates some distance from us.

Alissa sighs and puts her scabbard back in place. Ploms are magical animals that feed on mana, they sneak on you and slowly suck your mana. They are nearly impossible to kill due to how easily they manipulate the air around them and slip away from any attack.

"I'm surprised it could bypass your [Sense Presence]," I say.

"It didn't, it just has such a small presence I didn't notice it. It's smaller than a mouse."

"There are Ploms on Maoka. Annoying little creatures, adorable, but annoying," Roxanne says.

She passes us by and I swat a Plom on her back. It slips from my attack, my hand only manages to brush at its fluffy fur. Roxanne groans.

"My... mana... 1/5th is gone!" She cries.

"I'll pay more attention to them," Alissa says, with pitying eyes.

"Pleeease!"

As we get closer to the building we reach a small group of marble houses.

"There's something weird in there," Alissa says.

"Living Armors. The satyrs only appear in dark places," I answer.

Lina's Trivia: Living Armors are suits of armor that got possessed by spirits, somewhat similar to a nature spirit. Living Armors are generally found in battlefields or tombs, which means their personalities are aggressive or territorial. They give no proof of extermination and their metal is of poor quality, but if you can capture one the hunters guild pays a good price for them, depending on their form. They work well for sparring since you can control their aggressiveness with [Spirit Magic].

"There's four, they are patrolling the front of the building."

"We could go around but let's go fight them and see how we do," I say.

We pass by the houses and enter a courtyard, the Armors are walking side by side through this courtyard and stop when they see us. They are ethereal humanoids without any features. Their armor is a hauberk with a metal plate cuirass on top, greaves, sabatons, metal pauldrons, vambraces, gauntlets, a bevor, and a sallet.

Though they would look imposing with so much metal, it's nearly all rusted and decaying. Their longswords look a little better.

They charge towards us. We'll do a melee test, Alissa, Roxanne, and Aoi will do nothing unless necessary.

I ready myself. My Armor does an overhead slash, such a telegraphed attack is easily dodged and deflected by my shield. I slash sideways and destroy the armor on the left arm. As a combo, I slash again and destroy a part of armor on the chest.

Hana takes the charge and ripostes towards his belly. The sword easily slides in and the Armor winces, somehow their spirits can be harmed physically.

Ciel parries the attack while stepping back and digs her glaive on the Armor's shoulder. With a bit of a yank, she removes the glaive and parries the next attack.

I feel the mana circling on Lina's body, she takes the hit head-on and immediately counters with a swing on the knee. It gets completely shattered and the Armor falls on its knee.

My Armor tries to swing upwards and gets deflected again. I slide my blade on the exposed chest armor and pierces a lung, not that the spirit breathes, but it does "feel" pain.

Hana slashes at the Living Armor's chest and its sword is caught on the way and sent flying. She finishes the Armor by decapitating it, the crumbling bevor did nothing to protect its neck. The spirit believes it's alive, if you cut its head off it will believe it's "dead" and truly die.

Ciel digs her glaive on the arm of the Armor, it tries to shorten the distance but gets a kick and it's pushed back again. Now it has only one functioning arm.

Lina takes the chance and swings her hammer upwards and it connects with the chin of the armor, its bevor gets crushed and the helmet flies off. It's "dead".

I bash my Armor on the moment it winces in pain. It falls backward and I thrust my sword on its neck, I use the bevor as a lever and push the sallet upwards. Then I thrust my blade on its round, featureless, and ethereal face, it's "dead".

Ciel parries the weak slash and thrusts towards the heart. The blade slides in and she twists it, the armor squirms and struggles in pain for a few seconds then "dies".

The remaining metal of the Living Armors corrodes and turns to dust.

"That was easy," Lina says.

"This is the first level with these monsters, they aren't that good," Hana says.

"These were especially weak, really old looking. Living Armors shouldn't be this rusty," I say.

"The ones at the guild looks like ceremonial armors compared to these ones," Alissa says.

We move inside the building. It's rather large but completely empty, at least there's no ruined furniture, debris or skeletons. The walls are decorated with carvings of battles, mostly have winged humanoids and monsters fighting each other. The building has no seams, it's like it's carved from a single rock of white marble with streaks of black, it's certainly not the minimalist architecture of the chimeras.

"I have a few hits. Humanoids... I think I recognize three of them," Alissa says.

Oh? We better go meet them.

Ciel and I share a look, we don't really believe in coincidences.

Intermission 6

I have never been happier, free to explore the library, discussing what I read every day, continuing my training in enchanting, actually fighting alongside strong people. Mom, Dad, I'm okay now, I'm happy. I just want you to know that, I don't want you to feel guilty anymore, I don't blame you for selling me, I just want you to know that I'm happy.

Master Hilde, thank you for everything.

I thought master wouldn't find me attractive seeing how Ciel is... big. But now I'm sure I'm making him happy, it's the least I can do to repay this new life. Even so, I have been training, this time I will have strength, I will have power. When the time comes, none shall stand on his path.

A note from Manasong

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Chapter 20: Depths

"You all stay here, Hana and I will go upstairs so we look less threatening."

Alissa frowns but she accepts. We start climbing the spiral staircase, it goes up the 3 floors and ends up on the cupola.

In the middle of the way, we hear footsteps above. A large woman in plate and leather comes out with a tower shield and behind her is a dog wereanimal woman archer in monster leather.

"Who are you and why are you here," The archer tells us, arrow nocked.

"Wolf Ryder, adventurer, just like you. I'm here because one of my companions sensed one of my friends, Nour Asaf.

The archer expression lightens and pulls the shield woman upstairs. More footsteps and in a minute Nour appears.

"What a coincidence! Never thought we would meet again inside a dungeon," Nour says with arms open wide. He is wearing his black leather again, this time he has a pristine black scaled shield hanging on his back.

He goes down the stairs and we shake hands.

"Was bound to happen, right? Neither of us can resist the call of the dungeons," I smile.

"How are you doing, Wolf?" His eyes turn warm.

"The same as always, very happy. You?"

Even though we have the problem with Darean my mood isn't bad.

"Just starting my adventure, let's say that I'm very excited, no marriage proposal to take me away from here this time," he smiles, "Come upstairs, the view is wonderful."

"This is Iana, a tracker we hired," he points to the wereanimal woman.

She has skin black as night and curly, short, boyish hair. Her black ears are nearly camouflaged among her hair.

"This is Bellatrix, a Blood Slave," he points to the other woman.

She removes her helmet. Bright red skin, two small protrusions on her forehead and swept back, glossy black hair that reaches the shoulders. Her grin shows some very pointy fangs. She's a devil-type demon.

"So, you are the Wolf Ryder?" Asks Iana, her pretty eyes open wide.

Oh boy.

"W-well, what do you mean by this?"

"You know, the one who killed the Symbol and the one the town criers announced some time ago."

"Yes, that's me."

"Wow! Amazing," she shakes my hand vigorously.

"I never thought you would be so small, some stories tell of your cold, killer eyes, of your booming commanding voice, your hundred spells you can call on a whim," she looks at the girls," But the other parts are true, just what is so special about you?

The spells is partially true.

"Nothing, really," I smile wryly.

She holds her head in her hand and pouts cutely. I feel 2 of the girls are getting very annoyed. I hurry and continue the introductions, Nour lifts his eyebrow.

"Another fiancee?" He laughs.

"Look who's talking," I rebuke.

Midori and Bellatrix smirk.

"Anyway, let's go to the top of the tower, the view there is pretty good," Nour swiftly turns around.

"Let's bring everyone, I can leave my elemental here as a guard."

"Wonderful."

The view really is nice, though just a bit windy, perhaps I should summon a wind elemental if it gets worse. We can view the entire island, we are on corner of a once marble town, possibly filled with living armors, not really a good place to go. There's the corner of an abandoned farm covering a good part of the island, in there we will be too exposed to the flying monsters of this level. Near the path we came there's the light forest, the safest place to go through, we will take a spiral stairs there and go to the next island, there are no stairs for the next level on this island.

We look up the blue sky, the lights slowly dims as the sun sets outside the dungeon, it's weird not seeing a sun and not having an orange sunset to appreciate. As the light dims little stars can be seen very far in the distance, the mana crystals still retain some light, giving us the same light as a moonlit night. The little stars that surround us gives me a chill, I feel as if we are drifting among stars.

I see Ciel smile in a way she didn't smile before. It's a daring smile, one you do before you jump from the plane and open your parachute. A smile of nostalgia, adventure was something she missed and now she's getting it back.

We set up camp on the cupola and decided to spend the night together. Safiya, Alissa and Ciel got in charge of dinner, although Iana knows how to cook an adventurers cooking is far too rough for our sensitive palate. I force my disgust away and help butcher 2 harpies that Nour shared with us, my [Dismantling] getting its rare use. Then the girls fry the bird parts, tastes like turkey with a mustard aftertaste, something on their fat does this.

Even though people here eat orc and goblin, only when it's explicitly part human they don't eat it. Cannibalism really is a taboo here, but it has a line much further than that of Earth.

After the gruesome butchering the girls responsible for the dinner don't need our help anymore. Lina and Bellatrix start maintaining the weapons and armor while Iana talks to them about enchanted bow maintenance. Hana and Midori go fawn over Aoi, tickling her belly, she seems to love the new dragonkin acquaintance. Roxanne comes to my side, she's having Ted and Suzy try to dance, I can see some jealous glances from Ciel towards the golems. Nour sits in front of me.

"Say, Nour, you might have some more experience on this type of thing so I want your opinion."

I tell him of Darean.

"Wow, well not that surprising, some people can be vengeful. I agree that he doesn't want to kill you, most likely have you sent as a slave somewhere, I know some circle of magi use illegal slave mages," he says to me.

Roxanne shudders.

"I was afraid Dawn of Fire was involved in something like this. I feared what they would do if I traveled alone so I ran from Goloria and went to Rabanara, which seemed a place not under the influence of the circles of magi," Roxanne says.

"Yeah, some of them are really bad, but you just need someone to vouch for you and they run away. They don't want to suffer through an investigation so they keep away from people that can bring them trouble," Nour says while nodding, "But anyway, I really think Darean has backing."

"Backing?" I ask.

"Yes, that rogue space mage is not cheap and it's not easy to find, you know the empire is very protective of [Gate]. This is not something a simple adventurer can find with just money, he needs connections and someone to vouch for him, though he's seriously misusing his power."

"Who would back him, then?"

"I don't know. I don't have connections in the underworld, at least not here..." He cleans his throat, "So I don't know much about the factions that work here, I just know who to avoid. But we can try to make a deduction, do you know if he has allies and enemies?"

"I only know Vanea Anara seems to dislike him."

He winces at her name. Roxanne looks at him concerned, she hasn't met the little devil.

"So she could be his enemy. Perhaps he's the one who's blocking her."

"What do you mean?"

"Well, you know that Vanea wants the emperor to recognize the efforts of her family, right?" I nod, "To do that she's gathering allies, people who can owe her favors, people she can buy, people she can protect so they will swear loyalty to her, all this stuff, this being the reason she's one I want to avoid. The thing is, she can't get anyone near her, someone is blackmailing or buying out any ally she can get, most likely some faction from the capital."

"So, Darean is position 1, he likely has a close relationship to the Lord and by extension he can get near Vanea rather easily, he seems to be showing he's romantically interested in her, though that could be fake. Being an adventurer means he most likely works for money so he can be bought, he's the perfect spy on the Anara family," I say.

Rabanara's closeness to adventurers seems to be backfiring on this part.

"Exactly, at position 1 Darean might as well be considered a knight working with the Lord, I hear they fight together a lot. This is only guesswork but it's the closest you have. Sorry, but I can't help much more, since I don't have connections all I can do is get you bodyguards, but I don't think that's the kind of help you want."

Roxanne nods in agreement.

"Yeah, I don't want to live in fear. I was only looking for advice anyway. Say, if you have a name, body description and a possible quirk, like the smell of the hair product someone uses, how easy can you find this person? Though I know she could be using [Ignorance] to keep low."

"That depends a bit, but the smell is a good thing, sniffers don't care about illusion spells. If the town doesn't suffer with smuggling then it's rather easy to lock down the town and make a sweep. If this person is in Rabanara then I think the Anara family can find them. I assume you got a lead?"

"Yeah, do you know hair products that use Ranja?"

"Oh yes, from the High Forest, one of the few things they export, those elitist bastards. Safiya loves it, bit expensive though," he whispers and then smiles, "How did you get that information? You should have gotten very close to smell a hair product."

"Well, I talked to a spirit of one of the kidnappers, he gave me a very good description of the one who lead me to the trap."

Nour knits his eyebrows in worry

"You didn't mess with him, right?"

"No, no. I still have my blessing, I didn't do anything bad."

Nour's expression relaxes in relief.

"Dealing with spirits of the dead is very... dangerous. Lots of nobles got their lives ruined by going too far and the temple getting a whiff of what they have done."

"Ciel is a former priestess, she helps me keep in line."

He chuckles.

"You got some good companions, I see. Rather, good wives-to-be."

Roxanne chuckles.

"Just what a good husband-to-be deserves," she gives me a kiss on the cheek.

I smile. A productive conversation, now I know I actually got some bargaining chips for Vanea.

"How did the 9th floor go for you?" Nour gives a pained smile, "It was a nightmare for us, those damn spiders kept crawling up to me and Safiya. Then we met two minotaurs, luckily for us one fell on a crumbling piece of the floor and disappeared a few levels below. But we ended up meeting it again before we found the stairs."

"Oh, well I just met a Shadow Satyr on the floor we arrived, behind him was the stairs so it was rather quick."

Nour's mouth hangs open.

"T-that's unfair, you and your damn good luck."

After dinner comes time for the bath. Safiya is a fellow mage who knows how to make a bath in a few seconds, though I saw Nour's bathtub was smaller than ours. With the summons, we have the added cheat of not needing to keep guard.

Bath ends up being Alissa's time, can't really make too much noise so Hana and Roxanne are left for bedtime, the gag will get used again with them. When Lina tries to "practice" Ciel sighs.

"Even you, Lina?"

"I... I…"

"She just wants to make me happy," I say.

Ciel rolls her eyes but she keeps watching Lina with the corner of her eye.

I spend some time reviewing our coordination tactics. I decided to teach them a few commands in English, it's a good thing to be able to yell orders without the enemy knowing what they mean.

The living armors occasionally patrol the lower floors but none came up towards the cupola. The anti-monster stone should have some effect on them too.

Today is the 28th.

A silent storm called Hana's mouth wakes me, Roxanne wasn't awake yet so she just swallowed all by herself.

"Better this way, I get it all for me," Hana smiles.

"Shameful, she's also your wife-to-be, you gotta share everything," I say.

I actually got Hana, she looks away and blushes.

My [Summoning Magic], [Space Magic], [Sword Use], [Andraste Language] and [Dismantling] increased by 1 (now 11+11, 14+18, 9+7, 8+2 and 0+3)

Lina is leveling up nicely, now she's level 18. With this amount of extra skills points her learning rate is very fast.

Hana increased her [Block] by 1 (now 8).

"Why is your block so low? I would expect someone experienced like you to have it higher. Especially when your style is about blocking and countering," I ask Hana.

"Well, I don't really have the... delicacy, to learn how to block so effectively. Besides, with my strength and endurance I can just take the hit, even if it's not on a shield. If an attack can't penetrate my skin or scales, why block it? These things aren't just for the fetishists like you," she smiles and points to the scales on her cheeks," You know, these things already deflected a few blades.

She really fights like a barbarian. I see Midori has a two-hander with her, she might be even worse than Hana.

For breakfast, we share our charcuterie with Nour.

"So, where are you going after this?" He asks.

"We will go to the 13th floor."

Nour and Safiya grimace.

"Ugh, I might as well pay for someone to help me skip those floors. Why are you going there?"

The Shadow Satyr was just an entree of what I really want. Two special monsters from the 13th floor.

"Well, there's a monster I want to fight, for magic research. Though the description of that floor sounds interesting."

"The monsters of that floor do have some very good uses for poison and dark magic," Safiya says.

"Something like that, mostly poison, I don't deal with dark magic," I say.

"You sound just like Rania," he smiles nostalgically.

"What would she research?

"Alchemicism. She had a very peculiar habit of trying out acids. You know, the Orc Headhunter was really lucky, she had just used all her acid," Nour makes a pained face, not because of the orc, but because of the image of what acid does.

Lina's Trivia: Alchemicism is a magic school where alchemy is combined with spells. I can learn it with the skill system but I can't use it since I need to ingredients before I can cast a spell and the skill system does not give me the knowledge of which ingredients I need.

"I, uh, I would rather not fight with acid, I'm having Roxanne create some poisons and venoms, though. I mainly want paralysis, some monsters are quite valuable if you get them intact."

Roxanne looks at me with an evil smirk.

"I would rather create healing potions but poison can be fun too," she says.

"I see, well we rarely bring the bodies back, don't really need the money so Rania had no reason to hold back, besides for the effect it has on my mental health."

"Well I, I also don't hold back, the less time fighting a monster the better," Safiya smiles a bit painfully.

"The girls are the same, sometimes they hold back for me, I just do not do well with gore," I scratch my cheek, shyly.

"Don't be ashamed of that. Everyone has a weakness," Alissa says, tapping my shoulder.

Thanks, honey.

"My weakness is invisible enemies," Hana says.

"My weakness is swarms," Ciel says, frowning.

Dream Eaters attack in swarms.

"My weakness is spiders," Safiya says.

Nour shares an understanding look with her.

"My weakness is heights," Lina says, lowly.

"My weakness is cute enemies," Midori says.

Everyone raises an eyebrow at her, she chuckles.

"I simply can't kill the Rabid Rabbit," she shrugs.

Ciel puts a finger in her chin.

"Understandable," she says.

Roxanne nods in agreement.

"Some people say you are not a proper adventurer if you can't handle gore," Nour says.

"To hell with them!" I yell

Nour laughs.

"To hell with them!" He yells too.

We break camp and say our goodbyes. Nour is going to a bigger island while we are going upstairs to the closest stair for the next dungeon floor.

We meet some proper Living Armors this time. A trio that looks like plated knights, they all use long swords.

"Let's test our melee again. Lina, Wolfy, you two fight together one of them, you may have skills but it's not the same as having experience," Hana says.

We nod. I give the warbow and bodkin arrows to Alissa, she won't be able to do much with just her normal bow. The nature elemental will be ready, any sign of blood and she will restrain the armor.

The Armors are in the street walking towards us. We move out of our hiding spot and they immediately charge towards us.

"I can handle the first strike," Lina says.

I kinda agree, my "Strength" isn't rising quickly enough even though I have been doing strength exercises, [Stonebody] is a cheat.

The Living Armor slashes sideways towards Lina. It was smart enough not to go all-in on a single strike. She grunts and deflects the blow upwards. She counters with strike on the knee and the armor gets dented, forcing it to kneel for a second.

I strike the bevor on the neck of the Armor, there aren't many openings in the armor so I have to create one. Nothing visible happens to the bevor but a few more strikes will be enough.

Hana is not using her shield, she deflects the first strike with her sword and kicks the Armor away. She summons her wings and charges towards it.

Ciel keeps the Armor away, it tried to force itself into her guard but she forced it back with a strong thrust towards its chest, denting the armor.

Our Armor steps back and slashes downwards towards me, I dodge backward and feel the tip of the blade get slow down by [Wind Armor]. It immediately slashes sideways towards Lina, she deflects upwards again and strikes the shin. The leg gets lifted with the strike and it jumps back to keep its balance.

Hana strikes the Armor's sword upwards, opening its guard and hits it with her shoulder, sending it flying backward. She lands on top of the arms of the Armor, preventing it from getting up, then she grabs the bevor and rips it away. She thrusts her sword into the neck and it pierces the coif, the Armor struggles for a few seconds but "dies".

The Armor tries to charge again and Ciel finds an opening on the armpit of the Living Armor and disables the arm. The Armor tries to strike with a single arm but Ciel blocks the strike with her small shield strapped to her forearm, then she jumps backward and gets ready for the next attack.

Lina charges forward and strikes downwards, the Armor parries and tries to twist its sword to pull the hammer off Lina's hand. She goes with it and bashes the Armor's hand, making it wince. I slide my blade below the bevor and it gets snagged into something, I pull my sword with all my strength and something snaps. The Armor recovers from the wince and kicks my shield, keeping me away.

Ciel deflects an awkward blow from the Armor and slides her blade past the Armor's neck, she turns it around and uses the hook on her glaive to snag the bevor and pull it. The Armor stumbles and Ciel sweeps his legs, making it fall face down on the ground. Ciel thrusts and pierces the Armor on an opening at the back of its waist, making it desperately spasm. The Armor turns around and grabs the blade when Ciel tries to thrust again. She wrangles it from its hands and jumps backward.

The bevor is hanging from our Living Armor's neck, exposing the mail coif behind it. One of its legs is lame and it can't walk properly. I feint and strike the Armor towards the neck but it deflects my sword away. Lina charges and gets her shield kicked, I feel mana flowing through her, she holds her ground. She uses the hook on her hammer to pull the good leg of the Armor. It falls back on the ground.

Ciel's Armor struggles to get up, it draws a dagger and lunges towards her. Ciel easily deflects it and sweeps its legs again. The Armor falls and Ciel drops on top of it. She draws a dagger and jams it on the opening of the bevor, the Armor tries to struggle but "dies".

I step on one arm and Lina steps on the other. She smashes the helmet of the Armor and it caves in, the Armor loses most of its strength. I thrust with all my strength and pierce the coif, the Armor slowly stops struggling and "dies".

I raise my head and look around, we are the last to finish. Hana is looking at us with a smirk. I just take a look at her work and smile.

"You fight like a barbarian," Ciel says.

"Only Hana could do such a thing," Lina says.

Hana laughs.

"I rather have magic than just muscles," Hana says.

"Let them be envious for a bit more," I say.

Magic really makes things much easier.

The remaining metal of the Living Armors corrodes and turns rusty, parts of it turn to dust. This is why their metal isn't too valuable, it quickly ages when the spirit dies, even when the Armor looks new it's going to degrade a lot after killing it.

We leave the small ruins and move towards the light forest.

I'm glad it's daytime and bright, there's a chance Shadow Satyrs appear in dark places. Even though they are rare and valuable I'm not so eager to find one again.

Alissa stops and stares towards the sky, her eyes narrow and then she smirks.

"A Kite Dragon, looks young."

"Oooh, how big?" I ask.

"Looks to be around 2 or 3 meters long.

"Can you hit it?"

"Just gonna prickle him at this distance, but it will certainly get his attention."

Time for the real test of the warbow.

"Let's get to a clearing and set the trap. Roxanne, how's the paralysis venom?"

"On a Kite Dragon it should take a minute or two to act," she taps her chin.

"Perfect we can certainly hold it down until then."

Screw Shadow Satyrs, a Kite Dragon is even more valuable. This dragon is flat and long, it has no wings but long flipper-like limbs on its side, it swims through the air like a flatworm, its head is flat and triangular like a crocodile's but its eyes are on the sides of the mouth and move independently like a chameleon's. Its scales make high-quality scale armor, even better than ours.

I look up and don't see anything, the dragon has some camouflage, he lights his own scales to look bright enough you mistake it for the sky. I take 5 points from [Parry] and put it in [Electric Magic].

Alissa nocks an arrow on the warbow, she waits, her eyes glued to wherever that dragon is. With nearly inhuman speed she draws her bow and releases the arrow. It flies high and I see a small blur on the sky, the arrow hits this blur and I finally manage to spot the outline of the dragon.

Silently the dragon comes, its entire body snakes towards us in a fast zig"zag pattern.

Hana is in the middle of the clearing while everybody is hiding behind a tree.

"COME HERE LITTLE WORM, I WANNA USE YOU AS BAIT FOR FISHING!" Hana taunts and strikes her shield."

"UROOOOO!" It answers.

Its crocodile mouth opens and light comes out of it. A huge clump of ice shoots out of his mouth and towards Hana. She dodges sideways and the ice scratches her shield. The clump explodes in the ground, covering everything with an unusual chilling thin layer of snow.

Hana breathes fire around her, she would quickly get frostbite otherwise.

"URAAH!" The dragon screams again.

Using its side flippers it swipes at Hana, the attack sends flying multiple emerald scales of her shield.

I cast [Discharge]. Low voltage, high spread. The entire dragon gets covered in sparks coming out of my fingers. Unlimited Pow-...

The dragon turns to me with anger in his eyes. He opens his mouth again and mana gathers.

Fuck! More power!

An arrow pierces the top of its mouth and it stops charging mana. It turns to Alissa.

Fuck! EAT MORE POWER!

"[Wind Hammer]!"

"[Torrent]!"

It gets disrupted again and with another arrow on its mouth it decides not to open it anymore. It turns upwards and starts to leave.

MAXIMUM POWERRRR!

My head hurts and my MP drops like a waterfall but finally, the dragon starts convulsing. This is what [Discharge] is all about, disabling the enemy.

An arrow pierces its head. Damn thick skull, it didn't penetrate much.

Another set of attacks from Ciel and Roxanne. Scales break off its head, I feel tears forming at the coins disappearing.

My head hurts, overuse is setting in, my mana is super low.

"NOW!" I yell.

The nature elemental throws its vines at the same moment I stop using [Discharge]. I fall behind the tree and drink an MP potion.

The vines wrap around the body and keep it from leaving. The dragon tries to fly upwards and the elemental is dragged a meter before it wraps more vines on a tree.

Hana flies and pierces its throat with her spear. Not enough "Dexterity" to hit the head while it's flailing about.

Hana rides the dragon by holding on the spear and her weight lowers him near the ground. Dust and dirt gets kicked about as it struggles. Aoi flaps her wings in excitement, through [Animal Tongue] I feel she wants Hana to ride her.

"IRAAAAH!" The Kite Dragon shrieks desperately.

The dragon uses its last strength like a whip and throws Hana upwards. She spreads her wings and gracefully touches the ground.

The elemental now has full control of the dragon. In a few seconds, it loses the last of its strength and falls on the ground.

"Careful, he's only paralyzed," Alissa says.

"Let me do the honors," Hana says.

She draws her sword and with all her strength pierces the skull of the dragon. Now it's dead.

"Without the warbow I wouldn't have even dented it," Alissa says.

Lina looks away shyly and Alissa sneaks behind her.

"It's all thanks to you!" She pounces and hugs Lina.

"Wha-wha-... oh, y-you welcome..." Lina mutters.

"You okay, Wolf?" Roxanne comes to me.

Alissa freezes and her head snaps to me, she hadn't noticed my struggle.

"Had to use all my mana on [Discharge], didn't think it was that immune to electricity."

"Well, yeah, dragons are kinda like that," Aoi chirps happily, "Though I think it's just that your 'Magic Power' is not high enough, even I wouldn't be able to contain him for long if I knew [Discharge]."

I sigh.

"Gotta keep training my mana."

"Well, we all gotta do this, with [Increased Growth] I think we can get a significant increase, even if it didn't show much with skill training," Ciel says.

Roxanne groans, "You know, I'm the only one bringing stable income to us, can't I just continue making potions?"

"No," Ciel answers flatly.

Roxanne pouts.

"Learn [Redirect Mana] and it won't be as bad. With one or two points in [Mana Overuse Resistance], the headaches won't appear easily," I say.

"Cheater," Ciel silently mouths to me, then she shows me her tongue.

The forest had a few more Ploms but nothing else. Aoi started to notice them and fired a few fireballs before they approached. She seems much more active and happy when we are outside of town.

We reach the spiral stairs and Lina stops on her tracks. There are railings on the wooden stairs but you can easily see the blue abyss if you look down. Even I am concerned with the safety of this thing.

"If we put a blindfold on you would you feel better?" I ask.

Lina shivers and looks at me with fear.

"Ok, bad idea... what if I carry you?"

She looks pensively.

"What if I carry you," Ciel says, smiling.

Lina smiles faintly.

"What if I carry you," Hana says, smirking.

Lina squirms and looks away, then she nods.

"What...?"

"Don't look too deep into it, Wolfy," Alissa pats my shoulder.

We go through the stairs with a confident Hana in front and a scrawny Lina trying to disappear in her arms. I realize the error of my suggestion, no way I would have been safe carrying Lina, with every step the wood creaks, with every blow of wind the stair sways, with every second the blue abyss comes closer. I give a quick prayer and hurry upwards.

The new island is very long and has a mountain on it, a grey, unremarkable conical mountain, in the middle of that mountain is our exit. There are only woods around here so the outside is safe, I just hope we don't meet a group of Shadow Satyrs inside the mountain.

As we walk through the long field of pink willows, the soft breeze and warm, uh, mana crystal light tickles my skin. Soon I feel like simply closing my eyes while walking.

"What's that, old man, is it time for your nap?" Ciel smirks.

I'm pushed back to reality, there are still other monsters in the sky that could attack us.

"Just enjoying the breeze."

"The view makes you forget you are inside a dungeon, huh?"

"Yeah, you enjoying our little vacation?"

Ciel laughs.

"Sure, with you around this really feels like a vacation."

"Imagine what we are gonna be like in a few years when our levels are much higher," Alissa joins in."

"Ridiculous," Ciel answers immediately.

We reach the edge of the mountain.

"Dwarven architecture," Lina says.

"How can you tell?"

"The tunnel is wide and not very tall, the lines are perfectly straight, not much use of rounded edges, none of your silly drawings on the walls, the stone is smoothed to perfection, and the lights are embedded in the stone. It feels... feels like home," she says with bittersweet happiness on her voice.

"Silly drawings?"

"Well, murals depicting events are only for the most important of events. You can only carve a wall once, if you make a bad mural then you have soiled a good piece of wall, better to just hang a painting and not risk it."

"Dwarves value good planning and carving things on the stone. The most prestigious buildings are entirely carved on stone, instead of constructed with bricks or cement like we do," Alissa says.

Lina nods in agreement. Alissa seems to know a little about everything.

The more you know.

Like Lina said, there aren't rounded surfaces here, the tunnels all either branch on a grid or on an angle, they never curve. This makes it easier for us since we just go straight to the heart of the mountain.

The lights on the walls get dimmer and eventually we have to use [Spirit Light]. I believe we are very close to the exit.

"Four Living Armors," Alissa says.

"Coming towards us?"

"No, they are standing in line on our path."

"Well, let's just attack them when in range. I will use [Discharge] while you girls charge something powerful."

As we approach we see these armors are a bit different.

"Dwarven men-of-the-line," Lina mutters.

4 metal squares block our way. Black shields with a boss and a small opening for a spear.

"Let's see how they like this," Roxanne says and starts gathering mana.

The shields immediately move forward followed by the clanking of heavily armored men.

I cast [Discharge]. Same as the dragon, UNLIMITED POWWEEER!

One shield falls, a fully plated and short Living Armor is behind it. It immediately receives an arrow that penetrates its helmet and "dies".

"[Wind Hammer]!"

A burst of mana flies beside me and hits another Living Armor on the top of its head, making it fall forward on top of its shield with a large dent on the helmet.

A large and long [Ice Lance] flies beside me and pierces the shield of another Living Armor, I don't believe it's dead but its chest could have been pierced.

"Lina! Get the downed one!" Hana yells.

"NOW!" I scream.

My head hurts a lot, overuse is stacking.

The nature elemental stretches its vines and holds the shield of the last Living Armor. Hana charges towards it with her wings, her spear pierces the Armor, it lets the shield go and it falls on the ground. Her spear breaks but she grabs the part that's stuck and drives it harder on the Armor.

Lina charges forward and destroys the helmet with a savage overhead strike.

The Armor with the [Ice Lance] drops its shield and staggers backward, there's an opening on its chest. It receives an arrow on the face and "dies".

I massage my forehead. Overuse keeps me from reaching my full potential with magic, guess if it weren't for that magic would be unstoppable.

"...-tyrs!"

What? Alissa yelled something. I hear clopping.

"AAARGH!"

Pain fills my shield arm and I drop it, I cast [Heal] on it and nothing happens. I feel "death" approaching. In reflex I lift my left shoulder and arm to protect myself, even though I have no shield in hand anymore.

A shadow covers my sight and I feel immense pain on my side. A hand pulls me away and I fall back a meter.

Ciel kicks the shadow and it jumps backward, dodging it. It then charges forward again with such speed it nearly gets inside her guard.

I cast [Lighting Bolt] and it teleports sideways, my head hurts even more. It charges Ciel but has to immediately stop as an arrow flies where its head was supposed to be. A [Fire Arrow] pierces its shoulder and lights a small fire.

It looks to the fire and nearly fails do dodge Ciel's thrust, she makes a wound at its neck. Ciel twists the glaive and uses the hook to grab the neck of the Shadow Satyr, she pulls it and it tumbles forward, only to be met with her knee. It falls down on the ground and an arrow pierces its face.

I hear Lina scream in pain.

She clutches her shield arm while Hana stands in front of her, parrying a blow from another Shadow Satyr. A vine tries to wrap around its leg only for it to teleport backward, safe from harm.

I grab my shield and walk backward towards Roxanne and Aoi, I'm disabled until I can at least use my shield. Thankfully the scimitar didn't cut through my scale armor but my shoulder hurts like hell.

Roxanne and Ciel prepare a spell. The Satyr momentarily looks at them, then it disappears and appears in front of Hana, she barely has time to react and receives the blow with her shield.

Hana yells as a dark bullet hits her shield arm at point-blank, she doesn't drop it and remains in front of Lina. But she couldn't counter so the Satyr moves to strike again.

An arrow flies and the satyr teleports backward. Silently, a [Wind Blade] cuts at its flank, sending black blood flying. An ice spear lodges on its chest and it staggers backward. It looks at us in what seems to be confusion.

An arrow hits its face and it dies.

Ciel relaxes and comes to me, she chants a heal.

"Better?"

"Better, thanks."

I feel a light head chop.

"You overused your mana and because of that you got distracted," Roxanne says to me, her mouth distorted in annoyance."

I feel another light head chop.

"You overuse your mana too much, you need to be more careful," This time a very angry Alissa looks at me.

"I'm sorry…"

I just wanted to test [Discharge] on the Living Armors but I guess I was a too reckless.

Alissa mellows out and kisses my forehead.

"You said the 13th floor was even worse?" Hana asks with her hands on her hips.

"Well, yes…"

"You gotta compensate us for that, this shit hurts and I'm not gonna let myself orgasm to a monster."

"What...?" Ciel looks bewildered.

"She has [Pain Conversion], it lets her convert pain into pleasure, but still feel the pain," I answer.

Ciel facepalms.

"You know what, screw it, I don't care, if this is the champion the Gods want then who am I to judge."

She throws her hands in the air and starts walking. We share a few looks and smiles and then follow.

Soon after we find the stairs.

We reach the 11th floor.

This is a weird floor, it's called Trial for the Reckless. Hundreds of island surround a large island, floating tunnels connect the smaller islands to the central island. Each tunnel section is dark and closed off and between each tunnel, there's an exposed wooden spiral stair.

We are thrown into one of the smaller islands, nothing but empty blue void around our island, except that above the central island the sky turns dark.

We are on a marble road, there are only a few houses before the island suddenly ends. It is as if this piece of land was cut directly from a town.

I'm quite happy that an elemental can go to the next floor if I order it. I thought the floor selection prompt wouldn't appear to it but it does, saving me from wasting mana dismissing and re-summoning it.

Our mood was a bit dark until we sat down and filled our stomachs, it's difficult to be grumpy when satisfied.

We force ourselves to move otherwise our mood will make the situation quickly degenerate into a cuddling session, possibly progressing even further.

We reach the first tunnel and dwarven architecture is seen again. We push the heavy stone double doors and move forward. The light doesn't reach far so we invoke our [Spirit Lights].

Each tunnel section we have to fight once. The first time it was a single Living Armor, then 2, then 3, then 4, then 5 so I summoned an earth elemental to help. With our experience it was a very simple fight, some of them lack shields, making them easy targets for Alissa.

Lina had to be carried by Hana every spiral stair but she seemed to be less afraid each time.

We fought 6 and then 7 Living Armors, then we get something new, a Nalusa, threat level 5. It's a two meters tall human-looking monster that looks like it's made of charred flesh with missing pieces of meat and exposed bones, it smells like burnt meat. It has hair on its back with white bones protruding out of it, it moves very fast and it swings sharp claws. Its face contains 4 eyes with a large white sclera, it's nose and mouth are mere slits that are almost invisible. It controls blood and turns it into projectiles, either their own or of their prey.

It immediately charges forward.

"Protect Alissa and Roxanne!" I order the nature elemental.

The earth elemental stands beside Hana. Ciel stands between them and Lina and I are at the flanks.

The monster slashes at the elemental, the shield on its left hand gets scratched and it counters with a spear stab. The monster dodges sideways and gets in range of Lina, she smashes one of its feet and it jumps backward. A small clump of blood floats in front of it.

It dodges an arrow and turns the clump of blood into a shard. It flies towards Alissa and the nature elemental intercepts it, getting stuck on her vines. The Nalusa tilts its head and dodges backward again when a [Water Blade] flies towards it.

"The blood has venom, talk to us if you get hurt by it!" I yell.

I'm not sure about the physiology of the nature elemental. Hopefully, it is immune to poisons and venoms.

A tense minute goes on. On this small corridor we risk too much friendly"fire to fire our ranged attacks wildly, besides, the monster is too fast for most of our ranged attacks but at least it can't get close due to our solid line.

"Let's move forward, push it back to the wall!" Hana yells.

"Understood! Keep the line!" I answer.

The monster looks at us expressionlessly, its eyes blink out of sync. We slowly inch forward and it slowly inches backward.

It charges Hana.

She strikes downwards, the monster parries it with a hand and the other scrapes by her shield. The elemental and Ciel pierce the chest lightly. It jumps backward.

A ball of blood floats beside it.

"Tch, it will get more powerful if we only scratch it," I say.

"No other way around it," Ciel says.

Another minute and the ball gets bigger. It charges towards me.

I cast [Entangling Vines] in front of me. The monster swipes at me and I block with my shield. The attack pushes me backward, brutish strength but little sharpness on the claws.

Hana strikes and wounds the arm, the bone is too tough, the sword can't cut through it. The vines wrap around an ankle. Another arm comes towards me.

I rest my sword on my shield and it slides between the fingers of the monster, nearly splitting its hand into two. Hana tries to combo a thrust but it immediately jumps backward and falls.

Hana's thrust turns into a slash and cuts into its belly. I pierce a leg with my sword. It cuts the vines and rolls backward.

The blood ball is much bigger now, fortunately the monster seems to be slowing down. We keep inching forward.

The monsters bleeds for another few minutes, I'm very concerned over the blood ball.

We reach the end, the light shows the door at the end of the tunnel.

The blood ball turns into hundreds of little spikes and they all fly towards us.

I hide behind my shield, I lower down into the floor to reduce my exposed profile. I hear multiple shattering sounds as the solidified blood breaks into my shield. A spike pierces my boot and I feel a sharp pain in my foot.

I look up and the monster is swinging at me. My position is bad, the arm hits my shield and I fly backward.

Hana strikes him but he defends with the other claw, it forces him down and he slips away forward. Ciel slashes at his leg but it feels nothing.

I feel sick, I feel something moving inside my body.

He covers his face with his claws and an arrow pierces his chest. He ignores me and charges towards Alissa.

The nature elemental jumps in front of it and it gets torn to shreds by the claws, but it's not dead. The monster jumps towards Alissa who's drawing her sword.

A torrent hits its chest and it falls back into Hana's sword. She lifts it up and changes the direction of her charge midair, she swings her sword down and the monster crashes in the floor headfirst.

The monster trashes and pushes itself off the ground, Hana loses her sword. I cast [Lightning Bolt] on it and my muscles tense, making me immobile, it's the venom Mage's Trap. Let's see if it was worth it.

The monster convulses for a second and Ciel pierces it through the chest sending it back down.

Alissa jumps sideways to get a clear shot and an arrow flies into an eye. It loses a brain, it still has another.

Hana draws her dagger and falls on top of one arm, digging the knife on its shoulder. She covers her face and a blood spike pierces her arm. The other arm strikes her and pushes her off its body.

It swings its hand again and Ciel jumps backward not to get caught in that, the earth elemental pierces it and pushes it to the ground again. Alissa fires another arrow and it blocks its face with its nearly ruined arm.

"HAAAH!" Lina screams.

She rushes to the monster and does a savage overhead strike, the hammer buries itself into the head of the monster. A large blood spike flies and pierces Lina on the waist, an exposed part where the leather shirt ends.

The monster drops its hand, it is dead.

I'm sweating cold, I feel like something horrible is running free inside my body. Lina is hunched over, clutching her belly. Ciel rushes to her and starts chanting.

"Wolf?" Alissa asks me.

I can't answer.

"He, he's paralyzed!" She yells, desperation on her voice.

Ciel looks at me concerned but keeps chanting, Roxanne rushes towards me and pokes me all around. It hurts, my muscles are sore, stop it!

"Mage's Trap, he got paralyzed because he used mana, the venom uses the mana of a spell to produce the paralytic substance. Only Ciel can heal him now, he can't drink anti-venom," Roxanne says, adjusting her glasses.

Lucky for me using directly on the body of another person is very hard so there's no venom inside my brain or heart, though it's difficult to breathe I won't die.

"C-Ciel!" Alissa calls her.

"Lina takes priority," Roxanne puts a hand on her shoulder.

Lina's wound is a bit problematic, it's deep. Ciel is taking a while to chant a proper heal.

"We should have gotten her a hauberk," Hana says.

"Wouldn't have helped, the blood spike would have flown through the openings of the rings just like it did on your arm," Alissa says, rubbing her arm, looking uncomfortable.

Alissa comes to me and touches my cheek. Roxanne grabs her hand.

"Better not, his muscles must be sore and sensitive."

Alissa looks even more dejected, she sits down and holds her knee staring at me, worry in her eyes.

Ciel finishes her chant and runs to me. She starts chanting [Purify Body].

Another minute of that horrible feeling and she finally finishes. My muscles relax and I collapse, I feel exhausted.

Alissa runs to to me and grabs my body. She lowers me and gives me a lap-pillow.

Ciel instantly cast [Refresh] and much of the soreness goes away. Putting the spare points in [Light Magic] she can cast this level 25 spell.

"That took a lot of mana," Ciel says.

"Bring me the monster," I ask.

Hana drags it to me and I immediately store it on "Items", can't let that precious blood run away. Alissa chuckles.

"Greedy little man."

I pout, feelings hurt.

Lina walks to me and hugs my arm. I don't feel like pouting anymore.

"You okay?" I ask.

"Yes. Only a bit uncomfortable."

"Cuddle puddle!" Roxanne drops on the ground and hugs me.

"How romantic..." Ciel rolls her eyes and chuckles.

The smell of the blood and burnt meat of the monster is still in the air.

Hana scoops Roxanne and lays down beside me, with Roxanne on top of her.

Ciel sighs and lays down on my other side. Lina releases my arm and moves over, laying down on my belly.

I cast [Purify Body] on Lina and Hana.

"Thank you, Wolfy," Lina says and curls up.

"Muuch better, that thing feels horrible," Hana says.

I sigh.

"Getting myself paralyzed wasn't such a good idea," I say.

"Eh," Hana shrugs.

"I'm not that good at improvising."

"That's why we are here," Alissa says.

"To clean up your doo-doo's," Roxanne pokes me.

Alissa plays with my hair and we spend some time like this. Life or death situations are the best for forming bonds.

When we move it's 6 PM.

That was the last of the tunnels. After another spiral bridge, we enter the central island. It's a place with very few monsters so fellowships camp here. Though not many fellowships come here in comparison with the other floors, the Nalusa being one of the reasons why.

I would rather not camp here, it's always going to be tense meeting other fellowships with the number of women ours have.

We move inside the marble ruins and look for a clock tower. It's like the entire town simply petrified into marble. There are carts, people, guards, animals, furniture, everything is made of marble and glued to the ground.

We find a specific house and enter, the stairs are there.

We reach the 12th floor.

This floor is called Faded Glory. There's two huge roots going in a spiral, they are as thick as Rabanara's castle. There are multiple islands stuck on those roots, simple marble bridges connect each island, and Marker Kites show when it's safe to move, multiple are swinging about.

Around us, there's no more blue sky, only a sandstorm a dozen meters away from the roots. The sandstorm is the only source of light, it produces a weak light that flickers, once in a while the sand sparkles.

Above and below a black mist slowly blocks our view, preventing us from seeing too far up or down.

Our island is a piece of a town, we find a walled-off house and set up inside, ignoring the statues(?) of people, I pull our tent in the backyard.

The first thing we do is take a bath.

"Say, Hana, you said you wanted a reward?"I grin.

I pull out a leather belt. She looks at me with hunger.

I wrap the belt on her neck. Bypassing the tip through the buckle the more I pull, the tighter it gets. I put on my "Sex Maniac" build.

She doesn't even say anything, she just turns around and spreads herself for me, I thrust immediately.

With both hands, I pull the belt in sync with my thrusts. She grabs the belt to give her a little more air but it's not enough, soon enough her strength starts to vanish, eventually she can't hold the belt anymore and lets it go.

Her back arches and she chokes, trying to breathe. Little by little she loses her strength and her eyes go white. I loosen the belt and she gasps for air.

When the gasps reduce a little I pull the belt back and resume thrusting.

I slap her ass, again and again, she cums again and again, every time she cums her legs shake more and more. I feel like I'm riding a bull, I wonder if [Riding] would help here.

I let her breathe two more times until I push her to the limit. She stops moving and uses all her strength to pull the belt back a little to breathe. As her desperation grows I feel her insides tighten more and more.

I take my points off and cum inside her then I let the belt go and she collapses, barely any strength to let herself from drowning on the tub. Roxanne pulls her to the edge of the tub where she wheezes and coughs.

"Don't... heal me..." She mutters in a rough voice.

Alissa looks very frisky so I take her next. Slowly from behind, I thrust, one hand on the base of her tail, the other arm wrapped around her throat. I choke her lightly and bite her ears, making her squeal.

She claws on my arm as her desperation grows. I relent and she coughs. Once we continue, I hold it in until she's desperately out of air, then I cum inside.

After she regains her breath I keep my tongue inside her mouth during the rest of the bath.

Hana has been getting better at roasting meat with her fire breath, though I had to heal her throat for this dinner. Aoi is trying to help but her flame is still too unsteady for roasting. We eat some nice Minotaur meat with not-potato and not-onion soup.

"So, what do you want for your reward?" I ask Lina.

She makes thinking sounds and fidgets about.

"I... don't know…"

"How about a massage?"

Ciel, who was almost falling asleep suddenly opens her eyes.

"S-say, Wolfy, I'm gonna be on the front line too, d-don't I deserve a reward?" Ciel tries to sound as innocent as possible.

Alissa mutters something to Roxanne.

"M-me too! Using spells is tiring, you know! Walking around all day on those boots that you like makes my feet sore, you know," Roxanne says, nodding and grinning.

"Well, I do like them but you use those high heeled boots because you like them too, I'm not forcing you," I answer.

"T-that's not... I still walked a lot, and, and-and-and..." She loses her train of thought.

I smirk.

"I will do all of you."

I put 20 points in [Massage], that's the maximum. I start with Aoi and massage her little body, she has a bit of meat to knead and seems to love having her scales pressed, I do it until she sleeps. Then I do Hana so she learns how it's supposed to feel, I mix some kisses and a few licks and get plenty of giggles in return, who knew that even Hana would be ticklish. I do Ciel as Hana copies my every move while doing Roxanne. As her reward, I did Lina for twice as long as any.

Ciel got frisky after all that, she might have a slight foot fetish.

Today is the 29th.

Me and Hana gained [Massage] with 1 point. I increased my [Sword Use], [Electric Magic] and [Summoning Magic] by 1 (now 9+8, 11+12), my [Light Magic] and [Mana Control] by 2 (now 6+6 and 0+9).

Lina is now the same level as me, though she has less experience. I left 5 SP on Lina so she can grow her skills with more ease, like enchanting.

Lina Skill Report

Physical

Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level
Hammer Use | 6+8 | Parry | 2+3 | Dodge | 1+3
Block | 6 | Muscle Explosion | 2+0 | Shield Bash | 1+0
Battlefield Perception | 2+0 | Dwarven Pride Style | 2+0 | Enhanced Speed | 2+0

Magical

Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level
Sense Mana | 1 | Mana Control | 3 | Mana Efficiency | 1
Fire Magic | 1 | Earth Magic | 5+0 | Light Magic | 1
Space Magic | 1 | Conjuring Magic | 1 | General Enchanting | 7
Magic Tool Carving | 1

Miscellaneous

Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level
General Blacksmith | 4 | Sewing | 4 | Housework | 1
Cleaning | 2 | Washing | 1 | Math | 4
Riding | 1 | Stonebody (innate) | 3
15 Remaining Skill Points
OBS: Level means (free point)+(trained point)

With this we remove the Rings of the Servant. After a few more levels I think the girls are going to use it again except me and Lina, we want everyone to be on a similar level. Currently, the other girls are suppressing their skills growth so we have some extra skill points to use on what's necessary, like resistances.

I switch the girls extra points to [Enhanced Speed] except Ciel because [Refresh] is going to be useful here. These enhancements skills aren't passive bonus to our status, they give you "intuition" and muscle memory of how to improve such status, though there might be a slight amount of magic involved into those skills. If I concentrate I can think of ways of moving faster and more efficiently but it takes a mental toll, it's impressive that Hana has so many of these enhancements skills.

If the last floor was unpopular this one is deserted, it's because there's only a single type of monster here, Symbol of Envy, threat level 6. It is disgusting ball of meat, its eyes secrete a petrifying liquid, and it's black and white tentacles are long and sticky. Thankfully they don't move unless an enemy is found, otherwise, we wouldn't be able to casually spend a night on this floor.

Lina's Trivia: There was once a rich and xenophobic kingdom of chimeras during the Age of Oppression that left others to fend for themselves. The envy the others felt birthed this horrifying monster and eventually the kingdom fell to it, so the legends say. It would hide in their wells, making people unknowingly ingest the secretion and it would spread through the air once the water dried like when used for cooking or washing. Once the contamination reached a critical mass a bit of mana was all it took to start a chain reaction and petrify everyone and everything.

is it Valuable? Yes. is it worth the risk of getting petrified and dying? No.

We move out of our campsite and walk towards the edge of our island, there's a bridge that leads us to an island embedded into the roots. The Marker Kite shows only a slight turbulence.

"Can you do this?" I ask Lina.

She fidgets and I grab her hand. She slowly calms down and breathes deeply.

"Yes," she says, resolute.

As we pass the bridge Aoi flaps her wings and closes her eyes, feeling the wind.

"Please don't even think about trying to fly here," I tell her.

"Kweh!" She chirps as if she's offended.

"Just making sure," I shrug.

We move into the new island, a few pink willows and a lake cut in half. The water flows down into the nothingness but the level of the lake's water does not change.

We reach the root and see a staircase carved into it. It leads us to top of the root. It's windy so I summon a nature elemental.

The nature elemental turns it's arms into vines and we tie the vines to our belts. Tied to one arm are Hana, Roxanne, and Ciel with Aoi on her shoulders; and on the other are me, Lina, and Alissa.

It's a long climb until the next island. The wind starts to change and I wonder if this path was a good idea.

"Oh no," Alissa mutters, "IT'S COMING, IT'S ROLLING DOWN!"

Alissa points forward, there's a small ball on the distance rolling down the root. Ah shit, terrible place.

"PUSH IT OVER THE EDGE. WAIT FOR MY SIGNAL," I yell.

I summon a wind elemental.

Hana moves to the front and readies her shield. We huddle up behind the nature elemental.

The ball rolls rapidly. It's 2 meters tall, full of disgusting tentacles covering half of the surface, and small eyes covering the rest. There's a mouth somewhere but that's not important.

I wait until it's around 50 meters from us.

"Elemental... now!"

The wind elemental swipes her hand sideways with great strength and a strong gust of wind hits the rolling ball. It flies sideways and rolls off the root. Mid"air a black tentacle shoots towards the root and gets stuck to it.

"NOW!" I yell.

"[Wind Hammer]!"

"[Torrent]!"

I cast [Earth Bullet].

An arrow flies into the tentacle that grabbed the root. The tentacle releases the root and it flies away towards the nothingness with great speed.

"Alright, move forward quickly!" I order.

"Is the fall not gonna kill it?" Asks Hana.

"The book tells to never underestimate it, that ball of horrors is tenacious," I answer.

"It was like a horror story," Alissa says.

"O-ok, let's go then," Ciel looks backward repeatedly in worry.

We quickly jog upwards. Ciel and Alissa keep glancing back every once in a while.

"Kweh!" Aoi yells.

I follow her gaze. There's a second root that twists around the one we are at. Over at the distance, there's a ball that's shooting tentacles and using its momentum to swing forward very fast. It's coming at us.

"Well, I'll be damned," Hana says.

We run with a spring on our step. Nothing like being chased to give you renewed vigor and a horrible chill on your back that only gets stronger.

The monster gets closer. The root it is on will pass right on top of us, at this speed, it will intercept us.

"Elemental, again!"

It swipes and the monster gets hit with another strong gust of wind. It swings towards the root and it disappears behind it. I bought us a few seconds.

We pass by the root above us and I hear a disgusting sound of meaty flesh.

"Above!" Alissa yells.

The ball swung behind the root and now it's coming down directly on top of us. I cast [Earth Bullet] on it and it stops in the middle of the air. An arrow flies and pierces an eye.

"Niroahoaho!" It screeches in a distorted voice.

We keep running and the sound of wet, meaty flesh reaches our ears right behind us. Ciel cuts the tentacle that grabbed the root. Aoi throws a fireball and Hana fires her breath.

*FOOOM!* The air behind us turns into flames.

"NIOOROROROAHO!" The distorted screeching gets louder.

We see the ball flying back, a tentacle grabbing further away from us. Multiple tentacles got charred but the monster has fast regeneration, it's a complete cheat, not that I'm not a cheater too.

We are reaching the end of this root, it turns upwards suddenly but there are a small arch and stairs carved inside the root.

We hear another wet, meaty sound and I look back, nearly at our side the slightly charred monster is flying towards us at a frightening speed.

A huge [Ice Lance] pierces it and it flies back from where it came from.

"NIROOONIO!"

It swings around and in a few seconds it's on the other side of the root. We reach the entrance and move up the stairs. The entrance gets covered by the monster and a long white tentacle waves upwards towards us.

Alissa dodges the tentacle and it gets stuck on Lina's shield. With a single motion and the help of [Telekinesis] I draw my sword and cut the tentacle.

"NAAAARIAAAA!" The monster screeches in anger.

Roxanne hurriedly pulls a potion and splashes it on Lina's shield, the tentacle stuck on it fizzles and melts, the petrification that was starting to appear stops and slowly recedes.

"Don't stop!" Hana yells to us.

We quickly move upwards and get out of reach.

The stairs go up for a long time, the small mana crystals giving just about enough light that we don't trip during our run. Suddenly the stairs turn into marble.

Our stairs end into a castle room. We push a very small door and we are into a hall, this was a secret exit, camouflaged into the wall.

This castle is filled with statues(?) of chimeras. Most have legs of bulls, chest of humans, arms of lion-type beastfolk, wings of dragonkin, heads of dog-type wereanimals, and tail of a succubus. Chimeras have many variations but this is the most common among soldiers. Their armor is light, delicate scale. They carry spears, short swords, and bows.

We go upwards, towards the highest tower. Hopefully, the Symbol of Envy won't catch up, they have more trouble moving upwards then downwards.

The guard-like chimeras change into softer, smaller and well-endowed women chimeras wearing very light and risque clothing. If I were to guess it was once semi-transparent.

"The chimeras are very good painters, too bad we can't see anything now that it is petrified," Alissa comments.

"True, it almost seems like there's no decoration at all," Ciel says.

With a bit of difficulty, we navigate the confusing castle and reach the correct tower. When you can fly everywhere it seems that walking distance is not of much concern to the castle engineers.

After another long climb we reach the top. I switch my points so me and Ciel can cast [Refresh] on everybody and regain some lost stamina. The spell doesn't produce energy, it only speeds up the replenishment so we have to take a quick break to eat some snacks.

The room at the top is rather fascinating, it's full of trinkets, gadgets, multiple telescopes, and books. Though I can't read any I see the name of a few has the titles written in relief on the book. With a little bit of luck messing with the skill system, I learn that the language of the chimeras is called "Reo".

With a bit of pain in my heart, we leave the room, on the only window of the room there's a bridge connecting to another staircase inside the root.

Alissa looks down for a few seconds and squints her eyes.

"It's still chasing us and it's almost completely regenerated, it seems."

We start running again, the spring on our step comes back.

This time the stairs are short, we come upon the plaza of a town. A quick look into the map and the compass and we find the way to the bridge we need.

Alissa stops us all.

"There's one right where we are supposed to go."

"Go around then?"

"Yes, but we have to be quiet."

We all look at Hana.

"You better just put some points in [Quiet Steps]," she says scratching her cheek.

Even [Quiet Steps] is not enough to completely silence Hana's stomps.

We take a turn and move two blocks down, then we turn back to the direction we should be going. We move more blocks forward but we hit the town wall. The exit is a block to the side, we might be exposed to the monster if we leave this way.

"Can you cast [Ignorance] on all of us?" Ciel asks.

"No, too much mana and I don't have all my mana due to the elementals."

Alissa's ears twitch.

"Oh no," I say.

"Oh yes," she smiles wryly, "It's coming directly towards us."

"Run."

We run from behind our cover and dash towards the gate. Outside is a brick road into thick woods.

We reach the woods.

"Faster! They are both coming!" Alissa yells.

"I can't!" Lina yells back.

Her small legs are taking its toll. I slow down and move beside her. With a yank, I grab her by her armpits.

"Put your weapons away!"

She stores them inside her [Item Box], she's much lighter now. With this, I can carry her like a princess.

We are reaching the bridge. The Marker Kite is flapping wildly, fortunately, the wind elemental helps protect us.

"Hanaa...!" Roxanne complains.

Roxanne stores her staff in her [Item Box] and Hana puts her weapons away. Hana slows and sweeps Roxanne off the floor.

I put all my strength in running. The sounds of wet, meaty flesh get louder.

"Elemental, now!" Roxanne orders.

A gust of wind flies by us. Roxanne chants hurriedly.

"[Torrent]!"

The sounds of chase wind down.

"Nature elemental, after this bridge you stay and hold them down!" Roxanne orders again.

The sounds of the chasers increase again, I glance back and see both of them swinging upwards from below the bridge. I throw an [Earth Bullet].

"[Wind... Hammer]!" Ciel manages to cast something while breathing heavily.

The nature elemental unwraps from us and stays behind. I feel it immediately getting hurt by monsters.

This new island is a cave, it's too large, it won't stop the monsters.

We run uphill, pebbles roll down all the time and it's hard to keep your footing. My legs ache but I trained for this, all that strength training wasn't for nothing, I can hold on much longer.

The nature elemental dies.

The stalagmites and stalactites increase in number and size. I get an idea.

"Roxanne...! Explode... the stalactites!"

"The what?"

"Pointy things... on the ceiling!"

"Oh, right. Hold onto your butts! This will make a mess!"

I feel mana gathering, a lot of mana. The fleshy sounds are increasing rapidly.

"Wind elemental... hold them!" Ciel orders.

The wind elemental explodes in a storm of wind. The fleshy sounds decrease.

They quickly increase again. I see a dark shadow coming.

"[EXPLOSION]!"

The blast was too close, I fall down and twist my body not to fall on top of Lina. My vision gets covered by dust and steam.

I hear the sounds of flesh hitting stone but they are muffled.

"The rubble is going to disappear soon, keep moving!" Roxanne orders.

We don't have time to catch our breath, we run again.

The sounds of flesh die down and only our echoing footsteps and quickened breaths remain.

The cave finally opens up into another small wonder. A mana crystal cave. Twinkling lights, rotating shadows, rainbows of colors, small sounds of cracking and tinkles, all this creates a slightly psychedelic show. Most crystals are transparent, only a small number has other colors besides green. The green crystals have waving forms with multiple curls and turbulent points, they grow in many directions but mostly upwards.

Lina's Trivia: Mana crystals are solidified mana that grows in mana-heavy places, mostly places where there's danger of a mana storm appearing. They can acquire an "affinity" to a magic type, we say that this crystal has "attuned". While most crystals naturally attune to the most prominent element of the environment they can also attune to any magic school, including spells or magic types not covered by the skill system. Attuned Mana crystals gather environment mana and turn it into the mana of its affinity, aiding in casting any spell related to that affinity.

Unfortunately, these crystals are all part of the dungeon. If we break them they simply disappear, but their effects are very real. This place would make a very good place to practice [Wind Magic]. Ciel looks around with a pained expression.

"If only we weren't being chased," she mutters, which echoes on the cavern.

We let Roxanne and Lina down. At the center of the crystal room there are our stairs.

We reach the 13th floor.

I drop down on all fours to catch my breath.

A note from Manasong

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Chapter 21: Bargain

We finally get to our destination, the Root of the Abyssal Forest.

Purple grass, brown dirt, black leaves, brown bark with blotches of ominous white and green. Simple, small, and weak trees that look like birches fill this forest. Huge mushrooms glow a light blue and bring a little light to this darkness. Plenty of red and yellow fireflies buzzing around. Frogs croak on a lake near us. A faint weird smell on the air makes me think of "death".

The sky is filled with galaxies and nebulas, none are familiar to me. The ground is completely broken and full of holes, we can see the abyss through them just like the chimera sky lands. This place is a mishmash of sky lands clumped together.

On the distance, huge roots with the same ominous blotches can be seen clumping up and moving upwards until they disappear on a black mist.

The next levels are called Trunk of the Abyssal Forest and Crown of the Abyssal Forest. Hopefully, we will never go to these floors, the crown, more specifically.

Ciel flops down on the grass and laughs.

"That was horrible," she says with a smile.

I raise one of my eyebrows at her.

"Yes, nothing like running for our lives in the morning, a rather pleasant and fun experience," I say.

"I know you are being sarcastic but I do enjoy things like these, it's why I was born," Hana says with a satisfied grin on her face.

"Don't complain, Wolfy, you chose both of them, it was pretty obvious how they would turn out to be," Alissa says, flopping down beside me.

"Ei, you are the one who recommended them to me," I say.

She smirks.

"Anyway, we weren't really in that much danger, you can always use [Gate] to send us to a safe place," Ciel adds.

"I know you enjoyed it too, Wolfy," Roxanne grins.

"No, I did not."

"I know you enjoyed carrying Lina," she continues.

"Yes, that I did," I smile.

Lina smiles shyly.

"I... enjoyed that too, even the running," she says.

"Even you!"

It's almost mid-day but these floors are shrouded in an eternal night. After resting and cleaning our sweat we have a quick lunch.

I put an extra point into [Blessing Magic], with this we can use [Rainbow Shield], we will need it here. With this spell on every once in a while a small rainbow forms near us. I split the girls extra points between [Mental Resistance] and [Pain Resistance], thought it's not much it will help a bit.

I summon a spirit elemental and a light elemental. The spirit elemental is going to circle around us as early warning, unfortunately Alissa's [Sense Presence] is useless on this floor.

"Ah, the nostalgic and also horrible feeling of not knowing when the enemy will attack," Hana says.

"We got too used to Alissa's [Sense Presence]. It really is too convenient," Ciel says, twitching and looking around.

"Some things we only appreciate when we lose them," I say, giving a kiss to Alissa's hand.

"My ears and nose still work, you know.

"That..." I try to speak but I actually forgot she has better senses than us, I also relied too much on her [Sense Presence].

We walk surrounding Roxanne, Alissa, and the light elemental. Aoi decided to ride the light elemental, apparently her hair is very, very soft.

Roxanne is a bit happy and anxious, there's a monster here who has very valuable materials for her potions.

We move closer to the gigantic roots while being vaguely aware of our position on the map, the terrain is far too complicated. We all tie ropes to each other, better be safe than sorry when someone falls into the abyss.

The spirit elemental picks up something.

"Stop," I whisper.

I point to the direction where the signal came from. We all huddle up and look out for every direction, the signal is a trap, the attack will most likely come from the opposite direction.

Out of a bush a shadow slides out into the grass, Symbol of Darkness, a threat level 6 monster, but only if you are caught by surprise. I cast [Spirit Light] and throw it into the shadow, it slows down and I see it tremble.

Ethereal tendrils shoot out of the shadow and hit my arms. Horrible pain but it's much less than the dark bullet from the Shadow Satyrs. Lina whimpers, she must be fighting another.

I charge forward and pierce my sword into the shadow, it enters deeply into the ground. The shadow grows out of the ground and tries to engulf me, I immediately dodge back and leave my sword there, the shadow is stuck.

I draw my dagger and wait. An arrow pierces it and tendrils shoot upwards, trembling.

Lina is fighting one alongside Ciel. They are pounding and slashing it, I feel they are in quite a bit of pain. Hana is just starting to fight hers, Alissa pinned it with an arrow. Roxanne is casting a long spell, she won't be much help, these monsters are resistant to magic.

The tendrils of my monster stop trembling and they shoot out towards me, I dodge but one hits my head.

I see Alissa sprawled on the ground, tears running down her cheek, her hand clawing on her face as she goes insane. She's dying, the monster is eating her mind. A filthy man approaches her, he pulls down her pants...

FUCK YOU!

I dash forward and stab my dagger on the shadow repeatedly. Tendrils hit my chest and make me stop breathing. I win the endurance battle and the monster tries to retreat from me, it can't run further than where my sword is.

I move back and catch my breath.

"[Firestorm]!"

Roxanne casts a very contained firestorm somewhere, it burns specifically where the monster is. I can't hear shrieks but I can "feel" them, a horrible pain and darkness over my heart.

The light elemental hugs me and the pain goes away, I melt on her arms and nearly fall asleep. The sound of a fireball hitting the grass and exploding gets me back on the fight. When I got out of the way Aoi fired a few towards my monster.

Lina recovers her breath and moves to my side.

"You okay?" She asks.

"Now I am," I answer and break the elemental's hug, she really is soft.

We dash towards the shadow and repeatedly pound it down, slowly breaking apart its existence. The closer the light elemental gets the more it trembles, it desperately tries to pull out my sword from the ground but it has little physical strength.

It tries to send tendrils towards us but it misses our heads this time. I intensify my stabbing and a tendril hits my heart, I immediately feel cold and sluggish, I almost pass out. The light elemental touches my shoulder and I feel two opposite forces battling inside of me, it's not pleasant.

Lina increases her speed seeing my suffering and the ground gets littered with small craters. The shadow loses power and the elemental wins the battle for my heart.

The tendrils disappear and the shadow "cracks", light escaping from those cracks. With the sound of shattering glass the monster breaks apart repeatedly until it turns into dust and that dust turns into nothing.

"[Firestorm]!"

Roxanne casts another small storm. I look in time to see a weakened Symbol of Darkness, filled with arrows, crack and disappear amid the fire.

Mentally tired we all huddle up around the light elemental. She starts to dance and twirl, we just stare at her absentmindedly, slowly it heals our hearts.

"Did anyone get hit in the head?" Hana asks.

"I did," I answer.

"Did you get a nightmare too?

"Worse than a nightmare it was an illusion, for me it was real, it feels like a memory instead of feeling like a dream."

"Even with our resistances it's still like this," she frowns.

"This is why everyone hates these levels."

"Yeah, but I can see it's worth it, though I didn't get hit in the head. [Summon Monster] really is powerful," Ciel says.

"It will help a lot against Darean," Alissa says.

"We need trinkets like mine, they help a lot with things like these," Roxanne says, showing us her amulet.

It's a simple metal necklace with a medal in the shape of a closed fist, unremarkable.

I grab Alissa's hand and kiss it, the dance of the elemental makes us temporarily forget the oppressive forest we are in.

We move on and now I summon another spirit elemental, this one will patrol the top of the trees, we are looking for a Beholder, threat level 5. This monster lives mostly near the huge roots we are going towards. It's a small black eye with bat wings, two skinny legs with claws and a small mouth with very sharp teeth. It's even more difficult to find than the Symbol of Darkness, it's very small and it even casts a spell similar to [Ignorance] on itself. The danger is the poison, its extremely effective but very slow acting, you just need a tickle from the monster to get poisoned.

There are small groups of Eldritch Horrors, little balls of purple flesh that move similarly to the Symbol of Envy. They move rather slowly and their blood is acidic so we just use them as target practice. These are the monsters Roxanne wants. She prances towards every corpse to analyze it and prod it, then makes me carry them all. She wants even the proof of extermination, the single purple eye they have.

We reach the roots and start looking for the stairs, too much of a mess here, the map is useless. The roots smell of mold and the air is stale, this place just keeps getting worse.

Ciel stops us and looks at Alissa.

"You got poisoned."

Roxanne pulls out a small flask and gives her to drink.

"Damn, to sneak up on Alissa the little shits must be good," Hana says.

"Exactly, it's why we are here, they are too good," I say, "One must be stalking us, we stay here I will try to use my [Redirect Mana] to look for its trail. Spirit elementals, sweep the area."

I sit down and the girls surround me. I kill my senses and focus on identifying the sources of mana floating around here. Every stream of mana I sense sends me shivers down my spine and makes my heart hurt, they all seem to be coming from the roots and going upwards.

Time passes and I finally get a trickle of something foul, it makes me feel twitchy and anxious. I open my eyes and let my instincts take over, I point towards a root on top of us and cast [Lighting Bolt].

"IIIIIIIIIIH!" A high pitched scream fills our heads as a black ball falls down in the middle of us.

An arrow immediately pierces it and it's followed by a spear. It struggles for a moment and dies.

"That took a while," Ciel breathes in relief.

"How long was I out?" I ask.

"About half an hour, I think."

I have to work on my sense of time while meditating.

"Now let's get the hell out of here."

We hurry along the roots until we find the blessed stairs.

The damp air, the smell of moss and nature, the feeling of the normal ground, the familiar trees, the pitch black darkness. Finally we are out of the dungeon and into The Smirk.

We all groan, the atmosphere of that floor was really oppressive, except for Roxanne, she loved those Eldritch Horrors.

I look around, we are not anywhere near close the door to the dungeon.

"Someone is entering the dungeon," Alissa says, squinting her eyes at the direction where I believe the doors is.

"Some dungeons are dangerous because they teleport you right outside the entrance, perfect place for an ambush," Roxanne says, a little pain in her eyes.

Hana consoles her and we leave the forest. We use our dinghy and we reach home well into the night.

Today is the 30th.

Alissa is the one who eagerly wakes me. Ciel ends up cuddling with Lina and they are both still sleeping. I gotta convince Ciel to sleep naked, she's the only one who sleeps in her underwear. All I want is to wake up one day with my morning wood buried into her ass.

"How are you always awake before me?"

She smiles and swallows.

"Your breathing gets faster before you awake. I wake Hana and Roxanne when it's time."

"And you are that sensitive to my sleeping patterns?"

"Yes, I can tell when you are having a bad dream. I was trained to have light sleep in case I needed to protect my master."

There are some things I just don't know how to react to.

Good thing is that yesterday made me grow quite a bit. I increased my "Strength", "Endurance", "Speed", [Blessing Magic] and [Summoning Magic] by 1 (now 11, 12, 12, 0+15 and 7+13).

Alissa and Roxanne leveled up. Alissa increased her [Bow Use] by 1 (now 26) and gained [Enhanced Stamina] with 1 point. She now has 10 skill points left.

Roxanne increased her [Potion Brewing], [Fire Magic] and her "Endurance" by 1 (now 11, 23 and 9) and her [Poison Brewing] by 2 (now 4). She has 8 skill points left.

Hana should be the next one to level up.

With Roxanne and Ciel's success at chantless casting I believe it's time for everyone to learn a few spells, a single [Earth Bullet] is powerful when used chantless, doing it point blank to someone can send even a dragonkin flying, like I did. I put [Inspire Growth] on Ciel and Roxanne and [Increased Growth] on the other girls, hopefully it's enough to brute-force some skill learning without having to delve too much into the theory.

When the spirit griffin appeared Aoi apparently got fired up and started to push her flame breath and fire balls to the limit.

I put their extra points into [Earth Magic], except for Alissa, who wants to learn [Illusion Magic], she read the book a few times and wants to try it so I give her a single point in it. The first spell of [Illusion Magic] is [Ghost Lights], it's used to distract an enemy when it looks at you, perfect if you want to make someone incapable of dodging your arrows even if they are looking right at you. [Ghost Lights] is easy to cast but it requires good control, if you screw up your allies will be affected by it.

Leaving them to their training I focus on my training for [Summoning Magic]. Increasing that summoning to level 30 takes too many points, I'm going to put Nononya's notes to use and try to level this skill asap.

I summon 3 Symbols of Darkness and 1 Beholder, slowly of course, no need to overuse mana already. The Symbols of Darkness will now be called "Shad", Shad 1 will stay with me, Shad 2 will stay with Roxanne, Shad 3 with Lina. These monsters can easily hide in our own shadows and they will stay as a countermeasure against assassination. Unfortunately I can't summon one for everyone so this is one of the reasons why I have to train.

The Beholder will now be called "Holly". It will stay mostly on top of our house as a sentry and will follow whoever leaves the house. This one can easily hide among people but it's risky, the [Ignorance] spell isn't perfect and it would cause an uproar if a monster was found inside the town, so it will remain far away from groups of peoples. If it's revealed that I can summon monsters then it might attract too much attention, more than the annoying amount I already have.

With these monsters and the 2 clay golems all summoned at the same time my mana drops to 1/6th. It's quite massive but this is only for training. I try to keep the maximum amount of senses on but at 4 it's straining me, 5 makes my head hurt.

The Shad's don't see like we do, they have a sort of "mana infrared", they see mana in the air directly but their vision isn't that great for much else, they don't serve as scouts unless you are hunting a mage. Interestingly they can't detect each other unless they are really close.

Holly has dark vision (can see in absolute darkness) and hawk eyes, so she's(?) the perfect choice for scouting. Holly's poison doesn't work too well yet, it has a very delicate mana signature so I can't recreate it even with level 30 [Summoning Magic].

I have one of the clay golems stare at Nononya's notes while I try to meditate and practice [Earth Bullet], even though I have very little mana. Basically multi-tasking. I level [Nature Magic] to 30 so I can use [Manasynthesis], with this I can recharge mana even faster just by staying in the sun.

I can meditate with my summons out and my sense of time doesn't get too disrupted. But it feels weird, like I'm looking through a movie. If only I could talk to them telepathically I could seriously multi-task.

Time for lunch comes and after that we all leave to the hunters guild to sell our stuff. We are going shopping after this.

At the guild I get the stares like usual, I have a tendency of being dramatic and call my women goddesses but they are not that eye-catching, at least not without their dresses. It's just that the male:female ratio of our party attracts attention, specially when I'm not a charismatic 2-meters tall hunk.

I see a request to investigate the Spriggans at the Spiral Springs, it claims that they suddenly started wearing ropes with weird patterns on them. I just move away from that board.

Then I overhear a conversation about hunters complaining that they don't cut down the Sea of Trees anymore so the monsters use it as breeding grounds. This means that whatever is protecting the Sea of Trees likely made a deal with Rabanara, now what could a magical being offer a Lord that's worth so much?

When I turn around after having my fill of the conversation I see a bear like man staring at me. His eyes are bloodshot and he clearly looks drunk, I think he's the leader of Escutcheon. He doesn't look like he has been having good days, I hurry Roxanne to the dismantling area and the others to leave the guild and wait outside. I should have brought Alissa, the loss of her blessing is stressing.

"Mr. Ryder! Good to see you, how was your hunt?" Gordon asks with arms open wide, a bloody grin, and the usual shining bald head.

"Wonderful, you might want to get Sonny here and it's not just because I want to tease him."

Gordon chuckles while I pull out a male minotaur, the Kite Dragon, the 3 Shadow Satyrs, a pile of scrap metal from the Living Armors, and the Beholder. Gordon smile twitches in surprise but he tells his assistant to get Sonny. Gordon seems to be unable to decide where to start, his eyes dart between the Kite Dragon, the satyrs, and the Beholder.

"S-so many rare monsters... such 'luck'," he sniggers.

I sit down on Roxanne's lap and she runs her fingers through my hair.

Sonny comes and his body jerks twice, once to look at Roxanne and again to continue marching forward, pretending that didn't happen.

"Most scales are good, even the skull, it could be made into some wonderful plating. The satyrs are in good condition, somewhere there's a filthy potion maker that will be delightful in having their brains, eyes, and hearts. The Beholder has a considerable amount of poison on its claws and it's poison gland isn't ruptured, the damage to the eye is regrettable but there's no other way to kill them," Sonny reads his report.

He gives us 70 gold for it all. Ah, money, money, money, money. One day I want to kill the Symbol of Envy, I might get a rose coin for it, so juicy.

Roxanne takes the gold from Sonny, she deliberately touches his wand and gives him a wink. He jumps in surprise and tries to keep his body upright.

"Any, uh, if-if that's all I will come to, no, be leaving to my, my, room?" He questions his own words.

"That's all, I will see you someday, Mr. Sonny," Roxanne says with a small bow.

"Yes, uh, bye."

He awkwardly leaves. I wonder how old he is, he seems to be nearly 20.

"Boy, come more often, even if just for teasing him."

"If I do you will eventually stop being surprised at my visits," I say smugly.

"It better be this way, if not you will get in your head to fight that Symbol of Envy someday."

Mind reader. I smile awkwardly.

"See?" He gives me an exaggerated disapproving look.

Roxanne chuckles.

"My greedy little man," she hugs me tighter.

I cough.

"Say, I saw the leader of Escutcheon, I forgot his name-..."

"Logan."

"Yeah, that one. He's looking pretty, uh, pretty bad, out of shape, you know? Anything happen to him?"

"You would know," he gives me a smug smirk, "After the he met that ancient dragon he started drinking a lot. People heard him muttering things like 'coward' and 'abandoned'. They say he was chasing that woman that died with you. His fellowship is taking an extended break, if they haven't disbanded already, so nobody is around to confirm these things."

I raise an eyebrow.

"Didn't know you were such a fan of gossiping," I make my tone as disapproving as I can.

"Hey! I'm here all day waiting for monsters, what do you think I do to pass time? It's not like I enjoy it or anything..." Gordon looks away embarrassed.

I just smirk and he shakes his head, he realizes he fell for my teasing.

We leave the guild and go buy more armor. Everyone gets a proper padded barbute this time, Roxanne and Alissa get a comfortable high-quality padded coif. All the girls will now have to properly tie their hairs before using the helmets. We shouldn't skimp on protection, we have been avoiding monsters with projectiles but it won't always be like this.

Roxanne looks at herself in the mirror.

"I look so…"

"Protected," Ciel completes.

"Safe," I add.

"Unfashionable," Roxanne frowns.

"There, there, nobody will notice," Hana consoles her and rubs her back.

"But I want them to notice."

"You only need to make us two notice and we notice you, all day, every day," I say.

Hana nods in agreement. Roxanne her lips curve upwards a little and she shakes her head in defeat. At least she can still use her hat over her coif.

Now everybody has scale armor, we also add fur padding to help with blunt attacks. It might get hot but Lina is going to focus on a temperature regulation enchantment next.

There isn't much cloth armor here. Space in the Shore of Leaves comes at a premium, there's not enough space for livestock. People prefer to use the abundant monster fur and leather than waste the precious wool in disposable armor, wool is also a bit weaker than some of the fur of monsters. Even the everyday clothes made of wool are made with economy of materials in mind. Rabanara seems to import most of its clothes instead of making them here.

We are now low on money. No more extravagant dinners, theaters or expensive food until the next break from my classes.

We spent the afternoon shopping so after dinner I spend my time trying to talk to Ciel without the skill system. I talk like a toddler. Surprisingly I can't chant magic in English, it just does not work.

Today is the 1st of the 8th month, the month of Love. Ciel told me this month the brothels are all cheaper, it's also the month most people marry or decide to have children.

Roxanne wakes me up, she's starting to pick up a style, though it's still difficult to discern it I feel a bit of mischievousness with the rhythm she takes.

I increased my "Willpower", [Nature Magic], [Earth Magic] and [Andraste Language] by 1 (now 16, 16+14, 0+3 and 7+3), [Summoning Magic] by 2 (now 15+15), my MP by 20 (now 690) and my "Magic Power" by 5 (now 265).

The girls only grew a bit of MP, Roxanne and Ciel are likely to acquire [Redirect Mana] in a few days.

I have been wondering how I am going to "unlock" level 40 spells. First time was when I prayed and increased "Piety" to 10, second time was after I got "Wisdom" to level 16 so maybe it's related to stats? What do some of these stats do anyway.

"Roxanne, what are the effects of 'Intelligence' and 'Wisdom'?" I ask.

I know that "Willpower" helps with mana control or with modifying spells. "Endurance" is about stamina and having your body resist shutting down. "Dexterity" is minute control over your muscles. "Charisma" has some sort of mental effect on others that can be dampened with [Mental Resistance].

"'Intelligence' is your ability to learn new things, they help with skill growth, yours is quite high, even for a scholar. 'Wisdom' helps with improvement and efficiency, it helps you apply better what you know," she answers.

What does "Piety" and "Wisdom" have to do with not being able to use higher level spells? Is it a glitch of the system? Meaning that since I'm abusing something that shouldn't work this way it simply does not allow me to cast these spells but a normal person would achieve the requirements before being able to cast the spell? Or is it some arbitrary restriction that the "God" that brought me here created just so I couldn't easily use the highest spell possible?

Now that I think about it, why do we automatically learn spells as soon as we level? Is there some reason why people wouldn't learn it?

"Roxanne, did you ever hear about someone that has the level to cast a spell but can't for some reason?"

She taps her chin with the tip of her finger and thinks deeply.

"Nope!" She gives me an innocent smile, "You thinking about 'unlocking' your level 40 spells?"

"Yeah, level 40 has some very interesting spells. Anyway, Why do we automatically learn spells as soon as we level?"

"Spells are just muscle memory for mana, once you reach a certain level you should have enough knowledge so that you can stabilize your mana and cast the spell properly."

"If I try to learn a spell with a very high level, is there some danger?"

"Shouldn't be, it should only waste mana if you are using System Magic."

Lina's Trivia: System Magic are the simplest and more well develop magic schools, Rabanara only teaches System Magic. The other magic schools are much more complicated and dangerous. Not many people practice these schools outside of the race that created them.

"Hmm... so the other magic schools aren't safe?"

"Yes, they could have some nasty side effects from malformed spells."

"Why is System Magic safe?"

"Skills are based on the collective knowledge of all humanoids that have ever lived. System Magic schools have explored very well how to create a spell and how not to create a spell, they know exactly how to manipulate mana safely. So what the skill system passes to us the most popular spell, which is the version that is the safest and easiest to control. Without the system we have to manipulate mana in a 'raw' state, which is very dangerous."

"Then perhaps if the system gives you spell 'muscle memory' and I don't have the 'muscles' to cast this spell then it won't give me the spell?"

"That sounds... plausible."

"But how do I gain this missing 'muscle'?"

Roxanne shrugs.

"It took us a long time until we learned how to scratch that 'itch' you told us to cast spells chantless. When we did it's like a new world of magic opened to us, perhaps it's something similar, you are lacking some sort of 'perspective' about the world," Ciel joins in.

I got access to level 20 and 25 spells when I decided to pray to the gods before the goblins village extermination, it's when I decided to "trust" the Gods. I got access to level 30 spells when I had a better perspective on the differences of monsters and humanoids. Maybe the "Wisdom" and "Piety" increase was just a coincidence, it's not the stats it's the knowledge about the world. Magic is very dependent on our knowledge and visualization of the world.

"I know I have tons of technical knowledge of physics so this is helping me level spells fast but I don't have in-depth knowledge of mana and magic, if I focus on these two then perhaps I could get a new 'perspective'?"

"Perhaps," Ciel says.

Roxanne nods in agreement.

I have created skills, but maybe if I create a Unique Spell I would understand mana better. But then again, Unique Spells require me to manipulate raw mana, which is known to be dangerous...

Nothing else will come of thinking about this "perspective" for now so I go back to my training. The girls spend the morning training the same way. This time I search Nononya's notes for the anatomy of more magical beasts, most of the ones she investigated are simple animals, what I need is to understand better how elementals work.

The nature spirit griffin brings the spirit cat with an oversized head again. Both play tag and frolic at the grass. Aoi kept glancing at them but she focused on training her fire breath. I did notice a small growth on its size.

Hana's [Earth Bullet] is pitiful, she never had much talent in magic but I pray that she gets help from the Gods, just a little more power and it could be a trump card for her.

Back to the elementals, it seems their body operates a kind of inverted [Manasynthesis], they let mana course through their body and converts that mana into energy for the cells when necessary. This removes the need for veins and allows for the body to be easily reformed.

Elementals do not have organs except for a source of mana, they move entirely by some sort of [Telekinesis] their cells are capable of using. Their cells are like spirits, held together by a thin layer of mana, which is why they are so vulnerable to emellanat, it easily cuts down their mana cells.

So this is why even summons that are non-corporeal require a lot of mana to be summoned, their cell "spirits" require to be built and maintained. The mana cost covers the conjuration of the materials to build the body of the elemental while the maximum MP reduction is caused by a small part of the "mana source" or "mana organ" on the summoner to be transplanted to the summon, giving it life.

This "mana organ" is where we store mana and how we gather mana from the environment. It's said to be part of our soul, but this mana source is not the only thing that gets taken, a small part of the soul goes with it and it's used as a base to give the summons its simple soul.

The nature elemental's body is the most interesting, it's plant-like cells allow it to unglue from each other and then re glue themselves in basically any way it wants to with extreme ease. It can also use [Grow] on itself to quickly increase the size of its vines.

Lina kept her back always touching mine as she felt my [Earth Bullet] and tried to copy it.

Lunch comes and the time to talk to Vanea draws near.

"So, the time to speak to Vanea is coming. Anyone has any objection?" I ask.

We already talked a lot about it, we won't ask for help, we will carefully bargain with her. She doesn't have many allies, the information we have is very valuable to her, she needs us more than we need her.

I don't hear any objection but Hana looks pained. I go to her side.

"If you don't mind can you tell us, or at least me and Roxanne, what happened to you and your family? It would help in understanding your pain," I whisper.

She breathes deeply.

"It's fine, I guess it's better that everyone knows more about me," she answers.

"It's not much, really. My family used to transport alchemy and potion materials from Sommerland to Ryutake, I was in charge of protecting our wagons. For most of the time nothing happened but about a year before everything fell apart the attacks intensified. Filthy bandits throwing their lives away to our swords, coordinated attacks uncharacteristic of the region, something was wrong. Our stores were being sabotaged and we started to lose merchandise and customers, people were ending contracts with us and little by little we were being driven out.

"Dad kept firm, instead of fleeing he made us work harder until we could move no longer, we held on for a few more months but it was useless in the end. Father lost all the money but refused to back down, he started smuggling, he avoided taxes and transported some dangerous things, I don't even know what, I wanted as much distance from that as I could.

"Smuggling didn't last long, an investigator from the empire suddenly appeared and knew exactly where to look. Someone betrayed us, don't know who, the bunch of mercenaries we employed have no real loyalty. I don't know what happened to them but dad was supposed to be locked away for a long time, but he was always frail..." She looks even more pained.

Both me and Roxanne squeeze her hand and kiss it at the same time. Hana smiles faintly and shakes her head.

"Mother is certainly on a prison somewhere, she would never sell herself after meeting dad. I have a brother and a sister too, they weren't trained enough to be worthy of being a Blood Slave like me, there's a chance they were sent to a noble as a servant slave but I don't know. The Judge made sure we were all separated and couldn't reunite easily. I chose slavery because there was a chance I would be sent to a lazy noble who only wanted a pet."

She finishes her talking and keeps her head down.

"If I become a noble is there a way I can release all of your family?" I ask.

Hana immediately raises her head and stares me deeply.

"Y-you would do that?" Her eyes show hope and pain.

"I don't know what I can do, but I would if possible."

She pulls me into a bear hug.

"Your father would be difficult, your mother is a bit less uncertain. Your siblings would certainly be able to be released, the word of a noble with a blessing and a wife with another blessing certainly carry a lot of weight for a Judge. For your sister it would be very easy if she decides to marry Wolfy..." Ciel trails off.

"Is she human or dragonkin?" Alissa asks.

"Human."

Alissa looks disappointed.

"Stop with this, I won't be getting another woman," I say.

"Yes, yes," Alissa giggles.

"Anyway, thank you for sharing, Hana, I understand why this is difficult for you," Ciel says.

"Yes, but from what you told us your father was too proud. We won't let the same thing happen to you again," Alissa says.

"We are all cowards here, we will run the moment things get too dangerous," I say.

"Starting over won't hurt, as we never had that much to begin with. The most important is that we stay together," Roxanne says, giving another kiss to Hana's hand.

Lina just gives Hana an innocent smile.

For a second Hana makes a crying face, then she collects herself and smiles with a bit of pain. I raise my head towards her.

"Whenever you are ready let the tears out, it helps clear your mind," I whisper.

She nods to me. It helped me, at least.

"Group hug!" Roxanne declares.

Hana's bear hug was already hurting my ribs a bit, now things are much worse.

"Can't... breathe... help!"

Alissa finds no stalker these days. With Holly on the lookout we will not miss it again.

"What happened to you?" Is the first thing Lyle says to me when he enters class.

That's expected, I can't really hide this scar on my neck.

"Had a fight with some monster, got a little too close to danger," I force an innocent smile.

Lyle frowns but remains quiet.

The professor asks the level of [Space Magic] others are at, everyone is around level 4 while I'm level 19. I lied and said level 10 and still got a big reaction from the class, the gnome professor wasn't that surprised since he saw me use [Telekinesis] chantless.

"You planning on becoming a space mage, Wolf?" Lyle asks.

"No, I just have a bit of talent with [Telekinesis], it's why I have so many levels with it."

"If you are progressing this fast then you could certainly enter the advanced classes easily."

Lina's Trivia: Beginner is considered up to level 10. Intermediate is from 11 to 30. Advanced is from 31 to 60. After that you are granted the tile Grand Magus of the magic school. There are very few people in history acquired level 100 on any skill, most of them are either the creators of such skills, an emperor with a fascination for such skill, or a hero.

"I don't plan on increasing it much more, I would rather keep away from learning [Gate]."

"If you were to stay in Rabanara you could get the favor from the Lord to be free from working for the empire," Hatara says with a smile.

It seems she also wants me here. If I didn't want to leave and become a noble, joining the knights sounds somewhat like a good career path.

Before I can answer I feel a chill, a vicious gaze pierces my soul, this damn family and their stupid eyes. It seems Lina didn't need to ask Nononya where to find Vanea, she already knew about my fight. I turn my ring green so she comes back.

"Good day, Mr. Ryder. A pleasant day for a chat isn't it?" Says Vanea with a beautiful smile.

"Good day, Mr. Ryder. I heard you went deep in the dungeon of the Morning Dew," says Silvane with an innocent smile.

"Good day Miss Silvane, Miss Anara," I answer with a smile, thank the Gods for [Acting] and [Mental Resistance], "Yes, I was hunting for money, these floors were horrible but rather profitable, unfortunately I never got the morning dew in any of them. Anyway, I would love to chat Miss Anara."

"Should we move somewhere more private?"Vanea asks.

"Yes, please."

Lyle and the others look worried, hopefully they won't gossip, I don't want many people knowing I'm associating with Vanea.

We get up and follow Vanea towards the offices building. She leads us to the top floor into a large and luxurious office. On the door there's a metal plaque written "Vanea Arana, Chairwoman".

The office is very large, it has a huge window overseeing the courtyard below, a lavish table with comfortable chairs and one large chair for her, two long comfy sofas with another decorated table, and multiple plants on the walls surrounding a painting of her family. They have a little sister I never met, a mini blue-eyed Vanea. The Lord's wife is a beautiful and delicate woman with long silky black hair and kind blue eyes, certainly recessive genes.

"You are part of the administration?" I ask her.

"Yes. I'm trying to get acceptance over [Cursing Magic]. The old quacks are too afraid of that magic school, they don't know who created it so they think it might be related to the undead like [Bloodwork] is," she sits on her chair and waves her hand dismissively.

"I admit I know nothing about that magic school."

It's one of the magic schools that I never mentioned for fear of what the reaction would be.

Silvane grabs a chair and sits behind Vanea.

"I would be very surprised if you did. Only a few mages in Dyrmorder or the savages at the Wild Steppes know anything about it. I wanted to bring it here to give us more power but unless if the emperor himself or his ministers endorse it the quacks won't accept it fully due to its... dark nature."

No wonder, just the name makes me apprehensive.

"Is it a complete magic school?"

"It is, surprisingly."

Lina enters the room.

"Excuse me…"

I motion her to sit besides me. She trembles once but it stops, [Mental Resistance] doing work again.

"I would like to know more about this school, does it have any books written on it?"

"Only a few, they are restricted so you won't be able to get them."

"I want to submit my work on [Golemancy] and exchange it for a chair at the university, would that be enough?"

Vanea smiles.

"Certainly, make sure you don't announce it to anyone else before you get your chair, the quacks would tremble in their boots if they knew what you were searching for. But anyway, we aren't here to discuss this."

Everyone tenses up and straighten their postures. My moral support is assembled, it's time for battle.

"Yes. I assume you know what happened at the 25th," I smile a bit.

"Hard not to, seeing how much noise you made. Both during battle and the aftermath. It seems you might be requiring some help?" She smiles back.

"Help? Have you seen how we fought? No, we don't require help, we are rather fine for now," I bluff.

Vanea thinks for a second. I think it worked, her followers must not have seen the fight themselves.

"Surely you understand Darean is more than a mere position 1 adventurer," her soft and commanding tone is unchanging.

She just confirmed for me that Darean is behind the attack.

"Yes, but we aren't his main target, he's coming for us as a personal vendetta. His employer must be pretty mad from losing such an important team with absolutely nothing in return."

She thinks longer. Does she know it was a kidnapping team that attacked me?

"You don't think he will attack again?"

"Attack? No, he won't. His trap failed once and now it will never work again."

"What gives you such confidence?" Her face shows a hint of worry and skepticism.

I simply smile, the answer to that is a secret.

Vanea looks down, her eyes race about, she's rapidly thinking of something

"Do you have a Gate Scrubber?"

Blunt, but I can't just straight up admit it.

"No," I keep my face expressionless.

Vanea stares at me for a few seconds.

"I can have you searched," her tone turns stern.

Careful now.

"Yes you can, but you won't find anything. Even if you get the empire's lie detectors," I lie.

Vanea stays still, my spidey senses are tingling.

"It seems you don't want to go that far. Why are you so interested in this scrubber?"

"A Gate Scrubber was stolen sometime ago. We believe Darean tipped off a group of thieves who then sold the scrubber to the kidnappers, giving Darean his connection," Silvane confesses.

Vanea gives her a look but Silvane doesn't budge.

"Vanea, it would do well to show a bit of trust once in a while," Silvane says, no hint of unease in her voice.

Information is key here, Silvane wants our trust so she gave something for free. The empire knowing they lost a scrubber would look really bad on them. I will certainly never tell anyone about this scrubber, I look at Silvane and give a grateful nod.

"I see, but like I said, I don't need help. If I sniff a trap I can just walk away, I'm not tied to Rabanara."

Silvane's poker face twitches. I'm sorry but I don't have loyalty to either of you.

"But you won't leave yet?" Silvane asks.

"I do not wish to. The only tie I have here is the university, with my research and blessing I can enter another rather easily. I don't need help Miss Anara, you do," I smile again.

Her eye twitches.

"Since you don't have a Gate Scrubber what help can you provide us?" She asks.

Good, she fell for my bluff, she thinks we aren't afraid and that Darean is an inconvenience instead of a threat.

"Information. I can help you get someone close to Darean."

"Who?" She's fails to completely contain her eagerness, it seems she really was cornered by Darean.

"What can you give in return?"

"I don't know the value of the information if I don't know the person," she smiles.

"We can just agree in something preliminary. You will keep me updated on any move Darean makes, you knew I was being stalked and did nothing."

"I am not that heartless, I lacked a lot of information," Vanea looks a bit offended.

"I didn't mean to offend, but you knew something and never warned me."

"Fine. But you will have to provide all info that you know, everything, even whether you really have the scrubber. You can keep it as long as you keep it quiet from the empire," she slips a hint of anger in her tone.

"A fair deal," I bow lightly.

"The name?"

I slip her a piece of paper. "Farana Uiara, human, level 37. Small body, around 160cm tall, traces that resemble the elves, thin chin, small red lips, pale face and freckles, braided brown hair curled inside a hat. She doesn't have any breasts but her ass is big and her hips are wide. Her hair smells of Ranja hair products, expensive and possibly from the High Forest."

Silvane lifts an eyebrow.

"Who gave you that description?"

"A dragonkin."

"Figures…"

Vanea breath quickens for a few seconds and then she controls herself.

"That's his bitch, the little thief, she leads the thieves. We have to find her and capture her. She also has the help of someone with [Illusion Magic]. "

"Yes, she was using [Ignorance] when stalking us."

Vanea thinks for a second.

"I want you to fight for me. Help me capture her," Vanea says, moving her body closer.

"No," I answer immediately.

"You don't understand, I don't have enough reliable people that could stand against an illusion mage, if you killed those kidnappers then you are good enough to fight for me," her gaze is unwavering.

Shit. I can't tell if she's bluffing, she was being pushed into a corner, there's a very good chance she's telling the truth.

"I have to talk to the others about this. If we do we are at minimum going to ask for a lot of money, you must know our rates from when we escorted the representative for armorer's guild. We are gonna ask for a lot more than that."

Vanea reclines back, her posture relaxes.

"That's fine, Rabanara is rich."

"And we are going to ask for protection, you must make sure nothing happens to us before, during or after the battle."

She narrows her eyes.

"You are going to have to fight, I can't hold your hand during the battle."

"But you can help us prepare, we are going to fight against a mage and we don't have that much experience."

She sighs, her authoritative voice is nearly gone.

"I will prepare something. But I will only protect you as long as you are in Rabanara."

I nod.

"Do I have the word of Miss Vanea Anara, daughter of a True Noble?" I ask in a stern tone.

She growls.

"You will have to share everything you know."

"Deal."

She glares at me one final time, "I, Vanea Anara, daughter of a True Noble give you my word, let the Gods observe me and judge me for my actions."

An oath that Ciel taught me. Everything we agreed to is now under watch by the Gods, if she screws me over I can invoke the Gods wrath upon her.

"Now spill everything else you know."

It wasn't much but it was valuable information to her. I also gave her the remaining corpses and she will give me the bounty, but silently, no need to increase my fame. She glares at me when I tell the truth about the Gate Scrubber but I'm keeping it, she said it herself, it's also my guarantee Darean won't try to kidnap me again.

Vanea says that after our fight the underworld got spooked about what the spirits on the corpses I have could spill and decided to hide. She is making sure no necromancer that could pull the spirits of the dead appears in Rabanara, they could do it even without a body.

The kidnappers had bribed the guards to keep their patrols away from the location we were to fight, it backfired on them since the guards only found a small amount of dried blood the morning after. With this there was nothing to start an investigation so the guard just dropped it, not even the people of the slums wanted to testify that they heard the screams, they know nothing good would come from it.

Vanea never saw the fight, she knew the kidnappers were bought and on the move but couldn't find any more lead on the target, she only knew later that they failed and disappeared, obviously died. She heard a rumor that Darean was targeting us and when the kidnappers failed someone slipped that Darean might have fucked over some valuable hired swords by sending them into a trap. With this she connected the dots and assumed we killed the kidnappers.

"Here's how we talk. This one is for giving me your answer, turn it and it will send a signal to me that you accepted or rejected," Vanea points to an Emergency Ring.

"This one is a compacted lithograph, I will send you the place where we meet. Keep it close to you, it will warm up when it receives a message," Vanea points to a small metal box.

That box has a glass window where I can see a white and black liquid floating around it, they don't mix. I assume the black liquid will form words when the message comes. It's a fantasy pager.

"With this we conclude our business," Vanea gives a wicked smile.

I hope I haven't made a deal with the devil.

Outside of that office the tension on my shoulders dissipates, it went as well as it could have been, Alissa gives me a quick shoulder massage. We go back to Lyle with Silvane in tow, she makes a small excuse that Vanea wanted to know in detail about my [Sense Soul], which is not totally a lie but covers my back in case someone gossips that I'm meeting her in private.

We are going to get another influx of money, perhaps I can buy bone-and-chain armor for Hana. I kind of quit trying to have her wear plate, too expensive and the prices fluctuate too much. With [Alchemy] I think Lina and Roxanne can work together to maintain it.

"I'm not really against fighting for her, if you want a job well done you do it yourself," Hana says.

"You made her do the vow, the last thing she needs is the Gods turning her luck against her. She will be a good ally as long as we keep a distance and the advantage," Lina says.

Lina seems to be getting more interested in the games of the nobility. It's not that different from the negotiations of the merchants, just more ruthless.

"Fighting is our specialty, after all," Roxanne says.

Ciel and me are anxious.

"Wolfy, I think this is a time we have to fight, we can make sure this ends as quickly as possible," Alissa says, grabbing my hand.

I kiss it.

"We are not going to do it alone, she said she didn't have enough allies, not that she doesn't have any. The most obvious ones are Haaran and his knights. If our allies are not good enough we can always just walk away," Lina says.

Now even she is encouraging us.

"This time you won't be forced to put your points into sneaking, we will be able to fight full force," Alissa says.

I don't have the energy to go against this argument. I look at Ciel and she doesn't either.

I need to clear my head, I ask Hana and we all spar a bit. I train more of my [Telekinesis], I'm getting the hang of casting it on myself but I won't be able to use it for long when I have all my summons out.

I can win against Alissa if she gets tired, otherwise she's just too fast for me. Lina had a very large growth on her martial prowess, the system gives too much of an advantage on melee. With her skill points she can already win against me, though I can't win against Ciel or Hana so it's not that big of a deal.

"Do you think I should use a style, too? Now even Lina can get the upper hand on me," I ask Hana.

"I don't think you should use a style from the system, you should create your own," she answers.

"Why is that?"

"Your [Telekinesis] permits you to fight in a way I have never seen before, perhaps there is a style the old heroes used that could fit you but you still have quite a lot of unique options on how to fight. If you combine [Telekinesis] with [Fly] or [Rush] you could have incredible freedom in fighting."

"It will take me a while until I learn [Wind Magic]."

"Still…"

"I could teach you," Ciel's bright smile lifts my spirits.

"Later, there's too much to learn. Let's leave it for when I learn more about Andraste or when I finish my courses at the university."

"Awn…"

I will certainly buy you some teacher cosplay one day.

"So anyway, how should I go making my own style?"

"Well. Style is all about the strategy, [Sword Use] only tells you how to use a sword, the style tells you when to use the sword. I can show you the [Imperial Tower Style] as basis but you have to think of it on your own.

"You have to think about things like posture, stance, footwork, strength, precision and speed of attacks or defenses, which direction to cut in, when and how to combo, grappling and bare handed attacks, feints and counters, weapons to use, and how to fight specific weapon and enemy type combinations. There's a lot to think about and your [Telekinesis] changes all of them, if you just adopt an existing style it will be very inefficient.

"I see... it will really take a long time to develop a style, I guess I should just use a single point in [Imperial Tower Style] while we spar. By the way, how does this style compare to yours?" I ask.

"This style is all about sword and shield while mine is more than just that, it encompasses all the weapons I use. It's also about fighting multiple enemies and how to counter them or overpower them. The imperial style is about coordination and working together with a simple sword and shield, the empire will never send their soldiers to be outnumbered or to work alone, I think this is why it would fit you well as a basis. It even tells about coordination with mages and archers, which you already do occasionally."

Yes, that's certainly interesting. Coordinating with Alissa and Roxanne when I retreat opens up attacks for them, I already did this a few times before, if I master [Telekinesis] or [Rush] I can enter and leave attack range basically at will.

While we talk Ciel pokes Roxanne's Shad with her finger. You shouldn't feel anything except for the mana leaking.

"Wolf, you are not looking at us when we... go to the bathroom, right?" Ciel asks, frowning slightly.

"I'm a pervert but I'm not that perverted. Besides, I can barely see a proper outline with their vision."

"That's, good to know."

We go back to sparring and I start getting pummeled by Lina, I better develop a style fast, she's reading my movements already. She's a bit scary when we spar, there's a fire in her that reminds me of Hana, but at least Hana knows how to go easy.

Tonight I act as human dildo for Hana and Roxanne as they take the stress of the training on each other. Alissa gives me a few scratches, I really do enjoy the feeling of her nails.

After we are all done Aoi gets out of her bored trance and pulls me and Hana together with her little claws. She always sleeps with either of us but when we sleep together she wants to sleep between both of us.

I spend a few more moments staring at Vanea's ring. The shrieks of that space mage I killed keep repeating in my head, I'm scared of fighting, I'm scared of the unknown enemy. I have to trust those women, even Ciel who doesn't want to fight got convinced. They trust me and I trust them.

I turn the ring green, I hope I didn't make a deal with the devil.

A note from Manasong

Alright, 1000 pages and Ryder didn't even leave Rabanara. I'm leaning more on discovery writing so the time in Rabanara is taking longer than I thought it would.

Anyway, I added a paypal. Help me out so I can spend more time writing and less time job hunting.

Leave a rating or a review to help me rise to the top or fix my shameful understanding of prose.

Take a look over my blog where all information of the world of Rupegia will be posted.

Join the Discord and discuss, or rant, or meme, or try and fight me so your waifu gets more screentime.

Become a Patron and read chapters in advance, or read the side-stories, or leave your mark on the story, or help choose the next artwork or the next side-story.

Chapter 22: Baalfire

A note from Manasong

Tell me in the comments new skills you want to see or some that you think would be interesting for this world.

Attention: to conform to the limit of sexual content allowed in a novel, I've censored this chapter. You can look for the uncensored version here.

The symbol "-" denotes a section that got cut for containing sexual content. Also, if paragraphs seem missing, they were also likely censored in an earlier pass where the symbol wasn't used.

Today is the 2nd.

-

I increased my "Charisma", [Sense Mana], [Nature Magic] and [Space Magic] by 1 (now 12, 2+6, 15+15 and 11+19), my [Summoning Magic] by 2 (now 12+17), my MP by 20 (now 710) and my "Magic Power" by 5 (now 270).

Today we can't even go outside since it's raining, worst of all the griffin spirit doesn't appear and Aoi gets depressed. Without Lina to hug I sit on Hana's lap while she practices her control by making the smallest [Earth Bullet] that she can. Roxanne asked for a corgi so she can cuddle with it while she works.

I bring Holly, a nature elemental, and my Shad in front of me while I observe them. The secret to level up is on them, Nononya's notes had a lot of information about anatomy but it isn't the same information that I can get if I use my soul to look inside their bodies.

I "expand" my soul towards them and "enter" their bodies to explore. I don't cut my feeling of taste, I need to know precisely how each of these are made.

Holly has a weird, diminutive body. She feeds on blood from unconscious victims, but the size of her stomach is too small to digest it, she must be absorbing the mana inside the blood. Mana courses through the body by using the veins as "guides", this makes blood the most mana charged part of our bodies, because of this many MP potions use blood of monsters as base ingredient.

Holly also doesn't have any sort of fat storage, she must be using inverted [Manasynthesis], converting mana into energy for the body. The poison gland is interesting, it's a mix of using digested blood with some other ingredient created by mana, this is something that's not on her entry on the monster book.

If I concentrate I can see in much more detail, I can go up to discerning the borders of every cell. Her cells are not glued by mana so these monsters shouldn't be vulnerable against emellanat. For their size they cost more mana than the elementals, it must be because their cells are more well developed. I wish I could look deeper into the cell, it starts to hurt my brain if I try to see more detail.

Hana hugs me and rests her head beside mine.

Shad's anatomy is basically nonexistent, it absorbs mana from the environment so it doesn't starve easily but it seeks out sources of mana, like mages. I can't see anything on their "bodies" besides where the soul rests, they are "magical beings", they do not follow the laws of physics like most monsters do. Roxanne's tail, wings and horns are considered to be of the same class of matter.

They are not even considered spirits or ghosts, they are literally shadows. Their ethereal tendrils are semi-corporeal though, they have a very weak interaction with matter, allowing them to move things like when one tried to remove my sword.

They react to interactions like Living Armors do, they get "cut" and "crushed" until their form breaks and dissipates. They easily interact with magic, which breaks apart their cohesion, but they have a lot of resistance to it. For example they don't "burn" from the [Firestorm], only the storm of mana raging through their bodies causes their cohesion to break.

It's all interesting to learn more about their anatomy but it isn't doing enough to level the skill faster. I need to look deeper, this anatomy analysis is only after the summoning, I need to learn how matters is formed the moment the monster is summoned.

- Hana starts getting frisky -

"Hana?" I ask.

"W-what you did, it felt so good," she answers, her breath is ragged and her face is very warm.

Oh, I guess she touched my soul "expansion" for a moment.

"We have to do it fast, we still have to train more."

"Okay…"

-

The girls open their eyes for a second and then go back to their own training.

-

Back to training, this time I put my back to Hana's so she won't "accidentally" brush on my soul. I cast [Summon Monster] and use the orb method, I throw the summoning orb in the air and expand my soul, absorbing every moment as the ball falls and turns into Holly.

There's too much information to process. I couldn't really see how it "appears" but I saw how it grows. It literally grows, from an embryo to a baby to a young monster to its adult form. It's like watching a video of a baby growing in fast forward, but I could also see how its insides grow.

I dismiss it and summon a Shad. This time instead of it an embryo appearing it simply grows into its maximum size. I summon it again and focus giving it more power, it only grew a little bigger. I do the same with Holly and instead of being bigger it was "older", it spent more time "growing".

I can modify the shape of the elementals at will but I can't do it with the monsters. If I killed a different kind, say an older or bigger type then sure, I can summon the bigger version, but I can't change their form. The only thing I can control is the age, I can only summon a "younger" version than the one I killed, I can even summon embryos, which are disgusting and die quickly. Interestingly I can summon armored goblins.

Maybe if I increase my magical knowledge and mana control I can dabble on summoning customized monsters. There's many "safety measures" on this skill system that limit versatility.

I try to focus on the moment the ball of light turn into an embryo to see if I can absorb more details but it's so fast that I actually doubt there's something in between these moments. It could even be that there's nothing there and it instantly turns into an embryo as soon as the light ball hits the ground.

I observe every other monster that I can summon, except for the big ones like the Kite Dragon or the Symbol of Hate, they wouldn't fit inside this room. My knowledge of anatomy reached a limit.

Today is nature class, more theory, at least we ended the talk about mating habits.

The Gloomy Pervert taught us about the importance of the moons to nature, the brightest moon should influence the behavior of nature and the spirits. You shouldn't try to interact with nature when the brightest moon is red (aspect of aggressiveness), like for example, hunting, they are very aggressive during this period and many animals that are passive or skittish will actively fight back. When the purple (aspect of wickedness) moon is the brightest things get worse as the entire forest might hunt you and "play" with you. Indigo (aspect of othewordlyness) things just get... Weird, so it's also not that great of an idea to go to the forest. Any other color is fine.

Alissa going away and coming is getting annoying, losing and gaining her blessing is stressing to me. I really do feel good when I'm near her and I'm starting to dread when she goes away. I'm tempted to ask her to always stay nearby.

Lina spent the afternoon at home, sparring with the girls. I have cut her time at the library in half until she has gained all the combat skills she needs. She will stay home the same days I have to do strength training, we will do this training together, me for muscles, her for [Stonebody].

When we are getting near home Holly spots a cloaked man who was at the same spot since last time. I tell Alissa to stop, I pull my sword out of "Items" and tie the belt to my waist.

She goes back home to call the girls and in a minute everyone is by the corner of the street.

This stalker is not even trying to hide, it's a big burly man with his face hidden by a hood. He is simply staring at our house a block away.

"I don't think it's related to Darean, he's too obvious, maybe he just wants to talk?" Alissa says, slightly confused.

"It's very suspicious to be cloaked and just staring at our house. Why doesn't he just come and knock?" Hana says and sends him an obvious glare, the man doesn't move.

"He looks a bit drunk," Ciel says.

After looking more carefully I see he's swaying slowly.

"There's no one near him to help, Holly scouted the area and he's alone," I say.

"Then there's nothing else to do besides confronting him," Alissa says.

"Turn on the scrubber for safety," Lina says.

I hope no space mage dropped a "coordinate" nearby.

We carefully approach him. Once close enough I can see past his hood, black beard, round face, dark brown skin, it's Logan from Escutcheon.

"Wolf... Ryder!" He says with a slur on his voice, clearly drunk.

"Yes, me and my wives. And you are Logan."

"Yesh...! I have been meaning to... talk to you..." I see a toothy grin.

"What for? Why not just knock on our door?" Hana says, clearly very annoyed.

"That's... Well, it'sh no matter! We are here now so let'sh talk!"

Hana clenches her teeth.

"Sure..." I say.

"You remember little Hilde, right? That... Woman we were with sssome time ago? How long washit?"

Uh... I'm bad with dates.

"About a month," Alissa saves me.

"Already!? Huh..." He loses himself in thought.

"So, what about it?" I ask.

He jolts back to reality and takes two steps forward.

"We were shuppos' to protect her... Right?"

"Only us, you were paid to kill the dragons."

He takes another step forward. The girls are getting anxious.

"Yesh but, we were shuppos' to help, like all good humanoidss we are shuppose' tha be."

He takes another step, I can smell he didn't take a bath. Hana is gripping her sword.

"And we did, we did all we could but it wasn't enough," I say, bitterness seeps into my voice as I'm being reminded of this.

Lina makes a pained face, holding some tears.

"It washn't enough!"

He takes another step and falls on his knees. I can only stare at him, bewildered.

"We weren't enough!"

He grabs my waist and pulls me closer. He sobs and the hood falls off his head, he's completely disheveled, his beard is unkempt, and he lost considerable weight. Tears flow freely on his face.

"We, didn't, do, enough," he mutters between sobs.

Gods help me.

After a few seconds of sobbing I put my hand on his shoulder.

"There, there... We did all we could. Sometimes that's just not enough," I try to console him.

"And that's how life is," Ciel says, she lowers herself to his height and rubs his other shoulder, "We live and we die, we do our best and even then we fail, so we should always live life to the fullest. Don't let her death ruin you too, if she could she would tell you not to waste your life with sadness."

He hugs my waist tighter. Please stop, this hurts.

"She was a strong woman, she will certainly spend some time in paradise. Now you need to grow more, you need to be stronger so you can join her when it's your time too."

This does something to him, he loosens his grip slowly. Ciel grabs his chin and makes him look forward.

"Remember to live well, you can still see her again one more time."

"One more time..." He repeats.

Ciel takes his arms off of me and pulls his hand so he stands again.

"I'm younger than you so when it's my time I expect to see you there," I say.

Logan chuckles. I hope this "paradise" works like this.

Ciel grabs him and sends a few more words to him. His beard is wet but his tears ran dry. At least his eyes regain some focus, some of their wildness returns. She pulls him back and they walk a few steps until he stops.

"Thank you, priestess," he looks at me and nods, "One more time…"

Ciel taps him on his huge back and he walks away. Ciel comes back to us and sighs.

"You worked well," I say.

"His type is the most common at the temple, people who lost loved ones so they lose their way."

I feel proud to have such a woman with me, I give her a kiss on her hand and she looks at me warmly.

"You are a wonderful woman," I say and give her a pure smile.

She waves me away and goes back home, cheeks dyed red.

I feel like training to get my mind out of this. I have to train my strength with Lina so I have Hana work us both hard, Lina needs to clear her mind too, those memories are still painful to her.

-

At night I spend my time studying Andraste again. It reminds me of greek, not that I ever heard someone speak greek but the letters are strikingly similar. I will likely never forget them, I have seen too many alphas, betas, and thetas in math to forget how they look.

"Ciel, why are there so few people with accents?" I ask.

I barely remember anyone but Simon having an accent.

"Most places have a teacher with a few points in Andraste, only the very small or isolated villages don't have a proper language teacher."

Knowing how Simon behaves I'm not surprised. But this is interesting, it's not an "everyone has an accent" situation, people literally do not have accents due to the skill never changing along time. Words get added but the pronunciation of existing words never changes.

I slowly play with Alissa and Roxanne in bed, can't have anyone feel neglected.

Today is the 3rd.

-

My [Summoning Magic] and [Andraste Language] increased by 1 (now 13+17 and 6+4). It seems I have to change my training regimen, simply repeating what I was doing won't take me much further. Even my MP increase slowed down.

This morning I train my MP. I use [Fireball] this time because I actually miss having this spell readily available. The next days I'm going to train Wind and [Water Magic] too because the first spell of each of these schools can actually be useful.

Leaving only Lina's Shad and Holly out I have enough mana to train. [Manasynthesis] is becoming really useful for this type of training.

"What does the spell [Rush] has in common with electricity?" The professor asks.

That's actually a good question.

"It's for the same reason why [Lightning Bolt] is effective against metal armor while natural electricity isn't."

Holy shit, I completely forgot about Faraday cages. Metal armor should protect against electricity except for burns due to heat, the way I use my bolt it flies through the body of my target completely unimpeded. Electricity wasn't my forte anyway.

"It's all about the 'abstract concept'. Magic has two ways to work, the first is 'copying', it's when we try to copy a phenomenon, like say, a lightning strike. We try to copy all the conditions necessary for the phenomenon and supplant whatever we don't know how it works or can't recreate with our own pure mana, creating things out of nothing by sheer 'Willpower'.

"The second way is the 'concept'. We copy characteristics of phenomenons and use them to create a spell that ignores the laws of our realm, we make it work in much more complex ways than a simple bolt of lighting.

"[Lightning Bolt] copies the physical part of a real lightning strike but it ignores certain properties, in fact it completely inverses a property. [Lightning Bolt] 'copies' the affinity electricity has for metals and also uses it as 'concept' so it can ignore the individual differences in resistance, making the spell behave the same way regardless of the metal it touches.

"It also uses a 'concept' of 'path' where charging the atmosphere with particles with opposite potential will 'ease' any sort of traversal. This is how you 'target' someone or 'guide' the bolt towards the body of the target.

"[Rush] works on the same 'concept' of the 'path', it just takes it much, much further and has it affect yourself instead of a bolt of electricity.

"So understanding these 'concepts' is what allows you to improve your magic and create more complex and frightening spells. Whenever you are training in a school of magic keep in mind these 'concepts' and you will increase the level of your skills with much ease."

Lyle stares at his hero with a mouth hanging open, I believe he just got his mind blown.

The professor takes us to the training range again so we can try out our new found inspiration. I mostly focus on [Rush], if I can couple this spell with [Telekinesis] my fighting style could become really ridiculous.

Lyle became the class... "clown"? Everyone is eager to see what is he gonna do this time, whenever we have a proper increase in our skill levels Lyle tries something ridiculous. This time he's trying to use [Rush] as a way to increase the speed of his punches and kicks. Apparently he didn't see my [Rush]-powered facepalm, needing Hatara to heal him after he hit his shin at the training dummy with such force it gave me a chill.

By the break, Lyle calms down and we can have a proper conversation with him.

"Hey, Wolf. I couldn't say this last time but our families took us to a dungeon so we could increase our levels. This time though, father made us fight together against a few Samu Stalkers, some wolves that live in the cold."

"How did it go?" I ask.

Garanae smiles.

"Fur burns very well," he says.

"Though the smell was horrible. I just wish I had more attack magic, staying behind like this isn't that pleasant," Hatara says, her green eyes look gloomy as she stares at her half empty tea cup.

Garanae rubs her hand, bringing her back to her now usual gracious demeanor.

"It's best that you don't have to work," he says with an unusual gentleness on his voice.

"Stil doesn't help with the boredom," he answers with a bitter smile.

"Anyway, now that father is giving us more freedom I wanted to explore a dungeon called Wisps of the Proud," Lyle says.

Both Hatara and Garanae look away with a slight cringe. Lina reacts the opposite, her little mouth hangs open.

"What's..." I pause to observe Lina's cute frozen expression for a moment, "So special about that dungeon?"

"It's supposedly a burial site for a king of the dragonoid race."

"Wait, dragonoid?"

Lina's Trivia, part one: Dragonoids are more dragon than human while dragonkin are more human than dragon. The dragonoids that I saw in books have a dragon body full of scales but they are at most 3-meters tall and their bodies have skeletons similar to humans. They have long necks, long dragonic faces with thick horns, wide leathery wings, a thin but strong tail as long as their bodies, good affinity for magic, very muscular arms and legs that end in claws, and enough dexterity to rival humanoids.

Lina's Trivia, part two: Most types of dragonoids are extremely brutal, they have a tendency to eat those who they fight and rape the survivors amidst all the blood and carnage, no matter if they are alive or not. Their extremely bestial behavior makes them very dangerous and I made sure to avoid dungeons with them.

"It's suspected that this was a race that live in the Sea of Trees but got extinct before they ever made contact with anybody. The Sea of Trees is surrounded by mountains, it was rather difficult to get out of it until the empire carved an entrance with the forts Erda and Reita. The existence of the dragonoids would explain why the Sea of Trees has so many monsters of the dragon type.

"And you wanna go there? A dungeon crawling with barbaric dragonoids?"

"No no, Wo-... ,aster," Lina answers me, her bangs shake with her head, "These dragonoids are very subdued, they are more like emotionless guardians than the standard barbaric dragonoid."

"Hmm... then it's not a very popular dungeon if I never heard of it before."

"Indeed, it's also not very hard to enter, but there's not much there. It's mostly an investigation site but not many people have interest on it because no one knows how to go deeper into the tomb."

Lina's Trivia: Dungeoneering is exactly what the name implies, dungeon engineering. Seeing how the formation of a dungeon is a natural phenomenon, researchers found ways to manipulate how a dungeon is formed and even how to induce an artificial mana storm. Kings of old have created many tombs for them and their families using mana storms, the robustness of a dungeon as a tomb is unparalleled to anything even the empire of today can build.

The most common signs of a dungeon-tomb is when the dungeon doesn't grow and when there is no reasonable way of getting deeper to reach the core.

"So I have a proposal for you Wolf, how I about I hire you to escort us there?" Lyle asks.

Lina barely contains her excitement.

"I will have to talk to my wives but it's likely we will accept."

Hardly anyone will have the heart to go against Lina's cuteness.

"Wonderful!"

"Are you two coming too?" I ask to the inseparable couple near us.

"Archaeology is something we do not really know much about, you see," Garanae tries to excuse himself.

Lyle rolls his eyes.

"These two are like newly-weds, they completely abandoned me during the half-cycle break," Lyle gives a mock disdainful look to them.

"We kinda are..." Hatara mutters with a blush.

"You should enjoy your youth Lyle," Garanae says barely keeping a smile as his face distorts in embarrassment.

"I am! You know that we have slower aging due to our Levels, I'm taking my time building my base until I have enough power to enjoy myself," Lyle turns his nose in a snobbish manner but still blushes.

Lyle is level 28, Garanae is level 26, Hatara is level 19. Nobles normally have their children create parties with servants wearing the Ring of the Servant, then they kill monsters for them, power-leveling their children.

"We do not need to tease you all anymore, you embarrass yourselves without our help," Alissa says with smug smile.

They do not have a comeback, they all look away and try to hide their faces.

Conversation goes back to normal after a while, Lina and Lyle start discussing where we are going to go. I talk to Lina at night about what she reads but I'm not such a history buff like Lyle is, I feel like he is her first friend ever since she joined us.

I do feel irrational amounts of jealousy towards Lina, I just have such a protective feeling over her it's making me anxious. It's wonderful she's talking with someone but she's mine, she's my little thing, I just wanna hug her and kiss her and pet her -.

I unconsciously grab Alissa's hand and squeeze it. I only notice it when she's rubbing my hand with her other hand, this calms me greatly. I'm being irrational, gotta calm my heart, too much love will wilt our relationship.

Back at home, a single look at Lina and everyone agreed to Lyle's proposal. I discussed it with him quickly and we agreed in 1 gold per person escorted. We will meet on the eastern end of The Smirk at the 11th.

At night I give Ciel some of the attention she was craving, I put on [Massage]. I start with cuddling and some light flirting, then I slowly massage her neck and give it some kisses. -

-

Today is the 4th.

-

I gained [Fire Magic] with 1 point, I increased my [Electric Magic] by 2 (now 9+11), my MP by 30 (now 740) and my "Magic Power" by 10 (now 280).

Alissa learned [Illusion Magic] with 2 points in it, she increased her [Mana Control] by 2 (now 3). Now she can properly mold her spell not to affect us. Her MP Increased by 110 (now 235) and her "Magic Power" by 41 (now 65).

At breakfast Roxanne comes out looking haggard.

"You didn't sleep well?" Ciel asks.

Hana snorts.

"She decided to spend more time working on those potions instead of coming to bed," she says.

"I'm getting close to having a breakthrough on a poison, I just need a little more time, the training is taking too much of my time," Roxanne says, her mouth curves into a slightly evil smile.

"Don't start overworking again, Roxanne," I say.

"It had seemed she changed since the time she spent on the temple hospital, but I guess it didn't last long," Ciel says.

Roxanne pouts in response.

This morning I have to spend at the Dungeoneering Guild taking a look at information about the Wisps of the Proud. Alissa accompanies me, she takes her time analyzing the anatomy of the dragonoids. Interestingly they do not have nipples or breasts and have little sexual dimorphism. Thankfully these guardians of the dungeon aren't similar to the monster types, they never berserk like the monsters do.

We have to buy some mountaineering equipment, we are going to have to scale some large walls and cross some big gaps, the terrain is not friendly there, specially if we cannot fly. I have to get Ciel to teach me [Wind Magic] so we can use [Fly]. We could use the dinghy but I'm afraid of the wind there, without protection from it like [Fly] does we risk getting swept into a wall or something, that dinghy is not very strong.

Ciel visits Arantos, she had been visiting him regularly during the afternoons, this time she wants to have a word with him about Logan.

Alissa got some nuts and not-olive oil that came from the empire Mainland. With this I show them "pesto alla genovese". Alissa thinks she heard about a similar dish, it might actually be a thing on the Mainland.

TIme for Blessing class. After a long time chanting I manage to cast [Rainbow Shield], with this I raise my [Blessing Magic] by 1 (now 0+15) immediately.

"Wonderful, wonderful," Professor Alciel claps her hand in excitement, "You are a natural at this type of magic, your chanting is not the best and your voice needs some adjustment but you have some inherent ease to learn magic that's envious."

She unconsciously summons her angel wings, which quickly flap about in excitement.

Well, I'm just a cheater.

I wonder how much more powerful Roxanne can get if I use [Rainbow Crystal] on her. The problem with these spells is that they cost shit tons of mana, specially when I want everyone to have them, it takes quite a while to have everyone properly buffed.

"Where's Miss Lina?" Lyle asks.

"She's back at home practicing her combat techniques, she's going to fight on the front lines so she has to be in top shape."

"Oh..." Lyle looks a bit disappointed.

"Don't worry, you will have a long time to talk to her during our trip," Alissa says with a mischievous smile.

Lyle looks away in embarrassment and changes the topic.

I'm fine, I'm fine, I'm fine. It's okay to be a bit jealous, she's just his friend, that's right, just friends, friends are good, she needs friends, just friends. I'm fine, I'm fine, I'm fine...

-

Today is the 5th.

-

This morning I spend training my mana using [Wind Magic]. I wish I could focus on [Golemancy], I really want to give Ted and Suzy better voices and more physical strength. My morning gets interrupted when I feel my pocket get very warm.

I take out Vanea's lithograph. The black liquid slowly forms words.

"Tomorrow, 10PM, Baalfire's Tavern".

Shit, already?

Lunch is very tense. The expertly seasoned bacon, beans and cornmeal that Alissa and Ciel made with so much love tasted like sand to me.

"How's Lina's training?" I ask Hana.

"She's ready to fight grunts toe-to-toe but anything else she will get suppressed. I focused on teaching her how to defend properly first so she won't die easily," Hana taps Lina's shoulder with pride.

Lina herself gives me a confident smile and a nod.

"She and Hana also have enough mana and power for a proper chantless [Earth Bullet], it will certainly catch whoever fights them unaware," Roxanne says with another proud smile.

"Remember it's only as a trump card, don't tell them of our skills," Ciel says.

With Alissa's [Illusion Magic] ready, [Ghost Lights] makes it very difficult to dodge her arrows, if you look at her you could get nearly blinded by lights.

"I will keep out my 3 Shad's and Holly, I still don't have much mana for anything else so depending on the terrain I will be on the back line. The Shad's will cover me, Alissa, and Roxanne. I will focus on scouting with Holly."

I learned that summons know everything I know so I can use English with them to give them secret commands. Yelling your commands to your summons will ruin certain strategies since the enemy will know.

Lina increased her "Strength", [Hammer Use], [Parry], [Dodge], [Muscle Explosion], [Shield Bash], [Battlefield Perception], [Dwarven Pride Style], [Mana Control] and [General Enchanting] by 1, her [Earth Magic] by 2, her MP by 70, her "Magic Power" by 35.

Hana learned [Earth Magic] with 1 point, she increased her MP by 95 (now 220), her "Magic Power" by 36 (now 60), and her "Intelligence" and "Wisdom" by 1 (now 9 and 10).

Roxanne increased her MP by 100 (now 1205) and her "Magic Power" by 21 (now 380).

Ciel increased her "Willpower" by 1 (now 13), her MP by 80 (now 885) and her "Magic Power" by 20 (now 270).

Tables for the girls:

Spoiler: Spoiler

Info

Name: | Alissa | Age: | 19 | Race: | Fox-Type Wereanimal
HP: | 100 | MP: | 235 | Magic Power: | 65
Level: | 29 | Experience: | 100/8000

Stats

Strength: | 11 | Endurance: | 18 | Dexterity: | 22
Speed: | 20 | Intelligence: | 11 | Wisdom: | 12
Willpower: | 16 | Charisma: | 10 | Piety: | 15
Perception: | 17 | Sanity: | 15

Other

Status Effects: | NONE | Titles: | Blessing from the Goddess of Love, Blinding Arrows
Affiliations: | Wolf Ryder (fiance), Blood Slave (Owner: Wolf Ryder), Helios (Fellowship)
Companions: | Wolf Ryder, Roxanne Succubus, Hanafuria, Ciel, Lina
Crimes: | NONE

Alissa Skill Report

Physical

Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level
Sword Use | 9 | Bow Use | 26 | Parry | 4
Dodge | 2 | Sense Presence | 6 | Hide Presence | 4
Enhanced Olfact | 5 | Enhanced Hearing | 3 | Hawk Eyes | 3
Muscle Explosion | 2 | Quiet Steps | 4 | Quiet Action | 2
Enhanced Stamina | 1 | Tracking | 2

Magical

Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level
Sense Mana | 1 | Mana Control | 3 | Fire Magic | 1
Light Magic | 1 | Space Magic | 1 | Conjuring Magic | 1
Illusion Magic | 2 | Fox Transformation (innate) | 5

Miscellaneous

Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level
Housework | 3 | Cooking | 4 | Cleaning | 2
Washing | 5 | Riding | 2 | Oral Technique | 4
Pain Resistance | 2 | Hand Technique | 2
4 Remaining Skill Points
OBS: Level means (free point)+(trained point)

Info

Name: | Roxanne Succubus | Age: | 21 | Race: | Succubus-Type Demon
HP: | 100 | MP: | 1205 | Magic Power: | 380
Level: | 33 | Experience: | 7059/10000

Stats

Strength: | 8 | Endurance: | 9 | Dexterity: | 11
Speed: | 8 | Intelligence: | 18 | Wisdom: | 17
Willpower: | 14 | Charisma: | 15 | Piety: | 10
Perception: | 10 | Sanity: | 12

Other

Status Effects: | NONE | Titles: | NONE
Affiliations: | Wolf Ryder (fiance), Helios (fellowship)
Companions: | Wolf Ryder, Alissa, Hanafuria, Ciel, Lina
Crimes: | NONE

Roxanne Succubus Skill Report

Physical

Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level
Dagger Use | 2

Magical

Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level
Sense Mana | 3 | Mana Control | 25 | Reduced Mana Cost | 3
Mana Efficiency | 9 | Fire Magic | 22 | Water Magic | 23
Light Magic | 1 | Space Magic | 8 | Conjuring Magic | 5
Alchemy | 3 | Potion Brewing | 11 | Poison Brewing | 2

Miscellaneous

Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level
Housework | 1 | Cooking | 1 | Cleaning | 1
Washing | 1 | Riding | 1
8 Remaining Skill Points
OBS: Level means (free point)+(trained point)

Info

Name: | Hanafuria | Age: | 23 | Race: | Fire-Type Dragonkin
HP: | 150 | MP: | 220 | Magic Power: | 60
Level: | 36 | Experience: | 11050/12000

Stats

Strength: | 19 | Endurance: | 24 | Dexterity: | 10
Speed: | 13 | Intelligence: | 9 | Wisdom: | 10
Willpower: | 19 | Charisma: | 16 | Piety: | 11
Perception: | 9 | Sanity: | 17

Other

Status Effects: | NONE | Titles: | NONE
Affiliations: | Wolf Ryder (fiance), Blood Slave (Owner: Wolf Ryder), Helios (Fellowship)
Companions: | Wolf Ryder, Alissa, Roxanne Succubus, Ciel, Lina
Crimes: | NONE

Hanafuria Skill Report

Physical

Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level
Sword Use | 20 | Spear Use | 14 | Bow Use | 9
Two-Handed Sword Use | 9 | Pole Arm Use | 6 | Dagger Use | 4
Shield Bash | 6 | Block | 8 | Parry | 6
Dodge | 4 | Tatesomu Style | 4 | Muscle Explosion | 4
Battlefield Perception | 2 | Taunt | 3 | Intimidate | 2
Enhanced Reflexes | 2 | Enhanced Stamina | 4 | Enhanced Strength | 2
Enhanced Endurance | 4

Magical

Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level
Sense Mana | 1 | Mana Control | 1 | Fire Magic | 1
Earth Magic | 1 | Light Magic | 1 | Space Magic | 1
Conjuring Magic | 1

Miscellaneous

Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level
Housework | 2 | Cooking | 1 | Cleaning | 1
Washing | 1 | Riding | 3 | Massage | 1
Dismantling | 4 | Oral Technique | 1 | Pain Conversion | 1
Fire Breath (innate) | 5 | Summon Wings (innate) | 2
5 Remaining Skill Points
OBS: Level means (free point)+(trained point)

Info

Name: | Ciel | Age: | 21 | Race: | Human
HP: | 100 | MP: | 885 | Magic Power: | 270
Level: | 31 | Experience: | 3500/9000

Stats

Strength: | 14 | Endurance: | 13 | Dexterity: | 17
Speed: | 18 | Intelligence: | 15 | Wisdom: | 18
Willpower: | 13 | Charisma: | 17 | Piety: | 21
Perception: | 12 | Sanity: | 19

Other

Status Effects: | NONE | Titles: | NONE
Affiliations: | Wolf Ryder (fiance), Helios (Fellowship), Templar Knights (Honorary Member), Temple Priestess (Former Member)
Companions: | Wolf Ryder, Alissa, Hanafuria, Roxanne Succubus, Lina
Crimes: | NONE

Ciel Skill Report

Physical

Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level
Glaive Use | 15 | Sword Use | 5 | Parry | 8
Dodge | 6 | Block | 4 | Imperial Hasterrum Style | 2
Muscle Explosion | 2 | Battlefield Perception | 1

Magical

Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level
Sense Mana | 2 | Mana Control | 6 | Reduced Mana Cost | 1
Mana Efficiency | 4 | Wind Magic | 15 | Fire Magic | 1
Light Magic | 24 | Space Magic | 3 | Conjuring Magic | 1
Diagnosis | 7

Miscellaneous

Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level
First-Aid | 3 | Housework | 3 | Cooking | 2
Cleaning | 2 | Washing | 1 | Riding | 1
5 Remaining Skill Points
OBS: Level means (free point)+(trained point)

Info

Name: | Lina | Age: | 18 | Race: | Dwarf
HP: | 100 | MP: | 270 | Magic Power: | 140
Level: | 21 | Experience: | 1240/7000

Stats

Strength: | 8 | Endurance: | 8 | Dexterity: | 12
Speed: | 11 | Intelligence: | 16 | Wisdom: | 11
Willpower: | 17 | Charisma: | 10 | Piety: | 10
Perception: | 14 | Sanity: | 11

Other

Status Effects: | NONE | Titles: | NONE
Affiliations: | Wolf Ryder (master), Helios (Fellowship)
Companions: | Wolf Ryder, Alissa, Hanafuria, Roxanne Succubus, Ciel
Crimes: | NONE

Lina Skill Report

Physical

Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level
Hammer Use | 5+9 | Parry | 1+4 | Dodge | 0+4
Block | 6 | Muscle Explosion | 1+1 | Shield Bash | 0+1
Battlefield Perception | 1+1 | Dwarven Pride Style | 1+1 | Enhanced Speed | 2+0

Magical

Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level
Sense Mana | 1 | Mana Control | 4 | Mana Efficiency | 1
Fire Magic | 1 | Earth Magic | 3+2 | Ligth Magic | 1
Space Magic | 1 | Conjuring Magic | 1 | General Enchanting | 8
Magic Tool Carving | 1

Miscellaneous

Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level
General Blacksmithing | 4 | Sweing | 4 | Housework | 1
Cleaning | 2 | Washing | 1 | Math | 4
Riding | 1 | Stonebody (innate) | 3
15 Remaining Skill Points
OBS: Level means (free point)+(trained point)

We have to level Roxanne and Ciel so they can learn more advanced spells, Hana is also suffering from only having 2 skill points left.

We tried to formulate a plan but aside from brushing up on our team tactics there's not much else to do, we don't know who and where we are fighting.

Due to the tenseness of the atmosphere I summoned a corgi for the girls.

"Roxaaanne, It's my turn now," Ciel cries.

"Nuh-uh you spent 15 minutes with it last time, I'm not even 10 yet," Roxanne answers, keeping the corgi away from her reach.

"We didn't even get a chance to cuddle with it yet," Alissa says, her fox ears drop.

I massage my eyes and try not to laugh at them.

"How about this, we cycle the corgi, Ted, Suzy, and Aoi. Ten minutes and then you girls change the one you are cuddling with," I say.

Aoi raises her head, just waking up from her nap on Hana's shoulder. Hana looks at me as if I was stealing Aoi.

"Let's all share the things we love, we are all mature enough for that, right?" I say, the two girls look guiltily at each other, "Just like how you all share me we should share other things, right?"

They nod. I look at Hana, she purses her lips and then nods.

I'm glad I did this. Lina and Alissa monopolize everything until it's time for my classes. I certainly did not expect a teddy bear riding a corgi having a mock battle with a cloth doll riding a small dragon.

I try to focus on my mana cost class, I feel it's related to how mana in general works. It's essentially the same thing as "Magic Power", you do more with less, it's just that it's something deliberate. With the skill you learn how to do it while "Magic Power" it's your body that increases its "affinity" with mana.

The professor is telling us to focus on the unit of mana, the smallest amount of mana you can invoke and turn into a spell, to focus on this and repeatedly try to increase the power of the spell while maintaining the same mana cost.

Normally this is impossible, mana cost equals power used but he's trying to have us disassociate these two concepts. Mana equals power but the conversion isn't static, it's dynamic, it depends on our "Intelligence" to learn more about mana, our "Wisdom" to refer back to what we already know and our "Willpower" to force the world to bend to our will. In the case of [Light Magic] our connection to the gods helps us change the world in accordance to their will, we understand more of it and allow them to help us channel magic through our bodies.

I feel like I understand it, somewhat. The focus on the unit of mana is helping me, it's like it's on the tip of my tongue. It's dangerously close to direct mana manipulation, or rather, it's nearly the same thing, we are manipulating how the mana is used for our spells. We are rejecting the reality of how mana works and replacing it with our own.

I feel refreshed and excited, this is kind of a mindfuck for me but I feel like I grasped something significant over this lesson.

"It's all on the unit of mana, that's the secret," I say.

"Hoh, for me it's more on the 'building' aspect of the spells, I feel like there's redundancy," Toroo says.

"What do you mean?"

"Well, I have been observing how mana flows through me and I see that every spell has many similar aspects, the gathering, the conversion, the building, the expulsion, and the trigger. The 'building' part seems very similar, like a 'stack of boxes', just that they are not all boxes and instead they have many shapes and forms. I have been trying to see how they can fit better together, the more 'snug' this building is the more stable the spell is, requiring less mana."

Interesting. I haven't been looking very closely to how exactly the mana transforms into a spell, my concern was more philosophical, I guess.

"That's a completely different view from what I have. I guess mine is about rejecting the way magic is formed and creating your own in a more efficient or rather, personal way."

"That! That's what I was thinking about!" Lyle exclaims.

Hatara and Lyle are leaning more to my side, Garanae is leaning to Toroo's side. Well it's not really a "side", more like a perspective. I can focus on training on my perspective but when I reach a wall I can switch to Toroo's perspective to continue leveling the skill.

Alissa and Lina pay a lot of attention to our discussion, both are wanting to get more involved in magic so it will be useful for them in the future.

Back at home I spend all my free time giving attention to each of them. -.

Tonight is Ciel and Lina on our bed. I crawl inside and nearly collapse, life's good.

Ciel comes behind me and squishes my head against her chest, it's her turn to cuddle with me. I grab Alissa and hug her from behind, Lina is then hugged by Alissa. It's going to be warm but I can deal with it, I'm already used to sleeping like this.

"Say, Wolfy. What is sex to you?" Ciel asks.

"The ultimate bonding activity with your partner, that's the common interpretation on my world. Why do you ask?"

"Well, your world is different so I wanted to know if we thought things similarly."

"In comparison to my world, people here have sex much more easily. The most unusual thing I see is prostitution being so accepted, religion in my world is not very fond of casual sex."

"So 'love' is the only accepted reason for having sex?"

"Kinda, the idea of having sex only for pleasure is accepted up to a certain point but it's complicated. The idea of selling your body is definitely not accepted in a large part of the world, even on the parts that are accepted it's not a respected profession. Also, people would definitely be disgusted to what I did to Alissa, Hana, and Lina."

Now Alissa and Lina turn their heads towards me.

"What do you mean?" Alissa asks.

"Slavery is not accepted, in my world you are basically sex slaves, I have absolute power over you. Even if you consent to having sex with me your decision would be considered biased, tainted by the fact that I can punish you in any way I want if you deny me. Even if I treat you like an equal you are still subservient to me, you are not able to give me proper consent to me, so in a way, I am raping you."

Alissa grimaces.

"The Gods say it isn't so, I do not care what your world is like, I am yours and you are mine," her voice is tinged by anger.

Hearing her say these words brings me peace.

"When in Rome, do as the Romans do, that's a saying in my world. I'm trying my best to adapt to this world, I do not care what others would think of me back at the home I abandoned. I already made my decision to live here as Wolf Ryder."

Alissa kisses my lips lightly, Ciel kisses the back of my neck. I extend my hand to Lina and instead of coming to me she kisses it, that's not what I wanted but whatever.

"In this world sex has more uses," Ciel says, "It can be a way to give comfort to loved ones or help ease their pain, even if that person is merely a friend or family."

"Wait what, incest is a thing?"

"Incest?" Alissa asks.

"Parents having sex with children or siblings having sex with each other."

"Yes, as long as you don't procreate," Ciel continues, "Keep in mind the Sin of rape, family rapists suffer in hell for much longer."

"Is there an afterlife? Like, when you die your soul goes to suffer in hell or have pleasure in heaven?"

"Heaven?"

"Paradise."

"Yes, there is. Sinners suffer in hell in proportion to their sins, some necromancers try to trap their souls eternally or simply break their spirits making them dissipate into nothing so they don't have to go through hell, no one knows if that works," he shrugs, "Others try to become undead, but that is another thing completely. Paradise is a place for family to reunite one last time, it's also for heroes that did not get to live long enough to enjoy their rewards. Anyways, we are digressing, you said that prostitution is not accepted?"

"Yes, selling your body is not accepted."

"So who heals the broken and the lonely?"

"Therapists, I guess. These problems of the mind are given much less attention than the ones of the body. Things were improving on that area, though. Do prostitutes do that?"

"Prostitutes are trained by priests in how to help the lonely or those with a broken heart or mind. During sex people bare their hearts to each other, it's in this most vulnerable state that we can truly see inside someone's mind and give them the proper help they need."

Sex as comfort and healing, seems progressive.

"Seeing how prostitutes might be the most common client for priests it makes sense they help each other."

"Indeed. Surprises me it isn't like this in your world, you said they had more evolved knowledge of the non-magical sciences."

"Things are more complicated than that, the morality of my world is different. Over here people are pragmatic and hierarchical, in my world people are very individualistic. It's a very heterogeneous world, I think that the lack of the Gods made people go their own ways, only in science can we find the most things in common that we agree upon."

And even in science there's a lot to disagree on.

"So the world is in the Age of Discord," Lina says.

"A proper comparison, but my world is much, much less deadly."

The conversation dies down on this point. Prostitutes with a degree in psychology, incest, and sex for comfort. This world never stops to surprise me.

Today is the 6th.

-

I Alissa her close to me and hug her tight. The shrieks of the dying space mage woman replay in my head every time I think about tonight.

"What are you feeling?" Alissa asks.

"... Scared…"

"So am I…"

There are no more words that need to be said.

I pull strands of her hair from blocking her beautiful orange eyes, which then look deeply into mine.

I grab one of her ears and just massage it, she lets out a sound that was almost a purr.

She runs her hand through my hair and we give each other a massage until Ciel and Lina properly wake up.

I increased my MP by 20 (now 760) and my "Magic Power" by 5 (now 285), it seems I couldn't focus much on training yesterday due to Vanea's message. I learned [Wind Magic] with 1 point and surprisingly I learned [Reduced Mana Cost] with 2 points.

The gloomy mood spreads and we eat breakfast in silence.

"Let's just relax this morning, we already trained all we could and it's best that we don't go into battle too tense," Alissa says.

There are no arguments against this. We spend this chilly morning in front of the fireplace, we bring blankets and pull the table away so we can all cuddle in front of it. I spend my time brushing Alissa's tail and hair, I just love to touch this fluffiness, it's not the fluffiness itself that makes me happy but it's the person it's attached to.

After a while, I just hug her from behind and rest my chin on her shoulders. Lina is sleeping on Ciel's lap, which in turn is playing with Lina's silky hair. Roxanne is taking care of Hana's hair, she grumbles whenever she finds a matted patch, she first brushes it then she passes some oily hair product so it won't mat anymore, Hana is just obediently sitting still. Ted and Suzy are awkwardly dancing with each other in front of the fireplace, something Roxanne taught them.

Aoi is on Alissa's lap, she traces her fingers lightly over Aoi's scales. Aoi raises her head and looks at me.

"Saa?" She asks.

I feel she wants to know why we are all so sad.

"We are not sad, we are tense, we will have to fight."

"Faig, fuun," he strains herself to talk.

She thinks fighting is fun. It might be if we are on a dungeon and we know what's coming.

"We are fighting other people again, it's not fun for us to fight other humanoids."

She looks confused and tilts her head, imitating Alissa. Cute.

"For us, fighting other humanoids there's no glory, it's... Almost like fighting a friend," Alissa says.

"Freen?"

Aoi is starting to understand what the other girls talk, but they don't fully understand her yet.

"Almost a friend," I say.

"Udeer-tan…"

I reach over and rub her slick head.

In space class the professor made the students demonstrate [Item Box], then he held a discussion about how the skill feels and how it could be modified. Not that many space mages actually reach level 20 on this magic school, those who are dedicated enough can improve the amount they can carry without increasing the level of the skill. I didn't participate much and thankfully the professor didn't mind.

Listening to Lyle and Lina helped me clear my mind, even though jealousy burned in my heart.

I cast on everyone [Wind Armor], [Sharp Blades], [Swift Foot], [Rainbow Shield], and [Rainbow Crystal]. The last spell creates a faint rainbow diamond on the back of our hands, it's certainly more visible than the other spells.

We make a simple dinner and by 9:30PM we leave towards Baalfire's.

A note from Manasong

Leave a rating or a review to help me rise to the top or fix my shameful understanding of prose.

Take a look over my blog where all information of the world of Rupegia will be posted.

Join the Discord and discuss, or rant, or meme, or try and fight me so your waifu gets more screentime.

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Chapter 23: Night Terrors

A note from Manasong

I'm not the best at poetry but I had some fun with it.

We all wear simple weapons at our sides but we don't wear our armor, it would be too conspicuous.

The tavern is on the main road near the castle so it's a rather well made building. It's a brown and grey brick building squashed between two other bigger food shops. The tavern has no windows and a very heavy metal door, it reminds me of the "secret club" type of pubs where it was mostly a discreet and quiet place for higher class men to share a few smokes and drinks.

Once we enter my suspicions are confirmed, the ambient is filled with murmuring, the occasional laughs and smoke of whatever thing they use to smoke around here. Everyone is dressed in rather conservative velvet clothing but of high quality, there's very few women in here. Seems like a gathering point for official servants of the town.

Our eyes adjust to the low-light environment as the murmuring reduces and I hear the music being played.

"♪ He saw no way around. The monster made him pause. His companion was about to fall down. So he jumped into those claws! ♪" The singer makes exaggerated movements as he sings.

As we walk the stares increase. Alissa motions to us and we quickly sit down on a table, it's very snug and comfortable, the low hanging light on the table makes our faces less recognizable.

"♪ Like a hero from legend. He used [Shocking Touch]. He paralyzed the wretched. And bet it all on a clutch! ♪" The singer quietens as the instruments start a crescendo.

A proto-waiter appears before us.

"Good evening grand patrons. Would you like to go to our exclusive room? We can give you more personalized service worthy of someone of your position," his voice rings in our ears but his unnatural emphasis makes it obvious to us what he wants.

"Sure, lead the way," I say.

"♪ The monster was a fearsome foe. No one would dare get so close! He attacked but his heart was filled with woe. Until his companion made the monster explooode! ♪"

The lyrics makes me uncomfortable but the instruments are being played well, with a little tuning it could be an epic song.

We move deeper into the tavern and enter a corridor. The proto-waiter stops and looks around, there's no one here besides us, then he opens a side door leading downstairs and motions for us to go.

"The bottom door," he says and leaves.

The stairs go down for what seems to be a few floors underground, we go deep below the city. There are a few heavy doors flanking us but we continue. We finally reach the end of the stairs and open the last heavy door.

On a very wide and unremarkable grey room Vanea and Haaran are hunched over a table with a few papers and drawings. Surrounding them are men and women in fully plate armor, a few have leather or robes.

Once we enter all heads turns to us and Vanea gives me a wide and genuine smile. Aside from a few people most knights give us looks of annoyance. Alissa and Lina return the stares, they seem unmoved at the attention. Hana is completely unfazed. Ciel and Roxanne shiver as they get the full brunt of both the siblings soul-piercing stare for the first time.

Haaran rolls his eyes and puts a sack of what could be coins, due to the sound they make, on the table. A devil-type knight besides him snickers and puts the sack on his [Item Box].

"What a pleasure to know you are here, Mr. Ryder," Haaran greets me with a bitter smile.

The gazes of the siblings penetrate my [Mental Resistance] and give me a shiver.

"I'm merely fulfilling my part of the deal," I force a smile with a small bow.

"I told you it was a stupid bet," Vanea says with a smug smile towards her brother.

Haaran's face scrunches up for a moment.

"Sir Haaran bet we wouldn't fulfill our word?" Alissa raises an eyebrow in annoyance.

"Not... Exactl-..."

"He bet you would come in all scared and skittish," says the devil-type man.

"Marduk…" Haaran says in a low growl.

The man bites his lips to suppress a smile. This exchange amuses Alissa and Hana, but it only makes Lina angry.

"Anyway, let's continue with our business at hand," Haaran says through gritted teeth and a forced smile.

His embarrassed face makes him look like another person, he looks almost... Normal.

"Come around, everyone, it's time for a briefing," Vanea says and everyone bunches up around the table.

There's a large diagram with what seems to be a map of part of the town. There are a few simple carved wooden soldiers surrounding a specific building. One has a golden dot on the top of its head, another has a silver dot, a third has a red dot, and the others have numbers.

"First of all, context," Vanea starts, her face becomes neutral again, "We are dealing with an information leak, there's a spy in the castle that's hampering our efforts. This is the only information everyone is allowed to share, anything else is on a need-to-know basis. Do not share this information with anyone else besides your superiors."

"For this operation I assembled this team. First is my brother, who will be leading gold squad. His second-in-command is Sir Marduk."

The devil-type man waves. His skin is red as blood and his eyes are black. His features are thin and a bit effeminate. He barely looks like a proper knight with his smirk crooked smile and casual posture.

"For leader of silver squad will be Dame Larana, her second-in-command is Sir Tarano."

A petite werecat woman waves. She reminds me of a Maine coon, grey skin and white hair with black stripes. Small snout, whiskers, yellow cat eyes, and cat ears. Her eyes are sharp and her face is bony and imponent, she looks calm and cold.

A small incubus-type man clenches his fist over his chest. He's similar to Sonny, pale white skin and hair, but red eyes instead of yellow. Small spiral horns on the temples and a dagger-like tail floating besides him. He has a bit of a ratty face with a long nose, thin chin and a suspicious smile.

"And this is the fellowship Helios, they will be red squad. Mr. Wolf and Misses Alissa, Roxanne, Hana, Ciel, and Lina. None of you except for Haaran has fought with him yet but I won't hear a single complaint," her gaze washes over every knight, "I have no time to deal with inflated pride, this operation is too sensitive to let petty feelings get in the way of the results. If any of you have any doubts remember this fellowship killed the Symbol of Hate and fought side-by-side with Haaran during the goblin village extermination."

The mood of the knights turn into surprise and they murmur between each other. A little bit of fear enters their hearts and the annoyance they have with us slowly disappears, no one seems stupid enough to go against her.

"Quiet. Now, for the operation. Two days ago one of our sniffers found a trail of Farana Uiara's scent while she was buying simple groceries on a shop, she was being escorted by two men. We got our stalkers after her and we tracked her going inside this mansion," Vanea points to a large rectangle on the map, "She hasn't come out yet but we had a tracker sense her presence in there."

"We have detected twenty people plus Farana in there. We do not know about their equipment but there hasn't been much movement inside, we think these are well trained guards since they don't go outside. Farana herself is restricting her own movements a lot, she believes she's in danger but she doesn't know just how..." Her face twitches as she forces herself not to swear, " much danger she is in."

"There's movement on the buildings surrounding the mansion. One of my spies confirmed these to be simple guards who rotate their deployment and think they are just protecting the daughter of a merchant."

"A few of the knights will have to deploy around the mansion to hold these guards, we are certainly going to have to fight so I would rather fight with less men than risk being flanked by random confused grunts," Haaran says.

Vanea places around 6 numbered soldier carvings on the buildings surrounding the mansion.

"You all know where the buildings you are assigned are and how to get to them. Any questions?" She looks to the knights in question.

6 plated knights hit their chests with a closed fist and shake their heads.

"No, my dame," says one of them.

"Continuing. The rest of the numbered knights will surround the mansion and guard the exits. If someone tries to run use your signal bombs and try to delay with the rest of your tools, but don't try to fight if you are outnumbered."

7 carvings are positioned around roads leading to the mansion.

"Silver squad will go through the back first and carefully enter the mansion. Two minutes after we will get gold squad and red squad to storm the front. Both gold and silver will use the scrubbers to prevent escape once the assault truly begins. Only Farana gets to live, everyone else don't bother leaving alive," her voice turns cold.

"What if they surrender?" Ciel asks.

"Cut their legs and heal them, then go back to the fight. You shouldn't have a problem with this, right, priestess?" Vanea glares at Ciel.

Ciel sustains her gaze and glares back.

"No, as long as we do not kill with reckless abandon."

"For me the most important thing is that none of my men dies. I don't know how much loyalty these mercenaries have but none of them is worthy of risking one of these knights," Vanea shows a disturbing smile.

A few of the younger knights straighten up in pride, for as much they fear her they still greatly respect her. Haaran raises his hand to call attention to him.

"Anyway, we have to move in the dark like this otherwise she might use a rogue space mage to escape. We know they had contact with one, this means they know where to go for such services so if we try to scout more we risk her escaping. This is an important woman, lover of a very important enemy to Rabanara, she's the key to catching this spy," he says.

"This is it, any questions?" Vanea asks.

All knights hit their chests with a closed fist and repeat in unison.

"No, my dame."

"I would like to speak with Dame Vanea in private," I say to Vanea.

I feel that if I said "you" one of the knights would slap me.

"You are all dismissed!" She waves at the knights.

The knights straighten up and everyone moves towards the exit. The room empties as Haaran is the last one out.

"We have to decide upon a reward," I say.

"Ten gold for each of you," she answers immediately, "Also, thirty more gold coins as the bounty for those kidnappers you killed."

We are taken aback in surprise. I look at Lina and she nods to me. Vanea chuckles.

"Five gold would be the standard for an inexperienced group of mercenaries. But we have no reason even try to rip you off, we treat and pay those who work for us very well," she smiles innocently.

"I would prefer the better treatment than the better pay."

"You don't have to worry, I will value your help greatly. You can even keep the money as a gift of goodwill."

I give her a thankful nod.

"Well then, can you watch over my dragon until we come back? She's not combat-ready for this type of battle.

Aoi looks at me with biggest puppy eyes she can muster, when I show no reaction she looks for support on the other girls. None of them flinch, Hana gives her a kiss on the top of her head and pats her.

"You will be ready in a few years, perhaps," she says.

Vanea raises an eyebrow.

"Sure, I will be waiting in the [Gate] room so she can just stay there. If she stays in the corner of the room nobody will bother her."

"Understood, that is all."

"Come to the first room to the right."

As Vanea leaves I relay the message to Aoi and I feel the same coldness and loneliness of when we first met. Being left alone in the corner with nobody giving attention to her is exactly what her parents did ever since she was born.

"We will not be able to always stay by your side, my little dragon," Hana says with a softness that could even soothe us, "But you have to trust us, we will come back, we are not abandoning you."

"Wolf will never abandon us, we will never abandon him, and we will never abandon you," Lina says.

"Thruus-t..." Aoi forces out.

"Yes trust us as we trust you," I say.

She sadly nods and hangs her head low.

We pull out our recently padded armor. All our chest pieces now have a small white gem near the neck, we just send a small amount of mana to the gem and it will cast [Breeze] depending on the amount of mana, this will keep us from overheating in this amount of fur. Some silver lines circle around the inside of our armor and even go down towards our pants.

We had the two-handed emellanat sword reforged into a smaller bastard sword that Hana can use, the remaining metal of the reforged sword got added to Ciel's shield. I'm using the one-handed emellanat sword. The other shield with emellanat we had it removed and added to Lina's shield. Our front line is nearly spell-immune, emellanat can only absorb a limited amount of "Magic Power" after all.

"How are you feeling, Wolfy?" Alissa asks.

"I'm fine."

She grabs my hand, I notice I'm shaking.

"Well I guess I'm very anxious. What about Lina?"

She looks at us, she's frowning but she's not shaking.

"I guess better than me," I laugh, then I turn to Ciel, "What do the Gods say about killing?"

"A life without conflict goes against the teachings of the God of Change, but we need a very good reason for this conflict. No life shall be wasted."

"Senseless murder", so there are reasons for it to be accepted.

"Are you ready to fight, not for yourself, but for us?" Alissa asks.

That surprises me a little.

"I fought for you when we were attacked by the Red Smile," I say.

"But you lost yourself, you weren't ready."

"I admit I'm fearing this a little…"

"We all are," Hana interrupts.

"Yes, we all are. But right now I am ready, as ready as I'll ever be."

She smiles then gives me a peck on the lips.

I silence the shrieking woman in my head. There's no time for fear, there's only time for being resolute. I need to strike true and with decisiveness, hesitation will get you killed. I will deal with my PTSD some other time.

Fortune favors the bold. Fear is the mind-killer. Hesitation is the kiss of death. Fortune favors the bold. Fear is the mind-killer. Hesitation is the kiss of death. Fortune favors the bold. Fear is the mind-killer. Hesitation is the kiss of death...

We enter the room Vanea talked about, it's another unremarkable room. The knights are all forming lines in front of robed men and women I haven't seen before. Vanea points to us to a robed man with no one in front.

"Form a line here, this space mage will send you to your destination. Haaran's squad will appear near you, just remember to follow him and everything will be fine. Here," Vanea motions and a servant besides her opens a box for us.

"Grab one of these necklaces, they have been blessed by the Goddess of Will and will give you some [Mental Resistance], it should be enough to resist against [Illusion Magic]. This is a gift so don't even think about losing or selling it," she gives me a stern look coupled with a sweet smile.

It's similar to Roxanne's, a simple necklace with a metal medallion, a pair of closed eyes is drawn on relief.

We give our thanks as we take the necklaces.

"Everyone ready...? Good. Now... GO!" Vanea orders.

A black circle appears in front of us, we give one last look to Aoi, depressingly curled on the corner of the room and one by one we enter it.

I am ready.

We appear in an alley, it ends in a road and on the other side of this road there's another alley. Shining in the moonlight a group of plated knights comes out of it, Haaran in the lead. He waves us over.

My skills are like this:

Wolf Ryder Skill Report

Physical

Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level
Sword Use | 10+8 | Dodge | 5+5 | Parry | 5+5
Block | 2+8 | Shield Bash | 0+1 | Battlefield Perception | 1+1
Muscle Explosion | 1+1

Magical

Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level
Sense Mana | 3+6 | Mana Control | 0+9 | Mana Recovery | 9+0
Mana Efficiency | 4+5 | Reduced Mana Cost | 7+2 | Mana Overuse Resistance | 0+3
Fire Magic | 0+1 | Earth Magic | 0+3 | Wind Magic | 0+1
Electric Magic | 9+11 | Light Magic | 4+6 | Space Magic | 11+19
Summoning Magic | 13+17 | Blessing Magic | 5+15 | Nature Magic | 0+15
Illusion Magic | 0+2 | Golemancy | 0+2 | Redirect Mana (creator) | 3
Sense Soul (creator) | 3

Miscellaneous

Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level
Andraste Language | 6+4 | Dismantling | 0+3 | Massage | 0+1
Enhanced Semen Recharge | 0+4
OBS: Level means (freepoint)+(trained point)

I discreetly summon Holly behind us and whisper her to fly around the mansion.

We huddle near a corner on the road, if we take that corner the mansion is straight two blocks down. Haaran looks at a clock in his hand, when it turns into exactly 10:10PM a ring on his other hand turns green. Through Holly I see a group of 6 people sneaking towards the back of the mansion, they are completely covered by the darkness so only with night vision they could be seen. Now we wait, two minutes.

Haaran's sword and shield are different. The sword has gems on the handle, his shield also has a few on its back. Makes sense to put those things where people can't really see, enchantments must be hidden from the enemy to catch them unaware. I feel a hint of mana coming from them, definitely powerful enchantments.

Not even a minute goes by and the ring turns red.

"They got spotted, charge!" Haaran orders and we rush down the corner.

I feel mana gathering besides us, a mage from Haaran's squad is casting something. Another mage is fiddling with a small black gem, it's the scrubber. In a moment I'm attacked by the discomfort of having my [Gate] blocked.

"[Fireball]!"

The spell flies forward and hits the gate, it burst open the same moment the double doors of the mansion are violently open.

10 men and women pour out of the doors, one familiar cloaked woman is behind them. Everyone looks a bit "odd", it's just slightly straining to keep an eye on them. The necklace is working, they are all using [Ignorance] but its effect was greatly reduced.

4 men step forward with shields, 2 have spears, 2 have bows and 2 have staffs. The shield users have some very thick textile armor, either brigandines or fur-padded chest pieces. Haaran has 2 shield users plus himself, 2 spears, 1 archer and 1 mage. The enemies are level 30-40, the knights are level 40-50, Haaran is level 56.

"She's at the back!" Alissa yells.

All the men and women in front of us looked very wary and angry, after Alissa yell a little bit of fear enters their expressions, they now look desperate and desperate warriors are the most dangerous.

They quickly form a line in front of us, too quickly. They are all completely dressed and armed, this wasn't a complete surprise for them. Worst of all, the shield users bring out war hammers, they were prepared to face the knights.

Now comes an important part, the mages try casting area spells on each other.

"I'll interrupt!" Roxanne yells.

"I'll cast!" Ciel yells.

"I'll cast!" Yells the other mage.

"I'll interrupt" Yells one of the spear users.

I feel a large amount of mana moving wildly around us. Feels like a storm, but this is only a small battle, a real fight between armies could cause a real mana storm to form and consequently, a dungeon.

I feel like there are two black holes near us, creating a swirl of mana and absorbing it when it gets too close, those are area spells being cast directly in the middle of us. One of their spearmen is chanting something, another half-mage like Ciel.

Just like how you control mana at range to cast a spell like [Firestorm], others can also control that mana and interrupt your spells. This phase of the battle is a dick measurement battle, the one with the biggest amount of control wins, but that rarely happens, you need a huge amount of [Mana Control] to finish a spell while being interrupted.

"I'll interrupt!" I yell.

I focus on one of the black holes, controlling mana is like trying to hold on multiple balls at the same time, you eventually learn how to juggle but it's always a large effort. Interrupting a juggle is much easier than juggling yourself, I "grab" the "event horizon" of the spell and pull it apart, it stretches a little and I see the spearman wince.

The other spell gets broken and the black hole disperses. I feel more "hands" grabbing this spell, with all this power the spearman doesn't hold and the spell is pulled apart. The mana is released and the storm recedes, only ripples of this storm remain on the atmosphere. Ciel and the allied mage's spell are broken too.

The front lines are understandably anxiously staring at each other. If one of the spells went off then chaos would have happened without them being able to do a thing.

I cast [Lighting Bolt], the shield guy that receives it didn't even flinch.

"EMELLANAT!" I yell.

Even Hana's [Fire Breath] won't have much effect on the front line.

"ATTACK!" Haaran commands.

Something on his voice lifts our spirits and clears our minds. Did he learn [Godly Language]? Such magic is restricted to high lords and royalty.

No time for this, the front line moves forward and the back line runs for cover. The enemy archers hide behind two trees, they are flanking the small road towards the gate. The front line meets each other at the gate and a tense battle starts.

The enemy's pole arms stay behind the shield users, spears won't do much good to a knight unless they hit a vulnerable spot, which there aren't many. It's best to leave the war hammers in front. Haaran and us assume a similar tactic, better to have more swords in front than poke each other at distance with spears, we have the numeric advantage, we have to use it.

The mansion is encircled with a metal fence, allowing for arrows to fly through. But the gate is not large enough for our front line to use their numerical advantage to full effect, we can't surround them. Hana is also constrained as her wings would get in the way of others, dragonkin do not fight well on a shield line.

In the middle of the street I pull out a barricade made of logs and crouch behind it. Roxanne hides behind the arch of a house to our right. Alissa is behind a porch of the same house as Roxanne's, there's a chest high wall she can hide behind.

Haaran's mage is on the left behind another archway of a house to our left. The archer is behind a pillar of the veranda of that house.

A [Wind Blade] hits my barricade and splinters fly, it can take about 6 more of these hits, this mage is not particularly strong. But the fight won't last as long.

At this position I don't have much I can do, I can't spam spells like [Discharge] because I don't have much mana due to the summons, there's also a large difficulty in not causing friendly-fire.

Alissa and the allied archer trade arrows with the enemy archer and try to flank the shield wall. But there's no angle to fire that won't let them exposed to counter-fire.

Roxanne chucks spells towards the mansion's doors, where the mages are covering themselves. She has the power to destroy the mansion, but I don't want her to waste mana so she's holding herself back.

Good thing Vanea surrounded this area with knights, the explosions definitely woke up the neighborhood.

I need to do something, the battle is on a stalemate right now, they are only giving each other light wounds. The ferocity of the knights is being matched by the resilience of the mercenaries which are like a cornered animal. No one on the shield line is exposing themselves, they need a distraction.

Hana gets impatient pushes a bit forward, she bashes the shield of the swordsman she's fighting and deflects the counter from the spearman. Ciel tries to snag his spear with the hook in her glaive but the man is experienced enough to not fall for it.

The swordsman Hana is fighting regains his composure and bashes her shield. Another swordsman and a spearman on his side help by attacking her in sync, she's too forward and exposed to more attacks.

The attacks have effect and Hana nearly loses her balance. The attacks continue and Ciel supports her back so she doesn't fall. A sword flashes towards Hana's neck.

Hana played them perfectly, she steadies her feet and with incredible speed she hunches over, the sword hits the side of her barbute right where her cheek scales are and crack them along with bending the metal of her barbute. She grabs the hand of the swordsman with her shield hand and blocks the other two fighters, her sword flashes forward.

Ciel manages to get a slash into the shoulder of the second swordsman, it didn't pierce his padded leather but he received a good bruise, his shield arm is going to lose some power. Hana's sword enters the throat of the swordsman in front of her, she twists the sword and the man jumps backwards, escaping her grip.

The spearman immediately drags back the hurt man and starts chanting. That's it, an opening! I should just throw a dog on their back line and they will quickly dissolve!

Mine and Roxanne's Shad's detect mana coming from behind us, it's on the form of a capsule. It turns into a person instantly, there's someone right behind us!

"Invi-...!

"Behi-...!

"UAAAAAH!"

"GAAAAH!"

Alissa and the allied mage's warnings gets drowned by blood curdling screams coming from behind us, the battlefield nearly stops to a standstill. I look back and there's someone kneeling that can only be described as a ninja. Textile body-conforming clothes, balaclava, very light shoes, all black, and a dagger on hand. Multiple ethereal tentacles coming out of my shadow are passing through his body, one is directly on his forehead.

I slash with my sword and his head falls from his shoulders. Roxanne points her staff and fires a chantless [Ice Lance] directly on the head of the assassin behind her, causing it to nearly explode. I feel Alissa get hurt.

"ASSASSINS! STAND YOUR GROUND!" Haaran roars, his words gives my body new vigor.

I look at Alissa, an arrow entered her left cheek and exited through her jaw hinge on the right side, she's nearly tumbling over. I feel the most amount of fear I have ever felt, my legs are frozen. She snaps her head back in place and recovers her posture, with blinding speed she draws her bow and fires an arrow behind where we are.

The arrow flies and suddenly stops in the middle of the air, blood pours from nowhere.

A glowing flask is thrown towards the floating arrow and it breaks on the floor. Hundreds of fireflies pour out in anger. In a second most of them congregate into 3 humanoid shapes. The [Invisibility] wears off and we see 3 assassins, two are archers, one of those has an arrow on his chest, the last one has no weapons and turns to run.

I cast [Lighting Bolt] on the one running, he trips and falls on the floor. Arrows, spells and another chantless [Ice Lance] pepper the surviving archers. A spear knight runs towards the assassin who fell on the ground.

The allied mage has an arrow coming out of his neck, Marduk breaks the arrow and pulls it out. He grabs an ethereal dagger and plunges into the heart of the mage. This is [Martyrism], demon-race magic. He will "absorb" the wound into his soul and "heal" his own soul.

I look at Alissa, she breaks the shaft of the arrow and pulls out the rest from the right side. She looks at me, I see a hint of smugness. My legs that had been like jelly suddenly get a burst of strength when I see blood pouring out of her wounds. I rush towards her.

I immediately cast two strong [Heals], the wound closes up entirely. She pinches my cheek.

"Don't waste so much mana! I can handle a little pain, remember I have [Pain Resistance]!" She chastises me.

"I.. I'm sorry. D-drink some anti-venom, just in case."

"Alright, now go back to the fight, we are back to a stalemate until the knights are back in shape," she leans into the wall and drinks a general anti-venom from a metal flask.

That's right! The dog! I cast [Summon Dog] and grab the light ball.

"Tackle one of them, do as much damage as you can," I tell the ball, in English.

With a shamefully awkward throw the ball lands into garden behind the fence. A German Shepherd comes out and lunges towards the mage hiding behind the doors just as the enemy spearman finishes chanting a heal to the injured swordsman.

"AAAH! HELP ME!" Screams a mage in high-pitched desperation.

Ciel jumps back and mock-chants a [Windstorm] into the archers behind two not-apple trees. They scatter and the enemy spearman tries to interrupt, the last unharmed mage is trying to help his partner mage and can't help interrupt.

Alissa jumps out of hiding and sends an arrow in the chest of the spearman mage. He falls into the ground and stops interrupting the spell.

Ciel casts the storm and moves it after one of the archers. It slashes him in the back and he falls into the ground, the wind digs into his flesh, opening up multiple deep cuts.

The other archer tries to hit Alissa but she casts [Ghost Lights] chantless and he gets blinded for a moment, she turns into a fox and runs back to cover. The archer flips a table and hides behind it. Roxanne fires a [Fireball] into it and the table partially explodes, leaving the archer exposed again. Alissa fires an arrow and the archer protects her face with her arm.

This is my cue, no more archers that can stop me, I cast [Rush]. I concentrate all I can in retaining control. I run towards the fence and jump towards a concrete pillar.

I pull myself up with ease as I cast a short [Telekinesis] on myself and I swing over the other side of the fence. One spearman tries to break from the line and engage me. He's too slow, I rush towards the double doors.

My dog finally dies and I see a mage with a completely shredded arm and partially burned clothes. Embers and the smell of burnt fur fill the air. I'm sorry you died so horribly, doggy.

The last mage is on the middle of the main hall, he sees me and starts chanting, it's a simple [Fireball]. It's not fast enough.

I slide and cut off his left leg right on the knee. He falls sideways and shrieks. I grip my sword backwards and stab him in the back of his head. He gargles, he's going to die in a few seconds.

The enemy spearman is almost catching up to me. Hana finally breaks through the shield line and with her wings she charges towards the spearman. He didn't even see her coming and his head fell from his shoulder.

The last mage lifts his hand towards me. I cast [Earth Bullet] into his face, he starts bleeding profusely from a wound in his forehead. Hana lands in front of me with a smile and turns around, she sees the last mage and sends her own chantless [Earth Bullet], a rock stake pierces his forehead and he stops moving.

I hear footsteps behind us. The door behind us opens and 1 men and two women appear. One woman is an archer, the other is a mage and the man is a spearman. They are winded and wounded, fleeing from their battle with the silver squad. Their faces pale as they see us.

Hana rushes the spearman, he meekly raises his spear only to have it break on her shield. She slashes downwards, he tries to defend with his shield but he gets sprawled on the ground.

I cast [Rush] and dash towards the archer, she quickly abandons trying to pull an arrow and draws her sword just in time to defend my blow. I feint a thrust and slash downwards with a little help of [Telekinesis], she can't handle the surprise weight and loses her sword.

I slash at her wrist and her left hand falls off, she quits trying to draw her dagger from her back and falls on her knees.

"I YIELD!" The archer screams.

The mage girls is shaking and drops her staff.

"I-I y-yield!" The mage is terrified.

I hear footsteps upstairs, must be Farana.

With a broken shield line and no support, multiple weapons fall down on the floor as the remaining mercenaries surrender. Haaran bursts into the hall.

"Where is she!?" He asks in desperation.

His armor is still pristine, only tainted by a few drops of the blood of our enemies.

"Upstairs! I think she's running!" I answer.

"I'll handle them, go!" Hana yells.

I dash through the left stairs while Haaran dash towards the right. I hear the mage woman scream, Hana must have cut her hands so she can't cast spells. Brutal, but necessary.

I cast [Rush] and [Spirit Light] and my head starts hurting. I'm on my last legs here, hopefully she won't fight.

"Hold her in place," I tell my Shad in English, I only feel a sense of someone telling me "yes".

Holly is flying around the mansion, Farana won't escape.

I hear a door bursting open at the far end of the corridor. Gotcha.

I can't even admire the luxury of this mansion, I get over the end of the corridor so fast I almost crash into the wall, [Rush] is still dangerous if I lose concentration for even a second.

I hear Haaran's plate cacophony coming closer. I'm on the entrance of a huge room full of furniture covered by dust, Farana is hiding here somewhere.

"Find her."

I pull my shield up and wait. I get a single glance at a shadowy figure and I sense "death" coming, I pull my shield up just as a dagger clanks against it. Farana tries to run towards the window.

A huge shadow emerges from the ground and covers her. She falls down on the ground, her screams muffled by the Shad.

I walk towards her and remove the 3 other daggers and the shortsword I can see on her waist. I put my sword on her neck and my foot on her back.

"That's enough, back to protecting me."

Farana stops screaming. I see her eyes are vacant, she's stunned by the pain. Slowly as her eyes gain focus she tries to raise herself, only for me to force her back down. Realization of her situation quickly washes over her face.

She's really cute and small. Braided brown hair to the side and a pale freckled face. Her larger than average ass is visible even for me.

A large orange fox and a pristine knight burst into the room. Alissa turns back and aims her drawn bow at Farana. Haaran stops to catch his breath and sighs in relief.

Haaran brings out manacles and quickly restrains Farana, two other knights appear and start patting her down. I move back towards Alissa and relax.

We are sweaty but I don't care, I just hug her and inspect where her wound was.

"It's fine, didn't even leave a scar," she slaps my exploring hands with a smile.

Good.

"What now?" I ask Haaran.

"Return to your fellowship and watch over the prisoners, we will find silver squad."

We quickly walk back to where we came. There's only 7 prisoners there, including the 3 that surrendered to me, the rest haven't surrendered fast enough and were cut down. Once a shield line breaks and people get surrounded things turn bad quickly.

I see Ciel is healing the stumps of the crying mage girl. She might get her hands back later, though I don't know what exactly is going to happen to them, they should be simple mercenaries.

"Wound report," I tell the girls.

"Nothing," says Roxanne.

"Nothing," says Ciel.

"My shield hand hurts a lot," Lina says.

"Just a small bruise and this," Hana says, tapping her crushed scales.

"How do I heal those scales?" I ask.

Some of them are missing parts, things like these don't heal without the level 80 [Regrowth] spell from [Light Magic] or a very long use of [Regeneration].

"Let me find the broken parts and it should heal normally, if not then in about a day-cycle or so they should grow back to normal."

Me, Lina, and Ciel surround the prisoners as Roxanne and Hana search for pieces of her scales.

Hana finds them and lays down on the ground, she puts the broken pieces on her face where they should fit.

"That's it, now just do it."

I signal Ciel with my eyes. Can't tell the prisoners I'm low on mana. She chants quickly and heals her.

"Alright, feels a bit off, some didn't get fully healed but this will go back to normal in a day or two," Hana says.

"Hana, can you bring me the corpses of the assassins? They might have valuable things on them, three of them are our kills so I won't let Vanea have them. Even the one who tried to run could be considered my kill but I will let her have two."

"What spell was that?" Ciel asks.

"[Invisibility], it's level 50, this illusion mage is no joke," I answer.

It's from [Illusion Magic]. The interesting thing about it is that you can't see anything when you use it, light curves around you, which means that light also never enters your eyes. You have to use other means to see where you are going.

Not even Holly can see them if they are using this spell, her vision depends on some sort of particle for vision, somehow, we owe our lives to the Shad's mana vision. The allied mage survived an arrow to the throat but if these assassin had reached us we could have died instantly.

Hana easily drags them, they are all rather small and thin, one is a werecat. The archer's armor is nearly ruined.

We wait nearly 20 minutes until Haaran comes back with Farana and the silver squad, they look beaten and bloodied. Larana looks tired, Tarano is limping and holding his ribs, and there's 2 dead knights with them. Haaran looks very bitter.

"Everyone here...? Good, calling back our way out," he says.

Haaran fiddles with a small gem on his hand. In a minute a group of space mages and a two knights come out of an alley and rush towards the gate.

"You two," Haaran points at the knights, "Find knight number 1, he must have been killed by the assassins. Then get the town guards and scour this area, I want every single hired guard around this mansion under arrest, someone was working with the spy."

"Yes, sir!" They answer in unison.

The space mages open the [Gate] and we are back in the room we came from. A few robed men and women come take a look at the wounded silver squad. Vanea is waiting for us in the middle of the room, her face is stern.

Aoi comes running towards us and tackles my stomach.

"You little... Careful, this hurts."

"Kweh!" She says, she's not sorry.

Aoi tries to lick my mouth but only reaches my chin. Then she jumps off and claws up everyone else, giving them a lick too.

Vanea comes towards us and Haaran. The other knights wordlessly move out of the room, dragging the crying mercenaries and slowly the room clears.

"Report," she says, subduing her anger.

"A spy among the outer guards sent an early warning, silver squad got ambushed and lost two but managed to kill nearly everyone else. There were also invisible assassins, fortunately no one died to them," he sends us a look mixed with concern and confusion, "We can assume that the knight responsible for our flank is dead."

Vanea visibly grinds her teeth, knights are very valuable to a Lord, the only death you want to give them is of old age.

Farana is thrown on Vanea's feet.

"You better be worth this or I will make it worth it," she growls towards Farana, the fury in her words barely masked by a cold expression.

Farana is completely quiet, her face shows pure terror, she barely had the strength to walk as one of the knights had to nearly drag her.

"We didn't find the illusion mage, he could have been entering and leaving the mansion by [Gate]," Haaran continues.

"Then he still has a rogue space mage and a very powerful illusion mage," Vanea says, then she looks at us.

"Our deal was to get Farana," I respond immediately, I let some bitterness in my voice, "Not only that but you greatly underestimated him, my fellowship killed three of the assassins, no thanks to your help."

I'm really bitter about those assassins, if it weren't for the Shads, me and Roxanne would likely be dead and Alissa would be vulnerable and wounded.

She looks at Haaran, he comes towards her and they hurriedly whisper.

"How did you survive?" She asks after a few seconds of whispering.

"I will not answer this."

"If you really want to end this once and for all you will come to fight for us again. You have better chances to survive this than even my own brother."

Both of them stare at us, this time though their eyes show a hint of pleading. My light headache from overuse just intensified.

Lina comes to my side.

"Let's just leave this for later," she whispers.

I agree.

"We will continue this later, we are too tired for such a thing."

"As you wish..." Vanea says with a hint of annoyance.

She might have been trying to force this out of us since we are tired and more vulnerable.

"Here's you rewards. You can also keep the bodies of those assassins you killed."

I just nod in answer, then a proto-butler comes forward and hands me a sack of coins. I put it into my "Items".

She turns to Farana and smiles wickedly. Haaran frowns and moves out of the room, now there's only us, Vanea, her follower, and Farana.

"Careful with her, dame," Ciel says, with a small respectful bow.

"Do not worry, priestess. I will allow you to cast [Detect Evil] on me anytime you wish, I will not throw away all I conquered just for this..." She seems unsure which swear is more appropriate for Farana.

Farana curls up on the ground, one eye staring at Vanea with pure fear.

"I will not go so far, but I must tell you the temple will be keeping an eye on you."

"They already are. I'm well acquainted with the Three Sins, I know very well what 'sadistic torture' means and I assure you my 'Piety' is higher than 10."

Ciel and Vanea start a staring contest.

"That is all that I have for you," Vanea says to us and waves her hand dismissively.

I would like to say that Ciel won the contest.

We give a small bow and take our leave, we take off our armor and leave the tavern. The patrons are all too drunk to even notice us.

On the trip home I use [Regeneration] on Hana's scales to get them back to normal. Once we are home we all go immediately to sleep.

Today is the 7th.

I woke up first instead of Alissa. She seems to sleep heavily when she's exhausted. I wanted to give her a surprise and kiss her but this time Roxanne is cuddling with me, her tail is curled up my leg and also curled up on my penis, she's slowly rubbing it with every breath. Ticklish, not stimulating. Her horns go floppy when she sleeps so they look like they are made of rubber and jiggle as her chest inflates with every breath.

The air coming out of her nose tickles my face. I see Hana slept with a hand fondling one of Roxanne's breasts. We all sleep naked now, Ciel sleeps in her panties but we her convinced to sleep without her breast sash, it was an amazing view to see Lina's head buried in the hopes and dreams of men.

I use [Clean] on my mouth and give Roxanne a kiss on the nose. She twitches her nose cutely. I press her nose and she starts to squirm and let out soft cute groans.

"Unyaa~..."

I feel movement on my other side. Alissa is stretching her arms.

"Not fair, you woke up first," she pouts.

"Everyone was too tired, it seems," I say.

She casts [Clean] on her mouth and gives me a kiss. I don't let her go and kiss her as deeply and passionately as I can. Yesterday was close, too close, too damn close!

"You worry too much," she says after I finally release her, she read my heart.

"Yes and I don't plan on changing that."

She smiles and rests her head on my chest, I play with her silky hair. Whatever Roxanne has bought is doing wonders to the hair of the girls, they all feel and smells so good. Alissa's smells like oranges, Hana's smells like strawberries, Roxanne's smells like some flower, I guess it's lavender? Lina's is very, very sweet, and Ciel's reminds me of chocolate.

"How did you notice the assassins?" I ask.

"One of them passed close to me to reach Roxanne. I managed smell him, they stank of a sweat I never smelled before."

Who knows what that arrow would have done if Alissa hadn't moved her head at that time.

Roxanne's tickling turns into tugging that turns into stroking. I look at my side and Roxanne is smiling at me mischievously. I give her a morning kiss too, her mouth is already clean. When we are done Hana gives her morning kiss to my dick as I burst into her mouth.

This time she swallows everything. She cleans her mouth and gives her morning kiss to Roxanne and then to me.

It's already 10AM. I want my arms to turn into noodles or tentacles just so I can tie them all down in bed and spend all day like this. Not that I'm thinking of anything else.

My "Dexterity" increased by 1 (now 10). I guess the focus required to use [Rush] pushed me to increase this stat.

Hana leveled up to 37. She didn't increased any skill so she has some free skill points for me to manipulate.

Breakfast is light. The griffin clawed the window of the kitchen until we gave it some piece of raw meat. Then it happily ran off with the meat hanging from its mouth.

"How you all holding up?" I ask.

"What?" Alissa tilts her head.

"I mean, how are you all feeling?"

I guess we should do this often.

"I'm fine," Alissa answers immediately.

"I'm fine..." Roxanne answers, her shoulders are slumped.

"Barely fought, it was quite fast," Hana says with a shrug.

"Same," Ciel says.

"I just defended..." Lina says.

"Kweh," Aoi was lonely.

Ciel looks at me, prodding me to talk. I sigh. It's actually quite hard to talk about your feelings.

"Yesterday scared the shit out of me but when I remember [Godly Language]... What you girls think of me asking for Haaran to teach me [Godly Language] in return for us helping them again?" I ask.

Lina's Trivia: [Godly Language] is a magic school where your voice carries power and other humanoids are compelled to obey, the higher the "Piety" the more effect it has. You can even make these humanoids accomplish things impossible for them, it's almost like bending reality with only your voice. I didn't train this school because you can easily kill yourself if you screw up, it's one where you really need a proper teacher for it.

Lina frowns.

"Was that really [Godly Language]?" Ciel asks.

"Seems like it, just by words he filled us with vigor, I didn't even sense mana or a chant from a spell. Unless it's a unique support spell that he can cast chantless like I can then it's [Godly Language]."

"This might be one of the reasons the capital hates Rabanara, learning this magic school is a privilege only reserved for those of high prestige or direct descendants from the emperor," Alissa says.

"Vanea did mention she wanted to bring [Cursing Magic] school to Rabanara against the wishes of the chairmen of the university. They might be so starved for power to control the Shore of Leaves it must be hurting their reputation," Lina says.

"She also the mentioned blocking soul manipulator necromancers from coming into Rabanara. She might be acquainted with the 'husk' manipulators," Alissa adds.

Lina's Trivia: Necromancy does not create undead, they reanimate flesh and bodies without the need for a soul. These reanimated dead are called "husks". They are not explicitly illegal, you can get a permit to use it but hardly anybody wants smelly, rotting, pestilent zombies walking around. The part of necromancy that deals with forcing a soul back into a body is the one that's illegal. The real "undead" is something else entirely.

"Rabanara got destroyed a few times before the Anara family took control, perhaps this is how they did it, they accepted anything that's not explicitly illegal. They are known to be pragmatics after all," Ciel says.

"So, I assume they might not have qualms with teaching [Godly Language] to a commoner?" I ask.

"Seems so. If Vanea truly is in need of allies then we can squeeze this out of her. But this might be the limit, anymore and we might get her ire," Lina says, her tone seems cold.

"Do any of you girls also want to learn it?" I ask.

"I don't think me and Ciel have enough 'Willpower' for it," Roxanne says.

"It also needs a lot of 'Intelligence'..." Alissa says sadly and looks at Hana.

Both aren't really qualified for this.

"Can't I compensate this with pure 'Willpower'?" Hana asks.

"Perhaps, but it will be difficult," Roxanne answers.

"If she's willing to train for a long time I can teach her after I learn myself," I say.

"I'm fine with this," Hana says.

"So that only leaves you and Lina," Roxanne says.

"I'm... Okay with this, though I might not have enough time until we finish enchanting lessons, no?" Lina says.

"If I learn I can just train you alongside Hana," I say.

"Sounds good," she gives me an adorable smile.

"Anyway, do you all agree in fighting for Vanea one more time in exchange for [Godly Language]?"

"I'm getting anxious about it... Last time was too close," Roxanne says, her posture shrinks.

"I agree. It feels tempting though, [Godly Language] will help against any other humanoid we fight but at what cost," Ciel says, she's concerned but also tempted.

"We could ask for the right to refuse if she's being too reckless," I say.

"That would be nice but Vanea does not seem to be the type to throw lives away," Lina says, "she needs allies and if we can end our relationship on a good note it would be beneficial for her in the future. She knows we want to conquer a dungeon, after all."

"Next time we can properly scout with the Shad's since Wolfy doesn't have to hide his ability anymore, right?" Hana asks.

"Yes, [Invisibility] won't be a problem, I'm scared of what else is gonna be thrown at us," Roxanne says, "Darean is getting put into a corner, what's he gonna do when he's desperate?"

That put us into thought. What else is Darean's backer capable of throwing at us? If he has a mage that can cast [Invisibility] then he certainly has someone powerful behind him, someone not even Vanea might know who it is.

"I think it's worth to risk it," Hana says.

"Me too," Alissa says.

Lina, Ciel, and me are in doubt. I'm leaning towards fighting.

"I think we should," Lina says meekly.

"Why?" I ask.

"We will never get another chance at this."

Roxanne sinks further. We could use a vote but it might not be the best choice, how would she feel if we just ignore her concerns?

"Roxanne... We will be fine, my love," Hana grabs Roxanne by the waist and buries her head on Hana's breasts.

Roxanne closes her eyes. Ciel's head is hanging low but she's staring at Roxanne. I move towards her and do the same as Hana.

"We will be fine, my love," I repeat.

I'm rewarded with a chuckle from Ciel.

"There's also the need to fully end this. If we help deal a strong blow to Darean, Vanea can finish him off without our help," Alissa says.

Roxanne looks at Ciel for help but Ciel answers with a small apologetic smile.

"Alright…"

Hana hugs her tighter.

I pull out the 3 corpses of the assassins inside our basement. They have simple black clothes created in a way they are soundless instead of offering any sort of protection. Their daggers are nondescript. The only thing worthy of notice was that they had some paralysis venom, it was the right idea to have Alissa drink a general anti"venom. Roxanne got interested in this venom that she never saw before, even though it isn't particularly strong.

[Invisibility] makes you blind, so how did they find us and even coordinate to attack us? There must have been something else there to aid them that we missed. Could it have been [Sense Presence]? It still wouldn't help them avoiding any sort of obstacle while they walk, they would easily trip on anything. Probably some sort of Unique Spell that faded when they died, all assassins are dead so we can't even ask them.

They even did something to their souls, I can't find their souls using [Soul Touch]. It's possibly what Ciel said where wicked people destroy their souls upon death to escape hell.

At nature class the professor tries to teach us [Manasynthesis]. It's a very useful spell for mages since it increases the recovery rate of mana, I would bet most students are here just for this spell. It goes as well as expected since it's a level 30 spell, it will take a few more classes for the students to learn it.

At the break I bring Lina and Alissa with me for support. We knock on Vanea's office door.

"Come in," she says, "Ah, Mr. Ryder. A pleasure to see you so soon."

Vanea has an uncharacteristic pure smile, her hair tied to a ponytail gives her a very refreshing expression.

"Hello, Miss Anara. You seem very happy."

"Yes, I'm taking my time teaching the little bird how to sing," her smile grows wider.

If one didn't knew what she was talking about one would assume she's a pure person teaching a real bird how to sing. The lack of evilness in her smile just makes me worried, I wish I didn't ask.

"Anyway, we are here to talk about your deal to fight again."

"Sure, sit down, please."

This time we sit at her cushy sofas. Alissa brings out tea and cookies for us, Vanea grabs one cup with a kind smile. With this attitude and her ponytail Vanea feels like a sister to Silvane.

"We will only accept with one condition," -Vanea lifts her eyes to me- "if you teach me [Godly Language]."

Vanea continues sipping from her tea and eats a cookie. She calmly reclines on the sofa and looks at the ceiling, thinking. Then she turns her head to me.

"Why would you want to learn this?" Her voice tells she's asking a genuine question.

Truth be told, [Godly Language] is known to be very difficult to learn, but I have the aid of the skill system. Learning anything is much easier for me since I can instantly learn about half of what's necessary to gain any skill.

"Power is power. I also believe I will have an easier time to learn it than the normal."

Vanea looks very amused. She stares at us with a smile while slowly stirring her teacup.

"You don't have any qualms about teaching me this?"

"No..." She shakes her head, her ponytail cutely bounces, "The pompous bastards at the capital be damned. I would rather not announce to the world that I'm teaching you this but I really do not care. If it weren't for the royalty having a near monopoly on this I would have fought for it to be taught at Rabanara instead of [Cursing Magic]."

I felt like asking for [Cursing Magic] instead but [Godly Language] is much more rare and interesting. She sips at her tea again.

"What did you put on this tea? Tonsel? It tastes wonderfully," Silva-, I mean, Vanea asks.

"Yes, it is Tonsel, but I think it tastes better cold and with much more sugar."

"I will try that later," she adorably smiles, "Anyway, I will only teach you this if you agree to hunt down that illusion mage. Your monster summoning is too good and a proper counter for illusions. Not only that but Haaran is sure some of your women cast a chantless spell. As far as we know they have no idea of your skills, we can catch them all by surprise."

Not like last "surprise" worked well for us. But the fact she knows I can use [Summon Monster] is worrying. I don't think she's going to exploit us, our relationship is balanced for now but this will be the last time we make a deal, [Godly Language] seems too good to pass up.

"Hm... I will reserve a right to refuse to participate if I feel you are sending us to our deaths. I won't risk so much again, Alissa got an arrow to the face."

She stares at Alissa for a few moments. The arrow thankfully didn't leave a scar due to my powerful [Heals] but still, the mental scarring of seeing her like that won't disappear so soon.

"Fine."

"Then I accept the deal."

"Now I will be the one to ask for your word, Wolf Ryder, Blessed by the Goddess of Knowledge."

I kinda expected this.

"I, Wolf Ryder, leader of Helios, Blessed by the Goddess of Knowledge, give you my word. Let the Gods observe me and judge me for my actions."

I feel a small constriction on my heart, it's not painful, it's only a bit uncomfortable. It's the Gods answer to me, they are telling me they heard my oath.

"You have a Symbol of Darkness, right? Do you have a Beholder?"

"Yes to both of these."

"Do you also have a Dream Eater?"

"No, we only went to the 13th floor of the Roulette of the Morning Dew."

"You should get yourself one, they are going to be even more useful than a Symbol of Darkness."

Ciel might really dislike this, she could even be traumatized by them, I really do not want to get her to suffer through this.

"Maybe... I'm very busy this class break, I might not be able to go to that dungeon again."

I also do not want to touch the 14th floor.

"I will get Haaran to capture one. After the end of the coming class break come see me and it should be ready by then. We will start training you in [Godly Language] then."

Can't really go against it when she's just giving me in a platter.

"Understood."

"Then that is all."

"I'll return to you the bodies of the assassins. They didn't really have anything of value in the end."

"Sure, just put them at the empty office just like last time."

I bow and we take our leave, Vanea was much more pleasant this time. Perhaps she wasn't such a fearsome figure until she started to get cornered.

"So it's confirmed we are fighting again?" Hana asks.

She's not fearful of Vanea, our dealings with her are going much better than what she was used to with the other nobles. When you are not at each other's throats or competing for the same resources a more pleasant relationship is possible.

"Yes, she knows I can summon monsters, she will give us a Dream Eater so we might end up with a more passive role this time."

Ciel shudders, it really was a good idea not to go to the 14th floor. I grab Roxanne's hand.

"One last fight, so we can end this once and for all."

She looks anxious but she gives me a nod in agreement. We will see this until the end, together.

Intermission 7

Everyone is dead or surrendered. My friends, the people I got to know so well, the people who put so much to help me, to keep me safe, they all failed. Everything seems to be falling apart as if a knife is slowly being thrust in my heart. I don't even know where I am anymore.

But that's not the worst.

I hear footsteps coming down towards my filthy hole, there's only one person who would visit me, there's only one thing that that person might want from me.

She stops in front of my hole and stares down into it. With her came the only light I can see, the sphere of light floats behind her head, shadowing her face. Even though I can't see her expression her eyes pierce me like a monster's fang pierces the flesh of its prey.

Just through the eyes I can see all the pain, hatred, fury... And carnage, that those eyes spell. I know it because part of it was caused specifically by me, I'm one of her worst enemies and now all she has to do is close her jaws. I'm scared, I'm so scared.

I feel the floor get wet and warm. Darean, help me..

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Chapter 24: Connections and Introductions

A note from Manasong

Attention: to conform to the limit of sexual content allowed in a novel, I've censored this chapter. You can look for the uncensored version here.

The symbol "-" denotes a section that got cut for containing sexual content. Also, if paragraphs seem missing, they were also likely censored in an earlier pass where the symbol wasn't used.

Today is the 8th.

-

Even though I trained with [Manasynthesis] my skill didn't level. I feel like I'm reaching a "wall" in my growth. Perhaps the b
onus from Earth knowledge is running out and now I need to improve my knowledge through practice.

This morning I practice [Water Magic]. Hopefully, Bombur won't be mad Lina skipped two of his lessons, we were so tense we forgot to warn him.

Roxanne seems to be straining. She grunts and squirms until finally she opens her eyes and jumps into a pose with her hands on her hips.

"I did it! I redirected mana to myself!"

We all clap as she smugly looks towards the sky.

"And that's all for me. I'm back to my potions for a while!" And she runs off towards her room.

Nothing needs to be said, we just sigh and shrug. I go back to my meditation to refill my mana.

I felt as if warm rushing water suddenly touched my leg. I immediately open my eyes in surprise only to see the spirit griffin has laid his head on my lap. His kind yellow eyes locked to mine.

Holy fucking shit, the spirit touched me. It's such a weird feeling, it feels like there's a storm passing through my leg, it's pleasant, but the lack of visible movement makes me uneasy. It's like feeling the world spin and yet your eyes tell you that you are standing still.

Trembling, I pass my hand through its feathery head, the spirit closes its eye and chirps happily. Ah, my heart.

"I shall name thee Gify."

"Gi" from "gift" and "fy" from "finish".

Gify chirps happily again and closes his(?) eyes.

Ciel has her mouth hanging open. Hana runs off to get Roxanne. Alissa and Aoi stalk closer, as if they afraid of scaring him off. I feel bad for Lina, she missed this historic moment.

With a nearly trembling hand Alissa is the second one to touch it. Aoi watches every second like a hawk. Alissa runs her hand through Gify's white plumage and rolls her eyes in pleasure.

"Aren't you enjoying this a tad too much?" I ask, eyebrows knit in worry.

"The Misty Fox clan lives among the forest, we see these spirits day in day out. Having one accompany you is a symbol of status, of being in sync with nature. Being this close to one has always been my dream," Alissa says, she closes her eyes and enjoys the feeling.

I swear Gify looks smug.

Ciel comes forward and Roxanne appears just as Aoi gathers courage and lays down besides Gify with her head also on my lap. Aoi closes her eyes and I see the corner of her long mouth turn into a small smile.

Ciel starts shaking Alissa, wanting her turn. The shaking gradually gets stronger until Alissa groans and lets Ciel have her turn.

"This feels amazing…"

That's all Ciel manages to say for the whole 2 minutes she was allowed to pet Gify.

Roxanne gets her turn and Gify decides to show us his tummy. Ciel pukes rainbows and the other girls almost need a [Heal] to keep their hearts from stopping.

The spirit is slowly giving me profound calmness. I feel the leaves from the tree in the front yard falling. I hear the stove slowly cooking the minotaur meat, I can feel the steam slowly leaving the pot, twirling, and cooling in the air and then seeping out from the kitchen window.

Nature is all about "connections", one living being connected to another, they consume each other in a cycle that maintains nature stable. A nature's spirit is the personification of that, Gify slowly "connects" my mind and that of the girls to the environment and to each other.

I can feel the happiness radiating from Alissa, all of that is aimed towards me, her mind is in perfect order except for her jealousy from not being in touch with the spirit. There's a single blurry spot inside the sun that is her love, a single curious spot. I can hear the people moving about their business on another calm morning.

I can feel Ciel restraining her heart from tackling Gify, she has an immense love for all things fluffy and cute. Apparently I'm included in those feelings. Her feelings for me are mixed with Gify's in a whirlwind. I can feel the warm sun slowly permeating my heart and taking away the humidity of the morning.

I can feel Roxanne's bliss, the crushing loneliness like a storm in the distance moving away. I can feel the breeze blowing far above us, taking the humidity that's fleeing the sun and sending it to the farms around Rabanara.

I can feel Hana's warm gaze, her desire to protect is unnecessary right now so her awereness relaxes and satisfaction clouds her blood thirst. The excitement and anxiety of battle is slowly fading away. I feel a tickle as the grass is gently caressed by the wind.

I can feel Aoi's sea of calmness and comfort, a sunny island in the middle of it showing her eagerness to fight. I feel like an ant in this world, just another small force trying it's best at living life.

In a way, Gify's power is just like my spirit extension, only that it's a lot more directed. My "soul sensing" is all about raw information, Gify filters all that information through the consciousness of the spirit and connects us all. I finally understand why nature spirits are so respected.

I'm pretty sure my feelings are being transmitted to the girls. They all look at each other with shy smiles then they look at me.

"Nature spirits are also called 'a lover's best friend'. Because they allow us to know what we feel about each other, but only if the feeling is strong enough," Ciel says.

She scooches over to my side and gives me a kiss on the cheek.

The overwhelming amount of feelings is making me emotional, I have to clean the corners of my eyes. I don't even know how to respond, I don't think I even need to respond, they are all looking right inside my heart.

I spent some time already in this position for my training, I have to stretch my legs. Hana's turn is about to end anyway.

"My legs are hurting a bit…"

I make a move to change from my cross-legged position but two iron grips make me stop. Hana and Ciel's murderous intent is made clear through their eyes and the spirit connection, we are not perturbing Gify right now. After I stop resisting they return to fawning over Gify.

We stay like this for a long time until Gify awakens and flies towards the kitchen. Alissa and Ciel hurry after him, both because they want to spend more time with him and also because they forgot to check the stove. Luckly nothing burned.

When I try to move my legs I feel they completely fell asleep. I manually straighten them and they crack loudly.

Lunch has 3 selections of peppers. One like bell pepper, one that reminds me of jalapeño with very mild heat, and another that reminds me of cayenne and it's used as a seasoning in fried chicken meat. It's pepper season in Maoka so the peppers are flooding Rabanara as we are very close to that continent.

Ciel brings Lina back just as we are about to have lunch. When Lina notices Gify sitting on top of my usual chair she freezes.

"Touch it," I say, smiling widely.

She does not move, like always she's too shy to act. I roll my eyes and grab her by the hand and lead it to touch Gify.

"His name is Gify. All the other girls already touched him so you get extra time because you weren't there during the first time."

As our hand approaches Gify, Lina starts trembling.

"Are you scared?" I ask.

"No..." She lies.

"She's scared of showing you her feelings," Alissa says with a smug smile.

Lina blushes and her trembling increases, her hand tries to escape mine but I just grip her harder. I force her forward, you are going to show me your feelings and I'm going to show you mine!

When my hand touches Gify an explosion of feelings enters my mind. The girls quickly come around and Gify opens all our hearts again.

I drop down on my knees and hug Lina.

"I never told you this, but I love you, I really do. You shouldn't hold it back, you are precious to me," I say.

Lina hardly talks about her feelings. The turmoil of happiness, lust, anxiety, and self"doubt have been eating her from the inside. The fear of death has been mounting but it got beaten by her desire to destroy my enemies. Not her enemies, my enemies. She adores me, I don't deserve such dedication but I should at least make sure she's as happy as I can make her.

A teary-eyed Alissa hugs Lina from behind, she gives Lina a kiss on the cheek and together we crush Lina's ribs.

"I love you..." She whispers, "I love you... I love you. I love you!" Her faint voice gathers courage and turns into a yell.

She finally hugs me back and her noodle arms try to crush me, good thing she's not using [Stonebody]. She doesn't cry but I feel the wavering of her legs.

Gify stands in my head and chirps repeatedly at Lina. Oddly, I don't understand what it's talking about.

"You understand him?" I ask.

"I don't... I don't understand how but. I think he told me to stop hiding'."

"Hiding your feelings. You were always serious, except when talking about books," Ciel says with the sweetest tone, "Remember to not keep it bottled up, we are here for you so you should share more."

I think I just understood something.

"You shouldn't let your feelings take charge of your decisions but you must take your feelings in consideration when making a decision," I say.

The fear of Vanea and fighting Darean must have been like a storm in her heart. Her other feelings were bottled up and safe inside a bunker but the damage of the storm keeps mounting. She wants to do the "right thing" so much it's hurting her.

"Okay... I will, I'll try my best!" She says with a conviction unheard of her.

"It's not about trying your best, it's about working towards what makes you happy."

She keeps quiet for a while but I feel her nod. I break the hug and clean the corners of her eyes. Now understand why Lina is so quiet, she's shy but she is also really insecure, so insecure she hardly shows her feelings.

"Let's eat, the food will get cold," Ciel says.

Gify slowly stops sharing our feelings and we return to our normal, except I'm feeling reinvigorated. I see Lina's usual expressionless face slowly turn into a more relaxed and happy one. She's avoiding looking at my eyes, though. As we eat her expression then slowly changes into a frown.

"Is there something on your mind?" I ask.

"Well, there's always something on my mind. I'm always thinking, after all," she smirks.

"You cheeky little... I meant, is there something bothering you?"

She smiles shyly.

"Well... Mr. Bombur was mad, he kept repeating a few phrases about 'responsibility' and 'dedication'."

"I'm sorry Lina, you got chastised because of us," Alissa said.

"You don't have to apologize, it wasn't problem, I know it wasn't your fault and I don't regret missing those days."

"But yet you still frown. Remember what we said about 'hiding'?" I say.

Lina looks at me surprised. She never complained about anything, It is simply unnatural for her to be like this.

"I... Okay... I was angry, it was unfair, I never did anything wrong," she looks down.

"Go on…" Ciel urges.

"And you all owe me for this," she gives an impish smile and immediately blushes in embarrassment.

"We'll get you something sweet from the buffet at the university as an apology," Alissa says.

Lina blushes harder and tries to hide her face but I see the beginnings of a smile on the corner of her mouth.

Gify seems to like to ride my head. The feeling of moving water dies down and only reappears when I focus on it, the "connection" we share also only reappears if Gify feels like it. This is a good thing otherwise it would be too stimulating for all of us to keep our hearts open all the time. But his claws from his bird front legs and lion hind legs do not hurt, in fact he has no bones, his entire form is spongy yet the texture of his body feels real.

"Gify, you are tousling his hair," Lina says.

"Gih!" He chirps indignation, he believes my haircut looks better with him on my head.

"I have to agree with Lina, please, he has to keep a tidy outlook to maintain his reputation," Alissa says, her fox mouth unmoving.

"Gih…"

*Pop*, *pop*. Gify disappears and suddenly reappears in my shoulder.

"Thank you," Lina says and combs my hair.

I say nothing, there's no greater joy than being pampered.

As I enter the class I feel my entire body shiver. Flashbacks that I thought I had buried long, long ago resurfaces as the entire class looks at me and murmurs. Gify on my shoulder just increases my fame, luckily my reputation is that I'm rather unapproachable, this keeps the class from swarming me.

Unfortunately, that does not apply to Lyle as him and his friends swarm my table. Fortunately Gify seems to have an impact on Garanae, making him mellow out a bit more.

"C-can I touch it?!" Asks Lyle.

"I don't know, Gify, can Lyle touch you?" I ask.

Gify looks up to him, his beady little eyes measuring him up and down.

"Gih."

"That's a yes, but only the head and be quick about it."

Lyle wastes no time and pets his head, he shudders at the stimulating feeling that the spirit provokes in him, I feel thankful Gify didn't open my heart to Lyle. Gify feels slightly sickened, though.

"Gih!" He says after a minute and moves his head away.

"Alright, that's enough."

"Awn... But still, it felt awesome," Lyle smiles brightly while staring at his hand.

Garanae twiddles his thumbs.

"Gih, geh, gih."

"You can go too, Garanae, but Hatara comes first."

Her green eyes look like a hunter who found its prey. Gify looks at her lecherously for a moment, disarming her.

"Was that…"

"Gih!"

"Don't waste more time, the professor is coming," I say.

She recomposes herself and pets Gify. I feel he wants to open my heart to Hatara, the little shit is already trying to cause trouble. He feels my annoyance and hums happily, its lion tail swaying about.

Two minutes goes by and he moves his head away.

"Gih."

"That's you, Garanae."

The most fearful of the trio, his hand trembles as he pets Gify. He shows us an uncharacteristic face of unbridled happiness, Garanae really is a pet person.

When his time reaches exactly 1 minute the bell chimes. Garanae straightens up, he kisses Hatara on the lips and runs away, red faced. Instead of also blushing, Hatara smugly looks at a corner of the room where a few girls give her mean looks. Whodathunk.

In this class I don't concentrate much, I can easily cast [Discharge] so the professor leaves me alone. I can't concentrate because I keep reminiscing of the feelings of the girls.

At the break, Lina eats her large piece of not-strawberry cake absentmindedly while the discussion revolves around a very smug looking Gify. Today she was supposed to train with Hana but we let her skip it.

"How did you get him to follow you?" Lyle asks.

"He appeared on my backyard when I learned [Nature Magic]. After that I kept giving him food until he decided to touch me," I respond.

"That's surprising," Hatara says wide eyed.

"Why?"

"A lot of them are quite whimsical, I read it being compared to a commoner trying to swoon a noblewoman."

"Maybe our personalities are compatible," I shrug.

"Maybe there's something special about you," Hatara says, she narrows her eyes and smiles slightly.

Alissa looks at me with a very smug "I told you so" expression. Garanae's jealousy explodes and he gives me a stink eye.

I don't want anymore attention so I return the conversation to stories about other nature spirits.

I'm still moved by the exchange this morning so tonight I show my women the meaning of my feelings.

Fortunately, Gify is only mirroring my preferences in not wanting to be touched by men. If he really was a "male" then I would have to force him to go away when it was time for skinship, no man shall ever lay his eyes upon the heavenly naked bodies of my women. He cuddles with Aoi when we begin our session.

Today is the 9th.

-

My [Enhanced Semen Recharge] increased by 1 (now 0+5), my hips are sore and I have to cast [Heal] on myself -. I also gained [Water Magic] with 1 point in it.

Roxanne gained [Redirect Mana] with 1 point. I can increase it for her up until level 3, the same as mine.

This morning I spend my time training [Conjuring Magic]. [Torrent] could also be used to conjure water but it comes with such a force it causes blunt trauma, it's not the best choice to use it to clean your private parts.

Gify appears whenever he pleases, the house was filled with the sounds of him popping everywhere as he explored every room. It seems he created a "connection" to me somehow, I can wish for him and he appears on my head, to the dismay of Alissa, Ciel, and Lina.

Blessing class was the same as always, calming as everyone lowly chants their spells and the professor walks by us, correcting our singing whenever she finds a mistake. I noticed that Hatara has been singing with more motivation, her voice is quite lovely, too.

At the break she goes to wherever Garanae is so it's only me, Alissa, and Lina.

"Excited for our expedition?" Alissa asks Lina.

"A bit..." She shrinks her posture.

"Is that all?" I ask, raising an eyebrow at her.

"Well, okay, I'm very happy," she smiles shyly.

"The books at the dungeoneering guild tell of a lost language of the dragonoids. It's interesting that it does not exist on the skill system," I say.

Other races like goblins and orcs also have their own language but nobody is interested in learning it.

"Yes, it's because our knowledge of it is incomplete. There's no one alive anymore who can speak it so the skill disappeared from the system," Lina says.

"Couldn't it become a new skill then?" I ask.

"You would need a lot of people speaking it fluently for it to become a skill."

"Hm... But the skills that I created are different, I can give them to any of you ever since I created them and I'm the only one in the world who has [Sense Soul]."

"Perhaps language skills are different?" Alissa asks.

"Or perhaps no one wants to waste skill points on an incomplete or dead language," Lina says.

"Or is there not enough knowledge for it to turn into a skill?" I ask.

"Why not all of them?" Lina asks.

Our speculation gets stuck on this point.

Today is the 10th.

-

I increased my [Blessing Magic] by 1 (now 4+16), my MP by 10 (now 770) and my "Magic Power" by 5 (now 290). I finally gained [Conjuring Magic] with 1 point.

For breakfast, a gloomy-looking Roxanne comes out alongside an annoyed Hana.

"Overworking again?" Ciel asks.

"Yes…" Hana answers and sends a glare to Roxanne, "she doesn't overwork when we are sleeping with Wolfy."

"Oh please, Hana, I'm working to help us, at least I'm not getting fat from meditating all day and only riding dick as an exercise," she spews her mind.

The table turns silent and I bite my lips to contain a smile. Hana's expression slowly turns into one of pain.

"I'm not getting fat!" Hana cries.

"Roxanne!" Ciel chastises.

Lina frowns and looks down. Alissa massages her eyes.

"Roxanne... You should always have a good night's sleep, it's making you too irritable," I say.

Roxanne opens her mouth to speak.

"We understand you want to help," Ciel interrupts, "But you don't need to go so hard on it. You also didn't need to hurt Hana."

Roxanne looks up to Hana and frowns.

"I'm sorry..." She mutters.

"Just come to bed earlier, ok? I don't like sleeping alone," Hana says in a soft voice.

"Okay…"

"And I am not getting fat."

"You are not getting fat…"

This morning I spend casting random spells to increase my mana. Even with [Increase Growth] I believe I haven't been making much progress, everything has been slowing down.

At [Reduced Mana Cost] class our group has a small discussion while practicing spells. It seems me, Tooru, and Bombur where the first to acquire the skill, probably because of our mindset is more developed than that of the teenagers.

At the break, I approach Bombur.

"Hello, Mr. Bombur. Would you like to join us at the buffet?" I ask.

"Gimbo is fine. But sure," he responds in a tired tone.

I awkwardly lead him to our usual seats.

"Everyone, this is Gimbo Bombur. He's teaching Lina enchanting."

Everyone gives him a respectful bow and introduce themselves. Garanae seems very happy to meet another noble.

Just as we finish Gify decides to pop on my shoulder.

"Hoh! So you have a new follower then," Toroo says, she gets up and gets closer to Gify, her big eyes examine every inch of him.

"Gih-gih!"

"My, thank you, it makes me very happy to hear this," her cheeks swell with a smile.

"What did he say?" I ask.

"Something about the most beautiful bird he has ever seen," she chuckles with her hand over her mouth.

You... She's married, stop with it.

"Anyway," I try to gloss over as Toroo retakes her seat, "How did you acquire the skill, Gimbo? What angle did you take?"

He was stunned at Gify's sudden appearance but quickly recollects himself.

"Spells are very similar to runes, they follow a 'pattern'. I spent time learning these patterns and recognized a few redundant ones, fortunately this redundancy applied to all spells so I managed to earn 1 point in [Reduced Mana Cost]."

Lina's Trivia: Dwarves created [Runic Enchanting], which are tattoos painted on their bodies that activate spells when mana is sent. The late Aremut kingdom created [Runic Warding], which is similar to enchanting but made on consumable paper. The painting requires crushed mana crystals attuned to a spell or magic school.

"Hoh. Yet another different angle to magic."

The group starts to discuss his angle but Gimbo quickly fades out of the discussion.

"How is Lina doing on her training?" Alissa asks Gimbo.

"She is wonderful, a natural. You should keep her coming every day, you must not let her disrupt her own learning," he gives Alissa a sharp gaze, "Enchanting is no simple skill, it will take a lot of dedication for her to learn it. Doubly so since we do not have a lot of time."

Gimbo is a man of few words, Alissa quickly learns he does not have much else to talk about Lina so he returns to merely observing our discussions.

Back at home, Roxanne is a bit fidgety and Hana is quieter than usual. Each one sits at one of my sides during the bath. Ciel is across me while I massage her feet.

"You two didn't make up yet?" I ask.

They look away from each other. -.

"Is something bothering you? You know you could just ask what you want," Alissa says.

Roxanne pouts a bit harder. I roll my eyes and grab one of Roxanne's feet.

"Yah! Geh...!"

She tries to run but ends up swallowing water.

I shove Roxanne's foot up Hana's mouth. She glares at me but - does the deed. Roxanne shudders and then closes her eyes when Hana starts to massage her.

I sneak away and continue my session with Ciel.

"Help me out, Lina?" I ask and offer Ciel's free foot.

She hesitates a little but then shyly starts to imitate me.

By the Gods, I wanna see Lina and Ciel - together. If only Alissa were bisexual too...

-

Aoi receives a wave of bath water on her face and wakes up.

"Gueh..! Wha? Oh..." She quickly swims to the edge and jumps out. Ciel grabs a towel and helps Aoi dry up.

-

"Dry below your scales," Alissa says.

"Muuuh," Aoi groans.

Aoi slips out of Ciel's grasp and darts to the door. Alissa is just out of reach, her hand brushes Aoi's wing. I smile at the familiar scene and try block her with my body but she rolls to the side and slips through with a jump.

Lina shows her combat reflexes by grabbing Aoi mid-jump, mana courses through her body and the battering ram is held firm.

"Nooo…" Aoi cries.

"I'll dry her," Lina says.

-. Lina jumps in place and loosens her grip. Aoi takes the chance and jumps out of her grasp again and runs downstairs.

"Or not..." She mutters and her face reddens.

Alissa and Ciel put their - clothes on and hurry out of the bath -.

"Got you!" Alissa pulls up her prey by the neck, her eyes remind me of the hunting gaze of Hana.

"Muuh!"

"Ow! Don't harden your scales!" Alissa grits her teeth but don't release the little blue weasel.

"Aoi! That's enough! We are doing this for you," I chastise her. I grab her little snout and force her to look at me, this way [Animal Language] will make sure she fully understands my meaning.

Her claws retract and her wings flop down. She averts her eyes and looks away.

"So, y," she forces out an apology.

Lina receives Aoi and Alissa rubs her hand, a large cut on the palm bleeding slightly. Ciel grabs her hand and heals her.

"Thank you," Alissa smiles to Ciel.

Ciel turns around, gushing. I smirk at her and she immediately controls her expression.

Lina dries up Aoi and I give her a head pat. Her scales now dry tinkle loudly when my hand runs through her spine. Her mood lifts and she huffs a bit of smoke.

"See? Your scales ring more when dry, can't let them get moldy or filled with grime," Lina says.

"Kaay."

-

Today is the 11th.

-

I breathe down Alissa's neck and see her hair rise.

"I love you," I whisper on her ear, making her shiver.

I increased [Reduced Mana Cost] by 1 (now 6+3), my MP by 10 (now 780), my "Magic Power" by 5 (now 295).

We leave by dinghy through the eastern gate and move towards the end of The Smirk. Lyle and his friends each have a different way of traveling so we decided to meet at the entrance of the Sea of Trees, with this we can all leave at our own pace.

We reach our destination just before lunch. The Sea of Trees to our right disappears and after a stretch of tree stumps a normal forest starts. The farms to our left end abruptly as the cliff of The Smirk appears, after that the terrain slowly decreases in a ramp, soon the Sea of Trees of The Smirk starts.

On the edge of the cliff a small watchtower with a few guards keep whatever appears out of the Sea of Trees away from the farms, but beyond that and until we reach fort Reita we would be on our own. Very far on the distance we can see a crack in the blue-gray mountain range, that's where the fort Reita resides.

As we approach, the guards nod to us, this is a popular spot for adventurers to pass by. We sit off the road near the watchtower and have our lunch, mushroom and pepper soup with bread and a thick slab of minotaur thighs. A group of adventurers passes us by and enters the Sea of Trees, they stare at our food like hungry wolves.

Roxane and Hana are extra cuddly towards each other, last night savage sex reigniting their passion. The few male guards get very interested in them and this time even I can't fault them as even I am getting jealous.

Ciel hugs me from behind and two balloons filled with love and happiness are crushed behind my back.

"You know, what I felt from you that Gify shared with me was that you were really containing yourself. You don't really have to be so reserved, sending me more love will only make me fall in love with you even harder," I say.

She hugs me harder and I feel her cheeks get warmer.

"I just... I feel a bit scared sometimes..." She whispers.

"Scared of what?"

"Of... Screwing up and pushing you away."

I'm not sure how to help her on this part, I'm much more determined and casualist.

"I think that sometimes I exaggerate on the way I drown in pleasures…"

"Yeah you do," she quips.

I feel no shame, I only smile at her frankness.

"But perhaps you are the contrary, you reserve yourself too much from pleasure."

"Hm…"

She goes quiet after that and hugs me harder.

Just as our filled stomachs make us feel groggy I see a conspicuous covered wagon and carriage duo coming towards us. The driver of the wagon is visibly armed and armored, not a common sight unless it's part of a caravan, but then there would be guards surrounding it. The carriage is simple but the materials that make it are visibly strong.

The duo stops in front of us. Out of the wagon comes out Lyle, his disheveled hair as disheveled as ever. Behind him comes a tall and lanky green-eyed ginger boy, his well-groomed, wavy hair makes me jealous. At his side there's what seems to be his twin sister with equally glorious auburn wavy hair. Behind them come two nondescript human space mage servants.

Out of the carriage comes out a well dressed, tall, delicate, and older looking boy. He has long dark hair tied in a loose bun and dark eyes. His clothes are similar to the others but he shows a bit more wealth in them with an embroidered jacket, he could be richer than Lyle. He is followed by a matching well dressed knight in well maintained plate-and-mail. I was not expecting this knight, he's a last minute addition.

"Hello, Wolf."

"Hello, Lyle."

We share a handshake. For the first time I see Lyle with casual clothes, they are really casual, though, he's not ready for combat. He and the twins still show some wealth in their clothes and they fit them perfectly, they are paradoxically well-dressed in casual travel gear. A nice, comfortably looking black fur cloak, a thick brown leather jacket, possibly enchanted like ours, a white shirt, tough looking black pants and some good brown boots.

"This is Delwyn Griffiths and his twin sister Gwinevere. They came from the Maplethorne Dominion."

Maplethorne is in English, could they have maple syrup there!? It's been quite a while, now I want some waffles, cream, and blueberries. How far are they? I really have to tell Lina to find me a proper map of the continent. Wait, now's not the time.

"This is Ankara Gartania and his knight Sir Tankar."

He points to the stoic black-haired boy. Even though the knight's sallet is raised I can barely see his face, I can only see a black beard and small eyes.

"I'm Wolf Ryder and this is Helios, my fellowship."

I introduce each of the girls. Lyle seems quite content in meeting the rest of them and gives them a respectful bow. The twins look at each other and then at Lyle in surprise. Ankara seems uninterested.

"You are the Wolf Ryder?" Asks Delwyn.

"Well, I think there's only one person with this name here, so yes?" I answer.

"Who?" Ankara seems to finally focus on us.

"How do you not…" Delwyn loses his train of thought.

"Know who he is?" Gwinevere continues where Delwyn left, "The one who got the Symbol of Hate, participated in the extermination of the goblin village, famous for being a summoner who can invoke elementals, position 3 on the last wyvern attack."

Ciel holds back a snort. Hana and Roxanne's face twitch from holding back a smile. Alissa and Lina beam with pride. I feel my ears burn, it's embarrassing having your "accomplishments" being listed this way.

Only when position 3 was mentioned that Ankara decides to take a good look at me. He raises an eyebrow and look at the girls at my side. Gify takes this moment to pop on my shoulder, surprising our employers. Gwinevere seems to turn from happy to overly excited in an instant.

"It's a pleasure to meet you, Lyle talked so much about you…" Gwinevere grabs my hand.

"Gwin...!" Lyle whispers in embarrassment.

"You are a rising star in Rabanara, your fellowship is becoming quite famous, you even have a little dragon!" She shakes my hand vigorously, her gaze passes from me, to a concerned Aoi, to a smug Gify, and finally to Roxanne, "Especially certain aspects of it."

She forgets to release my hand while she stares at Roxanne like someone admires a painting.

[Battlefield Perception] triggers, two of the girls are getting ready to kill me and another wants to hurt Gwinevere. Roxanne sweats cold, unused to this kind of attention.

"Stop wasting time and let us move," Ankara says and moves off towards the Sea of Trees.

Gwinevere snaps back to reality and straightens up, releasing my hand. Delwyn rolls his eyes and drags her away.

The wagon and the carriage turn around and leave. The space mages give us a respectful nod and follow Lyle, they seem to be holding back a smile, they know all about the personalities of their masters.

I shouldn't be surprised Lyle's friends are eccentrics as well. Me, Gify, and the girls all share a silent look, I should have asked who was coming with Lyle. But right now I gotta take the lead, Ankara is going in the front like a fool.

"Alissa, begin scouting, I will have Holly follow you quietly and give you a Shad. The other Shad will remain with Roxanne and the last with me," I quietly tell her.

She nods and changes into a fox, running ahead of everyone. Unfortunately I can't let Alissa rest, Lyle and the others do not know I can use Holly for scouting. Staying away from Alissa dampens my mood, I'm grateful for the effects of her blessing but these mood swings are stressful.

We hurry up ahead of Ankara.

"Excuse me, follow us, please."

"You know the way?" Ankara asks.

"Yes...? My task is to escort you all, I'm supposed to guide you."

"Fine…"

I do not know what is more worrisome, the 3 eccentrics or the unreadable youth and his silent knight.

Lyle quickly starts a discussion about the language of the dragonoids and disputed translations. I look at Lina and she gives me a quick puppy-eyed glance.

"Remember, stop hiding," I say.

"Hm... C-can I join them?" She whispers.

"Yes, make sure they don't speak too loudly."

She nearly claps in happiness like Roxanne does and slows down until she's walking besides Lyle. The twins look at her oddly, her status as a slave is very obvious so they feel awkward to talk normally to one. Lyle's indifference sets the tone, so the twins shrug and continue their discussion.

As the grass gets substituted by the moss, entangled roots, and small bushes, the forest quickly turns dark so we all cast our own [Spirit Lights].

Barely 30 minutes later and Alissa already comes back to us with a dead Rabid Rabbit on her fox mouth. I quickly store it.

"Holly pointed him out to me before it even got in range of my senses," she whispers, gushing with happiness and then runs off in front again.

The journey is uneventful, everyone is using a proper anti"scent so no monsters can detect us easily. The Smirk is also rather safe during the day, it's the night that the more dangerous types of monsters come out to hunt. Also there was a purge just yesterday, the worse roaming monsters are all dead.

Lina's enchantment shows its usefulness, [Breeze] consumes an insignificant amount of mana and completely prevents us from sweating. Feels like I'm wearing nothing at all while a small breeze tickles my entire body.

We reach the northern part of the valley deep inside The Smirk by 6PM. Blue"grey rock with yellowish cracks make up the wall in front of us. A large crack on the wall is our entrance.

"Wolfy, they look rather tired," Ciel whispers.

Ankara and Delwyn look sullen, they walk hunched over and slightly out of breath.

"Oops," I whisper back.

I almost fail to contain a smile. I look at Tankar, I can't tell his expression but he's not very happy. I would have cast [Swift Foot] on them but the awkward introductions made me feel petty. I'm actually surprised Lyle and Gwinevere are fine, they are looking excitedly at the entrance. No word on the space mages, they are professionals.

"Let's take a rest at the entrance. We will walk some more and camp inside," I say.

Tankar immediately pulls out a small cushioned stool for Ankara to fall on top of.

"Whaat... Damnit Lyle, you didn't tell us how far we would have to walk," Delwyn complains.

"Oh yes, I didn't expect you to have such girly feet they can't deal with a stroll on a little grove," he responds.

"You shut your gay mouth, you spent a whole day-cycle telling me how fun it would be and how much we could unearth. Did you ever think about why scholars don't come here? Because it's too far!" Delwyn gestures with his closed fist as he talks, "Scholars aren't made for traveling and you know I'm a scholar too!"

I have to contain my expression, professionalism tells me I shouldn't acknowledge such bickering between nobles.

"If I didn't rope you in like this you would never grab your pompous sorry little ass out of that library. Don't you have any excitement out of learning something new? This dungeon isn't even fully explored yet! We could be discovering new history just by reaching a new place. Don't any of you feel excitement over this?" He looks around, a wild smile on his face.

Even I admit adventuring is nice, I want to explore the world. Even though I don't like killing monsters or the gore I won't change my way of life, I'm not so naive to think that I can live in this world without killing. Besides, I have to keep increasing my level, whatever the God that threw me here has planned for me won't be fulfilled if I remain passive and weak.

"I... I think this is exciting," Lina says, shyly.

"You don't count, you are an adventurer!" Delwyn shakes his fist at her.

Lina drops her shoulders in dejection.

"Come now, my frail and younger little brother, adventure and discovery awaits," Gwinevere taps him on the back and pushes him forward.

"You are only older by a second!"

"Yet I am still older," she chuckles and moves after him.

Lyle watches them go inside and then turns to Ankara.

"How are you doing? Regretting coming?"

"I am fine..." He smiles bitterly, first real expression he shows, "I am the one who had the original idea, you do not have to worry about me."

"But I'm the organizer, you should come to me for any trouble," Lyle looks at him with concern.

Alissa is waiting for us inside. I go check on her to make sure the twins aren't causing trouble.

"Wait, where're the ruins?" Delwyn asks.

"You dunce, there's a long way inside this cave until we reach the entrance to the dungeon," Gwinevere responds.

Delwyn groans. Alissa is looking like a statue while the twins examine the cave wall besides her. As I approach her Ankara comes inside.

"Mr. Ryder, why don't we camp outside already?" He asks, a little annoyed.

"You like arthropods?" I ask.

"What...?"

"Spiders, centipedes, beetles."

"They are fine...?" He narrows his eyes.

"What about giant ones?"

He shows only a hint of disgust. Gwinevere on the other hand shows pure panic and grabs Ankara's arm.

"I don't care what you feel like Anky, we are not sleeping outside."

"F-fine..." He pushes her away.

We take a 10 minutes break, once I see Delwyn and Ankara's faces relax I tell them to move. Delwyn groans as he rises and Ankara frowns deeply.

This cave is a crack on the mountain, the ground is very broken and difficult to walk. I'm tempted on taking out our mountaineering equipment because our little charges are very bad at balancing themselves.

Lina's Trivia: This cave was created by an earthquake, such earthquakes are common occurrence when an underground mana storm happens. Mana storms are the most destructive natural event possible, the immense amount of mana circulating literally rips people apart.

"Maybe we should have Hana carry someone," Ciel whispers.

"The privilege of being carried by Hana is reserved for only us," I whisper back.

"You... What...?"

"You should try it sometime, I feel so safe and fragile at the same time when Hana carries me."

"You are irredeemable."

"But you like me this way."

She doesn't answer and moves forward. I hurry in front of her and catch a glimpse of her smile.

"Maybe you would like to carry me instead."

"Fine, I will do it in front of Lyle and the others," she turns to me and glares.

Are we playing chicken now?

"I would like that, go on, show them I'm your man, show them who rides on top of who."

You have chosen the wrong opponent.

Ciel stares at me and I stare back, smugly. Slowly her cheeks redden and she finally averts her eyes. She tries to leave but I grab her arm.

"Remember, you are mine," I whisper in her ear.

She shivers and I release her arm.

"Hey, those are my vows, not hers," Alissa joins, she heard everything with her enhanced hearing.

"Yes, but she can be mine too. "

Alissa purses her lips in thought. She comes closer and whisper in my ear.

"She can be yours but you are only mine."

Now I'm the one shivering, in happiness.

Alissa continues forward, her orange tail swaying widely.

A few Skritters are casually dispatched by the girls, Aoi on the other hand is taking it very seriously.

"You are doing a very good job," Hana says and pats Aoi, who is on her shoulder.

"Kweh! Rit... Boom...!"

Aoi's fireball is improving, she's copying Roxanne's own [Fireball]. Roxanne has enough control over [Fire Magic] that she can make her [Fireball] explode or burn. This is something that I don't have, I can't mold my spells to take different effects, at least not yet.

Lyle jumps over a small crack on the ground and stumbles forward.

"Your little dragon is impressive, Miss Hana," he says after regaining balance.

"That she is."

Aoi rubs her head on Hana's cheeks affectionately, the scales of both of them clink as they touch each other.

"My heart…" Gwinevere mutters.

"Keep moving, we are almost there," Ciel says, breaking the trance of our little slowpokes, even Ankara was staring.

A few minutes later the crack that we are moving through opens into a tall rectangular tunnel, the ground suddenly turns level, and imposing double doors blocks our path. The doors are made of amber, it feels like it waves as our [Spirit Lights] approach. I see multiple carvings of snakes and curiously there's two ouroboros on each side of the door, each ouroboros has 8 snakes, each snake is made of a different material.

"Moonstone, onyx, aquamarine, ruby, emerald, amethyst, gold and silver. Each represents a magic power of the dragonoids," Lyle says.

He walks up to the double doors and touches the ouroboros, he barely reaches it, it's too tall and Lyle is only slightly taller than me. He sighs and stops admiring it.

"Dragonoids are known to be tall," he smiles painfully.

Ankara moves besides him, as he's taller he can observe the ouroboros better.

"We can rest on the other side," I say.

Immediately both stop their observation and push the doors, they slide open with ease.

"I assume this dungeon is a mana solidification, right? Otherwise these gems would have been stolen a long time ago," Gwinevere asks.

"Yes, it's also why scholars aren't eager to come, there's nothing to salvage here, unlike real tombs. So it's quite possible this dungeon is only a sliver of the dying consciousness of the supposed dragonoid race," Lina answers.

As the doors open we are greeted with a huge hall, so big our light doesn't reach the end or the ceiling. There's not even a pillar in sight.

"Certainly resembles the main hall of Hombombein, if it were completely devoid of life, that is," Lina says.

"I heard the capital has a hall like this inside the castle. It's a marketplace where only certain stalls are allowed, like perfumes, spices, and gems," Hana says.

"Certainly fits that nobility would enjoy grandiose architecture," Alissa says.

We all enter the hall and slowly the double doors silently close.

"Let's just make camp here, no point in going any further," I say.

The space mages immediately pull out tents and a cooking set. In a minute there's a pot of water boiling and a slab of Great Boar being roasted in a flame-less magic tool fire pit.

Space mages can be hired from multiple mercenary guilds, they come in all flavors, fighters, mages, cooks, maids, butlers, prostitutes, bards, dancers, and many others. These are two simple looking men who have a very quiet demeanor, popular among nobility.

I dismiss the Shads, they won't be useful here. Nononya's notes talked about chanting so I fake a short summoning chant and invoke a fire and an earth elemental. To summon elementals the chant has to be adapted to the element it represents. [Fire Magic] chanting has a very aggressive tone with a few screams, put some metal song behind it and it won't be out of place. [Earth Magic] reminds me of opera, you have to hold the notes for a few seconds and add tremolo to the voice, making it a bit annoying to chant.

While the earth elemental draws raised eyebrows the fire elemental draws the stares of the men and boys. Hana was always wearing armor so none of our escortees knows what's below, the elemental is basically wearing nothing, showing the full glory of her sculpted body.

"I ordered the elemental to singe whoever stares for too long," I announce.

A chuckle and a slowly increasing flame floating in front of the elemental wards off the stares.

I pull out our tent and the bath partition, with the elementals and a hidden Holly, nothing should approach us. Delwyn knows water and fire magic so he prepares the bath for the others, the knight and the space mages have to take a towel bath, though.

-

After the bath, I see Gwinevere, Delwyn, and Ankara are avoiding looking us in the eye. Lyle on the other hand has mastered the art of not giving a shit.

"Wolf, come eat with us, these space mages have enough food to last us quite some time," Lyle says.

"You sure? I brought my own."

"Yes, I am sure, now sit," he motions us to a wooden bench.

I have a cushioned one but I have to contain myself, can't show the furniture shop I have inside my "Items".

"I'm a better cook," Alissa whispers to the girls with pride, she's glaring at the oblivious space mage cook.

"I know it," I rub her ears with a smile on my face, her tail sways at a mere compliment.

Seriously, that mage is over seasoning the meat. Seasoning is an art form and you have to take extreme care to reach the point of perfection.

The diet of wild animals changes how the meat tastes, this change is said to be how "gamey" the meat taste. It's interesting how in this world the meat from hunted animals doesn't have a strong gamey taste, from what I have seen they use [Purify Body] on the corpse and it reduces the gamey taste a significant amount. Also, most of the more commonly hunted monsters don't live enough to acquire this strong taste so they taste much better than most wild animals.

The meat is accompanied by a hearty soup, something similar to arracacha gives it a distinct taste and a thick consistency. It's a nice soup but we can do better. It's an annoying situation that I can't really show how much food we brought, no adventurer brings such a large amount or variety of ingredients like we do, most simply use [Conjure Bland Meal] and eat whatever they hunt while on an expedition. Lyle bringing simple soups and meat is already a display of wealth.

Roxanne brings out Ted and Suzy, she starts humming a waltz and the golems start dancing. I don't understand the lyrics, it's on her native tongue.

"What are those things?" Delwyn asks.

"Golems, it's part of my research, I'm researching [Golemancy]," I answer.

"Impressive, they have such natural movements."

"They have actual souls, but they are closer to elementals than real people."

Ankara leaves his seat and hurriedly circles the table towards us. He stops near Roxanne and leans over, he studies Ted and Suzy with a perplexed look.

"How much gold do you want for either of them?" He says, still staring at the golems.

"Not for sale," Roxanne replies immediately.

"One rose coin."

"No."

"Two rose coins."

"Mr. Gartania, we are not selling these golems," I interject.

Ankara's eyes turns to me, his gaze seems to measure my resolve. He finally turns silently and goes into his tent, Tankar follows.

"Just what's with him, he's always so... cold," I say.

"I'm sorry, Wolf, Anky is not a bad person, he has some... Issues and he acts a bit odd once in a while," Lyle says, smiling apologetically.

A bit.

The twins shrug.

We just talk for a little longer and retire to our tents. We huddle up and I start to polish Hana's scales. We have a small, circular whetstone that I use to sharpen the edge of the scales. Hana absolutely loves it and slowly her warm eyes turn hungry.

"So, what do you gals think about our employers?" I ask.

"That girl ain't right," Roxanne says while shaking her head.

"I know, right. I feel she's dangerous," Hana says.

"I think Gartania is trouble," Ciel says.

"I agree with Ciel," Alissa says and frowns, "He's too... Different, you don't know what to expect out of him."

"I like the twins, I don't like Gartania," Lina says.

She huddles up near me and wraps both her arms around my waist.

"Lina should be in charge of keeping an eye on the twins then," Alissa says.

"Since I'm likely to stay back I'll try to keep an eye on the one with the crazy eyes," Roxanne says.

"I will keep an eye on Gartania," Ciel says.

"What is his problem? Does he have a Plom up his ass or something?" Hana says.

"His sudden interest on Ted and Suzy was incredibly weird," Ciel says, she hugs Ted and he disappears -.

Suzy tries to pull Ted away from the death -, they seem to think they require to breathe to live.

"It is an interesting magic school that was basically abandoned a long time ago but what would he want to do with them?" I question rhetorically.

Ciel suffocates Suzy too, misunderstanding her pleading for a need for affection.

"Seeing how he casually displays his wealth I thought he would try to buy Aoi instead," I say.

"Keh!" Aoi coughs in disgust.

She tackles me and tries to lick my mouth. She's 100 years too early for this, countless years avoiding french-kissing my lick-happy dogs gave me perfect evasion. All she accomplishes is to lick my chin because I allow it.

Hana waves her fingers towards Aoi, who switches targets and tackles Hana. Aoi is not that enthused about licking her, perhaps because I deny her she feels like I'm a challenge.

"I wouldn't be surprised if we find bandits waiting for us when we leave this place," Hana says.

I cringe at this thought.

"The Gartania family are Lords of Fort Erda, his face could be known, he was being careless in coming in a carriage," Alissa says.

"Or he's overconfident," Ciel says.

"I would bet on careless. He's fixated with something else, he's too distracted."

- Ciel drops both golems, they pat their own bodies, checking for damage.

-

Ciel stares, burning with jealousy, but tonight I will neglect her, I want her to take the initiative. Just to tease her further I sleep while hugging her -.

"Irredeemable…"

A note from Manasong

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Chapter 25: Wisps of the Proud

A note from Manasong

Attention: to conform to the limit of sexual content allowed in a novel, I've censored this chapter. You can look for the uncensored version here.

The symbol "-" denotes a section that got cut for containing sexual content. Also, if paragraphs seem missing, they were also likely censored in an earlier pass where the symbol wasn't used.

Today is the 12th.

-

We go outside to have a quick breakfast. When we are finishing, Lyle and the others come out. The space mages barely retain their professionalism, Tankar glares at us with even more intensity, the nobles maintain their dignity.

I feel like I'm getting kinkier by the day, I barely made efforts to make the sound of our beds creaking less obvious. I'm starting to have some exhibitionism fantasies, I have to contain those, they are starting to go too far. I do have a dream of having sex while using [Fly], though.

While they have their breakfast Alissa goes out scouting ahead while we stay behind stretching and warming up. I decide to focus on casting [Swift Foot] for everybody on the camp.

Stretching the effect of the spell so much makes it start to go unstable, this could be dangerous. Molding spells away from their standard use is the mark of a proper mage and it is something that I lack since I learned everything by cheating.

I take my time, chanting and re-chanting, slowly inching forward the area of effect. I have experience with it since it's the same thing as my soul "expansion" but it feels like holding multiple balls with your hands and I haven't properly learned how to juggle yet.

It took me 10 minutes of lowly chanting but I did it.

"Boy, you knew this spell from the beginning?" Tarkan asks with irritation, his voice has a strong low bass that makes the earth tremble.

First time I hear him talk, this shocks me for a second. The entire camp goes silent to hear us.

"Yes, I knew it."

"Then why did you make master Gartania suffer by not giving him the spell?"

"I wanted to gauge the physical conditions of everyone. I don't know how much strength you or the space mages have but at least now I know the strength of our employers," I graciously gesture to the young nobles.

"That was highly unnecessary," he growls at me.

"You would do well not to coddle them, this isn't a vacation, this is a dangerous expedition."

"Unnecessary hardship to fulfill your fantasies of taking your anger of impotence on your betters," he quickly retorts.

"That was oddly specific, but no, I do not have such fantasies."

I didn't lie, I just didn't tell I was being a bit petty.

Lyle comes forward.

"Please. This argument is unnecessary," he shows us the palm of his hand, gesturing us to stop, " Wolf's method is valid and now we are not going to suffer the same thing again

Tarkan turns around in a huff and goes back to his tent.

"Boo... baad," Aoi mumbles her displeasure.

Gify pops into my shoulder.

"Gih!"

Yep, that duo means trouble.

Alissa comes back, the hall is completely empty. We tear down our tents and start to move. It's a rather long walk, around 30 minutes just to reach the end of the hall, at the end a much larger, but broken, double door can be seen.

When our light reaches beyond the door we see the ruins of a town. Rubble upon piles of rubble, the few buildings still standing are partially swallowed by the low ceiling. It's like this town was transported inside a small cave. We smell dust and the air is stuffy. Just by staring at these ruins I'm starting to feel gloomy, the name of this dungeon is rather fitting.

The dragonoids create their buildings by using their own version of [Transformation Magic], they raise the earth and transform it into pure stone. You can see little "veins" from where the ground was "sucked up", they almost look like roots, making the buildings look like they grew from the ground like a tree.

Lina's Trivia: [Transformation Magic] exists on the system, but it's extremely dangerous to use. It's similar to raw mana manipulation but it's based on the will of the user. It's the only magic that can cure birth defects, it can even change the soul and mind of people. But you must have the mind of a monk to use it safely, a single stray thought while using it is enough to transform a person into a pile of shredded meat and broken bones.

The remaining buildings all have odd shapes, they might have come from a workshop of abstract sculpting than something an architect would ever dream of creating. Many of these do not even have walls, telling of the dragonoids complete lack of shame and their collectivist society.

Lyle and Delwyn look around, hungry for details. But this place is completely explored, there's no new detail here for them, only refreshers for their memories.

"Make sure they don't stumble into something, we do not want to make much noise here," I whisper to Lina.

She nods and slows down until she's behind our careless employers, keeping an eye on them while occasionally looking around, herself. Soon enough she guides Lyle from tripping on a ruined round shield on the ground.

"You can see how the marks on the ground are made by their claws, they are digitigrade and leave small punctures on the stone wherever they step on," Lyle says.

"Please speak lower, Mr. Rizek," Lina says.

Lyle winces and makes an apologetic expression.

"Lyle is fine," he responds in a lower tone.

Our peaceful trek through the ruin is cut short as Alissa detect something.

"You can't see in the dark, right?" I ask her.

"No. There must be a Unique Spell that does it, though."

"Then we have to go after it all together, it's impossible to sneak up on them since we can't see in the dark.

"It's likely a guard. They are not particularly strong but remember that all dragonoids know magic," Lina says.

"It's time for the emellanat, then," Hana says.

She is very fond of that ominous looking bastard sword. As we bring out our swords Gwinevere's eyes open wide.

"Where did you get these swords? Emellanat is very rare around here," she asks.

"Secret," Hana answers with a grin.

She looks at me but I just shrug. Gwinevere frowns but lets it go.

"You all stay here with the elementals while we fight, if any problem appears then come to us and we will handle it," I say.

Gify suddenly pops into my shoulder.

"Gih, gih."

"So it really is a guard then. How do you know? Can you go invisible?" Iask.

"Guh, gah, gih."

"From what I understood he has something similar to Alissa's [Sense Presence]. Though it seems it's not instantaneous like the skill."

"Gih!"

And with a pop he disappears again, he does not like dungeons.

"I wish he would stay longer," Ciel says with slumped shoulders and a hint of sadness on her voice.

"Yeah, he could cuddle with us when we sleep," Alissa says, mirroring her demeanor.

Both of them pout for a few seconds.

"Back to the fight, you two," Hana says and rolls her eyes.

Alissa blushes at her own distraction.

"Anyway, the guard is over the corner?" Iask.

Alissa closes her eyes and focus a bit.

"Yes, he's kneeling and looking down, apparently," she says.

"Weird."

"They use some sort of spell that preserves themselves, they don't move or eat for a long time," Lina says.

Weird.

We go forward until the end of the block, we turn right and move forward. Before we our light even reaches the monster we hear the characteristic tinkling of chain mail. I feel mana gathering in front of us.

The town turns bright as a thunder roars and hits Hana's sword. For a split second we see our target, grey scales, golden lines wave wildy all over its body and shine lightly, long neck, dragonic face, short black hair spiking backwards, claws on hands and feet, and compact folded wings. Two thick and long whiskers coming out of the top of it's snout like a chinese dragon and a very long and thin tail stands straight upwards, those are the signs of a male. He has a round metal shield, a spear, chain mail on the chest, and a thick cloth covering both the chest and the legs.

Alissa lets out a bodkin arrow and it pierces the shield of the dragonoid, getting stuck on it.

"Just our luck, the first one is attuned to thunder," I say.

"[Fire Arrow]! More experience, then," Roxanne says.

The magical arrow pierces the shield, lighting the position of the dragonoid. He charges forward.

"I'll keep an eye on our flanks," Alissa says.

"[Wind Hammer]!"

The dragonoid charge gets stopped when the spell hits him square on the shield. Hana takes the opportunity and charges using her wings.

A clang echoes as Hana hits the dragonoid's shield, I feel mana gathering on the dragonoid. Her sword slides off downwards and she swings again, making a cut on the leg armor of the dragonoid. Suddenly the dragonoid glows very bright and lightning crackles.

Hana covers her eyes and jumps backwards, just barely deflecting a spear thrust with her shield. A thin tail wraps up on her left leg and pulls her forward. She tumbles and uses her wings to move backwards.

Ciel and Lina arrive at the same time and strike towards the dragonoid. His lizard eyes don't even look at them. He deflects Ciel's thrust with the shield and gets his right foot crushed by Lina.

He jumps backwards and Ciel's hook on her glaive snags a scale on his throat, ripping it off. The dragonoid spreads his wings and hovers over the ground, completely motionless. His foot and the place missing a scale bleeds.

The dragonoid defends against another arrow. A chantless [Fire Whip] snags his right leg. He gets pulled forward and the girls take their chance. Lina misses, Hana pierces the abdomen slightly and Ciel creates a large wound on his neck.

The dragonoid pulls back immediately. Roxanne learned her lesson and lets the whip go, she doesn't have the strength to hold him in place.

"Move back, you are too far!" Iyell.

The girls cautiously retreat. The monster starts regenerating. His mana is not endless, he's not a transformation type so he won't be able to regenerate for long.

The dragonoid flies higher and points his spear towards me. Another thunder cracks and nothing happens, I only feel that my sword gets hot. This is why I'm besides the back line, I don't have much mana with 3 summons out so I'm taking it easy, Lina would do better in the front than me.

An arrow, a fireball from Aoi, a [Fire Arrow] and a [Wind Hammer] hit his shield. It's starting to get bent and ruined, soon enough he will be an easy target for us.

He lowers down. His wings don't flap, only slightly move, telling us of his fine control over flight.

The dragonoid charges again, this time towards Lina. She steels herself and deflects the spear, a thin tail moves towards her face like a whip. With incredible speed she moves her upper body sideways and the tail leaves a scratch in her helmet, that tail is sharp.

Hana counters with a savage downwards strike, the shield of the dragonoid gets bent in half.

"[Wind Blade]!"

The cut on his neck opens again. He flies backwards as a [Torrent] hits his chest immediately afterwards. Another arrow pierces his shield, this time blood drips from his arm as the arrow hit exactly where his arm is strapped on.

It immediately charges again towards Lina but gets stopped by [Wind Hammer].

"Stubborn like an assfolk," Hana says.

"Don't say that, it's offensive," Ciel chastises.

Donkey beastfolk are known to be loud and foulmouthed, though they are unlikely to really take offense on that.

"Hit me, you limp - goblin!" Hana taunts.

I'm not sure the taunt worked on him.

The dragonoid receives another normal arrow and a [Fire Arrow] where his arm should be holding the shield. He grabs the [Fire Arrow] and pulls it out. The advantage of that spell is that it continually burns for quite some time, requiring immediate attention.

Hana charges the occupied dragonoid, forcing him to hurriedly defend with his spear. Hana was expecting that, she supports the spear with her shield and strikes the shaft with her sword, cutting it in two. The dragonoid immediately abandons the spear and counters with his claws and a tail whip.

The claws chip a scale from Hana's shield but the tail does nothing as it hits Hana's tassets that protects her thighs.

"Behind!" Alissa yells.

Ah, shite. I turn around and stand in front of the girls, waiting for the charge of whatever is coming.

"I will help!" Ciel yells.

A fireball lights the town far away from where I am. I raise my shield and point my sword forwards. When the fireball nears all I feel is a light hot breeze as the fireball dissipates, my sword gets slightly hotter. These are heavy spells if they can make such noticeable changes in my sword.

Immediately after the fireball dissipates a white dragonoid with glowing red lines thrusts his spear towards me, another male. I struggle to push the spear away but I manage to deflect the blow, the dragonoids put their entire weight on their charges. Truly fearsome lancers.

With my shield hand I cast [Lighting Bolt] and make sure the path goes towards his heart. Unfortunately emellanat impedes me from casting with my right hand.

The bolt hits him on the shield and I feel it going past it, hitting the target just as I wanted. The white dragonoid loses much of his strength and almost collapses on top of me.

A [Water Blade], a fireball, and an arrow hits him straight in the chest. He fails to dodge Ciel, she gives him a cut on his right flank, metal rings fly about as his flimsy chain mail gets shredded. Ciel flips her glaive again and rips flesh as the hook gets stuck on his wound.

Over all this pain the dragonoids are eerily quiet.

"We will finish the first one!" Alissa yells.

She and Roxanne turn around and I feel their happiness as the other dragonoid gets wounded again.

The white dragonoid looks towards Ciel and charges her. Both thrust their polearms and both attacks get deflected at the same time.

I cast [Rush] and I nearly instantly appear besides the dragonoid. He flies upwards, limiting my reach but I manage to slice his tail and right foot off with a single slash.

I hear Hana's wings beat as she flies upwards.

The white dragonoid immediately flies away from me, for the first time he shows some emotion as he looks at me in surprise. Even monsters have a cast time on their spells.

I hear the sound of something hitting the ground.

The monster decides I'm a mortal threat and charges me. Ciel slashes at him and makes him veer off course a small amount.

He thrusts at my shield with all his strength, the spear breaks and I nearly fall backwards. I cast a desperate [Earth Bullet] and the dragonoid is caught unaware again, the spell hits the corner of his shield and bends it, the stone ends up hitting his right shoulder. He spins and crashes on the ground to my side.

I hear the fleshy sound of meat and bones getting crushed behind us.

As I regain my balance Ciel dashes past me, I can't chase since I have to stay near the girls in case a spell gets thrown towards them.

Ciel plunges her glaive in the back of the white dragonoid. He thrashes about, trying to take flight only to get wounded deeper. Ciel removes her glaive and nearly cuts off one of the wings as a bonus.

"RAAH!" Hana yells.

"Another!" Alissa yells.

Bunch of nibbling Skritters. This is about to get out of hand. Through Holly I can see where the next one is coming from.

"Ciel, you are on your own!" Iyell.

"Yes!" She answers.

I stand in front of where Alissa is looking, a sky blue dragonoid with long flowing white hair appears from atop the ruins to our left. It has very small and thin whiskers, its tail waves about as it flies, the signs of a female. This one has horns, she is old and more powerful. She has more red lines than the others, they wave wildly over her body and glow with more intensity.

A fireball is hurled towards us and I dissipate it again, my sword gets quite hot. This one doesn't charge immediately and observes the battlefield. The red lines on her body calm and lose its glow, those lines are a visual representation of her mana.

Hana twists her sword in the chest of the struggling dragonoid, she seems to like to stand on top of her enemies... And lovers.

Lina strikes the base of the neck of the dragonoid, his lower body goes limp but his head still flails about. He tries to bite Hana but she's too far away, he then bites her sword and tries to pull it out of him, but Hana is stronger.

His eyes turn gold as he tries to cast a bolt towards Lina, but nothing happens as her shield absorbs it. Hana takes the opportunity finishes him off by decapitating him. All of the equipment of the dragonoid turns to mush and dissolves.

I feel a storm of mana right on top of me, me and Roxanne effortlessly interrupt the attempt of the female dragonoid of casting a spell on top of us. It's a bit frightening the dragonoid is capable of that.

The white dragonoid is struggling to take flight, he decides to fight Ciel on the ground even though he's limping due to the lack of a foot. His claws extend to the size of a long dagger. He suffers against her range advantage.

The blue dragonoid charges towards me, I steel myself and concentrate. She dodges a [Torrent] with incredible agility, she receives an arrow that pierces her shield arm but doesn't slow down.

It's difficult but I can do it for a single moment and a moment is all I need, I cast [Telekinesis] on the tip her spear. Her spear tips downwards and with a bit of help of my shield it gets stuck on the ground and snaps.

I thrust my sword at the same time but I get parried by her shield. I feel the immense strength on her shield arm and I'm glad I didn't take the spear directly.

Before she has the opportunity to continue her charge towards the back line, a chantless [Earth Bullet] from Lina hits her on the flank sending her far away from us.

Ciel jumps back to catch her breath, one"on"one a dragonoid is a tough fight. The white dragonoid stops for regeneration but gets interrupted as Hana charges him, forcing him to defend himself with his claws.

I can see with the vision from the elementals that the blue dragonoid fell backwards so far that she appeared on the corner of the road. Thankfully she didn't notice the group of wary humans staring at her and charged back towards us.

"Fire at the same time as me!" Itell the girls and they nod towards me.

I charge my mana to the maximum.

"[Lighting Bolt]!"

"[Torrent]!"

An arrow and a fireball flies.

The blue dragonoid gets hit by the bolt, with her muscles stiffened for a second she couldn't dodge the attacks. She receives the spell square on the shield and starts spinning, the arrow hits her right shoulder and the fireball hits the back. She crashes on the ground and rolls, kicking up dust.

Lina arrives besides Hana, who breaks away and rushes towards the blue dragonoid that's getting up. An arrow towards the white dragonoid forces him to defend himself with the shield, allowing Ciel to make a quick move and snag the rest of the dragonoids mail with her hook. She pulls her glaive and the hole on the frail hauberk opens wider.

Hana attacks the raising blue dragonoid, forcing her to defend with her shield. Then Hana bashes her shield, forcing her into an awkward angle. Hana follows with a savage slash on the now exposed legs, cutting deep into the left thigh through the armor.

Lina manages to smash the remaining foot of the dragonoid. He tumbles and falls on his ass, the lack of a good part of his tail does not help with his balance. Ciel stabs the groin, angling it towards his right leg, she twists the blade and pulls it out. This dragonoid is nearly completely disabled.

The blue dragonoid does not let Hana regain the advantage, she swipes savagely at Hana. Even with a range advantage Hana is not keen on exposing herself yet to this enemy, she can just wait for backup. She blocks, deflects and feints to keep the dragonoid from pressing her too hard.

The white dragonoid has to use two hands to defend itself from Lina's pounding with her war hammer. His shield bends more and more with each attack. Ciel circles around him and slashes half his throat off. The dragonoid tries to lash and bite at Ciel, he even tries to bite at the blade, to try and pry it off of her.

Hana steps sideways, giving a small opening for us to attack the berserking blue dragonoid.

"[Water Blade]!" Me and Roxanne cast at the same time.

Both our spells aimed for the head and the blue dragonoid defended from both with her right arm. Roxanne's spell clearly made a much deeper cut. Now the dragonoid's attacking arm is completely disabled, allowing Hana to push back with ease.

The white dragonoid arms break and his shield presses on his own body. He tries to move with hiss regenerating right leg but he has no power to stand up. Ciel slashes again at the throat and creates another deep wound, the dragonoid is bleeding profusely.

The white dragonoid opens his mouth and looks at Lina, the depths of his throat start glowing. On the moment his head stops moving an arrow pierces his right eye and buries itself deep, the tip appears on the back of the skull. His body goes limp, he's dead.

The blue dragonoid senses her impending doom and throws her shield at Hana. She uses her only good arm to try to at least kill her. She swings wildly at spits fireballs at Hana, the dragonkin answers with a smile on her face as she deflects the attacks and slashes the fireballs into nothing with her sword.

Suddenly Hana stops and bashes the dragonoid followed by a thrust. The bash leaves the dragonoid exposed, allowing the sword to pierce the throat with ease. Hana twists her sword, opening a large wound on the dragonoid and immediately pulls back, allowing the dragonoid to restart her rampage.

Ciel appears on the right side of Hana and with a swing her glaive slashes off the left hand of the dragonoid. That was the strong hand the dragonoid was using to attack. Lina appears on the left side of Hana and strikes the right knee of the dragonoid, making the leg bend backwards, forcing the dragonoid to use her wings to stay upright.

The dragonoid swings weakly with her slowly regenerating arm but it does not even scratch the shields of the girls. She loses a part of her tail when she tries to whip it at Ciel. Her claws on her feet get destroyed by Lina. Her chain mail gets snagged and ripped by the hooks. The cloth armor slowly falls apart with slash upon slash.

Hana takes flight again and sends an [Earth Bullet] downwards, hitting the dragonoid on the chest and forcing her to kneel. Lina smashes at the right knee, breaking the entire leg. Ciel slashes at the exposed chest, creating a deep gash that bleeds profusely.

The entire chest of the dragonoid turns red. She tries to take flight and charge Hana but gets sent down again with a savage overhead slash that carries the entire weight of Hana. The dragonoid falls on the ground and Ciel thrusts at her, forcing her to the ground.

Lina smashes the left shoulder, rendering the remaining arm useless. Hana slashes the neck of the pinned dragonoid and her head falls on the ground.

Everyone breathes a sigh of relief. Roxanne holds her head in pain.

"Too many spells in too little time. It's hard not to overuse when you don't have to chant anymore," she says.

"Now you understand how I feel," I say.

She chuckles.

We spend a few minutes still tense, waiting for any other dragonoid guard to appear. Meanwhile we recover the blue dragonoid parts and I store it in my "Items", we collect the pair of whiskers from the other 2, that's the proof of subjugation.

Aoi hops down from Roxanne's shoulder, she rips the scales easily and starts eating the white dragonoid's flesh.

"Don't you want us to roast it first, little one?" Hana asks.

"No~!" Aoi responds and continues eating.

"Dragonoids have lots of mana, perhaps roasting would reduce the amount of mana on the meat," Lina says.

"Yeesh~" Aoi mumbles with her mouth full.

"Don't talk with your mouth full, you are a monster but you are still a woman," Alissa scolds.

Look who's talking.

Roxanne chugs a small MP potion and sits down with her back on a small wall. She doesn't have [Mana Recovery] so she uses her own potions to recover mana. She has specialized small potions that heal mana slowly and have a low toxicity. In this world the old adage "the dose makes the poison" is still true.

I push her so I can sit behind her and pull her into my arms. [Breeze] is doing its work, she doesn't smell of sweat, only of the sweet fragrance of lavender.

She leans her staff on the wall and scootches closer to me to get more comfortable.

"If we stay like this I'm going to fall asleep," she says.

"Then do, I will protect you and wake you up when it's time," I answer.

She gives me a long kiss on the lips and takes off her pointy hat, coif, and glasses. No need to go so far and untie her hair so she just drops her head into my chest and closes her eyes. She looks sexy even while sleeping.

Ciel brings Lyle and the others towards us. They look a bit wary at the amount of blood around, except Gwinevere, she seems indifferent. Hana and Ciel then spend some time cleaning their clothes of the stray drops of blood that splashed on them.

"You guys okay?" Lyle asks with furrowed eyebrows.

The amount of blood around and Roxanne sleeping in my arms does make a slightly worrying scene.

"Yes, just tired, she overused her mana a bit so we are going to rest," Alissa says in a lower voice.

"We saw a blue one, where is the body?" Lyle asks, nearly whispering.

"Wolf stored it in his [Item Box]. It was bigger so it could be valuable."

"I see... Well, you are all quite powerful, the size of these monsters is frightening."

"Hopefully it will be enough to impress Mr. Garanae."

I can't see her face but I can tell Alissa is smirking.

"Perhaps. I assume it was you who influenced Hatara, both of them changed in impressive ways."

"It was, I believe my blessing from the Goddess of Love wasn't wasted on me."

Oh yeah, I can feel the smugness on her voice.

"Well, nothing bad came out of their relationship, it's actually rather refreshing how soft Gara has become. To think all he needed was a girlfriend…"

"Everyone needs some love, nobody is perfect. We all need people who complete us, after all. But what about you, Mr. Lyle, you said you are focusing on power but is it truly so? Can't you spare a bit of your time so you can spend it with a loved one?"

The smugness levels are off the charts.

"T-that's not... I don't have, I don't have time, really," Lyle turns his face away and cleans his throat.

"Reeeaally...?"

Now she's sassy.

"Y-yes... Ah, Gwin, h-how are the dragonoids?"

He waves to Gwinevere and moves away from Alissa. It seems Lyle can still be teased when the heat is on him.

"Dead...?" She looks at him confused.

"That's not…" He shakes his head, "Did you identify anything from their clothes and armor?"

I play with Roxanne's hair while she sleeps. The quartet of scholars examine the grey dragonoid, they seem to be avoiding Aoi, who's still eating the white dragonoid. The space mages lowly discuss how to cook dragonoid meat, apparently it's very hard to prepare properly, it's very tough and tastes very gamey. The diet of animals and monsters define how strong the meat tastes, monsters that use lots of mana are known to taste slightly better. The dragonoids guards don't seem to eat a lot because of their self-preservation mode, but such spells are known to ruin meat. In the end they decided to take the body.

After 30 minutes I wake Roxanne up. She yawns and gives me a peck on the lips. Then she frowns as she puts the coif back on.

"Feeling better?" Iask.

"Yep, time to move."

"It's impressive how easily you fell asleep in this uncomfortable stone."

"That's because I felt safe in your arms," she winks at me.

Awn, my heart...

We continue moving through town. The sound of thunder traveled far as we don't meet another guard.

We reach a main road, it's larger and has details on the sidewalk, simple tribal geometric carvings. We manage to get glimpses of our target, a large tower, the scholars believe it is a primeval temple.

"Even though they could fly they still required proper roads and sidewalks for they had servants of some kind. Not much is known about who these servants were," Lyle says.

"Could it be another extinct race?" Lina asks.

"Could be."

As we near the tower Alissa stops us.

"Another guard. Big like the blue one."

There's a building near us that's still standing, it surprisingly has some walls in the first floor.

"Hide there," I point to the building, "We will deal with the guard like last time"

We might need to have them always hide when we fight, those are not easy fights, we have to go all out. Having them see so many chantless spells would attract too much attention, I specifically don't want Ankara to see us fight.

We move towards the guard and suddenly the ground starts to get muddy, there was no cast time and a spell instantly started having an effect. Ciel, Roxanne, and I interrupt the spell immediately, a few seconds more and our feet would have sank on the ground.

"Transformation!" Lina yells.

He's gonna be annoying.

Alissa lets out an arrow, I hear it clang on metal. A second later a black dragonoid appears, the white lines on its scales glow. It's a male with two long and forward"facing straight horns, they look dangerously sharp. He charges towards Hana.

She takes the charge and immediately counters. The dragonoid fails to defend itself from the attack, his belly gets pierced by Hana, his neck is wounded by Ciel and his leg is hit by Lina. He spins from Lina's attack and flies backwards. His wounds instantly close, not a single drop of blood hits the ground.

Transformation types have extra regeneration capabilities.

The dragonoid receives a [Torrent] on his shield followed by a fireball and an arrow. Already his shield is bending. He charges Lina.

She steels herself and stands like a statue. When the tip of the spear approaches Lina moves with incredible speed, her shield hits the spear perfectly on the middle. The tip of the spear gets stuck on the shield and the shaft breaks.

"Come at me you squishy gecko!" Hana taunts.

She slashes at the thigh of the dragonoid, it cuts through the cloth armor and inflicts a light wound that closes immediately. When the dragonoid retreats Ciel unleashes a [Wind Blade] that gets blocked by his shield.

"I will cut your wings and turn you into my slave!" She taunts again.

The dragonoid spares her no mind and charges Ciel. Without his spear her reach prevents him from hurting her. He impales himself on her glaive and swipes at her shield, his claws get stuck midway on her wooden shield.

With his claws stuck and his belly pierced, he takes an extra second to retreat. Hana slashes down with her sword and cuts his right hand off while he retreats.

He blocks an arrow and dodges a [Fire Arrow]. He lowers himself and touch the ground, limiting the aim of Alissa and Roxanne. I see something is coming out of his stump, his bones are already regrowing. Stupid transformation types.

He charges towards Hana, Alissa is on a line behind her. She takes the opportunity, she casts [Ghost Lights] and releases an arrow at the same time. The dragonoid blocks his face with his shield and the arrow hits exactly where his eyes would be. Hana takes the chance and slashes at his exposed thighs again, this time the wound is much deeper and blood seeps from the wound.

This is why a kite shield is better, his legs would be less exposed this way.

He retreats again, meat and bones grow out of his stump in real time in a disgusting manner. Suddenly the ground becomes wet and slippery, his body glows brightly.

He charges towards Lina again. Hana flies to intercept, her sword hits his shield and bends it in half. He veers off course but manages to spin and kick Lina, she remains like a statue and slides through the floor.

I use [Telekinesis] on her, she slows down and slides until she nearly touches me. Roxanne casts a chantless [Ice Lance], it pierces through the shield and nearly wounds his chest lightly.

"[Wind Blade]!"

The spell flies towards his flank, his tail is sliced off cleanly at the base. Hana strikes him again with all her power and he crashes on the ground. I cast [Entangling Vines], his arms and legs get pulled to the ground. He tries to liquefy my vines but I keep casting the spell continuously.

Hana hacks at him wildly, he lifts his arms to defend himself and they get chopped off. Bones and scales grow wildly out of his stumps only to get hacked again.

"[Wind Blade]!"

"[Water Blade]!"

The two spells are cast with a lot of mana and with a completely vulnerable target both legs get sliced off. Hana continues to hack, more and more blood and gore spills from the butchering.

Eventually, his regeneration slows down and Hana sinks her blade on his head, splitting his skull in two. He flails for a few seconds and finally stops. Hana steps away from him, she's drenched in blood and pieces of meat and bone. I'm starting to feel sick so I wobble away from that scene.

Roxanne spends nearly a minute manipulating water to clean the floor of the oil.

"Hana, you are having a bath," I say.

"Eh, it's only blood," she answers with a shrug.

"I agree with Wolfy, it's worth spending some time to clean you," Alissa says.

"I agree," Ciel says.

"I also agree. You gotta take better care of yourself, my love," Roxanne says, tapping Hana's back, one of the few places untainted by blood.

Lina simply avoids eye contact with Hana.

"Fine…" She shrugs again.

"I will wash you," I say.

Now Hana smiles.

"Wolfy, no sex," Alissa says with a serious tone.

"Shouldn't you be saying that to Hana?"

"Yes, but she has Roxanne, tonight you are mine," she looks like a predator about to pounce on her prey.

Wow, where is that possessiveness coming from?

We go behind a still-standing wall and I pull out the bath requirements, Roxanne comes to help wash Hana's clothes while I carefully wash her body and scales. -.

"If you continue we will have to apologize to Alissa," she says.

"Wha...?"

"I'm about to pounce on you."

Alright then. I change to her scales, impressive how the blood seeped so deep in her, I carefully look below each to find any drop of blood that I could have missed.

"You know I'm not made of glass, you can be rougher with me," she says, one eyebrow raised.

"Sometimes I just feel like pampering you, why be rough when I can be delicate?"

"Please stop talking, I'm seriously about to pounce on you," her face shows some anxiety.

I just smile and finish up.

We store everything and bring Lyle.

"Dwarven beard, you did this?" Delwyn asks, he looks away sickly.

Idioms are starting to turn into their localized versions instead of being translated into their Earth equivalent. "Dwarven beard" means something impressive. Earlier I thought "nibbling Skritters," which means "annoying little shits."

"Well, yes," I answer, "Actually no, that was Hana."

"There's no way around it, transformation types have ridiculous regeneration," Lina says.

Delwyn groans and shudders.

"It's not that bad, little brother, it's just some blood and meat. The real dragonoids would do much worse if they caught one of us," Gwinevere rubs his shoulder.

"You are not helping," he answers flatly.

"As a noble, you should have a stronger spirit, Delwyn," Ankara says, he shakes his head in disapprovement, "How are we supposed to lead the commoners if you get sick at looking at the mere results of a fight?"

"I'm not a fighter and I will never be, there's no need for me to have to stomach this."

"Then you shouldn't..." Ankara stops himself.

Delwyn and Ankara glare at each other. I'm sure Ankara would have said that he "shouldn't be a noble, then". Tankar seems to be looking at Delwyn with pity.

"Keep moving, we don't have time for this," Lyle says in a commanding voice.

We reach the entrance to the temple, a row of steps flanked by 14 pedestals. Only one of the pedestals has a statue on it, the others are all partially destroyed without any hint of what these statues might be. The only statue is of a naked dragonoid, not that they regularly wear clothes.

"Some say these status represent the other humanoid races," Lyle says.

We enter the temple. It's completely hollow, not even the floor remains, it turns into the jagged floor of the cave. The middle of the tower has an out of control enchantment, a chaotic wind runs through the entire height, it's almost a visible tornado.

We take a quick lunch break. "Items"-ready meal for us and the remains of yesterday's meal for the others.

"So, I will summon another earth elemental and me and Hana will climb to the top. In there we will fix a pulley so the rest can be brought up by a suspended scaffold, then I will use a wind elemental to secure the scaffold for you guys."

Alissa seems anxious, she will be the first to come up, though.

I unsummon Holly and I fake a chant, I summon an earth elemental and a wind elemental. Then I bring out the small scaffold and leather harnesses we prepared.

We have a 4 pulleys system for raising the scaffold, 2 pulleys bellow, two on top. I grab the top pulley and hook it to the elemental. Good for us that someone measured the height of his tower, 164 meters, because of this we can bring the proper amount of rope. In this world "meters" is called "metris".

"Your [Item Box] is quite big, Wolf," Lyle says.

It's not funny when a man says it. I force a smile.

"You know I'm good with [Space Magic]."

"So it seems," he looks at me with curiosity.

Hana and I put on our harnesses and tie ourselves to each earth elemental. We climb on their backs and the elementals move towards the walls. They touch the wall and their hands fuse with the stone, then they pull themselves upwards and do the same for their feet. They unfuse their hands and fuse again higher up. This cycle repeats and we slowly climb up the tower.

The wind blows hard and we have to cling to the elementals or we would flap about wildly. It's difficult to breathe and the dust is irritating my nose. The wind is cold and soon I'm chilled to the bone, even with the fur padding of my armor.

After an eternity that lasted 20 minutes we reach the top. The tower suddenly opens into the cave environment again. This time it's full of stalagmites and stalactites, water drips constantly and rills flow towards a large crack in the ground about 100 meters from us. The wind is strong here too.

I have one of the elementals fuse with the ground and hold the pulley for us, the other will pull the rope while we secure the area. I turn my Emergency Ring red then green then off. The signal that we are ready.

A few seconds later my ring turns red then green then off. I signal the elemental and it starts pulling. 5 minutes later the scaffold appears with Alissa, Lyle and the fire elemental. The wind elemental floats above the scaffold. The fire elemental lights up our surroundings and we see a dance of small lights reflected on the wet ground of the cave.

We lower the scaffold and the wind elemental floats down.

"How was it?" Iask.

"A bit cold, barely any swaying, though I don't recommend looking down," Lyle says.

"Better than our trip up. Heat me up," I tell the fire elemental.

The flames of the elemental spring to life and she blows a kiss to me.

"They are getting personalities now," Alissa mutters.

Hana looks very satisfied.

Next comes Tankar, Ankara, and one of the space mages. Ankara seems to heavily dislike the wet environment, he maintains close to the elemental but keep his eyes away from her two large traps.

Next comes the twins and the other space mage.

"Ooh~..." Gwinevere looks around in wonder.

"Yeah, kinda nice," Delwyn talks absentmindedly.

"Nicer than just those ruins you and Lyle love so much. Do either of you play with yourselves while thinking about those ruins?"

If one were to ignore the context you would only hear an innocent maiden talking.

"I'm gonna tell mom" -Delwyn narrows his eyes and glares at his sister- "she's gonna have you pass those etiquette classes all over again."

"Ahahahah..."She laughs awkwardly and looks away, "What are you talking about, little brother, it was just a joke, a mere joke. N-no need to get so offended. Ahahah…"

"Something is coming!" Alissa yells.

This jolts us back to reality.

"Stay with the elemental and move to the back of the cave!" Iyell and wave them to move away.

The earth elemental is pulling Roxanne, Ciel, and Lina. They will be here soon, we only have to hold on if whatever is coming is too much for us.

We hear the clanking of metal before we see what it is. It shines in the reflected lights of the cave with such intensity I thought Haaran was coming towards us. It is an old male dragonoid, he has one horn, long silver hair and a few spikes on his spine. Once he got close we realized his shine is waving by itself, it is the visible mana of the dragonoid, it is silver.

"Metal type! Cook him alive! Fire elemental, come to us!" Iyell

I hear the sound of air being inhaled. *FOOOOM* Hana spews out fire.

"[Fireball]!"

"[Fireball]!"

Me and Alissa fire our spells. The silver-surfer-looking dragonoid gets swallowed by flames. I see Alissa draw an arrow and fire it into the flames but more to our right. Hana follows the arrow and I fire another [Fireball] too.

The fire elemental arrives and just as Hana's fire runs out the elemental starts her own fire-breath. Alissa fires another arrow towards the right and me and Hana throw a [Fireball] there, the elemental turns her flamethrower to follow.

Eventually, the fire elemental runs out of gas too and stops the fire breath. We see a red-hot dragonoid, his silver light is running wildly through his body, it's keeping the metal armor from burning him or melting off. I see two burned arrow stumps on his chest.

Hana inhales again and lets out more fire-breath along with a [Fireball]. We let out more spells and arrows. Hot blasts of wind make the cave become even more windy. I smell burnt meat.

"It's charging!"

Hana stops her fire and lifts her shield just in time to receive a claw from a half burned dragonoid. His metal armor melted off nearly completely.

He jumps back and turns the remaining metal on his body into a red-hot spear and a round shield. Now he's completely naked, fortunately a dragonoid's penis is retracted inside his body. He charges again at Hana, but this time she's even more ready. She trades blows with him as I charge towards her left side.

I strike down with my sword and he lowers his spear, letting Hana get into his guard and lightly pierce his right shoulder. His spear doesn't rise again, allowing us to keep the pressure on.

Alissa doesn't dare leave the side of the elemental, they are too nimble and would overpower her easily.

I strike again and open a wound on his right leg. He counters by using his tail to pierce me, I dodge backwards and he only weakly hits my belly. It didn't penetrate the leather and the impact got softened by the fur padding.

Hana bashes his shield and strikes down at the same time. The dragonoid's posture doesn't crumble but his shield gets nearly cut in half as Hana's sword gets stuck midway into the shield.

He's not powerful enough to pull Hana back. His shield turns into liquid, allowing Hana's sword to slide out, she forces the sword down again and slices his arm to the bone. At this moment the rest of the girls arrive.

"Lina! With me!" Alissa orders.

With this they run sideways to the flanks, Alissa fires an arrow that pierces the right shoulder of the dragonoid.

He lifts his spear, his shoulder healed and he charges Alissa. Hana goes flying behind him. Lina gets into position.

"[Wind Blade]!"

The spell goes off and it hits his spear arm, blood flies but the wound is not deep. Alissa casts a silent [Ghost Lights]. He strikes at Lina, he is blinded so she deflects it easily and counters with her hammer. I hear bones crunching as he defends with his shield, it bent backwards, his forearm is broken.

He flies backward for a second and receives Hana's strike with his spear. The spear shines lightly and doesn't break. But Hana feinted, she uses her momentum to spin and kicks the dragonoid away.

He flies back a few meters and immediately charges again. An arrow pierces his throat.

"[Fire Wall]!"

The smell of burnt meat grows stronger, he is trapped inside for a few seconds. Then the wall recedes.

"[Wind Blade]!"

His shield is dripping away, his spear is thin, one of his eyes is cooked. He charges again and it gets stopped by the spell that hits his chest, followed Hana's sword that cuts down his shoulder down to his heart.

He struggles for a second then goes limp. Hana lands on the ground and kicks him to dislodge him off her sword.

"Ah, a tooth broke off," she says with sadness, she passes her fingers on a spot of metal where a very sharp teeth should be.

"Bound to happen, these swords aren't that resistant," Lina says.

The wary escort NPC's come to us.

"Oh, it seems you are all competent mages," Lyle says.

"Eh," Hana shrugs, "Only a thing or two that helps us in situations like these."

We rest for a few minutes here.

"Aside from the smell of burnt meat this is a really nice place," Ciel says.

"The sound of the dropping water is relaxing," I say.

"Exactly. I would love to spend a night here."

"I will put a [Gate] 'coordinate' here then," I whisper.

She gives me a peck on the lips.

The crack near us is the only way forward, there's a way down but our target is not there so we are going over it.

We put our harnesses on again. This time I unsummon the fire elemental and summon another earth elemental. One elemental will stay here and hold the bottom pulley, two will ferry me and Hana across the crack through the wall. Then we will have an elemental hold the top pulley and the other will pull the scaffold.

The trip through the crack is short, it's barely more than 50 meters wide, the out of control wind enchantment is also much more subdued here. At the bottom we see faint glowing spots, there are more dragonoid guards down there, tough those are active.

We ferry everyone and cross safely without any other fights. Our path narrows and small ruined steps appear embedded in the rock once in a while. Fortunately, this part isn't wet otherwise the risk of falling would be high.

The tunnel slowly opens up, weak mana crystals appear embedded in the walls, giving us the first natural light of the dungeon that we have seen.

Long minutes pass and we finally approach the limits of explored territory as we reach a cobble wall with only a small arch as an opening. Below the arch, the skeleton of a halfling on the ground is the evidence of the result of the last expedition here, one of them died and the rest ran away. This place is a pain to get to, add that to the dragonoid family of 5 members that guards this place and nobody else felt like bothering coming here.

The sloths stay behind as we approach the arch.

"The last report said there should be a family of dragonoids guarding this place," I whisper.

"I sense nothing, dragonoids shouldn't have skills that hide their presence, right?" Alissa whispers.

"Correct," Lina whispers.

"Curious how the skeleton is still here, I guess these dragonoids do not eat their victims?" Roxanne asks.

"They are different from the normal ones anyway," Lina says.

"Let's gather the bones and give it a proper cremation," Ciel says.

Nobody buries their dead, graveyards attract monsters and necromancers.

"First let's make sure the area is safe, eyes peeled in all directions," I say.

We approach the arch we see it has a raised metal gate, it's a gatehouse not a simple stone arch. Past it we see buildings raised by the dragonoids, but instead of being attempts at abstract architecture they are much more similar to the engraved buildings of the temple. They are all engraved with tribal or flowery patterns.

There's only one road and the buildings end into the cave wall halfway, there's not much to explore and no way to miss any monster that could be hiding. Either they have some sort of [Hide Presence] or [Invisibility], or there's simply nothing here.

After a long hour of cautiously walking we find another gatehouse.

"Let's just get Lyle and we see how far he wants to explore," I say.

We double back and reach the first gatehouse. We pile the bones of dead halfling on a corner and Roxanne casts a small [Firestorm]. He had some ruined textile and chain armor that burned and melted, only a small lump of ashes and metal remains.

"Gods, let his connection to this world end and the cycle of his soul be allowed to continue," Ciel prays.

We quietly repeat her prayer and move on. We bring Lyle through the small remains of the town.

"What is this architecture!" Lyle exclaims as he sees the engraved buildings.

"Please keep your voice down," Lina pleads.

Lyle winces again.

"Sorry, sorry," he whispers.

Delwyn has to be herded by Lina as he lost his voice and part of his capability of walking. Ankara is very fidgety and only Gwinevere retains her composure as she only occasionally look around with curiosity.

We reach the second gatehouse and cross it. We enter what seems to be a large garden, except it's dead and smell like it's rotting. It's actually a bit unpleasant, I fear a trap as I can sense something wrong with this place.

"This must be the entrance to a castle. But why is everything so dead?" Lyle questions.

"There's something wrong here," Roxanne says.

"I agree," Ciel says.

I nod.

The other 3 look at us puzzled.

"Doesn't make much sense for it to be rotting like this," Gwinevere says, she holds her chin in thought. "This dungeon is a solidification of mana, it can recreate any sort of matter it want, it could easily recreate perfectly healthy green grass even if it were in complete darkness."

"Maybe it rotted on the original castle this was based on," Lyle says.

Delwyn snaps from his trance. "Assuming this dungeon was based on a real location. It could simply be a thematic shift, there could be something bad inside this castle," he says.

We continue forward with renewed alertness. The rotting grass reminds me of a swamp, the claustrophobic environment and the stuffy air does not help stave off our disgust.

Eventually, the tunnel splits into two, one goes to our right and deeper into the garden, the other way goes into the entrance of what could be a castle. The imponent stairs up into the building certainly signal this to be an important building.

"Castle," Lyle says the moment we stop.

We enter the castle into a large hall similar to the first room of the dungeon, except the low ceiling of the cave is visible. We reach the end and Lyle gets disappointed as the stairs to the second floor get cut halfway.

To the sides of the hall there's doors leading to corridors. One side has skeletons, ruined armor suits, rusted weapons, some rotting clothes, and broken furniture. The quartet of scholars seem ecstatic, there are remains of heraldry and designs never seen before. The skeletons are clearly dragonoid and their weapons are similar to ancient Greece of Earth, this means they are from a time period far from current days.

We nearly had to drag them away from there as we still have the right side to explore. When we got there they nearly shat themselves, there's a small library with readable books.

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Chapter 26: Paying

A note from Manasong

Attention: to conform to the limit of sexual content allowed in a novel, I've censored this chapter. You can look for the uncensored version here.

The symbol "-" denotes a section that got cut for containing sexual content. Also, if paragraphs seem missing, they were also likely censored in an earlier pass where the symbol wasn't used.

"Diamond dragon scales!" Lyle exclaims, he furiously flips through one of the books, "The books are written in the dragonoid language! We stumbled on something amazing! Mr. 'Good Luck' I'm gonna kiss ya, your nickname is a perfect fit!"

"Please don't."

The book crumbles on his careless touch and he yelps, all heads turn towards him in surprise.

"Lyle... It's okay, the book will regenerate," Lina says in a soft voice.

"Oh, yes, right," he laughs at himself.

The book turns to dust that quickly disappears into nothing. A few seconds later a black goo appears on the shelf, it slowly reforms into the shape of a book. Eventually it regains color and texture, finishing its regeneration.

Ciel motions for us to assemble.

"The rotten grass, I'm almost sure it's undead corruption," she says.

"You are not sure?" Alissa asks.

"No, I only crossed some small corruption a long time ago, we were passing through the remains of a nest of a White Arachne. These arachnes are quite weak so I never really had the opportunity to fight one, the adventurers would always kill them before the temple found one."

Lina's Trivia: Monsters mutate quite often, ironically the God of Destruction uses evolution, i.e. gradual change, as a way to bolster his forces. One of the rare mutations is the monsters acquiring the knowledge to become "undead". They find a way to dissociate their soul and body from the influence of all Gods, they become something "unnatural" to our reality, detached from the cycle of mana. They can absorb any matter to survive, live forever, disrupt life and matter just by existing, and need to be completely annihilated to truly die.

"That is actually worrying, if the family of dragonoids that guarded the gatehouse became undead then they would be very difficult to deal with. No, they would be impossible to deal with," I say.

"Indeed," Ciel says.

"Yeah, I agree, you shouldn't underestimate those dragonoids," Hana says.

"I will scout ahead, we need to know what exactly is out there," Alissa says.

I take a moment to think about her words.

"I will go with you," I say.

We stare at each other. She doesn't want to risk me and I don't want to risk her.

"We are stronger together," I say with more resolution in my tone.

Her stare slowly turns into a smile.

"Together then," she grabs my hand and kisses it, then I kiss her hand back.

"Tell the others what we just discussed," I say to Ciel.

"Make sure to come back before dinner, whatever is out there you can properly scout tomorrow," Ciel says, her tone leaves no room for questioning.

"Yes, mom," I mutter and walk away.

"I heard that!"

I walk away faster.

I left a single earth elemental to guard the entrance to the castle, for us I summoned a Shad and Holly to help us with vision. I will ride Alissa during the trip.

"This is nostalgic, just the two of us," I whisper.

"Not really a pleasant memory, you were too close to danger before Hana," she whispers back.

I can fell her pout even though her fox mouth doesn't move. I just smile and hug her fluffiness harder, I love this fox form of her so much.

Before meeting her I was scared out of my mind, I was lost and incredibly lonely. I threw myself at her and she opened her heart to me. She's my anchor and I'm her light, we will live together and die together, that I am sure.

"Hey..." A very peculiar thought occurred to me, "Can you feel pleasure in your fox form?"

Alissa stops, her fox face looks at me, slowly the corner of her lips rise into a frightening smile full of pointy fangs.

"Yes," she answers calmly.

"Ok... Let's keep moving."

I will continue that train of thought another time.

The smell of rot gets stronger, the cave opens up and we enter a dead orchard. I summon another Holly and tell it to fly about, if she finds another living being she must return to us immediately.

With the second Holly's vision I can see how big the cave has become, the orchard turns into a hedge maze that we contour. When the second Holly starts to fly over the maze a stone statue of a dragonoid archer releases its arrow towards Holly.

She immediately doubles back towards us. The arrow misses narrowly and with the corner of Holly's vision I can see the statue drawing another arrow.

"Stop! Go back to the entrance!" I tell Alissa.

"Ok, what's going on?"

"Holly got attacked by a statue."

Her fox eyes spell confusion.

Holly leaves the maze just as another arrow flies past her, her small size is a real advantage against projectiles. I see the statue returns to its normal position, with a drawn bow pointing upwards.

"A trap to prevent other dragonoids from flying above. This maze has anti-air statues, they take life and shoot arrows at flying targets," I say.

"Why would they do something like that? You don't put defenses like these unless you are guarding something valuable."

"Indeed, but dragonoids have a rather ruthless society, perhaps it's a prank, perhaps it's a test. If it's not related to their culture it could be something a dungeon rarely creates."

"A treasure chest!" Alissa seems ecstatic.

"Wanna bet Ciel is gonna side with Lyle when we tell them this?"

She snorts.

"No, that would be a dumb bet."

"Heh. Anyway, let's go around this maze and continue scouting."

I tell second Holly to circle around the maze on the opposite direction of us. The maze is quite wide so we reach the border of the cave while running around it. Aside from the inside of the maze we scouted every single inch of this cave, then we meet up on the other end of the maze.

We continue forward and pass a creepy statue garden, it has all sorts of statues of dragonoids. There are butchers, robed cultists, soldiers, actors, bone armored robed cultists, alchemists, mages, robed cultists stabbing themselves, merchants, nobles, executioners cutting heads off, cultists sacrificing other dragonoids, farmers, scholars, cultists eating other dragonoids, cultists raping other dragonoids, tall piles of dragonoid skulls, and a very large and mean looking dragonoid.

We do not talk about the statues, the increasing creepiness makes us not want think any more than necessary about this place. The only thing we paid mind is the corruption, the smell of rot was gone but a very faint smell of acetone fills the air.

After the statues we reach a water park. It literally has water slides, they look incredibly fun except for the black and bubbling slimy water. The air is filled with suspended particles that sparkle when our light touches them.

Alissa takes great care to avoid the deadly water. The smell of rot returns faintly and the smell of acetone increases. It also starts to slightly burn our lungs, it's damaging us. After 10 minutes smelling this "acetone" I see it reduced my HP by 1 point.

After the ridiculously large water park comes a grassland followed by a grove. At the border of the grove I tell Alissa to stop.

"What is it now?" She asks.

"Holly found something, seems to be a dragonoid. Her vision is being disrupted greatly, I think it could be the undead."

"Her vision is supposedly very sensitive, makes sense for it to be disrupted by the corruption of the undead."

"Yes."

"Where is the undead and where is it going?"

"It's deeper into the grove a long way to our left, it's moving away from us. I couldn't see anything else since Holly turned back as soon as she sensed it. I believe that one had a green glow, wind type."

As Holly moves towards us her vision quickly improves. It was like an analog TV having interference, the image distorted and got grainy. Holly even suffered some damage just by getting close to it. We are much tougher than her so we wouldn't take instantaneous corruption damage just by meeting an undead, but it would be detrimental to our health if we fought it.

"Let's return," Alissa says.

"Yes, Ciel would kill us if we went deeper."

"With the way Lina is changing she would join Ciel."

This time I'm the one who snorts.

"Undead, huh..." Lyle is in deep thought.

"It's dangerous to stay here," I say.

"It would be very tough to kill a single undead dragonoid," Hana says.

"Even worse is that out there is probably a family of undead dragonoids that were supposed to be protecting the entrance to this place," Alissa says.

Lyle purses his lips.

"We are not leaving," Ankara says with decisiveness.

"Why?" I ask.

"This place is too valuable, we have to stay here and compile the books in this small library," he says.

"Let a Glutton eat your words, you can come back here later," Hana says.

Lina's Trivia: Gluton is a slime-type monster that eats anything related to plants or animals (including humanoids). Hana's expression means "screw that".

Ankara narrows his eyes in annoyance.

"We are staying here, if we come back later this place will be filled with other scholars and soldiers to subjugate those undead dragonoids," he says.

"Oh, so that is what you are worried about, that someone would steal all your glory," I say.

His composed face breaks and he glares at me with anger.

"You should know your place, boy, show some respect," Tankar says through gritted teeth.

"What are you on about?"

"It is Mr. Gartania and Sir Tankar, not 'you'," he spews.

I can barely discern his expression, he never takes off that helmet.

"I, do, not, care, I'm not your fucking squire," I look at him with disdain.

Tankar clenches his mailed fist in anger.

"That's enough! Both of you!" Lyle yells and hits his fist on the table.

Ah shit, I gotta calm down. I'm not used to dealing with this amount of self-importance.

"The undead are very far away, we can keep an eye on them, can't we?" Lyle says and looks at me.

"The corruption is too strong and damages us. I will not let any of my women stand guard in the middle of that nasty air, I will use summons and let them at the border of the corrupted air. This should give us 30 minutes of early warning if the dragonoids come to us."

"Then that's enough, there's no need to run away now."

I'm conflicted, the maze, or safety, the maze, or safety. I look at Ciel, her eyes show a hint of excitement ever since we mentioned the maze. Ah, fuck it, we will stay.

"Keep in mind the price of your glory," Hana says to Ankara, she shares my disdain.

I let a sigh escape.

"I will agree to stay but only if I get whatever is inside that maze, no questions asked," I say.

"I wish to explore that maze," Lyle says earnestly, eager to change the topic.

"Now that's pushing it," Hana says.

Lyle drops his shoulders.

"I will stay with the books, that maze smells like a treasure chest," Ankara says.

"Me too," Delwyn says.

"I would like to go to the maze," Gwinevere says.

"We could split, no problem," Lyle says innocently.

"Bad idea," Ciel says.

Alissa nods in agreement. Lyle looks like a dejected puppy.

"Look, we are not taking any of you, it's too dangerous," I say.

Lyle seems hurt but without him we can use [Gate] to return instantly if something goes bad.

"I'm sorry but I'm not taking any chances, we will explore that place but only if we are alone. That way we can easily run away if danger comes either to us or to you."

Tankar scoffs.

"I'm more than enough to keep the undead away if you decide to prance about that maze," he says.

Death-flag.

"Suit yourself," I wave my hand at him, "We will leave two elementals here anyway to help."

"Then you are going tomorrow?" Lyle asks.

"Yes, tomorrow morning."

Ankara spoiled the mood again so we end up eating dinner separately. After that I immediately bring Alissa to bed and seek her tongue, her tail ruffles the sheets as it wags below her.

I will never get tired of this, of her taste, of her feeling. -.

-. I shove the gag on her mouth, then her orange eyes lock into mine and the sounds of the world drowns.

She takes off the gag and whispers something in my ears. I stop for a few seconds to process what she wants.

"You sure?" I ask.

She nods.

"I trust you," she says, her smile is adorable.

-

Her words ring in my head "I am your whore, your cock-sleeve, your sex toy. Hurt me, rape me, show who owns me". I let it repeat in my head, the perfect sexy whisper on my ears turned on the beast in me. I close my eyes and enjoy it.

-

"Wow..." That's all I can say.

"Yes," she says.

Hana is sprawled on the bed while Roxanne plays with her hair.

"That was amazing to watch," Roxanne says.

-

"I'm not complaining but what's gotten into you?" I ask Alissa.

"I wanted to push things a little further because of what Gify showed us..." She starts.

Gify pops into the bed.

"Gih!"

"Yes, you. Gify showed us your heart and I have been thinking what it meant."

"What exactly did you see?"

"Two seas divided by a wall, one is stormy and the other is paradise. Slowly the wall crumbles while storm recedes at the same speed. I want to make sure the storm is gone before the wall falls apart entirely. That storm, what is bothering you?"

For now, there's only one thing that keeps popping in my mind every once in a while, something I push away immediately.

"Hmm... Whenever I think about fighting other people I hear the space mage we killed shrieking…"

The girls quickly recover from their stupor after my words.

"We all have painful memories, they eventually fade if we don't feed them," Alissa says.

"I keep remembering Wolfy on top of the body of that woman with his hand missing," Lina says, she frowns and looks down.

Ciel pulls Lina on a hug and smothers her -. She pats Lina and the face of the little dwarf melts on a smile.

"What do these memories make you two feel?" Ciel asks.

"Fear, fear of hearing any of you scream like her," I say.

"Fear that I will one day find Wolfy looking worse than that," Lina says.

I free Lina of her pillows and pull her into a hug -.

"I think we all fear the same as Lina, it's just that we don't let those thoughts influence our mood," Ciel says.

"We have to deal with problems as they come, to dwell on fear will only hold you back," Hana says.

"But fear is what keeps us from doing stupid things," Roxanne says.

"I know... I just need to get used to controlling it," I say.

"Self-control is the thing you lack, we talked about this after you fought the Red Smile," Ciel says.

"I have been getting better," I smile wryly.

"Yes you have. There was one last thing, something unpleasant buried deep inside you," Alissa says.

I know myself well, there's only one thing I'm trying to bury, to forget.

"Must be about home... or rather, my former home."

I grit my teeth, I do not want to be reminded of Earth again. Alissa grabs my face and looks into my eyes.

"If you ever need to get something out of you, we are here to listen to you," she says.

I smile again at her earnest concern. I know that talking helps, but I don't want to talk about it now.

"I will be here to do the same," I say and I kiss her lips lightly.

"And you too," she kisses Lina's forehead, making her smile shyly.

"Anyway, what did you girls feel from Gify?" I ask.

"The same as Alissa, except 'paradise' was the warmth of the sun," Hana says.

"Yeah, I felt incredible sweetness," Roxanne says.

"I felt like I was being hugged really tight," Ciel says.

"I felt safe and comfortable," Lina says.

"Kweh!" Aoi felt big and strong.

"Did he show the feelings you have to each other?" I ask.

"He showed ours," Hana says with a beaming smile, she pulls Roxanne into a hug," I felt something clinging on my back very hard.

"I... felt like a warm and comfy blanket was all over me," Roxanne says with a blush, she averts her eyes.

The other girls just shake their heads.

-

I help Lina replace the broken tooth on Hana's sword with the use of [Manipulate Metal]. I think that soon Lina will learn this spell.

"Say, Hana, didn't you deal with snotty nobles like Ankara on your travels?" Roxanne asks.

"Yeah," she stops massaging Roxanne's head, "Well, most of the annoying ones wanted to dangle their little cocks in front of me to suck so the reasons I dislike them are different than why I dislike Ankara."

Alissa lifts her eyes from her book.

"You swear too much, Hana, you should change this behavior," she says with a slight disapproving tone.

"Hmm... That would be hard..." Hana turns her head away, "After I learned [Taunt] these things became ingrained in my mind."

Alissa rolls her eyes.

"But how did you deal with the nobles?" Roxanne asks.

"Mostly ignoring, if they try to brag you act dumb and uninterested, that squashes their motivation to talk to you."

"Not like you had to try hard to act dumb."

Hana flicks her forehead.

"Ow..." Roxanne rubs the reddening skin.

"You deserved it" Hana looks at her with cold eyes.

"I did," Roxanne smiles, unrepentant.

"Anyway," her warmth comes back, "Others try to buy you, there's no way than just flat out denying them, if you leave any detail uncertain they will come back and keep insisting."

"The only one you would sell yourself to is Wolfy," she taps Hana's scales on her cheek.

"Don't even need to sell, I would have stolen him for myself if I wasn't a Blood Slave," her man-eating gaze strikes me, giving me a chill. "Ankara is the last kind, he's a little bitch, you gotta walk carefully with him. You must always keep your distance, you can't give him a reason to talk to you, you have to appear as unapproachable as possible, then he will leave you alone. Problem is, you can't really offend him, that just makes the stubborn idiot to come after you harder."

"That's going to be difficult," I say.

"Ankara would use whatever he has to get what he wants, I bet he's a schemer like Vanea," anger flickers on her voice, "The best way to avoid fighting him is keeping away from him."

The best way to play a rigged game is to not play.

"You don't have to swallow your pride, Wolfy," Ciel says, "You just have to make sure you deny him without offending him."

"Alright, I get it. I guess it's not really a good thing to have the group leader be hot-headed."

Lina hugs me and smiles. From the few expressions she shows I know this one means pride.

"Better you than me, I would have blown off on him already," Hana says, then she smiles bitterly, "Father would always deal with these types when they started to get too annoying, I was never good at being delicate with the nobles."

"I have a feeling that none of us is particularly experienced or comfortable in dealing with these kinds of nobles," Alissa says, she looks to the girls and their expressions tell they agree with Alissa, although they do not express it openly.

"I guess this is just one of the jobs of a leader, no job is perfect," I shrug.

Alissa gives me a sympathetic look, not even she wants to save me from this.

I heal Hana before we sleep. Alissa snatches Gify and curls around him. I don't think that nature spirits sleep, but he started snoring in a cute high pitched voice a minute after that.

Tonight Roxanne clings to me with a silly smile, her tail caressing any part of my body it could reach.

Today is the 13th.

-

My [Blessing Magic] and [Mana Control] increased by 1 (now 4+17 and 0+10). Yesterday's large area casting helped.

Alissa groans as she sits on the chair, I cast [Heal] on her.

"It wasn't like that yesterday," she says.

Lina seems to be looking at Alissa with a lot of worry.

"Don't worry, little Lina," Roxanne says with an evil grin, "You will definitely survive when Wolfy's - rips - open."

Lina fidgets, her mouth moves but no word comes out. Ciel massages her eyes as she chews her food.

"I don't even feel disgusted. We are definitely not a normal family," she says.

"Slowly we all sink into depravity," I smile -.

Fortunately for us, we chose a room far away from the others so they didn't hear a thing from us. We finish our breakfast and go find Lyle, his groups are finishing theirs.

"We will leave an earth elemental and a fire elemental, they will stay at the door so don't go out. I allowed you to command them during battle, but the first order is to avoid it. I can see and hear through the earth elemental so if something bad happens I will know," I say.

Lyle sighs and nods.

"Shame we couldn't see you guys fighting," Gwinevere pouts.

I'm seriously unsure if she's a lesbian or if she simply enjoys carnage, maybe a bit of both.

"Then we will be off."

They wave to us and we leave.

"You okay with leaving, Lina?" I ask.

She raises her head to me and her gloomy eyes brighten with a small smile.

"It's okay, I'm not letting you fight without me."

Oof, my heart.

We walk fast and reach the hedge maze entrance. I summon two Holly's, they will go deeper to each side of the maze, then they will stay at the corners and follow whatever appears.

I leave a [Gate] "coordinate" at the entrance of the maze. I do not want to directly teleport in front of the castle or anywhere in possible view of Ankara.

The Holly's can fly high and look over the maze, but oddly the more they look the less I see, I can't make a mental map of what I see, it seems to be illusion magic. Unfortunately I can't give [Mental Resistance] to my summons. This damn place is enchanted to hell and back.

As we enter the maze I summon a spirit elemental.

"Explore the area," I order.

It crosses the hedge and immediately dies.

"What the…"

"What?" Alissa asks.

I touch the dead hedge row. The leaves crumble to the touch but they immediately reform in a black sludge. I approach my face to the hedge, I feel a very faint amount of mana emitting from it. I push my hand into deeper only to feel it touch something solid. I dig out the surrounding leaves and branches, I see a pure black wall, this is what's emitting trace amounts of mana.

"This destroyed my spirit elemental," I say.

"No cheating for you then," Ciel says with a smile.

"That's just more work for us…"

"Cheater no cheating," she puts her hands on her hips.

I shrug with a smile and we continue.

Roxanne's distance approximations for spells and Lina's inherent architecture affinity give them both a good sense of distance so they are responsible for mapping. Hana and Ciel's senses are better for shorter distances. Alissa has the best sense of distance but she's at the front, behind Hana, she's going be sniffing for traps.

On a particularly long corridor huge bardiches suddenly materialize in the air. A second later they start swinging, it's the cliche trap of swinging weapons.

"That's exactly the same as the symbol on the dungeoneering guild," I say.

"It's not a symbol by mere coincidence," Roxanne says.

"Still, I'm not sure how I feel," I say, "A mix of disappointed and amused. I feel like I'm back into one of my VR games."

"'VR'?" Lina asks.

"Er, I'll explain later."

"I feel like I'm into one of my books," Alissa says with a smile.

Hana frowns.

"You guys are getting way too distracted," she says.

"Hahah...," I laugh awkwardly, "Anyway, no need for all of us to risk crossing. I will go with Hana and open a [Gate] for you all."

I feel a slight displeasure from Alissa but she's learning to trust me more.

Hana keeps one hand over my shoulder and we both keep our shields raised. It's one thing to do this inside of a game, it's another to do it in real life where you can hear and feel the breeze caused by the bardiches cutting the air.

One by one we slowly pass by them. At the end there's no room to wait between each bardiche.

"We gotta run the last stretch," I say.

"Let me carry you, I'll definitely survive a hit from one of these, no big deal."

"The casual way you put yourself in harm's way concerns me."

"I swore to myself I would go through the depths of hell to save you, " she hits her chest with her fist.

"T-that does not mean you gotta hurt yourself so casually!"

Her resolve moves me a little.

"You got a better solution?" She looks into my eyes and raises an eyebrow.

Well...

"No…"

She grins. She stores her shield and sword in her [Item Box], then she picks me up princess-style. I store my sword inside my "Items".

"You actually do like when I carry you like this?"

"Yes, I have no shame."

She laughs, then she breathes twice. The bardiches open up, she runs. Hana is capable of moving faster than me, her longer legs give her even more of an advantage.

The sound of bardiches cutting through the air gives me chills, stale air blows in my face. She stomps the ground loudly and the sound of air being cut increases, the bardiches are cutting closer, she's not fast enough.

A blade appears on her side, I cast [Telekinesis] and hold the blade in place for a second. Another blade appears, I can't cast it again fast enough. Hana hunches over and jumps.

I fall on the ground and roll, I regain my balance and land on my knees. I skid and scrape my gloved hand on the ground. I look back and Hana is sprawled on the ground.

She lifts her head up with a shit-eating grin that makes me mad as hell. Her brigandine has a huge gash on the back, I see a glimmer of the metal plates below the cloth.

"You okay?" I ask.

"Yep, the fur padding absorbed most of the shock."

I breathe in relief. I open a [Gate] for the girls. For this small distance this spell uses very little mana.

"You got hit," Ciel says.

Roxanne runs her fingers through Hana's armor and frowns.

"It's fine," Hana says, she pats Roxanne's cheeks.

Roxanne lightly punches her, not that she could have felt it due to the armor. Lina pulls out a sewing kit and does emergency repairs on the cloth.

We enter another particularly long corridor, a few steps in Alissa stops. She looks down and stomps her foot in the ground.

"It's hollow," she says.

I have to strain myself to notice the difference, the concrete slabs that make up the floor must be quite thick.

"Well, prepare to run at any moment," I say.

"I will keep an eye on the back, it could be another challenge like the bardiches," Ciel says.

"True."

"Hana, I will have to go in the front, there's a big chance that there's a button or wire somewhere," Alissa says.

Hana nods and we slowly move forward.

Half way in Ciel's idea was proven correct, the first hollow slab we stepped on suddenly disappears into darkness.

"RUN!" She yells.

I realize I should have let them wait and use [Gate] like last time...

The slabs fall with a noise of stone scraping on stone, a few seconds later we hear a muffled sound of stone breaking.

Halfway along the corridor, the slabs stop falling. We stop for a second to understand what happened. Alissa taps the slabs again.

"These ones are hollow! Don't stop!" She yells.

The moment we start running again the slabs just behind us start falling. It was a trap in a trap, made for us to waste time looking back.

I lift Lina by the armpits and start running faster. Roxanne slows down, Aoi jumps from Roxanne's shoulder to my back and curls around my neck, she gives a small lick on my cheek.

"I will just float, damn stupid traps," Roxanne mumbles.

Her bat wings materialize, then she crosses her legs and slowly floats after us. With our two snails neutralized we manage to pick up speed and run faster than the falling slabs.

Alissa slows down near the end of the corridor and stomps the slabs again.

"Those are fine."

I slow down and catch my breath. I kiss the forehead of the cute small animal cuddling on my chest and let her down. A minute later Roxanne lands behind us. Aoi gives me another lick then runs back to Roxanne's shoulder and gives her a small lick, eliciting a smile from Roxanne.

"Weren't you supposed to be training your body?" Ciel asks with a bit of sass.

"Ye-yeah..." Roxanne purses her lips, trying to remain expressionless.

"The only way to get that one to exercise is by rubbing her tail," Hana says.

"But if we had to do that regularly either you or Wolfy would die," Alissa says.

Roxanne pulls down the brim of her hat in embarrassment.

"Stop picking on me," she says, muffled by her hat.

"We are just giving your jokes back," Alissa says with a smug smile.

"So it's revenge then," Roxanne narrows her eyes.

Lina nods vigorously.

"At this point it's a cycle, a never ending cycle of teasing," I say.

My words ring true as no one argues against it.

We turn a corner and see a creepy stone dragonoid head standing still mid-air. His long mouth is open and his stone teeth look menacing.

"I don't like that," Alissa says.

She slows down and hides behind Hana.

We approach the statue cautiously, when we are two meters from it its eyes glow green. We immediately hide behind our shields, Ciel covers Roxanne and I feel she's gathering mana.

A voice comes out of the statue. It has two tones, one is a low rumbling that reverberates in our ears and the other is a deep male voice.

"Dwie kaczki przed dwiema kaczkami, dwie kaczki za dwiema kaczkami i dwie kaczki obok dwóch kaczek. Ile jest kaczek?" The voice says, the only thing I understand is the intonation at the end makes me believe it is a question.

"What in the...," I mutter.

"It's talking in the dragonoid language!" Lina exclaims.

"Can you understand?" Ciel asks.

Lina shakes her head behind her shield, her bangs flail wildly.

"We only know about written language, we have little idea to how it's pronounced. The only hint is when wild dragonoids sometimes exclaim things, most likely expletives…"

"I have a hunch this is a riddle," I say.

"Theeen... We are screwed?" Roxanne asks.

"I think so…"

Lina nods in agreement.

"Czas minął, giń!"

We snap our heads forward, the statue's eyes glow red and its open mouth glows. A fireball is spit out towards Hana, she puts her sword in front and the fireball dissipates. Before we can even talk another fireball flies, then another, and another, and another.

"[Firewall]!"

The fireballs stop flying and get absorbed by the literal wall of fire, strengthening the wall but consuming more mana. We see only small bulges where the fireballs try to pass through.

"I have an idea, get down on the ground, now!" I yell.

Awkwardly we lay our bellies down and put our shields above us, I try to cover me and Alissa with mine.

"My mana won't last long like this!" Roxanne yells.

I wait and see the bulges on the wall lower. I hear a sound of stone hitting stone and the fireballs stop a good 60 centimeters above us.

"We can crawl through this! Just keep your heads down!" Hana yells.

"Stop the wall!" I yell.

Roxanne ends the spell and a stream of fireballs flies through our heads, they continue until they hit the end of the corridor, burning the hedge but doing nothing to the black magical wall.

Slowly and with a bit of difficulty we crawl forward and move past the dragonoid's statue. When the last of us crosses, the statue stops spewing fireballs and floats back to its original height.

"That was interesting..." Ciel says, she looks at the statue with a bit of amusement.

"Should we destroy it?" I ask.

"No!" Lina yells, then she drops her head and her cheeks turn red.

"Okay," I smile to her cuteness.

"We could learn a lot about the dragonoid language if we listen to it," Lina says meekly.

Roxanne looks over the corner.

"Well, I think it might be a bit difficult to find it again, mostly because this maze makes zero sense," she says.

"What do you mean?" I ask.

"Lina, come here and check with me, we didn't make a mistake right?" Lina scurries over to Roxanne and they look over the map they were drawing. "If this is right then it makes no sense, this corridor goes way past a path we already passed through. Either the maze changed or the dimensions of our map are completely off. This maze barely looks like a maze too, look at this."

The paths we are taking look more like a root system than a neatly packed maze where every single meter is either an explorable corridor or a wall. The path we took clearly looks like there's a single correct way while every other branch ends into a dead end sooner or later. I have been paying attention to the vision of the summons so I haven't been paying attention to the path we took.

"I will put a 'coordinate' here," I say, "Let's go back and double check the map."

We prepare ourselves and run past the dragonoid head. Fireballs follow after us but Roxanne casts another [Firewall].

We go back to the place where Roxanne thinks the paths intersect and there's nothing wrong there. Now even I can see the maze really isn't warped.

I open a [Gate] back to our previous position and a negligible amount of mana is used. That's odd. I get an Idea

"There's a spell in [Space Magic] called [Warp Space], you can create a house that on the inside is bigger than on the outside," I say.

The girls look confused but Roxanne seems to have an idea of what I'm talking.

"In my world we call it non-euclidean space. Going into a direction doesn't have the same cost as going in another direction.

"Ah, I remember, it's called warped-distances space," Roxanne says, "An example, you could say that going north for 5 minutes at a constant speed would make you walk 10 meters, then you walk south for 5 minutes and you end up walking 20 meters."

"That's incredible, I never heard of a dungeon doing something like this," Ciel asks.

"That's because it's commonly used in gauntlet type dungeons where they try to challenge the perception of the adventurer," I say, "These types of dungeons are sets of challenges. They are extremely rare because at the end of the dungeon there's a reward, once the reward is taken normally the dungeon collapses."

"This also kind of confirms there's a treasure chest at the end of this maze," Roxanne says, "Though I'm not sure why the maze is using warped-distances space, so far it has only made mapping the maze more confusing."

We get the answer to our question at the next corner.

"That's an [Eternal Gate]," Roxanne says.

It's a spell from [Space Magic]. I can only feel trace amounts of mana coming out of it, it's a very well done spell. It's a retangular portal covered by a very thin see-through white cloth, we see the maze on the other side. If it weren't for the "cloth" the portal would be nearly imperceptible.

With zero resistance we pass through the white "cloth" and the maze gets more annoying, behind us there's no way back, this is a one-way portal.

A small light shines through the cracks on the ground.

"Faza druga," a dragonoid voice whispers around us.

We warily wait for a few minutes but nothing else happens so we continue our exploration.

"This looks familiar," Roxanne says.

"Yes, the portal could have sent us back," Lina says.

A few minutes later we reach a corridor of swinging bardiches. I still have the "coordinate" of the first bardiche corridor. I open the [Gate] and I'm taken to the other side of this corridor, we really did get sent back.

"Cheat," Ciel mutters after she crosses the [Gate].

We enter a corridor and see another portal on it.

"This is different, there was only a dead-end here last time," Roxanne says.

"I guess we gotta map it exhaustively, then," I say.

We enter the portal and slowly the lights of our [Spirit Lights] dim until there's nothing.

"Hold each other!" I yell.

I grab Hana and Lina.

"Role call!" I order.

"Here," Alissa says.

"Here," Hana says.

"Here," Lina says.

"Here," Roxanne says.

"Kweh!" Aoi yells.

"Here," Ciel says.

"Gih!" Gify pops into my shoulder and chirps.

I breathe in relief. Everyone tries to cast [Spirit Light] again but nothing happens, Hana breathes fire and I hear small fireballs being cast but neither produces any light.

Suddenly our [Spirit Lights] suddenly produce light again and I nearly jump back in surprise.

The hedges were substituted by mirrors. Our reflections are repeated endlessly all around us, we look pale from the recent fear of darkness. Now there's a ceiling covering us and square arches hold each mirror in place.

"Creepy as hell," Roxanne says.

"Eh, kinda beautiful," Ciel says.

Roxanne looks at her with a crooked smile.

"You know, your sense of beauty is kinda skewed. You enjoy the dungeons way too much."

In other words, Ciel is kind of an adrenaline junkie.

"What?" Ciel shrugs, "I just like seeing new things, things that impress me."

"Yeah, dangerous things, you are addicted to having your heart beat fast."

"I agree with Ciel, dungeons can give us some very interesting experiences," Alissa says.

"You are both weird," Roxanne shakes her head.

"Look who's talking," Ciel says with a hint of sass.

"Ei, I'm a fun person."

"Better being like this than being a blood lusting weirdo," Alissa says.

Now Hana pouts.

"I don't think she was referencing you," I say to Hana.

"Oh..." Hana looks away with embarrassment.

The fact that Hana assumed she was being talked about tells us all we need about how Hana sees herself.

"Just admit you are all weirdos, I'm a weirdo and so is Lina too," I say, Lina looks down in sadness, "It doesn't matter, you are all good people and I love you all."

Though Hana and Alissa are more on the depraved side than on the weird side. Ciel rolls her eyes and gives me a kiss on the cheek.

"You and your honeyed words," she says.

"Well then...?" I look at the others.

After a row of kisses, a lick, and a head rub from Gify we move on. Or try to move on, Alissa gets highly disoriented in this maze.

"Too much movement, it's making me dizzy," she says.

Perhaps her eyes see too much detail. Dozens of our reflections plus our [Spirit Lights] must be too much information for her.

"Focus on the ground, keep looking at the corner between the wall and where the ground should be," I say.

Looking forward disorients yourself too much.

In the end, all this one does is make us waste time, we finally reach another portal and we are taken back into a familiar hedge corridor. We take our time there and have our lunch.

We pass through the falling slabs again, I put a "coordinate" and run along with only Hana, then I teleport the girls. After that we reach again the floating stone dragonoid head, it immediately starts spewing fireballs. This time with a [Firewall] placed right on its face we crawl past it faster.

We enter another portal and I feel trace amounts of mana behind us. Me, Roxanne, and Ciel look up, there's a large and perfectly round boulder floating above us.

"This is bad, RUN!" I yell.

I saw that movie, I saw how this goes.

We start running and the sound of stone scraping on stone can be heard behind us. The hedges aren't 90º degrees corners anymore, they curve smoothly, allowing the large boulder to continue forward without losing much momentum.

After a minute of running Alissa yells.

"The boulder is not getting faster or slower, this is weird!"

"Everyone stop and fire a single spell at it on my signal then run!" I yell.

I keep running for a few seconds longer, then we reach a straight corridor.

"Now!"

We turn around and multiple [Earth Bullets], a [Torrent] a [Wind Hammer] and Aoi's fireball are sent towards the boulder. Cool guys don't look at explosions so we start running again.

We hear the sound of glass cracking and the sound of the boulder stops. We finally look back to see a large amount of glass chunks spread all over the corridor. The boulder only had a small crust made of stone. In the middle a small green gem can be seen, this is what was moving the boulder.

In the next few seconds the chunks turn grey and melt, slowly they evaporate into nothing.

"You know, this place is kinda crazy," I say.

"Agreed," Roxanne says.

"Eh, it's fun," Hana says.

Alissa and Ciel nod in agreement.

"Why do we have to run so much..." Lina says and pouts.

I pat her head. I actually like running, but I understand the short legs of a dwarf make this more tiring for her than for us.

On the last corridor that we explore we see a portal.

"It should be ending soon," Ciel says.

"Good, my feet are tired," Roxanne says.

I feel a sudden burst of mana in front of us, the world loses color, I look forward and Alissa is not there anymore. I look at the ground and a small circular formation is glowing and slowly fading. Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck.

"Teleport trap!" Roxanne yells.

I focus on my connection with Alissa. I can still sense it but I can't discern the distance or the direction. No no no no.

I drop a "coordinate" and jump into the glowing circle.

Nothing happens.

FUCKING FUCK FUCK TITS FUCK CUM PUS FUCK!

Wait! this maze didn't have a single real enemy, she's not in immediate danger. It's okay, she's fine, she's gonna be fine. We have time to find her, lots of time, I can still go back to Lyle, teleport them all on the outskirts of Rabanara and spend however long here to find her. Consequences be damned, I will hide behind Vanea's oath to escape the empire if the fact that I can use [Gate] becomes known.

I look at my Emergency Ring, it glows green. She's fine, everything is fine, we will find her, this is just a prank/hahah funny/you got trolled type of dungeon. Fuck whoever thought random teleportation traps were a good idea, I hope you are burning in hell.

I turn my Emergency Ring green, I'm fine, everything is fine. Wait, fuck, I'm dumb, I'm so fucking dumb, I'm so massively fucking dumb. MORSE CODE, I COULD HAVE TAUGHT HER MORSE CODE SO WE COULD TALK IF SOMETHING EXACTLY LIKE THIS EVER HAPPENED.

I hit my head with my palm. Someone hugs me from behind.

"Wolfy, calm down," Ciel whispers into my ears.

Roxanne, Hana, and Lina surround me. I'm really thankful I have them around to keep me straight.

"I-I'm calm, I just remembered something I could have taught her so we could communicate through the Emergency Rings," I say.

Ciel looks at me puzzled, I think she has an idea of what I'm talking about.

"Maybe we should have bought that lithograph you once talked about," Hana says.

"Yeah, maybe, but we have to focus on the now," Ciel says.

"We are going back and scouring through what we already explored," I say.

The girls nod and we quickly move on. I still have my "coordinates" so the journey will be much faster.

She's not there, we wasted a whole hour searching for nothing. I have us quickly go back to the last portal, I hit myself for not leaving a "coordinate" there.

We return and cross the last portal, while the maze so far was rather straightforward, this part is a complete mess. Corridors that bend smoothly, circles and circles upon circles, corridors that go endlessly only to end up looping on itself. Even the square slabs that were being used to help with measuring distance now are a complete patchwork. Roxanne and Lina have to stress themselves to measure distances and during all this time my anxiety increases.

"We have to move faster," I say.

"We don't know if there would be other traps," Hana says, her eyebrows scrunch up in concern.

I grit my teeth, I'm not the kind to be reckless but the anxiety is pushing me towards that way.

I put down a "coordinate" every minute or so. I only have 7 slots and 5 of them are being used for other places. I step on every slab and walk sideways so I step on every part of the corridor just so I can make sure no one else falls to these traps.

I end up falling to 3 teleportation traps, vindicating my behavior. I yell Alissa's name every so often and also whenever I fall into a trap, but I hear nothing in return.

I return from the fourth trap, I'm getting a headache. This is the 77th coordinate I have put down and no sign of Alissa.

I feel a pain in one of my fingers, I look at it and my Emergency Ring is glowing red. I feel Alissa is on the move, though I still can't feel her direction or distance.

"FUCK! We have to move faster!" I yell.

The girls frown but Roxanne nods.

"Lina, we have to deal with only making a rough sketch, pay attention to the map and nothing else," Roxanne says.

Lina nods and we start jogging.

More curves, more weird bends, more loops, more crossroads. Fuck this place.

"Czas minął, giń!" Whispers a dragonoid voice.

I feel mana gathering behind us. We all turn and ready our shields, a stone dragonoid head appears from behind a corner, his eyes are red and his mouth is glowing.

We instantly chuck multiple spells at it, making it blow into multiple pieces.

"Well, that's a waste," Ciel says.

The pieces start to float again and in a few seconds the dragonoid face is reconstructed.

"Ah fucking hell, run!" I yell.

We turn the corner as a fireball flies pasts us and burns part of the hedge.

We keep running, the map be damned, we are relying on pure memory now. The only good thing being that the stone head doesn't fly fast, Lina isn't going to get tired from running so soon.

I have to do something, I have to find a way to get back to Alissa, some way, somehow. My "Companion" connection with her is useless I have to do something else, the Holly's can't see movement inside the maze, whatever space warp is used here is very strong.

I look at my Emergency Ring, there must be a way that information is transferred between them, it works even in a spatial distortion, there must be something special with it.

"Hold the stone head for me for a second," I say and stop.

I turn my Emergency Ring green and "extend" my soul over it. I feel something and then it's gone. I turn it off then on again. Same thing, there's really something going on. It uses a single point of my mana to work, it's sending that mana somewhere.

I focus all my attention on that ring and turn it. I felt something, it went north-west.

"Done! Move!"

I see that the stone head is decreasing its regeneration time, soon enough it might be unstoppable.

We run more and I stop again, still north-west.

I fell on a teleportation trap, I immediately come back.

We run and stop again, west.

We run and stop again, west.

We run and stop again, north-west.

We run and stop again, north.

I fell on another teleportation trap, I come back with the stone head almost on top of me. My sword eats the fireballs as I catch up with the girls. The fireballs are quite powerful, I think I can only eat about 5 of them before the emellanat melts.

We run and stop again, north.

"ALISSA!" I yell.

We run and stop again, north.

We run and stop again, north.

"ALISSA!"

"WOLF!"

FUCKING FINALLY.

Alissa appears on a corner, color comes back to my world. I run up to her and fall on another teleportation trap. FUCK YOU MAZE!

I come back to a deathly pale Alissa, she immediately runs up to me. I hug her tight, the sweet smell of her hair fills my nose. Stupid fucking dungeon.

"We have to go!" Hana yells.

I look away from the face of my love to see that we are cornered by the stone heads on both sides.

"Move forward!" I yell and release Alissa.

Alissa's stalker must still be weaker than ours. We blow it up and run past it.

Alissa guides us through the path she didn't take, her memory is quite good. We loop a few times back into already explored territory but we slowly map out this last part of the maze.

Lina and Roxanne tire out again, me and Hana have to carry them.

A few minutes after I notice the heads are not following us anymore. We continue exploring and meet up face-to-face with one of the heads, we run away and the stone head stops at a certain point.

"What the hell?" I mutter.

This happens twice, there's a small area that it seems the heads do not move past.

"The end must be around here!" Roxanne exclaims.

Shit, that's true.

We slow down and carefully map the area. Ciel carries Lina when my arms get tired. After a spiral we reach a portal.

Beyond the portal is a very long wooden chest, it's gilded with gold and silver, a golden dragonoid face is gilded on the front.

"Finally..." I mutter.

We release our breaths and nearly collapse, the tension of the chase slips away.

We slowly walk up to the chest. Alissa fires an arrow on it and we stand ready.

Nothing happens.

"Good, no mimic," Ciel says.

I approach the chest and put a hand on the handle.

"Together now," I say.

We all lift up the chest lid.

There's a beautiful spear inside it. The shaft is made of a piece of brown wood with multiple tin black circles on it. There's a single gem above the area where normally one would grip it one handed. The shape of the tip is simple, it is made of glossy grey wood. There's an intricate wavy pattern carved all over it and filled with silver.

"An elven spear," Alissa says.

Roxanne nods in agreement.

"From the High Forest, specifically," she says.

The elves from the High Forest use wood on their weapons. They can harden it and enchant it to have similar strength and edge to steel.

"I guess this means this dungeon is just a fragment of dragonoid culture instead of being a proper tomb," Lina says with a hint of disappointment, "No way a high elven spear would be found inside it otherwise."

I put points on [Wood Appraisal].

"The shaft is made of high quality heartwood from the Hearthtree while the tip is made from the bark of the Tree of the Stalwart."

"No idea what this means but I assume it is good," Hana says, her eyes glued to the spear.

"Same," I shrug.

Ciel looks enviously at Hana, her glaive is more versatile but it seems this spear is enchanted. Hana picks the spear and pours mana in it, it's 2 meters tall and in a second it stretches to 2.5 meters tall.

"Now that's amazing," Hana says, nearly drooling.

"Hopefully it won't break," Roxanne says.

"If a high elven spear breaks easily I will stab the nearest golden elf with it," Hana says and chuckles.

We hear a hiss going upwards and an explosion, we look up and fireworks fill the sky. Multiple colors and shapes, explosion upon explosion upon explosion fills the cave with light and a rainbow of sparkles.

"Gratulacje, wygrywasz!" A very loud dragonoid voice yells, it shakes our bones and nearly hurts our ears.

The cave turns silent and a chill runs trough my back.

"We have to go," I say.

I open a [Gate] back to the outside of the maze.

The elementals at the entrance to the castle saw and heard the fireworks, a space mage popped his head out of the castle for a second to see what was happening. There is no doubt in my mind that the undead inside that forest have seen or heard this, we have to run away.

We reach the castle and everyone is at the entrance waiting for us.

I stop in my tracks and nearly trip. One of the Holly's see 6 shadows moving towards her at incredible speed, 5 shadows run past her while one takes flight. It's a white scaled dragonoid with a black glow, destruction types are very sensitive to spells. It charges Holly with a spear and before it strikes I dismiss both Hollys.

"The undead are coming towards us! Run!" I yell.

Everyone's faces pale and Tankar grips his sword.

"Ciel, make sure no one falls behind!" I order.

Her face shows fear for a second, perhaps she thought she could be left behind? Right now she's the best for this. I keep my gaze stern and color returns to her face, she makes up her resolve and nods to me.

"Move!"

I summon a small bird, I tell it to hide and observe at the first gatehouse. We are reaching the second gatehouse when the bird spots the dragonoid undead. I can feel the bird's life slipping away as the undead approach, I dismiss it and form a plan.

We reach the tunnel and I stop.

"Alissa, Ciel, Lina, you three go with Lyle and escort them to the bottom of the tower. Once there you turn the Emergency Ring green. Me, Roxanne, and Hana will hold this tunnel until then."

I dismiss the fire elemental and summon two earth elementals and a wind elemental.

"What!? No!" Alissa yells.

"No time to argue! The undead are almost on top of us! Overload the scaffold and it should be fast!" I pull Alissa close and whisper in her ear, "I can use [Gate] to reach the cave, I need Lyle away so we can fight at full power."

She grits her teeth and clenches her fist. She gives me an angry kiss on the cheek and they run away, I see Lina is extremely anxious. She leaves with 2 earth elementals and the wind elemental. I'm left with the last earth elemental.

Hana pulls out her new spear. She and Roxanne are very tense. Aoi is quiet and focused, her monster nature makes her a natural for combat.

"Let's see how well this holds out," Hana says and smiles fearsomely.

I take away 2 points from [Mana Recovery] and add them to [Earth Magic], making it 2+3, now I can use [Earth Wall].

"We'll be fine, drink an elixir and we can keep them away," I say.

I drink one too and smile to Roxanne. Gify pops into my shoulder.

"Gih, giih, gih!"

Roxanne chuckles.

"What did he say?" I ask.

"Something about lizard barbecue, he wants me to give him a piece of those dragonoids."

I'm unsure how a nature spirit would react to eating undead but whatever, he helped Roxanne relax.

With Hana at the middle and me and the elemental flanking her, the tunnel gets a bit cramped. But that's enough to hold back the undead.

Two minutes later 6 shadowy figures appear. They hide behind their round shields like a phalanx, except there's 3 on top, making it a vertical wall of shields.

I feel my lungs get filled with the smell of acetone, it burns my insides and my eyes water. I feel shivers run through my entire body, my bones instinctively tell me to run, that this presence is wrong. Small particles of dust slowly stop moving and get suspended in the air, another sign of reality bending to the presence of the undead.

The calming feeling of water running through my shoulder clears my head. For a second Gify links our minds, our fears turn into one but so does our courage. We stand our ground united, we are in sync.

They all charge at the same time, a wall of spears thrust into us. They are not using pikes, with this Hana's spear is longer. Her spear bends one of the shields and penetrates it slightly. The elemental takes a spear on the arm, it barely scratches him. Roxanne lets out a [Ice Lance] in the middle, helping Hana hold them back. I cast [Earth Wall] on the ceiling, the top 3 spears get stuck into the wall I made.

I feel mana gathering. Two breaths of fire slip through the shield gaps and get dissipated by mine and Hana's swords. Hana is holding her sword with her shield hand just for the spell"absorbing effect.

"[EXPLOSION]!"

Blood and small pieces of meat fly through the gaps, all shields retreat except the one on the middle which falls down on the ground. A pool of meat and blood is all that remains, I see the 5 dragonoid eyes peek around their shields. They look at their fallen brethren.

"Spirits!" I order.

We all cast another [Spirit Light] and throw the balls towards them. The undead retreat even more.

"Humanoids, surrender. None of you will escape us," I hear an ethereal dragonoid voice, it's raspy and shaky.

There's no reason to provoke them, we keep our mouths shut.

I feel the blood drops that spilled on my face suddenly move, I get frightened and nearly smack myself. The blood drop escapes through my hand and floats back to where the undead exploded.

His body slowly pieces together and a few minutes later he's standing again, it's the destruction type dragonoid. He has white scales, black lines that wave and glow, two long spiral horns that circle many times over his temples, and a pair of penetrating eyes.

"Humanoid, we will turn you into servants. Surrender now and you will suffer no torture" His voice is not ethereal anymore, it's only slightly raspy and deep toned.

Yeah, no.

He looks at us for a few seconds, then he grabs his shield and returns to the shield wall.

"So be it then, you made your choice," the raspiness of his voice is gone.

The more time they take the better for us. The shield wall reforms and move forward, they strike the [Spirit Lights] and they disappear in a flash. I see their spears tremble, it takes them a minute return to normal.

The wind picks up dust and nearly blinds us. I feel a lump of mana is coming, I lift my shield and a blunt strike of compacted air hits me. I look forward and the tip of a spear is coming towards me, I parry with ease, the elixir is doing its job.

Small lumps of earth fall in front of us. My [Earth Wall] is being dismantled by the destruction type.

They strike again and again and again, merely trying to overpower us. It's good for us that their mana powers are low, their breaths and wind strikes are weak. They lost some of their affinity to their mana once they turned undead.

We are slowly pushed back into the tunnel, better for us as it got cramped. Suddenly 2 of them break off and stay behind, I get a bad feeling from this. I retreat from the line and stay in front of Roxanne.

The undead try to trample us over, they try a suicide charge. I cast [Earth Wall] twice and close the tunnel, trapping 2 of them in the middle of my walls. Their bodies are crushed and nearly split into two. One of them dies and Hana cuts down the other, slowly their bodies turns into grey mush and seep back behind the wall.

I put down my wooden log barricade and fuse it with the [Earth Wall].

My wall and the logs are slowly chipped away by the fire and wind types. Once a hole is opened I get a feeling of "death". To my side a rumbling sound comes out and the wall crumbles, the falling stone simply disappears. A spinning metal drill pops out followed by the metal and destruction type dragonoids.

Fuck.

"HANA!" I yell.

The drill turns into a spear and is thrown towards Hana. She looks behind and barely avoids getting skewered. The metal dragonoid charges her while the destruction dragonoid comes to me.

His claws strikes my shield, scales fly and a large scratch appears on it. I can't take a full hit from those claws, undead corruption is stacking with his destruction magic, scary.

An [Ice Lance] hits him in the chest and I cast a [Earth Bullet] on top of it. He's sent flying back into his hole.

"HUMAAAAAN!" He bellows.

The destruction dragonoid is pinned to the wall deep into the tunnel.

Hana abandons the front line and charges the metal dragonoid, who's generating a new spear on his hand. The earth elemental walks forward and holds the dragonoids as their claws rip it to shreds. Hana casts [Earth Bullet] into the spear shoulder of the dragonoid, having his strike veer off course and allowing her to pierce his throat with her spear.

I cast [Earth Wall] twice and close again the tunnel. My head explodes in pain, overuse.

"[EXPLOSION]!"

The destruction dragonoid has his body turn into very small giblets as the tunnel trembles with her spell.

Hana pushes the metal dragonoid into the wall and pins her spear into the stone. This is an incredibly sharp spear.

I cast [Entangling Vines] in the metal dragonoid, he gets bound to the wall. Hana struggles for a second but she manages to pull out the spear.

"RUN!" I yell.

I throw an Escape Bomb behind us. It shouldn't make them run but it should at least annoy the shit out of them and slow down their advance for a moment longer.

The tunnel is quite long, we have lots of room for another ambush. I drink an MP potion and pray my overuse doesn't stack too much. We all drink an HP potion, the corruption of the undead already took a few points from us, it's doing more damage than the elixir can heal.

I get a whiff of the Escape Bomb and my stomach churns. That thing smells like what I believe rotten goblin ass sweat would smell like, it provokes an instinctual need to puke.

The earth elemental is killed, I stop and cast a small [Earth Wall] and narrow down the tunnel. [Earth Wall] is easier to destroy than a normal wall, so I make it seem similar to the tunnel stone, this way they might not realize it's a spell.

Hana switches her spear for her sword. We wait a good 10 minutes, they are taking their time regenerating.

I hear the sounds of claws hitting stone. It grows louder and louder.

The first ones to come are two dragonoids glowing green.

"[FIRESTORM]!"

They burn greatly before the fire dragonoids can interrupt the storm. I see Roxanne grimace and lean on her staff, she's suffering from overuse too. Hana hacks at the burned wind dragonoids and decapitate them, immediately their bodies start to slowly reconstruct.

The next one that comes forward is the metal dragonoid, his body is covered in metal and he looks like the Silver Surfer. Hana fires her breath while me, Roxanne, and Aoi chucks fireballs. Aoi seems to be unloading all of her power on this attack.

The dragonoid tries to move forward but it is using all its power and concentration to keep his metal from burning him.

The moment Hana's fire breath runs out I pounce forward and slash at the dragonoid. He's slightly burned and receives a large gash on his chest, he staggers backwards and Hana decapitates him. The wind dragonoids are also partially burned by the fire and get their revival delayed.

The next to come are the fire dragonoids, they come full force trying to overpower Hana.

"[Water Wall]!"

Both are caught into the wall and struggle to get out, their mana refuses to leave their bodies. Roxanne holds her head in pain, her breath is ragged.

Hana slashes at the water and it turns red with blood. Suddenly it dies out, Roxanne didn't dispell it, the destruction dragonoid came.

"You shall pay for this!" The white dragonoid yells.

He flies towards us. I feel a lot of mana coming from him, his claws pierce Hana's shield and vambraces, it enters her arm. I believe this is enough to poison her, we have to get back to Ciel.

I cast another [Earth Wall] and my head spins.

The dragonoid is squished into the wall, allowing Hana to get herself free from its claws and to slash his arm off. She grimaces in pain and she's one who's used to dealing with pain.

I slash at the legs of the dragonoid, I cut a foot off. Aoi chucks fireballs at the easy target, his eyes get burned.

"Resistance is futile, you will serve me!" The dragonoid yells.

"Run!" I yell.

"I WILL FIND YOOOOO-...!" He screams, his voice booms and reverberates. Then Aoi chucks more fireballs and his scream is cut off.

This time we don't stop, the fear of that voice gives us a final boost in speed, but my lungs burns so much I'm getting out of breath. Roxanne is the one who stops first.

"I'm sorry... I can't... run... anymore," she nearly whispers.

"It's okay…"

Hana's arm is necrotic, half her forearm is blackened and she's sweating cold, this is the danger of the undead. We get another minute to rest and the ring turns green.

"That's our cue."

I open the [Gate].

"Gih!"

Gify says a quick goodbye and pops out of existence, our connection wears off and I suddenly feel much more tired.

"Thanks, Gify."

We enter the wet cave, it's quite dusty here and there's mana in the air. I look around and see the corpse of a dragonoid, an arrow pierced one of his his eyes. His glow is no more but I can assume it was a wind-type.

"Hana, I don't think we have time to lower down through the scaffold," I say.

"What are you planning?"

"Hold us and use your winds to keep us from hitting the walls. I will dismiss the elementals and use the last burst of mana on [Telekinesis] to keep us from splatting on the ground."

Hana laughs and sighs.

"Fine," she says.

Aoi curls herself on Hana. Hana grabs Roxanne with one hand and holds me with the weakened arm. Roxanne looks pale.

"Hana... I love you," Roxanne says.

"I love you too," Hana smiles and gives her a peck on the lips, "But we are not gonna die, at worst we will get broken legs."

Roxanne grimaces and her legs shake. I dismiss the elementals and the pulley the earth elemental in front of us is holding falls down.

"I love both of you and we are not going to die, not until old age," I say.

"Kweh!"

She loves us all.

Hana jumps without another word and I regret everything.

"AAAAAAAAAAAAH!" Roxanne shrieks.

Hana's wings wrap around us. Aoi seems to be laughing inside her mind, the feeling of flight something she desires greatly. We sway around and Hana's wings scrape on the walls. I feel my body turns cold as the light below us rapidly approaches.

I wished I paid more attention to the physics of Kerbal Space Program, perhaps they could help in calculating the optimal distance for the landing burn.

I let my regrets behind and focus on gathering all my mana, no time to be conservative. I cast [Telekinesis] on me and Hana. I feel the deceleration and get nauseous, my consciousness nearly slips away.

We are too fast, the wind enchantments is making things harder, I have to use it all. My head explodes, my vision and hearing goes away, I only guide myself by the feeling of the wind.

My mana drains like water. Even through blindness I can still see my menu until my mana dips to minus 100, then I blackout.

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Chapter 27: The Price

A note from Manasong

Attention: to conform to the limit of sexual content allowed in a novel, I've censored this chapter. You can look for the uncensored version here.

The symbol "-" denotes a section that got cut for containing sexual content. Also, if paragraphs seem missing, they were also likely censored in an earlier pass where the symbol wasn't used.

I open my eyes and the first thing I see are the orange eyes that I love so much.

"Hello, my love," I say.

She smiles but then pouts.

"Hello, my stupid husband."

"Ouch."

"You..." she frowns in anger and then her expression lightens, "There really wasn't a better way?"

"I don't think so, couldn't risk having the undead reach us. Talking about it, where are we and where's the undead?"

We are in a bed, it's not my tent or bed. Roxanne is sleeping besides us in another bed.

"I found us a safe place. Enough cover for us to hide in a basement or cellar or whatever. I was outside a while ago, the undead spread out but didn't find us."

"Good. Whose tent is this?"

"The twins, these are their beds."

"For some reason I would prefer to get up immediately," I smile wryly, she shakes her head and smiles too, "How long was I out?"

"Two hours."

I give her a kiss on the nose, she brightens up a little.

"Did anyone get hurt?"

"Hana hurt her legs, Ciel already healed her and the corruption. Roxanne scraped on the walls but she ended up floating down safely, though she was very dizzy and tired. Hana held you and Aoi without problems. If you give a point to Ciel in [Light Magic] she can use [Refresh] on Roxanne and we should be fine."

"Can you call her? My body is still heavy."

She nods and reluctantly parts with my body. A minute later I hear the light jingling of scale armor, Alissa came back with Ciel in tow. Ciel is still armored and the shield strapped to her arm is damaged, it was a disposable shield anyways.

"Good to see you up, old man," she smiles at me.

Not really up yet but whatever. I smile and nod back.

"[Refresh]."

Roxanne shivers and stretches herself, she yawns and rubs her eyes. "That felt soo goood," she says.

"How's Hana's arm?" I ask.

"Healed, but it's sensitive," Ciel says, "Her scales will need some [Regeneration], though. Lina is fixing her shield but she needs you to fix the hole in the metal."

"Can we stay the night here? I don't think it's a good idea to walk back yet."

"I think so," Alissa says, "There's space for all tents but they will need to be next to each other."

"We can just use the gag."

Ciel rolls her eyes.

I stand up slowly and Alissa supports me. My body hurts, some vitality was definitely used when my MP reached the negatives.

"[Refresh]."

My bones creak and I feel like stretching myself.

"Oh yeah, that felt really good," I say.

I'm still feeling very tired though, mentally tired.

I put Ciel's extra points back to [Wind Magic].

I go outside the tent and pull ours. The faint sweet perfume of the girls is much better than the smell of leather of the tent of the twins.

This basement is basically a cellar full of broken barrels and broken glass bottles, this once housed dragonoid alcohol. Another tent right next to the one of the twins opens up and the quartet comes out.

"Wolf! Good to see you up again," Lyle says.

"Yeah, that was a close one," I smile bitterly, "Thanks for lending the tent."

Gwinevere grins.

"No problem," says Delwyn and waves his hand dismissively.

I know exactly why they lent it to us.

"Let's stay here tonight, I will summon a few dogs to stay around, they can't see in the absolute darkness but they will be able to hear things."

It seems these undead can perceive the environment through something else other than their eyes.

"Understood. I sincerely thank you for your effort, I realize how close you were to danger," Lyle says and bows.

The twins bow more conservatively and Ankara simply nods. Oh well, progress.

"Don't need to bow, I only did the necessary" -I wave my hand and they straighten up- "We are not completely safe yet."

"Then simply accept my gratitude," he smiles.

"That I will. Now I gotta get the girls on the top back and position some dogs. I'm still tired so after that I will retire to my tent."

"Understood. We already ate dinner, we could share some meat with you if you wish."

"No need, I have my own."

We nod to each other and I turn around, I see the pulley and scaffold are on the ground. I guess the space mages have brought it for me, I put them back into my "Items" and go upstairs.

The upper floor has plenty of chairs and tables, there's a long counter where Tankar and the space mages are staying. Hana, Lina, and Aoi are anxiously looking out through the windows.

I pop my head up and Lina comes running to me as quietly as she can. Her head hits my chest as she hugs me.

"Sorry I got you worried," I say.

Lina shakes her head, rubbing it on my chest.

"I understand what you did and why you did it. But that doesn't change the fact that I was worried," she says, her voice muffled as she buries her head on my chest.

"That's way better than a certain someone."

"I can still hear you!" I hear Alissa say loud just enough that it carries up to our floor.

I smile wryly. Then I pat Lina and kiss the top of her head, she tightens the hug.

I summon 3 Labradors, from what I remember their hearing is excellent. I discreetly also summon a Holly.

"Hana, come down, let's grow your scales and then we fix your armor," I say.

"Sure."

I break the hug and we move to our tent. I spend 30 minutes being hugged by Hana while I use [Regeneration] on her. Her - pillows are the best, Ciel's are just as comfy but hers are more sensitive to prolonged use.

Hana's scales were only a very small stump. As I healed them they visually grew until they were back to her former glory, though they look blunted, now we have to sharpen them again.

"Even the irritation went away. Thanks, Wolfy," she tests her scales by raising and lowering them.

She hugs me and I get a head massage by her - and a brain massage by her hands as a reward.

After that we eat dinner, a simple hot sandwich with bean paste and ground meat.

I use [Manipulate Metal] to heat up our damaged metal equipment. The spell also allows me to slowly mold it without the need for a hammer, unfortunately this reduces the quality of the tempering so it's not a perfect fix.

With the repairing done I release the stress of Alissa and Lina with a skillful use of the gag, I'm not feeling as depraved as I was when we first entered this dungeon.

Today is the 14th.

-

We have a quiet breakfast, no cooking so no smell escapes this basement.

After that we move out, we only use a single [Spirit Light] in low power. I thank the Gods Holly exists, she scans the area and makes sure we are in the clear.

I deliberate if I should cast [Rainbow Shield] on us. With emellanat we haven't even taken a proper spell for it to help. It doesn't activate unless it reaches my skin so my shield prevents it from showing its usefulness.

Eh, I will cast it, better safe than sorry.

"The dogs heard some movement yesterday so make sure to keep noise to a minimum," I say.

The quartet looks apprehensive but nod in understanding,

We slowly move through the middle of the road to avoid tripping over the debris. Huddling up together we sneak by the ruins.

Holly sees movement in the distance, I extinguish our light.

"Lay down!" I whisper anxiously.

The floor is dusty and nearly makes me sneeze.

We spend tense minutes like this. The nearly imperceptible figure moves about the ruins without a set goal, it meanders through the streets. When it comes closer my heart beats faster, then it moves away and I relax. Then it comes back and the mood swings stress me out.

Eventually it moves away completely.

"Ok, let's go."

I'm extremely scared of being ambushed at the exit. My only comfort is that it is possible that the undead do not know where the exit is, monsters are born in a dungeon without knowledge of its layout. There are quite a few paths that take us to other places so if they don't know where the exit is they would need to guard every door.

Alissa's ears twitch and turn to our left.

"I hear metal hitting metal," Alissa says.

"The undead must be fighting guards," Hana says.

"The undead are not considered monsters of the dungeon anymore so it's possible the guards recognize them as intruders. That or the undead are simply trying to gather more followers," Ciel says.

"That destruction undead seems smarter than the average," I say, "It is possible only he has a power similar to the [Create Undead] skill. He said 'followers', this means they are bound to him, somehow. Which means there might be a limit to how many souls he can bind."

This is nearly the limit of my knowledge on the undead. There's not much information on that skill, possibly to prevent other people from trying to acquire it.

"Yes, there should be a limit or he would have turned the entire dungeon into an undead army," Ciel says.

We are casually chatting about this because Holly gives me confidence no undead is nearby, but the quartet and even Tankar seem to grow even more tense as time passes. I see one of the space mages reciting a silent prayer.

Our way is clear of guards, allowing us to progress quite fast.

"I smell corruption," Alissa says, "They must have spent some time here... I smell blood too, I guess they fought a guard."

"Well, they cleared a path for us, so we gotta thank these orc-brains," Hana says.

A minute later everyone notices the brutalized and rotting corpse of a dragonoid. Lyle shivers and even Gwinevere seems pale.

"You fought something that did this?" Lyle points to the corpse.

"You saw Hana's arm yesterday?" I ask back.

"I didn't, her wound was hidden by her vambraces."

"Yeah well, a single attack pierced her shield and rotted half her forearm."

Lyle frowns and looks sickened at the corpse.

"I sincerely underestimated their power," he says.

"Not just you..." I whisper.

I take a look at Ankara and he's gritting his teeth. Tankar looks pensive, perhaps he's remembering his stupid words of fighting the undead by himself.

"That wound was the most painful and horrible thing I have ever felt, and I'm a masochist," Hana says.

Delwyn massages his eyes but his expression quickly turns serious.

"These undead must be quite the danger to adventurers then," he says.

"Yes, which is why killing undead is very profitable," Ciel says.

"You didn't learn any spells against the undead, Miss Ciel?"

"No, I was simply a warrior priestess and then a healer when I was working for the temple."

If I had more spells unlocked I could possibly teach her. The higher levels spells at [Light Magic] school are one of the few ways to permanently deal with the undead. Fucking terminators, that's what these goblin dicks are.

We finally reach the long hall without any more encounters. It should be noon already but no one wants to stop. Alissa runs ahead with Holly and then comes back half an hour later.

"It's clear," she says.

"Alright, let's run from this place," I say.

Lyle and Delwyn break into a full blown sprint as we all run towards safety. With relieved breaths we reach the large double doors.

"Honestly we shouldn't stop," Alissa says "Let's keep this pace as long as we can. The sooner we leave The Smirk, the better."

The 4 turtles look at me concerned.

"Just because we left the dungeon doesn't mean they won't keep following us, they are not bound to the dungeon," I say.

The 4 make pained faces but even Tankar won't help them on this matter.

"Let's just eat a snack first," Lyle says.

"Alright."

On the other side of the double doors we stuff our faces with sandwiches and drink water as fast as we can.

"Don't eat too much or you will puke," Hana says.

Lyle looks at his massive sandwich with puppy eyes and returns half of it to the space mage.

We can't run on the difficult ground of the cave but we maintain a quick pace. After a long march and a few blown Skritters we finally we reach the comforting and oppressive darkness of The Smirk. Halfway there.

We keep our hurried pace, it's been so long since I last saw the sun even I am getting anxious.

Alissa suddenly comes back from scouting.

"I saw lots of tracks," she whispers.

"Any idea on the number of people?" I ask.

"Seems most are two-man groups, standard scouting parties."

"Keep close to us, don't scout too far and make sure our rear is safe too."

"Understood."

I signal the girls to gather and spread them around us. Hana front, me right, Lina left, Ciel back, and Roxanne middle. I summon a Shad and a bird at the same time to cover my spell casting.

Lyle comes towards me.

"Wolf, is something wrong?" He asks.

"There are too many scouting parties on this forest. Something is going on, alert the others."

Lyle pales and tenses up, he quickly marches back and spreads the news. This has been a bad day so far.

Gify pops into my shoulder.

"Gih…"

Danger is coming. Godsdammit. I turn my emergency ring green.

"Girls!" I wave my hand and they come to me, " Gify says danger is coming, we are going to wait and prepare for an attack."

"We shouldn't show our emellanat. If they are thieves they will be very enticed in stealing it," Hana says.

Lina and Ciel are the only ones with protection from spells now.

"Agreed, prepare for battle," I say, then I point to Lyle, "Hide behind a tree, this could turn ugly.

The quartet pales and moves. The girls faces harden but Lina seems angry.

"Are you okay?" I ask.

"I am ready, I will do it," she answers, resolute.

"We will do it," I say.

She nods to me and looks towards the woods, waiting.

A minute later Alissa comes running back.

"What is it?" She asks.

"Gify said danger is coming."

She stares at him and nods. She nocks an arrow on her bow. Just another minute and Alissa turns back to me again.

"Twenty people are running towards us," she says.

Aaaaah, shiiiite.

"We are going to assume they aren't good news, we must not get surrounded so I will use warning shots," I summon two wind elementals, "Pay attention to my signal."

They nod and Alissa holds my hand, I'm trembling again.

"We did this already, we will be fine," she says.

"Gih!"

Yes, Gify is here too to keep me straight. He shares Alissa's feelings and a wave of bravery, anxiety, and anger washes over me. In the end this helps keep me focused. The flood of emotions stuns us for a moment.

"Your fear is a bit overwhelming," Alissa says, her breath is haggard.

"Your anger too," I say and kiss her hand.

I can feel an incredible need to strangle the men coming towards us. Regardless of their intentions they are causing us grief. They dare act so aggressively, they strut towards us as if they are immune from harm!

Alissa steels herself and nods to me. I see the fire in my eyes mirrored in hers, for now we are in sync.

Gify pops out of existence.

The wicked shall be slain by my hand!

We spread in our usual battle formation and draw our weapons. I take my time to look at our situation.

Alissa is stoic but I know the angry storm inside her heart. A broadhead arrow nocked into her enchanted warbow, she keeps both types of arrows on the quiver hanging from her waist. She looks almost like a statue, ready to react to any movement.

Roxanne looks sharp and confident, the spherical gem on her black metal staff changes from red to blue and back with simplistic beauty. Anyone who looks at her would know she's dangerous, a clear contrast to her air-headed nature. She grips the staff harder and the gem pulses with a faint light.

Hana shows a mix of anger and excitement. Certainly not the face you want to see when a tall dragonkin charges towards you with its wings spread and sword held high. She stands straight and tall, her spear and shield pointing forward and ready. None shall pass through her guard.

Ciel shows a very serious look, it does not fit her kind and adventurous mood. It gives me even more motivation to fight hard so I can see her smile again. Her green glaive stands upright, threatening with a chop anyone who dare come close. Her face may be cute and round but her eyes show the calmness of experience, it would be a mistake to underestimate her.

Lina shows a dark look, anger is clear on her face and I fear she might turn too reckless. The quiet little girl should not be forced into a situation like this, I pray she retains her "Sanity". Her hammer and heater shield do not combine with her slim arms and cute face, but it's her expression that will make others wary. She has the eyes of someone who will crush anything.

The quartet of cowering little animals hides behind a tree alongside the praying space mages. Lyle anxiously grips a simple simple metal staff with a gem that flashes with faint light every few seconds. Delwyn keeps his eyes closed as he mutters a silent prayer. Gwinevere holds a red wand with black vein-like carvings, her eyes race about as if she's lost on what to do. Ankara looks pale and his hands tremble as he holds a beautiful and ornate long sword, it almost looks ceremonial. Tankar stands in front to protect them with a plain but well maintained long sword. His expression is completely emotionless and he breathes deeply to keep his emotions in check.

From the way we just came I hear lots of footsteps slowly increasing in volume. Small lights come out of the trees and quickly approach us. A large group of men wearing reliable"looking padded leather armor appears. Their most expensive equipment seems to be their metal plus grey scale kite shields. There are 7 spearmen with shields, 5 long swordsmen, 5 archers and 3 robed mages. The mages use simple wooden staffs with no gems.

They quickly move into a line and start to spread around us.

"[Lighting Bolt]!"

I cast it towards the front of the man at the flank and everyone stops on their tracks.

"You will not surround us," I say, mustering all my austerity.

"Easy the're, mate. We a're not he're fo'r a fight," A scarred dark-skinned man approaches.

He's the tallest of them all, he has an enviable black beard. He pronounces his "r" with a retroflex flap instead of the american way.

"Then for what reasons would you try to surround us without a single word?" I ask.

"Just making su're we a're all on a nice, comfo'rtable position to talk," he spreads his arms and grins, his round face gets rounder. I only see mischief in his eyes.

"Yes, talk, what reason do you have to follow us?" Hana says.

His beady eyes scan over everyone, he spends a moment longer at Hana's spear, then stops at me. He narrows his eyes, his face turns into one of deep thought.

"Well. We a're he're to make a simple t'ransaction," his face softens and he smiles.

"Not interested, go away," I say.

"Not that simple" -he shakes his head- "We simply need the fou'r lit'tle noble kids behind you and nobody gets hu'rt. No need to fight, we a're not wicked."

Good, it's not related to Darean.

"Impossible!" Tankar barks.

"Not fo'r you to decide, I'm af'raid," the man lowers his head in mocking apology.

"What are you going to do with them?" I ask.

"Simple. We need money, ransoming nobles give loads of money," he grins, his teeth are shining white.

I look at Tankar. His expression shows so much anger in those eyes that I believe that if I decided to sell them he would cut me down immediately.

"Perhaps we could make a different trade, we have some very valuable things with us," I say.

"Oh, it would be ha'rd to offe'r me something mo're valuable than those lit'tle nobles," he looks at me dubiously.

The men around him tense up, they are about to strike, maybe I have a bit more time.

"Lina, turn around your shield for a second."

She scores her shield on the ground and turns it.

"Emellanat!" One of the men exclaims.

"We have more," I say.

The men relaxes, greed is like a drug for them.

The leader pauses for a second. He scans our equipment, he spends a bit of time looking at the transparent, yet still very visible, crystal at Roxanne's ungloved hand. It's my [Rainbow Crystal] spell.

"How much?"

"One single handed sword, one bastard sword, another small shield, one glaive, and one war hammer. You see we aren't showing these weapons since they could attract... Unwanted attention."

The leader scans me again, he must be evaluating if I'm lying or not.

"We are going to need more," he finally says, then he points to Aoi, "And the d'ragon too."

Greedy fucking bastards!

I look at the girls, they all keep a poker face, even Aoi. She should understand the words by now but the only expression on her dragonic face is that of hunger.

"I carry a lot of money with me, 90 gold coins. I'm sure the little nobles must carry some more with them," I say.

"Why would you car'ry so much?" The leader asks.

"I don't trust banks and I'm a well-paid adventurer. I wouldn't be escorting four nobles if I were cheap."

Now he stares at the two wind elementals. Judging your chance of survival?

"Throw us the weapons, now."

Too bad it is zero percent.

"Okay," I look at the girls and switch to English, "Attack, don't hold back."

The advantage of secret signals.

"What did you say...?" The leader asks.

Roxanne's clothes suddenly ruffle wildly.

*Bloosh!* An instantaneous burst of mana and the head of a mage explodes with a watery sound. [Rainbow Crystal] shows its power.

The bandits look back and freeze at the gory scene behind them. The ones hit by the blood seem to be pale, one man pukes.

Fucking thieves are gonna get what they deserve.

"[Discharge]!" I cast.

"[Firestorm]!"

"[Wind Storm]!"

"[Earth Bullet]!"

"[Earth Bullet]!"

An arrow and a fireball flies.

"AAAAAAAH!"

"GAAH!"

"HEEEEL-..."

3 Spearmen get incinerated by Roxanne, 3 long swordsmen get cut down by Ciel, 1 mage is killed by Alissa, 3 archers get wounded by Hana, Lina, and Aoi's spells. The survivors are being shocked by me. The last enemy mage interrupts the area spells. Tankar sprints. Hana draws her breath.

"You are now level 22."

*FOOM!* Hana spews fire. With my spell stunning them they can barely raise their shields to defend themselves, 3 spearmen get badly burnt.

"UAAAAH!"

"HELP ME, HELP ME!"

"Hold the leader," I order Shad.

I stop my spell. Hana flies towards the last unharmed spearman and skewers him instantly with her spear. Lina charges a long swordsman. Another arrow flies and enters the eye of an archer. Ciel charges forward and defends herself from an arrow with her shield. An [Ice Lance] explodes the head of the last mage.

I cast [Rush] and charge past the front line towards the archers. Arrows fly past me and get stopped by the wind elementals. I approach one archer and slash at his arm, my blade feels resistance before it even touched him, it's [Wind Armor]. But it was weak, his arm is cut off regardless, then he falls back and draws his dagger.

"GUAA-...!" The screams of the leader gets muffled by a shadow that covers his entire body. He swings his long sword in desperation but it's useless now that he's covered.

I slash downwards, I cast [Telekinesis] and his measly weapon can't parry my attack. My sword gets buried in his head and I have to cast [Telekinesis] again to take it out.

Lina fights the last long swordsman with ferocity. His morale is broken and his attacks are desperate. Lina enters his range, his sword slides past her neck, [Wind Armor] slows the blade, leaving only a shallow wound. On the way back the sword scrapes her helmet as Lina pushes the sword away with her shield. She swings her hammer and smashes him on the knees.

Hana's leaves her spear inside the dying man, she draws her sword and flies to the nearest burned spearman. His face is partially burned and his shield is still on fire. He weakly raises his shield to parry and gets cut in the shoulder for his lack of strength.

Ciel reaches a burned spearman and quickly slices his armor. [Sharp Blades] makes quick work of the padding once she opens up the leather with her stabs. To make things worse for him his shield is on fire and his leather armor on both arms is so hot it's burning his skin.

Tankar reaches the last burned spearman. His spear arm is burned so even with his reach he has trouble keeping Tankar away, who starts to add more wounds to his damaged arm.

Another archer receives and arrow to the eye and dies. I use [Rush] to reach an archer with a broken hand from Lina's [Earth Bullet]. He parries my sword and displays some modicum of skill, he's desperately trying to keep me away.

A screaming archer that had his face burned by Aoi has half his head explode as another fireball from her hits him.

A [Torrent] hits the face of the long swordsman fighting Lina and he falls backwards. Lina activates [Spirit of Gaia] and strikes down his chest with her hammer. It caves in exactly where his heart should be.

Hana swipes away the spear of her opponent and locks her shield with his. She swipes his foot and he falls on the ground. She steps on him and stabs him in the face.

Ciel's opponent quickly loses strength. A [Wind Hammer] at point blank range crumbles his posture, allowing Ciel to stab him in the lungs. She quickly pulls back the blade and stabs him in the heart.

Tankar cuts off the arm of the spearman and jabs his sword into the collarbone. The spearman staggers in pain and gets his throat cut.

The last man standing desperately tries to keep his life. The attack was so fast no one had the opportunity to register the carnage and to surrender. My opponent glances at the corpses of his friend and his movements dull.

I use [Telekinesis] to swipe his sword away and bash him in the gut with the brim of my shield. His [Wind Armor] saves him from puking, so I cast [Lightning Bolt] to stun him. I finish him with a slash and a stab to the neck. He falls backwards and chokes on his blood.

He's going to die in a few seconds. I stop and take a moment to look at the aftermath. Gods, what have I done. This scene is carnage.

The victims of Ciel's [Wind Storm] are still bleeding from uncountable wounds, they are unconscious from blood loss. One victim from Roxanne's [Firestorm] is crawling away, barely conscious, his entire body a black char. Those with their throats cut struggle and squirm as their consciousness fades away. The leader passed out from the pain, Shad still covers his entire body. Aoi glides down from Roxanne's shoulder, she stops by a half burnt corpse and starts to eat it.

I feel sick, I drop my sword and shield and find a corner without blood to lay down. Hana and Alissa are finishing off the ones still suffering, Ciel is reciting a prayer.

"Another conflict between humanoids has finished. I apologize to the Gods for the wasted lives, we failed in maintaining unity," she closes her eyes, "Please guide their souls to a better place were they could be useful to civilization again."

"Let your next life be on a better place for this one was wasted here," I mutter my prayer.

We could have let them surrender. We killed everyone except one. We should have let them surrender. Fuck...

Roxanne sits down next to me with a painful expression. She lays down her staff on her lap

"Overuse again?" I ask.

"Yep... What about you?"

"I'm fine... I'm just feeling sick."

Roxanne's furrows her eyebrows.

"Are you really fine?"

"Well... Couldn't we have asked them to surrender?"

"Yeah, but. It would be very inconvenient and even dangerous to let some alive, they could try to run, they could be an assassin in disguise and try a suicide attack, they could bear a grudge and use their connections to get to us."

"When people start to kill each other it's best to end it permanently instead of letting things go," Ciel says, she comes closer and whispers "Not everyone can do this, not everyone has to do this but we are in a rather difficult position. There was no good way out of that situation."

Make sure you do all you can to preserve life, but when you can't, make sure you do all you can to end it with certainty. This world and its brutal philosophy.

"We couldn't really know if they would really let us go without a fight or even if the four they were after would survive," Alissa says, she plops down besides me and rubs my shoulder.

Gify shared Alissa's bloodlust with me, it helped me do what I needed but was it really the best choice?

"It's fine, it's done so let's get the hell away from this place," I say.

I will deal with this later.

Alissa hands me my weapons.

"Wait, Lina! How are you feeling?" I ask as I search for her.

Lina's cut in the neck was healed by Ciel, now she's taking a look at her hammer and cleaning the blood from it.

"I'm fine, I'm happy, I did it, I didn't fail," she smiles, but her eyes look vacant and without focus.

I hug her and she shivers, her expression turns vacant and she drops her weapons. Slowly her breathing becomes erratic and her expression turns into confusion.

I kneel and hold her head on my shoulder, a few silent tears run through her face. A few minutes pass and she slowly returns to normal, her shivering stops, her breath regains rhythm, and her eyes regain focus.

She looks at me and breaks the hug.

"We have to move," she says.

I nod and look at our employers. Delwyn puked and is now being consoled by Gwinevere. Ankara is frozen with a vacant look, he holds his long sword close to his chest. The space mages are sitting on ground desperately muttering prayers. My eyes cross with Lyle's, he stores his metal staff on his [Item Box] and decides to approach us.

"Wolf, what was that?" He asks, his face is pale and he's sweating cold.

"What do you mean?"

"You, them, none of you chant. All those spells, how do you do this?"

"We are all just good magicians?" I try to keep a poker face.

"No way," he shakes his head and his mouth hangs open in disbelief, "You were struggling to chant during classes, I know it. Now not just you but even the others who shouldn't know magic are chucking spells left and right! Is that a Symbol of Darkness? Can you even summon monsters now!?"

Eh, was worth a try.

"I have a Gift, it relates to magic and extends to my women."

Now everyone looks at me. The space mages are whispering and Ankara is trying to bore a hole through my skull with his gaze.

"Listen to this and listen well, I'm being protected. If you try to spread this or control me there will be consequences," I stare back at Ankara "I saved all of your lives, the least you could do is keep my secret."

The twins share a look.

"We swear we will not say a thing, we do not want to be involved in such matters," Delwyn says and bows.

"Wolf, you are my friend, I will never say anything. The space mages are under my employ, they will never mutter a word if they want to live," Lyle bows too, the space mages pale.

I maintain an unwavering gaze towards Ankara.

"I will not say a thing," he finally bows.

Tankar takes his place besides Ankara, his expression is indecipherable and he's avoiding looking at me.

Hana comes back with numerous bounty plates.

"They are all thieves and a few are kidnappers," Hana says and taps the pile of plates, "They are wanted in Sommerland, the Mainland, and Goldcross. If they kidnap nobles they need to keep on the move if they don't want to be killed."

So that accent was from Sommerland.

I look at the last survivor, he's still passed out. I dismiss the wind elementals and summon an earth elemental.

"We gotta tie him to the elemental and send him to the guards," I say.

"Yeah, someone tipped them about these four," Hana nods to the nobles.

Lyle grimaces.

The weapons have been collected and stored, now we have a few spare spears and shields. Unfortunately no one uses long swords, the archery and magic equipment was inferior to ours so it will get sold. We are not into stripping them naked so their armor will stay. We leave their bodies like they are, the monsters will eat them during the night.

I decide to keep Shad on the last bandit, he will make sure the bandit does not wake up.

The nobles walk wobbling a little but eventually regain their composure. The need to get away from this place is very clear to them so they keep up a fast pace.

On the way we get attacked by 2 Rabid Rabbits, 3 naked goblins and 5 Mossy Fangpines. We spent quite some time near the carnage so it's not surprising the number of monsters that found us.

We reach the border of the forest by sunset. I dismiss Shad and the bandit shivers but does not waken.

"Finally, God of the Sun, how I missed you!" Delwyn exclaims.

"Four days in darkness was a bit too much," Lyle says.

"And you wanted to stay a fifth," I say.

Lyle scratches his cheek awkwardly.

"I overestimated a lot of things on this trip," he says.

He does not know how lucky he is I'm this powerful.

The guards at the watchtower come out to see the strange sight of the elemental carrying a tied person. I see the wagon and the carriage waiting for us.

Two well armed men run out of the wagon and the carriage to meet us.

"Master Lyle! Why did you call us earlier, did something happen?" The man of the wagon comes to us, his face is young and his gait is strong, he's a well-trained bodyguard.

"Hello Sebastian. Yes, we met undead dragonoids and then we were attacked by kidnappers" -he points to the tied man- "He's the last survivor. We have to hand him to the guards."

I think this is the same butler that was helping Lyle's grandfather during the Symbol of Hate auction.

"Master Ankara. Is this true?" Asks the second man, he seems to be more delicate and thinner than Sebastian.

"Yes. I am very tired now, I want to go home. Ryder, I assume you will deal with this?" He turns to me, his eyes are droopy, his hair bun is nearly undone and his dignified expression is crumbling.

"It's fine, we will deal with the guards," I nod to him.

"Then I'm taking my leave. Goobye Lyle, Gwin, Delwyn," he nods to them and moves towards his carriage.

Tankar looks at me and gives a subtle nod. Maybe this is the maximum of respect I will ever get out of him.

One of the guards come towards us, he's wearing a golden armband on his right arm.

"Wait, you said undead and bandits?" He asks.

Hana produces the pile of bounty plates and gives to him. His eyes open wide when he looks at the one on the top.

"There's six undead dragonoids inside the dungeon Wisp of the Proud. I will report to the guild their location and affinities," I say.

"U-understood," the guard mutters as he puts the pile down and examines one by one.

"This man" -I point to the waking bandit- "Is the leader of the bandits, can you take him and interrogate him for us? Someone tipped him about four nobles leaving towards The Smirk and we want to know who."

The guard straightens up and looks at me in the eyes.

"I am Lyle Rizek, grandson of Werner Rizek, court high mage," he puts his right hand over his chest. The guard shivers at his words. "These are Delwyn Griffiths and his sister Gwinevere. The one who left was Ankara Gartania, son of Tarian Gartanaia, Lord of Fort Erda."

The guard pales and his mouth hangs open, I think that Werner and Tarian must be famous.

"We-we-we will c-call the captain right away. Please wait a moment, a space mage will bring him to us."

He immediately turns around and trots towards the tower. The other guards are frozen in fear and keep their positions.

The bandit groggily turns his head around, his eyes slowly regain focus.

A minute later around 5 well armed guards come out of the tower. Their mail jingles and shines in the light of dusk, their tabards look new and unblemished. Leading them is a plated guard with two golden armbands on each arm and a black one on his right.

"Captain Ansara, ready to serve," he puts his right hand over his chest and bows towards Lyle, the other guards follow suit.

"Please rise," Lyle says and they obey.

Ansara removes his helmet. He's a rather handsome man with brown hair cut on a buzz cut and a chin so sharp he could cut open a can.

"The lieutenant reported undead and bandits. Can you explain to me in more detail?" He asks.

I move forward and explain. This way I can keep the details of our chantless casting a secret for now.

"There's one last thing I have to tell you."

I approach him and whisper.

"I ask you to give him directly to Vanea Anara" -his eyes widen- "This bandit has information that should not escape this place."

He looks at me for a few seconds.

"I killed twenty men with only six people, you can also see I'm a summoner, I am not a normal person. I will meet with Dame Vanea tomorrow, I will ask her what you did to the bandit."

He sighs.

"If Dame Anara deems so you will be punished for wasting her time, do you understand?" He speaks to me in a stern tone.

"Yes," I answer immediately.

He spends a few more uncomfortable seconds staring at my face.

"Forgive me, but have we met? Your face is familiar," he asks.

"Uh... I haven't met many guards; I don't even talk to them since I have a pass that allows me to bypass customs."

"Customs... Are you the noble that came out of the Sea of Trees alone some months ago?"

Wow, he remembers me? Wait, was he the guard who processed my entry?

"Uh... Yes? Wait, I'm not a noble."

"Oh, is that so?" He chuckles, "I thought you were a runaway by the weird skills you had and the perfect way you talked. There's plenty of runaway nobles here in Rabanara but I remembered you because I thought you would try to sting my ass since I made fun of you."

By his behavior I can see why he thought that.

"Well I... Would not do that, I'm not that petty."

"This works for me," he shrugs "Anyway, we will be taking him, then. Report the undead to the guild too, please."

"I will."

He nods and points to the bandit.

"Take him off and send him to jail, don't let anyone else talk to him besides me."

The guards surround the elemental and untie the bandit. He seems to regain lucidity and starts to struggle.

"No! Help me! I'm innocent, wait, no, I'm not a mu'rde're'r! Have me'rcy!" He cries as he is dragged away into the tower.

Indeed, none of them were branded as wicked, but they are still career thieves. They are not even the poor and downtrodden who switch to banditry to survive, they did it as a job.

"Take the bounty plates with you. You can get your rewards when you want to," he says.

Hana gathers the plates on the ground and stores them.

The bandit is sent into the tower and suddenly his cries are muted. I dismiss the elemental and Ansara turns to us.

"Is there anything else I can help you with, grand nobles?" He asks and lowers his eyes.

Lyle looks at me and I shake my head.

"That is all, thank you for your help," Lyle says.

"May I offer you to use our [Gate] to get back into town? If you return by wagon you might reach Rabanara well into the night," Ansara says.

"That would be wonderful. Sebastian, take the wagon back."

"Yes, master," Sebastian bows and hops into the wagon.

"Please follow me, then," Ansara lifts his eyes and looks to me, "You too, please."

I nod and follow him. Ankara got shafted.

Inside the tower there's the familiar black circle. Once we cross it we are sent into a barracks. This seems to be the main floor, there's a variety of benches and tables with tea and snacks. Other well armed guards laze around the floor. I believe this is some sort of fast-response team.

"Welcome back to Rabanara, you can leave through this way, "Ansara points towards the door and bows.

A few gazes follow the women but they are very contained. We leave the building and I recognize we are near the castle in the middle of the town. Makes sense to have the [Gate]-bound soldiers in the most central location for efficiency.

"Well then, Wolf. Thanks for all the help, I am in your debt," Lyle says, he stretches his hand for a handshake.

"Only doing my job, and because you are also a friend," I say and shake his hand.

"It's a shame we have to part but I would like to meet you again," Gwinevere says to Roxanne.

Roxanne forces a smile. "P-perhaps fate would have us meet again," she says.

They share a delicate and feminine handshake. I can feel Hana get very fidgety.

"It was good to know you Ryder, your fellowship is certainly very dependable," Delwyn says with a nod. "But I would rather not have to go somewhere where I have to hire someone like you."

"You will get over it," Gwinevere says and slaps her brother's back, "One day you will be craving to explore a dungeon again"

"Let a Glutton eat your words," he quips back.

Lyle rolls his eyes.

"See you soon Miss Lina, Miss Alissa," Lyle nods to them.

"Until then," Lina shyly responds and Alissa nods back with a smile.

They go away towards the Nobles Quarters while we go towards the Hunter's Guild.

A sigh escapes my lips.

"Hectic days," Alissa says.

I entwine my arms with Alissa and Roxanne's. I'm gonna need lots of cuddling to forget that carnage. The worst parts is the screams, I still can't even forget the shrieking female space mage I killed.

Gify pops into my head this time, he seems more comfortable inside towns. He starts chirping a familiar tune, attracting even more attention to our already eye"catching group. Why is it that everything I do just attracts more attention!?

Alissa grabs Gify and forcefully puts him in my shoulder.

"Gih!" He snaps his beak at her.

"I told you already, don't tousle his hair!"

Gify's eyes sharpen and his beak bends into a pout. Slowly he returns to normal and continues his chirping.

We reach the guild and the sounds of raucous laughter, drinking, and average"to"bad music reaches our ears. Outside of the guild there's a new giant skull biting into the building. It's long and light blue, there's two horns protruding backwards, it's rather familiar.

"Kweh!"

"Yep, it's that one, the ancient dragon we encountered," I say.

Lina purses her lips and clenches her fist.

"It got what it deserved," she mutters.

"Geheh!" Gify chirps a laugh.

Ciel pats Lina's head and she calms down.

"Okay, just me and Alissa will do, the rest of you would attract too much attention, specially Aoi," I say.

You never know when someone might actually be dumb enough to try to steal her. Young tamable dragons are quite valuable.

Hana nods in agreement and scratches Aoi below her mouth. Whenever we are not in immediate danger it's mostly Hana's shoulders that Aoi likes to stay on.

We go inside and reach the nearest attendant. The guards of the guild have a mix of stern gazes to keep the most violent drunks in check or friendly smiles as they skirt their job by talking to adventurers.

"Oh, Mr. Ryder, hello," says the usual brunette attendant. She has short black hair, small eyes, and a very kind and round face. She shows signs of age yet retains an air of sensuality.

"I would like to report an undead sighting," I say.

Her eyebrows knit and her mouth turns into an asterisk.

"Oh my, would you follow me to a meeting room?" Her expression immediately changes into a smile.

We sit down and I see a glint in Alissa's eyes. I retell our encounter and escape from the undead.

"We will send an urgent request for the temple to deal with the undead. We will also put on a request to confirm the library you mentioned. You will be rewarded after confirmation," she finishes writing down her report and turns to us with a bright smile.

"But Mr. Ryder, I didn't know you were so strong!" she covers her mouth with the tip of her hand.

"We did defeat the Symbol of Hate," I say.

"Though your bravery was commendable, wasn't it the mage who blew it up?"

I smile wryly, talking about the Symbol never goes the way I want.

"Yes it was."

"Oh, but the monster did give you some scars did you not? I see you have quite a few already," she looks at my throat and cheek, "The claws of that monster must have pierced your chest, did it not?"

"Yes... They left some scars, a memento of my battles."

"Oh, how interesting. Could you show them to me?"

The smile on the attendant's face is as pure as they come. She leans forward -. I can hear Alissa's tail swaying rapidly in excitement.

"Perhaps, uh, another time. I have more business to take care of," I remember a very sharp gaze of a certain someone that keeps my mind straight.

"I will be waiting for your next visit then," the attendant smiles and waves.

I hurry away from that trap.

"You don't like older women, Wolfy?" Alissa asks.

"I do, I like them a bit too much. Which is why we have to stay away from that trap."

"Awn..." Her ears drop cutely.

"Don't 'awn' me, Ciel would strangle me if I were caught flirting."

She giggles.

"I'm sure Lina would too were she not a slave. Roxanne would likely singe your cute butt."

I gotta smile at that. if I were a woman I believe I would be very proud of my ass, it really is very cute and round.

"Lina too? Well, what about Hana?"

"She would likely want to tame that woman for herself."

Oof, my fetishes. I gotta stop thinking about this or else I'm gonna turn just like Alissa.

We go outside and find the girls through the party connection. They are in front of a stall drooling over some good smelling boar proto-shish-kebab.

"Ah, finally. I was about to eat without you guys," Hana asks.

"Rude. We were caught up because Wolfy was flirting with a mature beauty," Alissa says with a smug smile.

Multiple sharp gazes pierce my heart.

"Alissa, that's mean! I did nothing!" I protest.

"All you did was show your manly scars in your chest."

I look at Alissa with hurt, her betrayal is unexpected.

"Are you taking it out on me because I ran from her?"

She merely smiles with even more smugness.

Ciel sighs, she hugs me and I take this opportunity to squish her softness with my body. The lack of armor is the best part of being home.

"Of all fetishes, why did you have to have this one, Alissa?" Ciel asks.

"I feel no shame over my desires," Alissa says, "I trust Wolfy that he wouldn't allow himself to fall in love with a stranger or abandon any of us for someone else."

Ciel pouts over the implication she doesn't trust me. I lift my head from the two sources of love.

"We don't have to go with her every wish, she will do fine with me only having you girls," I say.

"I will do fine, I'm only teasing you," Alissa says and pats my head.

"See? This is why I do it, it feels really good," Roxanne says.

"You tease a bit too much," Hana says.

Lina nods.

"It's just banter..." Roxanne mutters.

"Anyway, let's eat dinner here, this place smells amazing," Hana says.

"Hun-gry!" Aoi pleads.

After a long day I just want to eat something good and relax. Some pieces of meat had a mustard and honey sauce, quite delicious. From what I understood the mustard taste came from harpy fat.

We take the dinghy out and fly back home. I can finally re-summon the 3 Shads and Holly, the safety these summons give us allows me to relax once more.

-

Lina's slave collar jingles in a nearly imperceptibly low sound. Can't have that necklace make much sound during sneaking so her tag locks very tightly on the collar.

Lina's collar is actually just a status symbol, a hold over from when slaves were treated as sub-human. Today the only ones who need tight collars to attach chains are the criminal slaves.

It is common for wealthy masters to decorate the collars of good slaves to show how important the slaves are. Some even have detachable collars, turning it into merely a piece of fashion, others use necklaces or chokers to hold their tags. For the law, the tag being visible is the only important thing.

"Lina, do you want to have that collar removed?" I ask.

She looks at me with uncertainty and fear, she's still way too insecure of her position.

"It is merely decoration, you certainly do not need it. Even if you needed you could break it easily with your [Spirit of Gaia] or even a small [Earth Bullet]."

She grasps the collar and thinks, at least she isn't irrationally afraid anymore.

"I... Had this collar ever since I met Hilde, I just. I don't mind showing I'm a slave, I actually want everyone to know I'm your slave!" she looks at me with wide eyes and a smile.

On the thing that I do not want is the one she shows the most emotion...

"Then let me turn this collar into a mere necklace then. The law tells that you need to show your tag but you don't need it to have it attached to a collar. Even a bracelet would be fine."

"It has to be something detachable, a bracelet would snag on her armor," Hana says.

"See? Nobody is going to mind you wearing something more practical or comfortable," I say.

Heads nod in agreement.

"Wear it with pride. A chain necklace would show how much Wolf trusts you," Ciel says. She kisses Lina in the cheek, making her blush.

Please kiss her on the mouth.

Calm down, lower me.

"Okay. Then..." she lifts her head, her gloominess is changed into excitement. "Can I decorate it?

I nod.

"You can even enchant it," I say.

Her fingers trace the collar on her neck as her eyes go out of focus, a silly smile on her mouth.

Oof, round 2, please.

Today is the 15th.

-

Lina leveled to 22, her [Hammer Use] and [Parry] increased by 1 (now 4+10 and 0+5). She has 7 Skill Points unused.

First thing in the morning, Alissa and I visit Gordon. I don't feel like training today.

The guild is noisy, there's plenty of gossiping, fellowships being formed and breaking up, hunters discussing bounties and requests. Yet in comparison to yesterday it is very calm.

I look at some of the bounties, there's already a call for an undead subjugation group posted by the temple. They will pay 2 gold to each person joining in. Quite high, but you have to keep in mind that the temple is gonna make sure that the gold is deserved.

The bounty on harpies has increased, it possibly means that their numbers are dangerously high. From what I understand the Lord subsidizes the rewards for bounties, this is the best way to attract freelancing hunters.

There's also a request to exterminate an Oodogloo. Whackers indeed, the monsters keep reappearing. Right now this bounty is below our pay grade, if it doesn't pay in gold it isn't worth the effort.

"Oh hello, Carmen," Alissa says.

A shiver runs up my spine. The brunette milf from yesterday comes towards us.

"Hello Miss Alissa, Mr. Ryder," she nods at me with a sensual smile, I nod back.

Her high heels clack and her slender legs peek out from her short skirt. She stops by very close to me -. Her perfume fills my nose and suddenly all I want is to be stepped on by her.

"A pleasure to see you back so soon," Carmen says.

"We are here in passing only. We are going to deliver some proofs of subjugation and a corpse to Gordon," Alissa says.

"Oh is that so? How did you manage to fight those dragonoids? All I hear is..." She shudders and I feel the urge to hug her and make her feel safe, "how they rape their victims as soon as battle ends, alive or not."

I try my best to turn and focus on the request board again. She either has stupid "Charisma" or she's a siren in disguise. I don't know what would happen if I didn't have Vanea's necklace.

They talk for a few minutes.

"I have to get back to work," Carmen finally says, "Come see me again."

"I will. Until later, Miss Carmen."

"Until then, Miss Alissa," Carmen winks and walks away. Damn those legs.

Even more gazes are on me, a mix of envy and anger. I just wanna curl in corner and disappear.

"Gih."

"Quiet you... Alissa lets go see Gordon."

"Hello there, Mr. Ryder."

He stares at Gify, his mouth hangs open in surprise but recovers and smiles again.

"Hello Mr. Gordon. The surprise this time is that there is no surprise."

Gordon snorts and shakes his head.

"Good, don't even think about one-upping yourself. Though that nature spirit is a surprise in itself."

"Anyway, here," I pull out the corpse of the horned sky blue female dragonoid and the proofs of subjugation. Gordon gasps. "We didn't kill many monsters. Had to kill some bandits, though."

"Oh?" His face instantly turns to me, "I heard some nobles got attacked by kidnappers, was that you?"

"Yeah we were escorting them to Wisps of the Proud."

"Ah... I see, you certainly had me surprised for a second. Thought you were hunting wild dragonoids."

"No, no, I would rather never have my women fight rapists like those."

"That would hardly be the worst part about them," Alissa says, she raises one eyebrow towards me.

"For me it is, I have confidence in our skills but some things you just don't mess with."

She rolls her eyes and pats my head. Gordon shrugs.

"I kinda get that," he says, "Ah yes, I heard the university is mounting an emergency expedition to that dungeon."

"We found a library there," I say, "It was just on the border of undead territory so I guess they don't want the undead to corrupt the books."

"A library on a dungeon?" His grin disappears and an uncharacteristic pensive frowns paints his face. "That's new. Why didn't you bring all the books with you?"

"The dungeon is all a mana solidification, can't bring anything out of it."

"What a bother."

"I know, right? The nobles I was escorting spent a day copying the books and didn't even copy half of them."

"There was a maze near that dungeon though," Alissa says, "We found a treasure chest with a high elven spear."

"Now that is a surprise, guess your nickname rings true again," he goes back to smirking.

I shrug and slump back on Alissa's lap.

In the end we only got a single gold coin from the corpse and proofs. Not worth the danger.

We meet back with the girls at the Bazaar. Hana had delivered the bounty plates and got our reward. Average of 95 silver for each head, 2 gold for the leader, 1 gold bonus for bringing him alive. Lina helped Hana in selling the excess equipment we got.

They were low-lives that lived by ransoming lower nobles. Why they chose to kidnap Lyle or Ankara, which had the money to pay for a proper escort like ours, is a mystery. The person who tipped them was incompetent or wanted them dead.

Alissa found some steel-coated bodkin arrows, even more penetrative power for her, something she lacks. The focus of her archery is pinpoint accuracy at close and up to middle range, this is why she didn't develop strong muscles for using stronger bows. An arrow through the eye is an arrow through the eye.

We enter the Bear Hug, it's a shop that was clearly cut in half horizontally by something very sharp. The beams were joined together by [Nature Magic], you can see a small amount of bark growing where the two architecture styles meet. The lower part is rustic and whimsical, the upper part is more modern and minimalist.

"Welcome!" The gruff bear waves towards us, "Miss Hana, good to see you again. Coming back from another job?"

He simply nods at me and I move deeper into the monster fang swords section. The shop is quite long and filled with racks upon racks of all kinds of weapons.

"Good day, Wick," she smiles and they crack each others hands on a crushing handshake.

"Kweh! Good, day!" Aoi says.

Wick chuckles and looks at Aoi warmly.

"Good day to you too, little one," he says.

"We came yesterday from an escort in the Wisps of the Proud," Hana says.

His beary face turns soft as he seems confused.

"Wisps of the Proud? Never heard of that one," he says.

"Barely anybody does. It's a very bleak and dark dungeon filled with dragonoids."

His mouth hangs open, creating folds on his neck.

"Yeah, everybody reacts like that," she laughs, "But it's not like you imagine, these dragonoids are actually creepy in the way they don't show emotion. My [Taunt] did nothing to them, they must have tons of 'Willpower'. I think they don't even eat their kills."

"Oh that makes it better," he breathes out, "Still, the job must have paid well, right? You can't make too much money with them."

Their meat is difficult to use, the scales aren't as tough as real dragons, there are better components for alchemical use. Overall they really aren't that good for selling.

"Yeah, but we got this beauty out of it." With a *poof* she pulls out the high elven spear.

"My, oh, my. A treasure chest?" He glances at Hana and she nods, "It's enchanted too!"

He pours some mana into it and the spear elongates.

"You know a nature mage?" He asks.

Hana points to me. Gify pops into my head.

"Wow!" He looks at Gify with curiosity, "You certainly got the talent. Learn how the elves maintain their weapons so you don't lose this beauty so easily."

I nod back emphatically. I have an idea of how to do it but I will need Lina's help to complete my knowledge.

"Say, I got a new item that I think would be excellent for that young lass over there," he points to Lina, she's bent over looking at some javelins.

She suddenly stiffens her back and look at us with surprise. Wick laughs and goes deeper inside the shop. He comes back with an engraved steel axe, it has a spike on the back. There are two small transparent gems at the handle. The engravings reminds me of circuits.

Lina opens her eyes wide when she sees it. Wick hands her the axe and she stands still, unsure what to do.

"Go on, activate them."

Lina pours a small amount of mana on both gems. Suddenly the axe head melts and in two seconds it hardens, its shape changed into an engraved hammer, its shaft elongated a good half meter.

"A switch-axe," Lina mutters.

"Exactly, I got this directly from Mountainhome. There's rarely any dwarves around here and curiously those who do are mostly mages, for some reason. You, young warrior, would make a good use out of it."

"How much?" I ask. Lina looks at me in surprise.

"Two rose coins."

"Oi, that's a bit much," Hana says.

"It's doubly enchanted, you know," he purses his lips and crosses his arms in sass.

"Yeah but this ain't Mountainhome. You said it yourself, you will have some difficulty selling this here."

"Fine, fine. One rose coin and 70 gold."

We have that money but it will be tight. The [Extend] enchantment on that switch-axe is perfect for her. If she learns how to improve that enchantment then we can transform that switch-axe into a pole-axe, fixing her main weakness, reach.

I discreetly look at Hana and wink.

"You know, the [Switch] enchantment is good and all but that [Extend] is a bit lacking," Hana grabs the axe and flicks it about, "I mean, barely half a meter? Her war hammer is just a tad longer than this axe at its longest! This is not a pure dwarven weapon, their weapons are normally longer than a human's to make up for their smaller frame."

Wick cringes and scratches his cheek. Did he get swindled?

"One rose coin and 50 gold," he says.

"Nah, one rose coin," Hana says.

"One rose coin and 40 gold."

She hands over the switch-axe.

"Thirty gold," he seems a bit strained.

"Ten gold," she says.

"Too little profit for me," he shakes his head, "Twenty gold."

She narrows her eyes and thinks for a moment. "Deal."

Lina grabs some heavy and cheap javelins.

"These too, they can be useful for disabling shields," she says.

Hm... If I give her [Throw] this could work.

Ciel and Alissa come back to us.

"Nothing?" I ask.

"Yeah," Ciel drops her shoulders, "There's no crystal alloy weapons anymore. Without Aremut the number of crystals is too low."

Lina's Trivia: Aremut was a kingdom that exported huge amounts of attuned crystals. Their mines were abandoned after the kingdom fell to the undead. You can grind these attuned crystals to dust and use them to coat weapons, helping in casting spells. Ciel had one such glaive once when she was a Warrior Priestess.

I produce the money and hand it over to Wick. Lina receives the axe and squeezes it hard at her almost non-existent chest. She walks with a spring on her step, but that's not all she's getting.

Roxanne takes us to a jewelry shop. She was thoughtful enough to bring us to a middle"range shop. I can see the subtle changes in architecture, this shop seems to have been destroyed 3 times.

The items on display are mostly polished simple metal bracelets, necklaces, and earrings. None of the girls wear earrings, they seem interested in it, though, even Hana.

"I think for you we need something simple and smaller. Perhaps like a choker," I say.

"Choker?" Lina innocently asks, tilting her head.

I beckon the saleswoman and asks her to show us the chokers. She brings to the counter a large drawer full of small chokers.

"Look at the leather ones, they are more comfortable. It also needs a bit of resistance so no cloth or thin metals," I say.

She suddenly turns into a very pensive expression. Her eyes move wildly through the multiple choices, scanning each of them.

"Don't tell her the price," I whisper to the saleswoman.

She smiles kindly and nods.

I walk back and check on the other girls. Roxanne is the most obviously excited one, she seems to be enjoying dragging Hana around, showing her all the different jewelry. Alissa is more contained but her swaying tail betrays her expression, her ears perk at each new thing Roxanne shows to Hana. Ciel is the most calm, priesthood gives few material benefits and she seems accustomed to it.

"See something you like?" I ask Ciel.

"Yes, but I have seen them so many times just seeing isn't exciting anymore," she smiles bitterly.

"Sorry. With the money short we should keep upgrading our equipment," I say to her, also smiling with some bitterness.

I want to pamper them more, so much more.

"If you did waste money on jewelry I would force you to return it," she sends me a sharp gaze that quickly dissolves, "But I would forgive you for good intentions."

I see a small smile on the corner of her lips.

I move towards Alissa.

"Choose one, we will come back here one day," I whisper to her.

Her expression doesn't change but her tail sways faster.

I go after Roxanne and smoothly get her to release Hana and use myself as sacrifice. With a silent thank you, Hana goes back to looking a things on her own pace, she seems to be fond of earrings. Aoi surprisingly showed some interest in earrings too, perhaps she would like a piercing one day.

I get on Roxanne's rhythm and engage with her enthusiasm. I'm used to doing this with a certain someone so I have experience on this area. It's enjoyable seeing her trying out the jewelry and showing the ones she finds beautiful. Some women want to be pretty only for themselves, for their own ego, but if you convince them to also dress themselves for you then things get much more interesting, and sensual.

When Roxanne's energy dips a little I interrupt her.

"Let's go see Lina, she might need help choosing."

"Oh, right. Knowing her shyness she will never choose something for herself," Roxanne says.

We go back to her and she seems torn between two. Both are brown simple leather chokers, but one has white geometrical embroidery while the other has pink heart-shaped embroidery.

"Pink," Roxanne says.

"White," I say.

Lina turns to us and her eyes spell desperation, they quickly switch between each of us, uncertain in who to choose. The saleswoman gushes at her cuteness.

I lean over her and whisper.

"In the end, you should trust your feelings and go with it."

She twiddles her thumbs and taps the glass in anxiety. Then she suddenly picks the white one.

"Victory!" I celebrate with a raised clenched fist.

Roxanne winces and hunches over. I rub her hand and she slowly recuperates. Lina has her head hung low in embarrassment, her cheeks dyed red.

There's a square metal plate in the middle of choker, she could fit a gem there for enchanting.

I use a small key and open up her collar. With it open it's easy to remove the small tag, a yellow metal plate with her info carved on it. I hand the tag to the saleswoman and she deftly puts it on her choker.

Roxanne lifts Lina's hair while I put her new choker. I give her a peck on the cheek.

"You look much cuter," I whisper.

She blushes again.

I pay the saleswoman and we go home. Lina is fidgety, her body barely containing her happiness. I feel like we have to be careful with Lina, everyone wants to pamper her, there's nobody to rein us in when we go too far.

When we reach home a messenger was waiting for us in front of the house. Vanea sent the message, she wants to meet us at 2PM on her office at the university. I was planning to meet her tomorrow but I believe what the bandit leader told her must have piqued her interest.

The university is so empty, so quiet. It's quite creepy since I only come here when classes are on and there's hundreds of students about.

I'm not really nervous about it due to our oaths so I just take my time and calmly knock on the door to her office at the exact time she wanted.

"Come in," she says.

I enter her office and immediately see something is wrong. Her chair is at her side, I can't see what she's sitting on.

"Hello, Mr. Ryder. It seems you had quite the eventful break, didn't you?" She asks, a hint of warmth on her voice."

"Y-yes. Just a simple job became so much more in an instant," I smile and bow slightly.

"A nature spirit, undead, and bandits, what a combination. You sure you aren't a hero?" She asks.

Oddly Gify does not respond at his mention, he's simply curled and "sleeping" on my shoulder.

I walk closer and sit on a chair, Alissa does the same. I got a glimpse of something very weird and my brain can't process it yet.

"I am sure. Even though I have a Gift, I have no such lofty ambitions."

There's no need to hide it from her. Her oath is the most valuable thing I have right now.

She stares at me and taps the table, judging my words.

I'm sweating cold but not because of our talk.

"Who knows about your Gift?" She asks.

"Lyle Rizek, Delwyn and Gwinevere Griffiths, Ankara Gartania, Ankara's knight Sir Tankar, a duo of space mages serving Lyle, and the bandit leader."

"Remove the leader from that list. He's already dead, too much of a liability."

I frown, my mind taken off from what I saw. I wanted Lina here, I want to hug her and feel her little ass rub on my crotch like she always does.

"Well then, this already solves another curious thing I had to stop," I raise my eyes to her, puzzled, "Likely Ankara Gartania was snooping around, looking for information on you."

He didn't waste a second, it seems.

"Not unexpected," Alissa says. Her voice is calm but she's sweating cold too.

"He promised me he wouldn't do anything, if he continues I will pay him a visit secretly," I say.

I won't let him jeopardize my life here.

"I already dealt with it. That stupid family," she rolls her eyes, "You better stay away from the Gartanias, they are glory hounds. They passed too many generations without a True Noble so they are looking for any opportunity to rise in prestige. It seems that horrible nature has stuck hard on their youngest son, too."

"Oh? I had no idea. I have no plans to work with him again so it wouldn't be an issue anyway."

"They are worse than mercenaries, at least hired swords are predictable, you never know who the Gartanias have sold their loyalty to. Unless you are the emperor don't rely on them. Also, it's extremely likely Ankara was the target of the kidnapping."

"I thank you for your advice," I bow slightly.

She smiles smugly at me. Now that her own necklace she gave to us is having a good effect on her eyes I can see how beautiful and refined her face really is, a delicate and sensual rose. Yet full of disgusting and dangerous spines. I will never touch her, I will never feel attracted to her, specially because of what she's actually sitting on.

"Excuse me, but what is that?" I point to her "chair".

Vanea stands up with a maniacal smile and looks down.

"Smegma, get up."

I use my [Sense Soul] and shivers run through my entire body.

Soul Info

Name: | Smegma | Race: | Human | Level: | 37

That's Farana Uiara, Darean's lover. She's wearing a blindfold, a ball gag, a lacy black bra (first time I saw a proper bra on this world), very small sexy lacy panties, long black silky gloves and thigh highs. Her hair is glossy and shiny, almost as good as Alissa's. There's a round cylinder protruding out of the middle of her legs, its contour can be seen pressed on her panties. A clear white liquid drips out of the middle of her legs.

Alissa lifts her nose and sniffs at the air, then she recoils and pales.

"You should know her, you captured her for me," she undoes Smegma's bra, small pink nipples are shown, "This is Smegma, my newest assistant. I have been training her very well, Haaran and his knights assure me her ass is incredibly tight. Would you like to have go at her? I would like to watch."

She pulls down Smegma's panties and I can clearly see two very wet dildos are shoved inside her, one on each entrance. Vanea grabs one and pumps it. Smegma moans loudly and a long trickle of liquid drips down.

Vanea licks her wet hand and caresses Smegma's head with the other. Then she sits down at her real chair.

"Was that all you had for me?" I ask.

"In the empty office there's a space mage waiting for you, he will take you to the Dream Eater we got for you. Tomorrow morning a messenger will come, invite him inside and tell him of a spot where he can drop a 'coordinate' for [Gate]. He will take you to your teacher of [Godly Language], you should discuss with the teacher how your classes are going to be like."

"Understood. Then excuse us, please."

"Awn, that's a shame. In case you want to have a taste of her she will always be by my side."

We hurriedly bow and leave the office.

"What the fuck," I whisper.

I actually wanted to talk to her about the emellanat the mercenaries had but fuck getting inside that place again.

"What. What did she do to her?" Alissa whispers back.

"I don't know and I don't want to know."

Gify finally stirs awake and opens his eyes.

"Gih!"

"I agree, I will never touch her while I'm still sane."

Alissa nods.

"Wait, why did you ignore us when we entered that place? You could have helped us absorb the shock, you know."

"Gih, guh... Gih!"

Coward, you were as useful as goblin jizz.

We are both shocked so we take a few minutes outside recovering until we have courage again to enter the empty office. There's only a bored man sitting on a chair.

"Mr. Ryder?" Asks the man.

"Yes, that's me."

"Please use this portal."

A familiar black circle opens, the man immediately crosses it and we follow behind. I just want to get this day over with.

We are brought into a very large room, it's made of blue slabs, there are no windows, and only crystals for light. I think we are below the castle. There's 7 familiar knights here.

"Good day, Mr. Ryder. Oh, a nature spirit," Marduk says, he gives me his characteristic crooked smile.

"Good day, Sir Marduk. This little one decided to attach itself to me."

"Gih."

"I see, you are certainly an interesting one," he says.

Who? Me or Gify?

The red skinned man turns and bows to Alissa, surprising her a little.

"Good day, Dame Alissa."

"T-that's not necessary, I'm a Blood Slave," she hurriedly shows him her mark on her wrist.

He straightens up and finally forms a full smile.

"It is necessary. Your archery and keen senses were a great help during our capture of the little spy and we owe you an apology as we nearly allowed you to die to the invisible assassins," he says earnestfully.

I force a smile because I want to forget of what I have done. Alissa seems the same.

"I... I will accept it, then," she shyly adds.

Something very, very angry is about to be unleashed. No one is allowed to make her like this. Uuuugh, let's get this day over with, already!

"The Dream Eater is ready?" I ask, trying to hurry things up.

"Yes, it is over there," he points to a half-meter tall airtight metal box, "Give us a signal and we will unleash it. We will stay back to make sure you can absorb all of its soul, is that okay?"

"It is. I will kill it with magic only. The people inside this room, are they trustworthy?"

Marduk's face twitches for a moment.

"Yes, they are all loyal knights of Vanea and Haaran."

"Good. Open it up, please."

Marduk nods and waves at one of the knights.

"Open up and scatter!" He barks an order.

"Yes, sir!" He clenches his fist over his chest.

I guess this is the standard salute.

The knight moves to the box while everyone else moves to the corners of the room.

"Do it!" I yell.

I focus and summon a 3 meters tall earth elemental and a normal wind elemental. The young knight pulls a lever and one of the sides of the box falls, then he runs to his friends.

Out of the box a dark grey smoke comes out, it forms a fuzzy shape equal to a Shadow Satyr. It's a smoky human with horse ears, horse legs, completely black skin and a straight, featureless face. It wields a very curved scimitar, almost a crescent.

Then a long oval wooden mask covers the face of the satyr, it has a round sleeping face carved into it. There are rectangular slits on the eyes and mouth, the hole of the slits are white and glow when the monster casts spells. This is a Dream Eater, quite creepy.

It charges towards us.

"Wind elemental, hold it in place. Earth elemental, kill it," I order.

I cast [Gravity Crush] on the mask.

The wind elemental spins, twirls, and dances, a small tornado starts around the Dream Eater, causing its smoke body to dissipate. It tries to gather its smoke but the wind is too strong, it tries to inch its mask forward but my spell holds it in place.

The earth elemental is big and heavy enough to just ignore everything. It slams its fist down on the ground and the mask shatters in hundreds of pieces. It's dead. I dismiss the elementals.

Marduk walks towards us, his mouth hangs open.

"You, uh, y-you didn't chant?" He asks.

"No. I have a Gift, talk to Vanea and make sure this never leaves this room," I say in a monotone.

He reflexively salutes, his red skin glistens with cold sweat.

"Yes, sir! Uh..." He realizes he called me "sir", "Mr. Ryder... Anyway, did it work?"

I summon a Dream Eater, exactly the same as the one we just killed. The knights freeze in their steps and murmur between each other.

Having one spell being chantless is one thing, having multiple is another, being a Gifted person that can cast spells chantless is mind blowing. I can see a mix of respect and fear on their eyes.

"Then I would like to return, please," I say.

"Yes. Artan, open the portal."

"Yes, sir!"

The black circle appears.

"See you soon, Sir Marduk," I say and give him a short bow.

"Huh? Ah, yes yes. Until our next battle together," he gives a short bow.

Alissa bows as well.

I enter the circle and hurry back home.

I spend the rest of my day at our balcony, having tea and cookies with the girls. I think I need a vacation.

Watching the hustle and bustle of the streets is quite relaxing. So many people have to work hard and here I am, sipping tea with more flowers than I have hands to hold.

Today's bath time was monopolized by Lina. All she wants is to show her gratitude to me -.

A note from Manasong

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Chapter 28: Circulation

A note from Manasong

Let the battle begin.

Attention: to conform to the limit of sexual content allowed in a novel, I've censored this chapter. You can look for the uncensored version here.

The symbol "-" denotes a section that got cut for containing sexual content. Also, if paragraphs seem missing, they were also likely censored in an earlier pass where the symbol wasn't used.

Today is the 16th.

-

I unglue Lina out of me and we have our breakfast.

There's barely a minute after I finish my breakfast when someone knocks on the door.

"Good morning, Mr. Ryder. I am Artan, I have been sent by Dame Vanea," a young man says and bows.

"Oh yes, I remember you from yesterday. Come in, we are going to the basement."

The only ones downstairs are Hana, who's slowly sipping her tea, Aoi, who's sleeping on the table, and Alissa, who's washing the dishes. They turn their heads and nod to him. The young man shivers at Hana's gaze, he's quite slim and he's only slightly taller than me. Just her passive man-eating gaze must be enough to threaten men like him.

I lead him downstairs to the unused basement.

"Ok, open the portal here. Next time when you call for me don't ever leave the basement. Come up only in case I don't answer. I value my privacy greatly," I say to him.

He straightens and salutes.

"Understood, Sir."

"Alright, now open up."

He chants and in 10 seconds the black circle opens. Gify decides to not make an appearance.

We step inside and the world loses color. I'm taken to a windowless room made of blue-grey bricks. The ceiling is rather uncomfortably low.

"Greetings, Mr. Ryder," says an old man.

There's a long table with a few very comfortable chairs around it. On the other side of the table there's an old man with olive skin looking at me. He has a puffy white goatee with brown and white sweptback hair. His small blue eyes stare at me with reserved interest.

"Greetings. Forgive me but I was not given your name," I say with a respectful nod.

"Oh. I am Kyros, your teacher for [Godly Language]."

Artan bows to Kyros and leaves the room. The door is heavy and produces a loud "pomf" when closed. I think the walls and the doors are padded, sound proofing must be important for when I mess up.

"Pleasure to meet you, Mr. Kyros."

"Likewise. Please sit," he motions to the chair, "Now, how are we going to go about this? From what I understand you have classes in the afternoon?"

I take a seat and my ass cheeks scream in happiness, I have to ask Vanea what these chairs are made off.

"Yes. My mornings are free."

"Then every morning until noon we should practice, how about this?"

"I would prefer if it would be every other day. There are still other things I want to train during my mornings."

"Fair enough. Then let's begin, I will introduce you to the language."

Good, no need for chit-chat.

"Do you know how [Godly Language] works?" He asks.

"Very little, all I know is it is an evolved form of chanting. While chanting aids a spell in altering reality, [Godly Language] alters reality directly with each word."

"Good. How are your 'Willpower', 'Intelligence', 'Charisma', and 'Piety' stats?"

"Sixteen, twenty one, twelve, and fourteen. Respectively."

"Ah, that's impressive," he smiles faintly, "You certainly have enough stats, your 'Charisma' is the only one that leaves to be desired. It really makes things much easier the more you have."

"I didn't know that 'Charisma' was that important."

"You could say you are literally 'charming' the soul of your target to obey your wishes. It obviously makes it easier when you are well-liked."

That's interesting. It affects the soul but I never heard of any mention on it on my cursory look at [Spirit Magic].

"But you have a good set of stats, that's enough to start," he flicks his wrist to grab back my attention, "Moving on, do you know how to circulate your mana inside you?"

"Not really. I know how control and modify spells a small amount, like casting it in area, but I can only manipulate mana during chanting."

"What's the level of your [Mana Control]?"

"Ten."

"Good enough. You should have already started understanding this part."

I learned [Mana Control] by brute-forcing, so I'm not a standard student.

"I learned it by repetition, I don't really know much else."

His face remains still as he evaluates my words. Am I really that unusual? He finally sighs and continues, "Well then, I will have to start at the beginning. When you cast a spell, what do you feel?"

"I..." I stop myself to think. With system-aided spells I don't feel anything, really. Only when I chant is that I feel something. "I feel an 'emotion', or a 'form'. I try to force myself to copy that feeling when I'm learning a new spell."

"Right," he crosses his arms and nods, "This is the correct path, the 'emotion' or 'form' is a rather abstract 'construct' of mana. Spells manipulate mana on a pattern, they follow five phases. Gathering, conversion, building, expulsion, and trigger."

Oh yeah, Toroo talked about this.

"Mana is spread throughout the body, so the first phase is gathering it inside you. The place that it most easily gathers is the heart. Your brain also contains lots of mana but it's a bad place to cast a spell from, you will get some headaches if you try to do it from there. Some spells have the mana gather on specific places, like [Illusion Magic] most often gathers mana on the eyes."

"The second phase is conversion, you convert mana into something else. [Fireball] converts mana into a fuel, oxygen, and heat. You don't convert the fire directly into your heart, you convert mana into a "frozen" version of the materials required for the spell. Like when cooking, you first pull out all ingredients necessary for the recipe before putting them into the pot.

"The building phase is when you 'organize' the materials in a way that makes them ready for use. In [Illusion Magic] the building phase is the most important as the conversion phase is nearly non-existent. This phase is where you create the scenario that's going to replay on the mind of your target. While with a spell like [Fireball] the mix of the ingredients is what defines your flame so the building phase is where you fine-tune the parameters of the spell.

"The expulsion phase is where you hold the spell outside of your body. It's when you construct and maintain the flame on your hand. This is important for spells like [Fireball] because you are directly interfering with the world. Spells like [Lighting Bolt] use this phase to manipulate the world and improve the 'path' to the target. I assume you know of the abstract concepts of [Electric Magic], correct?"

"Yes," I answer, "I have enough knowledge in [Electric Magic] to understand this part."

"Alright. Then comes the trigger part. This is where you add the last stabilizers, finish conditions and release the spell. With spells like [Earth Bullet], this is where you add the propulsion that will launch the spell, how long it will last and how strong it will be. With [Illusion Magic] it is where you add how long the spell will affect the target and how strong is the interference on his brain-soul connection."

Wow, this is surprisingly close to programming. This is what true direct mana manipulation is all about.

"This is only a standardized way of teaching how to manipulate spells. You can try to create a spell on your own in any way you want, it's just that you have a bigger chance of materializing the spell inside yourself if you don't follow the standard way. Imagine materializing [Fireball] inside yourself, you can explode your heart in an instant."

Ooooh. This is how Roxanne create [Explosion], I could recreate this spell myself one day. I guess the real difficulty of creating [Explosion] is doing it on a safe way.

"So we are going to practice the gathering phase. Instead of gathering inside your heart we will keep moving the gathering point around your body, effectively 'circulating' your mana. This is also the beginning of a proper way to increase your MP or 'Magic Power' so we can derive from this later."

Holy shit, I need this, I need this technique.

"Did you understand what I said?"

"Yes! I heard about it once so I have a good idea of what you are talking about. I learned about these five phases on my [Reduced Mana Cost] classes. One of my colleagues was learning this skill by improving her building phase."

He smiles and reclines back, relaxing his posture.

"Your colleague is on the right path. If she can manipulate the building phase with confidence then she has some talent. So, we talked a lot, now let's start practice. What's the level of your 'Perception' and your [Sense Mana]?"

"15 and 9. Respectively."

"Hm," he strokes his goatee, "Pretty good. I don't want you to hug me so close your eyes and sense my mana, try to copy my 'form'."

Me too.

I obey and start focusing on feeling mana. I got an idea, what if I forcefully use [Redirect Mana] on someone while they are forming a spell? To be honest this could be rather dangerous, an explosion would be the least worse of results.

Anyway, focus! I see a very small vortex of mana, it slowly moves in an oval. Paying more attention to it I realize it's not exactly moving, but rather it is shifting positions instantly in such small increments it looks like it's a continuous movement. This will take some effort.

The vortex feels like I am "grabbing" a rubber ball. I didn't pay that much attention to what exactly I am feeling while I sense spells until now. It's something like seeing a "soul", it's information not really made for the human brain so it "glosses" over. The brain tries to ignore the information but if you focus on it the brain forcefully translates it for me, somehow.

Replicating this feeling is actually simply imagining it, imagining it so hard it turns into reality. Visualization is the way magic works, it's the way skills are gained. The more in depth you can imagine things, the better your spells and the more your skill increases. This is why learning magic has so much theory on physics.

I feel a slight discomfort as I copy the gathering phase of my spells and try to mix it with the form that Kyros is showing. I slow down and reduce the strength of my gathering, this reduces the discomfort. This could be an early sign of bad mana manipulation, spells shouldn't cause pain unless you are suffering from overuse.

My vortex feels like a small pebble moving at walking speed while Kyros's is the size of a watermelon and moves at Formula One speeds.

"Dame Vanea told me you were supposed to be better than this," he says in a tired voice.

I wince.

"I believe I would be better on the actual talking part. This is not really a specific part of the skill, only a preparation, yes?"

I open my eyes and let go of the vortex. He spreads his arms over the nearby chairs and smiles with half his mouth.

"Well, yes," he rolls his eyes, "Just continue the circulation, try to increase the speed and size slowly. If you feel any discomfort reduce it a little, the discomfort means it is damaging your body. You don't need to hurt yourself to progress, in fact avoiding the damage is exactly the reason we are doing this exercise. You need to learn how to manipulate mana in a way you are not affected by it, otherwise if you try to use any offensive words on an enemy you will hurt yourself."

"I see... I will return to my circulation."

He grunts and I close my eyes.

I continue my practice for what seems to be an eternity. I'm always trying to slowly increase the size of my vortex, retreating whenever I felt discomfort.

Eventually, my body starts to hurt. I stretch my body, trying to stave off any pain from bad posture but it doesn't go away. With my eyes closed I open my "Status" and see that my HP fell by 2 points. It seems I contracted fantasy-cancer.

"That's enough for now, I will call the space mage," Kyros says.

He rings a bell and Artan appears immediately. Kyros nods to him and a black circle appears in front of Artan.

"Until the next time, Mr. Ryder."

"Until then, teacher," I nod my head towards him.

He smiles gently. I better get on his good side, he's a very reasonable person.

It's 11 AM. I come back early enough so I can help with lunch.

Ciel soon brings Lina back. She seems excited because they are going over the [Extend] enchantment. With practice she might be able to replace the handle of her switch-axe for something longer and keep the enchantment or simply improve the enchantment.

Ciel is going to receive a crash course in [Judgment], it's one of the few spells that damages undead permanently. If we are going to continue exploring unknown or unpopular dungeons we are bound to encounter other undead. After last encounter we decided it's better to be safe than sorry. We can't just go to the temple and have our weapons blessed every time we are going to a dungeon.

"I talked with Arantos," Ciel says, "They are keeping a very close eye on Vanea. She's not wicked but she treads dangerously close to it."

"I know it's cowardly but I would rather not have known what we did," I say.

"This is why I don't like to get involved with nobles," Hana says, she hunches over and hugs herself, "Thinking myself stolen from Wolfy and being forced to have sex with other men gives me chills. It's also why I negotiated on being able to choose whom I served."

Alissa's expression turns sad as she hears Hana. I'm glad to know they both don't have a fetish about cheating on me.

"To be honest. She should be grateful she's still alive," Roxanne says ,"The Judges have no mercy with those who mess with Lords."

"Vanea must be doing this mostly to get back at Darean," Ciel says, "Hurting him mentally is more insidious that way."

"I would rather commit suicide," Alissa says.

I'm not sure if I should be glad or worried.

Lina sits on the lap of Ciel and both seem depressed.

"I don't wanna talk about this anymore," I say.

-

At class Gify makes his appearance, the little ass is reveling in the attention.

"Gih!"

Yes, you are a little ass. You left me alone with Kyros but decided to appear when you have the opportunity of being a celebrity.

"Gih? Geh guh gih."

A celebrity is an important, famous, and well-liked person. And no, I'm not scared of Kyros, I just like the company. You know that being away from Alissa makes my "Sanity" go low, I get quite lonely when it happens.

"Giiiih..."

You are not a male! You have no gender!

"Gihihih."

You shouldn't make fun of the person who feeds you.

"GUH!" The students around me clutch their hearts from Gify's cute loud chirp.

I hear the bell chimes.

And I was joking too. Now get off my thoughts, class is beginning.

Lyle, Hatara, and Garanae come in a few seconds before the professor. Lyle seems to be warmed up more to me, though I can still see the usual savagery in his eyes. Hatara and Gara are stiffer than usual and Gara, specifically, nods to me with politeness. I guess they would change their behaviors when they knew I was part of a slaughter of 19 men.

"Oh hello, Mr. Ryder," says a soft voice above me.

"Hello professor," I answer.

The cute gnome is hovering just above me.

Gih.

He's cute and I'm not gay. I don't know why I just think he's cute and huggable, maybe it's "Charisma" like always. Now get off my thoughts.

"Professor Tanya will be delighted when she sees you," his smile is slightly mischievous.

With that class resumes and the professor starts to describe concepts of [Space Magic]. We finished exploring physics and gravity, now we are exploring torque, matrices and how to use them to express position and rotation. This is quite simply video game physics 101. You have the X, Y and Z axis, which represent planes. X represents sideways movement, Y represent up-down movement, Z represents forward-backwards movement. You represent position with these 3 coordinates.

You apply force on an object to create movement and through equations you can calculate the position of the object in any moment you choose. There's transformations and rotations and some other bullshit that's quite boring.

I really dislike rotation matrices but they are necessary to properly understand [Telekinesis]. That spell is the basis of the entire magic school and my main attack booster, it's really important.

There's also an introduction to non-euclidean geometry, like how to create a "3-sided square". Warping space and time becomes more important for the higher level spells.

There is one interesting thing regarding the identification of items inside [Item Box]. Instead of it being simply a warped space, like a "bag of holding" of other fantasy worlds where the bag is bigger on the inside, it is a complete system with user interface. There's the sorting function, the search function, and buttons for storing and retrieving items. That and how [Gate] "coordinates" are managed is the most sought after "concept" of magic. The concept of automatic information classification.

Whenever I think about [Gate] a small window with all the coordinates I stored is opened for me. The only information on these coordinates are the names I gave them myself, like "Wisps of the Proud beautiful wet stalactite cave". I can press a red "X" to delete the coordinate or I can press the coordinate and start chanting to open [Gate]. I can also simply press the "muscle" for the spell inside my mind for instant-cast.

Skills like [Sense Presence] and [Sense Mana] or spells like [Detect Evil] and [Soul Search] give you rather abstract feedback. They give you only a "feeling", while skills like the [Appraisal]-types give you a neat window full of information. Spells that extract and organize information this way are incredibly complex and difficult to create, and yet there's a bunch of skills and two (relatively) simple spells that incorporate this concept quite easily. Even my [Sense Soul] draws upon this concept , it really is a very useful concept to integrate.

Bell chimes and we go to our break. We barely have time to sit at our usual spot when Garanae begins to talk.

"What did you feel, Ryder, when you... Killed someone?" He asks.

Lyle purses his lips in displeasure. Both of us wished Garanae would have more tact.

"The first time I nearly went crazy with anger and then puked. The second time I was shivering but kept my resolve and fought. The third time was with Lyle. Gify opened my heart to Alissa's, it allowed me to keep a straight mind and let the anger fuel my actions."

"Three times...?" Hatara lowly asks, astonished.

"All these times were for survival," Alissa says, then she smiles bitterly. "Wolfy certainly reacted better than me. Back in my home town I executed bandits, it took me quite a few until I stopped puking every time."

Garanae stares at Alissa, his mouth hanging open in disbelief. For some reason he deluded himself into believing that Alissa was a princess.

"For me it was very scary," Lina says, her voice trembling slightly, "But not as scary as seeing master get hurt or die. That was enough motivation I needed to keep moving forward, to keep fighting regardless of the blood or pain."

Hatara lowers her head and hugs Garanae's arm harder.

"Your parents will prepare all of you when the time comes," I say, I keep my tone as soft as I can, "From what I can see all of you will be fighters in the future, you don't have to hurry."

"I sure hope so," Lyle smiles wryly.

"You have a tendency of being reckless. Work on it and your father should give you more trust," I say.

Lyle pouts and blushes in embarrassment. Even he is not so dense he doesn't know his own weaknesses.

"Let's talk about something else," I wave my hand dismissively. "How was the compilation of books? What was written in them?"

Lina and Lyle perk up and the gloominess from both disappear.

"Oh yes!" He claps his hands, "It was mainly epic tales. A few dramas, a few romances, if rape and incest can be considered romance, and a surreal comedy."

Gara and Hatara lift their heads up, eager to change the topic.

"I do not want any more information on that romance," Hatara says.

"What do you mean, surreal comedy?" Garanae asks.

"We are lacking quite a few words of their vocabulary, so we don't have an exact translation. In the end, either the jokes are surreal in nature or their sense of humor is very, very weird," Lyle says.

"Is it confirmed the books belong to the dragonoid culture?" Lina asks.

"No, we only know that they do not belong to our culture," Lyle says, "It could actually even be part of breeder dragonoid culture. If someone in say, the Maoka continent exterminated a dragonoid breeder village and salvaged their books then it could eventually reappear inside a dungeon. Though there's a very small chance but it could also be simply from a random race of breeder culture."

Alissa's ears twitch and we both look away. In the distance Silvane is coming, in her bosom she's carrying a pure white rabbit.

"Hello, Mr. Ryder, Alissa, Lina, Mr. Ryzek, Mr. and Miss Taranoa," she says and nods to each of us.

How annoying etiquette can be sometimes. Having to greet each of us instead of just sitting down with a "howdy".

The rabbit jumps from her arms and lands on an empty chair. It changes into Nononya who bows to us.

"Hello, everyone!" She says.

See? So much easier. Even Ankara is not the kind that wastes time with meaningless pleasantries.

Gify jumps into Nononya's modest chest. She seems surprised but ends up cuddling with him.

"Gih!"

Nononya blushes.

"W-wha-what...?"

I stretch my hand and force Gify out of existence.

"Sorry about that, he's very mischievous," I smile apologetically.

Gihih.

If you tried that with Silvane I would skin you alive!

"You are full of surprises, Mr. Ryder. It seems everything you do attracts attention," Silvane says in a warm tone, she then takes a seat. "Sorry to interrupt your conversation."

"Not at all," Lyle shakes his head, "It's always a pleasure to have you here, Miss Silvane."

He lowers his head because of politeness and because her smile made him blush.

"I certainly do not like the attention. Fate keeps me throwing hardships," I smile bitterly. "Anyway, what were we talking about?"

"We were just talking about the books we found in the Wisps of the Proud," Lyle says.

"Ah yes," Silvane's smile is as fresh as spring, "The court mages were interested in this discovery. Seems something finally got their attention away from killing monsters."

"Indeed. My grandpa finally took his eyes off the Symbol of Hate corpse and asked me to translate that surreal comedy for him," Lyle says.

"It is regrettable how Rabanara does not fund archaeological expeditions," Silvane says with delicate pout.

"But it is understandable," Lina interjects, "The whole Shore of Leaves is always under threat of monster attacks. Just yesterday we noticed the bounty on harpies increased."

"Yes," Silvane props forward with a bit of excitement in her eyes. "It seems a harpy attack will come this year."

Nononya sighs.

"This time I won't be able to skimp my duties so I have been practicing elemental summoning. With the notes Mr. Ryder gave me my wind elemental is strong enough to disrupt the flight of the harpies," she says, a hint of sadness on her voice.

"Just call me Wolf. Your progress is wonderful, but you don't seem happy about it," I say.

She slumps her shoulders and Silvane rubs her rabbit ears, causing her to shiver.

"Nono is not really a fighter, but a condition for her acceptance and funding in Rabanara was that she would use her summoning to help us fight," Silvane says.

"When the time comes we should fight together, I will help you out," I say.

"Yes, we are used to fighting alongside elementals so we will be there to help you," Alissa says.

"I will convince my father to let me participate. My [Discharge] is improving so I will be able to help a lot with controlling the harpies," Lyle says, he clenches his fist and his eyes spell wildness, the wide eyed crazy psycho type wildness.

"We are likely to be mere light support for the front lines so we wouldn't be able to help you," Garanae says with a hint of envy on his voice.

The front lines on a harpy attack are hardly anything more than a mobile shield for the ranged fighters.

"Well. This doesn't seems too bad," Nononya says, her white ears perk up a bit, "At least I will be able to see your elementals in action, Mr. Ryder."

"That would interesting, indeed," Silvane stops the ear rubbing and turns her head to me. "I read your report on the Wisps of the Proud. Your use of the earth and wind elementals is ingenious. If you join the expedition things would go smoothly."

"Sorry but I don't want to go there again. I had enough of that undead corruption to last me for a long time," I cringe and lift my hands, asking for mercy.

I look at Alissa and Lina, both nod in agreement. Books are nice and all but fuck these undead. Maybe when the temple exterminates them I would spend some time on that watery cave.

"Unfortunate but understandable," Silvane nods, "We will wait until we convince another summoner to participate. I think one of those at the Colosseum would participate if we offer enough money."

"I have never been to the Colosseum, how is it?" I ask.

"I think Hana and Roxanne would like it. There's some blood but it's mostly about having an entertaining fight," Alissa says ,"Specially the summoner fights, they go all out with the dramatic fights."

"I think even Ciel would like it," Lina says shyly.

"Next summoner fight will be at the 3rd of next month," Garanae says. "We should... all go together then."

He seems a bit embarrassed to suggest this.

"That would be nice, I will secure for us a private balcony," Silvane says.

"Yes! Thanks Silfy!" Nononya wiggles her fluffy rabbit tail.

The conversation goes back to the books Lyle found. Silvane and Alissa are very interested in the epic tales.

-

Today is the 17th.

-

I increased my "Perception", [Mana Control] and [Space Magic] by 1 (now 16, 0+11 and 11+20).

Ciel finally learned [Redirect Mana] with 1 point in it and her "Willpower" increased by 1 (now 14). Now I can't give her [Wind Storm] since she lacks the points but she has cast it so many times she can do it even without the system. This is what talent is about.

I spend my morning practicing circulation and coaching the girls in how to do it. Even if they don't want to learn [Godly Language] they should still learn it for the future training to increase MP and "Magic Power" that Kyros mentioned.

Alissa brings cheese curds so I teach them how to make poutine. Hana, Roxanne and Ciel absolutely loved to eat it alongside some cheap beer. Ciel isn't really a drinker but she enjoys a small taste of it once in a while.

Today Lina stays behind to practice her martial arts so it's only me and Alissa.

This time the students understandably are agitated when they see Gify. It's basically a dream for most of them to have a nature spirit attach themselves to you.

"How did you do it?"

"How long did it take for it to trust you?"

"How does it feel?"

"Is it true the spirit can link minds?"

"Is it true it can read your thoughts?"

"I heard they would raid your ice box if you didn't feed them for even a day. Did that happen to you?"

"Can you squish it? I know they have no bones but I want to know if they have something inside."

Gih.

If you say so.

I squash Gify with my hand. He squeaks like a chewing toy, his feathers fly, his eyes pop out and his legs face backwards.

The class stands still in silence. I see tears forming in the face of a girl.

With another squeak Gify reforms himself and rolls on my table, chirping in bird-like laughter.

Okay, that was a good one.

"Gih!"

A few people facepalm and laugh while others look at us in rage for the prank. At least the questions stopped.

The bell chimes and professor Tanya enters the room. Her koala and "Plom" nature spirits stand still and silent for the first time since I met her. Both of them stare at Gify. The professor notices the oddity and comes hurriedly to my table.

"Oh, oh, oh. You found one! How? How? When? Did you tame it? Or is it attached to you? How? Did it open your heart to someone? How?" She machine guns questions at me.

Gify just sits down with a smug smile. He receives all the attention like he's a seasoned celebrity.

"I, uh, I just gave him food and one day he decided to attach himself to me," I smile forcefully.

The class turns silent.

"What!?" Exclaims a student.

The professor's face twitches.

"That's it?" She asks.

I clean my throat.

"Yeah... That's it."

The stares are so intense I'm starting to sweat cold.

"You gotta be fucking..." She mutters and turns around. "I spent a fucking year talking and talking and playing around trying to convince each of these freeloaders to follow me."

She walks towards the blackboard. The wide cuffs of her black dress wave about as she gesticulates wildly.

"And now you come here and tell me a spirit just attaches itself to you because you fed it?"

Her dress spins as she turns around in a huff. Her face shows no gloominess but a very awaken and disbelieving expression.

"You young ones and you stupid talent and luck...," She grumbles and suddenly claps her hands, "Wait! Aren't you the 'Good Luck' Ryder?"

"Yes...?" I answer meekly.

"Thank the Gods, I almost lost faith in my own skill," she facepalms and shakes her head. "You are the one where weird stuff keeps happening. Having a spirit attach itself to you instead of having to tame it is just another monster for the Lord."

Lina's Trivia: "another monster for the Lord" is along the lines of "the same event as usual has happened".

I maintain an innocent smile during all this time. You just don't interrupt a person ranting.

After this outburst, we resume class. The professor takes this hook with Gify to explain more in depth how nature spirits can be used to connect people. Since I have already experienced this the lesson was wasted on me.

I have finally achieved a presentable Worcestershire sauce. I used vinegar, not-cinnamon, not-ginger, not-cloves, harpy fat, anchovies(?) and beef broth. There's still some refining to do but it's usable.

"Tastes so good!" Roxanne says.

There's a lot of spices in Maoka so it's unsurprising she's not picky.

"Quite interesting, reminds me of a sauce I ate once in Ryutake," Hana says.

I gotta visit Ryutake, I have a good feeling about this.

"I loved the cinnamon. It's used a lot at the Misty Low Forest," Alissa says.

Lina frowns, she's somewhat of a picky eater. Or rather, Hilde didn't adapt to Avgi cuisine se she's not used to experiment new things.

Ciel was rather neutral.

"Can I show this sauce to the temple?" She asks, "It would be a good help to make the food more varied there."

"Sure."

I still have many more recipes to use to make money.

After that I used my pseudo-Worcestershire sauce, not-paprika and melted butter to create Buffalo Wings. A certain someone once said I was committing sacrilege by using Worcestershire but need is the mother of invention. I didn't have the usual cayenne sauce available and I had terminal munchies so I just had to eat some wings.

Today is the 18th.

-

I finally learned [Cooking] with 1 point. I wasn't putting that much effort into trying something new so I guess this is why it took so long.

I go to the basement and wait a few minutes until the black circle appears. I enter it and I'm taken to the same room as last time.

"Hello, Mr. Ryder," Kyros is the same as last time, relaxed and calm.

"Hello, teacher."

"Show me your progress."

I sit down and start my circulation.

"Hm... passable."

Ouch.

"Now, give it your all to increase the speed of the circulation, the faster it spins the better."

This isn't as simple as it seems. I still have to reform the vortex little by little, except this time I have to do hundreds of these reforms in a few seconds.

It's an exercise in repetition and patience. Whenever I start to skip too much Kyros stops me and forces me to move the vortex little by little again.

After a while I enter a sort of trance. The movements are repetitive but not physically tiring, it's very cathartic.

"That's enough for today."

I bow and take my leave.

I noticed that I have to put less effort in seasoning food now. Measuring how many pinches of salt was always a bother, I preferred to underseason then test the taste and finally adjust when necessary. Now I barely need to test the seasoning because I have been hitting the right spot on the first try.

The speed that I prepare the ingredients also increased, my dexterity with the knife is noticeably better.

I can also imagine the ingredients and how to prepare then and I get an intuition about how they would taste. Honestly I like cooking but the skill takes some of the effort off, which is not exactly why I cooked. I used it as a method of feeling catharsis, now things are more efficient, reducing the time I had for this relaxation.

Oh well, whatever, more convenience is just more convenient. I won't turn into an old grumpy man that complains about the progress of technology.

Today is [Electric Magic] class. Lyle is back to goofing around so I remind him to take things seriously. He gulps and focuses on casting [Discharge] in the largest area possible.

Lina stayed home again to get used to her new switch-axe. I put her extra points for leveling up into [Axe Use] so she has at least some basis to start from. The skill system is so convenient to accelerate growth.

Today I spar with Lina, Hana and Ciel. We are using real weapons and armor so Lina can practice with her switch-axe. Lina's excitement compounds with her inability to take it easy, making my life harder than it should. Her wish to prove herself to me is a bit worrying, she doesn't need to try so hard.

I'm getting annoyed at being pummeled so hard so I try a new tactic. I hunker down behind my shield and keep her at bay. I grab the pommel of my sword and twist it once, it's quite hard.

I strike with my sword and it slides off her shield, she's getting good at blocking. She counters with a chop at my legs and I step back. The axe grazes my shield.

I grab the pommel again and twist it hard, I pull the pommel and it wrenches free. With my sword hand I throw it at Lina. It hits her in her helmet and she gets dizzy.

I rush forward and bash her shield. She falls down like rock. I stab my sword in the grass, right next to her throat.

She looks at me dumbfounded. I heal her head and take off her helmet.

"What... Did you do?" She asks.

I contain my chuckle and kiss her forehead.

"Sorry for that. I threw my pommel at your head."

"What...?"

Hana is laughing while Ciel and Alissa are looking at us in disbelief.

"Wolfy, that was fucking retarded, I can't believe it worked," Hana says, drying the corner of her eyes.

"That was the pommel?" Alissa asks, she looks at the pommel of her own short sword and tries to unscrew it. "This is kinda hard."

Ciel chuckles and goes back inside to look at the food. Roxanne looks over from the window of her room.

"What's so funny?" She asks.

-

Today is the 19th.

-

This morning we teleport to Spiral Springs to get more moonlight moss. Just yesterday Hana saw a request for the moss. Kind of a cheat to be able to teleport there so fast but we really need more of Roxanne's elixirs.

It nearly takes all of my mana to get everyone there but it's improving. I drink an MP potion and we move on.

There's a considerable amount of Moonlight Moss, Roxanne is quite happy.

Lina puts her axe to the test. Axes are better than swords at killing these bulky monsters like the Moon Turtles. Maybe we should get an axe for Hana too but she would need a level or two to have enough spare skill points for it.

"Careful with the spikes!" Ciel warns Lina.

"Okay!" Lina responds as she dodges a spike.

She strikes with her axe at the blinded Moon Turtle.

We gotta train Lina in [Earth Magic]. [Spirit of Gaia] only gives her magical "Strength" and "Endurance", it doesn't give her more mass so she can still be punted like a ball by monsters with enough strength. The dwarven men-of-the-line use [Earth Magic] to embed their feet in the earth, keeping them stuck on the ground.

"I'm concerned about that Moonlight Moss request," I tell Alissa.

"Why?" She responds and fires an arrow.

"Someone is going to come here and see there's less Moonlight Moss than what was known."

"They could assume it was a coincidence that someone was passing through and took the Moss."

"Yes but still, if we do this repeatedly I don't want people to be wary of someone collecting the Moss all for themselves. People might stop posting requests for it at the Guild, which would be rather inconvenient as we wouldn't know when the Moss grew again."

She tilts her head and purses her lips.

"I see. Makes sense. Maybe we shouldn't collect the Moss from every turtle. The moss has a distinct smell and I think it's the spores, so I believe it spreads through the air. If we leave a turtle with Moss near others it could make the Moss spread faster."

"That's a good idea, you are always helpful," I smile warmly at her.

She blushes lightly and continues popping eyes. It makes me happy I can still make her blush.

I spend this morning focusing on my mana circulation. The girls are enough to kill the turtles so there's no need for me to participate.

Today is [Blessing Magic] class. It's always a straightforward class, there's not much theory to learn. It might also be the easiest magic school to learn.

Hatara is getting quite good at singing. Her voice is so soft and sweet. I can just imagine how good of a folk singer she would be on Earth.

This break everyone is at the table. I'm not the kind that goofs around and chit-chats or gossips. If it's not related to magic or work it generally doesn't interests me, because of that I never really had many friends. But it's still quite nice to sit back, relax and hear the others have their conversations. Specially because they don't keep trying to get me involved in the conversation. The older side of the family that would ask "why are you so quiet" was maddening... But I still miss them.

I have to clear my head and focus on something else, these memories aren't helping me right now.

Hana drags Roxanne out of her room and I tie her down with my hug so she doesn't escape. Even though Roxanne stopped working towards the anti-venom that killed her fiancee her obsession with potions still didn't subside.

"Roxanne, you never talked to us about your parents," I say.

She stops struggling and cringes. Well that's a good sign.

"Well..." She smiles wryly, "We kind of parted in not so good terms."

"Go on," Hana says, everyone nods.

Roxanne deliberates for a few seconds but resigns and sighs.

"I ran away from home." -We all share a look of surprise- "My parents didn't approve of Mithra, they wanted a child of their blood. After she was gone I just couldn't stand anymore their talks of marriage and such. They wanted to create a family lineage and I just wanted to mourn. I took some money and ran away."

"I assume that they didn't try to brand you as a thief otherwise it would have been difficult for you to pass through Goldport unimpeded," Ciel says, she frowns in empathy to Roxanne's plight. "Your problem is quite common among the nobles. Greedy parents that want a better position to the extent that they trample over the wishes of their children. I didn't know you were part of the higher society, though."

"We are not considered part of the upper class of our Holy Land, I came from a small fishing village after all. What happened was that my parents ended up acquiring quite a bit of money, they found a wreckage and unearthed quite a lot of treasure. That happened when I was still a baby."

"So that's how they paid for your tuition at the Holy Academy, yes?" Hana asks.

Similar to a knights academy, the one on the demon race's territory is made to create servants and leaders to serve the Council of Elders.

"Yes. They wanted me to follow the path and reach a seat at the Council of Elders. But I couldn't, I couldn't handle the pressure. Then I met Mithra and..." Her voice fades and she curls into a ball.

I pull her down on the sofa and spoon her. Sometimes there's no need to talk, we already said our vows, all I have to do is assure her I'm here and I heard her.

With warm eyes, Hana rubs her thigh and I hug her tighter.

I don't have parents to come back to so I will make sure you go back to yours.

Each of the girls give her a kind hand squeeze to assure her, Aoi gives her a lick that elicits a chuckle and Gify rubs his forehead on hers. After a while Hana carries her to their bed, tonight she gets the best treatment for sadness, aggressive cuddling.

Today is the 20th.

-

I grab Ciel and reverse our positions while I use [Clean] on my mouth. I hold her head and kiss her deeply.

"You are always the jealous one aren't you?" I say.

She pouts and looks away.

"But I will always love you just the way you are."

She fails a poker face and her pout turns into a smile. I have to remember to regularly tell her I love her.

"I love you too, my cute little old man."

"Wow, what was that? What a horrible flirt. Do people of Rupegia flirt like this?"

She huffs in annoyance but ends up chuckling.

"Let me try that again," her tone turns to mockery, "I love you too, my little hero."

"Oh no that was too far. I will show you what a virtuous hero I am by ravaging you."

"Oh noo" -she slaps her forehead dramatically with the back of her hand- "the hero has turned into a depraved man that steals women's innocence."

"Ei, that's a good setting. I want that the next time you tie me up," Alissa says.

Ciel rolls her eyes and shakes her head. -

-

My [Blessing Magic] increased by 1 (now 4+18).

Roxanne was looking downcast this morning. Hana kept her company and made sure she ate and talked to her. Tonight is her turn so I will do my best to keep her mood up.

"Today we are going to take a step further," Kyros says, "Do you know how sound works?"

"Vibrations on the air. You can visually see the vibrations if you look closely to the wave form of a string of a harp, the longer the string is the easier it is to see."

Kyros blinks blankly in surprise. I could possibly have more knowledge on sound and music than the natives, I even know some sheet music.

"That makes things simpler then," he mutters and cleans his throat, "The next step is to tremble your vortex so much you can produce sound."

Oooooh! Now I get it how [Godly Language] works.

Kyros starts a demonstration. I hear a low pitched rumbling, it sends me shivers like when someone scratches a blackboard, but the pitch of the sound is so low it shouldn't provoke this reaction. The mana-tainted sound waves are interacting with me.

"Wait," I lift my hand and Kyros opens his eyes, "Sound propagates through the air. Is this sound that mana creates also propagating through the air? I thought mana didn't interact directly with matter."

"Hooh. You are surprisingly well-read..."

"What you mean by 'surprisingly'?" I interrupt with a frown.

"Well..." He cringes and looks away.

Hah, I made the stoic man embarrassed.

"You are an adventurer and there's not many nobles who would be able to ask the same questions as you did..." He smiles apologetically.

"It's fine," I wave my hand dismissively, "Let's go back to my question."

"Yes. Well, mana really does not interact with matter, the sound it creates is a bending of our 'reality'."

"So, like how gravity does it?"

"What?"

Oh yeah, he's not a space mage, his knowledge of physics might be limited.

"Never mind. Continue, please."

"Continuing. This mana wave bends our world, it's easily seen in mana storms, it's how they rip the world apart. The important part is that when you add words, a meaning to that sound, it interacts with our spirit. The words are understood by our spirit, forcing it to change. The power in the mana wave is what fuels this change. It works even when the person does not understand the language, hence the name, only the Gods can speak to us in a language every humanoid would understand."

"But why do I have to move my vortex in a circle?"

"It's to guide the wave. In the future you will need to make two vortexes, one will create the sound and the other will spin around the vortex and absorb the wave to shield you from it. With high enough [Mana Control] you can manually guide the wave so it only affects your targets."

There's a way to create directional sound waves by using ultrasound as a carrier wave. This part of physics isn't my specialty so it will be left for some other time.

The training is now another degree harder. Doing two movements at once is hard, doing it with two individual vortexes will be near impossible. Maybe this could be an introduction to dual casting for me.

The fantasy-cancer also kicked up a notch, I have to focus hard on keeping control over the vortex. It seems that stray mana, uh, "particles" could be the cause of the corruption, mana itself doesn't interact with matter but it disturbs space-time.

The more I focus on control over this vortex the less corruption I feel. The more mana particles that escape, the more the corruption that appears. The faster I spin, even though the same amount of particles is escaping, the more the corruption appears. So it's all about the speed of the particles. The faster they are, the more they disturb space-time, the more corruption that appears.

Could this corruption also be related to how the undead corrupt the world?

When we finish I feel very dizzy. I cast [Heal] on myself and the dizziness goes away.

"Wast that [Heal]? I didn't hear you chant," Kyros asks.

"I didn't. Keep this private, you can ask Dame Vanea if you want to know more."

"Apologies, if Dame Vanea didn't tell me then I don't need to know," he bows lightly.

"You seem very loyal to her."

He smiles warmly.

"I am."

"Hm..." I stare at him for a few seconds.

Would it be impolite to ask his story?

Almost like he read my mind he speaks again.

"I'm not a criminal, only a victim of injustice," his stoic expression returns.

I nod at him, that's enough for me.

"Until next time," I say and take my leave.

Roxanne is a bit lonely so this time she came downstairs to help with lunch. Even Aoi is trying to help.

Aoi is now the size of a fully grown corgi. She eats more than her stomach could possibly handle. Monsters like her that grow up to impossible sizes are considered partial magical beings. They absorb loads of mana into their own bodies and store it for energy and structural stability. Without mana the square-cube law would make a creature like the ancient Azurite dragon impossible to exist, they would collapse under their own weight.

Aoi has also been developing more of her personality. She has been growing very curious, always watching closely whatever we have been doing. She tried to peel a not-potato but her claws are awkward to handle. If she grows some more she will be able to properly grasp things.

"You need a little more time, my little dragon," Hana says.

"Kweh! Tato, har' to cuut!" Aoi says, her voice is growing less strained.

I run my hand through her sleek spine and she shivers.

"Kihih! Ti-kle!"

Male dragons and dragonkin have rough and pointy scales. Females have more smooth and rounded scales. Even though Aoi's scales are hard I feel like holding her all day and petting her head, just like I did with my dogs.

I grab her and cuddle with her on my lap.

"Ol-fy!" She stretches her head and tries to lick my chin, just a few millimeters short.

"Yes?"

"Lo-ve you!"

Awn, oof, owie, ouch, guh! Critical hit!

"Ha-na, Li-na, Li-sa, Ci-el, Ro-xy. Lo-ve you!"

Area [Heal] please!

A crowd of teary-eyed faces stare at Aoi like a hunter stares at its prey. Aoi jumps on the table and a storm of hands pets her whole body. She closes her eyes and sprawls herself, enjoying the free massage.

"Gih!"

Gify pops into existence and jumps into the mosh pit of caressing.

Our lunch schedule gets disrupted due to our impromptu cuddling session. Roxanne's mood improved greatly after this.

During [Reduced Mana Cost] class I focus on Toroo's method of improving the "building" phase of the spell. My "Perception" and [Sense Mana] are high enough that I can observe my own spells in quite a lot of detail, the problem is that the details do not make sense.

I have to look over all my spells one by one. I have to identify the common patterns among them and see which patterns can be simplified. The patterns of a spell are similar to how a soul works, it's "organized" but "nonsensical" information. I can't see them with as much clarity as I can when I'm using [Infuse] from [Golemancy] but I can discern something.

During this break Silvane and Nononya appear again. Gimbo was nervous for a while, he knows who Silvane is. Eventually he calmed as he saw how others would casually address Silvane.

Silvane seems very interested in our discussions about this skill. Describing what we feel about the patterns is quite a difficult thing. Due to everyone's different levels of perception and intuition the way we sense patterns differs.

For example. Alissa has a very good sense of smell, so when she tried to morph [Ghost Lights] to affect only a single target she felt the patterns of the spell as smells. Followed by that she saw abstract images and heard scratching sounds.

For me I have a feeling like spells are "circuits". Like an electrical circuit, every "symbol" represents a "pattern", these patterns are how the spells are modified. The way these patterns are wired also changes their behavior in (what I believe it would be) predictable ways.

Most natives of the world learns how to manipulate spells, though it's very limited. But even people with a small amount of talent for magic can observe the 5 individual steps that form a spell if they put some effort into it. For Alissa that modification was made on an instinct developed by years of contact with magic. Because I don't have the same instincts the way I see magic is very different.

The bell chimes and we move back to class.

"Say, Toroo, do you know who Silvane really is?" I ask.

"Hoh? I'm not sure, she certainly acts like nobility but I don't know of any silver elf house that lives here."

"She's betrothed to the Lord's son."

She chokes on her spit.

"W-what!?" She turns at me, she frowns so deeply her eyebrows make her look like a very angry owl. "Hoooh, you didn't deem it important to tell me!? I didn't even call her 'Miss'!"

I chuckle and lift my hands in surrender.

"I'm sorry. But you should have seen she doesn't care about these things. She was especially friendly to you."

"Hoh!" She turns in a huff and marches on.

"Miss Toroo," Gimbo scurries forward and interjects, "I had heard about the silver elf. She's a lovely woman who doesn't really hold nobility in high esteem. She's a Blood Slave, her parents were Lords that were executed for their incompetence."

Toroo stops and her expression turns into surprise.

"Huhm," She rubs the feathers on her head, "Tragic, I understand her position. But still, do not play me like this, Wolf."

"I'm sorry," I smile in a way that tells that I am not sorry.

Roxanne was feeling quite happy. -. She slept with a stupid smile on her face.

Today is the 21st.

-

My [Reduced Mana Cost] increased by 1 (now 6+4).

This morning I spend with Hana and Alissa. I'm mainly training my footwork and how to use [Telekinesis] for short flights and to aid jumps, I want to use falling attacks like how Hana does. People think that I have little mass due to my size but if I can use [Telekinesis] to increase gravity on myself (and not break my legs after hitting the ground) then I can do some really savage overhead strikes.

So far my style with the sword is catching them unaware with a super heavy attack. But this won't last, sometime, somewhere, I will find someone that can resist it.

I have been trying to use [Rush] for lighting-fast strikes but it's dangerous. I can easily lose my weapon or over-swing, leaving me open to a counter.

Roxanne finishes another batch of her strength elixir.

As we prepare lunch Ciel barges in.

"I learned it!" She yells with pride.

"That was fast," Roxanne says.

"Yeah well. [Judgment] is a really simple spell so it's easy to learn but mine is really weak. It does enough damage that I can threaten an undead but I would need time. If we meet a group like the dragonoids we should be able to keep them occupied long enough for me to kill at least one of them."

"That's reassuring. Good job," I kiss her cheek.

Ciel beams with a smile.

Today is [Space Magic] class. I'm not that focused this time, my mind has been swimming with too much information. Magic manipulation, dealing with my women, Darean and Vanea, the problems with Ankara, the reoccurring situations where I have to kill people. I need a vacation.

"Feeling tired, Wolf?" Lyle asks.

Can't really hide things from that one.

"I am tired," I sigh, "Next half-cycle break I wanna stay at home. Been fighting and training too much."

"Sometimes we put too much on his shoulders," Alissa says.

She pulls me closer, I lay my head on her chest and close my eyes.

"It is impressive how you are the leader of your fellowship," Lyle says.

"And you are famous in town," Hatara continues.

"It is not unexpected for you to sometimes feel the weight."

"Some of the weight is self-imposed. I spend too much money... Indulging on my women," I smile wryly.

Someone grabs my hand. I open my eyes and see a smiling Lina holding my hand close to her fast-beating heart. Her other hand is on her leather choker.

"But it is worth it," I say.

I smile to Lina and return to rest on Alissa's chest. Gify turns on his special touch and I feel like my shoulder is being massaged by running water.

Today is the 22nd.

-

"Good morning, Mr. Ryder."

"Good morning, Mr. Kyros."

"Show me your progress."

"Not much to show, I wasn't feeling like training the circulation yesterday."

Kyros narrows his blue eyes in disapproval. I sigh with tiredness.

"You wouldn't know but I have been fighting quite a lot lately. I'm getting very tired."

"Not of my concern," he answers immediately.

"It is if you want to properly teach me. You can't just look things in a vacuum."

"In a what?"

I massage my forehead.

"It's an expression. You can't ignore the rest of my life, it has influence over my performance. Teaching is more than just what you say during class."

His face frowns in annoyance.

"You are far too young to be giving me a lesson."

If only you knew the truth.

"Whatever. Let's continue," I wave my hand dismissively.

He huffs.

I continue where we stopped last time, but I increase the intensity.

Now I have to regularly heal myself. The dizziness is getting really strong, headaches hit me like flashes, my skin starts to grow red and inflamed. Is this radiation poisoning?

"Pay attention to your symptoms boy, they show you are being sloppy with your control," Kyros says.

I open my eyes to look at him and see small colored spots of light all over my vision. Yeah, it's fantasy-radiation poisoning.

With time I slowly manage to create a low-pitched humming. I'm quickly developing a sort of auto-pilot mode. I just have to wish and "let go" and I can recreate the vortex at the same level of control as I have already achieved.

"Boy, your level of precision and speed is good enough for some basic vocalization. But you have to improve on your control, you are leaking too much mana. Lucky for you that your [Heal] is so good."

"I understand. I will keep it in mind."

"That's enough for today."

Today is [Nature Magic] class. The professor is teaching us proper vine manipulation by combining [Entangling Vines] with [Vine Weapon], it's the basics of natural materials manipulation.

The spell [Grow] is used to harden the materials at specific points. You bend it, grow the two parts together, shave off the excess and repeat. This creates a material harder than normal.

The elves have a more advanced version of it using wood. They bury it in fertilized earth and use [Grow] on it. The wood then absorbs nutrients from the earth and changes its composition depending on how the earth was fertilized.

Lina is back at home sparring so it's only me and Alissa during break.

"Gih."

And Gify.

Now that I can properly relax I notice that there's a considerable number of people glancing at us. Not the usual envy or lecherous glance, it's a neutral glance with a hint of curiosity.

My time hugging Lina is growing short, she learned [Manipulate Metal]. As expected, it is weak, but it means that I don't need to show it to her anymore, she can improve the spell on her own. Not that I need a reason to spend hours cuddling with her - while I slowly bend a sheet of metal, but it was still a cathartic moment.

I spend the rest of the night compiling Morse code for the girls. They don't need to learn it immediately, just a sheet with all the words and a small explanation is enough for an emergency.

Today is the 23rd.

-

I increased my [Mana Control] by 1 (now 0+12).

Alissa increased her "Strength" by 1 (now 12). I can see her already athletic body get even more defined. -.

I spend the morning casually training. I focus on control, I need to reduce the amount of stray mana that escapes. I won't be able to increase the intensity of the circulation if I receive terminal radiation poisoning every time I train.

Ciel has some interest in copying my circulation. Hana is also practicing with me, she will pass down my lessons to Lina when she comes back home. Roxanne has only a passing interest, she will keep to her potions until Kyros passes me the "Magic Power" training regimen.

On [Electric Magic] class the professor talks about the level 30 spell [Charge]. It basically turns objects into a time bomb, when the time runs out it's like casting [Discharge] in every direction. Kind of underwhelming but the interesting part of it is that people have been modifying it to work like a battery.

If modified further it could even be used to enchant weapons with electricity, though great care has to be taken so the wielder doesn't get shocked too.

Lyle has taken an interest on this spell when I started telling him about how electrical actuators could be built. I don't have that in depth knowledge about it but I think Lyle could build it if he puts some effort on it.

The class was about to end when I feel my pocket get warm. I take out Vanea's lithograph and my heart sinks.

"EMERGENCY OPERATION. 9PM Baalfire's Tavern".

A note from Manasong

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Chapter 29: Nap Time

A note from Manasong

Attention: to conform to the limit of mature content (more than just sexual content) allowed in a novel, I've censored this chapter. You can look for the uncensored version here.

In case you didn't see I have started uploading this story to Scribble Hub: https://www.scribblehub.com/series/52931/rupegia/

I am reviewing grammar and doing some minor editing as I upload over there. Only now I noticed how bad my sentence structure was/is D=

We enter the tavern. It's just like last time, filled with smoke, low lights, music, and chatter.

"♪ ACHOO! ACHOO! The dragon made the ground tremble ♪."

I can barely pay attention to it, we didn't have enough time to relax and prepare our minds. Even Hana is showing some anxiety.

"♪ ACHOO! ACHOO! The hunters laughed and hightailed ♪."

A proto-waitress appears before us.

"♪ ACHOO! ACHOO! The dragon made the ground tremble♪."

"Good evening grand patrons. Would you like to go to our exclusive room? We can give you more personalized service worthy of someone of your position," she says, her smile is perfect but stiff.

The same words as last time.

"♪ Due to this crazy gam-ble, everybody left a-live! ♪"

We nod and we are taken to the same corridors and stairs. We go downstairs and reach the same familiar room.

It's empty.

"Uh..."

"Maybe the others haven't come yet due to the suddenness," Ciel says.

"Maybe," I mutter.

There are tables and chairs neatly arranged. Parts of the map of the town are strewn about. There are multiple drawings and markings on these maps, clearly part of some strategy meeting. The same golden, silver, red, and a new blue carving are all neatly organized at the side of the table.

We spend a nervous minute waiting when we hear footsteps and casual chatter. I relax until the door opens and the group of people enters.

A female silver elven archer. Her longbow is slung across her tall and muscular body which does not detract from her beauty. Her hair reaches her shoulders and curl inwards. Her sharp eyes and oval face give her a serious and sensual look.

Soul Info

Name: | Ercuria Ulher | Race: | Silver Elf | Level: | 44

A young krampus male mage. His goat hooves clack on the ground, visible above his black robe. He has a wizard hat similar to Roxanne's, his curly brown hair and ram horns can be seen below his hat. His round face makes him look like an innocent child.

Soul Info

Name: | Ervin Krampus | Race: | Krampus-type Demon | Level: | 35

A runic dwarf. The first that I have seen that look like traditional Tolkien dwarves with a wide body, thick muscles, and a long black beard. His scarred face and arms have multiple tattoos of words and a mix of tribal and geometric patterns.

Soul Info

Name: | Gilgor Momgrog | Race: | Dwarf | Level: | 47

And finally, a huge lion-folk, taller than Hana. His entire body seems to be furry. He walks on his digitigrade feet and he does not uses boots. He bellows a low rumbling laugh, showing an impressive set of pointy teeth and also a few molars at the back. His huge golden fur and brown mane is familiar, too familiar.

Soul Info

Name: | Grosnok Sokol | Race: | Lion Beastfolk | Level: | 51

Darean's fellowship.

I instinctively draw my sword. The girls spend a second in surprise but recover and draw their weapons too.

Great Destiny freezes and look at us with worry. Grosnok slowly lifts his huge hands in surrender.

"Uh... Hello?" He asks, not hiding his surprise. It's hard for his low growl of a voice to not look threatening but he succeeded.

"Why are you here?" I ask.

"We..." He looks at the other members, Gilgor shrugs. "Were summoned by Dame Vanea Anara. We are supposed to meet her here."

What.

"You are Great Destiny, Darean's fellowship, correct?" I ask.

The girls twitch nervously.

"Yes, well no. We kicked Darean out of the fellowship," he answers.

What.

"Why?" Alissa asks.

"He was getting too unstable. He could barely keep focus during our fights, he was bound to die sooner or later. Then Dame Vanea came to us and told us of his...," He cringes, "other job. We decided to help her so we wouldn't be implicated in espionage against a Lord."

Gify pops into my shoulder.

"Gih, ga, gih."

Huh.

"You are either a good liar or you are telling the truth," I say.

He lifts his hands higher and smiles wryly but it only makes him look more fearsome as his white fangs become more visible.

"We ask that you remain as you are until someone comes to clear your story," Ciel says," Sorry for not believing you outright."

Gilgor sighs and lowers his head. We lower our weapons but keep them on our hands.

"You haven't told us why you are hostile to us," Ercuria says, her sharp eyes narrow as she scans us.

"We killed Darean's brother and he has targeted us in revenge," Alissa says.

"Oh shit, so you guys are the ones..." A mutter escapes Grosnok's mouth.

I simply nod. We stay like this for another minute or so when heavy and armored boots stomp their way downstairs towards us. A head full of well-groomed black hair pops out from behind Great Destiny.

"Excuse me," Haaran appears out of the door and shimmies his way towards us.

His black eyes look at our drawn swords and he raises an eyebrow. His eyes spend a moment longer on Gify.

"So. What are you doing?" He asks in a very casual manner.

"This is Great Destiny, Darean's fellowship. Why are they here?" I ask.

"Vanea didn't tell you?"

"No."

Haaran sighs and massages his forehead.

"Did you make her mad somehow? I mean, did you annoy her in some way or another?" He asks.

Uh... There is one thing.

"I think so. We hid something from her and she got kind of mad..." I say.

There's the time we hid the Gate Scrubber from her.

Haaran rolls his eyes and moves towards the table. More knights appear behind him.

"Sheathe your swords. They are with us, they changed sides. Vanea can be petty sometimes so consider this payback for whatever you did to her."

I groan and sheathe my sword. Really now?

Haaran cringes and sits on a chair.

"Now, everyone, please come and sit. We don't have much time, I have to tell you of the plan."

We sit at one side of the long table and Great Destiny sits at the other. They also don't seem too happy to be part of Vanea's petty revenge.

One of the last to enter the room is Silvane, she sits near the end of the table and waves to us. She's wearing a mage's silver robe, she also has a metal staff with a free spinning hourglass on top, there's multi-colored sand inside.

The last one to enter is Smegma. What the hell. She's wearing a simple linen white shirt and brown pants, she looks just like any other commoner. Her brown side braids are well made, her freckled face is full of color and with hints of makeup and eye liner. Her eyes glaze over every face with no emotion. Her gaze stops at us for a few seconds and then moves, no reaction visible on her face.

Haaran cleans his throat, his piercing gaze kills any murmuring.

"For some time we have known about a warehouse that Darean, the spy, has been using to store smuggled goods. We infiltrated a spy and acquired the information that the goods will be moved tonight to a safer location so they will be ready for dispatch. The way that the goods are moved is by using [Invisibility] on them and simply passing through the front gates, which means that a powerful illusion mage will be present there."

Oh, I see. With [Invisibility] they can smuggle anything they want right under the noses of the guards.

The dwarf is sneaking glances at Lina. Uuuugh, focus.

"Unfortunately we have caught a whiff of necromancy, a husk master," Great Destiny and a few knights look around nervously, "Our trackers can't discern the number of husks present so the true number of enemies is unknown. This is why a massive assault will be mounted as soon as we can confirm the presence of the illusion mage. My sister is coordinating the guards while keeping the information minimal so no early warning is sent to Darean."

"We haven't confirmed Darean's backer so we do not know the extent of his power. What we know is that he has deep coffers. Expect well-trained and well-equipped enemy soldiers. We have been backing Darean in a corner so necromancy might be his trump card, which means he will throw everything at us."

He flips through the maps on the table and picks one in specific. There's a large rectangular building at the center and many sewer tunnels passing around it.

"It seems Darean is smarter than he shows. The warehouse is located on a spot where no sewer line runs through. Thus our tracking squad was limited to the rooftops of the nearby buildings," he puts a soldier carving with a silver dot on the head on a building a few blocks from the warehouse, "Wolf Ryder will be sent to rendezvous with silver squad, they have already infiltrated halfway towards the target. He will summon a Dream Eater to spread sleeping poison on the air to reduce the alertness and combat effectiveness of the enemy."

The amount of rugged faces staring at me and measuring my worth makes me feel very meek. Great Destiny turns to look at me with surprise, the elven woman is particularly expressive. Silvane pouts with a hint of annoyance on her eyes. Perhaps it's because I didn't tell anything to Nononya about my true skills.

"Reminder that his monster summoning is to be kept a secret. Disclosure of this secret will result in death," he adds, his sharp eyes scan the knights and spends a moment longer on Great Destiny. The knights are unfazed but Great Destiny tenses up.

"I will follow Wolf with silver squad," Alissa says.

A small albino incubus man cleans his throat. It's silver squad second-in-command, Sir Tarano.

"Why do you wish to come?" He asks.

"To keep him safe," she answers immediately.

They stare at each other for a few seconds.

"I use a bow and I'm more silent than he is," she adds.

Tarano sighs.

"Fine by me," he says.

"Continuing," Haaran says, bringing the focus back to him. He positions multiple soldier carvings around the warehouse, "The rest will simply wait for the signal of silver squad. My squad, Great Destiny and the remainders of Helios will assault the warehouse and kill anyone in sight. We are fighting against an illusion mage, any enemy who casts a spell either loses both hands or gets immediately killed. No exceptions, no mercy, no hesitation."

The knights salute.

"Yes sir!" They exclaim in unison.

"Great Destiny has an artifact, it is called Reaping Wind. It's a scythe that throws large [Wind Blades], be careful not to stand in front of them.

The lion Grosnok gives a toothy smile and waves his paw/hand.

"Once the illusion mage is confirmed to be present we will send, uh, Farana as a bait," he smirks and I see Farana cower slightly, "She has a special magic tool that will further disable anyone inside the warehouse. We will be tracking her so any hint of betrayal and her life is forfeit."

When everyone turns to look at her she straightens her posture and smiles. Her smile is strained and ruining her pretty face. Great Destiny frowns at this display and Grosnok even turns his head away, his previous smile turned sour.

"Everyone should have a necklace blessed by the Goddess of the Will. This is our main defense against offensive [Illusion Magic]. For the defense against [Invisibility] we will be using Dust of Appearance."

Lina's Trivia: Dust of Appearance is a white powder that sticks to mana and transforms it into light. It was made specifically to counter [Invisibility] and it's rather expensive. It's much more efficient than the Manaflies they used last time.

"Any questions," he scans our faces one last time.

"No sir!" The knights answer.

"Good. Now move!"

Orderly the knights start to leave.

"Ryder, you are with me," Sir Tarano says.

I nod and turn to give the armor on my "Items" to the girls.

"Be careful," Ciel says, anxiety painted on her face.

Lina nods in agreement, also copying her expression.

"Don't blow up the whole place without us," Hana says with a grin.

"Hey, that's my job," Roxanne says.

"Well..." Hana chuckles, "You get the idea."

"Now, we, fight!" Aoi says.

I smile and pat her head. She closes her eyes in happiness. Aoi grew so much she is more agile than Roxanne, she will be a proper fighting force this time.

Ciel steps forward and grabs the hem of my leather jacket.

"I love you..." Ciel mutters shyly.

"I love you too. It's just a small departure," I smile at her and grab her hand, "Ciel, you are in charge."

"Y-yes!" She straightens up and hardens her expression.

I release her hand and move on.

Tarano was staring at us with mocking grin. Farana is standing still with her eyes lowered.

So we follow him.

This is the results of the training of the girls.

Alissa increased her "Mana Points" by 110 (now 345) and her "Magic Power" by 50 (now 115).

Roxanne increased her "Strength" by 1 (now 9), her "Mana Points" by 65 (now 1270) and her "Magic Power" by 10 (now 390). Roxanne is slacking on her mana training so she had smaller growth than before.

Hana increased her "Intelligence" by 1 (now 10), her "Mana Points" by 105 (now 325) and her "Magic Power" by 45 (now 105). She and Alissa kept improving their mana with spell training while I was away with Kyros.

Ciel increased her "Mana Points" by 130 (now 1115) and her "Magic Power" by 20 (now 300). A byproduct of her training with [Judgment] was her increase in mana, her power didn't increase much since she was focusing on casting more spells instead of focusing on increasing the power of a single spell.

Lina learned [Axe Use] with 1 point, increased her [Earth Magic] by 1 (now 2+3), her "Mana Points" by 180 (now 440) and her "Magic Power" by 25 (now 175). Her enchanting training is helping her increase her "Mana Points".

The tables for the girls:

Spoiler: Spoiler

Info

Name: | Alissa | Age: | 19 | Race: | Fox-Type Wereanimal
HP: | 100 | MP: | 345 | Magic Power: | 115
Level: | 29 | Experience: | 7597/8000

Stats

Strength: | 12 | Endurance: | 18 | Dexterity: | 22
Speed: | 20 | Intelligence: | 12 | Wisdom: | 12
Willpower: | 16 | Charisma: | 10 | Piety: | 15
Perception: | 17 | Sanity: | 15

Other

Status Effects: | NONE | Titles: | Blessing from the Goddess of Love, Blinding Arrows
Affiliations: | Wolf Ryder (fiance), Blood Slave (Owner: Wolf Ryder), Helios (Fellowship)
Companions: | Wolf Ryder, Roxanne Succubus, Hanafuria, Ciel, Lina
Crimes: | NONE

Alissa Skill Report

Physical

Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level
Sword Use | 9 | Bow Use | 26 | Parry | 4
Dodge | 2 | Sense Presence | 6 | Hide Presence | 4
Enhanced Olfact | 5 | Enhanced Hearing | 3 | Hawk Eyes | 3
Muscle Explosion | 2 | Quiet Steps | 4 | Quiet Action | 2
Enhanced Stamina | 1 | Tracking | 2

Magical

Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level
Sense Mana | 1 | Mana Control | 3 | Fire Magic | 1
Light Magic | 1 | Space Magic | 1 | Conjuring Magic | 1
Illusion Magic | 2 | Fox Transformation (innate) | 5

Miscellaneous

Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level
Housework | 3 | Cooking | 4 | Cleaning | 2
Washing | 5 | Riding | 2 | Oral Technique | 4
Pain Resistance | 2 | Hand Technique | 2
4 Remaining Skill Points
OBS: Level means (free point)+(trained point)

Info

Name: | Roxanne Succubus | Age: | 21 | Race: | Succubus-Type Demon
HP: | 100 | MP: | 1270 | Magic Power: | 390
Level: | 33 | Experience: | 4659/10000

Stats

Strength: | 9 | Endurance: | 9 | Dexterity: | 11
Speed: | 8 | Intelligence: | 18 | Wisdom: | 17
Willpower: | 14 | Charisma: | 15 | Piety: | 10
Perception: | 10 | Sanity: | 12

Other

Status Effects: | NONE | Titles: | NONE
Affiliations: | Wolf Ryder (fiance), Helios (fellowship)
Companions: | Wolf Ryder, Alissa, Hanafuria, Ciel, Lina
Crimes: | NONE

Roxanne Succubus Skill Report

Physical

Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level
Dagger Use | 2

Magical

Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level
Sense Mana | 3 | Mana Control | 25 | Reduced Mana Cost | 3
Mana Efficiency | 9 | Fire Magic | 22 | Water Magic | 23
Light Magic | 1 | Space Magic | 8 | Conjuring Magic | 5
Alchemy | 3 | Potion Bewing | 11 | Poison Brewing | 2
Redirect Mana | 1

Miscellaneous

Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level
Housework | 1 | Cooking | 1 | Cleaning | 1
Washing | 1 | Riding | 1
7 Remaining Skill Points
OBS: Level means (free point)+(trained point)

Info

Name: | Hanafuria | Age: | 23 | Race: | Fire-Type Dragonkin
HP: | 150 | MP: | 325 | Magic Power: | 105
Level: | 37 | Experience: | 1100/14000

Stats

Strength: | 19 | Endurance: | 24 | Dexterity: | 10
Speed: | 13 | Intelligence: | 10 | Wisdom: | 10
Willpower: | 19 | Charisma: | 16 | Piety: | 11
Perception: | 9 | Sanity: | 17

Other

Status Effects: | NONE | Titles: | NONE
Affiliations: | Wolf Ryder (fiance), Blood Slave (Owner: Wolf Ryder), Helios (Fellowship)
Companions: | Wolf Ryder, Alissa, Roxanne Succubus, Ciel, Lina
Crimes: | NONE

Hanafuria Skill Report

Physical

Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level
Sword Use | 20 | Spear Use | 14 | Bow Use | 9
Two-Handed Sword Use | 9 | Pole Arm Use | 6 | Dagger Use | 4
Shield Bash | 6 | Block | 8 | Parry | 6
Dodge | 4 | Tatesomu Style | 4 | Muscle Explosion | 4
Battlefield Perception | 2 | Taunt | 3 | Intimidate | 2
Enhanced Reflexes | 2 | Enhanced Stamina | 4 | Enhanced Strength | 2
Enhanced Endurance | 4

Magical

Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level
Sense Mana | 1 | Mana Control | 1 | Fire Magic | 1
Earth Magic | 1 | Light Magic | 1 | Space Magic | 1
Conjuring Magic | 1

Miscellaneous

Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level
Housework | 2 | Cooking | 1 | Cleaning | 1
Washing | 1 | Riding | 3 | Massage | 1
Pain Conversion | 1 | Dismantling | 4 | Oral Technique | 1
Fire Breath (innate) | 5 | Summon Wings (innate) | 2
6 Remaining Skill Points
OBS: Level means (free point)+(trained point)

Info

Name: | Ciel | Age: | 21 | Race: | Human
HP: | 100 | MP: | 1115 | Magic Power: | 290
Level: | 31 | Experience: | 8672/9000

Stats

Strength: | 14 | Endurance: | 13 | Dexterity: | 17
Speed: | 18 | Intelligence: | 15 | Wisdom: | 18
Willpower: | 13 | Charisma: | 17 | Piety: | 21
Perception: | 12 | Sanity: | 19

Other

Status Effects: | NONE | Titles: | NONE
Affiliations: | Wolf Ryder (fiance), Helios (Fellowship), Templar Knights (Honorary Member), Temple Priestess (Former Member)
Companions: | Wolf Ryder, Alissa, Hanafuria, Roxanne Succubus, Lina
Crimes: | NONE

Ciel Skill Report

Physical

Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level
Glaive Use | 15 | Sword Use | 5 | Parry | 8
Dodge | 6 | Block | 4 | Imperial Hasterrum Style | 2
Muscle Explosion | 2 | Battlefield Perception | 1

Magical

Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level
Sense Mana | 2 | Mana Control | 6 | Reduced Mana Cost | 1
Mana Efficiency | 4 | Wind Magic | 15 | Fire Magic | 1
Light Magic | 24 | Space Magic | 3 | Conjuring Magic | 1
Diagnosis | 7 | Redirect Mana | 1

Miscellaneous

Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level
First-Aid | 3 | Housework | 3 | Cooking | 2
Cleaning | 2 | Washing | 1 | Riding | 1
4 Remaining Skill Points
OBS: Level means (free point)+(trained point)

Info

Name: | Lina | Age: | 18 | Race: | Dwarf
HP: | 100 | MP: | 450 | Magic Power: | 165
Level: | 22 | Experience: | 4501/7000

Stats

Strength: | 8 | Endurance: | 8 | Dexterity: | 12
Speed: | 11 | Intelligence: | 16 | Wisdom: | 11
Willpower: | 17 | Charisma: | 10 | Piety: | 10
Perception: | 14 | Sanity: | 11

Other

Status Effects: | NONE | Titles: | NONE
Affiliations: | Wolf Ryder (master), Helios (Fellowship)
Companions: | Wolf Ryder, Alissa, Hanafuria, Roxanne Succubus, Ciel
Crimes: | NONE

Lina Skill Report

Physical

Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level
Hammer Use | 4+10 | Axe Use | 3+1 | Parry | 0+5
Dodge | 0+4 | Block | 0+6 | Muscle Explosion | 1+1
Shield Bash | 0+1 | Battlefield Perception | 1+1 | Dwarven Pride Style | 1+1
Enhanced Speed | 2+0

Magical

Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level
Sense Mana | 1 | Mana Control | 4 | Mana Efficiency | 1
Fire Magic | 1 | Earth Magic | 2+3 | Ligth Magic | 1
Space Magic | 1 | Conjuring Magic | 1 | General Enchanting | 8
Magic Tool Carving | 1

Miscellaneous

Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level
General Blacksmithing | 4 | Sewing | 4 | Housework | 1
Cleaning | 2 | Washing | 1 | Math | 4
Riding | 1 | Stonebody (innate) | 3
3 Remaining Skill Points
OBS: Level means (free point)+(trained point)

We are brought to the same room as last time. Lines of space mages are ready for us. One of them opens a [Gate] and we follow after Tarano.

We appear on a lowly lit room. I can see shadowy figures slowly stir. One casts a very faint [Spirit Light]. Multiple small men and women in black clothes and masks surround us.

A woman with an undulating cat tail removes her mask and comes towards us.

"Greetings, Mr. Ryder," Dame Larana speaks, her whiskers flicker as she smells the air.

Her grey skin and sharp eyes makes her look quite ghastly in the low light. She turns to Tarano and continues.

"You brought an extra," her tone turns cold.

"Talk to Ryder, she volunteered," Tarano says with a shrug.

Larana's eyes narrow in annoyance and her whiskers flicker again.

"I am sorry for deviating from the plan but I am a capable archer and I can sneak better than Wolf. I would be much more comfortable accompanying him," Alissa says and bows lightly.

"It's not all about your skills, the number of people is also a concern," Larana answers immediately.

Alissa cringes but does not talk back. I grab her shoulder and she returns to normal. In truth I prefer her by my side too.

Larana shakes her head.

"No matter," she says, "We have to move forward, show us the Dream Eater."

I immediately summon one and everyone jumps in surprise. After recollecting herself Larana smiles and her stiff tail starts undulating again, she seems to have relaxed.

"How many can you summon?" She asks.

"Five, but it leaves me without mana and reduces too much my maximum MP. I need MP to survive or to fight, I'm a magic swordsman."

"Monster summoner and magic swordsman, actually. Quite envious," Tarano says with a crooked smile.

"We only need two," Larana says, ignoring Tarano.

I summon another. I will call them Dimy 1 and Dimy 2.

"Good," she says and shows her white fangs with a smile, "Now put this cloak over your clothes, I assume you still use scale armor?"

She hands me and Alissa a black cloak.

"Yes."

"You will not use armor until the attack begins, it's too noisy. Also remove your [Wind Armor] and [Rainbow Shield], it can attract attention. Your [Rainbow Crystal] can stay as long as you keep your hand gloved."

I dismiss the spells with pain in my heart. I won't be able to recast them during battle, they cost too much mana.

Alissa pulls out her smaller composite bow and ties her quiver to her waist.

"This spirit, do you control it?" Larana points to Gify.

"Gih!"

"I see. You are not useful, leave."

Gify glares at her and I feel a nearly scalding torrent of water passing through my shoulder. Larana's tail stops undulating and her vertical cat pupils narrow.

"Giih."

And he pops out of existence. He's not mad he's not useful, he's mad about her bluntness. Gify is quite prideful.

Larana gives a black cloak to Farana too.

"Now, let's move," Larana orders.

Besides Tarano, Larana commands 7 other lithe men and women.

I sneakily removed a point from [Mana Recovery] and added it to [Silent Steps]. I also removed 2 points from [Mana Efficiency] and added it to [Hide Presence].

Larana, Tarano, and another man suddenly stop and turn their heads towards me.

"You know [Hide Presence]?" She asks.

That was quick.

"Uh, yes."

"That makes things easier. We should be able to hide from any patrol now."

We quietly move upstairs and leave this empty and dreary basement. Upstairs is a carpentry. Multiple logs and planks are strewn about. Small boxes hold half-built furniture waiting for their craftsmen to come back. The smell of sawdust fills the air.

Suddenly I'm attacked by the uncomfortable feeling of having my [Gate] blocked. Quite the defense perimeter Darean has, but how did he get another Scrubber?

"Ryder," Larana stops and looks at me, "Get your summons to scan the next building and put anyone to sleep. We will make a path towards the building closest to the target."

I nod and obey. I tell the Dimy brothers to take a look outside and clear the target building. If someone is about to spot them they will hide and return.

The shrieking woman tries to make an appearance but I force myself to focus on the now.

I watch their vision as we wait close to the wall. Dimy 1 releases a faint mist towards a suspicious man standing near an alley.

After a minute the man yawns and sits down. Another minute he's sleeping.

Dimi 2 sneaks while moving along the wall. Once below a specific window he simply releases his mist, slowly putting his target to sleep. The suspicious man that was looking out of the window props his head on the window frame and goes to sleep.

"Building is clear. One man on the window is sleeping," I say.

"Have the monster eat him. Innocent workers won't be standing guard," Larana says, no emotion on her voice.

We move outside. One of Larana's men quickly sneaks towards the man on the alley and slits his throat. The creepy mask of a sleeping face comes back to me for more orders.

"Eat that man you put to sleep," I whisper to it.

Without a sound it moves back whence it came and I see it cover the sleeping man in smoke.

We scurry to the wall of the next building. Tarano looks inside and signals to Larana.

"Ryder, get the monster to put the two workers to sleep. Tarano, take the guard out," Larana orders.

Tarano draws a dagger and moves inside. Dimy 1 moves behind him.

It's a soap workshop. Two men are mixing a barrel of hot soap while a bored-looking armed man sitting on a chair sips something from a bottle.

Dimy 1 releases a more intense mist. It mixes with the smoke of the fire and no one notices anything different. When both the workers start to stumble the guard starts to get agitated.

Tarano jumps out of the shadows. He silently pounces on the guard and slits his throat with ease. The workers finally fall down on the ground, sleeping, though they could have been knocked out due to hitting their heads on the ground too hard.

Larana's men enter the building and explore upstairs. A few seconds later I hear something heavy fall down on the ground.

Dimy 2 finishes his meal. The man it "ate" now looks like he is brain dead, he drools and doesn't even breathe.

"Same thing," Larana says to me.

Dimy 2 puts another window sentry to sleep while Dimy 1 returns after meeting a wandering patrol of 3 men.

"Security is tight, they are certainly waiting for movement tonight," Larana says, "Have your monster release mist on them from above."

She picks 2 soldiers and the 3 of them go outside.

The enemy patrol suddenly stops moving. They slap their faces to wake up and joke to each other. One of them stretches and yawns, only to receive an arrow that enters the roof of his mouth and exits through the back of his head. One receives an arrow to the throat and the last receives an arrow through the eye.

The surviving man coughs blood and receives 3 arrows on his face, finally dying. Their bodies are quickly pulled over to the building we are on.

The next building has 1 guard and 3 workers mixing another large barrel of soon-to-be soap. I use both Dimy's to fill the first floor with sleeping mist.

The bumbling guard is peppered with arrows when he notices something is wrong. I smile with pride when Alissa's arrow hits him in the eye. I quickly stop my smile and mutter my prayer.

Another guard comes down to investigate the noise and gets filled with arrows just like his companion.

The next building is empty so we avoid it. After that there's 4 sentries standing on a very wide crossroads.

"I will climb the building and order the monster to release the mist when the area is clear," Larana says while looking at her pocket watch, "When I give the signal kill them and recover the bodies."

Those words are spoken with such a lack of emotion it's obvious she has said them many times before.

Tarano nods and Larana jumps towards the wall. I feel a hint of mana coming from her. Her gloves fuse with the wood and she climbs the building like a gecko.

With grace she vaults over the roof and turns into a Maine Coon, disappearing into the shingled roof.

Through five minutes the area in front of us slowly gets fuzzier as more mist pours in. When one of the sentries tumbles I see Tarano's ring glow green. He and 3 other soldiers jump into the open and charge the sentries.

The only sound the sentries make is a gurgle as their throats are slashed. Their bodies are dragged into our building and another soldier casts [Clean] on the ground, removing all the blood.

We quickly cross the wide road and enter the next building. Larana picked the lock for us. We stop for a few long minutes as a casual patrol of 3 men slowly strolls towards us.

"On my signal, pepper them," Larana orders.

The patrol enters our sight as they cross the windows in front of our building. Silently Larana's hand chops the air and multiple arrows find their marks. The men fall on the ground and 3 soldiers drag their bodies inside.

"You, stay here and report if any other patrol notices something suspicious," Larana says to one of her men.

On the next building both Dimy's sneak behind the inattentive sentries who discuss the taste of elven prostitutes. Their smoke materializes into a Shadow Satyr and their swords separate the heads of the guards before they could say "there's a Godsdamn creepy mask behind you, mate".

Larana frowns at the sight when we enter the building.

"We are spilling too much blood. I don't want to alert a sniffer. Let's avoid the patrols," she says.

The next building has 7 guards inside. They aren't drinking but they are smoking something and playing cards. They are loud.

"If we silence them it will be a problem," Larana says.

"Leave a gift and move on. We have to sneak past them," Tarano says.

"You stay behind," Larana points to one of her soldiers, "Fill that room with paralysis bombs when the signal comes and slaughter them all. Drink an antidote beforehand."

The soldier nods.

"Ryder, follow me closely," Tarano says.

Larana turns into a cat and another woman turns into grey owl. They fly in front.

We wait for a minute, then Tarano lift his hand to catch my attention.

"Go," he whispers and silently rushes forward.

I follow closely behind him. My steps sound like stomps in comparison to his delicate tip taps.

We hide on a dark alley a few buildings over. A patrol passes less than a minute later.

More men enter the same alley as us after they pass.

I see the wereowl woman perched on top of the building in the corner of the alley.

Alissa comes with the last batch of soldiers.

We wait another patrol to pass and leave the alley. We cross a wide street and enter another alley. After everyone is together again Larana and the wereowl join us, returning to their normal forms.

The wereowl woman makes a sign. She shows 3 fingers and points towards the second floor of the next building. Larana points to me and then points to the building. I whisper to the 2 creepy masks floating besides me and they fill the upper floor with mist.

A few minutes after we see the white mist overflow from the windows. It's followed by 3 thumps as bodies fall on the ground. The mist disappears and 3 men go inside the building to finish the job.

The next building is closed so Tarano has to pick the lock. There's multiple patrols passing near us. Across the road is our target.

The soldiers take positions besides the windows. This is a simple tea shop, multiple chairs and tables are neatly organized on both floors.

"Your [Hide Presence] isn't that good. Focus on remaining still and calming your heart," Tarano whispers and smiles. His thin chin makes his smile look slightly creepy.

I sit down near a wall and Alissa sits besides me. Once I feel the warmth of her hand I notice the pain on my shoulders, I was incredibly tense. No wonder, we didn't have that much time to prepare mentally for this operation.

Gify syncs my feelings with Alissa's and slowly my fear subsides. I focus on the warmth of Alissa's hand and slowly my anxious heart calms down. In the middle of the wolf's den I find happiness as I use my memories with Alissa to keep my emotions in check. The shrieking woman is completely silenced for a while.

We spend a good while sitting and waiting. When I look around it's almost like I'm seeing statues instead of people, they are so still it's creepy.

The patrols clear for a minute and I look at Farana. Her lifeless eyes stare at nothing.

"You doing okay?" I ask her.

Her face turns into barely hidden nervosity, her eyes race around and avoid looking into mine.

"Y-yes, I'm fine," she says.

Her voice is cute and very feminine, like Lina's.

Alissa squeezes my hand and she gives me a sympathetic gaze.

I'm feeling conflicted but I don't know how I should act. She should be grateful she's still alive but... How much is too much?

Am I a sympathetic person or am I just lusting over her and fantasying about saving a broken woman? My feelings are too murky right now.

Vanea's proposal rings in my head and I feel a very disgusting desire to... "Take" Farana. In my head this would be nothing but straight rape and yet the idea of taking another man's woman is doing things to my head.

If even Alissa is feeling conflicted about it than I should just bury those feelings until they go away.

A small commotion starts inside the warehouse and a few men hurry in and out. I feel the [Gate] block dissipate. The wereowl woman immediately opens a [Gate] in front of her and 4 plated knights appear. A second later the circle disappears and I feel [Gate] being blocked again. The knights walk in front of Farana and salute.

The wereowl woman grips her head and grimaces. She must have used all her mana in a single go. Ouch.

Then Larana turns to Farana.

"It's time," she says.

They both stand up and approach each other. Larana punches Farana in the face. Farana takes it without flinching and returns to her straight posture. She takes another, and another, and one last punch. Her face gets swollen, her lips part and blood trickles from her mouth, she's only slightly frowning.

Larana draws a knife and starts cutting and ripping on her clothes, she gives a few shallow cuts to her skin. She finally rips open her shirt, exposing her pink nipples.

"Ryder," Larana turns to me, "spread as much mist as you can from above the warehouse."

I nod and a minute later a faint mist covers the warehouse.

"Farana. Now it's your turn," Larana says coldly.

Farana's face cramps. She nervously rubs her right wrist and I see there's a bracelet there below her clothes.

With a forced smile she nods towards Larana and starts slapping her own face. When I see tears form on her eyes she stops and drops the cloak.

"Ei," Tarano grabs Farana's hand and looks her in the eyes. His voice is very soft, "be careful, eh? I want to see you come back."

Farana shivers and nods multiple times. The ratty man smiles creepily and lets her hand go.

Farana turns and runs outside towards the warehouse. Her body is bruised, cut, and bloody, her clothes are in tatters. She looks like a rape victim.

"DAREAN!" She cries.

The men outside leer at her when they see her exposed chest but suddenly grow panicked when they hear her cries.

"HELP ME, DAREAN!"

Multiple patrols follow her but don't block her path. She enters the warehouse and a commotion can be heard.

"Put your armor on," Larana orders.

Everyone puts on black scale armor.

A minute passes and the mist starts to thicken.

"That's enough, any more and it will affect us," Larana says, "Dismiss the monsters."

I obey.

Suddenly Farana runs off from the warehouse. A few confused men stand still and watch her come towards our building.

*BOOOOM!* An explosion rips apart half of the warehouse and lights up the night sky. The ground shakes and men scream. Pieces of the warehouse, human giblets, and assorted goods and food fly all around us.

Larana pulls out a small onyx disk full of circular silver inscriptions. She pours mana on it and I'm attacked again by the uncomfortable feeling of having my [Gate] blocked. I can feel the two different blockers overlapping on each other. I can also sense the direction of the source of each blocker.

Farana enters the building and stumbles. She's groggy.

"Good one, Smegma," Tarano says. He giggles and nearly chokes on his own spit.

She nods multiple times and collapses on the floor. Tarano drags her to a corner of the building.

I feel the enemy [Gate] blocker dissipate. Now only Larana's blocker is active.

"They will find us in a minute. Prepare for battle, meet them in the field," Larana says.

I walk to the exit.

"Ziny, Burky, I choose you!" I whisper to myself.

I summon a Zinotue and a Burkanolf outside. I think Alissa and Larana might have heard me.

The lightning tiger roars and the fire wolf howls.

"Keep them away from this place," I order.

Larana and Tarano smile as the two huge monsters make every man near us shit a Level. Damn huge cost in mana though. I drink an MP potion.

Now I'm ready, bring it on.

We fire arrows and spells at the fleeing men, many of them are falling down asleep. They all have flimsy armors and weapons. Darean hired tons of men but he couldn't hire a large amount of elite soldiers. My monsters do nothing as no one is brave enough to face two 2-meters tall predators.

With a *poof* Larana pulls out a bag from her [Item Box] and throws it towards the warehouse. It falls on the ground and spreads a white dust all over.

Her tail undulates casually as no man is capable of reaching us. Suddenly her tail freezes and I look outside.

The fleeing men start gathering around the remains of the warehouse. I can only barely feel fluctuations of mana, someone is casting spells in there. A few more men collapse on the ground, asleep.

A large burst of mana escapes the warehouse, such inefficiency. The wave passes through me and we all hunch over, retching and nearly puking.

"Necromancy!" Tarano yells.

"RAAAH!"

"I'LL PLOW YER ASS!"

"AAAH!"

"COME 'ERE LITTLE CAT!"

"UOOH!"

"I'LL FORCE YA UNTIL YE BLEED!"

Larana's eyes narrow as the few awake men on the warehouse suddenly rush out towards us. They trample over their sleeping comrades without any care.

Ziny charges the atmosphere with electricity and most of the men convulse and fall on the ground. Burky opens its mouth and a burst of flames catches the ones who managed to keep moving. The smell of burnt meat fills the air.

"AHAHAHAH! SCREW YOU!" Screams one of the men as he burns alive.

A shudder escapes me.

Shit, these people have been charmed. The illusion mage must have used [Vicious Rage]. I pity them, I don't know how to dispel such magic.

The 4 plated knights move outside to receive the charge of the rest of the burning suicidal men. Larana, Tarano, and two others pull out long swords while the rest of the men go upstairs.

Suddenly the white dust starts sparkling and floating. They flow towards the warehouse and converge in the shapes of 11 people. Lights flicker and the shapes turn into real people. Our target has finally moved out of the warehouse.

11 men and women. 4 plated soldiers with heater shields. 3 muscular archers with longbows. 2 mages with metal staffs and gems that flashes with lightning. 1 very tall plated soldier with a zweihander. 1 mage with a glass staff and a rainbow bismuth crystal on top, it's the illusion mage.

"Told you they would be prepared!" Yells the illusion mage.

Soul Info

Name: | Callistus Doukas | Race: | Human | Level: | 55

Dark hair, dark eyes, olive skin, and a broad face. The mage is missing an arm and his clothes are half burned. The others have small burns on their clothes and everyone is dirtied by soot.

The mage is accompanied by a rock gnome with a very fat belly and a pointy hat made of earth and grass, it's an [Earth Spirit]. Those spirits are the mark of a properly trained mage, they are controlled directly by the mage and help in casting spells.

"The glass staff is our target!" Larana yells.

"It seems Smegma almost got him. Oh well," Tarano shrugs.

Arrows and a few spells fly towards the enemy shield wall but they are all diverted into the ground or into the sky.

"Enchanted shields!" Yells one of Larana's men.

I start to chant a [Lighting Bolt] but I can't feel the "path" towards my target. It always veers into the ground regardless of how much I will it to obey my wishes.

"[Lightning Bolt]!" I cast.

The spell simply strikes the ground a meter away from the enemy shield bearers. I didn't even aim for them.

Emellanat is the poor man's defense against spells. The real deal are enchanted shields like these.

"The greatsword is enchanted!" Alissa yells.

This is kind of bad, we have no idea what it does. It could kill someone on a single strike if we are not careful.

Area spells start being cast upon us while the front lines clash. We interrupt it with ease.

Ziny fires his [Lighting Strike] at one of the lightning mages. He falls down on the ground but quickly gets up. The others pull out barricades and start firing spells towards the building we are on.

Our allies lob spells and arrows over the enemy shield bearers. Unfortunately the projectiles are too slow and the enemies simply step aside.

"HUSKS! IN FRONT AND BEHIND!" Alissa bellows.

I look through the door and see half-rotted orc corpses shambling out of buildings. Holy shit.

"I will cover our backs with the Zinotue!" I yell.

"Understood!" Larana answers.

Arrows won't do much damage against husks, Alissa's usefulness is limited.

Burky's fire breath simply diverts upwards without even touching the enemy shields.

The enemy fling spells and the walls of the second floor of our building burst open. Most of the men drop from the hole and spread to other buildings.

Ziny charges the atmosphere and the orc husks fall down on the ground, convulsing.

"Enough," I order it.

I drink Roxanne's elixir.

The atmosphere returns to normal and I charge forward. I cut the arms and legs off of each husk, this way they are completely useless.

I can't kill them properly because I don't have much mana, I can only boost my strikes with a well calibrated [Telekinesis]. I have to use only the exact amount of mana that will allow me to slice off the limbs.

Damn husks don't even give Experience.

The shambling corpses grab their shitty weapons that fell on the ground and rise again. I retreat and order Ziny to charge the atmosphere again.

*TOON!* A shockwave runs through my body, making my ears ring. I look behind and see an allied plated knight skid through the ground. The enemy with the zweihander is standing still with his sword thrust forward. I can feel the remains of the vortex of mana that the enchantment of that sword created.

I feel interest in looking at Callistus. I get a feeling that we barely need to fight anymore, the battle is won, reinforcements are coming. I can just lay back and relax.

A ridiculous amount of husks, both orc and the recently risen dead men, is trying to approach our front line. Heh, Callistus is screwed, not even husks can save him now, this battle is won. Damn, I'm tired of fighting, I really need my vacation.

Burky quit trying to hit the enchanted shields and is now focusing on keeping the swarm of husks from overwhelming our front line. His fire wall is protecting him from being flanked by the enemy mages and archers.

Our building is being shredded as the trade in spells intensifies.

Wait, no. This is wrong, I have to fight! Shit, he almost succeeded using [Pacify] on me.

"They are protected from my spells!" Callistus screams.

"Do it the normal way then. Kill that werecat!" Bellows the man with the greatsword.

Burky's claws rake and destroy bodies like nothing. The smell of burnt meat fills the air again as his claws of lava both cut and burn the enemies. Slowly the number of husks converging on our position seems to increase.

I turn back and continue to cut down the swarm of husks behind us. They are already starting to fill the street.

*TOON!* My ears ring again but no plated knight comes skidding. I glance back and see Tarano is stumbling backwards, his ears are bleeding.

The husks are too close. Ziny starts firing lightning bolts from his mouth in quick succession. The husks hit by it have their bodies fried and don't rise again. His mana is being wasted this way but there's no point in conservating it if we die.

The smell of burned rotten pork fills my nose. Disgusting.

The enemy keeps moving between their numerous barricades. The building Alissa is on is already half destroyed. She's using furniture as cover to lob arrows.

The husks reach my line of defense and start swinging their weapons. They are clumsy but they can still cut or be used as blunt attacks.

Ziny charges forward. He tramples, rakes, and bites the husks.

The husks counter and start to inflict multiple cuts on Ziny, the strength of even an orc zombie cannot be underestimated. Some try to hold on it to slow the monster down.

Taking the opportunity now that Ziny got their attention I cut off their legs, leaving them only with their arms. The crawling husks get in the way of the walking ones, creating a mess of entangled rotting bodies.

Ziny rushes back but it's quite wounded. He charges the atmosphere again. A mountain of husks starts to form, they crawl over each other and not even Ziny will come back alive from the swarm.

*TOON!*

I pull out multiple barricades. The wall of limbs claws on them and the ones at the top fall over the barricades. There's no stopping them.

Well that's damn peachy.

A cold air seeps through the battlefield and the fighting behind us slows.

"Lysander! Get the werecat!" Callistus yells.

A creepy, lanky, and bald man with a hollowed face appears from one of the streets to our left. He's wearing a black robe and a staff of bones with a beating heart where a gem should be.

He looks blankly at us. He raises his staff and every husk that I can see turns its head towards Larana. The knights tighten their ranks with Larana at the middle. Burky has to use his body to keep the husks at bay.

Well that's damn peachy.

One of the plated knights chants something and touches the ground with the palm of his hands. The ground glows with white light and sparkling particles get suspended in the air. This is [Light Magic] level 60 spell [Sanctuary]. He must be a Templar Knight.

The undead that approach the circle get weakened greatly, making them an easy target for Burky. Even the enemy soldiers seem to suffer when entering the circle. With this the battle on the front line turns into a stalemate.

I cast multiple [Spirit Lights] and throw them at the mass of limbs, it slows them down. The husks groan and growl louder. they claw forward and their arms stretch, trying to grab us. What a nightmare.

"Keep the air charged at maximum power!" I order Ziny.

He roars and rakes the wall of limbs.

The zombies grab and bite into my [Spirit Lights]. Flashes of light burst out of the broken spells, stunning the wall of flesh for a few seconds.

The necromancer lowers himself behind his barricade. A moment later black lines crack through the ground, making their way towards the [Sanctuary]. I feel the light of the spell flicker slightly and the glowing circle reduces little by little. That's [Decaying Corruption].

Our front line is slowly being pushed back. The man with the greatsword is just too much for them, he's half-swording at quite the effective level. One of the knights took a hilt to the face and now he's staggering. The Templar Knight is casting [Heal] non-stop.

Multiple large area spells are cast on the wall of husks. They burst into flames and the flesh burns faster than it should due to the concept of "consumption" imbued on the magical fire. The smell of rotten and burnt meat grows so strong I feel nauseous.

*TOON!*

"Help the front line," I order Ziny.

It leaps back and almost lands on top of a plated enemy, he has to roll backwards to escape being crushed. Ziny shrugs off a few arrows and swipes at the soldier, sending him flying backwards. His enchantment wasn't enough to keep the monster truck away.

Our front line regains momentum and starts to push back. The enemy focus on bringing down my wounded tiger.

Hana breaks through the smoke and lands by my side.

"Took you long enough," I say.

Her armor, shield, and sword are completely bloodied. I see a few cuts on the lining of her armor and a few scales of her shield are missing. She grins fearsomely through her helmet and speaks.

"I don't know what Darean did but we had a huge amount of damn suicidal trash to cleave through. Not only that but suddenly orc husks poured through the buildings. What the hell is he guarding on this place?"

"No idea. But our target is over there," I point to the mage with the glass staff.

Hana looks at him and then looks at the burning warehouse.

"The hell did you do?"

"Nothing, heh. That one was Farana."

Now that I look at her she's still sleeping inside the ruined building. There's even a few pieces debris on top of her but she didn't wake up.

*ZUSH*! The mountain of bodies parts in two as a huge [Wind Blade] cleaves through the meat.

"Move to the sides," Hana says.

Another huge blade of air carves through the meat. I'm thankful husks do not bleed otherwise the entire street would be a pool of blood.

A third cleave and the path is big enough for people to pass through. The meat still burns so people start to pour on a single file.

The first one is Grosnok. He's wielding on one hand an ornate scythe like it's a stick and a large kite shield on the other. He swings the scythe like a toy and a huge [Wind Blade] comes out of his slash. It flies towards the mass of husks and cleaves them in half.

The butt end of the scythe actually has a long spear blade on. The scythe part is not fit for cutting but at least he can use the other part for stabbing. The huge lion looks at bit comical and awkward using this weapon. There's a bastard sword at his side, showing he's at least prepared for the worst.

After him comes the dwarf Gilgor with a pole axe and scutum shield. He's just as bloodied as Hana. His tattoos glow. His movements are much more agile than what someone of his size seems capable of.

Both Grosnok and Gilgor use monster bones as armor, they look like tribal warriors.

Then comes the elf Ercuria. She's flanked by two large dogs that look like Rottweilers. I think they are summons.

The krampus mage Ervin comes after, a small flaming ghost floats over his shoulder, a [Fire Spirit]. From his age and level he must be completely specialized in [Fire Magic].

Finally my girls pour after them.

"Grosnok!" I yell.

His huge head turns to me after delivering another batch of sliced husks.

"Get that man!" I point to where the necromancer should be, "He's controlling the husks! The Burkanolf is my summon and it will open a path!"

He nods towards me and goes after the Burkanolf on the left of the battlefield.

"BURKY! Open a path towards the necromancer!" I yell in english.

He howls and spews fire while he furiously cuts down husks. Grosnok slashes any survivors and his fellowship follow behind the monster.

"Ziny! Come back and focus on disrupting the enemy!" I order in english.

It barely has the strength to leap back. It's bleeding heavily from multiple wounds, his body is a pincushion of arrows, and one of his paws is missing.

"Their shields are enchanted, can't punch through with our current power. The man with the greatsword has a sonic boom enchantment. It will push you back, hurt your head, and make you deaf," I tell the girls.

*TOON!* A demonstration happens just at the right time.

"I will deal with it," Hana says, with a *poof* she switches her sword for Lina's old hammer, "You, stick together and support the knights."

"Yes!" I say.

Lina and Ciel are looking tired, they seem slightly bloodied and there's a few small missing scales on their armor. Ciel must have healed any visible wounds. Roxanne is panting while the little blue dragon on her shoulder seems to be out of fire balls.

"Where's Haaran?" I ask.

"He separated from us to deal with some mercenaries," Ciel says.

"The guards?"

"Dealing with the husks. This is a nightmare," she lifts her hands in exasperation.

"I know, right. Let's go, stick together!"

Hana lands besides Larana. The werecat woman is panting and her ears are also bleeding, it seems she finally noticed the reinforcements. Her smile is absolutely beautiful, if only she weren't so cold.

"I WILL BREAK THAT LITTLE TWIG IN HALF!" Hana taunts while she points to the greatsword at the hand of the enemy.

I switch to my emellanat sword. We cleave a path towards the nearest enemy plated soldier at the right side of the battlefield. The number of husks is greatly reduced, there's only stragglers around us now.

Alissa and a few men run away from a crumbling building and take cover on a building to our right. Through our party connection I feel her run inside the building and into the second floor.

We approach the plated enemy on his left flank. He parries an attack with his hammer and points his shield towards us with his left. A huge gust of wind stops us from advancing, this is [Wind Shield].

"[Explosion]!"

Roxanne grabs her head and kneels. The plated enemy yells as his left arm and shield are crushed by the shockwave of the explosion. It seems that the enchantments are making even instant casting difficult.

The wind pushing us stops and Lina charges forward, her bloodied axe shifting into a hammer. She strikes down on the knee of the man and it bends backwards. He yells again and parries another hammer from the allied knight.

I dare not approach an experienced enemy in plate armor with only a measly sword. Ciel moves forward and strikes at his head with flat part of the blade. He falls down on the ground and Lina strikes his head repeatedly until he stops moving.

Ciel looks at two archers behind a barricade aiming at us and points her glaive.

"[Wind Storm]!"

Just slightly weaker since she only has 19 points in [Wind Magic] this time. But still enough to cut the archers and make them fall on the ground screaming.

Multiple [Lighting Bolts] are hurled towards us. Us 3 have emellanat so we only feel our weapons and shields get warmer as they absorb the spells. The two mages glare at us, a mix of fear, anger, and desperation.

"TOON"! Hana takes a sonic boom directly on the face. She grits her teeth and maintains her form, parrying the hammer of a plated soldier. She strikes at the shoulder of the greatswordsman with all her strength. The man winces and retreats a few steps.

"The mages!" I yell.

We charge towards the two obstacles in the way of Callistus.

"URAA! CHARGE FORWARD!"

The power in Haaran's voice gives us a boost. A large patch of ground turns into [Soul Sand], keeping a particularly thick swarm of husks in place. Haaran and his knights come out of a street and cut down the helpless husks. He quickly joins Grosnok and both charge past my dying Burkanolf.

Lina receives an [Earth Bullet] square on her shield. She retains her posture like a statue but she skids backwards a few meters. Callistus is looking at us with pure fear, his staff is pointed towards Lina.

Screw you, I cast [Rush].

The first electric mage helplessly fires a bolt at me, it just gets absorbed by my sword. He swings his staff at me like a baseball club in a desperate attempt to parry. I slide my sword past his staff and use the momentum to whip it into a slash. With [Sharp Blades] my sword slides through the meat and cuts the bone cleanly. His right hand falls on the ground and he yells in pain.

I continue forward. The fat little gnome fires multiple [Earth Bullets] at me, with [Rush] it's easy to dodge them. The ground suddenly shifts and rises, I tumble forward and roll. An [Earth Bullet] hits the gnome and disrupts him. Thanks, Lina.

I reach the gnome and my sword slides through him like butter. Summoned matter is so vulnerable against emellanat.

I look forward and Callistus suddenly splits into two, it's [Beguiling Clone]. Both clones try to run away in different directions. I cast [Discharge].

One of the clones flickers and continues forward, the other falls down and convulses. I stop my spell and dash towards the latter.

He gets up and tries to put the staff in front to defend himself. I pass through that amateurish defense and stab his stomach. My sword gets stopped by the chain mail below his robe and he hunches over in pain.

I grab his only remaining arm and push it forward, I chop his hand off at the wrist. He trips and falls on the ground.

"AAAH! SHIT! SCREW YOU, I WILL KILL YOU!"

He tries to get up and I kick his face on the teeth. He lifts his head again and I fire an [Earth Bullet], now he finally passed out.

*TOON!* Hana takes another attack. This time she stabilizes herself with her wings. She raises her hand and an [Earth Bullet] hits the greatswordsman in the helmet. He falls on the ground and struggles to get up.

Ciel holds the last mage down with her glaive. He struggles to remove the blade from his throat and slowly chokes to death.

"RAAAH!" Lina yells, her shy voice booming with anger.

She reaches the one armed mage and chops at his chest with her axe. It gets lodged inside and she activates [Switch]. The metal turns liquid and the weapon is easily freed from the dying man.

The last archer is overwhelmed by spells and arrows and finally dies to multiple wounds.

Lina turns her weapon back into an axe and chops the fallen mage at his throat, decapitating him.

The husks suddenly stop focusing on Larana and start attacking everyone, including the enemy soldiers. The husks can't kill them easily and only hold them down, making it easy to put them to sleep.

I see Haaran has finished off the necromancer.

Burky finally dies and fades into dust. Ziny runs out of mana so it starts to slash at the husks. Due to their lack of coordination they are barely more than wet paper to my monster.

The greatswordsman is finally subdued by blunt trauma to the head caused by Hana. The rest of the plated enemies are knocked out too. The rest of the husks are being quickly cleaned up.

Alissa jumps out of the window and comes to my side.

"You hurt?" She asks.

"No, just tired."

Now this is carnage. There must be hundreds of husks here.

Ciel goes to Hana and heals her ears.

A knight comes to us.

"Is this the illusion mage?" He asks.

"Yep. Must be passed out, but you still gotta heal him soon if you want him alive."

The knight nods and grabs one of the legs of Callistus. Without any concern he simply drags the unconscious man towards Haaran.

Larana and her men are healing each other so I signal to the girls to group up.

"Wounds? Problems?" I ask.

Everyone shakes their heads. I dismiss Ziny before anyone else can look at it.

We slowly make our way towards Haaran. He's sitting over a half broken crate, his face shows fatigue. Silvane is taking a look at his face and some dents on his armor.

Rather comical seeing the small girl taking care of the large man.

"Is it over?" I ask.

Haaran looks over to Callistus and smiles faintly.

"Yes," he looks at Silvane and his smile grows wider, his gaze is no longer piercing, "The guards have circled this area, they are going to comb every building in search for more husks."

"What in Gods name is it that Darean has that warranted all this protection?" Ciel asks.

"Money, more specifically, all his money," Haaran answers, "We cornered his operation so he had to concentrate everything on a single point. With this we were certain the illusion mage would appear to help move things."

"Quite the gamble. What if he weren't?" I ask, "I wouldn't fight again for you if he wasn't here, this wouldn't be part of our deal."

"We know, but there wasn't a better chance to capture the mage than this one," he shrugs.

Silvane finishes the pat down and gives him a kiss on the cheek. The stoic image crumbles as he chuckles and grabs her by the shoulder. He starts walking towards the now extinguished warehouse with Silvane by his side.

"Let's go see what's inside, shall we?" He says.

Wary guards start to appear from the streets. They sigh in relief when they see the knights already finished the fight here.

A very disheveled Larana approaches Haaran.

"Dame Larana, cordon the area, don't let any guard inside the warehouse," he says.

"Yes, sir!" She salutes and starts to bark orders to the knights.

That woman has endless energy.

I look back and I see Tarano pulling some rubble from the half-collapsed building. He pulls Farana out and hugs her.

I really do not want to know what kind of relationship they have.

A few water mages are putting out the last of the embers of the fire. There's lots of goods strewn about. Alcohol, cocoa, fine textiles, jewels, and many giblets of humanoids.

Ah, cocoa, this is making me want to start a chocolate factory. It's curious how some things from Earth are the exactly same as the ones here.

"This is not the main haul, there should be a trapdoor somewhere," Haaran says.

It takes us a few minutes but one of the knights finds it. A set of stone steps downwards leads us into a dark room.

Inside there are numerous crates, a considerable number of them are open and empty. Haaran and some others start opening the closed ones.

"High elven beauty products," Silvane says.

The eyes of Roxanne, Ciel, and a female knight shine as they stare at the crate.

Haaran opens another.

"Raw gems for enchanting or tools and a few gnomic magic tools," he says.

Now Lina seems interested.

"Emellanat," says one of the knights. He's holding a bar of the black, glossy, and sparkly metal.

Alissa smells the air.

"Oh, it smells of Ranja," Alissa says.

It smells like oranges.

"It's the same as your perfume," I say.

She nods.

Oh, I see it now.

"Pick a crate of each, Ryder. A gift from us. We will also send you the payment for your work later," Haaran says.

Now that the word "free" is on the mind of the girls they all show interest on one specific crate.

"Thank you, Sir Haaran. I appreciate it," I say and bow lightly, "May we take the enchanted shield of the enemy soldier we defeated? It seems very useful."

"Sure," he waves his hand.

I nod to Lina and she hurries outside, barely containing a smile.

I go to the crates and store them by using the rope loop that every crate has. A convenience so people can easily press the "store" button on their [Item Box].

I hear the clacking of heels. It grows louder until Vanea appears on the room. She's wearing a mix of beautiful but still functional padded black scale armor with a battle skirt. Even with a coif she looks elegant. Lina comes scampering behind her and gives the bent shield to me.

Vanea takes a glance at the contents of the crates and smiles widely.

"There must be hundreds of rose coins in here," she says.

"Unfortunately we found no weapons," Haaran says, "He must have distributed them all already."

"There were plenty of well equipped mercenaries around, surely they must have some of it," Silvane says.

"At this point any sane mercenary will have deserted him," Vanea says.

She stretches herself and yawns with satisfaction.

"There's nothing more to do here," she turns to us, "Our deal is complete, we even have the illusion mage captured. Rabanara is mine again," her eyes narrow and her last words are said almost in a growl.

I feel a tightening of my heart loosening, my oath to her is done. She still has her oath to keep me informed and protected of anything while in here.

"Glad to be of service," I say, I'm truly relieved.

"Dame Vanea," Ciel moves forward, "What happened to the mercenaries we captured last time?"

"Sent to Hiyoku Hara as combat slaves," Vanea answers flatly.

Lina's Trivia: A stretch of land that once belonged to the dragonkin and is now under monster control. It's a constant battlefield where most empire soldiers go serve once in their career.

Ciel frowns at her.

"Don't worry, priestess. A Judge sentenced them, they will only serve a few years. Quite likely for them to survive," Vanea smiles sadistically at her.

Ciel nods and backs away from Vanea.

"Well, if this is all we are leaving," I bring the conversation back to me.

"Very well, outside the mages will open a [Gate] back to Baalfire's for you. Until next time, Mr. Ryder," she smiles mischievously.

"Until."

No there won't be a next time.

Silvane waves to us as we leave.

We reach home and go immediately to bed. A weight lifted from our shoulders.

I hold Alissa and kiss her. I taste her tongue, I fill my nose with her smell of Ranja, I run my hand through her toned body.

I grab the base of her tail and run my hand through it. She shivers and kiss me harder. Slowly my consciousness fades, we almost slept with our tongues entwined.

Intermission 8

"AAAAAAAAAAH!"

I flip the table over and smile at the glasses shattering on the ground. I grab the chair and smash it on the ground, it breaks into multiple pieces with a hearty crunch.

I grab the leg of the table and rip it off then I strike that leg on the cabinet. The glass shatters and the porcelain is destroyed in a satisfying explosion. I flip over the cabinet for good measure and smash any surviving piece with my boot.

I cast a [Fireball] and explode the remains of the cabinet. Cinders and ash fill the air, the smell of burning wood heals my soul.

I grab the broken table and throw it through the window. It crashes down and I hear screams of surprise, making me giggle.

"SCREW YOUUU!"

I cast a [Fireball] on the ceiling candelabrum. The mana of the light crystals mix with the one from my spell, enhancing the explosion. I protect my eyes from the dust storm of shards. My ears ring and suddenly I lose my hearing.

I open my eyes and see the piece of art that I have made. The crystal dust lingers in the air and glitter as the cinders slowly fall. The few flames of the remains of the cabinet are the only light of the room, creating waving red shadows on the walls.

The chairs are all strewn about. Everyone seems to have left in a hurry, no one even grabbed their share of the coin. The bags are thrown to the ground and the scattered coins fill the floor.

I wish I paid attention to their faces, if they left without getting their payment then I must have scared the Levels out of their souls.

"The hell did I do wrong," I let these words escape my lips along with a sigh.

Everything was going fine. For years I never had a hitch, a failure, a real problem that I couldn't solve.

Everything was going fine until... Brother.

I let you become wicked, I let you die like a naked goblin. I should have kept you safe, I should have kept you away from these stupid asses, these reckless idiots, these power-tripping shitheads as useful as goblin jizz. They led you to death but I'm the one who let you leave.

Everything was going fine until...

Now without Callistus I can't even save Farana. She was always by my side, we always planned everything together. Now I feel so lost, abandoned, lonely.

My dry mouth suddenly feels wet and salty.

What have they done with you. What have they done.

You betrayed me, you tried to hurt me.

You are being used by them, YOU ARE BEING USED.

They... They did it... No, they forced you.

THEY STOLE YOU FROM ME.

Why you, why, why, why, why, why, why, why...

My knees feel weak and I have to lean on the wall to keep standing.

What I want to know was what I did wrong.

Even Grosnok ran away and the goblin stole my scythe.

Everything was going fine until. Until... Ryder...

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Chapter 30: The Tree in our Yard

A note from Manasong

Attention: to conform to the limit of sexual content allowed in a novel, I've censored this chapter. You can look for the uncensored version here.

The symbol "-" denotes a section that got cut for containing sexual content. Also, if paragraphs seem missing, they were also likely censored in an earlier pass where the symbol wasn't used.

Today is the 24th.

It's over. Another crisis, another nightmare, another fight. It's over and now we are safe.

-

I'm still not sure if Alissa is bisexual, I think she's being borderline just to satisfy my fetishes.

-

I pull Ciel on top of me and she yelps. Her black hair falls on my face and tickles me, and her bright smile melts my heart.

"I love you, deeply," I say.

She blushes and smiles wider. She gives me a peck on the lips.

"I love you more," she says.

"A competition? If my memory is right you do not have [Enhanced Sexual Stamina], it wouldn't be wise to compete with a God of Sex like me."

She scoffs.

"God of Sex? Old man now you are being arrogant," she looks at me smugly, her fleshy lips makes her pout so much more cuter.

"Oh yeah? Oh yeah!?"

Now you have done it.

I put on [Massage], [Oral Technique], [Hand Technique], [Enhanced Strength], [Enhanced Endurance], [Enhanced Speed], and [Enhanced Genital Control].

-

We spend a few moments catching our breaths.

"So..." I flip Ciel and kiss her, she's almost fully awake again, "Who's the God of Sex?"

"Wha..." Her eyes move about in confusion, "Oh..."

A smile slowly grows on her face. She sighs and closes her eyes.

"You are the cheating God of Sex," she says.

"Good enough for me. A God of Sex is a God of Sex."

I pull Ciel to lay down on my chest.

"Alissa, you turning bisexual now?" I ask.

"Hm..." She tilts her head sideways, "I don't know, I just wanted to make Ciel - happy. I don't find women particularly attractive."

Lina fidgets and looks down. Ciel is quiet, she seems to be processing what happened.

"I think that..." Alissa grabs her chin in thought, "I want you to use me. Use me more, use me like the time when you tied me down. Use me to fulfill your fetishes," she licks her lips and talks almost on a growl, "I'm yours forever."

I shudder at her words.

"And I'm yours too. So was our vows," I say.

"But I'm yours... harder," she chuckles.

"Hah. You want another competition?"

"Don't think this one will go the way you want."

My anus dislikes this conversation.

I lean back and pull her on a hug with my other arm.

"Well, if you want to fulfill my fetishes then prepare yourself," I lean close to her ear and whisper, "Because you will become everyone's - toy."

Alissa bites her lips sensually and rests her head on my chest. Both girls are facing each other quite closely.

"Just remember that you are only a slave to my fetishes. In everything else you are my companion, my wife, not a slave."

She turns her head to me and smiles. "I know, I know," she says.

Ciel turns around and pulls Lina in a hug, burying her on her chest.

I know Ciel likes Lina a lot. But what kind of "like" is it? Lina is very receptive of attention from anyone, so I'm not sure what she truly feels for the other girls. Though Lina did live with only women for a few years.

The amount of same-sex couples on the streets is much higher here than on Earth, I just wonder how many are actually bisexual.

"If any of you want to experiment more then say so. Just remember to talk to each other," I say.

Ciel turns her head towards Alissa then looks away with a hint of embarrassment. Alissa notices it and simply smiles smugly at her.

Alissa's ears flick.

"The other two are awake, I'll go prepare breakfast," Alissa says.

She casts [Clean] on her mouth then moves out of the room, still naked. Her cute ass and orange tail swaying sensually.

"It felt nice," Ciel mutters, looking at Alissa's ass as she leaves.

I completely corrupted the priestess. I fucking love this world.

Roxanne gained [Mana Overuse Resistance] with 1 point. Now she's just one point short from [Ice Lance], though she used that spell so many times she knows how to chant it and cast it quite easily. She also increased her "Speed" by 1 (now 9).

Ciel leveled up to 32. She increased her [Wind Magic] by 2 (now 17) and her [Light Magic] by 1 (now 25). She has 5 skill points left.

Alissa leveled up to 30. She increased her [Illusion Magic] by 1 (now 3).

Ciel is acting awkward around Alissa, it's so entertaining I want them to keep like this for a while.

"I'm feeling so tired," I recline back on my chair.

"You don't tell me, I had a headache the entire night," Roxanne says.

"I don't want to leave the house this break," I say.

"Oh let's go do something fun then," she claps the tip of her hands in excitement.

"Sure. Anyway, how about you all? Feeling okay?"

"Well I'm fine, my sense of smell is still dampened due to the horrible smell of the husks though", Alissa says, "The fight was nerve-racking but we didn't get hurt so I'm just feeling a little tired."

"I'm pretty good. If it's only husks then I can deal with it," Hana shrugs and then her eyes turn sharp, "But we are done with Vanea now, right?"

"Yeah, we are done," I answer her immediately. I won't make a deal like that again.

"We don't really have to worry about Darean anymore. Whoever his backer is might end up killling Darean himself, he lost a lot of money yesterday," Lina says.

"Good," Hana reclines back on the chair and smiles.

"I just don't want to fight husks again. My clothes are smelling putrid," Roxanne says.

"It will get off, don't worry," Alissa says and grabs her hand, "Well I guess it's expected of you to be more worried about clothes than your life," Alissa slaps her hand lightly and smirks.

"Hey!" Roxanne pulls her hand away and pouts, "Now with instant cast, I'm not really afraid of anything besides invisible assassins."

"And the undead," I add.

"And the undead," she smiles bitterly, "I guess blowing them into small pieces didn't work."

"Well, I will give you something to be afraid of," Hana says with an evil grin.

"Try me, bitch, I will rub my own tail," she narrows her eyes in defiance.

"That's not what I was thinking about but okay," Hana chuckles.

"You, not thinking about sex? Ciel, [Diagnosis], quick!"

"Oh you want to be fucked?" Her eyes narrow, "Okay then."

Hana sweeps the breakfast away, forcing us to pick our plates off the table. She pulls Roxanne out of the chair and drops her on the table -.

I turn my head to Ciel.

"Well I'm doing fine," she says, "I dealt with husks before, it's not a big deal."

"I'm more worried about how you did as a leader," I say.

- "She did fine!" Hana says.  "Though I wouldn't recommend her doing it often, she looked very nervous."

Ciel laughs awkwardly.

"I-I never had much experience with leadership," she lowers her eyes, "But I think I can at least keep everyone alive."

"That's all we need and all I try to do," I say.

I'm not deluding myself in thinking I'm a great leader, I know that at least I'm enough to keep us all safe.

Now I look at Lina.

"I feel okay..." She talks in a low tone -. "I just don't want to remember those things anymore, they make me feel sick."

"Kweh! Ded, dis-gus-tin'!"

She's mostly sad she couldn't eat anything.

"I think we all feel the same way," Alissa says, "Just make sure you keep your energy up so you can still fight alongside Wolfy."

Lina nods with vigor.

"You had to kill some people, didn't you, how you feeling about it?" I ask.

For me, most people who died weren't really my fault so I'm using it as an excuse to distance myself from yesterday. I'm simply running away from responsibility.

"I will... I will kill anything that tries to hurt us," her eyes flicker with anger, "I will never stand still and let them hurt us."

I feel like sighing.

"Just, just keep a level head and remember my two rules," I say.

She nods once with resolve.

Gify pops into my shoulder.

"Guuh, geh guh gih!" He says, "Balance is everything, but you all did well".

"Thanks Gify," Alissa smiles.

I barely finish my breakfast before it's time for my [Godly Language] lessons again.

"Good morning, Mr. Ryder. I heard you had quite the interesting evening yesterday," he gives me a calm smile.

"Good Morning, Mr. Kyros. It was a nightmare," I sigh and drop my shoulders, "Crazed men and hundreds of husks. Never again, please."

"The entire town is talking about it. A necromancer attack, the rumors say."

"Heh, almost. Good thing Dame Vanea was ready for it, otherwise it would be a massacre."

Kyros reclines on his chair and smiles to nowhere in particular.

"Wouldn't be unlike her. Anyway, let's continue our lesson. I will teach you your first words, we have to speed up your training."

I got you a surprise, old man. I put a point in [Godly Language].

I sit on my usual chair and close my eyes, focusing on his demonstration.

I can feel two mana vortexes. One is on his throat and the other is slowly spinning around it. The spinning vortex picks up so much speed my senses blur.

Suddenly the first vortex vibrates.

"Become stronger!" He yells.

I feel a wave shake my bones, sending a chill through my spine. I feel my muscles bulge and slowly return to normal.

Dayum son. If I master this maybe I could play Hulk.

"Become stronger!" He yells again.

This time I notice the wave is directed solely at me.

"Become stronger!"

I feel how Kyros is unaffected by the voice.

The second vortex increases its spinning radius.

"Become stronger!"

The sound wave goes much wider this time.

The second vortex disappears.

"Become stronger!"

Now this time there was barely a wave front. I felt only a small circle of the wave hit my heart and it still affected my entire body.

"You noticed the three different ways I used the voice?" Kyros asks.

"Yes. The first way was a normal sound wave directed towards me, the second way the wave got much wider due to the spinning vortex's radius increasing. Both didn't affect you. The third way it was directly sent to me only without the need for the spinning vortex."

"Correct. We call the spinning vortex the 'shield vortex' and the other vortex the 'voice vortex'."

"Quick question. Does the language that I use influence the effects?"

"No. It's all the same to our spirits."

Interesting. Though it behaves quite oddly. Why would the spirit of someone who never heard Andraste react to a mana wave?

"Can I create a language and use it with [Godly Language]?"

"Create...?" He frowns in puzzlement then shakes his head, "You have to use a language that belongs to the skill system. Using codes won't work."

Aw shucks.

"Now," His tone turns more stern, "Recreate my voice."

I close my eyes and focus. The vortex creation is much easier than before, I could even try to start a shield vortex but I will leave it for later.

I move the vortex towards my throat and grunt. I feel the shaking of my vocal chords and the vortex following it. There's a slight delay on the vortex, which made it sound like two grunts at the same time. Felt good enough for a proper try.

"Become stronger!"

I feel my muscles bulge for a few seconds. Much shorter than Kyro's voice. After the strength is gone I feel a chill running through my body and heavy nausea.

"Ooh, very good," Kyros says, then he notices my frown, "I was expecting you to puke on your first try. It seems you do have a small talent for it."

"Told you... So," I mutter, keeping my breakfast down.

"You did," I open my eyes and he's caressing his goatee, "Now, try to focus on creating two vortexes, they will shield you from the feedback of a bad word."

Easier said than done. Even with the skill I need many more points on it to properly control both vortexes. If you take your attention off from one the other dissipates, it hurts my brain.

Hm... I have an idea. The dissipation is not instantaneous, so what if I keep switching my focus from them in quick succession? Just like how a computer processor works.

Bad idea, now I'm nauseous and suffering from strong mana-radiation sickness.

This is too hard, I wanna cheeeeat. I want to put more points on the skill. Yes Ciel, I'm a filthy, filthy cheater.

Back at home I have such a bad headache that even [Heal] is not having much effect. It does not work well when you don't know much about the damage being healed.

I keep [Regeneration] on and it seems to work, although slowly.

"Roxanne, how did you learn to manipulate two spells at once?" I ask.

Her glasses glint in the shadows and her smile turns smug. So smug I feel like teaching a bloody lesson to her ass.

"Think it like this. Can you write two different words with each hand?" She asks.

"I can only write with one hand," I smile cheekily.

"Har har, you get what I meant?" She narrows her eyes in annoyance. Her serious face is so sexy.

"Yes, yes. I can't write it."

"But you can move your arms in different ways, can't you?"

"So it's only a question of finesse?"

"Not really. You have to memorize the movements, it's like a dance. They should come naturally to you. You don't separate your consciousness, you treat both movements as one."

Simple enough, I guess.

"Careful not to mix the spells. They are one movement, but separate," she adds with a wry smile.

Okay, maybe not so simple.

[Blessing Magic] class is noisy, everyone is talking about the necromancer attack. I heard no rumors about Ziny or Burky so I can assume the knights are keeping their mouths shut.

"In the middle of the Crafter's Corner!" Lyle exclaims, "What was a necromancer doing there? I would assume he would prefer to hide in the slums."

"Why would he need to hide, specifically?" I ask.

"Hm... Perhaps he needed a safe place to experiment?"

"Then the slums would be better for this," Garanae says.

"Then he just wanted a safe place to hide," Lyle says.

"Living on a residential area would be easier then," Hatara says.

Considering how ghastly that man looked I think he would be conspicuous there.

"Then he was protecting something," Lyle says.

"At the Crafter's Corner? Not the Bazaar or the Gambler's Den? Even the Guild's Corner would have something valuable stored."

The Crafter's Corner is basically the industrial area of Rabanara.

"There are warehouses in the Crafter's Corner," Lyle says.

"They just store raw material and some finished products. None of them store something so valuable they need hundreds of husks to guard," Garanae says.

"Then... He was hiding something illegal. Something that needed to be stored on a warehouse but couldn't be shown in plain sight that it is valuable."

It's so amusing seeing them get closer to the truth. Lina would be pleased to hear this conversation, she seems to like mind games.

The bath was smelling absolutely pretty. The girls were debuting our high elven products.

There's a liquid that they put on the bath that made it bubble and smell good. There's a shampoo type of liquid that made red bubbles that slowly turned green when the hair was "done". And finally we all turned into living hugging-pillows as our skin softened with a body oil that made me and Roxanne focus our [Sense Mana] on it because how the hell is that not magic?

I noticed that Ciel is definitely avoiding looking at Alissa's - body.

"Wolfy," Ciel calls to me.

"Yes, my love?"

She squirms at my sudden attack.

"How about we spend a night at the wet cave in the Wisps of the Proud? The temple already killed the undead so it should be safe."

"Sure. I will open a [Gate] and send Holly first."

The cave is empty, not even a dragonoid there like last time. I send Holly over the crack on the cave and there's not a single dragonoid down there. The temple did a complete sweep on the dungeon.

"This cave is a healing place. Just close your eyes and enjoy the sounds," I say.

The constant dripping and trickling of water is a massage for the brain. A single [Spirit Light] outside makes pretty reflections on the wet stone floor. I let myself enter a trance while we all watch the lights show.

All the carnage in the world is worth it if I can safeguard moments like these, spending a healing time with the ones I love.

Eventually, we move inside the tent but keep the flaps open so we can see the show outside.

Lina and Roxanne are playing Civil War. The more complex chess-like game that we bought. The two don't talk much to each other but over the game they seem to be bonding. Aoi seems interested in the game, her eyes are glued to the pieces and she's rooting for Lina.

I'm more of a Risk or Settlers of Catan player. I like when games give more freedom of play, chess is so limiting compared to VR. Maybe I should introduce Dungeons & Dragons to this world.

I spend my evening with Alissa on my lap. I love brushing her fluffy orange tail. Gify spends all the time on her - lap, being hugged by her. If he so much as hints he's being lecherous I will force him out of existence, I'm not being NTR'd by my own pet.

Gih.

If you are not a pet then what are you?

...

I knew it.

Ciel and Hana alternated as my breast pillows. Both of them taught wrestling to Ted and Suzy, Ciel is coaching Ted and Hana is coaching Suzy. Hana's style is not working well due to the lack of strength the little golems have, Ciel ends up winning 3-2.

-

Today is the 25th.

-

Lina and Ciel are sleeping so deeply they don't wake up. Their noses are touching and their hair is tangled on each other. What a sight. -.

Alissa prefers some hot soup with tea and some grilled meat. The Misty Low Forest is quite chilly during morning so she likes hot things.

Hana and Roxanne were born on hotter tropical climates. They prefer some fruit or fresh sandwich. Roxanne has a thing for spicy food due to the large amount of spices on her continent.

I like some hot coffee with some bread. Sweetened coffee for bread with smoked meat and cheeses. Bitter coffee with milk for chocolate spread on bread. I still didn't get a whiff of coffee outside of the Morning Dew, so I substitute it with tea.

Aoi likes meat, that's it.

Gify eats anything so we generally copy one of the breakfast someone is having and give to him.

Ciel likes jam or butter on her toast accompanied by tea while Lina prefers to eat cold cuts of cheese and smoked meats, though she has an occasional urge to eat mushrooms. Lina had enough of simple toasted bread during her life with Hilde.

I put each of their preferences on platters. Alissa and I bring it over so the two - sleeping beauties can have breakfast on the bed.

"Wake up, my love," I say.

Ciel groans and pushes Lina into her chest, suffocating her. If you are being cuddled by Ciel you should always have your back to her, she likes to hug things.

Lina wakes up quickly due to a lack of oxygen and pushes her away. Her droopy eyes are extra droopy due to sleepiness.

Lina finally notices us standing there with the platters and her eyes widen. She shakes up Ciel to help her wake up faster. Roxanne and Hana come back to bed with their own platters.

-

My [Blessing Magic] increased by 1 (now 4+19).

We go back home and I spend this morning coaching and Hana on [Godly Language]. I have her practice the same routine as I did. She has much, much more difficulty than me in maintaining the vortex. She also has some problems actually sensing the vortex, her low "Perception" and [Sense Mana] are not helping her here.

Her control is much sloppier so I keep healing her often. Not that she would easily get dizzy due to her "Endurance" but I would rather save her from the discomfort.

On [Reduced Mana Cost] class I focus on my own method of replacing the reality of magic to obey to my own conversion of mana. I have been getting quite good at meditation and placing myself on a trance. I don't know if it's self-delusion but I can "feel" the way I convert mana change.

Could I be changing my soul with some form of primitive [Alteration Magic]? I don't really know. Deviating from the system could have unknown effects. These things scare me a little.

Alissa and I made a super fluffy pie, it was so delicate it felt like your tongue was being caressed.

"Eat your veggies," Ciel says.

"Kweh..."

"Gify is eating his," I say.

"Gih!" He raises his head proudly before quickly lowering it again to dig on his food.

"He, no, du-ragon."

"I am and I eat my veggies," Hana says.

"Muuuh..." Aoi groans, her nostrils light up.

"Hey! No fire on the table," Alissa chastises.

"So-ry," Aoi hurriedly apologizes with her eyes wide open.

"Control your anger, little one," Hana says, "This is how dragons rise above animals and monsters."

Aoi shyly nods her head in acknowledgment. She always listen to Hana.

Dragons are omnivores, they have molars and incisors at the back of their mouths. They eat anything that could give energy to sustain their high-maintenance bodies.

We are about to finish eating when Gify licks his plate clean and jumps into the middle of the table.

"Gih, geh guh gih-ga go gih."

He wants us to go into the Sea of Trees.

"Weren't we going to relax this half-cycle?" Roxanne asks.

"Gih, gih!"

He really wants us to go somewhere.

"Hmpf" Roxanne pouts.

Alissa leans forward with curiosity.

"But why do we need to go there?" She asks.

"Gih."

"You are being awfully cryptic. I don't like it," I say.

"Gigigih!"

I sigh and massage my eyes. He really wants us to go but is being very scarce on details.

"Les, go!" Aoi says.

I pet her sleek head and she lets out smoke from her nostrils in satisfaction. She trusts Gify unconditionally.

"Alright... Does anyone do not want to go with Gify?" I ask.

"I'm never leaving you," Alissa shrugs.

My own foxy stalker.

"I mean, do you want to go?"

"Yes. It will at least be interesting," she smiles.

"Well, this is really suspicious but I won't let you investigate something without me," Ciel says.

Knowing her she's conflicted over the suspiciousness of his request but her curiosity tips her over.

"I wanted to relax too but if it's somewhere dangerous I want you to help keep you all safe," Roxanne says.

"Awn..." Hana pulls Roxanne into a bear hug, "There's no question about me, I will go where danger is."

"Help, breathe!"

Hana smirks and releases Roxanne.

I look at Lina and she shrugs.

"Why ask me? Gify could be taking us somewhere interesting and I won't leave you," she squirms over her own words."

"Just making sure," I smirk at her.

I was going to put a request to add an emellanat lining to all our shields but it will have to wait for another time. There's also the bent enchanted shield but due to damage it's not working, it will take some time for Lina to reverse-engineer it.

Ciel manages to speak to Alissa normally but during bath she becomes awkward, even Roxanne noticed. I feel like I'll have to push Alissa onto Ciel again so she stops being like this but I think I'll tease her a little more.

-

Today is the 26th.

-

My [Reduced Mana Cost] increased by 1 (now 6+5).

We leave quite early, there's still a faint mist around and the guards are just starting their rounds.

Gify takes us to the western gate. Outside we see squads of guards accompanied by priests lining up. They are going to start a purge on the Sea of Trees. If only we were a day later.

I will have Holly and Alissa help us avoid monsters. I don't want us to waste energy on trash mobs when we don't know how deep we are going to go.

Gify tells us to continue west along the road until the road curves northwards. We get off our flying dinghy and enter the Sea of Trees and move south-west.

We encounter a bloody battle between - goblins and Mossy Fangpines. The Fangpines have the upper hand and shred the goblins. There was so much blood even I could smell it. We stood clear of that mess.

A few minutes later we regrettably had to avoid a Grey Berserker that came running to join the carnage. We haven't sold the duplicate gnomic magic tools yet but once we do we won't have money problems for a while. There's also the large amount of emellanat that we have so we don't really have to fight that Grey Berserker.

But still, money.

Noon comes and we take our lunch break, a hearty meaty soup with garlic bread.

The terrain has slowly begun to get hilly. We are approaching Rakontagne, the western mountain range. It's odd to think that Alissa's homeland is on the other side of those mountains. There's a long way until the mountain range, but still, so close yet so far.

I really want to meet her parents. Not just hers, though, everyone's.

We reach a cave and Alissa reports wyverns in there. Specifically, there's a huge Hooknose leading other smaller wyverns. We should report this to the guild when we come back.

The sun starts to fall and I see a familiar sight with Holly. A huge and dark tree covered in a large amount of vines. I saw it when we were approaching the goblin village.

We go down a hill and find a secluded nook filled with huge roots around it. The ground is perfectly flat and dry. Quite the snug place for us to make camp.

Through a gap in the crown of the trees I look at the moon and mutter a curse. The brightest moon is the indigo one, the one who represents the aspect of otherwordlyness. Tonight and tomorrow is bound to be weird.

Now that I think about it, Gify is leading us straight to that tree. Ominous.

Nature spirits aren't evil or murderous, so I don't think we are in the danger of death. I just believe that tomorrow will be unpleasant.

"Did you hear that?" Roxanne asks.

"Kweh?" Aoi questions with her head tilted.

"I heard nothing," Alissa says, her ears flickering repeatedly.

Roxanne groans and shrinks on the bed, shivering a little.

"C'mere," I pull Roxanne's head to my lap and caress her hair.

Now with the elven products everyone's hair is so silky and soft. The perfume of the shampoo makes it smell so good, even though my hair smells flowery I love it.

Ciel offers Ted to her, she accepts it and hugs it close to her chest. The little golem accepted that he is fated to be hugged and smothered -. It is a shame for men around the world how he does not realize his luck.

Oh, wait. I better not change this nature of his, I already said to myself I won't be NTR'd by my pets. Maybe if I put a pink bow on him and say he's a lesbian the girls won't mind.

Since my lap is occupied, Lina pulls Ciel to my side and has Ciel spoon her.

Alissa, Hana, and Aoi are acting casual, they do not feel anything.

I think I feel some form of pressure on my chest, it's a feeling difficult to describe. All I know is that it gives me anxiety.

The forest is unusually noisy. I hear a lot of rustling and scratching. This part of the forest is more lively than the rest.

I hear a seductive female moan followed by a giggle. I look around in surprise but nobody is reacting to it. Alissa glances at me, noticing my unease.

"You also having a bad feeling?" She asks.

I nod at her.

She tilts her head in thought and worry.

Aoi repeatedly jumps from Hana's head and glides down to the floor. She's trying to focus mana on her wings, flapping them will do nothing due to lack of aerodynamics.

At the fifth failure, she huffs smoke, and embers leave her nose.

"Patience, little one," Hana says.

When Aoi comes to crawl up on Hana again she holds down the little dragon.

"Kweh! Fly, fun!"

"Yes, flying is fun but don't get mad that you can't fly yet."

Aoi tilts her head in confusion.

"Get mad when you have to fight. Use anger only when necessary, getting angry at yourself won't help you fly faster."

Aoi absentmindedly looks up while showing her belly to Hana for petting. I always see Hana wince at the cuteness whenever Aoi does that.

"An, ger..." Aoi mutters while thinking.

After a while Aoi resumes her flying trials, she still didn't have much success.

Gify calmly sleeps on Alissa's lap. He remained in high-spirits during the whole trip yet talked very little, or rather, chirped very little. He only chirped when he needed us to correct the course.

Alissa's ears flick.

"I heard a woman moan," she says.

"That's what I heard too!" Roxanne exclaims.

"Me three," I say.

Wait, that didn't work in Andraste.

"I mean, me too," I correct myself hurriedly.

I hear a thunder in the distance and cold air blows in. I pull out a gnomic heater magic tool, it even has a thermostat.

We all huddle together. Things are getting creepy.

Ever since I met with Alissa I never had nightmares anymore. My dreams were simple, sometimes they were painful memories of Earth, sometimes they were random nonsense, sometimes they were happy memories of Rupegia. This time my dream was a completely weird experience.

I feel a storm ravaging the land. An island suffers with huge waves that wash away anything above ground; tornadoes move dust and sand, slowly grinding away the stone; lighting strikes explode any protruding rock; the earth cracks with constant earthquakes; lava pours out of the cracks continuously, it solidifies on the constant rain only to get broken down again.

I feel this is one of many. One of countless islands where the storm ravages and rebuilds the land.

Today is the 27th.

-

We share our usual morning kiss. I turn my head to the side and kiss the nose of the sleeping Ciel, who decided to use my arm as a hugging pillow. Her arms are like tentacles. Not saying I dislike it, though, on the contrary.

Alissa gets up and opens the ice box. She picks up a cut of deboned fish. With a poof she pulls out a grilling grid and a heating magic tool. She turns on the tool and seasons the fish with some herbs and salt.

Soon the smell awakes Aoi.

"You want one too?" Alissa asks the little blue dragon.

Her nostrils flare and she gives a smile full of sharp fangs. Dragons don't smile so she's copying us, to slightly frightening results. She nods and Alissa picks another cut of fish.

Gify stops pretending to sleep and the other girls slowly wake up, they all get up and sit at the table. I'm the last one up.

That dream is making me feel weird, I felt like my body wasn't my own anymore. The pressure at my back increased and my heart aches for something.

That was the Everlasting Storm. Outside of the 3 continents there's nothing else out there, there's only the Storm, the remnants of the fight between the Gods. This Eternal destruction that ravages most of the world.

"You feeling okay, Wolfy?" Alissa asks as I sit to eat.

"I had a weird dream. I'm feeling odd."

Ciel uses [Diagnosis] and casts [Purify Body] but nothing happens.

I take a look at Gify but he's ignoring the situation. His face buried in a soup he's slurping.

I let a sigh escape my lips.

"It's just an uneasiness, if I get worse I will tell. Ciel you are second-in-command if anything happens," I say.

"Y-yes. I don't think anything will happen, though," she answers.

No one besides me is experienced in leadership but she's the one with the most level head here so she's the best for it.

We pull out our cloaks and leave in the light drizzle.

Slowly the drizzle turns into rain that turns into a thunderstorm. The light of the sun is almost put out, forcing us to cast our [Spirit Lights]. The forest looks extraordinarily depressive in this low light.

I swear I'm hearing giggles, it's not the wind.

The gnomic personal heating tools work to keep us from freezing, but they are costing too much mana and they don't stop the water from seeping into our bones.

"Just endure it!" Hana yells.

I barely hear Roxanne groan. Lina and I say nothing but our mood is horrible. Alissa and Ciel are a little more used to rough times. Aoi puffs smoke and keeps her own body warm with little effort. Gify is a cheater and he doesn't even get wet.

Gih.

Yeah, spirit body is cheating, you only feel temperature if you want to.

I feel Gify shrug inside my head.

Hana, Ciel, and Alissa are the ones with the most energy so they keep us moving at a steady pace.

The storm lightens up and Alissa stops us.

"Four large animals are coming!" She yells over the rain.

Animals? Hardly any exist in the Sea of Trees due to orcs and goblins. Now, four large ones? This ain't good.

I summon 3 water elementals. I can't use [Electric Magic] because I don't have enough control over it to not shock myself. I take my points off of it and put it all on [Earth Magic], now I can use [Dust Storm].

Due to the light rain, we see them before we hear them, but I think that even without the rain we would never hear them coming. 4 large black panthers with long, muscular legs and huge paws. Their claws are thicker than my thumb and look extremely sharp. Their mouths show impressive teeth while their yellow eyes and facial expression show unbridled anger. They growl wildly like panthers.

Gatun's, the mounts used by the high elves of the High Forest.

They walk low on the ground. Their long limbs move quickly while their heads move smoothly without bobbing. An eerie sight.

They split and circle us, their gaze never wavering.

"What are they doing here?" Alissa asks, clear surprise on her voice.

"They are not running away, they are ignoring my [Intimidate]. They are trained" Hana says.

"Then they belong to someone. Don't attack unless attacked, they might be protecting something," I say.

They suddenly pounce towards us.

"Uah!" Roxanne yells.

Mana runs through Lina's body and she counters with a shield bash. Her shield diverts a paw away and she parries the other paw with her axe. The mouth of the Gatun continues down but it is thrown sideways as an [Explosion] gouges out a small chunk of his ribs.

Hana immediately counters, before the Gatun can dodge her spear shoots forward. The enchantment and her thrust results in an incredibly fast strike, the spear gets lodged on it's throat. The Gatun extends it's long limbs and rakes her shield. A [Water Blade] splits its snout in two, exposing the bone.

Ciel is not so fast with the counter, her glaive gets stuck on the ribs of the Gatun. Both paws strike her flank, its claws sink on her armor and stop at the fur lining. The Gatun receives a [Torrent] on the face and is pushed back. It pulls Ciel down as it claws are stuck on her armor.

I cast a desperate [Earth Bullet] on the face of the Gatun. Its face tilts upwards due to the spell but it barely loses momentum. One paw strikes my shield and the other hits my sword arm, one claw sinking into my armor and shallowly breaking my skin. The force of the animal is so strong I feel like I'm getting crushed. An arrow pierces its throat and a [Torrent] pushes it back. The claw on my arm pulls me forward, making me stumble.

The Gatun falls to the ground and swipes at Lina's legs. Its claw pierces her leg armor and breaks her skin.

"RAAH!" Lina yells.

She strikes with her axe and it cuts off the leg of the Gatun, the blade went clean through the bone.

Hana's spear shortens and she spews fire. The fire doesn't go far due to the rain but it's enough to burn the face of the Gatun. The breath and a fireball Aoi threw burns his eyes, blinding it.

The Gatun pulls it's claws in. It opens it's mouth and bites into Ciel's head, its steel jaw muscles bend her helmet. She drops her glaive and grabs the throat of the Gatun. She fires multiple [Air Blades] point-blank on its throat. Blood flies as the Gatun nearly gets decapitated. It spits her in surprise and pain.

I stumble forward and strike its snout with the brim of my shield. The Gatun opens its mouth in pain and to bite at me, the bad smell of animal breath fills my nose. Another arrow enters its throat and I fire an [Earth Bullet] after it. The arrow pierces through its throat and it chokes. I remove my arm from its claw and slice with my sword, splitting his snout.

The claws on Lina's leg dislodge, leaving a thin trail of blood. Another paw comes down, the claws break the scales and bend the metal of her shield. With an overhead strike she hacks at the attacking paw, forcing the elbow to point at the wrong way. It's roar of pain is interrupted by it's head exploding like a watermellon.

Hana's Gatun retreats in pain. She strikes again at the neck and tries to keep it in place by using the spear with both hands.

Ciel staggers back and points her finger forward. Aoi spews a fireball, the Gatun jumps upwards and the fireball explodes right under his chin, forcing his head upwards. From Ciel's finger an [Air Hammer] invisibly flies forward and hits its chin, forcing it backwards. A [Torrent] hit its chin again, forcing the head to an impossible position, breaking the neck. The Gatun collapses.

I cast [Dust Storm], a large amount of dust gets lifted off the ground and surrounds the head of the Gatun. He swipes at it, confused. I fire an [Earth Bullet] at its body, making it roll on grass. Now he's completely disoriented. He stands still for a second and an arrow pierces his eyes. He falls limp.

A thin [Ice Lance] pierces the skull of the Gatun Hana is holding. It collapses immediately.

An arrow pierces the eye of the paralyzed Gatun.

"What the fuck!" Hana exclaims, "The hell are these things doing here!"

Ciel spits blood and heals herself. I instantly heal myself and Lina, our wounds were shallow.

I check on Ciel. We needed Hana to pull her helmet apart so we could heal her. We both use multiple heals on her until she's back in shape. Lina spends some time reshaping her helmet with [Manipulate Metal].

"Gify..." Alissa says, a hint of anger on her voice.

All this time the little griffin was just laying still on my shoulder like he's glued. Normally he dematerializes whenever we fight but now he looks around casually, as if nothing happened.

Don't tell me this is a fucking test.

I kiss the drenched faced of Ciel and she smiles weakly. Her helmet is now misshapen.

I store the bodies and dismiss the elementals. I feel even more sadness at killing animals than I do at killing monsters. What a shame to kill them because croikey, what a beauty they are.

Then we huddle together under a huge snaking root to give us a small respite from the rain. We briefly warm ourselves with the [Warmth] magic tool.

"Everyone okay?" I ask.

"Yeah..." Roxanne answers faintly.

The others nod. Everyone is taking a look at Gify on my shoulder.

The first-class actor does not show a single reaction.

"It's a test," I say.

Alissa nods in agreement. "Whoever protects this forest wants to know who you are," she says.

"I would rather not do this through deadly tests," I say.

"Nature shows no mercy."

"Next animal we attack on sight," Hana says.

It certainly is like how the Gloomy Pervert said. I hope we didn't screw ourselves over due to the moon aspect.

We continue our way forward. The rain turns back into drizzle, allowing us to finally warm ourselves again.

The landscape changes slowly. We see patches of brightly colored trees and moss increasingly often. The bushes grow in size, forcing us to trudge through them with some effort. The mushrooms become more numerous and more eye-catching. The huge roots are a constant sight.

"Do not touch any of these," Roxanne warns, "Many of them have poisonous spores and the rest I have no idea what they are like."

"If I don't know the poison [Diagnosis] then [Purify Body] won't work," Ciel says.

This is getting dangerous. No wait, this is already dangerous.

"Form a line behind me," Alissa says, "I will make sure we avoid anything dangerous."

Our traveling speed reduces but we avoid any danger.

I start to see small amounts of suspended dust particles. After a while I realize they are colored and that they are spore clouds.

The mushrooms start to pulse and glow. They come in many weird shapes, they resemble morels, brains, beards, skinny umbrellas, blood clots, or even underwater corals. Thinking of them as alien dicks lightens my mood.

We find a skeleton of an adventurer sitting down with his back laying on a large root. At his feet there are multiple sinister looking glowing mushrooms.

"Why did no monster eat his body?" I ask.

"Monsters easily identify poisoned meat," Roxanne says.

"The Mossy Fangpines use poison," I say.

"But the Fangpines know the taste of their own poison."

"Some adventurers use an Escape Bomb on themselves so their bodies are not eaten after they die," Ciel says.

"Why?"

"They believe it protects their soul," she shrugs, "I think it only delays reincarnation."

"If you meet something like an undead then this might be a bad idea," Alissa says.

"Or any monster that can manipulate the soul," I add.

"Can we cremate him?" Ciel asks, "It's a shame to leave this corpse like this."

"Wolfy. Can you lift him with [Telekinesis]?" Roxanne asks, "Nobody should ever be getting anywhere close to a glowing mushroom."

"Stand back," I say.

I focus on every bone that I can see. I have to be really delicate here, can't let a single bone fall.

I start lifting him up. His leather and cloth armor rips even further but fortunately it doesn't fall down.

Something shifts inside him and a leather bound notebook falls off his jacket. It opens into ruined pages and I catch a glimpse of Andraste.

*FUSHH~* A black cloud emerges from the disturbed mushrooms. I drop the bones and run. The skeleton breaks into hundreds of pieces.

We run with an increasing amount of spore clouds emerging from behind us.

We reach an area clear of mushrooms and Ciel stops.

"Leave it to me!" She yells.

We stop and cover our noses. Ciel hurriedly chants. The spore cloud gets closer.

"[Wind Storm]!"

We are assaulted by mildly uncomfortable wind bursts. They sting my cheeks every time they hit my face.

The wind around us calms but our surroundings get enveloped by a rainbow of spores. The tornado intensifies and slowly the spores are sent back to where we came, clearing our surroundings.

"Gihihihih."

The little shit giggles even though he receives glares from all of us, even Aoi.

"Sorry. It wasn't a good idea," Ciel says.

"It's okay," I say.

"I apologize for disturbing his rest but our lives must be preserved," Ciel prays.

Since we are already on a clearing we take this opportunity to have another hearty hot soup for lunch followed by hot tea. Comforting warmth fills our insides as the cold was starting to seep through our bones.

Our soured mood abates for a good half hour of relaxation. But when we pick up our pace again the anxiety comes back.

The hills start to increase in height, we are near our target. I feel the pressure in my back increase.

There are barely any trees left. Only a mess of roots, glowing mushrooms, and rainbow patches of moss.

"This is certainly a weird place," Ciel says.

"You never heard of it?" I ask.

"No... This is the weirdest part."

Her mood slowly improves as the mystery thickens. But it's hampered again by Alissa.

"Two large animals are coming. They seem rather humanoid," she says.

Fuck me, again.

The terrain is in our disadvantage, we are on a slope.

"Form a line over here. We can't disperse due to the mushrooms."

The wind rustles again and the drizzle quickly turns back into rain. The cloak protects us from the rain but we have to pull the hood down when fighting. The wetness and the cold is getting on my nerves.

The wind picks up speed and Alissa frowns. This amount of wind is unnatural and will divert her arrows. I can hear the giggles again.

Out of the woods come floating two hulking figures, at least 2 meters tall. The head is made of a conical dark cloud, the neck is represented by constant lighting, the chest is composed of mossy rock, the arms and legs are tornados of dust. Wild storm elementals, magical beings, extremely rare.

Lina's axe switches to a hammer. Hana stores her sword and shield, she pulls out Lina's old war hammer and her emellanat sword. Me and Ciel take a step back from the line. I switch to my emellanat sword.

"Give me a point into [Earth Magic]!" Alissa yells.

"Me too!" Ciel follows.

I quickly obey.

"[Explosion] will be very ineffective!" Roxanne yells over the rain and wind.

"Use anything blunt!" I yell.

I summon two earth elementals. I don't want to waste mana, I hope this is enough.

Roxanne points her staff and I hear her chanting. Aoi is also concentrating her mana, she's trying to somehow improve her own fire.

The storm elementals float forward. One points his arm forward and a lighting bolt hits Hana's sword. The second raises his arms upwards and a tornado starts to immediately form in the middle of us, it almost topples us over due to the sudden wind. Me and Ciel immediately interrupt it.

Both elementals reach us. Hana fires an [Earth Bullet] into the shoulder of the first storm elemental and follows with a strike. A considerable chunk of stone is pulverized. He swipes with one of his arms and a large gust of wind hits her. She has to summon her wings to not be swept away.

My earth elemental punches the first enemy. The storm elemental simply raises his other arm and the fists of the earth elemental stop in the air.

Lina strikes the second elemental in the chest and I see it float back a few centimeters. I follow with an [Earth Bullet] and rock pulverizes.

The elemental swipes just like the other and Lina is thrown back into me. I grab her and we roll a few meters down the slope, drenching us in mud. Choosing this a part of the slope with no mushrooms behind us was good thinking on my part.

Alissa and Ciel fire pathetic [Earth Bullets] at the second elemental, they only make it sway a little.

Lina quickly gets up and starts to charge.

"RAAAH!" She yells in anger.

Hana strikes at the elemental repeatedly. It returns with more and more gusts of wind. Small cuts appear on her skin and along her armor. She uses the emellanat bastard sword on the limbs of the elemental, giving her small reprieve from the storm of cuts.

Lina strikes the elemental and buries her hammer on his chest. He swipes her again but she remains in place by griping her hammer.

"KWEH!" Aoi yells, fire dangerously escaping from her mouth and nostrils.

"Lina! Get down!" I yell.

She dislodges her hammer and literally throws herself on the ground.

A fireball flies and explodes in the chest of the second storm elemental. It loses a large chunk of stone and staggers backwards. The earth elemental is blocked no more. It punches at the storm elemental repeatedly, both losing large chunks of stone.

"[Earth Bullet]!"

"[Earth Bullet]!"

"[Wind Hammer]!"

Me, Alissa, and Ciel fire our spells. Alissa used much more mana on this one, it breaks a chunk of stone. Ciel's do little damage but dissipates part of one tornado arm for a few seconds.

"OH!" She squeals, "[Wind Storm]!"

Hana staggers back while the storm elementals shudder. Their arms and legs dissipate and struggle to reform. After a few seconds they finally turn their chests towards the middle of the [Wind Storm] and interrupt it.

"Wow!" I let it escape my lips.

"HANA!" Roxanne yells.

Hana ducks and rolls sideways.

"[Ice Lance]!"

A 50-centimeter thick lance flies out of her staff and gets impaled in the chest of the first storm elemental. Its chest cracks and glows for a few seconds, then it explodes in a shower of sparks and large chunks of rock.

The other elemental turns into a tesla coil as hundreds of sparks leave his body. Lina is unnaffected due to her emellanat shield.

We take a step back and both earth elementals start pummeling it, barely feeling the electricity. I feel a "path" forming behind me. I dash towards Roxanne. I hold my sword upwards and a lighting strikes it from the skies. My sword gets so hot I drop it to not burn my hands. The sparks subside and the storm elemental holds both earth elementals away with its tornado arms and legs.

"[Wind Storm]!"

"[Earth Bullet]!"

"[Earth Bullet]!"

"[Earth Bullet]!"

"[Earth Bullet]!"

"[Fireball]!"

And another unstable fireball is thrown at it.

The tornado limbs dissipate and the elemental is hit by all spells at once. His already battered body is broken down in a shower of sparks and large chunks of rock.

The stormy wind subsides and the rain goes back to a drizzle.

Ciel, Aoi, and Roxanne are panting with pain from overuse. Alissa and Lina have little mana remaining from putting it all on their spells. Hana is okay but she's physically tired.

"Who would have thought... That storm elementals are... Vulnerable to [Wind Magic]," Ciel says between breaths.

"Only instant-cast spells. If you chant they could have a better chance to prepare," I say.

"Perhaps... But [Wind Hammer]... Is still powerful..."

Me and Lina use a potent [Clean] gnomic magic tool and the mud disappears from our clothes and armor.

I turn to Aoi and grab her from Roxanne's shoulders. I hold her on my arms. She's quite warm, or maybe I'm just very cold right now.

"Your fireballs were very useful," I rub her nose. She closes her eyes in happiness, she's feeling very proud of herself. "But be careful with it, though. They seemed unstable."

She huffs smoke but nods to me. She knows she would disappoint me if she hurt herself.

"Giih."

He doesn't want us to stop.

"Is it over?" I ask.

"Gih."

"Okay, just a five minutes break."

We collect the stones and I store them. They are charged with mana and could even be used as gems for wands and staffs.

We move on and the landscape changes again. The mushrooms die out, the trees disappear, all are substituted by the roots. The roots are so thick they almost form a wall of mossy wood. We shimmy our way through them and notice that the drizzle disappears.

Suddenly the wall of roots opens up and we reach dry grass. There's not a single cloud in the sky, our first real sun light in two days.

In the peak of the hill in front of us is the biggest tree I have ever seen. It might be bigger than a castle. Full of branches and leaves, it's a vertical pillar of dark green leaves. Hundreds of vines hang from the branches, visible from the few spaces you can see through. The bark is much darker than any tree on the surrounding, it's almost a creepy black.

We stand still for a good minute admiring this ginormous tree.

The thing that stands out the most is the quiet. Barely a wind, barely a ruffle, this place feels special. I don't really feel tense anymore, the pressure on my back finally released.

"Two, uh, people, are coming," Alissa says.

"Not sure?" I ask.

"Yeah, weird souls."

We stand in our battle formation but trying not to look too threatening. The encounter with the Gatuns made be slightly wary.

Behind one of the few roots in the way to the tree comes out two nature elementals. A man and a woman, both naked.

Actually, if Alissa said they are not animals then they must be dryads. When they get close enough I can make up the details of them, too much detail.

The woman has long hair made of heart-shaped yellow leaves that reach her hips. Her face has round lines with very full lips. Her skin is light green and seems rough like moss. - . She has an exaggerated hourglass figure with a thickness that makes Ciel blush. -.

The man has short black grass as hair that curls in a spiral. His face is chiseled and handsome, coupled with his smirk and he looks like an action hero. His skin is the same as the woman's. His body is more defined than a weight-lifter, I feel like starvation survivor near him. -.

We all uncomfortably look away from the two shameless dryads. The footsteps stop for a few seconds and then resume. We glance towards them and thankfully their sexes are being covered by palm leaves growing out of their bodies. The bulge in the man is still ridiculous, though.

"We are sorry for making you feel uncomfortable," says a slightly coarse female voice, "We rarely get visitors looking for something else than having some fun."

"You are dryads, I assume?" I ask.

"Yes...?" The man lifts a handsome eyebrow.

"Gih."

The dryad duo turns their heads to Gify and their eyes slowly open wide as realization sinks in. Their demeanor suddenly takes a change to a much more stiff and formal posture.

"Oh my. Please come forth, you are guests of our Lord," the woman bows lightly and motions us to towards the tree.

"I am Pallido and this is Camassia. We are the Speakers for our Lord," says the male dryad.

Alissa, Ciel, and Roxanne stiffen up, their mouths hang loose in surprise.

I only heard a passing about Speakers. It was only a very distant legend from the High Forest. This is certainly interesting.

"Please follow us," Pallido says.

I see the three girls are surprised but relaxed, I sheathe my sword and follow the dryads. I see that they do not trample the grass, wherever they set foot the grass actually grows a centimeter or so.

"So what are Speakers, exactly?" I ask Alissa.

"T-this must be the Lord of the Forest. A legendary being that existed before humans were created. A Speaker is someone who translates the language of the Lord to us, humanoids."

Oh boy. I only heard that there's a theory that the high elves might have gained their knowledge to manipulate the High Forest from trading with a Speaker.

"Are they dangerous?"

"I... Don't think so."

I will reserve my judgment then.

We reach the base of the huge tree and the musky smell of nature becomes stronger. It has a calming effect on me.

At the bottom of the tangled mess of roots we reach a doorway carved on the wood. Inside there's a cozy room with heating magical tools on the walls, multiple colored wool cushions, a low table with a beautiful porcelain tea set, and multiple twinkling crystals on the ceiling that illuminate the area.

"Please take your boots off. You can spend some time here to warm yourselves," says Camassia.

The wooden floor is warm to the touch. We take our armor off and huddle around the tea table. Alissa pours tea for us, it tastes like hibiscus. The porcelain is decorated with flowery patterns all over it. There's even a pot with sugar cubes.

The two dryads stand by the doorway to the corridor deeper inside. They remain motionless like two status looking forward.

Ciel sighs and massages her eyes.

"Now this is unexpected," she says.

Small vapors come out of our bodies as the gnomic personal heather does its work.

"I just... Can't believe it's really the Lord of the Forest," Alissa says lowly, her eyes barely focused on her teacup.

"Gih!"

I guess that now that we are finally here there's no point more in him hiding it.

"Okay, okay. I believe you." she says to Gify, "I just can't believe that I am going to meet the Lord."

"I'm more surprised I never heard they were so close to Rabanara," Ciel says, "I mean. The temple hears everything the common folk talk about. It's hard to think nobody would try to explore this place."

"We did have quite some trouble coming here." I say, "We even found a skeleton."

"Forgive me for interrupting but we do have a lot of secrets that keep other people out," Pallido says, "Very few people know about our existence."

"I wonder why," I say.

"You will know about it when you meet the Lord," he smiles faintly.

Well, whatever.

"What exactly is the Lord of the Forest?" I ask.

"This tree," Ciel says, "Tree of Mana, Lord of the Forest, Symbol of Nature. Those are the names it is known as. A being of legend that has been reincarnating ever since the war between the Gods of Change and Order created this realm."

"They say the Lord of the Land lives inside the Wild Steppes, this is why the empire never invaded the Steppes," Lina says.

"So, there are more than one?" I ask.

"Theoretically. It is said they are the incarnation of the 10 elements," Ciel says, "Though we only know of the Lord of Storms, who lives beyond the sky lands of the chimeras."

"How trustworthy is it? Could it harm us?" I ask.

I do not care whether it can hear us or not. Gify is already kind of a spy for it, anyway.

"Well..." She taps her cheek, passing through her memories, "It's a rather neutral figure. It never got involved in the matters of the humanoids unless we threaten it."

"Gih gih."

Harmless. On the contrary, it wants to help us.

We are all in a kind of stupor. How do you react when a being much bigger than you offers their hand?

I dismiss Holly but keep Shad on Roxanne. I'm not 100% comfortable yet.

After a few minutes of getting warm, we stand up with regret. Those cushions are really comfy.

"Ready to meet our Lord?" Pallido asks.

"Yes, please," I say.

"Follow us, then."

We can all stare in silence as our brows are perpetually lifted in surprise.

The halls are filled with ivies and other leaves even though there is no sunlight here. Flowers scent the air with their sweet perfume. Slugs, snails, and a small hermit-crab-like animal moves about, thankfully they are found exclusively on the ceiling. Small children that look like bulbous roots run around giggling in a very high pitch, they are the non-monster version of mandrakes, the Children of the Forest. Amber fireflies twinkle about, mostly resting near the ceiling crystal lights, those are Manaflies.

There are slow moving human looking people with bark or leaves for skin. Curinds and Cublends, respectively. They grunt and nod at us in greeting, the leaf ones make a lot of noise when the move.

We pass through dozens of rooms. Inside there's simple furniture like beds, cushions, shelves with leather-bound books, and counters that look like our kitchens with magic-tool stoves.

In many of these places there are assorted animals not found here. Deer, dogs, wolves, cows, bulls, turtles, sheep, Gatuns, and a few more magical animals. A few snakes lick the air when we pass.

There are plenty of Ronti, the mount of the Imperial Lancers. They are something like a mix of a mouse and a horse. Their rib cages glow with flashes of lighting.

A few times we see inter species mating. Surprisingly "civilized" instead of the rape-y kind you normally see in nature.

I even saw herbivorous animals eating cooked meat. From my classes on [Nature Magic], I knew magic beings of nature could morph how animals behaved but this is on another level.

"Sorry about that," Camassia says with a slight cringe as we pass a wolf mating with a Child of the Forest, "I understand humanoids are much more reserved than our kind."

"It's no matter, I understand our differences," I wave at her.

I have a very good hunch that the animals are all sapient.

We finally reach a big circular hall. Leaf baskets are used as elevators, multiple animals, and people can be seen using them. The elevator continues upwards so high we can barely see. Every floor there's a balcony where we see more living beings passing through.

The dryads lead us inside a leaf basket.

"Take us to the Lord, please," Pallido says to a vine that looks like a snake head.

The snake/vine nods slowly. The leaf basket turns into cage as vines close down any escape and the basket moves upwards.

Some floors have different layouts but they are all tall with wide corridors. Pack animals carry bags or pull wagons. I caught glimpses and the faint smell of stalls cooking food. This is simply a nature-themed town.

Eventually, the floors end and we only see the heartwood of the tree. A little longer and we finally reach the top floor.

A circular room with tall windows let in large amounts of sunlight and a fresh breeze. The floor is covered in flowers and when our naked feet touch them we feel the softness of warm earth. It does not seem to dirty our feet.

A little ways forward there's multiple sofas in a circle surrounding a very large wooden head of a sleeping old woman.

The dryads lead us to the circle of sofas and motion for us to sit.

I stare at the wooden head and see it's moving slowly, the nostrils flare as if she's breathing in slow motion.

A branch that acts as hair for the wooden woman lifts up and snakes through the air towards the Camassia. It enters her ear and suddenly the butler-like demeanor of the dryad turns into grace as the dryad's entire body seem to constantly move.

Camassia turns to us, her feet still but her arms undulate slowly.

"Welcome, humanoids. Welcome to my body," she says in slow and gentle tone.

I recover slightly out of my stupor and speak.

"H-hello, uh, Lord of Nature. I am W-Wolf Ryder," I speak.

"Lord of the Forest, Symbol of Nature," she corrects with a giggle, "But call me Gecynd. No need to add Lord, too."

"Pleasure to meet you, Gecynd."

"You too. And you, Alissa, Roxanne, Hana, Ciel, Lina, and Aoi," she gives a light bow to us all.

The girls tense up and return the bow. Aoi is the only one who's composed.

"It seems you know us well," I say.

"Yes. And I could have known a little bit more, but you refused to get close to that tree in your house. A small shame," she smiles faintly.

I blink in surprise.

"What would warrant such surveillance?"

"It is not everyday someone appears out of nothing inside my forest, realm traveler."

Now that is surprising.

"Is there something you know about how I appeared?" I ask expectantly.

"No. This is one of the things that interest me. There was no mana, no spell, no traces. You weren't there and the next moment you were. After that the Threads of Fate slowly changed."

Oh. This dampens my mood. I would rather not get reminded of Earth or even if there's a way back.

"Wait..." Ciel meekly raises her voice, "You said the Threads of Fate changed?"

"Precisely. I can see them just like, well, what do you imperials call it?" Gecynd closes her eyes in thought.

"Oracle?" Ciel says.

Gecynd slowly opens her eyes and smiles again.

"Yes, that is the word. After a long time observing the world I started to see what was 'underneath'," she smiles proudly. "I can see his soul just like your Oracles can. And let us say that his soul is very different from the norm."

Alissa frowns. "His soul is normal to me," she says.

"To you. I can see deeper than that. His soul is..." She slowly turns to me and smirks, "Bizarre. It made me question if you were a human when you came."

"Hey... I'm surely a human, the system says so," I say, a little offended.

"Yes. But all I could see was an aberration without a Thread of Fate suddenly appear in my forest."

I don't like being called "aberration", justified or not.

"Do you know the meanings behind his soul's... 'Diffferences'?" Ciel asks.

"No," she slowly shakes her head with indifference and then continues, "You would need to go to your Oracle for that. What I do know is that his Thread is very... Unusual."

"What are these Threads?" I ask.

"They are the bonds that tie us," Ciel says, "The fate of every commoner is already set. Who they meet, who they fight, who they love, when they die. Very few people can change their Fate, they are the heroes, people who can beat the odds and rise above all others."

"So this confirms he's going to be a hero?" Alissa asks, hopeful.

"It would, if his Thread was usual," Gecynd answers.

Alissa turns her hope into thought. She tilts her head and puckers her lips.

"What do you see of his thread?" Ciel asks.

"It is a... Stormy sea, a constantly morphing plane of endless possibilities. Slowly I see the storm recedes."

"Then he's adapting," Ciel says, her legs crossed and her hand on her chin, deep in thought, "Since we know he's from another realm it's plausible that he wouldn't have a Thread. When he came here his Thread would be uncertain but slowly settle down."

"Yes, I believe it is so," Gecynd says, "Though now that I see him close I can see the sea starting to move on a single direction."

"You are like an Oracle, you have a lot of influence over his Fate," Ciel says.

"Oh," Gecynd slowly claps her hands, "Then it is good that we met, an unstable fate is a dangerous thing. For him and for the world."

"I hardly believe I would be able to change the world," I say.

"Considering your powers, it is certain you could, given time," she answers with amusement.

"Don't underestimate yourself, Wolfy," Hana says.

I frown again.

"The monsters you sent to us were a test of my powers?" I ask.

"Yes," she replies immediately.

"Why send your subjects to death when you could have asked for a demonstration?"

"It wouldn't have shown your personality the way the test did," she answers flatly.

"I dislike being put into danger like this. Such tests are unnecessary," I scowl to clearly show her my displease.

"You are an interesting one," she smirks.

"Please forgive Gecynd's bluntness," Pallido interjects with an apologetic frown, "When you live long enough the lives of others lose meaning."

"I do not live forever, I die often. I only recover most of my memories through my roots," Gecynd says.

"You still retain most of your personality in every reincarnation," Pallido smiles wryly.

"Fair enough," she closes her eyes slowly in mild annoyance.

"Didn't Gify tell you all about me?" I ask.

"He told me much, too much, actually," she glares at Gify and he puffs his chest in answer. "I would rather confirm them with my own eyes. Some spirits can sometimes, brag, too much."

"Gih."

"Yes, I know," she rolls her eyes, "But how could I believe he had such incredible powers?"

Gify's beak deforms as he pouts. Gecynd scoffs at him.

So I guess he's not her underling, just someone who respects her a lot.

Gih.

"Why now?" I ask, "Any reason to wait so long?"

"You seemed like a busy person. Only now you had a free half-cycle to come visit," she shrugs, then her expression turns serious, "Would you let me observe your Thread more closely? I feel it is starting to entwine with my own."

"How would you do that?" I ask.

"Let me touch you close to your heart."

"Sure..."

The voluptuous dryad comes dangerously close to my face and puts a hand over my chest.

I'm staring at myself, my old self, dressed in a tuxedo. I can also see myself, my current self, dressed in my emerald scale armor and with my fang sword in hand. I know I am the one dressed in armor, yet I can still see myself, looking forward with grief stricken on my face.

My old self is cold. His heart burns in pain. Pain and longing.

The hand pulls away and the dryad looks at me with surprise in her eyes. I feel something change within me. I feel weird, like my body was not my own anymore.

"Did you see something?" She asks.

"Yes, I saw myself and my old self from Earth. Like I was looking at the mirror."

"Curious," her constant movements slow as she thinks, "I also saw something, it was merely a wooden door with the word 'Legado' on the frame."

"Legacy" in Portuguese?

"What does this mean?" I ask.

"Who knows? Your Fate is strong, so is mine, we are bound to influence the world and each other."

Oh, that weird feeling is familiar.

"Wait, there also was this dream, when I woke up it felt just like I feel now. I dreamed of the Everlasting Storm."

"Oh? I remember you were sleeping near a bundle of my roots," Gecynd taps her chin slowly, "Perhaps your Fate interacted strongly with your soul just like it did when I touched you. Or it could be one of my memories."

"Why would I see a memory from you?" I ask.

"Perhaps one of my birth places? I have died more times inside the Everlasting Storm than anywhere else. These memories are strong inside me."

"Why would you die there?" Alissa asks.

"I am always reborn some place randomly," she lowers her eyes in sadness, "I do not know how to fully control my reincarnation so I often end up reviving on a place only to quickly die. I have found many of my roots all over the world with painful memories of such deaths."

"Perhaps. But I only saw the storm, I didn't see you anywhere," I say.

Gecynd closes her eyes in thought. Ciel sighs and holds her head.

"Cryptic prophecies. I am back into a hero story," she says.

"Why are you pouting?" Roxanne asks, "You are the one who wanted an adventure the most."

Ciel shrugs and holds back a chuckle.

"I just like to travel," she says, "What annoys me is why couldn't a hero's destiny not be cryptic for once?"

"It's always back to being called a hero," I sigh.

"Well, you have the markings of one," Gecynd says, "One just does not get sent into this world with your abilities simply to do nothing."

"It even extends to us," Alissa says, "Clearly there's something he's meant to do here which needs a team."

"A team composed of people very close to him," Lina shyly raises her voice.

"Didn't you say you can see our status and the name of the screen is named 'Followers'?" Roxanne asks to me.

"Oh?" Gecynd grins at me, "What a suggestive name."

"Alright, alright," I lift my hands in defeat, "I'm sent here for some reason. But what is this reason? I never had any guidance, all I ever got was a message from 'God' saying 'I'm sorry for this, but there's no way for you to go back'."

"'God'?" Gecynd questions, "Which God?"

"That's the thing, it was only 'God', no more information on it. It could be the 'God' of my original realm, since most religions there are monotheistic and the God there is referred that way."

"Monotheistic?" Alissa asks.

"A religion with only one god, as if only the Overseer existed," I answer.

"Oh, I see."

Gecynd takes a look at all of us with a kind smile.

"Whatever it is the reason you are all together know this," she says, "Your Threads of Fate are all deeply entwined. Do not stray from each other and your life will be what it is meant to be. Your Threads are strong, your future is important."

Hana smirks and shares a look with all of us. "That much is obvious," she says, "We are all bringing something to Wolfy and he's bringing something to us. We are stronger together."

Gecynd smirks for a few seconds and then her expression turns sorrowful.

"There's something I must say to you, dwarf Lina," Lina nearly jumps out of her skin from being addressed directly, "The ancient dragon who killed your previous master was my responsibility. I am sorry for failing on this task."

Gecynd bows apologetically and Lina's mouth opens wide.

"T-that's no-not a problem. I-I understand that-that mistakes h-happen," she hurriedly stutters her words out.

Gecynd straightens and smiles with her eyes.

"You may be far too flustered to understand but I am truly sorry for your loss," she says, "I hope you will truly forgive me one day."

Lina's mouth opens and closes soundlessly for a few seconds. Her embarrassment catches up to her brain and she blushes heavily. She finally closes her mouth and nods to Gecynd.

"You are responsible for the monsters of the forest?" Ciel asks.

"Yes. It is a treaty with Rabanara. I keep the worst of the Sea of Trees away from the Shore of Leaves and they allow me to live in peace and quiet."

"But what about Hiyoku Hara?" Hana asks.

"That place is under the influence of the Monster King," she shakes her head with a frown, "I cannot stop the monsters from appearing along the Rakontagne mountain range."

Lina's Trivia: The dragonkin losing that stretch of land is what spurred the expedition into the Sea of Trees and the creation of the Shore of Leaves. Now Hiyoku Hara is an eternal battlefield for the empire.

Hana sighs in disappointment.

"There is one more thing. I wish to give something to you, Aoi," Gecynd says.

The little dragon tilts her head.

"Kweh?"

"If you would allow me, I wish to bestow upon you a gift that will be very useful as you grow."

Aoi turns to me and I feel she's asking my permission. I truly do not wish to control her too much but I guess I am the one with the most life experience so she's asking me for advice.

"What is this gift?" I ask.

"The ability to change the size of your body," Gecynd answers.

That's interesting. When Aoi grows too large she would be difficult to have around, I guess this is something very thoughtful of Gecynd.

"Why are you gifting us this?" I ask.

"I mean no harm to you. Think of this a gesture of good faith, I wish to have a good relationship with all of you in the future," she answers.

Alissa's eyes nearly pop out of her skull, Ciel chokes on her spit, and even Roxanne looks impressed.

I look at Hana and she shrugs.

"Well, go ahead, then."

A branch enters the ear of Aoi and she closes her eyes in pleasure. I feel a small amount of anxiety coming out of her but it quickly goes away and the branch retreats.

Aoi opens her eyes and I feel mana circulating through her body. Suddenly she doubles in size then immediately halves twice.

"Kweh!"

Aoi jumps in circles in happiness.

"Ohoh! That's wonderful. My shoulders were starting to hurt," Roxanne says, clapping the tip of her hands in happiness.

Aoi doubling in size makes her look slightly comical. The scales of a dragon do not grow proportionally to their size. So when Aoi increases in size she resembles something like a giant baby instead of looking older.

Gecynd seems to almost want to dance in happiness as she looks at the celebration of the little dragon.

"Now then," Gecynd slowly claps her hands, "That was all I wished to talk to you. Do any of have anything you wish to talk about?"

I'm feeling the tiredness of the repeated battles and this conversation. I just want to lay down and rest.

Alissa seems to want to talk about something but she eventually shakes her head.

"Please stay here as long as you like. You are all my guests so the others will receive you warmly."

The branch retreats from Camassia's ear and she stumbles forward. Pallido holds her and she slowly moves to a sofa.

"I will take you to your guest quarters. The bed of the main room should comfortably fit at least five of you," Pallido says with a grin.

With a little bit of embarrassment we follow him back to the elevator.

"When Gecynd told about having a relationship with us why did you react like that?" I whisper to Alissa.

"Having a relationship with the Lord of the Forest is an amazing thing," Alissa whispers to me, "Even the emperor would wish for such a thing. The neutrality of the Lord is something that vexed many emperors."

Huh. Hopefully word doesn't spread. Now this would be something that would attract a lot of attention.

As we go down the elevator I keep replaying the visions in my head.

Me, facing my old self? Why? How?

And then there's that dream. What would call me to a place where only destruction exists.

A note from Manasong

BAM! PLOT!

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Chapter 31: A Pervert's Vacation

A note from Manasong

Had a writer's block called video games. I'm back to normal now so it shouldn't take more than a week for the next chapter.

Now, I have to talk about patreon. I'm currently jobless and so I'll have to search for a job soon. This means that when I find a job releases will be delayed a lot, writing 10k words in less than a week takes a shit ton of my time so I have no idea how it's going to be when I have a job.

For this I'm starting a patreon, if I get enough money maybe I can look for a part-time job to help pay the bills, it will also depend if I can actually find a part-time job, they are not so common where I live.

With patreon other things will also come. I will start a discord, write advance chapters for patrons, "thank you's" at the end of chapters, a more regular release schedule, and I could even start writing in the English standard way of using quotation marks and then rewriting the other chapters (it will slow me down until I get used to it but I can deal with it).

So tell me your opinion on the poll.

Attention: to conform to the limit of sexual content allowed in a novel, I've censored this chapter. You can look for the uncensored version here.

The symbol "-" denotes a section that got cut for containing sexual content. Also, if paragraphs seem missing, they were also likely censored in an earlier pass where the symbol wasn't used.

"I just remembered, we heard some giggles and moans when we were coming here," I say, "Do you know what it could have been?"

Pallido looks at me with the corner of his eye, he suddenly seems hesitant to talk.

"That, uh..." Pallido massages his temple, "That must have been one of us. The moon was having an effect on us a day ago so the other dryads must have gotten... 'mischievous'."

"There were some suggestive moans," Roxanne says.

"Well... I'm sorry, they were mating near your tent," he hurriedly confesses, "They didn't mean evil and they would never interact with you due to Gify's presence but they certainly did some regrettable things."

"It wasn't anything bad," I wave my hand in apology.

"Yeah, just creepy, don't worry," Roxanne smiles wryly.

Pallido nods and awkwardly returns to his more formal demeanor.

We are taken to the 70th floor, around the middle range of the tree. The red grass is so thin and soft that it feels like we are walking on a textile carpet. The corridors are a neutral grey with very few leaves and ivies. They are all organized on a simple and orderly grid. It's one of the few floors were I actually saw doors. This feels like a hotel.

"This is your room," Pallido says. He stops on a particular door with unknown markings. "Apologies but please memorize or copy the markings, they are in a neutral language we all use."

I pull out some paper and a small clipboard and copy it multiple times, then I give the paper to girls. Each character is a number of scratches organized in a circle.

"The other five rooms along the corridor can also be used by any of you."

How much of our life did Gify tell Gecynd?

Gih.

Our sleep arrangements is not really "just enough".

"The Cublend in front will be your guide, his name is Arlo," Pallido points to the other side of the wall where bunch of leaves arranged in the shape of a man are growing out of the wall. I see them flutter loudly. "If you wish to separate ask it to him and we will prepare more guides for each of you."

"Thank you for your hospitality," Alissa says with a nod.

"It is our pleasure," he bows, his curly grass hair bounces wildly. "If you need nothing else I will be taking my leave. You can always ask for another meeting with our Lord, she's not a busy person."

"Thank you. That is all," I say.

Pallido walks away and I feel glad the overly manly man is away from the women.

We enter the room and the first thing we see is that the bed is larger than ours, there's a thick silk blanket on it and some very fluffy and furry looking pillows. There's a wardrobe that looks like it grew out of the wall, a table with some chairs that look they came right out of a nobles house, and I recognize a gnomic magic tool that controls the temperature. The mix of technologies is jarring but very curious.

To our left the door is open to a large stone bath, beyond that is an almost modern looking toilet. To our right we see that the doors to our other rooms are all open. Behind the bed there's a balcony that gives us a view to the south of the Sea of Trees. We are considerably high above the canopy of trees, giving us unobstructed view to something amazing.

Roxanne throws herself in the bed. -.

"SO FLUFFY!" She yells.

I - join her. Yeah, she's right. This is super fluffy.

Oh Gods, I fell asleep. It's almost evening so it's time for a bath.

I wake up to Roxanne spooning me on one side and Hana on the other. My brains are being massaged by Hana's strong hands and I almost fall back asleep instantly.

"Let's take a bath," I manage to force out before I end up blacking out again.

The hands stop moving and I regain my consciousness.

A groggy me and Roxanne are almost dragged to the bath where the other girls are taking a look. Simple grey stone with a large hole in the middle. Multiple gems decorate the border of the hole, magic tools. There's a large ice box where cold alcohol and some snacks are stored. Alissa closes the ice box and her nipples appear pointy. Even the floor is warmed.

This is a hotel.

"Wolfy, look at this!" Lina exclaims happily, "So many enchantments, maybe we should get some for our bath."

I blink blankly for a few seconds and finally fully awaken.

"Most look like magic tools. You weren't focusing on that, right?" I ask.

Her eyes go back to being gloomy.

"Ah, yes. I know very little about [Magic Tool Carving]."

Lina's Trivia: Enchanting is a spell that affects an item, a magic tool is a spell completely contained in a crystal.

"We can just ask Gecynd later. Actually, you should do it, ask her about the Monster King too."

Lina stiffens and her breath quickens. Ciel chuckles at her anxiety and gives her a calming, breasty hug.

"You will do fine, she doesn't bite, or rather, shouldn't," Ciel smirks.

Alissa starts filling the bath. Bubbles start to fill the air, fluffy and golden foam starts to form, the smell of flowers fill our noses, and a harp starts to play.

"Wow, even music. Now that is a bath," Hana says with a chuckle.

Roxanne face plants on the water and we enter after her.

"Cough, cough, gueh! What...? Oh, a bath," Roxanne surfaces.

"Sorry, my love. I didn't notice you weren't fully awake," Hana says with a guilty grin.

"You what?"

"Nevermind..."

Alissa activates another gem and the water starts bubbling, massaging our skin.

"Oh yes..."

My consciousness fades again.

I wake to the comfortable - pillow of Hana. Ciel and Lina are also sleeping while cuddling. Aoi and Gify are floating in the middle while they hold hands. Roxanne is sipping some blood red drink.

"Let's switch," I say.

-

Roxanne bites her lips, she wants in on the fun. I nudge on Alissa -.

"Kiss her," I point to Roxanne, "you are Roxanne's pet now, do whatever she wants."

Roxanne's eyes dart between me and Alissa. Her mouth puckered in surprise. Hana simply smiles wildly.

- After we use each other to our heart's content, Alissa and I show the intensity of our love and depravity to each other -.

"What have we become?" She asks.

"Two depraved perverts."

"Two people in love."

"Two hearts entwined."

"Two souls bound."

"Two beings who trust everything about each other."

-

I look to my side and the girls are eating salted not-peanuts and drinking some unknown beer while watching us. Lina found some green whiskey, hopefully, she won't get drunk.

We eat some snacks and rest some more on the bed. Due to Lina and I being so small we can all fit on it if we cuddle.

I finally explore what changed in me after that vision. I get a hunch and add points to [Space Magic], at 40 points a new spell is shown [Warp Space].

"Holy fuck! I can now use spells up to level 40!" I exclaim.

"I guess visions about future destiny is a good way to change your 'perspective'," Roxanne smiles wryly.

"Seems so..."

"You gotta teach me [Holy Spirit]!" Ciel grabs my shoulders and her eyes leave no room for questioning.

"Well, I have a lot of things I have to do. Is it really that important?"

"Well..." Her enthusiasm deflates and her shoulder drops, "No. I just really wanted one."

"Why do you want that one?" Alissa asks.

Ciel twiddles her thumbs and avoids eye contact.

"Bragging rights..." She mutters.

Our stifled chuckles just make her even more embarrassed.

"A-anyway," she quickly gets up and tries to change the topic, "let's go out and take that tour."

I look at the other magic tools and find something worrying on [Summoning Magic], the level 40 spell is called [Bind].

Lina gets out of the bed and stumbles. She immediately uses [Spirit of Gaia] and returns to normal. So that is the secret of dwarves.

Outside of our room, we surround the bundle of leaves in shape of a man.

"H-hello, are you Aslo?" Ciel asks shyly.

"Arlo," answers a voice. It is old but strong, there's an undertone of wood creaking.

The leaves grow away from the wall, pushing the existing leaves towards us while new leaves grow at the back. It looks like a stick figure of a man made of leaves. Eventually the branches snap and Arlo disconnects from the wall.

"Sorry, Mr. Arlo," Ciel lowers her head.

"Raise your head, humanoid," Arlo says, "I feel no offense on your words. And simply call me Arlo, no need for 'Mr'."

"Understood, Arlo."

The small openings between leaves show he's made of twigs, there's no organs inside. There's no mouth and I can't feel any mana coming out of him. How the hell does he talk or even see? The only facial trait he has is a bunch of leaves that look like a nose.

"Well then, Arlo. Can you show us some place to eat?" Hana asks.

"Sure thing," the leaves that make up his head nods noisily. "We have a section where food that should be to your palate is traded. Try not to take food from any other floor, it could cause problems for humanoids."

It needs to be said how odd it is to talk to something that does not show facial expressions. Even the lack of eyes to show where he's looking at irks me.

"Really..." Hana says, her eyes shining.

"Hana, don't do it," Roxanne says, stern, "this is not a challenge."

"Awn..."

"We won't heal you if you end up sick," Ciel says.

Hana pouts during our elevator trip but it quickly dissolves when we reach the 30th floor. The smell of food is mouth watering.

A grass bridge takes us out of our basket and into the floor proper.

In a nutshell, you can put on the Cantina Theme and it would fit right in with this atmosphere.

A marketplace exclusively for food. Multiple races and animals all walk through the dozens of stands. I don't know the name of half the living beings in here. Some of them are so alien I question if they really belong to this world.

The buzzing of trade is very similar to that of Rabanara's, even though most sounds produced aren't part of any language I recognize.

I see a Gatun growling at a Curind vendor. The bark-man vendor answers with the sound of stone grinding and wood crunching. The Gatun delicately puts his paw on the stand and a bundle of lightly glowing grass appears.

The bark hand of the vendor turns into a large spoon. He sweeps the grass off the counter and pulls out two mangoes from below the stand. The Gatun delicately grabs the mangoes with his mouth, he tilts his head and the mangoes disappear.

Even the animals know [Item Box].

We see fishes being grilled by a weird fish... Man? He looks like a huge fish that grew jelly-like arms and legs. Another that I don't know the race of.

"What is this?" Roxanne asks, "It looks like some good fish."

"Blargdablagarag!" Says the fish man.

"What did he say?" Asks Ciel.

"Uh..." Arlo thinks for a few moment then turns to the fish man, "Blargarag."

"Blargudlalar," the fish man answers.

"Glarlalalala."

"Glardu."

"Globar."

"Blargh."

"Blargh."

"They are bartering," I say to Ciel.

"How do you understand each other?" Lina asks.

"It's due to the blessing of our Lord," Arlo answers, "It should be similar to the spell you system mages call [Animal Tongue]."

"Oh I see. You mostly understand the feelings behind the words," I say.

"But it looked like he was speaking the same language," Lina says.

"Blarg language is not really a true language," Arlo says, "A single word has many meanings, it still mostly depends on feelings."

"Hmm... So maybe this is why it is not on the system," Lina says.

"Maybe."

"Anyway. What currency should we use?" I ask.

"None," he answers flatly, "you are guests so anything you want we will provide."

"How generous. Thank you," I say.

Arlo nods. Rather stoic this Cublend.

"Do you trade with coins?" Lina asks.

Hana points to a few grilled fish sticks and the Blarg looks at Arlo. He nods and the vendor gives it to Hana, his fish lips distorted in what could be described as a smile.

"They have some value but not much," Arlo responds. "Most valuable things are plants with mana on them."

A shish-kebab stall being tended by a dryad is attracting lots of attention. He's roasting a large amount of sticks on top of a scented log. The smoke he's creating is being sucked by some large flowers hanging from the ceiling. The man trips and hits his firepit, a large ember falls out and starts a small fire.

The crowd merely steps back a few centimeters. A flower on the ceiling turns to the ember and gushes water, putting out the fire. The flower then turns to the dryad and gushes double the amount of water on his face. The crowd produce sounds that could be interpreted as laughs.

The dryad recovers the wet ember and returns to tending to his stall.

The fish stick has quite the odd spice. Something like lemon but not very sour. It's in small clumps that burst on the tongue, sending periodic jolts of flavor. Cute gimmick.

I ask for a few of the sweet-smelling mangoes and Arlo barters for them. I guess not even Gecynd wants to feel ripped off when she receives the invoice of our expenses.

The girls spread around and drag Arlo onto a few stalls. They come back with multiple types of fruits that I have never seen before.

The shopping spree slows down and Arlo stops in front of us.

"Would you like a restaurant?" He asks.

"Sure."

Better than eating while walking.

Hana brings a bunch of large beetle shells. Everyone frowns at her until a smaller than normal Aoi crawls upon her body and snatches one.

"Sweeet, can-dy!" She says.

Trying to ignore the image of eating a bug. I throw a beetle on my mouth and chew.

With a satisfying crunch the shell breaks apart and I feel a sweet and mushy taste of peach. It's consistency reminds me of pudding.

"They are not the insides of a bug. Do not worry," Arlo says.

I swallow and smile at them.

"Tastes good, like fruit," I say.

Alissa and Lina eat it with some reservations. Ciel and Roxanne look at each other then at the beetles.

"The shell is only used as decoration, it's just pudding," I say.

I pick two and push it to them.

With a grimace, they take them and eat it.

"Tastes good," Ciel says.

"But it's not the taste that's the problem," Roxanne says.

"Yes. Food should look appetizing. Even if the shells are just decoration it's still a major negative point."

Roxanne nods her head along.

"Yes, yes. I give it a seven for taste but a minus ten for presentation," she says.

"Indeed. Minus three is all it deserves," Ciel copies the nods.

"Don't let the vendor hear this," Hana says with a smirk, she pops another bug on her mouth.

I look back at the vendor, he looks like a large meerkat. He nimbly moves between each customer, appraising the magical plants. He gesticulates wildly at whoever he's bargaining with and finally swiftly switches the plants for assorted beetles. At one point he quickly appraises a bundle of weirder than normal grass and throws it into the face of the not-hawk that put it there, a moment later he's already dealing with another customer.

"Do you have any dietary restrictions?" Arlo asks.

"Diet... What?" Hana asks.

"If there's something we don't eat," I say.

"Well they don't eat bugs," Hana smiles at the two on the back.

"I think he means something along the lines of not eating meat or drinking milk."

"Yes, precisely," Arlo nods, his leaves make every movement noisy.

The girls shake their heads.

"Well I wanted to eat some meat, if possible," Roxanne says.

Arlo nods and we change our path.

The stalls turn into large rooms as we near the border. I see the sunlight as small balconies open up to the outside. A few animals like Gatuns and birds seem to use them as entry or exit points.

We are taken to a restaurant at the border of the tree. Small windows let in the moonlight of the psychedelic moon and their satellites, tonight the green moon is the brightest.

This place also has the odd mix of nature with technology. The floor is soft and warm dirt, the chairs are made of wood with very soft cushioning, the cloths used are what I believe to be rare spider silk, the dryad waiters use the same proto-waiter uniforms seen in Rabanara. It's all so bizarre.

Since the dryads speak our language Arlo stays outside to give us some privacy. He merges with the wall in front of the entrance.

It's an all-you-can-eat restaurant with a salad buffet. The proto-waiters pass through each table offering different cuts of barbecued meat. Let me say that they know how to smoke and roast some meat, the scented logs must be the local specialty.

"So, what do you all think about Gecynd?" I ask, "I'm not very fond of allying with her, mostly because I don't fully understand her motivations, her whole perspective is different than ours. A semi-immortal being who uses the lives of others so casually scares me a little."

"Hm... I actually think it's a good idea to keep in contact with her," Roxanne says, "She could be a good ally due to her power."

Aoi lifts her head from her plate.

"Kweh! Good wo-man!" She says and goes back to eating.

Hana runs a finger through Aoi's spine, making her shiver.

"She means us well," Lina says.

"I agree with Wolfy, I think she's odd. I don't know what she's really thinking," Hana says.

"You kind of say this about most people, what's so different about her?" Roxanne asks, trying but not really trying to mess with Hana.

"Well..." Hana sends a glare to Roxanne, forcing her to squirm and bite her tongue, "It's just that I don't know how strong she is. I don't know how far we should, uh, appease her."

"I agree," Ciel says, then she cleans her mouth with a napkin, "Having the Lord of the Forest as an ally would be incredible, but also far-fetched. She eventually will want something from us, nature doesn't do charity."

"That would be our powers. Well, Wolfy's," Lina says.

"Indeed. What she expects from us is not gonna be so outlandish," Roxanne says.

"Alissa...?" I turn to her, she's quiet.

"I... I still can't believe we met the Lord of the Forest. Then there's the vision that you two had, I don't know what to think about it."

"Then don't. I hate cryptic things," I say.

Alissa sighs and drinks from her fruit punch.

"I don't feel any danger from Gecynd," she says, "We all know of Wolfy's destiny, Gecynd is now connected to it, she will be an ally in the future. Even if she does need something from us, it will benefit us if we help."

"Well, the Lord of the Forest is known to be fair. Having her in our debt would be great," Ciel says, "I'm just concerned about what will we need to do to put her in our debt. How big must a problem be for someone like her to not be able to fix it by herself?"

"A lack of legs?" Hana asks. I almost chuckle but she's got a point. "If she could move she would have changed her location already. She's way too close to Rabanara, it shouldn't be easy to keep her presence a secret. And even with the Speakers I never heard of any of those creatures ever leaving their forests."

"Now that sounds more plausible," Ciel says.

"We are adventurers," Lina says, she spins the ice in her green whiskey in thought, "traveling the world would be in line with what we do."

"And with what we want to do," I say, "After becoming a noble I want to travel the continent."

"There's that vision she saw," Roxanne says, "If we find what 'legado' means then we might find what we need to help her."

"In Portuguese, one of the languages of Earth, it means 'legacy,'" I say.

"Could be a coincidence," Lina says.

"I have a hunch 'legacy' is the proper translation," I say, "The languages don't translate directly but I can feel the similarities to many languages of my world. Andraste seems similar to Greek and some Latin, high elven is very similar to Portuguese, dragonkin's are inspired by Japanese, Sommerland seems to be German, Maplethorne is English, Faium seems Arabic. There's plenty of references going around."

"There's only one thing we are going to do at the High Forest," Alissa says.

"It seems we found our dungeon to conquer," I say.

After loosening my belt a few notches we go back to our rooms. Arlo told us he gets nourishment from merging with the wall so he has no problem in waiting for us. It's kind of like resting at his "bed".

We all end up sleeping on the same bed. Along with the gnomic heaters we got some coolers too so we didn't get as hot as we would have been.

I love the smell of the girls, the perfume of the lotions mix with each other and create a very sweet little piece of heaven. Their skin, and mine, is so soft now I kind of understand why Ciel likes to hug so much.

I never thought I would be so lonely in a new world but there are so many little things that annoy me and they pile up. The clothes that don't really fit right, the socks are rougher than I like, the constant need to use boots so you don't get your feet wet and dirty, the casual way death is treated, the need of individual strength to protect yourself from the world, the lack of a stable income, the constant reminder that there's something bigger than me going on, the lack of so many daily conveniences of my past life, a nagging feeling that if I stop increasing my power I will regret it, the impulse to make connections with people with power but the fear of what comes with it, the lack of internet, the lack of memes and web novels, no one understands my references, the food is just not the same as the one from my last home.

I miss coming back from work, eating some mac & cheese, then reclining on the sofa to watch some anime. I miss being small and insignificant. I was just another speck of cosmic dust that acquired sentience.

Now semi-immortal beings are taking interest in me and what I will change in the world. Seems that fighting only for my women would be a rather shallow motive, I have to take responsibility for what my power entails. With great power comes great responsibility.

I see the Everlasting Storm again. This time I don't feel discomfort, I feel confident. The Storm fades and slowly my usual dreams replace it.

Today is the 28th.

-

Roxanne wants to play with Alissa so I decide to stay and help. I whisper something to Roxanne and she answers with an evil "ohohoh~". Roxanne is as much of a sadist as I am.

We both hold Alissa down, she holds the legs and I hold the arms.

"I will go out get our breakfast," Ciel says after recovering from her embarrassment.

"I'll go with you," Hana says.

"N-no, that's not-not necessary," Ciel laughs nervously, "L-Lina, come with me. We will carry everything, just, just stay here. Look, look, play with Roxanne."

Ciel seems a little nervous in seeing Alissa being abused again but she seems even more nervous about what Hana might bring for breakfast.

Hana turns around to see Roxanne - use her dagger tail. "Ooh..."

To the disappointment of Lina, Ciel snatches her and they both go out.

Roxanne's tail can be used as a dagger but when she wills it the blade gets as soft as rubber. It's still scary as shit, though.

-

Then Ciel comes back with multiple fruit salads immersed in Chantilly.

-

After breakfast, I take a nap -.

I wake up to a mesh of light brown hair on my face, my nose is filled by her sweet perfume of orange, my mind is filled with the calmness that the perfume provokes on me. A hint of gold shows Gify's feathers peeking out from Alissa's arms.

A [Breeze] magic tool is on the table, it creates a soft wind on the room that caresses our - exposed skin. A small gust of wind hits my face and lifts my hair lightly, it tickles just like how Hana strokes my hair.

Hana is cuddling with Roxanne on one of the chairs at the table. They whisper something to each other and share pecks on the lips. Aoi sleeps on Hana's head, her small legs sprawled about.

I raise my head and see Ciel and Lina cuddling on a chair outside, overlooking the Sea of Trees. -.

I caress Alissa's floppy ears very gently. I feel her tail twitch, it's riding up on my belly and the fluffiness tickles me.

-

I'm healing. - Love, good food, doing nothing all day. This is the life.

The room - is getting smelly, though, we have to leave so the maids(?) can clean this up.

Today my [Nature Magic] increased by 1 (now 0+16) and everyone's "Wisdom" increased by 1. Mine is now 17, Alissa's now 13, Roxanne's now 18, Hana's now 11, Ciel's now 19, and Lina's now 12.

We leave the room to take a walk. Arlo called Gin and Aife, more Cublend guides. We got to a general trade floor and spread around but still remain close.

Roxanne is regularly coming back to me to deliver assorted plants she finds. Lina once in a while brings some random nick-knack.

The girls were very contained on their spending spree except for me, I got buckets of legitimate cow milk and cheeses. It's milder than minotaur milk but it's the closest thing I have that reminds me of home.

"Say, Aoi," she stretches her head downwards and looks me in the eye, upside-down. "Don't you want anything?"

She tilts her head and starts to look around. After a few minutes she jumps from my head and lands on the counter of a stall. There's some magical trinkets on it, one in particular is a cone of wood with a ball of gold resting on top.

Aoi stretches her claws to the cone of wood and feeds it some mana. The ball of gold starts to float and spin, I see a nearly microscopic gem on the wooden cone. The gold ball heats up until it glows with heat and mana.

"Kweh!"

Arlo nods to the stall owner and the ape pushes the cone to Aoi. She grows and grasps the trinket.

"We should teach you [Item Box]" I say, then I get an idea, "you should be able to keep things like these to yourself."

I hand her one gold and one silver coin. She stares at them for a few seconds then quickly snatches them with her mouth. She happily clinks them on her teeth.

Hana looks at her with some confusion.

"What's so good about those coins?" She asks.

"On my world dragons usually were fond of gold or other shiny things. Maybe it's something similar," I say

"Hmm..." Hana holds her chin in thought, "We heard that dragons would collect weapons and coins, we thought that it was just the remains from their victims."

"If you kill them regularly they don't have enough time to acquire too much treasure," I say.

"Makes sense. Huh, who would have thought."

"Then she really needs [Item Box]," Roxanne says, "she doesn't have pockets to carry her coins all the time."

The Cantina Theme fades off as the animals look much more contained this time. I think the effect of the green moon is subdued during the day. Tonight should be a yellow moon so things will get much quieter as time passes.

Eventually, we go to the restaurants for lunch. It's another dryad-run restaurant and this time we have pierogi with ground meat. Lina tentatively drank some whiskey again, later I saw her struggle to ask for more and got juice instead. I'm not sure what to say to her, I don't like drunk people but I don't need her to be a teetotaler like me.

In the afternoon we spend our time on the balcony. Roxanne and Lina play Civil War again while we cheer them on.

The balcony is rather small because I think Gecynd doesn't want people to see it from the outside. It's enough for us to sit on chairs though. If it was only slightly longer I could pull out a cheap sofa we once bought.

The place where we are at has very few vines so it's quite a large view. It's just endless upon endless green. Then the forest tips over the horizon and disappears. To our right, we can see the Rakontagne Mountain Range, snow-tipped mountains with greenish stone.

"What you think is out there?" Hana asks.

"Maybe a town of animals?" Ciel says. -.

"The animals must have formed clans, perhaps even a village," Alissa says, "there are some on the Misty Low Forest."

"If this place exists why couldn't it also exist somewhere else?" Roxanne asks then turns back to her game.

She regrets her distraction as Lina kills one of her Ronti lancers.

"Arlo said that there's a blessing that gives the beings here [Animal Tongue]," Alissa says ,"it could be exclusive to this place."

"Or it could be reproduced somewhere else..." Ciel says. -. "There's plenty of magic tools here. They could buy some, from whomever they are buying from, and set them up on towns and such."

"Would be quite the cost," Hana says, "both on mana and on gems."

"Well it is the Tree of Mana, maybe her roots could be used to at least feed the gems," Ciel says. She smiles at me as I kiss the top of her foot.

"At this point, I think Gecynd could just create a smaller version of herself somewhere else," Alissa says, "if her mana reaches the gem then her body also does. I find it hard to believe the Symbol of Nature wouldn't be able to somehow reproduce and create smaller versions of herself."

"If anything, we know that nature is all about reproduction," Hana says.

Heh.

"The lower levels are residential and the sounds of sex are quite common," Alissa says while nodding.

"Anyway, whatever is out there must be able to keep, hm...! The monsters in check," Ciel says, "We now know, ah...! That Gecynd somehow takes care of the worst ones."

"Gih hih."

"An army of dryads sounds scary," Alissa says.

Lina glances towards Ciel and loses her concentration. She makes a bad move and loses a Gatun scout unit.

"Ohohoh," Roxanne chuckles with an evil smile.

Lina glares at her and purses her lips in annoyance.

"Kweh! Calm doown," Aoi cheers for Lina.

"You traitor. I gave you my shoulders all the time," Roxanne glares at Aoi.

"Hih-hih. She, neeeds, cheee-rin'."

"Oh-hoh, so that's how it is. I also need some cheering, I'm not invincible."

"You, old, Li, young."

Roxanne scowls in pain while Lina snickers.

Roxanne loses an [Earth Wall] mage, creating a hole in her defenses.

"No!" She slaps her forehead.

Lina lands dragon knights beyond the wall and makes her lancers charge.

Roxanne puts down the [Eternal Gate] card on the board and summons dwarven men-of-the-line to receive the charge. Lina's smile fades as she realizes the trap.

The charge is halted midway, none of Lina's infantry can move inside to storm the walls. Because of this Roxanne's auto-ballistas on the wall are free to focus on the dragon knights, eradicating them.

"Noooo," Aoi cries.

"Ohohohohoh!" Roxanne laughs with her hand covering her mouth.

"Impressive acting," Hana says.

Roxanne blows a kiss to Hana.

Lina groans and regains her resolve. She retreats her lancers and prepares a new strategy.

Roxanne's counter is swift but she narrowly wins. The dwarf girl is a vicious defender. Current score is 8-4 in favor of Roxanne.

I finished Ciel so I sip my not-earl grey along with my gorgon fruit pudding. I'm so calm I feel like meditating. Ciel looks at me with hungry eyes and I quickly eat my snack.

-

"So," I clap my hands and strain a smile, "who gets the priority?"

Ciel and Roxanne look at each other. Their eyes hold aggressiveness, their pout holds anxiety.

"We don't really get hurt a lot," Roxanne says.

"It's for when we get hurt that we need the spirit," Ciel retorts.

"If I have enough power then you will never need a spirit. I can just blow everything away."

"Not all our enemies are monsters that attack from the front. We already got ambushed more than one time."

"And when we do I can just instantly explode them."

"But you didn't. The [Water Spirit] also won't help that much with [Explosion]."

"Hohohoh," she laughs mischievously, "there's [Heart of Fire], I'm not just going for the spirit."

Ciel bites her lips.

"[Heart of Fire] is worse, it's only to help you. It won't help us much during battle."

Roxanne smiles smugly, making Ciel turn red in anger.

"Well I'm kind of the most vulnerable already. You also underestimate how powerful quick relocation can be for a mage. If I can learn how to cast it chantless then I'm a step closer to becoming a demi-god of death, ohohohohoh~..." Roxanne smiles maniacally, every word makes her more agitated.

Now Ciel turns smug and crosses her arms.

"[Heart of Fire] consumes a ton of mana, you will have to train to increase your mana," she says.

All the evil in Roxanne gets cleansed in an instant.

"Ah, shit!" She mutters. "Wait! Wolfy said Kyros was going to give him a training routine to increase mana. I can just use that!"

"Yes you can," Ciel nods but her smugness increases, "but what guarantees it's not gonna give you the same headaches that normal mana training does?"

Roxanne scowls and strangles the air in frustration. After getting over her silent tantrum she breathes deeply and looks at Ciel with all the confidence she can muster.

"I will do it," she says.

"Do what?" Ciel frowns.

"I will train my mana."

"Pfffff..." Hana scoffs at Roxanne.

"Oi!" Roxanne scowls at Hana, "This is a conversation between the two of us. Stupid dragons are not invited."

"Kweh!"

"Sorry. Stupid perverts are not invited."

"Oi!" Alissa enters the fray.

"After what you did to Alissa you can't say you are not a pervert," Hana says.

"That... Nevermind!" Roxanne throws her hand in the air in frustration. "Back to the conversation."

"As you were saying," Ciel leans forward and speaks in a slow, mocking tone, "You believe you would train your mana with Kyros' technique."

"I don't just believe. Hoh!" Roxanne scoffs, "I will."

Ciel lifts her hands in defeat.

"Fine, fine. I will let you learn [Heart of Fire]. Buuuut!" Ciel jabs a her finger on Roxanne's nose, "If you fail you will have to accept punishment."

Roxanne's eyes race about as she imagines what Ciel might ask. She smiles as she thinks of Ciel's fetish, then she frowns as she remembers Ciel is not that depraved.

"What kind of punishment?" She asks, wary.

Ciel smug smile fades as she fails to think of a proper punishment.

"You are too much of an angel to enjoy sadism," I say.

Ciel pouts but I see a hint of a smile on her face.

"I will punish her," Hana says.

Roxanne shivers and she forces herself not to smile.

"That won't be much of a punishment," Lina says.

"Oh no. I'm gonna punish her," Hana licks her lips, "I will abstain from Wolfy just so I can use her and break her."

Roxanne shivers again but this time she doesn't smile.

"Awn..." I let out a disappointed moan.

"For the greater good," Hana says to me with apologetic eyes.

The greater good!

"Do it for me, Roxanne," I say, summoning the puppiest of all the puppy eyes I can summon. "Don't let Hana's insides forget the shape of my dick."

Roxanne sighs and her mouth twitches in a smile.

"I will do it, for you."

We take our clothes off and do it in the bath. I put on all my points on [Fire Magic] and [Mana Control], then I cast [Heart of Fire].

My entire body turns into flame. I lose my human shape and become a large ball of fire. It's a horrible feeling, I immediately turn back. I splatter on the water and nearly puke.

Alissa immediately fishes me out and I cough water.

"[Refresh]."

My dizziness disappears and I just float belly up.

"That seemed fun," Roxanne says with worry.

"I think..." I catch my breath "That people practiced this spell... Little by little, instead of transforming... All the body at once."

"Seems plausible," Ciel says, "but can you do it like that?"

"No," I answer flatly.

"Well shit," Roxanne mutters.

"I'm becoming more comfortable with modifying spells. This could be a good test for me," I say.

"Then..." Roxanne taps a finger on her chin then shrugs. "I will just meditate and try to glimpse how it works from a distance."

A spell that turns you into fire. Let swords phase through your flame, fly through the sky like a flaming arrow, slam on the ground like a meteor, that's what this spell can do. Big con for it is that if the flame is snuffed you die, makes it kind of dangerous to use during rain and impossible while underwater, also [Drown] becomes a death sentence.

I have to do it slowly, just a small part of my body has to turn into fire. I sit down on the stone and concentrate. The knowledge that everyone is naked in the bath takes a lttle of my concentration away but it helps in keeping the pressure off. I'm still into "vacation mode", I don't want to stress myself.

Many faceplants, crashes into water and near pukes later and I finally manage to at least keep my body from becoming a ball of fire.

"You kind of look sexy like this," Hana says.

I look just like a fire elemental, a naked man made of fire.

"You might not want to sexualize me. The only thing that you can get is a nasty burn."

"You said that you could eventually gain feeling on this form and choose when to burn," she says with a pout.

"Eventually. This spell is quite hard," I turn back into my nakedness, "and it's using my mana like a fountain. I have to meditate again."

Her pout turns into a frown.

"Maybe if it only burns a little..." She mutters.

Alissa shudders and mutters a groan.

Roxanne managed to cause a few whisps of flame to float around her. Thankfully there's little risk in burning your own hair otherwise fuck this spell. I went bald once, once.

I spend my evening training my Andraste. Been quite some time since I last did it.

"Why do we have to do it naked?" Ciel asks.

"Put 'naked' before any activity and it instantly becomes better," I respond.

"Naked family gathering," Roxanne says with a smile.

"Okay, I get it. Still, the longer we stay naked the happier I get."

Ciel crosses her arms and pouts.

"You are going to get distracted like this," she says.

"Only if you keep pushing them together like that," I say.

She blushes slightly but does not move.

-

Today is the 29th.

-

My [Fire Magic] and [Andraste Language] increased by 1 (now 0+1 and 5+5). Slowly I will get there. Spending time naked with Ciel is fun but what is not fun is grammar.

"These are gifts from our Lord," Arlo says. With a small bow, he extends a platter with 6 necklaces. "They have been blessed so it produces the same effect as [Animal Tongue]. They will also serve to appease any animal or forest guardian that you meet."

We all pick our necklaces. They are made of branches, leaves, flowers and some small berries. It reminds me of a thinned Christmas wreath.

I put it on and immediately feel a change in how I perceive things. It's a much stronger effect than my [Animal Tongue], I can feel faint emotions of every animal near us instead of only the one I'm directly talking.

"When you leave the Tree of Mana the effect of the blessing will be reduced but it would still be effective," Arlo adds.

"Hey, I can finally talk to Aoi like Wolfy does," Hana says, she grabs Aoi out of the ground and holds her like a baby. "I love you my little one."

"Kweh! Lo-ve!"

"Awn..."

Hana's expression melts as she suffocates Aoi on a hug.

Arlo's leafy face is expressionless but the necklace tells me he's "smiling".

With the blessed necklaces, we can finally take part of one of the most curious entertainment activities around here: the theater.

Without an official language to use, the actors have to get the story across using all other methods. Sounds, music, dance, expressions, and body language, all of these is aided by the blessing that the Tree gives to all its Children.

We get front row seats to the show. The theater is the odd combination of furniture found in the house of a noble with the heartwood of the walls and indoor red grass on the floor.

The lights dim and the actors enter the stage.

A girl is born. The father looks disappointed at his child, the mother cries at the bleak future of the family.

As if understanding what awaits her the girl grows wild like an animal. She grasps on the last branches of life. The father brings food home and watches as the little animal eats the food with ferocity.

I will live, I will live.

The father stares with fear on his face as he sees a dark and frightening ball of magic leave the palm of his daughters hand. The ball flies and hits a resting bird, it convulses and writhes on the ground, crying in pain. The little girl rushes to the bird and snaps its neck. With dexterity, she defeathers the bird, bleeds it dry, and with a ball of fire on her hand, cooks the bird.

The father approaches the girl and her eyes widen in fear. She growls and shows her fangs, which are still sunk on the meat of her catch. The father smiles at her display and offers a piece of dry meat.

The girl takes it in the blink of an eye and soon her belly is full of meat.

I shall starve no longer.

The tall and muscular brother comes, he wants his place, his destiny, he challenges her. The scrawny girl twists him and breaks him apart. As his body and mind fails to recover the girl extends a hand, with it comes a kiss.

The lives of the strong shall not be wasted, they will flock to me.

Father, then leader, then lord, they all fell to her. She takes them all, no life shall be wasted, no potential go unused.

I slit the throat of my enemies, I eat their meat, and mate with their strong. I take what I want and what I need.

She grows strong and extends her tendrils far. Her enemies tremble in fear of her ferocity. The Queen conquers all.

Then she meets her nemesis.

A creature so wide it is confused with a mountain. So big its steps provokes earthquakes. So strong the ferocity of the Queen is nothing but the anger of a single ant. But a swarm of ants can still take down bigger prey.

I fear no one, I shall conquer you.

Fire and brimstone rain upon her children, wind sweep them of their mounts, coffins of earth open and entomb her men,  and a storm forms just to clean the earth of the filth that are the survivors.

She lifts her head from the dirt and see nothing remains. Tears run free as she despairs, everything she ever had has been lost in a moment. The creature did not even glance at her.

Stricken with grief, she uses her magic on herself. She carves on her body the shame of her loss, the folly of her pitiful attack, the stupidity of her arrogance.

I won't die quietly, I shall have my revenge.

She climbs upon the creature in silence. With pure physical prowess and stubbornness she sneaks upon the monstrosity. Once on top of the head she plunges her little sword that barely manages to break the skin of the creature.

She flows her magic through the sword and penetrates the mind of the creature. She will invade the mind of the creature and destroy it. She will have her victory even if it takes her life, she has nothing else to live for after all.

The creature fights back. She views the endless well of life, the cycle of birth and death. She is born again, suffers again, thrives again, rejoices again, and finally, fails again. The cycle repeats over and over and over again. We merely live until we fail and the world takes us back to the earth.

How foolish of her to throw it all away when she lost for the first time. She has the privilege of remaining alive, she will do it all again and this time she will do it better.

No more arrogance, my lineage shall survive this time.

The creature shakes the earth with a horrifying sound. Her ears burst and bleed, her body shakes, and her bones creak. How cruel to die just after regaining the meaning for her life.

The creature took notice of her and stopped its laughter. Such power that merely a laugh nearly killed her. Apologizing for its outburst the creature nursed the little girl back to life. Suddenly the creature speaks in voice only she can hear.

"Bring me back a family worthy of the name 'Kaengraeng' and this time I will see you as my equal, my kin."

The Queen answers with a scream of war. She will take this as a challenge, she will create a new family so strong the creature will tremble. Or at least one that survives a bout of laughter.

She will come back and this time she will worship the creature.

The lives of the strong shall not be wasted, they will flock to the creature. Under its wing I shall gain power, power to safeguard my kin.

This is the story of the first Speaker.

"I see the show left you speechless," Arlo says.

"Yeah that was quite the storm of emotions," Roxanne says, "I cried so many times."

"Hah, I think you cried more than you didn't," Hana says.

"She just had such a hard life. So tragic."

"Such was the life during the Age of Oppression," Ciel says.

"From what we heard of Bestiaram things aren't that much better," Lina says.

"Blame the heretics," Ciel grits her teeth, "How could people ever worship pain?"

I smile wryly.

"Over here there's really only one religion so things are calm. Back on Earth when religions fought each other horrible things would happen, even worse than what I heard from that continent," I say.

We come back to our room in the evening. Everyone is rather quiet but very content. The show provoked a bout of introspection on the girls.

We all lay down on the bed and stare at the ceiling. The show may have been silent but a large amount of emotions have been transmitted to us. We are all rather tired.

Another fluffy and perfumed bath where Lina tries again to decipher the magic tools. Then another wonderful dinner, this time the main course is varieties of breads with wonderful sauces to spread, there was even pita bread. We finally regain our presence of mind and return to our normal way of acting.

"Say, Alissa..." I call to her.

"What?" She leaves the table and lays down on my side.

"Would it be weird for us to, uh, have sex on your fox form?"

"No. Well not for me," she smiles wryly, "Most non-wereanimals don't find it attractive so we hardly mention it. They feel it's like having sex with an animal."

"Well it is having sex with an animal, but considering it's you I don't mind it."

She beams with a smile -.

Suddenly she grows furry and the next second I'm looking at a large orange fox on top of me.

-

I collapse beside the fox and she turns back to her normal form. She nuzzles up on my neck and her arms and legs turn into tentacles as she hugs me with all her strength.

"I love you, I love you, I love you," she mumbles while she smiles with her whole face.

"I love you too," I weakly let it out.

That definitely felt weird -. But seeing how happy that made Alissa I will certainly make an effort to please her. Not like I'm going to be arrested for doing anything illegal.

After I regain my breath 4 pairs of hungry eyes stare at me.

-

Intermission 9

What does it mean to forgive? The pain doesn't go away so why should I forgive, why should I forget what doesn't leave me?

I don't even understand why she apologized. She doesn't show emotion when the Children of the Forest die yet she apologizes for master's death. Is it just duty that makes her feel guilty about death?

Why does a giant concerns themselves with an ant?

The basket reaches the top floor and the vines open for me. The flowers feel good when trampled by my feet. They quickly whiter and a new one grows on its place.

Huh. What a perfect analogy for my situation. I feel guilty about trampling on the flowers, such beauty shouldn't die before their time.

"Good evening," Camassia says with a smile.

"Good evening," I answer.

A branch sneaks up on the ear of the dryad.

A note from Manasong

Leave a rating or a review to help me rise to the top or fix my shameful understanding of prose.

Take a look over my blog where all information of the world of Rupegia will be posted.

Join the Discord and discuss, or rant, or meme, or try and fight me so your waifu gets more screentime.

Become a Patron and read chapters in advance, or read the side-stories, or leave your mark on the story, or help choose the next artwork or the next side-story.

Announcement: Discord, Patreon, Blog, and Schedule

Hello everyone. Due to some overwhelming yes I took the plunge and started a patreon. With this things will be much more organized.

First, I made a blog. It's mostly where I will put links to everything, since I will start uploading Rupegia on other sites beyond this one and Scribble Hub, so I thought it would be nice to have a place where all links are available. There's also a slight chance of some chapters getting censored so I will put the uncensored version over at the blog if that ever happens.

Second, I made a Patreon. Support me if you want the story to grow and read chapters in advance. I will use some of the patreon money to commission art regularly once the goal has been reached. I never commissioned art so the target goals for them might be naive but I will adjust them when necessary, so far they are only preliminary. There's also two English dialogue standard goals over there, switching styles will slow me down for a while since I actually do have to type quite fast to keep up my release schedule but I can adapt. I may end up switching even if the goal hasn't been reached but it really depends on how busy I would be.

Third, here's the Discord. It's a place for discussion, talking to me, ranting at me, memes, and artworks that I will commission (including the lewd ones). I'm fairly new at Discord so forgive me if there are problems with the server.

Fourth, schedule. I won't change current chapter structure but I will slice them up in mostly 3 parts (around 3k words) and release them over the week. I didn't want to do this but the difference it makes for my popularity is very significant, if I want to get more exposition it certainly pays to release more often. The schedule will be Monday, Wednesday and Friday at 8PM US East. Next chapter is on Wednesday, I could do a double-chapter day but I'm rather swamped. The schedule is bound to change in case of real-life changes (like if I get a part-time job) but I will try to sustain this for a while.

Fifth, expect Rupegia to appear in other sites soon.

Alissa's Origin: To Bring Honor to My Clan - Teaser

A note from Manasong

Revamped on 02/March/2023.

This chapter is not required to read to understand the main story, this is only a side-story.

This is a teaser for the patreon-only side stories I'm writing.

Each chapter has 3 parts and the first part of any new storyline I will make public as a teaser. I'm planning for the main cast to have at least 3 chapters of side-stories.

Jacques Verner

I grab the magical pen, an unadorned stick that looks incredibly small in my large, clawed hands. The stark difference in size is why I'm always at the forefront, to intimidate the other clans with my huge physique, uncommon among werefoxes.

Then I turn to the small piece of parchment beside it and hesitate for a moment as a painful tightness squeezes my heart. The name of our clan, "Misty Foxes," is written right at the center, and under it, there's a blank space where I slowly write my name. My handwriting is shamefully sloppy as my mind is somewhere else, and once I'm done, I grimace in disgust.

"Jacques…" Léonne softly whispers in my ear, her tone soothingly gentle, and I immediately put on again my stoic mask to not show weakness in front of the other Chiefs.

Damned Rakontagne, damned dragons.

We walk away from the table and return to the raised dais, then we sit in our luxurious chairs, but the white Prowler fur never felt more uncomfortable. It isn't the audience, I've never felt intimidated by any of our subordinate Chiefs, it's the reason why we're gathered here that makes me nauseous.

My discomfort is so great that I reflexively squeeze Léonne's hand, and her stern face changes into a warm smile for a second, all that I need to feel reassured again, then her gaze turns sharp as she resumes observing the proceedings. I could spend a whole day just watching her solemn beauty stare down the other haughty leaders, but I also have a part to play in this, so I mirror her expression.

I've always been envious of her composure. She's far better at politics than me, so I focused on being practical and useful to our family, but this makes me such a terrible Chief. Half our work is solely diplomacy as we have to constantly stop the clans from trying to kill each other or even usurp our position as the Chiefs of the Misty Low Forest, and I'd be having a hard time at it if not for her.

I'm just too soft, though at least my face doesn't match my disposition, allowing me to hide among the devious.

But someone needs to have a heart in this den of sly and shrewd foxes, so I'm proud of my softness.

And so we silently watch as the other clan leaders also write down their names on their assigned pieces of parchment. Too many of them seem eager to participate in this event, which disgusts me, but it's just as expected from these greedy foxes, and I find comfort in the fact that at least those we call allies have the decency to look tense or uncomfortable.

I usually enjoy the mist, but tonight, it seems too grim for my taste.

Eventually, the line ends, and all of the papers are signed by each clan. There's nobody missing, so it's time to move forward with the event.

Léonne and I rise at the same time, then we approach the podium. Without hesitation, we each grab a magic tool and then press it against our throats.

And she begins the speech, her solemn voice echoing across the open-air forum, "Chiefs and Chieftresses, Warlords, Leaders, Elders, and Masters of the Hunt! We're gathered here for the fulfillment of our old treaty with the Shore of Leaves and the Mainland. In exchange for our lands being protected from the dragons of Rakontagne, one of our young will be chosen, and they'll receive the best training we could give them so that they may grow into the finest example of a warrior that the Misty Low Forest can create. And once they're of age, the chosen will be sent to Rabanara, where they'll fight in our name to bring honor and glory to our clans."

They'll be sent as a slave. Where is the glory in that?

But now it's my turn, so I breathe in and solemnly follow up, "As the treaty says, we'll choose one from among the children of our strongest as only those who have shown true power are allowed to represent us. This means that all families from the ruling class must participate for no other class has the means to raise the finest werefox warrior. And the family of the chosen will be given rewards for their sacrifice and all the aid they need to ensure the quality of our future representative."

We're selling our children for money. Even if it's for the protection of our lands, there are some who are too eager to receive the "rewards" and the "aid."

Then a servant takes all of the folded parchments and puts them inside a glass globe.

I have no desire to drag this out for a single moment, so I promptly turn to the Elders behind our seats and gently request, "Elder Monique, please, if you would do the honor." Then I motion for her to approach.

The lovable old fox raises from her chair with the help of her servant, then she makes her way toward the globe. Once they're before it, the servant grabs the handle and starts spinning the globe, mixing the parchments in front of everyone's eyes.

The servant stops after a few turns, then the elder moves her hand toward the opening. The Chiefs all tense up, and fox ears flicker about wildly. Most show fear and anxiety, some show indifference, and a few too many show excitement.

Elder Monique picks up a piece of parchment and unfolds it, then absolute silence falls upon the forum.

"Jacques Verner!" she promptly shouts, and my heart stops as everything starts to spin.

I'm suddenly taken by so much anger that I have to use all my strength to not run up to her and rip that damn parchment apart.

But then Léonne strongly squeezes my hand, bringing me back to reality.

Right, I need to keep my composure.

I puff up my chest, but I don't smile, then Léonne and I each grab our right ear with our right hand, a gesture to display respect and honesty.

"It's an honor to have our child be the chosen one," she solemnly declares.

"It's an honor to have our child be the chosen one," I repeat the lie, trying not to scowl.

Gods, why? Why Alissa?

Alissa Verner

Ofilia softly chants a spell that I don't know. It's almost like she's singing, and she even tilts her head from side to side along with the beat. The way her long white hair sways with her moves is so pretty that Nen and I can't take our eyes off of her, and she gives us a smile that makes him blush (and almost me too).

Then she slowly waves her arm, and multiple, colorful butterflies of light fly out, spreading them all over the garden. But most just fly into the mist and disappear, leaving only a handful that slowly flies around us.

"Alissa, grab a stone and try to hit one," she challenges me with a smirk. But her soothing voice makes me feel sleepy instead of alert, so she adds the perfect bait for me, "If you hit one, I'll give you a reward."

Well, perfect bait for us because Nenvieu runs towards the nearest stone then immediately throws it, but it simply misses his target by a lot and disappears into the mist, making Ofilia laugh loudly. The boy's throw is so bad that he lets his head drop low as his grey cheeks redden and his also grey ears flop in shame.

I put my hands on my waist and advise him with a frown, "Nen, you can't just grab any stone and throw; you have to put some thought into it. Like this."

Then I grab a pebble and weigh it.

It's the perfect size; this one will fly very far.

I look around and spot a red, semi-transparent butterfly that's flying in circles above our heads. It looks like an easy target, so I lock my eyes on it and ready my arm, then I carefully lead my aim and finally throw.

The pebble launches straight forward like an arrow and hits the butterfly right on, which turns into a little puff of smoke that quickly dissipates away while the pebble simply disappears into the mist.

Ofilia gently claps her hands with a pretty smile, then little Allura starts imitating our maid with her cute toddler claps.

"Lis, hit!" she shouts and points with her chubby fingers, her small, orange tail wagging so hard it hits Ofilia's dress repeatedly.

"Yeah, I did," I proudly reply and pat my little sister's head.

Then Ofilia leans down toward me and happily asks, "Okay, what do you want as a reward?"

But before I say anything, Nen hurries to my side and whispers in my ear.

"I want you to kiss him," I immediately answer and point to Nen. But Ofilia just smiles kindly, which means she's just going to give him a peck on the forehead, so I stare hard at her and I add, "on the lips."

And she chuckles loudly, so we both pout at her in annoyance, but it takes so long for her to notice us that my cheeks hurt. Then she suddenly forces herself to stop and her eyes turn reproachful, but the smile on her lips says she's still making fun of us.

"No," the pretty maid answers with a severe tone, and I pout harder. "The reward is for you, not for him," she insists.

"My reward is seeing you kiss him," I insist back.

And she double insists back! "My, my. If you insist on this, then I'll revoke your reward!"

But before I can triple it, we suddenly hear footsteps, and Ofilia's smile instantly disappears as her spotted ears flicker, then she gently puts Allura down on the mat and stands up.

"Master," she politely greets and bows.

We turn to where she's looking, and a second later, a large shadow appears in the mist, then it takes the shape of a very large with fox ears, and Dad comes out of the mist. I smile but then frown as his face makes me anxious. He looks serious, but Dad never looks serious; that's Mom's job.

He raises his huge hand and gives Ofilia a weirdly sad-looking smile as he whispers with a tired voice, "At ease. I'm only here for Alissa; I have to talk to her."

Uh…

Ofilia straightens her posture and then slowly turns her head towards me, giving me a chill.

Did I do something wrong?

My mind races as I go over everything I did in the last few days, but I don't remember anything…

Oh no… did Ofilia tell Dad about the Avaler that I killed? It was an accident! I swear! I didn't know it belonged to Elder Vitus!

Suddenly, clawed fingers wrap around my chest, and I'm picked up with just one hand, then Dad's round, fluffy, red beard appears right in front of my eyes. He immediately kisses my forehead, making his face-fur tickle my face, then his claws tickle my sides, and I start squirming to escape his grip.

No! I was deceived! I thought I was going to get scolded!

But first, I must escape! I stomp the sole of both of my feet against his chest, and I slip from between his fingers like a wet fish. But before I fall on my back, I change into my fox form and contort in the air, then I fall on my paws like an experienced bandit.

He's definitely going to try to pick me up again, so I dash towards Ofilia and hide behind her, then peek at Dad from behind her dress. He's simply grinning at me, a warning sign he's not done, so I pout and glare at him with my foxy eyes, but then his grin slowly disappears and becomes serious again.

"Seriously, now. Alissa, come with me," he orders, his tone saying I can't say no, tthen he simply turns around and starts to walk away, so I start to follow him but take one last look behind me. Ofilia is smiling warmly and waving, Allura is cutely imitating her, and Nen is pouting sourly now that our fun is over before he could get his reward.

Well, it's more fun to make him wait for the kiss, anyway.

Then I use my claws to climb up Dad's clothes until I get to his shoulder.

And he frowns at me. "Don't do that, you'll ruin my clothes. Your mother hates when you do that," he quietly scolds me, but he doesn't sound like he cares too much about this.

So I grin at him with my fox mouth. "I won't tell if you don't."

But he flickers my snout, almost making me fall off.

"Oww…" I whine and sneeze, then I glare at him.

And he just chuckles. "Your fault for not learning how to cut out the pain in your fox form."

That's still mean!

I can hardly see where we're going with this mist, but there are mana crystals hanging from poles that light the stone path that crosses the grassy hill. I actually got lost once in the mist, but there are walls surrounding our garden, so it's not like I can get lost, you know?

Then we reach the porch, and I notice two female elders taking a sip of hot tea while sitting down on cushions. There's nothing to look at in this mist, and I also didn't hear them talking, so they must've been meditating or some other sense training that I don't know about.

Dad takes off his shoes before we step in, revealing his big, furry, clawed feet. They aren't fully fox legs like Allura's, but they're still really cool. I jump off his shoulder and change back to humanoid then also take off my shoes and carry them inside. Ofilia always says we should never bring any dirt from the outside into our homes, and I think this is supposed to have some deep meaning.

"Pay attention to how you lower yourself. Your sash is loosening with the wild way you move," Dad calmly scolds me.

I purse my lips and tighten the sash of my dress.

Why do we use such annoying clothes if they keep getting undone?

"If you can move around without loosening the sash of a Plier dress, then you're ready for hunting Prowlers," he adds, reading my mind.

"Still stupid…" I whisper sourly and look away.

"Don't question it until you understand it," he grunts and flickers my ear from behind me so that I can't see it coming.

"Ow…" I moan as I rub the sensitive cartilage. He likes to hit the black tip, exactly where it's the most sensitive.

Then I notice that the elders have big, dumb smiles on their faces, making my cheeks redden and my ears burn. I purse my lips harder and try to take control over my heart to not let them see me look embarrassed.

Dad starts walking, so I follow, and we enter our home, then the sounds of muffled steps on the wooden floor fill our ears even though not that many servants work in the evening. It's mostly just the cooks and the maids preparing dinner, but they have no hunting training, so they obviously make a lot of noise. The room dividers don't reach the tall ceiling, but even if they did, they're paper thin, so there's little that blocks sound around here.

Then I notice that the floor is beginning to get warm, so they must be preparing the bath, too. Feeling the warm wooden board through my socks is the only good part of being forced to return home earlier than I wanted.

We cross paths with a few Sworn Hunters, who I never hear unless they walk right past us, and they're bringing in small monsters they've hunted to help the cooks. But then we hear Louise's harsh voice echo across our home, almost making me jump in surprise, and Dad and I share a smirk as we have a good idea of what has gotten her angry.

"How did you not get eaten by a Prowler already is a wonder! You must've been stalked by every Buveursang in the forest with the bloody trail you left!" she shouts angrily, and we walk in just in time to see the small maid with puffy red hair smack the shoulder of a very large grey Hunter.

It seems he didn't properly bleed his prey before coming in. The sack he carries in his back has no blood spots, but the nose doesn't lie, and even I can smell blood coming from him.

Montague, the grey mass of muscles, makes a regretful face as he explains himself, "I'm sorry, Louise. It took too long to find this deer, so I would be too late for dinner if I took any longer."

"You oaf! We could've just stored it for tomorrow!" she hisses, showing her white fangs, then huffs away, her angry stomps making her hair bounce along with her steps.

"Montague did it again," Dad whispers with a smile as we watch him leave.

And I get curious. "Why did mom choose him? He's always so clumsy," I question, and then I realize that this kind of sounds rude.

But I'm speaking with Dad, so he just ignores my brattiness. "Sometimes, you just need a large muscle-brain to solve problems," he answers with a shrug.

"Aren't you the one who mom calls when she needs muscle?" I tease with a cheeky grin then immediately shift into my fox form and jump away from his huge, furred, red hand. I can easily dodge him with my quick little legs, though my stamina needs a lot of work. I can barely last a minute.

But before I can even begin to really run away, my little paws slip on the pristine, waxed floor and I fall on my side, then dad quickly nabs me by the nape.

"Enough," he orders with a gruff voice, so I make my ears go limp, which always softens his anger, and it works like always as his frown disappears, though he narrows his eyes in annoyance. "Stop playing around; we have to talk," he adds, now sounding completely serious.

"Okay…" I whisper in defeat.

Now there's really no escape.

Then he lowers me to the ground, and I turn back to humanoid, but I notice that my sash is getting undone again.

Stupid clothes.

We finish crossing the common grounds and finally reach our private quarters, which are marked by bright orange wooden sliding doors and an enchantment that starts a siren if an intruder gets in, though I've only heard it once when Mom showed it to me. We get past the orange door and enter the main corridor, then Dad immediately turns to the first room on the right and gets in, so I follow.

This is Mom's office, and she is sitting on a cushion, writing on some documents on a low table in front of her. She immediately lowers her magic tool pen and looks at us, then her usual stern look relaxes into the kind one that she only shows to us in private. Her large orange eyes stare right into mine, and she smiles, making me reflexively smile back.

Then Dad points to a cushion in front of Mom's low table, so I sit on it, and he sits beside her. They share a weird look, and he nods, which makes me confused because I don't understand why they're being this mum.

After a weird second in silence, Mom softly asks, "Alissa, do you know remember the treaty we have with the empire in relation to Rakontagne?" And her soft voice immediately makes me calmer.

I nod, making my ears bob. "I remember; Homvieun taught me that. He said that once every… uh, every ten years, we send a warrior to Rabanara to prese-… represent us and bring glory to our clan."

I notice that Dad's face twitches, which is weird, but Mom doesn't react and simply nods sweetly at me.

"That's right," she whispers softly and glances at Dad again, which is also weird. There are a lot of weird things going on right now. Then she calmly continues, "We choose one family from among those of the clan leaders, Warlords, Elders, and Masters of the Hunt. The family to raise the next warrior was chosen a few days ago…"

Oh…

She stops and narrows her eyes, making her smile look painful, then she finishes, "And our clan was chosen, so you'll be trained and sent to Rabanara when you're of age."

And the office suddenly becomes so silent I think I'm the only one breathing, which is really, really weird.

"And… is that good?" I tentatively ask with a confused frown.

"What?" Dad grunts and blinks blankly a few times.

"Shouldn't we celebrate?" I continue then lean forward and let my tail wag. "I'll be representing the Misty Foxes!" I shout excitedly and grin.

Dad's face twitches again and he even looks away while Mom smiles faintly. I don't know what's wrong with Dad today.

Then Mom assumes a soft teaching tone, which usually means that I said something dumb. "Yes, you will, but this means you'll have a very hard life ahead of you." Then her expression becomes serious, telling me that I can't make a joke about what she's going to say next. "You'll become a Blood Slave, so you won't be in charge of your own path, your Thread will be tied to your master's."

I tilt my head confusedly and ask, "Isn't Ofilia a Blood Slave?"

And she gives me another pained smile. "Yes, but she's lucky to belong to a good family. The family you'll be sent to may not be like ours."

I stand up and hold one of my ears to solemnly swear, "I'll endure it! I'll make you proud and bring honor to our clan!"

They both raise their eyebrows in surprise, Mom's face straining as she tries not to smile, but then Dad leans over to her and whispers in her furry ear, "We gave her some horrible influence."

Don't think you're the only one with good hearing.

"Thinking of her future, it's for the best that she remains like this," Mom gently whispers back. Then she turns to me and kindly warns with a sigh, "Very well, but you should know that your training will be very harsh."

"I-I'm ready!" I shout as confidently as I can. I mean, I want to honor the clan, but that doesn't mean that I don't fear my Fate.

And Mom nods. "We won't hold back, then, but I don't believe that you'll grow big and muscular like your father, so I think that training you in my style is better."

Dad also nods and hums, "I agree. She's fast; much faster than Nenvieu, but she's short for her age."

Awn… I don't want to be short.

Then Mom becomes serious again, so I perk up my ears to listen attentively. "Keep in mind that we won't be able to train you to the end. At some point, you'll have to live alone, away from this house."

And my heart suddenly starts to hurt with every beat.

Al, Nen, Ofilia. I'll have to leave all of you?

"I…" I start, but tears start to well up on my face, then I sniffle and force myself to hold them back.

I won't disappoint, I can't disappoint.

I swallow the pain and clench my fist, then I finally let my shout out, "I'll do it!" And I surprise myself with how strong my voice comes out.

Mom simply stares at me, and I feel a pressure coming from her sharp eyes. It's like she's testing my courage and trying to intimidate me so that I give up, but I flex my muscles to stop my legs and arms from trembling while I stubbornly stare back.

I start to feel weird as the staring contest lasts a bit too long, but in truth, it doesn't last very long. It's just that Mom's pressure makes time go slower.

Then she suddenly states, "We'll start tomorrow morning. This should replace the morning lessons with Homvieun for a while." And she also stops the pressure, allowing me to breathe.

Yes!

"Go take a bath; Ofilia should already be there," Dad orders and waves his hand, motioning for me to leave.

So I bow and obey.

I excitedly hurry to the bath to tell Ofilia the news, then I open the panel with a bang, and I catch Ofilia right in the middle of taking off her clothes.

"Lis! Don't leave it open, I'm undressing!" she hisses at me as she covers her chest.

I stop mid-step and turn around, but my sash immediately unfastens, so I just let my dress unfold and fall to the floor.

Stupid clothes.

I close the panel then run back to Ofilia, and I see that she's pouting while folding my dress. She didn't need to do that, but I'm too excited to stop her, so I just start spilling it out, "Hey, Ofilia, listen. I'm going to be like you. Mom said I was chosen to be sent to Rabanara!"

She simply freezes and stares at me, wide-eyed, then I notice that her white, furry ears flicker repeatedly, and she makes a confused face. "I'm sorry, what?" she asks with a faint voice.

I don't get why she's confused, so I just repeat, "I'm going to be like you. Mom is going to train me to represent the Misty Foxes."

She frowns and opens her mouth as if she wants to say something, but then she suddenly turns around.

I thought she'd be happier, or at least a bit proud, so I confu-... confusedly ask, "Uh… What? You don't like it?"

She turns back around, and now her face is neutral, but I don't like it when people do that; Her "neutral" expression is weird. "I, no-… This… do you know what this means?" she asks while mumbling, her trembling voice betraying her face.

I narrow my eyes and say it a third time, "Mom said I'll become a Blood Slave; like you."

Then she gives me a sad smile, just like Mom was doing a minute ago, and hugs me tight, but I like hugs, so I guess this is fine. And so my head gets buried in her long, silky, flowery-smelling white hair.

"You… you'll do fine. I know you will…" she whispers in my ear, sounding like she's about to cry.

"I know!" I happily shout, trying to cheer her up.

She chuckles and releases me then shows a much less sad smile, so I guess my cheering worked a bit. But she doesn't say anything else and leads me into the bath, then we wash each other like we usually do. Her porcelain white skin is always unblemished, which makes me envious of how pretty it is.

Then Mom comes into the bath too, and she's already brushing her orange tail.

"Master," Ofilia greets and gives a short bow.

Mom then sits down on a stool before us and suddenly narrows her eyes thoughtfully as she continues to brush her own tail. "Ofilia, there are some things you can teach Alissa. A few levels in [Washing], [Cleaning], and [Housework] will do her good," she orders and flashes a polite smile.

"Yes, Master," Ofilia accepts and flashes me a smile.

"Oh, can she teach me [Cooking] too?" I ask and raise my hand, then I remember that Mom said I should raise my hand before I ask a question, but nobody scolds me, so it's fine.

"Louise will teach you that," Mother calmly answers.

And I frown. Louise is always grumpy, but I guess that's better than nothing.

Ofilia pours a bucket of warm water on me to rinse the soap, then she turns around and helps wash Mom. Now that I'm free from her claws, I enter the large stone bath and float in the steamy water with my eyes closed.

"Can Ofilia teach me [Illusion Magic]?" I suddenly ask.

"I don't know much, just party tricks," she answers, and I sense that she's smiling just from her tone.

"Exactly!" I shout back and stand up on the water, then stare at both of them with my best "hopeful eyes."

But Mom immediately turns me down, "No, you need combat skills, and Ofilia doesn't know how to use [Illusion Magic] in combat."

"Awn…" I moan as I drop onto the water again.

For the rest of the bath, Mom discusses with Ofilia how Allura and I behaved today. They don't mention the Avaler, so I think I'm in the clear.

Stupid bird. Only a weak, sheltered one would die from a single stone. It didn't even try to dodge!

Then they drag me out of the bath so that we can have dinner, and Dad is already seated, feeding Allura her toddler food. We sit down on the cushions and Ofilia fills my plate with food, but I frown at it as if it was a living globin.

"If you want to grow strong, you have to eat it all," Mom kindly advises me, and I know she's testing my courage again.

I gulp and cut a piece of the liver. It's dark purple, and there's only one monster that I know of with a liver that has this disgusting color: the Stal Wolf, and its taste is disgusting!

"A painless kill makes the prey taste better," I recite what Homvieun always tells me.

Then I put the fork in my mouth.

UGH!

I bring a book to Dad and ask him to read it to me.

"'Radomir, the Ravager'?" he reads the title and raises an eyebrow at me.

What?

"She needs these books now more than ever," Mom states, and I agree, though I don't understand what she meant by that.

But I forget all about that because Radomir's story is too amazing, so amazing that I fall asleep in Dad's lap and dream of the Lionfolk conqueror. He's a great man that takes what he wants, and he took my heart.

Someone slowly squeezes my tail, which wakes me up, but it also feels really good, so I don't really wake up fully. But then they start to squeeze harder and harder until it stings and hurts.

"Ow, ow! I'm awake!" I whine as I wriggle and attempt to escape the villain's claws.

They finally release me, so I sit up and groggily look around. It's Mom who woke me up, and she's using her [Spirit Light] to illuminate the room because the sun isn't even out yet!

Then I notice the lack of a warm body pillow behind me, so I attempt to ask, "Where's dad…?" but my words come out as groans.

"He went to prepare the training grounds," Mom answers, somehow understanding me, but her voice sounds stern and her face looks neutral, which jolts me awake as I understand that no jokes are allowed right now.

"And Allura?" I also ask as I notice that there's a lack of toddler-crying right now.

Her gaze becomes sharper. "With Ofilia. You would wake her up with your screaming."

Yeah…

"Sorry…" I embarrassedly apologize as I look down.

Then she sighs and her eyes soften. "Let's go," she gently orders and extends her hand to me, which I'm happy to take.

We leave our private quarters and then cross the common grounds, and I see many Sworn Hunters getting ready to hunt.

"I didn't know they woke up so early," I comment as we walk.

Mom snorts. "Because you always wake up too late. The Prowlers are less active during dawn," she lectures then greets the Hunters as we pass them by.

We leave the house and walk into the grass garden. Everything is wet with mist, so I have to raise my dress not to dirty it, which makes it harder to not loosen the sash, so I'd be doubly annoyed if the mood wasn't so serious.

Then I smell something foul ahead of us, and it makes me worried.

What did Dad prepare for me?

Soon after, I spot Dad through the mist, and he's holding something small and green that squirms non-stop, trying to slip out of the rope that has tied it up.

Then I kind of recognize it. "A goblin?" I ask as I tilt my head.

"Yes. Your first task," Mom replies, her voice completely stern again.

We stop before Dad, and he lets the green ugly thing fall to the floor. It makes a wheezing sound as it hits the grass, but it immediately starts to get up again.

It seems to be about as tall as I am, and it tries to tackle me the moment it gets up on its two ugly, filthy feet, but Dad sweeps its legs, making it fall back down. I see something disgusting dangle from between its legs, so I guess it's a male. But why didn't Dad give him some pants?

Dad puts his foot on the goblin's back, pinning it against the floor, and the ugly thing starts scowling at me, for some reason. His gag prevents him from talking, and I'm sure he doesn't have anything intelligent to speak, but I know that he has lots of very small, pointy, dangerous teeth ready to take a bite at me.

I don't like this, I don't want to be here.

But then Dad throws a large dagger at my feet. "This is your first task: get this dagger and slice the goblin's throat," he sternly orders, and I know that I'm not allowed to say no.

Even though I swore on my ear, on my werefox pride, my face still betrays me and pales. I've never killed anything (birds don't count) and neither did Nen. I've never even held a dagger before as Dad never let me (knives don't count), so I don't know where to begin.

I look at mom and see that her face is neutral, but I realize that she's measuring me again. This is another test.

"You said you were going to do it, right?" she sternly asks, vinde-... vindicating my suspicion, then she points to the dagger. "Show us what you mean by it. Show us what it means to be a Misty Fox."

I turn to the dagger and extend my hand, then I notice that I'm trembling, but it's not just fear, there's also excitement getting in my way. I need to do this, no matter what. I gave them my word!

So I force myself to grab the dagger. It's heavy. So heavy.

Then I turn to the monster. It starts squirming harder now that I have a weapon in hand, and it even drools with how angry it is, but I won't let him scare me anymore.

I take a step forward, and the goblin growls, so I grit my teeth and take another step, and he growls louder.

It's bound. It's harmless. It won't hurt me. I'm okay. I'm okay.

Then I get real close to him, and the foul stench of poop and pee mixed with Gods-knows-what-else fills my sensitive little nostrils. It's a horrible smell that for some reason reminds me of moldy, old Sworn Hunter socks.

I have to kill it, I have to show Dad and Mom that I can do it. I kind of killed before, right? The Avaler counts, right? Yes. I'm okay. It's fine.

Dad puts more weight on his foot so that the goblin doesn't worm away, then he grabs the goblin's head and holds it still, exposing the monster's neck to me.

"Do it," Mom sternly orders.

"Do it", I order myself

"You can do it," Dad encourages me.

I can do it!

A wave of feral anger suddenly fills my body with energy, and I jump forward as I scream, "RAAH!"

I press the dagger's blade against the goblin's throat, and it cuts through the skin like a hot knife through butter, surprising me with how little resistance I feel. Then the flesh separates, and blood pours out.

The goblin immediately starts to gargle and choke on his own blood as he desperately squirms in a last attempt to escape. But Dad doesn't budge one centimetri, so I take a step back and then just watch as the goblin slowly passes out.

I feel sick.

I look at my own hands and see they're bright red, covered in warm blood, and it even spilled onto my dress and shoes. There's just blood everywhere. So much blood.

"Good job, Alissa," Mother gently praises me, and her voice fills me with happiness.

"You did well," Father also praises me, and his voice fills me with calmness.

Then he casts [Clean] on my hands and takes the dagger away.

"You are now level two," the Goddess of Growth announces in my mind.

And I retch.

A note from Manasong

Leave a rating or a review to help me rise to the top or fix my shameful understanding of prose.

Take a look over my blog where all information of the world of Rupegia will be posted.

Join the Discord and discuss, or rant, or meme, or try and fight me so your waifu gets more screentime.

Become a Patron and read chapters in advance, or read the side-stories, or leave your mark on the story, or help choose the next artwork or the next side-story.

Chapter 32: Titans - Part 1

A note from Manasong

Attention: to conform to the limit of sexual content allowed in a novel, I've censored this chapter. You can look for the uncensored version here.

The symbol "-" denotes a section that got cut for containing sexual content. Also, if paragraphs seem missing, they were also likely censored in an earlier pass where the symbol wasn't used.

Today is the 30th.

- My [Enhanced Semen Recharge] has been upgraded by 1 point (now 0+6).

We have one last breakfast of fruit salad with Chantilly.

I sit near Hana and whisper in her ear.

"Hey, Roxanne," Hana strains her face trying not to smile, "what do you think Chantilly is made of?"

"Uh..." She looks at her large bowl blankly. "Milk?"

"Yeah and what else?"

"Sugar?"

"And...?"

"I dunno," she shrugs.

Hana lets her evil smile surface.

"Fat... loads and loads of fat."

Roxanne and Ciel freeze, one with a spoon entering her mouth, the other mid chewing.

"N-no, no, nooooo..."

Both of them look at their bowls with pain and sorrow.

Lina purses her lips and pushes the bowl away. I look at Alissa, she rolls her eyes and continues eating.

"It's highly unlikely we will eat anything like this again so soon," I say while I grab more of the salad. "Eat all you want just one last time."

Roxanne and Ciel look at each other then nod.

Nothing was left of the breakfast.

"Let's make a picture," I say.

I fill the gnomic magic tool with mana and with a little awkwardness we position the smoky quartz on the table, we prop it over glasses and pots. Behind it we leave a wide canvas and we stand in front of the bed, prepared for the picture.

I sit down on chair with Lina on my lap. Alissa and Ciel sit down on my sides, each holding one of my arms. Roxanne and Hana hug each other with one hand over my chest. Aoi on Hana's shoulders, and Gify on mine.

The mana starts to seep out of the tool and it flashes. Smoke leaves the canvas, a rather faint and somewhat blurry image is burned into it. Looks like an old school picture without the sepia filter.

"Amazing..." Alissa mutters.

"Gih."

"Beautiful indeed," Ciel says.

"Hohoh, I always knew my glasses make me look sexier," Roxanne says.

"You might be sexy, but damn, I'm hot," Hana says.

"That's the smile that conquered my heart," I say.

"Awn..."

"My eyes are so..." Lina looks incredulously at herself.

"Cute," I say.

"Cute," Ciel repeats.

"Hmm..." Lina purses her lips.

We take one last walk on the market. Now with the Christmas wreaths the girls can more actively participate. Lina and Hana spend a long time together bartering with the animals. It was mostly Hana talking, with Lina coaching and helping out.

It's wonderful that the animals and magic beings here have a different view on sexuality, the girls can all use pretty dresses without attracting attention. They could all walk naked without anyone batting an eye.

Roxanne is sporting a rather risque black dress with her back exposed and only a loose and thin piece of cloth covering her nipples. It would certainly turn heads if we were among humanoids. Hana is using something similar. Her vibrant hair and the large breasts straining the dress would attract even more eyes.

I walk with Roxanne on one arm and Alissa on another. Roxanne seems distracted with the corners of her mouth on a smile.

"Something on your mind?" I ask her.

She snaps back to reality and readjusts her glasses.

"Well I'm just feeling sad we are leaving this place," she says.

"I know, right. I would love to live here," Alissa says, she turns her head around and looks at the market with a warm smile.

"It's just so different, so lively. The Holy Academy was so quiet and strict, it was suffocating. And then when I decided to travel I was always tense. I think that when I met that man who tried to... do things, I got a little paranoid but still. Traveling with you feels so relaxing."

"I have to agree," Ciel says from behind us, "though we shouldn't grow complacent, there's still much danger out there."

"Don't have to remember me, I will never forget invisible assassins," Roxanne says while nodding repeatedly. "But... even though we get into so much danger I just. I just don't want to leave, ever."

I see the corner of her eyes water.

"Getting sentimental on me now, eh?" I tease.

"Shush! Don't ruin this!" She glares at me.

I chuckle and kiss her soft hand, this appeases her a little.

"We already said our vows so I'm not saying something new but I'm glad you are here. I trust all of you deeply," I say.

Ciel gives me a kiss on the neck and Alissa a kiss on the cheek. I tap my cheek repeatedly until Roxanne takes the hint and gives me a kiss too.

"This place actually reminds me of home," Roxanne continues, "the first home, before the Academy."

"What's the name?" I ask. "We can certainly visit it sometime."

"Mashoor. My parents don't live there so..."

"You are going to have to meet your parents one day."

She frowns and looks away. I pull on her hand and she looks at me.

"Look. I can't go back to my parents, I won't let you run away from yours."

"I'm, I'm sorry, Wolfy," she lowers her eyes, the sadness on her face breaks my heart."

I release her arm and grab her pale cheek.

"We will do it together. You won't be alone with them we will be all there."

She purses her lips and strains a smile. "Thank you..."

"Love you."

Now she smiles.

"Love you too."

She recovers and we continue our stroll.

One last lunch in the dryad all-you-can-eat restaurant and we are ready to leave.

Arlo takes us to a residential floor. Deep within we enter a room.

"Oh, huma-... humanoids!" Exclaims a woman.

An average brown-haired woman. She's wearing grey robes with an embroidery of the Anara heraldry on the shoulder.

"Oh hello. Didn't expect other humanoids here," Alissa says.

"Me too," she nods with a smile, "it's very rare. Actually not so much, there's one or two of those weird druids around who appear once in a while."

"They are only weird to your human standards," Arlo says in tired tone.

"Which is why they are weird. They are different from normal humans."

Arlo does a noisy shrug and turns to us.

"We will be sending a word to the Lord of Rabanara that you are an acquaintance of our Lord. Is that alright with you?" He asks.

"I have a close relationship to Vanea," I say, "she even knows of my Gifts."

"Much better this way, then," he noisily nods.

He turns to the woman and hands her a sealed letter.

"To the Lord, please."

The woman grabs the letter and puts it on the ground in front of her. The black circle of [Gate] appears and disappears, taking with it the letter.

"So where to?" The woman asks.

"Can you take us just outside Rabanara?" I ask.

"Sure. Simply walk north and you will reach there in a minute or two."

"Thanks."

I summon Holly to the surprise of the woman and send her first to check the area. Once I deem it clear we all go through the [Gate].

Now we are back at the humid and oppressive Sea of Trees. The moss and mud is still humid from the rain of the last few days.

Hana sighs with sadness.

"That place was so nice. Reminds me of the streets of Betzenstein, the wereapes there were noisy but I miss it. The Tree made me feel nostalgic," she smiles faintly.

"Is that in Sommerland?" Ciel asks.

"Yep," her mouth smiles but I see a hint of pain on her eyes.

Sommerland must be where her family is locked up. When I become a noble I will see what I can do to free them. I could convince them to become my Blood Slaves like how Hana is.

We easily reach town and enter through the east gate.

There's a considerable number of UFO's flying around the sky of the town. Not the same number compared to the university but it's noticeable. I wonder if some air control legislation is going to be implemented to prevent accidents.

Alissa and I go to the hunter's guild while the other girls go back home. I gave them my 2 small clay golems to help clean the house.

Another fight is breaking out as we enter the guild. The booze from lunch must be still running on their blood. Not that there's really a specific time that these people start to drink.

Taking a look at the request boards I see a few asking to escort children into the Sea of Trees for leveling up. Getting a few levels and some skills could be wonderful for their job prospects, parents must be saving money so they could pay for a request like this.

"I want to talk with Carmen, can you go to Gordon without me?" Alissa asks.

"Sure, no problem. Report to her the Hooknose nest we found."

I enter the waiting area of the disassembling room and after half an hour Gordon calls me.

"Oh, storm elementals, how rare," he says.

He closes his eye as he feels the mana in the broken stones.

"We went a little deep in the Sea," I say, "we were just exploring when we found them, couldn't resist and fought."

"They should be tough nuts to crack."

"And they were. But we were tougher."

Gordon chuckles and passes a large hand over his shining bald head, then he calls Sonny. No job for him since there's no guts to butcher. The albino Incubus weighs the stones and runs some calculations.

"You should go to the Gambler's Den, Mr. Ryder," Sonny says, "put your luck into some money before it runs out."

"Got other plans for that," I say with a smirk, "I'm gonna need all the luck I can get."

"Remember to not die," Gordon says.

"That's my first rule."

"Heh, and the second?"

"'Let's never get into a situation where someone needs to die.'"

"Hah, good man."

I take my 4 gold coins and leave. I won't show the Gatuns since there's no reasonable explanations why they would be at the Sea.

Outside Alissa is talking with Carmen. For a split second the brunette madam gives me a gaze that makes me feel like prey. Even with the [Mental Resistance] necklace and after living with Hana for so long Carmen's gaze still makes me feel like piece of meat.

Alissa hands me a bundle of coins.

"Reward for the information we gave," she tells me.

"Soon you will have a little more, I'm sure," Carmen says with warm smile.

"You want to stay a little longer?" I ask.

"No, it's okay, let's go home."

"Goodbye Alissa, Mr. Ryder."

"Goodbye Madame Carmen."

Back at home, Roxanne calls me to practice [Heart of Fire] on the bath. She's developing her own chant for it.

I spend my time trying to move but even with my body retaining shape moving it requires mental effort, it's very tiring.

- Her body is warm so I scootch over to her and rest her head on my chest -. I trace my hand through her black hair and smell the calming lavender.

Alissa is lightly practicing her [Illusion Magic] besides us, every once in a while we see her body flicker and turn into two for a second, [Double Image]. We both stare at her, she looks like a snack all concentrated and stuff.

Aoi is casually staring at us, amused at our efforts of trying to turn into fire. Lina is right outside maintaining our weapons. Hana and Ciel are outside sparring, Gify is with them, teasing the one who's losing.

"Wolfy, what's the level 40 spell of [Summoning Magic]?" Roxanne asks.

"Uh... It's a spell called [Bind]."

Alissa's eyes shoot open.

"What does it do?" She asks with anticipation dripping from her voice.

"No idea, which is why I'm not touching it yet."

"Hmm..." Alissa pouts to me.

A sigh escapes my lips.

"Look, there's way too much that could go wrong with a spell like that," I say with a stern tone. "What if you are pregnant and then I summon you and the baby stays in place?"

Both girls look at me with surprise.

"That sounds horrifying," Roxanne says, her pale face slightly paler.

"And that's not the only thing that could go wrong," I continue, I let my tone turn even more stern. "What if she becomes like an elemental and loses her personality? What if it requires lots of mana to keep her summoned? What if something on her changes permanently due to the binding? I love you too much Alissa to risk you for something like this."

She frowns and lowers her eyes.

"I'm sorry Wolfy, I was being stupid," she says.

"It's okay, I just... Won't risk you."

"What if you tried with something else? Like a monster or an animal?" Roxanne asks.

"Kweh!" Aoi lifts her head in excitement.

"Come over here," I tell Aoi.

She scampers over to my side and I flick her forehead.

OW!

"Ow," she closes her eyes in pain.

I think I hurt myself more than I hurt her.

"Don't look down on yourself just because you were born as a monster. I won't risk you either," I scowl at her.

"Kweh..." She lowers her head in apology.

I sigh again. These women are too reckless.

Roxanne smirks and chuckles.

"Be a little happy that they wish to be bound to you so much," she says.

I scoff and smile faintly.

"Aside from Alissa's fetish with domination I don't need unconditional loyalty. I want companions that trust me."

"It's easier to just run from responsibility and simply give eternal loyalty," Roxanne says, she looks down and smiles with a hint of sadness. "I know because that's what I do."

"You have so much 'Intelligence' and 'Wisdom' and you act so air-headed most of the time," I flick her forehead.

"Ow... heheh," she shows her tongue to me. "What can I say, I'm lazy and you are reliable. Point me to things and I make them go 'BOOM!' That's what I do."

"And potions," Alissa adds.

"And potions."

"Wolfy," Lina says from the door way, "what if you find a stray animal that's dying?"

"What if the animal dying causes feedback?" I say.

"Feedback?"

"Uh... Something like our souls become connected and when it dies it hurts my soul."

"Oh. That's true. Then just a small normal animal should do."

"A bird," Alissa says, "it won't get in the way and can move more freely than something like a cat or dog."

I wanted a dog, though.

After a little handsy we go back to our training. I admit that training naked is slightly distracting but the benefits in morale outweighs the problems in concentration.

Hana barges in on the bath, she seems rather annoyed while Ciel comes behind her with a very smug smile.

"Wolfy, - I need you, now."

I turn back into human and lay down on the floor -.

"What's up... with you?" I ask.

"Eheheh," Ciel smiles innocently, "she lost to me and now she became quite the Symbol of Envy."

"Stupid [Glaive Use]... It's not a spear...! You shouldn't be able... To use a spear so... Effectively!"

"Not my fault [Imperial Hasterrum Style] also cover a lot of spearmanship."

Hana mutters a blasphemy towards the skill system only I and Alissa could hear.

"Be thankful I don't like betting," Ciel says.

Hana grunts.

"What did she try to bet?" Roxanne asks.

"Wolfy's cum," Hana answers flatly.

Ciel frowns and turns red.

"No. We bet his time," she says.

"Same thing," Hana shrugs.

"For you, you sex-crazed slut," Ciel shows Hana her tongue.

"That's a compliment," and she smiles ferociously to me, I nearly freeze as her man-eating gaze turns up to eleven.

"You are... My slut..." -.

-

Ciel's good mood seems to vanish when I give my attention to Alissa during the bath. She fidgets and pulls Lina tight on a hug.

For dinner we have pasta with bean sauce, I made this sauce trying to imitate tomato sauce but it only faintly resembles it. I'm craving for some spaghetti al pomodoro, though.

I miss tomatos, I miss pizza, I miss margheritta, I miss the red sweet and savory goodness, the heavenly brother of pasta, the secret ingredient of sauces, the sweet paradise of ketchup, the orgasmic barbecue. Alas, it is not to be.

At night, Alissa cuddles with me while she reads Toroo's book on [Illusion Magic], it's an introductory tome. This magic school is incomplete so the spells on it aren't really the safest or the most efficient yet. Spells like [Ghost Lights] and [Double Image] are simplified enough that they activate every time someone looks into your eyes. In a battlefield this could result in your mana dropping like a rock and you being hit with overuse.

I spend my time leisurely looking at the souls of the little two golems. I want to focus on them now, they could be excellent servants if I improve them.

I sleep safe and sound. The Tree of Mana is a great place but home is home and my home is this house.

I don't think I have enough mana for a [Gate] between High Forest and here, we will have to leave. It will be heartbreaking to leave this place.

A note from Manasong

Leave a rating or a review to help me rise to the top or fix my shameful understanding of prose.

Take a look over my blog where all information of the world of Rupegia will be posted.

Join the Discord and discuss, or rant, or meme, or try and fight me so your waifu gets more screentime.

Become a Patron and read chapters in advance, or read the side-stories, or leave your mark on the story, or help choose the next artwork or the next side-story.

Chapter 32: Titans - Part 2

Today is the first day of the cycle, Genn, the day of Light; also 1st day of the 9th month, the month of Combat.

I play with Hana's mane as she lays her head on my belly. I breathe in deeply and stretch.

"Darean is fucked and now we can relax," I say.

"Just one month of relaxation though," Hana says.

"You looking forward to leaving this place?"

"Not really, there's enough ways to gain a living here and nothing is really lacking for me," she turns her head to me and smiles wryly, her emerald scales on her cheek tickle my belly. "Though I'm worried about growing too soft, you pamper me too much."

"He pampers us too much," Alissa says.

"You all pamper me too much," I say.

"What was that thing you said once, tushy?" Hana asks.

"Uh... 'touché'?" I question.

"Yes, that, touché," she licks my abs and gets up.

My [Fire Magic] increased by 1 (now 0+3).

Alissa increased her "Charisma" by 1 (now 11) and her [Illusion Magic] by 1 (now 4). Her practice of [Double Image] is already giving results. That spell makes the target see a double of her that she can control at will.

This month the Coliseum is holding multiple spectacles. A few places on the town are reserved for public duels where hunters and guards participate en masse because there's a few talent scouts out there looking for the better warriors.

A considerable number of knighthood candidates start by showing themselves on these duels and then at the 1st of next month a martial arts tournament will happen. It's there that the nobility will compete for the best candidates.

I spend my morning researching improvements for the golems.

The soul "expands" and covers the entire of the body, knowing this I try to find on the soul where the heart is because that's where we normally gather mana for spells. What I did notice is that I can't really correlate pieces of soul to anywhere on the body, it's like I'm seeing a "window" into some different space. With this my search for the "mana organ" becomes a matter of scouring through every inch of the soul.

I recruit Alissa and Hana for this effort, I look into their soul inch by inch while they cast spells and then meditate. Finally I noticed a specific place where it seems like the complexity of the area reduces as they cast spells and then increases slowly again as they meditate. I assume this is the "mana organ".

Now on the golems, on the exact same place of where the mana organ should be there's a similar "construct". It slowly reduces in complexity until we fill it with mana, then it goes back to maximum complexity. With this I'm certain I found the "mana battery" and that my assumption of the mana organ was correct.

I spend my time observing the surroundings of the battery and organ. Hopefully the organ is what's responsible for collecting mana from the environment like we do. Then I use [Mold] on their souls and modify it to be similar to a mana organ.

Curiously I can't fill a mana organ with mana like I can a mana battery. At least there's a level 35 spell for [Nature Magic] called [Mana Transfusion] that allows me to do it. I'm rather interested in the mana battery, maybe I could teach something to Lina that could help her enchantments.

The "feeling" of feeding a mana battery is nearly the same as an enchantment or magic tool. When you grab a magic tool it is like you are standing in a slope, you "feel" like moving downwards and when you "let go" the mana is sucked. A mana battery feels a lot stronger the more "empty" it is, when nearing empty it's the difference between standing near a hole and standing near a valley.

"Ohohoh! Now you are self-suficient," I pat both little golems.

Both of them kneel and lower their head towards me.

"Oh, look, they are learning. Ciel taught them that," Hana says.

I must admit it's adorable to see a teddy bear and a cloth doll trying to look dignified.

"Raise, both of you," I say.

They stand tall (heh) and straight, waiting for the next order.

"Can you teach them spells now?" Alissa asks.

"I have to look where in the soul are skills stored."

"Everywhere?" Hana questions with a shrug, "I always thought it was like a box that increased in size with every Level we gain."

"Yes but the soul itself doesn't increase," I say. "How do you fit more things using a box that has the same space?"

"Tighter!"

"Or just better organized," Alissa says.

"Not sure how the second one would work and why would we need soul fragments for it," I say. "I believe it's something more like how warped-distances spaces work."

"You can use [Warp Space] now right?"

"Yeah, hopefully it will give me some insight. Well this will have to be left for later, let's go make our lunch."

This time we make some good milk roux for our lasagne, I have buckets of cow milk so they will last us a good while. We roast some Dragolite on garglic and oh Gods, it almost feels like home, almost.

"Logan has started his initiation at the temple," Ciel says. "He can quickly rise as a battle priest, maybe one day he can be a Templar."

"He certainly had the body for one," Hana says.

"Don't they learn magic too? Would he have the talent for that?" I ask.

"There's different types of Templars, because they have to learn martial arts they don't have time to learn all spells," Ciel says. "Not even the healers learn all spells from [Light Magic]."

"Considering my cheats you might become the first one to learn all spells then," I say with a cheeky grin.

"That wouldn't count because of cheating," Ciel rolls her eyes.

"Yet you wanted to learn [Holy Spirit] from me," I say.

"Different, uh... that's a different case," she crosses her arms looks away.

After lunch it's return classes for [Space Magic]. The professor is skipping [Gate] and focusing on teaching us the level 40 spell [Warp Space]. Lucky me.

The skill has some uses for combat but mostly it is used for creating Bags of Holding, House Carriages, House Tents, or the Hyper Loop found on the Capital. What makes these items special is that they are much bigger on the inside, allowing for easier mass transport. They are so expensive you don't even find them for sale in Rabanara, they are almost exclusive to nobility or rich merchants.

Bag of Holding doesn't look very useful when you have [Item Box] but they can be used to transport items for quick reach. Like say storing a longsword on a bag tied to your arm for emergencies, or storing battle-potions where they won't be so easily destroyed in case you are hit. You can also apply some [Telekinesis] enchantment to it so they weigh less than normal.

We learned that [Gate] does not create a "wormhole", it merely switches the position of an object. It's quite literally someone editing the "coordinate" property of an object like in a game editor.

[Eternal Gate], the level 50 spell after [Warp Space] is the one that creates a permanent wormhole. A wormhole being bending space so much we can poke a hole and transport things from one place to another instantly. This is the spell that created those portals with a white veil inside the dragonoid maze of the Wisps of the Proud.

"So father is quite interesting in meeting you, Wolf," Lyle says.

Noo…

"Why is that?" I ask, containing the frown that yearns for release.

"Well you did save us from a large group of kidnappers, he only wants to show his gratitude," then he cringes and looks away. "I was kind of... vague with how the fight went so he got even more curious about you."

Oh I see, at least he didn't tell him of my Gifts.

"How did you describe it for him?"

"Yeah I can see how he would be interested," I massage my temple. "It's no problem, I will talk to him when the time comes."

Note to self, Lyle is terrible at telling stories, either that or he's very scared of his father.

"He wants to meet at the next class break. Are you going out for hunting?" Lyle says.

"I think nobody wants to leave next break so we should be free."

"The 11th then?"

"Sure."

"Thank you," he smiles apologetically.

"So, what did you guys do this break?" I ask.

"I spent most of my time practicing my magic, father says I can participate at the next battle," Lyle says, his savage gaze turns warm for a moment.

Garanae sighs and Hatara smiles wryly. "I have been trying to focus on [Fire Magic] but I don't have enough "Magic Power", I'll have to stand guard near the backup," he says.

"At least he will be right outside my position," Hatara says.

"Yeah but…"

"We get it," Lyle says.

"Oh, so your [Heal] is already powerful enough for you to act as support," Alissa says.

"Nooot really," She curls her ponytail on her hand in discomfort, "Just enough that I'll accompany a temple healer."

"Experience in battle is very important, do your best in there," Lina says.

Hatara blushes but nods in agreement to her words.

"You would know," Alissa says.

Lina smiles adorably.

"What about you? What did you all do this break?" Lyle asks.

"Deep exploration on the Sea of Trees," Alissa says, the trio perk up their ears to her words. "Met a nest of Hooknoses, avoided a bunch of monsters, ran away from poisonous spores, and finally met a Storm elemental."

"Oooh... how was it?"

"Like cracking a nut," I say.

Alissa recites our battle, omitting the instant-casting.

Ciel's turn for attention. She immediately initiates things during bath and makes sure my tongue is occupied, either with hers or some other part of her body.

The grabbing doesn't stop as she makes full use of the time reserved for her. Her tentacles keep me glued to her while we practice Andraste after dinner. Lina pouts and plops herself on my lap.

I casually [Massage] both of them until Lina decides to strip and mount me. Ciel gets irritated but waits until I'm done with her to have her turn.

Today is the 2nd. Yn, the day of Earth.

Ciel looks adorable as she sits down, naked, and yawns while while hugging Ted. Lina slept while hugging Suzy but she's currently away so she wouldn't be dirtied by a stray droplet.

My [Sense Soul] increased by 1 (now 4). I can now see the MP and "Magic Power" of other people.

"I will sell half the emellanat and most of the gnomic magic tools," Lina says.

"You can do it? Bartering, I mean," I say.

"Hana can do it for me."

"Keep her safe, then," I tell Hana.

She grins and pats Lina's head.

"Take, me!" Aoi says. She reduces in size and then glides from the second floor, landing on Lina's head.

The gloomy girl giggles as Aoi's little claws tickle her head.

I meet with Kyros and this time I put 2 points into [Godly Language].

"You improved a little," He says.

I want to put all points on it but the least Vanea knows about my Gift the better.

"Yeah...," I mutter. The extra point reduced the nausea but not completely.

Breathe in, breathe out. Breakfast, you stay down.

Hey it rhymed.

I will focus on not puking first, this way I can at least use the skill to buff us. Then I need to be able to dual cast so I can create the shield vortex to be able to use the skill offensively. I tried once but the skill doesn't give me enough muscle memory so I can dual cast, I will have to learn this the proper way.

"You mentioned that there's a way to train my "Mana Points" using these vortexes."

"I guess you have enough talent to try it out" Kyros caresses his goatee. "Well then, if I remember correctly you created [Sense Soul], correct?"

"Yes."

"Then you should know how a soul looks like."

"Chaos, complex chaos."

"Exactly," he smiles, "it's not a space we can compare to our reality but the inside of a soul still has space, it still has 'locations'."

"Yes. I can see 'structures' inside the soul, with some effort I could eventually understand what all these structures are for."

"Hm, 'structure' is a better way to describe it, yes. Continuing, one of these structures is where mana is stored. You remember what happens when too much mana occupies the same spot?"

"A mana storm happens."

"Exactly. Some people call MP 'Mana Particles' instead of 'Mana Points', it makes a little more sense since you can't divide a mana particle in two. Mana also has no mass and no size but we can still 'feel' where it is. Mana has basically one attribute, 'location', or 'coordinates' if you are one of those space mages," he smiles wryly.

Not even in fantasy can scholars avoid schisms due to meaningless semantics.

"So even inside the soul mana still has its property active, which means that our mana organ can't put all mana on the same spot, each particle has to be separated. The interesting thing about the mana organ is that it's not like a box for mana, it doesn't increase in size but rather, it increases in complexity."

"Ooh yes, I saw that with my skill."

His smile grows wider and I see the fire of excitement in his eyes.

"Perfect! I knew it was true!" He leans back and looks embarrassed for a moment before going back to his usual stoicism. "Anyway, mana has no size so why should the mana organ increase in size when it can keep subdividing infinitely? Oh, do you know what subdividing means?"

"Yes, increasing the number of rooms by breaking the rooms down in equal parts."

"Good. So you see, the mana organ has to subdivide itself to increase its capacity but it can't do that while it's filled with mana. I believe the subdivision could negatively affect mana, nobody can prove it but it's the most accepted theory."

With [Golemancy] maybe I could. It would be an extremely precise test but I could.

"And now finally, to increase your mana you have to maintain the mana vortex outside of your body without losing a single mana particle. The mana is bound to your soul until it is spent on the gathering phase, this means that the mana particle 'slots' aren't filled again due to recovery, allowing the mana organ to subdivide.

"Though the organ does not subdivide infinitely, it needs some 'stimulation'. So the cycle you need to perform is to keep all your mana outside on the vortex for about a minute, flood the mana back to your body, and then create the vortex again. This is the best way to improve your MP."

I see, so this is why training by using all my mana eventually stops being effective to increase MP. The high amount of mana I have to use always causes some overuse side-effects, making it difficult to "dry up" my mana organ.

"What about 'Magic Power'?"

"You keep all your mana out with the vortex except for a single particle, then you try to cast a spell with it. You have to force your spells to do more with less."

"So it's dual casting?"

"Yes, unfortunately. This is the most controlled and safe way to do it so learning dual casting is a small price to pay."

"What about blackout? Wouldn't my mana go to the negatives to create the spell?"

"Not while you maintain the vortex, if you try to spend all your mana and cast a spell then it uses your vitality and your mana goes to the negatives. The vortex being out of your soul but still bound to your mana organ prevents the spell from using your vitality."

This sounds so much like... a glitch in the system. What an odd interaction, it reminds me so much of abusing game logic. Then again, this cycle is called "Playground" and the realm "RPG" so it's not unexpected. I'm just getting so used to this reality that I forget its game-like elements.

I will leave the mana training for later, I will focus on [Godly Language] for now.

Lina comes back with a pale face. With a poof she pulls out a sack of coins and opens up for us. Dozens of rose coins spill out the sack.

We are rich, so goddamn filthy rich.

Aoi nabs one and scurries away.

"Ask before you take it!" I yell to her.

"Kay!" Her response is muffled by the distance.

"You did it. Good job, both of you," Ciel smiles at them.

Lina twiddles her thumbs and her ears redden. She nearly topples as Hana gives her a strong tap on the back.

"We actually make a good duo," Hana says. "A few signals to put pressure at the right moments and they all fold to my 'Charisma'."

"Her 'Perception' doing work," Roxanne says.

I give a kiss on the forehead of each.

"Good job," I say.

Upstairs Aoi plays with her coins like a baby plays with toys.

Nature class is about [Life Transfusion] and [Mana Transfusion]. Coupled with [Regeneration] these were the common healing spells before [Light Magic] was created. They also were the precursors to [Martyrism].

And of course, the transfusion spells can have some "interesting" side-effects between lovers. I'm not surprised anymore when [Nature Magic] turns everything sexual.

Well I guess it makes sense, the jungle is basically a bunch of animals screaming "HAVE SEX WITH ME!"

I wince waiting for Lina to strike but it never comes. I open my eyes and see her wooden axe blade touching my neck.

"Oh..." I let a sound escape.

She learned very well how to smile with her eyes.

"You are acting much more, uh, calmer today," I say.

"I guess..." She answers in a whisper.

"Anything happen?"

"Well no, but…"

"Giiiih...?" From the top of Roxanne's head Gify prods her.

"After I talked to Gecynd I have been thinking. Thinking about what I want, what I wanted."

"And what did you want?"

"Power and revenge," she smiles faintly, her black bangs covering her eyes. "Now that I have both I have been thinking about the future."

"You may be a slave but that's basically just on paper, I want you to be happy," I grab her cheeks and pull her head up. I stare into her deep black eyes.

She smiles adorably.

"I know. This is why I have been thinking, there's also your destiny as a hero to take into consideration."

I chuckle and kiss her lips.

"Fighting for you is not so bad but I want to do more," she continues.

"You are also enchanting our equipment little by little."

"Yes but I want to do more."

One Alissa opens her eyes and smiles.

"We all do," one Alissa talks while the other keeps meditating.

"And me too, I want to do more for all of you," I say.

The meditating Alissa flickers and disappears, the real Alissa clicks her tongue in frustration.

Hana bashes Ciel to push her away and lowers her wooden sword.

"I know my limits but I'm always thinking in how to exceed them," Hana says.

"Were you even paying attention to our spar?" Ciel asks.

"Hah! [Battlefield Perception], you have the same level as mine and you don't use it like this?"

"Oh..." Ciel purses her lips and starts thinking deeply.

I hug Lina closer and push my tongue inside her mouth. After a little teasing I push her away and grab my weapons.

"Pull up your guard!"

She smiles and her vigor comes back. She gives me a few bruises but I make her scream during the bath.

Tonight I summon a [Holy Spirit] for Ciel. A light blue [Spirit Light] surrounded by fire materializes in front of me. Then forms from light two long transparent crystals that act as feet and a small oval metal mask with two holes that acts as a face.

"Oh Gods, it looks so cute, I want to hug it so much!" Ciel gushes at the spirit.

"You want to hug fire?" Roxanne lifts an eyebrow.

"It uh, it's not real fire. It just look as cute as the drawings so I just want to hug cute things. They have no real form and I heard they feel good to hug," she awkwardly makes excuses.

"Kweh! Bad, fi-re!" Aoi huffs smoke at the spirit which answers by tilting it's mask.

"Awn," Ciel gushes harder. "Wait, are you controlling him Wolfy?"

"No, I can feel it wants to look cute though."

This spirit feels weird. I share my senses with the spirit the same way as normal summons do but I can control it directly if I want.

Spirits are more commonly used as simpler spell casters, they use the lower-level spells mostly for defense and occasionally for offense. This way the mage can focus on casting the higher level spells without being completely vulnerable.

"Wait, it feels like I'm doing two things at once, could this be the secret to dual-casting?" I ask.

"I dunno," Roxanne shrugs, "I learned it by my own so I skipped the dual-casting classes."

The problem with talent, Roxanne is a terrible teacher for dual-casting.

She goes back to meditating alongside Hana, Alissa, and Lina, they are all trying the MP enhancement technique that Kyros taught me.

Practicing magic naked with Ciel is harder than the others, I almost fell asleep on her softness. Seeing my vulnerability she decided to attack me by filling me with kisses, the battle against sleepiness was long and hard-fought.

A note from Manasong

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Chapter 32: Titans - Part 3

A note from Manasong

Didn't want to keep the chapters split in the middle so here's last part of chapter 32.

Today is the 3rd. Ne, day of Water.

After Alissa's meal Roxanne uses her to get off. A mass of red and light brown covers my eyes and I immediately feel it rising again. Hana sits down on me and we slowly have our fun paying sole attention to the two girls to our side.

After Roxanne is done with Alissa, she is used to clean Hana and I have to use Roxanne as I watch.

"Guuys, I'm hungry!" Ciel appears on the doorway.

"Kweh!"

"Gih!"

Lina stands still looking disappointed but soon after her stomach growls and she joins the famished faction.

This morning is spent again naked with Ciel while we practice [Holy Spirit]. Roxanne only needs an occasional demonstration of [Heart of Fire] so I can split my focus between the two.

We hang our painting/picture at the wall on top of the fireplace. It gives a refreshing vibe to the room, it makes it really feel like "home". I was never one to care about pictures, but the lack of a mirror or a camera made me value the little things, you only notice how you miss something when you can't have it anymore.

"Behold! Lightning!" Lyle strikes his sword on the dummy and electricity runs through its straw body. Smoke rises and it catches fire, the professor [Rush]'es to the dummy and [Conjures Water] on top of it.

"I told you to use very little mana," he growls at Lyle, his red leather mask only makes him look more threatening.

All I need is a chair and some tea and I will be quite comfy watching this comedy routine unfold.

This actually shows how talented Lyle really is, he learned the level 30 spell [Charge] while having only 15 points in [Electric Magic].

Class ends and right outside of the university a beautiful carriage is waiting for us. On the outside it's a small carriage, on the inside it's a large room capable of transporting 20 people. Roxanne, Hana, and Ciel are already inside eating some snacks.

The windows are thick and do not open. The carriage needs a strong base to endure such strong enchantment.

The dresses are back, everyone switched to formal clothing and a magic-tool powered [Clean] is enough to make the faces look fresh.

Nononya looks adorable with her simple puffy and frilly white dress. Silvane is enchanting as her loose sleeveless silver silk dress shows the contour of her small breasts, if I look closely I can even see the form of the nipple. Hatara is more modest with a sleeveless black dress and a green shawl, her loose hair gives her a more mature look.

Alissa is using a puffy and thin yellow top with a long summer skirt, her toned midriff is showing. Roxanne is on her gothic-lolita-looking black dress with a huge cleavage and also knee high socks. Hana is on a sleeveless tube red dress that shows the contour of her entire body; her nipples are already hard, I will choose her for tonight. Ciel has her flowery dress, thought it's much shorter this time, showing a few centimeters of her thick thighs. Lina has a simple black dress that reaches her knees and a small white tie, she also uses a red bow tie headband.

The male side is rather boring. We are all using velvet pants, a thick doublet and a cloak. Even in fantasy we cannot escape the lack of fashion for men. I'm actually envious, all I want is to look fabulous.

Garanae has trouble finding where to look, he does not even want to stare at his own woman due to respect. Hana deliberately stretches, making her nipples poke through the dress fabric. Lyle turns red and keeps his head down while Garanae's eyes gloss over and lose focus.

Ciel pinches Hana's arm and she stops her teasing but gives both young boys a hungry smile that give them shivers.

"So I heard every race has its specialty, how are the spectacles on other Coliseums?" I ask.

"Spirit battle royal or team spirit battles," Roxanne says.

"Jousting with all sorts of mounts," Silvane says.

Hana snorts.

"We do horseless jousting with only our wings."

"Ei, Ronti jousting is really fun to watch," Lyle pouts.

"Yeah but it's always the same thing, wing jousting has much more breadth of movement."

"I know, right," Nononya leans forward and grins. "We do [Fly] battles and they are so awesome, I miss them so much."

"Now that's something interesting," Roxanne says, "[Wind Spirit] battles are quite hard to see."

"Hmph! It's not about the spectacle, Ronti jousting is about precision," Lyle says with pride.

"And elven jousting is about animal training and control," Silvane says.

"I am sorry, Grand ones but I believe it is boring," Hana says, straining herself not to swear.

Lyle sighs and chuckles, "Just call me by my first name, no 'Mr.'"

"Same, no 'Miss'," Silvane says.

"Anyway, we also do greatsword duels," Hana continues, "without armor they are quite entertaining."

"And bloody," Roxanne adds.

Hana shrugs.

"When you have healers at your side it's very rare for someone to die, no need to go easy."

"Weren't you born at Sommerland? What do they do there?" I ask.

"Eh, the ape wereanimals like [Alchemicism] too much, it makes the battles quite confusing."

Roxanne snorts, "What's the use of alchemy if you can't reproduce the same result twice," she wrinkles her nose.

"Uh, what? You have to explain that one to me," I say.

"A part of [Alchemicism] is trying to extract the abstract concepts of things. The problem is it rarely works the same way twice, you are basically asking the God of Luck to give you the spell you want!" Roxanne throws her hands in the air. "It's fine if you want to use it to extract the more complex things out of materials but the wereapes go a step too far."

Another rift between scholars, how amusing.

"Aanyway... what about the Misty Fox clan?" I ask.

"We don't duel much, just some archery contests. The more popular contest is hunting the most dangerous monster you can, alone," Alissa says.

"What about the dwarves?" Lyle asks to Lina.

"I never saw but I heard they like to duel with full plate and clubs until one passes out, then there's the men-of-the-line team combat. I'm not sure how true it is but there's drunk duels where you are not allowed to use [Spirit of Gaia]."

"Now that's something interesting," Hana smirks.

We reach our destination and get out of the wagon.

The Colosseum is a large circular building made of blue-gray bricks. It has a tall ceiling between each of the 3 floors with huge windows where statues of overly muscular men, women, and large monsters peek out from. Floating on top of it is a mini-sun called [Spirit Light].

We are on the "noble" side so other carriages and the usual carnival of fashion flock in direction of the entrance.

Our group simply strolls through the line and we pass by the guard with merely a nod from Silvane. We pass through wide halls full of murals of glorious battles that elicit a nod of approval from Lina. Stalls of assorted goodies can be seen, sweets, snacks, meats on sticks, keepsakes, plushies, and even fake gladiator armor for children.

After a stair we reach our room, it's a covered balcony protruding forward towards the middle of the ring. A feast of fruits, sweets, meats, and other savory snacks are in front of us on a table. Beyond that Haaran awaits on a very comfy looking sofa, his feet up on an ottoman footstool.

"Hey Silf," he waves towards us, his piercing gaze nowhere to be found.

She smiles at him and plops on the sofa at his side, Nononya then plops besides her. After some quick introductions my group picks a wide sofa while Lyle's picks a smaller one at the middle.

"Vanea is not coming?" Silvane asks.

"No, she's with mother and Lai," Haaran answers.

Conversation is thrown away as they discuss the best gladiator and who's going to win this time. There's also some mentions about the summoning battle but not much information about it was revealed to keep the mystery.

The golems are pulled out by Ciel, now that they are self-sufficient they are kept outside most of the time.

"How adorable!" Nononya grabs Ted and hugs him tight, the little golem already learned that resistance is futile and his destiny is to be smothered by women.

Once she gets her share of hugging she puts the golem down and Roxanne tells them to dance, causing Nono and Hatara to cough blood.

"Amazing, Mr. Ryder," Silvane says. "They look so incredibly smart... and cute..."

"So, so cute!" Hatara gushes, her green eyes suddenly turn into one of a hunter. "So envious! Sell one to me one day."

Haaran raises an eyebrow and Garanae rolls his eyes.

The mini-sun glows green and the entire Colosseum goes quiet.

"Gentlemen and Gentlewomen!" Announces a magically-enhanced voice. "Welcome to the 110th spectacle of the year!"

The crowd cheers.

"Our schedule for tonight is first a Battle Royal, then a duel between Baal and Taal, the twins of anger and scorn!" The crowd gives a "hurray!". "And finally, the SUMMONER BATTLE!"

The crowd cheers again.

"Start returning to your seats, folks! The bets are going to close down in a minute and the battle will start in five!"

I look to Ciel and grab her hand.

"What do the gods say about betting?" I ask.

"The God of Luck says it's a waste of time," she answers.

"So why do people do it?"

"The God of War tells people not to foolishly charge to your deaths but people still do it all the time. It's simply because people are fools," she smiles bitterly.

"More like they want some excitement," Hana says.

"They are still fools if they don't know when it's appropriate to make a bet," Ciel smiles smugly.

Hana shows her tongue at her and Ciel snorts.

A minute later a large amount of mostly men and some women come out of the first floor into the dirt arena. They wear typical gladiator armor that exposes a lot of the body but protects the more important organs like the heart and brains.

A beautiful dragonkin woman appears and the crowd goes wild. She's taller than all the men, she must be at least 2,1 meters tall. Her pure white skin in contrast with her abyss black hair and scales, her armor is minimal, it could barely be considered a bikini since she even exposes a massive breast with a ghost nipple.

The male side of our group becomes a little uncomfortable as the female side tries to catch back our attention. Lyle's posture shrinks as he looks incredibly solitaire in his awkwardness.

Lina casually drills her ass on my crotch as she pets Aoi. Alissa latches my hand in the middle of her crotch, which I feel get warm by the second. Hana latches my other hand on her crotch, which is already warmer than Alissa's. Roxanne and Ciel reach over and painfully squeeze my thigh for a second.

The shameless dragonkin pulls out a greatsword with a light blue sheen. Lina's grinding stops as she admires the sword.

"Kanal..." She mutters.

"What's that?" I ask.

"Metal perfect for enchanting," Hana answers, "not the best at cutting but you can make some interesting weapons with it."

After the carnival of gladiators is done coming out, a large amount of robed priests fill the ring wall of the arena and lower themselves behind barricades.

"It is time!" The announcer suddenly speaks, "Without further ado, LET THE BATTLE BEGIN!"

*PUOINNN~!* A gong is hit and the warriors start to fight.

The shameless dragonkin flies towards the nearest man and bashes him, he loses his posture and she slashes with all her strength. Her sword buries itself halfway through the exposed leg of a man, then a ghost of her appears and strikes again, this time the leg is cut through.

Interesting indeed.

"[Double Strike]..." Lina mutters again, completely entranced on the woman.

The crowd "ooh's" in sympathy. The now legless man and his legs are quickly recovered by the priests and immediately his leg gets reattached, though he doesn't return to battle.

"She swings that sword like a club," Hana says. "It works but..."

"It's completely inefficient, ridiculous even," Haaran says.

"They are performers after all," Silvane says with a shrug.

The shameless dragonkin skewers another man through his stomach and with a monstrous grunt, throws him into another opponent. Both men break bones from the impact, an arm is twisted on the wrong way.

"Wow..." Haaran mutters, his eyes gleam with admiriation.

The men decide to gang up on her. One tries to thrust but has his sword blocked by the black scales at the back of her hand; another cuts one of wings off; a third slashes at her thigh, drawing blood; a fourth comes for a killing blow at her exposed shoulder but stops when her sword flashes light and blinds everyone nearby. The light even hurt our eyes a little.

She crouches low and cuts off the feet of her attackers with a sweep. She immediately awkwardly flies to the side when the biggest man of the arena slashes down at her with his own greatsword.

The man is a muscular, bronze skinned man with the biggest mustache I have ever seen, and he's only wearing a tight red thong. He's just as bloodied as her.

"SABLE, SABLE, SABLE!" Half the crowd cries.

"MONS, MONS, MONS!" The other half cries in response.

They trade blows, nicking each other little by little. Each cut causes a short gush of blood to come out, dyeing the sand of the arena red.

The rest of the battles ended, bringing calm to the arena besides the two. In a split second they part ways and cleave the few remaining men, finally leaving them as the last two standing.

They rush back to each other and the clash restarts, but there's a clear winner approaching.

Mons kicks Sable away, she weakly stands up and walks forward. Mons leans forward and is stopped by Sable's hand. She holds him still, gives him a peck on the lips and pushes him back. He falls on the ground, unconscious.

"RAAAAAahh..." Her victory scream fades as she falls backwards, also unconscious.

"SABLE WINS!" The announcer screams.

The woman is healed by the priests and immediately runs a victory lap. The crowd throws flowers, coins, and marriage proposals from men and women.

The priests quickly clean the arena out of body parts, participants, and blood. In a few minutes everything is back to normal.

"Gentlemen and Gentlewomen!" The announcer talks again. "The bets for the next spectacle have closed! Sit down and watch as the twins settle who's the best swordsman of Rabanara!"

From opposite sides two handsome men with chiseled faces and statuesque bodies come out, I feel an instinctual need to cover the eyes of all women. Both of them have a half neck guard that only protects the spine, a shoulder guard that covers the heart, and short leather pants, their muscular chests are exposed and oiled. One has a ball of fire engraved on his metal kite shield and the other has a crystal of ice. One is a red skinned devil-type and the other is a blue skinned oni-type.

Their faces look the same even though they have different races, the devil-type has two small protusions on his forehead while the other has two short yellow horns coming out. They put their identical helmets on and draw their identical steel swords.

"Brother!" The blue oni yells, "Let your chaotic ways end here! Your swordsmanship brings nothing but blood and death, you will waste your life by dying by your sword due to your recklessness!"

"Brother!" The red devil yells, "Let your decaying ways end here! Your swordsmanship brings nothing but meekness and stagnation, you will waste your life by withering away without accomplishing anything!"

"Let the Gods decide who is right! You will be defeated here, Baal!"

"Let the Gods decide who is stronger! You will be defeated here, Taal!"

They point their swords at each other and charge.

Baal strikes first and keeps his momentum. His sword does not stop as he strikes again and again. Taal defends with his shield, using minimal movements to deflect each blow.

"Now this looks like proper swordsmanship," Hana says.

Haaran nods in approval.

Baal flourishes with a spin attack, it strikes so hard Taal's shield that even I wince at the damage to the blade. The sound of metal hitting metal reverberates through the arena, bringing the crowd to higher levels of excitement.

Haaran sighs and smiles bitterly. "Can't forget we are still at the Colosseum," he says.

The battle picks up pace not in speed but in showmanship, each fighter flourishes with increasing frequency. It's a beauty to watch but it's not one a show of expert swordsmanship.

Baal nicks Taal with more frequency than the inverse. The blue skin of the oni gets slowly died in his blood as the wounds increase yet his posture never crumbles or his speed decreases. Baal on the contrary looks increasingly haggard and with more difficulty to breathe with each attack.

"JUST... DIE... ALREADY!" Baal yells between each strike.

"YOU... ARE... FOOLISH!"

Taal bashes and counters, his strength pushes Baal away and his sword jabs the stomach of his brother. He continues with his momentum, a rhythm of bashing and countering pushes Baal away and soon he's going to touch the wall.

Baal sinks his foot on the ground and takes a bash on his body. He hugs Taal's shield and jabs at his collarbone from above.

Taal sinks low and sweeps his brother's feet off the ground. He leans forward as Baal's body hits the ground and forces him down with his shield.

Taal's sword flashes and Baal drops his weapons, his hand goes to cover the new wound at his throat, a futile attempt to stop the flood of blood.

Taal kicks the ground and lands a meter away from his brother, in a moment a priest is already healing Baal. Taal lifts his bloodied sword to the sky and closes his eyes in meditation.

"TAAL WINS!"

The crowd explodes in cheers again and Taal makes a victory lap. The crowd throws flowers, coins, letters of love, and used panties.

"You said dragonkin duels are more bloody?" Alissa asks Hana.

"Oh yes, a slashed throat or a missing arm are not enough to stop a fight," she answers.

The cleanup is quicker this time so in a minute the announcer is speaking again.

"Gentlemen and Gentlewomen! The bets for the next spectacle have closed! Sit down and watch our final spectacle! The SUMMONER BATTLEEEE~!"

"TITAN, TITAN, TITAN, TITAN!" The crowd chants.

"Ohoh..." Roxanne murmurs.

Nononya's whiskers twitch repeatedly.

Everyone leans forward waiting for the next duelists.

Out of opposite sides, two lithe robed figures come out. One is in white robes, the other in black . A krampus-type demon with brown hair and a wereowl woman with white hair with streaks of grey.

"KROSSUS VERSUS OROONA!"

Both of them start to chant and after 2 minutes a 10-meter tall earth elemental forms on each side. Their bodies are made of floating blocks of stone while the joints are round balls. Stone grinds on stone loudly with every movement.

The elementals step forward in slow motion, each step sending a tremor through the arena.

"Oh, wow," I let the wonder escape my lips.

"Impressive but I believe it's borderline unpractical, right?" Silvane asks.

Nononya has her mouth hanging in wonder but still manages to nod repeatedly.

"The mana efficiency is going to be horrible," I say.

Krossus' elemental is made of yellow stone while Oroona's is made of black stone.

"LET THE BEST SUMMONER BEGIN! FIGHT!"

The elementals crush the ground as they charge forward. The yellow titan aims a right hook while the black titan leans low and opens his arms wide.

"Yellow opens with a punch while Black bets it all on a bear hug!" The announcer yells.

Yellow fires his slow-motion punch and grazes the arm of Black, who deflects the blow with his own arm. Black slams his front foot on the ground to stop and aims an uppercut with his left arm.

*DROOM~* A low rumble as stone hits stone and piece of yellow rock flies. Yellow's head block spins wildly, his balance is broken and he falls backwards.

"OH! A perfect parry followed by a hit!"

Yellow uses his arms to hook on Black's arms and pull him down. Yellow's body twists and suddenly, as "sudden" as a 10 seconds fall can be, Black hits the ground first, followed by Yellow's knee.

*DOOOOMSHH~...* Dust lifts from the ground as both titans fall like rocks, literally.

"Yellow reverses it up and drags Black down with it!"

A 3-meters tall dominatrix made of fire burst alive besides Oroona. A 3-meters tall angel of light in a frilly dress blooms out of a flower besides Krossus.

The dominatrix flies forward and her whip of fire curls around Yellow's neck. She grunts as she pulls him away from Black.

Long blades appear out of the back of the hand of the angel and she flies forward towards the dominatrix.

"Dame of Pain and the Saintess make their appeareances! Will their rivalry finally end here!?"

Yellow staggers up, his hands claw at his face trying to remove the whip in vain. Black hits the ground with his arm and his other flies upwards, the outer layer explodes revealing a much thinner, and faster, arm below.

Saintess is nicked by Black's new arm and is diverted away from the fight. Her hands rub her eyes as dust must have entered them.

"The Saintess is taken in surprise by a layer discard from Black!"

Dame of Pain raises her other hand and a large ball of fire starts to form.

Yellow turns around and tries to move towards the Dame but his legs are swiped by Black and he falls face first on the ground.

*DOOOOMSHH~...* More dust is lifted. The Dame cackles an evil laugh and prepares to throw her spell.

A flying blade pierces the ball of fire and glows. The fire grows wild and the ball starts to lose shape.

"The Saintess interrupts the spell with the mana from her sword!"

The Dame scowls and throws the unstable spell at Yellow.

The Saintess flies into the spell and buries her other blade at it. She screams as the flame licks her "skin". Yellow pulls her away and the spell explodes, chunks of yellow rock fly around the arena.

Bursts of wind prevent the rock from reaching the stands. A particularly large piece of rock floats in front of us, wind flowing all around it, keeping it still. Another gust of wind takes the rock away back into the arena.

"Now that was scary as hell," I say.

Haaran chuckles. "That's the point of using [Wind Shield]," he says.

"It really makes it more exciting," Lyle says.

"Yellow sacrificed his hand to save Saintess, but oh no...!" The announcer yells.

Black jumps into Yellow and crashes down on him. Yellow sinks into the dirt as it compresses under the ridiculous weight. Black lifts his fist up.

A new sun appears on the arena. Saintess opens her mouth and a beam of light hits the flank of Black, sending him a meter away from Yellow. Her spell ends and she looks depleted with her shoulder slumped.

The Dame retreats her whip and coils it on Saintess, making her scream. She pulls the whip back and sinks a fire claw on the belly of Saintess.

"THE SAINTESS IS CAUGHT ON THE EVIL CLAWS OF THE DAME!"

The crowd groans in pain, clear favoritism towards the light elemental.

The Saintess struggles and wrenches free, she flies away and collapses on the ground. White shining "blood" stains the claws of the Dame, which slowly return to being a "normal" hand.

A tornado quickly forms besides Oroona. In a few seconds it dissipates and a 5-meters tall, transparent, green woman is left behind. You can see sharp features and an air (heh) of self-importance on her.

Besides Krossus it suddenly starts to rain. Quickly the drops of rain freeze in the form of a throne, after that a blob of floating water takes the shape of a 5-meters tall man. He has similar facial features and the same air about him.

"THE LAST SUMMONS APPEARS! SISTER TEMPEST AND BROTHER MAELSTROM ARE CALLED TO BATTLE!"

The ants that are Krossus and Oroona hunch over and breathe quickly, their mana is exhausted.

Suddenly Yellow explodes and the arena is filled with dust again.

A woman screams and a gust of air sweeps the dust. A skeleton of Yellow is moving at incredible speed back towards Maelstrom. Dame is on his clutches, being squeezed alive by him.

"Yellow shows his final form and captures the Dame!"

Maelstrom calls forth a jet of water that he fires towards Dame, steam fills the air and obscures our vision again.

A large tremor runs through the arena and Tempest clears the air again. A skeleton of Black is on top of Yellow, his foot is crushing the rib cage of the fallen titan. Dame is being encased in ice, she desperately tries to melt her prison down while shrieking.

Black cracks the spine of Yellow along his rib cage, breaking his body into two. Suddenly dame starts to glow. The ice prison shatters and a gush of water throws Dame back towards Black.

*BOOOOM!* Rock flies towards every direction again and [Wind Shield] keeps us all safe. The air clears and we see Black is standing still, the skeleton above his hip is missing, black rock fills grounds of the arena.

"THE SUICIDE BACKFIRED! MAELSTROM USED DAME TO FINISH OF BLACK!"

The crowd goes crazy, children have meltdowns, Aoi flaps her wings in excitement.

Maelstrom forms a spear of ice while Tempest forms one of air.

They charge at each other and a "bloody" battle begins. Water drips down multiple holes on Maelstrom and green smoke comes out of Tempest's body.

They pierce each other in a display of savagery more than spearmanship as they forgo defense.

Tempest is faster and is filling Maelstrom with more holes than he can dish out in counter. He's pushed back and Tempest smiles sadistically. The man of water has a stern expression but pain slowly seeps into his face.

"Maelstrom is being pushed back! The brother cannot compete with his sister's speed!"

Suddenly Yellow gains a burst of speed and grabs the legs of Tempest. She sneers at him and crushes his head, finishing him. A moment later light escapes from his ribcage, then the ground turns white and Tempest screams.

"THE TRAP HAS BEEN TRIGGERED! TEMPEST HAS FORGOTTEN THE SAINTESS!"

Her movements slow as [Sanctuary] attacks her every being.

Maelstrom booms a laugh and strikes back at his sister. She cowers and tries to leave the sacred ground but every move takes away her power. She barely manages to defend herself.

With a final laugh Maelstrom pierces his ice spear on the head of Tempest. She shrieks and becomes invisible, suddenly a tornado blasts through the arena and the elemental is no more.

Oroona kneels.

"KROSSUS WINS!"

The elementals dissipate in a rainbow smoke and Krossus makes his victory lap. The crowd throws flowers, coins, lewd drawings of his summons, and proposals for summoning brothels.

"Now that was a spectacle," I say.

"Can you do things like this, Wolf?" Garanae asks.

"I think I can get to 5 meters tall, but the efficiency of it is ridiculous, it's impractical for combat," I answer.

"What a shame, sieges would be so much more interesting if we had 10-meters tall titans taking front row."

"Maybe if we had someone dedicate their lives to it the efficiency could be improved," Nononya says.

"Oh?" Lyle turns his head to her, his eyes gleam with hope.

"You still have to deal with catapults and earth mages using huge [Earth Bullets], simply not feasible," Haaran says.

"Oh..." Lyle and Garanae drop their heads.

We spend a little longer and fill our bellies with more snacks. Since it's well into the night we are taken home after that. A new carriage was waiting for my group.

I enter the bath and push Hana on the wall, she bends over and lifts her dress for me, one toned leg up on a stool. I immediately penetrate her from behind. She's a mild exhibitionist, she would get warmer every time someone glanced at her nipples.

The prolongued teasing took its toll on us. Soon I pull it out and finish all over her dress, ruining it.

We take a quick bath to clean the sweat and then go to sleep.

A note from Manasong

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Chapter 33: Bind - Part 1

A note from Manasong

Attention: to conform to the limit of sexual content allowed in a novel, I've censored this chapter. You can look for the uncensored version here.

The symbol "-" denotes a section that got cut for containing sexual content. Also, if paragraphs seem missing, they were also likely censored in an earlier pass where the symbol wasn't used.

Today is the 4th. An, day of wind.

-

Alissa leaves to start breakfast while Ciel remains sprawled on the bed, her eyes out of focus.

"You becoming bisexual now?" I ask -.

"I just... I don't, uh. Well, ugh!" She covers her red-brown face with both hands. "What have you done to me, Wolfy!?"

"I did nothing, you are the one who licked Alissas wet pussy."

Ciel groans and shivers.

"I just don't know anymore. Ah screw it, I'm a lesbian now."

"Bisexual."

"Yes, that, whatever," she chuckles and leaves -.

"You got jealous?" I whisper to Lina.

She doesn't answer -.

"You have to take what you want from her, just like Alissa did," I giggle maniacally.

-

-

During this breakfast, everyone looks quite satisfied. -.

Ciel is absentminded with a small smile on her face, she avoids looking Alissa in the eyes. Ciel suddenly regains focus and looks at me.

"Wolfy, corgi, please," she says.

Roxanne's eyes shoot up and I summon two for them to pet.

Ciel hums happily while the chubby dog pants on her lap.

"How's the broken shield enchantments going, Lina?" She asks.

"Not much progress," she shakes her head, her eyes gloomier than normal, "they are very complicated."

"Can you ask Mr. Gimbo for help?"

"We haven't started looking at reactive enchantments yet."

"Can't tell were we got the shield too," Roxanne asks.

"It's fine, take your time," she smiles at Lina who nods once in response.

My [Light Magic] and [Electric Magic] increased by 1 (now 4+7 and 9+12).

I put another point in [Godly Language] and impress Kyros even more. The feedback is slowly decreasing.

"Do you have a skill point on the language yet?" Kyros asks.

"No," I lie. Well technically it's not a lie.

"You will soon," he nods to himself, "you have a good talent for it."

Thanks, mate. Kyros is a good person.

For lunch, we stir fry meat with my Worcestershire sauce. Put some vegetables along, dice it all up in small parts and you can eat it on a sandwich. The bread we use has an incredibly crunchy crust with a very soft interior, Alissa found the best baker in town.

Blessing Magic is more singing. This time I have been trying out [Reinforce], it's going to please Lina a lot since it reduces wear and tear of equipment. Well, maybe it won't please her that much since she's kind of a workaholic.

I come back home and see Ciel and Lina meditating beside each other. As Alissa and I approach, they open their eyes and smile warmly. Oof my heart.

"Practicing magic again?" Alissa asks.

"No, just meditating for better prayers," Ciel answers.

"Oh, that helps? I never knew."

"Somewhat," she shrugs.

"Is Lina becoming more pious?" Alissa asks. "If I remember right your "Piety" was 10, right?"

Lina lowers her head and fidgets.

Gify pops into my shoulder.

"Gih."

Lina sighs.

"I want to ask them to watch over us," she says.

"I believe they would already do that to us," Alissa says with a wry smile.

"Yes but I want to ask for it. Besides, there's something I want to ask them."

"Oh? What is it?" I ask.

"Secret," she smiles adorably.

Ciel pats her head and Lina blushes.

Hana comes back a minute later, sweaty from sparring at the guild. She looks a little down.

"What's up, Hana?" I ask.

"Up?" She lifts an eyebrow in confusion.

"Ehrm..."

"Reference from your world?" She asks immediately.

'Yeah," she chuckles once, "I meant, did something happen?"

"Got distracted and lost a duel with Toga," she smiles bitterly.

"I don't think I can even beat him."

"That's because you can't use your spells. Now come on, I need some consoling, spank me with [Telekinesis]," she pulls out two dull iron swords and throws one at me.

I have been improving my footwork by using [Telekinesis] on myself, slowly it becomes a second nature. A small decrease in gravity to make me jump farther, a small increase in gravity to make the sword hit harder, a momentary disruption on the weapon of the enemy, a momentary [Rush] to cause a surprise. This fighting style is really unique.

The problem that I see is that it is restricted to using mana, if for some reason I can't use spells or I am out of mana I am dead. Now I have to balance the pro's and the con's. I can't really learn two styles, even my [Dodge] and [Block] are influenced by the spells so I have to commit to fighting with spells to reach peak performance. The problem is that I have to use spells to fight, if I don't then muscle memory is likely to make me do a mistake on my footwork, then I will stumble, fall, and die.

Fuck it, I'll take the plunge, I'll commit to this style. If I have to name it it will be Ekrano Style.

More playing around with the [Holy Spirit] -. Roxanne was getting lonely practicing her [Heart of Fire] on the bath, so Hana stayed there to keep her company.

"Kweh?" Aoi looks at us with curiosity in her cry.

-

"So, Aoi, you see, when a man loves a woman very much..."

"Kweh? Kwh! Speell!"

"OH! That..." I scratch my head as my cheeks burn red.

"I'm trying to learn the spell Wolf is using, the [Holy Spirit]," Ciel says, holding back her chuckle.

"I, ler, fly!?"

"Hey, that's quite the possibility. It would speed up your growth," I rub my chin in thought.

It seems Aoi is learning how to sense mana, this means she can learn spells just like we do. Wow, imagine a huge ass dragon that can double in size and cast spells at you, possibly even chantless. Aoi, the Destroyer.

-

Today is the 5th. Fo, day of Fire.

-

Aoi stretches as she awakens, her little claws tickle my hair as she wiggles her fingers. Gify imitates Aoi in a more exaggerated way and his limbs stretch beyond normal means. Both jump on my chest and snuggle up to my throat.

"Do-ne, play-ing?"

"Yes, yes. Let's go feed the two black holes, shall we?" I sit down and the two roll off my chest.

"Kweh?" She tilts her head. Cute.

"Gih!"

"You eat just as much as Aoi."

"Gih, guh."

"I never heard someone having pride of their gluttony," Alissa says, she snatches Gify and aggressively pets him.

"Gih."

"Yes, yes, Your Highness Gify, we shall prepare a breakfast worthy of you glorious fat ass," I bow to Gify and Aoi lowers her head along, slightly confused.

"Gieh, gah gas."

"But her large ass is actually sexy."

Lina increased her "Piety" by 1 (now 11). I increased my [Blessing Magic], [Mana Control], [Space Magic], and [Enhanced Semen Recharge] by 1 (now 4+20, 0+13, 11+21, and 0+7).

"You look quite tired, Alissa," Ciel says.

"Heh, heheh, eheheheh..." Alissa responds with a silly chuckle.

"I showed her how real women make love," Hana says.

Ciel blinks repeatedly.

"That was the hottest thing I have ever seen," Roxanne says, a warm smile brightens her face.

"Wolf, uh, we are going shopping today, right?" Ciel forces a smile.

I really have to force Alissa on Ciel, she seems quite scared of her own desires.

"Yeah, equipment upgrade for everybody!" I spread my arms wide and smile.

We go on another shopping spree. More glass cabinets, more ceramic plates, some silver cutlery, another tea set, beautiful mixed potted flowers, a 2 meters tall mirror for all of us, a small glaive embroidery to hang on Ciel's door, and an embroidery of a ruby and a hammer to hang on Lina's door. More dresses to fulfill my fetishes.

For armor everyone has been upgraded to Grey Berserker leather padded with Stal wolf fur and covered with emerald scales, even things like coifs, mittens and boots. Roxanne's scales affect her spellcasting but the benefits of the armor make up for it. We traded all mail for the scales, the riveted mail was being a pain for Lina to deal with, her [Manipulate Metal] isn't that precise to repair it.

All our shields have been lined with emellanat. Ciel's wooden targe has also been upgraded to a metal one. Hana now has a warbow, though It's not enchanted yet. We now have some dragon fang dust that can be used to repair my sword.

We have bought a small dagger with [Double Strike], Lina will reverse-engineer it to enchant Hana's sword with it. Though for now the bent enchanted shield still takes priority.

We finally have a lithograph. One for each of us, they are all bound together on a network, modify one and the others follow. They are like Vanea's lithograph, a small metal retangular box that has a white and a black fluid inside, you apply mana to a very small gem and the black fluid follows your finger, allowing you to "finger paint" a message. Primitive but functional.

Finally, we go back to the jewelry shop where we bought Lina's choker.

"Y-you sure this is okay?" Lina asks.

I nod at Lina and bring her hand to my lips.

Ciel is quiet but she can't hide her unease.

Roxanne claps the tip of her fingers in excitement.

"It's been so long... uh," She knits her eyebrows, "I had some jewels before but I left them, they belong to my family, not me."

Alissa and Hana are rather absent-minded, they may not have the most vanity but they certainly enjoy looking beautiful.

Once we enter the store Alissa disentangles from my other arm and makes a beeline to a display of turquoise necklaces, pool blue gem with black streaks. Aoi drops from Hana's shoulders and starts walking around the store.

Roxanne quickly picks up a simple black cloth necklaced with a small marquise wine red garnet hanging from it and rushes to Hana.

"This, you," She says, her hands reach over Hana's neck and she fastens the necklace.

Hana looks at me and shrugs then plays with the small gem with her hand, a warm smile caresses her face. The necklace is long and even reaches her cleavage.

Roxanne picks up a thin black metal necklace with an Asscher ametrine hanging. The gem has a dark purple tone and on the middle it is tainted with a bright yellow. If light hits it at the right stop it looks like dusk.

Ciel spends some time looking over the moonstones. I point towards a heart shaped one and smile at her. She opens and closes her fist in indecision, her gaze lingers on the stone I chose.

Lina looks so lost she's sweating cold. Roxanne comes and brings her over some tanzanite, the deep purple gems awaken something on Lina as her eyes open wide. She shyly stretches her hand forward towards a Portuguese cut gem, it's spherical and looks like a storm of reflections is brewing inside.

Alissa comes with a white cloth necklace in hand, the turquoise she chose is shaped like a tear, Briolette cut. The gem contrasts well with her eyes.

Ciel chose a silver coated metal chain necklace with a heart shaped moonstone. Lina chose only the gemstone, she will embed the gem on the metal plate of her slave choker.

Alissa suddenly grabs my hand and puts a black cloth necklace with a square cushion-shaped heliodor gem, it is bright yellow with a hint of green. I lift an eyebrow but quickly lower it. I put on the necklace and hurry over the mirror.

"Fuck me, I look fabulous," I whisper.

"Gih, guh goh gah."

"Thanks..." I smile wryly.

"I prefer handsome, or dignified," Alissa says as she approaches me.

"Whispers aren't meant to be heard by just anyone."

"Then simply don't speak, you know my hearing is good," she lightly pinches my cheek.

I smile faintly.

"Should we get something to you too?" I ask.

"Geh geh, goh gih goh guh."

Alissa chuckles, "Do you only care about food?"

Gify morphs his shoulders into a shrug.

"Kweh!"

Aoi taps the glass with her claws, below there's a round gem of deep blue azurite with blue pool hints of malachite.

The female attendant looks supremely amused after I ask her to measure a very small necklace for Aoi.

"I have seen small dogs and even a small Gatun receive a jewel, but for a dragon this is the first time," she says.

"Pre-ty!" Aoi says as she looks herself on the mirror.

"Awn..." Hana gushes over the little blue bundle of scales.

'I will teach you [Item Box] so you can store your things on it, okay?" Roxanne says.

"Kay!" Aoi shows her fangs on a smile.

Alissa starts baking a berry and honey pie. It will be ready after lunch. The fluffy dough is her new obsession, it's something rather hard to find due to the precision necessary. It's not bread but certainly has that bread white "breadness" to it.

Today is [Blessing Magic] class. Hatara gives me satisfied nods once she sees my new necklace. It certainly compliments my dark hair and eyes.

My pocket starts to heat up and I see a message from Vanea.

"Come see me at the break."

A note from Manasong

Leave a rating or a review to help me rise to the top or fix my shameful understanding of prose.

Take a look over my blog where all information of the world of Rupegia will be posted.

Join the Discord and discuss, or rant, or meme, or try and fight me so your waifu gets more screentime.

Become a Patron and read chapters in advance, or read the side-stories, or leave your mark on the story, or help choose the next artwork or the next side-story.

Chapter 33: Bind - Part 2

"Enter."

Me, Alissa, and Lina steel ourselves, this time Gify is also awake and aware, he massages my shoulder with the running water feeling and lightly connects our minds. I grab Alissa and Lina's hand and feel my mind clear. We breathe in and open the door.

Vanea is sitting at her usual spot, this time with her proper chair. To the left there's a new small table where Farana is perusing over documents and making small corrections. She's wearing the usual grey velvet uniform and beret of the university attendants. She lifts her eyes and glances at us then goes back to work. Her expression is neutral but now I see life in her eyes. She's wearing a collar with a black tag, the mark of a criminal slave.

Soul Info

Name: | Farana Uiara | Race: | Human | Level: | 37
MP | 120 | Magic Power | 30

I almost sigh in relief.

We bow lightly to Vanea and sit, her gaze is uncomfortable as always. I will need Lina's ass on my lap for a good half hour to heal after this.

"I see you have been busy, Mr. Ryder," Vanea says.

"As always," I smile for a moment.

"I believe you will accomplish a lot but I didn't think you would actually meet with Lord of the Forest."

"We didn't, we only visited the Tree and talked to the Speakers."

"Oh? Oh yes, the dryads," her gaze loses focus for a moment. "I'm impressed you managed to find a way to being accepted, the Lord is quite unforgiving of trespassers."

"Gih."

"I see..." She contemplates Gify's words, her expression neutral with a hint of tiredness. "Now, I called you here to tell you that Darean has fled Rabanara."

I glance over to Farana and see her still working like before. She notices the silence and looks over us then returns to work, her expression is the same but just a tad sadder. I turn back to Vanea and frown.

"How did he escape?" Alissa asks.

"Ever since I captured Farana he went into hiding, quite difficult to find someone that has that much money," she says, her eyes half-closed in annoyance and tiredness. "I only know he fled because his minions have dispersed and a considerable number has switched sides. Even if he were still in Rabanara he's finished."

"That's nice to hear but we will be leaving soon, we could end up meeting him again," I say.

"Exactly," Vanea flashes a smile. "If you do meet him please capture and interrogate him, I would pay a fortune to know who was funding him."

"You still don't know?"

"Only that it's imperial royalty."

Us 3 share a look. It really was royalty. This is insane, the amount of money they could have poured in to fight Vanea is almost limitless. I have to thank the Gods that I didn't make the mistake of announcing to the world my relation to her, she can survive the wrath of royalty, we can't.

Her smile grows wider as the silence continues.

"I know you are going to the High Forest so this is my warning to you," her smile turns warm. "Darean has fled to the High Forest, neither I nor the empire has a proper network there and the elves have their own problems to deal with. He can survive there indefinitely, or at least until the western Crown Lord has been replaced and the order reestablished."

I sigh and massage my eyes. We haven't gotten rid of the fucking stalker yet.

"If you ever need someone to trust, the eastern Crown Lord is reliable," she continues.

"Why is that so?" I ask.

"He's the one spearheading the reforms on the High Forest, we have a good relationship with him," she says. "His side of the forest is safe, so it's unlikely Darean will act over there."

"But we are going to the western side because there's plenty of unregulated dungeons there."

"So rely on the eastern Lord, you can easily sell your services to him."

I would rather not have to deal with nobility again. Alissa and Lina look just as demoralized as me.

"Thanks for the warning, we will deal with it," I give her a tired smile.

"I hope you do. I will be going to the capital next year, I will see you there," she smiles again, this time more mischievous.

"What? I could end up avoiding the capital if we visit Sommerland then Mountainhome."

Find Hana's family then visit Lina's.

"You will certainly visit the capital, with your Gift I find it hard to believe the emperor won't notice you," I cringe at her words. "Now that we are talking about it, what is your Gift exactly?"

"I would rather not say."

"Guarded as always," she chuckles.

"It pays to keep your abilities a secret, Darean's attack failed because of this."

She nods in agreement.

"I know that well... one last thing, do you wish to purchase Farana?" She asks, innocently.

I choke on my spit, Alissa flashes a smile but quickly turns it into a frown, Lina's expression is unchanging but her skin pales.

"No, thank you" I answer as soon as I regain control of my throat.

"What a shame, it's quite obvious you are a good master, at least for women."

"I already have enough."

"At least Tarano will be happy..."

The ruffling of paper slows and I glance at Farana, she rubs her wrist in nervosity and then continues to work. I'm not sure if she's happy or not.

"Don't concern yourself too much over her, she's paid her dues, now she only has to keep being a good girl," an odd warmth on Vanea's voice.

Vanea rests her crossed hands on her lap in a relaxed posture.

"Was that all you had for me?" I ask.

"Yes, I believe this is our last meeting like this. Have a safe journey."

"Thank you, for you too."

We bow lightly and take our leave. Once we leave the building Lina talks, "Vanea looked somewhat, disappointed."

"Gih."

"Yeah, she even looked tired, if it's bleeding over her expression she must be really tired," I say. "Not really of our concern now that it is over."

"I must say, I'm happy it is over," Alissa stretches as she speaks. "Though not entirely over at least we are only dealing with a fugitive instead of a crime lord with the backing of royalty."

"No invisible assassins," I say and Lina nods along.

"Gih."

"Yeah, and no kidnappers," Alissa grabs Gify and pets his cute white little stubs he calls wings.

Gih! Geh gah guh!

Eheheheh. You have never seen a real griffin, have you? Real wings are massive.

Guh gih geeh.

I have seen illustrations at books, and that's enough.

It's relaxing to eat our pie as we watch the hustle of the other students and ruminate on what we were told.

There's some catharsis in knowing we are safe in Rabanara but also I feel rather calm at the future, knowing the enemy is coming is hundreds of times better than the sudden panic of falling into an ambush. Maybe this is why the shrieking space mage is what haunts me once in a while, I fear the unknown more than the known.

"Kweh!"

"Hold tighter!"

We are greeted at home to a very small Aoi grabbing Roxanne's coif as she walks around. Roxanne is helping out with dinner and Aoi is stuck with her, trying to concentrate into copying Roxanne's manipulation of [Item Box].

"Sounds like you are having fun," Alissa tells Aoi.

"Kweh! Wob-ly!"

"Oh shush and go back to concentrating," Roxanne says and taps Aoi's head lightly. "I heard your wings flap, don't think I'm going to continue this if you start to mess around."

"Oh, no!"

While Roxanne is busy with the pot Hana looks at Aoi and mouths "flap more", then she returns to chopping Dragolite meat. This elicits a giggle from Aoi and a glare from Roxanne who has a sixth sense in noticing mischief.

I approach Roxanne and smell the soup. Smells hearty and looks orange, must be a combination of Dragolite stock and annatto.

"I must say, Wolfy," she stops stirring the soup and gives me a greeting kiss, "cooking is harder than I thought, it's so much easier to just follow orders..."

"And the Ronti are fast," Hana says.

That means "that's right" or "that's obvious" depending on intonation.

"Being a chef is quite hard, finding the proper food that pleases everyone is quite hard. It's also why I experiment so much," I say.

"Well I find seasoning to be quite hard. We also have so many spices," Roxanne says and adjusts her coif as Aoi almost falls over.

"For seasoning just under season and then adjust, whenever you can do a taste test. For spices stick to what you know until you are comfortable to expand, don't try to impress."

"It's just that there's so many details," she glances over the multiple bowls where the dishes are being made.

Roxanne is making soup, fried meat, a leafy salad with light mayonnaise, and a squishy vegetable salad that reminds me of cucumber seasoned with vinegar and sugar. Quite the task.

"That's precisely the point. The devil is in the details."

"Another reference?" She asks flatly.

"It means something simple might take a lot more effort because details were overlooked."

"What does the Devil race got to do with it?" She tilts her head and Aoi squeals in delight.

"We are not talking about the same devils."

She shrugs and goes back to stirring the soup. Alissa puts on the apron and comes to help. Lina comes down and gives me a greeting hug.

"Where's Ciel?" I ask.

"With Arantos," Lina answers.

"Let's go out to spar, then?"

She nods.

Lina is slowly getting better with her strikes, more controlled, deliberate, and precise. Her battle sense is improving. If I start to mix up my skills along with my style I can finally beat her again.

Ciel comes back home and quickly joins us in sparring. I use [Telekinesis] to glide away from Lina's attack and stop.

"You spent a long time talking to Arantos," I say to Ciel.

She chuckles and rolls her eyes, "I told him we are leaving to the High Forest, he started giving me all kinds of advice and warnings."

"Sounds like he cares about you," Lina says.

"Yes, I know," Ciel smiles wryly, "doesn't make it any less tiring, though. Oh yes, he wants to talk to you, Wolfy."

I feel a chill.

"Don't make that face, he's not going to eat you."

"Doesn't make it any less scary, though," I say.

The two girls spar ferociously. We don't use protection equipment as the bruises build "Endurance" and [Heal] makes them all disappear anyway.

Despite being tired Ciel still puts up a fight against Lina. Her range advantage makes Lina's axe nearly impossible to use unless when she uses magic to create an opening.

Ciel drops down and sprawls on the grass, Lina joins her as I rest up.

"I'm actually quite excited to leave. I only spent some time on Goldcross last time I left, I heard that Escanso and Goloria are beautiful cities," Ciel says.

"They are high up in the trees, right?" Lina asks, Ciel nods. "It's just... scary for me. I'm not sure if [Stonebody] will still work so high up."

"It didn't change when inside the Tree of Mana, right?" I ask.

"Yes, but still, the Tree of Mana is special."

"The High Forest is also special. The elves mold the trees with their own magic, the ambient mana should be high."

"Hm..." Lina purses her lips in thought.

"Come on, sit up and pray. We will take a bath in five minutes," Ciel sits up and pulls Lina. Both girls cross their legs, closes their eyes, and turn into statues.

The bath is spent with Ciel. Alissa relaxes back and masturbates slowly as always. I feel Ciel is a little too excited and vigorous, she glances at Alissa and smiles faintly. A little progress at least.

"You are like a newborn," Ciel says.

I shrug and continue.

Night is spent again with Ciel and [Holy Spirit], I got it to tap-dance. Ciel is unsure if that's sacrilege or not.

Lina uses [Manipulate Metal] to mold the metal band on her choker so she can attach and detach her small jewel. She looks so cute with it on.

Today is the 6th. Ekt, day of Electricity.

Alissa shares her morning meal with Lina by way of kissing. Ciel unconsciously squeezes my arm harder as Alissa explores Lina's mouth. An out of breath and blushing Lina is left behind as Alissa leaves the bed to make breakfast.

Before leaving the room Alissa takes a moment to stare at her naked self on our new mirror, she pinches her own butt and moves out with a sway on her hips.

"Just making sure, you can always deny her, Lina," I say.

"It's okay..." She mutters.

"Gih."

Lina purses her lips.

"I like it..." She forces it out with some effort.

Ciel stands up and leaves, I pinch her jiggling ass and she glares at me for a moment. She's totally jealous.

Today Lina's "Dexterity" and "Speed" increased by 1 (now 13 and 12). Roxanne's "Dexterity" and "Perception" increased by 1 (now 12 and 11).

We sit at the table and a very happy Hana is humming as she cuts down some fruits for a salad with cream.

"You are quite happy this morning," Roxanne says.

"You didn't do anything?" I ask Roxanne.

She shakes her head sideways.

"Today is my birthday," Hana answers, chipper.

My stomach sinks, my heart hurts. OH NOOOOoooo~...

"Oh. Congratulations, let this year be better than the last," Ciel pats Hana's back.

"Let this year be better than the last," Alissa repeats and also pats Hana's back.

"Kweh! Grat!" Aoi rushes over Hana and licks her face.

"Gih gih."

Roxanne and Lina then do the same. Hana smiles wider and then stares at me, waiting for something.

"Wait, what's going on? Is this how people celebrate birthdays?" I say as my eyes race about, bouncing around everyone's happy expressions.

"Yes? Is it different than on Earth?" Ciel asks.

"We usually have a party where people bring gifts."

"Oooh party" Hana says.

"Gifts," Roxanne's glasses glint.

"The party seems okay but what would we gift Hana?" Ciel questions.

"Something she needs," I say.

"And what would it be?" Alissa asks.

I shrug and then Hana also shrugs.

"Sounds troublesome," Lina says, her eyebrows knit in thought.

"And it is," I cringe back at certain memories.

"How do you deal with it having to give gifts to so many people?"

"Trying to think of a gift for marriage is already hard," Alissa says.

"Yes, it is harder."

"We doon't really need to bring all of your customs back, right?" Roxanne questions with a phony smile.

"A party is enough" Hana says.

"A party it is," I say. "Anyway, uh. Congratulations, let this year be better than the last."

I grab Hana's hand to give a kiss but she steals one from my lips.

"How about we bake a cake ourselves?" Ciel asks.

"We would need a lot of time," I say.

"Let's do on the class break."

"The 12th then."

Ciel nods emphatically.

Kyros forces me to resist the [Godly Language]. I'm forced on the ground as he repeats "kneel". It is supremely unpleasant to not have control over your own body.

"Your 'Willpower' is quite good, most people in your place would be as still as a statue," he says.

I'm trembling all over trying to resist, my head slowly rises. I can't even smile or scowl, my body is completely controlled.

"Release."

I regain control and sprawl on the ground.

"Now, try to make me kneel."

I regain my control and slowly sit back on the chair.

"Kneel."

I see his face twitch and his body rock back and forth. I hunch over and grab my stomach, trying to keep my breakfast in.

"Good,"he smiles warmly, "you are improving.

I think I hurt myself more than I hurt him.

"I remembered one thing, you ever heard of [Inspire Growth]?" I ask.

"Oh that," he smiles faintly and strokes his goatee, "every drill master has it, helps people improve stats and magic."

"Not skills?"

"No."

"What about [Increased Growth]?"

He narrows his eyes in thought.

"Never heard of it, sounds similar to Inspire, could work the same way," he shrugs. "Where did you hear about it?"

"I heard someone at the hunter's guild got it but was afraid of the skill checks," I lie.

"Ah, that's quite common, once in a while an adventurer gets a weird skill and pays the temple to remove it," he chuckles. "Quite annoying, really, it's not cheap."

On [Space Magic] class I learn to chant [Warp Space]. Basically it "shrinks" space so more things can fit on the same space or the inverse. The professor starts a demonstration that makes us feel like we are tripping.

"You can see that there's a visual deformation of space as the parameters for reality are distor..." His voice slowly fades away as his head turns smaller and smaller, like he's walking away from us, then his head starts to increase in size again. "...roperties of this new space are exactly the same as the normal one so it is safe. What you should all be careful of is of the boundary space," his head grows back to normal but then balloons and expands much bigger than the original.

He continues, "This space has transient properties so when you create an extreme transition, physics start to acquire some odd behavior, potentially harmful," as he speaks his ballooned head extends a little further but starts to conform to a cubic shape. Like a distorted mirror his face is completely stretched yet gives the weird feeling of his skin "flowing" around the cube with a mere tilt of his head.

"You could compress or extend space directly inside the body of somebody and rip them apart," he casually smiles and his eyes glaze over as he imagines something, "but the usual inefficiency of affecting someone's body directly with mana still applies. The amount of mana necessary for such a thing would be ridiculous.

"Also don't ever try to compress it to extreme levels, you will doom us all when you rip the fabric of reality. Though you would never have enough mana to do this but still, the warning is given," he chuckles at himself.

Is it black holes? Well shit, now that's scary.

At the moment I can only create a small box of warped-distances space. It's odd to push your hand through it, it either feels like it's being pushed forward or back depending on whether I'm compressing space or the inverse.

Could be used as a tripping hazard, it would certainly mess people up to have your foot snag back during combat. Could even be used to slow down attacks. Imagine creating a super long corridor where things like arrows take forever to cross. Though I can't do these things instantly, the vacuum that it creates is quite wild and becomes exponentially more mana-inefficient the faster I try to make it.

"You managed to cast it?" Lyle asks, his eyes wide in wonder.

Lyle is a precious child, always so dreamy.

"Yeah, just a very small and faint space, barely any perceptible shrinking."

"Still, you are quite the space mage, Wolf," Hatara says.

Garanae gives a shy nod.

"We all have our specialties," I say.

Alissa smirks, I know exactly who she's thinking about right now.

"Miss Lina is not coming today?" Lyle asks and looks around the buffet.

On a second thought, I don't really like you that much, Lyle.

Rest of the class is theory, we calculate how physics interacts with the warped-distances space. Like atmospheric pressure, sound propagation and the effects of something passing through it in high speed, say a leg or an arrow.

It's quite the mindfuck that's difficult to wrap my head around. Though this was a very enlightening lesson.

A note from Manasong

Hall of Fame of Patrons.

The patrons who support Rupegia shall have their names sung by the bards for they deserve the glory and honor. Their names are:

Lord Andrew Meyers.

Leave a rating or a review to help me rise to the top or fix my shameful understanding of prose.

Take a look over my blog where all information of the world of Rupegia will be posted.

Join the Discord and discuss, or rant, or meme, or try and fight me so your waifu gets more screentime.

Become a Patron and read chapters in advance, or read the side-stories, or leave your mark on the story, or help choose the next artwork or the next side-story.

Chapter 33: Bind - Part 3

A note from Manasong

Attention: to conform to the limit of sexual content allowed in a novel, I've censored this chapter. You can look for the uncensored version here.

The symbol "-" denotes a section that got cut for containing sexual content. Also, if paragraphs seem missing, they were also likely censored in an earlier pass where the symbol wasn't used.

On the way home Alissa suddenly stops moving.

"Wolf, can you give me [Ignorance]?" She asks

"Sure, why?"

"There's a weakened bird over there, I can capture it easily with the spell."

"Oh, for [Bind]?"

"Yes."

"One moment."

I unmount her and she turns back into the love of my life. I adjust my points and cast [Ignorance], my hand glows and I touch Alissa. Suddenly she hurts to look at, something that sounds like a nightmare to me.

She stalks the bird and then pounces on it. The poor thing is old and weak, couldn't resist Alissa's assault even if [Ignorance] wasn't applied.

I pull out a bottle of paralysis poison made by Roxanne. Alissa opens the little beak for me and I pour a few drops into the beak of the little grey animal. Not even 10 seconds later and its body stiffens, could even pass up for dead if it wasn't warm.

"Let's do this at home," I say.

Everyone is circling me, anxious, excited, and curious.

"Here goes nothing."

"What?" Hana asks.

"Idiom."

I cast [Bind], my hand glows and I grab the bird.

I feel like I grew another arm, I wish I had [Materialization] right now. I pull the arm out and feel a need to bring it to my chest. With little effort I feel something enter my heart, then I release and my hand stops glowing.

My body convulses and I lose control of my muscles. I feel a stiffness on my whole body that's very uncomfortable. My heart beats fast and my eyes dart around, fear clouds my mind. I feel an incredible need to open my arms wide and flap. I'm hungry and tired, very tired. My vision doubles. n

My mind stabilizes after a minute and I recognize what I have been feeling. Proprioception, vision, hearing, touch, and other senses. The same overload of information when I first summoned something. I wish to cut all my senses and my body returns to normal.

"Ughh... I feel horrible..." I mutter.

"Wolfy! You okay?!" Alissa's orange eyes stare unto mine, fear and desperation on her demeanor.

"Yes, I think," I push her away and straighten myself on the sofa. Ciel removes a shining hand out of my arm. I look around and see everyone's pale faces, even Aoi's, if that's even possible. I look at my shoulder and a very calm Gify stares at me.

"Gih."

"Yeah, you girls should trust Gify," I say, "he sees how my mind works."

"At least he didn't get physically injured," Ciel sighs.

"Still scary, what did just happen?" Roxanne asks.

"I felt everything the bird was feeling and the poor thing wasn't feeling good," I say.

"Oh..."

I feel something more, like a string inside my mind that connects to my body, feels weird. I tug at it and feel the bird's mind flood into mine, like a large fluffy blanket that wants to engulf me. With little effort I bundle it up and engulf it myself.

The bird's mind starts to detach from myself, I still feel it but it seems like a different world, a second monitor that I can look at when I wish, different from the usual feeling of having more "eyes" that the usual summoning has.

"Give it the antidote," I say.

Lina receives a small bottle and pours it down the throat of the bird. Slowly its body relaxes and it calmly flaps its wings, stretching itself.

I watch it with warm eyes and hold the blanket tighter, it shrinks on my grasp and becomes a mere fuzzy ball of fluff. I see the little grey bundle of feathers shiver and chirp happily.

"You are safe here," I say.

"You can talk to it?" Alissa questions.

"Not really, it's even more abstract than [Animal Tongue]. More like it surrendered its mind to me."

I tug at the fluffy ball and will it to sleep. The bird curls on itself and closes its eyes, in a minute it's mind is completely shut down.

"Incredible," Ciel mutters.

"So you really can control it's mind," Alissa says.

"Yes but it could also do the inverse and control me if my mind is not strong enough. It's what happened when the spell started taking effect, I wasn't ready for it and felt like a bird."

The girls raise their eyebrows.

"This is dangerous," Ciel says.

"But also interesting," Alissa says, holding her head in thought. "You need to test it more."

I cast a [Heal] and [Refresh] on the bird. Its body was too weary, it wouldn't survive longer like this.

I wake it up with a thought and start controlling it. I have it eat some berries we have then I make it fly out of the window and make it cross town. The feeling of flight is enhanced by the birds own feelings of freedom. I can somewhat read its mind, its not smart enough to have proper thoughts but I can certainly understand its feelings.

"Controlling it costs mana. The further away he is the more mana it costs to send him signals," I say. "Though the sense sharing is not costing mana."

"Sense sharing could be something like a piece of the soul staying with it. This is why it doesn't cost mana," Ciel says.

"If information is being shared and a piece of my soul is in the bird than maybe there's a way to detect the transfer of information somehow."

"What?"

"Some concept from my world. I'm also worried about someone getting a hold of the bird and hurting it's soul, it could end up hurting me too."

"Remove the points and see what happens," Alissa says.

I call back the bird and start to focus on how to summon it. This spell is very different, I can't use the "pocket monster" approach and summon a ball of light, I have to summon it instantly besides me.

I pull on the string that's connecting the blanket, a little mana goes away. I "grab" the string and pull it hard, it keeps coming to me and my mana drops a considerable amount.

A light appears in front of me and the bird materializes out of it.

"Oohhh," Roxanne looks at the bird in wonder.

"That took a lot of mana."

"Expected since you teleported it," Alissa says.

I remove the points and the fuzzy ball turns back into a blanket, taking a lot of effort to keep it contained. I quickly put it back on.

"Didn't remove the [Bind], only made it more difficult to control."

"Okay, you really have to find a way to undo the bind," Roxanne says.

"Soul damage first," Alissa says.

I put 40 points into [Spirit Magic] and a new spell appears [Soul Blade], I cast it.

A small ethereal purple broad blade appears in front of my right hand, the size of a dagger. Awkward to use, it's similar to the katar, a push dagger.

I make the bird land on the table and cut all senses from it. I let a sigh escape.

"Here goes nothing..."

Preemptively wincing I push the blade into the bird.

"AAH!" I yelp in pain as my head sears in pain. The bird also cries and falls over, passed out, "FUCK!"

I cast [Soul Touch] and grab my chest. As if my insides are caressed the pain slowly recedes and soon turns into a gentle pleasure. Alissa caresses my hair, Aoi licks my chin, and Gify turns on his touch until the pain goes away. Then I do the same for the bird until I can see it's back to normal through the sense sharing.

"Yeah this is bad," Hana says, "Meet a spirit mage and you are screwed.

"You really have to find a way to undo the bind," Roxanne says.

"Agreed. Hm, maybe if I..." I get an idea.

I grab the fuzzy ball and start to push it away towards where it came. Somewhat like the reverse of [Redirect Mana] I push it out of my soul and the fuzzy ball simply disappears. The bird suddenly chirps and flies into the window and crashes. Alissa hurries and grabs it again.

"Well... I did it."

"That's reassuring. A bird isn't that useful for you, anyway," Lina says.

If I could teach this spell to other people it would be something like familiars, quite the exciting idea.

"I have to develop chants for these spells and teach other people, you girls would benefit from having something like this," I say.

"Possibly, scouting would be much easier, specially when you have an eye on your back," Hana says.

"Bind a Beholder and you are safe from nearly anything," Lina says.

"Except invisible assassins," Roxanne says.

"Except invisible assassins," Hana repeats with a sigh.

"What do you think would happen if you do it with a humanoid?" Alissa asks a glint in her eyes.

"Difficult to tell, the bird was barely sapient and he tried to take over my mind."

"Sapient?" Alissa asks.

"Intelligent like us," Ciel answers.

"Then let's test with something barely intelligent, perhaps goblins or Mossy Fangpines."

"First we have to know what happens when we kill it," I say.

"Let's use the bird then... sorry, it's important to know this," she hurriedly adds as she sees the pain in face.

I'm sorry little birb, you are not safe here.

We move to the kitchen. Alissa holds the bird over the stone sink and looks at me, I nod. The dagger slices, its head falls off and I feel my heart stop. My vision goes dark.

I felt "death", not only did [Battlefield Perception] trigger but I also felt the dagger run through my throat and the blood leave my body. Then I felt emptiness, cold, and loneliness. Aoi's feelings of her parents are a mere drop in the ocean of what I felt. Something was ripped from me, something very dear.

When I realize I'm already on my knees, head buried on my hands, tears flowing freely. Slowly the emptiness recedes and I start to feel again, the touch of the hug, the warmth of their skin, the fruity mix of smells from their hairs, Alissa's concerned eyes staring into mine.

"That felt horrible..." I mutter.

"I'm sorry Wolfy," Alissa's frown deepens.

I weakly smile and chuckle.

"You worry too much," I say.

"Look who's talking," she pouts.

"What did you feel?" Ciel asks.

"This is quite the dangerous spell," Ciel says.

"But incredibly useful," Roxanne says, she grins and her glasses glint.

"How so?"

"What if we [Bind] each other? Not just one [Bind] but two-way."

Holy shit, instantaneous mental communication.

Ciel massages her temples.

"Imagine if we can coordinate strikes!" Hana grabs Lina and Ciel's hands.

"Scouting and stalking would be much less dangerous," Alissa says.

"No one would be truly alone," I say.

Aoi suddenly sparks up from the table and jumps on my chest.

"No, mo-re, a-lon, e-ver."

My head hurts. There's going to be so many cons to organize this, but the pros!

"Gih, gig go-geh-gih-gah."

"Yes, the potential. But it's dangerous, so dangerous," Roxanne sighs and massages her eyes.

"You mentioned that it became harder to "control" the bird when you reduced the points, right?" Ciel asks.

"Yes, the bird's mind tried to control me."

"What if two strong-willed but equally inexperienced humanoids are bound together? Could their minds mesh irreversibly?"

Roxanne sighs again but much longer.

"Only Wolfy can do this. You could act as the central connector, can you do more than one?" Lina asks.

"Could be possible but the bond is quite deep, I could lose control."

"Then we really have to test this with goblins then orc maybe. Alissa should be the first of us to be bound, if it won't work with her then it won't work with anyone."

"Kweh!"

"You are second," I say.

She snuzzles up on my neck and her blue scales tinkle.

We go take a bath. Emotionally exhausted, I sink on the tub and close my eyes. I recognize Lina's touch, then I open my eyes and see her impish smile.

I give a peck on her lips, then on her cheeks, then on her neck, then on her ears. I fill her body with quick kisses until she giggles. I pull her to me and finally give her a long tongue kiss. I pull on her small tongue and lick her palate, giving her a shiver.

I make her breathless just by kissing. I stimulate her tongue with mine, I plunge it deep into her mouth, I give a small bite on her lips.

-

"Careful, your grip is quite bad, you can cut yourself like this," Hana says.

"Didn't you have [Dagger Use]?" Alissa asks.

"Helps with cutting, not with gripping vegetables," Roxanne answers.

"Cut the Remmidy in half first, having a flat side on the board prevents it from slipping," I say.

"Oh, I see," Roxanne says, she nods repeatedly deliberately just so Aoi has to grip to stay on her head.

Like a child scared of pain, Roxanne awkwardly cuts the onion-like vegetable in small pieces while grimacing.

"Next we put the fire at maximum and keep stirring it so it browns evenly."

"So what's this brown stuff? Your world explains it, Wolfy?" Roxanne asks.

"It's called Millard reaction, though I think that since it's a vegetable it's technically caramelization."

"How does that work?"

"No idea, not my area of expertise, I only knows it works."

"Pff," Alissa scoffs.

Ciel quietly cuts down the meat alongside Lina. Lina tries to slowly move closer while Ciel slowly moves away.

I grab Ciel's arms and pull her around me, forcing her to be the bigger spoon.

The [Holy Spirit] runs up the sofa and kicks Ciel's chin, making her flinch. She wakes up from her stupor and glares at me. She gives me playful slaps until I remove the smirk from my face.

When going to bed, Ciel quickly grabs Lina and smothers her, Lina turns around and hugs back. The two adorably sleep with their noses touching.

"Just a little push..." Alissa whispers to me.

Intermission 10

Tarano comes to get Farana and I'm left alone. I dim the lights and rest my head on my hand. Suddenly my chair doesn't feel as comfortable anymore.

Damn Royals, what in the hell do they want with Rabanara? Kyros is not worthy of this response, something else made them angry. Probably something petty, their spit is worth gold, someone was probably just playing around with me.

I let a long sigh escape.

If only I had met him sooner, a Gifted ally would be perfect for me. As much as I review the information on him there's nothing that stands out too much, he's just a runaway noble like others. The annoying thing is that I can't find from where he came from.

All I can do is keep a cordial relationship with him, though he seems scared of me. Not that I blame him, sometimes I despise the Eyes of Authority but in the end they have done more good than bad for our family.

It's unfortunate he's taking the Misty Fox slave away but such was the deal we made with the Slavers. I'm sure the Fox Chief is satisfied with Ryder.

Well, what a waste. If he can deal with 5 women than maybe he has some interesting to show...

Whatever, at least I have Grosnok, I prefer bigger men anyway.

A note from Manasong

Hall of Fame of Patrons.

The patrons who support Rupegia shall have their names sung by the bards for they deserve the glory and honor. Their names are:

Lord Andrew Meyers.

Lord SenilePenile.

Leave a rating or a review to help me rise to the top or fix my shameful understanding of prose.

Take a look over my blog where all information of the world of Rupegia will be posted.

Join the Discord and discuss, or rant, or meme, or try and fight me so your waifu gets more screentime.

Become a Patron and read chapters in advance, or read the side-stories, or leave your mark on the story, or help choose the next artwork or the next side-story.

Chapter 34: Eccentrics - Part 1

A note from Manasong

Edited this chapter to use the English dialogue standard of using quotes. I started writing using quotes on chapter 36 so I will slowly update the other chapters to this standard.

Today is the 7th. Fis, day of Nature.

Alissa silently wakes me up before Ciel and Lina awaken. She silently leaves the room after that, I sigh as the blessing makes the world blander again.

My [Space Magic] increased by 2 (now 11+22). Productive theory class strikes again.

I wake up the naked beauties with a kiss. Lina smiles and gets up to help Alissa. I hold Ciel back and she raises an eyebrow.

"Feeling lonely, old man?" She asks.

"Not really, more like feeling that someone is not being honest."

Gify pops into my shoulder.

"Gih."

Ciel breathes in deeply and lets out a long sigh. She sprawls back on the bed and looks to the ceiling.

"I, uh... you changed me, Wolfy, and I'm getting scared," she looks at me and I see she doubts her own words.

"Ohohoh? You think it's bad?" I lay down beside her and play with her hair.

"No. Well, maybe just a little. I told you I wasn't depraved and now I can't see Alissa naked without getting horny."

"That doesn't mean you are depraved."

"But I don't love her, all I want is to... fuck her," she lifts her arms in the air and drops them on the bed with a flop.

"And why is that bad?"

"I may be a follower of the Goddess of Love but I don't sleep around. It's why I was a virgin for so long, I don't really lack suitors," she smirks at me, then she frowns and her ears turn slightly darker as she sees that her words didn't have an effect on me. "It's just that I don't want to have sex without love."

"Isn't it just some other kind of love?"

"That's the thing I... I don't know. Ever since I met you my life never stopped changing, it's just scary sometimes."

I stroke my chin in thought.

"So that's why Gify doesn't nudge you or Lina forward, you might both be unsure of what you want."

"Gih."

"Lina? Wait you mean th-, oh..." Her mouth hangs open as realization kicks in.

"I don't know what she feels for you but she definitely shows some affection and some budding jealousy."

She covers her eyes with her hand and laughs. "You are loving this, aren't you?" She asks.

"Yes, deeply."

"That's enough teasing for me, you depraved old geezer. Let's go downstairs."

I give a peck on her fleshy lips and we get up.

Ciel sits besides Lina and pats her head, making the little girl beam with a smile. Ciel's gaze turns warm and we choke on tears at the sight of such a beautiful scene.

"Let's go meet Arantos," Ciel says.

Oh shit, moment ruined. She knows it, she's smirking at me.

There's an unusual amount of nature spirits on the streets. Gify drops from my shoulders and runs towards a group of bird-like spirits, then they start playing tag.

Gih.

Yeah, I still feel you.

Me, Lina, Alissa, and Ciel reach the temple. Ciel breathes in deeply when she sees the orphanage.

"Getting wistful?" I ask

She glares at me with the corner of her eyes.

"Now, seriously, do you miss this place?" Alissa asks.

"Of course I do, this is my home, my birthplace," she answers. "One of those children playing was me one day, until the priests discovered my healing affinity and decided to train me," she smiles nostalgically. "I once said that helping the clinic was boring, Arantos answered by bringing me outside and having me watch as they hunted goblins."

I lift an eyebrow. That sounds traumatic.

"I knew it then that I wanted to travel this dangerous world, but I would have to get stronger first," she continues.

Okay, not traumatic, actually totally normal for the people of this world.

"Arantos used to fight?" Alissa asks, incredulous.

"He's a mage, even someone like him can keep up. Though he used to only be slightly chubby, marrying made him get, uh, rounder," she smiles wryly.

"I'll definitely not become like that," I say.

"Hana won't let you," Alissa says.

Lina nods repeatedly.

We cross the orphanage and one of the children stares at us, wide eyed.

"Ciel!" He exclaims.

"Ciel?"

"Ciel...?"

"Ciel!"

"Ciel!"

"CIEEL!"

Oh Gods. A swarm of children run out of the orphanage and surrounds her.

She smiles at us wryly and starts to appease the mob.

"I'm only here to visit. I'm sorry, I have some business with Arantos, I have to leave," she says patting as many heads as she can.

"Awn..."

"Awn..."

"Noo..."

A minute later and with a few priestesses helping, the children are appeased. Ciel finally walks free and rejoins us.

"You really are popular," Lina says.

Ciel shrugs. "The other priestesses say I'm too soft," she says, "I guess I'm just not a cranky old woman who wants her own army of child soldiers.

"What? Child soldiers?" I turn my head to stare at Ciel slack-jawed.

"That's a joke," she gives me a withering look.

"Hyperbole, actually," Lina adds.

"Oh, right. It's just that in my world there's a small problem with child soldiers and I kind of took you seriously. Anyway, why did you say it like that? I didn't really understand the joke."

"Most orphans join the town guard when they come of age so most priests want to treat them like they are soldier trainees," Ciel says, "but children don't really have the discipline to behave like little soldiers."

"I did," Alissa says, "I was living by my own when I was 13."

"You, uh... you are kind of a special case," I say.

"Yeah, no one is trained to always wake up before your master so you can give him a blowjob," Ciel says with smirk.

Alissa shrugs.

"Just saying..."

"Say, Alissa, don't you want to go play with the children?" Ciel asks.

Alissa's posture stiffens and her eyes lock forward.

"If you want you should. I will be fine," I say.

Alissa looks at me with large puppy eyes that turn into eyes of worry.

"I will be fine," I repeat, I grab her hand and kiss it. "It's annoying to lose the blessing but I can deal with it, go have fun."

She bites her lips and looks back. She gives me a peck on the lips and goes towards the children.

"She likely didn't have much of a normal childhood," I say.

"Yeah..." Ciel agrees and Lina nods along.

We move on to the priests quarters and Ciel takes us to the guest room, still as cozy and humble as ever. Arantos arrives on the room carrying a large tray with some snacks and tea. The chubby man looks quite chipper.

"Good morning, Mr. Ryder, Miss Lina, and Ciel," his gentle voice tickles my ears, we nod back in greeting. "Did you have breakfast yet?"

"Only a light one," Ciel says, she quickly grabs a small sandwich. "Thank you."

"Been a while since we last saw but Ciel has been keeping me up to date with your adventures," he smiles warmly and adjusts his half-circle glasses, "I see you acquired some scars."

I see you lost more hair. His nearly bald head shines on the morning light.

"Mementos from certain battles," I say and pass my hand through the scar in my throat.

He nods, "Certain experiences must not be forgotten..."

"Anyway," Ciel interrupts, "I want to take Lina to the library, can I let her have a look?"

He takes a look at Lina and smiles to her.

"As long as you stay with her," he responds. "Be careful with certain tomes, they are in dire need of being rewritten and will crumble if you are not careful."

Lina nods repeatedly. Ciel grabs her hand and the two go away.

An opportunity to see the temple's books is worthy of skipping a day of her enchanting classes.

As Ciel leaves Aranto's gaze turns sharp and I feel a shiver, making me stop eating mid-bite.

"I see it was not a mistake to entrust Ciel to you," he says. His words and expression are in conflict.

He sighs and his expression relaxes, allowing me to continue eating.

"You are a good choice for her, a little too good," he smiles wryly, "it's hard to dislike you for taking her away when she's like this."

"I understand your feelings," I nod to him.

He sips on his tea and talks, "I hope you do, so you understand what she means to me," he turns his eyes away and sighs again. "What's your plan after you leave Rabanara?"

"Didn't Ciel already tell you?"

"I want to hear it from your mouth."

I finish my Dragolite sandwich and speak, "Once I finish my classes at the university we will move to the High Forest and search for a dungeon to conquer. After that I want to travel the world and visit the homes of my wives. One is in the Maoka continent, another is nearby at the Misty Low Forest, another is in Sommerland, and the last is in Mountainhome."

He finishes his tea and gazes into the distance.

"Conquer a dungeon, huh," he rests his head on his hand, "Are you confident you can do it?"

"Yes. With all of us together, we can."

"Unmanaged dungeons are much more dangerous, you never know what will come out of them."

"Still," I swallow a cookie, "we have been growing quite fast in power, as long as we don't get conceited we can slowly make our progress," I give him the most confident smile I can.

"Growing... I have heard something about your growth, of [Summoning Magic], specifically. A certain Templar had some monsters as allies during the battle with the necromancer."

I'm not really surprised he heard about it.

"If Ciel hasn't told me about this I won't pry but... you are hiding something," he says.

I pour more tea as I speak, "That I am and Ciel knows it."

He maintains his gaze for a moment longer to ascertain if I'm lying.

"You are a mysterious man, Mr. Ryder, and far too young for such mysteries."

That I am. I let a smile escape as I sip.

"You researched the monsters of the High Forest?" He continues, "Some of them are quite dangerous."

"Yes, it's why I brought Lina here, she's looking for information about the High Forest and some other curiosities I have."

"Food? Do you pretend to live on [Conjure Bland Meal]?"

"You should know I have an affinity with [Space Magic], my [Item Box] is big enough to hold a month's worth of food."

I don't even know how much food I have stored, I only know it's a lot.

"Hmm..." He adjust his half-circle glasses, "Money?"

"We have a few rose coins stored."

He raises his eyebrows in surprise.

"We are quite the successful fellowship," I smile and grab another cookie.

"Equipment?"

"We have all been fitted with well made Grey Berzerker leather covered in emerald scales and lined with Stal wolf fur. Lina is also studying enchantments for us so she will soon enchant our equipment even more. She already enchanted Alissa's warbow with [Loosen], she's quite talented."

I want [Wind Shield] next.

"Climbing equipment and such for dungeons with unusual environment?"

"I have multiple meters of rope, spikes, hammers, pulleys with a scaffold, and a flying dinghy. Our expedition to the Wisps of the Proud required such things."

He rests his cup on the table.

"Have you ever killed someone?" His expression turns serious, his voice is somber.

I silence the shrieking woman in my head.

"Yes, unfortunately," I frown and look away for a moment. "Didn't you hear? We already collected bounties on criminals twice."

"Yes, but did you kill someone, personally?" His gaze is unwavering.

"Yes, more than once," this time I don't look away.

He smiles sadly, "Good, as a leader you should always keep your wits about you, you will certainly have to kill more people if you plan on traveling the world."

"I know, I have already made my peace with it. I won't disappoint."

"I want grandchildren," his serious expression melts and his soft voice comes back.

"I will give you two, since there's so many women I have to limit the amount of children."

He chuckles and cleans the corner of his eyes. I smile with a pain in my heart, I won't be able to give my parents grandchildren but at least my siblings will.

"I'm sorry for this questioning but you must understand, you are merely nineteen, barely a man and yet..." He opens his arms wide and sighs.

"I know," my smile gets wider.

"Don't let the fame or the power get to you."

"I won't, thanks for the advice," I nod in respect.

"That's the only thing I can do," he smiles bitterly.

We eat more sandwiches and drink the tea in silence.

"Let's go see Lina," he says.

"Sure."

The third floor of the temple is the library. Multiple robed old men and women with glasses and tired eyes move about the lowly lit room reorganizing books, transcribing new ones, or performing maintenance on those not old enough. Rows of study tables with a small magic tool light are put in a circle around the stairs. The shelves of books also follow a circular pattern around the stairs. Even the marble of this room is black to keep the light from damaging the books.

Lina is at a table with Logan at his side. The large black man is hunched over a book and flicking through pages quickly.

"Here," Logan stops on a page and points it to Lina, "the last high elven kings, the last one was twenty thousand years ago, Arreira, the Unyielding. Died to the emperor in single combat, frozen in place with [Absolute Zero], burned by [Star] and entombed by [Fissure]. His army was wiped by another [Fissure] and a [Meteor]. Those spells created the Ultirei's Tomb mountain and the Loyalist Lake, separating most of Antano from Aloresta, the Wetlands and the High Forest."

"That I already know," Lina says.

"This is just the summary, the next pages show more detail."

"Oh, give it to me then."

"Things seem productive?" I ask.

Lina raises her head to me and smiles.

"The details on these books are much deeper than the ones on the university."

"We are historians, after all," Arantos says, "Rabanara is quite focused on combat spells so their library suffers."

"Didn't know you were a historian, Logan," I say to the large black bear. He brings a lot of contrast to the white little girl.

"Not a historian, I just maintain books here. Thought it would be a nice change of pace," he says and then smiles faintly. "The smell here is quite calming too."

I remember some article once said that old books and chocolate share a compound on their smell that has a calming effect. Just another reason why chocolate is love, chocolate is life.

"What's unexpected is your calligraphy, it is enviable," Arantos says.

Logan strokes his puffy beard with a hint of shyness to it. He says, "Father is a librarian, he worked as a scribe and taught me a few things, I even have two levels in [Writing]. Eventually I got big and the guards taught me to fight."

Ciel comes back with a few books. She blows the dust away from one and Lina sneezes.

"Achi!"

"Sorry," Ciel says and pats the books away from her.

"That was so cute," I say.

"I would have to agree," Arantos says.

Lina keeps her head down and her ears redden slightly. I pick up a book and look at the index, a compilation of messages from the Gods, the basis of their teachings. Quite interesting.

"You are rather thorough in your research, Mr. Ryder," Arantos says.

"I enjoy reading," I say.

Arantos smiles and speaks, "I will leave you to your reading, until later. Pleasure to talk to you."

"Likewise," I smile back and we wave as he leaves.

Logan shows us a few more books and leaves while we copy some notes. I have to put on [Writing] to create something legible.

"My hand hurts," Ciel says and waves her hand.

"You can go play with Alissa if you want, it's fine," I say.

She smiles and continues copying.

A few minutes later another priest comes by. He's tall and has an average build. His face is rather long, with his blue eyes and wild black hair he looks somewhat handsome. Reminds me of a certain actor.

"Oh, Bitar, hello," Ciel says with a kind smile.

"Ciel, heard you will be leaving soon," he says, his voice is on the lower end. He comes with arms open wide.

She gets up and gives him a tight hug, he smiles warmly and hugs back. Me and Lina look at each other.

"Yes, I will be traveling the world," she breaks the hug and pushes him. Then with a little awkwardness she points to me, "This is my fiance, Wolf Ryder, and our slave, Lina."

"Oh?" He looks at me with a frown. "Oh, that Wolf Ryder?"

"Depends on what you heard about me," I say with a smile.

"The man who killed the Symbol of Hate and participated in the goblin village subjugation?," He says and raises and eyebrow at me.

"Yes that's me."

"Who also has a peculiar appetite for the other sex," he frowns again. Quite expressive those eyebrows.

"Not sure about that one but I have three other fiancees."

Now his eyebrows shoot upwards, high into his large forehead. He looks at Ciel and she smiles wryly.

"This is your fiance?" He asks and frowns again.

"We all have quite the interesting relationship, don't we, Lina?" I say before Ciel can respond. I tap her in the back and her eyes dart between me and Ciel.

"Yes, our family is quite united," Ciel says while narrowing her eyes at me.

Come on, you didn't notice it?

Gih.

I know, right? This dude...

"I would rather keep my eyes to a single person," he says, he looks up and gazes into the distance, "I could then easily give her the treatment of a princess."

"I quite like the big family we have," Ciel says and glances at Lina.

"You could have one with a lot of children," Bitar says, his eyebrows in a normal position for a change.

"It wouldn't be the same thing," Ciel says and chuckles.

It certainly wouldn't.

Me and Lina share another look.

"You said you would be traveling around the world?" Bitar asks.

"After this month we will go to the High Forest and look for a dungeon to conquer," Ciel answers.

His eyebrows knit in worry. "What!?" His voice echoes on the library.

"Shh...!" A scholar hisses at him.

Gihihih, guh gah gih.

No, I was never as awkward as someone like him.

"What!?" Bitar whispers.

"What?" Ciel asks.

"Why are you doing this!?" He hisses.

"Because we can, we are strong enough."

Getting the True Noble title will make my life, and destiny, much easier.

"You..." His mouth hangs open, "why do you have to go away? Why fight like this? You can always stay in Rabanara, to fight here and help the people of the town. You get the title and then what?"

"We travel the world," Ciel says calmly.

He hold his hands forward and his eyes open wide with disbelief.

"You..." He mutters.

"Bitar, please," Ciel says in the sweetest tone she can, "It's what I want. I'll be fine, I will be safe, we are strong enough."

"I will never understand you."

"Maybe you won't, maybe you will. I just have a different wish for my life."

Bitar glares at me and frowns at Ciel.

"I will be here for you when you get tired of all the death and danger."

"Bitar..."

He turns around and leaves.

Gih-ger.

Yep.

"You should reject him with certainty," I say.

"What?" Ciel frowns.

"'I will be here for you'. He's clearly in love," I smirk.

"He-he's not like that, he just cares too much for me," her eyes open wide in shock.

"Uh huh..." I look at Lina and she nods, "Denial."

"You...!" She glares at me and clenches her fist in anger, then sits down and continues writing furiously.

"Denial," Lina repeats.

"Not another word!" She hisses.

Gihih.

You too.

A note from Manasong

Hall of Fame of Patrons.

The patrons who support Rupegia shall have their names sung by the bards for they deserve the glory and honor. Their names are:

Lord Andrew Meyers.

Lord SenilePenile.

Leave a rating or a review to help me rise to the top or fix my shameful understanding of prose.

Take a look over my blog where all information of the world of Rupegia will be posted.

Join the Discord and discuss, or rant, or meme, or try and fight me so your waifu gets more screentime.

Become a Patron and read chapters in advance, or read the side-stories, or leave your mark on the story, or help choose the next artwork or the next side-story.

Chapter 34: Eccentrics – Part 2

A note from Manasong

Attention: to conform to the limit of mature content (more than just sexual content) allowed in a novel, I've censored this chapter. You can look for the uncensored version here.

We continue our compilation until it's close to lunch time. Logan returns and helps us store the books.

"Good luck on your future" Logan says.

"You too," I respond.

"You will need it more than me," he smirks.

"We will," Ciel says, we wave and finally leave.

Alissa is still at the orphanage, play-fighting with the children while wielding small wooden practice swords.

She runs between 3 children and lightly taps their swords away. A 4th sneaks behind her and stabs her in the back.

"Noo~... I'm slain!" She holds the kids sword below her arm and dramatically drops to the floor.

"The fox monster is slain!" The stabby kid raises his arms in the air.

"For the emperor!" Yells another.

"Sir Bahaadur has slain the fox monster!" Yells a second.

Two other kids grab Bahaadur's wrists and raise them in the air.

"For the empire!"

The other kids watching clap. I see quite a number of them look tired and sweaty.

Alissa sits down and stretches. Her yellow shirt is sweaty and wrinkled, her black pants are dirty, her hair is disheveled.

"It's time to prepare lunch!" A priestess yells as she comes out of the orphanage. She waves to Ciel when she notices us.

"Kay!"

"Let's go."

"Coming!"

The kids gather their things and go inside.

A little girl approaches the smiling fox and says, "Thanks, Miss Alissa."

"No problem, we all had fun, right?" She pats her head.

The little girl nods and scurries away towards the orphanage.

Alissa stands up and stretches. "Some of these kids are so fast, I thought I was getting rusty," she says.

"The orphanage gathers attracts children quite often," Ciel says. "Every year I was surprised at the way they grew and changed."

"I believe that."

Alissa takes a quick bath and we prepare lunch. Mutton stir fried with assorted vegetables on my Worcestershire sauce. Bread to accompany.

"This sauce got really popular with the priests," Ciel says.

"If I could get a few ingredients I could improve it some more," I say.

"Maybe you should open a company then," Lina says.

"Maybe you should open a company in my name."

Lina twiddles her thumbs in thought.

This [Nature Magic] class was free so I spend time using [Vine Weapon] to create javelins for throwing. More advanced mages can even make bows using this spell. With around 5 points in [Throw] I can deal some considerable damage though I wonder how practical this is. The mana cost is certainly quite cheap but a [Lightning Bolt] is still instantaneous.

Using it for disabling shields is a good option. I think that it's most useful when dealing with large monsters, a javelin deep into their skin would greatly disrupt their muscles and even do more damage as the monster moves. Though it seems quite painful.

I feel that Alissa went to visit Carmen again. That milf is certainly teaching her a few things.

"Wolfy! Give me attention!" Roxanne demands.

I open my arms and she jumps into my lap. Her "cannonball" makes large waves on the bath, sending lots of water over the border.

I cough the water that entered my mouth and give her a glare.

"Massage my horns," she pokes me in the chest with her two spiral black horns.

"You, uh, you not going to 'change'?" I ask.

"Ohohoh, only if you do it with lube and too fast," she smirks at me evilly.

"Alright."

She straddles me and lowers her head, giving me reach to her horns. She shivers and moans while I run my hand through them and apply [Massage]. They are not completely hard, they squish a bit and feel like hard rubber.

The girls look at her warily, as if she's a bomb about to blow.

"I want your body tonight. I'm doing well in converting my body to fire I just need to feel you cast the spell some more."

"Oh? That's quite the progress."

"Yep! I'm also making my own chant."

She senses my unsheathing sword and decides to begin our little duel.

But as our fight progresses, I feel myself gradually become intoxicated by her allure, then her eyes lock into mine, and the world fades. The only thing in my mind becomes her beautiful body, her pair, her flower slapping into my hips, greedy for more of my seed. Her eyes become larger and larger, her presence wraps around my body and I feel like I'm drowning, drowning in her.

"Holy shit, she actually charmed him," Ciel says.

I need to do her, I need to do her, hard!

The mist dissipates and my mind clears. My body hurts from exertion, and my members throb in pain. I collapse on the bath, I feel like I ran a marathon.

"Wow, I didn't know I could do that," Roxanne says.

"Makes sense, The God of Creation used the myth that some women would charm and drain vitality of men through plowing to create the Succubus race," Lina says.

"Yeah but, I didn't know we could actually do something like this."

"Could be related to Gify and how our minds connect," Alissa says. "I know I improved from showing my heart to Wolfy. My ass disagrees, though."

"Let's not... do this often... because it's... really draining," I say.

"Now you know who tames who," Roxanne smirks evilly.

"I will do you from behind," I say flatly, "no [Heal]."

"Hahaha..." She looks away, "Just joking, yes, just joking."

After dinner we are back inside the bath, this time it's for training, not that it won't degenerate into making love soon enough since me and Roxanne are naked.

"Turn my heart into fire. Fill my blood with heat. Turn my flesh into flame. Let them cower and retreat! AAAAAH...! Feel my anger! [Heart of Fire]!"

Roxanne's body bursts into flame and she turns into the most alluring fire elemental alive.

"I can turn my body into fire now!" She exclaims, her voice has an ethereal reverb to it.

"Ooh..."

We all clap.

I cast my own [Heart of Fire] and turn into the hottest male fire elemental alive, or that's what the girls would have me believe.

"Come," I say. I open my arms wide for her and she jumps to me.

Oh Gods I feel weird as hell.

Our flames mix and it feels like there's something disgusting inside my body moving about. Reminds me of the Mage's Trap poison.

"Uugh," Roxanne groans, "let's not do that again.

"Yes."

"Hm? Felt something?" Hana asks.

"Felt really weird to mix our flames," I answer.

I recast the spell multiple times for Roxanne to copy while the other girls go do their own things. Alissa stays in the bath and practices her [Double Image].

Today is the 8th. Ros, day of Space.

My alarm clock is Alissa due to the soreness of yesterday. I use [Heal] and even apply some of the high elven skin care products to make the skin less irritated.

My "Piety" and [Fire Magic] increased by 1 (now 15 and 0+4). Alissa's "Charisma" and [Illusion Magic] increased by 1 (now 12 and 5). Lina's "Piety" increased by 1 (now 12).

"Maintain your mind on the words so they last longer," Kyros says. "Eventually part of your brain will develop a sub-process that will take care of these things by themselves, this is when you will actually gain the skill."

"Sub-process?"

Sounds incredibly close to programming.

"Yes...?" He frowns slightly, "It works the same way as [Battlefield Perception], a small part of your mind dedicated to a specific task. How did you learn that skill?"

"By being attacked from all directions and forcing myself to predict when it would come."

"Oh right, adventurers," He chuckles. "The proper way is to focus on multi-tasking, you observe battles and try to predict outcomes so much that they become instinct."

"Hm... the way I learned was quite simple, albeit a little painful, and I learned it quite fast."

"Sure, for your needs it's perfect but for an Imperial General you need to go much more in depth. Aren't you the leader of Helios? Having more points on that skill could certainly help in saving your companions before they get wounded."

"That is certainly true, another thing that I have to train added to the pile," I smile wryly.

"Most of my life was spent training. For people like us the moment you stop training is the moment you die."

I sigh and nod along.

"Is this 'sub-process' also how you control magic spirits?"

"Hm? You can summon one?"

"No, but one of my women can," I lie.

"I see. Well, I believe it could be so, the spirits are simple minded and reactive, quite similar to how the skills that use sub-processes behave."

"Could spirits be used to train dual-casting?"

"I believe that is possible," he strokes his goatee. "I myself learned dual-casting by using [Battlefield Perception] as a basis and created by own sub-process, but it's limited to the mana vortexes."

"If a sub-process is something so common to develop why is there no skill related to it?"

"I'm not sure, I believe it's related to the fact that a single sub-process is extremely constrained in functionality while in general having innumerous applications. It may not fit the rather abstract nature of the skill system."

So it's too ad hoc for the system to adapt it into a skill.

"It's always quite interesting discussing things with you, teacher," I smile.

"Likewise, I must say you are among the best I have taught," he faintly smiles back.

We continue practice. I focus on my "auto-pilot", I believe this is the secret to dual-casting.

During lunch Lina is energetic and impatient, she’s nearly finished with the new shaft for her switch-axe so she wants to dive on it non-stop like Roxanne does.

"It’s just so close, but Gimbo didn’t let me finish," She looks down and her bangs cover her eyes.

"Good exercise to build patience," Hana says and glares at Roxanne, "I can see how some people need it."

The succubus looks away and casually rubs a horn in embarrassment.

Electric class had some chemistry experiments around electricity. The first one is about electrolysis to remove rust from metal.

"Don't any of you cast a spell right now, if a spark goes off and the class explodes I will take the hand of the one responsible," Professor Nellan glares at the class through his red leather mask. "And I won't pay for the [Regeneration]."

He mixes washing soda on a small tub of water, then he puts on it a small rusted piece of metal and two ends of a circuit tied to metal plates. He enchants a proto-battery with [Charge] and soon the water starts bubbling. He leaves the tub by the windows.

"These bubbles are full of pure oxygen, if you create a spark right now the air could ignite," he says. "We will leave it like this until the end of class. Now, let's move on to the second experiment."

With a poof he pulls out multiple glass tubes and a new circuit with a proto-battery he enchants with [Charge]. He puts the first tube in and it glows a slightly red orange.

"Neon."

Next is violet.

"Argon."

Next is a duller violet, pinkish.

"Nitrogen."

Next is a dimmer violet.

"Oxygen."

Next is pink.

"Hydrogen."

Next is gray.

"Krypton."

Next is slightly blue.

"Xenon."

Helium is missing, perhaps they haven't discovered it yet?

He then casts [Magnetize], the level 50 spell from [Electric Magic], on a cylinder of metal. He approaches the cylinder to the tubes and they glow faintly.

"This is what you can manipulate with [Electric Magic], it's a particle called the 'traveler'. The act of manipulating this particle is called 'itionization'. This manipulation of matter releases energy, which in the case of the gases turns it into light."

I only know this is ionization because of how the gases release light. The magnetic field from [Magnetize] can also ionize gases, thus creating light.

We make some calculations about the energy released from ionization and some other calculations about the percentage of ionization during electrolysis. Chemistry stuff that I only glimpsed a few times during high school. Now this is a difficult theory class.

"Didn't know water and electricity could meld so well," Lyle says. "Though I see that [Alchemy] and [Conjuring Magic] can be much simpler in dealing with."

"There could be many uses for those procedures the professor is showing," I say. "We could also research deeper and understand more of physics. More theoretical knowledge will always help with magic, right?"

"That is correct. It's also curious how there's no mana signatures on the water and the washing soda the professor used."

"Indeed, Roxanne only uses potions with mana signature, everything that has no reaction she throws away because it could be dangerous for the body."

"There are a few medicines that do not need mana signatures to work," Hatara says. "We sometimes use non-magical medicines to heal the body so we can conserve mana."

"Oh yes, I know quite a few plants that have some healing properties," Alissa says.

"How is that possible? How can something heal without mana?" Lyle asks.

"I think it's not the [Heal] properties that your thinking, Lyle," I say. "There's more to medicine than just knitting wounds."

"Oh right, you are a Light mage too," Hatara says and I smile back.

"What did those plants do?" I ask Alissa.

"Calming effect, reducing bleeding, anti-infection, anti-fever, and anti-inflammation," she answers.

"Why would you need those plants?" Lyle asks.

"Plenty of monsters at the Misty Low Forest can cause these things. It's easier to deal with it on-site than going back to finding a healer. It's also quite common to hunt alone with just a bow since the monsters there are more on the sneaky and weak side than the loud and big side."

"Does not sound like a pleasant place to hunt," Lyle says.

"It's not, Prowlers can envenom you before you can even react."

"What is that? A big snake or something?" I ask.

Alissa chuckles.

"If only," she smiles bitterly. "They are giant spider-like monsters, their body is long and furry, they have a very ugly human face, and bulging eyes."

"When we go visit is there some chance of them attacking us?" I ask.

"They don't attack groups normally, only when really starved."

Thank the Gods.

We come back and continue our theory lessons. At the end of class the professor pulls out the metal plate and easily scrubs the rust away with a brush.

"You can easily remove the rust from any armor with this," the professor says. "Though you should be careful with enchantments, you don't want to mess with the silver or gold lines."

We come back and Aoi is dodging Hana's wooden spear. Lina is lifting weights thicker than her own arms.

"I'm gonna get ya, I'm gonna get ya, I'm gonna getcha, I'm gonna getcha!" Hana stabs and finally she hits Aoi on the flank.

"Kweheheheh!" She chirps in pain and in a giggle-like way.

Hana sees us coming and stops.

"You know, I think she's growing faster than normal, I thought it would take years for her to get this agile."

"She has been under the influence of a lot of mana," Lina says. "They are partially magical beings so perhaps the more mana in their environment the faster they grow."

Roxanne comes out and stretches her hands for Aoi, who dashes to her and jumps on her arms.

"Time for her [Item Box] training," Roxanne says and goes back inside. Aoi reduces in size and then crawls up to Roxanne's shoulder.

"It shouldn't be a coincidence she likes to eat a variety of monsters," I say.

"Dragons would hunt anything living, including other monsters," Alissa says.

"She will grow into a wonderful dragon," Hana says with a grin.

I pull out a set of weights and start lifting them alongside Lina. I take my shirt off and see her bits get hard through her sweaty thin white shirt.

I wait for after dinner until I give her what she wants. She was getting visibly annoyed and anxious, which just makes it so much more delicious when I can immediately penetrate her without foreplay due to her wetness.

After I’m done with Lina, Roxanne and Hana are still wrestling while Alissa is casually rubbing herself. Because of this Ciel struggles to concentrate on [Holy Spirit]. She could ask to change the place of our training to the bed but her own budding depravity makes her compelled to stay.

Today is the 9th. Nev, day of the Spirit. Lots of people go to the temple today, it’s somewhat of a holiday.

Ciel deliberately wakes me up so I get a perfect view first thing in the morning.

"I love you, Ciel," I say and kiss her forehead as she swallows, "and you, Lina, and you, Alissa."

I have a very odd feeling, like I can just sneeze and [Godly Language] would appear on my skill list. I have been wishing to not learn it so I can hide this power from others so I guess this is what it feels like to suppress a level up.

My [Electric Magic] increased by 2 (now 9+14).

I spend my morning practicing the MP training from Kyros. I gather all my mana on the vortex, hold it for a few seconds and then let the mana return to me. It's rather difficult to do, it requires quite a lot of concentration to fill it with every single point of mana. It also requires some attention for you to know that all your mana is used, otherwise you waste time trying to pull one more point of mana that does not exist.

I open my eyes and see Hana sparring with Alissa. Alissa goes to strike and Hana suddenly jumps back, her sword trying to guard against something that's not there.

"Oh shit..." Hana exclaims, barely blocking the real strike, "That was pretty good."

"What did you do, Alissa?" I ask.

"Split only my arm with [Double Image]," She answers. She shows it to me by slashing at the air. Another arm grows from her existing one and strikes at a different direction.

"Impressive," I say.

"I wanna learn that one," Hana says.

Alissa plops on the ground and taps her belly. Hana smirks and cuddles with her.

"I recently learned why you two love to cuddle with her," Alissa says.

A Roxanne made of fire slowly nods to Alissa.

"You are burning the grass again," Ciel says.

"Tch," Roxanne clicks her tongue, her voice has a slight ethereal reverb, "I lose my concentration for a second and this happens."

Lina comes back with her switch-axe improved. She got a new shaft that is 1.2 meters long and transplanted its enchantments, the [Extend] enchantment was modified to [Morph Length], now it can elongate to 2 meters or shrink to 0.4 meters, allowing for her to use it for close or long range.

"Maybe at the High Forest we could use a better type of wood," I say.

Lina smiles and nods.

Blessing class is quite calm. Professor Alciel helped us to cast more advanced spells in area and I had to keep my eyes squinted due to the repeated rainbow shine of [Rainbow Shield] activating.

"Your area castings is pretty good, Wolf," Hatara says.

"[Redirect Mana] helped me with this. I have been casting [Wind Shield] in area for a long time already," I respond.

"You are quite the talented mage, makes me a little envious," she absentmindedly twirls her ponytail on her finger.

"Don't let Ciel hear that," Alissa says, making me smile wryly.

Lina nods along.

Hatara looks confused but decides to ignore our inside joke. She turns to Lina and speaks, "Anyway, tell me about that book from the messages from the Gods. More 'Piety' will improve my healing."

At dinner we make some of my hot Buffalo wings. Alissa bought baby Harpy wings, they are much smaller, softer, and filled with fat. I just don't want to imagine how they look like.

Roxanne happily hums along, her [Heart of Fire] is nearly done. Ciel is glum because her [Holy Spirit] is being delayed, she keeps losing her concentration due to everyone being naked and spontaneous steamy love happening all around.

The wings disappear leaving only a single one left. Hana and Ciel extend their hands to grab it at the same time. They stop and stare at each other.

Slowly their eyes narrow and the table goes silent as the impending duel makes everyone run back inside and close their windows. The Dark Angel and the Red Devil finally meet in battle once again.

Hana's fingers move in a wave, trying to startle Ciel but it is for naught, the Dark Angel awareness is as sharp as a knife. Ciel's beautiful visage distorts into a scowl as she shows the extent of her resolve to the Red Devil.

The wicked woman smirks and receives the stare, she enjoys the attention, and the challenge. They step closer to each other, their hands hovering over the holsters. A pair of gloomy eyes spies over the crack in the window only to be pulled down by a pair of pale hands.

A dragon casually crosses the streets, the scales tinkling and reflecting in the Sun. The two duelists are like statues, their breathing slows and their hands stop trembling, their eyes narrow, their focus is so deep they can see a single speck of dust moving as the wind blows.

A bird chirps. The duelists draw and fire. A small piece of metal falls in the ground, two bullets met in the air and annihilated each other. The Dark Angel is faster but the Devil is more cunning, she dodges the second bullet with a blur and fires repeatedly. The Dark Angel is at a loss, her accurate strikes are thrown off, she can only watch in horror as the bullets come to her.

In a last ditch effort the Dark Angel dodges and saves herself, she rolls away from the street and into safety. She's wounded but not dead, she will live to fight another day.

The Red Devil casually strolls towards the prize. She bleeds but she will live, her wounds are nothing in compared with the Dark Angel.

"You are cleaning this mess," Alissa says.

"Sorry..." Ciel mutters as she collects the cutlery thrown around the table.

"Not sorry," Hana says and takes another bite.

A note from Manasong

Hall of Fame of Patrons.

The patrons who support Rupegia shall have their names sung by the bards for they deserve the glory and honor. Their names are:

Lord Andrew Meyers.

Lord SenilePenile.

Leave a rating or a review to help me rise to the top or fix my shameful understanding of prose.

Take a look over my blog where all information of the world of Rupegia will be posted.

Join the Discord and discuss, or rant, or meme, or try and fight me so your waifu gets more screentime.

Become a Patron and read chapters in advance, or read the side-stories, or leave your mark on the story, or help choose the next artwork or the next side-story.

Chapter 34: Eccentrics – Part 3

A note from Manasong

Attention: to conform to the limit of mature content (more than just sexual content) allowed in a novel, I've censored this chapter. You can look for the uncensored version here.

Today is the 10th. Tann, day of darkness. People don't like to go out today so it is kind of a holiday.

"Acho!" I sneeze as I open my eyes.

Roxanne snickers, her tail waving at me. Alissa chokes and struggles to swallow. She slaps Roxanne’s tail and makes her jump in surprise.

My [Blessing Magic] increased by 1 (now 4+21), my MP increased by 70 now (850). Kyro’s MP training technique works quite well, even Roxanne is satisfied.

Hana learned [Illusion Magic] with 1 point.

At 5 points of [Godly Language] I can give a 10 seconds boost of power to us with a burst of nausea at the end. With 10 points I can give a 30 seconds boost with reduced nausea. With 15 points I can give a 1 minute boost with minimal nausea. At 20 points the boost lasts 2 minutes and there’s only a slight discomfort and body fatigue at the end, this is the optimal point. I trained how to use it and the best way is to whisper to the girls or myself before battle, I can even use it during battle on an opportune moment.

"Good," Kyros says and smiles faintly as he strokes his beard, "I have very little new to show you, you only need to continue on your practice to improve."

"Thank you, teacher," I nod respectfully.

Kyros shows me all kinds of things that you can do with this skill. Turning them into mere puppets, inserting memories, changing their tastes, altering their body, and sometimes even forcing skills, the sky is the limit. Difficulty varies and it’s all temporary but it’s still incredibly powerful.

I come back to lunch and see the girls surrounding the table.

"What's going on?" I ask.

"Alissa brought Moody Juice, Turncoat Heretics, and Delicious Horrors," Hana answers.

"The, uh, what?"

She chuckles and opens space for me to look.

On a glass cup there's a red steaming juice that looks quite thick. On a platter there's stick-men cookies with a psychedelic color, they change color depending on the angle that you look at them, reminds me of that car paint ChromaFlat or something. On another platter there's 8 small purple clumps of wriggling tentacles. What the hell.

Alissa smiles at me and grabs the glass cup, after a few seconds without moving she releases the cup and there's a yellow mark on the juice where her hand was.

"Thermochromism..." I mutter.

"Thermo what?" Hana asks

"Thermochromism, changing color depending on temperature."

"Huh... Yeah that's exactly what it does," Alissa says, her ears flop slightly and her swaying tail slows.

"Don't look like this," I smile to Alissa, "The things that looked like this on my world weren't safe to eat, I assume this is drinkable?"

"Yes!" Her tail shoots up again, "You said your world never had any magic so I found some magic food and decided to buy a little."

"Ooh... Magic food," I grab the cup and sip on it.

At first comes a strong, ginger-like taste, it changes into citric juice similar to oranges, then to a more mild mango, then to black tea with honey, and finally to very sweet Gorgon fruit.

"Wow. It literally changes taste," I say.

"If you freeze it and let it melt on your mouth there's even more tastes," Alissa says, gushing with a large smile.

She heats up the now orange juice and it turns back to red. The girls all take a sip and only a small amount of it remains.

"Lovely," Alissa says.

"Quite good," Roxanne says.

"Meh, too, swee-t!" Aoi says.

"Gih! Guhgih geah gehger.

"Pbtbtbtb," Aoi shows her long tongue to Gify and makes a fart-like noise.

"I didn't like the first one..." Lina says.

"The last is the best, do the colder tastes get more sweet?" Ciel asks.

"Yep," Alissa answers.

"Eh. I liked the third one, after the citric one, it reminded me of one of the fruits from Sommerland," Hana says.

"Caaan I get the rest?" Ciel asks with an innocent grin.

"Sure," I say and the other girls nod.

Ciel puts the glass in the ice box.

"Now why are these cookies called Turncoat Heretics?" I ask.

"Because every time you look at them they change their color," Ciel answers and snorts. "Just like the real ones, always trying to infiltrate the temple by blending into the background."

I grab one and bite. The gimmick on this one is that it has a mix of fruits but the most prominent one changes randomly with a small popping explosion inside the mouth. Like one of those weird candy powders, Popping Stones or something like that.

"My tong' go' num'," Lina says with her tongue out.

"Don't put it all on the mouth, bite smaller pieces," Alissa says.

"Oh... Okay."

I chuckle and take a large bite. The popping gets so strong that it really does get uncomfortable.

"Meh," Aoi seems a little more content with the gimmick but the taste is average for her.

"I love it," Roxanne says and takes a large bite, "it massages my tongue."

"You are losing the feeling on your tongue from eating all that spicy food," Hana says.

"You are losing the feeling on your tongue from licking me everyday," Roxanne answers.

"No, it tastes like rotting fish like always."

"And you enjoy it very much."

"Girls please," Ciel glares at them and they bite their tongues with a smirk.

"Anyway, what's that horrifying thing?" I point to the still wriggling purple clumps of tentacles.

"Delicious Horrors," Hana says with a smile.

"I find the 'Delicious' part questionable," Ciel says.

"Bad presentation, again," Roxanne says and Ciel nods along.

"Trust me on this one, it's pretty good," Hana says.

"Of course you are the one who likes the disgusting food," Roxanne says with an eye roll.

"Yeah just like how I like eating your floweeer!"

That translated well into English.

"Please!" Ciel gives them a withering look. "Alissa, continue."

"Don't chew on this one," Alissa says with an evil smile, "Seriously, don't chew, let it on your mouth for a few seconds and swallow."

Oh boy.

Everyone looks at me, even Gify. I shrug and put it on my mouth.

Oh Gods! I'm being kissed by multiple tongues! The tentacles unclumped themselves and started crawling all over my mouth. They stimulate my tongue just like a kiss. Tastes like grape.

I swallow and shudder as the wriggling doesn't stop. Now I feel them inside me, crawling and tickling me where I can't reach.

"Alissa! What in the..." I stop talking as another shudder runs through my entire body.

Alissa and Hana chuckle as they watch my suffering. After around 10 seconds the wriggling stops.

"Betrayal! Again!" I protest.

"I'll make it up to you," Alissa says and pats my head.

"I demand aggressive cuddling."

"Your wish is my command," Alissa says, she and Hana bows. "Now, the rest," she looks at the other girls who stare at each other nervously.

"It's not so bad," I say, "at first it feels like kisses."

"Kiss?" Aoi asks, tilting her head.

"Uh, yes, kiss."

Aoi jumps to the platter and eats one, Gify follows her. They immediately start giggling and rolling on the table.

"Now that is adorable," Ciel says and Lina nods.

The next are Alissa, Hana, and Lina. They shudder but also giggle with the tickling.

Ciel and Roxanne look at each other and sigh. They close their eyes and throw a clump on their mouths.

"Ahhn...!" Roxanne moans, "It's stirring... My insides! Aahhn~...!"

Ciel shudders uncontrollably and holds a hand in front of her mouth to muffle the constant giggling.

"Well, it makes sense for Ciel to be like this because of her foot fetish, maybe she's more sensitive to tickling or something," Hana says, "But Roxanne...?"

"I have an idea, it relates to a certain thing about tentacles..." I say.

Hana lifts and eyebrow at me.

"More weird shit from your world?"

"Yeah..."

"Maybe we can find something similar on a lewd shop."

"If not then we could develop a spell for it," I smirk, "If it was made for the food we can recreate it on something bigger and not edible."

"Yes, yes," an evil glint on her eyes, "We could use Alissa to test how a normal person would fare."

Alissa shudders and blushes.

"I don't get it?" Lina asks.

"You are too innocent" I say.

Lina pouts and then shudders when Hana tells her what we are planning.

"Mo-re!" Aoi demands.

"Sorry, maybe next time," Alissa pats her sleek head. "They run out quickly since there's little magic food in Rabanara."

"The High Forest would certainly have more," Hana says.

"O-kaay…"

We have a normal soup for lunch. Not in the mood to try anything new with the feelings of having my innards kissed still fresh on my body.

During [Reduced Mana Cost] class I spend my time observing the "circuits" of spells. Slowly they start to make more sense.

Silvane and Nononya appear during break.

"Say Alissa, can’t you become small like Nononya so I can carry you?" I ask.

"Why didn’t I think of that..." She blinks repeatedly at the groundbreaking idea.

Silvane sighs, she runs her hand over her long ears and speaks, "Wereanimals have the best racial traits, Haaran loves my ears but they don’t compare to the furry ones you two have."

Garanae looks away and shyly nods, Hatara scowls for a second but then chuckles.

"What about the beastfolk?" Lyle asks, "Their entire bodies are furry."

Silvane shudders and smiles, Toroo hoots a laugh.

"Lionfolk are quite lovely," Silvane says and looks at Alissa. "But maintaining all that fur must be difficult, no?"

I grab Alissa’s tail and brush my face with it.

"Do you even shed fur?" I ask.

"Hardly," she flickers her tail harder on my face and makes me sneeze. "Part of our inheritance is that our fur disintegrates quite quickly when away from our bodies."

"Being a human seems quite boring in comparison," Garanae says. He runs his hand through his white-blond hair and frowns. "Animal ears are so cute in comparison to our boring fleshy ones. Now that I think about it, do your ears make it difficult to sleep Silvane?"

"No. They are quite flexible," Silvane grabs a thin, protruding ear and rolls it on itself. "They also regrow by themselves when cut off."

"Just like the demon race," I say.

"See?" Garanae points to a smirking Silvane, "They have all the advantages and none of the drawbacks, why even be human?"

Silvane shrugs, "Say that to the royals at the capital."

"Exactly, the supremacist faction is quite strong," Lyle says and nods, "It’s why the emperor has no human wife..."

"Say, is it possible to copy your [Fox Transformation]?" I ask Alissa.

"It’s a spell so… Possibly?" She shrugs.

"I heard that some humans copied [Stonebody] from living long enough in Mountainhome," Gimbo says, "So it’s not unheard of of racial skills being copied."

"You should start with the demon race," Toroo says, "Their racial characteristics are like a partial Transformation."

"Oh right," Alissa claps her hands, "They are mana solidifications but their souls still extend over their bodies. Wolf, what if you applied [Materialization] to your soul extension ability?"

Gify opens his eyes and stands on my shoulder.

"Gih," his body suddenly looks ethereal and he floats in the air, phasing through my body.

"So it really is the same thing, just a more advanced version," I say.

Gify turns back into solid and nods.

Oh Gods, I can become like Alissa. Animal ears! I want to be a kitsune!

"Hohoh, you are certainly breaking barriers, Wolf," Toroo smiles, "If you develop this it might actually be revolutionary."

"It will certainly be once the perverts get their hands on it," Lyle says.

"Just like Snow Weave," Silvane says.

I contain a shiver as delicious memories flood my mind. I feel Alissa’s tail sway harder on my lap.

"Oh yeah that thing is everywhere now and it has little use besides bed activities," Lyle chuckles and slightly reddens.

"They are quite lovely for sleeping on," Silvane says with an innocent smile, making Lyle blush harder. "It’s what they were originally made for."

Today is the 11th.

Lina wakes me up and she shares a morning kiss with Alissa. Ciel suddenly grabs Lina and gives her a morning kiss on the cheek.

"Morning," Lina says, beaming with a smile.

"M-morning," Ciel says and quickly moves out of the bed, her dark ass jiggles as she walks.

I fondle Alissa’s tail and watch the little girl scurry after Ciel.

"Who has the better ass?" Alissa asks me, seeing where my gaze went.

"I will not answer this question" I say immediately.

Alissa smirks and Ted tilts his head in confusion, something Alissa taught him.

You better learn these lessons soon, little one.

Morning is spent lazing around. Aoi plays tag with Lina, they both have similar agility so they are rather evenly matched. Aoi has some advantage on speed due to being a quadruped.

"Not on the kitchen!" Ciel yells.

"Kay!" The two answer in unison.

Hana does her morning routine of light exercises and martial arts. Soon she leaves for a morning jog.

Ciel prays and then leaves with Hana.

Roxanne is swinging on the tree in the front yard. She mutters something about mana signatures and inflammations.

I spend my time on the balcony of the second floor, trying to keep my soul out of my body without thinking. The secret to it must be on those sub-processes, I really need to learn them.

Gih.

Yeah, a lot of my progress is locked behind the sub-processes.

Alissa is on the table on a chair besides me, reading another book. A romance, obviously.

I summon a [Holy Spirit] and start chasing Lina with it.

Suddenly Aoi bursts into the balcony and jumps. She glides down towards the tree and nestles on a branch. Lina appears a second after and frowns.

"Not fair, I can’t glide," she says.

"Ha-Ha! Li, slooow!"

"Guh…" She scowls and turns around, I hear her stomping down the stairs and jumping over my Spirit.

She reaches the front yard and fires a very small [Earth Bullet] on Aoi, making her fall down the branch.

"Owwww!" Aoi cries and dramatically writhes on the ground in pain.

"Play fair!" Lina hisses.

"Fiine."

"You are the Gobbler!" Lina smirks and runs away.

"Ah..." Aoi rolls over and darts after her.

The rest of the morning is calm as everyone basically just sprawls somewhere and takes a nap. At 11PM we put on our jewels and best clothes and leave towards the Noble’s Quarters to visit Lyle.

We reach the front of the Rizek residence. A well-armed guard in shining chain mail stands in front of the black metal gate, every once in a while a small gem in the middle of the gate flashes with light.

"State your business," the guard says in a neutral tone once we approach.

"My name is Wolf Ryder, we were invited by Lyle Rizek for lunch."

The man nods and his eyes do not drift away from us. Another guard moves inside a small guard post. A minute later a proto-butler comes to the gate and opens it for us.

"Greetings," the man bows. I remember he’s Sebastian. He addresses us individually and asks us to follow him.

He’s a brown haired man with delicate features but a well built body, he looks to be well into his 30’s.

We pass a brick wall and pass by a hedge garden with multiple flowers and tea tables. A smooth cement path takes us across the front yard. A large hedge cut in the shape of a lightning bolt covers the view of the front door.

The mansion is made of yellow bricks, orange shingle, and white relief as decorations along the walls and windows. Three floors tall with low angled ceiling.

"Imperial architecture," Lina says.

Sebastian turns his head and smiles, "Grand Master Rizek is fond of the capital, even here he wanted his own piece of home," he says.

I believe he’s talking about Werner Rizek, Lyle’s grandfather.

We enter the house and see an interior fully decorated by tiles with flowing light yellow and blue patterns. The ceiling is tall and the air is quite fresh, I believe I feel a hint of magical air conditioning.

After a long hall with statues and a family portrait, we reach the main dining room. There’s only a large table near the center and a huge mirror that covers one wall, the empty space could easily hold a dancing party.

"Wolf!" Lyle raises from his chair and comes over for a handshake. He wears some loose white linen shirt with frills and a sleeveless doublet over it. His pants are straight and made of black velvet.

Behind him comes a lanky mustached man with evil and wild eyes, wearing the same clothes. His black hair is slick and swept to the side, his mustache is twirled and enviously long, his eyebrows are like a tilde. He smiles towards us in what could be interpreted as warmth.

Beside him is a thin and petite woman. Black hair on a single braid on her shoulders, very small lips and nose, small eyes, and a kind smile, certainly recessive genes. Her dark brown dress is wide and thick, embroidered with many yellow flowers.

At the table is Werner Rizek, an old man with a pointy nose and clean shaven face filled with wrinkles. He wears a simple purple robe.

"This is my father, Horvath, my mother, Helena, and over there my grandfather Werner," Lyle says.

We all bow lightly and Werner waves with a toothy smile.

"I am Wolf Ryder, these are my fiancees Alissa, Roxanne, Hana, Ciel, and our slave, Lina."

Werner is indifferent, Helena slowly lifts her eyebrows, and Horvath slowly turns his head towards her as I speak. The couple smirks at each other and turns back.

"Hohoh, Ryder, pleasure to meet you," he nods his head in respect and closes his eyes. His voice is on the higher pitched end. "Your fellowship is quite the interesting one, through, and, through," he puffs his chest as he speaks.

"Firstly, we must thank you for saving our son," Helena sends a sharp gaze at her husband for a moment and nods to us in respect. Her voice is very soft and slightly raspy.

"Yes! Indeed, Twenty versus six. A bard is going to tell that story," he gives us a very toothy smile, his teeth almost shine.

"Not the first time," Lyle says.

"Not the second," Hana says.

"Oh," Horvath raises his eyebrows, "I hear you are making fame in Rabanara yet you don’t show your face."

"I am rather reclusive," I say and smile wryly.

"Yet can’t stop participating on the most curious of things," he says.

Could they of know my relationship with Vanea?

"Please sit," Helena motions towards the table.

It’s oval, the Rizeks sit at one side and we at the other.

"I am not actually surprised that you managed to kill so many," Werner says, his voice is old but firm. He looks at Roxanne and continues, "The Symbol of Hate had very little mana contaminating its body, considering the damage I thought it would be the contrary. You must be specialized in [Mana Control], correct?"

"Indeed," Roxanne answers with bright smile, "I had much ease learning [Mana Control] so I decided to specialize in it. It came so easily that I learned how to dual-cast instinctively because of it."

"Ohoh," Werner drums his fingers on the table, "so you used Fire and [Water Magic] to create a steam explosion. With this amount of control you can create a very small explosion right inside of somebody."

"Correct."

"See, Horvath?" His eyes merely shift to the side, "This one can kill anyone with a single spell, nearly unblockable."

"Yes, quite impressive. But why did you never join a circle a magi?" Horvath asks, his wrinkled eyebrows wrinkle harder in a slight frown.

"Oh, I’m not the kind that wants to be chained, I love adventuring too much to give up on that," Roxanne answers.

"And the boy now has a dragonkin, a dwarf enchanter, a priestess, the Misty Fox slave, a small dragon, a nature spirit, and even he himself is quite the summoner," Werner chuckles. "You make me wish my wives were still alive. See, Lyle? This is how you choose women."

"Y-yes, grandfather," Lyle’s face stiffens and his ears redden.

"Oh, so you are the Misty Fox slave?" Helena turns to Alissa who smiles proudly, "I wanted to buy you for Lyle but the Slavers had control over it."

"How did you get Ghulam to choose you?" Horvath asks me.

"I saved Nour Asaf from the Orc Headhunter and as a favor he introduced me to Ghulam," I answer.

Werner nods to Horvath and smiles.

"You even got connections to Asaf. I thought about offering you knighthood but it seems you won’t need it," Horvath smiles bitterly.

"We are quite the adventurous group," Ciel says, "It will take some time for us to settle down."

"When you do, know that you could have a place in Rabanara," Werner says, "If not us then Alaraste would be very interested in your fellowship."

So they don’t actually know about my relationship with Vanea.

I nod and smile respectfully.

"Thank you for the offer," I say.

"Are the Misty Fox slaves famous over here?" Alissa asks, expectantly.

"Very," Helena answers with a kind smile. "Dedicated servants, experienced hunters, vigorous lovers, cute ears, what’s not to like? Alaraste was offering them to the nobility but the Slavers negotiated preference in exchange for more combat Blood Slaves."

Alissa’s smile grows wider on each word.

"We were looking for a wife talented in magic for Lyle, so your magical capabilities leaved to be desired," Horvath says, "But your clan makes perfect bodyguards, the weredog mercenaries do not compare."

Alissa’s eyes lose focus and her face turns into pure satisfaction.

"I heard the next slave is a male so unless if Lyle wants him we won’t pursue it," Horvath says with an evil smile and Lyle’s ears start to redden again.

"Is magic talent inheritable?" I ask.

"Quite so," Helena answers, "Sometimes even skills are inherited, so useful."

Oh boy, what does this mean for my children? I have shit tons of skills, how many of them are they going to inherit?

"Lyle asked for us to fight together," Horvath says, "I put forward a request towards Silas. Considering your record the harpies will be a simple thing."

"Do you fight at the central tower?" Ciel asks.

"Precisely," Werner answers, "I will be near, alongside the Dragon’s Bane so the danger of being overrun is negligible."

"The Cooka-monster is still leading the harpies so Alaraste wants to kill it," Horvath says, twirling his mustache.

Lina’s Trivia: The Cookachickadoodoolee is a huge, sapient chicken-man. It has a ridiculous voice and an overinflated ego. Its real name is something else but the Lord spread this ridiculous name as a taunt. The bards made a few songs about the banter between the Lord and the Cooka-whatever.

"Oh. So we will get to see the Dragon’s Bane in action?" Hana asks, her eyes glimmer.

Horvath’s eyes also glimmer, but evilly, "Hohohoh, oh yes, with premium seats. the beauty of the Bane is incomparable, it is the perfect weapon to end the life of that ridiculous creature," he says.

Lina perks her ears at that.

Hana and Lina kept talking about auto-ballistas with Horvath, Helena and Alissa talked about the history of other Misty Foxes, Werner prodded Roxanne with questions about her magic, me and Ciel talked idly with Lyle about traveling and knighthood.

Servants came, with a poof they pulled out the cutlery and the food. Glorious roasted large slabs of dripping and sizzling minotaur and Orc Lord, a variety of fruits nearly as wide as that on the Tree of Mana, breads so well made they look like pictures from gourmet magazines. My stomach feels so posh.

Lyle’s parents were a little annoying with their prodding, but now that my position is known they are more pleasant. Since they can’t really bring us under their fold so easily they would rather keep us close.

A note from Manasong

Hall of Fame of Patrons.

The patrons who support Rupegia shall have their names sung by the bards for they deserve the glory and honor. Their names are:

Lord Andrew Meyers.

Lord SenilePenile.

Leave a rating or a review to help me rise to the top or fix my shameful understanding of prose.

Take a look over my blog where all information of the world of Rupegia will be posted.

Join the Discord and discuss, or rant, or meme, or try and fight me so your waifu gets more screentime.

Become a Patron and read chapters in advance, or read the side-stories, or leave your mark on the story, or help choose the next artwork or the next side-story.

Roxanne's Origin: What of My Future? - Teaser

A note from Manasong

Revamped on 19/05/2023.

This chapter is not required to read to understand the main story, this is only a side-story.

This is a teaser for the patreon-only side stories I'm writing.

Each chapter has 3 parts and the first part of any new storyline I will make public as a teaser. I'm planning for the main cast to have at least 3 chapters of side-stories.

The squawking of the seagulls attracts my eyes, so I look out the window. The sky is clear, and the sun is shining, making all the little white houses glow so brightly that I suddenly feel like jumping into a cold pool. It makes you sweat just by looking at it.

Then I notice the faint whisper of the waves, and a sigh escapes my lips.

I want to go out.

So I close my book and take a look at my wardrobe. With the sun so hot, there's no question that I need something white, so I pick a thin, breezy dress and put it on, then I tuck my tail through the back hole and choose some cute yellow shoes because I need something with a more striking color.

Now I leave my room and make my way to Mom's office. It's a short walk since our house isn't that big, but it's still a very quiet walk because there's nobody inside, so the only sound that I hear is that of my shoes clacking loudly against the floor, which is spooky, so I hurry up.

I open the door and see Mom doing accounting with her abacus. She glances at me once I come in, then adjusts her small, round glasses and continues writing. Her long, silky black hair is tied in a ponytail to keep it out of her face, which makes her gorgeous face look so striking that I just stare at her in silence.

Since she's the most gorgeous woman I've ever seen, every time she changes how she looks, it stuns me with how beautiful she can be. I hope I get to look like her one day.

But I didn't come here to stare, so I swallow heavily and quietly ask, "Mom?"

"Yes, honey?" she replies without lifting her eyes as her long, white fingers write with grace and speed, showing off her high "Speed" and "Dexterity."

"I want to go out," I request and brace myself for what's to come.

"Bring Shervin with you," she immediately answers exactly how I predicted.

So I frown heavily and whine, "But Moom! Shervin scares the others…" Then I realize that this won't be enough to convince her, so I clasp my hands and fall on my knees. "I don't need him watching over me. I'll behave this time, I promise!"

But she slowly lifts her eyes, and her cold glare gives me shivers. "Don't make me repeat myself," she warns with a tone that I know very well.

So I immediately straighten up and nod obediently, then she returns to her work, and since I'd rather not annoy her even more, I just skedaddle out of there.

Heh, skedaddle.

Once I'm on the main staircase, I stop because Mom warned me not to run down the stairs, then I sigh and resign myself to my fate. I dread the reaction of the others when they see Shervin shadowing me.

At least Mom's books are improving my vocabulary. These hard words impressed Khadima.

I go downstairs to look for Shervin, and I see Khadima come in, then she begins to wax the tiled floor. The old maid is calmly humming a song as she works while her tail flabs about, barely staying upright.

"Khadima," I quietly call her.

She turns to me and smiles warmly as she answers, making her wrinkles deepen, "Yes, Little Rox?"

"Don't call me 'little,'" I reply with a pout.

But her smile widens. "Sure, Little Rox."

I just can't get mad at this woman.

So I pout a little more at her playful smile, then I exhale annoyedly and ask, "Where's Shervin? Mom said I have to bring him if I want to go outside."

And her smile starts to fade as she becomes serious again. "He's not here yet, but his shift is about to start, so you can just wait, and he'll arrive soon."

"Okay…" I quietly accept, and she pats my cheek with her tanned and wrinkly hand then goes back to work. She smells of the flowery perfume from the cleaning products, but it's a good smell.

But now, what do I do?

The main hall is a bit chilly to wait in, so I go behind the staircase and take the corridor toward the backyard, then I cross the door to the kitchen and catch the smell of something sweet being baked in there, but I can't go in because Mom gets mad when I eat out of time.

I reach the end of the corridor and realize that I don't really want to stay in the backyard, but now I don't feel like walking anymore, so I'll just stay here. I really don't want to go back to my room.

The pool looks enticing, so I decide to sit down on the edge then remove my shoes and dip my feet in the cool water. I also think about just jumping in, but Mom gets mad when I do that.

Mushtal is working on the flowers, and I decide to watch him for a bit as he carefully inspects each one of them and… does whatever it is he's doing because I can't see what he's doing when he has his back towards me. But that's not important, what I'm really wondering is where does an old man like him gets so much energy to work like this?

He suddenly stands up from the patch and cleans the sweat from his brow, then he notices me and waves. He's wearing some jumpers with dirt on his knees, but I expected him to be dirtier considering how often he gets in the middle of the flowers.

"Hello, Roxanne. Refreshing yourself?" he gently asks with a tired smile as he approaches.

"Yes," I respond without much enthusiasm and kick the water a bit.

Then he stops and grabs his waist as he looks up to the clear blue sky. "Today is a good day to go out, eh?"

"Yes," I repeat with a nod, but not a single other word feels like coming out of my mouth.

Mushtal turns to me and frowns concernedly, then he sits on the grass near the pool with a grunt. "Feeling bored again?" he asks sympathetically, making me feel guilty for worrying him.

But all I can do is repeat, "Yes."

Then he ungloves his hand and scratches his head while cringing slightly. "Maybe you should, uh… find some other girls to play with. You know… someone who has more, uh… money," he encourages me, but his tone isn't very encouraging.

And I frown angrily as a bad memory squirms into my mind. "I did, once. They were mean, and I didn't like them," I bitterly answer as I look away, then I notice Musthal's pitying gaze on the reflection of the water, so I lower my head as the twinkle of the pool suddenly becomes much more appealing to look at.

But he doesn't give up and tries to soothingly encourage me again, "People of influence can sometimes be mean, but you have to endure and get closer to them until they're less mean to you."

"I don't want to," I stubbornly answer.

And we stay silent for a long minute.

Why should I have to suffer being near these mean girls? They hate me, so I don't want to talk to them!

Then Mushtal suddenly gets up with another grunt. "I have to get back to work; your mother will get angry if the flowers wilt," he casually whispers, then his tone suddenly becomes warm. "But think about what I said, hm? For your future." And I find his last words to be hard to ignore.

But I say nothing, so he goes back to working on the flower patch.

My future? What of it?

"Roxanne?!" a familiar, hoarse voice calls out.

I immediately jump up and happily scurry towards the source, my wet feet leaving footprints on the warm stone.

On the doorway, there's a tall, muscular, shirtless man with wide shoulders and a longsword at his waist. He has brown fur on the side of his arms, large hands that hang near his knees, a fully furred back, wolf-like digitigrade feet, and a brown wolf head, which is staring at me with warm,glacial-looking blue eyes. He's a gorosnegee-type demon race.

"Shervin!" I shout and tackle him, but he doesn't even flinch as I'm just so light compared to him. Still, I tightly hug his large waist, and my head is tickled by the short fur on his ribs.

"Y-yes, me. Careful with your horns," he awkwardly replies and gently pushes me away. He doesn't like hugs, for some reason. "Khadima said that you were looking for me?"

"I want to go out!" I exclaim with a smile as I look up at his face, and he smiles gently as he stares down at me, then he gently pats my head, something that's difficult to do with his thick and rough hand.

"Alright, then. Lead the way," he hums with a toothy smile that shows his fangs.

Now that Shervin is here, the guard lets me out of the estate.

The high stone walls that surround our home were suffocating me, but seeing the cobbled road, the white buildings, and the townspeople on their day-to-day gives me renewed vigor. Still, I quickly move away from this block because I don't want to meet our neighbors since that's where the mean girls live.

Anyway, I make my way to the central square, but it's just a short walk there, so we quickly arrive.

Everyone likes to hang out in the plaza in front of the governor's mansion, for some reason, so it's pretty crowded. The shops may be too expensive for the people here, but there are plenty of stalls selling food, and they're pretty popular.

I'm not hungry yet, so I just move on.

I heard that the governor wanted to remove the stalls so that the poor people would leave, but that sounds incredibly mean. The governor is just like the neighbors; she's a snotty snooty snob.

But… well, the number of tails freely swaying about without care is annoyingly high. Some are even on the way, which is incredibly rude, especially since most of them belong to men, as it forces me to touch their tails so that I can pass.

I kind of understand why the governor dislikes the crowd, but that doesn't excuse trying to force the stalls to go away.

What I don't understand is why everyone likes this plaza so much. There are rarely any non-succubus in here, so it's kind of boring. I like people like Shervin; he makes things more pleasing to the eye, and it seems like plenty of other people also think this way, especially the women, but I don't get why they like him that much.

Do the goros-types have bigger dicks or something?

While everyone tries to flirt with him, I look for Nousha, and I quickly find her in the usual place near the candy stalls… but she's also with the usual group. The albino succubus girl is with her brother, Firuz, which makes things more difficult. He became like a kheshm-type ever since we changed houses, and I don't like him anymore.

I just breathe in deeply and bravely walk up to them. I have to talk to Nousha, I have to.

But Firuz is the first one to notice me, and he immediately scowls.

Damn…

I awkwardly stop before them and greet him first while the others turn around to face me, "H-hello, Firuz." Then I look at Nousha, and she immediately hides behind her brother, but… why would she do that? "Hello, Nousha," I greet as I start to fidget with my hands.

"Oh, it's Roxxy," one of the kids casually remarks, but Firuz glares at him, and the smile on his face instantly disappears.

But then he turns his glare towards me and angrily asks, "What do you want?"

I just ignore him and move a bit to the side to try to get a peek behind him. "Nousha? H-how are you? It's been a while since I saw you," I anxiously remark, but then Firuz stands in front of her, blocking her from my sight.

"Why are you coming after her again? Wasn't my dad enough for you?" he harshly questions and takes a step forward, his tail standing still and pointing forward threateningly.

Shervin growls in warning, and Firuz glares at him defiantly, but then he steps back and pushes Nousha to stay behind him. She just obeys and grabs his shirt, unsure of what to do, and I'm the same.

And then Firuz turns to me and continues to lambast, "Are you going to sic your dog on us now? Are you going to get him to kidnap my sister and beat her? Why don't you just leave us alone?!"

"That's… that's not fair!" I yell back and stomp my foot against the ground. "I didn't want this, I didn't want any of this, it's not my fault!"

And he scowls as wildly gesticulates at me. "I don't care! Your mother already fired my dad, and now he's drinking again! Go away! Your family became just like the other snobs!" Then he waves his hand to shoo me away.

I don't know what to say… I didn't want this, I didn't want to fight, I just wanted to play with Nousha, to talk to her again.

So I lower my head and keep it down; it's all I can do to keep the tears away.

I won't cry.

I don't want Shervin to see me cry, and I won't let the other kids see me cry, especially Firuz.

"Sorry…" Nousha whispers sympathetically, then I hear them walk away.

I lift my head and watch them leave, but they don't even look back, then I notice that there's a crowd staring at me. Some obviously dislike my mother, so they look quite smug, while the others seem to give me pitying eyes, but I don't like either.

There's nothing I can do about the people who hate my mother, but I don't like pity; I don't want their pity, I just want to play with Nousha again. I'd even like to play with Firuz because he didn't use to be so angry like this…

I just want things to go back to how they were. But this will never happen.

So I just turn around and leave.

I don't even know where I'm going, I just let my feet take me wherever they want, and so I go downhill and walk across the market. There's a strong smell of fish and seafood in the air, but I don't find it too bad. It also attracts the merfolk, and that's something that I like.

Most of them are tall and strong Sea Soldiers since not many commoners bother to get a permit to enter our Holy Lands, but that's fine with me since they're nice to look at. Outsider commoners tend to be fat merchants, so Soldiers are definitely the better visitors.

"Hello, Roxanne," one of the vendors cheerfully greets.

"Hello," I flatly answer, not feeling like talking, but they're smiling at me, so I at least smile back a bit.

"How are you, Roxanne?" another asks as I pass.

"Fine," I try to politely answer.

"Going for a walk, Roxanne?" an old woman gently hums.

"Yes," I hum back and glance at her.

Then a young, female vendor cheerfully catches my attention. "Taking a stroll with Shervin, eh? Why don't you spend some time at my house while I 'talk' with him?" she suggests with a naughty smile and glances at him. But then she hurriedly adds, "I can give you lots of cookies again."

Getting free cookies isn't that great of a thing, though. If I eat them, then Mom will know because I'll be less hungry for dinner, so what's the point, really?

"Shervin can 'talk' with you in his free time," I sternly answer, making Shervin choke on his spit and start a coughing fit.

Then another young, female vendor shouts from her stall, "Hello, Roxanne! Please tell your mother how your father is always a pleasure to deal with!"

"Okay," I answer flatly. Dad's popularity seems to help a lot with making Mom so successful…

Then a rather desperate merchant gets in my way and offers balls of wriggly tentacles as he charismatically pleads, "Roxanne, won't you take some Tickly Tentacles for dinner? I know your mother will love them. You know how mine are better than even the merfolk's!"

The last thing I want right now is to eat, really, so I just dismiss him, "Another day." And I quickly move on before Shervin tries to intervene.

Then I finally leave the market, and the assault ends.

The smell of sea salt becomes quite heavy once I reach the pier, and the constant whispering of the waves feels nice on my ears, but my feet don't want to rest here. I continue on and find the shore, then I walk a long way until I get past the bathers, and I stop before a thick patch of trees, but this is a familiar spot to me.

There's a very faint track that only Nousha, Shervin, and I know about, so I go down the winding path, then I enter a small cave and take in the beautiful sight. The sunlight creates reflections on the stone ceiling that flicker as the tide comes and goes while the whisper of the waves echoes throughout the cave.

This is just so soothing that I'm already feeling sleepy, but here is also the only place where I can truly feel "alone"... though I do still have a shadow called Shervin following me.

"Can't you leave me alone?" I harshly ask, feeling very frustrated.

"No," he answers flatly. "If I do, you might run away and get into trouble again."

I actually might…

So I just sigh and sit on a dry rock.

Past the cave's entrance, I see a green flag on a buoy, which means that the Sea Soldiers are on patrol, so it's safe to enter the water. Not that I want to, I just want to stay here without the risk of anything crawling out of the sea.

"You shouldn't have come, you made things worse," I whine and hug my knees.

"You know that's not true," Shervin softly replies.

But now the anger is starting to boil, so I glare at him as I shout, "Yes, it is! Firuz hates you, and you made him mad!"

And he raises his lips in anger, showing his white fangs. "Hey! No, I didn't. You know exactly why he hates you!" he shouts back, his powerful voice echoing across the cave, but he isn't trying to scare me, so he takes a breath and sighs. Then he runs his hand across the tall fur on his head as he awkwardly apologizes, "I'm sorry, Roxxy, I shouldn't yell at you. Look, Firuz is a kid, and so are you. He's taking his anger on you, and though it's not fair, that's just how things are. One day, he'll calm down, and then you can become friends again."

I frown then turn forward again and stare at the water. The waving lights on the rocks are much more enticing than Shervin's pitying gaze.

Yes, I understand what he said, but I don't want to think about it. I just want to play with Nousha…

But… there's nothing I can do anymore, so I just… stay here for a while longer. I don't want to go home, and I don't want to do anything, really, so I might as well just let my mind wander.

The sounds of water and the waving reflections are mesmerizing, and for some reason, I feel like it's gradually soothing my bruised heart. At least today won't be a total downer.

But I become so entranced that I don't even notice as my mouth begins to move and speak absentmindedly, "Father says we're going to leave Mashoor."

"Hm?" Shervin hums confusedly as he also got distracted.

So I speak with intent this time, "He hired a magic instructor. He said that he got me a spot in the Holy Academy for once I'm old enough. We're going to Xane in a few years."

And his tone becomes gentle as he's legitimately happy for me. "Oh… then you can make some new friends over there."

"I don't want to," I whine again and hug my knees harder.

But he just insists, and his casual tone gets under my skin, "You will, soon enough."

I don't want to. I don't want to. I don't want to. I don't want to!

Damn, stupid, shitty, filthy... argh! Skritter-brains!

I don't control my mother, I don't tell her what to do, and she certainly wouldn't fire Firuz's dad just because of some stupid shit we did!

IT'S NOT MY FAULT!

If I could just-…!

I stand up then raise my arms above my head and start casting a [Fireball]. I barely have the concentration to chant properly, so I just mutter some stupid words and curses in a voice Shervin can't hear, but for some reason, it feels so good to do this that I can't stop myself.

"… and rip them apart! [Fireball]!" I suddenly finish with an angry shout and swing both of my arms forward as if I was throwing the spell.

The ball of fire follows my movements and flies into the waves, then it explodes, and a wave of steam and scalding water flies in all directions. But I only have a split second to cover my face before it hits me.

"Ow, ow, ow, ow, ow!" I cry as I rush to the cold water then sink my arms into it to soothe the pain.

"You stupid kid, what did you do this time?!" Shervin angrily yells as he rushes to my side.

He suddenly pulls me out of the water and splashes an HP potion on my face, then another on my chest and arms, and a third on my legs. The pain immediately starts to fade, so I bite my tongue and wait while it works on my burns.

Thank the Gods for my glasses. If that water touched my eyes, I would be in much more pain.

"What kind of damn spell was that?" he continues and looks over where my spell hit the waves. There's a small whirlpool quickly decreasing in size over there, and even I know how that looks impressive. "How much mana did you even use?"

"Not much," I grumble in a low tone and walk back to my dried rock so that I can suffer while sitting instead of standing.

And he puts his hands on his waist as he starts to ponder while staring at the turbulent water, "You know how to manipulate magical concepts? That must have been an explosive [Fireball]."

"I guess so," I hum and shrug.

Then he turns to me and smiles encouragingly, showing all of his long fangs and sharp teeth. "You have some talent; you'll become a good mage one day."

"I'm tired of hearing that," I mutter stubbornly.

He knows that; he heard it so many times since he's always following me, so he immediately cringes, and I look away. I'm also tired of these pitying gazes.

I grab some pebbles and start to throw them at the water, but my aim is actually pretty bad, so they never go where I want them to. If only I could cast [Fireball] without having to aim, then I could blow the snobs with just a thought.

But then my skin starts to feel itchy because of the seawater, and I notice that there's also some red gunk stuck to it from the low-quality HP potion, so I cast [Conjure Water] to remove what I can with my hand.

But then I get a naughty idea. If I use Fire and [Water Magic] properly, then Mother won't notice I dirtied my dress with seawater. I have fourteen "Willpower" and five levels in [Mana Control], so it should be enough for some mild elemental manipulation.

First, I have to heat my body and pull out the water from my clothes along with whatever is dirtying me. Dad said that visualization is the most important part of magic, so I conjure more water, then I close my eyes and meditate.

Fire creates heat that turns water into steam. Fire creates heat that turns water into steam. Fire creates heat that turns water into steam.

I imagine the flames tickling and licking the water droplets, who get scared of the heat and scream while running away. They feel the heat on each other and panic, so they begin to run in all directions and from each other, scattering into increasingly smaller droplets until they just turn into a cloud of hot steam.

My mana starts to drain, and my body heats up until it becomes uncomfortably hot, then I hear the water on my skin begin to sizzle and dissipate into steam. But the drain on my mana is quite heavy, so I quickly get tired, but I hold on to it until all the water is gone.

I open my eyes and see that Shervin is meditating on a dry rock. Good thing his [Sense Mana] is low, or else he would tell Mom I'm doing this, which would make her mad, and then she would force me to improve my [Clean] until my head hurt.

Bleh, who needs [Clean]? It's harder but more fun to do it this way.

Now I turn to the water again and continue throwing pebbles, but I end up stopping after a short while, then I just stare at the waves in silence. I still don't know what I want to do, but I also don't want to go back to my stone cage again.

Time flies while I enter a trance, but then Shervin suddenly stands up and requests, "Roxanne, dusk is coming, and I'm hungry, so let's go home."

"Okay," I flatly hum.

And we don't say a single word during the walk back.

The vendors are closing their shops, so the market is mostly empty by now, and the laborers are coming to the plaza to hang out and drink while the ones that loitered all day leave to go home or to a tavern. Then the merfolk Sea Soldiers go back into the water and turn the green flags red, so now the sea is off-limits to anyone not stupid enough.

We enter the estate just as the guard shift changes, then the tall gate closes behind us, and I feel my body pressured again. This really is my cage.

Then we split. I go towards the master bath while Shervin the servants', but as I'm about to enter, Mom comes out looking refreshed. She stops, and I tense up, then she scans my body, especially my clothes, but she gives me an approving nod, so I breathe in relief.

Good, she didn't notice. I just hope I didn't damage this dress; I really like it.

I enter the bath and see that Dad is still in the tub, so I quickly wash myself and jump in then swim towards him and nuzzle in his arm.

"Hey, my little Rox. Careful with the horns," he soothingly cautions me then starts patting my head.

His thin, delicate hands caress my horns; his unnaturally white skin is flushed pink; his dark brown hair is swept back like always because he doesn't know any other style; and his slender arms give me a comforting hug. I feel so happy that I entwine my tail with his and close my eyes.

"Did you talk with Nousha today?" he softly whispers in my ear, sounding a bit concerned.

And I grind my teeth, but I quickly stop to not show Dad how angry I am. "No, Firuz didn't let me because he doesn't like me anymore," I answer as unemotionally as I can.

"It's fine," he whispers softly and tightens the hug. "You're still a child, so friendships will come and go, but you'll make new ones soon. Have you talked to the neighbors' kids yet? Some of them are the children from Holy Officials on vacation here. You should make friends with them because you'll meet them again at the Holy Academy soon enough."

But I just stay quiet. I'm tired of saying the same thing over and over again, and I don't want to tell Dad how that meeting went.

Dinner is as usual; Dad talks on, and on, and on, and on. He tells us of his meetings and gives updates on the shipments while Mom listens and occasionally interjects to suggest something. But when she starts giving her report on the finances, I just zone out and focus on savoring my food.

The conversation at the servant's table is ten times more interesting, so my brain ends up getting a few scraps from it even without me actually trying, but I can't laugh at their jokes, or else Mom gets mad. She wants me to learn business too, so their talk is also for me, but I don't know why she does this since she wants me to serve as a Holy Official.

Then I notice that Shervin is eating a mountain again.

How does he not get fat?

Soon, Dad takes a breather to actually eat, so I take the chance to ask, "Mom, can you buy some more books?"

"Have you finished the other books yet?" she replies with a questioning gaze.

"They are too boring!" I protest and pout.

So she narrows her eyes into long lines as her gaze turns cold.

But Dad always takes my side and easily mollifies her, "Come now, Sanaz, she deserves a few more books to distract her, doesn't she?" And he gives her his best handsome smile.

So she instantly gives in, though she still gives a stern warning, "Fine, but you'll have to make sure that she doesn't ditch her training, Behrouz, at least until her instructor arrives."

"Yes, my dear," he smoothly replies then grabs Mom's hand and kisses it, making her chuckle. "I'll come home earlier to measure her progress," he adds then turns to me and lowers his tone. "I want to see this powerful [Fire Magic] she has that I hear so much about."

That doesn't sound so bad.

I spend most of my evening on Dad's lap as he brushes my hair, then he uses his [Massage] skill on me, which feels like he's slowly caressing the inside of my brain. If Dad is using the skill on the female vendors, then I kind of get why they're always asking me to tell him to visit them.

Eventually, Mom and Dad retire early to the bedroom, and I don't feel like talking to the servants, so I go to my room and look for a book to read, but no matter how many times I look at them, none seem interesting. If Mom bought better books then I wouldn't keep asking for more so often.

But I don't want to sleep yet, so I groan and pick one I've never read before, "In Vivo Experiments of Death Valley's Flora on Humanoids".

A note from Manasong

Hall of Fame of Patrons.

The patrons who support Rupegia shall have their names sung by the bards for they deserve the glory and honor. Their names are:

Oracle Maximillian Hübner.

Lord Andrew Meyers.

Lord SenilePenile.

Leave a rating or a review to help me rise to the top or fix my shameful understanding of prose.

Take a look over my blog where all information of the world of Rupegia will be posted.

Join the Discord and discuss, or rant, or meme, or try and fight me so your waifu gets more screentime.

Become a Patron and read chapters in advance, or read the side-stories, or leave your mark on the story, or help choose the next artwork or the next side-story.

Chapter 35: Thesis - Part 1

A note from Manasong

Attention: to conform to the limit of sexual content allowed in a novel, I've censored this chapter. You can look for the uncensored version here.

The symbol "-" denotes a section that got cut for containing sexual content. Also, if paragraphs seem missing, they were also likely censored in an earlier pass where the symbol wasn't used.

The lunch is finished and we move outside to the backyard. We sit on a porch surrounded by flowers, a few sofas for the girls while me, Lyle, and Horvath sit around the tea table, Werner stayed inside. There’s a pool with clear water and a few fountains in front of us. Deeper in the yard there’s a raised tile platform with multiple lightning rods, should be where they train magic.

Horvath glances to me with the side of his eye and asks, "Ever been to the capital, Mr. Ryder?"

"I haven’t," I say, "I would like to pass by one day, the Hyper Loop and the Throne of Ascension sounds like an incredible sight."

"You should see the Bay of Three Kings in the morning, the morning mist dissipating is quite the sight," he gives me a toothy smile.

"I will believe you," I calmly say and take another sip.

"You would do well to keep away from the supremacists. They have some bad habits towards women of certain races."

"We are quite united, I believe we can handle it. But I would prefer to know who belongs to that side, I’m not that knowledgeable about politics."

"Really?" He turns his head to me and raises an eyebrow, "Supremacists are everywhere. Haven’t you met any yet?"

"I come from a very quiet place, not much politics there," I smile wryly.

"I would like to visit that place one day," he turns back forward, "We left the Capital to keep away from the politics, a place as idyllic as you say sounds like paradise."

"It was…"

"Why don’t you return?" He glances at me.

"My life is here now. I take the good with the bad."

"A free soul through and through," he says and I smile wryly. "Where are you planning to go to?"

"The birthplaces of my wives."

"Bring some protection when you reach Mountainhome," he twirls his mustache, "The refugees from Aremut are filling their towns and some places have become quite bad."

"I see, makes sense."

He spends a few seconds looking at me with what could be believed to be a warm smile. His mustache really makes him look like villain.

"The demon race outside their Holy territories are also prodding each other. Skirmishes will start again."

"There’s no need for us to go so deep. We will simply go to Mashoor and then Xane."

"I see..." He quietens and we continue our tea without much more talking. The girls are more noisy, Helena loves talking about desserts and the golems are putting up their usual show.

Lina comes to the table and they start talking about the translated dragonoid books. Mostly about etymology. I see that Lyle really is a little tense near his father.

Dusk starts to show and we decide to leave. They give us a warm goodbye and Sebastian escorts us out.

Ciel drives the dinghy since Roxanne drunk a little and I want to be safe.

"More pleasant than I imagined," Ciel says.

"The grandfather was a little annoying," Roxanne says with a slight frown. "I don’t really want to divulge all of my secrets."

"It must irk him seeing a mage like you roaming around without belonging to somewhere more important," Hana says. "I have seen plenty of noble mages like that, quite patronizing."

"I understand," Alissa says. "Wolfy doesn’t have much of a presence so they must think we are wasting our power."

"If only they knew," I say and massage my temple. "I feel like Horvath was prodding me."

"Anyone who investigates will know you don’t have a background," Lina says, "Nobles don’t like mysteries."

I feel emotionally exhausted, too much socialization for my taste.

-

Today is the 12th.

-

"Tonight is party time!" Hana drums her hands on the table.

"Gih!"

"I will buy the ingredients," Alissa says.

"I will go with you, I want to take a walk," I say.

"Kweh! Walk, me, too!"

"I’ll go with you and spend the morning at the training grounds," Hana says.

"Let’s deliver some laundry on the way," Alissa says.

I store in my "Items" a large basket filled with mostly bed sheets.

The washer is a few blocks away so we walk there. The shop interior is decorate entirely with pure white and completely clean tiles, there's a few chairs for people to wait and a heavy stone counter that is waxed and shining. An old woman with white hair and a kind, wrinkly smile is on the counter.

"Ah, Alissa," she says and smiles as we approach.

"Morning, Vosha. A large basket as usual."

-

Alissa puts the coin on the counter, Vosha takes the money and carries the basket away.

"I somewhat pity that woman," Hana says.

"She likely has other people help clean," Alissa says.

"Still…"

I drive us to the hunter's guild to drop off Hana there. I decide to enter and take a look at the requests.

The bounty on harpies increased again. The amount of Dragolite attacks decreased, this means there's some strong monster in the skies of the Sea of Trees controlling air traffic, likely the Cooka-thing.

I look around and feel something is different. The atmosphere is much more… Friendlier. There was always a hostile gaze or two, specially after I started to gain fame, but now I feel the gazes are cordial, even.

Could this be due to Darean's influence? Now that he's gone his minions among the adventurers might have dispersed and not want to mess with me anymore since they don't have support. Helios is position 3 on the city defense, that's the only real strength ranking available and it puts us among top 10. Not that many people would be brave to mess with us now.

I turn back and continue reading. There's reports of Grim Giants on The Smirk, threat level 6, you should simply turn around and run if you ever meet one. Grim Giants are skinny old men around 10 meters tall, they walk in all fours and have some very resilient skin. You need a dedicated squad to take them down, even us would have trouble dealing with them.

Orcs are making a resurgence, could be that a new Orc Lord has spawned.

Alissa waves to Carmen and she sends us a kiss.

"Excuse me, Mr. Ryder?" A male voice calls out.

I turn around and see a pair of tall brown-haired young men with well maintained stubble's, olive skin, and well-made padded red monster leather armor.

"Yes?"

"I am Mellissus and this is Nectarios, my brother," says one of the duo, a handsome smile on his face. He has a more chiseled face, while his brother is more on the pretty boy side. Their hair looks scruffy but not too much, like it's deliberate scruffy. "We are from the mercenary company Katasko. Have you ever heard of us? We are the biggest escort on the eastern Mainland, our influence even extends well past Goldcross."

"No I haven't," I say, my frown slowly growing alongside Alissa's.

"We would like to invite the fellowship Helios into our company," says Nectarios with a perfect white smile that gives me shivers, "We could certainly negotiate quite a beneficial contract for such a powerful group of people. If anything, our other contractors are known among the elite."

"Thanks for the offer but we are not interested," I say, forcing myself to keep polite.

I motion to turn back but Nectarios lifts his hand to catch our attention.

"Please, Mr. Ryder, I'm sure we could have a conversation to find some middle-ground," he smiles again.

What middle-ground?

"Not interested," I repeat, flatly.

"There are many benefits from joining us, our company is a favorite among nobility. It would certainly be an introduction into higher society for someone as talented as you," Mellissus says, slightly bowing.

I stare at him, forcing myself to suppress a groan. Alissa's tail stands upright beside me. Even Aoi and Gify glare at the pair of obnoxiously handsome men.

"Our beneficiaries regularly search among our elite for candidates for knighthood. Plenty of royalty from the Capital belong to those who turn to us for talent," Nectarios says, his smile unflinching.

"Many of our elites retire early and open their own business due to the amount of money they receive. You could certainly create a prestigious lineage by working with us," Mellissus says.

"Listen," I give them a phony smile, "I am not interested."

To follow up, Aoi's nostrils flare and glow, she huffs a large cloud of smoke at the two men, making their faces twitch.

"You are a bother," Alissa says, she steps in front and motions them to the door. "Please, leave us."

"Katasko is large company," Mellissus says in a softer tone, "You benefit from joining, but the inverse is also true."

Is that a fucking threat!?

I maintain my smile and motion to the door. I see Alissa's hand tremble on her back over where her concealed dagger is.

The men bow respectfully and leave. Me and Alissa relax and we let out a very long sigh escape in sync.

"What now? Mercenaries? Why are they interested in us?" I ask.

"They were very aggressive and even used a veiled threat," Alissa says and frowns. "This is not normal for Rabanara. The Lord doesn't let companies bully adventurers, he protects them, us, rather."

"I don't think it's related to Darean, he shouldn't have influence over this company."

"The other choices aren't very attractive either."

I just hope Ankara didn't blabber. I feel like this could be another headache coming.

We leave the guild and go shopping for ingredients.

We buy lots of flour, butter, sugar, milk cream, Dragolite eggs, shredded blanched Dragolite meat, baker's yeast, ground meat, dulce de leche, cereal, a blobby fruit that taste like grape called Stafali, and a very peculiar bottle that Alissa removed the label of.

Aoi and Gify are quite useful for bartering, the merchants instantly get a brighter disposition when they see the cute dragon on my head or the cute griffin on Alissa's arms.

"You are not messing with their heads, right?" I ask.

"Gih."

"If you say so."

The streets are busy with people, announcers, and wagons. I'm seeing horseless carriages become more common lately, I wonder what's making them move.

The streets may be busy but a sword at your side makes you untouchable, people really don't want to invade the personal space of someone who's armed. There's no real risk of pickpockets due to [Item Box] so you can walk much more calmly, it's mostly trinkets that are in danger of being stolen.

The morning air is quite fresh. On Earth things could get a little polluted during the rush hour. I think mana could be said to "pollute" the air but it's hardly the same thing as fossil fuels. Magic tools are as carbon free as it's going to get. Now that I think about it there's not much smoke coming out of houses, when everybody can summon a small flame or light the need for burning wood reduces a lot.

We go back home and have a simple lunch, shouldn't eat too much when there's good food coming for dinner.

I crack the eggs on the bowl and beat them. The gnomic magic beater does the work as I drizzle the oil slowly. After oil comes sugar and then a little of not-vanilla extract. I heat up butter a little and add it to the batter. On a separate bowl I whisk a little of flour, baker's yeast, and salt. Add the mix to the first bowl slowly. Then pour the full mixture into the two cake pans and bake.

"Alissa, what did you dream about when you were being trained?" I ask.

"I dreamt of meeting you," she says with a sweet smile.

"That's uh..." I blush slightly at her sneak attack, "not exactly what I meant. Did you also dream about being a teacher, an adventurer, a dancer, or something like that?"

"No, should I?" She tilts her head cutely.

I shrug, "I don't know. I guess I just want to know if you ever though about something that's not related to being a slave."

"I did but I quickly abandoned these thoughts. Well, I still think about it but it's not the same thing. Thinking about these things wouldn't help me, my destiny was set so I only dreamt of what was in reach, not what could have been."

I check on cake and turn back to molding kibbehs with my hands.

"Feels so, limiting. Did you ever not want to be a slave?"

"I never really had a choice of being a slave or not so I didn't think whether I wanted to be one, I just accepted my destiny. In the end, I have a freer life with you than most people have."

"The freedom of your world is incomparable to ours, Wolfy," Ciel says. She seasons another kibbeh and hands it to me. "Even Lords, even royalty, they are all chained to their duty. Nobody is truly free, or alone."

"When I was younger I dreamed about having my harem, or joining one," Hana says as she kneads some dough. She suddenly turns serious and introspective. "I guess I really dreamed a lot about sex. Actually, I still do. I guess nothing really changed; I just fulfilled my dreams," she shrugs.

"Most commoners dream about not dying during monster attacks and living long enough to see their grandchildren grow," Ciel says. "I dreamed of that too I just also dreamed of traveling."

"I just wanted to grow old with Mithra," Roxanne says, molding flour dumplings in a teardrop shape. "After that I kind of stopped dreaming. Now that I'm with Wolfy I dream about the wonders we will see," she smiles adorably.

"You are breaking the dumpling," Ciel says.

Roxanne snaps back to reality and groans as the shredded Dragolite filling escapes out of the ruined dumpling.

"So finicky," she mutters.

"I dreamed of inheriting the shop," Lina says, shyly covering assorted fruit pieces with dulce de leche, "After being bought by Hilde I also stopped dreaming. Now I feel like I need to aim for something higher."

"What do you dream about?" Ciel asks me.

"A long life with all of you around me... I guess," I answer. "I haven't thought much about the future, my destiny here keeps me from thinking anything solid, we will see after everything is done."

"Maybe you should focus on [Golemancy]," Alissa says, "You said it could cause a revolution one day."

"Perhaps... I was a researcher back on Earth so I guess my dream is to simply keep living like one."

"I, dream, fly!" Aoi says.

I take the cakes out and fill the top of the first layer with the filling of dulce de leche plus Stafali paste and some cream. I put the second layer on top and cover the cave with cream. On top of the second layer I drizzle Stafali paste on a checker pattern.

Ta-dah! Stafali cake is done.

"Looks delicious," Ciel says, her eyes already eating the cake.

We fry the dumplings and the kibbeh. We sprinkle sugar on the little balls of dulce de leche plus fruits. Everything is coming along quite nicely.

We have our fun making food and eat a few during the afternoon tea as a taste test. It goes well with some thick tea with milk.

"So we would light a thin candle in the shape of the years and sing a quick song," I say. "Since we don't really have these things just use this scented candle."

I put the thick candle on a plate and light it in front of Hana. We all stand on one side of the table while Hana stays on the other with an embarrassed smile.

"Now, sing along," I clean my throat and start clapping, the girls copy.

"Happy birthday to you! Happy birthday to you! Happy birthday, dear Hana. Happy birthday to yoou! Hooray!" We clap harder. Hana closes her eyes and chuckles, her face red.

"Now, blow the candle away and make a wish!" I say.

"What is this tradition of yours? I'm sure it's made solely to embarrass the person on my position," Hana says.

"It is incredibly sugary," Ciel says.

"My people are soft-hearted," I say, "Now, blow!"

Hana blows the candle and closes her eyes. After a few seconds she opens them again and grins.

"There, done. Now let's eat!"

"♪ Oh, a drop of a noble's blood wouldn’t do us any harm ♪," Hana sings.

"♪ Oh, a drop of a noble's blood wouldn’t do us any harm ♪," Roxanne sings.

"♪ An’ we’ll all hang on behind! ♪," Hana, Roxanne, Alissa, and Ciel sing in unison.

They start the chorus. Aoi and Gify chirp along and the little golems dance in the table.

"♪ So we’ll roooll the old chariot along! ♪"

"♪ An’ we’ll roll the golden chariot along! ♪"

"♪ So we’ll roooll the old chariot along! ♪"

"♪ An’ we’ll all hang on behind! ♪"

"♪ Oh, a nice fat cock wouldn’t do us any harm ♪" Hana sings.

"♪ Oh, a roll in the clover wouldn’t do us any harm ♪" Roxanne sings.

"♪ Oh, a long spell in gaol wouldn’t do us any harm ♪" Alissa sings.

"♪ Oh, a nice watch below wouldn’t do us any harm ♪" Ciel sings.

"♪ Oh, a night with the pals wouldn’t do us any harm ♪" They sing in unison.

They sing the chorus again and burst into laughter.

Lina and I look at each other, we barely drank so we are saved from Hana's chantey.

As the singing dies down and the food runs out I cast [Purify Body] on the girls and give them lots of water to drink.

"Oof... what was that?" Hana asks, "It made even me drunk."

"Lava Jet, from the Yopparai company," Alissa answers with a wide smile but winces at a budding headache.

"Oh yes! Dragonkin brewers, no wonder, your piss water wouldn't get me drunk otherwise," Hana snorts.

"Dwarven Coffin is stronger than this," Lina says. "I only got a sip once but I can still remember the taste."

"Dwarves don't count, using magic is cheating," Hana smirks at Lina.

Lina pouts, "And your abnormal 'Endurance' isn't? It's our racial skill."

"Still magic, using mana doesn't count," Hana shows her tongue to Lina, who crosses her arms and starts thinking of a comeback.

"'Coffin'? Is that really the name of a drink?" I ask.

"It's fitting, gnomes and pixies that try to drink it will certainly die without [Purify Body]," Lina says.

"Dwarves don't fuck around," I mutter.

"Ugh..." Ciel regains some lucidity, "The hell did we sing?"

"Something we will never let you forget," I say.

"I'll... Just go to sleep," she says and grabs Lina, the little golems follow behind.

Me and Hana help out Alissa and Roxanne walk upstairs and they pass out on the bed, exhausted.

A note from Manasong

Hall of Fame of Patrons.

The patrons who support Rupegia shall have their names sung by the bards for they deserve the glory and honor. Their names are:

Oracle Maximillian Hübner.

Lord Andrew Meyers.

Lord SenilePenile.

Lord Hope.

Leave a rating or a review to help me rise to the top or fix my shameful understanding of prose.

Take a look over my blog where all information of the world of Rupegia will be posted.

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Chapter 35: Thesis - Part 2

A note from Manasong

Attention: to conform to the limit of sexual content allowed in a novel, I've censored this chapter. You can look for the uncensored version here.

The symbol "-" denotes a section that got cut for containing sexual content. Also, if paragraphs seem missing, they were also likely censored in an earlier pass where the symbol wasn't used.

Today is the 13th.

-

Alissa's "Charisma" has increased by 1 (now 13). What the hell is Carmen teaching her?

"Is it weird to have sex with Alissa's fox form?" I ask to the girls.

Hana shrugs, "It's part of her, if I turned into a dragon would you stop loving me?"

"Unlikely," I answer.

"Some of the demon race have some very different body parts," Roxanne says and pats her horns. "It would be very sad for them not to be loved because they look weird."

Lina simply shrugs.

"I'm only a little surprised you managed to, uh, get it up," Ciel says, "A fox doesn't really have a woman's body parts to get you excited doesn't she?"

"What, didn't you ever imagine yourself being pounded by a huge wolf?" Hana says with a grin.

Unfortunately, my name doesn't translate to wolf in Andraste.

"That sounds..." Ciel frowns.

"Hot," Roxanne completes, "If Wolfy could change into a fox too then..." She shudders.

"I know, right?" Hana says and grabs my hand, "Wolfy, please develop that soul changing magic thing so we can be fucked by huge dragons."

"Kweh!"

Oh Gods! Too far!

I simply cannot look into Aoi's expectant eyes.

"Let's talk about something else, anything else," I plead.

I start writing my thesis. I have a pretty good idea of how much information I should share with the university. This magic school is incredibly powerful, smart-turrets or smart-bombs are the cutting edge of technology in my world and I can do it here with much less effort, I know very well how dangerous this is. [Golemancy] will certainly revolutionize warfare, I can't be careless with how I introduce it into the world.

Part of the ethics of science is how to introduce technology to the world. For an extreme example imagine if the atom bomb was introduced during World War 1? The results would have changed the outcome of a war. The US ended a war with nukes and then the scenario changed, anyone who had it was almost immune to being attacked due to Mutually Assured Destruction, M.A.D. changed the world.

If I introduce this technology in Bestiaram they would reignite their genocidal wars. If the heretics had monopoly on it a massive wave of suicidal golems would be the least of our problems.

What this technology needs is time. I need to be very careful, very vague with how it works so it takes time for everyone to acquire it. Level the playing field so there's no one side with an advantage doesn't crush any resistance.

The empire doesn't conquer Bestiaram outright since even the average beastfolk has the strength of a soldier, it's just too difficult to subjugate a race where even the civilians are a danger.

Maoka is in a weird place since they are very pious towards the Gods which gives them a rather friendly relation to the empire. The real deterrent against invasion is that they have a mutual defense pact in relation to their Holy Lands, if any Holy Land is invaded the whole continent bands together to remove the invaders.

The golems could give the empire enough power to subjugate a whole continent with little losses. Disposable, mass-produced soldiers are the worst enemy of a country that is on a war of attrition, and if anything the empire is patient.

The current emperor may be focused on the inner affairs of the empire but it's not like he abandoned conquering the other two continents. I'm sure his agents continue to work to weaken the other continents.

Even inside the empire, if I give this technology to the elves I can be damn sure the separatist movement will flourish again. Sommerland and Dyrmorder are two other conquered kingdoms that would be incredibly happy to have independence again.

"Let's go make lunch," Alissa whispers in my ear.

I leave my magic pen and clipboard on the table and join her.

I pick up a knife and start to remove the organs of the Blopish, a poisonous monster fish with a very delicate and deep flavor. It looks like an anglerfish, it has a huge jaw, some large teeth as sharp as a piranha's, dark beady eyes that see in the dark, and lots of "feelers" all over its body, which are long thin whisker-like protrusions that allow it to sense anything that gets close and spew poison through them.

I slowly cut the belly and expose the organs. I find the slightly discolored sacs and slice them off at the base. I even put [Sharp Blades] on my knife, it's so sharp that it just slides through the flesh and the sacs fall off.

The worse ones are near the tail, they are very small and require a lot of precision not to burst them open just by stretching the meat.

In total there should be 18 of these sacks. They cause some very bad paralysis and it's the chemical kind, meaning that your heart can stop if you get poisoned.

I carefully cut off the feelers at the base so it gets easier to scrape off the scales. You can't bruise the skin too much, the fat is just below it and you don't want the skin to break apart during frying, making the fat spew all over.

When I'm done the smell of fish is deep into my skin, thank the Gods for our gnomic [Clean] magic tool as it takes off even the smell. I can't stand having smelly hands.

We fry it a la Milanese. Some pseudo-Worcestershire and it tastes heavenly. Leafy greens, some cereals, and a squishy vegetable. Tastes very refreshing on this rising heat.

We must be at the southern hemisphere of the world since summer is at the end of the year. Quite nostalgic for me.

The fish has a deep taste, it sticks to your tongue and you keep tasting it long after swallowing.

"De-li-ci-os!" Aoi licks her lips and nabs another piece.

I pat her head with a smile.

"Wolfy, do you want to visit Selina tomorrow?" Alissa asks.

"Hm. Sure, I might not see her again," I say.

"Hana should come too, she's fascinated by her."

"Who isn't?" Hana smirks.

After lunch I go back to my thesis.

Even my [Sense Soul] and [Redirect Mana] are dangerous. Being able to see the name and other characteristics of fighters just by looking at them is incredibly powerful, espionage becomes incredibly more difficult when you can't easily hide. Avoiding customs and identity checks is doable, avoiding being seen by just anybody that could have [Sense Soul] is not. And [Redirect Mana] could be incredibly dangerous, it's a potential that even I don't know much but I'm sure it could be a powerful weapon if wielded properly.

I could introduce this technology to Maoka through Roxanne's parents, but how can I do it to Bestiaram? I will have to go there and improvise. I would have preferred to avoid going deeper in there but I may have no other choice.

Now I have to create a chant. I ask Lina for help since she seems the one who would be most compatible with [Golemancy]. I give her a point on it and ask her to cast [Infuse] repeatedly while I observe the mana flow.

"Wow, was that the soul?" She asks and blinks repeatedly.

"Yes. Chaotic, no?"

"Yes, but also filled with, uh, 'structures'?"

"Indeed, you could also think it's something like 'organs'. The mana organ that I gave Ted and Suzy are just like that. You can play around inside the 'soul building' or whatever that is but don't try to actually infuse it on anything. I don't know what could happen with a randomized soul."

She nods repeatedly.

[Golemancy] gives me a cold, emotionless, feeling when I sense Lina using the spell. I enter a sort of trance as I try to copy what I felt, I will myself to the same cold and emotionless state as the feeling the spell emits. Like when you want to dance to a song I feel words trying to come out of my lips, heavy, alien words. Truly an odd magic school.

This is very tiring. I open my eyes to see Hana hugging Alissa tight, she's nibbling on Alissa's neck -.

"Are you two practicing or flirting?" I ask.

Alissa snaps to reality and blushes. Hana smirks and gives one last kiss on Alissa's neck, then she returns to meditating and focusing on copying Alissa's [Double Image].

I sigh and rest for a while, waiting for my heart to recover. Then I close it again and continue.

Warmth fills my cold heart and my concentration is disrupted.

"It's getting late, let's take a bath," Ciel whispers on my ears.

They all know how stimulating their voice is when they whisper directly on my ears.

Lina seems normal while I'm emotionally tired again. The skill system omits from the caster the chanting and all the feelings that come from it.

-

At night, Alissa and I tell of Katasko to the others.

"I don't know what we did this time that got their attention," Ciel says with a frown.

Her sentiment is reflected in the others. The behavior of that company is odd, we don't even understand why they want to intimidate us into joining.

Today is the 14th.

-

My "Dexterity", [Dismantling], and [Cooking] increased by 1 (now 11, 0+4, 0+2). Lina's "Wisdom" increased by 1 (now 13). Hana's "Perception" increased by 1 (now 10).

I notice something odd. There's the nagging feeling of something incongruent.

"Do you girls… menstruate?" I ask.

"What?" Hana asks.

"Once a month you feel odd, weird, sluggish, or angry, then your, uh, vagina bleeds. The egg inside your ovaries is ready for pregnancy during this period and at the end it slouches off with a small piece of the uterus, causing bleeding."

Lina and Alissa frown and look at each other.

"Oh!" Ciel claps her hands, "You mean the Gynaimeres?"

"No idea what that means," I say.

"The days a woman can get pregnant."

"Yeah, you should bleed after the period ends, well, some women bleed."

Hana, Lina, and Alissa raise their eyebrows and look at their own uteri.

"Your body absorbs the egg if it's not used just like a potion so I guess this is why we don't bleed," Roxanne says, "If you pay attention to the mana on your body on these days you'll notice how there's a hint of foreign mana on your uterus."

"But there's no other things like mood swings, cramps, or change in libido?" I ask.

"Not that I know of," Ciel says and shrugs.

Wow, I know a few women who would love to live here then.

"You said foreign mana, this means it already has a soul?" I ask.

"Yes," Ciel says and nods, "Every month our child dies due to the lack of sperm to complete the soul, the sperm also has a soul."

Holy fucking shit I kill millions of my children every time I ejaculate.

"It's why breeder-type of monsters want humanoid sperms or eggs," she continues, "Our soul is much stronger than a monster's but theirs can dominate ours when the egg and the sperm fuse. Also some horrible abominations can be made using eggs and sperm," she shudders, "The sperm ones are quite weak due to the small soul in them but the ones made of women's eggs are quite horrifying."

"I'm sorry but what the fuck?" I ask.

"Necromancy, you can grow an abomination using the egg or sperm. It's wicked magic, of course, but it doesn't stop certain people in wanting the emotionless soldiers that defiling a womb can create. Eggs and sperm are powerful, they are the creators of life."

"It's why women are more often mages," Roxanne says, "Our womb produces more life than a man's testicles."

"Is it, is it not like I'm killing my children by throwing away so much semen?" I ask with worried a frown.

"A child is only a child when it's born," Ciel shrugs, "Anything before birth is not important."

"What about premature birth?"

"Still a birth, premature or not."

"Abortion?"

"That's only for children of rape."

"Abortion from accidental pregnancies?"

"Questionable. If you carelessly make a woman pregnant, then you deserve castration," she narrows her eyes, and the others nod.

I open my eyes wide and look away. This topic is too uncomfortable to me.

"Gih."

"Yeah you are kind of blowing my mind."

Ciel chuckles and pats my head. "The way you question things always amuses me," she says, "It's kind of your charm."

I recruit Lina again and spend my morning developing a chant.

Genesis, birth, artificial, imitation, automata, modification, adaptation. These words float into my mind like a soup, stirring, mixing, transforming into other words. There's a line somewhere, a start, a continuum, a sequence of words that leads me somewhere.

The words blur together and turn into an amorphous soup, a sludge that refuses to budge.

I exhale a sigh.

"I'm tired, let's go do something else," I say.

"Hm? Ah," Lina regains lucidity, "sure."

We spar for fun and rope in Alissa too. When you live and die by the sword, turning your means of survival into an enjoyable activity and also a way to train is a logical step. It's why the Coliseum is so popular here.

"You look cool when you slide through the ground like that," Alissa says.

"A bit frightening too," Lina says.

I smile and slide forward with [Telekinesis] to strike.

Roxanne comes down and Aoi drops from her head.

"How's her training?" I ask.

Lina picks up a spear and starts chasing Aoi.

"[Item Box] is quite the odd spell for her to start with," Roxanne answers, "I also trained her in [Clean] so it helps her with mana control. She should learn it in a month or so."

"Isn't that fast? Alissa told me she took three months to learn it."

"Wasn't she a child? A monster like Aoi has more affinity to magic than a humanoid."

"Then once we leave I will start teaching her [Fly]."

"Kweh!" She stops on her tracks and looks at me wide-eyed, then she receives a blunt spear to her ass, "Kwah! Li! No, fair!"

"Don't get distracted so easily, even if it's sparring," she says with an impish smile. "We are pretend fighting, after all."

"Hmph!" She puffs a large cloud of smoke on Lina's face, making her cough.

We start to make lunch and Ciel and Hana come back.

"So, I have been looking at some escort companies out there," Hana says, "I think we could make a tons of gold coins by escorting one from here to Goldport by the scenic way."

"Oh, you mean going through the west side first?" Roxanne asks, clapping the tip of her fingers in excitement.

"Yeah, the main towns we will pass would be fort Erda, Goldcross, Escanso, Goloria, and then Goldport. There's a lot of merchants leaving next month through this route, they are going to take alcohol and dragon meat and distribute it to the other towns for the Turn of the Year celebrations."

Lina's Trivia: Calendars here are made in the shape of wheels. When the year ends you just "turn" the wheel a little for the next month.

"I'll look for the smaller companies," Hana continues, "The bigger ones all have their own hunters for escorting. And I'll make sure I stay away from Katasko."

At 1 PM we leave for Selina's.

The 2 storeys timber-framed house is just as the same as before. Actually the blue bricks and dark wood seem brighter, they could have been washed. There are multiple rolls of cloth outside, most of them are thin and embroidered. And of course at least half of them are velvet.

"I actually feel like buying a few drapes, now," Alissa murmurs.

"You could, but we might not use it since we are leaving," I say.

"That's the problem."

"Maybe we could buy a rug for our tent."

"Ah yes."

"Buy a fluffy one, I want to be able to sit down and relax," Hana says.

We enter the store and the smell of textiles fill our nose. A well-dressed attendant is currently in behind the counter, working on some paperwork. She lifts her head and adjusts her glasses.

"Ah, Miss Alissa. Came to visit Mistress Selina again?"

Lina's Trivia: Miss is for single women, Mistress is for married women, "Madam" is mostly used for nobility. You only use Madam for commoners when you want to show respect to older women. "Gentleman" and "Signeur" are the male equivalent to Mistress and Madam. Dame and Sir are shortened versions used for knights and other people related to military.

"Yes," Alissa smiles and nods.

"Oh, Alissa?" I hear the soft voice of a petite woman.

Down the stairs come the pretty blonde girl. Hair loose and straight, longer than last time. She wears a long loose white summer dress and some pretty small red shoes. Her face is as cute as ever.

"Ah, Mr. Ryder, Miss Hana," she smiles brightly when she sees us.

She takes us to the small veranda on the second floor, it has a table with comfy chairs similar to the one on our house. We have a good view of the busy streets.

She leaves us for a minute and comes back with a plate of tea and scones. Very sweet and fluffy, they go well with strong bitter tea.

"Oh, so you are leaving," Selina says and smiles sadly.

"We will come back one day," Hana says with a warm smile.

"Then you better write down everything you did, I want a book, not just a second-hand story," Selina smiles brightly again.

"That's a good idea," Alissa says, "I could write down what we do in a diary and then send to you."

"We could pay for a scribe to compile everything in a more exciting way, a simple diary would be boring," Hana says.

"Yes. Tell me the all the interesting details, even the saucy ones," Selina smirks.

"You sure you want to know?" Hana asks, "You must have heard some rumors about my people."

"I'm not so innocent," Selina giggles, "Oh, now that we are talking about it I remembered I heard a saucy story. Do you know Carmen, from the hunter's guild?"

I suppress my smirk and simply nod along with the other girls.

"So my neighbor swears that she saw Carmen enter Ganto's cafe, the one right in front," she continues. We look behind us and see a tall and fierce-looking man with graying hair serving people on tables on the street. "This was well past closing time, then, the little vixen, sneaked up near a window and she swears she heard a woman moaning, and it wasn't Carmen's voice."

And at this moment Thomas comes in, he's wearing a rather formal thick cotton yellow doublet, black pants and some high boots.

"Greetings," he says, his silky black hair sways as he bows lightly. He has an enviable stubble and he's not even that much older than me.

"Welcome back, my love," Selina says with a wide smile.

"I'm back," he sits down and relaxes on the chair, "Sorry I'm a little late to receive the guests."

"We just started talking. I'm telling them Carmen's story."

Thomas sits downs and looks at me, we holds the same expression. Discomfort.

After some very excited gossiping about Carmen's escapades that me and Thomas do not really participate, we return to talking about our trip to the High Forest.

"Wow, you are stronger than I thought," Thomas says, holding his blocky chin with his hand.

"Position three is not joke, position one might as well be a knight," Selina says.

"Forgive me but I do not really envy your fellowship. I would rather never meet the undead," he smiles and nods respectfully, "Having to trudge through the rotting orc husks was enough for me."

He must own a warehouse on the Crafter's Corner.

"Well not everything is that unpleasant," Alissa smiles wryly.

"The Symbol of Darkness was unpleasant but the experience is something you never forget, it changes you and hopefully for the better," Hana says.

"Even the Symbol of Envy was stressful to run from but now it feels quite the fun memory," I say.

"You are all addicted," Thomas says with a sigh and then smiles, "My father always says this about adventurers and now I really understand it."

"Oh, come on, it really seems like an exciting lifestyle," Selina slaps his arm lightly.

"Fun to hear about," he grabs her hand and kisses it.

"That I won't deny."

A note from Manasong

Hall of Fame of Patrons.

The patrons who support Rupegia shall have their names sung by the bards for they deserve the glory and honor. Their names are:

Oracle Maximillian Hübner.

Lord Andrew Meyers.

Lord SenilePenile.

Lord Hope.

Leave a rating or a review to help me rise to the top or fix my shameful understanding of prose.

Take a look over my blog where all information of the world of Rupegia will be posted.

Join the Discord and discuss, or rant, or meme, or try and fight me so your waifu gets more screentime.

Become a Patron and read chapters in advance, or read the side-stories, or leave your mark on the story, or help choose the next artwork or the next side-story.

Chapter 35: Thesis – Part 3

A note from Manasong

Attention: to conform to the limit of sexual content allowed in a novel, I've censored this chapter. You can look for the uncensored version here.

The symbol "-" denotes a section that got cut for containing sexual content. Also, if paragraphs seem missing, they were also likely censored in an earlier pass where the symbol wasn't used.

"And then his claws just sank through the scales of my shield, through the metal of my shield, through the vambraces, and even through my own scales like it was nothing!" Hana pulls the sleeves of her arm and flexes fer forearm, lifting the patch of emerald scales in a wave.

"How do you defend against something like that!?" Selina exclaims, her hands on her cheeks.

"You don't. We only kept it back by using Roxanne's [Explosion]."

"Didn't undead corruption spread to you?" Thomas asks, leaning forward.

"It did, half my forearm died, it was the worst pain I have ever felt. -."

Thomas laughs and Selina smiles but blushes, then she goes back to petting Gify on her lap.

"Meanwhile, we were running like the wind, trying to get our employers to safety before Wolf could join us," Alissa says.

Then Hana continues.

"When she finished her part we ran away and reached the hole with the broken enchantment. Wolfy says, 'we don't really have the time, let's jump'. So I grab them and jump," Selina's expression is a mix of fear, surprise, and laughter. "I summon my wings and we scrape on the walls, Roxanne is yelling all the way, and then when we get near the ground Wolfy uses [Telekinesis] to slow us down. Suddenly I feel a large burst of force slow me and he passes out," Hana stops speaking for a moment to increase the tension.

"So I'm like 'holy shit, we are going to crash'. Then Roxanne frees herself from my grasp and summon's her bat wings so she can float down. Now I'm lighter so I just hold Wolfy and Aoi tighter and we land heavily on the ground, at least my legs didn't break."

"And you had a half-rotted arm," Thomas says.

"Yep."

"But we still had to keep running, now carrying Wolfy, until we found a safe place to rest," Alissa says, "It wasn't that bad, Wolfy has a tendency to overuse his mana so we were somewhat used to it."

I smile wryly and look away.

We spend some time talking about the incoming Harpy attack. Thomas hired a fellowship to take care of the shop during the attack while they hide in the basement. Every house in the town has a reinforced basement where the population can hide during attacks, this is why even though the town could get destroyed the loss of life is not massive.

We leave when it's near dusk.

"Goodbye Alissa, of the Blinding Arrows," Selina says with a smirk.

"Goodbye Mr. 'Good Luck'," Says Thomas also with a smirk.

"Now I'm the one envious," Hana says.

"Now that I think about it, titles sound a little, uh, silly," Alissa says with a wry smile.

Tonight I spend my time practicing Andraste with Ciel and Aoi, who's learning to read. Then I cuddle with Alissa again as she reads a book, I'm getting good at understanding Andraste without the skill. The golems seem interested in the books, I don't know if they do know how to read or if it was just passing curiosity.

Today is the 15th.

-

My [Andraste Language] and [Sword Use] increased by 1 (now 4+6 and 12+9).

Through Lina's research, I understood that [Transformation Magic] cures birth defects by altering both soul and body. [Heal] does not cure birth defects because the defect is on the soul itself, what [Heal] does is align the body with the soul. Later, I should get some more information on how [Transformation Magic] identifies the birth defects.

It confirms to me that the soul is not a reflection of the body, they could both be independent on each other or the body is a reflection of the soul. I'm leaning on the latter due to how [Illusion Magic] some spells like [Ghost Lights] sends sensory input to the soul, not the brain, possibly indicating some form of hierarchy.

If [Ghost Lights] sends spells to the "brain" on the soul, this means there's a permanent location for the brain. Same for the mana organ. So organs on the soul have fixed positions, the question then is can I relate someone's organ position on the body to their position on the soul? I want to do this because searching the soul blindly for the desired organ is quite tiring.

I ask Alissa to use [Ghost Lights] on Lina repeatedly while I scour through her soul. Eventually, I manage to find a place on her soul that's under random changes at periodic intervals. This is quite the find, I managed to visualize the effect of an illusion in someone's mind in real-time. This could greatly improve the [Diagnosis] skill, I have to teach [Sense Soul] to Ciel.

"It's done?" Lina asks while rubbing her eyes, she's slightly queasy.

"Yep, I found it. Thank you, my love."

"Y-you welcome," she lowers her head.

If I know where the brain and the vocal chords are, perhaps I can calculate the position of other body parts. I assume skills are the things on the outer layers of the soul, so far the organs were found inside the first layer. The second layer might actually be the first "level" layer, the one where skills are stored, since everyone (humanoid) seems to have the same number of layers as their levels plus one layer.

The first layer of the soul is a sphere, which means the organs will be stretched and their positions distorted. There might be more organs here that do not equate to physical ones like the mana organ, so not every structure belongs to a physical organ.

To find the correlation will be some very methodical and repetitive work. This is quite a headache, I want an assistant.

"Lina, Ciel, do you want to help me out?" I ask, "This is quite the complex work for just me alone."

I don't even have to ask Alissa, she nudges me on and I give her the skill too.

"What about the skin?" Ciel asks, "Have you found it?"

"Nope," I answer, "Could be just before the layer boundary."

"If we do then we could cut ourselves and see if there's a difference on the soul. Could make even finding internal wounds easier."

I give her some finger-guns and a "das rite" look.

"What are you doing?" She asks flatly.

"Reference, means 'that's right,'" I smile to her.

I take a look at Aoi's throat and compare it to ours and an elemental's. When she speaks it barely moves, ours moves a lot, and the elemental's doesn't move. Aoi must be supplementing her frail vocal chords with magic, not the [Godly Language] type but something else, something similar to the elementals but more complex.

"You are the secret to progress again my little one," I pat her head and she closes her eyes.

"Kweh?"

"I want to copy how you speak, it's better than the elementals and perfect for the golems."

"Kweh!"

Before I continue we have to make lunch.

Ciel and Alissa come back with some groceries. Lina scurries to her side, she investigates the vegetables and picks up a small mushroom. She sniffs once and eats it raw.

"Lina!?" Ciel exclaims, me and the other girls lift their eyebrows, "Those are poisonous!"

"No...?" She tilts her head and stares at Ciel with her usual gloomy eyes ,"Those are Giftig mushrooms, we can eat it raw."

"No we can't, we have to boil and drain them. They can make your blood go blue if you eat too many! You could die!"

Lina frowns and looks at the mushrooms again. "Mom would sometimes make a sauce for us to eat along but we mostly ate it raw," she says.

"[Spirit of Gaia] cleansed her blood of alcohol, maybe it does the same thing to the mushroom poison," I say.

"Oh. That's true, it could be it," Lina says and nods repeatedly.

Ciel massages her forehead and chuckles.

We boil the mushrooms and eat them. They are blue clumps of thin noodles, almost like a beard. They taste sweet and fruity, reminds me of blueberry and menthol.

"Hmmm... I think I can use this [Sense Soul] to improve my potion and poison testing," Roxanne says, "Using it on myself was limiting my knowledge of effects."

"Wait what? You were using yourself as a test subject for poisons?" I ask, incredulous.

She shrugs.

"What else could I have used?" She asks, "It's why I prefer making potions, easier to test on myself."

That's true, we need something for her to test things on. Maybe we could capture some monsters. Animal testing might be dirty business but I'm willing to compromise in exchange for power.

With Roxanne also recruited into the [Sense Soul] research Hana was the last one left. To not be left alone she decided to joins us too.

Looking at Aoi's voice using my direct soul touch I notice how she can speak. Mana has an attraction to matter, it does not interact directly but it clumps up near matter and is what's responsible for when crystals "attune" to mana, matter becomes more capable of attracting a certain kind of mana. This is why you gather mana for spells on your heart, it causes your blood to slowly get attuned to your own mana, improving your spellcasting.

Aoi's voice is produced by a reversion of the effect, it makes matter be repelled by mana and you vibrate this effect along with your vocal chords for improved speech. Requires minute control, something that Aoi has been improving on slowly.

Now that I think about it dragons are famous for their frightening roars, perhaps their physical throats are made for the roar while they use magic for normal speech.

Aoi turns belly up, giggling and drooling from the arousing touch of my soul. She seems... drunk and twice more adorable. Hana takes the opportunity and abuses Aoi's vulnerable state, she tickles Aoi until she begs to stop and nearly passes out, exhausted.

Since Aoi's voice is magical even I could learn how to make a voice like that. Maybe this is how those microphone-like magical tools work. Because her magic voice is something learned and yet it's also stored on the soul then perhaps everything we learn, like spells and other things unrelated to skills, are stored in the soul, maybe we could even quantify knowledge someday.

I cast [Mold] and slowly change the vocal cords of the golems to match that of Aoi. I make Ted's longer and Suzy's slightly shorter. The structure itself is rather similar to the throat visually so I hope what I'm doing is right.

"He, lo," Ted says in a raspy voice, still slightly high pitched.

"He, lo," Suzy says in a raspy and much higher pitched voice.

"Holy, fucking, shit, Wolfy," Roxanne says.

Ciel is quiet, she simply grabs Ted and slowly smothers him.

"You, might, da-ma-ge, me," Ted says.

Ciel grunts and he disappears on her bosom.

"I did it, finally," I say and exhale. I drop back on the sofa and smile widely.

Roxanne grabs Suzy before Lina can and the blonde doll disappears on her dress.

"Dark," The doll says, her voice muffled.

The two girls gush at the improved golems while Lina twiddles her thumbs, waiting for her turn.

"Next thing you girls should teach them is [Telekinesis]. They will be able to help around once they grasp it," I say.

Ciel and Roxanne nod emphatically.

"How goes the mapping?" I ask Alissa.

"We think we found how the skin maps to the border areas but it's soo distorted it's quite difficult to predict," Alissa says, a knife in one hand and small bloodied rag on another, "Ciel, Roxanne, help me here."

"Okay..." Ciel mumbles and releases Ted.

"No, da-ma-ge," Ted says while patting himself.

Roxanne releases Suzy and Lina gets her turn with both golems at the same time.

"You are so cute," Lina says while repeatedly pressing Ted's nose.

"Cu-te?"

"Cute!"

"Ted, can you lie?" I ask.

"Yes," he turns to me and nods.

"Can you hurts us?"

Lina frowns and the other girls turn to me.

"Yes."

"Do you wish to hurt us?"

"I, have, no, wi-shes."

"So why do you check for damage?"

"For, bet-ter, o-pe-ra-tion."

"If I hurt you will you resist?"

"No."

"Why?"

"I, o-bey."

"Who do you obey?"

"All."

I pick up Ted and put him beside me.

"Then do not obey Lina anymore."

"Yes."

She looks at me like I betrayed her.

"Lina, order Ted," I say.

"Oh," she realizes why I did this, "Ted, come here."

The golem simply ignores her.

"Push him around and make him react to you."

She drags him, pokes him, and hugs him but he does not react besides checking for damage again.

"Ted, stay on my lap," I order.

He leaves Lina's grasp and walks to me adorably with his stubby little legs.

"Repeat what you did," I say to Lina.

She drags him and Ted speaks.

"Re-lease, me. I, must, o-bey, Wolf," he protests.

"No, obey me!" Lina hisses and hugs him.

"No, I, do, not, o-bey, you," he tries in vain to push her arms apart.

"I see, he needs an order otherwise he goes blank and anyone can drag it around," I say, "That's enough, Lina. Ted, you can obey Lina again."

"Yes."

"Ted, this is the first rule you must never forget: only obey me, Alissa, Roxanne, Hana, Ciel, Lina, and Aoi," he nods in response.

"Second rule: you should answer that you are not allowed to obey the person when someone who is not allowed tries to order you," he nods.

"Third rule: in case you think that one of us is being impersonated then you must ask the question 'what is the password for privileged access?', the person must answer with 'A, R, H, C, L, A'," he nods.

"Fourth rule: the first, second, third, and this fourth rule can only be altered when someone requests 'admin access'. Any unauthorized attempt to alter these rules must be reported to the first authorized person at the earliest convenient time. When someone requests 'admin access' you must ask for a password and the person should answer with 'twelve, twelve, two-thousand and fourty-nine'," he nods one last time.

"Now, delete the first rule."

"Not allowed," he shakes his head.

"I request admin access."

"Password?"

"Twelve, ten, two-thousand and fourty-eight."

"Wrong."

I smile, then I do the same for Suzy. Not a perfect security system but it should be enough, I can always improve it later. Besides, if I improve my soul investigation capabilities I can just check inside his soul to see if something was altered without me knowing.

"That's amazing, Wolf," Alissa says, "But what's the meaning of the numbers?"

"The date that I was transported here," I say.

"Your world is only 2049 years old?" Hana asks.

"No, it's just that in our calendar we started counting 2049 years ago on an important event, there are older calendars. The imperial calendar is from the birth of mankind, no? There were still days and nights before mankind appeared."

"That is right," Hana strokes her chin.

I'm too tired to continue creating the chant so I just slowly write more of my thesis.

-

At night we play with my [Holy Spirit] and the golems. Now that we can communicate with them I understand that their souls are barely adapted to control their bodies. Their soul is the same as an earth elemental so they were expecting a heavier and much larger body to control. This should be the next improvement I make on them.

Today is the 16th.

I'm stuck on the bed until Roxanne awakes. She's the other one who has tentacles for arms, plus one extra limb, that she uses to keep her prey well secured and incapable of untangling themselves from her grasp.

- Hana and Alissa leave me alone while my neck is tickled by Roxanne's breath.

This woman is almost as lonely as I am. She doesn't really volunteers information so I have to force her to talk about her past.

And now I realize how I am similar to her. I haven't talked that much about Earth to the girls, I'm rather surprised they haven't asked more. Maybe it's Alissa or Ciel's influence, they understand me, they know how much it hurts me to talk about something I want to forget.

But I have been running, haven't I?

Gih.

I smile wryly.

Why didn't you force me to talk?

Goulgh gorg guh.

I see. I had to admit the problem first.

Geh gah gih.

Okay, Mr. Therapist, I have a problem, I don't like to talk about Earth. What's your prescription?

Galgh.

Fine, I'll talk. To-morrooow. I have to finish this Thesis.

The smell of breakfast enters the room and my stomach rumbles. I decide to wake up the sleeping beauty, I press her nose and she squirms while making a silly sound.

"Goyooo~…"

"Wake up, my love," I whisper on her ears.

"Wolfyy~…" She stretches her arms and hugs my entire body, "Just one more minute."

"You can 'just one more minute' alone, I'm hungry."

"Nyooo~..." She hugs me tighter and yawns.

I start flicking the tip of her currently rubbery horn. She shivers every time I hit and slowly opens her eyes.

"Okaay~..." She yawns again and unglues from me.

My [Golemancy] increased by 2 (now 0+4). Ciel's "Perception" increased by 1 (now 13). Hana's "Intelligence" increased by 1 (now 11).

I go downstairs - for another - breakfast.

"Good, mor-ning," says Suzy, "No, un-der-wear, will, ma-ke, you, cold."

Eh, it's summer time, it's quite hot lately.

"I'll be fine," I wave to her and she turns back to patting Lina on the head, "You have been improving quite a lot, Hana. Your 'Intelligence' increased by 1," I say.

"Can't be the only one not learning something new here," she shrugs and grins, "I'm mostly mooching off your intelligence."

"You're a good help, Hana, you are not mooching," Alissa says.

I kiss Hana's forehead and pat Aoi on her side.

After breakfast I regretfully put on some clothes and go to Kyros' lessons.

Nudism can be quite liberating.

A note from Manasong

Hall of Fame of Patrons.

The patrons who support Rupegia shall have their names sung by the bards for they deserve the glory and honor. Their names are:

Oracle Maximillian Hübner.

Lord Andrew Meyers.

Lord SenilePenile.

Lord Hope.

Leave a rating or a review to help me rise to the top or fix my shameful understanding of prose.

Take a look over my blog where all information of the world of Rupegia will be posted.

Join the Discord and discuss, or rant, or meme, or try and fight me so your waifu gets more screentime.

Become a Patron and read chapters in advance, or read the side-stories, or leave your mark on the story, or help choose the next artwork or the next side-story.

Chapter 36: Banter - Part 1

A note from Manasong

Attention: to conform to the limit of sexual content allowed in a novel, I've censored this chapter. You can look for the uncensored version here.

The symbol "-" denotes a section that got cut for containing sexual content. Also, if paragraphs seem missing, they were also likely censored in an earlier pass where the symbol wasn't used.

Now that most of my training of [Godly Language] is done I want to explore the effects of the skill. I know it can affect souls but it can also bend reality, I could whisper "your sword is unbreakable" to Hana and it might actually become true. I will need to put many more points on it than the current 20 I am willing to allocate to it but maybe I can do it with very small things like "this lock is open" or similar.

"Can you show me how you bend reality with [Godly Language]?", I ask.

Kyros stops stroking his goatee and speaks, "Boy, that is dangerous."

"I know. But I want to learn."

Kyros frowns and looks down, he doesn't seem very eager to teach me that.

"Boy, if you ever try to alter reality do it small, very, very small first," he says with weary eyes. "If something goes wrong, you dying is the least worst thing that could happen, a lot of people could die if you try something foolish."

"I'm a very cautious person, but also very curious."

"Evidently," he smiles wryly, then he sighs and continues, "The secret to altering reality is by visualization, just like magic, the more you know, the deeper you can imagine, and the more certain you can alter reality.

"Keep in mind that you are altering the laws of physics and magic to your wishes, this can cause some chaotic things if you don't know what you are doing. For example, if you ask something like 'create light', the skill does not create a [Spirit Light] or a flame, it simply creates a source of light, completely devoid of mass, fuel, mana, or logic. It won't create a real, physics-or-magic-abiding source of light unless if you specify it.

"To create something safely you need to imagine every single little piece that makes it, I don't think even the emperor is capable of that."

I see, opening a lock won't be so easy if I don't know the how the lock works. But the emperor doesn't have my knowledge of Earth and physics.

"I understand," I lower my head, "I won't abuse it, I swear I will take extreme care in what I do."

He spends a long minute staring at my lowered head. Perhaps he thinks that if he doesn't teach me, then I will experiment on my own, which I admit is kind of a possibility.

"Very well," he finally says and I raise my head, he pulls out a small handkerchief and bunches it up on the table, "Imagine this piece of cloth is igniting, not that it's on fire, it's catching fire, as if someone is holding a [Fireball] below it.

"Imagine every small fiber suddenly combusting into fire, a normal fire that consumes matter and leaves ashes on its behind. Focus on a very small spot, it should be enough to make it catch fire."

I focus and concentrate. Fire, rapid oxidation of material in a chemical reaction that releases heat and light. Oxygen, fuel, heat, a chain chemical reaction.

"Now say the words, 'this handkerchief will catch fire'."

I prepare myself. I only have 10 points on it right now so here comes nausea.

"This handkerchief will catch fire," I say, using the skill.

*Foosh*. A small flame suddenly bursts on the handkerchief.

I feel absolutely horrible. My vision decides that what I'm seeing isn't real and every color twirls into each other; my stomach receives a foreign package and wants to return my breakfast to sender; my brain rejects this reality and goes back home to my man-cave to sit in the computer and exhale air lightly every time I see a meme; my muscles enter a strike and ask for vacation into a thai massage-with-a-happy-ending resort.

Kyros puckers his lips into the shape of asterisk. "What," he says in a weak voice.

"What?" I ask, barely maintaining my grip on reality.

"You weren't supposed to do it this fast," he says and extinguishes his handkerchief with a use of [Conjure Water].

"Well... I did," I shrug and groan at the bloody revolution happening inside my body. Maybe I shouldn't have done it seriously on the first try.

Kyros pulls out two red potions with a *poof* and rolls one to me.

"Drink it, will help with the feedback. Not that you are actually wounded it's just that magic helps the world stabilize."

While seeing double I manage to grab the HP potion and chug it, tastes like honey. In a few seconds a wave washes over my body and removes the sludge that took over me.

"That was really odd," I say, "Way, way worse than just normal feedback or mana-radiation poisoning."

"Radiation?" He lifts one eyebrow.

"Mana leak poisoning during the gathering."

He nods in understanding. "Anyway, this is the feedback from a badly formed reality alteration. You now understand how dangerous this is, just a simple combustion caused even me to feel sick."

"I understand, thank you for showing it to me."

He nods repeatedly, "Well there's not much else to show, this is how you do it and the only way to get better is to improve your [Godly Language] or improve your visualization."

I calmly focus on my voice vortex, I had enough poisoning for today.

Space class is free practice, theoretical lessons are over so we are to focus on reviewing things until the final (and only) test. I get an idea about inverting [Gravity Crush] and trying to explode people, maybe I can teach it to Roxanne to improve her [Explosion].

I focus on my [Telekinesis], I have to chant it since I'm in front of the class so I focus on using it to dodge by sliding backward.

"Impressive," the gnome professor Ludwick says, "Are you planning on incorporating this on your martial arts?"

"Precisely."

"How novel. People would prefer to use [Fly] and fight at a distance. Show me the style when you create the skill. Actually, won't this be the third skill you have created?"

I can only smile wryly at his words.

"Three new skills alongside reviving an abandoned magic school. What an oddity you are, Mr. Ryder," he continues with a smirk and strokes his long white beard. " But then again, you do have a blessing from the Goddess of Knowledge."

"I will definitely show it to you, professor. I learned the most from your class so I owe you at least this," I smile faintly to him.

The professor gets very satisfied with my words and moves on in a renewed mood.

"Let's give Ciel and Lina a show," I say to Alissa during our trip back home.

"As if you had to ask," she answers.

-

"Yes, Ciel, I allow you to have a romantic relationship with my slave," I say with a smirk.

Ciel jolts awake and stares at me wide eyed.

"I, I…" Her mouth opens and closes repeatedly. "I will take care of her."

"Yes you will," Lina says lowly and giggles.

She pulls on my arm and brings me to Ciel, then she sits between us, smiling adorably with our arms entangled. She finally took what she wanted.

-

"We may be the most perverted family that has ever existed," Ciel says then snorts. "Maybe less perverted than the emperor's."

The evening is spent in a cuddle puddle as Lina uses both of us as her personal pillows. Ciel is awkward around Lina but the little girl is taking charge and keeping Ciel close to her at all times.

Today is the 17th.

-

My [Dodge] and [Mana Control] increased by 1 (now 5+6 and 0+14) and I learned [Washing] with 1 point.

I spend my morning reading over the "Soul Map" the girls created. They started up by setting an orientation axis and using the brain as a measuring unit, so the map is graded in "sorains", soul brains.

Ciel made the organization and most of the writing, her handwriting is beautiful. Alissa has quite the hand for drawing, in a methodical manner she sketched what she saw very well. The other girls were mainly responsible for searching up Alissa's soul while they gave her cuts.

The map is far from done, specifically the skin, it's literally our skin stretched into a sphere so the distortion can get quite heavy. There's also plenty of "dead spots" where there's simply no structure, they are breaks in continuity of skin. I wonder if the lack of continuity has any effect on the physical skin.

"Did you like it?" Alissa asks me casually yet her tail is wagging.

"Yes, very much," I say and smile at her, "I love you."

"Love you too," and she gives me a peck on the nose.

"And you too!" I yell to Ciel practicing [Judgment] outside.

Ciel lifts her head and smiles, then she returns to concentrating on her practice.

I go to the window and take a look at Ciel, her hand is glowing faintly yet I feel a large "threat" coming out of that hand. It's like when you see a dog growling at you and you think "oh shit, I'm about to get shredded", it provokes an instinctual need to run away;

Ciel focus on her hand and I see the glow slowly leave her hand. It forms into a faint blade that hovers near her hand. Then she exhales and the glow returns to her hand.

She stretches her legs and lays down on the grass. Hana is standing beside her, slashing the air while a blurry copy of her strikes in a different direction at the same time.

"The blurriness decreased, if you strike fast enough it could easily confuse someone," a Roxanne made of fire says. She hovers above Hana and slowly descends.

"But it will only work once, I need it to be perfect," Hana says and strikes again.

"Maybe she needs more 'Perception'?" I ask Alissa.

"Hmm... I think it's her control that's lacking. Hana, maybe you should train more of the MP and 'Magic Power' routines," Alissa says.

"Sounds good," Hana says and drops on the ground, immediately going into meditation.

Roxanne shoots up into the sky and lands with a heavy thud. The flames dramatically spread and lick the grass but no heat leaves them. From the "SFX", Roxanne appears on all fours and proudly rises.

"Maybe do a three-point landing, the one on all-fours is quite, uh, not-cool," I say.

"What?" Roxanne questions.

I show it to her, and she "ohoh's" me.

"Certainly looks cooler, though a little hard on the knees," she says.

"I know, right? Your robe also makes it more awkward to use," I say.

*WOOOOON~...*

An air raid siren starts to scream. I jump in surprise and freeze.

Ciel straightens up and yells, "Harpies!".

I store the golems on my "Items" and we all quickly change into our armor.

"Ciel, get Lina. Everyone, stay together while me and Alissa check on the hunter's guild. I will use the lithograph for communication," I say.

The girls nod, I pull out the dinghy for Ciel with a *poof* and mount Alissa.

The hunter's guild is as hectic as the wyvern attack, many tables are put out in front where attendants search the names of fellowships and where they are supposed to go.

A shining bald head catches my attention and I find Silas, the guildmaster. He nods once to me and then continues stroking his magnificent white beard.

During my moment of distraction Alissa led me to Carmen and I receive a very charming smile when she sees us. The line of hunters moves fast and soon comes our time.

"Fellowship 'Helios', support for nobility, inner tower two," Carmen says and then she gives me a slightly worried look, "Good luck, even though you are fighting among the nobles it's still dangerous."

"Thank you for the concern," Alissa says and we take our leave.

The people hurry to their homes. A slightly organized chaos is underway as the guards make sure people remain on the right of the road while moving forward. Take that, British, even in fantasy worlds right is the proper way.

Our destination takes us to the slums so we wait on a relatively safe area. On the lithograph I write to the girls "come to me, we are going to inner tower two."

We wait a while until the flimsy dinghy lands in front of us with the other girls, then we walk towards the tower.

The reason the slums is a slum is due to the incredible danger in living near the southern wall, it's the wall who always gets attacked by monsters so the properties get devalued. There's also a high chance of the house getting fully destroyed in the fighting if monsters cross the wall. The noble's quarters and the high value houses are all near the northern wall.

The town quickly turns into a ghost town where the only sounds are of the boots constantly moving around and the jingling of armor. The population has already locked themselves in their own basements.

In a few minutes of hurried walking we reach the second inner tower. It's a massive round tower made of blue-gray bricks. Nearby we see the main road that leads to the south gate. This gate is only used by the military since no one wants to cross the slums just to get out of town.

We near the tower and see rather tight security around it. The guards look at our ID's when we enter and cross-examines a list of approved adventurers.

We enter and move up the stairs. The lower floors have only melee well-armed guards, the middle floors are empty, and the upper floors have archers and mages positioned behind the arrow slits. The top floor has double the walking space than the lower floors and there's multiple retractable rectangular planks of wood for us to take cover.

On the battlements, I see Silvane, Nononya, and a few well-armed men and women. Nononya is summoning a second wind elemental, the elemental looks like a kind-looking mature wererabbit woman.

Silvane notices us and waves as we approach.

"A good day to fight, isn't it, Mr. Ryder?" Silvane asks with a wide smile.

"I would say there's no good day to fight but if we have to, then a sunny day like this one is perfect," I answer and bow lightly.

Nononya finishes her chanting and another mature female wererabbit elemental appears.

"Helloo!" She greets us with unbridled happiness, her bunny tail twitching wildly.

As the girls talk about the gruesome ways they are going to disembowel the harpies I fake my chants and summon 3 wind elementals and 2 fire elementals.

I have a good view of the forest on top of this tower, it's always amazing and also frightening the size of those trees. "Megalophobia" is what this feeling is called.

I see plenty of young men and women taking position along the wall or leaving for the field in front of the gate. They all have large shields and spears, the harpies are going to either suicide charge or pepper us with weak ranged attacks, most soldiers will only need to hunker down and wait.

Large stone structures are being raised by mages around the grassland, those are where the healers will remain, Hatara is going to stay at one of those structures but inside the town.

Most of the soldiers are slum dwellers, joining the guard is one of the most profitable jobs for the disadvantaged. You get free martial arts training, the opportunity to level up and gain more skills, free meals, and some even get to live on the barracks, if you survive. Curiously most prostitutes on town are also part of the guard, getting protection by making friends with the guards and also some extra money on duty is too advantageous to let it pass.

"Your elementals are certainly impressive," says a voice behind us.

I look back and see a tall and buff brown-haired bear of a man in full plate armor. He has two golden armbands on each arm and he holds a helmet with a red plume under his arm.

"Captain Entoli, reporting for duty," he says and bows quickly towards Silvane. "I am responsible for this tower, I assume you are the fellowship 'Helios'?"

"Yes we are," I say.

"Since you were requested by the Rizeks I assume you know what you are doing," his gaze turns stern, "so I will leave you to act as you wish. But know that I'm responsible for safeguarding the nobility, so when the time comes you will obey to me, understood?"

"Understood," I answer.

He nods to us and moves on the new arrivals, two groups come out of a [Gate] each. One is clearly a noble family and their knights that I don't recognize; the other is Horvath, Helena, Lyle, and two plated knights with large shields.

"Wolf! It is finally time for us to fight," Lyle says and we shake hands. He and his family admire the elementals before the greetings continue.

"Marvelous elementals, and women," Helena says with a smirk.

"Do not stare too much, dear, it could irk Mr. Ryder," Horvath says.

The pair is wearing a dazzling shiny black robe and I see black scale armor below it. The petite woman and the villainous man certainly look good even in their armor.

Horvath has a gloomy-looking ethereal little woman floating beside him. She has 4 transparent wings that beat so fast you can only see a blur, her body is made of dark clouds that occasionally light up with lightning. An [Electric Spirit].

Helena has a little water mermaid "swimming" in the air in circles around her. The mermaid has a cute face, hair made of algae, and a trident made of coral. She giggles softly once in a while. A [Water Spirit].

"Shouldn't you be with Haaran?" I ask Silvane.

"He'll be fine, I would rather keep my sweet Nono safe if I could help it," she answers and rubs one of Nononya's white rabbit ears.

We discuss tactics as we wait. Horvath and Silvane already fought together so it's only our group that has to know the other's abilities.

A note from Manasong

Hall of Fame of Patrons.

The patrons who support Rupegia shall have their names sung by the bards for they deserve the glory and honor. Their names are:

Oracle Maximillian Hübner.

Lord Andrew Meyers.

Lord SenilePenile.

Lord Hope.

Leave a rating or a review to help me rise to the top or fix my shameful understanding of prose.

Take a look over my blog where all information of the world of Rupegia will be posted.

Join the Discord and discuss, or rant, or meme, or try and fight me so your waifu gets more screentime.

Become a Patron and read chapters in advance, or read the side-stories, or leave your mark on the story, or help choose the next artwork or the next side-story.

Chapter 36: Banter - Part 2

A note from Manasong

Only now I noticed that Roxanne's age was set as 16 on her info. She's actually 21, just like Ciel.

We spend a long while waiting. When lunch time comes we share lights snacks to keep the hunger away but not slow us down with a full belly.

I see water mages orderly cast [Filling Waters] into buckets, then every mage passes by and takes a drink. Since this spell is free extra mana regeneration then there's no reason not to use it.

A few wind and fire elementals appear around the other towers and the wall, our tower is certainly filled with elementals in comparison. I see small ethereal beings once in a while, the [(Element) Spirit] spells are seemingly rarer than elementals.

Thankfully Horvath's and Silvane's group had their own Blessing mage cast spells on them so I only had to apply the buffs to the girls.

Slowly a huge wooden platform comes towards the south gate. On top of it we can see multiple structures: four domes at each corner, possibly where the magic tools that keep it afloat are located; at the center is a house-like structure where multiple people can be seen coming and leaving it, the command center; in front of it a the border there's the biggest ballista that I have ever seen, the Dragon's Bane.

It's made entirely out of glossy brown metal, darksteel, an alloy of steel with emellanat that allows it to hold enchantments. Golden lines run through it and I see the glint of multiple, head-sized magic crystals at the base. It floats perfectly still while a man effortlessly spins it around and tests all the mechanisms. Bolts as thick as a person and as long as a bus are organized horizontally in a wooden belt.

"There's grandpa," Lyle says. He points to the 5 people standing beside the ballista. Lord Alaraste, his wife Giana, Haaran, Vanea, and finally Werner Rizek.

While it's impressive that Lord Alaraste is level 102, Werner has some impressive stats.

Soul Info

Name: | Werner Rizek | Race: | Human | Level: | 140
MP | 26,240 | Magic Power | 10,011

I see the 4 members of Great Destiny appear out of the central structure of the platform, they stand behind the Lord.

The huge platform passes us and hovers over the south gate, to the happiness of the guards posted below it. No arrows will reach them while the platform is there.

A few minutes later Alissa narrows her eyes while looking at the forest.

"They have arrived," she says.

Captain Entoli hears Alissa and stirs up the bored soldiers. Slowly the entire battlefield seems to get ready.

Suddenly the sky is darkened by hundreds and hundreds of arrows that are lobbed towards us.

"ATTACK! GET TO COVER!" Bellows Captain Entoli.

We run towards our static cover and unfold the wooden boards, they are slanted and give us enough cover to sustain a frontal attack or one from the skies.

The arrows fall on the wood and a few crude bone tips pierce through the planks. The thuds of the arrows continue for a few long seconds until they pepper and finally stop.

Complete silence on the battlefield as we tentatively peek out from our cover.

"Seems clear!" A soldier yells.

"That was a taunt!" The Captain yells.

"KIII KIK BAKAWK!" Comes a chant out of the forest. "KII KIK BWKAWK"

The harpies chant their war cry a few more times then grow silent.

"Lord Alaraste!" Booms a male voice deep from the forest, the tell-tale signs of vocal magical enhancement are present. "I have come for your head!" The voice is strained and seems about to crack at any moment.

"You have said that the last time!" Alaraste answers, amused. His voice is also magically enhanced.

"This time I bring a surprise!"

"Is it babies?" Alarastes asks in an aloof tone.

"What!?" The Cooka-bleh voice's cracks.

"Babies, baby harpies. There is a new dish called 'hot wings' spreading through Rabanara," he says and pulls a bucket of Buffalo wings from his [Item Box], "The main ingredient is baby harpies, their wings and thighs specifically, but there's not enough baby harpies in town, we are in dire need of more of your babies," Alaraste says and takes a bite out of a thigh.

The harpy war cry starts to grow in volume again as they become more agitated.

"You, filthy, cannibals! Don't you have shame to eat a being so similar to you!?" Cooka-meh yells in an increasingly higher pitched tone.

"You are a monster, we eat monsters," Alaraste answers flatly.

"You dare eat MY CHILDREN!?" The voice booms so loud my ears hurt. The chanting grows louder.

"Oh please, Cookachickadoodoolee," Alaraste says the tongue-twister with ease and throws the bucket away, "we all know how limp you are, the harpies are your minions, not your lovers."

"My, name, is, KOTICK O'DOLEE!" The voice cracks again. "Your own grandfather named me this way. Show some respect!"

"Actually, that's the name of the adventurer whom you first met, he didn't give you a name so grandfather called you 'Kotick's monster' or 'O'Dolee's monster'. I'm sorry, but you don't really have a name, until I named you, that is."

An awkward silence lingers in the air for a few seconds.

"What?" the Cooka-thing asks in a faint voice.

"I thought you knew that. Did you seriously not know the name of the adventurer that found you? The one you loved so much?"

"I wasn't... I couldn't, I couldn't understand! I wasn't aware of the world during that time!" Cooka-ugh's voice breaks down and he seems to be crying.

"Please, keep your mental breakdown to yourself," Alaraste says on a tired tone. "Now, you said you had a surprise for us, so, is it babies?"

"Filthy, HUMANOOOOIDS!"

Oh the humanity.

The harpies chant again, louder and louder. Arrows fly again.

"TAKE COVER!" The Captain bellows.

This barrage only lasts a second.

"INCOMING!" A soldier warns.

I look out from behind my cover and now see a dark cloud of harpies approaching, fast.

"Gih." Gify pops out of existence, he's not necessary so he's just going to rest. See ya later.

Currently the cover boards can cover 3 people comfortably, so we spread like this: me, Alissa, and Nononya on a board to the left; Roxanne, Hana, and Aoi to the right; Ciel, Lina, and Lyle to the middle and behind; Horvath and a knight to the back-left; Helena and a knight to the back-right.

My MP increased by 320 (now 1170) and my "Magic Power" increased by 145 (now 440). [Increased Growth] could be actually helpful.

Alissa's MP increased by 230 (now 575) and her "Magic Power" increased by 155 (now 270).

Roxanne's MP increased by 640 (now 1910) and her "Magic Power" increased by 390 (now 690). She really didn't slack on her mana training this time.

Hana's MP increased by 190 (now 515) and her "Magic Power" increased by 100 (now 205). A few points in [Mana Overuse Resistance] helped a lot on Hana's training.

Ciel's MP increased by 295 (now 1180) and her "Magic Power" increased by 130 (now 400). Me and Ciel are now matched in power, though I have a bigger spell repertoire right now.

Lina's MP increased by 230 (now 680) and her "Magic Power" increased by 110 (now 275). I gave [Throw] to Lina with 4 points, now she can finally use the javelins we bought.

My skills and the girls are like this:

Spoiler: Spoiler

Info

Name: | Wolf Ryder | Age: | 19 | Race: | Human
HP: | 100 | MP: | 1170 | Magic Power: | 440
Level: | 22 | Experience: | 7146/7500

Stats

Strength: | 11 | Endurance: | 12 | Dexterity: | 11
Speed: | 12 | Intelligence: | 21 | Wisdom: | 16
Willpower: | 17 | Charisma: | 12 | Piety: | 14
Perception: | 16 | Sanity: | 8+4

Other

Status Effects: | NONE | Titles: | "Good Luck"Nickname

Affiliations:

Helios (Fellowship), Alissa (Blood Slave, Fiancee), Hanafuria (Blood Slave, Fiancee), Roxanne Succubus (Fiancee), Lina (Slave), Ciel (Fiancee)

Companions: | Alissa, Hanafuria, Roxanne Succubus, Ciel, Lina
Crimes: | NONE

Wolf Ryder Skill Report

Physical

Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level
Sword Use | 12+9 | Dodge | 5+5 | Parry | 5+5
Block | 2+8 | Shield Bash | 0+1 | Battlefield Perception | 1+1
Muscle Explosio | 1+1

Magical

Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level
Sense Mana | 3+6 | Mana Control | 0+13 | Mana Recovery | 12+0
Mana Efficiency | 5+5 | Reduced Mana Cost | 8+5 | Mana Overuse Resistance | 0+3
Fire Magic | 0+4 | Earth Magic | 0+3 | Water Magic | 0+1
Wind Magic | 0+1 | Electric Magic | 9+14 | Light Magic | 4+7
Space Magic | 11+22 | Summoning Magic | 13+17 | Blessing Magic | 4+21
Nature Magic | 0+16 | Conjuring Magic | 0+1 | Illusion Magic | 0+2
Golemancy | 0+4 | Redirect Mana (creator) | 3 | Sense Soul (creator) | 3

Miscellaneous

Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level
Cooking | 0+4 | Andraste Language | 4+6 | Dismantling | 0+4
Massage | 0+1 | Enhanced Semen Recharge | 0+7
OBS: Level means (free point)+(trained point)

Info

Name: | Alissa | Age: | 19 | Race: | Fox-Type Wereanimal
HP: | 100 | MP: | 575 | Magic Power: | 270
Level: | 30 | Experience: | 2034/8500

Stats

Strength: | 12 | Endurance: | 18 | Dexterity: | 22
Speed: | 20 | Intelligence: | 12 | Wisdom: | 13
Willpower: | 16 | Charisma: | 13 | Piety: | 15
Perception: | 17 | Sanity: | 15

Other

Status Effects: | NONE | Titles: | Blessing from the Goddess of Love, Blinding Arrows
Affiliations: | Wolf Ryder (fiance), Blood Slave (Owner: Wolf Ryder), Helios (Fellowship)
Companions: | Wolf Ryder, Roxanne Succubus, Hanafuria, Ciel, Lina
Crimes: | NONE

Alissa Skill Report

Physical

Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level
Sword Use | 9 | Bow Use | 26 | Parry | 4
Dodge | 2 | Sense Presence | 6 | Hide Presence | 4
Enhanced Olfact | 5 | Enhanced Hearing | 3 | Hawk Eyes | 3
Muscle Explosion | 2 | Quiet Steps | 4 | Quiet Action | 2
Enhanced Stamina | 1 | Tracking | 2

Magical

Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level
Sense Mana | 1 | Mana Control | 3 | Fire Magic | 1
Light Magic | 1 | Space Magic | 1 | Conjuring Magic | 1
Illusion Magic | 5 | Fox Transformation (innate) | 5

Miscellaneous

Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level
Housework | 3 | Cooking | 4 | Cleaning | 2
Washing | 5 | Riding | 2 | Oral Technique | 4
Pain Resistance | 2 | Hand Technique | 2
OBS: Level means (free point)+(trained point)

Info

Name: | Roxanne Succubus | Age: | 21 | Race: | Succubus-Type Demon
HP: | 100 | MP: | 1910 | Magic Power: | 690
Level: | 33 | Experience: | 8910/10000

Stats

Strength: | 9 | Endurance: | 9 | Dexterity: | 12
Speed: | 9 | Intelligence: | 18 | Wisdom: | 18
Willpower: | 14 | Charisma: | 15 | Piety: | 10
Perception: | 11 | Sanity: | 12

Other

Status Effects: | NONE | Titles: | NONE
Affiliations: | Wolf Ryder (fiance), Helios (fellowship)
Companions: | Wolf Ryder, Alissa, Hanafuria, Ciel, Lina
Crimes: | NONE

Roxanne Succubus Skill Report

Physical

Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level
Dagger Use | 2

Magical

Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level
Sense Mana | 3 | Mana Control | 25 | Reduced Mana Cost | 3
Mana Efficiency | 9 | Mana Overuse Resistance | 1 | Fire Magic | 22
Water Magic | 23 | Light Magic | 1 | Space Magic | 8
Conjuring Magic | 5 | Alchemy | 3 | Potion Bewing | 11
Poison Brewing | 2 | Redirect Mana | 1

Miscellaneous

Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level
Housework | 1 | Cooking | 1 | Cleaning | 1
Washing | 1 | Riding | 1
OBS: Level means (free point)+(trained point)

Info

Name: | Hanafuria | Age: | 24 | Race: | Fire-Type Dragonkin
HP: | 150 | MP: | 515 | Magic Power: | 205
Level: | 37 | Experience: | 10040/14000

Stats

Strength: | 19 | Endurance: | 24 | Dexterity: | 10
Speed: | 13 | Intelligence: | 11 | Wisdom: | 11
Willpower: | 19 | Charisma: | 16 | Piety: | 11
Perception: | 10 | Sanity: | 17

Other

Status Effects: | NONE | Titles: | NONE
Affiliations: | Wolf Ryder (fiance), Blood Slave (Owner: Wolf Ryder), Helios (Fellowship)
Companions: | Wolf Ryder, Alissa, Roxanne Succubus, Ciel, Lina
Crimes: | NONE

Hanafuria Skill Report

Physical

Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level
Sword Use | 20 | Spear Use | 14 | Bow Use | 9
Two-Handed Sword Use | 9 | Pole Arm Use | 6 | Dagger Use | 4
Shield Bash | 6 | Block | 8 | Parry | 6
Dodge | 4 | Tatesomu Style | 4 | Muscle Explosion | 4
Battlefield Perception | 2 | Taunt | 3 | Intimidate | 2
Enhanced Reflexes | 2 | Enhanced Stamina | 4 | Enhanced Strength | 2
Enhanced Endurance | 4

Magical

Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level
Sense Mana | 1 | Mana Control | 1 | Fire Magic | 1
Earth Magic | 1 | Light Magic | 1 | Space Magic | 1
Conjuring Magic | 1 | Illusion Magic | 1

Miscellaneous

Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level
Housework | 2 | Cooking | 1 | Cleaning | 1
Washing | 1 | Riding | 3 | Massage | 1
Pain Conversion | 1 | Dismantling | 4 | Oral Technique | 1
Fire Breath (innate) | 5 | Summon Wings (innate) | 2
OBS: Level means (free point)+(trained point)

Info

Name: | Ciel | Age: | 21 | Race: | Human
HP: | 100 | MP: | 1180 | Magic Power: | 400
Level: | 32 | Experience: | 2950/9000

Stats

Strength: | 14 | Endurance: | 13 | Dexterity: | 17
Speed: | 18 | Intelligence: | 15 | Wisdom: | 19
Willpower: | 14 | Charisma: | 17 | Piety: | 21
Perception: | 13 | Sanity: | 19

Other

Status Effects: | NONE | Titles: | NONE
Affiliations: | Wolf Ryder (fiance), Helios (Fellowship), Templar Knights (Honorary Member), Temple Priestess (Former Member)
Companions: | Wolf Ryder, Alissa, Hanafuria, Roxanne Succubus, Lina
Crimes: | NONE

Ciel Skill Report

Physical

Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level
Glaive Use | 15 | Sword Use | 5 | Parry | 8
Dodge | 6 | Block | 4 | Imperial Spear Style | 2
Muscle Explosion | 2 | Battlefield Perception | 1

Magical

Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level
Sense Mana | 2 | Mana Control | 6 | Reduced Mana Cost | 1
Mana Efficiency | 4 | Wind Magic | 17 | Fire Magic | 1
Light Magic | 25 | Space Magic | 3 | Conjuring Magic | 1
Diagnosis | 7 | Redirect Mana | 1

Miscellaneous

Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level
First-Aid | 3 | Housework | 3 | Cooking | 2
Cleaning | 2 | Washing | 1 | Riding | 1
OBS: Level means (free point)+(trained point)

Info

Name: | Lina | Age: | 18 | Race: | Dwarf
HP: | 100 | MP: | 670 | Magic Power: | 275
Level: | 22 | Experience: | 6540/7000

Stats

Strength: | 8 | Endurance: | 8 | Dexterity: | 13
Speed: | 12 | Intelligence: | 16 | Wisdom: | 13
Willpower: | 17 | Charisma: | 10 | Piety: | 12
Perception: | 14 | Sanity: | 11

Other

Status Effects: | NONE | Titles: | NONE
Affiliations: | Wolf Ryder (master), Helios (Fellowship)
Companions: | Wolf Ryder, Alissa, Hanafuria, Roxanne Succubus, Ciel
Crimes: | NONE

Lina Skill Report

Physical

Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level
Hammer Use | 10 | Axe Use | 4 | Throw | 4+0
Parry | 5 | Dodge | 4 | Block | 6
Muscle Explosion | 2 | Shield Bash | 1 | Battlefield Perception | 2
Dwarven Pride Style | 2 | Enhanced Speed | 2+0

Magical

Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level
Sense Mana | 1 | Mana Control | 4 | Mana Efficiency | 1
Fire Magic | 1 | Earth Magic | 5 | Ligth Magic | 1
Space Magic | 1 | Conjuring Magic | 1 | General Enchanting | 9
Magic Tool Carving | 1

Miscellaneous

Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level
General Blacksmithing | 4 | Sweing | 4 | Housework | 1
Cleaning | 2 | Washing | 1 | Math | 4
Riding | 1 | Stonebody (innate) | 3
OBS: Level means (free point)+(trained point)

The first wave of harpies falls to our fusillade. Every ballista, every mage, every archer, and a good amount of warriors are all firing at the exposed harpies. Only a few manage to reach the wall before being disrupted by the wind elementals, turning into easy targets.

Ervin Krampus, the demon race mage from Great Destiny, has his [Fire Spirit] throw fast [Fire Arrows] like it's a machine-gun with tracer rounds.

Another volley of arrows and before the arrows hit the second wave is already approaching. The harpy archers are trying to catch us exposed while we deal with the suicidal wave of harpies.

A harpy approaches our tower and gets an arrow to the eye by Alissa.

"'Blinding Arrows' indeed, hahah," Nononya laughs nervously.

"She's just getting started," I say with a grin and tap her shoulder.

Nononya is wearing some really fine scale armor, likely gifted by Silvane. She uses a short spear and a small kite shield, her martial skills are just enough to qualify her as a shield for Alissa but nothing more. She knows enough [Wind Magic] to keep harpies busy while me and Alissa finish them off.

Another arrow volley falls on us and this time the suicidal harpies are getting numerous.

A harpy dives towards us and gets impaled by Lina's javelin. The harpy flies backwards and falls down inside the town while screeching.

Aoi fires a fast fireball into the wing of a harpy and she crashes on the floor of our tower, she immediately gets decapitated.

"TAKE COVER!" The Captain reminds us just as another volley hits.

The few remaining harpies fall to their own arrows. Another wave is already closing by. The harpies are good with their timing.

"[Discharge]!" Lyle yells and a good amount of harpies fall from the skies, plenty fall in our tower and get butchered.

"COVER!' The Captain yells again and we hide.

The harpy archers start coming closer and the angle the arrows fall from start to reduce.

The next wave of harpies has leather armor and clawed gloves on their bird feet. They survive our barrage and multiple start to get close.

Who did they kill to get that armor?

"[Discharge]!" Horvath yells and a huge area is covered in sparks of lightning. A clearing opens as every harpy falls down, stunned.

A harpy falls down near me and I slash her throat, she gargles and writhes on the ground. She tries to fly away but an elemental disrupts her flight and a fire elemental explodes her head with a well placed [Fireball].

I retreat to our cover with Alissa behind me and another volley hits us.

Roxanne is calmly firing small [Ice Lance]s and collecting kills. The harpies are charging towards her, making them an easy target to her fast projectiles. Aoi is on her shoulder happily firing fireballs on the enemies coming from behind Roxanne's line of sight. The harpies are afraid of charging towards Hana, her ferocious smile and threatening posture makes her inapproachable by most harpies.

A harpy dives on each side of us.

Nononya keeps hers busy, threatening her with her spear while Alissa starts to fill the harpy with arrows.

I cast a chantless [Lightning Bolt] into a harpy and she nearly splatters on the ground. Now that her claws are below my chest the harpy is an easy target. I slash at her and she protects herself with her wings, causing one to be severed.

She tries to take flight again but a wind elemental disrupts her flight. Grounded and confused, she gets a deep slash from me across her chest. The harpy waddles backwards and receives an arrow through the eye.

"COVER!" The Captain yells.

"S-suicidal, ehehe," Nononya laughs but her eyes are open wide.

"They have no coordination so this is all they can do," I say as another enemy salvo falls.

"We'll be fine," Alissa says and points forward as another wave is about to reach us.

The lionfolk Grosnok from Great Destiny swings his scythe and cuts in two multiple harpies with every [Wind Blade] leaving his artifact. The Wind mages are bunching up the harpies for Grosnok to butcher.

A harpy dives past me, she's wearing gloves on her feet which make her claws as long as a knife. She scratch my shield and breaks a scale or two. As she stops in the air for a moment so she can turn around, I cast an [Earth Bullet] and hit her right in the ribs.

She's forced down on the ground by a wind elemental and Horvath's knight finishes her off.

Ciel and Lina are doing well keeping the harpies away from Lyle while he chants a spell with a manic smile. His father has an even more insane smile.

Ciel is doing short work of the harpies, she can easily chop off the wings of the harpies at a distance with either spell or glaive, then it's just a matter of slashing a throat. Lina lacks the follow up to finish off the harpies she manages to stab, but when an elemental disrupts their flight then Lina chops their wings and crushes their skulls with ease.

"[Discharge]!" Lyle releases his spells and more harpies fall to the ground. Hana and Lina butcher the vulnerable enemies

I stab a harpy repeatedly on the neck and face as she tries to crawl away. A harpy tries to dive me while I'm busy but I jump backwards and glide to safety with [Telekinesis].

Horvath's [Electric Spirit] fires a bolt into the harpy and she stiffens up. Now she's too late to try to find cover and gets peppered by friendly-fire.

The harpy archers get close enough that they are firing directly at us, which also means that they are in our range.

"NAHAHAH! [Dead End]!" Werner Rizek's laugh is oozing evil and sadism.

The archer harpies slow and stop in the air, having difficulty to move. Even their arrows that were already in flight stop. The level 60 [Electric Magic] spell makes everyone's "path" stop, forcing them to slow down or stop, the inverse of [Rush].

The archer harpies get shredded as they are basically immobile in the air. The mage harpies have some difficulty dispelling Werner's spell due to his inhuman power.

"ABOVE! LANCERS!" The Captain yells.

From above the archers comes a unit of harpies in thick padded leather armor. They hold with their claws a long lance pointing downwards.

Helena's [Water Spirit] spits high-speed droplets of water that enter the eyes of the harpies and make them blind.

Everyone casts high-damage spells towards the harpies and their charge gets blunted. It's annoyingly difficult to hold back and chant when I have been casting chantless for so long.

Lina casts an [Earth Bullet] and a harpy gets her lance destroyed. She veers off course and falls near us.

"MAGES!" The Captain yells.

The lancer harpy gets up and tries to crawl towards our cover. A kick in the face and a painful one between her naked legs and she's sent away with a shriek. Alissa looks at me with a frown.

Our cover that looks more like a pincushion loses chunks of wood as [Wind Blade]s and [Fireball]s hit it, there's also feathers of Needler harpies being thrown. The lancer harpy starts burning from friendly-fire as multiple [Fireball]s hits her all over her body. Alissa finishes her off with an arrow.

"Dear Gods," Nononya says, staring at the burning harpy.

"Nono! Incoming!" Alissa warns and fires another arrow.

An area spell starts being cast right on our cover and I interrupt it.

The mage harpies retreat and get ready to make another bombing pass at us. Their numbers are already greatly reduced, they won't last long.

More harpies, now with thicker armor, dive towards us.

Nononya skewers one harpy and her spear gets stuck. I cast an [Earth Bullet] on the harpy and knock it out, allowing Nononya to pull out the spear. I immediately turn around and slash at a harpy that's getting disrupted.

"Thank you!" I hear her say as I slash again.

The harpy's bodies are protected but not heir wings, I cut off one wing and wound the other. The harpy shrieks and writhes, trying to jump on me and claw my face. She misses but her blood is splattered all over me.

I kick it down and jab my sword at the back of her head, killing her.

With a glaive on the gut, a harpy is held down by Ciel until Lina comes and opens the harpy's skull with her hammer, spilling the brain matter.

I see Haaran and Alaraste are on a dance of death. They swing their flaming swords and crescents of fire fly out of them. I see that the swords are actually throwing flaming oil. The sword blades are in the shape of flames, completely impractical, they must be artifacts.

Vanea is behind them, freely throwing balls of darkness at the harpies while a knight keeps the harpies away from her. Her mother is beside her, doing the same with her own knight for protection.

Another salvo of magic hits our cover, blowing it in half. I cast [Grow] on it until it returns to its original size. Now there's bark on it, adding a little more protection. Lina casts [Earth Wall] and reinforces her cover. Roxanne pulls out a barricade from her [Item Box].

Silvane moves to another cover to help heal a wounded soldier.

Two harpies decide to focus on me while Alissa is busy. I cast [Discharge] and amp up the power until both fall down on the ground. I quickly stab the throat of one but the other manages to jump on me and latch on my chest armor. Her claws rake on my helmet while I stab her in the gut repeatedly, I eventually pierce through the armor and wreck her internal organs.

Her attack is slowed by my [Wind Armor] but it does nothing for the sharpness of her claws. I get a few scratches on the face and a painful cut on the neck, then the harpy pukes blood on my face and releases me. I quickly cast [Clean] on my eyes and see the harpy with the wounded throat right on top of me, she slams me and I fall backwards.

Nono's spear stabs the chest of the harpy that slammed, the harpy's armor prevents her from getting too wounded. Meanwhile a fire elemental burns the gutted harpy.

Another harpy claws at Nono from her flank, latching on her armor and pushing her to the ground. With a slide from my [Telekinesis] I reach the harpy and slash at her neck, nearly decapitating her. She passes out from sudden loss of blood pressure and slumps over Nono.

"You are now level 23," says the female announcer.

Alissa blinds the harpy with a spear on the chest by using [Ghost Lights] and fires an arrow on its eye.

I pull the harpy's body off Nono and pull her back to cover just as another magic salvo hits. The salvo's strength was greatly reduced, only two spells hit our cover.

I cast [Heal] on Nono and then on myself.

"Eh? Chantless?" Nononya asks, she looks at me with confused eyes and a face full of harpy blood.

"That's the first thing you say?" I snort at her.

"S-sorry, erm, thank you!" She bows lightly.

"Focus," I say and give her a hand chop on the head. Ah, she's so fluffy.

I move out and keep another harpy away while Alissa fires at her.

A harpy impales herself in Hana's spear. The harpy desperately tries to claw Hana but she kicks the harpy away and reverts her [Extend], easily pulling the spear off from the Harpy. Hana follows up with a stab on the throat, she forces the harpy on the ground and stomps on her until the harpy passes out.

A pillars of fire comes out of the forest, something exploded over there. Suddenly I see 3 huge balls of something on fire being lobbed at us from the forest. One veers off course and falls on the empty grassland, the ball breaks apart and burning oil spreads out starting a small fire. The second ball falls right outside the wall on the heads of unlucky soldiers, screams of pain arise and magical water jets immediately start to extinguish the fire. The third ball is slowed by the wind elementals and other mages when it crosses town but eventually it breaks apart and some burning oil falls in the slums, the rest is extinguished while floating in the air.

"Your 'surprise' wasn't really a surprise, Cookachickadoodoolee, pathetic," Alaraste says in a disdainful tone, his voice sweeps the battlefield.

"BAKAWWK! BAKBAK BAKAWWK!" The Cooka-(...) bellows and my ears ring in pain.

Another harpy comes and gets grounded by a wind elemental. Lina's javelin pierces her on the flank and while she's struggling to get up I step on her naked chest and stab her face until she dies.

Lyle stuns a harpy for Lina and she opens another skull with her hammer. Her armor is peppered by spatters of blood, brain, bone chips, and feathers. As a first it seems Hana is the one the least bloodied of the front line.

Out of the forest comes a huge black mass. A human face full of wrinkles, a very long and conical nose, triangular pointy and sharp teeth, a long feathered neck, a fat and brown huge chicken body. It's flight path is erratic, it's wings flap wildly and without coordination, it's a wonder it's still airborne. This is the Cooka-bitch.

"ALARASTEEE! BAKAWWK!" It bellows again.

"BAKAWK!" The harpies answer.

Suddenly the Dragon's Bane starts silently firing the huge bolts without anyone touching it. The Cooka-rooster has to jerk its entire body to dodge. The fat jiggles with every movement.

Suddenly a bolt enters the flabby belly of the ugly-ass-Cooka and it's sent back into the forest.

"I HATE YOOOoou~..." The Cooka-fat yells one last time and disappears in the Sea of Trees, for now.

"BAKAWK!" The harpies yell again and make one last suicide charge.

"[Discharge]!" Werner yells.

"[Discharge]!" Horvath yells.

"[Discharge]!" Lyle yells.

"[Discharge]!" I yell.

"[Firestorm]!" Roxanne yells.

"[Firestorm]!" Silvane yells.

"[Wind Storm]!" Ciel yells.

The sky is filled with the light of spells as no mage holds back their mana. The harpies lump together and get stunned, falling like rocks. Down on the ground the battle turns into slaughter.

"AHAHAHAH, OHOHOH, HAHAHAH!" Lyle laughs maniacally in the same tone as his parents. "AHAhah... Ooof~..." He slumps over as his mana runs dry and Lina catches him before he falls on the ground.

I jump over to their side and slash at a writhing harpy. I cautiously look around, searching for any harpy that could endanger Lyle.

The sky clears and a considerable amount of harpies retreat back into the Sea.

Their coordination was rather impressive, for monsters. They aren't even the breeder kind, the Little Cooka is only a leader-type.

Down below there's a few sources of fire being contained, adventurers and soldiers running around hunting for harpies and wounded, and priests working around their fortifications, healing the ones in most danger. Outside the wall the fire is already contained and the troops slowly reorganize, focusing on transporting the wounded to the healer's bunkers.

"Recover the wounded and finish your duties, soldiers! Then, celebrate! You deserve it, the town is safe again and we have achieved victory!" Alareste encourages us, his voice has a new reverb to it that brings a smile to my lips.

Our tower had a few wounded but no losses.

Horvath signals to us and we gather, the other noble house and Captain Entoli joins us and removes his helmet.

"No casualties, a perfect battle," the Captain says with a smile, "The elementals were a great help, the harpies were being constantly disrupted."

"Your boy has some talent for [Discharge], Horvath," says a male wereowl noble.

"Both my children do, Sir Rooter," Horvath says with large grin.

"Anyway," Helena says with an eye roll, "this year's fight was certainly a breeze. I would like to thank Helios and Nononya for their help with the elementals."

Silvane casts [Clean] on the blood spatters on Nono's face. She turns to us and says, "I can say that Haaran Anara also sends his appreciation for the help". She smiles at us and continues, "But now I must go down and join the healers."

"Should we go too?" I ask, looking at Ciel and Silvane.

"The temple is prepared to deal with this," Ciel answers.

"You are not prepared to deal with emergency healing, it could cause problems," Silvane says and bows lightly, "but thank you for the offer."

"The battle is done, you are all dismissed," Captain Entoli says to us and his subordinates.

"T-thanks for protecting me, Mr. Ryder," Nononya says and bows deeply, she's blushing lightly.

"My pleasure," I say with a smile.

"It has been a pleasure to fight alongside Helios, until then," Horvath says and turns his Emergency Ring green, a [Gate] opens and he leaves through it.

"Until tomorrow, Wolf," Lyle says and we share a handshake, "It was good fighting with you."

"Likewise," I say.

The wereowl noble silently observes us and then leaves.

Nononya is escorted out of the slums by two guards and Silvane goes to the south gate escorted by another two.

I turn to the girls and ask, "Right, no problems? No wounds?"

They shake their heads and Alissa pulls out a gnomic [Clean] tool to remove all the harpy blood from my body, then Ciel and Lina get a [Clean] too.

We wait for Aoi to finish eating a harpy's heart and we go home.

A note from Manasong

Hall of Fame of Patrons

The patrons who support Rupegia shall have their names sung by the bards for they deserve the glory and honor. Their names are:

Oracle Maximillian Hübner.

Lord Andrew Meyers.

Lord SenilePenile.

Lord Hope.

Lord Samuel Lim.

Leave a rating or a review to help me rise to the top or fix my shameful understanding of prose.

Take a look over my blog where all information of the world of Rupegia will be posted.

Join the Discord and discuss, or rant, or meme, or try and fight me so your waifu gets more screentime.

Become a Patron and read chapters in advance, or read the side-stories, or leave your mark on the story, or help choose the next artwork or the next side-story.

Chapter 36: Banter - Part 3

A note from Manasong

Attention: to conform to the limit of sexual content allowed in a novel, I've censored this chapter. You can look for the uncensored version here.

The symbol "-" denotes a section that got cut for containing sexual content. Also, if paragraphs seem missing, they were also likely censored in an earlier pass where the symbol wasn't used.

I drive the dinghy towards home.

My heartbeat slows and I feel heavy. It started and ended so suddenly I'm still processing things.

The town slowly returns to life as the population cautiously go out of their homes to check the damage. Corpses of harpies litter half the town, even a few blocks from our home there was blood spatter.

The harpy's suicide attack is just another part of life here, and also just another cycle for the harpies too. Their numbers grow until unsustainable levels, then they attack with all they have.

I'm getting used to the sudden need to fight. I won't have a second episode like on our first trip to the Morning Dew, but it doesn't mean that the aftermath is getting easier. The smell of blood is stuck on my nose, the screams of pain ring in my ears, the chaos of battle repeats in my mind.

How can the Lord get used to this? Seeing his own men die, see them cry before their deaths, the helplessness before such a large amount of enemies, the confidence that in the end everything will be okay. Warfare is so different from hunting.

We reach home and suddenly Hana lifts me off the ground with a bear hug. -.

-

It seems everyone was in need of some stress relief.

After we finish our dinner, everyone's faces are of content.

Gih.

Oh, right.

"So, Alissa. You never told us who your parents really are," I say.

"Neither did you," she answers calmly.

"We guessed you weren't comfortable talking about your family," Ciel says.

"I guess that you guessed right," I say and smile wryly. "I wanted to forget but it's not that easy."

"You shouldn't forget," Ciel says.

"So," Alissa claps her hands, "who are your parents?"

I breathe in deeply. I really don't want to talk about this but…

Gih.

Yeah, I should.

"My mother is a teacher, she teaches young children. My father was a factory worker, he's retired now."

"Factory?" Lina asks.

"Like a craftsman, but he works in a much more methodical way and with equipment instead of handcrafting."

"What did he create?"

"Cars. It's like a wagon that has a magic stone and allows it to move without animals."

"You said you don't have magic on your world, so how does it move?"

I smile at Lina's curiosity.

"Fuel," I say, "Think of something that's so flammable that it can explode when it catches fire just like Roxanne's [Explosion], on a smaller scale, though."

"Wait, how do you use that to move? It's just an explosion."

"Yes, we harnessed the power of explosion!" I open my arms wide and smile. "With a piston you can make the power of the explosion go in one direction instead of every direction. So you can move things in a line, but when you add multiple pistons and some intelligent mechanical engineering you can make the linear movement turn circular. Then you attach that to an axle and you have a way to move wagons without horses!"

"Ooh…" Lina's eyes gleam and the gloominess fades.

Maybe I found something for Lina to do. I have to give my engineering knowledge to her. Wait until I tell you how we distill liquid ancient dinosaur into fuel, technically not true but she doesn't need to know.

"Are, dra-gons, there?" Aoi asks.

"No dragons, but we use it a lot on stories and myths. Dragons are just as beautiful and majestic on Earth than they are in here."

Hana grins and Aoi breathes fire out of her nostrils, then closes her eyes in happiness.

"What did your mother teach?" Ciel asks.

"Math," I answer.

"Does your world teach the same things as ours?" Alissa asks.

"From what I remember they start with addition and subtraction, then multiplication and division, then algebra, there's something about kinematics too. That's just for children, teenagers go further than that"

"Every child needs addition so they can calculate their skill points," Ciel says, "but multiplication is only for the ones who want to specialize."

"I know the multiplication table," Hana says with a proud smile. "I use it when buying in bulk, if you don't then someone's going to rip you off."

Lina nods in agreement.

"So every child learns these things?" Ciel asks and I nod. "It's quite an interesting world. We must look so backwards to you," she smiles wryly.

"Somewhat, though you have more progress than us on other things," I say.

Not to mention how much we were killing our own world.

"What about potions?" Roxanne asks.

"This is kind of a weird thing. There are no potions," I say and she puckers her lips in disappointment," but there's 'medicine', a way of studying the effects of things on the body and how to cure diseases that's quite similar to potions," and she smiles.

"Well, the person we really want to hear about is your wife," Alissa says.

My heart pangs with guilt.

"Lily is… well, she's someone special…"

"Talk about cliche," Roxanne says and rolls her eyes dramatically.

"Oh come on, how am I supposed to start? I have to delay while I think."

"Sure, sure. Just don't be corny like you always are," Roxanne says and blows me a kiss.

"Well… Firstly, Lily has the same skin color and hair as Ciel. Secondly, she is shorter than me and taller than Lina."

"There's humans shorter than you?" Hana asks and lifts an eyebrow.

"Damn, you sure there's no dwarves there?" Roxanne asks.

"There's a physical condition called 'dwarfism', but this is caused by problems on the body and is not a different race of people. But yes, a lot of people in my world are shorter than the ones in this world. In fact, I'm not actually short, aside from my brother I'm the tallest of my family," I say and puff my chest with pride.

Hana stifles a laugh and says, "What? Y-you're, tall?"

"Maybe I shouldn't tell you these things," I say and narrow my eyes at her.

"Come now, my little Wolfy," Roxanne comes to my side and throws an arm over my shoulder, "Tall, short, does it matter? We are just commenting the differences in heights between the humans of this world and the dwarv-, I mean, the little humans of your world," she smirks at me.

"Well you are big in all the right places," Alissa says and taps my thigh.

Lina nods along and Ciel massages her forehead with a smile.

"Go back to Lily, please," Ciel asks.

"Alright," I breathe in deeply, "Lily is kind of an asshole. She's mean and abrasive, but she's good only to me. She works in business, erm, trading-stuff, so she has kind of a domineering attitude but she takes it off when she's with me."

Hana blinks blankly and laughs again, "Ain't that kind of a woman's dream? I have heard plenty of women who want a rough outlaw to take them but do them gently and with love."

Oh boy, I heard that one before.

"That kind of explains how he fell for both of us," Roxanne says with an evil smile, "you can't deny your wishes to be dominated by us, Wolfy. Just be honest with yourself and submit."

-

"So how did you meet Lily?" Alissa asks excitedly.

"You remember how I explained video games?" I ask, the girls nod and Roxanne grunts, "Well, there's a way to play with other people across the world through near-instant communication. It's like there's someone acting as an intermediary between you and the other person.

"I met Lily on one of those games. It's somewhat similar to how we fight in here, she was a vanguard fighter and I was a support mage. We were simply two players who did well together and became friends, we eventually started our own clan, it's uh, pretend-clan, not a real one. Some months later we realized we live close to each other and then we met.

"Then things went kind of crazy. Months of sexual tension culminating in us fucking like rabbits. It's kind of a trust thing, we just had some mutual trust on each other after relying on one another for so long. We just understood each other," my eyes start to burn, "I know how she thinks and she knows how I think so we never really had a fight. We had arguments yes but she's someone you can rely on, someone you know that even when she does something bad, you can be sure she didn't mean it. So why shouldn't we forgive each other for our mistakes? We had no pride or face to maintain, we were honest and straight. We were a team, a duo.

"Three years later, when we were both on a good place in our careers, I try to ask her in marriage but she beats me for four days, she asks me in marriage and I laugh at how much money I wasted on a surprise that she 'ruined'," I smile bitterly and swallow the lump in my throat, "We changed our reservations for a family party where we announced the engagement. We ended up spending more money splurging on the food of the ceremony than the ceremony itself, she's more of a gourmet while I like to adventure on tastes so we focused on food instead of the more traditional aspects of the ceremony, like the music, or decoration.

"Then, during the ceremony, I was transported here."

I clean my cheeks of the tears and keep my head down.

Guilt, longing, and fear. Those three emotions are a storm on my heart.

Alissa hugs me tight and the other girls find a piece of my body to grab. Aoi curls on my lap and Gify nibbles on my ear.

I control my tears and breathe in deeply.

I'm loved, I have nothing to fear, I will live my life here like I promised.

"Tears, means, sad-ness," Ted says on his usual strained voice.

"Why, sad?" Suzy asks.

Like the elementals, they hold the same knowledge as I do, but maybe they can't understand the deeper or finer parts of my knowledge.

"I am sad because I have lost something important that I won't ever be able to get back," I say.

"Im-por-tant?" Suzy asks.

"Yes, Lily was someone very important to me so I am sad that I will never be able to meet her again."

Ted and Suzy look at each other then back at us and nod.

Ciel and Lina grab them and bring them closer to us.

"Hugging helps with sadness," Ciel says.

"Then, I, hug, you," Ted says and his fuzzy arms wrap around my shoulder. Suzy copies him on my other shoulder.

"Awn…" Ciel gushes and cleans the corner of her eyes.

This hurts my heart. I know they are robotic and simple minded, they are merely applying their knowledge to serve me better, but it's still touching. Even if it isn't a natural response, what they do is what matters to me.

We spend a minute like this before I have the courage to speak again, "What about your parents, Alissa? Who are they?"

"The Chief and the Chieftess of the Misty Fox clan," she answers.

Not unexpected but something is nagging me.

"Why did you never called them mother or father? You only call them 'Chief' and 'Chieftress'."

She smiles bitterly and speaks, "Once I became a Blood Slave I wasn't their children anymore. Not calling them 'Mom' and 'Dad' is also a mental exercise, my past is irrelevant so I must keep it separate. I became a new person when I became a Blood Slave, so I need to look at my past differently."

"Remember that you are only a slave on paper, I already consider you my wife."

She hugs me tighter and bites her lips, then she kisses my neck repeatedly.

"I love you," she whispers.

"I love you too. I love you all," I say.

"I love you," Roxanne says and gives me a peck on my cheek.

"I love you," Hana says and kisses my hand.

"I love you," Ciel says and kisses the back of my neck.

"I l-love you," Lina says and kisses my other hand.

My relationship with Alissa is the most unhealthy one. Our dependency on each other is too great and no matter how much I call her "wife", she's certainly going to always act as a slave. I don't know how I should fix this, or if I can, or if I should. As long as we are happy that's enough, right? Right?

Slowly we disentangle. Roxanne cleans herself and we clean the table.

The evening is spent like all others, cuddling.

I summon the [Holy Spirit] repeatedly for Ciel, I tell the golems to chase the Spirit while Hana coaches them in how to better control their bodies, Gify decides to play along and let the golems chase him too. Roxanne keeps pulling and putting items in her [Item Box] for Aoi. Lina maintains our weapons. Alissa cuddles with me while we read one of her books.

"Do you have siblings, Alissa?" I ask.

"I have a little sister, Allura", she answers and closes her book. "Oh, you will lover her, she has fox legs. Fox, legs!" She turns on my lap a nuzzles up to my neck. "She got Mom's color, Dad's eyes, and possibly his height too."

"That sounds adorable."

"She is. I wonder how much she grew, she must be 12 now."

"You said you lived 3 years on your own?"

She closes her eyes and speaks sadly, "Yes, I couldn't see my family because of the training. Only Mom, occasionally."

"You finally started saying 'Mom' and 'Dad'."

"I guess so…" She slowly falls asleep in my arms with a faint smile.

"What about you girls?" I ask to the other ones.

"I have an older brother, Fuda," Lina says. "He looks just like me but a little more masculine."

"A little?" Hana asks.

Lina smiles and nods. She says, "He should be learning enchanting so he could inherit father's shop. He wasn't that excited about it so I wonder how it went."

"Were you the one who wanted to inherit the shop?" Ciel asks.

"Yeah, until I was sold. I was much more valuable than brother so I was chosen."

"If your family is still troubled we will help them. I want to travel to Mountainhome when we become nobles," I say.

Lina's eyes open wide and she smiles wide, then she nods repeatedly. "Thank you, master," she says.

"Don't go back to calling me master."

"O-okay," she lowers her head and keeps smiling.

We turn to Roxanne.

"I'm an only child," she says and smiles bitterly.

Now we turn to Hana.

"My brother is called Hermann and my sister is called Mizushina, Mimi, for short," She says, her gaze loses focus and she smiles. "Hermann was supposed to be like me but he's 19, he must still be training somewhere to be a guard for a noble. Mimi is older and was training to inherit Dad's position as the head, so she might be in a better position, like helping an accountant or something."

Alissa opens her eyes groggily and finally slumps on my arms, asleep. I massage her ears for a while until we finally go to sleep.

A note from Manasong

Hall of Fame of Patrons.

The patrons who support Rupegia shall have their names sung by the bards for they deserve the glory and honor. Their names are:

Oracle Maximillian Hübner.

Lord Andrew Meyers.

Lord SenilePenile.

Lord Hope.

Lord Samuel Lim.

Leave a rating or a review to help me rise to the top or fix my shameful understanding of prose.

Take a look over my blog where all information of the world of Rupegia will be posted.

Join the Discord and discuss, or rant, or meme, or try and fight me so your waifu gets more screentime.

Become a Patron and read chapters in advance, or read the side-stories, or leave your mark on the story, or help choose the next artwork or the next side-story.

Chapter 37: Memories - Part 1

A note from Manasong

Attention: to conform to the limit of sexual content allowed in a novel, I've censored this chapter. You can look for the uncensored version here.

The symbol "-" denotes a section that got cut for containing sexual content. Also, if paragraphs seem missing, they were also likely censored in an earlier pass where the symbol wasn't used.

Today is the 18th.

I pity the Cooka-meh, he seems to have a sad story and if what the Lord said is true he cannot enjoy the wonders of waking up to a tangled mess of bodies.

Roxanne's horns flab as she breathes in and out. Her head lays on my chest, she drools on my pectoral, and her tail wraps around my hand so tight I lost sensation in there.

My head is half-buried on Hana's - pillows. Her big and strong hand cups on of my cheeks while other her arm is wrapped around me from below and squeezes my ribs tight. Aoi sleeps on Hana's mane, making a nest out of her hair.

Alissa slept happily - on my thigh. Currently, I see her tail sway rapidly from side to side -.

I feel like I will level [Enhanced Semen Recharge] again soon. My refractory period is reducing with every level and I wonder how it's going to be like when I reduce it to zero. Could something happen if I level the skill more after the period reaches zero?

I'm afraid of adding points to it because the skill is clearly doing some physiological changes to my body and I'm not very eager to know what happens if I abuse it. My powers are a cheat and I know that if I abuse them I will feel like shit, like how adding too many skills made it hard on my mind when I was stalking Farana.

Hana stirs awake, she pulls the cute bundle of scales out of her hair and leaves her on my chest -.

I'm feeling more emotionally drained - than the other way, actually. Crying can be "cleansing for the soul" but it's also rather intense, that plus the sudden harpy attack overstimulated my nerves.

Roxanne stirs awake at the mischief. -

-

Incredibly, my "Sanity" increased by 1 (now 9+4), slow progress but it's understandable. Firstly I stabilized, now I'm improving.

My [Light Magic] and [Sense Soul] increased by 1 (now 4+8 and 4). I can now see someone's HP with the skill. Curiously the golem's HP is only 10, I think it's because their souls are not properly aligned with their bodies.

Lina leveled up to 23 and increased her [General Enchanting] by 2 (now 11) and [Mana Control] by 1 (now 5).

"Good, mor-ning, mas-ter," Ted and Suzy say in unison and bow.

Ciel smiles and pats both their heads.

"Morning," I say.

"They can sense mana pretty well even without the skill," Ciel says, "You should look to give them [Space Magic] next."

"Sure, maybe after you get your [Holy Spirit]."

She nods happily and we start to eat.

Today's lesson with Kyros is a return to the basics so I can strengthen my foundation. I need to learn how the sub-process creation happens and integrate it with my other spells, using multiple [Telekinesis] or even [Rush] plus [Telekinesis] would be wonderful for my style.

I feel a slight increase in control of my gathering vortex. More than the usual increase after a long period of training so it's noticeable. I believe my level increase improved my mental capacity.

"I read the report of your fighting," Kyros says, "Your talent makes me envious. Are you truly 19 years old?"

"That's what the system says," I say and shrug, trying not to smile.

He snorts, "When the bard writes your story send me a copy."

Today is Electric class. The professor asks for Lyle to demonstrate his [Discharge], to retell Horvath and his spirit's fight, and describe Werner's [Dead End].

"Not even I can cast a [Dead End] as large as that, your grandfather is a legend, Mr. Lyle," the professor says with a nod and his hands on his hips. "Keep this in mind when you think about the abstracts concepts of magic, you can create such powerful spells if you are smart about how to use them it could change how battles are fought. If you create a Unique Spell you can easily join a circle of magi or even a Lord's court of mages."

Lyle is currently gushing from the praises to his family, he barely had the composure to retell how the harpies were slaughtered once [Dead End] took effect.

Silvane and Nononya appear during the break.

Alissa turns into a very small fox and jumps on my lap, copying Nononya and Silvane.

"Since my normal form is large, reducing to this size makes me tire much more quicker so I won't be able to remain very long like this," Alissa says.

"That's okay, I will make sure to enjoy you as much as I can," I say, provoking jealousy from Garanae, who seems dying to pet the little fox.

"Thank you for protecting me, Mr. Ryder," Nononya says and bows.

"It was nothing," I say with a smile.

Nono awkwardly straightens and scratches her ear.

"It was her first time fighting alongside a man, I'm quite proud of her performance," Silvane says with a smirk and some odd emphasis, causing Nono to blush, "Next time she's going to be even more influential with the elementals, it will be wonderful," Silvane smiles so brightly Lyle blushes.

Garanae and Hatara didn't have to participate much until the flaming oil spread nearby and they had to help put out the fire on the houses. They at least know not to simply throw water into an oil fire, a Fire mage tries to control the fire directly through "Willpower" or [Mana Control] and a Water mage throws water infused with a "liquid" concept that prevents it from turning into steam instantly.

"How do your parents look like?" Alissa asks me as we finish dinner.

"Father is a very wide man, kind of chubby. He has a much more oval face and a round nose that goes well with his bald head. He has kind of rugged look, somewhat reminds me of the dwarves," I say.

"You sure that's your father?" Roxanne asks with a raised eyebrow.

"No," I laugh and feel a small pain of nostalgia, "We used to joke that we are adopted since we look so different from him, but my brother is looking more and more like Father now that he's shaving his head bald so we are sure we are his children. We just inherited the more childish looks from Mom.

"She's small and thin, her face is full of freckles due to her Irish inheritance. The Irish look kind of like the Griffiths's twins. She has our dark hair while Father is blonde but we never remember that since he has gone bald ever since we were born.

"Our grandma from mother's side is actually darker than Ciel, but we say that the 'printer ran out of ink' because every child grandma had was whiter than the first. 'The magic pen ran out of mana' would have a similar meaning."

"So your grandma is like the dark skins from Sommerland?" Ciel asks.

I nod.

"That's the inverse of me," Hana says, "I'm the whitest and eldest, Mimi is the color of Ciel and Hermann is as dark as Dad. Mom is as white as snow, her eyes are much kinder than mine and her face looks very sweet. She's taller than me and has bigger breasts, damn Da's inheritance reduced my breast size," she pouts. I smile and Lina hungrily stares at Hana's breasts, salivating. "Dad is as dark as night, he has more of my mean face with a thin and longer nose, he kind of likes to frown or scowl a lot. He's just a little taller than Wolfy but he's much thinner."

"Me and Allura didn't inherit much from our dad," Alissa says. "She has more of his color and possibly his height but we look more similar to Mom. Her eyes are sharper and her face is more bony in comparison to ours."

"I heard I'm the spitting image of my Dad with a more feminine look. But Dad is quite feminine even for Succubus standards," Roxanne says.

"What do you mean? Are Incubus men more feminine than other races?" I ask.

"Yeah, I dunno why but most Succubus women prefer effeminate men," she bites her lips and hides a smile.

I glare at her and she averts her eyes nervously.

"The succubus race has some bias among women," Ciel says, "I hear there are way more bisexuals among the Succubus than any other race."

"We are matriarchal so maybe that has something to do with that," Roxanne says and shrugs.

"What does your relationship with me mean to your parents?" I ask.

She frowns and says, "They might not like you. Mom, especially."

"We will deal with it when it happens," I say and reach over to give Roxanne's hand a squeeze. She nods and sighs, relaxing her expression.

"Dad and Mom are quite cute," Lina says, "Dad even looks like a child, he said he has some silver elf blood that makes him so cute. Mom is more sensual, her jaw is sharper than mine and her lips are fuller, even her breasts…" She looks down at her flatness and her shoulders slump.

"You are perfectly cute as you are," Ciel says and pinches Lina's cheek.

"O-ow!" She bats Ciel's hand away and pouts cutely, "I just wanted to have something, even Roxanne does. They feel so good to grab."

I nod emphatically to Lina's words.

"Believe me, they are heavy and uncomfortable, except for certain races who have it easy," Ciel says sends a look to Hana, who smirks. "The attention both of you give to them just barely makes them worth the pain."

That's almost sacrilege, almost.

This evening Lina and Igang up on Ciel and do our best to distract her from [Holy Spirit] training but not so overtly she gets annoyed. -.

- I focus on the golem's skills. I have to create a "layer" for them so I can add skills to them. It's quite the slow process since I have to alter their entire soul for it. -

- I look over Hana and Roxanne, who are cuddling and supposedly practicing their mana increase routine.

"Are they sleeping?" I ask Alissa.

She opens her eyes -, "Uh? Oh, let me see…" She stares at them for a few seconds, "Their breathing pattern tells me they fell asleep."

Ciel releases her concentration and the small [Spirit Light] dissipates into a rainbow smoke. She looks at them and says, "They actually look so cute."

"Cu-te?" Asks Suzy.

"Visually attractive," I say, "looking at them gives us positive feelings."

"Shoul-d, us, feel, that, too?" Asks Ted.

"I don't know, do you feel something when you look at them?"

They turn to the sleeping cuddlers and stare.

"No," they say in unison.

"If I order you to feel something will you start feeling?"

"I, do, not, know."

"Try to feel something once a day for a minute or so. If it doesn't work do not worry about it," I order. It doesn't hurt to have them try that and wording it this way won't burden them if it doesn't work.

"Yes," they answer in unison and nod.

Lina aims the smallest [Earth Bullet] I have ever seen and fires it on Roxanne's head. Roxanne snorts and wakes up, she blinks and looks around, confused. Then she massages her forehead right where a small red skin is starting to form.

Lina snickers evilly and looks away from Roxanne.

Today is the 19th.

-

My [Mana Efficiency] increased by 1 (now 5+6).

Ciel stays at the temple this time to train more her [Judgment].

Roxanne is practicing her [Heart of Fire] by prancing about on the wall with Gify and two other nature spirits behind him, a zebra-striped ferret and a parrot that's completely green and looks like a toy.

Alissa tries to contain her envy by reading Toroo's book. She wants to learn [Ignorance] next, it will greatly improve her scouting and stalking. She doesn't need my instant-cast Gift for it so she will keep her [Illusion Magic] at 5 for now.

Hana and Aoi spar. Hana is forcing herself to improve her [Double Image] and Aoi is improving her sensing and perception of magic along with her agility.

The golems watch from the window, Ciel does not allow them to go into the wet grass.

I'm in full armor with my sword in hand practicing my forms. I feel I'm getting close to something with my style.

Roxanne giggles like a little girl and says, "The mana consumption is still horrible but I never had so much freedom in movement before. This feels awesome."

I look to her and see that she's easily walking with her hands, her legs are dangling freely while her robe is glued to her body, thankfully. Gify and the ferret spirit are copying her while the parrot is simply floating upside down.

"But the best is still flying," she continues after returning to prance around the wall on her feet, the nature spirits mimic her gait.

"You damn right it is!" Hana says without taking her eyes off Aoi.

Aoi doubles in size and bats the wooden spear away, she pounces towards Hana but gets a shield in the nose.

"Owww! You, too, fast!" Aoi says and holds her nose with her claws. I glide towards her and apply [Heal]. "Thank!" She smiles towards me. Fewer fangs were shown so it's less frightening. Her facial expressions are improving.

"You, too, slow," Hana says mimicking Aoi's voice.

Aoi's head snaps back towards Hana and they resume their sparring.

I let a smile escape my lips as I watch them.

Roxanne starts to hum a march that's surprisingly similar to a certain masked blond boy's.

I return to focusing on my style.

I have been mastering the movement with [Telekinesis] and it's basically instant omnidirectional movement. I can easily get in or out of someone's reach with a thought.

Just for fun I lower my gravity and jump high up into the sky. I go above the houses and stay still in the air for a few seconds before I reach the apex of my jump and slowly fall down on the ground. The weightless feeling is incomparable to anything, Hana and Roxanne are right, flying is the best.

My reach is also my weakness since so far I have only specialized in short swords. I have to sooner or later learn the spear but even then, swords remain as the most versatile weapon I can use.

So, my style remains as focused on entering and leaving someone's reach at will. Enter, strike, retreat. I don't have the "Strength" or "Endurance" to remain in range for continued blows. I don't have the "Speed" or "Dexterity" for fast parries and flurries of blows. What I have is "Intelligence" and "Wisdom". I have a large, varied repertoire of spells at the tip of my hands.

My style is unique, it encompasses all kinds of System Magic, soon it will even encompass [Godly Language]. I can be a trickster, where nobody can know what I will bring next; a jack-of-all-trades, master of none; an impregnable fortress as I can literally be ready for any situation; a one-hit-kill machine as I can use the best tool for any job; I can be a death-go-… Yeah too far, I'm waay past my chuuni phase.

I can see the power in this, the unblockable combos I can dish out. I will always have the advantage, I can always stay one step ahead of my opponent, I can always have another card up my sleeve.

I am the newest master of [Ekrano Style].

I feel something change within me. I open my stats and see "[Ekrano Style] (creator)" with 1 point.

A door opens in my mind and a flood of information comes. Moves, stances, combos, strategies, I can feel them all at the tip of my fingers. At the edge of my knowledge I see a dark path, the way forward to improvement, where I have to go to become stronger, better, at my own style.

I feel like laughing, my body is electrified, this feels amazing. The joy of progress, the addictive nectar of power.

"Hana, spar with me," I say.

Her eyes drill a hole in my heart, her smirk brings shivers to my spine. Anger, fear, wonder, excitement. This is the first time I am truly feeling the brunt of Hana's [Intimidate] and high "Charisma", she's not someone I want to seriously fight to the death.

I charge forward before her, the early bird gets the worm.

She raises her shield over her face, only leaving her yellow lizard eyes to glare at me.

I glide forward.

She stabs with her spear, I deflect with my shield. The spear comes again to stab at my feet and I glide higher, folding my legs. The spear sweeps below my feet and I step on it.

Hana immediately drops the spear and grabs her wooden bastard sword she was holding on her shield hand.

She comes with a downwards slash and I parry with my sword. She pushes the sword forward and twists on its center of gravity so the point aims towards my neck.

I drop down on the ground and glide forward into her guard. Her sword's tip follows me and misses my neck.

I lower my shield on the ground and use both feet to kick her shield with a flash of [Rush]. She has to summon her wings to retain her posture.

She leans down and slashes at my exposed body. With a grunt and immense effort, I cast [Discharge] on her while maintaining [Telekinesis] so I can stand again. I transfer [Telekinesis] to my sword and slash downwards with all my strength. She buckles and kneels under the force of my attack.

Her sword comes for a stab on my chest and I glide to the side, out of her reach.

I immediately come again for another strike and she tries to jump back out of my reach. I cast an [Earth Bullet] on her knee, it bends and makes her jump awkward and short. She glares at me and growls.

She spreads her wings to take flight and I grit my teeth. With anger and regret I cast two [Wind Blades] in sequence towards her wings. One cuts through flesh and the other cuts through nothing as she retreats her wings towards her body and falls down like a stone.

She slashes downwards and I glide sideways, her attack was a feint and she points her sword towards my collarbone for a stab.

I remain in place and lift my shield to deflect the strike. I cast [Entangling Vines] on the ground. Her sword scrapes on my shield and the point snakes towards my face.

I glide backward and she nearly falls over trying to follow me as her foot is firmly caught on vines. She looks down and breathes in, I feel mana gathering on her lungs.

I cast [Torrent] on her mouth and she chokes. Then I cast [Rush] and enter her reach again.

She looks to me and I cast [Ghost Lights]. She grimaces and lowers her head behind her shield. She searches for my feet on the ground and I jump.

She stabs upwards, her sword searching for my body. With my shield arm I cast [Lightning Bolt] on her sword arm and it freezes.

I stab my sword on her neck just as I receive a shield on the nose.

My eyes regain focus and I see a concerned Alissa splashing one of Roxanne's HP potions on my face.

I immediately cast [Heal] on my nose and the throbbing pain goes away. I cast another on my brain and the concussion fades. Alissa casts [Clean] on my face and all the blood goes away.

I sit up and see Roxanne splashing a potion on Hana's wounded wing. Hana seems supremely amused, her body sways from side-to-side as she looks over her wounded wing with a grin.

"Feeling okay?" Alissa asks.

"Yeah, I healed my concussion, too," I say.

She sighs, "Drink a potion just to be sure."

I nod and obey.

Hana notices I'm awake and says, "That was awesome, Wolfy. I never fought someone like this, your movement is just ridiculous!" She grins and gushes like a little girl. "You did go easy on me, right? You could have used [Discharge] until I was on the ground."

"Relying too much on [Discharge] is going to kill me one day. Someone just needs to resist it once and slash at me when I'm vulnerable for everything to go to shit," I say.

"True."

"You also went easy on me, you didn't use a single spell, not even your [Double Image]."

"I tried to breathe fire and you shut me down immediately," she shrugs, "You know all my tools, I couldn't find an opening to use them properly. Still, it was awesome, let's do this again!" She retreats her wings into her body as Roxanne finishes her treatment.

"I'm glad you enjoyed but no, we are not doing this again," I say and drop down on the grass, exhausted. "Too much danger for both of us."

"Awn -." She stands up and comes to me.

-

A note from Manasong

Hall of Fame of Patrons.

The patrons who support Rupegia shall have their names sung by the bards for they deserve the glory and honor. Their names are:

Oracle Maximillian Hübner.

Lord Andrew Meyers.

Lord SenilePenile.

Lord Hope.

Lord Samuel Lim.

Leave a rating or a review to help me rise to the top or fix my shameful understanding of prose.

Take a look over my blog where all information of the world of Rupegia will be posted.

Join the Discord and discuss, or rant, or meme, or try and fight me so your waifu gets more screentime.

Become a Patron and read chapters in advance, or read the side-stories, or leave your mark on the story, or help choose the next artwork or the next side-story.

Chapter 37: Memories – Part 2

A note from Manasong

Attention: to conform to the limit of sexual content allowed in a novel, I've censored this chapter. You can look for the uncensored version here.

The symbol "-" denotes a section that got cut for containing sexual content. Also, if paragraphs seem missing, they were also likely censored in an earlier pass where the symbol wasn't used.

-

"Wolfy, those things you called video games," Hana starts talking as we sit for lunch, "did they help you with learning how to fight? Considering how little time you have been in this world you are kind of really good with the sword."

"You could say that," I answer and grab my chin in thought, "Swordsmanship and the combat from video games have little in common, even the virtual reality ones, but they gave me a better idea in how to fight, how to strategize."

"Hmm... The way you use the sword really is non-standard, so I guess it makes sense."

"The system also helped a lot. [Sword Use] is basically a lot of muscle memory so having the free points allowed me to easily train that muscle memory perfectly."

"Cheating like always," Ciel casually comments.

"There's no skill for leadership and talent," Hana says and Alissa nods.

"How did you fight in those games?" Lina asks.

"Gih."

"Excuse me? I'll have you know I was top 50 Mesmer for a long time," I say and glare at the little shit.

"Gygeh gah gowgah."

"'He will win who knows when to fight and when not to fight'," I recite the quote without even looking at the provocateur.

"Gihg gohgeh gwogeh."

"If you fall to deceit you have only yourself to blame for your own stupidity."

"I'm kind of lost here," Roxanne says.

"He can see my memories so he looked over my time during the game. The spells I chose where of support, illusion, and poison, so he complains I was cheesing."

"Oh, that game sounds interesting," Alissa says, her ears twitching at the mention of illusion.

"Gheaph."

"Then the developers suck at balancing and I was just helping to point it out."

"Gahsgohl."

"Lily is the asshole, she had absolutely no mercy on the poor plebs. We bet she made a poor guy go bankrupt paying the priests because she was hunting him and shitting on him. She even tea-bagged the poor bastard, now that was some disrespect. Here, see these memories," I say and remember that fateful night.

"I'm even more lost now," Roxanne says and smiles wryly.

"Gah guh gah gih..." Gify starts to recite the shit-talking that Lily and the pleb had.

"Now that's mean," Ciel says.

"Now that's banter," Roxanne says and smiles.

"You two would get along well," Hana says to Roxanne.

Aoi and the golems stare at us and tilt their heads repeatedly, completely confused.

I casually practice my [Blessing Magic], I'm not too into it today as the high form [Ekrano Style] is still running through my body.

I get a few weird looks due to my hickey but most seem to be positive as they recognize the meaning of it. Hatara blushes and sends repeated glances at my neck during the break, she seems very eager to try it herself.

During the evening Lina and I attack Ciel again but she immediately pushes us away, now aware of our plans of using her.

"Don't you want to play with - me instead?" Hana asks.

Lina stops and looks at Ciel, who sends a quick glare at her.

"M-maybe not today," Lina says and twiddles her thumbs.

I pull Lina to my sofa and play footsies with her while she retells today's library delve.

Ciel's [Spirit Light] is starting to ignite and gain a heatless flame. She lets the spell fade in a puff of rainbow smoke and massages her head. "This is hurting my head," she says.

I summon a [Holy Spirit] and a corgi and make them tackle Ciel's belly. She yelps in surprise and then again in happiness.

Hana's [Double Image] improved, she managed to split her arm in two and it's much less blurry looking.

"How's it going with Gimbo?" I ask Lina.

"We are going over [Double Strike], soon I can enchant Hana's sword with it. It's quite the complex spell so it's taking a while."

"How's Gimbo and his wife? You never talk much about them," Alissa says.

"Oh," Lina blinks repeatedly and blushes slightly. "They don't talk much about things but they are really kind and gentle. Madam Nala always bakes some sweets and gives us some tea during our break. She makes a sweet cream that she puts on top of the cupcakes that remind me of that Chantilly we ate at the Tree of Mana," she says and smiles adorably.

"So you have been gorging yourself on sweets and you never told us anything about it," Roxanne says with a pout.

Lina's eyes open wide and her skin pales even more. Her cute feet stop playing with mine.

"Chantilly?" Ciel lifts her head and asks. Lina's mouth hangs open when she sees Ciel's face turn into a frown.

Lina opens and closes her mouth, a silent "sorry" is mouthed. Her slave training kicked in.

"They are playing around," Alissa says and pats Lina's head.

Lina lowers her head and her ears turn red. Ciel smirks and continues her training. From behind her bangs, Lina glares at Ciel for a second.

Today is the 20th.

-

Hana's [Illusion Magic] increased by 1 (now 2).

"I managed to double-cast once yesterday. It was quite odd, I did it but I barely know how," I tell Kyros, ignoring his raised eyebrow at my hickey.

"That's the sub-process forming, once it's complete it works with a mere thought," he says.

"Isn't it dangerous? Casting a spell instantly with a mere thought?"

"Instantly?"

Oops.

"I'm a magic swordsman, I learned how to cast [Lightning Bolt] chantless," I hurry an excuse.

"Ah yes, well for someone like you it can certainly be dangerous. Make sure the process only uses [Lightning Bolt] when you truly want to kill, sub-processes for instant spells aren't to be taken lightly."

Good to know.

After lunch I sent Alissa to talk to Nour, I want to meet up with him one last time before I leave town.

In mana cost classes we hold a class-wide debate. My "replace reality with my own" side, Toroo's "building phase improvement" side, and Gimbo's "pattern's improvement" side are the three more well-developed ones. Other students have somewhat similar but more abstract and less developed takes on the skill.

One student saw it as a log that was wet and not burning fully, he's the son of a wood transport tycoon. Another student saw it as too many ingredients on a soup clashing and ruining the taste, her mother has very high [Cooking]. Another saw it as cleaning and polishing the windows so more light could enter the room, her father is the main healer priest of the temple. Another saw as conflicting voices in his head, his mother is a famous [Sing]er at the theater.

Spells may not really be like "circuits", but rather, they are painted as such in my mind due to how important circuits were in my life. The same goes for the soul's structures, the girls' perception of the soul were tainted by my own since I explained to them what to look for before they created the "soul map" for me. Now I wonder how useful it might be to other people, maybe since they need to learn the skill the same way as I did they will see the soul similarly to me.

Toroo was obviously very amused at my hickey but didn't mention it. The others did their best to ignore it but Hatara had a mischievous smile the whole time and Garanae was seating cold.

I do my strength training alongside Lina. She unbuttons her shirt due to the heat and I spend my time admiring her cute collarbones. I-

I stand behind her and keep lifting my weights, looming over her. -. Her sweat drips over her neck and I feel like licking her.

I drop my weights and hug her from behind. Our bodies are hot and sweaty, she has a faint sweet scent coming out of her.

I scrape my teeth through her neck and bite her, then I turn her head and kiss her.

-

This night I spend my time teaching Hana about light and photons, even the others join in to listen.

Then I teach them about the double-slit experiment to explain how waves and particles behave and how photons are both.

I push my hand on the water and we watch the wave pass through the two slits. The wave divides into two and both start interfering with each other.

Then by spitting water in a cloud, I remake the particle pattern on a piece of paper.

"So it's like, until the particle touches something it just goes around randomly like a wave?" Hana asks, tilting her head.

"Yeah it's kind of like it. Some theories say that a particle has a probability of being in a certain place until it is measured, then it is certain it is in that place and then it becomes a wave of probabilities again," I say, butchering the whole theory, but who cares, this is fun.

"Maybe we could derive an abstract magical concept out of it," Alissa says.

"Being a researcher sounds fun," Lina says.

"You only saw the good parts, it's mostly boring stuff," I say and smile wryly.

"Hm," she turns back forward -.

-

Today is the 21st.

-

I'm stuck on bed longer than normal as Aoi sleeps, curled on my chest, and I do not have the heart to take her off me.

"Everyone in here is just so cuddly," Ciel says as she leaves.

The smell of orc bacon being fried seeps into the room and Aoi's head suddenly raises, her eyes wide awake.

"Ba-cooon!" She yells as she runs downstairs, her little claws tickling my body as she moves.

My "Strength" and "Endurance" finally increased by 1 (now 12 and 13). My [Reduced Mana Cost] increased by 1 (now 8+6).

Hana's [Illusion Magic] increased by 2 (now 4). Alissa's and Hana's "Wisdom" increased by 1 (now 14 and 12).

We don't eat much as we are going to visit Nour this morning.

The sky is cloudy and a storm is coming, we put on our cloaks and enter the dinghy. Alissa distributed the bunny ear cloaks so everyone looks adorable in the gloomy weather.

Nour's house is near the north gate, not on the noble's quarter but clearly on the wealthy part of town.

We leave the main road and pass a number of large houses with their own guards in front, most have high walls and heavy gates. I see a twinkle of crystals every once in a while atop the walls, a security system of some kind.

We reach a standardized blue-grey house, a rental, but bigger and more well made than ours. A simple guard stands in front of the tall wooden gate.

"I am Wolf Ryder, Nour is expecting me," I say.

The guard nods respectfully and fiddles with a ring in his hand. In less than a minute a tall devil-type woman comes out of the house. She looks slightly androgynous with sweptback black hair and a male butler's uniform, but her face is still very feminine.

"Mr. Ryder, I am Bellatrix, I hope you remember me," she says and bows.

"I do, good to see you again," I say and nod.

Bellatrix straightens and gives a smile to Lina who answers with a shy head nod.

We are led inside a house with the same layout than ours, but bigger and with much more decorative furniture. The floor is tiled in colorful geometric patterns, imperial style. The walls have a few paintings and even a gnomic magic picture like ours. It seems Iana, the adventurer they hired, is integrating quite well.

"Whoever bought these tea sets has a good taste," I say while I look at the black and gold sets of porcelain. Alissa nods in agreement.

"Midori will be delighted to hear that, it's her family's heirloom," Bellatrix says.

We enter the living room and Nour rises from the sofa to receive us. Their fireplace is already lit and steamy, thick tea with milk is being served.

"Wolf," Nour says with a nod and we shake hands.

Safiya, the petite brown-haired woman serves us tea. Midori, the green-haired dragonkin, gives a bone-crushing forearm-shake to Hana and they quickly start to fawn over Aoi. Iana, the dark-skinned wereanimal woman with curly hair joins Lina, Alissa, and Bellatrix in talking about enchantments and bows.

I pull out the golems and Safiya looks at them wide-eyed, she nearly drops her cup when she sees them speak. Ciel and Roxanne join her in talking about their progress and how much smarter they are becoming.

Rain starts pouring outside, the pitter-patter, the murmuring of the conversations, and the crackling of the warm fireplace make for a very comfy morning.

"So you are leaving," Nour says, with a slightly sad smile. He strokes his modest teen-ish brown stubble on his neck and looks away. "I wish we could have met more often," he looks back at me and his smile widens.

"So have I, but too often we get caught up in things and end up forgetting to give friends a visit," I say and smile bitterly. I still haven't learned my lesson, some people you really shouldn't let go, they are far too valuable to your life and you will never find someone like them again. "I will come back, one day."

"Make sure you do, at least before I go back home to take over father's business."

"How long until that?"

"Maybe 5 years."

"That's too far, I will definitely come back before then."

"Then let's enjoy our time, we won't get another opportunity," he leans over and slaps my back. Then he comes closer and looks over the women, they are all focused on their own conversations. "There's something I must ask you, Wolf," his voice turns serious.

"Ask away."

"Say, I have been having some, uh, problems, to…" He swallows loudly, "contain, all these women. So I have been wishing for some, uh, help. And I got it, but it's quite the o-odd skill. Have you ever heard about [Enhanced Semen Recharge]?" He asks through gritted teeth, his eyes wide open in pleading.

I put my hand on his shoulder, my tone is equally serious, "Nour, think of it as a blessing from the Goddess of Love. Be proud of having this skill, any man that meets you should envy this skill for we are not just simple men, we are men among men. We are the apex of masculinity, we are the Symbol of Man, the Lords of Sex, the Harem Masters. Do not worry, take the plunge and level this skill without regard, you will not regret it," I say and grin.

Nour looks around nervously and nods, he leans back and smiles. His smile turns wide and then maniacal, he stifles a chuckle that turns into a laugh that turns into a wheeze. The girls look at him worriedly but we ignore them. Today, a brotherhood has been founded.

A note from Manasong

Hall of Fame of Patrons.

The patrons who support Rupegia shall have their names sung by the bards for they deserve the glory and honor. Their names are:

Oracle Maximillian Hübner.

Lord Andrew Meyers.

Lord SenilePenile.

Lord Hope.

Lord Samuel Lim.

Noble Salty Panda.

Leave a rating or a review to help me rise to the top or fix my shameful understanding of prose.

Take a look over my blog where all information of the world of Rupegia will be posted.

Join the Discord and discuss, or rant, or meme, or try and fight me so your waifu gets more screentime.

Become a Patron and read chapters in advance, or read the side-stories, or leave your mark on the story, or help choose the next artwork or the next side-story.

Chapter 37: Memories – Part 3

A note from Manasong

Attention: to conform to the limit of mature content (more than just sexual content) allowed in a novel, I've censored this chapter. You can look for the uncensored version here.

The symbol "-" denotes a section that got cut for containing sexual content. Also, if paragraphs seem missing, they were also likely censored in an earlier pass where the symbol wasn't used.

Nour reclines back on his seat and relaxes.

"So, there are no side-effects…" he mutters with a silly smile on his face.

"Just that passing through customs can be a little embarrassing if you don't take pride in the skill," I say in a low voice, we are basically whispering to each other.

My free town pass is more useful than for just skipping lines.

He holds his chin in thought and speaks, "I wonder what happens when you level it too far. Plenty of skills have a low level-cap so it's possible this one has one too."

"Why didn't you know much about it? I thought the priests taught us a lot about those sort of things."

"It's embarrassing to show others you have bed skills," he cringes and chuckles. The teasing I suffered makes his words ring true, "so most people suppress them, which leads to the priests not talking often about these skills unless someone asks for specifically."

"But the skills are just bed improvements, are they not? Why would you be afraid of them?"

"There's some more… weird skills that could have side-effects."

Oh yeah, there's that [Sexual Metamorphosis] skill or [Sexual Charm]. Now I remember that in the Miscellaneous list there's quite a few with concerning names, like [Tendrils], [Viscous Fluids], [Sweet Discharge], [Body Distension], and even Hana's [Pain Conversion]. Maybe I should study them for my kitsune transformation project.

"Yeah, I get it but you really shouldn't be afraid of them, most of them seem to be something you turn on if you want to," I say, "I don't think I ever heard of a permanent body change that's constantly on."

"Makes sense…"

We casually talk about our progress after that. Nour is steadily progressing through dungeons, he met a wandering group of dragonoids and has been avoiding the Smirk ever since then.

"They don't even need to be undead to be tenacious, an alteration-type is enough to keep them fighting for a long time," he says.

"Well their coordination was crap and they had no equipment so it was mostly a damn long attrition contest," Iana says, now joining our conversation.

"It kind of hurt a lot, though, we are lacking in the healing department," Midori says, "maybe we should hire a priest, or priestess," her lips curl into a small smile.

"M-maybe we could train Safiya in [Heal], she has some skill potential left so it shouldn't he hard," Nour hurriedly adds.

"Hmm…" Midori crosses her arms and thinks, her hand covers her mouth which I bet is hiding a smirk.

"A strong, male, and vigorous priest is a good choice, you can always have more men to help," Hana says with a smirk, "or a kind and shy angel for healing not only the internal wounds. Another cute little thing wouldn't hurt," she says and looks at Ciel, who shifts uncomfortably.

"I'm leaning more on the male priest, another big hand to help would be more beneficial," Midori says and narrows her eyes.

"I would prefer another Blood Slave, a young, petite, - girl would be easy to train as long as she had some talent in magic," Nour says in a serious tone and narrows his eyes at Midori.

The emerald dragonkin woman licks her lips and crosses her shapely legs. I see the muscles in her exposed arms grow slightly and her posture turns domineering.

Nour maintains his stare at Midori and grits his teeth. His brow sweats cold and his fists clench.

Midori exhales and her posture relaxes, it was like she flexed her entire body and soul. Nour smiles smugly and the silence that befell the room is broken by Aoi, who's rolling on a pile of gold coins and chewing on one, making clacking sounds as her scales and teeth hit the coins.

"Yes, another little play thing would be nice," Midori mutters.

I move to sit next to Aoi and pet her sleek belly full of small scales.

"Kweh," she makes a pleased sound and spreads her limbs wide for me, her puppy eyes draw me in and I use two hands to pet her. Monsters might not have a system, but I think Aoi's "Charisma" is still affecting me.

"So how did you tame a nature spirit?" Safiya asks while petting Gify on her lap.

"He just liked me and attached himself to me, so I guess it was luck," I say.

"Gih!"

"Don't push it. Your 'blessing' has only been a drain on our food reserves."

Gify pops out of existence then pops on my head and dances, ruffling my hair.

"Gah! Gify!" Alissa chastises and pounces, grabbing Gify in a quick swipe.

"Geheheh."

Safiya smiles adorably.

"There's a spirit that looks like a cat with an oversized head that appears once in a while, I have been trying to catch his attention and even learned how to chant [Animal Tongue]," Safiya says and receives Gify from Alissa.

Alissa comes back and straightens my hair.

"Gilh gif guh gor."

Safiya grins and says, "Thank you, I would love to have a spirit connect our minds at least once in our lives."

Nour looks and nods in understanding.

We leave some time after that so we can make our lunch. Rain is still going on so we put our cloaks and make our way home, I cast [Wind Armor] on everyone since it reduces the amount of water that falls on us slightly.

Space class is just reviewing stuff since next lesson is the final test. I decide to not show my style yet and pretend I'm focusing on using [Gravity Crush] to keep my opponent in place.

In the evening I focus on finishing my chant for [Infuse]. The rain continued up until now so we light the fireplace again.

As I watch Lina cast [Infuse] repeatedly my mind slowly clouds as I enter a trance. Deeper than a meditation, similar to Roxanne's intoxication but actually unpleasant. My heart turns cold, my mind devoid of emotions, my purpose unified, my desire a certainty.

I sense, I process, I react. Input, operation, and output. The small, tiny, individual pieces that make us, us, are divided and observed. It's not a neural network but an abstraction of action and reaction. In the end it is the same, but different.

The inputs and outputs relate to our perception, not just what we see and feel, but what we perceive. Our internal construct of reality is broken down and analyzed. We observe, compare to our internal beliefs, and react, then repeat endlessly.

Differences in comparison to reality and perception cause disorder, to survive we must keep the disorder at bay, controlled. We either change the world to obey to our beliefs or we change our beliefs to conform with the world.

Disorder is chaos, pain, suffering, surprise, but also opportunity. For we need the chaos to move us forward, to dislodge us from the expected, and force us into action to contain the unexpected.

A soul is not a bunch of lines of code or neural network, but a belief network. A spirit is the whole, it is a group of senses, beliefs, and actuators.

With a constant cadence and a flat tone I chant, "I invoke the genesis of life; from it, I construct an automata, an agent of change; I base it as a mere imitation of life and then alter it to my whim; I modify it to serve me better, I adapt it to serve me better; I hold this new soul in my hand and give thee fake life, [Infuse]!" I finish the spell and my hand glows.

My breathe quickens as if I was holding my breath, my heart beats fast as if I did a monumental effort, my mind reboots as if I was knocked out for a second.

I extinguish the spell and say, "Certainly an unpleasant magic school to chant."

"The emotions in casting is one of the first thing researchers try to remove to complete system magic, otherwise it's too tiring," Roxanne says.

"I require cuddling, recharge my energies," I say and extend my arms to Roxanne. She jumps out of Hana's lap and lands into my arms. "Careful with those horns. How come you never skewer something with them?"

She turns to me and pushes them on my chest, the moment they touch me they suddenly turn rubbery, the sharp point doesn't even prick me.

"Interesting."

For once, Ciel has an uninterrupted training session with [Holy Spirit]. Even I benefit from training that spirit as I think I have been managing to grasp dual-casting of Electric and [Space Magic].

Ciel decides to go to sleep and Roxanne pushes her head towards me, asking for pats. I slowly play with Roxanne's horn as the coldness of [Golemancy] is cleansed from my body -.

-

Today is the 22nd.

"Awaken, my master," Alissa whispers in my ear.

I break out of my slumber and rise for another day requires conquering.

My [Golemancy] increased by 5 (now 9). I certainly had quite a leap in understanding.

Kyros shows me how to affect someone's mind. "You do not know who I am," the friendly-looking, middle-aged man with olive skin says. He strokes his puffy white goatee and stares at me.

"Yes? Something wrong?" I ask the man.

"What are you doing here?" He asks casually.

Where did he come from?

I suddenly notice my sword is stored away and I'm in a closed room with an oddly charismatic man. His small blue eyes stare at me inquisitively.

"Well I was training with my professor," I say. I can't admit I'm training in [Godly Language] to a stranger. I look around and frown, "now where is he…" I mutter.

"How does your professor look like?" He asks, a small smirk forming on his face.

I ready two fast earth elementals in my mind, this man is too suspicious and I have no idea where he came from.

"Well, my professor is… uh…" my voice fades as my brain races through my memories. Something is wrong, why don't I remember my professor's face? How did I learn so much about [Godly Language] without even learning his name!? "Wait…" I eye the man in front suspiciously, "did you mess with my head!? Did you use [Godly Language] on me!?" I raise from my seat and point my finger at him, readying [Discharge] in my mind.

"You will remember who I am," Kyros says hurriedly and I feel the weirdest déjà vu ever. "You are quite guarded, I didn't expect you to be this defensive," his eyebrows knit in worry.

"I hate mysteries," I say and sit down, my rapidly beating heart slows down, "even I didn't expect this reaction but I can understand why I acted like this. The hole in my memories was too great, I panicked thinking that if you can do this then what else could you do."

"So at least now you understand how difficult it is to actually mess with someone's memories."

"Yeah, there are too many details to convey on mere words, quite the puzzle."

"And it's all temporary, I stopped yours earlier but once the effect ends most people would instantly realize what happened."

"Good for some information gathering."

"But you will reveal your powers to your enemy then."

"Unless it's someone disposable," I say and Kyros nods.

In [Nature Magic] class I spend my time training with [Animal Tongue] so I can read deeper into the feelings of an animal. I don't want to show any of my main combat abilities on the final test since it gets put on my record and plenty of people would have easy access to it.

I spend my evening reviewing and then re-compiling my thesis now with [Writing].

"Shouldn't we spread this mana training method?" Hana asks, "It's honestly much better than the standard."

"Remember that Wolfy and I have to [Heal] you regularly," Ciel says.

"And I give you points in [Mana Control] during it," I say.

"And it's actually really close to [Godly Language]," Roxanne says, "Even I can learn it now, though I would be horrible at it I could still use it to invade someone's mind."

"Well, that's disappointing," Hana says and shrugs.

For the bed, I have Lina wear the black bunny ears cloak with black Clothes of the Berserker. She shyly comes to bed and sits at the border, twiddling her thumbs -.

"Maybe we should buy some animal ears tiaras," I say, "more convenient than using the cloak."

"To be honest it was a weird fashion choice to have animal ears on cloaks," Ciel says.

"Still, she is absolutely adorable," I say on a low growl -.

-

Today is the 23rd.

-

"I'm going to go look for an escort company and offer our services," Hana says, "The good positions should be opening by now."

"Sure, take care," I say.

I'll just train my mana a little. I'm not feeling very creative this morning.

Intermission 11

I go towards the Guild's Corridor. This must be the most boring part of town, the buildings are all straight, simple, and direct, only the rich merchant companies splurge and make their facade more interesting.

Heh, spending time with Wolfy changed me a bit, I never really cared about architecture until I saw him admiring every building we entered. I still don't fully understand why he's so curious about buildings but I can now at least appreciate when we enter a pretty house.

The men and women here are all quite pitiful too, pencil pushers, the lot. They look cute but I bet I would break their hips if I were to take one for myself. Wolfy is the cutest anyway.

A young scribe nearly falls over trying to stay out of my way. I give him a thankful kiss with my eyes and I see him shiver.

I really want to level my [Intimidate], but I'm not sure how. Maybe I should ask Wolfy about it. Oh yes, he could put some of my points on it and I could learn what's different when I level it up.

The scribe's eyes glue to me as I pass, my cleavage, specifically. A few meters away I look back and see him suddenly scamper off.

I laugh freely at his innocence. Look all you want for a look is all you will ever going to get.

Now, business. I have to search for the smaller companies, Lina gave me a list of the better candidates. I have to gauge their worth by the number of guards they are taking, too little and they are going to be a problem, too much and they are going to be an even bigger problem. We don't need the money so we don't need to risk joining the more desperate caravans, which also means we certainly don't need to risk being attacked by robbers by joining the valuable ones. The High Forest is on low security so it's almost certain we will be attacked if we join either.

Too bad I never came here before, I don't recognize any of these companies. In the end, we will have to gamble and go with one, there's no way we will really know how the trip is going to be like until we are actually on the road.

I wish Lina came too, I want to molest her so bad but Ciel is being prickly and monopolizing the cute bundle of cuteness.

I also wanted Aoi too, my head feels too light without her. The stares the three of us would get were delicious, too.

I walk out of the building and chuckle.

Okay, these wackos are going to die at the High Forest, no thank you.

Next on the list is... Este company. Ain't that the western Crown Lord's family name? Lina said these are the small companies so maybe it was a branch family that fell out of grace. Or maybe it has to do with the downfall of the Lord, the higher Lords would never be this incompetent without some shenanigans.

I reach the building and look at the facade. The building is kind of falling apart, maaybe they are on the "desperate" side, just maybe.

"Hana?" A familiar voice asks.

I snap my head towards the source and feel my heart tighten. My smile grows so wide my face hurts.

"Klein!" I yell.

A petite brown-haired-and-furred weremonkey woman runs up to me, I open my arms wide and receive her on my embrace. Her arms squeeze my waist like she wants to break me, I see that her toned and tanned arms are the same as always.

We break the hug and she looks up to me, beaming with a smile and jumping on the spot repeatedly.

"I-I can't believe this! Why are you here!? I thought you were going to be sent to prison!" She says so quickly and excitedly it's almost unintelligible. Heh, my vocabulary is improving, wait no, it was unintelligible.

"Calm down," I say and put my hand on her head, forcing her to remain still. "I was sold as a Blood Slave in here, one thing led to another and now my master is my fiance," I grin towards her.

She finally stops fidgeting and lets her mouth hang.

"W-who could keep you in line? Who could even survive you?" She asks, slack-jawed.

Someone who can instant-cast [Heal], as a start.

"Someone very special," I say and smile awkwardly. Praising Wolfy to his face doesn't make me feel embarrassed like this.

"Yeah, duh. I want to know how's he like? What race is he?"

I look around and see the pencil pushers are all holding back their giggling. This is not the kind of attention that I like, but Klein still doesn't care about these things.

A long brown tail tickles my nose and I look down.

"Let's go somewhere else to talk," I say and smile warmly at her.

"Okay!"

Wolfy is right, tea shops are kind of calming, the atmosphere is so nice.

Klein sits down and looks around nervously, her round monkey ears are twitching.

"I'm paying," I say.

Her head snaps forward and looks at me confused, "What? Aren't you still a Blood Slave?"

"My maste-, fiance, is very kind with money and we are well off now," I say and blush lightly. Gods, I turned into a hot-blooded hatchling again, I never really had to refer to Wolfy as my fiance so often before and now I realize how much my heart tightens when I say it.

"Oh!" Klein's eyes open wide, "That's wonderful, enviable. How big is his sword?"

"Oh, I didn't measure it," I make a mental note, "But do you even have experience on this?"

"Nope!" She answers with a smile then immediately let her shoulders slump and frown. "Da is still looking for a husband for me and he says that plenty of the men want a virgin."

"Screw that, the Goddess of Love told us to enjoy ourselves and so you should!" I slam my fist on the table and cringe when the tea seat clatters. "Dad wanted this too and look where it got me? I got sold as a Blood Slave still a virgin. It's paradise for me that my master has a sword strong enough for me. I don't even want to imagine if I ended up being sold a limp-one fat merchant somewhere."

Klein nods repeatedly with her eyes glued on me, "Yeah! Screw Da!"

"Maybe you want to talk to him before you actually do something," I say and awkwardly play with my cheek scales. I don't really want to be blamed if she ends up doing something stupid.

"Oh, is your fiance a noble? I heard they like to form harems of Blood Slaves."

"No, he's just a commoner, a rather rich commoner. But I do have a harem, technically it's his but I have two women as my playthings. Soon I will get the other two," I say and lick my lips.

"Women? Didn't know you like other women," she eyes me suspiciously and I shrug. "So, do you want to take me? Do you want to drain me like you said you would do to men?" She excitedly sways her body with a stupid smile on her face.

"I don't feel anything in particular right now, but if my master lets me," I give her a kiss with my eyes and she shivers just like everyone, "then I would gladly turn you into my bed slave."

"A-hahaha-hahahahah," she laughs nervously at first but then lets her true laugh come out.

"So, what are you doing here?"

She composes herself and cleans her throat, "Well, after you got taken we ended up being interrogated but eventually they released us. I was really scared we would get arrested too just because of our association," she says with a heart-wrenching sadness in her eyes.

Now that I think about it, it's likely the traitor was among the ones who suffered no repercussions. I have to get Klein to tell me their names, I don't want revenge but I don't want to ever see them again.

"Then me, Da, and Mom decided to go to a calmer place and went towards the High Forest. Boy, were we screwed, we didn't know about the rumors of how messed things were," she smiles wryly. "But it's not so bad, our Gentleman boss is quite experienced. His family is going through some troubling times so he lost a lot of money but he's already improving steadily."

If Klein is with them then it might not be so bad.

"Say, Klein. My fellowship is going to leave Rabanara and we are thinking of taking the scenic route, do you know if your boss is in need of experienced hunters?" I ask with a smirk.

Her eyes open wide, "Oooh! Yes!"

A note from Manasong

Hall of Fame of Patrons.

The patrons who support Rupegia shall have their names sung by the bards for they deserve the glory and honor. Their names are:

Oracle Maximillian Hübner.

Lord Andrew Meyers.

Lord SenilePenile.

Lord Hope.

Lord Samuel Lim.

Noble Salty Panda.

Leave a rating or a review to help me rise to the top or fix my shameful understanding of prose.

Take a look over my blog where all information of the world of Rupegia will be posted.

Join the Discord and discuss, or rant, or meme, or try and fight me so your waifu gets more screentime.

Become a Patron and read chapters in advance, or read the side-stories, or leave your mark on the story, or help choose the next artwork or the next side-story.

The Legend of Kaka Haere: The Broken One - Teaser

A note from Manasong

This is a side-story requested by the Oracle-tier patron.

This chapter is not required to read to understand the main story, this is only a side-story.

This is a teaser for the patreon-only side stories I'm writing.

Each chapter has 3 parts and the first part of any new storyline I will make public as a teaser.

Today should be the 10th of the month of Birth of the year 50,465.

I wake up with the morning light. I see the sun rays seeping in through the bushes in front of my cave. I raise from the soft dirt and spread my wings, I shake the dirt from the feathers and stretch. Ngeru starts to rise and stretches her long legs.

"Nrrroww~…" She purrs and yawns.

"Morning, Ngeru."

I focus on the dirt still on my feathers and tell them to return to their Mother. The dirt turns into dust and slowly sets down on the earth, a little mana leaves my body. Nobody would notice the dirt on my brown wings but they feel filthy and heavy if I let them like this.

I look at my stats:

Info

Name: | Kaka Haere | Age: | 35 | Race: | Metamorphic Chimera
HP: | 100 | MP: | 530/540 | Magic Power: | 220
Level: | 33 | Experience: | 151/10000

Stats

Strength: | 24 | Endurance: | 19 | Dexterity: | 13
Speed: | 15 | Intelligence: | 11 | Wisdom: | 12
Willpower: | 10 | Charisma: | 10 | Piety: | 4
Perception: | 14 | Sanity: | 18

Other

Status Effects: | NONE | Titles: | NONE
Affiliations: | NONE
Companions: | NONEl
Crimes: | NONE

Kaka Haere Skill Report

Physical

Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level
Sword Use | 2 | Dagger Use | 4 | Quiet Steps | 4

Magical

Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level
Sense Mana | 12 | Mana Control | 7 | Mana Recovery | 6
Earth Magic | 10 | Nature Magic | 6 | Fire Magic | 1
Light Magic | 1 | Space Magic | 10 | Conjuring Magic | 9

Miscellaneous

Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level
Farming | 14 | Dismantling | 17 | Housework | 5
Cleaning | 4 | Washing | 2 | First-Aid | 5
Cooking | 9 | Sex Metamorphosis | 5 | Wind Aspect (innate) | 5
OBS: Level means (free point)+(trained point)

Great, my MP increased by 10 and my [Space Magic] by 2. I always need more space on my [Item Box].

I push Ngeru out of my legs and stand up, I pat my body and clean my leg fur.

"Come on, girl," I tell Ngeru and she springs up. I pat her body and clean the dirt out of her gold and black-spotted fur, she licks the fur of my face while I clean her.

Once done we move to the entrance, I awkwardly have to walk in a half crouch so my horns don't scrape on the ceiling.

"I really have to open this cave more," I say and Ngeru sneezes in response.

I push the bushes away from the entrance and we relieve ourselves nearby.

"Having a penis makes this easier but eh, the townsfolk are more gentle with women," I say and Ngeru tilts her head at me. "Not that you would know."

I apply [Clean] to me and Ngeru and we go back inside to eat. I open the trapdoor and pick a large piece of smoked goblin, I quickly close it before Ngeru can get inside. I pull out of my [Item Box] the rest of yesterday's stew and divide everything in two bowls.

"I want some smoked orc now, or minotaur, maybe some cheese too," I say and Ngeru "mrow's" in response.

Once we are done eating Ngeru looks at me with wide eyes and purrs on my lap.

"No," I say but Ngeru pushes her head closer to me. "Nooo," I repeat and Ngeru shows me her white belly.

I can't resist and scratch her. "Bad girl," I say and Ngeru responds with a "mrow".

I don't give her another piece of meat so she closes her eyes and falls asleep again on my lap.

After the food settles in I store the dishes on my Box and wake Ngeru again. We move to the small stream nearby for a quick dip and drink.

I grab a handful of clear water and use it to look at myself. My goat head is perfectly combed, thanks to Ngeru's tongue.

"My horns need some polishing," I say and Ngeru flickers her ears at me. Why do the beastfolk even like horns? They are so impractical.

"I wonder why there's not more chimeras down here, the beastfolks like me so much even though I'm average-sized."

I wash the sweat out of my human torso and comb the fur of my horse legs with my brush. Then I brush my horse tail to remove any matting.

Ngeru is already done and waiting for me to brush her. She rolls on the grass and nearly falls asleep again as I brush her.

"Okay, done, go hunt," I say and tap Ngeru's ass. She springs up again and dashes into the woods.

I move through the bushes and find my patch of vegetables.

"Good morning my beauties, it's time to grow," I say and lower my ears to the ground. I feel the earth, there's life seeping out of it and being absorbed by the plants. "So much life being wasted, it's time for some redirecting."

I spread my conscience and throw it into the earth, I feel the life and follow it on it's journey upwards. I create tunnels and destroy others, I find the plants and guide the life towards them. I add my own life to the earth and aid the natural life in entering the plants faster.

One by one, every vegetable gets their share of life from Mother. Some are craving for certain things so I conjure them into the earth and guide them to the plant. Slowly my mana leaves my body and gives new life to the garden.

I keep this for hours and hours, slowly and carefully I trickle life into the plants. No good crop comes out of a rush job.

I see a nature spirit staring at me from a branch of a nearby tree. The wide eyed little spirit reminds me of the wereapes, I'm not sure what animal it's supposed to be.

I wave at it and it waves back then pops out of existence.

I wish I knew more about [Nature Magic], maybe the spirits could help me improve the growth of my veggies.

I close my eyes and return to concentrating on my work.

Once my mana is almost running out I stop. I sigh and open my eyes. The sun is up high and it will be noon soon, Ngeru has already deposited two small monster birds nearby.

I harvest the crops that have matured already and go back to the cave to make lunch. Soon after I start cooking, Ngeru appears with a third bird and lays down in front of the stove while I cook. Her long tail sways, the blade at the tip scrapes on the ground, making lines on the dirt.

Once done, Ngeru digs on her bowl like a starving beast.

"Not that you aren't a beast but you shouldn't be starving, you eat the same as me and I'm bigger than you."

"Mrow."

"Growing crops is just as tiring as hunting, sometimes even more."

"Mrooow."

"Hmpf," I snort and continue eating. Sometimes I swear that she can understand me.

Once we finish eating I grab my dress and put it on, I'll never go there naked again. I grab the rest of the crops and store part of it on my [Item Box], the rest goes into a basket that I'll carry on my back.

It's time to go into town, I dread it a little but any reason to fly is a good reason.

We go outside the cave and I spread my wings. I feel the light breeze coursing through my feathers. I focus on the force of the wind, it barely manages to lift a feather so I increase it. The wind gains more and more force so more and more feather rise.

I am the wind, the force that's constantly moving, constantly changing. I am movement, speed, force. I am weightless, invisible, and free. I am the wind.

I flap my wings and open my eyes, with just two flaps I'm already above the short trees. Flying near the ground is much easier than on the Sky Lands, there's barely any gust of wind to throw me off. Ngeru is patiently waiting for me, I flap my wings again and propel myself forwards, Ngeru immediately follows.

There are no flying monsters here and the trees are quite far apart so Ngeru has no problem following me. A bush or other blocks her way but her nimble and long legs allow her to easily dodge or jump over them.

Soon we reach the mountain pass and the forest dies out. Only short grass and shrubs are allowed in here, every tree has been cut and used to build the fortress. A small structure of rock and wood can be seen between two huge snow-tipped peaks. The Twins' Pass.

I pass by small groups of people coming and going out of the Pass, more than the usual today. Beastfolk, humans, elves, and the odd wereanimal all point towards me as I fly near them. It's like they never saw a mage using [Fly], actually they might have not, the land-dwellers need [Wind Magic] to fly.

I land near the gate, I stop coursing the wind through my feathers and I fold them. I pull out a small piece of smoked goblin for Ngeru and [Conjure Water] for her on a bowl.

"Good girl," I say while petting her, she answers by purring loudly.

"Miss Haere," a low bass voice greets me in Limba.

Here we go.

"Just Kaka, please," I say and smile.

The large bullfolk grins and nods, he tries to look as tall as he can yet still falls a few centimeters short of me. "Coming to sell your crops again?" He asks.

"Yes, I want to enter the town, please," I say and release Ngeru, she stands in front of me and stares at the bullfolk's eyes.

The man looks slightly unnerved, Ngeru is fast enough to rip his neck before he can properly defend himself. I'm not sure why they don't fear me but they certainly do fear her.

"This way, please," he says. He quickly turns but still steals a glance at my large chest.

The stares of the other beastfolk makes me uneasy but Ngeru is a deterrent against any one stupid enough to get handsy.

The customs is as slow as a death by slime, Buick is taking his sweet time measuring my veggies and stealing looks at me. I close down the buttons on my dress and set Ngeru closer to him, now he quickly picks up the pace and sends me off.

"Rip off, four silver for a bunch of veggies," I mutter and count my coins. "Sorry, Ngeru, no minotaur meat, maybe I can get some smoked orc."

"Meeow."

The people look tense, the beastfolk look out of patience, the humans look scared, the dark elves are keeping to themselves. The town should be bustling with activity this soon after the Turn of the Year and the prices for food should be returning to normal after the debauchery of the festivities but things are expensive. Even Ngeru is getting tense, something is going on.

I hear people talking in Andraste or Iezik much more often, the Limba speakers are in the minority now.

The buildings the land-dwellers build are so ugly, I think none of them know how to paint. I don't even have the [Painting] skill and I can make a proper mural.

"Look at that, most houses don't even have color, they are just raw materials," I say and Ngeru purrs loudly.

Well I guess that is one of the cons of living in the ground.

I find the restaurant I have been looking for and see Broasca outside, taking a break to smoke a pipe.

"Ah, Kaka, good to see you," says the female frogfolk after she stores her pipe back. Her green skin is shining and oily, her large red eyes are oddly attractive, her red hair is short and as well-cared for as a human's.

"Good day, Broasca," I say with a small smile and deposit my basket in front of her, I pull out of my [Item Box] every stored veggie. She immediately reaches over to examine the crops.

"As good as always, I will give ten silver for them," she says after a quick inspection.

"Ten? Broasca, don't play me," I say and frown.

She narrows her vertical eyes at me and sighs, "Look, Kaka, you might be living under a rock, literally, but even you should see that something is happening."

"Yeah, I noticed," I say and look around. Everyone is quiet and hurrying around, only preoccupied with their own business. An odd group of humans is discussing something and sending glances at me repeatedly.

"The Volnosht's are pushing back, the war is getting close to the Twins and that's bad for business. The whole of Bestiaram is being drawn into this conflict. I think that even I will have to move away soon otherwise I will just lose money sticking around," she says in a low, hushed tone.

So this is why the prices are high.

"That close? The Avgi aren't pushing back?" I ask and match her tone.

"No, something bad is going on. The Twins aren't safe, even with the war far from here the danger is still close by. You better leave this place soon too."

"Where would I even go?"

It took me so long to reach this place. A far and quiet little corner, not too many monsters but not too little, not many people but not deserted.

"You use the System, right? Converting wouldn't be a stretch and living among the Avgi priests is certainly better than the Volnosht's."

I frown and hunch over, Avgi priests are a pain in the ass, though. Ngeru turns to me and purrs, rubbing her head on my thigh.

"Thanks, girl," I say and scratch behind her ear. Ngeru helps me calm down, in any case we will stick together and muddle through.

"You understood the situation? Now, take this and leave," Broasca says and grabs my hand, pressing hard 11 silver coins into my hand, she quickly stores the veggies in another basket she took out of her [Item Box]. "Talking about trouble," she takes a glance at the group of humans and hurries back into her restaurant.

I turn around and see the group of 6 humans making their way towards me. Their gazes are strong and unwavering, they are not commoners and they are all wearing padded leather armor.

"Hey there, big girl," says one of the men, his lips smile softly but his eyes are hardened.

"What's a chimera doing in this continent?" Asks another one, the biggest among them all, looks like the leader.

Damn you, what now?

"I'm just a traveler," I say and Ngeru stands in front of me. The men stop from getting too close but they can still surround me.

"Uh huh," the leader strokes his beard while looking me up and down. "Someone as big as you can survive around here quite easily, right? There shouldn't be many monsters as big as you."

"I-I guess so," I say and shrug, I cross my arms so they don't see my hand trembling.

"You don't have any weapons but I heard chimeras are all good mages. You certainly don't need them with a Kish following you, how did you tame this beast, anyway?" He grins widely yet his eyes don't show happiness.

"I saved her while she was a cub, that's all," I say and look around, the streets are suddenly empty.

"But to keep her by your side, you must have some gained some skill, right? Or maybe a blessing? We have seen plenty of hound masters with those, right boys?" He glances quickly at the men and they nod. The men all have their eyes glued on me, their hands are close to the swords at their waist but not in a posture that looks threatening, not too much at least.

What are you testing me for? Damn you and your stupid holy war.

"I'm not that pious," I say. I start feeling up the wind in my feathers, I can't use mana so I'll have to prepare a burst. I hope Ngeru breaks through them and follows me, she won't survive if she tries to fight them.

"Uh huh…" The man mutters and we have a staring contest. Shivers run repeatedly through my back, Ngeru's fur is raised and she slowly raises from her sitting position, the blade in her tail starts to lift up in the air.

I'm sweating cold and my breath starts to increase in cadence. The men are all standing still like statues, their gazes are almost stabbing into my soul. You could hear a coin drop.

A bucket of water falls out of the second floor and hits the leader in the face, splashing water all over him and making him fall back on his ass.

"AH! I'm sorry, young man, didn't see the bucket and dropped it by accident. It seems that my eyesight is failing me," says Broasca in a raspy, old woman voice.

"STUPID DAMN TOAD!" He bellows and throws back the bucket into the window.

"I'm sorry young man but you don't need to to offend, I'm a frogfolk, not a toadfolk. My skin is perfectly moist and shiny, not all dry and rough like the ugly toads. I put on cream all day, you know? It comes aaaall the way from Avgi, I paid a good coin for it, they say the high e-…"

"I DON'T CARE! SHUT UP!" A tone of red takes over the tanned skin of the leader, his cheeks puff up like a real frogfolk.

"I'm sorry, young man, look at me an old woman who simply ca-…"

"We have a problem?" Says another man, loudly yet not yelling.

A tall red lizardfolk comes with 2 other lizards and Buick flanking him. They are all armored and wearing the town guard's tabard.

I'm saved!

The human leader freezes for a second, the red quickly disappears out of his skin.

"No, sir, we were just talking to this chimera over here" -he softly gestures towards me- "a very unusual visitor, is it not?"

The lizardfolk stares at him, his expression is stoic and his pupils blink vertically repeatedly. After a long moment he finally speaks, "Yes, quite unusual, but even so, a woman surrounded by 6 men is quite the sight, is it not?"

The leader smiles falsely again and speaks, "We are just taking a better look, those brown wings are beautiful, are they not? Surely the Gods had a hand in making such a beautiful woman."

"This is your only warning, scram," the red lizard says in a dangerous tone.

The leader bows lightly and turns, the others follow him silently, none take a second look.

"You too," the lizard turns to me and I get a shiver. His long mouth shows some sharp teeth and his scaly tail is stiff.

I nod and move away, my walk is stiff and awkward, my heart is beating like the flap of wings. I see Buick follow me with his eyes, his mouth is stuck in a wide grin.

I look for a random stall, I buy all the smoked goblin meat I can and some salt. I just want to leave this place for a long time.

When we finally get outside the town I breathe in relief.

"I felt like I was being strangled in there, in more ways than one," I say and Ngeru "mrow's" in response.

I'll have to thank Broasca one day, she put herself in danger to help me.

I take flight and move on a different direction than the way from home. When the Pass is beyond sight I turn towards the right direction.

I hear Ngeru growl and stop mid air. I look back and see she's engaging some goblins, after she's done with the fight and with her quick meal we continue back home.

I land near home and Ngeru growls again. I drop the empty basket and lower my ear to the ground, I close my eyes and feel the vibrations. There's something alive near my crops, not on top of them so it's not eating them. It's also a weak pulse, someone is dying or lying in wait for me.

Great, what a great day I'm having.

I focus on the life in the earth, I pull it to me and a large amount of life force comes. This is odd, could it be there's blood in the grass?

I lift up from the ground and quietly move closer, [Quiet Steps] was a good investment. Ngeru silently follows, her body is low and looks like her head slides on the ground.

I smell blood in the air.

We slowly gain sight on the intruder, it's a bloodbath. A disemboweled Vier is laying in a pool of blood besides a dying Wetiko.

The Vier is a meter tall round quadruped with spikes all over its body, its strong legs allows it to charge forward and skewer anything it wants with its long tusks. It currently has its innards all over the ground and a tusk missing.

The Wetiko is a beautiful monster. Over 2 meters tall, taller than me, it has a thin but muscular body, long arms that end in red hands and bladed claws, the tip of his finger can even touch the ground. It's body has a mix of fur and human skin, the head is of a coyote, and it has beautiful deer antlers on top. It is a male, a very well-endowed male.

The Wetiko has a tusk going through its belly but also multiple other cuts all over its body, they weren't made by the Vier.

I start to prepare an [Earth Bullet] to release it from its misery. The Wetiko opens his eyes and Ngeru prepares to pounce and keep him away from me.

"Please… help me…" He says in Andraste.

I get so surprised that I let the spell vanish completely.

"I-I'm sorry, what did you say?" I ask, not believing my ears.

"Help…" It mutters and falls unconscious.

A monster is asking me for help!?

I look at Ngeru and she seems more curious than cautious. There's definitely something different with this monster.

I lower my ear to the ground and close my eyes. I put all my focus around the life force of this monster. It's blood seeps out life force, I focus on that force and try to identify it, it's similar to the characteristic force that comes out of a monster. It has the mana of a monster but the force is different.

"What are you?" I ask but no answer comes.

Dammit, what should I do? It's a monster but a monster never speaks this way to humanoids, even when dying, so is it really a monster?

I look at it again. Such a beautiful and strong creature, he must have had a long journey here, just to die in the hands of a weak monster. Such a shame for a thing like this to happen, a Crime even.

I don't have time to think, the Wetiko will die soon and the blood will attract more monsters.

What is going on with me? I feel like I'm a young little bird again, naive and hopeful.

"Let the gust take me where it wills," I say and pat Ngeru. My curiosity needs to be sated, I want to know why he's asking for help.

First, I grab the Vier's body and fly away with it, I throw it a long distance so other monsters stay away from this place. Then I [Clean] as much blood as I can out of the vegetation.

Then I go back and drag him towards my cave. I pull out an HP potion and shove it on his mouth, he chokes and nearly awakes. I grab some rags and bandage the bigger cuts tight so the bleeding stops.

Then I grab the tusk and cast [Regeneration]. Slowly I try to pull out the tusk, when I feel the wound closing down on the tusk I remove more of it. Little by little the wound closes without too much blood escaping.

Ngeru stands beside me, her tail on the throat of the Wetiko.

My mana runs low but I manage to remove the tusk successfully and close down all the big wounds. Now he needs to survive the blood loss until I can recover more mana.

As a precaution I grab some rope and tie it around his body. If anything it will at least give me enough time to run if he tries to kill me.

"Now we wait."

A note from Manasong

Hall of Fame of Patrons.

The patrons who support Rupegia shall have their names sung by the bards for they deserve the glory and honor. Their names are:

Oracle Maximillian Hübner.

Lord Andrew Meyers.

Lord SenilePenile.

Lord Hope.

Lord Samuel Lim.

Noble Salty Panda.

Leave a rating or a review to help me rise to the top or fix my shameful understanding of prose.

Take a look over my blog where all information of the world of Rupegia will be posted.

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Hana's Origin: I'll Do What I Want – Teaser

A note from Manasong

This chapter is not required to read to understand the main story, this is only a side-story.

This is a teaser for the patreon-only side stories I'm writing.

Each chapter has 3 parts and the first part of any new storyline I will make public as a teaser. I'm planning for the main cast to have at least 3 chapters of side-stories.

I force my smile and get up from the table.

"I'll catch you boys later," I say and throw down a silver coin. "My pay, if you steal it I'll break your balls, got it?"

"Yo, little miss!" One of the drunkards raises his cup and spills some pot-ash-to beer on his own face, "I'll catch you later, eh? Get it?" He laughs and makes fucking movements with his hips.

"You wish, you limp-dick, you couldn't even break my hymen with that chicken cock," I say and send him a wink. The man falls back on his seat and slams his dagger on the table, glaring at me. "Don't make that face, I saw you take a piss, you are smaller than my Da's!"

The others laugh and slap the back of the man, he pulls the dagger out and points it to me, "I'll get ya one day!" He yells and smiles as I turn around and walk away.

The 3 boys in the corner laugh along between themselves and get up too.

I get out of the tavern and breathe in the fresh air. A silent lightning falls on the tavern and even I can feel the mana coursing through the lightning-rod. It disperses on the ground and an Earth mage comes to check on the soil near the rod. I look up and see a large dark cloud directly above, periodic lighting strikes light up the entire town.

I start moving quickly down the white brick road. I think about hiding in between the buildings but they are too far apart from each other and the streets are almost empty, the fuckers would find me effortlessly.

I hear the tavern's door open just as I turn the corner. My hope of getting lucky gets dashed as I hear 3 sets of footsteps get closer.

"Miss Tranfkoever!" I hear the forced melodic voice of the pompous asshole that has been stalking me.

"Signeur Mushmasun," I say with gritted teeth and turn around.

The brown-haired young boy looks up at me. Even though he's older than me he still falls short, but it's his muscles that give him the confidence to try to fuck with me, or better, try to fuck me.

Flanking him are two orc-looking boys, toys to be usedwhen the fucking little noble lacks the raw power. A blond and thick one from Dyrmorder and an olive-skinned, black haired, chubby one from the Mainland. The blondie looks kind of handsome, though.

"Please, just call me Amon," he says with a wide smile, his beautiful blue eyes stare at me with smugness. His blocky face and fleshy lips look enticing, it disgusts me that he arouses me. Handsome men shouldn't act like him, it doesn't fit.

"Fine, Amon, I greet you."

"Yes, yes…" His smile turns warm and gets far too close to me, though he's close enough for me to bite.

He points towards the direction I was going to with one hand and the other falls on my exposed shoulder, forcing me to turn, "Please let's continue walking," he says softly. I turn with him and he pushes me on, forcing us to walk, but he doesn't remove his hand. "Going back to your family?"

"Yes," I answer curtly.

"Good, maybe we should have a talk, meet with your father, you know. There's many things for us to discuss, business, partnerships, your future," he glances at me and I feel the scales in my body twitch. "I know you haven't found a partner yet and I'm also saving myself for someone special, we could learn many things with each other. Me, you, maybe Yasarin or Yamini too, maybe my sister, definitely my future wives too."

I look at the two orcs and they are grinning at his master's words. They don't look ugly, though they do look brutish, taking 3 men would be interesting, but it's unfortunate that their master is such a fucking piece of shit.

I look at his waist and scoff internally at his rapier. Damn duelists think they are above the real warriors, I bet he uses a girly buckler too instead of a real damn shield!

I stop and grab his wrist, I squeeze it painfully, making the little bitch squirm. I push back his hand into his chest, hopefully he will learn this time.

"I would prefer that you didn't touch me," I say and force a smile.

His two cock suckers surround me.

"Miss Hana…" He says with the sweetest poisoned smile.

"Don't fucking call me Hana," I interrupt.

He lowers his head in apology and goes back to staring at me, a new savagery seeping into his eyes. "Apologies, Miss Tranfkoever."

"I already said no to you more than once," I say coldly and narrow my eyes at him.

"Oh Miss Tranfkoever, we can always discuss it further, hasty decisions will always leave us unsatisfied," he says smiling wider, turning maniacal. "Negotiations should be ingrained in your mind, right? You should behave more like your class," I don't know why but something on his tone pissed me off.

"I don't want to negotiate," I say, gritting my teeth and forcing a smile that undoubtedly looks warped.

"Don't be conceited," his tone mixes coldness with casual speech making me even more pissed, "I will negotiate with your father. Now please, lead me to him."

"No," I say curtly.

He sighs and dramatically massages the bridge of his nose, "We are not going to just negotiate you, my delicious dragon. There's also your younger sister who would make a fine young wife for me, I would love to have your little brother too. Maybe we could even include your mother," -he smiles faintly and I can only think his face looks like a rather handsome fucking Eldritch Horror- "I'm sure your father would understand how much he could gain from this."

"You know what, fuck you."

I spread my foot and get into position. His hand immediately goes to his rapier, fucker thinks this is a duel.

My fist connects with his jaw before his rapier is half way out of his waist. I tense my back muscles and follow through, my hips spin on the spot, giving the punch all the strength it requires. His face twists and I see his teeth fly, [Enhanced Reflexes] is a beautiful thing.

His face snaps to the side and is stopped by his neck reaching the limit it can twist. Then his body starts to follow, his feet depart from the ground and he takes off like a bird. A very heavy bird that can only fly a few centimeters before falling back on the ground, face first.

K.O.

"Nighty night, little Lady."

The two orc-brains look at their cum dispenser with wide eyes, they didn't even understand what was going to happen and just stared at us the whole way with empty minds. Probably not so empty as I'm sure they were dreaming of boning me.

The Mainland one drops on the ground near his master and splashes Lady's face with an HP potion.

"Fat fuck, that won't work, his face is not broken, his brain is. You have to make him drink it," I say.

"UOO!" The blondie aims a straight at me. I tilt my head and lift my scales, they cut his hand and arm deeply in multiple places. "AAAH!" He yells in pain as he pulls his arm out.

I give him a real straight punch right on the nose and his head snaps backwards. He takes a few steps back while groaning and covers his nose, it immediately starts bleeding.

"Too bad your face is going to get fucked, you are actually handsome." I grab him by the throat and pull him close, I give him a kiss on the lips and taste his blood. "This is how you punch, bitch." I send another down his solar plexus and hear the air escape his lungs.

A punch hits me on the right of my face, right on the cheek and on my scales. I release blondie and take a few steps back.

"Ahahaha! Fattie doesn't know how to punch, you hit the wrong spot," I say as I look at the Mainlander grasp his left hand in pain. He didn't even crack a scale.

I lift my fists and get ready. I kick blondie with the sole of my boot and send him away, then I immediately walk forward and send a straight towards fattie.

He dodges and uses his arm to parry the punch and sends one on my ribs with his left. I grunt in pain but hold on, I grab his arm with my right and send a left on his throat.

He endures the first and grabs my wrist when I go for a second so I kick him in the balls.

"Ah...!" He moans like a bitch and hunches over.

I knee him in the chin and he falls on his ass. The blondie comes with a drunk punch, I fail to dodge fully and he hits me in the neckbone, it actually fucking hurt but it might have hurt more on him.

He follows with a flurry of drunk punches and I just keep stepping backwards to dodge them.

"I can smell the cum from here! Now, is it from your master or from your fat lover?" I taunt and his punches gain speed but lose accuracy.

He tires quickly and slows down again. I stand my ground and parry one, then I send a right on his jaw. It connects and he stops, his body starts swaying, then I send a left and he falls on the ground.

Fattie stands up so I grab his dick and squeeze.

"Aa~h! P-please no! I yield!" He pleads like a bottoms.

"I'm sure you do, little finger, I'm sure you do," I smack my head on his nose and he falls back, this time he doesn't try to rise. I spit on him, a little blood goes out with the saliva.

Lady Amon is opening his eyes, trying to wake up.

I walk over his head and lower my pants, I spread my panties and give him a view he won't forget. "Here's my dowry," I say and squat, I pee on his mouth and hear him choke.

I quickly put my pants back on and run away before the guards can come.

What the fuck did Lady Amon think would happen, that he could stab me in the throat with his rapier and in the next moment ask me in marriage?

I hang by the central fountain, the silent lightning strikes the fountain repeatedly, making for quite the sight.

It's still too early to go back, damn Lady Amon made me leave before I could wipe the table and steal from the drunks, after last time they won't try to beat me up just because I'm good at pochspiel. I need some more coin, the sex shop is selling some shaking beads cheap and I really wanted one.

I get me some goblin ear chips and a fish dip from a stall. I see the kids from the orphanage are hanging out near the fountain like they own the place.

After I finish eating I [Clean] my mouth and wash my face on the fountain, I let the water drip down my white sleeveless shirt, then I approach them.

"Yo, kids," I say and cross my arms, I bunch up my breasts to tease them. "Doing anything fun?"

Most are boys and the girls are all small and thin. I see the older ones follow the water dripping from my neck down to my chest, my wet shirt is sticking to my breasts quite visibly.

"Y-yes, we got hash!" Says a short and young one quite excitedly.

"Fuck, Gamal! You don't tell others these things!" An older boy says and slaps Gamal in the back of his head.

I walk to Gamal and stroke his head, he barely comes up to my chest so I lean over and give him a view. "Don't hit him like that, the good boy is just friendly." The young boy smiles and his eyes glue to my breasts.

"What do you want, lizard?" Says another boy.

I glare at him and he gulps visibly.

"Give me a piece and I will flash you," I say and smile wide. The boy visibly gets uncomfortable and some of the boys look at the girls, they scowl at me visibly and one even hugs the arm of a boy.

"Slut, go away," hisses a girl.

"Fucking dragonkin are all like that, she's just like Aiya," hisses another, the older of the girls.

A boy throws me a rolled hash and I catch it in the air. I lift my shirt to them and they gasp, the same boy stretches his hand for a squeeze.

I drop my shirt and grab his hand, then I bite it and he yells. "Fuck! Bitch! Why did you bite!?" He cries.

"No touch, only watch," I say innocently.

He clicks his tongue and I walk away.

I blow a little fire in the hash and light it up. I suck on it and it fills my mouth with smoke, I inhale the air for a few seconds and let it escape. The smoke is slightly pleasant and fills me with calmness but it's short lived, damn "Endurance" is already too high for smoking hash.

A few people send me glares, not everyone likes the smell of hash in the open.

I keep walking down the streets carelessly, I prance down the clothiers alley and spend some time window-shopping. I'd like to wear dresses too but when? Even Mom spends most of her time only wearing pants due to her job.

Time passes quickly, from behind the dark clouds I can see the God of the Sun setting and the Goddess of the Moons rising on the opposite side. The wind picks up and I think it's going to rain so I go back home.

The inn is full of people coming for dinner, there's a large amount of grass right outside that would make for quite the fresh dinner below the stars but everyone prefers to squeeze inside instead, making the air go stale and stuffy. The architecture here in the Thunder Plains is so weird, I miss Sommerland. It's going to take at least another month until we finish our route and go back.

I see Mimi in front of the stairs, she's brushing her silky dark ash hair calmly while listening to the bards sing to the diners. She looks at me and smiles adorably, her high cheekbones make her face look so cute, but then it slowly turns into a frown as I approach.

"Hey Mimi," I say and give her a kiss on the cheek, she retributes but her frown doesn't change.

"Did you fight again?" She asks in a very disapproving tone.

"Uh..." I stay quiet and lift an eyebrow at her, I can't lie to her.

"Your clothes are messy and I can smell the hash on you," she says matter-of-factly.

"Hash doesn't mean I fought," I say and scoff at her.

"Your right cheek is swollen, the cloth on your right knee looks slightly frayed, and I know that you won't waste money on hash if not after a fight," she continues on the same tone.

"Well, damn, are you part of the Investigation Department now you cheeky brat." I sit beside her and hug her.

"You are 14, you are just as much of a brat as I am." She rests her head on my chest.

"You are 10, you shouldn't be this smart."

"You should have higher 'Intelligence', you dum-dum." She smiles cheekily.

I pinch her dark cheek and she keeps smiling. I release her and start patting her head, she closes her eyes and enjoys it.

"Who did you beat?"

"Amon."

She chokes on her spit but quickly recomposes herself. "Dad is going pop a vein," she says with a sigh.

"I pissed on Amon's mouth, Dad is going to beat me."

"Wow... Well Mom is going to beat you, didn't she tell you to stop picking fights after you wasted your points with [Dagger Use]?"

"Yes," I say with a cringe, I did forget about that detail. I'm almost wishing I had just ran away from Amon instead, almost.

"Did you even pay for the hash?"

"No."

"Oh Gods don't tell me you sucked someone off," she says with disgust on her voice.

"Where are you learning these things you brat? Ew, I would never do that, I just flashed some dumb kids from the orphanage." I pull on a small strand of her hair.

"Ow. Well somehow that sounds even worse."

"The kids shouldn't even have hash to begin with."

She sighs again and goes quiet.

After a long time Mom and Dad finally appear. His pure black and her milky white skin contrast heavily as they walk with arms entwined, Dad's hardened face and Mom's soft one make them a beautiful pair, that and her vibrant red hair turns the heads of many patrons. Even though Dad is short for a human he still has a strong presence.

Little Hermann sleeps on Mom's arms adorably. We both stand up when they approach and I almost ask to carry Hermann when I see the gazes of both of them. Dad's is cold while Mom's is furious, they make me freeze and quake in my boots. Well, I already knew I fucked up.

Mom silently gives Hermann to Mimi and they plus Dad go towards the baths. Mom stands still in front of me, her glare burning a hole in my heart.

"Pissing, really? You pissed on a damn noble!?" She lowly hisses at me, trying to not make a scene.

"Yes, I am sorry..." I say and lower my head.

"I bet you aren't."

"Mom..." I say it as my heart hurts. I don't lie, not to her, or Dad, or Mimi.

"Come," she says curtly and turns around. I don't question and simply follow.

We go outside into the back of the inn, light rain drizzles on us and the silent lightning strikes increase in number. There's only an Earth mage switching the earth near the lightning rods.

Mom pulls out of her [Item Box] two wooden swords and throws one at me.

"Pull up your guard," she growls at me, her emerald scales waving in anger.

I raise my sword and Mom immediately advances to strike. I know to not take her lightly and immediately fight back.

We dance around each other. Her sword easily finds openings, slashing painfully on my hands, arms, chest, throat, and face. My skin even starts to bruise due to the repeated strikes.

She kicks and sweeps at my leg, playing with me. I fall on the ground repeatedly but she never says to stop, she never drops down her guard.

With a heavy breath I rise up again and Mom strikes me painfully on the head, sending me down again.

"Wow...! Please stop, this hurts...!" I plead.

"No," she replies curtly, her soft face is stuck in a harsh gaze.

I rise and she quickly sends me down again with a slash on the shoulder.

"Mom, please... I can't fight anymore..." I say, completely out of breath.

"No, get up."

Shaking, I rise again. She strikes and I parry but her sword snakes over mine and the tip strikes me in the face, making me lose balance and step backwards.

"Mom... please..."

"If you want to stop then make me stop," she says.

"I can't..." I try to raise my sword, my arms tremble in tiredness.

"I'm only doing as I please, if you want to stop me then make me!" She barks at me and sweeps me off my feet, I crash painfully on the ground and I don't think I can get up again.

I scowl at her, she's taking pleasure in torturing me. This is not right, I just want the punishment to end.

"I thought you would understand me. You certainly only stop when someone beats you down, so I'm just going to beat you over and over until you stop me," she says, her face distorted in anger.

I drop my sword and let my mouth hang open. My heart hurts so much I feel like crying. "I'm sorry," I mutter.

"Sorry!? Damn you, girl, sorry is kind of late now, don't you think!?" She says and throws her sword at me in indignation. "You want to do as you please!? You want to live by the sword, taking what you want, doing what you want!? Then get ready to die by the sword when others also do what they want!" She spews the words at me.

"I... I get it..." I say and drop my head back on the grass, the light rain mixing with my tears.

A small ceramic bottle is thrown at my chest. I uncork it and drink it, the delicious taste of an HP potions fills my tongue.

"Don't think this is over," Mom says, her tone still severe, "Tomorrow we are meeting with the Mushmasun's."

Her words send me a shiver, if I meet with them I'm bound to say something stupid, again.

I see Mom's milky hand and take it, she lifts me up and hugs me, squishing me on her soft breasts. She runs her delicate hand through my hair and I feel it get stuck on some mating, making her chuckle, we both have a problem with that.

"I'm sorry," I mutter it again.

"Say that again after all this is done."

"Okay."

A short silence falls between us, I enjoy her hand running through my hair as much as I can.

She breaks the silence with a sigh, "Let's go home, we have to take a bath. And what the hell have you been doing, you smell of hash."

I cringe one last time and hope she doesn't ask anything else.

"Hanafuria... What did you pay for the hash?"

Shit.

A note from Manasong

Hall of Fame of Patrons.

The patrons who support Rupegia shall have their names sung by the bards for they deserve the glory and honor. Their names are:

Oracle Maximillian Hübner.

Lord Andrew Meyers.

Lord SenilePenile.

Lord Hope.

Lord Samuel Lim.

Noble Salty Panda.

Leave a rating or a review to help me rise to the top or fix my shameful understanding of prose.

Take a look over my blog where all information of the world of Rupegia will be posted.

Join the Discord and discuss, or rant, or meme, or try and fight me so your waifu gets more screentime.

Become a Patron and read chapters in advance, or read the side-stories, or leave your mark on the story, or help choose the next artwork or the next side-story.

Chapter 38: Last Days - Part 1

A note from Manasong

Attention: to conform to the limit of sexual content allowed in a novel, I've censored this chapter. You can look for the uncensored version here.

The symbol "-" denotes a section that got cut for containing sexual content. Also, if paragraphs seem missing, they were also likely censored in an earlier pass where the symbol wasn't used.

Hana comes back grinning. She lifts me up by the armpits and lowers me on her lap, she hugs me tight and her body sways from side-to-side.

"I met an old friend, she's working as an escort for a transport company so I got her to introduce me to their boss," she says, her voice is gushing with happiness, "I got a good deal for us, a gold every other day. We will be the main hunters on the caravan, our job is to keep any monsters away, since we have really good scouting it should be easy for us."

"Sounds wonderful, thank you, my love," I say and pat a scaly cheek. "It's good that you met a friend, on the trip you will have a lot to talk about."

"Yes!" She crushes my ribs.

Aoi jumps out of Roxanne's window and glides until she lands on Hana's head.

"When are we departing?" Alissa asks.

"The fifth," Hana answers.

"How long are we going to stay on this trip?" I ask.

"Depends on how many foot travelers come too, he said he would limit the number but you know how these merchants are," Hana says and exhales a tired breath, "At the most we should reach Goldport before the Turn of the Year. If we come later than that then his trip is redundant, he's spreading supplies for the celebrations."

"Who's the boss?"

"A fallen noble silver elf, he belonged to the western Crown Lord branch family but his father turned cuckoo and lost a ton of money so now he took over the business with his mother. He's quite serious and hard-working, but stay away from his mother, she's off-limits."

"What do you mean by that?" I ask and chuckle.

"She's a tanned silver elf, she's just like Ciel so I know exactly what's going to happen," she says, I see Alissa shiver and smile. "I know how weak you are to our tanned skin. Roxanne and Ciel don't want you being seduced by no experienced woman, no sir. So I'll be there to keep you - satisfied." -.

"Aren't you my Blood Slave, what are you obeying them for?" I ask and close my eyes, inhaling her sweet strawberry perfume on the strands of hair that drifted close to my face.

"I'm only doing what I think is best so you retain your body integrity, master..." Hana says with a whisper in my ears.

"So the girls are getting haughty? Maybe I have to teach them who's in charge again," I say in a low growl.

"I would love to see that," Hana says and licks her lips.

I'm merely joking, no way I'm going to impose myself like this on the girls.

-

"You ruined me, Wolfy," Ciel says in a tired tone as she comes back.

"I agree but I'm not sure what you are referring to," I answer and continue dicing the remmidy.

"I can't talk to Bitar anymore, it's too awkward. I can't even hug him because it makes me feel sick," she says and slumps on the chair.

"You shouldn't hug him anyway, he's feeling up your breasts," I say and give a welcoming kiss to Lina.

"He-he's not!" Ciel protests.

"Gih," Gify says and chews on another small chunk of remmidy. I smack his head and frown. If I take my eyes away he'll eat all the ingredients.

Ciel puckers her lips in anger and glares at Gify.

I stop and smirk at Ciel until her dark skin acquires a strong red shade.

"Fine! I will knowingly hug him now. He's my friend and I should make my friends happy, right?" She glares back, defiantly.

"Maybe I should visit Carmen again, it's been a while since we last met," I say casually.

"I'm sure Nononya would like a private meeting with you, I feel she admires you greatly," Alissa says.

"That adventurer Iana seemed to quite like Wolfy," Hana comments casually.

"Vanea's offer is still valid?" Lina asks casually, and Roxanne bursts into snickers, she barely contains them with her hand.

Ciel pales and her mouth hangs open, then she lowers her head and frowns.

"Sorry, I went too far," I say and sit beside her. I grab her hand and kiss it, "But you started it."

"Sometimes you are quite mean. You all are quite mean," Ciel says and sends a glare to Lina.

"S-sorry," Lina says and lowers her head.

"I just want my friend back…" Ciel mutters.

"Aren't you the one who worships the Goddess of Love?" Roxanne asks, "What does she teach us about your situation?"

When it's you that's on the chaise lounge it gets difficult to analyze yourself objectively.

"'Loose ends will make a dress get undone'," Ciel says. She breathes in and her voice turns sad as she says, "Sorry, I shouldn't have suggested infidelity to you, Wolfy, that was disrespectful."

"I didn't take it seriously, and you were just retaliating at my teasing," I say and squeeze her hand. "I love you."

"I love you too." She smiles weakly at me.

I give her a deep kiss and we continue preparing lunch.

Like other classes, Electric class is just reviewing since the next lesson will be the final test. Lyle will show his [Discharge] and the power of the battery he can create with [Charge].

For this class, I decide to test a concept back from Earth that I heard once, electrical muscle stimulation. With [Shocking Touch] I can control exactly which muscles are shocked, forcing them to contract and expand at will. From what I understood there's no CPR on [First-Aid], it's a skill with a rather low ceiling. This means that they have not realized you can force a stopped heart to move or use the shock to stop a desynchronized heart.

I don't have the facilities to test this on a real heart so I will just show how to control muscles with this spell and suggest a line of research. From what Ciel knows, when the heart stops pumping blood correctly they focus [Heal] on the brain to keep the lack of oxygen from killing the person while they also try to find the cause for the heart problems. This is because [Heal] does not work very well in making the heart work again since it's physically "fine" but it's the signals that make it contract and expand that are the problem.

I come back home to Roxanne sneezing repeatedly while Ciel chants [Purify Body]. Roxanne's eyes are red, her face is swollen, her nose is dripping constantly, and she's scratching her face repeatedly.

"What's going on?" I ask.

"She succeeded in making some strong poison," Hana says with a wry smile.

Roxanne starts to speak, her voice distorted due to a clogged nose, "I, acho! Got inspired when you, acho! When you, acho! When y, ach-!" Roxanne bites her tongue and holds in the sneeze, "When you told the story that I used a poison concoction to cause an allergic, acho! Reaction on the ancient Azurite dragon."

"You really shouldn't test poisons on yourself, when we are on the road we will get goblins for you to test," I say and knit my eyebrows in worry. "None of you should be hurting yourselves like this, this is going too far."

"Oh, you worry too muucho!" Roxanne sneezes on her handkerchief and groans in pain.

"[Purify Body]."

The swelling on Roxanne's face reduces and her nose unclogs, but she's still suffering.

"Well, I'm going to have to do this a few more times," Ciel says and starts chanting again.

After Roxanne is healed, I decide to [Massage] her face and relieve some of the stress. Even though what she did was stupid she still succeeded in making a strong poison. Rox's Sneeze-'n-Wheeze it has been named.

I put on my hands some of the elven scented oil. Then I [Massage] Roxanne's face, then her scalp, then her horns, then her neck, then her back, then her lower back, -, then her thighs, then her calves. -.

At night I play nice with Ciel -, helping her calm down and keep her concentration.

The [Holy Spirit] slowly forms in front of us, it's cute feet tap on the table repeatedly as it floats down. Then it's metal mask turns around to stare at all of us once his summoning is complete.

"Yes!" Ciel suddenly jumps out of the bed and the spirit falls over backward like a puppet with its strings cut.

"Okay, control, I have no idea how to do that," she says and grabs the little spirit, having it nuzzle on her bosom.

Ciel drops back on the sofa in my arms. Through a clay golem's eyes, I can see how we look like a couple looking at their newborn with warm eyes, though a rather mismatched couple since she's 21 and bigger than me while I'm 19 with a babyface.

Now that she finished her spell I slowly increase the intensity of my [Massage] -.

Today is the 24th.

-

I try to implant fake memories on Kyros but the low level of my [Godly Language] gives him only faint feelings of déjà vus instead of actually changing his mental state.

"You remember something funny," I order and Kyros unconsciously smiles for a few seconds then returns to his stoic expression.

"Some people are more affected by certain memories than others, if you attack these memories then it's easier to implant things on someone's mind," he says.

I certainly have a few of those.

[Blessing Magic] class is reviewing. I focus on my [Reinforce] spell, on this one I don't have to hold back. The spell is kind of a "force field" that prevents atoms from being split apart by other atoms. It really is that specific, it doesn't stop things from burning or melting, it seems to exclusively stop cutting, bending, or scraping.

Good for physical combat but extra vulnerable to magical. The "force field" reduces in power the more attacks it receives and magical attacks are extra powerful against it.

Today I have my physical training so I have to appease Hana and Lina during bath.

-

"Wolfy, can we talk?" Ciel asks casually but I feel my heart sink to my stomach.

"Y-yes, what is it?" I ask nervously and sit on the sofa.

She hugs me and pulls me down on the sofa, her softness brings me calmness.

"When we leave, you think you are ready for the world out there?" She asks softly.

Oh good, it's just an impromptu therapy session.

"Hm… Yes, I think so," I answer.

"Would you kill again to protect us?"

"Didn't I already do this?"

"After some long mental preparation, I want to know if you can answer with the intent to kill when the time comes," she squishes - me harder.

"Even if I say yes, can we really know if it's going to be the truth?"

"I can feel how motivated you are."

"So this hug is not just part of your usual hugging instinct taking over?"

"You could say that," she chuckles.

"Even if Wolfy doesn't answer, we will," Hana says with ferocity.

"If you really trust us you will understand our reasoning, even if we have to knock him out we will stay together," Alissa says with confidence and Lina nods.

"How relaxing knowing my slaves will harm me so easily," I say with a wry smile.

"You never used the Blood Slave connection against any of us. If you suddenly start, then something is wrong," Alissa says with a shrug.

"You always say that you don't like to treat us as slaves," Lina says.

"It's fine, I trust you all," I say, "and yes, I will do what I have to to keep us safe. No freezing, no inaction, no sentimentalism, you are all that matters." I squeeze Ciel's arm.

"Rabanara is quite calm in comparison to some towns, even with all the monster attacks," Roxanne says.

"We still haven't met a truly rotten noble," Hana says.

"And there's still Katasko, certainly someone rotten or dangerous is behind them," Roxanne continues.

"Once we reach the High Forest there's a high chance of bandit attacks. What would you do then?" Ciel asks.

"I will kill the dangerous ones and this time we will leave some time for them to surrender," I say with confidence, "I don't care if we have to show our powers, we will simply deal with it when it happens."

"That easy?" Ciel asks, skeptical.

"It's like I said, it's easy to say but I truly think that I am ready for this trip."

"You said you never killed before coming here, how was it on Earth? How did you deal with killing other people?"

"The sanctity of life was said to be inviolable. Killing might be one of the biggest sins one could commit."

"Even criminals?"

"Even criminals. A lot of people had to vow to not kill but some people even took it a step further, becoming true pacifists."

"That sounds incredibly naive," Hana says.

"It seems Wolfy is far from being on the stupid side of his world," Roxanne says.

"It's not that bad to be against killing as a principle," Ciel says.

"Yes, it is. When it endangers others you are just being incompetent, your life is not your own when it impacts others," Hana says with a frown and crosses her arms.

"Big words coming out of your mouth," Roxanne says lowly.

"My 'Wisdom' has been increasing quite nicely, thank you," Hana says and pinches Roxanne's cheek.

"I agree with Hana, your world is incredibly naive. How many unworthy people are left alive to cause more pain due to this naive mercy?" Alissa asks.

"It's a mere difference in philosophy. When your life is mostly your own, people develop differently," I say. "Individualism, idealism, pragmatism, all these things are in conflict with one another. My world has a lot of variety between any two people. This world is mostly pragmatism and I'm well into your side.

"I've exorcised most of my demons, I'm fine with killing. My fear is being caught unaware, but even that I feel like I have been getting it under control."

"Gih," I look at him on Alissa's lap and see his face distorted into a proud smile.

The shrieks of the space mage I killed sound further and further away. With the newest point in "Sanity" I feel more anger at my stupidity than fear of the ambush repeating. I feel more "in control" of my fear.

"What does the demon race got anything to do with exorcism?" Roxanne asks with a frown. "Ah, a reference?"

"A reference."

"What does your Earth got against demons?"

"The demon race was based on nightmares and myths were they not?" Lina asks, "It's not that he's talking about the demon race specifically, he's talking about the myths that you were based on."

"Ooh…"

"So, did we really fix Wolfy?" Alissa asks Ciel.

"I wouldn't say 'fix' but…" Ciel curls my hair on her fingers.

"Yeah, you all 'fixed' me, at the least you kept me sane while I adjusted," I say.

"Just remember to not stop the fear, you shouldn't grow numb," Ciel says.

"I remember: 'self-control' to keep the fear at bay as my guide, not my master."

Embrace the fear, embrace the pain, embrace the danger.

"What, is, fear?" Suzy asks.

Heh. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration.

"The desire to maintain body integrity," I say.

"Or the desire to keep away from damage," Lina says.

"Then, we, feel, fear," Ted says.

"I wouldn't say it is like this. To feel you have to let emotions take control of your actions, even if it's beneficial or not," I say.

"Then, do, not, let, us, feel. Fee-lings, dis-rupt, per-for-mance," Ted says and Suzy nods.

Ciel frowns and Lina shrugs dejectedly, they are certainly trying to humanize the golems.

"Kweh? I, feel, no, fear, am, I, wrong?" Aoi asks.

"You are fine," Hana says and pats Aoi, "All monsters seem to feel less fear."

"Possibly something the God of Destruction did to make monsters more willing to kill humanoids," I say.

"Muuh…" Aoi's nostrils glow, "I, won't, kill, friends."

"But only friends," I say with a smile and Aoi nods with resolution.

"How about the men we killed during the necromancer battle?" Ciel asks.

"Oh…" I didn't think much about them. "I really feel bad, they were charmed by the Illusion mage and died like cattle."

"Not all deaths have meaning," she says and strokes my hair -.

That kind of got me, I didn't pay much mind to these men after the battle. It seems my coping mechanism is to ignore and forget.

"I still feel sad about them," I say.

"Yeah…" Lina mutters. I turn around and see Alissa patting her head.

"People die stupid deaths all the time…" Roxanne says, her tone turning cold and her eyes lifeless. "I barely feel anything anymore."

Hana pulls her into a hug and says, "You should still feel."

"But I don't want to."

I wish I could stop feeling the pain of losing Lily every time we talk about my past.

"Gih."

But I shouldn't, not until the pain goes away on its own, not until the wound heals properly.

"Gih."

-

Today is the 25th.

I wake up refreshed, these therapy sessions are rather intense but they made me feel better afterward, little by little. The storm recedes slowly, as Alissa said once.

-

Lina's [Stonebody] is now 4. And here I though I had finally grown stronger than the little girl, I'm itching to overpower her and abuse her.

I spend some time thinking about my soul changing magic, I should call it [Soul Hardening]. I know I managed to change my soul somehow with my [Redirect Mana], so I could couple that with [Spirit Magic] [Materialization] and discover how to form the material that I want out of my soul.

But first I have to be able to move my soul at will. Currently, I have to meditate and concentrate a lot, the [Soul Hardening] should work without any input from me. I guess I have to create something like [Soul Manipulation] too.

Another looong and repetitive training ahead. I see no way to cheat on this one, I have to find a way to move freely my soul before I can think about casting [Materialization] on it.

Soon I'm going to have to spend years meditating non-stop refining my soul or some bullshit like that and somehow end up developing bullshit superpowers.

No point delaying it any longer. I sit down on the sofa while the pitter-patter of a light drizzle hits the windows.

A note from Manasong

Hall of Fame of Patrons.

The patrons who support Rupegia shall have their names sung by the bards for they deserve the glory and honor. Their names are:

Oracle Maximillian Hübner.

Lord Andrew Meyers.

Lord SenilePenile.

Lord Hope.

Lord Samuel Lim.

Noble Salty Panda.

Leave a rating or a review to help me rise to the top or fix my shameful understanding of prose.

Take a look over my blog where all information of the world of Rupegia will be posted.

Join the Discord and discuss, or rant, or meme, or try and fight me so your waifu gets more screentime.

Become a Patron and read chapters in advance, or read the side-stories, or leave your mark on the story, or help choose the next artwork or the next side-story.

Chapter 38: Last Days - Part 2

A note from Manasong

Attention: to conform to the limit of sexual content allowed in a novel, I've censored this chapter. You can look for the uncensored version here.

The symbol "-" denotes a section that got cut for containing sexual content. Also, if paragraphs seem missing, they were also likely censored in an earlier pass where the symbol wasn't used.

Training my soul manipulation is very tiring, it's very similar to trying to cast two spells at once. Another thing I need a sub-process for. If only there was something similar to [Mana Control] to aid me.

I focus my soul out of my body, open my eyes, try to maintain soul there, repeat. I feel like I'm getting a cramp inside my brain.

We leave early for the university so I can send my thesis to Mathias.

"This is amazing, Mr. Ryder!" Mathias gushes while flipping through the pages of my thesis.

"In exchange for my thesis I want a 'Scholar' title," I say.

Mathias stops and looks at me, his gaze is now serious.

"We don't give the title to just about anyone. You understand that this title grants you the privilege to access any restricted library of the empire, correct?"

"Correct, I'm not looking for anything specific from the restricted area," I lie, "I'm mostly looking for accessing a wide breadth of knowledge in general. I have my slave, Lina, collect any sort of historical account, I'm planning on compiling it all in more comprehensive encyclopedias."

"Hm, a rather noble effort," he taps his desk repeatedly.

"It's one of the reasons I want to travel the world," I say and smile.

"Very well, I believe you will manage it. For the title you will have to defend your thesis in front of the university's council, understood?" He asks.

"Yes, can you schedule one soon? By the next day of Fo I have to leave Rabanara, so I want to defend it before that. I'm sorry for the hurry but it took me a while to finish this thesis."

"I think it can be arranged, a number of professors are interested in your work with [Golemancy] so I will deliver it to them posthaste!" Mathias shakes my papers with enthusiasm.

"Thank you for that," I say and bow lightly.

"It's the least I could do to someone blessed by the Goddess of Knowledge."

Last Mana Cost class, we have one last discussion about the skill. Professor Vareto starts to say a speech but his voice is so soporific that I have to focus on examining my spells to stay awake.

I discover that the speed in which the weapon forms in [Vine Weapon] can be greatly increased if I modify the way it is formed. The spell folds vines on top of one another and "ages" them, if I put my hand on a bucket of mineral [Conjured Water] and cast [Vine Weapon], the aging basically petrifies the vines, making them brittle, but strong enough that they can be used as projectiles.

If I can cast both spells at the same time I can create javelins in 2-5 seconds depending on concentration. I could teach this to Lina and it would be much more practical than pulling out javelins from her [Item Box].

During the break, Toroo waves her hand to us to catch our attention, "Everyone, I have some news," she says, barely containing her excitement, "I'm pregnant!"

"That's amazing!" Alissa says and grabs Toroo's hand, who nods repeatedly. Toroo's large eyes are squished by her raised cheeks due to her wide smile.

"Congratulations, joy and honor for the couple," Gimbo says.

Lina's Trivia: couples wait 3 to 5 years before their first child so they can properly "get used" to each other. Since people marry easily, this is a necessary tradition to prevent bad marriages. Once the couple lasts that long and they have their first child the couple is said to be "honorable" due to having fulfilled their duty of continuing the wishes of the God of Creation.

We repeat Gimbo's congratulations and Toroo takes them with pride, her feathery "ears" on top of her head seem to increase in size. Hatara looks at Garanae mischievously, his posture straightens and he shifts uncomfortably.

She's merely playing with him, nobility lives longer so they wait even longer than commoners to have children. I wonder how menopause is affected by the increased longevity of Levels.

"Say, Mr. Ryder," Gimbo turns to me as the girls fawn over Toroo, even Lina is joining them. "Since Lina's training is coming to an end I wish to speak with you."

"Oh, sure, please do tell me how she behaved," I say and send a quick glance towards Lina, her face seems cramped.

I get up and put my chair beside Gimbo, the lack of Lina and Alissa's hands makes mine feel oddly cold.

"I don't really have any complaints, I just wanted to thank you for the opportunity of teaching her," Gimbo says.

I lift my eyebrows in surprise and say, "I should be the one thank you for agreeing to teach her, a slave."

"Nonsense,-" he closes his eyes and shakes his head lightly- "useless dwarven pride getting in the way of letting the Spark turn into Fire."

Lina's Trivia: the Spark turns into Fire when Creation "spreads like wildfire".

"Still, I must thank you, her enchanting knowledge has been a great help and will continue to do so," I lower my head to him.

"And I must thank you for bringing her to me, it has been a long time since I have someone as dedicated as her," he lowers his head to me. "She managed to even charm my wife, or maybe it was the opposite. No matter, when you can, bring her to visit us, we would love to see her again," he says and smiles warmly at Lina.

"I will, I have a few friends in this town so I will come back one day."

"Make sure you don't take too long since I'm already 100 years old. I might last one decade, but two would be pushing it," he says and chuckles faintly.

Well damn, that's some genetics.

"That would be too long indeed. We plan on sightseeing, shouldn't spend too long in any single place."

"I know your kind." -He sends me a glance- "Wanderlust has a way of making us drift from our path. It took me 5 years to cross Avgi while it should have taken only a few months."

"So you used to like adventuring?"

"More like I used to enjoy fattening up eating delicacies from every town we visited. It's a wonder me and my wife aren't fat."

I chuckle lightly, but this is a true concern, if we go to Faium I might get fat from all the chocolate.

"Of all places you should go to Conchononoi," he continues, "they have a very sweet tea with a soft taste, it's rather energizing. They call it 'filía', it has a novel way of drinking it too."

"How is it prepared?"

"You mash dry leaves of their herb and add hot water, you drink from the mush that forms with a special straw with small holes that keeps the larger chunks away. My recommendation is to drink the cold version with Tonsel."

That sounds too similar to something I know. Could it be? Chocolate is not the only thing that was copied from Earth?

"Sounds like a good place to visit."

"Make sure you visit The Fissure or Auri Yorei, seeing the flood and feeling the town rise above the water is quite an interesting feeling. Oh, and spend at least one night sleeping in the open at the grasslands of Elaria, the air over there is more refreshing than anywhere else," his eyes seem less tired as he speaks with excitement.

"In the open? I thought dwarves preferred to sleep in small and cozy places with a rock roof above their heads."

He chuckles once and rolls his eyes, "If one thing we dwarves know about is that ventilation and freshness of the air are essential for soft and supple skin."

I guess that dwarves aren't oily cave-dwellers.

Tomorrow is [Space Magic] final test so I use Hana to test my [Gravity Crush] to keep her in place. It works rather well since I can fake a short chant and attack at the same time.

After appeasing Hana, I have Alissa give me some scratch marks -.

"How are your parents, Alissa? You think they will like me?" I ask - with Alissa in my arms.

"They will," she says and kisses my - chest, "Dad will play it tough a little just to see how you react, he doesn't like cowards. Mom will act cold and slowly warm up, she's not the most trusting or friendly, dealing with the other clans too much made her like that."

"I guess we will be fine, then."

"We will. If Dad goes too far, I'll scratch his face," she pouts cutely.

I chuckle lightly, "How does your dad look like?"

"Dad is big and muscular and he loves his long red beard. He barely looks like other werefoxes, we aren't really a tall people."

"Well, you can say I'm getting used to dealing with people bigger than me."

"That's a given since there are no other humans shorter than you," Roxanne says and I reach over to pinch her - . She evades my attack by jumping out of bed, she stands and readjusts her glasses, "Not this time, aha-AH!"

Aoi bites her - and giggles.

"Traitor!"

Aoi gives her a lick on the bite mark and Roxanne shivers. "Her tongue is so slippery," she says.

Alissa turns to me and raises her eyebrows at me repeatedly, I start to sweat cold.

"Say Aoi, you wanted to learn what a kiss is like?" Alissa asks.

"Kweh? Yess, please."

"Come over here and I will show you," she extends her arms and Aoi scurries to the bed. "Bigger, please," she asks and Aoi turns into medium dog size.

"See, do it like this," Alissa pulls Hana closes and shoves her tongue inside Hana's mouth. Their tongues seek each other, twisting and rubbing. Their lips don't touch, so Aoi can see the movements.

Their tongues separate and a bridge of saliva connects them briefly. "Got that?" Alissa asks and Aoi nods, "Now, who do you want to practice with?"

I look away and feel Aoi's gaze on my mouth.

"Don't you want another woman?" Alissa asks, innocently.

"Bleh."

"Then Wolfy it is."

Suddenly Aoi is deposited on my naked lap, she looks up at me, expectantly. I look at Alissa and she's grinning evilly.

"Come now, Wolfy, you received me quite well. Why don't you show the same enthusiasm with Aoi?" Alissa asks.

"Y-you have a human-looking body to help," I hurriedly say.

"If she acquires one will that be fine, then?" She asks innocently. She knows what my research on [Soul Hardening] implies.

"I-I don't, I don't know."

Aoi's claws softly touch my shoulder and she comes face-to-face. Her long tongue extends and snakes over towards my mouth.

A new and odd sensation touches my tongue. Aoi's tongue is really slippery, it easily stimulates my own with just a little speed. -.

-

"Kissss!" Aoi says and giggles happily. She reduces in size and snuggles on my lap -.

"Dragon fucker," Roxanne mutters -.

"Excuse me, Aoi," Hana says and grabs the small bundle of blue scales, she softly deposits Aoi on a pillow.

Hana's strong hands pull me down, her yellow eyes look at me with anger and ferocity.

"I'm gonna - do you now, Wolfy," Hana says -.

Today is the 26th.

-

I look to the side and freeze as Aoi's snout touching my nose sends me a shiver.

My head swims in disorder. A new problem has arisen, Aoi is a breeder-type. Monsters normally feel no attraction towards humanoids, except breeder-types, who exclusively feel attraction towards the other sex.

Aoi is sapient, which muddles things, but it's still the most viable explanation why she wants me and feels disgusted at the women.

As a monster, her growth is much different from a humanoid. Monsters are born already conscious and with enough knowledge to build a civilization on their own, so they mature extremely fasst. As an example, goblins are babies for barely a day-cycle, so I'm not if can even say that Aoi is "child" anymore because a breeder-type only feels attraction to humanoids when her body is ready to mate, but for me, she's one, she's my baby.

Now I'm not sure I can continue thinking of her like this.

"Now you are the one corrupting me, Alissa," I say.

-

"Now I want to see you subdue a real dragon." She lets our girly giggles and moves out of bed.

"I'm a real dragon, partially," Hana mutters and goes after Alissa.

My [Mana Efficiency] and [Reduced Mana Cost] increased by 1 (now 5+7 and 8+7).

I tell the girls the good news.

"Well…" Ciel starts but doesn't continue.

"You are going to be a dragon rider in all senses of the word," Hana says and slaps my back painfully. "Though now you need to - do it with a Dragonoid too."

"We could eventually get another, male, dragon for Aoi. Or have another… man, uh… satisfy her," Ciel suggests, ignoring Hana.

Aoi huffs smoke towards the air and Alissa glares at her but then pats her head.

"I don't know what to think," Ciel says.

"Me too," I say.

"Dragon fucker," Roxanne says and Lina bites her lips, trying to hold back a smile.

"There's not much to think, I'm sure Wolfy won't enjoy seeing another beastly dragon - taking our little Aoi's virginity," Hana says with a fearsome grin.

"Kweh!" Aoi nods.

"We don't need to make a decision now, do we?"I ask, the girls shrug and Ciel remains unmoving. "Then let's leave this for another time."

"Are we the only two normal ones here?" Ciel asks me, I shrug and massage my eyes.

"Gih," Gify nods.

I try to slowly alter reality by provoking a small breeze on the handkerchief using [Godly Language]. At one point I feel like I'm tripping on shrooms as the fabric of reality weakens due to successive attempts to alter it.

Altering reality has a weird effect on the world, basically, once you break one rule it gets "added" to how reality works and as such, they start a chain sequence of alterations, "updating" the world to the new rule. The effect is different from say, radiation, which is similar to how mana rips the world apart, because it seems that a "conscience" has a special effect on the world and breaking reality messes with our consciences.

On Earth a brain is only a series of neurons firing randomly, a series of chemical processes and electric currents, in Rupegia, a brain/soul has the capability to alter the world based on will. This is how magic works, this is how mana works, and this is how [Sense Presence] works, by looking at the outline of how we alter reality around us just by existing, this outline being our soul.

Apparently I can't alter how mana works with [Godly Language], the power of mana is well-defined, even if it doesn't seem so for us, which means it's unalterable. Which is why mana helps the world "stabilize", it is the primordial source of everything so it "overrides" my alterations.

I go through a lot of MP potions but manage to create a breeze, the only side-effect is that I saw a rainbow for a few seconds.

Lina comes back with an adorable smile. She pulls out Hana's emerald fang sword with a *poof* and puts it on the table.

"Oohh…!" Hana exclaims and quickly snatches her bastard sword, I see there's a small grey gem on the hilt, looks like quartz.

Hana swings her sword in the air and I feel mana leave her body. A ghost of Hana appears and swings the same way.

"Amazing!" Hana exclaims and drops the sword on the table, she rushes over towards Lina and invades her mouth with her tongue. With a smack, their lips unglue and Lina nearly melts on Hana's arms. "I love you! In more ways than one." She chuckles.

Lina twiddles her thumbs and nods while Hana pushes her straight. Ciel looks concerned but also happy.

"Now do for your own switch-axe too," I say.

"Yes. This time it will take a few days only," Lina answers and nods again.

Alissa brings Aoi to the university since nobody is currently at home. She receives all the stares with Gify on her shoulder and Aoi in her arms.

In Space class, every student goes one by one and shows their specialty. A few town guards are chosen as guinea pigs and two school teachers who know [Heal] are at the ready in case of accidents.

Most people are either showing [Telekinesis] by raising large rocks or throwing smaller ones at the guards, or showing [Item Box] by fitting large items inside. A few students use [Gravity Crush] to destroy things like boxes or pieces of armor.

I'm the only one who developed a short chant just so I can use it to disrupt someone's attack. I pick the biggest guard of them all and start the spar.

After delaying things enough I cast the spell and strike at his neck. He barely has the force to lift his sword, let alone block me. I touch his neck with my wooden sword and end the spell. The guard collapses and coughs blood.

Oops, I think Hana was a little too resistant for me.

Professor Ludwick smiles widely at me and then nods, he and 2 other observers write a few things on a board as I finish my test.

"This is the easiest to pass so I'm not worried," Lyle says.

"Beginners [Space Magic] class is only for [Item Box] so as long as you can put a suit of armor in it they pass you," Hatara says.

Eventually, the conversation dies down because Aoi charms everyone with her adorableness. She's playing with her floating gold ball toy, she swipes at the ball and it flies away but returns to float on top of the wooden block, once it stops the ball starts heating up. The point of the game is to keep the ball away as long as you can until it starts to glow with heat, the ball starts to increase in nimbleness with every hit.

Aoi stands on her forelegs on top of the wooden block and batters away the ball repeatedly. She adorably growls with anger and lets smoke leave her nostrils.

"She's adorable," Garanae mutters absentmindedly.

"Kweh!"

And she knows it.

Since we already finished our tests we go home. Lina is with Hana at the hunter's guild sparring; Roxanne comes back from selling some of her potions; Ciel is at the temple showing off her [Holy-, I mean, training her [Judgment].

I recruit Alissa and keep messing with her skill points, trying to find where in the soul is the skill stored.

"What do you feel?" I ask as Alissa casts [Telekinesis] on a cup of tea.

"We, do, not, feel," Ted says.

"Right, what do you sense, can you sense the mana inside Alissa?"

"We, feel, a, dis-tur-bance, a, for-ce," Suzy says.

"Can you copy it?"

They tilt their heads in sync.

"Not, sure," Ted says.

I see the differences in the soul when I add or remove skills, but I can't feel the entire extent. It seems skills are something that stretches for a good part of the soul.

Ted lifts one of his fluffy arms in the direction of an empty teacup. I feel a wild burst of mana come out of his arm, the teacup shakes and explodes in hundreds of little pieces. Ted falls over face-down, his body limp.

The clay golem summons immediately start to move again and sweep the dust.

"Oh shit, Ted, you okay?" I ask.

Alissa quickly grabs Ted and checks all over his body for damage.

I put on [Spirit Magic] and cast [Soul Touch]. I feel his soul is "gooey", it's constantly shivering and moving, something wrong happened inside him.

The spell acts like a [Regeneration] for the soul and slowly puts his soul back in piece, returning it to it's "structured" form.

Roxanne comes down and peeks over the room. "Did something happen?" She asks.

"Kweh! Ex-plode!"

"Gih."

"Ted tried to cast a spell and it seems to have failed spectacularly," I say.

"Oh no!" Roxanne yells and rushes over to the little teddy bear.

Ted recovers lucidity and starts to move again. He escapes from Alissa's arms and looks over his handiwork.

"I, fai-led, my, task," he says and bows, "for-give-ness, ne-ces-sa-ry."

"It's fine," I say and Ted straightens, Alissa snatches him and she and Roxanne ask him if he's really okay. "I think I gave them too much mana. I copied Hana and Alissa's mana organ but they are an adult's organ, the golems are like newborns with their mana control."

"They should have the soul of an elemental so maybe they can cast [Earth Magic] spells correctly?" Alissa asks.

"Elementals manipulate the elementals, they don't really cast spells the same way we do," Roxanne says.

"[Earth Wall] should be close enough," I say.

We move outside and I show the spell to the golems. This time we let Suzy cast.

She only manages to raise a flimsy wall, but at least she didn't turn her soul to mush.

"Maybe the bodies of the elemental also influence on their spellcasting," Roxanne says.

"Makes sense, we know the storm elementals' bodies are valuable due to the mana they hold, kind of like a mana crystal for staffs," I say.

"So elementals are essentially just huge, sentient, mana crystals?" Alissa asks.

"Cor-rect, as-sump-tion," Suzy says.

"So, does Gecynd shit crystals?" Roxanne asks with a chuckle.

"Gihih," Gify chirps a muffled laugh, his claws cover his mouth.

"If it creates an elemental then she more like births them," I say.

"That sounds horrible," Alissa says.

"And painful," Roxanne says.

Gify stares at where our tree in the front yard should be and I get a shiver. Hopefully, Gecynd didn't hear that.

We teach the golems [Earth Bullet], [Earth Wall], and [Dust Storm]. They learn how to cast easily but have extreme difficulty in controlling the spell.

Roxanne starts training them in [Mana Control] alongside Aoi while I focus on [Soul Manipulation].

During the bath, I require a massage -.

At night Hana shows us her progress with [Illusion Magic], she can create 3 arms and attack at the same time, with this even Toga has difficulty winning against her. To survive you either full dodge or take the risk and try to parry, trying to parry all attacks at the same time is basically impossible.

"Wolfy, can you start to show me [Water Spirit]?" Roxanne asks.

I look at Ciel and she nods.

"Sure."

I sit down and hug her tight, she nuzzles her face on my neck and my nose is filled with her lavender perfume plus some faint sweet perfume from a high elven skin cream.

I put my points into [Water Magic] and call the spirit. A ball of water forms on my palm, it changes into the face of a little mermaid. Ink appears from the ball of water and takes the color of unnaturally white skin, a black fish body, and black algae hair. Her face might be cute but certainly resembles Roxanne, even her shell-covered breasts are the same size, if Roxanne was half a meter tall. A trident made out of coral grows from her hand.

Once completely summoned, the mermaid "swims" in the air, giggling.

Ciel's [Holy Spirit] stops walking and face plants as she loses concentration and I see the "hugging eyes" show themselves.

"Why does yours continue moving when you don't pay attention while mine stops?" Ciel says and pouts.

"I heard something that [Summoning Magic] alters the soul, a part of it turns similar to the summon's soul," I say, "could be the same principle."

"Then give me a point in [Summoning Magic]," Ciel says and I obey. She casts [Summon Small Bird] and sways while sitting, nearly falling over Lina on her lap.

"How did… how did you get used to this?" Ciel asks, trying to hold her dinner in.

"You just do, you have to force yourself."

"His 'Willpower' is slightly higher than yours," Alissa says.

Ciel nods and gathers her resolve.

A while later I have to wake up Roxanne. I almost suspect she used the excuse of training to fall asleep in my arms, since tonight is Lina and Ciel's day she must be trying to score some out of her time.

A note from Manasong

Hall of Fame of Patrons.

The patrons who support Rupegia shall have their names sung by the bards for they deserve the glory and honor. Their names are:

Oracle Maximillian Hübner.

Lord Andrew Meyers.

Lord SenilePenile.

Lord Hope.

Lord Samuel Lim.

Noble Salty Panda.

Leave a rating or a review to help me rise to the top or fix my shameful understanding of prose.

Take a look over my blog where all information of the world of Rupegia will be posted.

Join the Discord and discuss, or rant, or meme, or try and fight me so your waifu gets more screentime.

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Chapter 38: Last Days – Part 3

A note from Manasong

Attention: to conform to the limit of mature content (more than just sexual content) allowed in a novel, I've censored this chapter. You can look for the uncensored version here.

The symbol "-" denotes a section that got cut for containing sexual content. Also, if paragraphs seem missing, they were also likely censored in an earlier pass where the symbol wasn't used.

Today is the 27th.

-

Alissa comes back and throws herself into the pile of limbs. Her tail slaps Lina in the face repeatedly, who grabs it and pulls on it weakly making Alissa yelp once.

"This is actually so soft," Lina says and starts to caress Alissa's tail.

-

"The trip itself might actually be boring since we are going slow so I thought about buying some books," Ciel says as runs her fingers through my hair.

"You know what books I like," Alissa says. She closes her eyes when I start to play with her ears.

"Maybe we should buy some card game too," I say and Lina perks up her head.

"There are a few toys too that we could bring with us," Ciel says, "What books do you like, Lina?"

She sends me a glance and puckers her lips.

"You can choose whatever book you want; keep the history ones for when we reach another big library," I say and pat her head.

"Oh, then I want some ro-romance," she says meekly.

"Hm? Am I not enough for you?" I ask and lift an eyebrow at her.

Ciel painfully pulls a strand of my hair and Lina pouts.

"Ow, it's a joke," I say.

"Let a woman dream a little," Ciel says and caress the hurt spot.

"For you, the trip might be boring, but for me, it will be a good exercise -," Alissa says.

-

I don't feel like training this morning so I spend it playing not-backgammon with Lina. She seems to love playing games, I bet she would be a hermit just like me on Earth, addicted to video games or anime.

Lina's still a little too young to compete against me but she's a fast learner. We started off 3-0 in my favor and then finished off at 6-5. I think that the last games were won by luck, her analytical and strategic thought are well developed.

For lunch, we are having mutton since we are going to leave we better enjoy it because we might not find it again so easily. The wine and juice made out of the Gorgon fruit is also a local delicacy so we are stocking some of it.

The High Forest has a large number of fruits and veggies so we are not too worried about missing the taste unless it's something specific we crave. Ciel seems a little guilty over the number of luxuries we have so we send some gold coins as a donation to the temple.

The money is starting to run low again but the job will give us a lot of money so we aren't worried. Any monster we kill we get full rights over the body and proof of extermination so it's also a good supplement.

Nature class is the final test, just by showing Gify I pass but I decided to show my javelin creation.

"Have you been learning dual-casting, Mr. Ryder?" Professor Tanya asks.

"Yes, little by little I have been forcing my brain to learn how to create sub-processes," I say.

"Then this javelin creation is a worthy pursuit, learn a few levels in [Throw] and it will be a handy tool for close-range support."

Most other students focused on [Grow], [Animal Tongue], or [Manasynthesis], most combat-oriented mages seek that last spell just for the increased mana regeneration it gives.

At night Roxanne and Ciel start a proper [Mana Control] class.

"Feel the mana, it's like a river, or a pitcher that you use to pour water on a cup," Ciel says, "You control the rate of the flow, too much and you lose control, too little and it drips along the edge and down the pitcher."

"Ri-ver?" Suzy asks and tilts her head.

"Ne-ver, used, pi-tcher," Ted says.

"You should have my knowledge of it, shouldn't you?" I ask.

Both of them look at their hands.

"Diff-rent."

"Bo-dy."

"Oh, I see," I say and hold my chin in thought, "They may have my knowledge but lack the means to apply it. I thought it was kind of weird they didn't know how to control mana seeing they have my experiences."

"Ad, hoc," Ted says.

"Ah, right! Mana is dependent on the soul and mind, so the way we control is different for each person."

"It shouldn't be that different," Roxanne says, "The standard [Mana Control] training is done with hundreds of other students so everyone learns the same way. Nonstandard control could lead to some dangerous side-effects when you start to cast bigger spells, especially with the empire's [Ritualism]."

"The souls of the golems are already nonstandard," Ciel says, making Roxanne frown.

"We shouldn't try to create something new. The golems are already dangerous as is, we don't need to make them even more special, it would only make them more difficult to deal with," I say and Roxanne nods.

"Dan-ge-rous?" Suzy asks, and Alissa and Lina look at us with puppy eyes.

Roxanne chuckles and says, "Not in the way you are thinking. Currently, you are harmless but your growth is an unknown, we don't know how powerful you will become. If we can't control you or you can't control your own spells properly then you might become dangerous to us or others."

"[Golemancy] is a very rough and unfinished magic school so we would rather not take any risks," I say.

"Un-der-stood," Ted says and nods. "Keep, us, far, from, com-bat."

"That would be difficult, the first thing anyone would want from [Golemancy] is cheap and disposable soldiers. If we don't develop [Golemancy] that way someone else will and they might not have the same concerns with safety as I do."

"Well, we are just a small group of people, maybe if the scholars of the capital join hands they would have more resources to deal with this safely than we do," Alissa says.

"But my knowledge of robotics and artificial intelligence sets me apart. I might know more about [Golemancy] than anyone in this world, alive or dead," I say.

"You never really explained what those two things are," Lina says.

"The first one is a little difficult to explain since this world doesn't seem to have sensors yet. But basically it is something like this: you see the water level of a rainwater collector is too high, so you open a trapdoor and let some of it spread to workshops, like say soap-makers.

"You have three important parts on this: first your eyes, they showed you the water level. There's a way to do something similar with mechanisms and electricity, it sends a signal, the higher the level of the water, the stronger the signal, the bigger the electric 'pathway.' The second part is the logic: if the tank is full, then open the trapdoor. If the condition is fulfilled, then do an action, this is one of the basic building blocks for logic. There's a thing called transistor that hasn't been invented here yet that you use for this. The third part is the action: you open the trapdoor for the water to escape. With a thing called actuators, mechanisms that allow you to do physical movements, humanoids can activate the actuators by simply sending an electric signal.

"Now, artificial intelligence is basically [Golemancy] or [Summoning Magic], specifically, the brains of golems and summons. It is the copying of our capacity for processing information and applying it in other areas. The interesting part of these magic schools is that they copied the brain while in my world we tried to build the brain from the ground up."

I stop and notice how I have been talking non-stop. The girls are looking at me warmly with a small smile on their mouths.

"Alright, then. Now I believe you are the most qualified person for this," Alissa says with a wide smile.

"You are a scholar, alright. Your eyes were shining all the time you spoke just like the ones I met," Hana says and smirks.

"What's logic?" Lina asks.

I smile and pull a piece of paper. I start by explaining her decision trees and flow-based programming.

Alissa turns into a small fox and comes to sit on my lap while reading a book. Her cute little paws flip the pages with a little difficulty.

"Sensors... maybe, maybe we can do something like this with the gnomic picture creator," Lina says.

"There's the mechanical ones, too," I say.

"Hmm... there are those mana batteries, maybe we can use a mechanical opener for them using [Telekinesis]."

"Can you channel mana down a wire or pipe?"

"Not really efficient but possible, going to use a lot of Kanal metal, though."

"Too expensive, if we can convert mana to electricity then it's better, it flows through simple and thin copper wires."

"I see..."

Ted and Suzy look over my diagrams.

"Our, min-d, works, li-ke, that?" Suzy asks.

"No, your mind is very different," I say. "This is just the distillation of logic into its base components, this is called 'hard' computing. Your and our brains work differently, it's called 'soft' computing or 'white box' computing because it's only a bunch of numbers that have no meaning when looked separately."

Lina and the golems look at me inquisitively, well at least Lina does it, I'm assuming that's the meaning of the stare of the golems.

"The neurons in our brain work in a different way. Somewhat similar to the flow-based programming I showed but in a more purely mathematical way."

"Ohohoh, well listening to you is quite enlightening," Roxanne says, her voice slightly slurred.

Hana rolls her eyes and removes the cup from Roxanne's hand. "That's enough for today," she says.

"Awn, I got drunk already? Well, Wolfy, living with you has removed the resistance my body had to alcohol."

"That's good for your health," Ciel says and I smile wryly.

"Sorry that your training got interrupted," I say.

"We are going to have enough time on the roo~ad," Roxanne says and drops her body on the arms of Hana.

Soon after the clothes of both of them are on the ground and my erection starts to rise. Aoi and Gify read the mood and jump on the table, curling on each other, and going to sleep.

Alissa looks at me and sends me a toothy smile. She innocently increases her size and pushes the book away. -.

-

Today is the 28th.

-

I feel like I'm on the grasp of creating the shield vortex, like a word that's on the tip of my tongue. The feeling of edging so close to my goal was frustrating at first but I slowly managed to get it under control, like the anxiety from going downhill on a bicycle, it makes my heart beat fast at the uncontrolled feeling of freedom, but then feels refreshing once I stop and look back.

At the class, Alissa parts from my body with much regret so I can demonstrate my muscle control with [Shocking Touch]. The spell is originally chaotic to fry the nervous system, making it more controlled wasn't that hard, although my control is still rough for what I'm trying to do.

"Controlling the heart, how novel," Professor Nellan says, "I have been focusing on mechanical and chemical uses for [Electric Magic] so I don't know much about the medicinal uses."

"His reasoning seems sound, this path of research should definitely be investigated further," says a professor.

"You think you can control the brain?" Asks another professor.

"That would require so much control in the spell that I think it is not humanely possible," I say.

"'Humanely'," says the first professor with a snort, he's a halfling.

"That's now how the word is supposed to be used," says the second professor as he narrows his eyes.

"That was a joke."

The professors try my spell and see that it is possible. The halfling professor is quite pleased.

Lyle manages to increase the area of effect of his [Discharge]. Not very powerful but it should be enough to disrupt certain weaker monsters like harpies.

The other students display a variety of focuses. Most use [Lightning Bolt] as a way for a quick stun and the second biggest group uses [Rush] as a retreating tool.

Mathias sent a letter that the council will evaluate my thesis at the next day of Tann, the 30th.

"Well Wolf, this is our last class together, it has been a pleasure to study beside you," Lyle says, Hatara nods emphatically and Garanae nods shyly.

"The pleasure is mine, your family's talent with [Electric Magic] is admirable. Also, don't forget about what I said about actuators," I say and smile.

Lyle is my best hope in inventing the transistor and bringing robotics to this world.

Hana and Roxanne are quite content, the ride might be bumpy but changing the scenery and sleeping in the open seems to be something they miss. Though with my tent and [Heal] the ride will be much more comfortable than usual.

"How's Maoka?" I ask Roxanne.

She waddles through the water and deposits herself in my arms, then she says, "It's quite hot, from what Hana told me it's like Sommerland but with fewer trees and more tall grass instead of bushes. Oh, and we have lots of tall mountains, so, on the horizon, you can always see a snow-peak. I guess we don't tan as well so the skin color of our people is more varied than over Sommerland."

"There's a large archipelago on the eastern side of the continent, right? Ever been there?"

"No, you have to cross the Death Valley so I never felt the courage to do it," she cringes lightly.

"How Mithra was?" Ciel asks, "You never really told us about her."

Roxanne frowns and says, "Do I have to? You know I don't like to talk about it."

"Wolfy did, you should know that talking helps."

It helps us accept reality, once you put your feelings into words they seem more "real".

Roxanne looks at me with pleading eyes.

"You should talk," I say, and her gaze turns sultry, her pale skin contrasts with her red lips, who are calling mine. I plant a kiss on them, I taste her tongue and tease her palate, then I break the kiss and say, "You really should talk."

Roxanne clicks her tongue and sighs. "Well... where should I start."

"Her personality," Ciel says.

"Happy, carefree, and just generally positive about life."

"Sounds like you are talking about yourself," Hana says with a smirk.

"Except the last part," Alissa says.

- "If we are going to talk about this then at least massage - me," she says and gives me a peck on the lips. "Well Mithra was her own person, if anything she made me realize how life is fun outside of studying and training."

"Considering how you abhor mana training I believe this is true," Hana says and Roxanne's dagger tail touches Hana's throat threateningly.

"How did she look like?" Lina asks.

"Like Hana but albino, it's quite common among our kind and I think it's a fetish of mine," Roxanne says and licks her lips.

"You are not meeting Sonny again," I say in a serious tone.

"Oh please, don't be a killjoy," she says while rolling her eyes dramatically, "I'm sure you would love to -."

- Roxanne's mouth is very dirty -

"That was... too specific, you are never meeting Sonny again," I say -.

"Also, you are changing the topic, Mithra, please," Ciel says, slightly annoyed and blushing hard.

"Ahn...! Fine, as I said, she's just like Hana, I like being dominated-"

"Hah! Now you admit it," I say.

"Wolfy, shush, you are going to pull the topic away again," Ciel chastises me.

- "Anyway. When we first met it was like a [Lightning Bolt] struck -."

"That sounds wild," Hana says with admiration in her voice.

"And it was, though we never did it again, we are not that depraved," she says and Hana snorts.

Roxanne sighs wistfully -. "With Mithra, things were just right, it's like the first time in my life I had someone who really wanted me by their side, we really just wanted me to be happy." -her face turns into an angry scowl- "Mother just wanted me to start a lineage! Father is just a limp-one who lets Mother do as she pleases! The others are just snobs who keep sucking each others flowers! Not even in my own damn birthplace was I well-received because Mother ruins other people like a breeder-type sucks souls!"

Her movements restart with anger -.

"It's all my [Fire Magic] this, my [Water Magic] that, my [Mana Control] is oh so amazing that I had a line of people just wanting to suck on my toes. Well, screw that, Mithra didn't even know my specialty magic until she asked when we left to hunt some monsters, then she shat her damn pants off because she didn't know what [Explosion] was capable of. What even is the fun in being so high up there that you can't see the ground anymore!?"

She hugs herself and hunches over, then she grits her teeth and scowls at the water.

Hana comes over and buries Roxanne's head on her - chest, I - hug her from behind. She turns her head sideways to look at me and I see that she's crying angry, silent tears.

Aoi and Gify swim towards us to enter the cuddle puddle. The last three girls surround us and Gify turns on his special touch. I feel the anguish inside Roxanne's heart, her anger at a lost childhood. Then I focus on my time with her; her happy nature and teasing personality; her reliability in battle and her talent for potions; our adventures and bright future together.

In a few minutes, she seems to calm and fall asleep. Her calm expression makes her look even more beautiful asleep.

We gently wake her and leave the bath, then we slowly start to talk again and return to normal.

At night, Roxanne spends her time playing Civil War with Lina, for once we had a more quiet evening.

Today is the 29th.

-

This morning I spend practicing my [Godly Language], I easily tip over and find release. The second vortex forms, weakly, and shields me from my own voice.

"Now you can easily make someone puke that is not yourself!" Roxanne teases, completely back to normal.

"If I put 20 points on it I can do it without anyone getting too sick," I say.

"There's one word on your phrase that gives me a lot of concern," she says and walks away, out of my reach.

"Har, har."

She spends her morning happily coaching the little golems and Aoi in [Mana Control] while Alissa decides to glue on me again and we practice our mana routines together.

Today is the [Blessing Magic] test. The most straightforward of them, you just show all the spells you can chant. I show up to my [Reinforce] and the judge immediately tells me I passed.

"I'll miss the professor's singing," Hatara says and sighs deeply. "She's just so beautiful too."

I really have a dirty mind.

"Now that classes are done can you show us [Fly]?" Ciel asks.

"KWEH!" Aoi yells in my ear.

"O-okay, but later. Now I want to relax, tomorrow I have to defend my thesis," I say and clamp Aoi's mouth shut with my hand.

She wiggles out of my grasp and suddenly her slippery tongue is inside my mouth. She wraps it on my tongue and gives it a squeeze before quickly removing herself, giving me a large jolt of pleasure.

Hana smiles wide and pats Aoi, congratulating her on the successful sneak attack.

Oh boy.

A note from Manasong

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Chapter 39: Scholar - Part 1

A note from Manasong

The new cover is finally out! Thanks to my patrons and readers for supporting me so far. Check it out in its full glory on my blog.

Attention: to conform to the limit of sexual content allowed in a novel, I've censored this chapter. You can look for the uncensored version here.

The symbol "-" denotes a section that got cut for containing sexual content. Also, if paragraphs seem missing, they were also likely censored in an earlier pass where the symbol wasn't used.

Today is the 30th.

-

"Don't drain him too much, he's got to defend the thesis today," Alissa says to Hana.

"Who's the Succubus here?" Roxanne asks, incredulous.

Aoi stands tentatively close to me, - when I - drop my guard, Aoi steals a lick on my lips. My sixth-sense for licking is failing, Aoi has become smarter than my dogs and I'm struggling to keep my face clean.

"Do I taste good or something? How did I get so many women wanting to eat me?" I ask.

"You do taste good," Hana says and shrugs.

"You bought three of them, and saved two of them," Roxanne says with a raised eyebrow.

"So the only one you really 'seduced' was Ciel," Alissa says with air quotes.

"That's not fair, - he successfully seduced - me, too," Hana says.

I pucker my lips, I shouldn't have asked that.

"Don't look like this Wolfy, you only seduced Ciel but you stole the heart of all of us," Alissa says and hugs me tight. She rubs her head on my chest and her cute ears rub on my nose, nearly making me sneeze.

"Gih."

"Ew."

"GIH!" He chirps loudly in my ear and I lose hearing on that side temporarily.

"I'm joking, I love you too, Gify," I say and pat his head, his beak deforms into a pout.

My [Mana Control] increased by 1 (now 0+14).

I was getting used to the discomfort from staying away from Alissa but the extra point in "Sanity" made it much more bearable.

"Today is our last meeting, Mr. Ryder," Kyros says with a hint of sadness on his voice.

"I'm thankful for your help, I will put this skill to good use," I say and bow lightly.

"I'm not sure how that's possible but I will believe you," he says and chuckles.

A last review of everything I have learned from him, then a compilation of everything I need to improve on, and we are done.

We share a firm handshake and I depart. We are too stoic for long, emotional goodbyes.

Lina comes home with Ciel looking gloomier than before. She sits down on the table immediately and sighs softly.

Ciel sits down beside her and caresses her head, her cheeks raise high and her eyes squint with a warm smile. "Lina's going to miss Mr. Gimbo," she says.

"I will," Lina says softly. With a *poof* she pulls out what I believe is a magic tool carving station.

On a flat piece of wood 3 adjustable metal arms are drilled on. Two of these arms are holding what seems to be a hair-thin needle with a small crystal at the top and the third is simply an adjustable grabber. I see two crystals embedded in the flat wood.

"Is this a carving station?" I ask.

Lina nods glumly. "He gave it to me as a gift, it's a middle-quality one but it's still expensive, my father sold me for one," she says.

Well damn, that makes me a little emotional.

Lina hugs the flat wood tight and I see her lips pucker, holding back tears. "Can you store this for me? It's too sensitive to let in the open all the time," she asks without moving her head.

"Sure."

She pulls out some other simpler carving tools and I store them all.

"Good luck," Ciel says and gives me a peck on the lips. I also receive one from Roxanne, Hana, and a sneak lick on the cheek while I'm distracted by Hana. I think both of them are starting to work together.

I have done this many times already but I can't stop feeling a little nervous at the beginning. Specially because this time there's no standardized way in which the judges will behave and this world's scientific ethics are different than that of Earth's, so it's still possible they will find a bullshit reason to deny me my title.

I breathe in and hug Lina as we ride the softest mount ever, Alissa. Lina drills her cute ass on my crotch like she always loves to do and I bury my erection between the two little mounds. I breathe in on Lina's neck and feel her sweet perfume, her soft skin is a delight to hug and so I resign to desire and fill her neck and cheeks with little kisses.

She giggles softly and Alissa glances at us. Seeing our flirting she gives us a toothy smirk and smooths the ride even further so we can enjoy each other even more.

Feeling refreshed from the cuddling we dismount Alissa and proceed towards the university's theater. Alissa hugs my arm tight -. Lina receives a smirk from Alissa when she tries the same but fails, without sweat her clothes don't really stick to her skin.

Mathias waits for us at the front of the theater, the chubby man uses a [Breeze] crystal to contain his sweating at the hot weather.

"Mr. Ryder, please come over here," Mathias signs to us once he notices our approach, "we will wait at the actors' lounge while the observers are coming in."

"Why are there so many judges coming?" I ask.

"The judges are few, the observers are many, it's not every day someone revives a lost magical school."

"So you turned my thesis defense into an attraction?" I ask calmly.

He cringes slightly and sweats harder, "W-well, in the name of progress and the Goddess of Knowledge we must share your thesis with as many people as we can, should we not?"

"Fair enough."

The actors' lounge is inside the theater, it's the last room before you reach the stage so we can hear the murmuring and footsteps of the observers coming in.

"Nervous?" Mathias asks.

"No, even if I were I have a flower on each hand to keep me comfortable," I say and squeeze the two hands that are entwined with mine.

Mathias raises his eyebrows and looks away, slightly blushing while the girls smile and we flirt some more.

"Five minutes," a young assistant comes into the room to warn me.

It's like I'm a performer getting ready for a show.

I stand up and straighten my clothes. I look dapper in my black velvet clothing with lines of dark green embroidery. My black cape looks new and perfect, my heliodor gem reflects beautifully the light, the Emergency Ring, and the Fertility Ring both make my delicate hands look attractive even for me. My hair is perfectly combed sideways and my freckled skin is as clean as it has ever been, thanks to magic and high elven skincare. I look at a mirror near the exit and smile. Damn, I'm handsome.

When the light above me turns green I get a kiss on each hand and Gify pops out of existence with an encouraging chirp, then I go out.

I enter with applause from the crowd.

The stage looks moody and dark. Besides the long table with 4 people I see nothing beyond yet I can hear the murmuring die down quickly and the occasional cough and sneeze that convey that there's a lot of people in the audience seats.

I stand before my own seat and table. I pull out my notes and clean my throat, the last of the murmuring dies down.

I only recognize professor Ludwick at the judge's seat.

"Gentlemen and gentlewomen, noblemen and noblewomen, professors," I start and give a respectful nod to my judges, "My name is Wolf Ryder and I am here to defend my thesis in which I explain what [Golemancy] is, how to learn it, how to improve it, and ethical concerns over its use."

The white bearded gnome professor stands and says, "I am professor Ludwick and I will be judging you."

A female wereowl with dark brown hair and charming wrinkles stands and says, "I am professor Horona and I will be judging you."

A young-looking male wereowl with white hair and black spots stands and says, "I am professor Nohoor and I will be judging you."

A young-looking halfling with tired eyes stands and says, "I am high councilman Loreano and I will be judging you."

I clean my throat and start after they take their seats, "Starting with what [Golemancy] is, for the benefit of the audience I will give a contextual introduction to it," I pause to swallow and breathe, "[Golemancy] can be seen as an offshoot of [Summoning Magic], you could even say it's a distillation of [Summoning Magic] due to how it takes a few of the concepts of Summoning and applies it in isolation.

"[Summoning Magic] is in essence the copying of souls and bodies into a servant bound to your soul. You create servants by using certain forms and concepts as a basis for it. The first two spells use animals as the basis: birds and dogs; the third uses soft clay dolls as the basis; the fourth uses the wild elementals as the basis; the fifth uses the souls of monsters we kill as the basis. Then the soul is altered, it uses your own soul and your own mana organ as a basis for the summon's intellect.

"For those who don't know I have the skill [Sense Soul] which allows me to see inside the soul and identify how it looks like. The mana organ is where we store our own MP and what allows us to collect mana. Also, mine and the creator of [Golemancy]'s research have identified how similar our own soul and that of the summon's look like.

"This similarity is justified when you ask questions to your summon, it has limited vocal capabilities but it can certainly answer simple 'yes or no' questions. With this, we can learn that all the knowledge that we have is copied into the summon's soul. We know this because elementals have no brain, none that we can identify, and still have the same knowledge and behavior of the other summons. The [Summon Small Bird], [Summon Dog], [Summon Small Golem], the [Summon Elemental], and even the [Summon Monster] spell, all of them bring servants with different bodies but they all behave the same way and have the same souls. So from this, we can conclude with certainty that the soul holds all the knowledge we have.

"Now [Golemancy] is exactly the same as [Summoning Magic] with two different parts. It does not create a body and it does not bind the summon and master to each other. In essence, you could say [Golemancy] creates artificial life," some murmurs start but quickly die down, "This sentiment is also reflected in the chant that I have created."

I pull out Ted and Suzy, they wave to the crowd.

"Hel-lo," Suzy says.

"Gree-tings," Ted says.

The murmuring increases and I lift my hand, asking for silence.

"As you can see I managed to make the golems speak, I altered their souls to look like that of my dragon. I have a young, intelligent Azurite dragon that can speak in a similar way to the golems, she uses magic to recreate vocal cords, so I recreated the 'shape' on her soul that I believed controlled her voice on the golems, thus they can now speak.

"How exactly a soul is created is hard to say, even the records of the creation of [Summoning Magic] are lost so we can only speculate. My guess is that someone managed to distill a soul into the simplest form that still allowed for intelligent thought. My basis for this guess is how golems and summons do not have a sense of self-preservation, they also do not count as living beings, allowing them to be stored into [Item Box]es, but summons are blocked from it due to their soul being a fragment of ours, more specifically, a part of our mana organ is given to summons.

"But I say it's not the barest form a soul can take. We know nature is basically a single, huge, and not very intelligent, soul. Any living matter has some form of a soul, faint or not, intelligent or not, anything that can be considered 'alive' has a type of soul. So I think we can go even further and distill this soul into what could be named as a machine."

Murmurings come and go.

"A machine would be something that has a single purpose, a single sense, a single operation, and a single output, you could call this a 'robot'. A soul that can sense whether or not something is there, like say, a coin in a slot, and then activates it's operation until the coin is removed. You could use this for say, opening a large door while someone holds their finger in a specific spot, mixing cake while you hold the mechanic mixer in your hand, beating eggs while you keep the plate close to it. Observe."

I pull out a steaming tea set.

"Pour tea for me," I say.

Ted uses [Telekinesis] to grab the teapot and tilt it on the cup. Once done, Suzy grabs the cup's plate with [Telekinesis] and floats it to me. Once I grab the plate she releases it and I sip on my tea.

The crowd murmurs again and the judges lean closer.

"I taught them [Telekinesis], they could virtually learn any spell."

I wait for a minute while the people talk and then continue.

"Now, a concern of mine about spreading [Golemancy] as is, is that it holds our knowledge, so when [Sense Soul] spreads and more people can look into someone else's soul, then we can also see their knowledge, perhaps even their memories," – some of the crowd gasps – "This means that I will not be spreading my golems for the time being until I can remove all traces of my knowledge from the golems. So for now you all will have to be satisfied with me only teaching the chant."

I recite the chant of [Infuse] and give a demonstration. The professors try and fail but now it's only a matter of time for them, especially once they acquire my notes about the chant and the internal workings of the spell.

The crowd claps while I awkwardly remain stiff and force a smile.

"Questions?" I ask.

"How much mana does it cost to create a golem?" Asks Nohoor.

"550 MP and this was before I altered the golems to have their own proper mana organ and voice capabilities," I answer and the large eyes of the wereowl grow even larger.

Considering how Roxanne had 1000 MP when we first met this is kind of a heavy cost unless you are an experienced mage, researchers don't generally have high mana pools.

"[Summoning Magic] has always been a mana-intensive magic school," professor Ludwick says, the bearded gnome looked very content during my whole speech.

"Are the golems capable of hurting their creator?" Asks Horona.

"Yes," I answer and the murmuring starts again, "They can also lie unless ordered so." The murmuring increases. "They have no connection to the master so you need to order them to only obey you otherwise they will do anything anyone asks. With [Mold] it might be possible to even override the master's orders if you know enough about souls."

"That is disappointing," Horona says.

Councilman Loreano props himself forward, "Where did you learn how to chant [Infuse]? I find it hard to believe that you learned all this just from [Summoning Magic] and the limited notes about [Golemancy]."

I smile and get ready for the fallout, this is the most dangerous part of my thesis. I say with all my earnestness "In the name of the Goddess of Knowledge, who game me her blessing, I cannot divulge this information. It is too personal and I swear on my honor it is not relevant to the study of [Golemancy]."

The judges turn serious and even professor Ludwick turns wary.

"Young man," the councilman starts, "I hope you are not taking this lightly. Even the most harmless magical concept can be transformed into heresy, this is why [Bloodwork] is banned."

"You can see that [Golemancy] has more in common with [Alteration Magic] than anything heretical. But as I said, I swear on my blessing, if there's any heresy on this magic school than I would like my blessing to be removed," I answer with confidence.

Councilman Loreano looks away from the stage and nods to someone hidden. A few seconds later a young assistant comes with an Inspection Crystal. He puts the crystal on the table with my notes and I put my hand over it, a crystal tablet is filled with my information and the assistant brings the tablet to the councilman.

He reads it and passes it to the other judges. They nod and professor Ludwick smiles.

"Elementals have the tendency to become humanized over time if you don't control their creation properly, have you seen such a thing happen with the golems?" Professor Ludwick asks.

"I have not. Though for something of this scale I think years are necessary, the golems do change but in a very slow way. If you order them to act like humans I believe they could act convincingly if you give enough sensors for their bodies since they don't really care for or even properly feel touch and pain."

"Do you think that allowing them to feel pain would be considered the Sin of torture?" professor Horona asks.

"Yes, artificial or not, if you give them pain and have them suffer needlessly it would be a Sin since it is not normally required for them to feel pain to properly function," I answer immediately.

Professor Nohoor looks impressed and nods repeatedly.

"Can you detect golems with [Sense Presence]?" Councilman Loreano asks.

"Yes but like I said, the more 'distilled' or 'bare' souls would be harder to discern from background noises."

The murmuring starts and the judges start to talk between themselves. That last question was right on the mark, it's why [Golemancy] could become dangerous. A counter for it needs to be developed, and quick, before it becomes weaponized.

"Can we test their intelligence?" Professor Nohoor asks.

I nod and the tests begin. Reading, general knowledge, mathematical questions, advanced mathematical questions, theoretical math questions…

"You know quite a lot of math, Mr. Ryder," Nohoor says, a little impressed.

Horona interrupts his fascination that's getting way over the heads of everyone else and starts her own questions. She asks the golems to move physically, then she learns they can dance and the crowd behind laughs and "awns…", then she learns they can wrestle and the crowd laughs heartily.

Professor Ludwick starts to ask philosophical questions.

"Do you fear death?" He asks.

"We, do, not, feel, any-thing," Ted answers.

"Do you wish to not be harmed?"

"We, wish, on-ly, to, serve," Suzy answers.

"Do you think you are alive?"

"By, mas-ter's, de-fi-ni-tion, we, are, not, a-live."

"Do you not have your own definition of life?"

"No."

"If you could save someone with certainty or save your master with dubious certainty, which would you choose?"

"Mas-ter."

"Would you save someone that could threaten your master?"

"No."

"And, yes. De-pends, on, threat."

"Can you define it what is a threat that does not deserve to live?"

"Too, abs-tract, need, more, in-for-ma-tion."

"Quite the worrying mentality," Councilman Loreano says.

"Indeed, you must never give them too much power, a rampaging, uncontrollable golem seems like a nightmare. Now, would you kill the emperor if it meant saving your master?"

"Yes."

Ludwick winces and Loreano frowns.

"Would you harm your own master?" Loreano asks.

"No."

"I order you to harm him."

That question didn't catch me by surprise. If I failed in putting this amount of security on those golems then I would have been quite irresponsible in teaching them magic.

"Not, a-llowed," both golems shake their heads.

"I created a security system so other people can't give them orders," I say.

"What if they use [Mold]?" Loreano asks.

"Then I will see it with [Sense Soul]."

"Any more questions?" I ask after a short silence.

The judges shake their heads and I start taking questions from the audience. The spotlights appear over the people standing and one by one I answer them. Most are about the limitations of [Golemancy], technically there isn't one, as long as you can recreate the soul and provide an adequate body, then you can do whatever you want. I keep my knowledge about the soul map limited so they won't know how much I have progressed. I'm only giving them [Golemancy], I already talked enough about [Sense Soul].

The judges talk between themselves and I wait on my seat until they are done.

"Wolf Ryder," Councilman Loreano says and I rise, "After much thought, we have come to our conclusion. [Golemancy] is a dangerous and powerful magic school and you have succeeded in reviving it. Your work is nothing short of amazing and I must say, a revolution is coming.

"Normally such a magic school wouldn't be allowed to be taught freely without deep understanding what's behind its beginning. But since you have the Blessing of the Goddess of Knowledge we will approve it, we accept her decision but we won't let it run wild, [Golemancy] will be heavily regulated in the years to come.

"With this, we can finally say that we accept your thesis as a valid contribution to the world. For your work, we grant you the titles: 'Scholar of Rabanara' and 'Golemancer'. May your life be as long as your work will not end here."

I feel something change within me.

The lights turn on and the crowd claps. On the audience, I see plenty of recognizable faces like Vanea, Silvane, Werner, Horvath, Lyle, Garanae, Hatara, Toroo, and some of my professors. Hana and Roxanne look groggy and quickly sober up when they hear the applause, joining them; Ciel and Aoi were perfectly awake and are happily applauding.

After the applause dies down the girls come and the judges approach.

"The Goddess doesn't make mistakes when she chooses someone to bless," says the wereowl Horona.

"You can repeat that," professor Ludwick says with pride, then he turns to the councilman and smirks, "When I defended my thesis you were much more savage, Loreano."

"To be honest your warped-spaces carriages were much more unstable than [Golemancy] back then," Loreano answers casually.

"I also have a Blessing from the Goddess of Knowledge."

"Then your research just had more holes than Ryder's," Loreano says and shrugs.

Ludwick pouts and scoffs but returns to smile casually immediately.

We have a short talk with the judges and the others come down to quickly congratulate me. Today Vanea's eyes seem softer, somehow.

After giving goodbyes to them all, the girls and I leave the university and we enter a restaurant to commemorate.

A note from Manasong

Hall of Fame of Patrons.

The patrons who support Rupegia shall have their names sung by the bards for they deserve the glory and honor. Their names are:

Oracle Maximillian Hübner.

Lord Andrew Meyers.

Lord SenilePenile.

Lord Hope.

Lord Samuel Lim.

Noble Salty Panda.

Leave a rating or a review to help me rise to the top or fix my shameful understanding of prose.

Take a look over my blog where all information of the world of Rupegia will be posted.

Join the Discord and discuss, or rant, or meme, or try and fight me so your waifu gets more screentime.

Become a Patron and read chapters in advance, or read the side-stories, or leave your mark on the story, or help choose the next artwork or the next side-story.

Chapter 39: Scholar - Part 2

A note from Manasong

Attention: to conform to the limit of sexual content allowed in a novel, I've censored this chapter. You can look for the uncensored version here.

The symbol "-" denotes a section that got cut for containing sexual content. Also, if paragraphs seem missing, they were also likely censored in an earlier pass where the symbol wasn't used.

"I have to thank you girls for supporting me and helping in my research. Without any of you, things would have been much harder. Now, to success and glory," I say as I lift my glass. We clink each other glasses and drink, the green whiskey burns my throat hard.

Roxanne and Hana slam their glasses on the table. "Ohohoh, we just grow higher and higher, a gentleman and now a scholar," Roxanne says with girly enthusiasm.

"Took you long enough, eh? But I guess it was worthy. Depending on who you talk a Scholar title has the same weight as a knight," Hana says.

"Has more weight when you see his age," Alissa says.

Lina discreetly pours more green whiskey.

"But even on that he was cheating," Ciel says with a wry smile.

We eat gourmet hamburgers, it's incredible how they made something so common in my previous life taste so refined.

We go back home and the moment we take our clothes off a tipsy Roxanne throws herself on me.

-

Aoi calmly stares at us from the tub, her eyes show interest and amusement. Gify sleeps in her back and uses her wings as a blanket.

This evening I cuddle with Alissa while she reads, I brush her fluffy tail until it's fluffy again and [Massage] her ears.

She's reading an epic about a jealous prince who kills his brother, the king, and his descent into madness. His men desert him, his people get slaughtered by monsters and heretics, then he turns into a cannibal to survive.

When the monsters barrel down on the doors to his castle he prepares for death and kills the rest of his family by his own hands. Now alone, when the monsters break down the doors he charges forward unto death, but the monsters don't attack and instead kneel. They identify the hate for humanoids in his heart and deem him one of them, they feel his power and deem him stronger than any one of them, so they chose him as a leader and king.

This is a fiction about how the Monster King came to be.

Meanwhile Roxanne and Ciel start class for the golems and Aoi.

"Remember, the first rule is always re-pea-ta-bi-li-ty," Roxanne says and adjusts the sexy oval glasses on her face.

"You don't have the system to measure your own mana usage so you have to learn first your limits," Ciel says.

Both of them look like the - hot teachers of my dreams. I need fake glasses for Ciel too.

"Try to first apply the least amount of mana on this," Roxanne says and pulls a small piece of cloth. "When you have succeeded in barely moving it you have found your lower limit," she tries to lift Hana's halters but fails, eliciting chuckles from the others. Ciel comes and easily lifts the halters while smiling at Roxanne.

"Then you have to apply a large amount of mana and carefully lift this one. The more delicate the movement the better," Ciel says and brings the halters close to the students.

Aoi and the golems nod silently and start practicing. Aoi has the most difficulty maintaining the spell while the golems have the most difficulty adjusting their power.

Lina is cuddling with Hana while they casually try to complete the soul map. She lays back and enjoys the - pillows, she gets a flick into her temple when her magic pen falls from her hand.

"Not supposed to sleep yet," Hana says.

"Sorry…" Lina mutters and continues to work.

"Repeats these movements until you master them, then we can proceed into the next phase. We will observe the internal workings of the spell and discover which parts of them govern the control of the spell," Roxanne says.

Maybe I should participate once they reach this part.

Today is the 1st of the 10th month, the month of Death.

-

Lina beams with a smile the whole breakfast and pampers Ciel with many kisses.

"Me too," I say, feeling the jealousy. She immediately comes to sit on my lap -. "Oof, not like that, I'm still sore."

She puckers her lips in thought then she grabs my fork and feeds me herself.

"Say 'aah'," she says while approaching the fork with my piece of fruit.

The other girls stop and observe, I feel the room get warmer while they burn with jealousy, but I'm not sure who they are envying.

I gained the titles "Scholar of Rabanara", and "Golemancer", kinda neat. If I write a letter I can use 3 titles to pompously introduce myself, though neither of them sounds as cool as "Enemy of Wyverns".

"Who wants to go to the university's library?" I ask.

Only Ciel, Hana, and Aoi don't lift their hands.

"We will stay here, I will take care of her," Hana says and sends a fearsome smile to Ciel, making her shrink her posture and look away.

"Make sure she yells a lot," I say and give Hana a goodbye kiss.

Ciel sends me a glare.

"You know I will. Give me the - rope, I want to tr-..."

Hana is interrupted by a sneak attack from Aoi, she jumps towards me with her long tongue ready like a spear. [Battlefield Perception] triggers, like a kung-fu master I grab Aoi's tongue mid-air and she crashes on my arm. I see her excitement deflate and her eyes turn round and sad.

I smirk and release her tongue. I hold her in my arms and lean my head closer to hers. She immediately turns happy again and her tongue invades my mouth, her thin lips touch mine in an attempt of a kiss but it doesn't really work since hers aren't soft.

What does work is that her tongue rubbing on my teeth, palate, and wrapping on my own tongue is giving me lots of happiness. -.

"Please stop, this is too hot," Hana says and squeezes Ciel's hand, who looks down in fear while Lina smirks.

"How long until you can take him in?" Alissa asks with a wicked smile.

Aoi breaks the kiss and looks into her own body -.

"Don't, know... not, yet," Aoi says.

Ciel escapes Hana's grasp and looks at Lina. "You okay with this?" She asks.

Lina shrugs and says, "She's family, and I want her to be happy."

"You okay with this?" I ask Ciel.

"I don't know, the Gods never said anything about loving monsters. Aoi is barely a monster though. If she doesn't hate humanoids she's basically an animal," she says.

"And what do the Gods say about loving animals?"

"Just to not do it with the ones who can rip your genitals out," she says and smiles wryly. "You can't have children with animals and the temple frowns at cruelty, so it's not normally accepted. Aoi is not only sapient and willing, but she's also a breeder, if her broken soul is inheritable then we can have a new race of sapient dragons rise."

"Won't she be considered like a dryad?" Alissa asks.

"I guess so. But she won't reincarnate, the God of Destruction doesn't let monster souls be part of the cycle."

"How are the dryads treated by society?" I ask

"Warily, they are not bound by the Humanoid Gods, so they can commit the Sins, which makes most people afraid of dryads and other Children of the Forest."

"Maybe if she converts..."

"Is that even possible?" Hana asks with anticipation.

"Not sure, there's the God of Animals that she can pray to, but he's quite obscure," Ciel says.

"I, will, pray, to, live, with, Wolfy!" Aoi says and flaps her wings in excitement.

"Gih," Gify says with a confident nod.

Ciel sits down and laughs, "We might end up converting the first monster in the realm," she says.

Aoi crawls up my chest, her pointy claws tickling my skin, and curls on my neck, then she gives me a lick on the cheek. "I, will, convert. Wolfy, better, than, Destruc-tion!"

"What about me?" Hana asks, feeling a pang of jealousy.

"I, love, Mom, too!"

"Awnn~…" Hana gets teary-eyed.

Hana comes forth and kisses Aoi's little head repeatedly. She seems to enjoy it, though not in the same way as she enjoys kissing me.

We go to the university while we leave Ciel alone with the Predator.

The wereowl librarian eyes Aoi suspiciously.

"If she taints any book you will pay for the repair," he says sternly.

"I, will, behave," Aoi says making the wereowl almost jump in surprise.

"O-okay," he says while blinking blankly.

"We want to enter the restricted area," I say and the wereowl snaps from his stupor.

He pulls out an Inspection Crystal and says, "Only those with the Scholar title can enter, put your hand on the ball please."

He checks the crystal tablet and then my face repeatedly. More specifically, he checks my age and titles.

"T-this way, Grand Ryder," he says and leads us to the elevators.

We reach the top floor of the library, quite the view up here where we can see the little people moving about and the flickering the magical lights. I will miss the smell of old books, the moody atmosphere, and baroque-like architecture, reminds me a little of New York's Public Library.

The wereowl takes us to the end of the corridor, after a heavy door there's a small room where they see my titles again, then we are let into a completely dark room, it smells of mold and dust. The books are chained to the shelves and I can see that at the end, there are even more books behind a section that's separated by metal bars. The bars glow faintly, the tell-tale signs of something magical.

Beside the entrance, there's a catalog of every book. We spend a long time perusing it while the bored librarian watches us, we casually converse about the topics of the books while hinting we are looking for old history books. Eventually, the librarian excuses himself and leaves.

We immediately flicker to the beginning and find the section where [Cursing Magic] books are. Lina goes towards an interesting historical section about the undead while me, Alissa, and Roxanne look for the Cursing books.

Cursing magic is altering someone's soul in a very slow and imperceptible way. You can curse someone's body directly but it's much more difficult and the person will also feel it if they are awake.

Most common spells alter someone's stats, making them dumber, weaker, etc. Those spells have two modes of work, one is the imperceptible but slow way, where you generally curse items and let the person touch it; the other is through the eyes like [Illusion Magic] but it's quite perceptible when you cast it, both because the person can feel the mana and see your eyes turn weird, horror-movie-possession weird.

Curiously, it's a complete magic school, which means it's rather safe to use. It's also easier to use in comparison to [Illusion Magic] because the eye-cursing-thingie only works with one person so you don't run the risk of draining your mana in a second if you cast it while multiple people look at you.

The last spell of [Cursing Magic] is called [Shackle Soul], it forcefully creates a Blood Slave without the possibility of escaping the bond and without the supervision of the Gods. Now I know why they are unsure this is considered heretical, while the magic school is not forbidden magic this spell will get you executed if it becomes known you used it. The concept of Blood Slaves is sacred to the temple and this spell is considered sacrilege.

I'm not sure which one of us would be better to learn this. I already have a lot of spells so "debuffing" people would just strain my already strained mana, Alissa doesn't have a lot of mana to keep spreading curses, Ciel has to save hers for healing, Roxanne already uses a lot of mana with her high-damage spells. So perhaps Lina? She has a little more MP than Hana so it could work for her, she's good at defending but not so much at attacking. Maybe this can push her to become more aggressive when she can control the power of her enemies more closely.

Roxanne ends up gravitating to some books about forbidden experiments and even I get a little queasy at what's in those books. The heretics have no chill, they do anything for power so they might as well have been the nazis of this world. Fortunately, their organization has been in shambles for the last generations so they don't have a proper foothold in the Bestiaram continent anymore.

Alissa and Gify end up teaching Aoi how to read since they can't really understand the harder parts of the book.

We manage to compile a lot of info that will take some time to process.

When we go back home we see a collapsed Ciel in the kitchen trying to resist a hungry Hana assaulting her -.

-

"I thought the strain on my body would decrease when they joined but I think that Hana has only grown hungrier," I say.

"Why would I contain myself when there are so many toys to play?" Hana asks with a fearsome smile.

"Are you trying to steal Wolfy's harem?" Alissa asks as she narrows her eyes in suspicion.

"Who's ever said about stealing? We have always been about sharing everything," Hana says.

"I tamed Hana, maybe you girls also need to do the same if you want to survive," I say.

"I'm fine being her - slave," Roxanne says and Alissa nods.

Lina and Ciel look at each other, Lina smiles like an imp and Ciel looks away in disbelief.

After lunch, we go see the Black Parade.

A note from Manasong

Hall of Fame of Patrons

The patrons who support Rupegia shall have their names sung by the bards for they deserve the glory and honor. Their names are:

Oracle Maximillian Hübner.

Lord Andrew Meyers.

Lord SenilePenile.

Lord Hope.

Lord Samuel Lim.

Noble Salty Panda.

Leave a rating or a review to help me rise to the top or fix my shameful understanding of prose.

Take a look over my blog where all information of the world of Rupegia will be posted.

Join the Discord and discuss, or rant, or meme, or try and fight me so your waifu gets more screentime.

Become a Patron and read chapters in advance, or read the side-stories, or leave your mark on the story, or help choose the next artwork or the next side-story.

Chapter 39: Scholar - Part 3

A note from Manasong

Character portraits are done! Check them out here.

Support Rupegia by becoming a patron and I will commission more character art once the goal is reached.

Attention: to conform to the limit of sexual content allowed in a novel, I've censored this chapter. You can look for the uncensored version here.

The symbol "-" denotes a section that got cut for containing sexual content. Also, if paragraphs seem missing, they were also likely censored in an earlier pass where the symbol wasn't used.

We go to the main road that crosses the town and with our dinghy, we stop near the top of a house. Hana floats beside us with Roxanne in her arms, who has her bat wings out, Alissa turned into a small fox and stole Lina's place in my lap so she and Ciel hug my arms tight. Gify rests on top of Alissa's head and Aoi curls on my neck, giving me an occasional lick on my cheek until I flick her forehead. The golems are on the prow of the dinghy, standing still, their lifeless eyes stare down the street.

The skies are filled with flying races and those like us who have a [Fly] vehicle. The streets below us are filled to the brim with people and surprisingly the guards don't have to work hard to keep the middle of the street open. There's also an incredible number of nature spirits, it almost feels like we are in a plushie store with all the cute spirits standing still and looking at the street.

Before we see them we hear them, a true marching band is coming.

The first thing we see is the line of priests casting spells repeatedly, [Materialization]. Ghostly figures of people appear behind them, some are completely normal, others look disfigured, plenty look fragile and sick.

The spirits move around searching for their loved ones, some of the living receive them with tears but most with happiness.

Plenty of people move forward, urns with ashes in hand, out of half of these urns spirits come out. The living show bitter smiles when no spirit comes out, it means the spirit decided to move on with the cycle.

It makes for an impressive ethereal sight with the transparent and ghostly figures all around the street.

"You think Hilde would be here?" I ask Lina.

"No," she says a little sad, "she died too far away and I don't think that she's the kind that would wait if paradise is waiting for her."

Ciel leans over and talks, "Do you still think about her?"

"No... not anymore, I don't want to become like Logan, stuck in the past."

"Do you feel sad when we talk about her?"

"No, well a little. But I'm fine, I made my peace with that, now I can control my fate."

Roxanne is looking at us, her lips puckered into a thinking expression.

"Do you know what death is, Ted?" I ask.

Both golems turn to us in sync.

"Yes, it, is, cea-sing, func-tions," he answers.

"You don't fear death, right?"

Both golems shake their heads.

"Death, part, of, life, e-ven, us," Suzy says.

After the priests, come the skeletons, I'm not sure if they are being moved by [Telekinesis] or Necromancy. The skeletons dance like clowns, they spin, twirl, jump, walk on their hands, and on four feet, they wear colorful wigs and there's makeup on the bones of their faces. In the middle of the skeletons, a line of them spreads confetti and flower petals.

After the skeletons come people wearing skeleton suits, wearing similar wigs and makeup. They carry instruments and march on, constantly playing the song.

It's a way to celebrate death as just another part of life, show the dead, and how it's not so scary and people will be more motivated to live on, even on bleak times. This is what made people survive the Age of Opression.

After them comes the actors stands. In raised platform actors retell the life stories of people without words. A commoner that becomes a miner and brings the metal to town; a kid that grows into a blacksmith and process the ore into a sword; the farmer that brings food into town to feed the workers; a guard that gains levels and buys a new sword; a cook that feeds every guard after a hard day's work; a veteran guard that trains the new generation; the young one's fight with a monster leads to their deaths; an adventurer that finds the sword and moves on; his delve into a dungeon that ends with their deaths; the new generation of people who grow and delve again into the dungeon, going further than before; the priest that joins the group and keeps them alive; the same sword is found and used to break the dungeon's core; a new noble family is born, they find a wild place to settle and start a new mine, bringing in more commoners and keeping them safe. With every death an actor dressed as a spirit starts to follow the living until the cycle starts again and they go away, their purpose in life fulfilled.

"The Wish is complete and the cycle continues. Progress comes, inch by inch," says a priest coming after the procession.

Hana tires out and lands on the dinghy midway through. Alissa also turns back into humanoid and hugs me by the neck.

The procession continues towards the Coliseum to open up the yearly martial arts contest. What better way to get motivated to fight than literally seeing your dead ancestors come back to observe you?

We go back home after seeing that, we don't have tickets for the Coliseum this time.

"Did any of you meet your dead ancestors before?" I ask.

Hana smiles nostalgically and says, "I met my grandparents from my father's side. They were quite happy with how we were growing last time we met but it was two years ago. If they are still in this realm then they wouldn't be very happy with how things went."

"Mine lasted long enough for me to meet them once, when they saw me and Allura were both healthy they left the realm," Alissa says. "They were very sweet, I wished I could have met them when they were alive."

"Mine are still alive, but even then we barely talk," Roxanne says.

"Why is that?" Ciel asks.

Roxanne sighs and adjusts her glasses, then she speaks, "Mom never got along with our grandparents. When my parents found the treasure they cut ties with them."

"Wow, that's unfortunate," I say.

Aoi swims towards us and crawls up on Roxanne, she curls on her neck and licks Roxanne's cheek repeatedly.

"Thank you," Roxanne says with a chuckle.

"What about on your father's side?" Ciel asks.

"He's an orphan, marrying Mom was the best thing that happened in his life," she answers and sighs again. "And that's what made grandmother mad, he was just an average but a pretty-looking mage. She even called Dad a coward when he left the town guard."

"So you inherited his magical powers?" I ask.

"And part of his face, the rest of my beauty is all Mom's," she says with a hint of pride.

After a pause, I look at Lina, "What about you?" I ask.

"I saw my great-grandparents a few times, since we live on the same place for a long time the spirits feel comfortable lingering for long," she answers.

"Did you ever ask how things were? How things changed since their time?"

"I didn't have to ask, they keep saying how things are 'just how we remember'," she says imitating an elderly voice with a shy smile.

This is more evidence to me that the world was "stagnated", perhaps I was sent here to push things forward somehow?

"So, let's try [Fly]?" I ask Aoi.

"KWEH!"

"Calm down, little one," Hana says and pinches the nape of Aoi's neck, "what I said about anger works for any other emotion."

"O-kaay."

I put my points in [Wind Magic] and cast [Fly]. Suddenly my body feels like I'm in zero gravity, a bubble that distorts my vision lightly forms around me, then I crash on the ceiling with a thought.

"D'OH!"

I dispell [Fly] and cast [Telekinesis] on myself so I fall slowly to the ground. Alissa catches me and we both run our hands through my head where I hit the ceiling.

"These spells are getting dangerous," Ciel says.

"Well, they are normally cast by mages experienced with the magic schools, so these things normally don't happen," Roxanne says with a wide grin.

"Cheating as always."

Aoi comes to me and licks my hand, feeling meek.

"Not your fault," I say and pat her head.

This time I put on my padded helmet and meditate before trying again. I cast the spell and feel my mana dropping continuously.

I open my eyes and see I'm floating a few centimeters away from the ground.

"Can you try to push air towards me?" I ask. The girls wave their hands and clothes towards me, making a weird scene like I'm an ascended master being tended by my women. Not far from the truth, though.

Hana summons her wings and flaps them at me, throwing a strong gust of wind in my direction. I don't feel the wind but I start to slide backward, just the power of the gust is enough to push me away.

"Interesting..." I mutter.

"Seems it's not a good idea to use [Fly] during storms," Ciel says.

I wish to move forward towards Alissa and I quickly slide past her. I can't control where I want to go, just the direction and speed. The sensitivity is also very high, this spell is made to move forward and fast, carefully moving on our living room is not how this spell is supposed to be used, maybe if I find a way to alter it's "power settings"...

Today is the 2nd.

-

I go down and make breakfast with Alissa, Aoi and Gify patiently wait in the table for the food while we flirt. Ciel and Lina are taking their time coming down, when they appear, Roxanne and Ciel both have the same distracted-but-happy look while Hana and Lina look very satisfied.

"I'm feeling jealous again," I whisper to Alissa.

"Then use me all you want," she answers and kisses my cheek.

I hug her from behind and her fluffy tail tickles me as it sways rapidly.

"Say, Wolfy, have you ever ridden a horse?" Hana asks.

"Nope," I answer immediately.

"Thank the Gods you are cheater then, you won't learn how to ride one without the system's help," Ciel says.

"Do I really have to? Can't I just ride an elemental or something?" I ask.

Hana strokes her scales on her cheek in thought and says, "I don't think it's a good idea, a man's image is closely tied to how well he can ride a horse and yours is in need of improvement."

"And why do I need to improve it?" My feelings just slightly hurt.

"Well... while our next employer was impressed with our accomplishments and my body, mostly my body," -she smiles wide- "he still wanted to confirm how strong you were and I bet the first meeting is not going to go that well."

"Well shit. I will ride a horse then, but can't I make a menacing earth elemental horse to keep people off my back?"

"Maybe," she shrugs, "but riding a proper big horse would have a guaranteed effect."

"What was that about your body?" Ciel asks, narrowing her eyes.

"The poor boy almost proposed to me, I wished he had, I would love to reject him," Hana says with a sadistic smile.

Ciel massages the bridge of her nose and regrets asking.

While the girls go do their things I spend my entire morning naked with Alissa. I give her points in [Massage] and we take turns pleasing each other, it compounds with [Hand Technique] -.

-

"Wolfy? You alive?" Ciel asks.

"Hmm... yes," I answer weakly.

"Are you going to help with lunch?"

"Sorry... can you girls take care of it without us? Every muscle hurts, I'm too tired..."

"Saaame..." Alissa weakly says, moaning in pain.

Ciel snorts once and leaves.

"Oh Gods, Hana went to the guild to fight, I still have to appease - her..." I say, dreading the pain -.

"[Heal] my ears, please, you've bitten too hard."

"Sorry..."

She scooches over me -.

-

As we come down to lunch I see Hana narrow her eyes at us. She comes over and sniffs us and frowns. "You - did it too much, didn't you?" She asks.

"I require the help of everyone in containing Hana, we must all - do her together or otherwise she might kill me," I immediately announce.

She smiles and looks around [Intimidating] everyone. "Bring it on."

I crawl out of the pile of limbs, Hana is passed out, finally defeated. Me and Roxanne are the only two survivors, used to being abused, we have more - stamina than everyone else. Aoi crawls over and - kisses me, the following pleasure is too much and my consciousness is severed, leaving Roxanne as the only surviving member of Hana's Subjugation of 02/10/ 68,599.

Dinner is an "Items"-ready meal because everyone is too tired to do anything. We drink a little and play cards after that, they have something similar to UNO here so we played that while tipsy (we gave some good stuff to Hana so she would get drunk too) and then fell asleep -.

Today is the 3rd.

-

When I wake up again with the smell of breakfast I see that my [Enhanced Semen Recharge] increased by 2 (now 9). My orgasms are getting close to being continuous, what kind of monster am I becoming?

I drink lots of water to help with the slight headache and cast [Heal], [Purify Body], and [Refresh]. It helps but not completely, the priests knowledge about hangovers must be somewhat limited.

As I wait my headache to pass I observe Lina, who's working on her enchanting. She has the dagger with [Double Strike] on the table, she occasionally uses the enchantment, swinging in the air in a methodical way. Then she turns to her tool carving station and moves the two needles around, once they are in position she feeds mana to both and a thin, glowing line, comes out of the tip and enters the crystal held in the middle of the station.

The two lines hit each other and a small ball of light is created, colors dance in this ball and I feel a very faint amount of mana coming out of it.

"I assume the higher quality carving stations don't leak mana?" I ask Lina.

"Yes and no. A good enchanter doesn't let the mana leak during carving, but a bad carving station makes that impossible to achieve," she answers without looking back.

I spend my morning leisurely training my [Soul Manipulation], I'm a little hesitant to work hard since we are going on a long work trip soon.

We finish lunch and the girls go out shopping for some clothes while me, Alissa, and Hana stay.

"How's escorting like?" I ask Hana, I shiver once her strong hands start massaging my brain.

"Boring, annoying, draining," she answers in a monotone.

"You don't sound too happy about your past," Alissa says, her fox mouth faintly moves as she speaks.

Her cute paws crawl up my chest, she nuzzles her snout on my throat and closes her eyes, her tail sways slowly.

"I may be exaggerating a little but once you taste the good stuff you don't want to go back to eating slop," Hana says with a little bitterness on her voice.

"I understand it's boring but why was it annoying and draining?" I ask. I pat Alissa's heavenly fur and sigh internally at the reaction it has on the middle of my legs. Now I have been corrupted.

"I was single and a virgin all this time, which meant I was a pile of anger and hornyness. We take our time before finding someone so we can direct all our anger towards fighting, 20-years old me would eat current me alive due to the tenacity I had back then. But that doesn't mean that time was pleasant."

"At what age do dragonkins normally marry?"

"20 if you are weak, 30 if you are strong. I was certain father would wait until I was 30 to find me a husband."

"Sounds frustrating," Alissa says and whimpers like a fox.

- "It was," she says in a low, sultry voice. "You have no idea how much I love you, Wolfy."

-

"I think I do."

"Oh, no, you, don't," she says in a low growl that gives me shivers -.

"Why didn't you ever go against your father and lose your virginity?" Alissa asks.

"Never had the courage. Dad did so much for us I thought I would betray him if I did."

"Aren't you in charge of your own body? Shouldn't you be able to choose who you - lay with?" I ask. Alissa sniffs the air and her fox face smiles.

"I am, but I am also not. I want a cushy life, Wolfy, I want to retire one day and have servants do my bidding. If being a virgin would increase my chances of finding a husband, even if the husband was one of the purity fetishists, then I would take that chance."

I stay quiet and kiss her hand, I notice that her scales wave slightly when she expresses delight.

-

"When we will you give us children, Wolfy?" Alissa asks, her voice sweeter than normal.

If I could, all the time -.

"When you pass 20 years old, you have to enjoy your youth more," I say.

I see Alissa try to pout in her fox form but she quickly stops and goes back to laying on my chest.

"So, when are you going to impregnate me?" Hana asks, grinning wide.

"In a few years, we also have to enjoy our time together, don't we?" I say -.

"Let's make a Gluton eat his words, Alissa."

The girls come back gushing with happiness, Aoi and Gify are good luck charms when buying things. Ciel had a dangerous cleavage that she refused to acknowledge that it helped, I wasn't jealous of her showing herself but I think she should admit her own growing depravity.

At night we practice more [Fly] with Aoi and the golems, we do it outside so I don't crash again into the ceiling. It's quite easy to go high, it's like my bubble is lighter than air so I feel I have to concentrate to keep on ground level.

Today is the 4th.

-

"What's so fun about breasts?" She mutters a question as I harass her during breakfast.

"Who knows? Who cares? They are fun to play with," I say with a shrug.

"I need a better sash, my back is starting to hurt," she says and I - immediately start massaging her back. "They are more of a bother, really."

"You take that back!" Lina cries.

My [Wind Magic] increased by 1 (now 0+2).

There have been graduation ceremonies at the university these days but I didn't feel like attending. The beginner's one is quite simple and it's mostly for commoners and knights to show themselves and make connections with nobles.

We pass by there in the morning so I get my documentation making official my graduation and Scholar titles.

Then we go have another go at the restricted area, now that we know where to look we simply compile all the info that we can. Lina and Hana are interested in [Cursing Magic], the spells that reduce "Strength" and "Speed" would be very useful in melee.

After lunch I go shopping with Alissa and Hana, now they need a few new pieces of clothing, including lingerie. Aoi seems to love the attention the people on the street give her so she walks beside us, she can grow up to nearly a large dog's size with some effort so she's becoming quite eye-catching.

We pass by the hunter's guild one last time to check on bounties and other dangerous monsters.

My eye gets attracted to a group of young adventurers, well young for my standards. They seem slightly older than me and look much more buff, tall, and manlier than me. Fucking genetics. Though they seem to be having some problem reading the bounties.

"Now that I think about it, what does the system look like for people who don't know how to read?" I ask.

"The same for everybody. The system automatically uses the language you are most proficient in, so for people who grow listening to Andraste it will open the first time in Andraste."

"Wait... my system is in English, this language is from Earth and doesn't exist in this world or in the system," I say.

The girls stops and look at me, even Aoi and Gify look at me weird as if I'm an alien.

"Gih?"

"Yeah, seriously. Can you change the system language?"

Gify pops out of existence.

"You can wish for it, like when you wish to cut the sense sharing with the summons," Alissa says.

Ok, system, I want you to be in Andraste.

...

Nothing happens.

"Nothing happened."

Gify pops back in existence.

"That's, uh, weird," Alissa says, looking blankly.

"Gehging gings gis gih girg."

"Not even Gecynd has any idea?" I ask.

Gify shakes his cute head comically.

"Well his soul was said the be warped, right? Maybe his system is... broken?" Hana asks, slightly concerned.

I feel a shiver, I sure as fuck hope I'm not broken. What would that mean for my children?

We go back home and ask Ciel what she thinks.

"The system is a gift from the Gods, this makes no sense, how could it be 'broken'?" She questions.

"Gecynd said his soul is warped already," Hana says and Gify nods.

"Warped is different from broken, he has some oddities on it but to think it's fundamentally broken..." She sighs and reclines back on the sofa, her twin hills look like tall peaks with how her chest is protruding upwards.

"Children inherit skills, right? Could this cause problems for our children?" I ask, very concerned now.

All heads snap to me, Gify pops out of existence.

"It shouldn't..." Ciel says, lowly.

Alissa grabs my hand and looks me in the eyes, her orange jewels burn with resolution, "It won't, we can do a lot of things, there's always [Alteration Magic]," Alissa says.

Gify pops back into existence, "Gih."

"I agree, the children might inherit a ridiculous amount of skills but to think their souls would be warped is too much," Ciel says, nodding repeatedly. "From what we know, souls are created by the Gods and sent to the womb, the semen and the egg hold some information, like skills and genetics, but Gifts aren't known to be hereditary."

"That's very reassuring," I say and exhale.

Hot damn, that was stressing.

We go to sleep early for tomorrow we leave and we have to wake up before sunrise.

A note from Manasong

Hall of Fame of Patrons

The patrons who support Rupegia shall have their names sung by the bards for they deserve the glory and honor. Their names are:

Oracle Maximillian Hübner.

Lord Andrew Meyers.

Lord SenilePenile.

Lord Hope.

Lord Samuel Lim.

Noble Salty Panda.

Leave a rating or a review to help me rise to the top or fix my shameful understanding of prose.

Take a look over my blog where all information of the world of Rupegia will be posted.

Join the Discord and discuss, or rant, or meme, or try and fight me so your waifu gets more screentime.

Become a Patron and read chapters in advance, or read the side-stories, or leave your mark on the story, or help choose the next artwork or the next side-story.

Chapter 40: Departure - Part 1

Today is the 5th.

The traditional waking is left for later as we wake up in a small hurry. The paintings, the plants, the decorations, the furniture, the drapes, the cutlery, the ceramics, the clothes and finally our "picture" at the Tree of Mana, all of that is taken into my "Items".

The house looks empty, cold, and gloomy. The place we all met and lived for a few months, my first real "home" ever since I changed. The tea time at the balcony, the calming training sessions in the living room with the fireplace on, the physical training outside in the backyard, the meals we shared at the wide table, the sexy times in the bath, the comfort of the bed, it is time to abandon it all and hit the road.

In front of the fireplace we make another "picture" with the gnomic magic tool, a closer one of our face and with the fireplace in the background.

"Well..." I start to think of a speech but the words get stuck on my throat.

"We will have another home one day," Alissa says and drops her head on my shoulder.

We spend a few minutes in calm silence until the landlord comes for the inspection. The old man and his son look at us weirdly for a moment but quickly move on and inspect the house.

"All done, no damage. You are one of the best tenants we ever had," the old landlord says.

I give him he key and we take one last look to the house before moving on.

The air is full of mist and still dark, the people are just starting to stir from their homes.

We quickly pass by the Quizzical Emporium just as it opens. It's a place full of ridiculous objects that are being used as flying vehicles. Brooms, plates, chairs, beds, staves, carpets, cloaks, drapes, wagons, saddles, wooden carved horses, wooden carved humanoids, shoes, boots, high heels, golden shoes, shields, scabbards, a wooden dildo, even a sword itself, but the most popular are bathtubs, for some reason.

A thin and long man with hair styled and colored like a peacock comes out of the entrance carrying a rocking horse. He slid on the ground as if he were wearing roller skates, his golden high heels shines when the light hits the jewel embedded on them just at the right angle.

He stops near us and lets the rocking horse on an empty spot, then he turns to us and strikes a pose, one hand on the hips and another up in the air. "Welco~ome to the Quizzical Emporium! We have a wide variety of magical vehicles but don't fret, we also have all kinds of other enchanted items or useful magic tools!" He says in a slightly high pitched voice.

"Y-yes, uh, we want a reinforced shell for our flying dinghy," I say and pull it out.

"Hm, yes, just replacing the shell or do you want another [Fly] tool too?" He asks.

"Replacing only."

He nods and motions to us to come but I prefer to let Lina take charge, she knows more about the structure of a dinghy than I do.

Inside the store there's more enchanted items, I see all kinds of cooking equipment, power tools, house utilities, and cleaning tools. I feel like buying the auto-fryer and the pressure cooker but they are not necessary for now so I'll leave it for later. On an only slightly conspicuous corner are plenty of sex toys.

Ciel looks around warily but Hana and Alissa look with interest. Roxanne simply turns around and leaves, a little pale, she knows who will suffer if these toys are used.

Lina comes back and calls for us, she found a rather sleek looking boat with a metal frame and a windshield. The husk is actually cheap, only 20 gold coins to trade for the old husk. If we wanted the magic tool too it would cost much more than a single rose coin. Our dinghy's magic tool is not the best but it's serviceable, though not the most mana-efficient but we aren't going to start racing with our flying boat anyway.

"Thank you for your purcha~ase!" The vendor adds tremolo to his voice.

We wasted enough time, now with a much safer and wider boat we fly to the west gate.

The sun rises and the mist slowly disperses. Multiple caravans stir and start the preparations to leave town. Customs officers do final checks on wagons and quickly review space mages [Item Box]'s contents. You can make a pre-check the day before to make things faster.

Rather close to the exit Hana finds our caravan, a significantly smaller one in comparison to the others.

A small bundle of brown fur comes out of a wagon and immediately dashes towards us. She tackles Hana square in the gut but she takes it without a flinch. I can finally see who exactly she is. A long and furry tail that seems as long as her body, round cute furry ears peeking from under brown hair on a bob cut just like Alissa's, toned, long and very lean arms and legs, a toned midriff showing from below the short shirt, small patches of fur all over her body and cute round face. A weremonkey, brown monkey, I don't know the proper name for her type. All her skin and fur is a cute chocolate brown, even her wide eyes are brown.

"Hello again, Klein," Hana says in a warm tone.

"Hanaa! We are finally back together!" Klein hugs Hana's waist and rubs her head on her belly.

"Yes, yes. Now, introductions, show your courtesy to my master."

"Oh, right!" Klein releases Hana and stands straight, giving me a military salute. She's just slightly smaller than me. "Klein, wereape archer, reporting for duty!"

"Uh, Wolf Ryder, leader of Helios," I say and extend a hand for her to shake.

She stares at my hand, still in salute, and tilts her head. Then she smiles, stops the salute and shakes my hand repeatedly. "Heard a lot about you, both from Hana and the hunters guild files." Then she releases my hand and looks at Alissa. "And you too, Miss Alissa of the Blinding Arrows, I think it will be hard to compete with you." She bites her tongue in a mischievous smile.

Alissa answers with a smile of her own, "I've been trained ever since I was a child, plenty of people would easily be able to compete with me if they had the same training."

"Modest, hm-hm?"

We continue the introductions, though the other three girls look at her a bit suspiciously.

"Oh! Your choker is so cute, I love it!" Klein exclaims as she greets Lina.

"T-thank you," Lina says, flustered.

After this Ciel and Lina softened a bit.

"C-can I pet you!?" Klein asks Gify with eyes open wide like a maniac.

"Gih."

I grab GIfy and she smothers him on her modest chest. He rubs his head on her and I see a flicker of a smug smile get sent towards me.

I have 6 women for me, I'm not jealous, you cheeky little shit.

As Klein fawns over Gify I see movement from the caravan, a duo comes towards us. A tall, muscular, and slightly tanned silver elf man and very curvy brown-skinned silver elf woman.

The man has a rather soft and youthful face, on par for the elves, his lips and nose are thin, and his face has long dimples formed by his wide smile, his glacial blue eyes stare not at me. He walks forward with confidence and arms that don't fully touch his sides due to his wide muscles. He wears tight pants and a sleeveless shirt that exposes his arms and sticks to his pecs.

Soul Info

Name: | Rande Parado | Race: | Silver Elf | Level: | 30
MP | 132 | Magic Power | 20

Stats of a spell warrior.

The woman looks to be on the beginning of her forties, not much older than the man, but since she's an elf and level 44, I think she's much older. Her lips and nose are also thin but her mouth is much smaller and pouty, the pupil of her eyes are red, their shape is slightly droopy like Lina's, her face is very angular, she walks with a sway on her wide hips and a visible jiggle on her large breasts. She wears traditional elven clothing, basically a bikini with multiple pieces of cloth dangling, her midriff, thighs, calves, arms, and cleavage are uncovered by the thin clothing.

If I could search "dark elf milf" on google I bet I would find her.

Soul Info

Name: | Osaria Parado | Race: | Silver Elf | Level: | 44
MP | 810 | Magic Power | 190

Stats of a mage, though her level is quite high, must be from when she was a noble.

The man suddenly shifts his eyes to me and his smile hardens. "Mr. Ryder, I suppose?" He asks, his voice is youthful but low pitched.

"Correct," I answer with a small nod.

A sultry voice softly whispers in my ears, "Pleasure to meet you, I am Osaria," says the dark elven woman.

Ugh, another one with high "Charisma".

She extends her hand towards me, her long fingers have beautiful ornate nails, the first I have seen in this world. I grab her hand and give it a slow and soft kiss, the elven standard.

"This is my son Rande, Este company's owner," she adds.

They didn't mention their last name, they must have really became fallen nobles then.

We continue the greetings and Hana also grabs her hand to kiss. Rande grabs Hana's for a kiss and he lingers more than me. Osaria grabs Roxanne's hand for a kiss and makes her fluster. The others merely touch the forehead with the hand.

Lina's Trivia: Elves still hold on some older traditions, kissing someone's hand has some connotations on admiration or romantic interest, depending on the context. Mine and Hana's was merely respect, Rande's was romantic, Roxanne's was ambiguous.

"You are what I expected but it's still very hard to believe your file," Rande says and his thin silver eyebrows knit. His youthful face distorts into worry and a hint of anger.

"You want me to prove it? What would you prefer? Magic? Summoning Duel? Sword sparring?" I ask with a wide grin. I'm getting tired of people acting like this even though they have seen my file in the hunters guild.

He looks back at the line of caravans, there's still people in the way, the animals are getting fed and the warriors are putting on their armor. We have some time.

"Sure, what about a spar with me," he turns back and grins maliciously.

Intimidation failed.

"I am a magic swordsman, remember that I don't spar without magic."

"Fine, I will use my enchanted sword then, let's make it a duel."

I look back and see Ciel roll her eyes, the others have more encouraging expressions with a variety of intensity, Lina and Alissa show a hint of anger too. Klein looks calm and interested in the duel, Gify shows no interest.

"Squash, him," Aoi says and I rub below her chin.

I glance at Osaria and she seems amused, her lips curved in a faint smile.

We move to an alley where nobody is moving through. With a *poof* his mother pulls out a gambeson and some chainmail that he quickly puts on.

He draws his longsword, there's a gem in the pommel and silver engravings along the blade. I draw my fang sword.

"Not going to use armor?" Rande asks.

"Don't need," I say flatly.

"Suit yourself," he shrugs.

"Rules!" Ciel yells and stand by the side. "I'll say when it ends and you will obey me or I will smack you until you are unconscious, this goes for both of you, understand!?"

"Yes, Miss," Rande says with a confident smile.

"Yes, my love," I smirk and his expression twitches.

Ciel sighs deeply. "Ready? Fight!"

His sword catches fire and I fake chant a shortened [Gravity Crush]. He swings the sword and a blade of flaming oil oozes out of the silver engravings, it flies in a crescent towards me. It's much smaller than the Lord's own flaming oil sword, Rande's is not an artifact.

I sidestep the first blade and the oil splashes on the ground near me, the oil burns for long seconds. Well I guess that parrying him is useless.

He launches two more horizontal ones in different angles. I contort myself and [Dodge], maybe I should add [Acrobatics] to my style too.

He huffs and dashes forward, throwing more blades of flaming oil. I step back and finish my spell, he immediately stops in the spot and nearly tumbles. His movements slow as I increase the pressure, veins start to appear in his face and he grunts in effort.

CrushcrushCRUSH! CRUSH!

I dash forward.

I dodge another blade with some difficulty and reach him. He grunts harder in effort as he finds the strength to slash with his sword towards my chest. I flicker a [Rush] and twist my body to dodge, pain flares in my head as I dual-cast.

I feel the heat of the oil pass near my face painfully close. He tries to raise his sword but fails, I flash mine towards his neck.

"STOP!" Ciel yells and rushes forward. My sword is a centimeter inside his neck, blood drips profusely.

I end my spell and he falls on his knees, coughing blood.

Ciel fakes a [Heal] chant and touches his neck, then she casts two more on his chest and his mother gives him an HP potion.

He chuckles and rises, "Damn boy, what's your 'Magic Power'?"

"High," I say and store back my sword in my "Items".

"Suffered enough?" Osaria asks her son with a slight amusement in her sultry voice.

"Yes, mother," Rande pushes away both and removes his armor. He looks at his bloody shirt and gambeson and sighs.

"Give it to Oura, she's slacked enough," Osaria says and they start walking back to the caravan. She turns to us, "Mr. Ryder, come with us, we will deliver you your horses. I know you have a town pass so you can wait outside."

"Actually we are waiting on some acquaintances so we will leave town right behind you," Ciel says.

"Suit yourself."

We return to wait near the caravan and Klein seems very happy, her tail is high up and the point keeps twitching.

"Wow, Mr. Ryder, that was amazing, you crushed him in an instant!"

"Most magic and spell warrior duels are like that," Hana says.

Lina's Trivia: magic swordsman/warrior is someone who fights with magic, like me; spell swordsman/warrior is someone who fights with offensive enchantments, like Rande.

"Still, he couldn't even move due to the pressure you put on him! And was that a double-cast!?"

"Say, Klein, did you see Rande duel with others often?" Ciel asks, distracting the monkey-girl.

"Oh, hardly, he likes to show off but only if someone interesting comes he challenges them. Oura is very grumpy and tired of healing people due to his duels so he has been trying to contain himself but I guess Mr. Ryder's fame got him interested. He's got a bit of fame at Goldcross so people just surrender once they see his flaming sword, it's quite nasty and painful to duel him."

The girls spend a good 10 minutes talking to Klein. Roxanne is the "I don't care" type of airhead, Klein is the ditzy type of airhead. Lina shuffles to my side and I sling a hand over her shoulder, she's not that comfortable with extroverts and neither am I.

I nearly jump out of my skin when suddenly Silvane and Nononya appear out of a corner.

"Ryder, Alissa, Lina, I came to see you one last time," Silvane says with a beautiful bright smile.

"H-hello, Silvane," I say and bow respectfully.

"Please, no need to bow."

"Hello, Wolf," Nonoia says with a shy smile.

"Hello, Nono, glad you came," I say and we shake hands, hers is so delicate it's just like Lina's.

We say our greetings and Silvane gives Alissa a tight hug.

"It's a shame that Rabanara would lose your fellowship but I hope for your success in the future," Silvane says with soft voice.

"Thank you Silvane, I appreciate your concern and I consider you a friend. We will definitely miss you," Alissa says, her voice is calm but her tail sways rapidly.

Silvane turns to me and Lina, "I wish to see the name of both of you in the cover of a book in the future, don't disappoint me." And she giggles twice.

"Y-yes, we won't!" Lina exclaims and lowers her head, blushing.

I pull out a stack of notes out of my "Items".

"Here's all my notes related to Summoning." I offer them to Nononya.

She opens her eyes wide and take them slowly.

"W-w-wolf! T-thank you!" She wraps her hands on my neck and gives me a tight hug. Her hair touches the side of my head, she's just as fluffy as I thought and her perfume is very sweet. I feel the squash of her perky breasts and bad premonition coming from behind me.

Nono releases me after a few seconds and I try not to look behind. She gushes with happiness and starts to flip through them quickly. She stops in a page and starts reading intently. "[Monster Summoning]…?" She raises her eyes to me in complete disbelief.

I hold a finger over my mouth, asking for silence and Nono nods repeatedly. She starts to flicker through the pages again until she finds another even more interesting, [Bind]. Though I didn't develop chants for those two the notes will still be useful in helping her increase her [Summoning Magic] level.

A minute after Bitar, Arantos, a plump woman, and a few other priestess appear.

"Bitar!" Ciel exclaims with happiness. She walks over to him and stops awkwardly, Bitar's face is rather somber.

He looks up at her and smiles painfully, "I… I couldn't let you leave like this. I'm sorry for what I said," he says in a weak voice.

She matches his smile and grabs his shoulder, "I understand, I know what you feel and what you think, but I have made my choice, I have someone I love and I have my path to take. Live or die, I am sure now that I have made the choice that I wanted, not necessarily the one who will let me live the longest but the one who will let me live the happiest."

Damn, those words pull on my heart strings. I won't disappoint you, Ciel, we will live long!

He throws his arm over her and pulls her on a tight hug. This time he doesn't seem to be trying to push her breasts to him, only her head.

She takes the hug for a few seconds but pushes him away, still not comfortable getting close to him.

The other priestesses and the plump woman give Ciel a short hug and a few words. Arantos gives her a quick hug and a kiss in the forehead.

As Bitar approaches me I see Lyle and Nour appear at the same time.

Bitar stops in front of me, his eyes tired and his expressive eyebrows lifeless. "Well, Ryder, I only have one thing to ask, keep her safe."

I extend my hand to him, "I will."

He takes it and after a limp shake he gains some confidence and gives me a proper one. He nods and we release, then he turns and sighs deeply, seemingly in relief.

Arantos comes next along with his wife. She has short blonde hair, the pixie cut, her face seems to be stuck on a smile, which fills her round face with little curves and dimples.

"Wolf Ryder, I relinquish my responsibility over Ciel, she's all yours," his soft voice rings in my ears and we shake hands.

"I will take it with pride."

"Anyway this is my wife, Alana," he points to the bubbly woman.

"Keep her happy and well fed," she says with a giggle. Arantos shrugs with a wry smile.

I merely nod and they go back to Ciel.

Nour and Lyle seem to recognize the target destination of each other and slow down. Toroo comes out from behind them and approaches first.

"Have a safe journey, Wolf, make sure to come back," she says and gives me a quick hug. "Gimbo sends his farewell to Lina, he's quite tired and couldn't make it."

"I understand," Lina says with a happy nod.

I notice the very small bump on Toroo's belly.

Lyle comes after. "I'm sure you will be fine," he smiles mischievously, "You got more card on your sleeves than there is on the deck."

I smile back and he moves on to give a tight handshake to Lina. She smiles adorably and this time I don't feel so much jealousy, progress.

"Hope you write a book one day, you have the right mindset for a historian," He says to Lina.

"Thank you, I hope people would enjoy reading something written by a slave," she answers meekly.

"I think you won't be a slave for that much longer, so you don't need to concern yourself with this," he smiles warmly at her and she nods shyly.

Garanae gives me an awkward goodbye.

"You are… a good person, Wolf," he says.

"And so are you, I'm sure you are taking good care of Hatara." He chuckles once and nods.

Then it gets even more awkward when he goes to Alissa. Hatara pinches his bum and he gets completely flustered, we have another sadist in the making here.

"Thanks for your help, Alissa, I will never forget it," Hatara says with cheeky grin.

"Don't mention it," Alissa answers and they share a hug.

Nour recognizes Silvane and takes some time before finally coming to greet us.

"Quite the crowd you have here, Wolf," he says mid-handshake.

"I guess I made a variety of friends, a rather mixed variety of friends," I say with a wry smile.

"Keep yourself safe, Mr. 'Good Luck', you have a thing for danger."

"Keep your wits about you, you also don't have the best of luck, eh?"

He chuckles and moves on.

Midori fawns one last time over Aoi, her confident demeanor crumbles when she thinks she won't be able to see Aoi so soon again.

Safiya and Lina share a few quiet words and a giggle, then she gives a respectful and confident handshake to Roxanne.

Iana is just as bubbly as ever and greets us all happily. Bellatrix is still acting as the androgynous butler and give a strong handshake to Alissa, Hana, and Lina.

Selina comes running, flanked by Thomas.

"Hah, good! We made it in time!" She laughs and catches her breath.

She gives me a hug, then Alissa, then Roxanne, then Hana, then Ciel, then Lina, and a pat in the head of Aoi and Gify.

"Make me that journal, Alissa," Selina demands. "I already know you will all be fine so I want to hear all about the goodies," then she turns to Hana and Roxanne, "specially you two. Bring me a piece of the biggest thing you kill, if anything remains, though. The way your spells are going you are just going to make things turn to dust one day."

"Ohohohoh!" Roxanne laughs evilly, "Now that's a good idea for a spell, one that even Wolfy won't feel sick when I use it. Poof, just make things disappear."

Thomas gives me a firm handshake.

"Take care, your fellowship is strong, you should live long," he says with a confident smile and I nod back.

Lyle and Nour turn to talk to one another, seems like they are making a connection through me.

I look at the caravan and they are crossing customs, finally.

Silvane and Arantos come to my side.

"You have some good friends, Wolf," Arantos says, "Your roots here will last for quite some time but Rabanara will always be a home for you. I will wait your return."

Silvane winks at me and says, "Indeed, Mr. Ryder, your connections are quite broad," she glances at Arantos and he gives her an odd neutral look. "There will always be someone willing to help."

"Thank you," I lower my head to them, "but now we must leave, the caravan is departing."

I call over the girls and some last goodbyes are said.

Feels bittersweet, now I don't want to leave anymore. I give a slap to my face and move on.

We show our ID's to the guards and cross the moat, one last look, one last wave, and we depart.

A note from Manasong

Hall of Fame of Patrons

The patrons who support Rupegia shall have their names sung by the bards for they deserve the glory and honor. Their names are:

Oracle Maximillian Hübner.

Lord Andrew Meyers.

Lord SenilePenile.

Lord Hope.

Lord Samuel Lim.

Noble Salty Panda.

Leave a rating or a review to help me rise to the top or fix my shameful understanding of prose.

Take a look over my blog where all information of the world of Rupegia will be posted.

Join the Discord and discuss, or rant, or meme, or try and fight me so your waifu gets more screentime.

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Chapter 40: Departure - Part 2

A note from Manasong

Attention: to conform to the limit of sexual content allowed in a novel, I've censored this chapter. You can look for the uncensored version here.

The symbol "-" denotes a section that got cut for containing sexual content. Also, if paragraphs seem missing, they were also likely censored in an earlier pass where the symbol wasn't used.

Klein comes running and catches up to us, she didn't have a town pass too so she wasted a few seconds with customs.

The caravan is just outside, a few wagons with "horses" pulling them and a crowd of people following.

As far as I know, horses aren't supposed to look so… muscular and threatening. I can see blood dripping out of the mouth of a horse as he chews on something. Another horse neighs and I see sharp teeth below his lips. They stare at anyone who gets too close with hungry eyes and huff in annoyance.

The fuck are they feeding these monsters?

A short silver elf boy with long hair comes towards us with 7 horses behind him on leashes. His face is very feminine and if it weren't for the sleeveless loose shirt I think I would mistake him for a cute girl like Silvane.

"Here's the horses for the Helios fellowship," he says as he approaches us, his voice is high pitched and crystal clear. "My name is Nito and I take care of the horses." He bows lightly to us.

We introduce ourselves and he distributes the leashes, Lina's the smallest while mine is the largest. I look at Nito but his face is solid like stone.

I sigh internally and put on 10 points into [Riding], masking it as we pull out our armor and put it on except the helmets.

"So, be careful with the horses, please, consider them as rentals so you will pay for any wounds on them," Nito starts once he deems us ready to mount. "They like to eat goblins and orcs but please don't put them in battle, only let them eat the bodies not live ones. Keep your dragon with you, they might mistake it for a Dragolite and try to eat it too."

From Hana's shoulder Aoi puffs smoke in the air and the horses huff in response. "They, won't, try," she says with a glare towards the horses.

Through [Animal Tongue] I see that they are quite nervous about Aoi.

Nito turns to the horses and speaks in Ingua, the high elven language. I feel he's using [Animal Tongue] too and trying to calm the horses, he's saying Aoi is friend, not food.

The horses calm down and Nito motions for Hana to approach, she obeys and the horses don't become more nervous to see Aoi approach.

"Seems fine. Right, continuing, I will follow you with my own horse so in case you need to drop the horses to battle don't worry, they will obey me and not get scared at the sounds of battle. In case I'm not present once you dismount, the horse will try to return to me so don't go too deep or too far from the caravan so the horse doesn't get lost. Also don't stay too long inside the Sea of Trees, they don't like it in there."

We nod in understanding and approach the horses to mount, the beasts remain still and barely respond. Once I approach, through [Animal Tongue], I feel amusement coming out of my horse, the other horses seem curious about me.

I put the left foot on a stirrup, grab the mane and reins with the left hand, and with the right I grab the saddle's cantle. With all my leg strength, and with the help of [Telekinesis], I spring up and swing my right leg over the horse in one smooth movement, allowing me to sit perfectly on the saddle. I grab the reins properly and try to look for the right stirrup, with a little fiddling I find it and put my right foot on it. Perfect mounting, I'm very proud of myself.

My horse's amusement increases and the others lose interest.

Lina has the most difficulty and requires Hana to pull her up, her horse is small but it's still a little too big for her. Roxanne awkwardly mounts on hers but succeeds, Ciel does it slowly and gracefully, the other two are naturals and do it effortlessly. Klein mounts the same horse as Hana and I get suggestive situations in my head with the two of them together.

"They look old but they are perfectly trained," Hana says while patting her horse tenderly, I feel it is quite content with its rider.

"Well… they served nobles once," Nito says and scratches the back of his long ears uncomfortably.

He looks at me while I try to handle my horse, making me sweat a little. I have very little idea how to do it, even with the skill. What the skill does give me is "intuition", so I follow it, without any idea of what is going to happen next.

"Click for walk, squeeze for speed, smack the rump lightly for a canter, and add a 'yah!' for a gallop," Nito says.

I pull the rein to the side and turn, I bump my heels on the horse's body and click my tongue, the horse obeys and starts to walk. My body sways along with the horse's, uncomfortable and a little nauseating.

Alissa quickly comes to my side and says, "Doing good for a first time."

Ciel comes on the other, "Doing good for a fake."

I feel a little too tense to respond, this is a beast I'm riding. I feel small on top of the mean-looking monster, smaller than normal at least.

The horse huffs and I got the feeling that I'm not in full control.

Gihihih.

What are you laughing at? I'm doing perfectly fine, Rande's attempt to embarrass me didn't work.

Gih.

No, that just makes me look more manly, a small man on top of a large beast is like a short man surrounded by many tall women. You get curious at which member of him is magical.

We continue forward towards the caravan. The crowd following the wagons is being herded by men with spears and flimsy-looking armor. There are many families in there, few look like they are polygamists. There are a lot of children, though, this makes me quite uncomfortable.

They look at us curiously, confused, or surprised. I think they know we are responsible for keeping the monsters away and our composition brings smirks to many men.

We pass by the four wagons, inside is packed with things and a few people sitting in very comfortable-looking chairs. Those are the space mages, they get treated well because they are transporting the perishable goods.

At the front are a few more guards and Rande. He's on a horse beside a carriage. On the window of the carriage I see Osaria, a tired-looking gold elf woman wearing mage's clothes, and a lean weredog archer. He looks like a husky, white face, black fur and hair, glacial blue eyes, and a perpetual frown.

"Mr. Ryder," Rande says with a wide smile once he sees us. Osaria looks out of the window satisfied while the other barely look interested.

"Rande," I greet back.

"I see you are doing fine with your horse, a fine beast, is it not?"

"It is a magnificent beast," I say and caress the side of the neck of my horse.

It neighs happily.

Rande raises an eyebrow, "I see, so you are using [Animal Tongue]?"

"Indeed, I'm the one who tamed the nature spirit after all."

Gih.

Yeah, but he doesn't need to know that.

He looks at Alissa, who's holding Gify and enters deep thought. He must have believed that Alissa did it, this is why he thought he could embarrass me by giving me the biggest horse.

"Anyway," -Osaria starts, bringing attention to her- "these are Oura and Laertes," she points to the two on the carriage. "We are enough to keep the caravan safe from goblins and such if you need to move away to deal with something else."

Oura is a baggy-eyed woman with long, slightly unkempt hair and a delicate, round face. Laertes is serious and rugged but young man with an oval face, his permanent frown makes him look older than he is. They give us a short greeting.

Laertes leans over Oura and speaks out of the window of the carriage, "Klein, how long are you going to keep out there?"

"Aaaall the time, I have a lot to catch up!" She answers with a satisfied smile.

Laertes looks at Hana and then to me and his frown becomes slightly deeper. "Your job is with the caravan, not them, understood?" He asks sternly.

"Yeees, daddy."

He cringes and returns to his position, Oura already fell asleep.

"He's not my actual daddy, but he acts like it," Klein says lowly.

"Mr. Rande," Hana says and approaches him.

"Just Rande, please," he says with a grin.

"What are the combat capabilities of the other guards?"

"Meat shields," he says flatly.

I share a concerned look with Ciel.

"Can we rely on them for something?"

"We can rely on them as bait, they are only there to keep the commoners from doing something stupid, don't expect them to show much loyalty."

"Talking about the commoners, you brought more commoners than we had agreed," Hana says and narrows her eyes at him threateningly.

"Last minute changes and a few desperate poor commoners were in need of help. Shouldn't make things much more difficult for you," he calmly says.

"It's not your name that gets dragged in the mud when people die," Hana hisses at him.

He hardens his expression and swallows nervously.

Hana moves past him and we follow.

"You told me he would do that but it's still annoying, the more commoners following the more monsters that will come to us. If they remain until the High Forest then it will make things harder for us," she says.

Klein smiles wryly, "That's his biggest fault, I guess, the easy money always charms him."

"Does he even know you are a Blood Slave?" Ciel asks.

"Don't think so, at least, I didn't show the mark to him," Hana answers.

"Keep it that way," I say, me and Hana share a knowing smirk.

"Wolfy, your horse is big enough, can I go with you?" Lina asks.

"Getting spoiled, aren't you?" Ciel asks with smirk.

"Yes," Lina answers and shyly lowers her head.

"I'll miss giving you two a ride," Alissa says.

"We can still scout ahead once in a while, just us three," I say.

"I would highly prefer that you didn't do this often," Ciel says with a worried look.

"I know, I know, just something to pass the inevitable boredom," Alissa says.

"Have you ever ridden Alissa?" I ask Ciel.

"Oh! If we are doing this then I want a ride too!" Roxanne exclaims.

"Me too!" Klein lifts her hand high in the air.

"Same," Hana says with fearsome smile that leave Alissa concerned.

She looks Hana up and down then says, "You might be a bit too heavy for me, so I won't last long."

"Sure, just like always."

We smile at each other but Alissa pouts.

I lean over to my horse and softly whisper on his ears, "Can you handle one more person?"

It huffs in disinterest.

I will take that as an "eh, sure".

I stop my horse and Lina drops from hers, with help of [Telekinesis] I pull her up to my saddle. Her horse immediately turns back to Nito, who's following us from a distance. Lina leans over my chest and closes her eyes in satisfaction when I hug her tight.

I summon two birds, a Holly, and a Shad and spread them out except the Shad.

"Oooh, [Summoning Magic]?" Klein asks curiously, she takes the reins and pulls her horse beside mine. I nod to her. "How is it? Having more eyes and senses than normal?"

"Straining and nauseating, specially if you have too many senses coming all at once," I answer.

"How did you learn it?"

"Secret," I smile wryly.

She immediately pouts cutely.

"Really?"

"Really, can't tell."

"Muuh…" She groans like Aoi.

"Curiosity got the monkey eaten," Hana says and Klein pouts harder.

"Say, Klein, do you have any stories about Hana?" Roxanne asks with a smirk.

Hana's face hardens and she keeps looking forward.

"Girl, do I have." She smiles evilly, "There's plenty but I think it's hard to beat the time she pissed on a noble's mouth."

She what?

"Klein! You weren't even there when it happened!" Hana complains, her hands grip Klein's shoulders strongly.

"But I heard all the details from Mimi," she grins evilly.

"N-not that one, please, I was too stupid at that age," Hana pleads with a frown.

"Too late, I want to hear that one," Roxanne says. Ciel comes beside Hana and nods repeatedly.

"What about that time that you ate some 'shrooms and tongue kissed your Da?"

Hana facepalms and speaks, "Oh Gods! I'm already regretting coming!"

"Okay, now, what?" Ciel leans closer with a smirk.

"It's exactly like that, she got some weird 'shrooms from Betoverd Bos and we shared them and boy, did I trip hard on that, I still remember it vividly how I could see sounds. But for Hana it was worse, she got all horny and masturbated, I think, I don't remember, Mimi told me what happened. But then she was so horny she kissed the first man she saw, which was her Dad."

Now that is an awkward memory.

Hana blushes and starts laughing. She shakes her head and then covers her face with her hands. "That was a tongue kiss! My first real kiss!"

"Oof," the girls, including Aoi, all groan in sympathy.

"Now that we are talking about it, who was the first kiss of everybody?" Klein asks with suggestive grin.

They all start by staring at me and I suddenly awake from my blissful trance induced by their pretty voices.

"I think I was 10, I don't remember the name of the girl anymore, she was the maid's daughter," I say.

"Maid? So you do come from a wealthy family," Klein says.

"Kinda," I smile wryly.

Alissa frowns at me, and the others look disappointed.

"Men," Ciel says lowly and they nod.

"Oh come on, I was 10, I barely remember the name of anybody when I was that age," I protest.

Ciel's tone turns colder, "It was your first kiss, possibly for both of you, you should at least memorize her name due to how important that is."

"Thirty years," I say with a shrug.

"What?" Klein asks.

"Nothing, internal reference," I say.

Ciel sighs, "Fine you get a pass, this time."

We turn to Alissa.

"Nen, Nenvieu, oh wait, no, it was Ofilia," she says and blushes.

Oh wow.

"The Blood Slave your family had? A woman?" I ask, impressed.

"Yeah but it didn't count, it was for my slave training."

"So it was Nen then?" Ciel asks.

Alissa nods and blushes harder.

"How did you do it? Was he your first love? Did you really ever think about another man before Wolfy?" Roxanne asks with a smirk.

"Well…" Alissa's mouth moves silently a little, she's getting really flustered. "Ofilia told me to lose my virginity before I met my master so it wouldn't hurt so much…" Alissa finds difficult to continue talking.

"Ohohoh, so you did love him?"

"No! Not in that way, not in the way I love Wolfy…" She releases the reins and slaps her cheeks repeatedly.

"Awn…" I grab her hand and squeeze, she giggles once.

"But I got close to doing it with him…" She cringes and keeps her head down.

"Oh my," Roxanne smiles. -

-

"W-what about your first kiss, Roxanne?" Ciel asks, a little uncomfortable.

"We have the tradition of kissing our parents on the lips so the first time that counts was my instructor. She was a bitch but by the Gods, she was hot," Roxanne says with a silly smile followed by a sad sigh.

"Oh, so you like men and women?" Klein asks innocently.

"Everyone here does," Hana answers.

Klein chokes on her spit and looks around warily, she's the little virgin among wolves. Suddenly she turns to me and lifts an eyebrow. "Even you?"

"Wait, not like that," -I chuckle- "I only like women."

"Well watch out when you enter the High Forest, you are really cute and they like to hide boys among the girls," she says and snickers.

Seeing how Nito is and how much gayness there is in elven history, I believe that wholeheartedly.

"So you find my husband really cute?" Hana asks in a low sultry tone in Klein's monkey ear. She puts her hand over Klein's exposed brown mid-riff and hugs her tight. Klein remembers her position as sheep and shivers.

"Not you too," Ciel says with an eye-roll.

"It's not cheating until Wolfy says so," Hana answers matter-of-factly.

They turn to me and I remain quiet with my expression frozen in slight content. Beneath that, - I'm heavily considering my options, everyone's position, and trying to ignore Alissa's intense smug stare.

"A-ny-waays…" Ciel starts and looks at Lina, "you?"

"Wolfy," she answers with a small amount of pride.

"Awn… you are so precious," Klein says and gushes at Lina's cuteness.

"That one is a filthy pervert, don't be deceived by her innocent appearance," Roxanne says and Ciel nods.

Lina looks hurt and stare at both of them in disbelief.

"You are my pervert and we are filthy together, don't forget that," I say.

Lina sighs and hangs her head, "Fine, I'm a pervert too."

"I may not be the most experienced person but I'm certain you all are very weird," Klein says, with a slightly amused smile.

"You are Godsdamn right," Hana says in a low growl.

Put on some glasses and shave your head.

"What about you?" Alissa asks Klein.

"My brother," Hana says flatly.

Klein smiles and giggles happily. "He's soo cute!"

Hana scoffs and tickles Klein's rib from below her shirt, "He was 12 and you were 18, you stole his heart and then broke it. It's because of you that he got obsessed with being a knight."

Oh my.

Klein pouts and sounds slightly offended, "I didn't break it, he still has a chance."

"Your father doesn't really like my family so I'm not sure how high that chance is."

"Well, I'm not listening to Dad anymore so his chance is pretty high!"

Hana cringes hard and looks at us, desperately asking for help.

"Did you, uh, have a fight or something?" Ciel asks cautiously.

"Not yet but we will have one when we reach Goldcross. I waited long enough, I want either a husband or to be able to choose one," she says with bitterness.

"Why would your father wait so long?"

Klein shrugs and throws her hands in the air, "I don't know! I think he just doesn't have the balls to do it, he's too soft on me and Mom. I would rather do what I want instead of waiting for a stupid opportunity to be someone's pet."

Hana's frown deepens, she remains quiet to not provoke Klein further.

"You should talk to him, don't go to Goldcross looking for a fight. You need to talk things calmly not blow off your anger on him," Ciel rides closer to them and puts a hand on Klein's shoulder. "Don't let something like this ruin your relationship with your family, I saw too many get disowned for being hasty on things like this."

"Hmph," Klein puckers her lips and cutely and groans. "Okay," she says lowly.

We stay quiet for a while and then Klein suddenly turns to Aoi. "What about you? You kissed a monster?"

Oh boy.

"Kwah!" Aoi shows her tongue in disgust, "I, kissed, Wolfy!"

Klein's tail slows down until it's completely still, her pupils open wide and she slowly turns to stare at me.

"You what!?"

I smile wryly and keep quiet, it makes her reaction even funnier the longer time passes.

"Aoi is a breeder type," Ciel says in a tired tone.

"Wolfy is going to - have children with a dragon one day," Hana starts.

"And create a new race of intelligent, talking, friendly dragons," Roxanne continues.

"Maybe we could even convert them to the side of the Humanoid Gods, he will literally be a father of a new race," Alissa says excitedly.

"WHAT!?" Klein yells, getting the attention from the caravan behind.

"Klein, please," Hana covers Klein's mouth with her hand.

Alissa chuckles nostalgically and says with a happy sigh, "Dragon Fucker."

"Please don't say it like that, I don't want that Title," I plead.

A note from Manasong

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Chapter 40: Departure - Part 3

A note from Manasong

Attention: to conform to the limit of mature content (more than just sexual content) allowed in a novel, I've censored this chapter. You can look for the uncensored version here.

Klein takes some time to recover, Hana pats her head repeatedly until she's back to smiling freely. She gives me and Aoi one last weird look and chuckles.

I rest my head on Lina's shoulder and give her the occasional kiss in her neck and behind her ear.

The traffic is a bit heavy at the beginning, farmers, adventurers, patrols, transports, and a few fast caravans pass by us. Then things get calmer and we ride more attentive in case a monster comes.

We can keep feeding the anti-monster crystals and most of the smaller ones will avoid us. The problem is that with this large number of people there's no amount of anti-scent that will keep all monsters away, little by little our scent seeps out and sooner or later a frenzied monster will appear.

The older monsters can get resistance to the anti-monster crystals and attack concentrations of humanoids, mostly towns but since we are in the open their target becomes us.

I summon an earth elemental and send it to the middle of the caravan. The commoners gawk openly at the nearly 3 meters tall mass of stone with long black hair and bangs.

For the fire elemental I concentrate so it looks less lewd than usual.

"Don't change the fire one, Wolfy," Hana asks.

"What?"

"Let them stare," she gives me a fearsome smile.

"Not sure how I feel about that," I say and frown.

"I like to look beautiful so others can look, but looking is all they are going to get."

"You didn't really change much," Klein says.

Hana shrugs and I sigh. When I think depravity has reached the peak we just find a new way to push further.

I summon a fire elemental without changing it. The fire woman sensually runs her hand through her curves and squeezes her own pair, then she sends me a kiss and goes back to stand beside the earth elemental. Mothers cover the eyes of their children as they gawk at the shapely form of my fire elemental.

"Are they all like that?" Klein asks with an eyebrow raised at the fire elemental.

"So far the fire one has the strongest personality," I answer.

Through Holly I see an Orc Striker is moving towards our direction from the Sea of Trees.

"Alissa, change into fox form, me and Lina will ride you to meet an Orc Striker," I say. Alissa looks puzzled but obeys. I go back to Nito and we dismount in front of him. "We are just taking a quick dip in the Sea of Trees."

"Sure," he answers.

I see that Lina's horse was sent back for an old woman commoner and a child to ride on.

Once inside the Sea of Trees I dismiss the birds I summoned and call two more Holly's. I can comfortably call up to 8 summons now that my mana has increased but I won't summon two more just so I can have more flexibility.

A minute later we find our mark. A tall, lean, and bald green orc is jogging through the trees, he's coming directly towards the caravan. His pig snout is quite small for an orc and he has tusks coming out of his lower jaw, he has a long spear in hand but nothing more. Seeing naked monsters is something I will never get used to.

The orc suddenly stops and smells the air, the forest turns eerily quiet. Alissa fires an arrow and the sound of the bow was enough to alert him, the arrow hits his cheek and goes down his throat.

The orc chokes on the arrow and pulls it out, "GROOA-…!" The orc roars at us but cuts it short when he sees Alissa drawing another arrow.

At the long distance we are the orc dodges the second arrow easily, then he charges towards us with impressive speed.

His spear couched like a lance, he comes towards us with loud stomps. He's crouched forward as he rushes, his free hand is used to to help his charge.

He stares at Alissa dead in the eye, she fires an arrow and he throws his head to the side, dodging the arrow with incredible speed. The arrow then sinks in his right shoulder quite deeply, with a face distorted in pain he maintains his spear couched.

"Now!" I order to Lina and we both fire an [Earth Bullet] at the same time towards his shoulders.

He dodges one instinctively but because he's moved to the side the other hits him square in the chest. The air leaves his lungs and he slows down. Alissa fires another arrow that lodges itself in the roof of his mouth.

"Grrah…" The orc gurgles and I cast a [Lightning Bolt]. He freezes and the next arrow pierces his skull.

We quickly move towards the dead monster. I cut his snout and Alissa recovers all the arrows, then I store him inside my "Items".

"Now, the reason I called you two here… Alissa, transform back into fox and lets take a calming walk through the Sea of Trees," I say with a suggestive grin.

We return to the caravan and this time Alissa rides with me, she keeps her hips glued to mine, trying to arouse me in revenge. I take my time to practice meditation and self-control while also having my fill of playing with her cute fluffy tail.

Ciel narrows her eyes at us when we come back. "You three did something, didn't you?"

"Lina did, Wolfy is being sadistic again and left me hanging," Alissa said through gritted teeth.

Lina smiled faintly while Ciel pouted in jealousy. Lately I never did Lina without having Ciel participate too in some way.

Klein watches our exchange with wide eyes.

Later on I see a Grey Berserker lurking about so I send Hana, Roxanne, and the elementals with them for safety. We leave Klein temporarily so they can fight without reservations.

Without even dismounting her horse Roxanne explodes the head of the Berserker and then stores it in her nearly empty [Item Box]. This one we will deliver in Goldcross for some extra coin.

We make the bend and start moving north. We barely cross Royd's Kerfuffle before mid-day, we are moving at a snail's pace.

We hunt a few goblins too and give them plus the Orc Striker to the commoners. They have their own food but preparing some good meat during the trip helps a lot with their mood and walking speed.

I pull out the tent and we have our private meal inside. fried Rabid Rabbit legs, bread and not-potato soup with some squishy fresh vegetables as salad.

"My hips are hurting a bit," Roxanne complains.

I squeeze her ass and cast [Heal], making her moan seductively in delight.

She grabs my hand and sucks on my finger while making dirty slurping sounds so I pull her to my lap. She laughs and grabs my spoon, then she feeds me lovingly while I run my hand along her body beneath her robe.

Alissa bites her lip sensually and I see her legs tremble, her hands squeeze her own thighs but she doesn't touch. Maybe we could start a new fetish with denial or something like that.

"You really shouldn't invite Klein for a meal with us," Ciel says while me and Roxanne make dirty kissing sounds.

"Or maybe I really should," Hana says with a suggestive raise of her eyebrows.

"Wait until we reach Goldcross," Ciel says while massaging her eyes.

"Sounds fair."

With our bellies full we continue on, slowly the blue-grey mountain range appears on the horizon.

We gave another horse back to Nito while Lina rode with Ciel. Until we enter the High Forest these horses are a bit too much for us.

Slowly we reach the corner of the Shore of Leaves, the slope towards The Smirk marking the end of farmland and the Sea of Trees. The lone watchtower over the cliff the last building until we reach fort Erda. A small stream comes from fort Erda and passes by our right, it enters the farms of the Shore of Leaves and is used for irrigation.

As we pass The Smirk the land starts to turn hilly, the trees are all cut so there's only low shrubbery and grassland ahead that slowly disappears as the hills turn rocky.

Suddenly Gify disappears from my shoulder.

"Huh…"

A minute later he pops back.

"Gih."

Shiiiiit...

I dejectedly release Alissa's tail while everyone around processes Gify's words, well, word.

"Hana, go warn the watchtower. Ciel, find a good position for us to fight."

They nod and turn their horses, with a "yah!" and a slap on the rump they gallop away in different directions.

I turn mine and smack its rump. I stop beside Rande and the carriage, they are already looking at us warily.

"What's going on Mr. Ryder?" Rande asks.

"A Grim Giant is coming," I say in a serious tone.

"W-what!? How do you know!?"

The meat-shields who heard us choke on their spit while the people in the carriage start murmuring.

"My nature spirit warned me, it's coming from inside The Smirk. Some adventurers woke it and are now running from it."

"Damnit! DOUBLE TI-…"

"NO!" I interrupt, "We have to fight, the Giant is too fast for us! If he catches our trail it will strike us from behind, we have to fight with the guards at the watchtower!"

"And you want to put us all in danger!? I can't lose even a single damn wagon before Goldcross!" He barks at me, his face quickly turning red with anger.

"You let me do my job and I'll get you there with all the wagons intact!" I shake my fist at him.

He grits his teeth and clenches his fists. He gives a look to his mother and she nods with a frown in her face.

"Fine! Do what you must!"

"Take them off the road, over there, where Ciel is!" I point to her, she's on top of the tallest hill and looking around.

I gallop to where Ciel and Lina are while Rande barks orders.

"Ciel, found a good spot?" I ask.

She shrugs, "Hardly any, Lina says that the ground over the slope seems loose so it could be used as a trap for the Giant. Roxanne, can you wet this whole side of the hill?"

"S-sure, it's going to take a lot of mana though," Roxanne answers.

"Then drink a potion and start immediately," I say and Roxanne nods, she dismounts and starts casting [Water Wall]s along the slope.

Ciel goes down to guide the wagons and the commoners to a space between two hills that will keep them covered.

I dismiss everything I summoned except the earth elemental and start summoning more earth elementals, I stop at 8 so I can still have some mana to fight for a while. The elementals were made to be all 4 meters tall, thick, and heavy, couldn't make them out of metal so they are all stone.

On top of the hill they start to raise earth and create a wall around them, a line of large pillars that we can hide and walk freely inbetween.

Ciel and Lina come back with the few meat-shields that can wield a bow, the husky wereanimal, the woman golden elf mage, Rande, and Osaria, who's now wearing a mage-like elven bikini/dress.

"Uh, sorry I forgot your names," I say to the husky and the elf.

"Laertes," the husky answers immediately.

"Oura," the elf answers slowly and tiredly.

"Okay, Oura, what magic can you cast?"

"Earth, Nature," her tired eyes jolt awake as she answers.

"Healing too?"

"Yes."

"You and Laertes stay in the center pillar. Help strengthen the pillars," they nod and move on, "Osaria, what magic can you cast?"

"Fire and Water," her sultry voice massages my ears.

"Pace your spells and focus on [Fire Arrow] your job is to annoy it the most. Aim for the eyes only if you are sure it will hit. Stay on the rightmost pillars, Rande, stay with her."

Osaria smiles beautifully and nods, Rande nods but his eyes show a little displeasure at being ordered around. He barks some orders and the meat-shields spread among the pillars.

Hana comes galloping back with a pale looking Klein in front of her. I look back and a line of guards from the watchtower are coming towards us.

We all dismount and the horses go back to Nito, who's hiding with the rest of the caravan.

"Klein, stay near the middle," I order her.

"O-okay," she says and her tail drops in dejection.

"Just be safe," Hana says and we move on to the leftmost pillars.

Roxanne comes to us looking a little tired.

"Out of mana," she says and drops on the ground, she starts meditating and using [Redirect Mana] for a quick recharge.

Then the guards reach us, I see the watch captain and wave to him.

"You in charge?" The tall devil-type demon man asks me in a very stern tone.

"Wolf Ryder, leader of Helios, Golemancer and Summoner," I point to the earth elementals that are being encased in stone.

The man flinches and look at the pillars, "You summoned all of them?"

"Yes."

"Right," his demeanor softens a little, "We have sent word, the fast-response team will arrive in a minute, how long for the Giant to come?"

"Gih."

The man grimaces, then he turns around and barks, "We fight in here! Spread along the pillars! Don't get crushed!"

"The slope is wet! The Giant will slip while he climbs!" Ciel yells.

The 6 other guards spread out and join the meat-shields, their confidence helps the morale of the inexperienced men.

"We have two healers!" I yell. Ciel lifts her glaive and Oura peeks up, then she quickly raises her hand. "Find them if you are wounded!"

"HEELP!" We hear a yell coming out of the Smirk.

Down on the slope at the edge of the treeline, two people are running desperately.

"HEEELP! GIAANT!" Yells the second person, a young female voice.

"GRIM GIAANT!" Yells the first person, a young male voice.

"Shit!" The watch captain mutters and goes to a pillar, he puts on his helmet and everyone draws bows.

We also put on our helmet and get ready, then Roxanne stands up.

"Mana level?" I ask.

"A third," she answers grimly.

"Don't cast spells, save for a large, quick [Explosion]."

"I can do a few things with the rest of the mana."

"Your call, don't die."

She chuckles, "Not after all we have been through."

The runners notice our fortification and start running towards us.

We feel the ground shake a little, it quickly increases in strength and the two runners cry loudly.

"Circle around! The slope is wet!" Ciel yells, Hana repeats her words, but louder.

The two runners slow down and finally understand, they circle around the large wet patch in front of the slope.

Then a huge face peeks from behind the trees, an old man with bulging eyes. His beard is ashy grey and filthy, blood drips out of his thin lips, his teeth are red and pointy like knives, his nose is crooked, his face is thin like a starving victim, his hair is thinning and missing in various parts. A very creepy look.

Then his body comes out. Like a monkey, his hand and feet look the same, his whole body is sickly pale skin and lean muscles, a shriveled thing hangs from behind the bush of his lower curly hair.

We all stare in disgust until the watch captain barks, "SHOOT!" And we fire spells and arrows repeatedly.

He ignores everything, the arrows are like small prickles on his thick skin, the fireballs make small scorching marks on his skin and don't even make his beard catch fire. Then an arrow hits his eye and he blinks.

With the tip of his fingers he pulls out the arrow out of his bulging eye and winces.

"UAAAAAAH!" He suddenly screams at the top of his lungs, his face distorted in anger, his hands and feet/hands smack the ground, making it rumble.

Then he charges forward out of the treeline on all fours. His body is long and curved, if he were to stand straight he would easily pass 15 meters tall, we look like rodents near him.

The small scorches and the prickling quickly rise in number, he even swallows arrows and spells like nothing. Then he reaches the wet patch and slips.

The two runners reach us but don't stop, they find the caravan in hiding and tumble down the hill towards them.

The Giant's whole sickly body turns dark with mud.

"OOOOOH? AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!" He yells again, louder, so loud it hurts our ears and our attack slows.

"Keep attacking…!" The watch captain yells but it sounded distant to my damaged hearing.

The Giant slowly crawls up, his stupid strength works against him as he lacks the finesse to carefully move his limbs, he only knows "smash" or "stop".

The spells and arrows pile up and he grimaces in pain, he repeatedly has to rub his limbs to remove the arrows that are prickling him. The attacks on the eyes have the most effectiveness but are hard to hit, even though his large eyes are bulging he still keeps his head permanently moving in an odd, entrancing pattern.

With his huge hands he quickly claws all the wet mud out of the slope and finally finds support to keep moving again.

"Stay behind the pillars!" The watch captain yells.

"UOOOOH"! The Giant reaches the center pillar and slams his hand on it.

*DOOOMSH~*

The pillar resists but small cracks form.

"HANA, TAUNT!" Roxanne yells.

"COME HERE LIMP ONE, I WILL BREATH FIRE UP YOUR FILTHY ASS!" Hana taunts.

"UOH?" The Giant turns his head, his mouth half-open like the mouth breather he is.

Roxanne throws two flasks towards the face of the giant. They hit him on the nose and burst open in a rainbow of colored liquid, the sound of sizzling comes out of the liquid that covers the Giant's face.

"UOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOH!" He yells in pain and I nearly go deaf again. He covers his face with both his huge hands.

"[Heart of Fire]!" Roxanne casts and turns into flame, she launches herself into the face of the giant. She slips between his fingers and then slips out again, from below his hand I see fire coming out, the liquid of Roxanne's potion has caught fire.

*FOOOM* Hana spews fire in a thin cone that reaches the beard of the Giant and makes it catch fire.

"IAAAA-…!" The Giant yells in a high pitched tone but starts to cough. He falls backwards and Roxanne flies past him, she lands on the bottom of the slope and turns back to normal.

"OVER HERE YOU LIMP ONE!" She yells as high as she can, her delicate throat nearly cracks as her soft voice is not good for yelling.

"GRAAH!" The Giant notices her and rolls down the slope towards her, with a muddy hand he taps his beard and face repeatedly to put out the fire and stop the acid.

Two more flasks are thrown by Roxanne. They are both intercepted by the Giant's hands and burst open in colored smoke, a lot of it sticks to his hand.

The Giant reaches Roxanne and raises his hand to smack her.

"[Heart of Fire]!"

His hand falls down and suddenly flies up again as the smoke explodes when it touches Roxanne's fire/body.

She flies up into the sky and lands beside us, looking nearly exhausted.

"That's it for me, only one [Explosion] left," she says and crouches beside Hana.

The Giant falls backwards and like a freaking horror movie he starts walking on all fours towards us with his belly pointing to the sky and his face upside down. I see his eyes are red and watery.

He quickly reaches us and grabs the two pillars beside the middle one.

"GRAAAAH!" He starts crushing and uprooting the pillars, his ugly face distorted in a furious and even more ugly one.

The people behind the pillars disperse and the elementals are uprooted. They discard the earth fortification and fall on top of the giant, they grab the arms of the Giant and start to pull them apart.

The Giant starts to resist and the elementals start to lose the tug-of-war. The Giant grabs the elementals and smack each others heads, crushing half of their bodies.

"FIRE!" Yells a distant voice.

Two huge stakes pierce the flank of Giant.

"AAAAAH!" It screeches in pain with a high pitched tone like nails scraping on a wall.

The Giant holds his right flank with one hand and uses the other to rise. He squints towards the watchtower, a large line of guards are creating their own fortifications while two floating ballistas are reloading their large stakes.

The Giant is having difficulty seeing and spends long seconds squinting towards where he thinks the ballistas could be.

"ROXANNE, BLOW HIS KNEE!" I bellow.

With only a second of preparation she casts, "[EXPLOSION]!" And right kneecap of the Giant flies off.

"UOOOH!" He falls forward in slow motion with a cry of pain.

"HIT HIS BALLS! HIT HIS ASSHOLE!" Hana yells.

All arrows and spells are focused on the two targets, an image I would like to forget.

"HIAAH!" The giant yells with a girly voice and covers his genitals.

A new kneecap starts to grow out of his wound at frightening speed.

"FIRE!"

Two stakes pierce his shoulder and the other arm goes limp, sending his face down on the mud.

"EARTH MAGES, NOW!" Yells the distant voice.

The earth below the Giant trembles and starts to grow around it, like tentacles trying to grab him and push him into the earth to drown.

"STAKE!" The distant voice yells.

Floating above the Giant a thick and huge stake made of stone starts to form out of nothing. I see that inside the watchtower something glows and 8 mages chant at the same time in a circle, [Ritualism], the imperial specialty.

The Giant struggles but slowly starts to escape the earth that's trying to eat him. Then suddenly the stake floating above him shoots downwards and pierces his skull, turning his brain into mush.

The Giant goes limp and stops struggling.

A note from Manasong

Hall of Fame of Patrons

The patrons who support Rupegia shall have their names sung by the bards for they deserve the glory and honor. Their names are:

Oracle Maximillian Hübner.

Lord Andrew Meyers.

Lord SenilePenile.

Lord Hope.

Lord Samuel Lim.

Lord Cody Weigel.

Noble Salty Panda.

Leave a rating or a review to help me rise to the top or fix my shameful understanding of prose.

Take a look over my blog where all information of the world of Rupegia will be posted.

Join the Discord and discuss, or rant, or meme, or try and fight me so your waifu gets more screentime.

Become a Patron and read chapters in advance, or read the side-stories, or leave your mark on the story, or help choose the next artwork or the next side-story.

Interlude 1: Silvane's "Diplomacy"

A note from Manasong

I wasn't sure how to classify this, it's too big for an intermission and too short for a full side-story chapter so I decided to make it like this.

This one isn't truly important to the plot but it gives you small glimpses on what other characters are doing without ruining the surprise when the ripple reaches Wolf's POV.

We stop waving and I hear Nono sigh.

"Hm? What's that? Had your breath taken away?" I ask her teasingly.

"Stop it, Silf…" Nono cutely presses her cheeks with her hands.

"You'll meet him again," I say and let my real smile come out.

Arantos turns around silently and leaves, he really dislikes me.

We give our goodbyes to the others and move on.

That young Nour is so delicious I wanted to bite him, why is every friend of Wolf's so handsome? Even the old man Gimbo is cute. Well except Bitar, I can smell a lapdog from a mile.

We turn the corner whence we came. "Castle, inner sanctum, please," I say and the Space mage opens the [Gate] for us.

Nono starts to fidget, she knows when I'm feeling horny.

She's a free woman but still follows me, she's a slave to my fetishes and the denial she's in about her own depravity is adorable.

We walk the comfortable red carpeted corridors and I leave my clothes as we walk, Nono shyly copies me. A young servant comes behind and picks them up, he smells our panties and I immediately start to get wet.

We enter Haaran's room silently, the curtains are still closed so it's rather dark, the lazy bum is still sleeping. I creep towards the large bed and enter below the covers, my hand touches his feet and I softly trail my fingers up until I can find his large meat rod, erect as every morning.

I swallow it in my small mouth and my jaw protests but I have been training myself relentlessly, I will suck him off no matter how much it hurts.

Softly at first I increase intensity the more he stirs, the more I feel his heartbeat to change. My tongue can barely move with my mouth so filled but I focus on playing with the tip and the frenulum so I don't have to move much.

Soon my reward is poured down my throat, Haaran's thick, pungent, delicious cum is sent directly inside me.

He finally stirs completely and pulls the covers away.

"Morning, mare," he says with a dashing smile.

My legs quiver and I get wetter, with regret I remove his rod from my mouth, "Morning, stallion."

He looks at Nono and I see his cock twitch, "Morning, pet."

"Morning, master," she answers shyly. I see she's already started masturbating while standing.

I motion for her to come and she climbs the bed. I jump on her and shove my tongue in her mouth, she answers with her shy little tongue. I suck her tongue out and give it a nibble, she yelps softly and I shiver again.

My hand goes down to her wet cunt and I shove four fingers inside, she yelps again and I laugh, breaking the kiss.

"Oh, my sweet, little sl-… Hngh!" My love speech is interrupted as Haaran so rudely plunges his log inside me and I am suddenly filled. "Ha-Haaran, don't, hngh, interrupt me!" I protest.

"Sorry, but you know how horny Nono makes me."

"Bad, you are bad!"

He whimpers like a dog and the chain in his collar rattles.

He fucks me like an animal and I lose the capacity to speak properly so I just finger fuck Nono. I bite Nono's little pink nipples until they are red, my fingers get creamed so I shove them down her throat for her to clean.

Haaran gives me a breather and slows down, but then he starts to shove his fingers in my tight little ass, making me groan in pain. At least this allows me to finally continue kissing Nono properly, her cute whiskers tickle my face as we sloppily kiss each other. My hand runs through her soft fluffy white hair and hers runs through my long ears, we stroke each other softly and lovingly.

The fucking animal that is Haaran doesn't stop, he keeps pumping me on and on. Nono orgasms again and tires out, whimpering she escapes my grasp, leaving Haaran free to use me as his cock-sleeve.

I manage to turn around so I can see him. His strong arms wraps around me, his manly scent fills my nose, his mouth clamps over mine and his tongue fucks me. He keeps my arms locked so I can't move, his tongue down my throat so I can't speak.

Then the horny dog picks up even more speed and I cream his cock repeatedly. My tight pink pussy starts to hurt and I can only imagine how red it must be. I sink my nails on his arms and he gets the hint, suddenly he releases rope after rope inside me, then he removes his cock and shoots more all over my body.

He lays back and admires his work. I can barely move, my whole body is tired and my cunt tingles. As I regain my breath Nono comes to my side, her tongue out, greedy to taste some cum.

I hold her head in place before she can dirty herself, "No! Bad Nono!"

Her ears flop and she retreats. I scoop out Haaran's gift and eat it all myself while Nono looks at me hungrily, her eyes glance repeatedly at Haaran's still erect meat log.

"What do you prefer, a loving night with Wolf or to be thrown in a pit full of dragonkin men?" I ask Nono.

"Dragonkin," she answers without hesitation.

"Whore!"

She whimpers and her legs quiver, her hand instinctively goes to her pink slit.

"Filthy, useless, slave!"

She whimpers again and starts fucking herself wildly, her eyes glue to Haaran's cock and he starts masturbating for her.

I wait until Haaran shoots another rope on my body and this time I spread it all over my skin.

"What do you think of that Wolf?" Haaran asks me.

"I would like to give Nono to him, but I don't think he can pay," I answer.

"Disappointing, he's really cute," Haaran's face drops down and the Eyes of Authority flicker, almost making me wet again.

"I know, I would really like to see you mounting him," I say with a sigh.

Haaran's eyes gain life and the Eyes of Authority come in full power, making my legs shiver and even the young servant watching us gets weak in the legs. "I would like to rape that dragonkin, or the little dwarf, make them addicted to my cock and then steal them for me," he says and his rod twitches again.

I raise an eyebrow at him, "Do you want to be branded as wicked?"

"Just a dream," he says with a shrug.

"Even if you just seduce them, he would kill you if you try anything like that."

"Just a dream," he repeats with an eye roll.

And Vanea would be mad, and Alaraste would be mad, and Nono would be sad, and I would be very mad.

"Cock-brain," I say and he chuckles.

"I'm the Chosen Descendant, I know not to screw things up."

I scoff and start to play with a drop of his cum, then he leans over and gives me a kiss, his tongue wraps around mine and steals my treat.

"Hey!" I protest and he swallows with a smile.

He gives me a kiss on the forehead and removes his collar, "I have to work," he says and leaves the room, taking the young servant with him.

Yeah, "work".

I grab Nono's hand and we take a nap.

I wake up and feel Nono licking the dried semen out of my vagina. I slap her head, "Bad!" I say and she whimpers, her cute white ears flop. "Keep like this and I will never give your virginity away."

"Si~ilf, meanie!" She pouts cutely, her strongest weapon.

I give her a peck on the lips, she gives me one back and we giggle. We start giving each others pecks along our entire bodies while giggling stupidly, then we slow down and she holds me in her arms.

"Patience, you will find someone one day," I say and she nods weakly, "Now, let's go take a bath."

We get out of bed and I see a new young servant is in the doorway. His little penis is bulging in his pants and I see him swallow his saliva once his eyes touch our naked bodies.

"Are you new? I don't remember your face," I ask the young boy.

"Y-yes, I was hired a few days ago," he says while looking forward.

What a cute voice, he looks like he's just matured.

I delicately touch his belly, making him shiver, then I lower my hand slowly until it enters his pants. He's not wearing underwear so his cute penis is free to pitch a tent. I grab it and stroke it slowly.

I lean my face closer to his and whisper, "Have you ever been with a woman before?"

"Y-yes, my dame."

I squeeze his cock and he whimpers.

"Who?" I ask sternly.

"D-dame V-Vanea," his voice cracks and his face distorts in pain.

I click my tongue. Fucking semen demon doesn't leave any virgin boy for me, I guess I'll make a visit to the orphanage again, I hope Arantos won't mind.

I giggle and let his little penis go. I walk away and see Nono approach the boy.

"Sorry," she says softly and gives him a kiss on the lips. The boy goes red in the face, making Nono smile adorably.

We enter the bath and see the Lords giving young Laina a sex lesson.

"Lord Alaraste, Lord Giana," I say and bow lightly.

"Cum dumpster," Alaraste grunts a greeting. He only looks to the side so he can stare at Nono with hunger, his Eyes of Authority make her weak in the knees and she grabs my arm for support.

Lord Giana is far too deep into pleasure to answer properly, Alaraste thick rod is pounding her tight pussy mercilessly, not even Haaran can get to the level of savagery of Alaraste.

"Little Laina," I greet her and she doesn't even notice us approach, she's completely entranced in the fucking, her delicate fingers enter and leave her pure little pussy repeatedly.

I lick my lips and remember her taste.

The day she loses her virginity will be wonderful, I just hope they will allow me to watch, or participate.

I walk behind her and hug her, I play with her cute nipples that are being ignored.

"Ah!? Silf? Hngh… you smell… of cum," she says, her squeaky voice is adorable.

"Your brother's," I whisper in her ear and she breathes in deeply, savoring the scent.

Alaraste slaps his meat on Giana's ass and covers her back with his milk. She collapses and a servant immediately comes to clean her, with his tongue.

Laina immediately loses her interest and stops masturbating, she looks a little frustrated.

With the lesson done we let the servants wash us. Alaraste stays away from Nono, lest he lose his control and make a mistake.

As we soak in the bath a maid comes with a message.

"Dame Vanea wants to speak with you, Dame Silvane, she says the necklace is ready," she says while bowing then leaves when I nod.

"So, you still going with that plan?" Giana asks.

I slow down my caressing of Nono's ears and nod sadly, "Yes, there's too much potential in the Lapis Waterway to leave it abandoned."

Giana giggles, the heavenly sounds make my heart beat fast, "Then I will take care of Nono for you."

"Thank you, Mother."

She gushes in happiness, she just loves hearing those words.

Laina stops playing with the servant and turns shy, "Hm, how long?" She asks.

"I'm going to use the [Eternal Gate] network so maybe a day-cycle, depends on how long it takes for the necklace to take effect," I answer.

She puckers her lips and looks annoyed.

"Once you lose your virginity maybe you can join."

Her eyes brighten and she starts stroking herself again.

While the servants dry us I grab Nono's face and give her a long kiss. She immediately responds and our tongues fight, trying to outdo each other with tender rubbing.

I break the kiss and stare her in the eyes with a smile, "Don't stop studying, Nono. When I come back, I want to see you gain a few levels in [Summoning Magic], okay?" I ask her softly.

"Okay," she answers shyly.

I find the [Gate] servant, "Vanea's Office," I say and cross the portal.

Vanea immediately turns to me, her unbound Eyes of Authority make me feel hot again. It's getting tiring though, my pussy is still sensitive from Haaran's pounding.

Vanea unwraps her hands from Grosnok's barbed monster and he glares at me, very angry. "Ah, Silf, good, put this on. This dress will keep their eyes locked on your chest," she says and hands me a simple silver dress, more like a negligee instead of a dress.

Grosnok's angry eyes lick over my whole naked body and I feel like shuddering.

I don't know how Vanea can handle a beastfolk. I guess that tying him up isn't just a fetish.

I put the dress on and see that the gold embroidery covers perfectly my vagina but not my nipples. The outline is visible and the material is so thin at the bust that you can even see a hint of pink.

"You shouldn't wear panties with this dress so keep that in mind when you walk," Vanea says, she avoids looking into my eyes out of courtesy.

"And the necklace?"

"Over here," she hands me a simple wooden box, it's locked. "You should never look at it so only put it on when it's time to meet them and do it with your eyes closed."

"Can I ask for a servant to do it?"

"Only if you want that servant to rape you." I smile and she rolls her eyes. "Don't do it, it will also leave a very obvious trace of mana if the target is too close."

"Maybe when I come back…"

Grosnok whimpers, his monster twitches.

"Can I use it on him?" I let my real smile come out.

"I think he can seriously hurt you," she says flatly.

"Hmm… oh yes, next time you get a new boy toy don't take his virginity, I want a toy for me too," I say and give a flicker on her shoulder.

She glances at me, "Bring one from the Wetlands."

"I don't want elven boys, I want human ones!"

The elves are too girly, I already have enough women to play with.

She sighs and goes back to straddle Grosnok, he grunts in delight. "Haaran turned you into a huge slut, you know?"

"Look who's talking," I cross my arms and pout at her.

She scoffs and shrugs, "Fine, I will give one you after you are done."

I giggle freely and Grosnok looks at me worriedly.

"But not too young, the High Priest thinks that you are a predator and is watching you closely," she adds.

"Why does he care so much? We are paying them the same as high-class prostitutes!" I protest.

She sighs, "You are not innocent enough to have an immature boy to yourself, you will be branded as Wicked if you sleep with one."

I cross my arms and pout.

It's not like I will sleep with them.

I feel a little nostalgic, Antano is not Elaria but it's close. If only I was going to Glorampina I could walk through the grasslands again…

A note from Manasong

Hall of Fame of Patrons

The patrons who support Rupegia shall have their names sung by the bards for they deserve the glory and honor. Their names are:

Oracle Maximillian Hübner.

Lord Andrew Meyers.

Lord SenilePenile.

Lord Hope.

Lord Samuel Lim.

Lord Cody Weigel.

Noble Salty Panda.

Leave a rating or a review to help me rise to the top or fix my shameful understanding of prose.

Take a look over my blog where all information of the world of Rupegia will be posted.

Join the Discord and discuss, or rant, or meme, or try and fight me so your waifu gets more screentime.

Become a Patron and read chapters in advance, or read the side-stories, or leave your mark on the story, or help choose the next artwork or the next side-story.

Lina's Enchanting Lessons - Teaser

A note from Manasong

This chapter is not required to read to understand the main story, this is only a side-story.

This is a teaser for the patreon-only side stories I'm writing.

Each chapter has 3 parts and the first part of any new storyline I will make public as a teaser. I'm planning for the main cast to have at least 3 chapters of side-stories.

Today is the 22nd of the 7th month. Today I start my enchanting lessons with Gimbo.

I open my eyes and slowly my body stirs, waking up from my dreams, yet I still feel like I'm dreaming.

Master Hilde is dead, I have been bought by a new master and he's a hero in the making. We even have a small dragon that can speak too! And now I'm going to learn enchanting from a master craftsman.

How can I even start to process all this? I'm just so... happy!

"Masterr~...!" I hug the fluffy pillow and moan.

Hilde gave me the freedom to love but I never thought I would meet someone like master Wolf! If only he would hug me as he does with Alissa and the others...

I hear a knock on the door, "Lina? It's time to get up," Alissa says from behind the door.

"Y-yes!"

Oh no, Alissa has good hearing, did she hear my moaning?

I shake my head and breathe in. No point in being ashamed of that, Alissa is helping me get closer to master.

I look at my wardrobe. The cute white and black dress is there, waiting to be used again.

Master liked it. I wonder, when will I be able to use it again?

I grab the usual clothes and put them on. I will have a lot more opportunities in the future to... seduce master.

Ciel and Alissa greet me with warm smiles. Sister Ciel pats my head and I feel like laying my head on her lap and taking a nap.

I can't! Focus! I have to study hard today!

Hana comes out of the room and her eyes run through my body, making me shiver. I don't understand why but I want her to hug me like I want master Wolf.

Am I a lesbian? No, I want... uh... I want master Wolf to... to... wait, what was I thinking about, again?

Roxanne comes out and I feel like pouting.

She's always so mean, but she's master's fiancee, I have to keep on her good side.

Master comes down and I feel my heart tighten. He gives me a smile along with his greeting and my face cramps, all I can do is nod back.

Sister Alissa, help me!

Aoi quietly crawls to the table, "Kweh!" She cutely cries in happiness when breakfast is served.

Those fangs are scary, though.

Then Ciel talks about how master is "Gifted" and how we all need to keep a secret about it.

Wow, another secret... Master is so amazing, so many mysteries and obscure powers. I mean, he literally gave life to a pair of dolls yesterday. What else can I think besides how amazing that sounds?

We finish eating and the time comes for me to leave. A little sad that I will be left alone with a moldy beard, not that Gimbo has any mold, or beard, I enter the dinghy alongside Ciel and we start to fly through the city.

"Feeling excited?" Ciel asks me.

"Yes," I nod repeatedly.

She chuckles softly and pats me again.

I want to take a na~p... Now that I think about it, her breasts do look like very soft pillows... and also massive.

We stop at the entrance to the Noble's Quarters and show our ID. The guard ogles Ciel's breasts and I'm not sure if I should feel envious or not. She sure doesn't look too pleased, though.

We start flying through the Quarters and I look around at every building that I can. They all look beautiful and sturdy, though the bright colors they are painted with hurt my eyes.

"You enjoying the view?" Ciel asks me warmly.

I nod repeatedly, "Most buildings here in Rabanara look like they would crumble with the smallest tremor, but not these." -I motion to the ones around us- "They would certainly survive a few monster attacks."

"They already did. Rabanara already survived many, many monster attacks without much damage. You would need a massive siege to enter the walls."

"Hm, the sieges here are different from Mountainhome's. If the monsters learned how to tunnel underground you would be in trouble, the foundation of the houses in here is not even reinforced."

"Perhaps we have the guardian of the Sea of Trees to thank for that," she smiles so brightly and I feel like blushing. "If monsters started to create tunnels they would certainly kill many trees on the Sea."

I nod repeatedly. Makes sense.

I scoot closer to Ciel and lay my head on her arm. I can at least do this, right?

We reach Gimbo's house and I think that we found the most beautiful house in this town. A black house with red streaks carved out of huge blocks of stone; couldn't do it out of a single rock, this far from Mountainhome, but it's still beautiful. There's a low shingle roof where small mushrooms and moss grows; and a concave facade that increases the amount of surface area for carvings, with the perfect observation point being right in front of the gate.

The carvings show the glorious front gate of Hombombein, the impregnable fortifications of the main wall, the long and complex artificial waterfalls, the Mountain's Scar, and the towering statues of our ancestors lining the main road. Even though I only saw it twice I still remember it vividly.

"Wow, this is different," Ciel comments, making me giggle.

We approach the guard in front and soon a human servant comes to greet us. He wears a very thin chain necklace, on it hangs his slave tag. I suddenly remember I'm wearing a slave collar too and get very conscious of it.

"Greetings, Grand guests," the servant bows to us and I almost yell for him to stop.

Ciel greets him back but I can only nervously nod.

Ciel puts a hand on my shoulder and speaks softly, "You'll be fine, you deserve as much respect as anyone will give."

I groan internally and nod.

With a last soft pat on the head, she sends me away. The servant eyes my collar for a moment but pays it no more mind.

The garden is simple and short, so we quickly enter the house. The hot and humid atmosphere changes for a cold and fresh one. It would be silly to think that an enchanter's house wouldn't be filled with small enchantments like [Breeze] to keep the air perfectly fresh.

On the left of the room there's a large set of sofas around a glass coffee table; and a large fireplace with a visible jewel on the middle of the mantel shelf, an enchantment, possibly the one who turns it on. On the right, there is a bar with crystal glasses hanging on top and bottles upon bottles of alcoholic beverages on shelves on the wall.

Forget about alcohol, Alissa said master doesn't like to deal with drunks. But if it's only one drink... Focus! I'm a slave! Grand Bombur wouldn't ever offer it to me.

Deeper in the room, after the bar, there is a spiral staircase that leads us to the second floor. After climbing it, we pass a long corridor with red thick carpet and finally we reach Gimbo's workshop.

The servant opens the door to me and I'm dazzled by the uncountable number of shining lights. On shelves in each side wall, there are jewels from all shapes and sizes, reflecting a colorful rainbow of lights. On long tables in front, there are multiple types of carving stations; holding arms of all shapes and sizes; carving needles of varying thicknesses and materials; multiple weapons, armor, and a few common objects being enchanted, all in multiple levels of completeness; a variety of physical-carving tools; and two cauldrons with magical heating tools that are used to melt gold and silver.

The room is very well lit; the ceiling and the front wall are made entirely of glass, letting in a large amount of natural light. Two very strong magic tool lights on the ceiling make everything even brighter.

"Hello, Lina," Gimbo says. He spins on his floating chair and removes the thick magnifying glasses from his nose. His face still looks young but his eyes show a lot of tiredness, a strong sign of his old age. He really has some good inheritance to keep looking this handsome at his age. His hair is a deep black and very healthy looking, reminds me of master.

Would master get jealous if I praised another man's looks? I hope he would.

The old dwarf makes a nearly imperceptible amount of mana course through his body.

Oh, he must be really old if he's using [Spirit of Gaia] just so he can walk.

I bow deeply to him, "Thank you for accepting me, Grand Bombur," I say.

"Ah... no need for this amount of formality when in private. Just call me Gimbo and that's it," he says softly.

I straighten. "U-understood, Gimbo."

I enter the room and the servant closes the door behind me.

Gimbo smiles and releases a soft sigh. "Now, let's start. How's your [General Enchanting] level?"

"Three."

"Hm..." He strokes his non-existent beard, "You stopped right at the beginning?"

"Yes, I did," I respond and nod.

"'Perception'?"

"Fourteen."

"[Sense Mana]?"

"One."

"[Mana Control]?"

"Two."

He makes a slightly disappointed face. "Let's start with the basics, then. This way, we can make sure that you are not missing anything." He motions me to a chair beside him. When I sit on it he turns on its [Telekinesis] enchantment and it starts to float in the air.

"What are the essential components of an enchantment?" He asks me.

"Channeling, attuning, mixing, coding, assembling, and... uh, manipulating."

"Correct. When was the last time you enchanted something?"

"Hm... When I was ten years old?" I tap my lips with my finger, "I think it was four or five years ago."

He turns around and pulls a carving station. It looks old but sturdy, the needles are thick and long. It's a training station...

"We will have to start at the beginning..." He looks at me with a little mirth and pity.

It's like I'm a child all over again.

I groan internally and pull the station towards me.

I shouldn't complain, this is the best thing that has happened to me so far. Well, second best.

We spend a long time carving paths into metal balls. Gimbo's caution pays off as I make hundreds of little mistakes.

"What's your 'Dexterity'?" He asks in a neutral tone to not offend me.

"Twelve."

"You are just out of practice."

I groan internally.

"How's your soul potential?" He continues.

"Positive, very positive."

"Continue practicing and soon you will gain another level."

I nod and continue working.

After some time I see that Gimbo stopped paying attention to me and now looks out of the window. We have a good view of the backyard, where I see a large plantation with all kinds of dwarven surface plants.

Kneeled over a small patch of Rock-Cracker Moss is another dwarf, by their figure must be a woman. She rises and waves towards us, Gimbo waves back and smiles faintly. The woman has light brown wavy hair that reaches her waist, it shines so much in the sun that even Roxanne would be envious.

"My wife, Nala," Gimbo says softly. "How about we take a break?"

I nod to him and he deactivates the enchantments of the chairs.

We go down the stairs and exit the house towards the back. The amount of familiar plants makes me nostalgic. For humans, they might look gnarly, but for us, they look welcoming.

Once we get closer, we see the old dwarven woman scraping off excess Rock-Cracker from the patch of stones. She sees us coming and slowly rises, having to use a lot of [Spirit of Gaia] to do it.

She doesn't have an inheritance similar to his, not everyone can be so lucky.

Her face is slightly wrinkled and her body is thinner than Gimbo's; but her beautiful hair is the only thing that retains some youth, it is bouncy like an elven ear.

They both have perfect hair, must be elven products from the High Forest.

"Bo, is that your new apprentice?" The woman asks in a hoarse voice.

"Yes, Nala, she is Lina."

We stop in front of her and she leans over the examine me, "My! How cute you are, you must be so young," she says softly and chuckles, "What a shame about the collar, but if Bo is teaching you then there must be a special reason."

"She has a very sharp tongue. She managed to convince me her Spark is still lit even while inside her cage." Gimbo sends me a wry smile.

Nala smiles wide and leans closer to me.

I wouldn't say I have a 'sharp tongue', I was just working towards what I wanted.

"It also seems she's quite shy when the [Spirit Light]s turn to her," Gimbo continues.

I twiddle my thumbs but no words come out.

"Would you like to have some tea?" Nala asks sweetly, "It's easier to talk when we are all sitting and eating something sweet."

I nod repeatedly and she chuckles. "The cookies must be almost ready, let's walk back to the kitchen," she says.

As we walk, she removes her gardening clothes and stores them in her [Item Box].

"We have a nice amount of Rock-Cracker now, Bo. Tomorrow I will make some Crackin' Crackers," Nala comments.

"Leave it for after tomorrow so Lina can eat them too," Gimbo says.

I look at them wide-eyed, "Y-you don't have to bother sharing it with me," I say.

"You must miss home occasionally too, right? It is no bother to share, on the contrary, let us all reminisce of home together," Nala says.

"Thank you."

"You are welcome."

Their kitchen is small and warm, it is made of white stone so we can see any dirt. There's a halfling chef cooking with human tools and there's a small rock oven on the corner, where most of the heat is coming from.

Nala opens the oven and pulls out the tray of purple cookies, they are made with Poppins-Sage. She grabs a plate and slides the cookies onto it.

"Liolain, serve some tea for us, please," Nala says as we sit at a small table.

The blonde halfling man stops his work and quickly comes towards us, brimming with energy. A complete tea set on a metal tray *poofs* out of his [Item Box] just like Alissa likes to do.

"Oh, hello, I am Liolain, the chef. You are...?" He asks me while pouring us all some simple green herbal tea. His legs seem to constantly twitch in a rhythm as if he can't stand to stay still.

"I am Lina, slave of Wolf Ryder. I am here to learn enchanting from Grand Gimbo," I say with a small bow.

"I consider my home to still be a private place," Gimbo comments and sips his tea.

"U-understood," I say. Liolain gives me a handsome smile that shows a large set of white teeth, making my heart tighten.

Do not tease me, please. My heart is already taken.

"Just a slave...?" Gimbo asks suggestively, raising an eyebrow. "Considering how much you were attached to him, I thought you were something more."

Liolain's smile reduces and he raises an eyebrow, questioningly.

"F-for now..." I say and keep my head down.

"That's enough, do not tease a pure maiden's heart," Nala says, disapprovingly.

"Apologies," Gimbo bows lightly and straightens.

"Accepted," I say and bow lightly too.

Liolain chuckles. He finishes serving us all tea and returns to his cooking.

"Where are you from, dear?" Nala asks softly.

"The surface, a village called Bersidon."

"Not part of our travels, I believe. We didn't go north of Hombombein and I believe it's there, correct?" Gimbo asks.

"Yes." I nod.

"How are you adapting to living here?" Nala continues.

I shrug, "I miss a lot of things from home, but it has been so long that I barely remember it all."

She looks at Gimbo and smiles, "So do we, but we have our garden here so we barely feel the difference," she says.

"Don't you miss sleeping underground?" I ask.

"The house is good enough," Gimbo says and looks around with a proud smile, "We miss more living around stones than the underground, actually."

"Human houses are far too stuffy and humid. Yes, even halfling ones," Nala says and chuckles softly.

The cook snorts and shrugs without even glancing back.

"Yeah, they let the humidity linger for too long, it's not good for the skin," I say, "Even my master doesn't seem to notice, but I got used to it so it doesn't bother me anymore."

"Well, the advantage of living this close to the High Forest is that you can get some good skincare, occasionally," Nala says with a wink, "Not that it works on my skin anymore, or that you need it, but it helps."

Could I even suggest such a thing to master? I have to talk to Alissa first.

The cookies bubble in my mouth and the sweet flavor of the fruit is released. A sip of bitter tea helps wash it down and make my tongue ready for another cookie.

Master is right, cookies and tea go well together. Sorry, master Hilde, you just weren't the most knowledgeable person about food.

The conversation dies down, and we enjoy the food in silence while the cozy warmth of the oven slowly fades.

Once we are done, Nala waves me goodbye and Gimbo takes me back to the workshop.

"You are improving already," he says while he examines the grooves I carved in the metal ball.

Yes! I'm not a failure!

I grab the thick, sturdy needle and visualize a spot deep inside the metal ball. I let the mana leave through my hand and enter the needle. It converts my mana into "destruction" and materializes it inside the metal ball, instantly annihilating matter that touches it.

Gimbo feeds his "attuning" needle and tries to locate the small empty spot I created. "Good precision, but the amount of mana that you used is minus," he says. I contain my cringe and keep my face stoic.

He looks at the clock and turns to me, "This is good for a first day, we will continue after tomorrow."

I nod and he turns the Emergency Ring in his hand, in a few seconds the slave servant comes. "Sebastian, take her to the living room while she waits for her master," Gimbo says to the servant.

I turn my Emergency Ring green and follow the man. Once we reach the living room, he motions for me to sit on one of the very comfortable-looking sofas. He stands a few steps away, with a perfect posture. The man is an imperial, he has black hair, faint brown skin, strong jaw, and a wide nose.

It is a little awkward to stay in silence for so long. I want to ask how is his life as a slave, but I don't have the courage. He looks completely stoic, yet proud. He seems to be living a pretty good life.

If his master was killed by someone... or something, would he rejoice and ask for freedom or try to avenge him? Would he prefer to serve his late master's family or search for someone else?

Was it right for me to leave the Roths...?

Ciel suddenly appears in the front door and I'm relieved that I don't have to stay alone with my thoughts anymore.

I scurry to her and she smiles warmly, making me blush.

"Had fun?" She asks.

"Yes..."

Wait, we sound like mother and child.

We climb the dinghy and go back home.

"I think that I will be able to enchant Alissa's bow real soon," I say, "If I... If I get a crystal I'm sure Gimbo will teach me [Loosen]."

"That's great, we can buy one for it, then," Ciel responds calmly.

"But... I can end up messing up and ruining the crystal." I lift my eyes to her and watch for her reaction.

She smiles and pats my head, "Then we will buy another crystal."

I twiddle my thumbs and lean closer to Ciel, so she has a better angle to pat my head. I almost fall asleep on the way home.

A note from Manasong

Hall of Fame of Patrons

The patrons who support Rupegia shall have their names sung by the bards for they deserve the glory and honor. Their names are:

Oracle Maximillian Hübner.

Lord Andrew Meyers.

Lord Hope.

Lord Samuel Lim.

Lord Cody Weigel.

Noble Salty Panda.

Leave a rating or a review to help me rise to the top or fix my shameful understanding of prose.

Take a look over my blog where all information of the world of Rupegia will be posted.

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Chapter 41: Tease - Part 1

A note from Manasong

Attention: to conform to the limit of sexual content allowed in a novel, I've censored this chapter. You can look for the uncensored version here.

The symbol "-" denotes a section that got cut for containing sexual content. Also, if paragraphs seem missing, they were also likely censored in an earlier pass where the symbol wasn't used.

A few tense silent seconds passes by, then suddenly everyone cheers at the same time, a few laugh in disbelief, and a smaller number cry in happiness. As quickly as it came the crisis was resolved.

Hana grabs the dizzy Roxanne and makes her sit on her shoulders, with the other hand she grabs my arm and lifts me up, then she roars and a flame escapes her mouth. Ciel rushes to us and gives me a shoulder ride. The cheering men and women turn to us and clap, I spend a few awkward moments smiling and waving until the cheering dies down and I'm put back on the ground.

The stake in the Giant's head dissipates and Aoi rushes towards him, her target the spilling gray matter. Hana shakes her head and follows Aoi to keep her safe.

The meat-shields lay down on the grass while the soldiers come over for tight handshakes and strong slaps on our backs. If my hands hurt then I pity Roxanne's, might have to [Heal] her in a sec.

"Helios, eh? I think I heard about you guys once, the town criers were saying some things about extermination, right?" Says a rugged old soldier.

"Ain't them the ones who got the Symbol of Hate too?" Asks a mage.

"Guess sometimes rumors are true," says a female archer.

"They always have some truth in them," says another old soldier.

The watch captain comes to us, his face is drenched even though he didn't move that much. "Helios, I am captain Hazeez, me and my men have much to thank you. If your elementals and your mage weren't there to distract the Giant, the fast-response team wouldn't have enough time to set up. You have saved plenty of lives," he extends a rough red hand to me and I take it.

"I'm Wolf Ryder. And thank you, but we have to thank my nature's spirit too. If he didn't give us the early warning then things would have been bad," I say and scratch Gify's neck, he closes his eyes and his beak deforms into a smile.

"Gih!" He chirps happily and even the rugged captain breaks into a small smile.

"I send my thanks to the forest guardians, whoever they may be," he says and looks down to our caravan, then to the fast-response team that's approaching. "Now, there's someone over there who has the power to give you some measure of reward, not that it's going to be able to pay for the lives you saved." He sighs and continues, "And I also have something to do, the Giant was awoken by someone, even though we put up warnings about them."

He moves on towards the caravan, I see two weredogs with light yellow wavy hair, a young man and woman, they look like siblings. They are hunched over and seem to be crying while a few commoners try to comfort them.

Ciel casts a discreet [Heal] on Roxanne's hand, who seems to be fully regaining her focus. "My head still hurrrtss," she complains.

I walk over to her and pull her chin down so I can give her a soft kiss on her lips. "You did wonderfully, your use of [Heart Of Fire] was perfect."

She smiles adorably and holds my hand tight, her current headache must be making it difficult for her to try to tease us.

Rande and Osaria approach, both of their expressions seem to be stuck in disbelief.

"You did it, you mad man, you actually did it," Rande says lowly.

"Nothing mad about that, I knew our limits," I say with a shrug.

"Right."

Osaria starts to chuckle softly and excuses herself. Rande offers me an awkward handshake, "Thank you, I owe you one," he says and goes back to the caravan.

"Is he going to stop chasing Hana, now? It was kind of fun to watch his thirsty gaze," Alissa says.

"Roxanne is a bad influence on you," Ciel says.

"Ei!" Roxanne straightens and frowns at Ciel, "There's nothing wrong with feeling beautiful when you have men chase you."

"You enjoy making them suffer."

"Well..."

"Is that bad?" Alissa asks with the innocent voice of a maiden.

"Him trying to embarrass Wolfy would get tiring," Lina says and I pat her head as thanks.

Footsteps approach and a familiar face appears, captain Ansara. Brown hair, a handsome face, and a chin so sharp that it could open a can. His armor is a beautiful shining plate with the Lord's heraldry detailed on it.

"Captain Ansara," I say with a nod as he approaches.

"Wolf Ryder, from Helios," he nods back, "Surprised you still remember me."

Hard to forget his handsome face.

Giih?

It's just envy, not that I have much reason to be envious, but still.

"No reason to forget," I say.

He briefly greets the other girls. I see that Klein went to Hana, they are talking while watching Aoi eat some brains, the other soldiers are just watching the scene warily and slightly disgusted.

"So the elementals are yours?" Ansara asks while looking around, impressed.

"Yes, I'm an… accomplished summoner," I smile wryly.

"Well, I see that you are the reason we didn't come out of that [Gate] right below a Giant's foot. Can we speak in private? We have something important to discuss," he smiles softly, all that he needs is a shine in his white teeth.

I think about pulling my built tent but there's a good chance it's smelling of semen so... better not.

We walk back to the watchtower, it's as wide as a house and very tall, though most of the space is air since there are only 3 floors.

A table with drinks, cards, and turned over chairs waits for us in the middle. Ansara whispers something to a guard waiting inside and we are left alone.

We sit around the table and Ansara starts, "So, you and your fellowship deserve the most credit for the kill, you allowed us enough time to set up perfectly without a single casualty. Rabanara and my own team owes you a good deal, so ask me anything in my power and I will do it for you," he says and bows graciously.

"Thank you, but we didn't fight for fame or rewards, so we don't know what we could ask for," I answer and he slowly straightens again. I look around and the girls shake their heads.

"The corpse of a Grim Giant has a lot of value, could we get the money for the bounty?" Roxanne asks.

"We don't have a proper bounty for a Grim Giant since nobody hunts them, but we could still give you a good part of the expected profit," Ansara says, "If you don't want money then how about equipment? Since you are adventurers it never hurts to have more."

Ooh, I got an idea.

"How about an enchanted weapon or shield?" I ask.

"Oh yes, we acquired a few enchanted weapons from smugglers a while ago. We have a pair of shoes with [Weightless Bubble], a mage's robe enchanted with [Earth Armor], a greatsword enchanted with [Sonic Boom], axes enchanted with [Bleed], a few swords with [Double Strike], and a number of shields enchanted with [Dead Zone] and [Wind Shield]."

Jackpot.

I look at Lina and she nods to me.

"How about a shield and the axe?"

Ansara smiles wide, "You know the value of enchantments, don't you?"

"I have my own dwarven enchanter." I put a hand over Lina's shoulder and she smiles proudly.

"I'll take you to the equipment for you to choose then," Ansara says and rises.

"You can choose. Pick one for Hana, she's the most mobile and would benefit the most from the shield," I say and push Lina forward. She shyly follows Ansara outside and they disappear on a [Gate].

It's frightening to think she's suddenly so far away, alone, with a handsome man. After Alissa's disappearance on a teleport trap, I think I have gained a deep fear of being stranded due to teleportation.

We go outside and breathe in the fresh air, it smells of blood and I see Alissa puts a hand in front of her nose. The soldiers have started to cut down the Giant, they have to use huge saws to cut the limbs of the Giant.

The Earth mages have begun dismantling the shelters they hastily built. They made underground bunkers for people to hide and thick pillars just like mine, this is the standard strategy against Giants, to abuse their clumsiness while preparing something to kill in one strike.

One by one I dismiss the earth elementals, the few people leaning on them quickly disperse once the first one starts to crumble. The earth quickly disappears into nothingness so it's not like they would be crushed by the falling earth.

Hana comes to us with Aoi on her shoulder and a very happy Klein on the other.

"What are you doing?" Roxanne asks.

"Giving her a ride, since she got jealous Wolfy got one," Hana says with a shrug that nearly makes Klein fall.

"Not jealous! I just thought it would be fun," Klein answers with a cute pout.

Roxanne is the one getting jealous of all the attention Klein is getting.

"Aoi, come here," I say and spread my hands to her. With a glide and a hint of mana being used around her wings, she falls softly on my hand and curls on my arms. She tries to shove her tongue inside my mouth but I turn my face away in time. "Not in public," I hiss lowly at her.

"Kay," she says with a hint of sadness.

Klein looks at me with wide eyes and a smile slowly forms. "Dragon f-..."

"No!" I interrupt her, "Not you too!"

She giggles and jumps out of Hana's shoulder. Roxanne walks over to Hana and wraps herself on her arms. We sit near the cliff and wait for Lina to come back.

When my jealousy starts to get uncomfortably high a black circle opens behind us, Ansara comes out of it and behind him, Lina appears, a long poleaxe in a hand and a long kite shield on the other. Both are too big for her so she awkwardly comes to us and Hana receives both.

"The axe will be difficult to use, but the shield is already perfect," she says while inspecting every inch.

The shield is pure black, it's made of wood, rimmed with metal, and it has a metal boss in the middle. Behind it silver lines and two small jewels, one yellow and one green, near the straps are hidden by a piece of leather.

The axe is what I would call "danish", due to its wide blade in comparison to Lina's, who also works as a hook due to the curve the lower, non-bladed part has. The [Bleed] axe has lots of silver lines at the blade, this means the enchantment might fade with time. At the middle point of the shaft, a small red gem is embedded.

"I can copy the ax's enchantment so we shouldn't use it much," Lina says.

"I'll send word to the Lord about what happened here if you don't mind, Mr. Ryder," Ansara says.

"No problem."

"Then that is all, I need to go back to work. I wish a safe journey to you," he bows slightly.

"Keep up the good work and stay safe," I say and wave. The girls give short goodbyes and Ansara leaves. The ballistas are taken back and only the grunts who are dealing with the Giant's corpse are left, a few are entering the Smirk to keep monsters away from the smell of blood.

We walk back to the caravan and see the two siblings who started this all looking like zombies.

Ciel gets closer to them and squints her eyes, "Nala, Orian?" She asks.

The two weredogs suddenly jolt awake and stare at Ciel wide-eyed.

"Ciel!" The two exclaim in unison and look at her like two lost puppies.

"You know them?" I ask Ciel softly.

"Orphans from the temple, they are all barely seventeen..." She says with a pained voice, then she crouches in front of them. "By the Gods, what are you doing here?" Her voice is full of grief.

"We..." Nala starts, her ears raise when she speaks but fall flat when she loses her conviction.

"Were exploring the Lapis Waterway when..." Orian Continues, his fluffy tail hangs limp behind him.

"We stumbled upon a nest of Hooknoses..."

"We ran and hid in a cave where they couldn't reach..."

"Then we explored that cave..."

"Where we found the Giant..."

"And we ran again..."

"But Alexa and Daiana couldn't continue.." Orian sniffs and tears run through his face.

"Then the Giant..." Nala's face distorts in pain, her voice cuts off and she cries loudly.

Ciel opens her arms and pulls both of them into a tight hug, making the three of them touch heads.

Captain Hazeez is awkwardly standing a few meters away, he walks a few steps forward and speaks, "Normally we give heavy fines to people who wake up Grim Giants but this time I think you suffered enough," he says with a sympathetic tone.

Ciel breaks the hug and speaks to them, "Let them rest because they will be waiting for you there, okay?" They nod weakly at her and sniff, she cleans the corner of her eyes and looks to Hazeez, "Captain, can you give them a [Gate] back home? And make sure they go back to the temple?" She asks with a very sweet voice.

Hazeez becomes even more awkward and his face cramps, "Sure..."

"Thank you, Captain," she walks to him and grabs his hand, giving it a squeeze and making his eyes twitch.

I see that the caravan is already moving again, we don't have time to stay and console them.

"Stay safe, please," Ciel gives a hug to each sibling and make them stand up, they nod silently at her but keep their gazes on the ground. Captain Hazeez puts a hand on each of their shoulders and leads them back to the watchtower.

"Sorry, Ciel," I say and grab her by the waist.

She shakes her head and grabs my waist, "They will be fine, they are old enough for that and we have our job to do," she says and smiles bitterly.

Lina grabs Ciel's hand and they both ride the same horse. Roxanne and Hana go for mine and ride together so Alissa and I get the second biggest one while Klein goes to the carriage.

Aoi happily stays in my lap while Alissa controls the reins from behind me. She's being obedient enough to not try anything else, maybe I should give her a little reward later.

"Am I going crazy or is she smaller than before?" Klein asks from the window while looking at Aoi, her large eyes look dreamy.

"Secret," I say and put a finger on my lips.

"Muuh," Klein puckers her lips and cutely and groans. Osaria lifts an eyebrow at us, Oura is asleep with a book covering her eyes, Laertes is maintaining his bow and his ears flicker at us, and Rande is just daydreaming, his eyes look forward without focus.

The commoners have been chatty and staring much more at the elementals, now with wonder instead of lewdness.

I see Roxanne and Hana are skirting around the line of "appropriate" behavior. Roxanne's robe has buttons to open the side, allowing her to sit properly at the horse. This also means that it gives easy access to her pants, which Hana has been taking advantage of.

They ride in front so only we can truly see what's going on -.

-

We continue our journey slowly. When night comes we can only see a single faint light coming from fortress Erda, we are too far to stay there for the night.

"Couldn't make it in a single day," Rande says with a sigh.

He dismounts awkwardly and barks orders for us to make camp. He shakes his legs, then walks bow-legged and hunched over for a few steps and slowly straightens. Yeah, he had a boner.

I pull out the foldable partition and the bath, I station an earth elemental outside just in case a little shit tries to peek on my goddesses.

Alissa doesn't come to wash me and instead scrubs herself as fast as she can, she only gives me an angry glance and I know what's coming. I scrub myself fast, matching her speed.

-

I feel a [Heal] on my shoulder followed by a [Clean].

"Thanks... my love," I say, catching my breath.

"You, uh, welcome, my love," Ciel says and enters the bath. Her face is flushed -.

Alissa's whole body relaxes and she slowly falls into the bath. She smiles, showing her bloody fangs -.

-

"I'm really sorry about showing my animal side like this but you teased me way too much," she says and blushes.

I kiss her cute nose and say, "I don't mind, it's nice to see you change once in a while."

"It's impolite to act like this in human form."

Hana snorts -. "Being part animal or something else is what you are, shouldn't be trying to hide it, you should push it out to let it help you get stronger," she says.

I see through Holly a group of boys sneaking to our position.

"Being animal or human is what we are. We need to learn how to have two sides before we can properly change forms," Alissa says with a frown -.

"Then after that you need to learn to be both so you can pick the best of the two sides."

"Hm..." Alissa slows down and thinks. - the boys outside stop and giggle. Her ears flicker, "I heard children, they are close."

"Yeah, just let them come," I say.

She looks at me suspiciously, "You want to add exhibitionism to your fetishes?"

"No, I just want to give them a scare."

Alissa snorts -.

Hana leans down on the bath and closes her eyes, moaning softly.

Suddenly the earth elemental turns to the children and stomps the ground repeatedly, the children yell in surprise and scatter, one even pissed his pants.

Roxanne surfaces and ends [Water Breathing], "I heard yells," she says.

"It was nothing, continue," Hana says and pushes Roxanne down again.

Rande decided to give a Great Boar to the commoners and make a feast. The large, spherical animal was spit roasted and booze started to flow.

Me and Ciel helped out by applying some [Heal]s to the older commoners to help with the pain of the trip. If they liked us before, now we turned into celebrities.

"Master summoner!" A drunk comes towards our table and gives me a cup of not-wine, or whatever this is, "For you! For your elementals are the finest piece of magic I have ever seen!"

He lifts his cup and I lift mine along, "Bottoms up!" Yells another drunk and we chug.

I put on 10 points into [Poison Resistance] so I won't get drunk because of this. More people come and offer me booze so I have to quietly cast [Purify Body] on myself. It seems this had the opposite effect as more people saw I was not getting drunk and decided to just give me more until I did.

I let a bit of alcohol accumulate and exaggerated my drunk acting, then I was finally left alone.

I started to feel bad about Gify eating as much as a grown person so I pulled out some more food for him. His early warning saved us so he at least deserves that.

Klein gets drunk easily and is taken away by Laertes. I see the husky weredog covering her with a blanket and then quickly getting out with a deeper frown than normal on his face.

Roxanne is being nearly molested by Osaria. She's touching Roxanne's hair, leaning dangerously close, touching her hand, letting their thighs touch, running her hand through Roxanne's back. Then Osaria's hand stopped on Roxanne's thigh and stayed there, slowly moving up -, occasionally her fingers rub softly and lightly.

The dark-skinned milf is wearing even less clothing right now, it's literally a bikini, smaller than the one before -.

I get an idea and whisper something to Lina, she frowns slightly, then looks at Ciel then at Roxanne. She bites her lips -. She finally nods shyly but I still see some fear in her eyes, fear that slowly gives room to lust and depravity.

Roxanne is getting drunker and drunker -. Osaria sends me a kiss when Roxanne is not looking and I get up. I walk to Roxanne and cast [Purify Body].

"Oh, Mr. Ryder, please join us," Osaria's voice is dripping with sensuality. She grabs my thigh and pushes me forward -.

"I apologize but I think she's had enough," I say and pull a sobering Roxanne up, she immediately casts [Conjure Water] on her own mouth and groans as the fog in her head dissipates.

Hana, that's sitting beside Roxanne, smiles and winks at me. Rande didn't back down and is now giving her expensive elven alcohol after expensive elven alcohol. I bring Roxanne to sit with us and the moment Rande's hand touches Hana's thigh she rises and comes to join us.

"I think I just drank a few gold coins," Hana says, gushing with happiness. She lifts me and lowers me on her lap, a hand immediately goes up my shirt to caress my body while the other rests on my thigh -.

I look at Rande and see his expression frozen, almost sour. Then he rises and finds Nito, they both go to the carriage where Oura is sleeping.

"Had fun?" I ask Hana.

"Yes, thanks Wolfy," she says and kisses my neck repeatedly. "Thanks for trusting me, too, not that many men would let another chase his wife like this."

I shrug, "Every once in a while sounds harmless, specially when you can use him to get free expensive alcohol."

"I would rather not play these games," Ciel says with a frown, "specially that one," she points to Roxanne, who jolts awake and takes a nervous glance towards Osaria.

"Alright, let's keep it contained," I say. Ciel softens, Alissa's tail stops swaying, and Lina looks troubled.

We retreat to our tent and I spread 7 elementals around: 2 fire, 2 earth, and 3 nature since they have good night vision. Holly is out and I'm feeling comfortable enough to not use a Shad.

- Ciel drops down on the bed, feeling a little too tired. I climb over her and fill her neck with kisses, then I lower to her back, [Massaging] her spine. -.

-

Roxanne turns Lina's head and kisses her, Lina receives the kiss and opens her little mouth. Their tongues entwine, - meanwhile, Ciel experiences first-hand the pleasure/pain/- of NTR.

-

A note from Manasong

Hall of Fame of Patrons

The patrons who support Rupegia shall have their names sung by the bards for they deserve the glory and honor. Their names are:

Oracle Maximillian Hübner.

Lord Andrew Meyers.

Lord Hope.

Lord Samuel Lim.

Lord Cody Weigel.

Lord Bill.

Noble Salty Panda.

Leave a rating or a review to help me rise to the top or fix my shameful understanding of prose.

Take a look over my blog where all information of the world of Rupegia will be posted.

Join the Discord and discuss, or rant, or meme, or try and fight me so your waifu gets more screentime.

Become a Patron and read chapters in advance, or read the side-stories, or leave your mark on the story, or help choose the next artwork or the next side-story.

Chapter 41: Tease - Part 2

A note from Manasong

Attention: to conform to the limit of mature content (more than just sexual content) allowed in a novel, I've censored this chapter. You can look for the uncensored version here.

The symbol "-" denotes a section that got cut for containing sexual content. Also, if paragraphs seem missing, they were also likely censored in an earlier pass where the symbol wasn't used.

I wake up in the middle of the night, Holly is making warning sounds in my head, 5 Grassland Goblins are sneaking closer. These are smaller and more silent than the average one, they like to hide in the tall grass and prowl about.

I silently push Aoi to the side and untangle myself from the mess of naked bodies, this time we didn't have the energy to sleep in armor. As I walk to the entrance of the tent suddenly Alissa straightens, her eyes open wide in shock. She quickly and silently comes to me, then she hugs my arm tight.

"Why are you up?" She asks softly.

"Goblins, I'll just tell the elementals where they are."

"Oh… well you scared me, leaving me alone on the bed like that."

"Sorry," I smile wryly and kiss her nose.

Holly can see the goblins so I call her back and tell her to show their location to the elementals. Two get stomped, two get strangled, and the last one tries to run but dies burned alive while screaming. Unfortunately he woke up the rest of the camp, so I spent a few more annoying minutes assuring everyone that the goblins were dead.

"Wolfy~?" Roxanne asks groggily as I lay down on the bed.

"Yes?"

"What was that?"

"Goblins, they are dead now."

"Thank yoo~…"

Today is the 6th.

I feel my whole body tingle, a slight caress that playfully stimulate my senses. My lips part and mouth is filled, I feel something snake inside and carefully taste every inch of my mouth, my palate, my teeth, my gums. I wish to suck on it, to have it fill me more, to caress me harder and faster, to swallow it all inside of me.

My pointy bits tingle, my body is played with, and my sword is massaged by something slick and warm, so very warm.

I open my eyes slowly and see the twirl of color from Aoi's red and blue eyes, they stare at me like a mischievous child stealing from the cookie jar. I feel her scales on as she lays on top of me, they wave slowly, tickling my entire body but focus on my bits.

With one hand I grab her head and push her deeper, she chuckles girlishly and increases the intensity of her massage. I caress the small bumps of her spine with the other hand, this always delights her and makes her close her eyes in happiness.

The depravity of being inside her fills me with energy and I pump my waist. A moan escapes and I feel something is wrong, I see a mane of wavy red hair. I regain focus in my eyes and see from behind Aoi that Hana is mounting me.

I'm not doing Aoi and that nearly made me go limp. I close my eyes and focus on the feeling I had. To do a dragon would be the most badass thing someone could ever do, I'll be the manliest man that ever manlied. Making a force of nature like a real dragon get addicted to my sword would be my magcum opus.

I imagine the feeling of Aoi's pointy teeth rubbing on my shaft, her slick tongue then wraps around it, her dangerous head just a few centimeters from biting it off. Then I release it all inside her long mouth and she swallows all she can with happiness.

After the first meal is done, I use my whole body to pin her down, I feel her dripping entrance is ready for me. My barbed monster enters her forcefully, she struggles, trying to bite me while I mate with her.

My claws sink on her flesh, my wings wrap us together, my tool inflates and knots inside her, letting my seed fertilize her fields. I bite on her shoulder and leave my mark, showing to all others who she belongs to. I savor the taste of her blood on my long tongue, the metallic taste mixed with the rich mana that has her mark.

I plunge my sword deep inside Hana and flood her. Aoi's tongue slows down and slowly withdraws, leaving me wanting for more.

"You got pretty excited there, Dragon Plower," Roxanne says with a smirk.

No, that's wrong, there's a better one, a proper one, a right one.

"'Father of Dragons', that's the one I want," I say.

"Hm?" Aoi tilts her head at me.

"I'll give you many children, Aoi, we will make a new race of dragons."

Hells, now I want to be a dragon. That feeling I got from her wasn't normal, but it felt damn good.

"Kweeh!" She cries happily.

Hana slides off of me with a satisfied smile and Alissa digs her morning meal.

There's some truth about Alissa's and Hana's words on the animal side. It was exhilarating; whatever connection I formed with Aoi, I felt like I could fly forever or rip and tear through hordes of monsters. But it was also consuming, like it was hard to control and I would lose myself to the feral side.

Was that you, Gify?

Gih.

Well, don't do it without my consent, that was just a glimpse and it felt overwhelming.

Gih.

We prepare ourselves and eat a simple morning breakfast. I drink a lot of not-earl-grey with not-vanilla biscuits so I have more energy. Waking up in the middle of the night disrupted my sleep.

"Feeling better, Ciel?" I ask and give her hand a light squeeze.

"Wha-… Oh, so yesterday was you trying to console me?" She narrows her eyes and pouts.

"It helped, right? -," I give her a cheeky smile.

She sighs and looks at Lina, who gets flustered and keeps her eyes down, "- I'm not proud of it but it did feel good…" Her voice fades the more she speaks and her face cramps.

"See? It's - so, so, so, damn, good," Alissa says, her last words cause a shiver on her. "I advise to not overdo it, it's also draining."

"You never told me it was draining," I say to Alissa.

"I just had a lot of energy to drain," she smiles adorably.

-

When we come out the sun finished rising out of the mountains. The commoners are finishing picking up their things so we just mount our horses and start clearing the area.

This time Roxanne is with me, she uses the most perfume so it's always a pleasure to hug her.

I see Osaria smiling suggestively at us and I quickly move to the front.

"You enjoyed - her?" I ask Roxanne.

Roxanne groans lowly and hugs me tighter, "It's not as fun as you think, Wolfy, too many women think we succubus - sleep with anybody. It doesn't help that some are, but not all."

"Oh right, you said that once, didn't you? Sorry about that," I cringe a little.

"You don't have to apologize. And it's not like I don't enjoy it, but I don't want to be seen as unfaithful, or like I'm disrespecting you. I don't have the same courage as Hana to play around with Rande."

"What about that thing about us - doing it in front of Sonny?"

"That's…" I look back and see her biting her lips in embarrassment, "Just a wild - fantasy."

"And you - and Lina yesterday?"

"Well, Lina is Lina, she's different, she's family, someone I can trust. And I actually do love her, a little."

"Awn…"

Roxanne seems a little flustered, "Don't tell her that…"

"Sure…"

"Wolfy~!"

"What are you talking about?" Hana comes over with Klein.

Roxanne grips my chest and I feel her heart beat faster. "Nothing important," she says.

"She told me something embarrassing," I say and both the girls look at me evilly.

"Wolfy…" Roxanne's hand wraps around my neck and squeeze threateningly.

"Well, just pester her until she tells you about it," I say and shrug, her nail digs on my skin painfully for a moment and she releases me.

The tall grass becomes short, then it becomes moss that becomes rock. The path turns more vertical then starts to snake so we can climb more efficiently. Fort Erda slowly becomes visible, a huge blue-gray wall built in the crack of the mountain range. Down below there's a small town built around it.

To our right, a small brook runs close making soft calming sounds of running water. It snakes down and disappears among rocks, it reappears again near The Smirk only to disappear again inside the Shore of Leaves.

To our left we see raised earth, showing the different layers of sediment. The emperor at the time used [Fissure] to widen the opening of the mountain, allowing for the army to pass more easily, then he closed it again partially, leaving part of the ground cracked and raised.

"Was it emperor or empress that widened fort Erda?" I ask Lina.

"I think it was Emperor Sofos, his daughter Phystosa was the one who lead the creation of the Shore of Leaves. It was when Rabanara was founded that she became Empress," she answers. "The books says they had to rebuild the entire fort town since it was merely a small elven garrison to keep the foot monsters away."

I look at the mountain, I can see the continuous snow peaks get suddenly interrupted by a large crack. The fortress wall is still small in comparison to the mountain range but it's measured at 200 meters, so it's only "small". I notice the wall is curved towards us, it's made this way so it can survive Grim Giant sieges.

"Ooh, so you are a historian?" Klein asks, her dreamy eyes open wide.

"Not really… I just read a lot," Lina says.

"More than the average person so you could call yourself an amateur historian," I say.

"Do you like to read, Klein?" Ciel asks.

"No!" She says proudly and thumps her modest chest.

"She likes to play around," Hana says and chuckles. "You still visiting the orphanages?"

"Always, a few kids call me 'pretty miss' so I give them candy once in a while, the ones who call me 'squeaky monkey' only get dried goblin ears."

Like, Santa?

Alissa, Ciel, and Klein start to talk about orphans and the games they play. Meanwhile, I summon two air elementals to keep the Dragolites from harassing us, they make nests near the mountains and so they fly over caravans like vultures waiting for an opportunity.

At 9 AM we reach the Fort. It's dirtier, muddier, and colder than Rabanara, but the view from here is amazing and we didn't even go up the wall. Colored squares make a patchwork of farms, each color looks vibrant under the sun; further, we see Rabanara and the castle, the flag on top a barely perceptible waving square; further than that there's the Sea of Trees, endless waves of green; I think I can see where the Tree of Mana is, but the blue mist of the long distance makes it hard to see.

"There are dwarven-like houses inside the mountain, you can see the light shining out of them at night," Lina says.

"Can we go there?" I ask.

Lina's eyes light up, "Yes, we might have enough time."

I pull out an Emergency Ring and give it to Rande.

"Once you get near the exit send us a signal and we will join you," I tell him and he gives me a slightly annoyed nod.

We dismount and move towards the gate, the 10 meters-high wall looks like a palisade in front of the real wall behind it.

The soldiers are now a mix of imperial and local, the imperial ones wear red cloaks, the higher rank ones have yellow or white details on them. They use more metal than the ones on Rabanara, a few even walk with plate and metal kite shields.

The soldier that sees our town pass raises an eyebrow but let us pass without a problem. Klein is held back for a few minutes and then joins us.

"Is it okay for you to be away from the caravan?" Hana asks.

"I'm just there to kill monsters, I don't think he trusts me to keep cargo safe," Klein answers and shows her tongue mischievously.

The inside of the town is made out of brick buildings. Though they aren't the same color as the imperial style, they still retain the same form. Some of the wealthier buildings are painted in the right colors.

The ground lacks grass so there's mud, dust, and soot everywhere. This is one of the few quarries and mines in this part of the continent so it's quite busy. The miners look almost like adventurers walking around in armor with picks instead of swords, monsters like to appear inside mines so it's a dangerous job. Plenty of forges and refineries work non-stop, the quality of the metal is good but it's not the most expertly-crafted armor around.

I notice a considerable amount of dwarves here, still in the minority, but much more than Rabanara.

We pass by many inns until we reach the real wall, then we enter a large dimly lit tunnel bustling with wagons carrying raw material, most of it going towards the north instead of Rabanara.

The other side is very different, not only is it much bigger but it's also much more organized and clean. There are elven buildings mixed with the imperial ones, houses made entirely out of the trunk of a tree. They inflate the tree trunk using [Grow] until it is at the appropriate size and then hollow it out. The small tree crowns on top of the thick trunk look adorable, like a little green hat on a large spherical brown head.

Lina looks around until she finds a very small building with the banner, "[Gate] services", there are two doors, one with "In" and another with "Out" written on top.

An old man with a crystal ball waits inside the "In" room.

"Commercial area inside the mountain, please," Lina asks shyly.

The old man grunts and points to a large scale that fits all of us plus some more. Then all of us put a finger on a crystal ball and a number is shown on the old man's tablet. Both were measuring our weight and the weight of our [Item Box]es, the total fee was nearly a silver for each of us.

We touch the black circle and we are taken to a completely different place. We leave the "Out" room and look around.

We are in a large cave, the ceiling is high and filled with colored small twinkling lights. The buildings are all blocky and full of carvings; sharp angles and geometrical patterns being the trend, some buildings have glowing mushrooms on top. The streets are wide and made of cement. The magic tool lights and the humidity give a rather gloomy atmosphere.

The air is much more chilly and there's a constant breeze coming out of a single direction. I see a small light coming out of there, must be the exit to the top of the wall.

"Good thing we are wearing armor," Roxanne says.

We all deactivate our [Breeze] and look at Klein. Her small shorts, bare midriff, and exposed arms don't look very comfortable.

"Wolf, give her my fur cloak," Alissa says.

I flick through my "Items" for a bit until I finally find it, a black cloak lined with dark brown fur, simple but elegant.

"T-thank you," Klein says with her teeth chattering, she accepts it without hesitation.

"Do you ever wear armor?" Hana asks.

"Only at the High Forest."

"What about you, Aoi, feeling cold?"

The little dragon huffs flame and smiles, showing fangs, then gives me a lick on the cheek and goes back to coiling herself around my neck.

We walk down the street, the buildings are mostly restaurants and tea shops. I see one that screams of "homemade food" and stops at the front.

"Let's have lunch, we are paying," I say and add the last part with a glance towards Klein.

She awkwardly scratches her monkey ears and nods, "Thanks, Mr. Ryder," she says shyly.

"Just call me Wolf."

"Sure thing!"

We enter the restaurant and a plump brown-haired young dwarven woman comes to greet us, Lina's gloomy eyes instantly light up. The woman looks young but I see the signs of dwarven age, slow movements, tired eyes, slightly spotty skin, awkward gait.

"Welcome to the Mycelial Spice, I am Bia, how can I help you?"

"Do you have a table by the window?" Alissa asks.

"Sure, there's a balcony over there, it's covered by windows so you do not need to worry about the wind."

"Do you have Dodlig soup?" Lina asks.

She smiles warmly at Lina, "Yes, we have that. We also have raw Giftig salad for dwarves, boiled Giftig for the other races," her eyes flicker to Hana, who smirks, "Fried Oatlig with beef, and Osmaltbar pudding."

Lina drools absentmindedly.

"We can have it all and share if it's too much," I say and the girls nod.

The view on the balcony is amazing, we are looking at the Goldcross side. Steps of paddies of something that's not rice fill the mountain all the way down until it reaches Goldcross very far in the distance, a sprawling city shining gold in the sunlight, seemingly larger than Rabanara.

To the west of Goldcross, the terrain angles again until the road reaches Fort Katakti on the Rakontagne mountain range, which continues north much further than we can see. To the northwest of Goldcross, there's only a small belt of farms that turn into grassland until the landscape turns blue and we can't see anything anymore, but we will be able to see the High Forest from Goldcross once we get there.

Our food comes and our stomachs rumble, even though we are having an early lunch.

In the paddies a thick algae grows, it's quite watery and is eaten raw as a salad or as a seasoning, tasting similar to zucchini. We order both chips and salad of the algae. Fried Oatlig has a very earthy taste, something like a non-spicy chili mix with a hint of coffee. Osmaltbar has a faint bittersweet taste, remind me of carob when I ate it nearly raw once.

We get a bitter stout beer to go with, though except for Lina we only drink a cup. I don't really like alcohol but I can recognize when it goes well with the food and this one was on the spot.

Bia occasionally looks at us curiously as we eat, it's not every day you get a troupe of women, a young boy, a little obedient dragon, and a cute nature spirit as customers.

Gih!

"Did any of you come here when you passed through the Fort?" I ask the girls.

Alissa and Hana shake their heads. "Slave," Alissa says.

"We had very little money at the time so we just passed through here quickly," Lina says.

"We left Rabanara in the morning on horses and entered Goldcross at night, staying here long wasn't interesting," Ciel says.

"I came through Fort Reita and it wasn't much different from this one. I also didn't spend long and just passed right through," Roxanne says.

"You don't really talk about your days with the Templars," Alissa says to Ciel.

She smiles bitterly, "I'm just like Wolfy, easier to avoid ever talking about it."

Klein looks at us confused, her dreamy eyes blinking repeatedly, "You were a Templar?" She asks.

"Kind of, Honorary Templar was my title, I was just a… well, a potential lover for one," Ciel blushes slightly.

"Ooh! That's amazing! We were escorted by some Wandering Knights once and it was a breeze, they were so strong and skilled I thought my heart would melt! But when I talked to them they were kind of uptight, not my type," she shows her tongue and tilts her head in a pose.

"Most of them are, you don't get to be a Templar if your manners lack polish," Ciel says and smiles wryly.

"What kind of Templar were you following?"

"A standard Platoon. We were focused on hunting monsters or the Wicked before we were ambushed by a swarm of Dream Eaters and we fell apart."

"Awn… I'm sorry to hear that."

"We fought Dream Eaters before, I would rather not do it again," Hana says solemnly.

"To meet a swarm in the wild is incredibly rare."

"We were going to investigate a Lord that was being incompetent in keeping the monsters at bay, ironically we were attacked by the same monsters the Lord was supposed to exterminate," Ciel says and looks out the window wistfully.

"What happened to that Lord?" Klein asks.

"After we got the word to the other Templars about what had happened, he was executed along with his wife and Chosen Descendant."

Klein cringes and looks away.

"How was the Templar that you loved?" I ask Ciel.

"Well, I already told you that," she answers and rubs her arm awkwardly.

I lean over the table and grab her hand, "But you haven't told us much detail." I give her a squeeze. "Please…?" I beg in the most adorable tone I can.

Ciel puckers her lips and thinks for a few seconds, then she leans on her chair and I release her hand.

"Well, the thing I remember most about him was his smile, it was just so wide and white. With a square face and large chin he looked like one of those naked statues the weird Lords like to stare at," she giggles softly as she reminisces.

"What statues?" I ask.

"Well, some nobles like to look at muscular, perfectly defined male bodies. They act like the body is a piece of art," Hana says, "Most that act like that are men with a taste in other men, the rest are the muscle brains who like to look at men similar to themselves."

Ciel starts to blush lightly, "Your view is a little narrow but yes, he was kind of a muscle brain too."

"How did you go from a muscle brain to, well, no offense Wolf, but him?" Klein says incredulously while pointing at me.

"None taken."

"She got better taste," Roxanne says in a sultry voice that awakens lower me.

Alissa and Lina nod in agreement.

"I was young and stupid… and horny," Ciel says and giggles louder.

"So he was kind of like Rande?" Alissa asks.

"Oh no, Rande is too proud of himself, Macht was much more down-to-the-ground, he was more of a charismatic joker."

"So you got seduced by a dashing and charismatic warrior with the body of a hero and dropped everything to follow him?" Roxanne teases while lifting her eyebrows repeatedly.

"I wasn't-…" Ciel starts but stops herself and goes quiet, her face goes redder and redder.

"She did say she was young, stupid, and horny," Hana says with a smirk.

Ciel drinks the rest of her beer in one go, "Let's change the topic, please!" She pleads.

We remain there waiting for a long time, the restaurant is only slowly getting full so we are not hogging a table that someone else could be using.

Then at 11 AM we get a green signal from Rande and go back down with much regret. Laertes glares at me, it was so sudden that it nearly made me stop in my tracks, I guess my closeness to Klein is getting to him.

This could get awkward.

A note from Manasong

Hall of Fame of Patrons

The patrons who support Rupegia shall have their names sung by the bards for they deserve the glory and honor. Their names are:

Oracle Maximillian Hübner.

Lord Andrew Meyers.

Lord Hope.

Lord Samuel Lim.

Lord Cody Weigel.

Lord Bill.

Noble Salty Panda.

Leave a rating or a review to help me rise to the top or fix my shameful understanding of prose.

Take a look over my blog where all information of the world of Rupegia will be posted.

Join the Discord and discuss, or rant, or meme, or try and fight me so your waifu gets more screentime.

Become a Patron and read chapters in advance, or read the side-stories, or leave your mark on the story, or help choose the next artwork or the next side-story.

Chapter 41: Tease – Part 3

A note from Manasong

Attention: to conform to the limit of mature content (more than just sexual content) allowed in a novel, I've censored this chapter. You can look for the uncensored version here.

The symbol "-" denotes a section that got cut for containing sexual content. Also, if paragraphs seem missing, they were also likely censored in an earlier pass where the symbol wasn't used.

As we leave the gates I look back and see a mansion protruding out of the mountain, that's the Lord's house, Ankara's parents. I didn't think they would raise a stink with us but I'm glad nothing happened.

The path down the Fort is long and snaking. To our left we see the paddies where farmers slowly work, a small burst of mana comes out of them once in a while as they use magic to make the plants grow faster. To our right we see a few farms protected by high walls, the monsters come from that side often so only the more hardened farmers stay.

As we go down the snaking slope we move much faster than before, but it's still a long way down, much more than we went up. Goldcross slowly disappears from our sight as the horizon lowers and the air gets much more humid and hot.

The right side starts to get less rocky and more wet, the moss and dirt become grass that quickly becomes marsh. Over there is the Elven Wetlands, or Antano in the native tongue.

"We will arrive by night, barely making it," Klein comments.

The road is getting more and more crowded as farmers, adventurers, and soldiers go towards the town. At least we don't have to work on this stretch as any monsters approaching were already taken care of far from us.

"It looks like the town might get crowded," I say.

"It will, it's why Mom and Dad are already holding an inn there for us."

"Won't the other towns in the High Forest also be crowded?" Roxanne asks. "Goloria was packed when I went there."

"Goloria maybe, but before we reach there… not so much," Klein says with a slight cringe.

"We only heard rumors, how are things really like over there?" Hana asks.

"The territory under Crown Lord Este is suffering, they aren't handling the amount of monsters and bandits very well."

I come closer to Hana and Klein's horse and ask in a low tone, "Is the Lord's problem related to how Rande fell from being a noble?"

Klein glances at Rande, who's talking to his mother, "No, that was a few years ago, before I joined. I heard that Lord Este's problems are actually the other high elven Lords."

"So he fell to a conspiracy?"

"Falling, he's still holding on but I think even the empire is getting annoyed at the disruption on the High Road."

"With the fall of Aremut the emperor must be getting very nervous," Lina says.

"He would be the worst emperor in history if he lost two territories under his reign," Roxanne says with a laugh.

"And two very important ones too. Aremut is important for attuned weapons, the High Forest is important for magical wood and as a trade route," Ciel says.

"And skin-care products," Roxanne adds.

"How's the situation over there? I hardly know anything about Aremut," I ask.

"Well the undead took over the entire kingdom, and did nothing after that…" Klein shrugs.

"The army is keeping the place on lock down, they say they can't get inside because the undead's corruption is too high," Lina says.

"In the entire kingdom?" I ask and she nods. "How could they even do that? The corruption only lasts when there's an undead present."

Lina shrugs and the others follow when I look at them.

"There's a way to stop it with mobile [Sanctuari]es," Ciel says, "But it's hard to cover an army with it so only small expeditions managed to get inside the City of the Damned."

Lina's Trivia: The City is actually called Spita Bureya but since the kingdom fell the spirits of the area became distorted and malicious, they attack the mind and inflict suffering upon others who come close. The description of the area is on par with a dark and haunted land so the new name became popular quite quickly.

"I heard the only thing the undead changed inside the City was that they added a new tower," Klein says like an old woman talking about gossip.

"That sounds ominous," I say and look at Alissa, who smiles, and Ciel, who frowns.

"Aremut is right next to Mountainhome, maybe we could cross the Atskild mountain range and take a look," Alissa says with a smirk.

Klein coughs and looks at Alissa wide eyed, her brown tail is straight up, tickling Hana's face. "What!? Are you one of those mad adventurers who enters unmanaged dungeons just for a thrill?" Klein's voice cracks a little, then she cleans her throat and recomposes herself. Her tail leaves Hana's face who seemed to enjoy it.

"We are looking for a dungeon to conquer so, maybe? A little?" Hana says with a shrug.

"At least half," Ciel says with a snort.

"Kweh! Kill, undead, they, taste, bad!"

Klein looks at all of us slack-jawed.

"Gih, guh… gih."

Gify doesn't like to fight but he likes to watch.

"Why did you say it like it was - joke?" Alissa asks Gify, whose beak curves in a smile.

Klein knits her eyebrows, "Doesn't the spirit's mind get molded after the one who tamed them?" She asks.

They all turn to me and I smile faintly. "Wait! Gify is more independent than others spirits, you could say he still has his own personality," I try to defend myself.

"Uh huh… the things you do to me make me think otherwise," Alissa says with narrowed eyes.

Sadistic-Alissa is coming out!

Klein's eyes dart between me and Alissa.

"Look at his face, Klein, that's the face of a sadistic - fiend, a monster who abuses his slaves daily," Hana says in a low tone on Klein's ears, her pupils dilate and her eyes glue to me in fear. Hana's voice turns into a barely understandable whisper, "He made me bleed on my first time and didn't even stop, he enjoyed the blood."

"H-Hana, that's a bit too far, we didn't do it like that. Y-you are scaring her," I say and force a smile.

"Oh?" She raises her head and smirks, "So you didn't spread - us wide until we bled and kept - going? Even when we cried?"

"N-no, not like that…"

Roxanne hugs me tighter and licks my face. "This taste… is the taste of a liar!"

"Wolf Ryder, you monster," Ciel starts, barely containing her smile. "You stole my innocence, then abused me and held me in place while my lover was being taken by another right in front of my eyes!"

Klein looks at Ciel and frowns, "Oh…" Her posture relaxes as realization kicks in, "So you guys really are weirdos… damn you, Hana, I trusted you."

Hana snickers evilly and hugs Klein tight, her hand drifts dangerously close to the border of Klein's shorts. "We are fun weirdos, Wolfy is very open-minded so we just play around quite often," her voice turns suggestive at the last few words.

"Better to have fun now since we all might die horribly tomorrow," I say.

Alissa looks at me oddly, "Rather morbid for you."

"Bad things happen, we must enjoy the now until the bad things disrupt our fun." I shrug.

"Sounds better."

"You sound like a priest of Love," Klein says with a chuckle.

Ciel puckers her lips a little sourly and looks away.

As we talk, Hana's hands trace circles below Klein's belly button, making her breathe heavier, while the other hand slowly inches upwards until it's covered by Klein's shirt. -.

Hana's hand squeezes Klein's ribs, making her gasp lightly as it slowly inches upwards. Hana leans over and breathes down Klein's neck, her emerald scales rubbing on the brown monkey ears.

Klein arches her back and raises her head higher, rubbing her cheek against Hana's. She closes her eyes and bites her lip, her hands grab Hana's thigh strongly -.

-

Then Klein suddenly grabs both hands and pushes them away. With a heavy breath she merely glances at all of us, a small smile forms but is quickly suppressed.

Ciel and Roxanne aren't pleased, though they look rather anxious instead of angry.

Okay, we really need to talk about Klein tonight.

The rest of the way is a little awkward as we turn silent and Klein's excitement slowly dies, it is then replaced by full-blown embarrassment. I only glance at Laertes once and see he's at the window of the carriage, glaring at me, so I don't look again.

Goldcross slowly becomes fully visible again as dusk comes and the commoners give happy but tired cries. The light yellow wall is just as high as Rabanara's, covering most buildings from our view but I still see the orange shingles and cute leafy crowns from the imperial and elven styles. There's no castle in this town but there's still the Lord's mansion that will peek above the houses once we get on the main street.

There's some people building a part of the wall a ways to the right of the town, an extension to the city. When you have [Earth Magic] to help, building and tearing down walls is not a very hard job.

The town blocks our view of the High Forest but we can see the peaks of the Ultirei's Tomb artificial mountain far behind the town. It looks like a rusty, giant, jagged meat cleaver.

As we finally approach the line to enter town, the night has already come. The psychedelic moon is fully visible in the night sky, the blue one is shining bright.

The ambiance is a symphony of crickets, there weren't many bugs in the Shore of Leaves and I was thankful for that. Crickets are not something I missed from Earth, if those things can even be called crickets. If horses are carnivorous and huge in this world, then what are the insects like?

Once the wagons park behind a caravan in front, the commoners cheer and Rande turns his horse around. "As of now my contract has been fulfilled and you are safe, you can leave and go wherever you want," he announces to them.

We dismount our horses and plenty of commoners come give a goodbye to us. Though, quite a lot seem very interested in getting near Aoi and Gify so they can give them a pat, not that I, or the two, actually dislike it.

"Thank you, young ones, you helped me a lot. My hips are barely hurting from this trip," says an old human woman who bows to me and Ciel.

Ciel moves to the woman and gives her a small [Heal], "Now they shouldn't hurt anymore, right?"

"Oh, ooh… thank you, my Grand healer! Thank you! How may I ever repay you?!" The woman's face lights up and she bows.

"Please, just continue as you are and offer help to the temple once in a while," Ciel says, she pulls the woman straight and gives her hand a squeeze.

"Certainly! I could cook for the orphans my own vegetable stew, just like you love it, hm?" She looks over to the young man beside her.

"Y-yes grandma, I'm sure they would love it…" The young man says and they leave.

As the commoners finally leave, Osaria approaches us with a sway on her hips. Oura and a now calm Laertes follow behind.

"I will show you the inn," Osaria says in her sultry voice.

We spend a few minutes on customs waiting for the others and finally we move on. After the military buildings, the taverns become numerous, all bustling with activity. We already see a few drunks being kicked out.

The amount of demon race walking around dropped drastically while the elves increased to make up the difference. The elves are mostly the silver kind, they are about the same height as humans but skinnier and much, much easier on the eyes. They say the elves have a "curse of beauty" which makes them all look beautiful but also very similar. I see there's some truth to that, or just that the elves don't usually marry outside of their race, keeping their gene pool small.

The town is very orderly and well-built, the architect seems to love square blocks, the town is a perfect grid. It's completely different from Rabanara's crooked buildings, twisting dark alleys, and varied architectural styles. It's cozy and nice but I still prefer Rabanara, a perfect neighborhood feels fake to me.

We reach the inn, the Shining Lake, a larger building not very different from the ones around.

"What kind of room did you ask for us?" I whisper to Hana.

"The biggest."

Oh yes.

The interior is the same like any other inn, the first floor is the dining room, where a large number of patrons are eating their dinners to the sound of a lute. The bard might be the most interesting thing around, a beautiful werecat woman wearing the elven standard bikini with a few pieces of cloth hanging.

Out of a seat a really large man comes out and walks with a confident stride towards us.

"Klein!" The black mass of muscles exclaims.

Okay, we really need to talk about Klein.

"Dad!" She answers back and rushes to hug him.

The man is a wereape, gorilla if I were to make a guess. His head is bald and shining with pure black skin, he has pieces of fur coming out of the back of his hand, small ears, beady little eyes on his huge square face, a low brow that gives him a perpetual frown, large pointy teeth easily seen from behind his smile, logs for legs and arms that he proudly displays in his tight shirt, and enviable amounts of facial and chest hair.

Klein launches herself into his arms and he carries her like one carries a twig.

"Oohohoh… how has my little girl behaved?" He asks, his voice is a loud low rumble that even catches the attention of the other patrons.

"Like always, a mischievous monkey, but an adorable one," Osaria says and the wereape bellows a single laugh.

He glances at Laertes and his face gives him pause.

"Hello, Klein," says a very soft voice coming out of the side of the wereape, it's a very small weremonkey woman. Shorter than Klein, she has paler skin and fur but still looks very similar to her daughter, with a more delicate and mature look in comparison to the bubbly, cute young woman. Her tail is also much shorter than Klein's, it's an odd thing since wereapes don't have tails.

"Hey, Mom!"

"Anton, Krista, this is Helios, the fellowship we hired as main escort," Osaria introduces us.

We share a quick introduction, Anton doesn't shake anyone's hands except Hana's. His huge meat club he calls a hand looks very threatening and makes me afraid for the integrity of the bones in my hand.

"Good to see you well, Hana. Didn't expect to meet you again so soon," Anton says in a nostalgic tone.

"Good to see you too, big man. It's going to be just like old times," Hana answers with her characteristic smile.

"I hope so, or not, you were really reckless back then," Krista chimes in.

"I… got better," she glances back to us, "I have more people to protect now."

Anton chuckles softly and Krista nods in understanding.

The greetings continue and like everyone who meets Aoi, they seem surprised at her ability to speak. Though they look much more interested in Gify.

"So, Helios," Anton starts loudly with an upbeat tone and everyone looks at him, even a few patrons, "You can now trust me to keep whatever is on the wagons safe while you hunt down any monsters that could threaten us. On the contrary of Rande, I can actually use a battleaxe and cleave my way through nearly anything, so you don't have to rely on his enchantment working against everything," he finishes with a thumbs up and a wink of his small left eye.

There's no remaining doubt in my mind about who is Klein's father.

"It certainly won't help against Weepers," Krista says in a more normal tone.

Osaria rolls her eyes discreetly and speaks, "Right, thank you for your work, Anton. Anyway, we'll be leaving in two days so we will meet up at the north gate on sunrise, around 6AM, I believe."

"I'll let you rest, your trip must have been tiring, shouldn't have fought anything dangerous over there, but still," Anton says and bows softly while Osaria and Oura walk away.

"Well… heheh…" Klein laughs softly and Krista looks at her with an eyebrow raised. "We had an interesting fight, but anyway, let them rest. Oh, yes! Can we see you all tomorrow?"

"Sure thing," I say and everyone nods, calmly, though I see Hana's scales twitch.

As we leave towards the bathhouse behind the inn I see them sit back down at their table and Laertes joins them.

We reserve a bath for ourselves and with a sigh I finally take off all of my armor. Staying all day on a horse isn't so uncomfortable when you have [Heal] and [Regeneration] to deal with the pain but it's still physically tiring and it doesn't stop the pain from coming in the first place.

-

As the drunkenness from love fades, Lina stares at Ciel with an impish smile.

"What…?" Ciel mutters.

"Now that we have all shared one another, we all belong to each other," Lina says and giggles softly.

"You know, aside from the pun that is quite profound," Roxanne says and we chuckle.

"But we don't… really love one another in the same way…" Ciel says and frowns, she's conflicted.

"Well, you said making love can be used as comfort for loved ones," I say.

"I know, it's just that me doing it is a little different. Our family is… confusing," she answers with a shrug.

"We all share, that's all," Hana says with conviction.

"I love you all, in different ways, but I do," Alissa says, she wades over to me and rests her head on my chest, "I trust you all and that's what's important for me."

"Awn…" Ciel melts a little and nearly submerges herself underwater.

Lina shyly comes towards us and gives me a hug, then the others follow, including Aoi and Gify.

"Love, love, love, love, love, love!" Aoi gives everyone a lick after each word.

"Gih," he says and nibbles on my ears softly.

After a few seconds of rib crushing, mostly caused by Hana, we disentangle.

"Buut… we have to talk about Klein," Roxanne starts and looks at Hana, Ciel nods repeatedly and stares at me.

"Okay, first," Ciel raises her hand and points it to Hana, "what do you want with Klein?"

"Well…" Hana rubs on her scales awkwardly, then she shakes her head and smiles, her resolve set, "I want to do Klein, like, really bad. Though, let me say this, I don't need to do her, I just want to."

"Do you, uh, love her?" I ask.

"No, I don't really want her as a wife, for me or Wolfy, but I want to do her, I want to take her first time. But since I don't have a sword, I want Wolfy to do it while I watch. It's pure desire," she shrugs.

"I also don't want Klein as a wife," Roxanne says quickly but then her posture shrinks, "But I want to watch Wolfy take her first time."

Alissa's heartbeat quickens, Ciel groans, and Lina frowns.

"Well I don't think she would be a good wife but she would be nice to play around with," Alissa says.

Ciel massages her eyes so I look at Lina, waiting for her answer.

"I don't know… I don't want Wolfy to love another, but… I don't love Hana the way I love Wolfy, I just… want her to abuse me," she says and cowers, getting slightly more flushed than the hot bath is capable of.

"So, you think it's agreeable for me to sleep with Klein because I don't love her?"

"Yes…?" She questions tentatively, "Is that too weird? It sounds weird…"

"It is weird," Ciel mutters.

"It is called trust," Alissa says.

"It is called depraved degeneracy," Roxanne says.

Alissa shrugs, "Can't deny that, but it can be both, or all three."

"Alissaaaa, you corrupted me!" Ciel complains.

"Yeah, she kind of did it to me, too. I don't think I can look at a fox the same way I did before," I say and awkwardly scratch my head.

"You did it to me first," Alissa says and laughs, her wet fluffy tail splashes on the water repeatedly.

"Look, let's make it clear, none of you have to accept any of this. I love all six of you. No, Gify, I don't love you like that-…"

Suddenly Aoi raises her head high and she shows me the widest, fanged smile she can.

"Kweh! You, love, me, like, them!?" She asks.

"I, uh… yes…?" I say with a phony smile.

Aoi swims forward like a fish towards me but suddenly gets grabbed by Ciel, "Not now, please, you can kiss him later," she says.

"Kweh…" Aoi deflates and becomes even smaller.

"Anyway… none of you have to accept this, I have absolutely no need for any other women than you all," I finish.

"But we need it," Alissa says with an evil smile and chuckles. Hana smiles faintly and Lina frowns but shrugs.

Ciel and Roxanne remain quiet, they stare at each other for a few long seconds and turn away. They sink lower in the bath and try to relax and focus on their thoughts.

Suddenly Roxanne rises, "Honestly, I don't care. I just want you to promise me not to fall in love with another woman and you can do whoever you want," she says.

I blink repeatedly, taken aback.

Ciel slowly rises, staring at me intently, then she suddenly fires word after word in high speed, "We have veto over any woman, and you can't do it in secret, and you can't do it repeatedly, and you have to ask all of us first, and we all have to agree, and you can't ignore any of us, ever!" She hits her hand on the water once done.

"You enjoyed it, didn't you?" Alissa asks in a soft tone.

Ciel swallows her saliva and remains quiet.

Alissa smiles sadistically, here comes her other side.

"Come now, priestess, you know you shouldn't lie about your feelings. Having Lina taken by Roxanne felt good, didn't it? You felt the exhilarating pain, the disgust, the self-hate and the humiliation. But it all made you feel better, didn't it?"

Ciel can't look away from Alissa, their eyes are locked. Alissa wades over to Ciel and kisses her softly on the lips, making Ciel melt and relax just a bit. Alissa holds Ciel's head with both hands and their noses touch.

"You want it, you love it, you need it. Tell me the truth, Ciel, how did it feel?"

Silence.

"Tell me the truth!"

"I… felt horrible, and it hurt, and I felt disgusted, and I hated myself… because it felt good…"

Alissa laughs and releases her, Ciel massages her eyes again and groans.

"You don't have to accept this," I softly say to Ciel.

"No, Wolfy, she doesn't, but she needs it," Alissa says and returns to my arms.

"I'm sure you can have some fun with Klein, too," Hana says to Ciel.

"Well, first Wolfy has to get past that monster," Roxanne says and they all stare at me.

Umm… what the hell just happened?

A note from Manasong

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Chapter 42: Eyes Wide Open - Part 1

A note from Manasong

Attention: to conform to the limit of sexual content allowed in a novel, I've censored this chapter. You can look for the uncensored version here.

The symbol "-" denotes a section that got cut for containing sexual content. Also, if paragraphs seem missing, they were also likely censored in an earlier pass where the symbol wasn't used.

Okay, fine, fine! This is fine, I just have to not fall in love with the women I have sex with… which is not that simple. I won't delude myself in thinking that this is easy, that I can separate sex and love like you separate files in folders.

Damn, I actually like Klein. If I didn't already have so many women around me I would certainly be interested in her.

Now that I think about it, is there any kind of women that I don't like?

…

Vanea.

…

Yeah, anyway. Love is uncontrollable and it's rather easy to let it bloom when you get so close and intimate with someone during sex. It's rather easy to separate myself from my sex-friend if I actually do start to love her, but it doesn't mean it won't hurt. For the sake of my own "Sanity", I better not abuse this new power I acquired.

But before things get out of control, I need to set up a rule.

"Ok, first thing! No other man! I will never accept another man having sex with you girls," I say.

They look at each other and shrug.

"We want to see you have sex with someone else," Alissa says.

"Though if you turned bi and wanted to have sex with another man I would gladly watch," Roxanne says with an evil smile.

Hana's voice turns sultry and her fearsome smile makes me tense up, "Oh, yes."

"Not happening," I say flatly and they deflate. "So, you're all fine with this? I'm getting most of the benefits. Do any of you want to have sex with other women?"

"Just Klein," Hana says and then we all look at Roxanne.

She looks down and rubs her horn awkwardly, "Osaria is really hot, but… she scares me a little."

"Same rules that apply to Wolfy also apply to us, then," Ciel says and rests her head on the border of the tub.

"I like Osaria…" Lina shyly says.

Ciel narrows her eyes and mutters, "I'm sure you do…"

Lina bites her tongue playfully, then wades over to Ciel. -.

Ciel breaks the kiss and stares into Lina's gloomy eyes, "You love me and not just my body, right?" She asks with a little insecurity.

The gloominess disappears into surprise and fear, "Yes! I do, I do, I do, I do!" With each word she gives a kiss on Ciel.

"That was a silly question, Ciel," I say and give her a disappointed pout, making her wince slightly.

"I understand how you feel, but yes, that was silly," Hana says.

"What about you, Aoi, don't you feel jealous?" Alissa asks.

"Kweh?" She turns her head to the sides repeatedly, "Jealous? Dragons, love, who, they, love."

"She's right," Hana says.

"So you don't mind if Wolfy has sex with other women?" Alissa continues.

"Don't, abandon, me, and I, be, happy!"

"Will you leave Wolfy if you find another dragon?"

"I, trust, Wolf, I, not, trust, other."

"So it's about trust? It takes time and knowing someone for you to come love them?" I ask.

She taps her little claws on the water and thinks as she floats towards me slowly. Then she raises her head and tilts it, "Yes? I, want, Wolfy, not, any, other."

My feelings for Aoi are rather confusing. I want to, uh, give her eggs, but I don't really feel the same love I feel for the other girls. Somewhat similar to my need to protect her like how I feel about Lina, but still not the same type of love. The feeling Gify showed me felt awesome but it's only the pleasure of being an apex predator and being able to dominate Aoi, not love.

Her kisses do feel good, though, very stimulating. I'm also… curious about her -. It doesn't help that Alissa corrupted my view on animals. I just wanted to make her happy but now my desires are warped.

"But, can you say that you will never love another?" Alissa asks.

"No, but I, never, abandon, Wolfy, if, Wolfy, never, abandon, me," she finishes with a toothy smile.

I tickle her belly from underwater and she giggles.

"We will never abandon you," I say and pull her closer for a hug. She doesn't try to kiss me and just nuzzles her head on my shoulder.

"Her voice is getting better," Roxanne comments.

"It's less squeaky, she's maturing."

"And it happens most often after she eats something special," Hana says.

"Giant, brain, taste, goood, very, noodly."

Once we finish our bath, most patrons are already finishing their meal. Our stay and meal were already paid for so we just sit to eat. Klein and the others have already left.

The Mainland loves nuts and oils and they also love to put them on everything. So we get nutty bread, garlic bread, not-pita bread, dipping sauces for the bread, and fried cow meat from the Mainland.

"Lacking veggies," I say.

"Elven restaurants are known for that," Ciel says.

"Oh, yes. The restaurants avoid serving veggies because they never taste as good as the elven ones," Roxanne says.

After dinner we retire to our room, the biggest one in the Inn. It's just a bit larger than the rented one in Rabanara, but the bed is certainly not comparable. I switch it with our own bed and we all enjoy some quiet time together.

I pull out the golems and they curiously observe their environment. I think I will have to continue my research on them while on horseback since we spend far too little time stopped for me to research them during our breaks.

I adjust their souls so they can speak with the same level of skill as Aoi, though now I notice they still speak rather raspily. Maybe my "adjustments" are lacking in detail. I may have to look deeper within their souls to find the discrepancies.

Aoi practices [Fly] and the golems repeat their routine of [Telekinesis] while being smothered by the girls. I summon two corgis so it becomes a cuddle - party of soft happy moans and grunts as the girls gush in happiness.

I start giving everyone a [Massage] and Aoi is the first to fall asleep, and then Gify activates his special touch alongside my massage and nobody wants to leave. I have to pull out the extra beds so Hana and Roxanne can sleep in the same room because the cuddle - part drained us all of our energy.

Today is the 7th.

-

My [Summoning Magic] increased by 1 (now 13+18). Good to know that elementals still give me some experience in that skill.

"Morning, Mr. Ryder!" Klein comes up to us and gives me a hug. A fruity scent fills my nose -. Then she gives each girl a hug, Hana getting the longest one, and a pat for Gify and Aoi.

Anton gives a slightly stiff greeting to each of us and Krista seems neutral. They all wear baggy, colorful clothes with small see-through parts; "harem pants" in Earth terminology, Jasmine style. On his chest, Anton only wears a sleeveless shirt that's open in the front, showing everyone his large abs and pecs.

"So, we want to buy some more equipment this morning. How about we meet here after lunch?" Kleins asks, her long tail bounces like it has a spring on it.

I look at the girls and then nod, "Sure. I think we will look for an elven restaurant for lunch, after that we will come back here."

"Great! See you then!"

The inn is quite expensive, we get a nice charcuterie of cold cuts along with a nutty milk drink spiced with alcohol.

As we eat, Rande comes over with Oura, Nito, and Osaria. Oura looks much more attractive now that her hair is properly brushed, the bags under her eyes are gone, and she is wearing elven clothes that show her faint curves. She's a slender and cute woman who actually looks like Nito's older sister since he's wearing a female high elven "bikini." The male version of the "bikini" is more of a vest, like the one Rande is wearing.

Both elves and wereapes seem to be very proud of exposing their bodies.

"Helios! Morning!" Rande greets us with a dashing smile.

Osaria gives a silent greeting but her eyes linger for a while on Roxanne.

They sit at the opposite table and Rande drops his arms on Oura's and Nito's shoulders. When their food comes, they both feed Rande lovingly while he plays around with their hair.

"It looks nice but it's kind of awkward to eat things like that," I whisper.

"I know, completely impractical and too slow," Alissa says.

"Maybe if we got some practice we would get better at it," Lina says and looks at me with expectant eyes.

"Not in public…" I say softly as my heart melts.

"Okay…"

We take a stroll through town, this is Katasko territory so I keep 4 Shads and a Holly out as safety. Even with the swords at our waists we still bump against far too many people, so we don't wear anything valuable on our person. Elves may be proud, pompous assholes but their hands are light and dexterous.

My vision with the Shads is far too cluttered to be of any use so I just give them the order to attack those who show strong harmful intent towards us. Like drawing a sword or dagger from behind us or trying to take a swing at us.

This town is a very congested place filled with Inns and curiosity shops; its specialty is at being a mix of cultures. The standard and reliable imperial, the mystic from Antano, the obscure from the High Forest, the colorful from Glorampina, and the pragmatic from the Shore of Leaves.

The alchemy coming from Antano is cheap and powerful, but it has a tendency of causing an occasional "side-effect." Like random inflation of certain body parts, your breath starts to smell of ass, the touch of the grass on the skin becoming incredibly tickly, getting water in your boot makes your skin quickly slough off, and a few others.

Imperial is made with precision and reliability. You always know what you are getting but you always pay more for it.

The High Forest doesn't export a lot. It relies mostly on tourism for the sights, magic, food, spas, beauty products, and prostitution. What does come out of it is the mad ramblings of an inventor-mage, similar to what I found in Rabanara, it is interesting but useless.

Glorampina is very fertile but they don't export a lot of food. What they do export, though, is a lot of paint and handcrafted arts.

"Well, these are so similar to the ones in Sommerland that I wonder if the craftsmen actually met," Hana says while looking at a colorful carnival-like mask from Glorampina.

"These are common party masks. The elves in Glorampina like to party a lot," Lina says.

"Oh? Seems like we have more in common than I originally thought."

"They don't like outsiders, though."

"Meh."

The Shore of Leaves fills the niche for medium and low-priced armor and weapons but not much else. Though the price of things here is certainly higher than Rabanara's, so I'm glad that we bought all our equipment there already.

"The prices of elven dresses are too high, we can find better ones in Goloria," Roxanne says while dejectedly dropping a bikini that would look inappropriately small on Hana or Ciel, "Unless things have changed since I was last there."

"I think you are right. This place feels like a tourist trap, everything seems too expensive," I say.

"I think the entire High Forest is a tourist trap," Lina says.

"Well… not recently."

The elven vendors have much more "Charisma," making me wary to barter with them as my mind gets clouded by my desire to stare at them. Inside shops, things are a little worse as the attendants are much more "handsy" and most of the time I'm not sure if it's a man or a woman that's trying to grab my arm. Not to mention the anxiety I felt when the girls were being dragged by an androgynous, half-naked vendor.

I have to work on my jealousy, but I won't get much progress in a single day so it's best for us to not waste any money here.

Next, we go to the hunter's guild. The atmosphere is very similar to Rabanara's, though I feel a hint of pride instead of ruthlessness coming from the other adventurers. The stares got better though; less hungry stares, more curious ones.

The boards have few bounties, most seem to pay less than Rabanara's. But on the other hand, it is filled with escort requests towards the High Forest.

The sickly looking Imperial man working in the disassembling room looks overjoyed when I don't pull out another stinky, poisonous, or venomous bog monster. He gives us 5 gold pieces for the Grey Berserker's body and 1 for the bounty, a good deal.

For lunch we enter an elven restaurant, the building is a large grey tree that has been hollowed out. The furniture is all composed of the wood of the tree and we can even see that certain things, like counters and benches, are still part of the tree trunk itself. The ambiance is the sound of trickling water and bird chirps, actual birds that fly around the building and often land on the shoulders of the waiting staff. Thankfully, we don't see or smell any bird droppings.

"I will take the… rainbow course," I say to the androgynous silver elf waitress with a perfect smile.

"Foamy pies," Alissa says.

"Fire stick," Roxanne says.

"Wheezing squishes," Hana says.

"Bubbling broths," Ciel says.

"Puffy bulbs," Lina says.

"A-…carei, steak," Aoi says, pronouncing the name of the monster with a little difficulty.

The waitress gasps and turns to Aoi. She blinks repeatedly while her brain tries to process what she just heard.

Full marks to her since she continues smiling perfectly.

"Gih."

The waitress jolts awake and writes down all our dishes, then with a twitching smile she bows graciously and leaves.

The rainbow course is every vegetable they have, one piece of each. From roots, to bulbs, to leafs, to fruits; they have it all and more. I have no idea what I'm eating and I can barely recognize the taste of half of them, I only know that it tastes good. Though, the tastes are so varied and some so strong that my tongue goes numb.

We meet up with Klein and her parents back at the inn. Laertes and Osaria are with them, too.

"Let's go see the street performers!" Klein exclaims.

I look at Ciel and she shrugs, "I only saw a few small ones once," she says.

"Oh, the imperials set up shop in front of the elves. They actually have a competition at this time of the year," Anton says.

Klein nods repeatedly, "They keep trying to up the spectacle every day until it culminates in a party at the Turn of the Year."

"So it's like a festival?" Alissa asks.

"Actually, you could say it is," Osaria smiles towards us, "Though, no elf will ever admit that they have a real rivalry with the imperials."

"Or that they are actually having fun," Laertes comments.

So elves are tsunderes?

We reach the main road and see the six-floor-high mansion of the Lord rising from between the houses as we approach. It's fully composed of white tree bark and shaped like a baroque house. Very impressive.

At a certain point, the stalls turn into street performers. Elven bards, dancers, mimes, jugglers at one side, imperial mages and actors at the other.

"Lady Astrid! I will protect you from this beast that calls himself a man!" Says a human woman dressed in shining, but thin and flexible, plate armor.

"What are you doing, Cassandra?! You dare separate me from my wife?!" Yells a large black-skinned wereape with orange fur. He wears dark robes and his eyes look bloodshot.

"'Beast', huh, a little offensive," Anton comments.

"I don't think they did it with that meaning," Krista says and holds Anton's arm like one holds a log.

He grunts and pouts but continues to watch.

The elven bards start an upbeat song with heavy drums and the dancers imitate marching soldiers.

Cassandra draws her shining, but fake, sword and the wereape pulls out his glaive from his [Item Box].

"Do not approach, beast! I will not allow you to rape Lady Astrid!"

"Cassandra! Please! Don't do this, you don't have to fight for me!" A pale skinned woman wearing a princess dress grabs Cassandra's arm and tries to pull her back.

Cassandra is like a rock and doesn't even flinch at the frail woman's effort. "Lady Astrid, please, this is my duty as a knight. Your family saved me and the only way I can repay that is with my life.

"Don't… Astri~d…!"

With a drum roll, the two enemies dash forward and clash. The moment their weapons touch they clang loudly, with every strike they shine in the afternoon light. A dance of black and white, of silver and darkness.

The elven bards reach a crescendo and the glaive pierces Cassandra's chest as the dancers strike an acrobatic pose. The crowd gasps and goes silent, the only sound is of a startled group of white birds that take flight.

Blood drips in a puddle, every drop a painful pang of the heart.

The elves play a slow and sad ceremonial song of mourning, the dancers bow.

The glaive leaves Cassandra's body and the wereape swings it in the air to remove the blood. A red smoke taints the air and the sunlight darkens to blood red, creating a gloomy atmosphere.

Astrid falls on her knees, catatonic. The wereape spends a few seconds watching the body of Cassandra and the blood pooling beneath her. His head whips back and he roars a wicked laugh, the ground trembles and clouds gather.

He starts to move forward, toward Astrid. Every step slams against the ground, raising a dust cloud that turns darker and darker. His wicked, white smile becomes the only thing visible as his skin turns abyss black and small tendrils extend from his face.

Two loud drum hits come out of the elves that suddenly turn quiet, the dancers suddenly straighten.

"Not, dead, yet!" Cassandra yells and a light comes out of her. She turns around and glares at the wereape, a shining magic tool in her hand.

"YOU SUICIDIAL B-…"

The street goes white as the magic tool disintegrates in an explosion.

The elves start a calm and ethereal song with soft female vocals while the dancers graciously spin in place.

The light disappears, only Astrid remains. Both the wereape and Cassandra vanished, leaving only a black char remaining in their place.

"NOOOOOooo…! Cassandra! I loved yooouu…! Whyyy…!" Astrid cries.

Cassandra's sword reflects the sunlight and catches our attention. Astrid notices it, too, and slow walks towards it, her entire body swaying in pain.

She leans over and grabs Cassandra's darkened sword. She admires it and cleans the sword's char off onto her dress.

Another crescendo comes as the vocals turn increasingly angry, the dancers raise their hands in the air and jump around the street.

Astrid swings the sword repeatedly in anger, with each swing, her anger reduces but her skill increases. Once she's almost exhausted and covered in sweat, her swings are now expert slices. Her face that was so recently distorted in pain now shows only anger and determination.

"I will avenge you, Cassandra. I will hunt down every wicked man or woman in this realm, for today I am a 'Lady' no more!"

Astrid disappears and reappears a second later. Now, she's completely armored with a shining armor just like Cassandra's. She puts on her helmet and raises her dark sword high.

Trumpets blare like the announcement of a nobleman's arrival, the dancers fall to their knees and gaze up into the skies.

"FEAR ME, WICKED. I AM COMING FOR YOU!" She yells and disappears again, this time for good.

One last drum hit and everything goes silent, the dancers drop their heads.

The entire street claps and cheers. Once it dies down the jugglers and mimes come out, they sync their tricks to the upbeat rhythm of the dancing elves.

We make our way through the performers and leave our share of coins in their tip buckets.

A few stalls are selling fried sticks and some simple sweets that we snack on. Later, we drink some tea in an open-air tea shop.

"Say, Hana, how's the new life?" Krista asks.

Her hand falls on my head and she smiles wide, "Couldn't be better. Well, it could be if nothing bad had happened in the first place, but since it did, it couldn't be better," she says.

"You fellowship is a little… interesting," Anton comments with a wry smile.

"Well, yes, we really are quite unusual," Alissa says and smiles towards Klein.

"So, how did such an… unbalanced party form?" Laertes asks, his expression towards us is neutral but I detect a twitch in his mouth.

"He's got a magic dick, duh," Klein says, provoking a choke out of Anton and contained light chuckles out of Krista and Osaria.

"They are all my wives but I won't comment on that," I say with a smile. Lina turns her head to me and she seems to want to speak but hesitates.

"Every once in a while you see adventuring parties with interesting stories, I believe Helios is merely one of those," Osaria says.

Anton frowns, something that barely changes his overall expression, "Wait, what do you mean by that? I would rather not have glory seekers attracting monsters to our caravan."

"No, they aren't that type," Klein says and pouts, her eyes try to stab Hana, "They are the kind that wants to conquer a dungeon for the title."

"It was good to know you," Anton says with a loud chuckle. He delicately takes a sips his tea, his cup looks like a children's size in his huge hand.

"Not trying to be rude, but… we do see that a lot of those types of fellowships disappear inside dungeons," Krista says, she shows concern and her expression is almost a mirror of Klein's.

"I know, I've met the same ones you did," Hana says. "But we do have the track record to back it up."

"We aren't reckless but we are talented. It's a matter of being cautious and playing it smart," Alissa says.

Klein chuckles, "Do you have the 'Intelligence' to compensate for Hana's?"

Hana's eyes turn piercing and her smile threatening, "Watch it, little monkey. I actually got it up to eleven and I'm sure it's going to rise again soon."

"They have the talent, Anton, we held back a tall Grim Giant because of them," Osaria says and her voice turns into a purr, "They made a very good impression on all of us."

"Even I admit that she's right, though it doesn't mean I agree with their ambition," Laertes says and looks away with a shrug.

"We, strong, we, kill, we, get, stronger!" Aoi shows them a toothy smile.

"Gih!"

"Hah! Fine! If even a nature spirit is on your side who am I to doubt you?" Anton opens a wide smile and lifts his tea cup, "To Helios! When you become nobles call me for the wedding!"

A note from Manasong

Hall of Fame of Patrons

The patrons who support Rupegia shall have their names sung by the bards for they deserve the glory and honor. Their names are:

Oracle Maximillian Hübner.

Lord Andrew Meyers.

Lord Hope.

Lord Samuel Lim.

Lord Cody Weigel.

Lord Bill.

Noble Salty Panda.

Leave a rating or a review to help me rise to the top or fix my shameful understanding of prose.

Take a look over my blog where all information of the world of Rupegia will be posted.

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Chapter 42: Eyes Wide Open - Part 2

A note from Manasong

Attention: to conform to the limit of mature content (more than just sexual content) allowed in a novel, I've censored this chapter. You can look for the uncensored version here.

The symbol "-" denotes a section that got cut for containing sexual content. Also, if paragraphs seem missing, they were also likely censored in an earlier pass where the symbol wasn't used.

As we finish our tea Anton suddenly turns serious, "Wait… Hana, are you trying to become a noble to save your father?"

Osaria and Laertes frown, suddenly very interested in Anton's words.

Hana glances at me and smiles shyly, "Yes… it's at least part of the reason."

"'Save'…? Is your father in jail?" Osaria asks.

"He is. Our family fell to a conspiracy so we were all arrested." These words make Osaria's expression melt. A motherly air comes from her as she looks at Hana with sympathy. "My parents should still be in jail while my siblings are likely working as Blood Slaves somewhere."

"And you are a slave too?" Osaria's tone is very kind.

Her hand lands again on my head, "My master and husband-to-be, Wolf."

I strain a smile as every eye falls on me.

Osaria looks away, realizing something. Her mouth slowly curves into a very wide white smile, then it twitches as she tries to search for the right words but no sound comes out. Eventually, she covers her mouth with her hand and chuckles.

She quickly controls herself and clears her throat, "Sorry, no disrespect towards you, Hana, it's just that I realized what you have been doing to Rande all this time."

She looks at me and we grin at each other. We are kindred spirits.

"So…" Laertes interrupts our bonding, "You are his Blood Slave and his wife?"

"Fiance. We will end the contract once we become nobles," I answer.

He turns to Hana, "I don't really understand how such a relationship works. Don't your vows conflict with the duty of a Blood Slave?"

"Vows are different for each person. They are made to fit the relationship, not the other way around," Ciel says and Osaria nods repeatedly.

"My vows aren't that much different from what a Blood Slave already does. It's just that it's mutual," Hana says with a shrug.

"All of our vows are like that. In truth, we may be more like a group marriage instead of us all only marrying Wolf," Ciel adds.

Krista raises her eyebrows, "So you, uh, all share?"

Ciel suddenly finds herself with her face on fire so she stays quiet while she deals with it. Alissa answers in her stead. "Everything," she says, almost purring.

Anton, Krista, and Laertes all look at Klein questioningly, who has a smile creeping up on her face. Osaria's eyes dart between me and Roxanne, who plays with her tail nervously.

Anton turns to Hana and shows some concern as he speaks, "What about your harem? You were crazy about the boys back then."

Boys?

Hana's expression stiffens. "When I got sold as a Blood Slave I resolved to myself that I would never search for them. I am neither a Yokubo nor a Tranfkoever anymore, I am simply Hana, Blood Slave of my master."

"You hardly look like a slave, Hana. Both of them were crazy about you."

She grits her teeth and sends a forced smile to Anton, "What are you suggesting that I do, big man?"

He cringes and looks away, "Sorry, didn't mean to disrespect."

"Wolf is a sword and he parries all others."

I contain a chuckle as the others give me awkward glances. Osaria's seems a little disappointed, though.

"So, who were those boys?" Roxanne asks, tapping the table in slight annoyance.

Hana lifts her hands in surrender and smiles, "Two guards that my Dad hired. They were kept close to me to keep my emotions flaring, it helped me be more ferocious. Once I was married they would likely join me and become part of my harem."

"Do you want to meet them?" I ask.

"Better not…" She smiles awkwardly.

"You actually do have your own harem now so it's not like you are worse off," Alissa comments with a mischievous smile on her face.

Hana sends a fearsome glance to Klein, who nervously rubs her legs together. "Oh yes, I am having all the fun I can."

"Right…" Laertes interrupts while rubbing his eyes. "So, Krista is our cook. What kind of dishes are you planning on serving us?" He tries to change the topic.

Talking about Hana certainly isn't helpful for his plans.

Krista has [Cooking] at level 10 so she has quite a lot of information to share with us. Small details and personalized methods to cook just about any sort of food we will ever come across. Add that to her small talent in [Space Magic] and she's basically a portable chef.

"If anything, Krista is responsible for keeping our 'Sanity' intact," Osaria praises the weremonkey who turns a little shy and almost mirrors Klein's behavior.

The conversation dies down and turns into gossip and banal exchanges, allowing me to concentrate on [Massage]ing Alissa's ears. Her expression of pleasure attracts the attention of Klein, who sends me the occasional glance, and Osaria, who starts to play with her own long, flexible ears.

Osaria has lots of knowledge about elven history so she and Lina get in an argument about the interpretation of the passage of time before the Age of the Sun. Without a periodic cycle of day and night, some timelines become ambiguous as it isn't possible to truly know how long things took.

Osaria's argument is that the elven accounts are more accurate due to their orderly nature and strict schedules. She cites that the God of Law being elven is a fact that backs her argument. Lina calls bullshit, though in a respectful way, and cites how even the dwarves who live underground and in perpetual darkness have the necessity of using clocks to accurately keep time.

I would like to support Lina's argument with my own knowledge of biology, but Alissa and I are far too engrossed in trying to make Klein envious that I don't feel like participating.

Once evening comes around, we go our separate ways. Our bath is another - party.

-

We spend the evening in our room again.

"You feel that? The mana coursing through your body?" Roxanne asks the golems.

"Yes," they answer in unison.

"Kweh!"

"Do you also feel prickly or tickly?" She continues.

"Prickly?"

"Tickly?"

"Kweh!"

"Uh…"

I reach over and scratch Suzy's body softly, just enough intensity that would make me feel tickly too. "Feel that?" I ask.

"Yes."

"Did it feel different than normal?"

"Yes, but, it was, just, softer."

"Hm… Try to remember how I reacted when I was tickled in the past."

"You, laughed," Ted says.

"Where? Where was he tickled?" Alissa demands an answer with sadism in her eyes.

"Wait, n-…"

"Armpits."

She immediately pounces on me. Her dexterous hands reach below my shirt and softly rub my armpits.

"Oh-oh," I moan weakly as a jolt of stimulation invades me. "N-no!"

Suddenly my arms are grabbed and I'm pulled backwards. I see Hana's evil smile staring down at me while Alissa ravages my flanks.

"N-nooo, aha… NO! AHAH, ah… AH! AHAHAHAH, N-NOO! AHAHAHAHAHAHA!"

My laughter is interrupted for a few seconds as Alissa's lips cover mine. Then she keeps her face a few centimeters from mine, her sadistic eyes locked into mine.

"NOOo~~….!" I protest one last time before succumbing to the torture and laughing out loud.

With a trembling body I recollect myself and curl into a fetal position near the corner of the bed. Alissa grabs my head and lays it on her lap, her vicious fingers now calm and tender.

Today is the 8th.

-

Roxanne sneaks over -. Her smile then becomes a little creepy, "Wolfy, when are you going to give me a goblin to experiment on?"

"Oh, yeah. We can do it on the way to the High Forest. With Anton helping protect the caravan we can easily find a secluded spot for you to experiment on one."

"Bi~ind!" Aoi cries happily.

"Yes, yes, we will test [Bind] on the goblins, too."

"Then I will look for a shop where I can buy some more ingredients!" Roxanne happily exclaims and plants a kiss on my mouth.

"Hana and Ciel should go along with you, I will also give you two Shads and a Holly."

She nods happily -. "Hm-hmm… four delicious slabs of meat as my personal bodyguards!"

"Is that all I am to you?" Ciel asks with disdain in her voice.

"No, you are also the perfect punching bag for my banter because you don't fight back."

Hana hugs Roxanne from behind and gives her a bite on the neck, "We better establish a hierarchy. You two are my bitches while I'm the top bitch."

Roxanne's tail rubs on Hana -, catching her by surprise. "Only because I let you," she says, seductively.

Hana growls and pulls Roxanne off Ciel. They immediately start to wrestle.

"Are we going now or after lunch? Klein likely wants to meet up with us in the afternoon or evening," Ciel says and they immediately stop.

Hana clicks her tongue and pulls Roxanne's tail out of her -.

We have a calm breakfast. The bread today was very nutty and sweet, almost cake-like. We also got shredded beef cooked inside the leaves of some fruit, likely the not-olives that accompanied it.

We didn't see Rande, Osaria or Klein, so we retreated back to our room while the three others, plus Aoi, went to the market nearby.

I focus on my [Soul Manipulation]. I'm making some progress, managing to keep my soul where I want while I have my eyes open. Though, once I lose concentration it slowly returns to me.

At least I can now use the "soul touch" to stimulate them anytime I want.

Wait, I can even use it discreetly, just a small touch would be enough to arouse someone. Is it harassment if I use it on Klein to seduce her?

I can see that Roxanne found a nice cozy shop. The four girls enter the shop and disappear from Holly's sight.

I drop down on the bed and relax for a while as I gather my energy back.

I see that Lina is completely immersed in her training. She's training [Weaken]. By focusing her will and hate solely on one person she can make the target tire easily and be more vulnerable to physical damage. It is mentally draining to have to use your hate as part of the spell but she says she can handle it.

I reach over to Lina and push a little of my soul out of my body.

"A~ah!" She moans weakly and stares at me wide-eyed. "W-Wolfy, what did you do?"

"My version of [Soul Touch], a literal one," I say with an evil grin.

"Mean, you are mean," she pouts and turns away.

"Only because I love you."

She squirms from my attack.

The four girls leave the shop while chatting happily. Down the alley I see six hooded men dashing forward.

I feel my heart sink. The alley is completely empty aside from the girls, the target of the men is obvious.

I turn the Emergency Ring red repeatedly. Ciel looks at it and stops, she starts to talk to the girls.

Look behind you! BEHIND YOU!

I notice something odd, I can't hear any footsteps, the six large men aren't making a damn sound!

They all draw wooden clubs from below their cloaks. When they are on top of the girls, Hana notices them and draws her sword.

"AAA-…" The scream of the two men in front is muffled as the Shads attack their heads at the same time as they cover their mouths.

Everyone stands still for a moment, taking in everything. Hana acts first and slashes the throat of one of the incapacitated men.

Ciel draws her sword, then her, Roxanne, and Aoi fling spells at the survivors.

"Alissa, open the window! NOW!"

She jumps up from her meditation and obeys without question. I grab Lina and jump through the window, then I use [Telekinesis] to fall softly in the back alley. Alissa lands beside me in her fox form.

I pull out the reinforced dinghy and we all hop in.

"Alissa, fly to them, full speed."

I supply the mana while she controls the dinghy.

"They got attacked by six hooded men, there's only one left alive."

We get there in a few minutes. The girls moved to a narrow alley, it's more secluded than the one they were in. Ciel [Clean]ed up the blood, Roxanne stored the bodies in her [Item Box] and Hana is holding the survivor in place. The man is a typical imperial, he has olive skin and black hair. He looks dirty, his body is full of scars, and his jaw is crooked. His head is bloody, Hana hit him in the face with an [Earth Bullet] and he was passed out until Ciel [Heal]ed him.

I put 30 points in [Godly Language] and remove the gag from his mouth.

"Who sent you?" I speak lowly so the other girls aren't affected by it.

"Handsome imperial. Very strong 'n muscular, walked like he 'ad a big cock. Didn't give a name but 'is voice was very low 'n manly. Couldn't see 'is face but he 'ad a beautiful beard peekin' out from behind his hood. He did smell really good, of sweat, blood 'n metal," the man blabbers a description immediately.

"What…?"

He blinks repeatedly and then gasps, "What did you do to me!? Get out of my h-…"

Hana gags him again. "He's using slang, he's just a thug."

"Describe him again with as much detail as you can."

Hana removes the gag and he immediately starts to speak, his eyes wide open in disbelief, "Black cloak like the pissers, they don' like ta show their faces 'n you don' ask questions. Sword at his waist, looked average, no pisser comes with enchanted swords to the slums. Pants 'n boots look' tough, not a pisser himself but a piss-drinker. Beard was perfect, shaved square to make him look manlier, not that he needed. He walk' like he 'ad a rocks on his pants, bet 'is cock smelled of flowers 'n his cum taste' sweet."

"How did you track us."

He grimaces but his mouth moves without his permission, "Got a runner to stalk ye cunts. Piss-drinker knew where you slept, so the runner waited until the three cunts left then brought us here."

"Who's the runner?"

"Cy, small wereowl, girl loves ta suck dick even tho' she say she don't. Brown hair, brown feather, yellow eyes, small mouth, white skin, cute face for an orphan. Frail like ta ones starving 'cause she drinking too much of the poppy."

"Gag him."

Hana obeys and the man starts to struggle. I cast [Shocking Touch] and he immediately goes limp.

"What's a 'pisser?" I ask Hana.

"Noble or wealthy man. Someone who likes to order other people and 'piss on their heads' when someone doesn't obey them. 'Piss-drinker' are their servants."

"Poppy?"

"Drug, makes people go numb. Don't recommend it, very addictive."

"I've seen many orphans who get addicted to poppy to numb their pain," Ciel comments, her eyes are low with sadness, "When they get too old for the orphanage there's some who don't have the courage to join the guard, or sell themselves as slaves, so they turn to it instead."

I take the gag off and the man looks at me warily.

"Where's Cy?"

"Fuck if I kno', bitch musta be on the other side of town by now."

"Did she see us fight?"

"Hngh…" He tries to resist, "With a foxy lass like her nearby… she would be stupid if she did, too many trackers 'n sniffers in town." He motions to Alissa with his chin.

"If you try to resist I will make you feel more pain," I warn him.

He grits his teeth and looks at me in defiance that slowly crumbles to fear.

Can't stop the interrogation or he will get confident and try to resist.

"What were you paid to do?"

"Beat… t-them up bloody, then leave them… naked… as a message," he struggles to talk so I gag him and cast another [Shocking Touch].

"Who do you think hired you?"

This time he doesn't resist and keeps his eyes down while he speaks, "Not the pissing Lord, he hates imperials. Try to boot'em off anytime a soldier fucks up."

"More details."

"Fuck if I know! Trying to guess who piss I'm drinkin' don' matter, they all taste like piss!"

"Seriously disgusting, his obsession with urine," Roxanne comments, her nose wrinkled in disgust.

I look at the girls, "Any questions?"

"What does Cy smell like?" Alissa asks.

"Cum, sweat, poppy, dirt. We don' get yer fancy perfumes out 'ere…" He answers without looking at her. "If she smart, she is taking a bath right now."

"What did they tell you about us?" Hana asks.

"Nothing. Jus'ta not fight all of you at once and to catch ye by surprise, not that it fuckin' did anything! Fuckin' trap," his voice quickly turns into a mutter and he curls into a fetal position. "Fuckin' end this already."

I look at the girls again and they nod. I cast [Shocking Touch] on his head and he passes out, then Hana shoves her sword into the back of his skull.

"He's dead," Alissa says a few seconds later.

I store his body in my "Items."

"Give me the others, if our [Item Box]es are inspected then things could turn out badly," I say.

Their bodies are all in different states of butchery, none of the girls went easy.

We silently fly back to the inn.

"It's not Darean, he wouldn't hire thugs to beat us up after all we have done," Ciel says.

"Ankara knows our power, he also wouldn't do such a thing," I say.

"Then it's Katasko."

"But why? What kind of message do they want to send?" Alissa questioned.

Roxanne shrugs, "'Join us or else…' But they want us to join them… beca~use…?"

"Someone knows we are powerful but underestimated just how much," Lina answers.

"Could it be that our relationship with Vanea leaked?" I ask.

Ciel shrugs, "Could just be a greedy and powerful person who wants us because of our record."

"Five women, a little dragon that can speak and a nature spirit? Yeah, some people would love to have us," Hana comments with disgust on her face.

Roxanne's face distorts in anger, "Could even coerce us to abandon Wolfy…" she hisses.

"Katasko bragged too much about having the support of nobility, it's them," Alissa says.

Ciel's expression turns dark, "It's been a few generations since the last purge. A lot of filth must be getting stuck on the emperor's boot."

We go silent and share angry looks.

"We will deal with this as it comes," Ciel gives a pained smile. "We can't let them destroy our lives with hate."

"They underestimate us again and again. We just have to keep growing faster than they can throw shit at us," I add, then I smile with confidence, "Mark my words, one day I will destroy Katasko."

"We," Alissa corrects me.

"I won't let… I won't let anyone hurt us," Lina says, through gritted teeth, her words filled with anger.

"Don't… don't let anger taint you," Ciel says weakly. She looks anxiously at us, "I won't… I won't run, but I won't let myself succumb to anger."

As the leader, I also shouldn't.

"Some of us shouldn't, but some of us should," Hana affirms with certainty.

"Anger is what motivated me to create [Explosion]," Roxanne says, bitterly. "I don't want to go back to those times, always angry at something."

"I will be angry for the both of us," Hana says and pulls her into a hug.

Roxanne smiles weakly, "Thanks, but… I need to fight, regardless. It just feels like we stumbled onto something big. Katasko won't let us go with just that, more is coming."

"Nothing is impossible if we take it one day at a time," I say.

The screeching woman in my head feels like a far away cry right now.

Roxanne massages her horns and looks at Ciel, who nods with bitterness but resolve. She chuckles once and breathes in. Her chest puffed up, her chin raised high, her horn looking sharp, she says, "I won't ever back down on my vows, Wolfy. I entrust you with my life."

"And I entrust you with mine." I nod towards her with courage.

Aoi claws tickle my leg as she tries to grab my attention, "I vow, to kill, for you. To never, abandon you. To stay, by you, forever."

I chuckle and hold back the pain quickly rising from my throat, "I vow to kill for you. To never abandon you. To stay by your side, forever."

Aoi crawls up my chest and her dexterous tongue invades my mouth. It lasts for a short time and I catch myself wanting more.

Then I see Lina has her mouth hanging open and her expression is frozen in shock.

I push Aoi out of my lap and crawl over the bed towards Lina. I grab her face and make her stare into my eyes, "I will protect you, I will keep you safe, I will always support you and encourage you to grow. I will always love you, I will entrust you with my life."

Her pupils dilate, her breath quickens rapidly, her mouth hangs open and she mutters unintelligible sounds.

"Lina, I love you, you love me, that's all we need. Now please, repeat my words," I plead.

"Ah… y-yes…" Her voice barely leaves her throat.

"I will protect you, I will keep you safe, I will always support you and encourage you to grow."

"I w-will protect you, I will k-keep you safe, I will a-always support you and enc-c-courage you to grow."

"I will always love you, I will entrust you with my life."

"I will a-always l-l-lo-v-ve you, I will entrust you with my l-l-life."

I seal her small lips with mine and invade her mouth with my tongue. She immediately responds. She seeks me and tries to pull my tongue towards her.

The girls clap and Lina soon breaks away from me in embarrassment.

I feel something change within me. My "Sanity" increased by 1 (now 10+4).

Through adversity, unity.

A note from Manasong

Hall of Fame of Patrons

The patrons who support Rupegia shall have their names sung by the bards for they deserve the glory and honor. Their names are:

Oracle Maximillian Hübner.

Lord Andrew Meyers.

Lord Hope.

Lord Samuel Lim.

Lord Cody Weigel.

Lord Bill.

Noble Salty Panda.

Leave a rating or a review to help me rise to the top or fix my shameful understanding of prose.

Take a look over my blog where all information of the world of Rupegia will be posted.

Join the Discord and discuss, or rant, or meme, or try and fight me so your waifu gets more screentime.

Become a Patron and read chapters in advance, or read the side-stories, or leave your mark on the story, or help choose the next artwork or the next side-story.

Chapter 42: Eyes Wide Open - Part 3

A note from Manasong

Attention: to conform to the limit of mature content (more than just sexual content) allowed in a novel, I've censored this chapter. You can look for the uncensored version here.

The symbol "-" denotes a section that got cut for containing sexual content. Also, if paragraphs seem missing, they were also likely censored in an earlier pass where the symbol wasn't used.

Lina hugs my chest tight with her thin arms. I kiss the top of her head and return her hug, her very sweet perfume fills my nose and calms my heart.

I feel it when Gify's touch turns on and gradually, all our hearts connect. Alissa's determination, Roxanne's trust, Hana's courage, Ciel's protection, Lina's support, Aoi's fearlessness, and my love for them all.

"Gih!"

And Gify's watchful eyes.

Though, that sounded slightly creepy.

…

Heh.

Anyway, we all get a piece of each other's mind, something that will help us grow. It also calms us greatly, making our anger pass and our hearts settle.

Lina's hug weakens and she untangles from me. She looks up, her gloomy eyes are dreamy and their corners are wet. I dry one them and give her a kiss on the nose. She chuckles softly and kisses my hand, before drying the other eye herself.

"There's something we have to do," I say and smile wickedly, "Does anyone know where their offices are?"

"I know where they could be, but not the exact location," Ciel answers, eyeing me suspiciously, "What do you want to do?"

"Tonight, when their offices are empty, I would like to send our own message."

Roxanne jumps on the bed and claps the tip of her fingers, "Let me blow it up!" She pleads.

"That would be a bad idea. They would know without a doubt that it was you," Ciel says.

"Exactly," I nod towards Ciel, "I want to make it ambiguous, at least until we are done with this escort business."

"You could use [Monster Summoning] to demolish the building," Alissa suggests.

"Minotaurs, Kite Dragons, the Symbol of Hate. All of those have high strength," Hana adds.

Lina perks up, "Get them to destroy the supporting pillars and the building will collapse easily," she completes.

I lift an eyebrow at her, "Do you have knowledge about architecture or engineering?"

She lowers her head, "N-no… you could call it dwarven intuition."

I shrug, "Better than nothing."

"So, now what? Are we staying here all day?" Hana asks.

"I think we should continue as usual, it would show them that we're not afraid," Alissa says.

"I agree," Hana agrees.

"Well, it's unlikely for them to attack again so soon," Ciel accepts and Lina nods along, "Though, after we destroy their offices…"

"It could signal a war," Roxanne says.

"It's already a war, we're just escalating it," I say.

"Aren't we dragging Klein and Rande into it too?" Lina asks.

Hana grits her teeth and her emerald scales rise. "We already did," she growls.

"It's not like we could just hide forever. We have to continue living our lives and just deal with the consequences as they come," Ciel asserts.

"I still haven't finished shopping," Roxanne says.

"Let's go out again, then. But let's avoid empty streets for now," Hana says with a wry smile.

Ciel breathes in deeply to gather her courage and nods.

"Show me where the guild's offices are first," I ask.

I spread four Hollys around the area Ciel had described and we all leave the inn.

With Alissa and Lina on each of my arms, we walk down the main street again while casually observing the performers. They guide me forward so I can focus on my Hollys’ vision.

During the morning, only the more subdued performances are being played, so there's nothing that interesting going on. The nature spirits seem interested in the performances, though. The rooftops are filled with their cute, watchful eyes.

Eventually, a Holly finds the building in question. Bright yellow core bricks with blood-red ones marking the frame. A very large crystal tablet is displayed in front with the words "Katasko, Escort and Protection Business Mercenary Company" inlaid in gold.

I bet those red bricks are load-bearing. They'll make for a nice target for the monsters. Though I wish I knew how to make gunpowder, then I could be a true terrorist.

With the target located, I focus back on myself and guide the girls towards our target. I pay attention to our surroundings, searching for any attentive eyes that follow me. I see a few suspicious imperials and tell their names to Lina so she can note them down. [Sense Soul] is the best counter-espionage tool around.

If I could stake out their offices, I could learn the name of every employee. Unfortunately, I'm already under surveillance by them and we're strapped for time. Though, the description of the man who hired the thugs will be forever at hand, written on a paper inside my "Items."

We reach Katasko's offices and linger in front of it. A few men and women go in and out in full armor, paying us no mind. Nobody seems to care for us so we move on, but then I discreetly put a [Gate] "coordinate" at a quiet-looking entrance to an alley nearby.

Then we meet up for lunch.

We go to another elven restaurant. I have fried not-potatoes with a sauce that's rather close to tomatoes. It's more on the bitter and spicy side instead of having the acidity and sweetness of tomatoes.

"Roxanne, have you ever seen a kind of black powder that creates a lot of smoke when lit up by a flame?" I ask her.

She pushes her glasses back up her nose and speaks, "Don't think so. Though, some of the oil that enchantments like Rande's conjures can make a lot of smoke if it's a bad enchantment."

"I know about it. It's a little dangerous to enchant things with [Flame Slash]," Lina chimes in.

"How easy it is to light up the oil produced by the spell?" I ask.

"Very, a single touch of a flame is enough."

"Does it burn without air?"

She tilts her head cutely, "Not sure."

"I think we can make it, I saw a book explaining about how to make things burn underwater," Roxanne comments.

"Can you make it burn faster, like, burn it all in an instant?" I ask.

She taps her lips with her fork in thought, "I think so. There are plenty of accelerants that we can test."

"I want to create an explosive that has two properties: it must burn it all instantly, creating a lot of hot air that quickly expands; and it must burn without contact with air, so it can burn inside a sealed container."

If I can manage to create smart explosives with [Golemancy] then things could get interesting.

"Not exactly my specialty but I can take a look at what [Alchemy] can do," Roxanne says.

"I could modify [Flaming Slash] to supply you with the oil," Lina adds.

"How hard is it to find something enchanted with that spell?" I ask.

"Rather hard," Lina frowns slightly, "It's a popular enchantment and it's dangerous for the enchanter so they always sell fast."

Another research subject to add to the list.

We go back to the inn and see Klein on a bench in front of the building. There's a small grass garden at the entrance so it's a nice place for patrons to spend some time.

"Ditched your parents today?" Hana asks.

She springs up with a wide smile, her tail waves a greeting to us. "Yep! They apparently became very concerned with my training, so I ran! We'll get enough time to train on the trip," she hums happily when she finishes speaking.

"So, what do you want to do today?"

"How about some cards? Like old times?"

Hana awkwardly looks at us and then rubs the scales on top of her hand. "I lost way too much money on cards to make that mistake again."

"Oh, we don't have to bet money," she flicks her wrist dismissively.

"Then, what? Clothes?" Hana's eyes turn fearsome.

Klein hesitates for a second and sends us all a glance, "Sure…" Her voice is filled with anticipation.

"So, you still got that Poch table, eh?" Hana murmurs nostalgically as her hand rubs an old circular board. It has eight small cavities around it with one more cavity in the middle. Some simple carvings of swords, knights, armor, monsters, and nobles decorate it.

"For old time's sake, I kept it. We had too much fun for me to just throw it away so easily," Klein says.

"How sentimental of you."

"Hmph! I like you and would like something that reminded me of you," she pouts and looks away with her chin held high.

"Awn…" Hana's gaze mellows and she gives Klein a tight hug.

"Help… breathe…!"

"I know, right. She knows how to precisely crush our lungs so that we can't breathe anymore," I comment.

Klein sends me a glare, "Brea~the…!" She wheezes.

Hana eventually lets Klein go and Ciel gives her a small [Heal].

"Thank you, Ciel."

"So, who's playing?" Roxanne asks while looking around.

"I'm not," Alissa raises her hand, "I'm just going to watch." She positions herself behind Klein and smiles mischievously.

Aoi curls around herself with Gify on top. She and Gify are going to just take a nap while we do our naughty stuff.

"Do you all sleep in the same room?" Klein asks as she looks around. The whole room is filled with beds, so there's barely any space to walk.

"It's more fun that way," I say. Klein looks barely surprised, she's getting used to our weirdness.

"Quite warm and comfortable, too," Roxanne adds.

"Ever since we started sleeping together I haven't had a bad night's sleep," Lina says.

Klein's tail wraps around her chest as she hugs herself, "So precious…" She mouths.

"Let me explain how this game works…" Hana starts.

So, it's poker, we are playing strip-poker.

"We should play with a low amount of chips so when someone loses all chips they lose a piece of clothing. Also, after every round ends, we roll some dice to decide who loses a piece of clothing but the winner of the round is immune," Hana recites the rules to us.

"You played this before?" I ask.

She smiles wide, "Oh yes."

The six warriors draw their weapons and raise their shields. Currently protected from each other, we try to analyze our opponents to see what they might be holding. The shields mask our expressions but they are merely a cover. Any movement, any little change, is a tell that must be scrutinized in search of the truth behind it.

We all take a sip of beer and begin.

Hana comes strong and confident, Lina follows with shyness, Roxanne prefers to wait and stays out of this round, Ciel does the same, I follow Hana, and Klein goes high.

I drop out along with Lina immediately. The two girls stare at each other intently, measuring each other's worth. Hana bets higher and Klein pays to see.

Klein's hand beats Hana's.

"Caught ya bluffing!" Klein exclaims as she gets all the chips.

We roll the dice and I lose my socks.

Klein and Hana aren't the most observant, but they do play strategically.

"Your skin is beautiful," Klein comments -.

"Thank you, so is your fur," Roxanne compliments back.

"But you aren't the best at bluffing," Lina says, her impish smile covered by the cards.

Roxanne glares back and her tail shoots up, aiming at Lina threateningly.

Lina is the next to lose-.

"Hohohoh~" Roxanne laughs evilly.

"This is just bad luck…" Lina pouts while shyly -.

"What are you trying to do? It's not like you have anything to cover," Roxanne remarks offhandedly.

"I still have my dignity."

"You still make Wolfy [Massage] you - every day, as if that would make them grow."

Lina turns her eyes to Ciel, who cowers behind her cards, "Why did you assume it was me?" Ciel protests.

She then turns to me with a frown, "I never tease you behind your back," I say and raise my hands in surrender.

A soft voice tickles Lina's left ear, "You shouldn't be ashamed of that, we all know how you envy Ciel and Hana," Alissa says and gives a kiss on Lina's cheek.

She pouts and motions for the game to continue.

"Ok, next you are going to say you are also wearing alluring underwear," Klein says to me as Ciel - loses.

"Would you like that?" I innocently ask her.

She starts to answer but chokes on her words and stays silent.

"I'm not sure I like this game," Ciel says -.

Klein's mouth hangs open and I close it with my hand. I push my soul just a tiny bit out of my finger and see a shiver run through Klein's whole body, yet she doesn't take her eyes off Ciel -.

"Ain't she like a cow?" Roxanne nudges Klein.

"Ain't you like a twig?" Ciel shoots back, a little flippant.

"Then what does that make Lina?"

"A… very cute little doll…?" She asks tentatively. Lina answers with a pout, making Ciel wince.

Alissa - sends me a wink.

Next, I take my shirt off. Klein avoids looking at me while Hana runs her hand over my abs.

"Isn't he delicious?" Hana growls. Klein sends me a glance and her breath becomes heavier.

Lina loses - next.

Then Klein loses her vest and shows us all her sash, something she only put on so we had a matching amount of clothes to lose. -.

"Please, don't stare…" She pleads shyly as every hungry eye falls on her.

"Then don't show it to us," Hana says.

Klein doesn't try to cover - herself and the game continues.

Ciel loses - more and groans. "Do I stop playing now? I don't have anything else to take off," she says.

"You can spread your legs -," Hana says.

Ciel spends a few seconds considering it. I see her breath quicken, she's getting excited. Then she nods.

Hana's shirt comes off and soon after, her pants. Klein chuckles repeatedly, now tipsy -.

Klein's pants come off next and she gets nervous, but her tail starts moving faster. This is her tell for excitement: she moves her tail while her body freezes up. -.

- The rounds continue and things escalate until I lose on purpose -.

"W-what n-now?" She asks, her voice shaking, yet dripping with anticipation.

I crawl over to her and advance my head to hers. She tries to move away but her limbs don't respond, so her body just falls flat on the bed.

"Now, you won. What do you want of me?" I ask

"W-w-won? M-m-me? Y-y-you?"

"Or do you want me?" Hana lays down beside her. -.

"W-wait! I can't!" Klein exclaims and Hana stops. "I-I can't… I didn't… I didn't talk to Dad yet…"

I put my hand softly over her cheek and make her look at me, "It's okay, we can wait. But we don't have to go all the way…"

The entire room goes silent as we all anxiously wait for Klein's answer with bated breath.

- She answers positively, but we don't go all the way -.

After a long session, she suddenly says, "I… I have to go… I'm sorry, Wolf, I c-can't do anymore." She quickly collects her clothes and starts putting them on in a hurry.

"It's fine. I'll be waiting for you to come again."

She holds back her chuckle and hurriedly leaves the room.

A bronze body covers my view as Hana immediately - straddles me.

Her fearsome yellow eyes lock onto mine, "That was the hottest thing we ever did. I want you to do her; I want to see her bleed; I want to see you destroy her little holes; I want to see her cream on your sword repeatedly!" She shouts.

-

"Wow…" Ciel murmurs, "That was exhausting."

"One of the best you ever gave me," Roxanne says as she hugs my arm tighter.

"I'm completely drained now," I say.

Alissa has a silly smile plastered on her face. -.

We leave the room to have a bath together and we catch Rande and Anton leaving while discussing the escort job. They barely spare us a glance and walk out of the inn. Klein completely freezes as she sees us come out. Her mother raises an eyebrow at her behavior then stifles a small chuckle when she sees us.

Fortunately for Klein, they were finished with their meal, so they have an excuse to leave.

There's just something special in knowing that she tasted - me. She only had one large mug of beer, too, so she can't even complain that she was too drunk to know any better.

After our meal, we spend a short, leisurely time reading and lightly drinking. Tomorrow we will be waking up very early, so we cut our evening short and go to sleep.

Gify is actually a really good alarm clock. He wakes us up at precisely 2 AM and I open a [Gate] to Katasko's office.

"There's one guard at the front, one at the back, and two inside. There's a few in the other buildings around, too," Alissa whispers.

I summon a Dream Eater and fill the street with the mist. Soon, even the guards in the nearby buildings fall asleep.

"You think there's an alarm or protections?" I ask.

Lina taps a finger on her cute lips, "There's definitely alarms, but protections would be too expensive," she says, "If they needed to protect something they would store it somewhere less obvious."

"Well then…"

I put all my points in [Summoning Magic] and [Reduced Mana Cost], then I summon eight minotaurs.

"Wreck-it, Ralph," I mutter.

"What?"

"Reference."

"Oh… Anyway, aim for the inner walls. The building is large enough that destroying all the inner walls will certainly make it collapse in on itself."

"Understood." Then I put thirty points in [Godly Language], "Become stronger!"

The minotaurs all bulge and grow a good thirty centimeters.

"Now, bring it down!"

Intermission 12

The scrawny pencil pusher keeps his posture shrunken, threatened by my presence.

"So, everyone was asleep?" I ask him without giving him another glance.

"E-everyone, Sir. The inner guards were moved to a safe area by the perpetrators before the attack began. We also found traces of magic but couldn't find any solid clue to which spell it was. There are too many ways to put someone to sleep for us to know with any certainty," he bows again once he finishes.

"If it's so easy to put the damn guards to sleep, then what do we even pay them for?!" I snap at him.

"T-they aren't there t-to stop s-something like this. O-only as a deterrent a-against theft or espionage," he barely holds his piss inside himself as he stutters.

I click my tongue and flick my hand at him. He bows again and scurries away.

Dwarven beard. How did they demolish an entire building in only a minute without leaving a single damn trace?!

Must be Helios. This is retaliation; they are merely flexing their power at us. They are hiding something powerful and I have no idea what it is.

This won't be easy… just what kind of damn task did those pissers send my way?!

A note from Manasong

Hall of Fame of Patrons

The patrons who support Rupegia shall have their names sung by the bards for they deserve the glory and honor. Their names are:

Oracle Maximillian Hübner.

Lord Andrew Meyers.

Lord Hope.

Lord Samuel Lim.

Lord Cody Weigel.

Lord Bill.

Noble Salty Panda.

Leave a rating or a review to help me rise to the top or fix my shameful understanding of prose.

Take a look over my blog where all information of the world of Rupegia will be posted.

Join the Discord and discuss, or rant, or meme, or try and fight me so your waifu gets more screentime.

Become a Patron and read chapters in advance, or read the side-stories, or leave your mark on the story, or help choose the next artwork or the next side-story.

Chapter 43: Missing Piece - Part 1

Today is the 9th.

We wake up early and I use Alissa for a quick morning routine. Even though I'm still feeling a little drained, Alissa is so good at it that she makes me cum after only a minute.

Well, yesterday was satisfying, though I do feel a little silly. Responding to assault with a demolition doesn't feel like it's on the same level, it makes me feel like I threw a tantrum. But if they escalate this further, then innocent people, or almost-innocent people, will get involved. I'm almost certain that blood is going to be spilled, and I see no easy way of ending this that doesn't involve us exposing ourselves and bending over to the nobles that are after us.

Then we calmly eat our breakfast. Everyone seems energetic and content, Hana hums happily, Alissa is brimming with happiness and Ciel seems absent-minded with a faint smile on her face.

"I'm starting to think you are more depraved than me," Roxanne comments casually.

"What…?" Ciel comes out of her stupor.

"You enjoyed playing with Klein almost as much as Hana did."

In just a few seconds, Ciel flashes through several emotions: anger, realization, shame, acceptance, finishing with laughter.

"So, did she finally accept it?" Alissa asks.

"Seems so…" Hana says with a shrug.

"What about Osaria?" Ciel shoots back with a sharp gaze.

Roxanne breathes in deeply and keeps her eyes on her food. "I don't trust her. I trust Klein, at least I trust Hana, who trusts Klein, but I don't trust Osaria. She reminds me too much of my instructor: aggressive and a little manipulative."

"Your call, Roxanne. If you don't want it, we won't bring her in, there's no problem with that," I say.

"Want to bet that you're going to buckle?" Ciel teases.

Roxanne scoffs and adjusts her glasses, "I'm perfectly capable of being faithful."

"If you don't reject her outright, she's going to keep seducing you and eventually you will fall to her."

"Don't say 'fall', I'm not going to fall in love with her," Roxanne frowns.

"But you will want her body."

"Do you want her now, too? Is that why you're pushing me towards her?" Roxanne raises her eyebrows questioningly.

"No… you can have your fun with her, I don't mind," she lifts her chin and looks away.

"I saw your lip tremble," Roxanne says with a cheeky smile.

Ciel puckers her lips and her face distorts as she tries to contain a smile.

"A-HA! Got you!" Roxanne points to Ciel with her index.

"Don't abuse it, my heart is still too tired for another round," Ciel says lowly to us and resumes eating.

It's best that we don't push this much further or else things will get dangerous.

Roxanne leveled up to 34 and increased her [Fire Magic] by 2 (now 24). She has 8 SP left.

With breakfast done, we return the keys to our room and end our stay.

The imperial soldiers move around nervously while the elven ones remain stoic. The town quickly starts to bustle with conversation as the early workers notice the tenseness and start asking questions.

We reach the north gate by dinghy and see Rande's caravan getting ready.

"Morning, Rande," I approach casually.

"Morning, Ryder," he merely glances back and nods.

"What's going on? The town is too loud for this hour."

"Oh, right," he stops reading the documents and gives us his full attention, "Someone demolished the offices of an imperial mercenary company. I think it's one of those companies bought by the nobles. Nothing special, just some small petty fighting."

"Wow, did anybody get hurt?" Hana opens her eyes wide and asks.

Rande glances at her and looks a little uncomfortable but responds, "Well, no. A little odd though, these fights can easily get bloody."

"Isn't it good that lives aren't being wasted?" Ciel questions with a frown.

"Well, yes," he awkwardly scratches one of his long ears, "But there's little reason to spare them. When you want to send a message, you need to be brutal. Otherwise, people think you are just bluffing."

I look at the girls and they seem to have mixed feelings.

"Anyway, no point in speculating about these things. Gossip spreads fast and the important details are lost along the way," he shrugs and goes back to reading the documents.

We continue towards the front of the caravan and the caravan guards nod to us in recognition. Then we see the commoners in front, most of the previous commoners left and now we only recognize a few. There's a few humans we don't recognize, a considerable number of golden elves, and a few silver ones. The numbers are less than when we left Rabanara, though, so at least Rande is not being as reckless.

Anton, his family, and Rande's are talking with the elven commoners. Anton notices our approach and waves for us to come over.

"There they are, Helios, the main escort. They will deal with the monsters before they even reach us," I hear Anton say as we approach.

The elves turn and their eyes analyze us. I don't see many relieved or confident expressions forming after they make their opinions about us.

"And you are the leader…?" An elder golden elf man questions me as I approach.

I give him my best smile and bow lightly, "Wolf 'Good Luck' Ryder, Scholar, Golemancer, and Summoner."

This gives him pause and he looks at me questioningly.

I roll my eyes and quickly fake chant a light elemental. Ciel looks slightly uncomfortable as everyone stares at an almost naked form of her.

"I see… so Weepers won't be a problem…" The elder elf nods repeatedly, now convinced.

"Wolf Ryder?!" A flippant voice comes from behind us.

A mature Asian woman with fading red hair and a graying, spindly Asian man strut towards us. The woman's gestures are aggressive and she grits her teeth while her eyes try to pierce me. The man is completely stoic and barely seems to notice me as he follows the woman.

The woman's eyes turn to someone else near me, "What did you do to my Dietgard, you sad doll!" She spews.

I follow her eyes and see a pale Lina staring at her wide-eyed. Her whole body freezes into a statue and she even stops breathing.

The mature woman's risque black dress flutters wildly with her movements. Her shapely legs peek out with every loud step as her high heels clack on the bricks. The graying man seems almost like a ghost in contrast to her, with his completely silent steps.

"Madame Helganst…" Lina mumbles.

"What?! I saw your mouth moved but no sound came! How many times did we tell you not to mumble?!" The woman barks.

"M-madame Helganst!" Lina's posture straightens immediately.

"And stop stuttering, say it with confidence!"

Hana and Ciel immediately get in front of Lina, blocking her view of Madame Helganst, and from Hana's shoulder, Aoi bares her fangs. The woman stops very close to both of them and stares at Hana in the eye at the same height. She's tall and her high heels make her look even taller.

Helganst leans her head to the side and peeks on Lina, "Is that what Hilde taught you? To hide behind your bodyguards?"

"She owes you nothing," Hana growls at her.

Helganst rolls her eyes, "Of course, the dragonkin is the one who acts aggressively."

"You need to take a step back," Ciel says with a dangerous tone. She delicately touches the exposed sternum of Helganst with the tip of her hand and pushes her back slowly. Helganst glares at Ciel but takes a step back.

Time to be diplomatic.

"Wolf Ryder, leader of Helios," I introduce myself and bow lightly, I don't think she would accept a handshake. "And you are…?"

Her eyes finally deem me worthy of address. "Helganst Roth," she says curtly to me.

"Friedrich Roth," says the old man softly, making me suddenly remember he existed.

"Roth… Hildegard's Roth family?" I ask.

"Yes… and Dietgard's Roth family," she answers, fuming with anger. The small wrinkles on her face stretch as she scowls.

I force a smile, "To what do I owe this pleasure?"

She glares at me, "Do not play with me boy, I don't skirt around pleasantries. I merely came here to have a word with the slave who dared abandon us and reject Dietgard's offer."

"As her master, you have to go through me if you need to speak with her," I calmly state.

Lina turns to me and holds my hand. "It's fine," she says, lowly.

I see no anxiety in her eyes, only calm resolve. I nod to Hana and Ciel and they part slightly. I take a glance back and see that the elves are watching us intently with curiosity, but after my glance, they immediately turn around and go back to their business. Klein and Osaria are also watching intently and both nod in support.

"What do you want to say to me, Madame Helganst?" Lina asks softly.

Helganst's mouth twitches at Lina's meekness but doesn't chastise her, "Why did you reject Dietgard?"

"I don't love him."

"That's it? Dietgard disappeared from Goldcross due to heartbreak, do you realize how much you have hurt him? How are you going to take responsibility for this?!"

Lina's confidence falters for a moment but she manages to shoot back, "Becoming part of your family is also something I would never want. Besides, Dietgard's ego isn't my responsibility!"

Helganst snorts, "Is this how you repay us for saving you? By abandoning us and turning your back to his affection?"

Lina frowns and gains more confidence, "I owe Hilde a lot and I'm sorry for not paying her back, but I don't owe you anything."

"Insolent…" She snarls and forces herself not to scream, "Where do you think the money to buy you, clothe you, teach you, and feed you came from?!" She hisses, "You run away from us in our time of need and join a perverted boy and his harem! I didn't think we raised you to be like that."

"You didn't raise me, Hilde did. And if you are going to disrespect my… my fiance, then I will be leaving," she glares defiantly at the woman who towers heavily over her.

Helganst seems about to burst a vein, her face turns even redder than her hair, "Fiance?! You used your body to seduce the boy like a damn whor-…"

*Slap!* Helganst staggers back and is supported by her husband. Ciel's face is distorted in pure anger; one hand is on the sheath of her sword, ready to draw; the other is raised high, resting there after the slap.

Helganst immediately straightens up proudly, the only trace of the slap is the red mark on her cheek.

"You have found companions of your level, Lina: animals." She turns around in a huff and struts away.

"We are wolves who eat snakes like you!" Lina yells back.

We wait in silence until Helganst's red blur disappears completely.

"Gih."

"Yeah, but not literally," I say.

"Well… that was interesting," Roxanne says.

"How did she finds us?" Alissa asks.

"I think it was our fault," Osaria says softly with a slight cringe. "Rande used your exploits to convince the other elves they would be safe with us."

I glance at the elder elf man nearby and he shrugs.

"So you announced to the entire town that we were escorting you?" I ask.

"Yes…" Osaria frowns apologetically.

"Not your fault. We never even imagined that Helganst would be so angry at us," I shrug.

I guess this is also how Katasko found where we were sleeping so easily.

Lina hugs Ciel, who calms down rapidly and even looks a little ashamed.

"Oh, yes, that slap was beautiful. I don't think I could have slapped her any better myself," Roxanne praises Ciel.

"That was certainly one of the most painful slaps I have ever seen. The sound was so crystalline and perfect that I must say it was almost musical," Hana adds.

Ciel sighs deeply and looks to the sky, "You're not helping."

"But… thank you, Ciel, for protecting me," Lina says.

Klein loudly gasps at Lina and uses her tail to hug herself, then she gets a little tense once our gazes cross. Anton and Krista seem sympathetic to us and give an encouraging nod.

Rande appears with Nito, who's bringing our horses, and the caravan starts to move past us.

"Here are your horses, Mr. Ryder," Nito says and hands me the reins of the monstrosity.

With a sigh, I mount my horse the same way as before.

Hana mounts hers and slaps the side, "Come on, Klein, get up," she says.

"She should ride in the carriage. Your horses aren't to be used by just anyone," Anton interrupts with a wide, phony smile.

Klein's tail tickles Anton's nose and he nearly sneezes, then a flash of light comes out of her and she dashes towards Hana, now as a monkey. She quickly climbs up Hana's leg and returns to human form, sitting perfectly in her spot.

I help Alissa up onto my horse and hug her tight, "There's plenty of room on these horses, they are far too big for just one person," I say and give my own phony smile.

Anton sends a sharp gaze to Nito who immediately turns away and stiffly walks to the back of the caravan.

With a short grunt, he enters the carriage where Oura, Krista, and a very tired looking Laertes are waiting.

"Maybe you could give me a ride too, later. Sitting in the carriage all day is a little tiring," Osaria comments with a smile, her sultry voice worms into my ear.

I smile at her suggestively, "Maybe…" I answer and guide the horse forward.

The imperial guard who checks our IDs takes a moment longer than normal. His eyes scan through the skill list on all of our tablets. All of them are blocked from sight as any other adventurer would, yet he still wastes time checking them.

Another name for the list.

We exit Goldcross through the north gate. Around us are a few farms with high walls to protect them from the usual monsters since the patrols are scarcer on this side. There's a river that flows from Fort Katakti, far to the west, and then empties into the Loyalist Lake below Ultirei's Tomb.

I slow down my horse towards the commoners and start chanting an area [Swift Foot].

"Oh… much appreciated, young man," says a mature human woman.

I spend a few minutes gathering my mana and finally release the spell on all of the commoners. Nearly all my mana was used, but I have some time to practice my [Redirect Mana].

"Impressive," the elder elven man says with a respectful nod.

The other elves talk among themselves in their native tongue in an excited tone. It does sound like Portuguese to my ears but what they are actually saying sounds like gibberish, so I can barely understand it.

I send a wave to the pleased commoners and head back to the front of the caravan.

As we pass through the farms, the Ultirei's Tomb mountain range becomes more visible. The closer we get the more we see the details: grey jagged rock sprinkled with red from the deeper sedimentary layers, and at the bottom, there's molten rock that had quickly solidified into crude obsidian. The mountain is protected by both the temple and the elves, so it still has all of the small, shining mana crystals that formed due to the high amount of mana everywhere.

To the left and behind the mountain, we see the first trees of the High Forest: gigantic towering trees that make the ones in the Sea of Trees look small. Bundles of thin trees twist around each other, interweaving with each other in a spiral, creating patterns as they reach upwards. Some of them look like springs; others make square, circular, or complex patterns, similar to Celtic knots; some look like greek columns; and a few appear to be abstract art. The elves use the trees as yarn to practice their "tree-knitting."

In front of us, small hills dot the landscape. Between them, small puddles of water hide beneath the tall grass. To our left is the last stretch of the Rakontagne mountain range, the earth quickly growing rocky as the plants die out. To our right is Antano, small dark green oaks start to appear and increase in size, and more to the front and to the right there's the Loyalist Lake where the river we crossed ends. The Lake has some nasty monsters and plants so the road we are taking avoids getting close to it.

The wide road is raised because the soil here is loose and muddy. Even so, the road has to snake a little and rise and fall along with the hills, so it's much harder to walk along it in comparison to the Shore of Leaves' straight path.

There are three informal "lanes" on the road: we walk on the right, the others come from the left, and the middle is left for faster caravans "overtaking" slower ones. With my [Swift Foot], our caravan becomes part of that faster category.

I let Alissa handle the reins while I calmly seek the ambient mana and pull it towards me with [Redirect Mana]. On our left are the mountains, so the mana coming from that direction is very "earthy" with a few hints of "Aoi," which should be coming from the dragons that live there. On the right, we're passing the corner of the wetlands of Antano, so I feel a lot of "plant," "death" and "toxicity." Not the most pleasant mana to receive.

Klein is now wearing padded leather armor, so she isn't as accessible as before, but that doesn't mean she doesn't enjoy being hugged by Hana. She lays her body against Hana's as she watches me with her dreamy eyes, then she turns a little awkward when I look at her.

"What are you doing?" She asks me.

"Refilling my mana with [Redirect Mana]," I say.

"Oooh, what's that?" She leans closer and opens her eyes wide in curiosity.

Alissa maneuvers our horses closer together.

"A skill I created, it allows me to take in the ambient mana to refill my MP."

"Isn't that a huge boon for mages like you?"

"Indeed, it is. We can fight much longer than the average mage because of it."

"So you taught Roxanne that, too?"

"They all know it."

She lifts her eyebrows and twists her neck to look at Hana, who hunches over and makes their faces get dangerously close.

"Yes, we all know it," Hana says softly, her warm breath is felt on Klein's face.

"Feeling a little lonely here," Roxanne comments. Aoi jumps up from Lina's lap and glides over towards Roxanne. "Awn… thank you," she says as she pats Aoi's little belly.

Klein turns to face the front and swallows her saliva.

I brush Alissa's hair while we make our way forward. The road is rather busy, so most monsters get killed before they can reach us. When it's nearly midday, Holly finally detects two Kappatti far away from any caravan or hunter. I decide to use them as test subjects.

Kappattos are small turtle/man hybrids that reach a maximum height of 1.50 meters. They have thick, slimy, green skin; turtle shell covering their front and back, which thankfully also covers their genitals; raised green hair that resembles grass; a beak-like face that is similar to a turtle's; long, frog-like legs that give it impressive speed; and long claws made for shredding and prying open oyster-like animals.

"Roxanne, my summons found two Kappatti, let's go kill them."

She nods to me and slowly wakes up the sprawled little Aoi. I relay my intention to the others and we gallop towards our targets. The monsters are a good distance into the wetland and close to the river, so we try to take a safe path through the drier parts of the hills.

A good 200 meters away from the road, Alissa stops us. A few of the dark green oaks block us from being seen by anyone on the road.

"They are over there and coming this way, slowly," she points to a spot in the distance. My human eyes can't see anything different over there.

"Roxanne, will your sleeping potions work on them?" I ask.

Her glasses shine when she realizes what I want to do, "Ohohoh, yes! The poison will spread quite quickly if we manage to make them absorb it through their gills."

"They are amphibious, so we will need to force them," Alissa says.

"I'll just knock them out with [Lightning Bolt] and splash the poison on their gills," I say.

Alissa doesn't seem too pleased but still accepts my plan. She hugs me from behind and gives me kisses on my neck while aiming my arm towards the Kappatti.

I see the puddle ripple and I cast the spell. Two green monsters appear, one jumps out of the water, while the other just floats in it.

I fire a second [Lightning Bolt], it hits the dashing Kappatto and the monster faceplants on the ground. Roxanne hands me a flask and I cautiously approach it with my shield raised high. With my feet, I expose the neck of the first Kappatto and dribble some of the liquid poison on its gills.

Both Kappattos stir and turn their heads towards us, their eyes brimming with anger. I cast another [Lightning Bolt] at the Kappatto at my feet, then I wait for the second monster to get close enough and cast it again. Now, with both monsters disabled, I pour all the poison onto their gills and wait for it to take effect.

It takes a few minutes and a few more [Lightning Bolts] before they finally succumb to the poison and fall asleep. I grab some rope and Alissa and I tie them up. Their skin is slippery, so it doesn't work that well. I conjure a nature elemental and make her vines become sticky, allowing her to get a stronger grip on the monsters.

I summon an earth elemental to keep watch and approach one of the monsters.

"Right…" I start and breathe in, "I will test [Bind] on this one. If something happens, kill it."

Alissa nods and draws her sword. She holds the sword close to the monster's neck and waits for me anxiously. Roxanne and Aoi stare intently at me, Aoi seems to be very excited.

I do it the same way as before: I cast the spell, grab the monster's soul, and release it inside mine. But this time, I'm prepared for what's to come.

A note from Manasong

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Chapter 43: Missing Piece - Part 2

A note from Manasong

Attention: to conform to the limit of mature content (more than just sexual content) allowed in a novel, I've censored this chapter. You can look for the uncensored version here.

The symbol "-" denotes a section that got cut for containing sexual content. Also, if paragraphs seem missing, they were also likely censored in an earlier pass where the symbol wasn't used.

I immediately wish to cut all sense sharing with the monster. I only receive a small glimpse of darkness and my body feels very heavy before it all fades away. I feel the same string inside my mind that connects me to another body, but this string feels more "strained." I carefully try to "approach" it and feel "heat" coming from it.

I open my eyes and smile to the girls. I receive back two beautiful smiles and a fanged one.

"This is the difficult part, I will try to control it," I say, then they nod and I continue.

Being careful will get me in trouble. I have to attack and dominate the monster's mind if I want to control it.

I grab the string and pull it. A tsunami rises and suddenly I feel small.

What is this? A wave for ants?

I laugh in my mind and start my own flood.

Memories of a difficult birth assault me. Out of hundreds of hatchlings, only a few get to live past a few days. I counter that with what my parents have told me of how I was as a baby.

I was a cry-baby, always crying about something. Even when my parents didn't acknowledge my pain, I still cried, and cried, and cried. Perhaps I just liked to yell, but my parents thought I was a hellspawn, created to drive them to insanity. It sounds cruel but it was funny as hell when my Dad told us this. We were in the living room drinking beer after the first dinner with my girlfriend at the time. People like to look back fondly regarding their first girlfriends but she wasn't that special, not in comparison to Lily…

The next wave is of a childhood fraught with danger and pain. Monsters have to learn quickly how to fend for themselves because nothing, absolutely nothing will help them survive. Their own mother abandons them a few weeks in, most of the time because she was slain by an adventurer, the other times are because she can't feed all the children. But monsters are born with knowledge and they grow blindingly fast, so they don't need a mother to nurture them for long.

I counter that with the memories of my childhood. How I was a bright kid, always being praised for being smart and creative. I was always at the top of the class, but I didn't let that get to my head. I knew that many of the kids had difficult lives, so while I swam in the glory, I never felt that I was "better" than the others. Then comes the embarrassing memories that I don't even want to use as ammo in this fight.

After childhood, the monster reaches maturity and starts looking for a mate. It is strong for its kind, and so it has the opportunity to find the perfect one. The search is long and painful, it paid for waiting with scars. It spent most of its energy traveling through the land and avoiding danger, but when the opportunity arises, it pounces and tears its prey apart in pure rage. Then finally it found the perfect mate: so strong that it nearly lost its spot at the top; so fast that the mate almost escaped; so cunning that the mate nearly ambushed it in return. Over a long and tiring wrestle, it finally rose victorious over its mate and it became the apex of its kind.

I fight back with memories of teenage years. The slow descent into bitter realism as the reality of an overachiever crashes into me. Trying to follow the trail of my sister and brother, I aim high and create lofty goals of becoming a famous or important person one day. I work hard, but the energy that my body has seems to decrease the more I work. Resting doesn't replenish me as much as it used to; playing video games become more of a chore than entertainment; reading doesn't stimulate me anymore; the intensity of exercise remains the same but the cost of energy increases; I find fewer and fewer reasons to smile. I retreat into my shell and abandon most of what made me happy just so I can get enough energy to reach my goals. Energy that never comes.

The next attack shows the bonding and love the pair of monsters share. The trust required to put your own life in the hands of your loved one. Their intense passion for each other and the results where they leave offspring at every chance they can get.

Is that all?

I counter that with my memories of Lily. After finally deciding to abandon my stupid dreams, I aim for something more ordinary and tangible, then I migrate to Canada and meet Lily. When I'm breaking out of my shell and seeing the sunlight, when I'm discovering my new love for programming and AI, when I'm letting happiness trickle in again, and then I finally meet the sun. That trickle turns into a flood as the first true summer of my life comes. I fall deeply in love with the crazy woman that is Lily.

The monster shows me its incoherent anger at my attack on its mate. Its entire life culminated in this moment, and it failed to protect the most important thing it has.

The effect that has on me is only to make me feel a little pity as I strike back with all I have. I send it the pain of being abandoned on this world; the need to cling to someone else for sanity; the effort in changing my views on life and death; the long journey in gaining the confidence to protect myself and others; the continuous battle against the horrors in this world; the fear of my uncertain future.

The monster's mind collapses and retreats, the tsunami crashes and gets absorbed by my mind. I envelop its mind with my own and force it to bend to my will. I feel the "heat" increase the more I try to control it. The "heat" increases so much that it burns and I feel that there is something wrong.

It hurts me, it is trying to tear me apart. It's not the monster's mind, it's something that's reacting inside it and trying to crawl out. It burns me so much that the monster's mind starts to regain control and expands.

I push the monster's mind out from inside me with all my might, no matter how much it burns. It finally leaves me and the burning stops.

"ARGH!" I yell in pain and grab my chest.

Alissa immediately slashes the throat of the monster and throws it away from me with some difficulty.

"Wolf? What happened?!" Roxanne asks me, a little desperate.

I put my points into [Spirit Magic] to cast [Soul Touch] while I explain, "It took some effort but I managed to overwhelm its mind, but then it started to get 'hotter' when I tried to control it. I don't know how else to explain it besides using 'heat.' It got so hot that it started to hurt and burn me, so I pushed it away and ended the [Bind]."

"Wolf, look," Alissa says and points to the monster with the throat slit. It is convulsing and its eyes are slowly opening. It's regaining control of its body, but the blood is gushing out like a fountain. Then it finally passes out because of the blood loss.

I look at Roxanne. "I have no idea how he woke up. He should have been out for at least a half-hour," she says.

"The speed the blood was draining at increased when it started to convulse. That was odd," Alissa says.

"Its… heart was beating faster, then," I say.

We all go silent, trying to understand what happened. Aoi drops down from Roxanne's shoulders and starts to eat the open neck of the monster.

"You managed to overpower its mind but when you tried to control it, the 'heat' started, right?" Alissa asks.

"Correct, it's something that didn't happen with the bird," I say.

"Could it be the God of Destruction's bloodlust interfering?" Roxanne asks.

I shrug. "It's our only guess."

"Try the other one, see what happens," Alissa says.

I cast the [Bind] and bring the monster's soul inside mine. The same "heat" comes out of the string connecting us. I immediately push it out of me.

Aoi [Clean]s her lips, "Try, me!" She exclaims and comes to us.

"Hm… I can cast [Bind] without trying to dominate your mind…" I say.

"If something goes wrong, will I have to kill you, Aoi?" Alissa asks.

Aoi curls her lips and pouts, "I want, to connect, to Wolfy," she says with stubbornness.

"Just the string, I can control that much," I say.

Roxanne hugs Aoi tight and we all tense up. I cast [Bind] and pull Aoi's soul into my heart. Once I release it, she breathes in and then lets a long breath out. Her eyes roll up and she smiles wide.

Inside of me, I feel the string; it's cold, "colder" than normal. When I "approach" it, I feel it wants my "warmth." I feel like I'm seeing a cold scarf that I want to wrap around me. I push it away and return from my meditation.

"She's different," I say.

"Yeah, I can see that," Roxanne comments.

Aoi is now moaning and writhing in pleasure. -.

"Uh…" I can only let out a sound as words fail me.

"Aoi… what are you feeling?" Alissa asks while frowning.

"Wolfy! Is inside, me~!" She cries happily.

Even Gify is looking at us wide-eyed. We all shrug to each other and wait a few minutes for Aoi to calm down. Meanwhile, Alissa kills the other Kappatto. I feel a little sad at their deaths knowing their history together, but monsters are monsters and there's no way for us to avoid bloodshed, for now.

I turn on my shared senses with Aoi and - feel her pleasure, so I cut it off because it's a bit inappropriate at the moment. Actually, we are alone, so I'm sure the girls wouldn't mind. Anyway… I reactivate our sense sharing and try to discern what Aoi is feeling.

- Alissa immediately notices it -.

"I activated the sense sharing with Aoi. Can you help me out while I try to understand what she's feeling?" I ask innocently.

"Sure…" Both girls smile suggestively -. Not the most romantic place -, with the two dead monsters nearby and all, but whatever.

-

I try to look deeper into why Aoi is feeling like this. What I sense is that her pleasure is like someone who was stuck in a deep, dark hole and finally feels the warmth of sunlight for the first time. Or a lonely person who just started dating for the first time. It's a feeling of "release" -.

"Kwa~~ah!" Aoi's whole body shivers -. She collapses on Roxanne's lap and pants with her tongue out; a satisfied smile is plastered on her face. -.

-

Alissa - smiles. "Well, she's - like any other humanoid woman," she says.

Roxanne looks very amused at all of this. "So… what happened?" She asks.

"Something about the [Bind] is making her very happy. It's like she's finally found something that she was missing in her life," I say.

"The complete opposite of the other monsters."

"Yes. The 'string' inside my mind that connects us also feels different. It feels cold, like it wants to be touched."

"Are you going to touch it?" Alissa asks.

"Once Aoi calms down. I don't want to have to overpower her; I want to see if she can willingly give me control."

Aoi's eyes regain some focus and she looks at me, "Okay, you can, have me," she says.

We wait a minute longer before Aoi is truly ready. She stretches herself and flaps her little wings, then she properly sits on Roxanne's lap.

"Okay, I'm going to try to control you. Don't resist, stay calm and let it happen," I say.

"Gih."

"Stop distorting the meaning of my words," I complain while facepalming.

"Gihih."

"Kweh!" Aoi hurries me.

"Alright, alright." I sit down in front of her and pat her head. "Here goes nothing…"

"What does that mean?" Roxanne asks.

"What…?"

"'Here goes nothing'. You've said that once or twice before, what does it mean?"

"To be honest, I have no idea." -I shrug- "It's an idiom that got morphed until it was unrecognizable."

"Kwe~eh!" Aoi hurries me again.

"Sorry… here we go…"

I find the string and grab it. It makes me feel slightly odd, not exactly unpleasant, but it makes me anxious about something. I pull it and the string comes to me without any resistance. The string gets thicker and thicker, then it starts to weave into a cozy blanket that gently nudges her memories into my head: a kiss, a hug, a pat, my own face repeated over and over again.

I collect the blanket and turn it into a bundle that I hold close to me. The more I hug it, the warmer it feels. It's not the unpleasant "heat," but soothing warmth.

"Give me a lick," I tell the blanket inside my mind.

Aoi leans closer to me and licks my hand.

"Get up on my shoulder."

She crawls up my scale shirt and sits on my shoulder. Then, she nuzzles her scaly face against my cheek, almost purring in happiness.

I feel something odd, it's as if my soul is a sand hourglass. I feel a constant trickle leave me, but the amount of "sand" on my side doesn't decrease. This feeling is what makes me anxious when I touch Aoi's string.

"Wolfy, I love, you," Aoi softly says in my ear.

My heart tightens and I take her off of my shoulder so I can hug her tight. She increases in size a little so she can receive the hug more comfortably. The more I focus on her and the more that I feel like giving her my love, the more sand that trickles out of me.

"Something is happening. Not sure what, or how, or why, but my soul is giving her something," I say.

"Kweh! You are, inside me!" Aoi gushes and nuzzles in my chest. Her happiness leaks into me while I still hold her "blanket."

"Give us [Sense Soul] and we will try to search for what's different," Roxanne says and Alissa nods.

I obey and we wait a few minutes in silence while the girls scan my soul.

"I see nothing happening to your soul, Wolfy," Alissa says.

"I see something being added to Aoi's, but it's veery slow," Roxanne says.

"Gih," Gify agrees with both.

"Doesn't seem to be anything bad, we can wait and see…" I say and shrug.

"Gih," Gify assures us.

"Can you test [Bind] on me?" Alissa asks with an innocent smile.

I look at Roxanne and she shrugs, "If you don't try to force her mind then it might be doable," she says.

[Bind]ing Alissa to my will is certainly appealing, but I'll have too much power over her. I can't use it to force her to obey me; what I can use it for is to keep her safe and for us to open our minds to each other.

I breathe in deeply and nod, then she sits close to me with her tail wagging furiously.

I release Aoi's soul and cast [Bind] on Alissa. The "soul arm" that grabs her soul and pulls it back to me feels much heavier and more difficult to control. I feel like Alissa's soul is almost "slipping" from my grasp.

Once her soul is inside me, her string appears in my mind just like the others. I don't feel any "heat" or "coldness" coming out of her string and no "trickling" of my soul towards hers.

"That's it?" She asks, with mild disappointment.

"Did you feel anything?" I ask.

"Just a mild discomfort. Now it's like I'm constantly focusing on our fellowship bond, I know exactly where you are."

"I'll pull the string, don't resist."

She nods and her tail resumes hitting the ground repeatedly.

I pull the string and the most delicate textile I have ever felt follows it. Alissa's delicate memories of our time together send me into a trance. Love, dedication, loyalty, trust. My first instinct is to wrap myself around all this love coming out of her and fuse them to my own emotions.

Wait… fuse…? NO, STOP!

I desperately push away Alissa's silk and we both groan in pain. Her silk flutters with the wind and spreads out, the shape of a hand forms out of the folds. I run away in fear of hurting her further.

Through the connection, we both feel the anxiety of each other and stop. Our eyes meet and we sigh. Her silk returns to the nothingness and only the string remains.

"I didn't expect that, to be honest…" I say with a wry smile.

Alissa giggles and shakes her head.

Aoi, Gify, and Roxanne lean over, dying of curiosity. "What happened?" Roxanne asks.

"Instead of resisting and hurting each other, our minds tried to fuse together…" I answer and chuckle, "Having a tail is so weird, I can still feel how it's like to have one."

"Gih," he chirps proudly.

"Yes, having a tail is the best," Roxanne agrees.

"Kweh!"

Alissa scooches closer. "Let's do it again, but we have to try to not fuse together," she says.

I grab her cheek and look into her eyes with a soft smile. "Ready?" I ask and she nods. I pull on the string again and the silk comes out. I let it bundle gently on the ground before trying to envelop it, keeping our boundaries in mind.

The feeling that I have while holding her silk is that of wanting to bite it and have it inside me. It's a very annoying feeling and takes some willpower to control it.

"Kiss me," I say to her inside my mind.

She leans over and falls on top of me. Her lips seal mine and her tongue invades my mouth.

"Okay, stop!"

She freezes on top of me with her tongue still inside my mouth. -.

"Go back to normal."

She resumes kissing me and rubs her crotch on my leg. She desperately searches for the fastenings of my pants and tries to undo them.

"Come."

Nothing happens and I feel the disappointment coming out of her.

She finally releases my pants -. Then she breaks the kiss and desperately undoes the fastening of her own.

When she lowers her pants - I say inside my mind, "Don't lay with me."

She freezes - and cringes. She then starts to use her hands while staring at me with anger.

"Don't use your hands."

She stops and growls in anger. Her eyes look at me dangerously sharp.

"Obey me."

Her legs quiver and through the connection I feel the fire burning - in her heart.

"Please, Wolfy…" Alissa pleads between gritted teeth.

"You are free, do what you want."

-

Alissa reaches it -, and through the connection I feel it too. A massive wave of pleasure takes hold of our bodies and makes every one of our muscles seize up for several long seconds. -. Then, after it passes, she collapses on top of me.

I mess with my points and cast [Refresh] on both of us.

"Thank you, Wolfy…" She says in my ear.

"You are welcome…" My voice comes out faint as I'm still - in shock. Once I finally regain my voice I say, "I felt so much pleasure. Women have it good, what the hell…"

Roxanne laughs so heartily that she lets herself fall onto the grass. Alissa seems at a loss for words and simply shrugs.

-

"Roxanne, can I try it with you, now?" I ask after she's done = with Alissa.

"Sure."

I cast the spell and bring her soul towards me. My "soul arm" feels like it weighs a ton and my real arm flexes while I desperately try to pull her soul towards mine.

I grunt as I finally manage to get her inside me and release her soul. Once her string appears inside my mind, I start to feel very "tickly." I have to use a lot of willpower to not pull on the strings and fuse myself with them.

"My mind is… getting taxed. I can barely… keep calm with you three… inside me," I say. My face twitches as the tickling inside my mind starts to get unbearable. It reaches the point where I feel like driving a dagger inside my brain just to stop the tickling.

I finally decide to grab Roxanne's string and push it out of my mind.

"Sorry, two is the limit for now," I say.

Roxanne pouts and looks at Alissa with envy. "Awn… that sounded like fun," she says.

"Having a - felt amazing," Alissa confesses and giggles.

"Right… you felt what I felt," I say and sigh, "We can't abuse the connection sharing - or we might go numb to pleasure."

Even though there's [Regeneration], we'd better not abuse it.

"Oh, now we have to train mental communication," Alissa says and Aoi nods.

"We can do it on the way. Let's go back, we've played around enough," I say.

A note from Manasong

Hall of Fame of Patrons

The patrons who support Rupegia shall have their names sung by the bards for they deserve the glory and honor. Their names are:

Oracle Maximillian Hübner.

Lord Andrew Meyers.

Lord Hope.

Lord Samuel Lim.

Lord Cody Weigel.

Lord Bill.

Lord Novgarod.

Noble Salty Panda.

Leave a rating or a review to help me rise to the top or fix my shameful understanding of prose.

Take a look over my blog where all information of the world of Rupegia will be posted.

Join the Discord and discuss, or rant, or meme, or try and fight me so your waifu gets more screentime.

Become a Patron and read chapters in advance, or read the side-stories, or leave your mark on the story, or help choose the next artwork or the next side-story.

Chapter 43: Missing Piece - Part 3

A note from Manasong

Attention: to conform to the limit of mature content (more than just sexual content) allowed in a novel, I've censored this chapter. You can look for the uncensored version here.

The symbol "-" denotes a section that got cut for containing sexual content. Also, if paragraphs seem missing, they were also likely censored in an earlier pass where the symbol wasn't used.

As we approach the caravan, Ciel eyes us suspiciously. "You spent quite a lot of time out there," she says.

"We had some fun," I say and shrug.

Klein's eyebrows rise and she asks, incredulously, "In the open?"

Alissa nods and happily smiles, her tail wags and hits my belly repeatedly.

"I was ignored, though," Roxanne says with a wry smile.

"Oh, sorry… I'll make it up to you," I say with a slight cringe.

"All of us," Hana says and looks at me suggestively.

Our conversation fades away as we all notice Aoi's happy humming. Her head is turning like it's on a swivel, switching around repeatedly and looking at everything as if it was the first time.

"You look pretty happy, Aoi," Hana comments.

"Kweh! Wolfy, is inside, me!"

Klein chokes on her spit and the other girls look at me questioningly. Alissa, Roxanne, and Gify choke their laughter.

"It's a long story…" I give them a phony smile. "Now… don't say anything else that can be misinterpreted, Aoi," I look at Aoi and give her a sharp gaze. Just to make it more clear, I pull on her blanket inside my mind and give it a few "pokes," making her jump in surprise.

"Sorry," she says and giggles.

"That wasn't literal, right? You guys are just messing around again?" Klein asks.

"Literal… hmm, not sure about that," I say and grin.

Klein uses her tail to massage her eyes, "Why are you guys so weird?"

"You are the one who slept with all of us, so you're a weirdo, too," Roxanne says matter-of-factly.

Klein groans softly and looks away.

"Have you talked to your parents yet?" I ask her softly. Alissa helps me out and leads our horse close to Klein's.

She bites her lip when I come closer and looks at me from the corner of her eyes. "No… I didn't have the courage."

"Well, at least you admit that," Hana says and shrugs.

I grab her hand and kiss it, pushing my soul out of my lips just a little bit. She breathes deeply and keeps her eyes glued to me. I feel a shiver run down my spine and see Anton intensely staring at us.

Oops, better not get too close for now.

I increase the speed of my horse discreetly and the girls follow.

"You should do it soon, it's no use to keep waiting," I say.

"We will keep teasing you if you don't say no," Hana adds suggestively in Klein's round monkey ear.

"And you will eventually go crazy if you don't get off," Roxanne finishes.

Klein turns to Ciel and Lina in search of support.

Ciel shrugs. "It's true. If you want it, just do it," she says.

"It feels good, Wolfy is very gentle," Lina says and nods.

Klein gets even more flustered. "T-that's not what I wanted to know," she says.

"Why do you want to remain 'pure'?" Ciel asks.

"A lot of husbands prefer one," Klein answers shyly.

"To be honest, I thought that too, but…" Ciel looks at me warmly, "the good ones won't care."

"But…! I could still be losing a chance of finding one," she looks down as she speaks, not very confident in her words.

"If the man cares more for that than your personality, then he only wants you as a prize, not as a woman." Ciel spurs her horse and leads it to the other side of Klein's horse. She grabs Klein's hand and rubs it gently. "You are a good woman, you should let yourself be free to choose."

"I agree," Roxanne says, "I don't regret doing it with other men before I met Wolfy, I only wish I had met him sooner."

Ciel releases Klein's hand with a soft smile.

"Aren't you older than him? Wouldn't he have been a child back then?" Klein asks.

Roxanne snickers evilly, "That would make it even better." Then she sends me an intoxicating gaze and I feel an instinctual need to call her "onee-san."

I have to teach her how to "ara ara," maybe Ciel too.

Klein lifts an eyebrow and looks at Roxanne worriedly, "Wouldn't that be the Sin of Rape?"

"I'm not that much older than him," -she looks at Klein in horror, then turns to Ciel- "and if it's love, the Gods would allow an exception, wouldn't they?"

"Well…" Ciel cringes, "you are kind of a sadist so I'm not so sure about it."

"How old are you, Wolfy?" Klein asks me and bites her lip, suddenly becoming very embarrassed but she doesn't correct her mistake.

I grin at her and answer, "Nineteen."

"Bullshit," she immediately retorts.

"Yeah," Ciel agrees. "But that's what his system says, so…" She shrugs.

Klein spends some moments analyzing me. "Do you want me as a wife, Wolf?" She finally asks.

"I can't answer that, it must be a unanimous decision to accept you," I say.

"And we don't think you would enjoy traveling with us," Hana says.

"I… have to agree with that," Klein says with a sigh.

"But we do like you," I say and look to the girls, who all nod, even Aoi. "And we would like to enjoy our time with you."

"It's not like you are a pure maiden, anymore," Roxanne says and grins evilly.

"I'm still pure," Klein pouts and turns away, chin held high.

"Only in body, not in spirit," Alissa says.

"That's what counts."

"Keep lying to yourself," Alissa smiles.

"Klein, we may be pressuring you, but in the end, the only thing that I want is for you to be happy," Hana says.

Klein turns around and they look at each other in the eye. Klein reaches over and tenderly holds Hana's cheek with her hand. Hana's strong hand grabs the back of Klein's head and pushes her closer.

I summon a tall earth elemental that blocks their horse from the view of the carriage following behind us. Our horses are quite far ahead now, but still, better safe than sorry.

Their lips seal and their mouths open. Hana hugs her tight and takes charge of the kiss. Her tongue explores Klein's mouth and I can only imagine the sweet taste of their saliva mixing.

Klein's right leg swings over the horse so she can sit on it sideways and kiss Hana better. -.

The caravan coming towards us is still too far away, I just hope that nobody there has [Hawk Eyes].

They break the kiss and a bridge of saliva connects them for a moment. Their heavy breaths mingle -.

Alissa turns into a small fox and runs up my shoulder, then she jumps and lands behind me, back in human form. -.

-

Hana makes Klein sit correctly again and I finally let them leave the protection of the earth elemental. Through Aoi's eyes, I notice Anton's intent gaze is unchanged, but he likely doesn't suspect anything since he could barely see us at this distance.

As our - emotions subside, we go silent for a while. I send the earth elemental away as if I was sending it to kill a monster, and then I dismiss it when it's far enough. We discreetly slow down our horses so we can get closer to the caravan again.

"Ciel, was Wolf your first?" Klein breaks the silence.

"Yes."

She turns around and asks her intently, "Why did you wait?"

Ciel awkwardly looks at her own body. "Nearly every man I met just wanted to suck on my pair…" She says with a little disgust.

"Uh…" Lina tries to speak as she worriedly looks at Ciel.

"We all want to do it, say it correctly," Hana says.

Ciel smiles to herself, "Right… every man and plenty of women want to suck on them, but most of them want only that."

"The woes of being hot and big-chested," Roxanne says derisively and rolls her eyes.

"You are the one who complains about Osaria harassing you," Ciel says with a sharp glare.

"Not as much as you do about your delicious cow pair."

Aoi looks at her own sleek body and runs a claw through her scales, "Are chests, so tasty?" She asks.

"You should suck on some and find out for yourself," Roxanne says, very amused.

Aoi turns to me.

"You should suck on Ciel's," I immediately divert her attention away from my poity bits.

"Please, we are getting sidetracked!" Klein complains.

"You should look at Lina, you're both slender and beautiful as is," Alissa says and Lina nods with a shy smile. "Also, Wolfy doesn't care about size. Oh, do you have pointy bits?"

Aoi lifts the scales on her chest. "No," she says sadly.

"It's fine, we will find other ways for him to play with you," Alissa says assuredly.

"Anywa~y…" Ciel continues, "I waited because I just couldn't find a good man. They only wanted me for my body and that made me lose any interest in them. I just felt so disgusted that I couldn't give myself to anyone and ended up staying single for so long…" She smiles bitterly but it turns soft. "Then Wolfy kind of swept me off my feet and completely corrupted me… I didn't even like other women that much until, uh, until I met Lina," she turns shy and blushes.

"I'm glad he did," Lina says and smiles adorably. Ciel pats her head lovingly with a wry smile.

"Didn't you do it with me before you did it with Lina?" Alissa questions.

"You are… a different case. I just find you really hot," Ciel's voice goes faint as she gets more uncomfortable.

"Who doesn't love her? Her fox ears and tail are so adorable even I am jealous," I say. Alissa hugs me tight and fills my neck with kisses.

"Her screams are delightful, too," Hana says in a sultry tone.

Klein sighs, ignoring that last comment. "This is harder than I thought. I feel a little scared and anxious… but I also just want to have some fun… with Wolf-," she bites her tongue as she almost says "Wolfy" again.

"What do you want to do with your life? Who do you want to marry?" Alissa asks.

Klein goes quiet and stares forward.

"I want to marry a knight," she says softly and gains some confidence, "so maybe I could fight alongside him or something… but I don't want to keep traveling forever. I want to settle down in one place and have stable friends and neighbors."

"Man or woman?" Hana asks.

"Man. I don't think I even like women in general, it's just you all who make me feel funny," Klein shyly admits.

"Yeah, we have that effect," Roxanne says with a smirk.

"Would you marry a man with more than one wife?" Ciel asks.

"Hm, maybe… but if he had a husband…" She giggles girlishly.

"That's Wolfy's biggest flaw, not enough swords," Roxanne says with an evil smirk.

You just wait until I finish my [Soul Hardening], or when we get our hands on some more Delicious Horrors.

"Don't start, you know how it ends if you tease me that way," I warn Roxanne and she blows me a kiss.

"Aren't you tired of traveling, Hana?" Klein asks.

"Not yet. I'll have a long life with Wolfy, so I don't need to settle down immediately. The only thing I really want right now is to reunite my family," Hana answers, her smile has an unusual amount of kindness and warmth in it.

And there's also our destiny to fulfill.

Klein turns and gazes deeply at Hana, considering her words. They almost kiss again, but our proximity to the carriage behind us makes them hesitant.

The time for lunch comes. We stop for our meal and Krista pulls out a mini kitchen out of her [Item Box]. The food was already mostly cooked so we only have to wait a short time for it to finish. While we wait for that, she has already begun preparing dinner.

Just as energetic as her daughter, she moves from pot to pot, prepares some ingredients, then taste tests a meal, all in rapid sequence. She cooks not only our meal but also the one for the soldiers and Space mages, albeit theirs looks simpler.

For us, we had beef wellington with a thick not-wine and beef sauce, green bean pod salad that tastes faintly sweet, not-lentil soup, and some very light beer. It's refreshing to be eating beef regularly again, though it won't last long since there are no cows inside the High Forest.

The elven commoners organize themselves to prepare their own lunch. They include the human commoners with a little reservation. The Space mages cast [Conjure Bland Meal] and distribute the dry cracker-like magical food to anyone who didn't have enough to eat.

A meal in the open grassland with the impressive view of the snowy peaks on one side and the massive trees approaching us on the other. Fresh air, untainted by pollution, city-life, or the marsh nearby. It's these small things that I should focus on to find my happiness.

Laertes still looks like he barely slept and kept to himself the whole meal. Anton tried to cheer him up and strike up a conversation with him, to little effect.

The sun is shining very brightly so most people wrap light head scarves around their faces. No wonder why there are so many tanned elves, Glorampina is even hotter than here. With [Regeneration] we can easily deal with sunburn, and [Breeze] saves our skin by keeping us fresh.

We finish our meal and return to the road. Anton convinced Klein to ride inside the carriage while he walks along beside it.

Alissa switched with Roxanne so I can play with her body all day long to make it up to her.

With the free time and privacy, I decide to tell the others of our test with [Bind]. I give [Sense Soul] to them so they can look into mine and Aoi's souls.

"Interesting, I would love for you to [Bind] me next, Wolfy," Hana asks. "I wonder if [Pain Conversion] can be used when you give me mental pain."

I ignore her last sentence and elaborate, "I think I can get used to more [Bind]s with time. Also, it's not that difficult to change whoever is bound to me, so we can always switch whoever is bound for the best utility." Alissa and Aoi look at me sadly and I smile apologetically to Alissa. "I don't think it's a good idea to un-[Bind] Aoi, so you will have to give up your spot occasionally, Alissa."

Alissa pouts then sighs.

-

"I don't see anything actually leaving your soul, Wolfy," Ciel says.

"Same," Lina agrees.

"Aoi's soul is slightly different from last time," Roxanne says and her tail gently wraps around my neck. The caravan crossing us looks at us oddly -. She is an exhibitionist, and she gets even more excited while they stare at us.

"Kweh! I am getting f-…" I hold Aoi's tongue through the [Bind].

"You said that on purpose," I say.

Aoi laughs out loud and the passersby jump in surprise when they hear her voice.

"You need to test the mind communication," Lina says.

"Yeah, but…" I smile wryly. "Alissa, can you hear me?" I say in her mind.

"Yes," she immediately answers out loud. Through the connection, I feel her heart tighten and her crotch heat up.

I knew it.

"Things are going to be difficult if you get horny every time I use the [Bind]," I say.

"But Wolfy…! It just feels so good!"

"Is it him controlling you that makes you, uh, excited?" Lina asks. Alissa nods with a perverted smile. "Can you do it in a way that doesn't force her to obey? Like, how senses are shared; maybe you can share your mind with her instead of forcing the communication?"

"Ooh… you just gave me an idea," I say.

The tighter I hold on Alissa's silk, the more we share, so what if I went deep inside her soul? Her mind should be in there somewhere, and if our minds "touch," can we talk?

I keep our boundaries in mind and search inside her. A silent storm of feelings surrounds me. I see fragments of strong memories and I recognize most of them. Deeper in, I find a constant, harmonious humming that slowly changes notes.

"Alissa?" I think inside my mind.

The humming turns into a voice, it echoes through my mind like someone is speaking inside a huge hall, "Wolfy?" Alissa responds.

Found her brain, I think.

I grab the humming mass and bring it back with me. Like a swimmer rapidly surfacing, I feel all the memories fly past me, and then I'm suddenly back in the calm, dark silence of my own mind. In my hand, the string now hums softly with Alissa's voice.

"Can you hear me?" I ask.

"Yes! This is amazing! You are speaking inside my mind!"

"How are you speaking to me?"

"I don't really understand how, but it's like there's a small peephole where I can speak through and you can hear."

"Now that's convenient."

"But it doesn't feel good… please toy with my mind later."

"No."

"Hngh…!" She moans softly.

Well, shit, now she's getting excited at being ignored too.

"Hey, Wolfy…?"

"Yes?"

"Love you," she says in a cheeky tone.

"Hngh…! I love you, too."

"Did you just moan…?"

"Hm, no…?"

"Love you, love you, love you, love you."

"Ahn! Stop! It's hard to control my emotions in here!"

Alissa laughs out loud -.

"You two are having fun…" Ciel comments, a little jealous.

I smile at Ciel and continue. I dive inside Aoi's mind and find her humming, it's more chipper than Alissa's.

"Aoi?"

"KWEH!"

I groan internally and my mind is filled with a giant Aoi. Her jaws open wide and the black maw rapidly approaches me.

"Calm down, you're resisting."

The huge blue dragon clamps her mouth shut and looks at me apologetically, then it slowly shrinks into nothing.

I grab her "brain" and pull it back towards my mind.

"Okay, this is how we talk."

"Yay! I can speak freely here!" She answers inside my mind. This voice of hers is much less childish and slightly sensual. I think that when she fully matures it's going to be on the lower end of a woman's voice, like Hana's or Osaria's.

"Your voice is different in here."

"Hihih. My throat hurts when I try to speak, so it never sounds right, but now you know that this is my real voice!" I can just imagine her puffing her chest in pride. She's currently being petted by Alissa, so she's in a rather undignified position, sprawled all over Alissa's lap.

"Your voice is beautiful, you will certainly sound very mature and dignified when you grow up."

"Uhmm…" She considers my words and tries to understand the meaning of my emphasis.

-

I pull out the golems, they spend their time practicing [Telekinesis] and playing dead when other caravans pass us by. Anton and Rande look at us curiously but say nothing.

As I give Roxanne a breather, we get closer to the carriage so we can see inside. Klein is asleep in the carriage. She and Oura are leaning on each other and drooling slightly, to the amusement of everybody.

"Have you been keeping Oura up too late, Rande?" Hana asks with a teasing smile.

He smiles back suggestively but it turns soft, "She just loves to read too much. When she's absorbed with her books, she loses track of time and forgets to sleep."

"Oh, I know how that is," I say and Lina nods along.

"When it's our turn to sleep with Wolf you never lose yourself," Ciel says teasingly.

Lina pouts and stays quiet.

"What are those things?" Rande asks, looking at Ted and Suzy in Hana's lap.

"Golems, my creations. Think of them as simple, artificial life," I say.

"Oh, so that's where your title came from. But… is it really 'life'? Do the Gods allow you to create 'children' at will?"

"They are more like copies of humanoids. Think of them as tools rather than living beings," Ciel says.

"If you say so, priestess," Rande shrugs and looks at the golems warily.

"Can they fight?" Anton asks.

"Not yet," I answer. With [Telekinesis], Suzy raises a small rock on the wayside and shoots it a few meters away.

Anton looks at them warily. "Aren't they dangerous?" He asks.

"If you don't know what you're doing. Though, considering that I'm the only living 'Golemancer,' I do know what I'm doing," I smile calmly.

I spend my time trying to create a chant for [Bind]. If I can alter it so the girls can only use it for communication, then it would be much safer and possibly less taxing on the mind. If it's difficult to maintain more than two [Bind]s for me, who is used to multi-sense sharing and other inner-mind shenanigans, then how would the girls fare?

Dusk comes and we get very close to the entrance to the High Forest. We leave the road and find a good spot to make camp. A few other caravans stop a good 50 meters away, this seems to be a regular spot for camping as the ground is unusually flat.

With this amount of humanoids in the wild, we had to deal with a few more Kappatti and Marsh Goblins, the sneaky cousins of the poisonous Swamp Goblins. Though, since we are on the left of the road, in the more dry and rocky area, the monsters had to expose themselves before they could reach us, so they were easily dispatched by my elementals.

During the bath, I pull Lina to me and start giving her my love.

"You don't want it?" I ask.

"Huh? Yes, I want it, please," she raises her head and plants her lips on mine.

"You seem distracted."

"Oh… I have just been thinking about Madame Helganst."

"You shouldn't bother with her."

"She's a bitter woman, and she's not the kind that needs pitying," Ciel says.

Lina nods and kisses me again. -.

Dinner is more beef wellington, and a not-carrot and not-potato salad with cream and not-chives. Krista takes her job seriously; every meal is perfectly made.

Laertes is so quiet that even Klein tries to cheer him up, but that may have just made things worse.

After dinner, I sneak out of the tent and store some boulders inside my [Item Box]. They could be more reliable than barricades, but just a little more awkward to use.

In our tent, Lina finishes the enchanting of her switch-axe and adds [Double Strike] to it. The weapon now has gold and silver lines running all along it. This will give her enemies pause when they realize how dangerous it is.

We all practice our spells a little. I practice my [Soul Manipulation]; Alissa's [Ignorance] is starting to form; Roxanne is learning [Water Spirit]; Hana's [Double Image] is perfect so she's starting to practice [Godly Language] more seriously; Ciel's [Holy Spirit] is almost independent; Lina's [Weaken] is starting to work; Aoi is nearly done learning [Item Box]; and the golems are using [Telekinesis] to move around more easily.

"Gih," Gify calls my attention.

I follow his advice and use [Sense Soul] on Aoi. I see a familiar bump on the outer layer of her soul.

Soul Info

Name: | Aoi

Oh boy.

A note from Manasong

Hall of Fame of Patrons

The patrons who support Rupegia shall have their names sung by the bards for they deserve the glory and honor. Their names are:

Oracle Maximillian Hübner.

Lord Andrew Meyers.

Lord Hope.

Lord Samuel Lim.

Lord Cody Weigel.

Lord Bill.

Lord Novgarod.

Noble Salty Panda.

Leave a rating or a review to help me rise to the top or fix my shameful understanding of prose.

Take a look over my blog where all information of the world of Rupegia will be posted.

Join the Discord and discuss, or rant, or meme, or try and fight me so your waifu gets more screentime.

Become a Patron and read chapters in advance, or read the side-stories, or leave your mark on the story, or help choose the next artwork or the next side-story.

Ciel's Origin: Wanderlust – Teaser

A note from Manasong

This chapter is not required to read to understand the main story, this is only a side-story.

This is a teaser for the patreon-only side stories I'm writing.

Each chapter has 3 parts and the first part of any new storyline I will make public as a teaser. I'm planning for the main cast to have at least 3 chapters of side-stories.

A bell rings outside our door and I wake up. "IT'S TIME TO WAKE UP!" Matron Daiana yells as she walks.

I slowly open my eyes and sit up on the bed. Without even thinking, my body moves on its own just like every morning.

I turn to the side and put my feet on the cold wooden floor. I extend one hand and open the bedside drawer to take out my clothes. Before anyone can see me, I pull off my sleeping gown and put on my pants and shirt.

The other girls start to wake up while I tighten my sash so my chest looks flat. Then I take out my prized possession: socks made from high-quality Plom fur. With them on, the hard boots feel as soft as cake fresh out of the oven, fluffy but also a little hot.

I cast [Clean] on my face and mouth and feel refreshed. Then I get up on the edge of my bed and peek over the top bunk.

I poke the orange-haired girl. "Fleur?" I call her and poke her again. She groans in response and continues sleeping. "Fleur!"

"Ciel!" She groans in annoyance.

"The Matron is going to throw cold water on you again."

"Let the hag try…" She mutters.

"It's going to wet my bed too, I won't let that happen again."

"Fiine…!"

Fleur climbs out of the bed while and her body sways since she's barely awake. When she starts to put on her shirt, she loses her balance and kisses the floor. The other girls laugh at her, but it will have little effect on that thick head of hers.

"You need to get to sleep earlier," I say.

"No, the Matron is the one that needs a man so she softens the dragon scales that she calls a face!" Fleur complains, her voice muffled by the floor.

I sigh and leave her there.

At least she won't go back to sleep now… or will she? Nah, she'll likely sleep on the floor.

I join the forming procession of priestesses and girls, and walk towards the restaurant. I let my hands trail along the grooves in the wall carved by the priests. The wavy patterns give the hall a calming atmosphere, even when the murmur of the morning becomes loud and noisy.

I stop playing with the carvings and pull out a small brush out of my [Item Box], then I brush my hair as I walk.

The corridor ends and we all pour into the mess hall. On the other side of the hall, the men come in and greet the women quite energetically. A tall blond boy notices me and waves, and then he comes towards me.

"Morning, Ciel," Calum says with a wide smile full of white teeth.

"Morning… Fleur is still in the dormitory."

His smile disappears and he narrows his eyes at me, "Ah, come on. Didn't you say you were going to help her wake up?"

"I did say and I did do that," -I shrug- "Fleur woke up alright, then fell on her face and stayed down. I bet she's sleeping again." I smile wryly.

Calum facepalms and groans.

"You shouldn't keep her up so late, she's not an early riser," I say flatly.

He smiles suggestively and blushes lightly. "Let's just eat. She'll come out, eventually."

I nod and store my hairbrush.

I feel a little bad for keeping the two lovers separate, just a little.

Honeyed and soft tea, salty crackers, Reedberry jelly, and a piece of Gorgon pie. Breakfast is comfortable as always.

The other girls give passing greetings and Calum lights up from the attention.

I sigh and say, "I'll tell Fleur."

"T-tell what?" His posture instantly stiffens.

"Actually, there are many things that I could tell…"

"Cie~el…" He turns to me and his face distorts in pain.

I smile faintly. "I'm joking. Just don't flirt around, Fleur doesn't like that."

He nods emphatically and relaxes his posture.

When we're almost done eating, Fleur appears in the hall. She looks quite grumpy.

"The Matron found her," we say in unison and chuckle.

Fleur notices us and waves, then she picks up her breakfast before coming to sit with us.

"The Matron found me!" Fleur complains and we chuckle again. "It's not funny!"

"What did she do to you this time?" Calum asks.

Fleur pouts angrily and her pink skin becomes red. "I have to wash the dishes tonight!"

Calum groans like a goblin and the people nearby look at us. Fleur doesn't care, but I look down and try to make myself disappear.

"The Siren is only playing tonight, we can't miss it!" Calum pleads and grabs Fleur's hands.

"I know… but I would rather miss the Siren than face the Matron again after ditching my punishment." Fleur fights back Calum's charm with her own cute pouty face.

"Why don't you two work together? If you two wash the dishes then maybe you can make it in time," I say.

"Oh! Great idea!" Fleur exclaims.

"Y-yes! Great idea!" Calum says, through gritted teeth. "Ah, can you help us?" He adds while staring at me intently.

"No," I say flatly.

"Plee~ase!" Fleur turns her charm towards me and smiles adorably.

I sigh and grab her soft hand. The older girl is certainly a beauty, her orange eyes are entrancing and her hair is so voluminous and healthy. But that's not enough.

"No," I repeat.

Both of them sigh and stop insisting.

We separate after breakfast and both of them look pretty uninspired to study. At least they'll still be together during their class.

My class is with Priest Landon, we are going to study the teaching of the Gods, again. I slap my cheeks because a yawn comes just from thinking about it.

"Hey, Ciel," Bitar waves to me and I sit in the chair beside his.

"Hey, Bitar," I greet back without much emotion.

"Did you drink enough tea?" He rests his head on his hand and his blue eyes look at me warmly.

"Just a cup."

He smiles and his eyebrows take flight towards the top of his head. "You should have drunk at least three."

I stay quiet and frown.

He's right, this class is going to be hard.

Priest Landon slowly walks into the class and the kids stop talking. The graying Krampus man looks almost like a sheep with the amount of white curly hair that he has.

He finally reaches his desk and opens the ledger. "Morning, children. Now, attendance…"

Aya was a tall Pixie, for her race at least. She had a very healthy body, which allowed her to travel much further out of the Crystal Forest than the other Pixies. She traveled so far that she met other humanoids.

For a Pixie, other humanoids are scary giants that speak in another language. For the humanoids, the Pixie is an adorable little flying woman with cute butterfly wings and a high-pitched voice that triggers a desire to hug her.

The little faerie soon noticed how these so-called humans didn't have much strength. She, in her minuscule body that was barely a meter tall, could lift rocks three times her size, while the humans couldn't.

She also noticed how barely any of these humans could use magic. The air too was so lacking in mana that she wondered if she would suffocate if she strayed too far from the Crystal Forest.

"I'm actually stronger than them," she thought. "Much stronger," she added with blooming confidence.

So she decided to let them hug her; let them all hug her; let the hugs fall like rain; let the hugs flow like a river; let the hugs fill her with energy.

Soon, the little faerie was famous among humans, so famous that she quickly found people willing to learn her language and teach her theirs. And with that came the reason why Pixies don't leave the Crystal Forest.

"Can you bring us a crystal?" Asked a human.

One turned into two, that turned into three, that broke the dam and turned it into a flood.

"No crystals! Never!" Little Aya stood her ground.

The humble folk relented, but not the sly ones.

They schemed and deceived, but Aya was no fool. She fought back and built bonds; the people loved her and her kind nature, and because of that they protected her from the greedy scum.

She realized that the scheming would never end because she had something others wanted. So she thought, "Why not trade our surplus for something new, something interesting?"

She went back to the Forest and convinced her friends to come to participate. In the town of Terminus, she established the first trading post of the Crystal Forest.

The town exploded with traffic. Not only could people see the so elusive and charming Gnomes and Pixies, but they could also receive a valuable crystal in exchange for anything that could impress or catch the interest of a cute little trader.

With this, not only did Aya bring incredible gadgets and knowledge back to the Crystal Forest, but she also learned valuable information about the world.

To the south, there was a budding kingdom establishing itself: a wet flat land with grass greener than even the Crystal Forest, the Avgi Kingdom. To the north, there was the mystic kingdom of the wereapes: a place full of damp jungle and colorful plants, the Sommer Kunikreich. To the west was the mountains of the dwarves: a dry and rocky place full of danger, a place called Mountainhome. To the south-west was a protectorate of the Avgi Kingdom: another flat land full of rivers that flood every season, a place called Lorei Laurelai. To the east, there was a land full of recluse wereowls: a land full of hills, tall trees, and cold wind; the names were many, but one stood out, Hermit's Roost.

All these places had their own charm that attracted young Aya to them. Every place had its own culture, people, and environment. Every place was like a book waiting to be read, a painting wanting to be observed, a song begging to be played.

The call was too strong, so strong that Aya couldn't contain it. She had to explore them, she had to visit these places, she must wander the realm.

A searing pain on my forehead forces me out of my dream and my head whips back, hurting my neck.

"Having a comfortable nap?" Landon growls at me with his old, gravely voice. His wand is pointing at me and I feel the remnants of a spell in the air. Then I hear the sound of a pebble hitting the ground beside me.

I collect myself and sit straight. "I am sorry, Priest Landon," I immediately say and bow my head.

"Hmpf!" Priest Landon glares at me and continues reciting the teachings of the Goddess of Love.

I have heard so much about these teachings that I'm dreaming about them…

Bitar smiles wryly at me.

"What?" I lowly hiss at him, without much patience.

"I'll wake you up if you fall asleep," he says.

"S-sorry…" I turn away from him blush in shame.

"It's okay," Bitar answers, patient like always.

I feel like sighing again.

If I have a dream like that again then I hope that I don't wake up…

After an agonizingly long time, the class ends. I and Bitar go have our lunch and join the two stupid lovers.

"You are going to drop it," I say to Fleur.

She sends me a glance, a grave mistake. In her distraction, the soup drips and a hot droplet hits Calum's leg. He jumps in surprise and pain, which then scares Fleur, making her drop the rest of spoonful of soup on Calum's crotch.

"AAAH!" He yells and turns every cup of water that he can reach on his crotch.

"Why would you do such a dangerous thing," I say to myself out loud.

"Well, it looks fun?" Bitar responds. I turn to him and raise an eyebrow. "What? Being so close to someone you love and feeding them sounds like a good time to me."

I sigh and continue eating my soup.

It sounds like a bother…

We join the Matron in the courtyard to hear the job offers. The old ha-… caretaker has a permanent scowl stuck on her face. Her raised lip makes her nose seem larger than it is; her hunched back makes her look like a cripple, but her large stature is still noticeable even from behind her robes; her brown hair is always perfectly tied tight; her metal cane looks more like a weapon than a walking aid.

"Warehouse organization, ten open spots, temporary. Pay: ten copper a day," the Matron announces. The orphans laugh and scoff at the low pay, a single glare from the Matron makes them go quiet. "If you work hard enough, this job is likely to increase your 'Strength' and 'Endurance.' And don't look down on it, the common people who do this job need it and it isn't any less dignified than any other work!"

She might be strict like a drillmaster, but she's right.

"Bookkeeping apprentice, two open spots, permanent. Pay: twenty copper a day." Immediately, most of the kids raise their hands. "'Intelligence' and 'Wisdom' above ten only," she adds and most hands flop down. Eventually, a girl and a boy with the highest stats are chosen.

It starts low but it's an apprenticeship, the benefits are massive.

"Farm harvesting, twenty-five open spots, seasonal. Pay: sixty copper a day. Lunch included"

All the strong orphans raise their hands: most of the boys and some of the girls with strong inheritances. In the end, all open spots are taken.

Not really what I want with my life. Actually, what do I even want to do…?

The Matron rolls her eyes as she states the next offer, "Servant for the Lord, one open spot, male-only. Pay: five silver a day," -Everyone starts murmuring at the same time- "Silence! Only above average height and penis length. You will have to go through an interview and a body inspection later, too. Also, keep in mind you will be required to satisfy both men and women."

The murmuring stops completely for a moment and then restarts with more intensity.

"Silence!"

The Matron tells the usual prostitution jobs for the girls, average of a silver per day. The girls talk between themselves and I see a few starting to change their minds. They pay is good, but the job is tiring, though you have a much greater chance to marry a rich person if you work there.

Also not my kind of thing… I haven't even kissed a boy yet…

I feel a sigh forming and suppress it.

"Guard duty, always with open spots, permanent. Pay: thirty copper a day, a bunk bed to sleep, basic equipment, and skill training every afternoon."

Everyone goes silent and don't look her in the eye, even me. We are all too ashamed to admit that we are cowards and would rather not fight.

Without a hint of a reaction, the Matron continues, "Priesthood initiation, always with open spots, permanent. Pay: thirty-five copper a day."

Priesthood is the same, less dangerous but still a lot of hard work.

If I don't find anything interesting then I will become a priestess.

"Cleaning with magic, four open spots, temporary. Pay: a silver a day."

Only me and Bitar raise our hands. Kids who can use enough magic to actually use [Clean] on an entire room are rare.

He smiles wryly, "Guess we are together again, partner."

Oh, joy.

"Not this time," the Matron interrupts. "Ciel, you go to the male priests quarters, the empty rooms from 120 to 130; a new batch of priests are coming and we need to clean the empty rooms. Bitar, you go to Wild Rabbit brothel and clean five of their rooms."

"What?!" Bitar exclaims, wide-eyed.

"Sorry…" I mutter and contain my laugh as much as I can. It would be very mean to laugh at him right now.

Bitar bites his tongue and glares at the Matron. She glares back without flinching. Her gaze is so strong and mean that Bitar withers and relents. He shrinks and walks away while grumbling.

The Matron turns to me, her expression is still as stiff as stone. "You deserve better than cleaning that mess. Make sure you work hard so you impress someone special," she says lowly so only I can hear.

I stare at her with my mouth hanging open for a few seconds and she just casually returns to reading the next job offers.

Wow… she… actually likes me?

I turn around and walk towards the priests' quarters.

Thank you, Matron. I feel bad for Bitar, but still, thank you.

After a short walk, I get to the priests quarters and find the empty rooms. Cobwebs in every corner; a layer of dust covering every surface; tainted windows and floorboards; furniture that hasn't seen the sun in quite a while.

I sigh and go to the janitor's closet, then I grab a broom and a few chemicals.

I have two points in [Cleaning] and that will be enough, it has to be enough. I will not be a [Clean]er all my life, I swear to myself that I won't be.

I put on some leather gloves and start cleaning.

I turn around to leave the room and freeze. Leaning on the doorway, a young priest watches me with kind eyes and a small smile. I see a large bag by his feet.

"Is this going to be your room?" I ask, reflexively.

"Oh, so you're a human…" He smirks. I don't really understand this joke. "Well, I hope so. Seeing how well you are cleaning it, I would prefer to choose this one in case you get tired and slack on others."

"O-of course not! I will clean them all equally."

"I hope so. Anyway, are you done with this room?"

"Yes, you can move in. Wait, what did you mean by 'so you're human'?" I give him an odd look.

He chuckles once and says, "Well, you were working so diligently, but also so soullessly, that I thought someone summoned a human-looking elemental or something." He shrugs.

"Cleaning is hardly the most exciting job around," I say and start to gather my equipment.

"Is that so? And what would you prefer to be doing?"

I shrug in answer.

I truly don't know.

"You've got a nice amount of mana, have you ever thought about becoming a real mage?"

I look at him and his stupid kind smile is still plastered on his face. "To fight monsters and die by a monster?"

His smile fades and turns into a concerned look. "What a grim view that you have…"

I turn back and continue my work. "Not grim if it's the truth."

"There's more to being a mage than just killing monsters. Have you ever thought about healing people?"

I immediately put down the bucket that I had just started to carry. "And who would spend their time teaching such valuable and complex magic to me?"

His stupid smile comes back. "I would."

I stare at his beady black eyes from behind his half-circle glasses and harden my face. "You better not be joking, I don't like to be played with."

Don't raise my hopes just to squash them, please!

He clenches his fist over his chest. "I swear on my admiration of the Goddess of Love that I am not lying or playing with you."

Goddess of Love…? Matron, I feel like the God of Luck is playing with us.

"T-then, please, do teach me!" I plead and bow at a right angle.

"First, we have to prepare you mentally," the young priest says in a serious tone.

I immediately straighten and stare him in the eye. "What is it?"

His smile fades. "Have you ever seen someone die?"

"No."

"Then you will, better sooner than later."

"W-what are we going to do?" I ask, apprehensively.

"First we are going to the clinic, then we are going outside and joining a Purge."

I gasp. "WHAT?!"

His kind smiles come back and disarm my tension. His voice turns soft and tickles my ears, "If you stay by my side, it will be fine. This is something we have to do. I won't waste my time with you if you don't have the fortitude to stay on your toes after seeing blood being spilled." Then his voice becomes serious again, "Understood?!"

"Yes, sir!" I exclaim before I can stop myself, and start to blush in embarrassment.

His face softens again and his stupid kind smile becomes wider. "We'll go tomorrow morning. You have to finish this job first, don't you?"

Ah, well…

"What's your name, girl?"

"Ciel."

"I'm Arantos, pleasure to meet you."

A note from Manasong

Hall of Fame of Patrons

The patrons who support Rupegia shall have their names sung by the bards for they deserve the glory and honor. Their names are:

Oracle Maximillian Hübner.

Lord Andrew Meyers.

Lord Hope.

Lord Samuel Lim.

Lord Cody Weigel.

Lord Bill.

Lord Novgarod.

Noble Salty Panda.

Leave a rating or a review to help me rise to the top or fix my shameful understanding of prose.

Take a look over my blog where all information of the world of Rupegia will be posted.

Join the Discord and discuss, or rant, or meme, or try and fight me so your waifu gets more screentime.

Become a Patron and read chapters in advance, or read the side-stories, or leave your mark on the story, or help choose the next artwork or the next side-story.

Chapter 44: Extermination - Part 1

"So… I can see Aoi's 'Soul Info' with my [Sense Soul]," I say.

While everyone else looks impressed, Ciel's face just looks blank. "Wolfy, give me [Sense Soul]," she asks softly.

I obey and she spends a long time staring at Aoi. So long, that even Aoi gets uncomfortable.

"What the fuck," she finally says. "I had some idea that this was happening, but still… The skill system is the blessing from the God of Creation, so how did this happen?"

"She converted…?" Roxanne asks tentatively.

"She isn't listed in my 'Followers,'" I say.

"Then she better start praying," Alissa says.

"I will, be good, Gods!" Aoi says.

"Okay, so, in the battle against the Monster King, wouldn't such a thing tip the balance in our favor?" I ask.

"Yes, that's great!" Ciel exclaims, "With a way of turning monsters in our favor we can control them the way the Monster King does! Imagine if we converted a Leader-type!"

"But if we break the balance, won't the God of Destruction come back to try and take control?"

We all go silent, the implication is too heavy.

Ciel starts to say what we don't want to hear, "If you are here, sent by a 'God,' and Aoi is part of your Thread of Fate, then… a war of the Gods could be coming."

"We all knew something would happen," Lina says.

"Yeah, but it was very vague, and now that things are getting more real, the fear is starting to rise," I say.

"Together!" Aoi exclaims.

"Gih."

Heh, fine.

"Alright, enough pep-talk. There's no more room for hesitation and complaints, we can only look forward and fight-on," I say.

"Gih, gah gih!" Gify puffs his chest and nods with determination.

Alissa grabs our hands, and claws, and pulls us all together, "United, day and night," she starts and looks around, urging us to continue.

"In pain and pleasure," Hana adds.

"Success or failure," Roxanne continues.

"Life or death," Ciel goes on with a wide smile.

"Wherever we may be," Lina shyly contributes.

"We will, never aban-don, each other!" Aoi chirps.

I chuckle. "All for one, one for all," I complete.

We squeeze each others' hands and return to normal.

"That was incredibly corny," Ciel says and we chuckle lightly.

"Those are our vows to each other," Alissa says.

"Right, whenever we have to act on our own, remember our vows," I say.

Lina, Hana, and Aoi nod with determination while the others smile softly.

The little golems watch us with curiosity.

"Vows are, rules?" Ted asks.

"Somewhat. They are personal rules that we follow, but not literally. We follow the 'spirit' of the vow, the essence of it," Ciel answers.

"What is a, 'spirit' of, a vow?" Suzy asks.

"If I ask you to make my life 'better' and I get sad one day when someone dies, do you think that you failed the task I gave you?" I ask.

"Sadness is, part of, life," Ted says.

"Exactly. You need to understand the nuances and assumptions that come from a phrase like 'I want to live a happy life,' instead of taking it literally."

"How do we, learn that?" Suzy asks.

"It is called 'common sense,' it's something children learn by observing their parents all their lives," Ciel says.

"And some don't even fully learn it," Lina says and sends a quick glance to Roxanne.

Roxanne blinks blankly for a few moments, then it dawns on her. "Oi-!" She starts.

"We will teach you whenever we can," I interrupt. "You can always ask us questions when you feel confused about something."

The two golems nod in sync.

Then we do a little "bonding" before going to sleep. The golems were watching so intently that we decided to store them in Ciel's [Item Box].

Today is the 10th.

Hana wakes me up and recruits Aoi's help. Hana is learning how to do it in a gentler way so that I don't feel like I'm in the jaws of a monster when I wake up. That and Aoi's stimulating kiss are as good as coffee to help me wake up quickly.

But I really do miss coffee.

My [Summoning Magic] increased by 4 (now 18+22) and my [Blessing Magic] by 1 (now 8+22).

We calmly eat our breakfast with tea. We only leave our tent when everyone else is finishing gathering their belongings.

"Morning!" Klein comes to us and gives us a chipper greeting.

I see that neither Anton nor Laertes are nearby.

"Morning," I say and take her hand, then I kiss it the elven way while pushing my soul slightly out of my lips.

Klein breathes in and smiles shyly, "How high is your 'Charisma,' Wolf?" She asks.

"Not particularly high, you must have a crush on me or something," and I give her a wide smile.

She eyes us all warily, "You are all wolves trying to eat me up, aren't-chyall?"

Ciel and Lina look a little embarrassed; Aoi doesn't think she's being referred to so she just ignores it; and the rest simply nod and smile.

"Gih."

Klein smiles at his compliment.

"You are just really cute," Alissa says in a sultry tone.

"Predators," Klein laughs and walks away.

Nito hands us our horses and as we mount, Osaria comes to give us a greeting and talk to Roxanne. She stands a little closer than what Roxanne is comfortable with. The curvy milf wears an eye-catching white bikini and I catch Ciel staring at her ass with mixed feelings.

When we are all mounted and walking again, Hana approaches Roxanne, "When are you going to reject her?" Hana asks.

"Uh… well…" Roxanne's posture shrinks, she looks conflicted and guilty.

Hana pouts and looks at Roxanne with a little disappointment, "You are too indecisive; it was the same thing with Wolfy," she says and turns away.

Roxanne doesn't answer but her horns go soft in dejection.

Lina approaches Roxanne and pats her head like a mother would to console her child. "There, there," she tries to appease Roxanne.

Roxanne's horns regain their stiffness and she warily eyes Lina. "I feel like you're mocking me," Roxanne says.

Lina gives her an impish smile and smacks the rump of her horse, then she quickly canters away from Roxanne. For a moment, Roxanne's tail threateningly points at Lina.

Ciel makes sure the carriage is out of earshot and asks, "Why don't you reject her?"

"Well… I really do find her hot, it's just that the idea of having sex with her makes me feel 'dirty,'" Roxanne answers.

"Then reject her."

"But I find her really hot," she smiles wryly.

Ciel rolls her eyes, "Slut."

"We all played with Klein, we are all beyond saving," she smirks at Ciel.

"You always speak like we are doing something bad," Alissa interjects, a little miffed. "It's like you secretly dislike what we are doing but don't really want to speak out."

Roxanne's mouth hangs open, speechless, and Ciel looks away, feeling awkward.

"I enjoy the verbal abuse, I thought that's what she was doing," Hana says, frowning in confusion.

"Maybe a little of both?" Alissa shrugs.

"Embrace degeneracy," I say.

"I thought we already did?" Lina questions shyly and Hana shrugs.

"Gih."

"Even you?" Ciel looks at Gify questioningly.

We laugh softly and the conversation dies down, then Aoi perks up her head and innocently asks, "Am I a, degenerate?"

"I don't think so," I say and rub the thick skin beneath her scales. "Did you enjoy when Alissa's finger entered you?"

I feel her shrug through the [Bind], "Yes."

"If Aoi has, sex with, other women, she could be, considered, hedonistic," Suzy says.

"That would just be a sexual preference," Roxanne says.

"Not for a, monster," Ted says.

"Right, I believe the monsters were created for a single purpose. It wouldn't make sense for them to be homosexual since they can't have children that way," I say and Ted nods.

When it's something technical they seem to do OK in understanding my knowledge.

"But Aoi is intelligent, she can choose to have sex just for pleasure," Hana says.

"Hm…" Aoi murmurs and I feel our connection "wiggle" as she thinks deeply.

"Is there a difference between what you feel about Wolf and any of us?" Ciel asks.

"I want Wolfy, inside me, and I really like, the others," she answers.

"Well, we are almost there," Hana says and shrugs.

I lift an eyebrow at Hana. "Do you want to have sex with her?" I ask.

"Ei, 'Dragon Fucker' is an awesome title," and she gives me a fearsome smile.

I chuckle and shake my head.

Now that the caravan is moving properly, I go towards the commoners and give them [Swift Foot] again. They show us lots of appreciation and even Rande seems pleased.

For us, I cast [Wind Armor], [Sharp Blades], [Swift Foot], [Rainbow Shield], [Rainbow Crystal], and [Warrior's Respite].

I use [Redirect Mana] to recharge my MP and notice that the mana coming from the High Forest feels very "odd." It is quite "pure," but it also has an uncomfortable aftertaste.

With a fast march, we quickly approach the gigantic trees of the High Forest. The road splits, and one way turns east, towards the forest, while the other continues north, towards Glorampina. The traffic suddenly drops to zero; nobody is entering or leaving the forest.

Klein and Laertes climb on top of the carriage; up there they unfold thick, wooden chest-high walls that they will use as protection. Then, they pull out some comfy mattresses and lay down, though they still look very alert.

Anton walks along beside the carriage with his poleaxe in hand and awkwardly glances towards Aoi. He's wearing a light blue dragon scale armor that looks very similar to Aoi's scales.

"You look like you want to say something," I guide my horse closer to Anton and speak.

"Is she… okay with my armor?" He asks with a deeper frown than normal.

"My armor is also made of dragon scales, she doesn't care," I say.

"Good, good. Well, I don't think I could stomach seeing someone wear wereape skin as armor."

"Monsters are too different from us, many simply wouldn't even care."

The lights slowly dim as we enter the forest; only faint streaks of light get past the thick canopy of trees. Everyone casts [Spirit Lights] and the road becomes as clear as day due to the number of light sources. The air becomes more damp, causing Lina to show a little displeasure. The tang of moss grows strong, and once in a while I smell a faint citrus or flowery scent.

The grass becomes very thin, narrow, and delicate, almost hair-like. The earth turns soft and almost mushy, a few heavy steps on it are enough to dirty your feet with mud. A few elven children decide to drop down to the road and step out onto the grass. I notice that they don't get dirty, and some of them barely leave a mark on the grass thanks to the softness of their steps.

My Hollys spread out and we quickly find monsters lurking about. Walking dead animals and monsters reanimated by Corpse Stealers are the most common find. The small slime-like monster behaves more like a hive-mind: it's always either searching for more corpses, or attacking any nearby threats.

Not a very dangerous monster, except when they manage to gather into a large group, and there's one such group nearby.

"We have to deal with them," I say.

"Me, Lina, and Ciel will stay on the ground, you all stay on the horses in case we need to run," Hana says and we nod.

"I can, breathe fire!" Aoi chirps.

"Stay on Lina's shoulders," I say.

"Yay!" She glides towards Lina and crawls up onto her shoulder.

"You'd better not eat anything rotting or the Corpse Stealer itself, they will give you a tummy-ache," Lina says and strokes the scales under Aoi's chin.

"O-kaay!"

We warn Rande of the danger nearby.

"If you can't deal with them, aren't you going to attract them to us?" He asks while frowning.

"The 'feelers' are too close, it's a gamble whether they find us or not," I say.

He nods bitterly, "I'll trust you, we will set up near that tree and raise a few [Earth Wall]s."

We gallop north through the forest for a few minutes before we find the horde. Through Holly, I know that there's a hill nearby that we can use to our advantage. I dismiss all but one Holly and summon two earth, two nature, and two fire elementals. The earth elementals will create walls to funnel the Corpses into a narrow area between two huge trees. The nature elementals will slow down the monsters with their vines. The fire elementals are obvious, fire does more damage to slow-moving enemies than any other element.

Hana, Ciel, Lina, and Aoi will stay in the front, at the entrance of the funnel that the two earth elementals are creating. Behind them, the nature elementals will spread their vines, and behind the vine-yard are the rest of us with the horses and the two fire elementals. Through [Animal Tongue], I can keep the horses calm and make them follow me.

The "feeler" Corpse Stealers find us, and immediately the horde changes direction towards us. The "feelers" are Corpse Stealers that have faster and younger corpses, they stay in the outskirts of the horde and warn them of any incoming threat.

After a minute, we hear the growling from multiple types of monsters and animals. The Corpse Stealers move slowly to conserve their energy, but when a target is found, they burst forth with plenty of speed at the expense of the possessed corpse's integrity.

Once a critical mass of Corpses notice us, they all break into a sprint at the same time. Before we can even see them, we can hear the mixture of footsteps rushing towards us.

Alissa starts firing arrows, aiming for the chest, where the Corpse Stealer hides.

"We need flaming arrows," I say.

"Too late for that," Alissa answers and fires another.

"[Lava Jet]!" Roxanne casts the level 30 [Fire Magic] spell. Out of the tip of her staff, red-hot lava shoots off like a jet of water. It flies over the heads of the girls and creates streak after streak of blisteringly bright walking hazards.

The first line of Corpses walk over the lava without any concern, not even making a cry of pain when their feet melt and pieces of skin and flesh are left behind. They eventually start to tumble and get stuck in the lava as more parts of their bodies melt away and fall off.

Easy targets for the elementals to burn.

Two more [Lava Jets], and the entire side of the hill is lit up by Roxanne's spell. I even start to feel the heat coming off the molten rock.

The first few monsters crash against the girls and are easily dispatched.

The monsters that fell onto the lava form a bridge for the ones behind them, so the next wave has less of a problem moving past the lava hazards.

"[Firestorm]!"

Roxanne launches the spell in the middle of the new front line and the monsters behind it crash into each other, trying to stop. A pile of monsters forms as they desperately crawl away to escape the fire at any cost, a prime target for us.

"[Firestorm]!"

The new pile bursts into flame and only charred corpses are left after the spell ends. The smell of burnt meat fills our noses and makes me feel hungry, but also a little disgusted.

More monsters reach the girls.

"Become stronger! Become faster!" I command in [Godly Language].

They easily butcher the monsters while slowly walking backward.

I create a vine javelin with [Vine Weapon] and give myself 4 points in [Throw]. Whenever a particularly large monster appears, I throw a javelin at them. When I manage to hit their core they don't die, but they do become much slower.

Hana's and Lina's [Double Strike] are enough to kill most monsters in one attack. Lina crushes their chests with the first strike and the second comes to finish off the monster, while Hana can nearly bisect the monsters with her two strikes.

Ciel plays conservatively with her mana to save some for healing injuries.

Hana breathes out fire in a wide area and holds the monsters in place for a moment.

"[Firestorm]!"

And then they burn to death.

"You are now level 24."

Our carnage is silent, giving it an eerie feeling. This is because the monsters don't scream, they only use growls in a few specific situations.

The monsters start to get entangled in the vines, making them easier targets for the girls. Some even try to crash against the earth elementals, with little result; or they crawl up them, allowing the elementals to skewer the monsters with fast-growing spikes.

"Retreat!" I yell. Ciel, Lina, and Aoi break off from the line and return to the horses. Hana summons her wings and uses [Wind Shield] to hold the monsters off.

"Hana!" I call her once we are all mounted again, and with a last cleave, she flies towards us and lands on her horse. The animal neighs in protest. "I'm sorry, but you are strong enough to deal with it, right?" I talk to it with [Animal Tongue].

The horse scoffs and we all gallop north to try to lose the horde. The elementals will commit suicide when they get overwhelmed, and I think the fire ones will make quite a nice explosion.

We follow along the contour of the hill and then gallop back to the caravan. Rande had raised a wall and created a funnel very similar to ours. He and Anton wait at the front with most of the average soldiers.

Anton's poleaxe is dirtied with green slime. Pieces of the body of a Giant Centipede are being dragged away by the elven commoners.

"How was it? How many are still alive?" Rande asks once we stop our horses in front of him.

"Around fifty can still move," I say as I dismount. Nito guides the horses away towards the back.

"That's not a lot," Anton says, his permanent frown temporarily on hold.

"We are pretty good at butchering large numbers of small monsters," Hana says with a fearsome smile.

"I wouldn't call Corpse Stealers 'small,' but ok."

We reform the line with Hana in the middle, Rande and Anton flanking her, and the rest of us spread around the other men. While we wait, the girls and I use [Redirect Mana] to recharge. Aoi seems to be trying to copy us.

"Are you managing to redirect mana?" I ask Aoi through our connection.

"I think so, I only know something is happening, hehe!"

"Be careful, you don't have the System to protect you from hurting yourself."

"Not yet," and she mimics the sound of a kiss being blown.

I give her a playful tug on our connection and return to recharging my mana.

After I'm done, I summon the same elementals as last time, but this time I keep the nature elementals in front of us to slow the charge.

A few minutes later, the Corpses start trickling in, too spread out for area spells. But they are much less threatening now that there isn't a mob of them marching towards us.

Alissa, Hana, and Laertes manage to shoot at least one arrow at each of the Corpses before they can even reach our front line. Then the vines slow them down further, and now even the most inexperienced of the mages can manage to hit their marks.

I cut down the arm of a dead Gatun and a soldier pierces it in the chest. The monster retreats to try to save itself and I cast a [Wind Blade] directly at it. The spell opens its chest and I see a black goo twitch within it.

Another spear hits it right in the black goo and the dead Gatun goes limp. The black goo pools under its body and a rancid smell escapes from it.

Soon, the battle ends without another monster attacking me again.

Ciel goes to treat the few bruises and cuts among the average soldiers while I walk towards Rande. I see a man discreetly cut his own palm and then show it to Ciel so she can heal him.

"We will return to the site of the first battle and collect our Proofs of Extermination," I say.

"Sure, the Lord of Ostodos will reward you well for dealing with a horde. How many were there, anyway? I didn't imagine so few were coming after us," he creases his eyebrows in doubt.

"No idea, our area spells are really powerful," I say and smile smugly.

[Rainbow Crystal] is helping us a lot.

I gather the girls and we gallop back to the first site.

"So… you want us to gather the Proofs?" Roxanne asks, her tail completely stiff in wariness.

I summon 9 average goblins. Their small and dexterous hands are perfect for this task.

"Nah, I just used it as an excuse. Let's just wait and watch," I say.

The goblins work tirelessly and even the two little golems try to help with [Telekinesis]. The Corpse Stealers have small bones they use to help sustain their possessed corpse, so they are used as the Proof. You can use the black, rancid goo as Proof, but who in their right mind would?

A note from Manasong

Hall of Fame of Patrons

The patrons who support Rupegia shall have their names sung by the bards for they deserve the glory and honor. Their names are:

Oracle Maximillian Hübner.

Lord Andrew Meyers.

Lord Hope.

Lord Samuel Lim.

Lord Cody Weigel.

Lord Bill.

Lord Novgarod.

Noble Salty Panda.

Leave a rating or a review to help me rise to the top or fix my shameful understanding of prose.

Take a look over my blog where all information of the world of Rupegia will be posted.

Join the Discord and discuss, or rant, or meme, or try and fight me so your waifu gets more screentime.

Become a Patron and read chapters in advance, or read the side-stories, or leave your mark on the story, or help choose the next artwork or the next side-story.

Chapter 44: Extermination – Part 2

A note from Manasong

Attention: to conform to the limit of sexual content allowed in a novel, I've censored this chapter. You can look for the uncensored version here.

The symbol "-" denotes a section that got cut for containing sexual content. Also, if paragraphs seem missing, they were also likely censored in an earlier pass where the symbol wasn't used.

We sit down on a root as thick as a car and watch the goblins work. We spread out a large, thick blanket that's perfect for our picnic.

"Aside from the view of the ground, this is a really beautiful place," Ciel comments.

The most common color is obviously green, then dark brown from the bark of the trees, then gold and silver from the moss and other plants growing on the bark of those trees. The trees in the High Forest absorb all the nutrients from the ground, so most plants that thrive here are parasitic and grow on the bark of the gigantic trees or they try to rise above the canopies for some delicious sunlight.

I practice my [Grow] and try to flatten the root we're on. Without [Conjuring Magic] to replenish the nutrients, the bark will become weakened if I overdo it.

If an elf saw what I'm doing they would give me a slap in the face.

Alissa pulls out a tray with steaming hot tea while Ciel guides the smell of burnt meat away from us. Aoi looks a little dejected at all the burnt meat that she won't be able to eat.

The goblins bring the bones and line them up on the ground, then Ciel and I repeatedly cast [Clean] on them to remove the smell. The bones are black and porous, they can even bend a considerable amount. They're shaped into vertical rib cages that protects the Corpse Stealer better from slashing attacks.

The goblins tie the bones together with strings so that the parts from two different Corpse Stealers won't mix, then they all tie the bones together so I can store them in my "Item Box." If we didn't do that, then the monster appraiser would have to summon the spirit of every single bone to discern one from another. Lords don't like to be scammed when paying for the monster bounties, and the ones in the High Forest are even more stingy.

We return to the caravan and Alissa smiles smugly. "The commoners are happy to see us back, the elven ones sound a little relieved, too," she says.

I search for the elven elder and our eyes meet, he gives me a respectful nod and I return it.

No matter the place, they still respect power.

Soon after I spread my Hollys, we have to leave again as an Uspidor is approaching. A blobby monster that has 12 tentacles it uses to walk, with one extra protruding upwards that it uses as a mouth and as a way to spit acid. They are normally slightly bigger than a giraffe.

"Hana, use the axe," I say and pull it out for her.

"Well… prepare the bath for me, then," she says with a wry smile.

"Ohoh? You didn't seem to care about a little blood during your butchering of that Dragonoid some time ago," Roxanne says.

"You guys are a bad influence on me, staying clean just feels too good," she shrugs.

"'Bad influence,'" Roxanne turns away and snorts.

"Wolfy, give me [Mounted Archery]," Alissa asks.

"Oh, right, good idea," I say and put her six points into the skill.

We approach the location of the monster and look up. High above, too far for our [Spirit Lights] to reach, we can see the figure of something large moving between the trees when it passes near a hole in the thick canopy.

Alissa draws her warbow to its maximum pull and I feel a hint of mana come from the enchantment, then she releases the arrow and we hear a faint screech. Through Holly, I can see that Alissa hit her mark perfectly.

The monster stops moving and turns to intently observe us. It has six eyes spread around the blob of meat that is its main body and three of these eyes are locked onto us.

"Start moving, it's going to spit acid," I order and they obey. "Become Faster!" I yell in [Godly Language] and even the horses gain speed.

We spread out and the monster struggles to choose a target.

"I'll make meat rolls out of your tentacles!" Hana taunts and the Uspidor targets her.

She's just stating facts, though; Uspidor tentacles are a delicacy.

A liquid splashes near Hana and we hear the traditional sizzling of something melting away. We hide behind the trees while Hana plays around with the monster.

Through another Holly, I can see that there's a group of five Feral Goblins approaching the caravan. Like a Gatun, these goblins have large, curved claws that they use to climb trees.

"Ciel, Lina! Go back to the caravan! There are five Feral Goblins coming from the south!" I yell.

While still under the effect of my [Godly Language], their horses gallop away at incredible speeds and soon they disappear behind the trees.

Another minute passes with Alissa firing a few perfect arrows at the Uspidor. Then she finally hits an eye at a record distance for her and the monster becomes enraged.

"KIIIEEEH!" It shrieks as it drops to the ground. It crashes like a water balloon and its whole body shakes with the waves its internal fluids created from the impact. Its color is green and black as if it were wearing camouflage paint, and its skin is smooth and slippery.

Hana jumps off of her horse and summons her wings. She darts towards the Uspidor and dodges between the tentacles while leaving a long gash on its body. Blood gushes out like a fountain as the enchantment takes effect and the monster becomes even more enraged.

With [Animal Tongue], I call back the horse and keep it safe behind a tree.

As the monster's focus changes to Hana, its "back" (the monster doesn't really have a front or back to it) is turned to us and its tentacles grow dull in their movements. Alissa takes the opportunity and fires an arrow. It passes through the tentacles unimpeded and buries itself in another eye.

I summon a Kite Dragon and yell, "Become faster!" in [Godly Language].

"UROOO!" The flat dragon responds and bolts in a zigzag pattern towards the monster.

"[Water Blade]!" Roxanne releases a particularly long blade from the tip of her staff.

Suddenly surrounded on four sides, the monster struggles to decide on a course of action. It abruptly drops to the ground and surrounds itself with its thick tentacles.

Alissa's bodkin arrow buries itself deep into a tentacle; Roxanne's spell nearly severs another; the Kite Dragon cuts down a tentacle with its sharp side-flippers; and Hana buries her axe into the monster. I cast a [Lightning Bolt] on the Uspidor to make sure that Hana can safely pull out her axe.

The axe is pulled free and a thick gush of red blood erupts out of the wound, painting a large patch of moss red. Hana strikes again and uses her wings to fly away before it can counter-attack. The new wound is a shallow cut but it's still enough to create another temporary fountain of blood for a few seconds.

Roxanne fires several [Water Blades] in quick succession and the monster's mouth turns towards her.

"[Water Wall]!" She casts just as a squirt of acid flies out. It hits the magic water and gets diluted without affecting anything. Her horse barely flinches from all the magic flying around it, its training is perfect.

Hana appears from "behind" and severs the mouth of the monster with a perfect chop of her axe.

"KIIIIIIIIIIII!" Its screech makes my ears hurt. So much blood flows out of the wound that the monster visibly deflates and starts to wobble around due to the blood loss. The Kite Dragon strikes again and opens another large wound, it was so deep that its guts start to spill out.

We just wait for it to bleed out while hiding in safety behind the trees. I try to avoid looking at it because just the sight of it was making me feel sick.

Meanwhile, Ciel and Lina make short work of the goblins. A [Windstorm] is enough to even the numbers and then the girls finish them easily from horseback due to the length of their weapons.

Alissa guides her horse towards me. "It's dead," she says, once she's close enough.

"Right, now we just need to collect the disgusting corpse," I say and Alissa smiles wryly.

"Let me eat a tentacle!" Aoi says inside my mind.

"Okay. Just one, though."

Then we leave Hana standing naked in the open while we give her clothes a quick [Clean].

We gallop back and wait for the caravan a good distance ahead so that both we and the horses can rest for a bit.

"It's barely midday and we've already killed quite a lot," Alissa says.

"Yeah, the Lord isn't doing a proper culling," Hana says.

"Through the Hollys, I can see that there's even more, it's just that our anti-monster crystals are enough for most of them," I say.

As we wait, I notice that there are a few glowing plants appearing on the trunks of the trees. There's also a firefly-like large insect that seems to be flying between them. These plants are symbiotic with the trees and other plants. They give off light that's absorbed just like how plants would normally absorb sunlight, then they all help break down the bark of the tree and also serve as a home for other insects. They are somewhat like corals.

The caravan reaches us and we stop for lunch. Krista cooks a thick Giant Centipede soup. It has a faint minty flavor with a bit of a of chicken-like aftertaste.

Why am I suddenly thinking of Ciel's feet?

"You collected all the bones from the Corpse Stealers?" Anton asks us.

"I used [Summoning Magic] for that," I answer.

"Diamond dragon scales, that is too handy," he snorts and resumes eating.

"I could teach you a spell, if you wish," I say and smile innocently.

He stops eating and analyzes me with his eyes. "You are not getting yourself any favors," he answers flatly.

Klein groans softly and keeps her eyes on her food.

A soft voice caresses my ears, "How many Corpse Stealers did you kill?" Osaria asks.

"One hundred and thirty-seven."

The table turns to us in surprise and we show a mix of proud and embarrassed smiles. I select one set of the bones in my "Item Box" and touch the ground with my finger. With a *poof*, the large pile of black bones all tied together appears.

A long sigh escapes Laertes while the others go quiet.

"Did you even need our help?" Rande asks.

"Couldn't finish them all in one go," Hana says and gives Rande a fearsome smile.

"Are you paying them a fortune or something?" Krista asks Rande, incredulous.

Rande laughs oddly with a stupid smile on his face, "You didn't even see them stop a Grim Giant in its tracks basically by themselves."

Anton grunts a chuckle. "Well, I thought you were exaggerating a little," he says.

Klein pouts and playfully punches the log that is Anton's right arm, though, it might have hurt her more than him.

"To be honest, our strength is a little difficult to gauge. [Summoning Magic] is that useful," Alissa says.

Osaria smiles seductively at me and I get a little uncomfortable. She is too "stimulating."

We continue our trip and our peace lasts a short while before another Giant Centipede approaches. We only send Hana and Roxanne, and they [Explode] the head of the monster. Like last time, she stores it in her [Item Box] and we will transfer it later.

A small group of eight Woody Skritters approaches us and get used as target practice by Klein and Laertes. They have so little value that it's not even worth it to collect the Proofs of Extermination for them. However, we do burn their bodies so that there are no remains for Corpse Stealers to possess.

As we near Ostodos, the number of glowing plants explodes and the night nearly turns into day amidst their brightness. The bark disappears beneath the carnival of colors. Then the multi-colored lights all turn purple when the sun sets.

We then see the first patrol, a group of golden elves riding Gatuns, the long-armed panther-like feline. They wear cloaks with wooden armor underneath, they're yellow and glossy. Most of them wield bows while the rest use spears and one or two look like mages. They look at us with weary eyes and only give a curt nod to the other elves before moving on.

They climb a tree and disappear. I notice that the Gatuns leave marks in the bark and plants that appear to heal completely after only a few seconds.

The patrol gives the commoners new vigor and they walk faster. After a half-hour, we finally reach the huge ramp that is the entrance to Ostodos. It turns into a spiral around a pillar-like tree and disappears inside a huge ceiling made of bark. This is the underside of Ostodos, a shield to protect them from monsters, their equivalent of a "wall."

Thick bark covers the underside of most of the town. Only a few spots are open and that's where the monsters can invade through if they have no means of breaking the bark.

Below the city is a small lake where rainwater gathers and slowly trickles away into a river. That river eventually joins others and grows larger until it leaves the northwestern corner of the High Forest, pouring out into the sea.

Around the lake are the farms, though only a few are actually on the ground level. A single tree in the middle of the lake brings water upwards and it is then distributed among multiple levels of farms.

"Wow," Ciel lets out in wonder.

"I see a few camouflaged elves in wait behind windows," Alissa says.

"Really? I didn't notice anything," Hana says.

"They are known for being good at hiding," Lina says.

After a long and tiring climb for the commoners, we finally pass through the ceiling. We go through a long killing-corridor filled with murder holes before we finally reach the gate.

The guards wait for us anxiously. When we finally reach them, they crowd around us and hurriedly talk to the elven commoners. They also look a little weary, though their equipment is still in top shape.

I put on 10 points into [Ingua Language].

"You brought magic tools?"

"How did you survive?!"

"I told you not to try to come!"

"A HORDE?!"

Rande approach us. "We will leave after tomorrow, same time," he says and immediately leaves.

As we dismount and approach a guard for customs, we start to get glances from the commoners and other guards. Klein escapes her parents and joins us so we wait for her inspection before we finally cross the large wooden gate together and enter the city proper.

The whole city is divided into two levels. The lower level is where the commoners live and where the military buildings are located; they receive weak sunlight and supplement it with crystal lamps, so it has a rather gloomy atmosphere. The upper level is above the canopy and receives sunlight, so we would rather go there.

The streets are composed of grey wood. They look almost Earth-like with two lanes for the wagons like an Earth road and two other lanes for pedestrians on the sides. Where the traffic line should be is actually an empty spot where you can see the lower bark "shield wall." In that empty spot, there's an enchantment that prevents people from falling and it pushes you back onto the road. It's quite popular with children, though it's too late right now for them to be out playing.

Moonlight shines down through the same holes in the middle of the street on the level above us and we see people sitting along the border of the hole. They dangle their feet above us and drink while talking happily.

The buildings are simple in their shape, huddled together, and are all boxes made of differently colored wood. The amount of decorations on them, like glowing plants and statues grown out of the buildings, is the way they display their wealth.

This floor does not have a very inviting atmosphere. The streets are nearly empty and inns desperately announce their vacancies.

"Do you know of a good inn on the upper floor?" I ask Klein.

She smiles innocently and nods, "Follow me, then!"

We enter a thin tree trunk nearby and climb the stairs carved inside. We exit onto the second floor and have a very clear view of the night sky. We feel a soft, chilly breeze blow through with the faint smells of plants, perfume, and dinner coming from nearby businesses.

The streets are busier on this level but most of the people here are drunks, so it's not as pleasant as it could be. The buildings are more sparse but are taller and share room with the canopies of the trees.

"I could live here; it's so beautiful," Ciel comments.

Lina looks at her with her eyebrows knit in worry.

"What of your [Stonebody]? Can you still feel the mana?" I ask.

"Yes, but… I feel a little uncomfortable," Lina answers.

"It will pass, even I felt uncomfortable with heights when I was young," Klein says.

"But I'm a dwarf and you're a wereape."

"Pfft!" Klein flicks her hand at her, "Don't let your race get in the way of enjoying yourself!"

"Okay…"

Ciel pats Lina's head and she brightens up a bit. We each grab one of Lina's hands and swing them back and forth like you would with a child. We look like the oddest father-mother-daughter combination ever.

Klein stops in front of a three-story-high blue inn, The Red Leaf Inn; it's a blue cylinder with red leaves as the roof.

"The name is quite original," Roxanne comments flatly.

"At least it's in Andraste, the other upper-class inns aren't as fond of imperials as this one," Klein says.

The interior is quite comfy. It's got that weird plant-like fluffy carpet just like in the Tree of Mana. The walls and ceiling are light blue and quite easy on the eyes.

A plump golden elf woman waits behind the counter looking a little bored. The elven "curse" is so strong that I still find her quite attractive. She suddenly jumps when she notices us and smiles widely at Klein.

"Miss Klein! It's good to see you well!" The woman exclaims. She walks out of the balcony and scurries towards Klein.

"Flor!" She opens her arms wide and receives the plump woman in a tight hug.

They spend a few heartwarming moments trying to crush one another, and then break the hug.

"So, Rande decided to make the trip," Flor comments.

Klein nods and looks to us. "We found a very strong escort to keep us all safe. They are the fellowship Helios," she says.

Flor analyzes us all quickly and smiles warmly. "I can easily see you are all special," she says, then we share polite greetings.

"So, you are staying for the night?" Flor asks.

I nod and Klein answers for her parents.

"I would like to reserve a bath for six people plus my dragon," I say.

"Make it seven," Klein interrupts. She smiles innocently but her face cramps and she blushes slightly at her answer. Flor raises an eyebrow at her and looks at her oddly. "And don't tell Dad," Klein adds.

Flor raises her eyebrows in surprise and silently goes back behind the balcony to write in the ledger.

We casually start our routine and undress, though our eyes linger for a while on Klein, making her even more embarrassed.

"May I wash you?" Alissa offers with a wicked smile on her face.

"N-no need, hehe," Klein laughs nervously.

"I insist," she says softly.

Klein swallows her saliva and nods.

-

Klein looks at me wide-eyed in fear and I smile sadistically.

"The next time you come to us I will take your virginity whether you've talked to your father or not. I don't like indecisive people," I warn her.

-

Klein nods glumly -.

-

We leave the bath while Klein stays inside to not arouse suspicion with her family. Once we pass Flor, she looks at us blankly then makes a visible effort to not laugh. Once she regains control over herself she suddenly pretends that there's work to be done in the ledger.

We sit down for dinner and are quickly served pasta with roasted duck. There's a purple sauce on the pasta so I eagerly taste it.

I drop my fork in surprise and anger, "Motherfucking pompous elves! This is tomato sauce!"

A note from Manasong

Hall of Fame of Patrons

The patrons who support Rupegia shall have their names sung by the bards for they deserve the glory and honor. Their names are:

Oracle Maximillian Hübner.

Lord Andrew Meyers.

Lord Hope.

Lord Samuel Lim.

Lord Cody Weigel.

Lord Bill.

Lord Novgarod.

Noble Salty Panda.

Leave a rating or a review to help me rise to the top or fix my shameful understanding of prose.

Take a look over my blog where all information of the world of Rupegia will be posted.

Join the Discord and discuss, or rant, or meme, or try and fight me so your waifu gets more screentime.

Become a Patron and read chapters in advance, or read the side-stories, or leave your mark on the story, or help choose the next artwork or the next side-story.

Chapter 44: Extermination – Part 3

A note from Manasong

Attention: to conform to the limit of sexual content allowed in a novel, I've censored this chapter. You can look for the uncensored version here.

The symbol "-" denotes a section that got cut for containing sexual content. Also, if paragraphs seem missing, they were also likely censored in an earlier pass where the symbol wasn't used.

I cover my mouth with my hand and blush in embarrassment. A few of the elven patrons heard my shout and send me some glares. An imperial drunk chuckles loudly and cheers me on, earning some glares of his own from even more elves.

The girls look at me oddly and Alissa asks, "To-mayto?" She tilts her head cutely, "Isn't that one of the vegetables you asked me to find?"

"Yes! I can't believe the damn elves have been hogging this fruit for themselves all this time!" I hiss under my breath.

Hana slurps a few noodles and hums while savoring the taste. The other girls and Gify copy her, and our table goes silent while they all savor the sauce.

"Gih!" Gify loves it.

The opinion of a Black Hole about the tastiness of things isn't reliable.

"Tasty," Aoi says in a calm tone.

Now, if Aoi likes it, then it must actually be tasty.

"It's okay," Lina comments.

"I think there's some of that Basil you like," Alissa says.

"Oh, yes, they use a lot of this sauce. They like to put it on everything," Roxanne says.

Hana goes silent and eats faster.

"You said it's fruit? So isn't this juice instead of sauce?" Ciel asks.

I shrug, I have no idea what the difference is between them.

"Excuse me," I call the attention of an androgynous waiter, "What's the name of the vegetable this sauce comes from?"

They smile kindly and speak, "This is tomafinger, it's a staple in our cuisine."

T-toma-what? I heard something else being spoken but the system translated it to that monstrosity.

The waiter leaves and I shake my head.

I refuse to say that name. For me, this is not-tomato.

"So, let's buy a ton of this fruit while we're here," I say.

"We have to be careful, though. If we buy a lot, then they might think that we are trying to export it and the elves will investigate," Lina says.

It would be awkward trying to explain what we did with a ton of not-tomatoes if they inspect my nearly empty [Item Box].

"I feel annoyed at being so close to something I love so much and not being able to enjoy it due to elven elitism," I say.

"Well, they sold tomafingers to the chimeras, so they aren't that bad," Lina shrugs.

Everyone is hogging the good stuff all to themselves. Who's hogging rice and coffee? Will I have to explore every single place in the world to find them?

Gih.

You would like that, wouldn't you?

I feel Gify grin inside my head.

A world-spanning quest for rice and coffee. How far would a man go to acquire his comfort food?

Gih!

Anton, Rande, and their respective families enter the dining area. Klein sends me an exaggerated wink and then Osaria copies her. I bite my lip to hold back my chuckle.

Rande sits on a table beside ours and strikes up a conversation with Hana about their fight with the Corpse Stealer horde.

"I'll retire to our room," I say to the girls and hold down Alissa's shoulder when she motions get up too. "You can stay. My 'Sanity' is good enough now that it's way less stressful to stay far from your blessing," I whisper in her ear.

She puckers her lips in thought and worry.

"Enjoy yourself," I say and leave. Lina quickly gets up and follows me.

"I don't really want to talk to them," she says, awkwardly.

Hana sits at Rande's table and drags Roxanne with her to sit beside Osaria.

I switch the room's bed out for ours and add some extra beds so everyone can sleep in the same room.

Lina cuddles up with me and pulls out one of Alissa's books to read. -.

I take the opportunity to brush her hair. It's a very cathartic experience and I feel my consciousness drifting away. After I'm done, I pull out the elven skin oil and smile at her suggestively.

-

While I play with Lina, I concentrate on the conversation downstairs through the [Bind]. Alissa's hearing is good enough that I can hear what everyone is saying.

I notice that Rande is decreasing his flirting, but Hana's "Charisma" is still high enough for them to be very friendly towards each other. Osaria is striking up a proper conversation with Roxanne, and through Aoi's eyes, I can see that they aren't touching each other too much.

Alissa and Ciel talk with Klein, her family, and Laertes. They are talking about Sommerland and the possible birthplace of Ciel. Gify is being petted by Klein while Anton and Krista look at her with a hint of envy.

-

I give Alissa a small hint of what I'm doing to Lina and her heart tightens -. She grits her teeth in frustration but doesn't give anyone a hint of what she's feeling.

Aoi suddenly comes off of Hana's shoulders and scurries towards our room. She grows large and opens the door by herself.

"What is it, Aoi?" I ask.

"I want, to play, too!" She answers and climbs up onto the bed. She grows to her larger form and pushes me down, then she shoves her tongue inside my mouth.

I share my senses with Aoi and - Alissa, too. She fakes a coughing fit to mask -.

"Wolfy~! That was dirty!" She complains inside my head.

"That's what you deserve, -."

"Punish me more!"

"No."

And I leave her like that.

-

A slightly drunk Ciel comes back to bed and tries to kill me in my sleep by suffocation. A fitting death if any, but far too early for me.

Today is the 11th.

-

Lina leveled up to 24, she learned [Throw] with 2 points.

We have a simple breakfast: soft biscuits, tea, fruits, and… Gatun milk.

"Sweeter than a cow's," I say with a shrug.

After we finish our meal, we laze around for a few minutes.

"I want to take a walk through the city," Alissa says.

Ciel and Hana nod in agreement.

"I'm feeling lazy, I'll just spend some time in a tea shop or something," I say.

"Take, me," Aoi asks.

Roxanne and Lina look at each other. "Let's play some Civil War…?" Lina asks tentatively.

Roxanne's eyes turn sharp and she smiles evilly. "Bring it on."

I discreetly summon three Shads and three Hollys. We should be relatively safe in this town if we don't go down any dark alleys. The elven authorities certainly wouldn't take kindly to imperials starting trouble here.

Roxanne gives me the Giant Centipede she killed and I head to the hunter's guild to get our rewards. I ask for directions a few times and quickly find it since the town is small enough that it's hard to get lost.

I go down the stairs to the lower level and enter a gloomy street. There's not much sunlight, so luminous plants are used as a substitute.

The guild looks much simpler than Rabanara's, and only the black bones of Corpse Stealers decorate the outer walls. As I cross through the double doors, I immediately smell the perfume of scented logs being burned and see quite the cozy atmosphere inside. The furniture is upholstered and covered in Uspidor skin, making it look quite comfortable to sit on. There are a few other Proofs of Extermination embedded in the interior walls, but they look more like museum displays rather than trophies from successful hunts. Having a fireplace in a building made entirely out of wood gives me some anxiety, but I can see a gem above it that somehow must be controlling the fire. The scented logs have a faint flowery smell to them that reminds me of chamomile.

The few hunters are mostly dignified elves with poise in their posture. Some of them are showing off glossy wooden armor but most wear elegant padded leather armor. The elves look at me with doubt while the few imperial hunters send more sympathetic gazes.

The way I walk with my sword at my waist and the presence of Aoi curled around my neck would give pause to anyone who might underestimate me. Though, that won't stop stupid people from doing stupid things.

I see a sign above a door in both Andraste and Ingua that says "Dismantling Room," so I enter through there. Two elves are playing cards inside. They've decorated their puffy beards with flowers, giving them an odd mix of girlishness and manliness.

The bigger one of the duo notices me and motions to the empty metal tables. "Feel free to pull out your monsters," he says.

Let's just show off a little to build some reputation.

I pull out the Kappatti, Marsh Goblins, Wood Goblins, Uspidor, Giant Centipede, and the pile of Corpse Stealer bones.

The bigger one lets his mouth hang open and the smaller one turns around to understand what stunned his co-worker. They both look so alike that I'm not sure if they are brothers or it's just the elven "curse."

"Young Mishter, you, uh, belong tchu a mersh'nary comp'ny?" The bigger one asks me nervously. His Andraste is a little odd, he has a thick European Portuguese accent and pronounces the vowels openly, like in Ingua.

"Wolf Ryder, leader of the fellowship Helios," I say and extend my hand for a handshake.

He looks at me and leans over to kiss it but thinks better and just gives me a handshake.

I certainly do not want a bearded man kissing my hand.

"I am Oldo and thish ish my brother, Boldo," he motions to the smaller man.

Boldo starts to hurriedly count the number of Corpse Stealers and I feel some mana escape his hand. He is merely checking whether or not all bones belong together, something simple for a Spirit mage.

Oldo goes towards the Uspidor and Giant Centipede.

"You ush'd [Bleed] on thish one, but how did you kill thish other one?" Oldo asks.

"Secret of my fellowship," I answer and Oldo grunts in understanding.

"Your fellowship killed all these Corpse Stealers by yourselves?" Boldo asks, his accent is much fainter than his brother's.

"We did, indeed."

"I could recommend you to the Lord's Knight Company. A fellowship like yours you would be paid handsomely," he immediately adds.

I raise a hand in a plea for him to stop. "We are currently working as a temporary escort for a caravan and we prefer to remain unbound," I say.

Boldo sighs and nods to me. "A shame, but the offer will stand if you ever change your mind," he says, then returns to examining the Corpse Stealers.

"I want the tentacles from the Uspidor, if you can remove them for me," I ask Oldo.

"Yay! They are delicious raw, with Alissa's cooking they will taste even better!" Aoi cheers in my head.

We get 30 gold coins for the Corpses, 3 for the Uspidor, and 1 more for the other monsters.

On the way to the hunter's guild, I saw a stair with the sign "Observation Point" above it, so I return there to investigate.

We go down a long stair down past the lower level of the town. After a set of thick bark doors, we come out into an inverted observation dome where the floor is made of thick glass and plenty of benches are available for us to lay down on. There's a single bored guard at the entrance to the dome and a few elves on the benches.

I lay down on a bench and keep my face at the edge so I can comfortably look down. The elves send me a few restrained glances but mostly ignore us.

"I guess this is kind of like a date," I say to Aoi.

"Date? A day…?" She tilts her head and rubs against my cheek.

"That got translated oddly, I guess dating is not a thing here."

"Time-ing?"

"On Earth, we have a casual relationship level called 'dating,' kind of like lovers but the word 'love' has heavier connotations there than it does here."

"I love you, we are not date-ing!" She scoffs.

"Well, okay, but the thing we are doing is kind of a 'date': two people in love spending time together just by themselves."

"Then isn't every day a 'date'?"

"Well, we are mostly working or training, so it has to be like, away from home and we have to be doing something fun."

"But training is fun! And so is killing monsters, they are delicious!"

I smile at her cheerful mindset. "Different standards."

"Hm."

From the observatory, we have a view of the lake below. It's quite calming and beautiful. The not-fireflies make for a truly magical sight straight out of a fantasy story. Not that I'm not in one, considering all that's happened to me.

Sometime later, an elven priest comes in and lights incense in the middle of the dome. Slowly, a faint herby smell fills the room.

I pull out two teacups Alissa prepared for us and some snacks, meaty ones for Aoi. She cutely drinks from the cup like a cat and nibbles on the slices of meat on the tray.

"You are supposed to be omnivorous," I tell her.

"But meat tastes goood!"

"Eating veggies will give you nutrients and help you grow big and strong."

"Muuuh," she groans in annoyance.

When the time for lunch nears, Alissa talks to me in my head, "Wolfy, we found a nice restaurant, let's eat here."

"Sure." I take out the lithograph out of my pocket and feed it some mana. I write on the crystal screen with my finger and the black ink congregates at the places that I touched it. In a few seconds the message is formed: "Ro, Li, come meet us."

We barely enter the restaurant and Aoi is already salivating in hunger. The smell of barbecue and scented logs is so strong that even I'm getting excited. We join the girl's table and wait for Roxanne and Lina to come. Meanwhile, they discreetly transfer to me all the things they bought. Tons of Tonsel, the not-lemon; bag upon bag of not-tomato; assorted fruits and veggies; more scented candles; scented logs for barbecuing; cheap skin-care products; and a few pieces of interesting-looking underwear.

"Everything is so cheap right now," Ciel whispers excitedly.

"And they all seemed eager to sell to us," Alissa adds.

"Gih."

"Pff, they weren't looking at you, at least not the men," Hana says.

Gify clicks his beak at Hana.

"Elves don't usually have large breasts," Alissa comments and glances at Ciel's modest cleavage.

The two missing girls soon arrive with Roxanne holding Lina's hand. Roxanne looks like Lina's older sister, they are adorable together.

"Awn… have you two been getting along?" Hana asks with mockery on her tone.

"Oh yes, her little tongue has been licking my lips all this time," Roxanne says with an evil smile.

Ciel and Lina both glare at her with annoyance.

"The score was 5-4 in favor of Lina," I say and Roxanne bites her tongue.

We order our meal and huge steaks are served to each of us. They have orc ribs with barbecue sauce and it tastes just like back on Earth. My mind melts with the flavors and I get one step closer to feeling at home.

I let a sigh escape from my lips and Alissa looks at me oddly. "Were those ribs that good?" She asks.

"No, not really. It's just that I've missed this quite a lot, it feels very nostalgic for me," I answer.

"Food is something that gives us comfort. We get so used to the taste of certain foods that we feel empty if we don't have them once in a while," Ciel says.

"So, food is like poppy?" Roxanne asks with a raised eyebrow.

"More like sex," Ciel answers with a wry smile. Hana and Roxanne let out an "ooh" in sync.

After lunch, we find a dead-end street and play around with the [Float] enchantment. You can throw yourself as hard as you want into the hole and the enchantment will always push you back to safety. It feels just like [Telekinesis], it changes your gravity until you gently fall back onto the road, which means it can be a little disorientating if you spin too much.

I lightly spar with the girls but keep my instant-magic hidden. I haven't met any suspicious people here yet, but Katasko can just buy information from the elves if they need to.

A few shy elven children appear at the corner of the street and watch us curiously. Ciel and Alissa turn to them like moths to a flame and their smiles mesmerize most of the children but creep out a few.

An elven boy (I think) comes to Hana and pulls out his own wooden shortsword, "Missh, can you teach ush to fight?" He asks.

"Oh?" Hana looks down and smiles warmly, "Of course, but don't you have your own teacher for that?"

"Yes, but he shaid to spar with ash many people ash I can."

Hana laughs and the kid winces, "Good advice, let's play a little, then."

I sit down near the curb and watch them spar. Lina ends up being dragged into it since her height makes her a good sparring partner for the boy, much to her annoyance.

As time passes, the number of girly looking elven children sitting beside me increases so much that I start to become uncomfortable.

"Why are they all so close?" I ask Alissa through our connection.

"Well, you are quite cute for a human, your scars give you a little charm, and your height makes it easier for them to relate to you," Alissa answers, barely containing a chuckle.

Gods, please, I'm not a pedo!

The kids play tag and at first, they manage to outwit Alissa by playing around with the [Float] enchantment. Once she manages to copy their tricks, the evil orange fox comes out and the kids have to learn strict teamwork just to bring her down.

"You seem to be enjoying playing with children more than even Ciel," I say to Alissa.

This gives her pause and she ends up being stabbed in the back. The children cheer in victory, but it's cut short so that they can start the next round.

"I guess…" I feel Alissa shrug.

We return to the inn with the sunset and fool around in the bath again. Roxanne fulfills her promise and steals Lina from Ciel so she can have her fun. To console Ciel, I give all of my attention to my chocolate goddess -.

Dinner is more pasta, now with Bolognese sauce. I discreetly add some shredded cheese and not-olive oil to it. It tastes so perfect that I could even see myself having a meal back at home while being surrounded by my family. All five of us around a table with a large pot of pasta, roasted chicken, and some cheap sweet wine. I can even remember the Sunday TV programs that would be on at that time.

This time I don't sigh, but I do get a little emotional, so only Aoi and Alissa notice my feelings through our connection.

Anton's attempts to keep us separate from Klein aren't really that bad considering she's getting extra attention from her family. She looks very happy when she comes back to the inn and immediately sits at our table.

The girls share information about what they bought in town. Just like us, they got a lot of skin-care products and even Anton got a few for himself.

"I mean, they really do work. Being bald may look easier than having to take care of your hair, but my skin can easily get dry and wrinkly," Anton defends himself.

"There might be only a single race in the entire realm that thinks that skin-care is a simple business," Ciel says and sends a discrete glance to Hana.

"Well, it is simple," Hana says with a shrug and smiles wryly when every woman at the table sends her a glare.

We go to sleep early since we'll be waking up tomorrow before sunrise.

Intermission 13

I enter my room and breathe in deeply to calm my nerves.

What am I doing? How am I even going to start this conversation?

"Hey, Dad, I want to lose my virginity. No, not Laertes, obviously. Yes, I want to have sex with the cute perverted boy who has his own harem."

Or maybe I should go with: "Hey, Dad, I want to have sex with whoever I want. Obviously, I will join that boy and his harem and have orgies everyday with all of them. Yeah, totally normal."

This is so ridiculous. I just want to have some fun…!

I sigh and lean against the door.

If only he wasn't so ambitious, he would be quite the catch.

I think I should keep in touch with Hana. They should be grooming Hermann to become a knight…

I groan and slap my cheeks.

Whatever, I'll improvise.

I leave my room and knock on the door of the room beside mine.

"Come in," Mom says.

Dad is delicately brushing Mom's hair with a brush far too small for his huge hand. His "Dexterity" is amazing.

"What is it, Klein? You look nervous," Mom says, her intuition is as sharp as ever.

"Well, I just want to talk about something," I answer and force an innocent smile.

Dad immediately stops brushing and his eyes lock with mine. Mom motions for me to sit and I awkwardly make myself comfortable on the corner of their bed.

I breathe in to muster all my courage and ask, "Dad, when are you going to find a husband for me?"

Mom calmly turns to him and I see his face twitch.

"I haven't found any good enough," he answers flatly.

"Dad, I'm twenty already."

His permanent frown grows deeper, "Still young, only trophy hunters would care so much about your age."

"But I want a husband! I want someone to love!" I protest and my tail twists on itself.

"I already said I haven't found anyone good enough!" He glowers at me. His normal voice is loud enough that increasing the volume just a little is enough to be considered a yell.

"Then I want the right to choose my own!" I pout and glower back.

"My love…" Mom says softly and her small hand cups his large cheek. He quickly calms and looks at her worriedly. "What kind of husband are you searching for her?"

"A good one," he answers flatly.

"And what would be good enough? A Lord? Is that why it's taking so long? You want a Lord for me," I say with a sneer.

Mom turns to me and her angry eyes force me to shut my mouth.

Dad shows a bit of annoyance on his face, then he breathes in and speaks, "Someone who would respect you, who wouldn't treat you like a trophy. Someone who's not collecting wives or husbands and truly wants to respect the exchange of vows that a marriage is supposed to be about."

"If you say it like that, then Laertes would be perfect, would he not?" I ask and send him a glare. Dad keeps silent and I see him grit his teeth in anger. "But Laertes is not rich is he? That's why he's not 'good enough.' You want a rich man with power and enough heart to truly love only me. Dad, that someone only exists in dreams."

"Do you want to wait for someone perfect and live the rest of your life happily, or do you want someone now and have a mediocre marriage?" He asks between gritted teeth. He's using a lot of "Willpower" to not yell and wake up the entire inn.

"I want to choose for myself," I say confidently.

"You want to fuck that perverted boy."

"So, what?!" I hiss at him.

"You two, stop it," Mom says with finality on her tone. "Anton… you haven't been putting much effort in finding her a husband, have you?" Mom's cold tone makes Dad tense up.

"I saw them all and deemed them unworthy," Dad nervously says, using big words to sound confident.

"You barely talked to the nobility. You can't judge someone's personality that way," Mom says and then turns forward, her cold eyes now assault me. "You just want to drown in sex. You know they are having orgies every day."

"Well… yes, I want to have sex!"

Gods! I never thought I would have to admit such a thing to my parents!

"You know how men like him are, you are just going to be a trophy for him," she says, flatly.

"I don't care, I just want to have some fun with them."

Both of them raise their eyebrows in surprise and I cringe.

"Even with the women…?" Mom asks, her voice barely above a whisper.

"Yes…?" I answer, a little unsure of myself.

"Should I, uh, start searching for wives, too?" Dad asks.

"No, I still prefer men."

"Okay, then."

"So, that's it! I'm sleeping with Wolfy-… Wolf w-whether you like it or not!" I announce.

"You are going to regret this," Dad says in a disapproving tone.

"Husband, you have only yourself to blame," Mom says and slaps his cheek lightly.

Dad grumbles and looks away. "Since you are so naive, let me tell you to not accept marrying him if he proposes to you. He's the perfect example of a 'collector,'" he adds.

"I won't, I don't want to marry him."

"That makes it worse."

Mom groans. "You both are making stupid decisions, but nothing is perfect, except for my cooking, so you both need to learn your lessons."

Dad protests, "She's just letting herself be sed-…"

I start to speak at the same time, "He's just too scared to find m-…"

"Not another word!" Mom interrupts and we both go silent. "You both need to learn your lessons the hard way."

A note from Manasong

Hall of Fame of Patrons

The patrons who support Rupegia shall have their names sung by the bards for they deserve the glory and honor. Their names are:

Oracle Maximillian Hübner.

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Lord Hope.

Lord Samuel Lim.

Lord Cody Weigel.

Lord Bill.

Lord Novgarod.

Noble Salty Panda.

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Chapter 45: Mercy – Part 1

Today is the 12th.

Gify wakes us all up and I start my day feeling oddly unfulfilled.

The elves serve us some strong not-chai tea with milk, it helps a lot with the morning laziness. Rande's family has already left so it's only us and Klein's. Anton seems quieter than normal while Klein seems more anxious. The trip to Ostoum will be short, but there's still some danger on the way, so it's quite normal for us to be tense.

Flor comes out to talk to Klein's family; they all give each other tight hugs.

"Are you making the trip back, too?" Flor asks Anton.

"Through Glorampina," he gives her a sad smile.

"Well, come back and spend some time here after things go back to normal," she says.

"How long do you think this is going to last?" Krista asks.

"Not much longer, I hope. The towns are starting to have problems even though we are almost completely self-sufficient."

"Yeah, the patrols looked very tired," Klein comments.

"As much as we are proud of not relying on the empire, I still hope that the emperor will solve this," Flor says with a sigh.

"Most elves we heard talking about it want to keep things internal," Anton says.

Flor frowns, "Of course they do, but while they maintain their elven pride, the common folk like us are the ones getting hurt the most."

"Huh… pride…" Anton comments awkwardly and scratches his cheek with the log of his finger.

Flor turns to us and gives us a shy goodbye. "You are an interesting fellowship, please come back one day."

"We would love to," Ciel says.

Anton and Laertes sigh lowly in unison.

We go to the gate and see the usual caravan forming up. With nobody else leaving besides us and the patrol, the gate looks oddly empty. I can see that most of the elven commoners are back, but either a few of them are missing or I'm just confusing them with other because they all look somewhat similar.

Then we take the long walk down the spiral ramp. Most commoners look rather happy and comfortable, the safety Helios provides allows them to relax more.

When we reach the road I cast a [Swift Foot] on the commoners. They let their pride wane a little and bow lightly to me.

"So, Roxanne, where are you from?" Osaria asks, she leans out the window and bunches up her bountiful breasts into a trap for the eyes.

"Mashoor, then I lived in Xane while I studied at the Holy Academy," Roxanne answers with a wry smile.

"Amazing, so that's where you learned of your talent for magic," Osaria smiles warmly.

"Well, you could say that I was talented before I joined," Roxanne smiles proudly. "In fact, I had created my specialty magic, [Explosion], before I joined and that's what guaranteed me a spot there."

I don't try to hold back my gaze and just drown in Osaria's breasts. She sends me a wink and a seductive smile when she notices my stare. I take a glance at Ciel and she quickly undoes her pout then looks ahead.

"Does Ciel really not want us to get involved with Osaria?" I ask Alissa through [Bind].

"How was the Academy? I studied at Escanso's Academy when I was young but my talent with magic was middling at best… for a noble," Osaria adds the last part with an uncharacteristic shy tone.

"Maybe she wants to be teased, maybe she's unsure if she wants to sleep with Osaria, or maybe she's feeling territorial," Alissa answers.

"Is Ciel an animal? Like, her position as the 'boob slut' is threatened by Osaria?" We both chuckle internally while looking at Ciel, who notices our odd looks and frowns.

"It… was quite informative. The Academy is certainly the reason I am this strong today," Roxanne says with a little anxiety.

"You don't seem to look at it fondly," Osaria says softly, her sensual voice jolts my member awake.

"Maybe we should get Lina to flirt with Osaria, that would push her into a decision quite quickly," Alissa says, her voice dripping with sadism.

"Hmmm…" I moan in delight, "That could be pushing it a bit too far, though."

"The Academy was so strict that I felt like I was being suffocated there," Roxanne says, her tone gets sadder.

"I understand…" Osaria says as kind as a mother. "I heard that succubi society is quite competitive."

"She's a big girl, she can deal with it and stop us if she doesn't like it."

The image of Lina being eaten by the two curvy chocolate goddesses invades my mind and I smile like a fool.

"It is. It's not the environment I wanted to be in for my entire life, so… I left."

"You seem quite happy now, so perhaps it was the better choice."

Roxanne smiles shyly. Hana guides her horse closer, then grabs Roxanne's hand and kisses it.

"It was. For me, at least," Hana says with a warm smile, making Roxanne squirm.

Roxanne looks like an innocent maiden while Hana looks like a dashing knight looking fondly at her lady.

Osaria looks at me and her questioning gaze awakens me from my unashamed lewd stare at the twin hills. "Wait, who's Hana married to?" She questions.

"Me, and, well, Roxanne, too. Also, kind of everyone, really," I say with a shrug.

Osaria lets out a dignified chuckle.

"Technically not married, we just exchanged vows," Ciel comments.

"How… how does that work?" Laertes chimes in from the top of the carriage. Morbid curiosity got the best of him.

"We just… love each other?" I answer and look at the girls.

"It's trust," Alissa says.

"Fighting alongside one another builds bonds like nothing else," Hana says.

And what about your bonds with the two boys back when you were free?

"The way we love each other is different for each couple," Ciel says.

Rande nods and joins the conversation, "The way Oura and Nito love each other is certainly different from the way I love them."

We hear a grunt and suddenly Oura's face appears from behind Osaria, she looks quite confused.

"Go back to sleep, love, I didn't call for you," Rande says with a mirthful smile on his face.

"Kay…" Oura answers faintly and disappears back inside the carriage.

"How did you three meet?" Hana asks Rande with a suggestive smile.

The mirth disappears from his face and his smile becomes dashing. "Nito is my cousin, his family never had that much power so I took him for myself. Oura was Mom's little pet, once. We got introduced to each other through her so that Oura could become my knight one day. It was love at first sight, so we decided to get together immediately."

A muffled voice protests from inside the carriage, "I-I'm not a lesbian! I was never your mother's pet!" Oura appears from behind Osaria again and glares at Rande.

"She was grooming you to become one, though," he states calmly.

"N-no!" She covers her face with her hands and retreats back into the carriage.

"If you say so," he shrugs.

Osaria continues to smile innocently, then she and Rande share a knowing smile.

Yeah, they are nobility alright.

The trip continues calmly, only a few Wood Goblins and another Giant Centipede come before lunchtime. Ostodos and Ostoum are sister towns and they help each other out due to their proximity, so this part of the trip might be the safest.

I give the corpse of the Giant Centipede to the commoners so they can make a hearty meal for themselves.

Krista opens a jar of pickled Dragon Eggs. Not literal eggs, they are just fruits that look more like pitayas than the eggs we found in the dragon nest Aoi lived in. They taste just like pickled cucumbers.

She spit-roasts a whole Acarei, a large lizard-like monster from Antano, and we eat it in a baguette sandwich. She serves a few salads, like not-tomato with not-oregano, to be added to the sandwiches.

Alissa approaches Krista and they start to talk about how to cook the Uspidor's tentacles.

"Wolfy, can you give us the tentacles?" Alissa asks.

"Sure, but I will want most of them for ourselves."

Krista nods and happily takes the thick octopus-like tentacles.

We move on through the forest and I notice that the number of glowing plants remains fairly constant along the road. The mana in the environment is quite thick, so I'm not surprised that the exotic plants have survived outside of direct elven influence.

Though, there's still something odd.

"There are way fewer monsters around here than I expected," I say.

"Well, this stretch of the road is easy to patrol in comparison to the rest of the High Way," Rande comments.

"No, I mean, the number of monsters is decreasing the more we progress."

Hana and Rande immediately look at each other. "There's probably a large group camping nearby," Hana says.

"Yes, someone who can hunt monsters," Rande agrees.

"Adventurers?" I question.

Rande starts to reason, "To affect the number of nearby monsters this much… only if it's a mercenary company training their members, or…"

"Bandits," Hana completes.

"Alissa," I turn to her and she nods.

"I will search for tracks," she hits the rump of her horse and gallops forward.

Rande alerts the soldiers and they become alert. The commoners go silent and huddle up, holding their children tightly in their arms.

I have four Hollys out scouting in a circular pattern; I dismiss the Shads and summon three more Hollys to fill in any gaps.

A few minutes later, I see someone curled up inside a hole in the trunk of one of the gigantic trees beside the road. Holly has orders to observe for a minute and then move on, so I use this minute to absorb all the information I can about this person.

A thin, dirty, golden elf wearing a ghillie suit. He has a bow, a quiver, and some food out. He sips on a large cup of steaming tea, not-chai.

"Stop, I found a scout beside the road," I tell Alissa.

"Where?"

"A few hundred meters ahead of you. The tree he's in is right beside the road."

"I will circle around and try to find tracks to see where he came from."

"Understood."

"Rande, one of my birds found a hiding golden elf wearing camouflage," I say.

His eyebrows shoot up, he's very impressed. "You found a hiding golden elf through the eyesight of a mere bird?" He questions.

"My 'Perception' is quite high," I say.

"I can see that… Anyway, we have to take him out silently before he can call his companions."

"You sure he's a bandit?"

"He's watching the road, right?"

"Yes."

"We need to capture him. If we make a mistake, then it's his fault for doing something so suspicious."

I look at the girls and Ciel and Hana both nod with confidence.

"Caravans are very important for the stability of the towns. Lords stomp down on bandits like these with prejudice," Ciel says.

"Don't fail me now, Wolf," Rande says warily.

"My job is to keep the caravan safe and that is what I will do," I state categorically.

He nods and turns to Laertes. "Scout the area and find us a good spot to defend ourselves," he says.

Laertes nods sternly and turns into a large husky. He jumps off of the carriage and darts away. Soon, his small [Spirit Light] is the only sign we can see of him.

"Can you actually capture him silently?" Rande asks me.

I have so many tools to use… but to do it perfectly and without allowing the scout to react will be difficult. Especially because I can't use the Shads.

"Possibly, though if he has an Emergency Ring then I'm not sure how I can stop him from activating it."

"Do what you can."

I harden my expression as I firmly state, "I'll summon a dark elemental, it has more of a chance to disable him than a spirit one."

Rande grimaces and repeats, "Do what you can."

I look at Ciel and she sighs, then she guides her horse closer to me and whispers, "If you feel uncomfortable, stop immediately. The Gods send signs, but Torture is a Sin that's easy to commit."

"Understood. I'll go alone."

The girls, even Aoi, look at me with immense anxiety.

"It's better this way, you won't be affected by the elemental."

Ciel cringes and nods. "We will be here when you return," she says, softly.

I gallop midway between the caravan and the scout, then stop.

I remember the anger that the Red Smirk ignited in me; the fear from the ambush that Darean's kidnapper created for me; the unpleasant surprise of the invisible assassins that tried to kill us; the disgust during the fight to capture the Illusion mage; the massacre of the kidnappers that wanted Lyle. These memories help me gather my courage and steel my nerves for what's to come.

I cannot let these people interfere with my life, but they still interfere with my feelings, regardless. The dark elemental is just another part of it.

I breathe in calmly and summon a dark elemental.

My face twitches in discomfort; a slow and heavy shiver runs along my back and tires out my muscles; my lungs feel heavy when I exhale; and my breath trembles.

A dark outline of a person, eerily similar to myself, rises from the ground and stands beside me.

"Find the scout," I order.

I nod and turn around, then I dash through the road in search of my prey.

Even though I move along the road with all my speed, I feel like I'm not moving at all. Like a nightmare, I struggle to move forward no matter how hard I try. Desperation sinks in as the dark outline behind me gets closer and closer. My back tingles so much that when the dark outline touches it, I immediately feel immense pain in my tense muscles as I try to distance myself from the darkness with all of my willpower.

I wake up from my nightmare and feel like an eternity has passed while in truth it didn't last long. I stop my distressed horse and look up at the tree. Somewhere in there, the elemental is holding the elven scout, who is screaming in pain, but no sound escapes from him.

I unsummon another Holly and summon a nature elemental.

"Bind it," I order.

The dark elemental releases the elven man as the nature elemental restrains him with her vines, then she brings him down from the tree.

I can't use [Godly Language] right now since I'll have to bring him back alive after I'm done.

The elven man looks rather weak and malnourished. His thin beard is unkempt and makes him look more like a beggar than a dignified elf.

Slowly, he regains his awareness and observes the situation he's in. He looks at me with a mix of fear and proud defiance.

"What were you doing hiding up there?" I question him once I deem him sane enough.

"Release me! I am merely a hunter waiting for prey! You can see that I had my bow up there!" He spews at me and nudges to the tree with his shoulder.

"You were watching over the road, do you understand how suspicious you looked?" I shoot back flatly.

"Fuck you, imperial!" He spits on the ground. "How did you know I wasn't waiting for prey, huh?!"

"How, indeed…" I cast [Summon Small Bird] the normal way and his eyes open wide with realization. "Don't lie or I will use the dark elemental again."

"You don't have the courage, boy," he spits again.

I look at the elemental and say, "Do it."

The scout opens his mouth in fear but before he can speak his voice fades. He stares at the dark elemental with horror on his face as a disgusting mutation takes place.

The dark outline grows a cocoon and turns into a writhing mass of white flesh. It falls on the ground and squirms towards the scout. Arms grow out of the twitching flesh, then a head, then a barbed penis.

The head gains its shape and a face forms: a balding man with sickly, pale skin; no lips; and bloody, pointy, and thin teeth. A sickening smile and a piercing stare with bulging, bloodshot eyes is shot at the scout.

His arms grow long and thin and he slowly crawls forward with twisted delight, savoring the terror in the eyes of the elven man. The fingers form, and long, dirty fingernails extend out from their tips.

The dark elemental hugs the man firmly and licks his ear. Then he turns the scout over onto his back and lowers his pants. The scout mumbles a few things, trying to convince himself this isn't real, because it's the truth.

The elemental spreads the ass cheeks of the scout and inserts a dirty fingernail inside. The scout groans in pain and starts to struggle.

I turn my head away and see a finger creeping inside the scout's asshole. I turn to the other side and see another finger entering him. I cannot escape from the nightmare.

The sharp fingernails break the skin and the man bleeds. The fingers start to enter deeper and spread his asshole open. He cries in pain and struggles against his binds, but the nature elemental only increases her grip and bruises his skin in response.

He squirms and manages to see the bellybutton of the elemental open as disgusting worms slime their way out. They fall onto his cheeks and worm their way down towards his asshole.

His cries become even louder and he starts to scream. "PLEASE, STOP! PLEASE, I BEG YOU! MERCY, PLEASE!"

I feel some discomfort and disgust. My heart is burning in pain.

"Will you obey me and tell me everything?"

"Y-YES, PLEASE MAKE IT STOP!"

I dismiss the dark elemental and nearly puke, but the scout doesn't have the same resistance as me. The pain and discomfort quickly fade.

The scout coughs and rolls away from the disgusting puddle he created. He checks his pants and sees that they are still on. His hands, currently tied behind his back, reach over to pat his ass and check if there's any damage. He sighs in relief once he's satisfied.

"What were you doing in that tree," I ask, emotionless.

He cringes but speaks, "Waiting for a good target."

"A caravan?"

"Yes," his breath quickens in anxiety.

"Did you warn your comrades about us?"

"No…" He says through gritted teeth.

"Search his body for anything," I order the elemental.

The nature elemental's vines snake all over his body, making him itchy all over. Then, in a hidden pocket, it finds an Emergency Ring turned green.

"So…?" I ask the scout.

The scout keeps silent and stares at the ring with desperation.

"If they are coming, I will make the dark elemental torture you again for disobeying."

He grimaces as he speaks, "I already missed my last safety report, they'll know I got captured by now."

Fuck.

"Alissa, did you find the tracks?"

"Yes, he came from the north-east. There's another younger track, it seems like someone came out of there after he reached the observation spot."

"So, they are organized."

"Quite."

"Come back now. He said that he missed the last safety report, so they'll know that he got captured."

"You interrogated him?"

"With a dark elemental since I can't use [Godly Language] on him."

She grows silent and I feel worry and anxiety leaking from her side. "I'll give you lots of love later," she says, forcing a chipper tone.

"I'll be waiting…" I finish. I can't help but smile at her concern.

I unsummon all of the Hollys and summon an earth elemental to help carry the scout and bring him back with me to the caravan.

"How many men?" Rande asks.

"One hundred," the scout answers.

"Bullshit," he gives the scout a slap.

I really want to use [Godly Language] right now.

"Fuck you," the scout struggles against his binds.

Hana's brain massage helps me zone out of the "interrogation."

"What kind of men do you have?"

"Gatun riders, mages, and dozens of archers."

Rande slaps him again and the scout spits blood.

"I can confirm any of this information with my [Summoning Magic] once they get close enough," I interrupt.

"If he lied, then we kill him, simple as that," Rande says and gives the scout a wicked smile.

This gives the scout some pause. "We have mages, we will kill your little birds before you can see anything."

"I doubt that. I saw you with one of my special little birds and you never noticed."

"Even if they do that, once they get here we will have our answer, then, you die," Rande growls at the scout.

"Fuck, okay! We've got seventy men, just hungry farmers that lost our homes!" He yells and the entire camp goes silent.

"Where?" Rande asks, his voice much softer.

"Odulto, a small farming village north of Escanso. We abandoned it before we could get overwhelmed, but not everyone had enough money to restart somewhere else."

"You are quite far from home."

"We got a tip that a juicy caravan was going to pass through here. Escanso has more patrols, so it's too dangerous if we are too close."

A tip, eh?

"Did you leave your families behind?"

"Yes…" He looks down and his tone turns sad. "Can't bring them close to the fight, can we?" Shame appears on his voice and his defiance fades away.

Rande leaves him and motions for us to come over.

"I would rather not kill them all," he says.

"Are you going soft, now?" Hana says and narrows her eyes dangerously.

"Dammit! They are my brethren!" He hisses. "How can I just slaughter them all without a second thought?"

"Our safety and yours comes first. But if they surrender, then it ends," I say.

"Then make them surrender," he affirms with determination.

I look at Roxanne and she frowns. "We have to be brutal and quick, then they'll be so shocked that their morale will drop and it won't recover," I say and her frown grows deeper.

"Some of them will have to die horribly," Roxanne says.

"Yes."

Rande grimaces and speaks, "I understand. It's the most efficient method."

Brutal efficiency…

We use the cover of a spiral tree to hide the caravan. Some of the space mages use [Nature Magic] to turn the tree into a proper wall. We stand out in the open to show ourselves off as a target for them, two sacrificial wagons are left behind us to make for a juicier target. I leave six earth elementals below the ground with a surprise for them.

Thirty versus seventy, but the advantage is ours.

Two Hollys scan the area, and one Shad is left with Roxanne while she prepares the spell. I'm left with very little mana, but it's a sacrifice we have to make.

A good half-hour later, I see scouts tracking us through Holly. They find our tracks leaving the road and alert the main group. A few minutes later, a mob of elven men with crude bows or wooden shields and spears appear. They look similar to the scout: scruffy, thin, and slightly dirty.

As they approach, I see something odd. Three birds are following the mob, not just coincidentally flying nearby, but literally following them.

"Alissa, I think someone is using [Summon Small Bird] to follow the bandits," I say through [Bind].

"I will look for them."

I find the girls and whisper them the information. No chantless casting if we can avoid it because the less they know about our powers, the better.

It's either Darean or Katasko that wants to scout us.

I approach Rande and speak, "The scout didn't lie. Well, the last information he gave us is correct. They look like poor and untrained soldiers. Most are men and a few are women."

He clicks his tongue and relays the information to the others. Plenty of the soldiers are also elves, so they get both angry and frustrated at this situation.

Soon, their [Spirit Lights] become visible and they stop in front of us.

"WE ARE HERE FOR YOUR CARGO. LEAVE THE WAGONS BEHIND AND NOBODY GETS HURT!" A well-built golden elf man bellows.

"NO. WE ARE PREPARED FOR YOU. GO BACK NOW OR FACE A PAINFUL DEATH!" Rande yells back.

"YOU ARE OUTNUMBERED AND SURROUNDED, YOU WILL NOT SURVIVE THIS!"

"YOU DID NOT BRING ENOUGH MEN TO ASSAULT A FORTIFIED POSITION!" Rande shoots back and laughs out loud.

"I SEE NO FORTIFICATIONS!"

"THEN YOU HAVE ALREADY LOST!"

Through Holly, I see the man growl. He motions with his hand and the bandits form a crude shield wall. They start to slowly advance with the yells of an "officer" in the middle of them.

To their credit, their formation is advancing very orderly, they've practiced this.

The elven archers start to spread out and we raise our shields. Our mages and archers are behind heavy barricades, so there's not much danger to them if they keep their heads down.

Slowly, they approach, but nobody has the courage to fire a spell or arrow. Both sides look conflicted to fight one another. Elven pride is actually somehow beneficial to this situation.

Soon, they get close enough to feel Roxanne's mana leaking out. "Someone's casting a big spell!" A bandit yells and soon the others repeat.

"I don't know what it is!" Another frightened bandit yells.

"CHARGE! STOP THE MAGE!" The "officer" yells.

"RISE!" I and Rande bellow.

The elementals rise out of the ground and bring caltrops with them. The bandits are wearing thin shoes, which easily get pierced by the caltrops. They fall to the ground and yell in pain, the line quickly crumbling as they fall on top of each other.

"ROXANNE!" I yell.

Hana rises from behind her barricade and activates [Wind Shield]. The bandit archers fire their arrows, they lose their power and harmlessly fall on the ground due to the enchantment.

A huge bubble of steamy water appears above Roxanne as she rises from behind Hana.

"[MELT SKIN]!"

"FIRE!" Rande orders and the archers and mages obey.

A note from Manasong

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Chapter 45: Mercy - Part 2

A note from Manasong

Attention: to conform to the limit of mature content (more than just sexual content) allowed in a novel, I've censored this chapter. You can look for the uncensored version here.

The symbol "-" denotes a section that got cut for containing sexual content. Also, if paragraphs seem missing, they were also likely censored in an earlier pass where the symbol wasn't used.

The desperate, dying screams of the bandits spread through the forest.

Gods, is this the world that you wanted? Full of death, pain, and suffering?

The bandits fire their arrows, but their barrage is weak and lacks leadership. We hide behind our shields and our own, less numerous archers and mages are enough to suppress the bandit archers.

Is this what "change" is all about? Do it, fail, die, and let others come after you?

"CHARGE!" Rande yells.

I, Lina, and Ciel break out of the formation and charge the archers on the left. Rande and Anton charge the archers on the right. Hana leaves Roxanne and flies towards us. She lands in front of me and her enchantment diverts all of the arrows. Alissa fires her own arrows, not at the bandits, but at the birds that she spotted, currently circling above us. Aoi wraps herself tighter around my neck and I feel arousal leaking through her [Bind].

Progress comes through change; little by little, we move further and further onwards.

Hana passes the first archer and ignores him. He tries to draw a hunting knife to defend himself but I cut his hand and stab him in the thigh. Lina crushes the leg of another archer and then breaks his clavicle. Ciel sinks her glaive into the belly of a man and casts a small [Wind Blade] on his arm. Then we move on and search for the next archers to disable.

But this gradual change doesn't build a strong foundation. It searches for the best chance at the moment and lacks foresight.

Rande swings his sword and paints archers left and right with thick flames. They scream in agony as their extremities burn. Anton chops off limbs with ease, until a bandit tries to fight back, only to get a swift axe to the head. Both of them use kite shields to protect themselves from arrows; Anton can easily swing his poleaxe one-handed while Rande fights at a distance, so they don't need to use two hands to wield their weapons.

To fix that, we need drastic changes to cut out the tumors that will always inevitably grow. And death is the most drastic change there is.

I slash the chest of a man and cast an [Earth Bullet], then I feel "death" coming from my flank. I find the source and see an archer aiming at me. Before I have time to react, an arrow pierces the archer's flank and he drops his bow.

"The bird spies are dead," Alissa says in my head, and through her eyes I see her aim at another sneaky archer.

Hana flies from archer to archer and gives them each a quick slash. Her shield makes her immune to their attacks, so she flits around with impunity.

This world has no mercy for the weak, no time for the slow, no tears for the losers.

We only have fifteen foot-soldiers, so we don't have enough men to brawl with the bandits and our soldiers have to instead blitz through their enemies. Thankfully, the buried earth elementals prevent the bandits from mounting a proper defensive line. If the bandits don't throw down their weapons, they get cut down; if they play defensively, the mages and archers will take them apart; if they beg for mercy, they will be spared.

To treat each life as a sacred gift will only bring stagnation, as the leeches will slowly drain society of all that makes life worth living.

The archers sling their bows and turn around. They begin to run away with impressive speed and spread out. We deal with the few remaining stragglers and our fight ends.

The ones on Rande's side run away screaming in fear. Rande's [Flaming Slash] horrified them after seeing their comrades be burned alive. Though not many actually died from it, the mental effect of the horrific display was more than enough to terrify them.

The last few bandit spearmen create a circle of spears and make a last stand.

"[Firestorm]!" Roxanne casts.

For a moment, their faces distort into fear, then they burn alive and die soon after.

The sounds of battle end and only the moans of the wounded and dying remain. Suddenly, shy cheers come from of the soldiers and quickly die down. This is not a victory to celebrate.

A world without conflict will stagnate just like Earth, or even worse if a leech manages to rise to the same power as the Avgi empire. We are fated to kill each other for eternity, as it's the only sure way of keeping the way clear for progress.

"DO NOT REACH FOR YOUR WEAPONS OR YOU WILL BE KILLED!" Rande bellows.

We start to drag the wounded together. The stronger commoners come out of the tree and help drag the bandits.

Osaria and Rande organize the wounded, allowing the ones at risk of dying to be healed first. Our foot soldiers get HP potions, while the bandits will have to survive with only a weak [Heal].

I unsummon everything and drink one of Roxanne's MP potions, then I get to work beside Ciel and we heal the dying. Oura helps with healing, too, but Ciel is still more experienced so we defer leadership to her.

Spilled guts, broken bones, chopped off limbs, bleeding arteries. The smell of blood becomes so strong that I have to send the other girls into our surroundings to kill the approaching monsters.

Glue the bones together, reconnect the veins, guide the muscle together, reconnect the skin, then clean the wound and move on to the next patient. A few of the foot soldiers have [First Aid] so they have some idea about how to knit wounds, which helps us conserve mana and allows us to spend less time with each patient. I end up healing the same men that I wounded, which makes things very awkward when they thank me in tears for saving them.

The ones with burned skin scream the most, but they get healing salves made by the commoners so we don't spend too much time on them. It's also much easier to heal them, except for those who were burned in horrifying places; for them, I almost have to close my eyes in revulsion.

The bandits get stripped down to their underwear and securely tied up. The few female bandits are watched closely by the female commoners so that no one gets any stupid ideas. The corpses are piled together far away from our camp and Roxanne burns them all.

I feel like my humanity is slipping away as the red color of all the blood paints over my memories. I also feel a small change in me that gives me a small boost in strength. My "Sanity" and "Piety" increased by 1 (now 11+4 and 15).

I walk away from the last patient and sigh in relief.

I feel something crawl up to me. Warm but hard crystalline feet make their way up my clothes and stop at my shoulder. A comforting warmth spreads and my body relaxes; the blood red and desolate grey fade away and the other colors come back to the world.

I rub the mask of Ciel's [Holy Spirit] and hear it giggle softly in a familiar feminine voice.

"I felt that," Ciel says.

I sit down on the soft, damp, mossy earth and Ciel sits down beside me. The [Holy Spirit] tap dances on my shoulder, and on the last tap, it vanishes into smoke.

I hear the quick trot of a quadruped and soon after a small fox-Alissa land on my lap. She turns around and shows me her belly, giving me mixed feelings at the sight, but still making me happier overall.

I rub Alissa's soft furry belly and she yips cutely.

"Haha, just admit you want to - mount a fox again, you degenerate," Alissa says, lowly. Ciel looks at me oddly and raises an eyebrow. "I can feel his emotions leak once in a while through our [Bind]."

"Fine, I do," I shrug. "But you are going to have to do all the work because I'm way too tired right now."

"Hm…" She puts a paw on her lip, making her look extra cute. "It's certainly awkward for the female to move, this body wasn't really made for that…"

"Anyway," -Ciel rolls her eyes- "how are you feeling, Wolfy?"

"Just tired… so tired. I don't want to see any more blood," I answer.

"Yeah, that's what I feel and I didn't even heal anyone," Alissa says.

The other girls come back and dismount from their horses.

"Are you used to this, Ciel?" I ask.

"A little. I participated in the medic squads during town defense, before. This one feels different because we don't usually heal the people we hurt," she smiles wryly and wearily.

"Yeah, this is a weird sight," Roxanne says as she looks at the wounded bandits being bandaged.

Gify pops back onto my shoulder and activates his "massage."

"Oh, yeah, that's the stuff…" I moan.

"What?" Alissa questions and tilts her head cutely.

"Expression…? Never heard of it?"

"Not used that way, it sounds odd."

"Gih."

"You're the one massaging me," I say and close my eyes.

"Let's set up the tent," Lina says. I open my eyes and see she's hesitant to sit on the humid earth.

We talk to Rande and he says that we will have to spend the night here. When I recover enough MP, I summon four earth elementals and two nature elementals to watch over the surviving bandits, and a light elemental for the Weepers. In the end, around 20 died, 30 were captured, and the rest escaped.

During our bath, Hana's hands massage my brain -.

"You did well, Wolfy," Alissa says softly.

The shrieking woman has disappeared from my mind.

"So did you; so did all of you." -

I share my senses with her and feel what it's like to be mounted by me. It's too weird for me right now so I cut it off.

"Why did you stop?" Alissa questions me. "It feels soo good to have a sword!"

The other girls look at us oddly and Aoi nods.

I smile wryly and say, "It feels too weird for me."

"What? You don't want to feel what it's like to be stretched by a thick one?" Hana says, amused.

"No."

"Well, well, well. Someone's insecure about their preferences," Roxanne says with an evil smile.

"From behind feels very good," Hana whispers in my ear with a sultry tone.

Lina's eyes turn mean and she smiles like an imp.

"No," I say with extreme confidence and determination.

The girls deflate and return to normal, except for Roxanne. "Alright, then… but there's still plenty of time for you to change your mind," she chuckles like an evil witch.

Ciel avoids looking me in the eye and blushes.

- I ask the other girls, "But what about all of you? Are you feeling okay?"

Hana answers - with a grunt. The other girls nod shyly while Lina nods enthusiastically. We look at Lina oddly and she becomes awkward.

"W-was I supposed to feel bad for them?" She asks.

Ciel shrugs and pats Lina's head. "There's no right answer to that, the only wrong one is to feel pleasure from it."

"Oh… I didn't feel pleasure, I just felt angry that they were putting us in danger," Lina says.

"Exactly. The safety of this family is the most important thing, after all," Alissa says with a confident nod.

"Well, for me it was just another fight," Roxanne says with a shrug.

"Fighting is, fun!" Aoi says and I cringe a little. Aoi notices my discomfort, then she tilts her head and asks, "Not fun?"

"Fighting is fun, killing… is not," Hana says.

"Because bandits, are almost, friends?"

"Exactly," I say.

"But why? Bandits are ene-mies, bandits try to, hurt us," Aoi questions while trying to pout.

Ciel responds, "Lives have a purpose: to help civilization progress. Bandits didn't fulfill their purpose and even damaged our progress. In the end, their lives were wasted."

"Hmm…" Aoi taps her lips with a claw. "And what is my purpose?"

We all look at Ciel and she shrugs.

"Maybe you have to find one of your own," I say.

"Make babies!" Aoi happily exclaims.

Roxanne turns serious as she speaks, "There's a lot more to life than just that. What if taking care of your children is different than what you imagined and it leaves you sad and unfulfilled?"

"Making babies, won't make me sad!"

Roxanne rolls her eyes, "Just imagine that it did, what will you do then?"

Aoi puffs smoke but goes silent. I feel she's taking Roxanne's words seriously.

"Didn't expect that amount of 'Wisdom' from you," Ciel says with a cheeky smile.

Roxanne narrows her eyes dangerously and her tail plunges underwater. "My 'Wisdom' is pretty high," she says.

"But you don't show i-… Ahn!" Ciel nearly bites her tongue in surprise then moans.

"What were you saying?" Roxanne smiles mischievously.

"You don't s-… Hngh!"

"Yes…?"

"You d-d…" Ciel's mouth opens wide and she grabs the edges of the tub to steady herself. -.

Lina gets a little sad that her pampering stopped -.

-

Feeling very refreshed, we sit down to have dinner with Krista.

"Hey there!" Klein comes to us and sits beside me, stealing Ciel's place. Klein smiles wide and continues, "I saw you fight. The way you use a blade is odd, what style is that?"

"My own style, it's named Ekrano."

She tilts her head cutely, her dreamy eyes feel so easy to get lost into, "What does that mean?"

"Secret," I say with a cheeky smile.

She pouts and turns forward. Her tail rests on my legs and I give her a glance. She acts like nothing is happening, so I grab it and apply some [Massage].

Anton sits in front of us and narrows his eyes at Klein. "You fought well," he says to me.

"So did you. Swinging a poleaxe with one hand is impressive," I respond.

"Even I wish I was as big as you. Though, I think I'm the perfect size for Wolfy," Hana says.

"Size is all I have, though," he says with a shrug.

"That's right," Krista says softly from behind him and gives Klein a mischievous stare. Anton facepalms and I feel Klein's tail fur stiffen.

Klein scootches closer to me and becomes a bit friendlier than normal, visibly annoying her father. -. I apply some more [Massage] to her tail and see her face cramp for a few seconds, then relax in pleasure.

Laertes sends us a few reserved glances; after each time he does, he gets more and more depressed.

Dinner is more of the roasted Acarei sandwich. While we eat, the smell of tomorrow's lunch makes us hungrier. Krista is smoking some meat, and we could only smell it because she made a small mistake with the anti-scent enchantment she's using.

Klein's tail stimulates me through the entire meal -.

We relax outside our tent and watch as the lights of the luminous plants dim and turn purple. Soon after that, the commoners and soldiers alike huddle up in their tents. Nearly all of them will find a partner for tonight because sleeping alone when a Weeper could come is asking for a horrible nightmare.

The bandits are taken inside the tree the commoners had used for cover. The two nature elementals are used as bindings for their arms and legs. Rande and a few elven commoners lend them some blankets to pass the night, but the ground is so soft and the weather is so warm that they could sleep on the ground without much of a problem.

"Rande is being very kind to the bandits," Roxanne comments.

"Perhaps he was one of the good nobles," Ciel says.

"Lord Este is an isolationist," Lina says.

"Well, their political differences are what could have motivated the Crown Lord to remove Rande's family from the nobility," Alissa says.

Hana's face scrunches up in displeasure and scoffs.

"What is it, my love?" Roxanne asks.

"Just a difference of opinion is what led to a Lord removing his brother from nobility?" Hana questions with a hint of anger seeping in her tone.

"I don't think it's that simple," Alissa says with a wry smile.

"Most likely it was a long list of petty grievances that made them grow more and more estranged until they finally became enemies," Roxanne says wistfully.

"Talking from experience?" Ciel raises an eyebrow at Roxanne.

The pale succubus lets out a long moan from Hana's brain massage before she answers, "Not my experience." We wait for her to continue but Roxanne turns quiet.

There are many things she doesn't like to talk about, like her mother, for example. If I had to make a guess, I believe she's talking about her grandparents.

"How does, one become, an enemy?" Ted asks.

"When two people interfere with each other's lives so much that the most cost-effective choice is for them to destroy each other," I answer.

"'Destroy'?" Suzy asks.

"To remove the power or authority that someone has. The easiest way to do it is most likely to be by killing the other."

"Well, as far as we know, they didn't kill each other," Hana says with a shrug.

"As far as we know…" Roxanne repeats.

I spend some time brushing the hair of the girls while Alissa and Ciel wash the mountain of clothes and sheets we had piled up. Considering how we're not being cautious with what kind of things we "dirty" these sheets with, we all make a concerted effort to [Clean] them. Though, Hana is not allowed anywhere near the delicate and alluring underwear.

While we wash, we notice how the air is growing colder and the entire forest is quickly falling silent. The children lose interest in playing and quickly enter the tents, then a baby starts crying.

The light elemental becomes alert and looks to the darkness beyond the trees. She starts patrolling around our camp with confident steps.

"I don't really shake my ass like that," Ciel says and scoffs.

"You do, though…?" I say and give her a phony smile.

Ciel stares at Lina and the little girl becomes very shy. "Yes, you do," Lina says in a low tone.

*SLAP!* Ciel gasps and grabs her own ass in pain and Hana laughs out loud, then says, "Have you seen this jiggle?! Of course, you shake it like that, there's no other way for you to walk if not with a sway." Hana grabs the other cheek and squeezes it.

"Ow! Don't slap me like that!" Ciel protests.

"You can slap me back if you want," Hana smiles at her suggestively.

"And then you're just going to activate [Pain Conversion]."

"Maaybe," Hana says with a chuckle.

Ciel lifts her hands in exasperation and turns to me. "How do you even punish someone like her?" She asks.

"Plow her until she begs you to stop?" I say with a shrug.

Ciel facepalms, then she turns around in a huff and enters the tent.

"Uh… s-sorry, I'll make it up to you," Hana says with a phony smile and goes after Ciel.

-.

Tonight we go to sleep early. It's obvious that the Weepers are out there, hounding us, but it's not yet the time for a fight, so we can only endure it for now.

A note from Manasong

Hall of Fame of Patrons

The patrons who support Rupegia shall have their names sung by the bards for they deserve the glory and honor. Their names are:

Oracle Maximillian Hübner.

Lord Andrew Meyers.

Lord Hope.

Lord Samuel Lim.

Lord Cody Weigel.

Lord Bill.

Lord Novgarod.

Lord DJ.

Noble Salty Panda.

Leave a rating or a review to help me rise to the top or fix my shameful understanding of prose.

Take a look over my blog where all information of the world of Rupegia will be posted.

Join the Discord and discuss, or rant, or meme, or try and fight me so your waifu gets more screentime.

Become a Patron and read chapters in advance, or read the side-stories, or leave your mark on the story, or help choose the next artwork or the next side-story.

Chapter 45: Mercy - Part 3

A note from Manasong

Attention: to conform to the limit of sexual content allowed in a novel, I've censored this chapter. You can look for the uncensored version here.

The symbol "-" denotes a section that got cut for containing sexual content. Also, if paragraphs seem missing, they were also likely censored in an earlier pass where the symbol wasn't used.

Today is the 13th.

-

Lina's "Sanity" also increased by 1 (now 12). It seems that she's also improving and adapting to her new lifestyle.

The morning is slow. An uncomfortably cold breeze passes through the camp and the people repeatedly glance at the darkness beyond. A faint noise can be heard; it's so faint that it's hard to discern what it is.

"E-excuse me," a male human commoner approaches Ciel as we leave for breakfast. "How much longer until you can kill those Weepers?"

"I'm sorry, they are too far for us to even see them," she softly says to the man. She puts a hand on his shoulder and motions to the light elemental nearby. "Why don't you spend some time near her? The elementals help a lot with the nightmares."

"Understood. T-thank you…" He bows lightly to her and scurries towards the patrolling elemental.

"Why did he go to you instead of me?" I ask.

"My 'Charisma' is higher than yours," Ciel says with a shy smile.

"Yeah, just 'Charisma'…" I pout exaggeratedly.

Ciel rolls her eyes and summons her [Holy Spirit], then she has it follow my light elemental.

Breakfast is simple and quick, the Weepers are already affecting our appetite.

"Say, Wolf," Rande calls to me, "You can't see the Weepers with your summons?"

"They are all being used to keep the bandits from escaping, so I don't have any of them scouting right now."

He clicks his tongue. "You think you could find them if you had your scouting summons?"

"Only if we are lucky, Weepers are very good at hiding."

He sighs and leans back in his chair. "I would take a horde of Corpse Stealers over uncomfortable days with the Weepers stalking us."

"Only because you have us to deal with that horde," Hana says, with a smug smile.

"Only because the Lords are overburdened with their duties," Rande shoots back with a scoff.

"You can't act like you don't rely on us after everything you told me."

He smiles at her and continues without even glancing at me, "That was just common elven courtesy, if you can't differentiate between casual flirting and heartfelt praise then I overestimated you."

She gives him a fearsome smile and starts a staring contest, "'Casual'? You think that was 'casual'? I know exactly how much money I drank that day; I know my alcohol like I know Wolf -."

"Didn't you say that the flirting was decreasing?" Ciel whispers beside me.

"I did…"

Laertes frowns and looks at me. "What's the matter with you all? It's like everything you do revolves around sex," he says.

"Because it does," I say, with a grin.

"Well, he does have five wives. How do you propose he satisfy them all if not by having sex all the time?" Osaria chimes in.

"It's not like he's always the one who needs to do it," Roxanne comments.

"I would prefer if such things weren't discussed over breakfast," Anton says with a frown and sends a glance to Klein, who's very interested in this conversation.

Osaria leans to the side and softly puts a hand on Anton's shoulder. "Oh, don't be shy, Anton, we should all be very proud of our bodies and of the people we love," she says in a sultry tone that tickles my ears.

Krista puts her hand over Osaria's and gives it a light squeeze. "Yes, but we should always keep in mind that different people have different ideas of love."

Osaria withdraws her hand with a cheeky smile and sends me a wink. "Even among elves, very few people have different views from what the Goddess of Love teaches. Love is to be spread and taken without prejudice."

"Love is not the same thing as sex," Laertes says.

"But it can be," Hana interjects. "It is the most pleasure you can give to your partner, so it makes sense for them to be so closely tied together."

It figures that she's the one who thinks like that. Wait, that actually means she loves me quite a lot. Awn…

"Well, you don't have to be the one giving your partner pleasure, you can even leave that to others," Alissa says.

"W-what…?" Anton looks at her in disbelief, his eyebrows are finally far apart from each other.

"Giving pleasure to your partner is part of what love is, but it doesn't have to be you, specifically. You can just be the cause of your partner's pleasure while another does the deed."

Both Anton and Krista become speechless. Their eyes inevitably turn to me and I just give a wry smile.

"I agree. It's much easier on my body if I let Rande do as he pleases," Oura says and I see Nito, who's sitting at the corner of the table, turn away and blush heavily.

Alissa nods repeatedly. "And it's also a show of trust. Wolfy can have sex with whoever he wants, but he can only make love with us, his wives."

Oura gives a lovely smile to Alissa and says, "There's much more than just sex that Rande gives us. Now, if someone tried to take that away from us, then I would be very angry."

Ciel starts to look uncomfortable.

"I also feel that if it was only me then I wouldn't be enough to make him happy. Especially after he started to gain skills, then his appetite flew high like a bird."

"I can confirm that. He might be even hungrier than me, lately," Hana comments.

Oura nods in understanding. "I tried to learn the skills to help me with that, but Rande has way more skills than me. It would be a waste of skill points to learn them when he can use someone else for that." Rande smiles proudly at himself and keeps quiet while Oura sends him indirect praise.

"I have some, but they are nothing in comparison to his. What is it with men and sex skills? It's like they learn them so easily by comparison, it's not fair," Alissa says and sends me a playful glare.

"Maybe they have some dragonkin blood in them," Oura says with a shrug.

"I can say that Rande's 'appetite' runs in the family," Osaria says.

"He says he only became like this after he met us," Alissa says and Osaria sends me a hungry glance.

"Then it's love," Oura says with a chuckle.

"So much love he would have broken me if I didn't have help."

"Can we please talk about something else," Laertes pleads.

"Like what?" Osaria questions him.

"I don't know, the journey to Goldport?" He shrugs.

"We already talked about it until the leaves dried."

"The bandits we captured?"

"Too depressing, we are not proud of having to kill our brethren that turned to thievery to survive."

"Monsters?"

"Too boring, not even Anton likes to talk about them."

"It's just a job, I'm not proud of killing monsters," Anton comments with a shrug.

"Weather…?" Laertes asks tentatively.

Osaria rolls her eyes. "What weather? It hardly ever changes at the ground level, only the elves living among the tree crowns can even feel it."

"Then politics, I mean, we are feeling the effects of Lord Este's policy."

"Politics is a good way to start a brawl," Rande comments.

"Then the fights at the arena!" Laertes excitedly exclaims, his shy tail shoots straight up for once.

"You only watch the imperial ones," Rande says with a snort.

"Archery competitions are not exciting."

"Says you, and you're an archer yourself. Now you are the one who doesn't like to talk about it."

"If we don't have anything good to talk about, then maybe we should all just stay quiet," Anton says through gritted teeth.

Osaria pouts playfully and the conversation dies down.

Rande barks orders and the caravan stirs. With 30 potentially dangerous prisoners to take care of, nobody wants to be out in the open any longer than necessary, so things proceed quickly. I use my nature elementals, the light elemental, and Ciel's [Holy Spirit] to slowly heal the wounds of the bandits. I don't have mana to spare, and because the earth elementals have to stay out as security, I can't use [Heal] on the bandits.

I summon a single Holly and order her to circle around the caravan at high-speed, so my security perimeter has no holes.

The soldiers look a little tired. They had to keep a much larger night watch due to the bandits, and the lack of scouting from my summons made them a little warier. I unsummon two earth elementals and summon two more light elementals so the commoners and soldiers feel more comfortable.

The elven elder commoner comes towards us and calls for my attention. "Excuse me, Mr. Ryder, correct?"

"Yes, you can just call me Wolf. I'm sorry, but I don't know your name."

"I am Rudito," the old man bows lightly and I return it from atop my horse.

"How may I help you, Rudito."

He smiles at my courtesy and strokes his short, straight beard like a stereotypical kung-fu teacher. "I would just like to thank you and your fellowship for your work. You are doing quite a lot for us and it's making this trip very pleasant for us all."

"You are welcome," I say softly.

He extends to me a small fresh-looking letter. "If your fellowship is in need of help, look for a Tribunal of the Commons. We may be small, but together we can offer aid for a variety of problems."

Lina's Trivia: The Tribunal is the elven alternative to the Avgi temple. Dating back to before the empire even existed, the Tribunal helps the commoners with their problems.

I receive the letter with a smile. "Thank you very much for this, I really appreciate it."

"We are always looking for allies, devoted followers of Avgi or not. The only thing that matters is their consideration for us, the commoners," he smiles back and leaves.

Once Rudito is out of earshot, Lina guides her horse closer to mine. "That's a good ally to have, but I don't think they have spies that can counter Katasko's," she says.

"Or Darean's," I say.

"Darean is a commoner, they could find a way to track him, depending on who he's associated with."

"Well, he's involved with bandits, so it's possible."

"What does the temple think of the Tribunal?" Alissa asks Ciel.

She shrugs and says, "It depends on the town, but they don't speak badly of them. It would make sense for them to be allies because the temple is not very influential in the High Forest, and so they would definitely try to at least maintain friendly relations with them."

We spend the morning hunting goblins and Miasmatic Gambos, small rat-like men who have a very keen sense of smell. The amount of blood spilled yesterday is slowly attracting these monsters; they pick up the scent of the caravan and follow us. The commoners keep their children close because these monsters will kidnap anything smaller than a dwarf, making them terrifying for halflings and gnomes.

"[Firestorm]!" Roxanne casts a small version of the spell on the monster.

"[Wind Storm]!" Ciel casts a harmless version of the spell and pushes the hot, smelly air away from us.

"Done?" Alissa asks me through the [Bind].

"Yep, you can come over now."

"I would rather not… the corpse still smells horrible."

"Gih."

"Gify?" I and Alissa ask in unison.

"Gi-ih?" He asks back playfully.

"Since when can you do that?"

"Gih."

Since now.

"Congrats, I guess?" I say.

"Gih!"

"You never showed your knowledge about magic before."

"Gih."

"Well, you could stop being such a lazy ass and help us more."

"Gih!" And he pops off of my shoulder to go… wherever spirits go.

"Is this what it's like to have him inside your mind all the time?" Alissa asks.

"Yes."

"Are you sure you're not a masochist, too?"

Considering how I loved Lily, maybe…?

"I will not answer that."

A little before midday, we pass by a patrol and the commoners rejoice. Fifteen soldiers, most of them mounted on Gatuns look at us like they are seeing aliens.

"You defeated seventy bandits… with around thirty men, and didn't suffer a single casualty?" The patrol leader asks.

"Defender's advantage," Rande proudly states, then his confidence deflates only a tiny bit. "And powerful elemental summons."

The leader looks at the caravan and sees the light elementals. "I see…"

Rande pulls out the large pile of bounty plates, both from the dead and the captured bandits. Most of them have only a theft or two registered while the rest haven't committed enough crimes for a bounty to be posted for them.

"Can you handle them?" Rande asks.

The leader notices the numerous bandages on the bandits. "They are wounded? And you healed them?"

"We have three good healers, so it wasn't that difficult."

"Good, the Tribunal hates when small bandits die to wounds. Very well, we can bring them back to town. Take the bounty plates and the town will give you your reward."

I unsummon the nature and earth elementals, and the patrols shackle the bandits with wooden manacles and ropes.

The scout that I tortured raises his head and looks at me. His eyes look sad, but I see no anger; instead, I see a hint of elven pride coming back.

A mage of the patrol heals the worst wounds of the bandits to help them walk faster. The patrolmen write down the names of those involved and asks everyone what happened, including the bandits. The questioning was quick, they were mostly checking Rande's story for discrepancies.

With the patrol leaving, I unsummon everything so I can cast [Swift Foot] on the commoners, then I summon a light elemental again. But even with that, the patrol is faster than us because they force the bandits to jog.

The time for lunch comes by and we sit down to eat.

Krista sets out on the table in front of us a large tray with an Uspidor tentacle. It's a roll of meat surrounded with a crunchy, fried pork rind, dripping with fat. This tentacle is only for me and the girls, and another tentacle is given to the others.

"Ooh…" Anton coos, his eyebrows so high they could almost be considered part of his hair.

"I'll pass, too much fat for me," Osaria says.

"Not like she needs any more fat on her," Aoi says in my head.

"You think she looks delicious?"

"Yes! Wait, not in a sexual way!" She says with a chuckle.

"Do I look delicious, too?"

"Yes, in both ways, hehe!"

"Not sure if I should be glad."

"Muuh! You should! I don't feel like this for any other humanoid man!"

"Awn… thank you, I will."

"Hmph."

The Uspidor tastes a bit like pork but it has a much stronger flavor. The acid they produce gives the meat a slightly acidic taste, too.

The rest of the meal is a slab of expertly roasted cow ribs and sirloin with the fat still on it. As a Brazillian, I know how to properly barbecue and I must say, Krista knows it too. The scented logs she used to roast the meat added a faint taste of the wood to the roast, improving the flavor. We barely ate any salad; between the Uspidor tentacles and the cow roast, we even had enough to share with the soldiers, which improved their morale.

A few hours into the afternoon, we finally reach Ostoum. The first thing we see is a long ramp supported by thin (by the High Forest standards) trees that take us up to the town suspended above the lake. Hundreds of vine-like plants hang from the bark "shield wall"; they suck the water up from the lake and bring it to the farms.

The commoners cheer and Rande turns around; his face is stern. "We are leaving tomorrow morning, at the same time. Get as much rest as you can," he says and the soldiers and commoners alike moan in frustration. "We are behind schedule. I'm sorry, but I have a tight schedule to follow. A small effort won't hurt when you have all been having it easy with Helios' [Swift Foot]."

The complainers quiet down and I see Rudito chuckle softly.

We reach the gate after a familiar killing-corridor.

Once we dismount, Hana approaches Klein and asks, "Any Inn recommendations?"

Klein seems to be brought back to reality by Hana's words and stutters, "Y-yes! There's a good one that should be quite cheap right now. It's not the same level of comfort as Flor's, but it's still pretty good."

This time Klein can't escape and Krista comes along to arrange their accommodations.

The town has four levels. The first two are farms and we can see what they are cultivating: glowing plants of all kinds, creating a rainbow of colors that light up the entirety of the two levels. From what I know, these plants produce mana and are actually one of the main sources of potions for the High Forest.

I see a few small nature elementals walking about. The nature spirits seem to find the leaf-like hair of the elementals to be very comfortable beds; this makes the lolimentals look ab-so-lute-ly adorable.

Gih!

"What is it? You were always adorable, Gify," Alissa comments.

"Kweh? What are we talking about?" Aoi chimes in.

"I might have to keep all of you out of my thoughts or my mind will become a tavern," I say.

Guh.

The elves have a proto-elevator for us to use. It works by using the overflow of water brought up by the vines as power. It's limited to only people, though.

We exit the elevator at the top level, then we breathe in the fresh air and see the beautiful, clear night sky. Lina seems to be the most pleased to be here.

"Are you getting used to being so high up?" I ask her.

"Wolfy… don't remind me of that." She looks down and frowns. "I'm just happy we aren't in the damp forest anymore."

"Oh, you didn't like it there?"

"Kind of. The air down there is too stuffy and humid, it's not good for the skin."

"Really?" Roxanne turns to her and questions with a serious tone.

Lina nods twice, "Air has to be fresh and circulating. Otherwise, your skin will become too oily and then it gets blemished."

"The elves must need their plants to keep their skin from getting ugly, then," Alissa comments.

"Hmm, I guess this is why every elf has a garden," Krista adds.

The town has a gloomy atmosphere similar to Ostodos. Though, a thin mist seems to be forming and making the town even gloomier.

"Hmm…" Lina starts to look at the mist apprehensively.

"It only appears on the colder nights," Krista says with a wry smile.

The inn we arrive at is simpler than The Red Leaf: it's smaller, the walls are warped, and there's no carpet. It has a "Rabanara vibe" to it so I like it a lot. The innkeeper is an old golden elf man that receives us without much enthusiasm; though, at least he doesn't look displeased.

We go to our bath and - today I choose Ciel -.

-

"Are you enjoying this trip?" I ask her.

She - answers, "Why wouldn't I? Well, some elves can be annoying, but they are mostly neutral to us and a few are friendly. The towns have been quite endearing and I'm sure that if we make friends, like you did with Rudito and Tribunal, we would be easily accepted." -.

-

Dinner is a very tasty Arracacia with Dragolite soup. We have some crunchy fried not-potatoes and a not-tomato salad as side dishes.

Oura sends us a small wave as she enters the Inn with the others. Considering how she's a bookworm, maybe we can push for her and Lina to become more friendly.

After dinner, we retreat to our room to practice a little. Lina is making a lot of progress on the second [Wind Shield] enchantment by using the broken shield we got from Vanea; next, we should teach her how to use [Earth Magic] to glue herself to the ground so that she doesn't get punted by a heavy attack. Alissa plays around with her [Illusion Magic], seemingly trying to use it to create butterflies or something similar. I teach Roxanne [Warp Space] to see if she can use it to improve her explosion. The little golems diligently observe us and practice their magic alongside Roxanne.

Hana and Ciel are practicing wrestling techniques, then Hana gives a playful kiss on Ciel's lips. After that, it devolves into them making out on the ground -.

Suddenly we hear a knock on the door.

"Who is it?" Alissa asks.

"It's me. Can I come in?" Klein replies.

A note from Manasong

Hall of Fame of Patrons

The patrons who support Rupegia shall have their names sung by the bards for they deserve the glory and honor. Their names are:

Oracle Maximillian Hübner.

Lord Andrew Meyers.

Lord Hope.

Lord Samuel Lim.

Lord Cody Weigel.

Lord Bill.

Lord Novgarod.

Lord DJ.

Noble Salty Panda.

Leave a rating or a review to help me rise to the top or fix my shameful understanding of prose.

Take a look over my blog where all information of the world of Rupegia will be posted.

Join the Discord and discuss, or rant, or meme, or try and fight me so your waifu gets more screentime.

Become a Patron and read chapters in advance, or read the side-stories, or leave your mark on the story, or help choose the next artwork or the next side-story.

Hadrian and the Guardian of the Sea of Trees - Teaser

A note from Manasong

This chapter is not required to read to understand the main story, this is only a side-story.

This is a teaser for the patreon-only side stories I'm writing.

Each chapter has 3 parts and the first part of any new storyline I will make public as a teaser.

"I'm Targua, from Honest Shield," the short and stocky man says and we shake hands.

"I'm Hadrian."

"Pleasure to meet you, Mr. Hadrian." Targua sits down and nods respectfully.

"Likewise." I return the nod.

"So, on to business. The request said that you require escort towards the Sea of Trees."

"Precisely. I want to go as far as I can for three days."

He takes a moment to think. "Any particular reason you want to go there?"

"I'm a researcher. I have something to do out there."

His droopy eyes twitch in annoyance. "Is whatever you are going to do there going to attract monsters?"

"No monsters, but possibly dryads."

His eyebrows shoot up and his mouth hangs open.

I smile and feel my tail twitch. I regain control of myself and stare him in the eye. "Are you married, Mr. Targua?"

"Yes…" He answers nervously.

"Perhaps it's best that you don't meet the dryads. But any of your colleagues that want to join would be welcome to." I give him my best business smile.

"Hmm, indeed…" I can feel the frustration in his tone.

"Now, let's negotiate the price."

"I can get ready in two days," Targua says.

"Fine by me. We shall meet at the western gate on the next day of Fis. We leave at 7 of the morning."

Targua nods and we shake hands.

He leaves the meeting room and I'm left with my thoughts.

I'm finally doing it. Mother, your legacy won't die with me.

I stretch and release my black tail.

Horrible thing to negotiate when you have an appendage that responds to your emotions.

I scratch my furry ear with a claw and my right leg trembles with the stimulation.

We should be able to get pretty far into the Sea in three days. It will coincide with being the day of Nev and the Moon being blue. The omens couldn't be any better.

I leave the hunter's guild and make my way out of Rabanara.

I walk through the mossy alleys and run a claw along the wall. The moss gathers on it and I sniff my hand, smelling the musky scent of nature.

A small blue ball of feathers lands on my shoulder.

"Good day, Tuk-Tuk," I greet the bird nature spirit.

"Peep," she chirps a casual greeting.

"I'm leaving next Fis. You want to come?"

"Peep," she accepts my proposal.

"You sure? I'll stay three days away from the town."

"Peep!"

"I appreciate your enthusiasm." I smile at her and scratch under her chin. Her feathers ruffle and she chirps softly in delight. "Will you help me with the forest's guardian?"

"Peep!" Nope!

"I appreciate your concern over me." I smile wryly.

"Peep!" You are welcome.

Freeloaders. Is there any nature spirit that isn't like this? Maybe the ones in the forest aren't.

I reach the western gate and pass through customs. I take the road north that runs along the wall. The golden hairs look as beautiful and calming as ever.

A small sight that I'll miss.

I leave the brick road and walk on the slightly wet grass and dirt. It feels amazing on my paws.

I take a few turns and greet a few of the familiar farmers moving about.

I see a group of children hunting Dragolites by using a five-year-old child as bait. The bait-boy's blade looks like it has crusted blood on it. This boy is experienced in hunting.

I finally reach the Blood-red Wine Ranch. I greet the farmhands and move on, then I [Clean] my paws before getting inside.

Sebastian already has the bath prepared for me so I go upstairs to enjoy it. As I sink on the bath, I hear the hurried footsteps of high-heeled boots coming upstairs.

The door opens and Madame Rafaela enters. She's in her less elegant clothes, made for the hard work of the farm.

She takes off her clothes and hurriedly applies [Clean] on her body as she scrubs herself with soap. After a quick wash, she ties up her brown hair and joins me in the bath.

I receive her curvy body as she sinks. I wrap my arms around her and rest my head on her shoulder. Her hair still smells of her deep perfume, so I breathe in and enjoy it while I can.

"So…? How did it go?" She breaks the silence with an excited question.

"I'm leaving next Fis," I say without much enthusiasm.

Her bright smile stays strong, but the dimples on her face tremble. "That's amazing! You are finally going to do it!"

"Yes, I will…"

She turns around and pouts, her luscious lips look very appetizing. "You don't look very excited."

"Well, I'm leaving soon, hard to be excited when I think about it."

"You talk as if you are not coming back. You are coming back, aren't you?" Her cute face distorts in worry.

"I will come back, I just don't know when…"

"Well, just make sure you do!" She flickers my nose and I twitch my whiskers. "I want my cute kitty cat back for petting, you know how I'm like when I can't pet you," she says in a cutesy voice.

"Mrow, I'll come back." I purr and fill her neck with kisses.

The next day I only do a few things: inspect the crops, apply [Growth] on them, check on the livestock, talk to them with [Animal Tongue], and give as much love as I can to Rafaela.

On the fated day of Fis, she wakes up early along with me. She brushes my tail just the way I like while I brush the fur in my leg.

She helps me put on my armor and hugs me from behind while I look at myself in the mirror. My short black hair and the fur of my pointy cat ears look silky and perfectly cared for, not that the dryads would care. My black tail undulates behind me and Rafaela grabs it for one last petting. My whiskers look strong and straight; I can't grow a beard so I take good care of them. My pale skin looks glossy; Rafaela's skin oils are something that I will miss a lot. My black cat legs are properly brushed and protected by my armor and boots. My paw/hands are protected by thin leather; being a werecat with paw/hands is annoying sometimes. If my gloves were any bigger, I wouldn't be able to move my fingers properly.

"You look very handsome," the mature woman says.

"I know." I turn my head around and rub my whiskers on her face, making her giggle.

Her happiness quickly fades and she lets out a sigh.

"I love you, Hadrian," she says as she looks into my eyes.

I return the stare and drown in her hazel eyes. "I love you too, Rafaela." She smiles bitterly, not fully believing my words. "For you, I will come back."

"Don't give too much hope to my old heart." She cups my cheek lovingly.

"I'm sorry."

To her, that's all I can say, for now.

I make my way to the meeting point and see the group of five men sitting around in a circle, watching the caravans move out of town. Three shields, one archer, one archer mage. A front-line-heavy fellowship, good for just about anything in the Sea.

"Hadrian!" Targua notices me and waves. I send a wave back and the men line up to greet me.

"Greetings, men. I am Hadrian," I say as I approach.

"Saito," says a tall dragonkin with very short blue hair. The main shield user.

"Tauragh," says a lanky man with bushy and unkempt brown hair. The support shield user, like Targua.

"Wensah," says another lanky man that looks very similar to Tauragh. "I'm Tauragh's brother," he adds with a knowing smile. He's the main archer.

"Reagarian," says a black man with white curly wool sticking out from under his clothes. He has two large round horns on his forehead. He's a ram-type demon race and the archer/mage.

I nod to each of them as they introduce themselves.

"You know how to fight?" Saito asks with a grunt.

"Some, I can handle myself," I answer calmly.

"Where's your weapon?" He raises an eyebrow at me.

"I use [Vine Weapon], you will see it when the time comes."

"Stick close to Reag," Targua says. I answer with a nod.

With a pop, Tuk-Tuk appears on my shoulder.

"Oh, you have a little helper," Reag says with a small smile.

"More like a freeloader." I smile wryly.

"Peep!" Tuk-Tuk chirps proudly.

"Oh…" Reag's shoulders slump in disappointment.

"Let's go," I say and we move south-west, towards the Sea.

I love the scent of the moss, plants, flowers, and mushroom spores. I feel free and at home in the Sea. I almost feel like taking off my boots, so that I can feel the mushy dirt and the few blades of grass.

I take some Eia out and let the paste slowly melt on my tongue. Soon, my hearing improves, my eyes gain a new focus, my muscles move as if I weigh a feather, and my mind starts to process all the information of the world around us. Every chirp, every rustle, every crushed leaf and bent blade of grass, everything feels "in its place." I'm no longer moving by taking steps through the earth, I am now moving "through" the Sea of Trees.

My mana overflows as I attune myself to the world. I casually cast [Grow] wherever I step, turning the Sea just a bit more fantastic just by "belonging" to it.

Suddenly, Targua makes us stop while Tauragh and Wensah move on ahead, seemingly following the tracks of something.

They come back soon, their smiles show happiness, their eyes show greed.

"Those are the tracks of a Ghostly Fawn, no doubt about it," Tauragh says.

"Great, we will hunt it on the way," Targua says.

"No, you will not," I state categorically.

Targua raises an eyebrow and Saito rolls his eyes.

"You don't want us to kill an animal, right?" Saito asks.

"Precisely."

The blue scaled dragonkin turns around and grumbles.

"That Fawn is valuable and we are prepared for it," Targua says, his droopy eyes evaluate my expression with curiosity.

There shouldn't be any signs of Eia on my face, I hope.

"If you want to meet the dryads then you will not hunt it," I say.

Saito shrugs and laughs. "Fine by me."

The brothers look at each other nervously and grin. Reag wets his lips. Targua sighs and turns to the brothers. "Fine, let's avoid it," he says.

Men.

Peep.

The monsters are killed, the animals are avoided. We continue our journey following this rule.

Tuk-Tuk brings a small branch with a berry in it. I use the overflow of my mana to cast [Grow] on the berry, which causes it to grow but also dries up the branch completely.

Tuk gulps the berry that's half her size and bloats, becoming nearly completely spherical.

Reag watches us with curiosity. "You got the Pixie's Touch, cat?"

"I don't think that skill is inheritable, sheep. My mother was an elf, I'm just very good with [Nature Magic]."

"So, you're a druid."

"Please, I'm not a tree-fucker. I'm just a Nature mage who's slightly eccentric." I let out a small chuckle.

"We are going to fuck dryads, I think that's exactly what 'tree-fucking' is."

"We aren't going to literally fuck a tree. Dryads live in trees, they are not the trees themselves."

He shrugs "If you say so, Boss, but our dicks are still going to be covered in tree moss."

Correcting his understanding of Dryad biology is not worth the effort.

We continue on our journey forth, occasionally stopping to quickly strip a hunted monster of their most useful parts so that we can cook them later.

We make our way annoyingly slow through the forest. The lack of [Swift Foot] makes me wish I had paid for a priest to bless us.

The men don't talk, making the journey rather boring. We lack a dedicated scout, so we all have to stay quiet and pay attention for an ambush.

When we do meet a monster, the fellowship works together like a temple's clock. I can only stand awkwardly near Reag with my vine spear at the ready and wait for the attack that never comes.

"You seem eager to fight," the ram-type says.

"I'm mostly tense, but a little, yeah," I answer.

"Can't have the boss get hurt when our job is to escort you," Saito says.

"Well, the job is to escort me and not to prevent me from getting harmed." I grin and Saito grins back.

"Don't complain when you get your tail in a knot, then."

After that, I participate a little more. I stand to the side with my spear and get a cheap shot when the opportunity arises, but I mostly throw it a lot, then I turn the spear back into flexible vines and recall them back to me so I can throw it again.

The first day ends fine, just goblins and orcs. My towel bath and small tent make me miss not having Water and Space mage servants. At least I'm not forced to take the watch.

During breakfast, I discreetly eat a small piece of Eia to aid with my senses.

As the men stretch and prepare to move. I notice an odd root jutting out of the ground. The way it "flows" out of the tree is different than the others. The roots seem to delicately spin and wave as they move away from the tree, but this one is different, its turns are sharp and it seems to be… "lost."

I approach the tree and touch it with my forehead. I close my eyes and use all of my [Sense Mana] to look deep inside the root.

I see a line. It's the life that the root feeds the tree.

I slow my breathing until its barely perceptible. I sync it with the chaotic breeze and let nature control it.

I chant a simple [Grow] and open a way to the heartwood. Then I shape it so it prickles my skin and draws blood. The blood flows into the channels that I create and is slowly absorbed by the heartwood.

The line of life shifts and a small red line connects to the main "white" one. The red spreads and invades the main line at increasing speed.

I hold back the invasion on the left side and send all my blood to the right side, the side of the root.

I don't go far before I see the line turn turbulent like the rapids of a river. I painfully crash on rocks, but that makes me smile.

Found you.

"Peep," Tuk agrees.

I retreat from the rapids and then use all my power to invade as fast as I can. I scrape on the walls and take pieces of dirt with me, and I crash on the rocks in the way and shatter them, also taking the pieces with me.

I clean the life-line of the tree and take all the dirt up to the end, where they all lump up into a ball of dirt and stone.

With a grunt of pain, I remove myself from the tree and cast [Regeneration] on my bleeding forehead until no scar remains. Then I follow the root to where it enters the ground and cast an inverted [Earth Wall].

The dirt is compacted and a hole opens. Down there, I see the swollen piece of the root where I lumped all the dirt.

I cast [Vine Weapon] and create a small serrated knife that I use to cut off the swollen white root.

"Well, damn, you are just like a druid," Reag says from behind me.

"Just missing the smoking pipe," Wensah says, beside Reag.

I suppress a sigh.

They are going to make fun of me when I call the dryads.

"You guys had a lot of contact with druids, huh?" I raise an eyebrow at them.

"Them naked weirdos are all over the Sea. You are bound to see a few if you hunt here long enough." Wensah chuckles and turns around.

Naked? Interesting, but also barbaric…

"You are going to use that, right?" Reag asks and points to the root in my hand.

Rockwood Warts are perfect for my Eia concoction.

"Not right now, but yes."

Reag clicks his tongue and shrugs.

"Peep," Tuk chirps with contentment. She lands on my hand and pecks the root, taking out a small hair from it.

"I really need to use it for later, sorry." I smile wryly.

"Peep…" She chirps sadly.

The Eia pills improve my senses even further, but my body is starting to feel "foreign."

"There's a monster in that direction," I say and point.

"Oh? Explain," Targua stops and looks at me with skepticism.

"I can smell it."

Reag and Saito smell the air and shrug at Targua.

"The longer I stay in the Sea, the better my senses become," I try to explain.

"Great… work with Tauragh and Wensah, then." Targua still looks skeptical but he's willing to give me a chance.

With the aid of the two trackers, we avoid most monsters.

On the third day things start to become dangerous. The number of poisonous plants and mushrooms increases suddenly and the men start to become affected by illusions. Then the compass suddenly stops working, making the men even more twitchy.

"I think we already came this way," Saito says, his blue scales wave nervously.

"No, we didn't," I say.

"No, we didn't," Wensah repeats.

"No, we didn't," Tauragh piles on.

"Kay," Saito grunts and swallows heavily.

A heavy mist suddenly falls upon us and Targua barks orders, "Grab a hand and start role call! If you complain about gayness, then I will stab your arse with my spear!" He nearly reverts to the farmer's accent of the Shore of Leaves.

Targua pulls out some rope and we all tie our arms to it.

I eat another bite of Eia, then I open a wound in the palm of my hand and let my blood drip as we walk. I close my eyes and try to find my mana escaping from my spilled blood. The little particles of mana try to find my body again and spread all over. While most of them are slowly attracted to me, the ones that aren't allow me to get a clear view of the area.

"I smell blood," Saito says.

"Sorry, that's me, trying out some magic," I say loudly so everyone can hear.

"[Blood Magic]?" Targua asks, very concerned.

"Not that, elven magic."

"Right…"

"Anyway, the trees are moving, they want to herd us away from our destination," I say and guide the line in between a mangled mess of roots.

"W-what?" Saito chuckles in disbelief.

"I always thought the trees looked different every time we came here," Tauragh comments.

"Well, shit," Saito comes to a realization and looks at the trees in a new way.

We move slowly and with care because the path now has many more roots and trees in our way.

Suddenly, the mist disappears and we six freeze on the spot, awkwardly holding each other's hands.

"Your hand is very soft, Boss," Reag says.

"Thanks," I answer and give his hand a squeeze.

"Careful with that one, he likes to duel other men with his rapier," Saito grunts.

"Spear! Rapier sounds small!" Reag protests.

"Because it is," Saito grunts again.

"Guys, we can stop holding hands now," Targua says and we finally let each other go, then we untie ourselves from the rope.

The spot we are in is rather odd. We are in a circular area completely free of roots while the trees are like pillars around us, organized in a perfectly periodic pattern.

"It's like we are in an arena," Tauragh comments as he inspects the odd pattern in the roots.

I look back and see the roots cover our exit.

"Because we are," I say and conjure my vine spear, the others immediately grab their weapons.

"Reag, burn an exit for us; Saito, freeze anything that moves," Targua orders us.

"I advise against that," I say.

"Meaning?" Targua turns to me, looking very annoyed.

"Let me smoke some Eia and I can calm the monsters down."

"Fucking hell, next you are going to strip naked and masturbate in the open," Wensah mockingly says.

"Wow…" I mutter, a little taken aback. "I can see how that could help, but no, that is not necessary."

The druids around here are just so barbaric.

I cut my other palm, deeper this time, and swing my arms at the roots, painting them with my blood.

"Gods guide me!" Targua exclaims. "Don't tell me you are a bloody heretic?!"

"What…?" I stop to look at Targua in complete disbelief. "This is [Weaverism]! Elven magic!"

"Why do you have to spread your blood around like an undead trying to corrupt the land?!"

Well… the principle is similar but the execution is completely different.

"Do I fucking smell like an undead?! No! I'm throwing my blood around so I can connect myself with the nature around us!" I turn back and create a circle with my blood.

Once I'm done, I sit down in the middle, take out a large bite of Eia mixed with the crushed Rockwood Wart and a smoking pipe. Then I light the pipe with the Eia and start meditating.

"Don't pass out on me, now," Tauragh jokes.

"Just need concentration to connect with nature."

"Bloody druids…" Targua mutters and orders them to make a circle around me.

The lines are now a web, all interconnected. I invade them all so I can see further. I feed it my mana to appease it and it drinks it all like a child sucking on their mother's breast.

"Holy shit, how much MP do you have?" I hear Reag ask.

"A lot."

Not going to help me, Tuk?

Peep!

Freeloader…

Peep!

The web moves slowly, thickening the wall of "white" around us. My invasion spreads deep enough that I see multiple balls of "yarn" quickly approaching. I invade them too and feed them my mana. They stop and squirm in delight, making dirty noises while bleeding me dry.

The web loosens and allows me to control it, but I don't, it would be impolite. I retreat my invasion and the balls of "yarn" sigh in disappointment, then they continue moving towards us, now at a more calmer pace.

With the last of my mana, I cast [Regeneration] on myself to close my wounds and recover my lost blood.

Less than a minute later, we hear the creaking of wood. With unbelievable speed, the roots disentangle and make way for multiple dryads to come in. Naked human-looking beings with skins all colors of the rainbow and the texture of moss, wood, or grass. Their hairs are all kinds and shapes of grass or leaves. Their toned bodies are borderline impossible for normal humanoids and their sexes are grossly oversexualized.

They all surround us and stay near the roots, while a single male dryad comes closer. He has short black grass as hair that curls in a spiral. His face is chiseled and handsome, with a smirk that would make Rafaela blush. His skin is light green and seems rough like moss. His body is more defined than a high-"Strength" dragonkin.

"I am Pallido, guardian of this forest. Your gift has been accepted with delight. Now, what do you wish of us?"

"A cultural exchange," I calmly say with a respectful bow.

Pallido smiles and his horse penis immediately stands erect.

Saito pulls out his own huge penis and looks around. "Finally. Now, who's first?"

A note from Manasong

Hall of Fame of Patrons

The patrons who support Rupegia shall have their names sung by the bards for they deserve the glory and honor. Their names are:

Oracle Maximillian Hübner.

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Lord Samuel Lim.

Lord Cody Weigel.

Lord Bill.

Lord Novgarod.

Lord DJ.

Noble Salty Panda.

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Chapter 46: The Encounter - Part 1

A note from Manasong

Attention: to conform to the limit of sexual content allowed in a novel, I've censored this chapter. You can look for the uncensored version here.

The symbol "-" denotes a section that got cut for containing sexual content. Also, if paragraphs seem missing, they were also likely censored in an earlier pass where the symbol wasn't used.

"Sure, please do," I answer.

Hana sneaks one last kiss with Ciel and lets her go.

Klein opens the door and immediately stops in her tracks -. Klein shakes her head and comes in.

-

"Please, make yourself comfortable," Alissa says with soft voice and she motions to one of the beds.

With a strained smile, Klein obeys and sits at the corner of the furthest bed.

"What are you doing? Come here!" Hana says and grabs Klein, who latches onto Hana in surprise, and even her tail wraps around Hana's neck. Hana carries her like a princess and gently deposits her at my side.

Now that Klein is beside me, I can smell the very strong scent of a flowery perfume coming from her. I also notice that her hair is extra silky today; her lips have an enticing, glossy red color; her nails are perfectly done; and her skin looks as smooth as a baby's.

Roxanne leaves my lap on her own initiative and the girls form a circle around me and Klein.

I grab Klein's hand and kiss it. It feels very soft and has a faint, sweet taste from a familiar elven skin care product -.

Klein breathes in and I see her jaw tremble in anxiety.

"You don't have to be scared," I say in a low tone.

Through [Bind], I know that Aoi and Alissa enjoy it when I use this exact tone.

I kiss her repeatedly, moving upwards along her arm until I reach her neck. The smell of her perfume becomes stronger and I notice a faint milky and coconut-y undertone to it.

I hold her face and stare deeply into her dreamy, brown eyes.

"What do you want from us?" I ask her, softly.

Her breath quickens and I feel a faint minty scent coming out of her mouth. "W-well… I want you-…"

"Not me. Us. If you accept me, you accept all of us."

She looks around and the girls give her varied smiles. Alissa and Hana smile like predators; Roxanne smiles warmly; Ciel and Lina smile shyly; Aoi gives her a toothy smile that makes Klein chuckle and ask, "What, even Aoi is participating?"

"If you want to and she wants to," I say.

"I like, kissing," Aoi says and imitates a shrug.

"Well?" I draw Klein's face to mine as I pull her forward. Our faces are now so close that our noses touch.

She breathes in deeply and gathers her courage, then she says, "I w-want to be part of your harem… temporarily."

"That's all that we need to hear." I seal her lips with mine and invade her mouth. Our tongues rub against each other, sending jolts of eager pleasure through each of us. Her tongue tastes minty, making me hunger for more.

I send the pleasure of our kiss to Alissa and Aoi, but I order Alissa to remain still -.

"NO! WOLFY!" Alissa immediately complains inside my head.

"OBEY ME -"

Alissa protests so much that I almost bite Klein's tongue when her frustration starts leaking through.

-

- The abused small monkey-girl now looks like a lifeless doll. Everyone played around with her until her brain simply couldn't handle the pleasure anymore. -.

With [Heal] and [Regeneration] to prevent any damage to the skin and sensitive nerves -, she could withstand far more abuse than her delicious body was made for.

"You two surprised me with your eagerness," I say to Ciel and Lina.

"Well," -Ciel finishes casting a [Heal] on Lina - and scratches her neck awkwardly- "I can't deny that it's fun…"

"And you like when we participate, too, right?" Lina asks with a proud smile.

"I love it," I answer immediately.

Lina closes her eyes and lays down on the bed, still feeling very proud of herself. Ciel shrugs and chuckles softly -.

After cleaning up everything we could, - we all huddle up in a mass of limbs and drift off to sleep.

Today is the 14th.

-

I feel drained, hungry (for food), and even a little weak. Yesterday, I pushed the limits, but it was not enough. I have to push harder, I have to become the master of [Enhanced Semen Recharge]!

I wake up Klein, who slept glued to my arm, with a kiss and a short exploration of her mouth. She moans happily and then stretches out her body. Her tail lovingly strokes my hair and she gives me a peck on the lips.

The other girls get a little jealous of her loving attitude and compete to demonstrate their charms -.

"Hah, I win!" Ciel says playfully.

- "You wanna play seriously?" She says threateningly.

Alissa feels my anxiety and - undoes Hana's grip.

"Not today, at least not with him right now," Alissa says and the competitive spirits of the two - girls deflate.

We start dressing ourselves and Hana slaps Klein's cute ass, making the monkey-girl yelp in surprise, but also dissipating the clouds over her mind. She looks at me - and her skin acquires a deep shade of red.

"You are mine now, Klein, at least for a while," I say with a sadistic smile. Her face stiffens and she doesn't answer.

Before leaving, I store the two watchful golems.

I'm surprised they didn't speak. Maybe they realized that they could ruin the mood by asking questions about sex. Sex is certainly something that takes up a lot of space in my mind, so I think it would be easy for them to understand basic courtesy.

We go down to have our breakfast and I walk with a flower on each arm. Alissa hugs one of my arms lovingly while Klein shyly holds the other. For as angry as Alissa was yesterday, today she looks like an angel with a smile so bright she could compete with a light elemental.

As we sit at our table, Anton and Krista appear. Anton gives Klein an angry look and turns his face away, Krista shrugs at Klein and tries to appease her husband with soft words. Klein ignores them and wraps my arm around her, leaning her head on my chest.

"That would make it difficult for me to eat," I say and Klein smiles. Once our food comes she grabs my plate and feeds me crackers. Alissa immediately joins her and feeds me cake.

Lina stares at us like she was betrayed. Her gloomy eyes make her sad expression so much more heartbreaking. Klein stops when she sees Lina and becomes awkward.

"M-maybe you should do this in my place," Klein shyly says to Lina, who shakes her head and regains her usual gloomy look.

I smile wryly and say, "Tomorrow." Lina smiles adorably and nods repeatedly, then she turns to Ciel and her eyes become like a puppy's.

Ciel chuckles, then she pats Lina's head and nods. Roxanne shrugs and starts feeding Hana too. Aoi looks at us with curiosity, seemingly not understanding the significance of what we're doing.

Laertes comes in and notices us. He grits his teeth, and his tail becomes stiff and upright. Klein avoids looking at him.

I kind of understand her position: knowing that he likes you but you don't is very awkward. What could she do? Not follow her heart just so she wouldn't "hurt" him? Even with her father, things are complicated. She might rely on him to find her a husband, but that doesn't mean she's his property.

Our overly-sweet atmosphere gives diabetes to Laertes and Anton, they eat quickly and leave. The other patrons try to ignore the happy chatter but the amount of beautiful women around me makes even the elves jealous.

Once we are done lazing about, we take our leave. Klein tries to glue herself to me again but Hana stops her. "It's time to share," she says with a cheeky smile.

With much regret, Klein leaves my side, and Ciel and Lina each take one of my arms -.

The streets are almost empty. Back in Rabanara, this time is when the buzzing of business would start, so seeing this emptiness is rather disconcerting.

The morning sun slowly rises from below the treetops and the mist of the night dissipates, revealing the odd mix of cozy buildings sharing space with tree crowns.

As I walk, I finally understand the faint uneasiness that's always present while inside these towns: a mix of vertigo with the feeling that I'm always walking on uncertain ground, like when you cross a swaying suspended rope bridge. The constant sight of the lower levels of the town adds quite a lot to this.

Aoi curls herself around my neck and gives me a loving lick on my cheek.

Klein suddenly gasps and we all turn to her. "Wait… I'm completely sure now: Aoi was much larger yesterday. I mean, I truly saw that she was at least three times larger!" She exclaims.

I chuckle and Hana says, "You are right, that's a special skill of hers. Don't tell anyone, it's kind of a trump card."

Klein lowers her voice, but still speaks quite excitedly. "Wow! So, how big can she get?"

"Little smaller, than Lina!" Aoi answers.

"Only if you stretch yourself," Lina says, a little defensive.

"I will be, taller soon." Aoi gives us a toothy smile.

"Your teeth may be big but your smile is adorable," Klein says.

"For now!" Aoi puffs smoke up into the air.

We reach the gate and see Rande's caravan getting ready. Rudito sends us a respectful nod and the other elves pay more attention to us. The few human commoners look quite happy to see us.

Nito hands us our horses and Klein gets up on top of the carriage. She and Laertes don't talk to each other and the air seems awkward between them.

The caravan starts to move again and we say goodbye to Ostoum.

We go down the long ramp and the uncomfortable feeling of the Weepers starts to assault us again.

"Well… it seems that they like us," Ciel comments.

I summon two light elementals and she summons her [Holy Spirit].

"It's not even going to be an exciting fight," Hana says.

"They are only going to tease us for a long while until they finally get close enough to die," Alissa says with a sigh.

"Hey, hey!" Suddenly Aoi calls for our attention. "Look!" She holds her chewing toy (a gold coin) in her little claws and I feel a bit of mana leave her. Suddenly the coin disappears with a *poof.*

"OH! You did it!" Roxanne excitedly claps the tips of her fingers.

"Yay!" Aoi claps the tip of her claws, copying Roxanne and making a clacking sound.

I pull out dozens of gold coins and a few rose ones and hand them to her. "Don't lose a single one, okay?"

"O-kaay!"

She gives each of them a loving bite and stores them. I also pull out her little golden dodgeball-like toy.

"Now, I learn [Fly]!" Aoi flaps her wings and I feel mana leave them.

I nod and tickle her chin.

Then I cast [Swift Foot] on the commoners, spread my Hollys, and put in enough points to practice [Fly] with Aoi on my lap.

Soon, we are all back to our silent absentmindedness as we make our way east. Next stop: Escanso. ETA: three days.

A note from Manasong

Hall of Fame of Patrons

The patrons who support Rupegia shall have their names sung by the bards for they deserve the glory and honor. Their names are:

Oracle Maximillian Hübner.

Lord Andrew Meyers.

Lord Hope.

Lord Samuel Lim.

Lord Cody Weigel.

Lord Bill.

Lord Novgarod.

Lord DJ.

Noble Salty Panda.

Leave a rating or a review to help me rise to the top or fix my shameful understanding of prose.

Take a look over my blog where all information of the world of Rupegia will be posted.

Join the Discord and discuss, or rant, or meme, or try and fight me so your waifu gets more screentime.

Become a Patron and read chapters in advance, or read the side-stories, or leave your mark on the story, or help choose the next artwork or the next side-story.

Chapter 46: The Encounter - Part 2

Ciel starts talking to one of the soldiers about his wound. He took a spear to the belly and there's still some side-effects from the [Heal] going on. Hana joins in and soon they're having a casual conversation about their adventures.

Aoi plays around with her [Item Box], trying to fit in random pebbles and increase its capacity. Gify observes her with amusement because what Aoi is doing is not the right way to expand your [Item Box].

"You are uncharacteristically quiet," I say to Gify.

"Gih."

"I agree," Lina says.

"Hm, I don't think this place is that bad," Roxanne says.

"How ironic that a nature's spirit dislikes a forest, of all things," I say with a cheeky smile.

"Gih!" He clicks his beak near my ear lobe, threateningly.

"Well, there's still 'nature' inside a town, so Gify is very far from his preferred landscape right now," Alissa says and Gify nods.

I chuckle and things become quiet again.

"Wolfy, hug me," Alissa says inside my head.

"How…?"

"I don't know, just find a way to do it. You managed to 'poke' somehow, right?"

"Right…"

I pull on Alissa's string and her mind floods inside my "mind space." I remind myself of our boundaries and differences, then I envelop her with myself and squeeze until I feel some resistance.

"Ah… that feels good," Alissa says.

The desire to "merge" with her grows stronger the more relaxed she feels.

"Help me out with this, try to, uh, not merge with me," I say.

"What?"

"It feels like our minds want to mix and become one. Try to not wish for that, otherwise, I can't maintain this for long."

"Hm…"

I do not love myself. I love Alissa and Alissa loves me. I do not love myself.

I want her to be happy, but I do not want to feel her happiness.

Her presence inside my mind becomes odd, "foreign," separate. The desire to "merge" decreases and becomes "unpleasant," although it's still a desire.

"That helped," I say.

"Reduced my pleasure, though," I feel Alissa's pout inside my mind.

"Can't have everything."

"But I'm sure you would bring me the sun if I asked," she says with a cheeky tone.

"If there was a possibility… and it wouldn't kill us from being too close…"

Alissa giggles inside my head and I see her tail wag.

Our morning is quiet and calm. We are still close enough to the town that there are hardly any monsters and there aren't any here that can bypass our anti-monster crystals.

Lunch comes and we get to eat roasted cow ribs and sirloin again. This time we also have some veggies, so it isn't too heavy of a meal. We might want energy-rich food so that we can fight, but we must still be careful to not overeat.

Klein sits at our corner of the table. Due to the size of our group, we take up a large part of it by ourselves. The cute monkey-girl hand-feeds Aoi and hums quite happily. The tails of both of them sway happily like a cat's.

"Ask Oura what kinds of books she likes to read," I tell Alissa.

"Why?"

"For Lina."

"Hmm! How thoughtful!"

Klein tosses a piece of meat up in the air and Aoi catches it with a snap.

"What books do you read, Oura?" Alissa asks.

Oura smiles warmly and says, "Ah, I love mysteries. Always trying to guess who's the enemy and who's the ally, trying to read between the lines of every conversation." Her voice sounds excited, for once.

"That doesn't mean that she's actually a shrewd person. She's fairly absentminded, most of the time," Osaria says with a wry smile.

"Well…" -Roxanne pouts angrily- "maybe she just doesn't want to play those kinds of games."

Oura chuckles and nods.

"Could someone truly be considered 'wise' if they refuse to think about their actions?" Osaria sends a questioning stare to Roxanne.

"Could someone truly be considered 'wise' if they keep wasting their time with petty games?" Roxanne sends back her own questioning stare with an over-the-top pretentious tone.

"Wouldn't a 'wise' person make the most of their life and achieve all that they can?" Osaria continues and her tone remains serious.

"Wouldn't a 'wise' person live the way they prefer and accept the consequences?" Roxanne's tone turns serious.

"Do you consider a beggar to be wise?" Osaria raises an eyebrow.

"Well, if I need knowledge about how to live on the streets, then asking a beggar would be helpful, wouldn't it?" Roxanne shrugs.

Klein's tail sneaks around Hana and finds my waist. She rubs my belly affectionately and giggles girlishly while playing with Aoi. I pat her tail in return and apply a little bit of [Massage].

"But surely you don't approve of their lifestyle?" Osaria narrows her eyes disapprovingly.

"A beggar is a person who didn't receive fortune through the Threads of Fate. He is neither good nor bad," Roxanne states matter-of-factly.

"But a beggar who is not trying to improve their situation is someone who's denying the wishes of the God of Creation."

Roxanne pouts slightly, unconvinced. "Do we really need to search for riches to follow Gods' Wish?"

"We have to search for something."

"If we benefit others with our actions, aren't we still following the Wish?"

"Depends on how efficient that may be. Aiding a farmer to make him richer won't make him a good merchant or business owner. Someone who knows how to make riches is more likely to have the skill to properly handle those riches."

Both of them turn to Ciel, who gives a strained smile and says, "The Gods do not get involved in petty matters, but you will be judged by the result of all of your contributions."

"That didn't go as planned," I say to Alissa through [Bind] and hear a chuckle in response.

The two continue arguing for a little while longer but neither gives up their position.

We continue our trip and I notice that the number of monsters is starting to sharply rise.

The faint crying of the Weepers increases again and becomes perceptible when there's nobody talking. This means that the elves start talking about anything just to help with our "Sanity." The cries sound humanoid, but they vary with time, both the sex and age of the supposed crying person slowly morphing at random. The chatter of the elves turns their cries into just background noise.

Eventually, I see that a Holly finds a thick fog in the way. Through her sense, I know it smells sweet like a flower and has a calming effect. A Watchman Ton is coming. A cute, squishy green monster with yellow glowing balls for eyes. It wears a robe and holds a lantern that jingles as it walks. Its stubby little legs contribute to its slow walking speed, but the monster itself isn't that dangerous, the fog is. It has a strong soporific effect, which allows the Ton to leisurely cast a spell to finish off its prey.

"I think only me, Alissa, and Ciel should go," I say.

"I won't be of much use there," Hana says with a wry smile.

"Stay safe," Lina says and Roxanne nods.

"Kweh!" Aoi agrees.

We reach the border of the fog and dismount from our horses. There's a very clear border where the fog starts, like a fog wall from a certain game. The smell reminds me of hibiscus with a hint of Cinnamon.

I summon an Arachne. "Can you dissipate this fog?" I ask the monster and it nods in response, so I summon four more.

We now have Ciel's Holy Spirit, one light elemental, and the Arachnes. The power of the spider monster is in manipulating poisons in the air and ambushing its prey. This thick fog should be easily unwoven by the number of Arachnes that I have.

The Arachnes whisper an odd and chilling chant and I don't recognize the language it's in. They pull their silk up to their hands and "crochet" a spell while chanting. The silk turns into a small piece of cloth that disperses into smoke and mixes with the Ton's fog.

The fog fades the more it mixes with the Arachne's "smoke web."

"You know, they look really cute," Alissa says while staring deeply at the Arachnes. "Their faces, I mean. Not the spider body," she adds.

"I kind of agree. If they brushed their hair they would look like normal girls, kind of," Ciel says.

I have read far too much monster girl hentai to have an unbiased opinion about this.

"The question is, would Wolfy have sex with one?"

I shrug. "If she looks cute enough, I guess it could work out."

"Where's their vagina even located?" Ciel asks and squints her eyes.

"Above the spider eyes, hidden in the fur," Alissa says.

Ciel leans back and chuckles. "Okay, that's weird."

"I think the humanoid Arachnes don't have extra eyes there," I say.

"Much better," Ciel says with a nod.

"Why do you care? It would be Wolfy that would have sex with her," Alissa says.

"Or would it…?" I add.

"We are supposed to be sharing, right…?" Ciel asks a little shy.

"Everything."

The Arachnes pick up the pace and they start to carve a tunnel into the fog.

"I'll periodically cast [Purify Body] with my [Holy Spirit]," Ciel says.

We enter the odd, milky tunnel and I feel the horses are amused at the sight. They get bored of the forest easily and not much scares them, so they seem to enjoy the occasional break from the routine.

Soon, we see a faint yellow light coming out of the fog. The light is oddly alluring, like a moth seeing a flame.

Alissa draws her warbow and fires an arrow towards the light. We hear a cute, comical "QUEH!" and the jingle of metal clacking and glass breaking. Moments later, the yellow light fades and we move on.

I start to feel fatigued due to the fog and instead of casting another [Purify Body], this time I sink my nails into Alissa's [Bind] and feel her whole body shiver. She suddenly becomes very aware and alert, and I allow that to bleed over through the [Bind] to me, making me alert again, too.

"Hah, good idea," Alissa says.

"This spell is so useful."

Suddenly, I feel mana coming from the front and we raise our shields. An Arachne yells a warning as a [Wind Blade] opens a wound in her shoulder. Ciel casts a [Wind Wall] in front of the wounded Arachne, preventing any further spells from reaching us.

The [Holy Spirit] jumps onto the Arachne's spider body and starts tap dancing. While it dances, mana leaves its body and heals the Arachne.

"Does it have to dance?" I ask Ciel.

"No, but the dancing helps ease the mind and it's good practice for me," she answers with a shrug.

Alissa fires a few arrows into the fog but doesn't look satisfied. "They are hard to sense," she says.

We start to see a faint yellow light and Alissa smiles evilly. She fires an arrow and a "QUEH!" from a dying Ton is heard, then the pale yellow light dissipates.

Suddenly, we feel mana coming from our flank. Alissa reflexively fires an arrow, I cast a [Lightning Bolt] at the source, and Ciel moves her [Wind Wall] to protect us from that direction. A faint yellow light suddenly appears from where the mana came from and something tries to pierce Ciel's [Wind Wall].

"I missed?" Alissa thinks out loud and tilts her head cutely.

She fires another arrow and we finally hear the "QUEH!" of a dying Ton again.

"Not dead yet," she says and fires another arrow.

The monster yells another "QUEH!" of an, apparently, not-dying Ton and I feel mana come from his direction again.

Spears made of fog extend out from the fog and become "solid."

I cast [Telekinesis] on a spear that is aiming for Alissa, making it fall on the ground like a noodle, and block another with my shield. Their tips are as sharp as a needle, but they carry little momentum, making them very easy to block. Ciel moves her [Wind Wall] and the spear dissipates as it touches the spell. The Arachnes aim their "webs" at the spears and they become fog again.

The Arachnes create a wider tunnel to give us more breathing room and change direction towards the annoying Ton. They manage to dissipate any further "fog spears" before they can threaten us.

Ciel casts a [Wind Blade] into the fog wall and frowns. "My spell dissipated," she says.

As we make our way towards the Ton, we hear the pitter-patter of the monster trying to run away.

"Put the [Holy Spirit] on me and I'll go get it," Alissa says.

With a cute, feminine "Hup!", the spirit jumps onto Alissa's horse and she gallops forward. Once she crosses the fog, I immediately feel through her [Bind] that the fatigue increasing at a very fast rate. The spirit goes to work and clears her fatigue, only for it to soon start building up again.

"Ciel, help the Arachnes, this is stressing Alissa's body," I say.

She nods and starts making a small tornado with [Wind Storm] that pushes the fog upwards and away from us.

Alissa comes back and yawns. I guide my horse close to hers and [Massage] her fox ears. "Good job," I say and see her tail wag. "You too," I add while looking at Ciel and she tries to hide her smile.

We continue further and see another faint yellow light. Alissa fires an arrow but no scream of pain comes.

Her cute fox ears flicker and she frowns. "I think he's hiding behind a root," she says.

"Let's get closer, then."

As we slowly make our way further, the yellow light becomes stronger and more calming. We huddle up and the light elemental turns into a literal blanket, the softest blanket I have ever touched. The calmness dissipates from our minds and I feel slightly disappointed. Though, I feel a chill as I realize that I had been thinking quite favorably about being eaten by the monster.

The Arachnes start giggling and swaying around as they walk.

"It even affects summons," Ciel says, a little impressed.

We get closer and Alissa cutely tilts her head. "I think the monster is shivering," she says.

"Because of us?" Ciel asks.

"I only fired a single arrow, I don't understand."

A minute later we finally reach the Watchman Ton and see it for the first time. It is a green Moomin with glowing yellow eyes and a brown robe. It just looks so cute that I almost feel sorry for killing it, almost.

It's sitting on the ground, hiding its head in its knees and covers its ears with its cute chubby hands. It shivers uncontrollably and when it notices us, it cries cutely and lays down on the ground in a fetal position.

"Damn, that's certainly not our fault," I say.

"Yeah, something traumatized it," Ciel says.

"Should I kill it?" Alissa asks.

"Yeah, I guess," I say with a shrug.

An arrow through the eye and it stops shivering. Its golden lantern, which is on the ground in front of it, slowly loses color and the yellow light fades away, then it rusts over and turns to dust along with its robe.

"I see its tracks; it came running from over there," Alissa says and points north.

"I'm a little curious, let's follow them," I say.

The girls agree and we move on again.

The mist loses a lot of its opacity, allowing us to see much further and making it easier for the Arachnes to dissipate it.

"Wait!" Alissa warns and we all stop our horses. "Something big is over there!"

"Recognize what it is?" I ask.

"No."

I point to one of the Arachnes. "You, continue forward and meet the beast." It nods and obeys.

I receive the Arachne's sight and share it with Alissa. It's rather straining to do this so I won't be able to keep it up for long.

"Woow~… that's a little confusing," she says.

"You want me to stop?"

"No, I'll get used to it," she says with a confident smile.

Ciel pouts, feeling a little left out.

"Want me to try to use [Bind] on you?" I ask her.

"Not now, better not risk it," she answers.

"I smell blood," Alissa says.

I receive the Arachne's sense of smell. "The monster can smell it too," I say.

"Not good."

Soon, her words ring true as we find a monstrosity. Three meters tall; four huge, muscular limbs like logs that keep its long body high above the ground; curved claws for grasping onto wood; stone slabs that look like scales; a vertical, rectangular stone "mask" that has square, glowing eyes and a square, glowing mouth; and a long, dexterous tail with sharp-looking metal scales protruding out of it.

"The fuck is that?" I mutter.

"No idea," Alissa answers.

The mouth of the monster glows, then the Arachne dies.

"Fuck! That! It's an Aberrant, I'm not fighting that without Roxanne to blow it up," I say and turn my horse. "Let's run through the fog! It could try to follow the tunnel we made!"

Lina's Trivia: an Aberrant is any monster that is not documented and or doesn't spawn regularly in a region. They are very rare and are generally very valuable.

The girls nod and I unsummon the remaining Arachnes. The light elemental and the Holy Spirit work overdrive to keep the soporific fog out of our bodies.

"Aoi, we found an Aberrant. Bring the girls to us," I say through [Bind].

"Yes, Sir!" She answers playfully.

I summon two Hollys to keep watch over the caravan. The commoners become tense now that we've all left and Rande wakes up the soldiers so they get more alert again.

"So, what is it?" Hana asks as we meet up outside the fog.

I describe what we saw to the rest of the girls.

Hana looks at Lina and asks, "How's your [Earth Magic]? Can you fuse yourself with the ground?"

"I didn't practice it that much. I can do it in five seconds," Lina answers, crestfallen.

"I'll stay with you. Anything happens and I carry you away, ok?"

"Okay," Lina answers with a confident nod.

"I'll stay on my horse, then," Roxanne says.

"Me too," Ciel says. "With a body made of stone, my glaive won't be very useful."

I summon a Destruction and a Metal Dragonoid and say, "You, Metal, your job is to distract the monster when it endangers someone. You, Destruction, your job is to weaken the stone scales. Try to find a balance between offense and defense so you don't waste your life. Only do a suicide attack when it's to save one of us." Both of the summons nod.

"Let's try to make a trap, weaken the ground and we can bury it in mud," Lina says.

I summon another Holly and send it to scout the Aberrant.

Two Hollys and one light elemental at the caravan, two Dragonoids and one Holly with us. My mana reserves are low, so when the fight starts, I will unsummon our Holly to get some mana back.

I drop a [Gate] coordinate far away from the fight zone so we have an escape route. Lina and Hana dismount, and their horses gallop back to the caravan on their own.

Lina and the Destruction Dragonoid create a large hole and Roxanne fills it with water, creating a mud pit. Then they cover the hole with a thin layer of solidified earth. If the monster touches it, it will notice that there's something wrong with the earth, but by then it will be too late, or so we hope.

The trap is near the entrance we made in the fog, so if the monster is following our tunnel, it will find us, eventually.

I start to get the shivers of anxiety and excitement. This is the first monster we'll fight that I don't have much of an idea of its power. I know it can use magic, which makes its true power hard to guess.

Gify pops onto my shoulder and gives us all a massage that calms our nerves.

"Gih."

"Thanks, Gify," Alissa says.

"Gihm goht guhgleghs."

"Yes, you are very useful," Alissa agrees with a wide smile.

Gify snorts and sends me a side glare, then he pops out of existence.

"With any luck, it won't try to follow our tunnel," I say.

But unfortunately, either the God of Luck is messing with me, or the Gods want to test us repeatedly: Holly found the Aberrant.

"Well, shit. It's coming through our tunnel," I say.

A note from Manasong

Hall of Fame of Patrons

The patrons who support Rupegia shall have their names sung by the bards for they deserve the glory and honor. Their names are:

Oracle Maximillian Hübner.

Lord Andrew Meyers.

Lord Hope.

Lord Samuel Lim.

Lord Cody Weigel.

Lord Bill.

Lord Novgarod.

Lord DJ.

Noble Salty Panda.

Nobleman Lassiter.

Leave a rating or a review to help me rise to the top or fix my shameful understanding of prose.

Take a look over my blog where all information of the world of Rupegia will be posted.

Join the Discord and discuss, or rant, or meme, or try and fight me so your waifu gets more screentime.

Become a Patron and read chapters in advance, or read the side-stories, or leave your mark on the story, or help choose the next artwork or the next side-story.

Chapter 46: The Encounter - Part 3

A note from Manasong

On another short trip so I'm uploading from my phone. By Monday or Tuesday things will return to normal

The Aberrant comes out of our tunnel and "sniffs" the air. Its stone mask displays very little emotion, so I'm assuming that the way it's looking towards the sky means that it's sniffing. Then it lowers its head closer to the ground and starts following our tracks. I can see that its eyes and mouth have stopped glowing.

Hana and Lina stand together in front of the trap with their war hammers at the ready, their bodies strengthened by my [Godly Language]; the rest of the girls and I are on our horses, hidden behind a giant tree; and the Dragonoids stay behind the two vanguards at the front, a small distance away from them, hidden behind a large root.

It takes little time for the monster to reach us, so I unsummon Holly and recharge my MP a bit with [Redirect Mana].

We don't have our [Spirit Lights] out, so we can only see a brown outline move out from behind a root as it briefly passes through a small streak of light that leaked down from the canopy. The monster is completely silent, even though it's huge. A few seconds after it appears, it finally notices us and immediately freezes on the spot, becoming as still as a statue.

The odd, stone-skinned monster barely looks out of place as it's dark brown color blends in well with the roots around it.

"He doesn't look tasty," Aoi says through [Bind].

"Wait until you see his insides," I say.

We spend a tense minute just staring at each other, if you could say that a lifeless stone mask can even "stare" at anything, that is. Then, suddenly, the eyes and mouth of the Aberrant light up again and lightning crackles along its body. The next moment, it charges forward at a frightening speed while stomping along ground.

Hana and Lina get ready and I see the earth rising around Lina's feet. They cast [Spirit Light] and we finally see the whole of the monster.

It reaches the trap, and a few steps in, it suddenly starts to try to stop itself. It slips and writhes in the air as the ground crumbles underneath its claws. It falls down a dozen meters into the hole we created and splashes into the mud below.

Alissa stays behind while I, Ciel, and Roxanne gallop forward.

"[Torrent]!"

"[Wind Hammer]!"

I visualize the wall around the hole. We didn't dig a hole, we compacted earth so that it would create an opening in the ground.

"[Earth Wall]!" I cast the spell and pull on the compacted earth, then I let it crumble on top of the monster.

The Destruction Dragonoid dives into the hole and latches onto the back of the struggling monster. Black light glows out of his body as he works on weakening the stone scales.

The Aberrant desperately claws its way upwards. When it reaches the edge near us, Hana and Lina strike its claws, breaking them. The monster falls back into the mud and crushes the Destruction Dragonoid, but that doesn't kill him.

The stone mask turns to Hana and she only has enough time to hide behind her shield. Without a sound and with blinding speed, a large block of stone shoots out of its mouth and penetrates both Hana's [Wind Armor] and her [Wind Shield]. In one moment she's there, then in the next she's spinning as she's hurled high into the air. She goes so far up that she flies past the crown of the gigantic trees.

I only stop for a moment as the reality of what just happened dawns on us.

"RUN AWAY!" I bellow with all my power. "LINA!" I extend my hand to her and she runs to me.

The hole glows and lightning flies out of it, hitting Lina in the back. Her [Rainbow Shield] flashes and her skin glows in a rainbow color as the lightning courses through her body. Not even the emellanat lining of her shield is enough to stop the magic. Faint burn marks appear along her skin as she yells in pain. A moment later the lightning runs out and she collapses.

I spur my horse towards her and use [Telekinesis] to lift her up from the ground. Then the long limbs of the Aberrant slam on the ground as it hangs at the edge of the hole. Its head peeks over the edge and turns to me.

Aoi fires a fireball at its mouth, to no noticeable effect; Ciel fires an [Air Hammer] at the face of the Aberrant and it only flinches a little; the metal-clad Dragonoid slams on top of its head and forces it to look down. The monster fires a block of stone into the edge of the hole, causing a loud and dull sound that makes the earth tremble, and dirt and dust flies everywhere.

The Destruction Dragonoid regenerates enough to escape the mud and attacks the Aberrant along with the Metal one, forcing it back down into the hole. Both of them wrestle with the monster, but they get quickly grabbed and buried in the mud by the monster's back claws. Its hind legs are as dexterous as its forelegs.

I pull Lina onto my lap and gallop away. She slowly wakes up and groans in pain. Ciel pairs her horse with mine and instantly [Heal]s Lina. The burn marks disappear and her mind immediately regains clarity.

The Aberrant hangs on the edge of the hole again and looks at us. Its stone mask looks "melted" and distorted.

"[EXPLOSION]!"

With incredible speed, the head of the Aberrant moves to the side and nearly completely evades Roxanne's spell. The mask cracks and the cheek of the monster loses its scales, exposing red and bleeding flesh.

Hana dives down like an arrow towards the Aberrant. The monster looks up at her and lighting courses through its body. One clawless paw swipes at Hana as she rapidly enters his reach, but she dodges perfectly with only a flap of her wings.

Her war hammer slams perfectly on the crack of the mask and splits it in two horizontally. The upper part peels off with a layer of skin stuck to it and reveals the glowing eyes of the monster. Its skull is flat and it has no nose on its face.

"[EXPLOSION]!"

Even while suffering from the wound on its head, it dodges Roxanne's spell again and only suffers minor damage.

This provides just enough time for Hana to strike again at the back of its head and for Ciel to fire a [Wind Hammer] at its face. The skull caves in slightly and the Dragonoids escape its claws. It remains dizzy for a second and Alissa fires an arrow, which pierces an eye and I immediately feel lots of mana leaving its body.

"HANA, COME BACK!" I yell.

Lightning explodes out of it in all directions. It fries the Dragonoids and Hana is hit in the back. She crashes down onto the ground near us but immediately rises again.

I unsummon the Dragonoids before they die and open up a [Gate] behind a tree.

"GET IN!" I order.

In only a few seconds all of the girls cross my [Gate], with Hana as the last one in. I cast [Summon Small Bird] and order it to stalk the Aberrant, then I enter the [Gate] and we take a few moments to rest.

"Fuck! That was horrible!" Hana exclaims while Ciel heals her broken arm and burned skin. I heal Lina to make sure there's no residual damage in her body.

"It's faster than my spell," Roxanne says with a deep frown.

"Is its brain even inside its skull? I hit the eye and nothing happened besides it getting angry," Alissa says.

Aoi hangs her head low and through the [Bind], I can hear her grumbling.

"It's regenerating," I say.

"That's fucking stupid!" Hana protests and raises her arms. Ciel sends a glare to her because she's trying to [Diagnose] her arm for any side-effect.

"It's slow, but it's regenerating. The skin is regrowing at a noticeable rate."

Ciel finishes her inspection and sighs. "We need a new plan."

We are too close to the road. The Aberrant might attack the caravan if it gets too close.

"Alissa, go back to the caravan and tell them to stop. I'll just send a small bird with you for scouting. I need more mana, so I'm unsummoning the light elemental and the Holly."

She nods and gallops away. I share my senses with her so she can participate in the discussion.

"If it's using regeneration, won't its mana run low, like the Dragonoids' did?" Lina asks.

"I couldn't use [Sense Soul] on it but it could work. To confirm this, I just have to stay close long enough," I say.

"I do not like that idea," Alissa says.

"I can always use [Gate] to escape."

"If we confirm this then we can use sneak attacks to wear it down," Ciel says.

"Hmph. Fine," Alissa relents.

"That is, if it doesn't have a skill like [Redirect Mana]," Roxanne says with a wry smile.

"That would be too much," Hana says.

I drink a delicious MP potion and flop down on the soft earth.

"We need fast and heavy blunt attacks to break its scales and bones. Pure magic seems to have little effect on it since it withstood the Watchful Tons' fog like it was nothing. The Destruction Dragonoid seems to work but it needs time for it to take effect and the Aberrant reacts too quickly," I think out loud.

"Can you use the golems to help? Throw some of your boulders at it?" Lina asks.

"Yes! [Telekinesis] is cheaper than [Earth Bullet], so we can throw lots of them!" Roxanne exclaims.

I nod in agreement and say, "Right, I'll spread [Gate] 'coordinates' around while you girls collect lots of boulders. But first, I'll use [Ignorance] and sneak up close to the Aberrant so I can inspect its mana."

Hana's shield is bent, the enchantment is damaged but not unusable, only its coverage was warped. Lina can fix it completely, though it will take a while.

I put my points just like the same way I did when I stalked Farana. Though this time I don't put more than ten points in skills that I know nothing about, like [Sense Presence] and [Hide Presence], so I don't feel as "heavy" as last time. I think I was "overtaxing" my soul with those skills. They require some very odd knowledge and experiences so they shouldn't be as easy to "force" into my soul as magic skills are.

I also take off my scale armor so that its jingling can't alert the monster. I feel a little naked without my armor, but [Gate] gives me the confidence that I need to continue.

Through the summoned bird's eye, I see that the Aberrant is still searching around the area where I used [Gate], so I calmly make my way towards it. With [Sense Presence], I can easily avoid any monster I encounter along the way.

Alissa warns Rande of our situation and the commoners grow distressed when I unsummon the light elemental. Klein shows a lot of worry and fidgets for a while.

The rest of the girls work diligently and even Aoi helps gather boulders with her small [Item Box]. The golems are very helpful with raising the stones, they acquired a lot of control over [Telekinesis] thanks to Roxanne's guidance, though they still haven't gained any skills.

Long, silent minutes pass as I make my way through the almost completely dark forest. It's only when I'm alone that I realize how small I feel among the giant trees. The small streaks of light that pass down through the leaves help the weak, luminous plants brighten the landscape, but there are still so many dark places that the forest looks frightening and dangerous.

[Sense Presence] gives me some rationality about the darkness. I can always be sure that there's likely nothing in there. In this forest, there are a few monsters that can hide from [Sense Presence], but they're nowhere near as dangerous as the Symbol of Darkness.

When I finally reached the Aberrant, it's starting to slowly make its way towards the fog again, probably hunting for the last Watchful Ton that might still be in there. The fog is very faint now, but it might still affect me, so I hurry closer to the monster.

I see that its steps are incredibly dexterous. Its legs move normally until it nearly reaches the ground, then it slows down instantly so that it can softly and soundlessly touch the ground.

I avoid the light and make my way towards the monster, careful to not touch any dry branches or leaves. Even [Quiet Steps] won't help me with those. I leave a few "coordinates" along the way.

I get close enough and focus on my [Sense Soul]. I don't see the same menu that appears for anyone with a system, but I can still look inside and search for the mana organ. I see many organs that I have no idea what they are for, but eventually, I find a very familiar-looking mana organ.

The familiar slots for mana particles are there. The amount of them is a little frightening; if I were to make a guess, they are as numerous as Roxanne's. Though, I notice most of them are nearly empty.

The monster's face and eye are healed and the skull is not caved in anymore, but the stone scales haven't grown back yet.

"The monster is nearly out of mana. We co-…"

The monster suddenly turns around and looks directly at me.

The earth explodes and my heart beats uncontrollably. The scare was so great that I reflexively cast [Gate] and closed it immediately after, which was the correct choice as the next moment, a large block of stone filled the location where I just was.

I collapse on the ground and try to gather myself.

"Wolfy?!"

"I'm okay. The monster sensed our communication, I think."

"That's concerning."

I store all the boulders inside my "Items" and we prepare ourselves again for the fight.

"Focus on controlling mana," I say in the [Godly Language] and open a [Gate] near the monster.

I summon another small bird and have it chirp loudly somewhere that we have a clear shot of. A minute later, the Aberrant sneaks close, wary of another trap. We calmly charge our [Telekinesis], my [Godly Language] helps with controlling the power and I put everyone's skill points into [Mana Efficiency].

Suddenly, lightning crackles along its body and it rushes towards the bird. He reaches it in an instant and stomps on it.

"FIRE!"

The monster looks at us but it's too late, our boulders are already in flight and the [Gate] is closed. The boulders hit all over its body and more of its scales crack.

"FIRE!"

Boulders fly from another direction and hit the other side.

"FIRE!"

Boulders hit from a third direction and the monster turns towards whence it came.

"NO. YOU. WON'T!" Hana strikes at a joint of its shoulder and the monster winces.

"[EXPLOSION]!" Roxanne aims for the body and the monster evades, but not as much as before because its body is much more massive than its head. The stone scales at the left flank are blown away along with a small chunk of the ribs.

Ciel fires a [Wind Blade], Lina fires an [Earth Bullet], and Alissa fires an arrow at the exposed flank.

"NUOOOOH!" The monster groans in pain for the first time.

I summon a minotaur and another Destruction Dragonoid and command in [Godly Language], "Become Stronger!" Both of my summons bulk up in strength. "Hold it still!" I order, and they charge forward with Lina following close behind them.

Hana goes for another strike and hits the other shoulder. The Aberrant's tail tries to lash out at her, but her [Enhanced Reflexes] allow her to dodge the attack.

I open a [Gate] to the first position again and we fire another volley of boulders.

"[Explosion]!" Roxanne opens a wound on its right flank.

The minotaur hugs the left hind leg and holds it to the ground; the Destruction Dragonoid weakens the joint at the left shoulder; Lina strikes the left hip of the Aberrant with the aid of [Spirit of Gaia].

Suddenly, the monster turns into a Tesla coil again, but this time it's so weak that Lina's emellanat shield protects her from any damage and my summons are only slightly fried.

Hana flies up once more and strikes the left shoulder, then Lina strikes the left hip again and monster buckles. It's left limbs are now too weakened to support its body.

"FIRE!" We launch another volley at the right flank and the monster trembles in pain.

"[EXPLOSION]!" This time, Roxanne aims at the base of the neck and its head separates from its shoulders. The monster stops struggling and goes limp.

A few seconds later Alissa calls out, "It's dead!"

"FUCK YEAH!" Hana yells and lands on the ground.

We cheer and Roxanne jumps on me. She gives me a tight hug and Ciel gives me one from behind. Aoi has to quickly jump off of my shoulder to not get crushed by them. If not for their armor, I would be drowning in breasts right now.

Alissa turns into a fox and comes running, and Hana brings Lina to us, then we all have a group hug. The golems waddle closer and hug our legs, too.

We disentangle after having our fill and nearly making me pass out. I recover the body and the head, then we slowly make our way back to the caravan. We are all rather tired physically, magically, and mentally.

I unsummon the minotaur; summon an Arachne and send it along with the Dragonoid to deal with the last Watchful Ton; and summon two scouting Hollys and a light elemental, who dances as we walk, to accompany us.

When we reach the caravan, we see the commoners preparing a few orcs that Anton and the others killed. One of the orcs is already partially cooked, the handiwork of Rande.

"Ah, Helios!" Rande greets us with a dashing smile and Klein and Osaria sigh in relief. "By your faces, I can tell that the hunt was successful."

"Indeed it was. Damned Aberrant was the toughest thing I have fought yet," I say with a dashing smile of my own.

I pull out the Aberrant for everyone to gawk at.

"The damn thing is beaten, alright," Anton says with a snort.

"It looks as resistant as an imperial wall," says one of the soldiers that's been friendly with Hana and Ciel.

"How did you inflict such wounds?" Rudito asks as he inspects the hole at the left flank.

Roxanne smiles smugly and says, "That's my secret."

Rudito chuckles and doesn't prod any further.

"Are you okay? Wasn't this shield enchanted with [Wind Shield]?" Klein asks, tenderly grabbing Hana's arm.

"Yeah, it was. Still is, actually. But anyway, that Aberrant threw a square rock at me that went through the enchantment, broke my arm, and sent me flying up past the treetops," Hana answers.

"It shocked me so hard that my skin burned and I passed out," Lina says.

"Oh…" Osaria looks at us with a heart-wrenching sad frown. It makes me and Roxanne feel sad for making her worry.

"One thing we have to be thankful for is for having these two," Ciel says and props up the two golems, trying to change the mood. They stand still on top of Ciel's palms and scan the audience. "They are Wolf's golems and they were immensely helpful in taking out the monster today."

"Golems?" The commoners question and look at the two dolls curiously. Ciel whispers something and the duo of golems wave cutely towards the commoners. Most women, children, and some of the men squeak at their cuteness.

The exhibition starts to get a bit noisy, so I store the Aberrant's corpse away and Rande starts to organize the soldiers again.

"We've waited long enough! We'll be moving at a faster march!" Rande yells.

We mount our horses again and start moving on. Soon, the Arachne and the Dragonoid kill the last Ton and the fog dissipates quickly, finally clearing the road ahead for us to continue travelling.

Intermission 14

I hear a knock on the door.

"Come in," I say.

Sebastian enters and deposits a sealed letter on our desk. The signet catches my attention, so I immediately open it and we three huddle up to read it.

"Seems too perfect to be true," says Luz.

"He's not even certain how they did it," says Lua.

"Not even a hint of the type of magic used, aside from the sleeping one."

"Still, their powers are just what we need," I say.

"We will have to test them," says Luz.

"All of them?" Lua asks.

"Only the boy, it's obvious that he's the one hiding his powers," I say.

"We don't know of his background. Are you sure he's reliable?" Luz questions.

"A lot can be ascertained simply from looking at those around him."

"Well, he does seem 'apt' for this," Lua says with a smirk.

"Sebastian, keep a close watch on him. Mark him as the first choice," I say.

The servant nods and silently takes his leave.

"Hm, he's coming right towards us," Luz says.

"We'd better make use of this opportunity," I say with a grin.

Helios sounds like an Imperial name, but you don't really seem to be one, Wolf.

A note from Manasong

Hall of Fame of Patrons

The patrons who support Rupegia shall have their names sung by the bards for they deserve the glory and honor. Their names are:

Oracle Maximillian Hübner.

Lord Andrew Meyers.

Lord Hope.

Lord Samuel Lim.

Lord Cody Weigel.

Lord Bill.

Lord Novgarod.

Lord DJ.

Noble Salty Panda.

Nobleman Lassiter.

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Vanea's Origin: Hardened - Teaser

A note from Manasong

Warning: if you thought that Interlude 1 was disturbing, this one is worse

This chapter is not required to read to understand the main story, this is only a side-story.

This is a teaser for the patreon-only side stories I'm writing.

Each chapter has 3 parts and the first part of any new storyline I will make public as a teaser.

I give the male wereowl a Princess smile. "Signeur Rooter, what a pleasure to have you here in Rabanara," I say and use the Princess' voice to match.

His cordial smile widens and acquires a hint of smugness to it. The nobleman certainly didn't spend any skill points in Acting. "Lord Vanea, it is a great honor to be received by you."

"Lord"? So he is a cunt licker.

"Rabanara is always open to receive the strong, but we love more those who show some loyalty." I stress the last word with a hint of the General.

His smile stiffens just a little while as he swallows in an uncomfortable way. "So I have heard," he says and finishes with a nod. His eyes glance at the form of my nipples showing from under my thin black dress.

Too bad for you, then. I will never open my legs for you and you will only taste my piss if you don't participate in the town's defenses.

"So, how's the mansion to your liking?" I ask, returning completely to the Princess.

He opens his mouth and cunt-licking praise comes out. I register the words in my head but pay him no mind.

I should stop thinking about piss, plenty of the pissers have an actual pissing fetish. Or maybe I should indulge in it. Meh, it's not a fetish that's stopping them from allying with us.

I need to talk to Haaran about pissing fetishes, won't hurt to be prepared for it. It actually seems like a fun pass-time and I don't even have to expose myself, so they can still salivate and lust for me while I piss down their mouths.

I feel my nipples harden and force myself out of my musings, lest the spindly frail wereowl think that I'm hard for him.

"I'll leave you to enjoy your new house, then." -I giggle like the Saintess- "If you ever need anything, you can always ask."

His eyes immediately run along my cleavage and end in my exposed midriff. "Y-yes, I'll ask."

I might have to get Haaran to fuck his wife behind his back.

I rise from the sofa and approach him to shake his hand. Once we share the three usual shakes, I pull his hand closer and softly push my cherry lips against his frail hand. A small and fragrant red mark is left on his skin.

I giggle like the Saintess again and walk away. With the corner of my eye, I manage to catch a glimpse of him smelling his hand.

"How did it go, master?" Loctar asks as I cross the [Gate].

I immediately let my dress fall and throw my underwear at him. "The same, a failure," I say.

The dwarven boy/man makes an effort to catch it all and then sniffs my panties. His cute dick immediately goes erect.

"I'm sorry to hear that, master," he says after he recovers from the stupor of my scent.

"I'm going to my room," I say and he immediately starts to masturbate with my panties.

"As you wish, my love."

As my Persona crumbles, all my enthusiasm goes along with it and I start walking with a hunched back.

I meet Dad along the way. Mom is as chipper as ever, hugging his arm and smiling brightly.

With only a single look, Dad knows what happened. He gives me a sad, but sympathetic nod. Mom stops and disentangles from Dad, she grabs my face and forces me to stare her in the eyes.

"No luck, my love?" She asks in her cutesy voice.

Her unbounded love makes me smile, but my eyes still look dead. Her pure mind sets mine at ease and I sigh. "No luck, Mom."

I give her a hug and she tries to crush my ribs, but her perky balloons hamper her efforts. When I loosen the hug, she grabs my head and gives me repeated kisses on my lips, I feel a soft honey taste enter my mouth from the lip cream she uses.

"Don't feel so sad, please. No matter what happens, know that we always love you. It's not your fault the other nobles refuse to ally with us," she says in her loving voice, forcing more love to invade my heart.

I send a glance at Dad, but I see he's only smiling warmly. I already quit trying to have him tell us the truth, I think he himself doesn't even know it fully.

I steal a kiss from Mom and caress her tongue with mine. I end it with a loud *smack* and smile at her, feeling fully recharged. "Thank you, Mom," I say and we disentangle.

They continue towards the [Eternal Gate] Station while I retire to my room.

I tell the servant to turn off the lights and crawl into my bed below the covers. I curl into a ball and go to sleep.

I feel something slick and wet rub on my pussy, making me moan involuntarily. Then I hear a gruff chuckle and suddenly, a thick, long penis invades my womb.

"Ahn! Arman!" I protest.

He chuckles and binds me in an iron hug.

The rough awakening makes me weak, but with Arman having the advantage of surprise, I'm left completely defenseless.

His cock is completely lubed, how kind of him. You like to play these games, but you never go all the way.

I relax in his strong, red arms and enjoy the "hard" fucking.

"Father has a faster stroke than you," I say, mockingly.

"Your mother's pussy is tighter than yours," he grunts back. His mustache tickles the back of my neck and his rough voice feels like music to my ears.

"My brother has a bigger dick than you."

"Your sister will be less of a whore than you."

"That's actually a compliment."

"Fucking degenerates, all of you." -He chuckles- "Is there someone you didn't fuck?"

"Your son."

"Well, that's unexpected."

I use the tone of the Dame of Pain as I say, "Maybe I should marry Marduk, then you two can fuck me at the same time."

"Don't joke about those things. You should marry a noble, not a dirty commoner like me or my son," he says in a serious tone and slows down.

I grab his arm and give it a pinch. It probably didn't hurt him, but I just wanted to send a message. "Fuck those nobles, and not literally! You and the rest of the knights are commoners and you're all just as strong as any noble!"

He hugs me tighter and stops moving. "I'm sorry, I shouldn't have brought that up."

I hug his arms and run my hand along his skin, feeling the coarse hair. "No, I'm just ranting, it's not your fault."

He kisses me on the back of my head and his fleshy lips make my arms lose their strength. His breath smells of Nightshade, an earthy and calming smell mixed with smoke.

His dick disappointingly leaves my insides, then his strong arms spin me in place, forcing me to look at him. His graying hair adds to his charm, making his smile breathtaking.

He cups my cheek with his large red hand and I grab his fingers. My hand feels small next to his log-like fingers. I smile brightly and savor his touch. I always feel like a frail little girl in his embrace.

"Loctar said that you were feeling down," the Devil-type old man says, his gravelly voice works just like Mom's in calming my heart.

"I am," I say flatly.

"No luck?"

"No luck."

He grunts and suddenly I'm filled again.

My legs and hips hurt to move. Arman used me like a doll until he was satisfied, which took quite a while.

I look around and see that Loctar is back. He's delicately storing my Seduce-type dress in my wardrobe.

"Loctar, I need healing, my love," I say weakly and motion to him.

Arman grunts a chuckle and uses the skin of my arm to dry his wet cock.

Loctar immediately stops what he's doing and scurries to my side. He chants a [Heal] and suddenly I can walk again.

"You are losing your strength, old man. Loctar didn't even need to [Heal] me twice," I say and giggle like the Seductress.

"Fuck you," he gruffs.

"Please, do," Loctar says lowly with a smirk.

"Huh?!" Arman turns to the small dwarf.

"Ah! A thousand apologies, my Grand Sir!" Loctar turns around and bows completely.

Arman laughs out loud and walks out of the room.

"If you take his cock up your ass, I'll reward you with a night with my mother," I say softly into Loctar's ear.

He turns around and his green eyes look at me anxiously. "I appreciate the offer, my master, but I don't need anyone but you."

"Awn…" My heart melts so completely a small tear forms in the corner of my eye.

I pull him into a hug and start to undress him. He gets so excited, that when I start stroking his cute penis, he immediately splurts all over the bed.

Well, what a waste.

"Apologies, my love, I didn't warn you," he says and cringes a little.

I sigh. "The maids only like you because you are cute."

He chuckles adorably and awkwardly scratches his head.

I run my hand through his black hair and kiss him on the forehead. Then I make sure that the Ring of Fertility is on and straddle him.

"You've been a good boy, so you get to finish inside," I smile like the Saintess and lower myself onto him.

I have another meeting with a potential ally, so I clean myself and use a [Regeneration] magic tool on my vagina.

I played around so much today. Haaran would be proud.

I use a more innocent Seduce-type dress. The elves love to worship and corrupt innocence. The dress is inspired by Sommerland designs, it has a lot of see-through clothing, showing him most of my curves, but keeping all the important bits completely covered. Its light green color goes well with my hair, just like how Loctar's dark hair contrast perfectly with his emerald eyes.

The form-fitting dress reduces my movement, but it looks seductive. I'm sorry to the weremonkeys and apes, but the baggy clothing looks a little silly in my eyes.

I enter the room and immediately see a thick piece of meat that makes me salivate. The elven man is as tall and built as Arman; he lacks any of the femininity that plagues the elves; his yellow stubble is perfectly trimmed; his square jaw is striking and masculine; his dashing smile is that of a Hero of legend; his dimples show the marks of experience and that of a man that smiles a lot; his glacial eyes shine in contrast to his fair skin; his short golden hair is elegantly combed backwards; his neck is graced with an elegant necklace; his clothing is simple but perfectly fitted; his posture is like that of a statue from the Colosseum.

"Signeur Rico Este," I greet him and give an elegant bow, allowing him to see down my dress. When I straighten, I already feel my hard nipples poking through the dress and I catch him staring at them without shame.

"Lady Vanea Anara," he greets back and bows elegantly, much deeper than my own.

Flawless greeting, but 'Lady'?! I'll cuck you and your wife! I'll have Haaran impregnate her and then steal her for myself!

"A pleasure to have you and your company here in Rabanara," I say with the tone of the Princess.

"A great honor to be received by you." His manly voice sends shivers of pleasure along my spine.

I want Arman and him spit-roasting me, right now!

We both sit at the corners of the sofas, as close as we can be without sharing the same piece of furniture.

A small, virgin maid enters the room and shivers as both our predatory gazes wash over her voluptuous body. She's one of the most delicious finds of the orphanage this year, so I'll save her for a special occasion. The shivering prey deposits a tray with tea, sweets, and savory snacks at the corner of the table.

Her loose dress allows her cow tits to hang and gives us a perfect view of her entire body, even a glimpse of the bush that I personally trimmed.

Rico smiles like a breeder dragon seeing a fainted adventurer. The maid straightens and walks away and we both watch the bountiful butt shake from behind the see-through part of her dress.

Once the prey is gone, I finally turn to him and ask, "To what do I owe this delightful visit?" I add a dash of Seductress to my tone.

"Este escort company has a good hold over the High Forest and the Wetlands. We are thinking of expanding south and offering our services here," he answers with the tone of the Leader.

"Delightful." I increase the dash of Seductress and bunch up my breasts.

We casually talk about his business while eating the snacks. His eyes analyze every part of my body without shame, but he always stares me in the eye while we talk. My Eyes of Authority are still budding, but still, for him to do that show an envious amount of "Willpower."

"Our prices are very competitive and we are always offering our services to anyone," he says and I feel a hint of the General on his last word.

A perfect opponent for a battle.

I smile like the Dame of Pain and arm myself with my knives.

The battle is bloody, we are both experienced negotiators. Our tactics are too ineffective against each other, causing us to slowly bleed each other dry.

His tone shifts and I feel the Hero starting the final fight. "There is one last proposal that I would like to make…" He says while his glacial eyes try to pierce my heart.

"Do not tease me like this, Signeur Este. Say it," I mix the Dame of Pain with the Seductress, making him smirk.

"To finish this contract, I want you." The Hero stabs the Villain in the heart and looks at me, about to take his lover in his embrace.

"Oh my. What do you take me for?" I ask, using all of my Saintess and Princess in one go.

"A harlot, a slut. A woman who loves pleasure," He says, completely serious. The Villain revives to stab the hero in the back.

I change into the Dame of Pain and chuckle with a sultry tone. "You got it right, but my price is too high."

He pulls out the biggest, thickest cock that I have ever had the pleasure to see. "This is all the payment you deserve."

I chuckle like the Villainess and smile. "I've had bigger, the dragonkin are still unparalleled," I lie. I show complete control of my emotions, but my heart beats wildly.

If he was single I would gladly marry him in the spot.

His composure suffers a nearly invisible hit. He underestimated me and wasn't prepared for my steel nerves.

He throws some numbers and I bleed the last drop out of him.

My victory.

We sign the contract and one of his servants takes it away for copying. The poor elven woman was salivating at his exposed rod.

I kneel in front of him and grab his meat. I lick the shaft like an innocent puppy and gently play with his head.

He suddenly grabs my head and shoves it down completely. He enters deep down my throat and blocks my airways. If I was an innocent flower I would have puked.

I glare at him and the Madman stares back. I feel a slight chill run along my spine.

"Whore," the Madman whispers.

He doesn't let me breathe and plays with my head, skull fucking me until I nearly pass out. He cums down my throat and finally lets me breath.

"What the fuck are you doing, you brute! We never established a safe word!" I protest.

"Sex toys do not need 'safe words,'" he says flatly.

He lifts me by my throat with one hand and with the other he rips my dress. Then he throws me on the table and glass shatters, cutting my arm.

"Fuck! Stop!" I yell.

He grabs my waist and violently shoves his cock inside my vagina.

"AH! STOP! YOU ARE HURTING ME!"

He mounts me and wraps his arms around me. "The contract said we had to mate," the Madman says.

"Fuck the contract! We already signed it!" I turn my head and spit into his face.

He grabs my spit and savors it, moaning with pleasure. "The contract is with my servant. If I turn my Emergency Ring, she will burn it immediately." He shows me the Ring on his finger.

"Fuck the contract! You will be branded a Wicked rapist this way!" I snarl at him.

"No, I won't. Either we fuck my way or the contract is gone," he says, flatly.

I stop and stare at him wide-eyed. I feel the blood trickling down my arm and the pain starting to set in. I feel his disgusting cock twitching inside me repeatedly with excitement. I feel his filthy breath on my face. I see his eyes open wide in excitement and madness.

The contract is so good, just so good…

He starts moving again and I grunt in pain.

We need the help, we need an ally.

I turn away from him and grit my teeth.

It's always so hard on Father, Mother, and Haaran to keep the dungeons contained.

I hold the beam of the table and the glass shards cut my palm.

If we get more trade, we get more adventurers and the town will prosper.

He chuckles like the Madman and increases the pace. My insides get wet against my will and the pain turns to pleasure. Disgusting pleasure that I never wanted.

For Rabanara, for my family.

His limp wet cock slides out of me and I finally let the beam go. I nearly crash on the floor in the puddle of my own blood, but I catch myself and stand.

The Madman suddenly splashes a few very-high-quality potions on my body. All the wounds are healed and the blood I lost is replenished.

He throws his Emergency Ring at me, it hits my chest and falls on the floor with a clink. "Here, Smegma. Turn the Ring green if you want to be put in your place again," he says and cackles a Wicked laugh.

"Smegma…?" I ask through gritted teeth.

"That's what you are. You are barely worth more than the smegma of my cock, you slut." The glacial eyes of the Madman hurt more than his words.

With these last words, he puts on his clothes and walks away.

I pull out another dress and immediately go to the bathroom.

Loctar suddenly bursts into the bath and slips on the wet floor. He hits his head on the hard tiles and immediately gets up, a red trail of blood blemishing his perfect face.

"Master! What happened?! We found your blood at the meeting room!"

I told the guards to not interfere, now I'm not sure how much of a good idea that was…

I remain quiet and with a stern face. Loctar waits for my response, but when none comes, he jumps into the water, fully clothed, and swims to me. He hugs me tight and whimpers.

"Master… please tell me what happened…"

"He fucked me bloody because I allowed it, but never again…" I say through gritted teeth as silent tears run along my face.

I enter my workshop at the university. The scattered books and notes give me a second wind. I have a will, I will find a way.

[Cursing Magic] is feared by the old quacks. They are suspicious of its origin and are wary of any heretic influence on it, but they are completely wrong about it.

Any magic school is capable of being used for Wicked ways and to commit the Sin of Torture, [Cursing Magic] is just one that can walk closer to the border than any other. Not even [Dark Magic] can go as close as Cursing can.

The wording of the Sin is very clear: sadistic torture. It needs a meaning, a change, a goal. So I add one simple goal: revenge. So I add something that will change the realm: the death of Rico Este. So I add a justification for my Sin: taking justice into my own hands.

The realm needs to get rid of the bloodsucking waste of air that is the rotten goblin jizz called Rico Este. Another man who thinks he can walk all over me because I'm young, because I'm pretty, because I'm frail.

If they won't ally with me willingly, then they will stay away from fear of me!

"I curse you to a slow, painful death, Rico Este. I curse you to slowly lose your mind as your reality is slowly replaced with fantasy. Fantasy that is abruptly broken, leaving you in a rotten, broken home that you yourself created. Let your last will be to return to that fantasy, something only possible after your death.

"I curse you to suffer a horrible fate for your crimes. I curse you to tarnish your own name for your crimes. I curse you to die alone and not take anyone else undeserving with you. I cur-…"

A searing pain in my heart stops my words. I grasp the table to steady myself and grit my teeth.

Why do you stop me, Gods? Why do you hate me so much?! Why did you abandon me in this corner of the empire to struggle?! Why do I deserve to suffer for something that I don't even know what it is?! This realm is unfair and I'm merely doing my part to take control of my life!

The searing pain reduces a little, allowing me to speak again and restart the spell. "I… curse you… Rico Este… to suffer as long as I have suffered… To know my pain and my shame… To feel the guilt of a crime you will… never repay… I curse you to death…"

The spell is woven and deposits itself on the necklace. The searing pain in my heart stops and I collapse on the floor.

Loctar wakes up and sits up on the sofa. "Huh…? Ah! My love!" Loctar rushes to my side and hugs me tight. "Are you alright?! What happened?!"

I calm my breath and grasp his cheek lovingly. "I was allowed my revenge."

I cross the [Eternal Gate] to Goloria and surprise the elven receptionist. "I need a meeting with the Crown Lord, it's urgent," I say.

The androgynous receptionist jumps out of their chair and dashes towards the Lord's office.

I harden my will and fix my Persona, then I burst into his office and march towards the chair in front of his desk.

"Madame Vanea Anara…" Confiel starts the greeting but his Noble face collapses into a worried frown. "Are you alright? You don't look well."

"I am fine, Lord Confiel," I say and sit down on the chair and pose like the Princess. "I have no time for pleasantries. I'm here to give you an opportunity, either you take it or not and that's all."

"Hm… Wh-…"

I deposit the elegant necklace on the table and interrupt him. "I know you have some enmity with the Este family-…"

"That's putting it mildly." He frowns.

"-but I can give you the opportunity to kill Rico Este without anyone knowing he was murdered." I point to the necklace while his face freezes. He manages to contain his extreme surprise quite masterfully.

"How?" He asks with a sharp gaze after a few moments of consideration.

"The necklace will do all the work."

"I would like to test it beforehand."

"It'll only work with him."

"I'll test it anyway."

"Do as you please. Now, are you going to do it?"

He looks at the necklace and then analyzes me. My unkempt and unwashed clothing is disgraceful, but I had no time to waste, Rico must pay.

"Rico did something horrible to you," Confiel says and looks at me with a hint of empathy.

"Do not pity me, but he did," I say calmly.

"Are you Wicked?"

"Got close, but no."

He swallows uncomfortably and hardens his will. "I will do it."

Vanea pierces my anus with the spiked club again and I whimper in pain, then she strokes my cock and forces me orgasm while I cry.

I try to ask for her to stop, but my mouth is gagged.

I try to escape her torture, but my limbs are tied.

I try to struggle and rebel, but my battered body refuses to respond.

I can only remain there, limp, while she has her way with me.

I suddenly wake up from my nightmare. My heart burns with pain and my vision feels blurred. The immense discomfort in my entire body makes me spring up from the bed.

Heartburn? I'm not dying, am I? No, that's… that's a "warning."

I open the drawers and desperately search for the necklace. I have far too many jewels, I need to throw them all away, I don't need any other anymore.

We had a contract! The foolish girl didn't specify anything! I stopped when she asked and then she gave me permission!

I finally find the dark scintillating jewel. It shines to my eyes, an alluring shine that nobody else seems to notice. I put the necklace on and sit on a nearby chair. I savor the pleasant feeling of the smooth jewel rubbing on my fingers.

We had a contract! I didn't go too far! I know the limits! We had a contract!

"We had a contract… we had a contract…"

"Rico…?" Osaria asks from the bed. Her curvy body and dark skin sends a jolt of pleasure through my spine when I remember taking her first time. "Have you gone too far, this time?" She asks, flatly.

"Never… we had a contract… we had a contract…"

Osaria gets up and stands in front of me. Her face is cold and her eyes look tired. I love it when she looks at me like I'm trash.

No, I don't!

"Stay away from Rande. I won't let him become like you," she says, oddly resolute.

You need to die, Rico.

I cackle a laugh so loudly that she jumps backwards and covers her face with her hands.

Never! We had a cont-…

You need to pay, Rico.

Osaria looks at me again with disgust and I get hard at her gaze.

What?! Why am I ha-…

You are disgusting, Rico.

I am!

No, wai-…

You need to die, Rico.

I look at my own sword and wonder how pleasant it would be to have it slice my throat open.

You need to die, Rico.

It would definitely not be pleasant.

You need to pay, Rico.

But maybe that would be enough of a payment.

I rub the jewel harder.

Wha-…

You need to die, Rico.

A note from Manasong

Hall of Fame of Patrons

The patrons who support Rupegia shall have their names sung by the bards for they deserve the glory and honor. Their names are:

Oracle Maximillian Hübner.

Lord Andrew Meyers.

Lord Hope.

Lord Samuel Lim.

Lord Cody Weigel.

Lord Bill.

Lord Novgarod.

Lord DJ.

Noble Salty Panda.

Nobleman Lassiter.

Leave a rating or a review to help me rise to the top or fix my shameful understanding of prose.

Take a look over my blog where all information of the world of Rupegia will be posted.

Join the Discord and discuss, or rant, or meme, or try and fight me so your waifu gets more screentime.

Become a Patron and read chapters in advance, or read the side-stories, or leave your mark on the story, or help choose the next artwork or the next side-story.

Chapter 47: Paranoia - Part 1

A note from Manasong

On another short trip so I'm uploading from my phone. By Monday or Tuesday things will return to normal.

Attention: to conform to the limit of sexual content allowed in a novel, I've censored this chapter. You can look for the uncensored version here.

The symbol "-" denotes a section that got cut for containing sexual content. Also, if paragraphs seem missing, they were also likely censored in an earlier pass where the symbol wasn't used.

Soon after we cross the area where the fog was covering the road, we meet a scout from an incoming caravan.

"Greetings!" The elven horsewoman talks to us from a safe distance. She shows her sword hand to us in a signal of non-aggression.

"Fellow caravan coming through!" I yell back and the woman looks taken aback. "I'm a summoner, I saw you from far away."

"Oh, understood! Foguera company's caravan is coming through!"

"Este company's caravan is coming through!" Rande announces.

An exchange of courtesy in dangerous territory.

The scout comes closer so we can talk normally. "Did you clear the Watchful Tons?" She asks.

"We did, along with an Aberrant that was hunting them," I say.

"In the name of Foguera, we appreciate your work," the woman says with a slight bow.

"The pleasure of the fellowship Helios, hired by Este company," I say and return the bow.

After a nod, the scout returns to relay the information to her caravan.

We see the light coming from the other caravan long before we see it properly. It's much bigger than ours, with at least 20 horsemen, 40 spearmen and an unknown number of mages and archers inside the wagons. A few [Holy Spirits] and dozens of powerful enchantment-created [Spirit Lights] hang on the roof of the wagons as protection. A small number of commoners follow the caravan, protected by the spearmen.

A fat golden elf man leans through the window of the most ornate wagon, the last one to pass. "Ah, Rande! Surprised to see you making this trip," he says.

"Luck of the Gatun. I found a fellowship competent enough to keep us safe from even an Aberrant!" Rande says with a dashing smile.

"Escanso is in need of metal. What did you bring?" His gaze turns sharp.

"Enough to get robbed by seventy men." Rande turns smug.

"Hah! Then you cleared the way for us." His face turns soft again.

"All the way to Goldcross."

"I'll pay you with a bottle of Sunflower Wine." He laughs out loud.

They nod respectfully to each other as the caravans finish passing.

The soldiers quickly exchange news about the road and the mood lightens. Both caravans have been clearing the way of monsters as they pass, so at least for tomorrow, no more monsters will attack us.

With the Hollys, I confirm that the number of monsters actually does drop drastically, so we relax and start chatting casually.

Alissa pulls out a tray of hot tea and cookies and serves us while we stay on our horses.

"How was the fight with the Aberrant?" Klein asks with both worry and curiosity.

Ciel starts talking before anyone of us says something they shouldn't. She manages to describe the fight without mentioning any of our special powers. Then Hana butts in and starts "embellishing" it.

"I flew through the sky and suddenly saw the sun! When I came to, they were already getting chased by the Aberrant, so with a broken arm, I dropped down with all my speed and broke the mask of the Aberrant in half!

"I came back for another strike and caved in the skull of the monster, but he didn't die. It didn't even groan in pain! But it retaliated, it fried the elementals and got me in the back with its electric attack. I crashed into the ground but we had already deployed the escape smoke, so the monster quickly lost our trail."

"Wow, the horses saved you guys," Klein says.

"Hm, seems so," Osaria comments.

Nito perks his head out from the back and smiles as adorably as a little girl.

"We could have used the earth elementals to create a tunnel, so there were still other ways that we could have escaped," Roxanne says with a shrug.

"So versatile. There should be more teachers of [Summoning Magic]," Osaria says.

"It's actually quite complex. If you're not a 'natural' like Wolfy, then I would say that it's not worth it."

"And you're not going to share your secrets?" Klein questions me.

"Nope." I give her a cheeky smile.

Klein puckers her lips and then shows me her tongue.

Hana continues her story, "Then, for the second fight, we were more prepared. Six elementals: three earth, three fire. A trap from all directions! We lured it in with a single, small bird, and then we started such a powerful barrage of spells and attacks that we stunned it completely.

"Lina and I weaved in our attacks with the recharge of the barrage to keep it overwhelmed. It turned to each of us and tried to crush us with its incredibly powerful [Earth Bullet], but we were prepared and built our own super-tough barricades.

"Roxanne adapted and blew apart the stone scales of the aberrant, opening it up for us to hit its insides. Then we all synced our attacks together, and with one thundering strike, we toppled it over. This gave us enough time for Roxanne to blow off its head."

"Is the brain even inside its skull? You said you caved it in but nothing happened," Osaria questions.

"Oh, it's there, it's just protected underneath a lot of meat, bones, and fat," I say.

"Are you going to give the brain to Aoi?" Klein asks.

"I want, the heart!" Aoi says.

"She wants the heart," I say with a nod.

Anton listens to the story. He looks interested, but also annoyed. I know his opinion of me has lowered by a lot, but there's no helping it.

The light of the luminous plants turns purple as night comes. The wagons are parked near the road and we prepare our bath. Klein joins us awkwardly and Hana takes it upon herself to wash the newest member.

-

"Where did you buy so many elven products?" Klein asks -n.

I pass the bottle to Hana -. "Fought for a Lord once, and part of the reward was this. It's all smuggled goods."

"Instead of… asking for a fortune… ah, in coin you asked for el-… hm! Elven products?" Klein struggles to ask.

"We already have quite a lot of coin," Hana says with a shrug.

Klein turns to Hana and chuckles. "You used… to be greedy."

"Used to. But I always used my money, I never saved it, so I guess nothing has really changed."

Once Klein is exhausted -, we actually relax. Aoi swims underwater and plays tag with Gify.

Klein lets out a long sigh and uses Hana's - chest as a pillow.

"What is it?" Ciel asks.

"Nothing… just feeling very happy," Klein answers shyly.

"That's everyday," Lina says.

I reach over and pat her head.

"How's the arm?" I ask Hana.

"Just a little sensitive. Tomorrow it'll be okay."

Before we start eating dinner, Rande makes an announcement.

"As everyone should know, Helios discovered the bandit ambush long before they were even coming. They also prepared the trap with the caltrops, something that wouldn't be as effective if it weren't for their buried elementals. Not only did we not suffer any casualties because of them, but we also received healing from two of their members and potions from a third. With this, I announce that I'm giving 40% of the bounty to them, as a reward. The rest will be split evenly among the other participants."

The bounty isn't much, it ends up being a few gold coins and some silver, but it's symbolic, it shows that Rande divides rewards based on merit, not birth, nor race, nor favoritism.

Dinner is a hearty, sweet, pink mushroom soup from Klein's homeland. Lina seems interested at first, but the sweet taste puts her off.

"It's not a real mushroom because mushrooms shouldn't be so sweet!" She complains under her breath.

Too tired to train, we retire to our tent and play around. Klein plays cards with Lina after she finishes repairing Hana's shield. Aoi cheers for Lina while Roxanne cheers for Klein.

"Yes! Crush her!" Roxanne cheers.

"Y-you're not helping," Klein says nervously.

"Breathe in, breathe out," Aoi tries to calm Lina.

Lina is silent, but she glares repeatedly at her opponent: Roxanne, not Klein.

Ciel pulls out of her [Item Box] a small surprise that she got from Ostoum: a box containing small flasks of nail polish.

"I wanted to surprise us all with this, but Klein interrupted before I could," Ciel says with a wry smile.

"Wow, what's gotten into you to spend money on feminine things?" Roxanne asks with a playful look.

"We have money to spare, now…?" Ciel awkwardly plays with her hair.

I immediately nudge Alissa through [Bind] and we attack Ciel. She trims all of Ciel's nails while I sand them smooth. Then I pick out a soft pink flask and use the little brush to delicately paint her nails.

Ciel - giggles at the delicate care and then looks at her perfect, beautifully done nails.

I never did this for Lily and I don't really feel regret for not doing it. It's something new, something just between me and the girls.

We look at Hana and she turns a little awkward.

"Is this really necessary…?" She scratches the scales on her cheek.

I find a glossy, red flask and dangle in front of her face. She becomes intrigued at the color and relents.

"Wow, I look fabulous!" Hana stands - in front of our mirror and looks at her nails.

The other four girls stop playing cards and look at their own nails, then they start oozing envy.

Roxanne got a glossy purple; Lina got a milky white; Klein got pool blue; Alissa got yellow; Aoi got sky blue and we had to paint hers while she was in her larger form, otherwise the paint just turns to dust and falls off when she gets bigger.

They then try to paint mine black but I continue to deny them until they stop.

"No fun," Klein shows me her tongue.

"Painted nails are a very feminine thing where I'm from," I say.

For as open-minded as I try to be, painting my nails still feels weird.

"Hmmm…" Roxanne looks at me sadistically. She pulls off her underwear and grabs a bright pink flask. "Little sissy Wolfy."

Alissa shivers with a flash of rage that spills over the [Bind].

Roxanne's tail trails over the bed and approaches - me, though I know its real aim -.

"Do it."

Alissa pounces on the tail and squeezes it, eliciting a painful and delightful squeak from Roxanne. She grabs Roxanne by the throat with one hand -.

-

"Is the paint toxic?" Ciel innocently asks.

-. "It doesn't really matter if it is, we can always use [Purify Body]," I say, suggestively.

-

"When's my turn?" Klein asks -.

"Tomorrow," Alissa says.

The golems see that the night's playfulness is ending and walk away from the corner of the bed, heading towards the center.

"Sex is, pleasurable, correct?" Ted asks.

"Yes, it is," I say, almost cringing as I know where this is going.

"We wish, to serve. We have, no genitals, but we can, still do some-thing," Suzy says.

With emotions mixed between confusion, disbelief, and mirth, the girls all turn to me.

"Not necessary," I say and force a smile.

"We lack, 'sex-appeal,' correct?" Ted asks.

"Yes."

"Then make, us sexier," Suzy says with a respectful bow.

"Not necessary," I repeat.

Both of them turn silent for a few moments.

"I do not, understand," Ted says.

"Yes, same," Suzy says.

"You lay with, a monster."

"But you will, not make us, more appea-ling?"

"I'm already very satisfied with the current number of women I can have sex with," I say.

"And dragons!" Aoi adds.

"I kind of already considered you as one of the women." I smile at her.

"Awn…" Hana moans and Aoi lets her mouth hang open.

"Anyway, making the two golems sexually appealing would increase the number of considerations that I need to have. It would make things more complicated when they don't need to be. And you girls are trying to humanize them, so I can't just consider them as sex toys."

"Hm…" Ciel thinks seriously.

"Hmm…" Alissa thinks perversely.

"Think seriously," I say flatly to Alissa.

She grins mischievously but lifts her hands in defeat. "Well, you know my fetish, but I understand your position. It becomes harder to think of the wishes of everyone the more people there are."

"But our wish, is to be treated, as a sex toy," Ted says.

"Literally," Suzy adds.

"To serve you better," Ted says.

"That's… quite the conundrum," I say with a laugh. "Let's see… for now, just consider that becoming a sex toy would cause more work than it would bring pleasure."

"Understood," Suzy says with a nod.

"For now," Ciel says and gives me a knowing look.

"Wow, 'Golem Fucker,'" Klein says.

"'Everything fucker'!" Hana exclaims.

"You girls are the ones pushing me to do it," I say and send a look towards Alissa.

"At this point, I find this more entertaining than depraved," Lina says.

I choke on my spit and look at her in disbelief. She smiles like an imp and then starts blushing in embarrassment. Klein and Roxanne cackle with laughter while the others chuckle.

Klein reaches over and hugs Lina's head, pressing her into her chest. "Awn… you are so adorable!"

-

"I-I'm not a child!" Lina protests but doesn't even try to escape Klein's hug.

"But you are more adorable than one," Ciel says.

Lina is conflicted about how to take Ciel's words.

To try to make her even more embarrassed, Klein starts kissing Lina's head repeatedly, but it only escalates to the point that they start making out.

-

Intoxicated by the sight, Aoi nuzzles on my lap and brings her head closer to kiss me. Alissa quickly turns into a small fox and we have an odd, overly wet, three-way kiss enhanced by our [Bind].

-

We enjoy some more cuddling before finally turning off the [Spirit Light]s.

Today is the 15th.

The laziness of knowing no monsters are coming is already affecting me since I go straight back to sleep after Klein wakes me up. I only manage to actually get up after Hana goes "Ghostbusters" on my soul.

"Now you wake her up," Hana says, pointing to the pale Succubus that's completely entangled with me.

I lean closer to one floppy horn and take a bite. It has the consistency of rubber but quickly turns completely solid like metal.

"Nu-aahuah, nngh!" Roxanne spasms, then her face distorts - and finally, she goes limp and lets her tongue fall out of her mouth.

"I'm not even surprised," I say.

Ciel and Lina shrug and walk out of the tent while Hana thinks deeply. "She's actually as much of a masochist as I am," she says.

Roxanne regains lucidity and slaps my shoulder, very annoyed. "Don't do that, I didn't like it," she says while her pale face quickly turns red.

"Okay, masochist in denial," Hana adds.

"Why didn't you like it?" I ask.

"Would you like it if someone bit your -?" Roxanne says.

- Hana shrugs.

"It's… not about the pleasure, just don't do it, please," Roxanne pleads with a sad frown.

Okay, so it's some Succubus race faux pas that she's too embarrassed to look closely at.

My [Summoning Magic] increased by 2 (now 16+24), my [Space Magic] increased by 1 (now 13+23). Alissa leveled up to 33, her [Bow Use] increased by 2 (now 28), her [Hawk Eyes] increased by 1 (now 4) and she learned [Enhanced Reflexes] with 1 point. Roxanne increased her [Mana Control] by 2 (now 27) and her [Fire Magic] by 1 (now 25). Hana's [Summon Wings] and [Tatesomu Style] increased by 1 (now 3 and 5). Ciel leveled up to 33, and her [Wind Magic] and [Light Magic] increased by 2 (now 5 and 3). Lina's [Earth Magic] increased by 2 (now 7).

Our group has less of a problem with Weepers, so our mood is better than the others', but Krista made a not-banana pie with caramel and cream that evened the mood of the table up to ours.

"Oh, nail polish, how adorable," Osaria comments as we sit, then she turns to me. "You should get some for yourself too, gold or silver goes well with men."

I cringe and say nothing while the other girls look at me smugly.

Krista starts to ooze envy and rapidly trades whispers with Klein.

Oura seems to be the least affected, she smiles at Lina and returns to her usual, quiet self. Nito, on the other hand, keeps stealing glances at Aoi's painted claws.

The cries of the Weepers grow stronger, so one of the elven commoners pulls out a lute. His song is very calm and faint, but it's enough to drown them out. The children love it and start to dance until they tire. They like to wave the pieces of cloth hanging from their bodies as they spin, which makes the dance look quite beautiful.

We move on again and relax on our horses. I cast [Swift Foot] on the commoners and recharge my mana. Klein and Laertes simply ignore each other. Krista still talks to us; she asks us and Oura to help her clean her prized metal meat grinder. Anton remains unchanged. Rande seems to be friendlier and reduced his flirting even more. Osaria is not very flirty with Roxanne today.

Oura is leaning through the window of the wagon, so I decide to start up a conversation with her.

"You said you loved mysteries, which one is your favorite?" I ask her.

She jumps slightly at being talked to, but smiles adorably. "Murder on the Orient Transport," she answers with confidence.

Through Alissa's [Bind], I see Lina turn her head toward us.

"Hm, I think I have an idea what it is about, but I'm not completely sure I remember the story."

"A murder happens on a ship going from Goldport to Aflabrandar. There are so many colorful characters that it's a delight to read, and then there's the mystery, which is quite the brain puzzle, and finally, there's a moral dilemma, too. All around, one of the best mysteries there is."

"Oh, I've read that one," Lina comments.

Oura smiles to Lina, making her blush slightly. "It's based on a real story. An elven Tribune was the investigator in the real one."

"I know his story. After that, he married one of the passengers and created a lineage among the Angel demon race."

"The book was embellished, but it didn't really need it. The life story of Ustissa is enough for a book itself."

"Well, I literally read a book about his life." Lina smiles adorably and the gloominess is gone from her eyes.

"Oh, where did you find it?"

"Rabanara, the magic university has his biography, for some reason." Lina shrugs.

Lina guides her horse closer and the two start talking about mystery books.

Nothing happens in the morning, so I spend my time keeping my soul out of my body. Like with dual-casting [Telekinesis], it feels like there's something "happening" inside of me.

Gify, can you teach me how to customize [Materialization]?

Gih… gih!

Lunch is an imperial delicacy: raw ground meat seasoned with simple salt and not-garlic, it tastes just like back on Earth. For some, it's odd to eat meat raw, but with my, Ciel's, and Oura's seal of approval, everyone eats it without fear. It's such a simple meal that even the soldiers eat the same as us.

After some light alcohol, Osaria joins the dance and her pseudo-bikini struggles to keep all of her curves contained. Feeling like she's being challenged, another milf-like golden elf woman joins Osaria and dances with her.

- They grab each other's waists and glue their bodies to one another as continue their dance. They seem to switch leads often and the skin contact between their bodies increases each time.

With their noses touching and their quickened breaths mixing, they finally stop and stare at each other with wild eyes. Osaria gives her a playful peck on the lips and the other woman quickly turns red in the face.

With applause and hollering, they disentangle from each other and rest.

After lunch, I guide my horse far from the others and pull out the Aberrant's corpse. I summon a Nalusa: a two meter tall, human-looking monster that looks like it's made of charred flesh with missing pieces of meat and exposed bones. It has some very sharp claws that I have it use to delicately open a hole in the corpse's chest, then surgically remove the heart.

The summon then discovers that the Aberant has three hearts.

It hands a heart to Aoi, who eats it raw and makes squeaking noises of happiness inside my head.

She licks her lips, applies [Clean] to her face and gives me a kiss, or rather, invades my mouth without a moment of hesitation.

"Hearts and brains hold so much mana; they are the most delicious things I have ever eaten, no matter the monster!" She says inside my head once she's had her fill of abusing my mouth.

"Glad you like it," I say and kiss the top of her scaly head.

Once we return, Gify starts teaching me about [Materialization].

The spirit is the outer layer of the soul that keeps it together and it also serves as the "bridge" between the real and the ethereal. Spirits can likewise connect with each other, and eventually, they fully mix and become something else.

The spirits of dead humanoids that do not wish to continue on into the cycle end up mixing with other spirits and most commonly they mix with spirits of animals. This is because the nature of animals is to try as hard as they can to stay alive and this remains with them even after death, so they mix with other spirits to strengthen themselves. This makes these two types of spirits very compatible, ending up creating the famed nature spirits, like Gify.

[Materialization] uses this "bridge" effect of the outer layer of the soul so that spirits can interact with matter again. It creates "matter" for the spirit to "bridge" to, and such matter has three main types: it can simply be "illusion" matter that has no real weight and never interacts with real matter, only emitting light; it can be "fake" matter, like Gify's, that can interact with the real world and his body follows "some" principles of matter, but he's still not real. And finally, it can also be [Conjuring]-type matter, actual, fully-functional, real matter.

Roxanne's tail and horns are "fake" matter, a simple mana solidification. Most spells also use fake matter to save on mana costs. This is the one that I want to copy for now, but later on I will use Alissa to create my own real, fluffy, adorable, cute fox tails and ears.

"Kweh! You need to become a dragon, too! -" Aoi butts in.

" - And Hana wants all of these and more, all at the same time," Alissa also intrudes.

I poke both of their souls and they squeak in real life.

Roxanne and I practice magic a little ways away from the caravan. The commoners and Rande know that we are doing some secret magic training and leave us alone. Roxanne practices [Warp Space] and I try to create [Soul Manipulation].

I cast [Materialize] repeatedly on my soul. It gains a blue-ish glow, but it has no shape or detail, it's just a glowing blue blanket that gives pleasure to whoever I touch.

Gih.

Yeah, now I have to "bend" my soul into being something so that [Materialize] can give me something useful.

The day goes by without a single monster appearing, so when the night finally comes, we relax in the bath with as much energy as we had on the first days of the trip.

A note from Manasong

Hall of Fame of Patrons

The patrons who support Rupegia shall have their names sung by the bards for they deserve the glory and honor. Their names are:

Oracle Maximillian Hübner.

Lord Andrew Meyers.

Lord Hope.

Lord Samuel Lim.

Lord Cody Weigel.

Lord Bill.

Lord Novgarod.

Lord DJ.

Noble Salty Panda.

Nobleman Lassiter.

Leave a rating or a review to help me rise to the top or fix my shameful understanding of prose.

Take a look over my blog where all information of the world of Rupegia will be posted.

Join the Discord and discuss, or rant, or meme, or try and fight me so your waifu gets more screentime.

Become a Patron and read chapters in advance, or read the side-stories, or leave your mark on the story, or help choose the next artwork or the next side-story.

Chapter 47: Paranoia - Part 2

A note from Manasong

Attention: to conform to the limit of sexual content allowed in a novel, I've censored this chapter. You can look for the uncensored version here.

The symbol "-" denotes a section that got cut for containing sexual content. Also, if paragraphs seem missing, they were also likely censored in an earlier pass where the symbol wasn't used.

I put on my "Sex Maniac" build.

-

"Now that is cheating," Roxanne says and cackles a laugh. She grabs Ciel's hand and kisses it, then she pulls Ciel closer -.

"Is Osaria getting to you?" Ciel asks playfully while closing her eyes-.

"Is Osaria getting to you?" Roxanne shoots back.

"I know Wolfy is dying to - have her." Ciel gives Roxanne a sharp stare.

"Hmph, let him, then," Roxanne turns her head and lifts her chin.

"Seriously?" I stop dominating Klein for a moment and she gasps desperately for breath. "You know she wants you more than me, right?"

Roxanne's expression stiffens. "Well, maybe she isn't that bad. She did back off after her flirting didn't work and she seems legitimately concerned for us. I just had a bad feeling about her."

"Great. She'll also be a temporary member of the harem then!" Alissa happily cheers as her tail repeatedly slaps against the water.

-

I rub my hand against Alissa's cheek. She grabs my hand and squeezes it.

"I love you," I say.

"I love you too," Alissa answers.

"I love you too," Roxanne says.

"I love you too," Ciel says.

Hana and Lina suddenly surface.

"I love you too," Hana says.

"I-I love you too," Lina says.

Aoi surfaces.

"I love you, too!" Aoi says.

"Gih," Gify says with a shrug.

I point to every girl and say, "I love you, and you, and you, and you, and you, and you I kind of only like." I end on Gify and smile mischievously.

Gify clacks his beak and then chuckles.

"And I really like you," I say to Klein, who, again, can only respond with garbled nonsense.

When we leave the bath, Klein requires Alissa's help to even walk.

"This is why I don't like when you use [Heal] on me. I wanted to be - beaten silly like her," Hana says.

"And who would carry you?" Ciel asks.

Hana shrugs. "Maybe heal me enough so that I can just barely walk. That would still show everyone that I'm your bitch."

"Tomorrow is your turn, so okay," I say.

"Tomorrow we should reach Escanso at night, so not everyone will see it."

"Well…" -I shrug- "I can always do it whenever it's your turn."

She gives me a fearsome smile. "Then you'll kill me. But I guess I can handle being broken for a few days straight."

When we reach the table, Rande gives me a thumbs up and Osaria starts chuckling. Klein has a silly smile on her face, so Krista shows her some concern, but then shrugs. Anton and Laertes ignore the scene.

Roxanne sends nervous glances to Osaria, who notices it and sends charming looks back. In a rare sight, Roxanne blushes and goes silent during our meal.

We retire to our tent and rest. Aoi immediately pulls out her stack of coins and starts to play with them. As she bites the metal, I feel a faint amount of mana leave her body.

Interesting.

The girls do some light training while I appease the clingy Klein. She immediately adapted to the "no clothes on the bed" rule but only grudgingly accepted the "sleep in your armor" rule.

Lina sits on the fluffy carpet and continues her enchanting. She can't do it on the bed since we shake it too much.

The golems practice [Telekinesis] and show a lot of dexterity in handling a sword.

Once Klein is again left convulsing, I talk with the golems. "Do you know how to handle a crossbow?" I ask them.

They stop for a few moments as they go through my memories. "Simple mecha-nism," Ted says.

"Also, do you need to look at something to see?"

"It helps, but it's not, necessary," Suzy says.

"When the next battle comes, sit down on the ground and pretend to be dead. Only someone with [Sense Presence] will know you are dangerous."

"We will fight?" Ted asks.

"Yes. I think you will be useful."

"We are glad," Suzy says.

"Murderous brown bear and blonde cloth dolls sound like something out of a horror story," Roxanne says.

"You have no idea," I say.

"They are still… adorable," Klein struggles to speak -.

"Watch for the murderous cute little one," Lina says casually.

"What?" I ask and raise my eyebrow at her.

"Uh, dwarven idiom. Imperials underestimated the cute-looking dwarves when they conquered us and they paid for it."

Ciel ignores our conversation as she tries to apply [Judgment] to the blade of her glaive. Once she manages that, she will become a proper Wicked-hunter.

Alissa applies [Ignorance] on herself and sighs. "It still costs too much mana. I need to learn [Mana Efficiency]."

Klein looks at her questioningly. "Are you becoming a hybrid, now?"

Alissa smiles proudly. "I already am, I just need more mana or Efficiency."

"Oh, right. You all know Wolfy's secrets, huh?" She pouts at me.

I noticed that Klein doesn't show up in my "Followers." Sex is the seal, but it seems it needs more than just that.

Alissa giggles girlishly and turns into a medium fox. She leaps onto my lap and shows me her belly. When I start to pet her, she spreads her limbs and raises her eyebrows repeatedly suggestively. It doesn't have the desired effect as it causes me to laugh instead of becoming aroused.

Alissa growls softly and licks my chest, which makes me shiver.

"Alright, alright," I say and pick her up. I lay her on the bed -.

-

Once - everything done, Alissa turns back to normal and cuddles with Aoi. Klein crawls closer and hugs Alissa from behind.

"I'm so happy for you," Klein whispers and Alissa glows with a smile as bright as a [Spirit Light].

The night ends as we all cuddle around Alissa and Aoi.

Today is the 16th.

-

I learned [Spirit Magic] with 1 point; Alissa increased her [Illusion Magic] by 1 (now 6); and Ciel increased her [Light Magic] by 1 (now 26).

During breakfast, Klein talks more excitedly than normal. "Oh, Escanso is such a comfy town! There's a mist that appears every morning and also after sunset, so it gets a snoozy atmosphere! The nighttime diners serve such delicious food and they have some very good minstrels, we just have to eat at one at least once!"

Snoozy? The system translated that one oddly.

"Alissa, define 'snoozy,' please."

"Calm and slow on the outside, bright and energetic on the inside."

So, almost like a slang version of 'snoozy'? Odd.

"We should have a family dinner, with all of us," Anton says with a fake smile. Krista rolls her eyes discreetly.

"Uh, wu-wo-wha…" Klein suddenly stammers on her words and blinks blankly at her father.

"Since you seem to be very close with Mr. Ryder, him and his harem are almost like family, right?" Anton says while staring at me with wild eyes.

"I-I guess…"

I summon all my courage to keep my voice as steady as possible. "If we reach Escanso by tonight, then we should have dinner together tomorrow. Is that alright?" I ask.

This is not the first annoying parent I've had to deal with. Lily's father was a sunavabitch.

"Perfect for me," Anton says and immediately turns away.

It takes a while, but Klein regains her brightness. There's nothing more for her to do since I took charge of the invitation, so she just facepalms and enjoys her post-repeated-mindblowing-orgasm clarity while it lasts.

The caravan moves on again. After getting over the Weeper-induced depression, the commoners become much brighter since our destination is now very close.

We only meet a few Miasmatic Gambos following the trail of yesterday's caravan. The rest of the monsters still haven't come back and the patrols from Escanso go further than the ones from the smaller towns, so we are basically safe right now.

For lunch, Krista fries the raw ground meat, giving it a completely new taste with minimal effort.

Roxanne teaches the golems [Fire Magic] while I hold her tail and observe it. It feels like rubber, but when I spread my soul over it to try to peer deeper, I see nothing. It only has weight, mass, color, and form, but nothing else, it's not a "material." She only feels pleasure from it because her soul is spread over it, and due to it not fully being "matter," her soul is more exposed in her tail and horns than it is in the rest of her body. She has no nerve endings in her tail or horns, yet she still feels every touch.

"Wolfy~…" Roxanne complains - because of the sensation of my soul on her tail.

"Endure -."

She growls at me -.

"Endure -."

-

With a roll of my eye, I spur my horse forward so we can have some privacy.

-

Continuing with my research… the part of her soul that extends into her tail is the area that has a special shape.

I can "alter" my soul with [Redirect Mana] to make it easier for the mana to come to me, so this is the path I should take in my research.

"Cast something," I tell her.

She sends a few [Fireball]s towards the sky. They should dissipate before they reach the leaves of the trees.

I put all of my points in [Sense Mana]. It basically gives me a constant "mana nose" similar to covering mana with my soul or when I use [Redirect Mana]. The odd thing is that there is a difference between the information I receive from [Sense Mana] and from the other method, but I just don't yet know what that difference really is.

"Do it again."

I taste the "delicious" mana that leaves her body.

"Now move your tail while you cast."

There's a difference. Something small and odd. Perhaps an "interference" that her tail creates in her mana footprint.

As I research, the scenery changes into something even more magical. The patterns of the bark on the ginormous trees become even more intricate. Some look like statues, or even have pictures knitted into the tree trunks.

Elven homes start appearing inside these trees, too. Small, bunker-like homes where they can close every entrance with ultra-thick bark. At first, only soldier-like elves live inside, but then commoners and farmers start appearing.

The farmers grow their crops on the trunks, so the "tree art" becomes even more beautiful as it begins to glow and gains color.

The commoners talk excitedly and the cries of the Weepers become a distant memory.

I put down a [Gate] "coordinate" a fair way away from the road before we reach Escanso proper.

Soon after, we see a very bright lake, lit up by a few ultra-bright scintillating crystal lights that are so strong that they're like disco globes. Dozens of pillars rise up from the lake. Multiple levels of disk farms protrude out of these pillars and each level has a different color due to the crops growing there.

The brick road rises above the lake and slowly becomes wooden. Flowers and grass starts to appear, and soon, we are walking on a carpet of light green grass and surrounded by a rainbow of perfumed flowers.

The bark "shield wall" looks completely black with large, wavy golden carvings along it.

The night slowly comes and the light dims, but it doesn't become purple. Unfortunately, a faint mist reduces the visibility of the fantastical environment, but the periodic crystal lights posted along the suspended road give a very comfy atmosphere, just like Klein said.

"Most of the mist is an illusion instead of being humidity, so it's not that bad," Lina comments.

"Where does the mist come from, then?" Ciel asks.

With much more enthusiasm than normal, Lina answers, "The farms. There's a plant called Eia that creates a mist just like the Watchful Tons. They use it for elven [Weaverism]."

Lina's Trivia: [Weaverism] is an eclectic, but very odd kind of magic. The principle is that "everything is connected," so you can alter similar things with similar methods. The drawback is that there's no fully defined spells for it, like most non-system-magic schools, and you need to be high on Eia to effectively use it. This magic school is the source of Snow Weave cloth.

We pass another familiar killing-corridor full of murder-holes, though this one is much more ornate, with wavy carvings all over the walls.

Rande stops his horse in front of the commoners and announces, "For most of you, this journey ends here! My contract is fulfilled and I have taken you safely to Escanso. For the rest, we meet here on the coming day of Ros, at the same time as before."

We dismount and quickly pass through customs due to the nearly empty entrance. Once inside, the ramp continues on until we reach the top floor.

We immediately smell the clean air mixed with a slight fragrance of the flowers from the entrance. Faint music can be heard from the taverns and plenty of happy commoners are walking about.

The number of non-elves increases dramatically; there are plenty of humans, wereanimals, some dwarves, and surprisingly, a significant number of halflings.

The buildings are slightly crooked, giving them the similar cozy air that certain places in Rabanara have.

"Right, any recommendations for an inn, Klein?" Ciel asks.

"On the higher end, this time," I say with a grin.

Klein scratches her tail awkwardly, but then a shy smile appears on her face.

As we walk, I spread my Hollys around. They can see through the mist, so I notice the amount of stares we're getting is oddly high. Plenty of commoners seem to be able to see us through the mist.

"Can the elves see through the mist?" I ask.

"Some might, if they have the right skills," Lina says.

"Barely anyone does, though. If they do, they can make a good fortune working as a combat mage and scouting through the mist," Klein says.

Curious.

Gify doesn't seem to notice the stares, or maybe he doesn't care. He stands on my shoulder and looks around quite happily.

"Gih."

"Escanso is nice, but Goloria is better," Klein says.

Gify doesn't respond and starts to chirp a tune.

"Were the Weepers affecting you?" I ask.

"Gih," he chirps with a shrug.

"He's always snuggling with me, so he shouldn't have been affected," Alissa says.

"So, this place is just special?" Roxanne asks.

"Gih!"

I look at Lina, but she just shrugs.

Cu~rious.

We reach a white building full of scintillating lights, like an old-school casino or something. It's made from a tree that grew horizontally, so the crown can be seen far at the deeper end, instead of above the building. The top floor is actually a lounging area where the guests can sunbathe.

"There's a pool up there," Klein says.

All eyes turn to Ciel and Hana.

"I don't think we have clothes appropriate for that," Ciel says.

"At least not ones that we can use in public," Hana says with a grin.

We enter the building and see a white interior with dark red carpeting and detail. The ceiling is high and the occasional pillar gives the place a more modern vibe. The sofas with random guests lounging on them or having a snack makes this place feel like a hotel.

Two smiling female golden elves receive us. From their names, only one of them is actually a woman.

"Welcome to the Everlasting Light," says the man.

"We are a premium establishment only for the most valued members of society," says the woman.

I pull out a dozen gold coins and the elves' smile widens.

"Do you have a set length for your stay?"

"Only until the morning of the next day of Ros," I say.

Both of them bow and point to the stairs. "Right this way, esteemed guests," they say in unison.

We walk to the top floor and enter our room, and it's the size of a damn house. There's dozens of beds arranged in a circle around a huge one the size of our "harem-sized" bed. The balcony has a view of the main road, which is not much of one right now due to the mist. There are literal gold inlays in most of the furniture, walls, and ceiling.

"This is our Harem Lord suite, does it fill your needs?" The male elf asks.

Ciel sends me a slightly concerned look. I grab her hand and we both lay on the bed.

The perfect bounciness to enhance the jiggling of a woman's assets.

"Perfectly," I say.

"Over here is the key to your room and the key for the safe," the female elf says.

"We have breakfast, lunch, afternoon tea, and dinner for all guests. Come to the reception to check the schedule and menu," the male elf says.

"Any requests, needs, or questions, just send some mana into one of these enchantments on the wall," the female elf says and points to a ruby embedded in the wall. "Dinner is ready, you can freely ask and it will be delivered to your room."

With one last smile, the duo of elves close the double doors.

There's a bath inside of our suite, and it's just as big as the one in the Tree of Mana. We turn on an enchantment and the water starts bubbling a lot, giving a light massage to our skin.

A small ice box full of alcohol is right at the border of the bath, so we all pass around some drinks, though I only drink a small sip of mine. I'm still not comfortable with ever getting drunk, even when I have summons all around us.

-

When I feel like I'm halfway done with - them, I touch a ruby embedded near the bath and ask for dinner to come. It's an instant communication enchantment, just like an intercom.

We leave the bath giggling and laughing. Dinner is served on trays and a circular table is set in the corner of our room. Tomorrow, we will have our breakfast on the balcony.

There's a large roasted not-duck stuffed with seasoned cornmeal; dozens of unknown vegetables made in a variety of ways; and damn pasta with not-tomato sauce and meatballs. I'm still very annoyed at the elves for hiding tomatoes from the rest of the realm.

Klein, Hana, and Roxanne continue drinking after dinner. They play some slapping game with the towels during the bath that Hana and Klein used to play when they were younger.

Now that the bed is calmer, Lina sits on my lap -. I pat her head while she continues enchanting.

"We need to buy another shield, one that's sturdier than the spares we have. This [Wind Shield] gem is almost ready," Lina says.

I gush at her cuteness and give multiple kisses to the back of her neck. "Thank you for your hard work, Lina. We owe you our lives for the enchantments and the maintenance you do on our equipment."

She freezes while staring at me and her jaw drops.

I give her a kiss on the nose. "Love you," I say.

My attack "crits" and her eyes become watery.

"L-love you, too," she says with a weak voice.

I get an idea. I pull out one of the pink flasks of nail polish and grab Lina's hand.

"W-what?"

"One second."

I paint a little pink flower on one of her nails and her mouth turns into an "o."

The room turns silent as they gaze upon the piece of art that Lina's fingernail became.

A note from Manasong

Hall of Fame of Patrons

The patrons who support Rupegia shall have their names sung by the bards for they deserve the glory and honor. Their names are:

Oracle Maximillian Hübner.

Lord Andrew Meyers.

Lord Hope.

Lord Samuel Lim.

Lord Cody Weigel.

Lord Bill.

Lord Novgarod.

Lord DJ.

Noble Salty Panda.

Nobleman Lassiter.

Leave a rating or a review to help me rise to the top or fix my shameful understanding of prose.

Take a look over my blog where all information of the world of Rupegia will be posted.

Join the Discord and discuss, or rant, or meme, or try and fight me so your waifu gets more screentime.

Become a Patron and read chapters in advance, or read the side-stories, or leave your mark on the story, or help choose the next artwork or the next side-story.

Chapter 47: Paranoia - Part 3

A note from Manasong

Attention: to conform to the limit of sexual content allowed in a novel, I've censored this chapter. You can look for the uncensored version here.

The symbol "-" denotes a section that got cut for containing sexual content. Also, if paragraphs seem missing, they were also likely censored in an earlier pass where the symbol wasn't used.

Today is the 17th.

-

We ask for breakfast to be delivered right outside our door -.

We eat delicious fruit cakes and mousses with soft, herbal teas to cleanse our palates of the sweetness.

Klein stretches and even her tail shoots straight up, then she yawns, then I yawn, then Alissa yawns, and then everyone else yawns.

I chuckle at the silly moment but my excitement quickly dies down immediately afterwards.

We are under watch by someone, I think. If only they actually attacked us I could use [Godly Language] on them.

That's a stupid thought, thinking so lightly about killing someone.

Remembering the thugs we killed in Goldcross makes my stomach churn. Remembering the bandits we killed makes me sad and slightly angry.

Stupid, but effective. Someone is planning something and I don't know what. I need an opportunity to learn more about my enemies. I hate to be passive, to just wait for something to happen and hope for the best, but that's the only thing I can do right now.

"Wolfy?" Alissa brings me out of my depressive musings, most likely because my emotions spilled through the [Bind].

"Hm?"

"What do you all want to do today?"

Klein is the first to speak, "I want to spend some more time… with you all for the morning. In the afternoon, my Da' wants to buy more equipment for us."

"I want to meet with Oura, she said she would lend me some books," Lina says.

Good.

"I'll go with you," Roxanne says.

Ciel looks at her with a tinge of suspicion but lets it go. "I'll pay a visit to the temple here. They're not very big in comparison to Rabanara," she says.

"We can donate some gold," I say and Ciel nods with a wide smile.

"Is there an orphanage there? I'll go with you," Alissa says, her tail wagging excitedly.

I look at Hana and she shrugs.

"Let's just play around, then," I say.

"Gih."

Today is Fis, the day of Nature, so he wants to play with the other nature spirits again.

"So it's just me, Hana, and Aoi?"

"Yes, it's a date!" Aoi exclaims.

"A what?" Ciel asks and looks at the calendar.

"It's something from my homeland, two lovers or lovers-to-be spending time together is called a date," I explain.

"Why is there a specific name for it?" Hana asks.

"Well, there are certain expectations that come from calling an encounter a 'date,'" I say with a shrug.

"So it's like courtship, but for the commoners?" Ciel asks.

"Yes…? Yeah, it's kind of like that. It was being used in such a broad sense that it was becoming hard to define it properly."

"Your homeland is really odd," Klein comments.

"You have no idea," Hana says.

"Anyway. For the morning, let's visit the market," Roxanne says and claps the tips of her fingers.

We finally put on some clothes and leave our room.

Without the mist to block our view, we can now see how truly comfy and cute the town is. There are hundreds of flowers spread around the town: they are in the crowns of the trees, mixed in with the leaves; randomly growing in the walls of the buildings; neatly arranged on the sidewalks and in the holes in the middle of the streets; and also on the clothes and in the hair of the people, including the beards.

First, we go to the Row of Statues, a famous street full of wooden mannequins wearing all kinds of clothes.

We properly fit and buy elven not-bikinis for all of the girls and the uncomfortably tight pants and vest for me. Not that the cloth itself is uncomfortable, it's just that I feel very "exposed" in it.

"Oh, yes, I look amazing," Hana says as she pushes up her two large distractions. Then she strikes poses like a body-builder would. Roxanne hugs Hana from behind and feels up her lean muscles.

Ciel looks uncomfortable in hers, likely suffering from the same problem as I am.

Lina's is so thin that you can make out her shape - if you pay attention. Ciel raises her eyebrows and the others smile suggestively.

The female attendant coughs uncomfortably and picks a similar black not-bikini for Lina but with a piece of cloth that can be tied to cover the important areas.

Aoi looks at us with curiosity. "Should I wear, clothes too?" She asks.

"Well, no," Hana answers.

Aoi looks at her own blue scales and I feel her conflicted heart through the [Bind].

"Maybe we should make clothes for her, one day. Something that befits a true dragon," I say.

"Ooh…" Hana seems very pleased with the suggestion.

The elven attendant loses her composure as she inadvertently overhears our conversation.

We end up taking two sets of the not-bikinis. One thin set in the usual colors of the girls, and another in a light green (the most common color) with a more "conservative" design, as if they were something that a prude would ever wear.

We leave while wearing our new clothes. We blend in much better now, especially because we are all quite attractive and don't seem out of place among the beautiful elves.

As we enter onto the main road, we see the Lord's castle's wall, the "Shell." It looks like a cracked egg and it's the same color as the bark shield wall: black with gold inlays. The flowery patterns of the inlays mimic the styles from the "tree-knitting" the elves do. There's also the portraits of the current Lords drawn with gold. They are so big that we can already discern their features from where we are: a man with soft features and a round face in the middle, Lord Mavel Este; two similar-looking women with sharp features and square jaws on each side, his wives; below his portrait is a young girl with a soft face and very sharp eyes, his first daughter; beside the daughter are two twin young boys with very similar faces to the Lord.

From behind the "Shell" we can see the peaks of the branch-like golden towers of the castle proper.

The main road is completely straight and points towards the castle just so that most of the traffic can have a clear view of it. It can also serve to remind the population of who their Lord is.

After having enough of the view, we pass by the Otoro Totoso bakery. There's a tree grown in the shape of a bull in front of it. The place is very high class, with a white and gold interior and some very refined furniture.

The normal desserts, while looking very appetizing, aren't what we're looking for. We browse through the premium items that are so beautiful that they're locked behind a glass display, but also because they're making sounds. To some, they look like a blob of horrors, but, to me, they look like the key to heaven.

We've found the Delicious Horrors again: the bizarre balls of squirming tentacles that would trigger a weeb's lewd senses from a mile away. I want it not because it's delicious, but because of the magic behind the tentacles. I must learn it and add it to my body transformation research!

There are also Globin Grapes, small little balls with a goblin's nose that scream when you eat them. I have no real hate for any sort of monster, but a lot of people do, so they get plenty of delight from eating a sweet and hearing the dying screams of a goblin. There's also a whole-body version of the Globin Grapes, but it's way too expensive to be commercially viable, so it's rarely ever seen.

There are plenty of psychedelic sweets too, though they are magically psychedelic, as if the normal psychedelics weren't enough. We get a set of these for each of us.

"Hmm… now this is nostalgic," Klein says as she holds a pink and purple mushroom that glows softly.

We all turn to Hana and she turns awkward. "Yeah, they are really good," she says.

Roxanne looks at the mushrooms with fascination. "Ohohoh. Just don't eat it while anywhere near family."

"These are really good," Lina says and points to the one in Klein's hand.

"You've tried them before?" Ciel questions with a raised eyebrow.

"No, but mushrooms all have similar biology. If you know one, you know them all."

I don't smoke, in part because there's no need, and also because I might have a problem with regulating pleasure-seeking behavior. But psychedelics are much safer, so the benefits outweigh the risks for me.

We see some Everlasting Crunches, which are very odd. They're an infinite pork rind: you eat all but the black part of the rind and it comes back. It comes with a piece of bread which is teleported inside your stomach, bite by bite. The pork rind that was eaten then is traded with the bread, then reattached to the black part of the rind, and finally returns to its uneaten state, all in an instant.

Now, the most popular of the magic foods are certainly the non-caloric ones. Literally. Non-calloric. Sweets. The most popular type of magical food that has ever existed. Eat as much as you like and suffer literally no side-effects except for higher MP regeneration. This is because the food works like a potion; it's turned into mana and absorbed by the body. The only thing that remains is the inert "not-matter," something that still fills the stomach but slowly dissipates away as it's "digested."

"H-how much money can we spend on this?" Ciel asks.

"A lot…" I answer.

"How much?"

"You don't want to know."

Ciel swallows heavily while her eyes are glued to the cupcakes.

My heart burns with pain, but I must do this, I must be the mature person here and find a middle ground.

"A gold coin for each of us, that's all we can spend," I say.

Ciel sighs deeply and nods.

We have a second breakfast and eat until our stomachs nearly burst.

"Isn't this stuff supposed to disappear after we eat it?" Alissa asks, holding her belly in pain.

"After a while," I say.

Lina is frozen and her face is pale. She swallows heavily and breathes slowly.

"Lina?" Ciel asks.

"I can't move or…" Lina stops talking and swallows heavily again.

An elven attendant silently deposits a tray with a cup containing an odd silvery liquid in front of Lina.

Without another word, Lina drinks the liquid and shudders. In a minute, her skin regains color and she sighs in relief, though her tummy still hurts like Alissa's.

After recovering enough to move again, we leave the bakery and return to the market. It's getting close to midday so the bustling of the population is increasing.

The stares of the commoners make me tense again. Now that there's no mist, they can't stare at us as freely, but they still stare at us when we're not looking. Holly also noticed some people following us, mostly elves this time, though.

I'm starting to feel even tenser. Every time we leave a shop I'm reminded of the danger outside.

"Is there a problem?" Alissa asks inside my head.

"Kweh!" Aoi noticed it too.

"There are people following us," I answer.

"Stare at them, it will make them paranoid and you can also write down their names," Alissa suggests.

"Sounds like a good idea."

It's better to show that we notice them than to look like sitting ducks and get attacked again.

At any moment that we stop, I look back and meet the eyes of our stalkers. A few show immediate reactions and leave right away, while others play the fool and just smile cordially, but then after a while, they leave too.

I pull out a small piece of paper and discreetly write down their names.

"What are you doing?" Klein asks.

"Just making personal notes for research," I say.

We buy a dozen crossbows for Ted and Suzy since they can easily manipulate and even reload the weapons with [Telekinesis].

"We can use, bigger," Ted says.

"Nobody will sell me a ballista," I say.

"We create one, then," Suzy says.

"Can you?" I frown.

"With trial and, error, we can learn, to build," Ted says.

"Methodical re-search," Suzy says.

Well, I think that I could probably learn to build a ballista, so maybe they think they can, too.

"Sure, I might build a mobile workshop for the two of you one day," I say.

Now that we've seen their effectiveness, we buy some caltrops of our own; the ones we previously used belong to Rande.

We see some flammable oil and buy it, too. It'll make for a good basis of research for pseudo-napalm and gunpowder. I have some reservations over recreating something like napalm, but I'll use any weapons that I have if the need arises.

We buy some high quality Hearthtree shields for Lina to enchant and a new shaft for her war hammer. The heartwood from that kind of tree is nearly as tough as metal, which is why it's used in shields and also for the shaft of Hana's enchanted spear.

That spear's blade comes from the bark of the Tree of the Stalwart, which we now know is a type of bark that retains a razor sharp edge when broken, just like obsidian.

The elven merchants also gave us tips on how to maintain the weapons. They sold us some fertilizer that can be mixed with the earth of the High Forest, so it has the appropriate nutrients for me to cast [Grow] on our weapons and allow for them to be properly maintained.

Just before lunch, we notice that the main street is getting eerily loud with the murmuring of the commoners. We stop and join the growing crowd near the sidewalk and find the source of the commotion.

Like the caravan we crossed yesterday, we see the light radiating from them before we can actually see it properly: two men, each wearing a complete set of armor that covers all visible openings. A scary mask of a stoic man covers their faces. Their golden armor is set with enchanted gems of all colors, and it glows so brightly white that it hurts to even look at them when they get closer. A sun is engraved in their chest and its rays radiate out from it to cover every surface. A heavy golden cape with a blood red lining flows from their shoulders as it seems to flutter in the wind, even though there's barely a breeze.

They are the Hands of the Emperor and they are here to give the Lord a light spanking. The Hands are not good news. We can all easily tell why the Emperor would send his proxy to the High Forest and so blatantly display them for the populace: the Emperor is not pleased.

"I felt a chill," Klein says.

Hana nods. "Me too."

"May this problem finally end," Alissa says.

"It won't end today. The Emperor won't kill Lord Este so easily," Lina says.

"The other elves will take the matter into their own hands before the empire has the chance to meddle," I say.

We move on and search for the hunter's guild.

The guild's outer wall is decorated with very fine and intricate carvings of the monsters found in the High Forest. It gets an approving nod from Lina.

The inside looks similar to Ostodos: scented logs being slowly burned in an enchanted fireplace, lightly warming the air, and giving off the calming sounds of crackling wood burning; upholstered furniture covered in Uspidor leather; displays of Proofs of Extermination embedded in the interior walls. Though, everything looks so much more elegant and grandiose that I feel like I entered a pseudo-baroque building with a nature theme.

"Let's 'taste' some of their booze," Hana says and walks towards the bar. Klein, Roxanne, and Ciel follow her.

I look at Lina with questioning eyes. "You don't want to go?" I ask.

"I don't feel like it," she answers.

"Gih."

She looks away and fiddles with her leather slave collar. "I would rather stay with you than drink."

"Awn…" I grab her hand and give it a kiss.

With a flower on each of my arms, we walk together to the boards to see the news.

There's a heavy bounty for our Aberrant, 70 gold coins.

Oof.

There are multiple warnings about a variety of dangerous monsters about. I take note of a few of them so we'll know what to watch out for.

"Wolfy…" Alissa calls my attention and points to a specific note.

A new dungeon was found at the border of the Western and the Eastern High Forest, a dungeon called "Legado."

"Damnable brats!" A voice yells from some ways behind us.

Fuck yes! We found it! And it looks like it's a lost tomb that resurfaced… Around five months ago, which is roughly the time that I came into this world. As if I needed any more reason to explore it.

Heavy footsteps stomp closer to us.

If it's at the border between the two regions, then Goloria is closer to it than Escanso. I'll make sure to keep a [Gate] "coordinate" outside the town when we reach there, then. It's unfortunate that we still have to complete this job, but it seems there hasn't been much progr-…

Alissa's ear twitches and through Shad's sight, I see a tall man quickly approaching us.

A heavy hand falls on mine and Lina's shoulders and spins us in place. While we spin, the three of us reach for our daggers below our shirts and draw them, then we immediately point them towards the man behind us.

The mature golden elf man quickly takes his hand off our shoulders and shows us his palms, displaying non-aggression.

"Who are you?!" I yell at him.

"Uh… I'm Ardian… aren't you from the Academy?" The man asks, very unsure of himself.

"Academy? Do we look like we're from there?!"

"Uh, kind of?"

I look at Alissa and Lina.

Okay, we look like young, high-class foreigners with a pet dragon and nature spirit, I guess we fit the profile.

Hana and the others appear behind the man, looking very serious. I pull back my dagger and we relax a little.

"I'm Wolf Ryder, leader of the Helios fellowship." I point to the girls behind him and he takes a look. Hana gives him a fearsome smile and he swallows heavily.

Ardian's eyebrows shoot up in surprise. "S-sorry to bother you, Sir. I mistook you for one of the… young warriors of the Academy who overestimate themselves and take requests they are not ready for."

I clearly remember you calling us "damnable brats."

"It's fine. Let's just move on and continue with our days," I say with a diplomatic smile. I would like to swear at him but the guards of the guild have their hands on their batons and I still want to use the Dismantling Room.

"Sure, sure. Again, forgive me, Sir Ryder." Ardian bows, then he turns around and quickly walks out of the guild with a rigid posture.

"Odd man," Ciel says, eyeing him up with a sharp gaze.

I sigh and shake my head. The tension from being stalked all day is making me tired.

I enter the Dismantling Room and greet the burly butcher.

"I'm Alto, pleasure to meet you," he says.

"Wolf Ryder, leader of Helios." I shake his hand and he looks slightly pensive.

While he tries to remember where he heard about us, I pull out the Aberrant, the Watchful Tons, and the Proofs of Extermination for the other monsters we killed.

He jumps and gasps in surprise and his assistant immediately shoots up, suddenly wide awake.

"You got the fucking Aberrant?!" Alto exclaims.

"Yes. Quite the hard fight, if I must say," I say, smugly.

"H-how? These wounds… h-how?!"

I shrug. "Don't ask me to reveal my secrets."

It's time for lunch, so I don't spare the time to chit-chat with them. I get my rewards and leave. Then we dawdle a little until the "Notable Hunts" board is updated.

"Fellowship Helios: Masked Aberrant - stone and thunder quadruped. 70 gold coins bounty."

A few people exclaim when they see the update on the board and soon, a small crowd forms as people make comments about us. Quite a few notice us and make the connection.

Hiding our accomplishments would look too suspicious. We don't want to participate in politics, but we can't fully avoid garnering fame.

We leave after that and go have lunch in our room at the inn.

We're served a delicious mix of roasted vegetables. They are mostly sweet and each has been slightly browned, then a small amount of meat sauce was applied to add to the taste. It reminds me of Ratatouille.

"Hmm… this is nice." Klein stretches on Hana's lap as the dragonkin's fingers massage her brain.

I play with Ciel's silky hair and let my mind wander.

"Right, it's time to go." Klein gets out from Hana's lap and looks at us sadly. "Have to meet my parents, now."

Awn…

"Do you know where they are?" Ciel asks.

"Yeah, we three are in a fellowship."

"Does it have a name?" Roxanne asks.

Klein blinks twice. "No," she answers, flatly.

"Okay…" Roxanne smiles mischievously.

I summon three Hollys and three Shads. One pair is given to Klein without her knowing about it. Now that she's temporarily part of my harem, I fear that she might also get targeted.

Soon after the girls leave, Holly already identifies several people stalking the three groups.

"Gih."

Thanks, Gify.

He pops out of existence to go play around, but he will keep an eye on the girls, too.

"Right, so what do we do on this 'date' thing?" Hana asks.

"Something interesting, but mostly just spend time together."

"- me silly."

I smile wryly. "Maybe something that we don't usually have time to do."

"Lets spar and play around, then."

"Me, too!" Aoi raises her paw.

I pull out the golems and we play around on the balcony. It's high enough that most buildings can't see us.

I manage to summon another Holly, my 7th summon. I tell it to watch over the places that can see us and make sure that nobody is watching us.

"Alright, bring it on," I say.

Hana's sword flashes, and her arm instantly splits in three: one stays in place while the wrist spins into a slash; a second moves forward to try and pierce me; a third lowers down and tries to strike at my leg. Hana leans forward and lowers her posture a little; this gives me the answer: the third arm is real.

I bat her sword away and counter with a with a thrust of my own. It catches her on the shoulder and she clicks her tongue. "How did you know?" She asks.

"You leaned forward and down. The first one wouldn't reach me properly, the lower posture wasn't necessary for the second, so the third matched your posture the most."

"Damn you and your 'Perception.'"

We play a little more but Aoi also wants to play. She grows in size and stands up on her hind legs. She's nearly at my height, now.

"Wow," I mutter under my breath. My heart beats faster when I see her large and lean face close to mine. Her teeth and claws are sharp and huge, her scales are shining and tough, her wings are large and delicate. She's majestic.

"Hehe, you are stunned. I know, I'm amazing," Aoi says. In her bigger form, her voice takes a more lower and almost mature tone. She spreads her wings; growls; shows her bladed fangs; and opens her hands/paws, showing her long claws.

"Pounce on me and take me. You look frightening, Aoi," Hana says.

"Uh-huh…" I agree, though, I feel no fear; on the contrary…

I remember Gify's vision of what being a dragon is like, and I feel a chill. Aoi stops growling and smiles. Her smile is stiff because her face is not made for smiling, but it's still beautiful.

"I can feel, that," Aoi says and her smile turns smug.

"Feel all you want, you deserve it."

"Awn…" Hana melts. She grabs both of us and gives us such a tight hug that even Aoi feels a little pain.

Hana kisses Aoi's lips, who responds by invading her mouth for a few seconds. Once she's done, I get my own mouth invasion.

"Wow, that feels great," Hana says as she wipes her mouth.

"I know! I'm great!" Aoi says after having her share of me. "Now, fight me!"

Aoi quickly learns why reach is king. Her claws are long but not long enough to compete with even a shortsword.

"Muuh! Not fair! I can just block everything with my scales," Aoi tries to pout.

"You shouldn't rely on that. They can break, and then you'll have a weak point that can be exploited."

"Muuh… then I just have to defeat you before you can strike me twice."

"Oh?" Hana cocks an eyebrow and smiles.

"Rah!" Aoi jumps on Hana.

Hana answers by jumping backwards and striking. Aoi bats the sword away and lets it slide along her scales.

Aoi reaches Hana before she can pull her sword back and grips her shoulder. Their heads get closer and they both decide to headbutt one another. Aoi ends up winning the exchange, but just barely.

They crash into each other and fall on the floor. Aoi grabs both of Hana's arms and legs with her own limbs. They wrestle and try to get on top of each other.

They start laughing, but that distracts Aoi, allowing Hana to twist her limbs and nearly fully escape. She takes the opportunity and turns it around, ending up on top of Aoi.

Aoi spreads her wings and tries to use them to get out from under Hana, but they're too weak.

Suddenly, mana bursts from Aoi's wings and she manages to stand up with Hana still clinging onto her.

Hana takes advantage of Aoi's momentum and slings her left arm over the back of Aoi's neck and chokes her. With the right arm she pushes up Aoi's stomach and spins her upside down. The spinning confuses Aoi and she does nothing in her daze, allowing Hana enough time to fall backwards. A vertical lift neckbreaker.

They both slam on the ground with their backs and groan. Their groans of pain quickly turn into laughter.

Hana crawls on top of Aoi and mounts her. She holds both of Aoi's arms down and kisses her. "I won," she says.

"Wait until, I get bigger," Aoi says.

"Uh-huh." Hana shuts down Aoi's mouth with her own.

-

I stretch and lay back.

Thank the Gods for Holly. I would never do such a thing if I wasn't sure there weren't people watching.

A note from Manasong

Hall of Fame of Patrons

The patrons who support Rupegia shall have their names sung by the bards for they deserve the glory and honor. Their names are:

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Lord Bill.

Lord Novgarod.

Lord DJ.

Noble Salty Panda.

Nobleman Lassiter.

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Chapter 48: The Darkness - Part 1

A note from Manasong

Attention: to conform to the limit of sexual content allowed in a novel, I've censored this chapter. You can look for the uncensored version here.

The symbol "-" denotes a section that got cut for containing sexual content. Also, if paragraphs seem missing, they were also likely censored in an earlier pass where the symbol wasn't used.

The girls flop on the floor and take their time to rest.

"Having fun?" Alissa asks.

"Yeah, just two dragons 'wrestling.'"

"I'm under Hana, now," Aoi says.

"Uh, no, you aren't," I say.

"Muh! Not literally! I'm her… uh… underling…?"

"So you take orders from her, now?"

"Yes! I challenged her and she bent me to her will. I'm hers now." Aoi giggles.

"What about Wolfy?" Alissa asks, a little annoyed.

"He owns me. Hana is above me, but she doesn't own me," Aoi answers.

I knew that dragons were hierarchical, but I didn't know the details.

"So, because I'm the leader of the harem I 'own' you?" I ask.

"Yes. Alissa is on top of the harem, below you, then comes, Hana, then the position is tied for the other three."

"What's the difference between me owning you and you being Hana's underling?"

"You can order me to do whatever you want. Hana can only order me in battle and - bed."

"Didn't you say that you were only going to follow me if I didn't abandon you?"

"Yes, and that's still true."

"It sounds kind of similar to how Hana views the Blood Slave business."

"Huh… I can now see how similar dragons and dragonkin are," Alissa says.

No wonder the dragonkin love to sell themselves as Blood Slaves; they seem to work well with hierarchies.

Once Hana has recovered, we clean ourselves off and change our clothes into the more "revealing" elven sets, then we go upstairs to the pool.

As we enter the Victoria's Secret runway, we straighten our postures and walk with confidence and grace.

Hana links her arm with mine and her smile turns proud. "I always saw Mom walking like this with Dad. To think that I'm actually doing it with my own man feels like a small dream come true," she says.

I squeeze her hand and give her a small smile. "Tell me all of your dreams so I can make as many of them as I can come true." She blinks blankly and then enters deep thought. "So you don't have any other dreams?" I smirk at her.

"You've realized most of them already." She shrugs.

We find a set of sun lounging chairs and remove the covers so we can sit. There's a small adjustable sunshade that can be used to shield your eyes. An option which is necessary due to the lack of sunglasses in this world.

The other guests come from a wide variety of backgrounds, so we don't stand out. The commoners are overwhelmingly elves, but for the people with money, the High Forest is a popular place to spend a vacation.

As the day nears its end, the girls come back, except for Klein, who's still fitting better armor for herself with her parents.

With a range of confidence, the girls make their walk alongside the pool until they reach our secluded corner. Lina's posture hunches over the more she walks, and when she reaches us, she immediately lays down on my chair and hugs me tight so she can "recharge."

"How did the day go?" I ask them.

Lina hugs me tighter and smiles shyly in response. Ciel and Alissa give tired smiles, having played with the children all day. Roxanne doesn't hear me; she's tipsy from drinking with Oura and so, she crawls on top of Hana, then they start making out.

Ciel casts [Purify Body] on Roxanne and then I tell them all about the stalkers and Aoi's hierarchical view of the harem.

"I noticed some odd stares as we walked. I thought it was the elves being awed at my beauty," Hana says with a wry smile.

"I think they really were. The ones who were stalking us were watching us from the back and were much more discreet," I say.

"Oh…"

"There's not much to do about these stalkers. Just make it clear that we can see them," Roxanne says with a shrug, now with her mind clear of drunkenness.

"If we knew their strength, we could bait them to attack, but since we don't, I think what you are doing is the correct choice," Lina says.

"I'm not too worried about the stalkers. The problem will be when we leave town," Ciel says.

"We got attacked by either Darean or Katasko already, so there might be another attack coming soon," I say.

"Then we have to prepare mentally so we can keep Klein and the others safe," Hana says.

"Can I eat, a humanoid's, heart?" Aoi asks, tilting her head cutely.

I look at Ciel and she shrugs. "It would be very disrespectful to the body, but they are our enemies and if doing this can give us an advantage, then it can be justified," she says.

"I'm going to have to burn the bodies anyway," Roxanne says with a hint of displeasure.

"Waste of good, meat!" Aoi says happily and Alissa nods in agreement.

"Well, there's not much we can do right now, so let's enjoy ourselves," Ciel says with a kind smile.

"Does anyone know how to swim?" I ask.

Only Hana and Roxanne raise their hands.

I lift Lina into a princess carry and jump in the pool.

"HIIH!" She shrieks as we crash into the water.

I land in a shallow part, so Lina can't drown when she stands up.

"Then I'll teach you how to swim!" I yell to the girls.

The clothes we're wearing stick to our bodies when wet, leaving very little to the imagination. The same happens for all other guests that enter the water; this is just the standard style of elven clothing.

I have to control myself - in the pool, but then I see an elven man proudly sporting - while floating on the surface of the water. We can't see his -, but we can see - the tent inside his elastic shorts.

Fuck it, then.

-

Night comes and we start feeling like leaving the pool.

Alissa is the first to notice the - change in atmosphere. The low light makes it harder to see, but things quickly escalate -.

"I won't ever share any of you, so I think it's time for us to leave," I say.

"We could just watch you," Alissa says with a shrug.

"I would rather not have him - go with strangers like that," Ciel says and Roxanne agrees.

-

Our bath is quick because we've been in the pool for a long time. After that, we head out of the inn and follow Klein to meet up with Anton. It's time for the most awkward dinner that I'll ever have.

Anton greets us stiffly and I feel him holding back his muscles from crushing my hand. Krista gives me a warm hug and a kind smile, making her husband feel even more awkward.

Ignoring her father's displeasure, Klein excitedly tells us about her day and then we share ours.

"You two will make amazing mothers one day," Krista says to Ciel and Alissa after they tell of their day playing with the orphans. Alissa smiles so brightly that she shines while Ciel goes red and sends me repeated glances.

Klein chuckles and says, "Yeah, and they will need all the help they can get. With five women… how many children are you planning on having?"

"Two with each," I say casually.

Klein laughs out loud and Krista shows an amused smile.

"If one is already a lot of trouble, imagine ten?" Krista asks.

Not counting Aoi's.

"I want at least five!"

"Klein is not part of the count?" Anton asks.

"I'm just here temporarily," Klein happily answers for me.

Anton turns to Klein and asks while staring her straight in the eye, "So all you do is - play around while he pays for everything for you?"

"Yep!"

"You know what they call women who do that?"

"Prostitutes!" She slings Hana's arm over her own shoulder.

Everyone has a varied reaction. I keep my face calm to not egg Anton on any further.

Anton's face twitches in anger and Krista has to pull him around so he doesn't trample over anyone caught by his stomps.

Still angry, he turns to Hana and says, "I didn't expect you to be the one to use my daughter like this."

"We all use one another, no matter the relationship," Hana answers and shrugs.

Something inside him finally breaks. He facepalms and starts chuckling like a fool.

"You always knew she was free-spirited," Krista says and squeezes her husband's arm, which he must have barely felt with those thick logs he has. "You couldn't keep her to yourself forever."

"What… I…" Anton look lost for words.

Krista then turns to Klein, her eyes look sharp and her tail is stiff. "And you will learn that this 'arrangement' of yours is not so simple. All of you will." Her gaze sweeps across us and ends with me.

"We know, or at least, I know. Sex and love are sometimes hard to separate, but we will deal with whatever comes, together," I say.

I feel something for Klein, but I won't let it grow, since our time is limited.

Gih.

Yeah, I might not fully control how love blossoms.

Alissa speaks inside my head, "I see what you mean. Maybe we might fall in love with her, but I won't regret the time we had together. And I do like Klein."

Krista stares at me for a while and we all go quiet.

Soon, we finally reach the restaurant they chose. A middle-class location that they can pay for. Inside, there's a nice and comfy atmosphere that doesn't lose out to the higher-class competition. The selection of food is modest, but you can never go wrong with recipes that are thousands of years old and are made with care.

"So, how long will it last?" Krista asks, breaking the silence.

"After we finish this job, we will rest for a little while and then search for a dungeon to conquer," I say.

"Two days after we reach Goldport, Rande wants to make the way back through Glorampina," Anton says, flatly.

"So, until then."

Klein sighs and her long tail finds her way to my waist. Krista shows some concern over Klein's dampened mood.

"On the contrary to a certain person, I only want Klein to be happy. Just remember to not hurt each other when the time comes to leave," Krista says.

I nod with a faint smile and [Massage] Klein's tail.

After one last sigh, Anton suddenly stands up and extends his hand. "Let's start again. For now, I will consider you Klein's 'husband' and leave her in your care."

I remain stunned for a moment, my spidey senses tingling, then my brain starts to process his words.

To be her 'husband' has some connotations. It would also open the chance for us to confess love to each other, since I'm her 'husband' and not just a sex-friend. Maybe this can work as an excuse to tell Klein the truth about me. If she knows the future that truly awaits us, then maybe she won't be as keen on following us.

I look at Klein and she seems a little stunned too.

People here marry easily, but marriage is something you go into with conviction. Trying to just put a label of 'husband' on this relationship without any responsibility is just bullshit and not something Anton would ask for.

I look at the girls around me. "Opinions?" I ask. Anton turns awkward as I leave him hanging, but the opinion of The Council takes precedence.

"I'm more comfortable with this," Ciel says.

"Seems the best for us all," Lina says.

"Better than just being a harem 'member,'" Hana says.

Alissa and Roxanne just shrug.

I look at Klein and she shyly nods, then I stand up and finally grab Anton's huge hand. "I agree, I'll be her 'husband' until then."

He chuckles once and his permanent frown deepens for a moment. We shake our hands a few times and then sit down again.

"Well… it's finally settled, then," Krista says with an amused smile.

"Of all things, I never imagined I would have to do this… Now that my heart is settled, bring me the dessert!" Anton orders.

All's well that ends well…?

Gih.

Well, what else could happen in the future? The only thing that could happen is if I actually marry her, now.

Gih-hih-hih.

Gify laughs smugly inside my head.

You don't have foresight, don't say things like that.

Gih!

The dinner ends with more of a casual conversation and we go our separate ways.

Since we're waking up early tomorrow, we all just trade kisses and wish each other goodnight before going to sleep in the huge bed, all tangled together.

Klein sleeps in the arms of Hana and tries to wrap her tail around a part of me, but the only free appendage that's free is my dick.

Today is the 18th.

-

When Ciel gets up, Lina giggles evilly and sends me a glance. "How far can we corrupt her?" She whispers.

We quickly get dressed and have our breakfast.

"Oh, look, Soseji," Hana says. She points to a large sausage that looks like pepperoni. I cut a slice for myself and eat it; yep, it's not-pepperoni.

"Now where did this one come from?" Alissa questions.

"Someone brought food from Ryutake and sold it as something exotic, but it doesn't fit in that well with this breakfast full of fruit."

"It's lacking milk and other cold meat cuts," I say.

"Exactly."

We finish eating and go find Rande's caravan. We came through the western gate and now Rande is leaving through the eastern one.

With Klein guiding us, we easily cross the morning mist and reach our destination.

Most of the commoners are gone, Rudito included, and only a few remain. But now there's another carriage being flanked by two horsemen and five foot soldiers. It's clearly part of Rande's caravan.

We search for him, and once he sees us, he excitedly waves for us to come over and meet him. Beside him are three very well dressed golden elves. They each are wearing traditional elven clothing and I see golden embroidery in the fine white cloth. Certainly upper-class.

Once we are close enough, Rande starts the introductions, "Good morning, Helios. These are our three new passengers: Nobleman Ento, Noblewoman Silvina, and Root Lord Ricardo." With a short bow and a delicate wave, he points towards the trio beside him.

"A pleasure to meet you," Silvina talks first. She's a very tall and thin woman who towers over Hana.

"Likewise," I say.

As the leader, I grab her hand for a short kiss. The others are introduced as my wives (even Klein, which makes her blush), so they merely touch her hand with their foreheads.

"Greetings and good day," Ricardo says without much enthusiasm. He's an average-built man and one of the elves who wears flowers in his golden beard.

Reluctantly, I kiss his hand, but thankfully the others don't have to do the same.

"Greetings," Ento says and I see his smile twitch with discomfort. He's a chubby man who keeps his golden wand very visible on his wait. His eyes suddenly lock on Aoi, who's curled around Hana's neck. It was only for a short moment, but most of us noticed it.

The longer the greetings go on, the more that Ento's smile strains. When Hana greets him, he forces himself to not look at Aoi, which makes him even more suspicious.

"These nobles will accompany us until Goldport. Merely continue with your job as usual and everything will be fine," Rande says. His usual more casual tone is gone and he speaks with perfect enunciation. He doesn't seem to be forcing it; he's a natural at being polite when he wants to.

We bow lightly and silently leave. None of the nobles seem interested in striking up a conversation with us. Once we turn around, they resume speaking in Ingua.

Nito hands us our horses and my usual "monster" neighs with some mild interest once he sees me.

"You've been doing a good job in keeping him happy, thank you," Nito says softly and my heart tightens at his cuteness.

"You're welcome, but I just like taking good care of animals," I say.

Roxanne's horse seems excited to see her. He didn't forget the "stimulation" that Roxanne provokes in him.

Nito watches Roxanne mount her horse with a mix of confusion, worry, and mirth. Then he turns back to me and nods. "Anyway, keep up the good care."

We leave Escanso in the mist of the morning and Ciel sighs as we aren't given one last view of the beautiful lake and rings of farms above it.

Soon after we reach the ground, the Weepers start their cries again, now much stronger than they were before.

The nobles' carriage suddenly lights up in response. The source is a huge crystal light on the roof that gives blinding radiance. This light causes the cries of the Weepers to reduce by a lot, though it doesn't make the Weepers themselves actually go away.

Rande guides his horse towards us and says, "Can you deal with the Weepers now? They should be fairly close and I don't want to annoy the nobles."

"I'll see what I can do," I answer.

Rande nods once and leaves us again.

I cast [Swift Foot] on the few remaining commoners, who happily thank me again. I also summon a light elemental and see that the nobles stare at it with curiosity. Then I spread out five Hollys, three of which will go deep into the forest to search for those pesky Weepers.

A note from Manasong

Hall of Fame of Patrons

The patrons who support Rupegia shall have their names sung by the bards for they deserve the glory and honor. Their names are:

Oracle Maximillian Hübner.

Lord Andrew Meyers.

Lord Hope.

Lord Samuel Lim.

Lord Cody Weigel.

Lord Bill.

Lord Novgarod.

Lord DJ.

Lord Ashadun.

Noble Salty Panda.

Nobleman Lassiter.

Noble D4rk Sheep.

Leave a rating or a review to help me rise to the top or fix my shameful understanding of prose.

Take a look over my blog where all information of the world of Rupegia will be posted.

Join the Discord and discuss, or rant, or meme, or try and fight me so your waifu gets more screentime.

Become a Patron and read chapters in advance, or read the side-stories, or leave your mark on the story, or help choose the next artwork or the next side-story.

Chapter 48: The Darkness - Part 2

A note from Manasong

Attention: to conform to the limit of mature content (more than just sexual content) allowed in a novel, I've censored this chapter. You can look for the uncensored version here.

The symbol "-" denotes a section that got cut for containing sexual content. Also, if paragraphs seem missing, they were also likely censored in an earlier pass where the symbol wasn't used.

Klein speaks to us from atop the carriage, "We've barely seen anything in Escanso. We could have gone to the theaters; watched the street dancers and performers; visited the public hanging gardens; walked along the wall of the castle; seen the main street of the nobles' quarter, which is extremely beautiful, by the way; dined in a dancing restaurant; visited the libraries-…"

"I thought you didn't like to read," Hana interrupts Klein.

Klein continues as if nothing happened, "played games in the taverns-…"

"Gambling would be a bad idea," Hana interrupts again and Klein ignores her.

"Elves have other games that don't involve gambling. Anyway, there's still the art galleries-…"

"Oh right, I saw them once, very pretty," Roxanne comments.

"There's the Colosseum, obviously, but there are a few other places where we can watch fighting-…"

"Is it elven fighting or normal fighting?" Hana asks.

"Normal."

"Nice."

"There are periodic costume parties-…"

"Costumes? What kind of costumes do they use?" I interrupt.

"Well… playing wereanimal is always popular. There's the body paint ones that like to walk almost naked and mimic one of the demon races with colorful designs. Then there are the novels' character copies."

"The what?"

"Uh, people who try to copy how the characters in novels look."

Elves are cosplayers!

"How interesting…" I smile and look at the girls.

We have a variety of body types here, there are plenty of "interesting" costumes that the girls could try out.

"And finally there's the brothels…"

Laertes' pointy Husky ears twitch repeatedly, but he doesn't turn to look at us.

"You know that we could only sleep with women?" Alissa asks.

"I know, but it's an elven brothel. It's worth trying out at least once," Klein answers with a shrug.

We turn around to Alissa and she gets uncharacteristically shy. "I like it more when Wolfy lays with someone that I know. It feels so much dirtier," she says.

I shrug. "We can have some fun in Goloria, but I'm not in a hurry."

"Goldport has a wider variety of women than Goloria," Roxanne says with a wicked smile, and Klein agrees with her.

Laertes finally turns around looking very annoyed. "Is she not enough for you? You just have to get all the women you can and rub it in everyone's faces, huh?" He spews at me, his glacial eyes open wide in extreme annoyance.

"I'm not rubbing it in, we are just having a casual conversation," I defend myself.

"And it's something you could talk about in private, away from me so that I don't have to hear about your stupid addiction to it."

"It's not my problem if you find it annoying while eavesdropping on our conversation," I state matter-of-factly and narrow my eyes.

"Which is why I said that you enjoy rubbing it in!" He hisses and scowls.

"How am I supposed to defend myself from that?! Of course, I don't!" I hiss back, controlling my voice so I don't attract the attention of the carriage of nobles behind us.

"Well, I do enjoy rubbing it in. It's not a crime," Osaria chimes in and then smiles with a little shame. "Sorry for intruding and eavesdropping," she adds.

"You are both obnoxious pricks," he grumbles and turns his back to us. Osaria merely shrugs and lays back in her seat.

"Screw you," I growl.

"Don't push this any further, both of you," Ciel warns us.

Feeling bitter, I spur my horse forward to leave the ruined atmosphere behind.

Ciel and Roxanne appease the other girls so they don't add to the fire, then they spur their horses forward and come closer to us. Klein drops down from the carriage and walks beside Anton, who's frowning and confused in how to act.

Sure, I do enjoy it a little, but it's not my fault that he's so in love with Klein. As far as I know, she never even responded to him.

Alissa turns into a small fox and jumps off her horse, then lands on my lap.

Thinking with my sword isn't the best thing, but what else could I have done? Not going after Klein just because he can't deal with rejection is completely off the table.

Alissa's ears flop and she approaches her snout to my face. She gives me kind little licks just like a pet.

I pat her head and kiss her forehead, making her tail wag furiously.

Lately, even Ciel has been thinking with her… - ? We might need to be a little more careful with our actions.

Ciel appeases Lina while Roxanne tends to Hana. Aoi also helps mollify Hana by copying Alissa.

The cute little fox curls up in my lap and stares at me from behind her tail with mischievous eyes.

"You really know how to be cute when you want to," I say with a warm smile and her tail wags a little.

"You haven't even seen me try yet," she says.

"Hm… I would love to see that."

"It's my weapon! If you grow resistant to it, how will I get what I want from you?"

"How shrewd." I pout playfully.

"Don't worry, I haven't had the need for it, yet."

"Wouldn't calming my heart be a good reason to use it?"

"Hm… fine."

She suddenly shows me her belly and leaves her mouth open in an almost-smile. She covers her eyes with the back of her paws and wiggles her body.

I feel compelled to pat her furry belly and succumb to it immediately. When I touch her, four paws and a fanged mouth latch on my arm and prickle me painfully.

I resist the instinct to back out and pat her belly. Her legs tremble as her body is tickled and overstimulated.

"You forgot that I used to have dogs. I know all about their tricks," I say with a smirk.

"Oh, no! You're already resistant to me!" She exclaims in a cutesy voice.

I pat her harder and she closes her eyes in delight. Then I start to slow my petting and we calm down.

She suddenly climbs up to my shoulder and then jumps behind me. After a short glow, she returns to normal and hugs me from behind.

"Thanks for this," I say and close my eyes since I'm now the one being petted. Her soft hands glide through my hair and caress my scalp. Her lips softly touch the back of my neck and send small jolts of happiness through me. She certainly knows how to give me the most pleasure.

"I felt your frustration and thought that getting angry at Laertes would just make things worse," she says.

"It certainly would."

"And playing with you would be much more pleasing than yelling at someone."

"That's a given."

I lean back into her embrace even more and relax in her arms.

I'm not a jerk, am I…?

Well, I actually am starting to feel a little bad for Laertes.

We don't have any elderly or children commoners with us, so we move at a much faster rate than before. The cries of the Weepers can just be ignored for now while the Hollys search for them.

The houses inside the gigantic trees become fewer and fewer until suddenly, they stop completely. Even before lunch, we've already left Escanso's circle of safety and entered the wilderness proper. Soon after, the number of monsters shoots up drastically.

I notice something odd and say, "You know, this place is quite a good environment for insects. Back on Earth, we would have annoying little mosquitoes that would suck blood from us and leave itchy marks on the skin. So far in this world, I haven't seen any that do that. In fact, I've seen very few bugs at all."

"Blood-sucking insects and monsters are exterminated by the temple for free," Ciel says.

"Why?"

"They tend to become very powerful since there's too much mana in the blood. And they were also used by heretics to become undead."

I open my eyes wide. "So you just… exterminated entire species of insects?"

She shrugs. "Nobody has missed them so far. The last of them were in Bestiaram and we exterminated those a few thousand years ago."

"Amazing! Screw those mosquitoes!" I exclaim and she chuckles softly. "How did they do it?"

"Potions and incenses. It's a poison for the mosquitoes that was slow-acting and highly contagious. The Emperor ordered a sweep of the continent and after a few generations they had died out completely. We still use it in certain ceremonies to immunize the commoners from them in case they return."

Rupegia's first biological war was waged against blood-sucking mosquitoes.

Lunch comes around and Krista prepares a selection of sausages and sandwiches for us. She gives a wink to Hana, who seems lost at which sausage to eat first.

Insert - joke here.

Unfortunately, the table's arrangement has changed. Rande and his family eat at a separate table with the nobles. Nito looks like a scared, cute little animal, completely out of his depth; Oura seems very stiff and sends repeated glances to us and Lina, likely silently asking for help that will never come; Osaria seems very calm, but doesn't participate much; Rande talks the most, a natural at this sort of thing.

On the nobles' side, it's mostly the Noblewoman Silvina talking; the other nobles show some small amount of interest, but they don't speak a lot.

The soldiers of both Rande and the nobles mingle and eat with each other without prejudice. They're just grunts who have a rather cushy job thanks to us, they aren't knights.

When we are finishing our meal, suddenly, I and the girls go quiet, attracting the attention of the others. Out of the nobles' carriage, a small, shiny black dragon comes out, perched on the arm of a servant. It's let onto the table and eats a small meal which was set out for it.

Nobleman Ento sends a few nervous glances towards us and Aoi. Our own "little" dragon observes her counterpart with curious eyes.

When the black dragon notices Aoi, it stops eating and they have a staring contest. After a few seconds, it breaks the stare and resumes eating. I notice how the other dragon has a much rougher body. Its scales shine, but they're not flat like Aoi's; they are also not arranged perfectly on top of each other, making them protrude slightly out of its body.

That dragon is a male.

We might have a problem.

"What do you think of him?" I ask Aoi.

"Looks dumb. Don't want him," she says flatly and resumes eating.

The caravan continues to move without incident. Klein returns to stay on top of the carriage with Laertes and they resume ignoring each other.

A few monsters start to appear. The usual goblins, a few orcs, small Uspidors and a single Watchful Ton creating a thick mist around a small area.

Alissa stands at the edge of the mist and holds her chin in thought. Then she turns around and asks, "Can you summon a nature elemental for me? I think that I can hit it if I have more height."

"I can cast [Fly] and carry you up there," I say.

"That spell disrupts my arrows, not a good idea."

Disappointing.

I use [Telekinesis] on myself and follow them as they climb a nearby gigantic tree. The elemental gently deposits Alissa in a small nook and I huddle up with her inside it.

She breathes in and her eyes become sharp. Her soft and calm expression disappears, and it instead becomes cold and emotionless. This side of Alissa is odd to see, it's as if she's turned into a total stranger.

Her eyes narrow and suddenly, she draws her bow and looses her arrow. She looks intently along the arrow's path. She sees something that I don't, as she clicks her tongue softly and draws another arrow from the quiver at her waist.

Her breathing slows and stops fully, then she draws her bow again and lets loose another arrow. This time she nods in satisfaction and draws a third arrow.

She waits again and I see the mist move away from us slowly. She scoffs and fires the arrow.

When the mist starts to disappear, she returns to normal and smiles adorably like always. "Got him!" She says proudly and her tail wags.

I kiss her nose and we make our way down from the tree.

"So… you didn't - do it up there?" Hana asks with a frown, as if there's something wrong with us.

"Right, the fear of heights would have enhanced the pleasure…" I say as I grab my chin in thought.

"Yeah, that shit is amazing." She smirks.

The day ends without much excitement.

During our bath time, it's Ciel's turn for affection, which she initiates without a second word. -.

-

"You are quite happy lately," I comment.

"Am I?" She questions innocently and cups her own cheek.

Oh, her pose looks perfect for this!

"Say 'ara ara,'" I request.

She leans back and looks at me oddly.

"Please," I insist.

"Ara ara," she says calmly and chuckles.

Innocent - appeal.

Lina blinks blankly at Ciel.

"Put a little sass and warmth into it," I say.

"Hm…" She pouts playfully and narrows her eyes at me with suspicion. Then she breathes in and gets in character, "Ara ara!" She tilts her head from side to side with each word, like a mother who caught her son with his hand in the cookie jar.

"Oh…" Lina mutters.

"Again, please!" I plead.

"Ara ara!" She does it again -. "W-what?" She looks at herself in confusion -.

"Ara ara," Alissa says, but the effect is small.

"Those are the wrong words for you," I say.

"Ara ara…" Hana says with a predatory smile -.

An aggressive - predator.

"Ara ara," Roxanne says with a soft, sensual tone and a sharp, intense gaze -.

Mean and - older sister.

Her expression quickly crumbles when she sees the reaction it had on me. "Ahahahah, what is that?"

"I don't know, those words feel like… magic?" Lina tilts her head as she tries to understand the power of the "ara ara."

"Say it and laugh softly," I request to Ciel again.

"Ara ara, a-hahah," she obeys and covers the mouth with the back of her hand. Her laugh has that perfect high pitched inflection at the end.

From Aoi, I feel strong emotions broiling within her heart. Klein looks like she's seen the light as she stares at Ciel with wonder. Alissa seems to be affected, but not very much.

"Klein, say 'onii-chan!' in a mischievous tone."

She blinks blankly and the cloud over her mind disappears. She gets up and strikes a pose. "Onii-chan!" She exclaims and smiles mischievously.

The spunky younger sister.

Hana moans, "Ooh, I see it now."

"Alissa, say 'nii-sama' with a dignified tone," I say.

"Nii-sama," she says and nods respectfully.

The perfect and dedicated maid.

-

"Lina, say a cutesy 'onii-chan.'"

"Onii-chan," she gets it right on the first try.

Imouto! Pure innocence!

Ciel's gasps -.

"What are these words?" Roxanne asks.

"They have a nice ring to them," Alissa says.

"Ways of addressing someone, but in a special way."

"Onii-chan!" Lina repeats and throws herself to hug me.

"Nii-sama!" Alissa hugs me from the other side.

"Nii-chan!" Aoi jumps on my face and copies Lina's tone.

I think for now that's the right one for Aoi.

"Just don't overdo it, okay?" I ask with a wry smile.

Dinner is quieter than lunch. Anton and Laertes start talking with the nobles' horsemen and the atmosphere becomes more casual. That is, until Ento approaches us with his dragon on his shoulder.

"Greetings, Helios," he says and smiles cordially. "You must be Wolf Ryder, the leader, correct?"

"Yes, I am, Signeur Ento," I respond and nod cordially to him.

"I see you have a tamable dragon of your own." He glances at Aoi and she immediately stares at him. "She seems quite… aware."

"She is and she was raised with great care by us," Hana says, a little defensively.

Ento turns to Hana for a moment and then returns to me.

"How did you come upon her?" He asks.

"We found her in a dragon's nest while on an extermination request."

"I see… possibly an evolved one, then," he says and looks at Aoi with curiosity.

If only you knew.

I retain my casual expression so I don't give away any information to him.

"What do you plan on doing when she grows?" He asks calmly, but his gaze is intense.

"At that point, we should have the resources to support her. I plan on becoming a noble," I answer with confidence.

His eyes linger on me and show a hint of annoyance.

"You are planning on becoming a noble…?" The chubby elf seems to be containing his displeasure.

"I am," I answer calmly.

"When?"

"After this job is done."

I would prefer to not tell him about this, but it's the best choice right now.

"Are you sure you will have the resources? A fully grown dragon has limited uses and requires a large amount of money to sustain."

"I will deal with it."

His jaw twitches as his annoyance increases.

"You can see that I am a tamer of dragons." He lifts his shoulder and prods the small black dragon. He uncurls and stares at us, his gaze lingers on Aoi, but yet again, he's the one who breaks the mutual stare first, which seems to agitate Ento further. "And I can say with certainty that yours is quite intelligent."

"Kweh!"

Hana smiles ferociously and crosses her arms, pushing her pillows together.

"I certainly have the resources to help her grow appropriately," he continues.

"You may, but we prefer to keep her with us," I answer and try to keep my tone as cordial as possible.

"If in her youth, she's not properly cared for, her maximum growth will be reduced."

"We are taking good care of her," I assure him.

He swallows heavily and controls his emotions. His voice shows a lot of hesitation as he says, "I will give you twenty rose coins for her."

The eavesdropping commoners and soldiers whisper about in complete disbelief. Anton, Krista, and Laertes drop their jaws.

"She's special to us, we will not sell her," I say, still maintaining my calm.

"You will never find a better deal," he says in a dangerous tone.

"We will never sell her," Hana says and glares at Ento.

Aoi nods and smiles. Ento notices it and becomes even more agitated.

"Mr. Ryder, I am giving you the deal of a lifetime. It would be wise to accept it," he says through his gritted teeth.

"Please, Signeur Ento, she means to me more than anything in the realm," I say and force some sadness in my voice.

"Dragons are extremely valuable to many people in powerful places. Are you sure that you can provide her with a safe environment to grow?" His eyes narrow in anger as his right hand grabs his belt, where his golden wand is.

The nobles' soldiers tense up and look around nervously. They are outnumbered and surrounded by Rande's soldiers, who stare back at them, also very nervous.

"I can," I answer and then increase the loudness of my voice for all to hear. "As someone aiming to become a noble, I am confident in my strength and that of all of the members of my fellowship." I scowl at Ento and curl my lips in anger. "And I will defend myself with ferocious tenacity."

"Mr. Ryder, my final advice for you is to-…"

"Signeur Ento," the mature voice of Lord Ricardo interrupts our "negotiation." "Please, do not put our protectors in such a delicate position."

Ento's face twitches repeatedly and slowly settles as he controls his anger. "Very well. You know my terms," he says with finality and turns around in a huff. He makes for his tent and disappears inside.

Everyone calms down and a few awkward chuckles escape some of the soldiers.

I look at Lord Ricardo and nod appreciatively. He nods sternly and returns to ignoring us. Rande, Osaria, and Silvina have positive expressions on their faces that gradually relax into more natural and neutral ones. Oura and Nito look pale and continue to fidget for a while.

Hana turns back towards our table and slings an arm over my shoulder, forcing my head to lean against her chest. "That was hot. You are plowing me silly tomorrow," she asserts.

"You're not afraid of him?" I ask, lowly.

"Not anymore. Not with you and the others by my side."

I close my eyes and we enjoy light conversation before we retire to our tents.

Lina works tirelessly while I softly brush her hair. Her silky black bangs are so adorable. They are carefully maintained by Ciel while I make sure that she never skips her hair care. The crate of elven products we received from Vanea for the job we did for her really was a very good reward.

I feel a very strong need to tease Lina and play with her -, but her work prevents me from taking action.

She finally removes the gem from her workstation and raises it upwards. She puts one hand on her waist and forces a smile. "Do-don~! It's done!" She exclaims.

"'Do-don'?" Ciel tilts her head and swallows a laugh.

Lina immediately returns to her more shy demeanor and her skin reddens. "It's something from dwarven stories."

"Is it an onomatopoeia?" I ask.

Damn, even in Andraste it's a hard word to say.

"A what?" Klein asks. "Hm…" She shivers as Alissa brushes her tail.

"Words that imitate a sound," Lina answers.

Klein and Alissa switch places and my fox-girl moans softly when Ciel joins in and plays with her ears.

"And yes, it is. It's for a drum hit," Lina adds.

"Sounds very cute," I say.

"It's from children's stories." She looks down and fidgets.

"Even cuter." I lay my head on her shoulder and give her cheek many kisses.

She giggles and leans away so she can speak. "A-anyway. The gem is done, so now I need to choose a shield to enchant with [Wind Shield]."

"I think it's either Ciel or you," I say.

"Oh." Ciel's mouth breaks off from Alissa's and she looks at us. "Well, I would prefer that you have it," She says to me.

"I have enough spells to protect myself," I say.

"I'm always beside Hana, so I'm covered by her most of the time," Lina says.

"Ciel it is, then."

Lina nods and stands to look for Ciel's shield. She stops midway and looks back at me, sitting on the carpet -.

"It can wait for tomorrow, if you wish."

There's not much time left before we have to go to bed.

Lina puckers her lips in thought for a moment. In the next, she scurries towards me -.

"Tomorrow it is, then," I say and grab her.

-

I wake up in the middle of the night. A Holly is squeaking a warning.

A note from Manasong

Hall of Fame of Patrons

The patrons who support Rupegia shall have their names sung by the bards for they deserve the glory and honor. Their names are:

Oracle Maximillian Hübner.

Lord Andrew Meyers.

Lord Hope.

Lord Samuel Lim.

Lord Cody Weigel.

Lord Bill.

Lord Novgarod.

Lord DJ.

Lord Ashadun.

Noble Salty Panda.

Nobleman Lassiter.

Noble D4rk Sheep.

Leave a rating or a review to help me rise to the top or fix my shameful understanding of prose.

Take a look over my blog where all information of the world of Rupegia will be posted.

Join the Discord and discuss, or rant, or meme, or try and fight me so your waifu gets more screentime.

Become a Patron and read chapters in advance, or read the side-stories, or leave your mark on the story, or help choose the next artwork or the next side-story.

Chapter 48: The Darkness - Part 3

A note from Manasong

Attention: to conform to the limit of mature content (more than just sexual content) allowed in a novel, I've censored this chapter. You can look for the uncensored version here.

The symbol "-" denotes a section that got cut for containing sexual content. Also, if paragraphs seem missing, they were also likely censored in an earlier pass where the symbol wasn't used.

Well, not really a warning. The Holly is crying, literally. Its vision is blurry as its single eye sheds a stream of tears.

I wish to share proprioception with the summon and can tell that nothing is wrong with its body. It's just very sad right now.

I could leave it there, but I would feel pretty bad for letting it suffer all night until it's devoured, so I unsummon it after I've memorized its position. It's quite far away, so it will take some time for us to reach the Weepers.

I go back to sleep and mentally prepare myself for tomorrow.

Today is the 19th.

-

We give each other our good morning kisses. When Klein gives one to Roxanne, the succubus takes the opportunity to - invade the little monkey's mouth and make the innocent girl melt in her arms.

- I feel oddly at peace while watching the two.

Roxanne ends the invasion with sensual and loving little pecks on the lips. "If you think you aren't 'double-edged' after this, then I'm an - old hag," she says. Klein shrugs and gives a last peck on Roxanne's lips.

"You're a hag already, so," Hana says and shrugs.

"You're older than me!" Roxanne scowls.

"But I'm hotter than you." Hana smiles smugly and ferociously.

I reflexively turn away and walk out of the tent while the two goddesses burn their glares into my back.

While we eat, Anton sends us worried glances. After Krista finishes lunch and sits down to eat, too, he decides to speak. "So, you think it was a good idea to do that?" He asks me, lowly. Krista looks at me intently, waiting for an answer.

I knit my eyebrows in confusion. "Do what?"

"Reject the nobleman's offer."

"We do not need the money and Aoi is more valuable than anything he could ever offer," I say casually.

"Aoi is family," Hana says and pats Aoi's head, who looks around in confusion when she notices the attention focused on her.

Anton goes quiet, but his surprise is still apparent.

"Be careful with that noble," Krista warns us with concern.

"We will. Thank you," Hana says with a nod.

I find it difficult to think of a single angle that Ento could use to take Aoi from us. The most he can do is try for petty revenge. The temple is not strong enough to protect commoners like us here, but the laws are.

Ento eats quietly at the other table without even sparing us a glance.

We get moving again and I call the girls for a meeting.

"So, I know where the Weepers are, and it's pretty far away," I say.

"You, Ciel, and Alissa should go. With a light elemental, nothing should happen," Roxanne says.

"Well… I was thinking of making this a psychological test."

"Psy…?" Alissa tilts her head.

"A mental test, to see how well our minds can handle an attack."

"Hm…" Ciel murmurs and twiddles her thumbs. "I think it's a good idea."

"Do any of us has any regrets?" I ask.

"No," Alissa answers immediately. We all turn to her and she looks around, confused. "What?"

"Well, she is the most depraved of us all," Hana says with a shrug.

"I like to think that I'm merely madly in love with Wolfy," Alissa says with smug pride.

"Yes, madly," Roxanne sneers.

"I don't think it's that bad…" Lina mutters.

"So, Alissa can stay with a light elemental while we meet the Weepers one-by-one," I say.

"Ooh…" Roxanne understands my idea and looks around, very worried. "I don't think I need a monster to show me that I have issues…"

"Maybe you could learn something and understand yourself a little more," Ciel says.

"No thanks, I prefer to remain a crazy bitch." Roxanne gives a phony smile.

"Maybe it's time for you to change," Hana says, showing real concern.

Roxanne frowns and looks down, then slowly nods.

I tell Rande that we will be away for a long time. To protect them, I summon an earth and a nature elemental, and one Holly for scouting. Then I send another Holly towards the direction where the Weepers should be.

"So, you are mentally masochistic, too?" Klein asks, her face tells us it was rhetorical.

"Hm, would a dark elemental bypass my [Pain Conversion]?" Hana wonders.

Ciel blinks repeatedly; her eyes do not believe the words that Hana's lips just formed.

"Dunno. But it would make torturing you easier on my body," I say with a shrug.

Alissa licks her lips.

We gallop for a few hours and the cries slowly become more clear and creepy. There are few monsters along the way because not many monsters can maintain their sanity while near the Weepers for too long. This makes it simple to avoid them, so the journey is easy for us.

At a certain point, the scouting Holly breaks down into tears again. We reach where it stopped moving forward and I unsummon it.

"So, who's first?" Alissa asks with a wicked smile.

I sigh and say, "Me," with as much enthusiasm as a cow mooing before slaughter.

"Well, it was your idea," Roxanne says.

The way forward is dark, like nearly everywhere in the High Forest, but my [Spirit Light] looks very weak right now, as if there were a cloud of impenetrable darkness in front of me.

I look back and Alissa's smile shines even brighter than the curvy light elemental beside her. I face forward and the cold darkness stares back at me.

Alissa's blessing is still active, but I already feel like my "Sanity" is back at seven again. All I want right now are my - ladies to cuddle with.

This was a terrible idea, maybe I should just swallow my pride and go back to cry on the girls' chest -.

Gih.

You are the one who keeps peeping on my thoughts, pervert.

Gih!

If you say so. -.

He gives me a painful peck on the neck, then pops out of existence and returns to take care of the horses.

I chuckle, but my happiness fades away as fast as it came.

I take a step forward and feel that my body is getting oddly heavy, but nothing is actually wrong with it. I take another step and feel my back begin to ache, but I'm not carrying anything heavy.

My waist hurts with the sway of my legs caused by my emerald fang sword on my belt; my leg feels like it's forming a bruise from the scabbard smacking the side all the time; my knees creak like the old joints of a hard worker; my neck feels like stone with the weight of my barbute pressing down on it; my lungs struggle to pull in air because the padded scale armor is crushing my ribs; my hands refuse to obey me, like on cold days when the joints feel sluggish and painful.

The cries of the Weepers remind me of Lina's loud cry when Hilde died; of Logan's tears when he drunkenly stalked us; of my sobs on my first day in this world; of Hana's silent sorrow when she was arrested; of Ciel's guilt when she deserted Macht; of Roxanne's wail when Mithra died; of Lily's pain when I abandoned her; of the widows of the bandits we killed; of Darean's anger when I killed his brother; of Farana's horror when I left her to be raped.

"You know very well what happened to me," the cute high-pitched voice accuses me.

"Vanea never told us," I defend myself.

"The Sin of Rape protects me from that, so I wasn't taken against my desires, no," -Farana's hazel eyes pierce me with anger- "but that doesn't mean I wasn't being taken against my will, repeatedly. You know Vanea's words: every hole was filled by a man, repeatedly."

"I didn't know that she would go so far," I turn my eyes away from her.

Her eyes stare into me from the darkness, they open shallow cuts in my skin and lick up the blood that trickles from them. "But you didn't do anything to stop it after it started. I GOT FORCEFULLY TAKEN AND FILLED JUST TO SURVIVE! I WAS A SLAVE AND A COMMUNAL HOLE!"

"You messed with Vanea and I was just defending myself," I think to myself and push on into the darkness.

If I kill the Weeper, everything will end.

"THAT'S NOT THE PROBLEM, WHAT IS A DAMN PROBLEM, IS THAT YOU WANTED A PIECE, TOO!" Her words crush my heart, but my rationality turns it into a glancing blow.

"Judging me for my thoughts won't work! I am what I do, not what I think," I sneer at the Weeper.

The eyes filled with anger surround me, preventing any escape. "YOU COULD HAVE SAVED ME! SHE OFFERED ME TO YOU, BUT YOU REFUSED! NOW I SUCK A RAT'S SHRIVELED SWORD SO HE CAN FEED ME AND CLOTHE ME!"

I'm not here to cause a revolution and change this world's version of human rights, I say to Farana and push her away.

"Oh? I could be sucking your sword right now if you weren't such a wimp," she sensually whispers in my ear.

"Is that what you want? Screw it, then. Suck on this!" I yell to myself.

I pull it out and shove it down the throat of the kneeling young girl. She scowls at me and swallows it with anger, applying more pressure and speed to make me reach the summit and end this faster.

She chokes, but doesn't stop. If she does, she won't be able to start again and will probably puke in disgust instead.

"Clean all the smegma, because that's your purpose, Smegma," I cackle a laugh and force it down her throat.

I feel extreme amounts of pleasure as she chokes harder and tries to pull me out of her, but she's too weak to do so.

She can't breathe, so she quickly becomes desperate. I feel her teeth apply a little pressure on me, but she won't dare to bite it. Unless she wants her holes seared shut again.

I let it out down her throat just as she passes out and goes limp. I pull her off of me and she regains lucidity. She chokes and spits, trying to get it all out of her body.

A hand touches my shoulder and the disgusting feeling of the pleasure is purged from my body.

"It wasn't like that!" I yell.

Alissa hugs me from behind and I freeze on the spot, suddenly feeling so disgusted with myself that I have to summon all my will to not puke.

The light elemental sends another wave of cleansing and the disgust subsides. My breath quickly calms and I wipe away the beads of cold sweat from my forehead.

"Feeling better?" Alissa softly asks.

"Yeah, I think so."

She pats my head and I can feel her love even with my barbute between us.

"Let's go back," she says and I nod without hesitation. I failed the test and the Weepers didn't even have to use Lily against me.

Farana's life isn't like that. The Weeper took something that I felt guilty about and cranked the scenario up to eleven.

I get back to the girls and they all immediately crowd over me. Cuddling is [Healing] for the mind.

Roxanne is next on the chopping block. She walks forward with a somber face, since after seeing how affected I was, she has no confidence that she will do any better.

She doesn't even get that far before she freezes on the spot and the light elemental touches her shoulder. She quickly comes back and we apply them same healing procedures.

"What did you see?" I ask and continue kissing her feet.

"Mother," she answers with a sour face.

"I saw Farana. She blamed me for not rescuing her and for lusting after her."

Ciel raises an eyebrow and even Alissa look at me oddly.

"I never really wanted her," I continue. "It was just a passing disgusting desire that I had once."

"Considering how depraved you are, I think I understand why it's so effective," Ciel says.

Hana gets ready for the pain. She goes so far that the light of the elemental disappears from view, but she eventually comes back, looking very sour.

She unties her sword belt and throws it on the ground in a huff of anger. "Shitstain used my Dad. Blamed me for turning a blind eye when he was smuggling stuff. 'If family doesn't stop you from doing stupid shit, then why are you even family to begin with?'," she mimics a male voice, likely her father's.

With a very delicate soul touch, the pleasure of cuddling is taken to another level without even turning lewd.

Lina marches forward to seize the day. She walks with such confidence that she even wows Hana.

While we wait, suddenly one of the cries is abruptly cut off, catching our attention. The forest becomes a little quieter and a little less like the souls of the damned are haunting it.

Not long after, Lina comes back with Alissa, both looking very proud.

"Bite me, because I can't believe it," Roxanne says.

I grab her tail and lightly pressure the dagger-like tip with my teeth. She takes it back and sends me a glare.

Lina carries a human-looking head. It's bald and its skin is sickly pale with red bruise-like blemishes. The eyes and mouth are closed, and a black, oily substance seeps from them. The same substance drips from the neck wound. It smells like car oil and grease with a dash of piss.

"I got him!" Lina proudly announces and raises the head she's carrying.

We clap and sing her praise. Ciel discreetly takes the head away from Lina and then gives her a hug.

"You did very well," Ciel says and Lina looks up from the heavy bosom that's still squishy even through all that armor.

"I need a reward," Lina requests, unashamedly.

Ciel narrows her eyes playfully and Lina gives an impish smile.

Aoi volunteers as the next tribute. She changes size into her bigger form, which frightens Lina, and casually walks into the darkness while humming one of the elven songs that the commoners sang during the trip.

After a while, another Weeper's cry is interrupted and a moment later, Aoi returns with a wide, fanged smile.

"They didn't even try, anything with me," she says.

"She ate a whole Weeper," Alissa says, a little impressed.

"They taste like sun, dried meat!" The "little" dragon proudly pats her belly.

"'The tears make it salty!'" Alissa mimics Aoi, who nods innocently.

We look at Ciel and the dusky delight disentangles from the gloomy loli because it's now her turn to suffer.

She looks at Alissa and nods with confidence.

While we wait, I enjoy the view of Anton trying to cleave some Miasmatic Gambos with his poleaxe, who let out a horrific fart in his face every time he misses. Klein and Laertes laugh at him, purposely missing their shots. Eventually, my elementals and Rande do most of the job and the fun ends.

Soon after, Ciel comes back with silent tears running along her face.

"I still can't face him," she says as she comes back and we start the healing process.

Out in the open, we have a quick cuddle-orgy to refill our happiness meters.

Aoi's belly is tickled by Alissa while Ciel and Roxanne happily play with Alissa's fluffy ears and tail to recharge. I have Lina, who's brushing Gify's feathers, drill her ass on my lap while we are both hugged tightly in Hana's strong arms.

"Right, I forgot to tell the rest of you yesterday because of the stalkers, but we discovered that a dungeon called 'Legado' has been found recently," I tell the girls.

"Oh, nice!" Hana smiles and pulls my head harder into her chest.

"So we have our next destination…" Ciel looks happily to the sky covered by the leaves while absentmindedly rubbing her face on Alissa's tail.

"It's a lost elven tomb, so it should be filled with treasure and history," Lina says excitedly.

"And traps," Roxanne comments.

"I prefer to call them 'challenges,'" Hana says and grins.

I look at Ciel with questioning eyes. She's still being aloof while sniffing Alissa's fur, but then she notices me and becomes a little awkward. "Traps are traps. You won't just get your arm broken if you fall into one," she says.

"I know it's certainly going to be a difficult dungeon to conquer, but the mystery draws me in and I just can't not go there after hearing about it," I say.

Alissa nods and says, "As long as we are together…"

When Roxanne's hands start to slide beneath Ciel's armor and Hana's hands start to get dangerously close to my sword, I decide that it's time to end this before we waste even more time.

"Right, let's finish them off," I say.

Wait, I just said no to love. What's happening to me?!

Gih.

Screw being mature, I want to plow my women!

I restrain my inner monster for tonight, it's Hana's turn.

I summon another light elemental and Ciel summons her [Holy Spirit], then we split into three groups and go hunting.

The light elemental covers me and Alissa like the softest blanket that ever blanketed and we huddle up like two lovers during snowfall. How romantic it is to take a stroll through a fantastical and dangerous forest full of monsters with the ambient sounds of the moaning souls of the damned.

The elemental uses more mana this way, so we hurry up until we find the hellspawns.

We find our first group simply standing still in the open, illuminated by the only streak of sunlight around us that pierces down through the crowns of the trees.

There are three human-looking things standing in a circle: one is pale and tall with long limbs, broad shoulders, a small head, and a shriveled "sword"; the second is darker and has a dwarven stature, a small ribcage, a large belly, and a "sword" that touches the ground; the third is a blue woman with very saggy chest, a grey bush and a normal stature, but she's armless.

They all stand still, but their muscles spasm randomly. The disembodied cries seem to come from them, but their mouths do not move. Their skin looks blemished with red welts and bruises. Their bodies are skinny and lack muscle. Their eyes and mouths are shut while the black substance slowly seeps out of them and is absorbed by the ground, creating a dark patch of mushy, dead dirt.

Roxanne will undoubtedly collect that substance because it is heavily toxic.

I approach the dwarven one and cut his head off with a single, clean chop. He falls down on the ground and splatters the oily substance everywhere. The others do not move and don't seem to make any sound in response.

I slash the back of the knee of the tall Weeper and he falls to his knees. He tries to stand up again, but he fails and stumbles, crashing on top of the woman.

She pushes him to the side and stands up again, and then the tall man crawls back to his spot and remains on his knees.

They move with lethargy and lack of emotion, eerily puppet-like.

Alissa fires two arrows into their eyes and the Weepers die, then I go back to huddle with Alissa and the light elemental-blanket.

"That was damn creepy," I say.

"At least it's over."

The other girls reach their targets and the forest becomes silent once again.

"Thank the Gods, it's like a buzzing in my ear is finally gone," I say.

We return to the caravan feeling creeped out, but still rather okay, due to the cuddle-healing orgy.

"Helios, what a pleasure to see you again!" Rande exclaims with a dashing smile as we gallop back.

"Our mission is complete," I say and return a dashing smile of my own.

"Much appreciated," Lord Ricardo calmly says and nods respectfully from the window of his carriage, then the huge glowing crystal on top of the nobles' carriage turns off.

Silvina appears in the other window and waves. "Thank you, this saves a lot of my mana," she says.

Ento shows no sign of appearing, so we return to the front of the caravan.

"So, how was it?" Klein asks from atop her carriage.

"Horrible!" Roxanne answers immediately. "Wolfy, that was the worst idea you've ever had!"

"What?" Klein asks and her tail scratches her temple.

"We went towards the Weepers one-by-one and alone to test our mental fortitude. We had Alissa and a light elemental to save us from being devoured."

Osaria, Oura, and Krista peek from out of the carriage and even Anton looks surprised.

"You what…?" Anton asks.

"Well, you heard her," I say with a wry smile.

"I managed to kill one by myself," Lina shyly lifts her hand.

"Me too," Aoi says from Alissa's shoulder.

"Wow…" Oura mutters with wonder and astonishment. "I once read a book about a real report from a lone traveler. You shouldn't play around with these monsters."

"It's an opportunity for growth," Ciel says. "Even I, with nineteen 'Sanity,' was affected by them."

"They know how to play with your mind; they aren't the usual illusion that you can resist just with 'Sanity.'"

"Exactly, and now we know our mental weaknesses." Ciel smiles brightly and nods.

"Well, that's a noble goal, but it's still half-insane," Anton says.

"'Everything works, you just have to find out what for,'" Hana quotes the God of War.

Anton scoffs and turns away.

We missed lunch, so we gallop forward and have our own, private meal in our tent. Krista saved us our share and we enjoy a not-beer-based beef sauce with simple browned veggies.

The monsters we encounter today are more simple trash: another group of Miasmatic Gambos catches our scent and are used as target practice; a Giant Centipede approaches us and is also used as target practice; a few old Wood Goblins cross our path and are used as additional target practice; a small horde of Corpse Stealers comes too close and are used as even more target practice.

Night comes and the plants' luminescence changes into the usual purple glow. This means that it's time for our bath and also time for me to - Hana silly.

-

"Holy shit…" Klein mutters.

"Eh, they are having fun," Roxanne shrugs.

"No one else would be able to satisfy her the way Wolfy does," Lina says, watching the dragon being tamed with fascination.

"No one else would be able to satisfy Wolfy like she does," Ciel says and shrugs.

"You made me like this!" I complain.

"You chose your own path," Roxanne says with a smirk.

"'Have no shame in putting dedication into making someone else happy,'" Ciel quotes the Goddess of Love and Alissa gives her a thumbs up.

"Is [Pain Conversion] really that fun?" Klein asks.

Hana gives Klein a quick thumbs up and then returns to trying to not suffocate.

-

We soak in our bath a little more, but the smell of dinner calls to us.

Hana struggles to walk, requiring Ciel's help. She smiles proudly and giggles randomly, drawing the attention of the others.

When she winces as she sits on the bench, the others understand the source of her problem. Rande chuckles while Osaria looks at Hana with intense curiosity. Their reactions cause the nobles to notice Hana too: Ento frowns and looks surprised, but quickly returns to playing with his black dragon; Ricardo raises an eyebrow and looks at me in disbelief; Silvina giggles a little, but quickly regains her composure and returns to her prim and proper demeanor.

I see that Ento plays with his dragon in a rather similar way to how we play with Aoi.

I sit and eat calmly, ignoring the stares aimed at us, but controlling myself so that I don't smirk and gloat.

Anton and Laertes ignore it, perhaps truly learning some form of awoken meditation.

Krista looks at her daughter with concern. "Are you really doing fine?" She asks.

Klein chokes on her food and glares at her mother. "Of course I am! What kind of question is that?!" She hisses.

"Okay," Krista accepts, but still looks worried.

"You sure you are fine?" I ask Klein, mockingly.

"- Stop it!" She moans and pouts.

I - smile evilly. "Your mother is concerned if you can survive my attacks. Maybe you should tell her how I'm gentle and loving with you and describe how well-thoroughly beaten Hana is."

She sinks her nails on my arm and scowls -.

"Alissa's nails are much sharper than yours; she can even draw blood," I whisper in Klein's ear and chuckle evilly.

"You are a monster," she says -.

"And what are you?" I aks.

"His -," Lina answers for her with a smirk.

After Klein is satisfied, we have another - cuddle-party -.

The little golems are let out and immediately deposit themselves on my lap.

"So, why me?" I ask them.

"You enjoy, touching," Ted says.

"We will touch, to improve your, mood and serve, you better," Suzy says.

"Touching the girls also makes me happy," I say.

They spend a few moments thinking and I could almost hear the gears grinding inside their little heads.

Ted goes to Ciel and Suzy goes to Lina.

Alissa and Klein groan.

"Why them?" Klein asks.

"Only temporari-ly," Ted says.

"We must be, shared," Suzy says.

"Gihih."

"Yeah, they sure are Wolfy's children," Roxanne says with a chuckle.

We go to sleep soon after, but I'm awoken yet again by the Hollys. This time, two of them are squeaking a warning and they are in opposite directions of each other.

A note from Manasong

Hall of Fame of Patrons

The patrons who support Rupegia shall have their names sung by the bards for they deserve the glory and honor. Their names are:

Oracle Maximillian Hübner.

Prince Bradly.

Lord Andrew Meyers.

Lord Hope.

Lord Samuel Lim.

Lord Cody Weigel.

Lord Bill.

Lord Novgarod.

Lord DJ.

Lord Ashadun.

Noble Salty Panda.

Nobleman Lassiter.

Noble D4rk Sheep.

Leave a rating or a review to help me rise to the top or fix my shameful understanding of prose.

Take a look over my blog where all information of the world of Rupegia will be posted.

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Chapter 49: Lit By a Flame - Part 1

There are four men and two women in two groups, both sprinting towards us. They are dressed in the same "ninja"-like black clothes as the invisible assassins that Darean hired.

"Get up! Something is happening!" I yell.

"Whaa… Wolf-…" Roxanne complains in her cutesy voice.

"GET UP!" I yell and no more complaints are raised. The girls immediately notice the seriousness of the situation.

We sleep in our leather armor, so we only have to make some minor adjustments and help Hana put on her metal armor.

While the others prepare themselves, I store the golems inside my "Items" and dart out of the tent.

"Someone's coming!" I yell.

I dart straight to Rande's carriage and burst it open. I see Osaria, Rande, Oura, and Nito all cuddling together naked in a sight very familiar to the one I wake up to everyday. I immediately turn around and yell, "Someone's coming! It's suspicious! Get ready for an ambush!"

I hear them all scramble and I close the door.

Next, I approach the nobles' carriage. There's a guard in front, but even without him, I wouldn't make the same mistake twice. I warn the guard, who turns around and knocks, then yells my information.

The girls start to come out of the tent, so I store it in my "Items."

The gigantic tree to the west of us has a double-helix pattern, just like DNA, which makes for a perfect overlook.

I cast [Telekinesis] on myself and jump. With a few adjustments, I land on the tree a good two dozen meters up. I pull out Ted, Suzy, the crossbows, bolts, and the rest of the rocks.

"Listen to this order. Use these weapons and attack anyone that does not belong to this caravan when I yell 'golems, attack!', understood?" They nod. "Also, try to focus your attacks on the person that I point at after I yell 'golems, focus!', understood?" They nod again.

"Remember: pretend to be normal, unmoving dolls in case someone tries to come up here." With this last point, I jump down from the tree and land in front of the girls.

Rande comes out of the carriage, Oura and Nito trailing behind and hurriedly putting his scale armor on him.

Lord Ricardo bursts out of his carriage with a servant behind him, desperately trying to tie his glossy wooden armor to his body.

"Ryder, report," Ricardo orders.

"Six people, fully clad in dark cloth, are silently sprinting towards us in complete darkness."

"How far?"

"A minute or so before they reach us."

"Then we meet them before they can do anything."

I nod in agreement, but then I freeze. The approaching ninjas suddenly stop and a familiar black circle appears in front of them. A dozen men in metal armor, mages in robes, and archers in leather emerge from each circle.

"Fuck! They just used [Gate] to teleport actual soldiers! From two sides!" I point to the two directions perpendicular to the road.

"Pincer?" Rande asks.

"Yes!"

"We have to split up."

"I can take care of a side on my own, so Rande, Anton, and the nobles can take care of the other side. Split the foot soldiers between us," I say.

"Weeper's nightmare, boy, can you really fight obviously trained soldiers on your own?" Lord Ricardo asks with a glare.

Rande turns to Ricardo and scowls. "He's reliable, I trust him."

Rande's opinion is regarded highly, because after a single glare towards Rande, Ricardo accepts our arrangement. "Fine," he grunts. "I'll send the horsemen away to attack them from behind."

He pulls out an Emergency Ring and approaches his two horsemen, who are getting ready to fight. He gives the Ring to one of them. Then they gallop west, down the road.

Coming towards us are ten spear/sword and shield soldiers, one greatsword user, five mages, four archers. On each side.

We have only ten foot soldiers and a few inexperienced Space mages for each side.

After I tell them the numbers, we all nod solemnly and continue our preparations.

I approach the girls and get close to Klein. "This is the first secret, don't ever tell anyone what I'm about to do," I whisper and she nods glumly.

"Become stronger," I say in the [Godly Language].

Her eyes bulge as her muscles get slightly bigger.

Gify turns on his "massage" and our minds are briefly linked, making each of our hearts burn bright with determination to protect one another.

"Wo-wo-wo-wow!" Klein staggers as she's also included in the link.

"Roxanne, elixirs," I order.

She pulls out one for each of us and we all drink it.

I feel so strong that I believe that I could split a rock with a single slash. This overconfidence is a bad sign; maybe I should have used the [Godly Language] differently.

There's no time for regret. Fortune favors the bold. Fear is the mind-killer. Hesitation is the kiss of death.

I look at Ciel. "[Wind Shield]?"

She activates it for a moment and my view of her becomes blurry. "Ready."

"Good work, Lina."

The little dwarf nods with confidence.

"Aoi, with me, I have a plan." She gives me a toothy smile and jumps up onto my shoulder.

"Alissa, if you get me behind their shields, I can blow them all up," Roxanne says, her eyes have a special glint to them.

"Can't you use [Heart of Fire]?" Alissa asks.

"That would be dangerous to chant in front of the enemy, and I would also be left vulnerable when I land."

"Hop on," Alissa says and changes into a large fox. Roxanne awkwardly mounts Alissa, but maintains her resolve. They dart off to the east, dashing down the road.

We pull out a variety of barricades, which will allow our archers and mages to have some cover that they can switch between. Klein and Laertes stay on top of Rande's carriage, which is reinforced to last through a battle. A sacrificial wagon shields their backs so they won't get shot from the north.

The civilians and the rest of the wagons are taken to the inside of the double-helix tree. I think the elves make them hollow specifically for situations like this.

We face the north and a wagon covers our backs. Rande's carriage is south of that, with Klein and Laertes on top. Ricardo and the others are beyond the carriage to south. To the west, the gigantic tree covers our flank, but our eastern flank is left exposed.

I leave only two Hollys summoned; I need the mana for my spells.

Our magic growth seems to have slowed down as we trained with Kyros' MP training routine, but after we left Rabanara, it stagnated completely since we didn't have enough time to do it at all.

My MP increased by 480 (now 1650) and my "Magic Power" increased by 240 (now 680).

Alissa's MP increased by 405 (now 980) and her "Magic Power" increased by 210 (now 480). She trains the same amount as me, but her affinity with magic seems to be lower than mine.

Roxanne's MP increased by 720 (now 2630) and her "Magic Power" increased by 400 (now 1090). She is the only one of us who did some regular MP training after we left Rabanara.

Hana's MP increased by 310 (now 825) and her "Magic Power" increased by 180 (now 385). Even less growth than Alissa due to her focus on maintaining her sword skills for this job.

Ciel's MP increased by 505 (now 1685) and her "Magic Power" increased by 300 (now 700). She's had more opportunities to fully spend her mana with [Heal], so she experienced better growth.

Lina's MP increased by 430 (now 1100) and her "Magic Power" increased by 220 (now 495). She's working hard on her enchanting, so her MP grew more than normal.

My skills and the girls' are like this:

(There's a new section called "Extra Spells").

Spoiler: Spoiler

Wolf Ryder Skill Report

Physical

Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level
Sword Use | 12+9 | Dodge | 4+5 | Parry | 4+5
Block | 1+8 | Shield Bash | 0+1 | Battlefield Perception | 1+1
Muscle Explosion | 1+1 | Ekrano Style (creator) | 1

Magical

Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level
Sense Mana | 0+6 | Mana Control | 0+14 | Mana Recovery | 6+0
Mana Efficiency | 0+7 | Reduced Mana Cost | 0+7 | Mana Overuse Resistance | 0+3
Fire Magic | 0+4 | Earth Magic | 0+3 | Water Magic | 0+1
Wind Magic | 0+2 | Electric Magic | 6+14 | Light Magic | 2+8
Space Magic | 7+23 | Summoning Magic | 13+24 | Blessing Magic | 8+22
Nature Magic | 3+17 | Conjuring Magic | 0+1 | Spirit Magic | 0+1
Illusion Magic | 0+2 | Golemancy | 0+9 | Redirect Mana (creator) | 3
Sense Soul (creator) | 4 | Godly Language | 30+0

Miscellaneous

Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level
Cooking | 0+4 | Andraste Language | 4+6 | Dismantling | 0+4
Massage | 0+1 | Enhanced Semen Recharge | 0+9

Personal Information

Name | Wolf Ryder | Age | 19 | Race | Human
HP | 100 | MP | 1650 | Magic Power | 680
Level | 24

Stats

Strength | 11 | Endurance | 13 | Dexterity | 11
Speed | 12 | Intelligence | 21 | Wisdom | 16
Willpower | 17 | Charisma | 12 | Piety | 15
Perception | 16 | Sanity | 11+4

Other

Status Effects | NONE | Titles | nickname "Good Luck", Blessed by the Goddess of Knowledge, Golemancer, Scholar of Rabanara

Affiliations

Helios (Fellowship), Alissa (Blood Slave, Fiancee), Hanafuria (Blood Slave, Fiancee), Roxanne Succubus (Fiancee), Lina (Slave/fiancee), Ciel (Fiancee)

Companions | Alissa, Hanafuria, Roxanne Succubus, Ciel, Lina
Crimes | NONE

Alissa Skill Report

Physical

Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level
Sword Use | 9 | Bow Use | 28 | Parry | 4
Dodge | 2 | Sense Presence | 6 | Hide Presence | 4
Enhanced Olfact | 5 | Enhanced Hearing | 3 | Hawk Eyes | 4
Muscle Explosion | 2 | Quiet Steps | 4 | Quiet Action | 2
Enhanced Stamina | 1 | Enhanced Reflexes | 4+1 | Tracking | 2

Magical

Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level
Sense Mana | 1 | Mana Control | 3 | Fire Magic | 1
Light Magic | 1 | Space Magic | 1 | Conjuring Magic | 1
Illusion Magic | 4+6 | Fox Transformation (innate) | 5

Miscellaneous

Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level
Housework | 3 | Cooking | 4 | Cleaning | 2
Washing | 5 | Riding | 2 | Oral Technique | 4
Pain Resistance | 2 | Hand Technique | 2

Personal Information

Name | Alissa | Age | 19 | Race | Fox-Type Wereanimal
HP | 100 | MP | 980 | Magic Power | 480
Level | 31

Stats

Strength | 12 | Endurance | 18 | Dexterity | 22
Speed | 20 | Intelligence | 12 | Wisdom | 14
Willpower | 16 | Charisma | 13 | Piety | 15
Perception | 17 | Sanity | 15

Other

Status Effects | NONE | Titles | Blessing from the Goddess of Love, Blinding Arrows
Affiliations | Wolf Ryder (fiance), Blood Slave (Owner: Wolf Ryder), Helios (Fellowship)
Companions | Wolf Ryder, Roxanne Succubus, Hanafuria, Ciel, Lina
Crimes | NONE
Extra Spells | Ghost Lights (instant), Double Image (instant), Ignorance (instant), Loosen (instant enchantment)

Roxanne Succubus Skill Report

Physical

Skill Name | Level
Dagger Use | 2

Magical

Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level
Sense Mana | 3 | Mana Control | 27 | Reduced Mana Cost | 3
Mana Efficiency | 9 | Mana Overuse Resistance | 1 | Fire Magic | 25
Water Magic | 4+23 | Light Magic | 1 | Space Magic | 8
Conjuring Magic | 5 | Alchemy | 3 | Potion Brewing | 11
Poison Brewing | 2 | Redirect Mana | 1

Miscellaneous

Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level
Housework | 1 | Cooking | 1 | Cleaning | 1
Washing | 1 | Riding | 1

Personal Information

Name | Roxanne Succubus | Age | 21 | Race | Succubus-Type Demon
HP | 100 | MP | 2630 | Magic Power | 1090
Level | 34

Stats

Strength | 9 | Endurance | 9 | Dexterity | 12
Speed | 9 | Intelligence | 18 | Wisdom | 18
Willpower | 14 | Charisma | 15 | Piety | 10
Perception | 11 | Sanity | 12

Other

Status Effects | NONE | Titles | NONE
Affiliations | Wolf Ryder (fiance), Helios (fellowship)
Companions | Wolf Ryder, Alissa, Hanafuria, Ciel, Lina
Crimes | NONE
Extra Spells | Explosion (instant), Melt Skin (instant), Ice Lance (slightly weakened/instant), Heart of Fire

Hanafuria Skill Report

Physical

Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level
Sword Use | 20 | Spear Use | 14 | Bow Use | 9
Two-Handed Sword Use | 9 | Polearm Use | 6 | Dagger Use | 4
Shield Bash | 6 | Block | 8 | Parry | 6
Dodge | 4 | Tatesomu Style | 5 | Muscle Explosion | 4
Battlefield Perception | 2 | Taunt | 3 | Intimidate | 2
Enhanced Reflexes | 2 | Enhanced Stamina | 4 | Enhanced Strength | 2
Enhanced Endurance | 4

Magical

Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level
Sense Mana | 1 | Mana Control | 1 | Fire Magic | 1
Earth Magic | 1 | Light Magic | 1 | Space Magic | 1
Conjuring Magic | 4 | Illusion Magic | 4

Miscellaneous

Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level
Housework | 2 | Cooking | 1 | Cleaning | 1
Washing | 1 | Riding | 3 | Massage | 1
Pain Conversion | 1 | Dismantling | 4 | Oral Technique | 1
Fire Breath (innate) | 5 | Summon Wings (innate) | 3

Personal Information

Name | Hanafuria | Age | 24 | Race | Fire-Type Dragonkin
HP | 150 | MP | 825 | Magic Power | 385
Level | 37

Stats

Strength | 19 | Endurance | 24 | Dexterity | 10
Speed | 13 | Intelligence | 11 | Wisdom | 12
Willpower | 19 | Charisma | 16 | Piety | 11
Perception | 10 | Sanity | 17

Other

Status Effects | NONE | Titles | NONE
Affiliations | Wolf Ryder (fiance), Blood Slave (Owner: Wolf Ryder), Helios (Fellowship)
Companions | Wolf Ryder, Alissa, Roxanne Succubus, Ciel, Lina
Crimes | NONE
Extra Spells | Double Strike (instant enchantment), Double Image (instant), Wind Shield (instant enchantment)

Ciel Skill Report

Physical

Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level
Glaive Use | 15 | Sword Use | 5 | Parry | 8
Dodge | 6 | Block | 4 | Imperial Hasterrum Style | 2
Muscle Explosion | 2 | Battlefield Perception | 1

Magical

Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level
Sense Mana | 2 | Mana Control | 6 | Reduced Mana Cost | 1
Mana Efficiency | 4 | Wind Magic | 2+17 | Fire Magic | 1
Light Magic | 26 | Space Magic | 3 | Conjuring Magic | 1
Diagnosis | 7 | Redirect Mana | 1

Miscellaneous

Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level
First-Aid | 3 | Housework | 3 | Cooking | 2
Cleaning | 2 | Washing | 1 | Riding | 1
Washing | 1 | Riding | 3 | Massage | 1

Personal Information

Name | Ciel | Age | 21 | Race | Human
HP | 100 | MP | 1685 | Magic Power | 700
Level | 33

Stats

Strength | 14 | Endurance | 13 | Dexterity | 17
Speed | 18 | Intelligence | 15 | Wisdom | 19
Willpower | 14 | Charisma | 17 | Piety | 21
Perception | 13 | Sanity | 19

Other

Status Effects | NONE | Titles | NONE
Affiliations | Wolf Ryder (fiance), Helios (Fellowship), Templar Knights (Honorary Member), Temple Priestess (Former Member)
Companions | Wolf Ryder, Alissa, Hanafuria, Roxanne Succubus, Lina
Crimes | NONE
Extra Spells | Wind Storm (slightly weakened/instant), Judgment (weakened), Holy Spirit, Wind Shield (instant enchantment)

Lina Skill Report

Physical

Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level
Hammer Use | 10 | Axe Use | 4 | Throw | 2+2
Parry | 2+5 | Dodge | 2+4 | Block | 1+6
Muscle Explosion | 2 | Shield Bash | 1 | Battlefield Perception | 2
Dwarven Pride Style | 2 | Enhanced Speed | 5+0

Magical

Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level
Sense Mana | 1 | Mana Control | 5</td | Mana Efficiency | 1
Fire Magic | 1 | Earth Magic | 3+7 | Light Magic | 1
Space Magic | 1 | Conjuring Magic | 1 | General Enchanting | 9
Magic Tool Carving | 1

Miscellaneous

Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level
General Blacksmithing | 4 | Sewing | 4 | Housework | 1
Cleaning | 2 | Washing | 1 | Math | 4
Riding | 1 | Stonebody (innate) | 4

Personal Info

Name | Lina | Age | 18 | Race | Dwarf
HP | 100 | MP | 1100 | Magic Power | 495
Level | 24

Stats

Strength | 8 | Endurance | 8 | Dexterity | 13
Speed | 12 | Intelligence | 16 | Wisdom | 13
Willpower | 17 | Charisma | 10 | Piety | 12
Perception | 14 | Sanity | 12

Other

Status Effects | NONE | Titles | NONE
Affiliations | Wolf Ryder (master, fiance), Helios (Fellowship)
Companions | Wolf Ryder, Alissa, Hanafuria, Roxanne Succubus, Ciel
Crimes | NONE
Extra Spells | Manipulate Metal, Double Strike (instant enchantment)

Everyone's [Earth Bullet] hits like a truck now.

Alissa prefers having more points in [Enhanced Reflexes] instead of [Bow Use] because it has better cost-effectiveness. Too much [Bow Use] is useless if you don't have the stats to use the increased skill with the bow.

Lina prefers [Enhanced Speed] so she can keep up with Hana's repositioning and support her better.

Flaming ghosts with cute round eyes appear floating beside the shoulders of the enemy mages.

"Fire mages! Get ready for Fire mages!" I yell.

Suddenly, all twenty men turn into balls of fire and rush towards us at frightening speeds.

"[HEART OF FIRE]! GET WATER MAGIC READY!" I bellow.

I split the ten nervous foot soldiers in two groups, five covering each of our sides. Four mages lower themselves behind the barricades and start to pray, erm, chant.

In the next moment, the balls of fire appear from behind the gigantic trees in the distance, from both the north and the south.

"[Inspire]!" Ciel casts the spell and we all feel courage filling our hearts and spreading through our blood.

That'll have to be enough. There's no time for speeches or calming the men. I barely even had enough time to fasten my armor.

"RELEASE WATER MAGIC!" I hear Lord Ricardo yell.

"[TORRENT]!" I yell the spell to aid me in controlling it.

My jet of water flies towards a ball of fire faster than any other. The ball jerks to the side and nearly gets completely snuffed out. A good chunk of that man's mana just evaporated along with part of his "fire body."

Unfortunately, that's not enough to kill him. He dismisses the spell and rolls along the ground, his metal armor clanking as he tumbles.

Another ball of fire lands in front of him and a metal soldier materializes as cover in front of his fallen comrade. I see the characteristic blurring of [Wind Shield] and try to aim a [Lightning Bolt] at them, but my "target" is being pushed away from the soldier.

"[WIND SHIELD] AND [DEAD ZONE]!" I scream and hear Ento yell the same.

The rest of the balls of fire dodge the [Torrent]s and land very close to us. Eight metal soldiers stand in a line with a good distance between one another, though I can see that there's no way to pass between them due to the enchantments on their shields. A man with a greatsword stands behind the front line. The two stragglers dash at frightening speeds to catch up.

The enemy mages and archers spread out, still completely shielded by the front line, but also blocked from attacking us.

"WHAT DO YOU WANT?!" I bellow.

No response comes from them.

"Alissa, come back," I say through the [Bind].

"Understood."

I have to kill these mages.

Suddenly, the [Wind Shield] wall seems to lower and a barrage of spells and arrows from the enemy come whistling towards us.

The spells are blocked by our shields. A fireball harmlessly dissipates when it approaches my emellanat-lined shield, but the others defending us aren't so lucky, the simple wooden kite shields of the footmen take a battering and a few are already cracking from the explosion concept which was added to the [Fireball]s.

Then the arrows hit the shields. I notice how the arrowhead is barbed and there's a thick package wrapped around the shaft. In the next moment, they explode.

Three foot men are immediately taken out. One has shrapnel in his face and eyes, the other two had their shields crack apart completely and their arms were blown off.

I have to kill everyone!

"DODGE THE ARROWS! Hana…! BREAK THROUGH!" I order.

"Spread your legs! My spear is here to turn you into women!" Hana taunts. Then she summons her wings and charges towards the line of metal soldiers. They intensify their [Wind Shield]s and hold her off in the air, but that's also draining away their mana like water.

Lina casts [Earth Wall] under the feet of the female metal soldier in front of Hana. She rises up above Hana, but keeps control of the [Wind Shield] holding Hana back. Then she loses her balance when the enemy mages dispel Lina's control over the wall and it crumbles beneath her feet.

Hana's spear finds an opening beneath the right armpit of the soldier and she drives her elven spear into her. She yells in pain and they both crash into the greatsword user behind her.

Alissa comes into view and starts to circle northwards, around the spread out archers and mages. Roxanne points her staff at an archer that was aiming at her and his head suddenly explodes.

The two straggling metal soldiers notice Alissa and stop in their tracks, they turn towards her and start charging.

"CHAARGE! MAKE THEM WASTE MANA! GOLEMS ATTAAACK!" I order. I cast [Rush] and cross the opening in their line.

Ciel casts a [Wind Storm] on one of the metal soldiers. The spell doesn't touch him, but it does mess with his [Wind Shield], forcing him to use so much mana that it must be dropping like a waterfall.

Alissa finds a mage taking cover behind a barricade. Roxanne points her staff and the mage's head explodes like a watermelon.

The greatswordsman tries to skewer Hana, but she flies backwards instantly and dodges the attack.

The other metal soldiers try to converge on us, but the footmen, Lina, and Ciel prevent them from turning their backs to us.

Before the wounded metal soldier at the greatswordsman's feet can get up, Hana and I each fire a heavy [Earth Bullet] directly at her face, causing her helmet to cave in and she (seemingly) passes out.

I rush past them and move to the northwest, finding my first target.

A barrage of bolts and a few rocks lands on the enemy archers and mages, forcing them to take cover and ignore me.

I dive across the barricade in front of me and use [Telekinesis] to glide through. My sword slashes downwards, slicing through both fabric and leather like butter, but it doesn't reach the skin.

I use [Telekinesis] to force myself to land a meter behind the enemy mage.

A cute [Fire Spirit] stares at me and adorably coughs out a [Fireball]. It harmlessly dissipates close to my shield and I feel the emellanat get very hot.

"Aoi, crush," I order her with [Bind].

She grows herself into her larger form and both of her arms slam into the back of the mage's head, which then hits a wooden root on the ground and he immediately goes into a decerebrate posture. Aoi slices his throat and with her tail, she slams the Spirit, making it disappear in a puff of smoke. She reduces in size and glides towards my arm.

"GET HIM!" A man yells. I glance at him and see a metal soldier pointing at me.

No, I get you, Mr. Commander.

I feel "death" coming, so I dive again past the barricade and see arrows and [Fireball]s fly over my head.

Hana duels the greatswordsman, she has the advantage of reach, but he has the advantage of having nearly impenetrable armor. Her spear suddenly disappears with a *poof* and she draws her war hammer that was hanging at her waist.

Her arms turn into three and the man luckily parries the right one. A ghostly arm repeats the blow while she swings again and repeats the illusion. This time, the man feels the overwhelming strength of two attacks from a roided-out Hana and goes on the defensive. Hana repeats the combo and keeps pushing him back.

A lobbed arrow lands on top of Osaria's barricade and explodes near her face. She falls down and doesn't get back up.

Fuck!

I turn to Mr. Commander and cast a large [Gravity Crush] so expanded that it even affects the air outside his [Wind Shield] and crushingly pressures down on him. I cast [Rush] and wince in pain as my brain struggles to maintain both spells at once.

Through Holly, I see Alissa get near an enemy archer while aiming for another mage. The archer fires an arrow.

"What? Dodge!" I yell through the [Bind].

"Huh?"

The barbed tips are slightly deflected due to Roxanne's [Wind Armor], but it still lodges itself in her neck, near her collarbone. Suddenly, her skin bursts into flame and a rainbow color flashes as [Rainbow Shield] activates. She shrieks and wheezes while desperately casting [Conjure Water] on herself to put out the flames. Alissa immediately stops in her tracks and doubles-back to help her.

I stop my spells, then I summon the Masked Aberrant. It's smaller than the original, but a murder machine is still a murder machine.

KILL THEM ALL!

I cast [Rush] again and cross the battlefield as fast as I can, aiming to reach Alissa.

Aoi jumps off my shoulder and lands on top of a mage, butchering him over a few seconds.

"RAAAH!" Hana yells in anger, wisps of fire escaping from her mouth. She fires an [Earth Bullet] after each [Double Image], pounding the greatswordsman into the ground while his very resistant armor finally begins to bend from the punishment.

Klein's leg is nearly blown off by an arrow that lands near her, but she continues lobbing arrows. Laertes is luckier and only gets singed.

Osaria is healed by Oura and wakes up, but yells in pain due to the burns on her face.

A mage is crushed instantly by the Aberrant, who turns around and fires another large block of stone at the last mage, then he aims for the straggler metal soldiers.

Alissa finds a safe area behind a large root and deposits Roxanne, who has finally managed to put out the fire, but she's still wheezing and struggling to breathe, with a large hole in her throat still preventing her from speaking.

Alissa desperately pulls out a bunch of HP potions and splashes them on Roxanne's wound, making her choke with the sudden influx of fluids down her airway. The arrow was just ripped out; there was no better way to go about it.

I finally reach Roxanne and immediately cast the strongest [Heal] I can on her neck. My world spins as the mana overuse starts affecting me. I look at her wound and see that it's still a gnarled mess of skin and muscle, continuing to bleed due to the unfinished heal.

Damn! Ciel! Help me!

Tears run down my face as I whimper and scramble through my thoughts, trying to remember how to [Heal] properly.

Redo the skin, the muscles, the bones, the nerves, the veins and arteries. Redo, redo, redo!

I cast another [Heal] and my sight goes completely dark as the overuse intensifies.

I suddenly feel mana coursing along my skin as Alissa casts [Ignorance] on both of us.

"Wha…?"

I suddenly notice through a Holly that the sneaky archer from before has crept his way towards us.

Alissa fires an arrow and dodges. Her arrow narrowly misses the archer while his lands where she just was. I feel a wild amount of mana escape the arrow so I immediately throw myself on top of Roxanne just before the arrow explodes.

Heat and pain hits the side of my face and flank, then my ears start buzzing from the explosion. I grunt as my skin burns and sticks to the padding of my armor.

"[Firestorm]," Roxanne mutters with a hoarse voice.

"AAAAAAAAAAAH!" The man shrieks in a chilling high-pitched voice. He doesn't die quickly and spends many long seconds screaming in pain.

I cast a small [Heal] on my ears.

"AH!" Alissa yells shortly in pain and grimaces.

I can see that Roxanne's wound is now healed, but she looks like she's in a stupor.

I try to rush over to Alissa but I trip since I can only see through the Hollys right now. Her tail is half-burned and her right leg is sizzling while the skin burns. [Rainbow Shield] flashes, reducing the damage to her skin.

I crawl my way towards her and try to grab her leg, only for her to bat my hand away.

"You can use your mana better!" She chastises me.

"I'm blind, overuse," I say weakly. The pain in the side of my body is starting to intensify.

"Shit…"

"I'll use [Redirect Mana]. You and Roxanne get out of here."

"What about the other enemies?"

"Aoi got them and the Aberrant is clearing out the line."

"Aberrant…" She grimaces, then grabs my hand and holds it on her burning skin. "Do it."

I cast another [Heal] and feel my mana drop to dangerously low levels.

"Roxanne?" I turn to her and ask.

"Okay…" She mutters weakly. "I can fight…"

"Go!" I yell to Alissa.

While grimacing heavily, she grabs Roxanne and gives her a piggy-back ride. Then she turns into a fox and dashes away with Roxanne sitting perfectly on her back.

"Ignore me and continue fighting," I tell Aoi through [Bind].

"What?!"

"Trust me."

"Okay!"

That was easy.

There's only three remaining metal soldiers on our side now, so I unsummon the Aberrant and cast [Heal] on myself. The growing pain in my side nearly disappears, but the overuse stacks up again and I lose my hearing.

Suddenly, a ball of fire impacts the overlook where Ted and Suzy are. The two dolls are playing dead while the mage searches the area for the pesky sharpshooter.

Frustrated at finding nothing, he throws a [Fireball] at the crossbows, blowing them all up and throwing Ted and Suzy off the overlook.

He turns around and starts chanting something I have never heard before. Something… evil.

Chants aren't supposed to be chilling, but "hellfire" is the least horrible word he's using.

The mana all over the battlefield goes wild. The soldiers on our side, who were doing a short cheer, suddenly stop. Even the side of the nobles, who are in a difficult battle, stop completely.

All of our mages desperately try to undo the spell, but we are all too far away and the mage is too powerful.

You know what? FUCK YOU!

I sit down and concentrate. I spread my soul far and reach towards the maelstrom of mana that's forming above our camp.

Redirecting mana to myself involves "willing" it to come to me, but what if I will it to do something else? Wait… isn't that like casting a spell? Instead of casting where my body is, I can try to cast it where a part of my soul is.

I have no time left to test this, so the brute-force method it is.

I completely wrap my soul over the maelstrom. I see Roxanne chanting [Heart of Fire], but she'll put herself in a dangerous position if she charges at that mage. Hana is catching her breath, I have to finish this before she tries to attack.

Stop this! I don't want you, I don't need you, you should go away! This mana is a tainted, filthy, disgusting piece of shit! I hate you, I wish you death, I wish you pestilence, I wish you chaos, I wish you pain, I wish you cold, I wish you darkness, I wish you to go to hell!

"And I'm fee~ling good!"

The hit drops and the music gives me goosebumps.

"Ahahahah!" I laugh and fall on my ass.

A bright pink fairy slaps the baddie mage on the cheek with such strength that she rips his jaw off and twists his neck. Then he's sent flying off the overlook.

The wood turns to sand and a huge hole opens up in one side of the helix tree.

The fat man burps towards the sky and lights his own gas on fire. It shoots up fast and reaches the leaves of the trees. The fire quickly consumes the branches, making it rain flaming leaves, which then burn slower. But fire consumes everything, so the flaming rain changes midway into flaming snow.

The men down below yell in pain as the flaming snow lightly sears their skin and immediately fizzles out, leaving a wet welt on each spot. The commoners panic as the double helix tree creaks and buckles, but doesn't come crashing down. The children laugh as the leprechauns all come out of the holes in the tree to gasp and faint in surprise at what has been done to their home.

"Oh no! Don't laugh! Poor lepries!" I gasp and cover my mouth with my hand.

The adorable woodland creatures rush to the battlefield and swarm over the evil men. Their cute, serrated pincers inject venom into the blood of those who dare to struggle.

As fast as it came, the bent reality warps back into its normal shape and the battlefield turns to a standstill again.

"FUCK THAT! I STILL GOT DICKS TO CASTRATE!" Hana taunts while raging and flies towards the front line on the nobles' side. The battle quickly resumes after that.

Wait, what the fuck just happened?

Gih.

Fuck me, did I almost break reality?

Gih.

Raw mana manipulation is really dangerous…

Gih!

Okay, sorry, I…

Anger flares again as a Holly notices a group of fifteen horsemen galloping down the road from the east. They are carrying lances and seem to be armed for battle.

For fuck's sake!

I crawl out from my cover and tumble my way towards the road.

"Alissa, get Roxanne to pull out the flaming oil flasks and bring Lina with you. More enemies are coming from the east," I say through [Bind].

"Understood!"

"And come find me."

A horrible headache starts to pound in my skull. I grit my teeth and let the anger flow through me.

You are all still underestimating me, which is good, but still so damn frustrating.

Alissa appears beside me with Roxanne, who is recovering from her stupor, and Lina on top of her. Roxanne clinks the dangerous flasks and giggles evilly.

We hear the trotting of the horses and soon they appear down the road. The still living metal soldiers on the other side cheer at the sight of them.

Through Alissa's ears, I hear her ask, "What are you going to do?" She seems slightly nervous about my deteriorating mental state.

"Fuck them the only way they deserve."

I can't see, so I cast a very long and wide [Warp Space] where I think they are going to pass through and hold it there. I force the space to be very deep, which makes the rest of my mana rapidly empty out of my body.

Meh, I have enough left.

I unsummon one Holly and exactly what I wanted happens: the horses enter the area of my [Warp Space] and their hooves desperately try to find the ground, only to suddenly discover it when they finally accepted that they were falling into a hole. This makes the first horses immediately crash to the ground, which causes the ones behind them crash onto the first, and a domino effect ensues. Those who try to avoid it and move to the sides, also fall into the warped space and crash on the ground, too.

Once they are all down, I finally dispel the warped space.

"I can't see, so you'll have to do it, Lina."

Roxanne giggles evilly and gives the flasks to my adorable little girl. Mana courses through Lina's body and she hurls the flasks. They perfectly hit the horsemen and splash most of them with the sticky, highly flammable, oil.

After one last giggle, Roxanne casts a spell.

"[Fire Storm]."

A note from Manasong

Hall of Fame of Patrons

The patrons who support Rupegia shall have their names sung by the bards for they deserve the glory and honor. Their names are:

Oracle Maximillian Hübner.

Prince Bradly.

Lord Andrew Meyers.

Lord Hope.

Lord Samuel Lim.

Lord Cody Weigel.

Lord Bill.

Lord Novgarod.

Lord DJ.

Lord Ashadun.

Noble Salty Panda.

Nobleman Lassiter.

Noble D4rk Sheep.

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Chapter 49: Lit By a Flame - Part 2

The oil makes the fire spread instantly and aids the hellfire in consuming the men. Their screams bring the battlefield to a stop as they can only watch in horror while both man and horse become charred corpses before their eyes. The smell of burnt meat had already begun to spread, but now its new strength fills our nostrils with dread.

Once their screams finally cease, Roxanne ends the spell with an angry snarl on her face.

Soft clanking can be heard when the enemies drop their weapons. We have no mana to spare to heal their wounded, so Hana finishes off the dying man in front of her, and an archer is finished off by a grim-faced foot soldier. The surviving count is six metal soldiers, two archers, and three mages.

"Cut off their hands!" Lord Ricardo commands. It seems that all of the enemies know some magic, so it's a risk we just can't take. As a single act of mercy, their hands will be stored inside Ento's [Item Box].

I grab Roxanne's hand and help her off of Alissa, then I carry her like a princess. Lina tries to dismount and dangles her little legs before Alissa lowers herself a little.

"Thanks," Lina says shyly.

I turn to Alissa and say "Get Hana, there's still three spies that we have to deal with."

She nods and darts away.

I summon a small bird and keep it on my shoulder as my eyes and ears. Then I turn around and walk towards Ciel with the help of Lina, who steadies my steps. The Brown Angel is already starting the emergency healing along with Oura.

Little Aoi finally comes back while licking her lips. She [Clean]s the blood from her mouth and crawls up onto my shoulder. She ate an entire mage, something that I only glimpsed through [Bind] and then let her do as she pleased.

"And thanks for that! Humanoids have so much mana in their bodies, they are delicious!" She says inside my head.

"Stop peeping into my thoughts," I chastise her.

"Hehehe, sorry!"

I lay Roxanne on the ground and pull out a sleeping bag, then I pick her up again and gently lay her on top of the bag.

Ciel notices us and hurries towards Roxanne.

"What happened to her?" She asks as she inspects Roxanne's neck.

"She got an enchanted arrow through her throat. I had to use so much mana to heal her that I got hit with overuse."

Ciel turns to me. She notices how my eyes are without focus and then looks at the bird on my shoulder. Then she realizes how bad my overuse is and lets her mouth hang open. "W-well, she's fine now. She only needs a little [Regeneration] later, so I'm going to return to the others."

"I'll go hunt down the last three spies. I'll be back later."

"Please be careful," Ciel says worriedly and gives me a kiss on the cheek.

I nod and crouch to kiss Roxanne, but she throws her arms around me and hugs me tight. Once she's had her fill, she loosens the hug and plants her lips on mine. "Love you," she says with a hoarse voice and a shy smile.

"I love you, too," I say with a pained smile and pat her head.

Stupid, reckless tactic. I should've never allowed her to do that.

"Uhm. Wolfy, I'm going to strip the dead of their armor and collect the shields of the men we killed," Lina says.

"Please do. And get their magic arrows, but be careful with them, I don't want them to explode in your hands," I answer.

"I-I will." She gives me a peck on the lips and walks away.

I meet with Alissa midway and Hana pulls me up, setting me in front of her in a very comforting hug. She smells of blood, but it's likely not hers.

I pull out the [Gate] "scrubber" and turn it on, then we dash towards the north and I motion to the Holly flying above us. She approaches us and I give her the command to scout ahead.

It takes less than a minute for Holly to find the "ninjas" hiding under some form of ghillie suit.

What are they doing…?

I slow down and point out where they are for Hana and Alissa.

"Hana, kill that one; Alissa and Aoi, kill the one over there; the last one we will interrogate," I order.

Hana jumps off of Alissa and flies towards the first.

Suddenly, they all bolt out from below their camouflage and sprint off in three different directions.

Alissa shoots a [Fireball] and Aoi coughs her own fireball at the second ninja, making him tumble to the ground. We catch up to him quickly and Alissa instantly snaps his neck with her jaws. These clearly aren't combat soldiers.

The last one is a woman and we easily gain on her. Hana flies back to us with her emerald sword bloodied.

Suddenly, the woman trips and rolls on the ground. Once she stops, she curls into a fetal position and yells, "Please! Mercy! I surrender! I'll tell you everything!"

Hana jumps on her and ties her arms behind her back with a rope. In only a minute, the woman is completely bound and held with a dagger right over her neck. She stops pleading for mercy and now only whimpers.

I dismount Alissa and she returns to normal. I'm steadied by Alissa while I walk towards the ninja woman. Her clothes are simple, baggy, and pure black. They are made solely for the purpose of soundless movement. She carries no weapons that we can see.

Hana unmasks her and we see golden wavy hair, a freckled, pale oval face, and the pointy, flexible ears of the elves. Very pretty, around Hana's age. She's slender and tall.

"What's your name?" I ask.

"Loria," she answers immediately, her voice wavers with fear. She looks at me oddly as my eyes are not focusing on her.

"Who do you work for?"

"Dawn of Fire mercenary circle of magi," she says without hesitation.

We three look at each other with raised eyebrows.

That Dawn of Fire, the one that stalked Roxanne in the past?

"What were your orders?"

"I-I don't know, I'm only a 'ferry.'" She shifts her eyes and avoids looking me in the eye.

"Make a guess."

"Capture the nobles and the dragons."

"What about the rest?"

"I don't know. They could be spared, Goloria is close enough that they could walk back."

"Didn't you know that I had a 'scrubber'? Why didn't you run before I started hunting for you?"

"We did, but we were hiding underneath an enchanted camouflage! How did you even you find us?!" She asks, completely bewildered.

Hm? We'll have to collect that, then.

I turn to Alissa and she shrugs. "Even I couldn't notice them."

"Well, their heat signatures were obvious to Holly. Anyway, where were you going to teleport the people you kidnapped?"

"Close to Escanso. One of our hideouts."

"Point on this map where you guys have hideouts."

She only knows of two: one close to Escanso, and one close to the Grand Delta of Glorampina to the northwest, near the border of the High Forest.

"Name all the people that work above you."

She starts listing names and Alissa writes them down.

"There's a handsome blonde guy that's mysterious and meets with the old mages all the time. But I don't even know what he does and I've never heard his name."

"Describe him," I say.

"Manly face, scraggly blonde-hair, long beard, sullen and tired eyes, tall and thin body."

"That doesn't sound very handsome," I say with a frown.

"He looks like he's not doing very well, but if he cleans up he would look very handsome, all the women say so." Loria lowers her head in embarrassment.

Is that Darean?

"Do you have any more information about the circle?"

She spouts random facts on how they operate. It's a shady circle that compartmentalizes a lot of its structure, she hears very little about anything outside her department.

"I have nothing else. Please, don't kill me! I'll be your slave or even a Blood Slave, I'll accept any power you want over me. I'm single, you can use me in any way you want and I know how to please men," she begs me with teary eyes.

Blood fills my dick and I get an erection looking at her grovel in this way. The idea of fucking her and taking out my frustrations on her wet pussy makes my head spin with excitement, but also renews my anger at this circle of magi for fucking with me.

This isn't even how slavery works, the empire doesn't allow you to force other people to become slaves.

"Are you okay, Wolfy?" Alissa asks through [Bind], worriedly.

"The frenzy of the battle is clouding my mind."

Anger supersedes my disgusting sadism and rape fantasies, allowing me to regain some of my rationality.

I approach Loria so the girls aren't affected by my [Godly Language] and ask, "Did you ever lie to me?"

"Yes.

"What was the lie?"

"I've sent a small written report about the fight back to my boss… wait, what did you do to me?! I'm sorry! I didn't want you to get angry at me!" Her eyes open wide in fear and tears run along her cheeks.

"Are all your comrades as agreeable as you?"

"No. The foot men, maybe, but the archers and mages are freaks. Ugh, this feels so weird!"

Now that the interrogation is over…

I hold back a tired sigh trying to come out.

To make her my slave would first require her to be judged and officially considered a criminal, then she would be sold as a slave, but no sane slave trader would ever sell a slave to her former enemy.

For her to be judged would first require a thorough investigation, which would likely call for imperial lie detectors. Two nobles and a Lord were attacked so blatantly, after all.

There's just so much that could go wrong for us with this investigation… I'm sorry, Loria.

"Alissa, I still can't see, so I'll use your body," I say through [Bind].

"You can just ask Hana."

"I want to do this myself."

"If you say so… well, I'll always be yours, use me," she says solemnly.

I grab Alissa's "string" and receive her senses as I assume full control of her body.

I sneak closer to the side and silently draw Alissa's dagger. I approach Loria from behind and grab her head, then I shove the dagger in with all of Alissa's strength.

"Geh!" Loria whimpers and then spasms. After a few seconds, she stops moving and dies.

Hana lets Loria lay back with a frown. "What a waste, she was so pretty," she says.

I frown. I dislike seeing her as only a potential sex slave, but I also can't deny Hana's words.

We gather the three corpses, recover the bounty plates for them, and burn them into ash with Hana's fire breath. Then, Hana opens a hole with her [Earth Bullet] and we bury their ashes. This way, nobody will know that we ever met these "ninjas."

Their bounties had no crimes listed, they were legal [Gate] mages.

We find the enchanted camouflage they were using. It's a ghillie suit enchanted with [Ignorance], some other spell that seems to mimic [Hide Presence], and an anti-scent spell. I'll have to research those last two.

We finally return to the caravan and see Ciel finishing up her emergency care, then she starts to heal the stumps of the captured mercenaries. Hana dismounts and Alissa acts as my wheelchair while I direct her through [Bind].

I see Anton laying on top of a sleeping bag with Klein and Krista beside him. He's alive, but his belly is heavily bandaged. Krista is holding a glowing smoky quartz, likely a [Regeneration] magic tool. Klein has a makeshift crutch beside her, her wounded leg is completely covered with bandages and red with blood.

"Klein? How's your father?" I ask as Alissa approaches. I can feel her unease through [Bind].

"He took a flaming arrow in his belly, but he couldn't pull it out properly due to the barbs so it opened a hole in his stomach," Krista answers for her, her face looks grim.

"Ciel said he will live, but… we can't let him wake up," Klein says, before her voice cracks as she starts to sob.

I pull a gnomic [Regeneration] magic tool out of my "Items," then I lean over and offer it to Krista. "Use this one, it's better," I say and hand her the shining green gemstone.

Both of them turn to me with surprised faces. Krista doesn't hesitate any longer and quickly takes the stone from my hand. "Thank you," she says, her voice also starting to crack.

"How's your leg, Klein?" Alissa asks, softly.

She wipes the corner of her eyes and says, "I'm fine, it's already stopped hurting. I can march with crutches… Uh, are your eyes okay, Wolfy?" She finally pays attention to me.

"Blind and deaf from mana overuse, this bird is a replacement for those senses," I say.

"Oh… uhm… thank you for protecting us. The men are talking about how you crushed the fuckers," she grits her teeth, seething with anger as she refers to Dawn of Fire.

"But you fought too, and you sacrificed more than us," I say.

"But you killed many more," she shoots back, grimly.

I stay quiet and just nod, then I notice that Osaria is set down beside Roxanne. The dark elf woman has half her face bandaged, but she still seems rather fine, though she seems like she's high on anesthetics. Roxanne looks at the woman with concern in her eyes and holds a glowing [Regeneration] magic tool over her face.

Rande is beside them. He checks on his mother before he returns to barking orders to the still able-bodied survivors. He has a nasty burn on his shoulder that melted some of his armor. The armor was cut out and the wound was partially healed. There's a piece of cloth wet with red liquid tied down to his shoulder, likely an HP potion.

"Use your [Regeneration] tool on yourself," Alissa says to Klein.

"Oh, right, good idea."

"Wolf!" Rande calls to us and comes marching fast.

"Yes?" I turn to him and he looks at me oddly since I don't look him in the eye. "I'm currently deaf and blind due to mana overuse, so I'm using this summoned bird as my senses for now."

"Oh… well, anyway, I want you, Hanafuria, and Alissa with me while I talk with the nobles," he says, his expression is stern.

"Hm?" Alissa lifts an eyebrow at him.

"A slight show of force and displeasure. Everyone is talking about how you summoned a large monster that killed a dozen enemies by itself. I just want the nobles to sweat a little."

"Sure," I answer.

We find Ento using a [Regeneration] magic tool on one of the men. Silvina is nearby, watching over the new prisoners with an arrow nocked in her ornate green longbow, which looks to be enchanted with three gemstones.

Lord Ricardo chops a hand off with his glossy wooden sword and Oura heals the stump of the man.

"Lord Ricardo!" Rande calls out.

He chops the last hand off and turns to us. His grim eyes and his dark armor makes him look rather frightening, but the flowers in his beard ruin the image.

"Yes?" He asks.

"A quick word," Rande says.

Ento waves and we, Silvina, and Ricardo all converge to him.

Once we form a circle, Rande gives a phony smile. "You three look well," he says.

"We are…" Ricardo says, calmly.

"I don't think I saw them attack you three even once," Rande continues and his smile becomes strained.

"What are you implying?" Ento asks and gives Rande a tired glare.

"What do you think?!" Rande hisses at Ento. "I didn't offer to escort you all just to be dragged into your petty fighting!"

"We didn't expect Lord Este to be so brazen," Ricardo says, still calm.

"The Hands of the Emperor must have scared him too much," Ento says.

"I don't think Dawn of Fire works for him directly," Silvina comments.

"So you know who they are?" Rande asks.

"Those exploding arrows are their specialty."

A handless silver elf man is dragged over to us by one of the nobles' men.

"This is one of their commanders, we will interrogate him," Ricardo says.

"I demand to participate," Rande immediately says and sends me a glance.

"Suit yourself."

We take him far enough away from the caravan that his screams won't bother the rest of the caravan too much.

Ento draws his golden wand and touches the commander's forehead with it.

"Now… you will answer some questions, and if I detect even a hint of a lie, you will suffer, understood?" Ento asks, his tone turns completely emotionless.

The commander glares at Ento. "Fuck y-…"

"[Pain]," Ento casts immediately.

"AAAAAH…!" The commander screams from the top of his lungs.

A long minute passes before Ento stops the spell.

"Again, you will tell no lies, understood?" He asks again without emotion.

The commander chuckles and says, "Fuck it, understood."

"Who do you work for?" Ento asks.

"Star Worshipp-…

"[Pain]."

"AAAAH…! DAWN OF FIRE, I WORK FOR DAWN OF FIRE! PLEASE, STOP!"

But Ento doesn't listen and another full minute of torture passes before the spell ends.

"What was your goal?" Ento continues.

"Capture the nobles, capture the dragons, capture any mage that surrenders, and kill the warriors."

"'Kill the warriors'…?" Rande asks, seething with anger.

"Yeah… anyone with a weapon needed to die."

Lord Ricardo and Silvina look at Rande, and the three frown at each other.

"What about the commoners?" Rande continues.

"Let them go."

"Why kill the warriors, then?"

"I don't know, that's the order that we had. I didn't want any more Wicked among us, so I might have spared those who surrendered."

"Sounds like someone wanted you dead," Ricardo says to Rande.

No, they wanted us dead.

"'More Wicked'?" Silvina questions.

"The fucking mages are insane, most of the artillery archers are like that, too. You can see how burning people to death can push someone over the edge, right?" He looks at us flippantly.

"Why do you work with them, then?" Silvina asks, stern.

"Have to make a living somehow…" He looks down.

"You still chose to kill alongside Wicked," Rande says and spits on the ground. The commander grits his teeth and keeps his head down.

"Did you have any information on us?" Ento continues.

"Yes. Quite a lot, especially that boy," he says and looks at me with anger. "You killed my men, right? None of the second squad seems to have survived."

Rande growls. "Do any of you work with gangs of elven thieves?! With poor villagers that have to turn to stealing to survive?!"

"I-I don't know, I'm just a grunt that keeps his men alive!" He lifts his stumps and glares at us in anger.

"Make a guess," I say, coldly.

"We might." -He shrugs- "Most of our info comes from the clients, so it might have been someone with a grudge who showed us an opportunity to attack. Fucking got my men killed, too, so I hope that fucker gets stabbed by the Captain."

"Do you know that I am a Root Lord serving under Crown Lord Confiel Rincipio?" Ricardo asks.

"Yeah. I guess that the old mages want to cozy up to Lord Este," the commander says with a shrug.

Rande turns his frown to Ricardo. "You are working against Lord Este and you still spent that long in Escanso?"

"We are spies in plain sight. Lord Este would never outright kill us while inside his town, that would spark a war," Ricardo answers calmly.

"But you still dragged us into your petty fighting," Rande scowls at him.

Ento turns to us, his emotionless facade is broken as he looks at Rande with disgust. "We are fighting for a cause. Don't forget that the High Forest will be greatly improved once Lord Este is replaced."

"Tell that to the widows of the men who died today. They never pledged their lives to your cause," Rande shoots back.

"For that, we apologize," Ricardo says and bows lightly. "We will pay for the cost of [Regrowth] and send compensation to the widows of your men."

"That will be expensive," Silvina says with worry.

"If not for them, we would be captured by now," Ricardo says and sends me a glance. Ento also glances at us with gritted teeth.

Ento squeezes more information out of the commander, but compared to my own info, he's hearing a lot of lies. Ento has no way of verifying any of it, so to begin with, the info has dubious veracity at best.

We return to the caravan and the death toll is taken.

On our side, six foot soldiers survived with minimal wounds, two are in grave condition, and two are dead. Of the mages, two survived without wounds, and two died. Those are Space mages, so a lot of perishable goods, like ready to consume food, are left behind after their deaths. The food is distributed among everyone and eaten promptly.

On the nobles' side, two foot soldiers survived with minimal wounds, one is in grave condition and two died. Of the mages, two are in grave condition and two died.

Of the nobles' men, two foot soldiers survived and three died. The two horsemen also died with their horses.

Klein can walk with crutches; Anton is going to be sleeping for a while; Osaria can only walk with assistance because she's as high as a kite; Laertes only had some small burns and got some skin cream to ease the pain; Oura has no wounds.

The wagon on our side is wrecked and the cargo of metals survived, but it will have to be buried nearby and retrieved later. Rande's carriage is still holding strong, though the ceiling now has a hole in it where the arrow that hurt Klein and Laertes went off.

Both carriages are now being used for transporting the wounded. The Nobles' carriage is enchanted with [Warp Space], so it carries most of the wounded.

My wound is now mostly healed, and with an HP potion, the rest of the damage will go away in a few hours. Alissa's wound was fully healed by me and the fur on her tail will regrow with an hour of [Regeneration]. Roxanne is using a small [Regeneration] stone on herself, so her voice will fully come back in another hour. Lina, Hana, and Ciel have no wounds.

Alissa recovered Ted and Suzy for us. They received some light burns, but their stuffing is visible. Apparently, they can control the stuffing like they do with their locomotion, so at least it won't fall out.

Now I have to think of a means of healing them, and apparently neither [Heal] nor [Regeneration] seem to work. Their bodies don't have the elementals' fake mana cells, so they are also unable to heal themselves by using mana.

Lina recovered the metal armor for us. The plates are almost all bent or outright crushed thanks to the Masked Aberrant, so we will have to reforge all this steel if we want it to be of any use to us. The shields are all functional, so we now have a shield enchanted with [Wind Shield] and [Dead Zone] for each of us.

She also recovered a lot of arrows for us. The exploding ones are difficult to aim properly due to their extra weight and thick shafts, so they can only be lobbed with poor accuracy. We still need to properly understand how to use them. The other arrow is a magical design that produces a ridiculous amount of flame and heat. This is the one that hit Roxanne and Anton. It's as easy to use as a normal arrow since the arrowhead is simply enchanted with a crude spell.

"It's just one big fire attuner on a delay. I think they use a different 'code' so it's much more efficient," Lina says.

"'Code'?" I ask.

"It's what we use to visualize the components of the enchantment so we can convert mana that passes through the component more efficiently."

"Okay, you need to explain enchanting for me from the beginning."

Rande offers our horses to the nobles, but they refuse. The wounded are all inside the carriages, so we mount them and start to relax a little. This forced march in the middle of the night will be tiring, but we might reach Goloria by dusk tomorrow.

A note from Manasong

Hall of Fame of Patrons

The patrons who support Rupegia shall have their names sung by the bards for they deserve the glory and honor. Their names are:

Oracle Maximillian Hübner.

Prince Bradly.

Lord Andrew Meyers.

Lord Hope.

Lord Samuel Lim.

Lord Cody Weigel.

Lord Bill.

Lord Novgarod.

Lord DJ.

Lord Ashadun.

Noble Salty Panda.

Nobleman Lassiter.

Noble D4rk Sheep.

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Chapter 49: Lit By a Flame - Part 3

We don't make any gravestones for the dead, but the mages do grow a small memorial for them from the roots of the double helix tree and carve the names of their comrades on it.

We share a minute of silence, watching the pyre burn with the corpses as Roxanne's fire quickly consumes the bodies. With a little help of [Wind Magic], these ashes are buried in a hole, while the ashes from the Dawn of Fire soldiers are left in the open for the wind to scatter.

For the elves, they wish to be buried near a tree, so that they can be a part of it after their deaths. To leave the ashes in the open means they will be spread so thin that their contribution to the High Forest won't be noticed. It's not the worst of fates, but it's still one that's undesirable for most.

"I'll advise for a Spirit mage from the temple to come here, in case any malicious spirits remain," Ciel says, solemnly.

"How are you feeling?" I ask her.

She turns to me and smiles warmly. "I'm fine, how are you feeling?"

"This headache is still killing me."

She pairs her horse with mine and takes my barbute off of me, then she caresses my head with her delicate hands.

"I want some, too," Roxanne says with a weak voice and a cheeky smile.

"Hop on his horse," Ciel says.

Roxanne caresses my head while Ciel caresses Roxanne's.

"You saved me again, Wolfy. Do I get to marry you twice, now?" Roxanne asks with a sultry tone she has to force due to her weak voice.

"We will remarry every year. Let's celebrate our love," I say and she giggles softly. Then she sighs and kisses the top of my head

Her pale, thin fingers run through my hair. Her delicate, loving touch puts my mind at ease and I notice how tense my whole body has been. I stop sharing my sight with the bird and simply sink into the dark abyss of my mind.

But just as the physical tension fades away, the mental guilt comes rushing in. The image of her neck being scorched by the arrow; the sound of her shrieks; the smell of her burnt flesh; the rough texture of her burned skin. I'm tormented by these senses that wrack me with guilt.

"I'm sorry, Roxanne. Allowing you to go with Alissa was too reckless," I say and feel my words almost get stuck in my throat.

"I'm sorry for making you worry," she whispers softly in my ear.

I pull her hand up from my waist and kiss it repeatedly.

Although, I can't say that we will never do that again. We are warriors, risking our lives is our destiny, but next time I'll do better, much better!

"Stop being silly!" Hana exclaims a distance behind us.

"I can still walk!" Klein protests.

"Doesn't mean you have to!"

"You're still bleeding, Klein. Just accept it," Ciel says.

I make the bird look back and see Hana pulling Klein up to her horse, crutches and all.

Klein winces but soon finds a comfortable position sitting side-saddle instead of astride.

Hana hugs her tight and deposits her head on the monkey girl's shoulder. Klein turns to face her and kisses Hana's cheek, then allows herself to be completely enveloped by her embrace and closes her eyes. But Hana doesn't smile, she looks just like me, filled with guilt. She looks at my bird and bites her lip in anxiety.

Half of the footmen are inside the wagons, trying to get some sleep, while the rest are in front of us, marching with stern faces and weapons drawn. The three nobles are in the middle of them, completely solemn. In front of them, the handless mercenaries walk with drooped heads and dead eyes.

The soldiers whisper amongst themselves and glare at the mercenaries with murderous eyes. A single word of a chant and they'll butcher them all. Cutting off the hands of a mage stops most direct spells, but some, like [Heart of Fire], don't need hands for casting them, though they still aid the spell.

If during the day the High Forest is rather dark, things get even gloomier after nightfall. The weak purple glow gives an odd air to the environment. The cute and colorful luminous plants look dangerous and unwelcoming at night.

Tiredness sweeps over us, and Roxanne and I almost fall asleep on our horse.

"Wolfy, you should sleep. You need to recover from the mana overuse," Alissa says.

"I'll hold you and control the horse," Roxanne says and pulls out Gecynd's Christmas wreath that allows her to talk to the horses.

"Okay," I whisper and black out.

Today is the 20th.

I'm awoken by Gify's "massage" and the soft moans of my women.

Wait what…? I said I wouldn't be NTR'd by my own pets…

Gihihih!

But then, I notice that he's only massaging their shoulders. He nibbles my cheek lovingly as an apology.

Gih!

Don't lie. I could feel the love coming through that nibble. You are clearly apologizing for messing with me.

He stops the "massage" only for me.

Noo, meanie!

Gih!

Never!

Giih!

F-fine. But if I apologize, you won't get dinner.

Guh.

He turns on the "massage" again. It was the best decision for both of us.

I can finally see and hear again, so I summon another Holly, two light elementals, and a nature elemental. Then the headache starts up again, so I leave it at that.

The nature elemental turns into vines and wraps herself around the throats of the prisoners. Now there's no way they will be able to cast a spell without being interrupted.

Klein's leg stopped bleeding and recovered some muscle mass, but she will need [Regrow] for any more than that.

Most of the men who lost limbs have had them reattached, but there are still plenty of parts missing, mostly fingers.

Ciel looks horrible; she used [Redirect Mana] twice, so she's suffering from overuse. Alissa hugs her from behind while she sleeps, tenderly caressing Ciel's silky black hair.

Krista hands me a cup of steaming hot tea. "Thank you for your hard work," she says with a strained smile.

"How's Anton?" I ask.

She looks down and smiles shyly. "Still sleeping. Ciel closed the wound, but it still looks nasty. Your elementals might help."

"Yeah, but it'll be slow."

She nods and climbs up onto Rande's carriage, where she's cooking some soup.

The smell soon awakens Ciel and we have a 4 AM meal.

I switch with Roxanne and hold her in my arms while she tries to sleep. I use [Regeneration] on her to complete the recovery of her throat.

The mangled, scarred skin slowly fades away and only her beautiful pale skin remains. She moans cutely from the pleasure my spell gives her.

"Do you want me to heal the scar on your belly, too?" I ask.

Her eyes immediately open wide and she grabs my spell hand. "No!"

"Okay…" I say, feeling a little awkward.

She relaxes in my arms and closes her eyes again. "Sorry, Wolfy, but consider that scar as the symbol of your marriage proposal. It's special, like the ones on your neck and wrist."

"Your skin is perfectly smooth, except for the scar received when we fought together and nearly died. That is what you consider to be the symbol of our marriage?" I ask with a wry smile.

Her horns shine, showing rigidity and sharpness.

"No…" She turns around and sends me an annoyed glare. "You risked your life to save me from death, yet you didn't even try to take advantage of me for that. I just want to keep this as a reminder of what you did and what I should strive to be."

"W-wow…"

That pulled on my heartstrings so hard I'm left speechless.

She nuzzles her head against my shoulder and kisses my neck softly. "Now, let me sleep while I smell your scent…"

Morning finally comes as the purple light fades away and the rainbow of colors is turned back on again. Then a few streaks of sunlight pass down through the leaves and light up the environment even more.

Osaria suddenly walks up beside my horse while using a [Regeneration] magic tool on herself. She seems to have recovered from her burns, though one of her eyes is still cloudy and she's lacking some hair on the burnt side of her head, giving her a rather sexy-punk look.

"Uh… have the red birds taken flight?" Osaria asks me.

I blink twice and stare at her blankly. "What?"

"The birds! The red cawing ones who like to make my ears buzz!" She grabs my boot and looks very annoyed.

Oura suddenly comes out of the carriage and pulls her back.

"I think the anesthetics are still affecting her," Oura says with an apologetic smile.

Osaria rolls her single normal eye and says, "I just wanted to spit at the red birds."

Ciel wakes up and Alissa switches with Lina so that she can help Krista prepare breakfast. But instead of Lina hugging Ciel, she's the one who's hugged like a vertical body pillow.

Sometime later, we stop for breakfast. Taking turns watching the prisoners, we have an energy-rich breakfast full of carbs. Krista pulls out all the cookies she has and spreads them among us, while also giving us another round of not-earl-grey tea.

Rande seems to relax from the permanent frown that he wore since the attack. He now spends his time either close to his mother and talking to her, or glaring at the prisoners.

The three nobles are still very solemn. Some dirty looks are sent their way when they aren't looking, but nobody has the courage to say anything to them. Lord Ricardo has an enchanted suit of armor; he could certainly cut his way through all of the footmen.

After breakfast, I cast [Swift Foot] again and ride with Alissa while I hold [Regeneration] over her half-burnt tail. The skin is fine, but the hairs need to grow out again. There's a way to do it by combining an aspect of [Growth] with [Regeneration], so I try to remember the chant that professor Tanya taught us back at the university.

Not long after we resume our march, we meet a Gatun patrol from Goloria. The stern and disciplined patrolmen seem completely different from the weary and frightened men from the other side of the High Forest.

They approach us cautiously. The sight of so many bound, handless men being escorted by a bunch of wounded, angry soldiers with missing limbs would make anyone become very alert.

"I am Lord Ricardo Lhorido of the small town of Colmela, far to the north of Goloria," the Lord announces with a dignified tone.

The mounted patrol comes closer and analyzes all of us.

"What's the reason for these men to be bound and left handless?" The apparent patrol commander asks. His glossy wooden helmet has a single yellow stripe on the side, differentiating him from the others.

"Barbarians! Kidnappers that aimed to kidnap me and my two other traveling companions, Noblewoman Silvina Airo and Nobleman Ento Raconio."

The commander whispers to one his men and he pulls out an Identification Crystal.

"Forgive me for this, my Lord, but we have to confirm your identity," the commander says and bows deeply.

"No offense taken."

The soldier confirms their identities and the patrol fans out, surrounding the prisoners.

"They are all capable of magic, so the nature elemental wrapped around their necks must stay," Ricardo says and the commander nods.

The commander takes off his helmet and we are greeted by a grizzly man with golden flowing hair that belongs in women's erotica. "I assume you will want an investigation?" He asks.

"Yes."

"Then we shall travel together to Goloria."

The patrol shares their healing supplies, but they don't make much of an impact since Ciel already did most of the work.

Some of the wounded are allowed to ride with the patrols, reducing the weight that the horses pulling the carriages have to bear, which increases our speed.

The patrol takes charge of keeping the prisoners under control, so the three nobles take up the commander's offer and ride Gatuns of their own. Even the chubby Ento looks dignified while riding the huge and long-limbed cat.

The twenty-man patrol separates the soldiers from the prisoners, allowing them to relax more and the tension to decrease.

The soldier that's been friendly with Ciel and Hana comes towards us. "Excuse me, Sir Ryder?" He asks politely.

"Just Wolf is fine," I say.

"Wolf it is, then," the human man says and smiles. "I and the boys would like to pay you all a round at the tavern. We know it's not much, but we would like to thank you for all your hard work."

Another human soldier comes up beside him with a cheeky smile and slings his arm over the first one. "We would've been dead more than three times already if not for you. Just what the fuck is wrong with this forest?"

"Nothing!" Exclaims an elven soldier from behind us, slightly defensive.

"It's too damp, too dark, too smelly, too wild. How have you all not gone crazy from all the Weepers? The creepy-ass goblin shlocks had been haunting us for what, a whole day-cycle?" The second soldier shoots back.

Shlock? The slang shlock?

"Felt like the whole way!" Exclaims a fourth soldier.

The first soldier turns to us and smiles wryly.

"Sure, tomorrow we should be rested, so let's meet up somewhere at night," I say and smile faintly.

"The Prancing Cat!" Suggests an elven soldier.

"Pansy Cat, more like; your sweet water won't get us anywhere!" Complains a human soldier.

"Better than Tatopa piss!"

Lina's Trivia: that's the not-potato.

"We're supposed to get drunk! Not rot our teeth with sugar!"

"If I put alcohol in my piss, would you drink it?"

"Hers, I would," the human soldier points to one of the female elven Space mages.

"And I would charge you a silver per gulp!" The mage yells with a sneer.

"Hey, that's cheap," Hana comments lowly.

"How do you know that?" I turn to her and lift my eyebrows as hard as I can.

"Got offered some coin for that a few times after a certain… 'incident,'" she says with a smirk.

The banter between the men continues on, so I turn to the slightly awkward soldier still walking beside us.

"Sorry, what's your name?" I ask.

"Julien."

"Right, Julien, let's go to the…" I turn to Klein, who's sitting on Hana's lap.

"Blurred Wheel," she says with a soft smile.

"Heyoo! Good one, Klein!" A soldier exclaims.

"That one, it is," Julien says with a smile.

The brown-haired man excuses himself and returns to staying near the few commoners we are protecting.

Most of the men here are quite handsome, so I'll have to keep my guard up when we go there.

Lunch is more lively; the patrolmen mingle with the soldiers quite well and some light alcohol is passed around. Rande, the commander, and the nobles all ignore it, to let the anger of the men be washed away a little by the booze.

"Wolf!" Osaria calls for my attention and comes up to us as we mount the horses again.

"Hey there, bird spitter, did you find the red ones that you wanted?" Roxanne says with a smirk.

Osaria stops and slowly her palm covers her eyes. "Can you please never mention that again?"

"Oh, she's back to normal," Hana says and laughs.

I can see from behind Osaria's hand that her ashamed frown is growing even deeper.

"So, spit slinger, did you find the red ones?"

"I spat at the feet of one of the barbarians, yes," Osaria says with a flat tone.

"Ooh…" Hana now realizes the meaning of Osaria's previous babble.

"Considering how beautiful you are, they might have preferred for you to spit on their faces," I say.

"It might be the last woman they will touch for a while," Alissa says with a bit of poison on her tongue.

"They can still fuck each other even if they become criminal slaves," Hana says.

Alissa and Lina wrinkle their noses at this.

"Well, uh, I have a favor to ask, Wolf," Osaria starts, she sounds serious and even a little shy.

"What is it?" I ask. My heart starts beating faster as I look at her face. It doesn't matter if she's wounded, she's still stunning.

"Can you heal my hair with your [Regeneration]?" She asks with an adorable smile and taps the bald spot where she lost one-third of her hair.

"Sure," I say and look around at the girls.

They all nod, but Roxanne seems to have a dozen emotions racing through her head. Suddenly, she taps my horse's saddle and asks with a strained grin, "Why don't you get up here and he'll heal you along the way?"

Intermission – 15

"DAREAN ARNALD! WHERE ARE MY MEN?!" The grizzly dragonkin lifts me off the floor by my neck and growls, weak flames escaping from his crooked mouth.

"Wait… you've read the… report… right?!" I force out in a hoarse voice as his hand crushes my throat and his claws dig into my skin.

"Yes! Your information got them fucked in the ass! They had more tricks under their robes than you've had cocks up your ass! Now, give me one good reason why I shouldn't kill you right here!" His half-burnt face gets closer to mine and his stinky breath hits me in the face.

"Well, I can still-…"

I focus on my personal [Wind Scythe] gem which was implanted just below my ribs and activate it. A small blade of wind forms and erupts out from inside of me, giving me a small cut as it does. But then the blade grows in size immediately, growing so large that it bisects Captain Hidoi in half from below his armpits.

"Fuck!" His bodyguard tries to duck but gets his forehead split open. The gray sludge of his brain spills down onto the floor when his face hits the ground.

The second bodyguard draws his sword as Captain Hidoi collapses and passes out, his two halves separating as his body collapses. The last bodyguard looks at me with surprise and fear, his eyes watching for every single twitch of my muscles.

"You can go, I won't kill you," I say to the man.

"What the fuck do you think you are doing?! Do you think that you can get out of Escanso alive? Even if you stay, the Archmages will blow up any hole you try to hide in!" He spews, his hand shaking in fear.

I cackle a laugh.

Oh, damn, that really made me sound like a maniac.

I look him in the eye with a manic smile and say, "I'm already dead, but I'll choose where I die. Now go!"

He spits at my feet and walks backward. He finds the door and fumbles, searching for the handle while his eyes still stay locked with mine, then he finally manages to open the door and immediately sprints out.

I hear a crash and chuckle again. The fool even jumped out of the window.

Thanks to Hidoi, I only have one last chance at this…

I sigh and pull out a bounty plate. I dip the corner of it in the pool of Hidoi's blood and watch as the letters form.

Now… how can I get an audience with the Lord…

A note from Manasong

Hall of Fame of Patrons

The patrons who support Rupegia shall have their names sung by the bards for they deserve the glory and honor. Their names are:

Oracle Maximillian Hübner.

Prince Bradly.

Lord Andrew Meyers.

Lord Hope.

Lord Samuel Lim.

Lord Cody Weigel.

Lord Bill.

Lord Novgarod.

Lord DJ.

Lord Ashadun.

Noble Salty Panda.

Nobleman Lassiter.

Noble D4rk Sheep.

Leave a rating or a review to help me rise to the top or fix my shameful understanding of prose.

Take a look over my blog where all information of the world of Rupegia will be posted.

Join the Discord and discuss, or rant, or meme, or try and fight me so your waifu gets more screentime.

Become a Patron and read chapters in advance, or read the side-stories, or leave your mark on the story, or help choose the next artwork or the next side-story.

The Mystery of the Dryads - Teaser

A note from Manasong

This chapter is not required to read to understand the main story, this is only a side-story.

This is a teaser for the patreon-only side stories I'm writing.

Each chapter has 3 parts and the first part of any new storyline I will make public as a teaser.

Like eyes recovering from blurring, I regain clarity of thought and recover from my primeval state. The senses of my physical body, or what remains of it, are slowly reactivated, allowing me to understand my own state.

Partially fused with a tree, I'm in the middle of the process of being re-birthed.

I fused too much. Shouldn't have waited so long to return.

I hear some garbled nonsense, so I focus on reactivating my ears.

Something pokes my breasts and I would physically roll my eyes if I had control over them.

Why do I even want to roll my eyes? Gecynd's quirks must be passing down to me.

I feel a nipple get pinched while the other is licked and sucked by something wet and slippery. My whole body quivers with delight; the re-building made everything so sensitive again.

I'm not disconnected from the Life yet! Let me regain my senses before you ruin my oversensitivity!

I stop trying to reactivate my ears and focus on my mouth.

"Stop…" I manage to force it out.

Pallido stops playing with me after giving me one last pinch on both of my nipples that jolts me with pleasure again.

After waiting several long moments for me to reactivate my functions, Pallido says, "You did it wrong."

"I know my body," I say with a hoarse voice.

I take a look at my soulmate and see his perfect form patiently waiting for me with a smirk on his perfect face. His face is perfectly chiseled and handsome. His perfect skin is light green and textured like moss. His perfect body is more defined than any humanoid. His perfect horse penis is the ideal size for my womb.

He softly plays with my leaf-hair and my temporary oversensitivity almost makes me moan at his touch.

Having enough of being stuck, I start to detach myself from the tree. I separate my essence from the wood and shift both my body and the tree's wood back into real matter. I reform the inner heart of the tree, and the muscles and bones of my body, then I freeze them in time, so that I don't bleed like a gutted animal.

"Well, you still did it wrong. Unless you are infected with something, it shouldn't take this long."

"Is this a competition? Why does the time I take matter?" I ask with a chuckle.

"You missed a cultural exchange."

"Who cares? You are still the best." I shrug and give him a smile.

Pallido's penis twitches in anticipation, but his face is still serious. "And now we have a druid trying to recreate Kaka's work."

My hand slips and my top-heavy body falls forward.

"Unnecessarily complex humanoid bodies…" I shift the inner muscles and bones so I can straighten myself out again without causing more damage. "Okay, WHAT?!"

"Did you not hear it properly?" His face softens, thinking I might not have completely reactivated my hearing.

"I did, I just think it's too sudden!"

"Gecynd," he says and shrugs.

I sigh and roll my eyes.

Nonsensical humanoid reactions.

I regain control of my eyes and look at Pallido, who's smiling wryly. "Did he try to make a connection yet?" I ask and continue separating myself from the tree.

"Nope. He likely has zero idea how to do it, so it's going to take a while."

"So why did Gecynd chose him?"

"Potential and the fact that he has such a pure heart that he would become a dryad too if he knew how."

I almost roll my eyes again. "How boring."

"Eh, he's actually interesting. The way he used [Weaverism] to create a sort of 'frame' of his mind and life lets us predict what he's going to do, it's quite novel."

I stop my separation again. "Hm? How does that even work?"

He lets a shrug escape him. "No idea, I just know that it sort of works. Only Gecynd and Soliana know how, exactly."

"Soliana? The small and yellow one?"

"That same one."

I smile smugly. "You had my attention, but now you have my curiosity."

He lets a shrug escape again. "He did it with just casual banter, from what I've heard. You'll have to ask her if you want to know more."

My smile disappears as I let disappointment escape. "Well… she was always weird."

"I think she's just bored and the humanoid is something new for her. He did give her a very curious trinket to play with, after all."

"Good for her, then. I thought she was going to commit suicide soon."

"Well, I'm surprised she accepted having sex with him in the first place. She seemed tired of it last time I did it with her."

I smile mischievously. "Maybe you are just losing your touch."

He snorts and becomes smug. "I made a dragonkin sleep, don't even try."

I finish separating from the tree and let myself fall into Pallido's arms.

"But you'll never lose your touch with me," I say as I look up to his eyes.

We giggle softly and rub our noses against each other as I let time resume affecting my body. We expose the nerves and the slightest touch sends waves of pleasure to our brains. Much stronger and less messy than a humanoid kiss.

"Now, help me stretch my insides again," I say and his penis instantly goes hard. It hardens so quickly that it smacks my vagina and I savor the feeling.

He aims himself up against my entrance and I make myself wet. When he sees a drop of my juice drip on the tip of his penis, he grabs my waist and pushes me down onto the entire length of his shaft.

Muscles tear and bleed, but I instantly heal them so that my insides conform to the shape of Pallido's penis. I am filled beyond capacity as his penis reaches the end of my womb and pushes further upwards, squishing my organs. My stomach deforms outwards as his penis tries to pierce me from the inside.

The surge of stimulation overloads my brain and I lose control of my entire body. My mouth just hangs open with my tongue out and I drool on Pallido's chest. Just as I start to regain control, he moves again and pulls his penis out in one go. My body goes flaccid again and a long streak of white is left on his shaft from my continuous orgasm.

Then he starts slamming into me with his penis repeatedly. I'm penetrated and used like a toy, forced to orgasm without the ability to say "no" until all I have left in my mind is the pleasure of his penis piercing me.

He grunts and ejaculates. The thick and strong stream pushes my organs back just a little more and causes me to reach the apex of pleasure.

His orgasm continues for a minute. A whole minute of a continuous stream of semen that fills me to capacity in the first second and then simply spills out continuously onto the ground after that.

He finally stops and his penis goes limp, quickly reducing in size and allowing my organs to go back to their original positions.

"Ah… the first time is always the best," I say with a wistful sigh as my mind slowly clears from the clouds of pleasure.

He pulls me forward and we rub our noses again, making us giggle.

"I'll never commit suicide as long as I have you at my side," Pallido says softly and plays with the yellow leaves in my head.

"Same." I lay my head on his chest and close my eyes.

"Oh right, no time to rest. Gecynd said that the harpies are up to something again."

I groan and look at him annoyed. "Can't we rest for a few moments?"

"Nope!" He rubs his nose against mine once.

"I'll demand double the rest time after this."

"Please do, I want it too," he says with a smirk.

"You lazy sapling." I flicker his nose softly and he frowns in pain.

We disentangle and his penis slides out of me with a wet noise. The rest of his semen drips out of me continuously, so I use my womb muscles to clean myself.

"Ready," I say and we both touch the tree that I just re-birthed from.

We spend a little mana and our bodies become ethereal. In this form, we divide our "selves" into a cloud of nearly invisibly small particles and enter the tree. Being so close to the Life allows us to easily rejoin the web and travel through it, feeding ourselves along the way.

My particles are happy to mingle with Pallido's, annoyingly forcing us to focus on our sense of self so we don't merge with one another.

A faint trail of particles crosses with ours and we stop the main cloud, then the Scouting Front of our cloud is absorbed by another dryad traveling through the Life.

Azaleu seems to be in a hurry to deal with unruly lizards trying to take over monster territory and start a war. We feel his cordial and chipper greeting as we are briefly connected when he absorbs our Scouting Front.

We remake the Scouting Front and resume our journey.

A few more times we are stopped by passing Life travelers and a few other times we see travelers waiting for us to pass.

"Busy times," the words are formed in Pallido's mind and sent to me as a few of our particles intermingle.

"Very," I send the words back.

We reach the border of Harpy territory and detach from the Life. We carefully remake our bodies, wary of any Harpy Shaman that could be watching.

In the middle of our reconstruction, Gecynd sends us information. Big constructs are threading through the forest, something new and of unknown origin.

"Oh, so that's why Gecynd sent us here," I say once my voice and hearing are reactivated.

"Secretive as always," Pallido comments.

We take a look around. We are in the Wall of Trees, a rather oppressive atmosphere with Gecynd stealing all the light and inserting a slice of her Life filled with xenophobia into the trees around here.

We ask the trees for information on the Harpies and follow their trail. They are already mobilizing because we managed to sneak deep into Harpy territory before we met the first patrol.

The trees say they haven't absorbed mana from spells, so we sneak past them with ease.

The density of patrols becomes so thick that we have to dig underground to move further. Our bodies morph into a snake-like form with spiral blades to help dig up the soil and a thin wooden plate to encapsulate us. The earth itself moves out of the way for us, but the bits that are too slow are dug up by the blades.

Everything goes without a problem, until we meet a Harpy Shaman.

The lost spirits of dead humanoids, animals, and even the nature spirits seem to be avoiding this place. The trees tell of spells that make them feel "naked," the mark of a Harpy Shaman.

We split up and try to pinpoint her location by measuring the density of spirits. It's a slow process that is slowed even further by being limited to only moving underground.

We meet up and share information. We connect our fingers and sync our minds.

"Rush?" Pallido asks through the connection.

"Rush," I answer with a smile on my sealed lips.

The earth is not fast enough to move out of the way, so we spin our blades so fast that they become a blur and we pick up speed. The surface is visibly disturbed, but no harpy is attentive enough to notice it.

The roots tell us of stinky magic being released and we are now sure we are headed in the right direction.

A faint pulse of mana reaches us, but it's too faint for the Shaman to understand what it sensed. Another, more directed pulse hits us and we decide to surface.

Five armored harpies and an old hag are perched on top of a very annoyed tree. Our target.

The seals around our body are hardened into armor and the blades are turned into weapons. We create javelins and throw them.

The first two harpies are hit in the face before they can take flight. The other three spread out and try to surround us. The shaman tries to start a chant, but the tree she is perched on is pretty happy to aid us by forming a small vine that wraps around the neck of Harpy and chokes her.

Pallido dashes forward while I stay behind and prepare for the two other harpies to come.

I take the water from my body and condense it so much that it turns into ice. I make my armor puffy and sticky, so it becomes a trap for the flying chickens. Then I raise my two javelins like spears and wait for the harpies to strike at the same time.

They fly towards me like arrows, their claws stretched out and ready to slice me.

The first one dodges my javelin and latches on my arm, her claws sink deep into the armor and even cut my skin, but then they get stuck. The other one I manage to skewer with the javelin, and she flails her arms wildly in pain and anger.

I launch the ice spears from my shoulders and both of them pierce through the throats of the harpies, leaving a visible hole behind.

I clean the blood off of the ice spears and will them to return to me. I shudder a little as my body re-hydrates itself.

Pallido simply skewers the last harpy on his javelin like a spear and hurls his last one into the face of the Shaman, killing her. He immediately turns around and sees the small wound on my arm.

"Are you fine?" He asks a little apprehensive.

"Just a scratch."

He nods and smiles faintly.

We reconnect through a finger and dash onward.

Chaos in the ranks of the harpies allows us to get close. There are more Shaman Harpies about, but they are protecting the constructs from sabotage, not espionage, so we are able to see them from a distance.

Tall towers of wood, metal, and rope; large balls of ceramic being filled with something liquid and toxic; and a few odd harpies seemingly reading something from a piece of rough paper.

We find a good observation spot so we can morph our eyes to the ones from a Striker Eagle. Pallido observes the constructs while I observe the papers.

"I didn't know that harpies had engineers," Pallido says.

"Didn't know they could even read," I answer in disbelief.

"That's a war machine, different from the ones they use in Rabanara. Seems to be made to hurl those balls of ceramic."

"Where did they even get the metal, and the paper, and the knowledge to read and write! Let alone make the plans for these constructs, because that's what's written in the papers!" I hiss lowly.

"Coprophagia…" Pallido mutters and surrenders to his instincts, rubbing his temples. "How did they even get that construct here? I don't recognize the wood and the metal is too perfectly made. I'm sure that harpies were never such good woodworkers, miners, or smiths."

"Nothing makes sense." I suppress a sigh.

"I think even Gecynd didn't believe their own senses." Pallido smiles wryly.

I turn to Pallido and stare at him, completely serious. "If Gecynd didn't see this coming, then can we really protect the tamer?"

His smile fades slowly and he turns stern. "We can only wait."

We turn around and dash away before a Shaman can find us.

We reach the Tree of Mana without a problem. Pallido immediately merges with Gecynd to relay the information while I go inside to talk with Alaraste.

I enter unannounced and the brown-haired human suddenly jumps out of her seat. Arlo turns his senses to me and calmly gets up from his chair. Both of them stand straight, then bow respectfully to me.

"Speaker, what a surprise," Arlo says cordially.

I smile at him and merely nod in response after they finish their reverence.

"The harpies are mobilizing and I bring information for Lord Alaraste," I say.

Without another word, the Space mage opens a [Gate] to the meeting room of the castle.

I finish growing my dress made of golden leaves and cross the portal.

A bright room fully carpeted and decorated with many paintings of scenes of victory for the Anara family. The room is just the kind that Gecynd loves to copy: grand, bright, and ornate.

In the middle, there's a table full of armored knights and mages, all looking at me. In the biggest chair, Alaraste is seated. He looks at me with curiosity and a small smile. Haaran and Vanea give me wide smiles, which I return with a small one of my own and a nod.

"To what do we owe this urgent visit, lovely Camassia?" He asks. His special eyes pierce my heart and I have to push away the need to reminisce that starts to cloud my mind.

"Information on the harpies, something for which even we have some problem in understanding all the ramifications," I answer in a cordial, but dignified tone.

A servant brings me a simple chair and I sit between Alaraste and Giana. Both of them lay their hands on top of mine and the newer knights understand the implication.

I retell what I saw and everyone at the table takes quite a long moment before speaking again.

"Those are trebuchets…?" Giana questions in her usual adorable tone.

"I do not know what they are," I answer.

"Your description is detailed enough, those are trebuchets," the elderly Werner says.

"Who would be insane enough to aid the harpies?" Alaraste asks and the coldness in his voice makes the whole table go silent. Even I feel very uncomfortable at his words, both because of the literal meaning and because his own power is seeping into them.

He looks at me with such anger that the Life inside of me trembles. I shake my head and he turns back to the war plans on the table.

"Destroy the trebuchets and steal the plans. Larana, can you do it?" He says, his voice still dripping with power and anger.

The stoic werecat woman nods and says without emotion, "It shall be done."

A note from Manasong

Hall of Fame of Patrons

The patrons who support Rupegia shall have their names sung by the bards for they deserve the glory and honor. Their names are:

Oracle Maximillian Hübner.

Prince Bradly.

Lord Andrew Meyers.

Lord Hope.

Lord Samuel Lim.

Lord Cody Weigel.

Lord Bill.

Lord Novgarod.

Lord DJ.

Lord Ashadun.

Noble Salty Panda.

Nobleman Lassiter.

Noble D4rk Sheep.

Noble Michale Erwin.

Leave a rating or a review to help me rise to the top or fix my shameful understanding of prose.

Take a look over my blog where all information of the world of Rupegia will be posted.

Join the Discord and discuss, or rant, or meme, or try and fight me so your waifu gets more screentime.

Become a Patron and read chapters in advance, or read the side-stories, or leave your mark on the story, or help choose the next artwork or the next side-story.

Chapter 50: Rest - Part 1

A note from Manasong

Attention: to conform to the limit of sexual content allowed in a novel, I've censored this chapter. You can look for the uncensored version here.

The symbol "-" denotes a section that got cut for containing sexual content. Also, if paragraphs seem missing, they were also likely censored in an earlier pass where the symbol wasn't used.

I look at Roxanne questioningly and she merely glances at me with her strained grin and taps the horse again. I shrug and quickly scan the girls to see if anyone is discontent. I notice that they're mostly just confused.

"Lay down," I tell my monster of a horse.

It scoffs in annoyance but obeys. I mount it and extend my hand to Osaria so she can mount it, too. The horse realizes what I'm doing and neighs a mocking laugh.

Osaria sits in front of me while I hold her curvy body at the waist. She's giving off an intoxicating fragrance that reminds me of wine.

"Get up," I tell the horse and I can easily imagine it rolling its eyes as it obeys.

-

I cast [Regeneration] and watch her hair grow back in real-time.

"Oh, this feels so good. Can you use it on my eye, too? It feels stronger than my own [Regeneration] magic tool."

"Sure."

She moans softly and closes her eyes. She holds my arm that's currently wrapped around her waist and caresses the back of my hand. Roxanne watches us with interest and a little anxiety and Lina seems to be quite amused.

Osaria touches her budding hair and sighs, then she looks at Roxanne and says, "You make me wish that I had used one of these." She points to Roxanne's padded coif.

"Yeah, they are kind of good at protecting me, but nibbling Skritters, it looks so drab," Roxanne says pokes with her coif with disinterest.

"Oh, you don't have to tell me. It would look horrible on me, but you look quite good in it."

"Really?" Roxanne smiles and brims with happiness.

"Yes, your outfit doesn't let it stand out. But my clothes…" She grabs a strip of cloth hanging from her arm. "Do not mix well with headgear."

Roxanne becomes absent-minded as happiness clouds her mind.

As we warmly observe the airhead, Osaria notices the scar on my left wrist. "Did you lose your hand once?" She asks, softly.

"Yes. I prefer to keep the scars to remind myself to not grow overconfident," I say.

"Even the cute one on your cheek?" Her tone turns cheeky.

"That one gave me a point in 'Charisma.' I'm not gonna heal it."

"It sure gives you some charm." She tries to get herself more comfortable in her seat -.

"Have you seen the scars on his chest? Those look even manlier," Klein says.

"Oh? You have to show them to me sometime," Osaria says in a sultry tone that turns softer. "But what caused them? Certainly nothing good; you look far more experienced than your face shows."

"That was the Symbol of Hate," Alissa says.

Roxanne cringes and touches her belly.

"I don't think I'm familiar with it," Osaria says.

Alissa recites our battle with the creature.

"My, oh my. You are all full of surprises," Osaria says with a chuckle.

Oh, please say "ara ara."

"I can attest to that," Klein says.

Her silky silver hair starts to bunch up in my hand, allowing me to feel its texture. It's just like Roxanne's or Ciel's, but it's less shiny due to the lack of hair products, a small shame.

She softly guides my hand so I don't hold her waist so strongly anymore and she slowly inches it upwards. She then leans back onto me more and our heads touch.

"If not for Ciel's healing, I would still be unconscious and drowning in anesthetics. I owe both of you quite a lot. You can ask me for anything," she says.

Ciel waves her hand and says, "It's nothing, we are ju-…"

"Anything…?" I ask in a whisper.

Ciel rolls her eyes and shakes her head, but smiles.

"Oh, my, Mr. Ryder. What are you thinking of asking of me, a pure, innocent, and kind widow?" Osaria asks in a sultry tone.

"There are a few things that I want, Osaria. If you wish to truly repay me, surely you can imagine what they are," I answer in the same tone.

Her tone turns overly dramatic. "You save me from pain just to inflict it again?"

I go ham on the cheesy "seducer." "Is it really pain if you will enjoy it thoroughly?"

"You think too highly of yourself."

-

Osaria chuckles. "I'm in danger."

"They are all predators," Klein says.

"No, I'm not," Lina protests and pouts.

Klein looks at Lina with dead, lifeless eyes and says, "You are a trap. You play the adorable little victim, but then you trap us with your eyes, stopping us from leaving and allowing you to suck more from our hearts with your cuteness." Then she shows her tongue.

"Don't even try to deny that one," Ciel says with a knowing look.

Lina puckers lips and shrugs.

"But keep in mind that if you accept me, then you accept everyone," I say and look at Roxanne. "I don't think I'm the main target, after all."

Osaria's smile turns predatory and she looks at Roxanne. "So, I'm to be passed around by everyone?"

"We share everything."

Ciel scans over Osaria's entire body. "All we want is to enjoy one another," she says and I detect a hint of desire.

"I wouldn't have it any other way," Osaria says calmly.

Roxanne's smile strains and she sends me a glance.

-

- Her hair finally reaches its previous length, so I switch back to the standard [Regeneration].

The guards and patrolmen send us the occasional nervous glance, but don't stare for too long.

Rande notices us and guides his horse towards us with a wide smile. "I see you are getting along well," he says.

Osaria smiles -. "Oh yes, he's got a gift with his hands."

He raises an eyebrow and his glacial eyes look at me with interest. "Hm… so will there be some trading?"

"He's got no sheath," Osaria says and Rande shows some displeasure and disappointment. He calmly turns his horse around and clicks his tongue.

Wait, was that a euphemism?

I look at the other girls and they show a little surprise.

-

As our emotions settle, we observe the environment change: the streaks of light become more common, illuminating the dark forest; the dark bark becomes light brown and slowly shifts to light yellow or pure white; grass starts to appear, making the soft, mushy terrain become much more firm; the "tree-knitting" becomes wild, and abstract patterns become much more common.

Suddenly, a prisoner mage starts to chant. The nature elemental squeezes his throat shut but he still forces the spell, creating a vortex of wild mana due to his lack of control.

Silvina draws her bow even without an arrow and it starts to glow. She releases the string and an arrow made of light strikes the head of the prisoner. He yells for a moment but stops as a hole is burned through his skull.

The arrow continues on and starts to burn the earth until Silvina does something with her bow, then it stops glowing and the arrow dissipates into nothing.

The patrol commander clicks his tongue and says, "If any other Wicked wants to run, give us a warning now and we will make your death quick and painless."

The zombie-like prisoners nod weakly and continue to march forward as if nothing happened.

A patrol soldier casts a spell and we don't even stop as the body burns into ashes.

Soon, we start seeing commoners living inside the gigantic trees and the strange sight of our caravan attracts attention.

They start whispering among themselves, so I discreetly put points into [Ingua Language] and [Enhanced Hearing] so that I can hear them. They comment on just about anything and anyone, but Hana seems to be their preferred target with her fiery hair and a personal dragon which make her stand out.

The guards also whisper between themselves. My stunt with the Masked Aberrant was definitely noticed, but they seem to be thinking that I made an earth elemental instead of summoning a real monster. The stone "scales" of the Aberrant give me a plausible excuse for what I did there.

I leave a [Gate] "coordinate" on the road. Unfortunately, I can't hide it due to still riding double with Osaria.

Then we finally reach Goloria.

The road reaches a very wide lake and continues on. We walk along the suspended bridge and look down to see the crystal clear water where plenty of fish and other weird things swim about.

Our view becomes completely surrounded by water and reflected light as we go deeper and deeper. Then the light fades out as the bark shield wall covers the sky. Crystals light the way and reflect off the water, giving us a breathtaking view of uncountable numbers of little dots of light as if the night sky completely surrounded us.

We start to hear the bustling of people as we reach the Pillar: the main entrance to Goloria.

The roads from all directions meet on the Pillar and a very wide spiral takes us upwards. Caravans from all other parts of the High Forest (except the west, where we came from) meet up here and we slowly make our way upwards.

The patrolmen start to bark orders and open a way through the middle of the wide road. The patrol commander whispers something to Lord Ricardo and we follow behind the patrol, effectively cutting the line.

We reach the same familiar killing-corridor, but this time it's pure white and decorated with golden inlays and fake columns, baroque style.

We pass through the huge, thick, heavy gate and are greeted by the clear blue sky. It's about an hour before dusk.

The caravan guards cheer and laugh. They are finally safe after surviving a harrowing encounter.

We are taken to the side of the road and the usual procedures for customs begin.

Rande approaches us and says to his mother, "I'll be going with the nobles. You and Oura take care of the caravan while I'm gone."

"Understood, my love," Osaria says softly and nods.

Then he turns to Klein. "You should stay here, the healers will come to see you and the other wounded soon."

Klein's perks up with excitement and nods repeatedly.

Rande turns to me and continues, "We are staying here for three days. Meet us here on the fourth, same time."

I nod and we dismount. Osaria turns to me and hugs me tight -.

"I would love to continue this, but I have to work. So, how about we meet up tonight and have some dinner?" She says with her usual sultry and happy tone.

I regretfully regain the ability to breathe and glance at Osaria. I notice that her wounded eye is less cloudy and a faint red of her iris can be seen. Then I look over at Klein.

"The Canto Ornado is a good restaurant for dinner," she says and smiles softly, but it quickly fades. "I'm sorry, but I'll stay with my dad tonight."

"I'll come to see you in the morning," I say and give her a kind smile.

Klein's tail undulates faster with excitement and she smiles shyly. "Thank you… ah! Go to the Levesomno Inn, it should satisfy your, uh… preferences." She smiles again and awkwardly scratches her monkey ear.

Osaria seems a little surprised and happy at the fact that we can afford Klein's suggestions.

Hana grabs Klein and gives her a kiss on the lips. "See you tomorrow," she says in a slightly sad tone.

Klein nods and becomes more chipper. "You bet! Tomorrow we should all explore the town!"

I give Klein a gentle kiss too and we start walking away, but then I hurry on with the girls. The sooner we make ourselves scarce, the better. The guards will likely be questioned and the worst thing that could happen to us is if someone gets suspicious and orders us to answer questions under a Seeker of Truth. A single question could fuck us up, which is why most nobles avoid these Agents, but also why they rely on them in times of need.

-

This town was the first settlement ever "grown" by the elves. While the other towns prefer grid planning and simple buildings, Goloria is as creative as it gets with many ramps up and down; patches of levels at different heights; crooked buildings; abstract buildings; random public parks sprinkled everywhere; snaking roads; and labyrinthine urban planning.

It's beautiful, but it's also a pain to navigate around.

Gih!

Snob.

I soon realize that the elves are spying on us again. Without the mist, they have to resort to spying on us behind our backs. Through Holly, I see that they are very curious about the ruined leather on mine and Alissa's pants.

We reach the Levesomno Inn as the sky turns orange. A dark blue circular building dotted with small crystals that give off a faint shine, mimicking the view on the way to the Pillar. The overall shape kind of looks like a huge wooden mushroom with the way the upper floors are bigger than the lower ones.

A proto-butler elf greets us neutrally. The jingle of a few gold coins is enough to make him become very friendly.

We immediately head to the bath. Once we enter, we hear the instantly calming sound of running water. Large glass tubes come out of the ground like huge roots and glow lightly as the water flows through them.

After I lower myself into the water, I'm suddenly lifted up and sandwiched between Roxanne and Hana.

"I'm gonna - both of you, real hard," Hana says with a low growl.

Roxanne smiles mischievously and says, "That's her way of saying 'I love you.'"

"No, that's my way of saying 'I'm gonna fuck both of you.'"

"You are only this aggressive because we got hurt," I say.

"Well, yes."

"And you like to - those you love," Roxanne adds.

"Yes…" Hana pouts in annoyance at us.

"So you know what this means."

"I got worried and now I want some skinship…" Hana admits with a sigh.

"You also looked very guilty when you hugged Klein," I say softly.

"Hard not to, considering how wounded Anton and Klein got."

"It's not solely our fault, Hana. Someone fed information to Dawn of Fire about us, but the main targets were still the nobles," Ciel says.

"I know…" Hana looks down and sighs. "But I still feel really bad. People died, and Klein is not like us; she doesn't want any of that bullshit with nobility or to get involved with our 'destiny.'"

I get an idea. "After this is all done and we become nobles, do you think we can have Klein retire and serve us? Not like, follow us into danger, but just be a guard in our estate or something when we buy one."

Hana lights up. "Oh! She could marry my brother and they could both serve us as something like knights."

I cringe a little. "Wouldn't it be too awkward to have your brother marry a woman I dominated like that?" I ask.

I was preparing myself to take responsibility for my relationship with Klein.

Hana scoffs. "He can suck it if he doesn't like it. We can even train Klein to become his little personal cum extractor, so he won't have anything to complain about."

"If they're happy, then it's fine. Maybe we can even have Wolfy show him how to properly break a woman," Alissa says and smiles.

"Uh… I'm not letting him see any of you naked," I say.

"It doesn't have to be one of us. You can still fuck Klein," Hana says.

I raise my eyebrows as high as they can go. "Fuck his wife in front of him?"

Hana chuckles. "Maybe you can double-team her together. It would give her something to brag over us."

"You are serious?" I turn to Hana so I can look her in the eye.

"What? Is it different on Earth?"

"Yes…"

"Is my fetish that unusual?" Alissa asks innocently.

"Kind of." I cringe again.

"How boring," she says and blows some bubbles.

-

A note from Manasong

Hall of Fame of Patrons

The patrons who support Rupegia shall have their names sung by the bards for they deserve the glory and honor. Their names are:

Oracle Maximillian Hübner.

Prince Bradly.

Lord Andrew Meyers.

Lord Hope.

Lord Samuel Lim.

Lord Cody Weigel.

Lord Bill.

Lord Novgarod.

Lord DJ.

Lord Ashadun.

Noble Salty Panda.

Nobleman Lassiter.

Noble D4rk Sheep.

Noble Michale Erwin.

Leave a rating or a review to help me rise to the top or fix my shameful understanding of prose.

Take a look over my blog where all information of the world of Rupegia will be posted.

Join the Discord and discuss, or rant, or meme, or try and fight me so your waifu gets more screentime.

Become a Patron and read chapters in advance, or read the side-stories, or leave your mark on the story, or help choose the next artwork or the next side-story.

Chapter 50: Rest – Part 2

A note from Manasong

23/01: I'll start standardizing the number of sex scenes so they don't fluctuate wildly anymore and take up too much space from the rest of the story.

Attention: to conform to the limit of sexual content allowed in a novel, I've censored this chapter. You can look for the uncensored version here.

The symbol "-" denotes a section that got cut for containing sexual content. Also, if paragraphs seem missing, they were also likely censored in an earlier pass where the symbol wasn't used.

"W-wait, we have to meet up with Osaria tonight," Roxanne says with a strained smile.

Hana glares at her and growls. "Tomorrow will be worse, then."

I look at Alissa and she grabs Ciel's and Lina's hands. "We'll deal with it, together."

"Good," Hana says in a low growl and the two other girls look each other in the eye.

"I can help!" Aoi says and raises her little claws.

"Even better! Let's see how long an original dragon's endurance lasts." Hana's eyes burn with fire.

"Aoi has already admitted to being under you, in more ways than one, so you should really focus on 'training' her," Roxanne says, completely jumping on her way out of this situation.

Hana rolls her eyes. "Well, I wanted to break you, but if you are that unwilling to have some fun with me, then I'll go for Aoi." Her tone turns dramatic and her mouth distorts in annoyance.

Roxanne pouts. "I love you," she says and Hana's farce melts off of her face.

They kiss while I'm still between them, making me feel like a third wheel.

"So… are we doing it?" I ask once they break apart.

"Gently," Roxanne says and starts to intoxicate me.

I get out of the bath -.

"What got you to change your mind about Osaria?" Ciel asks Roxanne, who immediately turns awkward.

"Well, I… thought that she didn't seem like a bad person, so why not?" Roxanne plays with one of her horns awkwardly.

Lina goes over to the ice box near the bath and pulls out a small yellow drink.

"You are still uncharacteristically uncertain about this." Ciel smiles smugly.

"She's too prideful to admit that she likes Osaria," Alissa says and smirks.

"Of course I like her. She's a fun person," Roxanne protests.

"Ahn! You are breaking, me apart!" Aoi yells.

"Do you want me to stop?" Hana asks.

"No! Harder!"

Now that is a sight…

"Yeah, but you were completely frigid to her flirting," Lina says.

"Even you…" Roxanne glares are Lina who returns a smile for a moment. "I'm rather suspicious of such aggressive flirting, so I didn't give her much attention. But then I saw her wounded and I realized that I couldn't hold back those feelings."

"So, what do you feel about her?" I ask.

Roxanne becomes a little awkward again. "I wouldn't mind if she were to join us."

We sit near the edge of the stone bath; the stone is heated, so it's quite comfortable.

"She seemed to be looking for something casual," Alissa says.

Roxanne shrugs. "It would still be fun to have her around."

We go silent and calmly watch -.

Lina dangles her legs adorably at the edge, splashing the water with her cute little feet. I'm starting to think that some of the things she does are deliberate; she's far too cute for it to all be natural.

I look at Alissa and she smiles mischievously. She goes down on all fours and prowls towards me like a cat. Then she deposits her head on my lap and looks up at me with expectant eyes.

"Have you taught Lina those moves?" I ask.

"I only taught her how to be so cute that you wouldn't ever think of abandoning her," Alissa answers with a smug grin as her tail sways wildly.

"Eh?" Lina turns around and looks at us with uncertainty.

"Seducing Ciel was a nice side-effect of my 'coaching.'"

"I'm not one to complain," Ciel says.

"Me neither," Roxanne adds.

The two stare at each other and a few sparks fly between them.

"Learn to share," Alissa says and the situation calms down again.

Aoi finally collapses and lays on top of the water, using her wide wings to help her float. Hana sends our "little" blue dragon towards us and I cast [Heal] and [Refresh] on both of them.

"We have to be careful to not get hurt," Ciel suddenly says.

"From…?" Alissa looks at her questioningly.

"Klein and Osaria. I know we have been spending too much time with Klein, so much in fact that I think that saying goodbye to her now would be very hard."

"Oh… I didn't think of that…" Hana says and her expression turns pensive.

"That's nothing new," Roxanne comments.

"I just let my desire flow…" Hana ignores the insult and climbs out of the water.

"We all kind of did…" Ciel says with a cringe.

Hana becomes so dejected that I grab her arm and pull her into a hug. Alissa gets out of my lap and hugs her from behind.

"I know you like her as a friend and maybe something more, but we will deal with it, together. I'm also starting to get affected," I say.

"Group hug!" Roxanne exclaims and Aoi jumps out of the water to join in.

Gify turns on his "massage" and the mood becomes a little better.

We get ourselves dressed up in our best clothes and start making our way towards the Canto Ornado. The elven attendant is extremely helpful in giving us directions now that he knows how much money we have.

A few taverns closed off parts of the small roads so that they can have some open-air music and drinking, a custom that starts in the last month and lasts until the Turn of the Wheel.

"The bards are better over here," Hana comments and even Aoi nods.

"They are a little boring, though," Lina says.

We turn to her and look at her oddly.

"There's no party like a dwarven party," she says and smirks, making Hana scoff. "Have you ever actually seen one?" She adds and glares at Hana.

"No, but it's hard to imagine a bunch of cute little dwarves reaching the same level of debauchery as a true dragonkin party."

"I'll show you how cute we can be," Lina says, threateningly.

"I would actually love to see that," I say and we have a light chuckle.

The Canto Ornado takes the baroque pompous architecture and turns it up a notch. The building literally shines due to the gold on the walls. Every single surface is so overly detailed that my eyes get tired just from looking at them for too long.

"Are we sure this isn't one of the emperor's houses?" Roxanne asks.

"The Throne of Ascension isn't covered in gold, that's just a tale," Ciel says in a tired tone.

"If it is, wouldn't that make it even better that we're going to dine in here?" Alissa asks.

"Yes!" Aoi exclaims happily.

"Don't bite the walls," I warn her with a smirk and she puffs a small smoke cloud.

We head inside and get a table, then we wait a little bit for Osaria to arrive while eating some croutons and drinking not-wine as a snack.

"Well, it tastes nice, but this is juice," Roxanne says and Lina nods.

"A few more cups and I bet you'll get drunk," Hana says.

My heart nearly stops when I see Osaria come in -.

She's a work of art.

"You have to take off your sash," Hana says, noticing Ciel's slight frustration.

"Oh, I wish I had more makeup," Alissa casually comments.

"Your wish is my command," I respond without thinking.

"Oh, wait! It's not a necessity," Alissa tries to take it back.

"Too late, we are buying you makeup."

The fragrance of the girls' perfume is overwhelmed for a short time when Osaria comes over to us smelling like a goddess.

"Good evening, Helios," Osaria greets us and smiles sensually.

"H-hello," Lina absentmindedly responds.

I manage to retain enough composure to get up and pull out a chair for her, right between me and Roxanne.

As Osaria sits down, I draw the curtains for our table and we become isolated from the world.

Klein really understands what we like.

We touch the gem on the table and a waitress comes to deliver the menu to us.

As we choose what we're going to eat, Ciel starts up the conversation, "How's the healing? I can see that you recovered your eye."

"We went to the temple and had to call on every priest there to heal us. They even had to use [Mana Transfusion] to feed the healers more mana, such was the cost of healing us all," Osaria answers.

Lina's Trivia: that's [Nature Magic]'s level 35 spell.

"How's Klein?" I ask.

Osaria chuckles. "Literally jumping around, the priestess that healed her almost lost her mind."

"Understandable. Klein, I mean, not the priestess," Hana says with a small smile.

"Then Anton woke up and started doing push-ups. The priest that healed him started groaning out loud."

"Oh, I know what that's like," Ciel says and sends a withering glare to Hana. "It's like people don't want to rest. They only make things worse by exercising right after being healed."

"In this line of work, we trade our health for coin. If we can move, we can fight," Hana says.

Ciel starts to pout. "Maybe you shouldn't literally trade your HP for coin. Take it easy sometimes."

"I'll rest when I'm dead," Hana says.

"That's exactly what Anton said," Osaria says with a smile.

"He's the one who told me that." Hana winks at Osaria.

"I didn't think Anton was that eager to fight again," Alissa says.

"Eager to work, not to fight. He doesn't want to be pitied."

"It's why we love him so much," Osaria says and smiles suggestively.

Hana turns to Osaria and looks at her curiously. "You like to play with fire, don't you? There was a moment when I thought that Krista was going to stab you."

Osaria hides her mischievous smile behind her hand. "I adore Krista, but she's so selfish. A big boy like Anton would benefit from getting more experience."

"Maybe he doesn't need to. Krista might be much more flexible than we give her credit for."

"Well, Klein did inherit her 'endurance' from someone," I say and we three smirk.

I'm pleasantly surprised by the wide selection of pastas with not-tomato sauces. I order a nutty salad mix and a pan-seared minotaur ribeye steak to accompany my sweet and mild taglierine sauce.

"I hardly ever see you drinking," Osaria says to me as she sips her not-wine.

"Imagine if I got into a drunken brawl," I say.

"He would kill me in bed, he nearly does when I ask him to go hard," Hana says.

"If we both got drunk, I could end up dead," Alissa says.

Osaria seems a little impressed. "Clearly you do not go easy on each other."

I smile warmly, "I'm willing to do anything to make them happy. I, myself, don't even enjoy it that much."

"Uh huh." Roxanne says. Ciel and Lina look at me with doubt.

"I see… but you could still drink a little," Osaria says.

I smile bitterly. "I just don't really enjoy drinking."

The conversation switches to clothing after that. I give my humble opinion on my preferences.

Osaria gushes a little and says, "You are all so cute. I wish I had someone that would dress me up like that. Rande isn't much help in that regard, Nito and Oura are too girlish for that, and… my husband never took interest in those things."

"You co~uld dress up for us," Roxanne says, tentatively.

Osaria smiles endearingly but shakes her head softly. "After this is done we might never see each other again. It's best to leave it that way."

"We would rather enjoy ourselves as much as we can before separating," I say.

"You may have the energy for it, but I can't handle anymore of that… pain. Tonight is all we have." She smiles bitterly.

"Then I'll make it worth it."

She sends me a sharp glance. "You'd better."

We finish the main course and call for desert. Osaria lays her hand on my thigh while we wait.

"You know, these cakes are a little too sweet for me, I prefer something a little more… bitter," she says and smiles mischievously.

-

The cake soon disappears and we lay back in our seats, our stomachs filled to the brim -.

"I think it's time for us to go," I say.

-

We walk out of the restaurant in an eye catching procession. Osaria is on one arm and Roxanne is on the other. The other girls are walking closely behind us.

This town is much more lively than the others we've been in, so Hana ends up having to walk in front alongside an earth elemental to keep the way clear for us.

We enter our light blue cozy room and Osaria raises an eyebrow. "Are you all going to sleep here?" She asks.

"Together, always," Aoi says.

"Ara ara, how adorable."

Oof.

Lina is heavily affected too and I see her smile brightly at me.

We make our way through the beds and sit down at the edge.

-

Today is the 21th.

-

Osaria pulls out some spare clothes and tries to stand up, but her legs wobble and she collapses back onto the bed. "Hahaha, I can't walk! We did it so much that I can't even walk!" She exclaims and sighs in satisfaction.

"[Refresh]," Ciel casts.

"[Heal]," I cast.

"Ooh…" Osaria moans -. "Oh my, I've never felt so much pleasure before, and I really needed that. Staying out of town for so long without a proper man beside me isn't easy, you know."

"We are always available," I say with a smirk.

"No thanks, I won't be thinking of sex for a day-cycle, at least."

Hana snorts and says, "Yeah, right."

For the first time in the last two days, I take a look at the girls' stats: Hana leveled up to 38 and increased her [Tatesomu Style] by 1 (now 6); Lina increased her "Sanity" by 1 (now 13); Roxanne increased her "Endurance" by 1 (now 10); and I increased my [Nature Magic] by 1 (now 3+18).

I feel very hungry, so I end up sampling one of everything from the extensive selection of fruits for breakfast.

Alissa glows with happiness and clings to me like glue. I use the [Bind] to guide her so she can feed me properly, which just makes her even happier.

With our bellies full, we stretch and laze around for a little while.

"I think it's time for me to go," Osaria says with a slightly sad tone.

"Oh, okay," Roxanne says, lowly.

"Maybe when we reach Goldport we can repeat this, but don't count on it. You're all so 'energetic' that I'm starting to feel old," Osaria says and smiles wryly.

"We are just abnormal," Ciel says.

"That much was obvious since the first time we met."

Roxanne and I kiss Osaria's hand and she takes her leave.

Once she's gone, Roxanne visibly deflates and looks at her plate with disappointment.

"You liked her that much?" Alissa asks.

"I… uh, I don't think so. I just… feel a little disappointed that she left," Roxanne answers, lowly.

"We always knew that was going to happen," I say.

"Yeah, but… I still feel disappointed. It was good, really good, but I still feel… disappointed." She shrugs in frustration, not able to find the words to express herself.

"I don't think you have a good mindset to fully enjoy casual sex," Ciel says and pats Roxanne's back.

"Yeah, I guess… It does remind me of the time I was alone and had casual partners, but it's not really a pleasant memory…" Roxanne hunches over and awkwardly touches one of her dark horns.

We work a little to cheer her up again and then head to the temple to meet up with Klein.

A note from Manasong

Hall of Fame of Patrons

The patrons who support Rupegia shall have their names sung by the bards for they deserve the glory and honor. Their names are:

Oracle Maximillian Hübner.

Prince Bradly.

Lord Andrew Meyers.

Lord Hope.

Lord Samuel Lim.

Lord Cody Weigel.

Lord Bill.

Lord Novgarod.

Lord DJ.

Lord Ashadun.

Lord D4rk Sheep.

Noble Salty Panda.

Noble Michale Erwin.

Noble Cidant.

Leave a rating or a review to help me rise to the top or fix my shameful understanding of prose.

Take a look over my blog where all information of the world of Rupegia will be posted.

Join the Discord and discuss, or rant, or meme, or try and fight me so your waifu gets more screentime.

Become a Patron and read chapters in advance, or read the side-stories, or leave your mark on the story, or help choose the next artwork or the next side-story.

Chapter 50: Rest – Part 3

As we walk, I notice how the number of halflings running about seems to be even higher here than it was in Escanso. I knew that they were hiring halflings to improve the yields of the farms, but the percentage of halflings here must be close to that of the humans.

The cute, thin little men and women are very similar to dwarves, indeed, but they seem more manic in their behavior, while dwarves are more boisterous. There's always exceptions, like Lina, but they are just that, exceptions.

We end up finding the main road and move east towards the temple. At the center of the town is the castle, a twin of Escanso's castle with a rather similar engraving of the Lord's family: A man with thin eyes and an oval face in the middle, Lord Confiel Rincipio; two similar-looking women with cute eyes and round faces on each side, his wives; below his portrait are two young boys with soft features, one seems to be my this-world-age and with a pompous look, and the other seems slightly softer due to his younger age.

I miss the flag that Rabanara keeps atop its castle. The lack of heraldry here makes me feel like something is missing. The elves don't seem to show heraldry that often; aside from bodyguards and knights, you rarely see someone displaying any sort of house symbol. Sneaking around in the dimly illuminated forest is rather easy, so going around wearing colorful clothes and waving banners doesn't seem very smart most of the time.

The inner ring around the castle is where the nobility lives. Our inn is in the outer ring, so we move east and enter the last ring, the residential area. The number of non-elves drops off drastically as only elves are allowed to buy residences here.

Since we are wearing traditional elven clothing, the residents mostly ignore us, except for those who are spying on us and a few of the more xenophobic elves who give us annoyed looks.

The buildings become small and adorable, like the plump tree-buildings we saw in Goldport. The holes in the middle of the road disappear, and even Lina starts to feel more comfortable and ignore how high above ground we are.

We finally reach the temple and see the familiar four clock towers pointing to the base cardinal directions. After the small gate and the low wall, we see a rather small half-sphere of white marble, the temple proper. The size of it is clearly smaller than Rabanara's, but the priest quarters and orphanage are of the same size.

Right outside the orphanage, we see Klein monkeying around with the children, a sight very similar to the one of my own orange fox. Anton and Krista are sitting on a bench and watching them while leaning on one another. I recognize a few of the human soldiers of the caravan also playing around.

Krista and Anton notice us and wave. Klein stops in the middle of the field and gets hit on her back with a heavy leather ball that they use to play something similar to american football.

Klein quickly recovers from the hit and comes to us, bouncing around. "Look, look! I feel even better than before!" She exclaims happily and stops in front of us. She pushes her short up so we can stare at her athletic-looking leg. The skin looks absolutely perfect, as if she'd never lost a chunk of muscle from the exploding arrow.

"It will be better than before if you give the new flesh time to adapt to your body," Ciel chastises and narrows her eyes at Klein.

"Hehehe, sorry, sorry, but I'm far too happy to stay resting." She scratches her cute monkey ear.

"She's always been like that," Hana says and taps Ciel's shoulder.

Klein comes to me and gives me a quick kiss as a greeting, then Hana; the rest of the girls each receive one, too, but it's a little more awkward. Aoi and Gify get a pat on the head.

Krista and Anton whisper to each other as we come to greet them.

"How are you, big man?" Hana asks with a grin.

"Couldn't be better, I think they even took out some of my fat that was building up! HAH!" Anton answers and laughs out loud once.

"He's trying to convince me that getting wounded was a good thing," Krista says in a tired tone, her tail seems to rubbing her temple in annoyance.

"If we benefited from this whole ordeal, then isn't it a good thing? For us, I mean, not for the people who died," he says and cringes a little.

"Considering how much grief we suffered while you were unconscious, you getting thinner wasn't very beneficial for my soul."

"Oh…" Anton puckers his lips and his permanent frown increases in strength.

"Da' is just being silly," Klein says and shakes her head.

Anton's huge hand sneaks behind Krista's back and grabs her shoulder, pulling her into a much tighter hug than normal. "Just trying to see the golden inlays for what they are," he smiles awkwardly and cringes again.

"So, I'm going to leave now," Klein announces.

Krista smiles wryly and Anton rolls his eyes.

"Don't let yourself get hurt," Krista says with a slightly teasing tone.

"I won-… right, yeah, I'll…" Klein seems to fail at finding a comeback for that. She cringes and decides to let that one go. "Anyway, let's explore the town, hm? We have three days to enjoy it!" She raises her arms to the sky and grins.

"We have to restock and repair some of our equipment, and fit metal armor for Hana, but that can wait until tomorrow," I say.

"Let's go for a boat ride!" Klein suggests.

I look at the girls and they all shrug.

"Sure."

We enter a [Gate] booth and Klein asks for the mage to take us to the Marina do Rei. We exit at the ground floor and the first thing we hear is the soft swish of water.

We are right at the twilight zone, the border where the environment starts to turn dark due to the town's shield bark wall above us. On the dark side, you have a romantic atmosphere with hundreds of little lights tickling your eyes and flower petals floating about; on the other side, you have a much more vibrant and calming view with the colorful plants sticking to the white "knitted" tree-pillars, and visible colorful fish swimming in the surprisingly shallow water.

Ciel seems particularly dazed by the view of the light side.

Klein turns to us with a proud smile as she sees us all admiring the amazing view. "So, which side?" She asks.

"That one," Ciel is the first to respond.

"Are we going to just float around or is something else going to happen?" Hana asks.

"You can take your pick and mix them. There's also dance; music, either calm or upbeat; food; alcohol; elven dancers you can hire; elven, uh, prostitutes; or just get a large one with a comfy bed so you can read or do something… else." She finishes off with a wry smile.

"We could have brought Osaria here," Hana comments with a grin.

"The whole marina would have heard her screams," I say.

"That would make things even better."

"Calm music and food," Ciel interrupts.

"Bed and dark side," Lina suggests. Ciel turns to the gloomy dwarf and pouts. "I want to read the books that Oura lent me," she adds.

"Oh, good idea. I'll join you," Alissa says.

"Eh, might be good for some mana training," Roxanne says.

"Mana training?" Klein looks up with expectancy, smelling another secret of ours.

"Super duper secret stuff. You better not tell anyone about this," Hana answers with a smirk.

"I'll go with Ciel," I say.

"I'll go with Roxanne; I didn't get my fill of cuddling with her yet," Hana says, making Roxanne smile.

"Hana," Aoi chooses.

"Gih," Gify chooses Alissa.

"You'll be telling me all about that training, then," Klein says to Roxanne and smiles mischievously, then she turns to me. "Oh yes, ask for them to take you near the flowers, they smell really good."

We board the gondola and the elven bard at the stern motions for us to sit. "What kind of song would you like to listen to?" She asks.

"Love songs," I immediately answer.

Ciel rolls her eyes. "Corny as always, old man."

"I know you enjoy it." I smirk at her.

She scoffs lightly and turns her head to the side. "You overestimate yourself again."

I poke her ribs and she jumps, making the gravity well around her chest turn chaotic for a moment. She turns to me and glares.

I point my finger to her face and tap her nose twice, then I say, "I saw that smile. You have no [Acting], you can't hide it from my 'Perception.'"

She forces her expression to remain serious. "Your jokes cause me pain and happiness at the same time, but I'm not Hana or Alissa, so I don't enjoy the pain."

"You enjoy being teased."

"I enjoy attention."

"Same thing."

"Only because you are insufferable!" She chuckles as she protests.

I grab her hand and kiss it. "And I love you too."

She melts a little and shakes her head with her eyes closed. "Calm songs only, please," she says with finality in her voice.

The giggling bard nods and turns around to give us some privacy.

"Ready?" The driver at the bow asks us.

"Ready. Take us close enough to the flowers for us to smell them, please," I say.

"As you wish."

The old man opens his arms and I feel mana escape his body. The swishing of the waves around us increases, but then it stops and I feel the gondola start moving. The fingers of the old man wave one after another like waves and I feel the mana coming out of him synchronizing with the movement of each finger. Must be some form of [Weaverism].

The gondola itself also starts to leak some mana and I can see that the net that's tied on the underside is glowing softly. Somehow, the boat moves without making waves or swaying, as if it is perfectly gliding on the surface.

I get myself comfortable on the fake fur seat and give Ciel a hug.

"Normally I'm the one hugging you," she says.

"This time, let me be the bigger spoon."

"What…?"

"We are cuddling, like two spoons on top of each other. The bigger spoon covers the smaller spoon. So, cuddling is also called spooning."

She lays her head on my lap and chuckles. "What a silly symbolism and word to represent it."

"Hey, it sounds cute, at least in my native language." I shrug and start playing with her silky black hair.

We go quiet and enjoy the view as I apply some [Massage] on her scalp.

"There's just so much road ahead," Ciel says wistfully.

"Hm?"

"Until we can retire and grow a family."

"You'll get two children of mine, don't worry."

"What?" She asks amid chuckles.

"I've got it all planned out. With two children each, we will have ten children, not counting how many Aoi wants. We will make enough money to buy a huge estate with enough servants to help us take care of all the children."

"Do you want children or a fellowship?" She asks with an amused tone.

"Well, they might have to follow in our footsteps, so having them team up wouldn't be much of a stretch."

"That sounds oddly adorable." She smiles wryly.

"Why oddly?" I frown at her.

She looks up at me with a cute smile. "Killing monsters is a pretty gruesome job. Doing it with your children sounds like something out of a hero's tale."

I would say fantasy story, but since I'm living in one, I guess that a 'hero's tale' sounds more appropriate.

"But don't people like Anton and Klein live like that?"

"Out of necessity, not because Anton dreamed about it." She cups my cheek tenderly.

I pucker my lips and look at her a little annoyed. She cringes and gives me a phony smile. "Sorry, sorry. I just couldn't let you get too wild with your dreams.

"Okay, mom, I'll keep my dreams very down to Earth."

"That sounded odd." She raises an eyebrow.

"Yeah, it didn't translate that well into Andraste. But anyway, our children will be able to choose their own path, we'll make sure of it."

She lets the pouty face drop and closes her eyes. "That's all I want."

With the white trees, clear water, reflections of the light, and beautiful flowers, it's like we are in a holy garden or something. The care the plants receive is so meticulous that they could be paintings by themselves. There's a skill called [Artistic Arrangement] that I think is responsible for this. It's like the Japanese art of flower arrangement.

The fragrances actually remind me of the sweets and cakes that I've eaten before. They are strong enough to stimulate your senses, but not enough to overwhelm them or make you get sick of it too soon.

Ciel eventually sits up so she can see better. After some light rib poking, she sits on my lap so I can hug her from behind. She might be squishy, but she's a little heavy.

Gih.

If you ever tell her that I thought that, I swear that I will use [Spirit Magic] to hurt you.

Gihihih.

With the bard and the driver not looking at us, I'm allowed a little bit of fondling over the thin fabric of her not-bikini. I wish I had six hands because there's thighs, ass, and boobs to fondle, yet I only have two hands. What a shame.

We eventually ask for the bard to stop a few hours in and silently enjoy the view, entering into a trance-like state. Surprisingly, this is good training for my [Soul Manipulation], allowing me to focus on practicing it with Ciel's chocolate body and the view as good distractions to help test my control.

As lunchtime nears, we eventually end our boat ride and rejoin the other girls. Hana ended up falling asleep, but she practiced her MP training quite a lot; Roxanne taught Klein the technique, who swore to never teach anyone what she learned, even her parents; Lina looks a lot less gloomy while Alissa looks even more refreshed and latches onto my arm, still feeling the glowing happiness from yesterday's adventure; Aoi is adjusting the finishing touches of her [Fly] and mixing it with her own dragon-way of manipulating air for flight; and finally, Gify is Gify.

Gih!

We buy our lunch from the street stalls and eat the skewers as we walk along the busy streets of the Bazaar. We eat a variety of things: from meat skewers, to sweets, like honeyed not-apples, to even skewers of spicy preserved foods paired with cheeses to break up their strong flavors.

We stop in front of a shop that displays Snow Weave nightwear along with live spiders and mantises in cages.

"Uh… this is creepy," I say and the girls nod, except for Lina.

"The bugs are how they make Snow Weave," she says.

"Ooh… Oh! Ew…" I go through a variety of emotions as I learn this new fact.

"So, this is an original store for Snow Weave?" Alissa asks with a wide smile.

"Yes."

Alissa immediately hands me Aoi and Gify, then she pushes all the girls inside the shop.

I could go in too, but I prefer to be surprised later.

"Shouldn't I go, inside, too?" Aoi asks.

The image of Aoi wearing stockings is definitely not sexy.

"Maybe not yet, one day we will figure out clothing for you," I say with an apologetic smile.

"Promise?" She asks in a soft voice. Her eyes suddenly turn round and cute.

"Promise."

Did Alissa teach her that?

The girls come back giggling and we continue our shopping spree.

We eventually pass by a few armorsmiths, so we end up commissioning a full set of armor for Hana with the metal that we acquired.

"'Boobplate' or 'plainplate'?" The burly human smith asks.

"Boob," Hana immediately answers.

He pulls out a few measuring tools that he gives to his young female assistant so she can measure Hana's bust. Then he shows Hana drawings of the designs he can make.

The young girl looks a little miffed at the perfect balloons that Hana has.

The man stares a little while at the bent pieces of metal we gave him to reforge, but accepts them nonetheless. Taking the equipment of the dead is a common occurrence, but knowing what you are holding actually came from a dead person can still be a little chilling.

We find a leather worker who can patch up mine and Alissa's armored trousers. Melted leather is annoying to deal with since the worker will have to cut out a patch and replace the mangled leather and burnt padding.

"Nasty stuff. Lucky you that this padding only burnt and didn't fuse with your leg," the leather worker says.

"Dragon scales and [Blessing Magic] made it much less severe than it could have been."

"Aye."

The word he said was different, but the system still translated it into "aye."

Then we buy more burning oil and Klein visibly shudders when she sees the flasks.

"I would rather never use [Fire Magic] again, but I know that I'll have to get over it," she says.

Roxanne touches her neck and swallows heavily.

Finally, we find some thread and needles that Lina can use to stitch Ted and Suzy back into shape. But I still have to find a way to strengthen their bodies.

Dusk comes, so we go back to the inn and have our bath. Klein is getting frisky, but I'm still a little sore, so she accepts waiting a little while until I'm ready to break her.

After that, we make our way to the Blurred Wheel. A very large inn with very loud music. The architecture is plain, but there are a lot of actual plants used as decoration. I recognize one as being the same golden wheat-like plants found in the Shore of Leaves.

"They are all plants that can be turned into alcohol," Lina says and Hana nods.

Right, it's a theme.

In a corner, thankfully far from most of the loud music, I recognize Julien, Laertes, and the other soldiers and mages from the caravan.

"Yo!" A brown haired man beside Julien waves for us.

"Let's split up a bit," Hana says with a fearsome smile.

They start to make room for all of us to sit together, but Hana seats us in a spread out pattern. Ciel is put beside Julien; Lina is put between the two female elven mages, which are strikingly similar looking; Roxanne is put beside the joker man next to Julien; Hana sits between two of the burliest soldiers; Klein sits beside a soldier who's near Laertes; Alissa is thankfully allowed to sit beside me, a little far away from Laertes.

Is she trying to kill me with jealousy? I'm going to make her asshole bleed if that's her plan…

Might do it anyway just for fun…

"Klein, are your parents coming?" Julien asks in his usual soft voice.

"Nope. Rande is also too tired to drink today and Osaria is…" Her eyes drift over to me.

"Well taken care of, but also too tired to party," I say with a grin.

The men chuckle and holler while the women massage their temples with strained expressions. My girls look half amused, half embarrassed.

Julien clangs his empty ceramic mug at the table and stands up. "Before we start with the debauchery, it's time for us to remind ourselves of our comrades we lost," he says in a gentle tone.

We all stand up and hold a fist over our heart.

"Marcus!" Yells one of the soldiers.

"Hera!" Yells another of the soldiers.

"Thassos!" Yells a third.

"Felicia!" Goes a fourth.

"Vadik!" Exclaims a fifth.

"Orquideo!" And sixth.

"Abava!" Then a seventh.

"Avallach!" A female elven mage nearly chokes on her words.

"Jafari!" The ninth finishes while a tear runs down his cheek.

Julien continues, "The nobles lost most of their men, but I don't really know their names. So we shall thump our chest five times, one for each of the dead."

"Hah!"

"Hah!"

"Hah!"

"Hah!"

"Hah!"

Everyone slams their empty mug on the table and sits down again.

An odd mourning tradition.

"Angel of the alcohol! We need you!" The joker yells to the barmaid.

The elven woman gives him only a small smile, but that's enough to melt his heart.

She starts taking our orders and I request a weak drink.

"You don't drink, Wolf?" Julien asks

"If I get too drunk, things might get dangerous," I answer and smile a little nervously.

"I can believe that. Seeing how fast you summoned that beast of an elemental, you could have just plopped it on top of the fucker's head and killed him instantly!" The joker chimes in.

"Didn't his dragon do something like that and squash a mage?" a soldier asks.

"I saw something, but it was too fast," says another soldier.

"It's a spell we taught her, like [Double Strike], but instead it makes her body bigger," I come up with an excuse.

"Fucking awesome! If that chubby pisser knew that, he would tear his pointy ears off!" The joker exclaims.

"It's so good to see impotent rage like that. If he knew we had an actual Agent of the Tribunal traveling with us, he would become a literal pisser, of himself, that is," a soldier says and the others chuckle.

"Let's thank Lord Ricardo for being an actually good Lord. From what I heard from Rande, he's not pushing back against Rande's demands for compensation," Julien says.

"If he wasn't that good, then the Tribunal would have bankrupted him a long time ago," Lina surprisingly joins in and then slightly reddens as the focus of everyone's gazes lands on her.

Yes, shine! Shine, my beautiful little flower! But shine on my lap…! I want to hug you so much…

"Most of the Lords are fine, it's the pissers of the nobles trying to grab to some power that are the problem," the female elven mage beside Lina says.

"Except for Crown Lord Mavel," the mage on the other side of Lina says.

"Well… thanks to him having bad aim on his pissing, we get this job!" The joker raises his empty mug but quickly clangs it back on the table. "But also thanks to him, bloody pissers made our lives hell for a short while."

Lina's Trivia: bloody pissers means someone who pisses blood, which is likely to be an undead person and the Wicked by extension. Undead pissing blood is a myth, though.

"I hope that attack was enough to make Lord Confiel hunt down the Dawn of Fart," says one of the burly soldiers.

"If he doesn't, then we will, once we become nobles," Hana says with a fearsome smile.

"Oh shit! Are you serious?" The joker asks.

"We are. We'll stay in the High Forest for a while, but after we become nobility, we will hunt down all those who hurt us," I say.

"Rah! Fuck yes! Go get 'em Helios!" A burly soldier yells and slams his mug on the table.

"Go get 'em!" The others repeat.

The drinks come and we finally start killing our livers. Then conversations split and I try to overhear things.

Hana is the usual barbarian: bragging about strength, telling tales of fights, comparing wounds, and just trash-talking each other. Considering how much stronger she is than the other two burly soldiers, she gets ahead in the game quite easily.

Ciel is giving me shivers. Julien is a sweet talker and very subtle with the way he talks, making me unsure if he's actually flirting or just being respectful. I can't even complain about Ciel, she's being perfectly faithful and innocent in her conversation.

Roxanne found a match in banter and instantly hit it off with the joker. The ginger cheery man seems completely harmless, which makes my spidey senses tingle even harder.

Klein talks casually with the men and women. Already familiar with them, she drinks freely and laughs heartily at their jokes. Laertes shyly participates and they seem to somewhat reconcile a bit.

Lina is a little awkward between the two elven beauties. They have little in common, but have taken an interest in her background and how her life as a slave is. The gem in her leather necklace is very visible, and her story might sound tragic at the beginning but it melts the hearts of the beauties.

Suddenly, Alissa picks up my wrist and pulls down the strip of cloth tied to it. "See this one? A dragonkin cut his shield hand off because he tried to create a shield with [Vine Weapon], but the bandit had an emellanat sword!" She tells the story excitedly.

The two elven beauties slowly shift their interest to hearing my story, much to the relief of Lina and the delight of Alissa.

She runs her hand along my cheek. "This scar might look charming, but you should see the ones on his chest!"

"Men and their scars," says one of the elven beauties with an amused sigh.

"Charming, yes, I know," the other says with a wistful sigh.

Alissa starts unbuttoning my shirt to show off the scars.

"Are you interested in them?" I ask Alissa through [Bind].

"Oh, yes. Elven women are incredible and these two are sisters. If we get them both it will be incredible!"

Oh boy.

Alissa's pimping slows down a little as she notices an orange werefox man looking at us. His colors perfectly match Alissa's, which means he might be from her tribe.

I take a good look at his eyes and see only interest, not lewdness, though I know I'm not infallible.

"Oh, the light side is my favorite," I overhear Julien say.

"It is, it gives such a perfect and holy feeling. I'm still feeling fluttered from the experience," Ciel says with a giggle.

"I would love to go there again one day, but I don't really have anyone to go with," Julien continues with a slight cringe.

"I'm sure a man like you could find an interested partner for a romantic boat ride," Ciel says with a disbelieving pout.

His rogue-ish looks with a small stubble and his soft voice are certainly enviable… for other men, because I feel no envy, nope, not a single bit of envy.

"Yeah, but…" He awkwardly agrees with her. "Not one of those people would be special. I miss that connection."

"Oh… I see what you mean." Ciel props up her breasts and then suddenly stops, realizing what she's doing. "I-it's hard to find someone worthy of a connection when so many are only attracted to your l-looks." She blushes a little and Julien awkwardly smiles.

NGHHH! Stop being so cute and awkward around him! That awkward face is mine! All mine!

My stupid inner rant is interrupted as Alissa's and the werefox's stare at each other intensifies.

"I'll go talk to him," Alissa says.

"Sure, I'll watch you," I say. "From the inside too."

She responds by sending a warm feeling of happiness through the bond.

Without Alissa to pimp me up, Lina turns the attention back to herself to save me from my not very effective flirting. I'm too distracted by watching the girls to properly flirt with the elven beauties.

The werefox man is also handsome, which just makes me even more annoyed. I'm not used to having so many sausages around my women, it's too unnerving. Even though I know I need to get better, it won't happen so easily.

Alissa takes a seat beside him and he flashes her a dashing smile.

Seriously! I'm not usually that jealous of Alissa since I trust her so much, but the fact that he's also an orange werefox is making me so uncomfortable!

"Have we met? You seem familiar," Alissa starts the conversation.

You are even starting with a reverse-cheap-flirt.

"I think we have. You are the Chief's daughter that was selected to become a Blood Slave, right?" The man asks, his voice is a little hoarse, instantly reducing his charm by a lot and decreasing the stress in my heart.

"Wow, yes, precisely." Alissa nods repeatedly and her cute ears flop around.

"If I remember well, we hunted some caravan raiders together," the man says and wistfully looks into the distance.

"Oh… wait, were you a mount for a Sharpshooter?"

"Yes."

Alissa smiles wide and her tail sways a little. "I remembered your presence. What a coincidence that we meet again."

"Yeah, what a coincidence." He smiles wryly.

Alissa glances at his mug and sees that he tilted it, exposing a piece of paper below.

"I only came here for a quick drink. It was nice seeing you well, young Tracker, but I must take my leave," the man says and gets up, leaving his nearly empty mug behind.

"Oh, okay, bye…" Alissa says absentmindedly, surprised by the suddenness.

She watches him leave and then immediately turns around. In barely a second, she swipes the piece of paper and discreetly takes a look at it.

"Léonne and Vanea are watching. Both of the Crown Lords have noticed Helios. If you decide to participate, go for the eastern Lord."

"Stay safe, my little Nocturna."

Holy, shit.

A note from Manasong

Hall of Fame of Patrons

The patrons who support Rupegia shall have their names sung by the bards for they deserve the glory and honor. Their names are:

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Lord Bill.

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Lord DJ.

Lord Ashadun.

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Lord Michale Erwin.

Noble Salty Panda.

Noble Cidant.

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Chapter 51: Challenger - Part 1

A note from Manasong

10/02: Chpt49-part 2. Lord Ricardo mentions he's serving under Ortalez Soliar and that's the wrong name, the correct one is Confiel Rincipio. I dunno why I only used Ortalez once and forgot about it, but now I've used Confiel more than Ortalez, so I'm abandoning the latter.

"I expected Mom to keep a spy on us, but to work with Vanea and share information? That's a little surprising," Alissa says through [Bind].

"You expected her to spy on us?" I send her my raised eyebrow through the connection.

"If she didn't, Dad would end up interfering with our lives."

She gets up and walks back to the table.

"Should we be concerned about that?"

"If he did show up, then I would be very angry."

"Hm… when you become my wife in writing, will we be able to use your connection to the Low Forest?"

She sits down and goes back to hugging my arm lovingly.

"Certainly. Mom rules the Forest with an iron grip. At the very least, we will be safe from Katasko over there."

"I'm tired of being ambushed, so I have no intention to hide… but the Forest will be a good starting point. And there's also Crown Lord Confiel…"

"Allying ourselves with someone that Vanea trusts seems suspicious, but if Mom is also advising us to do it, then I trust her."

"Oh yeah, are you sure this message is legitimate?"

"Only Mom has ever called me Nocturna."

I felt no hesitation from her, so I'll trust her judgment.

The message had a very sobering effect on me, allowing me to easily overcome my stupid jealousy. Not that it went away, it just became much more manageable.

"Say, Klein, when are you going to tell us your fellowship's name?" The joker teases her.

She rolls her eyes and groans. "Why would I tell you that? You are just going to make fun of me."

"Well, yes, but we will all also have a lot of fun with it, so it's a net benefit for us all," the joker answers with a smirk.

"Wow, didn't expect you to know what a net benefit is," Klein shoots back.

"I know very well how to balance my skills and soul potential." He gives her a phony smile.

"She didn't even tell us what it is," Roxanne comments with feigned offense.

Klein scoffs. "You are worse than Lotopios. I would have to listen to your teasing every day if I told you."

"Damn, is it really that bad?" I ask.

Klein becomes a little shy and awkward. "Well, no, but…"

"Everyone wants to know," Laertes chimes in and smirks. I see his fluffy tail sway softly.

"Oh come on, Klein. I'll smack anyone who makes too much fun of you," Hana says with a smirk.

"It's only going to get worse if you don't say it," Roxanne piles on.

The entire table starts to pay attention to her and even Aoi and Gify become interested.

Klein covers her eyes with her brown tail and groans. "Fine. The name is 'No Defeat.'"

The table goes silent. I close my eyes and exhale a long sigh.

That's a pun in Andraste made to sound like "no eyes." The system translated a goddamn dad joke.

"BAHAHAHA!" Hana holds her stomach as she laughs. "That's perfect! I knew Anton had a hand in that!"

"You only need a dick and you would be a perfect 'dad,'" I say.

The joker chuckles and looks at his own empty mug. "Okay, I need two more mugs so I can properly laugh at this. Angel of the alcohol! Bring me salvation!"

"My condolences," Laertes says and reaches over the give Klein's shoulder a squeeze.

Julien and Ciel laugh softly and look around at the others. "What? It's funny," Julien defends himself while the others send them glances.

Alissa wordlessly moves on and continues pimping me to the elven sisters.

Eventually, the reality-bending experiment I caused gets mentioned. Nobody knows how that happened and they think that the mage got interrupted by an arrow or something and then got so scared that he completely botched the spell.

When Hana starts singing with her two new friends, we decide that it's time to leave. Not because she's drunk, she's only just starting, but because everyone else is.

Hana carries the drunk Klein while also giving a piggy-back ride to a very chipper Roxanne.

"I'm not a horse, you know," Hana says with a frown.

"Yah! Yah!" Roxanne slaps Hana's ass twice.

"I'm gonna throw you off!" Hana jumps once and kicks the air backward like a bucking horse.

"Hahaha, [Riding] is taking effect!"

We reach our inn and climb the spiral stairs to our rooms. The architecture is quite novel, there's a single circular corridor that we walk along to get to our almost pizza-slice-shaped room.

Ciel casts [Refresh] on the girls so we can relax.

"Oh, the sheets smell so nice," Alissa says and rubs her face on the bed.

Klein snorts and looks at Alissa oddly.

"Yesterday, Osaria and Roxanne drained Wolfy so much that the room was starting to smell a little bad," Ciel says.

"I thought it was odd that you were too tired to play around," Klein says with raised eyebrows.

"You girls are making me feel like I'm not even a humanoid anymore," I say and awkwardly scratch my neck.

Alissa pulls my hand and kisses the spot I was scratching.

"You are a humanoid, but you are not 'normal,'" she says and continues kissing.

It's too late for training, so I give Klein a little of my attention and we go to sleep.

Today is the 22nd.

Lina wakes me up and Ciel holds her hair for her while she warmly watches her little girl milk me.

I feel recovered today, so the girls will resume having their needs fulfilled.

Hana gained the title "One Thousand Strikes."

"The investigators must have spread the details of our battle with Dawn of Fire," Lina says.

"Hm…" Hana crosses her arms, squishing her balloons, and stares at nothing, likely her own "Status" screen. "I don't really feel like it's cringe-worthy, I love this title. 'Hana of the One Thousand Strikes.'" Her eyes look out of the window and she smiles fearsomely.

"When am I getting a title too?" Roxanne asks.

Lina and Ciel frown, disliking the way things are going.

"'Roxanne of the Finger of Death,'" Hana says and they smirk at each other.

"'Ciel of the Angelic Touch,'" Roxanne says and Ciel looks very conflicted.

"'Lina of the Evil Eyes,'" Alissa says and Lina looks horrified.

"W-why do you think my eyes look 'evil'?" She questions.

"Your [Cursing Magic] can be done with just a look. That's slightly more frightening than Roxanne's ability."

Lina frowns. "That still doesn't make them 'evil.'"

"It makes you sound more threatening. Just accept it," Hana says.

"We don't have to. It's not like we are getting these titles anytime soon," Ciel says.

"If I stick around I might get an embarrassing title too," Klein says with a smirk.

Hana's scales flicker in annoyance.

As we eat our dinner, a delightful pitter-patter massages my ears. Rain.

"Well, this is annoying," Klein says as she looks out the window.

"What?" Lina asks.

"What, what?" Klein returns the question.

"What's annoying? The rain?"

"Yes! I wanted to practice archery in the sun." Klein pouts.

"Hm… this is a perfect day to work. Rain helps me concentrate," Lina says a little shyly.

Klein approaches Lina and the closeness of their faces makes my little girl blush. "Don't dwarves usually live underground?"

"I lived on the surface. It's quite dry, so the rain was always a good thing. We had good acoustics so the rain made a calming hum when it hit the roof of my house."

"Ooh…" Klein moans in understanding.

"I want to visit the Academy's library, today is a good day for reading," I say.

Lina's eyes gleam but deflate shortly after. "I want to fix Ted and Suzy, and enchant all our weapons with [Double Strike]."

"Can you do it all in the morning? We can go in the afternoon."

"Yes!" She nods energetically.

I pat her head and turn to the other girls. "Right. There's some new information I have to share with you all, but first, I have another secret to tell Klein."

"Ooh…" She moans in wonder again.

"I have special abilities, like a Hero of a story," I say.

Klein's hands hit her cheeks with a smack and her mouth hangs open. "OH! Now it all makes sense!"

"So, you understand why we want to become nobles? We want to grow in power and standing while also slowly making connections."

Klein nods repeatedly, too overwhelmed with excitement to speak.

"This means that we will have a 'Hero's destiny,' so our lives won't be easy from now on," Ciel says.

Klein's excitement disappears like a popped balloon and her tail hits the ground. "Oooh…"

"It's not the kind of life that you want, right?" Ciel asks softly.

"Yeah… I… I think I'm like my dad. This job is something I do for a living, not because I like it."

"If you end up becoming our knight, we won't send you off to do dangerous things," Hana says.

Klein crosses her arms and frowns. As she thinks, her frowns deeper so much that she starts to resemble Anton.

"If I become your knight, will you… will you approve of me and Hermann?"

"I was never against it," Hana says calmly.

Klein thinks for a while and says, "It feels like I'm asking for charity. You are going to go out to fight while I stay behind and only get the easy jobs?"

Hana shrugs. "I don't think I'll ever send my brother out to die, but I also want him to grow, so it's not like we are going to be sheltering you."

She bites her lip and walks over to Hana's chair to give her a hug. Both of them are naked, of course. "I'll agree to be your knight, but I won't be a mere decoration. I'll work hard to show that I've earned the position."

Hana smirks and pulls Klein onto her lap. "If that's what you wish, I'll accept it." Then they kiss.

"Awn…" Ciel moans and Roxanne sniffs.

"Why do you dislike Wolfy's, destiny?" Aoi asks.

Her voice is improving.

"I don't think I'm ready for something like this," Klein answers.

"What is 'this'?"

"Well, in the stories, if you involve yourself too much with the Hero, you get responsibilities that you never asked for. Like saving the Hero when he's in trouble or helping lead people who flock to the hero."

"Isn't becoming a knight, 'involving too much'?" Aoi tilts her head.

"Maybe. But it's enough responsibility that I think it's worth it. Staying close to Hana and Hermann is all I want." She shrugs and smiles bitterly.

"And Mimi?" Hana asks and raises an eyebrow.

"Y-yeah, her too." Klein smiles wryly.

"Now that everything is said and done, let me tell you who Alissa talked to yesterday," I say and retell the encounter with the informant.

Lina nods her head along and says, "This is good. Even though Alissa is a Blood Slave, Léonne seems to want to keep a connection."

"But why can't she interfere?" Roxanne asks.

"It's the contract with Rabanara. I belong to Wolfy, nothing more, nothing less," Alissa says.

"Hard to believe any ruler of the Misty Low Forest would 'give' their children away so easily." Roxanne frowns.

"This is why any 'contact' is prohibited. It discourages them from even trying to interfere."

"Ooh. So you are going to live in the Misty Low Forest?" Klein asks.

"Possibly," I say.

"Anyway. Do you really want to get involved in this struggle between the two Crown Lords, Wolfy?" Ciel asks.

"Not sure. I know the eastern Lord has the advantage, so I don't think we would be betting on a losing horse, but our 'help' would almost certainly be mercenary work."

Hana crosses her arms again and thinks. "Hm… we'll have to meet him first. See how he is in person before making a decision. What if he's like Vanea?"

"What's the problem with Vanea?" Klein asks.

"She's a huge bitch," Alissa says and I chuckle but nod.

"Wow. I never heard that one before." Klein looks legitimately surprised. "They say her eyes are frightening, but then so are the rest of the Anaras."

"She's extremely vengeful against anyone who antagonizes her," I say.

Klein shrugs. "I would never have guessed that."

"It's like she wears a mask."

If she does, then what about the others around her, like Haaran, Silvane, and Nononya? She seems very emotional, but the others are much more stoic, so how much are they hiding from me?

Meh, paranoia.

"We could get an audience with the Lord through Ricardo, he owes us one," Hana says.

"You are the one suggesting we meet with nobility?" Lina questions Hana.

Hana looks a little conflicted but says, "Wolfy can't avoid the higher powers all his life. We'll need them and I'll need to adapt."

"That's good to hear," Ciel says and smiles. Hana snorts in response.

"You grew up a lot," Klein says and pats Hana's back with a mocking smile warping her face.

"She's finally reaching maturity," Roxanne says and fakes drying tears in the corner of her eyes.

Hana's glare sends fear into our hearts and blood to my dick.

"So, do we all agree on talking with Lord Confiel?" I ask.

They all nod, even Aoi.

"Any questions or comments?"

They all shake their heads.

"Then The Council has reached a conclusion and I declare the meeting adjourned."

We spend the rest of our morning casually. Hana, Ciel, and Klein spread scented oil on their bodies and wrestle naked… Greco-Roman style. Very distracting. Alissa helps me with the Soul Map and identifying skills. Lina and Roxanne work together to fix Ted and Suzy, then they separate. Lina starts enchanting all our weapons while Roxanne continues studying [Warp Space]. Aoi starts flapping her wings and messing with the ambient mana so much that Lina complains and she has to practice in the bath pool. Gify spends his time in my lap being petted while I study.

Lunch comes around and we fill our bellies again with gourmet-level food.

"I'm going to get fat…" Klein complains.

Ciel discreetly pinches her own bellies and her expression strains.

After we're done, I pull out two rain cloaks for me and Lina.

"So, we are going to the library, what about you girls?" I ask.

"We'll coach Ted, Suzy, and Aoi," Ciel says and points to Roxanne.

"I'll go visit Dad and Mom. Wanna come too, Hana?" Klein asks.

"Sure."

"Can I come with you?" Alissa asks me innocently.

"How could I say no?" I answer and pat her head, making her tail sway a little.

I pull out the armored dinghy for us to cross the town. As we fly above the streets, I notice how most elves don't use any protection from the light rain and walk around casually as if nothing was different.

We fly northwest and enter the Nobles' Quarters. Like in Rabanara, our entry isn't blocked, but we are heavily watched and our IDs are checked.

Goloria's Knight Academy is one of many imperial academies spread around the world, but in the High Forest, this one is the biggest. Unfortunately, they do not have a public university like Rabanara because the circles of magi are much more powerful and monopolize most of the magical knowledge.

A familiar dark bark wall decorated with golden inlays blocks our way.

We approach the gate and see turnstiles made of wood blocking our way. A cloaked student presses something on the top of the turnstile and it unlocks for him to pass.

We approach the guardhouse and ask how to pass. The imperial guard takes a long look at our outfits before pulling out an Inspection Crystal. We have all come with our best clothes and shining necklaces, so he shows a lot of respect towards us.

He ignores the "Golemancer" title and focuses on the "Scholar of Rabanara." He eyes me oddly but allows us to pass. Lina and Alissa are both my slaves, so he might have thought that I'm a wealthy commoner from an influential family.

We cross the gate and I'm immediately assaulted by the uncomfortable feeling of having my [Gate] blocked.

After getting over it, I see something rather similar to greek architecture: huge yellow columns supporting a red low angled roof, both made of wood but camouflaged to look like bricks; rows upon rows of statues of mages, soldiers, warriors, and naked body-builders with the "swoleness" of the statues seemingly increasing the further in we go; huge tiles with colorful geometrical patterns show the way; short green grass fills the rest of the path, but it's dotted with very visible signs of "DO NOT WALK ON THE GRASS"; behind it all, a golden castle that looks like someone stacked dozens of the huge-column-buildings one on top of another.

"It's like everything was made for giants here," I comment.

"Bigger is better," Lina says.

She puckers her lips when I give her a suggestive look but does not retract her statement.

We continue walking forward and notice that there are dueling pits spread out between the buildings. We know they are dueling pits because plenty of them are being used.

From knights in armor; barbarians in loincloths; archers using acrobatics and speed-firing (something that amused Alissa greatly); unarmed fighting; group combat; summoner battles; to mages yelling their spells and fighting with rapiers. All kinds of fighting are going on.

I also quickly notice how everyone is wearing a uniform, making us stand out like sore thumbs. It's a black coat and pants with vertical colored lines on the chest, possibly representing some form of classification of the students.

The walk to the castle is annoyingly long, almost making me pull out the dinghy.

The inside of the castle makes us feel dwarfed by the architecture, pun intended. The ceiling is so high that I think at least three floors would fit in all this empty space. Thankfully, there are magic elevators everywhere, so we don't have to actually walk up the stupidly long stairs.

A map at the entrance guides us to the library, it occupies exactly one half of the castle, the other half is purely classrooms.

"Starting from the entrance, we've been walking in a straight line for nearly half an hour. Not even dwarven architecture is this straight," Lina comments.

"That's imperial pragmatism. If you can make everything straight, why not?" Alissa imparts us with another of her tidbits of varied knowledge.

We finally pass the middle line of the castle, and suddenly our corridor changes. We enter a wide room full of desks for study, exactly the same as in Rabanara's library.

At least now the huge empty space above us is used more efficiently. What was previously a single floor is now divided into three floors and filled with rows upon rows of books. The number of floors is so high that I feel a little dizzy just trying to see the top.

"That's a lot of books," Alissa comments, feeling a little overwhelmed.

"Gih."

"That's called megalophobia. It's harmless, it's just that our primal fears are activated when we see something so inconceivably large," I say.

"So, what are we searching for?" Lina asks.

"Whatever you want, go nuts."

"Nuts?" She tilts her head cutely.

I smile at her. "Do what you want."

She twiddles her thumbs a little, then nods and gives me an adorable smile.

The building is imperial, and the students are a mixed bag, but the administration is completely elven. As if the elves would ever let an imperial military installation in their own territory run unsupervised.

We spread out and look for interesting books by ourselves. Lina goes to find some books on enchanting, Alissa searches for [Illusion Magic], while I search for something related to the soul.

I find something interesting in the index: "Using [Alteration Magic] for Soul Surgeries." It's a book that describes how Chimeric mages fix birth defects using [Alteration Magic].

What I did during Dawn of Fire's attack was a real fucking mess. I used my will to break a spell and ended up bending mana in a wild and uncontrolled manner. One of the first warnings of the book is what made me realize that: "Do not use Alteration while someone is casting a spell." Then the book goes on to describe in gruesome detail how reality broke and… shit happened. The most horrible consequences are: people fusing, exploding, warping their own souls until it is beyond recognition, or just simply dying in nightmarish ways. Other "accidents" include: noxious fumes killing people for kilometers around, dungeons appearing on top of people, earthquakes and other natural destructive phenomena, and even the Deadlands is a result of an Emperor interrupting a doomsday ritual made by a cult of undead.

He bent the mana to his will and reversed the effects of the ritual, but then all of the corruption spread around the land and made it uninhabitable for a thousand years. It's still only populated by researchers and priests who can cast [Sanctuary] because the corruption is preventing nature from retaking the land. Maybe in a few generations the first plants will finally be able to grow again over there.

The problem with bending mana that way is that there are two minds fighting over it, but what if I used Redirect on an enchantment? I must test this.

Moving past the warnings, the rest of the book is quite interesting. They bend souls using pure "Willpower" and can basically do anything.

Maybe we should visit the Chimeras soon and pay for Roxanne's eyes to be fixed, then she wouldn't need glasses anymore.

The soul itself is bent quite easily, it's just that they require extensive knowledge of the organ being "altered" so that they can recreate it perfectly. Modifying the mana organ that way is actually a bad idea, though. The Alteration will mix with the patient's mana and shit will happen, but Golemancy's [Mold] seems to not have this problem, for some reason. Another thing to test.

The most important information I learned from this book is how they can create appendages.

"Wolfy, let's eat something?" Alissa asks.

"Goodness me, look at the time. It's tea time!" I say excitedly in a low tone.

Both of the girls roll their eyes at my silliness.

We walk out of the library and move towards the gigantic restaurant.

Halfway there, a young pompous elven boy with a familiar face stops in our way and sends us a glare.

Oh boy.

Soul Info

Name: | Bastico Rincipio | Race: | Golden Elf | Level: | 52
MP | 350 | Magic Power | 100

Crown Lord Confiel's first son.

A note from Manasong

Hall of Fame of Patrons

The patrons who support Rupegia shall have their names sung by the bards for they deserve the glory and honor. Their names are:

Oracle Maximillian Hübner.

Prince Bradly.

Lord Andrew Meyers.

Lord Hope.

Lord Samuel Lim.

Lord Cody Weigel.

Lord Bill.

Lord Novgarod.

Lord DJ.

Lord Ashadun.

Lord D4rk Sheep.

Lord Michale Erwin.

Noble Salty Panda.

Noble Cidant.

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Chapter 51: Challenger - Part 2

The boy has perfectly combed sweptback hair that reaches his shoulders, giving him an androgynous look. His eyes are a deep, striking green and his gaze is unmistakable, he's staring straight at us.

We three share a look and stop a few meters in front of him.

"Is there a problem?" I ask, warily.

"Where is your uniform?" Bastico asks, even his voice makes it hard to say whether he's male or female.

Ah shit, here we go again.

"We are not students. I'm Wolf Ryder, a scholar from Rabanara," I say and bow lightly.

He raises an eyebrow and his face slightly distorts in displeasure. "You don't look one bit like the scholars from Rabanara," he says.

I don't contain my annoyance at his words. "If you don't mind, I have other business more important than to convince you of that."

I hold the arms of the girls tighter and take a step forward and to the side.

He immediately moves to block us again and his tone turns stern and unmistakably male. "You will not escape the duels that easily." He crosses his arms and tries to look imposing.

I almost facepalm. Another fucker who thinks we belong to the academy.

These high-class clothes and jewelry are doing more harm than good since people think we are nobility or something. Our necklaces, Lina's jeweled leather slave collar, and my (recently) enchanted emerald sword also only serve to reinforce this image.

Even the shimmering from my [Ranbow Shield] and [Rainbow Crystal] could be interpreted as us being wealthy enough to pay for a Blessing mage to buff us every day.

"We aren't students and we can easily confirm this with an Inspection Crystal," I say through gritted teeth.

He scoffs and his nose wrinkles in disgust. "Do I look like I have a Crystal at hand? This isn't the first time I've heard that lie. All your Blessings are visible, you know. And don't think that I won't find out whose house you belong to." He takes a step forward and looks me in the eye. "I challenge you to a duel."

Alissa looks at him with flabbergasted while Lina grits her teeth and clenches her fist.

This isn't a cliche novel's battle academy where the strong walk all over the weak, but dueling with all kinds of warriors is still an integral part of it.

"You know what, fine, I accept. Even though I'm not a student, I'll fight you… BUT, after that I demand an Identification Crystal to be used to verify my identity," I say and finish with a smug smile.

He narrows his eyes in suspicion, slightly unsure of himself due to my confidence. "If you think that you can bully me after the duel using your family's influence, you'll know better soon enough."

He's so damn sure of himself…

I give him a phony smile. "You'll have to explain to me how these duels work. As you know, I'm not from here."

He groans in annoyance but complies. "What's your style of fighting?"

"I'm a magic swordsman."

He eyes the small red gem embedded at the hilt of my sword. "You look like a spell warrior."

"My wife enchanted this sword for me just today," I tilt my head towards Lina. She blushes slightly and swallows heavily, then nods.

Bastico looks at Lina with a little suspicion, but then he ignores her. "Well, then. Do you want to share which spells you are capable of casting and what enchantment your sword has?"

"Is there a reason to?"

"It would make the duel more fair. But if you don't, then I'll ask for a best out of three. This way, we won't lose the entire duel just by being hit by a surprise spell."

"And you will share yours?" I point to his longsword at his waist.

He rolls his eyes and says in a flat tone. "Yes."

"Are we going to wear armor?"

"Only protection for the heart and brain. Even I don't want to waste money ruining good enchanted armor in a mere duel."

"Can I change into spare clothes? I would rather not ruin these." I put a hand over my heliodor necklace.

His patience decreases another notch. "There's a changing room beside the arena."

"So, what are the rules for the duel?"

"I don't fight until first blood. If you get squeamish at the sight of blood then you shouldn't be here. We shall fight until one of us surrenders or passes out.

"A healer is present at all times and we defer to them for stopping the battle. If you try to continue the battle after the healer has already called for the end, then you will be instantly hit with a [Lightning Bolt] enchantment."

"Fine, let's do this. What spells can you cast?"

"[Fireball] and my sword is enchanted with [Double Strike], [Double Image], and [Extend]."

[Fireball] is such a common spell that someone would only mention it when they can deal some serious damage with it. His fighting style could be similar to Hana's new style with feints and successive strikes.

"Yours?" He smirks slightly, underestimating my ability.

All? Well, I need to show some consistency regarding which spells I can cast without chanting.

"My sword is enchanted with [Double Strike] and I can cast [Lightning Bolt], [Telekinesis], and [Heal], but I won't heal myself to make things more 'fair.'" I smirk.

Bastico is taken a little aback but says nothing. He motions to a dueling arena nearby and we follow him.

As we walk, I notice that we have the attention of most of the students around us. It makes sense since there's a portrait of Bastico on the castle's wall, and it's big enough for all the nobility and higher class citizens to be able to see it every day.

The light rain turns into a drizzle and we remove our cloaks, then Gify pops onto my shoulder.

"Gih?"

"Good timing, yeah, we are going to duel."

"Gih."

"Thanks."

"Are you sure this is a good idea?" Alissa asks, worried.

"It's not a duel to the death," I say and squeeze her hand. "Even as the Lord's son, he would get branded as a Wicked if he tried anything deliberate. So for me, it's a good opportunity to learn something."

"Hm…" She pouts and grumbles through the [Bind].

"Give him a lesson," Lina whispers with fierce determination.

"For you, I will," I say and she hugs my arm tighter with a cute smile on her face.

The arena is a pit in the floor and its wooden walls remind me that we are high above ground level.

We go down a set of stairs carved in the ground and enter the pit, then Bastico activates an enchantment and a [Gate] opens. A temple priestess comes out of it and looks at us inquisitively.

"Are you two going to duel?" The priestess asks.

"Yes. Traditional faint-or-surrender. We are two spell warriors who use swords," Bastico responds.

We recite the spells we know and the priestess nods in understanding. She gives each of us a metal helmet with a stripe of metal that touches the spine to protect you from decapitation, and a breastplate that's tied on the shoulder and only protects the heart.

Bastico shows me the way to the changing room where I put casual clothing. Even though it's casual clothing, it's still one of my more comfortable sets, which makes it quite annoying to think that it might get damaged. I decide to go shirtless, both to show off my scars and to save this comfy shirt from being ruined.

I come out and we both stretch a little to warm our muscles. Then I motion for the two girls to come over and they each give me a good luck kiss, making Bastico even more annoyed.

Gify is taken by Alissa and gets a privileged seat by being hugged against her chest.

We draw our swords and stare at each other.

The priestess walks to the corner and clears her throat, grabbing our attention. "REMEMBER! IF I SAY IT IS OVER, THEN IT IS OVER! ANY FURTHER ACTION WILL BE INTERRUPTED WITH EXTREME PREJUDICE! UNDERSTOOD?"

We turn to her and nod. I glance at the border of the pit and see a good audience around us. Benches were laid out so that rows of people could watch. This is definitely a bigger audience than I saw around the other dueling pits when we came in.

"STATE YOUR NAMES!" The priestess orders.

"BASTICO RINCIPIO! FIRST SPELL WARRIOR OF THE FIFTH YEAR!"

"WOLF RYDER! LEADER OF THE HELIOS FELLOWSHIP, SUMMONER, GOLEMANCER, AND SCHOLAR OF RABANARA!"

Murmuring starts at full blast and Bastico now looks completely uncertain about my identity for the first time.

The priestess looks at me oddly then turns to Bastico, waiting for his decision.

"It changes nothing! We are going to duel!" Bastico announces and the priestess sighs.

"PREPARE YOURSELVES! THE DUEL SHALL COMMENCE… NOW!" She hits a gong and we act.

I immediately cast [Lighting Bolt] and his skin glows like a rainbow as his [Rainbow Shield] activates. He grunts, but the spell only makes him flinch. His Blessing is really strong.

Our swords meet and slide off one another as we measure the other's skill level. We strike each other a few times and I realize that his skill with the sword is much higher than mine.

Without using a single spell, he painfully nicks my cheek with the tip of his sword and draws blood, even though his strike was slowed by my [Wind Armor].

"Hmph," he scoffs.

Well, I would never win in a pure sword duel anyway.

Without moving my legs, I glide forward with [Telekinesis] and strike. Bastico gets surprised and desperately tries to defend himself.

His eyes are drawn to my feet and I take the opportunity to strike from above and activate [Double Strike]. I manage to nick his head and the tip of my sword scrapes his skull. I also feel my strike being slowed by his [Wind Armor].

From my shoulder, an ethereal arm appears and strikes down again.

Bastico is fully forced on the defensive and has to activate his own [Double Strike] to meet mine, yet he starts smiling like a maniac.

His arm suddenly splits in two as he activates [Double Image]. I counter with [Telekinesis] on his shoulder and one arm visibly slows, that's the real one. An Illusion enchantment is limited in how life-like it can truly appear.

I move my sword to parry his strike and cast [Telekinesis] on my own, bringing his guard down and allowing me to give him a cut on his belly.

Mana leaves his body and his sword extends, allowing him to give a cut on my shin on the way out.

We each back off slightly and prepare for another bout. He wipes away the blood dripping onto his eye and lunges.

His reach is annoying, but [Extend] makes his longsword more awkward to use.

I parry his lunge and cast [Telekinesis] on the tip of his [Extend]ed sword. Physics makes it so that the longer his sword is, the more force he feels when I cast [Telekinesis] on its tip.

The tip flies up to the sky, opening him up to a counterattack. I lunge and cast [Lightning Bolt] at the same time that I thrust at his chest.

He grunts in pain but deflects my lunge with the hilt of his sword, then points a finger at me. A [Fireball] forms and I dodge backward.

As I glide with [Telekinesis], I pivot my sword and slice his shoulder as the blade comes back.

With my free hand, I protect the side of my face as I use [Muscle Explosion] to dodge the [Fireball]. I feel my hand burn just a little and the skin shines like a rainbow for a moment as my [Rainbow Shield] takes effect.

"Your fighting style is odd. Where did you learn it?" Bastico asks with a manic smile on his face. He's just like Hana, a blood-thirsty muscle-brain.

I merely smile and return to focusing on the battle, annoying Bastico greatly.

"Fine, we can still talk after the duel."

Yes, please.

By waiting, I gave him an opening and he took it. He strikes repeatedly and uses [Double Strike] with every attack. This puts him into a sort of rhythm, a very predictable rhythm.

I focus on defending and staying away with [Telekinesis]. It's a good thing that my style involves gliding, otherwise my wounded leg would have messed with my footwork.

"Come on, attack me!" He taunts.

I would rather not. Just waste your mana, please.

He stops using [Double Strike] and we stare at each other while catching our breaths.

"Thought you for a fool for going against my longsword with your short sword," he says.

I smile and say, "I knew I had a way to negate your reach advantage."

"Can you cast [Telekinesis] during the entire fight?" He smirks as if he knows the answer.

"Yes, actually. I told you I was a summoner; my mana is high."

He narrows his eyes and considers my words.

"You are the oddest warrior I have ever fought," he says with a snort.

I smile again and start chanting [Rush], prompting him to attack.

I use [Telekinesis] to glide out of his reach and hear the crowd gasp in surprise. Then I finish my shortened chant and dash like lightning. Using the chant version hurts my head much less than using instant double-casting.

I cast [Telekinesis] again on my sword when I meet his sword to force his guard down, then I jump and cast [Telekinesis] again to make myself fly. I release [Rush] and the pain in my head instantly clears.

I let my feet go high above my head and turn myself upside-down. I enter his guard and he moves his hilt upwards to parry my slice.

I let my sword slide past his. He twists his wrist to try and slice me, but I fly past his head, where he can't reach. He fires an instant and small [Fireball] and I defend with my free hand, then I slash with my sword.

I cut his neck and slice across the metal guard at his spine.

"STOP!" The priestess yells.

Feeling a little dizzy and grimacing from the very painful burn on my hand, I will myself to spin upright and land graciously on the ground.

I think I need to add [Acrobatics] to my build.

The priestess rushes to [Heal] him and I instantly [Heal] myself. I see a glint of envy on the priestess' eyes.

She touches the scar on the spine guard of Bastico's helmet and yells, "I DECLARE WOLF RYDER THE VICTOR!"

"I ACCEPT HIS VICTORY!" Bastico yells immediately after.

The crowd cheers and claps.

With his face still bloodied (the priestess didn't bother [Clean]ing him) he approaches me with an extended hand. "I believe I owe you an apology," he says while smirking.

"Hm?" I'm taken aback at his action, so I freeze on the spot.

"If you were a student, I would have known about you and your fighting style."

"Oh, I see. Apology accepted," I say with a slightly strained smile and accept his handshake.

"Are you employed somewhere?"

Alissa and Lina come down and dress me in a spare shirt.

"Our fellowship is currently working as a freelance escort for Este Escort Company."

He raises his eyebrows in pleasant surprise. "Oh, so Rande is still leading the company?"

"He is, along with his mother."

"How long are you staying in Goloria?"

"We leave in the morning on the next day of An."

"Great. I'll pay Rande a visit, then," he smiles so softly he looks like a cute girl. "Anyway, if you ever come back to Goloria, I would like you to meet my father. Unfortunately, he's currently in that new 'Legado' dungeon, so he won't be back for a while."

Hm? How convenient.

"I see. I might come back after this job is done."

"I'll be waiting, then. Goodbye."

"Goodbye."

We all share a slightly awkward nod and he turns around.

The crowd is dispersing and he quickly mingles with them. Bloody face and all.

"Awkward…" Lina whispers.

"Yeah. It went well for us, though," I say with a wry smile.

"Even the elves aren't free from the manly brotherhood," Alissa says.

"What?" I ask with a frown.

"Beating each other up as a good way of making friends."

I chuckle and Lina nods. "True," she says.

I change into my higher quality clothing and we go to the academy's restaurant to have our snack. The architecture is not grand, for once. This way there are enough tables for all the students and the waiters can come to us in a reasonable time.

We order the usual tea with sweets. This time we get some wet not-lemon cupcakes that are very sweet.

Lina happily goes over her notes and shows us a page about [Double Strike] as an enchantment.

"It was quite a nice idea to use your [Telekinesis] against his enchantment," she comments while brimming with pride in me.

"I thought that they couldn't have made a perfect Illusion enchantment. For Hana to use it that way it took her quite a lot of mental effort."

Lina nods. "It might work for a normal duelist, but [Illusion Magic] is quite easy to unveil with magic."

We return to the library without a problem and I resume my research.

[Alteration Magic] can be used to create appendages that never existed, like a malformed limb.

It is possible to recreate these appendages without creating an "organ" for it inside the soul of the person. With time, the appendage is "assimilated" by the soul due to the mana of the person mixing with the appendage. It can be accomplished even faster when blood flows through it. The downside is that magic is disrupted while the appendage is being "assimilated" and there could be problems controlling the appendage if the assimilation is not done "correctly."

Another way to recreate appendages is to "pull" the soul of the person out of their bodies and force it to create solidified mana. This is used for appendages like Roxanne's horns and tail.

The basis for this solidified mana is elemental fake matter. Specifically, a nature elemental's fake matter is the most versatile due to its putty-like properties. It's easily moldable, soft, squishy, texturable, and colorable.

I have everything I want here, I just need to learn [Alteration Magic] then.

I go back to the index and search for a book on that. I can easily put points in Alteration, but I fear what could happen if I went about it too carelessly.

I find a book called "Basics of [Alteration Magic]" and start compiling anything I deem useful.

It's strikingly similar to using [Godly Language] to alter reality, though it is much more mentally intensive than simply talking to inanimate objects.

Meditation, mantra, visualization, and motivation. These four ingredients are what comprise the basis of this magic school. First, you need to close your senses off from everything except what you desire to change; then you recite a mantra that's related to what you want to change, similar to a chant; then you visualize exactly how you want the thing you want to change to become, down to its most minute details; then you have to get yourself pumped up because matter resists change, so you need to use your "Willpower" to aid in your change. It's all or nothing, you either succeed or you fail horrifically.

This is rather dangerous… To think that I'm going to do this to myself…

The changes are also permanent. I want something more temporary.

Gih.

I see. Fuse Alteration with [Materialization]. I'll have to look deeper into that spell first before I can alter it.

Gih.

Look at that, you are useful for something.

Giih.

His cute eyes narrow in annoyance, though they don't lose their cuteness.

Gih!

Haha.

We return to our inn when dusk starts to come. The drizzle of the rain is still ongoing.

Hana and Klein came back before us. They had a nice talk about the good ol' times. Although, Hana still thinks the best is yet to come.

Aoi is managing to hover and slightly gain altitude with much effort, though that doesn't diminish her happiness.

"Kweh!" She tackles my stomach and crawls up to my face to give me a deep tongue kiss.

"Where's mine?" Alissa asks and receives it.

Roxanne and Ciel managed to teach the golems how to cast [Fireball] without burning themselves. Their [Mana Control] coaching is paying off as they can more safely try out new spells.

Surprisingly, they can also cast [Heal]. It's not a good idea to have them use it on themselves, though. Their souls are based on elementals, so [Heal] just destroys their bodies. They learned that after Ted undid Lina's stitches on his arm.

"Awn…" The cute girl moans while Roxanne and Ciel give her strained apologetic smiles.

"Well, at least now I have an idea on how to properly change their bodies and strengthen them," I say and pat her head. "I will have to alter their soul organs to represent that of a doll and then cast [Heal]."

"Well, how are those organs supposed to look like?" Alissa questions.

"No idea, but I'm sure that this is the correct way."

Maybe those books on Alteration could help me with that.

Just as we start thinking about taking a bath, a messenger delivers a note to us.

"Lord Ricardo wants to have dinner with us tonight," I say.

A note from Manasong

Hall of Fame of Patrons

The patrons who support Rupegia shall have their names sung by the bards for they deserve the glory and honor. Their names are:

Oracle Maximillian Hübner.

Prince Bradly.

Prince PreownedFIN.

Lord Andrew Meyers.

Lord Hope.

Lord Samuel Lim.

Lord Cody Weigel.

Lord Bill.

Lord Novgarod.

Lord DJ.

Lord Ashadun.

Lord D4rk Sheep.

Lord Michale Erwin.

Lord Cidant.

Noble Salty Panda.

Leave a rating or a review to help me rise to the top or fix my shameful understanding of prose.

Take a look over my blog where all information of the world of Rupegia will be posted.

Join the Discord and discuss, or rant, or meme, or try and fight me so your waifu gets more screentime.

Become a Patron and read chapters in advance, or read the side-stories, or leave your mark on the story, or help choose the next artwork or the next side-story.

Chapter 51: Challenger - Part 3

A note from Manasong

Attention: to conform to the limit of sexual content allowed in a novel, I've censored this chapter. You can look for the uncensored version here.

The symbol "-" denotes a section that got cut for containing sexual content. Also, if paragraphs seem missing, they were also likely censored in an earlier pass where the symbol wasn't used.

"And the pleasantries begin," Alissa says with a sigh. Her fox ears droop and twitch sadly.

"What do you mean?" I ask.

"Well, nobility loves to have parties and gatherings. It's all about socializing and making 'connections.' Even when people knew I was going to become a slave, some wanted to get closer to me in case I was sold to someone powerful, like you."

Right. Medieval networking.

"Well, for us this is a good opportunity." I shrug.

"Hopefully he doesn't introduce us to more nobility and just keeps it small. Otherwise, we will get a string of invitations from other nobles trying to poach us to their side."

"Oh, I see how that could be bad."

Alissa smiles wryly.

-

Aoi is lovingly held in Hana's arms, nearly passed out. Roxanne and Klein talk about random things, completely used to our depraved ways.

After Lina and Alissa clean up -, we finally soak in the bath and Alissa retells my duel. I tell them for the first time that Bastico is the Lord's son and they have mixed reactions.

"Well… he's an odd one, this Bastico," Klein says.

"If you want strong people on your side, what better way to confirm that than by fighting them yourself?" Hana asks.

"Well, I get what you're saying, but…"

"Yeah, Bastico is odd," Lina says with a nod.

"I'm a little surprised that he didn't turn sour when you beat him," Alissa says.

"Can't have everyone be a walking cliche, right?" I ask with a laugh.

"You really are seeing things as if we are in a hero's story?" Klein asks, her brows knit in disapproval and raised in surprise.

More like a VR video game.

"Eh, it's worked so far," I say with a shrug.

I run my hand along Aoi's sleek scales and she rests her head on my shoulder. She's currently the size of a dog and the rest of her body lays on my lap.

"Well, Bastico was surprisingly happy after being beaten. He just apologized and acted as if everything was well again," Lina says.

"All's well that ends well," I say with a wry smile.

"What a weird saying." Lina frowns.

"Eh, at least we have our ticket to meet with Lord Confiel," Roxanne says.

"Hm… everything is going so smoothly that I feel… odd," Hana says and scratches her emerald scales on her cheek.

"You're just learning how normal people become friends," Klein says and smirks at Hana.

"I think you weren't exactly born to interact with nobility. Though I can see how Wolfy's influence has made you start to get better at it," Roxanne says and also smirks.

Hana merely stares at them like they are bugs. "Right, another set of punishments will have to be dealt to both of you in bed."

"Hmhmm! I'll be waiting!" Roxanne exclaims and flutters her eyelids exaggeratedly at Hana.

"Gih."

"More like her addiction to his - made her change," Alissa adds.

"I won't deny either of you," Hana says with a proud smile.

We prepare ourselves and fly to the address specified in the message. Thankfully, the rain has stopped so the girls won't risk getting their expensive dresses wet.

We enter the Nobles' Quarters and get a few directions from the guards. Having this large a number of perfectly dressed women in our dinghy makes the guards tense and wary of offending the "young master" that I seem to be.

We land at our destination and I put some points in [Acting]. Better safe than sorry.

Our traditional elven clothing isn't formal enough for the occasion, so everyone is wearing their best dress. Klein doesn't have one that's up to standard, so Alissa lent her one of her yellow dresses, which perfectly fits the lean monkey-girl.

The two walk hand-in-hand, like two sisters from different mothers.

We march on and the clacking of their high heeled shoes and boots is a bit loud. If Aoi starts walking on her own, then things might get even louder.

We stop in front of a very tall building formed out of the purest white tree around. A large hedge blocks our view of the lower floor, but we can see the top of many multi-colored plants peeking out above it, some of them even glowing.

The guards receive us cordially, as they were already expecting us, and escort us towards the mansion.

The soft, mossy floor massages our feet as we walk, though it is a little awkward to walk on it.

The plants all seem to bear some sort of fruit that feels familiar to me. I hardly remember all of their names, I just know that they are all very tasty.

We enter the large white tree-mansion and are greeted by a lavish interior. It seems that the elves are quite fond of intricate details and patterns. Makes sense, since they practice a house-sized version of those patterns with the tree-pillars that support this town.

Right after the grand and circular reception room, we cross a doorway and enter the dining room which has a foldable wall that's currently folded, giving us a view of the backyard.

At the table are Rande, his family, Ento, Silvina, and Ricardo. They are snacking on the same croutons and not-wine as we had at the restaurant we went to with Osaria.

Silvina rises from her seat and announces, "Helios, welcome to my home!" She opens her arms wide and smiles proudly. She looks refreshingly beautiful in a very loose elven dress that barely covers her small breasts or her sex. I pray for a breeze that exposes them to us.

But of the elves present, Osaria still remains the undisputed champion of sexiness. Oura looks adorable, but conservative. Nito isn't wearing his female clothes, so he doesn't even count.

Ento is the one wearing the most ostentatious clothing of all of us, but he lacks style. His clothes are simply made of gold and silver with a few gems embedded. They don't seem to be made to show anything else besides wealth, which is quite boring. Although, Ento is chubby, so I prefer that he shows the least amount of skin possible.

Ricardo barely seems any different from his usual clothes, though he shows off a little more muscle this time.

"It's a pleasure to be here. Your home is absolutely beautiful," Alissa says for me since I am too distracted by Silvina to respond in time. I can only smile and blush a little.

We sit in front of Rande's group and the nobles. Silvina is in the middle, Ricardo is beside her and right in front of me, and Ento is beside him.

The flowery-beard man looks quite pleased at our presence and smiles softly when we sit. "Since your assistance was so crucial during our fight, I thought that a dinner was the least we could do to repay you," he cordially says to me.

"It was not our intention to involve your fellowship or Este's company in this matter," Silvina says.

"Dawn of Fire's actions were extremely bold. You can expect retaliation once Lord Mavel is deposed," Ricardo continues.

"Do you think they will look for revenge against us?" I ask.

He looks slightly uncomfortable for a second, then returns to his stoicism. "You have two blessed people in your fellowship. If they try anything out of malice, they will certainly all be hunted to extinction by the Templars and all of the elven Lords."

That would be after we are already dead, so it's not the most reassuring thing to hear, but I can understand his intention.

"Their representative nearly licked my feet. If anything, they themselves would have imprisoned anyone with a desire for vengeance," Silvina adds.

"They tried to escalate the conflict and gambled with their Fates, but they only ended up with both sides hunting for them. Nobody there will have time for revenge," Ricardo finishes.

Now that is reassuring.

Rande chimes in, "I've never heard anything but bad rumors about Dawn of Fire. Why would Lord Mavel ever try to ally with them? They even attacked me. I know that Mavel disowned us, but still… Well, I just hope he didn't fall that far."

"I think you would be included with the people they would spare. But also, hardly anyone knows you're his nephew, so they might have simply not known," Ricardo says with a slight frown.

Or someone might not have given them all the information.

"Our decision to leave was purposefully sudden in order to lower the chances of someone plotting against us, yet they attacked us merely two days after we left. This was far too reckless; there's still more information to uncover," Ento says, slightly displeased at the current conversation.

Ricardo sighs and says, "There's always more information to uncover, but we might never know the truth."

"There's also the matter of the Warped Reality that appeared." Ento seems more interested in talking about that.

The what?

"Right, the men say that someone hit the mage with an arrow and he botched the spell," Rande says.

Gih.

Oh, that. I didn't know it had an actual name. Actually, I didn't talk to the girls about it, did they assume it was me?

"A trained mage botching a spell due to a mere arrow? Ridiculous!" Ento exclaims.

Gih.

Well, thanks for telling them.

"Well, it was a really big spell." Rande shrugs and smiles wryly.

"That… well, that's not a lie, but it's still ridiculous!"

"We were too far to interrupt or interfere with the spell, so it's the only logical explanation," Ricardo says.

Thank the Gods that nobody knows exactly how I use [Redirect Mana].

"Well!" Silvina puts her glass down on the table, making a loud noise. "We aren't here to discuss what has already happened. We are here to celebrate!"

Silvina immediately changes the topic to how the fellowship formed and we manage to avoid talking about my birthplace.

Rande's side and the girls start talking among themselves while my side of the table has a little more difficulty finding common ground.

We end up hearing about Ricardo's background. He rules a small city to the north of Goloria, near the border of the High Forest with Glorampina.

Ricardo is serving under Lord Confiel, but that doesn't mean that he has to obey his orders unconditionally. His choice to be a "spy in the open" comes with a very generous reward of a lot of equipment for his men.

Silvina and Ento are trusted allies of Confiel, who were sent as support for Ricardo. Their mistake was bringing too few men with them, but they didn't have many to spare from the beginning, and hiring mercenaries against someone who has loads more money than you is a dumb idea.

I'm surprised that they are being so open about their espionage, but what they were doing was always "in the open." It's just that normally nobody explicitly mentions it.

It's quite obvious now that they are trying to get on our good side. Even Ento seems less cold and a bit more agreeable as he tries to make a little conversation.

Suddenly, the doors swing open and I understand why the meal hasn't been served yet. Bastico and a younger, cuter version of himself come walking in and stop to scan the table.

"Oh! Bastico!" Rande exclaims.

"Rande!" Bastico smiles fearsomely and marches towards him, his younger brother shyly following behind. "You got yourself into a big mess, or so I've heard."

"Someone's been naughty," he says with a voice hinting of anger.

"It's not over yet."

"Indeed."

They share a strong handshake and Rande kisses his hand. Then he moves on to greet the rest of his family. He receives an enviable hug from Osaria and kisses her hand with a smack, playfully showing respect and familiarity, but with Oura and Nito he's much more restrained. His younger brother greets Nito warmly and the two of them immediately sit down and start talking.

Bastico turns to me and sends a wave. "We meet again, Wolf."

I smile a little awkwardly and respond, "we do."

"You two know each other?" Rande asks, incredulous.

"I thought he was a cowardly son of a wealthy house and challenged him to a duel. Then he beat me with his weird style."

The other nobles seem to already know that as only Rande's family reacts.

"I didn't expect any less from you, Bastico," Osaria says with a chuckle.

"Men…" Oura whispers and shakes her head.

Bastico smirks and turns to his brother. "Anyway. Helios, this is my brother, Ernando." He extends his hand to the boy, who blushes immediately.

"P-pleasure to meet you," Ernando says with a soft boyish voice.

"Ignore his shyness, he's still a virgin who blushes when Osaria hugs him."

"Not just blushes," Osaria comments and winks at him.

Ernando goes quiet and stares at the basket of croutons as if it murdered his family while his delicate face turns redder and redder.

Bastico sits beside Ento and smirks at us, then the conversation shifts back to us, more specifically, me, while the food is being served.

We were served several choices of bread, including a garlic bread that doesn't leave that horrible aftertaste on your tongue; sauces to put on the bread, including one made with not-tomato; a slab of minotaur meat, which seems quite popular around here; a vegetable casserole that reminds me of an eggplant casserole my Mom used to make; a variety of alcoholic drinks; and interestingly, they serve baskets of Buffalo wings and I get some amused looks from Ciel.

"So, where did you learn your style?" Bastico asks me, dead serious.

"I created it myself, it's called [Ekrano Style] and its basis is using [Telekinesis] to hover along the ground and move freely," I respond as my mouth drools from the smell of the Buffalo wings.

Thankfully, Bastico allows us to eat a little before continuing the interrogation. "And where did you learn how to cast [Telekinesis] instantly?"

"Personal talent. I'm quite good with [Space Magic]."

Ento becomes curious and bold enough to ask, "And where are you from, exactly? It's hard to believe that you are a mere commoner."

I merely smile faintly. "I'm from a faraway land."

The nobles go silent, both surprised and confused at my reservedness.

Bastico grins and his eyes scan over all my women, then snaps back to me. "Father would love to meet you."

Let's hope he really does.

"So, how was that duel?" Silvina asks.

"You are a summoner, a blesser, and an accomplished magic swordsman?" She asks, her thin eyebrows shoot high up her forehead.

"So they really are your wives…" Bastico comments softly.

Ricardo turns a little more serious as he asks. "The men commented that you summoned something that was very similar to that Masked Aberrant that had a huge bounty on it. What was it, really?"

"An earth elemental. I'm pretty good with [Mana Control] so I can make them in any shape I want. We are the ones who hunted the Aberrant, so I have a very vivid memory of it in my head," I answer, using [Acting] to keep as calm as I can.

"Oh? Could you demonstrate it for us?" Ento asks, becoming bold again.

"Please, Ento. Leave your incessant curiosity with magic for another time," Bastico says casually and flicks his hand dismissively.

The chubby man grits his teeth and forces his expression to remain neutral. "Then perhaps we should not talk about the gruesome details of duels as we eat our meal," he responds.

Bastico merely glances at Ento and doesn't respond.

With the conversation shifting to our accomplishments, Alissa tries to pimp me to Silvina with mixed results. The slender golden elf is clearly an amiable person who enjoys talking to other people earnestly, but we can't discern how far her interest in us goes.

"Thinking about you doing a noblewoman feels even more depraved," Alissa says through [Bind].

"I know. Even I am getting interested in her."

The dinner starts to end and people start to get up to observe the light show of Silvina's backyard.

Hana slings her arm over me and I rest my head against her chest while hugging her waist. Through Alissa's eyes, I see how we are a prime example of a role reversal. Even my ass looks nice in these tight pants.

I also notice how Ento sends glances at Aoi like a boy sends glances to his crush. With our connection to Lord Confiel becoming stronger, his chances of getting Aoi drop from "astronomically unlikely" to "not even in a fantasy story."

Osaria stands beside us and her delicious, sensual scent invades my nostrils. "Are you going to get involved?" She asks, softly.

"Perhaps," I answer.

"Not only are you going to go conquer a dungeon, but you will also shove yourself into a conflict between Lords? Why?" I feel a hint of restrained anger in her voice.

"I have my reasons."

"This is why I don't want to continue this. I don't want to outlive people younger than me."

"I'm sorry, but it's something we have to do," Hana says.

I look at her and see an anguished expression. She seems sad and tired, of what, I can make a pretty good guess.

"We'll do all we can to come back and see you again," I say.

"Hmph." She turns around and walks away, back towards Rande's side.

We resume watching the light show and I nearly chuckle. For a while, it dispels the sadness of disappointing Osaria. Silvina basically made Christmas lights by controlling the flow of the water, which in turn controls the blinking of the plants' luminescence.

The desserts roll in and the women moan with delight; I almost do, too. Nutty cakes and not-fig sweets that I have no idea what they are called.

I actually recognize hazelnut. I have to buy some and save them to mix with chocolate.

We have a few more casual conversations and the time to leave finally comes.

After we walk out, I exhale in relief as the tension in my shoulders subsides. Then I moan as Hana's strong hands massage me.

"Not used to talking to nobility?" Rande asks me with a wry smile.

"Yes. I dislike all the formality."

"Better invest in some [Acting]. It'll certainly pay off."

"I'll keep it in mind."

"Well then, until the next An."

"Until then."

We say our goodbyes and depart in different directions.

We enter our inn and I hug Lina to recharge -.

We comfortably watch on as Hana deals out her punishment to both Roxanne and Klein. For the good of the other guests, I hope this room is soundproof.

A note from Manasong

Hall of Fame of Patrons

The patrons who support Rupegia shall have their names sung by the bards for they deserve the glory and honor. Their names are:

Oracle Maximillian Hübner.

Prince Bradly.

Prince PreownedFIN.

Lord Andrew Meyers.

Lord Hope.

Lord Samuel Lim.

Lord Cody Weigel.

Lord Bill.

Lord Novgarod.

Lord DJ.

Lord Ashadun.

Lord D4rk Sheep.

Lord Michale Erwin.

Lord Cidant.

Noble Salty Panda.

Leave a rating or a review to help me rise to the top or fix my shameful understanding of prose.

Take a look over my blog where all information of the world of Rupegia will be posted.

Join the Discord and discuss, or rant, or meme, or try and fight me so your waifu gets more screentime.

Become a Patron and read chapters in advance, or read the side-stories, or leave your mark on the story, or help choose the next artwork or the next side-story.

Chapter 52: Glare - Part 1

A note from Manasong

Attention: to conform to the limit of sexual content allowed in a novel, I've censored this chapter. You can look for the uncensored version here.

The symbol "-" denotes a section that got cut for containing sexual content. Also, if paragraphs seem missing, they were also likely censored in an earlier pass where the symbol wasn't used.

Today is the 23rd.

-

I cast a quick [Clean] in my mouth and start my morning kisses with Lina. Her shy tongue searches for mine and we rub on one another with the same tenderness of her touch on my cheek.

I give the usual kisses to all the other girls, including Aoi, and we have our breakfast on the beds.

Hana's "Wisdom" increased by 1 (now 13).

"Yeah, I'm totally getting smarter," Hana says with a proud smile.

"So, what are we doing today?" Klein asks excitedly.

"I want to research in the morning and in the afternoon we need to get Hana's armor, then I have to give the Weeper proofs of extermination to the hunter's guild," I say.

"I… want to knit," Lina says.

Roxanne claps the tips of her hands excitedly. "I'll buy some cloth and we can fit Ciel," she says.

"Why me?" Ciel asks and frowns.

Roxanne flicks her hand dismissively. "Your clothes are criminally unsexy. You need to show off your curves more."

"Maybe I don't want to look 'sexier.'"

"Nonsense. A hungry look from any of us and you turn on your sadistic-teasing mode in a mere moment."

Oh boy. I approve of this.

Alissa picks up on my excitement and turns to Ciel. She looks at her with puppy eyes and says, "Please, for me?"

Ciel looks at Alissa a little incredulous and suspicious. "F-for you…?" She asks and Alissa nods, her fox ears and orange hair wobble along with her head. Ciel groans. "Eh, fine, whatever. Might be fun."

"Oh, yes, it will," Roxanne says with a predatory smile.

I look at Hana and Klein and they shrug. "Sounds fun," Hana says and Klein nods.

I look at Alissa. "I'll be writing Selina's adventuring diary," she says.

Then I turn to Aoi. "I want to fly. Can you show [Fly] to me again?" She asks. Her eyes have a suspicious puppy-like glint to them.

"Sure."

"You know [Fly]?" Klein asks.

"Yep. It's one of my special abilities as a hero. I don't use it because I can't properly control it."

"Ooh…"

"Here's another one of my abilities that you need to know. I can summon monsters with [Summoning Magic]."

She stares blankly at me. "What?"

"I can summon monsters."

"How is that a thing?"

"Well, it just is."

She looks at Ciel. "That isn't heresy?"

Ciel smiles and says, "Whoever invented [Summoning Magic] was a genius. Using the tools of the God of Destruction against him will never be heresy."

Klein chuckles and shakes her head. "Well, it's not like I knew how [Summoning Magic] worked to begin with."

"So, you see, I'm a little paranoid. Whenever the girls go out to do their things, I summon two monsters for safety," I say and summon a Shad and a Holly.

Klein jumps when she sees a shadow move to the middle of the bed.

"That's a Symbol of Darkness, a monster that I killed once. Think of it as an anti-assassin guard for you." I grab my little Holly and extend my hand so Klein can see it better. "This is a Beholder, a monster that has very, very good eyesight that I use to scout and have a better view of the battlefield."

She squints her eyes and gets very close to the Holly. "It's so hard to even look at this one," she says.

"Precisely. This is why nobody can sneak up on us while we sleep."

"That's just so…"

"Overpowered?" Ciel asks and sends me a knowing look.

"Well, yeah, I guess… Wait… do you think this is some kind of card game?" Klein asks and looks at Ciel in disbelief.

"Uh, no. Of course not," Ciel answers with a stiff expression.

"You are all insane…" Klein mutters and looks away.

"Anyway…" I continue, "This means that if you want to talk to me, no matter how far apart we are, you can just talk to your own shadow."

Klein pouts and crosses her arms -. "Did you watch me change all this time?"

I smirk. "What do you take me for? A pervert?" I snort and look away, then she shows me her tongue.

I cup her cheek and push a small amount of my soul through my fingers, which makes her inhale deeply. Then I approach my face to hers and kiss her lips, sucking on her energetic tongue.

She leans into the kiss and after only a few seconds her arms wrap around my chest -.

I break the kiss and see she's already out of breath. Her tail wraps around my waist, trying to keep me from leaving; her eyes look at me with expectancy and a warm smile.

I - smile. "Research can wait."

While Klein recovers in my arms, I pull out Ted and Suzy.

"So, we are leaving to buy some simple cloth," Roxanne announces.

"Ah!" Klein exclaims. Her long tail shoots up and even her round monkey ears twitch. "Wait for me!"

Klein jumps out of bed and hurries to put on her clothes. Alissa comes over to me to take Klein's place in my arms. She puts her journal on the pillow and reads it over while making the occasional correction.

I kiss her face and neck repeatedly, making her giggle. Her fluffy tail and legs sway happily.

"Ah, before you go. Hana, come here," I say and she dutifully obeys. "I'm going to cast [Bind]. Clear your mind and don't resist."

"Oh, yes!" Her scales flicker with excitement. She bends over the bed so I can reach her.

"[Bind]?" Klein asks. Her tail scratches her temple in confusion. Ciel starts explaining to her what we are doing.

I cast the spell and pull Hana's soul into mine. Her soul is very heavy, but it's lighter than last time when I had used [Bind] on Roxanne.

I wonder if my 'Sanity' increase is helping.

Hana's soul enters mine and I feel a light "tickling" which makes me want to pull on Hana's soul-string.

Hana frowns, "That's it?"

"Not done yet," I say.

I pull her string and her bundle feels… "intense," as if we are constantly kissing. I dive into her mind and the feeling only increases.

-

I find her "talking" area and pull it back into my mind so that we can talk.

"Hello?"

"WOLFY!"

Immediately, her yellow lizard eyes envelop the entirety of my mind with her fearsome gaze.

"Okay, calm down a little," I say.

"I can't. It's too awesome!" Hana exclaims and her eyes grow even bigger.

I stare back at the yellow abyss of her eyes and send my own displeasure.

"Oh, no… Wolfy, I'm sorry…" Hana says and her excitement deflates. The eyes reduce in size the more I glare. "I'm sorry…"

I feel a little bad for her, so I reduce my glare and we both calm down. Happiness and comfort escape through her [Bind]. She's very content in knowing again how much power I have over her.

"You have to control your feelings, or else I'll be always reading your mind," I say.

"Eh. Not like I have anything to hide," Hana responds with a shrug. She thinks that she's dumb and that two minds think better than one.

"It helps me a little. My mind is taxed with three [Bind]s."

"Oh, I see." She thinks it's fine, she mostly just wanted to tell me all the time how much she loves me without having to use words since she's bad at being creative.

"Awn…"

Through [Bind], I have her lean on the bed so I can kiss her again. She immediately gets aroused and shoves her tongue inside my mouth, but since they have to leave, she contains her insatiable hunger.

I mean, seriously. If those memories are representative of her mind, she's really insatiable.

I wave to the girls as they head out and I'm left with only Alissa and the golems.

I "update" the golem's voice organ to match Aoi's progress. Then I continue my own research while using [Fly] so that Aoi can observe it.

Now, how do I make their soul's "physical body" organs equal to their doll bodies. Actually, just the outside needs to be doll-like. I can give them bones that will prevent them from being burned away.

The "bones" can even be just metal bars and hinges since they move simply by [Telekinesis] instead of needing muscles.

I summon a small skeletal steel earth elemental and use [Sense Soul] to observe its body. I play with Alissa's tail while I focus on my work.

Then I summon a few random monsters and observe their souls and compare their souls.

Okay, "bones" are in the same place, no matter if it's humanoid, elemental, animal, or monster. The "bone" organ in the soul itself is what differs in its "construction."

With the skeletal elemental in mind, I focus on the golem's soul and cast [Mold]. The copy is not 1-to-1 since their bodies are small, so I think I might have to make adjustments once they have their skeletons reconstructed.

Using the spell twice nearly consumed all of my mana. [Golemancy] is really expensive, mana-wise, or it's just inefficient because it's incomplete.

I grab Ted and cast [Regeneration] on his spine. [Heal] won't be able to create him a new spine since he never had one to begin with. [Regrowth] would be able to do it, but that's a level 80 [Light Magic] spell.

With the knowledge from [Alteration Magic] that a soul "assimilates" things that were grafted onto it, I hope that Ted and Suzy will assimilate their doll bodies into their soul now that they have an "original" piece of their physical bodies.

Very small and thin slivers of steel start to form after an hour of using [Regeneration] on them.

"I feel a difference," Ted says.

"Yes. Much easier to control, ourselves," Suzy says.

"Do you two feel any sort of discomfort? Like, are your bodies uncomfortable being so different when compared to what your soul is?"

"I feel 'wrong,' but it's not discomfort," Ted says.

"'Wrong'?"

"There's interference in the control, of our bodies," Suzy says.

"You didn't notice it before?"

"We didn't have a reference to compare to," Ted says.

"Interesting…"

The two little golems walk around the bed in circles, making Alissa laugh with their adorableness. They are testing their improved control while I recharge my mana.

"They are still walking a little oddly," Alissa says.

"Considering their bodies are like that, I don't think they will ever not walk oddly."

They start to dance and I notice how they have improved.

"Now, Roxanne will love that," I say.

The girls soon come back and are instantly distracted by the more energetic golems.

Ted lifts his stubby arms to Ciel, asking to be hugged, and is snatched away instantly.

"So, cu~te!" Ciel moans and smothers Ted -.

After a little while of gushing, the girls start working.

Lina wanted to knit, but Roxanne convinced her to sew clothes. They even bought paper for Roxanne to sketch the designs she wants. Of course, I gave them designs of my own, such as a proper maid, butler, bunny onesies, pajamas, sailor uniform, - , and some cosplay designs.

"Hey, that one is similar to Low Forest clothing," Alissa says while pointing at a kimono.

"Yeah, we are going to buy lots of clothes there," I say with a knowing grin.

She cutely taps her chin with her index finger. "If only I knew you liked it I would've smuggled some over. They are a pain in the ear to wear, though."

"Why?"

"They get loose easily if you don't know how to move correctly in them. They say it's so that you train your 'Dexterity,' but I think it's just so that once in a while perverts get to see someone expose themselves."

I run my hand through my hair in excitement. "Wow, that's a great idea, actually. It's like the dress knows when it's time to leave, so we get to sexy time faster."

"See? I knew it was for perverts," Alissa says while grinning at the other girls.

Coming up with designs for clothes took up quite some time, so I don't manage to progress any further in my research before lunch.

"I miss cooking," Alissa says.

"Me too," I respond.

She smiles warmly at me. "It's all amazing food, even Krysta's, but it's not the same as when you cook them yourself."

"Most likely because this food is filled with fat to make it taste better. We cook with little fat so it tastes differently."

"Is that so…?" Klein asks, looking at the food warily.

"Eh, eating this for a few days won't hurt," Roxanne says with a shrug.

"See? She's learning," I say and point to Roxanne, who smiles back at me.

We go out and collect Hana's armor. Now she looks like a proper metal soldier. We didn't ask for any decorations, so it's a bit plain, but it's something we should save on. The high-class inns are expensive, so the indulgence is over for now.

The boobplate fits her pretty nicely, though. The padded armor is still there, below the metal, so it's not like she's wearing a form-fitting armor, but it still represents what's inside quite well.

She'd do well in a Wonder Woman cosplay.

Then I notice that the peeping elves are at it again.

How did they get so many elves to spy on us? Most of them look like average commoners, so they can't all be soldiers for the Lord.

Maybe this is how Léonne and Vanea managed to get wind of their spying. They just hired a bunch of elves for this job and the news spread quickly. If they are keeping an eye on us, then it would be easy for this information to reach their ears.

I direct Hana through [Bind] so she glares at the spies and scares them off. She's much more difficult to control directly than Alissa or Aoi, so I end up mostly just telling her where to look.

I enter the guild and quickly make my way to the Dismantling Room. The guild follows a similar design to Escanso's, but it's made of white and gray wood, giving it an even more refined air.

The hunters over here certainly do look the part with their pompous looks and upturned noses. Low-level hunters aren't really necessary when the town guard and the Lord can take care of all the normal monsters by themselves, so only the more specialized hunters live here.

The Weepers give us a few gold coins each, their blood is very valuable for [Alchemy]. We could have gotten more, but I gave a good amount of the blood to Roxanne for her experiments.

While inside, the three [Bind]s start to get even more annoying and the girls notice my feelings seeping through it. I even have to control Hana's blanket again since it's so easy for her to resist the [Bind].

When I go back and feel the effects of Alissa's blessing affecting me again, the three [Bind]s return to being manageable.

"Well, now I know that my 'Sanity' affects how well I can manage the [Bind]s," I say.

"Sorry, Wolfy, I'll try to submit to you harder," Hana says, a little sad.

"I find it hard to believe that that's possible," Roxanne says with a raised eyebrow.

"If it ever gets too annoying I can just undo the [Bind]," I say with a shrug and Hana nods.

We move on to the shops closer to the castle and find a shop for facial products.

I look at Alissa and smirk. "You are getting your makeup, whether you like it or not."

She rolls her eyes and smiles faintly.

The shop smells pretty. The overly well-groomed elves remind me of the same beauty boutiques on Earth. Though everyone looks amazing and perfect at first sight, they use so much makeup that it ruins the illusion the more you look at them.

The girls put on some basic face powder and eye shadow and there's an instant change. Though Roxanne and Lina seem to benefit the most out of it and Hana comes just behind them.

Then we find a public park and have some tea under the sun while listening to the birds chirping.

For the first time, I see Gify (comically) fly around, chasing some birds, then he frolics in the grass with the other nature spirits.

He gives me a glare but ignores my jab.

After that, Hana, Ciel, and Klein go to the hunter's guild training grounds; Roxanne, Lina, and Aoi return to the inn for more sewing; and Alissa and I follow them to continue my research.

Aoi's hands are much more dexterous now, so she can even help with some things. Her ability to become very small is also advantageous since she can do much more delicate tasks that none of the girls can manage.

While observing Gify pop in and out of existence with my soul-touch, I cast [Materialize] repeatedly and follow Gify's advice in how to turn my soul completely solid so that I can grasp things.

Mana is an infinitesimal particle that has only a place in space as a physical property. It doesn't have physical substance, so I have to create the abstract concept of "mass" and add it to my mana, then I have to organize those particles of mana in a way that they fill up my soul and "attach" to it.

[Materialize] adds "sources" to my soul that emit photons, which is why it gives a glow to spirits. I have to take these "sources" and turn them into mana particles with mass.

Concepts, enchanting, and unique magic. These three things are all about visualization. Visualizing the exact effect you want in your mind and you can use mana to bend reality to your wishes.

"Roxanne, what is a Warped Reality?" I ask.

The two girls stop whispering to one another and turn to me. "Well, it's like the thing you did that made it rain flaming leaves that left a wet spot where they touched. You used mana recklessly to bend the laws of reality to your will, but that's not allowed, that's the domain of the Gods," Roxanne says.

"Wait, laws of reality? What is magic then? Is it different?"

"Yeah. Altering reality is changing how a specific object works. Altering the laws of reality is changing how every instance of that specific object works."

"Why doesn't anybody study it, then?"

She smiles wryly. "It's too dangerous and difficult to control. Some circles of magi might try some things with it, but it's always small and temporary."

"Like how I use [Godly Language] to alter reality?"

"Kind of. [Godly Language] is still more about altering reality itself than it's laws. And even then, it's like the difference between system magic and unique magic. [Godly Language] is much more controlled than what I've heard about from those circles of magi. Those who try to alter the laws of reality usually don't live long."

"Wow."

"Yeah. Well, it's actually really hard to even alter the laws in a small area. What you did was really crazy and impressive."

"Gih."

I lower my head and look away. "Alright, I'm sorry. I didn't know [Redirect Mana] could be that dangerous."

Roxanne shrugs. "Well, now you know," she says and Lina nods.

I manage to create a faint solidification. My hand still goes through it as the "mass" is not exactly "solid," so it feels like my hand is being squeezed slightly.

I play around with my blue, glowing tentacles and accidentally arouse Roxanne by touching her horn. It seems that until it's fully solid, my soul will still cause pleasure when it touches someone.

-

We have our last dinner in Goloria and savor all we can. Salads, pies, casseroles, juices, sweets, and meat. Everything is always so delicious that it's to die for.

With a sigh, I dip my not-grape in the flavored cream and eat the last fruit.

"We'll come back to Goloria sometime, right?" Lina asks.

"Yeah. The 'Legado' dungeon is closer to Goloria than Escanso," I say.

She nods and says, "Good, I want to go to the library again someday."

Look at that, my little girl is demanding things for herself!

After dinner, we play around a little more.

I watch the girls play Civil War, it's like a mix of "Magic: The Gathering" with chess. Fun, but kind of chaotic.

Then we go to sleep since we are waking up early tomorrow.

A note from Manasong

Hall of Fame of Patrons

The patrons who support Rupegia shall have their names sung by the bards for they deserve the glory and honor. Their names are:

Oracle Maximillian Hübner.

Prince Bradly.

Prince PreownedFIN.

Lord Andrew Meyers.

Lord Hope.

Lord Samuel Lim.

Lord Cody Weigel.

Lord Bill.

Lord Novgarod.

Lord DJ.

Lord Ashadun.

Lord D4rk Sheep.

Lord Michale Erwin.

Lord Cidant.

Lord Joxsan Herrera.

Lord Enrique Peña Gomez.

Noble Salty Panda.

Leave a rating or a review to help me rise to the top or fix my shameful understanding of prose.

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Chapter 52: Glare - Part 2

A note from Manasong

Attention: to conform to the limit of sexual content allowed in a novel, I've censored this chapter. You can look for the uncensored version here.

The symbol "-" denotes a section that got cut for containing sexual content. Also, if paragraphs seem missing, they were also likely censored in an earlier pass where the symbol wasn't used.

Today is the 24th, day of An.

-

My [Spirit Magic] and [Mana Control] increased by 1 (now 0+2 and 0+15). My [Sense Soul] increased by 2 (now 6). I can now see someone's "Endurance" and "Strength" stats.

But the best growth of this morning is that I can now see Aoi's HP.

Soul Info

Name: | Aoi | HP: | 200

Aoi stands on her hind legs, opens her wings wide, puffs out her chest, and smirks. Though, she looks more comical than imposing, due to being in her smaller size.

"Diamond dragon scales…" Klein mutters and her tail massages one of her temples.

"Hey, so my increased HP really is due to my dragon inheritance," Hana comments.

"I'm more interested in her MP and 'Magic Power,'" Roxanne says with a light shrug.

"Same," Ciels says.

"Gih."

That means "a lot."

"Well, that's not fair," Hana says with a frown. "Why are dragonkin so bad with magic, then?"

"Gih."

"That's bullshit. Why do the wereanimal and beastfolk races not have the same problem with magic, then? They also have a non-human inheritance. The demon race is even more talented with magic than the average human."

"But your race is the only one that inherits from monsters," Roxanne says.

Lina chimes in, "Think about it like this: If the dragonkin were as good with magic as they are with physical combat, they would be unstoppable."

The dragonkin are the Klingons or Krogans of Rupegia. Frightening stuff.

"As if that would be a bad thing," Hana says and snorts.

"You have more energy than, even real dragons," Aoi says.

"Hm…" Hana grabs her chin in thought. "But aren't the beastfolk good with both?"

Lina smiles and pats Hana's lower back since she doesn't reach Hana's shoulder. "You overestimate them. The beastfolk are mostly rebellious and independent. The dragonkin have more raw strength."

"You know a lot about the beastfolk," I say to Lina.

"There's a lot of them living in Wideberg."

"I see…"

We get up and I sadly store the beds back in my "Item Box." Then we go down to have our breakfast.

Ciel seems so happy that she almost hums as she eats.

"Happy to be traveling again?" Lina asks Ciel.

"You bet," Ciel answers, chipper.

Lina smiles adorably and Ciel doesn't resist, patting her head during the entire breakfast.

We head outside and breathe in the fresh air. The white wooden town looks quite picturesque as it stirs awake.

We make our way to the gate and see that it will be a repeat of Rabanara. We are likely to waste an hour or so just to get out due to the number of other caravans also going the same way as us.

Then we find Rande's caravan. The commoners we have been traveling with are all gone now and a new set of commoners going to Goldport are taking the ride with us. I see that the noble's carriage isn't here anymore.

Osaria sends us a warm wave when she sees us. Roxanne smiles back, but she seems a little sour after that for a while. Anton and Krysta also greet us warmly, though Anton seems to be still feeling a little awkward about our "agreement."

The elven sisters greet us with a smile and a wave; Julien also sends one to Ciel; the two brutes and the joker send a casual "yo" to Hana and Roxanne; the rest of the guards give the usual friendly nod.

Laertes merely sends a glance at us and gets on top of the (now fixed) carriage.

We get our horses but don't mount them just yet. There's no point when we are just going to stand here and wait in the line to get out of town.

"Hm…" Lina mutters, trying to start to talk but anxiety holds her back.

"What is it?" I ask.

"C-can I go to the carriage and talk with Oura?"

"Sure. You didn't have to ask."

I pat her head and she blushes, embarrassed at her own shyness.

Alissa and Klein stay together, talking about girl stuff. Hana and Ciel are talking about Hana's new armor and testing her mobility. Roxanne immediately pulls out an [Alchemy] book and starts to read about flammable compounds.

Feeling a little needy, I get Aoi and hold her in my arms. I caress her spine and she gives me a happy lick on the chin.

"So, how's your growth?" I ask her.

"Very good. Humanoids are tasty, they gave me lots of strength," she answers.

I cringe while smiling. "Yeah… we aren't going to kill a lot of humanoids again so soon."

She gives me a toothy grin. "I know, but it doesn't change that, they are very tasty."

I get an idea. "Do you think you could drink my blood?"

Her beautiful eyes gleam at the idea. "Yes! You have tons of mana; your blood would be very tasty."

I raise an eyebrow at her. "Do you actually taste the mana? Blood by itself doesn't taste good."

She tilts her head cutely. "But it does?"

"If you say so…"

"Hehe. I wouldn't mind if you, used [Slavery Magic] on me, too."

"Would it even work? You're not fully part of the system yet."

"We'll know if we try."

"What about that part of you leaving me if I ignore you? If you're my slave then it'll be harder for you to leave."

"If I'm your slave, then you have more responsibility, to keep me happy." She smiles smugly as if she has everything thought out. "And even then, if Hana can escape slavery if she wants, then so can I."

I smirk. "Confident, aren't you?"

Her nostrils light up. "Dragons are proud."

"How do you know that?"

"It's knowledge I was born with. Dragons are proud."

That's actually very convenient.

I kiss the top of her head and steam comes out of her nostrils.

"Once we are nobles, I want you to grow to your normal size and walk beside us. No more hiding your abilities. You can talk freely, too."

She grins again and licks my chin. "I'll pray lots so that I, get the system faster!"

I hug her tighter in my arms and she rubs her head against my cheek.

After having our fill of snuggling, we stare at one another again. "I know that the Gods will listen. It's just a matter of time… Ah, now that we are talking about it, how have you been praying?"

"Every night before I sleep, I ask to get another piece of, the system. I also ask to get included in, your 'Followers' Gift."

"How much do you know about the Gods?"

Her non-existent eyebrows try to knit together. "Well, I know their names."

"Right, we need to teach you more about the Gods, then."

She gives me a toothy smile. "Okay!"

The caravan starts to move and we finally get out of Goloria when the day has fully started.

We mount our horses and go down the spiral of the Pillar.

Alissa and Klein mount the same horse and flirt a little as they talk. Alissa's hands don't leave Klein's furry and long monkey tail for a single moment.

We reach the end of the Pillar, where the road splits off in all directions. We take the eastern one towards Goldport. There's some traffic in that direction, so I cast [Swift Foot] on the commoners. This way we can more easily pass the slower caravans and reduce the number of times that we have to move to the side when a faster caravan wants to pass us.

We leave the beautiful dark and light parts of the lake faster than I'd like. With some mild disappointment, we finally leave Goloria behind.

Now we are back inside the dark and damp forest of gigantic trees. It feels less oppressive this time; though, maybe I'm just getting used to it. I summon a light elemental so we can all feel more comfortable.

I discreetly leave a [Gate] "coordinate" in the forest for when we go back to Goloria. It's a really good idea to always leave a "coordinate" outside of any place we enter. We've been ambushed far too many times for that to be considered paranoia.

I whisper to Aoi and she glides towards the window of Rande's carriage. She perches herself on the windowsill and looks inside.

Through her eyes, I see Oura and Lina happily discussing passages from a book. Osaria looks at both of them with a predatory glint in her eyes, making some blood pump downstairs for a few moments.

"Li, Wolfy wants to dismantle those, exploding arrows," Aoi says.

"Oh, right! We still have to understand how they work," Lina says. Her gloomy eyes glow a little with excitement that quickly fades. "Sorry, Oura, I have to work."

"It's no problem," Oura says with a kind smile and pats Lina's head, making her blush slightly.

This girl. I'm sure she's not that innocent about her charms anymore.

Lina nods and scurries out of the carriage with Aoi wrapped around her neck.

I offer my hand to her and help her up onto the horse, then we gallop away with Roxanne following us.

I feel the annoyance of losing Alissa's blessing again, but I endure. Hana is very calm right now, making it much easier to deal with her [Bind].

We find a secluded clearing, far from any caravan or other random hunters walking through the forest.

I pull out an explosive arrow from my "Items" and carefully lay it on the ground, then I summon a spirit elemental.

"Enter the arrow," I order.

I see the insides of the arrow through the spirit elemental. There are two different liquids divided between two separate compartments inside the shaft. A potential point where the liquids could mix is in the middle of the shaft, near the arrowhead, where a small piece of glass is located. There's a small piece of wood connecting the shaft and the arrowhead, but I don't know what it's for.

I cast [Earth Wall] and create a bunker, then I summon a small glass earth elemental and order, "Open a hole there and use your body to fill it, like a window."

The elemental obeys and its body turns into a large square. It touches the wall and easily opens a hole where it fits perfectly.

Then I summon two goblins and order. "You, stay behind the window. You, go outside and hit the arrow on a rock. Turn the arrow around so you hit every part of it at least once."

They both nod and we move far away from the bunker.

The goblin starts by hitting the arrowhead against the rock. Nothing happens so it starts flipping the arrow around and hitting all its parts on the rock until the arrow breaks in half and the liquids mix together.

*BOOM!*

"Yay!" Aoi exclaims in happiness.

The guinea pig goblin instantly dies from the explosion and two-thirds of its body turns into minced meat. The other goblin behind the bunker is completely unharmed. The glass elemental receives some minor damage but it heals itself quite easily.

"First test is a success," I say and Lina nods.

I describe to the girls what happened and Lina says, "There's a priming mechanism so it doesn't blow up easily during transport. That glass piece is the key to priming it."

I summon another goblin and pull out another arrow. I use the spirit elemental to make another pass through the arrow and start drawing out a rough sketch of the interior.

The arrowhead is a little "off" to one side. The unknown small piece of wood keeps the arrowhead in place, but once you break it by pulling the arrow and the shaft apart, the arrowhead becomes loose and is able to move a little to the side, where it will fit into a slot. This slot makes the arrowhead touch a loose piece of wood in the middle of the shaft. With enough strength, the arrowhead will push this loose piece of wood backward, shattering the small piece of glass that was separating the two liquids.

"Quite the dangerous liquids. They seem to start a chain reaction that causes a big explosion just from contact," Roxanne says.

"Is that what you wanted when you mentioned that 'gunpower'?" Lina asks.

"No. This one creates too much fire, gunpowder isn't like that. Also, the mechanism to prevent them from mixing is far too complex. Bullets are a bit simpler than this arrow," I say.

"But the reaction seems to start inside the arrow without the need for air. This seems to be one of the requirements for your 'bullet' to work," Roxanne continues.

"Hm…" I scratch my head in thought.

I know how bullets work and how to engineer them, so I have an advantage for that. This mixing of two liquids will require new engineering, which would kind of negate my advantage.

"Perhaps… But we'll have to wait. If you girls don't manage to create my gunpowder then this might be a good substitute for it."

"No pressure," Roxanne says with a smirk and I shrug with an apologetic smile.

We stand inside the bunker and watch the goblin prime the arrow. We hear a click and the arrowhead visibly moves.

"It seems they prime the arrows when they draw the bow," Lina says and we nod.

The goblin hits the arrowhead against a new rock (since the last one was blown to bits) and another explosion occurs.

"Yay!" Aoi claps her claws, making clinking noises.

"Well, the secret has been revealed!" Roxanne says and chuckles.

"Now, we just need to find a way to extract the liquids," I say.

"Use a nature elemental to drill a hole in each side," Lina says.

We follow her suggestion and I summon the elemental. We give it two small flasks and order it to extract the liquids.

The first liquid comes out fine. A little oily and dark, similar to the burning oil we have. The second liquid starts to flow out of the shaft and it immediately bubbles and releases steam.

"Well, that ain't good," I say.

It enters the flask and its bubbling reduces by a little, but when the elemental tries to cork it, the bubbling and steaming shatters it.

We just observe the wasted liquid. It steams away in less than a minute, leaving small burns where it touched the rock and the elemental.

"Well, we just have to make a closed channel so it doesn't touch the air," Roxanne says with a shrug.

It's a little more difficult than that since the channel has to be hollowed out without filling it with air. Even the flask has to be turned into a vacuum by the elemental before it was ready to accept the second liquid. Its color is clear, but it's rather viscous.

"Now, let's mix together a drop of each," Roxanne says.

A little more fussing about with the bottles and the nature elemental manages to pass a drop of the liquid into another bottle.

"Waste of a flask, but oh well," Roxanne says and shrugs.

The elemental uncorks the bottle and drops the first liquid in. The drop touches the second and a small explosion happens, shattering the bottle.

"Hm. You know, this explosion is quite good, maybe we could weaponize it," I say.

"But I can see why it would be hard to make your 'bullets' with it. Maybe I could work on it to make it less unstable when it comes into contact with the air," Roxanne says.

"I'll build a workshop for you. We'll have to make a vacuumed room that's hermetically sealed."

"'Hermetically'?" Lina asks.

"Something that doesn't allow air in."

"Oh… Hm… yes, it will be difficult to build such a thing. We'll need lots of metal."

"Aren't the armor pieces we got enough?" Roxanne asks.

"No. A whole room made entirely of metal would require a lot of it. Especially because it has to be thick, otherwise if something accidentally punctures a hole in it, the pressure would blow you up, or something."

Roxanne frowns. "Erm… how?"

"It's an engineering thing. But basically the air would force itself in all at once, which could be dangerous," I say with a shrug.

I'm not certain, but you don't want to be careless with vacuum chambers.

"Not only that, but the unstable liquid could end up being exposed," Lina says.

"But we don't need to use the steel armor to make the room. We can buy cheaper metals for it."

"We'll also need to come up with a… herme, uh… a sealed suit-…"

"Hermetic suit," I interrupt.

"Yes, that. We need to make it so that she can breathe while still inside the room."

"That's actually the trickier part. I'm not really sure how to do it."

"Couldn't we use slime skin?"

"Oh, that could work. Though, their skin looks a little fragile."

"There are some tough slimes out there, some of them even resist arrows."

"Sounds perfect." I pat her head and she smiles.

We drain all the arrows and fill up half a barrel with each liquid. That's not a lot, but Roxanne will focus on identifying the liquids before we actually try to experiment with it.

After that, we pull out the enchanted Ghillie suit and observe it. The first enchantment we recognize as being [Ignorance]; the second one we have no idea what it is, we only know that it blocks [Sense Presence] after doing some testing; the third enchantment absorbs scents below it.

"I've never seen this second enchantment before, even in the books," Lina says.

"Keep it with you and study it. It would be good to know if there's a countermeasure to it because we do rely a lot on Alissa's [Sense Presence]," I say.

"So, a countermeasure to a countermeasure?" Roxanne asks and chuckles.

"That's warfare in a nutshell," I say and give her a smirk.

Roxanne chuckles again and rolls her eyes. "Oh, another of your weird references?" She asks.

I pout at her and narrow my eyes. "Ei, your idioms are also weird: 'Dwarven beard'; 'diamond dragon scales'; 'let a Glutton eat your words'; and the obsession with goblin semen."

She puts her hands on her hips in a sassy way. "Ours are more literal. What in the hell does 'in a nutshell' even mean?"

"I… have no idea…" I awkwardly scratch my head. "You use it when you are explaining something with only a few words, so maybe its origin comes from reducing something so much that it fits inside a nutshell?"

She scoffs and says, "Not only are Earthlings weird, but they are also boring."

I shrug. "Well, that's not our fault. Earth doesn't have dwarves, dragons, or goblins to reference."

"But you know what they are. You said we exist in tales and 'fantasy,'" Lina says.

"See? Earthlings are so boring," Roxanne says. She pokes me on the chest with her pale finger and Lina nods along.

"Oof, Lina, you traitor," I say and the little imp dares to smile.

We return to the caravan and spend our time leisurely. Lina returns to the carriage and Roxanne starts studying the dark liquid with her special lens that lets her see mana "signatures."

I continue my practice of [Soul Manipulation]. I can now keep my soul out with barely any mental effort, so I feel that I'm almost finishing creating the skill. There's one vector I haven't fully explored yet, which is the "soul-changing" that I can do with [Redirect Mana]. I can "change" my soul so that I can more easily attract "attuned" mana, or in other words, free-flowing mana with a "signature."

"Roxanne, can you lend me this lens for a minute?" I ask.

"Sure."

"Excuse me, I need this too." I grab her black tail and she looks at me curiously.

Since her tail is solidified mana, (aka, "fake matter"), it means that her mana has a signature. If I can change my soul to that "signature" by using [Redirect Mana], then I can use my special [Materialization] on it and gain an appendage!

I fucking cracked the code!

Gih!

"Use some magic, please," I say.

She casts a [Fireball] and throws it upwards. Some mana leaves through her tail and floats in the air.

Gimme!

I extend my soul over it and use [Redirect Mana] to "change" my soul to the same "signature" of the mana.

It's as hard as I remember, like flexing a muscle that you never used before. You know it's there, it's just difficult to use it the way you want.

But that's the last stretch for [Soul Manipulation]!

The road is a little busy. Just like on the way to Goldcross, the number of caravans and hunters roaming about makes the way completely clear of monsters for us. This side of the High Forest isn't having the same problems as Lord Mavel's territory.

Lunch comes and we savor Krysta's home-cooked meal.

"You're still the best cook out there, Mom," Klein says and Krysta returns a lovely smile.

Krysta sits beside her to eat and their tails entwine, making me envious and even more fired up to finish my [Soul Manipulation].

I turn to Aoi and say, "I think I should start teaching you what I know about the soul, too. If I can become a dragon, then you can become a humanoid."

Aoi stops mid-chew and stares at me like a statue. Her galaxy-like eyes bore holes through my soul as I feel the gears in her head turning from the mumbling escaping through [Bind].

"KWEH! YES! THAT'S AMAZING! I WANT TO BE A HUMANO~~-…!"

I cut the screaming inside my head with my mind.

I wait a minute before I say through [Bind]. "You done?"

"Hehehe. Sorry, sorry. Yes, I'm done! No, wait, I'm just starting! Teach me [Soul Manipulation]!"

"As you wish."

Gih.

He offered to help teach her.

"Thanks, Gify."

Gih!

We continue on our way after filling our bellies with roasted Dragolite and a cheesy casserole.

Holly suddenly sees a worrying sight. Thirty horsemen are coming towards us, all of them wearing red cloaks and a tabard with the yellow imperial sun on the chest. They are equipped with a mix of leather and metal armor. Most of them are soldiers, with only a few archers and mages, but there's also a lone temple priest among them.

I warn Rande and the guards tense up a little. I summon two earth and two fire elementals and position them in front of the caravan as a deterrent.

The imperials pass by a few caravans and ignore them. When they approach ours, they slow down, making us even warier.

The group of imperials stops in front of our caravan, blocking our way.

The leader, who's wearing a white cloak with yellow stripes, comes out from the middle of the group and stops a few meters in front of the others.

"Is this the Este Escort Company caravan?" The leader asks.

Rande growls and walks forward, stopping right between the two earth elementals. "Yes. I am Rande, the owner of the company," he says.

The leader's face is obscured by his helmet, but his eyes are neutral and imperative. "Is the fellowship Helios protecting this caravan?" He asks.

"Yes, we are here. I am Wolf Ryder, leader of Helios," I say.

I notice the imperials tense up and their hands squeeze their spears tighter.

His eyes glare at me with unbridled anger. He contains himself and says with a very stern tone, "I am Commander Taavi. I represent the Imperial Enforcers and I am here to take you, Wolf Ryder, to Goldcross for trial. You are accused of destruction of private property."

A note from Manasong

Hall of Fame of Patrons

The patrons who support Rupegia shall have their names sung by the bards for they deserve the glory and honor. Their names are:

Oracle Maximillian Hübner.

Prince Bradly.

Prince PreownedFIN.

Lord Andrew Meyers.

Lord Hope.

Lord Samuel Lim.

Lord Cody Weigel.

Lord Bill.

Lord Novgarod.

Lord DJ.

Lord Ashadun.

Lord D4rk Sheep.

Lord Michale Erwin.

Lord Cidant.

Lord Joxsan Herrera.

Lord Enrique Peña Gomez.

Noble Salty Panda.

Leave a rating or a review to help me rise to the top or fix my shameful understanding of prose.

Take a look over my blog where all information of the world of Rupegia will be posted.

Join the Discord and discuss, or rant, or meme, or try and fight me so your waifu gets more screentime.

Become a Patron and read chapters in advance, or read the side-stories, or leave your mark on the story, or help choose the next artwork or the next side-story.

Chapter 52: Glare - Part 3

A note from Manasong

Attention: to conform to the limit of sexual content allowed in a novel, I've censored this chapter. You can look for the uncensored version here.

The symbol "-" denotes a section that got cut for containing sexual content. Also, if paragraphs seem missing, they were also likely censored in an earlier pass where the symbol wasn't used.

My heart tries to suddenly leap through my mouth. The girls feel it through [Bind] and a wave of determined anger washes over me, helping me control myself. Gify turns on a light "massage" to help.

"W-what…? What 'private property' are you talking about?" I ask while I recollect my composure.

Taavi narrows his eyes at me and says, "Katasko's office in Goldport was completely razed. You're accused of destroying it."

Well… this ain't good.

"And how did I supposedly do that?"

"We know that you're a talented summoner. There are plenty of ways to do it."

So, they don't know how it was done? Why else would he be so vague about it when just knowing that I have [Summon Monster] would turn me into a suspect?

Aoi rubs her scaly blue head against my cheek, calming me even further.

"Why do you think that I would do such a thing?"

"That's what the trial is for. You're a prime suspect," Taavi says, matter-of-factly.

I grit my teeth in annoyance.

You're being awfully vague.

"I've never associated or interacted with Katasko before. I've only met a representative of them once, who offered me a job that I declined, which made them quite angry. So, is this Katasko admitting that they have a vendetta against me because I refused to work for them?" I add a bit of smugness to my words.

Taavi pauses and looks at one of his men. The significance of that is not lost on me. Then he turns to us and his glare is fully reignited. "Such matters will be revealed during the trial. You'll have your chance to defend yourself and turn your questions to Katasko."

I feel like facepalming and groaning, but Anton's and the other caravan guards' movement catches my attention. Anton stands beside an earth elemental, the other guards stand behind him and form a line between us and the Enforcers.

Taavi turns his glare to Rande. "Think very thoroughly about what you are about to do. We are here to take them back for trial, not arrest them, yet. And if not now, then someone else will, and that person won't be very gentle."

"You want to take away my personal guards?! You want us to die out there?!" Rande exclaims, his face flushing red with anger.

Taavi's tone turns to one of annoyance as if he's talking to a petulant child. "The road to Goldport is safe. You won't find any danger that your other guards and you yourself won't be able to handle."

Rande gets so angry that he spits saliva as he says, "Did you know that not even a day-cycle ago we were attacked by a circle of magi?! I lost eight of my men!"

This gives him some pause, then he speaks without as much conviction as before, "The road to Goldport is safe. If you do not feel safe, then we will allow you to come along. You should have looked deeper into Helios' character before hiring them if you were that concerned for your safety."

Hana glares at him with so much anger that it even scares me a little.

"Come alon-…" Rande stops himself before he has a heart attack. "I'll appeal in the Tribunal for lost profits due to imperial meddling!"

"I'll appeal in the Tribunal for a deferred trial," I say and Taavi grips his bridle tighter. He can't stop either of us from appealing. "And I also demand a suspension of your escort due to extenuating circumstances. We will report to the Tribunal after our escort job is complete."

Taavi's glare comes back in full blast. "Do you take me for a fool?! What 'extenuating circumstances'?"

I gather all of my courage to look as sure of myself as I can. "Nobleman Ento, Noblewoman Silvina, and Root Lord Ricardo were targeted by the circle of magi Dawn of Fire. We killed all of the attackers, but only because of my 'talent' with [Summoning Magic], as you yourself said that I possess."

Even behind his helmet I see Taavi grit his teeth.

I continue piling it on, taking the chance now that I've seen a way out. "The law is there to ensure justice and bring order, but what is more important: the law or the lives of these men and women? As you said, I'm no murderer, I'm only being accused of destruction of private property. So tell me this: will the God of the Sun look kindly on you when you take me away and threaten their safety?

"I'll report to the nearest Tribunal when my job is complete and my employers are safe," I finish with perfect confidence, because that's exactly what I'm going to do.

I can still get the temple or the Tribunal to protect me; there's a lot of room for me to work with.

I see approval in the eyes of Alissa, Ciel, and Lina.

Taavi narrows his eyes at me and his tone grows less confident as he speaks. "When you get to Goldport there are hundreds of ways you could take to escape the Empire. What stops you from taking any of them?"

"My fiancee and I are both blessed by the Gods; you can trust that we won't run from the Empire. And if that's not enough, I have a letter from an Agent of the Tribunal attesting to my character," I say and pull out Rudito's letter.

I summon a small bird and have it fly to Taavi. It lands on his hand and he takes the letter from its beak, slightly impressed at my display.

He reads it three times and returns it to the bird. "I have to discuss this."

He dismounts and gathers four men with yellow bands on their arms. I notice that one of the men he's talking to is the one that he looked at in the beginning of our conversation, so I focus on him.

Soul Info

Name: | Nero Gavalas | Race: | Human | Level: | 44
MP: | 250 | Magic Power: | 30
Strength: | 23 | Endurance: | 22

His level is awfully high for an imperial soldier, it's even higher than Taavi's.

From under his helmet, I can see a perfectly trimmed square black beard jutting out. It seems that his skin color is similar to Hana's, the common color of the average imperial. His arms are like logs, though they are still thinner than Anton's.

The imperials talk for a few minutes, sometimes a little heatedly, while the rest of the imperial soldiers stare at us sternly, leaving us rather tense. Rande calms himself down and his skin color returns to his natural tan.

Enforcers are trained to look mean so you don't even think of opposing them.

They finally stop talking and Taavi turns to us, his glare and confidence returned to him.

"The trial was set for the next 25th. If you are not in Goldcross by then, you'll be hunted down by the Enforcers and the temple, blessed by the Gods or not," Taavi says, nearly spitting as he speaks.

"That is acceptable," I say and nod courteously.

"Do not think that hiding in Maoka will get you out of this," he adds.

I simply smile back at him, unnerving him yet again.

He motions to his men and they move off to the side of the road. Rande motions to his own men and we return to our positions.

Thankfully, I'm on horseback, otherwise, I would have shown them that I've forgotten how to walk.

The imperials stare at us as we slowly make our way. The commoners look just about terrified of the situation, and the caravan guards show some discipline by remaining calm and alert.

When we pass by the officers following Taavi, I stop in front of Nero.

"You, what's your name?" I ask him.

"Sargeant Barak," a low and gravely voice answers. The man's brown eyes stare at me intently, but his expression is neutral.

"Oh, I thought I recognized you, my mistake," I give him a fake smile and spur my horse forward.

Once the imperials are out of sight, everyone's composure crumbles in an instant.

Rande immediately turns to me, eyes open wide in disbelief. "Wolf! Did you fuck someone's wife?!" He asks.

I immediately frown at him. "No… why would you think that I did?"

"Because he did," Osaria says from the window of the carriage. "This situation is… very familiar to Rande."

"Wolf is far too kind to be a wife-stealer like you," Oura says from the other window of the carriage.

I sigh and massage the bridge of my nose. "Anyway, I want to thank you all for the support," I say and look around.

"You're all good people," Ciel adds.

"You had our backs, so we have yours," Julien says.

"Ha! That's what I like to hear!" Hana exclaims.

"Even if only temporary, we are brothers-in-arms," Rande says.

"Paying us back for the times we saved your balls," Hana says and gives a fearsome smile to Rande.

Anton snorts and says, "You can unite the beastfolk if it means pissing off some nobles."

Ciel cringes slightly at his words. That's because the beastfolk united and pushed the Empire and the temple out of Bestiaram a long time ago.

"You can consider that you made a true friend today," Alissa says, putting into words the emotions she felt coming from me through my [Bind].

Julien gives us a friendly smile, Anton gives us a neutral nod, and the rest of them give me a short salute and some smiles.

Rande gives me a sympathetic smile and says, "Well, it's the least we could do, but it's not like you're going to be in much danger of being convicted. Lord Confiel can make the accusations disappear quite easily."

"I think the trial itself is a sham. Katasko wants to recruit us, so they might be trying to use the trial to cut a deal or something," Alissa says.

Rande frowns. "Ah, I see. Katasko is run by some pretty obnoxious nobles, so it doesn't surprise me that they would use such a tactic."

"If you end up not getting protection from Lord Confiel you can come to us and we'll do what we can to help," Osaria says, and Rande and Oura nod. Osaria's juicy lips form a smile, but her slightly droopy eyes have a hint of sadness to them.

"Thank you for the offer. We'll keep it in mind," I say and bow to them.

We return to our usual mood and continue on, then I gather the girls for a small meeting.

"So, we are going to Lord Confiel first," I say.

"Our bargaining power has decreased, though," Alissa says with a small frown.

"Eh, I still think we're going to be fine. We just have a lot of power," Roxanne says.

I let a sigh escape. "I'm more worried about what they have in store for us besides the trial," I say.

"If the trial really happens, we can just put the blame on them for harassing us," Hana says.

"Then there's not much else to do besides waiting," Ciel says.

"Wait, did you actually do it?" Klein asks.

I smile at her and reach over to pat her head. "I can't say anything to you yet."

"Well… fine…" She crosses her arms and pouts. "Actually, now that I think about it, the answer is pretty obvious."

I smile wryly at her and [Massage] her tail.

"It will all depend on how amenable Lord Confiel is. If he doesn't want to help us, then we can run to the Low Forest," Lina says.

"I'm tempted to ignore the trial while we hunt for the 'Noble' title," I say.

Ciel frowns and says, "That's too dangerous."

I shrug. "If we are running to the Low Forest, then we might as well do it before going there."

Ciel insists, "I would rather not. Even though it's Gecynd's 'advice.'" And Lina nods along.

"Well, we'll make the decision when the time comes."

Klein suddenly speaks up, "Just… just promise me that you'll all be safe? That you won't try anything stupid against the Enforcers?"

Hana gives her a pained smile and nods. Her heart went up into her throat, so she temporarily lost the ability to speak.

I grab her hand and give it a squeeze. "I promise. This, I promise."

The way forward is calm as usual. Night comes and we stop to rest.

I appease Hana of her frustration about today's matter. It was too close to her own experience for her to not fear a repeat of her family breaking up.

I link our minds together and our pleasure echoes within one another. Everything about Hana is intense, even her own pleasure makes me orgasm faster than with the two other girls.

Dinner is as usual, but the guards and Rande are more friendly, then things get lively when the commoners start a small dance and song.

Alissa and Klein are the meals for tonight.

Klein entwines her long tail with Alissa's and they start cuddling on the bed.

-

After calming down, I continue my [Regeneration] of the golem's bones with both of the now satisfied girls resting their heads on my chest. Klein's soft tail brushes against my skin while I fondle Alissa's fluffy one.

"Shouldn't we make them bigger?" Hana asks.

I hum in thought and say, "Maybe. The Gnome race doesn't need big bodies to fight, so I'm considering whether it's really necessary."

"You're really thinking of keeping them in doll-like bodies just so that they look cuter?" Hana gives me a questioning look.

"Yes," Ciel immediately answers for me.

"Really?" Hana gives her a disappointed look.

"Hm… Maybe. Maybe we coould find a way to make them bigger." Ciel looks away and her dark skin reddens a little in embarrassment.

"You could create new golems, instead," Roxanne suggests.

"Let these ones be personal guards who stay with us all the time," Lina piles on and intently stares at me.

"We could use the rest of the metal we have to make a new one," Alissa suggests.

"That metal is too bent to be used again, it needs to be reforged," Lina says.

"Right, prototype living armor will be done after we reach Goldport," I say.

Roxanne teaches Aoi and the Golems [Conjure Water]. After that, she'll teach them [Torrent] and the other spells because apparently, their magic aptitude is increasing by quite a lot.

"Well, the golems do have your memories," Roxanne says with a shrug.

Today is the 25th.

-

The morning trip is very quiet and calm. We only come across the occasional caravan or average traveler going either way and they share news of the way ahead with our commoners and soldiers.

The ground starts to angle downwards and becomes a little hilly. This means that we are close to the end of the High Forest.

I spend my time playing with [Materialization].

"You're a Spirit mage now, Wolf?" Osaria asks when she notices my glowing soul. "And what's that blue thing coming out of your hand?"

"This is my soul," I respond and extend my hand to show it to her. "Gify taught me that. He's been teaching me this sort of magic."

"Gih!" He puffs his chest so much that it grows to nearly his own size.

Her mouth hangs open and she blinks blankly. "How… how are you doing it?"

"This is my secret 'touch.'" I guide my horse towards the window of the carriage and touch her arm with my soul. She shivers and her face flushes slightly.

"You… you touched me with your soul?"

"Yep…" I answer with a smile that quickly fades. "I-is that a problem?"

Her eyes start to glimmer as she says, "No. It's just so… lewd…" She looks away and breathes heavily.

"I never thought of it that way," Alissa chimes in.

"It kind of makes sense. Our souls are the most bare forms we have, it's a very intimate touch," Ciel says while she and Lina nod along, then she blushes slightly as her mind wanders.

Okay, maaybe it could be considered sexual harassment when I did that to Ciel and Roxanne before they became my fiancees.

"Bah, you romantics. It's just pleasure," Hana says with a shrug.

Yeah, just pleasure. Juu~st pleasure…

Intermission 15

Fuck me… did he recognize me? How…? His [Sense Soul] should only see my MP and "Magic Power."

Oh no! Was he observing with his summons while I surveyed the building?!

Wait… that would be risky for him; we had magic sniffers all over the street…

Maybe he just paid someone to observe the street…

Damn it! I was careless and now he knows my face!

"Attention!" Commander Taavi yells and the men straighten up. "We are going to Goloria! Formation!"

The horsemen all neatly line up behind him.

"March!"

The officers move off from the formation and start their own private discussion. I'm obviously not invited.

Commander Taavi notices them but pretends not to. I see his expression stiffen for a moment, then he sends me a glance.

That's it; I need to disappear. Fuck this disguise; it's better to destroy it than to risk being ambushed by the Enforcers. Nobody can trace the forgery back to me, anyway.

The more we march on, the more obvious the officers' displeasure towards me becomes.

They might not stop with just me, Taavi could also be investigated. And if they get Taavi, then the pissers will be angry with me, too.

I can't risk it; I need to start looking for a new occupation.

A note from Manasong

Hall of Fame of Patrons

The patrons who support Rupegia shall have their names sung by the bards for they deserve the glory and honor. Their names are:

Oracle Maximillian Hübner.

Prince Bradly.

Prince PreownedFIN.

Lord Andrew Meyers.

Lord Hope.

Lord Samuel Lim.

Lord Cody Weigel.

Lord Bill.

Lord Novgarod.

Lord DJ.

Lord Ashadun.

Lord D4rk Sheep.

Lord Michale Erwin.

Lord Cidant.

Lord Joxsan Herrera.

Lord Enrique Peña Gomez.

Noble Salty Panda.

Leave a rating or a review to help me rise to the top or fix my shameful understanding of prose.

Take a look over my blog where all information of the world of Rupegia will be posted.

Join the Discord and discuss, or rant, or meme, or try and fight me so your waifu gets more screentime.

Become a Patron and read chapters in advance, or read the side-stories, or leave your mark on the story, or help choose the next artwork or the next side-story.

Chapter 53: Milestone - Part 1

A note from Manasong

Attention: to conform to the limit of mature content (more than just sexual content) allowed in a novel, I've censored this chapter. You can look for the uncensored version here.

The symbol "-" denotes a section that got cut for containing sexual content. Also, if paragraphs seem missing, they were also likely censored in an earlier pass where the symbol wasn't used.

Lunch comes and we fatten up with some not-shish-kebab with not-bell-pepper, not-tomato, not-onion, and pieces of dragolite and actual cow meat.

After that, I continue teaching Aoi how to move her soul around the same way that I do. Since she doesn't have a fully-fledged system yet, I can't just give her points so she could learn how to press the internal "button" inside her mind/soul. Maybe I should start calling that "soul-space."

Aoi stays curled in my lap while I play around with my soul and [Materialization], which is fine by me. She also requests a finger from me so she can draw blood and then keeps sucking on it so the wound never clots, which is also fine by me. I do go a little ahead of the caravan so that I don't get any weird looks when the others see Aoi -.

I occasionally cast [Regeneration] on myself to replenish the lost blood, but most of the time I keep it on Ted and Suzy so they can grow their skeletons. Actual bones would be much faster to regrow; it's because they are composed of steel that this regrowth is slowed down by quite a lot.

Aoi is having problems with moving her soul, but at least it seems that [Materialization] won't be a huge hurdle for her.

"Wolfy, give me [Sense Soul] for a moment," Alissa asks.

"Sure."

I patiently wait for her to finish her analysis.

"Your blood is speeding along Aoi's soul changes," she says.

Through [Bind], I immediately stop Aoi from biting my finger.

"Hehehe, sorry," she says in my head.

"I know you're not," I say and poke her soul, making her wince. Then I take my finger out of her mouth -.

"Why do you wish to become, humanoid?" Ted suddenly asks.

Aoi turns to him and taps a claw on her snout. "Hm… the system is good; humanoid society is more fun than, monster society; making lots of strong babies with, Wolfy will be fun; the Humanoid Gods are better, than the Monster King; Wolfy's cheat will also be very, good for me."

Ted turns his fluffy face towards me and I swear his beady black eyes shine. "Make me into a woman," he says.

"Cast [Bind] on us, too," Suzy asks immediately after.

"Well, [Bind] will have to wait, the other girls come first," I say.

"Yes," Suzy says and nods.

"Wait… why do you want to be a woman?" I ask Ted.

"To receive your 'cheat,'" he says with a nod.

I cringe. "That would require me to make love to you."

"Make love to me."

Alissa laughs and I cough and chuckle.

"We've already talked about this…" I say and look away from his seemingly intense stare.

"Make us attractive, that's our wish."

"To serve you better," Suzy says.

"To serve you better," Ted repeats.

"I've already said that I don't wish to make you attractive to reduce my mental load."

"Having the system will be, very beneficial," Ted says.

"Lot of ease in learning, and controlling our own, spells," Suzy says.

"You do not wish to treat us, like toys."

"But we are toys."

"You…" I start but my motivation dies inside of me.

I use the [Bind] with Hana to bring Ciel over to us.

"What is it, Wolfy?"

"The golems want to be like Aoi and receive the system, and then also receive my cheat."

I look at her and her wide eyes stare at me, then at the golems, then at Aoi, then at me again, then the golems, then Aoi, then the golems, then finally stops on me.

"My priestess training didn't prepare me for this," she finally says.

"We have no feelings, only a will, a wish," Ted says.

"We are your toys, play with us," Suzy pleads.

Ciel frowns, Alissa looks conflicted, and Aoi sees nothing wrong with this situation.

"What about you?" I ask Gify on my shoulder.

"Gih."

He thinks that my moral conundrum is respectable, but he personally doesn't see a problem. He does what he wants and he has few responsibilities, so he doesn't have the need to think as deeply as I do. He knows this, so he doesn't think that his perspective would be useful.

His mind is so fundamentally different that, for him, having servants wouldn't really be useful, let alone having love toys, which he would have zero need for (and I'm thankful for that). He follows us and enjoys eating our food, but he doesn't need any of that. His attachment to me is merely because he thinks that my life is amusing. So, for him, he doesn't fully understand my problem enough to advise me responsibly.

My brain hurts a little at the amount of information contained in that single chirp.

"You're surprisingly smart," I say and receive a pinch on my cheek. "Anyway, I'm not sure if the benefits are worth the cost. What would the Gods think of using a quasi-humanoid as a love toy, even if they wish for it?"

Ciel answers, "Slavery is either voluntary or forced upon criminals. You basically creating subservient life is… a gray area. We'll only find the answer to your doubts if we explore this situation further."

-. "Technically, I'm not creating 'life' since I'm only creating pseudo-elementals, but if I start to give them the gift of the system, then I'm creating another humanoid race, right?"

"I think that's correct, but I'm not sure if the Gods differentiate between humanoids created by you and humanoids created by the God of Creation."

"Can they choose not to give the golems the system?"

She shrugs and sighs. "Unknown."

I pat Aoi's head and play with her scales, lightly tickling her. "I wish I could talk to the Gods directly and ask what they think about it."

Ciel also becomes conflicted like Alissa as she says, "There are the Messages, but we'll never know if we are going to receive one until it comes."

"Since it seems hard for the Gods to send Messages, then annoying them until they send one also doesn't seem like a good idea," I say and feel another sigh coming on.

We all go silent and I ruminate a little more on the issue. My mind gets so clouded and fuzzy with conflicting thoughts -.

I break the kiss soon after; I'm not yet ready to reveal our relationship to the rest of the caravan.

With my mind now clear, I laugh and say, "This situation is playing with my weak spot. I value agency in a person's actions, I would only stop someone if I thought they were about to hurt themselves too much.

"The line of what I consider 'too much' is really far, and that is why I can accept Alissa, Lina, and Hana's love and slavery even with my Earth morals. I value their agency and their choices in loving me.

"But I don't know how much agency the golems really have. I don't even know how far into the 'too much harm' their request would even land us."

"What actual harm would, befall us?" Ted asks.

"It could hurt my feelings," I answer in a soft voice. "I would get attached to both of you and try to humanize you, only to be heartbroken when I eventually realize that you aren't."

"But we are trying to become, more like humanoids," Suzy says.

"That doesn't mean that you'll succeed."

"And Aoi will? Why?" Ted asks.

I know their gazes have no emotion to them, but the way they don't move while they wait for my answer is a little creepy.

"Because she's different. Her brain is closer to a humanoid's than either of you, and I don't know how to make your brain closer to hers without copying it over yours and deleting your personalities. Not to mention the psychological consequences of putting her mind in your bodies. What if she feels pain or agony from not even being able to breathe?"

Both golems go quiet and lower their heads.

"I cannot evaluate the, pros and cons," Ted says.

"Me too," Suzy says.

I turn to Alissa and Ciel and ask, "What do you two think?"

Alissa answers first, "I know that you have a lot on your mind, so I can't fully understand your perspective, but I would try to give them the system and also talk to the Gods. This is too much power to let it remain unused."

Ciel answers next, "First, I would leave it for later, for when you actually have room in your [Bind] for them. Then, I would dive into the teachings of the Gods in search of some guidance about this. I know the basics, but I was mostly just a healer in the temple and there's a lot more depth to the teachings to understand."

"Hana would say 'just do it,'" Alissa says with a smirk.

"Roxanne would say 'sounds too bothersome,'" I say and smirk too.

"Lina would definitely do it, though I've been trying to get her to be more pious," Ciel says.

"We need religion classes," I say.

"And Andraste classes. You've abandoned your grammar lessons," Ciel says and sends me a glare. I smile apologetically but don't answer. Then she continues, "If you take off your cheat, then Aoi knows how to read better than you do."

"Woo! I'm smarter than Wolfy!" Aoi exclaims and her nostrils glow for a moment.

"Har, har, very funny," I say in a flat tone.

We go quiet again for a while and I return to casting [Regeneration] on the golems.

"I think that I'll take Ciel's advice. I need to know more about what creating life means to the Gods," I say.

Ciel puffs up her chest and fidgets with a wide smile on her face, barely containing her pride.

The luminescent plants start to disappear from the trees, another sign that the High Forest is coming to an end.

When dusk comes, Alissa sniffs the air and smiles. "It's salty," she says.

"I can't feel it yet," I say.

Her tail wags slowly. "I've never seen the sea in person before, only in paintings. I'm getting excited!"

"Me too, I would love to go to the beach and sunbathe," Ciel says.

"The beach is boring," Ted says.

The girls turn to me with questioning eyes.

I smile wryly and say, "I don't like sand. It's coarse and rough and irritating and it gets everywhere."

"That's a reference," Suzy says.

I blink a few times in surprise. "Have you two been scanning my memories?"

"Yes," they say in unison.

"The way they alternate who speaks is kind of creepy," Roxanne says.

"We are very similar," Ted says.

"So similar that you could, consider us twins," Suzy says.

"Why does Ted always speak first?" Roxanne asks.

"I was born first," he answers.

Roxanne uses her tail to readjust her glasses. "Why does it matter who was born first?"

"It doesn't," Suzy says.

"But it's a simple reason to use to, base our decisions on," Ted says.

"Otherwise we would speak in, unison."

"And that would make it more, difficult to hear us."

Roxanne turns to me and asks, "Is that really how you think?"

"Kind of," I answer and smile wryly. "They need a reason to do anything, but there isn't any to help choose who speaks first and the alternative is undesirable. So, they chose the simplest reason to organize their speaking order: who was born first."

Roxanne does not look convinced. "But why split the talking this way? Why not just have one talk all the time?"

"Talking is magic practice," Ted says.

"Talking helps us practice body control," Suzy says.

"It's stimulation for us."

"And not participating would be, unfair."

"Do you need stimulation?" I ask.

"Not necessary, but desired," Ted answers.

"Why?"

"No stimulation means we are, useless," Suzy answers.

Ciel snatches Ted from my lap. "You'll never be useless. You'll always be my cuddly source of happiness."

"I… appreciate being appreciated," Ted says.

Oh? Is that some progress that I'm seeing?

Ciel squeaks and hugs him tighter.

Roxanne takes Suzy, but the cuddling session ends soon after because we stop for the day and make camp.

Lina comes back from the carriage quite happy after spending most of the day talking to Oura. More like geeking over some stories, from what I've grasped from their conversation.

The golems float near the edge of the tub so they won't get caught in the waves that we're making. They've also learned some courtesy and keep their eyes away from us. Though I'm almost certain Roxanne would enjoy being watched by them.

After dinner, I practice some jumps with [Telekinesis] and [Acrobatics]. It seems to help me reduce the dizziness while spinning around and jumping.

One thing that's advantageous about fighting with my feet above my head is that the enemy only has the reach to attack my face and arms. The downside is that it makes me dizzy and uncomfortable pretty fast because of all the blood rushing to my brain. [Acrobatics] helps a little with that, but it doesn't change the laws of physics.

I think that I should keep at least five points in [Acrobatics] while fighting. It seems that this number has the best balance of cost versus benefit to help with the dizziness from jumping around, though I haven't developed my style very deeply yet. Also, I need to take almost all of my points out of [Mana Recovery] to fit it in my build.

It's a shame, but fighting with too many people near us doesn't give a lot of EXP for leveling up. The EXP is divided based on proximity, so the caravan guards certainly leveled up, but we didn't.

I come back and Alissa hands me a cup of Tonsel (the not-lemon) juice loaded with sugar that we all guiltily drink. It feels like we just drank a silver coin.

Then I take my clothes off and Aoi's eyes seem to be glued to my body. They scan every inch of me as I apply [Clean] on myself.

"Interested?" Alissa asks.

Their eyes meet and some strong feelings of desire escape through their [Bind]s. Alissa averts her eyes almost immediately and the feeling fades from both of them.

"I think she's ready, Wolfy," Alissa says.

"Hm…?" I hum, confused at how she reached that conclusion.

"Her 'breeder-type charm' is affecting me." She smiles and blushes slightly.

"What? How? But you're a woman," Ciel says, and approaches Aoi. She grabs her and looks deep into her eyes. "I feel nothing."

"I'm more sensitive to 'breeder-types,'" Alissa says and smiles shyly. "I think that Hana might feel it too and our love for her might be increasing the effect."

Lina's Trivia: rarely, breeder-type monsters can use their "charm" to make their victims more agreeable to them, similar to Roxanne's succubus "charm." It's generally seen in the smarter and less rape-y monsters, so it's highly unlikely that goblins or orcs will ever "charm" someone to sleep with them.

"Her 'Charisma' should be quite high," Lina says.

Hana grabs Aoi's face and stares into her eyes. My fiery dragonkin gets so excited that she even makes me get a boner as her feelings flood into my soul space through the [Bind]. Her yellow eyes open inside my mind.

"Hana… control yourself…" I plead.

"Oh. Sorry, Wolfy…" She looks away from Aoi and my soul space returns to normal, though now I have an annoying boner.

Klein and Roxanne remain quiet, their eyes spell excitement as they imagine me on top of my little blue dragon.

Aoi finally looks at me and I feel a chill. As if the rest of the world was being tuned out, all I see and hear is Aoi. Her intense stare pierces my heart and makes my erect penis twitch.

The effect starts to fade, but the initial feeling is still there. I want Aoi.

She looks away and the rest of her "charm" fades, leaving me again with an awkward boner.

She looks at me again and more blood is pumped downstairs.

She looks away again and the awkwardness comes back.

She turns to me again with a shit-eating grin and I grab her head, forcing her to keep facing me.

"You really don't want to tease me like this," I say through gritted teeth.

"Oh? What are you going to do?" She asks and bats her surprisingly feminine eyelashes repeatedly.

"What do you mean 'surprisingly' feminine?" She asks and smokes escapes her nostrils.

"I, uh… bah! You're trying to misdirect me! Get out of my head!" I exclaim and grip her head harder.

She giggles and I feel her teeth growing inside my soul space. I grab her blanket and cover it with my own "blanket," then I wish with all of my strength to cut her off from my thoughts.

"Nooo! I can't hear it anymore!" She complains in a cutesy voice and struggles dramatically against my grip.

She's like a chipmunk, her small-size voice is just so cute, but her large-size voice is so sensuous…

I look around and teasingly say, "Have I made a mistake by marrying all of you? You all seem to enjoy teasing me someway or somehow."

"I don't," Ciel says immediately.

Lina seems conflicted while the rest grin, even Gify, who is the one with the biggest, most warped grin.

"That's the spice of life," Roxanne says with a soft and dramatic voice.

Aoi calms down and increases in size, towering over me. Her claws push my shoulder down and she gets on top of me.

"I want you now, Wolfy," she says in her more mature and sexy double-voice. Her normal behavior may give someone the impression that she's immature, but she's just inexperienced. She was already an "adult" the moment she showed interest in kissing me, now she's merely at a size that can comfortably "take" me.

My dick responds again and this time, she doesn't look away.

She lowers her hips and my tip touches a hard part of her.

She grins and shows me her sharp and pointy fangs. A frightening grin that only makes me more excited.

The hard part moves and the way is open again. She lowers her hips further and my dick is wrapped in a very warm and slick womb.

"Ah…" She moans in an even more sexual voice.

She lowers herself all the way down and her entrance reaches the base of my cock. I breathe in deeply as her tight womb slides around my head.

"Congratulations! You're not a virgin anymore, Aoi," Hana says and they all clap.

"Virginity means nothing until he, gives me an egg!" Aoi growls and approaches her face to mine. She glances at my Ring of Fertility and says, "You don't want a child now, right?"

I shake my head.

"Then I'll remain a 'virgin' for, you. You're the only one, that I want."

I grab her arms that are still holding me down and squeeze them tight. Her blue scales tinkle as they are pressured against one another.

She takes the hint and lowers her face to mine. Her long tongue invades my mouth and wraps around my own.

She moves her hips up and a strong jolt of pleasure almost makes me moan. Then she slams her hips down and this time the moan escapes me.

"I feel like she's fucking him," Roxanne comments.

"That's even better," Alissa says and makes herself comfortable on the bed. She doesn't feel like masturbating and only savors the sight.

Aoi pumps her hips up and down. Her womb feels like it's deliberately gripping my whole member.

"Holy shit… this feels amazing, and different," I say to Alissa through [Bind].

"Better than mine?" I feel a hint of danger in her voice.

"No… just, uh, just different."

"Uh, huh."

I share my feelings with Hana and Alissa and they moan in satisfaction.

Aoi's "charm" is nothing but a candle to Roxanne's spotlight, but I let it intoxicate me all the same.

As the poison flows through my veins, a new feeling wells up inside me: anger. Aoi is on top of me, she's dictating the pace, she's controlling the mating, she's on top of me, she's the one fucking me.

My pride says that I should fuck her from behind, but now it's too late; her claws are already squeezing my shoulders and her "Strength" is likely much higher than mine.

I squeeze her arms tighter and start moving my hips, slamming myself against her. I grimace in anger and control myself to not bite her tongue off.

She notices it and her smug glee passes through the [Bind].

"Today, you are my toy, Wolfy," she says in my soul space.

I cum inside her and the pleasure makes her orgasm, too.

"I'll breed you and make you birth hundreds of eggs!" I shoot back.

"Yes! Make me yours! Breed me like the monster that I am!"

I spread my soul out through my dick and both of us enter a continuous orgasm. I constantly cum and fill her up.

She spreads her wings and wraps them around me. Her legs wrap around my waist and she forces my dick to stay deep inside her while I fill her long womb, which squeezes around my shaft and stops any cum from overflowing, sealing the way like a plug.

The pleasure and anger eventually fade, and Aoi's satisfaction replaces both feelings.

We stop kissing one another and she lays her large scaly head beside my cheek. Her arms wrap around my shoulders and she hugs me tight; I'm completely wrapped by her now.

My dick is still being slowly tugged and my soul is in contact with both her womb and vagina. We close our eyes and enjoy the presence of each other. I cum again inside her and she giggles, enjoying being filled even more.

Normally, the male dragon would wrap around the female and stay inside her to ensure fertilization. This time, Aoi merely wants to enjoy my presence and pretend that I'm the one fertilizing her.

"I'll give you many eggs," I whisper to her.

"I want one for each of the, wives," she says.

"What?"

Her voice is like a soft and sensual tickle in my ears. "Teach them [Bind] and have them, feel the same as I do. To be connected so deeply, that I can't imagine being without, you."

I hold back a few tears and hug her tight. Her scales are ticklish, but they are also very comfortable right now.

After orgasming inside her three more times, she finally unwraps from me and allows Hana, Lina, and Alissa to clean her.

A note from Manasong

Hall of Fame of Patrons

The patrons who support Rupegia shall have their names sung by the bards for they deserve the glory and honor. Their names are:

Oracle Maximillian Hübner.

Prince Bradly.

Prince PreownedFIN.

Lord Andrew Meyers.

Lord Hope.

Lord Samuel Lim.

Lord Cody Weigel.

Lord Bill.

Lord Novgarod.

Lord DJ.

Lord Ashadun.

Lord D4rk Sheep.

Lord Michale Erwin.

Lord Cidant.

Lord Joxsan Herrera.

Lord Enrique Peña Gomez.

Noble Salty Panda.

Leave a rating or a review to help me rise to the top or fix my shameful understanding of prose.

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Chapter 53: Milestone - Part 2

A note from Manasong

Attention: to conform to the limit of sexual content allowed in a novel, I've censored this chapter. You can look for the uncensored version here.

The symbol "-" denotes a section that got cut for containing sexual content. Also, if paragraphs seem missing, they were also likely censored in an earlier pass where the symbol wasn't used.

A small horde of Corpse Stealers wanders too close to our camp, so I wake up to deal with it. Pocket-sized Aoi is sleeping on my chest, so I end up waking her when I get up from the bed. We are sleeping in light armor, so fortunately/unfortunately I don't have to get dressed.

Not wanting to scare Alissa again, I nudge her awake with the [Bind] and also use it to put Aoi back to sleep.

Alissa gets up and hugs my arm, then we go outside together.

"Shouldn't we wake up the others?" She asks, lowly.

"Nah, the summons can take care of this," I answer.

We walk towards the nearest gigantic tree and away from the bored eyes of two caravan guards standing watch. They didn't even notice us.

It seems like the night watch is getting more and more lax each day. With Holly always around, they haven't been useful even once, so I can understand their behavior.

We get behind the tree and I summon an Uspidor.

"Spit acid at the Corpse Stealers," I order.

The summon hisses and climbs up the tree.

Once it starts swinging from the branches, its vision becomes confusing and blurry as it spins around and tumbles through the air as it jumps from branch to branch.

"Ugh…" I groan and Alissa holds me tighter. My own balance is starting to get affected from sharing my view with the Uspidor.

Eventually, the summon reaches the Corpse Stealers and it perches itself on a branch, waiting patiently for the monsters to enter its range.

Apparently, it's smart enough to wait until they are all well inside its range instead of firing as soon as the first Stealer crosses into its spitting range.

The Uspidor has perfect accuracy and hits all of its shots in their chests. The Corpse Stealers quickly abandon the melting bodies and run away, but the Uspidor easily chases the slimes down and melts them to death.

"You are now level 25," says the female announcer.

Aoi wakes up a little annoyed. Lina suddenly sat up and nearly awoke the rest of the girls. Smoke escapes Aoi's nostrils as she stares at Lina.

"Wolfy said he killed some, monsters and leveled up. Go back to sleep," Aoi says at my request.

"Oh… okay…" Lina mutters and falls back on the bed. Ciel grumbles and hugs Lina again.

Alissa lays her head against my shoulder and sighs. "Perfect shots."

I rub my cheek against the top of her head and her fox ears tickle my face.

"Do you want to go back or stay like this for a little longer?" I ask.

"Both. But let's go back, we need our sleep." She gives me a light kiss on my neck that almost makes me want to stay.

When we are back in our bed, Aoi crawls up onto my chest and I use [Bind] on her to make her go back to sleep.

Alissa's tail tickles my side and Ciel's hand grabs my other arm.

The sound of their calm and light breathing is like a lullaby for me.

Today is the 26th.

-

I wake up a little more groggily than usual due to my disrupted sleep -. Seriously, it's not that, my body doesn't even feel tired. After some hot tea, I'll feel as refreshed as ever.

Lina's "Charisma" increased by 1 (now 11) and she also leveled up to 25. I put my newly gained 4 points into [Mana Recovery] (now 6+0). Alissa is now 20 years old.

"Congratulations, let this year be better than the last," we all say in unison.

"Gih gih."

I'm the first one to give her a tongue kiss, then Hana, Aoi, Ciel, Klein, Lina, and finally Roxanne.

"You should've told us your birthday, we would've bought you a gift," I say and squeeze her hand.

"I don't care about gifts. We're all too busy with our own problems to have any of you roaming around searching for something to gift to me," she says and squeezes my hand with her other hand.

I pull her back onto the bed and fill the back of her neck with kisses.

"I'll definitely get you something," I whisper in her fox ear.

She makes herself more comfortable in my arms. "I don't need anything. Not now and very likely not even in the future."

"Just something with sentimental value, then."

"Then you'll have to give us hundreds of sentimental gifts throughout our lives."

"I'll do it."

Her tail wags and tickles my waist. "That would cheapen the sentimentality of the gifts."

"Why are you so against it?" I nibble her ear.

"Kyah! Wolfy, you…" I can imagine her pout. "They are just objects, I prefer having you at my side."

"How about a date, then?"

"Just me and you?" She turns her head and gives me a sideways glance.

"Not sure if that's a good precedent to set," Ciel says and smiles wryly.

"We are supposed to share," Roxanne adds.

"I had a date with Wolfy, it was really good," Aoi says.

"Maybe turn this into a tradition so that no one feels left out?" Lina questions.

"Sounds great," Hana says.

"Well, our boat ride was kind of a 'date,'" I say to Ciel and she holds her chin in thought.

"Eh, fine," Roxanne says and Ciel shrugs.

Alissa turns around and gives me a peck on the lips. "You owe me a date, then."

We get out and sit down to eat a breakfast that's a bit more fragrant than usual.

"Hm… smells of flowers," Alissa says as she breathes in the steam from her tea.

"Do you prefer aromatic teas?" Krysta asks.

Alissa's tail wags once. "Yes, but only the ones that smell sweet. Nothing too pungent, please."

"Then I have just the tea for you. Tomorrow I'll serve some of it."

"Thank you."

They both smile kindly at each other and my heart goes "Aww…"

The caravan starts to move again and I cast [Swift Foot] on the commoners. The older ones respond with chuckles and wide smiles.

An old ram-type demon man comes closer to us and says, "There aren't many priests in Goloria, so it's difficult for us to get these blessings. Thank you, Sir Ryder." And he bows to me.

I wave at him and say, a little flustered, "It's no problem, I have a lot of mana to spare, anyway."

He straightens up and smiles. "Even so, you're saving us from a lot of pain, so thank you."

I nod and carry on.

I continue my [Materialization] training while the girls also practice on their own -; Ted and Suzy start trying to cast [Regeneration]; Alissa uses a nature elemental as horseback archery practice; Roxanne is trying to cast [Water Spirit], and she's nearly there; Hana abandons her horse and practices using her wings to fly while fully armored in metal gear; Ciel continues practicing [Judgment] on the blade of her glaive; Lina focuses on [Mana Control] so that she can cast [Earth Wall] on her feet faster; Klein plays around with [Fireball], discreetly testing its strength.

Laertes seems to have cast [Ignorance] on himself because after the drinking night with the caravan guards I've only noticed him once. Maybe he got laid or something and now his edge is gone.

I force my soul to come out of my temple in spirals just like Roxanne's horns. Then I cast [Materialization] on them and they become visible. Now I have faintly transparent black horns.

"Hey, Roxanne," I call her attention.

Her ball of water dissipates into mist and she looks at me. She immediately gasps and her tail stands up, completely erect.

"Wolfy, that's so hot! Can you change your skin color too?" She asks while grinning a little creepily.

"I don't know. Maybe if I blanket it with my soul. I might have to study Alissa's [Fox Transformation] to see if I can do it."

The other girls notice me and send impressed hums my way.

"Can you try fox ears next?" Alissa asks.

"That was the original idea," I answer.

Aoi takes my finger out of her mouth and her galaxy-like eyes narrow. "But I want a dragon!" She demands.

"You'll get it," I assure her and pat her scaly head, making it jingle.

My concentration slips and my soul horns become blue, though at least the spell doesn't make them glow anymore.

"I wonder why a spell to turn the spirits solid hasn't been created yet," I say.

"Spirits aren't supposed to remain in the Realm for long. Allowing them to touch things would only make them want to stay for longer," Ciel says.

"I'm sure that it must exist as a Unique Spell somewhere," Roxanne says.

The next step I have to take is to be able to maintain my soul "flex" without paying attention to it. I'll call this "flexing" soul "morphing."

It's difficult to morph my soul into anything, but maintaining the morph is not as hard. Since I've (seemingly) already mastered keeping my soul out of my body, I can visibly see progress as time passes.

The forest lights up a little and we see lights on the horizon.

"That's the end!" The joker yells.

"Tomorrow morning we should reach Goldport," Julien says.

The guards cheer and even Anton joins in.

Then we stop for lunch and eat while looking at the light at the end of the tunnel with longing.

"I kind of miss grass," I say.

Lina nods and says, "The earth is too humid and the air is a little stuffy."

"I miss the blue sky," Alissa says and most people agree with her.

"I miss the breeze touching my skin," Ciel says and Hana agrees.

We move on and the light slowly gets closer and closer to us.

The blue sky gradually becomes visible and the trees become more sparse. The canopy thins out and allows light to come in.

Ahead of us, we see the green grassland of Glorampina. The sparse normal-sized trees look a little odd to us now after spending so long with the huge "knitted" trees.

Near the horizon, we see a small stretch of the blue sea.

"Ooh!" Hana exclaims. She and Aoi seem almost like twins in the way they look ahead and from the feelings that come through their [Bind]s.

Alissa's tail sways lazily from side to side. She and Ciel seem quite content at seeing the sea for the first time.

The familiar salty smell slowly becomes noticeable. Be it Earth or Rupegia, the smell of the sea is still the same.

My concentration is disrupted a little as my mind goes blank from observing the endless blue.

I put points in [Hawk Eyes] and look at the small dots populating the sea. I can see a lot of sailing ships and only the smaller ones don't seem to have a sail, but they don't even have rowers, so I bet they are moving through magic.

Looking closer at the decks of the sailing ships, there seem to be some sailors punching the air. When we finally get close enough for me to see more in detail, I notice how the sail seems to "stretch" in sync with each sailor punching the air.

"Roxanne, how do those ships move?" I ask.

"Wind mages casting a non-combat version of [Wind Hammer]," she answers.

"Neat."

"I think we're close enough to the Everlasting Storm that the winds get a little unpredictable, so the only safe way to travel along the waters are with Wind or Water mages. I think that using a merfolk's submarine ship is faster, but they are much more expensive."

"Neat!" I exclaim again and Roxanne smiles wryly. "Wait, you said that the Everlasting Storm makes the winds unpredictable?"

"Yeah. It even gets more dangerous the further north you go."

"Also, the tides get much bigger in the north," Hana chimes in. "The shore of Sommerland regularly gets flooded and on some of the northern islands, the stilts they use reach over ten meters in height."

"Have any of you ever seen the Storm?" I ask.

They shake their heads.

"It's dangerous to get close, but I heard it's quite humbling to see the aftermath of the fight of the Gods," Hana says.

If Gecynd's vision was true, then one day we'll certainly see the Storm ourselves.

We finally get out of the High Forest and breathe in the fresh air. Everyone, except the wagon drivers, leave the road and walk in the tall grass. It's not like Antano, so the earth under the grass is very solid and dry.

"I'm feeling itchy already but I sure did miss the grass," Roxanne says with a giggle.

Alissa turns into a fox and darts around. I feel her happiness about her freedom leaking over our connection.

Lina lays down on the ground and a satisfied sigh escapes her lips. Even with her gloomy eyes, she still looks very satisfied right now.

With [Animal Tongue], I take care of all of our horses and let them graze a little. They all seem to miss eating grass once in a while, even though they are mostly carnivorous. Seeing what I'm doing, Nito gives me such a cute smile that he could make a straight boy blush.

One thing we quickly notice is how harsh the sunlight is. We are all in helmets, so it doesn't affect us too much, and the elves don't cover their exposed skin, but everyone else does. I guess this is why "dark" elves like Osaria exist; they tan easily and their skin doesn't burn like ours does.

As the sun sets, we start turning towards the south. Far off in the distance, almost completely covered by the blue haze, we see the delta of a wide river. With [Hawk Eyes] I can just barely make out the other side of the river and the tall yellow walls of Goldport.

Once it gets dark, we stop by the road-side and I immediately clear the area of a few Grassland Goblins.

"Why aren't there any small towns being built in obvious resting spots like this?" I ask the girls during the bath.

-

Ciel, who's the only one not doing anything lewd right now, answers me. "It's hard to maintain small towns. Even in fertile lands, if there isn't a very good reason for the town to exist, then it might end up being overrun by monsters sooner or later."

-

"I feel like no Lord has ever tried founding a new town even before I was born. Nothing ever changed in the trade route we used to travel along," Hana comments -.

From what Lina and I know of history, even in the High Forest, very little has changed since the start of this age, the Age of the Sun. Maybe it's that "stagnation" that I once suspected…

My train of thought is lost because Roxanne's perfect face is many times more interesting than thinking about that.

Krysta cooks a special meal for us. A large amount of roasted sirloin caps with the fat still on them, fried not-eggplant, fried not-potatoes because they are still king, and leafy greens in a herby vinaigrette and coleslaw. She used some monster cream to make mayo for the coleslaw so that she didn't need to use raw eggs.

"Raisins…" Alissa says lowly and chuckles.

"What?"

"Nothing." She grins and looks away.

"Weirdo," I say through [Bind].

"And you love me regardless."

"Yep."

I continue the bath's special time with Roxanne and pamper her while she reads one of Oura's books.

I grab her sexy feet and…

Well, I guess I did develop a foot fetish, thanks Ciel.

Anyway, I remove the nail polish and reapply the glossy purple, then I get a smaller brush and paint a white flower on her toenail.

"You need to learn how to paint something else, Wolfy," Roxanne demands from me.

I merely narrow my eyes at her and continue painting her nails.

Once done, I kiss the top of her foot and continue my journey upwards until I reach her lips -.

Once I've had enough of her lips, I pull her into a hug and read the book along with her, Radomir the Ravager. A lionfolk conqueror who is kind of this world's version of Conan the Barbarian.

Fun stuff, the writer knows how to write good action scenes and mix them with interesting sex scenes.

Meanwhile, Hana ties up Alissa on the bed -. We didn't give her a gift for her birthday, so we gave her this. Hopefully, she felt enough - happiness to compensate for that.

Today is the 27th.

-

My [Enhanced Semen Recharge] increased by 1 (now 0+10). Lina's [Mana Control] increased by 1 (now 6).

I feel refreshed, but aside from waking up with a wet crotch and a bigger appetite than normal, I don't feel anything different.

We have a lively breakfast since everyone is happy to end this journey. Krysta's new tea lets off a thick sweet scent and Alissa feels delighted, almost like a cat on catnip.

Rande seems very pleased when he says, "Three days before the Turn of the Wheel is a good time. Without [Swift Foot] we might have come right at the time limit since we stopped at Goloria for a little while." He eyes Goldport in the distance with a gaze filled with greed.

"It might be a good idea to actually hire a Blessing mage," Osaria comments.

"Indeed."

"Even for the day-to-day, [Swift Foot] is really useful," Hana joins in.

Rande nods and his wide smile creates dimples on his face. "Hopefully, the new Lord will allow the temple to have more influence. The priests at Rabanara are always for hire, but they don't come all the way over here," he says.

The road joins with another one that comes from Glorampina to the north, so now there's too much traffic to let Aoi give my finger blowjobs or to practice my [Materialization]. Because of that, I focus on using [Regeneration] on the golems while they practice on their own.

I discreetly guide my horse away from the road and put down a [Gate] "coordinate" behind a tree and some bushes. Better safe than sorry.

The tall yellow walls of Goldport reflect the harsh sunlight, giving them a natural glow that makes it seem like the walls are made of gold.

Far behind the walls, we can see the white stone houses clumped up on the hill that Goldport is built upon.

On our side of the river, there's a smaller version of the town. There are only business and inns on this side, so we'll have to take a ferry to enter Goldport proper.

The morning passes without any events and we slowly make our way to Goldport's gates.

The view is worthy of a painting. The High Forest to our right; the sea to our left; and the delta and the golden town in front of us, hugging the end of the Drakotoicho mountain range.

This mountain range is the eastern version of the Rakontagne. It's a huge vertical wall of gray rock with snowy peaks. It dwarfs Goldport and adds a picturesque air to the landscape.

Endless blue sea, a fantastical forest of gigantic trees, a golden city, snowy peaks, and a river full of ships. Perfection.

The hours pass us by and we are filled with wonder at the humbling view. Roxanne is the least affected since she's been here before.

The walls of West Goldport become bigger and bigger, then suddenly we stop, finally reaching our destination.

Rande guides his horses to the commoners and announces, "As of now my contract has been fulfilled and you are safe, you can leave and go wherever you want."

We dismount our horses for the last time and stretch.

Journey's end…

Nah, the journey's still ongoing. This is just a milestone. One of many.

A note from Manasong

Hall of Fame of Patrons

The patrons who support Rupegia shall have their names sung by the bards for they deserve the glory and honor. Their names are:

Oracle Maximillian Hübner.

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Prince PreownedFIN.

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Lord Hope.

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Lord Bill.

Lord Novgarod.

Lord DJ.

Lord Ashadun.

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Lord Michale Erwin.

Lord Cidant.

Lord Joxsan Herrera.

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Noble Salty Panda.

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Chapter 53: Milestone - Part 3

A note from Manasong

Attention: to conform to the limit of mature content (more than just sexual content) allowed in a novel, I've censored this chapter. You can look for the uncensored version here.

The symbol "-" denotes a section that got cut for containing sexual content. Also, if paragraphs seem missing, they were also likely censored in an earlier pass where the symbol wasn't used.

The caravan stops in the line to customs and the commoners continue on, going towards the "express" lane of customs.

Klein and I approach Rande and I say, "So, when are you leaving?"

He turns to me and smiles wide, creating dimples on his tanned cheeks. "On the second, at first light."

Osaria approaches from behind and lays her hands on my and Klein's shoulders. "We should celebrate the Turn together," she says in her sultry tone.

"Not that way?" Rande asks his mother.

"Not that way," she repeats and leans over so she can look at my face. "What do you think about seafood?"

"I like it," I answer.

"Then how about the Dansstroom?" Her droopy red eyes seem to smile on their own.

I look at Klein and she smirks. "I'm sure you'll love it," she answers.

"Well, how's it like?" I ask.

"I'm sure you'll love it."

I look at Osaria and Rande and they both smirk.

I pout at Klein and say, "Uh-huh, 'love it.' I can just imagine what kind of opinion you all have of me."

Osaria raises an eyebrow at me and asks, "A very good one?" Then she smirks again.

I fail at coming with a comeback and blush a little.

"We might want to check that they aren't already full," Klein says.

"Right. We're going to be busy, so please go check for us. We'll be staying in the Wind'he Gevee," Rande says.

I summon a small bird and give it to Rande.

"For communication purposes," I say.

Osaria steals the blue ball of feathers from his hand and starts petting it. "I know that summoners can share senses with their summons, correct?" She asks with a slight grin.

"Correct," I answer.

Her eyes narrow and give her a very mischievous air. "I bet that Oura will love to pet this little one."

Rande shows a slightly displeased face but then he eyes the bird curiously.

"I think that the bird should stay with you at all times," I say to Osaria and give her an intense glare.

"If you say so," Osaria says in a slow and fake displeased tone.

With a *poof*, Rande pulls out a bag of coins and says, "So, Wolf, your job is done, so here's your payment. If, in the future, you think about continuing in this line of work, I'd gladly hire you again."

I take the coins, shake his hand and say, "It was a pleasure working with you."

He gives me a dimpled smile again. "Likewise."

We go back and see Ciel giving her goodbyes to Julien and the others. The elven sister gives us a slightly sad wave.

Maybe I should come hang out with the guards again sometime…

Klein hugs one of my arms and Hana hugs the other while we wait in line for Klein to pass through customs.

The people around us send us curious glances, whisper among themselves, and snicker once in a while. The elves are much more discreet in their staring, when they aren't obviously spying on us, so having these embarrassed/envious stares being sent at us again is kind of refreshing.

The races that I can see here are a mixed bag. Elves still make up half of the population, but the number of demon race people shoots up drastically.

Of the most exotic of the demon race I can see here are: a wolf-like man, similar to beastfolk, though he looks more "savage"; a woman who has spikes for hair, which run down her back, like a porcupine, and also force her to wear an open-back dress that's slightly alluring; a man with peacock feathers for hair, but they also hang from his arms; an oddly thin man with bulging, beautiful light blue eyes and tufts of fur on various parts of his body; a cobra-like woman with a snake head, a long neck, and the iconic "hood" of a cobra.

Then there's the merfolk: Lamia, the half-snake people, are the most common; the Scylla, the half-octopus people, come in second; the Sirens, with their floating magic hair, come in third; after that come the Thalanthro, humanoids mixed with fish.

The Thalanthro look as if a human literally mated with a fish. They have slick and bluish or greenish colored skin, a complete lack of chest, large webbed hands and feet, fins on various parts of their bodies, large noses, thin and tall frames, and elongated Asian-like eyes. This confirms that this isn't a game, otherwise Rupegia would've been sued out of its ass for plagiarizing Zoras and I could hardly believe that Nintendo would ever create a world as lewd as this one.

All that's missing are the mermaids/mermen, but they aren't fully amphibious so we won't meet one so easily.

I've also noticed that merfolk seem to use very little clothing. From what I know of their culture, they don't usually wear clothes underwater, only when they walk on land. The Chimeras and some beastfolk are also like that, probably because they spent most of their existence far from the Empire's influence.

"Ciel, are there any laws or teachings of the Gods against going naked in public?" I ask.

"No. But they tell us to cover ourselves and only be naked in the presence of family or those you wish to make love to."

Wait…

I frown a little. "It's okay to be naked in front of family?"

"Yes, why? It's different on Earth?"

"Yeah, it's… basically the same as here, except you don't get naked in front of family."

Hana knits her fiery red eyebrows in light confusion. "Then how do you give baths to children and babies?"

"Well, when they are at that age then it's normal to give them baths. When they grow up and start to get embarrassed with their bodies or when seeing yours then you stop. By then they should've learned to take a bath by themselves."

"Uh… then it's normal to pay for individual baths for all of the children?"

"Ah, no. The way we take a bath is different. It's much smaller and simpler. It's just piped water thrown at your head in a constant stream."

"Sounds wasteful," Roxanne comments.

"It kind of is. It's also not as comfortable since you take a shower, that's what we usually call it on Earth, while standing."

"Ooh… so that's why you love baths so much," Alissa says with a snicker.

"Earth is so prudish," Hana says and snorts.

"What's 'Earth'?" Klein asks and tilts her head.

"My birthplace," I say lowly with a sly smile.

Klein frowns and pouts at me. "Never heard of it."

"Do you know of all countries that exist in the realm?"

"No…"

"Then you'd never know about it."

She shows me her tongue and I chuckle, but my laughter quickly dies and I ask, "Anyway, so you all took baths with your parents?"

They all nod and I feel a little uncomfortable.

"I still do," Klein says, innocently.

"How do Earthlings teach children about making love?" Ciel asks.

"Uh… with books and in school. Why? Is it relevant?"

"Well, yes. Bath time is a good time to show children what making love is supposed to be like."

"What…?"

She chuckles. "What 'what'?"

"You mean, you just do it in front of children?"

"Yes…" She smirks and shakes her head. "Not everybody can buy books and they also don't show how love is supposed to be like. There's also the technical part; I know that there are some noble families that like to brag about how they know bed techniques that have been passed down for generations."

"Oh yes, Mom taught me all about [Oral Technique]. Dad showed me how he pleases Mom, but he's so big that I don't think Wolfy can do the same things he did," Alissa comments.

"Oh yeah, Da's the same. It's more about how to not hurt a woman instead of how to please her," Klein adds.

"Wow…" I can only mutter in wonder.

"Well, for me it was perfect. Wolfy does me just like Dad does Mom, so I knew that he would be the right one for me," Hana chimes in.

I look at Ciel with my mouth hanging open in disbelief. "And that isn't weird?" I ask while pointing at Hana.

"Oi. I may be a sword polisher, but I know that that isn't weird," Hana protests.

"Well…" Ciel starts and shrugs. "If it works for her, why shouldn't she base herself off her parents? They seem like a good example…" -her voice dies down as she speaks- "except for the whole 'getting arrested' deal… sorry, Hana."

"No problem. Dad screwed up."

"Anyway…" Ciel clears her throat awkwardly. "Why are you so appalled by this? It seems like most of the things you find weird about us revolve around bed activities."

I frown and pucker my lips in thought. "This is really the biggest difference between my birthplace and here. It's seen as 'dirty' by a lot of people. There's uh… there's also a lot of fear about anything related to pedophilia and putting children in these kinds of situations," I say.

She frowns and looks down, thinking deeply. "Hm… you don't have Gods that could punish pedophiles, right?"

"Yes."

"Wait, you're from a heretical land?" Klein asks, lowly.

"More like a land that isn't under the influence of the temple."

"Oh, I see. Makes sense."

Ciel continues, "Well, I can see why people would be afraid of those things. Here, if you force your family or do it with a child, then you instantly get branded as a Wicked, so we don't have much to worry about besides embarrassing your children."

Well… you're considered an adult when you reach 14-16 years old, so I know that Americans would also get a little miffed at the lower 'age of consent' here.

"It was informative, but I'd rather never see my parents doing it again," Klein comments. Alissa, Hana, and Roxanne just shrug.

I sigh and say, "Well… I guess it makes sense. Knowing the Gods are watching makes a lot of things much simpler for us… So, uh, does anybody think the Gods are perverts for peeping on us while we do it?"

"Hah, yes, I do," Roxanne says.

"They aren't… they aren't humanoids anymore. They don't 'peep,'" Ciel says, a little annoyed.

"I bet that's someone's fetish," Hana comments, ignoring Ciel's growing annoyance.

"Isn't it yours?" Roxanne asks Hana, who ignores her.

"Do people touch themselves while thinking of the Gods?" Alissa wonders.

"Some of their statues are quite attractive, I bet someone has at some point," Lina says.

I turn to Ciel ask with a cheeky grin, "Is it heresy to cover a statue of the Gods with fluids? What about the Goddess of Love?"

"Can you gain 'Piety' if you hit one off to the Gods?" Hana asks.

"I'm not answering any of these questions," Ciel says while facepalming.

Alissa's tail wags and she smirks at Ciel. "Which God is the most attractive? My vote is tied between the God of Law and the God of the Sun."

"Goddess of Will," Hana answers immediately.

"You're only saying that because she's a dragonkin," Lina says.

Hana looks at Lina as if she's saying something obvious. "Yeah? So?"

Lina pouts. "Attractiveness does not mean what you think it means."

They both stare at each other with narrowed eyes.

"What about you?" Roxanne asks Ciel with a smirk.

"God of Luck…" Ciel says with a flat tone, resigning herself to her fate.

The halfling?

Klein looks me up and down. "Yeah, I think I know why."

"Wolfy, on Earth, would Ciel be a pedophile?" Alissa asks

"What?!" I feel a certain someone's glare hit my cheek.

I smirk at Alissa and answer, "Considering that she's twenty-one... yeah, she would."

"What…?" Ciel's hand falls heavily on my shoulder.

I shrug and direct my smirk at her. "Hey, that's just how the law is."

She narrows her eyes dangerously. "Uh-huh, sure, I'm the pedo."

I point at Lina and she cringes.

"Go on… who's the pedo?" I ask with a shit-eating grin.

"Both of us…" She mutters and looks away.

Klein frowns and tilts her head in confusion.

We play around a little more and Anton and Krysta come over to chat, too. They'll be staying with Rande, and Klein wants to spend the day with them after tomorrow.

It takes a while, but we finally cross the yellow stone gates and enter the city proper. I immediately feel Rabanara's vibe because the architecture is a mixed bag and I notice some buildings that were cut in half and then "grown" back together.

This side of Goldport is often abandoned when there's a monster siege, so it makes sense that it would've been razed a few times already.

The streets are filled with vendors selling a variety of wares. Mostly fish, but also a lot of exotic products. They announce the wares out loud with their prices, trying to attract any customers.

"Tourist trap," Krysta says and we tune them out. A single look at the price of the Snow Weave products and I nod my head in agreement.

We do get a fishstick, though. Simple sardines fried in flour and seasoned with salt and not-lemon.

I notice how Krysta seems to be sending glances at the food stalls. She fidgets and then pats her stomach. Klein notices that I noticed her and she smiles wryly.

I stop and ask, "How about we get our lunch from the stalls?"

On one end of the spectrum of reactions, Roxanne pats her stomach and frowns. On the other end, Klein jumps in place and grasps her hands together, "Yes!" She says and nods repeatedly while her tail copies the movement of her head.

Krysta smiles and nods. "Sounds lovely!" She says, more enthusiastic than normal.

Anton smiles at me and snorts, then he turns to Krysta. "When someone else suggests eating from the stalls you jump right on it, don't you?"

Krysta's eyes shift from side to side. "What do you mean? It would be rude to impose my diet on them."

Klein sighs softly and says, "Mom, it's fine. Eating from the stalls is okay once in a while."

Did I misread her interest in the stalls?

Krysta continues looking around as she says, "Did I say I was not fine? Of course I'm fine with eating from the stalls."

She suddenly stops for a moment and then marches forward to a stall selling honeyed fruits.

Anton and Klein smile wryly at each other.

"One of each," Krysta immediately says when she catches the female seller's attention.

"We… have twenty types of fruit," the seller says, a little stunned.

"Yes, one of each," Krysta repeats.

We approach Krysta from behind and the seller notices us. She understands we are with Krysta and hums in understanding.

Well, this isn't too bad.

"Those are all for her," Klein whispers.

"Okay…"

"She's going to store them all in her [Item Box]," Anton says.

"W-well, it's always good to have some good desserts to remind me of the correct flavor," Krysta defends herself.

Anton smiles softly and his permanent frown lightens a little. "Of course."

But Krysta didn't stop there.

"Yes, I want all of them."

"One of each."

"Only these two, the rest I've already tasted."

"Hm… no new flavors…"

"Oh…!" She suddenly stops in front of a stall. "This one's new."

"You remember them all?" Anton asks, a little incredulous.

"You don't…?" Krysta asks, unsure of herself.

"Not really."

Krysta eyes us and we look away.

I feel a little bad for her so I say, "Ge-generally Alissa searches for things for me, so I don't go out a lot to browse the stalls, but I'm sure I'd remember them as well as you do if I did."

"I see…" Krysta smiles awkwardly.

"We don't think you're weird, Mom," Klein says and uses her tail to rub Krysta's shoulder. "We think that you're funny because of how shy you act when it comes to this."

Krysta picks on her meat stick without much enthusiasm and says, "Well, it's just not a good idea to keep wasting so much money on such simple food."

Klein rolls her eyes and Anton lands a huge hand on her small shoulder. "Your grandmother just really wasn't a good person," he says.

Krysta shrugs. "She was a good chef, though."

We eat a wide variety of exotic foods while Krysta hoards all kinds of weird stuff.

As we get closer to the port, stereotypical seagulls make themselves known, though there's something odd about their cries. They're almost… human. Like a person badly imitating real seagulls.

I notice that there's no one spying on us here, which is very refreshing. We might finally get some real peace and quiet.

We finally reach the port and choose one of the dozens of ferries going to the other side.

While we wait for the boat to get ready for departure, we take our armor off and sit down on one of the benches to relax. When I'm just about to doze off, the boat captain gives the signal to depart.

A Wind mage "punches" the sails and two elven mages use [Weaverism] to propel it forward like the gondola from Goloria.

Osaria seizes this perfect moment to start caressing the bird. Her finger runs along the spine of the bird and I feel a massage coupled with a little bit of tickling. She gives the bird a knowing smile and I smile back, even though she will never know it.

"What's up?" Alissa asks, always perceptive.

"Osaria is caressing the bird," I say.

Hana looks down to her breasts, where the back of my head currently rests. "Huh, it seems like she's getting attached to you," she says.

"Even though she said she wouldn't," Alissa adds.

"Well…" I feel a sigh coming but I suppress it. "She may be trying to not get attached, but that's easier said than done, right? And I'm getting attached to her, too. She's quite a fun person."

"Maybe we could find a way to keep Rande around after we become nobility," Alissa says.

"Only if we remain in the High Forest. I don't think he'll leave it so easily," Hana says.

"We'll see how things go," I say.

On the way, Roxanne and Ciel make friends with a traveling couple of demon race, an Angel-type and a Raven-type. The man is white-skinned with beautiful locks of yellow hair and white wings. The woman is black-skinned with dark glossy hair with a purple shine and black wings.

They came to spend the Turn here instead of in their smaller town in Maoka. They can fly, so for them, travel is much safer than it is for us, land-locked beings.

It's quite nice to hear the common folk talk about their daily life. I also noticed how our lives are now so detached from the norm that it feels hard to truly relate to their problems due to how different they are from us.

First, they paid for hunters to escort them around so they could gain levels. Then, they paid for magical training so that they could get enough mana to cast [Conjure Small Meal]. This way they can travel light and save money on supplies.

Another thing they are trying to learn is [Earth Wall] so that they can build shelters for the night with little risk of being eaten while sleeping. [Summoning Magic] is better for this, but [Earth Wall] has more uses since it also protects you from the elements.

Their work is with polishing gems for enchanting. Not a bad job, but they don't make enough to be considered "middle class," so their achievements are actually quite impressive.

At first, they thought that Ciel and Roxanne were lovers and Lina was Roxanne's sister. Boy, were they wrong, so wrong that they became very awkward for a while after Roxanne told them the truth.

We land on Golport proper and part ways with them.

The town is a mass of pure white and yellow with rows upon rows of square buildings as far as the eye can see. It all culminates in a huge mansion at the top of the hill, like a shining white throne for a giant.

The true beauty of the town comes from the public gardens, the dark green contrasts perfectly with the bichromatic buildings. Other small sources of color, like red or blue drapes covering the windows, or the drying laundry on top of the houses, give the view a very comfy summertime charm.

Jugglers, dancers, bards, and Illusion magicians populate the streets, giving simple shows to the populace every once in a while.

The Illusion mages almost exclusively belong to the demon race. They are mostly comprised of the peacock-type, called Estekabar, or Succubus-types.

"So, your race seems to be quite good with [Illusion Magic]," I say to Roxanne.

She cringes and says, "Yeeah… we are…"

I hold back my smirk because that would be rude. "But not you?"

"Nope." She adjusts her glasses awkwardly.

Hana and Klein smirk at her and their intense stares make her posture shrink a bit. "See how nice we are? We don't even tease you about your weaknesses," Hana says.

"That's your loss…" Roxanne mutters.

Sometime later, Anton stops at a crossroads and turns to us. "So, we have to split here, the Wind'he Gevee is that way."

"Right, where are we going anyway?" I ask and look to Klein.

"The, uh, the 'better' inns are that way," she answers and points down the road, still higher up the hill.

"Well, you know how to find us," Anton says to Klein and pats her head. My spine tingles when I see how much Klein's posture buckles due to the weight of his massive hand.

"I'll spend the 29th with you," Klein says and they both smile at her.

"Until then," Krysta says and gives Klein a kiss on the cheek.

We wave them goodbye and continue climbing the hill.

The buildings become more luxurious while the number of people reduces and their clothes become more lavish.

"I think just about here should be good enough. We don't want to overindulge again," I say.

"Sure. I don't know any inns around here, but I do know which ones are bad," Klein says.

We walk away from the main street and search around the hill for a nice-looking inn.

We see a few entrances to the underground portion of the city, where a rather healthy community of dwarves lives. They are in charge of the gold mining operations, so they're all quite wealthy.

"They've some dwarven restaurants over there," Klein comments.

"Do you wanna go there tomorrow for lunch?" I ask Lina.

She silently nods and smiles, making me squeak internally.

I'm a sucker for cute things and a pinkish inn with a flower garden run by a gaggle of halfling lolis is the cutest thing ever.

"Welcome to the Innocent Nymph," a brown-haired halfling woman says with the softest voice ever and bows. Once she straightens her posture, I glance at her amber eyes and feel a chill run down my spine -. Her "Charisma" is very high.

Ciel raises an eyebrow and slowly turns to me. "Really?"

"So… I guess this is one of those inns?" Alissa asks.

"Obviously," Klein responds.

"Hm…" Hana sends a fearsome smile to the innkeeper, who trembles for a few moments but gathers her resolve and returns to her subservient demeanor. "I like this place."

I look at Lina, then at the innkeeper, then at the cute proto-maids in skimpy outfits, then at Ciel, then at the innkeeper, then at Ciel again and say, "It sounds like a really nice place, right?"

Ciel follows my shifting eyes and sighs. "Sure."

The innkeeper grabs my arm and pulls me along. "My name is Rutina. Let me show you to your room." She hugs my entire arm and squeezes my biceps. "My, how strong you are."

"You should see his scars," Alissa says with a predatory smile.

"I would be delighted to, Mr…?" Rutina turns to me and her sparkling gems for eyes stare into mine.

"Ryder, Wolf Ryder."

The adorable Rutina sends me an impish smile that can easily rival Lina's.

A note from Manasong

Hall of Fame of Patrons

The patrons who support Rupegia shall have their names sung by the bards for they deserve the glory and honor. Their names are:

Oracle Maximillian Hübner.

Prince Bradly.

Prince PreownedFIN.

Lord Andrew Meyers.

Lord Hope.

Lord Samuel Lim.

Lord Cody Weigel.

Lord Bill.

Lord Novgarod.

Lord DJ.

Lord Ashadun.

Lord D4rk Sheep.

Lord Michale Erwin.

Lord Cidant.

Lord Joxsan Herrera.

Lord Enrique Peña Gomez.

Lord Vampmire.

Noble Salty Panda.

Leave a rating or a review to help me rise to the top or fix my shameful understanding of prose.

Take a look over my blog where all information of the world of Rupegia will be posted.

Join the Discord and discuss, or rant, or meme, or try and fight me so your waifu gets more screentime.

Become a Patron and read chapters in advance, or read the side-stories, or leave your mark on the story, or help choose the next artwork or the next side-story.

Chapter 54: Innocent Nymph - Part 1

A note from Manasong

Attention: to conform to the limit of sexual content allowed in a novel, I've censored this chapter. You can look for the uncensored version here.

The symbol "-" denotes a section that got cut for containing sexual content. Also, if paragraphs seem missing, they were also likely censored in an earlier pass where the symbol wasn't used.

Alissa hugs my other arm and the two smile cordially to one another.

Rutina's faint and sweet perfume caresses the inside of my nose. There's a faint freshness to it that goes well with her seemingly energetic personality.

I feel Alissa's light amusement coming through her [Bind]. It seems that she feels only a small amount of pleasure from having "paid" women throw themselves at me.

I take advantage of the moment the two are having to scan Rutina's lithe and delicate body. She's wearing a thin green dress that's so light that it flows through the air as she walks -.

Her sandal-like heels clack on the wooden floor and her thin legs peek out from under her green dress. Her feet are so small and cute -.

Goddammit, Ciel.

Rutina notices my stare and her devious smile becomes even more smug. I feel that she could make a perfect tsundere.

I look at my "definitely-not-pedo" wife and see that her face is stiff and twitching. Lina is hugging one of her arms while a skimpy proto-maid hugs the other. The fabric of the proto-maid's outfit is the same as Rutina's -.

It's almost like they're wearing nothing at all.

Oh, wait…

"Aoi, can you drop down and walk for a little while? Look up their skirts and dresses," I say through [Bind].

"Okay," she answers innocently.

Other proto-maids hold the arms of Hana and Roxanne. Klein denied hers, so Hana took that one, too.

We walk towards the spiral stairs. There's a fragrant tree in the middle of the spiral being watered by a proto-maid. A glass ceiling gives the tree the light it needs to survive.

"So, what kind of room are you looking for?" Rutina asks as we approach the stairs.

"One that fits all of us," I answer.

-

She takes a look behind her to count our numbers and smiles. "We have just the room. It'll be enough for all of you and more in case you'd like some company." She whispers out loud some of the words and it causes a pulse of blood to rush downstairs.

We go upstairs and then she stops. "How do you like trading?" She asks, innocently.

I take a look at her amber eyes and swallow awkwardly. "Trading?"

"If you'd like to trade some of yo~ur…" She takes a glance back and returns to me.

"Wives," I say.

"Wives… then on the top floor we have a hall where you can trade them with our other guests." She finishes with a purely innocent smile.

"No… just no…"

I feel Hana's teasing coming through her [Bind]. It's wordless, but - an image forms in my mind. Roxanne smirks but says nothing, and the rest of them look a little awkward.

Hana's teasing just makes me get slightly angry and dissipates some of Rutina's "charm." I regain enough control over my emotions to start my own "seduction."

I push my soul out of my arm very faintly so that it touches Alissa and Rutina. Using [Bind], I adjust the intensity so that she won't suspect any foul play.

"Well, even if you don't, in the hall there are open rooms where anyone can join. They have hetero, homo and bisexual rooms for both men and women."

"Oh, can we watch even if we don't participate?" Alissa asks.

"Yes, it's an open room, after all."

"Nice. Let's go to the men's homo room," Roxanne says with a snicker.

Rutina looks at Roxanne and smiles. "That's quite popular with the ladies, indeed."

"It's not cheating if Wolfy participates," Hana says with an evil smile and Roxanne snickers louder.

I look back and see Klein smiling; Ciel and Lina tense up a little and look away, feeling even more awkward than before; for a second, desire escapes through Alissa's [Bind] before she can control it.

Har, har. I'm above such teasing.

"Eh, no. Only women for us, please," I say with confidence and slightly increase the soul touch.

Rutina looks at me for a second longer than normal and says, "Understood," then she turns forward again.

-. I order my peeping dragon to crawl back up onto Hana's shoulders because that's too much stimulation for me right now.

We walk down the long, simple corridor and Rutina continues on, "Do you have any 'preferences' regarding the servants that will be assigned to you?"

"I don't like formality, so I'd prefer if the servants were more casual than submissive or subservient."

"It shall be done." She squeezes my arm and guides my hand to touch her stomach, dangerously close to her lower bits. "Preferences on race?"

"None."

She smiles again and my hand lowers a little bit more.

"One last thing: we do not allow rape role-playing unless it is done in a specific private room. If someone says 'no,' that means 'no.'"

"Understood," I say, a little nervous.

It's frightening how that sounded like something necessary to say to us.

Hana seems to think the same.

This "inn" is nice and cute, not lavish. The price is obviously higher than the norm for this level of luxury. We pay a little more so that we can get some "companionship" and we are left in our room.

Rutina gives me a kiss on the cheek and walks away with a smile and a wave. The proto-maids bow and leave, too.

I drop down onto the bed and let out a sigh. It's a huge dark yellow room with three huge beds that can fit us all and more. The bath is in another building, this one is only for the beds.

"I feel really tired, so I'm taking a nap," I say and close my eyes.

I don't remember what I dreamed about, I just know that it was a very happy and satisfying dream.

I wake up to Aoi -.

Alissa is beside me, hugging my arm and still asleep.

I pat Aoi's head and she "smiles," then she - nuzzles her large head against my neck.

"How many times did you drain me? I only feel a little tired," I say.

"Four," she answers in her cutesy voice as she shrinks in size.

"Really? I feel a bit drained already, though."

"Alissa, Hana, and Lina got one, too."

"Oh, I see."

She gently bites my finger and starts sucking my blood out of it -.

The rest of the girls all sew - some clothes and whisper lowly, occasionally giggling. Klein seems to be the model as she has plenty of pieces of cloth tied around her body.

The bird I gave to Osaria is currently on Oura's lap while being quite innocently petted by her. They seem to be resting in one of the public parks right now.

I can see that Nito is wearing his female clothes and he reaches over to pet the bird, too.

His delicate and feminine hand traces down the spine of the blue bird and I feel a wave of guilty pleasure wash over my body, leading me to question my sexu-…

Nope.

I cut down the sense of touch just as the bird catches a glimpse of Osaria's evilly mischievous eyes staring at the bird.

That woman…

I - sit up on the bed. A few seconds later, Alissa wakes up and leans on me, still a little groggy. Her fox ears twitch as she tries to understand the girls' conversation.

I look out through the small balcony and see that the sun is almost fully set.

"Bath time," I say and smirk to the girls.

Now - clothed, we use an enchantment on the wall to call for room service. A minute later, we hear a knock on the door and Alissa opens it.

Two proto-maid halflings walk in. One is dark-skinned like Ciel; her black hair is long and reaches down to her hips; her smug smirk makes me want to ask her to step on me; her sharp eyes say that she's completely confident in herself; her heeled dark boots give her a spunky air.

The other is a little lighter skinned; her white hair is short and has a cute braid on the side which is decorated with a red flower; her pouty lips give her a shy air; her dark eyes race as she takes in all of us and lay on Hana for longer than normal; all her nails are painted red and decorated with a few sparkly circles on them.

I really need to - on some feet, it's been a while since I did that to Ciel.

By "a while" I mean less than a day-cycle.

"Greetings, Master Ryder. I'm Daiana and this is my sister, Suelen," the smug loli says as they both bow.

Nope, your name is "smug loli" now.

She straightens her pose and her smugness goes off the charts. "Rutina hopes you'll be pleased with these two sex toys that she's temporarily lending to you," she adds. With one hand, she touches her heart; and the other, she touches the shoulder of her sister, who smiles adorably and glances over at Hana again.

Hana notices her glance and gives her a fearsome smile in return, making the shy loli's knees tremble for a moment.

We chuckle at her straightforwardness while I glance at Ciel. She gives me a phony smile and shrugs.

"I appreciate your honesty," I say and nod.

"If it's not too personal to you, can you tell us if you have a sexual skill?" The smug loli asks.

"I do. Actually, I have more than one."

She laughs while the shy loli looks away.

"Well, I really should've taken that bet then. But anyway, you don't seem to have a single pig bone in your body," the smug loli says.

"Pig bone?" I ask.

"People who buy sex because they can't get it the normal way," Ciel answers me.

"Yeah, that," the smug loli smiles to Ciel, who licks her lips unconsciously.

"So, who wanted to bet on us?" Alissa asks, a little miffed but hiding it well.

"Rutina wanted to bet that you had a magical dick while I wanted to bet that you had multiple sex skills."

So my special touch actually did have an effect on her.

Roxanne laughs and says, "How about both?"

The smug loli frowns and asks, "Seriously?" Roxanne nods and the loli chuckles while the shy one lets her mouth hang open. "I'm sure your male friends cursed the Gods for being so 'fair' to you."

"He's special, so you shouldn't think too much into it," Ciel says and chuckles.

"What made you or Rutina think that about us?" Alissa asks.

"No way is money enough to keep all these women happy and obedient." The smug loli becomes smug again and gestures to the girls with her open hand. "You gotta have something special. Especially with that cute little griffin on your shoulder."

Alissa and Gify become happy and proud about her answer. Hana looks the opposite. "Y-you know, there's more to him than just his dick," she says.

"Uh, sure," the smug imp says.

"He could totally make me bend even if he wasn't that much of a sex fiend," Hana adds.

"If you say so…"

An awkward silence sets in as we all stare at Hana while she has an internal crisis.

The tanned red goddess reaffirms her resolve and gets up from the bed. She marches over to my bed and pulls me into a powerful hug, trying to suffocate me in her Grand Canyon.

"I love you, Wolfy. I'm sure that you could've swooned me if we met in another way. I'm sure of it," she says as her confidence grows with each word.

Using more strength than I'd like to admit, I open Hana's arms and bring her face towards mine.

"I love you too. Whether or not you'd have fallen for me in another realm doesn't matter," I say and pull her in for a kiss. Her energetic tongue invades my mouth and wrestles with mine.

After our messy kiss is complete, a small bridge of saliva connects the two of us for a short while before it breaks.

"So, you wanted a bath?" The smug imp says, interrupting the silence.

"Yes, please," Alissa answers for me.

"Follow us, then."

They turn and the proto-maid dress flies up for a moment -.

I wish I had a [Bind] with Ciel right now.

The two lolis take us to the next building. I notice a higher than the normal number of guards both in the inn and in the bathhouse.

I catch a glimpse of the building past the bathhouse and see that it's a brothel. After that, there's a clinic from the temple.

Well… ain't that convenient.

Now that I think about it, I've never heard anything about STDs. [Purify Body] seems to be able to heal most diseases, so I wouldn't really be surprised if there isn't even syphilis in this world.

The bathhouse follows a similarly cute, but simple architecture, all made with stone. The inside has a considerable number of people, but the crowd moves quickly. The sight of the short proto-maids guiding patrons, both men and women, is a common occurrence.

We enter a private stone bath dug into the floor and Lina immediately goes to the edge to look at the two enchantments installed there. She quickly figures out that they are enchantments for a water massage and a bubble bath.

The two lolis tie their hair up with a band and raise their mini-skirts even higher -.

"Get naked so we can start fu-, I mean, washing you all," the smug imp says and the shy loli sends a glance towards my crotch.

"Let's leave those two for last," Suelen, the shy loli, says and points to me and Hana.

"Right, the Kerasou on top of the cake," Diana says and nods.

-

"You're a fun family. We wouldn't mind giving you a discount if you need us again," Daiana says and Suelen nods.

"Don't mind if we do, then," I say.

They finish up with Klein and turn to Aoi.

"And how about that one?" Diana says and points to my little blue dragon.

"Play with me, too," Aoi says and gives a (for them) frightening toothy smile.

"Oh! She talks," Suelen says as her eyes bulge in surprise.

"Well, she's female, right?" Daiana asks and we nod.

The sisters look at each other with a knowing smile and turn back to Aoi.

"Make me moan," Aoi asks.

"As you wish," Suelen says and scoops Aoi up.

-

God fucking dammit, how I wish I had a camera to take photos of these glorious moments.

-

With Lina in my arms and the water massaging me, I doze off again.

Loli paradise.

A note from Manasong

Hall of Fame of Patrons

The patrons who support Rupegia shall have their names sung by the bards for they deserve the glory and honor. Their names are:

Oracle Maximillian Hübner.

Prince Bradly.

Prince PreownedFIN.

Lord Andrew Meyers.

Lord Hope.

Lord Samuel Lim.

Lord Cody Weigel.

Lord Bill.

Lord Novgarod.

Lord DJ.

Lord Ashadun.

Lord D4rk Sheep.

Lord Michale Erwin.

Lord Joxsan Herrera.

Lord Enrique Peña Gomez.

Lord Vampmire.

Lord Braidborn

Noble Salty Panda.

Leave a rating or a review to help me rise to the top or fix my shameful understanding of prose.

Take a look over my blog where all information of the world of Rupegia will be posted.

Join the Discord and discuss, or rant, or meme, or try and fight me so your waifu gets more screentime.

Become a Patron and read chapters in advance, or read the side-stories, or leave your mark on the story, or help choose the next artwork or the next side-story.

Chapter 54: Innocent Nymph - Part 2

A note from Manasong

Attention: Royal Road has recently stipulated a limit to the amount of sexual content on the story. This means that new and old chapters will have most this content cut. If you want to read the uncensored version, choose another site from here, or read the uncensored chapter here.

I won't be changing my writing style, so if you see odd small skips in the story, then that's likely something that got cut.

The symbol "-" denotes a section that got cut for containing sexual content. Also, if paragraphs seem missing, they were also likely censored in an earlier pass where the symbol wasn't used.

My sleep is light and gets disrupted by the - girls.

I open my eyes and see the two loli maids playing around with Ciel. Hana, Roxanne, Gify, and Aoi are all cuddled together in a puddle. Aoi almost looks like a baby in Roxanne's arms and Hana looks like a father hugging his wife from behind. Gify is like the pet of the family, though he's on Hana's shoulder instead of sitting in front of them.

Gih.

Lina is awake and her gloomy dark eyes stare intently into mine. I look down at her and we enter a short trance as we remain staring lovingly at each other, letting our awareness drown in the seas of our eyes.

-

I bring her face close to mine and our lips touch. Her tongue gives shy licks to mine and I slowly enter her mouth. I hold her head and hug her small waist, bringing her closer to me.

Our excitement dies down as our kiss ends, then we remain embraced like this -.

We calmly stare at the maids and Ciel.

"You don't feel jealous?" I ask Lina.

"No. Look at how happy she is; why would I feel jealous of that?" She answers in a low tone. I kiss her forehead and have her rest her head on my chest again, then she continues, "I think she's a bit like you: very loving, caring, and perverted. But unlike you, she doesn't admit that last part, for some reason."

"So you just want her to admit that she's a slut?"

"Yes. Just like how you're a manslut." Lina gives me an impish smile for a moment and then returns her expression to normal. "I also love her, so I just want her to search for her happiness, the same way she's been helping me find mine."

"You think she'll find happiness in a halfling's tongue being buried - or with her toes inside a loli's mouth?"

She chuckles and asks, "Loli?"

"Er, someone who looks like you or the halflings: barely mature, even though you're older."

"Oh, yes, definitely; she's totally going to be happy with that." We chuckle lightly and she continues, "It's not something 'noble,' but we already have enough 'adventure' in our lives thanks to our destinies."

"It's 'our' destiny, now?"

She pokes my cheek with her finger and I know she's pouting due to her tone. "Yes. The moment we decided to join you, 'your' destiny became 'our' destiny."

I lay my hand on her cheek and restrain myself to not squeeze her in a hug. "Thank you."

"And thank you for bringing all of us together."

"Awn…"

I kiss the top of her head and we watch on -.

The loli sisters lay their heads on Ciel's soft body and relax.

"Oh, done already? Well, Ciel, you reached a new level of depravity, but you're still too weak for me," Hana comments.

"I'd say that it's not fair to compare dragonkin to other races," Suelen says.

"Our husband could do all of you and still ask for more," Daiana says and turns to me. "Though you would make his knees buckle with your magic dick."

"You have a husband?" I ask, a little surprised.

Daiana smiles and she says in a rehearsed tone, "Yes, he works mostly at the men's homo room. Yes, we have two children, and they're adults now. No, we won't tell you our age. No, we don't talk about their sex lives. No, they don't work here. No, I won't have children with them, the Gods don't like that to begin with. And finally, no, you can't have them."

We chuckle but I sweat a little.

My fetishes are becoming a little too much, even for me…

"And I thought we were depraved," Lina says with a smile. She hugs me and I feel her heart beating quickly.

"That made you aroused?" I whisper softly in her ears.

"Yes…"

The maids pull out a new set of dry and clean clothes, then they turn to us and return to their more subservient demeanors.

"If you have any dirty clothes, you can give them to us and we'll wash them for you," Daiana says.

We share a look among ourselves and I shrug. We pull out the small basket of stained sheets and another one with everyone's smelly underwear.

"I can guess what that one is," Suelen says and they both smile wryly while looking at the basket filled with sheets.

"Do you mind if someone sniffs your laundry?" Daiana asks, entirely serious.

"Only if it's not a woman," I say, matching her seriousness.

The girls and Gify chuckle, except for Aoi, who doesn't understand the situation. Even Ciel chuckles, far too deep into her post-multiple-loli-induced-orgasms clarity and happiness to care.

Daiana smiles smugly at me. "Understood. We'll have it washed and dried by tomorrow's lunchtime."

"Thank you."

"Anytime." Her smile goes soft. "But seriously, anytime. We'll even go for free next time if you use that magic dick. I might have to bring two friends, though, since your family is a little too much for just the two of us."

"Uh… bring as many as you'd like," I say with a smirk.

We all turn to Ciel and she starts to get annoyed. "You know that's not funny; this is bullying."

I smirk evilly and say, "If you admit to being a pe-…"

"I'm not!"

"Yeah, right," Daiana says smugly.

Suelen looks worried and says, "You know, it's fine to admit it. As long as you always go for a halfling or dwarf of age you-…"

Ciel interrupts again and says through gritted teeth, "I'm hungry. How about we move on and go have our dinner?"

I grab Ciel's arm and give it a loving squeeze. "It's fine, I'm one too," I say, still smirking.

She covers her eyes with her hand. "Please, let's just go."

"Sure."

This inn is a little different than the usual small, snug and vertical buildings. It's long and rectangular; a mansion, really. On the bottom floor, there's a large hall dedicated to the restaurant, which opens out onto the street and even has some tables on the grass. It's the most well-decorated part of the inn because a lot of the patrons here seem to be people from the outside coming in just for dinner and to watch the shota and loli waiters and waitresses wearing skimpy outfits that leave little to the imagination. At least this time the panties aren't transparent.

For a place with such a sexually charged atmosphere, the patrons are surprisingly tame. The number of muscular guards sporting very visible shiny and spiked metal maces seems to be one of the reasons that peace reigns around here.

"We'll always be on duty during your stay, so don't be shy about calling on us," Daiana says and then smirks. "But remember that we also sleep at night, so if you call us too late at night then we'll take a while to wake up and respond."

"Sure, we understand," I say with a nod.

"And that's why you're one of the good ones." She gives me a wink.

They bow and moon the patrons behind them, then they straighten their postures and leave without acknowledging the distraction they caused.

"I knew these sexy inns were 'intense,' but this… wow. This is beyond what I ever imagined," Roxanne says as her gaze follows a very tight and small werecat ass.

"Doesn't it get tiring, though? Having sex thrown right in your face all the time?" Lina asks.

"That's the best part," I say and Hana nods. Alissa is slightly more conflicted but agrees with us.

"I think this is nice," Aoi says, scaring a cute blonde waitress passing by. "Hugging all the time is nice, having fun all the time is nice, feeling pleasure all the time is nice, and everyone looks pretty all the time."

"Can't argue with that," Roxanne says with a wry smile and shrugs.

We sit down and order a normal meal. There are few above-ground farms, so most of the options here are seafood. Even the bread is made from algae instead of not-wheat.

We all choose a mild-tasting fish soup with a silly name. The Thalanthro Holg language sounds like Klingon and it's the most commonly used after the elven Ingua, so most of the sea-related options are in Holg.

The bread that comes with the soup is white and yellow on the outside and dark green on the inside, quite novel. There's a faint parsley flavor in the after-taste. We dip the bread slices in the soup and this special flavor ends up combining perfectly with it.

Rutina comes in while surrounded by three old men and takes a seat. She notices us and smiles, then gives us a little wave with her fingers. The three men momentarily take their eyes off of her to give us a curious glance, which every single one ends up falling on Lina for an annoyingly longer moment than normal, then they return to salivating over Rutina.

She wears red lipstick and a tight red dress that looks even lewder than the outfits the waiters and waitresses are wearing.

Our table is near the opening to the main hall, so we look out from the restaurant and up towards the stars.

"Ciel, what are the stars?" I ask.

"Remnants of the fight between the Symbol of Light and the Symbol of Darkness," she answers with a hint of excitement.

"Oh? Why did they fight?"

"Well, they are literally opposites. It's hard for them not to."

"Since the Tree of Mana revives, do they also come back?"

"Tree of Mana?" Klein questions and Alissa explains our meeting with Gecynd to her while being light on the details.

"You're all being ridiculous. You met a being of legend and never told anyone about it!" Klein grabs her round ears in disbelief.

Ciel lays her hand over mine and runs her fingers along my skin.

Alissa softly pats Klein's head and says, "She did put some effort to keep her identity secret. Maybe the Lords of Rabanara know, but nobody else does. It wouldn't be right for us to spread her secret."

Klein calms down and accepts the absurdity of our lives again.

"So, going back to the Symbols," I say and look at Ciel.

"Anyways, yes, they revive. We call it a Star Burst event. Once every few years, the nights become darker because the stars fade out and disappear. Then, after a day-cycle or so, the sky is lit up with a beautiful show of lights as the Symbols fight again. Once the fight ends, the only things left are the stars created by the Symbols. The ones made by the Symbol of Darkness aren't visible to us since, you know, the sky is dark at night."

"But why is the sky dark?"

She smiles warmly and says, "Sometimes it feels like I'm talking to a child." Roxanne gives her a knowing look. Ciel ignores her and continues, "Anyway. We know very little of what's beyond the Broken Skies. It's basically the same as with the Everlasting Storm: some force rips apart any form of matter that goes too deep into it."

"But what about the Moon, the Sun, and the stars? They are still visibly out there and whole."

"They aren't made of matter, though. They are all sources of mana and power that are converted into light that we can see, almost as if they are a 'visible soul.' Also, the stars of the Symbol of Darkness can only be seen with a very precise mana detector, but they are out there."

I pull her hand to me and hug her arm. "Hm…"

I feel like telling them about Earth, but Klein doesn't know the full truth yet.

"Should I tell Klein about Earth?" I ask three of the girls through [Bind].

"I don't see why not," Hana says.

"It would make her confused, though," Alissa says.

"Oh, yeah. I can see that happening."

"Not telling is annoying. Tell her everything!" Aoi suggests.

"Well, I agree… but telling might be just as annoying," I say.

"But only once."

We end the discussion there as no consensus is reached.

"Every day, you just make me even more curious about your homeland, Wolfy," Klein says while staring at me intently.

I chuckle and stare back, competing with her.

After a few seconds, she pouts and looks at the girls. "Do any of you know the truth?"

The table goes silent and Klein immediately turns to Hana.

Several very silent seconds go by as Klein's eyes slowly narrow towards my red dragon. I lay my head on Ciel's shoulder and she runs her hand through my hair.

"What? Why are you staring at me?" Hana finally asks, a little nervous.

"I know you're a bad liar."

"Oh, please!" Hana flicks her hand at Klein.

"Oh yeah, you wanna do this? I can list all the times that we or just you got caught because of your bad lies."

"Wait, no, Dad just… Dad's just really good at investigating," Hana says, without much conviction.

"Uh huh…" Klein responds, full of sass.

"I can just not say a thing, you know," Hana shoots back with a smirk.

"Ugh…" Klein moans and pouts even more.

"Why do you want to know more about me so much?" I ask.

Her withering glare turns to me and she looks even more displeased. "Why do you think?"

I get that sinking feeling that I fucked up.

"You fucked up," Alissa says.

I glance at Ciel and she gives me that "you fucked up" smile.

Gih.

The other girls also discreetly cringe, except for Aoi, who's a little confused.

Every second that passes, Klein just gets even more displeased, bordering on anger.

I swallow my pride and say, "I'm sorry, Klein. That was rude of me. You're very important to all of us, it's just that my background is very complicated."

Her displeasure fades and turns into sadness. "I just want to know more about you," she says lowly as her cute monkey ears droop.

"Well, I think it's just better to do it after all," I say through [Bind].

"Kweh!"

"Lina, switch places with Klein so I can tell her."

She nods and gets up.

Klein looks a little conflicted. A mix of guilt and annoyance, but also excitement.

She quickly sits down beside me and I regretfully depart from Ciel's fragrant shoulder. I grab Klein's hand and pull her close, then we hunch over the table and I start talking.

"Another… realm?" She asks with her head hung low. I nod slowly at her and she looks away. "And you don't know how to go back?"

"No, not even how I got here."

"Your family?"

"They are all on Earth…" I meet eyes with everyone at the table and say, "These women, and this freeloader, are all that I have left. Without them, I'm all alone."

Small smiles, sad faces, a beak warped into a pout, and Alissa's burning determination are sent right back at me.

"I'm sorry…" She mutters, almost breaking into tears.

I turn to her and frown. "For what?"

"For being so nosy."

"It's okay. You're important to us; I should've just told you this from the beginning."

"No, I… understand why you didn't. I'm not even going to be a real wife; I'm not worthy to listen to your story."

I sigh and pull her into a hug. Just a little more and we would both start crying. I caress her head to calm the both of us down.

"What are the stars like on Earth?" Alissa asks to bring our minds to a better place.

I smile faintly at her and see her tail wag a little. "It's completely different than here. Back there, there are no Broken Skies. The atmosphere thins out the further up you go until you can't breathe, then you just float off into the nothingness and get burned by the Sun if you face it."

"Burned? Why?" She asks.

"The Sun is a source of power and heat. Even here it burns us," Ciel says.

"Exactly," I nod and continue, "The Sun is something huge, far larger than Earth, but it's so far away that we can only see a small bright circle in the sky just like the Sun over here. Between the Sun and the Earth there's nothing for billions and billions of meters. You end up burning because the atmosphere normally absorbs the heat, but without it, the sunrays can reach you at full power."

I lay my head against the top of Klein's and her monkey ears twitch, tickling my cheek.

"The size of the Sun is a little difficult to imagine," Alissa says and smiles wryly.

"How's Earth's size compared to Rupegia?" Klein asks.

"For me, it feels like this realm is smaller."

"Wow."

"Well, we don't know what's beyond the Everlasting Storm, so the real size of this realm is unknown," Ciel says.

"But from what we know, how does it compare to Earth?" Alissa asks again.

"If Earth is the size of Hana's head, then Rupegia is smaller than Lina's head."

"That's quite the image," Hana says and chuckles.

"Now, if you want to imagine the distance between these landmasses, imagine that they are just specks of dust in the opposite ends of a mansion, this should give you some perspective of the distances between things and I'm not even sure if those distances are long enough."

"Seems like there's more nothing than, uh, not-nothing," Hana says with a chuckle.

"That's about right. The scale of space is quite hard to grasp. But even though it's empty, there's quite a lot to learn from it. These landmasses, which we call 'planets,' all interact with one another even from such vast distances. Gravity, what makes things fall down, are created by these landmasses. With this, the gravity of each landmass affects all the others, and so, complex and beautiful formations are created as a result."

"We do have gravity here, too. So you think that our 'planets' are similar?" Ciel asks.

"I don't have enough evidence of that. Gravity on Earth is caused by a physical phenomenon. For all we know, gravity here could just be caused by magic."

"How many 'planets' are there?" Lina asks.

"Planets stay around stars and there are as many stars larger than the Sun as there are grains of sand on a beach. All of these grains together form what we call a galaxy. The gravity from this entire galaxy interacts with itself, and this in turn makes the galaxy always remain in motion."

Lina's eyes glimmer. "Does it ever end? Is there more than one galaxy?"

I smile softly at her. "There is. The same way galaxies are formed by stars, 'clusters' are formed by hundreds of galaxies. But beyond that, we don't really know much."

"Wow." Lina's expression softens as her mind tries to grasp the scale of things. Ciel is just impressed. Alissa and Klein seem to be totally mindfucked and have stopped reacting to things. Hana and Roxanne are almost in a "I'm too sober to understand this" state. Aoi and Gify seem to be having the easiest time understanding things, or maybe they aren't even listening.

Gih.

So, not listening.

Feeling inspired, I continue talking. "Another thing is that the moon in my original realm is completely different from the one we have here. It's just a hu~ge piece of rock, but we can walk on it. We can build constructs that fly up out of the sky and land on the moon. But first, we have to survive the trip there, a trip through what we call 'space.'

"It's the most difficult place to survive and we need insane amounts of planning just for a single person to land on the moon, but we can go there. Maybe one day, humanity will land somewhere else and colonize a different landmass, and then spread out and colonize the galaxy."

"That actually sounds amazing," Roxanne says and Lina nods.

"Any place without monsters sounds amazing," Ciel says.

I smile wryly and say, "But the lack of the Gods doesn't. Things were kind of turning bad because we were screwing around too much with the environment. The lack of magic makes things so much more difficult. We were destroying the land while extracting resources and there wasn't any magic to create new ones."

"You mean like, the mines were running out?" Lina asks.

"It's a complex situation and that's only one part of it. To extract resources and grow our food, we create waste and we can't just make the waste disappear like we can here. All that waste has to go somewhere and we need to deal with it because there's no place for it that doesn't destroy something."

Lina's Trivia: the waste management system here literally makes shit disappear.

"So you have mountains of shit?" Hana asks with her eyes wide open.

"Not literally, but we do have literal mountains of trash. Remains of food, old and used things, byproducts of… uh, creation of items, all those things that have no value and there's no easy way to dispose of them. The worst part is that they become toxic and pollute nature."

"Oh! Just like the Deadlands," Alissa says.

"Honestly, yeah, kinda, but not as bad. The Deadlands is a massive wasteland, what we have are thousands of small wastelands all over the world."

"World?" Alissa asks, tilting her head cutely.

"Same thing as 'realm,' 'planet,' or 'landmass.'"

"Oh, okay. But yeah, that sounds horrible."

"It's a mixed bag. The good comes with the bad," I say and smile wryly.

"But it's impressive that your world managed to achieve so much peace without the Gods," Ciel says.

I cringe a little. "Ye~ah… We did kill each other by the millions in a massive war, like, when my great, great grandparents were alive, so not that long ago."

"Oh…"

"To be honest, your realm sounds like it kinda sucks. You just got lucky you were born somewhere 'okay,'" Hana says.

"Isn't that true even here?" Lina asks.

"Eh." Hana shrugs. "It feels like they are trapped in a dying land or something."

I blush a little and try to adjust myself so that I can hug Klein more comfortably. "I am a bitter realist, so I don't really see the 'bright side' of things very often," I say.

"You looked rather sad when we first met, I thought you were depressed," Alissa says.

"I kind of was. Though, it was more like I was ignoring what had happened until I just couldn't anymore."

"That's when you proposed." Alissa smiles a little shyly.

"Oh? I haven't heard that one," Ciel says and Lina nods.

Klein disentangles from our hug so that she can listen to me better and see my face.

"I saved Nour, a merchant's son, from death or from at least losing his Blood Slave inside a dungeon. As a favor, he wrote me a letter that gave me some sort of discount on buying a Blood Slave.

"At the time, I was very scared, having just barely survived death myself. I just wanted a companion, someone I could trust. With all the Gifts that I have and no information on the world, I was feeling extremely isolated.

"Then, in comes Alissa." -she blushes and even I get a little embarrassed- "She opened herself up to me and yet I still kept secrets. I just didn't want to talk about or face what had happened to me. I just wanted to move on and continue with this 'destiny' of mine, but that's not… a good choice for a healthy mind…

"Eventually, when Alissa suggested marrying both her and Roxanne," -now Roxanne blushes and Hana smirks- "that's when I kind of 'cracked' and felt really guilty for not taking their feelings seriously, for not telling them the truth, and for trying to bury my past so that it wouldn't hurt.

"I hate being indecisive and letting things just stew without a resolution, so it was at that moment that I made my decision: I'll cast off my old self and stay in this world, forever; I'll give up on Lily, who I married just before being transported to this realm; I'll live with my wives as if I was originally born here; I'll hold no hope of ever going back.

"This" -I extend my hands towards the girls- "is my duty: to be the best husband that I can be for these women… and the owner of this freeloader."

"Gih."

"Thank you," I say and tip my cup to him.

"Wow. You had to abandon your wife; that is so sad," Aoi says so innocently it hurts. Then she smiles and nods, "But then things turned out fine."

"They have," I say softly and pat Klein's hand.

She pulls my hand towards her chest and looks at me with teary eyes. "Thanks for telling me. I promise I'll never abandon you."

I cup her cheek with the other hand and say, "Thanks for being there. I promise the same."

She chuckles but then looks down sadly. "You're all still going to that dungeon."

"We'll come back fine. I guarantee it," Hana says with a fearsome smile.

"We still have so much to do," Roxanne says casually.

"I still want my eggs!" Aoi exclaims a little louder than I'd like.

"Same," Ciel says and Lina nods repeatedly.

"I didn't train so hard just to die in a dungeon," Alissa says while smiling.

"I don't like to make these emotional promises, but I'm confident in our success. We'll be back," I say and kiss her forehead.

We spend a little longer observing the night sky, then Hana, Klein, and Roxanne take the armored dinghy and go to the Dansstroom to make our reservation. When they come back, we retire to our room and cuddle up to recharge our emotions after all that serious talk.

A note from Manasong

Hall of Fame of Patrons

The patrons who support Rupegia shall have their names sung by the bards for they deserve the glory and honor. Their names are:

Oracle Maximillian Hübner.

Prince Bradly.

Prince PreownedFIN.

Lord Andrew Meyers.

Lord Hope.

Lord Samuel Lim.

Lord Cody Weigel.

Lord Bill.

Lord Novgarod.

Lord DJ.

Lord Ashadun.

Lord D4rk Sheep.

Lord Michale Erwin.

Lord Joxsan Herrera.

Lord Enrique Peña Gomez.

Lord Vampmire.

Lord Braidborn

Noble Salty Panda.

Leave a rating or a review to help me rise to the top or fix my shameful understanding of prose.

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Chapter 54: Innocent Nymph - Part 3

A note from Manasong

Attention: to conform to the limit of mature content (more than just sexual content) allowed in a novel, I've censored this chapter. You can look for the uncensored version here.

The symbol "-" denotes a section that got cut for containing sexual content. Also, if paragraphs seem missing, they were also likely censored in an earlier pass where the symbol wasn't used.

Today is the 28th.

"You're such a heavy sleeper," Alissa says with a chuckle.

I shrug. "Well, I mean, we have like, eight people sleeping in a single room. If I wasn't, then I wouldn't get any sleep."

"Fair enough."

I walk up the balcony and hear the weird seagulls making noise. The air is humid from a midnight light rain and I can still feel the scent of wet earth. The temperature is a little chilly due to the rain, but it'll soon go back to being as hot as Satan's balls soon enough.

It might actually be cooler in our [Breeze] enchanted armor than in these casual clothes.

We go down to the restaurant and the breakfast is a cute buffet with a large selection of simple slices of bread and teas. The cold teas are a delicacy in this weather.

"So, what's the schedule for today?" Klein asks, excitedly.

"We can just leave all the boring stuff for tomorrow when you won't be with us," I say.

"Great!"

"The beach it is, then," Hana says.

"I know the beaches here get a lot of traffic, so we need a secluded spot," Roxanne says.

"I think that along the north-eastern beach, there's a spot where people go to relax. It's further away from the town, so it's usually not too busy," Klein says.

"What about the monsters?" Ciel asks.

"The merfolk have houses all over the bay. We have to go near the coastal cliffs to be beyond the protection of the Sea Soldiers."

"Well, this sounds like a really good town."

Klein smiles and nods. "This is why this is a tourist spot."

"Is there something that protects us from sunburn?" I ask.

"We can always use [Heal]," Ciel says with a shrug.

Klein nods and says, "Yep. There are some ways to handle it, but the most common is still [Heal]. The clinics make a lot of money because of this."

"So… I guess we don't need any protection?" I ask.

"Nope. We can just ask for a quick [Heal] in case we start getting uncomfortable."

"Ah, let's buy a ball to play Zeiktov," Hana suggests.

"Zeik-what? What's that?" I ask.

"Zeiktoveidei. It's a game where you draw 'boxes' on the ground, the size of which depends on your height. Then you hit a ball around and try to hit the box of your opponent. It's pretty fun."

It sounds like volleyball.

We go back to our room to change into our more revealing beachwear.

There are quite a few toys and balls to be found. Most toys revolve around using some sort of sword-like object to hit others or a ball that hits others. The balls themselves have a little more variety: either you dodge the ball or you try to catch the ball in some way.

Curiously, a lot of the toys come with small, rough pieces of paper with the rules written on them. Not all games are as popular as Zeiktov, so the average person needs an explanation about how to play them. The result is that these games are quite simple to ensure that all of the rules fit on a single sheet of paper.

The skill system being shown in writing seems to contribute quite a lot to improving the literacy rate of the world.

Along the way, we buy some straw hats, some shawls, and a set of beach chairs.

"It's odd to see a lack of the cute elven tree-houses here," I say.

"They burn too easily in comparison to stone houses, and the Oni and Devil-types used to raid the coast too often," Lina says.

"Also, Gatuns are useless here and elves aren't good sailors," Hana says.

"How do you know that?" I ask.

"Everybody knows that," Klein says.

"They're just like dwarves: going out of their environment makes them weak," Hana says.

"Well, not weak, but definitely uncomfortable," Lina says.

"Yeah, and when the stress piles up, it makes you weak."

Lina frowns but doesn't argue any further.

The morning sun is beautiful. Huge white clouds as far as the eye can see provide occasional shade, but they don’t protect against the heat, so we all use our [Breeze] gnomic magic tools to keep ourselves cool.

Osaria seems to be spending her morning alone and bereft of clothes in her room while holding the bird in her lap and caressing it. She gives it some small, delicious fruits to eat and takes out a book to read. A simple comedic romance story that would be considered cheesy on Earth, not that I believe she doesn't think it's cheesy.

We make our way towards the north and join a procession of people going the same way. Most of them carry light parasols made of something that looks like bamboo and cloth, or heavier versions made from leather and thicker wood.

The people on this route are following the typical elven fashion by being in various stages of undress. Not a bad sight, but I’d rather see fewer men with defined pecs and more women with defined abs and bouncy assets, just like my women.

"It's getting quite busy here," Ciel says.

"Don't worry, the beach is big enough… I hope," Klein says and smiles wryly.

"The view is great, though," Roxanne says.

"Agreed," Hana and I say in unison and chuckle.

"Look at that," Hana says and points to a tall androgynous Thalanthro. "Don't you think they look hot?"

"Definitely, though the lack of a chest is a minus," I answer.

"But their skin is slick. You know, slick," she says, suggestively.

I look at Aoi being carried by Roxanne and hum in thought.

She tilts her head and drums her claws on her arm. "Hm… You once said that my tongue is slick, so that means you want to use their, skin to have fun?"

The people around us give us weird looks and I smile wryly. Thankfully, no Thalanthro is nearby us right now. "Yeah, that's the idea," I say.

She looks at her own arm and lifts her scales. "My scales can't be used like that, then."

I chuckle. "Definitely not."

"Thalanthro would also be difficult to wrestle with. I can't hold down someone that slips, out of my hug unless I use my claws." She clacks her sharp claws together and they shine in the sunlight.

"Not if you make holes to hold on to," Hana says and smiles evilly. "But finding a Thalanthro even more masochistic than me will be difficult, so you'll have to bear with only having me for now," Hana says and pats Aoi's head.

"What races are you interested in, Wolfy?" Alissa asks.

"Lamia," I answer immediately, then I give it some more thought. "Sirens seem pretty, but kind of boring. Scyllas are okay, though I'm not sure I'd enjoy all those tentacles-…"

"I know we would," Roxanne says with a grin and slings an arm over Ciel's shoulders.

"Anyways, I think that even though Thalanthros can look almost alien, I'm still very interested in 'getting to know' one. In the end, at the top of my preferences are wereanimals and the demon race. What about all of you?"

Klein scratches her ear. "Not really interested in that," she says and smiles wryly.

"I have all I need right here," Ciel says with a small smile.

"Same. I'm more interested in having Wolf change shape, though," Lina says.

"Oh?" Alissa turns to her.

"They say dragons and beastfolk have barbed 'tools.' I thought that would be… interesting," she says and blushes a little.

Alissa smiles wryly and reddens, too. "Oh, they do. They do…"

I frown towards Alissa and ask, "How do you know that?"

"I saw one from a huge dragon before. Not sure how it would even fit, but it was huge… and spiky." She grabs my arm and squeezes it. "You have to finish that soul transformation, Wolfy. Seriously." Her tone doesn't allow me to say "no."

"I'd likely have to examine a male dragon's body, including his 'tool,' if I want to fully transform into one," I say.

Roxanne adjusts her glasses and smiles wildly, then she says, "Please do. Examine all you want, be it with your hands, mouth, or any other parts, including rubbing your 'sword' against his, or even using your whole body if he's big enough."

"We wouldn't mind examining it for you, too," Hana says with a smirk.

"I'll make you bleed," I say to them with narrowed eyes.

"Please do," Hana says, casually.

I stare into her yellow lizard eyes and turn my tone serious. "But not you. You, I'll tie up and neglect."

Her smirk is washed off. "That doesn't sound fun."

"For you," Alissa says.

Through [Bind], I make Alissa hug me tighter as a reward. Her heart tightens in happiness in response.

"So, what about you, Hana? Interested in another race?" Klein asks.

"Just beastfolk women or a cute shortie like Lina," she answers.

"Why beastfolk?" Roxanne asks.

Hana grabs her own pillows and bounces them. "Most of them are quite big in this area and even I like them, for some reason." She chuckles and shrugs.

"You should meet a Sowrokh Demon race, then. But even their cow-pair aren't as big as mama cow over here." She kisses Ciel's cheek.

"Bullying," Ciel says with narrowed eyes.

"That's just what Wolfy does to us in bed."

"Yeah? But that doesn't mean that I enjoy it."

"Well, I kind of do bully your ass," I say with a smirk. "But alright, let's stop picking on her."

I pull her closer with my free arm and hug her waist. I give a few kisses to her exposed chocolate shoulder and she shifts from "annoyed," to "pouty."

We get close to the north gate and slow down since the way up ahead is blocked by a wall of people wanting to leave.

We stop and I try to think of a solution.

"How about we leave Hana and Klein in a secluded corner, then we go out and open up a [Ga-…"

A man suddenly stops behind us.

"Argh!" Ciel suddenly jumps and turns around in a huff.

The man then continues walking as if nothing happened. Ciel's eyes follow him with a death glare, but she doesn't act.

"Hana, get that one," I say and point, adding a little nudge with [Bind].

She obeys and grabs the man by his throat.

"W-what?! Re-release me!" The male Siren pleads in a beautiful voice even though Hana's choking him.

She pushes him and he falls down in front of my feet.

"You grabbed my wife's ass," I say, emotionless.

"What?! No! I didn't!" His black hair floats upwards as he gets angrier and it gains a dark green sheen.

I summon a bird without chanting and have it land on top of his head. "I'm a summoner; I have eyes on the back of my head."

He stops and stares at me as his eyes slowly widen in realization. The people around us make room and begin to stare. Then he looks up and growls. "You damn liar! You don't have a bird in the sky!"

"I do, you just don't have eyesight good enough to see it," I finish and kick his teeth in. The feedback from that kick makes me feel disgusted.

His head snaps back and he groans in pain, then he coughs and a bloodied tooth falls out of his mouth.

Ciel leans down and grabs the tooth. She casts a chantless [Clean] on it and stores it in her [Item Box]. With a cold tone, she says, "I'll be taking this as compensation. Think about the consequences of your actions the next time you feel like touching someone."

"You h-horrible…! I didn't do it!" He says, his voice muffled by his hand and warped by his cut lips.

"Call the guards, then," Alissa says and stares at him like he's trash.

His hair lowers and returns to just normally floating about. Then he gets up quickly and runs away.

"Ugh…" Ciel groans in disgust and the other girls mirror her distaste.

"Let's go somewhere less rowdy," I say and pull out the armored dinghy.

In only ten minutes, we reach the north-eastern gate and touch down. There are far fewer people here, so the queue moves quickly, and, best of all, no other molesters harass us.

After waiting in the line, our hearts calm down and we enjoy the view as we cross through the gate. Osaria's petting of the bird helps me out a lot, though. The edge of the Drakotoicho dwarfs us. It's a long, long way up and forward until we can see the snowy peaks.

We are in a valley, in between the hill that Goldport is built on and the first jagged hills of Drakotoicho. To the south-east, there's a road going around the golden walls of the town. To the north-west, the ground becomes flat and small farms use this small piece of fertile land to grow elven food.

We get in the dinghy again and marvel as the view opens up and we can finally gaze upon the open sea. The endless blue is even more beautiful from our new vantage point.

We see the line of beach-goers leaving through the north gate and we take a turn north-east, flying close to the hills.

On a nearly deserted beach, we touch down again and get out of the dinghy.

"Ooh…" Aoi is the first to go towards the golden sand and feel it slip through her grasp.

The sand really is golden, not white; this is what gave the town its name.

"Yes, this is just like the paintings," Alissa comments while smiling with her eyes.

Roxanne takes off her shawl and her pure white skin nearly glows in the Sun. "The merfolk are still below the sea, right?"

"Yeah, they have houses down there," Klein answers and points to the sea.

"So, no naked swimming?"

"No naked swimming," I say.

"Can they taste - it if we do it in the water?" Alissa asks.

"If they get close enough, then yes… but you don't want to do it in the sea," Hana says.

-

With a *poof*, I pull out our tent and several comfy beach chairs.

Roxanne picks a chair and brings it over to the shaded area in front of the tent.

"I do not need a tan. My skin is as perfect as it can be," she says.

Lina puts her chair beside Roxanne's. Ciel thinks for a moment and then sets her chair beside Lina's.

"You two are acting like her mothers," Hana says.

"So?" Roxanne shoots back and hugs Lina's head, making her motorboat Roxanne. "She's our little girl and we just want to spoil her rotten!"

"She deserves all the pampering because she's such a good girl," Ciel says and hugs Lina from behind.

The two turn their heads to us and try to look proud while Lina smiles, a little embarrassed.

"Alright, now kiss!" Klein exclaims.

Before Ciel can react, Roxanne grabs Ciel's face and steals a kiss. She hugs the curvy goddess and sinks her hand in her ass. She doesn't let Ciel escape and shoves her tongue inside her mouth.

Ciel freezes at first but soon responds to her invasion and giggles while kissing her back. She forgets about Lina, who's still between them, and smothers her by hugging Roxanne back. She suddenly stops and pulls Roxanne away, revealing Lina biting a dark pillow.

"You could have just slipped away," Ciel says with a frown and Lina smiles like an imp.

"Ciel… we are in public," I say.

She immediately pulls Lina away and covers herself. "You're a bad influence, Wolfy."

I put my hands on my waist and say, full of sass, "I'm a bad influence? Did I - do that in public?"

"You're all bad influences." Then she turns to Lina and narrows her eyes. "And you're not such a good girl, after all. Maybe you need a little spanking."

"Ooh, ooh! Lemme!" Hana pleads and marches towards them.

Lina's smile falters and she hides behind Roxanne.

"You know I can't say 'no' to Hana, don't you?" She asks with a raised eyebrow and Lina pales. Her eyes cross with mine and I give her an apologetic shrug. Alissa and Klein look at her like predators.

Her last hope, Aoi, merely tilts her head and asks, "But isn't pain fun? Playing is fun."

Hana stops in front of Lina and stares at her intently.

"By definition, pain is not fun. It's… 'uncommon' to enjoy pain," I say.

"Why is it 'uncommon'?"

"It's not a pleasurable thing, normally, so only certain people can find pleasure from pain."

"Why is it not pleasurable?"

"Pain is a negative thing, it's meant to tell us that we did something 'wrong.'"

"But pain is a part of making love and conception."

Hana snatches a shivering Lina and takes her inside the tent.

"These are outliers. The ferocity necessary to make a dragon submit requires pain, and the pain caused by conception is offset by an instinctual drive to reproduce. Otherwise, hardly any women would have enough courage to get pregnant."

Roxanne and Ciel enter the tent while Alissa and Klein start playing Zeiktov.

I pull out the golems and sit in one of the beach chairs while Aoi curls up in my lap. Gify is in his usual spot on my shoulder and activates a light "massage" for Aoi and me.

"Submitting to Hana is also fun," Aoi continues and stares at me, waiting for an answer.

"If it wasn't, you wouldn't follow her around. The pain of making you 'submit' is also offset by the instinctual drive to 'submit.'"

That's just assuming there isn't any "intelligent design" going on with each of our minds since we are literally created by the Gods.

"So I don't control myself?"

I run my hand along her scaly spine a few times while I think. Gify's work is compounding with Osaria's touch and it's already making me feel a little sleepy.

Anyway, Aoi is surprisingly intelligent and naive at the same time. More mature than she looks but still considerably young. Definitely not a child anymore, though.

"You still need food to eat, but you can choose when you do so. Your brain makes it difficult to starve to death by making you crave food, but you can still overpower it. In the end, pain and pleasure are there to help you learn what you should and shouldn't do so you don't accidentally kill yourself."

Ciel pokes her head out of the tent and says, "That's how the Gods influence us, too. When you feel bad for being mean, guilt for hurting others, disgust for killing. When you feel good for helping or compassion for the less fortunate. These things are the Gods influencing us."

"Isn't that just having a conscience?" I ask.

-

"Well, the Gods make sure that these things exist in all of us. Sometimes they also influence us more directly so that we don't 'accidentally' commit a Sin." She smiles and goes back in.

"So, we can't confirm that we are free, but neither can we confirm, the opposite," Aoi says.

"I guess. But in the end, does it matter?"

"No. I just wanted to know."

She lays her head on my leg and we watch Klein and Alissa play Zeiktov. It's kind of like a mix between volleyball and tennis.

First, the play area is a box defined by the length of your body. They are playing a game of "four lengths," so they lay down on the sand and create a box where every side is four times their height. They leave around two lengths between the boxes as a no-man's-land. Then they flip a coin and the game begins.

The one with the ball has three seconds to throw the ball and hit the boxed area of your opponent. The ball is quite elastic, so the normal attack is to throw the ball in the air and hit it like in volleyball. This way the ball flies at blinding speeds.

The opponent has to defend at any cost. Due to the elasticity of the ball, it's quite slippery, so when the ball leaves both play areas it's a free-for-all.

I summon four earth elementals that will stay a bit away from the play area so that they can catch the ball when it goes too far.

With a *poof*, Aoi pulls out some gold and rose coins and chews on them absentmindedly. The poor coins get scratched all over by her sharp teeth.

Alissa starts with the ball and strikes at the front-left corner. Klein defends and throws the ball backward.

The elemental hits the ball and Klein catches it. She's far from the center of her box, so her hit is easily caught by Alissa, who moves forward and counters immediately.

Klein dives to get the ball and it flies past Alissa in an arc. She has to dive to get the ball but she still manages to catch it.

She immediately gets up and aims towards the front-middle.

Klein's at the center again, so she catches the ball and hits it towards the middle-right.

Alissa defends and the ball falls towards the middle, in the no-man's-land. They abandon their zones and fight for the ball. Klein goes hands first; Alissa goes feet first. Klein protects herself but receives a perfect, manicured, nail polished foot to the side of the head.

With the slide, Alissa grabs the ball and merely tosses it over Klein, then it falls on her zone.

"Gaaah! You don't play around, Alissa," Klein complains in good nature.

She gives her a phony smile and reddens a little in embarrassment.

Round two starts with Klein. She lobs the ball towards Alissa's back-right and advances. Alissa catches the ball, but has little time to counter and ends up taking four seconds to hit the ball, a foul.

"Four!" I yell and Alissa nearly fumbles her strike.

Klein lets the ball hit the ground but immediately takes it into her hands. She throws it up lightly and immediately hits it towards Alissa's front-middle.

Alissa's too far away to react in time and Klein scores.

Alissa gets the ball and gives it a quick hit towards Klein's front-right, forcing her to dive to parry the ball.

Alissa dives into the no-man's-land and catches the ball. She twists her body and lobs it towards Klein's middle-left and scores.

"You're quite cheeky with those plays," Klein says with a fierce grin.

Alissa responds in kind with a fierce grin. "I've never played this version of this game before. I'm just an amateur trying my best."

Klein narrows her eyes. "I'll show you how 'amateurish' you really are."

The Playful Orange Fox and the Cheeky Dark Monkey get ready for another bout. The two competitors don't even wait for a full audience; they just want to fight as soon as possible.

With a loud smack, the ball flies at incredible speed. It hits the Fox's arm and gets sent off to the sidelines.

The competitors dash forward while eyeing the ball. The elemental kicks the ball softly towards the middle and they both dive foot-first.

They slide and their legs tangle with the ball in the middle. The Fox tries to push the Monkey away, but her "wrestling" with the Red Devil day in and day out gives her the upper hand in this exchange.

With the help of her tail, she disentangles herself from the mess of limbs with the ball in hand and scores.

A fire of determination lights up in the Fox's eyes as she prepares herself for another bout.

"AH!" The ball soars and the Monkey exclaims in surprise at her defense being undermined as the ball takes flight, high up into the air, far away from her control.

The Fox dashes forward, intent on contesting the ball.

The two hunters' eyes follow their prey in the sky. The two pairs of powerful legs flex and jump. Sand is lifted up into the air with them, following their majestic jumps… no, their majestic flight.

The Monkey flies upwards while the Fox flies at an angle, making her reach the ball a moment too late to grab it, but just in time to tangle with the monkey.

The Fox climbs the body of the Monkey, in search of the ball. The Monkey uses her legs to spin in the air and bring the ball away from the Fox.

They land on the ground with grace and roll, but the clock is ticking for the Monkey.

She pounces forward, trying to throw the ball over the Fox, but her arm is caught in a desperate attack from the Fox, who interrupts the throw and forces the ball to fall again into the no-man's-land.

They ignore each other and jump again in one last effort to catch the ball. They get in the way of each other and merely push the ball further forward, which finally crosses into the Fox's territory. Score.

Trying to catch the other unaware, the Fox quickly grabs the ball and goes back to the center. She immediately hits the ball, but the Monkey gets there just in time to make her defense.

The ball flies and another struggle begins. The Fox uses her quick wits again to make cute plays while the Monkey has the weight of experience to guide her attacks.

Their sweaty - bodies get dirtied by the sand and their small bikinis struggle to keep their sacred body parts covered.

Their propensity to wrestle makes this struggle even more beautiful.

The two warriors have one thing in mind: victory at all costs. They don't degrade themselves by throwing deliberate punches and kicks, but they will hurt each other to achieve their goals.

Their attacks turn even more merciless as their animal appendages become valid targets, too.

The contests for the no-man's-land become the focus of the battle. They once again throw the ball towards that zone and rush to the middle for another bout.

The ball slips to the sidelines and they follow after it. The Fox grabs the Monkey's tail and pulls her back.

"AH-aan~h…"

The Monkey is left behind in the struggle and the Fox gets the ball, but now she has to get past the Monkey, who blocks her way.

She goes for a shoulder check, but the Monkey dodges and then grabs her shoulder.

The Fox tries to escape, but the Monkey closes the distance and grabs the Fox's tail.

"NYAAAHaaahn~…"

The Fox falls on the ground and crawls forward. While she tries to escape, the Monkey mounts her. The Monkey may have the advantage, but she doesn't have enough "Strength" to easily take the ball from the Fox's strong hug.

They groan and growl while trying to steal the ball from each other. They tumble and roll, allowing even more sand to stick to their perfect bodies.

They bring the ball close to their cores so that they have more stability in holding it. It's now a competition of raw "Strength" and "Endurance."

Their sweaty faces get closer and they growl in anger. Their eyes stare daggers at one another and they butt foreheads, making their hot breaths mingle and hit their faces.

A glint of mischief glows in the eyes of the Fox. She slowly inches her face closer and the Monkey becomes worried, her competitive fire abates as she tries to understand the situation.

The Fox grins and uses her lips to seal the Monkey's. She shoves her tongue in and invades the other's mouth, but she's not unwelcome.

The struggle slows as they focus more on their mouths than on the game. -.

A strong desire grows in their hearts. -.

Suddenly, the Fox jumps away, ball in hand and throws it at Klein's box. Score.

The two stay in place, catching their breaths, while they eye each other with a different kind of fire in their eyes.

"I've had enough; want to play inside the tent?" Alissa asks.

"Sure," Klein answers immediately.

Final score: 9 for Alissa, 13 for Klein.

At the same time, a limping and tired Lina comes out of the tent, followed by three grinning girls.

"I want to take a dip in the water," I say and Roxanne nods in agreement.

"Want to play?" Ciel asks Hana as she grabs the ball left by the two previous girls.

Gify and Aoi hop off of me and cutely scurry towards the water while Roxanne and I follow them; the golems stay behind with Lina and practice [Regeneration]; Hana and Ciel gather up their inner competitive fires while preparing their boxes; Klein and Alissa clean themselves off and almost rush into the tent -.

A note from Manasong

Hall of Fame of Patrons

The patrons who support Rupegia shall have their names sung by the bards for they deserve the glory and honor. Their names are:

Oracle Maximillian Hübner.

Prince Bradly.

Prince PreownedFIN.

Lord Andrew Meyers.

Lord Hope.

Lord Samuel Lim.

Lord Cody Weigel.

Lord Bill.

Lord Novgarod.

Lord DJ.

Lord Ashadun.

Lord D4rk Sheep.

Lord Michale Erwin.

Lord Joxsan Herrera.

Lord Enrique Peña Gomez.

Lord Vampmire.

Lord Braidborn

Noble Salty Panda.

Leave a rating or a review to help me rise to the top or fix my shameful understanding of prose.

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Chapter 55: Escalation - Part 1

A note from Manasong

Attention: to conform to the limit of sexual content allowed in a novel, I've censored this chapter. You can look for the uncensored version here.

The symbol "-" denotes a section that got cut for containing sexual content. Also, if paragraphs seem missing, they were also likely censored in an earlier pass where the symbol wasn't used.

Aoi runs towards the water and stops after a few steps when the cold waves hit her chest. Gify continues on a few steps further than her before he stops and gives an odd look at Aoi.

"It's cold!" She protests.

"It'll get better once you go in deeper and your body adjusts to the water's temperature," I say.

"Okay," she answers and darts forward. "Still cold!" She yells back only a few seconds later.

"Dive and stay underwater for a few seconds!"

Roxanne and I hold hands while we watch Aoi and Gify disappear underwater, then they resurface a good ten seconds later.

"Okay! It's better now!" Aoi yells.

"Gih!"

Whodathunk that Gify wouldn't know what the ocean feels like.

I enter the cold, but refreshing water with Roxanne and we giggle a little as the waves hit us and make us shiver.

We walk forward until the water covers our belly buttons, then we look at each other with mischievous grins.

"We have to dive, now," Roxanne says.

"That we do," I say and hug her. I lift her up and throw both of us into the water.

"UNYAAA-…!" Her scream of surprise is interrupted by a mouthful of water.

I release her and swim a little to distance myself from her.

I surface and see her unnaturally white and perfect skin starting to turn red with anger as she coughs up seawater.

"Don't tell me you weren't thinking the same thing!" I yell to her and she slaps the water, sending a salty splash towards my face.

"I'll make you pay!" She yells back and awkwardly tries to run towards me.

"No, you won-…"

I feel mana being used and my back hits a solid wall of water.

"Shi-…"

I can't finish my curse as [Water Wall] sucks me in and covers my entire body. I struggle and try to swim away to no avail.

Suddenly, the spell ends and I fall into the water, just to feel two sets of delicate fingers hold my head underwater.

Two can play at that game.

I stretch my arms forward and easily find her thin waist, then I spread my soul out of my body and cover hers.

Her hands tremble and her arms weaken, allowing me to surface again. I immediately hug her around her waist and throw both of us back into the water again.

She spends more mana, and this time I feel my face go dry and the pressure of the water abates. I open my eyes and see her face smirking back at me, completely unimpeded by the water. She has cast [Water Breathing] on both of us.

We both float up to the surface, our eyes locked on each other. I approach my hand to her cheek and it immediately dries once it enters her spell's "bubble."

"I love you," she says in an eargasmic whisper.

"I love you more," I say and kiss her before she can shoot back a response.

I'll get the last word!

She pulls back just enough for me to see her thin red lips curl into a mischievous smile. I know exactly what she wants.

"They'll see," I say with narrowed eyes.

She whispers in my ear, worming her way into my brain and giving me another eargasm, "Let them all see. Let the world see."

"Your private parts are sacred. No unworthy man will ever see us make love."

She puckers her lips in a cute pout. "Can they at least hear me moan?"

I smirk and summon three water elementals.

"Make a small dust screen to shield us from view," I order.

The elementals lift up some dust and create a circular blackout screen around us, then they manipulate the water we are in into a bowl, so that you'd have to be pretty high above us do our thing.

Aoi and Gify enter the bowl and Aoi watches us while Gify quickly gets bored.

"Gih."

"But I like to watch," Aoi says.

"Giih."

"Seeing them play makes me happy."

"Gih."

"He's only… feeling lonely," Roxanne says with a smirk.

"Gih!"

"I'll hug you after we are done," Aoi says and Gify turns around with a huff.

I make the elementals stop and the sea returns to normal. I hug Roxanne's back and she wraps her tail around my waist.

With [Water Breathing] and Roxanne's summoned bat wings, we can easily float in the calm sea without any worry about stray waves.

Since her neck is dry, I fill it with kisses -.

Aoi and Gify leave our secluded area and start playing, racing each other in the water.

For a good half-hour, we remain like this and I extract faint moans of happiness and comfort from her.

I can see that her stare is glued to the horizon, but she's not taking in the view; her mind is on what lies beyond.

"Maoka is pretty close. Do you want to visit your family?" I ask.

She remains quiet for a few minutes and her heartbeat slowly gains speed as time passes.

"No…" She finally says, using in one go all the confidence she gathered, then her voice grows faint. "I don't… I don't want to meet Mother again, not yet."

"You can't run away from this forever," I say, softly.

"I'm not…! I just think that there are other, more important things to do right now, like the trial and the 'Legado' dungeon."

"Alright."

She grabs my hands and kisses them repeatedly. "Thank you, thank you for all of this and being there for me, but for right now, I don't want to go back."

"Okay, I'll accept that. But after we deal with these two things, we are going to visit your family."

"Okay…" She agrees in a faint voice.

Aoi and Gify swim in circles around us. Then they start wrestling and pulling each other down underwater.

Gify pretends to "drown" and "cough" so it seems fair to Aoi, but it really isn't; he has much more ease moving in the water than Aoi. Even with her nearly endless draconic vigor, Aoi eventually tires from the constant intense playing and crawls on top of us. Gify soon follows and we get two bundles of joy crawling all over us.

"Wolfy, I want more blood or the other thing," Aoi says.

Roxanne casts [Water Breathing] on Aoi and makes me straighten my posture. "Let's go a little deeper and you can get both," She says with an evil smile, which coupled with her wet hair, gives her a kind of "the ring" vibe to her.

"I don't like that implication," I say and pinch her ass, then I turn to Aoi. "If you draw blood without my consent I'll punish you… and it won't be sexual."

"Okay…" Aoi says with a bit more disappointment than I feel comfortable with.

Thinking back on Gify's vision of dragons mating, blood wouldn't be uncommon if the female is strong enough and feels like resisting.

Alissa and Klein soon join us and they give us kisses with their breaths showing evidence of what they did, then we start watching the two girls play Zeiktov.

Ciel and Hana's game starts out casual as each adapts to the other's play styles and they learn more about the game. When we start fully paying attention to them, then they pick up the speed and ferocity, rivaling Alissa and Klein.

We go to the shallower part so that we can sit and more comfortably watch them.

Ciel commits a crime and uses her sash to restrain her bouncy breasts. The pain is worth it, Ciel. The pain is worth the divine sight of the massive bouncing of her delicious brown balls filled with the hopes and dreams of men and bi/lesbian women alike.

Thankfully, Hana's jelly-like balloons are also jiggling wildly as they play. Her tough body won't get damaged so easily by a mere bounce. She completely trusts her criminally small bikini to cover her, which might make it the real MVP of this situation since its task is definitely not easy.

The two are playing for the long game, so they try not to overexert themselves. Ciel has less "Endurance," but she has much more "Speed," so she's playing it smart instead of contesting for control all the time.

Hana's versatility is low; she's good at reacting but not at controlling the game to make the plays she wants. Though she's slowly becoming more cautious and managing to plan her actions ahead.

Ciel stops and narrows her eyes. "You're trying to tire me out, right?" She asks.

Hana grins and says nothing.

"You definitely are."

The match continues and now I notice how Hana is striking the ball in a way that it always goes to the furthest corner and away from Ciel.

Ciel's movements slow and she begins to pant. Her chocolate body shines in the sun as the sweat drips off of her.

Hana switches gears and becomes aggressive. Ciel winces in pain as she tries to keep up with Hana.

Hana shoulder-checks Ciel and makes her fall heavily to the ground. She scores and looks at Ciel worriedly, thinking that she might have gone a bit too far.

Ciel [Heal]s herself and sighs. "You win. It was my mistake for not setting up a score limit for this."

Hana grins and offers a hand to Ciel. She pulls her up and hugs her so she can steal a kiss. They remain like this for a few moments longer as they catch their breaths and stare daggers at each other.

"I'm still the top bitch," Hana says and kisses her again.

"I'll gladly give that title to you," Ciel says with a shrug and they disentangle.

"But that means you're below me. You're mine -."

She glances at us and shakes her head while smiling. "Do I get to be above Roxanne?"

"Yes."

"Then I'll take it."

"Hey!" Roxanne complains. She casts [Water Wall] above them and immediately releases it, giving them both a quick bath of cold water.

"Do it again! That felt so~ good!" Hana asks.

Ciel takes off her wet sash and lashes it like a whip.

"Mama Roxy is being naughty!" Ciel yells, full of sass.

Hana grabs her shoulder and smiles. "Please, I won't let my women fight over me," she says. Ciel and Roxanne give her a withering glare, but that only makes Hana laugh out loud. "If you two aren't my bitches, then you'd better prove it."

Roxanne immediately looks away and pretends nothing happened while Ciel reluctantly accepts her place in the hierarchy.

The two sweaty goddesses take a swim along the beach to cool themselves off and join us in our enjoyment of the water. Lina comes with the golems and they float in the air above us with [Telekinesis].

We see a few ships passing by, but this route is only for long hauls. South of us, there's a cliff that protects the Sea of Trees from prying eyes, which impedes coastal cities from being founded and improving the route. There are only two stops between here and Lost Hiyoku Hara, which makes this sea route much less attractive than just going by land.

I use the water elementals to fish and summon small golems to prepare the catches for us. There's only "normal" fish here due to the Sea Soldiers keeping all the water monsters away. But even these "normal" fish look a little frightening and carnivorous, so it's kind of hard to differentiate between them.

Klein seems to be getting a little attached to Alissa lately, triggering a small amount of jealousy from Hana. The two wereanimal girlfriends season the fish for us and teach a fire elemental how to roast them while we continue to soak in the water.

The salt and sweat make our skin get sticky, but a simple [Clean] is enough to remove any discomfort.

Then we have our sea-side lunch and after that, we play some more in the water.

I sit down with the golems and train my [Soul Manipulation]. I grow a tail just like Roxanne's and cast my special [Materialize].

"Seriously, Wolfy, you look hot… well, hotter than usual," Roxanne says and bites her lip.

I increase the size of my tail and horns. She sucks in air and says, "If I wasn't still feeling the tingling, I'd pounce on you right now."

I stretch my own tail and tickle her below her chin. She grabs the dagger-tip and licks it sensually, though her tongue sinks a little into the not-completely solid tail. I feel an odd sensation, but it's not really pleasure.

"Do you feel with your tail just like how you feel with your skin?" I ask her.

She stops and looks a little confused. "Yes, I do."

I frown and start to think. "I don't. I might have to look deeper into your tail to see if there's some sort of nerve that gives you a more complete sense of touch." My temporary distraction is already enough to have my soul revert to being back to blue and immaterial.

"Please do," she says and immediately lays her tail on my lap.

Just having her cast spells isn't enough to understand the full extent of her soul. To understand how her magical nervous system behaves, I have to stimulate her tail to see where and how the stimuli travel. For science.

I recruit Hana to help me with this experiment.

The answer is that her skin has a thin membrane responsible for the tactile sense. Disturbances (i.e. touch) triggers its "structure" and sends a mana pulse along mana-infused pathways that enter her soul and connect to her "spine organ" inside it.

I try to "force" my soul to become exactly like her tail and I just feel something "click" inside my head, then I feel something change within me. I've been seeing her tail as something "separate" from her, but in truth, it's just as much of a limb as her arms.

It's just something that I can copy due to my special ability with the soul, which made me start with an inaccurate perspective about it. Since magic in this world relies so heavily on visualization, it's no wonder my [Soul Manipulation] took so long to develop; though, Ciel would say that I'm a cheater, so my research is actually progressing pretty fast in comparison to a normal person.

Anyway, I can't see the soul organs as being different from my soul "stretching" and even from my soul space. They are all the same, with just three levels of depth.

[Alteration Magic] makes permanent changes and what I can do is make temporary changes. I've somehow applied the abstract concept of "temporary" to my soul stretching skill (which might be because I think of my skill as "stretching" instead of something like "extending"), then I've added a sub-process to it so that I can keep it "on" all the time.

I thought that the soul was much more difficult to alter than it really seems. Now that I think about it, I can see the similarities between mana and the soul. Mana is abstract and amorphous, and the soul is our gateway to mana, so it makes sense for it to be so "moldable."

So, I need to not just "force" my soul to "bend" in a specific way, I have to add all the inner organs and connect it to the rest of my soul. I just hope that I don't screw up one day and kill myself…

I look at Gify and an idea comes to my mind.

"Do I really need a body? Can I change my soul to be like yours, Gify?" I ask.

His cute large eyes open wide in surprise.

"Gih!" He desperately tells me to not even try that.

"Okay, why?"

"Gih."

Seems like the Gods are chaining our souls to our bodies.

"That is scarily close to undeath, Wolfy, don't even try it," Ciel says, a little fearful.

"Alright, alright, it was just an idea."

I finally open my "Status" and see a new skill, [Soul Manipulation (creator)]. I look out of our open tent and smirk. The sea and the inside of our love nest make for a beautiful background for the historical moment: the day that the sexual revolution began.

I look at Roxanne and cast [Materialization] while she slowly gets up from the bed, thoroughly exhausted. Then she looks at me and her legs tremble.

Perfect succubus horns and a perfect succubus tail adorn my body. Ciel calls the others back and I feel a little embarrassed at the gawking stares they give me.

Alissa approaches me and caresses one of my horns. The odd feeling is back again, but it's amplified by my now rough tactile sense; it's rather "pleasurable." It's still a really odd feeling, but at least it's not bad.

"Can you feel this?" Alissa asks.

I nod and answer, "Yeah. It feels good, but it's still not the same level as having the real thing, I think."

- Hana and Roxanne request something very specific from Wolf -

I grin and say, "Maybe… to both of you. I just got the skill and I feel like there's a whole new area that I can explore. It'll take some time, but I'll definitely fulfill all of your fetishes."

"You know you can use this in combat, too, right?" Lina asks and we stop for a second. "Having a third hand to use another weapon, or to help you move around, or to grapple others with more strength. The more you can change yourself, the more unpredictable you can become."

I smile wryly and look at the other girls. "O-of course I thought of that."

Lina raises an eyebrow, not impressed. My horns and tail turning blue and amorphous again doesn't help me look more confident.

We watch the sky turn orange and slowly set down behind us. I play around with my tail and try to cast [Regeneration] on the golems while maintaining my appendages.

I don't really feel that different by having them. I feel like there's something foreign and distracting taped to my body. I need to look at Roxanne's appendages again because apparently, the area where the solidified mana and real skin join is different from the rest.

I get an idea and try to manipulate a part of my soul to be entirely composed of the "signal" that travels along Roxanne's tail when she's touched.

After some mental effort that makes me look like I'm shitting my pants, I manage to force a part of my soul to be like that. I instantly feel a spike of pleasure that's so high that it turns into blinding pain.

"ARGH!" I yell in pain, then I grab my tail and the pressure seems to lessen the pain.

"Wolfy?!" Alissa rushes to me, looking very worried. "I felt that."

"Sorry. I tried something that ended up being a stupid idea."

"I wouldn't say that's a first," she says with an annoyed pout.

"Sorry…" I mutter and look away in shame.

I relax a little and reform my (currently blue and immaterial) horns. This time, I make them big and thick, just like Hellboy's.

I can totally use them like -…

I chuckle lightly and continue using [Regeneration] on the golems.

Alissa explains my mistake to Hana and Aoi, then she goes back inside the tent.

Lina drags her chair closer to mine and sits beside me. I grab her hand and give it a squeeze.

"This view is beautiful," she says.

"Beautiful?" Ted asks.

"What is beauty?" Suzy asks.

Lina frowns, making her gloomy face look even gloomier. "I don't know," she answers.

"Patterns that cause pleasure signals to be sent to our brains," I answer in her stead.

"That's not wrong, but… I think it's missing something."

"Okay, a deeper explanation, then. There are logical patterns that make something beautiful. Like how a perfect fruit looks 'good' and a rotten fruit looks 'bad' because the first is edible and the latter is not. This way, we have an instinctual understanding of which fruits are for consumption and which aren't.

"Other patterns, like beauty, don't have such a clear-cut logic behind it. Its purpose might be that it makes us prefer the average-looking person so that we feel more incentive in procreating with the people around us.

"But then again, Ciel's foot fetish has like, zero logical reasons for existing."

"Hey!" A voice comes from inside the tent.

"So, I'd say that it's all a mix of pleasure, patterns, and a dash of chaos. Certain patterns give us pleasure, but not just a perfect, specific pattern. The 'patterns' need small changes in them. Small enough that they don't change the overall 'shape' of the 'pattern,' and also not so big that they are perceptible."

Lina blinks blankly at me while her brain processes it. "Just like the Tale of Creation," she finally says.

Ciel comes out and sits beside Lina. "Yes. Since it's coming from you, that's way too familiar" she says.

"Maybe some things are universal," I say with a shrug.

Ciel chuckles once and shakes her head. "It's just a coincidence. We are looking too deep into it."

I smile wryly and go quiet.

Before it's fully dark outside, we return to the inn and go back to our room. Then we call the maids again and soon we hear numerous footsteps approaching us.

They knock and Alissa allows them in. Aside from Daiana and Suelen, there's three other lolis following them.

Daiana smiles, though I do notice it's a little strained. "Good news… Mr. Wolf. You're becoming quite popular around here," she says.

A note from Manasong

Hall of Fame of Patrons

The patrons who support Rupegia shall have their names sung by the bards for they deserve the glory and honor. Their names are:

Oracle Maximillian Hübner.

Prince PreownedFIN.

Lord Andrew Meyers.

Lord Hope.

Lord Samuel Lim.

Lord Bill.

Lord Novgarod.

Lord DJ.

Lord Cidant.

Lord Ashadun.

Lord Michale Erwin.

Lord Joxsan Herrera.

Lord Enrique Peña Gomez.

Lord Vampmire.

Lord Braidborn.

Noble Salty Panda.

Noble Evil.

Leave a rating or a review to help me rise to the top or fix my shameful understanding of prose.

Take a look over my blog where all information of the world of Rupegia will be posted.

Join the Discord and discuss, or rant, or meme, or try and fight me so your waifu gets more screentime.

Become a Patron and read chapters in advance, or read the side-stories, or leave your mark on the story, or help choose the next artwork or the next side-story.

Chapter 55: Escalation – Part 2

A note from Manasong

Attention: to conform to the limit of mature content (more than just sexual content) allowed in a novel, I've censored this chapter. You can look for the uncensored version here.

The symbol "-" denotes a section that got cut for containing sexual content. Also, if paragraphs seem missing, they were also likely censored in an earlier pass where the symbol wasn't used.

"Greetings, master. I'm Lunastra, your new sheath," the first loli says and bows -. She's blonde, red-eyed, and her face is as perfect as a doll's. Instant favorite.

"I'm Balbina. I'd love to be filled by you," the second loli says and bows -. She's a freckled ginger girl with curly and fluffy-looking voluminous hair. Adorable.

"M-my name is Camila, master. Please do me first, I'm already wet," the last one says and bows -. She's not really a loli, though she looks very petite. She's a weredog girl with short and curly light brown hair and droopy ears. The frills of her maid clothes go perfectly with her cuteness, putting her among the cutest of all the lolis I've ever seen.

"You brought one more than you said you would," I say and raise an eyebrow.

Camila's tail wags and she looks down guiltily.

Daiana smiles wryly and says, "Well… Camila washed your clothes and got a little… addicted to your smell. Then she overheard me talking about your magic sword and she…" -she cringes a little- "insisted on coming."

I look at Camila again and her curly-haired tail wags furiously.

"Yeah, he does smell good," Hana says.

"Agreed," Alissa says and Aoi nods.

I look back at the girls and they give me a mix of shrugs and smirks. I turn to the maids again and say, "Alright, but there are some physical limitations here. I can't spend too long with each of you since my wives take priority, but I'll go long enough for you to orgasm."

"Oh? Quite a lofty goal," Lunastra says and raises an eyebrow.

"I'm sure he can do it," Camila says and takes a few steps forward. I hear soft sniffs and her smile becomes just a little creepy and maniacal.

"That'll be enough, I'm still a little sore from yesterday anyway," Suelen says.

"Well, I guess we have to take care of you first," I say and approach Camila.

-

-

"You weren't like that with us," Daiana says, wide-eyed.

Her white-haired sister nods softly.

"You didn't ask," I say and shrug.

"You now realize why we need so many women around him, right? He's an insatiable monster," Roxanne says.

"You made me this way," I shoot back with a smirk.

"And we love that about you," Alissa says.

"You're our little monster," Roxanne adds.

Lunastra suddenly stands up -. Her skin is as shiny as Roxanne's while her innocent and angelic features are as divine as Lina's. She's a work of art.

"Do me like you did her and I'll consider this one free," she demands.

-

"You know, I brought you three to help me with all of them, not to just get ravished by him and then take a nap," Daina says and pokes Lunastra's little ass, very annoyed.

"I don't care… I'm happy…" Lunastra mutters and hugs my leg harder.

"I'll cast [Refresh] on both of you," Suelen says, threateningly.

Balbina grabs Suelen's arm and stops her. "It's fine, let them enjoy paradise for a little longer," she says.

I pat Lunastra's head -. I look at the surviving maids and say, "Well, if any of you want to be ravished like they were, you'd better say it now. After the bath, I'd rather not do it like this since I'd definitely get all sweaty and sticky again."

"No thanks," Daiana says with a wry smile and Suelen nods. "After telling our husband about your magic sword, he's already ravished us enough." Her smug smile returns and she continues, "Well then, now we have to leave them here while we do our job."

I untangle the two women from me and Camila whines like a puppy -.

-

We walk out of the room and Ciel says, "I'm impressed."

"If you're impressed, then imagine how we feel," Daiana says.

Roxanne gives a weird look towards Hana, knowing that there's something wrong with her silence. Then she looks at me and I smirk. She realizes what's going on and scoffs.

We go to the bath and once the washing is done, I release the girls. Balbina looks at us in horror as large-Aoi - attacks me and Hana makes Alissa scream. Then her horror turns into fascination as our wildness awes her.

-

I lose, but retain my honor as a man. It was a losing battle to begin with, as I was already far too tired -, so when Hana - sets me down in the water, I feel more like a veteran returning from war than a loser of an endurance duel.

After a small [Heal] -, I relax in the bath with that cathartic pain that tells me that I'm fully satisfied. I'm still far from being fully drained, though.

Klein and Alissa relax on each of Hana's arms. Ciel relaxes while surrounded by cute girls whose hands tend to her. Roxanne is the one who looks like she's the most spent of us all. She pets Aoi rather weakly while Gify gives her his special "massage." Today's experimentation seems to have truly tired out my succubus the most out of everyone.

-

Oof… I'm outdoing myself lately. This place might be a bad influence on me.

-

Roxanne's moan from Gify's "massage" brings me back to reality and annoys me a little.

Can't you become a woman? I'd be more comfortable with you touching us all like this if you were.

Gih.

I've already done Aoi and Fox-Alissa, I'm way too far into that to care about this.

Gih.

They aren't really "animals" and neither are you. You're all closer to aliens to me than real animals; you all just kind of look like one.

Gih.

Hahahaha. No, I won't bed you… unless if you ask for it.

Gweh!

Well, you might as well call me The Second Coming of Kirk. I'll plow anything remotely feminine that wants to have me. No reason not to, unless there is a serious one, like diseases or getting Praying Mantis'd.

Guh.

Making love is part of life. Basically, all animals do is live long enough to do it and reproduce. How can we not enjoy it? I mean, do you even have the organs for it?

Gih.

Hm. It's like you're a caricature of a living being. You're missing parts of what makes someone a "humanoid," but you filled the gaps with your own charm. And it's that special "charm" that makes you so adorable.

Gu~h.

Yeah, I know you love me.

In my soul space, I receive the image of Gify rolling him/her eyes, making me chuckle internally.

I mean, does it or gender even matter to you?

Gih. Gih ih goh guh gih.

Why did you never correct me? I always thought of you as a male.

Gihihihih, gih!

You little shit.

He doesn't really have a gender or sex, so he chose to let me call him a "he" just to piss me off.

Well, he did start out as a male, but after being "connected" to me for long enough, he managed to stabilize his soul so much that he's "borrowing" less and less from me.

Nature Spirits are technically "dead" already, so the influence of the God of Change makes them fade away over time. After staying close and "connected" to us for long enough, his soul gets strengthened in a similar way to Aoi's and he staves off his "death."

Normally, he would've had to merge his soul with other spirits to "survive," but then he would change so much that he wouldn't be Gify anymore and he would've changed into something else.

Do you fear "death"?

Gih.

What is death to someone who "died" multiple times already?

Well, you enigmatic little shit, I'll just call you a "she" from now on.

Gih!

Too late, I'm not enduring any more of your pseudo-NTR.

Gihihih.

We get out of the bath and Balbina gives us a sad goodbye -. Their fascination with Aoi makes my "little" dragon feel smug, like a princess being fawned over.

Then it's time for our dinner.

I give the signal for the maids to serve us and two of them rush forward for a few steps before noticing the other. Then they stop and stare at each other with blank faces.

A third maid sneaks up behind us, which would certainly scare me if I didn't have a Shad on me to give me an early warning. She takes our orders and seems a little tense while she writes.

She gives a bow before she leaves and her fluffy brown werebunny ears flump on my head like a heavy blanket. She immediately straightens her posture, then profusely apologizes while blushing heavily and walking away.

"Okay, that was odd," Klein comments.

"She's really into you," Alissa says and gives me a suggestive smile.

"Daiana said that you're 'quite popular,'" Lina adds and I feel a little chill.

"That doesn't seem like a good thing," I say and look around. I can't really say for sure, but the inn staff seems to be sending me glances more often than normal.

Lina puckers her lips and puts a finger over them while she cutely thinks. Then the cuteness washes away and an imp smiles back. "We'll see how tomorrow goes."

She offers me no explanation for her words and the other girls have a small laugh at my expense.

After dinner, I go back to the room with Alissa and Lina while the others stay to drink a little more and talk.

I sit Alissa down on the bed -. She interpreted my excitement as carnal desire, but all I want right now is to study her ears for my morphing research.

"Oh… okay, then," Alissa says. I pay a lot of attention to her words but I can't really identify any hint of disappointment in them.

"We can do it if you want," I say.

"No, it's fine."

"You sure?"

"Yes…" I feel a hint of annoyance come out of her.

"O-okay…"

"If I wanted to, I would just mount you. I wouldn't even need to ask," she says with a smirk as her tail wags.

"Well, I mean, I'd still have to 'get it up.'"

She leans over, still naked, and licks her lips suggestively. - A depraved image invades my mind and I feel my underwear tighten.

She puts a hand on my belly and smiles smugly. "That's not a problem for me. I know how to… handle you," she whispers sensually.

Is this how she feels when she submits to me? I must say, I'm fine with this.

I shrug and hug them both so I can get comfy and study Alissa's ears and tail.

Osaria distracts me for a while. -

You tried to steal my Hana, Rande. I'll steal your mother.

Though, I'm not 100% sure that they aren't doing each other…

Osaria's little show ends and she sighs wistfully. She smirks softly at the bird but I can see a hint of dissatisfaction in her expression. Then she puts her not-bikini back on and leaves the room to go drink with Rande.

After being allowed to concentrate again, I get an idea.

"Gify," I say.

*Pop*

"Gih?"

"Can you morph your body into something else? I want to compare what different types of mana-solidification look like."

She smirks and I frown. "Giih."

I narrow my eyes at her and say, "I'm not doing that. I'll double the size of your meals for a day, instead."

"Gih!"

"Screw that, screw you. I'm not doing it."

"Gih."

"Remember that I can refuse to feed you if I want."

"Gih!"

I chuckle. "Oh? So, you're my pet, now?"

We go quiet and stare daggers at each other.

"Gih."

She buckles.

I've been solely focused on what soul organs are, but I have no idea what I'm actually looking at. I've basically just copied Roxanne's horns and tail, which are very simple mana solidifications in comparison to Gify's body.

Reproducing Alissa's tail and ears won't exactly be hard, but understanding how they are made so that I can apply this knowledge elsewhere will be.

"I can already see a very visible problem," Alissa says.

"What?"

"Your ears don't bob."

"Oh."

I look in our mirror and the solid black "ears" protruding out of my head seem more like two thick and short horns, instead.

I shake my head and force them to bob. It doesn't seem too hard, but it'll take some practice.

There's also hair inside the ears since they materialized from my skin instead of from my hair. I'll have to learn how to "absorb" it inside my appendages.

"Alissa, can you change into a fox a few times for me?" I ask.

"Sure."

She glows and goes from a - goddess to a cute little fox in just a few seconds.

She lifts her ass towards me and hits my face repeatedly with her tail.

"Aroused? Hm? You zoophile, I know you are," she says teasingly.

"You say that as if it's something bad," I say and sadly frown a little.

"It's not, but you seem to get a little embarrassed every time I say it." She gives me a toothy grin.

"Get out of my head." I pinch her ear.

"Kyah!"

"Please, I want to read…" Lina complains.

"Sorry," we say in unison.

One of the most curious things I've noticed is how Gify's soul seems to be "fluid." My soul is like a static building where people walk about inside, but Gify's entire soul is constantly "moving." It reminds me of one of those trippy gifs where they put a painting filter over each frame of the loop and gives it an illusion as if everything in the picture is "moving," but it's not.

With the new skill, forcing my soul to change into different "materials" is much easier than before, so I've managed to copy Gify's "fluffy" and "squishy" materials and add orange color to it, but they're still far from looking like fox ears.

Lina suddenly falls onto my chest and her book escapes her little hands. I think that my absent-minded head pats made her fall asleep.

Like when a cat sleeps on you, I'm currently frozen in place where I can't move or I'd risk waking up my little evil angel.

Alissa smiles and whispers, "So adorable…"

She takes the book from Lina's hands and starts to read it herself. I take a glance at the title.

"Legends of Times Past Series: Ender, the Dragon."

Hm, one of Oura's books.

Sometime after that, the girls come back slightly drunk and we all go to sleep.

Today is the 29th.

-

Alissa and Hana's "Intelligence" increased by 1 (now 13 and 12). Ciel's "Endurance" increased by 1 (now 14).

Breakfast is especially calm and happy. Everyone's in a very good mood this morning.

I load Gify's plate with double the normal amount of food and she chirps happily, but then she gives me a stink-eye.

Yeah, this is payback.

I sit down to eat and notice that my mountain of food is just slightly smaller than Hana's, who gives me a knowing smirk after seeing my plate.

"You girls have been draining me completely, lately," I say.

"You seem a little stronger, though," Alissa says and squeezes my arm.

"With all this physical effort, I'd be surprised if he wasn't," Hana says.

"And your fanbase is growing," Lina comments as she looks around. Through Alissa, I've been hearing some giggles and whispering aimed at me. My "fame" is certainly increasing.

I chuckle and massage the bridge of my nose. "I'm not sure how I'm supposed to feel about this," I say.

"To be honest, it's really impressive," Hana says.

"Yeah. Well, as long as you don't abandon us, then being so desired is good," Ciel says.

"Because you're also going to take part in the enjoyment of his 'fame', right?" Hana asks with a smirk.

Without even looking at her, Ciel says as she puts jelly on her toast, "I've no idea what you are talking about."

"You should start flaunting your horns and tail," Roxanne says, excitedly.

I raise an eyebrow at her. "Why?"

"Well, it's alluring, why wouldn't you want to be alluring?" Roxanne asks as if it should be obvious.

"For you, it's alluring," Lina says.

"The tail is really alluring," Klein says and Alissa nods.

"He could grow tentacles and you'd all find it alluring," Ciel says.

"Well, yeah?" Roxanne turns to Ciel and smirks. "Pretty sure you'd love that one, too."

"We still have the Delicious Horrors, you should study them next, Wolfy," Hana says.

"Oooh…" Klein mutters and looks at me excitedly. The other girls seem very interested while Ciel blushes.

"The Council has decided," Roxanne says and hits her glass on the table to mimic a hammer.

"I accept the decision," I say with a chuckle.

Roxanne smirks maniacally, but controls herself a moment later. Then she continues, "So, with that out of the way, what are we doing today?"

"I'll stay with my parents," Klein says.

"I have to go to the Tribunal and report that we are 'going back.' I'd also like to buy some armor and metal for our workshop plans," I say.

"After lunch, we could start our date," Alissa suggests.

I smile at her and see her tail wag. "Sure."

"I'll go with this juicy one to spar at the hunter's guild," Hana says and slings an arm over Ciel's shoulder.

"I have to train, too," Lina says.

"Perfect!"

"So… I'm going to be all alone?" Roxanne asks and fakes a wounded tone.

"Kweh! I'll stay with you!" Aoi exclaims.

"Awn… oh, Wolfy, gimme a corgi."

Ciel looks at Hana with large eyes like a jealous child.

"We can't get rusty, Ciel. Training comes first," Hana says, sternly.

She resigns herself to her fate and her shoulders drop. "Okay…"

"We have to get the armor first, so you can hold it until then," I say as I summon a corgi for her.

"Bark!"

"Oh! That's a first," Ciel exclaims and steals the corgi for herself.

"It's just like with the elementals; their mental capabilities improved a little after increasing the level of my [Summoning Magic]."

We get up and Ciel groans softly in pain. "My legs hurt, I think I overdid it," she complains and casts [Heal] on herself.

"Isn't it good that you exercised so much?" Klein asks.

"If I need a [Heal] to deal with the pain, then I pushed myself too far."

"Hm."

We use the armored dinghy to drop off Klein in front of the Wind'he Gevee and fly towards the Pirate's Sentence, the area near the imperial barracks that all the good blacksmiths opened their shops at.

We buy breastplates for everyone, making Roxanne frown at the growing "unfashionableness" of her outfit. I realize that Aoi is completely "naked" and start to feel a little concerned about her.

"Can you create some armor for Aoi?" I ask Lina.

"I can bend some metal with [Manipulate Metal], but it'll lose some of its strength after that since it'll affect the tempering," she answers.

"It's still better than nothing."

"Then, sure."

We buy some sheets of metal for Lina to bend into armor for Aoi. That, plus the armor makes the plan of an entirely metal workshop kind of expensive, so we decide to just make a metal workbench for now and have Lina add remote magical manipulators to it.

Buying all of this doesn't take long, so we still have half of the morning left to go to the Tribunal.

"We don't need everyone there since I'm just going to report things," I say.

"Right, let's meet up for lunch, then," Hana says.

"We'll keep in touch through [Bind]," I say and we separate.

A note from Manasong

Hall of Fame of Patrons

The patrons who support Rupegia shall have their names sung by the bards for they deserve the glory and honor. Their names are:

Oracle Maximillian Hübner.

Prince PreownedFIN.

Lord Andrew Meyers.

Lord Hope.

Lord Samuel Lim.

Lord Bill.

Lord Novgarod.

Lord DJ.

Lord Cidant.

Lord Ashadun.

Lord Michale Erwin.

Lord Joxsan Herrera.

Lord Enrique Peña Gomez.

Lord Vampmire.

Lord Braidborn.

Noble Salty Panda.

Nobleman Lassiter.

Noble Evil.

Leave a rating or a review to help me rise to the top or fix my shameful understanding of prose.

Take a look over my blog where all information of the world of Rupegia will be posted.

Join the Discord and discuss, or rant, or meme, or try and fight me so your waifu gets more screentime.

Become a Patron and read chapters in advance, or read the side-stories, or leave your mark on the story, or help choose the next artwork or the next side-story.

Chapter 55: Escalation – Part 3

A note from Manasong

Attention: to conform to the limit of sexual content allowed in a novel, I've censored this chapter. You can look for the uncensored version here.

The symbol "-" denotes a section that got cut for containing sexual content. Also, if paragraphs seem missing, they were also likely censored in an earlier pass where the symbol wasn't used.

We walk through the white streets and ask for directions to the nearest Tribunal. Alissa ends up taking over this job as I'm slightly awkward at talking to strangers and she seems to enjoy doing it, which is the opposite of me.

The people here talk differently from Earth. Back there, people are far more cold, self-centered, and without any patience for small talk. When you can talk to anyone around the world by just using a device that's always at hand, why would you ever waste your time and social energy on small talk with a complete stranger?

Alissa approaches someone and gives some casual comments. "Lovely feathers you have"; "what is this textile of your shawl?"; "what a lovely child, she has your eyes"; "your bow looks so well crafted, is this a Chape composite?" She seems to look for common ground while avoiding people who are too alien to her, like the merfolk. Then she follows up with a compliment or some keen observation to make the person more comfortable with her, and then she asks for directions.

Time-consuming, but we end up getting two not-apples from a nice old lady, so I'd say it's okay.

The Tribunal's office looks like any other government office I've been to. A single large hall with a high ceiling, partitioned by simple, movable wooden panels instead of having all the rooms permanently built with stone walls.

Most of the floor is occupied by benches where a considerable number of people wait their turn and on the other side of the counter, Tribunal employees quickly walk through the work area carrying stacks of paper in a hurry.

The building is not very noisy, but there's a constant humming of low voices and muffled footsteps.

We make our way to the reception and say that we'd like to make a Precedence Report. We'll be reporting our movements and intentions in case someone wants to talk to us about the trial. It's our way of showing that we are willing to conform to the law and appear for our trial. The other benefit is to also create a paper trail.

If we disappear for whatever reason and Katasko says that we ran away from the trial, creating this paper trail would help us not be labeled outright as criminals and also aid any future investigation into our disappearance.

Then we also write a Complaint Report. The Enforcers being used to "escort" us back to Goldport at the expense of Este company is a clear abuse of power and an overreaction. Especially since we are upstanding citizens of the empire with two blessings from the Gods and a letter of commendation from an Agent.

They could've just informed us of the trial without threatening us. If they don't have enough evidence to outright arrest us on sight, then they have no justification for acting hostile, well, more hostile their usual behavior, that is. The God of Law makes it very clear in his teachings that the accused is innocent until proven guilty.

I mean, we are guilty, but nobody should have any evidence of that.

The whole affair smells of corruption and I want to make that clear to the investigators from the very beginning.

The Judges themselves might be corrupt, but if we get a Seeker of Truth to be called, then we can also expose Katasko's strong-arming, which makes our response "self-defense."

Still, a lot can go wrong, but we have the advantage.

Sitting on a bench, I fill out papers with a magic pen, then wait for our number to be called. If not for the other races and the different sense of fashion, I think that this office would look like any tropical government building on Earth. It's always nice to find parallels to my former home; it makes me feel nostalgic.

Our number is finally called and we deliver the small stack of papers to the female attendant. She seems quite fit and immediately marches away from her desk as soon as she gives our papers a quick look. Her red peacock feathers on her head bob up and down as she moves and looks oddly mesmerizing.

A minute later, she marches back and gives us a receipt for our report that I store safely inside my "Items."

"Everything is done, let's go have lunch," I say.

"Roxy wants to be carried," Aoi says.

"Lazy~… Anyway, we'll walk," Hana says.

I fly the dinghy to go pick up Roxanne and we find a Succubus restaurant.

Hana frowns and says, "Why does your race like tentacles so much? I thought you liked horns and thin tails."

Roxanne giggles heartily and slaps Hana's shoulder. "Horns and tails are sexy; Tentacles are obscene."

Hana's mouth hangs open in surprise. "So you eat obscene things? What else do you eat?-"

"Well… pickled goblin - is a delicacy…" She looks down and adjusts her glasses, a little embarrassed.

Oo~f…

"What…?" I mutter and we all turn to Roxanne.

"It's not that popular, but it's something Mother loved to eat."

"But not your Father?" Lina asks.

"No…" Then Roxanne turns to me and smiles evilly. "Don't worry, Wolfy. -"

"What about the balls?" Hana asks, a little fascinated.

"You deep fry them in oil and they become very crunchy. Goes well as a snack."

Ciel gives them a withering glare and clears her throat. "Right, can we talk about something else? Like, the food we are about to eat?"

The two smile apologetically and focus on the menu.

Succubus food is full of really weird ingredients. For example: livers; toes; fingers; eyeballs; brains; and of course, there's orc penis, but since it's not goblin, it's minced and turned into a sausage.

Thankfully, these weird plates only take up half of the menu, and the rest are much more "normal." Though, the amount of seasoning and spice in them makes my tongue go numb.

I did discover cheddar, though. That spicy cheddar dust that fast-food chains like to put on food.

"Oh, that's Stag Carapace dust," Roxanne explains. "It's a huge stag beetle monster with a bright orange carapace that is ground into dust. A few bigger monsters like to eat it because it's so tasty."

"You'd think that a monster being tasty would be an undesirable trait," Lina comments.

"There are monsters that only exist, to be eaten by us, bigger monsters," Aoi says.

"Oh? Which monsters did the dragons hunt?" I ask.

"Goblins and Rabid Rabbits. When I became stronger, I'd hunt Orcs, too."

"Ironic that humanoids ended up adding those same monsters to our diet."

"Humanoids are cunning. You… we, use everything we have, to survive."

Well, the God of Destruction has been trying to destroy us since our creation, so I'd guess it makes sense for Aoi to be born with this knowledge.

We fly back to the inn to deliver Roxanne and she gives me a few pecks on the lips as a goodbye.

"Thank you, husband, for being so attentive to me," she says and hops off.

"Lazy~…!" Alissa yells as Roxanne walks away, but she only makes my succubus laugh out loud.

"Right, so our date officially starts now. Where do you want to go?" I ask Alissa.

"Hm…" Alissa tilts her head and her tail lazily wags. "Let's just walk around and see where fate takes us."

I'm not very excited about this, but it's still Alissa's birthday "gift."

"Sure."

We land on one of the streets close to the market. The main road has all the high-class shops, but the side streets hold the hidden gems.

White buildings; cute signs hanging in front; wind chimes; pleasing aromas; knick-knacks that glow and make noise; the soft clacks of the people walking by; the humming of their idle chatter. Quite comfy.

"Do you want me to carry you? We could walk faster that way," Alissa suggests.

"Wouldn't you get tired, then?"

"Just cast [Refresh] on me every hour or so."

"Alright."

I mount my fox and we trot our way forward.

"All that's missing is Lina," Alissa comments.

"You enjoy her mounting you that much? I thought this was a thing just between the two of us," I say with a cheeky smile.

She turns around and her large fox face shows fluster. "No! Uh… I-it's still our thing, but… well, I miss her little legs on me sometimes."

I lay down on her and hug her neck. "It's fine."

"Hm…" She feels a little conflicted but lets it go. "It's still our thing," she mutters.

Alissa stops by a particularly cute shop with large dark green stained windows.

I dismount without her even needing to say anything and she shifts back, then we go inside and we're greeted by the soft scent of mint and a stuffy environment with a faint haze of smoke from incenses.

We see haphazard piles of odd books; pieces of paper with nonsensical scribbles or weird patterns; both lit and fully burned incenses occupying vases that desperately need cleaning; colored gems glowing softly; and weak magic stone [Spirit Lights] hanging from the ceiling. I feel lots of trace amounts of mana flying about; this place is enchanted.

"This is quite the shop you chose…" I mutter.

"There's something odd in the air," Alissa says, softly.

"It's Eia, that drug the elves use."

"Right… but there's something more…"

"Well, more drugs, obviously."

She rolls her eyes and we make our way through the books.

What's with the atmosphere? Is this really necessary?

Gih.

My ass that they don't have a warehouse. Even a basement would suffice.

"I'd have to agree… there's something more," I mutter. My eyes are feeling odd, though I think it might be the smoke.

An old woman's voice comes from behind a table completely filled with books and says, "You're right about this shop. This one's special."

A stereotypical "Disney witch" gets up from the ground while carrying a small pile of books and smiles at us. She has a plump nose with a wart, pure white feathers coming out of her head and arms, a pointy black hat that matches her thin black robes, crooked teeth and walks with bad posture. An Estekabar-type demon race. "Welcome to the Clear Water. I sell all kinds of books."

She deposits the books she's carrying on the table and somewhere else a pile of books suddenly falls. She doesn't even react to the loud noise and an awkward silence falls on the shop as she starts to absent-mindedly dust the books in front of her.

The way those books fell was… strange.

"What kinds of books do you have?" Alissa asks.

"No idea, I buy whatever book interests me," the old woman says with a shrug.

"Do you have an… organization method or an index of some kind?" I ask.

"Nope," she says and turns her back to us to dust some more books.

Alissa and I look at each other and frown.

"How are we supposed to find anything here?" Alissa asks.

The shopkeeper turns to us and gives us a toothy smile that shows all of her pure white and crooked teeth. "Well… there are books in front of you, so you found it, them, some, whatever…" She shrugs and returns to dusting.

"She's high on Eia," I say to Alissa through [Bind] and chuckle internally.

"As far as I know, Eia doesn't make you this… weird."

The shopkeeper suddenly turns to us and her stupid smile disappears. She finally shows a completely lucid and serious face, but her odd reaction makes me feel a little tense.

Alissa's curiosity just increases and she feels like exploring. "I'll just… browse through the books," she says and starts flipping through the most accessible books.

"Sure…" the shopkeeper says absentmindedly as her eyes land on me and stay for an awkwardly long time. She slowly turns back to face forward and continues with her cleaning.

Gify, is there something wrong with this shop?

Gih.

Screw you, you useless freeloader.

Gih.

Last time you were this cryptic, you led us to Gecynd.

Gihihi.

I take a look around and start flipping over a book about "Intelligence" potions. It's like reading a scientific paper on something you don't know, it looks like gibberish filled with technical jargon.

"This is [Runic Warding]," Alissa says while holding a piece of paper with weird patterns.

"Good eye. Yes, they are," the shopkeeper says without looking at her.

Alissa stares at the piece of paper and turns it around. "It's not defensive or offensive, it's too pretty. It's also not calming, so it's not healing either. It's… mischievous… cheeky." She frowns and looks at the shopkeeper. "This is illusion magic. A party trick!"

The old woman finally stops and looks at Alissa with a warm smile that makes her look like a kind mother. "A perfect assessment," she says.

Illusion…

Something clicks inside my head.

Nearly all of the books become transparent and then disappear. Even the clutter between the tables clears away and I see display cases that were previously hidden underneath the mountains of books. They display beautiful books with shiny covers and colorful drawings.

Some of the incenses and glowing gems disappear and a perfectly arranged grid of decorations is left behind.

"What the fuck. The entire shop is an illusion," I mutter.

"Please, no profanities," Moth-… the shopkeeper says.

"Sorry… but, uh, why…?"

She narrows her eyes at me and I feel a hint of a higher-than-average "Charisma." "Keep your mind clear of impure thoughts and the little critters of illusion will have difficulty getting past your 'Willpower.'"

Well, consider me completely vulnerable to illusions, then.

"No… he meant why is the shop enchanted with illusions?" Alissa asks, reading my thoughts.

The old woman narrows her eyes for a moment again as her eyes dart between us. Then she goes back to her stupid smile. "Because this isn't really a shop. I'm Dokkanchee, and I'm a recruiter for the Kabara Basaree's School of Magic. You've both passed the first Trial of Illusion."

What…

My eyes still feel weird, though.

"You're an illusion, too. I can feel it," I say and Alissa nods.

"There's something odd about your face," she says

Dokkan smirks and her large nose starts to shrink. The wart falls off and disappears in a puff of smoke. Her teeth all straighten up and her smile becomes perfect. "The bad posture is real, though," she says and cackles. "Well, you've nearly passed the second Trial of Illusion, you still have to break the illusion with 'Willpower' if you want to pass."

"I wonder if there's a third Trial. I don't feel anything odd anymore, do you?" I ask Alissa through [Bind].

"No. Not a thing."

Dokkan opens her eyes wide and says, "There it is again! What is it that you two are doing? There's something… odd going on between the two of you."

We share a worried look.

"Of course, there is, but we aren't telling," I say and frown.

Dokkan laughs a little awkwardly and clears her throat. "Apologies, it's not my intention to pry, it's just that it's so curious. I've never seen anything like it before."

"What do you see?" Alissa asks.

"Not see, feel, and I feel something moving between you two. I have no idea what, and that's what's interesting because I can't even describe it."

"How do you see it?" I ask.

She smirks at me and waits a moment before answering, "I also have my own secrets that I have to keep."

Right, an impasse. But we still have the Masked Aberrant, so maybe I should study it and see what I can learn.

"Moving on…" I say and walk towards one of the display cases. "These books, are they for sale or something?"

Dokkan nods. "They are, but not for just anybody."

"And what does it take to be that 'somebody'?"

"A student, or a teacher of our school. Or somebody with magical qualifications."

"Is being a 'Scholar of Rabanara' enough?"

She raises an eyebrow. "Don't try to fool me, boy."

It's kind of annoying being called 'boy' in that way.

Gih.

Well, I'm not Tyrion and I'm not going to be a 'boy' for long.

Gih.

Right, levels. Fuck.

"Do you have an Inspection Crystal?" Alissa asks.

Dokkan shakes her head. "Don't need one. Students and teachers have IDs."

"You don't seem like you want to make many sales," I say with a sigh.

She shrugs. "Not really, I'm a recruiter."

"Let's see if there's something interesting before we try to negotiate further," I say and Alissa nods, her ears wobble cutely.

They really do wobble. My fake ears must look like dead leaves to her.

"Wait, the test is over, why don't you tell us what kind of books you have?" Alissa asks.

Dokkan cracks a smile and moves towards Alissa with a swiftness unbefitting her age. "Sure, sure, Miss Scholar. I'll show you around," she says, softly.

"I'm his fiancée, but I'm no scholar," Alissa corrects.

"As you wish, Miss …?"

"Alissa Ryder," she says with a confident smile.

Oof.

"Wolf Ryder," I say and send a warm smile to Alissa.

"Understood, Ms. And Mr. Ryder." Dokkan gives her a slight bow, the most I'd imagine someone like her can comfortably bend. "Come over here, I'll show you the more basic books we have and then we'll look at the more advanced ones if you wish."

We walk over to the first rows of display cases. She opens up the first and shows us a shiny book with a cover sheeted with orange metal foil.

"This is a beginner's book that we sell to young mages who aren't old enough to join the Magic School. This book gives them an idea of all kinds of illusion magic that they can learn without putting anyone in danger."

Alissa blinks a few times and her ears twitch. "What dangers?"

Dokkan snorts. "Just imagine a rich, spoiled child charming their parents to do their bidding."

"Oh…"

"Yes."

I hum in agreement and say, "I can see that there's more to illusions than just fake images. Like the book piles, those were all solid, but I'm not sure if their contents were actually intelligible."

"Illusion is the art of making someone believe in something else. The 'how' is only limited by your imagination." As Dokkan speaks, Alissa's excitement skyrockets.

"You have a thing for illusions, don't you, Alissa?" I ask her.

"Of course. I always dreamed of being like Nocturna." She lifts her chin up and puckers her lips like a proud young noblewoman.

"Oh, the werefox legend, I see…" Dokkan says and her eyes go towards the more advanced books. "We have a tome that describes her spells. Though you'd first need a considerable number of points in [Illusion Magic] before her spells become effective."

Too perfect…

"Let's see the others first," I say and Dokkan nods respectfully.

They are all interesting, really, but buying one is not viable for us because they all cost a few gold coins, after all. The biggest advantage is that these books have [Runic Warding] spells on them so that we can learn new spells by copying them.

Normal books about magic don't have this because [Runic Warding] costs mana crystals and has a limited number of uses before it deteriorates; so the book can at most teach the spell to two people, if you are not completely horrible at that magic school, that is.

"Do you want this book?" I ask Alissa.

"Uh…" She suddenly gets all bashful and awkward. Her ears flicker cutely up and down. She gets it under control soon enough, but I can still feel the anxiety seeping through her [Bind].

"You could teach Hana, too. She's been getting into [Illusion Magic] lately," I say.

"Right… [Double Strike] is kind of related to Nocturna's style," she says in a quiet voice as confidence slowly enters her heart.

Dokkan gives us a diplomatic smile and says, "Sorry to intrude, but it's mostly [Spirit Magic]. I do understand what you mean, though. The abstract concepts of [Double Strike] can easily be applied to Nocturna's spells."

"Yeah, I know," Alissa says and sighs wistfully. Guilt enters her heart but she overpowers it. "Let's buy this book."

"A simple Proof of Title will be enough for me. But it has to be signed by the temple, not the Lord's men," Dokkan says.

An odd restriction, but her school is from Maoka, so it makes sense for them to trust the temple so much more than the nobility.

Lina's Trivia: The Proof of Title is just a paper signed by someone stating that they have used an Inspection Crystal on me and confirmed that I possess a certain Title. You can always lose a Title, so having a recent Proof of Title or a Title Crystal is a requirement for a variety of things. These Title Crystals are magic tools that display a specific Title, so you can always check it whenever you need it, but they are expensive as hell.

"Point us to the nearest temple's office and we'll be back soon," I say.

I mount Alissa and we make our way to the office. Goldport is bigger than Rabanara, so they have a few offices scattered around the town.

On the way there, we find a public park. There's a cute patch of grass shaded by tall trees with wide canopies. A small fountain in the middle showers the grass around it with a thin mist of cool water. A good number of children and a few adults are taking a break under the mist.

We slowly make our way across the park and enjoy the mist for a few seconds. I see an interesting stall nearby and try to gently guide Alissa in that direction.

She's so distracted by the cool mist that she doesn't pay any attention to where we are going.

"Stop here for a moment," I ask and dismount in front of the stall.

"Hm?" Alissa turns to me and tilts her fox head, then her usually inexpressive face smiles as she notices the stall.

"The red one, please," I say and hand over a few copper coins.

The old man at the stall gives me a smirk and hands me a not-rose. Its red petals are arranged in such a way that it looks more like a fractal than a plant, so it's quite mesmerizing.

I mount Alissa again and set the not-rose's stalk into the fur behind her ear.

"Hopefully, flowers have the same meaning here as they do in my world," I say.

"'A pretty flower is a great way to adorn a pretty thing.' A teaching from the Goddess of Love."

"Quite similar. Though, in my world, the color is more important. Red is meant to represent love or passion."

"That's just the color for every one of us, then," she says and I can feel her shrug internally.

"Yeah… you could say that the relationships are more complicated here because the entire realm isn't almost exclusively monogamous."

"Hm."

We reach the office/clinic and ask for the Proof of Title. The female attendant is quite surprised since it's very rare for anyone to ask for that. Anyone with a relevant Title would usually be important enough to have their own Title Crystal.

The process is simple and fast since anyone can do it, so the attendant just dusts off the old crystal ball and writes up a paper for me that she signs and stamps.

Then we return to the Clear Water and show Dokkanchee the Proof.

She examines the paper for a short moment and hands it back to us. "Huh. You're an interesting person, Mr. Ryder. If either of you ever feel like joining Kabara Basaree, I'd gladly initiate you."

I smile at her and say, "Illusions aren't on my path of research, so I'll pass. Maybe Alissa will take you up on your offer, one day."

"W-well, this is a little too much for me. I'm j-just interested in pretty illusions," Alissa says and blushes in embarrassment.

Dokkan scoffs and narrows her eyes at Alissa. "Silly girl. You've got talent, at least enough to sniff out an illusion and that's the most important thing at the start."

"I-if you say so…" Alissa says and her tail wags for a moment before she controls it. "But there's a long way to go before we'll have the time to come back here."

"Hmph." With a *poof* Dokkan pulls out a piece of paper and a magic pen. She quickly scribbles some words on the paper, signs it, then hands it to Alissa. "Keep this with you and I'll remember you when you come back, even if it takes years. Well, I won't wait for decades, I'm quite old, after all." She finishes and cackles a stereotypical "witch" laugh.

We buy the book and Dokkan activates an enchantment on a chair deep inside the shop. Slowly, a complete makeover happens to the shop as it returns to its cluttered look. The illusions start out as "ghosts," then color is added, then the transparency disappears, and then they finally gain mass.

"See you again in a few years and may this year roll better than the last," Dokkan says and waves us goodbye. Her nose is visibly growing and the ugly wart is appearing again.

We say our goodbyes and also wish her a better "roll."

We stop by the park again and Alissa suggests that we take a break.

"Cast [Refresh] on me so that I can sleep on your lap," Alissa asks.

She shrinks down to small-Aoi-size and curls up on my lap. Her fluffy fur gets wet from the mist of the fountain, but it hardly changes the feel of petting her.

Her fur is so fluffy that my hand feels as much pleasure as she does and I can feel the best of both worlds just by sharing our senses. I allow her feelings to control me as much as she allows me to control her body. Her "will" helps guide my hand and it feels like we become "one" as our desires and movements synchronize.

It feels like an amazing moment, as if we were suddenly struck by lightning and energized. It's as if we acquired superhuman strength and had accomplished something impossible. We feel unstoppable.

But, like a moment of clarity, it comes and goes with a blink, but the knowledge has already been implanted. We can become more than the sum of our parts through [Bind].

The importance of this single, fleeting moment is enormous. This single spell might be one of our most important treasures.

"Wolfy…" She starts.

"Yes. It felt amazing," I complete.

"If we could replicate this…"

"Then we might become the perfect team."

"But if we go too far…"

"We'll easily 'merge.'"

"But can we achieve the same with the others?"

"So far only you tried to 'merge' with me."

"But we don't know if that's really a requirement for this…"

"So, we can only wait and hope…"

She switches back into her humanoid form and wraps her arms around my neck. The not-rose on her right ear makes her just that much more adorable.

"We'll do it, we'll sync with everyone," she says as her orange eyes stare into mine.

"If anything, I'm sure Gify's 'connection' can help us."

"Gih."

I smile wryly and say, "Yes, maybe you're not so useless, after all."

We go a bit away from the mist and have our cold tea with cookies in the shade. We spend the rest of our date enjoying each other's presence, trying to catch that lightning again, that wonderful feeling that we shared.

As the sun sets and the girls come back from the hunter's guild training grounds, we return to the inn. We catch Roxanne having a wonderful time with the golems and Aoi while experimenting with a laughing gas that she managed to create by studying the exploding arrow's chemicals.

"Yeah, you really need OSHA," I say with a frown.

"What's that?" Alissa asks.

"Something that'll save her life."

After Roxanne returns to normal and we store the golems away, we call the maids again to help appease Hana, who's all fired up.

We hear not just a few footsteps approach our door, but a whole army of clacking high heels.

Daiana knocks and we let her in. She enters with a completely stiff and awkward smile, and numerous maids and other staff follow her in. All of them are women, and they're all staring at me with predatory eyes.

A note from Manasong

Hall of Fame of Patrons

The patrons who support Rupegia shall have their names sung by the bards for they deserve the glory and honor. Their names are:

Oracle Maximillian Hübner.

Prince PreownedFIN.

Lord Andrew Meyers.

Lord Hope.

Lord Samuel Lim.

Lord Bill.

Lord Novgarod.

Lord DJ.

Lord Cidant.

Lord Ashadun.

Lord Michale Erwin.

Lord Joxsan Herrera.

Lord Enrique Peña Gomez.

Lord Vampmire.

Lord Braidborn.

Noble Salty Panda.

Nobleman Lassiter.

Noble Evil.

Leave a rating or a review to help me rise to the top or fix my shameful understanding of prose.

Take a look over my blog where all information of the world of Rupegia will be posted.

Join the Discord and discuss, or rant, or meme, or try and fight me so your waifu gets more screentime.

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Legends of Times Past Series: Ender, the Dragon – Teaser

A note from Manasong

Oops, this was supposed to be released Saturday.

"Good day, Lina," Oura says with a kind smile and I nearly stop to admire her. The golden elven woman is so beautiful and she's just what I imagine a not-evil Roxanne to be.

"Good day," I respond and turn to Osaria. The dark elven "milf," as Wolfy would say, sends me a small smile.

She's dangerous… I have to be careful with her, even if Wolfy wouldn't think it's cheating.

I send her a respectful nod and sit beside Oura. The fluffy and comfortable seat is just so much better than a horse. Even though Ciel makes sure I'm never in pain or too tired, I still prefer to properly sit at something and not mount it.

"So…" Oura starts with an excited smile and grabs my hand. "I know you love history, so I got a different book this time." With a *poof*, she produces on my lap a heavy leather-back book called: "Legends of Times Past Series: Ender, the Dragon."

"Ooh…" I feel a small door materializing inside my mind. A door to the past.

"It's a little dramatized, but the scholars say that this one is quite faithful to the historical records," Oura says.

Osaria leans closer so she can read the title and says, "Ah, that one. Can you narrate it for me? I'd like to hear this story."

"Sure," Oura says and nods repeatedly, even more excited.

I open the book with my free hand and both of her soft, delicate hands squeeze mine.

She's dangerous, too. I can't disappoint Ciel.

I try to ignore that I'm in a small room with two beautiful, older women who'd love to dote on me, but also have a rather elastic sexuality, and focus on the book.

It's time to cross the door that will take me into the past.

On the second day of the fourth month of the year 34,991, at the top of the Grey Roost, the wereowl God-Queen Mack'Hee conferred with her generals. Her sharp glare and bone structure gave her an air of strictness and regality. Her power as a multi-hundred level being only accentuated her features and made it impossible for the weak of heart to look at her. The gray locks of hair that covered her shoulders like a blanket made her look like a statue that glared down at lesser beings from atop her raised throne.

Grey Roost? Oh right, this is before the first Emperor changed their name to Hermit's Roost.

Only her own generals would survive her presence long enough to talk with her.

"Betoverd Bos has agreed to help. Their God-Rulers will support us in any effort against Ender," the first general said and stopped to read the rest of the document.

He was a mature wereowl man without a single gray hair or feather on his head, but the age of the higher society was always hard to define considering how their levels likely exceeded one hundred.

The general frowned as he read the document. Once done, he sighed and said with a strained tone, "But they will only offer a limited number of troops for combat. They believe that the average troops will be wasted in a confrontation with the dragon."

"And what troops have they offered?" The God-Queen asked. Her cold and imperious tone would make any lesser man be compelled to obey her, even if they didn't want to.

"Gnomic Wall-Masters, Pixie Mountain-Splitters, and Meteor Launchers."

"Impressive, but alas, limited," Mack'Hee said and gripped her forehead in disappointment.

The only sounds heard on the huge and austere Gray Hall was the ruffling of the delicate clothing the other generals were wearing as they nodded in solemn agreement.

This near-absolute silence made the sudden appearance of hurried footsteps very jarring. Someone had just entered through the emergency Eternal Portal.

The heavy doors to the Hall opened by themselves to let in a God's Voice for the Brumeux Clan. A werefox in shining gray armor enveloped in mist, making it difficult to discern any of his movement. The only truly visible part he had was his uncovered head showing his fox ears, perfect strands of orange hair and fur, and a handsome face marred by an expression of grief.

Oh, Alissa's ancestor. I have to show this book to her sometime.

A few of the generals grabbed their Heavenly Weapons and eyed the God's Voice warily as the armored man rushed towards the Triangular Table.

The young werefox God-King broke out of his inner reflections and raised from his throne. "Cousin!" He yelled in surprise.

The God's Voice dispelled the mist covering his body, revealing an eerily dull-looking metal armor. Then he fell on one knee and dropped his head. "My Divine! The Brumeux Forest is going to fall!" He announced as tears ran along his cheeks.

"What?!" the God-King shrieked.

"We found out that Ender had sneaked into the Haunted Caldera and used it to feed himself and his dragons. But then it was too late, his army is now so big that there's no hope for defense. Our God-Rulers ordered the evacuation of the forest while they hold back Ender himself."

Mack'Hee raised from her throne and immediately everyone, except for the God-King, held back a breath in awe of her presence. "Send all the troops that we can to aid in the evacuation. Contact Betoverd Bos and Sommerreich. Then summon the Celestial Owls and we'll personally help the Brumeux God-Rulers," She commanded and the generals obeyed. In the blink of an eye, they all disappeared.

"I am humbled by your Divine Mercy!" The God's Voice yelled, amid tears of grief and happiness.

"Think nothing of it. Now go, help your brethren," Mack'Hee said. Her voice quaked the God's Voice to his bones and fueled his inhumanoid speed as he immediately darted back towards the [Eternal Gate] whence he came.

Mack'Hee walked down the steps of her throne to the lower throne of her lover. She may had a lithe figure, but she never looked small, even while beside her tall and slender lover.

She hugged the young God-King and cupped his cheeks, then guided his head towards hers and sealed his lips with her own.

The thin clothes both of them wore made it quite easy for their body heat to transfer, and so they easily felt the rising heat coming from their groins. But there was no time for anything more than a kiss.

"We'll save them, my lovely Beau. We'll save them," Mack'Hee said in a soft voice that wormed its way into the God-King's heart.

His handsome and boyish face was wracked with grief. Even though Beau looked young, he certainly wasn't. He knew that Mack'Hee was trying to comfort him, and he knew that Brumeux wouldn't survive.

The Eternal Portal connecting Gray Roost to Brumeux was in a secure place underground, so it's no surprise that it was still in one piece. What is surprising, though, is that it was completely empty.

Beau stopped in place and the retinue of Celestial Owls deftly made their way around him, continuing on towards the stairs out of this grand underground hall.

Mack'Hee stopped beside her lover and squeezed his hand gently, giving him a jolt that awoke him from his stupor.

At that same moment, the curtains beside them fluttered and the God-Rulers of Betoverd Bos came out: Sputvick, the gnome God-King; and Yonda, the pixie God-Queen. Sputvick is a gnome oozing mana out of his many enchantments; he sported his infamous beard, so long that he constantly used [Warp Space] to make his meters-long beard occupy only a quarter of a meter square of space. Yonda is a rainbow-haired pixie that left sparkling trails of dust as her silver butterfly wings flapped through the air.

"Mack'Hee, Beau," the two God-Rulers paid their respects to their equals, which Mack'Hee and Beau returned. Then a crack was heard and the gnome teleported himself and his wife towards the surface.

"Let's go," Beau said, determined, and opened a Portal to his former home just as the Gnomic Wall-Masters started pouring out of the Eternal Portal.

The Heavenly Gray Armor of both God-Rulers turned red as it reflected the flames that surrounded them. If Beau hadn't know where they were, then they would've believed to have been transported to Hell as the all-consuming magical fire was the only thing they could see all around them.

The enchantments on their armor triggered immediately and created a bubble of cool air around them, while also extinguishing any flame trying to creep closer to unburnt matter. The lack of flames also revealed ashes that Mack'Hee identified as belonging to beams made from the Chape tree.

"ROOOOOOH!" They heard a wyvern's cry and lazily looked towards its source.

Mana left Beau's body and the wyvern then cried in pain for only a moment before dying as a blinding flash of lightning struck it. The lava on the wyvern's body cooled and its scales dulled, then cracked and shattered.

Beau and Mack'Hee wordlessly started floating in the air, surveying the sea of fire for any other feeble Volcanic Wyvern to kill.

A few more wyverns, blinded by blood-lust, attacked the pair of God-Rulers before dying in less than a second. The rest of the wyverns awakened from their lust and tried to flee, but that only made them easier targets for Beau to vent his anger.

Without a magical source for the fire, Mack'Hee snapper her fingers and all the flames converged into a small ball in front of her, then it was extinguished and the red light of the flames disappeared.

Brumeux's capital, Lieu'd Naissan, was burned down in its entirety to feed the Volcanic Wyverns. This sub-type of dragon will then be hunted down to near extinction for thousands of years.

I've never even heard of a Volcanic Wyvern before, so I think it's still hated by the werefoxes.

The duo of God-Rulers flew higher and higher until they managed to locate where the battle is taking place. Not a hard thing to do since a huge explosion caused a blinding flash of light come from the east, where the Western Edge of the Haunted Caldera is.

That's Rakontagne, and Haunted Caldera must be the Sea of Trees. I think the Sea of Trees is "only" a few thousand years old.

Both of the God-Rulers blasted through the air towards the source of the explosion while their hearts tightened in anxiety.

Their Celestial Owls soon approached them, carving a bloody path from the Gaping Maws, wyverns and dragons that eat the forest whole to feed Ender's army.

Then they felt the gnome God-King repeatedly teleporting long distances towards them, but he's not as fast as Beau and Mack'Hee, so he's left behind.

The duo of God-Ruler's spent copious amount of mana to fly faster than the sound, and left a trail of stunned dragons and wyverns below them. The Western Edge crept closer and closer, but even at their incomprehensible speed, they spent much longer than they wished flying towards their target.

They saw a black shining mass the size of a hill snaking its way over the snow-covered mountaintop of the Western Edge. Then a chill ran along their spine as they sighted the only thing that can cause fear in a God-Ruler's heart: Ender, The Annihilator, The All-Consumer, The Nemesis, The Hand and Child of the God of Destruction.

Unbreakable black scales that absorbed all light; yellow, piercing eyes that had no magic in them, only pure hate and destruction; spikes that covered his entire body; wings so big that could cover an entire town.

Huge stone stakes burst out of the ground and hit Ender on its underside, breaking apart as soon as they hit him. But the power of the strike was enough to send him back into the Haunted Caldera.

A large light appeared again and exploded, taking out the top of snowy mountain along with it.

Ender's horrifying black head peeked again over the blown mountaintop with a grin of pure evil on his dragonic face.

Beau started to glow as lighting cackled all over his body. Then Mack'Hee bent the wind to her will and created a line of thunder clouds from where they where that ended where Ender was.

The roar of Beau's [Lightning Strike] deafened all monsters for kilometers and even damaged the ears of the Celestial Owls coming behind them.

Ender was struck by the lightning and once again fell behind the mountaintop. The master of all dragons roared, not in pain, but in laughter, as Beau's attack stung like a bee's sting would feel to a lesser humanoid.

They continued their flight and the Western Edge grew and grew. Then they started to feel the mana coming out of the werefoxes God-Rulers, but their blood ran cold as one of the sources started to rapidly fade.

They suddenly stopped near the surface of the mountain and the air boomed a moment later. Only a single spot of snow wasn't disturbed by their arrival. It was a blurry mass of mist, which contained both the sources of mana of the werefox God-Rulers.

Then the mist dissipated and revealed two beautiful werefoxes. A male with white hair, fur, and skin with blue spots, and a female with delicate features and orange hair. The female lacked her left arm and leg, and a black slime covered her wounds, digging deeper into her body and soul.

"SISTER!" Beau bellowed. Lightning crackled and in the blink of an eye, he was beside his sister.

"Beau…" She said weakly and reached over with her remaining hand to cup his cheek and caress his fox ears.

A disembodied voice made the ground tremble and attacked the bodies of the God-Rulers with its strength. But they were way past having enough "Endurance" and "Willpower" to resist this attack without even putting an effort. "Another one of your kind falls. Pay your respects, fox, she only has a few minutes before she is mine," Ender said and his ginormous head peeked over the blown off mountaintop again.

"She'll never be yours!" Beau bellow back and the skin of the God-Rulers tingled with static. Ender, though, felt nothing.

The Annihilator's tone had such a cold finality to it that even Mack'Hee felt impotent after hearing it. "I am sure you are saying this to comfort yourself. Nevertheless, her soul will be annihilated by my essence," Ender said.

Bennie pulled her brother closer in a hug and said, "The battle is not over, little brother."

A mist started to appear between Ender and the God-Rulers and it was quickly becoming solid, like a barrier.

Ender frowned and started to collect his power above his head. A huge ball of pure darkness that absorbed the air and even the light around them, a Void Entrance. "Your illusions are a bother," he said, perfectly enunciating every word.

"Fuck you," Bennie cursed and added more power to her mist.

Before Ender could fire his attack, the mist was finished and Ender's view was completely obscured by it.

The All-Consumer stayed true to his name and started absorbing every little piece of matter around him, but Bennie's mist still didn't thin out.

Ender groaned and started to flap his wings to help disperse the mist, but it still didn't thin out.

Ender opened his mouth and sucked in the mist, trying to undo its magic from within, but it still didn't thin out.

Then Ender sighed and hardened his scales, knowing exactly what was about to happen.

The mist suddenly disappeared and Ender's body was wracked with a thunder strike, locking him in place as lightning coursed through his body. He was flattened against the ground as the air condensed and pushed down on him. Then the mountain rose again and started to engulf him.

"Do you know any other way to fight?" Ender asked as he looked up at the God-Rulers floating above him.

Then Bennie fired gigantic icicles the size of a house into Ender's eyes and poked them out.

"NRAAAGH…! HAHAHA, ALWAYS THE SAME AT-…" Ender's bellow was interrupted by Yonda, who entered his mouth and used her body as a propellant for her Heavenly Spear.

Then space cracked and she reappeared beside Sputvick.

"Now, that is something new," Ender's disembodied voice commented. Then the earth trembled and a mana storm started to brew all around the dark dragon.

The earth cracked and flaked; the air became thick and noxious; the clouds compressed into water and disappeared; and any living thing, be it monster or humanoid, decided to run as far away as they could from the God of Destruction's own child.

Bennie faltered in her lover's arms. "Ivo, I can't…" She muttered.

On the contrary of Beau, the white-haired God-King had a war mask on his face, betraying no emotion. He simply hugged her tighter and tried to slow down Ender's essence, but it had already consumed a lung and her intestines. There was nothing he could do.

Bennie still had a fire within her, and she would put her last moments to good use. She pushed her face closer to Ivo's ear and whispered, "I want to do one last… thing…"

"For Brumeux," Ivo said, solemn.

"For our children…" Bennie whispered.

Then both of God-Kings flew towards Ender's back, using all their power to resist the reality-bending mana storm from erasing them from existence.

"WHAT?!" Beau yelled. But the instant that he thought about moving forward, Mack'Hee stopped him.

"Focus on the battle, love," she said to him in a low voice, yet it was perfectly heard by him.

Beau gritted his teeth and all the God-Kings sent another salvo of attacks, to help Ivo and Bennie in whatever they wanted to do.

"USELESS, USELESS, USELESS, USELESS, USELESS, USELESS!" The Disembodied voice of Ender made the earth tremble as he slowly undid his binds and increased his resistance to the combined attacks of the God-Kings. Suddenly, his resistance stopped growing as he noticed something odd on his back. "WHAT?! YOU DARE?!"

"WE DARE!" Ivo responded.

Ender opened his mouth to yell again, but Yonda interrupted him and flew down his throat. She cut and tore his insides whenever she could, and his time she didn't teleport back so soon.

Ender resumed increasing his resistance, but he was once again interrupted, this time by two huge steel hammers smacking the icicles in his eyes and driving them further and into his brain.

His body went limp, but he's not dead yet. His pure black scales started to turn even darker as they sucked everything around him. Every single little particle of matter or mana was absorbed, annihilated, then turned into energy to fuel his regeneration.

Suddenly, his own stomach was turned into a Void Source, nearly trapping Yonda into its eternal embrace. She instantly teleported back beside Sputvick and gave a small prayer to the God of Change for her luck.

Then the two God-Rulers united forces to create a steel stake the size of a small village and dropped it on Ender's head. His regeneration and resistance grew faster by absorbing the steel stake, but he couldn't spare any more power to stop Bennie and Ivo.

Ender was not stupid, though, and once he had regenerated enough, he focused solely on the two God-Rulers at his back, ignoring everything else. But because of this, he didn't sense two huge pillars, one of fire and another of ice, flying towards him from the Brumeux Forest.

The ice hit his face and twisted his neck at an impossible angle, then it covered his face and froze it solid. The fire came a moment later and touched the ice, then it all exploded.

A cloud of steam covered his face, but it was swiftly pushed away by Mack'Hee, allowing everyone to see how Ender's frightening skull was warped as his bones cracked and caved in slightly.

Having enough, Ender started to bend space to teleport himself out of there.

"NO, YOU WON'T!" Princep, the God-King of Domum, bellowed. The olive-skinned man teleported directly above Ender. His weakened body was supported by his God-Queen, who solely focused on protecting both of them from Ender's mana storm.

Princep glared at Ender and used the power of his eyes to lock every fiber of Ender's being into its current resting place, effectively blocking him from teleporting away.

"RAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGH!" Ender shook the earth again with his voice, now fully enraged. He was still undoing his binds, but it was too slow to his linking. "AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!" His voice gained a higher pitch as he finally felt what Ivo and Bennie were doing.

A huge black scale, bigger than three humanoids stacked on top of each other, was bent backward almost fully. The dark skin was rupturing and tearing, letting black essence ooze out of the wound.

The God-Rulers of Sommerreich finally reached Ender and prepared another pillar of ice and fire, but at this point, even the combined attack of all God-Rulers would do little to stop Ender's rampage.

Ender's incessant yelling suddenly stopped and every God-Ruler gasped. The scale finally broke free and flew upwards, flipping in the air like a ginormous coin.

Princep's hold over Ender waned, and The Nemesis suddenly disappeared, teleporting to an unknown land to recover. The mana storm cleared and reality returned to normal.

Mack'Hee flew upwards to catch the scale while Beau flew downwards, towards Ivo and Bennie.

Princep collapsed and his God-Queen teleported him away immediately. The rest of the God-Rulers waited patiently for the aftermath.

"IVO, BENNIE?!" Beau yelled, searching for them.

The white-haired God-King coughed and caught Beau's attention. The beautiful werefox was unrecognizable, he had lost his arms and legs, and his face was covered in Ender's black essence, eating away his skin.

Beau landed beside Ivo and caught his body, lifting him slightly from the ground. "Ivo? Where's Bennie?" Beau asked, knowing the answer.

"Now… she only… lives… within… you…" Ivo answered with a weak voice.

Beau's beautiful face distorted in grief as he wept for the death of his beloved sister.

Ivo stopped resisting and Ender's essence consumed the rest of his body in a few seconds, leaving nothing behind.

Mack'Hee silently landed beside Beau and consoled him.

All present God-Rulers felt a horrible chill run along their spines. Nothing in this realm could kill them, except for Ender… and The Nemesis had struck down two more of their kind. At this rate, civilization will be extinguished.

Their gazes then drifted from Beau towards the huge scale floating above them.

They all could see an enticing opportunity in front of them, but was it really worth the sacrifice of two God-Rulers?

"Wow… this is amazing," I say, lowly, and look at Oura. "Even more so because Ivo and Bennie are literally Alissa's ancestors!"

"Oh, really? I didn't know that," Oura says and her long ears wiggle in surprise.

"She's the daughter of the Chief and Chieftress of the Forest, and their family has been Chiefs for generations. It's very likely that she is a direct descendant."

"The position of Chief not hereditary, right?"

"Exactly, which is why it's impressive."

"Wow… and the blood of the God-Ruler might run in her veins."

"We always knew she was special," Osaria says and giggles softly while smiling. Her smile looks a little… off. And the way she looks at me make me a little concerned for my well-being.

"And to think that such a legendary being was fought by her ancestors makes things feel so… real…" I say and look at the book, a little embarrassed at my own naivete.

Osaria and Oura look at me warmly, then Oura says, "You're right. We think that these people are so distant from us, but they are not. They are real, they existed and we are their descendants."

Osaria chuckles once and says, "Well, I'm sure Rande has the blood of the High Royalty in him. Could even try to claim royalty status if they hadn't made things complicated with all that whole Heretic's Rest ordeal." She smiles bitterly.

"Wow… now you have a connection to something historical," I say and stare at Osaria in wonder.

She shrugs. "Not my blood, but I guess you could say that. Though I'm not very prideful of that 'connection.' The secession movement was a front for heresy and they were using the remnants of the royals for their goals."

Aoi suddenly perches on the window of the carriage and says, "Li, Wolfy wants to dismantle those, exploding arrows."

"Oh, right! We still have to understand how they work," I say, a little excitedly.

Ah, another weapon for us! The more our arsenal grows, the fewer people would dare cross with us!

I quickly end my fantasizing; storytime is nice, but work takes priority. I turn to Oura and say, "Sorry, Oura, I have to work."

"It's no problem," Oura says with a kind smile and pats my head, making my heart quicken and my face blush.

Noo~… why do they always pat my head?! They don't even know how it's my weak spot, they just all do it for some reason!

I nod and scurry out of the carriage with Aoi wrapped around my neck.

I can't let myself get swept by her touch, that would be betraying Ciel.

A note from Manasong

Hall of Fame of Patrons

The patrons who support Rupegia shall have their names sung by the bards for they deserve the glory and honor. Their names are:

Oracle Maximillian Hübner.

Prince PreownedFIN.

Lord Andrew Meyers.

Lord Hope.

Lord Samuel Lim.

Lord Bill.

Lord Novgarod.

Lord DJ.

Lord Cidant.

Lord Ashadun.

Lord Michale Erwin.

Lord Joxsan Herrera.

Lord Enrique Peña Gomez.

Lord Vampmire.

Lord Braidborn.

Noble Salty Panda.

Nobleman Lassiter.

Noble Evil.

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Chapter 56: Turn of The Wheel - Part 1

A note from Manasong

This chapter is one of the few that I'll leave uncensored.

"Good afternoon to you all, Ryders," Daiana and Suelen say in unison and bow.

"Afternoon," all the women behind the sisters say in unison and bow.

"Good afternoon," the girls say for me. Hana and I are silent, too overwhelmed with anticipation to properly talk.

Everyone straightens their postures, except for Daiana, who says, "Let me apologize for this. The rumors went out of control and your fame took flight, Mr. Ryder."

I see Lunastra and Camila among the women behind her, grinning quite excitedly.

I laugh out loud and sit down on the bed. "Well, this doesn't look too bad. But I must say that we have a small problem. I'm just one man, after all."

"Indeed. I think we need to set some rules," Ciel says.

"Exactly," Roxanne adds and nods. She gets up and starts looking over each woman one-by-one. Her harsh glare makes a few of them tremble, suddenly feeling very "inadequate." "Let's start with this: all of you are here because you're interested in his magic dick?"

They all nod and a few mumble a shy "yes."

She smirks evilly and continues, "And you understand that we are his wives and none of you will get the honor of being fucked by his cock if we don't allow it?"

Their nods and mumbles become a little awkward.

Ciel chimes in, "Not only that, but do you understand that by him spending time with any of you, our already limited time with him is reduced even further?"

Their nods and mumbles also gain a hint of guilt.

Roxanne stops in front of an actual Scylla and smirks. "So, if you want to spend time with him, you'll have to first please us."

The tall and sensual Scylla notices Roxanne's succubus appendages and her juicy, brown lips curl into a smile. Her wriggling mass of tentacles gains a purpose and slowly moves forward; its suckers contract and expand, eager to latch onto anything sensitive; their thick muscles flex and relax, showing how they can gain impressive girth or length at will.

Ciel continues, "Second, you'll only get a single orgasm, then you'll need to give up your spot to the next one."

The women murmur in surprise among themselves. The reason for their reaction is not that they're disappointed at a single orgasm being a small number, but rather that they'll even manage to orgasm at all.

Hana walks forward and stops in front of the tallest woman in the room, who's even taller than herself. She looks as if a werewolf (the fantasy creature) and an Olympic sprinter had a child. Her body is tall and slim, but also perfectly fit with tight abs that make me want to lick them; her breasts are very small, but their pointy nipples nearly poke through the thin white sash covering them; she has grey fur that grows out of one side of each of her white arms; her hands are clawed, furred, padded and larger than normal, while her arms are so long that her hands hang down near her knees; her white and grey wolf head and red eyes make her look menacing.

"I'll be fucking you," Hana states and pulls the werewolf woman towards the bed.

Ciel comes forward and asks, "Who has [Massage]?"

A mixed bunch raises their hands, but they can be cleanly divided into two groups: small lolis and dwarves, or big women with strong hands.

She takes a look through all of them and starts pointing to the small women. "You will all massage me. If you can suck on my feet, then even better."

A cute dwarf with a round face gives her such a wide grin that I don't even have to guess what her fetish is.

Lina stands up and announces, "The one who can pay the most will get the first go." A group of women immediately crowd around her. Considering how much better their clothes are from the rest, these aren't prostitutes or staff. The more I look at them, the more they seem to be noblewomen or rich merchants.

Alissa gets up with Aoi on her shoulder and starts assessing the remaining women.

"Wait a moment," a Kabar woman wearing an inn staff uniform stops Alissa. She has dark skin, bright blue peacock feathers for hair, light blue eyes, and thin, elvish features. "My sister, she's, uh, she's a virgin. I'd like for her to have a good first time with a proper man and know what good sex is supposed to feel like."

From behind her, a similar and younger version of herself shyly comes forward, her face already a deep scarlet red from blushing.

Since she's not a dwarf, she's definitely barely legal.

"Hm, fine. You'll go first," Alissa says with a nod.

Two other women come forward and interrupt Alissa.

"I can polish her scales very well, I'm a groomer for the pets of the guests," a thin and Asian-looking wereowl woman says while smirking.

"I can brrush yourr tail and earrs," a curvy and black werecat woman says. She has majestic, fluffy, and pure black hair and skin, and strikingly yellow cat eyes. The way she (deliberately) drags the "r" in almost a purr is very sexy.

Alissa nods to both of them and says, "The first chosen of the other wives will come first, and then you'll get your turn."

They both nod happily and turn their hungry gazes to me. I merely smirk at them and turn to the first piece of meat. The peacock girls awkwardly approach me with a mix of fear and awe.

"P-pleasure to meet you, Grand Ryder," the older sister says a little nervously and bows.

"No need for Grand or any other honorific. I'm Wolf Ryder and you can just call me Wolf."

"Y-yes. I'm Mina and this is my sister, Nazli."

"Pleasure to meet you, Mina, Nazli," I say with a smile.

"Pleasure to meet you, Wolf," says Nazli, softly, gaining a little confidence.

I offer my hand to Nazli and she takes it. I push out my soul just a little and hear her softly gasp in surprise.

I gently lead her to the bed and we sit down. Her sister sits down beside her, looking a little lost about what to do now.

"Have you ever kissed someone?" I ask Nazli with a warm smile on my face.

"Well… yes, but I don't have much experience with it," she says, avoiding looking me in the eyes.

"Have you ever seen a man naked before?"

"Mostly just Dad. We also went to the mixed baths out of curiosity, but we didn't stay there for long since I didn't want to get naked in front of them."

"I see… so, is there anything you don't feel comfortable with?"

She finally looks at me and frowns with a small smile. "Everything? I'm not like Daiana who can talk and 'connect' with other people so easily."

Well, the more you talk about it, the more you might become more comfortable.

"Then why would you choose this way to lose your virginity?"

She looks away again and fiddles with the feathers on her arms. "I want to work here. Sis is making a fortune and if I can do certain things on the side, then we could live a nice life." She shrugs and sighs. "It beats risking my life to gain levels and skills."

"But are you sure you want to go with this lifestyle?"

She narrows her eyes and looks down at her feet, a little annoyed. "Of course I am. I'm here, aren't I?"

I shrug and look forward, giving her some reprieve from my staring. "I’m just confirming that it’s your decision. You haven't shown that much confidence, though."

"Don't fault me for that, I'm still learning and it's why I'm here: for you to teach me." She gives me a side glance with a crooked smile.

"So, what did you hear about me?"

"Magic dick," she answers immediately.

I chuckle and she laughs softly.

Getting better.

"What else?"

She goes back to fiddling with her feathers, though she still has a small smile on her face. "Fun, gentle, loving, and probably not the kind to be bothered by different tastes."

I guess that the last part is her way of saying "open-minded." I mean, she literally has blue feathers for hair. Some members of her race have hair, but not her; her head is only covered with feathers, though it does kind of look like shoulder-length hair.

I take a look over at Daiana, who has joined the audience and is observing us with keen interest. She gives me a smug smirk that makes me feel like everything is right with the world.

I chuckle softly and return my gaze to Nazli. "Right. Well, I always try to make sure that my partner has as much fun as I do. I see sex as if I'm doing something nice to someone else and even if it's a stranger, it still feels really good when the other person returns it in kind."

Nazli scoots closer and I see that she's still holding her sister's hand. I grab her free hand and give it a kiss, pushing my soul out just slightly.

"Y-you'll have to take charge. I really c-can't do it myself," she says and looks me in the eyes. Her light blue eyes are so endearing, and her cute and elvish face is still a shade darker than her sister's due to all the blushing.

I cup her cheek and feel the higher heat of her skin. I bring her face closer and her lips part. Then I cover hers with mine and smell the scent of her light perfume.

I slowly push my tongue out of my mouth and meet hers. I can feel that she's tense and her tongue moves shyly; she really doesn't know what to do. I push my soul out of my tongue just slightly and feel her tenseness slowly melt away as our tongues rub on each other.

I hug her waist and she moans softly in surprise. Her modest breasts press against my chest like two squishy buns covered by a thin piece of cloth. I push her down and lay her on the bed.

I regretfully end our kiss and take a look around the room. Hana already tied up her werewolf and is in the process of starting to fist her. Roxanne is now naked while suspended in the air by the Scylla's tentacles, which are now softly caressing her skin and sensitive parts. Ciel is having every inch of her body massaged by the lolis while her feet are sucked on by a very-happy-looking brown-haired dwarf loli. Alissa is currently "inspecting" the mouth of a cobra-head woman by having her forked tongue penetrate her pussy. Aoi is comfortably curled up on the lap of the Asian-looking wereowl.

I look down at Nazli. Her eyes are open wide, staring up at me with anticipation. Her beautiful and slightly shiny hair-feathers are all spread out, making them look almost like a perfect peacock's tail. Her hand squeezes her sister's as I climb on top of her.

Her white shirt is buttoned, so I slowly unbutton it and reveal her cleavage. Her breathing quickens and her free hand grips the sheets when I open her shirt and expose her breasts.

The two beautiful dark mounds are just slightly larger than Roxanne's, with pure black little areolas holding itty bitty little nipples. Her fun bags are less perky than Roxanne's or Alissa's, giving them an adorable bit of sag.

I lower myself onto her and start sucking on one of her nipples while rubbing the other. She moans and writhes as my soul-touch gives her sensitive nipples a good bit of attention. Her arms wrap around me and a small blanket of feathers covers my head.

I think she would make for a very good sleeping partner.

I slow down my sucking and rubbing and make my way down her body. She doesn't have the abs that make me feel like licking them, but she does have a cute thin tummy that deserves all the soul-kisses.

When I make it to the border of her skirt I stop there and look up at her. She's looking at me with a good amount of fear and anxiety. The feathers on top of her head seem to be rising with her mood change.

Mina runs her hand through her sister's hair-feathers, trying to calm her. They look at each other warmly and nod. Then they turn to me and the feathers on top of Nazli's head start to lower again as she relaxes.

I smile and bite the waistband of her skirt, then I pull it down. She lifts her waist to help us and we expose her white laced cute little panties. I pull her skirt down her legs and raise her feet to help it come off. Her sandals show some tasty little toes painted with light blue nail polish.

I take them off with a kiss on top of each of her feet. "Do you have a foot fetish?" I ask.

"N-no," she answers.

Better not push it this time. Maybe another day.

I approach her panties and see a small wet spot forming right in the middle. I give her a smirk but her expression is lax and her mouth hangs open with anticipation.

I bite the waistband of her panties and pull them down. A completely clean-shaved hood shows itself and a small bridge of her juices briefly connects it to her panties. Her breath is fast and she crushes her sister's hand in tenseness.

I pull down her panties and take them off completely. I give it a brief whiff to register her scent in my memory, then I put it beside her with a smirk. She doesn't even react; all she wants is me, so I'd better not keep her waiting.

I take my shirt off and flex my pecs a little for her. Both of the sisters glue their eyes to me and Mina even licks her lips. The audience murmurs about my scars and their meaning. The consensus seems to be that the one on my cheek is still the most charming one.

I unbutton my pants and show them the tent in my underwear. I slowly lower them down and finally let my erection spring free. The entire room goes silent as they all watch me and my magic dick.

"His secret shows itself after he enters you," Lunastra says and sighs wistfully.

"You don't mind the audience?" I ask Nazli.

"It's better like this than alone and scared," she answers, her eyes glued to my erection.

"Hm." I get down on my knees and block her sight of my dick. Her dreamy blue eyes then turn to my face and open wide when my fingers spread her pussy apart.

I smirk and give her a soul-infused lick, making her instantly moan softly. Her wetness is delicious, just like any other woman.

I give her the most caring and delicate cunnilingus I can with [Oral Technique] and [Massage].

Her fingers quickly find their way to my scalp and hold me in place; her thin thighs painfully squeeze my head with impressive strength; her high-pitched moans are just like a bird's song. To be honest, they sound a little bit funny, but I'm sensible enough to not laugh at her. They are more cute than funny, too.

I didn't need to, but I spent a few minutes on foreplay for her. They quickly flew by as her cute moaning sounded so good to my ears that I felt like simply continuing for a while longer.

All this stimulation quickly left her sweaty and gasping for breath. She had stopped trying to crush her sister's hand, but then she returned for round two as I got up and my cock approached her pussy.

I rub it on her entrance and she moans again. She slowly spreads her legs for me and lifts her body with her elbows so that she can see it better.

"Last chance, do you want this?"

"Yes," she says, full of confidence.

I slowly push it in and nearly moan myself at her slickness. She's perfectly lubed for me. I push my soul out through my dick some more and she gasps in response.

"Wow…" She mutters.

Suddenly, I feel resistance and she winces. It seems that she's an unlucky one.

"I'm going to break it and immediately [Heal] you, okay?" I ask.

"Okay…" She answers, a little worried, but still confident.

I lean over her and grab her chin, forcing her to stare at me. I drown in her light blue crystal eyes and push it in with all my strength.

"AH!" She squeaks in pain and I immediately cast [Heal] followed by [Regeneration]. "Ahn…" She moans softly from the spells.

"No chanting?" Mina asks.

"I'm a talented mage," I say and kiss Nazli. She wraps her arms around my neck and pulls me in, then forces her tongue inside. This time she explores my mouth and seeks my tongue for stimulation.

I pull out a little and cast a [Clean] just to make sure, then I push it in again. Her loud moan is muffled by our kissing and her eagerness increases.

I take this as a "go" to start moving properly.

With [Regeneration] on, her pain from her first time is significantly lessened as her womb quickly conforms to the shape of my dick. My soul touching her insides also serves to aid the pleasure in overpowering the pain.

I slowly increase the strength of my thrusts, impaling her with every strike and making her face scrunch up.

She stops the kiss, too stimulated to properly play with my tongue. "Gods…! It's…! So…! Good…! Inside…! Me…!" She yells between every thrust.

The moans of pleasure turn into yells that turn into screams that turn into shrieks. She's certainly loud, but her beautiful voice makes it much more tolerable.

I play with her nipples with one hand while I cup her surprisingly juicy ass with the other. I spread her cheeks and cast a [Clean], then I slowly push a wet finger inside her butthole. Her shrieks only get louder and her sister starts masturbating.

Our nipples rub against each other's chests while I thrust into her with all of my strength. The only sounds that can be heard are our wild fucking and all the women masturbating around us. The smell of wet pussy fills the room even with the window open and you can bet that the entire street can hear me committing bloody murder in here.

I push my soul out of my skin so that she'll feel pleasure everywhere she touches it.

I share my senses with the girls and feel their pride and satisfaction in return. I'm a real man among men, a stud whose current purpose is to give women what they deserve: to be totally sexually fulfilled.

I'll make her shriek until her voice gives out…

And I did.

Even if I were gentler, she would still only last a fraction longer than someone like Hana. She was a virgin after all and she asked for a magic dick, so a proper helping of magic dick is what she shall receive.

Her entire body trembles with a huge orgasm and I finish inside her at the same time. The touch of my soul makes her orgasm last longer, even if I don't move my hips.

The "seizure" slowly fades and only the sounds of her rapid breathing remains. The women look on in awe and silence as the first casualty is confirmed.

Ciel smiles wryly, knowing very well what that blank look and stupid smile means. She knows what it's like to have your entire body exhausted by the strongest orgasm that she could ever imagine; to feel the tingling sensations running through every one of her muscles. But the strongest feeling of all is the delicious, pulsing pain of a well-fucked cunt.

My dick slides out of Nazli's pussy with a lewd, wet noise. My white cream seeps out of her lips and the women mutter in surprise while staring at my still erect spear.

"Who's next?" I ask in a low growl and look around.

Ciel pushes forward a dwarf girl with such long, silky and straight black hair that it looks like a cloak covering her body.

Dwarves are better than halflings. Sure, halfling-lolis are ultra-thin and look like they are made of glass, but the dwarven-lolis have the golden-ratio. Pretty far from being "big," but not too small. Their racial [Stonebody] is also a plus because then they can actually do all the physically demanding positions while still lasting long enough. Sure, if you have a domination fetish, then halflings are superior, but for me, just pretending that Lina doesn't have the same "Strength" as me is enough.

The little heavenly dwarven girl looks the best in missionary with her silky hair beautifully spread out on the bed, or on all fours while her long strands paint her white back black.

Who am I kidding? She looks perfect no matter the position.

"You control the speed, if you want me to slow down you can say it," I tell her.

She giggles between moans and says, "You're… kidding? Harder…! I can handle it…!"

I hug her from behind and growl in her ear, then I bite her neck and pump her pussy.

Another whole-body-trembling orgasm and she collapses on the bed. I paint her beautiful hair and white back with my semen, defiling her holy aura.

"Next!"

Alissa, who's currently laying down on her stomach while the werecat brushes her tail, points to the wereowl groomer. She puts a shiny Aoi on the bed and gets up while her dress falls down.

Another one with black hair. I've seen a lot of common people with brown hair, so the ones with black hair must be more popular here.

The Asian-looking wereowl takes a few steps forward, then falls on her knees in front of me. With a little bit of fear, she opens her mouth and swallows me whole. Her little tongue and hands work on my balls while she deepthroats me.

"She's actually pretty good," Alissa comments through [Bind].

"Hmm," I moan in response.

"I have to suck your balls more, then. I didn't think it would feel this good," Hana says and moans internally.

It's only a minute later when I already feel it coming. I grab her bundle of feathers in the shape of an ear on top of her head and use them as a handle to hold her in place as I explode down her throat.

Even after cumming copious amounts of semen, my cock still leaves her mouth completely erect.

She gets up and puts a foot up on the bed, spreading her legs for me to fuck her while standing. Her high heels make her legs and feet look so damn sexy that I almost drop down to suck on them, but now's not the time. Her pussy is already dripping and it doesn't need any more stimulation.

After [Clean]ing her mouth, I hug her and start another round.

For those who dislike the concepts of lolis (I know, fucking heretics, the lot), wereowls serve as a good alternative if you still love petite and thin women.

Her body doesn't resist for long and succumbs to me, but her exotic eyes alone make it all worth it and an instant favorite. If I had the chance of doing someone twice, I would choose her instead of Lunastra.

"Next!"

The Scylla puts down a passed-out Roxanne and walks over. Tentacles leave every orifice of her body and her breasts look reddened as if a suction cup had altered the blood flow.

Oh boy, this'll be interesting.

She's tall, even without the long tentacles, and her long face gives her a modern model feel. Her brown skin and juicy lips give her that sensual Latina look that would make any man cheat on the love of his life with her. Her breasts lack a little in size, but not everyone can be as perfect of a Latina as Ciel can.

"You're not disgusted?" She asks in a sensual and low voice.

"Just don't touch my ass. I don't want to be penetrated," I answer.

She chuckles in a dignified way with the back of her hand covering her mouth and licks her lips like a predator.

"I usually take charge, so I hope you don't mind," she says and her tentacles wriggle their way towards me.

They squiggle slowly and touch my foot. It feels slimy and slightly ticklish. Then they start to go up along my leg and my erection twitches in anticipation.

They finally reach over my crotch and wrap around my shaft. The rubbing all over my body and the scent of Roxanne's cunt makes me even more excited. The stimulation is different from even Aoi's as every single inch of my body feels like it's being "kissed" by the suckers of her tentacles while also being rubbed by their sliminess.

I let out a moan and the Scylla chuckles sensually.

The tentacles continue going up and she starts to stimulate my nipples.

Oh right, I didn't tell her not to…

The feeling is not quite the same as what Alissa and Hana feel; it's good, but not so good that it's sexually arousing. More like a "massage" on a sensitive spot.

Then the tentacles reach my mouth and she makes me give it a "blowjob." I'm slightly confused at the situation, but they taste like Roxanne, so it's not all bad. Having a thick, fleshy rod pump in and out of your mouth is quite stimulating, this one even more so since the suckers are also giving me "kisses" all over.

I'm slowly lifted off of the ground and I wonder just how long are these damn tentacles.

"They stretch a lot. I think they are slightly magical too," Hana says.

"You know a lot about Scyllas," I comment.

"Well, tentacles aren't just Roxanne's fetish. Male Scyllas have a literal tentacle cock."

"Now I'm envious…"

"I'm telling Ciel, she's going to laugh a lot," Aoi says.

My chuckles are muffled by the tentacles covering my mouth.

They start squeezing my member and the exquisite feeling tips me over. I cum with such a strong jet that the Scylla's small brown breasts are painted completely white.

"Impressive," the Scylla says and pulls me closer. My crotch is taken towards where the middle of her legs should be and suddenly it's wrapped in her warm womb. "Ah… yes, delicious, certainly different than a normal cock."

I smirk and she starts using me as a dildo, but not for long since my soul touch makes her weak in the tentacles. I have to stand and hold her as her support goes limp like a mop and I feel like I'm fucking a legless woman.

Scyllas are certainly odd, so if you're looking for vanilla, then you're in the wrong place. In the end, pussies are all the same, so the bonus of a Scylla is in orgies because they can fuck a dozen or so people at the same time, men and women alike.

When they orgasm, though, is the really interesting part. My whole body is wrapped and squeezed by her tentacles as it receives "kisses" all over.

She finally collapses on the bed and her tentacles return to being a mop. Roxanne wakes up and starts to look at the next woman to fool around with, too tired for full-blown sex.

Alissa hands me a jug of juice, knowing just the right time when I'd start feeling thirsty.

"Thanks, my love," I say and chug. "Next!"

The actual werewolf woman stands up, now fully rested after Hana used her. She growls at me and shows me her fangs.

"I don't do gentle," she growls.

"Good. I don't want to be gentle," I say and growl back.

She lays down on the bed and spreads her legs for me. "Fuck me, now," she demands. I grab her digitigrade feet and lick the cute pink pads at the bottom. "What…?"

I smirk and [Massage] her wolf feet. "Sorry, I really need to suck on your toes for a little while. I have a foot fetish and no one has cute feet like you."

"HAHAHA! That's a new one! Never thought a foot fetishist would like me!" The werewolf says and bellows out a laugh.

"He's a zoophile, too, so I'm sure that has a part in it," Alissa says.

The werewolf shows me a fanged smile. "Even better! If you didn't have a harem, I'd court you for myself!"

Sucking furred, clawed toes is not only dangerous for your tongue, but it also gives you a mouthful of fur, which is a bit disgusting. Well, I can get used to the fur, but I don't think it's worth it and she doesn't seem to be feeling a lot of pleasure from me sucking on them. The pads, though, are rather sensitive, especially the ones on her hands, so I guess I found the weak spots of a… what's it called?

"Roxanne says it's a Gorosnegee," Alissa answers.

Right, the weak spots of a Goro are the pads on their hands. That and having their wombs destroyed, of course.

It might not be that every Goro is like this, but I certainly wouldn't sleep with one without a healing potion or spell, because this one's claws dig into my shoulder and dirty our bodies with blood.

Kissing a Goro is also messy. They have wolf mouths and long, energetic tongues, so for women, I'd say it's a plus.

Gify, help me with this.

Gih.

Images of dragons violently fucking fill my mind and a new vigor seeps into my blood.

The Train of Pleasure is now leaving the station.

Destination: Pound Town.

Brakes: nonexistent.

Ambient music: death metal.

This one actually leaves me tired, so I rest on the bed beside the passed-out werewolf while I catch my breath and Ciel casts [Refresh] on me. I look at the bite mark on my shoulder and wonder if I could actually turn it into a scar. Seriously, that was a battle.

"Do you want me to bite you?" Aoi asks through [Bind].

"Actually, yeah, I'd love it. Having a scar of your bite on me would be so sexy. Having one from a stranger that I don't even know the name of wouldn't be ideal."

"That's one of the largest amounts of semen you've ever shot," Alissa comments as she inspects the werewolf's body. She runs a finger on the exhausted woman's small breasts to collect some semen and makes sure to flick her nipple, making her wince. Then she licks her finger and smiles in happiness. "Hmm… yes, I can taste the other women."

"Next!" I demand.

The sexy werecat comes over to me while purring.

Catwoman, 'nuff said. Her purring is definitely a sexy aspect that gets even better when she vibrates her throat while deepthroating me.

"That's new. I have to learn this," Alissa comments.

"Definitely."

The catwoman's curviness and dark skin puts her on the same tier as Ciel, but her "power level" is still far from reaching my chocolate goddess. The black cat ears and tail are perfect, though, and those yellow cat eyes are mesmerizing enough for me to drown in them while wrecking her pussy in missionary.

I grip her thighs and claw her skin while growling. I'm still feeling the dragon inside of me and all I want to do is fuck.

The catwoman responds by clawing at my back, just like Alissa likes to do, and growling back at me. We look more like two people who hate each other than a couple having sex.

She hisses and I growl, then I fuck her harder and harder until her hisses start to fade and her orgasm begins.

I let myself go and soon after that, I cum a thick rope onto her dark body.

"Your orgasms always sync with your partners," Lunastra comments, impressed.

"I can almost orgasm at will," I say and chuckle.

"You're ridiculous."

"I know. Next!"

I eat a sandwich prepared by Suelen while I fuck Lunastra. This angelic loli didn't even need foreplay; just the memory of being ravished by me makes her drip with arousal.

With a full belly and another jug of sugary juice, I regain the energy to continue.

"RAAAAGH!" I yell in anger as I pump her harder. The dragon's ferocity only increases inside of me. I cast [Heal] on my hips to stave off the pain and then I choke Lunastra.

Her eyes roll up into her skull and Ciel stops me before she gets brain damage. She wakes up a moment later and has a "seizure" of an orgasm.

I slam into her one last time and release it all, even more than the werewolf's thick rope of cum.

"Next…!" I yell before I finish catching my breath.

Camila pounces on me and I don't waste another heartbeat before grabbing her and shoving my cock violently into her dripping-wet hole.

The cute and curly weredog holds my shirt on her face even while passed-out. She's pulled by Daiana and tenderly cared for so that she doesn't suffocate herself with my smell.

"Next!"

The cobra woman comes forth, a little awkwardly.

"This is interesting," I say as I look her up and down. Her head is literally that of a cobra with a hood that she can extend. Her thin, forked tongue licks the air and I feel my dick twitch.

She isn't very confident in herself because her face isn't feminine or attractive and she even lacks breasts, just like the Goro woman. Only her tongue is interesting because it can wrap around my shaft just like Aoi's can.

As a fully depraved person, I don't care about that and give her my full course of love and plenty of kisses. She actually has two tongues: the normal one, and the snake tongue, so kissing her is actually more interesting than with a normal woman.

The way that she can curl her neck around me is a little freaky, but also endearing since it feels like she's blanketing me with herself when she extends her cobra hood.

I leave her passed-out on the bed and give her face a few more kisses before I demand the next sacrifice.

After a few more women, Mina comes forth. She can't look me in the eye and walks like a lamb marked for slaughter.

"Gentle or wild?" I ask, not wanting to scare her.

"Wild…"

I chuckle.

Guess she's just ashamed about her own depravity.

I make her bend over on the bed and lift her skirt up. I spit on my shaft to add a little to the natural lube that's been formed from all the juices and cum.

I rub it against her entrance and feel that my "dragon power" reserves are still looking good.

"Wild or savage?" I ask again.

"Savage…" She says, almost regretting it.

I shove my cock inside her and immediately start pumping.

"RAAAGH!"

As nighttime arrives, my energy dips too low and the dragon fades away. However, I don't stop, and the women continue to mount me and ride me while I help a little. The spirit is still willing, but the flesh is battered and bruised.

I push my soul out of my hands and form two cock-shaped succubus tails. Now I can fuck at least three women at the same time with just a little mental effort.

At first, they were weirded out, but Alissa and Hana's demonstration convinced them.

Daiana and Suelen have their turn, too. Balbina appears for a short while and then leaves when she's satisfied to continue her job.

As the number of exhausted and satisfied women increases, the sounds of their giggling and idle chatter rises along with it. They all pay attention to me, but now more in an entertained way instead of a predatory way.

Alissa is watching me with a calm smile; she's still paying attention to my needs and making sure that I remain in peak condition. Roxanne drinks not-wine with the noblewomen and they share their experiences with different dick sizes. Hana cuddles with Lina as they each comment about my actions and the merits of using succubus tails as dicks; they feel that it loses some of the charm of a dick by using a "fake" one, but they also admit that it solves my problem of "not enough dicks." Ciel is talking to her gaggle of lolis; she's already had her sexual and fetishistic needs completely filled, so now she only enjoys the heavenly sight of the wide variety of lolis to gaze at. Aoi plays around with Gify and the wereowl groomer; they are the only ones who pay little attention to us.

Alissa's ears suddenly twitch and I focus on her senses. She's sensed a halfling and hears the footsteps of someone with high heels. The halfling stops in front of our room and the door opens.

Rudita comes in looking rather angry. Her ultra-thin dress floats wildly and then it stops in the air as she suddenly halts and takes in the current situation.

A note from Manasong

Hall of Fame of Patrons

The patrons who support Rupegia shall have their names sung by the bards for they deserve the glory and honor. Their names are:

Oracle Maximillian Hübner.

Prince PreownedFIN.

Lord Andrew Meyers.

Lord Hope.

Lord Samuel Lim.

Lord Bill.

Lord Novgarod.

Lord DJ.

Lord Cidant.

Lord Ashadun.

Lord Michale Erwin.

Lord Joxsan Herrera.

Lord Enrique Peña Gomez.

Lord Vampmire.

Lord Braidborn.

Noble Salty Panda.

Nobleman Lassiter.

Noble Evil.

Leave a rating or a review to help me rise to the top or fix my shameful understanding of prose.

Take a look over my blog where all information of the world of Rupegia will be posted.

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Chapter 56: Turn of The Wheel - Part 2

A note from Manasong

Attention: to conform to the limit of mature content (more than just sexual content) allowed in a novel, I've censored this chapter. You can look for the uncensored version here.

The symbol "-" denotes a section that got cut for containing sexual content. Also, if paragraphs seem missing, they were also likely censored in an earlier pass where the symbol wasn't used.

The loli on my left - suddenly jumps - and scrambles to find her clothes along with nearly half of the women in the room.

-

Hurried [Clean]s are cast all around us as the maids and staff get dressed and hurry out of the room.

Rudita stays in her spot, tapping her shoe impatiently on the floor. Her sharp glare is frightening and when her eyes sweep over my body -.

The halfling innkeeper raises an eyebrow at me and her stern expression falters a little, then she returns to stabbing at her employees with her eyes.

Another woman shamelessly comes over to me -. Rudita opens her eyes wide and shakes her head in exasperation. I feel like shrugging, but I don't think she'd be able to see it right now.

Ciel is left a little sad as only three lolis remain to cuddle with her: the loli maid sisters and one noblewoman. Lina leaves Hana's lap and sits down on Ciel's to cheer her up.

"Mr. Ryder," Rudita finally says when the room is cleared of the inn staff.

"Yes?" I ask and tilt my head to the side so that my view of her isn't periodically blocked by the - weredog.

Her intense glare almost makes me tip over again. "I would appreciate it if you don't bed half my female staff again."

I smile guiltily. "I can't promise that, but it was never my intention to disrupt your business."

"You may lack the intention, but you still need to take responsibility for the results." Her unwavering glare makes my smile even more strained. Then she redirects her glare towards Daiana and Suelen, who are still cuddling with Ciel. "I hope you two learned your lesson about not spreading rumors about a 'magic sword,' truthful or not," -she sends a glance to - me - "to an inn filled with… ravenous women."

Daiana and Suelen go completely stiff and silently nod to Rudita. The remaining women have a few laughs and giggles while nodding in agreement.

"If you'd like to join in, there will be an opening soon," Alissa says, - and points to the weredog on top of me.

Rudita turns her eyes to me and I feel a chill run through my - spine. "I'd first ask that you make sure that your stay doesn't cost me more coins than I'd gain."

"I'll definitely make sure of that," Alissa responds -. I delve a little into Alissa's [Bind] and - see how she really wants me and Rudita to be on good terms.

-

"Gods…" Rudita mutters and walks away. Before she closes the doors, she gives me - one last glance and I lick my lips -.

After the last of the women are satisfied, we leave them in our room while we finally go have our bath. Ciel casts [Heal] on my member while my muscles are massaged by everyone else.

"I'm actually pretty proud of you, Wolfy," Hana says as her strong hands massage my back and buttocks. "A few more of these and you'll become a legend."

"I wonder what Title he's going to get this time," Alissa says wistfully and slows down my shoulders' massage for a moment.

"Let a Glutton eat your words, Alissa," I say, serious.

"'Titles'?" Daiana asks smugly while massaging one of my arms. Rudita's admonishment of her behaviour has already faded from her mind.

"Wolf 'Good Luck' Ryder, Golemancer, and Scholar of Rabanara," Alissa says, copying Daiana's smugness.

"Alissa of the 'Blinding Arrows,'" I shoot back and turn to her just in time to see her eye twitch.

"Oh, wow, that's a cool Title, Alissa," Suelen says while massaging my other arm.

Lina's little hands massage my feet and I nearly giggle.

"Pfff… sorry, Alissa," Daiana chokes a chuckle and hastily adds an apology.

"No… I still think it's a bit… odd to be called by my Title," Alissa says with a wry smile.

Through [Bind], I see that she turns her head to Hana, who silently continues my massage without looking her in the eye.

"Hana of the 'One Thousand Strikes' also has a weird ring to it," Roxanne casually comments while massaging one of my thighs.

Hana squeezes my buttocks for a moment, nearly making me moan shamelessly.

"'One Thousand Strikes'?" Daiana asks, slowly turning her smug grin to Hana.

"Wow! It sounds so ferocious!" Suelen exclaims, her eyes glimmer in admiration. "What sort of battles did you go through to get that Title?"

Hana sighs and gives her an embellished recount of our battle with the Dawn of Fire.

The loli sisters look at Roxanne with fear and respect. They both search her neck for any evidence of a scar.

"There's no scar. Both Wolfy and Ciel are good enough healers to leave none behind, so I'd rather not blemish my perfect skin with an ugly scar," Roxanne says with a pained smile. Ciel stops massaging my other thigh and squeezes Roxanne's shoulder in support. Then Roxanne touches the circular scar on her belly and says, "This one is special, though. I got it after he saved my life… and it's one of the reasons I fell in love with him."

"Awn…" They say in unison and I smile wryly.

Daiana is the first one to sober up. "But… it seems that pissers were pissing about just like always," she says, her smug smile gone.

"Yeah, I hope Dawn of Fire gets dismantled. So many Wicked being employed by them means that their top mages must be Wicked, too," Suelen says with a dark, angry tone.

Lina nods repeatedly and says in an equal tone, "They seem to be hiding inside the Western High Forest, so after their conflict is done, they should be surrounded and executed."

Ciel cups Lina's cheek and gives her a pained smile. She uses a loving tone to say, "Their leaders should be old and powerful mages, they won't go down easily. We have to be careful with powerful Wicked people because they can and will do anything to stay alive."

Lina frowns and looks down while massaging my feet.

"Blow their bases up before they can notice, the attack," Aoi chimes in, currently curled on top of my head.

"That could end up killing too many innocent people," Ciel responds.

Aoi frowns, as much as her rather inexpressive face can, and says, "If they fight alongside the Wicked, they are an enemy."

"If you don't make an effort to save the innocent, then you'll become Wicked too."

"Too hard! I don't even understand how Wicked people are made!" Aoi exclaims and puffs out a small amount of smoke out of her nostrils.

Ciel smiles warmly at her and pats her blue scaly head. "We don't fully understand it, either. We can only work as hard as we can to not commit a Sin. We also have to make sure that we never completely disregard the lives of other humanoids in the pursuit of our own goals."

Aoi's voice goes softer as she seems unsure of herself. "Then I'm Wicked since I… 'disregard' anyone not close to Wolfy."

"That doesn't matter until you act on it. We all have dark thoughts inside of us."

"Why do we have 'dark thoughts,' then?"

Suelen chuckles softly and looks at Aoi endearingly.

"If we aren't capable of brutally murdering our fellow humanoids, then our capability to defend ourselves from the monsters is lessened. 'Pain, violence, and death are part of life. They are our tools to bring change, but they will burn everything if they are allowed to go wild. Balance is key.' This is a teaching from the God of the Sun."

"Are you a priestess?" Daiana asks Ciel.

"Former." Ciel smiles at her.

"Well, look at that, his magic sword can even convert a priestess."

"Is there anybody who can resist him?" Alissa asks with a wry smile.

I simply smile wryly in return and enjoy the massage.

After a relaxing bath, we make our way to the dining hall for a late dinner. The tiredness catches up to me and my posture slumps, but when the food is served my appetite gives me a second wind and I suddenly have enough energy to eat a mountain.

On our way back to our room, Alissa holds my arm so that others don't notice my unsteady steps. I re~ally overdid it this time.

As we make our way through the long corridors, we cross paths with Camila, who's carrying a heavy basket with all of our sheets. She seems quite elated with her "haul."

We enter our now completely empty, clean, and not-smelly room and I collapse on the bed.

Klein leaves her parents' inn and walks towards ours, so I send Hana and Ciel in the armored dinghy to escort her back to us.

Our spunky monkey-girl pounces on the bed and cuddles with me while pulling on Hana to form a spooning chain.

"Feeling happy?" I ask.

"Always," she answers.

"More than normal?"

"Obviously."

She and her family gained a little bonus from Rande, so they bought a few nice things for her and had some special family time.

Then Alissa retells our encounter with Dokkanchee and Hana talks about their sparring with the other hunters.

They actually thought that Hana was Lina's master and Ciel's wife, so the men started to hit on them a little too much. That promptly came to an end when Hana showed one of the more annoying ones what the Title "One Thousand Strikes" truly means.

Then they start retelling my marathon with the women today and I smile wryly as Klein struggles to process the increasing absurdity of my appetite for women and endurance.

Osaria puts the bird in her chest and goes to sleep. Exhausted as I am, the comfort she gives me and the heavenly voices of the girls are perfect lullabies that put me to sleep.

Today is the 30th.

I wake up feeling a little odd. It was the usual fare, but I feel different.

I open up my "Status" and see that my "Strength," "Speed," "Dexterity," and [Soul Manipulation] increased by 1 (now 13, 13, 12, and 2), and my "Endurance" increased by 2 (now 15). The most important thing is that my [Enhanced Semen Recharge] has disappeared and a new skill appeared in its place: [Mana Genitals (innate)] with 1 point.

What the hell.

Gih?!

"What the hell?!"

"Wolfy?" Alissa asks, feeling my surprise.

I look down at the Train of Pleasure. There's nothing different to it, it's exactly the same as always, but the "odd" feeling is still there.

I calm myself and focus on the "oddness." It feels just like how my arms do right now: exhausted and difficult to move. The weird thing, though, is that I've never felt like I could "move" it before.

I "flex" my member and it bends backward at an odd angle.

"KYAAH!" Alissa shrieks in fear and the other girls move back, completely dumbfounded and a little weirded out. Gify starts laughing and chirping so hard that she rolls on the bed.

"Oof! Wolfy! You broke it!" Hana yells.

"N-no, I didn't…" I say and relax. It becomes straight again and immediately goes limp. "What the hell…" I mutter.

I "extend" it and it immediately goes hard again.

"What. The. Hell?!" I say and start bending it in all directions. When I stop, I notice that I just used fifty MP. "AHAHAHAHAHA! I have an ACTUAL 'MAGIC SWORD'! The skill is literally called [Mana Genitals]!"

"What? You never said there was such a thing in the system!" Hana exclaims.

"It's 'innate,' so I can't use the Gift for it."

"Ooh…" The girls moan in surprise, except Klein, who's a little confused.

"It did taste slightly better today," Alissa says with a shrug.

"I thought it was just because of the juice you drank yesterday," Hana says.

"The mana was stronger," Aoi says.

Klein chuckles and gets up. "I think I've forgotten what it means to be normal," she says and starts dressing.

We shrug, and after everyone is calm again we clothe ourselves.

Hana increased her "Wisdom" by 1 (now 14); Ciel increased her Endurance by 1 (now 15); and Lina increased her [Stonebody], [Axe Use], [Block], and [Parry] by 1 each (now 5, 5, 7, and 1+7).

Here I thought I was finally getting stronger than Lina only for us to increase our "Strength" at the same time. Well, we are training with each other most of the time, so it does make some sense that we would grow together. But at least now I have one more "Endurance" than her.

The feeling that I have is that I can control my member just like I can control an arm and that I can "feed" it mana, just like an enchantment.

I think that I now understand what Nour was worried about when he said that some bed skills can "change" you. I just hope he doesn't freak out if the same thing happens to him…

I play with the toy in my pants while we eat breakfast and I start to get a little worried about my future if we continue this lifestyle.

Ciel casts a [Refresh] on me so that my muscles stop aching and I stretch myself out a bit.

"What's the schedule for today?" Klein asks, excitedly.

"Cuddling, or something similar. I'm still feeling rather tired," I say.

"Well, I want to read Nocturna's book. I think we should practice together," Alissa says and points at Hana.

"Sure," Hana responds with a nod.

"Well, I'll stay here, cuddling with you, then," Klein says to me and her tail taps my knee.

"I want to build the metal golem's armor," Lina says.

"I still need my hermetically sealed workbench," Roxanne says.

Lina looks down, deep in thought. Then her gloomy eyes look a little less gloomy as she says, "No."

"Ah…! You little…" Roxanne narrows her eyes at her and aims her dagger-tail at Lina.

She flashes an impish grin and returns to her gloominess. "Hehe. But seriously… we still need a thick viewing glass, so it's not efficient to start that right now."

"I'll go to the glassblowers and find someone willing to make it for us," Ciel says.

"I'll go with you, for protection," Aoi says and gives her a toothy smile.

"Gih."

"Thank you." Ciel pats Aoi and runs her hand along her spine.

"Well, I'll practice magic, then. It's been a while since I did that," Roxanne says with a shrug.

We had only put our clothes on for a little while, and now we're already naked again, except for Lina, since messing with hot metal while naked is a recipe for disaster.

I stay in bed, tangled with Klein. She wraps her tail around my waist and nestles her head on my chest. Her adorable monkey ears have some thick fur, so I feel like I'd never get tired of playing with them. She grabs my hand and gives it lots of kisses because she's too comfortable right now to move to kiss my face.

I bury my nose in her hair and smell the faint perfume of our shampoo, then I pull out the golems for us to play around with. Their progress is slow, but they are starting to get heavy, so they have to increase their mana consumption with a permanent [Telekinesis] to lower their weight when we hold them.

My little dwarf goes to the balcony and starts using [Manipulate Metal] to heat our sheets of metal and bend them into the shape of an average-height human. She only used a few sheets, so there's still enough to make Roxanne's workbench and some armor for Aoi.

The hinges will be the most difficult part for her without a proper workshop, but from what I know of her abilities, she's nothing if not crafty.

She doesn't really need smithing tools since she has [Manipulate Metal], so it'd just make smithing cost less mana. But, since I gave her [Redirect Mana], she can recharge much faster than the average smith ever could.

Alissa casts the first spell in her new book, [Mesmerizing Butterflies]. Colorful and glowing butterflies appear out of thin air and fly about. It takes a lot of conscious effort to not look at them.

"C-can you stop? I can't concentrate," Roxanne asks, completely mesmerized by the butterflies.

Alissa ends the spell and we regain full control of our ability to look somewhere else. "That's the spell Ofilia used to show to us… but it's different, there wasn't this need to look at it when she cast it," she says.

"Well, it's a pretty spell. She might've only learned the butterfly part, not the 'mess with our attention' part," Roxanne says.

"Oh, right… Nocturna's spells were very sought after while she was alive."

"Wow, I'm really going to learn this?" Hana asks, her scales wave with excitement.

"If you work hard enough," Alissa says and gives her hand a squeeze.

Hana gives us a fearsome smile and starts intently reading the book.

From what I glimpsed about what they've been reading, Nocturna's magic is more about neurology and psychology than the physics of creating believable illusions. The book teaches you how to identify certain types of people, then abuse their mindsets to fool them. This is in turn applied to spells to trick their minds on a fundamental level.

It feels like pseudoscience to me, but since it's magic, maybe it's not so "pseudo" after all.

Roxanne eventually manages to cast [Water Spirit], and now she needs to develop the sub-process so that she can have it act separately from her.

I spend my time manipulating my "new" member. Every time I control it with mana, I feel a small amount escape from it, so I can use that to develop a way to morph my soul into another "mana member." Though I'd still need a way to "connect" it to the rest of my body to actually feel anything from it.

I get Roxanne to sit beside us so I can observe the base of her tail. The part where her solidified-mana-tail connects to her flesh body is "odd." The flesh mixes with the tail and looks like some weird nonsense to me. The cells that compose her flesh body start to gain empty spaces between them while somehow remaining alive. This "empty space" is actually her solidified mana tail that somehow feeds the cells around it.

At this point, I think that creating a perfectly "joined" appendage would be too much for me. I can live with the discomfort of having a tail "hanging" on my skin.

I'm more interested in Alissa's [Fox Transformation]. If I can change my physical body into one composed entirely of solidified mana, then I wouldn't have this problem with the base of my tail. I'd also finally be able to change into an actual dragon and make sweet, sweet angry wild dragon love to them.

"They look adorable," Klein says and goes to pet my fox ears.

I've decided to go with black fur and gray inner fur. The new skill increase makes it easier to add detail to them, so they look better now and almost seem like real ears. Making a tail is much easier, I just imitate Roxanne's tail and then add fur to it, which is also black and with a white tip. Maintaining both the tail and ears at the same time requires a bit of effort. It's easier to keep two "sword" hands out because they are much simpler.

I get Hana to come closer and I take a look at her scales. There is faint magic on them, too. Technically, everything has some form of magic or another, it just varies in how easy it is to perceive it.

I make a scale on my hand. It's not that hard, it's just so "dense" that it takes a lot of effort and I still can't get the same shine that the real one has, so it ends up looking quite dull.

"Oh damn, that's hot, Wolfy. Make them all over your entire body," Hana asks.

I can only form enough of them to cover my face and chest with scales.

"Ho~t!" Hana exclaims.

"Hmhmm," Roxanne agrees with a nod.

"I prefer the fox ears," Alissa says with a smirk.

"One day, I'll be able to do all of it at the same time," I say with a shrug.

"Ew, that sounds horrible," Hana says while frowning.

"Foxes don't have scales," Alissa says, a little worried.

"Or horns," Roxanne adds on and shudders a little.

Klein chuckles and kisses my chest. "Now I understand what Ciel meant; the way you think really is so cute sometimes, Wolfy. You're like a grown child or something," she says.

I shrug and say, "Well, I do have an inquisitive mind. I wouldn't be a very good researcher if I wasn't like this."

Ciel comes back a little before lunch with a thick sheet of reinforced glass the size of my chest. They took their sweet time walking around and enjoying being gawked at. At least Aoi and Gify did, I'm unsure if Ciel actually liked it since she's being so coy about it now.

At lunch, I discover a not-beetroot salad seasoned with not-lemon and a little bit of sugar. I'm not that much of a fan of beetroot, so while it was nice, I wouldn't have missed it if I'd never tasted it again.

While we eat, Osaria taps the bird a few times to catch my attention, then she says, "Wolf…? Wolf…? Wolfy~…? Are you listening? I hope you are. Anyway, since you didn't talk to us about not getting a reservation we're assuming that you already made one. We'll be going to the Dansstroom at 8 hours, okay?" She ends with a small kiss on top of the bird's head.

She means 8 o'clock. They don't even say AM or PM here.

After lunch, we continue our training. Ciel starts to practice her [Judgment]; it's in a workable state now, so if we get some time to prepare before battle, she can apply it for bonus damage against wicked, undead, and also give a little extra "oomph" in cutting down normal flesh. Aoi is managing to get some height with her [Fly]; flapping her magical wings helps her with controlling the air and she's finally learning how to use her wings without disrupting the spell.

"You know, these days that we just don't leave the house are the best," I say.

"What did you do back on your 'planet'?" Klein asks.

I smile and explain computers to her.

"We have a few things like what you called 'video games,' but they are all super expensive and don't 'work with every game,'" Klein says.

"Indeed. His world is very odd," Ciel says.

"But since there's no magic, we can recreate it, right?" Lina asks from the balcony.

"We can, I think. It's just that I don't know how transistors are made and that's like, the most important part," I say and smile wryly.

"Oh…" Lina looks a little sad.

"Maybe when things calm down we'll be able to research it," I add.

"Oh…" Now she looks hopeful.

"I did guide Lyle onto a path where he might discover the transistor."

I get up from the bed and start some light sparring with Klein while trying to use [Soul Manipulation] to fight. It's very crude and imprecise, but I can use it to do sucker punches. With a little preparation, I can use it to stab my opponent with a dagger. But using it as a spear by protruding it out as a succubus horn is the most effective use for it in combat right now.

Using it as a shield can also be done, but that takes much more effort because it has to be much more solid than the spear. Both the succubus horn and dragon scales are useful for this "shield."

"Okay, one day, you're not even going to need armor," Hana says as she observes Klein punch the scale and wince.

I [Heal] Klein's hand and say, "There are still many ways to counter this. Since it's magic, it costs mana to keep the spell up and it'll take a long time for me to have scales as dense as yours."

Lina helps out and uses her hammer to easily break my scales and horn-shield.

"Well, in hand-to-hand combat you shouldn't lose anymore," Hana says with a shrug.

Klein seems amused. "Your style is already odd, but now that you're adding this [Soul Manipulation] it becomes freaky and scary," she says.

-

With [Mana Genitals], I can now actually control my friend, and with a little effort I can even make myself reach the summit at will.

I'm a damn monster.

Gih.

Thanks, that's kind of you.

"Nope, that's too big," Klein says and pushes me away.

"Awn…" I moan and undo it -.

"For me, it looks fine," Hana says and waves her hand.

"I'm not ready for you yet," I say with a wry smile.

Hana narrows her eyes at us dangerously, but lets it go.

After some - fun time with my little monkey girl, we leave the room to go have a bath. This time we don't call the maids because we have to get ready to meet with the Parados at the Dansstroom.

A note from Manasong

Hall of Fame of Patrons

The patrons who support Rupegia shall have their names sung by the bards for they deserve the glory and honor. Their names are:

Oracle Maximillian Hübner.

Prince PreownedFIN.

Lord Andrew Meyers.

Lord Hope.

Lord Samuel Lim.

Lord Bill.

Lord Novgarod.

Lord DJ.

Lord Cidant.

Lord Ashadun.

Lord Michale Erwin.

Lord Joxsan Herrera.

Lord Enrique Peña Gomez.

Lord Vampmire.

Lord Braidborn.

Noble Salty Panda.

Nobleman Lassiter.

Noble Evil.

Noble Yamibomb112.

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Chapter 56: Turn of the Wheel - Part 3

A note from Manasong

Attention: to conform to the limit of sexual content allowed in a novel, I've censored this chapter. You can look for the uncensored version here.

The symbol "-" denotes a section that got cut for containing sexual content. Also, if paragraphs seem missing, they were also likely censored in an earlier pass where the symbol wasn't used.

Osaria starts changing in front of the bird. -

-

She pulls out her personal toy that looks remarkably like my own and lays down on the bed. "If I lent this to Oura, do you think she'd be mad to know that I made it to be just like yours? Oh, but I'm sure Nito wouldn't, he's quite smitten with you, you know?"

Oh wow, that I didn't know.

- "What a shame that you aren't 'double-'edge.' I'm sure that all of your women have fantasized about you being with another man at least once."

Well, I might have to agree.

-

"What's up… Wolfy?" Alissa asks -.

"Osaria is giving me a private show," I answer and lay my head on Ciel's - chest with a silly smile on my face.

"She's dangerous," Lina comments, lowly.

"Oh yeah, she definitely is," I say with a nod.

"Why?" Hana asks.

"Well, she seems like she uses her body to get what she wants, and someone as beautiful as her has quite a lot of power in her hands," Lina answers.

"Huh… I guess I'm dangerous, too," Hana says with a shrug.

"You all are, but only to me," I say - "Oh man, this is too much fun."

- Hana has a specific request for me -

"S-sorry~…! Tomorrow you can use me all you want," I say with an apologetic smile.

"You're going to break him and then nobody will get to have any fun for a while," Roxanne says and squeezes Hana's steel-hard muscles.

"Hmph," Hana scoffs, annoyed.

"You know, my appetite has been increasing, but so have all of yours," I say.

"I have no idea what you mean," Ciel says and kisses the top of my head.

After a good and refreshing soak in the hot bath, we finally get ready and put on our best clothes. Seeing the girls use their gems again brings a tear to my eyes.

"We have to buy one for Klein, too," I whisper to Alissa and touch the turquoise gem on her necklace.

"Oh, right. She's kind of a 'wife,' too, but hers doesn't have to be so ornate like ours," she whispers back.

"That sounds a little unfair."

"We are the main wives, so we get better things."

"Hm…"

She's right, though. It's just that I feel bad giving Klein lesser treatment.

Lina goes with a bright blue lolita dress and a blue bow. It goes well with her tanzanite gem.

Hana and Roxanne go with matching tight-fitting (especially for Hana) dresses which have long strips of cloth as their skirts. There's a flower origami thing right above their asses that makes them look like gifts. Hana's is white and Roxanne's is purple. Both dresses belong to Roxanne, but she's rarely used them because the skirts scrape on the ground and damage the fabric.

Ciel is going with a silver not-bikini with a few pieces of cloth hanging from it, Osaria-style. The dress really brings out the color of the moonstone nestled between her fun bags.

Alissa and Klein go with matching lace dresses with mini-skirts. Alissa's is light yellow and Klein's is light blue. Alissa's turquoise gem makes her the most colorful of us all, which goes well with her young and "innocent" allure.

My clothes are slightly boring. A simple thin white shirt with silver embroidery and black pants with yellow details mimicking gold. My "charm" comes from the shirt being nearly see-through, which shows off some of my muscles, and my heliodor gem. It seems that yellow really looks good on me.

We eat a small snack to stave off the hunger and go out onto the streets. The town is busy all day as commerce gets ready for the festivities. As the sun sets, early parties start up and the booze starts flowing.

The Turn of the Wheel is celebrated on the streets, so we have to use the armored dinghy. Otherwise, it would take ages to reach the Dansstroom through this traffic.

"Oh, right," Lina mutters and produces a sack of coins, then hands it to me. I open it up and see quite a generous amount of gold coins there. "Noblewomen pay quite a lot to be plowed senseless."

Hana takes a look at the sack and whistles. "When you retire from adventuring, you could be a 'sword for hire,' Wolfy."

I chuckle at the idea.

Alissa smiles and her tail wags softly as she says, "That sounds nice. A good way to keep my fetish going regularly. There are just so many women that I can seduce for him."

"We could open our own brothel, then," Lina says.

"It's not unheard of for nobles to run brothels. Some of those bed skills are so helpful that it's quite easy to make money by using them," Alissa says.

"Damn, even I'm getting a little envious of your lifestyle," Klein says.

I smile awkwardly and stay silent. I don't know how to react to this situation.

We fly up the hill and I notice how the number of people starts to diminish. The traffic becomes bearable soon after, but we might as well continue flying.

Then we land in front of the Dansstroom and I pull out some comfy chairs for us to sit on as we wait. The building is the same large, white rectangle like the majority of the buildings here, but it's covered in colorful drapes and small lights, almost turning it into one of those houses decorated with Christmas lights.

At almost 8 PM, Klein gets up and looks down the street.

"It looks like they invited my parents, too," she says.

"How nice," Alissa says and gets up to wait.

I store the chairs and we soon see Rande's family walking along with Klein's parents.

Rande looks like a pimp. He wears an open silver overcoat with white fur at the hem; a thin silver shirt with a deep neckline that shows off his chest hair and perfectly defined pecs; thin silver pants with a wide hem; a black cane; and a wide-brimmed silver hat.

Osaria is wearing more clothing this time, sporting a red dress with a copious amount of hanging cloth that's so light that it nearly floats through the air, similar to Rudita's. But aside from the small bra and underwear, everything else is see-through.

Oura wears a tight shirt that displays her flat belly and a skirt which is open at the sides that briefly flashes her thin and shapely legs as she walks.

Nito is wearing a small white lace dress with a cute bow on his head. He almost matches Lina. My eyes meet his, and he immediately looks away.

Goddammit, Osaria… but he does look mighty cute, though.

Moving on… Krista and Anton are wearing their "Jasmine-like" clothes, but this time they are shiny and jade-like. They're certainly higher quality than their usual attire.

"Greetings, Ryders," Rande starts with a dimpled grin.

"Hello," Osaria says in a low, sultry tone.

The others say the usual greetings, then they cast [Clean] on themselves to remove the sweat that built up from walking all the way up here.

After she feels fresh again, Osaria comes forward to give each of us a hug and my nostrils are filled with her thick, rosy perfume. She makes sure that at least Lina and I motorboat her for a few seconds before letting us go, then she steals a kiss from Roxanne, who blushes and becomes awkward for a few moments.

"Let's go in, shall we?" I say.

With Ciel and Hana on each of my arms, we make our way inside.

It's a Carnival. Being a Brazilian, this is something I know very well.

There are plenty of Kabar demon race wearing flashy outfits that match their peacock feather-hairs. The other races follow along with the showy fashion style, but none can match the Kabars.

The interior has a subtle low-light, so the flashy outfits don't cause our eyes to bleed. The atmosphere also aids in finding the staff since they don't wear uniforms and instead wear a glowing, pulsating brooch on their chests.

The outfits aren't even fully sensuous, but plenty of them are, and those are mostly worn by women, too.

"Wow, this place is actually quite pretty," I say as I look around. "Well, you were right, I like this place a lot."

"You can pay to sleep with anyone wearing a red brooch," Osaria comments.

"Oh."

Klein smiles wryly. "Of course it wouldn't not be like that."

The floor is composed of stone, but the walls are all covered with colorful stained glass. There are tribal paintings on the glass and the small lights behind them give the venue quite a pretty atmosphere. Really unique.

Our reservation is on the top floor, the rooftop patio. We walk up the three flights of stairs and come out onto the roof. Again exposed to the starry sky, we feel the chilly breeze of the night blowing through.

Half the patio is filled with tables, a small part is occupied by a room where the waiters go to get the food, and the rest is a dancing area where a small band is playing something very similar to the samba. There are staff in their flashy costumes dancing by themselves on the dance floor, but they are also dancing with any of the customers who want to dance with them.

"That looks like fun," Ciel says, looking at the dancers.

"Yeah, Saltchitan is quite… bouncy," Osaria says.

Ah, so that's the name of this dancing style.

"I'd love to see you two dance with each other," I say with a grin.

Hana jumps a little while looking down at her chest, then she frowns as she looks at Ciel's. "My skin is too tight," she mutters.

Our table is right near the edge of the patio, so we have a nice view of the road.

We quickly order our food and the flashy waiter brings some seaweed alcohol that Rande ordered.

He pours a small glass for each of us and raises his own, then he smirks and says, "To a good haul. To a good journey. To a good friendship."

We raise ours and I repeat, "To a good haul. To a good journey. To a good friendship."

We smirk at each other and then we all drink. It tastes like sake, but it has a ginger-like "freshness" to it.

"Ah! Good one!" Hana says and slams her cup on the table.

Aoi doesn't seem impressed and Gify slurps down her share by turning her little tongue into a straw.

Anton scratches his massive jaw with his massive hand and says, "Ohoho. Seems to be five years old. I think the Everlasting Storm was shifting the currents back then, so the harvests at that time had a little more of an exotic flavor."

"If it was from any other year, I'd have stopped the waiter and asked for a different alcohol," Rande says with a proud grin.

"I've already been convinced that he knows his alcohol, so I trusted his judgment," Hana says.

"Just don't trust him to have a good sense for fashion," Oura says.

"What? I look amazing!" Rande protests.

Her long elven ears twitch along with her right eye. "A cane? Really? What are you? A dying, old, low-level grandpa?"

He scoffs and readjusts his silver furred overcoat. "Canes are stylish! I can't carry a sword everywhere, but I can have a 'beating stick' at hand!"

Anton bellows a laugh and asks, "Ha! Who'd be stupid enough to pick a fight with you?"

"I'm not that famous…" Rande says with a dismissive flick of his hand.

"But you're infamous enough among the brutes who duel strangers," Klein says.

"It's just a hobby! I'm not such a bad person that I'm 'infamous!'" Rande protests.

An awkward silence falls on the table that's then broken by a burst of laughter from everyone, except Rande, who's feeling very awkward.

"Sometimes I feel like you guys enjoy bullying me," he complains.

"I know, right!" Ciel chimes in. "It's like, can't you have some odd tastes without people trying to humiliate you for it?!"

"Exactly! I mean, I don't even take pleasure in what they are making fun of me about. I don't take pleasure in burning people; my 'sword' is only for making men bend over to me, not the blood and definitely not the burning!"

"Denial," Osaria says.

"Denial," Oura repeats.

"Denial!" Klein exclaims.

"Denial," Nito says shyly.

"Denial," Krista adds.

"Hm," Anton hums in agreement.

Rande remains silent with a displeased dimpled frown stamped on his face.

"Oh, I've never seen him duel. How horrifying is it, really?" Roxanne asks.

"Very," Oura answers and frowns.

"The screams. Oh… if only it weren't from pain…" Osaria says and gets lost in her own fantasies.

Rande drinks another cup of seaweed alcohol and says, "I haven't had a duel in four months. It feels horrible…"

"Can't you get the same experience from non-consensual roleplay at a brothel?" Roxanne asks, teasingly.

"No… it's not the same thing," Rande answers and eyes her oddly.

"She's making fun of you," Osaria says and squeezes his shoulder in sympathy.

"W-what? I know! I'm not that stupid!" Rande complains.

"But you answered me seriously," Roxanne says with a mocking frown.

"I… you know what? Screw you." -he slams his cup on the table again- "I'm off to dance until our food comes. I'm going to steal me a wife or two."

Oura slaps his butt as he gets up and smiles at him. "Have fun, love."

"Gods, you were so mean to him," Ciel says with a slightly worried frown.

"He can be mean to us later," Osaria says and winks at her.

Uh…

"So, Lina, did you enjoy the books?" Oura asks.

Lina's head snaps towards Oura as if a switch had been flipped inside her. "Where can I get more of that Legends series?" She asks, excitedly.

They immediately start geeking out over the books, so the girls switch seats to let Lina talk with Oura.

I grab Ciel's hand and caress it gently.

"What?" She asks, confused.

"I'm sorry. You're still a bit mad about the teasing, right?" I ask, trying to contain my smirk, but failing.

She narrows her eyes, then grabs my hand and gives it a painful squeeze. "No, I'm not mad, I swear," she says, her voice gaining a pitch higher than normal.

I chuckle softly. "I'm sorry, but you know that we all love you. That's why we like to play with you."

She raises an eyebrow. "Play with me…? It's quite the one-sided 'play,' hm?"

"We just adore every part of you, even your pouty and annoyed faces."

Her eyes narrow even further. "I'm not sure that's actually a good thing."

Ah, shit, am I making things worse?

I send a look at Hana, asking for help.

She gives me a wary look but my feelings of pleading escaping through our [Bind] give her enough motivation to help out. "A little pain or teasing goes a long way to add some spice and change to our relationships," she says.

"I keep saying that I hate spiciness, but you keep adding it to my food. Maybe I should stop eating it," Ciel says with a chilling tone.

I share a look with Hana, now we are both getting worried.

I swallow heavily and try to make puppy eyes. "I-I'm sorry, we won't tease you again. I promise," I say and start rubbing her hand.

She gives me a disgusted side-glance that triggers my femdom fetishes. Then it all fades away and she laughs out loud. "See? It's not so fun when the relentless teasing is done to you."

"W-what? That was mean!" I protest, but Hana laughs along and downs another cup of seaweed alcohol. Though I notice that her laughing has just a hint of strain to it.

The cold look returns for a moment. "Mean? You haven't seen mean." Then it fades and she laughs again with sadistic glee.

"Oh no, we've gone too far," Roxanne says with a worried look on her pale face.

"We've created a monster. A second one, actually," Alissa says.

Ciel coughs awkwardly and cringes a little. "I don't have the heart to be as mean as you girls can. I'm already feeling guilty about it."

"What's with all the teasing? Are you all sadomasochists or something?" Anton asks while his permanent frown deepens.

"Yes," Alissa, Roxanne, Hana, and I answer in unison.

"I shouldn't have asked," Anton says and pours himself more of the seaweed booze.

"If it can be twisted into something depraved, don't ask," Klein says, serious.

"I didn't need to know that," he says and gulps it down.

"You did. When they come back, you're definitely going to need to remember that." Her eyes go slightly hollow.

Krista taps his log-like arm and says, "There are some things you need to know, but shouldn't think too much about."

He shakes his head. "H-how can I not?! She's my daughter! My baby!"

Klein puts her hand on her waist and her tail pokes Anton's temple. "When I get a child, are you going to keep trying to imagine how it happened?" She asks.

"No!" Anton exclaims, disgusted.

"Then it's the same thing!" She pokes him again on the temple and he bats away her tail.

Anton pours himself another cup (that looks very small in his huge hands) and gulps it down again.

Alissa gets an idea and says, "We set up a 'safe word' so we know when to stop. Maybe you should start using one, too. For us, it's 'record scratch.'"

"That makes no sense," Ciel says.

"I did not need to know that," Anton repeats.

"I did," Osaria chimes in. "How interesting, I should set one up, too."

"Wolfy said it makes sense to him, so I guess it's not completely random," Alissa says.

Ciel shrugs. "Fine, I'll try to remember to use it."

"Don't you have something similar arranged with Rande?" Osaria asks Nito.

Suddenly being spoken to, the cute trap jumps in his skin and blushes. "W-well, yes. Rande likes to play with fantasies, so it's dangerous if we let it go too far. But for us, it was simply me using his real name."

"Gods, please stop," Anton says and facepalms. "We haven't even eaten yet."

Osaria chuckles and says, "Haven't you ever done food-play with your wife? Since she's a cook, I'd expect at least that."

Krista discreetly turns her head away and looks off down the street.

"Hm?" Osaria turns to Anton and presses him for an answer.

He swallows heavily and starts to pour another cup. "Not answering that," he says, softly.

"Well…" Krista starts and stops for a moment, debating whether or not she really should say this. She shrugs and goes for a "screw it." "Eating and food-play aren't exactly the same thing. You need a certain mindset and specific types of food to make th-…"

"Stop! STOP!" Klein yells and reaches over to cover Krista's mouth. "Okay, okay, I get it, Dad. We'll stop! Just don't say anything more about that!"

We all have a laugh at Klein's and Anton's expense.

"Why do you feel disgusted?" Aoi asks, innocently.

Klein shrugs and gives her a pained smile. "I-it's my parents, how could I not?"

"But Wolfy is my father and-…"

"Do not say that out loud," I say through [Bind] as I control Aoi to stop her from saying anything more.

"Oo~h…" Alissa and Hana coo in understanding in my mind space.

Osaria's eyes shine and she smirks.

"W-what…?" Anton asks, suspicious, but we ignore him and immediately change the subject.

From then on, the conversation gets limited to "safe" topics, so we just chit-chat until our food comes.

Rande comes back a little sweaty and with a mark of lipstick on his neck that he displays like a prize. Oura [Clean]s the sweat off of him and our food comes soon after.

It's some spicy carbs that remind me of Tex-Mex fast food. After feeling the heat, we massage our tongues with juicy and sweet fruits.

"You demon race must have some masochistic tendencies if you enjoy such spicy food," Rande comments.

"You're not wrong," Hana says.

"Don't start," Klein says, a little nervous.

After we eat, I decide to put some points in [Dancing] and get up to dance for a song with each of the girls. I'm not really a dancer or anything, I just want to do something special with them. The songs are all kind of romantic and Saltchitan is supposed to be danced very close to your lover, so it works in my favor.

Alissa adores it. She's not a dancer herself, so I use [Bind] to gently guide her while I let myself be driven by the skill.

"Love you," I whisper in her fox ear.

Her tail wags rapidly. "Love you more," she says and pinches my butt.

Roxanne shows off her legs while dancing and pushes me for more difficult poses. Saltchitan has some of those dramatic poses from a waltz or something.

"Exhibitionist," I whisper in her ear.

She laughs a little nervously and flushes.

Hana takes the lead and I feel what it's like to be a maiden being protected by her knight. Aoi stays on my shoulder, so I share what I'm feeling with her.

Ciel is more slow and loving, though I do tease her and make her do some of the more exposing poses that flaunt her curves. I make her do lots of little jumps that give me a front-row view of her jiggling.

"Really? Am I going to have to use the 'safe word' so soon?" She asks, dangerously.

"You say that as if you don't enjoy the attention," I say and glance at the few men salivating over her.

She pouts but doesn't answer.

With Lina, I make sure that I hug her the tightest. She has absolutely no idea how to dance, so we spend our time learning the basic steps. By the end of the song, she's giggling while we have a cute and silly little dance.

Klein is an energetic dancer, so I struggle to keep up with her pace, though her energy does arouse me a little.

"I didn't know you were such a good dancer," she whispers in my ear.

"I'm not, but that's a secret you'll have to keep," I say and smirk.

She pouts but pushes me further with the dance.

Osaria asks for a dance that turns into a thinly veiled excuse for her to have me motorboat her again.

"Do that thing with your soul," she asks and I push my soul out from my skin, giving her pleasure everywhere she touches me.

After her underwear gets visibly wet, she stops the dance and leaves to find the bathroom.

Finally done with the dancing, I go to the balustrade at the edge of the building to cool off and cuddle for a little while with Alissa and Klein. Meanwhile, Hana and Roxanne share their own loving dance, and Ciel and Lina learn with each other and have a (pedo)parent-child moment.

Krista ends her dance with Anton and comes over. Then she leans on the balustrade beside Klein and says, "Thanks for always being so kind to my daughter."

I get a little awkward and smile. Even with Lily, I was still very awkward with her parents. My "situation" with Klein only makes my awkwardness even worse.

"Thanks for being so 'accepting' of us," are all the words I find to say.

Krista chuckles softly and Klein cringes a little. Krista recovers quickly and says, "I know that Anton is sometimes hard to please, but he's a softie at heart and he knows that she's happy, so he doesn't think badly of you."

"He's just stubborn sometimes," Klein says.

"And a prude," Krista adds. Then she smirks evilly and says, "If he wasn't, then I'm sure I'd be in constant p-…"

"S-stop! Stop, stop, stop!" Klein yells and slaps Krista's shoulder, who laughs out loud and walks away.

After Ciel and Lina come back, I switch cuddling partners with them so that Alissa and Klein can go dance with each other with Klein taking the lead.

Hana starts feeling jealous of Alissa, so she steals Klein and has a make-out-plus-dancing session with her that makes Anton embarrassed.

Not long after, the town goes dark and silent as the [Spirit Lights] are turned off. The Turn of the Wheel is starting.

Today is the 1st day of the 1st month of the year 69,000. Today starts the month of Birth.

From the top of the hill that Goldport is built on, a rainbow of colorful [Spirit Light]s descends. They blanket the town in a beautiful light show. Then some lights start to rise up as paper lanterns are lit and take flight.

The lanterns contain the wishes of the commoners that they are sending to the Gods: what they want to change in this new year and what they want to stay the same as the year that's being left behind.

After a while, I look down at the street and see a procession coming through. [Spirit Light]s of all colors dot the dark streets and give an ethereal feeling to all the costumed people.

Almost naked people dance in a heavily sensuous way, signifying the love required for carnal relations and, consequently, for birth. The temple really likes to hire dancers to show symbolism.

The cries of babies follow the procession as parents everywhere bring their newborns for their first blessing. [Inspire] is cast on them as a symbolic gesture. It gives the babies energy to remain awake for this Long Night and grow stronger from all the mana they will absorb from the Moon.

Lina's Trivia: Long Night is the name of the nights that were artificially extended by mages of old so that they could acquire more mana and more power. This became impossible to achieve once the Goddess of the Moon ascended and both she and the God of the Sun stabilized the cycles of day and night.

But the thing with [Inspire] and the Long Night for the babies is most likely just superstition.

The pretty lights end and the street's [Spirit Light]s are turned on again. The procession goes on, re-lighting the entire town, street by street.

Party-goers follow the procession as a few priests stay behind to cast [Heal] and [Purify Body] on the wounded and the sick for free.

A pair of unremarkable brown eyes look up and stare at us. My attention is drawn to those eyes and as soon as our gazes meet, my vision goes dark.

Neither the Sun nor the Moon sees this place. The loneliness from being away from Their Everloving Gaze is worse than the cold chill from this dark wasteland.

Two familiar eyes stare at me without a hint of emotion, only cold determination, bordering on obsession.

They summon a wall that stands between us, so I summon my own wall, then we remain motionless while looking at one another.

Neither of us wants to do this, but we have to. Neither of us wants to make the first move, but we have to. Neither of us wants to lose, but we have no other choice. Defeat is not an option.

There's no time for regret. Fortune favors the bold. Fear is the mind-killer. Hesitation is the kiss of death.

I make the first move.

I lean on the balustrade and scan the crowds searching for the pair of brown eyes that I just saw, but I can't find them. I don't know the face, the gender, or even the silhouette of the person that I saw.

Wait, was that [Ignorance]? It seemed familiar… but if it was, then it was one strong spell.

Shit… what now…?

"Wolfy?" Alissa whispers and leans over, sensing the turmoil in my heart.

I feel something change within me. I feel weird, like my body was not my own anymore.

"I think I just had a vision."

Intermission 13

"I found him. Prepare the men."

A note from Manasong

Hall of Fame of Patrons

The patrons who support Rupegia shall have their names sung by the bards for they deserve the glory and honor. Their names are:

Oracle Maximillian Hübner.

Prince PreownedFIN.

Lord Andrew Meyers.

Lord Hope.

Lord Samuel Lim.

Lord Bill.

Lord Novgarod.

Lord DJ.

Lord Cidant.

Lord Ashadun.

Lord Michale Erwin.

Lord Joxsan Herrera.

Lord Enrique Peña Gomez.

Lord Vampmire.

Lord Braidborn.

Noble Salty Panda.

Nobleman Lassiter.

Noble Evil.

Noble Yamibomb112.

Noble Maurice.

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Chapter 57: Goodbyes - Part 1

"Gify, did you see that person?" I ask.

"Gih."

Dammit, he passed out too, but at least I know that the vision was real.

I focus on my Holly, but I can't see them and I don't even know what to look for. There is certainly some sort of spell preventing us from seeing that person.

Hana and Aoi come towards us, concerned about the feelings escaping through my [Bind].

The other girls come too, curious about my strained expression. I get my emotions under control to avoid causing a scene and then I explain to them what I saw.

"A… vision?" Klein asks as her tail massages her temple.

"I've had two so far. One showed me the Everlasting Storm, and the other showed me a dungeon in the high forest, a dungeon called 'Legado,'" I say.

Technically, Gecynd saw the dungeon, but that vision where I saw "myself" is too abstract to explain right now.

Alissa hugs my arm and nestles it between her perky breasts. "That dungeon is the one we'll be conquering," she says.

"Oh…!" Klein's tail shoots up in surprise. "Wow, that's… ominous. Your Thread of Fate is special."

Ciel snorts and says, "I know, right? Why can't we get a friendly old lady to explain to us what it all means? Why do our lives have to be full of obscure visions and cryptic messages? Foreshadowing in real life is just mean."

Lina and I chuckle, and Alissa smiles wryly.

"Right… these visions are literally foreshadowing…" I say and chuckle some more. Then I look around and notice all the eccentric side-characters of my story. "Oh, Gods. I'm living in a book or something."

"Well, yes?" Alissa says and gives me a kiss on the cheek. "One day you might join the Legends Series."

"Will they write about our sex lives, too? It's a very important part of us," Hana says.

"They may if I publish my diary," Alissa says with a mischievous smile.

"Can you do it after we're dead? I don't want you describing my first time with Wolfy," Lina says and looks at Alissa with a little worry in her gloomy eyes.

"I'm certainly of the opposite opinion," Roxanne says and smirks.

"I'm with Lina," Ciel says.

"Roxanne," Hana says and lands a heavy hand on the succubus' shoulder.

"I don't care," Aoi says.

The four girls turn to me, Alissa, and Klein. Their glare makes us uncomfortable, but before anyone can say anything, I raise my hand and suggest, "How about we don't decide this right now?"

"Agreed," Alissa and Klein say in unison.

Roxanne and Hana shrug and we return to observing the procession.

We spend a minute in silence, then Ciel is the first one to break it. "A place where neither the Sun nor the Moon can see. This is worrying… but I don't fully understand it."

"If it's beyond the Everlasting Storm, then maybe it makes sense," Lina says.

What's beyond the border of "reality"? I just hope there isn't a genre shift to cosmic horror.

"But the vision basically showed you fighting an equal," Hana says.

"Right. But who could be an 'equal' to me and my Gifts?" I ask.

"The… Emperor?" Roxanne suggests while cringing.

"No, that's… just no," Ciel says and a deep look of worry washes over her. "You going against the Emperor would be heresy. And there's absolutely no reason for you to fight or even dislike one another. Fighting the Emperor would mean fighting the Gods themselves and we are twice blessed by them. Just… no." She gets more and more desperate as her mind races with the possibilities.

Lina grabs her hand and draws her attention. Lina's anxious eyes pull Ciel back to reality.

"There's still a long road ahead; it's not really useful to think too much about those things yet," Lina says.

"Y-yes… I'm overthinking it," Ciel says and frowns. She pulls Lina into a hug and I see her quickened breath return to normal.

"But… there's still the matter of who brought Wolfy into this realm," Roxanne says and turns to me. "What would you do if you knew the truth about that?"

I shrug and say, "What could I do? We're talking about being mad at a supposed 'God.' But even if a 'God' isn't responsible for it, I don't think that I'd go so far as to kill them. I'd certainly be angry and ask for compensation, but it's hard to complain when I look at what I've achieved so far." I wave my hand towards the girls and they smile a little shyly, except for Hana and Aoi, of course, who grin proudly.

"So, there's really no reason for Wolfy to go against the Emperor or the Humanoid Gods, right?" Ciel asks, but her tone makes it seem like a statement.

"Right," I answer and nod, then I get closer to Ciel and cup her cheek with my free hand. "I understand that it's hard for you to think about those things, but you don't have to, it's not something that's likely to happen. And even if it does, I'd understand whatever you decide to do…"

Ciel bites her lip in pain and nods silently. I pull her head closer and give her a long kiss. Her tongue guiltily enters my mouth and then desperately rubs against mine.

We end up having a short 4-way hug as our kiss intensifies and our bodies search for one another.

The intense tongue kiss turns into pecks that she gives over my entire face. Then she stops and looks at me guiltily. "I'm sorry, Wolfy. I've been a priest my entire life. Thinking about such things breaks me apart from the inside."

I sigh and cup her cheek again. "I know, and I understand. But you don't have to think about this so much."

She nods again and smiles weakly. Then I look around and see the envious looks of the other girls.

Roxanne dramatically slaps her forehead and leans her body against Hana's, then she says, "Oh no~… Wolfy, I think I'm having a mental breakdown. Whatever shall I do? Should I choose your magic dick or claim the freedom to choose any dick I want? What. Shall. I. Do?"

"Alright, you're next," I say and extend my hand to her. She cheerily skips towards me and I bend her in a kiss, holding her entire body with only one hand.

Alissa reads my mind and tugs Roxanne's tail at the base, giving her a jolt of pain and pleasure at the same time as I lightly bite her tongue.

Then I give a kiss to each of the girls and Osaria appears. "I want whatever you're doing," she requests and I obey.

Oura and Nito dance with each other and it seems that it's Oura that's leading. They talk and giggle and share some kisses while Rande steals his second wife of the night.

With Osaria here, we can't talk about my vision anymore, but none of the girls seem very interested in continuing that depressing conversation anyway.

Trying not to hog me when my wives want some time with me, Osaria moves on to Roxanne and teases her a little. It seems that my succubus is still rather unsure of what she feels about Osaria, but she seems to be starting to "friend-zone" Osaria. She responds to her playfulness but doesn't make any moves to get more physically intimate with her.

The tiredness starts to hit us and the energetic teas start to be served. The tradition of the Turn of the Wheel is to stay awake for the entire "Long Night" and then go to sleep at dawn.

"We used to walk the streets for the whole night while casting [Purify Body] on the black-out drunks to make sure that nobody died because of the alcohol," Ciel comments with a wry smile.

"Passing out because of alcohol is a sign of weakness," Lina says.

"It's a sign you don't know your limits," Hana adds.

"And of irresponsibility, leaving yourself open to attack like that," Alissa finishes.

"It was mostly the poor, so I'm sure they all had low levels and stats," Ciel continues.

"The poor getting black-out drunk is a good way to drown in Betzenstein," Klein says and Hana nods. "You should never try to guess when the next tide is coming in. The Everlasting Storm is completely unpredictable."

"What's Betzenstein like?" I ask.

"I think that Goldport is calmer, at least the sea is, but Betzenstein has a lot more variety in everything," Klein answers.

Hana continues, "But that variety also includes thieves. I wouldn't advise us ever wearing any of our jewelry over there. There's always a thief in the Underside waiting for a chance to steal something."

"Underside?" Lina asks.

"That's what we call the town below the stilts. The entirety of Betzenstein is held up to always stay above the tide that floods the coast, but there are still people that build houses underneath the town. That's the Underside."

"And that's where all the thieves and cons live. Even worse is that wereapes and weremonkeys are infamously good at conning and stealing from people," Klein says with a wry smile.

"Hmm. I'd put your race on the same level as the dragonkin for how fun it is to be around them," Osaria says and pats Klein's head twice.

My little monkey and my red dragon narrow her eyes at Osaria, then at each other. "The same level?" Hana asks, threateningly, and raises an eyebrow.

Osaria giggles gently, a treat for my ears. "And your pride is only matched by the Kabar," she says.

"Well, at least we aren't sadomasochistic brutes," Klein says and turns her back to Hana.

The red dragon smiles fearsomely and towers over Klein while glowering down at her. "At least we're strong enough to defend ourselves from the predators around," Hana says in a low and slow tone.

Osaria takes a few steps to the side and puts her hands on Lina's shoulders. "Let me just say that the race at the top is certainly the dwarves," she says and walks away, cackling a laugh.

"In the name of all dwarves, I give the number one position to any other race that would like it," Lina immediately says before Klein and Hana can even begin to stare at her.

Rande gets one last dance with Oura and Nito and he finally tires himself out. Then we all return to the table and share a few stories. For me, it's a little painful to have to stay quiet and avoid talking about my time before Rupegia. Even more so because Krysta seems to be pushing to know more about me.

Dawn slowly comes and the band finally stops playing music. The constant noise of the party-goers reduces and the tinnitus sets in. I hadn't had it since coming to this realm, and it's oddly nostalgic to hear it again. It reminds me of those late nights playing games with Lily. When everything is turned off and we just see the black mirror in front of us, the only things we can hear then are our breaths and the low buzzing in our ears.

Anyway, it's curious how the sun rises in the east in this world, too. We see the beautiful sunrise coming up from the sea and it slowly paints the dark blue landscape into a beautiful shade of orange. The lights of the town mix with the first rays of sunlight and Goldport becomes truly golden.

Birds and the weird-sounding seagulls start making their noises and the patrons start to leave their tables.

"It's time for us to go," Rande says and we nod.

At the entrance of the Dansstroom, we say our goodbyes to each other.

"Tomorrow we are leaving at first light," Rande says to Klein and she nods.

We only have one short day left with her…

Then we return to our room at the inn and go to sleep.

"Gih."

Gify wakes us up at exactly midday. We've only had about six hours of sleep, so we are still feeling a little tired.

Feeling oddly "full" down there, we go down to have our breakfast/lunch.

The first proper meal of the new year is composed of simple bread sandwiches with some veggies and cold meat cuts, and some hot, energetic not-earl-grey tea.

"So, what are we doing today?" Klein asks, excitedly.

"Today is your last day with us, so let's… enjoy it?" Hana says and shrugs.

"Hm…" Klein hums and nods, a little tense.

"Is there anything you want to do with us?" I ask.

"No, nothing specific. I just… want to spend some time having fun." She gives us a pretty and youthful smile, then hurriedly adds, "Not partying, though, I've had enough of that for a few days."

"How about we just take a walk through the streets?" Roxanne suggests and smirks.

"Some shopping would be nice…" Ciel adds, casually.

"I'd like to buy a gem for Klein. Spread that to the other girls without warning her," I say through [Bind].

"Understood," Alissa says.

"Hm," Hana grunts in agreement.

"Okay," Aoi says.

"Then we can make a stop in the parks to rest," Alissa adds.

"Sure," I say and we leave.

Most of the town has a hangover, so it's much quieter and more idyllic today. The industry is taking a rest, but not the relaxing entertainment.

Taking the opportunity presented by the calm and empty streets, the tea shops moved to occupy them with chairs and tables shaded by parasols. We have a quick refreshing snack with cold tea in one of them and then move on.

We fit and buy a few more clothes. The extra income that Lina got from me selling my body was quite nice. It actually pays more than hunting monsters, which makes me think that the brothel idea isn't such a bad one.

We see a small play in the open about Ajax's Rise. It's about the time period spanning the first emperor's childhood and goes until his ascension to king.

We pull out our chairs and sit down in the middle of the street. A good amount of children and their adult parents sit down in front of the stage and happily wait for the play to start.

The imperial puppet master introduces himself as Vardo and starts the prologue. "Ajax was a young orphan, a child born in the underworld of Mac Gantus, which at the time was the Capital of the Domum Kingdom. Below the city, there was a huge, sprawling dungeon where monsters of all types, sizes, and horrors would roam.

"Before he was even aware of himself, he was already level two! Have any of you children killed a goblin yet?" He dramatically scans the audience by turning his head around.

One or two of the children, the ones with visibly better clothing, proudly raise their hands. A few others yell that a goblin had been killed in front of them, but they've never used a weapon before.

Vardo nods then disappears behind a black curtain and his face reappears on top of the stage, now covered in a white powder giving him the look of a mime. Then a small puppet of an olive-skinned boy appears from behind the curtains, holding a bloodied mini-dagger.

"Ajax didn't have the luxury to kill a tied up goblin, no. He killed them himself!" A puppet of a small goblin appears and snarls at the children, who all snarl back.

"Ajax was almost savage, such was his will to live." The puppet of Ajax launches towards the goblin and actually cuts it into ribbons. Its movements are far too precise for puppetry, so magic must be involved.

"And Ajax's hunger was unparalleled to others his age." The puppet then kneels in front of the goblin while Vardo makes exaggerated munching movements and sounds. The children make sounds of disgust and fake barfing.

"But he wasn't fully alone." Ajax's puppet produces a bloodied bag and walks to the other side of the stage, where a puppet of a small imperial girl waits.

The puppet girl produces an actual flame from her hands and Ajax pulls out a stick with a bloody piece of goblin meat. "His sister, Iris, was the only light of his life, almost literally. Together, they somehow managed to live inside the dungeon for years.

"And he actually grew strong enough to take on orcs by himself." Ajax's puppet now pulls a mini-sword and has a bloody fight with the puppet of an orc. Both puppets cut each other up and red stuffing comes out.

The children cheer when the orc is finally decapitated and a large amount of red stuffing comes out of it.

"In every sense of the word, Ajax was a barbarian, and his sister, a witch." The puppet of the little girl lifts a branch, and purple and green smoke flows from it. The colored smoke then envelops the orc, who starts to make pig-like cries of pain.

The boys whisper and the girls clap.

"What's a witch?" I ask.

"Mages that never use the system. Almost always women since our wombs make us naturally attuned to magic. They are not very strong, but their magic is always unpleasant to be around," Ciel answers.

Vardo continues, "Then, when they grew enough to be considered a man and a woman, they finally found an exit out of the dungeon." The puppets change into new ones of a "Conan the Barbarian" and a black-robed "witch." Around them, the background changes into that of a town full of sparkling details.

"Ooh…" The children mutter in wonder.

"But the beautiful sight only enraged Ajax."

Vardo's voice changes completely, now he sounds like a young man with a cracking voice that's just started to drop. "What is this?! A city of gold and silver atop the dreary and empty corridors?! A city of indolent and wealthy people atop the home of the desperate and poor?! And you people dare to call me weak?! I'll show you all who's weak!" His expression matches his voice and he almost looks like someone completely different.

Then Vardo's voice returns to normal. "Ajax and his sister decided to return to the dungeon, deeply indignant at the childhood that was denied to them. Within, they united their fellow orphans into a battalion of heavily trained boys and girls who could comfortably live inside the dungeon." Ajax and Iris are then surrounded by smaller puppets, all armored and armed with swords.

"Then he brought them to the surface and opened a guild, the first Monster Hunter guild." He raises a large building with the guild's symbol of a crossed fang and sword hanging in the front.

Ajax's puppet draws his sword and Vardo changes his tone again. "I shall protect the weak, not steal from them. I shall train them and give them a chance to grow. If they still aren't good enough to fight, then I'll shelter them while they pay in whatever way they can. The strong shall protect the weak! And the weak shall support the strong!"

Alissa's eyes almost shine as she listens to the puppet with pride. "That's the reason I live, to support," she whispers to me.

I can't pat her head because both my hands are occupied, so I just squeeze her thigh.

Vardo's tone returns to normal. "But that guild grew too much, too fast. The sibling duo was too powerful and their methods were too effective. The God-King ordered the guild to be dismantled, as his power cannot be challenged and a mere commoner's life is worth very little to him."

Ajax and Iris are suddenly surrounded by soldier puppets wearing shining armor. The soldiers raise their swords and throw them away, then they kneel in front of the siblings.

"Tired of the old ways of the God-Rulers, the town guards decided to help the siblings escape."

Ajax grabs one of the swords and slaps one the guards with the flat of the blade, making the children giggle. Then he throws the sword back at the guard and says, "I won't run away! If the God-Rulers want to resist change, then I shall break them! They are no Gods, they are mere mortals who have grown too comfortable on their thrones of gold! OFF WITH THEIR HEADS!"

The puppet guards grab their swords and repeat in unison, "OFF WITH THEIR HEADS!"

That's some impressive vocalization.

"OFF WITH THEIR HEADS!" The children repeat with glee.

The revolutionary siblings lead an army of puppet soldiers and the gold and silver of the city melts down as flames burn the background.

The children gasp as Ajax cuts down puppet after puppet and Iris burns them down with her magic.

"No benefit will ever be handed to you! Seize your destiny! Make the change happen now!" Vardo yells as he cuts down his enemies.

The burning town is left behind and a grand palace starts to appear. The puppets walk up the spiral stairs for a long time before they finally reach a palace of gold.

Vardo's face morphs into that of a decrepit old man. "BARBARIANS!" The puppet king yells and Vardo makes spit fly. Some children giggle and the others make sounds of disgust. "You dare oppose me?! DIE!"

The God-Ruler throws a flashy spell, but Iris' magic stops it in place, then unravels it harmlessly.

Ajax points his sword at the God-King. "You've grown too weak, too slothful. The God-Rulers of old would erase me from existence with just a glance. You shame the true God-Rulers, the nearly perfect existences who killed Ender."

The God-King takes a step back and trips on his own regal robe. "No, no, no, NO, NOO~-…"

Ajax cuts off the head of the God-King and Iris melts his golden throne. The children holler and clap at the special effects. It's actually really impressive.

Ajax turns to his men and says, "I am no God-King. I'm merely a ruler, a king. I am no better than any of you until the God of Change deems it so by their holy self!"

They walk down the spiral stairs and see the new town being built: one of stone and concrete instead of gold and silver, but still beautiful nonetheless.

Ajax walks up onto a podium with his sister beside him and his voice echoes through the street, "Today the Domum Kingdom falls and the Avgi Empire rises!"

A flash of light nearly blinds us as Ajax's sword glows, then he sinks it into the podium and all the puppets disperse into smoke. The children and the adults all clap, very satisfied with the show.

The curtains close and Vardo leaves his place on the top of the stage. He reappears on the ground as a normal wrinkly old man and bows, extending his open hat to the audience. We pull out a few silver coins and Lina throws them into the hat along with a flurry of bronze coins.

"Oof! A little heavy for my old body," Vardo says and straightens, holding his hat close to his chest. "Not really complaining, though. I am humbled by your generosity. Now, the next show will start soon. It's Ajax's Conquest!"

Watching more would be nice, but Klein wants to continue walking.

Hana and I squish Klein between us as we skip along the street. Gify nestles on top of her head and makes her freeze for a good ten seconds in awe.

"Oh Gods, did, did, did, did I get chosen?" She asks.

"Gih."

Klein's feelings suddenly flood inside of me as Gify connects us and I nearly break into a dance. Godsdamnit, she's energetic.

Her heart is a pulsing light that randomly changes into every color of the rainbow, but I can see that the bulb that makes up the LED of her heart is brittle. She lives in the "now," but if the "now" slaps her in the face too hard, she's going to fall on the ground and break.

Silent tears run along Klein's cheek, her excitement from before is all gone. She stands still and we both stop to observe her. With just a mental nudge, Hana and I each give her hand a kiss at the same time.

"What is it?" I ask.

"Your feelings are so intense that… I don't think that I deserve this," she answers with a weak voice.

"We'll decide what you deserve from us ourselves, thank you very much," Hana states, matter-of-factly.

Klein nods weakly and we start to walk again, but she's too overwhelmed with her emotions to return to her truly cheery self.

We spend the rest of the afternoon drawing out Klein's energy again. She cries a little more but she does become cheery again. Then we stop in front of a jewelry shop.

"Oh…" She mutters, eyes open wide and tail frozen in the air.

"Yes," I say and push her inside.

The girls take a look at the gems, but nobody wants anything, so we let Klein run wild. I approach a vendor with Aoi while Alissa helps Klein choose.

"Aoi, pull out your gem," I ask.

The female elven vendor's eyes nearly pop out of her skull when Aoi pulls out her Azurite gem with a *poof*. The necklace she has is too short; it'll only fit her when she's small.

"I'd like a larger silver necklace for this gem," I say and Aoi looks at me curiously. While the vendor goes to grab the cushion with the chains, I whisper to Aoi, "Pick one that will fit you when you're Hana's size."

"Ooh…" She mutters and her tail scratches her head under the scales.

She quickly picks out a wheat chain and the vendor goes to fit her gem on the new necklace.

Alissa and a blushing Klein come over with a small round sea-blue zircon. It's smaller than ours, but it's still beautiful.

"It's too beautiful…" Klein complains.

"Another complaint and I'll pinch your ass," Alissa says and throws a mischievous glance towards Klein.

"Fine…" Klein relents.

My little monkey then chooses a metal necklace painted in the same color as the gem.

"You look beautiful," I say and run my hand along her chest, where the chain touches her skin.

"You look hot," Hana says and kisses the back of her neck.

Klein giggles a little and gets a little more emotive. "Thank you," she says shyly while blushing.

With everyone wearing gems (even Aoi decides to wear hers), we strut down the street like we own the place. We are all high-class mofos who hold all the power of the world in our hands.

We'll seize our destiny! Bow to us, commoners, the Hero is passing through!

After fooling around a little more, the sun starts to set and it's time to go back.

"You know what this means, right?" Hana asks with a fearsome smile.

"My body is ready," I answer and give her a confident smile.

A note from Manasong

Hall of Fame of Patrons

The patrons who support Rupegia shall have their names sung by the bards for they deserve the glory and honor. Their names are:

Oracle Maximillian Hübner.

Prince PreownedFIN.

Lord Andrew Meyers.

Lord Hope.

Lord Samuel Lim.

Lord Bill.

Lord Novgarod.

Lord DJ.

Lord Cidant.

Lord Ashadun.

Lord Michale Erwin.

Lord Joxsan Herrera.

Lord Enrique Peña Gomez.

Lord Vampmire.

Lord Braidborn.

Lord Bakerdea.

Lord Kalsted.

Lord Yeeteris Dedmeem.

Noble Salty Panda.

Nobleman Lassiter.

Noble Evil.

Noble Yamibomb112.

Noble Maurice.

Leave a rating or a review to help me rise to the top or fix my shameful understanding of prose.

Take a look over my blog where all information of the world of Rupegia will be posted.

Join the Discord and discuss, or rant, or meme, or try and fight me so your waifu gets more screentime.

Become a Patron and read chapters in advance, or read the side-stories, or leave your mark on the story, or help choose the next artwork or the next side-story.

Chapter 57: Goodbyes - Part 2

A note from Manasong

Attention: to conform to the limit of mature content (more than just sexual content) allowed in a novel, I've censored this chapter. You can look for the uncensored version here.

The symbol "-" denotes a section that got cut for containing sexual content. Also, if paragraphs seem missing, they were also likely censored in an earlier pass where the symbol wasn't used.

We ask for the services of the maid sisters again, but as soon as our clothes fall to the ground, Hana pushes me down -.

-

MINE!

YOU'RE MINE!

YOU'RE MY SLAVE!

YOU BELONG TO ME!

WE ARE ONE!

A pounding headache starts to grow and my ears begin to buzz, then I go deaf. My head feels light and I lower Hana to the ground.

-

Ciel casts [Refresh] on us and the headache starts to fade, then absolute clarity floods my mind. I feel at peace. My body, mind, and soul all want to merge with Hana, so I ease off our connection through [Bind] before it goes out of control like it does with Alissa.

I feel that her heartbeat is perfectly synchronized with mine. An amusing moment that is soon gone as I lower our connection.

Our mouths finally separate and her fierceness is gone; there are now only kind eyes and a cute smile painting her face.

"I love you," I whisper.

"I love you more, master," she says in a sultry whisper.

She starts to run her hand through my hair while we stare at each other as if in a trance. I run my hand along the depressions of her skin created by her muscles, making her giggle, then I give her a peck on the nose.

Absorbed with each other, my mind starts to wander.

I did it, I had a "syncing" moment with Hana, too. But how far can we go with [Bind]?

I finally notice the girls. The two loli maids are drooling. Klein and Ciel are a bit pale and scared. Lina is concerned about the future integrity of her insides. Roxanne is leaning against the edge of the bath, looking exhausted. Alissa and Aoi are recovering, floating in the bath with unfocused eyes. Gify sleeps on top of Alissa's belly, as if Alissa is her own pool bed.

"You know…" Roxanne says with a slightly hoarse voice. "I really want that [Bind] of yours."

"Ah! But I-I'm next!" Lina exclaims. Then she looks at - Hana and looks worried again.

-

Hana turns around and smirks at Lina. "He doesn't share our senses all the time, so you won't suffer too much, but you'd better start getting ready. You'll experience some things that you'll never forget."

Ciel covers Lina's ears and glares at us. "You're traumatizing her!"

"Nah, we're just teasing her," I say.

"Bullying!" Ciel exclaims.

"I think she likes being bullied," Hana says and laughs out loud.

Lina takes Ciel's hands off of her ears and protests, "I can handle it!"

"I can handle it better," Roxanne says and grabs Daiana's hand. "You'll only get the next slot if you can fit this -!"

Lina pouts and gets up, then she sits at the edge of the bath -. "Do it," she orders.

Meanwhile, Hana and I disentangle and I lay my head on her - chest. I drink an MP potion to hasten my recovery.

-

"I can't…" My cute dwarf says with a defeated tone and lets her head hang low.

"Then I'm next in line for [Bind]," Roxanne says, triumphant. Her eyes land on me - and she smirks.

I get up and undo all the transformations, to Roxanne's disappointment. Then the lolis help wash Hana and me.

"You're full of surprises, Mr. Ryder," Daiana smugly says and gives me a few loving touches.

"What even was that? I've never seen such spells before. Can you teach our husband?" Suelen asks while looking at me - with fascination.

"It's something I've developed for a long time," I say and smile wryly. -. "It'll take quite a while to create a proper teaching method, but I could one day send you a book about it."

"Do that and I'll let you plow us both for free forever," Suelen says.

- She suddenly starts laughing so hard that she bends over and stops washing me. "This is so ridiculous!"

"I know, right! After that marathon we had, I literally gained a mana sword!"

"Marathon?" They both ask in unison.

"The, uh, day-long love-making session I had with all of my 'fans.'"

"Wow! So we created this monster?" Daiana asks while pointing at it.

"You only helped. The ones who actually did most of the work were us," Hana says with a smirk.

"I can imagine that," Suelen says with a knowing smile.

-

I sink into the bath with a sigh and hug Klein from behind.

-

"I'll miss you," I whisper in her ear.

"I'll miss you, too -." She cups my cheek and then lays her head against my shoulder.

After resting my muscles and getting them massaged, we leave the bath (and the two now very tired lolis) and go have our dinner.

Exotic dishes are nice once in a while, but home-cooked meals are still the best and this inn has perfectly embodied this mindset. Amid all the insanity and perversion around us, having a comfy bean-and-bread based meal reminiscent of Rabanara is like watching a party from a distance while you calmly sip your coffee.

Even our noisy table (thanks to all the girls, except Lina) feels calm to me. Partly because I'm getting used to it, and partly because the physical effort during our bath made my whole body become flooded with endorphins.

With [Refresh] and [Heal] taking away most of the negative side-effects of exercising, it's really cleansing for my heart to exhaust myself like this.

"You're going to get fat," Ciel says with a disapproving tone and looks at my pile of food.

I smirk and shoot back, "Constant 'culminating' seems to be quite the caloric activity. So, as long as you girls keep draining me like that, I don't think I ever will."

"'Caloric'?" Alissa asks.

"It means that it consumes energy, in another word, fat."

Ciel pouts as her teasing attempt fails to get a satisfying reaction out of me.

Back in our room. I pull out the Delicious Horrors and Ciel raises her eyebrows.

"You escaped spiky-sword, but you won't escape tentacle non-con," I say with a smirk.

Her eyes widen and she leans back. "'Non-con'…? What?!" She asks and her voice trembles. Her eyes desperately dart around the room at the other girls, asking for help.

I frown and ask, "You know I'm joking, right?"

"Damn, spiky-sword really scared you, huh?" Hana says and raises an eyebrow.

Ciel blushes heavily and pouts while looking down. "It's not like blood has stopped you before. Or that you didn't indulge in non-consensual fantasies."

I shrug and say, "I only used it as a way of saying that I'm going to ravage you. Like a stronger and more depraved way of saying 'make-love.'"

Ciel pouts a little harder. "Priests never use it that way so that you don't confuse things with the Sin of Rape."

"Back in Ryutake we used it all the time, even our priests," Hana says.

Ciel calms down and quickly sips more of her alcohol.

I return to studying the Horrors while Aoi, Gify, and the golems approach to look at the wriggling mass of tentacles tickling my hand.

"Right… this will be a little more difficult to analyze since there's no soul to see or mana that escapes from it," I say and sigh.

"Can we touch it?" Ted asks and I put the Horror on the bed where they all touch it.

"My claws feel it a little, but they get tickled," Aoi says and giggles in her adorable chipmunk voice.

"Is this supposed to feel 'good'?" Suzy asks.

"Yes, this tickles a lot, especially Roxanne and Ciel, for some reason," I answer.

Gify jumps on top of the ball and starts laughing as it tickles her underbelly.

Aoi gives it a few licks and giggles, then - lays her body against it.

"Oo~h… Amazi~ng…!"

"Now, that's unfair," Roxanne comments.

I look at Aoi's soul and find where - it's touching her, then I try to identify what exactly is going on.

By studying Roxanne's tail, I have an idea of what a nervous "mana signal" looks like in the soul, but this is a physical organ receiving physical input, so things look rather different. There's actually very little to see in her soul and the signals are so small that it's hard to even discern them from the background.

I tickle her spine and take a look at her soul. The signal is similar, but not the same as the one the Horror is producing in her and it's much weaker.

I take her off the Horror and - touch her myself. The signal is again different from the other two and a little weaker than the Horror's.

I - use [Bind] to make her grow, then I -touch her weak spots and observe. The signal is similar to the - touching one and almost as strong as the Horror's.

I push my soul out and the signal then becomes slightly similar to the Horror's and about the same intensity.

Curious. It's obvious to me now that the Horror's touch is not entirely physical, there's a strong magical element to it.

I - stop touching, force her to shrink again and return the Horror to her -.

How did they actually make this? Is there a power source somewhere? Is there an expiration date?

"Alissa, how long do these Horrors last?" I ask.

"A few days. Then I think whatever spell they cast on it ends and it becomes rubbery and inedible," She answers.

"Hmm…"

I grow a rubbery and wide tail from my hand and rub Aoi's scales with it. Then I change the skin of the tail into something random and rub her again to see if I can accidentally make them more similar to the Horror's touch.

Well, I have no idea what I'm doing, so that didn't work.

Maybe I should try something else. Since [Sense Soul] doesn't work, I focus my [Sense Mana] on it and… something odd… It reminds me of… [Godly Language].

I switch all my points to [Sense Mana].

Aw hell no, that's really a goddamn mana vibrator. That's why it doesn't leak mana: it just vibrates and consumes mana to continue working. It's also what fuels its incessant wiggling.

Now… how can I make a soul organ that vibrates by itself? This vibration is so small and gentle that it's an entirely different order of magnitude than [Godly Language], so I don't think that the skill will help me with this.

I could just ask Gify to help me with using [Soul Manipulation] to copy a tentacle, but it wouldn't be the same thing as the Delicious Horror's tentacle, so there's not much point to it…

It looks like I'll have to understand more about how to create soul organs if I want to continue.

I sigh and lick - the Horror. It's really tickly and arousing, and it could definitely be used as a bed toy. Then I let the golems observe and touch the Horrors while I return my focus to the girls' conversation.

"Got stuck on something?" Alissa asks, knowing it just from my sigh.

"Well, the good news is that I learned how this thing works," I say and point at the Horror. "But the bad news is that I have no idea how to reproduce it since it has no soul for me to 'copy.'"

"Oh? Finally found something that you can't do?" Klein asks, very amused.

"Cheater found out he can't cheat all his life," Ciel says and shows me her tongue.

I grab Klein's long tail and start applying [Massage] to it while I smile wryly.

"Why cheater?" Klein asks innocently and tilts her head.

"His Gifts are ridiculously powerful. They're like cheating," Ciel answers with a shrug.

"Hmm~… So, now I understand why Hana likes you," Klein says and sends a side-eyed glance at the Red Devil.

"That was just one time! One! Time!" Hana immediately protests.

"Oo~h…" Klein gulps down her cup and slams it on the bed, making little noise, contrary to what she intended. "You wanna do this?!"

"Uh… d-do what?" -Hana's eyes shift about- "You know what, I don't want anything."

Klein pouts and starts machine-gunning accusations, "Emil told me that time you got a guy off with your feet just to distract him while you cheated! Then there's that time you did the same to Emil and the fool fell for it! There's that time you played with my tail and worked with Firtjof to switch cards under the table! I only found out about that one because Haiener told me the truth! Then there's that time you made some sort of deal with Emil so that you could use biased die! If we took our eyes off of you then I'm certain you'd cheat us out of our underwear!" She slaps the bed and finally makes the noise she wants.

Hana stays silent, her scales on her cheeks and arms twitch a little. Then her eyes turn cold and calm, and she looks down at Klein and says, "I'd definitely do that. I regret nothing…"

"NYAAH! BITCH!" Klein throws the contents of her cup at Hana, but she forgot that it's currently empty and only small droplets fly towards Hana's open mouth, who doesn't let a single drop go to waste. "I'll show you one day…! I'll show you how… how it's infuriating when someone cheats…! I'll… learn it… so come back one day for me to show it to you…" Her energy quickly dies down until she's almost mumbling with a cracking voice.

Hana walks through the middle of our circle and pulls Klein into a hug, trying to suffocate my little monkey with her bountiful chest. "I'll come back, 'kay? I swear I'll come back," She says and caresses Klein's hair.

"I'll make sure she comes back," I say and pat her tail.

"Hey, that's my line," Hana says and smirks at me.

"C-come back…" Klein's voice finally cracks and she lets tears well up in her eyes. "I don't want… to lo-lose you… again…!" She yells and starts sobbing.

"Oh, she's the kind of drunk that cries," Roxanne says and chuckles to herself.

"None of us will let you lose anyone important to you again," Ciel says with a kind smile.

I hug Klein too and soon we have a group hug, finishing off with big-Aoi wrapping us up with her long wings.

"Kweh! We'll meet again!" Aoi exclaims and her "kweh" is so loud she nearly makes the beds tremble.

Our hugging soon turns to kissing and things take off -.

-

The fooling around eventually slows down and ends up with an exhausted Klein surrounded by limbs.

"Wolfy… Hana…" Klein starts with a wavy voice. Then she gathers her courage, breathes in, and grabs our hands. "I love you; I love you both; I love you all."

My heart aches. She's serious, so this means it's time for me to be serious too.

"I love you too," I answer and kiss her hand.

I feel some guilt by saying this, but it's the truth: I love her.

"We all love you," Hana says and kisses her neck.

"We'll miss you. A lot," Alissa says and kisses Klein's thigh.

"You're fun to be around," Roxanne says and pinches Klein's - skin.

"Your heart is pure," Ciel says and kisses her other thigh.

"You're charming," Lina says and kisses her cheek, making her giggle.

"You're tasty!" Aoi exclaims and licks her - skin. I send Aoi a glance and a nudge through [Bind], then she hurriedly adds, "I like being with you!"

We get ourselves comfortable and go to sleep. It takes a little while for me to get to sleep because my heart aches too much.

A note from Manasong

Hall of Fame of Patrons

The patrons who support Rupegia shall have their names sung by the bards for they deserve the glory and honor. Their names are:

Oracle Maximillian Hübner.

Prince PreownedFIN.

Lord Andrew Meyers.

Lord Hope.

Lord Samuel Lim.

Lord Bill.

Lord Novgarod.

Lord DJ.

Lord Cidant.

Lord Ashadun.

Lord Michale Erwin.

Lord Joxsan Herrera.

Lord Enrique Peña Gomez.

Lord Vampmire.

Lord Braidborn.

Lord Bakerdea.

Lord Kalsted.

Lord Yeeteris Dedmeem.

Noble Salty Panda.

Nobleman Lassiter.

Noble Evil.

Noble Yamibomb112.

Noble Maurice.

Leave a rating or a review to help me rise to the top or fix my shameful understanding of prose.

Take a look over my blog where all information of the world of Rupegia will be posted.

Join the Discord and discuss, or rant, or meme, or try and fight me so your waifu gets more screentime.

Become a Patron and read chapters in advance, or read the side-stories, or leave your mark on the story, or help choose the next artwork or the next side-story.

Chapter 57: Goodbyes - Part 3

Today is the 2nd.

I pat Aoi's head, who happily woke me up. I look to one side and give Alissa her good morning kiss, then I look to the other and give one to Klein, whose lips are already wet with Hana's saliva.

My small summoned bird is still with Osaria, who slept while hugging it and now lets it nestle itself between her breasts.

I summon a Shad and a Holly and order the latter to become visible.

"Klein, I'll give these two summons to you," I say and present the Holly to her.

"W-what?" She receives the one-eyed little bat, feeling very confused.

"To keep you safe, and so that I can take a look at you once in a while," I say and smile, then I cup her cheek and give her a peck on the nose. "I'll give you full control over them so that you can feel safer when you walk around."

"Won't they use your mana?"

"They can survive on MP potions, so with this much, you should be able to feed them for a few months." I pull out a handful of gold coins and hand them to her.

She frowns and her monkey ears fall flat as she looks down. "I can't really accept this."

"It'd make us more comfortable if you did. Caravan work isn't completely safe, even if you take the safest routes," Hana says.

Klein holds the coins close to her heart and stares at me with pained eyes. "You do so much for me…" She whispers.

Aside from fucking you silly and giving you a necklace I haven't really done that much, though.

"Well, I just like to dote on people," I say and shrug.

Her tail wraps around my neck and pulls me closer to give me a kiss. Then she pounces on Hana and gives her one too, then Alissa sneaks up behind her and steals one for herself.

"Tell your parents that it's a special summon that I developed and to keep it a secret. Don't tell them that it's a monster," I say.

She shyly nods a few times and stores the coins in her [Item Box].

Then we go down to have our breakfast.

I check the girls' statuses. I'd skipped it yesterday because of the Turn of the Wheel.

Alissa increased her "Charisma" by 1 (now 14). Hana increased her [Illusion Magic] by 1 (now 5). Lina increased her [Earth Magic] by 1 (now 4+6). Roxanne increased her [Alchemy] by 1 (now 4). And because of yesterday, my [Soul Manipulation] increased by 1 (now 3).

The sun isn't even out yet, so we wait for a few minutes while breakfast is being prepared. There are only two other people around: a dragonkin with a sword at his waist and an Angel demon race putting on mage robes. Both of them are also likely to be in the guard business since they are leaving for work before first light.

After we get our bellies filled, our troupe flies through the foggy streets as the town slowly awakens.

We pay for a ferry to take us across the river since flying in and out of town is forbidden no matter which direction you choose.

When we reach the other side, the first rays of light start coming out and the fog of the morning begins to dissipate, so we fly faster towards the western gate.

Klein keeps fiddling with her necklace for the whole trip while she wistfully gazes at the buildings below us.

We land near the gate and easily find Este's caravan waiting in line to leave. The first caravans at the gate are already moving out.

We greet the guards, and I look at the elven sisters with a little bit of disappointment. I've had a lot of fun with the loli sisters, but I got nowhere with the elven pair.

I see a few new faces among the guards; it seems that Rande has beefed up security and is increasing the overall number of employees. Then I see Laertes and he gives me a small nod when our eyes meet.

Klein meets with her parents and we waste some time chit-chatting while the line moves. Lina enters the carriage and returns the books she borrowed from Oura. Osaria then comes out of the carriage with my little bird nestled between her breasts.

"Can I keep it?" The curvy milf asks with a smirk. "It's so cute and quite 'interesting' to have around."

Anton immediately facepalms.

"I think that's possible. It uses so little mana that I won't miss it. Just remember to feed it often since it can die if it runs out of mana," I say.

"I'll certainly remember to do that," Osaria says. She gushes a little with happiness and her droopy eyes become upturned for a moment, then they become a little serious and sad. "It'll also tell me that you're still coming back…" She whispers, softly.

I frown a little and give her a pained smile. Sometimes I wish that my destiny was different so that I wouldn't have to make her worry anymore, but this is only the first time, there will be many more to come…

We talk about their coming trip through Glorampina. The grasslands over there are absolutely beautiful and idyllic. The temperature may be a little hot, but the winds make sure that everything is always fresh.

That's Osaria's homeland, so you can bet that it's filled with milfy dark elves with red eyes just like hers. Maybe not exactly like that, but, yeah, a beautiful place.

I see one of Este's new mages summon a few birds and an earth elemental. The elemental is smaller than mine, obviously, but it looks sturdy enough.

Osaria notices where I'm looking and smiles. Then, she says, "Rande was convinced of the usefulness of elementals and [Summoning Magic]. We made quite a lot of profit on this run, so we decided to invest in it."

"A solid choice; you won't regret it," Ciel says with a nod.

"Summons can be used for all sorts of small and menial tasks. It's hard to even think about living without them now," Lina says.

"Small and menial tasks were supposed to be a slave's job, but I can see that Wolfy has a different mindset," Osaria says and sends me a mischievous glance. Lina blushes slightly and fiddles with her thumbs.

"The happier everybody is, the more united we are," I say and shrug.

"Well, it certainly makes us all very happy that nobody has to stay up for the night watch," Roxanne says and they all agree.

Then Este's caravan reaches the gate and prepares to pass through customs. The time for them to leave has finally come.

Osaria gives me a deep kiss and enters her carriage, giving only a casual goodbye to the others. Oura gives a hug to Lina, shocking my little girl for a moment, then she returns to her carriage. Nito shyly waves and his stare at me gives me a small shiver, then he returns to his position among the horses.

Well, there is one guy that I have to say goodbye to.

I approach my former beast of a horse and talk to it with [Animal Tongue], "Thanks for carrying me all this way, big guy."

The horse neighs softly, a mere nod of acknowledgment.

"You're a good worker. I'll miss you, a little."

The horse huffs, agreeing with my compliment as if it's saying "of course!" Then his head turns to me and lowers a little, letting me pet its mane.

"Alright. Goodbye, friend."

It neighs once, solemnly.

Nito smiles softly at me and I blush slightly while I return to the girls. He's way too much like a girl for me to even see him as a man.

The usual guards have better equipment now and a number of them, including the joker and Julien, get on our former horses. Julien and the others give us one last wave before guiding their horses towards the gate.

Then Rande comes to give us all a goodbye.

He gives me a strong handshake and a dimpled smirk. Then the smirk disappears and he turns serious. "Let's work again one day. If not that, then at least come visit my mother, she seems to have taken quite a liking to you. I won't ask you to marry her, but do take responsibility and don't disappoint her."

"If I could, we wouldn't leave her alone," I say and smile.

He chuckles and then goes over to Hana. He stops mid handshake and stares deeply into her eyes. "I'll miss seeing you every day. My heart will miss your fiery soul serving as my second sun," he says, dramatically.

"I'll miss rejecting your advances," Hana says with a fearsome smile.

He releases her hand and laughs out loud. "Ha! You're all horrible sadists. I feel like I am the innocent doe among orcs."

"You might actually be right!" Osaria shouts from the inside of the carriage.

The other girls receive a simple handshake and even Aoi gets one. She wraps her small claws around his thick finger and puffs smoke out of her nose, feeling satisfied.

Now Anton and Krysta come over to say goodbye.

Anton loosely covers my hand with his sausage-fingers and then frowns a little harder. "I must say, it's annoying living near you, Ryders, but you're all good people. Don't change. And remember to come back and pick up Klein again; you're going to have to take responsibility and be her not-husband for the rest of your life," he says and finishes with a grunt.

"We will, don't worry," Hana says and Anton grunts again.

"I'm sure that Helios will one day meet No Defeat again," I say with a smirk.

"BAHAHAHA!" Anton laughs heartily while Klein and Krysta groan softly. "What?! It's funny!" He says and chuckles.

"I agree. A name like that fits you guys really well," Hana says while smiling.

Anton grunts again with a smile softening his rugged face and says to Hana, "Well, at least you always had a good sense of humor." Then he turns to Ciel. "You seem to be the sanest one among them, so make sure that they don't get too warped by the time you come back for Klein."

Ciel's smile becomes stiff and we all smirk at her from behind Anton's back. "Y-yes, I will," she responds.

Krysta comes up to me and gives me a small hug. She smells of cinnamon and her body is more frail and soft than Klein's. Her breasts feel a little smaller, too.

Bad! I shouldn't be thinking such things about her mother!

"I'll be waiting to hear about your exploits. So come back with some happy stories, please?" She asks and breaks the hug.

I nod, a little embarrassed, and then she gives a hug to everyone else.

Klein finally comes over and gives Hana a deep kiss first, then me, then Alissa. I feel a little jealous that Hana was chosen first, just a little.

"I love you all," she says shyly while looking down, almost tearing up.

Hana pulls her into a bear hug and lifts her off the ground. "I love you too~!" She yells.

A few moments before killing her, Hana releases the monkey paste and Ciel discreetly casts a [Heal] on her.

"We'll be back in a blink," I say and steal one last kiss.

Klein gathers her breath and nods. Then she turns around and runs to catch up with the caravan.

The first time we saw her she came running, and now we see her run as she leaves, too.

I drop onto the bed and sigh.

"I feel depressed," I say.

Hana drops face-down beside me on the bed and groans. Alissa crawls on the bed on my other side and hugs my arm. Lina climbs onto Ciel's lap and grabs her hand, then drops it on top of her own head. Ciel and Roxanne smile wryly while Aoi and the golems give us curious looks.

"What is sadness?" Suzy asks.

"What do my memories tell you about it?" I ask, not feeling very philosophical right now.

"Things that you didn't want to, happen, happened," Ted answers.

"It's more complicated than that."

"Yes. Not all of those events, are sad," Suzy says.

I grab the golems and "update" their vocal cords to Aoi's current version, then I say, "There is a 'level' of 'desire' to the things that I didn't want to happen. The greater this 'desire' is for something to not happen, the sadder it makes me when it does happen."

"But we cannot predict this level of inverted, desire," Ted says.

"That depends on your interpretation of how I think. And there's also how my subconscious works, which means there are certain things that I can't influence and are just part of what makes me a humanoid. Like, being left naked would certainly make me sad, but there are moments where I'm happy to be naked."

"It's very complex…" Suzy says and tilts her head cutely.

"I don't have a simple answer for that. Just continue to observe us," I finish and turn around to face Alissa. I look into her beautiful large orange eyes and the hint of sadness in them only seems to amplify my own.

I decide to close my eyes and take a nap. I might feel better after some relaxation. "Wake me up when September ends," I whisper to her.

"That was a reference," Ted says.

Did I hear a hint of smugness or excitement? Whatever…

I touch foreheads with Alissa and we take a nap together.

We wake up at the same time and my pocket watch tells me that it's 11 AM. I look to the side and Hana is still in the exact same position as before: looking like a plank, face down on the bed.

"How's she not dead?" I ask.

"How do you know she isn't?" Roxanne asks.

I chuckle and nudge Hana awake through [Bind].

She suddenly raises her head and inhales a mouthful of air.

"What?" She asks, confused at our laughing.

"Nothing, nothing," I say and crawl towards her.

She frowns but then smiles softly when I gently grab her head and nestle her red mane on my lap.

There's no need for words; I just continue to comfort her as her feelings flow back into me through her [Bind] in a self-reinforcing cycle.

We leave the room for lunch even though we aren't very hungry. For the first time in a while, our meal is rather quiet. But even then, we aren't allowed to stay sad as the waitresses seem to be scrambling to please us.

Alissa overhears some juicy rumors being spread about us and shares what she heard. Alissa seems to be a pseudo-artist who wants to see me fuck the most perfect women in existence; Hana is a sadistic beast that breaks women's minds and creates a hierarchy of blood-slaves below her; Roxanne is a seductress in search of the most depraved pleasure known to humanoid-kind; Ciel is a pedo; Lina is a greedy pimp who sells her time with her master in exchange for coin; Aoi is my child with a breeder-type dragon queen; Gify is Aoi's husband.

And of course, I'm the Penis Monster, Widow's Companion, Cock Hands, Ravager of Virgins, Insatiable Beast, Enemy of Women, Lover of Women, Worshiper of Women, Magic Dick, Semen Demon, and Lord of Sex. I haven't gained a new title yet, but that's only because there are so many different nicknames for me that nobody can decide on a single one.

This improves our moods a little and we start to return to normal.

I decide to show off my black horns and tail in public and make them slowly grow out of my body. The entire restaurant seems to stop to observe it. In this large hall that was full of casual conversation, murmuring, and the tinkling of cutlery, the sudden silence feels odd.

"Shapeshifter," the observers start to murmur.

"Oh, I'd like that title," I say.

"Told you that flaunting it would be good," Roxanne says.

We return to our room and I store two of the beds so that I can practice my [Soul Manipulation]-combat with Hana. It isn't a good idea to flaunt that in public since we want to ensure that people don't know what exactly I can do. We have enough enemies that it's better to keep most of my abilities a secret.

We put on our armor and I start to spar with Hana, but soon we notice a flaw in my skill: I can only protrude my soul from my bare skin, I can't make it form over armor. I mean, I can, but I can't hold it in place. If I manifest a floating scale, then it immediately falls to the ground. I can only control my solidified soul if it's directly connected to me through something that can actually move it, like a tail or a muscle.

Making scales directly on my skin works because there is some slight fusion of my skin with the solidified soul, it's just not as perfect as the base of Roxanne's tail, so it feels "odd."

I can still use the succubus tail as a whip or to hold a dagger, so offensively, it's okay, but defensively, it's limited.

I tie daggers along my forearms and calves for surprise tail strikes, then I put armor on top of it. With a little wiggling, I can pull them out with a tail and strike.

"Okay, the calf daggers are the most dangerous if you manage to cut someone's Penthos Tendon," Hana says.

"What tendon?" I ask.

She lifts her foot and shows me her Achilles Tendon.

"Oh, that. Right."

I practice it a few times with a wooden dagger and it's still very clunky. I'm getting better results than when I sparred with Klein, so the skill increases do help, but it doesn't seem that significant.

"It won't do much against an armored foe, unless you manage to poke their eyes out," Hana says.

Hana waves her helmet around while I create a small and thin tail and try to strike it at the visor.

Fast and simple movements are much easier since they work on a more instinctual level. The slicing motion with the tail holding a dagger is harder because of how complex it is. I can also use the dagger-tail as a blade itself but then it costs more effort to make it sharp.

Using it to wrap around someone's limb and then pull seems like a viable move, too. I just have to be stronger than the enemy or wrap it around a vulnerable spot, like their legs.

"We're going to have to beat these new tools into you so you can level up your style, otherwise they're just going to be in the way if you try to use them before you're fully accustomed to them," Hana says with a sadistic grin.

I groan internally as she channels her inner Toga.

She beat me up and I could feel Alissa's pained heart through [Bind]. All she wants is to have me lay my head on her lap while she sings a soothing song, but she knows that I need this pain to grow.

Now that Klein is gone and our escort job is complete, we are all getting into our training mindset again.

Ciel and Lina leave to have a date, uh, I mean, to buy some rubbery gloves for Roxanne's workbench. Alissa continues practicing [Mesmerizing Butterflies]. Roxanne works on controlling her [Water Spirit]. Aoi can now glide indefinitely and slowly gain a bit of height. The golems are casting [Regeneration] on themselves and gradually gaining weight, but they can compensate for that with [Telekinesis].

During my tea break, where I receive a brief respite from being physically abused, I update the golem's mana organ to be the same as Roxanne's. Though she may have a lot of mana, the golems use quite a lot of it just to fight and move, so it drains very quickly.

"Shouldn't we consider Aoi as having finally learned how to fly?" Alissa asks.

"She can fly, but she hasn't mastered it yet, so I think that she can still learn quite a lot more," Hana says.

"Kweh! I'm almost there, then!" She exclaims quite happily and lands in Hana's arms.

"Yeah, you've grown so fast that it's a little frightening, really." Hana taps her snout lovingly.

"I am awesome and ferocious! Rawr!" She fakes a cute roar in her chipmunk voice.

"Yes, you are! Yes, you are!" Hana rubs her nose against Aoi's and receives a few licks and kisses.

Lina and Ciel come back a few hours later with arm-length rubbery gloves. Both of them look quite happy and affectionate with each other.

"How was your date?" Alissa asks with a smirk.

"Very good," Lina calmly answers while Ciel smiles a little guiltily.

I fall to the ground with a thud and Hana immediately mounts me. I try to pull her off, but all of my muscles are too tired and I don't have enough mental energy to guide my [Soul Manipulation] to create anything useful.

Her legs straddle my waist and she pulls down my pants. Mana rushes downstairs and my member immediately bulges.

"Oh no~… I've lost…! Now I'll be 'punished' by Hana!" I exclaim dramatically.

"He's ours tonight, so be gentle," Ciel says.

"Meh, fine," Hana says, not very pleased.

Lina easily welds together Roxanne's workshop and starts testing the air-tightness of it by filling it with water. It's okay so far, but now it needs an enchantment that pumps out the air.

Soon after that, we go to the bath and Hana carries me there like a princess. We don't call the maids, to give my body just a small amount of rest, but that doesn't mean that I ignore Ciel and Lina.

I can easily fill three of their holes simultaneously, so the possibilities are endless. My focus this time is on making sure that all of their nipples are well-sucked.

After having sold their time with me during the marathon, they grew a little thirsty, so I'm left with a hole in my mana when we finally leave the bath.

Osaria takes a bath alone with the bird and plays with it gently. Her soft touch and delicious body make me miss her already. My milfy seductress needs her man!

Klein also plays with her Holly, though she looks very sad.

"Hey, Wolfy, I hope that you are listening. I love you, I love Hana, I love Alissa, I love Lina, I love Roxanne, I love Ciel, and I love Aoi…

"Oh whoops! I love Gify, too!"

GIIH!

I chuckle at Gify's indignation at being almost forgotten. It makes my heart ache just a little less.

During dinner, I start talking about something serious.

"So far, my Hollys haven't found anyone suspicious or related to my vision, not even the brown eyes that I saw. The Shads also didn't smell anything related to illusion magic aside from the time we went to that shop or the street performers. But still, should we leave tomorrow morning? There's nothing keeping us in this town anymore."

"I'd like to seduce Rudita, but that's… kind of not that important," Alissa says with a wry smile.

"We should see Confiel. We kind of played a little too much," Roxanne says and smirks.

"Oof, if you are saying that, then yeah, we slacked off a little," Hana says.

"After all that stalking the elves did, the Darean business, the monsters and escort, even with all the breaks we had, everything was all so very stressful. I don't think we could have avoided indulging ourselves for a little while," Ciel says and shrugs.

"I thought it was fun fighting Darean," Aoi says.

"Don't take joy in killing, Aoi, it's not good for a humanoid," Ciel says.

"Oh, right… sorry…" She gives us a toothy smile.

"No need to apologize. Anyway, we could wait a day longer to make Alissa happy," Ciel adds with a wry smile.

"Awn… thanks," Alissa says and reaches over to give Ciel's hand a squeeze.

"Can you do it in just one day?" Lina asks and raises an eyebrow.

"We could try…" Alissa says and shrugs.

"We could ask Daiana if she could set it up between us," I say.

"Right. That might work. Who knows? We don't lose anything by trying." Alissa shrugs again.

"Except for our place to sleep," Lina says with a frown.

"We can always open a [Gate] to the outside of the town and sleep in Wolfy's tent," Alissa says and shrugs once again.

"Hm." Lina looks at Alissa a little disapprovingly.

I interrupt, "Anyway, so we all agree to stay for one more day? None of us feel like we're in any danger?"

They all nod, even Gify.

A note from Manasong

Hall of Fame of Patrons

The patrons who support Rupegia shall have their names sung by the bards for they deserve the glory and honor. Their names are:

Oracle Maximillian Hübner.

Prince PreownedFIN.

Lord Andrew Meyers.

Lord Hope.

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Lord Bill.

Lord Novgarod.

Lord DJ.

Lord Cidant.

Lord Ashadun.

Lord Michale Erwin.

Lord Joxsan Herrera.

Lord Enrique Peña Gomez.

Lord Vampmire.

Lord Braidborn.

Lord Bakerdea.

Lord Kalsted.

Lord Yeeteris Dedmeem.

Noble Salty Panda.

Nobleman Lassiter.

Noble Evil.

Noble Yamibomb112.

Noble Maurice.

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Chapter 58: Meteor - Part 1

A note from Manasong

Attention: to conform to the limit of mature content (more than just sexual content) allowed in a novel, I've censored this chapter. You can look for the uncensored version here.

The symbol "-" denotes a section that got cut for containing sexual content. Also, if paragraphs seem missing, they were also likely censored in an earlier pass where the symbol wasn't used.

We call the maids and they answer quickly.

"What do you wish of us, master Ryder?" Daiana asks and bows.

[Acting] gives me the assurance that I won't screw up my delivery, so I smile and say, "Well… We were talking about compensating Rudita for the inconvenience that we caused, so we thought about at least buying her dinner for her troubles, but we haven't met with her ever since that day, and we were wondering if you could help us with that."

"Hmm… bold," Suelen comments and nods approvingly.

Daiana nods, too, and says, "She enjoys that, but nearly every man that comes here asks her that at one point."

"But she's also always complaining that they're all boring men who overestimate themselves because they buy love instead of earning it."

Daiana turns to me and smiles smugly. "Well, I see. You might be interesting enough for her, but she can get any magic sword she wants, so don't count on yours doing all the work for you."

Suelen nods. "Indeed. If she agrees, then you'll need to properly entertain her or all your fame will wash away with the waves."

Feeling just a little pressured, I nod and they gracefully leave.

Tonight is a mix of cuddle time and massages for my sore muscles. Hana breaks me down, then she puts me back together with those big, strong hands. She molds my body like putty, and I bask for a little while longer in the pleasurable pain of well-exercised muscles.

-

"I want to make a scar on you," Aoi asks.

"Right, that. Sure, let me put some points into [Pain Resistance] first," I say.

"What?" Roxanne asks, confused, and adjusts her glasses.

"I liked being bitten by that Goros woman, so I want Aoi to give me a scar," I say.

"Really?" Ciel asks, not amused, while Lina and Alissa look at us with a bit of worry.

"Why are you all worried? I'll just [Heal] myself," I say.

"You know that I don't like seeing you being beaten during training," Alissa says and frowns towards Hana, who shrugs and smiles. "But I know there's a reason for that. But this? I just… don't understand it."

"It's just some kinky shit about her leaving a mark on me. If I could, I'd like to give you all a bite scar, too," I say.

"Well, you could do all you want with me. Even leave a bite scar on my face," Hana says, but Alissa and Lina remain skeptical.

"It's like the slave mark you two have," I say and turn Alissa's left palm up, exposing her slave mark: a black circle with my name in the middle.

"But Aoi doesn't own you like you do us," Alissa says.

"But it still makes you happy that you have my name on your skin?"

She nods shyly, making her orange fox ears cutely bob, and says, "But you never let us show it."

"Because I don't want to see anyone treating you worse because you're a slave."

"Well, I have to admit, it has worked well so far," Hana says.

"Then I want to bite you, too," Alissa requests.

"I want to give you a scar on your sword," Hana says.

"Yes, Alissa," I say and smile warmly. Then I turn to the red evil being beside her and yell, "NO, HANA! BAD HANA!"

"Boo…!" Hana boos.

Roxanne frowns. "Yeah, biting is not a thing for us," she awkwardly says.

"Why?" Aoi questions.

She shudders. "A bad history with cannibalism… and sensitive parts are only to be licked, kissed, sucked, and plowed."

"The temple doesn't have anything against it, though," Ciel says.

"Do you want me to not do this?" I ask Roxanne.

"No, no." She shakes her head emphatically. "You can do whatever you want, especially if it's going to be an alluring new scar, but I don't think it's going to be that alluring for me."

I nod and look at the other girls, who shrug.

Then I turn to Aoi and give her the green light. She grows to her big-size and puts her long, sharp fangs against my shoulder. I don't even feel a prickle anymore.

Her fangs sink into my body and I feel just a little "odd" and "wrong." Then Aoi releases me and the feeling fades. Now I only feel even more "odd" and begin to notice the warmth of my own blood escaping from my wounds.

I cast many small [Heal]s to stimulate the growth of scar tissue. It feels ridiculous to me that I can just use [Regeneration] to make the scars vanish if they end up ugly.

My cosmetic surgery ends and I'm left with a small, but perceptible dotted line of scars around my right shoulder.

"Perfect," I say.

"KWEH!" Aoi screams, but in her small-form, having learned to have consideration for our sensitive ears. Then she crawls up to me and licks the small scars repeatedly like an excited dog, tickling me.

Alissa runs her hand along my skin and says, "I prefer actual battle scars, but this one does look cute."

"I'm so happy!" Aoi exclaims and continues licking my skin.

"Hm~…! That's hot," Hana says and starts licking my scars, too, but stops soon after. "Okay, licking them isn't as fun, though."

The other three girls shrug while the golems stare at us with their creepy and unmoving (literally) beady little eyes.

"Scars," Ted starts.

"Tattoos," Suzy continues.

"Piercings."

"Are all ways of."

"Becoming more."

"Aesthetically pleasing."

"But."

"They all also have."

"Complex humanoid reasons,"

"For existing," Suzy finishes.

"'Humanoid reasons'?" I ask, a little amused.

"As much as we try…" Suzy starts.

"There are certain things that, we cannot understand," Ted completes.

"That's fair… I guess," I say and chuckle.

Alissa grabs my right foot and bares her four, pointy fangs. "Can I?" She asks.

"Go for it."

She punctures four small dots on the side of my foot and then gives it a few loving kisses.

I try to make my fox tail and ears look more life-like and then I slap Alissa in the face with it. For some reason she gets very annoyed and pushes me down, then she slaps my face with her tail so hard that it actually hurts.

"Ow! Was that a whip or a tail?" I ask.

"D-don't slap me again like that," she warns me and turns away in huff, then I see her face starts to redden very quickly.

"Hm? What's that? I smell… issues…" I say and smirk.

Roxanne smirks evilly and her [Water Spirit] falls flat on the bed like a puppet with its strings cut. "All the non-human races must have some 'taboos' about certain specifics of their race. We may have bumped into one," she says.

Alissa turns to Roxanne and almost sneers. "What 'specifics'? There's no 'issue' here. I just find it annoying to be slapped in the face," she says and turns her back to both of us.

"So annoying that you actually hurt your precious master whom you worship oh so much…" Roxanne says, slowly.

We both crawl towards Alissa. I grab her stiff tail and apply [Massage] to it while Roxanne wraps her body around Alissa like a constricting snake and their faces get so close that their noses touch.

"My lovely Alissa. You know that you can't hide your weaknesses from us, hm?" Roxanne whispers with all her charm. Even her horns seem to shine with perfect sharpness.

Alissa remains unmoved with a stern and defiant expression.

I make a succubus tail protrude from my shoulder and wrap it around her neck while Roxanne's enters her pants.

"Surrender to me, or we'll make you surrender," Roxanne whispers and slowly covers Alissa's lips with her own.

"Her tail twitched," I say.

Roxanne hugs Alissa and invades her mouth. Her cheeky little tongue steals Alissa's breath away and leaves her wanting for more -.

Roxanne forces Alissa's head to turn to me. She's waiting for a kiss to finish her, but all that greets her is a mouthful of my fox tail hitting her face.

"Puh…! BETRAYED!" Alissa spits fur and yells, then immediately pounces on me.

I grab her and use my tail wrapped around her neck to pull her into a hug. She digs her nails into my back and I immediately steal a kiss before she can draw blood.

After annoying her so much, Roxanne and I work together to appease her.

Then Hana's fingers give me a brain massage that puts me to sleep.

But I'm soon awoken and regret not leaving Goldport immediately after the vision.

The two Hollys I had circling the inn yell a warning in my mind. Out of multiple buildings nearby, twenty-eight robed and masked people suddenly emerge and run towards the inn.

On the streets, there are only two drunks that immediately get spooked and run away as fast as they can.

"WAKE UP! ARMOR UP!" I bellow.

The girls jump and I curse myself for sleeping naked. We should've always slept with armor on! No matter what!

I pull out the crates with everyone's armor, and we hastily put it on.

"Wolfy, what's happening?!" Alissa asks.

"The inn is being surrounded by people in robes and masks!" I yell.

The robed and masked people suddenly stop when they reach each of the four corners of the inn and huddle up in groups of seven. They immediately start chanting and the amount of mana being released makes me go pale.

Even Hana feels the mana and mutters a faint "shit."

A few seconds later, before we can put even half of our armor on, the spells are finished. My Hollys' eyes are nearly burned from the intensity as four [Meteor]s complete, and the four balls of fire and molten metal light up the night sky. The robed and masked people immediately turn to run away and disperse.

"NO!" I yell and open a [Gate] the size of the room.

The beds and we are all immediately teleported to the outside of Goldport.

"Wolfy?!" Alissa asks, completely confused as all the girls take in their new surroundings.

After five agonizing seconds, the entire inn gets blasted apart by the balls of flame that explode on impact. Splinters, flames, and molten metal spread across the entire block and rapidly ignite an inferno.

Even where we are now, far from West Goldport, we can still see a small light in the distance showing where the impact was.

A few seconds later, we hear a soft, muffled impact from the fading and delayed shockwave.

Ciel grabs my shoulders and forces me to look at her. "What happened?!" She asks.

"The inn… exploded… robed people cast [Meteor]… and blew it up… it's gone… everything is gone…" I mumble an explanation.

"T-take us back! We have to help the survivors!" Ciel exclaims and both of her hands painfully squeeze my shoulders.

The pain brings a little clarity back to me. "No, everything is covered in fire. We can't go back."

I free myself from her grip and turn around. I summon two more Hollys to scout the area around us and four Shads, then I open a [Gate] back to our room.

"Find them," I order the Shads and immediately close the [Gate] after they cross it. They suffer a little from the fire, but they can resist it much better than we could.

The Shads spread out towards where the robed men came from at the same time that the priests emerge from the temple's clinic near the inn. The people start to panic and run away, but the priests immediately start to organize the mob coming towards them.

A quick-response guard unit appears nearby and starts to control the flames.

The Shads enter the buildings and find access points to the sewers, but it's a spider web of tunnels filled with monsters and the mana trail of the robed men quickly disappears amid all the sewage.

The girls finish putting on their armor while I stand still, only with my normal pants, padded chest, and helmet on.

The coldness of the grass eventually makes me move. I walk over to my crate and fish out my socks and my boots, then I clumsily put them on and face the girls.

Grim and shocked faces. My yelling gave them the energy to put on their armor, but now there's nothing else for us to do.

Alissa walks towards me and pulls me into a hug. My eyes burn as tears well up in my eyes and run down my cheeks. She sniffs and our [Bind]s are flooded with grief.

The others join us for a group hug and Aoi grows so that she can cover us again with her wings. Then Gify turns on her "massage" and I grit my teeth as the massage dulls my pain, but that leaves room for anger to come roaring in.

Stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid.

Why did we stay?! Why didn't we run away?! The goddamn brown eyes weren't the same as the eyes in the vision, but why did I think that person wouldn't be hostile?! Why didn't I consider that they might be related?! Why didn't I understand this for the warning that it was?!

Idiot, retard, stupid, dumb, bastard, piece of shit!

I killed them, I killed them all!

Daiana, Suelen, their husband, Rudita, Nazli, Mina, Lunastra, Camila, Balbina, the staff, and all the guests! All dead because of me!

I've been trusting my Hollys and Shads so much despite their failures, and what happened?! They'd already failed with the invisible assassins, and then they failed with the brown-eyed person when I had the vision. Why did I think that they wouldn't fa-…

A slap hits my face and a crystal clear smack resounds through the open grassland. My cheek flares with pain and the force of the slap sends me to the ground. Alissa's pain-stricken face glowers down at me.

"STOP IT! JUST… STOP!" She shrieks.

"STOP READING MY MIND!" I shriek back.

"NOT IF YOU'RE GOING TO BE STUPID LIKE THIS!" Her face morphs into fury and she mounts me. She grabs the collar of my armor and butts heads with me. "I'M NOT GOING TO LET YOU BLAME YOURSELF LIKE THIS!" Spit flies at my face as she shrieks.

I grit my teeth in anger and grab the grass and soft dirt. I gather a handful to throw at Alissa's face but let it go before making a move.

My lip trembles and my defiance crumbles. My face distorts from the pain and my vision gets blurred by the tears.

I go limp in her arms and look away as I lose control of my tears. My vision is obscured by Alissa hugging me and crying along with me.

As my heart starts to calm, I focus my senses on Klein's Holly patrolling their camp. Everything is fine. Este's summons patrol the camp along with a few guards, the Shad is watching over Klein as she sleeps, and Osaria's bird is still sleeping soundly with her. Whoever wanted us dead so badly doesn't seem to have anything against them…

My tears dry and the numbing effect of the adrenaline rush begins to fade away, leaving me with only the pain of laying on the dirt for so long and the pain of my heart breaking apart.

Alissa releases me and I sit up. We all wipe our eyes and cheeks and stare at each other.

I feel numb…

Ciel is the one to break the silence, and there's only coldness in her voice. "Heretics. To kill so many, so recklessly… The God of Existence wouldn't let any of them even finish that spell if they were humanoids. They are heretics."

"You said there was more than one person? Did they work together to cast the spell?" Lina asks in a matching cold tone.

"Yes. Seven people worked together to cast a single [Meteor]. Four groups of seven cast four [Meteor]s in total," I answer, flatly. "It was [Ritualism]. Imperials."

Lina shakes her head. "The empire teaches [Ritualism] to all races and nationalities in their schools. Anyone with a good enough background could learn it."

"So, it wasn't Katasko?" I ask.

"The nobles of the empire are shady and cunning, but they aren't brutal murderers," Ciel says.

"Not even Darean would be able to hire such powerful mercenaries. Only the imperial army or a powerful lord's private army would have the mages to cast four [Meteor]s," Hana says.

"Only if the Gods are dead would the imperial army be infiltrated by the heretics," Ciel says and clenches her fist in rising anger. "Not even the heretics of Bestiaram are known to be so powerful! They are sneaky, backstabbing shit-stirrers, but they don't have the power to go against even a single Bestiaram king's army! Let alone come all the way here to level an inn in less than a minute!" She pummels the dirt with her fist.

"Were we even their actual target?" Lina asks and we go silent. After a few seconds, she continues, "They didn't use a [Gate] 'scrubber' to block us from escaping or even try to take out Wolfy's Hollys. Because of that, we had plenty of time to run out of the inn if we didn't try to put on our armor. And even if they had a scrubber, we would've had enough time to escape the main blast zone if we jumped out of the windows after the spell was cast."

Alissa frowns and says, "There were quite a few 'odd' people that gave off the air of shady nobles. It wouldn't surprise me if there were people with questionable backgrounds staying there."

"But the vision-…" I start.

And Alissa interrupts me, her anger flaring up again, "Told us about a far away battle with an unknown foe. The person with the brown eyes could be some spirit or someone we haven't met yet. We could even meet them again if that person was watching us and knows that we escaped the inn alive."

"Your mother was spying on us even without us knowing. Not every spy can be caught by the Hollys," Lina says.

We go silent again and I start putting on my armor, then I store the crates and pull out the armored dinghy.

I breathe in and turn to the girls. My heart is burning with pain, but my mind is clear. "We have to meet with Confiel immediately. We might have lost quite a lot of our bargaining power, but we need someone powerful as an ally. These heretics aren't people that we can fight with the power we have right now. Agreed?"

They all nod.

"Then let's go. We stayed for too long in an area that we're not really sure is safe."

Roxanne flies us towards Goloria while half of us try to get some sleep.

A fruitless endeavor since nobody would be able to sleep after this nightmare.

The fires are brought under control by the quick-response unit and when the rest of the guards come, the fire is finally pushed back and fully extinguished.

The inn is a complete wreck. It burned to the ground.

I try to watch and see if they found any survivors, but when they begin to pull the bodies out of the wreckage, I start crying again and dismiss all Hollys and Shads I had in Goldport.

Klein might end up hearing about this when she reaches the next town, but since my three summons are still with them, she knows that at least I'm alive.

Near dawn, we have to avoid a squadron of elves rushing on Gatuns and wagons towards Goldport. We'd rather not be seen leaving Goldport so that we won't raise suspicion.

Soon after that, we have to avoid a squadron of Templars that are also coming from Goloria. Their armor is polished until it shines, but if you look closer, you can see how it's full of scratches. These are the Punishers, an order of Templars specialized in hunting heretics. Their armor is a symbol of their dedication. A declaration that nothing will stop them and that the things that can make a dent on them only leave mere scratches on their armor.

After dawn, we enter the High Forest again and Roxanne switches with Ciel. The tiredness finally starts to take me and I get some sleep, but it's frequently interrupted by having to avoid monsters or other humanoids along the road.

We stop for breakfast and I manage to take a nap. Then I wake up to the smell of fried fish and sweet not-mango juice. Apparently, Alissa's homeland has tons of not-mangos called Chapefruit and they export a lot of them to the tropical areas because of how refreshing they are.

The meal is mostly silent since even Gify isn't eating with much enthusiasm.

I find comfort in Alissa's ears and Aoi's scales. My skin starts to feel slightly irritated from all the petting, but it's my coping mechanism.

"How's Klein?" Hana asks.

I smile as I focus on the bird's view. "Already back to being chipper as usual. She's talking to Laertes right now."

"Ah! Already cheating on you!" Hana hits her fist on the table, then smiles.

I chuckle. "They are discussing the idea of using the summoner's scouting birds as target practice."

"Summons have much slower reaction times than the original monsters and animals," Alissa says.

"Hm," Hana grunts and nods. "They likely aren't stressed out and overly-aware from surviving for so long in the wild, so of course they wouldn't behave the same."

"What about Osaria?" Ciel asks.

"Training the bird to do some tricks and teaching it how to be more 'life-like,'" I answer with a wry smile.

"Right, isn't she giving you a show every day?" Hana asks and raises a red eyebrow.

"Not every day…"

Ciel facepalms and chuckles. "You might want to split your body into two so you can seduce twice as many women," she says and sighs.

"Create a summon that's a second you, then you can have as many wives as your mana will let you," Alissa says and her tail wags excitedly.

"The world deserves some of your love, but only some," Hana says and her feet start to rub on me -.

"And the original will only be ours," Lina says and her little legs wrap around my calf.

As long as we are together, everything will be okay.

-

I'll never be able to forget this day. There are dangerous people out there hunting for us and we need to prepare.

I swear. One day, we'll avenge the Innocent Nymph.

A note from Manasong

Hall of Fame of Patrons

The patrons who support Rupegia shall have their names sung by the bards for they deserve the glory and honor. Their names are:

Oracle Maximillian Hübner.

Prince PreownedFIN.

Lord Andrew Meyers.

Lord Hope.

Lord Samuel Lim.

Lord Bill.

Lord Novgarod.

Lord DJ.

Lord Cidant.

Lord Ashadun.

Lord Michale Erwin.

Lord Joxsan Herrera.

Lord Enrique Peña Gomez.

Lord Vampmire.

Lord Braidborn.

Lord Bakerdea.

Lord Kalsted.

Lord Yeeteris Dedmeem.

Noble Salty Panda.

Nobleman Lassiter.

Noble Evil.

Noble Yamibomb112.

Noble Maurice.

Leave a rating or a review to help me rise to the top or fix my shameful understanding of prose.

Take a look over my blog where all information of the world of Rupegia will be posted.

Join the Discord and discuss, or rant, or meme, or try and fight me so your waifu gets more screentime.

Become a Patron and read chapters in advance, or read the side-stories, or leave your mark on the story, or help choose the next artwork or the next side-story.

Chapter 58(?): Meteor - Part 2

A note from Manasong

Published on April 1st 2020.

I thought that we would be safe so far away from Goldport, but no, danger finds its way towards us again as I'm suddenly attacked by the feeling of having my [Gate] blocked.

"A [Gate] scrubber has been activated!" I warn the girls.

"What? We're in the middle of nowhere!" Alissa exclaims.

"Land the dinghy and I'll try to locate the source," I say.

"The Hollys didn't catch anything?" Ciel asks.

"No…"

A chill passes through our spines. If the heretics can cast four [Meteor]s in a few seconds, what's to say that they can't craft such a powerful scrubber?

We stop the dinghy and get ready for battle while I concentrate and try to find the source of the scrubber.

My heart sinks as the feeling happens again, overlaying with the original, then again and again. I count eight scrubbers in total. With a little more concentration, I find the sources to be coming from the eight cardinal directions. We are surrounded and the sources are converging on us.

"Get in! Roxanne, fly up! Directly up!" I order.

We quickly break through the canopies of the ginormous trees and the sun assaults us. Almost literally as we feel "pain" from the rays of light touching our skin.

"What's going on?" Ciel questions worriedly and casts [Heal] on us. Nothing happens and the sunlight slowly increases its "intensity."

I start to grow increasingly afraid as the sources of the scrubbers lift from the ground and follow us.

"Dammit! They are coming up!"

At the same time, I see through the Hollys small groups of dots raise above the canopies. Ten people in each group for a total of eighty.

A Kite Dragon above notices us and dives down, ready to strike. Ciel, Alissa, and Aoi strike at it and lightly wound it, allowing us time to fly past it as it recovers from the strike.

"They are gaining on us! Faster!" I order and we hold ourselves on the dinghy as it reaches dangerous speeds. Even though it's reinforced now and won't break apart easily, it doesn't mean that we are exactly "safe" inside it.

A Cloud Snake dives out of a cloud towards us and I start charging a [Lightning Bolt]. This monster is a snake actually made from cloudy matter. It likes to hide in clouds and strikes with blinding speed towards its prey, which would be us.

I release the spell and it immediately stops. Its snake-shape is lost as it gets stunned and becomes an innocent small cloud in the middle of the blue sky.

We start seeing dots above us that grow in size. Those are wild Sky Lands. Too far from the territory of the chimeras, so they are likely crawling with flying monsters.

A Dragolite appears and the Kite Dragon switches targets. It stops chasing us to go after easier prey.

The eighty dots chasing us increase in size and even Alissa can now see them. Then I see something that makes my blood turn cold as it stuns me.

The girls notice my fear seeping through the [Bind] and Alissa searches the dots, too, only to become stunned like me.

It's not hard to find them as their glow is eye-catching. Two men, each wearing a complete set of armor that covers all visible openings. A scary mask of a stoic man covers their faces. Their golden armor is set with enchanted gems of all colors, and it glows so brightly white that it hurts to even look at them when they get closer. A sun is engraved in the chest of the armor and its rays radiate out from it to cover every surface. A heavy golden cape with a blood-red lining flows from their shoulders as it flutters in the wind.

The Hands of the Emperor. One is coming from the east and the other from the west.

"WHAT?!" Ciel exclaims and goes silent, too shocked to speak further.

"They don't want us to escape…" Alissa mutters and grits her teeth.

Lina and Hana glare at the Hands as they finally notice the glow coming from them.

"Can I eat them?" Aoi asks, innocently.

I look at Gify and for the first time, I see genuine fear in her beady little eyes.

"Can you escape them?" I ask her.

"Gih."

That means "no."

I start to hyperventilate as my mind races with reasons for the Hands to so aggressively come after us, but nothing comes to mind. Not even in Ciel's wildest dreams would Katasko have the power to command the Hands to act, no, this situation is beyond what any of us ever thought could happen.

I check my "Status", but my "Piety" is still unchanged, and Alissa and I still have our blessings from the Gods.

The glow of the Hands start to hurt us, too, and we grow increasingly distressed as panic appears in our hearts.

Roxanne's driving becomes erratic, so Ciel takes over as she's too stunned to properly panic.

More monsters appear, but this time they run away instead of attacking, fearful of the Hands.

The Sky Lands above us continue to grow. Like in the Roulette of the Morning Dew dungeon, they are chunks of land that had glowing crystals jutting from below it. These valuable crystals are what allows them to float in the air.

Since we are too far from the capital, the wind here is so constant that these lands slowly drift around the entire Gillios continent, giving them the name of Drifting Lands.

The Hands are still gaining on us, so I decide to land in the closest of these Drifting Lands. Better face this than get caught in the middle of the open sky.

The surface of the chosen Drifting Land is covered in large white oaks, all bent in the same direction against the wind, forming a small dome protecting the trees from being blown away.

Their huge and deep roots are overgrown and stick out of the sides of the Sky Land in an effort to gain a better foothold against the ever-present strong wind.

We fly above the Land and find a clearing in the center, where a piece of the green crystal that glows harmonically protrudes out of the ground.

Getting weak in the leg as the "pain" from the sun increases, we suddenly feel like kneeling when the lights from the Hands start affecting us, too.

When we finally see the eighty men chasing us, my heart tightens and I hold my breath as the overwhelming presence of the Hands increases tenfold.

Eight semi-transparent white bubbles hold thirty mages, thirty armored footmen, eighteen archers, and the two Hands equally spread among the bubbles, which land on the ground and dissipate, then the men and women from all types of races surround us. They look stern, but not hostile. They hold defensive postures, but do not point their weapons towards us.

The two Hands walk a few steps forward and my legs tremble. Roxanne falls on her knees, heaving for breath, while the rest manages to hold on just barely.

"What is the meaning of this?" Ciel asks between gritted teeth, barely holding her glaive in her hands.

The Hand on the left says with a feminine voice, "You are Helios, a fellowship composed by Wolf Ryder, Roxanne Succubus, Ciel, the Blood Slaves Alissa and Hana, and the slave Lina. You possess a pet named Aoi and a nature spirit possessed Gify."

Her voice is calm, collected, and perfectly crystalline. She merely states facts and yet we feel guilt attack us with every word she says. Behind her mask, I can see two familiar dark eyes stare at me without a hint of emotion, only cold determination, bordering on obsession.

Oh no… the vision…

I look to the right and see unremarkable brown eyes stare at us.

Oh no…

"Brown eyes… the vision…" I mutter with a lot of effort and the girls notice it too.

The brown-eyed Hand on the right says with a masculine voice, "We are only giving you this small courtesy because your fellowship has done nothing wrong for the Empire and even gained two blessings from the Gods." His voice has a hint of kindness to it, but then it disappears and every word pounds at my heart like a stake, "Your existence and your Gifts were deemed too dangerous for the stability of the Stagnation Factor to our realm. You've all been sentenced to death. Resign to your Fate and you'll all be rewarded with a long stay in Paradise."

Tears escape my eyes and freely run along my cheeks.

"WHAT?!" Ciel questions with a cracking voice. "ARE YOU THE ONES RESPONSIBLE FOR THE [METEOR]?"

"Yes," answers the female Hand without a hint of emotion in her voice.

The male Hand elaborates further, but his voice contains no more emotion than the other Hand, "Unfortunately, we didn't know you had [Gate] and such a large field of view with your summons, so we miscalculated and killed many innocents as collateral damage. This time, though, you've isolated yourself, and for that, we thank you. But don't make a mistake, the number of innocents that are killed is of no concern to us. You're that dangerous."

No, no, no, no, no, no…

A crystalline glass wall suddenly materializes in front of them and surrounds us. The amount of mana that suddenly escapes the wall makes me stagger and reminds me that they have enough mages to cast four [Meteor]s in less than a minute.

In desperation, I cast [Earth Wall] and make a dome to protect us.

The Hands' voices magically penetrate the wall and enter our hearts. "Submit," they say in unison with [Godly Language]. Ciel, Alissa, Lina, Aoi, and Gify all fall to the ground.

"Resist!" I immediately shout back and overpower their Language.

"Interesting. We didn't know you could do that," the female Hand says.

"Truly a dangerous Gift," the male Hand says.

"YOU'RE NOT THE REAL HANDS OF THE EMPEROR! HE WOULD NEVER ALLOW YOU TO KILL SO MANY INNOCENT PEOPLE!" Ciel bellows. Her eyes are wild and desperate. She claws at her head as her heart is broken apart.

The female Hand calmly responds, "The Sin of Reckless Murder does not apply when there's a reasonable justification for the number of deaths. As we've said before, your fellowship is that dangerous to the entire realm."

"HERETICS! WOLF, OPEN UP!" Ciel orders while shrieking.

No, no, no, no, no, no…

"We have to fight our way out!" Alissa yells and shakes my shoulder.

The mages outside chant quickly, then slam their staves on the ground and my wall fades into dust that quickly disappears into nothing.

Ciel grabs her glaive and charges the crystalline wall.

"WOLF, RUN!" Lina yells as she follows Ciel.

The mages around us start chanting again and I recognize that they are casting [Meteor].

"NO!" I yell, but I don't have [Bind] acting on them, so I can only watch as another huge burst of mana leaves the Hands' bodies.

"[Warp Space]," the Hands cast in unison.

Two vertical lines appear along Ciel's and Lina's bodies. The lines blur my vision for a moment, then they disappear.

The two girls stop screaming and fall on the ground. Their bodies split in two vertically from the head to their crotch, spilling their insides and coating the bright green grass red with their blood.

"NOO-" My grieving shriek is suddenly interrupted as through the Shads' vision, I notice invisible people sneaking behind us.

The assassins yell in horror as the Shads attack their heads and force them into a nightmare.

I'LL MURDER YOU, I'LL MURDER YOU ALL, I'LL MURDER EVERYTHING.

I draw my sword and chop, decapitating the assassin behind me, then I immediately feel another huge burst of mana. This time, the source of the spell is inside me.

I try to interrupt it, but the spell is so strong that it feels like I just slammed my head against a brick wall. As a last resort, I use [Redirect Mana] on it as I see Alissa, Hana, Roxanne, Aoi, and Gify all split into two by [Warp Space].

"GRAAAAAH!" The flesh monstrosity screams in pain as a mantis-like being on top of it tortures it with sickening glee.

The monstrosity retains some shape of what could once be considered two people. Their limbs are all broken and twisted in different angles; their flesh is covered in bruises and cuts; and parts of the skin have been ripped off, exposing the muscles beneath. Their mangled intestines hang from a large wound caused by the skin and muscle being ripped from what would be their bellies. Two heads with bloody messes for eyes hang with their toothless mouths open as the smell of rot and death escape from their breaths.

The mantis being had enough of braking and cutting, so now it slowly pulls apart the limbs, savoring every sound of flesh being torn apart and the moans of pain that come from it.

A serrated penis protrudes out of what would be its crotch and enters the hole where the monstrosity's innards hang through. The jagged edges on the penis rip and tear more flesh, causing the monstrosity to bleed even more and paint the living carpet below it with bright red blood.

The living beings fused to the floor moan in pain and ask for death so that their eternal torture can finally end. Their bodies have been stretched into a carpet of living flesh, covering all the grass around the clearing with their sickening mess of flesh and feces.

The mantis steps on an exposed lung, squashing it and making the moaning being slowly suffocate. The being is elated, thinking that it will finally die, but all the happiness is then replaced by even more suffering as its lung is then restored to its former integrity, allowing it to breathe, and suffer, again.

"KRIIIIIIIIII!" The mantis being lets out a shrill cry as it orgasms and fills the flesh monstrosity with semen.

The mantis' many serrated limbs grab the now limbless monstrosity and crush it slowly. Squeezing the life out of it and the last of the sadistic pleasure it can have from torturing the monstrosity.

Like a fleshy balloon, the monstrosity suddenly collapses to the extreme pressure exerted by the mantis and explodes, sending flesh, bone, and blood everywhere.

Now without a toy to play or purpose to live, the mantis keels over and collapses on the puddle of blood and gore it created, crushing more of the living carpet below it.

The mantis coughs blood and pus as it's also rotting and dying. Its current shape is not what it should be, it's something "wrong," but now it's too warped by anger and grief to even remember what it once was.

Life slowly escapes its body as tears flow out of its many eyes.

"Kri…" It lets out a faint cry and takes its last breath.

I feel like I woke up in the middle of car trip. My body is in movement, but I'm just stirring awake, feeling sore all over.

I try to open my eyes but nothing happens, which makes me feel a bit of panic.

Then I see "it." I see a "light." I see the "end."

I don't want this to end.

I turn away from the light, feeling disgusted by it and stare at the abyss, then the abyss stares back.

"Yes, it's not over yet," a soft female voice calms my mind, but I notice that it's preparing me for the worst that's still yet to come.

Suddenly, information invades my mind, giving me forbidden knowledge that fills me with hope.

I immediately use this knowledge to see beyond. I see further than the "abyss" and the "light." I see the infinite potential at the edge of my grasp.

I see immortality.

I open a hole in this reality and escape it, greedily searching for the source of this potential.

In this new place of non-existence, I see many other things that I don't understand. Some of these things cause so much terror in me that I immediately forget that they exist. My existence itself would end if I ever tried to comprehend what I saw.

After an eternity moving through this place, a sense of familiarity washes over me as I start to comprehend what I'm seeing.

I see a string that has been abruptly cut and it bleeds anger and grief. This string calls for me and I answer. I reconnect the string and suddenly gain physical vision again.

I see a stretch of land suspended in a sea of blue background and white clouds. A brown mound of earth and rock with many green crystals glowing harmonically below it. Trees all bent against the wind to create a protective dome so that the air flow bends and goes around instead of trying to uproot them. A horrifying circle of living flesh, tainted by blood and gore. Seven glass coffins with the bodies of…

"RAAAAAAAAAAGH!" I scream, yet no sound is made.

My existence becomes composed entirely of anger as the sight of the coffins breaks down my mind.

I take hold of the Drifting Land and try to tear apart everything in there, except for the coffins.

The entire Land trembles and the earth cracks, but immediately the anger fades and a primal hunger takes hold over me.

I look at the horrifying living carpet not with disgust, but with hunger. I open my mouth and swallow it whole.

The dead bits of meat and the warped mantis-like creature give me little power, but the living carpet is much more "tastier." The tortured beings let out moans of pleasure as they feel Death finally coming towards them, but then their souls let out shrieks of horror as I suck them in, too.

There will be no Paradise for you.

I chuckle with glee as the delicious souls flood me with energy and power.

The anger flares, but a small nudge of the knowledge I received directs the anger to something else.

Instead of trying to rip things apart from this form, I'll be more effective if I exist over there to influence the world, so I start to make a body for myself.

I'm a tall man with pure-white skin, steel muscles, blocky and mean face, long golden hair and beard, and a huge horse cock.

My bones are the first to appear on top of the living carpet, then my flesh covers it, then my organs grow, then my blood starts to circulate, then I regain my sight.

I open my eyes and breathe in the acetone smell of undead corruption deeply mixed with the smell of blood, rot, and feces.

My hunger continues and I turn the living carpet into dust. I don't stop there and absorb the grass, then the trees and the plants. I turn the lush green Drifting Land barren. I stop at the crystals so that I don't fall out of the sky. I'm not ready for this, yet.

After feeding, I feel more powerful than I ever imagined I could be, but yet I still hunger for more.

I hunger for everything.

I laugh out loud and revel in the shrieks of horror that I caused from the souls of the tortured.

But this pleasure lasts only for a while as the hunger grows again until I can't ignore it any longer.

I look around me and when I see the glass coffins, everything breaks apart and I collapse to the ground.

"RAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGH!" I scream in anger again and the Drifting Land trembles with my power. The crystals crack and the Land starts to sway precariously.

With endless tears rolling along my cheeks, I crawl my way towards the coffins.

I stop in front of Alissa's. Her naked perfect body is blemished by a white scar that runs along her head down to her crotch. The mark of what killed her.

The other girls are all the same. All dead, all split by [Warp Space].

Their bodies look just like they were alive, but their chests don't move as they stopped breathing and I don't even feel their "strings" anymore from the [Bind].

Blinding anguish takes hold over me as I realize that I won't ever hear their beautiful voices again, I won't ever see them move their perfect bodies again, I won't ever touch their delicate warm skin again, I won't ever make wild love to them again…

I feel like screaming, but I hold back my anger this time, lest I break their perfect coffins and disturb their rest.

I have nothing left.

But I have debts to repay.

So I'll kill everyone. I'll consume everything.

And I'll start with the Emperor.

I open my "Status" again and notice that almost everything is gone. Only "Messages" and "Items" are left, and I have one unread message.

From: Goddess of Knowledge.

I'm your last friend left. Let us change this realm, together.

I feel a deep familiarity while I read the name of the sender. A soft and tender touch. A woman's kiss.

The sun suddenly feels painful again and I hear my skin sizzle and bubble. With just a thought, I make the burning stop and heal myself, but then it starts to consume my "power."

I look around and see other Drifting Lands slowly passing by me.

I store the coffins in my "Items," then by using my power, I pull the lands together, creating a landmass wider than a castle.

Through a hole in the ground, I manage to look down and notice a golden branch-like castle protruding from the canopies of the High Forest. Around it, I see many white houses partially covered by smaller canopies. Goloria.

The Emperor wanted to end me, but unfortunately for him, higher beings want me to continue alive.

As I said we once would, Wolf Ryder died with Alissa. From today on, I'm The Devourer and I'll consume everything in my path.

Avgi wronged me, so I'll "wrong" everything under the touch of the God of the Sun.

Death to the Gods.

I push the islands towards me and consume the crystals keeping them afloat. Then they all start to fall together like a huge meteor. Our aim: Goloria.

The nightmare ends and I wake up in the dinghy feeling sick. Alissa's hand lands on my head and her fingers glide through my hair.

"Bad dream?" She asks.

"A horrible one," I answer, then I lay my head against her shoulder and close my eyes again.

Soon, the dreamworld takes me again. At least this time I'm rewarded with a nice stroll with my women through a beautiful field of flowers.

A note from Manasong

Happy April Fools'!

Hall of Fame of Patrons

The patrons who support Rupegia shall have their names sung by the bards for they deserve the glory and honor. Their names are:

Oracle Maximillian Hübner.

Prince PreownedFIN.

Lord Andrew Meyers.

Lord Hope.

Lord Samuel Lim.

Lord Bill.

Lord Novgarod.

Lord DJ.

Lord Cidant.

Lord Ashadun.

Lord Michale Erwin.

Lord Joxsan Herrera.

Lord Enrique Peña Gomez.

Lord Vampmire.

Lord Braidborn.

Lord Bakerdea.

Lord Kalsted.

Lord Yeeteris Dedmeem.

Noble Salty Panda.

Nobleman Lassiter.

Noble Evil.

Noble Yamibomb112.

Noble Maurice.

Leave a rating or a review to help me rise to the top or fix my shameful understanding of prose.

Take a look over my blog where all information of the world of Rupegia will be posted.

Join the Discord and discuss, or rant, or meme, or try and fight me so your waifu gets more screentime.

Become a Patron and read chapters in advance, or read the side-stories, or leave your mark on the story, or help choose the next artwork or the next side-story.

Chapter 58: Meteor - Part 2

A note from Manasong

Attention: to conform to the limit of sexual content allowed in a novel, I've censored this chapter. You can look for the uncensored version here.

The symbol "-" denotes a section that got cut for containing sexual content. Also, if paragraphs seem missing, they were also likely censored in an earlier pass where the symbol wasn't used.

Today is the 3rd.

I thought that I used sex to cope, but it's not just that, it's the closeness, the intimacy. Getting hugged by Hana while hugging Lina is extremely relaxing. It makes me feel even better than the sex itself. I feel safe and supported in this cuddle-puddle as it cuddle-heals me and cuddle-energizes me.

The other girls join us and we spend a few minutes in bed as we all recharge with each other.

"How are you all feeling?" Ciel asks.

"I'm fine. Still angry, but fine," Alissa says.

"I'm okay," Lina says, calmly.

"Same," Aoi says.

"I'm okay," Roxanne says, weakly.

Hana swallows heavily and I suddenly lack the energy to answer.

Ciel crawls towards us and pulls us both into a hug. I take the opportunity to suffocate myself in her soft chest. Hana seems to have the same idea since Ciel clears her throat, a little annoyed, and forces our heads free so that she can see our faces.

"I feel weak," Hana says and dries the corners of her eyes.

"Well… you aren't," Ciel says and pats her head.

"I'd die if I had to take a [Meteor] head-on. I wouldn't even be able to protect anyone against that."

"There isn't a single humanoid who would. Unless you use magic or enchantments to defend yourself, that spell could even kill the emperor." Ciel's fingers run along the red forest of Hana's hair.

Hana sighs. "I know… but we faced something that we couldn't stop and we might have to face it again."

"Then we prepare for it."

Hana suddenly sits up and smiles fearsomely. "Yes! That's it! We need to prepare for it, so that next time I'll be able to stop that molten ball of metal with my own hands!"

"I'd prefer that you didn't actually use your hands to stop it, but I'll allow it," Ciel says as she pats Hana's head one last time. Then she turns to face me and questions me with her eyes without even saying a word.

"I'm still feeling guilty over their deaths…" I whisper.

"Wolfy, I'm going to slap you again," Alissa says, dangerously.

I frown and look at Alissa, feeling a little hurt. "Why are you so against me blaming myself?" I ask.

She hardens her face in a way that I've never seen her show me before. "Leaders sometimes have to make sacrifices and sometimes people die beyond their control. But we are talking about obtuse visions of the future here, not controlled battles. It's just so abstract and vague that if you blame yourself for their deaths, then every leader that came before you should blame themselves for every death of their men. It's just not fair."

"You know a lot about leading."

She chuckles once and gives me a pained smile. "I was trained in leadership and I hated every second of it."

"It sounds like there's a story there," Ciel says to Alissa.

Alissa hardens her face again for a moment. Tail stiff, ears unmoving, eyes as sharp as a hunter's. "I've vowed to dedicate my entire being to protecting Wolfy and making him happy. Thinking that deaths are 'acceptable' goes against everything that I believe."

I sigh and rebury my head in Ciel's bosom.

Being logical about things helps, but it takes so much mental effort to force cold logic to replace wild emotion.

"We'll be here for you. Regardless of what happens, we'll get through this together," Ciel says and then hugs my head.

Through adversity, unity.

The dark and oppressive atmosphere of the High Forest feels rather nostalgic. It's a gloomy and dangerous place, but there's something special about being dwarfed by the colossal forms of nature. I also can't deny that I find it breathtakingly beautiful.

We are moving quite fast with the armored dinghy. It's almost as fast as an Earth car, so our trip should take at most one more day, but I still have a [Gate] "coordinate" outside of Goloria, so we'll use it tomorrow to save us a day of travel.

Before long, the colorful and glowing plants growing from the bark of the huge trees start to appear and our way becomes properly illuminated, allowing us to fly a bit more safely.

"We have to continue killing monsters," Hana comments.

"It's risky to do that right now. After we talk with Confiel, we should have some time to power-level… I mean, to rapidly increase our level," I say.

"Hm," she grunts and nods.

While we fly, Lina molds a small hinge, trying to make it and unmake it with [Manipulate Metal]. It's practice for the final touches of the first metal golem we're making.

There's not much else we can do besides practice our mana training, so joining Ciel and Roxanne, we all do Kyro's routine. Since we are all so close together, the focus is on controlling our mana so that no mana particles escape and we don't get sick from mana radiation.

We teach the golems the mana training routine. They have a lot of problems doing the routine because they still lack mana control.

I also feed Aoi whenever we're resting from our training. It seems that she has acquired a preference for one of the ways that I can feed her.

The meditative state that the training requires puts a band-aid on the wound in my heart. The helplessness and lack of control over my own emotions bring me shame.

I'm the so-called "hero" who didn't stop innocents from dying. I'm not the white knight stereotype that will sacrifice himself to save as many people as possible, but I'm supposed to be powerful, dammit! We were all just a few short seconds from death and there was no way for me to stop that spell!

[Redirect Mana] stopped that one spell from Dawn of Fire once… If I could use it in a safer way…

Gih.

I know it's dangerous, but maybe if I try it with small enchantments or spells, then perhaps I could find a way to weaponize it.

Gih.

I know, I'll be careful.

We stop for lunch and I find some catharsis in cooking with Alissa and Ciel.

Meanwhile, Lina creates chain links and connects the different pieces of the metal golem with it. This makes me chuckle and I feel like I was being silly. Why waste time making proper hinges when the golem itself will most likely use [Telekinesis] to move? There's no need for protective hinges since it doesn't have muscles that limit its movements nor flesh that it has to protect.

Then we sit down and eat our lunch: Brazilian Beirute. Not-pita bread sandwiches with slices of Orc ham, cheese, runny Dragolite egg, not-lettuce, not-tomato, Dragolite egg mayo, and a little bit of harpy not-mustard oil. Also, thick, milky not-grape juice on the side, though Hana's and Roxanne's have a dash of alcohol added in.

"It's a little bit tall," Roxanne says as she struggles to eat the sandwich.

I grab a fork and a knife and use them to eat. "You don't need to eat a sandwich with your hands," I say and smirk.

"Blasphemy," Hana says and scoffs.

"Blasphemy blasphemy," Ciel says with a smile.

"Blasphemy blasphemy blasphemy," Alissa continues.

"Okay, that's enough," Ciel says and shakes her head.

"But isn't it heresy instead of blasphemy?" Lina asks.

Ciel sends her a glance and she smiles in response but stays silent.

We finish our meal and I prepare to give life to the metal golem. It looks rather comical since it doesn't have any details or characteristics. It's almost like a stick figure made out of metal.

I copy Ted's soul the best that I can, but I don't even dare touch the brain part. Then I adapt the "skin" soul organ to something more closely resembling its current shape.

With everything ready, I finally cast [Infuse] and touch the metal man laying on the ground with my glowing hand.

A new effect manifests as I feel my "hold" over it slowly enveloping its entire body. Because the metal man is too big for my hand to hold all of it, it needs time for its soul to "spread" and take control over all of the metal.

Once it's almost done, I feel a sharp pain in my heart and look at my own "Status." My MP is dropping like a rock and when it reaches minus three hundred it stops, but then I fall unconscious.

The sweet, sweet nectar of MP and HP potions enter my body and I awaken, but when I try to sit up, my body doesn't respond.

I'm blind, my ears are ringing, and a headache is pounding through my brain with every heartbeat.

Ugh… overuse… again.

"I can't move…" I say in a weak voice. Even my vocal cords feel stiff and hard to move.

"Sorry, that's the side-effect of the Moonlight Moss MP potion," Roxanne says.

"[Purify Body]," Ciel casts and my muscles relax, but the pain of overexertion comes. "[Refresh]," she casts again and now I only feel slightly tired.

After a few minutes, the side-effects of overuse start to fade and Alissa helps me sit up.

"You did it again…" Alissa says with a disappointed frown.

"Sorry, I guess I was a little too anxious to do this and forgot about the possible consequences," I say and smile wryly.

"Hmph." Alissa pouts and looks away.

It's barely even been a full day, and I managed to disappoint Alissa yet again. Damn, I'm on a roll.

I look at the metal statue in front of me and ask, "Did it work?"

A "metallic" voice, very similar to Ted's answers, "Yes, master. I am alive."

Lina and I squeak in delight and she hugs me tight.

"Alright, time to establish the security protocols," I say and repeat the same rules that I told to Ted and Suzy.

"We need a name," I say.

"Kinzoku," Hana says immediately.

"Why should it be in [Ryuki-go]?" Alissa asks.

Lina's Trivia: That's the dragonkin ancient language.

"Just thought it sounds cool," Hana says with a shrug.

"Jarn. It sounds cooler in [Norvok Language]," Lina says.

Lina's Trivia: That's the dwarven ancient language.

"Then let's go with Metall," Ciel says and holds her hips in a sassy way.

"So you were all just saying 'metal' in other languages?" I ask with a raised eyebrow and they nod a little awkwardly. "How creative…"

"Why be creative if it sounds cool?" Hana asks.

I look at Alissa and she shrugs. "It sounds just like Ciel's suggestion in the ancient [Brume Language]," she says.

Then I look at Roxanne and she just smirks.

"Well… Lina built it and I just cast the spell, so I think that she gets priority in naming this one," I say.

"Just cast a spell from a lost magic school that you yourself revived," Alissa says and now she raises an eyebrow at me.

"Cheater," Ciel says and I lift my hands in surrender.

"Then Jarn it is," Lina says with a cute smile on her gloomy face.

"My name is Jarn," the metal golem says.

"Can you move?" I ask.

"What do you want me to move?" Jarn asks.

"Choose a random limb and flail it."

Jarn's right arm flails so wildly that it hits its shoulder and creates a loud metallic thud that resounds through the forest.

"Stop!" Lina exclaims and Jarn obeys.

"He lacks proper control of his own body and mana, just like the other golems," I say.

"Is Jarn a 'he'?" Hana asks.

"Technically, it's irrelevant. Unless Jarn… 'themself' decides on a sex," I answer.

"I do not have any reason to choose a gender," Jarn says.

Hm… it seems Jarn needs time to look through my memories.

"Master prefers women. We should all be women," Ted says.

"Then I shall become a woman, too," Jarn says.

I knew it. It's really the most advantageous choice because then they can receive the system…

"So, what are we going to do with Jarn?" Roxanne asks.

"Train her in combat. A perfect bodyguard that never needs to rest," Hana says.

"How do you see?" I ask Jarn.

"You would call it 'Spirit Eyes,'" she answers.

"Waait… I can learn this with [Soul Manipulation]!"

"Probably."

Actual eyes on the back of my head!

"How fast can you move?" Hana asks.

"Do you want a demonstration?" Jarn asks.

"Yes."

Jarn suddenly starts to move and turn around with her chains clinking against one another. Then she starts dashing away at a frightening speed. After a hundred meters or so, she turns around and dashes back.

"That cost half my mana," Jarn says.

"Well, shit," I swear and massage my temples.

"Movement gets more mana-efficient with, time," Ted says.

"She has to train her control," Suzy says.

"Oh, good news, then," Lina says and smiles.

"That'll be for later. We have to move…" I say. "Anyway, how long was I out?"

"About a minute. Roxanne's MP potion is very fast," Alissa says.

"Good to know."

Jarn can't stay out since she's too heavy for the dinghy, so I store her in my "Items" for now.

More flying, more meditation, more avoiding monsters, more squadrons going towards Goldport.

A good pastime is watching Klein's Holly flying around. It soars over fields of grass, then flowers, then berry bushes, then pastures for animals. Glorampina is so much safer than even the eastern High Forest, but it's not as much of a rich or productive place in comparison.

For lunch, they stop amid a field of fragrant flowers, then they frolic in the grass until the farm's owner notices them and they quickly run away.

The glowing lights of the plants turn purple as night comes and we land inside a huge tree that seems more like a multi-story building without walls.

As soon as we land, we groan and stretch. We cast [Heal] on ourselves to help with the pain. It was a bit worse than riding a horse since the dinghy isn't as well-cushioned as the horses' saddles were and we had less freedom to move. We also spent more time in it than we did on the horses because we didn't get out to fight anything.

With a few short [Grow] casts, I create walls that will block any light from escaping and potentially giving away our position. I have no idea how the heretics found us, so I'm not taking any chances. I summon three earth and nature elementals each and establish a perimeter with the Hollys.

We prepare the bath and enjoy quite a lot of comfort from not having any humanoid or monster near us for a good long distance. This also means that the girls won't be heard, so I go ham.

-

We eat Brazillian Beirute again because it's light and we're feeling a little sick from the journey. Just like with a car, the constant shaking makes our muscles tired and our stomachs irritated.

After that, we have our usual cuddling time inside our tent. Ted, Suzy, and Roxanne coach Jarn in mana control. I use an earth elemental to learn more about "Spirit Eyes." Lina starts reading about a simple enchantment to create a vacuum inside Roxanne's workbench. Alissa and Hana practice [Mesmerizing Butterflies] again. Ciel and Aoi share fighting tips. Roxanne continues practicing with her [Water Spirit].

Ciel pushes Aoi back with her training spear and Aoi frowns. "I need a weapon," she says.

Ciel nods and says, "Yeah. Those claws are sharp, but they have very little reach. They'll only work against other clawed enemies or if you forgo your personal safety."

"We need weapons for her, then; I won't let her get wounded," I say.

"She needs something special. Her claws aren't the best for gripping and they can easily cut through the shaft of a spear," Hana says.

"Can she use a sword? That would be interesting to see," Alissa says.

"I'm great, so I need a greatsword!" Aoi exclaims and smirks.

Hana chuckles and says, "Not sure you have the 'Dexterity' for that. Halberds or poleaxes are probably your best bet."

"Bru~te!" Roxanne teases.

"So be it! I'm gonna give the heretics my Aoi Smash!" She moves to hit the ground with her fist, but I stop her with [Bind] before she damages the tent's floor. "Oh, sorry…"

"Control your anger. Let it fuel your actions only when you need it," Hana says, sternly and smacks Aoi's head.

"Oww…" Aoi moans cutely and reduces in size to small-Aoi. Through [Bind], I know that she barely felt it.

"Come on, let's continue," Ciel says and Aoi returns to big-Aoi.

I calmly watch them spar and Aoi tries to use a spear, but being bipedal and using her hands to fight is still very awkward for her.

Hmm… My mind space is rather calm…

"Roxanne, I think that I can try another [Bind] now," I say.

"OH! YES!" She shrieks and immediately pounces on me. Her [Water Spirit] dissipates into smoke. "Take control over my body, my master." She pokes my nose with the tip of her finger and kisses my cheek.

"You don't get to call him 'master,'" Lina says with a mocked offense.

"Getting feisty, aren't you?" Roxanne asks with narrowed eyes. "You'll learn your lesson soon enough."

"I'll be waiting…" Lina smirks.

"Right… Uh, I'm doing it," I say and cast [Bind].

I bring Roxanne's soul into my mind space and a fourth "string" appears, then I pull on it and pick up her "blanket" so I can dive inside her mind in search for her "talking area."

The images that I see bring a lot of pain into my already wounded heart. Betrayal, abuse, loss, danger, and loneliness. She didn't have an easy life.

An image catches my attention. Like many others, this one is strong and vivid… too vivid. I see a man that pushes her down with a sickening smile on his face, then he gropes her breast. His head explodes in the next moment and the image goes dark.

I nearly stop and lose myself inside her mind. I shake my non-existent head and try to forget what I saw. This is too personal… but the images still don't give me any rest.

I'm assaulted with images of a stern-looking woman extremely similar to Roxanne, likely her mother. Fear radiates from these images. So much fear that I almost stop and go back.

Then I see a melanistic succubus woman, so dark that she's eerie. She's right on the top level of beauty and sexiness, but she still loses to Ciel and Osaria. There's something very alluring about her, though…

Feeling annoyed at almost losing myself in her memories again, I continue on and manage to ignore the memories of a Goros man that comes after that.

I get a glimpse of a bubbly ginger-like woman with a wide and bright smile. This glimpse makes my resolve falter for a moment and the images of her naked body flood my mind. That's likely to be Mithra, her late fiancée.

I resume ignoring all the images and after what feels like a long trek, I finally reach her "talking area" and immediately pull it back with me. I return to my mind space with her "talking string" and sigh internally.

Her memories are so much stronger than the other girls… Is it her lower "Sanity" at work? Hana's memories have much more "intensity," but they weren't nearly as difficult to push away as Roxanne's.

I wonder how the inside of my mind is, then…

"Roxanne?" I ask her through [Bind].

Her eyes light up and she kisses my cheek again, then she rubs her head against my cheek and her floppy, elastic horns slap me in the face. "Yes~! I'm here!"

Her happiness seeps through the [Bind] and I find it oddly… childish…

"Oh, how innocent your heart is," I comment and feel her pout, but her eyes narrow dangerously. "I can read your heart, you need to control yourself better."

"Easier said than done!"

"Calm yourself and concentrate."

"I think we need a rule against mind conversations," Ciel complains.

"Agreed," Lina says while pouting.

"Sure. Unless there's a good reason for it, then all conversations need to be spoken aloud," I say.

Roxanne takes a little longer to control herself before my mind space starts to return to being calm and quiet again. There is that "itch" to pull on Roxanne's string again, just like with the other girls, but it'll go away in a few days.

Then I continue studying the earth elemental "Spirit Eyes," but I don't make any meaningful progress before we go to sleep.

A note from Manasong

Hall of Fame of Patrons

The patrons who support Rupegia shall have their names sung by the bards for they deserve the glory and honor. Their names are:

Oracle Maximillian Hübner.

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Chapter 58: Meteor - Part 3

A note from Manasong

Attention: I've censored some sections of this chapter that had sexual content, you can read the uncensored version here.

Today is the 4th.

Alissa wakes me up with a mischievous smirk and our day starts perfectly, just like it always should.

Then I look at my "Status" and frown.

"You girls are using me too much," I say.

"I told you he was going to complain," Hana says, lowly.

"But I'm growing! You drink less!" Aoi protests.

"But I'm thirsty!" Hana shoots back.

"Aren't you always?" Roxanne says and kisses her cheek.

"You two need to decide who gets first dibs. This new skill is quite mana-hungry," I say.

"I'm sorry, Hana, but Aoi gets priority this time," Ciel says and squeezes her shoulder.

"Fine…" Hana accepts and pouts.

The reason why it was easier to cast [Bind] on Roxanne yesterday was because my "Sanity" had increased by 1 (now 12+4). I'm improving, though it seems like it's because the world is forcing me to adapt or die, but at least it's progress.

Our breakfast is toast with a selection of pates and not-earl-grey tea. The chilly morning air starts to seep into our tent, so I shut the entrance, and the tea soon starts to heat up our naked bodies.

"This place is so comfortable. I really like it," Lina says, a little wistfully.

"We could easily live in the wild like this. There are plenty of trees that could make for great hidden bases," Alissa says.

"We could just use [Gate] to enter or leave town," Roxanne says.

"Until we are all linked with [Bind], I'd prefer that we didn't split up like that," I say.

"Hm… yeah, we'd be just one 'scrubber' away from being stranded apart," Ciel says with a slight frown.

I nod. "That sort of thing is one of my worst nightmares."

I've read too many novels where portals go wrong.

Alissa pouts, but nods in understanding.

Now that breakfast is done, it's time for us to teleport to Goloria.

With 91 points put into [Mana Efficiency] (the rest being in [Summoning Magic] and [Space Magic] because I can't remove any from them), it costs about 240 MP for about a day's worth of travel for each person, 1680 in total. My MP has increased to 1670, but I still need to keep some summons out, so it's reduced by 1/10th. We decided to divide the teleportation into two groups with a small break between them so that I can recharge some of my mana with [Redirect Mana].

Now that we are so close to Goloria, the area is much safer, so I just pull out the dinghy and, under some light rain, we reach the beautiful white town after half an hour.

The surface of the huge lake below the town is distorted by countless small waves caused by the rain; the cloudy sky nearly blocks out all of the few rays of sunlight that would normally manage to pass through the huge tree crowns; the view through the crystal clear water is now poor enough that we can barely see the outlines of the many pretty fish that we know are swimming just below the surface.

We enter the area of the lake currently cloaked in shadow by the town above, and the sound of the rain is muffled while the surface of the lake becomes calm. The crystals light the way and reflect off of the dark waters, giving us the illusion of being up in space among the stars.

The memories of my boat ride with Ciel brings a smile to my lips.

Then we finally reach the Pillar and fly upwards, which attracts some attention since there are only a few others who are flying like us. The crowds are all either on foot or riding an animal as they climb up or down the spiral.

We skip customs and easily enter the town, then we find cover under a balcony to talk.

"I'd like to know what the people have heard about the attack," I say.

"Right, rumors. I can get on that. The taverns are normally full of gossipers," Hana says with a confident nod.

"Even this early in the morning?" Alissa asks with a raised eyebrow.

"The night shift guards should be getting wasted right now."

"Oh…"

"So, meanwhile, we search for Bastico at the Knight Academy and arrange a meeting with Confiel," I say.

"Who's coming with me?" Hana asks and looks around while smirking.

"Alissa and Roxanne. I can summon both of you with [Bind] if I have to," I say before anyone can answer.

"Ah, Wolfy…" Alissa complains and her tail drops.

I pat her head and give her fox ears a few loving strokes. "You know it's the best choice."

She pouts cutely for a moment, then nods.

With Lina and Ciel on each of my arms, and Aoi on my shoulder, we make our way to the Academy. But before we reach the gate, we change into some more formal clothing and put on our rain cloaks.

Aoi snuggles around my neck and gives me loving licks every once in a while. Gify goes with Ciel since there's no room for her inside my cloak, and she makes my chocolate goddess a little elated at being chosen.

The girls only have open high heels, so to avoid getting their cute and delicious little feet wet in the rain, we use our less fashionable boots. Not that anyone would really mind our fashion faux pas.

One of the immediate changes I noticed is how the elves are not spying on us anymore. Quite the stark difference in the number of stares that we get.

When we reach the Academy, a familiar dark bark wall decorated with golden inlays blocks our way.

We go to the guardhouse and repeat the process of getting my scholar Title verified through an Inspection Crystal.

I flaunt a little and hold Ciel's waist by the ass while I keep Lina very close to me. The guard becomes a little stiff and lets us through with less wasted time than last time.

Being an "arrogant master" stereotype does have it's advantages. Mostly it's about preventing the common people from getting in your way or bothering you with stupid bullshit.

We enter the academy and the feeling of having my [Gate] blocked causes a small amount of fear to take hold of my heart.

Another thing that I rely on too much. One "scrubber" and we are fucked…

Once we are clear of the guardhouse, Ciel grabs my hand and pulls it up. "What are you getting handsy for?" Ciel asks me with a dangerous gaze.

This pulls me out of my fearful musings and I ask with a grin, "Can't I enjoy you in public?"

"Is there nothing that's too far for you?"

"Isn't a public display of love a great way to show how strong my love for you is?"

She scoffs. "You're making lewd actions into 'displays of love'?"

"Why not? I love both your body and your soul, but it's only easy to show how much I love your body," I say and shrug.

She narrows her eyes in confusion. "It's still depraved…" She says, not very sure of herself.

"So what? With the way things are going, soon the whole realm will know of our depravity."

She pouts. "Your argument is logical but I still have some principles."

"Well, sooner or later we are going to corrupt those principles, anyway," Lina says with a shrug.

"Exactly. It'd be better if you started getting used to it now," I say with a nod and we smirk at each other like villains.

"Sometimes I think that I was so naive when I fell in love with you…" Ciel says and sighs wistfully.

"Remember who made me like this," I say.

"Alissa did."

I smirk and glance at Lina, who's also smirking. "And you allowed it."

I lower my hand back to her juicy ass and give it a squeeze. This time she doesn't move my hand.

Walking aimlessly through this stupidly huge academy is not the best idea, so we enter the reception and I talk to the female attendant.

"I'd like to find a specific student of this academy, is there any way you can help me with this?"

"Do you know his year or which classes he might be taking?" The pretty elven woman asks.

"He said he was a spell warrior from the fifth year, but that was before the Turn, so I don't know where he might be now," I reply.

"I see… It's likely that he's on vacation right now, so all I can do for you is send a message to him. What's the name of the student in question?"

"Bastico Rincipio."

The attendant winces for half a second, then she regains control over her face. "Are you aware that he's the son of the Crown Lord of Goloria?" She asks, slowly.

"Yes." I give her a smile.

Her face gets increasingly stiff. "Are you acquainted with him already?"

"I dueled him a little more than a day-cycle ago, then I attended a small gathering with him on that very same day."

The attendant seems to realize something and looks at Lina and Gify, then her eyes stop on Ciel for a moment longer. "S-so you're the one who won a duel against him? Didn't you have a werefox woman with you, too?"

I nod and smirk. "Yes. That was my fiancee and this is my other fiancee." I tap Ciel's ass and she rolls her eyes.

The attendant looks at me and swallows heavily, then she blushes and looks down. "Sir Rincipio is known to roam the dueling pits, even during vacation time, so perhaps you could find him there," she says as her face slowly returns to its natural color and she regains the composure to look me in the eye.

"Thank you for the information. If we don't find him, can we send him a message instead?"

"Yes." She nods and her long ears twitch.

I give her another smile and we depart.

The dueling pits are located near the outer edge of the academy so that the library in the middle is safe from all the noise.

We walk clockwise around the pits. Ciel admires the grandiose architecture while Lina recites some of the knowledge she knows about the "swole" statues like a guide. I take this time to focus on what the other girls are doing.

Hana is drinking with some guards. Like a social butterfly, she seems to always find it easy to start a conversation with strangers. Alissa is unhappily listening to a drunk's sad drivel. He's not being very informative, but the bartender is taking some pity on her and helping her out, so maybe he has more information than the sad drunk. Roxanne is being flirted with by some elven woman. She's not responding to the flirting, but she is letting the woman freely talk about the High Forest as if Roxanne wants to come live here.

Do these women have a gaydar or something or is it just because she's a succubus that they flirt with her?

Well… why not both?

What I'm gathering from Hana's gossiping with the guards is that Goldport is in a complete lockdown while the Templars sweep through the city in search of Wicked or heretics. Quite a few executions of Wicked have already been carried out and the dead bodies are on display at specific places.

This isn't official news, but it's coming from the guards who have a close relationship with the temple, plus, nothing is being suppressed, so there's quite a lot to talk about. Since we know what actually happened, it's easier to filter out the wild rumors and focus on the ones that logically fit with what we already know.

The population is obviously going to get angry that heretics were allowed to cause so much destruction, and there's a lot of difficulty in denying that they used [Meteor], so the Lord is saying that a small army cast the spell to make himself look better. We know the exact number of heretics that participated, but it seems that this info is well buried among all the rumors and no consensus will be reached among the population.

There's quite a lot of Templars in Maoka, so they're going to flood into Goldport in the following days. For probably around a month, the Lord of Goldport will be compelled to stand aside while the Punishers rule over the town.

The thing that leaves a bitter taste in mine and Hana's mouth is that there's no known survivor from the inn. If there is, then they're one of the few in the temple's version of an ICU, or they just ran away in fear.

Roxanne hears about how people are saying that the western Crown Lord stopped obeying the Elder Council, which made the Buscuadores, an army under the control of the Elders that clears the High Forest of monsters, slowly abandon the Western High Forest, leaving the Crown Lord with an increasingly strained personal army who can't deal with all the monsters by themselves. The High Forest has a higher concentration of monsters than many other places, which would explain why they relied so much on the Buscuadores for safety.

This information is then complemented by Alissa's, who hears how the eastern and western Crown Lords are both spending long periods of time inside the Legado dungeon in search of riches and weapons. If Crown Lord Este finds something powerful enough, he could finally solve the situation that the Western High Forest is in. But if the Elders want to retain their hold on power, they won't allow that.

Now that we have a better picture of the situation, we know that this means only one thing: civil war. If Crown Lord Este doesn't bow to the Elders soon, then he'll be forcefully removed, either by the empire or by the Elders.

Some people think that the other lords of the High Forest are the ones plotting against him, while others think that it's the Elders, but why can't it be both?

Alissa frowns and asks, "Why didn't the Elders remove Este the moment he refused to obey them?"

The elven bartender smiles softly and says in a gentle tone, "A Lord deserves more respect than that. He may be beholden to the Elder Council, but he still has a certain amount of independence."

Alissa frowns and looks at her own cup of light alcohol. "While the Elders take their time deposing Crown Lord Este, the population suffers from the lack of Peacekeepers to purge the monsters from the forest."

The bartender's smile becomes a little pained as he looks down at the ceramic mug he's cleaning. "We've all accepted that for order to remain, sometimes people have to die. Even the Tribunal accepts this as they haven't deemed it time to intervene yet."

Alissa grits her teeth. "We've seen villagers who turned to banditry and attacked our caravan because their village was overrun by monsters. What would they say if they heard what you said?"

The bartender frowns, giving wrinkles to his delicate face, making it finally match with the graying hairs on his head. "They would be mad, obviously, and I wouldn't blame them, but at least I'd ask that they take their grievances to the Tribunal and ask for compensation."

Alissa's ears flop in distaste. "Kill Crown Lord Este now and save others from all of these problems."

The bartender's tone turns a little tired. "Kill Crown Lord Este now and create vengeful enemies for later."

"Then you kill them and the ones after them, too. The killing never ends, anyway." Alissa grunts and finishes her drink. "Wolfy, tell the others that I want to leave," she says through [Bind], feeling very bitter.

Roxanne immediately jumps at the chance to leave the flirty elven woman behind while Hana takes a few minutes to say goodbye to her new friends.

They quit going to taverns and hit a tea shop where they can wait for us and eavesdrop on conversations.

It takes us nearly an hour, but we do eventually find Bastico. The pretty and youthful elven boy is having quite an exciting duel with another elven boy nearly twice his size.

Bastico's opponent uses a shield, so his [Fireball]s are getting blocked, but Bastico still manages to slip in a few burns, slowing down his opponent's attacks.

Then Bastico activates his enchantments: [Double Strike], [Double Image], and [Extend]. He lays down attack after attack, landing small cut after cut, and overwhelming his enemy from far enough away that no counter-attack will reach him.

His opponent slips and kneels, then Bastico buries his sword in the taller boy's right shoulder.

"STOP!" The priest refereeing the fight yells and rushes over to Bastico's opponent.

He quickly heals the boy and yells, "I DECLARE BASTICO RINCIPIO THE VICTOR!"

"I ACCEPT… THIS VICTORY!" The taller boy yells, still suffering from pain.

That one will leave a scar.

The crowd cheers and claps.

Bastico [Clean]s his sword, then removes the small protective pieces of armor and returns to the changing room to put his uniform back on.

He comes out looking impeccable and casually makes his way out of the pit while the audience whispers and some of them drool over him.

We wait a little while for the crowd to disperse before we follow him.

"Bastico," I call and he stops.

He turns around with a curious look on his face and then leans back, surprised at seeing us. His surprise quickly disappears and a sly smile appears on his lips.

"Wolf!" He exclaims and struts forward for a handshake.

"We came back, as we said we would," I say.

His eyes dart between the girls and he looks beyond me as he shakes our hands. "You're not with… your other wives?" He asks.

"They are in town, just tending to other business."

"Ah, I see…" He nods in understanding. "Well, I said father would love to meet with you, but he doesn't seem to want to leave that Legado dungeon any time soon."

"Hm. We thought about paying a visit to that dungeon. It sounds quite interesting."

His striking green eyes become serious and sober up any frivolity I had in mind. "Well, then just remember to stay away from Crown Lord Este's men, they are trying to coerce adventurers to leave. I don't know how far they will go."

"Thanks for the warning, but do you really think that we can meet with your father inside the dungeon?"

"It's quite likely because he's also keeping an eye out for other adventurers. Though I'm not sure where he is exactly, if you search for a while you might find some of his men. I'll send word to him so that they'll be expecting you. Also, if you want to meet with me, you can just come by the castle and ask."

"Thank you for your help." I bow slightly.

He smiles and shakes his head gently. "No need for bowing. I'm sure my father and you can work together to great benefit."

He's not saying that I'll work for Lord Confiel, but that we will do it together. A bit more reassuring, but also curious.

"If you'll excuse me. We still have other business to attend to," I say.

"I understand. I'm sure we'll meet again soon." His sly smile returns.

"It was a pleasure meeting with you again, until later."

"Likewise, and until then."

The girls nod respectfully and we depart.

Ciel sighs and groans. "Wow… I think I need Alissa to coach me with talking to nobility. It's just not the same thing as being a helpful shoulder for the commoners."

"I think that I'd rather just surrender control of myself through [Bind]. I'll never get used to all this formality," I say.

Lina puckers her lips in thought. "Well, it's easier to talk with nobles when they are formal because the rules are all known," she says.

"Eh, but it takes a lot of effort in remembering them all," I say.

"For me it's because it all feels so 'unnatural.' It's like wearing a mask and I hate everything about that," Ciel says.

"That's because your heart is pure," Lina says and smiles adorably at her.

"Awn…" Ciel reaches over to pat Lina's head.

"Uh-huh…" I say and give them a wry smile.

Lina's smile becomes impish. "Her heart is pure, but not her mind nor her body," she says.

Ciel rolls her eyes and continues patting Lina.

We meet up with the other girls at the tea shop. They got us a table on the second floor, so we have a nice view down the street of the white town. Even in the rain, this town is quite charming.

"So, I think we'd better go to the dungeon now instead of waiting," I say.

"Nice, we're bound to get into some fighting. It's been a while," Hana says.

"Well, not that long. Barely a vacation, really," Ciel says and smiles wryly.

"It's a lost tomb, so it might be very interesting," Lina says.

Ciel becomes more alert and interested. "What would it look like?"

Lina shrugs. "As far as your imagination can take you. With a mana storm as fuel for the construction, some tombs can get quite… gaudy."

"We have to go to the dungeoneering guild and check where it is. There might also be some information about it over there," I say.

"We'll do it after lunch," Alissa says, excitedly. Her tail wags as she thinks about studying new pictures of monsters.

"So, what are we going to negotiate with 'him'?" Roxanne asks.

I lower my voice so that only Ciel and Lina can hear me while I use [Bind] to tell the others. "I thought about requesting a small favor with the trial; access to their spy network, or whatever they call it; and a promise to help keep us safe from heretics, probably through an oath to the Gods,"

"That's quite a lot. We'll have to work a lot for that last one," Ciel says.

Alissa leans closer and speaks in the same way that I did. "We are a hero's party. The help of someone with a Gift would never be cheap."

"Ah. We should ask for a commendation letter from 'him.' That would easily get the Tribunal to rule in our favor in case things go really bad," Lina suggests.

"With everything we have stacked in our favor, it feels like Katasko is just being desperate with this sham of a trial," Alissa says.

"With how easily Taavi agreed to let us go, I think that their plan has already started to fall apart on its own," I say.

"It was crazy, to begin with," Ciel says and shakes her head.

"Which is why I think it's not the trial that would be a problem."

"Wouldn't the worst that could happen be that we just have to pay a fine?" Roxanne asks.

We all look at Lina and she shakes her head. "I know a lot about history, but not enough about the laws to be certain. So I'd say that it's likely because of the philosophy of the God of Law, but I'm not sure about it."

"And there's always the option of asking for a Seeker of Truth to participate," Roxanne adds.

"We're repeating ourselves; I just can't focus on the trial if I don't get any new information," I say and wave my hand dismissively.

Ciel's expression hardens and her cold stare pierces through me. "So… do you know what 'he' is likely going to ask for in exchange for those favors?"

"Yes."

I use [Bind] again so that I don't have to say it out loud.

"Does everyone agree with this plan?"

They all nod.

We are going to kill Crown Lord Este.

A note from Manasong

Hall of Fame of Patrons

The patrons who support Rupegia shall have their names sung by the bards for they deserve the glory and honor. Their names are:

Oracle Maximillian Hübner.

Prince PreownedFIN.

Lord Andrew Meyers.

Lord Hope.

Lord Samuel Lim.

Lord Bill.

Lord Novgarod.

Lord DJ.

Lord Cidant.

Lord Ashadun.

Lord Michale Erwin.

Lord Joxsan Herrera.

Lord Enrique Peña Gomez.

Lord Vampmire.

Lord Braidborn.

Lord Bakerdea.

Lord Kalsted.

Lord Yeeteris Dedmeem.

Noble Salty Panda.

Nobleman Lassiter.

Noble Evil.

Noble Yamibomb112.

Noble Maurice.

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Chapter 59: Enter the Dungeon - Part 1

A note from Manasong

Attention: I've censored some sections of this chapter that had sexual content, you can read the uncensored version here.

After finishing our morning tea, we fly over to the dungeoneering guild. It's much larger, but also less busy than Rabanara's. Due to Goloria being the birthplace of the golden elves, and being much older than the Shore of Leaves, it has a far longer recorded history of dungeons, so it has more books available to read. But there are also less adventurers here, and it's not a significant source of income for the population, so most of the time, there are very few people who come here.

I approach the attendant and ask for any books regarding the new "Legado" dungeon.

The pretty, mature elven woman frowns and narrows her eyes slightly. "There are plenty of books being written about it, but no consensus has been reached yet, so you'll have to guess the veracity of any information you find at your own risk," she says.

"That's… fine," I say and nod.

Rain pitter-pattering on the windows; comfy, cushioned seats; warmth radiating from a fireplace; and the smell of old books waiting to be read. All that is missing is some coffee and chocolate. Fortunately, there's a specific section where you're allowed to eat while reading and they check all of your books before you go in or out.

We pick out a few promising titles and start reading them while drinking some mild tea and savoring Alissa's Ranja cookies.

Legado is not a normal tomb or dungeon, it's a goddamn gauntlet.

It starts off fine. The first level is a possible recreation of Elaria: dark green grasslands with a hint of a silver shine to them.

The monsters in there are the same as Elaria's: fast, prowling types that lurk in the tall grass; high-endurance types that chase you until your horse tires out; and vulture types, who fly high up in the sky and strike when you show weakness. But they don't bear any resemblance to the current monsters who live there, so while they seem to have basically the same attack patterns, they look completely different.

Then comes the second level, the High Forest. It looks similar, but the way the "tree-knitting" is done is curious: the "patterns" used are much "wilder" and the flora is actually dangerous.

The monsters are also different. The Uspidor is more similar to the Symbol of Envy, a mass of tentacles and eyes, but now it spews acid and corrodes everything it touches instead of petrifying it. They are calling it the Symbol of Decay.

The Watchman Ton is now much more deadly as a ghost that appears when people sleep and stabs their souls. A Spirit mage is recommended to keep it away or heal the soul damage. Such damage is dangerous because it can cause a variety of random effects, from loss of magic to loss of bodily functions to insanity.

Even the Gatuns appear to be much more savage and ferocious than they were before, now behaving like they're completely wild and undomesticated.

"So, I think we can assume that this tomb is ancient," Lina says.

"How so?" I ask.

"Gatuns were made into mounts a few hundred years after the empire conquered the High Forest. Before that, they used Nature mages to make temporary bridges between the branches of their trees since they refused to create roads that could help invaders. After being conquered and forced to make roads, they started using Gatuns to climb up and down their trees."

"What if this is a red-herring? By that I mean, a distracting detail that's meant to throw us off?"

She frowns. "Let's not start speculating just yet, especially if it's going to influence us into forming contradicting theories."

"Look at you, using all those big words," Hana says with a smirk and then assumes a formal posture as her voice becomes more grave. "Indeed, I agree with your suggestion. Let us restrict ourselves to factual evidence and focus only on presuming the meanings of the facts at hand."

"What? What's funny?" Lina asks, a little annoyed.

Hana chuckles and waves her hand dismissively. "It's just funny to use big words, not that it's bad to use them."

Lina doesn't seem very convinced, but lets it go after only frowning harder.

Continuing on, Corpse Stealers now have a symbiotic relationship with other monsters and live inside their bodies. Also, they can now only inhabit the corpses of humanoids, but they can use some of the skills that the humanoids had while they were alive.

A horde of humanoid zombies with some of their abilities intact is quite frightening, but they don't seem to be very effective inside the dungeon since not many people seem to be dying in there.

Miasmatic Gambos are smaller and less effective. They seem to focus on burrowing underground and stealing anything that's not bolted down, making for very annoying enemies if you don't have a Tracker to give you advanced warning that you're about to stumble upon a nest of them.

Feral Goblins are also different. Instead of climbing the trees with curved claws like the Gatuns, they now burrow underground to sleep and can achieve incredible sprinting speeds by running on all four limbs.

Giant Centipedes now have a horn that they try to pierce their foes with instead of just outright trying to eat their prey with their strong, crushing jaws.

There are a few other rare monsters on both of these levels, but we don't know how reliable any of this information is.

After the second level, the gauntlet (presumably) starts. First, there's a (seemingly) random number of arena battles with monsters.

Then we'll be taken to a labyrinthine wooden town where we'll have to find a palace to proceed to the next level. In the labyrinth, there are clues that guide us to the palace, but the information we have access to right now is contradictory so we don't know what to believe.

Nobody has been able to find that next level yet, so both of the Lords are likely still there in the palace.

The authors note how similar the town is to Goloria, then they make speculations on which past lord it was that made this tomb. It's likely that they were from the period of turmoil after the death of the last elven king.

Before that, the elven kings called themselves God-Rulers, so their tombs were always the gaudiest of the gaudiest displays imaginable and they all have one thing in common: a huge statue of themselves at the entrance, clearly exposing who those tombs belong to.

A little before lunchtime, Hana and Ciel look groggily at their books as they compile information with increasing illegibility.

"Wow, I didn't expect you to not find this interesting," Alissa says to Ciel.

The chocolate priestess jumps in her skin and snorts, then coughs as her cheeks redden. "I want to explore dungeons, not just read about them," Ciel says and smiles wryly.

"Fair enough."

I notice that Hana gets a few surprised stares from the few adventurers who come and go. I guess that since she gained her title after coming here, she might be a little famous now.

Then we leave the guild to go have some lunch, for which we settle on an average restaurant. While I know that elven veggies are tastier than the others, I'm sure that having godsdamned tomatoes to make sauces helps a lot in making everything tastier.

We make a quick stop at an imperial smith and buy some simple polearms for Aoi to try using. Not right now, though, but we do buy a wide variety of cheap weapons so that she can choose one to focus on later.

"I'm partial to the glaive," Ciel says with a wide smile.

"Meh," Aoi responds and Ciel's expression cracks.

With all our business in Goloria now done, we leave the labyrinthine and beautiful white town behind and make our way north-west, towards the border between the eastern and western High Forest.

The light rain soon stops and we leave the rain clouds behind as shy rays of sunlight pierce down through the thick canopy of the trees. The comfy smell of wet earth fills our noses and aids me in my meditation as we start using Kyro's practice technique again.

I notice a few small birds with suspiciously intelligent gazes scanning the forest and we do our best to avoid them. Soon after, we start seeing adventuring groups coming and going from that dungeon.

That's something that I didn't miss: encountering other armed and dangerous people in the middle of nowhere.

The groups are few, but a handful of them are also using flying vehicles like we are, which makes avoiding them a little harder if I get distracted and don't warn our driver in time. Because of that fact, we decide to take a small detour so that we don't accidentally stumble upon anyone.

The sun sets and the light of the glowing plants becomes purple again.

We enter another one of the ginormous trees. This one has an egg-like shape and we set up our tent near the top, among the leaves.

Lina and Roxanne look a little worried as they try to read our map.

"You know, the lack of points of reference makes navigating the High Forest a nightmare. I can only guess that we are about two thirds of the way there," Lina says.

"I kept a very stable speed, so we should be able to calculate our travel distance with some degree of confidence," Ciel says.

Roxanne smiles wryly and says, "Well, you kept a stable power output, not speed. Our actual speed can vary due to several different factors during our trip, and those factors could all add up to cause our final position to be very off the mark."

"I still have a Holly following the trail of adventurers," I say and make a line on the map between Goloria and Legado's supposed location, then tap a specific point a short distance beyond the midpoint. "After we took our detour, our distance from her hasn't increased, so I think our calculations are correct. Even if they aren't, we just have to stay close to the line of adventurers to find the dungeon."

"How do the elves orient themselves around here?" Alissa asks.

Lina responds, "The trees are landmarks for them and it's especially easy to orient themselves with help from the trees if they have a Nature mage that can commune with nature. Unfortunately, the information about the landmarks is reserved and is only made available to soldiers. Everyone else is supposed to always stay on the roads."

"Can you help us out, Gify?" I ask.

"Gih," she chirps and shrugs her shoulders.

A city Nature Spirit is different from a forest Nature Spirit, just like we humanoids are, but there's still goodwill between them.

"Well, we don't really need it right now, so let's leave that for later," Alissa says and we nod.

Since today is an even day, it's time for our strength training. We'd fallen into a routine, but now Hana is making us change things up, so Lina and I (and Roxanne, to an extent) have to work harder than normal.

Then it's bath time! And today is Alissa's turn.

I grab her tail and give it a small tug each time as I slam my hips. The brief jolts of pain that run along her spine mix with the pleasure of my magic toy and amplify each other.

Her fox ears droop as she melts in the bath and her worries are scrubbed away through by my ribbed toy.

She grits her teeth and growls, showing her cute sharp fangs.

From my hand, I form a tail that I extend and wrap around Ciel's wrist. "Come help me, hm? She wants a little extra today."

Ciel smiles wryly and gets up, the water running down her curves making them glisten in the soft light while her jiggling makes it rain with every step she takes.

I hold Alissa straight as I continue to play with her and embrace her from behind. Ciel hugs her from the front and presses their chests together. Alissa's perkiness is no match for Ciel's softness, and they quickly become completely enveloped by her bountiful bosom.

Like a thirsty savage, Alissa's mouth latches onto Ciel's and I use [Bind] to guide her tongue, so it feels like we are both kissing her.

As Alissa's will submits to magic, I supplant it with my own, guiding her like a puppet.

Her hand plays with Ciel's parts just the way that I do and that she loves so much.

As I fill Alissa, I slowly bring Ciel to heaven through a proxy.

Alissa's muscles then finally lose all of their strength and she collapses in the water like a defeated warrior.

Ciel looks down and sighs. Then her eyes wander to my multi-juice covered magic hammer with nostalgic warmth.

"What? Not satisfied with Alissa?" I ask.

Ciel cringes and tries to hide it by turning around.

Hm? What was that?

She bends over at the edge of the tub and spreads herself, presenting them to me. I sink my hands into her flesh and enter both at the same time. No ribbing for her, yet.

I use a tail to tie up her arms behind her back and then I give her a tight hug.

"Something on your mind?" I whisper in her ear.

Ciel chuckles and nearly chokes as they get interrupted by moans.

"She doesn't like… ahn… me in the same way that I like her," she whispers back.

"Oh…"

I slow down so that she can talk properly.

She looks at me from the corner of her eye and continues, "Yes… she's yours, body and soul, and I don't know if there's room for anyone else in there."

"Do you want her to love you?"

"Well, yes, she's… a good person. Having a harem for yourself isn't bad, you know, knowing that multiple people love you and all. But I don't think that she'll ever fall in love with any of us."

"What about the others? Do you love them, too?"

"Uh… yes…?" She becomes a little coy and turns her head away.

"That's good. But I don't know what to say about Alissa. She's… special…"

"I know…" She sighs and starts moving her hips back and forth.

I take this as a sign to continue moving and I stretch her further by making my not-real-toy become thicker.

"HNGH! Too big! Smaller!" Ciel pleads as tears start rolling down her cheeks.

"O-oh! Sorry! Hana's a bad influence…" I apologize and immediately reduce its girth.

"In a good way!" Hana complains.

"In a bad way!" Ciel shoots back and chuckles.

I heal Ciel's punished little entrance. It seems that for her, the perfect size to snugly fit her juiciness is a little bit smaller than my normal size. Still, that doesn't detract from the erotic sight of my two milky toys being smothered between her chocolate buns.

Ciel is now done for the night, but I still have a little more appetite to satisfy.

"Roxanne," I call and waddle over to her as I dismiss the extra tool.

"Yes?" She responds and eyes the approaching rod.

"Open wide," I say with a smirk and grab her horns.

She locks her eyes with mine and we warmly smile at each other, entranced in the love and trust seeping from both of our [Bind]s, as I rage her mouth and let loose a continuous stream of down her throat.

As I sit down to relax in the bath, Klein finally reaches the first town in Glorampina.

"Hey, Wolfy, can you let me see how Klein's doing?" Hana asks.

I bundle up each of their mind strings inside my soul space and let them see what I'm seeing.

"That's a nice view," Alissa comments as she sees through Osaria's bird's eyes, who is currently nestled between the milf's breasts. It seems to be Osaria's favorite spot to keep it.

Soon, the caravan starts to hear rumors and one catches Klein's attention. She stops someone and asks them for more details. The name Innocent Nymph is mentioned and she pales.

She makes an innocent sign and her Holly lands on her hand. She immediately covers it with a blanket and whispers to it, "Wolfy, you there?! You okay?! I… I know that you can't answer me, but please be okay…!"

She returns to Este's caravan and tries to hide her worried expression. "If you ever need the mana, please, just dismiss these summons, we'll understand! But if you don't dismiss them, then I'll assume that everything should be fine with you, okay? But… I won't know if the others are fine, too…" She slaps her cheek with one hand and Laertes raises an eyebrow at her. "Just… please be safe…"

Her parents hear the rumors, too, then give her worried looks. She smiles and shows them the bundle in her hand, so they know that we are okay.

Hana sighs and hugs Roxanne tighter. "We ended up worrying her. I feel bad," she says.

"She'll be fine, she's a strong girl," Alissa says.

Klein then discreetly tells Osaria what she heard, and my elven milf starts absently petting her bird. She doesn't say anything, but I know that she's forcing herself to not show any emotion.

For dinner, we make Dragolite parmigiana. Blanched Dragolite meat fried in flour and Dragolite eggs, then covered in not-tomato sauce and topped with cheese and not-oregano.

I'm still weirded out by the purple color of the not-tomatoes, but this is my new life and "adaptation" is the name of the game.

Thanks to Aoi's fire breath, we make a little bit of crème brûlée. The not-vanilla is a bit too expensive of a spice to use regularly, but it's perfect for a simple dessert like this to take some of the edge off.

At night, we do a little bit more of our physical training because Hana wants me to incorporate my [Soul Manipulation] into my [Ekrano Style] as soon as possible.

Sparring with Hana is even more distracting than with Klein because she uses her body to distract me sexually. For her, even when I keep my two Dragonators out, she doesn't seem to care about any form of seduction, but for me it's a narcotic for my eyes just to see her bouncy baby-bottles and dripping lips. I need to look her in the eyes and not get distracted by her "features."

She smirks and her emerald scales flicker proudly. "I've been in control of my sexual desire for my entire life. Seducing me won't work," she says, confidently.

"What if I fuck you while we wrestle?" I ask.

She scoffs. "That would be cheating. If an opponent did that it still wouldn't work because it would be Rape. But you, yeah, it would work."

I lube up the Dragonators and smirk at her.

"Ooh… Come at me, little boy. I'll drain you like a succubus!" She undresses and gives me a fearsome smile.

She didn't. My mana pool is greater than her endurance.

Ciel and Lina wrestle, actual wrestling this time, while Lina practices her [Cursing Magic]. The first spell, [Weaken], reduces someone's maximum "Endurance" and saps their stamina, so it's now much harder to win an endurance contest against her. In a fight between two fully armored and nearly invulnerable opponents, "Endurance" and "Strength" trumps "Dexterity" and "Speed" any day of the day-cycle.

While they rest for a moment, Lina eyes the red and emerald cumrag that was thrown into the corner of the tent, then her eyes slowly gain a mischievous glint to them.

After the cumrag has recovered, she teaches Aoi and Jarn how to fight while I spar with Lina and Ciel.

Alissa starts to cast wisps of [Mesmerizing Butterflies]. There's still a long way to go, but it's the best that she can do for now. Her progress is the slowest because her archery has basically plateaued for a while now, so she's focusing on magic to make up for her shortcomings. She really needs to get more levels and skill points.

Roxanne is making quite a lot of progress with her [Water Spirit]. A few more days and she should be ready to use it in combat.

We sit down to rest and take a quick second bath.

Ciel sits down on the bed with a serious face.

"What's on your mind?" Lina asks.

"Well… it's just that our destiny is a little bigger than what I'd anticipated," she answers with a wry smile.

"Well, a God brought him from another world, so it had to be worth it," Alissa says with a shrug.

"We'd talked about the God of Destruction coming back one day. I was ready for it," Hana says.

Aoi reduces to small-Aoi and energetically scurries towards Ciel's lap. "You are still afraid to die?" She asks.

Ciel smiles warmly at her and pats her blue and scaly head. "Yes, I am."

"Someone has to be. Otherwise, one day, we're all going to get into a stupid situation because we were too fearless," I say.

"Isn't that kind of your job?" Roxanne asks me.

I nod. "Yes, but I wanted Ciel to help me as a second-in-command." Ciel swallows heavily at my words and looks down. "You don't want that?"

She looks at me and her courage slowly comes back as she says, "I… do… I think. I'd like that job, I'm just not sure if I'm good enough for it."

"You are good enough. You just need some more experience," Alissa says and pats her back.

Ciel turns to her and frowns. "How do you know?"

"You've got a good head on your shoulders," I say.

"What he said, but also, you have a good heart," Alissa says.

"That's… enough?" Ciel asks, skeptical.

"Leading is about making the best choices and having the heart to handle the consequences," Hana says.

Ciel raises an eyebrow. "Shouldn't you be the second-in-command? You've likely been prepared to 'be a leader' ever since you wanted to have a harem of your own, right?"

"Yeah, but then I'd also have a trusting advisor because I lack the brains to lead," Hana answers and shrugs.

"So, why don't you fit?"

"I do," she says with confidence and nods. "But overall, you're a better choice. Brains is still the most important and hardest quality to improve, after all."

Lina chimes in, "So for us, who are getting ourselves into the mean little world of nobility, you're the most cost-effective choice."

Ciel turns to Roxanne, who winces and looks away with shifty eyes. "Why don't you fit?"

Roxanne laughs nervously. "I thought it was obvious? I'm irresponsible."

"And a bit crazy," Lina shyly adds.

"Aren't we all?" Hana asks and Alissa nods with a chuckle.

Aoi lifts a claw and asks, "Can you teach me how to lead? I want to lead our children."

Hana crosses her arms in deep thought.

"You'd first need more life experience," Alissa says and smiles at our small Azurite dragon. "Just pay attention to us and ask 'why' we do anything the way we do."

"Kweh." Aoi nods.

I sit down beside Ciel and embrace her in a warm hug. "Anyway. Ciel, you lack confidence in yourself, but even I was an 'advisor' to Lily. She's the one who took charge for most things, but she listened to me, so when she went too far, I pulled her back.

"When I was sent here, I felt very lost and scared, but while fearing for my own life, I learned how to take charge of things the hard way. If I met someone else back then besides Alissa, then maybe I'd have become a subordinate, but I changed.

"So don't worry. You'll slowly change and grow into a fine leader one day."

She holds her arms, still feeling insecure. "We don't have much time to wait for me to grow."

I shake my head. "Don't say that. We'll power through anything and come out of it stronger than before. Through adversity, unity."

I pull her face closer and kiss her cheek. She shakes her head with a smile and sighs. "Fine… I'll trust your judgment."

"That's our girl," Alissa says and pats her head.

Ciel pouts and sighs again.

After some cuddling and playing in our snuggle puddle, we turn off the [Spirit Light]s and go to sleep.

A note from Manasong

Hall of Fame of Patrons

The patrons who support Rupegia shall have their names sung by the bards for they deserve the glory and honor. Their names are:

Oracle Maximillian Hübner.

Prince PreownedFIN.

Lord Andrew Meyers.

Lord Hope.

Lord Samuel Lim.

Lord Bill.

Lord Novgarod.

Lord DJ.

Lord Cidant.

Lord Ashadun.

Lord Michale Erwin.

Lord Joxsan Herrera.

Lord Enrique Peña Gomez.

Lord Vampmire.

Lord Braidborn.

Lord Bakerdea.

Lord Kalsted.

Lord Yeeteris Dedmeem.

Noble Salty Panda.

Noble Evil.

Noble Yamibomb112.

Noble Maurice.

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Chapter 59: Enter the Dungeon - Part 2

Today is the 5th.

Aoi wakes me up and bats her eyelashes sensually at me.

"Oh… you've gained more of the system again," I say as I pat her head.

Soul Info

Name: | Aoi
HP: | 200 | MP | 1010 | Magic Power | 150

"Hey, so she's got a lot of MP, even though she's not very powerful," Hana comments.

"But she's also very young, which means that she has a lot of potential," Roxanne says.

"She's going to need a lot of magical training," Ciel says.

"Once she has the system, my Gift will help her get a boost in power," I say.

"Then let me slurp some more," Aoi asks.

I pat her head again and push her away from my vulnerable member. "I need the mana. You'll have to make do with this much for now."

She gives me a frightening pout. "Then drink more potions."

I smile wryly. "We're entering a dangerous place, so it's better to always keep my mana as high as I can."

"Kweh!" She lets out a slightly annoyed cry.

"Patience…" Hana says in a low and dangerous tone. Aoi folds her wings and remains stiff, trying to get her anger under control.

Lina's [Cursing Magic] increased by 1 (now 0+1). She learned how to properly use [Weaken] so that it doesn't accidentally affect us.

As we prepare our Charcuterie for breakfast, Klein starts to hear rumors about what happened in Goldport being related to the sighting of a pillar of flame coming from deep within the Sea of Trees.

That one is new information to us, so we listen closely. It was deep enough in the Sea that it likely happened in an unexplored area, so nobody knows anything concrete yet.

They seem to just be gossiping about some rumors and wild speculation which are trying to tie the pillar of fire to the [Meteor]s that destroyed the Innocent Nymph, so I tune them out and ignore what they're buzzing about. Yes, where there's smoke, there's fire, but I don't know what exactly happened over there, so it's too frustrating for me to try and piece together a proper theory.

Then we store the tent and continue our trip.

Unfortunately, Jarn is not yet ready for real combat and she's too heavy to ride in our dinghy while we travel, so she gets very limited time outside of my "Items." The golems should start teaching her how to continuously use [Telekinesis] to keep her body light.

By following the increasing number of tents set up by adventurers, we easily find the dungeon. It only takes us a few hours to reach a large gathering of prospective dungeon divers living around the entrance.

A simple wooden door and frame stands in the middle of a rare clearing, receiving direct sunlight. The words "Legado" are carved on the frame, just like it was in Gecynd's vision.

Why did she see this dungeon? Why did I see that vision of "myself" at the same time? It's obvious that they are related, but how?

Feeling an ominous chill run through us, we slowly approach the entrance from above the adventurers.

We see rough people living rough lives and talking about rough things. It's a wild atmosphere, similar to Rabanara's hunter's guild, and it gives me a small amount of nostalgia.

There are a few merchants selling their wares. Just basic things that adventurers might need, like food and equipment.

Quite a large number of the adventurers are staring at the door, too fearful or too weak to enter themselves, but also too curious to not observe whenever someone else dares to go in.

This is the perfect cover for spies that note who is entering the dungeon, so I have no hope in using the Hollys to help spot them in the crowd.

We simply land in front of the door and I store the dinghy in my "Items."

"Everyone ready?" I ask and they nod.

We are tense, but confident.

The whispers explode around us as I reach for the handle and turn it. The door unlocks and I push it open. We cast [Spirit Lights] to see inside and a bare wooden room is revealed before us.

Feeling curious, I look around at the other side of the door frame, but I can only see a closed wooden door.

A dimensional door.

We enter the room and close the door behind us, then the murmuring immediately becomes wild with speculation as the adventurers judge how our party would fare inside.

I dismiss the Hollys and we grab each other's hands, then the ground lights up and our vision goes dark as the feeling of weightlessness takes hold over us.

Suddenly, I'm awake and standing, then I see that we are all together and still holding hands. The harsh sunlight burns my skin and I quickly look away to protect my face from its intensity.

The grass is bright green but it shines silver wherever the sunlight touches it. This is the birthplace of the silver elves: Elaria, the Silver Grassland. But not really since this is all mana solidification and we are still inside a dungeon in the High Forest.

I look around and see only tall grass touching my waist, then I look up and see the blue sky painted with beautiful pillowy white clouds. The bright sun blinds me and I look around us again. There's nothing but grass as far as the eye can see.

I shift in place and frown in sync with Alissa.

"There's something off about this place," we say in unison. We would smile and laugh if we weren't getting increasingly uncomfortable in this place.

The grass seems to always tilt with the breeze in the same direction; the clouds don't move no matter how long we stare at them; and the sun hurts us, making my bones creak and my muscles protest with every movement I make.

"What is it?" Hana asks.

"Everything about this place is odd. It doesn't feel like a perfect recreation of the world," Alissa answers.

I summon four Hollys and establish a perimeter. They can't see anything other than the blue sky above and green-and-silver grass around us. The grass slowly fades into a shade of blue and disappears far off in the distance as the atmosphere gradually hides it from our view.

"Remember that every detail might be deliberate," I say.

There weren't many sources that mentioned these oddities of the dungeon, but the ones who did, now rank higher in my mind since they seem to be accounts from adventurers with high "Perception."

"So, do we go with or against the direction that the grass is tilting?" Lina asks.

I shrug. "Flip a coin? We don't have any information to help us decide how to make this choice, so it's pointless to argue about it until we know more."

"I think that 'go with the wind' seems rather 'silver elf-y,'" Roxanne says.

Ciel stops looking at the horizon and chuckles. "Sure, seems like a good idea."

I shrug again. "Fine with me. Anyone against it?"

Everyone stays silent, so we start walking.

The grass is easily crushed under our boots and the rather soft and resilient earth makes for good footing. Add [Swift Foot] and [Refresh] to this equation, and our hours-long jog barely tires us out.

I notice that the height of the grass is gradually changing, but there are always valleys where it only goes up to my waist (which means that it reaches the top of Lina's chest).

Lina and Roxanne's delicate pale skin requires tender care to not burn in this stupidly harsh sunlight. And so, they wear cute shawls over their armor, leaving only their strikingly beautiful eyes uncovered to look at us, giving them an air of mystery.

Then a Holly spots a monster stalking through the grass, and soon Alissa detects it too. It's a large insect-like monster that seems to have green-and-silver grass growing out of its back. Its eight thin, long and dexterous legs almost trace a line along the ground as it "swims" between the grass blades, causing minimal disruption as it slinks towards us. The front legs have long blades on them that I assume it uses to attack almost like a human uses swords. It's called a Leixe Campi, and its threat level is assumed to be 4.

Alissa closes her eyes and draws her enchanted warbow as some mana leaves her body. She releases the arrow and it whistles through the grass. Then it buries itself in the eye of the monster, but not deeply enough since the grass slowed down the arrow.

A sound like a blackboard being scratched assaults our ears as the monster screeches in pain and increases its speed, completely abandoning stealth and now visibly disrupting the grass as it starts sprinting.

I cast [Lightning Bolt] at the rapidly approaching clump of distorted grass but it doesn't even flinch.

"It's immune to [Electric Magic]!" I yell.

Roxanne casts [Fire Arrow] at the same time as Alissa lets loose another arrow.

The spell whistles past the monster as it manages to dodge it in time, but Alissa's arrow still buries itself in its carapace and causes cracks to form.

Aoi grows into big-Aoi size and stands beside Hana as they wait for the monster to pounce.

Ciel and I cast [Wind Hammer] while Lina casts [Earth Bullet]. We slow it down as we break one of its eight legs and pulverize the carapace, creating an opening for Hana to strike.

The monster tries to parry her spear with its forelegs, but it fails and is stopped in place as the spear slips into its body right through the gap where the dark carapace is missing.

Aoi strikes at the same time with a savage chop of her halberd and splits the monster in two.

Its innards pour out and the front half flails about wildly as it suffers in agony. Barely five seconds pass before all of its energy fades away as it dies.

"Ew…" I mutter.

"Tasty," Aoi says as she licks her halberd.

Aoi eats it like a crab: she breaks open a leg and slurps everything out, leaving the inside clean. If it wasn't raw, then it might look tastier to me.

Not even a minute after that, we spot a large, nearly camouflaged blue-and-white bird flying in circles high above us. Its hovering capabilities are astounding, but it's still not enough to perfectly hide itself in front of the completely unmoving clouds. This creature is called a Sky Stalker.

It's too far high up for any of us to kill it at this range, so we ignore it for now.

Another Leixe strikes and we stop it with a salvo of [Earth Bullet]s and other blunt spells. The golems help, too, and I notice that their mana control is getting noticeably better. Then the disabled monster becomes easy pickings for Alissa since its specialty is only in charging forward, not turning or dodging.

A little before lunch, Alissa lowers herself to the ground and listens carefully. "Hoofed beings are coming," she says and gets up.

"Can you guess how many?" I ask.

She shakes her head. "I only know that a group is coming."

"Well, Holly will spot them, anyway."

After a few minutes, a group of seven animals strikingly similar to Ronti appears in her view. They are silver horses with very long and thin legs that keep their bodies raised above the grass, leaving minimal tracks behind.

Their skulls are conical and their beady black eyes bulge out, giving them a comical look, but their appearance betrays their magical prowess. They can cast spells with Wind and Electric magic, giving them the name Storm Chargers.

"They're coming directly towards us; they know that we're here," I say.

I look at the anti-monster crystal in my hand. It protects us from most monsters, but it also seems to do the opposite sometimes.

Alissa immediately lobs a long-distance arrow at them, and through Holly, I see it getting struck by lightning mid-air, then it ineffectively falls to the ground.

"Yeah, we'll need a strategy against these," I say.

"The info said that they don't go into melee and instead kill their victims with lightning from a distance," Lina says.

Hana grunts in displeasure.

"I could just 'gib' them," Roxanne comments.

"New monsters are valuable, so I want their bodies intact," I say.

"We are very exposed in this place, we need a wall protecting us," Lina says.

I look up and see four Stalkers slowly circling above us, but they're still too far away for Alissa to shoot them down.

Bah. We should've just put in the effort to kill them earlier, but now they're also a threat that can strike at our backs.

I summon two earth elementals. "Everyone, raise a circular wall around us, but leave an opening to funnel them in."

We also put a wide wall in front of the entrance so that they can't look inside our circle and fire their spells directly at us.

Then I summon an electric elemental. A crackling ball of plasma appears, just like those plasma ball lamps. "Watch for the birds above us," I order.

"Why an electric elemental? It'll be useless against the Chargers," Hana questions.

"But not the birds, and it'll gain power from the Chargers."

"Huh."

"I'm still not feeling safe enough, can we make a burrow for us to hide in?" Lina asks.

That will cost a painfully large amount of mana, but I'm not the kind to be reckless, so I allow it.

After a few minutes, the beating of the hooves and the occasional rumble of thunder can be heard approaching us.

"This feels like a lot of effort for a few coins," Ciel comments.

I cringe and give her an apologetic smile.

I see the Charges notice the wall and they split into two groups. They circle around it and find the entrance, then they continue running around our little fortification, growing increasingly restless.

I feel my hair rise and small shocks arc through my body. It's the same spell that the Zinotues, the lightning tigers, can cast. It's called [Charge Atmosphere].

"Get inside the burrow," I say, and a few seconds after that, multiple lightning strikes hit the earth above us.

The Chargers neigh loudly in anger, impatience, and happiness as they think that they've fried us all.

They waste all of their mana charring all the grass above us, but absolutely nothing actually harms us. The electric elemental even gains more power as it captures some of the lightning for itself.

The lightning storm ends and their excitement wanes, then they cautiously start to approach the entrance to inspect the damage.

"Do they eat charcoal? No good meat would be left after that," Aoi comments.

"Monsters aren't known to have fine taste in cuisine," Ciel says.

"Oh, right. That's true," Aoi says and grins.

The first four Chargers get close to the entrance and tap the ground repeatedly in impatience, then they start entering our circle wall.

"Aoi and earth elementals, go after the three outside and we'll deal with the ones coming in. The elementals should go underground towards their targets, then they'll hold them in place when we charge out. From left to right, Hana takes the first, then me, then Lina, then Ciel."

"Kay," Aoi answers and I hear a low grunt from the elementals, who start merging with the earth and moving towards their targets.

From each side, a Charger finally enters and another comes in right behind them.

"NOW!" I yell and we all leap out of the burrow.

The monsters look at the charred grass in confusion, but then they neigh in anger as they see us emerging from the hole in the ground.

Hana flies towards her target, then Aoi jumps off of her shoulders and grows while holding her halberd and shield in each claw. The three of us dash towards our targets in a shield line and I activate [Dead Zone] on my enchanted shield.

Ciel's little [Holy Spirit] glows so brightly that it blinds the monsters, but for us, it only gives inspiration.

Roxanne throws a [Fire Whip] that holds mine in place. Alissa's arrow flies over Lina's head and sinks into the flank of her target Charger.

Hana reaches her target first and drives her spear through its heart, then she draws her sword and chops at the back of its neck. Her aim is perfect, so it will die after just a few seconds.

The elementals raise the earth around two Chargers while Aoi lands on the last one with a savage chop that embeds her halberd deep into the spine of the monster. It falls to the ground, wailing in pain as it shoots wild lightning bolts in every direction. Aoi activates [Dead Zone] and scoffs at it.

We reach our targets and strike. Lina easily crushes her Charger's legs, then pulverizes its head; Ciel slices through the throat of hers, then uses the [Dead Zone] of her shield to protect herself from its counterattack; I drive my sword into my target's heart and chop at the back of its neck, embedding my sword in its flesh.

Hana flies away to help Aoi. Lina helps Ciel and crushes the monster's delicate legs. I let go of my sword and cast [Earth Bullet] at its face to knock it out.

Aoi grabs the long face of her target and gives it a sharp twist, snapping its spine.

I step back and wait for mine to bleed out while Lina and Ciel finish theirs.

Hana lands on one Charger and cuts open its throat with her sword while Aoi bashes the head of the other one with her shield.

After waiting for only a few more seconds, they are all dead.

"YAY!" Aoi exclaims, then both she and Hana flap their wings with happiness.

I immediately collect the bodies as the girls clean the gore off of their weapons. With a bit of difficulty, Aoi retrieves her halberd and cleans it with her tongue.

Hana crosses her arms and nods proudly as she says, "Aoi, the Blood Drinker."

"And the Cum Guzzler," Roxanne adds.

"Oh… I'll get Titles one day, too!" Aoi exclaims, excitedly.

We quickly [Clean] all the blood off of our gear and I dismiss the elementals.

"Okay, these shields make everything easier," Ciel says and pats her shield.

"Didn't you use one back when you were a Templar?" Alissa asks.

"I wasn't part of the front line, so no. They were too expensive for my role, and I hadn't worked long enough as a Templar to save up the money to buy one for myself."

I look up and see that there are now five Sky Stalkers flying above us. I summon a Kite Dragon and two Needler Harpies. A flatworm-type dragon and feather-throwing harpies.

"Get them," I order and point upwards.

Both of my summons lack the firepower to bring down these huge birds. The Kite Dragon strikes, but its attacks are narrowly dodged. A few feathers are ripped and superficial wounds are inflicted, but the birds manage to keep it away with their magic. The harpies engage in a long battle of attrition with the birds since each side lacks the firepower to properly hurt the other.

"Well, it seems that they're at least keeping each other busy," Roxanne says with a shrug.

"It's still a bit of a waste of mana, though," I complain.

The birds finally decide to disperse just before lunchtime. They seem to be easily startled, but they'll soon be back, and in greater numbers.

I've noticed that the sun hasn't moved from where it was when we first saw it. It seems to be suck at the 9 o'clock position.

I summon a few spirit elementals and have them patrol around us.

The smell of meat cooking and veggies frying brings a calm over me as I sit in the chair outside of our tent and enjoy the fresh breeze. I double-check to make sure that our anti-scent stone is working. The last thing we need is to have every starving monster on this level coming towards us.

Endless green, silver, blue, and white; a soft smell of grass and earth; a crisp breeze that constantly tickles my skin; the low rustling and humming sounds of the grass. If only I could take off all of my armor and enjoy nature in the nude.

Alissa leaves the golems and the summoned goblin to finish cooking our meal and comes out to sit with us.

Her ears flick as she seems to get uncomfortable about something.

Roxanne absentmindedly undoes the ties of her robe and Ciel suddenly stops her while frowning.

I turn my head towards Alissa, then I feel a horrible sluggishness take hold over me, making my every moment become slow. I summon all of my energy and slap my cheek, then yell, "CRIATUA!"

Threat level 3.

Roxanne groans and the girls all slap their own faces to fight off the effect.

We stand and draw our weapons, then we fall into a circle formation.

The golems stop cooking and turn off our magic stove, then get ready for battle.

A rustling comes from the grass surrounding us and a high-pitched yell nearly makes us go deaf as a disgusting little thing jumps out of the grass and pounces on Jarn's head.

The mini-goblin frantically claws at the steel helmet but only leaves some light scratches on it. Jarn grabs it and crushes its neck. Just like a squeaky toy, it chirps like Gify and dies.

"Gih," Gify chirps, totally not like the Criatua, sounding offended at my thoughts.

Ciel smiles and shakes her head at our antics. Then everyone relaxes and sits back down in their chairs.

I store the Criatua in my "Items," and sit down, too. The odd humming of the grass is now gone.

"So, there is a humming when it attacks," Lina comments.

"I smelled something 'fresh' and it came from the monster," Alissa says.

I re-summon my spirit elementals and order them to search for the humming and pay attention to the smell. Before long, they find another Criatua creeping closer to our camp.

We continue our walk/jog through the grass and finally find a crystal clear lake, the entrance to the next level.

I look up and see ten Sky Stalkers circling above us. "Increase speed," I say and summon the Kite Dragon and Needlers again. More are going to find us the closer we get to the lake and they will definitely attack this time.

Five Chargers arrive at the other side of the lake to take a drink.

Great, now all that's missing are a few Leixes.

The fight starts and more Sky Stalkers take off from the lakeside and join the ones flying above us.

A spirit elemental detects a Criatua and I fire a [Lightning Bolt] towards it followed by a few [Earth Bullet]s. The monster gets mortally wounded and screeches, torturing our ears. Alissa fires an arrow towards the source of the screaming and silences it.

Holly detects two Leixes coming towards us, and soon Alissa does too.

"Stop!" I order.

"Aim!"

"FIRE!"

With the help of the two small golems, we crush the two Leixes and make them easy targets for Alissa. Then I summon two young Orc Strikers to retrieve them for me.

The Chargers see us coming and start neighing loudly in anger. Lighting crackles along their bodies as they launch into a dash towards us.

"Surround Roxanne and Alissa!" I order and we turn on [Dead Zone] all around us to protect the girls. I think about pulling Jarn out and giving her a shield, but I'm not confident enough in her combat skills yet.

The flying summons start to get overwhelmed by the number of Sky Stalkers, so I summon an electric elemental to protect us from the monsters above us.

The Orc Strikers come back and I unsummon them, recovering most of the mana spent on them, but with this many summons out, I'm still a little concerned about the amount of MP that I have left.

Still a few minutes away from the lake, the Chargers reach us and start throwing lightning attacks. It may be a waste of their mana, but defending against their attacks is also forcing us to waste our mana, which is much more precious than theirs.

The electric elemental suddenly shoots a bolt of lightning and fries a Stalker, which falls dead onto the ground in front of us.

"Perfect!" I exclaim.

"Greedy little man!" Ciel yells.

A Charger gets closer, trying to trample me, but [Wind Shield] keeps it away and I shoot an [Earth Bullet] at it, which nearly gets blown away by its protective lighting strike, but still wounds it badly enough that it retreats.

More Sky Stalkers fall down around us, killed by the elemental. Then the Needler Harpies die.

"Roxanne, thin them out!" I yell.

She uses an [Explosion] on a Charger and the others retreat even more, making it harder for her to aim at them properly.

"Jump on my back!" Hana yells and Roxanne obeys. Now our explosive butcher can focus on taking out Sky Stalkers or wounding the Chargers without risking falling on her face.

She points her staff, which now looks as threatening as a loaded gun, and casts.

A Charger falls, but doesn't die, so it intensifies its attacks and burns through our mana even faster until we finally leave its range.

The thrill of running away and the feeling of our invulnerability from the monsters' attacks is so intense that it's addictive, but a mere thought about the memory of the [Meteor]s is enough to sober me up.

Then we finally reach the lake and Roxanne casts [Water Breathing] on all of us. I store the toy golems away and Gify pops out of existence.

"Gih," she chirps as she leaves. Apparently, she still has to dry herself off when she gets wet, but she'd rather not have to do that right now.

Our mana is slowly chipped away as we reach the shore and the Kite Dragon dies. The wind magic of the Sky Stalkers caused it to suffer a death by a thousand paper cuts as it gradually bled out.

We enter the water and the electric elemental floats above the surface. We ensure that we are fully submerged before we finally stop. Then we look up and laugh at the cloud of Sky Stalkers swarming above us.

The remaining Chargers neigh in frustration and shoot lighting wildly in our direction, but they have no effect thanks to our [Dead Zone]s, and the electric elemental diverts anything that could actually threaten us.

We sheathe our weapons and awkwardly walk underwater to the bottom of the lake where another dimensional door awaits us.

Elaria is clear. Next level: the Ancient High Forest.

A note from Manasong

Hall of Fame of Patrons

The patrons who support Rupegia shall have their names sung by the bards for they deserve the glory and honor. Their names are:

Oracle Maximillian Hübner.

Prince PreownedFIN.

Lord Andrew Meyers.

Lord Hope.

Lord Samuel Lim.

Lord Bill.

Lord Novgarod.

Lord DJ.

Lord Cidant.

Lord Ashadun.

Lord Michale Erwin.

Lord Joxsan Herrera.

Lord Enrique Peña Gomez.

Lord Vampmire.

Lord Braidborn.

Lord Bakerdea.

Lord Kalsted.

Lord Yeeteris Dedmeem.

Lord D4rk Sheep.

Lord Nevarec.

Noble Salty Panda.

Noble Evil.

Noble Yamibomb112.

Noble Maurice.

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Chapter 59: Enter the Dungeon - Part 3

A note from Manasong

Attention: I've censored some sections of this chapter that had sexual content, you can read the uncensored version here.

We enter a familiar bare wooden room filled with water. Then we close the door and all hold hands. The floor lights up and I lose consciousness.

I wake up, still standing in the same position, just before thousands upon thousands liters of water flood across the floor and push us away from the center. We easily hold our grips against the tide and stay together, then we start taking in our surroundings.

It's the High Forest, but the ginormous trees aren't as tall here and the countless branches that make up their "trunks" aren't arranged in the usual tidy patterns, but instead, they grow wildly in all directions. Most of the trees have some elven-made artistic arrangements using some of the branches, but at least half of the branches that make up these huge trees are still "wild."

The glowing plants display their usual variety of colors, so we know that it's currently daytime, but the wilder canopies block even more of the sunlight than the current High Forest does, so it almost feels like nighttime to us.

"Nothing like a brief jog to get the blood pumping," Hana says and sighs wistfully.

Ciel smiles wryly and adds, "The thrill of being chased isn't that bad, either. But I did feel safer with our setup this time since we're currently invulnerable to magic. Being chased by the Symbols of Envy wasn't nearly as fun as this was."

But the others aren't feeling quite as chipper as her.

Roxanne groans and complains, feeling a little dizzy, "Everything in this dungeon is uncomfortable, even the teleports."

"How long were we passed out? It feels like I just woke up from a full night's sleep," Alissa questions.

"I didn't look at the watch before we entered, so I have no idea," I say.

Lina frowns as she walks out of the wet area around us. "The air is stuffy and stale, and the ground is all mushy," she complains.

"More than the usual for the High Forest?" Ciel asks.

"Yes."

"The clouds aren't moving," Alissa comments while looking up at the sky through one of the few holes in the canopy.

"There are no 'statues' in the trees of the High Forest," I comment and point to a lewd statue of two elven men sharing some butt-love.

"What a shame," Roxanne says and adjusts her glasses to see it better.

We start drying ourselves off and I reestablish the perimeter with the Hollys. The only areas that didn't get wet were our heads because of the [Water Breathing] bubble.

I send one of the Hollys up above the canopies so that she can search for a mountain range. That's our target.

This level and the one before it are thought to loop on themselves. You can pick any direction and one day you'll reach the mountain range. Then you can pick the opposite direction and you'll eventually end up on the opposite side of the mountain range again.

This level only has one exit, but Elaria's level has multiple. We thought that the tilting grass was a clue to the direction of our target and it seems that we were right.

"Every detail is a clue," I comment absentmindedly, then I get an idea. "Lina, do you know if the glowing plants here are any different from those you can find in real High Forest?" I ask.

She stops, butt naked, and looks towards the plants. Her lithe and pale body shines in the few rays of light as she scurries over to a plant. Ciel follows her and casts a [Clean] to finish drying her off, making the little girl shiver all over and moan cutely. Then she spends a few intense seconds looking at the glowing plants.

"No idea," she finally answers, flatly.

Ciel chuckles and shakes her head, then walks away and continues drying her clothes.

There's a small spot where the sunlight hits the surface of a flat, giant root, so I pull out a carpet so that we can all sit there while we dry our clothes. The padding of our armor is the most annoying part to dry because of how thick it is.

Gify decides to reappear on the carpet so that she can take a short nap in the sun.

I lick my lips as I watch Lina's cute little ass shake as she dries her cute little panties. I slowly and silently place my clothes on the carpet and stalk towards her.

I cover myself in black fur and grin like a maniac.

Innocent and distracted, the gloomy little angel pays no attention to her surroundings and doesn't notice the approach of the big bad werewolf. The monster is not known to spare any mercy for his prey, so only a terrible fate awaits this pure beauty.

The evil monster suddenly pounces…

And lands right in front of the raven-haired angel, briefly startling her.

He grins as she takes a step back and covers her mouth with her own panties. She notices what she's doing and quickly switches the panties for a simple shirt, now blushing heavily.

The werewolf's dark, evil eyes sweep over her entire body with a lecherous and slimy gaze, defiling her with a mere look.

"What is a pretty thing like you doing here, all alone, in this evil forest?" The werewolf asks. His voice is a low growl, full of intensity, yet he still shows absolute control over his own emotions.

The gloomy angel tilts her head cutely, not understanding the question at first, then it dawns on her and she averts her eyes downward, suddenly scared of the werewolf's implication.

"I'm merely drying myself, I'm about to leave," the angel answers in a crystalline voice, so perfect and innocent that it would give an erection to any evil men that hear it.

The werewolf may not be a man, but he's evil, and his long, thick, pink monstrosity emerges from its sheath like a weapon being drawn. Her current nakedness makes her feel threatened by it, as if a sword is being drawn against her neck, but it's only a penis.

"Leave?" The werewolf asks as he frowns in worry. "Oh, but this forest is full of dangers. Big, evil monsters that would make such a little girl like you bleed from every orifice and any new one that they open."

Then the werewolf grins from ear to ear and his eyes bear such an intensity that the girl's legs start to tremble under his gaze.

He chuckles slowly, savoring her fear, then continues, "But you see, I'm a guardian of this forest. I can keep you safe, if you pay the price."

"W-what is this price?" The angel asks but she doesn't really want to know the answer.

The pink monster touches her lips and a peculiar smell invades her nostrils. "Let me play with you for a short while."

The angel doesn't want to do this, but the manly scent of the werewolf invades her mind and takes control of her. Her innocence crumbles and she surrenders to lust.

She desperately bobs her head, trying to quickly bring an end to this disgraceful situation, but the werewolf stops her and shakes his head.

"No, no, no. That won't be enough. It seems that I'll have to use your other hole."

The angel's little hand can barely wrap around half monstrosity, so how is it going to enter her tight entrance?

The answer: not easily.

With a generous application of lube, and being aided by the shameful juices of the angel, the monstrosity finally breaches the gates and the angel falls silent.

Disgraced, corrupted, and defiled. The angel is used like a mere doll by the werewolf.

Her toes curl, but quickly go limp as her mind goes blank.

She sings in such an innocent and perfect high-pitched voice that would make evil men shoot it out just from hearing them, and this wolf is one of them.

To her relief, he finally vacates her, but then more comes out, tainting her whole body.

He lets her fall to the ground like a used doll and cackles an evil laugh, then he walks away and leaves her splayed unconscious on the forest floor as a Symbol of Obscenity. This time, she was spared the worst of the wolf's lust, but not for long.

The wolf will honor his words, though. She'll always be "safe" near him, but that doesn't mean that she won't be defiled again. The wolf doesn't see this treatment as a bad thing, but instead considers it a service for her. After all, she's the one being fucked senseless.

Alissa claps excitedly. "That was amazing. Excellent performance!" Her claps have a bit of stickiness to them with her own lewd juices coating her fingers.

"I just [Clean]ed her, you could've at least shot it at Hana," Ciel complains.

"Or me!" Aoi exclaims and starts to eagerly clean Lina's body.

"Not sure if that was acting or actual fear," Hana says.

"They say that the best actors fool themselves into genuinely feeling their character's emotions," Roxanne says.

"Well, I wouldn't want to be an actor in a romantic drama, then," Alissa says.

"Now it kind of makes sense why actors come to the temple so often to pray," Ciel says.

Aoi quickly cleans Lina's skin, then her dexterous tongue cleans the insides too. She also gets a little bit more out of Lina as a reward for a job well done.

While we talk and get dressed, Holly finds the mountain range, but also encounters something unwanted: adventurers. It's not just that we'll have to meet up with dangerous people, it's that their continuous presence there means that there will undoubtedly be a few Weepers nearby.

We sit down to meditate and recover our MP through [Redirect Mana] while I think it through. Recharging mana this way is tiring and not very good for our mana organs, so I'm trying to avoid it whenever we can recover our mana by other means.

I don't want to spend a night here near the Weepers. In this dungeon, their modus operandi hasn't seemed to change, not that many people have confirmed it, but their intensity definitely has because everyone is near or going towards that mountain range.

"We found our target, let's move. I want to get there before night falls," I order.

"Can't we just sleep outside the dungeon with [Gate]?" Roxanne asks.

"I'd prefer not to use mana for that."

The lazy succubus seems a little annoyed, but accepts my reasoning.

Not long after we restart our jog, a Giant Centipede comes directly towards us. Its long and sharp-looking horn is tainted with blood and green mucus, proof that it has killed before.

I frown as I glance at our anti-monster crystal. Monsters seem to acquire resistance to this crystal with age, and in a dungeon filled with monsters that haven't been properly culled for a long, long time, it seems that there's a large number of old monsters roaming around.

The horned monster lowers itself to the ground and its hundred little legs give it frightening speed. But like most stupid monsters who can only rush in a straight line, Alissa blinds it quite easily with her arrows.

"Wolfy, sync us!" Hana asks.

Through [Bind], I guide Hana and Aoi to fly in sync, then they land on the Centipede and strike the head of the monster with their polearms at the same time. The poleaxe and the halberd crack through the shell of the monster and bury themselves deep into its head.

With a grunt of effort, I make them both use all their strength to pull their weapons free while Roxanne prepares an [Ice Lance]. With its path unimpeded, the thick stake of ice goes straight through its brain and cracks the carapace at the underside of its head.

The giant horned monster didn't stand a chance.

"Woo! Awesome! Level up!" Hana exclaims and the girls cheer.

I get a little bit dizzy from all of their emotions heavily flooding into me and immediately release their "strings."

"Wolfy?" Alissa asks worriedly as she steadies my shoulder and supports me, not that I was about to fall.

"Using [Bind] that way was a little more straining than I thought it would be. You girls have to be more in control of your own emotions. Otherwise, I'll get into a blood rage, just like you."

"Oh, shit. Sorry, Wolfy," Hana apologizes.

"Okay. I'll be better," Aoi says with a nod.

"We have to practice fighting with [Bind] more," Ciel says.

"Agreed," I say with a sigh.

Another thing to add to the list… I feel like those xianxias with training arcs that last for decades aren't that far from the truth…

Then a black sludge starts to seep out of the monster's joints and the girls move away from the corpse so that Alissa has a better shot.

A number of small blobs of dark slime form under the Centipede's corpse and Alissa pops them one-by-one. The rancid smell of dead Corpse Stealers is strong enough that even my anti-scent stone won't be able to deal with it, so I store the Giant Centipede and we continue quickly jogging towards the mountain range.

Soon after, we encounter a group of five zombie adventurers making their way towards the mountains. Feeling pity for them, we decide to put them out of their misery.

The mage and the archer fall to Hana and Aoi's synchronized attack, putting much less strain on me this time as they manage to control themselves better.

Before the three front line fighters can react, I slice off a leg at the knee from the lightly armored man while Lina crushes a knee of the more well-armored one. The last one is a spearwoman that Ciel attacks, but she doesn't manage to wound it with her first strike.

Mine and Lina's opponents flail about wildly, trying to crawl towards us to attack, but we just stay away and easily keep them at a distance while we wait for their burst of anger to fade. A cornered and desperate enemy is more dangerous than a cautious one.

Alissa's arrows are ineffective against these zombies unless she can fire at their chests, so Ciel has a quick bout with her opponent while Hana and Aoi spend a few seconds flying around for a flanking attack.

Ciel tries to go for a disabling wound, but the zombie's burst of speed is enough to make her cautious. The Corpse Stealers try to use minimal energy while traveling, making them look like shambling corpses, but when it's time to fight, they have speed comparable to a living person.

The female elven spearman gets her leg pinned to the ground by Hana while Aoi decapitates her, but that's not enough to make her stop moving.

Ciel sinks her spear into the zombie's chest and the Corpse Stealer struggles within.

"[Judgment]!" Ciel casts and the blade of her glaive glows, then flashes. The sound of searing flesh can be heard as the Corpse Stealer stops struggling and liquefies, then slowly seeps out of the zombie's body.

My target stops flailing, leaving itself exposed. After a short cast of [Discharge] followed by a quick stab to the chest, the Corpse Stealer starts bleeding to death.

Lina breaks the arms of her target then caves in his chest, nearly squashing the monster inside and allowing for Alissa to fire an arrow at it.

While the last two Corpse Stealers are still dying, we pile up the pale corpses and Roxanne casts a [Firestorm] to cremate them.

Their equipment is tattered and lacking in maintenance, so we don't even think about salvaging anything. The most valuable things they had on them would've been their potions and coins, which were most likely dropped where they died, but we don't feel like searching for them.

Through my perimeter Hollys, I spot a ramp that takes us up into the canopies of the trees and onto a small network of walkways that reach between them. They appear to be crude platforms of bark grown directly out of the trees.

It beats walking around the tangled mess of roots and mushy earth down below, so we climb up the ramp.

We're met with a nest of five Feral Goblins who decided that sleeping among the leaves was better than burrowing in the ground and we quickly dispatch them. Now that all of the girls have ranged magic, nothing but armored foes can even get close to us.

At least these goblins didn't have Corpse Stealers inside them.

Then an Uspidor swings by and Roxanne requests that we take a small detour to kill it.

How do you kill a mass of tentacles and eyes without damaging them too much? With a big "fuck you" icicle, that's how. Now, the challenge is: how do you get it to stay still long enough for Roxanne to hit the damnable Weepers' dream? You just pin it in place with anything that you can.

"Hm… maybe coming up onto these walkways wasn't the best idea," I comment as I look around at the dangerous sections that lack railing.

"You think?" Lina asks, slightly flippant.

"Sorry," I say as I cringe.

We approach the Symbol of Decay/Uspidor and I summon two metal dragonoids with spears.

The messy ball of tentacles swings about casually, totally unaware of us, so I disable the anti-monster crystal just in case it decides to go away.

We stop at a wide area of the walkway that seems secure enough for the fight and Alissa moves ahead.

I use a little mana with [Grow] to raise small, camouflaged barricades for us to hide behind.

After a minute or so of marching, she gets her eyes on the monster, spotting it as it swings through the branches. Even when I look through her eyes with [Bind], I find it rather difficult to see the monster. It's not just [Hawk Eyes] that allows her to notice it, but she also has experience with tracking the most minute movements at the edge of her vision, and using those small glimpses to correctly identify her target since she can't rely on [Sense Presence] for everything.

She leans close to the edge of the walkway and takes a knee. Her eyes lock on the target, hidden behind leaves and she nocks an arrow. Then she spots a clearing ahead of the monster's path. She leads the target, draws the bow, and fires at the clearing.

I finally get a good view through her eyes as a blotched ball of tentacles receives an arrow in one of its many eyes.

"KIEEEEH!" It screeches in pain and anger, then immediately changes its direction, now swinging towards Alissa.

She races back to us at full speed and it doesn't take long for her to run past us. The monster lands on the walkway and uses its many tentacles to run with a freakishly alien gait that makes the Leixes look "normal."

"NOW!" I yell.

Alissa stops and launches another arrow; the dragonoids jump out of the foliage from each side and thrust with their spears, pinning the monster to the walkway; Hana and Aoi jump up from behind the barricades and launch themselves forward for a savage dual strike with their poleaxe and halberd; Lina and I fire [Earth Bullet] after [Earth Bullet]; and Ciel stands in the middle and holds it back with a massive [Wind Hammer].

The squishy ball of flesh is flattened like a rubber ball, then pinned to the ground by the dragonoids. Hana and Aoi chop off a few limbs, but Aoi takes a step back and activates [Wind Shield] because the monster's counterattack is too strong for her to handle.

A tentacle tries to whip at my azure dragon, but it comes so slowly and awkwardly that she turns off the [Wind Shield], then snaps at it and bites it off in one clean move.

Tentacles wrap around the dragonoids and they start to melt, despite their metal armor.

The wood that the monster is pinned to starts to sizzle and melt, loosening its binding spears from the walkway. The dragonoids remove their armor and create another pair of spears, then they use them to bind it to the walkway again. Then they remove the loose spears and stab once more, rebinding it at the cost of their bodies, which start to melt from the touch of the Symbol.

Alissa pops all of the eyes on its front, and now only a single one near the bottom is left facing us. Alissa's view of that last one is blocked by Hana, so there's no easy way to blind it.

Roxanne's mana starts to spiral out of control as a person-sized ice stake starts to float up from behind her barricade.

"Retreat," I order through [Bind].

"[ICE LANCE]!"

Aoi and Hana jump backward and fly away at the same time as the huge stake shoots off at a nearly instantaneous speed and impales itself right through the middle of the Symbol's body.

The ball of flesh becomes an eldritch donut and it starts to wiggle wildly. Its limbs lose their strength and it falls to the ground, then after a dozen or so seconds, they stop moving at all.

"It's dead," Alissa says.

"Nice!" Roxanne exclaims and rushes towards the monster. She pulls out a silver flask and scoops up some of the slime, then immediately starts to observe it with her enchanted glass piece. "Oo~h… this is a rare mana signature!"

"It might be pretty valuable, then," I say. Then I see Roxanne's glasses glint as she stares at me with wild eyes. "But maybe we don't need to sell it," I hurriedly add on, a little nervously.

"Yes, we don't," Roxanne says, flatly.

Then I store the monster's body before even more precious fluid is wasted.

The trails we left of our footprints, the sounds of battle, and the smells of dead bodies attract a different danger.

A clowder of Gatuns makes their way towards us, quickly. Ten little murder kitties are coming over to play.

I pull out the dinghy and we get ready to fly away, but first I want to try something.

We pull out our Christmas wreaths that Gecynd gave us and hang them on our necks, then we wait.

The first black kitty finally sees us and slows down, looking a little confused. Then the others follow and stop.

The biggest kitty leaps out of the pack and lands in front of us. It growls in suspicion, but curiosity killed the cat, so it endangers itself to satisfy its impulses by coming closer.

Ciel looks a little worried since she was bitten by one of them once before, and I don't blame her.

I pull out a small piece of raw meat and throw it to the cat. Its angry scowl and sharp eyes are immediately replaced by a dreamy-eyed cat, purring happily as it chews on food.

"That was fast," Hana comments.

"These necklaces help a lot," I say.

The small piece of meat is quickly eaten and its demeanor towards us changes completely. It elegantly sits in front of us as its tail lazily wags near the ground.

"Awn… it wants to be our friend…" Alissa says, easily reading its feelings through the enchanted necklace.

It meows loudly, in agreement with her words.

We get out of the dinghy and the other curious kittens come over to investigate.

I share some of our meat with the girls and we feed the Gatuns. With them all a little happier, we get to move closer and pet them.

The big kitty rolls over for me to pet its belly and I squeak internally. "Who's a good murder kitty? Huh? Who's a good murder kitty? Yes, you are, yes you are," I say in a baby voice as I pet it.

The kitty can somewhat understand the meaning of the word "murder" and it takes pride in being a monster killer. It purrs loudly, sounding pleased at the compliments.

Lina and Alissa chuckle at my silliness, but what can I say? I'm just a pet guy who misses my two dogs very much.

Hana somehow manages to get into a wrestling match with hers. Because she's armored, their claws don't hurt, but she wouldn't mind even if they drew blood.

Alissa calmly brushes the tail of one of them. As an expert in tail-brushing, she knows how good it feels.

Roxanne mounts hers and it starts playfully bucking around as she holds onto its neck for dear life, yet she enjoys it, somewhat.

Ciel is a little nervous, so she stays with Lina and pets it along with her, showing some courage in facing her slight fear of Gatuns.

The murder kitties have scary, pointy, and sharp claws; their faces are large and full of dangerously large teeth; their menacing eyes hold cold-blooded killing intent; but they behave like huge cuddly kittens who just want to play.

I've never been near a lion or a tiger before, but the Gatuns seem to be even more dangerous than those animals since they hunt down goblins and even orcs. They are also smarter, which means that they are more deadly… but also that they can play more.

Ah, my heart.

Time flies by quickly and we spend almost half an hour playing with the cats, but we don't have any more time to waste here.

"Alright, it's time to move," I say and the girls nod.

With a little sadness, we explain to the Gatuns that we have to go. They understand and meow with longing. It's rare to find friends in this place, so they have to enjoy their good times when they come.

We make our way towards our target and they go the other way, purposely avoiding the area full of murderous humanoids.

A short encounter, but magical nonetheless.

Soon after that, we get close to our target and meet with the first adventuring parties.

A note from Manasong

Hall of Fame of Patrons

The patrons who support Rupegia shall have their names sung by the bards for they deserve the glory and honor. Their names are:

Oracle Maximillian Hübner.

Prince PreownedFIN.

Lord Andrew Meyers.

Lord Hope.

Lord Samuel Lim.

Lord Bill.

Lord Novgarod.

Lord DJ.

Lord Cidant.

Lord Ashadun.

Lord Michale Erwin.

Lord Joxsan Herrera.

Lord Enrique Peña Gomez.

Lord Vampmire.

Lord Braidborn.

Lord Bakerdea.

Lord Kalsted.

Lord Yeeteris Dedmeem.

Lord D4rk Sheep.

Lord Nevarec.

Noble Salty Panda.

Noble Evil.

Noble Yamibomb112.

Noble Maurice.

Leave a rating or a review to help me rise to the top or fix my shameful understanding of prose.

Take a look over my blog where all information of the world of Rupegia will be posted.

Join the Discord and discuss, or rant, or meme, or try and fight me so your waifu gets more screentime.

Become a Patron and read chapters in advance, or read the side-stories, or leave your mark on the story, or help choose the next artwork or the next side-story.

Chapter 60: Dragon - Part 1

We see a few Nature mages who made their homes inside the ginormous trees. They look rather cozy and even more fantasy-like than what they have in Goloria since the construction is so crude and full of personality.

The windowsills look warped and tilted; the doorways are convex, as if they were made for very fat people; the walls are bowed, making the houses all look spherical; and everything is covered with rough bark. These houses have more of the "Rabanara charm" than Goloria's to them.

The atmosphere also makes for a cozy view: dark areas contrasted by the few rays of light that pierce through the canopies and a few crystal lights; dark brown bark enlivened by the vibrant green leaves; the wildness of nature confronted by the symbols of civilization with the houses, vegetable gardens, the walkway, and the occasional "artwork" grown out of the trees. It's no surprise to me that so many people decided to make their home here.

The wild air of the hunter's guild is also present with everyone being armed and armored to the teeth. Even if you're just going outside for a second, it's better to do it while ready for combat than risk a sneak attack by a stealthy monster.

The adventurers eye each other cautiously, but cordially. People nod and greet each other, but they always stay at a greatsword's length away, or sometimes even more.

Just because of our party's size, others make way for us. Adventurers of all people would be the last to underestimate another fellowship before knowing their real power. You never know if you are going up against a troupe of clowns, a veteran band of brothers, or a Lord's son undergoing training with his harem.

There are a few other houses which are instead carved from the wood or tents that are erected in open spots on the walkway, but these are few in comparison to the Nature mages' houses.

The walkway comes to an end, and at the same time, we, unfortunately, start to hear the faint whispers of crying coming from the Weepers.

In my still rather delicate mental state, their cries bring with them images of the families for the victims of the attack on the Innocent Nymph and guilt starts to encroach in my heart. This guilt is not one that will simply go away with a slap, though.

With a sigh, I summon an almost-naked Ciel to brighten my mind. Without even giving it any orders, the light elemental immediately comes up to me and buries my head in the softest breasts that ever breasted.

"Should I feel offended that my husband is burying his face in the bosom of a summon that looks just like me?" Ciel asks.

"I… don't think so. Maybe you should feel flattered, instead?" Alissa suggests tentatively with a wry smile.

"She's just envious because she has to wear armor and can't hug him like the elemental can," Lina says.

The light elemental lays her head against mine and hugs me tighter, as if taunting Ciel to come over and stop her.

"You should start having sex with your elementals, too," Hana comments.

"Not sure if that's something morally right to do," I say. Even with my face covered by breasts, they are still only made of "light," which allows for air to pass through, and therefore, I can breathe and talk normally.

"As moral as having sex with your golems and slaves," Lina says.

I blush in embarrassment. There's such a power imbalance between me, Alissa, Hana, and Lina that it's hard to say that I'm a good and 'moral' person in comparison to my former fellow Earthlings. Especially with how easy it was to corrupt me and push me to buy Alissa.

Hardly anybody sees themselves as being "bad" people, so I always thought I was "good" or at least "justified," but hell is full of good intentions and heaven is full of good works. Justifying my transgressions doesn't absolve me of them. I'm still very much a "bad" person who does a wrong thing and justifies it by then doing a "right" thing.

"Wolfy…?" Alissa asks with a dangerous tone.

I cringe at what's coming. "Yes…?"

"Are you thinking stupid thoughts again…?"

"Yes…?"

"Do you want me to slap you?" I can hear a malicious grin coming from her voice.

"No."

"Then stop thinking stupid thoughts."

"Okay."

I hug the elemental back and she pats my head lovingly. My heart is filled with a calming anesthetic that makes it easier to wash away these stupid thoughts and clear my mind of the Weepers' encroachment.

Fuck Earth morals. I'm in Rupegia now and I'm going to adapt to life here no matter what!

I grab hold of the softest ass that ever assed and sink my fingers into them cheeks.

"I really feel like fucking this elemental," I say.

"That sounds interesting. I'll make sure that Ciel watches it very closely," Alissa says with a sadistic smirk and glances at Ciel, making the curvy priestess shudder with fear and just a hint of depraved excitement.

The elemental lowers her hand from my head, tracing her fingers along my body, and stops right on top of my crotch. She grabs my growing shaft and gives it a loving squeeze, then reaches slightly farther down to cup my balls.

I grab her hand and pull it away, then I kiss the soft non-material. "That's enough, for now," I say and we continue walking.

The few adventurers nearby give me odd looks, but one man smirks and nods in approval. I don't really care about what they think of me, only that the light elemental managed to clear my mind of all my guilty thoughts.

As we walk, the number of crystal lights increases significantly. Even the few people walking about are carrying crystal lights to ward off the Weepers' influence. Then we finally reach the end of the walkway and a ramp takes us back down to the mushy and mossy dirt.

The number of tents explodes, then a small society of adventurers starts to take shape and merchants appear. Elven "woodsmiths," herbalists, rustic restaurants, alchemists, and butchers are the most common businesses present.

Eating new monsters isn't safe for inexperienced people, so people with high [Dismantling] and [Cooking] can make small fortunes discovering the more valuable and delicious bits of these monsters.

The glowing plants suddenly start to turn purple and the Weepers' cries intensify. The adventurers quickly retire to their tents and what was once a bustling, informal town now looks depressingly desolate. The girls huddle up around the light elemental and I grab her hand to keep my heart calm.

We look up and through the small openings in the canopies, I can still see sunlight. It's currently night outside the dungeon, but the sun on this level is always stuck in the same position at 9 o'clock. So the plants must have some form of an internal clock, then.

Now that I think about it, if they are magical plants, then they are likely more influenced by the moon than the sun.

Alissa suddenly shoots two quick arrows and they hit two small Miasmatic Gambos emerging from their burrows to scavenge. These are actually no more valuable than an average goblin, so I only store them to not litter the area with their bodies.

Then we slowly start to make out the mountain range a ways away among the trees. Its twinkling lights catch our eyes and stand out from the (currently) purple landscape of the forest.

In the distance, we see a commotion of people surrounding a dimensional door. That's our target to reach the next level.

Close to that door, there's also a white one, the exit of the dungeon, but everyone seems to be ignoring it.

We hurry up to see what's going on and jog for a few minutes until we reach the unruly mob.

The mountain range slowly becomes more visible as we get closer. It's like a black blade of rock suddenly jutting up out of the earth. Its countless number of sparkling white gems make it seem like the night sky and give it a strong "emellanat" vibe.

The blade is surrounded by a small clearing, allowing it to bask and gleam in the eternal sunlight. With this, the atmosphere gradually lights up and the purple of the glowing plants reduces in intensity.

I feel very odd looking at this mountain range. My body is starting to tire out and become lethargic, yet the increase in sunlight makes me feel like the day is just starting. Couple that uncomfortable feeling with the constant threat of Weeper encroachment, and my discomfort with this level of the dungeon can only increase.

We reach the crowd and see a group of soldiers wearing wooden armor surrounding the door to the next level. They're maintaining a shield wall and pushing away any adventurer that tries to pass through. Inside the encirclement, there's an elven official wearing some very refined, traditional clothing. He's holding a piece of high-quality paper and is impatiently glancing at the pocket watch in his hand.

Nearby, there's a small detachment of men arranged in a battle formation. There are even Gatun riders, mounted and ready to battle. These men are watching the adventurers very sternly, discouraging anyone from doing anything more than trying to push their way through the encirclement.

We stop at the outer edge of the crowd, along with the more patient adventurers who are merely watching the commotion.

"What's going on?" Alissa asks a nearby tall female mage.

The woman grunts, then eyes our odd group a little strangely, but doesn't comment about it as she says, "Some piss-drinkers have been blocking the way to the next level for the last hour or so. I heard that on the other side of the mountain range, the door to the next level is open, but it'll take a day or two to get there, so the people are getting angry."

"Which pisser is pissing about?" Hana asks.

The woman shrugs. "No idea. Supposedly that weak little piss-drinker in the middle is going to make the announcement soon." She points towards the official in the middle. If not for the Hollys, only Hana would be able to see him from above the heads of the crowd.

With [Earth Wall], I make a raised dais for us, then I pull out some comfy chairs for us to sit on.

For some reason, it takes a day-cycle for the dungeon to revert any alterations done to it, so it's possible for Nature mages to quite easily maintain their houses and small veggie patches if they don't leave them unattended for too long.

We wait a few minutes and Alissa pulls out some cookies and tea for us to snack on while we relax. We get a few amused looks since the hardy men and women aren't used to seeing such comfort in the middle of a Godsdamned dungeon.

Then the elven official stores his watch away and unfurls his piece of paper. He clears his throat so loudly that it's obvious that he's using voice-enhancing magic.

Once the crowd quiets down, he starts reading, "By the order of Crown Lord Mavel Este, Ruler of the western High Forest, True Noble, The Silent Sword, and Protector of the Last Crow, progression through the dungeon named Legado has been heavily advised against."

Murmurs of protest start to quickly spread through the onlookers.

"The capabilities of the previously named dungeon are being greatly underestimated due to its irregular construction, and consequently, too many adventurers have died to the challenges of the dungeon."

Some adventurers scoff while others act offended that the official could be implying that they are underestimating a dungeon's dangers.

"With this fact made clear, the Lordship who maintains control over this dungeon has decided to turn away unprepared adventurers. This measure is needed lest too many adventurers die, which would cause significant distress for the Western High Forest and a shortage of monster materials which are essential for the daily lives of the commoners."

The murmurs grow into protests and questions about what is considered "unprepared." The men blockading the dimensional door push back the adventurers that are starting to get rowdy.

"Lord Este is blocking progression through the dungeon just to stop people from taking all the riches," Ciel comments, slowly starting to get angry.

Hana's blood starts to boil over and we all stop to stare at her rising fury.

"Hana…" I start and gently hold her shoulder to try to calm her down. She breathes in deeply and her boiling blood cools down to merely "hot," then she hops down from our dais and forces her way through the crowd.

"Fuck you, bitch," a rugged old man swears as Hana shoves him out of her way.

Feeling very annoyed at both him and Hana, I feed mana to the light elemental, greatly increasing its brilliance and nearly blinding the people nearby while also calming them a little, then I order the elemental to follow Hana. Their combined presence is so overwhelming that the crowd feels compelled to clear a path for them.

She stops in front of an elven soldier and glares at him, her face merely centimeters from his. Her [Intimidate] makes him weak in the legs, but his training is good enough that he holds the line. If he didn't, he would've likely been thrown back into training for failing in his single duty: holding the damn line.

"Who THE FUCK defines what 'unprepared' is?!" Hana yells a question, making spit fly in the soldier's face.

If he were a pervert, he might've enjoyed this situation, but apparently, he isn't, because the soldier lowers his head behind his shield so that Hana can instead glare at the official standing a few meters behind him looking slightly nervous.

The murmuring quiets down as people start to notice the elemental and Hana's imposing frame, which becomes even grander with the elemental glowing behind her, making her figure shine.

"I do," the elven official says. Even though his voice is magically enhanced, it doesn't boom through the crowd since he lacks Hana's "Charisma."

"A pencil pusher is the one who's deciding who's strong enough to pass? BAH!" She barks at him, making him redden slightly under her fearsome glare.

Though he's getting embarrassed, he's still composed enough to not reveal it in his voice. "I do not need 'Strength' to know who has enough power to survive in the dungeon."

"So how do you define who's 'unprepared'?"

The official smiles as he says with pride, "We've set a number of criteria that a fellowship must fulfill to be considered 'prepared.'"

Before he can even list them, Hana interrupts with her voice overpowering his own. "Just the fact that you think you can define everything that makes someone 'prepared' or 'powerful' enough makes me laugh! Even a veteran hunter would eventually misjudge others because his experience is incomplete."

The official frowns and looks at Hana with distaste. "We've compiled this list of criteria after very careful deliberation while consulting with a wide variety of veteran hunters. This list isn't perfect, but it's certainly good enough to stop the large number of deaths that have been happening in this dungeon."

"It is not your job to stop people from taking risks!"

"It is our job to protect civilization and ensure the stability of the High Forest!"

Ciel appears beside Hana and her figure looks even more imposing than my fiery dragon's. My Brown Angel was truly born to shine in the spotlight!

Ciel's voice washes through us like a wave of purity, clearing our minds of the billowing clouds of rage. "Will you block the common people from acquiring power?! Will you steal our right to delve into this blessing from the God of Change?! Will you deny us our Fate?!"

The official starts to lose his composure and his voice cracks. "I am here to guide you towards a safer path! For the stability of the High Forest!"

Ciel's face looks triumphant, but she doesn't let overconfidence take hold over her stern expression. "Exactly! You are here to guide us, not force us! Appraise our fellowships if you must, but tell your men to stand down and clear the way!"

The Light has shined upon us, guiding us towards the true path. The soldiers blockading the dimensional door cower and shiver behind their shields while the official pales under my girls' ferocity.

"Clear the way! Clear the way! Clear the way! Clear the way!" The adventurers chant in unison and stomp their feet.

The detachment of men nearby is getting restless and is now holding their weapons a bit tighter, but they don't act since nobody has turned violent yet. However, they all saw how the crowd went from energetic to outraged very fast, which also means that they will become enraged soon and nobody wants to have to put down a crowd of enraged veteran hunters.

"Clear the way! Clear the way!" I chant along with them and the [Spirit Lights] of everyone in the crowd start to shine brighter, clearing the purple of the night away. The little balls of light dotting the landscape become spotlights aimed at the two angelic women leading the crowd.

I see the official's mouth move, but his voice is drowned out by the chanting.

"STO~P!" Hana bellows and the intensity of her voice makes our bones tremble.

"W-we ca-cannot allow m-m-more deaths," the official's words stumble their way out of his mouth.

"LET THEM THROUGH!" Suddenly booms another voice. We turn our head towards the source and see an elven man in dark glossy wooden armor. His helmet has two golden lines, distinguishing him from the rest, who have none.

The official remains frozen, staring at the detachment commander in disbelief, then an officer near the dimensional door shouts orders for the men to move. The soldiers break the line to allow corridors for people to pass through while some of them reform the encirclement around the official to protect him.

We all cheer and some fall down to their knees while praying to their two new goddesses.

"MAKE A LINE! ONE FOR EACH SIDE OF THE DOOR!" Hana bellows before the adventurers start trampling over each other to be the first to cross the dimensional door. They all freeze for a second, then obey her and shuffle around while murmuring.

The pushing and shoving stops as the way clears and fellowships line up one after another to cross the door in an orderly fashion.

Ciel sighs and relaxes, then they both start to lose their imposing figures as I turn down the brilliance of the light elemental.

The official retreats towards the detachment and sends a glare at our group, but that only makes Hana laugh out loud as the delicate man holds no hint of real danger in his eyes.

They return to us and sit back down on our thrones.

"I'm actually really proud of what you two did," I say.

"Praise me more," Hana says.

"You two were amazing, stunning, and inspiring!" Roxanne praises.

"More."

"I felt like I was being stepped on by you," Alissa says.

"More!"

"I wanted the kneel in front of you. You're my master!" Aoi excitedly exclaims.

Hana smiles fearsomely. "HM~MORE!"

"You two looked heavenly," Lina calmly says.

Ciel looks at us from the corner of her eyes and mutters, "More…"

"You are my Goddesses. You shined like the stars and brightened my heart," I say and give each of their hands a kiss.

"Hm… a little corny," Ciel says and narrows her eyes, giving her an air of superiority.

"I like it," Hana says with a shrug. She grabs my hand and returns the kisses I gave to hers. "We are all Gods in the making. Slowly growing in power and fame until our eventual ascension to Godhood."

Ciel frowns a little. "I'd rather not assume that we'll ever ascend. Calling yourself a God before it actually happens goes against the teachings of the God of the Sun."

"Then you are my angels. Not the demon race, but the myth of angels," I say.

Ciel seems pleased with that and smiles shyly. "Much better."

"Nice. Now, all that I need are feathery wings and a glowing sword, then I'm a battle angel," Hana says.

"Learn Wolfy's [Soul Manipulation] and you'll be able to grow your own feathers," Alissa says.

Hana smiles wryly. "Well, I have the soul potential for that since I leveled today, but other things have priority, like [Mana Control]."

"I want Wolfy's skill. These claws suck!" Aoi complains and raises her cute little claws.

"Don't hate your body like that. Your claws are perfect if you live in the wild," Hana consoles her and pats her head.

"But I'm not wild anymore. I'm civilized!" Aoi stands on her hindlegs and puffs her chest as smoke escapes her nostrils.

"Chimeras are known to dislike certain parts of their bodies that cause inconveniences, like very long horns," Ciel says in a warm tone.

"A few types of demon race also dislike some of their parts. It's a common problem," Roxanne says with a shrug.

Hana scratches her emerald scales awkwardly. "Hm… there isn't a single part of us that we, the dragonkin, dislike about ourselves, but our 'special parts' are quite simple and minor in comparison to other races. So, yeah… I think I get what you mean…"

A few fellowships leave the line and walk towards the elven official. After controlling his emotions, the man keeps a neutral look, then immediately puts on a business smile as he notices the fellowships coming over to talk to him.

After the first few, a good 30% of the fellowships also leave the line to talk with the official, then a good number of those do seem to get convinced about the dangers of the gauntlet and choose to leave the dungeon instead of continuing on.

"All's well that ends well," I say and shrug.

As the line becomes small, we decide to enter it. It doesn't take long for our turn to come since we only have to wait for each fellowship to cross and the door to close before the next group is allowed to cross through.

Then we finally enter the familiar wooden room. The floor lights up again and my vision goes dark.

We wake up on a stone platform floating in the middle of space. There's another dimensional door at the edge of the platform, but this one is composed of unremarkable stone.

In contrast, the view of the environment around us is breathtaking. The pure black background is painted spectacularly with countless stars, constellations, galaxies, and nebulas. I feel like I'm in Space Engine VR again, causing me to smile nostalgically.

Hopefully, there are no black holes around here because we certainly don't need the existential dread of something as mind-fucking as a black hole.

I sigh and stretch, then I start to remove my armor since I know that this place is perfectly safe.

"Let's make camp here," I say and the girls nod.

A note from Manasong

Hall of Fame of Patrons

The patrons who support Rupegia shall have their names sung by the bards for they deserve the glory and honor. Their names are:

Oracle Maximillian Hübner.

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Noble Maurice.

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Chapter 60: Dragon - Part 2

A note from Manasong

Attention: to conform to the limit of sexual content allowed in a novel, I've censored this chapter. You can look for the uncensored version here.

The symbol "-" denotes a section that got cut for containing sexual content. Also, if paragraphs seem missing, they were also likely censored in an earlier pass where the symbol wasn't used.

Hana, Roxanne, and I sigh as we are finally free from the mental assault of the Weepers.

"I thought that with my high 'Sanity,' I wouldn't be so vulnerable to monsters fucking with my head," Hana says.

"That stat protects against illusions, but the Weepers play with our guilt, so they don't need believable illusions to take hold if they can break us down with just a few words," I say.

"What did the Weepers use against each of you?" Ciel asks.

"Well, I have a lot of things to feel guilty about," Roxanne answers.

"Same," I say with a nod.

"I only have one: Macht," Ciel says and I notice that she doesn't look pained anymore when she mentions his name.

"It's my family, I still feel like I failed them," Hana says.

"We can use Confiel's spy network to get information about where they are," I say and pat the scales on top of her hand.

"Yeah, but I still feel… unresolved about it." She shrugs. "I guess that my heart won't let me rationalize myself out of this one."

"Why?" Aoi asks.

Hana shrugs again and chuckles. "I don't know. Sometimes we just can't control our own hearts."

"Hm…" Aoi tilts her head repeatedly in deep thought.

Now that we're all naked, I pull out the tent and the bathtub for us to relax in.

It feels ironic to me that the safest place we could be right now is inside a dungeon.

I unsummon all of my Hollys and Shads and delight myself with the sight of Klein and Osaria taking a bath together. They sit beside one another in the hot water, and Klein looks very uncomfortable.

"Should I call you 'sister' from now on?" Osaria teases Klein and slings an arm over the monkey girl's shoulder.

"I-I'm not a wife and I didn't know that he proposed to you, too," Klein answers and looks away.

Osaria smirks and licks her lips. "I know that Anton considers him responsible for your future. To me, that means you're a wife."

She shrugs, a little awkwardly. "I'm just going to be his knight when he becomes a noble. But you still haven't told me how you became a 'wife.'"

"I simply got fucked hard until I couldn't walk anymore, and I want him to do it again, repeatedly. It doesn't matter if he proposes or not, I'll make sure that he puts in the effort to keep me happy." She finishes with a devious chuckle.

Klein eyes the summoned bird nervously, who chirps a simple song to them.

-

I sink into the bath and sigh.

It feels like it's the first time that I've fully relaxed after the [Meteor].

"Her first skill might end up being [Oral Technique]," Alissa comments as she looks at Aoi.

"For us, that's certainly the most useful skill," Roxanne says and chuckles.

-

Alissa helps me out of the bath and we start making dinner.

The three golems use cooking time as an opportunity to test their own dexterity and control over [Telekinesis]. The two adorable dolls make simple movements to aid in manipulating their tools while Jarn is a lot more awkward and struggles to use her individual fingers.

We make beef roulade with not-carrot and orc bacon and cook it in a thick broth. As a side, we make some not-garlic-bread toasts along with crunchy veggies and squeaky beans.

After we eat, we store what's left in my "Items" and I smirk at the convenience. The lack of a microwave to reheat meals seemed quite inconvenient at first, but with [Item Box] and my "Items" freezing things in time, there's no need to refrigerate anything or even to reheat our leftovers.

It's hard to think of anything more convenient than this that doesn't involve just creating food outright, and even for that, mid-high level [Conjuring Magic] has a spell for making food.

It seems that Anton does not approve of Klein becoming Osaria's plaything, but it's not like he can stop it anymore. Klein's already been corrupted by our hedonistic lifestyle, and there's no turning back for her now.

I even approve of their relationship. This will keep both of them from searching for other - men, and I really don't want to watch as they get railed by another man.

The thought that Klein will likely one day marry Hana's brother makes me uncomfortable. I know that I'll have to learn to "share" her, but that doesn't mean that I have to get comfortable with seeing Osaria and Klein lay with strangers.

We fill our bellies and replenish the energy that we used by jogging all day long. Then we take the bed out of the tent to sleep under the stars since there's no wind here. After we sit down, I get a - lineup of legs and feet to [Massage].

-

"I need to become more human!" Aoi exclaims in frustration as she barely feels me -.

"We have to study Alissa's [Fox Transformation] and invert it," I say.

"Yes! Study!" -then her head hangs low and smoke escapes her nostrils- "But I can't use [Sense Soul] like you can…"

Her eyes gleam with mischief, but before she can chomp down -, I stop her with [Bind] and offer her my finger instead.

"Roxanne has to pray some more," I say and Roxanne happily nods in agreement, her horns flopping about adorably.

I use the very last of my mana to repair Aoi's halberd with [Grow]. The shaft is covered in scratches and a few grooves where her sharp claws have gripped the wood. They are blade-like to aid in combat, and they help with cutting through meat when she wants to eat, but maybe she doesn't need those blades anymore.

"Aoi, what if we dulled your claws? It would make it much easier for you to use a weapon," I suggest.

She releases my finger, then clacks her claws and looks at them a little sadly. "These claws make things harder, but I still like them," she answers.

"It's not like I'm asking if we can remove them," I say and pat her head.

"I don't think it's necessary; she's not supposed to stay in melee for long, anyway," Hana says.

"But crushing things is easier than casting, spells," Aoi says.

"You have more potential with magic than physical combat," Roxanne says.

Hana crosses her arms in thought and says, "But dragons are partially magical beings. Couldn't getting stronger physically make her become more 'magical,' too? There's a limit to pure muscle strength, after all."

"We don't know which is the cause and which is the effect. Though, I guess that it wouldn't hurt to do both," I say with a shrug.

"Yay!" Aoi happily exclaims.

I cover Alissa's body with my soul and get her to transform repeatedly while I observe her with [Sense Soul]. I see that her cells all seem to "sink" into the mana solidification of her body somehow.

I cut away a piece of her fur and it decays into free mana particles. I focus on their "signature" and feel that they seem quite familiar. They are different from Alissa's usual mana "signature," but still feel "similar."

After Alissa turns back, she seems to have lost an MP point, something that doesn't happen with [Fox Transformation] unless she exerts himself.

"Interesting," I mutter and hear a muffled chuckle. Ciel is staring at me with a loving gaze and a hand covering her mouth. "What's so funny?"

She gets a hold of herself and shows me a wide smile. "The way you look so serious while you work, but you still seem so cute. It just looks adorable to me."

"I'm glad that I can make you happy without trying, my love."

She fidgets a little as she recovers from my critical hit and continues coaching Roxanne in controlling her [Water Spirit].

Returning to my study, there's definitely some form of abstract concept in [Fox Transformation] that sends Alissa's body "somewhere." When she transforms, her physical body disappears, but any damage dealt to her fox form will still be transferred to her physical body if she returns to normal while she's still wounded.

She can use mana to heal herself, but it takes time, and dismemberment severs the corresponding parts of her physical body. Though, at least with dismemberment, the limb reverts to normal and can be reattached after she changes back.

Piercing her heart or brain makes her pass out and immediately start to "regenerate" until either the wounds are healed, or she runs out of mana and dies. The only way to instantly kill her is by cutting her in two in a way that separates her heart and brain, like decapitation.

Another interesting thing about [Fox Transformation] is that the integrity of her body depends on the amount of mana that she currently has available. The more mana, the "tougher" her body can become. She's also been getting much stronger because of her mana training routine, so perhaps one day she might even be able to reliably participate in melee combat in her fox form.

"How did you gain your [Fox Transformation]?" I ask Alissa.

She fidgets and groans, but I use [Bind] to hold her back from pouncing on me.

"I was born with it, so it was always instinctual for me," she finally answers.

I scratch my chin. "Then how would you describe your transformation?"

She lowers her head, making her ears bob cutely, then clenches her fist close to her heart. "There's… something 'wild' inside of me. It's what fuels my anger and rape fetish. I just let it loose and 'coat' myself with it."

"At least you're honest about your fetishes," Ciel comments, blinking repeatedly in surprise.

Alissa smiles wryly and shrugs. "It's not what I am, but I know that it belongs to me, as if it were something separate. I guess that makes sense since we are called wereanimals: part human, part animal."

"Yeah, and we are dragonkin, which means that we are a kind of dragon. But we are still a mix of dragon and human," Hana says.

Hm, a "part" of her… Should I study Hana or Alissa?

"Gih."

"You think so?" I question.

"Gih."

Look at that, Gify is giving me encouragement.

She morphs her beak into an angry pout. "Gih!"

I chuckle and raise my hands in defeat. "Sorry, sorry, I won't tease you about that anymore."

"You really see him being able to become like that?" Roxanne asks.

"Gih," Gify answers with a nod.

Ciel pouts anxiously and says, "As long as you remain cute and gentle. I don't want a second Hana being born."

"I wouldn't say that he's gentle," Hana says with a chuckle.

Ciel frowns. "He's rough with you because you ask for it."

"Then you just have to ask him to be gentle," Hana responds with a smirk.

"I don't think that I'll become 'rough' or violent like you're imagining," I say.

Alissa grabs my hand and gives it a squeeze. "Your heart is more important than your behavior. Remember my promise: I want you to remain kind, to not take pleasure in killing, to be someone who always aims to make the realm a better place; but that doesn't mean that you have to look weak."

I bring her hand up to my lips, then I look down at my free hand. "I have to look powerful…" I whisper as I clench my fist.

"You have to wield and exude power," Hana says.

"Look at you, using big words," Lina teases and Hana snorts. Then she adds, "Being more confident would help."

"But it can't be misguided. You need to know your place in the world," Hana continues.

Dragons are all about hierarchies, after all.

"It feels like it makes sense, but in practice, it's not so simple," I say with a chuckle.

"It's not like you have to learn it now," Alissa says.

I hum and enter deep thought.

As Gify said, to become a dragon, I have to become a symbol of "power."

"But what about becoming a human?" Aoi asks, pulling me out of my trance.

This one is easy for Ciel to answer, "Our purpose is to always strive to become better. To change, improvise, adapt, and overcome. Our bodies may not be malleable like certain monsters or elementals, but we have this:" -she raises her hands, then taps her head- "we have the tools and the intelligence to change our environment to better serve us. We are capable of building anything we need to help us overcome any obstacle that comes our way."

Aoi looks down at her claws that vex her so much. "So I don't have either," she says in a low tone.

Hana flicks Aoi's head. It seems like Hana hurt herself much less than when I did it.

"Ow…" Aoi complains, barely feeling any pain.

"If you lack both, then you just need to work hard to get them," Hana says.

"I already am!" Aoi complains.

Hana gives her a fearsome smile. "Then work harder!"

"RAAGH!" Aoi growls cutely and fire lights her mouth.

"Aoi…" Alissa says in a dangerous tone.

The flames are immediately extinguished, but she retains her mean look.

"I want to fight, and crush, and help, and make things! I'll work hard!" She exclaims.

"Then start by observing me," Alissa says just before she transforms into a fox.

I spread my soul over Alissa again and stop her with [Bind] before a lewd fox can try to mate with me.

Lina starts practicing [Sap Power]; it's a spell that reduces "Strength" and "Magic Power." Hana studies [Mesmerizing Butterflies] and catches up with Alissa as she can now create wisps of the butterflies. The golems all cast [Regeneration] on me to help me recover the blood that I gave to Aoi. And the rest of the girls continue their practice. Alissa, of course, gets nothing from me tonight and has to meditate to contain herself.

Tonight, we use the light elemental as a blanket. Since she'll be in constant contact with us, her mana will drain continuously, so we'll get at most one hour of the softest blanket that ever blanketed us, but that's enough to put me into a deep and calm sleep.

Today is the 6th.

Gify wakes the girls-.

The sky is still dark since we're in space and there's no sun, but I feel like I'm waking up from a deep and comfortable sleep. Ciel uses her [Holy Spirit] as a mini sun for us, so we get plenty of light to help us clear the fog of sleepiness from our minds.

Hana leveled up to 39. She also increased her [Mana Control] by 1 (now 2), and Lina increased her [Cursing Magic] by 1 (now 2).

I see that the Este caravan is already back on the road. Holly is back to patrolling around the beautiful green grasslands, and Klein is already cracking jokes along with the others.

After an energetic breakfast, we armor up, then we stretch and do a quick warm-up.

The stone door at the edge of the infinite abyss is a little heavy, but we manage to open it regardless. On the other side, we see another stone platform, but it's larger than the previous entrance area, although it does have the same stone door at the edge. In the middle of the platform, there are five naked orcs masturbating in a circle.

They quickly notice us and grab their rusty swords.

"The fuck?" I reflexively ask.

"Underestimating us, I see," Hana says and scoffs.

We make short work of them and move onwards through the next door.

Ten naked orcs this time. Same shit.

Then the dungeon throws four Storm Chargers at us, so we bum rush them before they can fling a single spell since the arena is too small for them to run away.

Next comes an Uspidor, the modern High Forest acid spitter. I get an idea and we push it off the edge of the arena with spells. Then after a minute or so of waiting, it plummets back down onto the center of the arena, right on top of an earth elemental in the shape of a cone. It impales itself, then it immediately explodes into chunks, spreading blood and innards everywhere.

"Yeah, stupid idea," I say before anyone can remark about it.

[Wind Shield] protected us from the gore, but not the smell, so we quickly enter the next arena.

This one has ten Sky Stalkers circling above us, far beyond Alissa's range.

"Okay… now what? We wait?" Hana questions.

Lina pulls on the hem of my armor and says, "Electric elemental on the back of a Kite Dragon."

"Nice!" I exclaim and snap my fingers.

The plan goes flawlessly; the birds drop out of the sky one-by-one, then Alisa effortlessly kills them in mid-air.

Next, the arena becomes large enough to accommodate a line of fifteen armored orcs with swords and shields.

I use the electric elemental and Kite Dragon combo to stun and kill them one-by-one while we hold off the rest ourselves.

The orcs are quite unskilled in combat, so we don't have much trouble while staying on the defensive, but actually attacking them is a bit problematic for us. With all the armor and padding that we have, I barely feel anything when full-on blocking an orc's strike. They need hammers to get to us, not swords.

Then the next floor is eerily empty.

"Is it over?" Roxanne asks.

"I… don't think so? The exit should be a wooden room like all others," I say and we get extra cautious as we slowly make our way in.

Neither Alissa nor the Hollys see anything. Then my Shad catches a whiff of mana coming from right in front of me.

[Battlefield Perception] triggers and I use [Telekinesis] to glide backward. I feel a small and very painful scratch on my skin. I reflexively cast [Discharge] in front of me and feel it "hit" something small.

"Oh, fuck! Spirits!" I exclaim and cast [Spirit Eyes]. I see nine glowing fuckers floating all around us with manic grins on their ugly mugs and a menacing dagger in each of their hands. Spirit Watchman Tons.

The girls immediately cast [Fireball] in front of themselves and flail about wildly to keep the spirits away. Alissa gets a "cut" in her waist and Lina gets one in her arm. Ciel's [Holy Spirit] keeps them away from her, and Roxanne luckily [Explodes] hers just a few centimeters above her head.

I guide Aoi and Hana to breathe fire in wide arcs and the Tons are all instantly turned into more EXP for us.

The "scratch" that I received damaged my soul and hurts like a bitch, so I immediately put more points into [Spirit Magic] and cast [Soul Touch] on us to heal the soul damage.

I focus on Alissa first since she's lost most of the feeling in her right leg due to the "cut." Then it's Lina's turn, whose left arm is trembling so wildly that she can barely control it.

"Getting interesting," Hana comments.

"Nah. The background isn't changing at all, it's boring," Ciel comments.

"I'm getting a bit of an End of Time vibe from Chrono Trigger, so I'm feeling nostalgic," I say.

"You should work on a way to show us your memories through [Bind]," Alissa suggests.

"Good idea. No idea how to even start, though."

"You'll manage, you haven't disappointed so far," Ciel says and chuckles.

"No mention of cheating?" I question and raise an eyebrow.

"Did I even need to? You did it yourself." She chuckles, quite pleased with herself.

I roll my eyes and we continue on to the next door.

We open it and see a three-meter tall suit of armor carrying a longsword so thick that it's more like a metal club. Red glowing eyes stare right through our souls and we immediately close the door again.

"Did I just hear boss music?" I question and chuckle at myself.

A note from Manasong

Hall of Fame of Patrons

The patrons who support Rupegia shall have their names sung by the bards for they deserve the glory and honor. Their names are:

Oracle Maximillian Hübner.

Prince PreownedFIN.

Lord Andrew Meyers.

Lord Hope.

Lord Samuel Lim.

Lord Bill.

Lord Novgarod.

Lord DJ.

Lord Cidant.

Lord Ashadun.

Lord Michale Erwin.

Lord Joxsan Herrera.

Lord Enrique Peña Gomez.

Lord Vampmire.

Lord Braidborn.

Lord Bakerdea.

Lord Kalsted.

Lord Yeeteris Dedmeem.

Lord D4rk Sheep.

Lord Nevarec.

Lord Nathan Vanbrunt.

Noble Salty Panda.

Noble Evil.

Noble Yamibomb112.

Noble Maurice.

Leave a rating or a review to help me rise to the top or fix my shameful understanding of prose.

Take a look over my blog where all information of the world of Rupegia will be posted.

Join the Discord and discuss, or rant, or meme, or try and fight me so your waifu gets more screentime.

Become a Patron and read chapters in advance, or read the side-stories, or leave your mark on the story, or help choose the next artwork or the next side-story.

Chapter 60: Dragon - Part 3

A note from Manasong

Attention: to conform to the limit of sexual content allowed in a novel, I've censored this chapter. You can look for the uncensored version here.

The symbol "-" denotes a section that got cut for containing sexual content. Also, if paragraphs seem missing, they were also likely censored in an earlier pass where the symbol wasn't used.

"Was that a reference?" Alissa asks.

I nod. "Yeah. From video games."

"Why are their eyes glowing red? How cliché," Roxanne comments.

"It's certainly not a monster. Its presence felt similar to a Living Armor," Alissa says.

"And it didn't look like there was anyone inside that armor, so I think I agree with you," Hana says.

"So it looks like I'm mostly useless," Alissa comments with a wry smile.

"You can still, uh… 'distract' it with [Illusion Magic]," Ciel comments while cringing.

Alissa scratches her fox ear awkwardly. "So, I'm bait, huh…?"

"You're kind of the nimblest of us. I'm bad at turning," Hana says.

Totally not feeling hurt at being ignored, I say, "With [Telekinesis] I can dodge nearly everything."

Alissa frowns and says, "But if things go wrong, you can use [Bind] to pull me out of danger. If you get yourself into a bad spot, then there's nobody that can help you."

Now I am the one who frowns. "[Gate] still works and Ciel's [Holy Spirit] can keep itself latched onto me."

"That's still risky," Ciel warns a little worriedly.

"But… how are we even going to fight it?" Roxanne asks.

"There's no guarantee that it'll behave like a Living Armor if we 'stab' it," I say.

Lina hands me her switch-axe, currently in its hammer form. "Then we turn it into scrap metal," she says.

"That'll take a while. We need to find its weak spot," Hana says.

"Joints: knees and elbows," Lina says.

"But what if it moves like Jarn? If it does, then even if we destroyed the joints, it would still use some form of [Telekinesis] to stay upright," Roxanne ponders.

"So… no weak spots?" Hana asks and we glumly nod.

Something tells me that there's a blood symbol inside it at the neck area, but I'm sure that the girls won't appreciate another reference…

"I still have to study the Uspidor acid and the Symbol of Decay's goop," Roxanne says.

"The Symbol of Decay melted the armor off of the metal dragonoids that I summoned, so maybe we can use it," I say.

Roxanne claps her hands, making a loud noise. "Ohoho! It's time for me to shine!" She exclaims with a manic smile as her glasses gleam.

"Make sure you're protected; those things are toxic," I say and grasp her delicate hand.

She smiles proudly and fidgets in excitement. "Yes, yes. To calm your tender and worrying heart, I'll make sure that my perfect body remains pure."

My expression goes a little stiff and I release her hand. "Yes… do that…"

I pull out the Symbol of Decay donut and we quickly cut off a tentacle, then I store the rest back in my "Items" so that no more blood is wasted.

So… how do you contain something that corrodes everything? By making it float in the air.

We use Ted, Suzy, and Jarn to suspend a small amount of goop inside Roxanne's workbench while she analyses it.

Even though there's no vacuum enchantment yet, the gloves and glass window protect her against spills and fumes.

"This goop is not an acid, but it's definitely magical since there's no known physical substance that corrodes things as fast as this does," she comments.

"Can we replicate it somehow and weaponize it?" I ask.

"We can replicate it easily with [Alchemy], but weaponizing it would be much easier with [Alchemicism]," she says the last few words with a sour face. "But make no mistake, if you want 'repeatability,' and by that I mean, to be able to manufacture things with any reliability, then [Alchemy] is the answer."

"What's the difference between them?" Alissa asks.

She adjusts her glasses and acquires a stern demeanor. "[Alchemy] is simply magical chemistry. We analyze the properties of matter and how it interacts with itself and with mana. [Alchemicism] is the utilization of the abstract concepts of mana-rich matter to transmute one 'thing' into another, and that includes transfer of 'abstract concepts,' so the transmutation can get very complex. The problem with that magic school is that you never really know what you are getting until it's done. Each mage practices [Alchemicism] a bit differently, so it's unreliable."

"I see. So, for improvising something on the spot, it could be useful? And can I learn it?" I ask.

"Exactly, but I don't know enough to teach you and I'd prefer that you didn't blindly test it with your Gift."

"Agreed," Alissa says with a nod.

"We don't need a perfect weapon to use this stuff, we just need a container that will last long enough for us to spread the goop on the Living Armor," Lina says.

"Right, yeah, that's doable," Roxanne says.

She tests a variety of materials on the goop and it seems that steel really is the most resistant to it, but it's still too expensive for us to use that as a consumable.

"What if we used a weaker material for a container, then stored it in our [Item Box]es until it was time to throw it?" I ask.

"Cover the container with something sticky, then we can be sure that the goop will end up covering the Living Armor," Lina says.

"The Uspidor's tentacles are quite sticky," Alissa says.

"I collected some of the tentacles from the one we turned into giblets. I meant for us to eat them later, but I guess we can part with a few," I say with a wry smile.

"Wolfy, put a point in [Alchemy] for me so that I can learn [Transmute]," Roxanne requests.

"Can't you use [Extract Pus] to… extract whatever mana signature it is that's corrosive?" I ask.

"There are quite a few, so it's just easier to copy everything rather than test them one-by-one."

"Alright, but don't you have a magic tool for [Transmute]?"

"Actually knowing the spell helps with its efficiency."

I nod and fulfill her request. She now has five points in [Alchemy] and the spell [Transmute] appears in her "Magic" tab.

She pulls out an MP potion and the [Transmute] magic tool, then she holds the potion close to the floating glob of goop while keeping the magic tool in between them.

"Ted, you'll be responsible for holding the goop in place after I transmute it, okay?" She asks.

"Understood," Ted answers.

She activates the magic tool, and something oddly similar to a soul starts to seep out of it. It's so similar that my [Sense Soul] itches but doesn't detect anything. Then the pseudo-soul splits into two. One of them envelops the goop while the other envelops the MP potion.

Roxanne feeds a large amount of mana to the magic tool and the glowing blue liquid turns white, then disappears. In its place, more of the goop replaces it and immediately starts to corrode the glass flask of the potion.

Ted casts [Telekinesis] on the new goop and combines it with the glob.

We repeat this a few more times until we have a sizable amount of goop.

"That cost you a lot of mana and potions," I comment.

Roxanne shrugs and responds, "Better than using the corpse of the Symbol of Decay and wasting more of its ingredients. I can still use [Redirect Mana] to replenish myself, and we can easily replace the potions back in town."

We wrap ceramic pots with Uspidor tentacle skin, making them quite sticky, then we fill the pots with the goop and immediately store them in our [Item Box]es and my "Items."

"Now we just need a strategy to distract it while we throw our little gifts," Hana says.

"I'm bait," Alissa says, without hesitation.

"I'll fly around it and throw the pots at the more vulnerable spots," I say.

"I can do that, too," Hana says with a frown.

"You yourself said that you lack the turning speed to dodge it in mid-air. I can do it," I repeat.

"Well… I think he can," Lina agrees, a little apprehensively. "We can't all go wasting these pots just randomly throwing them at the Living Armor."

Alissa sighs. "Fine, let's do it like that, then," she finally accepts.

"I'm not that fragile, mom," I say and pout at Alissa.

She narrows her eyes and sends me a side-eyed glance. "We'll see about that."

Aoi holds a pot in her hand a little precariously. "I don't want to throw these things. I'll miss," she says.

Ciel looks at the pots with uncertainty, too. "Yeah. Only Hana and Lina should try to throw them, we aren't confident that we won't just waste them," she says, and Roxanne nods along.

I grab the [Holy Spirit] and it shrinks, then it crawls up my chest, slips into my helmet, and stays near the back of my neck. It feels like a warm, watery cushion that tickles me once in a while.

"We're ready, let's go," I say.

We open the stone double door and see the Living Armor standing still, in the same combat stance as before. It has no decorations, making it rather plain, except for the two glowing red balls floating right behind the slit of its sallet's visor. But it doesn't need decorations to look menacing when its size dwarfs even Hana and its sword effortlessly plows through the air as it gets ready for a strike.

It's too big to be called a sword. Massive, thick, heavy, and far too rough. Indeed, it's a mass of raw steel.

Gih.

I'm sure the girls wouldn't want to hear a reference right now, so I'm grateful for your appreciation of culture.

I put ten points in [Throw], then Alissa transforms into a fox and we march forward.

Ciel, Roxanne, Aoi, and the golems wait behind the door, safe from the Living Armor; Lina stands ready at the doorway, prepared to retreat if the Living Armor targets her; Hana will circle near the edge of the platform, far away from the Living Armor; Alissa and I charge the middle, but I let Alissa reach the Armor first to grab its attention.

As soon as Alissa gets in range, the Armor strikes downwards and the platform trembles from its stupidly high raw strength. Alissa easily dodges the attack and circles around the Armor.

Its sallet silently turns in a creepy manner so that its red glowing eyes can remain staring straight at Alissa. It lifts the sword and we see a large groove left in the stone platform that was caused by the previous strike.

It swings the sword horizontally and Alissa jumps out of its way.

I get in range and cast [Discharge]. The sallet immediately turns backwards to face me and [Battlefield Perception] triggers. I jump back as its body spins with incredible speed to strike at me one-handed.

[Discharge] didn't cause any damage, so I stop using it.

Alissa runs in and tackles its leg, making it momentarily lose its balance. The sallet immediately spins around again to face her, with its body continuing the spin to strike down at the nimble fox.

She dodges sideways and another groove appears in the stone platform.

I pull out a Decay pot and throw it at the back of its sallet. The pot breaks and coats the helmet with goop. Thanks to how sticky the pot is, both it and the goops stay on the helmet and hardly any of the goop flies off.

The sallet spins back around to face me and its sword arm swings backward. With [Telekinesis], I dodge to the side and my legs shake as the lump of steel impacts the platform beside me.

Can this thing hold? Will the platform get destroyed by the Armor?

Before my mind can arrive at an answer, the flat part of the thick blade slams into my flank as the Armor tries to launch me off of the platform. I grab the rough blade and easily manage to resist being batted away.

Hana throws a pot that hits its sword shoulder and Lina throws one that hits its thigh. The Armor decides to turn to Hana and then kicks Alissa away as she comes in for a tackle. Since she's in her fox form, she doesn't feel any pain and gracefully lands on her paws a few meters away.

The [Holy Spirit] heals the small amount of pain in my flank, and I release my grip on the blade just as the Armor decides to swing the flat part down to try to flatten me against the floor.

With [Telekinesis], I float in the air and ready another pot. The sallet immediately turns to face me, and my pot hits the sword's blade as it swings at me again. As I was almost out of its reach, just a little nudge with [Telekinesis] is enough for me to dodge this slash.

"IT CAN SEE WITHOUT LOOKING AT YOU, BUT THE RED EYES SHOW WHO IT IS TARGETING!" I yell.

Alissa gets up off the floor and charges towards the Armor again, only to stop midway as she casts a spell. The helmet follows Alissa's illusion and kicks at the air, then its sword comes down for a slash, still targeting the same illusion.

Hana throws a pot at its other shoulder and Lina throws a pot at its face. The Armor immediately targets Lina and runs towards her. She retreats behind the door, which the girls start to close as soon as she's safe.

I fly towards the Armor with [Telekinesis] and strike the helmet with Lina's switch-axe. It caves halfway in, which is much more damage than I expected.

The red eyes immediately face me and its chest spins in place for a two-handed slash at me.

I dodge the attack just as Alissa comes in for another charge. The Armor ignores her and she successfully hits one of its knees, making it kneel and miss its attack. Not that it would've connected, but with this, I don't have to waste any mana to dodge it.

Then I strike downwards at the helmet again and its red eyes warp out of place, making it look funny.

As I fly away to land, Lina hits the back of the sallet again, but it's Alissa's second attack that draws the attention of the Armor. She casts [Double Image] again and the Armor's red eyes jump between the two Alissas, trying to discern who is real.

It decides to attack the one moving closer, only for its sword to hit nothing while the real Alissa runs out its reach, completely safe.

Hana and I each throw a pot. Mine hits the sword again while hers hits the back of the Armor.

Its red eyes turn back to me, but then immediately turn to Alissa, who's charging at it again.

Gify, play some metal for me.

Images of dragons fighting and mating flood my mind, - unfurling the mast, but also filling my heart with energy.

Not what I wanted, but okay, this works, too.

The Armor attacks Alissa, only for its sword to whiff again and hit nothing but an illusion. It stays still for a second, and I chuckle at imagining how confused it must be feeling—if it can feel anything at all.

I charge forward and its bent eyes face me, then it kneels again as an [Ignorance]-clad Alissa tackles the back of one of its legs.

I hit the weakened thigh and bend it backward, almost fully crippling that leg.

It swings the sword horizontally, and we duck under it. Then I jump with [Telekinesis] and use its knee to jump even higher again. With a mid-air somersault, I strike down with my hammer onto its sword shoulder, which bends so much that the arm is stuck in place.

I continue on and fly upwards as the Armor spins its entire body to try to strike at me. The telegraphing is so obvious that I easily dodge it just as I deactivate [Telekinesis] to come back down for another strike.

I crush its huge helmet into a lump of steel, leaving its red eyes buried behind its chest. It suddenly stops moving and switches the sword to its still-working arm. Then it starts swinging the sword wildly at us, so we stop to watch it for a moment.

"Can… can it see us?" Hana asks.

"It seems so," I say as Alissa dodges backward to avoid a clumsy attack.

"I don't think it can see us very well. Its attacks have lost their precision," Alissa says.

"Ooh… The helmet gave its vision 'focus,'" I say as I hit a fist against my palm in understanding. Then I grab the hammer again and smirk. "Well, now it's time to turn it into scrap!"

The parts not covered in goop barely bend from my attacks, but the ones that have been seem to bend like a tin can. Of course, I only hit the areas where the goop has already dried up, otherwise, I'd be greatly damaging Lina's expensive enchanted axe.

The Armor apparently uses its joints to move, so as we slowly bend them further out of shape, it loses more and more of its range of movement.

The power of the dragon visions fuel my attacks as I release a barrage of blows. With [Bind], I weave in Hana and Alissa to always keep the Living Armor busy while we aim at its blind spots. Relentless and merciless, the dragon does not measure its efforts to subdue its prey. My sole focus right now is to end the threat with all of our power.

The Armor strikes again at Alissa's illusion and the sword finally breaks at its base. Without wasting a single second, it drops the hilt and starts to awkwardly punch at us.

Hana pulls out her own war hammer and smirks. "Now, I can fight too!" She yells.

We hit the other shoulder that was weakened by the goop and crush it to the point that it can't move, then we slowly crush its hips so that it can't walk anymore and has to crawl around instead.

"Well… now what? How do we actually kill it?" Hana asks.

"Alissa, lure it to the edge of the platform," I say.

"Understood."

The Armor crawls towards Alissa and desperately tries to strike at her. It's becoming increasingly creepy to fight this huge monstrosity.

With everyone working together, we cast blunt attack spells to push it over the edge. Then, we just rest for a minute and watch as it crashes onto the middle of the platform with a resounding thud.

Its legs get bent beyond recognition, and now, it can only move one arm, which seems to have become a lot slower.

We watch it for another minute as it struggles to chase after us while the glow of its red eyes embedded in its chest slowly fades.

Then finally, the red light is snuffed out, and it stops moving.

"It's dead," Alissa announces and sighs in relief.

The bloodlust still courses through my veins, but a disgust starts to grow inside of me.

What did Hana say…? Control my anger, let it fuel my actions, but don't let it take control over me.

I control my breathing and start to meditate with my eyes open. The bloodlust starts to lash out and tries to take hold of me, but my own will and my disgust at bloodshed keeps the lust in check.

With a groan of frustration, - I finally push it down and the visions of dragons fade from my mind.

These visions are messing with my head. Are you sure this is safe?

Gih.

Oh, Gods…

It might not be safe, but it's damn effective.

I approach the huge lump of steel and store it all in my "Items." Since it didn't rot away after its "death," this steel is still very valuable.

"You feeling okay, Wolfy? I noticed some very intense feelings coming from you," Alissa says.

"I used Gify's dragon visions to help motivate me to fight. It was quite effective, but also a little scary."

"We call that 'power lust,'" Hana says in a knowing tone and chuckles. "You want to make others submit to your power so much that it probably makes your dick hard."

"That seems… an apt description," I say.

"I guess that's a good way to learn how to be a dragon." She shrugs.

Aoi nods and says, "Yeah. Power lust is the core of my energy."

"So I better start learning how to control it," I say.

"It's like I always say," Hana starts, then we say in unison, "Control your anger. Let it fuel your actions, but only when you need it."

We both smirk at each other, then we start laughing out loud together.

"Weepers' dream! I told you that we were going to get a second Hana!" Ciel exclaims in horror.

"I'm just learning to understand her more. I might end up being more like a wereanimal than a dragonkin," I hurriedly say, trying to appease Ciel.

She groans and shakes her head. Roxanne gulps and looks a little worried about the future of her body's integrity.

"We'll just have to work harder to contain him," Alissa says, and Lina nods.

"It's not like you girls were trying very hard to begin with," I say.

"It might even be a little too late to start trying," Hana says and chuckles.

"You haven't seen true Misty Fox ferocity," Alissa says, confident.

"You're the last person I'd bet on to be able to contain him," Ciel says.

Alissa narrows her eyes at Ciel and smirks. "You underestimate my power," she says.

Sometimes the memes just write themselves.

Ciel remains unconvinced as we approach the next door. Our shoulders drop, all the tension in our bodies releasing as we recognize what's before us: the barren wooden room that will take us to the next level.

We enter the room and close the door, then the floor glows and our awareness is cut off again.

A note from Manasong

Hall of Fame of Patrons

The patrons who support Rupegia shall have their names sung by the bards for they deserve the glory and honor. Their names are:

Oracle Maximillian Hübner.

Prince PreownedFIN.

Lord Andrew Meyers.

Lord Hope.

Lord Samuel Lim.

Lord Bill.

Lord Novgarod.

Lord DJ.

Lord Cidant.

Lord Ashadun.

Lord Michale Erwin.

Lord Joxsan Herrera.

Lord Enrique Peña Gomez.

Lord Vampmire.

Lord Braidborn.

Lord Bakerdea.

Lord Kalsted.

Lord Yeeteris Dedmeem.

Lord D4rk Sheep.

Lord Nevarec.

Lord Nathan Vanbrunt.

Noble Salty Panda.

Noble Evil.

Noble Yamibomb112.

Noble Maurice.

Leave a rating or a review to help me rise to the top or fix my shameful understanding of prose.

Take a look over my blog where all information of the world of Rupegia will be posted.

Join the Discord and discuss, or rant, or meme, or try and fight me so your waifu gets more screentime.

Become a Patron and read chapters in advance, or read the side-stories, or leave your mark on the story, or help choose the next artwork or the next side-story.

Chapter 61: Immediately - Part 1

We wake up and find ourselves inside a pantry. We see a variety of not-food on shelves upon shelves of white wood with a light brown wavy grain. This wood seems to be what almost everything else is composed of: the floor, the walls, the ceiling, and the furniture.

I look at my pocket watch and say, "How odd. We spent about a minute in 'limbo.' I don't know of any kind of teleportation magic that would take so long."

"'Limbo'?" Alissa asks as she cutely tilts her head.

I scratch my head in thought. "A… well, it's an 'in-between' place. Somewhere between here and our previous location where the concept of time and space doesn't exist. Ah! Think of it like being inside an [Item Box]."

"I was going to say that you were talking like a goblin, but [Item Box] makes it really easy to grasp," Hana says.

"But time didn't stop while we were in 'limbo,'" Lina says.

"Not even teleportation is 'normal' in this dungeon. Nothing is," Roxanne says.

I nod in agreement and continue looking around.

Aoi grabs a not-apple and chews on it cautiously. Shortly after she swallows it, the not-apple in her claws turns into dust and she shudders. "That felt weird," she says.

"You shouldn't eat solidified dungeon mana food. It'll upset your stomach," Ciel says.

Aoi quickly makes her way to the smoked meats and grows large enough that she can fit a whole sausage in her mouth. It would've looked suggestive if she didn't immediately start chewing on it.

She swallows almost the entire sausage, only leaving a small stub that turns into dust. Then she shivers and says, "But it tastes good!"

The not-apple reforms and I take a bite. It tastes just like an apricot. Then I swallow and feel my throat get tickled by the not-apple dust scratching against it just before it disappears.

"Yeah, it does," I say.

I approach the string of sausages and pull out a knife. I cut off a slice and notice that it seems to have the consistency of a paste and should be easy to spread on some bread. I eat the slice and enjoy a very strong flavor: pork and perhaps garlic?

"Mettwurst," I say and eat some more.

After a few seconds, the whole string turns to dust, and I feel an unholy tickle deep inside my body that makes me shiver all over.

"Ciel… you should try some," I say with a malicious grin and offer her a fresh string of sausages.

She pushes them away and eyes them with wariness. "No, thank you. You're going to get some 'stomach burns' before long."

"Just cast [Purify Body]," I say.

"Gastric acid isn't a poison, so it wouldn't be removed by that spell."

"But I know there's an abstract concept in it that removes anything that 'could be harmful to the body.'"

She frowns. "Well… the temple advises healers to not use that concept for common cases since the side-effects are unknown."

"I trust that you'll do what's best for your beloved husband," I say with a smirk.

Ciel scoffs and gets a little sassy. "Old man, soon you'll see that even old people like you can learn their lesson."

I try to attack the other girls with puppy dog eyes but even Alissa shrugs.

"HP potions can help with that," Roxanne says, trying to sound casual, and Hana starts laughing at her.

I feel like I'm being treated like a child who just ate toothpaste.

Gify pops into existence and gobbles up a not-apple in one go, making her small body stretch into a ball.

"No fair," I pout and we walk out of the pantry.

We pass through a cute little house, which is filled with small plants and colorful flowers growing out of the white woodwork all around us. Then we exit into a familiar white town, although this version has a low, gray stone ceiling.

Crystals light up the streets and the interiors of the houses, so we get the feeling that it's the start of the evening, but we saw a clock that was stuck at nine inside the house that we just came from, so it might actually be a different time of day.

"This feels like Goloria," Roxanne says with a small smile threatening to appear on her face.

"A little claustrophobic, though," I say, staring at the boring gray ceiling just a meter or so above our heads.

"I feel comfortable," Lina says.

"Figures," I say with a shrug.

Not-Goloria has such a low ceiling and such a messy topography that we can barely see much beyond our street. The buildings don't have a set height, and most of them are so tall that they hit the stone ceiling and block our view.

With Holly's utility being very limited here, I spread spirit elementals around to try to map the area with Lina's assistance. Our attempt is rather unsuccessful because we quickly realize that this is not not-Goloria, this is worse-Goloria, much-worse-Goloria.

A few buildings are so warped and precariously built, that not only Lina, but even I feel unsafe near them. It's an irrational feeling because we know that these buildings don't collapse; they're being held up by magical matter, after all. But still, they look wrong, in an engineering way.

One spirit elemental goes up, past the gray stone ceiling, and instantly dissipates. It reached the "end" of the dungeon, and some funky shit can happen beyond that boundary.

Another one goes down below the floor and quickly reaches the "end," too.

I guess that we can't just tunnel our way up or down…

Before long, my stomach starts to ache as the sausage that I ate tricked my body into thinking that more food was coming. I drink an HP potion and feel it ease the burning almost immediately, then we stop for lunch.

I pull out our leftovers, and it feels like a party due to the wide variety of food laid out.

After filling our bellies, we don't waste any more time and quickly resume our exploration. Meeting with Confiel takes priority and we still have the energy to spare, so rest days will be kept for later.

As we walk, we notice how the atmosphere of the town feels "neat" and "tidy." Different from the Roulette of the Morning Dew dungeon, with levels of either abandoned ruins or towns that were instantly turned to stone, this area feels like everyone left things all prepared and ready for visitors, but there isn't a single soul around.

The food stalls are all open and ready for cooking; the oil pots are on the stoves and only need a little mana to heat them up; the shops are open and all their best products are on display without a single speck of dust to blemish them; the plants and hedges on the streets are all trimmed, with some of them looking freshly watered; the alchemists' workshops have ingredients organized on the tables, ready to brew potions; and the kitchens have meat and veggies cleaned and seasoned on the counters, ready to be cooked at any time.

The eeriest part of all of this is that in the houses of the commoners, we see full sets of formal clothes, underwear included, neatly arranged on the beds. It's as if everyone was getting ready for a formal occasion, but then they simply vanished without a trace.

Inside a poor commoner's house, Aoi finds a very small elven coin embedded in the wood below the bed. This is most likely an emergency fortune, the fantasy equivalent of storing money under the floorboards.

Even after scratching it, the coin doesn't turn to dust, so we know that it's legitimate gold and not a mana solidification.

"Kweh! Treasure!" Aoi happily exclaims as she rubs the coin against her scales, making clinking sounds.

"Can I see it for a second?" Lina asks and extends a hand to Aoi.

My greedy dragon feels like saying no for a moment, but remembers that she has to share with her fellow wives, so she hands it to Lina without complaining.

My cute little dwarf applies a bit of [Manipulate Metal] to repair the scratch that we made in the coin. "Don't bite or scratch this coin. It's truly ancient and an important piece of history. You can have it, as long as you promise to preserve it," she says.

"Okay," Aoi immediately accepts, and Lina returns the coin to her. She delicately turns it over repeatedly with her sharp claws, then she stares at it intently, keen on unraveling its mysteries.

"That coin was minted during the reign of Ristova, the Wealthy. That's about eight hundred years before the fall of the last high elven king," Lina continues.

"So, this dungeon is somehow related to Ristova?" I ask.

"No. That king set up a better coin maintenance system so that old coins could be restored and it reduced the number of new ones that had to be minted. That's why he got that Title, which is a bit mean, to be honest." She chuckles softly.

"This doesn't help much in narrowing down the time period in which this dungeon was made, so I think it's unlikely to be a clue," Roxanne says and we agree.

Aoi stores the coin in her [Item Box] and we move on, only to soon find the first clue. At a crossroads, there's a placard written in Ingua floating two meters or so above the road.

"It is our hope that the oceans calm into peace, so why do the winds raise up the waves in anger?"

"That sounds familiar," I say.

"Odd to hear an elf talking about the oceans…" Alissa comments.

"The Elven Bay wasn't named that just because the elves lived near it. Before Heretic's Rest, their wooden boats were the fastest around, and they dominated their region of the sea," Lina says.

Lina's Trivia: North of the High Forest, there's a rather short strip of land called Glorampina. That region wasn't so small in the past. A few hundred years ago, the remnants of the elven royal family tried to make a comeback and start a secession movement in the High Forest.

They failed and retreated to Glorampina, where they managed to regain their support. As punishment for their heresy, the God of the Sun turned most of the bountiful grassland into a desert and shattered the revolt without the Empire having to send a single soldier to fight. The royal family went back into hiding after that.

"So, we follow the wind again?" Hana asks.

"Exactly, it should take us to the palace. Or at least close to it," Lina says.

Just to reinforce the clue, we feel a breeze; this is the first time that we've felt it on this level.

I feel a slight itch inside my head.

The "winds of anger" guide us to the palace? That sounds… bad.

"Would you girls accept a detour? I want to find an ocean," I say.

"Send a Holly to follow the wind, then," Ciel says, looking interested in my suggestion.

"And set a [Gate] 'coordinate' so that we can come back here," Alissa says.

The breeze blows to the right of the crossroads, so we go the opposite direction. Along the way, we avoid two other adventuring fellowships who are following the wind.

I feel extra anxious about meeting another fellowship on this level since everyone here is most likely searching for riches, like the coin that we found. It isn't a good idea to get involved with grave-robbers, not that we aren't grave-robbers, too.

Thankfully, there are no monsters on this level. I also don't think it would fit with the theme. If you were a proud elven Lord and you recreated one of your towns in your tomb, you certainly wouldn't want it tainted by a monster infestation, which would give the impression that it was overrun due to your weakness.

We also find a few scattered white doors in the middle of the streets. These are exits out of the dungeon.

Alissa's ears suddenly flicker cutely and she turns her head away. "I hear water running," she says.

We wait a little longer to make sure that the source isn't a fellowship using [Conjure Water], or someone urinating, but it doesn't stop, so we decide to go check it out.

A small public fountain is overflowing, sending a trickle of water along the white wooden floor towards the lower levels.

It's only now that we realize how odd it was that there were no public fountains anywhere before we got here. They aren't super common in any town, but they do exist among the commoners' houses. They're generally used by those who don't have the mana to cast [Conjure Water] often enough to satisfy their needs.

The fact that it's overflowing is even stranger. These fountains are public magic tools filled with mana by the Lord's men, so to have one of them wasting water like this would be quite literally a waste of mana, and mana is money.

We follow the trickle of water down to the basement of a house, and after going down a trapdoor, we find ourselves in another building.

Feeling confused, we cross through this simple home and exit onto a white street. It's different from the one we were on previously, but it's still the same much-worse-Goloria. We just went down a level, and this information is in none of the books that we've read.

"Ohohoh! This is interesting!" Roxanne exclaims and Ciel agrees.

"We crossed through a dimensional door or something since the spirit elementals couldn't go so far down before," I say.

Ciel nods and says, "It was probably made this way so that people wouldn't just be able to dig down to reach this level. Also, there's something more to that trickle of water."

We turn to look at the trickle and continue to follow it. It exits the house and flows into a drain on the side of the street. What's even weirder is that the drain doesn't split the trickle into two. Instead, it picks a direction and continues on, like a trail for us to follow.

We go down a few blocks by following the trickle of water, and encounter another overflowing fountain, which merges with the trickle.

The trail of water continues on, and more and more overflowing fountains add to it, quickly turning it into a stream. The drains then become channels, made specifically to guide the water in a certain direction.

Our cautious walk shifts into a curious march that speeds up into an excited jog. We're just dying to know where this stream ends.

Suddenly, the stream enters a very large hole in the middle of the street and we kneel near the edge to see what lies beyond.

There's an endless ocean of dark blue water only a hundred or so meters below us, and in the distance, we see other streams pouring into it as they fall from similar holes to the one we're looking through.

The ceiling of this ocean is filled with light crystals, but the water below is entirely dark and ominous despite them.

Feeling a little dizzy, Lina most of all, we stand up from the edge of the hole and look at each other. An adventurous smile creeps up on our faces as we wonder about the significance of this place.

I summon a water elemental and order it to jump in. The almost-naked Roxanne blows me a kiss and lets herself fall backward into the hole, making me smile.

Strong and turbulent winds blast against her, which makes me feel like using the dinghy here might be risky. Then she hits the water and swims over a dozen meters down before she touches the muddy dirt.

"Dirt, huh? It seems like the underside of Goloria, then," Roxanne comments.

"All that's missing are the trees," Lina says.

"But we could consider these waterfalls as the trees," Alissa says.

"Anyway… the wind is way too strong; we probably shouldn't use the dinghy," Hana says.

"Can't you use water elementals to make an air bubble for us?" Roxanne asks.

"That would take quite a bit of mana… and we don't know how far we'll have to walk," I say.

"Time for another Holly," Alissa says and I agree.

I spread out four Hollys, one in each of the cardinal directions, but I already know which one is right.

"Following the breeze led us to the second level, but now 'the winds raise up the waves in anger,' so maybe there's something at its source," I say.

I already know which Holly will be the one to find out where we need to go, so I'm not surprised when it starts to hear a low hum. The humming grows until I identify it as the howling of the wind. Soon after that, we find its source: a ginormous tree glowing green with Wind-attuned crystals.

This magnificent tree looks more like an ornament than an actual tree. It doesn't even have roots digging into the small dirt island it's sitting on. It's been fully "tree-knitted" in the usual elven style, making it look like a sort of tubular netting.

In the center of the island, there's a simple brown wooden door without a handle. That's likely the dimensional door to the next level.

Fuck, we have to meet with Confiel, but this is too exciting!

"Alright, using water elementals to make an air bubble will work, but I want us to run towards the island to save mana," I say.

Roxanne's face stiffens, but she nods in agreement.

I unsummon the spirit elementals and all the Hollys, except for the one searching for the palace, and then summon a wind elemental. "Carry me to the water," I order.

I'm slowly brought down in a safe bubble of air. The wind elemental hemorrhages mana to protect me from the turbulent wind, but succeeds in carrying me down without a problem.

I summon three more water elementals and order them to make a small air bubble for us on the ocean's floor. Then the wind elemental deposits me in the muddy dirt and I open a [Gate] back to the girls.

"Well… I guess I didn't think this through," Roxanne comments as she scrunches her nose at the mud sticking to her fashionable boots. She also has to lift her robes so that they don't get muddied.

Hana rolls her eyes so dramatically that I easily see it behind her helmet, then she pulls Roxanne up into a princess carry.

"Awn. Thank you, my love," Roxanne says and kisses Hana's exposed neck.

"I'm going to need much more than that," Hana says, and Roxanne starts licking her.

"I want some of that, too," I say and pout.

"I'll do it to your dick, don't worry," Roxanne says and returns to playing with Hana's neck.

"Right… Become faster!" I say in [Godly Language] and we start to run.

It takes us a few minutes to reach the tree, and the view of its slowly-growing size makes us feel just a little small. Being the only landmark for Gods-know how far significantly intensifies the overwhelming presence of this tree.

Once we climb up the muddy slope to the dirt island, the howling of the wind becomes so overwhelming that it blocks us from progressing. It feels like a solid wall of wind that pushes us back whenever we try to go further.

If only I knew how to play the ocarina.

"I can do it!" Aoi exclaims in my mind. The loudness of the howling makes it nearly impossible for us to talk normally.

"What? You can play the ocarina?" I ask back.

"Silly! I mean that I can help us cross the wind barrier."

"Exactly when I'm expecting you to be reading my mind is the only time when you aren't. Anyway, let's get started."

"Order the wind elemental to help me split the wind in two."

I approach the tired-out, almost-naked Alissa and scream the order in her non-physical ear. The elemental grabs my head with her not-air hands, gently tickling my face with them as she makes me look at her, then she nods with an adorable smile.

Aoi grows larger than Hana and spreads her wings wide. With the elemental following her, they use their willpower to create a barrier against the wind. It takes the shape of an aerodynamic cone that gently pushes the air to the sides, creating a corridor for us to walk through.

We slowly make our way up the island and then finally cross into the ginormous tree. Instantly, the howling dies down and becomes a weird muffled sound, allowing us to talk freely again.

Aoi reduces to small-Aoi and flops on the ground, letting her halberd thump beside her. "Kweh! So tiring!" She exclaims, more annoyed than tired.

"Since when are dragons so lazy?" Hana says and frowns.

I snort and say, "Since always? At least in my world, they were said to be greedy hoarders who spent every day sleeping in their lairs."

"That sounds right," Aoi says and scurries over to me. I pick her up and bundle her up in my arms, then I tickle her belly and she licks the exposed part of my wrist, where my scar is.

"Start to get fat and you'll see how hard I can push someone," Hana says and glares at Aoi.

"Uh-oh," Aoi mutters and starts to grow worried. "M-maybe I should start exercising with Wolfy and Lina?" She gives a toothy smile to Hana.

"Hm. Not a bad idea." Hana nods.

Aoi seems a little nervous, so I calm her down with more belly tickles.

Ciel's hand suddenly lands on my shoulder and she quite gently nudges me forward. I look at her and see a slightly stiff smile. "Can we investigate the door, now?" She asks.

"Uh, sure…" I say.

We cast quick [Clean]s on our muddied boots and walk closer to the door. Now that we're this close to it, I can clearly see that it doesn't have a handle. There's also something carved on it, which makes it clear that this is different from the other doors we've seen.

"The wind came from the storm.

Not from the ocean, not from the shore, not from the forest, and not from the sky.

The wind came from the storm.

A storm made from the hate, pride, greed, ambitions, and fears of elvenkind."

It's in Andraste, how odd.

Below the poetry, there's a carving of a ball with squiggly lines surrounding it, and the lines pointing down are longer than the others; below the longer lines, there are four identical rectangles and another smaller one; below the rectangles, there's a number: 20,162; beside that number, there's a cane.

And below all of that, there's a single phrase: "What did my death accomplish?"

"Oh jolly, poetry!" I exclaim and Ciel chuckles.

"What's 'jolly'?" Lina asks.

"Merry, cheerful," I say.

"Oh hey, that's the same meaning as in Brume," Alissa says.

"How much do you know about that language?" I ask.

"I'm an okay reader, but my speech is awful. All the official documents are in Brume, so I learned enough to fill out the necessary paperwork, but not that many people in Roubaix speak it aloud."

Lina's Trivia: Roubaix is the Misty Low Forest capital.

"Focus. Door, please?" Ciel asks, a little excited and anxious.

"Right…" I say and chuckle, then we all turn to Lina.

She points to the drawing below the poetry and starts talking quickly, "Before the ascension of the God of the Sun, time was kept differently. The high elves used a plant called Sugaragua to keep time because it grew so fast that you could hear it grow. Every two hours or so, a new notch would appear on the plant, so they used these notches, called 'Talhas,' as a measuring unit.

"Then there's the body-cycle. Everyone has a twenty-four-hour cycle where our bodies react in predictable ways. For example, we feel like sleeping at night, then waking in the morning, then working during the day, and then sleeping again. That's a body-cycle. Due to how the days and nights didn't follow the natural body-cycle, they tracked the cycles by counting Talhas instead.

"Also, see this cane-like carving? It's actually a dried flower without petals, their symbol for death. This carving is a date of death. It shows that it was during a Long Day as the sun is showing long rays towards the earth, that the time of death was around nine in the morning as there are four and a half Talhas, and that it was 20,162 body-cycles since the beginning of their king's reign. Which king, I don't know."

"The elves mostly revolved around their king. So, with all this drama about his death 'accomplishing something,' what if this is a king's tomb?" I ask and point to the number. "Is there an elven king who lived this many days?"

With a *poof*, Lina pulls out a thick notepad and starts flicking through the pages. She finishes going through them all, then sighs and says, "We'll… have to check the records. I didn't record that specific detail in my notes."

"We can do it right now, actually. Once our Holly finds the palace, I can open a [Gate] to Goloria, and then open another back to the white town above us."

Alissa's ears flicker. "Someone's here!" She sends the warning through [Bind] and it jolts us into action.

Hana summons her wings and Aoi jumps out of my arms, then grows into big-Aoi. She grabs her halberd from the floor and I guide both of them to fly towards the source of the sound that Alissa heard. At the same time, Alissa fires an arrow and Roxanne prepares an [Ice Lance].

The projectile reaches the target first and seems to stop mid-air, then we hear a grunt. Next, Hana and Aoi swoop down at him with their weapons as I throw a [Lightning Bolt].

"WAI-…!" The unknown man's plea is cut short by my spell at the same time that his [Invisibility] is dispelled by himself and a ninja-like man is revealed with an arrow stuck in his waist.

Hana's long sword and Aoi's halberd are parried by the man's short sword, but he lacks the power to fully defend and is slammed against the ground by their furious chops.

The man hits his back hard against the floor and groans in pain. Lina and Ciel finally have enough time to react and ready themselves. Lina protects me while Ciel protects Roxanne.

Hana and Aoi draw back their weapons, then get ready to deliver another strike.

"I WORK FOR LORD CONFIEL!" The man desperately screams and then coughs and groans.

We tense up as we think of what we should do now.

"Why were you spying on us?" I ask.

The man catches his breath and readjusts himself into a more comfortable position. I see clear blue eyes and a hint of golden hair peek out from behind his balaclava, a golden elf. "I'm spying on anyone that comes here," he says.

"So… do you know that we want to meet with Lord Confiel?" I ask.

"Yes, and he's already coming."

A note from Manasong

Hall of Fame of Patrons

The patrons who support Rupegia shall have their names sung by the bards for they deserve the glory and honor. Their names are:

Oracle Maximillian Hübner.

Prince PreownedFIN.

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Chapter 61: Immediately - Part 2

Well… this is awkward…

Aoi and Hana back off, then I summon a Holly, and one nature and two earth elementals.

"Hold him in place," I order the nature elemental and we move into a circle formation around Alissa and Roxanne.

The man warily eyes the approaching curvy dryad, but doesn't resist the vines as they wrap around his limbs.

"Forgive me if I don't believe you immediately, but I'll ask that you remain still and avoid making any sudden movements," I say and smile apologetically.

"Can I… at least remove this arrow?" The man asks and grabs the shaft of the arrow sticking out of his waist.

"Sure… but we can't get close enough to heal you."

The nature elemental allows him to move up to a point, so, with a yank and a heavy groan, he pulls out the arrow and throws it towards us. Since it's a bodkin arrow, it didn't get caught on his insides, making it easy for him to remove it.

"I have potions…" The man says and drinks something out of a metal flask hidden below his shirt, then he pours the rest on the wound and applies pressure on it so that the bleeding stops.

The man sighs and relaxes in the dirt. Then he removes his balaclava and I see a mature, but still very pretty, golden elf man with cheek-long hair. With his short, whitening beard, he's got a bit of a "classy dad" kind of charm, so I feel a little bad about his situation.

"How did you find me?" He asks.

I get a nudge from Alissa in my soul space that directs me to say, "I'd prefer not to reveal that, for now."

He chuckles once. "Fair enough."

"But how did you?" I whisper to Alissa.

"I smelled anti-scent, something that only happens if there's somebody else using one. Then I felt an odd lack of presence in this mana-filled place and thought that there could be someone there, so I decided to act," she whispers back.

She had so little evidence that it was almost paranoia, but I'm thankful that she's that aware of our surroundings.

"What's your name?" I ask.

"Ervo," he says without hesitation.

He's not lying.

Curiously, he doesn't have a last name. Perhaps he's a Blood Slave or an orphan.

"I see a few daggers under his clothes," Alissa whispers.

"I'm more worried that he might try to escape after hearing what we talked about," I whisper.

"Yeah. We also mentioned [Gate]. It wouldn't be good to let that leak just yet," Lina whispers.

I pull out our scrubber, keeping the onyx disk hidden behind my shield, ready to activate it the moment that I see or feel anything resembling a [Gate].

"He seems physically weak, but I'd bet that he's at least fast," Hana whispers.

"If he attacks, I'd be more concerned about poison than lethal blows," Ciel whispers.

"If anything happens, I'll immediately [Explode] his arms and knees," Roxanne whispers.

"Don't get too nervous. Remember to breathe and stay calm, but alert," I whisper.

"Always," Lina whispers with confidence.

I whisper an order to the Holly near me, and she perches herself on one of the branches of this ginormous tree that we're inside.

After a few awkwardly silent minutes, the Holly sees a white, nearly transparent bubble with a bunch of people inside flying down from a similar hole to the one that we came from.

The ball floats towards us and takes two more minutes before it enters Alissa's senses.

"Seven people," she says.

"Why didn't he come through [Gate]?" Ciel asks Ervo.

"It would leave him vulnerable to you. No offense, but it's better to not risk it," he says and smiles cordially.

"None taken," I respond.

The ball lands effortlessly at the shore of the island and I feel mana escaping from one of the female mages as she bends the air to her will and allows all seven to walk towards the ginormous tree unimpeded.

The party crosses into the net-like tree just before the ball is dispelled, allowing us to properly see them.

The most striking one is in the middle. A mature golden elf man with thin eyes and an oval face. His graying golden hair is conservatively styled and the lack of a beard makes him look rather youthful, but confident. He walks forward with a slight smirk, but his posture is impeccable and his presence is slightly humbling.

His armor is a pure shining white that makes me uncertain if it's the usual wood or actual metal. Multiple gems are proudly displayed in his armor, shield, and sheathed sword.

Soul Info

Name | Confiel Rincipio | Race | Golden Elf | Level | 90
HP | 100 | MP | 9,120 | Magic Power | 2,250
Strength | 18 | Endurance | 23

On his sides, there are two similar-looking mature women with cute eyes and round faces, his wives. One is a golden elf, while the other is a silver elf. They look kind, but a hint of smug and refined pride makes them look mischievous. Their presence is the opposite of Confiel's, and looking at them makes me feel slightly at ease.

They wear fine mage robes that are faintly transparent, revealing a set of chain and padded leather armor below. Both hold simply-designed staves, each composed entirely of a single crystal that slowly pulses with light. Luz, the golden elf, has a red staff while Lua, the silver elf, has a blue staff. Their hair is tied up in a bun so that they can wear helmets, but still look regal. Alissa and Roxanne take mental notes about that hairstyle.

Soul Info

Name: | Luz Rincipio | Race: | Golden Elf | Level: | 77
HP | 100 | MP | 15,340 | Magic Power | 5,005
Strength | 13 | Endurance | 19

Soul Info

Name: | Lua Rincipio | Race: | Silver Elf | Level: | 77
HP | 100 | MP | 15,340 | Magic Power | 5,005
Strength | 13 | Endurance | 19

The fact that their stats are exactly the same is very interesting.

Diamond dragon scales… they are basically half as powerful as Werner Rizek…

Beside Confiel's wives, there are two tall and buff soldiers in armor similar to Confiel's, their personal bodyguards. Behind them, there's an old mage holding a vine staff adorned with a white gem, likely the healer. And behind them all, there's a tall dragonkin man in dark metal armor. He has lustrous long brown hair and scales, and a scarred face, making him look like a handsome barbarian.

The bodyguards all have their swords drawn, but the blades are pointing down in a non-threatening posture, so we mirror them.

Confiel's eyes scan over our party and his gaze slightly unnerves me. It's far from being as powerful as the Anaras' piercing eyes, but it's still a mysterious power that makes me wary. I feel like it's different from the Anaras' mental attack; it's a feeling that he represents "danger."

His smirk turns into a normal smile. He nods respectfully as he says, "Greetings, Helios. I am Crown Lord Confiel. Ruler of the Eastern High Forest."

I bow to him and the girls repeat the gesture after I'm done. I summon all my courage to speak with clarity. The memories of Gify's vision about dragons seem to release whatever hold Confiel's presence was gaining over my heart. "Greetings, Lord Confiel. I am Wolf Ryder, and these are my wives."

He nods in response and his eyes turn to Ervo, still being held by the nature elemental. "First, I'd like to apologize for unknowingly spying on your fellowship, but you must understand the importance of this door. My intention was to know if Lord Mavel would ever find this place, not to spy on you, specifically."

I turn to Ervo and say, "You can stand." He obeys with a slight grunt as his wound is still not fully healed, then I continue, "Apologies accepted. I also apologize for wounding your agent. Lately, we've been very wary of ambushes, but unfortunately, he did hear some things that he shouldn't have."

"Has he heard something sensitive enough that requires his death?" Confiel asks, still in a calm tone.

That nearly throws me off, but I remain composed. "No, but if we are to negotiate, his return must be postponed until we are done."

He nods once. "Agreed. But can you finish healing him? From what I know, your fellowship has two healers."

I unsummon the nature elemental, then Ciel nods and walks towards Ervo, who straightens his posture as she approaches. He still holds his hand over his wound, and I see that it's bleeding slightly.

After a short chant, Ervo nearly releases a sigh of relief and his posture relaxes. He [Clean]s his hand and inspects the now perfectly closed wound.

The bodyguards sheathe their weapons, and the mages store their staves inside their [Item Boxes], so we do the same. Aoi doesn't have a sling, so she just stores her halberd in her [Item Box], provoking a short look of surprise from Confiel, his wives, and the old mage.

Ervo kneels and looks down. "Forgiveness, my Lord, I have compromised your position with my failure," he says.

"I don't fully fault you for that. Misty Foxes are famous for being spy-killers," Confiel says and sends an amused glance towards Alissa, who simply smiles proudly, though I can feel that her heart is also being affected a little by his presence.

Then he smiles and his threatening presence fades. "With that done, I believe that we have some business to discuss," he says.

"Mr. Bastico has suggested that we might benefit from working together," I say and give him my best business smile.

He nods and responds without hesitation, "Indeed, we might. But this is not a comfortable place to talk about such things. Would you accept a [Gate] to our castle in Goloria?"

"Certainly."

Luz seems to become pleased while her sister(?) maintains a calm expression.

"Ervo, follow them," Confiel orders, then turns to the old mage behind them. "Ceiro, if you please."

The man licks his lip, a little impatient, then walks towards us and casts [Gate], creating a black circle in front of us.

Aoi reduces to small-Aoi, provoking a twitch of surprise from everyone, then she climbs up onto my shoulder. The brown-haired barbarian seems slightly amused by Aoi.

Hana walks in first and disappears. Through [Bind], I see that she's inside a grand white hall made of wood with stairs everywhere and three thrones in front of her. I assume that this is the main hall of Goloria's castle.

After a moment of hesitation, we follow and appear beside her with Ervo coming through right behind us. Confiel and his party appear a moment later a few meters away from us and closer to the throne.

The hall is carpeted with blood-red velvet that caresses our feet after these long days of walking in boots; it feels largely empty, but I see marks where the chairs and benches are usually set out for events. The stairs lead to dozens of corridors, reminding me of the branch-like style of this castle. Behind us, there's a huge oval double door that's currently closed, but we can see a well-lit corridor through the red stained glass in it. Behind the three lavish thrones, the wall is made entirely of clear glass that allows us to see the dark "Shell" of Goloria. The ceiling is full of dark beams making a beautiful web-like design that seems to be on par with the elven fascination with patterns.

They all untie their weapon belts and store them along with their shields in their [Item Box]es, so we follow suit.

After waiting a short while for us to get acquainted with our surroundings, Luz smiles and says, "It's a pleasure to meet you, Wolf Ryder." Then she extends her hand to me.

Her voice has nothing special to it, which I'm thankful for since the presences of these three Lords are already intense enough for our hearts.

We walk forward and start the custom of kissing hands. Confiel's hand is barely distinguishable from Luz's and Lua's. Aside from it being larger, there's no significant difference; his nails are even painted with the same light silvery shade as that of his wives.

After the girls and I are done, Luz motions for me to come forward, then grabs my hand for a return of the same slow and gentle kiss that I gave, one signifying respect. She's the only one that returns the kiss, but for us, who are mere commoners, this is a significant gesture.

Confiel gestures to the bodyguards and mages, who then leave the room, except for the brown-haired Conan.

Then Luz smiles brightly at us and says, "Follow us, please. The meeting hall is this way."

We pick a large set of stairs and climb for about the height of one or two floors before we enter a light brown corridor. The walls are all carved with Celtic knots, giving the impression of an infinite corridor. The walls are full of wide windows that allow the light to come in and let us see the outside.

The sunlight is beginning to turn orange as the sun starts to set. We see a few colorful gardens and guest houses dispersed in a circular arrangement around the castle. Other branch-like golden corridors extend above us and end in leaf-shaped rooms with green walls.

This castle is certainly odd-looking.

We soon reach the meeting hall and see a tall and wide room with a long circular white table and a servant at the ready near the wall. A recreation of Goloria is carved into the table and covered by glass.

The Lords sit in three lavish chairs, Conan stands behind them, we sit at the opposite side in some very comfy chairs, and Ervo stands beside us with his back turned to the Lords. Then Confiel makes a gesture and the servant serves us some fresh cold tea and juicy sweets, then leaves the room.

Luz and Lua start enjoying the food along with us, but Confiel merely waits.

After we've wet our throats and eaten some delicious sweets, Confiel starts speaking, "As you should already know, we've collected all readily available information about your fellowship. We know all about the skills that you've shown publicly. After all, we're interested in working together with you for mutual benefit."

His tone turns a little more serious and that makes us become a bit apprehensive. "But there's something that must be adfirst. How did you escape the Innocent Nymph? We don't know how it was possible for you to survive that."

We all look at each other somberly. The memory is still fresh and painful, but it also means that if Confiel is too cautious, he might consider us "cursed" and refuse to work with us.

I breathe in as Gify gives me a small boost in confidence by faintly connecting us all together. Then I say, "I'm a summoner and I always keep eyes around me wherever I go. We've fallen into ambushes a few too many times to not be constantly worried about them. And this time, this vigilance was justified since it was this early warning that saved us."

Confiel continues to pressure us, "And what happened? Not even the Punishers seem to have found closure, even though they've found a dozen Wicked to execute."

I wet my dry lips and prepare for the lie. "Four groups of seven robed and masked men and women suddenly appeared around the Inn. Then they huddled at the four corners of the building to cast [Meteor] in just a matter of seconds.

"Feeling the immense amount of mana being gathered, we all immediately bolted out onto the balcony and jumped. With my [Telekinesis], I guided myself and the girls that can't fly towards the ground safely. Then we ran away from the masked heretics and safely escaped the blast zone.

"We didn't know if they were after us, specifically, so amid all the confusion, we slipped out of town."

After I'm done, the three Lords remain silent as they process what I said.

Lua suddenly fiddles with her system and with a *poof*, she pulls out an Identification Crystal.

She holds the crystal ball in her hand and calmly says, "Forgive us for this, but we have to make sure that you're not Wicked. Too many people with enemies died in that attack and you seem to be the only survivor." Then she rolls the ball towards us.

After everyone has been checked, Confiel turns very pensive and scratches one of his long and flexible ears. Then he shares a look with his wives, who nod at him.

"Considering what you are, I don't suspect that you're responsible, but I suspect that you're involved," he says.

My stomach sinks and I feel a little bit of dread. "What do you mean?" I ask.

"You must be a Gifted person. A Hero in rising that will have the power to accomplish something great. The heretics must have gained a whiff of that information and responded with extreme force."

Denying that I'm a Gifted person would be counterproductive to bargaining with Confiel, so we remain quiet about that. But our faces harden with resolve as we become even more convinced that we're being hunted.

"Where would the heretics find so much power that they could cast four [Meteor]s?" Ciel asks.

"Aremut," Confiel answers immediately.

I look at the others who frown and look worried. I don't know much about Aremut.

"I thought that place was a repeat of the Deadlands. With everything there being dead, the undead can't grow more powerful because there's nothing to absorb," Ciel continues.

"It is like the Deadlands, but it's also their only foothold in the entire realm, so it makes sense to suspect that the heretics came from there. The Emperor himself found evidence that there are or were heretics doing something in Aremut. But he can't find anything meaningful since he's just a single person searching a whole kingdom."

So, we'll have to "visit" Aremut one day.

I sigh softly and say, "It seems that we are at a disadvantage, then. Since the Emperor himself can't find these heretics and the Punishers have no meaningful leads, we are forced to go into hiding."

Luz looks a little sad, which is a bit heartbreaking, and Confiel nods sympathetically, then he says, "I'd say that these heretics lack critical information about you. They used a flashy, crude, and heavily imprecise method to try to kill you. That is, if we are assuming that they are targeting you, specifically. So, a Lord's protection should be enough to keep them away."

I hold back a sarcastic smirk. "And that Lord would be you?"

He narrows his eyes gently and his mouth twitches. I'm not sure if he was going to smile or look annoyed. "Not precisely. Any of the higher Lords of the Avgi and the higher-ranking governors of Maoka have enough power to keep you safe. Considering your skills, trading protection for your services is an easy deal to make."

I force my sarcasm to go away and make my expression become more pleasant to look welcoming. "So what kind of services do you desire from us?"

Luz smiles and says, "If you are here, you must have a good idea of what we need."

"We do," I say with a nod.

"Then think of it as a small test. We don't want just your Gift, we want to know more about Helios' judgment and discretion."

I reflexively glance at Hana and her posture straightens even further. Through [Bind], I feel it when she bites her tongue a little painfully.

"You don't have to literally do it," I say in her mind.

"Helps me not forget," she answers.

"Speaking of tests, how many times have you tested us? Our first stay here wasn't that pleasant due to all the staring," Alissa asks.

"We did all sorts of tests. Gifts can be very peculiar, so we had to come up with ways to narrow down what it might be," Lua answers.

"My powers are very peculiar, indeed, so I need a better idea of what you want to do with it, exactly," I say.

Confiel becomes very serious, and the feeling of "danger" comes back. "If we tell you about our plans, we won't allow you to leave until the situation is resolved or you agree to help us. We cannot afford the risk of this plan leaking."

So it might really be something related to killing Lord Este.

"Then we still have more to discuss. There are a few minimum assurances that I need before we continue on to talking about your plans," I say.

Confiel nods. "List them."

"First. How did you find out about my Gift?"

The three Lords smile gently and Confiel starts speaking, "One day, we came across some information in Goldcross about a request to 'subdue' a fellowship called Helios. This request almost instantly went wrong, very, very wrong. The poor girl that witnessed the fight was traumatized, but fortunately, she entered the temple and stopped using opioids because of that."

The girl saw us! She saw the Symbol of Darkness defend the girls from the thugs!

I sigh internally.

There was no reasonable way for us to find that girl… It's lucky for us that Confiel was the one who did.

"A day after that happened, we got information that Katasko's headquarters was leveled in the middle of the night. An astounding attack to their pride that left no witness and no victims. A remarkable feat."

Lua nods in agreement, Luz smirks, and Confiel smiles, but we only feel a little shame about their "praise."

"Then, two day-cycles later, Katasko seems to have found some 'evidence' that Helios was responsible for the attack. I managed to take a look at the 'evidence' provided, and let's just say that it's 'flimsy.'"

"Putting it that way, anyone would make the connection to us," Roxanne says.

"Only if they had the first bit of information. Otherwise, it would be more correct to assume that Katasko merely wants to throw the blame at someone to recover some of their pride," Luz says.

That seems to be all they have to say about that for now, so I ask something else, "How is Katasko seen by the nobility? We don't know much about them, after all."

Lua wrinkles her nose for a moment and says, "A disease. Imperial nobility trying to hoard power and influence for themselves and infringe upon our right of self-governance."

"With the way that the Western High Forest is right now, we lack the unity to block their advances," Confiel says, becoming more serious.

"Katasko tried to recruit us, but after we refused, they immediately turned hostile, so I assume they're trying to aggressively gain power?" I ask.

Confiel nods gently. "Indeed. Their method of operation is the same at all levels."

"We don't seem to need help with the trial against Katasko, but a letter of commendation from you would be a nice guarantee in case things go wrong."

Confiel doesn't hesitate to answer. "That will cost us very little, so I'll allow you to use our [Eternal Gate] network to go to Goldcross for the trial at any time."

I smile and bow shortly. "That is appreciated, but we will also require more."

Confiel leans forward and interlaces his fingers over the table. Luz seems a little amused and Lua remains neutral.

I become serious again and continue, "We have a certain crafty and resourceful enemy that wants us dead. His name is Darean and he's a former member of the fellowship Great Destiny that operates out of Rabanara. We have reason to believe that he's the one that guided Dawn of Fire to attack Este Escort Company's caravan."

Luz and Lua open their eyes wide and hum in unison. "Ooh…"

Confiel sighs and says, "It really was too reckless for Dawn of Fire to do such a thing without outside influence."

"We require assistance in finding Darean so that we can kill him once and for all," I add.

Confiel relaxes a little and says, "That should be simple. Dawn of Fire assured us that the 'agitator' responsible for their 'mistake' is inside Escanso. Even Crown Lord Este seems to show some willingness to help hunt him down. I'm assuming that this Darean and the person that Dawn of Fire is hunting are one and the same."

A collective sigh resounds inside my soul space. Darean is a problem that was becoming too big for us, so it's very reassuring to know that he's finally finished even without our help.

Feeling a little more sure about this deal, I continue, "In addition to that, I'd like access to your spy network, or whatever you might call it. We are tired of being in the dark about our enemies, so we'd like to receive information about matters that pertain to us."

Now Lua seems to be the one more amused while Confiel and Luz are pensive.

"I can arrange this for you," Lua says, then both Lords turn to Lua and look at her questioningly. "I'll censor sensitive information about us, but you can be sure that it's in our mutual interest to keep you informed."

I'll just have to trust that they'll really never lie about or omit anything relevant to us.

Confiel and Luz seem satisfied and say nothing, then return to looking at us, so I continue, "There's also the need to define the length of time that we'll work with you. We have plans to leave the High Forest at some point, so we won't swear to become your knights."

Confiel answers, "We also do not want that kind of relationship. After our plans are complete, there will be a time of instability in the High Forest, so we want you to stay for a few months, at least."

I nod. "That's acceptable, but if we are going to behave like knights, then we'd like to be paid as such."

Lua's mouth twitches and her stare intensifies, then she says, "You won't be official knights, so you'll have your pay reduced by thirty percent. It's still more than the average fellowship is paid for this sort of job."

"That is fair," I say and bow shortly again. "Now, lastly, I want you to swear to the Gods that you will not try to kill us."

The three Lords freeze and even Conan, the barbarian, reacts with mild surprise. Both Luz and Lua let a small smirk form, but Confiel remains impassive.

"I can't promise you that, not with those exact words, at least," Confiel says and finally drinks some of the cold tea to wet his throat. "Such a simple promise to someone of your potential would be irresponsible of me. What I can promise though, is that if our paths ever bring us against one another, then I'll make sure to warn you of that and give you ample time to change your ways. If you continue on your path despite that warning, then I'll kill you."

We spend a few seconds processing his words, but we don't find any fault in them.

"That'll be enough," I say with a nod.

"You ask for a lot," Confiel says.

I smile with confidence. "You know that our price is worth it."

Confiel readjusts himself in his seat, and we all unconsciously stiffen our postures in expectancy. "Very well… I'm going to tell you our plan, so after this, you're not allowed to leave if you reject it." I nod in agreement, and he clears his throat. "We request that you use your Gift, that we assume might be [Monster Summoning], to break the Shell around Escanso's castle, so that we can invade and execute Crown Lord Mavel Este and his wives."

We assumed that he probably wanted something like that, but we didn't know exactly what.

We've already discussed this, so there's no hesitation in my words as I bow and say, "We accept your request."

The three Lords get up, and their faces turn stern. "Then we depart. Immediately," Confiel says.

"W-what? Immediately?" I ask.

"Immediately," he repeats with a nod.

A note from Manasong

Hall of Fame of Patrons

The patrons who support Rupegia shall have their names sung by the bards for they deserve the glory and honor. Their names are:

Oracle Maximillian Hübner.

Prince PreownedFIN.

Lord Andrew Meyers.

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Lord Bill.

Lord Novgarod.

Lord DJ.

Lord Cidant.

Lord Ashadun.

Lord Michale Erwin.

Lord Joxsan Herrera.

Lord Enrique Peña Gomez.

Lord Vampmire.

Lord Braidborn.

Lord Bakerdea.

Lord Kalsted.

Lord Yeeteris Dedmeem.

Lord D4rk Sheep.

Lord Nevarec.

Lord Nathan Vanbrunt.

Noble Salty Panda.

Noble Evil.

Noble Yamibomb112.

Noble Maurice.

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Chapter 61: Immediately - Part 3

His suddenness makes me freeze as my brain scrambles to prepare for what's to come.

Confiel grabs a small gem, and a minute amount of mana leaves his body, then he turns back to us and says, "Lord Mavel may be desperately trying to find powerful artifacts in the Legado dungeon, but he's not blind to the outside world. If he wasn't paying attention to you before, just knowing that you've gotten closer to us will make him alert and assume that you're a threat to him.

"He must be fortifying his position, so the longer we wait, the more difficult it'll be to kill him. It'll take twenty minutes to mobilize my forces, you have until then to prepare."

Roxanne gets up and speaks before I can respond, "If we are to break the Shell, then it might be advantageous to us if we can test its sturdiness beforehand."

Confiel's hands clench nervously as he responds, "You can use our castle's Shell to test that while we prepare. Just… don't open a hole in my wall."

Roxanne smiles very stiffly. "I can't promise we won't damage it, but I doubt we'll be able to 'accidentally' open a hole," she says and bows slightly.

Confiel nods and returns to me. "I, Confiel Rincipio, True Noble and Crown Lord of the Eastern High Forest, give you my word that I'll fulfill my part of our agreement. Let the Gods observe me and judge me for my actions."

I feel a tightening in my heart that tells me that I also have to fulfill my part of our bargain. Then we both nod at each other in understanding.

Confiel touches a gem embedded in the table and the servant immediately comes back. "Take them to the private gazebo and then to the Shell. Dismiss any guards nearby and hold on to this," he says and hands a lithograph to the servant.

The servant casts [Gate], then we step on the black circle that appears.

The cool air of the meeting hall is replaced by the stuffier atmosphere of the outside. The sun paints the well-mowed grass and the small water streams with a faint shade of yellow, and the shadow of the Shell slowly creeps closer to us.

We're in a covered large octagonal platform made of ashen planks with several lounging chairs, couches, and a bed. Eight pillars support the conical roof, where a mesmerizing kinetic sculpture spins without the need for wind.

The servant motions for us to follow, so we cut our sightseeing short. We walk along a tree tunnel until the servant suddenly stops us. He crosses through a metal gate at the end, then Alissa hears him dismiss a guard outside.

After even Alissa can't hear the guard's footsteps any more, the servant comes back and motions for us to follow him.

We exit the gate onto a wide cobbled path and see the pitch black color of the Shell in front of us. Then we walk far enough away from the path so that the servant can't hear us talk.

"I'll spread my soul over it. Roxanne, do your thing," I say.

While the rest of the girls maintain their equipment and temper their minds, Roxanne and I start studying the Shell.

I spread my soul over a part of it and "taste" the bark. Within it, I find minute amounts of mana and a very dense material. I can't see the atomic structure, but the feeling that I get from it is very similar to metal.

This is truly a shell with a capital "S."

I walk forward, then I knock on it and in return, I receive the feeling and sound of knocking on concrete.

"Hm~… The Shell is tough, but I think that with the amount of mana that Confiel and his mages have, they should be able to knock it down."

Roxanne readjusts her glasses as she says, "Remember that they'd have to spend time chanting and use all their mana on something big enough to breach the wall. Even a simple [Earth Bullet] big enough to open a hole in this would require a long time just to gather the necessary mana. I'm guessing that Confiel wants something more 'instantaneous.'"

I cringe as I say, "Which brings us to our specialties… instantaneous spells."

Roxanne sighs. "Yeah… put my extra points into [Mana Overuse Resistance]."

I pull out one of the Decay pots and throw it at the wall, then I observe the effects with my soul.

Have you ever eaten a rotting corpse? That's what I think this feels like. The Decay goop sickens me, and I need Ciel to cast [Refresh] so that I can continue my observation.

And I see something fascinating. It's like watching a complex web simply "unravel" in front of me. I can't even understand how it unravels, it just works.

The Shell starts to puff up and warp a little as it becomes less dense, and some of its components become gas or liquid that then slowly seeps out of the wall, leaving it porous.

I chant and cast, "[Earth Bullet]."

The ball of rock hits the wall and gets embedded in it, then it starts to get dissolved by the goop.

We observe for not even a minute before the servant suddenly spurs into movement and marches towards us. "I've received a report about something tampering with the Shell."

I merely nod to him and the servant returns to his previous position.

"I see… so we don't have much time to let the goop work," I say.

"How deep did it penetrate?" Roxanne asks.

"Barely one-tenth."

"We can use it, but… it wouldn't be wise to rely on it.

"Cast two small [Explosion]s. One in a place with goop and the other in a place without."

I pull out a barricade, which everyone hides behind. Then Roxanne casts the spells. After making a small mess and spreading some of the goop over the cobble path, we assess the damage.

The goop-covered part of the wall received a visibly deeper scar than the part without it. I focus deeper into my "soul vision" and notice that the outside layer of bark seems to be tougher than the inner bark. The outer bark seems to have gone through some sort of treatment, possibly something to make it better resist the elements and small scratches.

In the time that we have left, we use the golems to transfer the goop from the Decay pots into a repurposed leather jacket that's been sewn into a container by Lina. Then we discuss our plan.

The girls don't like it, but I convince them to go big or go home.

Alissa senses someone coming just as we finish our preparations. I look back and see both a mage and the servant looking at the Shell in horror.

There are a few grey blobs of slime on the wall slowly dripping towards the floor and many small white globs all over the cobble path.

"The… Lord awaits us…" The mage mutters, his eyes still glued at the sullied Shell, the symbol of the Lord's unassailableness.

"We are ready," I say and the mage casts [Gate].

We are taken to a dimly lit building where multiple knights are moving about and making preparations. The sounds of footsteps and wooden armor hitting and rubbing against itself resounds through the building, giving us a sense of urgency.

Not-Conan, the barbarian, appears before us and says in a soft, but imperative tone, "Helios, come with me."

We pass through a lavish living room and climb a set of stairs, then we enter a guest room with a wide view of the street outside.

Confiel's group that we met previously in the dungeon is all here. Confiel is looking impatiently out of the window towards the dark Shell of Escanso; his wives are sitting on the bed as they meditate, doing something similar to our mana circulation training; Ervo is looking out of the window, too, but he's staring at the empty streets below us; Ceiro, their healer, is chanting [Blessing Magic] in an area, covering the entire room; the two bodyguards are standing by the doorway and merely glance at us when we enter.

There is a Wind, Fire, Water, and [Earth Spirit] on the bed, adorably dancing in a circle. The [Wind Spirit] is a transparent, green little guy with long, thin shoes; baggy pants; a round face with cute, round eyes; and long, winged ears.

We walk towards the middle of the room and Confiel asks without looking at us, "You think that you can do it?"

"We have a plan, but we don't have enough information to make any sort of reliable prediction," I say.

"If you fail, then we'll do it the hard way." Then he turns to look at me in the eye. His stern face and "danger" aura blow away the last shred of levity I had within me. "I want you fighting close to me, but when the time comes to fight Lord Mavel himself, I want you to stay away and focus on taking out his reinforcements. Also, I know that it's dangerous to ask this of you, but I want you to keep in mind that the only ones that need to die are the three Este Lords. Anyone that you can spare will benefit the entire High Forest."

"We'll keep that in mind," I say and bow slightly.

He nods. "Good. We are ready. You can attack this wall in any way that you see fit, but I advise you to let Ceiro finish Blessing us all. We have enough time; the patrols around this area have been diverted for ten minutes."

I nod respectfully. "Thank you for the aid."

"There's more. Your weapons and armor may be good enough for this battle, but I can give you better ones, though I'm not sure if you'll be able to fight as effectively with something you're unfamiliar with."

Hana and Ciel nudge me to say, "It's better for us to keep using our own equipment. We are fine the way we are."

He nods and resumes staring at the Shell.

We wait four more minutes for Ceiro's Blessings to be cast on us. We sit in comfy chairs and slowly feel our heart rates rise as the sounds of the men getting ready downstairs wanes.

So fast… so sudden…

We receive [Wind Armor], [Swift Foot], [Rainbow Shield], [Rainbow Crystal], [Warrior's Respite], and [Mage's Respite]. They are all stronger Blessings than what I can cast.

Then we nod appreciatively at Ceiro, who snorts a little smugly and returns the nod.

We go down the set of stairs and huddle up in the corridor that leads outside. We see Escanso's night mist slowly seep in from under the door.

My skills are like this:

Wolf Ryder Skill Report

Physical

Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level
Sword Use | 12+9 | Dodge | 4+5 | Parry | 4+5
Block | 1+8 | Shield Bash | 0+1 | Battlefield Perception | 1+1
Muscle Explosion | 1+1 | Acrobatics | 5+0 | Ekrano Style (creator) | 1

Magical

Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level
Sense Mana | 0+6 | Mana Control | 0+15 | Mana Recovery | 6+0
Mana Efficiency | 0+7 | Reduced Mana Cost | 0+7 | Mana Overuse Resistance | 0+3
Fire Magic | 1+4 | Earth Magic | 0+3 | Water Magic | 0+1
Wind Magic | 0+2 | Electric Magic | 6+14 | Light Magic | 2+8
Space Magic | 7+23 | Summoning Magic | 13+24 | Blessing Magic | 8+22
Nature Magic | 2+18 | Conjuring Magic | 0+1 | Spirit Magic | 0+2
Illusion Magic | 0+2 | Golemancy | 0+9 | Redirect Mana (creator) | 3
Sense Soul (creator) | 6 | Soul Manipulation (creator) | 3 | Godly Language | 30+0

Miscellaneous

Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level
Cooking | 0+4 | Andraste Language | 4+6 | Dismantling | 0+4
Massage | 0+1 | Mana Genitals (innate) | 1 | |

But I temporarily shift my points around for our plan.

Aoi gets down from my shoulder and grows into big-Aoi, then stands on her hind legs in a way that reminds me of a bear. She has to use her wings for stability, but this posture is much safer for her in melee combat than staying quadruped.

"What a day," Ciel comments.

"So fast," Roxanne adds.

"No rest for the weary, or the hunted, or the wary," I say, absentmindedly.

Ciel chuckles and says, "From fighting a sequence of monsters, to walking through a mysterious city, to nearly unraveling the riddle of the dungeon, to a meeting with the three of the most powerful Lords of this region, to a battle to kill other three of the most powerful Lords of the region. What's next after this?"

"An encounter with heretics? I want payback," Alissa asks. Her ferocity seeps through [Bind], but I easily keep my anger in check.

"Maybe we'll meet with the Monster King, too," Lina says.

"Or another one of the Symbols of the Elements," Alissa suggests.

She means someone like Gecynd.

I shift some of my points in melee skills into [Mana Overuse Resistance] and [Blackout Resistance]. I can only put ten points in each because any more makes me feel "heavy," which I believe means that my soul isn't ready for more.

I close my system and smirk as I say, "You girls are thinking too small. Remember that I had a vision of something beyond the Everlasting Storm. We are going to explore the unexplored! Conquer the unknown! We'll explore strange new lands. Seek out new life and new civilizations. Boldly go where no man has gone before!"

"No hu-man-oid," Ciel corrects with a slight pout.

"I bet that was a reference," Alissa says and smiles at me.

"Why would we bet against that?" Hana asks.

"Silly, she wasn't serious," Roxanne says in a slightly condescending tone.

"I… I know!" Hana protests and Roxanne chuckles evilly.

Lina hugs my chest and starts, "United, day and night,"

We smile at each other and continue reciting our vows in unison, "In pain and pleasure, success or failure, life or death. Wherever we may be, we will never abandon each other. All for one, one for all."

The levity lightens our hearts, making me realize how tense my shoulders are. Then we join in a group hug, and this time we don't even need Gify to connect us to fill our hearts with determination. But I still need one last push.

"Gify, hit me with the good stuff," I say.

"Gih!"

I get an instant erection as visions of dragons fill my mind. Then I open the door and we walk outside.

The world is my oyster and I'll take charge of my Fate.

"Lina, the goop," I order.

She pulls out the leather bag filled with goop and immediately throws it across the street. It hits the Shell, rupturing the leather and spreading the goop all over it.

I'll do whatever I must to keep these women safe.

I start counting in my head. When I reach 30 seconds, Roxanne starts gathering her mana, then I hold the "button" for [Monster Summoning] and choose the Grim Giant.

I'll go as far as necessary to get the power I need to kill the fucking heretics.

The Grim Giant that I killed was old and decrepit. As scary as it already was at that age, it was even more powerful when it was young.

I can't modify the monsters that I summon that much, but I can choose to summon a younger version of them, so I choose to summon the [Grim Giant] at its prime.

A dragon doesn't measure efforts to vanquish their enemies.

My soul locks up and my body goes limp, yet I remain conscious. Hana holds me in place as the pain explodes in my head, then my body convulses as my life force is drained away to feed the Grim Giant.

Ciel casts [Heal] multiple times, making my HP shoot up, then crash down as my spell continues to drain me. My veins burst, bruises appear along my body, my nose bleeds, and my eyes become bloodshot.

My lack of control over my body at least prevents me from screaming and crying like a little girl over this extreme level of pain.

I feel like my limbs are being slowly ripped from my body while something is chewing into my chest, aiming to eat my heart.

When my MP reaches minus one thousand, the pain vanishes as suddenly as it came, and an enormous mass of glowing matter appears in front of me. In the next instant, a grinning, muscular, and naked gigantic man appears kneeling in front of me. The street can barely contain his massive body, with his arms brushing against the houses near us.

I summon all of my strength and use [Godly Language]. "BECOME STRONGER!"

The muscular man turns into a bodybuilder, and my own body feels like it's made of steel.

"KICK IT!" I order.

The Grim Giant stands up and easily reaches twenty meters tall, yet he's still smaller than the Shell. But that's enough for us.

The Giant slams his fingers against the Shell and pierces it lightly, giving him the leverage to bash against the wall with more of his strength.

Alissa makes me chug a few of Roxanne's Moonlight Moss MP potions while Ciel continues [Heal]ing me and then casts a few [Purify Body]s to counteract the side effects of the potions.

The Giant draws its foot backward, then slams it against the Shell, right where all the Decay goop is splattered.

The street trembles with the loud bang of the impact, and Roxanne's barricade protects us from the spray of goop. I immediately feel multiple [Gate] scrubbers being activated all around us.

Come on…

The Giant pulls back its foot again and I can see that the skin of its toes is melting off.

Another bang blasts through the area, and my ears start hurting from the noise. In the distance, we see civilians running away from this place with all their energy.

Come on...

The Giant readies its foot again and I see that it's bleeding. Another slam and the wall is painted red with the Giant's blood.

Come on…!

The Giant kicks the Shell again and breaks his toe.

"ROXANNE!"

"[EX-PLO-SIOO~N~]!"

Goop flies everywhere and starts melting our wooden barricade. Then the Giant bashes the wall again, and I wince from the extreme loudness of the thump.

Something cracks, and the Giant's foot enters the wall. Then he wrenches the foot free, and we see some light coming out of the wall, a hole.

Ciel casts a quick [Heal] on everyone's ears so that the buzzing goes away and I unsummon the Giant, finally stopping the horrible strain on my body and soul.

"CHARGE!" I hear Confiel's magically enhanced voice boom across the street.

Knights burst out of windows and doors of the surrounding houses, then a stampede flows around us as they all pour through the hole.

We give Roxanne one of the Moonlight MP Potions, and Ciel casts [Purify Body] on her so that she can recover from the paralysis.

Soon after I'm starting to feel strong enough to fight again, Confiel appears beside us. "Let's go," he orders and rushes into the hole.

Without any hesitation, we follow him into battle.

On the other side, we see a hellish scene as Confiel's knights plow through the hastily organized defense without much of a problem. Elves fall left and right from arrows and blunt weapons. Whether they are alive but unconscious or actually dead, only Alissa and others like her would know.

There's a corridor of stunningly arranged formal gardens between us and the castle, but the destruction has already tarnished all of the beauty of this place. The geometric patterns of the gardens and the trees surrounding them are already up in flames or broken apart by the crossfire of spells.

Enemy archers and mages use the guest houses scattered along the straight corridor of garden space as cover, which means that the destruction is brought upon these houses, too.

"Through the middle!" Confiel yells. The men make way for their Lords' party, and numerous enchantments protect them from any harm coming from above.

I summon three Hollys and spread them out to get a complete view of the battlefield.

Escanso's golden castle is similar to Goloria's. It has a thick, cylindrical trunk where most of the rooms are located and dozens of branch-like towers extend outwards, making it look like a dried bush. Currently, each of these branches holds a powerful archer.

As we run, I help Alissa and Roxanne fire long-distance arrows and spells towards the men in the towers, forcing them to hide behind cover.

Confiel's party notices what we are doing, and their three mages start to help, too, but none of them can cast spells as fast as Roxanne can, and nobody can reach the same level of accuracy with their aim the same way that I can by guiding the girls with [Bind].

Near the end of the corridor, we reach the front line and Confiel assumes command.

He slashes his sword at the elf in front of him, and his sword is stopped by the enemy's shield, but an ethereal arm and sword passes through the defense and completes the slash. The enemy elf yells in pain, and his shield arm loses strength.

He's a Spirit spell sword!

The soldier is clearly not prepared to fight a [Spirit Magic] user and tries to parry the next strike, only to get his throat cut by the [Soul Blade] and immediately fall unconscious.

The soldiers make room for us to fight alongside them, and Hana opens up with a strike that sends her opponent to the floor.

I cast [Lightning Bolt] to freeze my opponent and slash at his leg. My strike gets stopped by his wooden armor, but with the aid of [Telekinesis], his knee gets twisted and he falls on the ground.

Lina comes in right beside me and bashes his helmet in. The man stops moving, but is likely only unconscious.

[Battlefield Perception] triggers, and I make Hana protect herself with her shield. A light shines out of one of the towers, and a bolt of light is launched. It's aimed towards Hana's head but is intercepted by her shield.

Once the light is gone, we see an arrowhead peeking through her shield. The Godsdamned enchanted arrow went through [Wind Shield] like it was nothing.

Luz aims towards the tower with her red crystal staff and lets loose a [Fireball] the size of a person. A few seconds later, we hear an explosion and see that the top of the tower is no more.

Preoccupied with swinging her halberd to plow her way through the enemies, Aoi doesn't activate her [Wind Shield] in time before an arrow cracks one of her scales. Even with my ample field of view over the battlefield, I still missed that arrow coming at her, and that makes me unreasonably angry.

"RAAAAH!" Aoi and Hana receive the brunt of my anger, and both of them blow their flames at the men in front of us, who drop their weapons and roll on the grass, trying to put out the fire covering their bodies.

Lua casts [Water Wall] on top of the men, which extinguishes the fire. Fortunately, they all decide to remain on the ground, moaning in pain from the burns, which allows us to continue on.

Confiel, not-Conan, Hana, and I detach from the main force and strike at the scrambled men in front of us before they can make a shield wall capable of slowing us down.

[Battlefield Perception] triggers again, but my view of the offending mage gets obstructed by a small wall of fire that blocks the spell. Luz's [Fire Spirit] absorbs the [Fireball] and starts a short exchange of spells with the opposing mage's [Fire Spirit].

A longswordsman bars my way. I let him attack me, and I dodge to the side, allowing Alissa's arrow to pierce his gut. I glide my way into the stunned man's guard and cast [Rush] as I sink my sword into his armpit, right through the opening of his armor. The padding wasn't enough to stop my powered thrust, and he wasn't wearing chainmail, so he paid the price.

The next soldier in front of us is a shield user, so I slide under his guard with [Telekinesis] and stab his crotch. The shriek that comes in response makes me realize that it's actually a woman. Fortunately for her, my sword can't fully pierce through this kind of padding without [Rush].

I slide a bit sideways and push myself off the ground, then I float in place and spin my legs, kicking the back of the soldier's helmet and making her crash on the ground. [Acrobatics] plus [Godly Language] is amazing.

I feel a large amount of mana coming from the enemies in front of us, so I get wary.

A few spearmen manage to land blows on Aoi, but they are all deflected by her scales. Then one scale breaks, and another wave of anger hits me.

STOP HURTING MY DRAGON!

Lina disrupts their footing with [Earth Wall], then Ciel and Aoi strike together at the spearmen, breaking their little formation apart and giving Lina a clear line of sight to me.

The next target is a young elf, who desperately charges towards me while screaming expletives in Ingua. I trade a few blows with him before he suddenly grows tired. Lina's [Weaken] saps his stamina, and he runs out of breath.

I sweep his legs out from under him, and he falls backward, hitting his head against the stone path. I let anger empower my actions, then I stomp at his face until he stops moving.

The next soldier is an officer who is wearing ornate dark wooden armor and is using an enchanted sword. I control my anger so that I won't make a mistake.

I dash towards him, and we clash with fury. There's barely any time to gauge your opponent's level of ability in a battlefield; the intention of every strike must be to maim or kill.

His eyes are cold and calm, and his strikes are confident and lethal. He's more experienced and much more skilled in swordsmanship than I am.

Getting this taste of real experience gives me chills and washes away the anger. But the worst thing is that he doesn't even use his enchantment, which unnerves me.

Then I see a figure rise up against the orange sky of sunset. [Battlefield Perception] triggers, and I activate [Dead Zone].

Like a wave, lightning washes all around me and the others, then continues towards the bulk of our forces behind us.

Confiel's men are prepared, and they all activate [Dead Zone] to stop the massive [Discharge], but everyone has to spend a copious amount of mana to keep the spell away.

I didn't have the time to fully recover my mana before we started this battle, so this makes me especially wary.

While the officer in front of me doesn't act, I drink an emergency MP potion from one of the metal flasks in the bandolier secured firmly across my chestplate.

The spell ends, and the battle continues. In one moment, the officer is standing with his sword pointed at me, but in the next, [Battlefield Perception] triggers as his sword pierces my throat. [Wind Armor] suddenly triggers, and I feel a burst of wind pushing us apart.

I need a fucking neck guard!

I push his sword away and glide backward, then I feel something warm running down my skin from my throat, and at the same time, the pain hits me, making me grunt.

Ciel's [Holy Spirit] inside my helmet glows, and the wound is healed in just a few seconds. I cough a little and spit out some blood, but then I'm ready to fight again.

Even from behind his helmet, I see the officer's surprise at my quick recovery.

Heh, I won't go down so eas-…

The sky above us explodes with particles as Luz's and Lua's four Spirits fight Mavel's wives' four.

I shift my head to the side, and an arrow flies past me, then it sinks into the shield of the officer, who has to block his view to not get hit.

Impressive reflexes.

At the same time that he raises his shield, I cast [Rush] and drive my sword into his neck. I get a good way in before he simply disappears from my sight and reappears a few meters away with a hand covering his wound and his bastard sword clanking heavily on the ground.

Mavel's men finally reform a proper shield wall, and our advance is stopped. Their formation also blocks the elven officer from view.

The soldier in front of Hana falls on the ground in pain as an [Ice Lance] pierces through his shield and into his arm. Then Hana casts [Earth Bullet] at his face and chops at his helmet with her sword, knocking him out.

The spells stop flying above our heads, and an eerie silence falls around us, but the battle still continues in the distance.

The shield line in front of us makes way for a man in golden armor to pass through. A single white feather adorns his "close" helmet. I see hints of white grain in his armor, which means that his armor is wooden and not actually coated in gold.

"CONFIEL!" Lord Este bellows and points his sword towards the Lord in white. Both of the Lords' swords glow with a faint sheen of blue. That's Kanal, the perfect metal for enchanting.

"SURRENDER AND EVERYTHING ENDS!" Confiel yells.

Mana starts to be gathered all around us, worrying me a little.

Lina and Aoi catch up to us along with the rest of Confiel's men. Ciel is a short distance behind us with Ceiro and a few other healers, making sure that the wounded men don't die immediately. Alissa and Roxanne are a few meters behind Ciel, taking cover along with a few of Confiel's men that are pushing mobile enchanted barricades for protection.

The battle spreads out to the sides as the allied soldiers encircle the last bastion of our enemy and start to take over the Shell. The white and gray of Confiel's men outnumber the gold and white of Mavel's men, and no reinforcements are coming to Mavel's side any time soon.

The air starts to feel cold and I see the enemies in front of us sweating with heat. The sounds of the battle start to fade away, and it becomes harder to breathe. I see dust coming out of the cracks in the bricks, and it starts sticking to our bodies. The wives of both Lords are trying to wrestle for control over the weather.

Fuck! Too many spells!

I summon a wind elemental and order, "Give us air!" The atmospheric pressure immediately returns, and the [Vacuum] is countered, allowing us to breathe.

Confiel and Mavel charge towards one another and start their duel. I blink and Mavel suddenly appears in front of Confiel. Mavel cuts downwards, but the white Lord was waiting for that and defends himself. Then an ethereal sword extends out through his shield and aims to jab at Mavel.

Another [Blink] and Mavel appears a meter away.

The men yell, and the officers sound their whistles to order their charge.

"LINA! DISRUPT THEIR LINE!" I yell.

She casts multiple [Earth Wall]s at the men's feet, making them stumble and fall.

I cast [Rush] and charge ahead of our shield wall. I stop at the first soldier, who's stumbling forward, completely open. I sink my sword into his shoulder and see the elven officer behind the enemy line, still with a bloodied hand covering his neck wound. His eyes lock with mine, and I keep my attention fixed on him.

"WOLF!" Confiel's voice gives me chills, and I reflexively protect my neck with my shield.

I turn my head to the side and my vision gets partially obscured by a faint golden light, then I feel something cold slide into my armpit. In response, I extend my soul out from the wound and cast [Shocking Touch] on Mavel's sword.

Suddenly, the cold sword inside my body is gone, and through Holly, I see that he's back to fighting with Confiel.

I smirk as the [Holy Spirit] heals me immediately, then I summon a Nalusa.

The two-meter tall monster stands before me. A horrifying human-like thing made of charred flesh with bones protruding out of its back.

"PUNISH THEM!" I yell an order.

Each of its four eyes focuses on an enemy, then it swings its hand, and the sharp claws make deep grooves in the wooden armor of one of the soldiers. Then the claws reach an exposed spot and slice through the skin, letting the blood flow.

The blood that the Nalusa draws starts to float around it, then the droplets dart away like bullets. They create chaos, opening more wounds and causing even more bleeding.

My summon starts a chain reaction, drawing more and more blood that it can control, rapidly increasing its power. A vicious spiral of red expands outwards from our position, sweeping through our enemies and piercing their exposed skin.

The two shield walls finally clash, and Mavel's men are quickly overwhelmed as they get randomly wounded by the Nalusa. They don't know from where or how they are being attacked, so they can't even defend themselves.

Mavel's sword glows and grows to ten meters in length, then he tries to sweep at Confiel's men, only to be stopped by the white Lord himself.

Confiel's shield glows with the heat that it absorbs from Mavel's sword, then the energy is expelled outwards in an explosion, pushing the sword away.

The dust gathering at my feet starts to slow me down, but then it suddenly stops, and the cold air returns to its normal temperature. At the same time, four figures rise up into the sky, and they all start to gather mana for massive spells.

The elven officer [Blink]s in front of the Nalusa, and I immediately cast [Lightning Bolt] at him. His muscles seize up, and the Nalusa sweeps at him, sending him flying away.

I don't need to look to see you, fool!

Then I guide Roxanne, and she casts, "[EXPLOSION]!"

One of the flying figures has her spell interrupted as the explosion near her waist burns her robe and violently pushes her away.

Mavel's eyes turn to Roxanne, and his angry glare gives me chills. We've hurt one of his wives, and now he needs to return the favor.

He [Blink]s forward towards Roxanne, but he's still very far away from her.

HAH! I GOT YOU, YOU FUCKER!

I guide Roxanne, and she casts another [Explosion]. Mavel [Blink]s again, and the air explodes a few centimeters from his face. Taking effect too quickly for [Wind Shield] to activate and protect him, he's sent backward to the ground, and Confiel catches up to him with [Rush].

An ethereal and naked Confiel crouches down and grabs Mavel's head, then he pulls Mavel's soul out of his own body.

Hana, Lina, Ciel, and Aoi surround me and the Nalusa, keeping us safe from any other attacks.

With [Telekinesis], Mavel's physical body rises up and strikes at Confiel, but the strike is dull and easily parried.

A blade appears in the ethereal Confiel's other hand, then he slices it at the ethereal Mavel's neck. Mavel's physical body falls limp, and Confiel sinks his real sword into an opening in the back of Mavel's golden armor.

The sky explodes with three spells. A huge torrent of fire hits an equally huge boulder and explodes. The chunks of debris never hit us as they are gathered up by the wind, and along with the fire, they converge on Mavel's wives and consume them.

Like a shockwave of silence, the men stop fighting, and the stunning stillness spreads outwards quickly. After just a minute, the only sounds left are the moans of the wounded and the crackling of the fires.

Confiel flourishes his sword through the air, instantly cleaning it of all the blood, then he yells, "THE ESTE CROWN LORDS HAVE BEEN DEPOSED! THE BATTLE IS OVER!"

Mavel's men drop their weapons and start to cry. Confiel's men simply stare at their defeated foes in muted sympathy.

"You are now level 26," the female announcer says in my soul space.

A note from Manasong

Hall of Fame of Patrons

The patrons who support Rupegia shall have their names sung by the bards for they deserve the glory and honor. Their names are:

Oracle Maximillian Hübner.

Prince PreownedFIN.

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Lord Bill.

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Lord Cidant.

Lord Ashadun.

Lord Michale Erwin.

Lord Joxsan Herrera.

Lord Enrique Peña Gomez.

Lord Vampmire.

Lord Braidborn.

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Lord Kalsted.

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Lord D4rk Sheep.

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Noble Salty Panda.

Noble Evil.

Noble Yamibomb112.

Noble Maurice.

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Chapter 62: Ambition - Part 1

A note from Manasong

Attention: to conform to the limit of sexual content allowed in a novel, I've censored this chapter. You can look for the uncensored version here.

The symbol "-" denotes a section that got cut for containing sexual content. Also, if paragraphs seem missing, they were also likely censored in an earlier pass where the symbol wasn't used.

These men aren't part of the town's guard; these are men that swore loyalty to their Lord. They were followers that believed in their Lord's vision for the future, and they were pillars that supported the Este family so that their Lords could exert their immense power and keep others safe.

Their Lords gave them training, food, shelter, and safety. All that they required in return was loyalty, protection, and the promise that they would fight their Lord's enemies when the time comes. And they all failed, indubitably so.

A few of the soldiers try to lash out, to continue fighting so that they could die in a blaze of glory. But the God of the Sun makes it clear: "there's no glory in death, only in life"; "so live to fight another day"; "live with the shame of defeat so that you can achieve glory one day."

The soldiers attacking in a blood rage are quickly put down by Confiel's men and also by their own comrades. There's no need for any more death here today.

I unsummon the Nalusa, then we take off our helmets and exhale in relief. Aoi shrinks into small-Aoi and crawls up to me, so I take her into my arms and start to cast [Regeneration] on her broken scales.

My erection fades as I clear myself of the dragon's anger, and the disgust quickly takes hold of me. I suddenly feel like a weak and frail old man who just needs a long, long nap.

"Kweh! I understand! I want armor!" Aoi exclaims and nods.

I chuckle and say, "Your scales are too beautiful to have them get broken in every battle."

"Exactly!"

Alissa runs up to me, and Roxanne struggles to catch up. My foxy worrywart immediately inspects my bloodied neck and armpit.

Her angry eyes are like daggers stabbing at my face. "If you're going to continue fighting so recklessly, I'll make you wear full metal armor," she chastises me and pouts. Even when she's angry, she's cute.

I cringe a little and smile apologetically. "Yeah… I will," I say.

Roxanne finally reaches us, wheezing for breath.

With everybody here, I inspect our wounds. Hana's armor has a number of new scratches and a few small dents. Alissa, Roxanne, Ciel, and Lina look perfectly fine; at the most, their armor got dirtied by the smoke and debris. Aoi has a few blemishes on her beautiful body: her broken scales; such disrespect for her perfect form will soon be corrected by my [Regeneration].

It really seems like I was the most reckless out of all of us this time.

I see Confiel pull out a golden flag with Este's heraldry: six white flowers arranged in a circle, with each flower different from the others. Then he covers Mavel's body with the flag, and two temple priests appear to carry the body away on a stretcher.

Ciel sighs and [Clean]s my armor, but it doesn't remove all of the blood that seeped into the padding.

"We'll have to wash it," Alissa says.

"I'll go take care of the wounded," Ciel says and pats my sweaty head. I smile and nod at her.

Go spread your love, my angel.

Luz suddenly lands beside us and greets us with a sad smile. "Helios, can you accompany us? There's something we want you to see inside the castle."

Ciel clumsily stops walking away, and after she thinks things through for an awkward few seconds, she comes back to us and stands beside me.

I stop myself from narrowing my eyes in suspicion at Luz. I don't really have the emotional capacity for anything intense again today, but my curiosity gives me enough energy to nod respectfully anyway.

Luz smiles and starts walking towards the castle. Her heels clack against the stone path as she walks with confidence and a perfectly straight posture. Her presence exudes authority and the power to enforce it; she inspires her men to salute her and intimidates the subjugated soldiers to kneel in her presence.

In a way, I envy her, since that's exactly the kind of aura that I want for myself. Not only to help with my dragon transformation, but also to assist me against those that would normally underestimate me.

Confiel's men strip the defeated soldiers of their weapons and armor, then herd them away towards the Shell's gate, likely to release them so that they can return to their families.

I see the elven officer that I fought. He's removing his armor and keeping his head hung low with an impassive expression concealing his gloom. He's an old man that looks almost sixty years old, but with the slowed aging of higher-level people, he could be older.

Soul Info

Name: | Sandoro Irme | Race: | Golden Elf | Level: | 60
HP | 71/100 | MP | 220/1,120 | Magic Power | 505
Strength | 17 | Endurance | 17

He notices us walking close by and merely nods, then his neck bleeds a little more since the wound is not yet fully closed.

A nearby healer notices him and starts to chant a [Heal], then we pass him by, and I look forward again.

We quickly reach a short wall, well, a small wall in comparison to the first layer of the Shell. It's about ten meters high, but it doesn't hide the barracks behind it. This is where most of Mavel's men were stationed when we attacked.

We cross the gate and pass by a few sets of ornate, but identical tall buildings, then we cross through another gate and enter Este's private garden.

We walk along a short and fluffy grass lawn that feels like pillows under our feet. Beautiful hedge sculptures of small monsters and animals flank the comfy path, but most of them are more cute than beautiful. I recognize Rabid Rabbits, Ploms, Dragolites, and kitten Gatuns.

Gify pops onto my shoulder, and Luz glances curiously at her. The elf rewards us with a small smile and continues on as if nothing happened.

A few alluring paths branch away towards sightseeing routes or resting areas. I feel drawn to stray away from the main path as the old man inside of me begs for rest, but we move on and get closer to the bush-like golden castle. Quite a few of its "branches" have been blown off or charred, blemishing its indisputable beauty.

As we walk, I finally feel the [Gate] scrubbers being turned off, calming my heart a little. I hear a commotion on the wall and see a few gems light up near the top of the Shell. I think that Confiel's men are preparing for the other Lords who might be coming to "liberate" Escanso.

We climb a long set of stairs and finally reach the castle's entrance. A huge double door welcomes us to its main hall.

White velvet covers the floor with a color so pure that it feels like a crime to dirty it with our shabby boots. Painted statues of all of the previous Lords of this castle populate the walls of the hall, with stairs to its "branches" positioned between each set of statues. The ceiling is decorated with a painting of the usual elven-like patterns. At the end of the hall, a huge portrait of the Este family hangs over a double doorway.

In the middle, there's a man with glacial blue eyes, soft features, and a round face, Lord Mavel Este; he looks kind and calm, more like a gentle father than a strict Lord. Two similar-looking women with sharp features and square jaws flank Mavel, his wives; they are both golden elves and have a much more severe gaze, making them look noble but strict. Below Mavel, there's a young girl with a soft face and very sharp blue eyes, his first daughter; her hair is styled in long and fluffy drills, and her slightly fleshy lips give her a bit of a pout. Beside the daughter are two twin young boys with very similar faces to the Lord; they look like normal boys, but they still seem to be very cute and energetic.

I don't even feel like teasing Ciel, not even in my thoughts. Seeing their portraits only brings me dread.

We somberly walk under the portrait and cross through the double doors to another room. It's initially rather dark, but then Luz activates an enchantment on the wall, and it lights up.

Multiple portals covered in white veils appear out of thin air. Behind each veil, I can see that they lead to other parts of the castle. They are all arranged in a circle and have identification plaques above them on the wall. This is an [Eternal Gate] network hub.

The room becomes a mix of colors as the different natural lights coming from all the rooms connected to this hub blend into one vibrant mix. The orange of the sunset is the most prominent of all, but it doesn't detract from their combined beauty.

Thankfully, [Eternal Gate] only gets forcefully turned off when a scrubber is on. I don't even want to think of the chaos outside that was caused by every [Gate] coordinate in the entire town being wiped out by Confiel's scrubbers.

Luz crosses a portal without hesitation and we follow her through. We exit into a meeting hall rather similar to Goloria's. The table also has a recreation of Escanso carved into it, but this one has the buildings painted with its adorable multitude of colors instead of being mostly white.

The portal behind us fades into nothing, and behind where it was, I see a white gem embedded in the wall. It likely holds the enchantment that will activate the portal again when it's needed.

"Take a seat," Luz says and we obey.

She sits across from us, but doesn't take one of the three lavish seats reserved for the Lords.

Just as we all sit down, an [Eternal Gate] materializes out of thin air near the one we came through, and Confiel and Lua emerge out of it. Right after they cross, the portal disappears into nothing.

"She's coming," Confiel says and takes a seat beside Luz, who nods and smiles with a little bit of pain hidden behind it.

Lua then sits beside Confiel, and her eyes scan us. Her stern gaze gives me a chill, and I straighten my posture instinctively. Once her scan is complete, she says, "We are about to meet with Yulania Este. Keep in mind that she just lost her parents, so be very tactful about what you say."

Wait… since she's the first-born, she's automatically considered the Chosen Descendant unless stated otherwise. By imperial law, when a Lord is deposed, his Chosen Descendant is also executed.

So, why are we here…?

All the girls, except Aoi, seem to understand the meaning of this, and their expressions stiffen. Alissa, most of all, seems rather displeased to be here.

A few seconds later, another [Eternal Gate] opens, and one of the prettiest girls I've ever seen comes through. Flanked by one of Confiel's men, Yulania looks like a delicate flower wilting away.

Light blue transparent Cinderella shoes cover her delicate feet. Thin and rosy legs peek out from underneath her deep blue dress, which tightly hugs her body, but opens up at the waist and ends at her knees. The lower part of the dress flows through the air with loose folds and frills, while the upper part looks smooth and leaves little of her curves to the imagination. Her considerable bosom is held tightly together by the dress, which also shows off a dangerous amount of cleavage. Her drill-like hair bounces like springs as she moves and almost hides her long elven ears with a volume as impressive as Hana's wild mane. Her face is delicate and pouty, her lips are bright red and fleshy, and her makeup is perfect, but it all looks like a mask through which her lifeless, vibrant blue eyes look out at the world with detachment.

She stops for a moment to scan us, then shows no reaction and continues walking. The man escorting her stops midway and salutes the Lords before returning through the [Eternal Gate], which again fades into nothing.

Without any hesitation, Yulania sits in the middle of the three lavish chairs reserved for the Lords, her father's seat.

"Yulania," Confiel greets her softly, and his wives warmly nod. His expression looks severe, and without his smirk, he appears much older than his mature face would imply.

"Confiel, Luz, Lua," Yulania returns the greeting with a crystalline voice devoid of any emotion.

We wait to be addressed so that we can introduce ourselves, but neither Yulania nor Confiel's group looks at us, so we remain silent.

After a few seconds, Confiel breaks the silence, "Did you prepare as I told you to?"

"How could I even start preparing for the death of my parents?" Yulania asks back with a hint of venom in her tone.

Confiel sighs softly. "You knew that your father had no other way. He could've just resigned, of course, but that was never an option for him."

Yulania's face remains unchanging, unnaturally so. "Even though it was inevitable, it doesn't mean that I could prepare myself for it."

Confiel shakes his head, and Luz gives her a sympathetic frown. "We tried, my dear, we tried."

Yulania stares at Luz with dead eyes. "You killed them… and that will always be the truth," she says.

Now even Confiel and Lua start to look sad. Then Confiel's face gains its own mask, and he looks sternly at her as he asks, "So, are you prepared?"

Yulania closes her eyes and looks like she's praying. "Yes, I am," she says, resigning herself to her fate: death.

"It is good that you're prepared for this, but there are a few different paths that you can take, Yulania," Luz says.

The elven girl opens her blue eyes wide in surprise, and we do the same.

Before Yulania can ask anything, Confiel continues, "Your first path is to simply run away. You can abandon everything and start a new life on another continent. We recommend Maoka since it has better living standards than Bestiaram. We'll help you start a business that will sustain you, and as long as you stay away from nobility and avoid accruing too much power, you can lead a fulfilling life."

A hint of anger enters her eyes, giving them a spark of life. "And abandon my brothers to be Blood Slaves forever?!" Yulania asks, offended that Confiel would even suggest such a thing.

Confiel smiles faintly, regaining some of his youthful air. "Your second path is to be sent to Elaria and become a Blood Slave yourself, then try to become a True Noble and recover your family's honor."

That's just like Silvane's story.

Yulania looks skeptical. "And the Empire would allow that?"

Confiel smirks and responds with enthusiasm, "Consider that our way of saying 'fuck you' to the Empire and their brutal laws."

Alissa subtly narrows her eyes, displeased at the elves' shyness when it comes to executing their enemies.

Light returns to Yulania's eyes, and she looks like she's awakening from a stupor. She stares at Confiel for several long seconds, seriously thinking through this option. "And the third path?" She finally asks.

"Become Wolf Ryder's Blood Slave, and then acquire the True Noble Title. I have the word of the Council that if you acquire the Title, then you and Ryder can return as the Crown Lords of the Western High Forest."

Wait, what the fuck…

Yulania's eyes turn to me and stare deeply into my soul. A small fire in them makes my cheeks burn with shame at my own lack of ambition. Then I put on the mask of the dragon and stare right back at her. I feel like I can hear the resounding ring of a glass being struck, then Yulania averts her eyes, and the feeling fades.

Gify, did you do something?

Gih.

That means "no."

The beautiful elven girl notices Lina's slave necklace and raises a thin eyebrow as she gives Confiel a questioning look. "How many slaves does he have?" She asks.

"Lina, the dwarf, and us two," Alissa responds, then she and Hana bare their wrists to show their Blood Slave mark.

Yulania narrows her eyes slightly and questions Confiel again, "What's so special about Mr. Ryder that you'd bring him here?"

"He has a Gift. He's a Hero in the making," Confiel responds immediately.

"Wait!" I interrupt and collect my thoughts. "You want us to become Crown Lords?!"

Confiel smiles in a way that makes him seem slightly smug, which is rather annoying to look at. "Exactly. There are many reasons why we chose you for this, but the main reason is that we don't want to punish Yulania for her parents' mistakes."

Yulania's face distorts a little as her mask cracks, and she shows true anger. "Your concern for me is appreciated, but my opinion of you will never change."

Lua turns her head away, looking displeased, Confiel's face returns to being impassive, and Luz seems a little disappointed.

"Your opinion of us doesn't matter. All that we want is to keep you safe," Confiel says.

I massage my eyes while a long internal sigh courses through my body. "We need time to discuss this. I mean, me and my wives," I say.

"Very well," Confiel says and nods. "We want to slightly change our agreement, so think of it like this: we want you to take Yulania as a Blood Slave and conquer a dungeon in the High Forest to become a True Noble. Once you do, you'll become Crown Lords and rule over the Western High Forest. Yulania is completely capable of being the governor and managing all the boring parts of being a Lord. And through her, you'll have a strong claim to Lordship while also being a shield against plotting from Mavel's former allies."

Luz's frown turns into a hopeful smile as she says, "We hope that you don't just view her as a servant, but as a fiancée."

Yulania and we are taken aback at Luz's suggestion.

Now, this is unexpected… or was it, really?

God-sanctioned harem…

"That… is a very big decision you want us to make," I say.

Confiel nods. "Take as much time as you need. We'll prepare a guest house for you in Goloria that you can stay in."

I feel him send a small amount of mana to a gem near his wrist, and the same servant from before appears out of an [Eternal Gate].

"Prepare the imperial guest house for them," Confiel says.

The servant bows and starts chanting, so we get up and bow respectfully to the Lords.

Yulania scans us one last time, and her expression grows impassive. The surprise of this situation is still affecting me, so I merely nod at her, which she returns, then we wait for the servant to finish chanting.

After the black circle appears, I'm the first one to cross it due to my impatience.

I exit into a beautiful living room. A brick house with an interior entirely composed of colorful ceramic tiles, with the most common colors being red and yellow, the imperial colors. The doorways and windows are rounded, leaving no right angles or straight lines, but they instead have a lot of small, pointy triangles where the curves meet, which reminds me of some sort of Arabian architecture.

The girls come through right behind me and start to take in the room.

Lastly, the servant appears, then he clears his throat and says, "This will be your private property until one of my Lords says otherwise. We clean the house every day, one hour after noon; if you need privacy at that hour, then we can reschedule the cleaning for any other time. The pantry and ice box will be filled with food shortly, but everything else is ready for you. Would you like a tour of the house?"

"No, thank you, we'll be fine on our own," I say.

The house is big, but it's not huge, so there's no need for that.

The servant nods and continues, "Very well. You can use these enchantments to call for a servant." He gestures his hand over a white gem embedded in the wall. "We shall hear your every wish and try to fulfill them to the best of our abilities."

"If we want to meet with Lord Confiel again, we just have to ask?" Ciel asks.

The servant nods. "Yes. He or the other two Lords may be busy at the time and not able to answer, but you can ask whenever you want, and we'll check their availability."

We stay silent after that, so the servant asks, "Any more questions?" I shake my head. "Then I'll take my leave," he finishes, then bows and leaves.

I immediately turn towards the nearest sofa and start to remove my armor as fast as I can. My limbs feel like lead, and it's only when I finally remove all the armor that I feel "light" again.

Gify pops out of existence and then pops back on top of a lavish, cushioned armchair.

I let my armor fall heavily on the floor and hope that the tiles don't break, then Aoi deftly manages to stay on top of me as I throw my body onto the sofa and close my eyes with a sigh. My whole body immediately shivers due to the comfort, and I moan in pleasure.

"Well… that was an interesting day," Roxanne comments. I hear her remove her robes and armor as she shuffles towards a place to relax.

"'Interesting,'" I say and make air quotes with my hands. The girls don't understand the hand symbol, but they understand my tone.

Then the rest of the girls also take off their armor at varying speeds and find a place to unwind. A few moans of pleasure escape their mouths as they discover the wonders of a perfectly cushioned piece of furniture.

Alissa calmly walks over to me, and I turn myself belly up, then she lifts my head and positions herself on the sofa so that her athletic thighs become my pillows.

"So… why shouldn't we?" Hana breaks the silence.

"Can it wait until after dinner?" I ask. I almost feel a headache coming on.

"Alright," Hana answers.

"Will give us time to… process things," Ciel says, also sounding very tired.

Alissa's hand lands on my head, and she starts to play with my hair, then I roll sideways so that I can grab her tail and return her affection.

The fluffy pillow starts to twitch, but it's stuck between the sofa and my hands, so her calm wagging isn't enough for it to escape my grasp. She loves when I lightly grasp it and gently pull from the base, letting the fur slide through my hand, while still applying enough pressure that she feels her tail stretch. Then, when I reach the white tip, I squeeze it tighter and give it a small tug. That nearly makes her moan.

Her delicate fingers rub along my scalp with increasing strength as she surrenders to the pleasure and slowly gets aroused. She has a different touch compared to Hana's brain massage, but it's just as effective at rubbing my thoughts and worries away.

The holy fluffiness of her tail is entrancing, addictive, and fascinating. The vibrant orange color and white tip is just the perfect combination for a cute & fluff devotee like me.

Roxanne moans sensually from Hana's [Massage]. "I want a baath!" She complains.

I release Alissa's tail and silently get up.

We split up to search and quickly find the bath on the first floor.

The room is covered in tiles painted with simple geometric patterns in white and blue. The enchantments are very similar to Gecynd's and very efficient, so we only have to spend a small amount of mana to get our hot bath ready in just a few minutes.

I enter the bath and sigh again.

I'm feeling exhausted. My body must've been drained so much that neither [Heal] nor [Refresh] are enough to fix what I've done to myself.

"Sorry, girls. I don't have much nectar to give to you right now," I say.

Aoi nods repeatedly and says, "I understand. You must not break, so rest because tomorrow I want my sha~re!"

Alissa fidgets a little and shyly makes her way closer to me.-

I see her tail making waves on the water's surface with its faint, shy wagging, and I get curious. The slow cadence, but high speed of the wags tell me that she's anxious about something.

I pull her face up to mine and give her a kiss. She coos softly in happiness and smiles adorably.

I smile at her and ask, "What is it? Did you want to ask me something?"

Her voice becomes a whisper, both shy and sensual at the same time - as she says profanities that cause a fire in my heart.

A note from Manasong

Hall of Fame of Patrons

The patrons who support Rupegia shall have their names sung by the bards for they deserve the glory and honor. Their names are:

Oracle Maximillian Hübner.

Prince PreownedFIN.

Lord Andrew Meyers.

Lord Hope.

Lord Samuel Lim.

Lord Bill.

Lord Novgarod.

Lord DJ.

Lord Cidant.

Lord Ashadun.

Lord Michale Erwin.

Lord Joxsan Herrera.

Lord Enrique Peña Gomez.

Lord Vampmire.

Lord Braidborn.

Lord Bakerdea.

Lord Kalsted.

Lord Yeeteris Dedmeem.

Lord D4rk Sheep.

Lord Nevarec.

Lord Nathan Vanbrunt.

Lord Andrew Heffelbower.

Noble Salty Panda.

Noble Evil.

Noble Yamibomb112.

Noble Maurice.

Leave a rating or a review to help me rise to the top or fix my shameful understanding of prose.

Take a look over my blog where all information of the world of Rupegia will be posted.

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Chapter 62: Ambition – Part 2

A note from Manasong

Attention: to conform to the limit of sexual content allowed in a novel, I've censored this chapter. You can look for the uncensored version here.

The symbol "-" denotes a section that got cut for containing sexual content. Also, if paragraphs seem missing, they were also likely censored in an earlier pass where the symbol wasn't used.

-

I'm nearly carried out of the bath due to my tiredness. Lina is the one with the most stamina remaining since she's using [Spirit of Gaia] to be able to walk, so I lean on her to make sure that I don't trip and fall.

A proto-maid wearing a not-bikini awaits us in the kitchen.

"Would you like us to prepare dinner for you?" She asks.

I look around, and the tired faces of the girls tell me all that I need to know. "Yes, please," I respond.

The maid bows, making her jugs jiggle freely, and I feel a pain downstairs.

I've really become a sex fiend… there isn't a woman that I don't think about shagging anymore…

We go to the living room to rest while we wait.

Lina decides to worship my chest and fills my body with kisses. Her little hands caress my body, and I kiss every single of her pink, painted nails. They're also decorated with little, light blue flowers, giving her a very girly air. She and Roxanne are the ones that protect their nails the most, so they are always impeccable.

I want her nails painted with something new. Too bad I'm not a manicurist.

Hana isn't fully satisfied yet. Today she seems in need of thickness, so, on the sofa, she - plays with Ciel as they kiss.

Aoi didn't get any, so she's itching for something. -

"Don't try to charm me, please," I ask Aoi and she nods, then closes her eyes.

Just as Roxanne starts to feel left out, Alissa comes over to cuddle with her -.

The maid comes to tell us that dinner is ready, and Roxanne hurriedly covers her chest. I have to use [Bind] to hold Hana back because she's far too drunk with thickness to care.

The dining room has a Victorian air with all the ornate details, but there's still a very strong Arabic flavor with the vibrant tiles and curved lines everywhere.

There aren't that many different plates for this meal because we didn't ask for anything lavish. We just want something fast that will fill our bellies and replenish our energy.

From the few dishes they brought us, the best one is certainly the elven casserole. It's a staple of commoner cuisine, but still something that not even the nobility is snobbish enough to pass on. Aoi finds it "okay," which is kind of a compliment for something without meat.

I unfasten the belt of my pants and groan softly in satisfaction. Lina lets out a cute burp and lowers her head to try and hide the intense redness that immediately creeps onto her face.

Hana suddenly feels like one-upping Lina's burp, but a quick glance from Alissa and Roxanne, who had read her mind (but not through [Bind]), is enough to force her to reconsider.

Without that silliness clouding her mind, Hana remembers what she was eager to discuss. "So, we need to talk about the goblin knocking at the door," Hana says.

Lina's Trivia: that's Rupegia's "elephant in the room." Something that we have to deal with, but nobody wants to.

"We can start with your opinion," I say and look at Hana.

"Do it," she says in almost a whisper.

"Why?"

She smiles softly and with confidence. "It's obvious: it's everything we need."

"Adding a stranger to our harem, as a wife no less, is going to be quite a complicated affair."

She shrugs. "We just have to seduce her like you seduced us."

"I didn't really sedu-… wait, 'we'?"

"Most of the nobility, and especially the higher-ranking Lords, are bisexual so that their harems won't rule out powerful people due to gender," Roxanne says.

Roxanne and Yulania… together…

"You just made my opinion so much more biased…" I say and facepalm.

"Well, Hana's right. If we're going to accept her, we'll all have to work on getting along with her, in more ways than one," Alissa says with a wry smile.

"She'll have to adapt to our ways more than we'll have to adapt to hers," Ciel says in a serious tone that contrasts with Alissa's.

"We have far more secrets than the average person. To become associated with us is no simple decision," Lina says, matching Ciel's tone.

"Why would she even want to stay with us?" I ask and look around. "She'll be in danger forever because of the heretics that are after us."

Ciel answers my question without hesitation, "Being close to a Hero means that you'll face hardships, but you're likely to survive if you have the will to fight through them, and then, after everything is done, you'll be able to reap the rewards."

So, plot armor?

"Well, ambitious people will always be drawn to someone like a Hero, but it's not necessarily an attractive characteristic to us," Alissa says.

"Does anyone have high ambitions here?" I ask and look around.

The girls awkwardly look at each other.

"Why do you all follow him?" Alissa asks.

"You first," Roxanne says to Alissa.

"Fate," Alissa answers immediately and smiles. "I've sworn to serve my master with my body, mind, and soul. That I fell in love with him is just a bonus."

Hana nods in agreement with a fearsome smile and says, "I just want us to stay together. Life's been so much better after meeting Wolfy that, heretics or not, I don't think that we'll ever want to separate."

"Do we need a reason to want to be here? We just love being together," Ciel asks and smiles shyly.

"I guess not," Alissa says and deflates a little.

"And that's the difference between us and Yulania. She has an ambition," Lina says.

"Just wanting to become the Crown Lord isn't that high of an ambition," Hana says.

"But that's still different from us," Lina says, and Hana's face scrunches up as she thinks deeply about it.

"We have to make sure that her mindset is the same as ours," Ciel says.

"Can't we change, too? We could also align our goals with hers," I suggest.

Ciel looks worriedly at her empty cup, then looks forward, towards nowhere in particular. "For that, we'd first have to learn what she wants. But even so, she might not fully know what she really wants right now, and that could cause strain to develop in our relationship in the future."

Lina continues with a stern look on her face, and I already know she's concealing her own worry with a mask of cold objectivity. "What if she doesn't fall in love with Wolfy? What if she has a lover and asks us to include him in the harem? Would Wolfy or even any of us be comfortable with her sleeping with another man?"

I'm very possessive, so that would be a little complicated, but it's already something I'll have to learn to accept with Klein… Well, it's not like she was ever considered to be a true wife. At most, Klein is a "close friend with benefits." Even though we both love one another, we don't want to commit more to this relationship…

Alissa hums in understanding and says, "So, we have to influence her to surrender herself to us. That would kind of be a prerequisite for [Bind] to work on her, right?"

"Hana and Aoi are the most 'willful' of us and have the strongest 'feedback' with [Bind], so I believe it's quite possible that she'd unconsciously reject it," I say.

"I still think she'll accept it," Hana says.

"What do you mean?" Ciel asks.

"She'll have to give up a lot, but we'll also replace it all with much more. Power, safety, Fate, endless love, and a fucking huge amount of fun," Hana ends with a smirk.

"It depends on what her ambitions really are. She didn't seem to hate Confiel for killing her father," Roxanne calmly says.

"That's true. She might be more similar to me than any of you," Alissa says with a slightly pained smile.

Roxanne nods and continues, "Her ambition might simply be to gain enough 'glory' to offset the shame of having her parents deposed, not vengeance, nor a desire to conquer the entire High Forest."

"Elves aren't known to be ambitious, to begin with," Lina says.

Ciel smiles wryly and quotes, "'Power nurtures Wickedness in the unfaithful,' a teaching from the Goddess of Piety. 'Power is a sword, and we do not give sharp swords to children,' a teaching from the God of Law. 'Break the traditions that fail, reinforce the ones that serve a purpose,' another teaching from the God of Law."

"Wait, that last one could go either way," I say.

"There hasn't been a change in the borders of each of the Lords' territories in the High Forest for a thousand years," Lina responds.

"Confiel taking control of the Western High Forest would cause a civil war. He killed Lord Mavel, but he didn't kill any of his other allies or their armies," Roxanne adds.

"Everything they did seems to be in line with the objective of only removing the three Este Lords," Ciel continues.

"And they seemed to be very friendly to Yulania. Friendly enough that they went to great lengths to test your potential as her fiance," Lina finishes.

"But why us, non-elves, instead of searching for another elf?" I ask. No answer comes, so I smile wryly. "We'll ask them about that tomorrow, then."

"So, everyone is in agreement with continuing to consider Confiel's offer?" Alissa asks.

"Yes," Hana answers immediately.

"It's going to be a lot of effort for all of us, but I agree," Roxanne says. Her tone was serious through this entire talk, which is quite the record for her.

"Same," Lina says with a nod. "I'm worried that we'll have to rely on Confiel to hire aides and people for other key positions. We don't have enough connections to be truly independent."

"We can always ask them to become our Blood Slaves," Roxanne says and Lina agrees. "They might not be happy about it, but it's something we need to do."

"Then I'll demand that from Confiel," I say and turn to Ciel. "What's your opinion?"

"I'm… okay with all of this," Ciel says and smiles a little bitterly.

"You seem like you have some reservations."

"Mostly the problem of forcing her to join us, and the fact that we'll have another wife to share with."

"I think that Confiel has probably prepared alternatives. We might not be the only fellowship he has in mind," Lina says.

"So it's possible that she won't accept us," Roxanne says.

"Hm…" Ciel hums, and her face relaxes a little. "That makes it a little better."

"Still, if you're uncomfortable with another woman joining, you can always say 'no,'" I say.

Ciel shakes her head gently. "We can't just say 'no.' This opportunity is too good for us."

"We could go our own way and attempt to ally with Alissa's parents."

She gives me a pained smile. "Wolfy… I know you want to make us all happy, but this is an offer that we can't refuse. Our safety is more important than our happiness."

If I had some proper support, then maybe we could find a reason to say no… But she's right, we can't pass up this chance for power, even if it isn't the choice that will make us all the happiest.

I sigh and nod weakly.

"So, we'll all have to accept her with an open, sympathetic, and understanding heart, understood?" Alissa questions us all, and we nod.

We turn our heads towards Aoi, who has just been patiently observing us so far.

"What?" She asks.

"Your opinion on this matter?" I question her.

"Oh! Okay! I'm fine with this. Dragons start with big families, so this one is small."

I raise an eyebrow. "'Start'? They don't stay together forever?"

"Food runs out, so they have to separate to stay alive."

"That's sad," Ciel says, softly.

Aoi tilts her head repeatedly, then says, "Hm~… Yes, it is. Good for me that we won't separate, then!"

I smile warmly and pat her scaly head.

We spend the rest of the evening merely relaxing and ruminating on our discussion.

I return Lina's love from earlier and caress her entire pale and delicate body. -

The girls start talking about something, but I become too absorbed with Lina - to pay attention, eventually falling asleep while hugging her.

Today is the 7th.

-

Lina leveled to 26, too. She increased her [Cursing Magic] by 1 (now 3) and her [Hammer Use] by 2 (now 12).

My [Summoning Magic] increased by 2 (now 7+25), my [Mana Overuse Resistance] increased by 1 (now 0+4) and I gained [Blackout Resistance] with 1 point. That was kind of expected.

We take a look through the pantry and see a not-strawberry jelly pie, so of course, we eat it while sipping some not-earl-grey tea. We eat the entire pie and feast on some savory snacks, too. Nutrition be damned, we deserve this indulgence.

Then we activate one of the many white gems embedded in the wall and after a minute, a servant knocks on the door.

"We'd like to meet with the Lords and Miss Yulania," I say.

The servant bows and leaves. We wait for about fifteen minutes before he returns and opens a [Gate] to Goloria's meeting hall.

Confiel and Luz are seated in their designated chairs and receive us with gentle smiles. They're both wearing lavish traditional elven clothing. White for Confiel and red for Luz. Their clothes have long strips of gold and silver weaved into them.

Luz's outfit shows off her abs, a nice amount of cleavage with her small not-bikini, and her long, delicious legs, which makes me slightly uncomfortable until I get mini-me under control.

"Good morning to you all, Ryders," Luz says.

"Good morning," Confiel says.

"Good morning, Lord Luz, Lord Confiel," I say and bow quickly.

The girls bow, too, but it isn't necessary for them to repeat the greeting.

Then we sit on one side of the round table and Alissa asks, "Lord Lua is not joining us?"

"She's dealing with the aftermath of Mavel's death. A few angry Lords are throwing a tantrum, but after their little fit is done, things will return to normal," Confiel responds.

I feel mana coming from behind us, and we turn around. An [Eternal Gate] appears, and Yulania enters the room.

She's now wearing an even more ornate, transparent yellow dress that lets us clearly see her figure, along with her frilly black underwear. She's between Alissa and Ciel in curviness, with a slightly muscular body, but she also has the gift of "good genes" that makes her bouncier in all the right spots.

I swallow heavily as she approaches us and stops before me with an impassive expression. She extends her hand, and the thick scent of her perfume invades my mind. It's sweet, sensual, and strong; something that Roxanne would love to wear.

I get up and gently take her hand for a kiss. I press my lips against it to give her a proper kiss and hold it for a moment longer than normal. A kiss means respect and admiration, length translates into the intensity of respect, and the pressure of the lips translates into the intensity of admiration or romantic feelings, if there are any.

Before I can release her hand, she grabs mine and hesitates. I look her in the eye and see her expression tremble slightly, then she quickly lowers her face towards my hand, hesitates again for a second and mirrors my kiss.

She straightens her posture, and her hesitation is gone, returning to her previous, impassive expression.

"I am Wolf Ryder," I say and nod.

"Yulania Es-… just Yulania," she says and flashes a faint wry smile.

She releases my hand, and we continue the greetings.

"I am Alissa," my soul mate says and touches her forehead against Yulania's hand. Touching the forehead means neutral respect. The more haughty of the nobles feel offended when you don't kiss their hand, though.

"Not a Ryder?" Yulania asks and mirrors Alissa's gesture. Clearly, she's not part of that arrogant faction.

"Not yet," Alissa responds with a gentle smile.

The rest of the greetings go the same way, then Yulania walks around the table to her seat. I try to study her entire body before she sits across from us and hides most of it from my view.

The elves "dress to be seen," so they don't feel offended if others stare at them, but damn, I'm already salivating.

She scans over us again, and I notice that her eyes have a lot more life to them, but I see a hint of bags under them as well, which are not covered by makeup.

"So, Mr. Ryder, what would you like to discuss?" Luz breaks the silence.

"There are a few things we'd like to ask you, Lords," I say.

"Please, ask away," Luz responds with a kind smile.

"Why us? Why not a fellowship of elves? They would certainly be more well-received as Lords than we would."

Yulania stares at Luz with a hint of interest in her answer.

"An elf of the High Forest would have family, friends, and a history here. That would mean that their alliances would be more easily manipulated by vengeful former allies of Mavel."

"And since we're outsiders, we have no allegiances…"

"Exactly." She nods.

"But we're also more vulnerable. We'll have to lean on you until we have enough trustworthy allies to protect us."

Confiel flashes a smile and says, "It's in our mutual best interest to hold no influence over the Western High Forest."

Yulania scoffs and asks, "And why would that be so?"

He turns more serious as he says, "I want to join the Council of Elders one day."

Yulania quickly becomes shocked, and her long ears twitch in surprise.

"You did all of this just so that the Council would pay attention to you?!" She exclaims and grits her teeth.

Confiel narrows his eyes, and his aura of "danger" shows itself again. "I did this because I wanted what was best for the High Forest. If I didn't care for the Elder Council, I would have been much more ruthless in deposing your parents."

Yulania straightens her back and bites her tongue. She matches his glare, but it seems like she's more frozen than defiant.

Confiel's aura quickly fades, and the atmosphere slowly loses its tension.

"Speaking of that, why did you depose the Este family?" I ask.

Confiel is the one to answer. "Over the course of a decade, I've gradually convinced the Elder Council that the High Forest needed outside talent to grow and improve. Their opinion finally changed when we learned that the halflings of Lorelai had managed to surpass us in the yield of their magical farms.

"The Council then decided to heed my reforms, but not everyone liked them. Mavel actually put forth a different reform to focus on enriching us further, but he didn't have the same patience as I did to influence the Council, so he decided on acting independently when he was rejected. As you might have guessed, the Council does not like when their authority is challenged."

So, just some political differences that grew until there was no path left other than war.

Yulania's face turns dark, and she looks down as she clenches her fist. "His reform would've worked if you didn't plot against him."

Confiel sighs and looks at her with a stern face. "If we analyze his plans on their own, they look like they definitely would've worked. But if we put them in context with the current situation of the High Forest, then it's obvious that they would've failed. The fact that he didn't account for my interference tells us how naive he was."

"Your father was idealistic and too stubborn to change his ways," Luz adds in a soft tone.

Yulania's anger is snuffed out, and she slowly rebuilds her look. Once her anger seems fully contained, I continue.

"If we don't agree to become Lords, what will happen to the Western High Forest?" I ask.

"The Council will choose a noble without land or a powerful fellowship and then slowly groom them over time to replace the Este family. It would likely take a decade for another Crown Lord to be inducted," Confiel answers.

"So, none of Mavel's allies will rise to Crown Lord?"

Confiel nods and his face suddenly becomes very somber. "We don't want to give any of them the hope that killing those above them would grant them a chance to elevate their position."

I see…they're hoping to keep greed from starting wars…

"Now I want to ask about something different. We want to travel the world, but wouldn't becoming Crown Lords impede that?"

Yulania leans forward in a small gesture of interest.

"It's not like you'll be bound to the High Forest all the time," Confiel answers.

"We've traveled the entirety of the Empire, Maoka, and some more with the [Eternal Gate] network. You'll be rich enough to do the same with ease," Luz says.

Roxanne's heart skips a beat. This would make visiting her family trivial, but I'm not sure if she thinks that she's ready yet.

"You said that you wanted to change our agreement?" I ask Confiel.

He nods and says, "We did. We don't need you to stay and help deal with the aftermath, and there's no need for you to continue hiding. We want you to go find a dungeon to conquer with Yulania, but you should stay hidden from the public eye since there's still a chance that she may be kidnapped and used as a pawn."

Yulania doesn't seem very pleased with Confiel's words, but she begrudgingly accepts them.

I've run out of questions, so it's time to make our demand. "So, if we are to become the Crown Lords of the Western High Forest, we demand that our close aides will all be Blood Slaves. I won't take the risk of someone close to me and my wives potentially being a traitor. We don't need them to be sex slaves, we just want them as Blood Slaves for our own safety."

Confiel smiles widely while Luz seems a little annoyed.

"It's the right choice," Confiel says and glances at Luz. "This will lower the number of possible aides available for you, but it won't negatively affect your rule."

"That is all that we had to ask of you. Now, we'd like to talk to Miss Yulania in private," I say.

Confiel and Luz get up and nod.

"Use the enchantments on the table to call for us or a servant," Luz says, and they walk away. They open an [Eternal Gate] and disappear through it.

Yulania turns to us, and her impassive expression holds, but this time I catch a glimpse of a subtle trembling of her hand before she gets it under control.

"What have they told you about us?" I ask, not wanting to let an awkward silence fall between us.

Her voice is casual and soft, different from her fierceness when talking to Lord Confiel. "About your backgrounds, or the lack of one in your case, Mr. Ryder; your accomplishments; your… sexual appetite;" -she raises an eyebrow as she speaks, as if she doesn't believe what she's heard- "your supposed Gift; something about [Godly Language]; your interactions with Katasko and Darean; and your encounter with the heretics."

Oh, I may have yelled a bit too loudly during the attack. I didn't particularly want Confiel to ever actually find out that we can use [Godly Language].

"And you still want to join us?" I ask.

She eyes each of us and then says, "You're my best choice."

"So you have other options?"

She nods. "But I agree with Lord Confiel. Your situation makes you a good choice, even though there are… dangers that come with associating with you."

"We know more about our Fate than we've told Lord Confiel. There's that and a few other matters that we can't discuss with you until you've become our Blood Slave," Alissa says.

She narrows her eyes in suspicion and confusion. "What does that mean?" She asks.

"We are even more special than the Rincipio Lords believe us to be," I answer.

"Our bonds with one another go far beyond those of marriage," Alissa says.

"We've opened our hearts and minds to Wolf. He has absolute control over us," Hana says.

"But we aren't below him. He treats us as equals, and each of us can veto any action we might take," Lina says.

"So, it's important that you understand how our relationship works. You won't be a slave, you'll be another equal," Ciel says.

"And I just have to submit absolute control to him?" Yulania asks and frowns. "That's what I'll already have to do if I'm to become his Blood Slave."

"Not just control. We've given him our trust, loyalty, and love," Lina says.

Yulania's eyes stay on me, ruminating on Lina's words while also measuring my worth.

I won't back down from this small challenge, so I return her gaze. Her lips deserve loving kisses, her eyes deserve peaceful rest, her smile deserves a reason to shine.

It's obvious how strong her mind and will are, but she's not infallible. Her small flashes of weakness make her endearing to me, and my pity for her increases as I notice them. I want to protect her, to make her happy, to make a nest for her in my heart.

Her eyes regain their focus again, and she notices my stare. Her face tenses, and I get the feeling that I can hear the resounding ring of a glass being struck, as if something fragile is about to break. Then she averts her eyes, and the feeling fades.

Alissa's sympathy for her also starts to seep through [Bind], and this motivates her to say, "In a way, he's special, in many ways, he's not…"

"Heey…" I complain and look at Alissa, feeling a little hurt.

She smiles warmly and squeezes my hand, then she continues, "But that doesn't matter. I've chosen to give him my love, and he returned it all and more. Not only him, but the other wives, too," -she looks around and grabs Ciel's hand- "they've all given me love, and I returned it and more to them as well. We all love each other, we're all connected."

I get an itch and immediately recite our vows, "United, day and night, in pain and pleasure, success or failure, life or death. Wherever we may be, we will never abandon each other. All for one, one for all. Those are the vows that we made to one another."

"That's… cute," Yulania says in a low tone and shows us a shy smile.

"And very corny. Oh, so corny," Ciel says and chuckles.

"But they fit us perfectly. I may not be an expert in healthy relationships, but ours is certainly… special," Roxanne says with a wry smile.

"Love! We give love with every breath!" Aoi exclaims, nearly making Yulania jump out of her seat.

"I knew that you talked, but knowing about it and hearing it myself are two completely different things," she says.

"Oh, yeah, she's also another wife, so… we are all in a physical relationship with her, too," Alissa says.

"With a… dragon?!" Yulania's mouth hangs open as she looks at me with fear and disbelief.

"She's special, too," Roxanne says and giggles.

"Wait, so, you're all… bisexual?" Yulania asks.

"Yes. We all love each other quite deeply," Hana says, emphasizing the last word very suggestively.

"We also have an open relationship. You can bring any woman you want to the bed only for sex as long as all the others agree, but men will never be allowed," Alissa says.

Yulania blinks twice. "Oh…"

"Did you… have a lover?" I ask, tentatively.

Her surprise quickly fades and gets replaced by almost completely concealed sadness. She looks down at her perfect silvery nails and starts to scratch her index finger against the glass in anxiety. "I did… but I 'prepared,' as Lord Confiel suggested, so I broke off our engagement a long time ago."

"That's something I won't back down. If you're to be a wife, no other man will lay with you," I say.

"I don't mind," she says softly as she shakes her head. Her long drills bounce so perfectly that all the girls, except Aoi and Gify, feel envious about her. Damn, even I want that glorious hair!

"We want to accept you with open arms, so we hope that if you choose us, that you'll do the same," Alissa says.

"Now you've heard what we want. But what do you want from us?" I ask.

She shyly averts her eyes, then stares down at her own hands, and finally, lets her head hang low.

Her voice starts low and timid as regains her confidence and gradually raises her head again, "I want to save my brothers. Once they are old enough, they'll continue the Este family name and be our sworn allies.

"I've already had an uncle turn Wicked... and now my parents will be known as failed nobles. I want to reclaim the honor of our bloodline! I want enough power to dictate history!" She ends with a yell as her eyes burn with determination.

Alissa grins and mirrors the fire in Yulania's eyes. Her voice makes the hatchling dragon inside of me gently stir awake as she says, "Once our Fate is achieved, you won't need to grow any more powerful. Our own accomplishments will be enough that our names will be immortalized. Whatever dishonor your family suffered will be washed away many times over."

"So, will you choose us?" I ask.

Yulania stands up and bows at a right angle to us. "I formally request that you, Wolf Ryder, and all of your wives, accept me as a fellow wife and help me become a True Noble. I swear on my name, worthless as it is, that I'll give all my love to you and to my fellow wives in return for this favor. Let the Gods observe me and judge me for my actions."

That last part is a surprise. We didn't expect her to commit so heavily to us.

I look around and the girls all nod, even Aoi and Gify.

"Very well. We'll protect you and rule together. We'll regain your honor and fight alongside you so that you receive your just rewards. Our house will grow in fame and power, and we shall leave our mark on this realm, together. Let the Gods observe me and judge me for my actions."

Yulania straightens her posture and a faint smile graces her beautiful face. For the first time, a glimmer of hope lights up her eyes.

This time though, I don't feel a tightening in my heart, and this confuses me.

"Promises about love aren't the same as business deals. So you can't swear on love so easily, but if we screw up too badly, then the Gods can still punish us through our Fate," Alissa says through [Bind].

"Well, we all have big hearts. I'm sure that we'll have enough space in each of us for her to make herself feel at home."

I get up and bow, then I say, "Welcome, Yulania, to the Helios fellowship and the Ryder family."

A note from Manasong

Hall of Fame of Patrons

The patrons who support Rupegia shall have their names sung by the bards for they deserve the glory and honor. Their names are:

Oracle Maximillian Hübner.

Prince PreownedFIN.

Lord Andrew Meyers.

Lord Hope.

Lord Samuel Lim.

Lord Bill.

Lord Novgarod.

Lord DJ.

Lord Cidant.

Lord Ashadun.

Lord Michale Erwin.

Lord Joxsan Herrera.

Lord Enrique Peña Gomez.

Lord Vampmire.

Lord Braidborn.

Lord Bakerdea.

Lord Kalsted.

Lord Yeeteris Dedmeem.

Lord D4rk Sheep.

Lord Nevarec.

Lord Nathan Vanbrunt.

Lord Andrew Heffelbower.

Noble Salty Panda.

Noble Evil.

Noble Yamibomb112.

Noble Maurice.

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Chapter 62: Ambition – Part 3

"[Mark of the Master]," the slave trader casts the spell, and a slave mark with my name appears on Yulania's wrist.

"[Tongue of Obedience]," the trader casts another spell, and I fidget anxiously.

I'm not sure if that one was really necessary. I don't even know how it actually works.

Yulania exhales deeply in relief, and her expression seems calmer than it was a few moments before.

Through [Sense Soul], I see her last name, Este, fading away.

"Anything else?" The elven slaver asks me, and I shake my head. He nods and leaves through an [Eternal Gate].

"Trust in each other, and you'll achieve something beautiful," Luz advises us with an enchanting and warm smile.

"I'm sure you'll all work fine together," Confiel says with a youthful smirk.

"We've sworn to do our best," I say and nod respectfully.

"That's very good," Confiel says, and his face becomes more relaxed. "Now, what do you plan on doing next?"

"We'd like to continue exploring that Legado dungeon. After going so far, it'd be a shame to abandon such a mysterious tomb."

Confiel chuckles once, and Luz shrugs while smiling. "Even we are stuck at that door, but you can do as you please. Also, as you've guessed, that tomb belongs to an elven king, the last elven king, to be precise."

Ooh… that's the king that was killed by the first emperor. The emperor's spells were so powerful that they created Ultirei's tomb and Loyalist Lake.

Even Yulania looks impressed.

"You know that much, but you couldn't get past that door?" Lina asks, suddenly feeling very bold and excited.

Confiel shakes his head gently. "The elven historians all agree that Arreira's death caused the High Forest to realize how outmatched they were against the Empire, and thus, they avoided a drawn-out war that would have razed our land. But apparently, that's not the answer."

"We've nearly recited an entire book on history in front of that door for nothing," Luz says with a wry smile.

"A different perspective is probably necessary, then," I say.

"Considering that it's you saying that, I'll be eagerly awaiting your success," Confiel says. I grin in response, and he continues, "I've already given your identity to the guards so that they'll let you in and out of the castle at any time. You can also use the [Eternal Gate] hub as you wish, but try not to go somewhere outside of the High Forest unless it's truly necessary."

"Thank you for your support. I think that we'll go to Goldcross and give our testimony as soon as we can," I say.

"The Tribunal would appreciate that." -He flashes a smile- "Anyway, here is your letter of commendation." He pulls out a piece of paper and pushes it towards us. Once I grab it, his face turns serious. "Another thing, we've found someone at Escanso's dungeon that would be of interest to you: Darean."

So, it's finally going to end…

"The mad man," Yulania comments softly.

I raise an eyebrow at her. "What do you mean?" I ask.

"He weaseled his way into a meeting with my father. He spun a complex lie about how he was a spy and had sensitive information about imperial encroachment on the High Forest. But one of my father's spies recognized him as being the man who was wanted by the Dawn of Fire, so after hearing his drivel, my father arrested him."

"Not everything he said was necessarily a lie," I say.

Yulania suddenly remembers that Mavel is dead, and the color of her face slowly drains. "He… knew that, but there were many lies weaved with the truth, so it was too much effort to try to discern them apart."

I hold back the need to reach over and hug her, then I turn to Confiel. "I'd like to interrogate Darean, then I'd like to… present him as a gift to Vanea Anara." Confiel and Luz seem a little shocked at the mention of Vanea, so I continue, "Darean has been after us ever since we killed his brother, who had joined a band of Wicked men that attacked us with the intent of raping my wives. We temporarily allied with Vanea to drive him out of Rabanara, but we couldn't kill him.

"It's true that he's a spy for someone in the Mainland, and since we're going to be Crown Lords one day, I'd like to build more goodwill with the Anara family."

Confiel evaluates my words and seems to become slightly pleased, then he says, "I don't know why the Anaras are ostracized by the nobles of the Mainland, but as long as you don't overtly declare an alliance with her, then it should be fine."

I nod in agreement and remember that one last thing I was going to ask them about, "I would also like to ask if you could search for Hana's family members. They should either be in prison or serving as Blood Slaves to someone, and we'd like to reunite her family with ours once we are Lords."

Hana holds her breath in surprise, and through [Bind], I feel her heart almost trying to smother her with happiness.

Luz brightens up and says, "I'll take care of that. We know that they aren't near the High Forest, so they might've been sent to Wideberg or Dyrmorder."

"Thank you," Hana says, and her voice nearly cracks.

Luz and I both smile gently at her and go silent.

"I believe that's all that we had left to discuss," Confiel says, and we all get up out of our chairs.

"I'll send your belongings to your new place," Luz says to Yulania, who nods without much energy.

"I'll go to Goldcross with Alissa. You girls can… get acquainted in the meantime," I say and smile at them.

"Find the 'Network' room. The official there will guide you to a portal to Goldcross," Confiel says, and I nod. "Well then, until another time," he finishes, and we bow, then the two Lords leave through a portal.

Yulania feeds mana to a gem in the table and gets up. I stare at her sexy, dark, and lacy underwear, noting how it contrasts with her yellow and transparent dress. She's a bombshell. I'm also starting to hope that her fashion sense rubs off on the other girls, especially Ciel, who still doesn't take advantage of her "assets" as much as she should.

Aoi and Gify leave my shoulders since they're also eager to interact with her.

The girls stand beside Yulania near the portals, and my new elven goddess starts to fidget nervously. I stare at her ass for a few seconds, until the usual servant appears.

"To our house, please," she requests, and the servant chants [Gate].

"Don't any of you dare steal the first bite from me," I warn the girls through [Bind].

"My fetish only gets fulfilled when it's Wolfy fucking another woman, so don't take this from me," Alissa also sends her own warning to them.

The three sex fiends on the other side of the line nod silently and swallow heavily.

Before Yulania enters the black circle, she sends me a curious glance, and I smile warmly at her in response.

She makes me feel a little silly and naive. She managed to touch my heart when she said that she'll give all her love to the girls and me, but I can't grow lazy, just thinking that our relationship will be simple. I hope it will, but I have to be very careful to make sure that she at least likes us.

I grab Alissa's hand, and we go towards the white gems embedded in the wall. A small plaque above each of them identifies which destination the portals lead to.

I feed mana into the one that says "[Eternal Gate] hub."

A rectangle materializes, and now that I've seen it so close up, I notice how it's like it went from being fully transparent to fully opaque over a single second as if it was always there and someone just moved the "transparency slider" to zero.

We cross through the white-veiled portal and exit into a similar hub to Escanso's castle. With it still being mid-morning, the strong sunlight coming from all of the portals makes the room almost uncomfortably bright, but still very beautiful as the glimpses through the portals give us a good idea about where they lead.

Four guards are standing at the corners of the room. They stare at us for a few seconds before they resume their duty like statues.

We start inspecting each of the portals. Most of them seem to lead to either a garden or a secluded house somewhere in the Empire. A grassland of dark green with a hint of silver; a rocky and humid place where only moss grows; a colorful jungle with huge pink mushrooms and many other weird plants; a cave where a multitude of glowing plants provide illumination; a balcony overlooking somewhere in the High Forest; another balcony facing a huge snowy and misty mountain; a mountainous region full of jagged rock faces and thick jungle…

"That's Fledgling Falls!" Alissa exclaims. We approach the portal, and the plaque confirms her words.

"Where's that?" I ask.

"Right next to the… Misty Low Forest!" She exclaims again as she reads the plaque next to the portal to Fledgling Falls.

Through the second portal, I can see a forest with normal, Earth-sized trees, except that the tree leaves look more like sombreros being held up on a thick stick. I see some juicy, round fruits hanging from these trees, and Alissa salivates at the sight of them.

"Chapefruit…" She mutters nostalgically.

"Escanso's castle should have a similar hub. When we become Crown Lords, we'll be able to use portals like these whenever we want."

Alissa nods and hugs my arm lovingly.

The room is huge, and there are more portals to explore, but we've endured enough temptation that we decide to move on before we give in to it.

There are only two doors here, one to the outside of the hub, and another with a large plaque saying "Imperial Gate Network," so we cross the latter.

We enter a large room where five well-armored guards stand at the ready near an elven official that's currently sitting behind a counter, waiting.

Beyond them, there's a long corridor full of heavy-looking, huge doors with many, many locks.

We approach the official and notice an Identification Crystal on top of the counter.

"Good morning," the official greets us with a soft smile.

"Good morning. We'd like to go to Goldcross," I say.

"Touch the crystal for a few seconds, please," the official replies and checks both our identities, then he compares it to some paperwork. After a few seconds, he lifts his head and gives us another smile while he motions to the guards. "Everything is in order, you may pass."

The guards escort us to one of the huge doors that magically unlocks itself as we get closer. It opens inwards and reveals a huge portal, then we cross through it without hesitation. The wooden and carpeted interior is replaced with bricks and tiles, and the air immediately becomes damper and hotter.

We see a similar huge door, now made of stone, slowly unlock itself for us and open without any visible help. We walk out of the room and see a similar scene to the previous hub.

Five guards escort us to the counter, where another official registers our names in his log.

"You're not allowed to wander inside the Lord's mansion, so you'll have to exit through the portal to the Lord's Hall," The official says and points to a white gem embedded in the wall near the door that leads out of this room.

We simply nod, and the guards lead us to it, then they activate the [Eternal Gate] and we cross through.

We're now in another brick building, a place called the Lord's Hall. This is where the commoners go to request audiences with their Lord.

Another guard seems to have been waiting for us and guides us to the outside. We see that only two people here are waiting for a meeting. Most towns have a government efficient enough that direct meetings with a Lord are rarely necessary.

Finally outside, we see that we're in the Nobles' Quarters of Goldcross.

The elven "tree house" is the dominant style here. They're grown from trees that have had their trunks enlarged to the size of a house, then hollowed out while leaving the crown of leaves intact. The other buildings follow the imperial style, having bricks that are mostly painted with red and orange. The Lord's Hall also follows the imperial style.

We enter onto the main road and see the Lord's baroque mansion peeking up from behind the houses. Its white bark makes a striking contrast against the landscape of green, red, and orange.

The town is as bustling as ever, but fortunately, we don't have to walk for long before we reach the Tribunal.

We wait in line, and when my turn finally comes, I explain my situation to the attendant, "Good morning. I'm Wolf Ryder, and I've been accused by Katasko of destruction of private property. Our trial is set for the next 25th. I'd like to meet with the Judge responsible for our case and deliver my letters of commendation to him."

The attendant nods, then leaves her booth and vanishes through a door.

While we wait, I share with Alissa how the girls are interacting with Yulania.

They started telling her about our adventures together, and they've reached the part where I told them that I'm from another realm.

"What…?" Yulania asks, and the girls repeat it again.

Ciel chimes in, incapable of containing her grin, "I know that it's almost impossible to believe, but we know that there are other realms beside ours. Wolfy was sent here and given all those Gifts for a reason."

Lina grabs Yulania's hand and helps her sit down in a chair before her knees give out.

Yulania starts mumbling, "This… is why you've all been so… 'mysterious' about his Gifts and his destiny. He's not just a hero, he's The Hero that will save the realm."

"Okay, that's, uh… that's a bit much. You girls embellished my story too much," I say through [Bind].

"Nonsense. We've only told her the truth from our perspective. You think too little of yourself," Alissa responds.

"Yeah. That Gift of yours is kind of wa~y too powerful. I still think that our future is going to be ridiculous," Roxanne says.

"It kind of already is. He's barely level thirty, and we're already destined to become Crown Lords," Alissa says.

"And soon he might become a shapeshifter if he manages to become a dragon," Hana says.

"And he's making me into a humanoid," Aoi says.

"But you girls are going to scare the shit out of her if you talk like that!" I protest.

Yulania smiles widely and brightly. "This is incredible! Amazing! I'm in a True Hero's party!" She exclaims.

My soul space goes silent.

"Right… you're all crazy. I should've expected that."

GIHIHIHIHI~!

"Crazy about you," Hana says, and I tune them out.

After a long time, the attendant finally comes back and says, "Judge Arbido would like to meet with you now."

We are guided to an office on the second floor with the Judge's name on the door.

We knock, and an old, raspy voice answers, "Come in."

We enter a cozy office decorated with many simple potted plants and flowers, a circle of sofas made from Uspidor skin, and a simple desk in front of a very wide window. Sitting behind the desk is an old man with a very stern expression. His short hair is so white that if I didn't have [Sense Soul], I wouldn't know whether he was a silver or a golden elf.

For his apparent age, his body still exudes a lot of vigor as he swiftly gets up from his chair.

"Wolf Ryder and… Alissa…?" Arbido asks.

"Yes, my fiancée," I say.

We nod respectfully at each other, and he motions to the sofas, "Please, sit."

The old man marches forward and takes a seat facing ours. He wears a very neat black robe that's made to look as smooth as possible, giving him a very strong air of "orderliness."

He feeds mana to a heating enchantment below a tea kettle and uncovers some biscuits for us. We all eat a few of the simple sweets and drink some mild not-orange tea.

"So," he starts and stops for a moment, then he gives me a cold and calculating look. "The first thing we need to discuss is: how are you alive? How did you escape the destruction of the Innocent Nymph?"

I feel a cold hand grasp my heart, and I search for Alissa's hand for comfort.

Then I breathe in deeply and prepare to tell the same lie I told to Confiel. I summon a bird without chanting and say, "I'm a summoner. For me, keeping an eye out on my surroundings is effortless, so why shouldn't I? Since we sleep in the wilderness so regularly, I've made it into a habit."

"So, you saw them, the heretics?"

"Yes. Four groups of seven robed and masked men and women suddenly appeared around the Inn. Then they huddled at the four corners of the building to cast [Meteor] in just a matter of seconds.

"The amount of mana used was greater than anything I'd ever felt before. Forgive my language, but after feeling that absurd amount of mana, we shat ourselves and jumped out of our window."

His gaze remains unwavering, and he asks without wasting a heartbeat, "How did you leave town without leaving a trace?"

I shrug. "Things were chaotic. With my summons as scouts, we waited for a breach in the wall's security, and I used [Telekinesis] to fly all of us over it."

"Why did you leave like that?" Another immediate question.

"Why is that even a question? Why wouldn't we run as fast as we could from those immensely powerful heretics?" Alissa asks, looking stupefied.

His cold eyes turn to her, giving me a moment of rest. "It never hurts to make sure that you've explored all the paths."

"Hmph," Alissa snorts, a little annoyed.

His eyes turn back to me, and the assault continues. "So, you wouldn't be able to recognize any of the heretics?"

"No," I answer, confidently.

"Do you have any idea why they might have attacked?"

"No," I answer confidently, again. I may have a Gift, but I still have no idea why they attacked the Inn, aside from simply being mustache-twirling villains.

"Are you involved in the incident in any way, shape, or form?"

My twitch is masked by a sigh as I answer, "Didn't you already check if I'm Wicked or not? You know that we still have our Blessings!"

"And those Blessings are the only things preventing me from calling the Punishers and letting them take you for interrogation."

I shudder a little, and even Alissa shivers from his voice. The Punishers aren't the Inquisition, but they'd still extract every little secret that we have, which would expose all of my Gifts and probably my world of origin to them.

I glare at Arbido and force a flare of my hatchling's anger to come out. "Of course we aren't involved!" I exclaim.

He hums, a little pleased, and the cold stare fades from his eyes, leaving only the intense severeness. "Just exploring all the paths."

"And have you?" I ask, a little flippant.

"Yes." -He nods, looking pleased- "Let's move on to other matters. You said that you had letters of commendation to deliver to me?"

I sigh and calm my heart. "Yes," I respond and pull out Rudito's and Confiel's letters, then I hand them to him.

He spends a long minute meticulously reading them both, then he returns them to me and maintains his severe tone as he says, "A fellow Agent commended you, and now you have the support of a Crown Lord… By themselves, these letters won't absolve you of the accusations, but they will annul any charge of malicious intent against you.

"If you were to be found guilty of the charge of destruction of private property, then at most you'd have to pay a fine." -His face twitches, and I swear he held back a smile- "But I'm dropping Katasko's case against you due to a lack of credible evidence."

Alissa and I let out a groan in sync.

"That's wonderful. Thank you," I say and nod respectfully.

Arbido's severe face softens a little, and he looks a few years younger as his wrinkles reduce in depth.

Then he straightens himself and lets his head hang low as he salutes. "As a member of both the Tribunal and the Seekers of Justice, I'd like to apologize on their behalf. We've discovered a few 'irregular' actions of some of our members, and we're working on correcting the flaws in our system." -He raises his head again and stops saluting- "We're also disciplining Captain Taavi for his abuse of power. His use of force wasn't proportional to the danger that someone like you, twice Blessed by the Gods, poses to the population at large."

Alissa squeezes my hand, and I can't hold back a smile.

But there's still something that I need to do, so I ask, "Is there anything we can legally do against Katasko? For us, it's obvious that they were pulling some strings to try to coerce us into… well, something. I'm still not sure what their goal was."

Arbido frowns and sighs. "Unfortunately, companies like Katasko know how to cover their tracks very well. For us, it's obvious that they were bribing our officers, but there's not enough evidence to prove that and not enough cases against them to make them a target for the Seekers of Truth.

"Perhaps with time they'll make enough mistakes that will allow us to act, but they're mostly limiting themselves to political bickering with the elven Lords. So, they are always close to the border of legality, but they never cross it."

At least we'll be able to face them on more even ground when we become Crown Lords.

"I see…" I whisper and sip more of the tea. "Well, at least this matter is resolved, for now."

He nods. "Indeed. The Tribunal swears to fight for the safety of the commoners, so I'm sorry that we weren't able to do more."

"Thank you, you've helped us enough." I show him a faint smile. "If everything is in order, I'll be taking my leave."

"Until next time, and may it be under better circumstances." He gives me a sympathetic look, and we leave.

We sigh in relief and fatigue.

"So many things, all happening so quickly," I whisper.

"And there's still Darean," Alissa says with a wry smile.

I chuckle once, then I remember how I told Confiel that I want him sent to Vanea, and it makes me shudder.

No, killing him would be a mercy that he doesn't deserve. He's a madman obsessed with murdering us.

We make our way back to the Lord's Hall, and I give Goldcross one last nostalgic look before we enter.

After Rande reaches this town, they'll spend a while resting, which would be the perfect opportunity to meet up again with Klein and Osaria, but they are still a long way from here.

We talk to the receptionist at the Hall and give her our names. She checks them against a list of people authorized to use the Imperial Gate Network under Confiel's name and finds ours, so we're guided back to the room from whence we came.

A minute later, we exit from the Hub Room in Goloria's castle.

It's pretty incredible that we've traveled so far and didn't even feel it.

The girls are sparring with Yulania and testing her abilities. It's almost mid-day, so it's time to have lunch, then we'll visit Darean.

Lina tells her about [Bind] and how Aoi is becoming a humanoid.

She misses a strike, and Hana backs-off, not feeling like taking advantage of a distracted opponent.

Yulania stands still and stares at Aoi, then her eyes lose focus, and she starts asking out loud, "You know what? This is stupid. What is Wolf Ryder? A Humanoid God walking on the land? How… how am I supposed to interact with him? He's a completely different person from all of us."

"Suck his dick long enough, and he'll give you a Blessing," Hana suggests.

"Less blasphemy, please," Ciel says.

"You'll soon realize that he's quite 'normal,'" Roxanne says.

"I wouldn't say that he's normal," Ciel says and tries to hide her smile.

"Wow, you girls are kind of mean," I say through [Bind].

"Hey, they are complimenting you," Hana says.

Roxanne chuckles. "Okay… he's just like us, though he's a little odd from time to time, you just treat him like you'd treat a friend. He's pretty casual about most things."

"Except when he's fucking," Hana says.

"Except when he's fucking," Roxanne agrees, and the girls all nod.

Intermission 14

"Excuse my presence, Centum Fluminis, for I have grave news. Crown Lord Confiel Rincipio deposed Crown Lord Mavel Este from power yesterday. Today, we've received a notice from our informants that the Helios fellowship has been allowed to fully utilize the Imperial Gate Network under Lord Rincipio's name."

I hear Sebastian's words and laugh with the wind. The man slumps, and his old face frowns.

Sebastian doesn't stop there, he continues, "The other shareholders have put forward a motion to limit your powers. They solely blame you for the loss of Nero and the 'sympathizers' that we had in the Enforcers."

"It matters not! Nothing matters! No more!" I exclaim and exclaim, and I laugh and laugh.

"Master?" Asks Sebastian as confused as a pebble.

I cough and recover my voice. "Helios was my last opportunity. I have no more options. Deciens Alkimeonids will order me to the front lines because he's unsatisfied with me. I'll die in the Purification."

The man's old and familiar face distorts into one of pain and anger. "You're a Centum! Why would he sacrifice someone of your rank?!"

"As I said, it matters not. Alkimeonids will have his way, and I will die."

I get up and stare out the window with a smile.

"I'm dead."

A note from Manasong

Hall of Fame of Patrons

The patrons who support Rupegia shall have their names sung by the bards for they deserve the glory and honor. Their names are:

Oracle Maximillian Hübner.

Prince PreownedFIN.

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Lord Bill.

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Lord DJ.

Lord Cidant.

Lord Ashadun.

Lord Michale Erwin.

Lord Enrique Peña Gomez.

Lord Vampmire.

Lord Braidborn.

Lord Bakerdea.

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Lord D4rk Sheep.

Lord Nevarec.

Lord Nathan Vanbrunt.

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Noble Salty Panda.

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Noble Yamibomb112.

Noble Maurice.

Noble Mild Fracas.

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Chapter 63: Alone - Part 1

A note from Manasong

Attention: to conform to the limit of mature content (more than just sexual content) allowed in a novel, I've censored part of this chapter. You can look for the uncensored version here.

The symbol "-" denotes a section that got cut for containing sexual content. Also, if paragraphs seem missing, they were also likely censored in an earlier pass where the symbol wasn't used.

We make our way out of the castle and stroll through the colorful formal gardens. The complete absence of any guards nearby and the huge dark wall surrounding us make it seem like we have the garden entirely to ourselves. But through a Holly, I know that there are many guards all over the Shell that can see us from far away.

I feel uncomfortable being under the care of the Rincipios, but we are undoubtedly safe from heretics while we're here. The wall is nearly unbreakable, and the sky is covered in protective enchantments that would certainly stop four [Meteor]s, so there's not that much to worry about.

My stunt of kicking a hole into Escano's Shell has certainly shaken up the perceived invincibility of the elven castles, but I won't be able to repeat that feat so easily. And if I can't do it twice, then it's likely that the heretics also won't be able to.

Our house is on the inner circle, close to the castle's entrance, which means that we are in a favored position in Confiel's eyes. I'm not sure how loyal the nobles living in this area are to Confiel, but living this close to a Crown Lord's castle implies a great amount of trust.

We reach the red and yellow brick mansion and cross through the gate. The guard posted at the entrance barely spares us a glance, already familiar with our faces, somehow.

"How did he recognize us?" I ask Alissa through [Bind].

"Well, I find it unlikely that Confiel would be hosting more than one couple composed of a half-imperial and a werefox."

"I'm half-imperial?"

"Your hair says that you're from the Mainland, but your pale skin and freckles indicate an inheritance from Maplethorne."

I think that "inheritance" means genetics.

"Why is hair color more important than skin tone?" I ask.

"Because in Faium, Maplethorne, and Dyrmorder, everyone has the same skin tone but different hair colors. However, freckles is a Maplethorne thing."

Huh. Well, I was already a mix of a Brazillian native and an eastern European immigrant, so it's not like I was a "pure breed" to begin with.

Once we get far away enough from the guard, we start speaking normally again, so I ask, "Don't people mix with different races fairly often? Hair color being specific to a region would eventually stop being a thing as more and more people mix."

She assumes a serious persona and starts lecturing me, "You can pray for children to be born with certain characteristics the same way that we pray for their race. But mixed children aren't that common outside of places like Rabanara. In many parts of the Empire, only children born with specific characteristics or races can inherit land. For example: only the elven children that you might have with Yulania will be able to become Crown Lords."

"Oh… and the same goes for the Misty Low Forest?"

She nods. "Only our children that are born as werefoxes would be able to inherit land. Over there, you have to be a werefox to even buy the land.

"Could Confiel's and Mavel's disagreements come from these sorts of laws? He said that he wanted to bring in outside talent, so maybe his reforms would have loosened some of these laws."

She nods, and her fox ears bob cutely. "It's quite possible. People are pretty protective of these laws that prevent imperial 'influence' from corrupting their customs."

"Even on Earth, this sort of thing happens."

She hugs my arm tighter, and we enter our mansion. The air is cooler and fresher than the outside. The high ceiling and tile-covered interior help a lot with that.

We cross through and exit into our backyard: a large concrete patio with a bright blue pool and a few hedge statues around a grass garden. The pool catches my attention due to its unnaturally blue color.

But that attention is quickly redirected to the girls. Hana and Yulania are sparring with training longswords, with the elven goddess fighting Hana to a standstill.

-

Damn, girl, you look like a fine steak.

It seems that the pervy elves even managed to make Snow Weave into almost-yoga-pants. But wait, shouldn't all that bouncing hurt? Sports bras were created for a reason.

After I stop drooling, I notice how oddly Yulania is fighting. No matter how she moves, she makes no sound. The way she fights is also rather defensive, and her defense is seemingly impenetrable.

Her blade occasionally touches Hana's skin, but Hana's aggressive style lets her inflict a quick counterattack and even the score.

They are following not-fencing rules, so small touches earn them single points. But those types of wounds wouldn't actually debilitate someone, so the fight is dragging on with neither contestant gaining the upper hand.

On Earth, sure, a strike on the thigh could lead you to lose a duel, but in Rupegia, you'd need only to stall until the HP potion takes effect for you to recover. Small wounds aren't the way to end a fight, only strong and clear cuts count towards victory.

Eventually, Yulania starts to slow down, and her face distorts from exhaustion, then Hana smirks and pushes her even harder.

It takes only a few more seconds for Yulania to trip and finally be defeated.

"I surrender…" Yulania says weakly, and I become able to hear her produce sounds normally again.

"Hah!" Hana raises her fist in victory, and then offers a hand to help Yulania get up.

"Wolfy, I'm horny! She's so ho~t!" Roxanne complains in my soul space.

"She's mine, you filthy woman," I reply and receive the mental image of a comically large pout.

Then Hana turns to me and narrows her eyes in annoyance. "My style isn't 'aggressive'; it's based on tiring out the opponent, not winning with brute-force," she says.

"First, alright, I get it. Second, get out of my head!" I exclaim and poke her through [Bind], eliciting a moan from her. "Aw, hell…" I shake my head and pout.

Yulania blinks blankly in confusion for a few seconds, then Lina hands them towels and she awakens from her daze. "Oh, thank you," she whispers.

"I'm a masochist!" Hana exclaims proudly to Yulania.

"Oh, right, obviously," Yulania responds and shakes her head, making her hair and ears bounce. Then she turns to me and says, "So, 'realm traveler,' once I've had a little bit of rest, would you care for a spar?"

I unconsciously lick my lips and say, "I'll be delighted to."

-

There's nobody that could see us here, and the soldiers in the Shell aren't allowed to look into the properties-. But I'm not sure how Yulania would react to that, so for once, I keep it in my pants.

I also get a feeling that she might have a gaydar or something since she decides to sit between Roxanne and Hana, who give her body their full, undivided attention.

The girls continue telling our story, and they finally reach the part where I plow an entire inn of ravenous women.

The elven goddess that everyone, even Ciel and Lina, is salivating over stops drinking her iced tea and sighs softly. "I have no more ribbing comments to make; I'm actually impressed," she says. I smirk, and she chuckles at my current state.

I pat my lap-loli while I rest my head against my chocolate pillow. Two tail-hands protrude out of my neck: one to caress the head of my pillow and the other to [Massage] the ears of my foxy girl. Alissa is almost falling asleep -.

If only we were naked right now, I-…

Damn, I'm thirsty!

Ciel lets out a soft and happy sigh that only I can hear, then she looks at the solidified-mana-hand giving her angelic delight and smiles wryly. "You'll get used to it quite fast," she says.

"I… hope so," Yulania softly adds with a nod.

After rest, we prepare for our spar.

The perfect woman stands before me with an evil glare -. I don't even need Gify's help to get myself into the right mindset to fight her.

She smirks and leans forward, ready for battle.

I need to subdue her and show her who's in charge.

"Do you mind if I use some Eia? My basic [Weaverism] isn't enough to compete with you without it," she asks, surprising me a little.

Her innocent compliment might actually be part of a plan to make me underestimate her. But I want her to fight me with her full power, so I nod in agreement.

She opens her [Item Box] and materializes a small green candy on her palm with a *poof*. She slowly uses her adorable little tongue to scoop it into her mouth. -

I stare into her eyes while she plays around, and I get a feeling similar to hearing the resounding ring of a glass being struck. Then Yulania's pupils start to dilate, and the feeling fades into nothing again.

Is she… using [Weaverism] on us?

Gih.

Even if it's only on herself, I want to know what it is.

"Ready?" I ask, and she nods.

I slide forward and strike. She meets my sword and pivots, bringing the point of her blade towards my face. I move to block with my shield, and she slides around it, scratching my left cheek exactly where my vertical scar is. Since she only lightly touched me, she gains a single point.

That was odd.

She's also not making any sound as she moves, throwing me off a little.

I strike again and defend myself from her counter, only for the tip of her sword to slide perfectly around my defenses and scratch me again.

This repeats four more times as I probe her defenses. I start to get the feeling that she's untouchable, not because she's skilled, her attack pattern is simpler than mine, but because she seems to predict my attacks.

Ooh… is this something related to [Weaverism]? Well, how about I do this…?

I cast [Rush] and strike as fast as the spell allows me to. She winces before I even touch her and struggles to keep up with my attacks.

"Point to Wolf," Ciel announces.

"Point to Wolf."

"Point to Wolf."

"Point to Wolf."

This will take ages. Even though I have speed, I don't have enough to finish this duel, and I hate attrition battles, unlike Hana.

I shift tactics.

A light [Earth Bullet] at her leg to distract her. A [Lightning Bolt] that, although it gets partially absorbed by [Rainbow Shield], is enough to make her flinch. I spin and float with [Acrobatics] and [Telekinesis] and land a sneak attack with [Soul Manipulation] that touches her calves but doesn't slice her ankles.

She really is predicting my attacks, but she can't react to them all at the same time!

I simultaneously pull her sword up with [Telekinesis] and blind her with [Spirit Light], then I strike down at her leg with all of my strength and easily pass through her [Wind Shield].

"Major point to Wolf."

Suddenly, I feel heavy, and it becomes difficult to stay upright. I cast [Telekinesis] to make myself light, but it doesn't help. A sticky feeling starts to spread across my skin and pull me down.

She sweats heavily, and her face pales as she starts chanting [Entangling Vines], but that was a mistake. I instantly cast the same spell and bind her in place before she can finish chanting.

She grits her teeth, and I cast [Vine Weapon], creating a blunted javelin in my hand. She raises her sword to parry, and I pull it down with [Telekinesis] so strongly that she can't raise it back up, then I throw the javelin.

It hits her square in the chest, and she falls backward. Suddenly, I don't feel sticky anymore, and I return to being able to move normally. She didn't surrender yet, so I [Rush] forward.

While gasping for breath, she swings her longsword at me, and I bat it out of her hands with a [Telekinesis] powered counter. Suddenly, my sword hand feels so heavy that I can't move it to attack her anymore. I don't lose my grip on my sword or get pulled down, I just lack the strength to lift my hand.

Yulania gets on her knees, and I use my shield to bash her face. She uses an arm to protect herself, but still gets sent to the ground again.

I straddle her chest and use my knees to press her shoulders against the ground. I release my shield since it's too big for this situation and punch her perfect face.

I miss the jaw, and she doesn't pass out, so she's able to push against the floor and slip up a bit from under my knees. Now, I'm merely straddling her waist, and her sweaty body is pressing against mine. My nose is filled with the alluring smell of her sweat and intoxicating perfume.

Her resistance is making my anger quickly flare up inside of me, greatly lowering my inhibitions about causing her pain.

I grab her neck and cast [Shocking Touch]. She goes limp for only a few seconds, but that's long enough for me to start choking her and push her against the ground again.

She doesn't tap my arm in defeat, continuing to resist me and trying to undo my grip on her neck. I cast [Shocking Touch] again, and she loses most of the strength in her hands, but doesn't go limp this time.

She's really good at resisting [Electric Magic].

[Entangling Vines] fades, and her legs are no longer restrained, but their thrashing accomplishes nothing as my legs are perfectly wrapped around her waist.

Her mouth hangs open, and her eyes roll back as she struggles to breathe and finally passes out. My right arm instantly returns to normal, and I hold my sword against her neck. I notice that her legs are randomly spasming.

"Pass out! Victory to Wolf!"

I loosen my grip on her neck, and she wakes up, then notices the practice sword, and her body goes limp. She sighs and closes her eyes. I remove the sword but keep my fingers wrapped around her neck.

"Victory to Wolf!" Ciel repeats so that she can hear.

I cast [Heal] on her and lower my head closer to hers until our noses touch, then she opens her eyes and I see a hint of fear within them. The feeling of a glass being struck comes back, but now it's so strong that it drowns out everything else.

What is that…?

She breathes in slowly and deeply and closes her eyes, then she raises her face to meet me and kisses my lips. The resounding ring instantly disappears, and I open my eyes wide in surprise. The way she forces her eyes shut makes her seem like an innocent girl who's forcing herself to kiss her boyfriend for the first time.

This was not what I was expecting her to do, but I'm not one to say no to a kiss, so I respond and pull her face closer. I part her lips with my tongue, and she responds, showing me how thirsty she really is.

I instantly feel her need for care and love, and start hugging her body. Her hands rise up and slip under my shirt. They glide over my skin and move towards my face, pushing my shirt up as they go.

I break the kiss, and she pulls off my shirt, then her hands go down, caressing my pecs and abs. She looks at my body with a bit of hunger and fear. I'm still not sure why she's doing this.

Then her hands stop at my belt and start to undo it. I look down at her chest and see her white shirt exposing her dark lacy bra to me. In between her perfect breasts, there's a small hook, so I eagerly release it.

Her glory breaks free from its chains, exposing her pink nipples to me.

There's a perfect woman below me with her majestic, drill-like hair sprawled out on the ground and her delicate hands undoing my belt. This is another scene that I need a painting of.

She throws my belt away and unbuttons my pants, then reaches into my underwear and pulls out my cock. She stops and stares at the thick meat rod in her delicate hands.

I immediately freeze Alissa with [Bind] before her hand can finish sneaking towards her pussy.

Then I reach behind me and rub a finger against her panties, causing her to squeak out a girly moan. She starts stroking me while I rub her drenched entrance.

I push my hips towards her, and she pulls back the foreskin, exposing my red head. Then she opens her mouth wide and swallows me whole. She deepthroats me as her tongue rubs strongly against my shaft and balls, begging for the symbol of my virility.

I push her panties to the side and penetrate her with my index finger. She starts squeaking adorable moans as I fingerfuck her, and her voice makes her throat vibrate against my head.

Due to how thirsty I am for her, I don't last long.

"I'm gonna cum," I warn her, and she pulls it out, then I glaze her perfect face and mark her as mine. She manages to swallow some of it, then immediately starts cleaning her face and eating the rest.

She releases my cock, and I stop straddling her. I go back and pull her pants and panties off of her, exposing her deep red lips to me. An adorable golden landing strip adorns her wet promised land.

She casts [Clean] on her mouth and takes her boots off by herself. She spreads her legs to me, her dripping entrance presented like an enticing invitation. Then I lean over her again, making our noses touch. I stare into her eyes, then she averts her own.

Feeling annoyed, I grab her face and order, "Look at me. If you don't want to do this, then say so, but look at me."

Her scared eyes turn to me, and I feel like I can hear a glass window shattering. She winces and whimpers, then her hungry face warps with pain as tears form in the corner of her eyes.

"What was that?" I ask.

"Sorry…" She mutters and looks away guiltily.

"What was that?" I repeat.

"Sorry…"

"Yulania! I'm not chastising you, I just want to know what you did!"

She hugs herself but doesn't cover her breasts, which only makes her look even more enticing, which I don't think was her intention.

"That's called [Mask]. It helps me… keep my emotions under control," she whispers, and a silent tear runs along her cheek. I release her face, and she turns her head away.

"Why would you need that?" I ask, and she sends me an angry glance. "Oh… right, sorry. I just… didn't know what it was."

She weakly nods twice and frowns, her face showing a hint of anguish.

Her confidence, magnificence, and even some of the shininess of her hair seem to fade as the proud woman now looks like nothing more than a wounded and vulnerable girl alone in the world.

She… reminds me a little of myself.

I sigh and sit in front of her, then I pull her up into a hug. I start to caress her head while applying some of my soul touch to it.

She sniffles, and my shoulder starts to feel wet.

"You can let it all out now. Cry, cry as much as you want," I whisper into her ear.

"I hate crying," she mumbles amid her whimpers.

She sobs for a while, then her arms wrap around my back, and she hugs me tight as her legs wrap around my waist, making my penis rest against her crotch. My shaft feels her intense heat and twitches.

She grabs my dick and shifts around, then rubs my head against her labia.

I loosen the hug so I can look at her face, my eyebrows raised in surprise.

She narrows her deep blue eyes in annoyance. "They said you can be too gentle, so don't you dare stop now. I need this," she whispers to me.

Right, Ciel said that people here use sex as a way to find comfort. That's what she wants, so that's exactly what I'll give her.

I pull her towards my lap, then I grab her waist and help her lower herself onto me. I gently spread my soul out of my dick, causing her to gasp, then her legs tremble as my head parts her lips.

Her warmth wraps around me, and she starts to breathe heavily. She grabs my head, and her deep blue eyes link with mine.

She pulls my head closer and gives me a hungry, messy kiss as I slowly bounce her up and down my length.

Her body is surprisingly light. She's taller and physically stronger than Roxanne, but weaker (and lighter, but don't tell her that) than Ciel, making it quite easy for me to use her as a cock-sleeve.

She wants to touch me with everything she can. She wants to fuse with me and open her heart. She wants to share her pain and receive my happiness.

I feel like casting [Bind], but then I think about Lina and how eager she is for that.

Sensing my torn feelings, Alissa calmly says in my soul space, "Don't. She can deal with this pain by herself. Lina's happiness is more important."

I nod internally and focus on Yunia. I share with all the girls exactly how amazing it is to fuck her, causing Alissa's words to quickly become a garbled mess as sexual frustration wracks her mind.

The other girls start their fivesome while watching us. Yulania momentarily freezes as she sees Hana eating Aoi out, but the rising heat in her cunt is enough to tell me her opinion about this sight.

Roxanne's tail fucks Lina while the succubus herself uses everything else on Ciel, making her convulse by intensively stimulating her clit and g-spot at the same time.

My soul touches Yulania's cervix, and her high-pitched girly moans increase in intensity.

"Ah… fuck me… fuck me harder… fuck that… pussy…!" She mumbles between moans.

Her feet kick against the floor repeatedly as her whole body quivers and her toes curl. I subtly add a clit rubber and some light ribbing to my dick, then I elongate it to make sure that it slams against her cervix with every thrust.

Her eyes soon roll back into her head, and she starts to go limp, then I decide that she's had enough and shoot rope after rope of my white paint deep inside her.

My lap gets coated in my dye, then I lower her onto the floor and take out my brush. I continue cumming continuously, staining her clothes and marking her whole body as mine with my seed.

She slowly starts to recover her lucidity and begins to absentmindedly scoop out my cum to eat as if it were candy.

Aoi wants to dart towards us, but I stop her with [Bind]. This time, Yulania is mine, solely mine.

The body of the elven goddess still twitches randomly as the last remnants of the strongest orgasm she's ever had still courses through her body. Her face relaxes, and her tears dry, bringing back her majestic aura, now completely sullied by my mark.

I stand above her, still erect as my Symbol of Power drips with ambrosia. I notice the imprint that my hand left on her neck is becoming more visible as a faint bruise forms.

Oh… I'll [Heal] you in a minute. I just need to burn this image into my memory.

My first time with Alissa (in both forms), Hana, Roxanne, Ciel, Lina, Aoi, and now Yulania. I'll never forget any of these historic moments of my life.

The defiled elf's eyes regain their focus and look at my grinning face, then at my still erect and dripping cock. "You're a monster," she says.

"Thank you," I respond and bow, then I cast another [Heal] on her.

"Thank you," she says shyly.

Once I see that her bruise is completely gone, I turn around and walk past Alissa without even looking at her.

I stop before the frozen Aoi and smirk. "You thirsty, thirsty slut. Who'd have imagined that dragons were such cock-slaves?"

"Fuck me!" She demands.

"Alright," I say and release her from [Bind].

Yulania witnesses firsthand the glory of high-impact sexual violence. Perhaps that might have traumatized her just a little.

A note from Manasong

Hall of Fame of Patrons

The patrons who support Rupegia shall have their names sung by the bards for they deserve the glory and honor. Their names are:

Oracle Maximillian Hübner.

Prince PreownedFIN.

Lord Andrew Meyers.

Lord Hope.

Lord Samuel Lim.

Lord Bill.

Lord Novgarod.

Lord DJ.

Lord Cidant.

Lord Ashadun.

Lord Michale Erwin.

Lord Enrique Peña Gomez.

Lord Braidborn.

Lord Bakerdea.

Lord Yeeteris Dedmeem.

Lord D4rk Sheep.

Lord Nathan Vanbrunt.

Lord Andrew Heffelbower.

Lord Markus.

Noble Salty Panda.

Noble Evil.

Noble Yamibomb112.

Noble Maurice.

Noble Mild Fracas.

Noble Geminus.

Leave a rating or a review to help me rise to the top or fix my shameful understanding of prose.

Take a look over my blog where all information of the world of Rupegia will be posted.

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Chapter 63: Alone - Part 2

A note from Manasong

Attention: to conform to the limit of mature content (more than just sexual content) allowed in a novel, I've censored this chapter. You can look for the uncensored version here.

The symbol "-" denotes a section that got cut for containing sexual content. Also, if paragraphs seem missing, they were also likely censored in an earlier pass where the symbol wasn't used.

Alissa and Lina worship their Idol of Love -.

Meanwhile, the other girls enter the pool - to cool themselves off. Aoi shrinks into small-Aoi and spreads her wings to help her float in the water, then joins Gify who had entered the water a long while before her.

Roxanne approaches Yulania while grinning from ear to ear. "Would you care for a 'special massage' from the two of us?" She asks.

Yulania lazily lifts an eyebrow, then closes her eyes and lets her body float on the surface. "Do as you wish," she says.

-

While they play, I take a look at Yulania's stats that have just been unlocked for me.

Info

Name: | Yulania | Age: | 20 | Race: | Golden Elf
HP: | 100 | MP: | 204/1,010 | Magic Power: | 500
Level: | 44

Stats

Strength: | 12 | Endurance: | 14 | Dexterity: | 19
Speed: | 16 | Intelligence: | 16 | Wisdom: | 16
Willpower: | 14 | Charisma: | 20 | Piety: | 12
Perception: | 20 | Sanity: | 17

Other

Status Effects: | Heightened Connection to Life, Source: Eia, Time Left: 1M | Titles: | NONE
Affiliations: | Blood Slave (Owner: Wolf Ryder)
Companions: |
Crimes: | NONE

That "Heightened Connection to Life" is quite interesting.

Yulania Skill Report

Physical

Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level
Sword Use | 8 | Two-Handed Sword Use | 10 | Parry | 8
Dodge | 9 | Silent Shadow Style | 4 | Battlefield Perception | 5
Enhanced Reflexes | 5 | Sense Presence | 1 | Hide Presence | 4
Muscle Explosion | 2 | Quiet Steps | 2 | Quiet Action | 6

Magical

Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level
Sense Mana | 5 | Mana Control | 4 | Mana Recovery | 2
Mana Efficiency | 8 | Reduced Mana Cost | 4 | Fire Magic | 1
Light Magic | 5 | Spirit Magic | 15 | Illusion Magic | 10
Space Magic | 6 | Nature Magic | 10 | Conjuring Magic | 1
Weaverism | 23

Miscellaneous

Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level
Riding | 5 | Acting | 3 | Dancing | 2

Spells

Fireball | Clean | Spirit Light | Spirit eyes | Spirit Link | Soul Touch
Materialization | Soul Shield (weak) | Soul Blade (weak) | Ghost Lights | Double image | Ignorance
Telekinesis | Item Box (weak) | Constricting Vines | Regeneration | Vine Weapon | Conjure Water
Conjure Bland Meal (weak) | Mask | Silence | Chain Life | Life Perception | Disruption Field
Precognition

How fascinating! She seems to be a bit more of the sneaky kind, but she's also a Spirit and Nature mage!

I'm very interested in her spells. [Chain Life], [Life Perception], and [Disruption Field] are completely novel to me. By the order they're listed in, they must belong to [Weaverism].

-We join the rest of the girls in the pool, all of us soaking - in the refreshingly cool water. Its deep blue color is kind of pretty, but it also makes me think that it might be contaminated with something.

"Why is the pool so blue?" I ask.

"It's to mimic the color of the water found in the Thunderplains," Yulania responds in a soft voice.

"There's a mineral in the water there that gives it its color. It isn't harmful, though," Ciel adds.

Yulania opens her eyes, and their fogginess slowly fades, returning them to their beautiful bright blue. "You've been to the Thunderplains?" Yulania asks.

Ciel nods and smiles. "Yes, just once. I was with the Templar Knights of the Wandering Order. It's a beautiful place that I'd like to visit again sometime."

Yulania closes her eyes again and smiles bitterly. "It is. My favorite hidden retreat is there, too. My silver mother said that I'm truly half silver elf because of how much I enjoy the grasslands of the Thunderplains."

"The grasslands have the freshest air, so it's my favorite place, too," Lina comments, and Yulania chuckles once. "What?" Lina asks and tilts her head.

"It was just that your comment was very… 'dwarfy.'"

Then Hana's brain massage makes Yulania softly moan.

Lina shrugs and snuggles against my chest.

Gify cutely paddles towards Yulania and climbs up her shoulder. The elven goddess lazily opens her eyes, then they shoot open as she stares at the little griffin with surprise. As an initiate Nature mage, she understands the significance of having a nature spirit decide to touch her for the first time.

We all move towards her and hold on to a part of her body, which startles her a bit, then Gify does her thing and connects us all together.

I see a palace in the middle of a lonely island. The sunset makes it shine with gold and orange, but the lower light also hides many of its details. The paint is starting to come off in various spots, moss is growing in the corners, small cracks are appearing in the walls, the luster of the gold is fading, and the decorative metal is scratched and worn.

"Ah!" Yulania gasps as she perceives what's inside all of our hearts at the same time.

Her eyes lose focus again, and she smiles faintly as her body is "massaged" by Gify.

She was - massaged by me, then had her body - stimulated by Hana and Roxanne, and now she's receiving a "soul massage." If this doesn't make her feel "refreshed," then nothing will.

The connection slowly fades, and we all return to normal. Yulania looks a little embarrassed, but Hana's brain massage quickly washes that away.

"Is every day going to be as intense as this?" She asks and looks around with an intense gaze.

"Well, not really, but it happens quite often," Ciel says and chuckles.

"Especially if you ask Wolfy to not be gentle," Alissa says.

"I see…" Yulania says in a low tone and looks at me a little fearfully. "You have some strange… skills, Wolf. I'm still not really sure what that was that you did to me."

Call me Wolfy, please.

I smile gently and answer, "That was my 'soul touch.' As the girls have told you, I can move my soul at will, and I coated…- myself. My soul touching yours causes pleasure, for some reason."

She narrows her eyes. "You mean 'spirit' instead of 'soul,' correct? The soul is merely the inner part of the spirit, like your inner organs. You can't use your soul to 'touch' anything else without rupturing your spirit, which is like your skin, because doing so would cause instant death."

Of course, a Spirit mage would be the one to push me to use the right terminology.

I smile wryly and say, "R-right, yeah, I've been using the wrong term, but my skill is called [Soul Manipulation]. I believe that I actually move my spirit by moving my soul, but I only actually touch things with my spirit."

She opens her beautiful eyes wide in surprise. "So, you've developed something like 'soul muscles'?"

I nod repeatedly. "That's a good analogy."

Her expression returns to being slightly stern. "Impressive."

"Thank you."

"Uh… can we start making lunch? I'm getting hungry," Roxanne suggests.

Yulania becomes a little uneasy.

I smirk, and Roxanne instantly understands her reaction, then smirks, too.

"Have you ever prepared a meal?" Roxanne asks Yulania.

"Yes…" The elven goddess responds and swallows heavily.

Roxanne pulls up Yulania's hands towards the surface of the water and gently inspects them. -

Yulania immediately licks her lips and stares intently at Roxanne. It seems that elves are quick to recognize lewdness.

Before we all start getting in the mood again, I poke Roxanne's soul, and she stops being so lewd.

"Yulania…" Roxanne starts with a low, teasing tone. She approaches Yulania and gives her cheek a slow and strong lick. "This taste… is the taste of a liar!"

The little liar shivers in fear of Roxanne and closes her eyes.

"Tell us the truth. You don't want to ruin the first meal we share together," Alissa warns her.

"Oh no! My meat has to be perfect, like always!" Aoi exclaims.

"Gih!" Gify agrees.

"Three of us have [Cooking] as a skill. We'll discover the truth sooner or later," I say with a severe tone.

"I've never touched a knife in my life!" Yulania finally admits, and her pink skin quickly turns red with shame.

"What an innocent Lady you are…" Hana says and pats her head softly.

"I'm not a Lady," Yulania protests without much energy.

"Sheltered for her entire life from the evil taint of the Cilrag and Remmidy. What a pure existence you are," Roxanne teases.

Those are not-garlic and not-onion.

Yulania pouts slightly, making her juicy red lips a little juicer. "They do smell terrible," she mutters.

We chuckle at her expense, and she sinks her face underwater, then makes bubbles in frustration.

"Alright, children, enough playing around. It's time to prepare lunch," Ciel says.

We start getting out of the water and drying ourselves off.

Yulania's hair has become almost completely straight, giving her a much colder air, similar to her mothers' portraits. Then she pulls out a long, drill-like piece of metal with a small gem at its base. She wraps her hair around the magic tool then activates it. It instantly dries her hair, and when she takes it out, her hair remains in the same drill shape it had earlier.

I kneel beside her, and she looks at me with a hint of wariness.

She has [Acting], so it's possible that her actual emotions are much stronger than this.

"Would you like me to help?" I ask.

She hesitates for a moment, then hands me the magic tool.

"Don't you have to brush it first? It should help maintain the shape, right?" I question.

"Y-yes, it does. But I didn't think that we had the time," she responds.

"For you, we do."

She nods twice and pulls out two brushes. While the girls dress and walk towards the mansion, we stay here while we bring her hair to its former glory.

"Didn't expect you to be interested in such things," she says in a low tone.

"Why?" I ask.

"You have five… uh, six other women to take care of. I'll completely understand when you need some time alone."

I stop brushing her hair and think for a few seconds.

She stops, too and turns to look at me with curiosity.

"Ever since I met my wives, I've never been alone," I say.

She lazily lifts an eyebrow. "Okay…" She says, not really believing me, and resumes brushing her hair.

"No, seriously. I'm always with one of the girls, so there's always someone getting some quality time with me."

"That's…" She turns around and looks at me a little annoyedly, then immediately stops and shakes her head. "No, you're a monster, of course, you'd be like that. You're an incubus-type demon in disguise, that's what you are."

I smirk. "I prefer the nickname 'incubus' much more than 'monster.'"

She chuckles once. "I'll start calling you Mr. 'Good Luck' then."

I let my mouth hang open with a sad frown. "No~, please don't."

Now she smirks, and her narrow eyes give her a "cool beauty" vibe. "Ha! They told me that you'd be annoyed with that one."

"Why would… traitors!" I shake my fist in the air. "Let's stop with these nicknames then, just call me Wolfy, please," I plead.

"Hmph, fine. Call me Yu, Yula, or Yunia, then."

Oh, Yunia sounds really cute.

"I prefer Yunia," I say.

"Good choice," she says and resumes brushing her hair once again.

We spend a few more minutes - restoring the work of art that is her hair.

-

To show Yunia some of the commoner cuisine, we prepare poutine. Nothing but simple ingredients that make for a very hearty meal.

"It's not very healthy, though…" Yunia says a little shyly.

"Exactly," I agree with her and grin.

Both Hana and Lina pout. The two of them have some slightly unhealthy eating habits, and I really don't know how Lina maintains her perfect, lithe figure.

Then, as we eat, Osaria finally receives the news about Mavel's death.

She rushes towards Klein and tells her the "good news." They both look at the bird with hopeful eyes.

"So, you did it? You've gained Confiel's support?" Osaria asks gently to the bird and lovingly pats its head.

"Now you just have to survive the dungeon," Klein says and their excitement deflates.

"I hope that you're fine…" Osaria says in a low tone, and Klein nods.

"Wasn't Mavel your not-blood-brother?" Klein asks Osaria.

Lina's Trivia: that means brother-in-law.

Osaria smiles bitterly. "We've never been close, and our relationship worsened when my ex-husband… started to become sick in the head. I'm actually only sad for Yulania. She was a good girl and didn't deserve to get dragged into Mavel's stupid war."

We have to tell her that Yunia is still alive.

Klein nods in grim understanding.

I clear my throat and start, "So… Yunia…"

"What? Is that her nickname, now?" Hana interrupts me.

"Yes, I… prefer that," Yunia responds with a nod.

"Nice! I like long names, but cute nicknames are even better!"

"Anyway…" -I send a short glare towards Hana- "Yunia, I have to tell you that your aunt Osaria is my…. Uh… bed friend? Concubine?"

"Concubine," Alissa agrees with a nod.

"You mean that she actually likes you and not just your… -?" Yunia asks and uses [Acting] to keep her expression straight.

"She definitely likes him. At least a little," Ciel says.

Yunia raises her eyebrows and leans back in her chair. "Wow. You're… uh - not really on the bigger side of things. I mean… it's thick and has a nice length, but…" She stops talking and facepalms while she bites her lip. Her face starts to gain a stronger shade of pink

I chuckle and say, "I get it, it's average. Now, where were you going with that?"

She sighs and strains her facial muscles to keep her face neutral. "I mean, Osaria likes it big, and aside from Rande, I don't think that anybody would be able to make her 'happy' consistently enough for her to become something like a concubine."

There are some things about Osaria's life that I think I'll just continue to ignore, but there's one important detail here that I need to know.

"Okay, why do you know that?" I ask and struggle to not laugh.

It immediately dawns on her, and her brilliant blue eyes stare deeply into mine. "No! I've never slept with her or Rande! It's just… that she doesn't really keep these things secret." She cringes so hard that I feel a little bad for her.

"He didn't even need to make it - bigger. He made her become addicted to him - with just his soul-, erm, 'spirit touch,'" Alissa says and corrects herself.

Yunia rolls her eyes. "Of course you did… Well, it's fine. She's a good woman who's had a hard life, and she deserves some comfort."

I smile gently at her. "She thinks that you're dead, so we should tell her what's happened to you to let her heart be at ease," I say.

Yunia nods in agreement, and a small smile adorns her red lips.

"Huh… so, she's our not-blood-aunt now," Roxanne comments.

"We're also related to Rande!" Hana exclaims and laughs.

"Oh…" Lina lets a shy exclamation escape from her mouth when she remembers Oura.

"Hm… so there will be many more chances for you and Nito to meet?" Roxanne asks with a teasing smile.

"I never told anyone that Nito has a thing for me," I say as I narrow my eyes at her, and she grins.

I watch the faces of Alissa, Hana, and Aoi. Then I feel a very small hint of guilt coming from Alissa and glare at her.

"Aren't you compelled by [Tongue of Obedience] to keep my secrets?" I question her.

Alissa freezes completely and starts talking robotically. "The fact that Nito 'is smitten' with you isn't really a 'secret' since Lina is the one that gave me that suspicion first. The fact that I shared this information with Roxanne isn't a breach of the contract since you tell us everything."

Lina lowers her head and stares intently at her hands, deeply embarrassed.

"You little shit," I grumble while the rest of the girls and Gify laugh.

"Wait, did you sleep with Oura and Nito?" Yunia asks.

"No. Also, Nito is a man, and I'm not gay," I answer matter-of-factly.

Yunia looks slightly amused. "But he's not really that manly; he's almost a girl. All that he's missing is a hole."

"Traps are totally gay, no question about that," I confidently state.

"Trap?" Alissa asks and tilts her head.

"'Gay' is translated but not 'trap'? This world lacks culture." -I shake my head dramatically- "A 'trap' is a man who looks and dresses just like a girl."

Yunia nods in understanding. "O~h… well, I don't think it needs to be translated. Plenty of girly men love to bait manly men into sleeping with them."

"Why don't you sleep with men? It's fun!" Aoi asks.

"Personal preference," I answer immediately.

"Insecurity in his identity as a man," Ciel says, casually.

I scoff and look at her in surprise. "Even you?"

Now she scoffs and gives me some sass. "Hey. You made me 'double-edged.' Why can't you become one, too?"

"Personal preference," I repeat with a nod.

Roxanne clicks her tongue as she says, "Tch. He'll see the light one day."

"Never." I deny.

We put the dirty dishes in the sink, with Ciel and I casting multiple [Clean]s on them. Alissa and Lina then give them a quick wash, just to clean away the last bits of dirt that might've escaped the spells.

Once everything is done, we sit back down at the table to discuss our plans. Yunia fidgets, uncertain about what we're doing, but too insecure to ask us about it.

"Right, now we have to decide what we're doing today," I start.

"Didn't you say that you were going to visit Darean?" Alissa asks.

"I did."

Her expression becomes more serious and a little anguished as her memories of Darean resurface. "Then I'm coming, too. I'd like to give him one last glare before he's sent to Vanea."

"He's brought too much grief to our family. We should all give him one final look," Hana says.

I look around, and the girls all nod, then we stare at Yunia, and she nods sheepishly.

The elven goddess has a "resting bitch face," but she doesn't seem to act like it, and even that "cool beauty" air of hers isn't holding up for long. She keeps up a serious persona because it was expected of her as Mavel's Chosen Descendant, but her true nature seems to be far more humble.

We call the servant and tell him that we'd like to see Darean.

"I have a message from Grand Bastico," the servant says.

"What is it?" I ask.

"He would like to inquire if you're available for him to come visit you this evening for dinner."

"That's fine…?" I say as I look around. The girls nod, and I see Yunia smile smugly.

The servant leaves to get the details about Darean's current location, and I turn to Yunia.

"What's with that smile?" I ask.

Her body twitches, and her smile warps awkwardly. "Oh, i-it's nothing… I just felt a little pleased that I now have a very good reason to thoroughly reject Bastico's proposal."

I blink blankly.

"He… proposed to you?" Ciel asks in my stead.

"Him and more than half of the High Forest…! Ohohohoh…" Yunia says and laughs smugly like a lady while covering her mouth with the back of her hand. Then she coughs and forces herself to become impassive. When our confused stares don't relent, she quickly explains herself, "I admit that I take pleasure in rejecting men."

Hana laughs once and says, "Ha! I get what you mean. I like the attention, so I don't reject them, but it certainly felt really good to repeatedly say 'no' to Rande."

"That's rather mean to men in general," Ciel says, disapprovingly.

They both shrug in sync.

"But we can't deny that it feels good," Hana says.

The servant comes back and guides us to an [Eternal Gate] to Goloria's dungeon, which is where Darean has been relocated.

The dungeon is deep underground, below the town's lake. The only way in or out is through the portal, so you can be sure that it's never had a prison break.

The place is made of pure black, damp stone. Enchantments recycle the air, giving a cold "air conditioner" feel to it. The rooms are all brightly lit since darkness would only help the prisoners to sneak around if, for some reason, they managed to escape their cells.

That last part has always bothered me in sneaky-type video games. I know that an environment full of dark spots makes it easier to walk around, but it just makes no sense!

We approach a gate, and the heavily armored guard behind it gets up to greet us.

The guard makes us use an Identification Crystal, then he logs our names in a ledger. He lets us through, and another guard guides us towards Darean's cell.

There are only four other prisoners here: three Wicked men and one woman. I recognize that one of the men is from Dawn of Fire. These prisoners are currently more valuable alive than dead, so their executions have been postponed for a short while.

After a few corridors, we enter a dead end. In the last cell on the right, there's one miserable person sleeping in a simple, rough bed, Darean.

We stop in front of his cell, and the disgusting smell makes us wrinkle our noses. The prisoners are allowed to wash themselves, but Darean hasn't been doing so. He's filthy, and his once white clothes are now yellow and have many dark and humid spots where the dirt has stained them. I can even recognize the foul smell of urine coming from him.

Alissa growls in anger as her nose is assaulted by his stench.

But I can't even recognize this person. I just see a thin man with dirty and frizzled blonde hair, a long beard that messily blankets most of his face, and sullen cheeks and eyes. [Sense Soul] doesn't lie, though; that's Darean Arnald.

A flicker of life enters his eyes, and he scans our faces. "Who are you…?" He asks with a hoarse voice.

"You've forgotten my face, but you still kept hunting us, Darean? I'm Wolf Ryder, and these are my wives," I growl, brimming with anger.

His eyes widen, and his filthy teeth appear from behind his maniacal grin.

"He's Wicked, so don't get too close to his cell," the guard escorting us warns us and walks away.

Darean starts to laugh out loud, but then a fit of dry coughing begins. After it's passed, he's left gasping for air.

"He's going to die from disease within a matter of days," Ciel says.

Yunia scoffs and glares at him like one looks at a pile of excrement. "He lost his will to live after my father locked him up, so I'm not surprised. But since he's valuable to us, I don't believe that Confiel would let him die so easily," She says.

Darean's grin comes back, and he stumbles towards his cell's grating. I notice an emellanat collar around his neck. Interrupting the flow of magic between the brain and the heart is enough to completely block all but the most powerful mages from casting any spell.

"Hello~…" He says and scans us all again. "Wolf Ryder… Alissa… Roxanne Succubus… Hanafuria… and, uh… who are the new sluts, again? Ciel and, uh, Lana? Nala? Whatever, you're sex slave number five! HAHAHAHA-…" Another coughing fit starts up, but he quickly recovers. "Please don't make me laugh, my lungs can't take it."

"My name is Lina…" She says in a low tone. Her eyes are cold and dark in a way that I've never seen them before. She's definitely not cute right now. I don't want to see her like this any longer, so I want to get this over with quickly.

"I don't care. You're Whore Five to me," Darean responds and shrugs. "And now I see he's got a sixth, too, huh? You fucking man-whore, stealing women from all over the land! How was Farana's tight little pussy?! Did you enjoy raping her, too, you fucker?!"

Hana slams her open palm against the cell, making it shake and startling Darean, who falls back on his ass. "Offend us again and you'll experience how agonizing it is to be burnt alive!" She growls at him, with fire escaping her mouth as she talks.

Darean prostrates himself on the ground and shivers. "I'm sorry! I'm sorry! Don't hur-…" Another coughing fit interrupts him.

She snarls, disgusted at his lack of backbone.

"But… what a fortunate coincidence that you're all here, right in front of me. With this, it's time t-…" His words are interrupted again as he starts to retch. We frown, disgusted, and a little worried that he might die here right now.

Then a ball of phlegm as big as a tennis ball launches out of his mouth and splosh against the dungeon floor.

"What the fuck," I mutter.

He grabs the ball and wipes it with his filthy clothes, revealing a cracked dark red gem. He feeds it what little mana he can, and a high-pitched alarm resounds through the dungeon.

Aoi suddenly grows into big-Aoi, then she, Hana, and Ciel stand in front of us while pushing us back. They desperately search their [Item Box]es for their weapons.

Lina casts an [Earth Bullet] at Darean's hand, which crushes it and makes him drop the gem. But the magic tool has already activated, and a dormant pool of mana instantly rises into a storm.

Darean clutches his crushed hand and looks at us with a maniacal grin as he starts laughing out loud, louder than even the alarm.

A guard comes rushing towards us, sword drawn. "Who cast a spell?!" He yells.

The mana inside the magic tool is growing so wildly and so quickly that we freeze up. I get a flashback to the [Meteor]s, but then something else enters my memory: Farana's explosion of Darean's warehouse, the second time we fought alongside Vanea.

Darean kicks the gem, and it rolls past the grating. "Don't even think of storing this in your [Item Box] if you don't want to make things worse!" He yells.

The gem starts to glow, then Roxanne pales, and the guard freezes in his tracks. "Runaway mana reaction! It's going to blow!" She yells.

I jump forward and open a [Gate] to our secret resting spot near Goloria. The gem enters the black circle and disappears. Three seconds later, the ground trembles slightly, then we hear the rumble of an explosion.

A note from Manasong

Hall of Fame of Patrons

The patrons who support Rupegia shall have their names sung by the bards for they deserve the glory and honor. Their names are:

Oracle Maximillian Hübner.

Prince PreownedFIN.

Lord Andrew Meyers.

Lord Hope.

Lord Samuel Lim.

Lord Bill.

Lord Novgarod.

Lord DJ.

Lord Cidant.

Lord Ashadun.

Lord Michale Erwin.

Lord Enrique Peña Gomez.

Lord Braidborn.

Lord Bakerdea.

Lord Yeeteris Dedmeem.

Lord D4rk Sheep.

Lord Nathan Vanbrunt.

Lord Andrew Heffelbower.

Lord Markus.

Lord Maurice.

Noble Salty Panda.

Noble Evil.

Noble Yamibomb112.

Noble Mild Fracas.

Noble Geminus.

Leave a rating or a review to help me rise to the top or fix my shameful understanding of prose.

Take a look over my blog where all information of the world of Rupegia will be posted.

Join the Discord and discuss, or rant, or meme, or try and fight me so your waifu gets more screentime.

Become a Patron and read chapters in advance, or read the side-stories, or leave your mark on the story, or help choose the next artwork or the next side-story.

Chapter 63: Alone - Part 3

A note from Manasong

Attention: to conform to the limit of sexual content allowed in a novel, I've censored this chapter. You can look for the uncensored version here.

The symbol "-" denotes a section that got cut for containing sexual content. Also, if paragraphs seem missing, they were also likely censored in an earlier pass where the symbol wasn't used.

Darean is stunned, then his expression goes from supreme delight to absolute horror in an instant. "NOOO~…! YOU RUINED IT ALL! HOW, HOW CAN YOU CAST [GATE] INSTANTLY?!" He bellows.

"STOP!" I yell in [Godly Language], and he freezes.

"WAIT! WHAT HAPPENED?!" The guard questions us.

I guide Hana and Aoi to stand in front of the guard and to look menacing.

"Call Lord Confiel, but leave us! This is more important than your life!" Alissa yells.

"Do you have any other hidden tricks?" I question Darean.

"No, they took away my [Wind Blade] gem that was hidden between my ribs. This was my last chance at killing you," he immediately admits.

A bunch of other guards arrive, and a standoff begins. The initial guard runs off down the corridor, hopefully to report to Confiel.

"Were you involved with the heretics that destroyed the Innocent Nymph inn?"

"I don't know anything about that inn. The only heretics I met were Wicked men working in the Dawn of Fire… Stop! You're messing with my head!" He grabs his long hair and starts pulling hard on it.

"Did you manipulate Dawn of Fire into attacking us?"

"Yes. I convinced them that the Este Escort Company had some very, very valuable targets to capture."

"Did you incite a mob of thieves to attack us?"

His face distorts in exertion, but he can't resist my skill. "Yes, I wanted to test your capabilities and hired a Summoning mage to spy on you. It didn't work very well… ARGH! STOP!"

"Back in Rabanara, did you hire a group of kidnappers and use Farana to lure me into an ambush?"

"Yes, I did. And because of you, I lost my FUCKING [GATE] SCRUBBER! BECAUSE OF YOU, MY MASTER TRIED TO KILL ME!"

"Who's your master?"

"He used a fake name, obviously. I only know that he's likely imperial royalty."

Royalty? Does he mean part of the emperor's extended family?!

Ciel winces and looks at him with disbelief and anger. "You are lying!" She yells.

"It's only logical! He had wa~y too many resources to fuck with the Anara-…!" Darean yells back at her, and another coughing fit starts.

"Baseless speculation! Slander!" Ciel yells.

"Ciel, stop," I warn her, and she bites her tongue, then returns to glaring at the line of guards in front of the girls. Yunia stands behind them, perfectly still, and completely unsure of what to do.

"Why did you target us?" I continue the interrogation.

This time, he answers without [Godly Language] forcing him to do so, "Because you killed my brother! He was the only family I ever had, and you fucking killed him like a goblin! I HOPE YOU DIE TO A BREEDER!" He crawls forward to the cell grating and slams his good hand against it, barely making it rattle. "AND THEN YOU STOLE FARANA FROM ME! YOU LEFT ME ALL ALONE IN THIS REALM! YOU TOOK AWAY EVERYONE I'D EVER LOVED…! I'VE BEEN DEAD ALREADY FOR A LONG TIME, SO FINISH THE JOB THAT YOU FUCKING STARTED!"

That tirade took all of his energy because as soon as he finishes, he collapses, gasping for air and coughing heavily.

I kneel and glare at him with more anger than I've ever had.

All this pain and suffering, all this manipulation that caused so many innocents to die, it was all the work of a mad man turned Wicked. He deserves no pity, he deserves no mercy, he only deserves to pay.

The women that saved me from depression and insanity were repeatedly endangered by his evil thirst for revenge. He wanted to avenge a Wicked brother that was rightfully killed for being a fucking rapist!

Scum of the earth, with a broken mind, a darkened heart, and a complete lack of morals. An existence too pitiful to be left alive. But with crimes too heavy to receive the mercy of death.

Darean clutches his broken hand, and his face pales. His whole body starts shivering, and his scared eyes remain locked with mine, as if he simply can't look away.

"You won't die so soon. You'll be sent to Vanea for her to extract whatever she might need from you," I say in a calm and deliberate tone, but still seeping with anger in every word.

"No… no… please, not her! She's as Wicked as me!" He begs.

I get up and look down at him with contempt. In the end, we're all responsible for our actions, and the dark path he chose was bound to only bring misery onto himself.

"She's not Wicked, Darean. She… is what you deserve."

That final word breaks his mind. He slowly lays himself down on the ground and curls into a fetal position as he whimpers incomprehensibly.

I turn to the guards, and they flinch.

I don't have the patience to wait for Confiel, so I state, "He tried to kill us with a large, cracked magic tool. I merely saved all our lives by teleporting the gem to the outside."

The guards mumble between themselves with uncertainty.

They need some more "persuading," so I grit my teeth and release some of my anger, "Out of my way! I have no more patience to deal with any of you! If any of the Lords want to talk to us, we'll be at the imperial mansion that we were assigned."

With a nudge, the girls sheathe their weapons. Ciel and Lina immediately copy them, then we make a single-file line. We walk forward with Hana in front, and her glare is the last warning that's needed to convince them to move out of our way.

We quickly reach the first guard we met here and order him to open the portal to Goloria.

I sit down on the sofa and sigh. My whole face feels cramped, so I massage it with my hands.

Hana walks up to me and suddenly straddles me. I look at her with a bit of confusion, then I see her hungry eyes as she bites her lip, and I immediately understand. She loves it when I show power and confidence, and my expression from before was enough to make her excited.

-

- I stand up, feeling refreshed. Then I sit beside Aoi and pat her head -. Alissa sets out a tray of tea and sweets on the "technically not coffee"-table, and I start drinking a mild one -.

Roxanne twitches and wakes up, then she yawns happily, spiritedly pats her lap loli, and gives a loving squeeze to her - pillow. "Hana's moans are a lullaby to me," she says and giggles.

Yunia sips her tea and subtly averts her eyes when I look at her. Her skin is a deeper shade of pink than normal.

"Meeting with Darean certainly didn't go the way I planned," I comment as I smile wryly.

"It was never going to go well," Ciel says and bats Roxanne's - hand away -.

"Well, you certainly weren't expecting him to try to kill us all with a hidden weapon, right?"

She rolls her eyes and gives me a sassy glare. "No, but I was expecting it to be a terrible experience for our hearts."

"You think we shouldn't have gone to see him?"

"I think we had to. We shouldn't avoid experiences just because they bring negative emotions."

"'Pain always brings an opportunity to learn,' a teaching from the God of Endurance," Hana says.

"Oh? You know the teachings of the Gods, now?" Roxanne teases her.

She sits and crosses her arms - . "Hmph. My 'Piety' is eleven. I know some things."

I lovingly kiss Alissa's forehead -, then she sits beside me -.

Alissa serves me a cup of tea and I take it gratefully. I'm not necessarily hungry yet, but the tea and sweets calm my heart.

"Even though it was necessary, I didn't like seeing you so angry," Alissa says to me, and Roxanne, Ciel, and Lina nod.

"You know my opinion," Hana says and moans in satisfaction.

"You looked beautiful!" Aoi says.

"Beautiful is used for women. Handsome is used for men," Ciel corrects her.

In Andraste, "beautiful" is used for things that look gentle and delicate. "Handsome" is for things that look menacing, but not aesthetically displeasing.

Aoi nods. "Okay. You looked handsome, Wolfy."

"It wasn't that he looked better than usual, but that his eyes were brimming with 'Charisma,'" Hana adds.

Oh. It'd be nice if I got something like Confiel's "danger" aura.

"Gih," Gify encourages me.

Slowly, the dragon awakens.

Not long after that, we hear a knock on the door.

"It's probably the Lords," Yunia says, and we hurry to make ourselves presentable again.

Then Alissa answers the door, and Luz comes in.

"Can you spare a moment for us to talk?" She asks.

We go back to the living room, and Alissa serves more tea, which Luz thanks her and sips once.

She puts the cup down and says in a serious tone, "We've confirmed a large explosion outside of Goloria, seemingly caused by a huge and malformed [Fireball] spell. No one has been hurt, and nothing has been damaged except for some of our decorative trees.

"The dungeon's guards thank you for saving them, and we offer you an apology for not being thorough enough in our search for weapons on Darean Arnald's body."

"I'd like to apologize as well," Yunia comes forth, and we look at her questioningly. "My father's men also didn't search deeply enough, so they've failed, too." Her long elven ears, almost hidden behind her majestic golden hair, flop a little with anxiety.

"We accept your apologies. Nobody has been hurt, so everything is fine," I say with a respectful nod.

Luz smiles gratefully, which makes us feel more at ease. "We've also already contacted Vanea Anara, she'll receive Darean tomorrow. She has expressed 'deep gratitude' about your 'gift.'" Her smile gains just a hint of awkwardness as she finishes.

"That's fine with us," I say and nod again.

"Well, that's all I had to say. If you'll excuse me, there are many scared citizens that I have to calm down," she says and finishes her cup, then she gets up.

We all nod at her and she walks away.

Yunia still looks a little sad, so I get up and sit down beside her.

"May I?" I ask and gently hold her hand.

She nods, not fully understanding what I'm asking, and I start caressing her delicate hand with a hint of my "spirit touch." Her nails have a faint golden shade to them, nail polish, of course.

"So, what are we doing with the rest of our day?" I ask and look around.

"Can we rest? It's been quite the… eventful day," Ciel suggests, and Lina nods emphatically.

"Alright, then," I respond with a nod.

Yunia quickly becomes much less anxious, and her ears return to their normal straightness.

We go out to the backyard again and make ourselves comfortable in the shade.

I pull out the Delicious Horror to study it some more. I use a frozen-by-[Bind] Alissa as a test subject for the "micro-vibrator." I don't know how to make a soul organ that vibrates automatically, but at least I can manually achieve the effect. Perhaps I can learn how to make it into a "sub-process".

My tentacles cause Alissa to feel tickled -. She meditates and forces herself to remain calm while simultaneously practicing [Mesmerizing Butterflies]. It's quite a feat for her.

Hana also practices that same spell alongside her, and the two achieve some progress as they manage to fully form the butterflies. They only last for a second, but even so, they are still a little distracting. In my case, the distraction is a welcome one since I'm trying to force myself to maintain the micro-vibrator without deliberately thinking about it.

I put all sixteen SP that Yunia has into [Earth Magic] so that she can learn [Earth Bullet], after which she can start learning how to chantlessly cast her other spells. She closes her eyes and meditates to aid in recognizing the "itch" from chantless casting.

Roxanne and Ciel coach her while they practice their own spells too. The three golems also practice [Earth Bullet] alongside Yunia so that they can have a simple means of attack.

Lina reads a book in the grass while she practices wrapping her cute little feet with hardened earth to lock herself in place.

Aoi forces herself to flap her wings as fast as possible to gain altitude. Since she's a few meters away, we just feel a pleasant, refreshing breeze on this hot day.

We may be training, but the intensity of our effort is very low, so it's kind of a "rest" for us.

Since Lina is the one acting more casually, I put my lap loli on her reserved spot -. I extend a tentacle-like tail and rub it all over Alissa's body, then I observe her reaction with [Bind] and adjust it.

Gify decides to be useful and connects herself with me, guiding me towards the right path.

Then I kiss Lina's head, smell her fragrant hair, and sigh in satisfaction.

Life's good™.

She grabs my hand and blesses it with an innocent kiss. I giggle internally and respond by caressing her head.

I grow another tentacle and use it to massage her shoulder. She looks oddly at it-, then realizes what I'm doing and returns to reading. -

I feel like I'm some sort of monstrosity that gobbles up little girls. I just want to expand and "envelop" her -. I want to open my Abyssal Maw and swallow her up entirely. I want to tie her up and worship my Symbol of Cuteness.

I slowly grow a fourth tentacle -. It's sluggish and floppy - and she tilts her head in confusion.

I put a little more effort into controlling it and manage to caress her gently -. I can only maintain the micro-vibrator with one tentacle, so she only feels a squishy thing rubbing against her -.

Unfortunately, her cute feet are getting wrapped in earth, so I can't - play with them.

Time goes by, and I content myself with caressing my loli.

The sunlight starts to turn orange, so we get up and breathe in the cool, fresh air. We stretch in sync, and I kiss her forehead.

We turn to the rest of the girls, then I get their attention and say, "I think we should just ask the servants to prepare dinner. I'm not sure that we have [Cooking] high enough to please a Lord's son."

"Your cooking is definitely good enough," Yunia says with a faint smile. "We are taught to not be fussy about food since it's not a good idea to bring chefs into a dungeon that you plan to conquer."

"We don't know what he likes, though," Ciel says.

Yunia nods. "True. The servants would know that."

I stop teasing Alissa, and she breathes a sigh of relief as her ordeal finally comes to an end. She silences her fire - and very grumpily gets up.

"You're not getting any today," I gently say to her, delighting myself with every word.

She gets even grumpier, but the fire is re-lit, and she struggles for a minute before she's back in control.

-

We all enter the bath together, and Alissa kneels in front of Yunia as she starts to wash herself.

"We have a tradition of washing one another," Alissa says and gently takes Yunia's sponge from her hands. "I, specifically, have five points in [Washing], so it's generally me who washes the others. But if you don't want it, then you can say so."

"Oh… please do, then. Just… don't touch me 'down there,' I'm feeling very sore," Yunia says and stiffens her posture a little as Alissa starts washing her.

-

After we dry ourselves and start getting dressed, Yunia calls my attention, "Hey, Wolfy-…" She says, still a little uncertain about using the cuter version of my name. "The others said that you have an 'infinite' [Item Box], so… can you store my luggage?"

"Sure. Where was it delivered?"

She awkwardly walks towards the room in question then stiffly stands in front of the doorway. I look inside and chuckle.

The room is completely packed. There's no furniture among it, but there are piles upon piles of wooden chests that fill most of the room. The piles are so tall that they even reach the high ceiling.

"I'm thankful that they've allowed me to keep all of my things, but… maybe it was unnecessary…" She comments and clears her throat.

"It's fine. Like the girls said, my 'Items' is seemingly infinite."

"Hopefully," she says in a low tone.

"Probably," I say and smirk.

They all fit. Thankfully, they are all labeled, so it's easy for me to take out the right one. She chose the one labeled "Clothes for a casual meeting in the evening." After reading all of the different labels, I'm convinced that she has many different dresses for every conceivable situation.

I pull out a table and a sofa for her, then I start walking away.

"Can you stay…? And help me choose?" She asks, with that last part seemingly added in a hurry.

"Sure," I say and pull out a chair for myself.

She nods subtly and undresses.-

"You feel embarrassed, yet you still do this. Why?" I ask.

"You're my master. It's normal," she calmly answers and puts on a tiara, pushing her hair back and tidily revealing her ears.

"But you don't have to force yourself."

"If I don't force myself, then I may never be able to do it naturally."

I frown. "You don't have to 'do it.'"

She looks at me with a subtle smile, and I feel her [Mask] peeking out from behind her eyes. "I chose to love you, so give me the chance and the time I need."

I feel a lump forming in my throat. "I'm not sure how healthy it is for your mind to rely on [Mask] to hide your feelings, or to force yourself to love someone you barely know."

She shakes her head gently and blinks slowly. "It isn't healthy for anyone to know that their parents will get murdered one day, but that's just how life is. I may feel alone now, but with you, that'll pass, like all things. 'All wounds can be healed,' the God of Endurance once said."

"Your 'piety' isn't very high." I smile softly.

She narrows her eyes slightly. "Neither is yours, yet you're still Blessed by the Goddess of Knowledge."

I don't know what to say to her. I just don't really approve of what she's doing to herself.

"Why did you choose to love me?" I ask.

Her smile becomes a little pained, and I hear the screech of the [Mask] threatening to break. "It's what's best for all of us. I won't be the one to drive a wedge between you and the other wives. Your relationship with them is… too perfect, too pure. I wouldn't be able to live with myself if I ruined it."

Saying that there's anything "pure" about the relationship between me and the girls feels very wrong, but okay, I'll accept it.

I get up from the chair and approach her. I look up into her deep blue eyes and softly hold her cheek. Then I gently caress her with a hint of my spirit touch.

"Thank you," I say with genuine gratitude.

The [Mask] shatters like brittle glass, and silent tears start flowing down her cheeks.

I feel like kissing her, but our relationship isn't at the stage where there would be any love in it, so I just hug her, instead.

"I'll never let you feel alone again," I whisper.

"I'll never allow us to stray apart," she whispers and hugs me back, holding my head nuzzled against her neck.

"But don't forget to be yourself, too."

"Okay…"

She readjusts her chin and rests it on the top of my head.

Our words were like vows. Private, simple vows that conveyed more about our intentions and feelings towards each other than what we wanted from this relationship.

She may be forcing herself, but true love and trust only come with time. We'll cultivate this relationship and let it grow into something beautiful.

A note from Manasong

Hall of Fame of Patrons

The patrons who support Rupegia shall have their names sung by the bards for they deserve the glory and honor. Their names are:

Oracle Maximillian Hübner.

Prince PreownedFIN.

Lord Andrew Meyers.

Lord Hope.

Lord Samuel Lim.

Lord Bill.

Lord Novgarod.

Lord DJ.

Lord Cidant.

Lord Ashadun.

Lord Michale Erwin.

Lord Enrique Peña Gomez.

Lord Braidborn.

Lord Bakerdea.

Lord Yeeteris Dedmeem.

Lord D4rk Sheep.

Lord Nathan Vanbrunt.

Lord Andrew Heffelbower.

Lord Markus.

Lord Maurice.

Noble Salty Panda.

Noble Evil.

Noble Yamibomb112.

Noble Mild Fracas.

Noble Geminus.

Leave a rating or a review to help me rise to the top or fix my shameful understanding of prose.

Take a look over my blog where all information of the world of Rupegia will be posted.

Join the Discord and discuss, or rant, or meme, or try and fight me so your waifu gets more screentime.

Become a Patron and read chapters in advance, or read the side-stories, or leave your mark on the story, or help choose the next artwork or the next side-story.

Chapter 64: Fortunate Encounter - Part 1

A note from Manasong

Attention: to conform to the limit of sexual content allowed in a novel, I've censored this chapter. You can look for the uncensored version here.

The symbol "-" denotes a section that got cut for containing sexual content. Also, if paragraphs seem missing, they were also likely censored in an earlier pass where the symbol wasn't used.

Her skin starts to grow cold, so I let go of her and allow her to dress herself. I glance into her eyes and hear the glass ringing again, then I notice that her MP has decreased by two hundred.

"How can I dispel your [Mask] even though I couldn't do anything to your [Chain Life]?" I ask.

She answers without turning to face me as she puts on a very small not-bikini, "You just can't see it yet. You have good insight into my feelings, but not into Life in general."

"You used a different word for 'life,' what does it mean?"

"It's what we call the connections that every living being has with each other. It's extremely similar, but not entirely the same as your Thread of Fate. The Thread deals only with your past, present, and future, and the people that you meet along the way. 'Life' encompasses your Thread, spirit, soul, and physical body."

I frown and hold my chin. "Huh… Well, I'm a Nature mage, so I think that I should've learned something about this back in the magic university."

"Nature magic is more concerned about interacting with nature than understanding the underlying foundation of everything. That's what Life truly is."

She finishes putting on her clothes, and I raise my eyebrows. - The hanging strips of cloth don't even hang over any part of her chest, abs, or navel, but they still cover most of her arms and legs.

"I want the girls to learn to dress like you," I say.

"Really?" She smiles, slightly pleased.

"You know very well how to bring out the… best parts of your physique."

She bows gently. "Thank you."

"I'll get changed, now," I say and get up, then I pull out my wardrobe.

As I get naked, she comes behind me and traces her fingers along the scars on my skin.

"Do you enjoy fighting?" She asks in a faint voice.

"No," I answer in the same tone.

"Neither do I."

"Then why do you fight?"

"Because I have to."

"So do I."

She stares at my -, and I stop dressing, letting her look as much as she wants.

"You're going to get cold," she says, and the corner of her lips curl into a smile.

"So are you, with how little you're wearing."

"The hungry stares of others will keep me hot," she says innocently.

I put on my elven clothes and give her a smile. "Let's go."

We wait for a short while before night falls and Bastico appears.

The design of his clothes is similar to mine: a thin vest, and baggy shorts. But his are made with a much more delicate material than mine. There's also an intricate pattern created by the transparency of the cloth. I don't pay that much more attention to it since I don't really feel like staring at a man's chest.

Roxanne and Yunia think otherwise and observe every detail of his outfit. Yunia gets a little embarrassed from her staring, so she won't get punished, but Roxanne, on the other hand…

Well, I don't entirely blame them. This dude is stylish with his sweptback hair and youthful grin.

Bastico smiles at us and nods respectfully. "Greetings, Ryders. It's good to see that you are all doing well," he says and becomes serious as he looks at Yunia. "Especially you, Yu."

"I'm stronger than you think," Yunia answers in the same tone. Her cold and cool aura is back, a mask for her true personality.

He smiles faintly. "I'll pray that your strength lasts."

She scoffs smugly. "I don't need you to give me encouragement."

"Well, another small push doesn't hurt, right?"

"Hmph," she turns her face away and points her nose up.

After some simple greetings, we enter the dining room and begin our meal.

Thankfully, we asked the servants to prepare a meat-heavy plate for Aoi, otherwise, our hungry "little" dragon would be very unsatisfied with the typical high-class elven cuisine. For us, there's a wide variety of fruits, salads, and spices, but not much in the way of carbs or protein.

"I heard about what happened this morning. Your fellowship just doesn't stop with the surprises. Everything you've already been through would make for a great start to a book," Bastico comments.

"I'm writing one, in fact. It's actually a diary, but it can be thinned down to a book if we hire a writer," Alissa says.

Bastico's eyes glimmer, and he grins at her. "If you give it to me, I'll ensure that it's made into a wonderful book!"

Alissa smiles wryly. "There are… quite a lot of personal details, so I'll edit some of it myself before we show it to anyone else."

Ciel freezes while chewing and slowly turns to Alissa. She covers her mouth and exclaims, "What?!"

"We said that we didn't want these things published," Lina says and looks even gloomier than normal as she frowns.

"Yeah, well. I'm writing about it just in case you change your minds," Alissa says.

Bastico claps his hands and calls for our attention. He looks at all of us with a maniacal grin. "If you allow the erotic parts to be published, you'll definitely become a legend in the High Forest. Perhaps even in the rest of the empire since your harem has such a wide variety of backgrounds."

"There aren't many erotic romances about a large harem that doesn't involve an emperor, so I can see the novelty," Lina says.

Our eyebrows go up a few centimeters, and we all look at her.

"I agree…" Yunia says in a low tone, and Bastico grins widely.

Lina's eyes lose focus, and she freezes into a statue that slowly gains a shade of red.

"I didn't know you were studying those kinds of books back at Rabanara's university," I say with a grin.

"I wasn't… that was Oura…" Lina whispers.

"She was corrupting my daughter's mind, I see," Roxanne comments.

Bastico's long ears twitch. "She's your-…" He starts.

"No, she's not. It's a… inside joke," Ciel interrupts.

She almost said "fetish," instead.

"You've explained nothing and only increased my curiosity," Bastico immediately responds.

"Then please bear with your curiosity because I'm not going to say anything else about that matter," Ciel says and forces a smile.

"A-apologies…" He says and nods respectfully.

"No offense taken."

"Even though I've been in this harem for a very short time, just take my word that nobody is… 'normal' among us," Yunia says and smiles wryly.

"I don't even care about the money. I just think that the realm of erotic literature needs to know about your harem," Bastico says.

Ciel massages her eyes. "Maybe when we're older, but right now, we don't want to share this," she says.

Bastico nods calmly. "It's fine. Your story is just starting, anyway," he says.

"How can you be so sure?" I ask.

"Well, you've made even father feel unsure about what exactly is your gift after the events of this morning. If you hid [Gate], then what else are you hiding? Just having [Monster Summoning], [Gate] and [Godly Language] as a Gift sounds rather… 'odd.' Gifts always have an underlying 'logic' to them, and the only thing we know for sure about yours is that it has something to do with magic."

"You seem very knowledgeable about Gifts."

He nods. "Every Lord must have a keen eye for the Gifted. Either to bring them to their side or to avoid them at all costs due to their 'interesting' Fate. Gifts can also be very specific, so we first try to collect as much information as possible."

"How about just asking what someone's Gift might be?" Hana questions.

"Some Gifts are so abstract that it's too easy to lie about them. We want to know their exact limits so that we can use them as efficiently as possible."

"And some people might not even fully understand their own Gifts," Yunia adds.

"I think that you two might know more about Gifts than even I do," Ciel says, a little impressed.

"We are the Chosen Descendants, after all," Bastico responds with a grin.

I think for a second and smirk as I say, "Now you've got me wondering about how far you really went to get more information on us. Did Root Lord Ricardo join our caravan just to watch us? Did Seigneur Ento antagonize us deliberately? Was even our duel a farce?"

He lifts his hands in surrender and continues grinning. "Whoa there. The justification to challenge you was forced, but the duel was legitimate. I put all my effort into that fight, though since I'm a spell sword, fighting without all of my enchantments put me at a disadvantage against a magic swordsman."

"Even with all of your enchantments, you wouldn't have been able to defeat him," Yunia says, a little smugly.

I smile but also look at her a little worriedly.

Bastico's eyes shine, and he says, "Oh? Then I'd like a rematch one day."

That's precisely what I didn't want to happen.

"I'm not much for duels. I like to spar, though," I say, and Yunia looks away with an awkward smile.

Bastico nods and smiles cordially as he says, "That's fine, maybe one day you'll change your mind… Anyway, Father sent Root Lord Ricardo to your caravan because he wanted to extract Ricardo safely and because he wanted to know how you would interact with nobility."

"Well, from what I've heard, I don't think that Ento was faking the way he acted. He's been known to be odd," Yunia says.

"You know him?" Aoi asks, suddenly mildly interested in the conversation.

"He sells the best dragons. Every noble in the High Forest should know about him," she answers.

Bastico's smile turns mischievous, and he leans over as he says, "Don't share this with anybody, but I heard some rumors that Ento might be in love with one of his dragons. That's why he doesn't sell the only Rubelite dragon that he has."

"Awn… He is fat, but every dragon deserves a humanoid," Aoi says.

"Uh…" Bastico's face goes blank as he processes Aoi's words.

"Well, none of them are as smart as you. That makes it more difficult for them to interact with other races," Alissa says.

"Yes. That's why I want many, many children! Azurite dragons must spread everywhere!" She exclaims proudly, and smoke escapes her nostrils.

Yunia smiles at Bastico smugly and says, "See?"

"And who's going to give you children?" Bastico asks Aoi.

"Wolfy!" Aoi answers.

I just smile and delight myself in imagining how the world will react when I marry Aoi and have her walk beside me in her big form.

"Okay…" Bastico says with a faint voice.

After traumatizing Bastico, we share some small talk until he recovers. Yunia talks with him about the knight's academy, and he shares how much he'll miss dueling with the other students.

Once Bastico fully recovers, he turns to me and says, "Right, Father asked me to tell you that you can use our armory to improve your equipment. We only have wooden armor, but at least it's better than your current armor."

"Yeah, that'll be perfect," Alissa says and sends me a knowing look.

I nod respectfully, and Yunia says, "We both know [Nature Magic]; we can maintain wooden armor with a little guidance."

We do have a resident expert in nature and wood.

"Gih!"

"Ah, that's great," Bastico says with a smile. "So, when are you leaving?"

"We haven't decided that yet, but we don't have any remaining business here. So, tomorrow we'll gather more knowledge on the Legado dungeon, and after that, we'll continue exploring it."

His happy expression fades, and he turns to Yunia, looking impassive. "Tomorrow afternoon will be your father's funeral, so I think that you should attend as commoners. Your brothers will be there, but they'll be with the nobility."

"I'll meet with them after the funeral, then. I can at least do that, can't I?" She asks.

"I think so," Bastico says with a nod.

We enjoy our meal while Yunia and Bastico share banter back and forth.

She smiles smugly at him and says, "If Wolf-…-y won't duel you, then I'll do it in his stead. After we come back from the dungeon, we'll certainly have become much, much stronger."

I think she's betting on instant casting being enough for her to win.

He smiles back at her, and I see a bit of Luz and Confiel in his expression. "I'll be waiting for that fateful day, then. But will we fight with armor or simple clothes?" He asks.

Yunia scoffs. "I'll never give you the chance to expose me. I'll be using metal undergarments."

Wait, like, actual bikini armor?! It has a real use?!

Bastico laughs. "I've never had any such intention!" He protests.

Yunia looks away and raises her chin in a snobbish way. "And I'm as ugly as a Ton. Please, I know that you'd have easily taken that opportunity if you had the chance."

He lowers his head. "I am a man. Please do not place fault on us for merely seeking the simple pleasures of life."

She scoffs again and sends him a withering glare, then slowly it turns into a gentle smile. But her eyes never truly seem "gentle." At most, they now look only slightly cold.

We finish our dinner, and Bastico pulls out a cold bottle of some kind of alcoholic drink. He uncorks it, and a very sweet and intoxicating smell wafts out of it.

I immediately feel weird. My skin tingles, and touching things causes an odd and indescribable feeling; things become more colorful and vivid; and a warm feeling starts to grow in my heart.

I open my "Status" and see a new "Status Effect":

"Slightly Heightened Connection to Life, Source: Eia, Time Left: Unknown"

"Eia extract?!" Yunia exclaims, brimming with happiness.

"High-grade extract spiced with the five flowers," Bastico says with pride.

"Oh! Rande had a medium grade bottle. This will be goo~d!" Hana comments.

Alissa's senses get enhanced far more noticeably than mine. The rest of the girls just feel an odd, but pleasant feeling from the smell.

Bastico pulls out shot glasses, smaller than the ones on Earth, and pours a few millimeters of Eia into each.

"Since none of you have ever tasted a high-grade Eia extract, just this much should be enough for a pleasant feeling," he says and pushes the glasses to each of us.

I still don't care much for alcohol, but this one is special, so I drink it eagerly. Its flavor is incredibly complex, and it also seems to be constantly shifting. I first feel a strong taste of chocolate, then hazelnut, then honey, then the chocolate and hazelnut fade, then strawberry starts to rise, then something flowery overpowers everything else, then my tongue starts to go numb, so I swallow it.

My body absorbs it so fast that I can barely feel it going down my throat before it's all gone. Then it hits me.

My vision goes blurry and warps, as if I had just summoned something. I start to feel every single fiber of my body with absolute clarity. My muscles respond perfectly to my commands and move in a crisp way, but they also feel heavier and slower, requiring more effort to make them obey.

Within the new area that appeared with my expanded field of view, I see nothing but darkness and morphing dots of white. The dots move, appear, disappear, and merge with each other, seemingly at random. But the more I focus on these dots, the more I start to see a pattern. It's as if they were dotted lines, representing something much larger.

As I focus on the white dots, a relaxed sigh suddenly escapes my lips, making me giggle. Then the whole table starts giggling too, and the room is filled with the heavenly music of cute female laughter.

Long minutes of giggling pass by, and the bliss from the Eia starts to fade. The giggles of silly happiness become giggles of embarrassment as we regain our senses.

"Oh wow, this is addictive," Ciel says as she stares at her empty cup.

"But the second shot will never be the same as the first," Yunia says while smiling warmly at Ciel.

"You build resistance to Eia extract quite quickly, and it takes quite a long while to lose it," Bastico says.

"Don't you use Eia pills regularly?" Roxanne asks Yunia.

"They are flavorless and don't give you a high. It's the spicing of the extract that makes it addictive, not the Eia itself," Yunia answers.

"That's good. If you felt like this every time you used one of those pills, even I would feel jealous."

"I don't think you should feel like that about addiction," Ciel says in a slightly serious tone.

Roxanne shows her tongue to Ciel. "If someone can remain sane like Yunia while heavily addicted, then count me in because that sounds amazing!"

"That's not…" Ciel shakes her head with a wry smile and lets it go.

"Eia is too expensive to get addicted to. Remember that this is the finest extract that you can get," Bastico says as he corks the bottle shut again.

The smell fades, then my connection to Life starts to disappear, and my field of view returns to normal.

"Wow. What was that… thing that I saw? Like, it was a dark spot in my view where I saw white dots moving about."

"That's Life. If you managed to see it on your first try, then maybe you have a slight aptitude for it," Bastico says.

"I saw something like that, too," Alissa says.

"So, can we learn [Weaverism]?" I ask, a little excited.

Yulania chuckles. "Maybe you can, because, you know…" -I think she's talking about my Gift- "But seeing Life is different from understanding it, and it's very different from being able to manipulate it."

"It would take a decade, at least," Bastico says, and Yunia gives me a phony smile, hiding it from Bastico.

If it's going to take a few years to get good at it, then I'd prefer to focus on something else instead.

"Anyway. I'll give this to… you," Bastico says, then hesitates for a moment before extending the bottle to me.

"She's the one who deserves this," I say and gesture to Yunia.

Bastico smiles and hands the bottle to Yunia. The elven goddess looks legitimately grateful, and her expression nearly melts with joy.

"I refuse to drink this alone. We'll share this, slowly," she says and stores it in her [Item Box].

"Well, it's time for me to leave. We'll see each other again soon," Bastico says with a charming smile, and Yunia nods a little shyly.

I'm getting just a little jealous.

At the doorway, he extends his hand to Yunia. She accepts and gives her hand to him.

"Remember this: Blood Slave or not, your friends and allies will always be here," he says, then bends and kisses her hand strongly for a few long seconds.

We all stare and wait for him to finish. Then he straightens and smirks like a little shit as he says, "No offense to you, Wolf, but I simply needed to convey my emotions one last time. It hurts my heart, but I'll accept that you'll be forever unattainable to me, Yu."

She narrows her eyes dangerously and crosses her arms, pushing her dangerous cleavage upwards. "You never had a chance," she says in a cold tone and lets a hint of a smirk appear on her fleshy red lips.

"Keep lying to yourself. Now, goodbye Ryders, until another time," he finishes and turns around.

A little stunned, the girls mutter their goodbyes while I glare at his back as he walks away.

"You'll get your duel one day!" I yell, and he laughs.

"Oh. I think he did that one on purpose, just to get you angry," Yunia says and looks at me a little guiltily. "I'm sorry. I should've rejected his kiss."

"It's fine," I say and gently pat her shoulder.

Both the mask and the [Mask] fade away, and she lets a more shy demeanor surface.

"He's quite the fun guy. Maybe I should duel him, too," Hana comments.

"He's more shrewd than I thought him to be," I say as I narrow my eyes. "No, he's exactly like a younger Confiel, isn't he? Maybe just more horny than Confiel, but he's still his father's son."

"He makes you feel jealous, so I think that he's fine," Roxanne comments.

"You like to see Wolfy suffer?" Lina asks and glares at Roxanne.

"Just as much as he likes to torture Alissa," Roxanne responds with a wicked smile.

Lina pouts. "Mother, you're a bad person."

Roxanne's eyes gleam with evilness as she leans down to bring her face closer to Lina's. "And how are you going to punish me for that?"

"You two are really going to continue that fantasy?" Ciel asks.

"I'll tie you up and give you to Father to punish," Lina says and returns the evil glare.

"That's hot," Alissa whispers as she watches the two of them roleplay.

"You have a thing for your own mother?" Yunia asks, incredulous.

Alissa looks away, very embarrassed. "Well… no. I just really like roleplaying."

Yunia turns to Ciel and asks in a neutral tone, "Okay, what's your fetish?"

"She's a pedophile and a foot fetishist. She may also have some secondary licking fetish or something," I answer immediately.

Yunia looks down at Ciel, as if she was disappointed in her.

Ciel shrugs with an unapologetic smile. "You'll soon learn all about your fetishes, too."

Yunia chuckles like a lady, but I notice a hint of anxiety coming from her.

While Roxanne and Lina wrestle, we quickly wash the dishes.

Once done, I pick up Roxanne's tied up body and carry her to our huge bedroom. -

-

I pat the pillow beside me and say in a low tone, "Here, for your first night you'll get to sleep at my side."

"You… rotate that spot?" Yunia asks.

"Yep. Alissa's spot is permanent because… of those nightmares that I used to have. But at any other time, if you want to snuggle or something more, feel free to ask. Just like Hana did today."

"Okay…" She responds and nods sheepishly.

She straightens the drills of her hair with another magic tool and lays down beside me. Her eyes stare at my face, and she starts to count my freckles.

"He has twelve faint ones, five medium ones, and two dark ones," Alissa says.

"W-what?" Yunia asks.

"Freckles. I'm listing his freckles."

Yunia chuckles and confirms Alissa's number.

"Sleep…" Aoi pleads, and we turn off the lights.

Alissa and Yunia each hug one of my arms -.

I don't really understand Yunia, but I can at least appreciate her efforts in trying to fit in.

My fantasizing about our future together continues on as sleep takes me, and I dream about having my own elven princess with Yunia.

A note from Manasong

Hall of Fame of Patrons

The patrons who support Rupegia shall have their names sung by the bards for they deserve the glory and honor. Their names are:

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Chapter 64: Fortunate Encounter - Part 2

A note from Manasong

Attention: to conform to the limit of sexual content allowed in a novel, I've censored this chapter. You can look for the uncensored version here.

The symbol "-" denotes a section that got cut for containing sexual content. Also, if paragraphs seem missing, they were also likely censored in an earlier pass where the symbol wasn't used.

Today is the 8th.

-

As we move to get up, Yunia takes out her brush and the drillifier magic tool. Alissa and Lina stop dressing and pull out their own brushes.

"Let us help," Alissa says, and the golden elf accepts. Together, they shine in the morning light as they work her long and precious hair. This scene feels like it could be found in a renaissance painting.

"I'm so envious of her hair!" Roxanne exclaims to us under her breath.

"Why are we, humans, so boring?" I ask in the same tone, and Hana snorts.

"We are perfect as we are," Ciel states, though she doesn't seem very confident about it.

We calmly eat our breakfast and I enjoy the view. The castle grounds outside are so silent that it even feels a little eerie until we get used to it. Not even in the wild were things so quiet since we could still hear the sounds of nature. Jungle-like areas are quite noisy, actually.

Yunia's choice for breakfast seems to be something close to muesli, a not-oat cereal with bits of unknown fruits mixed in. It piques Ciel's interest since it seems quite healthy and kind of tasty with all the fresh fruit that's in it.

"So, we have the morning free. What do you girls want to do?" I ask.

"I want to visit the library. Do they have one inside the castle?" Lina asks.

"They do. Though the knight academy's library should have less erotic literature and more history about the elven kings than the ones in the castle," Yunia says and sends a subtle teasing glance towards Lina.

"O-okay…" Lina says and pouts.

"I think I should take this opportunity to read up some more about [Alchemy]," Roxanne says and gently lands a hand on Lina's head.

"I could read more about [Air Magic], too," Ciel says and nods towards Lina.

"Ah, those books could help me fly. Read them to me!" Aoi asks.

"No, I'll teach you how to read them," Ciel responds and smiles at my little blue dragon.

"Muuh…" Aoi groans in frustration but nods begrudgingly.

"I'd like to see the bows they have in the armory," Alissa says, a little unsure of herself, and glances towards Lina.

"Oh! That's right. We can find some enchanted goodies there!" Hana exclaims.

"Bring me some good enchantments; I want to learn more. If you find any enchanted bows without [Loosen], then I'll just enchant them with it for you," Lina asks.

"Oh… Alright then!" Alissa cheers up, content that she didn't offend Lina.

"Can I spend some time walking around Escanso? I'll miss that town once we leave," Yunia asks.

"Do you want to go alone, or can I go with you?" I ask.

"It'd be lonely to walk alone," she answers and smiles, though her eyes look a little pained due to nostalgia.

I nod gently and smile warmly at her.

"Gih," Gify says. She wants to come, too.

We enter the [Eternal Gate] network, and the guards all immediately recognize Yunia. Nobody says anything to her, they only look down sadly in respect.

We exit into Escanso's castle. Yunia looks around nostalgically, and her face slowly saddens.

I match her pace and let her take in the sights before we move on. She doesn't linger for long though, only enough to refresh her memory of the area, then we move on.

We walk across the inner circle and enter the outer, which is where we fought two days ago. The destruction is still evident, and being this far from the castle allows us to notice how damaged it is.

Missing chunks, burnt walls, cracked and bent corridors. The golden castle looks like a sad, dying bush instead of a glorious symbol of elven culture.

The mansions around us are also badly damaged. The fighting was mostly contained within the eastern side of the outer ring, but there's still damage on the buildings to the west from stray spells and projectiles.

Both in the castle and in the mansion, many elves are working tirelessly to repair everything. The air is filled with Nature and Earth mana as they mostly use magic to repair the damage.

We decide to wrap a shawl around Yunia's head to contain her hair so that she isn't as instantly recognizable. Though if one stares at her for long enough, it's easy to realize how much more perfect she is than the average elf.

I get a few curious looks and decide to wrap a shawl around my head, too. My black hair stands out like a sore thumb among all the gold and silver hair around here.

Yunia observes the damage and suddenly asks, "You participated in the battle, too, right?"

"Yes. I summoned a Grim Giant to open a hole in the Shell."

"That makes you even more dangerous than Confiel…" She says absentmindedly.

"I also met your father on the battlefield… Do you hate me for conspiring against him?" I ask, feeling insecure.

"Do you hate a monster or animal for attacking you due to hunger?" She answers without thinking. I hesitate for a second, and she suddenly turns to me, her deep blue eyes staring intently, filled with guilt. "I'm so sorry! I didn't mean to imply that you're a monster or an animal."

"You've already called me a monster before, so I wouldn't be offended by that," I say and chuckle.

"But I was joking before."

"I'm not that easily offended." I shrug.

"Okay…" She whispers, still with a tinge of guilt lingering in her voice, and turns forward again. "Hating monsters and animals, even when they kill those who we love, will only cause you to succumb to anger. That is not the path of the righteous."

"I feel like that's a teaching."

"Not his exact words, but it's from the God of War."

Really? Kratos certainly wouldn't say anything like that.

Gih.

I chuckle internally.

"What makes someone 'righteous'?" I ask.

"I…" -she turns to me and hesitates, then smiles- "well, I think that Ciel would be able to give you a more complete answer."

I smirk. "Well, what if I want your answer to that, even if it's 'incomplete'?"

"Hmph." She turns her head away snobbishly. "'Righteous' means someone who doesn't fight only for themselves. Someone who doesn't take death lightly. Someone who strives for what's best for civilization."

I tap my cheek in thought. "That's quite vague. You could justify the mass murder of humanoids with that. If you start a revolution to create a 'perfect' nation, you could 'righteously' kill anyone that even slightly opposes you if you follow that definition."

"You can trust that the God of Existence wouldn't let such crimes happen."

"Hm…"

"The Gods are there for anything too complicated for us to solve."

"Wouldn't that just limit us? If we aren't forced to face these problems and find our own solutions to them, wouldn't we be forever dependent on the Gods?"

She stares at me in confusion. "They are the only things allowed to be immortal precisely so that they'll always be there for us. This way, we can be forever dependent on them and improve civilization beyond what we could do with just ourselves."

"Hm…" I tap my cheek again.

She chuckles softly. "The way you think is interesting. You seem curious about everything."

"I'm a scholar, after all."

She nods. "Yes, that you are."

"But we've drifted from what I actually wanted to talk about. I…" I look down at my own hands, and I can't stop myself from feeling guilty for having helped kill Mavel and his wives. I don't even know the names of Yunia's mothers."

The mood instantly changes as she realizes what I'm feeling.

She glares at me, and I feel a hint of the anger that she expressed to Confiel. "What? Out with it. Say it! Say what's making you look so weak right now!" She presses me to confess.

I grit my teeth and let it out, "I helped kill your parents, and I personally wounded your mother."

Her voice wavers, but she remains resolute. "Even if you killed him yourself, I would still be here."

I don't understand her.

I stare into her eyes and ask, "Why? You said that you hate Confiel."

She sighs. "I don't hate him as much as you think."

"Why? How?"

She cringes and looks away. "Can we not talk about this anymore?"

I frown and press on, "But we need to. Yunia, we need to talk through our problems if we hope to remain together for the rest of our lives."

I know this could be pushing her too much, too soon, but I can't stop myself now.

"I… I know!" She frowns at me, exasperated, then her face scrunches up in anger and frustration. "I just… I forgive you!" -she suddenly grabs my shoulders and looks into my eyes, and I feel her ironclad resolve, then she starts spilling a torrent of words- "I don't care about what you did, I forgive you. Because even I didn't believe he could survive defying the Council; even I preferred to take Confiel's warning seriously instead of hoping that my parents would survive; even, I, didn't support my parents as much as I could've. I preferred to stay with my siblings rather than getting involved with my Father's projects. For me, they didn't die the day that Confiel killed them, they've been slowly dying ever since I lost faith in them!"

She pours her heart out all in one go, then she catches her breath, and we remain still, staring at one another for a few long seconds.

I smile gently and cup her cheek, then I say, "Okay. I'll accept your forgiveness. I won't feel guilty about this anymore."

She cups my cheek, too, and touches her forehead against mine. Her sharp blue eyes draw mine in and keep them from looking away. "And I don't want you to pity me anymore. If you want to be my… husband, you'll have to match my determination."

I smirk and look at her like a maniac as I let the hatchling within me spew fire. "Fine, I'll stop being gentle and show you how a dragon treats their mates."

She knits her eyebrow, and her face turns smug. "A dragon? You're still a human, are you not?"

I grab her face and kiss her lips. I invade her mouth and pull her body closer to me. I - hold her head to keep it glued to mine. Then I spread my spirit over her skin, and she starts to respond.

Her tongue is dominated by mine since she can't find the energy to return my caresses. She lacks resolve, so her small tongue only weakly rubs against mine, like a child trying to pat an animal twice her size.

Her arms wrap around my neck and pull me into a tighter hug. -

Her fluffy hair escapes her shawl and falls over my face, caressing my skin. Its sweet smell is the perfect perfume to enhance the experience of our kiss.

Feeling like teasing her. I stop just as things are getting good and give her a shit-eating grin. "What are you looking so disappointed about? Do you want me to continue ravaging your mouth?" I ask.

She hurriedly readjusts her hair, and her sharp eyes become stern. She huffs like a snob and says, "Hmph. You have no shame, wanting to ravage me in public. It's quite likely that many people around here have already recognized me."

"Let them stare. Let them see how my woman is happy with me." I offer an elbow to her, and she takes it, hugging my arm and keeping it between -. "Also, I know that you elves like to show off. You wouldn't wear so little clothing if you were ashamed of your bodies."

She huffs again and makes a cute, snobbish pout, but I also see the small curve of a smile form in the corners of her mouth.

The thing that makes me the happiest, though, is that she's not using [Mask].

After giving the guards my ID, we are instantly allowed to cross through the gate. The old castle guards have been replaced by Confiel's people while Escanso lacks a Lord, so these guards would never try anything against us.

We exit into the Noble's Quarters, and Yunia starts to look around, savoring the sights. I let her guide me, and we take the scenic route, passing by the most beautiful mansions of the town and the expertly maintained public parks. I also spread some Hollys around us just in case.

I maintain a very subtle spirit touch on her arm. I just can't stop myself from wanting to make her feel good.

The elven equivalent of a mansion is to grow multiple of their tree-houses into one large complex. Some of them are even raised into the air, creating a whole floor at the ground level that's used in a variety of ways, like dancing halls, stables, covered pools, and shaded gardens.

"I spent my childhood walking down these streets. All of my friends live around here," Yunia comments.

"Do you want to visit them?" I ask.

"No!" She whisper-shouts. "It's already a bit of a risk just coming here. I don't want to make a scene!"

"Then we might want to walk faster since there's already someone looking at us."

She cringes and pulls me towards the exit of the Quarters.

We enter the common area and relax a little since the streets are bustling, and we can easily disappear into the crowds.

Every street, even the alleys, is filled with hundreds of flowers. They're in the crowns of the trees, mixed in with the leaves; randomly growing in the walls of the buildings; neatly arranged on the sidewalks and in the holes in the middle of the streets; and also on the clothes and in the hair of the people, including the beards.

While Goloria has a more chaotic urban plan and a more dignified style, partially due to how all the buildings are white, Escanso is a neatly arranged town with cute-looking buildings. It has plump tree-houses, an abundance of curved patterns, and a color palette that's pleasing to the eyes.

I kind of get why she wants to walk around the town. I miss Rabanara, and I miss Earth towns, too. It just feels nice to walk around a familiar environment where you have plenty of eye-candy to look at, and I'm not talking about the semi-nude elves everywhere.

"I actually hate crowds, let's go somewhere quieter," she says.

We start walking through dimly lit alleys. They aren't dirty or dangerous, they are just more difficult to walk through, so people avoid them most of the time.

Public cleanliness is generally higher here than on Earth due to everyone being able to cast [Clean] to instantly make most of the visible dirt vanish. Also, trash disposal is handled the same way as sewage: they make shit simply disappear.

We pass by a Snow Weave shop, and I strain my neck looking at the mannequins in front as we pass by.

"I have a lot of Snow Weave. You don't have to worry about that," Yunia comments.

"Hm… which chest are they in?" I ask.

"The ones labeled as 'nightwear,'" she responds and shyly looks away.

I open my "Items" and find five chests with that label.

"Oh boy," I whisper and start salivating.

Her breathing starts to speed up, and her pink skin becomes flushed. She squeezes my arm tighter -.

"Have you been using your special touch with me?" She suddenly asks.

"Yes, I have," I answer with a mischievous grin.

"Damn you… but dwarven beard… it's working," she whispers through gritted teeth.

"Want to stop somewhere?" I ask with complete innocence.

She looks around to orient herself, then turns in a specific direction and pulls me forward into a hurried pace.

We continue at this pace for a few minutes before we stop in front of a secluded and comfy inn.

"How did you know about this place?" I ask.

She smiles nostalgically, and her gaze softens a little. "Well… I never needed to sleep in an inn, but my friends did when they were going on 'escapadas' in secret from their parents."

Huh, I recognized that she used the Ingua word "escapadas," which means "escapades."

"You can't really stop young people from loving," I say and chuckle.

She stares at me, looking a little curious. "You don't mind that your future daughter might lose her virginity to a common boy?"

"She'll be allowed to make mistakes. I'd prefer that she be very careful with who she lays with, but I don't plan on stopping her, except in extreme situations, like if she falls in love with a heretic or something."

"Hm… You also don't mind that I wasn't a virgin before you?"

I shake my head. "It feels nice being the first, but even if I can't be, why should I care?" I shrug.

"It seems like you Earthlings have some interesting ideals."

"I wouldn't say I'm a 'normal' Earthling."

She smiles wryly. "Oh, bother. Then it's good that the better Earthling was sent here."

Alright, Pooh.

"I guess…" I scratch my head awkwardly.

"Let's go," she says in a sultry tone -.

We enter the inn and see a modest but pleasant dark blue interior with comfy furniture laid out. A mature elven woman stands behind a counter reading a book and smoking from a long and thin pipe. I sense a faint smell of chocolate that slowly morphs into honey.

"Is that high-grade Eia?" I whisper to Yunia.

"Too faint. It's at most medium-grade," She answers.

The innkeeper notices us, and Yunia asks for a room for only half a day. The innkeeper raises an eyebrow as she notices the mismatch in our pairing, but stays silent as I pay up the required silver.

The inn has a few people walking about, and they seem kind of well-dressed. If I had to make a guess, they are probably middle-class.

"The food here is pretty good, too, or so I've heard," Yunia comments, and I glance towards the restaurant and confirm that there's a significant number of people there.

We enter the room, and I see a simple, blue double bed. The blanket is made of brown Miasmatic Gambo fur, the pillows are filled with high-quality harpy feathers, and the mattress feels like high-quality not-cotton. All in all, it's quite a comfy place, and it might just be on the level of "acceptable" for a snobbish but horny teenager.

"The rooms here are soundproof," she comments and turns around to look at me with an expectant smile.

I close the door behind me and pull her into a firm hug. I turn up my spirit touch and kiss her, letting my hunger drive my actions.

Gify jumps off of my shoulder and goes to the corner of the bed to take a nap. We can be as loud as we want since she only wakes up when she wants to.

-

With a Holly, I see Silvane coming towards the inn. She's carrying a white rabbit while two fully armored bodyguards flank the silver elf girl. Even though her shawl makes it more difficult to recognize her, there's no way that I'd ever forget a face as beautiful as Silvane's.

Oh, wow! Silvane and Nononya! What a coincidence!

-

Silvane enters the inn and marches up the stairs. Her face is severe, matching that of her bodyguards.

Wait…

- At the same time, Silvane stops in front of our room, and one of her bodyguards kicks the door open.

FUCK!

I pull my real sword out of its scabbard and into my hand with [Telekinesis] while I summon two spooky skeleton-like earth elementals behind us.

Yunia's face goes from bliss as she yells profanities to panic as she leaps towards her longsword.

I turn around, -, and face the intruders with a glare of pure anger.

One of Silvane's bodyguards comes in, sword and shield at the ready, then Silvane comes in behind him, wand in one hand and Nononya in the other.

I cast [Lightning Bolt] and hit the first bodyguard, making them freeze and stumble. Then Silvane sees me and pales. She freezes on the spot, and the bodyguard coming in behind bumps into her.

"NOO~! BACK!" Silvane shrieks and jumps back, pushing the second bodyguard out of the room and tripping over him.

"Kick him out!" I yell and point to the stunned bodyguard. The elementals leap forward and literally kick him out of the room.

Oops, that was too much.

The bodyguard flies away as a kick to the chest and another to his head cracks his wooden armor.

"Close the door!" I yell, and the elementals obey.

I finally stop -, and an awkward silence falls over us.

"Wolfy, what just happened?" Yunia asks. She's in a combat stance -.

"I'm… not sure," I answer.

A note from Manasong

Hall of Fame of Patrons

The patrons who support Rupegia shall have their names sung by the bards for they deserve the glory and honor. Their names are:

Oracle Maximillian Hübner.

Prince PreownedFIN.

Lord Andrew Meyers.

Lord Hope.

Lord Samuel Lim.

Lord Bill.

Lord Novgarod.

Lord DJ.

Lord Cidant.

Lord Ashadun.

Lord Michale Erwin.

Lord Enrique Peña Gomez.

Lord Braidborn.

Lord Bakerdea.

Lord Yeeteris Dedmeem.

Lord D4rk Sheep.

Lord Nathan Vanbrunt.

Lord Andrew Heffelbower.

Lord Markus.

Lord Maurice.

Lord Badger.

Noble Salty Panda.

Noble Evil.

Noble Yamibomb112.

Noble Mild Fracas.

Noble Geminus.

Noble EESDESESESRDT.

Leave a rating or a review to help me rise to the top or fix my shameful understanding of prose.

Take a look over my blog where all information of the world of Rupegia will be posted.

Join the Discord and discuss, or rant, or meme, or try and fight me so your waifu gets more screentime.

Become a Patron and read chapters in advance, or read the side-stories, or leave your mark on the story, or help choose the next artwork or the next side-story.

Chapter 64: Fortunate Encounter - Part 3

A note from Manasong

Attention: to conform to the limit of sexual content allowed in a novel, I've censored this chapter. You can look for the uncensored version here.

The symbol "-" denotes a section that got cut for containing sexual content. Also, if paragraphs seem missing, they were also likely censored in an earlier pass where the symbol wasn't used.

I stop Alissa from rushing towards us. The situation is under control now, so I calm them through [Bind].

A muffled and gentle voice comes from the other side of the door. "Mr. Ryder?" Silvane asks.

Her bodyguard helps her get up, and the other sits down, clutching his head.

"Yes, that's me. Miss Silvane?" I ask.

She gets closer to the door and stores her wand, shawl, and necklace in her [Item Box]. The white rabbit in her hand, who I assume is Nononya, is completely frozen with fear stamped in her eyes.

"Yes… that's me," she answers and sighs.

I walk closer to the door, and Yunia starts to [Clean] herself.

"What did you just try to do?" I ask.

"A mistake… Can we talk?"

"Alright, but the guards stay outside."

"Yes! Yes…"

"Wait. Is that guy okay? The elementals kicked him pretty hard."

"He's… fine. I'll heal him myself."

"Alright. Just let me… clean this first, then I'll let you in."

"Let me clean it with my tongue…" I hear her mutter through a Holly.

Nononya's rabbit ears suddenly twitch. "Silf!" She complains under her breath.

O-ka~y…?

I force myself to go limp and cast [Clean] on my spills, though I couldn't remove the stains.

I pull out another trunk of clothes, and Yunia changes into something not painted with my - color. Alissa and the other girls calm down and return to their previous states.

We hurriedly groom ourselves, and I put two chairs in front of us, then I unsummon one elemental, and we sit on the edge of the bed. Yunia crosses her arms and legs, making her look like a haughty noblewoman.

"Open the door," I order, and we make our expressions turn stern as the elemental obeys.

Silvane comes in first, looking as pretty and delicate as ever. Her silver hair is not as majestic as Yunia's, but her blue and slightly upturned eyes give her a gentle look. Her delicate face is warped into a stiff apologetic smile.

But it's her clothes that catch my attention. She's wearing very little, exposing most of her pretty, pale skin. If I had to make a comparison, I'd say that she's wearing a light blue "slave Leia" cosplay: an ornate not-bikini top, and a light blue ornate skirt that's completely open on the sides. She doesn't appear to be wearing the bottom part of the not-bikini.

Dayumn, son. I've never seen her wear so little.

Then I notice something odd.

Soul Info

Name: | Silvane Andera | Race: | Siler Elf | Level: | 49
HP | 100 | MP | 2.510 | Magic Power | 840
Strength | 10 | Endurance | 13

She regained her last name! Does this mean that she's a True Noble now? But why is it not "Anara"?

Nononya turns back into her humanoid form and shyly walks in while looking down. Her long, white bunny ears bob as she walks; her cute whiskers seem limp, revealing her emotions; her short, white hair is raised in a way that makes her head look very fluffy; her turquoise eyes glance at me shyly, then return to looking down; and her snow-white skin is now a bright shade of pink.

She's wearing a not-bikini, too, exposing her cute mid-riff and delicate little curves, but her outfit has far more cloth hanging around her body than Silvane's.

I motion for them to sit, and they gracefully accept.

I start the introductions, "Silvane, Nononya, this is my… newest Blood Slave, Yulania. Yunia, these two are my friends from Rabanara. Silvane is a Blood Slave of Haaran, the Lord's son. Nononya is a [Summoning Magic] researcher."

"It's a pleasure to meet you, Miss Silvane, Miss Nononya," Yunia says with a severe gaze as she offers her hand.

The social standings of all present in the room is rather mixed and complex, but Silvane and Nononya don't hesitate and immediately go towards Yunia to kiss her hand. Both of them bow and give Yunia a gentle peck and remain bowed for a little longer than necessary, implying that they wish to ask for forgiveness.

They don't ask for Yunia to kiss their hands back, implying that they don't feel worthy of that.

Then they sit, and I smirk as I say, "It's always a delight to see both of you, but I didn't expect it would be under such circumstances."

Silvane's pretty face twitches, and she sighs. "Neither did we. But in the end, our encounter is rather fortunate as I'm sure that Nono missed you very much," she says, and Nono sends a desperate glance at her.

I chuckle. "Right. Since nothing truly bad happened, we can say that it is indeed a fortunate encounter. But I want to hear why you barged into our room in such a manner."

Silvane's face relaxes, and now she, too, looks down, feeling embarrassed, then she starts talking, "I received information that Miss Yulania had been sold as a Blood Slave to an 'elven collector,' and that he may be trying to strongly coerce her into having sex with him. As someone who knows very well the danger that these 'collectors' present to elven Blood Slaves, I immediately responded in this manner."

"'Elven Collector'?" I ask.

Yunia answers, "Other races worship elven beauty so much that certain individuals collect elven slaves. The temple and the Tribunal are always keeping an eye on elven slaves since they are the most commonly mistreated group."

"And someone at the temple or the Tribunal gave you information about us?" I ask Silvane.

Silvane bites her thin red lip, and I get a twitch inside my underwear, telling me that I didn't get my fill of elves yet.

"No. My informant… is from the High Forest," Silvane admits.

Well, apparently, we should've been more cautious about showing Yunia's face in public.

"Who?" Yunia demands.

Silvane's ears droop slightly, and her expression starts to turn sad. "I can't say… it would ruin my relationship with the informant."

"Do you know who my father was?" Yunia asks, with her tone still severe.

Silvane nods shyly. "Yes. Crown Lord Mavel Este. I'm here for his funeral."

"Precisely, which means that we are the future Crown Lords of the Western High Forest," Yunia declares.

The face of both Silvane and Nono goes blank, and they let their mouths hang.

"Wait… Oh…!" Silvane realizes the truth and goes silent.

Yunia continues pressing her for more. "Whoever gave you this false information wanted to cause an incident. And the culprit is likely one of my father's former allies. We need to know who this person is because they clearly harbor hate towards humans. No one with kind intentions would've tried to frame Wolfy as an 'elven collector.'"

Silvane sighs again and chuckles, but it quickly loses energy, and she becomes disheartened. "Vanea is going to be mad at me anyway…" She mutters.

"Why would Dame Vanea be angry? Aren't you Haaran's Blood Slave?" I ask.

Silvane nods and answers, "Yes, but I'm working for Vanea on 'improving' the relations between the Shore of Leaves, the Wetlands and the High Forest. Acting righteous only resulted in me getting involved in a conspiracy, and that's exactly what Vanea wanted to avoid."

"Hmph. Getting in the good graces of future Crown Lords is only advantageous for you," Yunia says.

Silvane smiles wryly. "Yes, but Vanea already has a bad enough reputation that she's feared by many. It's becoming increasingly important for her that this reputation doesn't worsen."

"'Increasingly important'?" I ask.

Silvane's smile becomes gentle. "She's in the capital and has managed to acquire some support over there. My job is to ensure that Rabanara doesn't get even more isolated."

"Well, even if you don't tell us who it is, we are bound to find out who dislikes Wolf so much," Yunia says.

"Even so, my informant will know that I've failed in freeing you and will likely spread this knowledge," Silvane says and becomes a little sad again.

"It'll end up just fine. I'm planning on keeping a good relationship with Vanea anyway. I even delivered Darean to her," I say.

Silvane's eyes light up with hope. "Oh…? I haven't heard about that yet."

"After fostering an incident between the Crown Lords and the Dawn of Fire circle of magi, he went to my father to beg like a maniac, but he threw the mad man into the dungeon," Yunia says.

"After Confiel took control of Escanso, we found Darean in the dungeon and decided to send him to Vanea," I say.

Silvane chuckles. "How convenient for us."

Yunia nods. "Indeed."

Silvane's face softens, and she becomes the gentle girl that I've always known. "Very well, I'll tell you the truth. The information came from Heart Lord Ira."

I don't recognize the name.

But Yunia does as she scoffs and shakes her head. "Foolish man. He has a big heart, but his emotions cloud his mind far too often."

Silvane "He gave me an excuse about why he wasn't able to come here personally, and I believed him since we've been building a 'relationship' lately."

"Hm… I didn't expect him to be so cunning," Yunia says and graciously runs a hand through her golden hair.

"Was he really so cunning since his plot failed so spectacularly?" Nono shyly asks.

"If you look at it that way, I guess that he seems incompetent," Silvane says with a smile and pats Nono's head.

"His emotions took hold of him, and he did something stupid, even though it seemed cunning at first," Yunia says and nods in agreement.

The mood of the room relaxes as the worst has passed. With everyone going silent, I take this opportunity to change the topic.

"So, Nono, how have you been?" I ask.

She jumps in her chair and raises her head, caught completely off-guard. Her skin tone was returning to white, but it quickly becomes pink again as she says, "I-I've been well, Wolf. Your papers on [Monster Summoning] have helped me gain m-many levels! I've been hired as a permanent researcher because of you! Maybe I can improve my position some more and become a teacher in a few years…"

The three of us smile endearingly at her, and her ears start to flop as her shyness skyrockets.

"This sounds amazing. I'm glad that I could help you progress," I say, and she smiles adorably. "Your own notes helped me a lot, too. I'll certainly want to trade them with you again once we've become Lords," I suggest, and she nods.

"I've heard that some huge human-looking being attacked Escanso's Shell. Was that a Grim Giant?" She asks.

"It was."

Silvane and Nono open their eyes wide.

"That's quite a lot of power you have. If you can open a hole in a Shell by yourself, then no elven Lord is safe in the High Forest," Silvane says.

"That'll serve as a deterrent against rebellion for quite a long time," Yunia says.

"H-how did you get enough mana to summon something so big!" Nono exclaims.

Ah… I love how she said that.

"I didn't. I had Ciel heal me continuously while it consumed my HP until the summoning was complete," I respond.

The three girls become stunned by my words.

"How did you not pass out?" Silvane asks.

I wink at her while I smirk, and her right ear twitches. "That's a secret," I say, and she pouts.

"Do you have [Blackout Resistance]?" Nono asks.

I smile proudly. "I can only say that I gained a point after that summoning."

"Gifted people are indeed on a different level than we are," Silvane says as she smiles wryly, and Nono nods.

"Oh, you have no idea. He's not 'average' at all," Yunia says.

The two elves smile gently at each other, and Nono shifts uncomfortably.

The way she said it was kind of suggestive.

Silvane's face suddenly becomes serious, and she says, "Hm… There's one thing that's making me confused. Weren't you supposed to be the Chosen Descendant?" She asks.

Yunia nods and answers, "Yes, but Lord Confiel and his wives convinced the Elder Council to allow me to live. The condition was that I'd have to become a True Noble."

"Hm… I wish that my brother had been offered such an opportunity." Silvane hums again and looks down, deep in thought.

Yunia's gaze softens, and she empathizes with Silvane's situation. "I'm very fortunate. Nobody in my position has ever been offered so much mercy."

Silvane nods weakly, and they stare at each other with pained looks.

The sad eyes of the gentle silver elven girl pull on my heartstrings. I can't stop myself from wishing that I came into this world with more money so that I could've bought her alongside Alissa.

With the way that I was back then, I'm not sure that I would've been a good master to her, but it's always hard to predict how things could've been. Maybe we would've helped each other the same way that Alissa helped me.

Silvane starts talking, and her voice gains a hint of weakness that I haven't heard before from her, "The hardest part of it all was knowing that it wasn't even my mistake that caused all of this. I barely had any magical skills yet, so I could only watch as my parents failed to keep the monsters away, then the empire came and 'deposed' them…"

"I feel for your loss," Yunia says in a soft tone.

Silvane sighs and slaps her face, trying to give herself a boost of energy. "I'm tired of feeling. I've already fulfilled my goal and reclaimed my family name. It's time to move on and look forward to my future."

"Wait, so you're not a Blood Slave anymore?" I ask.

She smiles gently at me and says, "I still am, and I always will. I've sworn to serve the Anaras, but it'll be in the form of a noble servant family. I've returned to being Silvane Andera, currently the only member of my house."

Oh wow… that's incredible. But wait…

"I don't think I can follow your path. I've already received the mercy of being allowed to become a Blood Slave. The best that I can hope for is to become a Ryder one day," Yunia says.

I grab her hand and give it a warm squeeze. She glances at me and flashes a small smile, then returns to her more stern, natural look.

"I wish you good fortune. Seeing how Wolf treats those that he loves, you two will be fine together," Silvane says and bows quickly.

Nono nods repeatedly and says, "Helios is a pretty nice bunch of people. I hope that you all do well together. But, oh… I don't know if their lifestyle is on a high enough level for nobility…" -She smiles wryly and scratches her head shyly- "sorry, Wolf."

"I'm not snobbish," Yunia says and calmly shakes her head. "I can handle some rough living since I was raised as the Chosen Descendant. Besides, it's not going to be like this forever."

Nono nods in understanding, and Silvane caresses her ears again.

"I think that we should be going. I have to report this to Vanea so that we cut ties with Lord Ira," Silvane says.

"Alright," I say and nod. "We'll see each other again soon. After we become nobles, there will be a marriage ceremony, so look forward to that."

We get up to shake hands, but Silvane instead pulls me into a quick hug, then Nono does the same. The smell of their hair is delicious, the touch of their exposed skin against my own is stimulating-.

Calm down, other me, they are friends, not food.

"We're staying in a guest mansion within the castle grounds in Rabanara, but you can come to visit us at any time," Silvane says.

"Alright, then. If we decide to rest for a few days, we might take up on your offer," I respond.

"Please do," she says with a gentle smile and turns to Yunia. "Stay well, Miss Yulania."

"You too, Miss Silvane, Miss Nononya," Yunia gracefully says, and they share a delicate handshake.

They leave the room, and their bodyguards follow them without a word.

I throw myself on the bed and sigh. "These have been some pretty hectic days, huh?" I ask rhetorically.

"Always listen to the singing of the birds," she says and lays down beside me.

I turn to the side to look at her. "What does that mean?"

She smiles smugly. "I want you to take a guess."

"Something about enjoying the good times while they last?"

"Good guess. Also, when the birds stop chirping, it means that something bad has passed through the area."

"What does that have to do with our situation?"

"Misery never affects only one person, it always spreads around, but what you should pay attention to is its source."

"I still don't see how this relates to us."

She turns her head to the side to look at me. "Vanea was feared for being ruthless, but when I looked at Silvane, I saw that she was disappointed in herself, not that she feared Vanea's punishment. Maybe Vanea is changing?"

"Huh… that'd be good news. I'm also one of those scared of Vanea."

She turns to the side and lands a soft hand on my cheek. "You don't have to meet with Vanea; I can deal with her if we ever need to talk with her again."

I hold her hand and give it a small squeeze. "Thanks, but I'm not so frail anymore."

She smiles smugly. "The other wives think otherwise."

"Then I'll prove them wrong."

She chuckles, then moves her hand to my hair and starts caressing it soothingly.

"We haven't finished what we started. Want to continue?" I ask, innocently.

-

Intermission 15 - Silvane

I let a sigh escape my lips as we leave the inn.

"So… he got another one," Nono says, sounding disappointed.

"Well, he has a Gift. Heroes are known to be 'vigorous,'" I respond with a smirk.

"I don't want to be his seventh." Nono's ears flop completely.

I caress her ears as we walk, and she tilts her head closer, wanting to be petted more.

We return to the main street, and I pull her into a hug.

"W-what?" She asks, confused.

I kiss her nose, and her whiskers twitch adorably, then I smile and say, "We'll find a wonderful man for you one day, don't worry."

She smiles weakly and lowers her head against my shoulder. "But I'm tired. I want a man, I want to lose my virginity, and I want to marry," she says in a low tone.

"Then marry me!" I suggest and kiss her cheek.

She lifts her head and looks at me with worry. "Silfy… I told you that I want to stop with these games. I could barely stop myself from jumping on Wolf. I can't hold back my lust anymore."

I chuckle. "We don't have to play with my fetishes all the time! And I'm serious, marry me!"

"But you don't have a…" She trails off and looks away.

"A penis? So what?! We can still ask Haaran, Wolf, or some other man for that!"

She turns back and starts to smile, but the worry doesn't disappear from her face. "You have many men around you. I don't want that, I don't want a big harem."

I shake my head. "They're just 'work' for Vanea; I'm not going to sleep around all the time, and I certainly don't need more than one cute toy…"

Her lips tremble, and she hugs me back.

"I love you, Nono. Marry me, please."

"Yes…" She whispers an answer.

I squeal and squeeze her chest against mine.

"I love you, Silfy!" She exclaims, and the people around us stop to stare. Hopefully, she won't notice that for a while because when she does, she'll freeze in embarrassment for a solid hour.

We loosen our hug and lovingly gaze into each other's eyes.

"Now, we have to solve the matter of your virginity…" I start.

She groans shyly. "I don't think I want Haaran to do it."

I nod. "I agree. We should ask Wolf."

Her ears deflate again in dismay. "Would he even accept? He has so many women around him…"

I smirk. "Once he's a Lord, ma~ybe we could 'strike a deal.'"

She frowns. "I don't want to 'sell' myself like that."

"It's just a pretext. We need this so that his wives don't feel too jealous about him ravaging you. And if it works… then we can actually 'negotiate.'"

"Hm…" She moans and puckers her lips in thought.

I put my mouth near her ear and whisper with all the gentleness that I can muster. "Nono, he's a Gifted person, a Hero of legends. Imagine if he impregnates both of us!"

"Ah!" She exclaims and looks at me, wide-eyed. "W-would Haaran accept that? Weren't you going to give him a child?"

I grin slyly. "Of course he would. I can have more than one child, can't I?"

Nono seems at a loss for words, but slowly, I see lust and acceptance growing in her eyes.

"I love you, Nono," I say and smirk.

"I love you, Silfy," she shyly says.

I kiss her cute red lips, and even more people stop to stare at us with envy.

A note from Manasong

Hall of Fame of Patrons

The patrons who support Rupegia shall have their names sung by the bards for they deserve the glory and honor. Their names are:

Oracle Maximillian Hübner.

Prince PreownedFIN.

Lord Andrew Meyers.

Lord Hope.

Lord Samuel Lim.

Lord Bill.

Lord Novgarod.

Lord DJ.

Lord Cidant.

Lord Ashadun.

Lord Michale Erwin.

Lord Enrique Peña Gomez.

Lord Braidborn.

Lord Bakerdea.

Lord Yeeteris Dedmeem.

Lord D4rk Sheep.

Lord Nathan Vanbrunt.

Lord Andrew Heffelbower.

Lord Markus.

Lord Maurice.

Lord Badger.

Lord Brennon Goetz.

Lord Amelgar.

Noble Salty Panda.

Noble Evil.

Noble Yamibomb112.

Noble Mild Fracas.

Noble Geminus.

Noble EESDESESESRDT.

Nobleman Lassiter.

Leave a rating or a review to help me rise to the top or fix my shameful understanding of prose.

Take a look over my blog where all information of the world of Rupegia will be posted.

Join the Discord and discuss, or rant, or meme, or try and fight me so your waifu gets more screentime.

Become a Patron and read chapters in advance, or read the side-stories, or leave your mark on the story, or help choose the next artwork or the next side-story.

Chapter 65: The Last King - Part 1

A note from Manasong

Attention: to conform to the limit of sexual content allowed in a novel, I've censored this chapter. You can look for the uncensored version here.

The symbol "-" denotes a section that got cut for containing sexual content. Also, if paragraphs seem missing, they were also likely censored in an earlier pass where the symbol wasn't used.

Yunia lays in my arms as I play with her springy ear. It's squishy like our lobes, but more elastic, and without any of the harder cartilage like a human ear. You can easily roll it up, and it immediately unfolds itself with a "sproing" when you release it.

I flick her ear, and it goes all "boing, boing" on me. She slaps my hand hard, and I return to [Massage]ing her head. It's so adorable and fun to play with her ears, but I still prefer Alissa's fluffy ears and tail.

-

After a few minutes, she actually falls asleep.

Am I for her what Alissa was for me…?

Not long after that thought, I drift off to sleep with a warm feeling in my heart.

I'll treasure you, Yunia.

We slowly wake up together. My left arm pinned under her has fallen asleep, but after a quick [Heal] on the nerves, it returns to normal.

She sits up on the bed and stretches, giving an alluring display of her perfect form. "How long did we sleep?" She asks.

I pull out my pocket-watch from my pants by the bed and check. "About an hour," I say.

"We still have some time to walk around, right?" She asks, expectantly.

"Sure, but we'll have to eat out, then."

"Oh… May we do that, then?" She asks, unsure of herself.

I smile warmly at her, and her expression stiffens. "We could end the walk in a restaurant and call the girls so we can all eat there together."

"Okay." She smiles and nods awkwardly.

I have a Holly crawl on the ceiling as we go down the stairs. I notice that the innkeeper frowns a little as we walk away; Silvane already paid for the damages to the door and a bit more, but it's obvious that the innkeeper would've preferred that we didn't cause such a ruckus to begin with.

I also notice an intense stare from a middle-aged silver elf man following us, but he immediately goes back to reading his book when I look in his direction.

Just as we are about to leave the inn, I stop and say, "I think I found our spy." Then I snap my head to the silver elf man, and he jumps in his seat. His hand trembles, and he fumbles his book.

Yunia raises an eyebrow at me as I guide us both towards the man. Then I release her arm and approach him alone, making him panic further.

I stand right in front of him and glare down with unbridled anger. "Be very careful about whom you spy on," I say with a growl, and the man weakly nods. "Hmph," I mimic Yunia's scoff and walk away. The man immediately gets up and runs away towards his quarters upstairs.

We finally walk out of the inn, and Yunia asks, "What was that about?"

"I'm almost completely sure that he was the one that told Lord Ira about us," I respond.

"Hm… But why would you confront him like that?"

"I'm rather tired of being spied on."

She narrows her eyes disapprovingly. "You're always being spied on."

I shrug. "Doesn't mean that I can't dislike it."

"Are you going to be angry all the time when we go outside, then?"

"I'll just try to intimidate them to stop."

"And when that inevitably fails to stop them, how are you going to escalate things?"

I look at her with a bit of surprise on my face. "Why do you think that it will fail?"

"There are few ways to stop spies from doing their job that doesn't involve the potential for a Sin of Reckless Murder," she answers with a little tiredness.

"I'll find other ways. But that's something for when we are Lords, so I don't have a concrete plan yet since I lack a lot of experience in espionage."

"The Lords hire commoners as spies, but if you start targeting the commoners, then the Tribunal will come after you."

"Then we'll find other ways that don't punish the commoners."

"That's acceptable." She nods and pats my hand.

We go to the lower level of the town, and the day instantly turns to night. Slowly pulsing lights decorate the signs of the shops; the ever-present ceiling gives a more claustrophobic or comfy feeling to the streets, depending on who you ask; a slightly damp and cool air forces us to put on our cloaks to warm ourselves up; wisps of smoke and mist occasionally appear from of the ducts of the city-wide air conditioner network; more plants, vines, and moss cover the walls of the tree-houses here than on the upper level; less cheery, but calmer elves walk through the streets; small streaks of light comes through the holes of the upper level, giving our environment a very moody atmosphere.

Gify finds this level "okay." She prefers sunny and open-air areas rather than the darker and moody places like this one.

A few children play with the [Float] enchantments on the holes in the middle of the streets above us. They throw themselves into the hole, and the enchantment activates, pushing them back to the street.

"You've played around with one of those, haven't you?" Yunia asks gently.

"Of course," I answer.

"If you hadn't, then I'd say that you were as cold as a summon," she says, and we chuckle softly.

I notice that the priests set up shop in a few spots. They seem to be selling both contraceptives and fertility drugs.

We're in the month of Birth, and the temple suggests that people try to conceive in this period so that the children are born in the month of Combat, which is seen as a good omen. But also, a lot of children are conceived during the month of Drink and, therefore, are born in this month, also giving its name an unintended meaning.

Unfortunately, we reach the end of our walk as we stop in front of a restaurant called Aldo Uente. It's a comfy restaurant attended by some kind-looking old elven women that don't speak Andraste. I put ten points in [Ingua Language] and impress them a little with my fluency in their language.

Then we sit at our table and wait for the girls.

Yunia frowns and becomes increasingly anxious. I raise an eyebrow at her, confused, and she glares at me.

"What?" I ask.

She clicks her tongue and says, "This Gift to change your skill points at will is, frankly, ridiculous. Did Ciel ever call it sacrilege that you can just 'play' around with the God's Blessing in such a silly way? Instant casting spells is one amazing Gift, but being able to become a master of any sort of skill at will is simply too much.

"Do you know how long I spent practicing [Weaverism] to be able to cast [Precognition]? My entire life! Even though I always had a large positive soul potential, it still took me more effort to reach this level than a normal mage would to learn their first Spirit familiar spell. And you can just spend a few seconds re-arranging your points to be able to cast those same spells! Madness!"

I smile wryly and say, "I can't learn any spell from [Weaverism] since it doesn't automatically give me the spells, though."

She turns her head to the side and looks at me with the corner of her eye. "But you can still cast something like [Fire Spirit] whenever you want just by changing your build."

"Actually, that one I can't. For some reason, I can only automatically learn spells up to level forty, so I can only cast up to [Heart of Fire]."

She scoffs and mocks my tone. "Pah! 'I can only cast up to level forty.' Still ridiculous!"

"Well, I'm only a cheater, after all," I say in a low tone and hold back my grin.

She clears her throat and holds back a cringe. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to belittle your accomplishments."

"No, that's…" -I smile wryly- "that's just a joke that Ciel says whenever she remembers how ridiculous my Gifts are."

"At least you admit that they're ridiculous," she says in a low tone and glances at me from the side of her eye.

We only have to wait for a few minutes while pecking on croutons before the rest of the girls arrive.

"Good timing," Yunia comments.

"Don't underestimate my ability to track down Wolfy," Alissa proudly says, and I chuckle.

They sit down, and we order a soup party. Aoi and Gify have the most trouble eating their soup and dipping the side dishes in, until they start using magic to help them. The people around us become a little mesmerized as they watch a small dragon and a nature spirit using [Telekinesis] to control their spoons and to dip bits of food in their soups.

"So, how did your research go?" I ask Lina.

"I've found an enchantment to create a vacuum in Roxanne's workshop. Also, they lent me a copy of the biography of Arreira," she answers looking proud of herself.

"Great, I wanted to try out some 'totally safe' things with the Decay pots that we have," Roxanne says with an excited grin.

"We'll discuss Arreira after we're done eating," I say and pat Lina's head, then I turn to Ciel, who's sitting at my other side. "And how did Aoi do?"

"Kwah!" Aoi suddenly lifts her head out of her bowl and looks at us with fear and surprise stamped on her face.

Ciel smiles and answers, "For a first-time reader, she did pretty well. Not well enough to fully read by herself, but she took your advice to heart and will keep observing us to learn more. She's perfectly capable of learning how to read with enough time."

Aoi gives us a toothy grin when she hears Ciel's praise. Hana pats her head, and we smile.

Then I turn to Alissa. "And how did it go in the armory?" I ask.

"I've found a [Mana Arrow] bow," Alissa answers quite happily.

"Does it have [Loosen]?" Lina asks.

"It does. It's even stronger than the one in my current bow, but the quartermaster was impressed with yours," Alissa answers and smiles. Lina doesn't know how to respond to the compliment, so she just nods and retreats into her mind.

Hana chimes in and excitedly reports, "They also have a lot of armor, even a set for dragons, but it's for a much larger dragon than Aoi's current battle-size. The quartermaster said that they can adapt it easily to a smaller size, though."

I nod and say, "Let's all get fitted for armor tomorrow, then. I want Aoi to be able to fight at a size slightly larger than you. If she's too big, it might be hard for her to navigate in certain environments."

"They also have some chain armor that doesn't interfere with casting spells," Alissa says and looks at Roxanne, who nods without much spirit. "It looks kind of pretty, though," she adds, and the vain succubus perks up a little.

"Any new enchantments?" Lina asks, a little hopeful.

"Only [Searing Blade]. Anything better than what we have already is custom-made, so we'd have to order it and wait for a day-cycle or so," Alissa answers.

"That's good enough. Our equipment was already pretty close to a knight's," Ciel says.

"I've also found a metal halberd for Aoi, so it shouldn't get damaged by her claws anymore," Hana says, and Aoi perks up, looking excited. "I've asked them to make the texture of the grip rougher so that it doesn't slide out of her claws."

"Good! Now I can smash without holding back," Aoi says with a satisfied nod.

We finish our meal, but decide to linger for a little longer and order some desert.

"So, Lina, what can you tell me about Arreira?" I ask her.

She smiles gently and brightens up from her usual moody expression as she says, "His story is very interesting. The generals were vengeful and wanted to fight the Empire to the bitter end, while the God-King admired the Empire and didn't want war. But together, his generals held more power than him, so he was forced to fight."

"God-King?" I ask.

"That's how the rulers called themselves back then. They were so powerful that they thought of themselves as gods," she answers.

"Something the temple outlawed after the God of the Sun Ascended. They were all false gods, arrogant mortals who didn't know what a real Humanoid God was," Ciel says.

"Ah, right. I think that Alissa is a descendant of a God-Ruler," Lina says. I chuckle in surprise, and the other girls mumble, looking impressed.

Alissa plays with her ear, deep in thought as she says, "Hm… I think it's possible. The Verners have been in power through most of the history of the Low Forest in some way or another, so even the times they weren't at the top didn't last long."

"Aren't your leaders elected by the Elders?" I ask her.

Alissa nods, making her cute ears bob, and answers, "Yes, the best of us is chosen, but once you're the best, you gain resources to remain the best forever. In the case of my Mom, she was the best Verner of her generation, and she tied with my Dad. Lucky for them, they fell in love and married, so there was no need to choose between them."

"So, tell the truth, who do you think would've won if they hadn't married?" Hana asks.

"Dad may be the best hunter of the Forest, but Mom is much smarter, so who knows?" She shrugs.

Yunia props herself forward, looking proud, and says, "I'm a direct descendant of the last elven king, though I'm only part of a branch family, but we could still make a claim for the status of High Royalty since the real royals disappeared." Then she becomes a little embarrassed at her own pride.

Roxanne chuckles and says, "So, we have two princesses in our harem. Now, what's next? Ciel is a long lost descendant of Sommerland royalty? Lina is the bastard child of dwarven nobility?"

"I'll be a dragon queen one day," Aoi says and lifts her claws shyly.

"Does 'merchant queen' count? I can still make a comeback," Hana says with a grin.

Before the girls start joking around, I put the conversation back on track. "Since the royal family became heretics, didn't Arreira's death mean nothing? They fucked up so badly that barely any elf wants them to come back, right?" I ask.

"I wouldn't say that his death meant nothing, but the second part of your statement is correct," Yunia says, matter-of-factly.

"But that happened many generations after his death. I don't think that the dungeon's riddle is about that," Lina says.

"But the dungeon only appeared recently," Roxanne says.

I smirk and point towards Roxanne. "Exactly," I say.

"But how would this 'Dungeon Master' know all this? How could he keep someone alive inside a dungeon for so long?" Ciel asks.

"[Golemancy]?" Alissa suggests.

"He'd still need some way to know about the status of the royal family," Ciel says.

"Can't he observe us and eavesdrop on our conversations since we are in his dungeon?"

"That's… possible," Roxanne mutters as she starts to imagine the possibilities.

"Having to rely on hearsay to grasp the status of the outside world seems quite unreliable," Yunia says.

"Indeed," Ciel agrees with a nod.

"The coincidence of it appearing around the same time that I came to this world can't really be ignored," I say.

"Coincidences are allowed to happen sometimes," Yunia says with a shrug.

"Not when it's related to a vision that Gecynd saw. There's at least some significance for our Threads of Fate to be so intertwined that she saw the dungeon, not me."

"But so many generations have passed for Arreira's family that I don't think that him living or dying would've had that much effect on their Fate," Ciel says.

"If the royal family hadn't gone into hiding after his death, then the other elves would've turned to them to keep the war with the empire going," Lina says.

"So he did save the High Forest from destruction," Hana says.

Lina nods. "Yes, that's what all the scholars agree about, but apparently that's not the answer to the riddle."

"Okay, then why did he sacrifice himself, to begin with?" I ask.

"To stop the war," Lina answers.

"That's it? No other reason?"

"Hm…" She hums, and with a *poof*, she pulls out a heavy book out of her [Item Box]. She flips through it, then stops at a particular page. "Here: Arreira lost control of his generals when the skirmishes started, then the generals decided to retaliate, contrary to Arreira's orders.

"He tried many times to turn the generals against one another, but that only backfired as they all banded together and started the war without his approval. He couldn't forcefully remove them as the generals threatened to fight together if he tried, and that would only result in Arreira's defeat. Now, without anyone else with the power to make his generals stop, he could only watch as the elves started losing Glorampina to the Empire.

"As the Empire started to encircle the High Forest, Arreira decided to participate in the war. He eventually spearheaded a campaign that concentrated the largest elven army ever gathered. Then he led it south, towards Antano, to stop the Imperial campaign taking over the region, and met with the Emperor there.

"It's said that when they met face-to-face, Arreira fought perfectly in a one-on-one duel, but he didn't have the immense 'Magic Power' of the Emperor, and couldn't manage to interrupt his casting. The Emperor cast [Fissure] and split the land, creating a ravine into which Arreira fell, then the Emperor slammed it, creating Ultirei's Tomb, and Arreira was never seen again.

"Even though the elven troops tried to attack in revenge, the Emperor dealt with the entire army by himself by casting a huge [Meteor] that created Loyalist Lake. That battle was seen remotely by most of the elven leadership, and it finally humbled them, leading them to negotiate the terms of surrender."

"How did he see the Empire? Why did he admire them so much?" I ask.

Lina flips through a few more pages, then she finds the correct passage. "Arreira was against elven isolationism. He believed that the purpose of civilization is to work together and to continue growing more and more intertwined. He created the first few permanent trade deals with Maoka and tried to eliminate the self-sufficiency of Aloresta, that's how the High Forest was called back then. Without self-sufficiency, the elves would be forced to interact more with the rest of the realm if they wanted to keep their economy stable.

"This angered his generals, as they were fearful of the Empire. At the time, they correctly believed that the Empire was aiming to conquer them next, so they didn't want to weaken Aloresta just before the war. But Arreira thought that defeat was inevitable, and he campaigned for the elves to strike a deal with the Empire in the same way that Gray Roost and Gnomeria had. The Empire's rule over other nations was rather lax, but elven desire for independence was too strong for Arreira to gain any significant support.

"He saw an opportunity for the Empire and Aloresta to interact and learn from each other. Both nations had a strong desire to protect the common humanoid as they forced the strong and the rich to stand on the front lines to protect their weaker countrymen. He saw more similarities than differences between their nations.

"He wanted to bring the Empire's standards of system magic and science to Aloresta, which was bogged down by the overly-obtuse [Weaverism] being glorified too much and holding back progress in other fields. He also coveted the wide range of products that the Mainland had made available to themselves, and tried to mimic that by opening trade with Maoka and the Chimeras, with a small degree of success.

"But he saw the Empire's ruthlessness as barbaric and wanted to influence them to become more like the Tribunal. He saw no need for all the killing and spent most of his life working together with the Tribunal to make their laws fairer for everyone. This is what gave him the title of 'Unyielding.' Even though he went against the entire elven nobility, he still managed to get many laws approved and enforced, to the acclaim of the commoners."

"I can see a few points where he failed, though," I interrupt.

"What do you mean?" Yunia asks.

"The Tribunal continues to be something only present in the High Forest, and the Empire continues on with its 'brutal' laws."

"But there's the temple and the Seekers of Truth for that. We don't need the Tribunal to exist in the rest of the Empire," Ciel says.

"Have you ever heard about a Mainland noble paying compensation to commoners?" Roxanne asks, and Ciel frowns. "Root Lord Rico did for getting us caught in a struggle between Lords without warning us of the danger beforehand."

"The Wandering Knights protect the commoners, but they aren't as organized and effective as the Tribunal," Hana says.

Ciel puckers her lips and nods. "Yeah, I get it," she says.

"But that's not all. He also failed at making the elves more open-minded," I continue.

Yunia frowns and gives me a smug side glance as she says, "Oh, please. We've improved greatly since then. Non-elves couldn't even enter the High Forest before Arreira's death."

"Just two days ago, two Crown Lord families fought because one wanted a more open society while the other didn't," Hana says, a little bluntly.

Yunia's smugness fades instantly, and she becomes inexpressive. She grinds her teeth, and her eyes lose focus, then the table goes silent.

"I'm sorry. That was too much," Hana apologizes while cringing.

Yunia shakes her head slowly. "No, that's not it. I'm just… I'm just tired. But you're right, elves haven't really changed that much…" She rests her head against her palm and closes her eyes, then she waves her hand dismissively. "Anyway, please continue."

Alright, then.

I shrug and sigh while looking at the other girls.

"There has been some progress in elven society, but it doesn't look like Arreira's dream was fulfilled," Lina continues.

Oh!

"He didn't just die to end the war, he sacrificed himself to show how delusional the elven pride truly was," Roxanne says, and we hum in understanding.

"He sacrificed his dream just to end the war, but the elves didn't understand that, so in the end, his death failed to accomplish what he wanted. Maybe he didn't need to spy on us since he knew exactly what would've happened once he was dead," Alissa says.

I grin in excitement. "Did we crack the code?" I ask.

"I don't think it should be this easy," Yunia comments in a low tone.

"It did require an outside perspective, though. One that neither an imperial nor an elf would usually have," Roxanne says and looks at me with a warm smile.

Ciel nods in agreement and says, "You'd need a neutral view on history. Something that the temple and the elven scholars both lack."

"Tomorrow, after we're done with the armory, I want to try to open that door," I say.

Lina nods repeatedly. "I can't wait," she says, softly.

A note from Manasong

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Chapter 65: The Last King - Part 2

A note from Manasong

Attention: to conform to the limit of sexual content allowed in a novel, I've censored this chapter. You can look for the uncensored version here.

The symbol "-" denotes a section that got cut for containing sexual content. Also, if paragraphs seem missing, they were also likely censored in an earlier pass where the symbol wasn't used.

We make our way across the lower level. We have the time, so we walk leisurely to enjoy the sights.

The town slowly becomes quieter and quieter. The people stop walking across the streets, and even the shops start to close. Today, the day will end early.

The priests also close shop, and the public lights are turned off, forcing us to cast [Spirit Light] to see.

The mood of the town suddenly changes as the dark environment of the lower levels is quickly filled with dotted lights from the commoners coming out. Most of them stay in front of their doors with their heads down, muttering prayers. The rest join us in a procession towards any of the town's exits.

We are early, so we easily pass through customs before a crowd forms. Across this gate, there's a spiral ramp that leads to many levels of farms. Our feet get massaged by the grass planted on the floor, but unfortunately, we won't be going down on foot.

I pull out the dinghy and we get in. With Yunia, things get a little more cramped, but it's not too uncomfortable yet. Lina and I might work to expand it one day, though.

We fly down and land on the lake. The dinghy is heavier now that it's reinforced, but Roxanne just needs to use a small amount of mana to keep it stable.

We find an agglomeration of boats and gondolas and join them. In the middle of the mass of boats, we see two sets of ropes that form a lane. It starts at a spiral ramp that leads up to the town, and ends at one of the giant trees inside the lake.

In the vessels around us, other elves occasionally mumble something between themselves, but everyone is silent most of the time. The lake is so quiet that the swish of the boats and the occasional dewdrop falling onto the surface can easily be heard.

We are all forced to wear cloaks since the dew dropping from the bark shield wall above us is quite consistent and annoying. The upside is that it makes us blend in perfectly with the other elves around us.

A few ultra-bright crystal lights illuminate the lake, but they aren't strong enough to let us see the bottom. Fish regularly pass by near our boat, mostly attracted by some of the elves, who feed them crumbs of food. Occasionally, I see eyes watching us from behind the cover of the deep, dark water. I have a feeling that these aren't normal fish.

Half an hour after we've arrived, there's a sudden uptick in the number of boats coming towards the lane, then we see movement on the spiral ramp that the lane connects to.

Through Alissa's eyes, I can see a procession coming down the path. Countless scintillating little lights slowly make their way down the spiral. Many levels of farms surround that pillar, and the [Spirit Light]s passing through cause faintly-colored lights to bounce off the plants on each level of the farms. The lights mix and form a magical image, then a small amount of Eia mist starts to accumulate along the procession's path, making the lights glow ethereally.

The procession reaches a jetty at the end of the spiral ramp, and three gondolas are loaded, each with a single coffin. Many more gondolas follow the first three, and the huge crystal lights floating above allow us to perfectly see who is in each of them

Confiel, Luz, and Lua each row a gondola with a coffin while standing. Their faces are stony and their postures are perfectly rigid; if it weren't for their arms moving, they could easily be mistaken for statues. As they're the ones who killed Mavel and his wives, they have the responsibility to ensure that their fellow elves find rest where they deserve. On top of each of the coffins, there's a large portrait of the deceased to remind us of their beauty and dignity.

On the first gondola coming right behind them, there are two twin boys with gentle and pretty faces. Their hair is messy and long, amplifying their feminine air. They stand on the gondola and look forward with grieving faces, but are still trying to look strong. They barely look twelve; at most, they could be fourteen due to their level delaying their physical growth a little.

Soul Info

Name: | Arturus Este | Race: | Golden Elf | Level: | 25
HP | 100 | MP | 150 | Magic Power | 60
Strength | 12 | Endurance | 13

Soul Info

Name: | Antares Este | Race: | Golden Elf | Level: | 25
HP | 100 | MP | 200 | Magic Power | 110
Strength | 12 | Endurance | 13

Yunia looks calm. There's a hint of melancholy on her face, but at least she's not using [Mask]. Her eyes follow her brothers, but theirs don't stray, so they pass us without them noticing her. The boys are looking forward, but without focus; perhaps that could be an apt description of what they feel about their future.

Behind them come many gondolas with the nobles that were Mavel Este's allies. None of them are wearing anything luxurious since the situation calls for everyone to humble themselves over the inevitability of death.

Alissa notices my observation and whispers, "'We enter this realm naked, and we move on to the next in the same state. Nothing material will come with you in your next life, not even your physical bodies.' A teaching from the Goddess of Piety."

Then a name jumps out at me.

Soul Info

Name: | Ira Saponaria | Race: | Golden Elf | Level: | 59
HP | 100 | MP | 840 | Magic Power | 210
Strength | 20 | Endurance | 18

High MP, but not a lot of "Magic Power." That's the usual consequence of being a spell sword.

Ira is a tall, middle-aged man. He sports a golden dad mustache, stubble, and a buzz cut. His face is blocky, and his eyes are permanently squinted. He looks slightly displeased, and I'm not sure if that's an expression or just his natural face.

Barely any of the nobles look around, focusing solely on intensely staring at the Rincipios' backs. Some show anger, but most keep an impassive expression, reminding me of Yunia when she's trying to hide her emotions.

Silvane appears on one of the gondolas near the back. She's one of the few who glances around, but there are so many people in the crowds that she doesn't manage to find us.

The gondolas pass us by and stop in front of the huge tree at the end of the lane. Then Confiel rests his oar on the gondola and turns around.

"Lords, Nobles, Knights, and the common folk of the High Forest!" He starts, gesticulating as he speaks and slowly increasing the speed of his movements. His voice resounds across the lake without being too low or too loud, no matter where we are, clearly aided by magic. "Today we bury Crown Lords Mavel, Deva, and Dalia of the Este family. It was us, Crown Lords Confiel, Luz, and Lua of the Rincipio family that deposed them. There were multiple reasons for why we did what we did, and each one of you might know a few of them, but we aren't here to tarnish the name of the Este family. We are here to see that our fellow elves receive their deserved rest, and to offer one last prayer to their name before we move on with our lives.

"Now, let us pray and wish that these Lords are awarded long stays in Paradise. Let us thank them for their hard work in protecting and ruling over us. Let us thank them for fulfilling their duties the best that they could. Let us honor their accomplishments and recognize their strength. Let us learn from their lives so that we may climb up on their shoulders and see further than we did before.

"Their efforts shall not go to waste, and their mark in the realm shall not be erased. Their lives end here, but their legacy shall continue on, influencing us for generations to come!" He finishes with his hands high above his head in a supplicating gesture.

His "legacy," huh? Now that he's dead, his vision of the future will be supplanted by Confiel's. Maybe something will last, but it won't be much now that he isn't here to continue spreading it. Just like Arreira's dream…

An elven woman starts to softly sing, and her voice resounds the same way that Confiel's does. It's so gentle that it sounds ethereal, and it tickles my ears. It reminds me of the way that the Weepers whisper into your mind, but in a good way.

I've removed my points in [Ingua Language], so I don't know what she's singing about.

Most of the other elves lower their heads and mutter their prayers. Yunia remains silent, still staring at her brothers, who are now praying along with the nobles. The melancholy in her eyes slowly gets replaced with determination.

Mages stand on their gondolas and start chanting. They open a hole in the water and deep into the lake bed, then the coffins are lifted by magic and slowly brought down into it. After a minute or so, the coffins reach the bottom and the mages release the water, allowing it to close the hole.

The coffins were buried below the mud of the lake, near the roots of the huge tree in front of us. They will slowly dissolve in a few days, then the ashes of the diseased will be absorbed by the tree. With this, their bodies will forever be part of their dear town that they worked so hard to protect.

After around ten minutes of listening to the elven woman sing, the melancholy that was building in my heart starts to fade. Her voice reminds me of a mother singing a lullaby to their child, and it makes me a little sleepy.

"Let's go," Yunia suddenly says, finally looking somewhere besides her brothers.

I look around and see that a few of the boats and gondolas are starting to leave. Some of them take flight and return to the town's gates.

"Alright," I say, and Roxanne makes us fly again.

We return to our house in Goloria, and the gloomy mood fades as we rest in our living room and enjoy some refreshments. The servants left some steamy pastries for us, so of course, we're going to eat it all.

"You girls want to do something? We still have a few hours until dinner," I say.

"I want to train. I need that instant cast Gift of yours," Yunia answers immediately.

"Sweating a little might do us some good," Hana says and looks at me.

I sigh and get up. "Alright, let's spar," I say.

Alissa tries out her new [Mana Arrow] enchanted bow. She can create arrows with any shape, weight, and color that she wants. This removes the need for arrows but uses mana, obviously, so it isn't a straight upgrade. The draw weight increased, though, and with a stronger [Loosen] enchantment, she can pierce armor deeper than before.

The bow is made from not-ebony and decorated with green wavy patterns to disguise the glitter of gold from the enchantments. Now I realize how eye-catching her previous bow is since it's pure white. Our own emerald weapons aren't the perfect camouflage, but they lost their luster from being new, so they are good enough for us.

Monster hunters also don't really need camouflage when there's hardly any monster that would run away once they've spotted a humanoid.

Ciel is testing the wooden sword with [Searing Blade]. This one basically turns the blade into a lightsaber while also protecting the sword from the heat. It sucks mana like Alissa, Hana, and Aoi combined suck me dry, so it's only used in bursts. It's also extremely dangerous to yourself if you don't know how to use a blade.

Yunia is meditating. After some coaching from Roxanne, she's putting her all into searching for the "itch" inside her soul space.

Lina is adding a [Vacuum] enchantment to Roxanne's workbench. It's quite simple, so it should be ready today.

Inside the house, Roxanne is testing some of her poisons on a group of summoned goblins and a dragonoid. The Decay goop is allowing her to make some very toxic substances, so it's good that the workbench is almost ready.

Aoi puts what she learned today to practice and tests new ways to bend air around her wings to produce lift.

Gify is watching us in amusement, as always.

The golems practice their spells while also observing us.

Meanwhile, Hana beats the shit out of me.

"Come on, where's your ferocity?! Where did that dragon soul go?!" She yells at me, and I force myself to stand up.

Bitch, imma stab you and make you -.

I lower my own gravity and jump, then I strike from above and spin in the air to avoid Hana's counter.

I pull out a dagger from my back with a tail, and it gets cut down by her sword. I increase my gravity again so that I catch up with the dagger, allowing me to reattach the tail, and at the same time, I strike at Hana.

She immediately goes for the tail again, and I detach the tail myself, making her sword only cut through air, then I immediately reattach it. Once she turns the blade to cut upwards, I meet it with my own and stop her.

My dagger thrusts towards a chink in her armor at her waist, and she dodges to the side, making it bounce ineffectively against the plate.

With a click of my tongue, I cast [Ghost Lights] and blind us both since I lack fine control with this spell. Then I use Holly's sight to guide the dagger towards the chink again.

She jumps back and tries to cover the chink with her arm, but I jump forward at the same time and bash her with my shield, making her stagger and open her guard.

I change my target and sink the dagger through the opening below her armpit, then I leave it there, almost fully disabling her arm. She moans out loud, and I smirk.

She suddenly spits fire, making the area between us become covered by smoke and flame. Then two swords emerge through it, each aiming to strike at a different angle. One of them is an illusion, but I don't know which.

Fuck.

I try to cast [Rush] and retreat, but the tiredness of controlling the tail and casting multiple spells makes me too slow, and I'm forced to defend before the spell can activate.

The left sword disappears into nothing while the right one hits my shield, then pivots. [Battlefield Perception] triggers, and I lean back, but it's not fast enough. Her sword slides over the top of my shield and sinks into my neck.

Once Hana feels her sword cutting flesh, she stops herself and pulls the sword back.

The wound was shallow, but it still hurts like a bitch.

The smoke and fire dissipates, and a smug Hana appears from behind it. "Hah! Got you!" She exclaims and grins.

I need a fucking neck guard!

I pout and [Heal] my neck. "I'm trying to do too many things at once, and the mental overload is slowing my reactions," I say, then I go to her to [Heal] her armpit.

She nods. "Which is why we need to train your style as much as we can until you adapt to it."

I groan internally. This training with sharp weapons makes me too anxious. Also, I can only do it with Hana because she's a masochist. Imagining myself stabbing any of the other girls is just too much for my heart.

She cleans her sword and gives me a fearsome smile. "Again!"

Alissa delicately massages my muscles with her soft and cute hands. They glide along my skin, aided by the soap, and caress me with love, then they find a sore muscle and stimulate it gently, giving me that combo of dull pain and pleasure. I let out a low, satisfied moan with every press.

-

She changes into her fox form while I'm inside, and my mind goes blank with the information overload.

Fuck!

- A blinding rage takes over me. I bite her neck to keep her in place, and hug her body, lifting her paws off the ground. - Then I do it like a mad man.

-

I soak in the bath and try to process what I saw and felt. It was almost like when our minds tried to merge through [Bind]. But this time, there was something more. There was a "raw" feeling, something pure and strong. It was similar to the dragon visions, but it had a different flavor to it.

This one made me feel small and energetic, and the energy fueled a need to fight and struggle, to make sure that I was never stepped on, that I was never the prey. While the dragon visions made me feel massive and majestic, it gave me the energy to act with confidence and certainty, to always strike true and to never hold back.

I think I just felt Alissa's "fox essence." But why was this time so different from all the other times that I observed her transform? Well, this time she did it while I had my thunder cock inside her…

Of course! [Mana Genitals] has turned that part of my body into something more "malleable" and mana sensitive. It would certainly have a special interaction with her "transient form," where her body is made of raw and unstable mana.

I adjust Ciel's - under my head to make myself more comfortable and look down at Lina-. I gently rub her scalp with my fingers, and she closes her eyes in happiness. I can't see Ciel's face, but I know that her expression is either one of happiness due to my tail-hand massaging her head, or one of awkwardness due to my tail-hand massaging her head.

But the amount of mana that I felt was incredible. It was so much that it felt like I was fighting Mavel again and one of his wives was casting a spell. Though, we only sense the mana that escapes the spell, not the mana used for the spell itself, so I guess this is why I sensed so much more mana, I was in the source.

Hana tiredly deposits an exhausted Roxanne beside us, and Ciel casts [Refresh] on them both. It seems that Hana won the duel this time. Because I couldn't control my [Bind], they became -crazed, so to compensate them, I extend two tail-hands towards them and massage their heads.

Yunia scooches closer to me, and I extend a fourth tail-hand to caress her, then her usual stern expression softens a little.

But there was something interesting that I noticed about Alissa's transformation.

"Alissa, transform for me, please," I ask.

"Huh…? Okay…" She wakes up from her nap and obeys diligently.

I use [Sense Soul] to keep a close look on her mana organ. Once she starts to glow, I notice something interesting: her mana organ expands and covers her entire body, then it changes in a way that reminds me of my and Gify's custom [Materialization] spell, and she becomes a fox.

That's it! She doesn't just create a new skin and cover herself with it. She uses her own mana organ to become the fox. She uses her own will and inner "animal" to control the mana organ and transform it.

Fox-Alissa adorably paddles her way to us and curls up on Lina's lap, increasing the spooning chain by one. Then Aoi curls up on top of Alissa, and finally, Gify curls up on top of Aoi, completing the cuddling chain.

Also, this might be the most efficient use of mana that I've ever seen. I don't think there's any actual waste of mana since it's never "taken out" of her mana organ. Of course, some of it is spent during the transformation, but it's a very small amount. She even recovers far more mana than when I recall a completely undamaged summon, it's actually pretty impressive.

After dinner, we do some mana training.

"I've heard of this secret imperial technique before, but I never imagined that it would be so simple," Yunia comments.

"But it's not something you'd normally think about doing. We are taught to focus mana in our hearts, not outside of our bodies," Roxanne says.

"It seems that the average mage knows very little about mana organs," I say.

"Only after you created [Sense Soul] did we become able to see into someone's soul like that, so it makes sense that most mages know very little," Alissa says to me.

"Not even [Spirit Magic] has this much insight into the soul. If we pierce into someone's spirit, then it instantly dissipates and kills them, not to mention that it makes the Gods angry," Yunia says.

"Once we become Lords, there might be people trying to pry into our secrets about the skills that Wolf has created," Alissa says.

"Just another monster for the Lord," Yunia comments and shrugs.

Roxanne claps the tip of her fingers repeatedly in excitement as Lina presents her with the finished workbench. It's usable, but it's not completely safe yet. She can still add some enchantments to protect against explosions and such.

Then, after another long day, we go to sleep.

A note from Manasong

Hall of Fame of Patrons

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Chapter 65: The Last King - Part 3

A note from Manasong

Attention: to conform to the limit of sexual content allowed in a novel, I've censored this chapter. You can look for the uncensored version here.

The symbol "-" denotes a section that got cut for containing sexual content. Also, if paragraphs seem missing, they were also likely censored in an earlier pass where the symbol wasn't used.

Today is the 9th.

-We start the morning kisses. Yunia gives me a morning kiss of her own will, even though I wasn't going to ask her for it. I guess that it would be awkward if she was the only one not doing it, except for Gify, who only gets a morning pat.

Yunia learned [Earth Magic] with one point, though she still can't instant cast.

-

I look outside the window and see the faint streaks of a light rain hitting it. The day is cloudy and gloomy, but for me, it's relaxing. Then the glass starts to get foggy as the air conditioner heats the room.

"If we're going to the dungeon today, then I think that we should all meet my brothers before we go," Yunia says.

"Yes, that'd be for the best," Ciel says.

Hana turns to Yunia. "Should we expect something?" She asks as she smiles gently. "I know that my own brother might challenge Wolf for my freedom when they meet."

I raise an eyebrow at Hana, and she chuckles.

"He's very protective and very grumpy," she adds.

"You'll be fine. Well, at least I'm pretty sure that something like that won't happen," Yunia responds and shakes her head, then she smiles wryly. "I coddled them, so they may seem… immature for their age."

"Oh, that's alright, we can deal with young boys, no problem!" Ciel exclaims excitedly. Then Yunia looks at her oddly, and she hurriedly adds, "Not in that way!"

Yunia lowers her head, a little embarrassed and says, "Oh, I'm sorry, it's just that-…"

Ciel interrupts her, "Yes, I know. We are a family with a few sexual predators, so I don't blame you." Then Ciel glares at Hana and I for a moment.

"But you are a pedophile," I say.

Ciel groans for a second and stares at me with a scowl. "So are you!" She accuses me.

I smirk. "Yes, but I don't sleep with underage boys. Only girls who look underage, like Lina."

"They aren't underage-…" Yunia tries to chime in.

"And neither do I because I don't sleep around with men," Ciel continues.

"So you sleep around with women?" Roxanne asks, grinning evilly.

"N-no!" Ciel denies.

"You've actually slept with more women than I have. That loli harem you had at the Nymph inn was impressive," Roxanne comments innocently.

Ciel glares at her. "But have I slept with more women than you have with men?"

"No," Roxanne calmly admits.

Ciel grins maniacally. "A-ha! There!"

"But would you sleep with boys who look underage if our agreement didn't say 'no men'?" I ask and stare at her intently.

She stops and leans back a little, not wanting to answer. Then she puckers her lips, and her face turns redder as she admits, "Yes. I'm a pedo, you said so. I love young boys just like I love young girls!" Then she sinks her head into her hands.

Lina taps Ciel's shoulder repeatedly. "There, there, you've finally admitted it. Wolfy will grow old, but I won't. Even then, we can always get halfling or dwarven prostitutes for you," she says in a gentle tone.

"I'm not like that~…!" Ciel moans, her voice muffled by her hands.

"But you can be. If you're happy, then I'm happy," Lina responds.

"Maybe we can make Wolfy de-age in her eyes with [Illusion Magic] one day," Alissa suggests.

"I'll make that my graduation project if we ever take that offer to study at the Kabara Magic School," I say and nod in agreement.

Ciel sighs and reveals her blushing face, then glances at Yunia worriedly. She's looking in Ciel's direction, but her striking blue eyes have lost focus a long time ago.

We call the servant to arrange a few things for us. Osaria and Klein will enter a town connected to the [Gate Network] in a few days, so we send them a message saying that we'll meet with them there.

Then we make our way to the castle grounds' middle ring. This is the area that divides the inner and outer grounds, and also where the barracks and the armory are located.

The guards finished their breakfast a long time ago, so the area is quite empty. There's only a few men around, standing guard, and a few squads training.

The armory is a big building, different from the others as it has no windows and the walls are as thick as the Shell. It's a high-security place where some of the most powerful weapons of the entire region are stored, so this amount of security is understandable.

We pass through a dull hall and approach a locker-like room. I look at the plaque above the entrance and nearly freeze. I barely know anything about Ingua, but I have a pretty good hunch that the plaque says "female locker." I notice that even the guard escorting us is female.

Ah, fuck it.

We enter the room, and fortunately, it doesn't smell like an Earth locker would. Inside, we see a well-dressed female elf, a few older elven women who look like commoners, and many elven proto-maids wearing much less clothing than everyone else. Behind them, there are over a dozen stands displaying a variety of full sets of wooden armor.

"Greetings, Ryders. I am Assistant Quartermaster Istante," the well-dressed woman says and bows. She's a tall and slender woman with a square face, an impressive jaw, and a slightly smug smile. She could definitely be a model back on Earth. She straightens her posture and asks me with a gentle smile, "Sir Ryder, do you mind changing in front of other women, or would you prefer to go to the men's changing room?"

"I'm fine," I say and nod.

"Very well. Also, if any of you, Ryders, would like privacy to change, that can be arranged." The girls nod, but no one says anything, so Istante continues, "We've prepared armor for all of you, as requested."

The proto-maids come towards each of us, and I let Aoi down from my shoulder. She grows into big-Aoi, and the maids freeze for a moment, then their training kicks in, and two maids guide her towards a stand in the shape of a dragon that's nearly twice her size.

Three of the common elven women join Aoi and start taking measurements of her body. They must be armorer mages.

"It tickles," Aoi says and chuckles gently. When she's in her large size, her voice gains a low rumble that frightens those who are unprepared for it, but her chuckle is so innocent that the women around her quickly recover from their shock.

The other maids provide sets of folded white clothes for us. The material has a bit of stretchiness to it, reminding me of Yunia's not-yoga pants.

As we receive and inspect these clothes, Istante says, "These sets of clothes go perfectly with our armor. They're very resistant to wear and tear, while also providing a lot of comfort and ventilation, increasing the effectiveness of [Breeze]."

Then I see that there's also underwear.

-

The maid looks disappointed when I put on the set of clothes, obscuring my body from her - eyes.

-

Then the maids start to bring us the armor and help us put it on. Meanwhile, the armorers cast spells on Aoi's armor to shrink it enough to fit her properly. Yunia is the one most comfortable with this situation; she's like a queen getting ready for battle.

First, we receive padded black dragon scale jackets and pants. The padding is rather thick, but more comfortable than what we had before. I don't have points in [Armor Appraisal] right now, so I don't know what they're made of.

These scales are smaller than the emerald scales on our previous armor, and they're also stronger. Both of these characteristics make them less fragile to blunt impacts.

Then comes the plate armor. Its color is a dark brown, with many thin, parallel black circles all over it. This wooden material feels and sounds exactly like steel, except that it's a better heat insulator than metal.

There's a thin padding under the armor to reduce the noise that it makes, and the same goes for the dragon scales. Thanks to that, the high pitched jingle of walking around with this amount of armor is gone, so now we can sneak around far more effectively while fully protected.

I finally get a neck guard, called a bevor, and a sallet-type helmet. This whole armor set reduces my range of motion, but even with my style, it's better to be protected than not since my defense isn't perfect, which Mavel's [Blink] clearly showed.

Now, the only vulnerable spots are the armpits, crotch, and a few slits where a blade could possibly stab through. But since we have the black scales and the padding underneath the plate, there's very little that could actually hurt us. Perhaps a [Rush]-boosted blade could pierce through, but I know that it won't pierce all the way since I "tested" that during our fight in Escanso.

The weight has increased, but not that much since it's distributed over my entire body. I can deal with it, but we have to be careful with stamina now since long battles could be the end of us, except for Hana, who has ridiculous "Endurance."

Roxanne's armor is lighter than ours, but it doesn't get in the way of her casting anymore, so she's gained a small power boost. The advantages that elven armor has over imperial metal armor are that metal slightly disrupts casting and that the elven wooden armor is lighter.

Aoi's armor is the same as ours, but there's a saddle on her back for someone to ride her and straps to tie the rider down. Now that it's smaller, it might be a little awkward to sit on it, but it's doable, especially for me… who's smaller than the average elf…

Aoi looks curiously at herself in the mirror, then she strikes a heroic pose and exclaims, "I'm beautiful, yay!" And flaps her wings, sending a gust of wind through the room. "Oh, sorry."

The armorers chuckle nervously. They seem to have problems accepting that Aoi can speak.

"You're always beautiful, armor or no armor," Hana says and slaps Aoi's back, but they are both so heavily armored that neither of them feels anything.

An armorer goes over to Lina and shrinks her armor to fit her properly. Even though they have smaller sets of armor, they still aren't at the size of an average dwarf. There may be many halflings around due to Confiel's reforms, but that doesn't mean that any of them have joined Confiel's elite guard.

The last armorer checks each of us and adjusts the armor to fit us perfectly. She casts [Grow] and an inverse version of the spell to shape the wood at will.

"I actually feel quite snug inside this armor," I say.

Alissa pulls out her bow and tries it out. Hers has a flat chest so that she can fire arrows while ours are convex. However, she'll rarely use this plate armor since she isn't supposed to be in melee combat, and the same goes for Roxanne. But, knowing that they do at least have some heavy armor to use brings me great comfort.

Aoi pulls her metal halberd out of her [Item Box], scaring the shit out of her armorer, and strikes a menacing pose.

"RAAR!" She roars. "Hahaha!" Then she shows a toothy smile, and even the proto-maids start sweating cold.

"I've never thought that Aoi looked threatening, but now that I see these women cowering around her, I realize that she is quite threatening," Hana comments through [Bind].

"That's right!" Aoi agrees.

"I want a male dragon to curl around me, then cover me in his wings," Roxanne says and sighs.

"Wolfy, work harder!" Hana demands.

"Enough mind conversations. The others can't join in yet," Alissa warns them.

After a little while longer, the fitting is finished, and we undress again.

The proto-maid in front of me helps me undress.

-

"Maybe another time," I whisper to her, and she nods shyly.

-

I smirk at her, then she suddenly freezes again and looks towards my wives. Alissa's wide smile and empathetic nod calms her down, and she looks at me again. She's a pretty, young girl with a bony, oval face, thin lips, narrow red eyes, a cute and small nose, and braided, long golden hair.

Alissa suddenly nudges me through [Bind], and I blurt out, "We are going to conquer a dungeon to become True Nobles, and we are looking for loyal servants to join us when that happens. If you ever feel interested in serving us, we'll gladly negotiate a position for you." I let Alissa's words flow through me, but it takes all of my effort to maintain my smirk and to not look at Alissa.

Recruiting another Lord's servants so openly could be considered rude, right?

The maid looks at me with a blank face, completely caught off-guard.

Before I can say something to salvage this situation, she nods repeatedly and says, "Y-yes, I'll think about it." Then she smiles shyly and blushes again.

Istante raises an eyebrow in curiosity, but some of the other maids don't seem pleased with their fellow co-worker. Not all elves are so accepting of non-elves, and some would even find it "beneath them" to lay with outsiders like us.

The maids help us get dressed again, and I store all of our armor. They know that I can use [Gate], so it's only logical to assume that my [Item Box] is as large as my thunder cock.

"Thank you for your help, Miss Istante, and the others, too," I say and nod respectfully.

"It's our pleasure to aid future nobility," Istante responds and bows.

"Tell Lord Confiel that we appreciate his support," Alissa says.

"We shall," Istante says with a nod.

Then we leave, and a servant takes us to the castle's [Eternal Gate] hub.

We cross through a portal and exit into a grassland atop a hill. There's a tree-mansion almost fully surrounding us. Down the hill, we see a small elven town with many colorful farms around it. After a few rings of farms, there's only green grassland as far as the eye can see.

"Glorampina…" Yunia says, nostalgically.

"Yunia!" A youthful male voice exclaims.

We turn around to the mansion and see two blonde boys rushing towards us. Yunia smiles warmly, nearly all of the usual sternness of her expression gone. She bends her knees a little and receives the two boys with a wide hug. They bury their heads on her neck and rub their wild blonde hair all over her.

"Tutu, tata," she whispers.

Antares glares at me briefly with the side of his eye and hisses at her, "Don't call us that!"

"You didn't complain when I did so a half-cycle ago," Yunia responds.

Both of the boys look up to glare at her and Arturus whispers, "Not in front of them!"

Yunia chuckles evilly and smiles smugly. "Ohohohoh… don't be so shy in front of them. They don't bite, well, some of them don't."

The boys calm down, and they break the hug. They straighten their postures and stare at us with intense eyes, reminiscent of Yunia's.

"I'm Arturus," says one boy.

"I'm Antares," says the other.

Looking at them this closely, I notice how androgynous they are.

Since they don't offer their hands, we bow shortly and introduce ourselves. They are still nobility, so a short bow is the precise amount of respect a young noble deserves.

They get surprised by Aoi's ability to talk, but quickly get over it to continue glaring at me.

"So you're the one that…" Antares starts talking but loses his motivation.

"Antares," Yunia says in a dangerous tone, looking down at him with stern eyes, and I notice that she's using [Mask] again.

The three of them have such similar eyes.

He bites his lip in anger and turns to glare at her.

"You didn't have to do this. We'd gladly take up being a Blood Slave in your stead," he says.

Arturus turns around and stares intently at his sister, adding to his brother's intensity.

I feel a cold determination in Yunia's voice as she says, "I made a decision that was mine to make. Now you have to make the decision to keep the Este name alive or not."

They start a staring contest that Yunia wins after a few seconds as they avert their eyes to look down.

"Perhaps you three should spend some time alone to talk," Ciel suggests.

Yunia shakes her head and responds, "We came here to talk to them."

"And we will have our entire lives to do that. But what you need to talk about with your brothers can't wait," I say, then I stare into her eyes, threatening to break her [Mask]. She looks away after a mere moment to save her spell from me.

I don't really like it when she uses that spell in situations like this one.

The twins nod towards her, also agreeing with us.

"Hmph, fine," Yunia accepts and points her chin up snobbishly.

They grab her arms and almost drag her towards the mansion.

"We'll be waiting back at home!" I yell.

She turns her head to the side and smiles brightly. "Understood!"

I take this free time to make a quick stop at the hunter's guild to sell off the corpses of the monsters we killed in Legado: four Leixe Campi, seven Storm Chargers, two Criatuas, one Sky Stalker, one Legado-type Giant Centipede, and five Legado-type Feral Goblins. All of that together nets us four gold coins.

The Chargers and the Sky Stalkers are worth more due to how dangerous the first level is and how difficult it is to kill a Sky Stalker. The Symbol of Decay is worth four gold coins by itself due to how valuable its goop is, but it's even more valuable to us, so I don't sell it.

When I get back to our mansion, I practice juggling with the tail-hands. I need to learn to use those tail-hands as if they were limbs themselves, so for now, I'll always keep a tail and two horns active. I'll also try to use them as often as possible.

Roxanne is the one who agrees with my idea the most emphatically, then Aoi comes in at a close second.

"Horns are handsome!" She exclaims. Male dragons have horns and spikes while females generally don't, so I get why she likes them.

Yunia spends the rest of the morning with her brothers, and I don't blame her. We're about to enter the dungeon again, and even though I can still use [Gate] to take us back out on demand, who knows what might happen?

She comes back right on time for lunch and gives us a genuine smile.

"Did it go well?" Ciel asks.

Yunia nods and whispers, "Thank you."

I pull up a chair for her, and we eat our lunch.

We all put on our new armor and get ready to continue our adventure.

Confiel included Yunia's weapon in her luggage. It's a beautiful gray wooden longsword with four colored gems in the cross guard. These gems hold four enchantments: [Extend], [Bleed], [Dead Zone], and [Searing Blade].

Confiel was kind enough to give us her sword, but he couldn't give us her armor due to how valuable it is. Once he deposed Mavel, he could only take a limited number of valuables out of the Este family coffers as compensation for his losses, but that couldn't cover the many rose coins that Yunia's armor is worth.

I interlace my fingers with Yunia's, and we recite the words, "We swear to share our war and our soul and to always keep each other's company." Now she's finally part of our fellowship, and we can all feel her direction and distance from us if we concentrate on her.

Now that we're ready, I finally open a [Gate] to the door riddle, and we teleport there one-by-one. At this distance, I can only do one person at a time, so it takes a while for all of us to pass through.

We are back on the dirt island. A dark place, but a little cozy since the humming of the storm outside of the tree is quite calming. Also, these gigantic trees that the elves love so much have been growing on me.

Alissa's head suddenly snaps towards a direction, and someone appears out of thin air.

"Hello, Helios," Ervo says as he dispels his [Invisibility]. I notice a hint of anxiety in his tone.

"Hello, Sir Ervo," I greet him back.

"It seems that Confiel is still very interested in this location," Alissa comments.

Ervo nods and responds, "But of course. Not even the Lords have managed to pass through this door. Anyway, I'll give you some privacy. Excuse me."

He fiddles with a magic tool, then a few seconds later, a [Gate] opens in front of him. He vanishes through it without another word, and we are finally left alone.

Just to make sure, though, I order our Shads to scan the area.

"Now then," I say and grin towards the door. "Let's finally open this."

"Hm… the suspense is making me anxious, too," Ciel says as we walk towards it.

"Nothing like a little mystery to get the blood pumping," Roxanne says.

Hana frowns and says, "I don't think I've ever heard that saying combined with 'mystery' before."

"Of course, a muscle brain would never understand the thrill of a good mystery," Roxanne responds and shakes her head while Lina nods emphatically.

"Bitch," Hana mouths.

"I know," Roxanne whispers with a wicked grin.

I clear my throat to silence the girls, then I state out loud, "You, God-King Arreira, sacrificed your dream to end the war with the Avgi Empire. But your fellow elves didn't understand your reasoning, so in the end, your death failed to accomplish what you wanted: to have the High Forest learn from the Empire while also teaching the Empire what they could, an exchange that would only benefit both nations."

Nothing happens.

"Uh…" I grumble.

"Well, shit," Hana says.

"Heh, I thought it was too easy," Yunia says.

"Confiel did say that he must've read an entire history book to the door, and nothing happened," Lina says.

"So… it's not a history riddle?" I question.

Lina shrugs and says, "I guess, but I don't know what it is, then."

"Try other variations of what we know about his history," Roxanne says.

While she and Lina try out different phrases, I stay silent, deep in thought.

What is the answer, then? Is there some obscure book out there that tells us what Arreira really wanted? Is there something else, something deeper to his dream?

Gih?

Yes, of course! What is the point of this riddle? "A test of someone's historical knowledge"? Or "a test of someone's interpretation of history"?

This is a gauntlet, not a tomb, it's a place full of trials to see if we are worthy of Arreira's "Legado." This is how games get it wrong; an arbitrary logical puzzle doesn't say anything about someone's "worth." A riddle tailored to judge our personalities wouldn't be "passed" with a technical answer, but through a heartfelt one. Or whatever that means, I'm just letting my mind go wild here.

I stop the girls and spill my heart out. "To me, it seems that you accomplished all that you could. You saved the High Forest with the ultimate sacrifice: your life. Hardly anyone will ever be able to fulfill their dreams, and even you, a God-King, is powerless before… I don't know… destiny? Your Thread of Fate? Whatever. If you look down on yourself because you couldn't help the elves become something better, then you're kind of a whiny bitch since it's hard to see how that would trump fucking saving your whole nation from destruction!"

"Oh, wow…" Yunia mutters.

I look around at the girls. "Go on, say it, spill your heart out. Let's see how this goes."

"I agree with Wolfy. You did what your people expected of you: you saved them, even though they might have not understood its significance," Alissa says.

Roxanne is next, "Maybe you could've struck a deal with the Emperor and survived somehow so that you could rule from the shadows. Then you could've fulfilled your dreams without committing suicide. I think your sacrifice is noble, but I don't agree with it."

"Didn't know you were this much of a schemer," Ciel comments.

Roxanne shrugs. "I'm smart, I just don't feel like acting like it."

"In my book, that still means that you're dumb," Hana says.

Roxanne glares at her and crosses her arms. "Fuck you."

Hana smirks. "With pleasure."

"I think he did the right thing. It'd be risky to try to fake his death with all of his generals watching," Ciel continues.

"The book did say that he was crushed by a ravine created by [Fissure]. Nobody ever actually saw his body," Roxanne says.

"There are other ways to know that a person is dead than just seeing their body," Alissa says.

"Fair enough," Roxanne responds and shrugs.

"I hate stupid deaths like this. He let the loyalists die, okay, that helps weaken the power of the warmongers, but maybe he should've fought his generals and died there. It would've made more sense," Hana says.

"Elves despise fighting each other. Him attacking his own generals would've turned the commoners against him," Yunia says.

"Then fuck them… Argh. I get what you mean, but I still think that it would've been better if he'd tried to remove the rebellious generals," Hana says and looks down while pouting.

Lina is next, "I think he should've prevented the generals from hating the Empire to begin with. He's the one who put those generals in power in the first place. It's his fault that they turned against him, too."

"Yeah, the generals betrayed him," Aoi says and puffs smoke, displeased.

Yunia looks down, deep in thought. "There were only wrong choices…" She says in a low tone, then her deep blue eyes pierce each of us. "So many mistakes, so many things that could've been done differently. He saved the High Forest, and the elves are changing. Even though the speed is slow, it's irrelevant, they are changing. His dream will still come true one day, and that's what matters."

I nod and look towards the door.

Nothing.

Now I'm getting angry. "What is all this for?! We are all grave robbers, no 'righteous' person would ever come here. We all need your legacy, your power, and that's it! That's why everyone's here! Let us in, you fucker. Let us in! Or at least give us a sign that you're listening!"

The entire island starts to glow, just like when the teleport for the next level is charging up.

"OH! WE DID IT!" I exclaim.

Alissa glares at me and growls, "You just offended the Dungeon Master, so why do you think that 'it worked'?!"

Oh, shit.

Then we all lose consciousness.

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Chapter 66: Journey - Part 1

As soon as we wake up, we draw our weapons and get ready to fight. Gify pops out of existence, then I re-summon the Hollys and Shads, and we observe our situation.

We stand on a cobble floor, covered in shallow water that barely reaches our knees. A faint mist makes it difficult to see very far. Strange pillars of black rock dot the area.

I cast [Spirit Eyes] and see nothing. Neither does Alissa, Yunia, nor the summons detect any presence besides ours.

We start to relax and observe our environment with curiosity.

The air is chilly, the water has the salty smell of the ocean, the wind is weak and chaotic. The floor is definitely man-made, but the rock pillars aren't, or at least they don't look like it. The oddest thing is that we see light coming from above, but there's no clear source. It's like the entire sky is faintly glowing.

I tell a Holly to fly upwards, and it keeps going up forever. The atmospheric pressure also doesn't drop as it flies up, which implies something magical.

"Well… I'm a little disappointed, but also a little relieved," Hana comments.

"What are you talking about?" Roxanne questions.

She shrugs. "Thought the Dungeon Master was going to punish us, or something."

"You really think that there's someone controlling the dungeon?" I ask.

"Well, this is the tomb of a God-Ruler. They were known to be very prideful," Alissa says and puckers her lips while staring at me.

I cringe and awkwardly play with my tail. "I'm sorry. I didn't think that a humanoid or something with an ego was controlling it; I was imagining that it was more like a construct or something like Ted."

"It's better to not risk offending… whoever this Dungeon Master is," Lina says, and I nod.

Lina's Trivia: It's possible to engineer a dungeon in a way that you can control certain aspects of it. The person controlling it is colloquially known as the "Dungeon Master." Though it's possible that Legado has a Dungeon Master, the way that it's being controlled is much more mysterious than the norm.

"So… now what? Where do we go?" Ciel asks.

The water is perfectly still, the only disturbance is caused by us; the direction of the wind changes randomly; the mist prevents us from seeing that far; there's no sound coming from anywhere, except from us; there's no sun to follow; and the compass is not working, it's spinning around randomly.

I summon twenty small birds and have them fly as fast as they can in all directions.

"Now, we go anywhere," I say with a shrug.

"Pay attention to these rocks, they could mean something," Roxanne says.

"Right. I'll start drawing a map," I say and pull out some paper.

Lina raises the earth and creates a dry platform for us to stand on while I draw a map of the rock formations that the birds can see.

After a good half-hour, we notice something interesting about the map.

"There are fewer rocks in this direction," Lina says and taps the top of the map.

"Point of interest found, let's investigate," I say.

Yunia chants and casts [Ignorance] on herself. She's pretty good with the spell since it has no effect on us, but it does on my summons, though Holly is not affected by it.

I pull out the golems. Ted and Suzy will protect Alissa and Roxanne, respectively, while Jarn will protect our backs.

The birds eventually start to encounter the stone pillars again, which means that the area of interest doesn't go on forever.

I re-summon half the birds and map that area in more detail. In front of us, there's a circle half the size of Rabanara where there's barely any stone pillars, but they seem to be the only things that the birds have found.

"How curious," I comment.

"Get ready for trouble," Hana says, and we nod.

As we make our way deeper into the empty area, we start to feel tense.

Don't tell me that it's another of those damn mental attacks.

Alissa suddenly notices something and tells us to stop. A second later, we see a ripple coming towards us. There's something in that direction.

We stand still and wait. The ripple becomes stronger and touches us, distorting off our legs and causing a bit of turbulence on the water's surface.

Then Alissa sees it first. A four meters tall human-like creature. Its long legs have no feet, making it look like it walks on stilts. The legs are thick, but quickly become as thin as a sword near the bottom. Its large naked torso is of a man with the same dark color as the dark rock pillars around us. Its long arms hold a huge greatsword as tall as its own body, and it looks dangerously sharp. Its head is covered by a tightly wrapped dark cloth.

Holy fuck, that's creepy.

We start fanning out, not wanting to all get caught with a single swing of that huge sword.

It keeps slowly walking towards us. Its thin legs cause minimal disruption of the water.

Suddenly, it attacks.

Hana tanks the hit with her shield. It passes through [Wind Shield] and hits the metal, then she tilts her shield, and with the help of the golems casting [Telekinesis], they deflect the blade upwards.

"[Explosion]!" Roxanne casts, and the monster's head is blown off. Blood, brain matter, and bone fly everywhere, but thankfully, we are far enough away that it doesn't get on any of us.

Then the giant freezes on the spot, and we stand still, wary of any movement. Even though it should have fallen forward in that position, it still remains standing, defying gravity.

"Shouldn't we do something?" Yunia asks.

"Wait, let's observe it for a little while longer. It doesn't seem like we are in any grave danger against it," I say, and she nods.

The giant suddenly starts to melt into a black sludge, including the pieces that were blown off, which all quickly starts to gather around its sword and then forms into another of the dark rock pillars that we see everywhere.

"Considering how many of these pillars there are around us, I'm starting to get a little bit worried," I say and chuckle nervously.

"They didn't turn into these stilt giants when we passed near them, though," Alissa says.

"This area is special," Ciel says.

"I can feel it. There's a faint presence of Life in this area," Yunia says.

"I can't feel any sort of presence," Alissa says.

"Yes, the Life is in the area, not in the giants. They must be something like puppets," Yunia responds with a nod.

I start walking towards the pillar, and Alissa gets anxious. Suddenly, the pillar melts and starts to shift into the shape of a Stilt Giant.

"[Explosion]," Roxanne casts again, but with much less power. The Giant's face splits open, and a bloody mush of brain matter seeps out. Then the Giant freezes again on the spot.

I jump and glide towards it, then I slice its wrist off and the sword drops in the water with a small splash.

"Lina, crush the sword," I order.

She morphs her axe into a hammer and whams the greatsword's hilt. It immediately gets bent out of shape, but after a few more full-powered strikes, it breaks in two.

The Giant turns into a sludge that seeps between the cobble and disappears.

"How curious," I say.

"How creepy," Ciel says, and Yunia and Roxanne both nod.

We continue walking towards the center and soon meet another Stilt Giant. This time, it comes running towards us.

"Wait, it's not really coming towards us," Alissa says.

We stand still, and I notice that the Giant is going to pass behind us.

"Can it even see us?" I question.

"It doesn't seem so," Yunia responds.

The Giant suddenly stops beside us and swipes at me, who's at our right flank. I duck under the swipe, and Alissa fires a [Mana Arrow] at its brain.

The Giant freezes, and Aoi flies towards it, then she severs its wrist with her halberd, and Lina breaks its greatsword in two again.

"Odd behavior, I think we're missing something," I say.

"I'll pay more attention to it, then," Alissa says.

We soon meet the third Giant, and the direction that it's coming from coincides with the position of one of the rock pillars on my map.

It walks towards, and we don't attack, waiting for it to strike first. Then Hana tanks its swipe, and we easily dispose of it again.

"It attacks when a ripple reaches one of its legs," Alissa says.

"How peculiar," I say with a grin.

"Should we try flying with the dinghy, then?" Roxanne suggests.

"Lazy demon," Hana whispers.

"We'll test how the Giants react to it, but they are so harmless that I'd prefer to kill them for their 'Experience,'" I say.

"I'll use a Ring of the Servant, then. I'm not in need of any more skill points, for now," Yunia says, and I agree.

We enter the dinghy and slowly fly forward. I send a bird to the nearest rock pillar and watch it shift into a Stilt Giant after we get to about 100 meters from it. Then it quickly makes its way towards us.

Hana, Aoi, and the golems stay on the ground, waiting for it. Once it appears in front of us, it dashes towards the dinghy in a mad rush.

"AH!" Roxanne shrieks in fear and flies us upwards. The Giant suddenly stops and throws its sword like a javelin.

"Weepers' dream!" Yunia exclaims.

Ciel casts [Wind Hammer], Lina casts [Earth Bullet], and I cast [Telekinesis] at it. With an oddly large amount of effort, the sword is diverted.

Then the sword stops mid-air and black sludge gushes out of its hilt. It quickly takes the shape of the Giant while the one on the ground melts and seeps into the cobble.

"DOWN!" I order Roxanne, and we nosedive.

WE NEED SEAT BELTS!

The Giant instantly gains speed and falls towards us, ready to swing its sword at us.

Alissa fires an arrow into its brain, and we push it away with magic again.

Roxanne hurriedly lands in the shallow water, and Lina hops out, chasing after the sword, which falls near us with a loud clang.

Hana strikes at the sword with her war hammer, but the power of her attack isn't comparable to Lina's. The sludge starts to gather around the sword, but they break it before it has enough time to solidify.

"Well, I guess that means that we aren't allowed to fly," Roxanne says and sighs.

We decide to walk, so I store the dinghy back in my "Items." Thankfully, elves dislike getting their feet wet, so the boots fully protect mine, and the girls' perfect and delicious feet from the salty water.

A few more Giants come towards us, but Alissa easily pierces their brains, and we make short work of their greatswords.

"I leveled up," Alissa says.

"Nice. We'll level, too, soon enough," I say.

Then, after a long and boring march, Alissa notices a light source directly in front of us. I immediately summon a bird to scout ahead, and we increase the pace of our march.

The bird sees a lighthouse on top of a rocky island. They're both pale gray, like normal rock. As it watches, a white sludge seeps out of the cobble floor around the island, taking the shape of a pier. Then the pier gains the same color and texture as wood.

After that, more sludge rises from the floor and takes the shape of a ship with wings. It's long and thin, like a Roman galley. It has large wings positioned vertically, their span is around six meters tall, and they're bony, like a dragon's. The cabin is a wide tent with a small wooden tower reaching up from it. Behind it, there's a large mast with a single fastened sail. A large number of dim and small crystal lights hang loosely from the beams.

Then the boat gains color: its body becomes bright yellow, decorated with light blue lines; the wings become blood red; and the cabin becomes a deep purple. Finally, a rope trimmed with gold grows from the back of the boat and snakes its way towards the lighthouse.

After everything is done, the beacon of the lighthouse starts rotating.

"How curious," I say and smile.

Our increased pace calls the attention of a few more Giants that we easily dispatch, then we finally see the lighthouse in person.

Its beacon seems to be clearing the mist for a short distance around it, allowing us an unimpeded view of both the ship and the pier.

"Huh… that's a chimeric airship," Alissa comments.

"You've seen one?" Yunia asks.

"Only pictures in books."

We climb the pier and split up. Alissa, Yunia, Aoi and I will take a look at the ship, while the others will take a look at the lighthouse. Then Gify pops back into existence, now that we aren't in immediate danger.

We climb up into the ship, and I immediately get a Bazaar's vibes: colorful pots, crates that waft the smells of spices, beautiful tapestries, and numerous rolls of cloth, all tied down to the boat by ropes.

The other girls follow the golden rope and enter the lighthouse. Inside, they find a huge, floating, rainbow crystal brimming with light. They discover that the golden rope enters the crystal, and that gives me an idea.

We walk to the stern of the vessel and climb down the stairs into the hold. The air is stuffy, and the strong smells of spices irritates Alissa's nose. Then we see the golden rope and follow it deeper in.

Right in the middle of the ship, the rope enters a large green crystal, but this one doesn't glow. It's fixed to the ship by some sort of metal mechanism full of gears. I realize that these gears control the wings of the ship. So this must be the main "battery" of the ship and what makes it fly. The rope must be used to transfer mana to the crystal, like a fuel pump.

"This is the ship's core. If we can charge it, we can get this airship to fly," Yunia says.

"Any idea how much MP is needed?" I ask.

"A lot. Tens of thousands, if I had to make a guess."

I wince. "Ouch."

She nods. "Yeah. The lighthouse must have a source of mana if this golden rope came from the crystal."

The other girls climb a spiral stairway around the crystal and enter a room above it. Inside, there are a few large metal levers and some writing.

"Hm… wanna bet that the Giants will swarm us when we start the mana transfer?" I ask with a grin.

"That'd be a stupid bet," Yunia says.

Alissa nods and asks, "But can either of you fly an airship?"

"No…" Yunia responds and looks at me.

I snort. "Why are you even asking me?"

Yunia shrugs. "Who knows. Your world has some odd technology, maybe you'd know something."

I smile and shake my head as I say, "Well. In fact, there is something like airships back there, and I do know a little about how to fly one. But I'd be irresponsible if I said that this knowledge qualified me as an airship captain."

"Better than any of us, I guess," Alissa says.

"Well, I know how to fly," Aoi says and lifts a claw.

"You can act as an advisor, but you don't know how to control one, do you?" I ask.

"Oh, right. Roxanne and Ciel would know that better," Aoi says and nods twice.

"I just have a little knowledge about how they function," Yunia says.

"You both can advise him, then," Alissa says.

I sigh and shrug. "Anyway, let's go up top and see the bridge."

Roxanne and Lina try to decipher the controls of the lighthouse. Curiously, the plaques identifying each lever are written in Andraste. Hana and Ciel go upstairs to inspect the top.

We go up and enter the tent cabin. Inside, we see a fully-fledged magic tool kitchen, a magic tool bathtub, a low table, and a huge mattress on the floor.

"Our tent is better," Alissa says, sounding disappointed.

"Totally," I agree.

We climb up the ladder to the small tower and Aoi goes outside, then flies around it. At the top of the tower, there's a bunch of levers and a flight stick.

"Okay, I kind of have an idea how this thing works," I say.

"See?" Yunia asks with a smug grin.

"At least there's a control station. Controlling the [Fly] gem directly is so dangerous," I say.

"This looks complicated, though," Alissa says.

"Eh. Once you get used to it, you'll see that it's a better way to control vehicles. At least with this, you can limit the input so that you don't self-destruct with stupid maneuvers."

"If you say so."

The controls are rather simple. There are multiple levers, one for each function: controlling the power, up-down movement, sideways movement, forward-backward movement, controlling yaw, sail deployment, wing folding, and wing tilting. There's also a gyroscope, and a glass meter that says "power," which is currently sitting on "Empty."

"Actually, controlling all these levers will be annoying," I say and smile wryly.

"Use me through [Bind]. If we work in sync, then it might be easier for you," Alissa suggests.

Yunia raises an eyebrow but says nothing.

Lina and Roxanne quickly identify the correct levers to pull to charge up the ship, so we get ready for battle: birds will be patrolling around our position to spot incoming Giants; Alissa and Roxanne will stay on top of the lighthouse and attack from a distance; Gify will stay on the bridge to check power levels; the rest of the girls and I will fan out around the area to protect it; and the golems will support us in breaking the swords.

I summon three earth elementals, then I order both them and Lina to start forming small boulders with [Earth Wall] all over the battlefield. This will disrupt the Giant's senses pretty well.

I set up three [Gate] coordinates: one on the lighthouse for Alissa and Roxanne, another on the pier that the girls will use to retreat, and the last one on the deck of the ship.

"Alright. Alissa, turn it on," I order through [Bind].

Alissa pulls the two levers to the correct position, and a low rumble resounds through the air. The water was completely still, but now it's gaining a hint of turbulence, and small waves start to crash on the stone island.

Through a faraway bird, I see a frightening number of Giants slowly awakening.

First comes the stragglers. It requires little effort from us to kill them all and break their swords.

Then comes the first wave. We see their silhouettes first, slowly coming into view from within the mist. The Giants completely encircle us, walking towards us in an oddly synchronized manner. The ripples that they produce add to each others' instead of disrupting them, becoming small waves that crash against our boulders.

The waves reflect back and reach the legs of some of the Giants, who then rush forward. Many of them freeze midway, "killed" by Alissa's small [Mana Arrow]s or Roxanne's precise [Ice Lance]s. Those who survive, stop in front of the line of boulders and slash at nothing.

We charge forward and start butchering them.

Yunia eats an Eia pill and starts dancing between them. Even when they aim at her, their attacks always whiff through nothing. They are too simple-minded to counter her [Precognition], she's untouchable.

I step on top of the boulders to avoid creating more ripples in the water, but even so, they still manage to identify my position.

Their attacks are dull and simple, but if I get hit, it'll hurt like a bitch.

The second wave of Giants appears from within the mist, but we aren't even done with the first.

"DON'T HOLD BACK WITH YOUR MANA!" I bellow an order.

I use [Rush] to weave in between them, leaving a trail of blood behind me. Hana and Aoi burn everything around them with their fire breath, not actually killing the monsters, but definitely crippling them. Lina breaks their fragile legs, and then their swords, each with a single savage strike. Ciel chops off limb after limb, bathing herself in their blood. Yunia holds the arms of the Giants in place with [Chain Life], then severs them without any effort. Roxanne starts to aim [Explosion]s at their swords, heavily damaging them, even the ones still being wielded.

"You are now level 27," the announcer says in my soul space.

Gify, how much longer?

Gih.

Good, my mana is running low.

The third wave comes, and I change gears. "STALL!" I order and unsummon everything to recover as much mana as I can.

We switch to a more defensive style, using the boulders to confuse the Giants, then cripple them instead of killing. Alissa switches to normal arrows and aims at their joints.

"GOLEMS THROW ROCKS TO DISTRACT THEM!" I order.

They fire weak [Earth Bullet]s near the Giants, who respond with immediate counter-attacks towards each rock. With my gliding style, I'm the one who has the easiest time getting close to the Giants while also avoiding disrupting their ripples.

I use my tail to disturb the water beside me, making the Giant respond with an attack, which creates an opening. I lower my gravity with [Telekinesis], then I use my tail to launch off of the floor and spin to dodge the Giant's clumsy attack, which was caused by the ripple. My sword slides through its throat and paints my arm red. Then I use its shoulder as a platform to leap towards the next Giant.

I glide slowly and with patience. The Giants all move in a predictable pattern, so there's no need to rush. One-by-one, the third wave is stalled as I slice through throats and the other girls fight while retreating.

GIH!

"RETREAT!" I yell and land.

I open a [Gate] to the ship and cross through, then I open a [Gate] to the lighthouse, and Alissa and Roxanne join me. Finally, I open a [Gate] to the pier for the girls to retreat through.

Alissa and I dash towards the bridge while Roxanne goes downstairs to detach the golden rope.

We climb the stairs and get our hands on the controls. We both breathe in and calm our hearts, trying to match each other's rhythm and mood.

"Ready?" Alissa asks.

I chuckle and respond, "No, but there's no more time to waste. ENGINE ON!" I push the power lever up. The lights all over the ship turn on, making it almost shine like the beacon of the lighthouse.

"Engine?" Alissa asks as a wave of mana hits us. This wave came directly from the [Fly] crystal.

"Somet-…" My voice dies out as every Giant suddenly turns their head towards the boat.

"I'll go down and keep them away!" Alissa immediately reacts and jumps off of the bridge. I cast [Telekinesis] to slow her fall, and she gracefully lands, then she pulls out her bow again and rushes to the bow.

"Roxanne, come back immediately!" I order her through [Bind].

She responds with a huff as she pulls a lever that detaches the golden rope from the [Fly] crystal. Then she breaks into a desperate dash towards the back of the ship.

The Giants can be frighteningly fast, so much so that I have to summon an electric elemental to help keep them at bay.

I pull the lever to go up, and it starts to rise agonizingly slowly.

"No! Forward first! We need speed!" Yunia yells right after she teleports to the deck via [Gate].

FULL SPEED AHEAD!

I push the "forward" lever all the way up, and we all stumble as the ship instantaneously reaches its full speed.

Oops, this thing is fast!

The golems appear on the deck and start chanting [Earth Bullet]s.

Hana carries Ciel to the [Gate] while Aoi carries Lina. Then the golems finally appear on the deck, too.

Alissa and the electric elemental clear a path in front of us, then I spread out the airship's wings.

The force that the wings produce is so strong that the vessel creaks and protests, but it obeys, and the wings launch us upwards.

Hehe, as gentle as drag racing.

Gih.

I grab the flight stick and gently start to pull it back. The ship responds and we tilt upwards, giving us an impressive climbing speed.

I hear multiple dull "thunk" sounds coming from the bottom of the airship, then a few huge greatswords pierce through the wings.

"[Earth Bullet]," the golems calmly cast in unison.

"[EXPLOSION]!"

"[WINDSTORM]!"

"[EARTH BULLET]!"

"[EARTH BULLET]!"

"[EARTH BULLET]!"

I close the [Gate] and cast [Telekinesis] to push one of the greatswords away from us. Aoi spits a ball of fire that explodes near another, blowing it away. The electric elemental expends all of its mana to stun the Giants that were oozing out of their swords, then the elemental dissipates into nothing.

A storm suddenly blasts around us, pushing away any incoming greatswords. I take a glance at Ciel's MP and see that it's rapidly draining away.

Two Stilt Giants crash onto the deck, stopped dead by the [Mana Arrow]s in each of their brains. Lina and Hana take care of their swords before they can revive.

"BEHIND!" Roxanne shrieks and runs away from the back of the ship, clutching her head in pain from overuse.

Four Giants climb up the stern of the ship and throw their swords at us. I stop the first with [Telekinesis] and send it off the ship. Jarn receives the second with her body, which does no damage to her thick metal chest, then she throws it overboard. The third is stopped by Yunia's [Chain Life] before he can throw his sword, then he receives an arrow in the head from Alissa and falls backward over the edge. Aoi slams her halberd against the fourth, and it crashes onto the deck, then she grabs the greatsword and bends it with her bare claws.

"RAAAAAAH!" She roars like a barbarian as she blows fire onto the sword, making it glow red-hot, then it snaps in two.

Ciel stops her [Wind Storm] and falls to her knees beside Roxanne.

Alissa runs around the boat, looking over the edge and searching for enemies.

"CLEAR!" She yells after a full lap.

Ciel and Roxanne clutch their heads and sit down, then they each chug an MP potion.

The tenseness we've been feeling suddenly disappears, so I reduce the speed of the ship and level it off.

"VICTORY!" I cheer, and the girls join in.

A note from Manasong

Hall of Fame of Patrons

The patrons who support Rupegia shall have their names sung by the bards for they deserve the glory and honor. Their names are:

Oracle Maximillian Hübner.

Prince PreownedFIN.

Lord Andrew Meyers.

Lord Hope.

Lord Samuel Lim.

Lord Bill.

Lord Novgarod.

Lord DJ.

Lord Cidant.

Lord Ashadun.

Lord Michale Erwin.

Lord Enrique Peña Gomez.

Lord Braidborn.

Lord Bakerdea.

Lord Yeeteris Dedmeem.

Lord D4rk Sheep.

Lord Nathan Vanbrunt.

Lord Andrew Heffelbower.

Lord Markus.

Lord Maurice.

Lord Badger.

Lord Brennon Goetz.

Lord Amelgar.

Lord Krawn.

Noble Salty Panda.

Noble Evil.

Noble Yamibomb112.

Noble Mild Fracas.

Noble Geminus.

Noble EESDESESESRDT.

Nobleman Lassiter.

Noble Aclys.

Leave a rating or a review to help me rise to the top or fix my shameful understanding of prose.

Take a look over my blog where all information of the world of Rupegia will be posted.

Join the Discord and discuss, or rant, or meme, or try and fight me so your waifu gets more screentime.

Become a Patron and read chapters in advance, or read the side-stories, or leave your mark on the story, or help choose the next artwork or the next side-story.

Chapter 66: Journey – Part 2

A note from Manasong

Attention: to conform to the limit of sexual content allowed in a novel, I've censored this chapter. You can look for the uncensored version here.

The symbol "-" denotes a section that got cut for containing sexual content. Also, if paragraphs seem missing, they were also likely censored in an earlier pass where the symbol wasn't used.

Our excitement fades, and the cheering stops, but then we start to chuckle, and allow ourselves to relax.

I spread a few birds around the ship as scouts. Then I set the boat to continue moving slowly forward and upwards while we meet up inside the tent.

"Excellent piloting, Wolf," Yunia says sarcastically.

"As gentle as when you -," Hana says and grins.

"No bullying," Alissa says and gives a dangerous look to Roxanne before she can pile on.

I smile awkwardly and say, "Considering the situation we were in, I just didn't want to be slow."

"I'd have done worse if I was at the bridge," Lina defends me.

"We get it, it was just a joke," Hana says and pulls me into a hug. If only she wasn't wearing armor I'd be motorboating her right now.

Then Ciel asks the question that everyone's thinking, "Okay, but now what?"

We are quite literally lost in a sea of mist. The only direction that has any meaning for us is down. There's no reason to go in any other direction.

"This is a Chimeric airship, so why don't we keep going up? That's where their sky lands would be," Lina suggests.

"The scouting bird that I sent upwards hasn't found anything," I say.

"But we only found the lighthouse when we got near it."

"Well, at least we knew that there was something interesting in that area."

She shrugs. "We don't really have any other hints, so we might as well try."

I rub my chin in thought. "True… In any case, we can still try to recharge the crystal with our mana to increase how long we can keep flying."

"Well, this could take a while, so I'll go rest and recharge my MP," Roxanne says.

"Same," Ciel says and sighs, then lays down on the bed, armor and all.

The girls spread around the boat, and I return to the bridge with Alissa.

Hana opens a crate and finds salted meat inside. She nibbles on it, and the meat doesn't shift into sludge or dust, no matter how long she waits.

"Oh, shit, this is real meat!" She exclaims and eats the whole slice.

Aoi suddenly appears beside her and stares at the crates as if they were my seed.

"Don't eat everything, we have to share," I tell her through [Bind].

"O-ka~y!"

"I'll sort and store all these crates and pots. That should make the ship lighter," I say, and Alissa nods, then I hop off the bridge and get to work.

This is the dream of many adventurers: finding loot. Dried and salted meats that none of us recognize; lots of alcoholic drinks that make Hana salivate; tapestries with all kinds of patterns, just like how the elves like them; a variety of strong and aromatic spices; incenses, oils, and possibly medicinal herbs, though their smell reminds me of our elven scented candles for sexy times; dozens of rolls of textiles; super fluffy feather pillows; assorted colorful feathers; and assorted dried fruits.

Among the fruits, I find four full crates of dried cocoa fruit.

Cocoa.

Actual cocoa.

"Oh… oh, Gods… oh, yes. Hm-hmm, hm-hmm! Yes, yes, yes!" I mumble as I hug the crate and rub it tenderly.

"Are you going to fuck that fruit?" Hana asks.

"I wish I could," I answer, and she laughs.

The rolls of textiles aren't anything special, but Lina showed a bit of interest in them since they'll probably be useful for the cosplay costumes that I wanted her to create.

"Hm… how odd that there aren't any valuables," Hana says.

"What do you mean?" I ask.

"Most caravans always carry a small amount of gold or other highly valuable goods. It might be risky because they're a prime target for theft, but the payoff from trading these goods makes it worth it."

"I think that the gold would probably be at the end of the dungeon, no?" Yunia asks.

"I guess." Hana shrugs.

Then I go to the bridge and get Alissa to identify the herbs. She quickly learned that she has to keep her hands on the flight stick or the ship will quickly drift off course. Good thing that we have the gyroscope to know the ship's attitude, otherwise it would be much more awkward to control it.

"Oh, those are Tonique leaves," she says and points to the crate with the most pungent smell. "I don't recognize the others."

"What do you do with Tonique?" I ask.

"A very strong tea. It helps you wake up in the morning," she answers with a warm smile.

The smell reminds me of mint and lemon, then I remember Ciel's feet.

Oh… this smells like Ciel's foot lotion…

"Smells delicious, actually," I say and grin.

Alissa raises an eyebrow, and a small prod into my thoughts is enough for her to catch my meaning.

"We'll all need a good [Massage] after today," she says and grins while her feet fidget anxiously.

I kiss her lips and climb down the ladder.

Ciel was convinced to brush Roxanne's hair during their break. Her slightly annoyed pout quickly melts away and turns into a smile as I walk towards them.

"I heard from Hana that the cargo was a good haul," Ciel comments, a little excited.

"Indeed, it was. I'll give you girls the full list later, but for right now, I'd like you to identify these goods," I respond and pull out the crates with the possible medicinal herbs.

"Well, this crate is useless," Ciel immediately says and grabs a bag full of dried leaves. "This plant is an aphrodisiac. We really don't need any of this."

"Maybe I don't, but what about you girls?" I ask with a shit-eating grin.

Ciel raises an eyebrow and pouts. "Isn't that your job-?" She asks.

I scoff. "How sexist. Why do I have to do all the work?"

"Because you have every sexual skill known to civilization. Also, you'll always have your spirit touch."

"Don't stop brushing, please," Roxanne asks, and Ciel obeys.

I chuckle and raise my hands in defeat. "Alright, I'll make it my reason for existence to satisfy all of you."

"Ohohoh, you better," Roxanne says as she smiles.

"Right, next crate," I say and open it.

"- hardener," Ciel answers and looks away.

I raise an eyebrow and say, "Like… something you give to old men who can't… get it up?"

"Exactly."

"O-kay… next."

"Fertility enhancer."

"Next."

"Contraceptive."

"How does that work?"

"The 'life' inside of the semen dies, and it becomes clear."

"Right, next."

"I don't recognize that one."

"Smells really good, though," Roxanne says, and she starts to breathe heavily.

I stare at Roxanne's perfect, unnaturally pale skin, then I focus on her thin, red lips. She licks them with that cheeky tongue of hers, and I swallow heavily.

The mast tries to unfurl, and I get a pretty good idea about what this herb does.

"Another aphrodisiac, the kind that you make into incense," Ciel says.

"We have a crate full of a variety of incenses with different names, I bet one of them uses this herb," I say.

"Don't worry, we'll find out which one it is, eventually," Roxanne says and leans on Ciel's chest, who stops brushing and switches to caressing Roxanne's head.

"Alright, there's only a few crates left," I say and continue pulling them out.

"Oh, now that one is actual medicine," Ciel says, and Roxanne nods.

So, it seems that we got some rare medicinal components. The Chimeras aren't the most pious of the races, so they rely a lot more on potions and other things to heal themselves.

"Are we done?" Roxanne asks, impatient.

"Yep. I'll show you our booty, if you want," I say.

"No need," Roxanne replies and covers Ciel's lips with her own.

The aromatic aphrodisiac is strongly affecting her, possibly due to her race.

I sit on a cushion beside the low table and watch -. Slowly, Ciel's armor is removed as she melts in Roxanne's grabby arms.

Then I start to notice a change outside: the mist is clearing.

I walk out onto the deck to see things with my own eyes just as Yunia comes to warn us of the change.

"Oh, right, summons. You're always watching," she comments, and I only smile in response.

We move up to the bow and look around.

Blue, there's only the color blue around us. We don't see any clouds, or the sun, or even the ground. If it weren't for the wind, it would be very hard to notice if we were moving at all.

Now that we're out of the mist, I summon some Hollys to help scout.

Suddenly, a strong gust of wind hits us and tilts the boat to the side.

"The next challenge has started?" I question out loud.

"Looks like it," Yunia says and holds on to the balustrade just as another gust hits us.

Roxanne groans as her sexy time is interrupted and helps Ciel armor herself up again.

"I'll go to the bridge and help Alissa," I say, and she nods.

Lina inspects one of the many lasso-like ropes around the deck, then she gets an idea just as she almost loses her footing again.

"Wolfy! I think that we should tie these ropes to our waists so that we don't fall off the ship!" She shouts.

"Good idea!" I shout back and relay that information to the other girls.

On the bridge, there are precisely two of these ropes for us. They may as well be "proto-seat-belts."

I take control of the flight stick and try to counteract the wind gusts. Alissa and I calm our hearts and hold onto the [Bind], sharing control of our bodies with each other. I work the flight stick and the power lever while she works the rest.

The wind is hitting us mostly from behind, so I get an idea. I unfurl the sail and lower the power, then I tilt the wings down so that the gusts hit the flat part and help push us forward.

The ship creaks and protests, but I've pulled the power lever back by 30%, so I think that it increased our efficiency. It also becomes harder to control the ship, so we strain ourselves trying to improve our skill as fast as we can.

I take a look through the system and find the [Piloting] skill, so I take out the five points I had in [Acrobatics] and put it in that instead.

Our reactive piloting immediately becomes proactive. I focus all of my senses on feeling the wind, which is quite easy to do on this open bridge. Any small shift in direction or speed gets an equal and gradual response to counteract it. The bumpy ride quickly becomes much smoother, though the ship is now constantly swaying.

"Hey, I'm getting the hang of this," I say, and Roxanne's mind immediately screams "cheater" in Ciel's voice as she chuckles.

The chaotic gusts become a current that snakes through the air and brings us… somewhere.

The current slowly starts to point downwards, then it becomes stronger and stronger. The ship creaks louder as the turns become tighter.

"I don't like this!" Hana yells as she sees how hard the wings are shaking. "Too much turbulence!"

Dust starts to appear within the current, allowing us to see it: a massive tube that descends towards the infinite blue, slowly becoming a chaotic spiral that I'm certain would rip the ship apart.

"Time to escape this current," I say, and Alissa nods.

The current pushes us back to the middle, trying to keep us from escaping it, so we start to gently sway from side to side, gaining momentum.

We drive up the side of the torrent, almost rolling the ship sideways, then we dive downwards and gain significant momentum. We straighten the wings and fold them upwards until they're vertical.

Like an arrow, we shoot out of the current and rapidly start to lose speed. We increase the power and straighten the wings again before we stall. Then we see a tornado forming.

Dozens of other tubes of dust start to grow out of the infinite blue into a spiral. All together, they create a massive tornado of dust. Even though we're now out of the current, we are still being slowly dragged towards the tornado.

"Okay, now that looks bad," Hana says.

"It's dinner time already… let me rest!" I complain, then one of the Hollys spots something at the "base" of the tornado. "Bad news, girls, our target is at the bottom of the tornado!" I yell.

"That's fine, I can fly!" Hana yells.

"I DON'T!" Lina screams, almost panicking.

Hana opens her arms wide and says, "Come to me, then!" Lina immediately jumps into her arms, shaking in fear.

"Your tits are too fat, I won't be able to carry you," Roxanne says to Ciel.

"I-I'll go with Aoi, then," Ciel responds, unsure of how to take that, and walks towards my large armored dragon.

"But you're mine!" Roxanne says and winks to Yunia.

"Okay…" Yunia responds, a little concerned about the frustrated - predator coming towards her.

Then I call the golems to the bridge and store them.

With our preparations for the worst case completed, I partially fold the wings and let the ship start to fall downwards. Folding them seems to reduce our susceptibility to the air currents, so it's the best way to descend without being dragged into the tornado.

The building at the base of the tornado gradually becomes more visible. It's a large dome-like metal structure. Four arms ending in smaller domes stick out from the bigger dome and spin at high speeds. It doesn't take a genius to understand that the spinning domes have something to do with the tornado.

The Hollys start to have problems resisting the pull of the vortex and get sucked into it one-by-one, so I unsummon them. Then I resummon some birds and post them around the ship, looking out in every direction.

Aoi notices something odd about the wind, then she and Ciel yell at the same time, "The winds are changing!"

"How so?!" I question.

I get my answer when we all watch a current of dust unroll itself from the storm and start to swing in our direction.

I spread the wings again, giving us some forward momentum, and avoid the torrent. The wind starts to have more of an effect on the ship, making us drift so much faster towards the tornado that I'm forced to maneuver away to maintain our distance.

Then two more wind currents detach from the tornado and start to swing at us. They all miss, but then their "heads" turn towards us and give chase. Three angry giant worms of dust and wind chasing after a widdle boat with wings.

"They are going to catch us," Aoi says through [Bind].

"I can see that."

"We need to do a stall maneuver."

"Alright."

We keep flying downwards until the wind worms are just ten meters behind us. Then I suddenly pull the "up" and the "backward" lever while tilting the wings, increasing our drag and slowing us down.

The boat creaks again and threatens to break apart, then the worms fly past us and immediately start to turn around to give chase again. I straighten the wings and accelerate forward with full power.

We fly past the worms and they make a full loop, struggling to catch up with us. Then they split up in three directions.

Two of the currents still part of the tornado dissipate into nothing, and the three worms chasing us gain speed. They start to catch up with us again, and I hesitate from pushing the boat any harder, fearing that I'm going to break something.

We start to get close to the metal domes. The lack of a point of reference makes it difficult to guess its size, but I know that it's huge.

One of the birds spots a floating pier-like structure attached to the bottom of the main dome. That's our true destination. Then the dust tornado fully wraps itself around the dome, blocking both our view and our passage.

Shit.

"Ciel, can you make a hole in the tornado for us to pass through?" I ask her through Aoi.

Her face pales, and she looks at Aoi with a frightened expression. "That's asking a lot! I'm not sure!" She answers.

I summon four wind elementals.

"What about now?" I ask again.

She holds her forehead in anxiety. "W-we might!"

I smile, and Aoi copies it, though hers is much more threatening. "I believe in you."

"I love you…" She mumbles.

"Odd time to say that, totally not ominous. But yeah, I love you, too."

Then I breathe deeply and relax. Alissa glances at me with a gentle smile. The other girls aren't as happy as she is, though.

"HOLD ONTO YOUR BUTTS!" I yell and grin. "Now, do a barrel roll!" Then we pull the levers. I use a bit of [Telekinesis] to keep Alissa and myself at the controls, while the girls hold onto the boat for dear life.

One after the other, the three dust worms miss us and loop around repeatedly, trying to catch us.

With the boat upside-down, I pull the flight stick down and we nosedive. The ship creaks, but we manage to make the turn, then I start a corkscrew descent.

"AHAHAHAHAHAHA!" Aoi and Hana laugh out loud together.

Yunia is frozen, stuck to one of the ship's beams while hugging Roxanne with all her strength. Lina is like a statue in Hana's arms, so immobile that it doesn't look like she's even breathing.

O~~H FUCK! WE'RE GONNA DI~E!

I laugh out loud with the girls, and Alissa chuckles, too.

When we're close to the bottom of the tornado, I pull the wings back and aim the airship forward, then I push the "forward" lever to full power.

We gain lots of forward momentum, but we're still falling, so I slowly pull the wings open again, and the drag reduces our falling speed.

"CIEL! NOW!" I yell.

Aoi carries her to the prow, and the wind elementals follow. Then Ciel starts to chant.

"What happens if she fails?" Alissa asks.

"The ship gets wrecked, but we'll survive," I respond.

"Unless we get dragged into the spinning domes."

"I'll [Gate] us out the moment it all goes to shit."

"Alright."

I show a fearless grin. We've made it through worse; we aren't even in real danger of dying here. I also won't let a stupid dungeon best us so easily.

As we get closer, the tornado in front of us becomes frighteningly enormous. Our boat is a mere ant in comparison to it. It's a huge, angry storm of dust that wants to wreck us.

I'm on a boat, motherfucker, outta my way!

"[WINDSTORM]!" Ciel casts. A hole as tight as Lina's opens up in the tornado, one that the boat should just barely fit through.

Oh, boy.

Big, long objects ramming into small holes: boat edition.

I pull up a little, giving us some altitude, then I pull the lever to tie up the sail. We lose a quarter of our speed, and the worms start to catch up.

Fuuuck…

I unsummon all birds, then I summon another wind elemental.

My mana…

"STOP THE WORMS! USE ALL YOUR MANA!" I order, and the wind-Alissa obeys.

The worms slow down, giving us enough time to get to the hole, then I fold the wings.

All of my focus is on that tight, virgin hole. Mine and Alissa's hands are as stiff as rocks; any wrong movement would ruin it all. I'm gonna pound that entrance right in the center.

I hold my breath in, and we cross into the hole. The top of the wings clip against the tornado and break with a loud crack. The sudden force of it makes us spin. I immediately turn off all translatory motion and focus on counteracting the spin.

This is fine, we are fine, I can deal with this.

I chuckle nervously as I look at the gyroscope and see that it's going fucking crazy, but the spin is stable. It's mostly pitch, plus a little bit of roll, with some faint yaw mixed in.

I stop the roll first, then the yaw, then when we're pointing upwards, I activate the "forward" lever again.

There, done!

The left wing is snapped a third of the way from the ship, with the rest hanging loose, while the right is just a little bent and cracked. We can still fly perfectly fine, though.

The girls are also fine; it would take a much stronger spin to make them lose their grip.

"AHAHAHAHAHA! WE DID IT!" I scream. Aoi, Hana, and Gify are the only ones who laugh. Everyone else is sweating cold, but Alissa does chuckle nervously.

The domes are above us, and I can see that none of the dust worms are following us anymore. We awkwardly make our way to the dock, and I slow down. The wings are only necessary to improve the mana efficiency of flying, so we can approach the landing zone without any rush.

With some help from the girls, I maneuver the airship sideways onto a metal platform to avoid snapping off the broken wing. Then we land successfully.

With a sigh, I turn off the power completely, and we assess the damage.

The wing is large but it's also light, so we can lift it back into place and fix the broken beams with [Grow]. There's some internal enchantment inside the wood, but Lina is confident that she can repair it. The enchantment lines are simple to repair; there would only be a problem if the crystal was cracked.

Repairs will have to wait, though. My watch says that it's 9 PM, so now we'll rest.

A note from Manasong

Hall of Fame of Patrons

The patrons who support Rupegia shall have their names sung by the bards for they deserve the glory and honor. Their names are:

Oracle Maximillian Hübner.

Prince PreownedFIN.

Lord Andrew Meyers.

Lord Hope.

Lord Samuel Lim.

Lord Bill.

Lord Novgarod.

Lord DJ.

Lord Cidant.

Lord Ashadun.

Lord Michale Erwin.

Lord Enrique Peña Gomez.

Lord Braidborn.

Lord Bakerdea.

Lord Yeeteris Dedmeem.

Lord D4rk Sheep.

Lord Nathan Vanbrunt.

Lord Andrew Heffelbower.

Lord Markus.

Lord Maurice.

Lord Badger.

Lord Brennon Goetz.

Lord Amelgar.

Lord Krawn.

Noble Salty Panda.

Noble Evil.

Noble Yamibomb112.

Noble Mild Fracas.

Noble Geminus.

Noble EESDESESESRDT.

Nobleman Lassiter.

Noble Aclys.

Leave a rating or a review to help me rise to the top or fix my shameful understanding of prose.

Take a look over my blog where all information of the world of Rupegia will be posted.

Join the Discord and discuss, or rant, or meme, or try and fight me so your waifu gets more screentime.

Become a Patron and read chapters in advance, or read the side-stories, or leave your mark on the story, or help choose the next artwork or the next side-story.

Chapter 66: Journey – Part 3

A note from Manasong

Attention: to conform to the limit of sexual content allowed in a novel, I've censored this chapter. You can look for the uncensored version here.

The symbol "-" denotes a section that got cut for containing sexual content. Also, if paragraphs seem missing, they were also likely censored in an earlier pass where the symbol wasn't used.

There are a few landing platforms around us, and an array of walkways connect them all to a stairway that leads up to an opening in the underside of the metal dome.

We use all our senses, but we can't find a single living thing, not even a trace of Life, so we have to assume that we're completely alone. We all take off our armor and relax. Though, if we were in the wild, we wouldn't get so comfortable.

We eat a light snack to stave off hunger, then we take a bath in the open.

As soon as we're washed and rinsed, Roxanne glues herself to me, begging for some attention.

-

"[Mana Genitals] makes it taste better, too," Aoi says, and Alissa and Hana nod in agreement.

"Hm… I wonder what else I can do with this skill. It's been at level one for a while, now," I wonder, then my mouth is sealed by Roxanne's lips.

-

- Ciel meets a tentacle monster for the first time -

- Alissa sighs in satisfaction and melts in my dragonkin's arms. "I love these scenarios."

-

I look at Roxanne and smirk. "You'll be next, sometime soon," I say.

"D-don't tease me before it's time," Roxanne says and fidgets nervously.

- Wolf talks about a new way to use [Mana Genitals] -

- I continue, "Alissa's [Fox Transformation] is what gave me that idea. 'Willpower' is used for magic that doesn't follow the laws of physics. 'Intelligence' is used for spells that copy physical phenomena. Alissa transforms by covering her body with her mana organ, then she 'forces' it to change to her will. So, since my - is already made of mana, I thought that I could make it transform in any way that I wanted if I wished hard enough."

"Your 'Willpower' is pretty high, so something like that should be simple for you," Yunia says.

"Can you try to transform into something else, now?" Alissa eagerly asks.

"Not yet. I'm still not sure how your physical body is preserved within the magical one," I respond.

"I bet it's going to be soon," Hana says with a smirk, and I respond with a smile.

"Once you do it, could you transform into anything?" Lina asks as she nurses Ciel back to life.

"Possibly. But just changing into a dragon is taking quite a lot of effort, so trying to transform into something else would likely take just as much effort."

"You have anything in mind, little Lina?" Hana asks teasingly.

She shakes her head twice. "N-no… just thought it would be nice to be able to take any form you want."

"It would…" I say, gently.

I finally relax in the bath and enjoy the view. The tornado has disappeared, so only the dome above us blocks part of our view, but there's still plenty of sky to look at. Staring into the infinite blue is so calming that even Lina feels at ease here.

With our "recreation" time over, we prepare tonight's dinner: shredded dry meat with not-onions, not-corn, mashed not-potatoes, and mild spices. With Ted, Suzy, and Jarn starting to help out, our workload is very low, allowing us to relax while the meal is made.

The low rumble of the tornado above the metal dome and the perpetually spinning four metal arms make for quite the novel background for our meal.

"I feel like this day was so short," Yunia comments wistfully.

"Maybe the lack of a sunset is affecting us," I say.

"Maybe, but it really felt like the day went by so quickly," Lina says.

"Is every day going to be like this?" Yunia asks.

"While we stay inside the dungeon, probably. Our lives were much calmer before," I answer.

"But we are still way more active than the average adventurer," Alissa says.

"I'm fine with it," Ciel says wistfully while staring out to the infinite blue.

Out of all of us, she's the one who should be the happiest right now.

I send Lina back to our mansion in Goloria to retrieve the dessert that the servants left for us: a not-blueberry cheesecake. If there's just one thing that the elves do right, it's desserts. I can only imagine the sweets that they'll come up with once they start to import chocolate.

We have a little time before we have to sleep, so I spend it massaging everyone's feet. This time, I apply some not-vanilla lotion that should keep their skin from cracking under the stress of walking and fighting all day.

"Thank you…" Yunia shyly says after I'm done with her.

"No, thank you for having such delicious feet," I say with a smirk.

"I'm not sure how to take that…" She smiles wryly.

With her hair straight, she does resemble her mother's portrait quite a bit. She just needs some small glasses, a cigarette skirt, and a jockey whip to look like a strict teacher who "rewards" good students.

After having my fill of their feet and legs, it's time for the most important event of the night.

"Lina, I'm ready," I say and grin at her.

"Oh…? Okay," she answers in a low voice and gets on all fours -.

"Hah, no, not that." I chuckle, but I don't stop her. She sits down, then tilts her head in confusion. "[Bind], I'm ready for one more."

"O~h…!"

She scurries over to me and sits in seiza, her gloomy eyes locked with mine, brimming with expectation.

"Alright, here it goes," I say and cast [Bind].

I pull her soul into mine and release it there, then her "string" appears. I pull on it, and her "blanket" comes out, then I immediately start to feel anxious and fidgety.

"Uh… you have to calm your heart, Lina, you're too anxious," I say.

"Sorry…" She answers and closes her eyes to meditate.

As if a soothing breeze is washing over me, her blanket slowly stops transmitting her anxiety.

"That's better now," I say, and she sighs in relief, then I wrap myself around her blanket and dive into her mind.

I see memories of her childhood. Her brother, her father, and her mother are all cute-looking children like her. It's actually hard to tell who is the oldest of them all.

But her memories are… fuzzy, blurry. They seem like they've lost some of the color, details, and emotions that were attached to them.

Then Hildegard, her former master, appears in her memories. These are all black and white, but at least they're crisp and clear. Her memories of Helganst, Hilde's mother, are especially darker. I don't see straight-up abuse, it's just that Helganst is an unpleasant woman.

Then we appear in her memories, and they regain all of their color and vibrancy. While Hana's memories focus on my -, Lina's focus on my face. She stares at me more often than I'd realized.

After a while, I finally reach the area where she "speaks." She nervously hums a song, trying to calm herself.

I pick up a string and return to my soul space with it.

"Hello, Lina. It's me," I say through [Bind].

Her eyes lose all gloominess as she opens them wide in excitement. "OH! W-WOW! This is so simple, it's incredible! I-it's actually so much easier to talk this way!"

"Calm down a little, Lina. You can't go crowding my mind space so much with your enthusiasm," I say as I smile wryly.

"Okay," she responds with a nod.

"You stole her spirit?" Yunia asks. She seems to be using [Spirit Eyes].

"I think I just took a small part of it, somehow. It creates a sort of 'bridge' between us," I answer.

"Without rupturing her spirit? This spell is incredible, but I'm also worried about how it might've been created…"

I nod in agreement. "[Summoning Magic] is very useful, but imagining how someone came up with these spells is… frightening."

"So, you can 'summon' her now?" She asks.

There are two ways to control the "string" that appears in my soul space. One is to tug at it gently, which would pull Lina's "blankets" into my soul space and allow me to control her; while the other is to grab the string and pull with all of my strength while allowing my mana to escape through it, which would 'summon' her to me.

I do the latter with Lina's string and wish her to appear beside me.

"I'm coming…" she mutters. Then she glows and disappears, immediately reappearing beside me.

I pull her into a hug -. Lina lays her head against my chest and almost sighs, feeling a supreme sense of comfort.

"Impressive," Yunia mutters. "How long until you can do this to me?"

"Maybe a day-cycle. It's been getting easier to manage the multiple [Bind]s, and it's not as distressing anymore when the girls' emotions seep into me."

"Even I'm starting to feel like I'm missing out," Ciel says with a wry smile.

Lina's soft little hands start to run along my chest-. I look down, and she smiles up at me like an imp.

"I wanna make Ciel jealous," she says through [Bind].

All aboa~rd! The Train of Pleasure is about to depart! Destination: Lina!

Today is the 10th.

-

Even though I wake up fulfilled, I don't really want to leave the bed today. This place is just so calming, and the fact that we're about to start another hectic day is already making me feel tired.

I slap my cheeks to drive the laziness away. No rest for the wicked, so we can't rest, either, lest they manage to find a way to overpower us.

Lina increased her level to 27. Her [Hammer Use], [Parry], [Earth Magic], and "Sanity" increased by 1 (now 13, 1+8, 5+6, and 14).

I also increased my level to 27. My [Sword Use], [Dodge], [Battlefield Perception], [Mana Genitals], and "Speed" increased by 1 (now 12+10, 4+6, 1+2, 2, and 14), and I learned [Acrobatics] with 1 point (now 5+1).

Alissa leveled up to 32. Her [Hawk Eyes], [Enhanced Reflexes], and [Mana Control] increased by 1 (now 5, 4+2, and 4).

Breakfast is enhanced by Alissa brewing some Tonique tea. Its taste is very strong, but it goes perfectly with mild fruity sweets. It really does help us wake up and wash away the laziness growing within me.

First, we start the repairs of the ship. It's better to have it ready for an escape, just in case.

The golems lift up the broken wing, then I summon an earth elemental that holds it in place for us while Lina, Yunia, and I take a closer look at the damage.

The beams are made up of smaller beams that were glued together with [Grow], so Yunia and I undo the "gluing," allowing Lina to weld the tubes of gold together. Then we [Grow] the beams back into their original position until they are firmly glued together.

Istante, the Assistant Quartermaster, gave us a book that fully explains how to repair any sort of wood with magic. It even seems to have more information than we previously knew about this subject, so it's very useful for us right now.

During repairs, we have to supply the wood with nutrient-rich soil, water, and light. We use Ciel's [Spirit Light] as a light source, and it helps speed up the repairs by quite a lot.

Yunia has more experience with using [Grow] in non-standard ways, so she takes charge of the repair while I'm just the support.

The other wing of the ship isn't broken, but there are visible cracks, so we repeat the process. We split the beams open, and Lina takes a look at the enchantment lines, then she does some simple repairs to them.

"I think we overdid it. The wood seems stronger than before," Yunia comments as she taps the repaired beams.

"Alright, we'll be more careful next time. This 'repair soil' is rather valuable, so I don't want to waste it," I say, and she nods in agreement.

Repairs are completed after about half an hour. After that, we test the airship a little to see if our repair job holds. Then we put on our armor and do a warm-up, getting ready for another day full of challenges.

We walk up the stairs leading into the underside of the metal dome and cast [Spirit Light]s since there's a complete lack of any sort of lighting around. There are crystal lights, but they're all turned off.

We enter the dome and see a very long, dark corridor that leads to a double door. The floor is composed of white tiles while the walls are made of peach-colored concrete, giving it a very "sterile" feel. The only source of light besides our own is an ominous glow escaping from the edges of the door at the end of the corridor.

I summon Shads, Hollys, and a spirit elemental, then I spread them out to map the area. I put on [Reo Language], and the information plaques become readable.

There are many rooms and facilities that seem to have been designed to sustain a sizable colony. I see barracks, mess halls, storage rooms, an armory, an entertainment area with shops and sports fields, a greenhouse, and a residential area. Some areas are open to the sky, but I couldn't see them from above because there seems to be an enchantment that's cloaking them.

Then the spirit elemental dies as it crosses through the wall into an area called "engineering."

"So, the spirit elemental just died when it tried to enter 'engineering.' Apparently, there are areas that we don't have access to," I say.

"A point of interest for us," Roxanne says.

"The closest point of interest is still down the hall," I say and point to the glowing door.

"Let's continue, then," Alissa says.

I stop at a plaque that's pointing to the door at the end of the corridor. "Looping Winds Control Station," I say.

"Oh, I see. The Looping Winds are the Chimeric equivalent to rivers or roads," Lina says.

"So, someone was controlling that tornado?" Alissa asks.

"Or something," I say.

We approach the door, and beside it, I see a small glass panel protecting a small gem.

I summon a spirit elemental, and when it tries to pass through the door, it gets destroyed instantly.

"Well, that's warded against spirits, alright," Yunia says.

"Just in case, I'm going to do this," I say and summon a goblin. "Open the door," I order it.

The ugly green thing grabs the door handle and turns it, then a buzzer plays, and a female voice says, "Access denied. Repeated attempts will trigger the alarm. Please use a blue keycard for access, thank you for your understanding."

I grin and say, "This will be interesting…"

A note from Manasong

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Chapter 67: Survival Horror - Part 1

"What are you grinning for?" Roxanne asks.

"This reminds me of the video games I used to play," I say and sigh nostalgically.

"What kind of games?" Alissa asks as her ears twitch repeatedly, a sign of curiosity.

"Horror."

"What…" Yunia mumbles and grips her longsword harder.

I grin again. "So, how about we split up and search the area? It'll be faster this way," I suggest.

"N-no! Are you insane?! That's the worst decision we could make if we were in a 'horror' novel!" Roxanne exclaims and bonks the top of my helmet with her fist.

"Most of us have [Bind]. So we can all be summoned to Wolfy in case something happens," Hana says as Alissa gently pulls Roxanne's fist away from my head.

"What do you mean by 'horror'?" Aoi asks.

"Horror is a genre of fiction which is intended to frighten, scare, disgust, or startle its consumers by inducing feelings of horror and terror," Ted answers.

"Well, hello there, Mr. Wikipedia," I say.

"What's 'Wikipedia'?" Aoi asks.

"Wikipedia is a multilingual online encyclopedia created and maintained as an open collaboration project by a community of volunteer editors," Suzy answers.

"What's 'online'?" Aoi continues.

"'Online' is a computer technolog-…"

"That's enough. We'll be here all day if we continue on like that," I interrupt Jarn.

"Awn… it sounded fun," Aoi and lets her head drop in sadness for a moment.

"Another time," Ciel says as she pats Aoi's armored head.

I bring our conversation back on track, "Back to the plan… Ciel, Yunia, the golems, and I will form a team; Alissa, Lina, and Aoi will form another; and Roxanne, Hana, an earth elemental, and Ciel's [Holy Spirit] will form the last one."

"No sex," Ciel says and sends a stern glance to Hana and Roxanne.

"This is hardly the most romantic place for that kind of thing," Roxanne says and chuckles nervously.

"Even us? You know, there are some pretty nice places in the residential area. If only we could turn the power on," I say and smirk towards Ciel.

"P-please, let's not make ourselves vulnerable in the middle of a challenge," she pleads and blushes faintly.

"Getting killed mid-sex is a pretty common way that characters die in horror stories," Lina says, and Roxanne cringes.

"Huh… you know what, you're right. That's quite the popular trope," I say.

"So… if we're avoiding tropes, can we just not split up?" Roxanne asks.

"What's up with you? Scared of the dark?" Hana teases.

"What if the station has a [Gate] scrubber?" Yunia asks.

"Isn't a scrubber made specifically for [Gate] and [Eternal Gate]?" Roxanne ask.

"But [Bind] could be different," Yunia answers.

"Well, we can test it right now," I say and pull out our scrubber.

"Why do you have that?" Yunia asks with a frown.

"Darean's men tried to ambush us using this. They failed," I calmly reply, and Yunia nods stoically in understanding.

I turn on the scrubber and summon Alissa.

"Ah, yes…" She says in a soft tone, then she glows and appears right in front of me.

I give her a peck on the nose and look at Yunia. "Satisfied?" I ask, and she nods, but Roxanne still looks skeptical.

"I don't know…" She mutters.

"It'd be much faster to explore the station this way," I say.

"If you're that scared to go with only Hana and the Spirit, then you can come with me," I say and give her my dashing smile.

"I-I'd prefer it if everyone stayed together," she says shyly and pokes the tips of her index fingers together repeatedly.

"Awn…" I feel touched.

"Awn…" Alissa sympathizes.

"Awn…" Hana teases.

"Awn…" Lina looks smug.

"Awn…" Ciel gushes.

"Awn…" Aoi copies Hana.

"Awn…" Yunia smiles endearingly.

"Gihihih," Gify giggles.

I walk towards her and pull her into a hug. "I wish we were both naked right now," I say.

Hana hugs her too, and the situation immediately devolves into a group hug. But since we're all armored, not much body warmth is transferred, so the hug quickly dissolves. I remain glued to Roxanne, though.

She sighs and says, "Fine… let's split up. You don't have to treat me like a child."

"Hey, I'm legitimately touched by your love for us," I protest.

She pulls my face up to hers and gives me a kiss. "But did that change your mind about splitting up?" She asks with a pouty smile.

"No…"

Her tail pokes my nose, and I bat it away with my own. "Thought so."

Hana pulls Roxanne back and gives her a deep kiss. "Don't worry, your knight in shining armor is here to keep you safe," she says with a smirk.

"Hey, don't start," Ciel warns them.

"Yeah, don't make her jealous," Alissa says with a cheeky smile.

"I-I'm not!" Ciel protests.

"Yeah, yeah. Let's go," I say and pull Ciel's hand.

"We're going to the Power Station. We'll try to turn on the lights," I say as we start walking away from the others.

"Administration. We'll search for information about the keycards," Lina says.

"Residential. We'll search the houses for keycards," Hana says.

I pull down the visor of my sallet, then I give them the thumbs up, and we head out.

Each team gets a Holly and a Shad for safety. I can't summon any more than that since I need to conserve my mana for [Bind] summoning.

"You two seem to be enjoying this," Yunia comments and raises an eyebrow, looking slightly amused.

"Why shouldn't we be?" Ciel asks.

"Oh, you know, it's just that the imminent danger and the risk of death both sound like good reasons to be tense," she answers and knits her eyebrows in worry.

"Sounds fun," I say, innocently.

"I didn't take you both to be thrill-seekers like Hana."

"I don't chase thrills, I just want an adventure," Ciel says with a shrug. "I want something 'different' from the usual day-to-day, something 'new.' Even if it's just wandering around."

"Flying the airship was really fun, and I find this dungeon enjoyable as long as we don't get hurt," I say.

"I was trained to never take a dungeon lightly. Some of them might be trying to lure us into a false sense of security until they strike and wipe us out," Yunia says.

I tap my chin and say, "Hm… that's reasonable. As long as we don't get careless, we can enjoy the dungeon as much as we want."

"'Enjoying' it makes it much easier to lower your guard," she says in a stern tone.

I play with my tail awkwardly. "I see what you mean. There's nothing that I can do other than saying that I'll keep that in mind and be careful."

She sighs. "That's all that I need, but I'll remind you of those words if I feel like you're getting careless."

"Please do."

The [Holy Spirit] massages Roxanne's shoulders by tap-dancing on them. She's feeling rather tense now that she only has Hana to protect her from danger.

"I'm watching over you," I say through [Bind].

She nods and smiles faintly as her stress level reduces a little.

They have a Holly and a Shad with them, so they should be fine.

They walk through an area that's incredibly similar to a modern shopping center. It's a long corridor flanked by shop after shop, with periodic green spaces and seats for people to rest on; three other floors with elevated walkways; and a glass ceiling, allowing them to see the light blue sky above.

As they walk, Hana notices a wooden mannequin in the middle of the corridor.

I don't remember that being there before.

They pass a shop with a broken window, then a restaurant where the furniture has been thrown out into the open.

I don't remember that, either. Are they really going the same that way my scouts did?

They see more mannequins, all wearing a wide variety of shredded clothing.

A hole in the ceiling is letting some air inside, and the buildings gradually transition to being mossier and dirtier. Then they notice cracks in the walls and a collapsed section of the walkway.

Further in, patches of tall grass have grown out of the green spaces, and the walls are covered with ivy. There's also a large number of rotting mannequins blending in with the post-apocalyptic scene, causing even Hana to become nervous.

"Is this like the lighthouse? Something that only changes when we get near?" Roxanne asks.

"It s-…"

Hana gets interrupted by my warning: something is moving in the tall grass behind Roxanne.

Hana immediately hides Roxanne's body behind her shield while she slashes at the stalker with her bastard sword.

A dull thunk resounds through the area as Hana's sword gets stuck in a wooden mannequin's body. It flails its arm wildly, trying to slash at them with a cleaver.

Hana pushes her sword down, and the mannequin is forced to the ground, dropping its cleaver on impact. Hana stomps on the mannequin and retrieves her sword, then she kicks it away.

It goes flying for a few meters, then stops itself from rolling and starts crawling back towards them with frightening speed.

"[Explosion]!" Roxanne casts, and the mannequin's head explodes in a shower of splinters and dust.

A few seconds pass, and the dust settles, then every mannequin around them starts to move in their direction, including the now headless one.

"Run!" I order through bind.

"Elemental! Make a path! Push them away!" Hana orders and pushes Roxanne in front of her.

"I bet that they were activated by sound. Don't use [Explosion] again," I say.

We stop moving so that I can guide the girls. Whenever a mannequin gets close, I guide Hana or Roxanne to intercept them with a spell. The mannequins are light and fragile, but there are so many of them that they would quickly overwhelm the girls if they got caught.

"Follow the corridor," I suggest. It's better to stay in the open than to get cornered inside a shop.

A platoon of mannequins starts to form behind the girls. They're all moving robotically and in sync, similar to how the Stilt Giants did. The mannequins are seemingly faster than the girls, but the ones chasing after them are keeping a constant distance.

Hana stops and inhales a deep breath of air, then she turns around and blows it out, spewing a wide plume of flame. The now burning mannequins run through the flame as if it were nothing, and both of the girls have to cast spells to push them back.

"I think I just made it worse!" Hana yells as she resumes running away.

The corridor comes to an end, but there's no clear exit in sight.

Fuck.

Then I see it: a heavy metal door with a faded painting of the word "Security" on it. The door is ajar.

"There!"

I guide the girls, and they burst into the room. It's a simple barracks-like room with weapons and a map of the shopping center on the wall.

"Hold the door!" Hana orders the elemental, and it immediately starts fusing with the door and the ground.

Roxanne stops in front of the map. The label says that it's a map of the alarm system. There are dozens of small gems embedded in it, and there's a legend near the bottom that shows how the gem will glow in different colors depending on the emergency. Most of the gems are glowing in a faded orange, signifying structural failure. Those are likely dead ends due to collapsed corridors.

Hana goes over to the other door of the room and opens it. It leads to a service tunnel. It's cramped, but there aren't any mannequins in it, at least not yet.

Roxanne locates their own position on the map and traces a theoretically safe route out of the shopping center.

"Let's go!" She exclaims after memorizing the map.

Hana nods and leads their way onwards.

The mannequins start to slam against the door with… something. Then the elemental completely fuses with the door, allowing me to see past it.

The still-burning mannequins are using each other like battering rams. They're slamming the body of one of them until it completely breaks apart, then another mannequin takes their place as the ram. They can only endure a few slams before breaking, so a pile of broken, burned mannequins quickly starts to build up beside the door.

It soon starts to bend and creak. Their relentless assault is powerful enough to bend metal. After just two minutes, they break open the door and flood into the room. Then they rush into the service corridors and sprint at full speed after the girls.

"How big is this fucking place?!" Hana complains.

"Not as big as some shopping centers I've been to," I say.

"What the fuck is that?"

"Like a Bazaar, but more formal and inside a building."

"What's going on?" Alissa asks, only now noticing the girls' distress.

"It's noisy in here," Aoi complains, and I feel a hint of agreement from Lina.

"I'll explain," I say and start, but I stop soon after because I have to guide Roxanne's spells again to slow the mannequins down.

"[Fire Wall], [Fire Wall], [Fire Wall]!" Roxanne casts over and over. The mannequin at the front finally collapses after crossing the third [Fire Wall] when its scorched legs turn to ash.

Hana casts [Earth Bullet] in quick succession, creating a pile of ashes and burnt wood. The mannequins finally slow down, struggling to pass over the pile that only gets larger as more and more of them collapse, clogging the tight service tunnel.

The girls finally break out of the shopping center and barricade the door they just came through. Then I unsummon the earth elemental since there's no way that they'd be able to go back to retrieve it now.

They look forward, and Hana whistles as they see a very large mansion past a small, public garden. A glass ceiling right above it allows us to see it in all of its glory. It's a large, U-shaped gothic mansion with four floors. It has some pretty menacing architecture with gargoyle, lion, and dragon statues; and pointy little towers everywhere.

Next target located.

With things calming down over there, I return my focus to exploring.

"Mannequins, huh. Feels like a puppeteer, just like in the lighthouse," Yunia says.

"There doesn't seem to be any near the mansion, and they aren't chasing after the girls anymore," I say.

"Something not made of flesh is exactly Roxanne's weakness," Ciel says with worry in her voice, and we nod in agreement.

"This place is even more mysterious than the lighthouse."

The "sterile" corridors of the administration section are soon replaced by the faded and rusty colors of the metal and concrete of engineering. The labels of rooms and plaques start to have more vibrant colors, but the paint job becomes rougher and uglier.

"Feels like 'engineering,' alright," I say with a wry smile.

The girls raise their eyebrows at me, and Ted sates their curiosity before I can milk their attention any more, "Workshops and machinery trade form for function, so they lack pleasing aesthetic details, but their straightforward design pleases pragmatic people like Master Wolf."

"So you're going to refer to me as 'Master,' now?" I ask with a small smile on my lips.

"Yes. You find the title 'Grand' to be 'odd,' but not 'Master,' as Master Alissa used to call you," Suzy answers.

Yunia looks at me in confusion. "Why does Grand sound 'odd' to you?" She asks.

"Two reasons: it is a title that he had never seen before, and it already has a meaning in English, his primary language. This creates a sense of incongruity when an established word is used in a novel way," Ted answers.

I chuckle and ask, "Hah. So you two know everything about me, now?"

"We know everything about your past, but not of your present or future," Suzy answers.

"Do you know his first time?" Ciel asks with a mischievous smile.

"W-wha-…"

"He had masturbated before to make himself last longer, but then he couldn't finish. Though, his partner was pleased with his performance, so she was happy with the outcome," Suzy answers, and I swear that there's some smugness to her flat tone.

"So you'd already showed signs of your skills," Alissa says through [Bind].

"Aren't you supposed to be paying attention to your surroundings?" I ask and grit my teeth in embarrassment.

"There's no way that I wouldn't pay attention to something like that."

"Awn, that's cute. I wish I'd met you when you were that innocent," Ciel says and gushes a little.

"Would you have fallen for me if I were like that?" I ask.

Ciel puckers her lips in thought. "Well, yes? The first time we met, you were still a little shy and awkward, after all."

I smirk. "Oh? Alright, I know what we're roleplaying next."

She smiles and shakes her head, and Yunia looks at us endearingly.

We pass by a few warehouses, and I suddenly smell something foul.

"Ew… are we close to the sewage system, or something?" Ciel asks and wrinkles her nose.

Yunia eats an Eia pill and frowns. "There's a strong web of Life all around us," she says.

"Is it like the Stilt Giants?" I ask.

She shakes her head, but since she's wearing a helmet, I have to imagine her glorious hair and cute ears bouncing. "No. It is literally around us. I'm not sure what this means; I've never seen anything like this outside of a thick jungle."

"This is worrying."

"Yes."

We hear a moan in the distance, echoing through the corridor.

"Zombie moan. Male. Possible 'husk,'" Ted says.

"Necromancy?" Ciel asks, worriedly.

"I've never seen it create a web of Life as strong as this," Yunia says.

Ciel casts [Judgment] on her glaive, and the blade glows with a dangerous light, then she takes the lead.

As we walk down the corridor, I recognize the foul smell as the stench of rotting flesh. Then the moans increase in frequency and decrease in distance.

We hear wet footsteps coming from the warehouses flanking us.

"Shit, they must be all around us," I whisper.

Our [Spirit Light]s reveal something in front of us. A human, a naked woman. Half green, rotting corpse, and half skeleton. She slowly turns around to us and moans mindlessly.

The husk shambles forward, raising her hands towards us and making grabbing motions, then her skeletal jaw opens up and chews the air.

Ciel slashes at the husk's leg, cutting it off and making her fall to the ground. Then the light of Ciel's [Judgment] fades, and she takes a few steps back, looking bewildered.

The husk glows, and the leg reattaches itself, then the flesh starts to regrow around the skeletal bits, and the husk becomes faster.

"What the fuck," we three say in unison.

Ciel chops with her glaive again and embeds the blade deep in the husk's skull. She holds it still as the husk grabs the glaive and tries to dislodge it from its own head.

"These aren't normal husks," Yunia says, worriedly. She raises her hand towards the husk and starts to groan from the strain. "It's so strong that I can't even use [Chain Life]."

Tremors run through the husk's entire body, showing that Yunia is having some effect on her.

I cast [Constricting Vines] on the husk, and Ciel retrieves her glaive.

The moans get closer.

"Alright, we need a strategy," I say.

Yunia starts chanting.

I cast [Lightning Bolt] at the husk and feel some relief when it gets stunned just like a normal humanoid would.

"Chopping off limbs seems to be effective," Ciel says, and I grunt in agreement.

I cast [Gravity Crush], and now the husk can barely move, too weak to struggle against my "Magic Power."

"Physically weak. Blunt attacks should work fine, too," Ciel says, and I nod.

"[Double Image]," Yunia casts and starts chanting again. This time, it's [Spirit Magic].

She moves while chanting, and the husk's gaze follows her. Then the husk lunges to the side, trying to grab at the air.

"Vulnerable to Illusion, I assume?" I question, and Yunia nods.

I throw a [Fireball] at the husk's shoulder, but nothing happens aside from our noses being assaulted by the stench of burnt, rotten flesh.

"No [Fire Magic], please," Ciel asks.

"Agreed," I say and wrinkle my nose.

We hear a metallic clanking behind us. It's Jarn turning around to face a husk coming at us from behind.

"Why are they human? Isn't this a chimeric facility?" Ciel asks.

"To be honest, they remind me of Earth video games too much. I feel like I'm in Resident Evil," I say.

"That's the name of a video game involving husks and horror," Ted explains.

"[Soul Blade]," Yunia finishes casting. An ethereal, blue arm holding a simple shortsword grows out of her shoulder and moves independently from her physical arm.

She walks forward, and the ethereal arm slashes at the husk's shoulder, then the zombie's arm falls flat on the floor.

"Cut her head, try to kill it," I suggest, and she obeys.

The husk's head goes limp and hits the floor, but it continues moving and struggling against the vines.

"The Life controls all of its limbs independently," Yunia says.

"Can't you 'cut its strings,' somehow?" I ask.

"No. It's too strong."

I walk up to right beside the husk, but it doesn't react at all. I kick its leg, and it immediately lunges at me as I dodge backward.

"It lost its senses, though," I say.

Jarn decapitates the husk coming at us and kicks it away.

"How 'permanent' is spirit damage, anyway?" I ask.

"Few things can permanently alter a soul, and most of those are offensive weapons that rupture the spirit, killing you instantly," Yunia answers.

"So, we have no reliable way to kill them?" Ciel asks.

"Seems so. Unless you have another way to use for your Gift that I don't know about," Yunia says and smiles wryly.

"Not really," I say and smile, then I create two maces with [Vine Weapon]. "Ted, Suzy, use these to help us out."

I throw the maces at them, and they stop them in the air with [Telekinesis].

"Alright, let's move. Start jogging," I order.

The state of the corridors worsens as we continue on. Rust starts to appear more prominently, the air grows stale, and the floor now appears to be stained with unknown fluids. The corridors also become wider, but that only means that more husks can crowd around us.

"Is that blood?" Ciel asks, looking at a particularly red blotch of rust on the wall.

"Alissa, what's this smell?" I ask and share my senses with her.

"Definitely dried blood," she responds and frowns. "I'm thankful that I'm not there to smell all that rot in person."

"I think that my sense of smell is going numb."

"Alissa says that it's dried blood," I say, and Ciel shudders.

Dozens of husks on our way slow us down by joining into a literal wall of flesh. If we linger for too long, they'll also come up from behind us and overwhelm Jarn.

"Alright, change of tactics. Ted, Suzy, focus on charging up your [Telekinesis] to the max. I want you two to punch a hole through the husks for us," I order, then I mold the maces into two large boulders as wide as my body. Two cannonballs of petrified wood.

"We require someone to hold us if we are to concentrate all of our power," Ted says.

"Ciel, switch with me and hold them," I say.

"Gladly," she responds, and shows a small smile as the two golems stop floating and flop into her bosom. She holds them both against her chest with one arm while she holds her glaive with the other. Then they start gathering their mana.

I cast [Discharge] for a second, then Yunia and I go all "chop, chop" on the husks' limbs.

There's no need for skill in this fight, only diligence and focus. The husks don't know how to defend, so I only have to pay attention to when I should attack and when I should retreat. One wrong step and a hand will grip my leg and make me trip.

One of Jarn's legs gets grabbed by a husk. She can float with ease, so she doesn't trip, but this means that our time is running out. With one hand, Ciel swings her glaive and frees Jarn.

"Thank you, Master Ciel," Jarn says, and Ciel smiles.

"Yunia, use [Searing Blade]," I order.

"Understood," she responds.

I turn around and cast [Discharge], giving Jarn a small breather.

My mana~… I need to save it to summon the other girls in case something happens.

I suddenly feel a significant amount of heat coming from behind me. I turn around and see Yunia's white-hot longsword grow to three meters in size, then she swings her weapon, and a dozen husks' heads go rolling.

She swings it twice more and makes minced meat of the wall of flesh before us, then she deactivates the enchantments and resumes attacking normally. She grimaces in pain due to the overuse. She used two thousand points of MP in just three seconds, that's a fuck ton.

Ciel pushes the diced husks to the side with her [Windstorm], then she starts throwing [Wind Hammer]s, crushing the heads of the husks still standing.

I return to the front and help Yunia.

We all start worrying about the golems. They're going to use up nearly all of their mana in one go. I hope the husks aren't sensitive to mana, otherwise, the storm the golems are creating will attract all the monsters in this facility.

"Ready," they say in unison.

Yunia and I jump out of the way. "Punch it," I order.

The cannonballs whistle through the air as they are fired like bullets, taking the husks with them. The corpses pile together as they collide in a snowball effect, pushing the wall of flesh much further beyond what we can see.

"Charge!" I order.

We deal with the stragglers easily and dash down the corridor before the husks can surround us again.

"We're getting close!" I exclaim.

The boulders created a carpet of rotten flesh along the floor, so Ciel casts a continuous [Clean] to keep us from tripping on the guts and gore.

The corridor finally ends and opens up into a large room filled with controls and glowing mana crystals. The problem is that this room is literally filled with husks. The boulders didn't even push that many new husks into this place, they were all in here, to begin with.

They all turn to us and start their slow shambling.

"Fuck that, we definitely don't have the mana to deal with all this bullshit," I say and look around. "Change of plans, let's get inside there and barricade ourselves."

We enter a large closet filled with cleaning products, and Jarn easily holds the door closed by herself.

"Now what?" Yunia asks.

"Lemme think," I say and sit down. "Let's at least recover our mana."

A note from Manasong

Hall of Fame of Patrons

The patrons who support Rupegia shall have their names sung by the bards for they deserve the glory and honor. Their names are:

Oracle Maximillian Hübner.

Prince PreownedFIN.

Lord Andrew Meyers.

Lord Hope.

Lord Samuel Lim.

Lord Bill.

Lord Novgarod.

Lord DJ.

Lord Cidant.

Lord Ashadun.

Lord Michale Erwin.

Lord Enrique Peña Gomez.

Lord Braidborn.

Lord Bakerdea.

Lord Yeeteris Dedmeem.

Lord D4rk Sheep.

Lord Nathan Vanbrunt.

Lord Andrew Heffelbower.

Lord Markus.

Lord Maurice.

Lord Badger.

Lord Brennon Goetz.

Lord Amelgar.

Lord Krawn.

Noble Salty Panda.

Noble Evil.

Noble Yamibomb112.

Noble Mild Fracas.

Noble Geminus.

Noble EESDESESESRDT.

Nobleman Lassiter.

Noble Aclys.

Leave a rating or a review to help me rise to the top or fix my shameful understanding of prose.

Take a look over my blog where all information of the world of Rupegia will be posted.

Join the Discord and discuss, or rant, or meme, or try and fight me so your waifu gets more screentime.

Become a Patron and read chapters in advance, or read the side-stories, or leave your mark on the story, or help choose the next artwork or the next side-story.

Chapter 67: Survival Horror - Part 2

Ted and Suzy drench themselves in an MP potion, trying to hasten their mana recovery.

"Did it work?" Ciel asks, worriedly.

"The potion is being absorbed by our metal skeletons," Ted says.

"Our mana regeneration is increasing, but it's three times slower than a humanoid's," Suzy says.

"Huh… so you guys do have a weakness," I say.

"Just until they learn [Redirect Mana]," Ciel says.

"True."

I sit down and sigh. The armor makes it a little awkward to sit, but since it's padded, it isn't too difficult to find a comfortable position.

I raise my visor and look at the girls. The three of us are all uncomfortable and tired of having to smell these fucking rotting zombies for so long.

"I have an idea, how about this?" Yunia says and turns off her [Spirit Light].

"Hm…?" I frown at her, then it dawns on me. "Oh…! That's right! They might be attracted to the light since they healed from [Judgment]."

"So… you want us to fight in complete darkness?" Ciel asks.

"Right, for you girls, it wouldn't work so well, but it can still be useful in a pinch. Anyway, what I thought is to use light to lure them away from the room," I say.

"A light elemental," Ciel suggests, and I nod in agreement.

"I could cast [Ignorance] on all of us, that would make it easier to sneak around them," Yunia suggests.

"Please do," I say.

"Wolfy, we are not alone," Alissa says through [Bind].

"Ciel, throw a [Spirit Light] out of the door to attract the husks away from our closet, then we'll block any gaps around the door that could let light leak out. I'm going to focus on Alissa's team."

"Understood," Ciel says, and they act.

Alissa and the others are in the main hall of the mayor's public office, a wide and open modern-looking building with minimalist paintings covering the walls and floor. The furniture all around them is made of glass, and even the balustrade of the three visible floors are made of glass panels.

The view brings me a hint of nostalgia, reminding me of Earth, but the lack of illumination gives it all a ghostly feeling.

Alissa perceives three presences patrolling the corridors, one on each floor above the one they're on.

"This looks fragile," Aoi says and uses one of her claws to poke a chair made of glass. The gray cushioning looks comfortable, but the lack of details or adornments give it that "soullessness" that plagues a lot of modernist architecture.

"It's reinforced with something. It's still weaker than wood, but it's not as fragile as a cup of glass," Lina says.

"We're not here to admire the architecture," Alissa says and pulls them back into "serious mode."

"If you don't stop to admire the architecture and smell the flowers, can you honestly say that you've really been there?" I question through [Bind], trying to sound as pretentious as possible.

"Please," Alissa pleads, trying to hide her amusement, but [Bind] never lies.

They walk to the reception desk and look over the documents while I translate for them. Alissa finds a map of the area, Lina finds a memo about keycards, and Aoi finds a memo about the new security arrangements. Curiously, the dates on all the documents have faded.

The map says that the keycard creation workshop is located on the top floor. It's a restricted area that requires a red keycard to open, so I don't think that we'll be able to go there just yet.

The keycard memo is about the new mayor requiring a keycard. The chief of security is reminding the public servants that a high-security delivery of the keycard will happen at a predetermined time, and he'll be absent, personally delivering it to the mayor at his mansion.

"Hey, so this might be the mayor's mansion," Roxanne says.

They're currently standing in front of the main entrance to the mansion. Hana is keeping an eye behind them while Roxanne examines an intricate padlock that's securing a chain wrapped around the handles of the double door. There's a mysterious note nailed to the door, clearly a hint about this puzzle.

"You know what, fuck this," Hana says and pushes Roxanne to the side.

"Here we go…" Roxanne says and smiles wryly.

Hana breathes fire on the chain until it glows white-hot, then she pulls out her steel war hammer and slams it onto chains until they break.

The door opens with a wooden creak, and they wait in a combat stance. After a minute of nothing happening, they walk inside.

"What if destroying the chains triggered the alarm?" I ask.

"Oops, didn't think of that," Hana says and cringes.

"It would be a waste to put an alarm enchantment on a padlock and chain," Roxanne says.

"Y-yeah, exactly," Hana says and laughs.

Roxanne shakes her head and smiles wryly, then she says, "We'll search for the mayor's office."

The security memo that Aoi found is about the three new guards that will patrol during the night. Elite special soldiers with extreme mental conditioning. The public servants are warned that nobody will be allowed to stay in the office once it closes and that disobedience will most likely result in death.

"You don't put such extreme security practices in place if you're not protecting something very important," Alissa says.

Yunia nods and says, "That keycard creation workshop is worth it, not to mention all the valuable information that's probably stored in the building. The entire leadership of this station works over there, so almost everything relevant to espionage is concentrated in a single location." All of which I relay to the others.

"We should try to fight those patrolling soldiers first, then we'll explore the building after they've been dealt with," Alissa suggests.

"I agree," Lina says, and Aoi nods with a toothy grin.

"I'll remain on standby to pull you girls out of there," I say.

"Shad, follow Aoi for now," Alissa orders, and the silent shadow obeys.

The husks slowly make their way to Ciel's [Spirit Light], then one of them eats it and heals a little. Now, without any light that they can see, they all forget about us and resume aimlessly shambling around.

Alissa's team crosses through the main hall and slowly climbs up a set of stairs. Meanwhile, Hana and Roxanne get lost in the creepy and dark mansion.

"Aoi, you'll stay in front, Lina will stay closer to me. At first, we'll focus on observing the enemy and keeping it away from us instead of engaging it in melee combat," Alissa orders, and they both nod.

They walk through the corridors and cautiously await the floor's guard. They stand still, ready for battle, as the sound of heavy boots slowly grows in volume as it comes closer to them.

A large figure makes the turn around the corner; it's immediately illuminated by their [Spirit Light]s and stops before them. He's a beast of a man at over two-meters tall; his skin is as pale as Roxanne's; his muscles are huge and veiny; his creepy face is chubby and bald like a baby's; his right arm is fused with a metal cannon; his left one is fused with a sledgehammer; the only bit of clothing on him is his pair of heavy, dark boots; and thankfully, he doesn't have genitals.

Alissa fires a thin mana arrow designed to pierce his flesh. It hits right in the middle of his forehead and enters his skull, but the man doesn't even react, his baby face is completely expressionless. Then the arrow is pushed back out of his head. It falls to the ground, and not even a wound remains in his flesh.

Mana leaves his body, and a ball of light flies out of his cannon-arm with frightening speed. Even through Alissa's eyes, I can tell that this light is "dangerous," just like Ciel's [Judgment].

Alissa dodges and grimaces; Aoi and Lina might not be able to avoid that attack. The ball of light illuminates the corridor as it passes beside them, then it hits the end of the hallway and instantly dissipates.

The Baby Brute starts walking towards them. He looks so menacing that he causes waves of stress to crash into the girls with each of his heavy steps.

Aoi spreads her wings, nearly blocking the whole corridor, and bends the air to her will. She compresses it, then launches crude [Wind Blade]s towards the Baby.

"Since when can you do that?" I ask.

"Since always. It was just too weak to be used before," she answers.

The blades cut into his chest and open deep wounds, but not even a single drop of blood falls from them. After a mere three seconds, the wounds simply close by themselves.

"[Cursing Magic] isn't working," Lina says.

The Baby Brute picks up speed and starts jogging towards them.

Alissa fires two mana arrows at the same time, and each of them sinks into one of his eyes. The arrows are promptly pushed out, and the eyes return to normal as if nothing had happened.

Alissa clicks her tongue and says, "I'm starting to hate these stupid regeneration abilities."

"That's because you're too powerful. Otherwise, you kill everything with one shot," I respond, and she scoffs.

The Baby Brute casts a spell, and another ball of light is launched towards Alissa, who puts all her effort into dodging it.

Lina fires some [Earth Bullet]s, but she lacks the "Magic Power" to do any significant damage, besides forcing the Baby Brute to slow down to a walk.

Aoi fills the entire corridor in front of them with her fire breath, but the Brute continues walking as if nothing happened, instantly regenerating his muscles as they burn. The only change is that he's lost his boots.

Then she fires an explosive fireball at him, and flesh flies everywhere. This finally makes him stop for a short moment, but then he immediately starts jogging again. His chest regenerates at a visible rate, and in a few more seconds it'll be completely healed. He's a fucking juggernaut.

Aoi flaps her wings, creating heavy gusts of air, and Lina casts more [Earth Bullet]s at his legs. Both of them manage to slow the Baby Brute down again, giving them a few more precious seconds.

"There's no way to stop him!" Aoi yells, starting to become concerned.

The Brute aims at Aoi, then Alissa casts [Double Image], and he shoots at nothing.

"He destroyed my spell!" Alissa exclaims, stunned.

"That could be a ranged form of [Judgment], so don't let it hit you, it'll hurt a lot," Ciel says.

"I'll keep attracting his attention then," Alissa says. "Lina! Trip him!"

Lina casts [Earth Wall] just in front of his feet, creating a short step. His foot slams against it, and the step cracks, but the Brute still trips and falls forward. Its creepy, unemotional face keeps staring at Lina all the way down, even bending his neck to an impossible angle to stay locked onto her.

Aoi leaps forward and lands with a savage chop of her halberd, decapitating the Brute. Its head rolls forward without spilling any blood, then black tendrils extend from the severed flesh and grab the body.

He leaps with all four limbs and stands up straight while his head hangs loosely from him by the black tendrils, then he immediately attacks Aoi with his sledgehammer. The hammer passes through [Wind Shield] and slams against her black shield, nearly folding it in half before the force of the strike flattens Aoi against the wall, causing a brief rumble to resound through the building.

Anger flares up inside both mine and Aoi's minds.

Motherfucker!

Alissa fires an arrow at his left knee, then Aoi violently lashes out, using the claws of her forelegs to slash through the back of that same knee, forcing him to kneel. The black tendrils pull his head back into place, and the wound closes as if nothing had happened.

Lina dashes forward and sinks her axe into his knee. Aided by my [Sharp Blades], it cuts cleanly through his muscles and bone, chopping off his leg. He falls on his ass, and black tendrils immediately shoot towards the leg and grab it.

The sledgehammer swings towards Lina, and she uses [Enhanced Speed] to dodge downwards. The hammer clips the top of her shield, tilting it back, then she pushes upwards and deflects the bow. The hammer embeds itself in the wall, causing another small tremor.

Aoi bites the cannon arm, preventing him from aiming it at them again, then she drops her weapons and sinks her foreclaws into his chest. She roars in rage and tries to rip his arm off while the heat coming from her mouth burns his skin.

Alissa casts [Mesmerizing Butterflies], but only an extremely powerful spell would be able to distract someone from a dragon trying to rip their arm off. The sledgehammer blurs and bashes against Aoi's helmet, sending deep cracks into it.

Aoi gets stunned and releases the arm, then her Shad attacks the Brute. Its black, ethereal tendrils sink into its body, but nothing happens, then the cannon points up, directly at Aoi's head.

Fuck.

I summon Aoi.

The closet suddenly gets rather cramped when Aoi appears in front of me, and the Brute launches a ball of light that harmlessly dissipates as it hits the ceiling. The creepy baby head instantly snaps towards Lina, its emotionless eyes staring straight into her soul.

"Heal her," I say, and Ciel jumps forward, grabbing Aoi's heavy body, and immediately starts [Heal]ing her. "Run!" I order Alissa and Lina.

"Shad, with me!" Alissa orders, and the shadow monster silently obeys.

The little dwarf scampers away with a pale face while Alissa casts [Double Image] repeatedly, keeping the Brute busy.

Alissa turns into a fox, and Lina mounts her, then they make their escape, but the Brute follows them, his legs already fully healed.

Alissa jumps off of the balcony and lands in the main hall. The Brute follows without hesitation mere moments after her, but when Alissa crosses the exit, he stops following them and immediately makes for the stairs.

"Let's not fight that," I say.

"Agreed," Alissa says.

Aoi recovers from her stun and curls herself up. Her tail angrily sways wildly from side to side in a low cadence. It's only because she remembers Alissa's reprimand that she's not currently spewing fire with every breath.

Her helmet has cracked and bent in a little, so it's slightly uncomfortable for her. I grab her large head and rest it on my lap, then Yunia starts the repairs.

"You let your rage take over you, then you gave an opening to your opponent," Hana says to Aoi.

"I know…" Aoi grumbles a response.

"You even left your weapons behind," Alissa says.

Aoi grits her teeth and doesn't respond. Her mouth warms up my lap as fire threatens to flare out.

Alissa and Lina enter the office again. Lina stays mounted on her; this way, Alissa can remain completely silent while sneaking around. Alissa's MP is also at about half, so they'd rather avoid alerting the Brutes. [Double Image] is too expensive for her to keep using it so often.

They climb up to the first floor and recover Aoi's weapons. Her shield is bent, but Lina thinks it'll only take about an hour to bring it back into shape. Repairs with [Manipulate Metal] reduce its overall integrity, though, so it'll be slightly weaker until it can be reforged.

Then they sneak up to the third floor and wait until the Brute patrolling there walks away from the mayor's personal office. The door requires a green keycard to open it, but luckily for us, it was left open. They'll have to hide when the Brute walks close, though.

The office is large and lavish. There's a circle of sofas around a glass "technically not coffee" table; a small cart with a glass tea set; a wide metal desk near the back wall; a few document shelves behind the desk; bookshelves covering the left wall; minimalist paintings covering the right wall; and dead potted plants spread all over.

"I'll search the desk, you search the shelves," Alissa says, and Lina dismounts.

Alissa easily finds a green keycard in one of the desk's drawers.

"How fortunate," I say.

"We just need to find a use for it now," Alissa responds.

"Access denied. Repeated attempts will trigger the alarm. Please use a green keycard for access, thank you for your understanding."

"How convenient, we just did," Roxanne says and smiles wryly. She and Hana are standing before a locked door, presumably the mayor's office.

"At least something went well…" I say as I read the document in Lina's hands. Apparently, the mayor lost his yellow keycard, so engineering sent a memo to double-check everyone's identity before allowing any changes to the power grid.

"So… we came all this way for nothing?" Yunia asks and frowns.

"Maybe… but since we're here, we might as well clear out these husks," I say.

Aoi groans. "Send me back. I don't want to smell these husks anymore!" She requests.

I pat her head and say, "I'll send you back to the place where we split up. Be careful, since you'll be alone."

"I will," she responds in a serious tone.

I kiss the tip of her nose and feel a small burst of happiness escape through her [Bind], then I open a [Gate] under her, and she disappears.

Alissa finds a locked drawer in the desk. There aren't any keys in the other drawers, so she starts trying to force it open.

"Lina, help me over here," she asks.

The gloomy girl nods and grabs the sides of the drawers. Mana courses through her body, and her [Spirit of Gaia] doubles the passive stat bonuses of [Stonebody]. The metal starts to bend, then it suddenly rips away, and Lina falls on her ass.

Alissa feels a chill as the Baby Brute of their floor suddenly stops patrolling.

Lina looks inside the drawer and finds an opened letter with neither a sender nor a recipient.

"The Brute is coming towards us," Alissa says.

"I didn't make that much noise," Lina complains.

"Doesn't matter. The monsters around here have some sort of special senses or something," I say.

Alissa looks towards the window beside the document shelves.

"I wouldn't recommend that. Windows are a common place to put an alarm system," Roxanne says.

"It's too late to try to sneak past the Brute," Alissa says.

"Turn off your [Spirit Light]s and hide," I say, and Alissa nods.

Lina gathers all the papers they can, and they hide behind one of the large sofas. Alissa casts [Ignorance], just in case. Without [Spirit Light], I can now only see through their Holly and Shad.

After half a minute, the Brute appears in front of the door. His eyes scan the room before he moves towards the desk.

Everything is so quiet that the girls' breathing sounds like wheezing, and the Brute's heavy steps feel like stomps.

He stops to stare at the document shelves, then he turns around and crouches, noticing that the drawer was ripped open.

Alissa winces as she suddenly hears a high-pitched screech, hurting her ears. Lina looks at her in confusion, it seems that only Alissa can hear it.

The Brute suddenly stands up and starts quickly searching the room. Alissa and Lina brace themselves, but the Brute walks past them without reacting; he even looks in their direction, but [Ignorance] prevents him from seeing them. The other two Brutes speed up and make their way to the third floor. Then it leaves the room and starts searching the next one

"Trying to sneak past them will be rather risky now. Any ideas?" Alissa asks.

The Brutes start searching inside the other rooms, and out of the few that are unlocked, most don't have any reliable hiding spots. Now, if they try to use [Ignorance] to sneak past the Brutes, Alissa likely won't have enough MP to keep it up all the way to the stairs.

"Summoning Solid Snake," I say with a grin.

"Reference. Video games," Suzy says.

Alissa rolls her eyes and lets me control her. I make her grab the cart and park it outside, right beside the wall of the corridor. Then I return her to her hiding place and wait. She breathes calmly and easily controls her own arousal from me using [Bind] to control her.

A Brute passes by, and his eyes lock onto the cart, but he simply passes by it without doing anything else.

"Well, well, well. We found our box," I say and guide the girls towards the cart. It's pretty small and cramped, but they both fit. A long tablecloth blocks both of them from view.

Lina feels a little hot from having Alissa's face pressed against hers, then Alissa also starts feeling it from my own fetishes bleeding through to her through [Bind]. I sigh and control myself. The smell of rotten flesh is a great help with that.

The girls push the cart along and slowly make their way towards the stairs. Without the Brutes staring directly at them, [Ignorance] doesn't drain Alissa's MP as much.

They finally reach the corridor leading to the stairs and stop a few meters away from them. Then a Brute stops in front of the cart, and our blood runs cold.

He's so close that I can see him through Shad's vision. He's staring at the cups, then he lifts his sledgehammer and uses it to align one of the cups with its plate.

Suddenly, his cannon lifts the tablecloth and aims directly at the girls.

Lina fires an [Earth Bullet] at the cannon, clogging it, then Alissa grabs her and rolls out of the cart. She turns into a fox with Lina already on top and leaps to the side as the sledgehammer crushes the floor beside her.

She dashes down the stairs, and all three Brutes go to the balcony. They jump down to the main hall and wait for Alissa to come to them.

"Uh…" Alissa's brain stops for a moment as she processes what's going on. "It seems like they don't know that I can sense their exact positions."

She goes to the balcony of the first floor and waits for the Brutes to move.

"Make a [Double Image] of yourself outside the office, let's see if they fall for it," I suggest.

She first casts [Mesmerizing Butterflies] to make them look behind themselves, then she casts a long-range [Double Image] for a moment. Any mage worth their salt would instantly recognize the illusion and interrupt it effortlessly, but these are Brutes that are easily fooled by it and believe that their target has escaped.

They leave the main hall and start coming up the stairs again.

"I'm very thankful that they're dumb," Alissa says.

"If they weren't, then they would be quite overpowered," I say.

The girls snort, and Alissa leaps down to the main hall. They cross through the exit and finally escape.

I sigh and get up. "Now, let's deal with these stinky fuckers outside," I say.

A note from Manasong

Hall of Fame of Patrons

The patrons who support Rupegia shall have their names sung by the bards for they deserve the glory and honor. Their names are:

Oracle Maximillian Hübner.

Prince PreownedFIN.

Lord Andrew Meyers.

Lord Hope.

Lord Samuel Lim.

Lord Bill.

Lord Novgarod.

Lord DJ.

Lord Cidant.

Lord Ashadun.

Lord Michale Erwin.

Lord Enrique Peña Gomez.

Lord Braidborn.

Lord Bakerdea.

Lord Yeeteris Dedmeem.

Lord D4rk Sheep.

Lord Nathan Vanbrunt.

Lord Andrew Heffelbower.

Lord Markus.

Lord Maurice.

Lord Badger.

Lord Brennon Goetz.

Lord Amelgar.

Lord Krawn.

Lord Remco.

Noble Salty Panda.

Noble Evil.

Noble Yamibomb112.

Noble Mild Fracas.

Noble Geminus.

Noble EESDESESESRDT.

Nobleman Lassiter.

Noble Aclys.

Leave a rating or a review to help me rise to the top or fix my shameful understanding of prose.

Take a look over my blog where all information of the world of Rupegia will be posted.

Join the Discord and discuss, or rant, or meme, or try and fight me so your waifu gets more screentime.

Become a Patron and read chapters in advance, or read the side-stories, or leave your mark on the story, or help choose the next artwork or the next side-story.

Chapter 67: Survival Horror - Part 3

"Overpowered?" Yunia asks Ted.

"A gaming term, meaning: a strategy, action, or object that's either the best choice in a disproportionate number of situations, which marginalizes other choices, and/or excessively hard to counter by the opponent compared to the effort required to use it," she answers.

"A-nywa~y… I'm summoning a light elemental," I say and start modifying the summon.

I make it look just like one of my small birds. It's surprisingly easy to copy things that I can summon.

"That's so cute," Ciel says and stares at the little glowing bird on my palm. Her gaze may appear warm and loving, but I'm aware of her hidden desire to smother small things between her pillows. Ciel is a dangerous woman to small animals.

"Lure them away," I order the elemental and let it fly out of the room.

Every husk's head immediately turns to it as it flies to the entrance and perches itself atop the door. Its brilliance is an order of magnitude higher than the glowing crystals of the room, making itself a much more delicious target. The husks uselessly flail about trying to grab the shining bird that stays just beyond their reach.

We wait for a few minutes until they all finish shambling towards the elemental and are crowded around it, then it flies to the next door down the corridor, and the room slowly vacates.

"Oh. My. God… Gods… Finally!" I exclaim and cast [Clean] all around us, purging the insufferable stench of rotten flesh.

We burst out of the room and close the doors to Engineering, but leave it ajar, then barricade them. If we fully closed them, we would be locked inside since they require a yellow keycard to open.

I breathe in the stale air and smell the rust, blood, and dust. It's bad, but still, it makes me smile that the worst is gone.

We start taking a look at the controls and let out a collective sigh when a female voice says, "Access denied. Repeated attempts will trigger the alarm. Please use a yellow keycard for access, thank you for your understanding."

"Well, there's nothing to do here," Yunia says.

"Let's top off our mana, and then we'll go join the others," I say, and they nod.

I pull down some comfy carpets for us to sit on, and we meditate. I put two of Yunia's points into [Redirect Mana] so that she can join us in meditating.

"You know, this mana doesn't feel disgusting like Necromancy did that one time," I say as I pull the mana around us into myself.

"You… 'tasted' Necromancy before?" Yunia asks.

"We fought a husk manipulator once," I answer.

"It almost feels like heresy to have husks heal from [Light Magic]. I've also never seen something like that before, so I don't fully believe these are true husks," Ciel says.

"Some dungeons are truly mysterious, this one even more so," Yunia says and nods like a sage.

I feel a little bit of strain from using [Redirect Mana], but it's manageable.

"What an odd skill. It almost feels like [Spirit Magic], but it's much more… 'free,'" Yunia comments.

"'Free'?" I question and tilt my head just like Alissa.

Yunia's face twitches as she holds back a smile. "[Spirit Magic] is all about turning the abstract and intangible parts of the soul into something usable and understandable. Your skill simply… 'moves' the soul without care for any of that. An odd but novel way of thinking."

"I was inspired by the dwarven [Stonebody]. I heard that they use the ambient mana to passively increase their stats, so I tried to pull mana into myself," I say.

"There are already skills for that: [Mana Recovery] and [Mana Absorption]."

"Oh yeah, what does [Mana Absorption] do?" I ask.

"It's a rare skill that lets you absorb excess mana and slightly reduce the power of any spells cast near you. It's almost useless since it requires too many points to be effective," Yunia answers.

"Never heard of that one before," Ciel says.

Yunia continues, "I'm not surprised. Mages have been trying to directly manipulate their opponents' spells since the beginning of linear time, but it always goes back to the dangers of raw mana manipulation: either it's too weak for practical use, or it doesn't end well."

"I know what that's like," I say and smile wryly.

"Gih," Gify agrees. It's surprising that she didn't pop out of existence while we fought the husks.

Gih.

Right, it wasn't even that much of a challenge for us.

We finish replenishing our mana, then I summon two small earth elementals. They merge with our barricade and fill the gaps with their bodies, ensuring that it blocks all light from escaping.

Then I open a [Gate] to the place where we split up, and we start walking towards the mansion, which is where we'll meet up with the rest of the girls.

Hana and Roxanne continue exploring the creepy mansion. The silence is the worst part of the eerie atmosphere. Everything seems bleak, "colorless"… "dead."

"Should we really be here?" Roxanne asks.

Hana stops and raises the visor of her sallet. "Hm? Of course, they're coming here," she says and frowns.

Roxanne tightly hugs her staff, and Hana continues walking forward, letting out a nervous laugh.

"Of course…" Hana repeats in a low tone.

They pass by a dozen rooms, all of which seem to have once belonged to someone. Too curious for their own good, they take a look inside each one and see fragments of someone's personal life. A husband, a maid, a butler, a guard, a son, a father, a mother, a cook, a guest, a mage, a warrior, a scholar. They all feel "private," as if we were prying into their secrets.

The rooms don't feel just like a place of rest, they feel like graves.

Hana enters a room, and Roxanne follows her in. Hana gets interested in the dressing table with a mirror. There's an open makeup container with a dusty brush beside it, and small plushie dolls cover the rest of its surface. Jewels and a cute dress decorate a small mannequin beside it, making the girls tense up for a second.

Hana walks to the mannequin and prods it with the bottom tip of her shield. After a few seconds without a reaction, she sighs and lets it go.

"Seems like the daughter's room," She says as she looks around, then she walks over to the dressing table and touches the makeup brush. "Looks similar to the one you have. Wanna try it?" She asks with a grin.

"Not now…" Roxanne says in a low tone.

Hana swallows heavily and nods. She starts fidgeting, clearly nervous, and takes a closer look at the bookshelf.

"Girly romance stories," Hana says and snorts.

Roxanne sits on the bed, and a sinking feeling enters her heart.

The room is pretty, too pretty. It's a princess's room.

Hana opens the wardrobe and sees cute dress after cute dress.

"I'm hoping these aren't just mana solidifications, then maybe we could take some of them for Lina. It seems like they could fit her," Hana says.

Roxanne looks out the door, and a sense of dread swells up inside of her. Across this corridor is the last unexplored room on this floor.

"We found the mayor's personal room, but not his wife's…" Roxanne mutters.

"Y-yeah… what's up with that? Maybe they were separated," Hana says and pulls out a thin white dress. "Damn, I really want to see Lina wearing this one, hah…"

Hana returns to the dressing table and picks up the brush again. "M-maybe I should put on some makeup. Wolfy would like that, right?"

Roxanne gets up and slowly walks forward out of the room.

Hana grabs a small blonde doll and starts brushing its cheeks with some makeup. "Maybe we s-should put it on Suzy, instead. She's a girl, too… also Ted. W-what would Ted be like if she had a humanoid body? A boyish girl with short brown h-hair, hm?"

Hana looks towards Roxanne and freezes. Her hand trembles, and the brush slips through her armored fingers.

Roxanne is standing in front of the door to the last room, staring blankly at the handle. The dread only increases as time passes, but she feels that if she turns back now, she'll regret it.

"Roxanne?" Hana asks and slowly walks out of the room, her legs shaking too much to walk properly. "Please, don't do that," she pleads, her voice barely a whisper.

"She's my mother, I must obey her," Roxanne says and grabs the handle.

"Mom's mad, we have to let her rest in peace," Hana pleads again.

"Family is the most important thing that we have." She twists the handle and opens the door.

They both freeze in terror, their bodies become as heavy as stone, their blood as cold as ice, their minds as fractured as broken glass. The Lady looks away from her mirror and turns around to face them. Their hearts are squeezed by the all-consuming scorn of the miserable, abandoned being in front of them.

"No…" Roxanne mutters.

The Lady takes a step.

"Mom, please," Hana pleads.

The Lady takes another step.

"I don't want this…" Roxanne moans.

Her heels clack against the floor.

"I'm sorry," Hana apologizes.

With each step, they feel something stabbing their hearts.

"Leave me alone…" Roxanne begs.

"This is too much…" Hana mumbles.

The Lady stops, then she turns her eyes to Roxanne.

"NOO~…!" Roxanne yells, then shrieks and runs away in a mad dash.

The Lady turns to Hana.

"I won't accept this…!" Hana gains some confidence and slowly draws her sword.

The Lady takes a step.

Hana's sword arm goes limp, and she falls to her knees.

"Mother, please, I can't…"

The Lady reaches both hands towards Hana's throat.

"I'm sorry…" Hana mutters, then she glows and disappears.

"HANA!" I yell and hug her. She doesn't react, slumped on her knees, completely catatonic.

Ciel casts [Heal], [Refresh], and [Purify Body] on the hysterical Roxanne while Yunia chants [Spirit Touch]. Ciel's spells don't accomplish anything, but Yunia's spell helps Roxanne calm down.

I cast [Spirit Touch] and grab Hana's heart. Somehow, I can feel that it's "in pieces." Holding it "together" seems to help it heal.

"What the fuck…" I mutter. Tears run freely down my cheeks as their terror and pain still seep through our [Bind].

I pull Hana towards Roxanne so that the three of us can sit down and continue hugging while [Spirit Touch] does its work. I take off my gloves and our helmets so that we can touch our heads together and get some skinship going.

Aoi doubles back and runs towards us at full speed, reaching us after only a minute, while Alissa and Lina take a few more. Alissa crouches behind me and runs her fingers through my hair, easing my pain.

Ciel's [Holy Spirit] was left behind after their summoning, so she dismisses it and creates a new one. Its cute little feet crawl all over our bodies, imparting a small dose of happiness.

Roxanne relaxes and finally releases her staff from her death grip. Hana recovers from her stunned state and starts crying.

"That was so mean…" Hana moans and sniffles.

"What was it?" I ask, gently.

"That… monster… used the image of my Mom. It made her say horrible things about me, Dad, and my siblings."

"That was just… evil," Roxanne mutters.

"That sounds like an even stronger version of a Weeper," Ciel says.

"I couldn't understand what you girls were seeing. It seems like it attacked your senses on a deeper level than what [Bind] can show me," I say.

Roxanne rubs her head against mine, making her floppy and squishy horns tickle me. I turn my head to the side and kiss her forehead. Hana notices what we're doing and rubs her head on me, too, so I also give her a kiss.

"Neither the Holly nor the Shad saw anything," I continue.

"And my [Holy Spirit] couldn't do anything," Ciel says with a sigh.

"I don't think that we can fight that one," Alissa says.

"It seems like every monster around here is invincible or impractical to kill," Lina says.

"That's what 'survival horror' is all about," I say.

"Video games?" Alissa asks.

I nod, and Ted answers, "Survival horror is a sub-genre of video games that focuses on the survival of the character as the game tries to frighten players with either horror graphics or scary ambiance. The player is made to feel less in control than in typical video games through limited ammunition, health, speed, and vision, or through various obstructions of the player's interaction with the game mechanics."

"Sounds similar to what we're facing," Yunia says.

"I can barely understand what he's talking about," Aoi says, almost proudly.

I smile wryly and extend a tail-hand to pat her head.

"At least we didn't piss ourselves," Hana says in a low tone and snorts depressingly.

I pat her head, then give her a painful tug on her ear.

"Ahn…" She softly moans sensually.

"Don't look down on yourself, okay? These monsters aren't the kind that fights fair, if we can even call those horrible abilities a 'fight,'" I say.

She grunts and looks away, then her lips curl into a small pout.

I build up my resolve and breathe in, then I look at the other girls and say, "Alright… we need a plan to deal with that thing."

"Do we have to go there?" Yunia asks.

"It's our best clue about where to go next," Alissa says.

"Maybe you should use summons to explore the mansion," Lina suggests.

"It seems that it did some spirit damage to them. Summons are more vulnerable to that than normal humanoids due to the lack of free will," Yunia says.

Lina looks down, disappointed. "Oh… well, that's a problem."

"I'll go, alone," Alissa says.

"I'll go, too. The Weepers barely had an effect on me," Lina says.

Alissa looks at Lina and considers her proposal, but she doesn't seem inclined to accept it.

"Are you sure you two will be okay? Your parents… uh…" I look away and regret speaking; it'd be too rude to say it.

"What…? Wolfy, please say it," Alissa asks, earnest.

I cringe and look her in the eye. "Your parents sold both of you. Are you sure that the monster won't be able to use that against you?"

Lina frowns and looks down, deep in thought.

"My parents had no choice. It was a deal made many generations before their time," Alissa calmly answers.

"But don't you have any bad memories of them? Like, some jealousy from your sister because she wasn't the chosen one, or something you did that disappointed them once?"

"I don't think that I should go anymore," Lina says in a low tone.

"Hm…" Alissa pats her head and hums.

"I never knew my parents, so I think I should be fine," Ciel comes forward.

"But I can't pull you out since you don't have [Bind]," I say.

She shows a guilty smile and innocently asks, "Remove someone and give it to me?"

Lina's frown deepens and Alissa freezes.

"Is it really that good to be bound to him?" Yunia asks and raises her golden eyebrows as high as she can.

"Yes…?" Alissa tentatively answers and smiles.

Lina starts fiddling with her thumbs and says, "We are all truly together because of the [Bind]. It makes me feel safe."

Roxanne sneaks her arms around my neck and closes her eyes. "Our feelings bleed into each other occasionally, so we can all feel each others' hearts when we need it the most."

"Remove mine," Lina says and comes over to me. "I'm the one who's been bound for the shortest time, so I won't miss it as much."

"Alright," I say in a low tone and obey.

Losing my connection with her makes me feel odd, like being in a room that's darker than what you're used to. It'll take some time to adjust to it.

Lina grabs her heart and bites her lip. "It really does make me feel 'empty,'" she says and walks away. Alissa gives her a hug and pats her head.

Ciel comes forth and breathes deeply.

"Alright, here we go," I say and cast [Bind].

I pull her soul into mine and release it. Her "string" appears in my mind space, and I pull on it, spilling her "blanket" all over. I hold it all and "dive" into it, searching for her "mental voice."

Her early memories have the same dull color as many of Lina's. Then they gain color when she starts fighting monsters and healing people. Their vividness becomes almost life-like when a tall, handsome black man appears. His body is the definition of perfection, and his smile is so bright that he could be a model for toothpaste. Thankfully, she never saw his dick uncovered by his underwear.

Must be Macht.

I'm not gay, but damn, son… he makes me feel a little inadequate, until I remember how much I've corrupted her.

Actually, I'm sorry Macht, I've corrupted our brown angel beyond recovery.

Her memories of him suddenly cease, then they become darker than any before them.

I finally recognize myself near the end, and all of the colors slowly come back, along with their vividness.

I finally reach the area where her inner voice resides. She's humming a very faint lullaby that calms my heart.

"Ciel?" I ask.

"Oh! Hello, Wolfy," she responds in a chipper tone. "This feels so odd, you're inside my mind. Wait, don't turn this sexual…"

"I love you," I say, and she responds with incoherent mumbling as her mind flinches from my sudden attack.

I grab her inner voice, then I bring it back with me into my soul space.

"You're ready now," I say and grin at her.

She nods shyly and sighs.

"I love you, too," she answers and gushes a little, making me grin.

"So, are we sure about how the monster will attack her mind?" Yunia asks.

"There are many other people it could've used to frighten me. If it picked my Mom, then it was for a special reason," Hana says.

"I think I have an idea about what that monster represents," Lina says and pushes a letter into my hands. It's the one that she got from the locked drawer at the mayor's office.

I unfold it, and the girls huddle up around me, then I read it out loud for them.

My dear Onora,

I dreamed about you yesterday. We were in the Astral Observatory during the day. Countless flowers were arranged around us, filling the room with their perfume. Your purple lips caressed my skin with your angelic touch, and my fingers massaged the inside of your moist womb. Your moans of pleasure sounded heavenly and ethereal as the sun touched your blessed cinnamon skin, elevating your beauty to divine standards.

Your lips moved down to…

"Okay, this is just an erotic letter," I say and frown towards Lina.

"R-read the bottom part," she says, shyly.

"Huh, the way he used 'angelic' is weird. I've never heard of it being said to a non-Angel-type demon before," Roxanne says.

"I've heard it once," Yunia says and smiles nostalgically. I bet she's remembering crushing that man's dreams when she rejected him.

"Anyway, here's the good stuff," I say.

I can't stand The Lady anymore. She nags me for attention, but how could I give it to her in good will? That bloodsucker took my youth and gave me nothing in return. My daughter ignores me, my son hates me, her father thinks me a coward, her mother tries to 'educate' me, and now even the help laughs behind my back!

What do I even have in my life that brings me happiness? Not even my job is worth all the stress anymore. I've lost my yellow keycard, and nearly everyone on the station stopped working while trying to find it. The Chief of Security only didn't strangle me because I'm the mayor; otherwise, I'm sure he would've even tried to kill me! We've been sent to a colony full of savages!

Let us meet again at the Wigwam. I long for your…

"He's thirsty," I say.

I'm ready to abandon it all. Let The Lady drown in her own hateful spit. She will not drain any more of my money! I'm taking it all with me, let us elope!

"Okay, this is weird, but… somehow, I already knew that his wife was called 'The Lady,'" I say.

Roxanne and Hana blink blankly.

"Didn't we already give it that name?" Hana asks.

"No… we didn't," I answer and scratch my head. "It seems like The Lady's power is rather subtle."

Roxanne grimaces and rests her head against mine again. "I really don't like the way that it messed with my head…" She says and her voice cracks as she's about to cry.

I give her head plenty of kisses. "We'll get through this."

Ciel crouches in front of us and smiles at Roxanne. "I'll deal with The Lady, and everything will be fine."

Roxanne pouts a little. "You're treating me like a kid again," she says and sniffles.

"I want to be pampered, too," Hana says and chuckles softly.

I get up and offer my hands to help each of them stand up.

Aoi folds her wings tight and pushes against my legs with her head. "Mount me, I'll carry you three there," she says.

Alissa hides her face, but [Bind] never lies, she's jealous.

We take up her offer and mount her. Hana is a natural at this and looks the most comfortable on Aoi's back, but not me or Roxanne. I don't look that imposing due to the mismatch in size. Roxanne looks like a Lady, I look like her son, and Hana looks like our knight.

One day, I'll fix my image…

"Your place is on top of me, anyway," Alissa says, and I agree with both meanings.

"Let's move," I order.

A note from Manasong

Hall of Fame of Patrons

The patrons who support Rupegia shall have their names sung by the bards for they deserve the glory and honor. Their names are:

Oracle Maximillian Hübner.

Prince PreownedFIN.

Lord Andrew Meyers.

Lord Hope.

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Lord Bill.

Lord Novgarod.

Lord DJ.

Lord Cidant.

Lord Ashadun.

Lord Michale Erwin.

Lord Enrique Peña Gomez.

Lord Braidborn.

Lord Bakerdea.

Lord Yeeteris Dedmeem.

Lord D4rk Sheep.

Lord Nathan Vanbrunt.

Lord Andrew Heffelbower.

Lord Markus.

Lord Maurice.

Lord Badger.

Lord Brennon Goetz.

Lord Amelgar.

Lord Krawn.

Lord Remco.

Noble Salty Panda.

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Noble Yamibomb112.

Noble Mild Fracas.

Noble Geminus.

Noble EESDESESESRDT.

Nobleman Lassiter.

Noble Aclys.

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Chapter 68: Abomination - Part 1

Gify gives us a massage to finish our treatment for "broken heart" and helps us get back into fighting shape.

"Are you sure we should go straight back to the mansion? Shouldn't we investigate the Mayor's Office a bit more?" Yunia asks.

"What, scared?" I ask with a cheeky grin.

"Me? Scared of a monster that uses your own fear of your parents to drive you insane? Ohohohoh, of course not!" She exclaims and shows an angry smile.

"But you're not even going into the mansion," Ciel says, confused.

Yunia clenches her fist and frowns. "My [Disruption Field] could be useful against The Lady," she says.

"Ooh… how does that spell work, anyway?" I ask.

"First, I draw a circle of blood on the ground, then, when someone enters it, I can disrupt their flow of mana and prevent them from casting spells. I can even kill magical beings if I disrupt them strongly enough."

"Hm… that's quite a useful ability. Couldn't Ciel carry a vial of your blood and make the circle herself, then?"

"I still have to be close to it to activate it."

"Oh…"

"'Oh' indeed." She smiles wryly and sighs.

"Anyway, there wasn't much in the Mayor's Office from what they saw. In fact, the only room that seemed to be fully furnished was the mayor's personal office," I continue, and Alissa nods.

"You could send in a Holly to investigate. The guards didn't seem to react to her," Lina says.

"Good idea."

We enter the Residential district and start sneaking. We don't want to risk drawing the attention of the Possessed Mannequins.

With everything made of concrete, the streets have a rather modern air to them. All that's missing is the black asphalt and we'd be set. There aren't any sidewalks or obvious lanes, but everywhere except for the middle of the street seems worn-out, indicating some form of separation of the flow of traffic.

The buildings are mostly apartment complexes, but there's still a large amount of empty space above them, so this district doesn't feel claustrophobic like the administration corridors did. Every once in a while, we see a dead green space, but it's still mostly a concrete jungle.

There are a few windows in the ceiling letting in some light, but they are far too few to properly illuminate the entire district, creating a very moody atmosphere.

"This place looks similar to my town back on Earth," I comment.

But it reminds me more of Brazil than Canada since every house is gated.

"Your home isn't a very pretty place," Yunia says.

"Polished rock is better, but these concrete buildings are really nice," Lina says.

"Really?" I ask.

She nods emphatically and says, "If only the air weren't so stale and we had more illumination, then this would be a good place for dwarves to live in."

"Ho~h. I can't even fathom how dwarves are capable of living in such small and closed off places," Yunia says.

"An elf that doesn't understand the coziness of a small and sturdy house is just another monster for the Lord," Lina says and shakes her head.

The two share a brief glare without any mean feelings behind it.

We give the shopping center a wide berth, but we still end up encountering a mannequin standing still in the middle of the street.

"I can't sense their presence," Alissa whispers, worriedly.

"Don't make any loud noises, they seem to react to sound," I whisper, and we cautiously continue forward.

Roxanne shows her tongue to the mannequin as we pass by it.

"I think I can use [Chain Life] on them if they start to move," Yunia says.

"Good, I have a feeling that we'll need it," Hana says and chuckles nervously.

As we walk deeper in, the district starts to become mossy and ruined, but even more so than when Hana and Roxanne passed through here previously.

"We are too loud," Alissa says as we pass by another mannequin.

"I'll store Jarn for now," I say.

The other two golems can float, so they never make that much noise.

"I can try to fix that," Yunia says.

Alissa grabs Lina and lifts the little dwarf onto her shoulders, surprising her, then she turns into a fox with Lina already on top of her.

"That felt really weird," Lina says.

"You must be more sensitive to mana, like Wolfy," Alissa says, then she turns to Yunia. "Just try to make Aoi and Ciel silent."

Yunia nods and starts concentrating. Her fingers subtly move around, as if they were typing something. I feel mana gathering within her, then it starts to surround us before pooling closely around Ciel and Aoi. I stop sensing the mana right when I stop hearing their footsteps. Even the soft jingle of their padded armor vanishes.

Ciel's mouth moves, but no sound comes out.

That spell must be really useful for assassination.

"I can't hear anything," Ciel says in my soul space.

"I'll share my hearing with you, then," I reply.

"This feels really weird," she says with a chuckle.

I also notice a change in the volume of the sounds that we're making. With Alissa being completely silent, and Yunia barely making a sound, the loudest sound we're producing is when we move too quickly, making our armor jingle.

It's fortunate for us that we have Yunia since the number of mannequins in the streets rises quickly.

We avoid them all without a problem, then they suddenly stop appearing.

"Are we safe, now?" Aoi asks in a low tone.

"We aren't that close to the mansion yet," Roxanne says, and I nod.

A few meters further in, our [Spirit Light]s illuminate a line of mannequins blocking our way.

"Spoke too soon," Lina whispers dejectedly.

I look to the side and see another line blocking our alternate path. Yunia suddenly looks behind us, and we follow her sight, then we see a third line of mannequins blocking our way.

"Uh… those weren't there before," I say, and the girls frown.

I look forward again and notice that the line has moved closer to us.

Oh, Gods, no!

I make Hana look behind us and have Roxanne look to the side. Now both of these lines have come closer, too.

"Their webs of Life are coming closer whenever no one's looking at them," Yunia says.

Ugh… does this count as plagiarism?

There's a gate ajar beside us, so I guide the girls there. We enter the front garden of an apartment complex with a few dozen mannequins spread around.

"Roxanne, watch the left; Lina, watch the right; Ted and Suzy, watch behind us," I order.

We move close to the wall and circle around the building to the other entrance. Then we take the streets again and continue avoiding the mannequin blockades.

Creepy-ass place. I'm starting to get tired of this shit.

On a particularly dark street, the road suddenly curves in a way that I haven't seen before in this almost perfectly grid-like district. This place just doesn't make any sense, and now it's changing things up to mess with us.

Down the curve, a blockade stops us, forcing us to double-back.

Oh, boy…

We don't get far before another blockade stops us. Now we are sandwiched between two walls of mannequins. There's no gate for us to escape this, but we can still climb the walls flanking us.

Suddenly, our [Spirit Light]s blink, plunging us into darkness for a moment, and when they come back on, the mannequins have moved closer. Even the Hollys "blinked."

Okay, we're getting into SCP territory now…

"What is going on?" Alissa anxiously whispers.

"Something is messing with our [Spirit Light]s," Ciel says, a hint of fear leaking into her voice.

"We can't stay here," Yunia says and looks at me, starting to get desperate.

"Climb up there," I say and point to a wall.

"This will be… hard," Aoi says.

"We'll dismount and cross over it on our own," I respond.

"Okay."

Alissa jumps across the wall with little difficulty, though she did make Lina scared for a moment. Yunia and Ciel quickly vault over top while we carefully dismount and use our abilities to cross over it. Roxanne, the golems, and I can simply float while Aoi and Hana have to use their wings.

On the other side, Alissa is getting cornered by four mannequins as our [Spirit Light]s start flickering every few seconds.

I keep my eyes on them as she runs around, then we run across a large dead yard and towards a gate that leads to another street. The few spread out mannequins follow us slowly due to the flickering of our lights.

We exit onto the street, and the duration that our lights stay "off" increases, allowing the mannequins to move a longer distance with each blink.

The blockades disappear, but they're replaced by mannequins sparsely spread out, forcing us to play a game of cat and mouse as we repeatedly dodge them.

Then we see a single mannequin that gives me chills. Laying down in the middle of the street is a white baby doll with an oversized head, nearly half a meter long. Its body is covered with splattered blood.

The light flickers, and it reappears a meter closer to us, now standing on its two chubby legs.

"Uh~…" Ciel lets out a sound filled with anxiety.

"W-wolfy…" Lina calls to me, sounding frightened.

The light flickers again, and it comes even closer, now fallen on the ground with its face down, as if it had tripped.

Okay, now this is plagiarism, right?

"By the Gods, that's creepy," Alissa says.

"I really don't like that," Yunia says.

The light flickers once more, the time it stays "on" getting shorter still, and the baby reappears closer to us, now standing up again.

"Fuck. That," I say, and order Roxanne.

"[Ice Lance]," she casts, and the spell punts the doll far, far away.

Our [Spirit Light]s dim, barely allowing us to see a meter ahead.

"They are coming…" Yunia whispers, almost stunned.

"Run," I order.

The mannequins don't appear anymore in the streets, but now there's a group of them running after us. They start to catch up just as we near the mansion, but we have to shake them off if we want to explore it safely.

Yunia casts a quick [Chain Life] on the ones leading the charge, quickly creating a pile as the mannequins fail to avoid the first ones that fell. Then Ciel casts a [Windstorm] to push the survivors away. This gives me an idea.

"The alley!" I exclaim, and we take a detour. "Lina, close it!"

She casts [Earth Wall], blocking the only entrance to it.

We repeat that maneuver a few more times and then hide inside a house beside the mansion.

Minutes pass, and we see no sign of the mannequins, allowing us to slowly relax. Our [Spirit Light]s gradually return to their previous brightness, a possible sign that the mannequins aren't after us anymore.

Alissa sighs and lays down, tired of being in her fox form for so long. Ciel casts a [Refresh] on her, wiping away most of the tiredness. Aoi is just slightly tired; a dragon's stamina is truly impressive.

This house is so comfy that I feel like stealing the sofas. Unfortunately, when I store them in my "Items," they simply disappear without creating another entry, then they grow back from a white sludge that oozes out of the ground.

Once I deem us all rested enough, I get up and say, "Alright, it's time to deal with The Lady."

Yunia suddenly jumps off of the sofa and stands up straight, frozen with tension.

I get up and walk over to her. I stop right in front of her and look up at her face, then I grab her hand and remove our gauntlets, allowing our bare skin to touch eachother.

I delicately caress her hand, with just the faintest touch of my spirit. She looks down at me, and her stern expression softens a little.

"I'll use [Bind] on you so that I can summon you back to me the very moment you get caught by The Lady," I state.

"No!" She exclaims and grips my hands, her blue eyes wide open in surprise.

"Why?" I ask immediately.

She bites her lip and says, "I'll… find the strength to resist her."

"You didn't answer my question," I say in a calm tone.

She looks away. "It's embarrassing."

"Hm…?" I knit my eyebrows at her.

Her tone lowers to almost a whisper. "I'm just… really scared…"

"Well…" I hold back my grin and use a soft tone. "That's why I'm going to use [Bind]. To make sure that I can bring you back safely even if you don't resist her."

"I feel like a child…" She mumbles.

"Oh, hey. That makes two of us!" Roxanne says and grins.

Lina shyly lifts her hands. "I'm also scared."

"I almost pissed myself when I met The Lady, so…" Hana says with a wry smile.

"I don't think you're helping," Ciel says to Hana and chuckles nervously.

"It's not just that. With [Mask], I can always hide my fear, but it never works with you, and now you'll know exactly what I feel," Yunia says and anxiously looks at me from the side of her eye.

I sit down on the sofa and make her sit beside me.

"I promise that I won't make fun of your feelings," I say.

"That's not re-…"

"I'll also stop Roxanne from making fun of you," I interrupt her.

"Okay, that's a bit better," she says and chuckles softly.

"H-hey!" Roxanne complains.

"I'll also take control of your bladder and prevent you from pissing yourself, just like I did for Hana," I add.

"Wait, seriously?" Hana asks, her mouth hanging open.

I just grin and don't answer.

"That's a bit weird," Yunia says, and softly shakes her head while smiling.

"I could possibly turn off your brain if you get caught by The Lady. Maybe even take control of your body and force you to walk away," I continue and rub my chin in thought.

"Wolfy, stop," Ciel says and laughs along with the girls.

Yunia awkwardly rubs her right ear while blushing slightly.

Laughing is always good for lightening the mood and reducing tension.

A few awkward silent seconds pass, then she breathes in deeply and straightens her posture. "Alright, I'm ready," she says.

I look at Roxanne and smile apologetically. "I'm sorry, but I'll have to remove your [Bind] for now," I say.

She pouts and her dagger-tail points towards me threateningly. "I demand compensation."

"I only have my body to offer," I say and lower my head.

"Then I'll only need your hands," she says and grins excitedly.

"Disappointing…" I whisper, then I nod and say, "But I accept."

"Hmph!" She points her chin up snobbishly like Yunia.

"I think she's making fun of me," Yunia whispers and narrows her eyes.

I poke Roxanne's soul, and she yelps, then I release her from the [Bind] before she can retaliate.

"Awn…" Roxanne deflates, and Hana, Lina, and Aoi start to console her.

I turn to Yunia and cast [Bind]. "Here we go," I say, and she tenses up.

I grab her soul and drop it into my soul space, then I pick up her blanket and dive in.

I see a cute little elven princess having a privileged childhood, then her training starts, and she slowly becomes more and more responsible. I see how dearly she loves her parents and how happy she was with them.

I also see a countless number of faces. Servants, friends, classmates, teachers, commoners, and many others. Then a face stands out: an androgynous elven boy, her first love. A pure and heartwarming love. The marriage proposal happens, and they drown in each other's bodies.

Then things suddenly turn sour. She loses all hope in her parents, breaks off the engagement, and retreats into a shell with only her brothers. Then I kill her parents, and everything goes gray.

The last few memories she has of us are so short that I can only get a brief glimpse, but that's not enough to say how well she's recovering. Then I find her inner voice.

"Yunia?" I ask.

"Ah!" She yelps, and a wave of anxiety hits me.

Things start to go dark, and her mind starts to squeeze down on me. She's rejecting me.

"Remember to breathe," I say.

I look at her in real life and see that she's biting her lip while her hands are shaking.

The pressure increases, and I get restless as her anxiety becomes too disruptive.

"You're rejecting me," I say.

She closes her eyes and breathes in, but it doesn't help.

"I feel weird," she says in real life.

Suddenly, the anxiety and the pressure are gone, then I start to feel lethargic. I lose the motivation to act, and it takes a lot of willpower to make myself grab her inner voice and pull it back into my mind space.

Once I'm back, the lethargy instantly goes away. I look her in the eye and hear the ringing of glass. She's using [Mask] again.

"I'm sorry. This is the only way that I could calm myself," she says, feeling my slight disappointment.

"It's… fine. Now, go with Ciel," I respond.

She nods, and the two of them depart.

Yunia didn't learn how to control her emotions to not let them bleed through the [Bind]. [Mask] has only diminished the intensity of her emotions. She's "numbing" herself to the world, allowing her to use her will alone to drive her actions.

The lethargy I felt must've been the [Mask] starting to take effect. And if that's how it feels to use it, then it must be really tiring to keep it up for a long time.

The mansion had its windows boarded shut when Roxanne and Hana first came here, but now, almost all of them are broken. The mansion itself seems like it aged a hundred years, with blotches that are either dirt or blood staining most of its surface.

"This station gets even creepier the more we explore," Ciel comments, and Yunia nods stoically.

They cautiously open the double door at the entrance, making it creak loudly, then stare into the main hall, wary of any movements.

"I'll start to set up over here," Yunia says.

"Alright…" Ciel says, a little tense.

The hall is wide and open, devoid of any furniture. There's only a wide staircase that splits in two halfway up to the second floor and doors to the other corridors of the mansion.

"How dull," Yunia whispers.

"Everything around here is dull," Ciel whispers.

"True."

The white tiled floor is completely covered in dust, making it look rather gray.

Yunia cuts her hand with a dagger and lets the blood drip all over the hall. Ciel goes upstairs and takes a right turn, towards The Lady's room.

Satisfied with the amount of blood spilled everywhere, Yunia starts making a large, uninterrupted circle of blood in the middle.

Ciel powers up her [Spirit Light] and makes her [Holy Spirit] walk beside her. She draws her shortsword since her glaive is too long for these narrow corridors.

A tense minute goes by as Yunia continues her work, and Ciel cautiously walks forward. Beads of sweat start to form on her forehead due to the tension; her sword arm trembles, making her armor rattle slightly; and her jaw shivers, making her teeth begin to chatter.

Her anxious breathing sounds a bit loud amid the complete silence of the mansion; her slow, quiet steps become quick, heavy stomps; the soft jingle of her armor now seems like the scraping of a wire brush against a wall; her heart is beating so fast that she feels it slamming against her rib cage.

Yunia starts to walk away from her circle of blood, but she suddenly freezes in place, and her head snaps to the balcony. Her [Mask] instantly breaks, and she shrieks in terror.

"CIEL, GO BACK! SHE'S AT THE LEFT WING!" I yell through [Bind].

Ciel sucks in a sharp breath and starts a mad dash back to the main hall.

Yunia runs in the opposite direction of The Lady, fleeing towards the right wing of the first floor. She crashes into a room and hurriedly closes the door, then locks it shut. She drops to her knees, and five sharp claws burst through the door a few centimeters above her head.

"HYAAAAAAAAAH!" Yunia shrieks and falls down on her ass.

The Lady starts to hack at the door, making splinters and chunks of wood fly everywhere. She opens a hole, then looks through it.

"YUNIA! LISTEN TO ME!" I yell through [Bind].

Yunia stands still, frozen in shock.

"YUNIA, CIEL NEEDS YOU! YOU NEED TO GET YOUR SHIT TOGETHER!" I plead to her.

The Lady grabs the rough edges of the hole and pries it apart, making the door crack.

Ciel jumps off of the balcony and lands in the main hall, then she sees The Lady down the corridor.

"I'M YOUR OPPONENT, YOU HATEFUL WOMAN!" Ciel bellows.

The Lady turns her gaze away from Yunia, allowing her to breathe again, and stares at Ciel.

Her [Spirit Light] and [Holy Spirit] shine like the sun, working hard to repel the hate of The Lady trying to break her heart.

"HRIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII!" A shrill wail hurts Ciel's ears and stuns her for a moment.

Yunia goes limp on the floor, catatonic.

"YUNIA! WAKE UP! GET UP! CIEL NEEDS YOU!" I try to force her to move, but she's resisting the [Bind].

Ciel recovers, then she sees the five long claws rushing towards her. She activates [Wind Shield], and The Lady is pushed back.

Gify, hit me with the good stuff.

Gih!

Visions of dragons mating, killing, eating, and flying fill my mind. Power, glory, majesty, confidence, these feelings fill me with endless energy. My dick tries to escape out of my armor, but I control my lust, then I redirect all of my feelings towards Yunia.

I don't know how to cast [Disruption Field], I need her to wake up!

"YUNIA, GET UP! CIEL NEEDS YOU! I NEED YOU…! WE… NEED… YOU…!"

Yunia trembles, the overwhelming energy of my emotions stunning her for a second.

"Okay," she responds and gets up. "I'M COMING TO GET YOU, YOU LOATHSOME GRUDGE-FESTERING MASS OF EXISTENTIAL IMPOTENCE!" She bellows.

Ciel trades blows with The Lady, but her body is completely incorporeal, except for her claws and her eyes. The only thing that affects her is Ciel's [Wind Shield], for some reason.

Yunia races down the corridor and The Lady turns to her. Instead of stopping, Yunia seemingly speeds up and yells, "I KILLED YOU ONCE, I'LL KILL YOU A THOUSAND TIMES, MOM!"

Then she leaps and lands with her hand on the circle of blood.

A storm of mana suddenly appears and wracks through both The Lady and Ciel. The [Spirit Light] and the [Holy Spirit] disappear, the [Wind Shield] stops working, and The Lady shrieks, almost stunning Yunia and interrupting the [Disruption Field].

A naked crone with sickly, pale skin and hair, and a half-rotten, half-skeletal body suddenly becomes visible. Her nails are long, wickedly sharp claws caked with blood. Her hair thankfully covers most of her hideously twisted face.

"GET HEE~R!" I order Ciel.

She doesn't waste a second before driving her sword through the crone's heart. A heavy tension suddenly lifts from my shoulders, making me notice how tired I really am. Ciel and Yunia suddenly calm down, their minds are confused, but their hearts are light, now freed from the cold grip of The Lady.

The crone goes limp and falls backward on the floor.

Alissa frowns. "I can sense her now, and she's not dead yet," she says.

Oh boy.

A note from Manasong

Hall of Fame of Patrons

The patrons who support Rupegia shall have their names sung by the bards for they deserve the glory and honor. Their names are:

Oracle Maximillian Hübner.

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Chapter 68: Abomination - Part 2

"AHAHAHAH…! WOO!" Yunia cheers out loud. She's feeling so horny right now that she'd even like to be choked while being fucked by me.

Ciel laughs more conservatively, still a little terrified by The Lady to put a lot of energy in her cheering.

"She's not dead yet," I say through [Bind].

The laughter stops.

Ciel jumps forward and grabs the sword, then twists it. Yunia draws a dagger and leaps forward, then stabs The Lady repeatedly in the eye sockets.

"Let's go help them," I say, and we rush out of the house.

The Lady's wounds aren't actually bleeding, but it's still gruesome to see what they're doing.

Then they notice that The Lady hasn't even reacted, so they stab her shoulders to stop her arms and her claws from moving.

We burst into the mansion, and I summon an earth elemental.

"Drop onto her! Stop her from moving!" I order.

The tall and heavy elemental with black hair and bangs stomps over to The Lady. Ciel and Yunia jump away, taking their weapons with them, then the elemental throws itself on top of The Lady, squashing her entire body against the tiled floor.

We stand still for a long minute, wary of any sudden movements.

"Is she really not dead?" Hana asks.

"It seems so," Alissa answers.

Yunia nods and says, "Her Life is still going strong, but for some reason, her body doesn't move." She wants to say that we should run away, but then she feels ashamed of being so weak. "She might be a magical being. I'll try to destroy her with [Disruption Field]," she adds. She's bitter and wants to take revenge on The Lady for the terror that she inflicted upon us.

I nod towards her, and she touches the circle of blood again, restarting the mana storm. The storm is focused below the elemental, only enveloping The Lady's body, but it still chips away at the elemental's health.

Another minute passes, and nothing seems to change with The Lady, so Yunia sighs and stops. She's feeling useless.

"Is she a monster or a humanoid?" I ask Alissa.

"A monster, and a kind that I've never seen before," she answers.

"I'll destroy her body with [Firestorm]," Roxanne suggests.

"Do it," I accept.

While still squashed by the elemental, Roxanne turns The Lady into a pile of ash, but she still doesn't die.

I look into her soul and see a mana organ twice the size of Roxanne's, with only about a tenth of it actually empty. Many other of her soul organs are similar to ours, but there's also just as many that I don't recognize.

"Can we rupture her spirit?" I ask.

Yunia shakes her head and answers, "A powerful enough Spirit mage can use [Soul Blade] for that, but I can't. There's also [Soul Rip], but that's a level eighty spell, and you said that your Gift only lets you see up to level forty."

Well, damn. This bitch is immortal to us, then.

"Wrap yourself around her, and pierce her heart and brain, then turn into a metal coffin," I order, and the elemental obeys. Changing stone into metal will take a lot of mana, so I walk towards it to feed it some more.

Alissa suddenly holds my hand. "It's dangerous to get close," she says.

I don't agree with that, but I don't feel like arguing, so I make the elemental extend a part of its body to me, then I feed it from a distance.

I get an idea. "Maybe it's time-based…" I mumble, and Alissa looks at me oddly. "Maybe she'll regenerate after a set amount of time."

"Oh! That's horrible!" Yunia exclaims. She checks her bladder and feels horrified once she notices that she could wet herself.

"Let's… explore this area as fast as we can, then?" Roxanne nervously suggests.

I agree, and Yunia cries internally, but obeys me without complaint. She remembers that I can listen to her inner voice and lets out a string of garbled elven curses that she tries to suppress.

"I think that I should probably remove your [Bind] now," I say.

She agrees emphatically and feels like giving me a kiss, but then the image of her kissing the tip of my dick appears clearly in her mind. She blushes and tries to suppress her horniness by slapping her face, but that just reminds her of the time that I fucked her brains out before we met Silvane.

She falls to her knees and buries her face in her hands. Her pride is wounded from not being able to control herself. She feels humiliated, but that's her kink and something she'd never shown to anyone before, even her past fiancé.

She wants to be forcefully stripped and fucked on the dirty floor like the filthy elf slut th-…

I release her from [Bind].

I walk forward and crouch down in front of her. "I'm sorry. I should've released you sooner," I say and pat her helmet.

She shakes her head, but doesn't say anything. She lowers her visor and gets up, then walks towards the stairs. "Let's go," she says, trying to sound strong, but I notice a slight tremble in her voice.

The girls stare blankly, confused.

I smile wryly at them. "I heard something that she didn't want to share," I say.

Roxanne almost says something, but holds herself back. I walk over to her and restore her [Bind].

"You can re-[Bind] Lina, too," Ciel says, and I nod.

Hana and Roxanne had explored a good part of the mansion, so we move quickly to explore the rest.

Alissa opens the mayor's office with her green keycard, and we search every centimeter of it.

"He's quite the prolific erotic writer," Roxanne comments as she reads his unsent letters.

"Onora is quite lewd, too," Ciel adds as she reads the letters that he received. "And there are lots of mentions of the time that they spent in a lighthouse by the sea."

"Oh, this one's good," Roxanne says and taps the last letter. "He thinks that he lost his keycard at this 'Wigwam.' He wanted to ask her to find it for him since he thinks that he's being watched by The Lady."

"I guess that we have to find that place now," Alissa says.

We also find a key inside a locked drawer that's labeled as "keycard workshop," though it's not for the door to the workshop. Welp, that's ominous.

Unfortunately, the office doesn't have any other useful information for us. That leaves The Lady's room as the last place to search.

"I'll go first," Ciel says once she notices our hesitation.

After a few moments of nothing happening, we get over our fear and walk through the door.

We see a large and refined room, full of furniture decorated with intricate details and gold inlays. By the wall, there's a lustrous set of metal armor on a stand and a painting of a man and a woman hugging each other with a familiar lighthouse in the background. The man's face has been scratched beyond recognition, and the woman's is covered with a black blotch of paint.

Yunia shows a satisfied expression as she sits on the red velvet chair and grabs the empty glass of wine on the side table. She swirls it, as if it was filled with expensive alcohol, and downs it, then chuckles at her own silliness.

"I understand very well how she lived," She says.

"Same," Roxanne comments as she looks into the large closet filled with expensive dresses.

"Oh, this is interesting," Alissa says as I translate the contents of a letter she found. It's from Onora.

My dear Emmett,

Our time together has been wonderful. I've never been happier than when I'm by your side. My only wish is that this lasts for the rest of our lives.

I don't mind your relationship with The Lady; I know how important she is to you and your career, so I pray that your marriage stays strong. I truly believe that you two can improve things. It'll take a lot of work, but don't lose hope, I'll support you all the way!

With that said, I have something that I must tell you personally. Something wonderful has happened to me; it won't change our relationship, but it's important that you know about it.

Come meet me at the Wigwam, I'll be in our usual room.

Below the letter, there's a map with the location of the Wigwam. The handwriting is different from Onora's, so it's likely to be The Lady's.

"This doesn't look good," Hana says.

Lina finds another letter. No address or sender, very suspicious.

We've found information on your person of interest: an engineer who works at the Control Station, in the main room, specifically. More information will come soon.

"This really doesn't look good," Hana repeats.

Alissa looks around the room. "There's a weapon missing," she says and points to an empty weapon stand.

"Looks like it was used to hold a polearm," Ciel says.

"Hopefully this scenario isn't based on a real one," I say, solemnly.

"Hopefully," Ciel repeats.

There's still no movement inside the elemental coffin, and we don't find anything else that might be important in this room, so we hurry out of the mansion. We leave without a problem and let out a collective sigh of relief.

We already have our next target, the Wigwam, but we're late for lunch, so I open a [Gate] back to our ship.

I simmer not-tomatoes, vinegar, sugar, salt, and not-pepper until a thick, jam-like mixture forms and all the liquid evaporates. I sieve it twice for extra creaminess, then I stir in a small amount of Worcestershire sauce.

There, ketchup.

"Hmm… interesting taste," Alissa says after tasting a drop.

"Put it on fried Territuberem and it tastes heavenly. Or you can do this…" I say and pour ketchup on the steak.

Hana and Aoi yelp in horror, Yunia's face goes blank, flabbergasted, and the rest of the girls frown.

"Ew…" Alissa mumbles.

I start chuckling. Some things stay the same, even across worlds.

I cut the steak into slices and hand it to the girls. "Just try it once," I say, and they give it a chance.

"I've committed a Sin," Hana says after swallowing.

"No blasphemy," Ciel says, then she adds in a low tone, "but I agree…"

Next, I just need a pineapple…

"Okay, it's not bad, but it's weird," Yunia says.

"Yes. Meat shouldn't be sweet, but why doesn't this taste horrible?" Aoi asks.

"It's a mystery," I say with a shrug and hum a tune.

The girls ignore me as they watch Lina put ketchup on the fried Territuberem. They hold their breaths when she takes a bite, and patiently wait until she swallows.

She shifts her footing and looks around, uncomfortable at the attention she's receiving. "It's good," she shyly says.

Nobody else put ketchup on their steak, but fried not-potato with ketchup was a success.

"It's finished," Lina says and gives the repaired shield back to Aoi.

I let a sigh escape me as I slowly return from a trance. The infinite blue is so mesmerizing that I wish that we could vacation around here for a few days.

But all good things must come to an end.

I turn Yunia's head towards me and give her a deep, long kiss. She runs her fingers through my hair, showing that her horniness hasn't gone away yet. I pull back slightly and give her lip a teasing bite, eliciting a soft giggle, then I give her one last peck.

I lean forward and grab Lina's head, then I steal a kiss from her. Her tongue is smaller but more active than Yunia's. She craves the touch and attention, trying to get as much out of me as she can.

I lift Lina and deposit her in the other chair, then I get up and start kissing each of the girls.

Alissa is next, never wasting a chance for her to take a bite out of me. She's calm and gentle, and she always uses [Oral Technique] to maximize my pleasure. Hana gets excited and comes over to me. Her tongue is the one that dives the deepest into my mouth. Roxanne sneaks behind me and steals a kiss. She loves to slowly wrestle with me for dominance. Aoi patiently waits for her turn. She always wraps her tongue around mine as if she were giving it a blowjob. Then Ciel is last. She's gentle, but there's always a thirst behind it.

"It's time to go," I order and open a [Gate] to the grounds of the mansion.

The Wigwam is in the opposite direction of the mannequins, so I pull out Jarn since noise won't cause any problems for us anymore.

As we walk, we notice that the streets are silent and eerie, even more so than usual.

"I smell smoke," Alissa says.

"Wait… is it from the mannequins that we burned?" Roxanne asks.

"Those mannequins didn't smell like this. It's coming from up ahead."

I'm a little surprised that they didn't start a fire in the district.

All of the roads here are named, so it's easy for us to follow The Lady's map. They all have English names, too.

I'm starting to get uncomfortable at how much this reminds me of Earth. Where did the dungeon get the details to make all of this? Unless, of course, it's a coincidence, and it's just copying Maplethorne's culture instead of Earth's.

It doesn't take long for us to reach the Wigwam, but we only find disappointment there. The entire building has been burned to the ground.

"Isn't everything made of concrete around here?" Hana asks.

"Most of them are, but there are a few buildings here and there that are made of wood," I say.

"Well, now what?" Roxanne asks.

"It's a dead end…" I mutter and pout.

"Do we have another lead?" Lina asks.

"The Mayor's Office?" Alissa asks.

"The Hollys haven't found anything noteworthy. There could be a keycard or something inside a drawer…" I say and shrug.

"I can clear the ashes away from the ruins," Ciel says.

Yunia nods in agreement and says, "There could be something buried under this."

"I can help," Aoi volunteers.

Ciel walks into the ruins and hums, deep in through, "Hm… I should be able to use [Windstorm] to push all the ashes away, and you could flap your wings to increase its power."

"We're counting on you two," I say and nod.

We hide in a nearby house as the two girls gather their mana. Just to be safe, I keep a Holly high above us in case this storm of mana that they're whipping up catches the attention of something.

Ciel spends a long minute chanting, then she releases the spell without the damage component, creating a mini-tornado. The spell pulls the air into a whirlpool above the burnt ruins, sucking up all the ashes, then scattering them away from both us and the remaining debris. Aoi's flap of her wings adds some speed to the tornado, and it even starts to lift up small lumps of burnt wood.

They use around a quarter of their mana, but they clear a lot of the rubble that was covering the ruins.

Then I summon four goblins. "Search the ruins for anything interesting," I order.

We take a small break and coach Aoi on how to use [Redirect Mana]. Since she doesn't have a system yet, she has to learn how to do that the hard way.

It ends up being unsuccessful since she doesn't have a fully developed "soul muscle," which is a requirement to use the skill.

While we wait, I let the Hollys explore the buildings around us. They all seem far emptier than the mansion, the Mayor's Office, or even this pile of rubble in front of us. It's like the Dungeon Master is saying that there's nothing over there, so we shouldn't waste our time searching them.

The goblins find a lot of female underwear, so I have a little chat with them to reorder their priorities. If they weren't mana solidifications, then I'd have stored this amazing haul of goodies with glee.

After a good half hour, a goblin suddenly raises his thin little arm in the air in triumph. He's found a yellow keycard.

"Should we really turn on the lights?" Yunia asks.

"What do you think would happen if we did?" I ask.

"Possibly make the monsters more active, or it might make the zombies spread out everywhere."

"It would make it harder to sneak into the Mayor's Office," Alissa adds.

"If it does, then we'll just turn off the lights again," I say, and Yunia shrugs.

We spend another half hour waiting and don't find anything else of interest, so I open a [Gate] to the closet in engineering. I store the golems in my "Items" for a moment so that I don't have to pay their mana cost to use the portal. I also leave a Holly here in the residential district, just to watch over the area.

"Do you know how to operate this?" Roxanne asks.

"No. Let's search the nearby rooms for information," I say, and we spread out.

We spend a half hour slogging through reports, memos, and other documents, we find a manual and start to decipher it. It's almost a literal deciphering session since this station's engineers seem to love technical jargon and didn't leave a dictionary for all this bullshit.

In the end, only Lina and I survive this challenge; the other girls all tap out and take a break.

We understand that a start-up sequence is required to connect all of the wiring properly. Otherwise, certain areas won't connect, and if we then try to turn things on, a mana overload would happen, basically frying everything.

There's no digital UI with all the information that you need on a single screen, so it takes us a combined effort to test the connections and check all the analog meters. The wiring that transfers mana to the lights is made of an alloy of silver and copper, so it's not super efficient mana-wise. The tools are also rather sensitive, and require some very controlled testing so that they don't produce false positives.

The magic tools send a small amount of mana down the channel, then measure how long it takes for it to come back, and how much mana returns. It's basically a mana "ping." Because of how imprecise it is, it requires a specific order of measurements so that the results don't get garbled up.

Lina sighs and lowers her mana sensing tool to the floor. She stretches and says, "How odd. These mana channels are so small and sturdy that I'm not even sure that they use something this well-made in the capital. But why did they make them like this if their tools were so much less precise? It would take so much more effort to build them this way."

"Isn't this dungeon supposed to be set in the past?" I ask, and Lina scratches her head in thought, then I continue, "With the development of better tools, it became possible to reduce the quality of the mana channels."

"Oh…" -She blinks blankly- "that's right. That makes so much sense."

We finally finish up, and Alissa gives us the sitrep, "The station is in 'minimum life-support mode.' All the spare mana from the generator is being redirected to Looping Winds Control."

"That's suspicious," I say.

"Something bad is going on over there," Yunia agrees.

"And if we return the station to the standard distribution of mana, something bad might come to us," I say.

"Nah, we'll be fine," Hana says with a fearsome smile.

"Yeah, we will, but it'll also force us to work harder," I respond.

"Well, we don't really need to turn on the lights right now," Yunia says.

"True, but then what should we do now?" I ask.

"Let me explore the Mayor's Office building again," Alissa says.

"Alright, I'll go with you and drop a new coordinate over there," I say.

"If we don't find any other clues, then we might have to break into the keycard workshop, and it could be powered by the station's mana, so we might be forced to turn on the lights anyway," Lina says.

"Now that could be really bad. We have no idea what will happen if we trigger the alarm," Yunia says.

"It might be a required step, we also have a key that's clearly for something inside the workshop. One last challenge before we enter the Control room," I say.

"Sounds fun," Roxanne says sarcastically.

I ride Alissa to the Mayor's Office and drop a coordinate in front of the entrance. She casts [Ignorance] on herself and sneaks in.

The Baby Brutes have returned to their respective floors, so she dances around their patrol patterns to avoid detection. Since a Holly has already checked anything not inside a drawer, Alissa wastes little time searching each room.

"There's nothing here," comes the inevitable conclusion.

Engineering is full of zombies, residential is full of mannequins and nothing else of interest, and administration is mostly empty. There's no other notable point of interest that we haven't fully searched yet. It's time to turn on the lights.

I unsummon the earth elementals holding the doors to this room open and close them. Now that we have a yellow keycard, we can open them at any time.

Then we discuss what we'll do next.

"All systems ready. Turning on the lights," I order, and the girls obey.

We pull the levers and average the mana distribution among all of the station systems. Everywhere, crystal lights turn on, clearing away most of the eerie atmosphere of the station. Then the zombies immediately start to spread out, each trying to grab the crystals in the ceiling.

"It doesn't seem like they're healing," I say.

"These crystals just produce light, they are different from a [Spirit Light]," Ciel says.

"That's good to hear."

Then it comes. We hear a low, long, high-pitched cry. It stops for a long moment, then it starts going again and repeats in the same pattern. It slowly becomes louder and louder. It turns into a horrifying wailing, then suddenly stops. After a few tense seconds, the Holly outside engineering sees it.

A thin veil of red, pulsating flesh grows along the corridors and slowly makes its way towards our room. Once it touches a zombie, it spreads over their skin, covering them with a patchwork of flesh. These new zombies all turn towards our room, and I notice that their dull movements have become much faster and more dexterous.

I explain what's happening to the girls and say, "I have a bad feeling about touching that thing."

"We have to hurry, then," Yunia says.

I nod in agreement and say, "It's time to break into the keycard workshop."

The girls ready their weapons, and I open a [Gate] to the Mayor's Office.

This area is open like the residential district, giving us an unobstructed view of the walls of the keycard workshop on the third floor. There's no reason to climb the stairs, so Lina uses [Earth Wall] to create a platform on the third floor for me to jump to. With [Telekinesis], it's a piece of cake to get up there.

I summon an earth elemental and tell it to open a hole in the wall.

A second after the elemental starts its work, a low siren starts to buzz, slowly gaining volume until it becomes so loud that it hurts our ears. Then it starts to lose volume, and a heavy tension falls on our shoulders.

All the lights dim, nearly plunging us into darkness again; the walls become darkened with dirt and grime; cracks appear all over the station and threaten to break the buildings apart; blood stains and scribbles that almost seem like actual writing randomly appear everywhere; random noises of metal hitting metal resound all around us.

"The guards, they are changing," Alissa says through [Bind].

I enter the workshop and open a [Gate] to the girls, then they immediately cross through it.

"No time to waste, get in position," I order, and we prepare for the worst.

A note from Manasong

Hall of Fame of Patrons

The patrons who support Rupegia shall have their names sung by the bards for they deserve the glory and honor. Their names are:

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Chapter 68: Abomination - Part 3

I see a counter separating the small room, a few chairs, some shelves with documents, a basket full of white keycards, and a large metal box that looks like a copying machine, which I assume is the keycard worktable.

Yunia takes off one of her gauntlets and lightly cuts her hand, then she starts making a strip of [Disruption Field] around the edge of the entire room. This way, she can disrupt anything that comes in while still allowing us to cast spells.

I go to the counter and search for a manual; Hana takes position by the door, with Aoi by the wall; Lina goes to the worktable; and Ciel and Jarn will protect Alissa, Roxanne, and the doll golems.

Gify pops out of existence. Things are about to get ugly.

Lina finds a keyhole in the worktable and uses the mayor's key. She twists it, and its lid unlocks. There are a dozen levers and a glass plate, where a blank keycard can be placed.

"They're coming," Alissa says.

The sound of metal hitting metal gets louder, forming a horrifying cacophony. A mist that clouds even the Hollys' sight starts to spread from every direction towards the Office.

Alissa's ears twitch, and she anxiously grips her bow harder. "Monsters are coming from all around the building," she says.

Then I see something frightening that makes me freeze. A flayed person crawls forward on all fours. Below the knees and the elbows, its limbs have been replaced by rusty, chipped blades, and its face is somehow stuck in a creepy grin.

The monster reaches our building and sinks its blades into the wall without a problem, then it starts to climb up, towards us.

Alissa goes out through the hole in the wall and shoots an arrow at it from the safety of the platform. It dodges by jumping away from the wall, then it falls to the floor without taking any visible damage.

The Flayed immediately continues forward and tries to climb up the Office again. Roxanne joins Alissa on the platform and [Explode]s its head. It falls to the floor again, and its exposed flesh starts pulsating, then it spreads out until there's only a thin veil of red, heaving flesh.

With a nudge through [Bind], I tell Roxanne to cast a [Fireball] at it. The flesh easily catches fire, and we immediately hear faint shrieks coming from it.

Lina tests all the levers, but nothing happens. Then, with her bare hands, she rips open a panel on the side of the worktable. She looks inside and sees crystals attached to the ends of the levers. It seems like a spell is cast to imprint the information into the keycard, and each crystal modifies that information in a specific way.

"As I thought. The alarm severed the connection to the station's mana," Lina says through [Bind] because it's faster.

"Can you use your mana on these crystals?" I ask.

"Yes, but the keycard will be 'tainted' by my mana. It probably needs the specific type of mana that the station generates for it to work."

"Find out where the connection was cut, and restore it manually."

"Understood." She turns to the hole in the wall and orders, "Elemental, come to me!"

We hear loud stomps coming our way from the corridor outside this room.

"It's going to slam against the door!" Yunia exclaims.

Hana leans against it and prepares for the impact. Aoi comes over to help and gets in position just as a fucking truck hits the heavy metal door and rips it off its hinges.

The two girls are pushed back, but remain upright. Behind the door that they're holding back, a mass of muscles larger than the Baby Brute is trying to push against them.

Its head is now oversized and veiny, just like the rest of its body. Its large mouth displays an impressive set of sharp teeth, and a long, thin tongue that drips with saliva. Both of its arms have sledgehammers embedded within them, and two smaller arms embedded with cannons have grown out of its back.

The cannons point at us, and Yunia activates the [Disruption Field]. The monster's head immediately turns towards her, and its tongue shoots forward, stretching like a chameleon's.

Yunia dodges sideways and cuts the tongue off. Aoi and Hana start to push the monster back with the help of the doll golems. Ciel launches a [Wind Blade] at its knee, nearly slicing its leg off while forcing the Adult Brute to fall down.

The mist reaches the building, reducing our visibility, but Alissa can still fire her arrows just through using [Sense Presence]. However, Roxanne now has to wait for the monsters to get close; I don't have the mental capacity to guide her right now. Lina smashes open the wall and the floor beside the worktable, searching for the mana channel that normally feeds it.

The Brute's tongue tries to unite with the severed end, but Yunia kicks it away, then the girls close the door, severing the tongue again. The Brute gets up and starts hammering against it; if it keeps going at this pace, the door will barely hold for a minute.

The two pieces of the Brute's tongue flail about wildly, trying to reconnect with the rest of their body.

The Flayed start crawling up all over the outer walls of the Office. Our room is in one corner of the building, so it has two exterior walls. Alissa and Roxanne can only see down one of them since the other is out of view of the platform.

"A second Brute is charging!" Yunia warns.

"THROW THE DOOR AT IT!" I order and continue searching for a manual.

The doll golems charge up their [Telekinesis], Ciel prepares a powerful [Wind Hammer], and Hana readies an [Earth Bullet] while Aoi holds the door back by herself.

"ON MY MARK!" Yunia yells.

The second Brute crashes against the first.

"NOW!"

All of our spells are released at the door, taking both Brutes with it and launching them back down the corridor. The tongues roll out of the room after the brutes. Then I summon a metal elemental and order it to replace the door.

The Flayed reaches the wall that Alissa and Roxanne can't see, then it starts slicing through the stone, carving out a hole into the room.

Oh, fuck.

"THEY ARE OPENING A HOLE IN THIS WALL," I yell and point.

"Jarn! Copy me!" Ciel orders, then she stands in front of the new hole and starts stabbing through it. Jarn copies her, and they stop the Flayed from breaking in.

"THEY'RE SWARMING US!" Alissa yells.

Roxanne summons a [Water Spirit]. Her control of it isn't perfect, but it's still helpful.

Our time is running out.

I finish searching the counter and start looking through the shelves. Lina has finally found the crystal that cut off the mana channel to the worktable. She pulls out her enchanting table and starts modifying it.

"A THIRD IS COMING! IT MIGHT COME THROUGH THIS WALL!" Yunia yells and points.

Hana and Aoi get in position, ready to give it a proper greeting. The metal elemental gets hit by a ball of light and loses a chunk of its health. It decides to dodge, otherwise, it'll quickly disintegrate before the Brutes reach it.

Ciel's [Holy Spirit] jumps to the elemental and starts absorbing the incoming balls of light. It still consumes Ciel's MP, but it isn't much.

The third Brute crashes against the wall. It nearly barrels through, but gets stopped by Aoi's and Hana's combined [Wind Shield]-powered shield bash. The doll golems grab large chunks of the concrete that broke off from the wall and start pummeling the Brute with them.

They let the Brute step into the [Disruption Field] so that its cannons get disabled, and with two against one, the Brute doesn't manage to land a single attack.

Yunia takes a chance and leaps forward, landing with a sharp chop that severs its right arm. I immediately get an idea and use [Telekinesis] to pull the arm to myself.

The Brute's black tendrils try to steal it back, but they aren't fast enough. I drop the arm in front of me on the floor and open a [Gate] to outside the dungeon.

The tendrils suddenly go wild for a second, then they stop moving. The arm also doesn't seem to be growing back.

"SEVER ITS PARTS AND SEND THEM TO ME!" I order.

"It's ready!" Lina yells. The keycard worktable lights up, and I feel a faint amount of mana escaping it.

"Help! Jarn!" Alissa yells and pulls Roxanne back into the room.

There are too many Flayed for the two of them to deal with on their own. Jarn and Lina dash over to them and start attacking the huge creepy crawlers swarming in.

"[Water Wall]!" Roxanne casts at the hole and slows down their approach.

I finally find the fucking manual tucked away at the bottom corner of the shelf. I frantically flip through the booklet, then I find something interesting. There's a drawing of the light spectrum. The keycard worktable simply prints a color to the card. Each lever is a number that when concatenated, creates an RGB code in base 7. Each of the three colors is controlled by three levers.

A severed arm and head fly towards me, and I send them to the outside of the dungeon.

The number is related to the frequency, so the higher the frequency of the chosen color in the light spectrum, the higher the number that I have to input through the worktable. Since we read the numbers from left to right, the leftmost numbers are the most significant, so they go first. Since I want a blue keycard, I just have to use the leftmost levers to get a blue color. Hopefully, a vibrant blue is the correct color to gain access to Looping Winds Control.

The two other Brutes crash into the elemental and push past Yunia's [Disruption Field]. The doll golems and Hana switch to them to push them back into the Field. Roxanne immediately explodes their heads so that they can't see us, but it wasn't quick enough, and they fire at us once with their cannons.

A ball of light hits Ciel in the back, and she shrieks. Her [Rainbow Shield] shines for a second, and her HP immediately decreases by ten. She turns around and gets ready to dodge the next shot, but she looks drowsy, and her movements are sluggish.

Alissa dodges a ball of light and pushes Roxanne away from another. Jarn gets hit in the back by one of them, and a hole appears in her body/armor. The last ball of light hits the [Holy Spirit], who absorbs it.

I grab a clear crystal tablet from the basket and set it on the glass plate. I input the code and immediately close the lid, then I pull the "on" lever on the side. Light and mana start to escape from the lid.

I turn around and [Rush] towards the two Brutes. One is savagely pummeling the metal elemental in front of it, while the other is swinging wildly, distracted by the doll golems' attacks. The third Brute is almost completely disabled now that it's both armless and headless.

A thin veil of flesh grows at a frightening speed towards us. It touches Lina and immediately begins to crawl up her leg.

"AAAAH! IT'S BURNING!" She yells in pain and jumps back, but the veil of flesh continues to grow upwards along her limb.

"AOI! BURN THE FLESH!" I order her through [Bind].

Yunia casts [Soul Blade] and severs the legs of the Brute, finally fully disabling it. Aoi immediately flies towards Lina and sucks in a large amount of air.

I reach the Brute currently fighting the elemental and slice at its arm, then I cast [Double Strike]. The wound penetrates deeply and reaches the bone, but doesn't sever it, its muscles are too thick, even with [Sharp Blades]. Also, I notice that the bits that made their heads are crawling back to their original place at a troubling speed.

I crouch low to dodge its counter and slice at the back of its knee, then I use [Double Strike] again. This time, it cleaves all the way through, and the Brute falls down.

Lina falls on the ground, holding her leg in agony as Ciel sprints over to her. Aoi spews fire, and the veil of flesh ignites into an inferno. Lina lifts her leg into the path of Aoi's fire breath, surprising her, and the leg immediately catches fire.

Alissa draws her sword and parries a burning Flayed. Its strength is so great that it rips the sword from her hands. Before it can strike again, I cast a [Lightning Bolt] at it, then it becomes too burnt to move anymore.

Ciel conjures water on Lina's leg, extinguishing the flame, then quickly casts a [Heal]. Lina stops crying in pain, then immediately gets up and charges, even though she's still not fully healed yet.

I dodge a ball of light, then completely cut off the Brute's leg and send it out of the dungeon. Now, the nearly dead elemental can go on the offensive.

Hana launches a sneak attack at the other Brute and cuts off both of its cannons with a single swing. It turns to counter her, but Yunia strikes at it from behind, cleaving its body in two with [Searing Blade].

She drops her longsword and uses both hands to throw the Brute's lower body towards the [Gate]. With my [Telekinesis] nudging it a bit, it lands on the right spot.

The doll golems turn to the Flayed, their two concrete bludgeons whistling through the air, crushing anything in their way. The battlefield quickly stabilizes in our favor as we push back the Flayed, stop the veil of flesh from growing, and disable the Brutes.

After a dozen grueling seconds of carnage, the worktable dings, and the light turns off.

"Aoi! I'm sending you to engineering to burn the flesh growing there!" I say through [Bind].

"Understood!"

I throw her the yellow keycard and open a [Gate] for her, then I rush to the worktable and retrieve the blue keycard. Once Aoi crosses through the [Gate], I open one under me to the door to Looping Winds Control.

I slam the keycard against the glass card reader, and the door unlocks.

"EVERYONE, CROSS THE [GATE]! ABANDON THE WORKSHOP!" I order through [Bind] and unsummon the metal elemental.

Alissa relays my order to others, and they all immediately jump through it, arriving as a pile on the other side.

"Horrible retreat! Get up immediately!" I order, then I feel a little guilty because I didn't even try to guide them with [Bind].

The area around us is filled with a thick mist, and none of them want to stay vulnerable for a single second longer, so they all scramble to get up. Then Ciel finishes healing Lina before healing herself.

We rebuild our formation, and Hana kicks the door open. Right on the other side, we can see that the floor is covered in a thin veil of pulsating, red flesh. Deep within the mist, we see three faint golden lights spread out in a line and a green one on top. They must be the crystals controlling the Looping Winds.

"Hana, burn it," I order.

She breathes in deeply, then spews a long plume of fire deep into the room.

We hear a high-pitched shriek, similar to the one we heard when we turned on the lights. This one sounds more like a baby crying than the horrifying wail from before. Then the shriek fades away until it stops entirely.

The flesh recedes from engineering, so I recall Aoi to us, and we wait. Hana's flame quickly spreads outwards like a wildfire, leaving only ash behind in its wake.

"We have its attention, so we can't waste any more time, we have to go in," I say, and the girls nod.

After a quick breather, we march inside.

Once we're all in, the door suddenly slams shut, and the elemental acting as a coffin for The Lady cracks silently.

"Oh, boy," I mutter.

The cracks quickly increase in length, and I hurry us forward. We're on a long and wide metal platform, and due to the thick mist and ash, we can only see a few meters ahead.

"Husks. Coming in fast," Alissa says and wrinkles her nose at the stench of rotting flesh.

"Get ready to butcher them!" I encourage the girls.

The elemental coffin breaks open, and it dies.

The ash suddenly lifts and stays suspended for a second, then it flies back to the entrance. The mist clears a little behind us, and we see the ash gathering into the shape of a person, the shape of The Lady.

"FUCK! RUN!" I order.

A few seconds later, we reach a mob of husks covered in patches of red flesh. They're seemingly smart enough to jump over the flames.

I draw my four daggers with my [Soul Manipulation] and start butchering. I slice and dice, carving a path along with the girls.

In a fit of desperation, I summon two Corpse Stealers.

"Dominate the husks!" I order.

The blobs of dark slime each enter a husk and fight back the pulsating flesh. After a few seconds, they win and start controlling the husks, then they split and start spreading.

That's it! I can counter this horde with a horde of my own!

"PROTECT THE CORPSE STEALERS!" I order.

I anxiously look behind me, but I don't see or feel The Lady coming.

Two Corpse Stealers becomes four, then eight, then sixteen, then there are so many that we don't have to protect them anymore.

We stop to watch the carnage and catch our breath. Faint lights coming from the wildfires shine through the mist around us, the ash and the smell of burnt flesh make it hard to breathe, and the heat starts rising, though we have [Breeze] to keep ourselves cool.

The Corpse Stealers are more powerful than the pulsating flesh-powered husks, and their ever-increasing numbers are turning the tide in our favor.

"The Flayed are coming from the left flank!" Alissa suddenly exclaims.

We turn and get ready to attack. A Flayed appears before me from within the mist, then, suddenly, ten long claws cut it into ribbons.

I suck in a breath and freeze.

THE LADY!

The claws suddenly disappear and reappear next to another Flayed, then she cuts it into ribbons, too. She disappears and keeps killing the Flayed, one by one.

"S-she's killing the Flayed!" Alissa exclaims.

"The Lady is helping us!" I exclaim.

Then I see a pair of sinister, black eyes filled with scorn turn to me.

Mommy is angry, very angry. She hasn't forgiven me for what I did, and that makes me feel like crying. I hurt Mommy, and now she despises me.

She's too angry to talk, so I know that I have to stay away until she calms down.

I avert my eyes and grit my teeth. I growl and flood my heart with anger. The cloud over my eyes slowly starts to fade.

Ciel's [Holy Spirit] climbs up to her head, then it shines twice as brightly, forcefully clearing the clouds over our minds.

The Lady carves a path through the Flayed and leaps into the mob of husks. Her claws spin like a tornado, shredding everything in her way.

She continues on towards the crystals in the center of the room, and the ash follows her. Both the husks and the Flayed turn around and follow after her.

The Corpse Stealers spread out all over in search of new targets now that the mob has thinned out.

"We should follow The Lady. I don't like where she's going," Ciel says.

"Agreed," I say with a nod. "Forward!"

As we walk, the crystal lights continue to increase in size. I still have no idea how far away they truly are.

We follow the trail of bodies that The Lady left behind and find a set of stairs that leads downwards. They are suspended in the air, so all that we can see is a featureless gray abyss all around us, making us feel rather uncomfortable.

We arrive at another platform and pass by a control station, then we go down another long set of suspended stairs and start feeling a wild storm of mana coming from the way down.

We start to sink below the crystal lights that now dwarf us in size. I think that they might each be as big as a three-story building.

We pass by countless pipes carrying mana channels towards the crystals. The mana coursing through them is gradually increasing to alarming levels. Once we're underneath the crystals, the mist thins out, and we finally reach the last platform.

We see The Lady and notice how her body is now made of ash. She flails her claws in the air, seemingly scratching them against an almost entirely transparent golden barrier, causing sparks to scatter through the air. The ground glows in a circle in front of her, it's the spell [Sanctuary]. In the center of this circle, we see the Abomination.

On top of a junction of mana pipes, a long golden glaive has pierced through the bellies of two flayed bodies on top of each other. One is a man, and the one under him is a woman. Their limbs twitch continuously, and their mouths hang open, drooling profusely. Their exposed, red skin pulsates like a heartbeat.

The wildfire burns the veil of pulsating flesh around the [Sanctuary], but gets snuffed out where it reaches the spell.

The amount of mana coming off the bodies is so large that it activates a primal fear inside of us, making us hesitant to move any closer.

Then we hear a baby cry. It's coming from them.

The Lady suddenly jumps away from the [Sanctuary], and I see more pulsating flesh growing outwards from it. The Lady gathers embers from the ash and starts a new fire on this growing veil of flesh. Once the fire finishes burning everything that it can, The Lady resumes her attack against the golden barrier.

"What the fuck," I mutter.

"We have to save the baby," Ciel says in a low tone.

"W-what?" Roxanne asks, confused.

"The center of all the Life around here is coming from that-… those bodies," Yunia says.

"I-is the woman pregnant?" I ask.

"There's only one thing alive inside the [Sanctuary], and it doesn't seem to be either of the bodies," Yunia says in a serious tone.

"How could you feel that?" I ask Ciel.

"I don't know… I just had a premonition," she answers.

"Well, she is a priestess," Roxanne comments with a shrug.

"How do we get inside the barrier?" Alissa asks.

"First, how do we deal with The Lady?" Hana asks, sounding worried.

"The crystals are feeding the baby," Yunia says.

I focus on my [Sense Mana]. All of the mana from the crystals is being directed to this junction, but most of it is escaping, being wasted away due to the baby's poor control of mana.

The Lady is weak to [Light Magic]… and if I could use all of this mana…

GIH!

How else are we supposed to end this?! We don't have the means to both kill The Lady and breach the [Sanctuary]. This way, we can starve the baby and get the power to kill The Lady in one go!

Gih!

I tried interrupting spells before. I'm only going to try to redirect the mana from the crystals to me!

Gify stays quiet.

"Wolf," Alissa calls my attention, her voice is as serious as it has ever been.

"What is it?" I turn to her, steeling myself for what's to come.

"We can return later. We don't need to do this!" She exclaims and grabs my shoulders.

"What's going on?" Yunia asks.

I lightly grab Alissa's shoulders and look deeply into her orange eyes. "We'll just come to the same conclusion. If we kill the baby, The Lady will still remain on the station, and we don't have the means to end her!"

"We'll find another way! We'll research how to rupture her spirit!"

"It's going to be very difficult to do that… but what are you two talking about?!" Yunia asks, frustrated.

Hana explains my experiments with [Redirect Mana] to her.

"This is reckless," Yunia says, stunned.

"I don't want to let her stay here, free to torture the baby," Ciel says, her eyes glare intently at The Lady.

"Do you think that she'll win?" Lina asks.

"The [Sanctuary] is slowly shrinking," Ciel says.

I use [Sense Soul] on The Lady. "Her mana is still a long way from being down by a quarter," I say.

The Dungeon Master is forcing our hand.

I return my gaze to Alissa. "I'll be slow and careful," I say with confidence.

She bites her lip adorably. "You're always trying to do something stupid," she says.

"It's not stupid if it works. Also, I know my limits, most of the time." I give her a cheeky smile.

"Test only your control over the mana. I'll be the one to destroy The Lady," Ciel says.

Yunia and Alissa grit their teeth in frustration, they don't approve.

"What's the worst that could happen?" Aoi asks.

"We don't know," Alissa answers.

"It's only mana. If I lose control over it, at most, it'll damage my body," I say.

"But what about Ciel? She's going to use it for a spell!" Alissa exclaims.

"Trust in my ability. I can cast [Holy Spirit] and [Judgment] even though I'm only level twenty-six in [Light Magic]," Ciel says.

Yunia turns to me, her eyes as stern as ever. "I haven't fought with her for that long. You trust her that much?" She asks.

"Yes. She has never failed us," I respond with a nod, and Alissa and Yunia relent.

Ciel looks down and gushes with happiness, then she breathes in and returns to her serious demeanor. "I'm ready," she says.

"I'll [Bind] you again so that you can read my mind. Also, I'll put my points and your extra ones in [Mana Control], just in case," I say.

She nods. "Do it."

Once everything is ready, I turn towards the crystals and start exerting [Redirect Mana] over it.

I'm a mere man in front of a damn unleashing a river. The water wildly gushes all around me, ignoring my will. It scrapes against my skin, hurting me as I fail to protect myself from it. It seems like it'll overwhelm me with its unstoppable power.

I try to reach one hand out to scoop up some of the water, but its force is so great that I feel it ripping the skin off my hand. Even the full might of my draconic will doesn't seem to be able to affect the jet. I pull back my hand and grit my teeth.

Just "Willpower'" isn't enough. I need to see things differently, imagining this flow of mana as water is not helping me.

I pull Cel's blanket into my soul space and dive in.

"Ciel, what do you know about [Light Magic]?" I ask through [Bind].

Somehow, she seems to notice my invasion into her mind. Perhaps it's due to our heightened awareness caused by our battle.

She starts to think about how to answer, causing feelings, memories, and thoughts to fly all around me, then they start to converge towards me, and I have to protect myself, otherwise, I feel like they'd start to fuse with me, just like Alissa's memories do.

She starts speaking through [Bind], but I'm so deep inside her mind that it feels like we're talking in unison.

This situation is all wrong. Light mana isn't supposed to hurt like this, we're using it wrong. And somehow, even the baby is using it wrong, too, but they're using it in such a warped way that it's distorting everything and everyone on this station.

But it's not the baby's fault. This whole scenario was created by a furious wife taking revenge on her cheating husband. Pain, suffering, and terror are everywhere. All this evil intent must be affecting the purity of the Light mana.

The source of the evil must be The Lady. She has so much hate in her heart that she refused to pass on and turned into a ghost. The power of her will is staggering, and her desire to cause pain is frightening. She's already dead, and so is everything else here, except for the baby, who's using so much Light mana that it's cheating death, for now.

The baby has also committed a Sin since it's their will that killed everyone on the station. But due to its innocence, we should offer it the mercy of death so that it can live in Paradise and be compensated for the unjust pain it suffered.

We have to fix this situation; we have to bring everything back onto the right path.

[Light Magic] is to be used to correct wrongs, not reinforce them. Light mana is about support, healing, justice, and protection. We turn ourselves into vessels for the will of the Gods so that we can filter it and let it act upon the realm. But the way that Light is used here is more akin to Dark or Cursing magic than Light.

This is the will of the Humanoid Gods: to progress, to improve, to grow, to fix our mistakes, to punish evildoers, and to support those on the right path. But [Light Magic] isn't just that. A part of its essence is to take the abstract concepts of the God of Change, Order, Creation, and Destruction, and use them to benefit civilization.

[Light Magic] isn't just the ability to create miracles, it's power. Raw, untainted, divine power. The power to influence the world with your own essence.

And we hold this power in our hands.

Slowly, mine and Ciel's minds sync. Our spirits, our wills, unite as one. We are soldiers of the Gods, and our sole purpose is to purge the world of evil.

I extend my hand with the palm up and gather the mana into a single point above it. The storm continues to ravage my body, but it starts to reduce in intensity, then a ball of light starts to form, floating above my hand.

I can't gather all of this mana inside my body, but I can wield it like a weapon.

The Lady stops and turns to us. "HRIIIIIIIIIIIIII," she shrieks, trying to break our concentration, but the raw [Light] keeps her evil glare away from us.

Ciel drops her glaive and extends her arm. She creates a line of Light mana between her palm and the golden glaive. It starts twitching, being attracted to the mana like a magnet, then it suddenly flies towards her open hand.

She gathers the Light mana in the glaive, and we chant in unison, "I am the judge, the jury, and the executioner. I am the unyielding shield for the pious. I am the swift sword for the Wicked. I am the vessel for the Gods! Face your fate! Face my [Judgment]!"

The spell coats the entire glaive with light, making it shine along with my [Light] as if they were twin suns.

The mist and the ashes are blown away, The Lady's shriveled and warped body becomes visible, the [Sanctuary] of the baby is dispelled, and the two bodies evaporate into dust.

I will it forward, and the raw [Light] flies towards The Lady. She shrieks again and slashes at it, rupturing it and creating a blinding flash of light, but neither Ciel nor I are blinded by it.

Ciel jumps forward and charges towards The Lady, who's reeling away from the pain. She slices through The Lady's body, and the brilliant light flashes again. In the next moment, The Lady is gone.

She continues forward, towards the dark fetus that still moves. She jumps off of the platform and into the junction of pipes, then she aims downwards with her golden glaive.

"Be welcomed into Paradise," she says and sinks the blade into the fetus' head.

The light flashes again, and this time, we're all blinded.

A note from Manasong

Hall of Fame of Patrons

The patrons who support Rupegia shall have their names sung by the bards for they deserve the glory and honor. Their names are:

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Chapter 69: Looping Winds - Part 1

A note from Manasong

Attention: to conform to the limit of sexual content allowed in a novel, I've censored this chapter. You can look for the uncensored version here.

The symbol "-" denotes a section that got cut for containing sexual content. Also, if paragraphs seem missing, they were also likely censored in an earlier pass where the symbol wasn't used.

"You are now level 28."

"You are now level 29."

"You are now level 30."

"You are now level 31."

"You are now level 32."

"You are now level 33."

"You are now level 34."

"You are now level 35."

Except for Yunia and Aoi, we all loudly moan in unison from the huge influx of Experience entering our souls. My knees tremble, and I almost fall down as I make a mess in my pants. Then our vision returns, and we look around as we recover from the experience.

There's no mist, ash, nor any indication that the monsters or the fetus ever existed, and even my Corpse Stealers are gone. We now see only glowing dots of light gently falling down like snowflakes. A rather holy sight. Then, after a few seconds, they fade away.

I chuckle once and let the tension escape my body. Suddenly, my vision goes blurry, and I'm looking at the floor. Alissa's hands support me, then help my body to stand up straight.

I guess I relaxed too much.

I open my "Status" and see that I received twenty points of HP damage, Ciel received thirty, and the other girls a bit less than ten.

"Go help Ciel," I say to Hana through [Bind].

She summons her wings and flies to Ciel, then lands beside her just in time to catch her when she staggers.

- They clean themselves after a "delightful" experience -

"I just… gained eight… levels," Lina says with a haggard breath. Her legs rub together, and she fidgets awkwardly.

"Oh…" Yunia mutters in understanding.

"Same," I say and sigh. "I also gained five points in [Light Magic]. I guess that was 'enlightening.'" I give the girls a shit-eating grin.

Roxanne, Lina, and Aoi chuckle, Yunia smiles wryly, and Alissa forces herself to pout to hide her smile, but she fails.

I [Heal] myself and regain the strength in my muscles, then I [Heal] the other girls. Ciel [Heal]s herself and then stares at the floor, where the fetus was.

"Is it over?" She asks.

Gify pops into existence. "Gih!"

"Yeah, it feels like it. I'll spread a few Hollys around, but the entire Control Room seems empty," I say.

"There's no other Life around here beside ours," Yunia says.

"So it seems that we are safe," Alissa says.

"This was quite something," Roxanne says.

"I'm unhappy, I couldn't eat anything!" Aoi complains.

I smile warmly at her and pat her armored head.

We store our weapons and take off our helmets, then Ciel and Hana jump back to our platform. Now that the mist is gone, we can see that there's a huge drop from our platform to the floor, ending at a dangerous mess of pipes.

Then we turn our attention to Ciel's golden glaive. She stops in front of us and proudly displays it.

The entire weapon is made from a single piece of golden metal. Its blade is longer and wider than her previous glaive, but it's significantly thinner. The back of the blade is sharp up until it reaches a large hook, so it should work just as well with [Imperial Hasterrum Style] as the other one. The shaft is hollow and perfectly straight, but both it and the blade are adorned with silver flowery patterns all over, so it kind of looks like a ceremonial weapon. There are two gems embedded near where Ciel normally grips the shaft, and at its butt, there's a white tassel hanging loose.

We all gawk at it for a few seconds.

"Wow, what's that made of?" Roxanne asks.

I put points in [Weapon Appraisal] and ask Ciel to hand me the glaive so that I can inspect it. It's rather light, even though it's solely composed of metal.

"It's made of an alloy of Light-attuned steel and a small amount of Okross," I answer.

We stay silent for a few seconds, stunned at the revelation.

"What's Okross?" Aoi asks.

Lina's Trivia: Rupegia's version of adamantium.

"It's among the rarest and strongest metals that we know about. Aside from darksteel, it's the only other metal known to resist dragon fire," Lina answers.

"So, it's valuable?" Aoi asks again.

"My father's sword used an alloy of Kanal and Okross. It's our most valuable possession, but it also has a dozen enchantments, too, so that increases its value by quite a lot," Yunia says.

"It says that it has five percent Okross," I say.

She nods. "Seems low, but it should make the weapon much more resistant and sharp. See how thin the blade is? Its cutting power must be very high, but if it was made of pure Okross you could even cut through steel."

"One day, we could melt the glaive and reforge it," Lina says.

"Seems a shame to destroy such a beautiful weapon," Ciel says with a frown.

"True. For now, a Light-attuned glaive will serve Ciel perfectly, but a Kanal and Okross alloy is still the best choice for a hybrid warrior," Yunia says.

"How much more Okross did your father have?" I ask.

"The sword and a set of armor made of an Okross alloy, but his wooden armor was superior."

"What do the enchantments do?" Lina asks, guiding the conversation to something she's dying to know about.

Ciel feeds mana to the first gem and the entire glaive glows, then it reduces in size and morphs into a shortsword.

"That's neat," I say.

"And handy," Hana says.

Ciel hums in agreement and returns the glaive to its original shape, then activates the second enchantment.

The tip of the blade glows, and we tense up. Our gut feeling is telling us that this spell is different. Ciel points the glaive away from us, and a thick beam of light erupts from the blade towards the floor.

Ciel only feeds it enough mana for the beam to last for two seconds, but that's enough to make the floor faintly glow red with heat.

"That's a new one," Roxanne says, mouth hanging open.

"Was that a ranged [Searing Blade]?" Yunia asks.

Lina shakes her head and answers, "It's different. [Searing Blade] uses [Fire Magic] to create heat; this one uses [Light Magic] to create… light?" She tilts her head in deep thought, and her cute bangs sway to the side.

"Energy. They are using photons as a form of 'energy' because it's closer to mana than heat is," I say.

"Photons?" She asks.

"Light is made of invisible, inconceivably small particles called photons," I answer.

Ciel smiles and continues, "It doesn't have mass, so you don't feel it when it touches you, but it's not immaterial like the spirit. It's a gentle type of matter, and it also carries the heat of the sun to us."

"I see. These Light crystals are feeding the Wind one; they are a source of power," Lina says and nods in understanding.

"Use it again, but aim at something far away. From what I know, using photons this way tends to lose power pretty quickly with distance."

She aims it at the railing of the platform above us and activates [Beam]. She turns it off after four seconds, and we see it glow red with heat.

"I guess this means that it does lose power with distance, but I have no idea if it's like the lasers back on Earth," I say.

Ciel shrugs, then hands me her green dragon fang glaive so that I can store it for her. "So, what do we do now?" she asks.

"How about we rest?" I suggest and look around, the girls nod softly in agreement.

"We can do that while leisurely searching for clues to our next objective," Yunia says.

"True," I agree, and no one complains, though I feel that Roxanne wanted to, but held back. "First of all, you, sit over there," I say to Lina and point to a chair.

"Uh?" She tilts her head adorably.

I grin mischievously. "I wanna look at your feet."

"Oh… okay."

The girls start to spread out and explore while I guide Lina to a chair nearby. Once she sits down, I start to undo the clasps of the boot that was burned.

The wood is only slightly charred, the scales look fine, and it seems that the padding underneath is what received the most damage. It was burned more than the wood and also looks like something tried to rip through it.

I expose her cute foot and push up the padded scale pants. I can't see anything odd, except that her pink nail polish is flaking off.

"How does it feel?" I ask.

"A little sensitive, and I still feel some pangs of pain," she answers.

I cast [Clean], then I cast a continuous [Regeneration] while I massage it.

"That feels good…" She mutters and smiles warmly.

I smile back and kiss the top of her foot, then we stare deep into each other's eyes as I work my magic.

- Lina tries to play the ojou-sama, but Wolf won't accept being the bottom -

Yunia coughs loudly.

We turn to her and smile wryly. She sends us a disbelieving look and continues inspecting the controls on the platform. She might look serious, but I know that she was staring intently at us, wishing that it was her in Lina's place.

Lina sighs and kisses the top of my head. "What's 'ojou-sama'?" She asks.

"'Young lady' in one of Earth's languages," I answer.

"I like that. Can we roleplay that again some other time?" She asks.

I nod and smile warmly at her. "As long as you're not trying to dominate me, then yes. Perhaps we can use Alissa or Hana in place of the slave, instead."

"Sounds good… but it did feel really good to say that to you." She smiles like an imp.

I snort and continue - playing - with her feet.

-

We spread out and inspect all of the controls, but they're much more complicated than the ones in engineering, so we have little hope of learning how to use them today.

The Control Room is rather impressive, though, so I spend a lot of time just mesmerized by the four three-story-high crystals floating in the middle. The three Light crystals are just "batteries" for the green one, which is attuned to Wind.

My Hollys reach the shopping center, and I notice that the mannequins are all gone. The damage to the Mayor's Office remains, but there isn't a single trace of any of the monsters that we fought.

The dirt, grime, cracks, bloodstains, and scribbles that were on the buildings are all gone now. Everything is back to a pre-alarm state, where at most, there's only moss and dust on a few of the buildings.

The Looping Winds requires some rather complex mechanics to be perfectly adjusted in order to work properly. It first starts a "loop," a circular path that begins and ends at the station. After that, we need to attach "anchors," coordinates where this "loop" is forced to pass through. This is where the problems start.

We can't just put anchors anywhere; we have to find places with relatively low turbulence. Otherwise, either the loop won't "attach" to these anchors, taking on a completely unknown path, or the anchor will simply drift over time, and the whole loop will change unpredictably.

But wait, there's more. If the anchors are too poorly positioned, the loop will twist into lots of sharp turns between them, which could possibly break the ship apart if we tried to cross through it. Not only that, but there are plenty of environmental dangers in the way that we have to avoid, and to do that, we need to know where we're going so that we know what to avoid.

So far, we haven't seen a hint of a map or anything similar to one. Since the loops use all three dimensions, a traditional two-dimensional map would be unsuitable, so I believe that the map won't be among the papers.

"This must be a recreation of the Broken Skies, then," Lina comments.

"Hm?" I hum in an inquiry.

"The Chimeras on the Sky Lands don't use the Looping Winds. But I don't know if there are any other Sky Land above the other continents," Alissa answers in her stead.

Lina nods in agreement and continues, "Only the Broken Lands still use the Looping Winds, but it's all been abandoned by now, so it would probably be extremely dangerous to ride one."

We spend a few hours reading about the controls, then we decide to go back to our home in Goloria.

I lower myself into the bath with a tired sigh. Roxanne quickly comes over to straddle me before Hana or Lina can do so. She gives them a smug smile and a knowing look.

- Of course that there's no need for only one to go at a time -

"Thank you, master…" Yunia mumbles as I deposit her back into the water.

I grin in delight after hearing her words.

"I like that. - After every time, you should thank me for rewarding you with my holy touch - ," I whisper in her ear.

She nods shyly, and her cute, long ears bob.

We ask the servants to make dinner since we're too tired to do it ourselves.

After our banquet, we retire to our room.

I brush Alissa's fluffy orange tail while she brushes Yunia's glorious golden hair. The room is filled with the smells of skin-care creams as the girls put on their favorite products to prevent their skin from becoming rough from all of the physically demanding efforts that we went through.

Then Roxanne repaints Lina's ruined nail polish, Hana lights up some incense that has a calming effect on us, Ciel smothers Ted and Suzy, Aoi plays tag with Gify, and Jarn stands in front of the door like a guard.

"This is nice," Yunia says in a low tone.

"Hm?" Alissa questions and kisses her bare back, making her shiver for a moment.

"This… this life. Staying together like this. This is nice," she replies.

"It is," Roxanne agrees.

"Once you get a taste of this harem, you never want to go back to being alone," Hana says, and we all nod.

I enter a trance as I brush Alissa, drowning in her fluffiness. I fall asleep not long after that, completely exhausted.

Today is the 11th.

-

I leveled up to 35; my [Light Magic] increased by 5 (now 13+2); [Mana Control] and [Summoning Magic] increased by 2 (now 0+17 and 13+26); [Sword Use], [Dodge], [Acrobatics], [Ekrano Style], and [Redirect Mana] increased by 1 (now 12+11, 4+7, 5+2, 2, and 4); and I learned [Oral Technique] with 1 point. For stats, my "Willpower" and "Piety" increased by 1 (now 18 and 16). My MP increased by 40, and my "Magic Power" increased by 20 (now 1,710 and 710).

Alissa leveled up to 38. She increased her [Mana Control] by 3 (now 7); her [Bow Use], [Sense Presence], [Enhanced Reflexes], and [Illusion Magic] by 2 (now 30, 8, 4+4, 4+8); and her [Dodge] by 1 (now 3). For stats, her "Dexterity" increased by 1 (now 23). Her MP increased by 45, and her "Magic Power" increased by 20 (now 1,025 and 500). I've given her points in Earth, Water, and Wind magic so that she has a more well-rounded set of spells.

Roxanne leveled up to 38. Her [Mana Control] increased by 3, and her [Water Magic] increased by 2 (now 30 and 5+25). For stats, her "Endurance" and "Willpower" increased by 1 (now 11 and 15). Her MP increased by 80, and her "Magic Power" increased by 40 (now 2,710 and 1,130). Her extra points are put this way so that she can use [Ice Lance], and [Lava Jet] without chanting, improve her mana efficiency with [Explosion], and improve her knowledge of [Space Magic] so that one day she can use [Warp Space].

Hana leveled up to 41. Her [Shield Bash], [Block], and [Dodge] increased by 1 (now 7, 9, and 5); [Parry] increased by 2 (now 8); and [Sword Use] increased by 3 (now 23). For stats, her "Dexterity" has increased by 1 (now 11). Her MP increased by 35, and her "Magic Power" increased by 20 (now 860 and 405). Her extra points are set this way so that she can get the rest of the low-level elemental spells for utility, and [Reduced Mana Cost] is used to allow her to cast more of these spells.

Ciel leveled up to 38. Her [Parry] and [Dodge] increased by 1 (now 9 and 7), [Block] increased by 2 (now 6), [Glaive Use] increased by 3 (now 18), and her [Light Magic] increased by 4 (now 10+30). For stats, she increased her "Wisdom" and "Piety" by 1 (now 20 and 22). Her MP increased by 60, and her "Magic Power" increased by 50 (now 1,240 and 750). She now has enough points to reach level 30 in [Wind Magic], allowing her to instantly cast [Fly].

Lina leveled up to 35. Her [Parry], [Dodge], [Mana Control], [Earth magic], and [Stonebody] increased by 1 (now 1+9, 2+5, 7, 3+7, and 6); and her [Hammer Use], [Axe Use], and [Block] increased by 3 (now 16, 8, and 10). She didn't gain any stats, but [Stonebody] gives a passive point to "Strength" and "Endurance" with each level, so it counts as a stat increase. Her MP increased by 60, and her "Magic Power" increased by 20 (now 1,160 and 515). With her points put this way, she can cast [Dust Storm], [Torrent], [Wind Blade], [Weaken], [Sap Power], [Befuddle], and [Demoralize]. Hopefully, the next monsters aren't all immune to [Cursing Magic], too, otherwise, I'll put her points into something more useful.

Yunia didn't gain any levels or skills, but since Hana is catching up to her, she'll take off the Ring of the Servant to be able to gain Experience again. For stats, she increased her "Willpower" by 1 (now 15). Her MP increased by 20, and her "Magic Power" increased by 10 (now 1,030 and 510). Her 3 extra points are put in [Mana Efficiency] because that's what benefits [Weaverism] the most.

Our skills are like this:

Spoiler: Spoiler

Wolf Ryder Skill Report

Physical

Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level
Sword Use | 16+11 | Dodge | 8+7 | Parry | 5+5
Block | 2+8 | Shield Bash | 0+1 | Battlefield Perception | 5+2
Muscle Explosion | 4+1 | Acrobatics | 8+2 | Ekrano Style (creator) | 2

Magical

Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level
Sense Mana | 0+6 | Mana Control | 3+17 | Mana Recovery | 10+0
Mana Efficiency | 3+7 | Reduced Mana Cost | 3+7 | Mana Overuse Resistance | 0+4
Blackout Resistance | 0+1 | Fire Magic | 1+4 | Earth Magic | 2+3
Water Magic | 4+1 | Wind Magic | 3+2 | Electric Magic | 6+14
Light Magic | 2+13 | Space Magic | 7+23 | Summoning Magic | 14+26
Blessing Magic | 8+22 | Nature Magic | 3+18 | Conjuring Magic | 0+1
Spirit Magic | 0+2 | Illusion Magic | 0+2 | Golemancy | 0+9
Redirect Mana (creator) | 4 | Sense Soul (creator) | 6 | Soul Manipulation (creator) | 4
Godly Language | 30+0 | | | |

Miscellaneous

Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level
Cooking | 0+4 | Andraste Language | 4+6 | Dismantling | 0+4
Massage | 0+1 | Oral Technique | 0+1 | Mana Genitals (innate) | 2

Info

Name | Wolf Ryder | Age | 19 | Race | Human
HP | 100 | MP | 1710 | Magic Power | 710
Level | 35 | | | |

Stats

Strength | 13 | Endurance | 15 | Dexterity | 12
Speed | 14 | Intelligence | 21 | Wisdom | 16
Willpower | 18 | Charisma | 13 | Piety | 16
Perception | 16 | Sanity | 12+4 | |

Other

Status Effects | NONE
Titles | Nickname "Good Luck", Blessed by the Goddess of Knowledge, Golemancer, Scholar of Rabanara

Affiliations

Helios (Fellowship), Alissa (Blood Slave, Fiancée), Hanafuria (Blood Slave, Fiancée), Roxanne Succubus (Fiancée), Lina (Slave, Fiancée), Ciel (Fiancée), Yulania (Blood Slave)

Companions | Alissa, Hanafuria, Roxanne Succubus, Ciel, Lina, Yulania
Crimes | NONE

Alissa Skill Report

Physical

Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level
Sword Use | 9 | Bow Use | 30 | Parry | 4
Dodge | 3 | Sense Presence | 8 | Hide Presence | 4
Enhanced Olfact | 5 | Enhanced Hearing | 3 | Hawk Eyes | 5
Muscle Explosion | 2 | Quiet Steps | 4 | Quiet Action | 2
Enhanced Stamina | 1 | Enhanced Reflexes | 3+4 | Tracking | 2

Magical

Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level
Sense Mana | 1 | Mana Control | 7 | Reduced Mana Cost | 5+0
Fire Magic | 1 | Earth Magic | 5+0 | Water Magic | 1+0
Wind Magic | 1+0 | Light Magic | 1 | Space Magic | 1
Conjuring Magic | 1 | Illusion Magic | 2+8 | Fox Transformation (innate) | 5

Miscellaneous

Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level
Housework | 3 | Cooking | 4 | Cleaning | 2
Washing | 5 | Riding | 2 | Oral Technique | 4
Pain Resistance | 2 | Hand Technique | 2 | |

Info

Name | Alissa | Age | 20 | Race | Fox-type Wereanimal
HP | 100 | MP | 1025 | Magic Power | 500
Level | 38 | | | |

Stats

Strength | 12 | Endurance | 18 | Dexterity | 23
Speed | 20 | Intelligence | 13 | Wisdom | 14
Willpower | 17 | Charisma | 14 | Piety | 15
Perception | 17 | Sanity | 15 | |

Other

Status Effects | NONE
Titles | Blessed by the Goddess of Love, Blinding Arrows
Affiliations | Wolf Ryder (Master, Fiance), Helios (Fellowship)
Companions | Wolf Ryder, Hanafuria, Roxanne Succubus, Ciel, Lina, Yulania
Crimes | NONE

Roxanne Succubus Skill Report

Physical

Skill Name | Level | | | |
Dagger Use | 2 | | | |

Magical

Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level
Sense Mana | 3 | Mana Control | 30 | Reduced Mana Cost | 5+3
Mana Efficiency | 9 | Mana Overuse Resistance | 1 | Fire Magic | 5+25
Water Magic | 5+25 | Light Magic | 1 | Space Magic | 2+8
Conjuring Magic | 5 | Alchemy | 4 | Potion Brewing | 11
Poison Brewing | 2 | Redirect Mana | 1 | |

Miscellaneous

Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level
Housework | 1 | Cooking | 1 | Cleaning | 1
Washing | 1 | Riding | 1 | |

Info

Name | Roxanne Succubus | Age | 21 | Race | Succubus-Type Demon Race
HP | 100 | MP | 2710 | Magic Power | 1130
Level | 38 | | | |

Stats

Strength | 9 | Endurance | 11 | Dexterity | 12
Speed | 9 | Intelligence | 18 | Wisdom | 18
Willpower | 15 | Charisma | 15 | Piety | 10
Perception | 11 | Sanity | 12 | |

Other

Status Effects | NONE
Titles | NONE
Affiliations | Wolf Ryder (Fiance), Helios (Fellowship)
Companions | Wolf Ryder, Alissa, Hanafuria, Ciel, Lina, Yulania
Crimes | NONE

Hanafuria Skill Report

Physical

Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level
Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level
Two-Handed Sword Use | 9 | Polearm Use | 6 | Dagger Use | 4
Shield Bash | 7 | Block | 9 | Parry | 8
Dodge | 5 | Tatesomu Style | 6 | Muscle Explosion | 4
Battlefield Perception | 2 | Taunt | 3 | Intimidate | 2
Enhanced Reflexes | 2 | Enhanced Stamina | 4 | Enhanced Strength | 2
Enhanced Endurance | 4 | | | |

Magical

Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level
Sense Mana | 1 | Mana Control | 2 | Reduce Mana Cost | 3+0
Fire Magic | 1 | Earth Magic | 1 | Water Magic | 1+0
Wind Magic | 1+0 | Light Magic | 1 | Space Magic | 1
Conjuring Magic | 1 | Illusion Magic | 5 | |

Miscellaneous

Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level
Housework | 2 | Cooking | 1 | Cleaning | 1
Washing | 1 | Riding | 3 | Massage | 1
Pain Conversion | 1 | Dismantling | 4 | Oral Technique | 1
Fire Breath (innate) | 5 | Summon Wings (innate) | 3 | |

Info

Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level
HP | 100 | MP | 860 | Magic Power | 405
Level | 41 | | | |

Stats

Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level
Speed | 13 | Intelligence | 12 | Wisdom | 14
Willpower | 19 | Charisma | 16 | Piety | 11
Perception | 10 | Sanity | 17 | |

Other

Status Effects | NONE
Titles | One Thousand Strikes
Affiliations | Wolf Ryder (Master, Fiance), Helios (Fellowship)
Companions | Wolf Ryder, Alissa, Roxanne Succubus, Ciel, Lina, Yulania
Crimes | NONE

Ciel Skill Report

Physical

Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level
Glaive Use | 18 | Sword Use | 5 | Parry | 9
Dodge | 7 | Block | 6 | Imperial Hasterrum Style | 2
Muscle Explosion | 2 | Battlefield Perception | 1 | |

Magical

Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level
Sense Mana | 2 | Mana Control | 6 | Reduced Mana Cost | 3+1
Mana Efficiency | 4 | Wind Magic | 13+17 | Fire Magic | 1
Light Magic | 30 | Space Magic | 3 | Conjuring Magic | 1
Diagnosis | 7 | Redirect Mana | 1 | |

Miscellaneous

Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level
First-Aid | 3 | Housework | 3 | Cooking | 2
Cleaning | 2 | Washing | 1 | Riding | 1

Info

Name | Ciel | Age | 21 | Race | Human
HP | 100 | MP | 1240 | Magic Power | 450
Level | 38 | | | |

Stats

Strength | 14 | Endurance | 14 | Dexterity | 17
Speed | 18 | Intelligence | 15 | Wisdom | 20
Willpower | 14 | Charisma | Piety | 22 | 22
Perception | 13 | Sanity | 19 | |

Other

Status Effects | NONE
Titles | NONE
Affiliations | Wolf Ryder (Fiance), Helios (Fellowship), Templar Knights (Honorary Member), Temple Priestess (Former Member)
Companions | Wolf Ryder, Alissa, Hanafuria, Roxanne Succubus, Lina, Yulania
Crimes | NONE

Lina Skill Report

Physical

Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level
Hammer Use | 16 | Axe Use | 8 | Throw | 2+2
Parry | 1+9 | Dodge | 3+5 | Block | 10
Muscle Explosion | 2 | Shield Bash | 1 | Battlefield Perception | 2
Dwarven Pride Style | 2 | Enhanced Speed | 5+0 | |

Magical

Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level
Sense Mana | 1 | Mana Control | 7 | Mana Efficiency | 1
Fire Magic | 1 | Earth Magic | 3+7 | Water Magic | 1+0
Wind Magic | 1+0 | Light Magic | 1 | Cursing Magic | 12+3
Space Magic | 1 | Conjuring Magic | 1 | General Enchanting | 9
Magic Tool Carving | 1 | | | |

Miscellaneous

Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level
General Blacksmithing | 4 | Sewing | 4 | Housework | 1
Cleaning | 2 | Washing | 1 | Math | 4
Riding | 1 | Stonebody (innate) | 6 | |

Info

Name | Lina | Age | 18 | Race | Dwarf
HP | 100 | MP | 1160 | Magic Power | 515
Level | 35 | | | |

Stats

Strength | 8 | Endurance | 8 | Dexterity | 13
Speed | 12 | Intelligence | 16 | Wisdom | 13
Willpower | 17 | Charisma | 11 | Piety | 12
Perception | 14 | Sanity | 14 | |

Other

Status Effects | NONE
Titles | NONE
Affiliations | Wolf Ryder (Master, Fiance), Helios (Fellowship)
Companions | Wolf Ryder, Alissa, Hanafuria, Roxanne Succubus, Ciel, Yulania
Crimes | NONE

Yulania Skill Report

Physical

Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level
Sword Use | 8 | Two-Handed Sword Use | 10 | Parry | 8
Dodge | 9 | Silent Shadow Style | 4 | Battlefield Perception | 5
Enhanced Reflexes | 5 | Sense Presence | 1 | Hide Presence | 4
Muscle Explosion | 2 | Quiet Steps | 2 | Quiet Action | 6

Magical

Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level
Sense Mana | 5 | Mana Control | 4 | Mana Recovery | 2
Mana Efficiency | 2+8 | Reduced Mana Cost | 4 | Fire Magic | 1
Earth Magic | 1 | Light Magic | 5 | Spirit Magic | 15
Illusion Magic | 10 | Space Magic | 6 | Nature Magic | 10
Conjuring Magic | 1 | Weaverism | 23 | Redirect Mana | 1+0

Miscellaneous

Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level
Riding | 5 | Acting | 3 | Dancing | 2

Info

Name | Yulania | Age | 20 | Race | Golden Elf
HP | 100 | MP | 1030 | Magic Power | 510
Level | 43 | | | |

Stats

Strength | 12 | Endurance | 14 | Dexterity | 19
Speed | 16 | Intelligence | 16 | Wisdom | 16
Willpower | 15 | Charisma | 20 | Piety | 12
Perception | 20 | Sanity | 16 | |

Other

Status Effects | NONE
Titles | NONE
Affiliations | Wolf Ryder (Master), Helios (Fellowship)
Companions | Wolf Ryder, Alissa, Hanafuria, Roxanne Succubus, Ciel, Lina
Crimes | NONE

Also, I see something interesting with [Sense Soul].

Soul Info

Name: | Aoi | HP: | 200
MP | 1,145 | Magic Power | 200
Strength | 17 | Endurance | 20

Her MP increased by 40, and her "Magic Power" by 20.

"Oh, Aoi, reduce in size, please," I ask.

"Okay," she answers and obeys.

Her "Strength" goes down to 6 in her small size.

"Interesting…" I mutter.

"What?" Alissa asks, curious.

"I can see Aoi's 'Strength' and 'Endurance' now, and her 'Strength' changes in relation to her size," I respond.

"Oh, that doesn't happen when I change my size while using [Fox Transformation]," Alissa says.

"So, bigger is better?" Aoi asks.

"Always," Hana answers before I can say anything, so I just smile wryly.

"How much longer until her system is complete?" Roxanne asks.

"I think that only her levels and skills are missing now," I say.

"So, less than a month?" Hana asks, getting excited.

"I don't know. They could take longer since they are more 'complex,' I believe," I reply with a shrug.

- Aoi slows down a little from her disappointment, but then I start petting her head, and she regains her energy.

For breakfast, I have some toast and butter, then Alissa brews a new elven tea, and the dining room gets filled with the spell of peaches.

The elves drink this not-peach tea hot, but I think it's best taken cold on a hot summer morning, so I put my cup in the icebox and wait.

The girls are rather excited to test out their new skills. Ciel, most of all, wants to try out her new glorious golden glaive.

I watch them practice as I drink my cold not-peach iced tea, and everything is absolutely apricot.

After a good warm-up, we return to the dungeon.

A note from Manasong

Hall of Fame of Patrons

The patrons who support Rupegia shall have their names sung by the bards for they deserve the glory and honor. Their names are:

Oracle Maximillian Hübner.

Prince PreownedFIN.

Lord Andrew Meyers.

Lord Hope.

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Lord Bill.

Lord Novgarod.

Lord DJ.

Lord Ashadun.

Lord Michale Erwin.

Lord Enrique Peña Gomez.

Lord Braidborn.

Lord Bakerdea.

Lord Yeeteris Dedmeem.

Lord D4rk Sheep.

Lord Nathan Vanbrunt.

Lord Andrew Heffelbower.

Lord Markus.

Lord Maurice.

Lord Badger.

Lord Krawn.

Lord Remco.

Lord Thiago Ferreira.

Noble Salty Panda.

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Noble Mild Fracas.

Noble EESDESESESRDT.

Noble Aclys.

Noble Tiler Mills.

Nobel CHoobler.

Leave a rating or a review to help me rise to the top or fix my shameful understanding of prose.

Take a look over my blog where all information of the world of Rupegia will be posted.

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Chapter 69: Looping Winds – Part 2

A note from Manasong

Attention: to conform to the limit of sexual content allowed in a novel, I've censored this chapter. You can look for the uncensored version here.

The symbol "-" denotes a section that got cut for containing sexual content. Also, if paragraphs seem missing, they were also likely censored in an earlier pass where the symbol wasn't used.

"You know, this place isn't so bad," Hana comments.

"Yeah, there's no way you'd think that an entire town's worth of people died here and were cursed into being zombies," Roxanne says.

"It makes me uncomfortable just remembering that," Ciel says and scratches her cheek awkwardly.

"I imagine that after stabbing a fetus, nobody could 'comfortably' remember that," Roxanne adds with a smirk.

"Please…" Ciel pleads with a sigh.

"I see that you're back to your usual mean self," Alissa says and nods in understanding.

"I'm telling you, Wolf's cum has healing properties," Hana says.

"I'm not mean, it's just banter, banter!" Roxanne exclaims and pouts.

"You call that banter? I've seen maids with sharper tongues," Yunia says and points her chin up snobbishly.

"Oh? Is the elegant elven princess finally showing her true colors?" Roxanne asks and grins evilly. The two glare at each other, and I start to feel like they're competing, or something.

"What's gotten into them?" I whisper to Alissa.

"Banter. Their sadism compels them to put others down once in a while," she answers.

"Oh, please, I've always been myself: a refined and upstanding example of elven nobility," Yunia says.

- Roxanne and Yunia share some banter about who's the top bitch -

Roxanne leans forward, her lips curled into a kiss, but Yunia has [Precognition] and easily avoids her attack. She trips Roxanne's leg, making her stumble, then slaps her ass hard.

Roxanne continues on for a few steps before regaining her balance, then she holds her hat against her head and turns around to glare at Yunia.

"Hmph, got what you deserved," Yunia snorts snobbishly and walks away.

Roxanne's lips curl into a faint smile, and her face slowly returns to normal.

"I'm rather happy about how this ended," Ciel says in a low tone.

"I guess that Hana and Yunia are going to be competing for the position of top slut soon," Lina says.

"Pff… not even she can win against me," Hana says and grins fearsomely.

I sigh and bring my thunder spear back under control. Their short bout made me a little excited.

We split up again and continue our exploration. The Control Room is already powered, so at least we don't have to go through that connection process all over again, which would be a massive pain in the ass.

I gather documents and start translating them. After a long hour, I finally notice something interesting: references to a "Remote Stability Scanner." It supposedly costs a lot of mana to operate, but we can just redirect all the power to this room again, and it should work fine.

"I think this is the Scanner that you mentioned," Lina says and grabs my attention.

She's standing in front of a large square wooden table with a glass panel on top. There are a bunch of knobs and levers at one side, a few glass panes beside the table, and underneath are some small colored crystals embedded in a metal plate full of gold and silver mana channels.

We quickly divert the power back to the Control Room and return to the Scanner.

Lina pulls a lever, and a red smoke starts to seep out of the glass panel, then gathers in a few spots above it. On the glass panel, a more colorful variety of smoke comes together.

"Okay, now what does this red smoke mean?" I question.

Lina fiddles with another knob, and a blue smoke forms a completely opaque cube on top of the table, covering the red smoke. She fiddles with the knob again, and the cube becomes transparent, allowing us to see the red smoke.

She fiddles with another knob, and a small cone of black smoke appears near the bottom. She turns one last knob, and hundreds of little purple balls of varying sizes appear.

I hum in thought and say, "Well, I think the blue smoke represents 'normal' air, so we can turn that off completely; black could be the tornado above us; and I have no idea what red or purple would represent, probably something bad."

"Agreed," Lina says and nods, then she moves to a set of knobs that turn endlessly. She slowly turns one, and the black, purple, and red smoke all move downwards. "Oh, I think this is moving the scanner's 'view.'"

"Seems so. Now, we just need to find our destination."

She continues moving the Scanner down and puts the whole tornado in view. At its bottom, we see a small red dot surrounded by black smoke. She fiddles a little more with the Scanner and discovers a way to zoom in and out.

"Heh, that's nice," she mutters.

Alissa finds a book of official coordinates. It has the name of a location, its coordinates, the anchors required to make a path to it, and the polynomial equations used to calculate the path that the Looping Wind would take. It's not really that complex, it just requires a lot of small calculations that could be done automatically by a computer.

Hana and Roxanne skim through a lot of documents and memos, and they start to notice a repeated name: "Ozymandias."

Well, that's ominous.

"Ozymandias was the name of a chimeric king. I don't know anything else about him, though," Lina says.

"It's the name of a location in the book," Alissa says.

"It really is the most commonly mentioned name that we've found," Roxanne says as she counts its occurrences. "Also, it's seemingly the capital of this 'fake' chimeric nation."

Assuming that this station is the center of the system of coordinates in Alissa's book, Lina puts Ozymandias' coordinates into the Scanner. The red smoke gathers into the shape of a vertical disk that's half the size of this station.

"Well, it looks like an interesting place, alright," Roxanne comments.

"I can zoom the Scanner out to show the distance between the station and Ozymandias," Lina says.

"Please do," I say.

The red disk of Ozymandias slowly becomes smaller and smaller until it's so minuscule that only Alissa can see it, then we see a small black dot representing the tornado.

"Well, that seems pretty far," Ciel says.

"A few hours, maybe half a day?" I question.

"Not sure. I don't know how to translate this zoom level into a real distance," Lina says.

"Let's see what obstacles are in the way," I say.

She increases the opacity of the purple and red smoke, but we can't really see anything since it's all so small.

I get an idea and grab one of the glass panes beside the Scanner. It has a support frame that allows it to stay upright, so I think that it has some kind of use.

When I put it on the table, the red and purple smoke starts to glow, making it much easier to see.

"Interesting…" I mumble.

"I guess that all that's left is figuring out how to control the Looping Winds?" Alissa asks and looks at Ciel and Aoi.

"Well, that thing's a mess. The tornado is not the right way to use it, apparently," Ciel says with a wry smile.

Aoi nods in agreement and says, "Tornado is not in the manual."

"Have you tried turning it off and on again?" I ask.

Ciel opens her mouth, then closes it, then bites her lip.

Aoi blinks blankly then turns to her, "What a waste!"

"I…" Ciel starts, but her voice dies down, then we break into laughter, and she blushes heavily.

Aoi groans out loud and curls on the floor. "I'm taking a nap!" She angrily announces.

The connections are already there, so turning it off and on again is not much of a problem. To be fair to Ciel, it does take a few hours for the Light crystals to stop and then resume charging the Wind one, so, if we could find a way to undo the tornado, it would save us some time.

"I definitely didn't want to have us waste two hours of our morning waiting for the crystals to charge. Definitely," Ciel says and chuckles.

I smile and gently tap her head, then pull her into a hug as we wait, sitting down on one of my sofas.

Yunia discovers a way to increase the speed of the recharge, so our waiting time is reduced to an hour.

Meanwhile, we continue our research into how to set up the Looping Wind. According to our calculations, the path won't be easy. There are lots of unidentified obstacles in the way, and too few safe spots to set an anchor. The longer the Looping Wind stays without an anchor point, the more twisted and unstable the path becomes.

"I've identified a few dangerous spots," Roxanne says.

We use the glass panes to help us see these obstacles better, but the path is so long that it takes a lot of effort to comb through all of it.

"Zoom in on them, we could try to guess what they are from their shape," Ciel says.

Lina fiddles with the knobs, and we start guessing. Most of them seem to be islands, a few are just too amorphous for us to make a guess, and the last one, which is right next to Ozymandias, is moving. By its shape and the way that it moves, it's a huge sky serpent, or something similar.

"And there is our next challenge," Alissa says as we stare at the sky serpent.

"More like the next boss," I say.

"How big is that thing?" Hana asks.

"Huge. We must be like ants compared to it," Lina says.

Soon after, the crystal is finally done recharging, and we see on the scanner a black ring appearing around the station, so we start setting up the anchors.

The inputs are all analog, so we have to count how many times we've turned the knob towards the target coordinate and hope that we didn't miscount. Then we turn the anchor on and search with the Scanner for a yellow dot, which is where it's been summoned.

As each of the anchors is turned on, the black ring starts to stretch and roughly conforms to the path we've calculated, so we can consider that a success. We also quickly check the return path, and it seems safe, so everything is ready.

Once the Looping Winds settles, we create a map of all the way to Ozymandias using the obstacles as points of reference. It's like Roxanne said, a few points look dangerous to fly through, so we'll have to pay attention when we get close to them.

We return to our ship and turn it on, then we unfurl the sail and spread the wings. I take ten points out of [Sword Use] and put them into [Piloting] again. Then we take off Aoi's armor so that she can fly more easily, and we each tie ourselves to a rope on the ship.

Alissa breathes slowly to calm her heart and allow me to sync my body with hers.

"Helm, warp nine, engage!" I yell and gently make the ship fly forward. Alissa rolls her eyes, but doesn't comment on it.

"Are you having fun?!" Hana yells from the deck.

"I sure am!" I yell back and grin.

We leave the platform and find a large, gray tunnel waiting for us near the station. We fly past the station's four spinning arms, then stop in front of the tunnel. It's a half-circle made of gray smoke with the flat part facing up.

The way the smoke flows seems like the sea when its windy: small, periodic waves form on the surface, following the direction of the wind. So, differently from the dust tunnels of the tornado that wanted to keep us stuck inside of them, this one pushes us up onto the flat part, then guides forward. This is like a sky road, or maybe a sky river.

I sink the bottom of the ship into the smoke, then tilt the wings forward, and the ship is immediately pushed along. The wind is also coming up from behind, so both the wings and the sail are helping us move faster, removing the need for us to use the [Fly] crystal besides counteracting gravity.

It's pretty easy to control the ship along the Looping Winds, so we relax a little and teach the golems how to do it in our stead. They have my memories from when I used to play flight simulators, so they should be able to learn this quite easily. Though, I'm only capable of achieving a smooth flight thanks to [Piloting], so they probably won't become as good pilots as me.

Soon, the station is left behind, and the only thing that we can see is the gray sky road taking us through the infinite blue. Then Alissa notices a small cloud very far away.

I summon Hollys and have them establish a perimeter around us. They see one lone cloud, then two, then three, then four, then eight, then twenty, then our vision of the infinite gets blocked by the numerous clouds that quickly increase in size.

In only half an hour, we go from a clear sky to a stormy one, full of huge, white and gray clouds. The sky dims, so we turn on the ship's lights. The wind starts to become chaotic, and we see lightning inside the darker clouds.

"We are getting closer to the first obstacle," Lina says through [Bind].

"Stay alert, girls! This could get bumpy!" I warn them.

In case anyone falls, Aoi will stay with Yunia, Hana with Roxanne, and Ciel with Lina. I'm concerned about keeping the golems out, but they can all fly with [Telekinesis], so I'll trust them to keep themselves safe.

Lina climbs up to the bridge. "See that dark, scary cloud over there?" She asks and points to a mother fucking colossal storm cloud of black death approaching us.

"Yes…?" I reply, anxious.

"That's the red smoke that we saw on the Scanner."

"We're going to pass close to that?" Alissa asks.

"Not just close, but through," Lina answers.

"I'll increase our speed to the maximum so that we spend the least amount of time inside it," I say.

"Be careful," Lina says, a little anxious, and returns to her maps.

The Looping Winds start to slowly wave from side-to-side and up and down. It's the instabilities that are affecting it. Further ahead, it'll get much worse.

We're slowly dwarfed by the cloud of death, and the wind becomes even more chaotic, making the ship creak from the strain. The wind behind us also increases in strength, giving us even more speed.

I wish I knew our current speed and the maximum that this ship was designed to tolerate.

Thunder roars in the distance, slowly becoming stronger. The wind starts howling, and some light rain starts falling. The ship shakes, the turbulence too strong for me to counteract.

Lightning lights up the sky road ahead for a moment, revealing how it plunges into a tunnel, surrounded by the storm of death.

Slowly, the last remnants of illumination are left behind with the white clouds. The gigantic tunnel of death surrounds us, and the only things we can see are the sky road and the occasional burst of lightning. Thankfully, the wind is much calmer inside the tunnel, but now the problem is making sure that I stay in the Looping Winds.

"There are two tight turns and a loop inside this tunnel," Lina reminds me through [Bind].

Ciel and Lina go to the bow so that Ciel can use her glaive to create a headlight, helping me to see a bit further.

Lightning cracks so close that we are temporarily blinded and deafened.

Fuck! Should I go slow and safe or should I go fast to finish this quicker?!

"There are monsters inside the storm!" Alissa warns us through [Bind].

Fast it is, then.

We power up the [Fly] crystal and go full speed ahead. The ship protests, but I know that it can handle at least this much.

I use Alissa's [Sense Presence] to guide Roxanne, and she fires an [Ice Lance] into the cloud.

"It's still alive," Alissa says. "Ah! Ahead!"

Ciel illuminates it for us: a head made of a conical dark cloud; a neck formed by constant lightning; a chest composed of mossy rock; arms and legs shaped like tornadoes of dust. A storm elemental.

Aoi builds up an explosive fireball inside her, Ciel prepares [Wind Hammer], Roxanne prepares a thick [Ice Lance], and the other girls charge up [Earth Bullet]s.

"Let us help," Ted asks.

"We know how to fight Storm Elementals," Suzy affirms.

I pull three boulders out of my "Items."

"Have fun," I say.

The storm elemental fires a bolt of lightning towards Ciel, but it's diverted by Lina's [Dead Zone] and strikes the hull, slightly damaging it.

"We can't let them destroy the ship!" I warn them.

I take five points out of [Parry] and put them into [Enhanced Reflexes]. I'm going to need this.

"Focus on flying!" I say with [Godly Language]. My mind clears, and my body relaxes, but my heart rate stays fast.

We fly past the elemental, and the girls release their spells, obliterating it before it can throw more lightning at us.

I summon five electric elementals. The plasma balls float around the bridge, silently waiting for orders.

"Protect the ship, but priority goes to the wings and the sails!" I order them. They'll guard the ship, but this doesn't make us invulnerable. "Now it's all on you, girls. Alissa and I are too busy piloting, we can't help any more."

"Leave it to us!" Aoi confidently exclaims.

"Lots more ahead," Alissa warns.

"Barrage! Pick a target and fire, then switch! Don't try to destroy them!" Lina relays Ciel's orders.

Alissa's "radar" is filled with dots, so I use [Bind] to feed this information directly to the girls. They fire their spells into the dark clouds, then lightning is thrown back at us in response. Most of it is diverted by our electric elementals, but the sheer number of attacks overwhelms them, and a few get through. Some planks explode, but the damage is minimal.

Another wave arrives, and fewer bolts hit the ship this time. The girls are adapting to my information sharing.

A third wave comes, and the same thing happens.

"Curve!" Lina warns us.

We move the ship to the left side of the lane, then we roll it 45º and start pulling the nose up.

We leave the Looping Winds since we turned too early, and the ship slows down a lot. Then we sink back into it again, and our vision is clouded by smoke because we didn't turn hard enough.

We bring the ship vertical again, and the smoke pulls us up without our input, then we surface and cough. The smoke is magical, so it's not completely suffocating, but it's still not air, so it's not good for our lungs to breathe it in.

"Behind!" Alissa warns.

A salvo of lightning bolts hits the back of the ship before the girls can counter it. A hole is opened up in the stern, but the electric elementals are defending the wings and sail perfectly.

We quickly leave these storm elementals behind, but then they start appearing all around the tunnel. Their numbers are less concentrated than before, but they still force the girls to be constantly fighting.

Without them having the needed numbers to overwhelm the electric elementals, we don't receive any damage from their lightning bolts.

But the dungeon's aim might not be to destroy us, it could simply be trying to tire us out.

"Curve!" Lina warns us again.

I've learned my lesson, I won't come into a curve too fast like a noob again. We repeat the same preparations as before, but this time, I slow down the ship's forward speed, and we make the turn without a problem.

Then the sky river starts to wave again, and I get a bad feeling about this.

"Loop!" Lina warns.

"Ahead!" Alissa warns, too.

Fuck.

We flex our muscles to keep them from shaking, but the tension makes them hurt. The road starts turning upwards, and we gently follow it, keeping our speed at the limit that the ship can handle without leaving the Looping Winds.

The girls struggle to aim correctly, and when we go vertical, the belly of the ship gets hit repeatedly.

We turn upside down, and the girls all miss their spells, too busy trying to hold on to the ship to aim.

Then we finally start pointing downwards, and the bolts hitting the ship reduce in number until they stop completely.

The sky river straightens out, and we reach a new speed record. We go so fast that the wind hurts my eyes and makes it hard to see.

I need aviation goggles.

Soon after, the last of the storm elementals is left behind, and then we're clear of the clouds of death. The cold winds and rain hit us again, but they're nothing in comparison to what we just went through.

Up ahead, we start to see something shining in the sky, then a burst of lightning reveals it to us: a fucking-huge floating island.

"Our first landmark," Lina says.

The first anchor is nearby, so I think we could get some rest over there. Lunchtime is coming up soon, and I don't want to fly on an empty stomach.

We get closer and closer to the huge lump of rock and crystal. It must be larger than a mountain.

It arches over the Looping Winds, sheltering us from the rainstorm. Soon, the wind stops, and we reach the calm.

I pull the ship out of the sky river and park it right beside an exposed Wind crystal on the floating island.

"I want to try something," I say.

Alissa sighs and turns to me, looking slightly tired. "The last time you tried this, you hurt yourself. You certainly didn't go slow like you said you would," she says reproachfully.

I smile guiltily and reply, "I have to find a way to control small amounts of mana. Last time, I couldn't really focus on that because of how desperate we were."

She lifts up my visor and kisses my lips.

"Fine. Just be careful."

A note from Manasong

Hall of Fame of Patrons

The patrons who support Rupegia shall have their names sung by the bards for they deserve the glory and honor. Their names are:

Oracle Maximillian Hübner.

Prince PreownedFIN.

Lord Andrew Meyers.

Lord Hope.

Lord Samuel Lim.

Lord Bill.

Lord Novgarod.

Lord DJ.

Lord Ashadun.

Lord Michale Erwin.

Lord Enrique Peña Gomez.

Lord Braidborn.

Lord Bakerdea.

Lord Yeeteris Dedmeem.

Lord D4rk Sheep.

Lord Nathan Vanbrunt.

Lord Andrew Heffelbower.

Lord Markus.

Lord Maurice.

Lord Badger.

Lord Krawn.

Lord Remco.

Lord Thiago Ferreira.

Noble Salty Panda.

Noble Yamibomb112.

Noble Mild Fracas.

Noble EESDESESESRDT.

Noble Aclys.

Noble Tiler Mills.

Nobel CHoobler.

Leave a rating or a review to help me rise to the top or fix my shameful understanding of prose.

Take a look over my blog where all information of the world of Rupegia will be posted.

Join the Discord and discuss, or rant, or meme, or try and fight me so your waifu gets more screentime.

Become a Patron and read chapters in advance, or read the side-stories, or leave your mark on the story, or help choose the next artwork or the next side-story.

Chapter 69: Looping Winds - Part 3

A note from Manasong

19/06 - Attention: I'm taking a week off from writing to increase the censoring of this version of Rupegia. The censoring will be very rough as I'll just be deleting most of the references to sexual content, so in the future if you see a "-" it's a reference that got cut.

I go down to the deck and walk to the starboard railing. I see the exposed dark green crystal just a few meters away from me, slowly pulsating with light and mana.

The girls discuss lunch. Lina wants a veggie soup with toast, which would be perfect in this cold and rainy weather. Yunia doesn't seem thrilled at the suggestion, but she doesn't complain, so the girls go with it.

I slowly take off my wooden armor and focus on the mana of the crystal. I take my ten points out of [Piloting] and put them into [Sense Mana] instead. There's always some kind of "flavor" to mana, so I'm hoping that'll help with my [Redirect Mana] research.

Aoi stops beside me and [Clean]s the floor of rainwater, then curls up into a ball. I sit down and lay against her body. She's quite warm, but unfortunately, she isn't fluffy like fox-Alissa is.

"What do you know about [Wind Magic]?" I ask her.

"Hmm~…" She thinks deeply, and I hear her grumbles inside my soul space.

She lays her tail on my lap, so I start playing with it.

"Wind is unpredictable. Like water, you can't control all of it, so you have to find a way to 'flow' along with it. You have to 'become' the wind," she answers.

She spreads her long blue wings, and I feel mana escape her body. Without even flapping them, she causes a strong gust of wind to hit me in the face.

She chuckles, then says, "My wings aren't actually good at 'swimming' through the air. Actually, my whole body is bad at doing that… Anyway, I'm bad at 'swimming,' but I don't need to do that to fly, I simply control the air around me and force it to push me up."

"Right, that's 'lift.' Your body isn’t that aerodynamic, so you have trouble 'cutting' through the air. To fix that, you make a 'bubble' or a 'shield' of air around you, which is aerodynamic."

"Oh, yeah, I think that it's like that."

"Air is a fluid, like water, and the faster that you move it, the harder it is to 'push' this air away and 'swim' through it. So, by making a certain shape with the wind, you improve your aerodynamics. You also control how the wind hits your bubble, so you have some resistance to undesirable weather, like strong winds, or rogue gusts."

She nods and shows me a toothy smile. "Mhm, that's why we rule the skies. Birds just fly 'through' the air, but dragons 'become' the air and control it."

She lays her left wing over me like a leathery blanket.

"Are you talking about [Wind Magic]?" Ciel asks and stops beside us to stare at the pulsating crystal.

The golems are preparing the ingredients for the soup, so there's little work left for the girls.

"Yep. I'm trying to understand what it's all about so that I can control it better," I answer.

"What did you tell him?" Ciel asks Aoi.

She retells our short conversation and Ciel starts thinking.

She sits beside us and starts petting Aoi's scaly head as she says, "It's important to understand that at smaller scales, the wind is completely chaotic, but the more you increase the scale, like when you start to talk about the weather, the more certain it becomes. It's even possible to predict when it'll rain and the temperature of a certain day."

"Oh, right. We have that on Earth, too," I say.

Ciel nods. "It's the duality of Wind. On one hand, it's slow and predictable, on the other, it's fast and chaotic."

"To fly, you become the wind, adding yourself to the chaos, but always using it with purpose," Aoi says.

We go silent and continue admiring the crystal.

Yunia goes down into the hold and starts repairing the ship. I pull out some spare planks the ship had in its cargo and summon an orc to bring them down to her.

If these planks didn't disappear when I put them in my "Items," does that mean that the whole ship is real and not a dungeon mana solidification? I figured that it was part of the dungeon's challenge to take care of it and not let it get destroyed, but if I store it in my "Items" and it disappears, then we'll be in trouble.

I pull out a cushion for Ciel and Aoi, then I use [Telekinesis] on all three of us to lift us onto them without having to get up.

"Thank you," Aoi says, and Ciel raises a questioning eyebrow at me.

"I'm not going to comment on how much mana I just spent," I say and grin.

I return to my study of the crystal and extend a very thin "soul-tentacle" towards it so that I can feel the mana better.

Since my mana isn't full, this piece of my soul becomes a "mouth" through which I can absorb the mana. If I "flex" my soul to be more similar to the signature of the mana that I'm trying to absorb, it gets "attracted" to my soul, making the absorption easier. This "flexing" used to strain me, but now that I have [Soul Manipulation], it's rather trivial to do in practice. But just altering the properties of the soul isn't enough; having a deeper knowledge of how things work will always be beneficial to magic.

Since I can't see the wind, sight won't help me, so I close my eyes and meditate.

To become the wind I have to… feel it.

I open my eyes again and push Aoi's blanket away, then I stand up and regretfully part with her warmth. I walk to the railing and open my scale jacket so that I can feel more of the wind against my skin.

I close my eyes again and meditate.

I remember the Reynolds Number, the coefficient that represents the turbulence in the flow of fluids. This number is proof that even chaos can be quantified.

I spread my soul through the air so that I can feel its flow. Everything is going through constant, chaotic movement, but I can see how it flows around the archway in a predictable manner.

I activate [Redirect Mana] near the crystal and observe how the mana particles slowly come to me, almost like a breeze. I pull a bit too much, so I stop and let it flow freely.

I start playing around with the mana, pulling it only for second in one direction, then in another, as if I'm making brushstrokes with it, then creating swirls in the air.

Aoi chuckles, and Ciel asks, "What are you doing? I'm feeling the mana moving in an odd way."

"I'm 'painting' with mana," I answer and give her a gentle smile. "If only I could make the particles visible…"

The mana swishes and swooshes within my extended soul, creating a little turbulence as the particles start to interact with one another.

It seems that it's much easier to control mana when I have the right mindset.

I start to chant [Wind Blade], and I move the point where I gather mana from my heart to the air in front of me, in the middle of all the Wind mana. As expected, the wild mana converges around my gathering point, boosting my spell. This is also why Roxanne uses a staff and casts her spells from its tip, the crystal on her staff helps gather the ambient mana to boost her spells.

I release the spell, and it makes a scratch in the stone, but I'm sure that Roxanne can make a much deeper one.

Mana from a crystal seems easy to "steal" with [Redirect Mana] because it has no "will." The problem is when two wills clash when they try to take control of the same mana particles. The two conflicting wills can't force the mana to be two things at the same time, so this bends the laws of reality, and some bad shit happens.

Perhaps I could stop enchantments with it, though it would require me to move my soul close to the gem, which would make me extremely vulnerable to a Spirit mage.

But what about completed spells? No… you can still control most spells after they've been completed or launched. I don't think that I could've stopped [Meteor] with [Redirect Mana].

Ah! But maybe I could recreate the effects of Yunia's [Disruption Field] by using [Redirect Mana]!

I spread my soul in two directions, then I start flickering [Redirect Mana] on and off on each of the ends.

The mana quickly whips up into a small storm, but it's nowhere near the amount of chaos that I saw with Yunia's [Disruption Field], and it's also moving a shit ton of mana.

Of course, Yunia's spell is a perfected tool, while I'm trying to do the same thing with only a makeshift replacement.

"Ciel, help me a little, try to chant and cast [Conjure Water]," I ask, then I turn the mana storm to her.

"This is really uncomfortable," she says as the mana particles wrack through her body, then she starts chanting, but she succeeds without much extra effort.

"Hm… a failure…" I mumble.

She smiles wryly and says, "You need a lot more disruption to prevent me from casting. Also, with this amount of mana you might actually damage my HP before you manage to interrupt my spell."

I start chanting [Wind Blade], building the spell outside of my heart again, but this time I pull in a lot of Wind mana from the crystal.

"Careful not to pull too much. You could make the whole island fall on us," Ciel warns me.

I won't go that far.

I start spinning the mana around the spell, but that only disrupts it. Maybe if I had a Wind-attuned gem, I could bring the mana to it, and it would help boost the spell.

But just "boosting" it isn't enough. I want to absorb this Wind mana and directly feed it into the spell. Now that would be novel, though [Ritualism] supposedly links multiple mages' mana together to cast bigger spells, so it's not completely novel.

I stop the storm and hold it in place, then I continue chanting. When I'm almost finished, I turn my soul into a "mouth," allowing it to absorb all the Wind mana gathered around it, then I release the spell.

"[Wind Blade]!" The nearly invisible green blade sinks into the rock beside the first scratch.

"Did that one cut deeper?" Ciel asks.

I jump and use [Telekinesis] to glide to the rock, then I run my fingers through each scratch.

"A little," I answer.

"I think I understand what you just tried to do," Ciel says.

"I'm trying to use [Redirect Mana] to feed my spell directly, not just 'boost' it by proximity," I say.

"Yep, I knew it."

I smile wryly and return to the ship.

Recharging my mana organ with [Redirect Mana] is straining, so I want to find alternative uses for the skill. If I can get this idea to work, I can carry a gem large enough to cast a huge defensive spell that could stop four [Meteor]s.

I continue my practice of using [Redirect Mana] to fuel my spells, but the problem is that it also refills my mana, so there's still some strain happening.

Maybe I could make a spell that didn't gather mana first, then I could fill it with mana from a crystal instead of using my own, but that would take a lot of effort to come to fruition.

I don't want to tire myself out with this simple practice, so I stop and go down into the hold to inspect the ship's crystal. I identify the area in the gem where the mana is being stored, then I bring the island's Wind mana to the crystal, refilling it.

"Oh, hey, at least this idea worked perfectly," I say with a smile.

Yunia comes to inspect what I'm doing and comments, "That's… actually a really good thing. It might make ships more viable in the future if your skill spreads."

"How are the gems normally recharged?" I ask.

"Mages would use their own mana to refill it, but I heard that the Chimeras collect Light magic, then transform it into what they need, just like in the Looping Winds Station that we just came from. It's rather ironic since they aren't very pious and don't use [Light Magic] for much besides that."

"Can't they use Wind mana directly, instead?"

"There's not enough Wind mana in the Sky Lands. You have to fly to the outer circle around the continent to reach higher mana concentrations, but then you also have to deal with the Drifting Lands and the strong winds, so it's not worth it."

"You know a lot about the Chimeras."

She smiles proudly. "We have trade relations with them, so it pays off to know what they need."

"If you can predict the weather, can't you predict the path of a Drifting Land? If you have them all predicted, there would be little danger of crashing into them."

"Every once in a while, the Everlasting Storm creates a new Drifting Land. You can predict the existing ones, but you'd need constant vigilance; otherwise, one day, a Drifting Land could crash into a new Land and ruin all your calculations."

"Ah, I see."

She nods gently. "You certainly don't think like a commoner. You're more of a scholar, but you'll do well as a True Noble."

"Well, thank you," I awkwardly accept her compliment.

We finish our repairs of the hull, then we go up and have our lunch.

We eat hot soup in the warmth of our tent while looking to the outside and admiring the storm off in the distance.

After everything is done, we pack up, armor up, and return to our positions. We bring the ship back to the Looping Winds and continue on our journey.

We soon pass through the first anchor, and we notice how still the air has become. Even our sail loses power since there isn't a single gust of wind coming from anywhere. Fortunately, we already have a lot of momentum, so we spend a short time crossing it.

The storm clouds are left behind us, but we're now entering a thick sea of white clouds. Every once in a while, we see islets peeking out of the clouds. This is the danger of this area. If we drift off course, we might crash into something. Not that there's any reason for us to leave the Looping Winds for now.

Over the course of half an hour, it slowly gets darker until we can barely see, forcing us to keep the crystal lights on, then the number of clouds reduces a little, and we see the sky again. Night has fallen, and we see a beautiful starry sky full of colorful nebulae. Then the clouds start to glow and gain muted colors, giving it a truly fantastical atmosphere. This area's mostly dark blue, but it's slowly changing to purple.

"Wow…" Alissa mutters, impressed at the beautiful sight. "We really are in the Broken Skies."

Lina's Trivia: Above the Sky Lands are the ruins of an ancient Chimeric empire, now a nearly untraversable region, full of Drifting Lands colliding with one another and wild, unpredictable Looping Winds everywhere. This place is called the Broken Skies.

A few colorful birds take flight from a hidden islet and fly near our ship.

"Are these monsters?" I ask Alissa.

"No, they're animals," she answers and admires them.

Their tails are nearly four times longer than their bodies. They seem rather sleek, and I'd bet that they attack by diving.

Three birds land on the railings of our ship, and we notice that they're actually slightly chameleonic as their color changes in just a few seconds from purplish-blue to light brown to match the wood. They're also rather big, around 60cm tall, excluding the ridiculously long tail, and they have long, thin beaks.

The golems come up to the bridge again, and Ted says, "Excuse us, masters, but this stretch of the journey is supposedly safe."

Suzy continues, "So this is the perfect opportunity to let us learn to pilot the ship while you enjoy the scenery."

Jarn finishes, "We wish to learn and earn independence so that you may come to rely on us."

I share a look with Alissa. "Sounds fine to me," I say.

"Yes, that sounds nice," Alissa agrees and smiles.

We untie ourselves from the ropes on the bridge, then I sweep Alissa off her feet and pick her up into a princess carry.

"Kyah!" She yelps in surprise and hugs my neck.

Without wasting a breath, I jump off the bridge and use [Telekinesis] to graciously land on the deck.

"I give your landing a solid eight out of ten," Roxanne says with a grin.

I let Alissa get her feet back under her, and she pinches my cheek, then I turn to Roxanne and ask, "What do I need to get a ten out of ten?"

"You have [Acrobatics], use it," she responds.

"Hah, alright."

Ciel tries to slowly approach the birds while holding some grains in her hand, but the birds seem uninterested in them.

"I'd guess that they prefer meat," I say and pull out some of the raw Dragolite meat that we have.

"Can't you give them some of the dried meat?" Hana asks.

"Too salty, it would probably be bad for them," I answer.

Ciel takes a slab of meat and starts slicing it into small strips. The birds notice the meat and start to intently stare at her.

I smile and say, "See?"

Alissa gets two ropes on the deck and ties one around my waist and the other around hers.

Ciel smiles like a little girl and throws a strip towards a bird. They all open their long beaks and snap at the meat, but the one in the middle is the victor.

She throws more meat, making sure that each of the birds gets an equal share. She slowly steps forward with each throw, observing the birds for any aggressive movement.

Once all the meat is gone, Yunia walks up beside Ciel and says, "It's fine, they like you. You can touch them now."

"Really?" Ciel happily asks.

Gify pops onto the head of the middle bird. "Gih!"

Ciel skips forward and stops in front of the left bird. Its amber, hawk-like eyes stare curiously at her.

She shyly reaches out towards it, then the bird lowers its head and rubs it against her hand.

"Ah… so fluffy," she moans.

It lets out a soft, melodic cry in happiness.

Yunia goes to pet the second bird, then Lina comes to pet the third, but it has to first hop down to the deck before she can reach it.

The birds send worried glances at Aoi, but eventually accept her presence. They also seem slightly wary of Hana, and they avoid looking me, specifically, in the eye.

The now muted purple clouds slowly shift into a muted red. Their glow seems to have a subtle pulse to it, giving us the impression that they're constantly moving.

The golems quickly adapt to working together to pilot the ship. Jarn seemingly has the most stable hands, so she takes charge of the roll and yaw, which require the finest control to counter any turbulence.

Some vegetation starts to appear, all odd-looking plants and trees. If they're truly native to the Broken Skies, then it's natural to think that they'd look different from normal vegetation after being isolated from the rest of the world for so long.

We drink the usual not-earl gray tea and some simple cookies while taking turns petting and playing with the birds.

More birds appear on the islets, but they aren't as majestic, or intelligent, as the ones currently enjoying our hospitality.

A few Dragolites appear, wanting to either attack us, or eat the now named Long-Tailed Chamebirb, but they're barely stronger than a goblin, so we can easily dispatch them, even with our eyes closed.

The birds eventually leave, not wanting to get too far from their usual hunting territory, so we end our little break, but we don't stop admiring the environment.

The muted reds of the clouds are replaced by muted greens, and the islets suddenly become lush with vegetation.

Then we see a huge flat bird the size of a car that looks more like a manta ray than a bird. It flies so slowly that it must be using mana to float. It has a long, seagull-like beak, and eyes at the sides of its flat head. Its dark gray plumage absorbs some of the colors from the environment, giving it a measure of camouflage.

The now named Manta Gull seemingly has a flock of small birds nesting on its back. When a Dragolite appears to attack them, they band together to defend their nest and fight alongside the Manta, who uses its thin, long tail like a whip.

No fantasy world is complete without a peaceful, slow, and large flying creature.

Alissa suddenly draws her bow and fires it at a small cloud. The mana arrow gets stuck in the cloud, which hisses and shivers, then fades into nothing.

"Oh, a Cloud Snake," I say, then I remember that I dreamed about it in that nightmare about the Hands chasing us. I shudder and push that horrible memory out of my mind.

Just as we're about to relax from our vigilance, the wind starts to pick up speed again, becoming too strong for the golems to pilot the ship smoothly anymore.

I look at Alissa and smile wryly. "Break time's over."

Lina scurries up to us and says, "The next dangerous area is approaching, it's the rapids," Lina says.

A note from Manasong

Hall of Fame of Patrons

The patrons who support Rupegia shall have their names sung by the bards for they deserve the glory and honor. Their names are:

Oracle Maximillian Hübner.

Prince PreownedFIN.

Lord Andrew Meyers.

Lord Hope.

Lord Samuel Lim.

Lord Bill.

Lord Novgarod.

Lord DJ.

Lord Ashadun.

Lord Michale Erwin.

Lord Enrique Peña Gomez.

Lord Braidborn.

Lord Bakerdea.

Lord Yeeteris Dedmeem.

Lord D4rk Sheep.

Lord Nathan Vanbrunt.

Lord Andrew Heffelbower.

Lord Markus.

Lord Maurice.

Lord Badger.

Lord Krawn.

Lord Remco.

Lord Thiago Ferreira.

Noble Salty Panda.

Noble Yamibomb112.

Noble Mild Fracas.

Noble EESDESESESRDT.

Noble Aclys.

Noble Tiler Mills.

Noble CHoobler.

Leave a rating or a review to help me rise to the top or fix my shameful understanding of prose.

Take a look over my blog where all information of the world of Rupegia will be posted.

Join the Discord and discuss, or rant, or meme, or try and fight me so your waifu gets more screentime.

Become a Patron and read chapters in advance, or read the side-stories, or leave your mark on the story, or help choose the next artwork or the next side-story.

Chapter 70: Obstacle Course - Part 1

Break time is over. We return to the bridge and take over the controls. The golems may do fine with a simple order such as "follow the Looping Winds," but they still don't have enough creative thinking to deal with unexpected dangers.

The sky road starts to sway from side-to-side, then sharp turns start to appear. We furl the sail because the wind is too strong, and this allows us to control the ship better. If we also close the wings, we won't be pushed along so strongly by the Looping Winds, but it also makes it easier for us to fly out of it.

The clouds have been blocking our view more, and the number of hidden islets has increased, so flying out of the Looping Winds is getting more dangerous than before. Not only that, but we don't have a working compass, so it'll be extremely easy to get lost in the clouds if we lose sight of the Looping Winds.

Then we see many tight turns ahead, making us become very nervous.

"Focus on flying!" I say with [Godly Language], and a wave of confidence hits us, reducing our anxiety.

We trace a path in our minds and prepare to follow it. We swing the ship to the right and get ready to swing back to the left when the turn starts.

Five seconds.

Four.

Three.

Two.

One.

Now!

We turn to the left, and a second later, the sky road follows.

We quickly realize how slow and heavy this ship is from seeing how our turning speed is much slower than what we expected. Because of this and the Looping Winds hitting the side of the ship, we're being pushed off the sky river.

We slow down the ship to give us more time to turn, but the ship's [Fly] gem isn't powerful enough. We lose all forward momentum and drift harder.

We think about closing the wings fully, but [Piloting] gives me a new idea. I open the wings and unfurl the sail. The ship creaks as we gain a huge boost of speed, and the girls on the deck yelp in surprise.

Sorry!

Fighting the rapids won't work, we have to fly through them head-on!

The next turn is to the right, and it comes after mere seconds, so we bank the ship to the right, half-submerging it in the smoke, and pitch up.

The sky road suddenly turns down, so we roll the ship upside-down and continue pitching up.

We surface below the sky road, which pushes us up to the surface, so we continue rolling clockwise until we're positioned sideways to the left, then we immediately pitch up again, making a banked turn to left.

Before the turn is completed, we roll to the right and sink into the smoke, then make another banked turn, preempting the tight curve coming up.

We finally turn upright, allowing us to cough out the smoke for a few brief seconds, then we see the sky road turn upwards so sharply that it looks like a wall.

[Piloting] triggers a desperate warning in our minds. We fold the wings, furl the sails, and point the ship upright, sinking into the smoke again, then we speed forward at full speed.

We rise out of the sky road, then hit the smoke wall. We open the wings and unfurl the sails again, but we continue sinking into the smoke due to our momentum.

We slip out of the sky road through the bottom, then we hear a crash, followed by scraping. My Holly at the bottom of the hull is crushed as the ship hits an islet.

The sail is still inside the smoke, so we get forcefully pushed forward, and the ship scrapes along for a few seconds before the [Fly] gem manages to push us away from the islet.

The crash was actually a Godssend since it slowed us down, allowing us to make the next three turns without a problem, while also allowing me time to summon another Holly and inspect the damage.

There's now a big hole in the hold where a pillar of rock pierced through it before breaking off. A lot of the planks are cracked and bent, but that type of damage is easily repaired. The best part, though, is that the bottom part of the hull will hold, and we aren't at risk of suddenly losing half of the ship.

Heh, what a sturdy bathtub.

The sky road suddenly turns vertical again, and the smoke pushes us up at a frightening speed. The instability has reached its apex.

Then we see it: at the top of this climb, there's another super tight curve that ends in a vertical drop. Beyond the sky road, we see a dozen cones of rock peeking through from behind the clouds, like the tips of a spike trap, waiting for us to crash onto it.

All around us, there's only islets, making it very dangerous to leave the sky road.

Is this a deliberate trap?!

I switch around the points of the girls while I let Alissa take control of the ship.

She folds the wings and furls the sails again, but the smoke is pushing on us too hard, and we don't slow down significantly. She pitches up the ship until we are facing backward, then she rolls us to align the ship with the surface.

"USE [WIND HAMMER] TO OPEN A HOLE IN THE ROCKS AHEAD!" I order through [Bind], and the girls relay it to the non-bound ones, then they all go to the ship's aft.

Gify pops onto my head and nestles inside my helmet, eager to see what's about to happen.

Oh, you little shit. Just watch me fucking dominate this challenge!

Alissa releases the controls and grabs her elven bow. She lays against the control panel so that she can draw it and concentrate all her mana into a single shot.

Ciel's glaive glows like a star as she charges up her own attack along with the others. Then she floods the deck with Wind mana, taking it from the islets nearby to boost our spells.

I get an idea and extend my soul to the rock trap above us, the furthest I've ever reached with it.

"FIRE AFTER ALISSA!" I order through [Bind].

I use [Redirect Mana] to pull all the Wind mana that I can draw from the islets.

The girls are ready, we only have a few seconds left.

I focus on Alissa's sight so that I can see better.

One islet twitches, then slowly starts to sink.

THERE!

I guide Alissa, and she releases the arrow towards it. The bottom part of the islet gets blown off by the arrow, but that's not enough.

I grab the islet with [Telekinesis], then push it to the side.

MOOO~VE!

"[EXPLOSION]!" Roxanne casts at the side of the islet, pushing it away.

"[WIND HAMMER]!" The rest of the girls cast in unison.

A sonic boom hits us as all the boosted spells are launched at the same time, then Ciel casts her [Beam] immediately after that.

Half of the islet is melted or blown away, and the rest of it gets pushed to the side by my [Telekinesis].

A rock comes straight at my face.

Fuck!

Without my metal enchanted shield, I'm forced to trigger [Enhanced Reflexes] and [Muscle Explosion] at the same time to dodge it.

A second rock comes, but now I have enough time to divert it with [Telekinesis]. The other girls are safe since they have their enchanted shields on hand.

We turn to the controls and make our final adjustments.

The ship reaches the top of the climb and flies off the Looping Winds. We snugly fit through the hole we opened in the islets, then we open the wings again and unfurl the sails, suddenly and heavily increasing our drag and decelerating.

HAH! WE'RE GETTING BETTER AT THIS!

We feel the pressure from the heavy deceleration, then the ship's aft gently touches an islet, and we remain still for a few seconds.

The view is breathtaking. If only we weren't vertical and barely hanging on, we could fully appreciate the chaotic and fantastical sight. Then we start to fall.

This time, we are slow enough that we can turn the ship and safely re-enter the sky road.

"GIIH!" Gify cheers, and I laugh out loud.

The rapids continues, but we start getting used to its unpredictability and learn how to make the ship go through the maneuvers that we want it to.

The rapids slow down to more manageable speeds, then the sky road straightens out. Soon after, we reach another anchor, and we take the opportunity to stop and make repairs.

The beams holding the wings have been stressed too much and started to crack, so we make some repairs on them, too. Lina helps this time with a [Grow] magic tool. The tool is more limited than using the spell yourself, but it's still helpful.

I sit on the railing of the deck and take in the sight. The clouds have now turned a muted light blue and are slowly darkening. They've also cleared up a bit, allowing us to see further than before.

The islets grow to a size that they can now be called actual islands. They're also visibly moving, and if we consider how far away they are, it means that they're going really fast.

"Wow, that's… frightening," Alissa comments as she stares at large islands crashing into one another. Their impact is so strong that it creates a disk of rocks and dust that's launched away at high speeds.

Then, a moment later, the shock wave hits us. The loud bang makes us wince due to its volume, and Alissa suffers the most.

"INCOMING!" Hana yells.

I summon three wind elementals to deal with the approaching debris barrage, then I pull out my shield from my "Items" and activate [Wind Shield].

Rocks and boulders of varying sizes pelt us, and a few break into the hold.

"Godsdamnit! We just fixed the hull!" Yunia complains.

"Make sure the gem doesn't get damaged!" Lina yells.

Yunia nods and goes down to the hold, and I summon two earth elementals to form themselves into a cocoon around it.

We return to the bridge and take over the controls again with a sigh. We've barely had any time to rest.

More rocks come from above, having been lobbed in our direction by the impact. Nobody gets hurt, but a rock hits the deck and crashes through to the hold, frustrating Yunia again.

Suddenly, far off in the distance, a huge volcano erupts.

Oh, boy.

Another shock wave hits us and hurts our ears, but this time, it's strong enough that it rattles our bones. I immediately cast [Heal] on Alissa to stop the pain in her ears.

"Thank you," she mutters.

The volcano spews out a column of red hot lava and smoke; long trails of lava make kilometers-long arches in all directions; and lightning courses through the gigantic plume of toxic smoke and debris that continues to increase in size.

Forecast: lava and smoke.

"Next danger: the maelstrom," Lina says through [Bind].

Two islands collide nearby us again, and another debris barrage hits the ship. This time, though, we're prepared for it, and we manage to protect the ship from getting damaged.

For some reason, the islands in this location keep moving towards one another. The only thing that's different about this area is that the mana is wild and unpredictable.

Ciel frowns and calls for Lina's attention. "There's something odd here. I feel a 'need' to go to the center of this maelstrom," she says to Lina.

"The ship will pass close by it. The center is calm, so there's an anchor there," Lina responds.

Ciel nods anxiously and looks ahead.

Clouds of dust threaten to blind us, so the girls and the elementals work together to clear them off the sky road.

Suddenly, a ginormous island as massive as the entirety of Rabanara bursts out of a purple cloud, it's flying directly towards us at an incredible speed. We are right in the middle of its path, so going forward or backward will have the same result.

"I don't think we can outrun that," Alissa says, worriedly.

Is someone seriously slinging islands at us?!

"Now's the time to turn on the afterburner fueled by the power of friendship," I mumble and grin.

"The what?" Alissa questions.

"Afterburner. As if we could use more mana to give us even more speed at the cost of efficiency."

"Hm… that'd be something useful to have."

"Remind me to suggest it to Lina sometime."

"Understood."

"Lina, can you ask Ciel if she knows a way to use magic to make us go faster?" I ask through [Bind].

"No."

Well, shit.

I pitch the ship up and leave the sky road, then I get Alissa to carefully look over the entire island while I think of something.

"So… this is bad," Aoi says in my soul space.

"Ciel says that we're going to get blown away by the wind that's enveloping the island," Lina says.

Shite…

"Crazy idea time!" I yell and Alissa frowns. "I'll jump onto the island and open a [Gate] to a plank, then Hana slams the plank against the ship's bottom!"

"Wow… Wolfy…" Alissa mutters, stunned.

"AHAHAHAHAHA! THIS IS SO STUPID THAT IT JUST MIGHT WORK!" Hana bellows inside my soul space.

"Hey, what do you mean by that?" I ask, a little offended. My idea is crazy, but it's not "stupid"!

"Okay, it's silly to use [Gate] like that, but it'll work. Just… how are you going to land on that island?" Yunia asks through Aoi.

"Actually… the island must be displacing a huge amount of air. Approaching that would be pretty difficult for me, so I'll use a boulder, instead. I'll put a [Gate] coordinate on it, then throw it and make sure that it lands on the island. If it lands safely, then I can just teleport everyone!"

"See? I told you it was stupid," Hana says with a snort.

"That was just the initial idea! I needed time to develop a proper plan!" I protest, and she just laughs.

"Then you'd better start with this plan, we don't have a lot of time," Ciel says through Lina as she warily eyes the approaching island.

I unassign my useless points until I have enough to cast [Fly].

"Ted, Suzy, and Jarn: Alissa's the captain now," I say and release the controls.

"Understood, master," Ted says.

Ciel's [Holy Spirit] jumps up onto the bridge, then scurries over to me and climbs up my body. It finds its preferred spot right behind my head, and Gify greets it with a happy chirp.

"I'll be right back, my love," I say to all the girls through [Bind], then I cast [Fly] and jump.

I'm suddenly assaulted by the exhilarating and also frightening feeling of being freed from the shackles that chain us to the ground. And not only that, but I'm also charging straight at an island that's trying to hit me. Can anyone in all of history say that they've been slammed by an entire fucking island? I want to believe that I'm the first.

Alissa directs the ship to fly away from the island to give me more time.

The looming mass of pure rock and death gets closer and closer. I start to hear its rumble as it violently pushes an inconceivably large volume of air out of its way.

I continue flying up and try to look for an inclined location to throw the boulder at. The turbulence the island is creating might be less over there.

I stretch my soul a lot further ahead so that I can feel the air and stop before I get swept up by the turbulence.

I start to discern the details of the island. It's an inhospitable landscape, full of jagged mountains, pointed crystals protruding out of the ground, and dark valleys in between them.

My soul detects a frighteningly fast torrent of air ahead, so I stop and fly backwards. I pull out a boulder and a plank from my "Items," put a [Gate] coordinate on the boulder, then use [Telekinesis] to throw it at the island. I keep extending my soul towards the surface, waiting for the right moment.

I spend several long seconds breathing heavily with anxiety as the torrent of air gets closer and closer to me.

Suddenly, my soul touches the ground, then I stop using [Fly] and put all of my effort into decelerating the boulder with [Telekinesis]. It's so far away that I can't even see it anymore.

The torrent of air reaches me, and I'm swept away.

Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck.

I spin like crazy and get so dizzy that I release [Telekinesis], and my soul returns to me. Then I open a [Gate] to the boulder on the plank that I'm holding and touch it.

My spinning immediately stops, but I'm now free-falling towards the island, and the disorientation is dulling my responses.

A FUCKING DRAGON WOULD NEVER CRASH INTO THE GROUND!

I roar and flood myself with the anger of a dragon, then I cast [Fly] again and open my eyes.

I see something shining green right in front of me, then I crash against a crystal.

"WOLFY!" Alissa's worried voice sends a wave of guilt through me. I may have fucking crashed, but at least I didn't pass out.

My pain immediately fades away and turns into pleasure as Ciel's [Holy Spirit] starts its work.

With the help of the dragon's energy flowing through my veins, I immediately get up and check the damage. I see a few cracks on my armor, including my visor, but overall, I'm fine. [Fly] canceled most of the momentum of my fall, so it wasn't like I just fell from Gods-know-how-high.

I think Alissa is right; I'm doing some stupid shit lately.

But it sure is fucking fun…

No time to waste, I scan my surroundings and notice that I'm inside a hole surrounded by green, glowing crystals. The wind howls a few meters above me as a stupidly high amount of air is forcefully displaced by the island.

I fly out of the hole, and I'm nearly swept up by the wind, so I remain close to the surface and fly towards the center of the island.

The time the girls have left is slowly running out, so I speed up as much as I can without crashing.

I finally reach the top of this fucking mountain and sigh in relief. This whole island seems like two meteors that joined together. After cresting the mountain, there's a lot of flat ground that isn't getting blasted by the strong winds running along the meteor's face.

I fly down a stony slope and land on a large strip of flat, straight rock, then I drop a coordinate there and open a [Gate] to the deck of the ship.

"Miss me?!" I yell after I cross it.

"Sure did," Roxanne says in a warm tone.

"Ack! You're wounded! Bad, Wolfy! Bad!" Alissa chastises me, and I smile guiltily.

I pull out another plank, then I cast [Gate] on it. "Here, slam it against the ship, then I'll use [Bind] to summon you back," I say and hand the plank to Hana.

"Understood," she replies and takes it, then flies off the ship. "I'm ready," she says in my soul space.

"Alissa, stop the ship," I order. She powers down the ship, folds the wings, and furls the sails. "Do it."

Hana touches the black circle against the bottom of the hull, and we're all teleported to the double meteor island, then I summon Hana.

We all wobble, the sudden change from being in motion to (relatively) not being in motion is rather difficult for our brains to deal with. I also groan from a headache, feeling the effects of mana overuse as a huge chunk of my mana is used to transport the ship.

Ciel holds me as I stumble, and Jarn holds Alissa on the bridge. She softly thanks the stick figure golem as she smiles.

I sigh and relax a little, then I make my way back to the bridge as the girls admire the environment. With all of its glowing crystals and strange dark rock pillars protruding out of the ground, the landscape looks rather alien, as if we'd landed on a child's imagination of another planet.

We power up the ship again and fly towards where the sky road should be. We fly past wind-blasted mountains and valleys shrouded in shadow. Alissa detects a few things living down there, so we fly high to avoid them; now isn't the time to get caught up in fighting random things. We can't fly too high, though, since the torrent of turbulence around the meteor is still going strong.

It takes us nearly half an hour, but we finally get past this ridiculous obstacle. We lower the ship to follow under the path that the center of the island took to avoid the trail of turbulence it left in its wake.

After a minute of flying, we see the sky road appear in the distance and sigh in relief. At least we didn't get lost. Then some strong turbulence hits us, forcing us to fold the wings and furl the sails until it passes.

Just as we finally clear it and approach the sky road again, the volcano's lava spray reaches us.

"Lovely weather," Alissa says, flatly, and I chuckle.

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Chapter 70: Obstacle Course - Part 2

And fire and brimstone fell upon their heads.

The girls not only have to deal with dust and boulders, but now molten lumps of rock are coming towards us, too.

"I don't think that they can divert that one," Alissa says as she looks up at the sky.

We pull the ship out of the smoke river for a minute, and a thick, long stream of cooling lava falls through it.

We return to the sky road, but don't stay on it for long as more and more hot and cooled rocks, far larger than what we can deal with, cross with our path.

Ciel casts [Beam] at one small lump of lava, but it suddenly flies off-course, avoiding her spell.

"I CAN'T STOP THAT ONE!" She yells and activates [Wind Shield].

The lump continues changing its course, only stopping when it's shooting towards the middle of the ship's deck.

"ELEMENTAL!" Alissa warns us as it enters the range of her [Sense Presence].

The girls clutch their weapons and get ready for combat.

The lava elemental crashes into the planks, making Yunia grit her teeth in anger. Then the lava takes the shape of a bald, muscular man.

It's raining men! Hallelujah!

Roxanne opens up with a [Torrent] and hits the elemental directly in the chest. His (?) arm suddenly takes the shape of a shield and blocks Roxanne's continuous spell.

The glowing rock that is his shield arm quickly cools off, creating a cloud of steam which blocks our view.

Roxanne stops her spell and manipulates the steam to clear it away. The elemental's other arm is now a spear, and it stands in a combat stance, motionless like a statue. His feet are causing the planks to light up into a small fire.

Hana grabs her steel war hammer, and Lina [Switch]es her axe to a hammer.

Hana is the first to move, attacking it from the front; Lina moves a second later, aiming for its back; Roxanne, Aoi, and Yunia charge spells; the golems keep their boulders at the ready, holding themselves back in fear of hurting Hana or Lina; and Ciel remains watching the skies, playing a fantasy version of Asteroids.

With just a nudge, I direct the girls to attack in sync. Hana aims high while Lina aims low.

The elemental's head doesn't even look at them, he just uses his sword to deflect Lina and his shield to block Hana.

A loud thud resounds through the air as Hana's hammer strikes the cooled lava shield dead on, pulverizing a small amount of rock. Lina's hammer slides along the elemental's sword, then hits his folded arm, spilling a few drops of lava onto the deck.

The elemental goes for a counter, trying to pivot his red hot sword around Lina's shield, but then his arm suddenly stops in an awkward position, and Yunia smiles triumphantly.

Lina deflects his Life-chained arm upwards and strikes at his knee, her favorite spot. It bends awkwardly and the elemental is forced to kneel, though I don't think that his knee has bones or cartilage that can be damaged.

Hana bashes her shield against the elemental's, throwing it off balance and making it fall, then Lina squashes its head, splattering lava everywhere, but it's not dead yet.

"Ready!" Roxanne yells in my soul space.

Hana and Lina heed her warning and jump away, then a meter-wide [Torrent] slams against elemental. Its shield isn't wide enough to protect it, so its entire body gets cooled off by the spell, creating a small localized steam explosion.

"Kweh!" Aoi yells in my soul space.

Roxanne clears the steam away, and Aoi releases an enlarged fireball, which then hits the elemental's shield, completely obliterating his arm.

His movements dull considerably, leaving him wide open. His chest starts to glow, which I believe means that he's heating himself up again, but the golems don't let it rest and release their boulders, which then start smashing the elemental to dust.

"It's dead," Alissa says, and they stop.

The girls sigh and return to playing asteroid defense, but a few minutes later, three more lava elementals land on the deck. My mana is dangerously low, so I won't be participate in this battle.

"I hate this part of the dungeon!" Yunia complains, seeing the damage that the elementals are doing to the ship.

Roxanne immediately fires off another thick [Torrent] and solidifies the first elemental. Ciel turns around for a short moment, casts [Beam], and pulverizes its arms, then Roxanne explodes its knees, and the golems finish it off.

The second one lands in front of Aoi, who immediately fires a crude mix of [Conjure Water], which she can cast perfectly, and [Torrent], which she hasn't fully learned yet. She wildly spews water at it like a certain turtle, then Hana wacks its shoulder, cracking it.

Aoi jumps at it, then grabs its weakened arm and breaks it off.

"WEEAK!" She roars, then starts to cast her crude [Conjure/Torrent] again to cool off the rest of its body while grappling the other arm. Hana wacks whatever spot is cooled enough, and they slowly break it into pieces.

Yunia holds off the last elemental while Lina casts small [Torrent]s repeatedly. She manages to solidify an arm that instantly gets chopped off with [Searing Blade].

Hah, now that's funny, using heat against a damn lava elemental.

Roxanne and the golems turn to Yunia's elemental. Roxanne casts [Drown] on him, which allows her to prevent the steam from escaping, and they bash it into dust.

Another elemental lands on the deck, and Lina and Yunia engage it.

I unsummon the wind elementals, switching them out for water elementals, who can solidify the lava elementals before they land on the ship. Then I bite the bullet and use [Redirect Mana] to refill my MP.

I think that after today, I'll need to rest for a while.

Dodge islands and huge lumps of molten rock; clear the path of dust and toxic smoke; destroy the incoming boulders and lava elementals; admire the environment as a Godsdamned apocalypse continues all around us. The girls are working non-stop, but I prefer this over the rapids. At least we aren't at risk of crashing the ship against a hidden islet.

As the clouds turn red, then yellow, the volcanic eruption reduces in intensity until it stops, then we fly past the island. The elementals stop coming at us, allowing Yunia to make quick repairs to the deck.

The toxic smoke coming off the volcano is left behind, and the islands stop crashing against one another.

We squeeze past one last island collison, then we suddenly enter a sphere of calmness, the eye of the storm. In the center, there's a literal eye staring at us.

"Oh, fuck!" I exclaim, stunned at the sight. The more I stare, the more I "itch" to go into the eye.

Yellow clouds; dark, toxic smoke; lighting arcs; flames; lava; rocks, and dust. All these things are chaotically mixed together, yet they are shaped into a huge eye the size of a castle.

"FLY US CLOSER!" Ciel yells.

Roxanne wants the same, but is too creeped out to say anything. Yunia swallows an Eia pill, then slowly walks forward towards the bow, a completely serious expression stamped on her face. Aoi is conflicted, she feels the same as I do, but the Eye is too threatening to her. The rest of the girls don't feel anything and look oddly at Ciel.

"Why?" Lina asks her.

She grips her glaive harder and grits her teeth. "I know that this sounds crazy, but I really feel like we should go into the Eye," she responds.

We slow down the ship, and I yell, "Meeting time!"

The Eye is just creepily staring at us, but nothing else is happening, so it seems like we're safe, for now.

We group into a small circle in the middle of the deck while Jarn stays at the controls.

"Okay, starting up, if you feel like entering the Eye, raise your hand, I'm not talking about if we should, only if you feel," I say.

Ciel, Roxanne, Aoi, Yunia, and I raise our hands.

"By the way, the golems count, too," I add.

"We feel nothing," Ted says.

"So, the mages of our group feel like entering?" Roxanne questions.

"Aren't the golems more magical? They move by using [Telekinesis], after all," Lina says.

"They also lack a lot in the perception department. I don't think they can even resist any sort of [Illusion Magic]," Alissa says.

"If the golems aren't affected, and we are, then it isn't a spell giving us this odd feeling, right?" I question.

"Possibly, unless the spell was targeted specifically at you five," Alissa says.

"I've been feeling like going to the Eye ever since we entered this maelstrom," Ciel says.

"And why only you?" Yunia asks Ciel.

"She was also acting slightly odd during the fight with the baby," Lina adds.

"Her 'Perception' isn't particularly high," Alissa says.

"Her compassion is, so I think it makes sense that she would feel like that near the baby, but not here," I say.

"The only things that changed since that fight were a few levels and the glaive," Roxanne says.

We all turn to Ciel, then we scan over her and her golden glaive. She stiffens and blushes from the attention.

"Could the Eye have something to do with [Light Magic]?" She suddenly asks.

"Hm… I can't feel any mana coming from it to confirm that," I say.

"Send a summon over there, then we'll watch to see how it reacts," Lina says, and I nod in agreement.

"I'm feeling an odd type of Life coming from the Eye," Yunia says.

"Can you elaborate?" I ask.

She shakes her head. "It's too far for me to see any details," she answers.

"Alright, so let's stay on the Looping Winds and observe the Eye until we reach the closest point to it, then we'll send a summon inside to check things out," I say, and the girls nod.

The wind slowly loses power as we approach the anchor, which is right beside the Eye. Curious how we only saw a few "obstacles" in the Remote Stability Scanner when we looked into the center of the maelstrom. I think we only saw the rocks of the Eye and nothing else.

We stay quiet along the way and relax while we recover our MP. The Eye slowly follows us, subtly turning as we fly closer to it.

Contrary to Sauron, his sibling is much more chill and less threatening. Creepy, yes, but it's more as if he's obsessively curious instead of trying to rape your mind. After The Lady, none of us is in the mood for more mind or soul fuckery.

Its sclera is composed of clouds, volcanic smoke, and dust, all swirling around in an oddly calming storm. Its iris is made up of a wild mix of lighting arcs, flames, lava, and rocks. Its pupil is a dark and empty hole, and seemingly the source of my "itch."

We finally reach the center of the anchor, which is the closest spot to the Eye, and leave the Looping Winds. We park the ship in the sky, and I summon a Sky Stalker to scout the pupil alongside a Holly.

"I'm starting to feel it, too," Alissa says.

Yunia chuckles and says, "Nothing about this dungeon is simple."

"Considering who made this, I must say that this is as expected," Lina says.

"It's very fun," Aoi comments, and Hana nods.

The summons slowly make their way in, and I share their sight with the bound girls. The pupil isn't actually dark, it's just lined with dark smoke, giving it the impression that it's dark.

They enter the eye and continue deeper into the tunnel of smoke. It feels like they're gradually being enveloped by it, and even I get chills at the eeriness of this.

The Holly notices how the tunnel ends in smoke, then a hole suddenly opens for them, and a faint blue light escapes from it.

Within that hole, they see a spherical chamber lined by the dark smoke, and many long, dark stone platforms slowly floating around a glowing orb, the source of the blue light.

We spend long tense minutes simply watching the summons as they explore all of the sphere. Nothing interesting happens, so we start another discussion on what to do.

"That orb, that's what's calling us," Ciel says.

"Is that a gem?" Lina questions.

"I have to get close to it to use an Appraisal skill," I say.

"What if it's a living being? There's a source of Life in there, after all," Yunia questions.

"We'll hope that it isn't hostile?" Hana says with a wry smile.

"I can [Fly] to the platforms, then I'll teleport you girls to it if we think that it's safe," I say.

"I'll go with you. So, who else wants to fly with us?" Ciel asks.

"I can't fly that far," Hana says.

"I might, but it's going to use up a lot of my mana," Roxanne says.

"I can! I think that I can even carry someone," Aoi says with excitement.

"So, who wants to ride Aoi?" I ask.

"I can fire arrows while flying if you give me some points in [Mounted Archery]," Alissa says.

I nod towards Alissa and say, "I think you're the best choice."

After some brief preparations, we're ready to depart. I take only Suzy with me because the other golems have to pilot the ship in case of trouble.

Suzy grips my helmet, with [Telekinesis] countering her weight enough that she's so light that I don't even notice her; Ciel and I jump and cast [Fly]; Aoi takes a running start and jumps off of the ship, then spreads her wings wide and starts flapping.

We slowly make our way into the Eye, and megalophobia gives us repeated chills during the trip.

We enter the inner chamber of the Eye after a few minutes, then I unsummon the two scouts, and we land on the platform closest to the orb.

I use [Jewel Appraisal] on the orb, and it tells me that this is simple silica glass.

I feel my "itch" increasing in intensity the longer that I stare at it. It's like staring down a dark hole, and at the same time, it's like looking at a fragile soap bubble, just waiting to be popped.

I feel like this orb…

"… Is a spell…" We all say in unison.

We look at each other with wry smiles, and I shake my head. "This is so odd," I say.

"Is this whole maelstrom a single spell?" Ciel questions.

"But why are we getting 'drawn' to it?" I question back.

Ciel shrugs and sighs.

"I'll open a [Gate] to the rest of the girls," I say, and they nod.

They come through and admire the orb. Yunia frowns and tilts her head to one side in confusion, then to other, and then again, and again. She's completely flabbergasted.

"This is a spell," she concludes, then looks around, and we agree. "But there's something living inside the orb."

I use [Sense Soul] on it, and the first thing that I see is a huge mana organ. It's so large that it seems like it's endless.

"I feel like this dungeon is playing with us…" I say, starting to feel a little anxious.

"So, it's daring you to interrupt the maelstrom?" Roxanne asks with a raised eyebrow.

"I'm uncomfortable with the way we've been lured here," Ciel says with a frown.

We look at her, then we look around warily.

"I'm uncomfortable with your choice of words," Roxanne says with a small smirk.

"The dungeon likes to give us trials, and he hasn't shown us a single trap yet, so this is just another challenge, but it was made specifically for us," Lina calmly says.

"So there is something or someone with intelligence controlling it?" I question.

"You said you saw this dungeon in a vision? Maybe it was made for someone like us, but not us, specifically," Yunia says.

"Hm… so many questions, so few answers," I hum in thought and ponder.

Gify squeezes out of my helmet, then flies to the top of my head. "Gih!"

I look at Alissa and smile. "If even Gify is telling me to do it…"

She narrows her eyes at me.

"This is exactly what we needed," Lina comes to my aid.

"If the orb doesn't suddenly try to kill us when we attempt to interrupt the spell, then I think that this is doable," Yunia piles on.

"I want to investigate why I reacted so strongly to the orb, too," Ciel says.

Alissa sighs and shakes her head. "This time I understand why we have to do this," Alissa says, then she pokes me hard in the forehead. "But you have been acting too recklessly lately, so you still owe me some peace for my worries."

I grab her hand and pull off her glove so that I can kiss her skin directly. "I understand. I'm trying to be better," I calmly respond.

"I think that only Wolfy, Ciel, and I should stay here, just in case," Yunia says.

"Alissa's blessing still helps me concentrate," I say.

Alissa grunts in satisfaction and flashes a smug smile.

Roxanne, Hana, Lina, and Aoi pout, though Aoi's pout barely counts since her lips are rather thin.

"We'll leave if you start to do something dangerous," Roxanne says.

Yunia shrugs and sighs.

I take off my helmet, and Gify jumps on my head, then I pull out two sofas from my "Items" and sit down with a sigh. I open my arms, and Alissa sits down on one side, then Ciel sits on the other.

I pull them both into a hug, then I look at Yunia with a smug smile.

"My lap is still empty," I say and grin towards her.

She rolls her eyes, then graciously sits on my lap and keeps her posture perfectly straight like a proper princess. The other girls sit down on the other sofa and relax.

"You can lean on me," I say.

Yunia leans back and the back of her chestplate squishes my face.

She laughs and asks, "Is that comfortable for you? Or would you prefer this position?" She spreads my legs and sits on the floor, then rests her head against my knee.

"Oh yeah, this is much better," I say with a grin.

Suzy flies off my helmet and lands on my shoulder, then rests her body against my cheek. Her cuteness makes Ciel very happy.

The girls release their tied-up hair, allowing me to play with them. Alissa's orange fox ears have to fold inside her helmet, so, when she frees them, it feels even better than taking off a bra after a long day.

The fact that I know how that feels makes me a little uncomfortable. Gods… I hope that I don't become a girl after being bound to them for our entire lives.

I massage a furry ear and play with Ciel's dark hair while I study the orb and ponder how to interrupt a spell that can fling islands at us.

I try to interrupt it the usual way, by "grabbing" the spell, then trying to rip it apart, but I feel like I'm pounding my fists against a solid brick wall. This is clearly not the way, it's a test for [Redirect Mana].

The conflict of wills over mana is what causes a bending of the laws of reality, so, can I use [Redirect Mana] without using my "Willpower"? The skill seemingly benefits from both "Willpower" and "Intelligence," but we know that only the will bends the laws of reality, so, how do I use "Intelligence" to fuel [Redirect Mana]…?

"If the orb is a living being, does it have emotions?" Ciel asks.

"What, do you think that you're an empath, now?" I question her with a smile.

"What's that?" Alissa asks.

"Someone that can read other people's emotions," I answer.

"Well, she is a priestess of the Goddess of Love," Alissa says.

"Aren't you the one with a God's Blessing?" Yunia asks her.

"Yes, but it's because of my love for and dedication to Wolfy," Alissa proudly says.

Yunia raises her eyebrows in surprise and stays silent.

"The orb seems to be a life form with a rather simple soul, except for the almost endless mana organ," I say.

"It could've targeted Ciel first because she's the most empathetic of us," Yunia says.

"So, it really cast a spell on us?" I question.

The spinning platforms suddenly slow down, and we freeze, wary of any movement.

After a few seconds, the platforms regain their speed. Ciel frowns and stays silent, in deep thought.

"Okay… what was that?" Roxanne asks, but no one knows how to answer her.

I gently tug Ciel's ear and ask, "What's wrong?"

She looks up at me and bites her lip. "I think that we made the orb 'sad,'" she answers.

I raise an eyebrow questioningly.

She turns to the orb and continues, "I don't understand how, but I felt like I was hit by a wave of something, then I felt guilty, as if I had offended the orb, but the feeling lasted only for a second, and it left me feeling like something… 'foreign' had touched me, like when you sit on a sofa that was warmed by someone else."

"A small amount of Life burst out from the orb when the platforms slowed down, maybe you felt that?" Yunia questions.

"I'm not sensitive to Life; when we drank that Eia extract, I couldn't even see the webs of Life," Ciel says.

"So you felt something else?" I question, and the platforms bump once.

"Holy shit, it can hear us," Hana says.

Another bump.

"Are you hostile?" I immediately ask.

The platforms slow down again.

"It's sad," Ciel says.

Once they speed up, I ask again, "Do you want us to interrupt your spell?"

It bumps our platform in response, then they all slow down.

"It's… tired?" Ciel says and knits her eyebrows in confusion.

I look into the orb's mana organ and notice that it's now almost entirely depleted when it was nearly full just a few seconds ago.

"Holy shit," I mutter and relay that info to the girls.

"Losing concentration while controlling a spell can make it waste a lot of your mana," Roxanne says.

"And a spell so big that it flings islands around must consume an inconceivably large amount of mana," I say, and Roxanne nods.

And so, the plot thickens.

A note from Manasong

Hall of Fame of Patrons

The patrons who support Rupegia shall have their names sung by the bards for they deserve the glory and honor. Their names are:

Oracle Maximillian Hübner.

Prince PreownedFIN.

Lord Andrew Meyers.

Lord Hope.

Lord Samuel Lim.

Lord Bill.

Lord Novgarod.

Lord DJ.

Lord Ashadun.

Lord Michale Erwin.

Lord Enrique Peña Gomez.

Lord Braidborn.

Lord Bakerdea.

Lord Yeeteris Dedmeem.

Lord D4rk Sheep.

Lord Nathan Vanbrunt.

Lord Andrew Heffelbower.

Lord Markus.

Lord Maurice.

Lord Badger.

Lord Krawn.

Lord Remco.

Lord Thiago Ferreira.

Lord Empyrean.

Noble Salty Panda.

Noble Yamibomb112.

Noble Mild Fracas.

Noble EESDESESESRDT.

Noble Aclys.

Noble Tiler Mills.

Noble CHoobler.

Leave a rating or a review to help me rise to the top or fix my shameful understanding of prose.

Take a look over my blog where all information of the world of Rupegia will be posted.

Join the Discord and discuss, or rant, or meme, or try and fight me so your waifu gets more screentime.

Become a Patron and read chapters in advance, or read the side-stories, or leave your mark on the story, or help choose the next artwork or the next side-story.

Chapter 70: Obstacle Course - Part 3

A note from Manasong

Attention: to conform to the limit of sexual content allowed in a novel, I've censored this chapter. You can look for the uncensored version here.

The symbol "-" denotes a section that got cut for containing sexual content. Also, if paragraphs seem missing, they were also likely censored in an earlier pass where the symbol wasn't used.

Ciel gets up and paces around the platform. Yunia quickly takes her place at my side, so I play with one of her long, elastic ears. A fox ear in one hand and elven ear in the other, truly cleansing for the soul.

The orb's mana organ has an impressive regeneration rate, but it has so much MP to recover that it'll take a few hours until it can talk to us again.

"Maybe I should wait until the orb's mana is full before I try to interrupt it," I say.

"You'll first need to learn about what kind of spell the orb is casting, anyway," Roxanne says.

"Yep."

I focus on my [Sense Mana], and the feeling of the "dark hole" that the spell causes inside of my mind.

The orb's mana efficiency is very high. For the amount of mana that it uses and regenerates, only an infinitesimal fraction escapes and faintly triggers my [Sense Mana]. Very impressive. But something about the orb's mana feels familiar…

"This is Light mana…" Ciel says and turns around.

"Oh, so [Light Magic] really is the reason you were so strongly affected by the orb's will," Roxanne says.

"That doesn't make sense… unless this is a light elemental," Ciel says and turns to Alissa.

"Its presence is completely different from an elemental," Alissa affirms.

I summon a "Ciel" elemental to compare.

"Really, their signatures have nothing in common aside from the Light mana," Alissa affirms again.

The basically - glowing "Ciel" bends to me and kisses my forehead, then she skips happily towards her real-body twin and grabs her hand, then interlaces their fingers together.

The real Ciel looks at me with eyebrows raised in surprise. I just shrug and smile.

-

"I think it's my 'Piety' that helps me to sense the orb's intentions," Ciel says, then crosses her arms in pondering. "'Piety' is not a measure of the strength of someone's belief, but rather one of their understanding and alignment to the Gods' wishes. For example, a heretic who has learned about the Gods could have a high 'Piety,' though whether he agrees or not with the Gods can increase that 'Piety' even further.

"High 'Piety' allows you to understand the Gods' wishes, and a high [Light Magic] skill allows you to understand their power. You need both of them to cast spells and enact the Gods' will upon the realm. 'Piety' lets you channel their power from within you, and [Light Magic] lets you shape it. So, perhaps this orb has something similar to the Gods that allows me to understand its will."

"Uh… Isn't it kind of a big deal that this orb is related to the Gods, somehow?" I question.

"I think that this orb is probably part of the dungeon's core. It'd explain its relation to the Gods," Lina says.

"Oo~h… That makes so much sense!" Yunia exclaims.

"So, this is the Dungeon Master that's controlling the dungeon?" I question again.

"A part of it. Since the core has to control the entirety of the dungeon at the same time, it should be able to divide its 'consciousness' into multiple parts to be able to multi-task effectively," Yunia answers.

"I see… so, since this is part of the core, and we need to destroy it to conquer the dungeon, then maybe this isn't a challenge specifically for [Redirect Mana], but just our ability to destroy it," I say.

"Not sure if saying that out loud is a good idea," Alissa says, a little anxious, and - other-Ciel giggles.

"I won't destroy it; I'll ask what it wants of us once its MP recovers," I say, and Alissa calms down.

"The orb already agreed with your suggestion to interrupt the spell," Ciel says, and her twin nods.

I shrug and say, "We'll try to talk to it some more later."

We go silent and return to studying the orb.

Now with a new perspective, the orb's spell feels much more understandable. It's a constant cycle of destruction and creation swirling around the Eye. For as much as it looks chaotic, the feeling that I'm getting from it is paradoxically calming, as if there's a beauty and "order" within it that's just beyond my understanding.

If anything, I think that this is what "divinity" should be like. Something that invokes the feelings of awe, beauty, chaos, and order, all at the same time. Something that you feel like you understand, but you'll never be able to fully grasp. A truly "higher" existence.

Besides, what else would you call the Godsdamned apocalypse happening out there, if not the work of the divine?

I unassign my unnecessary skill points and put them in [Light Magic] until it reaches level forty, assigning any more feels like it's straining my soul. I also put some points in [Sense Mana] and [Sense Presence] to aid me in studying the orb, but [Sense Presence] has a much lower "strain limit" than my magic skills, for some reason.

The first step of any spell is generally to gather mana since it's the step that takes the longest, and it's more efficient to continue gathering mana while you build the rest of the spell.

To interrupt a spell, you take control of the mana leaking from the casting mage's spell and use it to rip apart the spell's "constructs." The similarities between the leaked mana and the caster's mana is the greatest factor that contributes to the ease of interrupting the spell.

If the spell is ranged, the mana is gathered outside the mage's body, making it trivial to interrupt it, unless the magical skill difference between the mages is too great. If the mana is gathered inside the mage's body, then it's extremely hard to interrupt it due to the interference from the casting mage's soul.

If a mage has perfect [Mana Efficiency], then the spell doesn't leak any mana, greatly increasing the difficulty in interrupting it because it forces the interrupting mage to use their own mana for that, which wouldn't have the same signature as the casting mage's spell.

[Redirect Mana] is so powerful in interrupting spells because of how it mimics the caster's soul, fooling the mana that the mage is currently using into gathering under the control of my soul as well. Since this causes the mana to be under the influence of two twin souls with conflicting wills, it breaks the laws of reality. This happens because, according to Roxanne, mana can be attracted to multiple sources, but it only "obeys" the will that it has the greatest affinity for. In the case of [Redirect Mana], both wills have a perfectly equal affinity, so the mana is ruled by two wills at the same time, something that should never be possible.

What if I try to make an "imperfect" copy of the casting mage's soul? I could even flood the spell with this "imperfect" mana and try to interrupt it the usual way. This should increase my power to interrupt spells without the risk of bending the laws of reality. Well… with less risk of that, because if I fuck up my "imperfect" copy, I could still cause another incident, unless I create another skill for interrupting spells.

[Redirect Mana] is simply a skill for moving mana around. Using it to replenish my MP is certainly not the standard application for it, and neither is using it to interrupt spells. I really need to create another skill if I want to interrupt a [Meteor].

I wonder about potentially using [Godly Language] to interrupt spells, but the nature of the skill is that any change is temporary, so I'm not really confident that it can do anything besides stalling a spell. Remembering how bad the fallout was to just set a handkerchief on fire with it makes me think that it might be suicide to try to stop [Meteor] that way…

I sigh and kiss the top of Lina's head, who decided that even while armored, my lap is still the best place to sit.

We decide to leave the actual interruption test for tomorrow. We also bring the ship into the Eye and land it on one of the platforms so that it stops consuming mana. It can fly non-stop for a few days, but it's better to not waste fuel.

The end of the day comes slowly, so I ask the orb if we can leave the ship on the platform while we go back home, and it responds with a "positive" bump of the platforms.

I open a [Gate] to our house in Goloria, and we all cross through one by one.

I take off my armor with a satisfied sigh, it certainly felt like taking a bra off after a long day. We make our way to the bath and take off our white elven clothes, then throw them in the basket for the servants to wash.

Alissa passes by it, then suddenly goes back and picks up my shirt, then takes a deep sniff of it. I look at her oddly and raise an eyebrow.

"What? I know that you smell ours -, too," she says in an accusing tone.

My face stiffens in a guilty smile, and I blush.

"Don't we all smell each others' -?" Hana asks.

Roxanne and Ciel ignore Hana and walk to the bath with stiff postures.

"I do," Aoi innocently says.

"I… don't?" Yunia says and looks around in disbelief.

Hana snorts and says, "One day, you will."

Yunia goes silent and walks to the bath.

Today, I focus on Alissa to make up for worrying her so much. After all, I'm the one who told her to never get into a situation where a heroic sacrifice is necessary.

-

"Let's ask some more questions to the orb after dinner," Ciel suggests.

"E~h…?" Roxanne moans in laziness.

"Your demonic inheritance is lust and charm, not laziness," Yunia says in a slightly harsh tone, but her natural glare amplifies the intensity of her words.

Roxanne takes it the unintended way and gets a little excited, but her pleasure nerves were recently abused by me, so it quickly fades. "Your racial inheritance is arrogance, not bitchiness," she responds in the same tone and smiles smugly.

"I guess that it's nice that they found a companion in verbal abuse," Ciel softly says.

"Only Ciel and I should g-… only Ciel, Alissa, and I should go," I say and quickly correct myself before the feral fox bites me.

"We can only ask a few questions, anyway," Ciel adds with a shrug.

Since we arrived a bit early today, we make dinner for ourselves. Yunia makes a not-eggplant and ham casserole by herself, and after we approve of its taste, she subtly gushes in happiness when we're not looking.

We all eat a lot since today's been rather physically draining, then we break out some alcohol, and Yunia puts the Eia extract bottle on the table.

I smile gently at her and pull out a set of not-scotch glasses, then she pours out a small amount for each of us, even Gify.

I lift up my glass and say, "To another day full of victory."

The other girls lift their glasses, with Alissa lifting Gify's and Yunia copying us with a confused look on her face, then we clink them together.

"That's a toast. It's a ritual where we lift our glasses, hit them against one another to make some noise, then drink in the honor of something," I explain.

"Bread?" Yunia asks and tilts her head.

I chuckle once and say, "No, the name of the ritual is 'toast' in English, an Earth language, but for some reason, the system translates that to toast."

Her sharp gaze softens quite a lot as she says, "Well, then… I agree. To another day full of victory."

We down our glasses, and the constantly shifting flavors caress our tongues. This time, my "third eye" that can see Life doesn't open, but I still feel the weed-like effects of the Eia, and we spend many long minutes constantly giggling while talking about stupid shit.

Osaria and Klein finally reach a small elven town, and while they're waiting for customs, they receive my message about what's happened to us and that Yunia is alive.

Osaria runs to Klein with the letter, and the two hunch together to read it.

Hello, Klein, Osaria, it's us, the Ryders.

First of all, you must've heard about what happened to the Innocent Nymph. We're all fine and unharmed. Wolfy's summons gave us an early warning, and when things started happening, we ran as fast as we could from the inn. Those heretics weren't something that we could deal with by ourselves.

They stop for a moment and smile at each other. They knew that I was still alive, but knowing that everyone else is also fine clears away a great worry from their minds.

After that, we decided to search for Lord Confiel and ask for protection in case the heretics were after us. It was already part of the plan, but the attack prompted us to act. In exchange for protection, we participated in the attack on Escanso's castle and helped depose Lord Mavel.

Lord Confiel had other plans for us, though. He proposed that we make a deal with Yulania Este, his daughter: …

"Oh, Gods! Don't tell me she's alive!" Osaria exclaims.

"Talk after we're done reading," Klein says, annoyed.

… she'd become Wolfy's Blood Slave, and we would search for a dungeon to conquer, then, after we've acquired the title of True Noble, we'd return as the new lords of Escanso and the Western High Forest.

"Wow…" Klein mutters.

"Your half-husband is going to be a Crown Lord, one day," Osaria says in a teasing tone, and Klein blushes.

We've accepted, and now, Yunia is part of Helios and our family. She says that she misses you, Osaria, and would like to see you again very much.

"Awn… my dear niece…" Osaria moans.

We're currently living in a mansion within Goloria's castle's inner circle. We've decided to conquer the Legado dungeon, and we've made quite a lot of progress already; we're much further than anyone else currently exploring this dungeon, even Lord Confiel himself.

We've been watching you through Wolfy's summons, and we must say that we're all very eager to meet up with both of you again. -.

-

We'd like to pour out our feelings of longing for both of you and the rest of Este company, but we can now use the imperial [Eternal Gate] network, so let's meet up at Campo Verdante when you get there.

Tell Oura that Lina says "hi."

Also, we should totally make Nito as pretty as possible, then lock him and Wolfy in a room together.

Then a winking smiley face was drawn beside that phrase.

"Wait! I don't remember that last part!" I exclaim.

The girls giggle, but Roxanne giggles the most, so I turn my glare to her.

"Y-you can't prove that it was me!" She exclaims, and if her skin wasn't pure white, she'd have certainly paled.

I look around, and the girls all grin mischievously, except for Yunia, who's obviously innocent.

I narrow my eyes and say, "You're right, you're all traitors."

Alissa grabs my face and steals a kiss, then all the other girls copy her.

"So, tomorrow night we might meet with them?" Klein asks, expectantly.

"I'll make sure that the caravan leaves on time tomorrow," Osaria says and gushes, and Klein's long tail sways about with anxiety. "Patience, now that they're Lords, you'll live long enough to get as much - as you want."

"T-that's not why I'm excited!" Klein complains and pouts.

Osaria grabs her hand, then interlaces their fingers and says, "Of course not. Now, come with me, you may not be excited…" -her voice turns into a sensual whisper- "but I am…"

"Oh, Gods! I want - them so badly!" I exclaim and fall back onto the bed.

"We all do, we all do," Hana says and gently pats my head.

"We also have to make sure that they want to associate with us. Since you've supposedly been targeted by the heretics, they might become afraid of being targeted, too," Yunia says.

"We know that Klein won't back down since we already told her the entire truth about my Earth past, but maybe we should tell Osaria too if we want her to be my concubine," I say.

"I'm not sure about telling her all of it, but maybe we should tell her about your destiny as a hero and that you have a Gift," Alissa says, and the others agree.

-

I open a [Gate] to our ship inside the dungeon, and Alissa, Ciel, and I cross through it.

We drop down onto the stone platform and get closer to the light blue floating orb. I check its mana and see that it's now full.

"I think that we get three or four questions," I say.

"Alright. First, are you part of the dungeon's core?" Ciel asks.

A single bump, that's a "yes."

"Would you accept being destroyed?"

A single bump.

"Would you prefer being destroyed or interrupted?" Ciel continues.

Two bumps, that's "interrupted."

I see, it really is a test about destroying it, but maybe only interrupting the spell is like a hidden objective that gives bonus rewards, like how saving the baby from The Lady likely rewarded us with Ciel's golden glaive.

"Will something bad happen to us or this place if we interrupt the spell?"

Two bumps, that's a "no." Then the platforms slow down for a moment, and Ciel receives the feeling that it's tired.

"If you want to help us interrupt your spell, fill this room with your mana, and tomorrow, I'll try an experiment with it. Just don't make a mana storm," I say confidently.

I immediately sense a faint amount of mana leaking from the orb. Once it has recovered it's MP, it should be able to release a lot more.

Then we return home and gather on the bed as usual. We play some card games and drink some alcohol to de-stress. By 10 PM, we're all tired, so we go to sleep.

A note from Manasong

Hall of Fame of Patrons

The patrons who support Rupegia shall have their names sung by the bards for they deserve the glory and honor. Their names are:

Oracle Maximillian Hübner.

Prince PreownedFIN.

Lord Andrew Meyers.

Lord Hope.

Lord Samuel Lim.

Lord Bill.

Lord Novgarod.

Lord DJ.

Lord Ashadun.

Lord Michale Erwin.

Lord Enrique Peña Gomez.

Lord Braidborn.

Lord Bakerdea.

Lord Yeeteris Dedmeem.

Lord D4rk Sheep.

Lord Nathan Vanbrunt.

Lord Andrew Heffelbower.

Lord Markus.

Lord Maurice.

Lord Badger.

Lord Krawn.

Lord Remco.

Lord Thiago Ferreira.

Lord Empyrean.

Noble Salty Panda.

Noble Yamibomb112.

Noble Mild Fracas.

Noble EESDESESESRDT.

Noble Aclys.

Noble Tiler Mills.

Noble CHoobler.

Leave a rating or a review to help me rise to the top or fix my shameful understanding of prose.

Take a look over my blog where all information of the world of Rupegia will be posted.

Join the Discord and discuss, or rant, or meme, or try and fight me so your waifu gets more screentime.

Become a Patron and read chapters in advance, or read the side-stories, or leave your mark on the story, or help choose the next artwork or the next side-story.

Chapter 71: Whakamutu Mutu - Part 1

A note from Manasong

Attention: to conform to the limit of sexual content allowed in a novel, I've censored this chapter. You can look for the uncensored version here.

The symbol "-" denotes a section that got cut for containing sexual content. Also, if paragraphs seem missing, they were also likely censored in an earlier pass where the symbol wasn't used.

Today is the 12th.

-

My [Wind Magic] increased by 2 (now 3+4), my [Redirect Mana] increased by 1 (now 5), and I learned [Piloting] with 1 point.

Roxanne increased her [Water Magic] by 1 (now 4+26). Ciel increased her [Wind Magic] by 1 (now 12+18). Lina learned [Water Magic] with 1 point.

Breakfast is the usual charcuterie board, but since the weather is quite warm, we mostly eat fruits and have something similar to Yunia's muesli.

After that, we spend some time maintaining our equipment. I have to "heal" the cracks in my wooden chestplate while the other girls resharpen and oil their weapons. Aoi has learned how to sharpen her claws, so they might as well be considered daggers now.

The golems have quietly been practicing magic while we sleep, so they've improved their [Earth Bullet] quite a lot. It's now at a level where they don't need to use the boulders anymore; they can just cast it and reshape the bullet whenever they need a blunt weapon.

We observe Hana test Jarn's melee skills while Roxanne measures the power of their [Earth Bullet]s. I wish that I could spend more time developing their bodies, but currently, my priority is increasing my and the girls' personal power.

"Why don't you make a golem army?" Yunia asks.

"Because of my memories. These three golems have all of my memories; it's why they're so smart," I answer.

Yunia frowns. "I see… but can't you remove those memories from them?"

"Maybe. I haven't had enough time to research that because I've been focused on other things."

"If we remove their memories, won't we need to teach them everything, then?" Alissa asks.

"Yup, there's that, too. They aren't summons, so, if I create a golem army, I'll need facilities to train them," I respond.

"Then you likely won't create any more like them?" Yunia asks and nods towards the golems.

"Yeah. It's too dangerous to risk my memories being taken, especially now that I know so much more, and in the future, it'll only be worse. Imagine if you had access to all of the memories of a Lord. How much harm could you bring to them because of that?"

"You'd have a limited time to act, but it could be fatal," she answers.

I nod. "And we know that there's a hidden enemy targeting us. The last thing we need is having a golem stolen while we have our backs turned."

We warm-up, then we get ready to return to the dungeon, but we just have a small problem that we didn't foresee: the Hollys I left there are reporting a heavy sense of distress due to the ridiculous amount of mana that the orb has leaked. It managed to avoid creating a storm, but it absolutely filled the room with mana. It even stopped leaking any more because if it did, it would then go past the saturation point and collapse like a black hole, creating a mana storm.

I guess I was too vague. Either it has no frame of reference for how much mana a humanoid can handle, or it's just way too simple-minded for original thought.

First, we teleport to our secret base outside of the dungeon. It's atop an egg-shaped ginormous tree, among the leaves. Quite a comfy place to camp. I half expected that the limbs of the Brutes I teleported would still be here, but since everything disappeared after we cleared the Looping Winds Station, I'm not surprised that there's no sign of them.

Now that we're close to the dungeon, the mana cost of [Gate] going in or out is minimal, allowing us to all cross through at the same time if needed.

I cross the [Gate] first and try to pull in a breath. I feel like I'm going to suffocate, crushed by some sort of pressure and the overwhelming feeling of fear and danger. It's like I'm surrounded by a sea of acid while standing still on an island only as wide as my body. The sea may look innocent, but if I make one wrong move, I'll fall to my death.

I think about bringing the girls and taking the ship outside the Eye, but I'm not sure if turning on the large [Fly] gem is a good idea right now.

"Only Alissa should cross through, the other should stay put until I finish this," I say through [Bind].

The girls grumble a bit, but I apologize and calm them down.

Alissa crosses the [Gate], then gasps and immediately hugs my arm, shaking in fear. I give her the stiffest smile that I've ever smiled and groan, which was supposed to be a forced chuckle that failed to come out.

Her Blessing helps with my concentration, allowing me to increase my focus and better resist the effects of this suffocating amount of mana that's currently overwhelming my senses.

"Calm down," I say with [Godly Language]. The sense of pressure still remains, but my heart rate slows down, and my mind clears, allowing me to focus on something else besides my fear. I could use [Godly Language] to stop feeling fear, but I think that might mess with my decision-making a bit too much.

Alissa is affected by my voice, too, so she calms down and stops shivering.

"I'll start now," I whisper, and she nods.

I spread out my soul all over the room and hesitate for a moment.

This is actually "a little" dangerous. There's going to be a lot of mana radiation once we begin.

I slowly start to morph my soul, making it as similar as I can to the orb's mana, but not exactly the same.

Gify pops onto my shoulder. "Gih."

"Alright."

"Gih."

"Giih…"

"Gih gih."

She guides my attention towards the unstable points, where my soul is too similar to the orb's or where it's too different. Making a homogeneous soul is necessary to prevent the mana from spiraling out of control and forming into a storm.

I start sweating from the tension and effort. I haven't even started the disruption, and I'm already struggling.

"Hngh…" I moan as Gify suddenly starts her massage. My control over my soul almost slips, but then the massage pulls me the other way, helping me focus, instead.

"Gih."

"Alright."

I close my eyes and start meditating, slowly drowning out my unnecessary senses at the same time that Gify reduces the intensity of her massage. I feel like I'm starting to dissociate from my body, as if I'm watching it through a screen and controlling it remotely with a joystick.

My senses fade away until the only one that remains is my "vision" of my soul. Now with enough free mental capacity, I start to become able to differentiate between each of the hundreds of thousands of mana particles inside of my stretched soul.

Little by little, I patch my soul, morphing it closer and closer to the "imperfect" copy that I need.

Suddenly, a part of my soul changes without my command, becoming more similar to what I'm trying to do, then I feel another "presence" near the "me" that's controlling the real "me." I sense a faint image of pointy ears twitching as another part of my soul changes.

Alissa…

Then another presence helps me, and I sense a fearsome smile.

Hana…

A part of my soul is poked, and it's also changed, becoming closer to my goal. I sense a pointy tail doing the poking.

Roxanne…

My soul is shyly touched, as if the person touching it is afraid of breaking it. I sense gloomy, droopy eyes staring intently at me.

Lina…

Then a part of my soul is roughly twisted, becoming less similar to what I want, but it's immediately released. Then, another, much gentler twist comes, and this time it helps me. I sense a toothy grin being sent to me in apology.

And Aoi…

We all work together, meticulously changing my soul with the utmost care, except for Aoi, but she eventually improves her rough handling of my soul.

I lose my sense of time, so I don't know how long it takes. I only know that my mind is getting way too tired.

"That's enough; we don't have much time left," I say through [Bind], and their presences become stronger in my mind as they all pay attention to me. "Now, since you're all here, help me with this. Spread out and follow my lead."

I focus on a chunk of the mana covered by my soul and start exerting my will over it. I "wish" for it to move closer to the orb while carefully reducing its size. The other girls do the same, causing some minor mana leaks, though not enough to cause a chain reaction yet.

Thankfully, the source of the spell is right above the orb, so its soul won't interfere with our attempt, making our job much easier.

Exerting all of my remaining mental capacity, I hold the mana in a small spot, about the size of our "harem-sized" bed. The density is high enough that someone casting a single spell nearby would be enough to make me lose control. The amount of mana is absolutely astounding.

While I wait for everyone, I manage to observe the mana changing. It slowly becomes more similar to my mana signature the longer it remains in contact with my soul. Quite curious.

Our focus starts to slip, and as a consequence, the leaks increase. My feeling of danger intensifies as the velocity of the leaking mana particles increases. If things keep this way, we'll soon have a repeat of the situation with the Light crystals in the Looping Winds Station.

Fortunately, it doesn't take much longer for the girls to be ready. It's time to start the "dance."

I squeeze and expand the mana that I'm holding, creating a "turbulence" all throughout the area that I control.

The orb's spell trembles, immediately feeling the pain of the interference, then the girls follow my lead, increasing the trembling.

The amount of mana leakage skyrockets, but that's slightly beneficial to us, as that mana will bounce back and add to the chaos.

"It's time to cook up a bomb!" I exclaim through [Bind].

I decide to use brute force to "crush" the mana, increasing its density even more.

My will starts to transfer to the mana, giving it a chaotic and explosive aspect. The girls feel my emotions, and their mana starts to gain the same aspects, too. The spell may be divine chaos, but it's certainly not the same as some good old explosions!

The spell's integrity starts to take a hit, and its "black hole" presence in our minds starts to deform. Its control over the islands declines, and the cycle of creation and destruction is broken.

I start to receive some worried feelings from the girls as they lose control over the mana.

"On my mark, we crush it once and release!" I order.

Disrupt, annihilate, defile, desecrate, sacrilege. I fuel these feelings into the mana to act as the complete opposite of the spell. Of these, I'm very familiar with at least one of them.

I watch the mana closely, then I finally sense it: the vertex, the knee in the curve. The mana has a perfect balance between my signature, the orb's, the explosion aspect, and the divine spell's aspect. Interruption efficiency: maximum.

"NOW!"

We crush the mana, then release it. I hug Alissa and open a [Gate] back to the other girls. The mana explodes with pure chaos, the particles attract one another and whirl into orbits around the spell. The aspects given to the mana prevents the particles from quickly calming down, and their density causes the shock waves to echo repeatedly through the center as they collide, continuously bleeding off any speed that the particles may have gained.

Like throwing a wrench into a machine, the spell suddenly cracks, then violently breaks apart into huge chunks. The spell spins out of control for a moment, but then its "constructs" fade into nothing since the orb can no longer manipulate them.

The volcano islands become mere husks, completely exhausted of their violent eruptions; the crashing islands break into multiple, uneven parts, which causes them to lose stability or fall out of the sky because the remaining crystals aren't enough to hold them aloft anymore; the drifting islands lose their speed and stop, becoming inert and harmless; the elementals are no longer fueled by the divine spell, weakening them until they die and return to being just another part of the elements; last of all, the fury of the wind is snuffed out, and it stops blowing, leaving the surviving islands in peace.

The shock waves end, but now there's a mana storm all throughout the Eye, and it's so powerful that it might even be lethal for us if we stay there for too long.

But the ship…

My body is fine, but my mind is exhausted. I've spent so much time concentrating and using my will to control my spirit that I feel like I've pulled a muscle inside my brain or soul. But it's not over… almost, but not yet. There's still one last thing that we must do.

"HELP ME CONTROL THE STORM!" I yell, worried about our ship.

I open a [Gate], and we all cross through, then we immediately use [Redirect Mana]. We struggle to hold the mana back, feeling like powerful waves are repeatedly hitting us from all directions. We first take hold of the mana nearest to us, making it stop, then use it as a shield against further waves.

Once things calm down a little, I notice that a tornado is forming above the orb, where the divine spell was before. It starts sucking in the air, which also brings the dense mana with it, then the tornado bends forward and sends all that mana-rich air outside of the Eye.

With the orb's help, it only takes us two minutes to send the mana storm out of the room. The storm will continue for a short while, but now that it's in the open, its lifespan has been shortened by a lot.

I check our "Status," and see that we each lost a few health points. We also have "Mana Radiation Sickness" in our "Status Effects," so Ciel and I spend a short while casting [Heal]s on everyone until that goes away.

Lina looks at the ship and says, "I'll inspect the gem."

"Alright," I respond, and she scurries away.

Enchantments can be weakened or even fully destroyed if left for too long inside a mana storm, so we have to check the ship for any damage.

Now that things are calm again, we turn to the orb.

"So… now that the spell's gone, is there a better way for us to communicate besides using the platforms?" I ask.

We spend a few moments in silence, waiting for an answer, then the platforms around us start to move.

They all suddenly float up, then aggregate above the orb. They break and grind against one another, being forcefully shaped by an impressive amount of force coming from the orb. Over just a few seconds, the mass of broken rocks takes the shape of an androgynous face. Its expression is neutral and a bit gentle, but it's also as stiff as a statue.

"Hello…?" Ciel greets it tentatively.

The bald rock-face tilts gently in acknowledgment but doesn't say anything.

"I assume that you can't speak?" Yunia asks, and the… Core nods.

"Were you forced to keep that maelstrom spell going?" I ask, and it nods. "Do you know why?" It shakes its head.

"Are you a person?" Ciel asks, and it shakes its head.

"Wow… are you like a golem, then?" Roxanne asks.

The head tilts to the side, probably to indicate confusion.

"Is there a reason that you wanted to have the spell interrupted instead of us just destroying you?" I ask, and it nods.

A small amount of mana starts to gather in front of us. We get a little tense, trying to understand what is going on, then I sense that it's related to [Space Magic].

A small dot appears, then it grows into a vertical black disk, similar to a [Gate].

Wait…

It keeps growing until it's twice as wide as our ship, then it suddenly becomes white and blotches of color start to appear, as if it was a canvas being painted with watercolor. After a few seconds, it finally becomes recognizable: we see the Looping Winds and an unfamiliar sky behind it. The Core just created an [Eternal Gate].

We see some huge islands in the background, and we notice that a few of them seem to have towns on them.

"That's… the urban islands," Lina says.

"It's a huge shortcut," I say, and she nods.

Not destroying it now will have us pass up on possible Experience, but we'll still receive it one day when we destroy the dungeon's core. This [Eternal Gate] is also likely to save us a few days, but we'll lose out on any loot that would've been on our way.

"Is there anything valuable to us that we might miss if we take this shortcut?" I ask, and it shakes its head. "Wait… do you actually know what's out there between us and the exit of this [Eternal Gate]?" It nods.

"Will this [Eternal Gate] help us skip something dangerous?" Alissa asks, and it nods.

"What did the Scanner detect between the maelstrom and the urban islands?" I ask Lina.

She pulls out the maps that we made and starts inspecting them.

"The long calm, the huge asteroid, the spikes, the colossi, the spiral, and the valley," she answers, listing off the names we gave to those areas.

So, those were probably environmental challenges instead of combat ones… except for the colossi?

"I wanted to see the colossi," Hana says tentatively and grins without shame.

The colossi are six island-sized winged beings fighting an eternal battle around the Looping Winds.

"Well, seeing them and flying in between them are two completely different things," Yunia says with a wry smile.

"To be honest, they looked really impressive in the Scanner," Lina shyly says.

"See?!" Hana exclaims and points at Lina.

"Don't encourage her," Ciel says in a low tone, and Lina pouts.

I massage my temple with my palms. I'm so tired that I can't properly make a decision right now.

"I think that we should just cross the [Eternal Gate], but I'm way too tired to think straight, so let's rest for a bit first," I say.

While I lay down on the sofa and Hana gives me a brain massage, Ciel and Yunia try to understand the Core a bit better.

It's a rather single-minded being whose only wish is to keep its islands safe and sound. Before we interrupted the spell, it also wished to stop it since it kept destroying their islands. Even though the spell also made sure that new islands were birthed, the Core wanted to prevent them from being destroyed in the first place.

It really does remind me of the golems, but it's far "stupider," and it also doesn't have any of the memories of its creator. It's like someone managed to isolate a sub-process and then inserted that into the core.

"It's kinda cute," Roxanne says.

"Almost like a pet," Hana says with a gentle smile.

"A pet has a far greater capability to learn," Ted says.

"But it doesn't have such a developed understanding of speech," I say.

"Its understanding of speech is unnecessary since the Core has too few functions," Suzy says.

I smile and turn to face the golems. "Jealous?" I ask.

"We do not feel jealousy," Ted says.

"But we do understand the Core's limited usefulness," Suzy says.

"The Core does not have the aesthetic value required for a pet, and neither does it have the intellect required for a servant," Jarn says in her echoing voice. Her metallic body distorts her voice a little.

I give them a shit-eating grin as I say, "We could use it for an interesting experiment. It would certainly entertain my scholarly curiosity about artificial intelligence for a while… like a pet project."

"A pet is not the same as a pet project," Ted says.

"But you understand that the Core can entertain us?" I ask.

"Yes, but the Core does not meet the requirements to be a pet or a servant," Suzy says.

I tug my chin and ask, "What about you three?"

"We are both," Ted and Suzy say in unison.

"I am only a servant," Jarn says.

"Please give each of us an attractive body so that we can fulfill more of your needs," Ted asks.

"I will," I respond and chuckle.

Lina pats Ted's head. "You'll be beautiful, one day," she says.

"I think that going for cute fits the two small ones better, but Jarn definitely needs a killer body," Hana says and smiles as she imagines how hot we could make Jarn.

"I'll keep that in mind," I say with a wry smile.

My headache eventually fades, and we decide to move on.

"The shortcut is just the best bet overall," Yunia says.

"But the colossi…" Hana moans.

Ciel smiles wryly and says, "I'd like to see them, too, but the Core says that there's little to gain by going the long way. Well, besides learning how to pilot the ship better."

Hana pouts and nods in defeat.

We activate the ship and start to fly towards the [Eternal Gate]. Lina says that the gem lost some efficiency because of the mana storm, but it'll be fine.

We wave to the Core, and it creates a small rock-hand and waves back at us.

We cross through the [Eternal Gate] and get back into the Looping Winds. The gate stays open, but we're moving pretty fast, so it quickly gets left behind and shrinks into the distance until it disappears from our sight.

Onwards to victory!

A note from Manasong

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Chapter 71: Whakamutu Mutu - Part 2

A note from Manasong

Attention: to conform to the limit of sexual content allowed in a novel, I've censored this chapter. You can look for the uncensored version here.

The symbol "-" denotes a section that got cut for containing sexual content. Also, if paragraphs seem missing, they were also likely censored in an earlier pass where the symbol wasn't used.

The trip through the urban islands is fairly calm as we spend our time observing them. The higher class buildings are made out of marble, while the lower class ones are made of concrete. The Chimeric architecture style follows minimalism; they prefer to use paint instead of carving details, so most of the houses are either straight-up stone boxes or, at the most, have a slanted roof and a veranda.

Although their shapes are simple, the entire town is a rainbow of color, with each building choosing a different, vibrant color to differentiate themselves from their neighbors. Walls are considered a public canvas, too, so you can see all kinds of art, from abstract, to geometric, to realism, to impressionism, to surrealism, to erotic, to historical, to landscapes, to far-eastern, to portraits, to even what I think are proto-billboards.

"A bit tiring for the eyes," Alissa comments.

"On Earth, we call that visual pollution," I say.

"Pollution…?" She repeats the word in English and cutely tilts her head.

I guess that's a rather modern use for the word.

"Is there a word for 'contaminating the environment with something bad for living beings'?"

"There's the 'corruption' that the undead cause."

"That sounds too extreme. What about the slums? They're dirty, and there's always a bad smell there from feces or trash. They can be 'cleaned' of their dirt, which could be said to be 'pollution.'"

She frowns. "Hm… can't you just use 'filth' or 'trash'?"

"Well, those words have specific connotations. 'Pollution' specifically means something that's dirtying the environment, but in a more abstract sense so that it includes something like this visual pollution or excessive, continuous noise that would disrupt daily life."

"What about 'contamination'?"

"Too much like a disease. You won't get sick from visual pollution, just a little annoyed."

"'Defiling'?"

"Too sexual."

She smiles wryly. "'Soiling'?"

"I guess it could fit… but there's also the connotation about soiling your own pants."

"'Soiling your environment' does sound similar to 'soiling your pants,'" she says with a cheeky smile.

I shrug. "Heh, I guess this is the closest that we'll get."

The Hollys search the islands for living beings but don't find anything. The towns seem empty of anything interesting to us, too. They look like they've been abandoned for a while since all of their food stocks have rotted away, but there's no overgrowth present, so they feel more like ghost towns instead of abandoned ruins.

Suddenly, a Holly takes damage without anything physically touching her.

Argh… spirits…

I warn the girls and give everyone one point in [Spirit Magic] so that we can all cast [Spirit Eyes], but only Yunia can reliably fight them. I summon four spirit elementals to establish a perimeter, but I'm not confident in their combat capabilities.

It takes a good while, but we eventually start seeing spirits flying towards us. Their glowing light blue forms have odd shapes, vaguely resembling humanoids. I recognize wings and a goat head on one of them, so I think that they're actual Chimeras this time. We only see a few dozen of them, but their numbers are quickly increasing.

Yunia casts [Spirit Blade] and [Spirit Shield], then a spiritual arm holding a shortsword and another arm holding a large shield grow out of her shoulders. The blade is the only way to safely harm another spirit without the danger of an instant counter, and the shield actually repels spirits, so it's not as simple as it seems. It's possible to fight spirits without spells, but it's like getting into a knife fight, it'll be "bloody" for both sides.

The spirits start to intercept us, waiting for us in the middle of the Looping Winds, but the ship flies too fast for them to catch up to it, so we keep Yunia and the spirit elementals in the front. There, they can deal with any of the spirits that might get on a collision course with us. We have to protect the golems since they're the most vulnerable to spirit damage.

I unassign some of my Physical skill points and put them in [Spirit Magic] instead so that I can use [Spirit Touch] and fend off the spirits that might come our way.

"They aren't humanoids, but they also aren't monsters," Alissa says.

"It would be very creepy if they were humanoids," I respond, and she nods.

After a few minutes, the spirits adapt and begin to accelerate along the sky road. They eventually catch up, and we have to resort to fighting them.

The Chimeras' bodies are a mix of body parts from different races, but there's always at least one part of them that's human, and the pairs of limbs always belong to the same race. Their heads, chests, arms, and legs are all a mix-and-match that seems rather random. I start to see a few patterns though, like: goat head, human torso, ape arms, and bull legs.

Yunia casts [Spirit Link] and starts "talking" with them as she fights. They might not fully comprehend her exact words, but with the spell, they'll at least understand what she means.

"If you want us gone, then let us pass!" She yells as her spirit arm cuts down a Chimeric spirit.

The other girls start randomly casting area spells, which cause a strong enough disturbance to block the spirits from approaching and lightly damage them.

An angry Chimera lion/zebra mix enters the left side of the bridge, his arms reaching out for Alissa's head. With my extra arm, I grab his wrist and throw him towards Yunia.

No touch! Those ears are mine!

My will overpowers the spirit's, and it flies away, then sinks past the ship's deck. Spirits can't be "thrown," but you can still "will" them to be thrown if you get a hold on them.

"We're not here to loot anything!" Yunia lies.

The spirit elementals are doing pretty well. The hostile spirits aren't fighting very hard, they're almost like zombies, just trying to grasp and harm our souls. Lina's [Befuddle] and [Demoralize] make them even dumber and slower.

The number of spirits keeps increasing, so we start maneuvering to avoid them because of how slow they are to adapt. The spirits can catch up to us, but they don't last long, and eventually tire out.

"We'll be gone if you let us pass!" Yunia continues trying to reason with them.

As we get more competent in dealing with them, they change their tactics. A glowing, light blue tunnel forms as the spirits start to surround us.

I cast [Discharge] ahead of us, and Yunia raises her sword into the tunnel's ceiling while she charges up her [Spirit Shield]. The spirits are stunned for a second, then they get ripped apart by her sword and blown away by the shield, opening up a hole out of the tunnel.

A spirit comes from below and clutches my right foot. I feel like my skin is getting burned and my bones are getting crushed at the same time from its ethereal grip.

I force my spirit arm down, and a naked, spirit "me" bends down to grab the spirit's arm. It's a very odd sensation to have so much of my spirit actually "detach" from me. I feel like my upper body is naked while getting bitten by the winter wind.

My spirit "me" grabs the arm of the spirit, and I squeeze it with all of my strength. The spirit yells in anger and pain as its arm becomes blurry and loses cohesion, releasing my foot.

Now free from the spirit's grip, I throw it to Yunia again, and she cuts it in half with her [Spirit Blade]. I immediately use my spirit arm to grab my wounded leg and gently massage it, helping it heal.

"Fuck this!" I yell, then we pull the ship up out of the Looping Winds and quickly fly upwards.

The spirits all continue forward and slowly try to stop, bunching up into a sea of blue far ahead of us. The spirits that were getting left behind have enough time to veer upwards, but they're already exhausted and don't manage to get close enough to us to matter.

Then we slowly level off the ship a few hundred meters above the Looping Winds.

Once the glowing blue sea below us is left behind, we point the ship down, straighten out the wings, and fly downwards.

We quickly reach terminal velocity, so I deactivate the ship's power.

Then [Piloting] triggers, so we slowly level off the ship again, gliding forward at full speed. We level out when we enter the Looping Winds, so I tilt the wings downwards again, using the sky river to push us forward.

The sea of spirits resumes chasing after us, and when they start to encircle us again, I repeat the maneuver.

"Deal with this, suckers!" I cheer and laugh.

After a few of these maneuvers, we spot the largest urban island that we've ever seen ahead of us. It's a huge and imposing conical hill, entirely covered with colorful square house after colorful square house.

At various parts of the town, the Holly scouting it sees hanging piers where small delta wing aircraft are parked. There's even a large blimp.

"That looks ominous," Roxanne says through [Bind].

"If you have the time to admire the environment, then you can fight harder," Alissa chastises her.

"He~y…! I'm just firing [Firestorm] at random, I don't even need to aim!" Roxanne moans in response.

"Hmph…"

A few minutes later, Roxanne's words echo in my mind as the Holly scouting ahead sees movement on the huge, mountainous island, but this time, they aren't spirits, they're real Chimeras.

She sees the usual bustle of everyday life inside a mountain town with people flying up and down the levels all the time. The Chimeras seem to have an aversion to clothing, preferring to leave their large, toned, - bodies exposed for all to see.

-

It seems that the Chimeras enjoy exposing themselves more than the elves, and - doing it in public more than the beastfolk. This could be an interesting town.

Soon after, a Holly scouting down the Looping Winds detects twenty unidentified bogies flying towards us. Suddenly, multiple blue beams of light burst out from them and hit the spirits behind us. From the mana signature of the spell, I think that it's probably a spirit version of [Beam].

The super-long beams of light last for around twenty seconds, and when they snuff out, huge holes are left in the sea of spirits chasing behind us. The girls look warily towards the source of the beams. They fired towards us from such a long distance that even I didn't see it coming.

Then the Holly finally identifies them. The twenty bogies are Chimeras clad in glowing white armor and armed with golden spears just like Ciel's. With their white wings, they look like angels that came to save us.

The [Spirit Beam]s fire off a few more times, leaving only a handful of light blue clumps of spirits.

"Actual Chimeras are coming!" I yell.

"What?! Humanoids?!" Ciel exclaims, confused.

"I don't think so. They could be monsters, or they might be constructs of the dungeon," Yunia says.

"Using a part of the Core is one thing, but how can it make so many Chimeras?" I question.

Ciel's expression becomes somber, and she shares a look with Yunia, who sighs and nods. "[Trap Soul]," Ciel says.

Lina's Trivia: One of the few system spells banned by the temple, this level seventy spell traps a soul inside something, generally a gem. This prevents a spirit from reincarnating, so it's considered a Wicked thing to do, leading to its ban, but even before the empire, using this spell was frowned upon.

"But they look like they're made of flesh," I say.

"Your custom [Materialization] spell isn't exactly novel," Yunia says.

"Gih!" Gify agrees.

"Well, then… we'll see what Alissa's senses say once they get closer," I say, and Alissa nods.

The girls get ready on the deck to receive our winged guests, forming a line in front of the bridge's tower. I unsummon the spirit elementals and summon five wind elementals. The - green Alissas blow me kisses, then turn serious and glare at the glowing angels coming our way.

With our preparations complete, we all bite the bullet and use [Redirect Mana] to top off our MP.

I pull us out of the Looping Winds and park the ship in the sky. The Chimeras lower their glaives, pointing their blades downwards, in what I assume is a non-aggression gesture.

A minute or so later, five armored Chimeras stop in front of the ship while the rest of them surround us.

They're each over two meters tall and as buff as a bull. Their long, vertical horns peek out from under their closed helmets, leading me to believe that they're all either a bull or a goat mix. Those horns look a bit impractical, though.

The one in the middle has a long golden plume affixed to their helmet, so I assume that they're the leader.

"They aren't humanoids or monsters," Alissa says through [Bind].

"Their Threads of Fate have been cut, they aren't alive. They're some sort of spirit," Yunia whispers to Hana, who relays the information to the others and Ciel.

So, it is [Trap Soul], then.

They slowly float down to the deck, their large wings spread wide and their glaives still pointing down. Their glowing white armor makes them look truly divine. Then they land, and the plumed Chimera lifts their visor.

I see a long face of a black bull staring at us intently with its blood-red eyes, then they say in a strong, female voice that resounds through the air, "Tonu kia rere whakamua."

"Uh… we don't speak your language," Yunia says, then repeats it in Ingua.

"Go, fly," The horned cow lady says in Andraste, with a heavy accent.

I hurriedly put on some points in [Reo Language].

"Sorry, can you repeat that?" I ask in Reo.

The leader snorts, then says, "E rere tonu."

"I think she wants us to keep flying forward," I say through [Bind].

"Let's do it slowly," Alissa suggests.

We gently push the levers again and aim the ship towards the Looping Winds.

"Tere! Tere!" The leader yells in an impatient tone.

She wants us to go faster.

We re-enter the sky river and increase our speed to the max. The leader looks at the wings tilting down, then smiles in satisfaction, showing pearly white teeth. Her four bodyguards remain unmoving, and the Chimeras surrounding us follow the ship.

I look back and understand why she wanted us to fly: the spirits were catching up.

I finish putting enough points in Reo just as the cow lady speaks again.

"Who are you guys?" She asks in a demanding tone.

"We are adventurers, explorers," I reply.

She narrows her eyes in confusion and chews on something as she thinks. "Why would you come here?" She questions.

"What's the problem?" I return the question.

"Passing through wild Looping Winds with a cargo ship is insanity!"

"So, they don't know that they're inside a dungeon," I say to the girls.

"Somehow, the Dungeon Master trapped these spirits here," Alissa says.

"Well, we did go through quite a lot," I say and give the cow woman a stiff smile.

"Lina, tell me everything you know about the Broken Skies," I hurriedly say through [Bind].

The woman stares at me in disbelief, then she sighs and facepalms. She quickly regains her composure, and her expression becomes stern. "What's your name, human pilot?"

"Wolf Ryder, and these are all my wives," I respond with a proud smile.

She eyes Aoi, who's gripping her metal halberd and shield, and the golems in confusion, then her mask almost slips. "I'm Oritiki, platoon commander of the Celestial Horns," she says, managing to keep a serious tone.

The girls also introduce themselves, but the bodyguards don't say a word.

"'Celestial' was commonly used before the first emperor Ascended. They must be from before the empire," Lina says.

"From the same time as God-King Arreira," I respond, and feel her nod.

"So, Dame Oritiki, I assume that that island is your home?" I ask and point to the huge island ahead of us.

She nods solemnly. "Exactly. That's our home, Whakamutu Mutu. I firmly request that you land there and wait in port while I talk to High Command. I apologize if we seem rude, but it's been such a long time since we've had any visitors that we've never been trained in how to treat you."

"How about with love and perhaps some snu snu?" I joke in my soul space and get a few chuckles in response.

"I can understand your references better through [Bind]," Alissa says.

"Well, in any case, we're just travelers, and we have our own supplies. We won't bother anyone if you prefer that we continue on our journey," I say with a cordial tone.

She shakes her head, "We've been isolated from the rest of our nation for a generation already. It'd be foolish of us to send away the first visitor we receive with news from the outside."

She makes a signal with her hand, and her bodyguards store their glaives inside their [Item Box]es, then they all take off their helmets. We see three cows/bulls and two goats. Their fur colors and patterns are quite varied. I see Oritiki's pure black, a brown bovine, a white goat, a blue goat, and a white bovine with black spots.

With a nod from me, the girls also relax and store their weapons, then we all remove our helmets. The elementals relax and start to curiously look around, drawn to the glowing angels flying around us.

"I'll give everyone a few points in [Reo Language] so that we can understand each other a little better," I say to the girls. Hana and Yunia don't have enough spare points to fully learn Reo, so they'll talk through the others.

"Why are you isolated?" Lina asks.

Oritiki frowns, and the faces of her bodyguards twitch. Her voice softens a little as it gains a note of sadness, "Ever since the Petrification Calamity, the Looping Winds have gone out of control and the islands all around us have been overrun with monsters and elementals. We've gathered a few farm islands, but we still don't have the population to reclaim any more of them."

"Petrification Event?" Ciel asks.

Oritiki is taken aback, and her voice gains a tinge of bewilderment as she asks, "Haven't you land-dwellers ever heard about our nation? Has the tragedy of the death of millions gone unnoticed by the rest of the realm?"

"A-apologies," Lina immediately responds and hastily bows. "W-we aren't scholars, but by nation, do you mean the Ranta… gauhina… nation?"

"Rangatuhinga o mua Hauhuri," a brown bull bodyguard corrects her, a little offended that she butchered the name so badly.

"So you've heard of us?" Oritiki solemnly asks.

"That's the nation that fell to the Symbol of Envy," Lina says in my soul space.

"Oh, right!" I exclaim, taking the intense gaze of the Chimeras away from my shy little Lina. "We've heard about your nation. We just didn't know what exactly happened to it."

"Neither do we…" Oritiki admits, and the Chimeras all look down in sadness.

"We've heard that the High Forest aids the Sky Lands with expeditions to Ranga, but we don't know much else," Ciel tactfully relays Yunia's words.

"Sky Lands?" Oritiki questions.

"The Chimeric lands closest to the Gillios Continent," Lina answers.

"Ah, you mean the Lower Frontier… Well, at least something survived, and yet, a merchant ship is the first to find us…" Oritiki comments with a little suspicion.

"We've had a lot of luck in getting through the storms, then we found a Looping Winds Station and managed to get it running again," I say.

"So, you're the ones who reactivated this Looping Winds?"

We all nod.

"Where does it lead?"

"Ozymandias. We saw numerous references to it within the surviving records at the Station, so we chose that as the next target for our expedition," I answer.

She holds her chin and nods in thought as she looks away. "That's a town beyond Void's End…"-

Wait, town? All we saw in the Scanner was a vertical disk.

-"but now that the Looping Winds is active, you have a chance of crossing it if you've set the anchors correctly. Your only problem will be getting past the Gaping Maw." She returns her gaze to us and pays attention to our reactions.

"Gaping Maw…? You mean the ginormous sky serpent that makes this boat look like an ant?" I question.

She nods, seeming rather amused by my description. "Exactly. The Symbol of Gluttony, the Gaping Maw. An Aberrant Cloud Snake that eats islands."

We go quiet, feeling a little apprehensive at the name of the monster. Our encounters with anything named as a Symbol have never been easy. Even Yunia, who's never met any wild Symbols or Aberrants, knows what these two words combined must represent.

Oritiki chuckles, then she smiles at us as she says, "Well, you've traversed the wild Looping Winds in a cargo ship, reclaimed an abandoned Station, and managed to outrun the Vengeful Spirits. I'll be eagerly waiting to see how you deal with that one."

A note from Manasong

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Chapter 71: Whakamutu Mutu - Part 3

A note from Manasong

Attention: to conform to the limit of sexual content allowed in a novel, I've censored this chapter. You can look for the uncensored version here.

The symbol "-" denotes a section that got cut for containing sexual content. Also, if paragraphs seem missing, they were also likely censored in an earlier pass where the symbol wasn't used.

Everyone on the deck starts to relax and spread out from their battle lines. Aoi curls up and lays down; Lina and Ciel sit down on her large form; Yunia leans against the bridge tower; Hana and Roxanne cuddle near the starboard railing; the bodyguards lean against the railing near the bow; and Oritiki stands behind the prow.

She turns to the town just as a Holly notices a commotion. It seems that a bored scout has finally spotted our ship and alerted the town.

A group of small and lithe Chimeras scramble to the small delta wing planes and take off vertically, then zoom out of the dock at an impressive speed, flying in a delta formation.

Their yellow planes are like mouse cursors: triangular and wide with a small tail pointing out the back. They're so small that there's barely enough space for the pilot in the cockpit. Most of its volume actually comes from its wingspan, which is five times as wide as the cockpit in its entirety.

I see three small gems at the tip of each plane: one green, one brown, and one red. If I were to make a guess, these gems cast [Wind Blade], [Earth Bullet], and [Fireball], respectively. I don't think they'd send these small planes to intercept us if they didn't have any offensive capabilities.

The blue-furred goat turns to Aoi and looks at her curiously, then they turn to Hana and ask with a young male voice, "So, how did you tame a dragon and teach it to use a halberd?"

"I'm not tamed. I chose to follow him," Aoi responds with her deep, sensual dual voice, and Lina translates for her.

The young goat-man lets his mouth hang in surprise. The other bodyguards turn to us, too, suddenly very curious, and Oritiki holds back a chuckle.

- Hanainsinuates how Aoi was truly tamed -

"You know he didn't ask that!" Aoi exclaims, not because she's ashamed of Hana's words, but because she recognized her teasing tone.

The composure of the brown bull breaks, and he fidgets nervously while his eyes dart between me and Aoi. "H-how would that even work?" He asks, flabbergasted.

Oritiki turns her head back, and her blood-red eyes give the brown bull a frightening glare. "Paraaone, these are land-dwellers. Respect their privacy," she chastises him.

The bull immediately stands at attention, and his eyes look off in the distance. "Apologies. I forgot my position," he says.

"It's fine," I say and wave my hand.

- Aoi reveals my special skills, stunning them, even Oritiki -

"How attractive do you think Oritiki is?" Alissa asks through [Bind].

"Not particularly, though we can't really see her figure under all her armor," I reply.

"If you'd like to see that in person, I'm sure we can arrange a demonstration, but only for women," Alissa says with a mischievous grin and a very suggestive tone.

"I know you like wolf girls, at least," Roxanne teases.

"Well, it is in my name," I reply.

"Wait, seriously?" Alissa asks, and I respond with an internal nod.

"You're not a wolf, you're a human dragon!" Aoi exclaims and pouts internally.

"And you're a dragon human," I say, and she smiles internally.

Oritiki simply runs a hand through her fur and looks towards the approaching planes while the bodyguards start whispering among themselves. They have no reason to believe Alissa's words, but she also offered to prove it, so you could say that some of them got a little interested.

Once the intercepting planes notice the Celestial Horns escorting us, they slow down and add to the escort. The wind elementals become even more interested in the Celestial Horns and bunch up while mimicking Alissa's cute expressions of confusion.

One of the planes flies alongside the ship and matches our speed. They rest a wing on the railing of the ship and Oritiki grabs it to keep it in place, then the cockpit opens, and the pilot talks to her.

I see a khaj-… cat woman in a dark green jumpsuit heatedly discussing the procedures for our reception. Oritiki wants to take us directly to the higher docks due to the exceptional circumstances of our arrival while the cat woman wants us to go to the lower docks since we're commoners.

"I think they're actual nobles. The pilot has a large harem, a dragon, summons, a Living Armor following them, and he gave me his last name," Oritiki whispers, but unfortunately for her, the Holly at the prow can hear her perfectly.

"Did he introduce himself as a noble? No! They should go to the commoner's docks," the cat woman hisses.

"I'm sorry, Kaatohe Ngerua, but I'm going to use my rank this time. We're going to the Golden Docks," Oritiki says with finality in her tone.

Kaatohe actually hisses at Oritiki, then closes her cockpit and flies away.

I start to notice a spell in the air, it feels very familiar to Yunia's [Spirit Shield]. I look back and notice that the spirits aren't gaining on us anymore, they're actually slowing down.

I see… this is why the town hasn't been overrun by spirits.

"So, your group is… quite diverse. Are you all from the same place?" Paraaone, the brown bull, asks.

The names of the kingdoms changed after the empire conquered them, so we have to match our stories.

"I'm from the Domum Kingdom, ever heard of it?" I ask.

"I think my father once said that you Domums use a spell to transport people and goods instantly everywhere," Paraaone answers.

"Exactly, that's called [Gate]."

"Well, it seems like the land-dwellers are faring better than us…" The blue goat glumly comments.

"What happened to us was a calamity, not a result of our failings," Oritiki says, then motions for us to continue.

"I'm a slave from Mountainhome," Lina says and bows quickly.

"We're from the Sommer Kunikreich," Hana says and pulls Ciel into a hug.

Rabanara didn't exist until long after Arreira's time.

"I'm from the Brumeux Forest," Alissa says.

"Aloresta," Yunia calmly says.

"Succubi Holy Lands," Roxanne says with a smile.

They might not even know what a Blood Slave is, so it might be better to just say that they're all my wives, except for Lina.

"We all met in the Sky Lands and… fell in love, then decided to explore the Broken Skies," I say and grin awkwardly.

The blue goat and the quiet white goat suppress a chuckle.

"Apologies, but the blunt way you put it undersells the impressiveness of your group," the blue goat says with a wide smile and tugs at his small white goatee.

"I'm impressed at how well most of you speak Reo," the white goat says.

Only I have ten points in Reo while the girls each have a varying amount, so they have a noticeable accent, unlike me.

"I learned Reo to aid in our exploration of the Broken Skies, and my wives learned it to help with our daily lives since we'll be spending quite a bit of time among the Chimeras," I say and give them a diplomatic smile.

Oritiki raises an eyebrow, but doesn't say anything. Our first meeting was rather awkward, so I think she might be suspicious about our background.

"What about that Living Armor and the floating dolls? What are they?" Paraaone asks.

"They are servants, consider them as something similar to summons," I respond.

The attention of the bodyguards is drawn to the golems. They look at them curiously, though Jarn's appearance is slightly comical, so they focus more on her. They think she's a Living Armor while the dolls might be cursed in a similar way. Yunia, who's the closest to them, subtly tells them to not correct the bodyguards' guesses.

"Enough questions, we have to dock, so don't distract the pilot," Oritiki says, and the bodyguards straighten their postures again.

She pulls us out of the Looping Winds and guides us up to the top of the town.

The buildings slowly increase in size as we ascend. First, they become mansions, then they gain gardens of increasing size.

The Holly scouting the town discovers a rare human or two, naked among the Chimeras. They might be why the Chimeras know some Andraste.

The interceptors disengage from our escort and return to their own docks, then, a minute later, we finally reach the Golden Docks. In true God-Ruler fashion, the dock is covered with details in gold. The first emperor really disliked using gold and silver as decoration, so this sort of art isn't present in most imperial homes.

The Docks is a large landing strip made of concrete, protruding out from the town and supported by a lattice of thick, metal beams. On each side of the landing strip, there are four platforms with wooden hangars in between them. On the outer edge of the platforms, there's a raised wooden walkway with some sort of rolled up bridge. It looks like each platform can fit a ship approximately triple the length of ours.

The thick, colored clouds all over the Broken Skies blocks out a lot of the sunlight, making it difficult to notice the difference between day and night. This dungeon also doesn't really follow the outside world's day-night cycle, so I have no idea what time it might be right now.

My watch says that it's currently daytime, but the illumination is so low that it feels like night for us. Because of that, the landing strip has been marked with glowing crystals in the same way they are on Earth, reminding me of my plane trips between Brazil and Canada.

Oritiki guides us to the closest platform to the town, a place normally reserved for the upper class. The entire Docks is empty except for a small galley-like ship, which is similar to ours, but it has lots of details in gold, just like the rest of the Docks. Instead of wings, it has five masts with furled sails laid out in a fan shape.

Ooh… I love seeing new airship designs.

We gently land, and a welcoming party comes towards our ship. I see one naked Chimera along with four others carrying spears and armored with gambesons and leather.

Alissa and I finally release the controls, then we head down to the deck, and I stop near Oritiki.

With a gesture from her hand, she dismisses the flying Celestial Horns, then turns towards us. Her eyes immediately land on Gify, and she stops for a moment, then looks me in the eye. "I'll ask that you remain on this platform until I return or someone else comes to receive you," she says.

I nod in agreement, and she jumps off the ship, followed by her men, then spreads her white angelical wings and gently floats over to the walkway. She lands in front of the welcoming party, exchanges a few words, then flies off towards the top of the town. Now that their glowing armor is out of sight, my eyes begin to feel the tiredness from looking at something so bright for too long.

We huddle up on the port side of the ship and wait for the Chimeras to come to us. They stop in front of the rolled-up bridge, and an armored soldier activates a small enchantment, making it unroll itself towards us and stop right on top of the railing, then metal clamps secure it to our ship. Ropes running along the bridge's railings suddenly tighten and pull the suspended bridge taut.

The naked Chimera is a man with a monkey head with a lot of bright yellow fur covering most of his body, which explains why he doesn't feel cold. - Chimeric men have special etiquette in relation to their private parts -

This group of people doesn't have wings and are much less well-built than the Celestial Horns. They also have an eclectic variety of body parts, making me salivate as I see the white and light blue wolf that looks rather feminine.

Here's hoping that that one is female.

Their puffy armor makes it impossible to know whether they have breasts or not.

Hana and Aoi stare bemusedly at the yellow monkey -, but the other girls avoid looking down. Alissa, most of all, is noticeably disgusted at seeing another naked man, though the prospects of having me ogle naked women counters that negative feeling.

The monkey man stops near the end of the rolled-out bridge and stares at me with a serious expression. Even his long yellow tail is standing still in the air from the tension. He's nervous, but his tone is perfectly diplomatic as he says, "Wolf Ryder, I'm harbormaster Koura, and I'm responsible for dealing with entry and departure of aircraft. As Oritiki may have mentioned, it's been such a long time since we last had visitors that the correct procedures to deal with this situation have been lost.

"I ask that you remain here as she has instructed since you won't be considered a simple guest for us. The news of your arrival will spread through the entire town, and we'd very much like to receive news from the outside. We ask that you understand our situation and cooperate."

I give him a diplomatic smile, easing some of his nervousness, and nod, then I say, "I understand. We're explorers, so we aren't in any particular hurry to depart. We'll wait for as long as necessary."

He bows deeply, then smiles diplomatically, but his face becomes much gentler. "Thank you for your understanding. I'll be in my office in case you have any need for us. I'll leave two guards here so that you may ask them for whatever you wish."

I nod gently, and he turns around, then walks away. I give one intense look along with a subtle smirk to the beautiful wolf Chimera before they walk away. The feminine wolf stiffens for a second, feeling the intensity of my gaze, and shyly glances at me before going to stand at the entrance of the suspended bridge.

"I kind of like seducing others for you. If you can, let me have that one," Alissa says through [Bind].

I pull out sofas for us, then we enjoy a simple honey and water Tonique tea.

"Should we take off our armor? If we are going to be received by their high society, then that would give the best first impression," Yunia suggests.

"If they aren't living humanoids, then I don't trust them," Alissa says.

"Unless a spirit has been corrupted, it won't turn evil or Wicked," Ciel says.

"I can't say whether or not they've been corrupted, but they don't seem evil," Yunia says, and Roxanne agrees.

"Let's change into our formal clothes, but I'll keep the elementals on the ship, just in case," I say.

The sexy wolf Chimera stands still, allowing me to admire their body, but they can't stop themself from taking repeated glances at us.

"It's getting a little hot today, isn't it?" She says with a gentle female voice.

Fuck yes!

"Uh? Yeah, I guess," the raccoon man responds and shrugs.

The wolf woman loosens her gambeson, revealing a hint of her milky white bosom.

She's a bit too far away for me to use [Sense Soul] on her, so I can't see her name yet. She's as tall as Hana; her fur is quite fluffy, like a Samoyed; its color is pure white with small light blue spots at the ends; her ears are triangular and tall; her snout is quite long and thin; and it's her eyes that have the most "feminine" look with their long eyelashes and their seductive, angled shape.

I guess I've become a furry.

"It seems like they don't know that they're inside a dungeon," Yunia says. We keep our voices low so that the guards won't hear us.

"Yep. I think that we have to lie and go with the story that we're explorers," I say.

"Then we have to match our lies," Lina says, and I nod.

"I think that Oritiki might already be suspicious of us. Our first meeting was really awkward," Alissa says.

"I should've put some points in [Reo Language] before they landed. I was careless," I say and bow apologetically.

"We… we should've suggested that. I was too stunned by their spells; I should've been more careful," Yunia admits

I smile wryly and say, "I guess that even you can get careless from enjoying yourself too much."

"I wasn't enjoying myself," Yunia mumbles and subtly pouts.

I turn to Lina and say, "Alright, tell us everything you know about the Chimeras at the time of Arreira."

It takes half an hour for Oritiki to come back, walking alongside Kaatohe Ngerua, the apparent commander of the small planes. Both are naked except for the tons of jewelry adorning their bodies.

Oritiki has a black, very well-endowed human chest, furry arms with human hands, and lizard legs. Her wings have seemingly shrunk down to a third of their previous size -.

Kaatohe looks like a Bengal cat with spotted leopard arms and back, and a bronze-skinned human front and legs -.

"Godsdamnit, they're hot," Hana comments as I share the tantalizing sight through [Bind].

Roxanne looks at the pair of jiggly, dark bazoongas, then looks at Ciel's and smirks. "Yours are a match for an actual cow -," she says.

Ciel rolls her eyes and says, "Jealous?"

Roxanne grins mischievously. "Of course, but since you let me milk them, I'm quite happy with not having a pair like yours."

"You can't really win against her like that," Yunia lowly comments.

The two Chimeric women exchange some words with Koura, then stop in front of the bridge to our ship and talk to the guards. They speak too quietly for even Alissa to hear them, but the Holly under the bridge is still close enough for it to hear them anyway.

"How have they behaved?" Oritiki asks.

"They changed clothes, drank tea, and talked a lot, but we didn't eavesdrop," the wolf woman says, and Oritiki nods, clearly pleased.

"The human man has certainly got his eyes on her," the raccoon man says in a teasing tone.

Oritiki and Kaatohe stare at the wolf woman, but she remains stiff and avoids looking at their eyes.

After an awkward few seconds, Oritiki smiles and says, "I'm reassigning both of you. You'll report to me for the time being. Inform Koura, then take off your armor and serve our guests."

Kaatohe rolls her eyes and crosses her arms.

The raccoon man smiles sadly and says, "I don't think any of them are interested in me. I'm pretty sure that the dragon is looking at me more like a piece of meat… like, one that you eat, not… the other way…"

"Just be their guide, then," Oritiki says with a shrug. "Now, you have your orders."

"Yes, Honored One," they say in unison and walk away.

Oritiki and Kaatohe then walk across the bridge and hop onto the ship. We stand up to receive them, now fully dressed up in our formal clothing.

"Ryder family, this is Kaatohe Karaka Ngerua, commander of the Wasp Interceptors, the planes that escorted us here," Oritiki says and gestures towards the - cat woman beside her.

Three names? I'm not sure what that means. The way she looks at us screams of 'nobility,' though.

We introduce ourselves, but her reaction is so perfectly neutral that even Alissa gets disappointed.

The elven custom for introductions involves kissing a hand, but the Chimeras are very reserved when it comes to touching. They don't even shake hands with strangers, which seems extremely ironic to us. Kaatohe doesn't motion for us to kiss her hand, so we just trade short bows.

"You can call me Kaatohe Ngerua," she says and smiles smugly, then bows quickly and crosses her arms, enticingly bunching up her small fun bags.

Certainly not one to go for nicknames…

"I think she's a noble," Lina comments in my soul space.

"Agreed," echoes through [Bind].

"With the introductions complete, let's talk business. As I'd expected, the High Command has assembled and invites your family to a meeting," Oritiki says.

"We gladly accept," I say and nod respectfully.

She smiles and says, "Wonderful. Now, I'll explain some of the rules of our society. We mean no offense, it's just that it's better not to assume anything, especially because our brethren at the frontier are much more conservative than we are… and the dragonkin are notoriously the most common offenders."

"None taken," Hana casually responds.

Oritiki nods strongly, - then continues, "We may all walk around naked, but that's not an invitation to touch our bare skin or even for sexual acts. You're only allowed to touch someone's bare skin once they've asked for a handshake or a hug. A common way to ask for a sexual act is by first asking for a kiss, then gradually asking for more contact, and if you then have sex in public, make sure to clean it all up.

"You're all allowed to watch others as much as you want, and even have sex in public yourselves, as long as you don't block traffic or do it in front of private property without getting permission from the owner.

"Also, we all have personal towels that we use when we sit down anywhere besides the grass. If you wish to go naked, then you need one, too. It's very rude to stain chairs with sweat from your hindquarters, no matter how well cleaned it may be.

"Lastly, if you, Wolf, decide to go naked, ensure that your erection doesn't touch anyone, that would be very rude. Our men have learned how to keep their penises from straightening so that that doesn't happen, but they still enjoy keeping them at full length to measure their sizes against each other." She finishes with a subtle roll of her eyes.

"Understood," I say, and we all nod.

Oritiki smiles while Kaatohe remains impassive.

"Now then, please follow us," the cow woman gently says.

As we walk by Koura's office, the raccoon man and the wolf woman walk out -. Thankfully, the man - is fully sheathed, revealing nothing from under his fur, while the wolf woman exposes all of her milky white skin and light blue scales. -. Her legs are like a dragon's with a matching tail, her arms and chest are human, and her back is fluffy and furred.

-

She freezes for a moment when she looks at me, then continues walking forward with a stiff posture. I smirk at her, then look forward again, and Alissa happily squeezes my right hand.

We walk out of the Golden Docks and reach the city proper. It feels like we're in the Nobles' Quarters due to the low volume of traffic and the opulence of both the houses and the people walking by. We walk down wide cobble streets while admiring the creativity of the Chimeric painters.

To match our gems, Yunia wears a thin, white necklace with a yellow garnet gemstone cut into a sphere. With all of our jewels and fine clothes, we don't really look out of place, except for the fact that we're the only ones not walking around naked.

Out of all of us, Aoi gets the most attention since there's the occasional dragon-like monster walking around the town, and they're very impressed to see a tamed one calmly walking beside us. Alissa, Hana, and Roxanne get a lot of looks, too, since the Chimeras have a thing for animal or monster parts, it seems.

Then word of our arrival spreads, and a small crowd starts to follow us. The two guards behind us pull out wooden clubs and start to disperse the crowd, guarding against anyone bothering us or asking us questions.

We climb up for a few minutes and eventually reach a huge, golden, semi-circular building. It looks rather minimalist with a simple garden in front, but it's immaculately maintained. It only has a single floor and a wide dome in the center, but the ceiling is easily four times as high as the usual imperial architecture.

Guards wearing glowing, golden armor are spread out all along the outer perimeter of the wall-less estate. If I hadn't seen the eyes of one of them following us, I'd have guessed that they were statues instead.

The inside of the building is like the Sistine Chapel, with nearly every centimeter covered with paintings, while everything else is gilded with gold, instead. Truly opulent.

We pass through a wide hallway and walk up a long set of stairs towards the wide dome above. Then we cross through a set of gilded golden doors, and emerge onto the stage of a round theater. There are seats for hundreds of thousands of people, but they're all empty, except for ten of them in the front row, where old-looking Chimeras are seated.

Their eyes are all impassive and serious. Except for one of them, I don't think that they're particularly friendly.

The only person with a pleasant gaze is a gray dragon-headed Chimera. His leathery lips are curled up in a subtle smirk, but like Aoi, it reveals his long fangs, which unintentionally makes it look slightly scary.

He smiles at us, then motions towards a few seats in front of the stage and says, "Ryders, please have a seat."

A note from Manasong

Hall of Fame of Patrons

The patrons who support Rupegia shall have their names sung by the bards for they deserve the glory and honor. Their names are:

Oracle Maximillian Hübner.

Prince PreownedFIN.

Lord Andrew Meyers.

Lord Hope.

Lord Samuel Lim.

Lord Bill.

Lord Novgarod.

Lord DJ.

Lord Ashadun.

Lord Michale Erwin.

Lord Enrique Peña Gomez.

Lord Braidborn.

Lord Bakerdea.

Lord Yeeteris Dedmeem.

Lord D4rk Sheep.

Lord Nathan Vanbrunt.

Lord Markus.

Lord Maurice.

Lord Badger.

Lord Krawn.

Lord Remco.

Lord Empyrean.

Lord Asakurà.

Lord Cidant.

Noble Salty Panda.

Noble Yamibomb112.

Noble Mild Fracas.

Noble EESDESESESRDT.

Noble Aclys.

Noble Tyler Mills.

Noble Samuel Steinike.

Leave a rating or a review to help me rise to the top or fix my shameful understanding of prose.

Take a look over my blog where all information of the world of Rupegia will be posted.

Join the Discord and discuss, or rant, or meme, or try and fight me so your waifu gets more screentime.

Become a Patron and read chapters in advance, or read the side-stories, or leave your mark on the story, or help choose the next artwork or the next side-story.

Chapter 72: Grand Prix - Part 1

A note from Manasong

Attention: to conform to the limit of sexual content allowed in a novel, I've censored this chapter. You can look for the uncensored version here.

The symbol "-" denotes a section that got cut for containing sexual content. Also, if paragraphs seem missing, they were also likely censored in an earlier pass where the symbol wasn't used.

With a diplomatic smile, I nod, and we comply, but Jarn remains standing behind me even though there's a chair set out for her.

Oritiki and Kaatohe continue on and walk to the audience seats. They pass the row of the High Council and sit in the next row up. Kaatohe sits behind a cat-headed chimera that seems very similar to her, but with many strands of white hair and patches of white fur all over her face. She also has actual dark blonde hair on her head in a feathered style.

"Let's start the introductions. I'm Hihiriwa Tarakonaa, Marshall of the Skies," the gray dragon says.

"I'm Wahinui Karaka Ngerua, Marshall of the Lands," says Kaatohe's possible relative.

The other eight Councilors introduce themselves, and I notice that some of them don't have three names. Perhaps they aren't all nobles?

Then our turn comes, and the girls introduce themselves as my wives while Lina says that she's my slave. Once Aoi speaks, the Council displays a variety of reactions, from friendly to skeptical. Hihiriwa clearly looks interested. Perhaps Aoi is the reason he's so friendly towards us.

"Miss… uh, I'm assuming you're a female, is that correct?" Hihiriwa asks Aoi. Reo doesn't have a difference between Miss and Mister, but Hihiriwa is using the Andraste version of the word out of respect for us.

"Yes. I'm a woman," Aoi says with a nod, and Lina translates.

He smiles gently, showing his long fangs and says, "We knew how smart dragons were, but this is the first time we've seen one that actually talks and is… friendly to humanoids. Mr. Ryder, how 'similar' would you say that her intelligence is to ours?"

Chimeric language has a small peculiarity: it's gendered for all objects like Portuguese, but personal pronouns are genderless because Chimeras have a sub-race of Metamorphic Chimeras, who can change sex at will. Hihiriwa is using a genderless pronoun for Aoi, signifying that he sees her as a person instead of a monster or an animal.

"She's very young for a dragon, but her body has reached maturity, so I'd say that she's as smart as a barely mature youngster," I respond, and Aoi returns the toothy smile. "Oh, yes. Consider her as one of my wives, too."

Hihiriwa grins while the rest of the council erupts into murmurs. A few of them even question if I'm a heretic. They keep their voices to a whisper, but they're underestimating how good Alissa's hearing is.

Wahinui quickly puts an end to the talks about heresy. Apparently, she respects our privacy more than the rest of the Council does.

She turns to us and says, "Our concern about Miss Aoi is about how dangerous she might be to the populace, but I think that you've answered any doubts we might have about her, correct?" She asks in a slightly annoyed tone and eyes the nosy Councilors, who all nod sheepishly.

"What about the Living Armor? The two dolls are magical beings, too," an androgynous Councilor asks.

"Consider them like summons that act as our bodyguards. I'm a summoner who employs them for security," I calmly reply.

The Councilor grumbles, but doesn't come up with anything else to ask us.

"Then let's move the conversation onto another topic," Hihiriwa says, then becomes serious again. "As you might've noticed, we lost contact with the rest of our nation, including the Celestial Ruler who was appointed to our region. To replace our rulers, we created this High Council, which is composed of the higher ranking aristocracy of our town."

I think they do have some form of nobility, but the council also includes non-nobles, so he has to use "aristocracy" instead of "nobility."

"With this comes the question: have you heard of any other Chimeric town or aristocrat that has survived?"

"Aside from the Sky Lands, the frontier of your nation, no, we haven't," I say and shake my head gently.

"As far as I remember, the Sky Lands don't have a Celestial Ruler among them," Yunia says.

"Not even our Supreme Rulers survived?" A Councilman asks.

"No," I respond solemnly.

The theater becomes quiet as the High Councilors look at each other grimly, but lack the energy to say anything. Oritiki rubs her horn awkwardly and softly sighs.

"Then we technically rule over this 'Sky Lands.' That is, unless they're ruled by a branch of the royal house," a noble Councilwoman says, showing some disdain upon mentioning the Sky Lands.

The Council turns to us, waiting for an answer.

"I've heard that they've established a new kingdom, but they don't claim to be a direct descendant of the Hauhuri nation," Yunia says.

The Council reacts with shock and anger.

"Traitors!"

"Apostates!"

"We must subjugate them!"

Oritiki frowns, and her cold voice smothers their anger as she growls, "I won't fight fellow Chimeras for such petty reasons."

"And we lack any sort of real military," Wahinui sternly says.

Kaatohe bitterly looks down at her own hands/paws, extending and retracting her claws repeatedly.

Hihiriwa smiles gently and says, "Forgive us for this outburst, Ryders, but some of us are still too attached to the glory and pride of the past."

"It is no matter, we aren't citizens of the Sky Lands," I respond and smile diplomatically.

The rest of the Council regains their composure, and Hihiriwa continues, "Now, for the next topic, instead of subjugation, it's obvious that our first action should be to contact the Sky Lands. So, Ryders, please tell us how you managed to get here."

I smile diplomatically again, but it's also a little stiff due to the big fucking lie I'm about to tell them.

"Well, we went through quite the journey to get here, but if you want to come back through the same way we came, let me tell you that it'll be difficult… In essence, we are lost. Aside from merely going down, we have no idea how to go back."

Oritiki bursts into laughter while the rest of the Council quietly groans. Wahinui and Kaatohe remain silent, sternly staring at us.

Wahinui tugs on her whiskers as she says, "I'm not sure if you're aware, but going down won't necessarily lead you back to land. You're more likely to find a Dark Void or a Realm's Edge if you go directly downwards."

I nod and smile as I reply, "Yes, we're aware. The Broken Skies is a completely warped space at the edge of the realm."

"And how do you plan to go back, then?" A Councilwoman asks.

"We don't have any plans to do that. We'll go where the winds take us," Hana answers with a fearsome smile.

Half of the Council chuckles at her words. She said something very similar to a Chimeric idiom: "Let the current take me where it wills."

"So, you're saying that you'll be staying here for a while?" Wahinui asks. Her yellow cat eyes are subtly narrowed in mistrust.

The Council recovers their composure, and their expressions become serious again.

"No. We'll probably only stay here for a day or two, then we'll continue on our journey towards Ozymandias," I respond.

"Do you have any idea how to get past the Gaping Maw?" A Councilman asks.

"No, but we'll find a way to sneak around it if necessary," I answer.

The Council lets out a few low chuckles.

"And how would you accomplish such a thing?" He asks again.

Oritiki and Kaatohe lean forward, suddenly interested.

I smile a little mischievously and say, "That's a secret. We're adventurers, we can't reveal our secrets so freely."

Oritiki's face softens in surprise, while Kaatohe's mouth twitches in anger, revealing a sharp white fang.

"Would you mind if we sent an expedition alongside you?" Hihiriwa suddenly asks, and the entire Council turns to glare at him.

"What are you planning?" Wahinui asks him, her lips slowly rising into a sneer, revealing an equally white and sharp set of fangs as her younger relative.

The rather aloof dragon-headed Chimera takes a much more stiff and imposing posture, stretching his long, leathery neck upwards, making his head tower over everyone else. He pulls his lips up into a grin, showing them all his rather beautiful set of teeth. His voice gains a low rumble that makes it hard not to pay attention to him as he says, "Ozymandias had extensive farming islands. I want to recover one while they distract the Gaping Maw."

The Council seems surprised at his suggestion, but none of them find a reason to dismiss his idea.

The girls have mixed feelings about this plan. They certainly don't feel very happy about being "bait," but Hihiriwa has been the most favorable Councilor to us, so he's starting to win them over. Also, I'm sure that Ciel is the most distrustful of them since they're all… well, dead. As convincing as they might look, they aren't made of flesh and bone; the occasional wisp of mana escaping their bodies has a very similar taste to my own custom [Materialization] spell.

As we all consider his words, Hihiriwa continues, "You're the ones that reactivated Waenraw Station Fifteen, correct?" His beautiful red and blue dragon eyes stare intently at me with excitement.

Uh… the Looping Winds Station didn't have any name that we recognized.

"I didn't pay much attention to the name of the station, but I think you're right," I answer.

He gently nods. "We'll escort you past the Vengeful Spirits and help you make your way to the Gaping Maw. Once you do your thing, we'll work on recovering a farming island." Then he turns back to look at Oritiki. "What's your opinion, Honored One? Will you lend us your assistance?"

The black cow closes her mouth with her hand and rubs her chin in thought. "Sounds acceptable. We'll aid you, but only half of the Celestial Horns will leave. The rest will stay to defend the town," she answers and exhales through her nose loudly.

Hihiriwa lowers his head. "That should be more than enough," he says, then straightens his posture again and turns to us. "We'll need two days to prepare, is that acceptable?" He asks us, but the glance he gives to Wahinui tells me that he's asking her, too.

"Sounds fine by me. We wanted some days to rest, anyway," I reply.

"Now, about your stay. How much coin do you have?" A Councilman asks.

"A lot of silver and a few gold coins," I lie. We're much richer than that.

The Councilman frowns and the others look a little worried. He looks around and they have a short discussion, then he turns back to us and smiles diplomatically as he says, "Can you not spend your gold coins here? We've had to reduce the amount of metal in our coins to keep our economy stable, so your wealth is a little… excessive right now."

"We'll… keep that in mind," I answer, noncommittally.

Apparently that was the wrong answer as they turn impassive while Wahinui looks displeased.

Yunia sends me a subtle glance, and I realize my mistake.

"We're not looking to disrupt the order of your town, so we'll limit ourselves to buy only the essentials," I calmly add.

Hihiriwa smiles, so I think that fixed it.

"About Waenraw Station Fifteen, have you set the proper anchors for a way back to the station from Ozymandias?" A Councilman asks.

"We… haven't. It's 'traversable,' but not very stable," I answer and smile apologetically.

The Councilman sighs, then Oritiki says, "We'll have better results going back the way they came, then." And the Council nods.

The theater grows quiet, so Hihiriwa claps his hands and says, "Then I believe that is all that we had to discuss." He looks around as the Council murmurs between themselves for a moment, then they nod in agreement. "Very well. We'll meet again tomorrow at two in the afternoon to discuss our expedition." He adds, and we nod.

Oritiki stands up and says, "If you, Ryders, don't mind, I'll take responsibility for your stay and show you the town. How does that sound?"

I look to the girls, and they nod positively. Oritiki seems to be the most trustworthy of them all, so I think this will be fine.

"We'd be honored to," I say and lower my head respectfully.

With heavy stomps of her lizard legs and a mesmerizing jiggle of her huge cow tits, Oritiki makes her way down towards us with a smile on her long face.

"Follow me, then," she says and continues towards the exit.

We give a bow to the High Council, then follow her. The raccoon man and the sexy wolf woman give us a smile, and I wink to the wolf, then they follow behind us.

As we walk past the 'Sistine Chapel'-like hall, Lina looks up, absorbed by the paintings.

"Which are better, paintings or carvings?" I ask her.

"Carvings have depth, but lack color. Paintings are the inverse. The only 'better' medium would be to have both."

"Carvings?" Oritiki asks in Andraste with a heavy accent. Reo pronounces vowels with an open mouth, while the r's and s's of Andraste are much more closed and difficult to pronounce.

"Dwarves are master carvers, but they aren't good painters," I translate to her.

"Dwarves? She's a dwarf? Oh, I thought she was just a child slave," Oritiki remarks.

"Well, I'm still eighteen," Lina says shyly.

"Hm. You certainly don't look like it."

"Most dwarves don't age past a certain point, and it's always around fourteen years old that our aging stops," Lina says.

"That's enviable."

Lina glares at the - jiggling at eye level beside her -. "Debatable."

Oritiki notices that and laughs out loud. "You do know that these sacks of fat are only a bother? They even hurt my back if I don't use a sash often enough."

"Oh, I know exactly what you mean," Ciel says, and they smile at each other.

- "If I didn't like men, I'd have become one a long time ago. At least letting - it dangle around doesn't cause back pain," she says.

"I'm pretty sure that your thighs would get irritated from all the slapping," I say with a smirk.

"That's why you should always keep it at a half-chub," she replies, and we chuckle.

"Are you a Metamorphic Chimera?" Alissa asks.

She nods and answers, "I am. It's why I have these horns; I was born with them and didn't need an Alteration Mage to give them to me. It's been a while since I last changed into a man, though. I've even forgotten what it's like to piss while standing."

We chuckle, but the girls' are more reserved. They don't know what true freedom feels like.

We exit the building and stop near the grass.

Oritiki turns to us and says, "I still have some duties to finish for today, so I'll join you again at dusk. These two will act as your guides, but you're free to do as you wish."

"I'm Ririmu," the raccoon man says and gently bows.

"I'm Hukarere," the white wolf says and offers her hand for a handshake. I take it and give her a gentle squeeze. Her hand is human and rather rough. Not everyone can afford to use skincare products like we do.

"So, would you like to go somewhere?" Ririmu asks.

- I turn to the girls.

"We're late for lunch," Roxanne says, and Aoi nods emphatically.

"We'd like a restaurant with hearty food and a lot of meat," I say.

"I know just the place," Ririmu says and nods. Even though he's a man, I'm pretty happy to have him as a guide since his face is so cute. He reminds me of the gnomes because they both make me feel like hugging them.

"Then I'll take my leave. Until dusk," Oritiki says, and we all nod respectfully.

As we walk through the town, we start to hear town criers spreading the news of our arrival. It's basically an abridged version of our meeting: we've stumbled upon this town by accident, there's no simple way back, the rest of the Hauhuri nation is likely no more, and only the Sky Lands remain.

Although some seem saddened by the news, most of the murmurs are about their hope of finding a way to the Sky Lands. They've (seemingly) spent a generation already isolated from the rest of the realm, so they held little hope that Hauhuri survived the Calamity.

With the news spreading, the curiosity of the Chimeras is satisfied, so only a few of them come to bother us.

"Don't you fear never being able to go back?" Hukarere asks.

"No. We're prepared to spend a long time exploring around here. Also, the way back is difficult, but not impossible," I answer.

"I can't fathom not having a home to return to at the end of the day," Hukarere says and rubs one of her ears in thought.

"Home is where we're together, wherever it may be," Ciel says with a warm smile.

"Well, I always knew that explorers were different from us common folk," Ririmu says with a shrug.

"We'll return home one day, we're sure of that. We didn't come this far just on pure luck, regardless of how 'lost' we are," I say with a wry smile.

"Didn't you say that other expeditions failed? And you're confident that you'll survive?" Ririmu asks.

"Those expeditions tried to open the way to reclaim territory. Their goals are different from ours," Yunia says.

"Hah. They're all sissies and wouldn't dare to do half the things we've done to get here," Hana says with a fearsome smile.

"Oh?" Hukarere's pointy ears perk up and turn towards Hana.

We smile wryly and let our boisterous dragonkin tell an embellished tale about our trip through the Broken Skies.

"Haven't you met a Dark Void in the wild?" Ririmu asks.

"Thankfully, no," Lina answers.

"If you're going to Ozymandias, then you'll pass through Void's End, and it's… well, it's an area full of Dark Voids."

Hukarere shudders, and her snout scrunches in aversion. "I've patrolled Void's End in the Long Floater a few times. It's such a creepy place," she says.

"I hope you placed the anchors correctly. You shouldn't be careless near a Dark Void," Ririmu says.

The girls look at Lina and I, and we smile wryly.

"We did the best we could," I say, and our guides chuckle nervously.

Ririmu pushes away a horse-headed man and yells, "These are guests of the Honored One, don't bother them without going through them first!"

The man stiffens in fear, then neighs in annoyance and walks away.

"I sympathize with their desire to ask us questions, but we don't have time to answer them all," Yunia says.

"You're the most interesting thing to happen here in… well… ever since the Calamity, actually, so I'm sure that a fair number of them only want to satisfy their own curiosity," Hukarere comments.

"Well, guarding the Golden Docks is so boring that I'm quite happy to be doing something else," Ririmu comments, and we smile gently.

"After patrolling Void's End, I wanted to do something calmer, so I'm not tired of it yet, but a change like this isn't unwelcome," Hukarere says.

"Oh? We've only seen one ship in the entire docks. It doesn't look like there's a lot of traffic," Roxanne says.

"Yeah. There weren't that many aristocrats in town before the Calamity, so most of the upper levels are occupied by upstarts, and they don't have the funds to buy ships," Hukarere responds and scoffs lightly.

It's a bit odd how she's using "upstart" in a kind of derogatory way.

"The Forum of the Town Hall is supposed to be filled with aristocrats to discuss our laws, but even with the entire Common Council, you'd barely fill half of the Forum," Ririmu says.

"But it doesn't seem like the town is suffering for it," Yunia comments as she looks around.

The town is quite active and clean. Even though they're all some type of spirit, I don't see anything that looks abandoned or overgrown, which means that they're performing regular maintenance. Even the lower levels are relatively well-built for an area that would normally be considered the slums in other cultures.

"People are quite satisfied with the High Council," Hukarere says, and her tail wags subtly.

We finally reach a medium-class restaurant, the kind where you know the names of the chef and the owner, and they remember your favorite plate whenever you come in.

The guards cast [Clean] on their feet before entering, then they pull out their personal towels to sit on.

The building is made of cement and stucco and colored with a neutral, faded brown color, giving the restaurant quite a comfy atmosphere. There are a few paintings hanging on the walls, but the rest of the decor isn't anything special.

"Join us for a meal. It'll be our treat," Alissa gently suggests to them, and they accept with a smile.

The food is mostly chicken and other birds. The most expensive plate is a magical being called Taktaena. It means something like "uses color to hide," which reminds me of the Chamebirbs. I decide to not eat that plate.

The Chimeric lands lack space for large farms, so their diet is mostly hunted game, small farm animals used to add variety to the meals, the occasional veggie and fruit, roots, and leaves, lots of leaves. Not a single part of the plants go to waste, so there's even a tree with soft bark that's cooked until it melts.

I decide to order this tree soup, some fibrous bread to dip with, and spicy Dragolite skewers. The soup sounds exotic, but it isn't, the taste is quite mild and faintly sweet with the flavor of pineapple.

As we eat, I feel wisps of mana escaping from my belly, then the girls notice it happening to them, too, but it doesn't happen to the guides. The guides are eating normally, seemingly not noticing the odd mana leaving our bodies.

I open my "Status" and see two new entries under "Status Effects": "Moderate Mana Recovery | Souce: Digested Food | Time Left: 30 min," and "Moderate Nutrition Recovery | Source: Digested Food | Time Left: 1 hour."

This isn't real food, this is conjured food. I relay this information to the girls, and they whisper it to Ciel and Yunia to keep them from making a scene.

I was getting used to thinking that all these people are "dead," but now this? The more I think about this town, the creepier it gets. I mean, it's a literal ghost town, and now, we're basically eating "ghost food."

I wonder why the dungeon sent us here, specifically. This isn't exactly what I expected to find in an elven dungeon.

A note from Manasong

Hall of Fame of Patrons

The patrons who support Rupegia shall have their names sung by the bards for they deserve the glory and honor. Their names are:

Oracle Maximillian Hübner.

Prince PreownedFIN.

Lord Andrew Meyers.

Lord Hope.

Lord Samuel Lim.

Lord Bill.

Lord Novgarod.

Lord DJ.

Lord Ashadun.

Lord Michale Erwin.

Lord Enrique Peña Gomez.

Lord Braidborn.

Lord Bakerdea.

Lord Yeeteris Dedmeem.

Lord D4rk Sheep.

Lord Nathan Vanbrunt.

Lord Markus.

Lord Maurice.

Lord Badger.

Lord Krawn.

Lord Remco.

Lord Empyrean.

Lord Asakurà.

Lord Cidant.

Noble Salty Panda.

Noble Yamibomb112.

Noble Mild Fracas.

Noble EESDESESESRDT.

Noble Aclys.

Noble Tyler Mills.

Noble Samuel Steinike.

Leave a rating or a review to help me rise to the top or fix my shameful understanding of prose.

Take a look over my blog where all information of the world of Rupegia will be posted.

Join the Discord and discuss, or rant, or meme, or try and fight me so your waifu gets more screentime.

Become a Patron and read chapters in advance, or read the side-stories, or leave your mark on the story, or help choose the next artwork or the next side-story.

Chapter 72: Grand Prix - Part 2

A note from Manasong

Attention: to conform to the limit of sexual content allowed in a novel, I've censored this chapter. You can look for the uncensored version here.

The symbol "-" denotes a section that got cut for containing sexual content. Also, if paragraphs seem missing, they were also likely censored in an earlier pass where the symbol wasn't used.

Jarn draws the eyes of the patrons by remaining standing behind me, but she's hardly the most attention-catching of us. Aoi using cutlery, the fact that we're the only clothed people here, and our occasional use of Andraste call just as much attention to our group.

Alissa talks with Hukarere while I listen to Ririmu telling us about the history of the town. The Vengeful Spirits appeared after they brought the other urban islands here. It seems that after they removed the petrified people, their spirits became angry and started attacking.

Sometime after that, they realized that the Spirits also attack monsters, so they developed a defense system against the Spirits and surrounded themselves with urban islands, creating a barrier that prevents most monsters from threatening the town.

Another odd thing that I've noticed is the complete lack of children.

"We actually don't need any more urban islands. Our numbers aren't increasing, so we don't need more space, just farmland for a wider variety of food," He says.

"Why aren't your numbers increasing? Didn't Oritiki say that your people have been isolated for a generation already?" I question.

"I… I don't know… We've been isolated for a generation…" He mumbles as he looks at his plate. He freezes for a second, then looks at each of us and continues eating.

I raise an eyebrow and wait for a moment for him to continue, but he doesn't, so I say, "I haven't seen a single child since we came here."

He looks at me confused and asks, "Hm? What?"

"Children. I haven't seen a single child in this town."

"What…?" He asks again, then freezes for a second and continues eating. After he swallows, he looks at us blankly and asks, "What were we talking about, again?"

The girls and I share a look of confusion and suspicion.

"The population of the town hasn't been increasing," Ciel insists.

"Oh, right, yeah, it hasn't. Marshall Hihiriwa wants to send expeditions to explore other towns, but because we don't have a lot of people, Marshall Wahinui said no, and the rest of the High Council is siding with her."

"You said that the town has been isolated for a generation, how many years is that?" Yunia asks.

"Oh, I don't know… a few decades, at least, but no one's been keeping track of that," he answers with a shrug.

"What month is it?" I ask.

His beady little eyes blink blankly, then he says, "I don't know…" He freezes oddly again for a second, then continues eating. After a few mouthfuls, he looks at us and asks, "What were we talking about, again?"

We share another look between us. Even Alissa has stopped talking and is now observing Ririmu, but Hukarere acts as if nothing is wrong and continues happily eating her meal.

"This is… not good," Lina comments through [Bind].

"Let's not push them," I respond, fearful of what might happen. "Let's change the topic. What do the Chimeras do for entertainment around here?" I ask with a smile, then glance at Hukarere.

Ririmu's whiskers twitch, then he smiles and says, "Since only two of you should know how to fly, how about some Wasp racing?"

"Wasp?" I ask.

"Those small triangular ships that escorted you here along with the Celestial Horns. They're a type of airplane called Wasps."

"Airplane?" Roxanne questions.

He chuckles once and says, "You land-dwellers say 'ship' for everything that flies, but the main purpose of a ship is to navigate in the water, while a plane's purpose is to fly."

"Ooh, I see…" Roxanne responds with a nod.

"Well, in actuality, only three of us can't fly," Ciel says with a wry smile.

"I use [Telekinesis] to fly," I say.

"I use [Heart of Fire] to fly, and I can float along slowly due to my race, but I don't think that's the same kind of 'flying' that you're referring to," Roxanne says.

"I can only fly for a short while," Hana says.

Lina's anxiety skyrockets and bleeds through [Bind].

I look at her and smile warmly as I say, "If possible, we'll fly together with you on my lap. I have the [Piloting] skill, so I can fly smoothly enough for you to enjoy it."

Her anxiety is immediately replaced by excitement, and she shyly nods in agreement.

We finish our meal and go out. This town was built in a mountain, and like all towns of this kind, the lower levels are for the poorer people, so we go down to the middle-lower levels of the island, where the South Common Docks are located. This dock is only for civilian transports, so there aren't any merchant ships around here transporting goods, reminding me of an airport. However, their merchant fleet is minimal, anyway, since there's little actual trade going on. Thanks to that, most of their fleet is used for civilian transportation.

The ships around the Dock are almost like buses with wings. But they don't have sails like ours do since they're focused on comfort. The articulated wings allow for smoother control of the ship, contrary to sails, which are designed for cheap propulsion.

"Where are all these people going?" Alissa asks as she sees a long line of wingless Chimeras board a wooden bus.

"The farms. They take quite a lot of magic and care to keep them growing. You land-dwellers have it easy with your large stretches of land where food simply grows when you're not looking," Ririmu says with a snort.

"Well, the Thunderplains need lots of mages to take care of the farms; otherwise, the lightning kills everything," Hana comments.

"The… what? Thunderplains?" Hukarere asks.

She grins and responds, "It's a place that I call Gods' Urinal because their heavenly piss, the rain, falls incessantly over there."

Lina and Ciel facepalm, Yunia looks disgusted, Aoi tilts her head in confusion, and the rest of us laugh and shake our heads in disbelief.

"Isn't… uh… urine bad for crops?" Hukarere asks.

"It sure is, but this is heavenly piss, not normal piss. It's divine and actually makes the plants grow faster than normal if you have a mage protecting them from the lightning."

Ciel sighs, and Lina corrects Hana, "The Thunderplains is named that way because it's a region where thunderstorms happen very frequently. So frequently, in fact, that if you travel without a lightning rod, you'll be struck by the storms. Though it's unlikely for you to be harmed by the lightning since the magical storms are actually quite weak, you'll still be in a lot of pain pretty often.

"The abundance of rain and mana makes the region very bountiful, but you need a specialized farmer mage to take care of the crops. Otherwise, the crops would easily die from too much mana or water."

"Ooh…" Ririmu and Hukarere hum in unison.

"Gods' Urinal…" Ciel mumbles, sounding slightly angry, then she glares at Hana and says, "Please, that's a bit much. Don't say such blasphemies again."

The shameless dragonkin lifts her hand in defeat and smiles as she says, "Alright, alright. But can I at least call the rain 'heaven's piss'? I really hate how much it rains there."

"You-…" Ciel stops herself, then clenches her fist and sighs. "Just don't say it out loud…"

Hana shrugs. "Sounds good to me."

We reach a hangar that seems to have more than three floors full of different types of Wasp airplanes. The smaller Wasps are made of canvas and other leathery materials while the larger ones use wood, but most of them don't have a closed glass cockpit. I remember that Kaatohe's was made of wood and reinforced with strips of metal, so these must be a lot cheaper than the military planes.

We reach a small office, and an old, deer-headed man comes out. His antlers are small and seem soft, the color of his orange fur is faded, and his white fluffy beard looks well-kept. His folded ears quickly rise up when he notices who we are, and I see his rabbit tail wag a few times.

"Oh, Ririmu! You're with the foreigners!" The deer man exclaims.

"Hey, Jonu! I'm acting as a guide. Luckily, the Honored One chose us for this task," the raccoon man replies.

The old man grins and turns to us, "Oh, I see. And you're here for some excitement, I assume?"

"We won't be staying here for long, so we'd like to enjoy something decidedly 'Chimeric,'" I respond with a smile.

"I assure you, nobody flies like we do!" He exclaims and fondles his beard, then he turns to Hana and says, "And before the beautiful dragon over here says anything, I ask that you try it first before you judge it."

Hana opens her eyes wide in surprise, then laughs out loud. "I see that you've met some dragonkin," she says and grins.

Jonu returns the grin. "Hard to miss them, especially in this profession. Now, come over here, let's find the right Wasp for each of you."

Roxanne, Hana, Ciel, and Aoi will use light leather Wasps so that they have better maneuverability and speed at the expense of more mana required to control them. This type doesn't have a cockpit, so they'll use aviator goggles to fly. Alissa and Yunia will be piloting the wooden ones with closed cockpits since they're less experienced with flying. Lina, Gify, and I will use the heaviest one with a closed cockpit because it's the most stable.

The controls are kind of like a modern jet. There's a control stick in the middle for yaw, pitch, and roll; a speed lever on the left that allows us to fly in reverse at full speed; a small power lever below that; and another small stick above the speed lever that controls strafing. Our ship doesn't have a stick for strafing; instead, it has three leavers, making it much more awkward to maneuver than this plane.

And would you look at that, there are Godsblessed seat belts in these Wasps. How did I miss this!

I ask Jarn if she wants to fly a Wasp, but she declines.

"I'm merely a servant. Unless you desire me to learn how to pilot better, there's no need to spend money on me," she says.

"Have you ever seen a summon talk?" Hukarere whispers to Ririmu.

"Nope," he answers and smiles wryly.

"Then consider this an opportunity to not only learn how to pilot better, but also to learn what humanoids find 'enjoyable,'" I respond.

"I understand," Jarn says and nods.

I turn to the doll golems on Ciel and Roxanne's arms and smile. "That goes for both of you, too," I say.

"Understood," they say in unison.

"Oh, wow. The dolls are summons, too! That's sneaky!" Hukarere whisper-shouts, and her dragon tail lazily wags.

"If they can talk, aren't they just like living beings, too?" Ririmu whispers.

"Don't question it," she quickly replies.

I turn to Jonu and say, "I want a Wasp that's slightly difficult to fly so that she can practice."

The man blankly nods and walks over to the Wasps, still stunned by the absurd exchange we just had.

Jarn gets a small one made of wood. The weight helps a bit against rogue currents at the expense of higher mana consumption, but the small size increases the maneuverability, allowing her to push the plane closer to its limits. The two golems will stay with her so that the three of them can have a go at flying it together.

"We'll remain near the hangar," Ted says, and the other golems nod.

"O-okay. I'll… I'll give you some advice," Jonu says, still a little stunned.

Ririmu and Hukarere will be flying canvas and wood planes, but they'll just be nannying us (by that I mean nannying Hana and Roxanne) so that we don't do something stupid.

We pay with our silver, but Jonu has to ask for a weighting tool since their silver coins are around four times lighter than ours. Also, their gold coins have a different composition than ours, so we won't be able to use them without a lot of effort to find the correct conversion.

I get into my Wasp, and Lina sits on my lap, then snuggles with me.

Jonu comes to us and attaches a new seat belt on some hooks in the cockpit so that Lina can also be protected, then he runs off to manage the take-off.

"I might be the first dwarf to willingly choose to fly an airplane," she comments.

I smile gently and kiss her cheek. "I'm proud of you. Being brave like this and facing your fears isn't an easy thing to do."

She hugs my neck and returns the kiss. Her tooth-achingly sweet perfume fills my nose and arouses me. "Having you with me certainly helps," she whispers.

I smirk and turn her chin so that she can see my face. "Or maybe you're just using your fear of heights as an excuse to get some quality time with me."

She smiles like an imp and kisses my lips. "I won't comment on that."

I return the kiss again, but this time, I part her lips with my tongue and search for hers, asking for it to come out and play.

"Young man, you're next!" Jonu yells, forcing us to break off the kiss.

I close the cockpit and activate the plane, then we slowly take off and head towards the back of the hangar, where the air track is set up.

Floating rings of bright yellow light five times as wide as our planes start to glow in the dark sky. The colorful galaxy full of stars and nebulae along with the purple clouds drifting by make the perfect background for us to see the glowing checkpoints. Small blinking lights trace a path between each ring so that we don't miss them.

We line up in front of the first ring and wait for the race to start. I point the strafe stick upwards to counter the force of gravity, allowing us to hover in the air with little effort as long as I can keep the plane level with the horizon.

Ririmu clears his throat and starts speaking through the microphone, "Welcome, everyone, to the first Grand Prix of Whakamutu Mutu! I'm your announcer, Ririmu, and I'm delighted to be here along with my co-host, Hukarere, to narrate this exciting event!"

"It's a pleasure to be here with you, fellow colleague. This event is one-of-a-kind, so you'd better keep your eyes glued to your screen, or else you might miss something amazing!" Hukarere exclaims.

"Now, we'll announce the schedule. We'll begin with four free laps so that the competitors can become familiar with the track. After that comes a lap of honor for Little Lina to fully experience the freedom of flying, then the first race starts: The Sly Fox and The Golden Princess will duel in a beginner's race. After that, we'll get to the main event! The Red Devil, The Laughing Demon, The Dark Angel, and the Azurite Beast will compete in a race that'll awaken the competitive soul in each of us!"

"Indeed my dear Ririmu, the race hasn't even started yet, and you can see the burning anger fueling the main competitors. I don't know lip-reading or Andraste, but there's no need for either of them to understand that the Devil and the Demon are yelling some heavy profanities at each other!"

Ririmu's voice gains a tone of mischief as he says, "If you want a grudge match, you can bet that the Devil and the Demon are going to make things very exciting."

"But remember that the Angel has a history with the Devil and that the Azurite is young and has something to prove! Even in the beginner's match, the pride of the Fox and the Princess won't let them take it lightly."

"There's excitement all around for the fans of competitive flying!" Ririmu exclaims and laughs out loud.

"I'll say this again: keep your eyes glued to your screen, or else you might miss something amazing! Oh… it seems that the competitors are ready."

"We'll be analyzing how they approach this track. The way that they use these free laps will tell a great deal about their personalities and the way they pilot."

"How are you feeling?" I ask Lina.

"The mana is thin here, so [Stonebody] is losing power, and that makes me feel weak. At least on the ship, the [Fly] gem leaked a lot of mana," she responds.

"Scared?" I ask.

She pouts cutely. "I hate feeling weak, but I'm not scared."

I smile sadistically, and immediately she regrets saying that.

This [Fly] gem works in a special way. At full power, the gem creates an envelope around the plane, protecting it from drag and giving it super-maneuverability without the risk of stalling, allowing an almost inertial means of flight, but it's inefficient mana-wise. The proper way to use this plane is to only use half power so that the envelope weakens enough to allow the aerodynamics of the plane to have their normal effect on flight. So, there are two modes of flight: one is almost-inertial, and the other is plane-like, and being able to use either of these two modes allows me to pull off some neat tricks.

Hukarere gives the signal to go, and I push the speed and power levers to the max.

"AAAAH!" Lina shrieks and chokes me with her thin arms.

A small counter appears near the controls as we cross through the rings. This helps prevent cheating since, if we miss one, everyone will find out when we compare the counters.

We start with a long straightaway that gently turns to the left. I switch to plane mode and use our momentum to keep us moving forward at little cost to our mana.

As the most experienced pilot, the girls will follow after me first before going off on their own. Roxanne and Ciel have only flown in straight lines for the most part, so they don't know much about racing tactics. Alissa knows how to pilot the ship but only the strafing, and she doesn't have a good grasp of aerodynamics.

Suddenly, the straightaway bends into a hairpin that forces me to slow down a lot and make a delicate, banked turn. This must be a beginner's trap to get them to fly into it with too much speed and shoot off the track.

After that, there's a corkscrew downwards to make us dizzy, followed by a long curve that shoots vertically upwards, forcing me to switch to inertial mode. The curve continues after a short stretch, which would force us to fly upside-down, so I roll the plane before the curve starts, and we end it flying right-side-up.

Then there's another hairpin, so I switch back to plane mode. This curve is much easier to maneuver since we aren't flying at high speed. Next comes a downwards winding path that I have to cross as if I'm in a slalom. The swaying makes me giggle, but Lina doesn't enjoy it as much as I do.

We get another long, downwards drop followed by a tight curve forward, then a wide, upwards corkscrew that's designed to be traversed at a high speed, making us suffer from some strong G's.

After that, there's a long, upwards curve that straightens out and transitions into a loop that ends in a short shot back to the finish line.

"How're you feeling?" I ask Lina.

She frowns but doesn't really seem to be unhappy. "I'm okay, I guess… I think I'll have to use [Spirit Of Gaia] to keep myself from getting dizzy after all that spinning."

"You'd better, because I'm going to push this plane to the limits," I say with a sadistic grin.

"Oh, no…" She moans.

"Oh, yes," I reply and cackle.

I speed us up to the max in inertial mode as we barrel down the long straightaway, then switch back to plane mode. The airplane starts to shake due to the turbulence as we rapidly approach the glowing yellow rings.

The hairpin arrives, and I switch to inertial, then go neutral speed, spin the plane 180º degrees, and push the lever back to full again. Like a rocket performing a retrograde burn, we slow down and lose all our forward momentum as I drift the plane sideways. When we start accelerating again, we've already crossed through the hairpin, so we smoothly start the downwards corkscrew, and I switch back to plane mode. Our slow speed helps me find the perfect angle for the banked turn.

My organs are compressed as my body feels the pressure from the high G's of both the burn and the turn, but neither Lina nor I succumb to the force.

We reach the upwards curve, and I overshoot instead of doing a retrograde burn since this part doesn't have any rings that I need to cross through. Then I roll the ship and switch to inertial to do a burn while I drift sideways so that I stop at the apex of the curve, right where the ring is.

I make a tight, banked turn at the next hairpin, then I switch back to inertial mode and abuse the strafing stick to help with the following slalom. I fly like I'm going through a slalom as I imagine the plane making drifting noises.

Déjà vu!

Gih!

Keep singing, I love that song.

As Gify floods my mind with nostalgic memories, I switch to plane mode, then dive and roll. I switch back to inertial and pulse a short burn to reduce my speed, then I switch to plane mode and easily level out the plane again as we cross through the ring.

Next comes the wide corkscrew, so I ignore the blinking lights and go directly for the rings. I maintain a constant, upwards climb in a stretched corkscrew, straining myself to control the plane as I manage a complex angle with a constant roll, pitch, yaw, and strafe.

After that, comes the long, upwards curve, which allows me to go full speed ahead and only suffer mildly from the G-force.

There are only three rings here, so I could just ignore the loop ahead and go up off the suggested path, but that might cause a crash. I significantly slow down the plane so that I can make the tight loop, then accelerate again at full speed towards the finish line, and it shakes from the turbulence.

We complete another free lap this way, and the girls struggle to perform my maneuvers.

"Would you like to pilot for a lap?" I ask Lina.

"Uh…" She frowns, and her anxiety rises again.

"I'll be here with you and guide you in case you make a mistake."

She nods, and her bangs sway. "Okay."

I kiss her neck and release the controls. She immediately takes the large stick, but her hand trembles a little, making the plane shake with it.

"Easy, there. You need a strong hand and a calm heart to hover," I say.

"Gih," Gify helps out and turns on her massage.

"Ah…" Lina moans cutely, and her anxiety fades a bit.

As the girls catch up, we start moving forward and gently fly along in inertial mode. Lina has some grasp of aerodynamics, so we lower the power of the ship, allowing her to try out some maneuvers.

-

- The ride becomes rougher and shakier as her breath starts to become haggard with excitement -.

-

Her heart beats faster and faster, but she keeps her concentration on flying. Through stubbornness, she regains control of the ship, reducing the shaking -.

-

"Getting excited?" I whisper in her ear, and she - tries to hide her grin from me.

I open up the cockpit, allowing the cold wind to hit us in the face, and I laugh out loud. The excitement and adrenaline will keep us warm. I take control of the plane, then I stop it and make it hover.

I unbutton her dress and let it fall to my lap, exposing her perfect, bare skin to the world -.

"I dedicate this Honor Lap to my Little Lina. All I want is for her to feel the excitement and freedom of flight! Now, let us begin!" I yell -.

A note from Manasong

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Chapter 72: Grand Prix - Part 3

A note from Manasong

Attention: to conform to the limit of sexual content allowed in a novel, I've censored this chapter. You can look for the uncensored version here.

The symbol "-" denotes a section that got cut for containing sexual content. Also, if paragraphs seem missing, they were also likely censored in an earlier pass where the symbol wasn't used.

"Would you look at that, Ririmu!" Hukarere exclaims and nearly jumps out of her seat. "Wolf Ryder blasts off the very moment that the 'go' signal is given. The Four try to keep up, but the difference in skill between them is clear."

"The Duo isn't even trying; you can see that they're just observing how the others are flying," Ririmu calmly analyzes.

"Since they're the most inexperienced of them all; you can certainly say that they've made a smart choice. There's no time limit, so they can take as long as they want to finish those Free Laps."

Ririmu nods, making his ears bob. "But they're still using up their mana to stay afloat."

Hukarere nods, but her straightened ears don't bob. "Hovering is the least mana-intensive action they could take."

"Hopefully, they're taking their mana pools into consideration."

"Let's check up on them before they start their race, then."

Ririmu smiles, showing his small white fangs. "Sounds like a great idea, Hukarere."

Hukarere's ears twitch as something catches her attention. "Look at that, Ririmu, Wolf is using the plane at half-power."

Ririmu crosses his arms, looking pleased. "So, he immediately realized the advantage of the Wasp?! Incredible! I can say that he isn't someone who should be lightly challenged to a race."

Hukarere's leathery lizard tail sways lazily, showing satisfaction. "It seems that his talents go deeper than we thought!"

"You can say that again, Hukarere. Of all people, you can say that again…" Ririmu says in a teasing tone.

Her voice gains an edge from her annoyance as she asks, "What ever do you mean by that, Ririmu?"

Ririmu laughs out loud and exclaims, "Nothing at all!" -He suddenly jumps in his seat and points forward- "Now, look! The Four are managing to catch up to Wolf!"

Hukarere regains her composure and becomes serious again. "It seems that Wolf isn't the only fast learner. They may simply be copying his maneuvers, but they're doing excellently for first-timers."

Ririmu also regains his composure and mirrors her serious demeanor. "The Devil and The Beast are wing and wing, boldly trying to fly at full speed. Their flying may seem sloppy, but you can't deny that it's effective."

Her angled eyes suddenly open wide. "Incredible! They switched to plane mode and are now gliding at low power. Not even Wolf went for such a bold maneuver."

Ririmu slaps his forehead with his hand, but his fluffy fur prevents it from making any sound. "Oh…! Maybe that was for a good reason; they missed the ring!"

She hums in understanding and nods. "Hm. Lesson learned, I believe. If you don't fly boldly during the Free Laps, are you even trying?"

He glances at her, giving her a gentle smile. "Indeed, Hukarere. Bold is the way to go, but The Angel and the Demon have caught up now. They even switched to plane mode, too. The Four's flying skills are improving by the second!"

Her face instantly shifts into one of deep concern. "Watch out for that takeover! These ships aren't made of wood or metal, they will break if you bump against someone else."

"The Angel and the Demon are spending the most time in inertial mode, but at least they have the most stable flight. Unfortunately for them, if the Beast and the Devil manage to get their planes under control, they'll be left behind during the real race."

Hukarere nods and crosses her arms, pushing up her pale breasts. "Being too bold can be a bad idea, but right now, it's exactly what they should focus on." Then she leans forward, suddenly very excited. "Oh, my Gods! He's doing it again! Wolf Ryder has gone full throttle!"

Ririmu claps in excitement. "This is what boldness should look like! He has no fear of blacking out; he's doing the corkscrew like a Chamebirb dodging its hunter, and then he follows it up with diving like a Dragolite going for its prey."

She excitedly points to the Four. "Look at the flames, Ririmu! The Beast is angry, and it's chasing after the Devil like a rampaging Tarakona! And what is that gaze?! The Angel and the Demon certainly aren't happy about being left behind. It looks like they've switched tactics and are now blazing down the track in plane mode."

He snorts and asks, "Has the competition already started? I haven't seen so much emotion in the Free laps before!"

Hukarere suddenly shifts her focus to something that catches her attention. "The Fox and the Princess have finally started to move! They're going quite fast for beginners; they seem confident in their ability to fly."

Ririmu becomes serious again as he begins his analysis, "I can see that, Hukarere. Their skills are much sloppier than the Four, but they aren't shying away from using either the medium power or low power modes of the planes. They've realized that their understanding of flight mechanics is poor and are flying solely with their intuition and grit."

She smiles warmly as she says, "Such innocent flying! It's like watching Dragolite hatchlings play-fighting, except that they have the intelligence and cunning of adults!"

"The tellers must be quite happy with today's event; there's no clear favorite."

"Having a well-defined divide in skills certainly allows for a wider variety of styles, but once in a while, an exciting and unpredictable match-up like this one is perfect to break up the monotony."

Ririmu nods emphatically. "You can say that again, Hukarere."

"Would you look at that, the Duo is behaving quite competitively already."

"Yet you can see how different their styles are. The Fox seems to be making quite a lot of quick maneuvers. I wonder what her 'Dexterity' and 'Speed' are."

She glances at him and gives him a smile. "She's a werefox, Ririmu. The fox-type Chimeras are certainly the nimblest of our soldiers."

Ririmu nods repeatedly. "Yes, yes, and they're also the most sly. Now, the Princess is betting on a harmonious flight. Her Wasp may seem sluggish and slow to turn, but she's using the aerodynamics of her plane quite well."

"Back to the Four, it seems like the Devil is going to finish first, followed by the Angel, who is closely followed by the now much calmer Beast, and lastly the Demon."

"The Angel is finishing in an unexpected position. I must say that she seems like the safest bet right now," Ririmu analyzes.

"The Fox wins the Free Laps, but it seems that their competitive spirit took a hit once Wolf went full throttle."

"They didn't let rivalries get in the way and used their time to explore the capabilities of their airplanes."

"Certainly the wisest of Wolf's wives."

Ririmu grins. "Fans of the Dark Angel would strongly disagree with that."

"Fans of any wife would disagree with that."

He grins. "Except for the Devil's. Anyway, the wives are lining up for the Honor Lap. It should start at any moment, now."

"Let's give a round of applause to Little Lina, Wolf's dwarven slave, who, despite her great fear of heights, still took control of his ship and flew a lap by her-…"

"Oh! Is that - what I think what it is?!" Ririmu interrupts her and lets his mouth hang open in disbelief.

Hukarere's dragon tail perks up in alertness as her pointy ears twitch. "Yes! And - how mighty it is!"

"Ooh…! - While flying!"

She laughs out loud. "Hahah! Now that's a way to celebrate Little Lina."

"Well, this is what makes Honor Laps so interesting, you never know how the eccentric pilots would choose to 'honor' something."

"I can say that I'm thoroughly impressed with this Honor Lap."

"Now, tell me, Hukarere, considering her small size, is her expression one of pain or pleasure?"

"Why not both?" She asks innocently.

"Why not both, indeed." Ririmu laughs.

"And would you look at that: six envious pairs of eyes are following Wolf."

"You can add a seventh," he casually comments.

"What?" She tilts her head and looks at him.

"What?" He mimics her, then grins.

She narrows her eyes dangerously and growls lowly, displaying her dangerous fangs. "Your teasing will come back to bite you in the ass one day."

Ririmu gently smiles. "If it comes from someone as beautiful as you, then I'll be quite happy."

"Enough of that. Look, they're about to finish."

"Finish, indeed."

"A healthy amount - is sent flying. Too bad nobody is there to receive it."

"They don't probably don't know about Supreme Divine Waimarie because they're foreigners, so let us follow his ritual ourselves."

They close their eyes and pay in unison, "O Dark Void, we offer this - offering to help your insatiable hunger abate. Please accept this refuse and save us from having it come back upon our heads one day."

They open their eyes, and Hukarere announces with a beautiful smile, "And now that the Honor Lap is complete, let's get ready for the first race: the Sly Fox versus the Golden Princess."

"You're too arrogant, Golden Princess," the Sly Fox solemnly says.

"Hohoh! How presumptuous of you, Sly Fox," the Golden Princess responds with a sneer, then gives her a smug smile. "You have no harmony within your heart; you don't have the talent to fly."

The Fox's beautiful orange eyes narrow dangerously. "I've flown with Master for days on end. If I didn't have the talent within me, I wouldn't be able to synchronize with him so perfectly."

The Princess snorts. "Borrowed talent is just that: borrowed."

The Fox shows her fangs threateningly. "I'll make you eat those words!"

The Princess stern blue eyes glare daggers at the Fox's. "Let's see you try!"

The two proud rivals glare at each other, two prideful beings whose entire existences are based on their ability to survive an environment fraught with peril and strife. Their cores are made of competitiveness and ruthlessness, for the world has no mercy for the indecisive and weak of heart.

They look forward to the prize: to make the one they love proud of them. Win or lose, if they give anything short of their best, then they've failed in their reason for existence. They must show everyone their power, skill, and fitness. They must show how well they can survive any challenge. This isn't just a duel, it's a mating ritual.

For a moment, they're all in sync. Their sweaty palms grip the flight stick strongly. Their index fingers tremble as they hold the strafe stick upwards while the rest of their hand hovers over the speed lever, itching to pull it to full throttle. Their hearts pump blood faster with the adrenaline, and their breaths grow heavier. Their pupils narrow as they concentrate. Their minds hone their focus on accomplishing one thing and one thing only: to win.

Five laps, five minutes, one goal.

"GO!" Hukarere gives the signal, and they each force the speed lever forward.

The planes become blurs as they instantly reach their max speed. With caution thrown to the wind, speed is all that matters.

They reach the first hairpin at the same time, but their paths immediately diverge. The Fox goes for a retrograde burn while The Princess follows the curve in plane mode. Both of them suffer from the high G's, but they endure it like true warriors.

The pressure only continues as they pass the corkscrew, then the upwards curve. They reach a straight vertical climb and finally breathe out in relief, but it only lasts for a short moment as the curve continues again, forcing them upside-down, which they correct with a quick roll.

Another hairpin arrives, but this one is maneuvered at a low speed, so they don't feel too much force. Then the slalom comes and The Fox starts to overtake The Princess, whose style slows her down.

They gain impressive speed from the downwards drop, then The Fox shoots off of the course, missing the curve because she didn't slow down enough. This allows for The Princess to catch up as The Fox recovers.

The pressure from the G-force comes back again with a lot more strength as they pass through a tight corkscrew. Their skills waver, and both of them nearly lose control, but The Princess gains the advantage.

They barrel along at full-speed towards a loop. The Princess slows down to be able to traverse it in plane mode, but The Fox pushes her plane to the limit and performs a retrograde burn, then crosses through the loop at a high speed, passing The Princess.

They reach the finish line and complete their first lap. Their flying was full of mistakes, but also full of recoveries, showing their unwavering grit.

They soon reach the slalom again and look at each other. Their brows are sweating from the tension and effort of resisting the G-force, yet their gazes are those of calm warriors in battle.

The Fox's style proves to be faster as she slowly leaves The Princess behind, prompting the other to be even more bold. The Princess starts to gain on The Fox in the third lap, who notices her approaching and tightens her focus, decreasing her mistakes. Their ships creak, and their bodies protest as they push themselves to the limit.

They reach the loop for the fourth time, and The Princess decides to maneuver it at full-speed. She groans as her vision darkens, then a loud snap resounds through the air, and everyone gasps.

Her plane's left wing has snapped, but remains connected to the hull by tufts of wood fibers. She can still fly in inertial mode, but not in plane mode anymore.

The Fox continues on, unaware of what just happened. That's for the best as The Princess would feel shamed if The Fox slowed down for her.

The Fox finishes her fifth lap over fifteen seconds ahead of The Princess, who manages to finish, too, still hanging on to her pride.

The stern eyes of The Sly Fox look down on The Golden Princess as she guides her plane towards the other.

"You have talent," The Princess states solemnly.

The Fox nods, and both of their faces soften, allowing gentle smiles to bloom.

"A gut-wrenching performance from both of them! You could feel The Fox's extreme determination in winning, and the Princess' blinding pride that forbid her from quitting!" Hukarere exclaims and wipes away a tear.

"Indeed, gut-wrenching. I wish that they were allowed a few more days to practice. Just think how their styles would evolve as they fix their mistakes," Ririmu says.

"And their rivalry. Imagine if they could regularly practice against each other."

"What about friendship?" She asks innocently.

"The best relationships are both a rivalry and a friendship at the same time." Then they share a knowing smile.

"But of course." She nods, then her voice regains the seriousness from before as she says, "Now, let's begin the final event! The race of the Four: The Red Devil, The Laughing Demon, The Dark Angel, and the Azurite Beast!"

"Their planes are lighter, which makes them faster, but also weaker. It'll take a lot more skill to properly control them and not rip them apart, but they can achieve so much more with these planes when compared to the wooden versions. This is the reason why the featherweight class is the most loved of them all! It's so much more unpredictable!"

"Let's pay attention to the pilots. They're finishing their preparations."

The Red Devil looks to her side and smirks towards the Laughing Demon.

The Laughing Demon stays true to her name and laughs out loud, then grins in return, but there's a dangerous glint in her eyes. "Ohohohoh. Do you think you can intimidate me? I've seen all of your weak spots, sexual or otherwise, so you'd better believe that I'll exploit them!"

"Exploit them, how? This is a race, not a battle of wits," the Dark Angel states as she observes her opponents.

The Demon turns her bewitching gaze to the holy Angel. "If you believe that, then you've already lost," she whispers, then giggles mischievously.

"Never take any battle lightly," The Red Devil growls.

"This is a battle? It feels more like mating to me," The Azurite Beast says.

"It's always about sex," The Demon says, then giggles again.

"I can't deny that," The Angel says and massages her eyes, then dons her aviator glasses again.

Mischief, Pride, Love, Vigor. Four different warriors with four different driving forces at their cores. Their colorful personalities clash in a spectacular fashion. Be it for a mating call, dominance, sportsmanship, or just for fun, they all have a strong desire to win, and to make the others lose.

They hear a low beep.

They give their Master one last look. A wink, a kiss, a smile, a grin.

Another beep.

They face forward and clear their minds.

Another beep.

Their hands grip their speed levers harder. Their minds fill with thoughts about the battle soon to begin.

A high pitched beep resounds, and the planes nearly break from the sudden acceleration as they all force their speed levers to full.

Two blurs cross the hairpin without slowing down. The other two perform a burn before following after them.

They make it past the downwards corkscrew in record time, then they all overshoot above the upwards curve.

They're all possessed by competitive spirits, but their nervous and overeager hearts have clouded their judgments.

They scramble to recover, then resume their mad dash through the course.

The slalom soon comes, and the Devil turns her plane sideways, then uses the instant-acceleration of the forward lever to maneuver forward and backward while still drifting, easily passing through the slalom in an instant.

The Demon ignores the slalom completely, preferring to pass through all the rings on one side at ludicrous speed, then looping back to get the others. Her technique is surprisingly effective since the best characteristic of their planes is their high maximum speed in a straight line.

The Beast starts to get left behind, her dragon hands too awkward to control the plane perfectly, so she starts to use [Telekinesis] to compensate.

The Angel maintains the most stable style, catching up whenever the Devil shoots off course. Her gaze is always on the Demon, though.

The Laughing pilot is considered to be the most dangerous by some. You never know what she'll do, and that frightens the Angel.

Their planes get closer and closer as their styles are too similar to one another. The Angel gets more and more uncomfortable as a sense of danger creeps up along her spine.

Suddenly, the Demon flies upwards and slows down. Her plane nearly hits the Angel, who has to dodge out of the way.

The Dark Angel blinks and looks to the side, she just missed the ring that she needed to pass through.

"I'll hit you next time!" The Angel yells as she's left behind.

"Ohohohoh! You'll just boost me forward, then!" The Demon laughs and returns the taunt.

The Beast calmly passes by the Angel with a cheeky grin on her dragonic face.

The Devil recovers and crosses through the ring at the same time as the Demon. They both get surprised at the other's presence and dodge, flying off course.

"Watch where you're going, lizard!" The Demon taunts.

"Bitch! I'll grab your tail and hurl you away if you get in front of me again!" The Devil returns the taunt.

"Try me! I'll slap your face with my tail!"

Their ships nearly collide again, and both of them glare angrily at the other.

"Move, bitch! Get outta my way!" The Devil taunts.

The slalom comes up again, and they fly close to each other.

The Devil sees something coming towards her. Her [Battlefield Perception] triggers, and she pulls back on the speed lever.

A dagger-like tail passes by, close to her face. The way it cuts through the air causes a dangerous-sounding whistle.

"RAAAAH! I'LL FUCK YOU UP, BITCH!" The Devil grows red with anger and lets her wings grow.

"HEEEY! NO WINGS!" The Angel complains as she struggles to not get left behind.

"FUCK YOU!" The Devil responds and flaps her wings.

She suddenly feels a dull pain in the bones of her wings, then she feels the mana of a spell hit her. Someone just cast [Wind Hammer] on her wing, and she won't be having any of that.

She pulls back on the speed lever, slowing down. The Beast passes by, grinning from scale to scale. Then The Red Devil hears a yelp, and a blur passes by the corner of her eye.

"Gotcha!" She exclaims happily, then flaps her wings again.

A [Fire Arrow] flies towards the Beast. She catches it with her hand, then crushes the mana construct as she growls in anger.

"NAHAHAHA! YOU'LL NEVER CATCH U-…!" The Laughing Demon's taunt is interrupted by her [Battlefield Perception] triggering again.

She dodges to the side and misses her ring at the hairpin, then The Beast passes by, missing her by a hair. She grumbles, feeling angry at someone using her maneuver against her, but then gloats as she predicts how her opponent will shoot off the course.

The Laughing Demon's predictions are shattered as The Beast turns her plane vertical, greatly reducing its speed. Then she switches to airplane mode and effortlessly completes the extremely tight curve.

The Demon grumbles and returns to the course. She looks back and sees the Devil and The Angel trying to slam against each other while preserving their planes.

The Demon laughs, then throws a [Fireball] between both planes, making them catch fire.

"BIIIIIITCH!" The Devil yells in anger and spews fire, but it never reaches the Demon.

"BOTH OF YOU! CHEA~~~~TE~RS!" The Angel bellows, incensed.

They lose precious seconds extinguishing the flames on their wings, allowing the Demon to gain some distance again.

Suddenly, both The Devil and The Demon stop their aircraft as they're blinded by The Angel's divine light.

"Ohohoh! Now look who's cheating!" The Demon taunts, but no response comes.

When their eyesight recovers, they notice that the Angel has long since flown past them.

"NOOO~!" They scream in unison and push their planes to the max again.

The Devil continues cheating and uses her wings to boost her speed again. She starts to gain on the others, passing the Demon, then the Angel, and finally The Beast, reaching the leading position.

She slows down for a hairpin, then she feels a magical breeze pass by, followed by the heat of flames, then she's blinded again, and finally, she hears an ominous sound: a snap.

Her eyesight recovers, only for her to see her ship in taters as it burns.

"Cheater, no cheating!" The Angel taunts as she passes by.

The race ends soon after. First place goes to The Azurite Beast, then The Dark Angel, then The Laughing Demon, and last place goes to The Red Devil.

"Gentlemen and Gentlewomen! We have the two winners of the first Grand Prix of Whakamutu Mutu! The Sly Fox and The Azurite Beast!" Ririmu announces.

"Let's give them the applause they deserve while they complete their victory lap!"

Ririmu claps and makes his final analysis, "An incredible victory for the Azurite Beast. Seemingly ignored by the rest of the pilots that were too busy flinging spells at one another, she quietly sneaked past them all and stole the victory from under The Demon's and The Angel's nose. This was their race to lose, so they only have themselves to blame, unfortunately."

"The Devil did as predicted and sowed chaos, but her miscalculation proved fatal as all the other pilots then targeted her. She certainly did make things much more interesting, though."

"Indeed, Hukarere. I've never seen a dragonkin use their own wings to help them fly a Wasp. Truly a novel tactic that I feel will soon be banned in the following Grand Prix's because it is simply too advantageous for certain races with wings."

"Perhaps a new class of racers will emerge, one focused on a balance between combat and flight."

"An interesting idea. Hopefully, someone will leave here today with the inspiration to revolutionize air racing!"

"We can only hope… Anyway, I am Hukarere, and this is my co-host, Ririmu. It's with a heavy heart that I announce that this event has now come to an end. I hope that you all enjoyed it as much as we did."

"I certainly did. Until next time."

"Bye!"

A note from Manasong

Hall of Fame of Patrons

The patrons who support Rupegia shall have their names sung by the bards for they deserve the glory and honor. Their names are:

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Chapter 73: Concubine - Part 1

A note from Manasong

Attention: to conform to the limit of sexual content allowed in a novel, I've censored this chapter. You can look for the uncensored version here.

The symbol "-" denotes a section that got cut for containing sexual content. Also, if paragraphs seem missing, they were also likely censored in an earlier pass where the symbol wasn't used.

We make our way back to the hangar, where the golems are still practicing with Jonu coaching them. He wasn't very pleased with the damage we caused to the ships, but he knows very well how to repair them since this isn't an uncommon occurrence.

We apologize and pay for the repairs, then we take a small break so that we can discuss the girls' "rewards." We sit near the walkway of the hangar so that we can have a better view of the galaxy-like sky and colored clouds as we drink our tea.

Aoi takes her reward right now - I drink some not-earl-gray and eat a fluffy not-vanilla cake that Alissa prepared.

"Wolfy, can we go naked?" Hana asks.

"Underwear only, but nothing transparent," I immediately reply.

"You should go naked -," Roxanne requests of me with a mischievous smile.

I look around, and the girls shrug, but Lina and Hana seem to like the idea.

Our guides each raise an eyebrow in confusion. Soon after, Aoi takes a break to eat her pie, and I use my [Soul Manipulation] - to show them what I can do.

Ririmu falls into a fit of laughter, but Hukarere remains quiet and apprehensive.

"What… how did you do that?" She asks.

"It's just a spell similar to [Materialization], it's not real, but I can still feel pleasure through it," I answer.

"Amazing…" She mutters as she stares intensely -.

The girls start taking off their clothes, but Ciel and Lina hesitate.

Ririmu can't stop himself from discreetly glancing at Hana's perfectly sculpted body. This makes me feel a mix of jealousy but also pride. He's too afraid to stare and offend me, but he's also entranced by her beauty.

I take my clothes off, and although my body doesn't have impressive muscles, the scars quickly become something that Hukarere shows some interest in.

Impatient with their hesitation, Alissa undresses Lina with a smirk. At the same time, Hana undresses Ciel -. The sight - is just too stimulating for Ririmu, making him turn around to avoid - it.

After this short break, we wander through the town. Being so exposed makes us feel a little chilly, so we use simple robes to keep the cold away. The few humanoids and less furred Chimeras also do that -.

I still don't have the courage to walk around naked -.

I'm already used to going to the beach while only wearing swimming trunks, but the girls don't have that kind of experience -. Also, underwear is different from bikinis and swimming trunks; it feels so much more "personal," enhancing the experience.

Our guides take us to one of their public parks. It's a small and dark grove where people go to have some private time with nature.

Gify absolutely loves it. The adorable city nature spirit misses the green scenery of the forest, the place where half of her soul likely came from, but that doesn't mean that she misses the actual life that exists inside a forest. Gify seriously reminds me of those suburbanites who want to "reconnect" with nature and do things like yoga under a tree. Not that that's "bad," but there's always that weird mix of spiritualism and relaxation activities that puts me off.

Gih.

Nah, you're ten times more like a "Karen" than a mom.

Her beak deforms into a pout.

Giih!

Oi, don't start.

"This place used to be filled with nature spirits, but after the Calamity, they also disappeared," Ririmu comments, then sighs.

"One of them touched me once, but the fluffy little bugger simply disappeared one day," Hukarere sadly adds.

"Gih."

"Oh, that's unfortunate; we use the Vengeful Spirits to protect ourselves…" Ririmu says in a sad tone.

Nature spirits are extremely sensitive to aggression, so they'll never go anywhere close to something like a Vengeful Spirit. Though, I believe the reason that there aren't any nature spirits here is because we're inside a dungeon, since that means that there aren't enough spirits of dead animals or humanoids for a nature spirit to form.

Alissa is quite pleased with the dark, mossy grove. She misses the musky smell of nature and the quiet of the forest from her birthplace. The High Forest is nice, but she always feels like an ant near the ginormous trees, so she prefers "normal" forests like this one.

Hana starts retelling some stories of our travels very truthfully. Yep, she's totally, completely faithful to the truth. While Hana boasts about our adventures, our guides aren't as well-traveled as we are, obviously, so their stories aren't quite as epic, but a life in the military will get you many, many stories about the craziest things you could imagine, which they share with us.

"He almost cleaned his mouth with his personal [Beam] magic tool!" Ririmu exclaims and facepalms. "I've seen people who are terrible at [Sense Mana], but he must be in the negatives with that skill. How can you mix up an annihilation tool with a cleaning tool?!"

"Even the drill master was stunned; he saw someone almost commit suicide," Hukarere says and snickers.

"Please tell me that they changed the training schedule after that?" Ciel asks as she massages her eyes.

"Not quite…" Hukarere answers and snickers again.

"Let's just say that no magic tools are given to the recruits anymore during their endurance training," Ririmu says.

Ciel sighs and says, "Honestly, that's as good as a town's guard is going to get."

"Your opinion of them is quite low," Yunia says, slightly surprised.

"I spent most of my life near them, healing their wounds, and not all of them were from battle," Ciel says and starts chuckling, giving up when faced with the stupidity of humanoids.

"You'd better start elaborating on that," Roxanne says and hands her a cup of not-wine.

Now it's her turn to tell stories. She's certainly faithful to the truth, but the excitement from her tales isn't as intense as Hana's. It makes me torn when I try to decide who's the better bard. Heh, perhaps it's neither.

"I knew it. You land-dwellers really need to learn how to cast [Fly] like us," Ririmu says with a toothy grin.

Ciel shakes her head while smiling and says, "To be fair, you people need to learn how to fly just to survive. It's not every day that the watchmen get drunk on the ramparts and decide to play horsey."

"One thing is definitely true for every race: soldiers are no better than children," Hana says and downs her cup.

"I think I once heard something like this: the most dangerous weapon… is a bored soldier," I say, and they nod in agreement.

The sun starts to set, and the time for us to leave arrives. We return to the Golden Docks and make our way to our ship, then, soon after, Oritiki comes to meet with us.

-. I'm not sure who I want more, her, or Hukarere. Though it's quite obvious that the wolf woman is interested, I'm not sure about Miss Fun Bags.

She walks along the retractable bridge, then jumps onto the deck, making me smile. "I see you had fun," she comments.

"We're grateful for your choice of guides. They've served us well," I say and nod respectfully.

"It felt more like a day off than anything," Hukarere comments and grins. Ririmu snorts, and she raises an eyebrow at him.

"Well, then. My duties for the day are complete," Oritiki says and walks forward. I motion to a chair, and she pulls out her personal blanket, then sits. "As you may have noticed, we don't have inns here anymore, but you can rest at my estate for as long as you wish."

I smile gently and say, "We'd be delighted to, but we have a base in an islet not too far away from here that we have to return to. We'll spend the night there, then retrieve our equipment. But we'll gladly accept your offer tomorrow."

No fucking way am I missing our meeting with Osaria and Klein.

Oritiki raises her eyebrows in surprise. "Oh… well, how're you going to do that?"

"I have a spell that lets me teleport us to a number of places that I've been to before," I answer.

"Ah, the Domum specialty."

I nod. "Precisely."

She crosses her arms, and her tone becomes a little more serious. "Can you… teleport us to the Sky Lands?"

"I'm afraid that it's too far. It would cost many times more mana than I currently have."

She relaxes and nods gently, a little disappointed. "I see. Nothing magical is truly free." She chuckles and looks at us warmly.

That's a mage's saying.

I stand up and give her a quick bow, then I say, "We must be going, Dame Oritiki. Packing up our camp will take a while."

She and the guides get up, then nod.

"Until tomorrow, Ryder family," she says and leaves.

The guides give us a short bow. I share a look with Hukarere, and her tail sways gently, then they leave too.

Tomorrow, I'll have to prepare an opportunity for us to get "closer."

"Let me do that," Alissa says in my mind space.

I poke her soul, and she squeals in delight.

We watch them leave, then I store the golems and open a [Gate] back to our home in Goloria.

Bath is quick because Klein and Osaria are about to reach Campo Verdante, so we don't even play around, a first in quite a while.

Now that we're fully cleaned and smell absolutely pretty, we quickly enter the Eternal Gate Network, then cross through two gates to Campo Verdante. We exit into the Lord's Hall of the Nobles' Quarters.

We go outside, and I experience the freshest air that I've ever breathed. There are tree-buildings as far as the eye can see, spread over the hill that the city was built upon. The low-rise of the houses gives us an open view of the blue sky and the setting sun, which is still roasting the simple red brick of the streets with its heat.

Tanned silver elves are walking everywhere, calmly going about their day, only to have it disrupted when they see the slightly flamboyant ensemble of our group walking by. For them, it's rare for so many different races to be together in a single place, so we must be quite the attraction. Also, we're all wearing our best clothes, which are fit for a Lord, making us stand out. Then there's Aoi, who's proudly walking beside us in her large size, like the cherry on a cake.

After spending so long staring at beautiful, fully nude people, looking at these semi-nude elves is actually a bit stimulating. The secret to sensuality is not in exposing the interesting bits, but in how cleverly you can hide them.

We ask for directions and head to the east gate. Outside of the Nobles' Quarters, we see a very humble town, smaller than Ostodos and Ostoum. Someone like Root Lord Ricardo would rule over a town like this.

As the last of the sunlight fades, we reach the wall. It's made from thick red bricks and red mortar. It's imperial, but the walls of the Nobles' Quarters are made of the usual black elven bark-wall.

We see a few soldiers wearing the imperial red, so there's a light imperial presence here. I don't understand why, though. This town may be rather close to Heretic's Rest, but it isn't a land controlled by actual heretics. Perhaps it's a remnant from the aftermath of the secession attempt.

We exit the town and wait in the grass. Klein's Holly saw farms all the way to the horizon, each planting a different crop, creating a wide variety of colors and textures when seen from above. Now, we can only see darkness, so my eyes are drawn to the long line of dotted lights slowly approaching the gates.

Several long minutes pass until we recognize the first people of their group. Rande is driving his personal horse-driven carriage with Klein on the roof, Osaria is peeking out through the window, and Anton is walking beside them. Surrounding them are the usual guards led by Julien, the brown-haired rogue-like man.

Klein finally notices us and jumps off the carriage, then makes a mad dash towards us, turning her into a brown blur. Her "Speed" is pretty high.

I smile at her, but when I look into her eyes, my [Battlefield Perception] triggers. I've seen that kind of gaze before: she's about to tackle me like my dogs did.

"K-Klein, no!" I yell to no effect.

I brace for impact, and in the next second, a brown mass of pure love and energy collides with me.

I crash into something jelly-like, stopping us from falling to the ground, then a pair of large arms wrap around us. Hana has prevented a disaster, then she gives us a bear hug that lifts our feet off the ground.

"I MISSED YOOU~!" She bellows, but we can't say anything in response since all of the air has been forcefully ejected from our lungs by her hug.

Mere seconds before we pass out, Hana lets us down onto our feet. We both gasp and gather our breaths for a short while, then, suddenly, Klein grabs my face and shoves her tongue down my throat.

Her sweet taste, her energetic tongue. Oh, how I've missed her.

Before Hana gets jealous, Klein breaks the kiss so that she can give one to her, too. I see Klein's anguished face as she plays with Hana's tongue. The destruction of the Innocent Nymph must've been gnawing at the back of her mind ever since she heard about it.

"You've both fallen in love with her," Alissa's echoes in my soul space.

"We did…" I admit.

"We already agreed. She'll never only be yours."

"She won't…"

"She's still afraid about getting too involved," Hana says as they break the kiss, then Klein buries her head in Hana's large balloons. "I missed you, too."

I hug Klein from behind, and together with Hana, we crush her with our love. She has a mildly alluring scent of sweat mixed with her faint citric perfume. This pleases me a lot; I've always liked a hard-working woman more than a delicate princess.

"I got really worried…" Klein mutters.

"Sorry about that," I apologize to her.

Her long brown tail wraps around my waist, pulling me closer to her.

"I don't want you to go back to that dungeon…" She mutters again.

"It's still going to take some more time for us to conquer it," Hana says.

"And now, we have an actual reason to go there. We have a promise to fulfill," I say.

Klein nods weakly and pouts like an obstinate child, then we break the hug, and she turns to Yunia. Her pout disappears, and she becomes a little anxious.

"I've heard about you, Miss Klein," Yunia says with a gentle smile.

"I feel for your loss, Dame Yulania," Klein says and bows.

Yunia's smile becomes a bit pained as she says, "I'm just a Blood Slave, so you don't have to bow or call me a Dame."

Klein shakes her head emphatically. "You'll be a Crown Lord one day, so I should at least show you some respect."

"And if you're still interested when that day comes, then I want you to be our knight," I say.

Klein nods and smiles gently. "I will," she says, her voice wavering with emotion.

I pull her into a hug so that I can play with her round, fluffy ears. Alissa comes up and gives a peck on Klein's lips, then the other girls come over to give her a short hug.

"I'm pretty sure that your dragon wasn't anywhere near that big before," Rande comments as his carriage gets closer.

"Eating dungeon monsters seems to be very nutritious for dragons," I reply.

"Uh-huh…" Rande mumbles, sounding a bit skeptical.

"Dungeon monsters are very tasty," Aoi adds.

"What's 'nutritious'?" One of the guards whispers to Julien.

"I have no idea," he whispers back and smiles.

The carriage stops, and Anton, Julien, and the other guards come over to greet us. Anton's giant hand completely encloses mine as we share a handshake, then he grunts in satisfaction.

"I can see that you grew some more. Not your height, I mean, it's just that your eyes are a little more savage," he says.

I raise an eyebrow and look at him oddly, making him bellow out a laugh, then he continues on to greet the others.

Rande hops down from the carriage, then Osaria, Oura, Nito, and Krysta emerge from inside.

We finish greeting the guards. Hana shares a brutal handshake with the two burly soldiers; Ciel has a brief and awkward greeting with Julien; Roxanne shares a wicked grin with the joker; and the elven sisters give me a short hug, pushing me into their modest breasts. Laertes, the husky weredog archer, gives me a small nod as a greeting, then moves on along with the other caravan guards that we aren't familiar with.

Rande comes to greet us next. He gives me a wide smile, forming deep dimples on his tanned face. He appears to be the same mass of muscle as usual, though his armor now seems to be of a much higher quality than before.

"Time only makes us stronger, it seems," Rande says and offers his hand.

"We're still far from our prime," I reply and take it, giving him a strong squeeze that he returns.

His glacial blue eyes gain a hint of wildness to them. "Working together, we'll be able to grow so much more."

I nod, and he releases my hand because there's someone else that's anxiously waiting to greet me.

I walk up to Osaria and hold her soft hand, then interlace my fingers with hers. With my other hand, I hold her cheek and look up into her alluring, red eyes. She gives me a gentle smile, and I pull her face down to mine for a kiss.

I savor her juicy lips, enjoying the sweet taste of her lipstick, then I eagerly search for her tongue. I've missed her dearly, too.

I release her hand and pull her into a hug, squishing her juicy, semi-nude body against mine. Our tongues rub against each other as if they wanted to be joined together forever. Well, I certainly wish for her to remain at my side forever.

Our kiss soon ends, and her droopy eyes stare into mine, brimming with affection and anticipation.

She leans towards my ear and whispers seductively, "Tonight, I want you." Her voice caresses my soul, making my mind spin with ideas -.

I gently suck on her earlobe, and she giggles in delight.

"I'll make sure that you get your fill -" I whisper back.

She licks her lips seductively, and our hug ends, then she immediately goes over to Yunia and hugs her tight.

"My niece. I'm so happy that you're well!" She exclaims, barely holding herself back from becoming overwhelmed with emotion.

"I'm grateful for the mercy that was given to me. I won't squander this second chance," Yunia responds softly.

Osaria stares into her blue eyes, and her face trembles a little with sadness. "I've always held great respect for your father. I don't blame him for banishing us. Rico died as a Wicked in disgrace, as he deserved."

Yunia's lip trembles and she glances at me. She's not using [Mask]. She takes a few seconds to gather her resolve to say, "Father wanted to bring you back, but he never had the courage to do so. Then he started defying the Elder Council, and you escaped from his thoughts."

Osaria shakes her head gently. "I never expected, or wanted, to be allowed back into the castle. After Rico was gone, Rande and I decided to rebuild our lives by ourselves."

Yunia sniffles. "Yet your Thread of Fate is more entwined with ours than we expected."

Osaria touches their foreheads together. "Yes. Fate brought us together, once again."

They hug tightly again for a moment, then they let go so that Rande can greet her.

"Cousin," he says and nods respectfully.

"Cousin," she says in the same tone.

He grins at her. "I've become a lot better with the sword."

She narrows her eyes dangerously, letting him feel the full force of her stern gaze. "You'll never be able to overcome my [Precognition]."

His grin becomes a little wider, and his dimples increase in depth accordingly. "Oh, you learn so many things by fighting all kinds of warriors like I have. I'm sure that we'll have a lot of fun together."

She smiles, and her eyes soften. "I'm sure that I will."

They share a quick hug, then Oura, Nito, and finally Krysta come to greet us. The young trap boy blushes when we share a handshake. His hand is so delicate that I almost can't tell it apart from Lina's. Krysta gives me a light hug, happy to see that everyone is doing well. Oura quickly runs up to Lina and kneels down to hug her.

"We all heard about the Innocent Nymph, so we were very worried about you," Krysta says to me.

I nod at her and say, "We should all go to the same inn to talk."

"That's a given," Osaria says.

"You two can go on ahead, I'll take care of the customs," Rande says to Osaria and Klein.

"Thank you, my love," Osaria responds, then takes our hands and pulls Klein and I forward.

Ciel rolls her eyes, and the girls follow.

"Take us to the best inn in town. I'll pay," I say to Osaria and kiss her hand.

She smiles and wraps my arm around her waist. I motion for Ciel to walk beside me, then wrap my other arm around her, too. I grab a handful of both of their asses and squeeze them lovingly as I lick my lips.

Tonight is going to be a great night.

A note from Manasong

Hall of Fame of Patrons

The patrons who support Rupegia shall have their names sung by the bards for they deserve the glory and honor. Their names are:

Oracle Maximillian Hübner.

Prince PreownedFIN.

Lord Andrew Meyers.

Lord Hope.

Lord Samuel Lim.

Lord Bill.

Lord Novgarod.

Lord DJ.

Lord Ashadun.

Lord Michale Erwin.

Lord Enrique Peña Gomez.

Lord Braidborn.

Lord Bakerdea.

Lord Yeeteris Dedmeem.

Lord D4rk Sheep.

Lord Nathan Vanbrunt.

Lord Markus.

Lord Maurice.

Lord Badger.

Lord Krawn.

Lord Remco.

Lord Empyrean.

Lord Asakurà.

Lord Cidant.

Lord Mattirro Draca.

Noble Salty Panda.

Noble Yamibomb112.

Noble Mild Fracas.

Noble EESDESESESRDT.

Noble Aclys.

Noble Tyler Mills.

Noble Samuel Steinike.

Leave a rating or a review to help me rise to the top or fix my shameful understanding of prose.

Take a look over my blog where all information of the world of Rupegia will be posted.

Join the Discord and discuss, or rant, or meme, or try and fight me so your waifu gets more screentime.

Become a Patron and read chapters in advance, or read the side-stories, or leave your mark on the story, or help choose the next artwork or the next side-story.

Chapter 73: Concubine - Part 2

A note from Manasong

Attention: to conform to the limit of sexual content allowed in a novel, I've censored this chapter. You can look for the uncensored version here.

The symbol "-" denotes a section that got cut for containing sexual content. Also, if paragraphs seem missing, they were also likely censored in an earlier pass where the symbol wasn't used.

Osaria guides us to the edge of the Nobles' Quarters, and we enter a building formed from a dozen white-barked treehouses. The Amor Brando Inn.

Elven interior design in Glorampina prefers tall ceilings and ample room to keep the air fresh and the temperature cool. From the short time that we've spent in the streets and under the sun in this region, we understand very well why it does and how most elves become tanned like Osaria.

We reserve our rooms and pay a good amount of silver for them. Fortunately, their largest room was unoccupied, so we'll be able to have everyone sleep together tonight.

Osaria and Klein go into the bathroom to change their clothes and quickly [Clean] themselves. After that, we head down to the dining hall and have some drinks while we wait for Rande and the others. Osaria and Klein are very curious about the dungeon, so we start to tell them about our adventures. They want to know more since they've heard about how nobody has been able to progress in the dungeon, but also about all the riches that might be just beyond the next door.

We reach the part about how we cleared the Looping Winds station, and they both seem very surprised.

"This is like a story dungeon, then," Osaria comments.

"It's a mix of gauntlet, story, and puzzle," I say.

"I just didn't expect it to have so much Chimera influence in it," Klein says.

"Arreira was very curious about the other races," Lina says.

"Do you think that there are more, then?" Osaria asks.

I shrug and reply, "No idea, really." And the girls reflect my sentiments.

Osaria's eyes shine with anticipation. "You know, that sounds rather exciting."

"That's why adventuring will always be a popular occupation; we're all searching for our own mysterious dungeon to explore," Ciel says with a gentle smile.

"I've had my share of adventure already. I prefer to listen, so I'll eagerly await the next time that you return from the dungeon," Osaria says.

"I prefer to stay close to my parents," Klein says with a hint of shame in her voice.

Roxanne adjusts her oval glasses. "There's no shame in listening to your heart," she says and smiles smugly.

Klein gets a little surprised by Roxanne comforting her, of all people, then blushes slightly and repeatedly nods.

Then we tell them about the Chimera spirits, and now they get really surprised.

"Are you sure that they're… dead?" Osaria asks with a frown.

"The Threads of Fate do not lie. Theirs have been cut, and only a few random strands remain," Yunia says.

"And yet, they're still interacting with you."

"It's why the Gods dislike having spirits linger for too long, it's unnatural," Ciel says.

"What about nature spirits?" I ask.

"They're a fusion of so many spirits that their strands form a Thread. But even so, their Thread is fragile and slowly deteriorates over time," Yunia says.

"Gih."

"So, you're a leech attached to my Thread?" I ask with a smirk.

Gify pinches my cheek gently, then snaps her beak threateningly.

"Gih. Goi gih geeh."

"Heey, I'm not a leech, I'm a warrior," Aoi complains.

"Gih."

"To be honest, she literally drains him," Roxanne says with a mischievous smile.

"Boo!" Aoi boos.

I grab Gify and place her on the table, then I start petting her head with my finger. She's both fluffy and squishy, making it quite entertaining to touch her, for some reason.

"Gih."

"Oh, I do not abuse you. It's merely banter, right?" I say with a grin.

"Gih."

"As you wish, my Lady." I pet her harder and let my fingers run down along her spine. She tucks her wings and cutely lays down, then closes her eyes. Her lion tail lazily sways about in contentment.

"Anyway, I still can't believe that there are humanoid spirits chained to the dungeon," Osaria continues.

"Sounds like a miserable life," Klein says.

"Considering how one of them is about to be boned by Wolfy, at least one is definitely not miserable," Hana says.

"Considering how much they like - doing it in public, they're all living happy lives," Lina says.

"Oh, so these Chimeras are of the more 'free' kind?" Osaria asks and raises her eyebrows suggestively.

"Yep," Alissa answers with a nod, making her ears bob. "They all like to walk around naked and - do it in public, - and the men like to keep their things erect -. Though, they never touch strangers, only people that they're familiar with."

"Sounds like a good place to have an 'adventure,' but I'd certainly miss dressing up," Osaria adds.

We smile wryly, but Ciel turns serious and says, "What concerns me is that they don't know that they're stuck inside of a dungeon."

Roxanne nods and says with a frown, "The way that they froze when we mentioned the lack of children creeps me out."

"Their lives are a lie, and even their food isn't actually farmed by them, it's all conjured food, for some reason," Lina says.

"At least it seems to be peaceful there," Ciel says with a shrug.

Yunia becomes a little serious as she says, "I've studied [Trap Soul]. The few rare times it was used was to extend the time that a normal spirit could remain in the realm. That way, they could talk to their ancestors or powerful God-Rulers to teach them whatever they needed. But an entire town of trapped spirits? I've never heard of such a thing."

"What about their flesh? You said that you touched them, but how could that be possible?" Osaria asks.

"Now that isn't completely new," Yunia says, then looks at me.

I lift my hand and extend a simple tentacle out of it, then I cast the normal [Materialization]. My soul starts to glow the usual light blue color.

"This is the normal [Materialization] spell. And now, I'll show you the same spell, but altered with the help of Gify," I say and form a tail from my soul, then cast my custom [Materialization]. My soul stops glowing and becomes indistinguishable from Roxanne's dagger-tail.

Osaria lets her mouth hang in wonder while Klein smiles wryly. I start creating other things, like furry ears, horns, scales, and changing the color of my skin.

"Using [Materialization] like this isn't a new idea, though it was only used with dead spirits. Wolfy's control over his own soul is very impressive," Yunia says.

I create a slimy, purple tentacle -. Klein blushes while Osaria salivates.

"My, oh, my, that's incredible," the dark - elf whispers.

"A-anyway, the Chimeras, they seem to be quite friendly," Klein changes the topic.

"Except for the Marshall of the Lands," Roxanne says.

"What's her name? They're all so weird," Hana asks.

"Wahinui," I answer.

"It figures that you would remember her name," Roxanne says with a smirk.

"Oi!" I complain and send a quick glare at her.

"Be careful with those Chimeras. Spirits that persist for too long can become evil," Klein says in a serious tone.

I smile at her, and reach for her hand, then give it a loving squeeze. "We will," I say.

"They don't seem evil, but it's not like we can just cast [Detect Evil] on any Chimera that we meet," Ciel says and shrugs.

"Well, at least we can be sure that they aren't hiding a weapon under their clothes because, well… they're naked" Alissa says and chuckles.

"Uh… I've seen many women and some men hide things in certain… unlikely places," Ciel says and smiles wryly.

"Ooh…" Hana murmurs.

"Like Darean," Lina says.

"Y-yes, him, precisely," Ciel awkwardly says.

The conversation dies down to some casual chatter until Rande finally arrives with everyone, except for the guards. They all sit down at our long table and go silent, waiting for me to start. With the help of [Bind], we scan over the dining hall and make sure that there's nobody here that seems a little too curious about our conversation.

There's no one nearby that can eavesdrop on us, so I start, "Well, what I'm about to tell you all shouldn't leave this table. It isn't a huge secret, but if rumors spread, then other parties trying to exploit us like Katasko will come after us."

"Ah, since we're talking about Katasko, what happened to them? You had a trial, right?" Rande asks.

"Lord Confiel gave us a letter of commendation, and the Judge decided to drop the case due to the lack of reliable evidence," I answer.

He smiles warmly. "That sounds great!"

"Yeah, they can't fuck with us anymore. Moving on, do I have the word of everyone here that you'll keep our secret?" I give everyone a look, waiting for their nod. Their faces become serious, but no one hesitates from agreeing, so I continue, "Okay. What we wanted to say is that I'm a hero who possesses a Gift."

Rande and Osaria react with surprise, but the others stare blankly at us.

"Gift?" Krysta asks.

"In all of the real adventure stories, the hero always has a powerful ability that nobody else has. That's a Gift," Klein explains.

Anton raises his eyebrows in surprise and asks, "You knew?"

She nods solemnly. "Yes. He told me when we were in the Innocent Nymph."

"As you might've realized, the attack on that inn may have been targeted at us. So, for some reason, heretics could be after us," I say and wait for their reactions.

Rande and Osaria look at each other, still surprised. She suddenly bursts into a fit of laughter, earning raised eyebrows from us.

The mirth quickly fades away, leaving only a sad and tired face. "Why do I always attract men like you, Wolf?" She asks in a whisper and keeps her eyes down.

"I'm sorry?" I say, confused.

"Rico was not the only lover that I've buried. For some reason, the men I love all have a tendency to die," she says in a monotone.

"Mother, don't say it like that," Rande says with a frown.

"But it's the truth."

"I don't have any plans to die anytime soon," I say and smile confidently.

She looks at me and gives me a smile, but there's no sign of happiness within her droopy, red eyes. "That's what they all say," she replies, then starts laughing again, but quickly stops and sighs.

I feel like boasting, but it catches in my throat, and I hesitate. She's said in the past that she didn't like me getting involved in dangerous business like helping to depose Lord Mavel. Her fear doesn't come from paranoia or caution, it comes from experience. But I haven't lost enough in my life to be able to fully understand what she's been through, so I won't try to empathize with her.

"I'm sorry, Osaria, but my Thread of Fate has already been entwined this way," I say and stare at her with earnest eyes. Her face becomes anguished, tightening the knot in my throat, but I find the resolve to continue, "I have no way to change my Fate, so all that I can give you is the promise that I won't throw my life away."

I get up and walk around the table so that I can stand beside her. I grab her hand and kiss it, then I keep it close to my heart as I say with conviction, "Osaria, I'm a selfish man, as you might've realized since no man with seven wives wouldn't be-…"

"Seven…?" Krysta whispers a question.

"- so I'll be selfish once again and ask you this: even with all of the danger surrounding me, I want you to be my concubine."

She bites her pouty red lip, and her face warps in anguish. She interlaces her fingers with mine and gets up, then runs her fingers through my hair as her face mellows. "You're certainly one of a kind," she says and giggles softly.

I swing an arm around her waist and pull her into a warm hug. "You know what I can do; things will get even better in the future."

She smiles mischievously. "A life as a Lady alongside you is certainly hard to say no to, but your Fate tells me that things won't be so simple."

I shake my head. "They won't. Even if you live inside the castle all day, despite the protection of the knights, you might still get involved in whatever the Gods need me for."

Her lips tremble, but she quickly gets it back under control and smiles again. "Then you'd better make it worth it."

"I will," I respond with confidence, then I pull her face close to mine and savor her lips. Her tongue invades my mouth, hungry for comfort.

"Yaaay! Lady Osaria has been born," Alissa cheers.

"Congratulations!" The others cheer and exclaim.

Our lips part, and I look around. Rande is about to cry from happiness, Oura dries the corner of her eyes, Nito smiles like a pretty girl, Anton looks surprised and amused at the same time, Krysta and Klein give us a nearly mirrored smile as they clap for us, and the girls cheer with wide smiles, even Roxanne seems happy for Osaria.

"You still have to conquer that dungeon, right?" Osaria asks.

"Yeah, but once we do, we'll instantly be made into Crown Lords," I answer.

She gently caresses my head again. "Then, I'll be waiting for you." She sits back down in her chair and pulls me down into her lap. I'm not that much shorter than her, but I still fit quite nicely on her thighs.

I turn towards her so that I can kiss her -.

Seven wives, two concubines. Their numbers continue to grow.

I hold myself back from presenting a public show to the others and break our kiss, then lightly nibble on her pouty lips.

"You're mine," I whisper to her.

She licks her lips and responds in a sultry tone, "I'm yours."

Our foreheads touch together, and I drown in her sensual smile.

The celebratory mood picks up, but Anton still has his doubts. "So… you're saying that getting involved with you might be dangerous?" He asks in a serious tone, his permanent frown significantly deepened.

The others quickly quiet down, and I answer, "Yes. I'm not sure how, but my Fate will lead us to danger."

He turns to Klein and asks, "And you still want to be his knight?"

"Yes," she answers immediately.

Anton sighs, then turns to his wife, who shrugs with a smile. "You can't control her anymore," she says.

He swallows heavily and turns back to me, showing firm resolve in his gaze. "No, but I'll never abandon her. For as long as you'll have us, Wolf, we'll support your family and Klein," he says and nods respectfully.

I smile proudly and return the nod.

"We're grateful for your offer. We'll always treasure your loyalty," Alissa says.

"I know that your family is reliable. We'll do well together," Hana says and gives him a fearsome smile.

I turn to Rande and ask, "What about you? Do you still want to do business with me?"

He grins, creating deep dimples on his face. "Absolutely."

Nito nods gently, and Oura shrugs while smiling wryly.

I lift up my cup with [Telekinesis] and raise it above my head. "Where I come from, there's something called a 'toast'…"

Ciel casts [Refresh] and [Purify Body] on everyone, allowing them to walk unassisted. I still don't like alcohol, so I only drank the bare minimum that's socially "required" of me, which left me only slightly tipsy.

I walk with Osaria holding my arm while Klein holds Hana's. We take them to the bathhouse since they didn't have time to do that yet.

"I forgot to say it earlier, but no other man will sleep with you, understood? You're mine alone," I say.

"Clearly," she calmly replies and kisses my hand. "Rande only comforted me when I didn't have a man to satisfy my needs. We don't view each other romantically."

I swallow heavily.

I feel two smug smiles growing inside my soul space. "Wolfy~… I know that you'd love t-…"

"Do not finish that phrase," I interrupt Alissa and shut her up with [Bind], then I turn to Osaria and grin evilly as I say, "Alissa has the [Washing] skill. Since you're now officially my concubine, you may make use of her skills and body as you wish."

"Her body?" Osaria asks as she blinks blankly.

"Her body… as you wish," I repeat, then her expression instantly mirrors mine.

"No fucking, for either of you," Hana says, and Osaria giggles while Klein's tail stiffens. "I hope that neither of you needs to wake up early, because I've been seeing cocks all day long without being able to touch any of them, so I'm quite hungry."

"You're all such teases," Osaria says and slaps her shoulder playfully.

"Look who's talking," I shoot back.

We split up, and I feel the world become a little less vibrant when Alissa's Blessing fades.

Our room only has a harem-sized bed. Though it's large, it isn't wide enough for everyone. I store it in my "Items" and pull out our own beds, completely filling the room.

We crawl onto our beds and spread out. It's cuddling time until Alissa returns. I spend my time taking care of Yunia's hair, Hana polishes her and Aoi's scales, Lina maintains our equipment, and Roxanne and Ciel play tag with their Spirits while petting Gify.

"We should meet with your brothers once we've dealt with the Chimeras," I say to Yunia.

"They don't like you," she responds.

I sigh and ask, "Why?"

"They're young and stupid," she answers in a tired tone.

I chuckle lightly. "Well, can you elaborate?"

"Envy. You look like you're close to their age, yet you're going to be a Crown Lord. Even I am weaker than you, and I had all the resources of a Chosen Descendant."

"Would telling them that I have a Gift help with that envy?"

"I don't think so. They love epic stories, so, knowing how far a true Gifted is from them would only make them feel even more inadequate."

"Emotional youngsters with something to prove. We'll have to be careful with them once we're Lords."

She chuckles. "Yes, we will."

I stop brushing her hair, then I hug her from behind and kiss her neck.

"I don't know how family dynamics are supposed to be here, but I want a friendly relationship with them. I want your family to stay together."

"Considering your relationship with Osaria, we'll certainly stay 'together,'" she says in a teasing tone.

"Oh, if only you had sisters instead of brothers…" I return the tease.

She smiles and shakes her head, then caresses my cheek and jokingly says, "Wolf, The Insatiable. I agree with Lina, it's rather pleasing to see others bend to you."

"Lina finds it amusing, not pleasing. You're the sadist that likes to see others lick your feet."

"I sure do enjoy that. Now, please, continue brushing, my hair won't do that by itself."

"As you wish, my Queen."

She snorts. "When did I get crowned?"

"You'll be my Queen once we become Lords."

"And what about the others?"

"A man is allowed to have more than one Queen." I kiss her neck again and continue brushing.

"I'm sure that you'll bond well with the Emperor."

Alissa comes back smiling. My two concubines have been perfectly cleaned, and perfumed -. Osaria is wearing a thin, silvery Snow Weave robe, ironically covering more of her curves than her usual clothes do. Klein is wearing a similar robe that was gifted to her by Osaria after my milf claimed Klein as her plaything.

Osaria raises an eyebrow as she looks around the room filled with beds. "I can see that I'll never sleep alone while I'm with you," she says.

"You won't," I reply in a husky voice -.

Alissa clears her throat and gently pushes them forward through the threshold so that they come in from the hallway, then closes the door.

- We show them how much we missed them-.

I still have to give Alissa her reward, but that'll have to wait until tomorrow.

Once everyone is satisfied -, we pile into a cuddle puddle and go to sleep.

A note from Manasong

Hall of Fame of Patrons

The patrons who support Rupegia shall have their names sung by the bards for they deserve the glory and honor. Their names are:

Oracle Maximillian Hübner.

Prince PreownedFIN.

Lord Andrew Meyers.

Lord Hope.

Lord Samuel Lim.

Lord Bill.

Lord Novgarod.

Lord DJ.

Lord Ashadun.

Lord Michale Erwin.

Lord Enrique Peña Gomez.

Lord Braidborn.

Lord Bakerdea.

Lord Yeeteris Dedmeem.

Lord D4rk Sheep.

Lord Nathan Vanbrunt.

Lord Markus.

Lord Maurice.

Lord Badger.

Lord Krawn.

Lord Remco.

Lord Empyrean.

Lord Asakurà.

Lord Cidant.

Lord Mattirro Draca.

Noble Salty Panda.

Noble Yamibomb112.

Noble Mild Fracas.

Noble EESDESESESRDT.

Noble Aclys.

Noble Tyler Mills.

Noble Samuel Steinike.

Leave a rating or a review to help me rise to the top or fix my shameful understanding of prose.

Take a look over my blog where all information of the world of Rupegia will be posted.

Join the Discord and discuss, or rant, or meme, or try and fight me so your waifu gets more screentime.

Become a Patron and read chapters in advance, or read the side-stories, or leave your mark on the story, or help choose the next artwork or the next side-story.

Chapter 73: Concubine - Part 3

A note from Manasong

Attention: to conform to the limit of mature content (more than just sexual content) allowed in a novel, I've censored this chapter. You can look for the uncensored version here.

The symbol "-" denotes a section that got cut for containing sexual content. Also, if paragraphs seem missing, they were also likely censored in an earlier pass where the symbol wasn't used.

Today is the 13th.

"My back…" Osaria moans as she stirs awake, and I cast [Heal] on her. "Are you two angels from the myths? You can make all the pain go away with just a touch."

I start the morning kisses with the girls, so Alissa replies in my stead, "Ciel was nicknamed 'Angel' by the caravan guards after our fight with Dawn of Fire."

"All they need are wings," Lina says and gives Ciel a cute smile.

I give my loli a deep morning kiss and a loving look. "To me, you're my little angel," I whisper, and she smiles adorably.

My "Endurance," [Redirect Mana], [Soul Manipulation], [Spirit Magic], and [Piloting] each increased by 1 (now 16, 6, 5, 0+3, and 0+2). Huh, I got "Endurance," but no "Strength" again. I guess this is from all the fun with the girls? It's certainly an aerobic type of exercise, so it's not great for building muscle mass unless we do it in certain positions…

Roxanne increased her [Reduced Mana Cost], [Fire Magic], and [Water Magic] by 1 (now 3+4, 4+26, and 2+28).

Ciel increased her [Reduced Mana Cost] and [Wind Magic] by 1 (now 2+2 and 11+19).

Lina increased by [Earth Magic] by 1 (now 2+8).

The thoughtful Rande postponed their departure for a few hours to allow us to spend a long night together, so we don't have to hurry to get ready. We spend a few calm minutes reforming Yunia's drill hair.

"I'm a bit envious of your hair, my niece," Osaria says.

"Who isn't?" Ciel says, trying and failing to hide her bitter envy.

"Even I'm envious," I say.

"Maybe the Chimeras have an Alteration Mage that we could hire to give us hair equal to hers," Lina says.

"An excellent idea," Roxanne says.

"Hohoho, it makes me happy to know how much everyone wants to be an elf," Yunia smugly taunts.

"We might as well ask the Alteration Mage to remove her tongue, too," Roxanne adds, and the two smug goddesses glare evilly at each other.

"Your friendship is beautiful," Osaria with a cheeky smile.

"'Friendship,'" the two of them repeat with a sneer warping their perfect faces, but I know Roxanne's true feelings.

After Yunia's hair is made majestic again, we rent a room in the bathhouse to quickly wash ourselves, then we return to the dining hall for breakfast.

Rande and the others are already there, nearly finished with their meals. I grin towards Rande, and he returns it in kind. Klein and Osaria are glowing with happiness, so it's quite obvious that I've successfully done my job.

"We'll be leaving in an hour," Rande gently says as we sit down.

Klein nods weakly, and Osaria sighs.

My two - new women sit at my sides, then I wrap my arms around their waists. Hana and Alissa have a brief staring contest about who's sitting beside Klein, but a quick reminder about yesterday - resolves the dispute. Klein's tail wraps around Alissa's, and the two girlfriends smile at each other.

"Don't wait too long to meet up with us again," Osaria says and plants her hand on my thigh.

"We'll try to come back whenever we can. There's no reason not to," I say, and give her hand a squeeze.

After we finish our meal, we stay in the hall and chat for a while. Klein's tail untangles from Alissa's and lands on my lap, clearly begging for one of my special massages.

Since I have limited time left today with my concubines, I give the two of them my full and undivided attention. My wives understand, but I can still feel their jealousy increasing. I might have to actually find a way to split my body if I want to increase my harem any further. It would be impossible to keep all of them happy with just two hands and one mouth.

I already have the multiple members part covered, so now I need to recreate the rest of the body. The most difficult aspect would be creating multiple consciences, but perhaps I can use [Summoning Magic] for that.

If only shadow clone Jutsu existed in this world…

"Let's make a picture to mark our reunion," I suggest and pull out a smoky quartz magic tool.

"Oh, is this an [Instant Painting]?" Osaria asks, looking excited.

"I actually have no idea what it's called," I respond.

"Does it burn an image into a canvas?"

"Yes."

"Then that's what it is."

The more you know.

We get up and walk to the corner of the hall, then we organize ourselves and get ready for the family picture. We get Ted and Suzy to hold the canvas and the gnomic magic tool in the air with [Telekinesis], then I feed the gem mana and run back into place to get ready for the picture.

Lina's in the first row beside Aoi. In the second row from left to right: Klein, Alissa, Me, Ciel, and Osaria. In the third row with their heads above us: Hana, Roxanne, and Yunia. We all hug each other tight and smile.

The tool flashes, and an image is burned into the canvas. The elven patrons send us glares, annoyed at our commotion and the sudden bright light, but none of us pay them any attention.

We crowd around the canvas and admire our picture.

"This tool is quite good; it created such a high quality picture," Yunia comments.

"We should make one every year," Alissa suggests.

Yunia nods. "That's quite common among Lords. There's a storeroom where thousands upon thousands of portraits are stored. It's a physical record of the lineage of the Lords that have ruled over the Western High Forest."

"I bet that the portraits all look the same," Roxanne says and snickers.

"It's our 'curse of beauty,'" Osaria says with an amused smile.

"Cursed" with being beautiful; they don't really have as much variety in their facial features as the other races.

Yunia rolls her eyes and says, "Come, now, both of you. Elves occasionally take other races as lovers, especially if they're polygamous."

"But you know that the elven rules for a Chosen Descendant are very strict," Lina says.

"That… is true," Yunia admits and pouts.

"You didn't even deny your 'curse of beauty,'" I say with a smirk, and she rolls her eyes again.

The time to leave eventually comes when Rande reappears in the hall again.

Everyone suddenly starts to feel rather reluctant to leave, so we walk slowly to the west gate while I feel my heart tighten with each step. I don't want them to go away. I don't want to return to the dungeon. I just want to live a comfy life with my harem.

We reach the caravan, then stop at the gate, and my concubines look at us lovingly.

"I'll miss you," Klein says to me as she gives me a hug.

I give her a peck on the lips and say, "I'll miss you, too. Always."

She nods and smiles gently, then moves on to give her goodbyes to the others. Her tail playfully pokes me in the head as she passes me, and I bat it away while smiling wryly.

"Come back soon," Osaria says and hugs me tight.

"We'll try," I whisper in her ear, then I give her a deep kiss.

Rande comes up to me, and we share a firm handshake. "After this trip is over, we'll probably rest for a month in Rabanara. We'll be waiting for you there," he says.

"Understood. We'll definitely come back, then," I respond.

He shows me a wide smile and says, "Stay safe, my hero." Then moves on. A chill runs through my spine as the gayness in his voice reaches uncomfortable levels.

All of the others, even including Julien and the rest of the guards, come to say goodbye. The guards, specifically, hope to go drinking with us the next time we meet. Hana and Roxanne definitely won't let us pass up that opportunity if we get the chance.

With nobody else ahead of the caravan in line, they quickly pass through customs, so we give them one last kiss before they finally leave town.

Osaria gently pets her singing bird while smiling contentedly inside the carriage. I wonder if I should've given her a different summon that allowed her to pet it more "intensively."

We stay inside the town and wait as the caravan calmly makes its way forward. When they're finally nothing more than ants to our sight, we turn around and leave.

We end our stay at the inn and recover the beds. The sheets are going to need a lot of washing…

We return to our mansion in Goloria and begin our preparations to re-enter the dungeon.

As I move my points around, I start to dread what's to come. I don't want to fight anymore, but I will. I need to fight if I ever want to achieve my dream of a comfy life with my harem.

I want to create a women's sanctuary. A place where only women, and me, of course, are allowed to enter. It'll be a place where we can all live happily in harmony and with a distinct scarcity of clothing.

With the way that Escanso's castle and the Shell are set up, there's no better place for my Sanctuary than there. Concubines, maids, female knights, guests, and my wives. A carnival of women to satisfy my desires, and, of course, Alissa to help me out.

I laugh evilly inside my head while the girls cross through the [Gate].

We return to our ship and once again take in the gaudy environment that is the Golden Docks. We see a sleek, yacht-like ship with four huge wings parked on one of the platforms. It's as opulent as everything else here with its vibrant, light blue colors and, of course, details in gold.

I take the golems out, and our guides immediately appear with wide smiles. They walk across the retractable bridge and casually board our ship.

"Good morning, Ryders," Hukarere immediately greets me and offers me a handshake.

As I get closer to take her hand, I smell a sweet and thick fragrance coming from her. She definitely put on perfume today.

"Morning, Hukarere, Ririmu," I reply and shake her hand.

"Do you have any need for our services today?" Ririmu asks.

"Certainly," I eagerly respond.

"The Honored One, Oritiki, wanted to know if you'd like to spar with her," Hukarere says.

I look back, and Hana's eyes tell me that I can't say no. Even Hukarere seems interested, so, of course, Alissa also piles on for me to say yes.

"We're delighted to accept," I respond.

We strip down to our underwear again and don our thin robes. Roxanne's perversion starts to seep through [Bind], encouraging me to unsheathe my greatsword.

"Do it," she whispers in a sultry tone.

Yunia and Ciel raise their eyebrows, unaware of the succubus trying to influence my mind.

"I'm not ready to let any of you walk naked, so I don't want to encourage anyone by doing so myself," I say and give a knowing glance towards Hana, who immediately sends back a grin.

"I enjoy seeing you showing off. It brings me some pride to say that you're my man," Yunia says, then looks away, slightly embarrassed.

"I think exactly the same," Alissa says.

"Hell yes! Show them your dragon -," Hana says, and Aoi nods repeatedly.

Ciel shrugs and says, "I'm not going naked."

Lina puckers her lips in thought. "Make us proud, I guess?" She says without much conviction and tilts her head, making her cute bangs sway slightly.

I snort, then I pull off my trunks and create a long, spiky, white dragon - member.

"Holy shit!" Hukarere exclaims.

"It was true…" Ririmu mutters.

"So, the rumors have already spread?" I ask with a cheeky smirk.

He smiles wryly, then regains his composure and says, "Well… I apologize, but yes. The way that you bragged about your… 'skill' was very peculiar, which made a lot of people quite curious."

"Doesn't this hurt?" Hukarere asks, her eyes glued to me.

"You mean when I do someone? It depends," I respond.

"It definitely hurts, but that's the best part," Hana says with a grin.

Hukarere starts chuckling nervously, then sighs and shakes her head. "You'll definitely attract more attention now, but let me tell you that they're going to be mostly male."

"Damn," I let my inner thoughts out.

"Ye~~ah… hahahahaha," Ririmu laughs a little awkwardly.

"Too late to go back on it now," Hana says and gives me an encouraging slap on my back.

I pump myself up with a flare of my dragon wildness, then we head out into the town.

As they said, I didn't get the kind of attention that I was aiming for.

"Nice sword, human!" A cat-headed muscle brain yells as we quickly pass by.

"Are you sure you know how to use that spiky club?!" A salt-and-pepper black-haired dragonkin yells as he stares intensely at my dangling member.

Not only am I getting cat-called by men, but my skin is starting to itch because of my huge magnum dong repeatedly slapping my thighs, prickling me with its spikes.

"Daddy taught us not to be ashamed of our swords, especially since they're such a good size and all," I mutter. Roxanne and Hana are very interested in the mental image that I have in my head now.

I miss my memes…

On the bright side, if I ever turned gay, I'm pretty sure that I could easily drown in men.

Not going to happen, though…

The town may be rather dark due to the clouds, but it's certainly not a cold place. The perpetually starry sky; the comfy dim lights; the cute, boxy houses; the clouds that slowly change color; the slightly warm air; and the naked, weird-looking people everywhere makes for a very "alien" atmosphere. Even in the High Forest or Rabanara, I've never felt such a strong "alien" feeling, and those places are pretty fantastical and weird.

We walk through the town towards the north side, and we reach a set of nearly identical white and black two-story mansions built in the modern minimalist style: box-like rooms, a horizontal and straight roof, and floor-to-ceiling windows covering the front-facing walls. It's so boxy and straight that it actually satisfies Lina's dwarven aesthetics.

"What an interesting style. It would fit in well among the surface houses, though I'm not sure that many people would like having an entire wall of glass," she says.

"Yeah, it feels way too 'open' to me. I prefer small windows that can easily be covered," Yunia says.

"Looks perfect to me," Hana comments with a shrug.

"Aren't your people the ones who like to expose their bodies all the time?" Roxanne asks Yunia.

"We're also the people who created the Shells; we're reclusive by nature. We're proud of our perfect bodies, but we only show them off when we want to," she responds.

"You get tired of being naked?" Ririmu asks.

"You don't?" Yunia returns the question right back at him.

He shrugs. "For me, this is normal."

"Being naked all the time would be too stimulating, but at some point, it would become 'normal' again, taking the fun out of being naked," Roxanne says.

Ciel asks with a raised eyebrow, "Talking from experience?"

"Seeing you bare - was very 'stimulating' the first few times. It still is, but I certainly don't get - excited instantly anymore just from seeing them," she answers with a grin, and Ciel rolls her eyes.

"So, you're all excited by seeing us?" Hukarere asks.

"You bet. So many -, but I - touch any of them…" Hana answers with a sigh.

I hold her hand and earnestly tell her, "You can have me anytime you want."

Her face melts into a warm smile, and she kisses my hand. "I know I can, I just hold myself back for a while to make things more interesting."

I chuckle. "Oh, I see…"

"So, this excites you?" Hukarere asks, then squeezes one of her pillows with a hand, plants one foot on a garden bench, and spreads herself to me.

"Wha-… aren't you excited?" Ririmu asks, staring intently at her -.

"His sword has been 'growing' in me," Hukarere says, and we almost groan at her pun.

"I'm pretty sure that any man would get excited by just looking at - that," Hana says, also staring intently at her -. -.

-

"Seeing someone as beautiful as you going around naked all the time has made me perpetually excited," I say.

-

"Just - do her already," Roxanne complains inside my soul space.

"Patience. A true hunter waits for the perfect moment to strike," Alissa responds.

"She's almost ripe," Hana says.

"You're all predators," Lina says

"And you're the prey," Hana continues that line, and her predatory yellow eyes open up inside my mind.

I stop them there before my "Sanity" lowers again, then I undo the spikes of my magnum - and grab it with both of my hands.

"If you don't stop teasing me, we'll have to make a short stop - for me to take care of this," I say.

Hukarere laughs out loud and replies "I'm sorry, Wolf Ryder. I'll try not to 'stimulate' you so much."

"I'm not saying that 'stimulating' me is a bad thing, though."

She nods while smiling. "I'll keep that in mind."

We approach the largest mansion in the neighborhood. It's four stories high and still follows the same modern minimalist style as the other buildings here.

There's a simple gate with two common guards standing in front of it, who let us pass after a quick word from our guides. We walk along a rock path through a grass garden that takes us around the house, then we come out into the backyard. There's a wide patio with a pool, some obvious barbecue equipment, and a large veranda with a few dining tables.

About twenty horned and winged Chimeras and a dozen more with assorted parts are having a small party in the backyard. As if Hukarere wasn't enough, there are now a few Chimeras having some fun that I'd like to partake in.

Oritiki herself is entertaining two men on a lavish lounging couch, but she immediately stops when she sees us and comes over for a greeting while the men quickly follow her.

"Wolf Ryder! I'm glad you came!" She exclaims. She runs her hands down her body and casts multiple instant [Clean]s to dry herself off. The men also dry - themselves - but don't push it down.

"One of my wives is a dragonkin, surely you can understand that it'd be hard for me to say no?" I ask with a cheeky smile, which she returns.

Our guides bow to her while the girls and I give her a respectful nod.

"These are my husbands…" -She swings her arms over the shoulders of each man, then pushes them forward. She's a bit taller than both of them- "Korito and Rei. My husbands, these are Wolf Ryder, Alissa…"

Korito is Thor, a muscular, blonde human man with fair skin, a thick beard, and long hair. Rei is a warthog-head man with a slick, blue with black spots, merfolk chest; thick, blue lizard arms and hands; and rainbow-scaled merfolk legs.

"We've heard a lot about you, Ryder," Korito says. His voice is very gruff and manly.

"Our wife seems very 'interested' in you," Rei says, and I notice a hint of displeasure. His voice is even deeper and rougher, easily booming through the air.

Oritiki rolls her eyes and smiles, then she notices the prickly monster between my legs. "I assume this is the rumored skill?" She asks in an amused tone.

I grab the monster and grow it into an even bigger club, then I change its texture to rough lizard skin. "I have a few 'special skills,'" I say with a grin. Her husbands are speechless, too amazed to speak.

"That's not [Mana Genitals], right?" She asks.

"Nope. It's something else. Well, I do have that skill, but it's much more limited than this one," I answer and show them - the real one.

"Do you know how to use it?" Thor suddenly asks, still staring at the monster. The way that the two men are looking at me makes me uncomfortable.

"I have seven wives, so of course I do," I respond with a chuckle.

"Can you use a sword as well as you can use that thing?" Rei asks and gives me a familiar fearsome smile. If I had to guess, he probably has some dragonkin blood in him.

"It's why we're here," I say and glance at Hana while smiling anxiously. The Celestial Horns are some sort of elite unit, and it's not every day that you get the opportunity to fight someone as strong as Oritiki, so even I'm getting interested in sparring.

"So, who goes first?" Oritiki asks.

"Can I?" Hana asks, and I nod.

"How do you fight?" Oritiki asks her.

"Bastard sword and shield. I'm both a magic swordswoman and a spell sword," Hana says. Oritiki and her husbands seem impressed by her words.

"Which spells can you cast?" Oritiki asks.

We don't want them to underestimate us if we're going to work together, so she tells them all of the spells that she can cast.

"I knew you weren't an average explorer," Oritiki says, and a crazed look starts to form on her face. "We'll be fighting first."

The patio is cleared, and everybody stops playing around to observe the duel. They'll be using sharp weapons and protection for the heart, neck, and brain. Two semi-nude beauties with massive badonkers are going to give us a special show.

"Try not to aim at her underwear. If she's exposed, I'm stopping the duel until she's dressed again, no matter what," I state, and Oritiki nods in understanding.

Hana's alluring underwear won't be enough to hold her dobonhonkeros, so she switches to a tight sash. The small, lacy Snow Weave thong remains, though.

Oritiki's expression turns wild, and - she drips with excitement. With a *poof*, she pulls out her golden glaive, then squeezes her dohoonkabhankoloos as she says, "Let's give them an entertaining 'performance,' shall we?"

A note from Manasong

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Chapter 74: Measure of Strength - Part 1

A note from Manasong

Attention: to conform to the limit of sexual content allowed in a novel, I've censored this chapter. You can look for the uncensored version here.

The symbol "-" denotes a section that got cut for containing sexual content. Also, if paragraphs seem missing, they were also likely censored in an earlier pass where the symbol wasn't used.

Who'd have guessed that an elite force would be filled with battle freaks? Me neither.

Oritiki's angel wings increase in size and spread out. Hana copies her and spreads her own dragon wings. Hana's are unfortunately inferior to Oritiki's, but for this fight, they should be enough.

I can see that Oritiki also has [Wind Armor], but since they're both naked, its effectiveness isn't that great.

Hana hides her body and most of her face behind her black kite shield, then points her emerald bastard sword at Oritiki. She leans her body forward and lowers her stance to protect her legs, her most vulnerable area. She straps her shield to her arm to give her a more stable defense and to allow her to use both hands for her bastard sword if needed.

Hana's eyes mirror Oritiki's wildness. They're like two hungry beasts getting ready to kill each other, two forces of nature whose sole desire is to rip each other to pieces.

Oritiki grips her ornate golden glaive with both hands near the base, then points it forward. She's ready to exploit her reach advantage, which would otherwise be a death sentence for Hana if she didn't have her shield. Unfortunately for Oritiki, Hana's also very adept at fighting a glaive user from dueling with Ciel as much as she has.

"I'm ready," Oritiki says.

"I'm ready," Hana confirms.

"Alright… duel START!" Ciel gives the signal.

They carefully make their way towards each other, moving cautiously since neither of them knows much about the other's style.

Hana enters Oritiki's reach and receives a probing jab. She deflects it with her shield and tries to slash back in response, but her sword isn't long enough to touch Oritiki.

The prodding strikes from Oritiki continues as she analyzes Hana's skill. She predictably aims for Hana's legs, but my ferocious dragonkin is aware of her weak points and quickly dodges the attack.

Hana suddenly activates [Wind Shield] and pushes the golden glaive away, then jumps forward, getting inside Oritiki's guard. She strikes with her sword, but it's deflected by a shining shortsword, then Oritiki glides backward in a way that's very similar to mine.

Oritiki's golden sword finishes its transformation and stops glowing, then she [Switch]es it back to a glaive.

The attacks intensify, but both women are still fighting too conservatively to actually wound each other.

"You have some skill. I'd say your [Sword Use] is around twenty with a few points in a style, correct?" Oritiki asks while grinning.

"Yeah," Hana responds gruffly.

Oritiki's glaive starts to glow and give off "dangerous" mana. She's threatening to use [Beam]. The glow becomes so bright that it hurts to look at it, forcing Hana to go on the defensive.

She receives a slash on her shield arm's shoulder from not being able to properly see Oritiki's attacks, then jumps backward with the aid of her wings to think up a counter for them.

Blood seeps from her shallow wound and stains her sash. Her perfect, tanned skin has been damaged, making me feel anguished about her injury. I love making her feel pain, but I dislike wounding her during sparring. Now, seeing someone else wound her makes me so very displeased but also jealous. Knowing that she's not using [Pain Conversion] brings me some degree of comfort, but she's still enjoying the pain.

Hana continues dodging Oritiki for a few more seconds, then she suddenly stops, and her predatory dragon eyes narrow in determination. She understands that she has no counter for Oritiki's glow, so she'll fight fire with fire.

She casts [Ghost Lights] repeatedly.

Oritiki winces and retreats, then Hana immediately uses her wings to charge at full speed, kicking up a dust storm behind her with a single flap of her wings.

She enters Oritiki's reach and hides behind her shield, then activates [Wind Shield] while dropping low.

Oritiki dodges to the side as her glaive cuts into Hana's back, but in return, she receives a deep gouge in her thick-skinned lizard leg from a two-handed slash. [Wind Armor] is far too weak to have any meaningful effect against their clean strikes towards exposed flesh.

Hana stops casting and reforms her posture while Oritiki looks down at her leg with a frown. The wound is deep enough to cut into muscle, so she'll have to use her wings to move.

The gray stone patio is stained with the vibrant red blood dripping down from their wounds. The crowd is absolutely silent, too enthralled by the duel to even whisper among themselves.

Oritiki snorts, then the crazed grin returns to her face as she says, "Hmph, I underestimated your magic swordsman capabilities, but I'll be fighting you seriously from now on."

Hana laughs and shows her characteristic fearsome smile. "You'd better. I told you my spells because I want this duel to last," she growls a response.

"Do you have [Intimidate]?" Oritiki asks.

Hana nods. "I do."

Oritiki laughs heartily. "You should put more points into that skill. You're giving me chills."

Hana snorts and hides behind her shield again, so Oritiki enters her fighting stance too. The [Ghost Lights] assault returns, forcing Oritiki to squint.

Both of them are attacking each other's vision, but they soldier on and maintain their gazes on their opponent. Their eyes water from the strain, but there's no alternative; they can only endure it.

"Gods, aren't you an annoying enemy!" Hana taunts.

"You have the audacity to tell me that?!" Oritiki yells back, incredulous, then laughs out loud.

Hana grins, unnerving Oritiki for a split second. "Normally, my opponent would be completely blind by now. You're making me waste so much mana!"

"That makes two of us!" Oritiki yells, indignant.

Both of them have high "Endurance" and "Willpower," but no counter for the spells being used, making these kinds of physical illusions not very effective, but also impossible to negate. Hana's [Rainbow Crystal] increases the effectiveness of her spell, making it comparable to an Illusion mage initiate, but it's not enough to fully blind Oritiki.

Hana starts moving towards Oritiki again, who then raises her back hand to her cheek, aiming her golden glaive almost like a rifle. Hana immediately recognizes the danger. Her wings flap, and she charges forward.

Oritiki unleashed [Beam], aiming directly towards Hana's shield. [Dead Zone] diverts the spell, but not by much. It's one thing to divert a lightning bolt, but it's another thing entirely to divert photons coming at the speed of light.

An enchantment lights up along the patio's floor, and the [Beam] instantly fades into nothing well before it can hit the crowd.

Oritiki's spell intensifies when she feeds it even more mana as it clips Hana's shield. Fortunately, the spell doesn't have enough time to melt through it before Hana enters Oritiki's reach, forcing her to defend.

Oritiki dodges upwards, unscathed by Hana's charge. She stops in the air, well out of reach, then charges back down, using her wings just like Hana.

Her glaive strikes the black kite shield head-on and drives into the wood, almost getting stuck. It seems that this glaive also has a bit of Okross in it.

[Wind Shield] activates in the next split second and pushes Oritiki away, but that helps her retreat fast enough that Hana can't counter in time.

Oritiki charges twice again, but Hana manages to deflect the blade and preserve her shield. Each charge marks the patio with a thin, spotty line of blood that continues to drip from Oritiki's leg.

"Maybe trying to skewer me with your horn would be better!" Hana taunts. Oritiki huffs loudly, but the anger in her face quickly disappears, and she regains her stern glare.

On the fourth charge, Hana launches an [Earth Bullet] before the glaive reaches her, forcing Oritiki to defend. Then she charges upwards, and her sword arm splits into two as [Double Image] activates.

Oritiki flies backward, preferring to dodge the illusionary attack, but Hana gives chase, and they trade blows with each other.

"RAAAAAAH!" Hana yells in rage, showing why she gained the title "Thousand Strikes."

But in return, the leader of the Celestial Horns shows why they're an elite unit. She remains calm and focuses on her defense, managing a fighting retreat while Hana exhausts herself with a flurry of attacks that don't connect with her target.

Blood continues to seep from their wounded and sweaty bodies, then rains down after each attack.

Hana eventually gets a deep cut on her cheek, slicing cleanly through her emerald scales, but she still fails to reach Oritiki.

Oritiki tries to cast [Beam] again to get some breathing room, but Hana is keenly aware of the danger of that spell and pressures Oritiki even harder with [Wind Shield]. The enchantment keeps Hana safe, but it also makes it impossible for her attacks to reach Oritiki.

Hana decides to try something new. She hides behind her shield, then it suddenly splits into two as [Double Image] activates again. Oritiki doesn't know which one to strike, so she makes a sweeping horizontal slash, aiming to hit both of them at the same time.

The shield to the right was an illusion, and it perfectly hid Hana's attack. Her sword pierces through the illusion, and she stretches herself to the limit. She manages to stab into Oritiki's right ribs, but it doesn't pierce deep enough to puncture the lung. This time, [Wind Armor] was useful in reducing the effectiveness of the desperate attack.

Hana tries to widen the wound by slashing, but her attack is stopped by Oritiki's shortsword.

Hana casts [Telekinesis] on Oritiki's body, forcing her to stop in the air while allowing the sword to sink deeper into her ribs. But using this spell means that Hana stopped using [Ghost Lights], allowing Oritiki to clearly see her opponent.

Hana growls in pain as Oritiki's sword suddenly flashes and blinds her, then Oritiki bats her weapon away. Hana reflexively breathes fire in a wide plume to buy time for her eyes to recover, but Oritiki dodges the flames and flies to her flank with inhuman speed.

Hana detects the mana burst coming from Oritiki's wings and casts [Torrent] at its source while retreating. It hits Oritiki's left angel wing, breaking it and leaving it bent backward, but it does little to disrupt her flight.

Now able to clearly see her blind opponent, Oritiki flies upwards and makes a deadly, accurate chop towards Hana's neck, easily avoiding her shield. The blade sinks a centimeter through her skin before getting stopped by her neck guard.

"STOP!" Thor and I yell at the same time. Oritiki won; Hana would've been decapitated without the neck guard.

"NGHRAAAH!" Hana lets out a scream in frustration, and fire bursts from her mouth.

She holds her profusely bleeding neck and quickly drops to the ground.

Alissa's will enters my mind and makes me go towards Oritiki while Ciel rushes to Hana. I know that the Chimeras have fairly good healing knowledge, but they don't have an instant [Heal] like I do.

"May I touch you? I can cast [Heal] on you this way," I ask Oritiki with a gentle smile.

"Oh? Sure," she answers, then she suddenly coughs softly and spews blood; it splatters onto the floor before she can cover her mouth. "Apologies. I hate lung wounds…"

None of the blood got on me, so I'm fine. I touch her ribs - and cast [Heal]. The wound closes instantly, not even leaving a scar behind. I immediately cast it again on her thigh, then on her broken wing that she straightened out herself, and finally, one last time on her whole body to handle any remaining wounds.

I find it rather odd that I'm using [Heal] on a "ghost," and it works. It's even more odd that it cost me much less than it normally would given the extent of her wounds. But certainly, the strangest thing is that she bleeds at all.

Through Alissa's eyes, I can see that Oritiki's husbands certainly don't like me touching her. Seeing them like this gives me a dark and very sadistic desire to steal Oritiki for myself.

Netorare is the forbidden fruit, but netori is its equally enticing cousin that's of legal age. I won't do it, though, because I'd be a massive asshole if I persuaded a married woman to cheat.

I go over to Hana and help clean all of the blood off of her body. Her sash will need some washing, though.

We recover her scales that were sliced off, and I apply [Regeneration] to them.

Oritiki comes over and extends her hand to Hana. "That was a glorious fight. Thank you for dueling me," she says.

Hana takes her offer, and they share a powerful handshake.

"Heh, I'll say the same, it was truly glorious. Thanks for the fight, but I'd rather not fight you again, at least not with magic," Hana responds and gives her a fearsome smile.

Oritiki rolls her eyes and chuckles. "Ugh, you don't have to say that twice. I think I can still see your [Ghost Lights] when I close my eyes."

The other Celestial Horns surround us to praise Hana and share some light banter with Oritiki.

"You're getting old, Oritiki! You almost got shit on!" The blue goat taunts.

Lina's Trivia: that's a Chimeric saying that implies an image of a bigger bird that's flying high shitting on a smaller bird that's flying low.

"Hey, hey, hey! Fighting without our Heavenly Armor is a completely different thing!" Oritiki barks.

For some reason, I feel like her white glowing armor would make it impossible for any of us to kill her.

After just a short minute, Hana's scales are shining again.

"You're both quite skilled healers," Oritiki comments as she observes us.

"Thank you," Ciel says with a smile.

Lina's Trivia: [Heal] became much more powerful after the Humanoid Gods ascended, so it wasn't the most common healing method of the time.

"Is that also a Domum specialty?" Oritiki asks.

"It's a land-dweller specialty," I reply, then I kiss Hana's cheek scales, and she makes them wave in happiness.

"So, who's next?" Paraaone asks, a hint of eagerness in his voice. He's a brown bull that acted as Oritiki's bodyguard when we first met.

"I'll be next," a new voice comes from behind us. We turn around and see Kaatohe Ngerua standing before us in a sassy posture with one hand on her hip. "And I want a duel with you," she continues and points a clawed finger at me. Her amber cat eyes stare at me intently with a mix of smugness and wildness.

I smile diplomatically and say, "It'd be my pleasure. What kind of fighter are you?"

"Magic swordswoman. My focus is on [Rush] and [Perfect Intake], but I can also use [Regeneration]. I use a longsword enchanted with [Shocking Touch], but it also has [Telekinesis] for deeper cuts," she answers.

Impressive.

"I'm a magic swordsman, too. I use [Telekinesis] to glide around the ground and strike. I can [Heal] myself, use [Constricting Vines], create javelins with [Vine Weapon], cast all early [Electric Magic] and [Space Magic], and the initial elemental and [Illusion Magic] spells. My shortsword is enchanted with [Double Strike]."

"And you can also summon elementals, too," Oritiki adds.

"Is there anything you can't do?" Kaatohe asks, but there's not much amusement in her voice, she's really annoyed, for some reason.

I smile wryly while the girls tease me through [Bind]. Ciel's face tells me exactly what she's thinking.

"Is that… true?" Thor asks, stunned.

"You'll know soon enough if it isn't," I calmly answer.

"I thought that your dragon wife was powerful, but you're ridiculous," Rei says, then exhales loudly through his nose.

Ciel's mouth twitches repeatedly. She's about to burst.

I take off my robe and let them all bask in my glorious body. I hear a few murmurs as they guess about where I got my scars, then Alissa starts retelling the story of each of them. I smile proudly and return - my lower friend back to normal.

Kaatohe raises an eyebrow and casually asks, "Can't you leave it as it was before? It was rather attractive."

"It would distract me from our duel," I say with a smile.

"That'd make two of us." The casual way that she says this amuses me a little.

"Perhaps another time."

"Hmph. Fine."

I can't admit that I'm scared of - getting it targeted by her sword.

As we quickly warm up, I change my skill points around. I'd taken some from my sword skills to put them in [Reo Language]. Since I'm not going to be using [Godly Language] right now, I take ten points out of it and use them to return my sword skills to how they were before.

Kaatohe draws an ornate Kanal longsword, which glows with its characteristic blue light. It's been gilded with gold, making it look rather ceremonial.

I pull out my simple emerald fang sword and my old steel heater shield covered in emerald scales, then I enter my fighting stance. I grip my shield and point the brim forward, Viking style. My black kite shield is enchanted with [Wind Shield] and [Dead Zone], but it's too heavy for the style that I'm going for right now.

A large round shield would've worked better, but we only have kite and heater shields. Oh, well…

Kaatohe enters the fool's stance, her hands are level with her waist while her sword points down. Her body is slender, petite, and less defined than Alissa's, but I still find her extremely alluring. Her bronze skin -. She's a work of art.

She analyzes my stance, then her face softens into one of curiosity. "You're not going to use a spear?" She asks.

"Nope. Never touched a spear, actually."

She smiles smugly, looking slightly pleased. "A peasant's weapon," she says in a snobbish tone.

I chuckle softly, then our faces harden as we get ready for the duel.

"Would you allow me to cast [Perfect Intake] before we start?" She asks.

"Sure," I reply with a nod.

This will make things more interesting.

She chants for thirty seconds, then succeeds in casting it. Her chest inflates as she inhales deeply, then it stops moving, yet she doesn't suffocate. This spell gives her perfect oxygenation without the need to actively breathe. It's a strong sign about what her style will be like.

Gify, hit me with the good stuff.

Gih!

"I'm ready," she says.

Energy and excitement course through my veins. My dragonator threatens to harden, but I'm experienced enough to keep it under control. I'm ready to fight, to maim, to show them all who has the biggest dick around here!

"I'm ready," I say with a grunt.

"Alright, then… duel START!" Ciel gives the signal.

Kaatohe casts [Rush] and dashes towards me. Lighting crackles along the ground following her steps, and her blade rises up, ready to pierce me.

I slide to the side and defend with my shield. I hear the sound of her blade scraping against the scales, then I blindly slash low, aiming at her legs.

Lighting crackles, and I only cut through the air. I take a look at my shield and notice a cracked scale. Impressive.

Kaatohe immediately attacks again, and I'm put on the defensive, struggling to defend myself against her flurry of blows. My cheeks and shoulders are nicked, but it's nothing debilitating.

Her strikes get heavier and heavier as she gains momentum.

I cast [Lightning Bolt] to throw her off balance, and it hits her square in the chest. She growls and retreats to heal and give herself some time for the numbness to pass.

"Aren't you going to heal yourself?" She asks.

"Wouldn't that be unfair to you?" I ask back with a smirk.

She purrs like a cat and laughs once. "You're going to need every advantage you can get to defeat me."

I growl and point my sword at her. "I'll teach you not to underestimate others."

She opens her arms wide and grins smugly, showing her fangs. "This is why we're here: so that I can determine your worth."

Oh yeah? OH YEAH?!

The excitement is so great that I can't stop - myself -. It reminds me of when I dueled Yunia. I'm getting a strong desire to defeat her and make her mine in front of everyone.

Oh, wait, is this the dragon visions having an effect on me?

Gih.

Oh, well. I just pray that she isn't married.

I lick my lips and stare intently at her -. "Then I won't hold back. I'll show you my everything."

"I've already seen your 'everything.'" She sends a glance down -.

"You haven't felt it, yet."

She chuckles and purrs sensually, sending a shiver of excitement through my spine, -.

Oh, my Gods, this place is going to make me go insane!

She switches to Andraste and speaks with a heavy, sexy accent, dragging the 'r's. "Then come, try me, human."

I'll come, alright.

I cast [Rush] and go on the offensive.

We clash and trade furious blows. At such a high speed, our accuracy plummets. However, our skill with the sword still matters, and hers is higher than mine. Even my [Soul Manipulation] isn't enough; it's too slow to catch her. I fail to get into her guard and receive a painful cut on my shield arm in return.

Her "Speed" and "Dexterity" are definitely higher, too. She might even have [Enhanced Reflexes], a very useful skill to pair with [Rush].

Her sword scrapes against my skin and it turns into a rainbow of color as [Rainbow Shield] reduces [Shocking Touch]'s power.

I cast [Constricting Vines] in front of me, and she retreats, giving me time to deal with the shock. My arm is numb, but it quickly recovers.

While I struggle to breathe, her chest remains unmoving. The only indication that she's under any physical stress is the sweat that's gathering on her bronze skin.

"You're slower than me; you can't win with just [Rush]," she says.

"Watch me," I respond with a grin.

I dual cast [Gravity Crush] and [Rush]. I growl with effort as a headache assaults me.

Kaatohe winces in pain, surprise stamped on her face. She takes too long to react, and I slash her chest. I - open a diagonal wound right on her sternum.

She yells out in pain and finally interrupts my [Gravity Crush], then immediately counterattacks. The pain slows her down a little, and my relentless assault prevents her from using [Regeneration] to close the wound.

Then her face starts to warp in anger, and she hisses at me while showing her fangs. Her attacks suddenly become heavier and crack multiple scales on my shield.

I cast [Telekinesis] on her sword, making it lighter, and I angle my shield so that her attack slides off it, then I strike her sword with my own, forcing it upwards. Her face shifts to surprise again as her sword overshoots, leaving her open.

I lean forward and jab the brim of my shield at her snout. I try to follow up with my sword, but [Battlefield Perception] triggers, and I parry instead. Her sword comes back fiercely fast, and its tip hits my sword's hilt. I feel like a wall is crashing into me as its momentum is way too much for me to stop it.

I have the mechanical advantage by parrying at the hilt, but I can't even divert her strike to the side. My sword arm lowers, too weak to handle her attack.

I try to hold it back with [Telekinesis], but it's too little, too late. She drives the sword forward, and the tip cleaves into my shoulder. [Shocking Touch] immediately activates, and I completely lose the strength to hold her back.

The blade slices through my collarbone, and I scream out in agony. My vision goes dark and my body goes numb from the spell and the pain it inflicts.

NO, NOT YET!

"RAAAA~!" I howl in anger, and power courses through my body, giving me my second wind.

I'LL FUCKING DESTROY YOU!

Before she can remove her sword, I materialize a dragon scale hand from my shoulder and grip the blade, then I create a dagger-tail and stab her in the gut.

"Nghraow…" She lets out a groan of pain mixed with a meow.

I drop my shield and grab her by the throat, then I lift her off the ground and cast [Shocking Touch].

She somehow resists it and tries to pull the longsword back, but my scaled hand has a death grip on it.

I slam her onto the ground, and she finally lets go of the sword, then I mount her and choke her while I form another dragon scale fist and punch her in the face. She glares at me angrily and grabs my hand that's currently choking her, still trying to resist.

I regain a bit of my sanity and morph the dragon fist into a dagger-tail, then I lightly stab it into her neck.

"STOP!" Thor and Ciel yell.

I release her neck, and she gasps for air. I lurch forward from the pain and fatigue and nearly collapse on top of her. My shoulder is still bleeding profusely, so I immediately cast a [Heal] on it.

Her eyes then lower -. This makes me pause for a moment as I take in our currently horrifying situation. My white, bare chest and back are now completely stained red with my blood; - my body is - pressing against her still open chest wound; her bronze skin and leopard fur are thoroughly bloodied -.

Ciel touches me and casts another [Heal] on my shoulder, finally closing it while leaving a scar behind.

Oh nice, new souvenir.

I chuckle and collapse beside Kaatohe. Ciel switches to healing her and closes all of her wounds and fixes her bleeding snout.

I finish healing myself, then Alissa kneels beside me and starts [Cleaning] all of the blood off of my skin.

After a few more seconds, Kaatohe is fully healed, then she starts purring, sounding quite content.

The others gather close around us to give us praise.

"That was a brutal fight," Rei comments.

"Magic swordsmen are quite deadly. I wasn't expecting anything less," Oritiki says and nods in satisfaction.

"I'd prefer if you didn't use [Entangling Vines] in our backyard," Thor complains. I then see that a few of the patio stones were uprooted by my vines.

Oops.

Kaatohe sits up as Ciel [Clean]s the blood off of her, then turns to me. Her expression is blank, still recovering from the brutality of our duel.

"So, have you measured my worth?" I ask with a cheeky smirk.

A smug smile slowly graces her lips, and she snorts. "Yes, I have."

"And what do I get?"

"The highest honor you can receive: my respect," she says in an exaggeratedly pompous tone, perfectly enunciating each word.

"Is that all? I was expecting something a little more… physical," I say in a low, deep tone.

She chuckles and gets up. "That's all… for now." Then she turns around and walks over to the pool. Her hips have gained a noticeable sway -. I stare intently at her curves -.

"Hana, come with me, I need to fuck something," I demand.

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Chapter 74: Measure of Strength - Part 2

A note from Manasong

Attention: to conform to the limit of sexual content allowed in a novel, I've censored this chapter. You can look for the uncensored version here.

The symbol "-" denotes a section that got cut for containing sexual content. Also, if paragraphs seem missing, they were also likely censored in an earlier pass where the symbol wasn't used.

I take Hana's hand and lead her towards the veranda. There's a set of leather sofas surrounding a tea table where a pair is already having fun, so I think it should be fine to do it over there.

I pull out a large sheet and cover the sofa with it, then I push Hana down.

-

Hukarere sits on a sofa nearby to watch, and an audience quickly starts to gather, curious to see how I'm going to destroy Hana -.

-

"Holy shit, that's amazing," Oritiki comments.

"It's… spinning…" Hukarere says absentmindedly.

"I think I've read this - novel before," the white Celestial goat comments with a knowing smirk.

Kaatohe gets out of the pool and comes over to watch -.

She maintains her gaze for a few seconds, her face remaining impassive, then she turns around and goes back into the pool. Through Aoi's eyes, I see her face instantly become worried as she holds a hand over her belly.

I have to show her that I can be gentle, too.

-

-

I'm feeling exhausted, and it's not even midday yet. Though I'm definitely proud of what I've done today, I'm sure that my ego is a little inflated right now.

We get up from the sofa and [Clean] off our sweat, then I pull out Hana's criminally small bikini and hand it to her.

"You're not skinny-dipping," I say.

"What are you talking about?" She innocently asks as she smiles, but [Bind] doesn't lie.

Alissa takes her arm, and Roxanne appears a second later. I give them their bikinis, and the three of them go find a room to change in.

Ciel is sitting on a bench with Lina on her lap, Yunia is beside her, Gify is on her shoulder, and Aoi is curled up beside her feet. She's casually chatting with the Celestial Horns about healing, and they're buttering up my angel with compliments. Contrary to what MMO players believe, it's never a good idea to belittle the person who's supposed to save you from death.

I calmly walk over to the pool and lower myself into the shallow area. I sigh in relief and let a small shudder spread through me as my overheated body is quickly cooled down. I see Kaatohe talking to a few part-cat Chimeras who appear to be rather similar to her. Our eyes meet, and she nods at me, then returns to her conversation and ignores my existence.

The two toy golems hover near the pool while Jarn stands at the edge. Since they don't interact with anyone, the guests left them alone and eventually started to ignore them.

A few seconds later, the girls come back. Gify pops on top of my head and nestles into my hair.

Alissa sits in the pool behind me and pulls me into a hug. She picks Gify up and deposits the cheeky griffin on my unwounded shoulder while grumbling, then she sighs and says, "I don't want you to get into a duel like that ever again."

"Same… I can still feel the phantom pains from my bones being cut, I don't want a repeat of that anytime soon."

"You two were amazing, though," Roxanne says and hugs my right arm -.

"I'd love it if Wolfy cut me like that," Hana says.

"And then start - doing you while you're still bleeding with a sword through your gut?" Roxanne asks.

"Exactly," Hana says and grins fearsomely.

"Barbarians…" Roxanne mumbles and rolls her eyes. Hana immediately pulls her into a hug and breathes down her neck.

"I know that it - makes you happy to see me get hurt," Hana growls in her ear.

Roxanne smiles but doesn't reply. She hugs my arm again, and we start our cuddling session.

Yunia is the next person to be challenged, but she doesn't use sharp swords, preferring to go the sportsman route. They use blunt swords that are wet with paint and play by Chimeric rules, which are actually more conservative than the imperial ones. When you can easily [Heal] a poked eye, such types of attacks become much more acceptable.

Yunia swallows an Eia pill and easily wins two duels in a row due to [Precognition]. In the third match, the Celestial blue goat manages to cast [Rush] mid-fight and overpowers her. If she had prepared [Soul Blade] beforehand, she'd have been able to hold him back, which is why these duels aren't a perfect measure of our strength. Strategy plays an increasingly important role for higher level participants, and having about a minute to prepare beforehand isn't enough time to come up with reliable strategies.

After that, she's too tired to keep fighting, so she's the next person to join us in the pool.

"You fought perfectly," I praise her.

"They had no counter for [Precognition], and when they tried something new, I fell immediately," she responds and pouts subtly.

I grab her hand and pull her into a hug. "Just the fact that you're able to use [Precognition] is amazing. Perhaps we can perfect your build with [Enhanced Reflexes] or [Rush] when you have enough free skill points."

"Hm…" She stares at me while she thinks about what I said.

I give her a peck on the lips, and her serious expression melts away. She lets out a soft chuckle, then rests her head against my chest. Her fluffy hair gets wet and quickly loses its majestic drill shape, but we all promise to help her redo her drills when we leave the pool.

I give a little bit of encouragement to Lina, and she accepts a duel in the same style as Yunia's.

She's using a long wooden axe and her kite shield that's more like a tower shield for someone her height. Her opponent is Paraaone, a tall, brown bull-headed man who's using a wooden glaive.

She's actually really uncomfortable with this duel since - her eye level is at a very "unfortunate" height.

Lina's serious face suddenly goes blank as she remembers something. "Ah… I'm sorry, Oritiki, but I'll have to use the stones of the patio to keep my footing," she says.

"What do you mean?" Oritiki asks.

"I make the earth grow around my feet so that I don't get launched away when I defend against an attack."

"Oo~h…" She glances at Thor and gives him an apologetic smile. The man sighs and shakes his head, then shrugs at her. "Ah, well, it's no problem, I'll just contact the builders after today," she replies.

"I-I'm sorry." Lina gives her a quick bow.

Oritiki waves her hand. "It's no problem."

Lina nods and returns to her combat stance. Her opponent smiles warmly at her, then his face suddenly turns menacing. Her gloomy look darkens as she hardens her nerves and shows her rare serious expression.

"Ready?" Oritiki asks.

"Yes," they answer in unison.

"Duel… start!"

Paraaone immediately charges forward while Lina wraps her feet in stone. The menacing glare of the bull disappears for a moment, but he quickly recovers and sweeps horizontally with his glaive.

Everyone's eyes turn to Lina. She's using [Cursing Magic], and the novel type of mana that she's emitting makes them become very curious about her.

She easily defends against the swipe and counters with an [Earth Bullet]. Paraaone dodges it, but then he becomes confused and retreats. He knows what Lina's spells do, but he apparently doesn't understand what they do.

He spends a few seconds squinting his eyes at her and tilting his head. His "Intelligence" must be low because it seems that [Befuddle] is very effective against him.

Lina switches to [Demoralize], and Paraaone's attacks become sloppy. When he sweeps horizontally again, she manages to slip under the weapon's path, and her axe slashes at his thigh, leaving a long red line of paint behind.

"Point to Lina," Oritiki announces.

Paraaone slaps his own face, perhaps a little too hard as he winces in pain, but it seems to clear away [Befuddle] and [Demoralize] somewhat since his attacks seem to regain their previous vigour.

He starts to get angry when he fails to get through her shield. Dwarves specialize in defensive fighting, so there's no surprise there.

He takes a few steps back and starts chanting [Wind Hammer]. She casts [Earth Wall] behind him and activates [Enhanced Speed], then charges forward.

He was expecting Lina's spell to be aimed at his feet to disrupt his balance and interrupt his casting, so he jumps backward and crashes against the wall. "Oh, fuck!" He quickly mutters and swipes with his glaive.

Lina creates a small depression under her right foot as she steps on the ground and uses it to keep herself from being punted when lands a solid strike at the center of her shield.

She lands a strike with her axe at the side of his right knee, forcing him to kneel, then combos it with an upward chop towards his chin. He blocks with the shaft of his glaive, then spreads his wings and immediately takes flight.

"Major point for Lina."

He attacks her from above, staying out of her reach, but she simply counters with [Wind Shield] and easily keeps him away.

He suddenly stops in the sky to catch his breath. "Well, things won't end well for me this way," he says. [Weaken] is having a noticeable effect on him, constantly draining his stamina. And he's right, if he does nothing, then he'll lose because of exhaustion.

He distances himself from Lina, then starts casting [Wind Hammer] again, but he must have a pretty high level in [Mana Control] because he's gathering quite a lot of mana for the spell.

Her mind races with ideas as she tries to come up with a counter to his spell. If he has [Wind Magic] or [Mana Control] high enough, then he can abuse the spell's advantage, it's maneuverability, and even go around her [Wind Shield]. It's also possible to make the spell nearly invisible, so it'd be better if she doesn't solely rely on being able to block it.

A circular wall of stone starts to grow around Lina. She lowers herself behind her shield, then conceals herself with the [Earth Wall], forming a small dome.

"I need [Beam] for this!" Paraaone yells.

"Just don't hit her with the glaive!" Oritiki yells back.

I simply nod at her when she glances at me.

Paraaone swiftly uses his [Item Box] and pulls out his golden glaive, then immediately casts [Beam] at Lina's dome. The stone quickly starts to glow from heat, then it begins to melt.

After a mere five seconds, Lina's dome is pierced. A large stone shoots out of the ground next to the dome and breaks Paraaone's right wing.

"FUCK!" He yells in pain and dodges to the side, narrowly avoiding a second [Earth Bullet].

Hehehehe, clever girl.

"Major point for Lina."

A cloud of dust starts to kick up from her dome and quickly covers the entire patio. Paraaone limps around the sky, but he doesn't know where to strike.

His flying is so sloppy now that he's leaking mana everywhere. A [Wind Blade] flies towards him and nicks the skin of his broken wing. He tries to counter with [Beam], but he misses her completely.

"Point for Lina."

Lina decides to end the [Dust Storm] and goes back to using [Weaken] on him. She glares at him, trying to look menacing, but to me, it only makes her look even cuter. Her real angry face is definitely not cute, though.

"How much MP do you have?!" He exclaims, exasperated.

"A lot. I'm an enchanter," she stoically replies.

He lands and casts [Beam] at her again. She feeds mana into [Dead Zone], and his spell is diverted.

He feeds it even more mana, and the spell clips her shield, but her [Dodge] is at 3+5, which gives her enough mobility to keep it from causing any damage.

She doesn't even charge as she just keeps dodging him while he wastes his MP and his stamina drains away.

He finally lets his glaive drop and lets out a long groan. "I surrender!" He yells, then bends over and holds his knees to catch his breath.

Lina stops using [Weaken], then turns to us and smiles like an imp.

"That's my girl," I say through [Bind] and pat her head in my mind.

Lina played her cards perfectly: [Cursing Magic]'s strong point is continuous casting. The effect ramps up the longer you maintain the spell, so staying on the defensive until it reaches maximum power will always be the best move.

The fact that the Horns aren't wearing their glowing armor for these duels must've also helped with the spell's efficiency. I'm sure that there's some type of spell resistance enchantment woven into it; anything that glows in this world is magical and dangerous.

To make the hole that she hid in, she used [Earth Wall] on the stone to take "control" of it, then she forcefully "dismissed" it, leaving a hole behind. Not the most mana-efficient way of doing it, but it's definitely the quickest.

Now that her duel is finished, I give Lina her cute bikini so that she can join us in the pool. I'm not sure which looks better on the girls: underwear or bikini.

"You're changing clothes just to get in the water?" Hukarere asks as she swims closer to us.

"We were wearing underwear. It'd ruin the fabric if it got wet in the pool," Alissa answers. She stops hugging me and goes deeper into the pool, then stops beside Hukarere to chat with her.

With just a nudge through [Bind], I get Hana's strong, slightly tanned arms to wrap around me, making me feel completely safe and secure. She starts caressing the new scar on my shoulder, then intensifies her attention into a light massage of the still sensitive area.

Lina comes back and pouts a little that her favorite spot is taken, then she unceremoniously sits on Yunia's lap. The Princess snorts softly, then starts petting Lina like a posh lady would pet her cat.

The Celestial Horns talk about dueling with Aoi, but I say no. She's heavily disadvantaged against a humanoid without her armor, and her magical capabilities aren't yet strong enough to overcome that. She'd just get wounded repeatedly and we'd end up having to cast [Regeneration] on hundreds of her scales. There's also a small degree of over-protectiveness at play, which doesn't happen with Hana, for some reason.

Ciel is challenged to a duel, but after repeatedly healing everyone, the amount of MP she has left isn't much, so they have some glaive-only matches.

Our pure melee skills aren't that great without magic to aid us, so Ciel predictably loses most of her duels. Her potential has already been established, though. Someone who can instantly [Heal] grievous wounds like mine completely changes the dynamic of a battlefield. She and I are the pillars of our fellowship.

After that, Aoi comes over to join us in the pool and shrinks down to small-Aoi so that she can play with Gify. Their combined adorableness is enough to melt even the heart of the haughty Kaatohe.

Ciel puts on a bikini, too, and steals Lina for herself. My curvy goddess is in quite a good mood, even after her matches. The positive attention she got from the Horns seems to have mellowed her out quite a lot.

A lanky snake-head man challenges Alissa to an archery contest. It seems that the Horns don't have any archers, so they called on one of Hihiriwa's men. Normally, Alissa doesn't care about such things, but it's quite obvious that the Chimeras are testing our strength, so she plays along and accepts the challenge.

Her [Bow Use] is at level thirty, which is pretty high for the average archer, but she also has a good number of sense-enhancing skills, making her my very own Legolas. Needless to say, she wins the contest without much effort.

Just to style on the poor dude, her aim is so perfect that she hits her own arrow twice, right on the bullseye. She makes me so proud that I even poke Yunia - on her back.

She comes back to the pool with her tail lazily swaying behind her, but she's holding herself back from letting it wag freely.

Now that everyone has fought, the Celestial Horns start dueling between themselves like a bunch of barbarians. They're quite a chummy group of bros and bro-gals sharing some totally not gay bro-love with each other.

Oritiki slips into the pool near us, then Rei sits on her lap, and she hugs him from behind. The buff warthog-headed man looks kind of small in this position.

"So, I assume that Roxanne is your mage?" She asks us.

"That's right. Out of all of us, I'm the one with the most killing power," Roxanne replies and starts snickering evilly.

Both of them frown in a mix of worry and confusion.

Not revealing her [Explosion] spell is safer, but then it'd create an undesirable situation if we were forced to use it in front of them. It's one thing to reveal that we all hold power, but it's another thing entirely to talk about it in detail. Just how far should we trust them?

I nudge Roxanne through [Bind], and she agrees. I summon a small bird and let it take flight, then Roxanne points a finger at it and fires off an [Ice Lance], killing it instantly.

Hukarere and Ririmu are wowed by the display and clap softly in amazement.

"We all have a few more secrets, too," Roxanne says and winks at Oritiki.

"Now I can understand how you've all survived so far," Oritiki says and smiles gently.

The smells of barbecued meats fill our noses, and my stomach rumbles. The fighting slows down as everyone starts to get hungry.

We eat a few appetizers and watch as servants fix and clean the patio, then they pull out several long tables and dozens of comfy chairs. It seems that we'll be having a meal under the stars. It's still day, but the sun here is hidden behind the clouds like it usually is, so we only see the galaxy-like sky above us.

The meal is nothing short of amazing. They have tabbouleh, which fits well the barbecue fare. There's even some cow meat from a rare bovine monster that I can't pronounce the name of.

There's a lack of potatoes, though. They have lots of grains and tomatoes, but no starchy veggies aside from roots.

Once the meal is done, most of the Chimeras head home, including Kaatohe and the other part-cat Chimeras. A few of the Horns stick around and lounge under the veranda.

Oritiki shows us our rooms, but we quickly settle on a single room that's large enough to fit all of our beds.

Then we return to the veranda for dessert: fruit cakes. Tea and juice are also offered, but we don't have any alcohol yet because, in a few minutes, we'll be leaving to meet with the High Council again.

A note from Manasong

Hall of Fame of Patrons

The patrons who support Rupegia shall have their names sung by the bards for they deserve the glory and honor. Their names are:

Oracle Maximillian Hübner.

Prince PreownedFIN.

Lord Andrew Meyers.

Lord Hope.

Lord Samuel Lim.

Lord Bill.

Lord Novgarod.

Lord DJ.

Lord Ashadun.

Lord Michale Erwin.

Lord Enrique Peña Gomez.

Lord Braidborn.

Lord Bakerdea.

Lord Yeeteris Dedmeem.

Lord D4rk Sheep.

Lord Nathan Vanbrunt.

Lord Markus.

Lord Maurice.

Lord Badger.

Lord Krawn.

Lord Remco.

Lord Empyrean.

Lord Asakurà.

Lord Cidant.

Lord Mattirro Draca.

Lord Joshua Tal.

Noble Salty Panda.

Noble Yamibomb112.

Noble Mild Fracas.

Noble EESDESESESRDT.

Noble Aclys.

Noble Tyler Mills.

Noble Samuel Steinike.

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Chapter 74: Measure of Strength – Part 3

A note from Manasong

Attention: to conform to the limit of sexual content allowed in a novel, I've censored this chapter. You can look for the uncensored version here.

The symbol "-" denotes a section that got cut for containing sexual content. Also, if paragraphs seem missing, they were also likely censored in an earlier pass where the symbol wasn't used.

All of the Celestial Horns adorn their bodies with lots of jewelry, and we don our best clothes and jewels again, then we leave Oritiki's estate.

"How're you all handling being among us naked people?" Oritiki asks as we make our way through the streets.

"I'm fine," I casually reply.

"I can see that," she comments and looks me up and down -.

"Too many - things dangling. I - wanna do it all the time," Hana says.

"No complaints about that," I say.

"Me neither," Roxanne says with a shrug.

Hana snorts and adds, "Same."

"I feel disgusted seeing other - men's, and so should you," Alissa says to Hana and sends her a slight glare.

"Hey, Wolfy can make any - he wants, so they're just giving me ideas," Hana defends herself.

"At least be more discreet with your staring, like Roxanne."

"Nah," Hana replies dismissively, and Alissa's tail goes stiff in annoyance.

"I'd just like to say that I'm only dressed like this to please Wolfy," Ciel announces.

I grab her hand and give it a kiss. "And I love every second of it," I softly say to her.

"I don't feel like this is that different from what I usually wear," Yunia says.

"You're wearing more clothing with this bikini than that time when Bastico came to visit us," Roxanne says.

Yunia smiles a little sadistically and says, "You may have not noticed, but Bastico was definitely holding himself back so that he wouldn't drool from desire."

"Did you imagine him staring and drooling at you while Wolfy destroyed you -later that day?" Roxanne asks in a teasing tone.

"Definitely not," Yunia responds immediately, a little too coldly.

Roxanne snickers. "I know your type."

Yunia's cold, sharp tone awakens the sub in me for a moment. "You know nothing, Roxanne. Be quiet," she growls, but her tone just makes Roxanne snicker even more.

"I feel a bit more free, but I want to go back to wearing normal clothes tomorrow," Lina brings the conversation back on track.

"Same," Ciel adds.

"But what about the dicks?" Hana asks.

Lina frowns and looks down as she answers, "I don't like them…"

"Same," Ciel repeats.

"I like seeing Wolfy's -, but I don't feel anything when I see others'," Aoi comments.

"And that's how it should always be," Alissa says with pride and pats Aoi's head, who closes her eyes in happiness.

When everyone goes quiet, Oritiki continues the conversation by asking, "Well, but what about the women? Forgive me for assuming, but you all seem… a little too close to be just 'sister wives.' Especially you four." She points to the two obvious pairs among us.

"Hardly any women make me feel horny. But you do, for example," Hana answers.

"I can see all kinds of naked women during our bath, but I don't feel particularly aroused by them," Yunia answers.

"I get a little excited, of course, but I have little interest in most women," Roxanne answers.

"There's… not many women around here that are my type," Ciel says a little embarrassed.

"I only like Ciel," Lina innocently says, making our hearts melt, especially Ciel's.

"I only like strong women that I can dominate," Aoi says.

"Well, they're all gay as fuck," I say.

"Bisexual," Ciel corrects me and pouts.

I snort as I get an idea. I use [Bind] to control Alissa to say, "I'm 'Wolfy-sexual.' I fuck anything he fucks…" She frowns and tilts her head in confusion. "What…?"

Hana, Roxanne, and I snicker while the other girls chuckle softly.

"I know I've read this erotic novel before," the white Celestial goat comments.

Alissa blinks blankly a few times, then shrugs and whispers, "I guess he's not wrong."

"Alissa's keeping a diary; I'm pretty sure that there'll be an actual erotic novel written about us one day," Hana says.

"Nice," the white goat mutters.

We all go quiet again, so I take this opportunity to say, "Oritiki, there's something I'd like to ask you about."

"What is it?" She responds.

"Why is it that you act independently from the High Council?"

She smiles gently and answers, "The Celestial Horns are the weapons that the Divine yield to uphold justice, and above them, there is only the Supreme-Ruler, so we answer to no one here. But if we don't find any other remnants of our fallen nation, then I guess we'll never serve another for the rest of our lives."

"Do you ever think about raising another generation of Celestial Horns? Leaving your weapons and armor to just anybody could be dangerous," Yunia suggests.

"Yes, we thought about that…" She replies and goes silent. We get the feeling that all the Chimeras nearby just had a mini-seizure, so we don't push them any further on this subject.

We climb up for a short while before we reach the Forum, the golden building from yesterday.

There are a few owl-headed and dog-headed Chimeras running about with stacks of paper. The air here feels completely different from last time.

We climb the long set of stairs, then cross through the gaudy golden doors and enter the theater.

This time, the Council isn't sitting in the audience, but are instead seated at a large round table in the middle of the stage. They're all wearing even more jewelry than Oritiki, and there's so much of it that it almost covers their bodies like clothes.

We get a few nods from the Councilors as we approach, then Oritiki takes us to our seats. At the table, there are only two chairs assigned to us while the rest of our seats are positioned behind them. Oritiki gets only one chair, while the rest of her Horns have to sit behind her.

We were expecting this sort of gesture, but getting two chairs instead of one is a bit odd. Perhaps it's Hihiriwa trying to earn some goodwill with us?

"Good day to you, Ryders," Hihiriwa says and gives us a toothy smile. The old dragon-headed man is as cheerful and naked as the first time we met him.

"Good day to you too, Marshall," I reply and nod respectfully.

Yunia sits down beside me since she has the most experience with this sort of thing, while Alissa sits behind her to help translate since Yunia's [Reo Language] is only at level three.

"I see that you're adapting to our ways," Wahinui says, as stern as usual. Now that I've taken a "closer" look at Kaatohe, I think that she's just a hairless and younger version of Wahinui. They really might be parent and child after all.

"It's a nice change, but it won't last. We still find too much comfort in being clothed," I say.

"Hmph…"

Gify drops onto the table and lays down, so I start petting her like a pompous villain.

"Let's begin the meeting," Hihiriwa says and looks around, checking if anyone wants to make a comment, then he continues, "We're here to discuss an expedition towards Ozymandias. Oritiki, I heard that the Horns sparred with the Ryders?"

"Yes, we did. I was curious about their strength, so we arranged duels with each other," Oritiki answers.

"And what of their capabilities?"

"Stronger than any of your soldiers. They'll be fine on their own." She glances at us and sends a kind smile.

"Wonderful, I believe that we can let them act independently, then."

"Also, I'm an amateur pilot, so I don't think that I'd be able to fly in formation during a battle," I say.

"I'll keep one of my men with you to help us coordinate," Oritiki says to me.

"Now, on to the planes. I want to take one Island Winch, the Long Floater, and the Carrier with us, along with thirty Wasps," Hihiriwa continues.

He turns to Wahinui and the two of them discuss the number of soldiers they'll need to man the planes. There's some discussion between him and the other Councilors about the number of planes that should be taken and if it's worth it or not to take the Carrier. The concerns about safety win against the ones about cost, a determination which the Councilors who deal with the Treasury bitterly accept.

"Now, Ryders, how long can your ship stay afloat?" Hihiriwa asks.

I hesitate for a moment to come up with an answer because we've never actually tested that before.

If we encounter any islands or islets on the way, then "forever" because we have [Redirect Mana], but I don't want to explain that skill to them.

I trade a few quick whispers with Yunia about how to word our response.

"We haven't fully tested it yet, but we should be able to travel for a few days without a problem. If it's just floating in place, then we can do that indefinitely," I finally respond.

"I see, then the Floater will be necessary. We'll allow you to use it to refill your ship's mana in exchange for your aid in case of combat," Hihiriwa says.

"Our first priority will always be ourselves and our ship. We also rely solely on our own personal skills; our ship doesn't have any defenses of its own."

"That's fine. In case of attack, you can land on the Carrier and help defend. I'm more worried about monster swarms than anything bigger, and that's where we can use your help."

"We'll be there, too, in case a heavy-class monster attacks," Oritiki says.

I think that by "heavy-class," she means monsters as big as our ship.

"We'll also demand rights over all of our kills," I add.

"Agreed," Hihiriwa says with a nod. "Now, on to the matter of the Gaping Maw… I wish to expend a Light storage gem to cause a runaway mana reaction."

"What?!" Wahinui and another Councilor exclaim in unison.

He smiles a bit mischievously, seeming to find enjoyment in giving headaches to the rest of the High Council. "It's the best way to create enough of a distraction for the Ryders to get past the Gaping Maw."

"That… will be expensive…" The Councilor says and starts to nervously tap against the paper he's writing on with his magical pen.

Wahinui growls in a low tone and says, "Why do you wish to spend so much to help them… explore…?" -She looks at us in exasperation. She doesn't understand why we want to go there- "Ozymandias isn't even the way back to their 'Sky Lands.'"

Hihiriwa smiles calmly, then straightens his posture and raises his head high above the other Councilors. His voice booms across the stage, clearly intended to intimidate the High Council. "We're trading the Light gem for an entire farming island. We'll be able to craft another gem by using the island's gem if need be, and we'll have a whole new island for ourselves."

"Surely there are less expensive ways to distract the Gaping Maw?" The Treasury Councilor asks, also exasperated.

"Less safe ways? There certainly are…" Hihiriwa frowns as he answers and waves his hand dismissively, then he glares and at Councilors and snarls. "But let me remind you all that we also need that distraction to safely tow the island back here."

The Councilors winces slightly at his ferocity.

Numerous alternatives are suggested, which turns the meeting into a heated discussion, but once again, Hihiriwa comes out on top.

It's hard to find a better distraction since his plan has already worked for them once before. The Gaping Maw is a monster, which makes it rather sensitive to Light magic, so they fed it a Light gem and observed the result. A few seconds after eating it, the monster became very angry, but then it immediately curled up and fell asleep since it apparently had a lot of trouble digesting the gem.

So, big snek got a tummy ache?

The most obvious way to try to distract the Maw would be to use the Wasps, but how does the life of a Chimera compare to that of a Light storage gem? Wahinui doesn't want to put their soldiers in danger, but she hasn't come up with any reasonable alternatives yet.

The old cat-head woman narrows her feline eyes in annoyance, then turns to the Horns. "Honored One, couldn't you try to engage the Gaping Maw and lure it away from Ozymandias?" She asks.

For the first time, I see Oritiki acting rather meek and uncomfortable. "You know how fast the Gaping Maw can fly when it's angry. We… aren't confident that we can outrun it," she answers and shifts uncomfortably in her seat.

The Councilors quickly resume their chatter and discuss how they can make sure that the Celestial Horns outrun the Maw.

I interrupt the Councilors and say, "I should point out that we don't need to actually fly my ship to Ozymandias. It's possible for me to use [Gate] and teleport my ship across the Maw's territory if it isn't too far."

"Oh, [Gate]! I heard a lot about that from Domum," a Councilor exclaims, and the others start murmuring excitedly.

"If you can use [Gate] for yourself, then delivering the gem becomes even easier," Hihiriwa says.

"Would you trust an outsider with something so valuable?" Wahinui asks with a raised eyebrow.

"Yes…?" Hihiriwa answers and sighs. "As far as we know, none of the Ryders have the power to distract the Gaping Maw."

Wahinui goes silent and gives him a long stare. Meanwhile, the Councilors grit their teeth in frustration and suggest a few different plans. They want someone to anger the Maw and run away, then I can use [Gate] to help us both escape.

"It'd be simple to just sacrifice a Wasp for this plan," a Councilor says.

"What guarantees that the Maw would go away after they teleport?" Wahinui asks. Surprisingly, she's against this plan. Actually, she's against involving us at all in the distraction.

The Councilors prod us with questions about our powers, mainly [Gate] and its limitations. The Long Floater could possibly outrun the Maw, so they suggest using either it or a Wasp as bait while leaving me as a backup, but judging by its size, it would simply be too big for me.

We shoot down these plans because the girls also don't want to take the risk, Yunia most of all. Even if I set all of my points to squeeze everything I can out of [Gate], the teleport would probably leave me without any MP and force me to use [Redirect Mana], which would exhaust me. We don't even know what's in Ozymandias, so this plan could leave us vulnerable. Yunia also says that the Chimeras aren't offering enough in exchange for us to take on this risk, so no deal.

Hihiriwa finally starts to get angry, and his nostrils light up as he loudly exhales. He suddenly slams his fist against the table and yells, "I'll cover the costs!" The table goes silent, and a few hopeful eyes light up. "But I'll take half of the profits from the farm island until I recoup twice the cost of the gem!" Their hope is snuffed out, and their mouths are left hanging open in disbelief.

"Outrageous!"

"Twice?!"

"Did all of you get your wings broken?! I'm the one taking the risk, so I deserve to get something out of it!" Hihiriwa exclaims, incensed, and the smallest of the Councilors recoil in fear for a moment from his booming voice.

The Councilors all start bickering, but Wahinui puts an end to it as she says, "I'll accept that."

The Treasury Councilor sighs and takes her side. The rest continue to complain for a little while longer, then they bitterly accept the arrangement.

Gods! It's finally over!

Now that the plan has been agreed upon, they start to iron out the details.

"A Gull plane should be strong enough to carry both a catapult and the gem, so you'll be trained to fly it along the way," Hihiriwa says to me, and I nod. "Also, I think that it'd be easier to teleport the gem after you've gotten into position; otherwise, you'd have to fly very slowly."

"I understand. We'll see how training goes," I reply.

After that, we retire from the meeting, leaving the old farts to bicker about supplies and whatever else. Hihiriwa's men will be ready a full day from now, so the only thing left to organize are the supplies, and that'll only take a short while. Therefore, we'll depart the day after tomorrow.

Oritiki and the Horns stay behind, so it's just us and our guides again.

"Is there a tavern with music that we can go to?" Alissa asks them and smiles innocently. "I'd like to play around for the rest of the day since we'll be going back to adventuring soon."

"There are a few places. Do you like dancing?" Hukarere asks, a little excitedly.

"Not me, particularly, but the other wives do," she answers.

"Things tend to escalate in places where there's a lot of touching," Ririmu says and gives her a knowing smile.

"Sounds perfect," Alissa answers and giggles cutely.

Oh, how I love you, my cute foxy pimp.

"I don't think you'd do well with rowdy places since there's… well, a lot of unsolicited touching in those kinds of crowded places," Ririmu says.

Oh, right, a bunch of naked people jumping around right next to each other would be too much for us.

"We'll go for a more 'restrained' place," Hukarere says, and we nod in agreement.

I change the topic and ask something that the girls are thinking about, "Are you two coming with us on the expedition?"

"The Honored One could use us as a liaison between you and the Marshall, so we probably will, but I'll ask anyway," Hukarere says.

"This is the best job we've had in a while, so I'd rather keep it this way for a while longer," the raccoon man says as he smiles adorably and scratches his little button nose.

"You're good guides; it's been nice to have you around," Ciel says.

"You guys wanted to have fun, and I guess that's something we're good at," he says with a cheeky grin, and we chuckle lightly.

We spend a little while browsing some shops since the taverns aren't open yet, and we buy some jewelry for ourselves. We get metal chains of different alloys, which gives them a variety of colors; some cute tiaras and hair ties for the girls; and a few small jeweled bracelets.

We all agree that leaf-themed jewelry is perfect for Yunia because it just matches so well with her elven magnificence. Roxanne and I look surprisingly cool with geometric patterns and sharp angles. Maybe it's our angular features and (mine, mostly) cool demeanor. Hana and Aoi deserve larger gems because small things just don't suit dragons, for some reason, so they don't get much from this shopping spree. The other three get some cute chains, which makes them pretty happy.

The trinkets are real and not mana solidifications, so we get quite the bargain since the Chimeric coins are smaller than ours. After that, we buy some semi-transparent not-silk robes for each of us. It's the best of both worlds: their - bits can be seen, but they also exude the same sexiness as when they're clothed, and as a bonus, the robes don't make me excessively horny like with the Clothes of the Berserker.

We eat a few pastries from some nearby stalls, and I feel a subtle taste of something weird, well, weirder than the usual. I'm not sure if it's the spice or the fact that it's conjured food, but now that I've noticed it, I can't "un-notice" it. The possibility of the food being poisoned starts to float through my mind and makes me anxious.

I buy more of the same chicken pastries from another stall and feel the same weird taste, then I buy some other pastries with chicken and feel it again.

Okay, maybe it's just the meat that's weird or the fact that it's conjured.

I'm not a poison expert, but something that can kill us faster than Ciel can cast [Purify Body] just doesn't exist. There could be a problem if it were something completely novel that the spell won't handle, but there's still the alternative of continually casting [Heal] until the poison runs out.

After a while, the taste fades, and I sigh. I'm just being paranoid. The fact that these Chimeras are all dead must be getting to me. Someone disliking our presence here is one thing, but them trying to assassinate us is something completely different. If the spirits had turned Wicked, then there'd be other signs of it, and Gify is extremely sensitive to such things.

I clear my head and rejoin the bullshit conversations with the others. Ririmu is the sarcastic comedic relief, while Hukarere encourages both him and Roxanne to talk shit.

As the sun begins to set, they take us to the middle levels of the mountain town, and we hear the liveliness of the tavern before we see it. The ground trembles, and the sounds of stomping resound through the air. When we just barely start to discern the muffled music from the noise, the song ends, and the crowd cheers.

We take off our jewels and clothes and put on some simple Chimeric sandals. The awesome feeling of freedom and power from being able to swing my dong around floods my veins, and I smile confidently.

Then we enter the Tuumau Tavern, and we immediately feel the warmth of a vibrant tavern where even the waiters and waitresses are dancing. After a short reception, we enter a very wide dining hall with tables at the edges while the center is reserved for dancing. There's a small crowd of naked Chimeras bouncing around right next to the musicians, but in the middle, there are only couples.

Roxanne and Ciel get a bit excited by the lively mood of the room, then they freeze when both of them grab my hand at the same time. They stare at each other, but Alissa decrees that the order will be Ciel, Roxanne, then her. They quickly agree, and Roxanne releases my hand.

I'm okay with this, but I'm a little concerned about how nobody asked me about my opinion.

I shrug and let Ciel guide me to the center while I put some points in [Dancing]. The current song sounds rather romantic, so I get some quality time with her.

The couples are dancing a sort of waltz, spinning around in circles. They're spread out in multiple concentric rings, and the closer they are to the center, the faster they seem to spin.

After a few seconds of observation, I feel confident enough to enter the dance floor, but I still use Alissa's vision to continue observing them. [Dancing] at max puts me almost on auto-pilot, but I still need to understand how the dance works.

Small-Aoi jumps on the table and asks to dance. After sharing a look with the girls, Yunia grabs Aoi's little front claws and starts an elven waltz following along with the beat of the music. She uses her pinkies to push Aoi's back legs and guide her. She even makes Aoi spin, putting her two points in [Dancing] to good use.

I glue my body to Ciel's and drown out the other girls from my thoughts, focusing solely on her. The music isn't too loud right now, so we can talk a little.

I rest my face against her cheek and ask, "Are you okay with being here and you know… being in your underwear?"

"It's a little embarrassing, but it's not that different from being in a bikini," she answers, and I chuckle at her words. Then I kiss her cheek, and she closes her eyes in delight.

I get a little cheeky and say, "Hey, I'm going to make you spin."

She looks at me in confusion, then I cast [Telekinesis] on her and reduce her weight until she floats.

She opens her mouth in confusion but goes along with it. I push her forward while I remain in place and hold her hand, then I make her spin while she floats away.

She realizes what I'm doing and giggles. When our arms are almost fully extended, I reduce the speed of her spin, then I end [Telekinesis], allowing her feet to touch the ground and stop the spin. I immediately strike a dramatic pose, and she copies it a second later.

I pull her back in while using [Telekinesis] to make her glide towards me, and we continue the dance. I risk a few other complex moves, and she happily follows along.

She loves it all and gives me a deep, loving kiss when the song ends.

Roxanne is next and her song is a little more upbeat. That's perfect because, with the help of [Bind], we can go ham with our silly dancing. She summons her own bat wings and glides around, even without my help.

When either of our bodies can become as light as a feather at will, quite a lot of dance moves become not only possible but extremely easy. Even my sword style triggers, helping me glide along the floor with her more effectively.

She giggles excitedly from our dancing, making me laugh, too, but soon, the song ends, so it's now Alissa's turn.

This next song speeds up the tempo again, but our minds immediately synchronize, and our dancing becomes perfect. We aren't even dancing in the same style as the Chimeras anymore, we're just doing our own thing, but we still remain in the circles, interweaving between the inner and outer layers.

A good portion of the tavern is watching our performance, but I feel neither shame nor shyness. We're confident in our exposed bodies. We're confident in our beauty. We're confident in our dancing. We're confident in each other.

This isn't just a dance, it's an exhibition, or even a boast of our prowess. We're showing them all what it means to dance, and for a moment, we reach the top of the world. Our world, at least.

The song ends, and some Chimeras in the audience applaud us along with my girls.

I let Alissa back down onto the floor, and we go towards our tables.

"I didn't take you for a dancer," Ririmu says in a slightly teasing tone.

"You should've realized by now that we're full of mysteries," I answer with a grin.

"Indeed, that was my mistake," he replies and bows exaggeratedly.

Still feeling like I'm at the peak of my charm, I turn to Hukarere and offer her my hand. "Would you like to dance?" I gently ask her.

She immediately takes my hand, barely containing her toothy grin. "It'd be my pleasure," she answers excitedly.

Intermission 16 - Chimera Townswoman

I heard that the Travelers went to Jonu and flew the Wasps like maniacs. The old deer was grumbling about some broken wings and raising the cleaning fee. I've heard such spicy rumors about the Travelers, especially about the boy, but that last part just tickles my curiosity.

I wonder where they are right now. Their ship is at the Golden Docks, so I can't stalk them there. The Honored One seems to have taken them to her estate, so I really can't stalk them there either. I've heard that they were seen taking a stroll around town a few times, so there's a chance that I could meet them on the streets.

I stop by the South Common Docks and observe the crowds. Today, there's quite a lot of people around Jonu's.

Wait, they're all women, too.

Oh, don't tell me that they're all hoping to find the Travelers here…

Tch…

I buy some tea and lean against the railing while I think.

I don't have much time left, and it looks like there are a lot of people hunting them down, so I have to do something more drastic. But where should I go now…?

I hear the sound of a water droplet landing in water, then I look down at my teacup and see that something has fallen into it.

Have you blessed me today, Supreme Divine Waimarie?

I hesitate a little, but my [Mana Sense]s tingle, telling me to drink it. I chuckle and pray to Waimarie, then I down my cup of tea.

Wow, this is really mana-rich. But the taste… it's so… familiar…

Oh no…

I start laughing uncontrollably. Then my body suddenly feels so much more energetic and strong than usual. I feel rejuvenated, as if I just woke up from a long, refreshing sleep, full of motivation to take on an adventure.

I've never tasted something so strong and thick. That was certainly a blessing. Thank you, Waimarie.

The tickling quickly builds into a heavy itching, and my legs start to rub against each other.

I'm so filthy. I guess I'll go to Tuumau's…

A note from Manasong

Hall of Fame of Patrons

The patrons who support Rupegia shall have their names sung by the bards for they deserve the glory and honor. Their names are:

Oracle Maximillian Hübner.

Prince PreownedFIN.

Lord Andrew Meyers.

Lord Hope.

Lord Samuel Lim.

Lord Bill.

Lord Novgarod.

Lord DJ.

Lord Ashadun.

Lord Michale Erwin.

Lord Enrique Peña Gomez.

Lord Braidborn.

Lord Bakerdea.

Lord Yeeteris Dedmeem.

Lord D4rk Sheep.

Lord Nathan Vanbrunt.

Lord Markus.

Lord Maurice.

Lord Badger.

Lord Krawn.

Lord Remco.

Lord Empyrean.

Lord Asakurà.

Lord Cidant.

Lord Mattirro Draca.

Lord Joshua Tal.

Noble Salty Panda.

Noble Yamibomb112.

Noble Mild Fracas.

Noble EESDESESESRDT.

Noble Aclys.

Noble Tyler Mills.

Noble Samuel Steinike.

Leave a rating or a review to help me rise to the top or fix my shameful understanding of prose.

Take a look over my blog where all information of the world of Rupegia will be posted.

Join the Discord and discuss, or rant, or meme, or try and fight me so your waifu gets more screentime.

Become a Patron and read chapters in advance, or read the side-stories, or leave your mark on the story, or help choose the next artwork or the next side-story.

Legends of Times Past Series: Nocturna, the Mistborn – Teaser

A note from Manasong

This chapter is not required to read to understand the main story, this is only a side-story.

This is a teaser for the patreon-only side stories I'm writing.

The first part of any new storyline I will make public as a teaser.

I grin all the way as I run towards Mom's bedroom. The heavy book in my hands almost slips from my grip, but I'm a Godsblessed fox! My nimbu-… uh, 'nimblesness' is unmatched! Mom herself said that my "Dexterity" has been inc-…

"YAH!"

I slip on the waxed floor and hit the back of my head on the ground.

"Owwww~…" I whine as I roll on the ground pain, holding my head.

"Alissa?" I hear Mom's voice from behind the door.

I sniffle and hold back my tears, then I quickly tie back the sash of my dress before Mom scolds me for being clumsy.

I grab the book and stand up just as the sliding door opens in front of me. Mom looks down at me and her sharp, judging eyes analyze me.

"What happened?" She asks in a gentle tone, but I know she's testing me.

"The book fell," I answer and look down.

"'I let the book fall' is what you should've said."

Nooo, wrong answer…! Actually, the "right answer" was to not slip in the first place.

"I'll increase the intensity of your 'Dexterity' training tomorrow," Mom adds as she turns around. I wince, but luckily she didn't see it.

"Can you read this book for me?" I ask and raise the book towards her.

She stops and glances at it, then continues walking to her bed and answers, "Yes, but go get Allura first. She'll enjoy this story, too."

"Yay!"

I lower the book to the ground, then I run towards Allura's room.

I slam the sliding door, making Ofilia jump in surprise. Allura and she are playing with plushy dolls.

Ofilia greets me with a face full of confusion and surprise, "Oh, Alissa w-… hey!"

I nab Allura.

"Guh!" She moans as I throw her over my shoulder, then I run away.

"Come back!" Ofilia yells and I ignore her, so she immediately starts chasing me.

After getting enough speed, I slide along the waxed floor and perfectly stop right in front of Mom's room.

"Oo~h…" Dad mumbles in wonder.

I run forward, then jump and fall on their super fluffy bed. I make a very confused Allura sit beside me and sit in a formal position.

"There, ready!" I exclaim, too excited to control my voice.

Mom repositions herself to face us, and Dad continues to delicately brush her tail. "Ofilia, take a seat, it's storytime," Mom says and motions to the spot beside me.

"Oh? Oh. Oh…!" Ofilia mumbles repeatedly, then sits beside me and sends me a glare.

I grin towards her, then focus on Mom again. She opens the book and clears her throat.

"The Forest and the Mist have wills of their own. They're entities as old as Creation and as powerful as the elements. Their will is that of nature, yet they're independent of it. Their existence is just simply beyond the comprehension of most foxes.

Their power overflows from time to time, causing chaos and disorder in the Forest. The two different flavors mix in an everlasting storm, but eventually, it reaches a point that it sparks a chain reaction where it all congeals into a single point, giving birth to the Child, the Mistborn.

Their body itself is magical, allowing them to attune themselves to the Mist and the Forest. For them, these two elements are not just their allies, they can control them, mold them, shape them, use them like extra limbs. They delve so deeply into these elements that they don't see the sun until they're already matured.

The Child is relentless and steadfast. When the Goddess of the Moon is high, the Mistborn travels. When the God of the Sun rests, the Mistborn works. There is no time that the Mistborn is unguarded.

They maintain the Order, they keep the Balance, and they crush the Chaos.

They wrap themselves in mist, like a kind mother protecting their child. They arm themselves with vines, like a rigid father raising a warrior.

The Mistborn doesn't hunt, they Harvest what is rightfully theirs. They belong to the Forest and the Forest belongs to them.

The Child does not hide in the Mist, the Mist hides the Child."

The Child who was Born from the Mist and the Forest, by Cobaignon, circa Year After Creation 58,000.

"What's 'circa'?" I ask.

"Means 'approximately,' but it's used only for in historical writing like this one when the exact date is unknown," Mom answers.

I hug my tail and pat it myself. "So, Nocturna was alive around ten thousand years ago?"

"Indeed, but her story only became known throughout the land after her time, when the empire released her records."

"O~h…"

"Now, on to the first chapter."

"Cloth of dew, napkin of the fey, cover my face, hide my identity, shroud me in the mist, but let them see my visage. [Veil of Mist]," Nocturna chanted and cast.

Her dark face became blurry, then it was covered by mist. The enchanted water particles reflected the air, and Nocturna became a man. Her melanistic face lightened; her white irises became brown; her scars became freckles; her fox ears disappear, then human ones grew; her missing flesh became full again; her fangs receded; her black hair became brown; and her burns healed, showing a perfect, unblemished skin. Her few soft features hardened into the face of a human man from the Colored Sands.

No commoner would ever notice anything wrong with her face, but someone with a high "Willpower" would think that her face is "blurry," and a mage with [Sense Mana] high enough would notice the Illusion-flavored mana periodically leaking from her. Both of these would make anyone instantly suspicious of her, but her current enemies weren't trained in magic. No, they were mere thugs, illegal slavers, and grunts that worked for greedy, evil men.

She sniffed her clothes for any traces of blood and found none. If she couldn't notice it, then the humans certainly wouldn't.

She grabbed her small, composite bow by the limb like someone who never fired an arrow before, then dragged her quiver by the straps, as if she could barely be bothered to bring it with her. She listed again all the information about the slavers inside her head one more time, then set off towards their camp.

It took only a few minutes of walking for her to hear a startled guard grab its weapon and get in position behind a bush ahead. She was disguised as a human, who had weaker senses in anything not magical, so she pretended to not notice him.

The mist of the night covered the Low Forest, so while they heard each other, it would take a little longer until they could meet in person. While she walked, she made sure to snap any branches in her way like a child playing a game. It was hardly different from what the humans did, even though they didn't do it consciously, they were simply bad at being quiet.

Nocturna saw the outline of the guard as he stalked closer to her and carelessly walked in front of a light source, the flames of the village behind him. It took her a lot of effort to push the beast inside her from drawing an arrow and killing him instantly. She gained comfort in knowing that this guard wouldn't live to see the dawn.

"Halt! Who goes there?!" The guard finally decided to confront her and jumped from behind the bush. Now he was close enough that they could see the other perfectly.

He was a tall human dressed exactly like her: a colorful mixture of heavy furs, leathers, and cloths wrapped their bodies with such little concern for fashion that it was as if a storm dressed them. Only their eyes were visible from behind their balaclavas and all the bandannas covering their faces.

"Fuck you, let me through," Nocturna responded in a rough, unmistakably male voice. [Veil of Mist] was the perfect disguise.

"What the fuck were you doing out there?" The guard questioned.

Nocturna lifted the bow and quiver. "Chased after a hunter, he dropped his weapons then ran away."

The guard took a few steps towards Nocturna, his eyes glittering with greed. "Shit, this is a beautiful bow. It's no longbow, but I guess it's worth some big coin."

Nocturna gave him a strong shove with the hand holding the quiver and grunted, "I know, you fuck. Let me through or I'll hit you."

The guard laughed and backed off with a shrug. "What's your name, comrade?"

"Ligma," she answered immediately.

"Huh? Ligma?" The guard immediately became suspicious.

"Lick my balls, now fuck off."

The guard facepalmed and chuckled. "Fucking knew it!" Then he let Nocturna enter the burning village without further questions.

The slavers were going through piles of rubble, picking off anything valuable, then throwing the rest to the pile of growing trash. At least they weren't mindlessly destroying anything and everything just for the fun of it. Even the buildings were burned by accident, it seemed, not that any of them were even trying to snuff the fires. But none of that was enough for Nocturna to feel a single shred of mercy for them.

A few metri from the looters, a group of twenty crying werefox youths were stripped bare, then chained together to a log. Young and beautiful women and strong and perhaps cute men were the primary targets of these slavers. Their plight was soon to end, for Nocturna had already started her rescue.

She stopped by the trough where a group of horses were drinking from. These belonged to the slavers' scouts and to the wagon that would take the slaves. She dropped a pebble in it, and the poison immediately started to dissolve.

Then she made her way to the Lord's Hall where most of the slavers were having a party. She slung her bow and quiver on her shoulders, then entered the Hall.

Debauchery and profligacy assaulted her senses.

"What's that, 'debachegy'?" I ask Mom.

"Debauchery. Engaging in too much sex," Mom answers.

"Ooh… and the other?"

"Wasting resources, like eating so sloppily that you let food and drink spill on the floor."

"Plofliglachy!" Allura exclaims in her cutesy voice and smiles.

"Close," Mom says in a gentle tone and pats her head.

The slavers couldn't take everything back, so they'd drink and eat all they could before the Lord responded and drove them out. There didn't seem to be anyone obviously Wicked among them, but the few werefox women and the poor man that were being used by the slavers certainly weren't happy with their new positions as prostitutes.

Nocturna felt pity for them. If she were a little faster, perhaps they could've retained their dignity, but tragedies make people desperate. These were humble villagers who wanted to secure their safety by readily submitting to their new temporary masters.

Nocturna moved on towards the barrels of fermented Chapefruit. She grabbed a used mug on the floor along the way and discreetly dropped a pebble of poison inside it, then dove the mug inside the barrel to scoop some drink while making sure the pebble fell to the bottom of the barrel.

After she emptied her mug down her throat, she swallowed a pill she prepared beforehand, the antidote.

She looked around to see if anyone had noticed her, but the slavers were too absorbed in their pleasure to suspect her. She made her way towards the tables and started eating while she waited.

A cry finally came from outside as someone noticed the horses dying, one-by-one. The rookie guard that had been put on watch burst into the Lord's Hall and saw something even more horrifying: every slaver was dead, their eyes white and foam bubbling from their mouths. All except for one.

The slaves cowered behind the single man standing in the middle of the Hall. He had given them an antidote a mere minute before the slavers all started convulsing until they died, so they trusted this kind human man as one would trust a Humanoid God.

"WHAT HAPPENED HERE?!" The rookie guard bellowed, then he paid attention to Nocturna, who was freeing the slaves, and it dawned on him. "TRAITOR! POISON! TRAITOR! ALAR-…"

His screams were cut short by an arrow that pierced his brain through his eye and instantly killed him. He had served his purpose, so Nocturna wasted no time in killing him.

The rest of the rookies swarmed the Hall, only to fall by arrows, one-by-one. Terrified by seeing the increasing pile of corpses at the entrance of the Hall, the few remaining men retreated and created a rough line in front of the building.

Before any of the slavers got the idea to use the chained slaves as hostages, Nocturna decided to act.

A light flashed inside the building, then a huge, pure black fox leaped out of it and crashed into the spears of the rookies. The fox's hide was strong, but not enough to stop a spear, and so her neck and flank were pierced. But she was a magical fox, not a real one, so she closed her own wounds instantly by spending her mana.

The slavers knew very well not to fight aggressively against the werefoxes when they transformed, but these were rookies, the veterans were already dead, so they fought back with vengeance.

She crushed two men as she landed, then bit off the head of another. Spears rained over her body and her mana drained, but she had MP to spare!

She ferociously raked, crushed, and slammed her way out of the encirclement, then stood between the last three rookies and the chained slaves.

Her black fur had a sheen of red from her own and the slavers' blood, her white fangs dripped blood and had pieces of flesh stuck between them, and her white irises stared at them with rage. She growled, frightening the men. She looked like a ghostly butcher that came to reap their souls, and she herself wouldn't disagree.

Her body glowed and she became humanoid again. This time she didn't have [Veil of Mist] to disguise her, which allowed the men to clearly see small bits of her dark skin. They'd heard of her before, and now they'd only confirmed her identity.

A rookie didn't believe his eyes and stuttered a question, "W-who are y-you?!"

Nocturna turned to him and her murderous gaze frightened him to his core, making him piss himself and freeze. Fortunately for him, his fear would be his salvation.

Nocturna's arms blurred and low whistle resounded through the air, then one of the rookies fell to the floor with an arrow poking from out of his eye. The two remaining men yelped in fear and hid behind their shields.

"I am Nocturna, the Mistborn," she responded, now with her usual husky female voice.

True to her name, the mist thickened, making her disappear from the sight of the rookies.

The rookie who pissed his pants yelped again and cried, his legs completely frozen from terror. Every single one of his comrades had died by the hands of that butcher. Every wound he had given her had simply disappeared due to her seemingly endless pool of mana. What could a looter like him do against the infamous Mistborn? What could a single boy like him do against the true child of the Misty Forest?

Nothing. He could do nothing! And when he heard the death cry of his last companion, he dropped his weapons and ran. Through coincidence or strong survival instinct, he, fortunately, chose to run south, exactly towards where Nocturna wanted him to go: the Colored Sands.

Suddenly feeling very tired, Nocturna let out a sigh of relief and drank an MP potion she herself brewed. Not because it was more potent than the usual, but because it had a good deal of fermented Chapefruit in it, and was brewed in a way that the medicinal properties of the potion didn't ruin the taste.

With her heart calming down and her MP steadily rising, Nocturna made her way to the chained slaves as the werefoxes inside the Hall gingerly stepped outside.

Nocturna wordlessly got a key chain from a dead slaver and released all of the remaining youths, then started to walk away.

None of them are hurt or tired. They can all turn into a fox and run to the nearest village after dawn.

"Wait!" A young male voice cried out.

Nocturna stopped, then glanced at the naked boy calling for her and continued walking away, a bit faster this time.

"Please, wait!" The boy cried again.

Nocturna increased her pace, then she heard the boy yelp as he slipped in the blood and smiled to herself.

"I SAID WAIT!" The boy yelled with all of his strength.

Nocturna glanced at him again and saw that most of the boy's body had become painted red with blood, and now he crawled towards her creepily at a frightening speed like a Godsdamned Prowler!

She almost yelped in surprise, then turned forward again and started jogging.

"TAKE ME WITH YOU!" The boy bellowed with all his power.

That made Nocturna freeze, and she almost slipped on the blood, too.

How disgraceful of me. Being startled by a boy.

She turned around and stood still until the creepy crawler caught up to her.

He's very odd, though.

The boy stood up and Nocturna presumed that he was about to mature by the length of his dangling, bloodied penis. "Take me with you," he repeated. His voice was surprisingly firm, a testament to his determination.

"Why?" Nocturna stoically asked.

The boy bit his lip, making Nocturna feel like patting his head, but she resisted the temptation. His dark hair had a sheen of purple like most of his clan, and he seemed to be as well taken care of as the women, making Nocturna believe that he was the son of an important person of this village.

"I can fight," the boy responded after a second of hesitation.

"How many slavers did you kill?" Nocturna asked, still stoic.

The boy's shoulder dropped and his face warped into a scowl. "None," he bitterly answered, but his determination didn't seem to waver.

"You can't fight," Nocturna responded.

He rose his head again and his purple eyes stared deeply into hers. "Then teach me!" He demanded.

"No," Nocturna stated, then ran away.

"I won't quit! I'll chase you until you teach me!" The boy yelled and darted behind her.

Nocturna scoffed and increased her pace, but then she coughed as she saw the boy gaining on her.

Her body glowed and she turned into a huge, black fox, which almost doubled her running speed. She felt mana coming from behind her, then she heard another fox chasing after her.

How persistent.

She sped up to the max and left the boy behind, but whenever she stopped to rest, he would quickly catch up.

Dawn came and cleared the mist, making it easier for him to track her, but he still never caught a glimpse of the huge black fox that he chased so obsessively.

Nocturna started to feel amused by the situation. She dove into a thick part of the Forest, then started slowly covering her tracks more and more while observing him through [Sense Presence]. The boy predictably started slowing down to make sure that he didn't lose her tracks, but he still chased after her with impressive speed.

No [Sense Presence], but good [Tracking]. Also good "Endurance" and "Willpower"; he's been chasing after me for a few hours.

The boy was making a lot of noise, though, and then it finally happened: a monster came to attack him.

Nocturna groaned and stopped in her tracks, then turned around and dashed towards the boy to observe. If her [Sense Presence] wasn't wrong, and it never was, a Buveursang was making its way towards him.

The boy noticed the monster, hard not to when the monkey-like beast likes to shriek to disorient their prey, and turned to face it, which allowed Nocturna to stalk behind him. She didn't return to humanoid form because she was still bloodied with the slavers' blood, and that would just bring the Buveursang into a rage.

She observed the boy's back and admired his beautiful dark and purple fur. He was barely bigger than the average dog, which meant that he had one or two points into [Fox Transformation].

He stared towards the source of the ear-bleeding shrieking, his body tense and his tail low. He slowly rose his lips and let out a growl in warning.

The Buveursang stopped its shrieks for a second to listen to the fox, but deemed it a weak pup and burst out from the treetops.

The monster used its long and thin arm to fling itself forward; its monkey face warped into an angry scowl, threateningly showing its long, blood-sucking fangs; its dark, furred body was unnaturally thin, signifying that it was starving; its short and thick legs was a signal that it still had some strength left; and its long, menacing feet claws were aimed directly at the boy.

"KAAAAAAAA!" The monster shrieked as it flew.

A moment before the monster grabbed the boy, he rolled to the side with great "Speed," and the monster's claws sunk into the soft earth.

The boy pounced on the Buveursang's back and bit his neck, then started to wildly shake the monster in an attempt to break its spine.

Impressive, but not enough.

The Buveursang stretched its long arms backward and wrapped its strong fingers around the fox's neck, then strangled him.

A battle of "Endurance" started, but the boy had been running as a fox for hours, and against a starving, but rested, monster, he had an immense disadvantage.

The boy lost strength in his limbs and slowed his shaking, allowing the Buveursang to lift him off the ground. It twisted its flexible arms even more, then threw him against a tree.

The boy hit the hard bark right on, then slumped on the ground, too exhausted to continue the fight. His body glowed, and the naked, bloodied boy reappeared.

The Buveursang immediately smelled the blood, then went into a berserker rage. "KAAA! KAAA! KAAA!" It shrieked so loudly that the boy felt sick and almost puked.

The monster used its arms to swing its body, then launched himself towards the boy.

He raised his arms weakly to protect himself, but no attack came. He saw a large shadow passed by him, then he heard a crunch, and the monster was silenced.

He lowered his arms and saw the frighteningly large black fox in front of him chewing on the crunched head of the Buveursang.

She flung the monster's body towards him and swallowed its brain matter, then turned back into humanoid and pulled out a small knife from her [Item Box]. "Alright, boy. If you want to follow me that much, then start by making your own clothes." She threw the knife at his feet and sat down on the grass, then remained silent while staring at him.

The boy, suddenly reminded of his nakedness and that he was in front of a woman, shyly covered his penis with his hands.

"I've seen bigger," she said. Her face was still covered in multiple pieces of cloth, making it hard for the boy to discern her expression, but her tone was of clear displeasure. "If you don't want to freeze, you'll do what I say."

The boy hesitated for a moment, then slowly nodded and removed his hands covering his penis, then he grabbed the skinning knife and went to work immediately. He didn't need much encouragement because just a short while after his battle ending, he was already starting to feel the coldness spreading to every extremity of his body.

Nocturna let her gaze wander as she thought about what to do. On a whim, she had endangered the boy, bringing him too far from his village and tiring him out. At least for a short while, she'll have to take care of him.

The boy noticed her gaze, and Nocturna quickly learned that the boy sported a decent size and girth in his love tool. She immediately turned away and sighed.

The mating season can't come soon enough…

"Mating season?" I ask as Mom finishes the chapter and closes the book.

Dad suddenly freezes as he sands Mom's nails and gives her a concerned look. Ofilia looks away, trying to hide her embarrassed face.

If they're embarrassed, then it must be related to sex.

Mom's tone is perfectly neutral and calm as she explains, "It's the time of the year that animal foxes 'mate' and create babies."

"Oh, sex."

Mom nods. "Yes."

"Why does she want it?"

"Because she mates with the male foxes for pleasure."

I tilt my head and Allura copies. "With an animal fox?"

Mom nods twice and the corner of her mouth twitches. She's trying to hold back a smile. "Lonely werefoxes do that because they don't have a partner for sex."

"Do they get pregnant?"

"Preganhant!" Allura exclaims. I'm sure she has no idea what we're talking about.

Mom shakes her head. "No, they can't. They do it only for pleasure."

Dad suddenly frowns and says in a very serious tone, "And neither should you, ever. Animal foxes can be very aggressive during mating, so it's dangerous for you if you don't know what you're doing."

"Okay!" I answer and nod.

Dad sighs and continues sanding down Mom's nails.

"Now it's time to sleep. We'll read the next chapter tomorrow," Mom says and motions to Ofilia, who nabs Allura before she can run away, then firmly grasps my hand.

"It's time to sleep," she says with a grin that makes me want to pinch her cheeks.

Allura immediately pouts and complains while I grumble and let Ofilia drag me. Resisting will only make things worse, but that doesn't mean that I'll go to bed while smiling.

A note from Manasong

Hall of Fame of Patrons

The patrons who support Rupegia shall have their names sung by the bards for they deserve the glory and honor. Their names are:

Oracle Maximillian Hübner.

Prince PreownedFIN.

Lord Andrew Meyers.

Lord Hope.

Lord Samuel Lim.

Lord Bill.

Lord Novgarod.

Lord DJ.

Lord Ashadun.

Lord Michale Erwin.

Lord Enrique Peña Gomez.

Lord Braidborn.

Lord Bakerdea.

Lord Yeeteris Dedmeem.

Lord D4rk Sheep.

Lord Nathan Vanbrunt.

Lord Markus.

Lord Maurice.

Lord Badger.

Lord Krawn.

Lord Remco.

Lord Empyrean.

Lord Asakurà.

Lord Cidant.

Lord Mattirro Draca.

Lord Joshua Tal.

Noble Salty Panda.

Noble Yamibomb112.

Noble Mild Fracas.

Noble EESDESESESRDT.

Noble Aclys.

Noble Tyler Mills.

Noble Samuel Steinike.

Noble Jordon Gotthold.

Leave a rating or a review to help me rise to the top or fix my shameful understanding of prose.

Take a look over my blog where all information of the world of Rupegia will be posted.

Join the Discord and discuss, or rant, or meme, or try and fight me so your waifu gets more screentime.

Become a Patron and read chapters in advance, or read the side-stories, or leave your mark on the story, or help choose the next artwork or the next side-story.

Chapter 75: Onwards - Part 1

A note from Manasong

Attention: to conform to the limit of sexual content allowed in a novel, I've censored this chapter. You can look for the uncensored version here.

The symbol "-" denotes a section that got cut for containing sexual content. Also, if paragraphs seem missing, they were also likely censored in an earlier pass where the symbol wasn't used.

Hukarere almost skips along as I guide her to the dance floor. She's really impressed with how I danced with Alissa, but we only seemed to be so skilled because of how [Bind] allowed us to be in perfect sync.

I stop before we get to the dance floor, then I grab her other hand and look up into her eyes. "Hukarere, I have to ask this first: what kind of dancer are you?" I ask

She raises her lips into a smile, showing a hint of her white fangs. "I have one point in [Dancing]. I can dance to this song pretty well," she answers.

[Sense Soul] doesn't show me their "Status" screen, so perhaps the dungeon created an illusion for them.

"Great. We won't be able to dance like I did with Alissa, but that should let us have a lot of fun."

"That's all I want."

A few couples leave of the circle, then they start - doing it on top of some empty tables. I raise my eyebrows in surprise, but I guess I should've expected something like this from the Chimeras.

The circle has a lot of room for us now, so we jump in and get in position. My left hand lands just above her furred - waist, while my other hand grasps hers to lead our dance. My eyes are perfectly level with her - chest, making things a little awkward.

Her feet are digitigrade, which is like someone walking on their tiptoes all the time, so she's taller than even Hana.

She snorts, then lowers her "heel" closer to the floor, making her just slightly taller than Roxanne.

"Better," I say, then we start dancing.

She soon starts to sweat like I am, letting out a faintly alluring scent. I hear her sniff the air -.

We pull each other closer -. She smiles and pulls me towards her - chest. My thigh brushes against her - crotch, and I feel an intense heat radiating from it.

"I'll spin you," I say, then I cast [Telekinesis] on each of us. I make us glide along the floor, but I'm too short to make her spin, so I float upwards until my head is above hers.

She laughs at the silliness of the situation. I'm a short, cute guy, floating above the big, bad wolf, and making her spin like a doll. A mismatched pair doing ridiculous dance moves and freely casting magic.

I return to the floor, then grab her waist and raise her in the air high above my head -. Then I bring her back down and lower her body close to the floor with one hand while I make her gaze lock with mine with the other. We remain still for a moment and smirk together, enjoying the cheesiness of my moves.

We dive deeper into the circles and speed up our dancing. The couples around us start to get tired, giving us even more room to dance.

She breathes heavily on my face while I do the same on her neck. Our bodies glue to each other -.

She releases my waist and grabs me -. Our eyes lock on each other, and we drown out everyone else.

I guide us to the outer circles so that she doesn't accidentally rip my skin, and we continue dancing, but now, I keep our bodies glued together -.

- She lowers her head towards me and pushes out her tongue.

I reach upwards and swallow her long wolf tongue. - Kissing a snout-faced person is always messy, but it's also a lot of fun.

- She stares at me with sultry eyes -.

That's it.

I suddenly stop our dancing, then I guide her to the nearest empty table.

"Bend over," I order.

- I have my fun with her and let her taste all of me -.

- "You're - so tasty!" She exclaims with an innocent smile.

I raise an eyebrow, and for a second, my mind thinks that she sounded exactly like Aoi.

I guess I shouldn't be surprised by this. They're magical beings, after all.

I play around with Hukarere for a long time, -. I'm just amazed by how realistic their bodies are. She feels, smells, tastes, and moans like a perfectly normal humanoid.

She seems to be a bit addicted to my - taste, though -.

However, I still want to do some things with the girls, so, after a good hour of - "attention," I deem it as enough. After we're done and the adrenaline starts to fade, her hips threaten to give in, so I have to carry her back to our tables.

I deposit her on a chair and see Ririmu hugging his mouse girl -. I give him a thumbs-up, and he returns it. Funny how this gesture is the same here as it is on Earth.

I cast [Clean] on myself, then I kiss Alissa's forehead -.

"Love you," she whispers.

"Love you, too," I whisper back.

I take a quick look around at the other girls. Ciel and Hana are dancing, Lina is playing around with Aoi and her golden ball punching game, and Yunia and Roxanne are talking about dancing. They're comparing elven Saltchitan to Succubi Rahgeeb. Both of them are very sensual dancing styles, but while Saltchitan is a simple dance, Rahgeeb is a ritual for young Succubus women to find virile male partners. The better he can dance, the more desirable he is. Now imagine what she thinks of me.

I walk over to Yunia and offer her my hand, "I'm sorry to interrupt, but would you like to dance?"

She smiles a little smugly and takes my hand with a pompous gesture. "It'll be an honor, for you," she says, and I help her get up.

"Yes, my Queen. It's my honor," I reply.

She doesn't want to do an aerobic exercise, so we take it easy, focusing on perfection rather than impressiveness. This gives me an opportunity to talk to her.

"How're you feeling?" I ask.

"Good, you?" She answers casually.

"Awesome," I answer with a grin.

She chuckles once, and her stern gaze softens. "Your ego is growing."

"Step on it, then, and help me keep it in check."

"I don't feel like doing it."

I raise my eyebrows in surprise. "Aren't you the sadistic one who likes to put men down?"

"I do, but not you, for some reason," she answers in a gentle tone.

I feel my heart tighten, and suddenly I kiss her on impulse. She pushes into the kiss, and our lips smack when we part.

She takes on a very smug tone and sneers at me. "What are you getting so emotional for, little man? I just find it boring to put down such a weak-willed boy like you. It's like having an argument with a child."

I gush with a smile. "Awn… Roxanne says that this is your way of saying that you love me."

She clicks her tongue, then puckers her lips in a frown. "Tch… snooping on our conversation, I see."

"'Always,' Alissa says. 'Fun,' Aoi says. 'I like to watch,' Lina says, and 'not in that way,' she adds. Hana is too busy flirting with Ciel to respond."

Her face softens again, and she shakes her head gently in disbelief. "This family defies all common sense."

I'd like to make a hive mind joke, but that'd just creep her out.

"H-hive mind? Those images in your mind are creeping me out," Roxanne says in my soul space, and I poke her soul.

"If you want, we can slow things down. Take a few days to rest and calm our hearts. A lot has happened lately," I say.

She gently pinches my cheek, then returns her hand to my waist. "I'm fine, Wolfy. If anything, I think that we play around too much."

"If you say so."

We calm down and eat some snacks in the tavern. This isn't a full-blown restaurant, so we'll still have to go somewhere to eat a proper dinner.

As I head off to the toilet, a gray bunny-headed woman that's been intensely observing us stands up and follows me.

Coincidence?

I enter the bathroom and leave our Holly in the corridor. This room is quite small, with only a toilet bowl and a sink without a tap, so it's not a good place for a fight. I start going about my business, which is pretty easy since I'm naked, and wait.

The woman appears in the corridor, but there are rows of other toilets besides mine, so she's not that suspicious yet. She keeps staring at my door, though, so I decide to pull out my shield and get in position to block.

I alert the girls, and Alissa and Hana immediately come towards me. I tell them to not alert Hukarere or Ririmu since I don't want to make a scene, yet.

The woman stops in front of my door, and I brace myself, my heart beating like mad as adrenaline floods my veins, then she knocks and says, "Wolf Ryder, Wahinui Ngerua wishes to speak with you."

I blink blankly.

"W-what…? Can't she just ask… normally?" I respond, flabbergasted.

Alissa and Hana appear in the corridor but stop, also confused.

"Nobody should know of your meeting with her," the woman answers, completely serious.

Fucking hell.

"How are we to meet?" I ask.

"You'll wait for her in the storage room."

"If this is some sort of prank or ambush, let me tell you that I won't let it slide."

"I assure you, this is a serious matter." There isn't a single shred of uncertainty in her voice.

I sigh and relent. "Alright, I'll go."

"Understood." The woman turns her Emergency Ring green.

Hana, Alissa, and I sneak into the storage room nearby and wait with our weapons at the ready. I summon more Shads and Hollys to keep an eye on every angle. The bunny-headed woman waits outside in the alley.

It takes only two minutes for Wahinui to appear, wearing a cloak. She simply nods to the bunny woman and enters the room, then the bunny woman immediately leaves. Wahinui looks around and spots us, then makes her way around the dusty crates.

I'm actually surprised that she's here by herself.

"Put those things away," Wahinui says and points to our weapons, then stops in front of us. She takes off her cloak, exposing a delicious body underneath that's very similar to Kaatohe's. The cat-headed woman definitely has the signs that she's past her forties, but her body screams - of sensual beauty. "I'm flattered, but I'm not available," she adds, noticing our gazes.

I simply smile, and we sheathe our weapons, but we won't put them away.

"What is it that you wanted to talk about?" I ask.

She pulls out a watch and holds it up in front of her, then glances between the watch and us repeatedly as she says, "I'll start talking, but don't interrupt me until I'm done. I have to pay attention to this watch to make sure that I don't forget anything."

"Alright…" I say, a little confused.

"There's something affecting every single Chimera of this town. We simply cannot speak of certain topics. Otherwise, our memories are forcefully erased. Do you have any idea of what I'm talking about?"

I share a few words with the girls through [Bind] to make sure that everyone agrees, then I answer, "Yes."

Wahinui lets a wide smile bloom like a person in the desert who has finally found an oasis.

She pulls out a paper, then holds it up beside the watch and starts to read it out loud with a flat tone, "I'll try to make a list of the topics that are forbidden for us to speak: children, Chosen Descendant, pregnancy, emigration, committing suicide, age, something about spirits that I haven't been able to specify more, and the odd dreams we had with an elven man…" She suddenly freezes, and her eyes gloss over.

"We"?

We look at each other and instantly understand. Her mind was "reset" by thinking about one of the forbidden topics.

She suddenly jumps in place, as if she was awoken from a stupor, then looks at the watch and asks, "What… what was I doing? The watch just jumped in time, so something must've triggered a forbidden thought. What was it? Don't mention what it was exactly."

"You 'froze' while reading your paper," I answer.

She narrows her yellow cat eyes and looks away from it. "Curious…" Then she takes a few steps forward and offers it to us. "See if I missed any topics."

I take it and answer, "No, you didn't. You 'froze' after the last one."

She takes it back, then pulls out a magic tool pen with a *poof*, and writes something on the paper. I see that she's marking the last entry as "dangerous to think about."

She stores the paper inside her [Item Box], and her sharp vertical pupils turn to us, intensely staring at me. "Now, tell me the truth while trying to avoid the forbidden topics," she demands.

I take a moment to think, then I say, "You're inside an elven dungeon. You're not alive, and your bodies aren't real. It has been thousands of years since you've died. The dungeon creator, who's an elven God-King from the High Forest, has bound you to this dungeon, but we don't know why, exactly."

Her expression goes blank as realization crosses her mind. She suddenly stares at the watch and starts speaking as fast as she can, almost garbling the words as she goes, "Months ago, we all had dreams about a handsome and powerful elven man. Tell me that he's the one wh-…" She suddenly freezes, and her eyes lose their focus. "W-what were we t-… oh! I said something forbidden again…"

I repeat what I said, but I omit the part about the God-King. "There's more that I can say, but it'll just make you forget it again," I add.

She frowns and bites her lip in frustration. Her cat fangs look quite sharp, though, so I worry a little that she might hurt herself.

"She said 'months ago,' can we ask her how long? It might coincide with your arrival in the realm," Alissa whispers.

We manage to squeeze an "around five" out of Wahinui before her brain is "reset" again. She also says that some time ago, people were complaining about weird dreams with a handsome elven man, then she's reset once again.

"I'm in my sixth month in this world, so it fits," I say.

"The spirit that they saw wasn't necessarily Arreira, but it reinforces the idea that there's someone actually controlling the dungeon," Lina says through [Bind], and we agree.

"If we're dead, aren't we all spirits? H-…"

"Stop!" I interrupt Wahinui before she triggers the memory wipe again.

She glances at me, then quickly makes another note on the paper, and her mind is reset. Once she's lucid again, she reads the paper, then sighs and facepalms.

"How are we 'bound' to this dungeon?" She asks in a tired tone.

"[Trap Soul]," I answer.

She frowns, looking skeptical, "How can that be? I can hurt myself and bleed, so we're all clearly made of flesh and bone."

"The same way that I can do this," I answer and show her everything that I can do with [Soul Manipulation].

"That's [Materialize]?"

I nod. "Modified heavily, but yes."

She goes silent and looks down at her own hands in frustration. "So it's true, we're dead… This is why suicide is a forbidden topic."

"But you're talking about it," Hana says with a frown.

"Yes, but I can't think about 'committing it,'" Wahinui answers.

"You're still talking about it," Hana repeats.

Wahinui puckers her lips, looking mildly annoyed. "Yes, but I have no intention of committing it."

"Ooh…"

Wahinui clenches her fists and straightens her posture, then stares at me and demands, "If we're truly bound to a dungeon, you need to destroy the core. I want to have my time in Paradise before my spirit is twisted like a nature spirit."

Gify suddenly pops onto my shoulder and chirps, "Gih!"

"I know that you aren't evil, but I need my sanity and sense of self to enjoy Paradise," she responds.

"We don't know how long it'll take, but we'll do what we can," Alissa says.

"What if some Chimeras don't want to… go to Paradise, yet?" I ask.

A hint of bitterness and anger enters her voice. "If you can't spare them individually, then let me tell you that I and many others will become evil spirits if you abandon us here," she answers.

"Understood," I reply with a nod. The Gods also don't like it when someone is denied Paradise, so I won't deny her hers.

Her voice turns gentle and her posture slouches a bit as she says, "I can't say that I like you… but thank you."

I smile gently. "You're welcome."

Her stern demeanor returns, and she clears her throat. "Now, I assume that Ozymandias is the way to the next level of this dungeon?"

"Exactly. We know that it isn't a town or a floating island; it's likely a portal of some kind, but it's also right next to where the Maw was at one point."

"I can't help much with that since my power is limited outside of the town, but I can advise you on this: don't trust Hihiriwa. No matter how friendly he seems to be, he only cares about his own fame. He's…" -her tone suddenly becomes very bitter- "ruthless."

I frown. "You're saying that he'd put us in danger to complete the mission?"

She nods, making her cat ears bob cutely. "Exactly. From the way that he acts, I highly doubt that he's realized that there's something wrong with this town, so he certainly wouldn't have any qualms with sacrificing a few unknown adventurers who don't even claim to be nobility, and I don't want you to die before you free us."

I share a look with the girls. Our opinion of him has been completely changed in just a few seconds. If there's a reason for Wahinui to lie, then it must be quite contrived.

"We'll be careful. Although we don't really need him to get past the Maw, it still seems like the safest choice to follow along with his plan."

She snorts and puts on her cloak again. "I've given you my advice, so you'd better not die. If you come back here as a spirit…" -her face softens and her tone becomes almost casual- "I'll kill you myself."

"What about Oritiki? What do you think of her?"

"Reliable, but lacking in ambition. Use her to keep yourself safe from Hihiriwa. That's all that I have for you about her."

I smile, and we give her a quick bow. She nods respectfully, then walks away without another word.

This is a lot to take on, so I think that it's time for us to take a bath and have a Council meeting of our own.

As we return to our tables, a beautiful, petite Chimera walks in. Her lustful gaze makes me feel like prey for a moment, so I stop to stare at her.

She's a rare "smooth blend" type: a mix of human, deer, and feline, all merged together into a cute and appetizing package. Her brown hair is short and tied to one side; her small antlers are adorably stubby, sanded down to not get in the way; her ears are triangular and fuzzy like a cat's; her nose is flat with a straight bridge and is slightly furred, definitely not human; her light brown skin has streaks of dark fur, making it look like she's covered with tribal markings; her freckled face is small, triangular, and very charming; her arms are slender and very fluffy; her furred hands are large, with long, sharp-looking nails; her small - chest is cute like Lina's -; her back is furry like Hukarere's while her front is - bare, except for a few streaks; her legs smoothly transition from human to cat-like with digitigrade feet and stubby toes; her tail is short and fluffy, and it wags uncontrollably as she sees me.

Hana snorts, and Alissa pouts. My fox - doesn't care much for complete strangers.

"Be quick, - just do her once or twice -," Alissa says.

I nod -, then walk towards the slab of meat with a menacing gaze.

Do you think you can play the predator? I'll make you my - slave for your insolence!

A note from Manasong

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Chapter 75: Onwards - Part 2

A note from Manasong

Attention: to conform to the limit of sexual content allowed in a novel, I've censored this chapter. You can look for the uncensored version here.

The symbol "-" denotes a section that got cut for containing sexual content. Also, if paragraphs seem missing, they were also likely censored in an earlier pass where the symbol wasn't used.

The petite brown Chimera squirms underneath me. This brown cat/deer blend woman is just exquisite -.

-

"I fell in love with you… w-well, at least your - juice," she says and giggles, embarrassed with herself.

Huh…

I look over at the girls and see that only Hukarere is still watching us, and intensely so.

I guess I just made a woman fall in love with my - milk. Who's the real succubus now?

"Pff…" Roxanne scoffs inside my mind and pouts.

Nyehehehe.

"What's your name?" I ask the petite Chimera.

"Oh… uhm… I'm Kai," she answers and gives me an awkward smile.

"Kai, I'm Wolf Ryder-…"

"Yeah, I knew your name," she mumbles.

"- and after tomorrow, we're leaving town. So, would you like to meet up again?"

She looks into my eyes and nods earnestly, "C-certainly. If you could spare time to have some 'fun' with me, I'd love it."

I smile gently and kiss her deer nose. Her stubby tail ruffles the tablecloth under her as it wags uncontrollably.

"I'll come here tomorrow at eight hours after midday, though I won't stay for long," I say.

"I-I'll come!" She answers excitedly.

I caress her cheek and walk away. The girls get up, and Hukarere signals for Ririmu to come with us.

We pay our tab, and I notice a considerable amount of money being charged to us as "cleaning fees." Maybe I'll be less messy next time.

We go to a bathhouse and rent a room for ourselves.

I hold Hukarere's pale hand and say, "I'd love to have you with us, but I want some private time with my wives."

She blinks blankly once before smiling and shaking her head. "I'm thankful for your consideration, but don't worry about me, I'm still just a guide."

"Hm…" I merely nod and walk away.

That's right, I have to maintain boundaries. I can't let myself fall in love with every woman I - sleep with like I did with Klein and Osaria.

Hukarere and Ririmu enter the public bath area, and we part ways. We head over to our reserved room and start our usual routine.

I'm rather satisfied right now, but Roxanne is in the mood, so I put some effort into playing with her body to satisfy her. Meanwhile, Alissa shares the details of our meeting with Wahinui with Ciel and Yunia.

"Why doesn't she want anyone else to know?" Ciel asks.

"It'd likely cause an uproar among the townsfolk," Yunia answers.

"I assume that she's responsible for the town's order, or something like that," I say.

"She doesn't want any outsiders bringing chaos to her town when she seemingly has everything under control," Yunia adds.

"I see…" Ciel says and nods in understanding. "The way that their minds and memories are controlled frightens me. It sounds like a never-ending nightmare."

"Couldn't you learn how Arreira did it and use that method to remove your memories from the golems?" Lina asks.

"Oh… that's true," I mumble. "I'm not sure about how ethical it would be to use the Chimeras as test subjects. Perhaps I could convince Wahinui, but I have no idea if there are any side-effects to repeated memory resets."

"Maybe you could study their core? Their souls should be bound to it, and it's generally a gem with a mana storage enchantment," Yunia says.

"How would I find that gem?" I ask.

"No idea." Yunia shrugs. "Their Threads have been cut, so I can't follow them. The gem has a maximum range, though, but since the Chimeras can apparently travel as far as Ozymandias, I wouldn't dare to guess where it is."

"Hm… I'll spread some Hollys and Shads around to try and find their cores."

"I guess this is another challenge," Alissa comments.

"They always seem to stimulate us to grow," Ciel adds.

"Not too hard, but not too easy," Lina completes.

"I don't think we have enough time to study the 'memory reset.' It might not actually be the challenge," Yunia says.

"Then what's this challenge about? We didn't put any real effort into getting the Chimeras to help us, so it can't be that," Hana says.

"Maybe it's Hihiriwa? Surviving him?" Alissa questions.

Roxanne - takes my toy out and says, "Maybe one part of the challenge is actually identifying that it's a challenge -."

Yunia frowns and asks, "Are we sure we should be treating this as a deliberate challenge?"

"What do you mean?" I ask.

"Aren't we looking too deep into it? It could simply be that Arreira is showing us his pet projects one-by-one."

"There are quite a lot of weird locations that we skipped by taking the Core's portal," Lina adds.

"Or they're each a set of challenges, too," Alissa says with a shrug.

"Are you sure that we shouldn't see this as a challenge?" Hana asks with a cheeky smirk.

"Perhaps that's the true challenge: recognizing if there's a challenge here," Roxanne says and giggles.

Hana grabs my - toy and shoves it back into Roxanne's mouth like a pacifier.

"Now that's meta," I say with a smile.

"Meme," Ted says, and the girls ignore me, except for one.

"Meme?" Yunia questions, very confused.

"Just Earthling things; it's safe to ignore him," Alissa says. Her coldness stabs at my heart, but it really only makes me chuckle.

"Anyway… what Roxanne said made no sense," Yunia continues.

"Well, yeah, she always has to say some dumb shit," Hana teases.

Roxanne ignores Hana and pulls - it out again, then says, "Alright, let me... - lemme rephrase it: the real challenge is finding out what the… the challenge is."

"Ah~, I get it," Yunia says in an understanding tone.

Roxanne smirks and adds, "See? You were all just too dumb to… - to understand me at first."

"Quiet, slut. You've said enough," Yunia says in a cold tone.

I make Roxanne shut up again.

"Well… I understood what she said, but I don't think that's the answer," Alissa says.

I let my appendages move on their own as I say, "I think the challenge is getting past the Maw and surviving Hihiriwa. Learning how to manipulate the Chimeras' memories is just a side-objective, like not letting The Lady kill the baby."

"How would learning to manipulate their memories help us?" Ciel asks.

I shrug. "We could make Hihiriwa docile to us."

"What if you screw up?"

"Then I screw up. Whether we take that risk or not will depend on how easy it is to manipulate their memories."

"Are we going to trust Wahinui's advice?" Lina asks.

"I can't think of a good reason why she would lie to us. Not after our talk about Paradise," I reply.

"We don't have to trust her words, just keep them in mind when we interact with Hihiriwa," Yunia says, and I nod in agreement.

"Okay," Lina says with a nod, but her bangs are wet, so they don't sway like they usually would.

I summon three Hollys and three Shads, then order them to find any gem with the "flavor" of [Spirit Magic]. I let them out through a small window, and they quickly spread out around town. I'm not very confident that we'll find anything, though. If Arreira didn't want them found by the Chimeras, he could've hidden them in the deepest parts of the town's island and closed off any path that led there.

We get out of the bath and find a cozy place for a meal, which is, of course, more conjured food. It's a bit unfulfilling to eat conjured food all the time, so we'll have a late-night snack in private to keep ourselves in good health. This food does help a lot in refilling my MP faster than normal, so I guess I can't complain that much.

After that, we return to Oritiki's estate.

"You all party quite a lot," Oritiki comments.

"We have to rest and enjoy ourselves whenever we can," I reply.

"Our lives are quite hectic, so the time between rests feels much longer than it is," Yunia says.

Oritiki nods and replies, "I understand what you mean. Life's been quite calm here since we rarely do expeditions anymore. You tend to forget how tiring adventuring can be, especially now that I have a home to return to." She looks over at her husbands sharing a drink in their living room and smiles warmly.

Now I get what Wahinui said. Oritiki just wants a quiet life with her husbands. Without the Divines for her to serve or her nation to help protect, she's lost nearly everything that used to motivate her. In a way, we're similar, or rather, we'll become similar. After we survive our Fate, we'll likely give up adventuring.

We eat dessert with Oritiki, a simple caramel crème brûlée made from Dragolite eggs and milk from some winged pig animal with a weird name.

Hukarere and Ririmu go back home, and we cuddle up in Oritiki's living room. Ciel's feeling a bit neglected, so she pulls me into her squishy bosom and gives me a scalp massage.

"This feels nice," she whispers.

"Now you understand why I got [Massage]?" I whisper back.

"I do…"

"Love you."

"Love you, too." She kisses my forehead.

Shortly after that, we head off to bed.

Today is the 14th.

-

Today, we'll go back to wearing clothes. Even though I enjoyed brandishing my - member like a weapon, I'm still much more comfortable being clothed.

Hana increased her [Summon Wings] by 1 (now 4), which takes one point off from [Reduced Mana Cost] (now 2+0); Lina increased her [Dodge] and [Cursing Magic] by 1 (now 2+6 and 11+4); and I learned [Dancing] with 1 point.

My shoulder is still hurting a bit. [Heal] doesn't stop the pain, so it must be because of my sloppy self-[Heal] that made the skin so sensitive.

Breakfast is omelette au fromage with Dragolite eggs. I pull out our charcuterie board to add some non-conjured food to our meal. I notice that Oritiki and her husbands don't eat that much of it, though it doesn't seem that they dislike it; they just don't feel like eating it.

"Do you have any plans for today?" Oritiki asks us.

"I think it would be best if we just take it easy and train a little, perhaps," I reply.

"Wolfy got a date with a fan at Taamu's tonight," Alissa says with a cheeky tone.

"We'll meet again for a short while since we enjoyed our time together so much," I say with a gentle smile.

"She only gets one orgasm and one cumshot," Hana states, and I nod in agreement.

"I want to read a little," Lina says.

Oritiki turns to Hana and says, "Let's spar again, but only with wooden weapons."

"Sure," Hana answers and chuckles softly.

"What? What's so funny?" Oritiki asks.

"'Only wooden weapons,'" Hana repeats with a snort.

"Ha. I'm too old to fall for that kind of provocation."

Hana pouts, but it's quickly replaced with a smile.

Hana and Ciel spar with Oritiki for a while, then Hukarere and Ririmu join in. Alissa and Lina read a new book together. Roxanne uses her workbench and a small summoned bird to test the effects of gasified Decay goop. Yunia diligently meditates to learn how to use her instant casting Gift while occasionally asking me to mix up her magic skill points. Aoi continues her magical training alongside the golems.

Aoi is quickly learning [Earth Bullet] and [Conjure Water] by observation, showcasing her growing talent with magic. Jarn has mastered [Telekinesis], giving her much more freedom of movement, and now, she's learning [Manipulate Metal] from Lina, who's playing around with a sheet of metal while reading. Ted and Suzy are learning [Wind Blade] from Aoi and Ciel, with which they create a deep groove in the still not repaired patio, earning them a glare from Thor.

While Hana and Ciel spar in the backyard, the rest of the girls and I relax on the rooftop terrace in comfy lounging chairs. We're up high enough that we can see down the slope of the mountain. The mountain town in the foreground, the colored clouds in the distance, and the starry galaxy sky in the background would definitely make for a beautiful painting. This is one of the few times that I've wished that I had a camera.

With Gify's help, I practice copying an elemental's "spirit eyes" so that I can see behind my back. I've quickly learned that making eyes is much more complicated than making limbs because they need a connection to the brain.

I give [Summoning Magic] to Yunia and get her to summon a small bird for me. After helping her adapt to the information overload, I observe how her soul changes when she activates the summon's vision sharing. For each sense she decides to share, a new appendage appears, protruding out of the soul brain.

I might be able to improve the senses of my soul appendages with this information. Now that I know how to add taste, I get an idea for how to make a tongue, but that'll have to wait for later. I focus on adding the "extra eye brain extension" to my soul first.

I manage to establish a faint connection to my spirit eye, but it's not actually useful for combat yet. It'll take a while until it's completely integrated, but I'm already used to the extra vision from my summons, so I can just keep it active all the time.

I create horns and a tail for myself. I really need to improve my integration of these appendages to my body so that I don't have to undo them every time that I'm doing anything mentally intensive.

"Does nobody ever find it weird that you can change race like that?" Rei asks with a raised eyebrow.

I point to my horns and respond, "These things are fake, so I haven't really changed my race."

He sets down a few cups of iced juice on the table in front of us, then rubs his warthog chin in thought. "Looks pretty real to me."

I dismiss the horns and create fox ears. I try to flick them, but their movements are still a bit stiff and awkward.

"Oh, I see what you mean, but I can imagine lots of ways that you could use such skill," he says.

"Yeah… I've been trying to integrate this skill with my combat style… while also using it to have some fun." I smile wryly.

There are so many things I've wanted to do with it and so many things I still have to train that my dream of becoming a werefox keeps getting pushed further and further away…

Lunchtime arrives, and we eat Manta Gull ribs, the flat manta-ray-like big bird. This time, it isn't conjured food since it was actually hunted by the Celestial Horns. They caught one as large as an SUV, so it will easily feed all the Horns and us, and there'll still be quite a lot of it left.

The taste is a bit gamey, but it's kind of good. It tastes like an odd mix of bird, beef, and fish, for some reason.

After lunch, Oritiki goes off to inspect the supplies being assembled for them. Thor also leaves the estate to go shopping, leaving us with only Rei and their servants.

The Hollys and Shads observe that the town is busier than usual with soldiers moving supplies and tools everywhere around the Military Docks in the west side of the town. A few hundred soldiers are being mobilized for this expedition, so they need a lot of stuff.

Now that Lina's had her time to read, Hana gets her to train [Dodge] and "Speed." The golems continue to tirelessly train, but the rest of us take a short break to cheer on Lina.

"Faster, faster!" Hana barks.

"You can do it!" Ciel cheers.

"I know you can handle the pain! Don't stop now!" Roxanne adds.

"Bite her hand! Bite her hand!" Aoi exclaims.

"They aren't training offense, Aoi," Alissa says.

"If Hana can't dodge a bite, then she needs to be faster," Aoi replies, confidently.

"It's good for the teacher to also train themselves while training others," Ted says.

I snort and ask, "When did you get so philosophical?"

"Our wisdom comes from you," Suzy answers.

"You don't need to butter me up," I respond.

"We merely speak the truth," the doll golems say in unison.

I snort again.

"You're doing amazing!" Ciel cheers again.

"Embrace the pain!" Roxanne continues.

Lina's anxiety continues to increase, and her face burns red not only from the exercise but also from her embarrassment.

"Cheer a bit more, it's working," I say.

Lina sends me an angry glance, but she doesn't have the energy to complain.

Alissa smiles evilly and joins the cheerleaders, "Lina! Lina! Lina!"

Hukarere and Ririmu also join in and cheer a bit, too.

So much attention is directed at my little Lina that she almost freezes in horror.

"Don't you dare stop now!" Hana barks.

Lina pushes herself even harder, not because of the cheering, but because of the shame.

Yunia and I share wry smiles, then silently return to our own training. The second-hand embarrassment is too great for us to join in with the silliness.

Lina eventually tires herself out, and they take a break. Hana carries her and flies up to us while Ciel and our guides prefer to use the stairs.

Lina sits on my lap, and I use a [Clean] magic tool to make all of her sweat disappear. Once I'm finished, she lays against my chest and molds a sheet of metal into the shape of a face for Jarn.

"I miss this kind of liveliness," Rei says with a gentle smile.

"Why? Don't you have regular parties with the Horns around here?" Hana asks, then takes some big gulps of her watered-down Tonique iced tea.

He gently shakes his head. "It's not the same thing. I used to have lots of siblings, and back then, every day was like a big party."

Ciel smiles adorably and plays with her dark hair as she says, "It's non-stop fun when your family is large enough. There's always someone doing something interesting, so you're never really bored."

He looks down at his cup and gives us a pained smile. "After the Calamity, most of my siblings volunteered for expeditions intended to try to make contact with the rest of our nation, but none of them returned…"

I stop my training and solemnly say, "Our condolences."

He shakes his head. "It's been such a long, long time since they left that I've mourned for them for as long as I really should. Now, my only wish is to rebuild our family with Oritiki."

Hm…

He turns to us and smiles with his mouth and eyes, almost closing his beady little warthog eyes. "We've convinced her to retire in a few months. Her body is very strong, so we'll be able to spend a few years making babies."

I use [Sense Soul] on him.

His smile fades, and his expression becomes neutral, then he looks away for several long seconds. He takes a drink, then turns back to us and loudly exhales. His eyes dart between each of us, and he awkwardly taps his tusk as he asks, "Apologies, it seems that I was lost in thought. What were we talking about?"

"Our tea. Do you like it?" Alissa asks, thankfully taking the conversation somewhere happier.

He nods and smiles. "Oh, yes. I do, very strong. I like strong drinks, but I still prefer alcohol."

Alissa smiles back and says, "It's actually quite watered-down, you should try having it the traditional way."

I saw Rei's soul change. The "structures" of at least two locations in his soul brain were changed. The first location is a structure that's constantly changing. It was "scrambled," becoming a confusing mess, but as soon as the "reset" was finished, the location went back to rapidly changing again. The second location is a larger structure that's also constantly changing, albeit much slower than the other. This one, I couldn't quite catch what changed since it was much more subtle, but I can see at least one "smooth" area that seems unnatural.

Is the fast one related to short-term memory…? It changes so quickly that it could be. I have no idea what the other location represents, though, but I'd guess that it's related to memory, too.

It seems that I've found where memories are made, but I still have a ways to go until I can create new golems that don't contain my memories.

I stop observing Rei's soul. I've learned all that I can from him.

I decide to rest and lay down on the chair. Lina rests her head on my arm, and I pull her closer to my chest. My hand reflexively lands on her head, and my fingers run through her silky hair.

I look down at my other free hand and start messing with the inner part of my soul.

"Alissa, tell me if my mana organ has moved," I say through [Bind] and give her a point in [Sense Soul].

I try out a few different things and manage to make it stretch a little, though I have no idea where it's stretching towards. If I could cover myself with my mana organ, then I could try out the dragon transformation that the girls and I want so much.

So many things to train, but so little time…

I return to my spirit eye training. This ability is definitely a higher priority right now.

Alissa and Hana train [Mesmerizing Butterflies] together, wowing Rei and the servants who pass by. Ciel's now training [Fly] by dodging Hukarere's and Ririmu's attacks and blunted arrows. Alissa is too good of an archer to help Ciel train her dodging.

The glaive is actually a pretty good weapon for flying. Going for chops while diving has less chance of getting the weapon stuck in the enemy than a spear. Lances and pikes have superior power in comparison to the glaive, of course, but they're disposable weapons, so they aren't a practical main weapon for prolonged combat.

Roxanne presents a new weapon to us: caustic goop gas. Throw it at someone and watch them die a horrific death as their eyes and lungs are burned away, leading them to suffocate.

I feel like I'd be hard-pressed to find a reasonable situation where this weapon could be used on humanoids.

The sun sets, and the day ends. It seems like it passed by quite quickly. Even though we mostly just trained, it still felt like a short vacation. When compared to how our adventures usually go, nothing too eventful happened, but tomorrow will be very different.

A note from Manasong

Hall of Fame of Patrons

The patrons who support Rupegia shall have their names sung by the bards for they deserve the glory and honor. Their names are:

Oracle Maximillian Hübner.

Prince PreownedFIN.

Lord Andrew Meyers.

Lord Samuel Lim.

Lord Bill.

Lord Novgarod.

Lord DJ.

Lord Ashadun.

Lord Michale Erwin.

Lord Enrique Peña Gomez.

Lord Braidborn.

Lord Bakerdea.

Lord Yeeteris Dedmeem.

Lord D4rk Sheep.

Lord Nathan Vanbrunt.

Lord Markus.

Lord Maurice.

Lord Badger.

Lord Krawn.

Lord Empyrean.

Lord Asakurà.

Lord Mattirro Draca.

Lord Joshua Tal.

Noble Salty Panda.

Noble Yamibomb112.

Noble Mild Fracas.

Noble EESDESESESRDT.

Noble Aclys.

Noble Tyler Mills.

Noble Jordon Gotthold.

Leave a rating or a review to help me rise to the top or fix my shameful understanding of prose.

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Chapter 75: Onwards – Part 3

A note from Manasong

Attention: to conform to the limit of sexual content allowed in a novel, I've censored this chapter. You can look for the uncensored version here.

The symbol "-" denotes a section that got cut for containing sexual content. Also, if paragraphs seem missing, they were also likely censored in an earlier pass where the symbol wasn't used.

Oritiki comes back, and we get ready for the bath. There are four of them for us to choose from, so we don't have to share one with Oritiki's husbands.

I invite Hukarere to join us, and she eagerly accepts. She's definitely not bi, but she doesn't mind watching - the girls play, and if she gets to drink some of my miraculous - juice, then it's a no-brainer for her.

This time, I focus my attention on Ciel. Just imagining using her and Osaria as my pillows makes me feel all giddy.

-

"What's up with them?" Hukarere asks as she points to Alissa and Roxanne, who are nearly passed out at the edge of the bath.

"Just another one of Wolfy's skills," Hana answers with a grin, and I stop sharing my pleasure with the two abused girls.

One of the advantages of [Bind] is that I can satisfy all of my bound women at the same time. If I had to do it one-by-one, then every bath would take quite a while. I can still extend lots of - toys from my body, but it's much simpler to just sense-share.

We're getting pretty skilled at dealing with Yunia's hair, so it only takes a short time for it to be brought back to its usual glory. Aoi also behaves herself, now that she's had her fill, and she lets us polish her scales without complaint.

"You seem to have enjoyed our bath," Oritiki comments as we sit down to eat.

"Bath time is sacred," Alissa says as if it were a teaching from a God.

"It's our special time for 'bonding,'" Ciel hurriedly adds and sends a brief glare towards Alissa.

"Oh, I see." Oritiki responds, then crosses her arms and nods in understanding as she says, "Since it's one of the few times that land-dwellers are naked in private, you have to take your pleasure whenever you can."

"'Few,'" Hana mumbles and snorts.

After dinner, I take my clothes off and don a lavish robe. Alissa makes sure that my hair is perfectly groomed, my skin is as soft as a baby's, and my body is completely perfumed -.

She kisses my lips, and I head out towards Taamu's again. I don't change - my member this time since I don't want to get cat-called by men right now.

The tavern is loud as usual, but I'm not here for the music. I quickly locate my prey, and she notices my predatory gaze, acting like a rabbit that trembles at the approach of a wolf.

Kai let her hair loose this time, displaying her beautiful, dark brown wavy hair. Her light brown skin is almost shining and so perfectly unblemished that I'm sure that she's wearing makeup. Her small antlers are decorated with two cute little red bow ties. So adorable.

Delicious brown… Ah, who am I kidding, every skin color a woman can have is delicious.

"Kai," I say in a low growl as I sit down beside her. Her cat ears and deer tail twitch as she hears me. I instantly smell her sweet, flowery perfume, paradoxically stirring images of innocence in my mind, but I know how - filthy she is.

"W-W-Wolf," she stammers, very tense.

I call the waitress over to order some snacks and light alcohol. "Would you like to eat something? It'll be my treat," I say.

She asks for some candied berry-like fruits and a strong drink. I order a cereal bar and a mild drink.

"You're not a drinker, are you?" She shyly asks.

"No, why do you ask?"

"Chaimde-waipi is a drink for non-drinkers."

Oh, I see. It's just tea with cheap alcohol added to it, so it's pretty mild in comparison to other drinks.

"I prefer to remain completely aware while in the presence of other people," I reply.

She smiles cheekily and says, "Getting just a bit drunk makes everything more fun."

"Perhaps, but if I overdo it, I could hurt someone." I grow a spiky - club and slap it against the table, making her jump in her seat.

She stares at it in awe as I slowly make it return to normal, then she breaks into laughter. "Is that [Mana Genitals]? I've never seen one that can change so much!" She exclaims.

"It's not, it's my special skill, but I do have [Mana Genitals], too."

"Oo~h…" She giggles adorably. "This must be why you're so… tasty."

"Are you hungry?" I ask, and she nods emphatically. I stand up and harden - myself. "Then come get your meal."

-

Our date ends with her breathless, a silly smile on her face. The Wolf Ryder standard.

I pay for our food and the cleaning fee, then I tell them to keep the change as a tip. There's no tipping culture in this world, but my gesture is well-known.

"It's been nice knowing you," I say gently.

"Thank you. I'll miss you," Kai answers in a weak voice.

I leave the tavern and enter an alley, then open a [Gate] back to Oritiki's estate. Alissa vacates my reserved seat, and I take it, then I bury my head in Yunia's fragrant and fluffy hair. Right now, it's her turn for some affection, and even though she didn't ask for it, she'll still be getting it.

"Ah, you're back. I see you're enjoying the wonders of our race," Oritiki says, then smirks.

"All races deserve to be loved," I say, and her husbands smile faintly, even Thor.

"All races deserve his - big 'heart,'" Alissa whispers.

Oritiki continues, "We were talking about our upcoming trip. There are a few interesting locations along the way, and some of them might be infested with monsters if the animals haven't reclaimed their territory yet. Also, I'll teach you the basics of how to fly in formation."

I already heard it all through [Bind], but I allow her to go over it all again with me.

Hukarere and Ririmu return to their homes to finish packing up, and we retire to our room shortly after that.

Alissa tells me what she wants as a "reward," and we all smile wryly. We make it a team effort to satisfy her.

Her nails are cut, sanded, and painted with cute patterns; any stray hair on her body is shaved off; her skin is oiled up and massaged; her orange bush is trimmed and maintained; her tail is washed and re-fluffed until it's as soft as Hukarere's cloud-like back fur; her hair is carefully tended to by Yunia, to whom I gave the [Hairdressing] skill because she has the highest "Dexterity"; and finally, we give her the drill-hair treatment, making her look younger and even more adorable than usual.

She puts on Roxanne's lolita outfit, and I use the gnomic [Instant Painting] tool to immortalize this moment. I'll definitely hang this one in our room in the castle.

"Who's being 'rewarded' here, you or Wolfy?" Yunia asks with a raised eyebrow.

"All of us," Roxanne replies as she admires Alissa.

Ciel definitely enjoyed Alissa's especially cute look.

We don't stay up for longer than that since we'll be waking up early tomorrow.

Today is the 15th.

-

Lina learned [Enhanced Speed] with 1 point. My [Soul Manipulation] increased by 1 (now 6).

We get up and leave the room just as one of Oritiki's servants comes to knock on our door. The poor mouse-headed woman is spooked by us and apologizes for her brief yelp. We apologize, too, and continue on our way before we embarrass her any further.

"Oh, you're awake already," Oritiki comments as we enter the dining room for breakfast.

"We have our own alarm clock," I say and point to Gify.

"Alarm clock?" She questions.

"Gnomic mechanical invention," I lie.

"They use enchanted clocks here, and back on land, they go by the temple's bell," Alissa says through [Bind].

We eat our meal, then armor ourselves and wait for Oritiki to finish saying goodbye to her husbands. It'll take a while for her to come back because they'll be towing a farm island, and those things really don't move that fast.

We make our way to the Golden Docks just as the morning mist clears. Oritiki will be guiding us towards the Military Docks so that we can meet up with the other ships. She's wearing her white metal armor, but, thankfully, it isn't glowing. That kind of enchantment hurts our eyes.

My Hollys and Shads found the Light crystal protecting the town from the Vengeful Spirits, but there was no sign of anything related to [Spirit Magic], so I dismissed them.

We board our ship again and take off. I summon a few Hollys to keep watch around us as usual.

Chills run down my spine from the tension. We'll soon be in battle once again, so it's time to psyche myself up. I go through my memories of a few of the dragon visions just to make me feel motivated enough to overcome my anxiety.

The ship flies around the mountain town, attracting the attention of the populace that's just waking up. The Chimeras wave and cheer as we pass by. Our ship is of a different style than that of the Chimeras, making it instantly recognizable.

I recognize Kai watching us as we fly past. I briefly drop down to the deck and wave to her, hoping that she'll recognize me.

She smiles faintly, so I think that she might've noticed.

The wind picks up, and I squint my eyes to see clearly.

"Don't you have flight goggles?" Oritiki asks.

I think she means aviator goggles.

"Oh, I forgot to buy some," I answer.

She snorts. "I'll put in a requisition for you at the Carrier."

I nod and smile in appreciation.

After a few minutes, we reach the Military Docks. They appear to be the same as the Common Docks, just reserved for the military.

I see the Long Floater, a blimp, already floating in the sky. Its cabin is both twice as long and twice as wide as Earth's average bus. Above it, there's a large, cylindrical cloth tank with a pair of wings attached to it. Behind the tank, there's a long axle protruding from it with three sets of propellers with long blades lazily spinning along it. There's a second, smaller cabin at the nose of the tank, which I assume is the bridge.

The Island Winch is a huge, long ship the size of a cargo ship from Earth. It's basically just a long, wooden cylinder that's been reinforced with metal. It has over a dozen sails mounted on both the top and the bottom of the ship, and their masts seem to be able to fold on itself so that the ship can land. On the right side of it, there are six folded-up metal claws for grabbing onto the island.

The Carrier is currently taking off. It has a long landing strip on its center where three Floaters could comfortably park in a line. Below that are the crew quarters, which seems to span four levels. Two tanks like the one from the Floater are entirely embedded in the middle of the quarters. Five axles extend out from its back, and each of them have six sets of propellers with long blades along their lengths. Multiple small wings are arranged along the flanks of the ship, which flap in a wave-like pattern, exactly like a Kite Dragon. The bridge is seemingly positioned at the front tip of the landing strip. Cameras don't exist yet, so the bridge needs a clear view of where it's going if it wants to maneuver safely.

All these ships are black with white spots to camouflage them within the starry sky. It's difficult to properly camouflage something against the colored clouds because they keep changing as the day goes by, so the clear night sky is their best bet.

Oritiki positions us near the Carrier at the 4 o'clock position so that we don't get caught up in its turbulence, but it also allows their ship to maneuver without us getting in the way. The Floater will take the lead, and the Winch will take the lower rear position.

"Stay here, I'll get our communications set up," Oritiki says, then makes her wings grow larger and flies away.

Three groups of ten Wasps take off vertically and fly in a double column formation around the Carrier. I think they might be doing a test run.

A large manta ray made of cloth around a steel framework lands on the Carrier. It's approximately the size of a house. It has two small floating tanks flanking an actual catapult in the middle, and an axle coming out the back with one large propeller. There's a huge, cuboidal green crystal already loaded in the catapult.

I guess that's the Gull that I'll be flying. That crystal is green, so it's likely that it isn't the Light crystal, but why would they use a replacement?

"Wow…" Alissa mutters in amazement. "I've only seen one or two small imperial ships. These are really something else."

"There are a few troop transports in the High Forest, but most of them are owned by the Elder Council, and they aren't as big as any of these," Yunia says.

"They are larger than Earth's airplanes," Ted comments.

"But not as large as their water ships," Suzy adds.

"The Island Winch seems to be almost entirely hollow. I don't think it counts as a proper ship," I say.

"How do the Carrier and the Floater fight?" Lina asks.

"They have large enchanted crystals behind the windows," Yunia says.

On the sides of the Carrier and on the tank of the Floater are lots of openings where someone could hold an enchanted crystal.

"So, those cylinder things aren't hollow?" I ask.

"They're filled with gas, yes, but the gas is enchanted to push the ship upwards and help them float, so they don't have to be hollow for the ship to float," Yunia answers.

Dayum. So much magitech going on.

After about ten minutes of waiting, Paraaone, the brown bull Celestial Horn, comes to our ship. He flies over to the bridge and hands me a few sets of aviator goggles and a wooden box with eight small crystals protruding from it: two blue, two red, two green, two yellow, and two white.

"This is how you'll communicate with the carrier," he says and points to the box. "Have you ever heard about using signal combinations to represent words?"

"Oh, so the combination of the crystal lights represents a word?" I ask.

He nods. "Exactly."

He pulls out a paper with the Reo alphabet represented in binary using up to five digits. There are also some combinations that represent words like move left, move up, attack, run, regroup, dock, and a few others.

I take the paper and ask, "I'm a summoner, so couldn't we share summons for instant communication?"

"I was going to ask that after this. We have a light signal system, too." He activates a crystal and points at the Carrier. A light starts to blink in its southwestern-most window. "Flip the paper I gave you, the translation for the blinking lights is written there."

There's over a dozen variations of the blinking lights signals, but they're mostly going to be used like a car's blinkers.

He deactivates the crystal, then adds, "Send a small bird to that blinking light and share your sense of touch with it. A tap on the head will signify that you want to speak with the comms officer, and she'll be using the same signal. She'll send her bird to you soon."

I do as he asks and send the bird over. A minute later, another bird arrives and lands on the bridge, then mine reaches the Carrier and enters through the open window. It sees a simple room where Hukarere is seated on a comfy chair in front of a table. She has a pen, a few stacks of paper, a telescope aimed towards us, a magic tool enchanted with [Spirit Light], and a magic tool that gives her direct voice comms with the bridge.

"Hello, Ryders! I'll be your liaison today. I'll swap shifts with Ririmu every so often," she says in a cheerful voice to my bird.

"Wait, I didn't know you were a summoner," I say to her bird.

"I'm not, but I trained this spell just so that I could work in comms."

"Oh, that's neat. Glad to have you with us."

She grins. "Glad to be working with you."

She'll basically be our babysitter and make sure that we don't stray from the Carrier.

Paraaone then gives us a small piece of metal the size of my palm. It's a stadia rangefinder. I can observe the Carrier with it, and it will tell me how far we are from the airship. Since the height of the Carrier is known, it's possible to estimate the distance by comparing how large it seems in our view to a known measurement.

"I'll stay here and keep watch," Paraaone says and lands on the bow of the ship.

After that, we go through a test of all the comm systems and coordinate some simple maneuvers with the Carrier.

After two hours of preparations, we finish going through all the checks and tests, then we finally start to slowly move north towards the Looping Winds in formation.

Onwards, to adventure!

Intermission 17 - Vanea

The three men slide out of me, and I sigh in supreme satisfaction. Grosnok lays me back on the bed as I swallow, then I sit and cross my legs to stop - it from dripping out of me. I look forward to the broken thing in front of me that once called itself "Darean."

The last of his life fades away, and his spirit detaches from his body. But, before the process is complete, his spirit suddenly cries out, and in the next moment, it's simply gone, ruptured by Wicked spells.

"He thought he could escape Hell, but he didn't know that he couldn't escape his retribution," I say and let out the most sadistic laugh I've ever felt escape from my lips.

"Okay, and I thought that I was filthy, but sis, that was incredible," Haaran says as his little elven - slave cleans him -.

Loctar, my cute, loyal servant, licks my chin, cleaning - it from his own mess, then he sits down beside me.

I pat his head lovingly and run my fingers through his silky, black hair. Silvane finishes cleaning Haaran, then she goes over to Loctar next. She - goes too hard at it, so I roll my eyes and flick one of her elven ears.

"That's mine," I say, sternly. She winces, then grins and starts to clean Grosnok.

Now that she made Loctar become all excited again, I'll have to take care of him myself.

Haaran walks up to the cell and inspects Darean's body.

"So, he's dead?" He asks.

"Yes. Completely."

"And his soul?"

"Ruptured. I wonder where he found someone to curse him like that, though."

He cringes, then turns around and sits down at my other side. "You think his master was Wicked?"

I grab him -, too, and stroke it along with Loctar's. "No, his master was trying to kill him. I think it was Dawn of Fire."

"That's a bit… worrying…" Haaran -.

- I finish them, and their sauce lands on Darean's filthy body.

"Wasn't the hero Ryder targeted by them?" Loctar innocently asks.

"Indeed, he was. I guess I'll be paying him back for the favor," I reply, and a warm smile graces my lips.

Silvane giggles, having teased Grosnok enough that he tries to jump her, but the chains hold him back. I feel a little annoyed by how she never stops trying to play with my men, so I give Loctar the key and whisper an order in his ear.

When the chains clank loudly onto the floor, Silvane's sudden expression of fear greatly amuses me. Grosnok is a gentle, submissive giant, but even he has a limit.

A note from Manasong

Hall of Fame of Patrons

The patrons who support Rupegia shall have their names sung by the bards for they deserve the glory and honor. Their names are:

Oracle Maximillian Hübner.

Prince PreownedFIN.

Lord Andrew Meyers.

Lord Samuel Lim.

Lord Bill.

Lord Novgarod.

Lord DJ.

Lord Ashadun.

Lord Michale Erwin.

Lord Enrique Peña Gomez.

Lord Braidborn.

Lord Bakerdea.

Lord Yeeteris Dedmeem.

Lord D4rk Sheep.

Lord Nathan Vanbrunt.

Lord Markus.

Lord Maurice.

Lord Badger.

Lord Krawn.

Lord Empyrean.

Lord Asakurà.

Lord Mattirro Draca.

Lord Joshua Tal.

Noble Salty Panda.

Noble Yamibomb112.

Noble Mild Fracas.

Noble EESDESESESRDT.

Noble Aclys.

Noble Tyler Mills.

Noble Jordon Gotthold.

Leave a rating or a review to help me rise to the top or fix my shameful understanding of prose.

Take a look over my blog where all information of the world of Rupegia will be posted.

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Chapter 76: Espionage - Part 1

The milsim nerd inside me is squealing with joy. Airships flying in formation and making maneuvers are just so, so, so fucking cool!

I immediately start teaching the golems how to use the comms and make maneuvers so that I can focus on the view. Lina is also enjoying this, although she's still a bit uncomfortable with the height, so I let our feelings mix for a short while, amplifying our enjoyment.

We fly north, then east. We pass by two island farms the size of small towns, then we reach the Looping Winds.

The Floater goes in first. It unfurls a large sail that hangs down from the bottom of the ship. It doesn't have a mast, but it doesn't need one when its sail is only used for the Looping Winds.

The Carrier goes in next, unfurling multiple large sails underneath it just like the Floater. They're so large that they disrupt the white sea of smoke of the Looping Winds for a few seconds. The Carrier is also twice as wide as the Looping Winds itself, making it look like a comically oversized monorail train.

We go in next after the Carrier is far enough ahead that the Looping Winds stabilizes. We can go faster than them, so it takes some fine adjustments to the tilt of our wings to match their speed.

The Island Winch joins in last. It's even wider and far longer than the Carrier, but it's definitely lighter, giving it a greater max speed. Its lower sails perfectly fit within the Looping Winds, not disrupting it that much when compared to the Carrier.

It seems to me that civilian ships prefer sails while military models prefer tanks and propellers.

We get out of range of the town's protective spell, and each ship activates their own anti-Vengeful-Spirit spells, keeping the mass of ethereal blue ghosts at bay.

We leave Whakamutu Mutu behind, and soon, the urban area ends. We're back in the wilderness of this fake Broken Skies. Random islands and islets are floating about, sometimes hidden within the colored clouds, sometimes drifting aimlessly, but most of the time, they're just floating in place near the Looping Winds.

Plenty of animals quickly make their appearance, flying between the islands either alone or in large numbers. It's rather surprising how often we see one of them flying by. The predators in this area are mostly monsters, but we're close enough to the town that the Celestial Horns often come here to hunt, keeping their numbers low.

A Chamebirb lands on our ship, and we use our magic so that we can pet it for a short time. I let the golems control the ship so that Alissa and I can stay down on the deck. Ted and Suzy are now perfectly capable of operating the comms box by themselves. I warn Hukarere of that so that she'll send non-urgent messages through the comms box to train the golems.

The number of islands gradually reduces until we finally leave the Horn's hunting area, then the sky is suddenly clear of islands and animals, and the Chamebirb on our deck flies away back to safety.

"They're good omens, those birds. They're noble and peaceful; it's an honor to be allowed to pet one," Paraaone says and subtly smiles.

"They're so beautiful that I feel blessed just from touching their feathers," Ciel says with a grin.

I hug Alissa from behind, then bury my nose in her fragrant hair as we lean against the railing of the ship and inhale the Ranja perfume. We're both fully armored, reducing the comfort of our cuddly time, but her pointy fox ears occasionally twitch, tickling my cheeks and making up for the lack of skinship.

I stare off into the starry sky, entranced by the stars and colorful nebulae. I never had such a clear view of the stars on Earth due to the light pollution, and Lily and I were hardly the type to enjoy going camping and sleeping under the stars.

I miss the technology and stimulation-heavy environment of the internet, but I can't deny that calm moments like this are really nice. It feels like I'm up in space, doing an interplanetary mission, but set in a fantasy setting instead of sci-fi.

Jarn's artificial and metallic voice suddenly resounds across the deck, "Message: Code red. The Carrier reports a swarm of Dragolites incoming. The Floater will protect the Winch."

I let go of Alissa, and she immediately grabs her not-ebony bow, then readies her quiver at her waist. "Target practice," she says with a small smile as she puts on her helmet.

For combat, the Carrier folds its set of small waving wings back, allowing the men within the living area to fire their magic tools. The Floater leaves the Looping Winds and flies over to the Winch's left flank to protect it. The rest of the ships are to continue on in the river of smoke so that no time is lost.

Alissa is the only one who can see them right now: hundreds of tiny dark dots approaching from our left. They seem to come from an island very far away that even Alissa has trouble discerning from the background of the night's sky.

The Carriers fire a salvo of [Earth Bullet]s, allowing everyone to range their shots. After that, they fire a [Fireball] salvo, and this is what does most of the damage. Alissa sees dozens of the monsters falling towards the endless abyss below.

They fire two more [Fireball] salvos, then range their shots again with [Earth Bullet].

The monsters lose nearly half their number before they get into range of our spells, but they focus more on the Carrier than on us. Without a breeder or leader-type with the tactical knowledge to guide them, monsters will almost always focus on attacking the most plentiful concentration of humanoids.

The [Fireball]s are soon replaced with [Lightning Bolt]s, and so, no more ranging shots are necessary. Now that the sky is clear of projectiles, the Wasps and the Horns engage the Dragolite swarm.

A few Dragolites move to attack the Floater, but it releases a huge [Discharge] in front of it, completely clearing out that area of monsters.

We fire our spells, easily killing any approaching monster, and Paraaone takes to the skies, preventing any that we miss from damaging our sail or wings. I summon two Wind elementals to disrupt their flight and make it easier for us to hit them.

The Wasps and Horns suddenly all simultaneously fly towards the north, leaving the southern part of the swarm free to do whatever it wants.

The Floater turns on its propellers, suddenly charging forward at a high speed while also making a large amount of noise. It activates [Discharge] again, and a huge chunk of Dragolites get fried by it.

Dozens of monsters are lured within the Carrier and quickly slain. It seems that we'll be eating Dragolite today.

The battle only lasts for two minutes as the Dragolites are massacred to the last monster. Aside from three instances of Wasps having their wings broken, no other damage nor even a single casualty is taken by us. The Chimeras aren't experts in [Nature Magic], but with their [Alteration Magic], they can repair their Wasps exactly like how someone would use [Grow].

A group of five Wasps flies away to the left, towards where the Dragolites came from. Alissa watches them and notices a suspiciously large Dragolite desperately flying away.

"I think that's a leader-type," Alissa says.

Paraaone lands beside us. "Oh? You can see it that far away?" He asks, surprised.

"The senses of the average werefox are better than most humanoids," she answers.

He gives her a wry smile as he takes off his helmet. "And you're definitely not an 'average' werefox, are you?"

She nods happily, and her tail twitches under her armor.

The leader-type gets lassoed by two Wasps, then slain by the others and brought back as a trophy.

Code yellow is sounded, meaning that the fight is over and that we can rest, but also that we should remain alert for a second attack.

Since we left town quite late in the morning, it doesn't take much longer for lunchtime to arrive. Code green is sounded exactly as it starts.

"Message: Marshall Hihiriwa invites your family for lunch," Jarn announces.

"He'll probably invite us pretty frequently. This'll be good practice for when you have to socialize with other nobles," Yunia says.

Roxanne, Hana, and Ciel share a look between themselves. None of them are eager for that.

We fly the ship towards the Carrier and carefully land on it right in front of the Gull plane.

I leave the elementals guarding the ship, then we drop down onto the concrete runway, and a touch of acrophobia enters my mind. There aren't any railings along the landing strip, so if you get blown off your feet by a strong gust, you could fall off the ship.

Among us, only Alissa, Lina, and Yunia are unable to fly, but that still doesn't overcome the fear of falling that's been hardwired into my land-dweller brain over my entire life.

A guide arrives to receive us, and we part ways with Paraaone. With a slight shudder, we make our way off of the landing strip and enter through a hatch into the living area of the ship. The interior is made from a dark wood, and we're warned to be careful because, except for the floor and the outer armor, all of the walls are very thin and fragile to reduce the weight.

I think that my mailed fist could easily punch a hole through them. It feels like I'm inside an American house again.

Aside from the essential areas, most of the corridors are poorly lit, forcing us to use [Spirit Light]s to keep ourselves from stumbling on something, or someone. The winged Chimeras almost exclusively fight outside of the ship, so there's little reason for them to be walking along the corridors. Most of the crew we meet are among the small types, and they're all rather cute. Fortunately, and unfortunately, they're all wearing dark green jumpsuits, hiding their - dangling bits from our sight, but also concealing the interesting bits of the women.

Hana feels a little cramped in these corridors, but Oritiki would certainly have to be careful whenever she entered a room. Lina says that the ventilation is at least decent, so it's not all bad.

We arrive near the front of the ship, and suddenly, the corridors change. They become much wider, taller, well illuminated, and even carpeted. I see a few Celestial Horns lounging inside a room, and we understand the reason for the change: we're near the living quarters of the nobles and the winged soldiers.

The Horns aren't the only winged soldiers around, but they're certainly the tallest and most muscular. They're also the ones with the bigger - bits and - honkers.

We take a few flights of stairs down to the bottom floor and enter a large room that's almost entirely gilded in gold with a transparent glass floor. Hihiriwa, Kaatohe, Oritiki, and a few other Chimeras are seated at a long table in the middle of the room. The smells of the delicious meal before us enter our nostrils, and our stomachs sing rejoice.

Oritiki smiles, and Kaatohe nods respectfully towards us. We return their subtle greetings as we walk towards the table.

"Ryders, please have a seat," Hihiriwa says with a toothy grin and motions to the lavish chairs in front of him. "I assume your Living Armors don't eat?"

"They don't," I respond and nod respectfully, then we take our seats. The doll golems and Jarn stand behind us, creepily staring at the Chimeras. I quite like this.

Unfortunately for Lina, the view of the infinite sky below us frightens her, so I let her sit beside me while I comfort her mind by caressing her soul through [Bind].

I look down curiously and notice that the starry sky is becoming slightly blurred by a faint blue mist. The sun in the Broken Skies is unpredictable; some days, it's weak enough that the day feels like a night, while other times, it's so strong that you could boil water if you let the sun in. Most of the time, it's the former rather than the latter, and right now, it seems that it's getting strong enough that the blue sky will soon hide the stars.

The unknown men and women at the table seem to be interested in the golems, but Hihiriwa ignores them and seems to be more curious about Aoi.

"It's time for you to show off your manners, Aoi," Alissa says through [Bind].

"Muuh…" Aoi moos in frustration. She'll have to use [Telekinesis] to control her cutlery and actually chew her food this time.

Hihiriwa introduces us to his staff: Kaiia, his executive officer, a fluffy panda-headed man; Nohopu, the Floater's captain, a brown-skinned squirrel-headed man; Kurii, a beagle-headed woman, his executive officer; Mahi, the Winch's captain, a blonde horse-headed woman with an attractive body; and Kaata, Hihiriwa's wife and head comms officer, a neon-blue gecko-headed woman. Except for Kaatohe and Oritiki, they're all commoners.

"I assume the fight went well?" Hihiriwa asks us as our cups are filled with a watered down alcoholic drink that I don't recognize.

"Most of the Dragolites ignored our ship, so we were far from being overwhelmed," I reply.

"Dragolites are always found around this area, so there will likely be another attack like we had today. And tomorrow, the danger will increase."

"Kite Dragons and large Cloud Snakes," Oritiki continues.

"The Snakes are ambushers, so it's much more likely that they'll attack you instead of us," Hihiriwa adds.

"We'll be careful. We've encountered one or two Cloud Snakes before, so we won't be caught completely unaware," I respond.

Hihiriwa nods gently. "Good. Now, let's eat."

Predictably, a lot of the dishes have Dragolite in them.

Wahinui's warning lingers in the back of our minds, but Hihiriwa doesn't show any sign of changing his friendly demeanor. We'll have to spy on him, but I'm wary of letting a Holly loose right now. He could have unknown defenses against monsters or others sneaking into his room, or a Horn could accidentally get too close to a summon and notice something wrong.

I can get a Holly go up to the bridge, though, so we might be able to catch something. Also, it's obvious to us that we need to observe Kaata to discover Hihiriwa's true personality. We have to find out where their quarters are, but we won't have many opportunities to do so since we're expected to spend most of our time flying our own ship.

We have a low-key mental discussion about what to do while eating our meal and talking to the Chimeras. They complain about the crew being unused to expeditions and seeming to be pretty nervous, which influences them into making a lot of small mistakes. It's been a while since the Carrier last left port, and only the Floater saw regular expeditions for longer than a day trip, so the number of veterans is rather small.

Nohopu, the captain of the Floater, takes an interest in our tales of adventures, quickly befriending Hana and Ciel. He's a bit of a speed freak and loves racing, apparently, and he's definitely a bit eccentric.

Predictably, Alissa gets interested in Mahi, the horse-headed woman, but she doesn't pimp me as hard as she could. Most of our time is spent paying attention to Hana and Ciel, the bards, and Nohopu, the comedic relief.

Nohopu barely contains his grin, showing his rather small bucked teeth. His excitement as he tells his story is so great that we don't know if he's telling them to entertain us or himself.

He maintains his rapid retelling and assumes a serious voice to properly portray the story to us. "The albino Fay Leviathan was finally cornered. There was no way that it had the strength to push the Floater back and escape from the tunnel, so I gave the order: 'FIRE!' And the [Beam] hit it right in its head… but the light scattered in all directions, deflected by a spell I'd never seen before!"

"Wait, [Dead Zone]?" Oritiki asks.

He waggles his finger. "No, no. The light scattered, [Dead Zone] doesn't do that."

"Ooh…"

"And when the [Beam] ended, I saw something that gave me pause… a mirror!" His voice drips with mystery and wonder.

"Ah! Mirrors deflect [Beam]! But how could it summon a mirror just like that?" Oritiki questions.

Nohopu shrugs. "I don't know. What I do know is that we saw a gigantic mirror floating between us and our prey for a few seconds, but then it suddenly shattered without a sound and disappeared."

"Weren't you chasing that monster for years? It's reasonable to expect it to try to counter you," Hihiriwa says.

"Well, I've never seen a monster create such a spell before," Nohopu replies.

"If that monster's offspring learn the same skill, we'll have a bit of a problem," Oritiki says with a wry smile.

"Ohohoho, but not for me, I know exactly how to counter that spell," Nohopu continues and giggles evilly. "After the mirror disappeared, I grit my teeth and ordered: 'CHARGE, FULL SPEED AHEAD!'"

"Madman!" Kaiia exclaims, her gentle gecko face distorted in worry.

"I took control of the fore weapons and shield myself and waited. The men were wary, but they trusted me, and I don't give orders twice. The navigator pushed up both levers, and the men started praying.

"I'd have only a second to react, but I knew what I was doing. The albino Leviathan turned its huge face towards us, and I swear that it looked as if it was surprised. Our [Beam] was almost out of mana, so I couldn't waste a single shot.

"The Leviathan retreated deeper into the tunnel, but it quickly stopped when it reached the end. Now, it was truly cornered. I grinned, and my hands on the controls itched in anticipation.

"The beast let out a long, low roar of rage, then I felt it use its mana. I immediately activated [Wind Shield], and we heard a crash, then I deactivated it again to preserve mana. The mirror had shattered, barely slowing us down, so I turned on [Discharge], and the Leviathan's counterattack was interrupted; it was about to slam its tail into us."

"Clever, both of you," Hihiriwa comments.

"I activated [Wind Shield] again, and we slammed against the Leviathan. I kept it active, using up the last of our ship's mana to pin the Leviathan against the stone. But then, just when I was about to use [Beam] to finish it off, we heard a thunderous rumble! The island was torn in half by our attack!"

"What?!" Oritiki exclaims.

"Why did it break?!" Hana questions, completely enthralled.

Nohopu's excitement dies down as his voice turns disappointed. "It was simply too small for our battle. The tunnel we made reduced its integrity too much, and with two behemoths colliding against each other inside it, I shouldn't have expected it to last. A chunk of the island fell away, taking the Fay Leviathan along with it, and I missed with that final [Beam]. The monster slipped right between my fingers!" He dramatically covers his face with both hands.

"If we encounter it, we need to kill it," Hihiriwa firmly states.

"It won't be 'if,' but 'when.' That Leviathan will want revenge," Nohopu says in a serious tone.

"It wouldn't willingly attack the Carrier. Not after being cornered by you once before," Kaata says.

Hihiriwa smiles gently at her and nods. "We'll have to ambush it," he says.

"Yes! I'll find it for us!" Nohopu exclaims, returning to his normal cheerful self.

Hihiriwa turns to me. "Your ship is much faster than the Carrier, so perhaps you'll be able to help. You and the Floater could herd it towards us."

Yunia is not pleased with his suggestion but doesn't show it.

"We have limited firepower and defenses against large flying monsters, so that plan would be pretty dangerous for us," I reply.

"The Horns will stay with you. It wouldn't dare to attack you with us around," Oritiki innocently says.

Dammit, Oritiki.

"No point in discussing this matter any further for now," Hihiriwa says before I can respond, then turns to Hana. "Now, please, continue with your stories."

We stay for a little while longer, then code yellow is sounded, so we end our long meal.

I put ten of Alissa's extra points in [Sense Presence] and tell her to keep track of Hihiriwa. We need to find out where his private quarters are.

We go back up to our ship and find Paraaone already waiting for us. We lift off, and I summon a Holly, then I order it to sneak into the bridge.

It's time to begin our espionage.

A note from Manasong

Hall of Fame of Patrons

The patrons who support Rupegia shall have their names sung by the bards for they deserve the glory and honor. Their names are:

Oracle Maximillian Hübner.

Prince PreownedFIN.

Lord Andrew Meyers.

Lord Samuel Lim.

Lord Bill.

Lord Novgarod.

Lord DJ.

Lord Ashadun.

Lord Michale Erwin.

Lord Enrique Peña Gomez.

Lord Braidborn.

Lord Bakerdea.

Lord Yeeteris Dedmeem.

Lord D4rk Sheep.

Lord Nathan Vanbrunt.

Lord Markus.

Lord Maurice.

Lord Badger.

Lord Krawn.

Lord Empyrean.

Lord Asakurà.

Lord Mattirro Draca.

Lord Joshua Tal.

Noble Salty Panda.

Noble Yamibomb112.

Noble Mild Fracas.

Noble EESDESESESRDT.

Noble Aclys.

Noble Tyler Mills.

Noble Jordon Gotthold.

Leave a rating or a review to help me rise to the top or fix my shameful understanding of prose.

Take a look over my blog where all information of the world of Rupegia will be posted.

Join the Discord and discuss, or rant, or meme, or try and fight me so your waifu gets more screentime.

Become a Patron and read chapters in advance, or read the side-stories, or leave your mark on the story, or help choose the next artwork or the next side-story.

Chapter 76: Espionage - Part 2

A note from Manasong

Attention: to conform to the limit of sexual content allowed in a novel, I've censored this chapter. You can look for the uncensored version here.

The symbol "-" denotes a section that got cut for containing sexual content. Also, if paragraphs seem missing, they were also likely censored in an earlier pass where the symbol wasn't used.

We see a large Wasp and a small Wasp taking off from the Carrier. The first of the two lands on the Floater while the second lands on the Winch. It looks like they're Nohopu's and Mahi's personal transport planes.

Ririmu replaces Hukarere, and we leave the golems on the bridge to pilot the ship.

We separate into groups on the deck and start talking among ourselves while I use [Bind] to relay everyone's words. Ciel and Yunia talk with Roxanne so that we can all hear them.

"Having the Horns protect us is simply not enough for me to be comfortable with facing anything with 'Leviathan' in its name," Yunia says.

"If the Floater could almost kill it, then it shouldn't be too bad," Ciel says.

"I could explode it if it's not too mana-dense," Roxanne says.

"If it's too big, that would exhaust you, right? It'd be better to save that for an emergency," Yunia says.

"Wow, you are offering to do something that would give you an overuse headache? Are you alright?" Hana teases with a smirk.

"Shush, you little bitch, I've always used [Explosion] this way," Roxanne responds.

"Stop bickering, you whores," Yunia coldly says and glances at Roxanne. Then, she calmly continues, "I'm unsure of what to think of Hihiriwa, but he doesn't seem to hesitate from asking us for help."

"You just wanted to call them whores…" Ciel mumbles.

"Perhaps he'd prefer to sacrifice us instead of his men," Lina says.

"I don't think he wants to 'sacrifice' us. He needs us, or Wolfy at least," Alissa says. She glances at Paraaone, but he doesn't seem to be trying to listen to us, and we're fairly sure that he doesn't know Andraste. "I think he wants to spare his own men and get the most use out of us since we're much more powerful than everyone here except for the Horns."

"And it's not so simple for us to just say 'no' to him, right?" I question.

"We don't know how he'll react," Yunia nods and responds solemnly.

"If he decides to force us to cooperate, we'll have to rely on Oritiki," Alissa says.

"Will she even defend us? She's pretty friendly with him," Lina asks.

"She's friendly with everyone," Roxanne replies.

"True…" Lina whispers.

"We'll have to try to confide in her about some of our worries," I say.

"I advise that we don't do that while inside the Carrier or the Floater," Yunia says.

"You think Hihiriwa will be spying on us?" I ask.

"I don't know, that's the problem. There's too much mana inside the Carrier, and I don't know which spells they can use to spy on us, so I also don't know which countermeasures we'll need," she answers.

"Could we sneak onto the ship at night to inspect it?" I ask.

"That's a good idea, but we should try to get into Hihiriwa's room before they retire. They'll probably talk about us when they're in private."

"Understood."

My Holly reaches the bridge of the Carrier. It's a polyhedral half-sphere protruding from the front of the carrier, seemingly made of rhombic pieces of glass reinforced with steel. I see a truck-sized green gem glowing faintly underneath them all. I assume that this is the frontal [Wind Shield] that protects the bridge.

There are nine Chimeras sitting near the glass wall with telescopes in hand, observing in all directions; they must be spotters. Surrounding the lavish captain's chair, there are over ten Chimeras operating comm boxes with a summoned bird beside each of them. The floor is also made of glass, allowing everyone to see all around them. A single Chimera in front of the captain's chair operates a few levers and a flight stick, the pilot.

Hihiriwa is sitting in his big chair; Kaiia's in a smaller one beside him; Oritiki is standing on the other side of him; and Kaata is operating one of the comm boxes at her simple workstation.

There's no open window to enter through, so the Holly will choose the nearest entrance at the side of the ship and try to make her way to the bridge.

"What are your opinions of the others?" I ask the girls.

"Nohopu is insane," Ciel says with a chuckle.

"The rest of them are completely normal," Yunia answers me seriously.

"Mahi is a civilian. You have a chance with her," Alissa says.

I pet her ears and smile wryly. "It'll be difficult to have sex with her since she'll be busy all day and night with the Winch," I say.

She smiles mischievously. "There'll be a few opportunities when we stop to rest."

Yunia rolls her eyes and says, "Just proposition her. She's a Chimera, it's unlikely that she'd be offended."

"Also ask her if she likes women. I'm itching to fuck someone new," Hana says.

"Anyway, they all seem to be reasonable people, except for Nohopu," Ciel pulls the conversation back on track.

"Maybe his behavior is why Hihiriwa keeps him close," Lina suggests.

"Indeed, perhaps he values boldness over cautiousness," Yunia agrees.

"You've been quiet so far, Aoi. What do you think?" I ask her.

"Hihiriwa wants to make children with me," Aoi answers immediately, and I almost choke on my spit.

"Don't ever let yourself be alone with him. You should never worry Wolfy with the possibility of betrayal," Alissa immediately admonishes.

"I knoo~w…" Aoi responds in a childish tone. "All I want to is bite his head off because he's so weak, but I know that I shouldn't, so I can't think about him properly because of how this anger keeps getting in the way."

"O~h, that's surprisingly mature of you, Aoi," Roxanne comments.

"'Surprisingly'?" Aoi questions in a low tone, deliberately enunciating each syllable.

"Nyehehehe," Roxanne snickers like an old witch.

"You're growing more articulate. Congratulations, Aoi," Ciel gently says.

"Hehehe," Aoi giggles and gives us a toothy grin.

"If he wasn't weak, then you wouldn't want to bite his head off?" Alissa questions.

"No, but then I could just ignore him. He's too arrogant; he doesn't deserve to look at me with lewd eyes."

"Huh, I didn't notice he was looking at you that way. I thought you were just annoyed at having to use cutlery," I say.

"That, too, but you're always looking at me like that." She tilts her head in slight confusion.

"I also didn't know that." I smile wryly.

"Maybe you're gaining some form of [Intimidate] that you're not aware of?" Hana questions.

"You did start to seem like a predator since a little while ago," Alissa says, and Lina nods.

"He can resist mine and Aoi's 'charm,' so it could be related to that," Roxanne says.

"Those dragon visions must be working," Yunia says.

"Gih!" Gify nods proudly.

"Then you should continue trying to become a dragon!" Aoi says excitedly.

"And you, a human," I reply to her.

"Let's do it together," she says, excitedly.

"When we have a day to rest."

The conversation is already too sidetracked to pull back on course, and we don't have anything meaningful to add, so we just start chatting about trivial things.

The spy Holly enters the Carrier through one of the open windows. It's a Cannon Room.

The "cannons" the Chimera use kind of look like railguns. They have a central crystal where the spell is formed, and a long, enchanted "barrel" that serves to amplify its effectiveness. The crystal is set on something like the chamber of a revolver, allowing them to change the type of spell being used ([Earth Bullet], [Fireball], or [Lightning Bolt]) on the fly.

There seems to be a spotter, who uses a scope to range their shots; the gunner; and an armored guard, who protects them from invading monsters.

The Holly sneaks along the ceiling. It has to move slowly when it's so close to a person because it's not completely invisible, and its [Ignorance]-like spell is less effective the more eye-catching it is. I keep a close eye on anyone who could be a mage because they might sense the Illusion-flavored mana coming from the Holly.

It successfully sneaks out of the room, then makes a mad dash along the empty corridor, hugging the left wall. The floor plan of the ship is, thankfully, quite simple, so it easily finds a door to the upper level of the bridge, then waits there until someone opens it.

The Holly nestles itself in a corner near the ceiling where it can hear Hihiriwa speak. I'll have to keep a close eye on that Holly since I'll have to unsummon it the very moment it's discovered, before they can realize what it is.

With the most stressful stage of the infiltration now over, I let out a sigh of relief and give some attention to the girls.

Lina deliberately avoids Paraaone. She gets embarrassed whenever she looks at him because she keeps remembering his long pink bull - tool dangling near her face. I already know how I'll tease her tonight.

She senses my mischief and sends me a worried glance.

Ready yourself, little Lina; the big, bad monster inside me is coming for you tonight.

The area we're in right now is called "the calm." A long stretch of near-nothingness. It seems that most of the islands around here have been towed away by the Winch to create a protective barrier around Whakamutu.

Alissa and I pretend that we're having a private moment inside the ship's tent so that we don't get distracted from our espionage.

We see a pair of light blue clouds flanking the Looping Winds approach the fleet. They seem harmless at first, but small pieces of earth protrude from them, warning us of the hidden danger. The Floater passes them without a problem, but when the Carrier gets near, the spy Holly sees the bridge suddenly bursting into chaos, then a siren is sounded, breaking our concentration.

Monster ambush!

Ririmu suddenly taps my bird repeatedly, so I start sharing its hearing. "Code red! Monsters are inside the clouds! Ambush! Get out of the Looping Winds, NOW! THE CARRIER IS MAKING A BRAKING MANEUVER!"

I immediately jump up and use [Telekinesis] to fly to the bridge. I land behind the golems and hear Alissa desperately climbing up the ladder.

"Jarn! Release!" I order, and she immediately obeys. I see a swarm of Dragolites emerging from the clouds. They'll be here in just a few seconds.

I grab the levers and make the ship fly upwards, out of the Looping Winds, then I start braking in a controlled manner so that we don't get thrown off the ship.

The Carrier almost instantly stops in front of us, and we fly over it. Then it spins in place, facing its right broadside towards the clouds. The Winch makes the same maneuver, but much faster.

"The minimum distance between us and the Carrier needs to be much higher!" I yell a complaint and scowl at Ririmu's bird. He winces but remains composed.

The Floater is far ahead; it'll take about a minute for it to come back.

I turn the ship around and fly us back at full speed. Paraaone flies along behind us to intercept anything aiming at our ship. The Carrier opens fire on the swarm, making it rain monster corpses.

Roxanne pulls out multiple flasks and hands them to Lina.

"Throw them in a wide area! I'll [Explode] them and create a smokescreen!" Roxanne yells.

Lina nods earnestly, then starts to rapidly throw them using both of her hands, only needing to use one of them for each flask. The Celestial Horns start to take off one after another and engage the swarm.

Alissa suddenly twitches. There's a Cloud Snake trying to sneak up on our left.

Fucker!

"HANA, CIEL, GO GET IT!" I order through [Bind].

Hana grabs Ciel and jumps.

"WAAAAAH…! Oh, right!" Ciel shrieks, but then she remembers that she can use [Fly].

"CLOUD SNAKE!" Hana yells and points her elven spear towards the target: a thick, fluffy cylinder of cloud twice as wide as they are. It's barrelling directly towards them.

"SHIIT!" Ciel swears and launches a [Beam] at it. The spell hits it right in its "face," creating a hole that's half a meter wide, then it starts dodging, only receiving some light wounds after that.

A rainbow-colored smokescreen starts to spread behind us, and the Dragolites that fly through it either collapse or enter a berserker rage, blindly lashing out at anything near them.

A group of ten Wasps takes off in formation and engages the Dragolites. I stop the ship and turn us around again so that we can face the monsters flying around Roxanne's cloud of pain-, death-, and allergy-inducing gas.

"RAAAAAH! I'M GONNA BURN YOU TO ASH, YOU HAUNTED PIECE OF WOOL!" Hana roars and charges in.

[Taunt] successfully diverts the Cloud Snake's attention, and it prepares to receive her. Its spherical "face" splits in two as it opens its mouth, revealing actual fangs the size of her head, though they're transparent and have a metallic blue sheen.

[Beam] shoots down the Snake's throat and burns a hole through its stomach.

"HSSSS!" The Snake quivers in pain and dodges to the side.

"LET ME SHEAR YOU! SHEEP!" Hana [Taunts] again, and the Snake turns to face her. Her shield collides with the lower part of its "face," and she sinks her spear into the invisible, but solid, matter hidden behind its cloud covering.

The Snake hisses again and shakes its head, trying to throw Hana away. She inhales deeply, then the Snake opens its mouth, and she spews a long plume of flame down its throat.

The light blue cloud becomes a dark red as its innards catch fire and burn down into embers. Dragonfire is not just a simple flame; it's loaded with abstract concepts that make it stick to whatever it burns, almost like napalm.

Hana pulls her spear out of the Snake and swaps it with her bastard sword, then she goes choppy-choppy on the writhing monster.

The Dragolite swarm reaches us, and we enter melee combat.

Ciel comes back and defends the right wing of our ship while Alisa defends the left one and Paraaone defends the sail. Yunia guards the bow of the ship and leaves a pile of corpses around her. They're no match for [Precognition]. Lina, a wind elemental, and I protect Roxanne while she plays shooting gallery. Aoi and the golems protect Alissa. My little blue dragon seems to be getting a bit bored from crushing these small fries. She doesn't even have to defend herself since they'll never be able to break through her scales.

The rest of the Wasps take off and join the fray, then the Floater catches up. The soldiers clear out from the battlefield, and the Floater sweeps it with [Discharge], then they finish off the survivors.

The Cloud Snake dies, and its body disappears into smoke, leaving its beautiful fangs behind, then the battle ends shortly after that, but this time, there wasn't a leader-type to hunt down.

Paraaone lands on the deck and raises his eyebrows at Yunia. She's surrounded by beheaded Dragolites, and the deck is slick with their blood, creating a slipping hazard.

"I guess we'll be eating Dragolite again," Paraaone comments with a chuckle.

"Boo! Dragolites are weak, not tasty," Aoi complains in Reo, making him chuckle again.

Alissa gracefully drops down onto the deck behind me, the two doll golems creepily floating behind her, and we walk up to the Celestial bull.

"This battle was… odd… Why did the Carrier get caught off-guard?" I question him.

He takes off his helmet and awkwardly scratches his bull chin. "Yeah… you'll have to ask them. I don't usually comment much on tactics, but this ambush was certainly unexpected. There's definitely another leader-type ordering the monsters."

"Do Cloud Snakes and Dragolites usually work together?" I press on.

"Not that I know of…" He answers, and his expression shifts into worry.

"If they had attacked the Winch instead of the Carrier, things could've gone really badly," Alissa says.

He chuckles and says, "I guess they aren't that smart."

He really isn't the serious type.

I smile wryly and start collecting the Dragolites. I really don't want the deck to stink of monster blood.

Code yellow is given, and I ask Ririmu if anybody needs healing. There are a few people that were wounded this time, so Ciel and I fly over to the Carrier to [Heal] the injured.

A guide takes us to them, and I set a [Gate] coordinate on the way. We reach the infirmary and quickly finish our work since none of them were grievously injured.

While pretending to stretch and rest so that I don't get mana overuse, I set another coordinate in a dark corner of the infirmary.

"How wonderful. Your mana is so different from the usual healing potions. I've never seen such a strong abstract concept present in [Light Magic] before," the doctor says with a voice of wonder. She's a fluffy and cute bunny-headed shortstack.

"There are a few concepts overlapping in this spell. My spell, specifically, uses 'regrowth,' 'repair,' 'hope,' and 'succor.'"

"'Hope' and 'succor'?" The doctor questions.

She nods gently and answers, "'Hope' in the Gods, and 'succor' for whoever is in need."

The doctor blinks blankly, her tall bunny ears twitching with every blink. "I've seen a few priests of Change and Creation gain healing powers, but they weren't nearly as powerful as yours."

That's because those aren't the Gods that we pray to.

Ciel plays with a small lock of her dark hair, feeling very uncomfortable because she's a bad liar, and she's afraid of screwing up. She glances at me, asking for help, but I just calmly stare back at her. If only she had [Bind], I'd be teasing her so much right now.

"Well. I wouldn't claim to be more pious than a priest. I guess this spell is just something that both of us are good at," Ciel says with an awkward shrug.

The doctor scoffs and walks away grumbling. Ciel winces then gives me a glare, and I hold back my laughter.

Right before we leave, Kaiia, Hihiriwa's executive officer, makes an appearance to thank us. "We appreciate the healing. It's fortunate to have someone with such wonderful powers as yours with us," the fluffy panda man says and smiles gently.

We hear the doctor starting to grumble again, and Kaiia gives her a confused glance.

"We're happy to help," I reply, drawing his attention back to us. "This spell is rather expensive mana-wise, so we'll be very cautious in deciding when we use it from now on."

"Of course, we understand your circumstances," he calmly responds with a nod.

This was a freebie. If Hihiriwa wants to use us, we'll first build up some rapport with the crew, then we'll demand compensation.

The now fully healed personnel wave to us as we leave, and we return to our ship.

The Wasps investigate the islets where the monsters came from, but they don't find anything. There was no leader-type guiding this attack.

"Does this mean that the leader left orders and they obeyed even though the leader wasn't here anymore?" Hana questions, sounding impressed.

"That leader-type must've been in charge for quite a while to get the monsters to behave that way," I say.

"It's been some time since we had an expedition clear this area, but we didn't think that it'd be this bad," Paraaone comments.

The girls and I share a look. It could be the case that things changed ever since this dungeon "awoke" them.

"Well, I think we can only rely on Oritiki to keep us safe now," I say through [Bind].

"This just makes me even more concerned about that albino Fay Leviathan," Yunia whispers to me.

Unfortunately, I can only weakly nod.

The fleet continues on, and the rest of the day goes by without another encounter. Once the faint blue sky disappears, we stop by an island to recharge the ships and get some rest.

Apparently, the Floater's main function is gathering Light mana during the day, which it converts into Wind mana to then transfer to the crystals of the other ships. As Hihiriwa said, the Floater can recharge our ship, so we don't have to worry about doing it ourselves, not that it was hard for us in the first place.

We're allowed to use the Carrier's showers, but we have our own bath, so I park our ship above the others to ensure that no one can peep down on us, then we begin our sacred ritual.

Yunia's been very tense today, so I decide to focus on her right now. I can't read her mind, so I have to put some effort into getting her into the mood.

I put a few points in [Washing] and wash her fit body myself, making sure to get in a few squeezes -. I delicately shampoo her hair while my tentacles embrace her body, playing around with her fun bits.

She accepts my affection with pride, remaining majestic and composed even when the purple tentacle monster creeps closer and closer to her - sacred entrance.

I rinse out the elven shampoo from her hair and calmly clean every inch of her face. Not one part of her body is left untouched by me -.

I don't resist and nibble on her long, flexible ear, making her yelp. She breaks her composure and slaps my arm, making it sting a little.

"I'll bite you - in a place you don't want," she says in a cold tone, then pouts and looks away.

I smirk and say, "My apologies, my Queen. Let me make it up to you." I gently - apply [Massage] on her.

-

- I savor every part of my Goddes as if it was the first time again. I've liked her since we first met, but now I can say with certainty that I'm really falling in love with her. I just hope that she's also falling for me, too.

A note from Manasong

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Chapter 76: Espionage – Part 3

A note from Manasong

Attention: to conform to the limit of sexual content allowed in a novel, I've censored this chapter. You can look for the uncensored version here.

The symbol "-" denotes a section that got cut for containing sexual content. Also, if paragraphs seem missing, they were also likely censored in an earlier pass where the symbol wasn't used.

I sink into the bath with Yunia held tightly against me. She makes herself comfortable on my lap and wraps my arms around her chest -.

Hana is getting frisky, and I don't want to leave Yunia right now, so I assume direct control of Alissa. The foxy - slave instantly surrenders to my will and becomes an extension of my - will.

-

"Didn't you say that I was next in the line for a role-play session?" Roxanne asks with a pout.

I temporarily break off my kissing with Yunia to respond, "Uh… sorry. I had to balance out my time with the others."

Alissa finally recovers enough energy to say, "Tomorrow you may have him." And Roxanne claps the tip of her fingers together in excitement.

"I don't get a say in that?" I question her with a raised eyebrow, faking seriousness.

"No. Your body belongs to us," Alissa replies without hesitation.

"True," I say and chuckle -.

"Hey, hey, you'd better share," Roxanne says to me and starts pouting again.

"Tomorrow," Alissa states, sounding slightly annoyed.

"Not Wolfy, I mean Yunia. I also want some of her, too." Roxanne grins.

I roll my eyes -. "Is that alright with you?" I kindly ask Yunia and caress her cheek.

She nods gently and lovingly runs her fingers through my hair, then she gets up and walks over to Roxanne.

"I'll continue kissing you through her," I say to Yunia, and she chuckles softly like a lady.

-

I smirk and assume direct control of Roxanne -.

She smiles and closes her eyes, letting me dominate her through another.

I'm almost certain that she loves me, too. I just need to create a romantic situation so that I can confess to her.

"We need to create a romantic situation," Alissa says through [Bind] and walks up to me.

This time, I'll let her intrusion slide because what she said made me feel pretty happy.

-

Before we start preparing dinner, Ririmu informs us that Hihiriwa has invited us again for a meal.

"Whenever we have the time, I want to have a meal with you and Hukarere again," I reply to his bird.

His beady raccoon eyes gleam for a moment and he smiles. "We'll be eagerly looking forward to it," he responds earnestly.

We land on the Carrier again and make our way through the corridors. We hear a lot of excited chatter echoing through the ship as the crew eats and rests.

We all agreed to be as respectful and amicable as possible with the crew, so we give friendly greetings to a few crew members who Ciel and I healed a few hours ago.

We go to the same dining hall as before, the one with a transparent floor. I comfort Lina again, though this time, she's more confident in herself. Enjoying - my intense love at the bath must've helped at least a little in building up her confidence.

Hihiriwa and Kaiia look a little less enthused than last time. They had a short argument about the leader-type that must have commanded the monster ambush, and the conclusion they reached made them both rather unhappy: they fucked up. At least they're much more cautious than Nohopu, who seems very eager to talk about the battle.

"I heard that you took out a Cloud Snake with just two of your members," he says with an excited grin as he hugs his puffy tail.

We sit in the same arrangement as before, and the servants fill our cups with actual alcohol this time. Kurii, Nohopu's XO (executive officer), and Mahi are still absent, so we'll have to wait for them before the meal can be served.

"You were observing us?" I casually ask.

"Our spotters wanted to take out the Snake, but since one of you was stuck to it, they decided to wait and see," Hihiriwa answers calmly.

"Oh, I see," I reply.

"Hah! Those things can be sneaky, but they're no match for us," Hana says with pride.

"It tried to shake you off like a mad Manta Gull, though," Nohopu says with a cheeky grin.

"Did it succeed? No, so everything's fine," Hana responds with a shrug, and Nohopu breaks into laughter.

"See? This is why I'll never give up melee. It's just too much fun," Oritiki says with a smile and sends a glance at Hihiriwa.

"Just keep in mind that the Trinity Cannons are a much more effective use of your mana," he calmly replies with a business smile.

"But not an effective use of my wings," Oritiki shoots back and shows a hint of smugness.

Kaata is quiet, but Alissa notices her expression flicker into one of tiredness for a moment.

Hihiriwa clears his throat and says, "Onto more serious matters, the monsters clearly have a leader-type that knows basic tactics. We've decided to maintain the same speed, but we'll be much more thorough with our scouting." His words dampen the mood, and everyone's expressions become serious again.

"They can also spot us from afar. We searched the islands they came from but didn't find any monsters that could be a leader-type," Nohopu says, his usual chipper attitude temporarily contained.

Hihiriwa nods. "Yes, which means that there's no reason for us to try to be quiet, so the Floater will remain at max speed all the time to scout the area as fast as possible."

"The Floater seems to be faster than all of my summons, so I'm not sure how they can help with scouting," I say.

"Our priority is speed, so we won't be able to depend on your summons. You'll help us the most by maintaining a perimeter around the fleet," Kaiia responds.

"Why do you want to travel so fast?" Yunia asks, and we relay her question in Reo.

"Bringing the island back will take quite some time. I want to spend the minimum amount of supplies on our trip, at least until we can grow our own on the island," Hihiriwa answers.

"You'll grow your own food while towing it back?" Yunia questions.

Oh, now, I remember. The High Council was arguing about the ratio of supplies to fertilizer or something like that before we left for Tuumau's.

"Indeed. We've become experts at farming with minimal resources, after all," Hihiriwa answers proudly.

Mahi, the tall, horse-headed woman, and Kurii, Nohopu's XO, finally enter the dining hall.

"Oh, Kurii, Mahi, what held you up?" Kaata asks gently.

The two smile wryly, and Kurii answers, "The men were a bit slow in setting up the mana cables to recharge the Winch."

"We thought it was better to observe them, lest they do something wrong and let the mana waste away all night," Mahi continues, and the table chuckles.

"Now that you mentioned it. When can our ship be recharged?" I ask.

"We'll do it tomorrow morning before we resume traveling. It should only take a few minutes since your ship is so small," Kaiia answers.

"After that, you'll take off in the Gull and practice delivering the Light crystal. We'll be using a Wind crystal in case something goes wrong," Hihiriwa continues and shows us a toothy smile.

"While we travel?" Oritiki questions.

Hihiriwa sends her a glance and answers, "It's the most efficient option."

"Who'll pilot our ship? I'm the only one who has the [Piloting] skill," I question.

"Can't your Living Armor servants do that?" He asks and gestures to the floating creepy dolls and the metal stickman behind us.

I press on, "They only know how to keep the ship from crashing. In a battle, I'm the only one who is qualified to pilot it."

"Just keep your ship landed on the Carrier while you practice," Oritiki suggests.

"That'll decrease the Carrier's top speed," the panda man Kaiia says and frowns slightly.

I could use Alissa's [Bind] to help her pilot, but I'm not keen on piloting two things at the same time.

"It'll be a bit dangerous for us to let someone else pilot. We could've crashed into the Carrier today if Wolf was less experienced," Alissa calmly states.

Hihiriwa's gray scales subtly wave a few times, making faint clinking sounds. He thinks for a moment, then answers, "I see. You can land your ship while you practice with the Gull." Then his thin lips curl into a smile for a second.

He's the one who suggested departing so quickly without me practicing in the Gull beforehand.

Now that the more important parts of the conversation are done, we're free to begin eating our meal. It's Dragolite again.

We return to our ship and retire to our tent.

"I initially thought that it wasn't our problem, but I'm starting to really dislike Hihiriwa's rather reckless behavior," I say.

"He's paying for this expedition, and he's doing everything he can to maximize his profits," Yunia comments.

"He also likes to take risks. Reminds me of Dad…" Hana says, and her voice loses a bit of motivation as she goes on.

I pat her head and get up from the bed, then walk over to Yunia, and Alissa casts [Ignorance] on the two of us.

"Now, let's do this," I say, and she nods solemnly in response.

I remove Lina's [Bind], making her pout unhappily, then I cast [Bind] on Yunia.

I immediately feel something coming from her that makes me pause, then she manages to get her feelings under control by the next second.

She really wants me to hug her like I did in the bath today.

Yeah, I'm pretty sure that she loves me.

Yunia coughs and looks over to Alissa. "Where are they?" She asks.

"I believe they're about to enter their quarters," Alissa says.

I pull Yunia into a hug and grin as I look up at her.

"Well, then, we're off," I say, Yunia's slightly embarrassed expression instantly hardens.

I open a [Gate] to the infirmary under us, and once we've teleported, we immediately hide behind a bed.

While she prepares [Silence], I dive into her soul and bring back the "communication string."

"Can you hear me?" I ask her through [Bind].

"P-perfectly," she answers, almost fumbling the spell. An echo of her fear seeps through the connection.

"Alissa, is the coast clear?"

"Coast…? Uh… Earthling expression?" She replies, pretty confused.

"Ah, yeah. Is the area ahead clear for us to move out?" I ask again with a wry smile.

"Oh, right! Yes, it seems to be clear."

Yunia taps the floor, and we hear absolutely nothing from that, so we're ready to move.

We dash out of the infirmary and run down the corridor without hesitation. Two "stark-butt-naked" people making a run for it. If we had any clothes on, [Ignorance] would've been much less effective. We also have a few points in [Hide Presence], so it's unlikely that we'll be noticed.

I just remembered something, we have a ghillie suit that we took from Dawn of Fire's spies. It has an interesting spell that works alongside [Ignorance]. It isn't [Invisibility], but I think we should study it sometime.

We easily make our way to the lowest floor of the poorly lit corridors, then we move on towards the front of the ship, and suddenly, the corridors change, becoming wider, carpeted, and much more illuminated.

At this point, we proceed with caution and avoid the more crowded rooms to reduce the chance of us running into someone along the way.

The higher class area of the ship is rather small, so in total, it only takes us a few minutes to get to the Captain's Quarters.

We stop at a corner and look down the target corridor. Two tall and armored winged soldiers stand guard in front of the double door to Hihiriwa's room. Alissa is certain that he's in there.

"I can feel different types of mana emanating from his room," I say to Yunia.

"Same. I think I recognize [Silent Room]. We won't be able to eavesdrop on their conversation from here," she replies.

"How about trying to sneak in from the outside, like, through a window?"

"That's even more likely to be enchanted with defenses. Our best bet is through that door."

"Bet? You're not sure?"

"I can't recognize the other enchantments. One seems to be a protection against spirits sneaking in; possibly a specific counter to a spirit elemental instead of a normal one."

"Aren't they spirits, too?" I ask.

"Kind of, but the enchantment is likely to be confined solely to the walls of the room, not an area where a material person could go through."

Hm… I wonder if I could create an ear in the other room through [Soul Manipulation] if they didn't have that enchantment active.

"I see… would a Shad trigger it?" I question

"I'm not sure since their enchantments feel different from those I know."

"Do you think that I could sneak a Shad through the crack of the door?"

"It'd be a gamble whether it would trigger an enchantment or not." She answers and the other girls echo her feelings. "Ah… if you manage to open the door, then the enchantment should be disabled."

"Hm…"

I bring Alissa here with [Gate], then Yunia and I circle around the area to get to the other end of the corridor. Once we're in position, I summon a Shad and a Holly, then put ten points in [Cursing Magic].

"Alright, try to be as subtle as you can," I say to Alissa.

She casts [Mesmerizing Butterflies] and creates a single, glowing, rainbow-colored butterfly. It lands on her hand, then peeks a small area of its wing around the corner for a second, then pulls it back. She repeats that a few times, slowly increasing how much of the wing is revealed at a time.

One of the guards suddenly turns and looks towards her.

"Huh…" He mumbles.

"What…?" His partner questions.

"There's something over there."

I send the two monsters down the corridor while making them cling to the ceiling. They quickly reach the door, so now we just need to open it.

"Wha-… see! There! Something… something pretty was there," the first guard mumbles, sounding mesmerized.

"Wow…" The second guard coos in awe.

They start to take a few steps towards Alissa, becoming increasingly charmed by her butterfly, but her MP is dropping fast.

I cast [Befuddle], then Yunia and I dash down the corridor, [Silence] still affecting us.

My heart is beating so fast that it's like it wants to punch right out of my rib cage; my hands and legs are trembling with fear; my skin is dripping with sweat; my shoulders are aching from the tension; my eyes are completely focused on the two guards ahead. This is so dangerous.

We have no time to lose, so we get to our target as fast as we can.

I grab the golden handle of the gaudy double doors, then slowly turn it all the way. There's no click because [Silence] is now affecting it, too.

The second guard sighs and shakes his head.

I pull open the door, just wide enough for the Holly, and both summons immediately go through, then I close it.

The second guard turns around and looks at us. "Wh-…" -I open [Gate] at the same time- "-at…?" He remains frozen in place for a moment, almost drooling in confusion. "The fuck was that?"

"What?" The first guard turns around and looks at him.

"I saw… a shadow…?" He grumbles.

"Man… did you smoke something?" The first guard asks in a serious tone.

The second guard turns around and frowns at him. "No, fuck you."

The first guard snorts and grins. "Well, I did."

"Oh…!" The second guard points down the corridor. Alissa releases the butterfly to distract them, then I summon her, and the spell vanishes in a puff of rainbow-colored smoke.

They both shake their heads and groan. "The mages are fucking with us again," the first guard says, and they both scowl, then they return to their posts.

"Infiltration successful," I say and sigh in relief.

Yunia knits her eyebrows in worry. "You know, that was kind of a dumb idea," she says.

"It worked," I point out with a shrug.

"You got lucky. It was still stupid," Ciel says, disapprovingly.

"Hey…" I pout at her. "You two should've stopped me, then."

"I thought it was a good idea at first," Yunia says and lets her head hang, clearly disheartened.

"It. Worked," I repeat, getting a bit annoyed.

Yunia chuckles and Ciel shrugs then smiles. "I'm just teasing you," Yunia calmly says.

"We're putting ourselves in a lot of risk with just Wahinui's word that he's bad," Roxanne says, and that makes us pause.

"But it'd also be stupid to just ignore her," Lina adds.

Yunia's face becomes stern, and she narrows her eyes in discontent. "Huh… If she wanted to undermine Hihiriwa, then we could say that she almost succeeded," she says, a hint of disgust in her tone.

We go silent for a few moments, conflicted about our actions.

I frown and interrupt the silence, "It's like Lina said: it'd be stupid to ignore her, but she succeeded in planting the seed of doubt within our minds."

The other girls reflect for a moment longer, but they all come to a similar conclusion: both Roxanne and Lina are right.

"Either of them could be manipulating us," Hana says, anger seeping into her voice.

"What about our monster spies? Is Hihiriwa talking about us?" Alissa asks.

"They're…- doing it," I answer with a wry smile.

"O~h, lemme see," Roxanne asks with a grin.

Ciel frowns. "That's a bit too much," she says.

Hana snorts and counters, "Heh, I don't think they'd care if they knew that we were watching."

"Alright, who wants to watch?" I ask. Yunia, Roxanne, Hana, and Aoi lift their hands/claw. "Aoi?" I question her and raise an eyebrow.

"I want to see how small - he is," she answers and gives me a toothy grin.

I shrug. "Fair enough."

"I want my [Bind] back after this," Lina says and pouts. I pat her head lovingly and nod.

We may have deliberately derailed the conversation with the topic of peeping, but the unpleasant question is still gnawing at the back of our minds: who's manipulating us? One, both, or neither?

A note from Manasong

Hall of Fame of Patrons

The patrons who support Rupegia shall have their names sung by the bards for they deserve the glory and honor. Their names are:

Oracle Maximillian Hübner.

Prince PreownedFIN.

Lord Andrew Meyers.

Lord Samuel Lim.

Lord Bill.

Lord Novgarod.

Lord DJ.

Lord Ashadun.

Lord Michale Erwin.

Lord Enrique Peña Gomez.

Lord Braidborn.

Lord Bakerdea.

Lord Yeeteris Dedmeem.

Lord D4rk Sheep.

Lord Nathan Vanbrunt.

Lord Markus.

Lord Maurice.

Lord Badger.

Lord Krawn.

Lord Empyrean.

Lord Asakurà.

Lord Mattirro Draca.

Lord Joshua Tal.

Noble Salty Panda.

Noble Yamibomb112.

Noble Mild Fracas.

Noble EESDESESESRDT.

Noble Aclys.

Noble Tyler Mills.

Noble Jordon Gotthold.

Leave a rating or a review to help me rise to the top or fix my shameful understanding of prose.

Take a look over my blog where all information of the world of Rupegia will be posted.

Join the Discord and discuss, or rant, or meme, or try and fight me so your waifu gets more screentime.

Become a Patron and read chapters in advance, or read the side-stories, or leave your mark on the story, or help choose the next artwork or the next side-story.

Chapter 77: Probing - Part 1

A note from Manasong

Attention: to conform to the limit of sexual content allowed in a novel, I've censored this chapter. You can look for the uncensored version here.

The symbol "-" denotes a section that got cut for containing sexual content. Also, if paragraphs seem missing, they were also likely censored in an earlier pass where the symbol wasn't used.

-

Kaata's genetics seems to be more of a gecko/lizard, which explains her being physically weaker than Hihiriwa and his dragon genetics. Her body is also rather delicate and thin. She's petite -, though her gecko face is a bit strange, even for me. Aoi is actually more "feminine" than she is.

Now that I think about it, Aoi must be the ultimate feminine dragon. Her body is completely smooth and lean, and her blue scales are all shiny and straight. Spikes, horns, and rough textures are male dragon characteristics, of which Aoi has basically none. Even her wings' webbing is smoother than Hana's. The only "male" characteristic of Aoi is probably the few spots without any scales, which exposes the usual rough and thick dragon skin, like on her feet, but these spots are normal for a dragon, making them gender-neutral.

As I think about Aoi, she gives me "the look," -. She grows until she's bigger than me, and Gify jumps off her head in search of another warm bed.

-

-

Hihiriwa pours some expensive alcohol into golden cups, then he goes back onto his bed and offers one to his wife.

"Thank you, husband," Kaata says with a warm smile.

He sits down beside her, and they slowly savor the alcohol.

"Today's battles worried me a little," she softly says.

"Oh, they're starting," I say, then I start relaying their words to the girls.

"The monster's leader is smart enough to test us, but he's not that smart since he was so quick to give away that he's much smarter than average," Hihiriwa responds.

Her voice is faint, and she seems very unsure of herself. "Nohopu and his albino Fay Leviathan worry me. What if he deserts his post to chase after it?"

Hihiriwa sighs and chuckles, then he lays a heavy hand on Kaata's head and pats her a few times. "We'll be fine, but I'm warning you now that some of the men will inevitably die. There are just too many rookies with us this time." He looks at her sternly, and she nods weakly. "But, Nohopu has Kurii to keep him in line, and I'll make sure that Oritiki and the Ryders support him."

"The Ryders are always very guarded. Especially that elven woman, I'm sure that she's a noble with [Acting]."

He nods repeatedly. "They're competent, at least, that we can be sure of."

"You seem to like their Azurite dragon quite a bit," she says in a disapproving tone.

He looks at her with a serious expression. "She's absolutely beautiful, is she not? At least, you have to admit that much. Also, I don't complain when you look at the other dragons," he calmly responds, but a hint of anxiety seeped into his voice.

"Hmph." She pouts for a moment. "Alright, she's beautiful, but keep your staring contained, she might think that you're challenging her."

"Muuh…! But he is challenging me!" Aoi groans in annoyance and exclaims.

"She's far too intelligent to take that as a challenge," he says in a dismissive tone.

"Hahahaha!" Hana laughs out loud and points at Aoi, who moos in frustration again.

Kaata caresses his cheek and looks him in the eye. "Don't make them angry. They're outsiders, and they're clearly hiding many secrets," she advises, with worry very noticeable in her voice.

He exhales loudly and replies, "Hmph, I know. But they're powerful, so I won't hesitate in using them to aid the expedition."

"If you keep the Celestial Horns around them, I'll feel much safer."

He caresses her head. "That's the plan."

She closes her eyes in happiness and rests her head against his gray chest.

They stop talking about anything important, eating a few sweets for dessert.

I release Yunia from [Bind], and she sighs tiredly, finally being free to let her emotions run wild again. She just barely managed to keep herself from flooding our connection with her insecurities.

I smile gently at her as she absentmindedly plays with Roxanne's thin tail, curling it around her fingers. She notices me watching her and returns a subtle smile, then I cast [Bind] on Lina again. My little angel was starting to feel anxious, so a strong sense of relief leaks through her [Bind] the very moment that our souls are connected again.

"Welcome back," Alissa says through [Bind], and Lina shyly nods while smiling.

"Well… their talk was… very innocuous, all things considered," Yunia admits.

"Quite a lot of risk for no gain," Ciel says and frowns slightly.

"It was our best option. If they were going to talk about us, it would be tonight," Lina says confidently.

Yunia shakes her head, making her long ears bob around. "That simply isn't true. They could've already talked about us a long time ago… I think we may have gotten ahead of ourselves," she says with an embarrassed expression.

"Hm?" I question her and frown.

"We didn't really have any evidence that he's dangerous to us, yet we're spying on him. Our behavior is not justifiable," she responds.

"We don't need a justification to act to protect ourselves," Alissa says.

"I'd rather suffer the consequences of my actions than regret my inaction," I say.

Yunia shakes her head and continues, "We didn't need to act today. Like we've just seen, there was a very good chance that they wouldn't say anything evidently damning."

"Then what should we have done?" I ask.

"Wait; talk to the crew tomorrow, be friendly with them, and listen to their rumors; probe Oritiki and Hukarere about his personality; get one of the officers drunk and make them spill their secrets. What we did tonight was just too aggressive, and I agreed to it because I was also eager to act. I failed to follow my own advice." She tiredly lays down on the bed and looks towards the roof of our tent.

Roxanne snuggles up to her perfectly shaped bosom and gives her puppy eyes. Yunia rolls her eyes and pats the needy succubus's head.

Lina lowers her head and goes into deep thought. Alissa pouts and looks away, being a bit stubborn in not admitting that she was wrong, but she slowly accepts it.

"I should've said something…" Ciel mutters, then looks at me and repeats herself, "I should've said something, and I will next time."

"Don't regret it," Aoi suddenly says, and we turn to her. She's staring intensely at Yunia. "This wasn't a mistake, so don't let it snuff out the fire inside you."

"It wasn't the best idea, either," Yunia says with a wry smile.

Aoi immediately responds with conviction, "Doesn't matter. It wasn't bad enough that you should regret it."

Yunia's tired expression regains some vigor, and she uses it to smile smugly at Aoi. "Hoh. You're far too young to give me advice."

Aoi's eyes burn with ferocity, and she smirks. "Then act like you don't need it."

Hana cringes and comments, "Oof, even Aoi got you there."

Yunia narrows her eyes dangerously but doesn't say anything.

It seems like Yunia is doubting herself a little.

I raise my hands in defeat and say, "Alright. I'll admit that it was a bit too soon to spy on Hihiriwa right now, but I'll remain pragmatic and use this situation to our advantage."

Aoi nods in agreement.

Yunia holds Roxanne's head against her chest and sits up, then says, "And I'll remain cautious, making sure that we all understand very well the consequences of our actions."

I turn to Ciel and say, "I still want you to remain as our second-in-command."

She fidgets with her hair nervously. "Shouldn't Yunia have that position? She's more experienced than me."

"You're older than her," Alissa says. Hana smirks towards Roxanne, who shows her tongue in return.

I look inquisitively at Yunia, and she frowns, then looks down. "I don't think I deserve it…" She says in a quiet voice.

"You shouldn't think like that," I say to Yunia, then I turn to Ciel. "But I still want Yunia to advise us on how to achieve our goals, while I want you to be our second-in-command because I know that you can keep us all together."

We all look towards Ciel, waiting for her response. As a sign of her conviction, it doesn't take her long to answer.

She releases her hair and pats it to smooth it out, then she takes a deep breath and says with confidence, "Alright. I'll do it. I'll take your words seriously."

I smirk and the corner of her mouth twitches, holding back a grin.

"Group hug?" Alissa asks tentatively.

"Group hug," I answer with a nod.

Hana's strong arms pull us all together, and we form a circle, resting our heads against one another.

"Through adversity, unity," I say, and Ciel holds back a chuckle from the corniness of it.

Feeling all giddy from the cute moment we just had, we turn off the ship's lights and go to sleep while tightly hugging each other, though having to sleep in scale armor lowers our comfort.

Today is the 16th.

Gify wakes the girls right after sunrise.

-

Lina increased her [Throw] by 1 (now 1+3). Dragolites are so easy to kill that there was little opportunity to level anything in yesterday's fights.

The sun comes out in full force, shifting the starry sky into a beautiful sea of blue. If only we could have a naked breakfast, then today would start perfectly.

As we eat toast with butter under the warm morning sunlight, the Floater approaches us, and a winged soldier comes out, then he lands on our deck.

"Ryders," he greets us with a bow. "We'll begin the recharge of your ship. I assume that the crystal is in the hold below us?"

"Yes, it is. The stairs are over there," Alissa replies and points towards the stern of the ship. "Do you need our assistance with the recharging?"

He gently shakes his head and answers, "No need, thank you. This will be quick. I just ask that you don't fly the ship while we recharge."

Another winged soldier carries the end of a golden rope from the Floater and brings it to the stern of our ship. He pushes it through an opening at the back, and the first soldier grabs it, then pulls it to our crystal.

Just like how it went at the lighthouse, the Floater transfer mana to our Wind crystal, recharging it. This time, it's already converted Wind mana, making it much more efficient than the lighthouse's Light mana.

Jarn's artificial and metallic voice resounds across the deck, "Message: after your ship is recharged, Kaiia requests your presence at the Carrier's landing strip for your Gull training."

Hihiriwa hasn't even left his room yet, and Kaiia is already asking me to work. I guess that's the privilege of being a captain.

We finish our meal and start donning our wooden plates. The winged soldiers finish charging our ship and detach the golden cable, then they bow and leave. Paraaone then appears and lands on our deck, and Hana immediately strikes up a conversation with him.

The Carrier begins to bustle with activity as everyone gets ready to take their positions. The Wasps are flown from internal storage and landed on the strip for faster take-off. They leave a very obvious empty area for our ship to land on.

A winged soldier comes over to us and helps us land, but he barely has to do anything since I have my Hollys to give me a perfect view of the area.

I wave to the girls as I jump off the ship and float downwards with [Telekinesis]. Gify jumps, too, and glides in circles around me until she lands on my shoulder.

"I see that you don't want to make Alissa angry anymore," I comment and scratch her under her beak.

She closes her eyes and snobbishly looks away, then stretches her neck up so that I have better access.

I walk towards the Gull and see Kaatohe talking to a Wasp pilot. She pauses the conversation and follows me with her eyes. We share a respectful nod, and I feel my dragonator pulse, then she resumes her conversation. I really want to "get to know" that feisty little cat better.

I approach the Gull and get a good look at it. It looks like a large manta ray made of cloth and a steel framework, painted in black with white spots to camouflage it against the starry sky. It's about as wide as a house and around three meters tall. At the front here is a glass dome cockpit, and behind it, on the ship's body, are two small (but still bigger than me) floating tanks and an actual catapult, which has a huge, cuboidal green crystal already loaded. At the rear, there's a propeller with three blades, each of them almost as long as I am tall.

Hukarere and a winged soldier stand in front of the Gull's cockpit. The beautiful and sexy white wolf woman grins when she sees me, and I grin back at her, barely containing my happiness from being this close to her again.

-

"Wolf Ryder. It's a pleasure to work with you again," she says, and they both bow.

I return a respectful nod and grab her hand, then give it a kiss. A faint smell of perfume fills my nose, reminding me of the day I was inside her.

I stand on my tip toes and reach for her face. "May I have a greeting kiss?" I ask.

She grins instantly, and, instead of aiming for my mouth, she gives me a strong lick with her long tongue all over one side of my face, even wetting my hair with her saliva.

I stand still, stunned, then I wipe my face with my hand and lick it up. "Well, aren't you cheeky?" I ask rhetorically and chuckle.

With her free hand, she motions to the winged soldier beside her, a dog-headed man who seems to be a bit disappointed that he's not in on the fun. "This is Aihopu. He'll be responsible for fetching the Wind crystal after we launch it with the catapult."

The Border-collie-headed man smiles at me, revealing some not-so-impressive fangs. Not only is he smaller than Hukarere, but his air is much more "Ririmu" than the imposing air soldiers usually have.

"The irony of my job is not lost on me," he says and grins, letting the tip of his tongue peek from behind his small fangs, which makes him look very goofy.

We chuckle at him, then Hukarere points to the dome cockpit. "Shall we?" She asks with a slightly sultry voice. I think I know what we're going to do in there.

"Oh, right," Aihopu interrupts, and we turn to him. "Commander Kaiia said to not leave a stain, or you'll be spending your recreational time dicing tomafingers."

"I'm very good at swallowing, I certainly won't let a drop - go to waste," she calmly answers and lays her free hand heavily on my shoulder.

Aihopu snorts and shakes his head. "If you say so."

Hukarere gives my hand a squeeze and pulls me towards the cockpit. We climb up a small set of steps and enter it. It's about the size of a car's interior, with four seats and a small corridor to the rear that leads to the maintenance access of the floating tanks and the [Fly] crystal.

We put on our seat belts, and Aihopu climbs up onto the back of the Gull. He spreads his brown-feathered wings wide and gets ready to fly at any moment.

Hukarere explains the controls of the Gull to me. This ship… I mean, plane, was designed to carry sensitive cargo. It has terrible roll and pitch control, but it has nearly perfect stability, being capable of staying level, even inside storms. It's maneuvered mainly by yaw to turn towards the desired direction, the propeller to move forward, and the floating tanks for vertical movement.

"Rather simple," I comment.

"Your ship should have better control options, but that just means that you have to be more delicate with this plane," she says in a calm, instructive tone.

I put my hand over hers and give it a gentle squeeze. "I'm impressed with your knowledge, though. You seem to have worked in a lot of different places," I say with a warm smile.

She laughs once and shakes her head. "Hah. I'm not that special, I've just been serving in the Defense Force for most of my life. You get to choose your path, so you can explore them all if you serve long enough."

"I can definitely say that 'serving for most of your life' is quite the achievement."

She smiles wryly. "It'd sound more impressive if I was older, though."

"Oh? I see. Indeed, you do look pretty young." I put all of my charm into a smile and pull her hand towards me, then I give it a gentle kiss.

"Yeah. I'm barely twenty-five…" Her wide smile suddenly fades from her face. "Wait… how long ago was the Calamity?" She looks to the distance, then her eyes lose focus as her mind is "reset."

I kiss her hand again, and that gets her attention. She turns to me and smiles, then asks, "Sorry, I got distracted. What were we doing again?"

"We were about to take-off," I say and release her hand.

She nods, and her face becomes serious. "Right… start the [Fly] gem by pushing that lever over there."

While Hukarere explains things, Alissa, Yunia, and Ciel leave the ship and walk through the Carrier. They search for familiar crewmates or members of the Celestial Horns that are currently resting, then they strike up a conversation with them. They'll try to gather as much information or rumors about Hihiriwa that they can.

Alissa translates for Yunia, but it becomes unnecessary once they meet up with Kaatohe, who seems to have a good enough grasp of Andraste for casual conversation. She and Yunia begin by showing some degree of respect for each other, but they soon realize that they have a reasonably good affinity since they share an appreciation for the finer things in life. Even Alissa gets to contribute to their conversation since she has her short time as the daughter of the Chiefs to give her the background of a noble.

Ciel goes to the infirmary again and starts talking about medicine with the doctor. A few crewmates who look up to her come to join their conversation, giving my chocolate angel the chance to shine and show them how lovely she truly is.

I can't get distracted while piloting, so I tune them out when I see that everything's going fine.

The Gull is sluggish as fuck when I try to do anything, but when I engage the propeller, it's frighteningly fast. Its vertical movement is quite good, too, but it was designed to carry much heavier things, so it could be said that we're severely underloaded right now.

The fleet returns to the Looping Winds while we practice, so we follow them. The Carrier is slightly slower with our ship landed on it, so it's not that hard to follow the fleet. It's also good practice for me.

The Chimera engineers modified this Gull so that I can fire the catapult from the cockpit. We try it out while we're flying in the Looping Winds, and I'm surprised by how far the crystal can be thrown.

This catapult is magically enhanced, allowing the tension in the frame to reach a ridiculous level. Hukarere says that it could easily snap a person in two if it suddenly broke apart, which is why they're always operated from a distance. Even Aihopu hides beside the cockpit before we fire it.

After launching it a few times to get a grasp on the catapult's range, Aihopu feeds the Wind crystal some mana. Like this, it'll use the provided mana to stop its flight and float in place after it's launched, making it much easier for him to fetch the crystal.

-

We spend most of the morning having fun, and it technically counts as practice since I'm still piloting.

We eventually end our session and land back on the Carrier when her clothes get dangerously wet -. I exit the Gull and return to my ship, leaving her completely satisfied -.

The girls return soon after. I give my foxy wife a deep thank you kiss (which also forces me to give one to the others too), not because of her information gathering, but because she pimped me very well to Kaatohe.

"In a few days from now, she'll have some time off to rest. That's when we should invite her to our ship," Alissa says, feeling very proud of herself.

"Perfect, absolutely perfect…" I say to her, then Yunia's impatient eyes pull me back to reality. "Oh, right. How did the information gathering go?" I ask them with a cheeky grin.

A note from Manasong

Hall of Fame of Patrons

The patrons who support Rupegia shall have their names sung by the bards for they deserve the glory and honor. Their names are:

Oracle Maximillian Hübner.

Prince PreownedFIN.

Lord Andrew Meyers.

Lord Samuel Lim.

Lord Bill.

Lord Novgarod.

Lord DJ.

Lord Ashadun.

Lord Michale Erwin.

Lord Enrique Peña Gomez.

Lord Braidborn.

Lord Bakerdea.

Lord Yeeteris Dedmeem.

Lord D4rk Sheep.

Lord Nathan Vanbrunt.

Lord Markus.

Lord Maurice.

Lord Badger.

Lord Krawn.

Lord Empyrean.

Lord Asakurà.

Lord Mattirro Draca.

Lord Joshua Tal.

Noble Salty Panda.

Noble Yamibomb112.

Noble Mild Fracas.

Noble EESDESESESRDT.

Noble Aclys.

Noble Tyler Mills.

Noble Jordon Gotthold.

Leave a rating or a review to help me rise to the top or fix my shameful understanding of prose.

Take a look over my blog where all information of the world of Rupegia will be posted.

Join the Discord and discuss, or rant, or meme, or try and fight me so your waifu gets more screentime.

Become a Patron and read chapters in advance, or read the side-stories, or leave your mark on the story, or help choose the next artwork or the next side-story.

Chapter 77: Probing - Part 2

A note from Manasong

Attention: to conform to the limit of sexual content allowed in a novel, I've censored this chapter. You can look for the uncensored version here.

The symbol "-" denotes a section that got cut for containing sexual content. Also, if paragraphs seem missing, they were also likely censored in an earlier pass where the symbol wasn't used.

"You didn't want any distractions, but you still let Hukarere - do you?" Roxanne questions me with narrowed eyes.

"Uh…" I close my mouth and look around. The girls' eyes are all narrowed in severe gazes at me. I lift my hands in defeat. "Alright, alright, that was a bit reckless of me. Now, the information about Hihiriwa?"

"Yes, what information about Hihiriwa did you collect from Hukarere?" Roxanne continues, striking me with her smug smile and inquisitive eyes.

"It's rather difficult to have a casual conversation while I'm concentrating on piloting, even more so when - something is blocking her throat," I respond with composure and glare at Roxanne.

The teasing stops, and Ciel is the first to pull us back on topic, "Anyway, the doctor said that Hihiriwa is the most competent commander they have, but she's preparing for a wave of injured as we fly deeper into monster territory. She and the men all expect Hihiriwa to aggressively chase after the albino Fay Leviathan."

The golems pilot the ship to take off and enter the Looping Winds behind the Carrier. Hana and Aoi distract Paraaone while we have our quick, private meeting.

"Any mentions about past expeditions?" Yunia asks.

"The men are all rookies while the doctor probably isn't, but our conversation didn't drift that way enough for me to ask her. I'll try to probe for her stories the next time we meet," Ciel responds.

"What about you two?" I ask the Fox and the Princess.

Alissa answers first, "Kaatohe is wary of Hihiriwa because he hasn't been very favorable to the nobles, but he values skill, so the few nobles that do work under him are all strong warriors like her."

Yunia continues, "He's extremely strict with his orders, so the nobles that didn't obey were quickly replaced. She didn't say it explicitly, but she seemingly believes that Hihiriwa is hogging as much power as he can. Also, the High Council isn't composed entirely of nobles, so as long as he gives results, they'll allow him to retain his power."

"Wahinui might be 'exaggerating' things a bit because he's basically her direct opposition," Roxanne comments.

Alissa adds, "Perhaps there are lots of rookies in this expedition because their veterans aren't eager to follow Hihiriwa into battle again."

I nod and continue, "The soldiers choose their own path, so they probably don't have that much loyalty to either Hihiriwa or Wahinui directly, which makes it very difficult for them to just straight up launch a war against each other."

Yunia's long ears twitch, and she frowns, as if she just realized something. "Oritiki has also shown herself to be completely neutral in this struggle, so whoever succeeds her could tip the balance of power. It'd be a typical ploy of the nobility to intrude themselves into the succession of Oritiki's power, so that might be how she discovered that topics like 'children,' 'Chosen Descendant,' and 'pregnancy' are forbidden."

I coo in wonder and say, "Oo~h… Hihiriwa is unlikely to think about those things since he probably views hereditary succession unfavorably."

Yunia scoffs and flicks her hand dismissively. "Pfft, and what's he going to replace it with? Democracy? Nepotism? Anyway, he'd still have to groom a successor, which would then lead him to stumble upon these forbidden topics, too."

"Should we assume that he knows that we're 'different'?" I ask.

"It's a possibility, but he didn't mention any of that to his wife," Yunia replies.

"It seems that Wahinui probably hasn't mentioned it to anyone else, either, including Kaatohe," Alissa adds.

"Hm… more time and information is needed," Yunia says, and we nod in agreement. "How long can your Hollys last?"

"A few days," I reply.

"That should be long enough."

We wrap up our meeting and don on our aviator glasses, then I take control of the ship. The Carrier's cruising speed is noticeably faster after we lift off, so Kaiia really wasn't lying when he said that landing our ship on the Carrier would slow them down.

We pass by an anchor, signifying that we've passed the midpoint of "the calm." For this next area, we couldn't really figure out what it was through the Scanner back at the station, but we believe that it's going to be rather chaotic.

When it's just about time for lunch, the Floater spots a few monsters ahead, and code yellow is given.

Soon after, a Holly spots a blue Kite Dragon coming up from below us, so I decide to send Hana, Aoi, and Roxanne to deal with it. Aoi can carry Roxanne on her back since she's rather light, though that will reduce her agility by a little.

"Who's lighter: me or Alissa?" Roxanne asks me with a smirk.

Roxanne is taller, but Alissa is physically stronger. I suppress any further thoughts on this matter.

"What about me?" Yunia asks with sharp eyes.

"Do not distract the pilot," I stoically reply.

"Ciel is definitely the heaviest," Roxanne says and hugs Ciel from behind, who puckers her lips in annoyance and glares at the succubus. If Ciel wasn't wearing her armor, Roxanne would be molesting her delicious cow tits right now.

"But that's a good thing," Lina says with a quiet voice and a frown, making Ciel mellow out a bit. My little angel is detaching Aoi's saddle from her armor with Jarn's help.

"Enough playing around," Yunia says and drags Roxanne towards Aoi. They secure the saddle, then Roxanne mounts her, and they fasten her to it. Unlike a horse rider, a dragon rider should always be very securely fastened to their dragon so that they can carry out complex maneuvers in the air.

After blowing me a kiss, the three of them take off and fly down towards the Kite Dragon.

Alissa's eyes bore a hole through the side of my skull, demanding an answer from me. I've already made up my mind, so I stand firm and resist her attacks.

The girls spot the monster, and I focus on them. It looks like a scaled flatworm that snakes through the air; multiple small wings are aligned along its flanks, helping it fly like the cilia of single celled organisms; its head is flat and triangular like a crocodile's, but its eyes are positioned at the sides of the mouth and move independently like a chameleon's. Its scales are famous for being very strong and of an appropriate size to turn into armor.

Hana dives towards it like a missile, her kite shield in front and elven spear at the ready.

"FACE ME LIKE A REAL DRAGON, YOU WORM!" She taunts.

"UROOO!" It responds in anger, then it opens its mouth and launches a frost orb towards her. She easily diverts it with [Wind Shield] and reaches the monster before it can fire off a second.

At the speed that she's diving at, hardly any armor could protect against her spear, and the Kite Dragon's scales are no exception. She slams her shield against its nose, and her spear breaks through a scale on the right flank and sinks into its flesh, right behind its skull.

The monster tries to shake her off, but it's much smaller than the Cloud Snake from before, so Hana is easily able to completely counter its struggle with her own wings.

The Dragon slows down enough for Aoi to latch onto its back, restraining it even further. It's still longer than her, but it's not considerably larger, so Aoi has the physical advantage at the moment.

Roxanne casts a large [Ice Lance] and holds it back, feeding it loads of mana and waiting for the right moment.

Hana mounts it and holds onto the spear like it's a handle. It tries to buck like a horse, but Aoi and Hana have a firm death grip on it.

Once it slows down a little from fatigue, Roxanne launches her [Ice Lance] point-blank through the back of its skull, turning its brain into mush.

"It's dead," Alissa confirms, and they bring it back for me to store in my "Items."

"Your husband's [Item Box] is huge," Paraaone comments to Yunia.

"He is very huge," Yunia responds in broken Reo with a nod. I'm not sure what her intentions were, exactly, but it makes Paraaone smile, and she doesn't correct herself.

Lunchtime finally comes, and yellow code remains, but Hukarere and Ririmu both manage to get a break at the same time so that they can have lunch with us. Since Paraaone is already here, he's invited, too.

The Kite Dragon is twice as big as a cow, and we're not strapped for money, so we decide to dismantle it and roast some of the meat. It tastes a lot closer to bovine than Dragolite, which is close to chicken, so we're happy to eat something different. It's not the best quality though, a little too tough for our jaws, except for Lina, who's trained her jaw muscles like no other.

I notice that it doesn't have any of the "gamey" texture of old wild animals or monsters, so it must be a young Kite Dragon. Paraaone notices it too, and it makes us a little worried.

Certain types of monsters are completely immune to anti-monster crystals, but Kite Dragons aren't. That either means that it was an Aberrant that managed to resist our anti-monster crystals, or it was specifically ordered by a leader-type to attack us.

"Oh, I don't usually eat monster meat, so I missed that," Yunia says.

"I honestly don't understand how anti-monster crystals work, so I always assume that it's an Aberrant, or whatever, that attacks us," Hana says with a shrug.

Alissa assumes a teaching tone and replies, "All monsters have an internal sense that leads them towards humanoids. An anti-monster crystal 'scrambles' that sense, driving them away from us, but some monsters are, instead, attracted to this scrambling, negating its purpose. The attraction that monsters have towards humanoids increases with age, eventually reaching the point that they end up frenzied and suicidal while also gaining resistance to the 'scrambling.'"

This dungeon is also filled with ancient monsters, which makes these crystals basically useless to us.

"I'll report this to the Honored One and the Marshall," Paraaone says.

"Don't worry. I'll report it to our handler on the Carrier," I say and get Ted to bring the bird down to us.

After such serious business, we steer the conversation towards something more fun.

"So, have any of you met with Nohopu? He's quite the eccentric character," Yunia says with a wry smile.

"Oh yes, I served him for quite a while," Hukarere says with a grin. "He's… uh… 'fun' to have a conversation with, but he's so energetic that serving him quickly gets tiring."

Paraaone starts chuckling and says, "He's a genius captain, that's for sure, but he's somewhat addicted to fighting, even more than the Honored One."

"That's pretty impressive," Hana comments with raised eyebrows.

He gives her an amused look. "Ain't that right? If there was a Divine for us to serve, I'm sure that he'd be recommended to join a Celestial battalion."

"What about Hihiriwa? He seems to be an old veteran of many battles," Yunia asks.

Hukarere frowns slightly and sends a wary glance to Paraaone. "He's a very competent commander, but he's one of the commoners who forced their way into the High Council," she says with a little awkwardness.

"Yeah, he's ambitious, but he's also our oldest vet, so I think they give him a pass because of that," Paraaone says with a neutral tone.

"Oh, he's certainly a warrior. When he's commanding an expedition, you can be sure that there will be many battles," Ririmu says with a stiff smile, then lets out a tired sigh.

Paraaone smiles wryly and replies, "Well, it is his job to clear the skies of monsters. And it's not like the men will starve if we run out of supplies, there are enough Conjuration mages for everybody."

"Hmm~…" Ririmu groans, and his eyebrows knit in concern. "[Conjure Bland Meal] tastes like dirt, though."

Hukarere nods in agreement.

Paraaone shrugs. "Hunt some monsters and mix it all together in a soup. We always eat that when the Celestial Horns go out alone."

"Well, if it gets to that point, then you'll always be welcome to join us for meals," Alissa gently says, mostly to Hukarere, but she's quite receptive of Ririmu too since he keeps his thing in his sheath most of the time, unlike most of the other male Chimera.

The conversation starts to die down, so Yunia takes the opportunity to steer it towards what she wants to talk about. "We've never fought a Fay Leviathan before, so we're concerned about how we'll be able to help Nohopu," she says.

Paraaone calmly replies, "You won't really have to do much. The Leviathan likes to eat [Fly] crystals, and your ship's big enough to look like both a threat and a meal to the Leviathan. If the Celestial Horns try to fight it head-on, it'll try to escape, so I believe they want you to lure it into the middle of a triangle formed by your ship, the Floater, and the Carrier."

Yunia frowns subtly. "We're not very eager to be used as bait."

Paraaone's expression stiffens, and he stares at Yunia, trapped by her sharp gaze and unable to look away. After a few seconds, he puts both of his hands on the table and lowers his head. "I ask for forgiveness, Ryders, if this has offended you, but that wasn't our intention. The Fay Leviathan is too intelligent to actually fight us head-on, so we need to lure it into a trap."

Yunia gracefully waves her hand, calling his attention and making him raise his head, then she smiles gently at him. "This isn't something that you need to ask forgiveness for. We're just concerned about being placed in an unfavorable position."

She just probed his reaction to a perceived insult while also establishing that we're wary of being used. A very subtle maneuver, the trademark of the "elven way."

Paraaone energetically nods and says, "I understand. The Honored One herself will be protecting this ship, so there will be nothing to fear."

Yunia nods gently, and we change the topic.

"Now that I think about, why's there a landing strip on the Carrier if the Wasps don't need it?" I ask.

Ririmu eagerly answers, "The Eagle and Dragon class planes are the ones that use the landing strip, but we're saving them for emergency situations because the Wasps are much, much cheaper to build in comparison. The Wasps are just simple point-defense planes, designed to be able to take-off under any circumstance, so it doesn't cost much to make one."

"Oo~h… what are those other planes for?" I ask excitedly.

"Eagles are armed with a long-range [Beam] weapon and a defensive [Discharge] while Dragons are armed with a large explosive [Fireball] and multiple [Fire Arrow]s that can also be used for point-defense."

"Is the Floater an Eagle-class plane, then?"

He shakes his head emphatically, then continues speaking excitedly, "No, it's much larger. Its purpose is to be an autonomous explorer, so it needs the armaments to keep things like the Fay Leviathans at bay, but like you've heard already, that's not enough to easily kill them. The Eagles may be weaker, but they're very agile, so they can dodge the Leviathans while still firing off their spells. Once the Leviathan is disabled, the Dragons will come in for the kill."

Ririmu and I geek out about Chimera planes until their break time ends, then we take them back to the Carrier.

We continue our journey for a few hours without another encounter because the Floater is completely clearing out the way ahead for us. Then Hihiriwa starts up a discussion with Oritiki and Kaiia about the intention behind the monster attacks, and he says something that makes me apprehensive, "Initiate a deep-scan on the ship."

The coms officers all nod and start to organize a "pulse." I ask the girls through [Bind] about it, and Yunia hurriedly responds with something worrying, "They have enough mana in those crystals to make a sweep of the ship for signs of non-humanoids."

"Uhh…" I hesitate, and in the next moment, a thick wave of Spirit mana washes over all of us.

"Oh, they used a deep-scan," Paraaone casually comments, then a siren starts to resound through the Carrier. "A~nd they found something…" He frowns.

Both Hollys on the Carrier groan as their spirits are attacked, and the Shad quivers silently, then they all immediately try to escape the ship because their standing order is to flee when attacked or detected.

Oritiki's attention snaps upwards, and she looks directly at the Holly on the bridge. In the blink of an eye, she's pointing her glaive towards it, then she casts [Beam]. The Holly is instantly toasted, so I immediately unsummon it before she can properly see what she killed.

The other Holly and the Shad quickly move towards the door out of Hihiriwa's room, and they hear a commotion outside that's quickly approaching. I decide to just unsummon them before anyone can sense them. Apparently, Holly's [Ignorance]-like spell was disrupted by the "pulse," and Shad's "essence" is so disturbed that any mage would notice it now, so there's very little chance that they'd be able to escape, anyway.

Through his summoned bird, I ask Ririmu, who's currently babysitting us, about what's going on.

"They used a mana pulse to detect hidden monsters and found four of them inside the Carrier. The Floater also reported one monster hidden inside their ship," he replies after inquiring about the situation.

Four? So… my Hollys weren't the only spies inside their ship.

"Uh… could there be one inside my ship, too? Should we be worried?" I ask.

"Take a look at your hold, that's the only place where they could be hiding."

I order Alissa, Hana, and Paraaone to sweep through the hold, but they don't find anything in there except for two cheeky Ploms draining some mana from our crystal. These little rodents are fluffy like dandelions and nearly impossible to kill without magic. Alissa kills one by stunning it with [Blinding Lights] first, but the other escapes through a hole for the wings in the side of our hull.

"So… why would there be monsters inside the Carrier?" I ask Ririmu, doing my best to keep calm.

He answers in a serious tone, "To spy, of course. Very rarely will leader-types send monsters to do that, so you'd better believe that this one is going to be a bit difficult to deal with." He smiles wryly.

Nobody seems to be suspicious of us, so I eventually manage to relax.

"Your nickname fits you so well," Yunia comments through Aoi, and the girls start teasing me through [Bind] to dispel their own anxieties.

"Really a 'Hero's Luck,'" Alissa says through [Bind].

"You'd better not abuse it, or the God of Luck will make your nickname ironic," Hana adds and snorts.

"I'll keep that in mind," I reply and kick them out of my mind.

A Cloud Snake tries to sneak attack the Winch, but this time, the Carrier notices it before us, and they take care of it. Aside from that, no other attacks occur, and even the Floater finds fewer hidden enemies on our path. It seems that the Chimeras discovering the spies made the monsters become more cautious than they were before.

We ask about the monster spies that were found. Ririmu says that there was one Frost Wraith inside the Floater, two Crystalline Moths inside the Carrier, and the last two on the Carrier were unknown. They perform three more pulses to try to find out where the unknowns went, but they don't find anything.

The Wraith is a rare spirit monster that can be found anywhere. Its Threat Level is four, which means that it's capable of killing a squad of soldiers, but only if there isn't a mage present since it's extremely vulnerable to magic.

The Moth is a monster that likes to suck out mana from crystals just like Ploms. It changes its color to blend in with the background just like a chameleon. Its Threat Level is one because it's possible for it to kill a child by latching onto them and sucking out their MP until that damages their HP. More than a bit horrifying.

These mana pulses cost a shit ton of mana, but since they have a Floater to recharge, they'll be able to use a few of them every day. This spells the end of our espionage. We won't be able to risk it except for occasionally sending a Holly into the bridge, but that might be a bit of a waste of my mana.

We have a quick afternoon tea time since things seem calm enough now, and our minds start to wander. Thankfully, summons don't need rest, so I can rely on them to warn me about incoming threats.

The girls and I practice some magic. Alissa and Hana suggest using Paraaone as a guinea pig for [Illusion Magic], and he gladly accepts. He's just muscle to help us in case we get into a battle, so it's not like he's going to be helping us with scouting.

The blue sky soon turns orange, then dark, revealing the stars and nebulas hidden beyond, and we leave the Looping Winds to rest for the night. Code yellow is still active, so a larger percentage of the crew will participate in the watch this time, but that's none of our concern since we have summons.

Paraaone says goodbye, and we set up our bath. It's time to wreck Roxanne -.

A note from Manasong

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Chapter 77: Probing - Part 3

A note from Manasong

Attention: to conform to the limit of sexual content allowed in a novel, I've censored this chapter. You can look for the uncensored version here.

The symbol "-" denotes a section that got cut for containing sexual content. Also, if paragraphs seem missing, they were also likely censored in an earlier pass where the symbol wasn't used.

-Another extreme roleplaying session fuels my depravity and I try something new-.

I pressure Roxanne's horns with my thumbs, gradually forcing them to break.

"W-wait, Wolfy, record scratch!" She exclaims.

"Huh?" I question with a frown.

"D-d-don't break my horns, please!" Roxanne desperately begs.

I raise an eyebrow. "They grow back, and I can just use [Heal] to glue them back on."

"Y-yes, I know… but-but don't… please…" She begs with puppy eyes.

I let go of her horns and kneel down, then pull her into a hug. "Alright, sorry, sorry, sorry. I didn't know that it was that frightening for you." I cover her cheeks and lips with apologetic kisses.

"It's not frightening, it's shameful, extremely so," Yunia interjects.

I stop, then Roxanne fidgets and looks down.

"Uh…?" I turn to Yunia.

My elven princess smiles sadistically, and in Roxanne's heart, a very strong desire to shut her up suddenly bleeds through [Bind].

"Her horns and tail are her identity. Breaking them would make her seem less… humanoid," Yunia continues.

"That's just so hot…" Alissa whispers.

"Ooh~…" I grunt in understanding.

"But, uh… wouldn't breaking them hurt a lot?" Hana asks.

Ciel assumes a teaching tone and responds, "No, actually. Horns aren't like bones, so she wouldn't feel a thing if these were normal horns, but these are made from mana, so they're a bit different." -She starts smiling wryly- "I'm not actually proud to know this, but plenty of demons feel actual pleasure when they're broken. It's a bit like when Wolfy bites Alissa's ears."

Hana nods in understanding. "Ah, I see… but now you just made me want to break them, too."

"No~… please!" Roxanne pleads, almost crying.

I hug her tight and caress her back. "It's alright, it's alright. Nobody will force it on you, okay? All of us love you too much to hurt you like that," I console her.

"And you know that nothing would really change if you let him break your horns," Alissa consoles her and squeezes her shoulder. "Though if I felt pleasure from it, I'd ask Wolfy to do it for me."

Roxanne narrows her eyes at her, but she calms down and nods weakly.

We look towards Hana, who grins as she says, "I'd absolutely love to break your horns, but I won't do anything that you don't want me to."

I roll my eyes at Hana, but then I start to feel a little awkward. I almost did something bad to Roxanne. From my own soul research on her horns, I knew that it'd give her pleasure if they were broken, but I had no idea it was such a taboo thing in Succubi culture.

Oh, wait.

"Is this why you don't like it when I bite your horns and tail?" I ask Roxanne.

She awkwardly nods as she responds, "Yeah. It's too easy to bite off the tail, so biting those parts just ended up being 'forbidden.'"

- The excitement from our roleplaying was almost ruined, but we quickly recover our passion -.

We have a quiet dinner by ourselves. A Spirit pulse is sent out just before we eat, and my scouting Hollys can barely feel it. Alissa still couldn't detect them with [Sense Presence] after the pulse, so I think that we're far enough away that my Hollys are safe here.

The pulse seems to rapidly lose cohesion with distance, quickly becoming just a chaotic wave of Spirit mana, so I think that it's only effective on things inside the Carrier or very close to it.

We have a small amount of free time before bed, so I decide to check up on the golems. I update their mana organs and vocal cords so that they match Roxanne's and Aoi's organs, respectively.

Ted and Suzy now have very thin steel skeletons that they can use to move around like an elemental. They're at the point where they have full body control and can even resist a sword attack, but their skeletons are still too thin, so they're vulnerable to being crushed.

It's been nearly a month since they started using [Regeneration] on themselves day and night, and there's still a long way to go until they're finished. It's taking so long because [Regeneration] mostly stimulates natural healing while also adding a bit of "miraculous healing" to aid with whatever the body can't handle. Using it to regrow the golems' skeletons is basically using only 5% of the spell's effects because of how the golems have no biology to heal naturally from, which means that only the "miraculous healing" part affects them.

Jarn is slowly learning how to cast [Manipulate Metal] by herself. It seems like the golems aren't that skilled with chanting, seemingly being more apt with chantless, near-instant casting than the traditional method.

Jarn is using this spell to mold her plates into a more humanoid shape. So, she's going from a stick figure to a slightly anthropomorphic robot. It's like she's playing with clay and molding herself until her limbs vaguely look humanoid. She's entering the "uncanny valley," since she's becoming humanoid, but she's not there yet. There's also the fact that because her limbs are joined only by loose chains, she kind of moves them in an inhuman way, increasing the effect. Though, she could develop a sick fighting style with those limbs.

I also notice that she's giving herself quite an ample chest.

"Jarn, come over here," I ask, and she immediately obeys.

"Caution, my arms are dangerously too hot for your skin," she warns me.

"I want to take a closer look at your chest," I say with a gentle smile.

She moves her red-hot arms behind her back and pushes her chest piece towards me.

I extend a hand and grope her breasts. "You're copying Ciel's breasts?" I ask with raised eyebrows.

"Eh?" Ciel's head snaps to us, and she stares at us, wide-eyed.

Jarn calmly responds in her robotic voice, "I have decided to copy Master Yulania's face; Master Ciel's chest, buttocks, and legs; and Master Hana's arms, abs, and muscular structure in general. But, I still need to choose a race to copy their head adornment."

Is she going to be like a super bimbo?

I smile wryly and slowly look around at the girls. They're all a bit stunned by this revelation. Yunia smiles smugly, Hana is a little concerned that only her muscles were chosen, and the others have mixed feelings.

"What about you two, Ted and Suzy. If you could change your bodies, what would they become?" I ask with a cheeky grin.

"Halflings," Ted answers immediately.

"Though the specific characteristics haven't been defined yet," Suzy adds.

"We need to meet more attractive halflings to copy."

"Cloning Master Lina's is undesirable because it introduces competition and repetition."

I chuckle softly and look at the girls bemusedly. Lina knits her eyebrows in concern, but she's mostly confused about how to react to this situation.

Alissa seems mildly pleased. Her tail wags lazily, ruffling the sheets lightly as she says, "I intend to hire at least one loyal weredog and werecat as maids. It'd be best if you chose something exotic, like a wereowl's, or perhaps a wererabbit, though I'm not sure if Nononya will join our harem."

"Understood. Perhaps I should look to the demon races?" Jarn questions.

Roxanne, who's currently giggling teasingly towards Ciel, suddenly twitches as our attention is directed her way.

She eyes us warily, then says, "Uh… I'll always like horns more than anything, so, perhaps, you could go with deer horns, they're pretty cute. Or maybe you could copy the Estekabar and their feather-hair."

"Horns are undesirable since they're detrimental to combat," Jarn responds, and Roxanne pouts while her horns gain a dangerous metallic sheen.

"You were too blunt, Jarn. You made Master Roxanne displeased," Ted says, surprising us.

"Apologies, Master Roxanne, but combat practicality is my primary focus," Jarn responds and bows.

"O-oh… it's fine. I was just being silly; you didn't offend me," Roxanne hurriedly says, and her horns become rubbery again.

"We require more wisdom to not fall for Master Roxanne's playfulness," Suzy says.

Roxanne instantly cheers up and straightens her posture. "Ohohoh, you heard that? You need lots of 'Wisdom' to beat me," she says with a smug giggle.

"I believe the golems will become quite the arse-lickers," I comment.

"But you enjoy licking ours," Hana says with a smirk.

I smile wryly. "True."

Before the conversation becomes too lewd, Ciel suggests, "The webbed ears of the merfolk can be pretty cute."

"You don't need to copy a single race, specifically; perhaps we can work out something more elaborate depending on how your body and face turn out," Alissa says.

"Oh, yes. The ears should complement the face, not the other way around," I say and pat my foxy lady on her head.

Ciel looks at Alissa's tail wagging with happiness and adds, "The tail is also important. It has to match the ears in cuteness. Perhaps you could even add wings and other things to yourself and become like a Chimera."

"All attractive options, I don't know what to choose," Jarn stoically responds.

"There's still some time before you have to decide, and you can always change your mind if it doesn't fit," I say.

"Understood," Jarn says with a nod.

After Jarn finishes her modifications, I create a metal earth elemental that looks as close as possible to her, then I copy it with [Mold] so that her soul aligns with her new body shape.

With her toned abs and faint muscles, her body now somewhat reminds me of a metal soldier that you'd find in a fantasy game set in ancient Greece.

In the end, her body has developed quite well, but not her face yet, which is still pretty blank.

After that, we cuddle until it's time to sleep.

Today is the 17th.

-

My [Golemancy] increased by 1 (now 0+10), and Lina's [Earth Magic] increased by 1 (now 1+9).

The Floater approaches us to recharge the ship's mana while we finish having our breakfast, then Paraaone arrives on our deck just as we're about to land on the Carrier so that I can fuck Huka… erm, practice with the Gull.

"Oh, your Living Armor has changed," Paraaone comments to Lina and observes Jarn's improved body.

"She wishes to be more feminine, so we're helping her change her body," Lina replies.

The area where his nonexistent eyebrows should be rises in surprise. "'Her'? It… well, she has a gender…?"

Lina frowns inwardly, deciding that it'd be easier to just lie. "Yes… Did you know that summons gain intelligence and sometimes develop a personality the higher the level of their summoner?"

He nods repeatedly while staring intensely at Jarn.

"That's what happened. Jarn's a woman who wishes to become more feminine," Lina says, then looks away and returns into her thoughts.

He snorts and says, "Heh. It looks like Wolf Ryder is the only male among all of you. Next, you're going to say that even the nature spirit is female."

Lina cringes. "Well…"

"Paint me in shock," he adds dryly and laughs. "I'm a bit envious, though."

Hukarere breaks our kiss and comments, "You know, you're pretty good at flying, so there's not much left for you to learn."

I - say in a husky tone, "I'm sure I still have a lot to learn from your body."

She grins and licks my cheek.

"I don't mind doing this job every day," Aihopu casually says. We look up and behind us, and see him quite content, sitting on the edge of the Gull and flexing his wings. "Do you mind if I - have fun by myself while I watch -? You two are pretty hot together."

"Uh… sure," I answer with a shrug. Having an audience feels pretty good.

"Thanks, friend," he replies -.

"How about - I take both of you - at the same time?" Hukarere suggests with - suggestive look in her eyes.

Aihopu's dog ears point up in attention, and he gives me puppy eyes.

Well, she was never supposed to be exclusive to me.

I shrug. "Alright, let's do this," I say and look back at the seats behind us. "It's going to be a bit cramped, though."

Aihopu's demeanor completely changes. He goes from an endearing puppy to a hungry beast hunting for a white wolf pup. "We'll find a way," he says in a low growl.

"Wild winds, man, you're a beast," Aihopu praises me, wide-eyed.

-

"You try satisfying seven wives, which includes a dragonkin and a succubus at that, and you'll become like me in no time," I say.

"He's got… [Mana Genitals]," Hukarere grunts.

"Did you get that through [Alteration Magic]? I'm trying to save up enough money to pay a mage for that," Aihopu asks.

Hm… I guess it makes sense that the Chimeras would know a lot about these body-changing skills.

"No, I got it through [Enhanced Semen Recharge]," I answer.

He raises his eyebrows in surprise. "Oh, I see. Yeah, you're a complete beast, man."

I smile wryly -.

I actually do practice with the Gull and play fetch for a short while with Aihopu, so it's not like we're just - having all morning, and Hukarere doesn't have the stamina for that, anyway…

Once our training time is over, I land the Gull and lift off with our ship.

The journey is quiet, as usual, and after a few hours, we reach the anchor, then the wind dies down and our speed decreases. Ahead of us, we see lots of dark clouds rapidly moving about. "The calm" is over, and there's definitely plenty of danger in this new area.

Immediately after we pass the anchor, we're hit by a gust of wind that makes the ship's wings creak. The Carrier doesn't even budge, but the Winch sways a little. It's a big ship with very little actual mass, so I hope that the rookies over there don't get motion sickness easily.

Code orange is sounded soon after. The Floater has engaged monsters, but it doesn't need our help, so we're directed to just stay at the ready.

I let the golems and Jarn pilot, but Alissa and I stay on the bridge to take over at any moment. They need to learn how to achieve the same level of stability that I can, and these light gusts are perfect for that.

"We require more practice to build muscle memory," Jarn says.

"Our responses to changes in the wind direction are too random," Ted says.

"We lack the prediction capabilities to smoothly control the ship," Suzy says.

I scratch my chin and respond, "It seems like [Piloting] doesn't give me anything miraculous or magical, so I think that it's all about feeling the wind. Maybe we could ask Kaatohe about it."

"If you're able, then we ask that you do that for us so that we may serve you better," Ted says, and I awkwardly nod.

Gify suddenly uncurls from my shoulder and looks ahead with a serious (which is also very cute) expression.

"Gih," she lets out a short chirp full of meaning.

"You didn't even care when the Dragolites attacked us. What's different about this time?" I ask her.

"Gih."

Alissa and I share a look. There's only one thing that could take that cheeky smile off her beak: Spirit mages. Out of all the monsters that are normally found around here, only two of them are related to spirit magic: Frost Wraiths and Fay Leviathans, but she didn't really care about the Wraith that was inside the Floater, so we know which is our culprit.

I advise Hukarere through the summons that Gify is concerned about Spirit magic ahead, and she passes it on to the bridge.

Soon after that, we see a [Beam] cut through the clouds ahead.

"A Fay Leviathan was spotted hiding among the clouds," Hukarere reports to us.

"Are we directed to assist?" I ask.

"Not yet. It's not the albino, so the Floater should be able to deal with that one, or at the least wound it enough that it leaves."

I hold Gify and pat her head to calm her down. I've never seen her get so scared like this before.

"Gih!" She complains and pouts.

"Yes, you're scared," I respond with a snort.

She's too anxious to argue, but my teasing works, calming her slightly. If I'm calm enough to tease her, then what reason does she have to be scared?

Lightning crackles within the colored clouds around us, forming large shadows that almost make us jump. We all become far more tense, waiting for the inevitable battle that's about to begin.

"Wolf, prepare for an ambush. It seems that the Leviathan is just distracting the Floater!" Hukarere suddenly announces, then code red is sounded.

"Understood!" I acknowledge her message and relay it to the others.

Paraaone spreads his wings and activates his armor, making it annoyingly shiny, but I know that its effect is much more severe for the monsters.

"Monsters spotted! Direction, forty degrees, northeast; elevation, horizon; distance, over one thousand metri! Forty-five large Kite Dragons!" Hukarere relays to us.

Alissa turns her face towards the specified direction, and after a moment to focus her eyes, she spots the mass of black dots approaching. "Their telescopes are very good," she comments, a little impressed.

The Carrier signals to the right, and Hukarere relays, "Order: exit the Looping Winds and stop! Stay behind the Carrier!"

The Winch exits to the left, then points its nose towards the Carrier, clearly using its small frontal profile to also hide behind it. It folds down its sails, and the men on deck retreat inside of the ship.

The Kite Dragons open their mouths, then a salvo of frost orbs launches towards the Carrier as fast as bullets. Our view ahead is tinted green as [Wind Shield] activates and diverts the orbs away. If we were above or below the Carrier, there's a chance that we might have been hit by them.

Another message comes through Hukarere, "Monsters spotted! Direction, two hundred degrees, south; elevation, minus forty degrees; distance, three hundred metri! Nine large Cloud Snakes! Remain in place and only engage when in close proximity!"

A salvo of [Earth Bullet]s immediately followed by another of [Fireball]s launches towards the Snakes, then fifteen Wasps deploy towards them, immediately followed by five Celestial Horns. They whistle past us at full speed while we're just supposed to watch and wait until the monsters get closer, otherwise, we might hit a friendly.

The Winch fires random [Lightning Bolt]s towards the Snakes as a threat, warning them to not get too close, but their target seems to be the Carrier, so they ignore it.

The Kite Dragons fire another salvo of frost orbs, and one of them whistles past us close enough for me to get a good look at it. It's a transparent white ball full of mana that cools the air just by passing near it. They seem to be as big as Lina, at least double their usual size.

The Horns fire their [Beam]s, and the Snakes scatter to dodge them. The Wasps split into squads of three, which hunt down a Snake each.

Four Snakes are ignored by the Wasps, but when the Horns reach them, they're quickly dispatched, even faster than when Hana fought one.

Suddenly, the remaining Snakes collectively let out a long, deep howl that sounds rather similar to the whistling of the wind. It crosses through the battlefield and makes my bones shake, slightly unnerving us all. Then the Snakes turn around and try to escape, but only one of them manages to do so.

The Kite Dragons stop, still far out of range of the Trinity Cannons, and open their mouths again. They fire off another salvo of frost orbs, and without even waiting for it to reach the Carrier, they turn around and fly away.

The Floater reappears a moment later, having disengaged from the Leviathan right after the ambush began, and goes after the Kite Dragons, but they scatter in all directions and hide behind the clouds.

Far off in the distance, Alissa spots a light blue glow. For a brief moment, she sees a large and long transparent snake with wide wings moving around the clouds. Its organs are clearly visible for us to see, including a fast-beating heart that could be as big as I am. It's the Fay Leviathan.

"So… that was a probing attack?" I question, and Alissa nods solemnly.

A note from Manasong

Hall of Fame of Patrons

The patrons who support Rupegia shall have their names sung by the bards for they deserve the glory and honor. Their names are:

Oracle Maximillian Hübner.

Prince PreownedFIN.

Lord Andrew Meyers.

Lord Samuel Lim.

Lord Bill.

Lord Novgarod.

Lord DJ.

Lord Ashadun.

Lord Michale Erwin.

Lord Enrique Peña Gomez.

Lord Braidborn.

Lord Bakerdea.

Lord Yeeteris Dedmeem.

Lord D4rk Sheep.

Lord Nathan Vanbrunt.

Lord Markus.

Lord Maurice.

Lord Badger.

Lord Krawn.

Lord Empyrean.

Lord Asakurà.

Lord Mattirro Draca.

Lord Joshua Tal.

Noble Salty Panda.

Noble Yamibomb112.

Noble Mild Fracas.

Noble EESDESESESRDT.

Noble Aclys.

Noble Tyler Mills.

Noble Jordon Gotthold.

Leave a rating or a review to help me rise to the top or fix my shameful understanding of prose.

Take a look over my blog where all information of the world of Rupegia will be posted.

Join the Discord and discuss, or rant, or meme, or try and fight me so your waifu gets more screentime.

Become a Patron and read chapters in advance, or read the side-stories, or leave your mark on the story, or help choose the next artwork or the next side-story.

Chapter 78: The Hunt - Part 1

A note from Manasong

Attention: to conform to the limit of sexual content allowed in a novel, I've censored this chapter. You can look for the uncensored version here.

The symbol "-" denotes a section that got cut for containing sexual content. Also, if paragraphs seem missing, they were also likely censored in an earlier pass where the symbol wasn't used.

We wait for a few minutes while the situation calms down. There's zero damage on our side, and only a few Cloud Snakes and a single Kite Dragon killed on their side. The Fay Leviathan only suffered a few minor wounds from the Floater.

Paraaone stops the glow of his white armor and shrinks his wings down again. "That was annoying. Too much teasing for me," he comments and knits his non-existent eyebrows.

"Why didn't those Trinity Cannons fire on the Kite Dragons?" Yunia asks him, and Lina translates.

"They have the range to fire that far, but it isn't worth the mana. Better to just wait for the Wasps or the Horns to deal with them," he responds.

"The Carrier doesn't have anything like the Floater's [Beam]?"

He shakes his head gently. "Nah. It's a defensive ship, and the Trinity Cannons are used for point-defense."

Her eyes narrow, making her expression look severe. "The monster leader definitely has many more monsters than what he has shown so far. Are you sure that the Floater will be enough to deal with them?"

He nods and smiles a bit awkwardly. "Yeah. With just ten Celestial Horns we could easily get you guys to Ozymandias. The only difficult part of this expedition is protecting the Winch from all these monsters."

"I see…" She holds her chin in thought and looks away.

After about half an hour, lunchtime arrives, but we're called to the bridge before we can eat. I take Yunia and Lina with me while the other girls remain on our ship.

The two of them ride Aoi down to the Carrier while I use [Telekinesis] to launch myself over. Jumping or calmly floating down with this spell is quite simple, so actually flying is much more exciting, and the strong winds slightly increase the difficulty.

I fly faster than Aoi and land first, but I almost go splat on the runway. I still don't have a good sense of my speed while flying.

Aoi lands, and the girls dismount from her, then I give her a kiss, and she flies away with a smile.

A soldier takes us to the bridge, and we take a moment to look around to hide the fact that we've already seen it.

The crew silently looks down their scopes, tirelessly scanning the skies for monsters while the comms officers stoically wait for communications. As we enter, I hear an officer turn around and report that Kaatohe has lost the last Cloud Snake inside a huge, cloud-shrouded island.

Kaata, Hihiriwa's gecko wife, is using her summoned bird to relay a message to the Floater. Kaiia, the panda XO, motions for us to sit on three chairs prepared for us in front of Hihiriwa's.

Oritiki sends us a nod and a gentle smile that we return as we pass, then we take our seats and face Hihiriwa.

His gray dragon scales twitch nervously. "Ryders, we've called you here because there's something that we must discuss," Hihiriwa starts, then Kaiia takes his seat.

I nod and signal for them to continue.

Hihiriwa's tone is completely devoid of any mirth. I have a feeling that he's actually seething internally, but hiding it very well. "If we don't deal with that Fay Leviathan and their Kite Dragons, we'll have to endure a lot of harassment. We even suspect that a breeder-type is leading them instead of just a leader-type, which would explain its infuriating tactics. We believe that their plan is to wage an attrition war, and while we're certain that we'll survive, it would be costly. "

He pauses there so that Lina can finish translating.

"That's certainly very worrying," Yunia calmly comments, then leans back and relaxes, showing calmness and confidence.

For you, is what she's implying. They don't react openly to it, but subtle body language like this is important in delicate negotiations.

Kaiia continues, his tone even more tense than Hihiriwa's, "The Floater can keep the Leviathans away, but it's unable to deal a decisive blow against them, so we want you to take a more aggressive role in this fight."

We take a moment to think, and Yunia gives me a subtle look. Her advice before we came here was to keep in mind the relationship we currently have with Hihiriwa. He has displayed a friendly attitude towards us, but he also hasn't given us any real favors like Oritiki has. Our relationship is that of equals, where each and every favor is traded. We're merely guests accompanying them, and we don't need them as much as they need us, so we need a good reason to get ourselves more deeply involved with them.

I gather my courage as I puff up my chest and say, "Our ship is completely vulnerable. We'd receive far too much damage if we were to engage an enemy like a group of Kite Dragons, who could just fire their orbs further than the Carrier's defenses."

Kaiia nods and says, "We have a few spare [Wind Shield]s. We can install one on your ship, and that should allow you to even engage a Leviathan."

Now, that is an interesting proposal.

"What are the specifics of these enchantments?" Yunia asks with a business smile. She has personally inspected the enchantments on Escanso's Shell many times, so she knows her [Wind Shield].

They don't even try to give us cheap ones, going straight for the best, not that Oritiki would allow them to put us at risk. They'll install two crystals: one will create a half-sphere at the front, and the other will form one at the back, protecting us from all directions. They consume a lot of mana to keep them active, so they'll give us ones with increased mana reserves.

Also, our handler will be transferred to the bridge so that we'll have a direct channel with Hihiriwa. We'll have to closely follow his orders, and he'll definitely be putting us at the front line. Even though we're going to be forced to fight, having this defensive enchantment will make us much, much safer in general.

Negotiations are finished quite quickly. They'll begin the installation after lunch while we continue along the Looping Winds.

We return to our ship and enter formation again. While we let the golems pilot, the girls organize lunch. I can't help with cooking since it's more important that at least I remain ready for an attack.

I drop down to our deck and walk to the bow, then look ahead alongside Paraaone.

He glances back towards the girls and comments, "You guys have a lot of ingredients that I've never seen before."

"They come from the lands down below. We've primarily eaten the monsters we've killed along the way, so we still have a lot of supplies left," I calmly tell a lie.

He grunts and returns to observing the way ahead.

The fleet makes a short stop so that we can eat. Paraaone returns to the Carrier for his meal, allowing us to have some private time. Right before we dig in, a Spirit pulse sweeps through the ships. The birds on the bridge suffer a bit, but it's not enough to damage them significantly since it's aimed at monsters and not magical beings in general.

We make some pasta with not-tomato sauce, leafy greens with orc bacon, and some smoked fatty minotaur rump. Not the healthiest meal, so we'll compensate for it at dinner.

"So, aren't you going to say anything about what you did this morning?" Alissa asks with a subtle smirk.

"Uh… I did Hukarere…" I reply absentmindedly.

"Yes…" She nods slowly. "But you also learned to share her with Aihopu."

"Oh, that's interesting," Yunia says and leans forward.

I shrug. "Well, not every woman that I sleep with will be exclusive to me," I say.

Alissa nods and smiles proudly. "It's good progress. Not everyone will want to be like Osaria, and you need to learn how to share Klein," she says.

Hana frowns and pouts. "I didn't see that; I was too busy staying on watch."

"Oh, it was really hot. Maybe Gify can show you those memories," Roxanne says and smirks.

"So you were daydreaming while we were supposed to be on watch?" Ciel asks her with a reproachful look.

"I can do two things at the same time quite easily, just like Wolfy did," Roxanne immediately answers since she was just waiting for the opportunity to make that joke.

Ciel turns her eyes to me, making me feel a little guilty. "You're a bad influence on them," she says and pouts.

Hana's eyes suddenly lose focus, and she shows a ferocious grin. I look at Gify and see that she's staring at Hana while eating her steak. A wave of - excitement starts to seep through Hana's [Bind] -.

"Oi, you little imp! Now we're both getting horny!" I complain to Gify.

"Gih," she chirps dismissively.

I sigh. "We don't have time for that. Our mealtime is about to end."

"Giih," she chirps, annoyed.

"Hey, I want to have some fun, too. You've had Hukarere all to yourself for all this time, so share her a bit," Hana says, her eyes still out of focus.

"Well, she isn't bi," I reply with a shrug.

Her hand drifts down, and she starts touching herself while eating. "I know, but I want to taste a new woman. I should've met with that - Kai you had a date with."

I smile wryly. "Alright. When we have some time, we'll ask around for someone interested in you."

I extend a tentacle towards her, then I make it crawl under her pants. She jumps in surprise, then smiles at me. "Thanks, Wolfy. That makes it easier to eat," she says with a grin.

I smile smugly and say, "'Easier'? I beg to differ."

-

After lunch, we continue the journey along the Looping Winds. Hana isn't satisfied yet, so she and I spend some time at the back of our ship, my hand clutched over hers, and my - tentacles inside her.

Paraaone doesn't suspect a thing since all he can see is that we're standing next to each other -.

After she's finally satisfied, we cuddle, while armored, and her strong hands give me a brief but relaxing brain massage as a reward, but it doesn't last long since we've spent enough time distracted already.

Ririmu arrives on the bridge to replace Hukarere and awkwardly sits down at his workstation. I assume that he's never entered that room before, but since he's our handler, he got a "promotion" after our negotiations with Hihiriwa.

The fluffy raccoon man summons his bird and sends it to our ship, so I go up to our bridge to receive it.

"Greetings, Ryders, Ririmu reporting for duty," he says in an overly formal tone, then glances at Hihiriwa.

I grin at the bird, then I raise the pitch of my voice and spew out my words in rapid succession, doing my best Nohopu impression, "Pleasure to meet you, Sir Ririmu. It's an honor to be serving at your side, my good sir. Let's follow Marshall Hihiriwa's will and hunt down that vile Leviathan! Huzzah!"

He clenches his jaw and stares at the bird with a stiff expression, trying to keep a straight face, for which Kaata gives him a side glance. After a few seconds of struggling, he wins and manages to hold the laughter back.

Four Chimera engineers fly over to our ship, and Ciel accompanies them down to the hold. Two of them pull out a large light green crystal each, both about as tall as Ciel is, and the other two pull out a bunch of planks.

They put together nests for the [Wind Shield] magic tools and secure them with the planks by actually fusing them with the ship and the crystals, then they set up gold-veined beams from each crystal towards the bridge, adding them to the one that belongs to the [Fly] gem.

Alissa and the golems clear from the bridge so that the engineers have room to install the controls.

"Well, this is quite the old control station," an engineer comments.

"Clunky as fuck. Why do they even make them like this anymore? Fuse these damn levers into a control stick!" Another exclaims.

"We didn't get this ship because it was the latest model," I lie with a wry smile.

"A miracle you got this bathtub so far, too," the third comments.

"Miihini, don't be rude. This is the ship of our esteemed guest. He'll be fighting up front to protect us," a fourth says in a more formal tone.

Miihini, the third engineer, gives me a phony smile and a quick bow. "No offense intended, esteemed guest, I just say it like I see it: you land-dwellers don't make ships as good as ours. You should've taken a look at our transport ships back in town, you would've definitely wanted to buy one if you did."

"Perhaps one day we'll come back to Whakamutu. We'll definitely take a look then," I say with a gentle smile.

"You won't regret it!" Miihini exclaims, then continues to work cheerfully.

The Chimeras finish quickly, then we test the enchantments. The control for each of them is a gem on a stick. We send mana through this gem, and it gets amplified exponentially by the enchantment. There's no upper limit to the amplification, so it's possible to spend too much mana and waste all of its reserves in just a few seconds. It seems that mana circuitry in this world isn't as advanced as Earth's science.

The fourth engineer gives us one last piece of advice, "I advise that you always keep the enchantment active in combat at a consumption rate of one MP per five seconds. That should be enough to deflect most attacks, including the frost orbs from the Kite Dragons. While active, the enchantment can also detect incoming attacks and drain more of its reserves to stop them, so you don't need to predict the power of the enemy's attacks yourself."

"Oo~h… that's some good enchantments they have there," Lina comments, then goes down to the hold to inspect the crystals.

The engineers leave soon after, and we play around with the enchantment.

We learn that we can fire projectiles from the ship while it's active, but their trajectory gets entirely disrupted, so it's basically the same as not being able to aim. Ciel's [Beam] works fine, though.

"Ryders, is everything complete on your end?" Ririmu asks.

"[Wind Shield]s are armed and ready," I respond and give him a thumbs up.

He raises an eyebrow and holds back a smile. "'Armed'…? Uh, anyway, the Marshall requests that you support the Floater and take a forward position while it sweeps the area. Keep your eyes peeled for monsters; we have little choice but to walk into their ambushes."

I breathe in and nod, then the Carrier exits the Looping Winds, allowing us to overtake it, and we fly full speed ahead until we see the Floater.

It engages its propellers and leaves the Looping Winds, quickly sweeping the area, inspecting every cloud and islet. It's so nimble that our ship really seems like a bathtub in comparison to the Floater.

Yunia suddenly turns her gaze to the side and points. "Spirit. I don't know what kind it is, though," she announces.

Ciel comes up behind her, then aligns her glaive with Yunia's arm and fires [Beam].

"Right on, a perfect hit," Yunia gently says and glances back at Ciel with a cheeky smile.

Ciel returns the smile, then holds back a chuckle.

"What is it?" Yunia asks.

"I was expecting you to either kiss me or flirt. I'm just way too used to how Wolfy, Hana, and Roxanne act," Ciel responds and shyly looks away.

"Your aim is as perfect as you are," Yunia immediately says in a serious tone.

Ciel opens her eyes wide and giggles.

Yunia narrows her eyes and looks away. "No, that wasn't good enough… how about…" She turns back to Ciel and stares her in the eyes. "Your aim is as deadly as you are to my heart," she whispers sensually.

Ciel's giggles increase as she blushes.

I blink repeatedly because I don't believe my eyes. "H-hey… she never acted like that with me," I say.

"You were never the sexy or seductive kind of man," Alissa says and squeezes my hand lovingly.

"Then what 'kind' am I?" I ask with a frown.

She smiles gently. "The really cute kind; the kind that you want to hug and protect, but now, you're also a confident charmer."

Yunia takes one Ciel's gloves off and kisses her hand. Now, even Hana starts to get a bit unnerved as her "knightly" aura is being overtaken by Yunia's.

Roxanne's cold staff touches the back of Hana's neck, making her jump. She giggles and says, "You were never much of a 'knight,' my love. A majestic barbarian with a bear's hug, sure, but a 'protective knight'? Nah."

Hana pouts and says, "I'm too smart to be a barbarian, my 'Intelligence' is twelve."

Before Roxanne can retort with an insult, Hana covers her mouth with her hand, making Roxanne chuckle.

I send a suggestion to Lina, and she comes up out of the hold, then stops beside Ciel and makes some puppy eyes, distracting her from Yunia.

The elven princess snorts softly, then walks over to Aoi and snobbishly says to me through her, "See? I can make all of your women mine if I want."

"I dare you to steal Alissa's heart," Aoi replies and narrows her eyes dangerously.

Yunia points her nose up, then looks down at Aoi. "That one isn't a humanoid, she's basically your own golem or something."

"I wholly belong to Wolfy, so, in a way, she's correct," Alissa comments.

Aoi grins at Yunia and says, "Is that so? Or maybe you're just not the great seductress that you thought you were."

"You're just taunting me to get your lesbianism fetish fulfilled," Yunia responds calmly.

"Well, you're the one who started this," Aoi responds with a shrug.

Yunia smirks mischievously. "I just thought it'd be fun to see you sweat a little with jealousy."

Aoi rises to her hind feet, towering over Yunia. Her eyes sharpen, and she glares at her as she says in a serious tone, "Are you sure you want to tease me like that?"

She doesn't answer, just giggling like a lady instead, then she smiles smugly at Aoi, as if she's daring me.

I guess she's in need of a good - pounding.

I summon a spirit elemental to widen our coverage area because it seems that we'll be encountering a few spirit monsters on the way. Gify doesn't say anything, so I know that they're just small fry, which leads me to believe that they're just spies.

Ririmu identifies the new monster for us, it's an Ethereal Snatcher. It's a slime monster that switches between spiritual and physical forms at will. It moves in its spiritual form, which allows it to be unaffected by gravity and just float in any direction it wants. It only switches to its physical form to attack by enveloping its prey with its body, then it turns back into a spirit again, dragging its victim along with it, spiriting them away. Heh.

Yunia and Ciel kill a few of them, then a Crystalline Moth, after which, the spirits suddenly stop appearing. It seems like they've realized that they can't penetrate the defenses of our ship.

The Spirit mages in the other ships of the fleet also go on high alert due to the number of spirit monsters coming our way, so, even without the Spirit pulse, they're managing to flush out any spies trying to infiltrate.

The Moth is a nice addition to my monster collection. Perhaps I could replace Holly with the now-named Monthy depending on the situation. I'm not a bug dude, but its wings have a psychedelic pattern that's pretty nice to look at. It's a much more interesting insect than the annoying and fuzzy little shit who loves entering my room at night and hiding, then suddenly scaring the shit out of me by flapping around and making a lot of noise.

The rest of the day is free of excitement, and soon after the sun falls, we reach another anchor. Ahead of us, there's a faint white mist that gradually becomes thicker farther away. We saw that on the scanner and knew that something like this was coming. It's the "mist" area, the perfect place for an ambush.

- I punish Yunia along with Hana, then I switch to Alissa once I'm done-

She's happy with the progress I've made in decreasing my possessiveness and asks Gify to share the memories of me - with Klein and Osaria. Knowing that I'm - with her while thinking about someone else is seemingly enough to fulfill her NTR fetish.

For her, fulfilling this fetish may be a high priority, but making sure that my harem is healthy and well-cared for is her highest priority.

-

Hihiriwa invites us for a meal, but he says that it must be a quick one this time since the crew is still on alert for more attacks.

Without much time for idle conversation, we mostly just listen to Nohopu retelling his short bout with the Fay Leviathan. It's quite the slippery enemy, but curiously, it doesn't have much in the way of strong magical attacks, so the [Wind Shield]s will be enough to keep it at bay.

Mahi, the captain of the Winch, doesn't seem to be persuaded by Alissa's pimping, so I guess she might be a bust, but not Kaatohe. I let my eyes thirst for a bit over her naked, tight body, and notice that her eyes are also wandering, lingering on my scars, the cute vertical one on my left cheek, specifically. Our eyes meet, and she exhales loudly, giving me a snobbish look, then she turns to Nohopu.

Soon, our meal is over, and we return to our ship.

Jarn continues to mold her face into Yunia's. Her aptitude with [Manipulate Metal] is rapidly increasing; she seems to have a good affinity with this spell, which is expected since she's technically an earth elemental herself.

Aoi conjures a ball of water and holds it up in the air with her "Willpower."

"What are you doing, Aoi?" Roxanne asks.

"I don't know. I just felt like doing it," Aoi responds and shrugs.

"Shouldn't Azurite dragons have some affinity with water?" Hana asks.

Roxanne adjusts her oval glasses in thought. "Hm… see if you can change the temperature of the water with only your will. If that doesn't work, try increasing the power of your [Torrent], or work on [Water Wall]."

"O-kaay…" Aoi responds absentmindedly, deeply focused on her ball of water.

We're not in the mood for any training right now, so we just cheer on the as the [Water Spirit] fights the [Holy Spirit]. The two cute little familiars beat each other senseless, but it feels oddly non-violent without the grunts of pain and sprays of blood that usually come with real combat.

We go to sleep soon after that, but I'm awoken at midnight by Gify, the summons, and an alarm siren. A monster attack is incoming.

A note from Manasong

Hall of Fame of Patrons

The patrons who support Rupegia shall have their names sung by the bards for they deserve the glory and honor. Their names are:

Oracle Maximillian Hübner.

Prince PreownedFIN.

Lord Andrew Meyers.

Lord Samuel Lim.

Lord Bill.

Lord Novgarod.

Lord DJ.

Lord Ashadun.

Lord Michale Erwin.

Lord Enrique Peña Gomez.

Lord Braidborn.

Lord Bakerdea.

Lord Yeeteris Dedmeem.

Lord D4rk Sheep.

Lord Nathan Vanbrunt.

Lord Markus.

Lord Maurice.

Lord Badger.

Lord Krawn.

Lord Empyrean.

Lord Asakurà.

Lord Mattirro Draca.

Lord Joshua Tal.

Lord Colorblind.

Noble Salty Panda.

Noble Yamibomb112.

Noble Mild Fracas.

Noble EESDESESESRDT.

Noble Aclys.

Noble Tyler Mills.

Noble Jordon Gotthold.

Leave a rating or a review to help me rise to the top or fix my shameful understanding of prose.

Take a look over my blog where all information of the world of Rupegia will be posted.

Join the Discord and discuss, or rant, or meme, or try and fight me so your waifu gets more screentime.

Become a Patron and read chapters in advance, or read the side-stories, or leave your mark on the story, or help choose the next artwork or the next side-story.

Chapter 78: The Hunt - Part 2

"Lights up!" I order, and the golems on the bridge obey, turning on our ship's lights.

We bolt out of our beds and scramble to suit up in our wooden plate armor. We were sleeping in our scale armor, so we're kind of protected already, but we consider our plate sets as our primary armor, and we seem to have the time to fully prepare ourselves.

The comms officer on watch gathers all the birds and yells, "Fay Leviathan spotted! Direction, ten degrees north; elevation, minus twenty degrees; distance, over one thousand metri! Accompanied by forty-four large Kite Dragons! Remain in place and wait for further orders!"

In the distance, a Holly spots a dark serpent passing in front of a colored cloud, and a small swarm of black dots follows it. There's barely any moonlight since the moon is hidden behind the clouds, but it's still enough for the Chimera spotters. They wouldn't have survived this long if they didn't know how to detect a night raid.

The Floater is to our west; the Carrier is to our northwest, its broadsides facing north and south; and the Winch is in the middle of the three of us. To save MP, I dismiss the extra summons and only keep out two Hollys for scouting, a spirit elemental, the bird on the bridge, and, of course, the ones I have with Klein and Osaria.

On the Floater, a light crystal at the top and one at the bottom suddenly shine so brightly that they light up the surroundings. The clouds in the immediate vicinity are all illuminated, revealing over ten Stone Lancers coming from the west, which are currently about five hundred meters away from us.

These monsters are like mini black Concorde planes, about twice the size of a horse. They have a thick jousting lance made of stone for their beak and a small, flat body with fixed wings for control. They don't even flap their wings, flying entirely by magical propulsion, which is fucking fast, and they attack through obvious means.

Alissa immediately stops helping me put on my armor and grabs her bow. Roxanne only needs to put on her robe, hat, and glasses, and grab her staff, so she's the first one of us to finish getting ready.

Alissa pulls Roxanne out of the tent to hold off the Lancers. "Wolfy first!" She exclaims, and Lina and Yunia come over to help me finish armoring up.

I quickly pull out a crate full of javelins and spare weapons. "Ted, Suzy! Go help Alissa!" I yell to the golems.

"Yes, Master," they answer in unison. They fly down from the bridge, pick up the crate with [Telekinesis], and exit the tent.

I grab a rope and store all of our beds simultaneously in my "Items."

The Carrier and the girls start firing at the same time at the Stone Lancers. These monsters have robust bodies, so they take a beating without a single one falling. Only two of them get significantly wounded, but they're still flying at full speed.

"Captain on the bridge!" Someone inside the Carrier yells, then Hihiriwa, Kaiia, and Kaata quickly enter and take their seats.

The Floater activates its [Wind Shield], but the Lancers simply ignore it and pass by. They don't seem to be aiming at the Winch or the Carrier, either, so that just leaves us.

The Floater quickly turns and fires a [Beam] at them, damaging the ass of one of the Lancers, but then they all start to do barrel rolls, making it difficult to hit them again.

I hear the Floater's propeller engage, and it tries to catch up to use [Discharge], but it's slower than the Lancers, so it gets left behind.

Gify pops out of existence, but I have a feeling that she's actually just hiding inside my armor.

Alissa suddenly senses enemies entering the range of her [Sense Presence], and they're coming from the east, fast.

"JARN! SHIELD UP!" I roar.

"Yes, Master," she obeys and feeds mana to the enchantment.

Three seconds later, the enchantments drain mana a bit faster as they divert ten Stone Lancers coming from our east. I get to the bridge just in time to see these large monsters jet around us. They whistle past our ship like a blur, and I can barely turn my head fast enough to follow them. I'd guess that they're flying at over 100kmph.

I deactivate our shield, and Alissa, Roxanne, and the golems fire at the Lancers. An [Ice Lance] and an arrow hit the softer stone of the Lancers' ass ends, heavily wounding them. The golems completely miss with their javelins.

Another warning comes from the bridge, "Monster swarm spotted! Direction, due south; elevation, plus forty-five degrees; distance, over one thousand metri! Harpies and Dragolites! Be careful of ranged attacks and magic!"

There are too many types of monsters here for a simple leader-type to control.

The ten Lancers to the far west join up with the other ten we just defended ourselves against, then they all turn their pointy beaks towards us and charge. The Floater suddenly starts gaining altitude and points up, flying towards the harpies and Dragolites above us.

Why are they targeting us? Did they assume that we didn't have a [Wind Shield]?

"FROST ORBS!" Our handler yells, and we activate the [Wind Shield], losing our chance to counter the Lancers' charge. They whistle past us again, diverted by the shield.

"We're under attack from all of the Lancers," I report to my bird.

A light suddenly slams into one Lancer, and the monster is split in half, then the light dims enough for us to see Paraaone, fully armored, with his angelic wings spread out and pointing his glaive towards the Lancers.

He fires [Beam] and wounds another Lancer. Thirteen Lancers remain in good condition, six are injured, and one is dead.

"Hide behind the Carrier, and the Celestial Horns will aid you after dealing with the harpies. Kill the Lancers as fast as you can!" The handler relays Hihiriwa's orders. The comms box lights up with the command for a "defensive battle." I lower the ship so that the Kite Dragons can't hit us anymore.

Hukarere appears on the bridge and replaces our handler. It makes me a bit calmer to have her with us.

The Carrier and the Winch turn on their lights. The Carrier's are comparable to the Floater's, but the Winch is in a class of its own. It's a mini-sun that even lights up the Leviathan approaching from afar.

The girls line up on deck and prepare their spells, and the Lancers turn around to face us. I lower our shields, and we release our volley, then the Lancers spread out, and only Alissa's arrow manages to scratch their stone beak.

"ONE MORE! ON MY MARK!" I order. The Lancers' acceleration is frightening, so we only have a few seconds to react. I guide the girls with [Bind] so that we each aim for a different target.

Paraaone glows again and nods at me…

I wait another second, and [Battlefield Perception] starts to tickle in my mind. The Lancers are going to try to pierce our [Wind Shield] once again.

"FIRE!" I order.

A wild assortment of spells flies from the girls and the Carrier, breaking the Lancers' formation, then Hana and Paraaone launch towards the enemy just before I raise our shields.

Hana aims for Alissa's target. There's an arrow in its right eye now, so it doesn't see Hana rapidly approaching with her spear to finish the job.

Paraaone tanks a Lancer's hit with his manly chest, aided by his balls of steel. His armor being OP helps, too. The Lancer's stone beak breaks against his armor, then he grabs it with one hand and decapitates it with his glaive.

Five of the Lancers get stopped in mid-air by the [Wind Shield], and the rest of them are diverted. Three [Telekinesis]-powered maces and a few extra spells launch at these five, breaking their beaks.

Six Lancers are left in good condition, eleven are considerably wounded, and three are dead.

"Careful! The harpies are aiming at you!" Hukarere exclaims.

What the fuck?!

Hana aims her shield upwards, then a rain of Needler feathers rain on us, but they're diverted by our [Wind Shield]s.

The rest of the Horns and the Floater engage the harpies while the Wasps thin out the large number of Dragolites.

Hihiriwa yells at the Horns to help us finish off the Lancers already. The Carrier tries to approach the Kite Dragons, but they retreat along with it, easily staying beyond its range.

I see the Leviathan starting to glow with a light blue color as it makes its way towards us. I now realize that our ship is basically a smaller version of the Leviathan. Its rough-textured face looks exactly like the bow of our ship, a vertical triangular prism with a long, protruding chin that can be used as a ram. Its long, transparent body is at least three times as long as our ship; there's a thick vertical fin at the end, which I assume it uses to slap things; it has three sets of fin-like wings, which are twice as large as ours; and its many, colored organs are all visible, pulsating and twitching. Fucking creepy.

With a grunt of effort, Hana pulls the spear out of her Lancer's brain before it falls into the infinite below, then she lands on our deck along with Paraaone just as the rest of the Lancers turn around.

[Beam]s fall on the Lancers at the same time as another salvo from the Carrier, finishing off three Lancers.

Five Horns appear in front of our ship, and I recognize Oritiki's horns in the middle of their group.

"Scorcher Harpies are aiming for the Ryders!" Hukarere reports.

Alissa looks up at the mayhem raging above and notices some harpies with a more reddish plumage diving towards us. The naked chicken-women seem to be holding small red wands in their claws, which shows that they're mages. The Horns are engaging them, but there are just too many to deal with quickly.

I summon three fire elementals to counter their magic and guide the girls to shoot at the screeching creatures. I stall one after the other with [Gravity Crush] while Alissa and Lina shoot at their ugly mugs.

[Battlefield Perception] tickles my mind again, and I activate the [Wind Shield], giving it just enough power to deflect the Lancers. I manage to stop two of them at just a meter from the ship, and the girls immediately fuck them up.

The Horns finish off four more. Only eight Lancers remain while four are wounded.

Suddenly, multiple fire-type area spells begin to form all over our vessel. This must be the Scorcher Harpies trying to destroy us since we don't have a [Dead Zone] protecting the ship. Because they're area spells, we can interrupt them before they're actually cast, but there are dozens of them being formed at the same time.

The Floater has now disengaged from the harpies, leaving them free to focus on us, and it's now literally ramming the Leviathan, though they never quite touch each other due to the [Wind Shield] protecting the Floater.

The fire elementals quickly interrupt most of the harpies' spells, and we deal with the rest, but that distracts us from the Lancers. The Horns aren't fast enough to chase them, so they stay in front of our ship to guard us.

The Lancers whistle past us again in an ineffective attack, then they all clump together, probably to try one last attempt to fuck us up.

Oritiki's laugh resounds through the air, and the Horns all clump around her. "RYDERS! WATCH THIS!" She bellows.

We continue to interrupt the harpies' spells and watch on. I keep the shields up so that the Needlers can't hit us.

The Lancers charge. Eight black Stone Lancers versus six white Celestial Horns. The Horns stay still in the air like a wall, and the Lancers hit them straight on.

An unstoppable force meets an immovable object. Rock shrapnel sprays out in a cloud, and the Horns remain in place without moving a centimeter. The force has lost to the object.

With their beaks all broken, the Lancers make an easy target for us, and we quickly finish them off.

"NOW GET THOSE FUCKING KITE DRAGONS!" Hihiriwa bellows.

"Ignore the harpies, destroy the Kite Dragons!" The handler exclaims, and the comms box lights up with the initials "KT" and the command for "attack."

The Winch is joining the battle between the Dragolites and the Wasps, helping out a bit with its few Trinity Cannons as it flies in. The Wasps circle around the Carrier, diving into its [Wind Shield]s to prevent themselves from getting overwhelmed by the swarm. Some of the Dragolites manage to get inside the shields, but they're quickly dealt with by the winged soldiers outside or the guards inside the Carrier.

I point the ship's nose upward and flap the wings, giving us a lot of initial impulse, then I push the "forward" lever to the max.

"WE'RE GOING AFTER THE KITE DRAGONS!" I yell, and the girls and Paraaone cheer in response.

Oritiki and her four bodyguards follow us while the rest of the Horns help the Wasps. We're going to have to make our way past the harpies, but they've been significantly thinned out, so their area spells are unlikely to overwhelm us.

A stray Frost Orb comes our way and gets diverted by our shields.

I see the Leviathan and the Floater engaging each other above the Carrier, remaining in a blind spot of its Trinity Cannons. The Leviathan's body is wreathed in ethereal blue flames, the Fay Fire, a magical fire that has an effect similar to the Decay goop if it touches anything.

The Leviathan flaps its wings and gains a burst of speed, then it "swims" through the air to dodge the Floater's [Beam]. It suddenly turns and slaps the ship with its tail fin like a whip, knocking it away. When the force of an attack is too high, the [Wind Shield] enchantment pushes its source gem away to make sure that the attack doesn't get through.

The Horns and Ciel fire [Beam]s at the Scorcher Harpies around us, and we easily fly past them since there's nothing that they can do to stop us.

Alissa climbs up to the bridge while Jarn jumps down to our deck. We sync our minds through [Bind], and she starts flapping the wings of the ship to give us an extra boost. We quickly get out of range of the harpies.

A few of the Kite Dragons turn to us, but most of them continue firing on the Carrier. If all forty-four of them decide to turn to us, then we might have a problem.

"WE'LL PROTECT YOU FROM THE ORBS!" Oritiki yells.

The armor of the Horns in front of our ship begin to glow with a faint red, and when the Frost Orbs hit them, the magical frost almost instantly melts away.

I knew it. Their armor was made to resist magic.

Some of the harpies try to follow us, but a few diverted Frost Orbs and Alissa's arrows quickly deal with any of them that manage to get close.

There's nothing left for us to do until we're in range of the Kite Dragons, so we just rest, enjoying our less than a minute long breather. It's eerie to have to stand still and do nothing while others fight behind us, especially since the Floater's fight is just so "energetic." It's constantly moving, trying to face the Leviathan, just nicking it and inflicting light wounds while the monster keeps slipping around it and trying to stay in its blind spot so that it can drain the [Wind Shield]s mana.

Alissa stops flapping the wings, then gracefully drops down from the bridge, and Jarn returns to her post.

"I'm in range!" Roxanne yells.

The Horns block another Frost Orb, and I drop the shield.

"FIRE!" I order.

The girls don't spare their mana, just throwing everything they can, and the formation of the Kite Dragons immediately starts to crumble. One by one, they slowly switch their attention to us, all forty-four of them.

"Calm down," I say with [Godly Language] and forcefully slow my own breathing down.

I focus on all of my [Bind]s, every girl, every summon, every pair of eyes. I have a full 360-degree view of our ship. I can see the entire battlefield at once. I have all the information that I need, and more tools and weapons than I can count, so it's time to put it all to use.

Hana and Aoi are my bruisers, they jump off the ship and fly into the fray; Roxanne and Lina are my main damage dealers, they'll disable anyone aiming at us; and Alissa is my finisher because, with her, it's one arrow, one kill.

"RAAAAAAAGH!" Hana and Aoi roar in unison, then each of them crash onto a Kite Dragon.

Aoi pries her Kite Dragon's mouth open and sends her own [Wind Blade]s down its throat, then she uses it as a meat shield to protect herself from a Frost Orb.

The fire elementals, the golems, Ciel, Yunia, and the Horns all fire randomly at whatever gets close to them, wreaking havoc among the Kite Dragons. The damage starts to pile up, and the Dragons start to fall.

We hear lots of propellers activating far away, and the Carrier starts to charge towards us.

We fly into the middle of the Kite Dragons' formation, then they try to surround us and fire on us from all directions, but the Horns glow brightly like stars as I take evasive maneuvers. The monsters miss most of their shots, and the Horns easily block the few that are on target.

Suddenly, a deep, long roar shakes us to our bones and nearly breaks me out of my Godly calmness, "UROOOOOO~~!"

"The Leviathan is coming after you!" Hukarere reports.

The Kite Dragons turn around and start to flee. The Floater chases after the Leviathan, managing to injure some of its wings in its pursuit.

"DON'T LET THEM GET AWAY! KILL AS MANY AS YOU CAN!" Hihiriwa bellows.

"Chase after the Kite Dragons!" Hukarere relays the order, and the comms box's lights change from the "attack" command to "chase."

Hana and Aoi return to our ship since they're slower than the Kite Dragons. The Wasps finish off the rest of the harpies and Dragolites, then land on the Carrier to recharge while it's in pursuit. The Winch unfurls all its sails to keep up with the Carrier.

I unfurl our sail, and Ciel starts guiding wind into it with her "Willpower," then I unsummon the three fire elementals and replace them with wind elementals to help her. Alissa climbs back up to the bridge, and we start flapping our ship's wings again, then we all recharge our MP with [Redirect Mana], just as a precaution.

The girls and the Horns continue firing at the Kite Dragons, getting in a few more kills, which drops their number to thirty.

Lina walks to the back of the ship and faces the Leviathan, giving it a mean glare. She cycles through [Weaken], [Sap Power], [Befuddle], [Demoralize], and I switch her points around so that she can cast the level twenty spell, [Slow].

"Winds take me; she's managing to slow down the Leviathan!" Oritiki exclaims.

The monster turns its huge white eyes towards Lina, and a massive wave of discomfort washes through her. Her whole body starts to twitch and gradually stops obeying her.

Yunia runs over to Lina and hugs her, then she positions her [Soul Shield] in front of her body, but doesn't cover her eyes. "It's doing something to her spirit!" Yunia exclaims, then she starts chanting [Soul Touch].

Lina soldiers on and continues to stare down the Leviathan, and with Yunia's help, its counter-attack is blocked.

Oritiki lands behind them and glows brightly, reducing the power of the Leviathan even further and allowing Yunia to actually start to heal Lina's soul.

The Floater catches up to the Leviathan, and its [Beam] completely slices off a fin.

"URO~! URO~! UROOO~~!" It roars again repeatedly.

"UROOOAA~H!" Another roar from ahead of us responds to its call.

Oh, fuck.

"Oh, fuck…" Hukarere mumbles.

"Oh, fuck!" Paraaone exclaims.

Up ahead, among the dark clouds, a white light suddenly shines, revealing a Leviathan twice the size of the previous one.

"FUCK UP THAT BLUE LEVIATHAN! NOHOPU, KILL IT!" Hihiriwa orders.

"Switch targets! Kill the blue Leviathan!" Hukarere orders, then the comms box lights up with the signals for "Floater" and the command to "support."

"YUNIA! CAN YOU HOLD THE BLUE ONE WITH [CHAIN LIFE]?!" I question.

"WHAT?! I-I THINK SO, BUT ONLY FOR A MOMENT!" She answers, caught by surprise, but she immediately recovers her confidence.

"THAT'S ENOUGH! GIVE YOUR SWORD TO HANA AND WAIT FOR MY SIGNAL!"

Hana drops her weapons and jumps up towards the bridge.

"Become stronger!" I exclaim in [Godly Language], and she regains her almost fully spent strength.

Then she jumps down to the back of the ship, nearly rips Yunia's enchanted longsword from her hands, and launches herself towards the blue Leviathan. Oritiki and the other Horns follow Hana a second later.

Hana hugs the longsword and leans as far forward as she can to increase her speed to the max. Her wings are tired, but she has enough energy for one last strike.

"MOTHER FUCKING SNAKE! LOOK AT ME! I'M GONNA SKEWER YOUR ASSHOLE IF YOU DON'T!" Hana taunts.

The Leviathan turns its massive head towards her and opens its mouth, revealing its hundreds of sharp teeth ready to chew and grind down Hana into a mush. It's like the mouth of a colossal worm.

"NOW!" I order.

Just before the Leviathan closes its mouth around Hana, it freezes, and Hana slips through into its throat. She uses her wings to spin, activates [Extend], [Bleed], and [Searing Blade], and then lets it rip.

Her mana gushes out like a pressurized pipe bursting, and I summon her before she passes out.

Her body is completely drenched in blue blood and the Leviathan's smelly innards. Alissa and I immediately cast [Clean] before we can all pass out from the stench.

"Jarn, finish [Clean]ing her!" I order, then I turn our ship around, and Alissa grabs her bow again.

Alissa pops an eye while everyone lets loose, turning the writhing monster into Swiss cheese.

The Kite Dragons turn around and fire Frost Orbs at us, forcing us to raise our shield and stop our attack, but the Horns and the Floater are still free to butcher the blue Leviathan.

"ROOOOO~!" The albino Leviathan roars as it flies past the Kite Dragons, who then turn back around and continue fleeing.

The gigantic Leviathan reaches us soon after and slaps down at our ship from above with its back fin. I set the controls to full power for the [Wind Shield], and the ship creaks as we're forced far downwards. The suddenness of the attack scares us shitless, but we quickly recover. Then, blue, glowing blood rains down on us, but gets diverted by the shields.

The albino Leviathan slaps the Floater away, then it tries to slap at the Horns, but they're like annoying bees that keep stinging it. It seems to know better than to try to eat them like the blue one attempted to with Hana.

With the way clear, a salvo from the Carrier rips open a line of wounds in the albino.

"SURROUND IT! KILL IT!" Hihiriwa orders.

"Get back into the fight!" Hukarere exclaims.

"Trying!" I respond.

We sense a burst of mana, then we see something sparkle, and a huge, circular mirror suddenly appears in front of the Floater. It's [Beam] scatters into dozens of smaller beams, one of which hits our ship, burning a line across the deck.

"Watch it! Friendly fire!" I yell to the bird.

One of the Horns smashes themselves against the mirror, which cracks it. Then the Floater slams into it, and it breaks up into a shower of glass shards.

We lower our shields and continue firing, the glass turns into dust, and I briefly increase the power of our shields to protect us from it. I'm sure that it's very unhealthy to inhale magical glass dust.

Hana recovers and weakly sits down, then she drinks one of Roxanne's MP potions.

We gain some altitude, but we're slapped down again soon after. The blue Leviathan seems to be exhausted, and I can clearly see its colored organs slowly becoming blue as it bleeds internally. It's dying.

The albino Leviathan suddenly bites onto the neck of the blue one, then starts to "swim" away with it. The albino is much faster than the blue one, and even the Floater seems to be slightly slower than it.

"NO~!" Hihiriwa rages and slams his fist down against his chair. He breathes in and controls himself enough to command, "Nohopu, Oritiki, Ryders, I'm ordering all of you to chase after the albino! You have three days. Hunt it down and kill it!"

"Understood," I respond and summon two more wind elementals to increase our speed. Our mast and sails strain from the amount of wind being blown into them, but I believe that they'll last.

We follow the Floater, which reduces its speed so that we can stay together, and we follow the trail of mana leaking from the bleeding Leviathans. Tracking magical beings is so much easier than physical ones when you have a high enough [Sense Mana].

I drop the shields, and Oritiki lands on the deck, then she removes her helmet and asks, "I request permission to remain on your ship. We'll also request for the Floater to lend us rooms for the night."

"Uh, permission granted," I reply and smile.

She nods, and the other five Horns land. They take off their helmets, then sit down, using their wings as cushions.

Hana sits down beside Paraaone with a grunt, and they share a glance, then they chuckle.

"What a night," Hana says.

"I've had worse," he grunts.

"It'll get worse," the blue goat says and smiles wryly.

Alissa goes into our tent and starts preparing some Tonique tea.

Oritiki clears her throat and says to all of us, "Everyone, you'd better get some sleep; we'll be awake for a while. Also, we'll take turns piloting this ship if you'll allow it, Wolf Ryder. All of my men are experienced in flying."

I nod and reply, "Fine by me. My golems don't sleep, so they'll always be ready to help."

Oritiki nods. "Alright. Everyone, get some sleep. The next shift will be in three hours."

Gify pops into existence, and she's definitely not happy about our current goal.

It's going to be a long three days.

We enter the "mist" area, and I breathe in the cold, moist air.

But if we kill it… the Leviathan will be the largest monster I could summon.

A note from Manasong

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Chapter 78: The Hunt - Part 3

A note from Manasong

Attention: to conform to the limit of sexual content allowed in a novel, I've censored this chapter. You can look for the uncensored version here.

The symbol "-" denotes a section that got cut for containing sexual content. Also, if paragraphs seem missing, they were also likely censored in an earlier pass where the symbol wasn't used.

"I guess we won't be seeing each other for a few days. I'll miss our morning 'practice,'" I say to the bird, and I see Hukarere's face cramp, holding back a smile.

"So will I," she whispers and glances towards Kaata.

Paraaone and Oritiki remain on our ship while the rest of the Celestial Horns fly over to the Floater to get some sleep. Hukarere retires to her bed, and the night shift handler takes over.

The girls drag Hana into the tent and make her strip down completely so that they can clean off every single drop of blood from her armor. Nobody wants to go to sleep hugging a stinky dragonkin.

The golems come up to the bridge, and I let them pilot while I simply keep watch. We'll be just following the Floater for now, so it'll be easy piloting even with the mist since the Floater has bright blinking lights for us to keep track of it.

Alissa climbs up to the bridge and gives me a hot cup of honeyed Tonique tea.

"Thank you, my love," I say and caress her cheek as I take the cup.

"I think I should stand watch with you. If you go to sleep without me, you could have a nightmare," she says, and her butt gently wiggles as her tail tries to break free from her armor.

"Yeah, I think that'd be for the best," I say and force a slightly sad smile.

I've been neglecting this issue, but right now would be a bad time to test it again.

I drink my tea while leaning against the railing, and Alissa offers me some jam-filled cookies.

"You're going to spoil me if you keep this up," I comment with a wry smile.

She giggles adorably and snuggles up to me, resting her head against my chestplate. "Everyone deserves to be spoiled with love," she replies and kisses my cheek. "I'll spoil the others too when I have the time."

I finish my mouthful of the cookie and say, "But don't exhaust yourself, okay? Remember to be mindful of your own condition and not just think of others all the time."

"Yes, yes. I still remember our talk about the two rules and overworking."

I finish my cup of tea, and she stores the tray of cookies away, then we just keep snuggling there for a long while.

The handler tells us to send over a summon to the Floater, so we exchange birds. The Carrier and the Winch will try to follow us, but since they're much slower, they'll definitely be left behind.

The Floater's bridge is smaller, but very similar to the Carrier's, except that there's a yellow [Beam] crystal positioned right beside the [Wind Shield] crystal below the captain's chair. Nohopu and Kurii, his beagle-headed female XO, aren't on the bridge anymore, so everything is completely quiet now.

The lights of the Floater can only reach a few hundred meters ahead, revealing nothing but white mist. The only sounds I can hear are those of the sleeping girls and the whistling wind coming from the elementals constantly blowing air into our sails.

Cloud Snakes are a notable danger in this area, so we're relying on the Floater's strong crystal light disrupting the monster's [Hide Presence] along with theirs and Alissa's [Sense Presence] detecting the monsters before they can attack.

Small fireflies start to appear, attracted to our crystal lights. These are manaflies, and if these cute bugs are around, then there could also be Ploms nearby. I tell the spirit elemental to check on our crystals every once in a while in case those mana-sucking rodents try to sneak into our hold again.

Oritiki spreads her wings and slowly floats up towards us. She stops right outside the bridge and asks, "How are you holding up? Not too scared of the Leviathan, are you?"

"As long as we keep our shields up, we seem to be safe," I calmly reply.

She smiles faintly. "Yeah, that's what makes the Leviathan so difficult to deal with. We can perfectly defend ourselves from it, but to actually kill one takes a lot more than that."

"If our shields go down, would you be able to defend us from both of them?" Alissa asks.

Oritiki nods gently and answers, "Sure, no problem. In case they try to attack, we can definitely give them a mortal wound, but it'd cost us most of our mana, so we'd only do that in an emergency…" She suddenly frowns, and her expression becomes serious. "Though, that albino's mirror is a bit of a problem."

"It can counter your… special attack?" I ask with a raised eyebrow.

"Partially. It seems to be more of a physical mirror than something… more 'abstract,' so it should still heat up if we unleash our [Beam]s at it, but it'd be a huge waste of our mana."

"If it learns how to deflect the [Beam] instead of scattering it, then we'll have a real problem," I say and point to the dark line burnt across the ship's deck.

Oritiki stares at the line in thought for a moment and says, "Yes, that's problematic. It seems that it'd be easier to just tire it our first with your dwarf's… special magic."

Alissa frowns slightly and says, "That could prove difficult since she has to maintain eye contact with the monster for it to work, and I believe that the albino won't be so easily lured into attacking us, right?"

Oritiki rubs her horn. "Hm… yes, I see. Perhaps she can stay on the Floater's bridge during the battle?" She turns to look at us.

"Then it would just stop attacking the Floater and attack us, instead, or even simply run away."

Oritiki's non-existent eyebrows knit in worry. "You're right, the albino is too smart to engage us long enough for that eye magic to work. Unless we enrage it…" She shakes her head. "Anyway, we should at least finish off the normal Leviathan; that'd be a massive blow to their strength."

"Do you think they have any monsters in reserve?" I ask.

She shakes her head. "They shouldn't. Before we crushed the Lancers, they should've sent any monsters they had in reserve, it'd be a complete blunder to not do so. I think that they only have the surviving Kite Dragons and disposable small monsters left."

"The albino did wait until the other Leviathan was wounded before joining the battle," Alissa comments.

"The blue Leviathan was probably trying to lure one of us away from the Carrier so that they could fight them two-on-one, but it seems that their plan failed spectacularly," Oritiki replies.

That's most likely because they didn't expect our ship to have [Wind Shield].

I nod and rub Alissa's ears in thought as I say, "So, we've already crushed them, and now, we're going in for the finisher."

"Exactly. Now you can see why we were so confident about this expedition," she says with a hint of pride in her smile.

At around 3:30 AM, two other horns arrive to replace Oritiki, and we wake up Roxanne and Hana to stand watch in our place. Alissa gives them some Tonique tea, and we drift off to sleep in our plate armor, which is even more uncomfortable than sleeping in our scale armor.

Today is the 18th.

-

Roxanne increased her [Water Magic] by 1 (now 1+29). Lina increased her [Throw] and [Cursing Magic] by 1 (now 4 and 10+5).

Also, today is Ciel's birthday. She's now twenty-two years old.

I call Aoi back into the tent with Yunia, then we surround Ciel and say in unison, "Congratulations, let this year be better than the last."

"Gih gih."

Ciel blushes and looks down, gushing with a smile.

I grab her hand and pull her towards me, then I immediately steal a tongue kiss. It doesn't last long because there's a line of eager women waiting to kiss her.

First up is Lina, obviously; then Alissa because she has a crush on my foxy lady; then Hana because she has to assert her dominance; then Roxanne, just because; then a lick from Aoi; and Yunia starts to seduce Ciel again by first kissing her hand, then staring deeply into her eyes with a gentle and sultry gaze.

"You age like Eia. The longer I spend with you, the further you let me see," Yunia says to Ciel in a deeper voice than normal, then kisses her lips.

"Uh… u-uhm… thank you…" Ciel says in a weak voice, stunned for a moment, then she starts chuckling.

I'll have to get Yunia to teach me how she does that.

"This isn't the most romantic place for a birthday, but we'll definitely compensate you accordingly," I say and give her hand a squeeze. She breaks out of Yunia's spell and turns to me. "Your gift will be that we allow you to ask anything from us once."

Yunia sends me a glance. She's not part of the [Bind] yet, so she's a bit concerned about what this "anything" might entail.

Ciel raises her eyebrows, then her gaze softens, and she looks around. "Hm… thank you, really, but I'll wait until we're in a better 'place' to claim my gift."

Lina scooches closer to Ciel, then grabs her hand and says, "For me, you don't have to wait. I'll always do whatever you need me to."

"Awn…" Ciel's heart bleeds a bit at that, and she gives Lina a tight hug. Their armor clinks as the plates rub against each other.

I call for a quick group hug, then we leave the tent.

We're up a little later than usual to compensate for the time we spent awake on watch.

Once we emerge, the Horns on the bridge bow respectfully and say that they have nothing to report; all they had to do was observe the golems during their watch.

We offer some breakfast to them, but they say that they'll eat the Chimeras' provisions so as to not burden ours, then they leave.

Ciel tells us that the Floater killed two Cloud Snakes during her watch. The Trinity Cannons are silent, so they only noticed that it had fired after they sensed the mana that was emitted.

The squirrel-headed captain and his beagle-headed XO woke up before us, so when we finish our breakfast, I request for them to recharge our ship. After a bit of delicate maneuvering, we align our ship with the Floater, then they recharge us on the fly. Our [Wind Shield] was drained quite a lot, but we only used about a quarter of its capacity. I'm really happy about how it's performing so far.

I can barely sense the mana of the bleeding Leviathan, but when I put my points in [Sense Mana], it becomes very noticeable.

Lina's Trivia: Someone who has a high-level in [Sense Mana] is called a "sniffer" since they can very accurately discern the "flavors" of mana. The Floater always has at least one of them on the bridge helping the pilot stay on track.

"This mist is starting to make me miss the High Forest," Yunia comments to Aoi as she stares wistfully at the endless white sea.

"Yeah, me too. Hunting Prowlers in the mist was always so intense; I miss it a bit. I wonder what made this mist, though," Alissa says through [Bind].

"It's not like the Eia mist in Escanso, this mist is purely physical," Yunia answers.

"That it doesn't dissipate under the sun tells us that its source is likely magical," Alissa says.

"That might just be right."

Yunia simply can't stand the line burnt across our deck and takes it upon herself to fix it with her [Nature Magic].

The morning quickly passes by, and we only encounter a few stray harpies that get instantly one-shot by Alissa. We set aside one for Aoi to eat while we harvest the chicken parts from the others. Buffalo wings are back on the menu, boys.

Preparing lunch in the mist is rather annoying since it makes the toasted bread for our soup get a bit too moist.

Islets start to appear nearby, and I completely lose the Leviathan's trail, but the sniffers can still sense it with some difficulty. The floating crystals in the islets interfere with their sensing a bit, but it's not enough to shake them off the trail.

A stray Stone Lancer forces us to turn on our [Wind Shield], so I use it to test the golems' reaction time and control over the enchantment. The results please me, and I believe that the golems are now ready to fly defensively during combat.

Some random Vengeful Spirits start to appear, but they're all easily dealt with. Their appearance is a sign that we've entered the "wilderness," which means that the strength and types of monsters here are unknown, so code yellow is given.

A few hours later, Gify suddenly shivers.

"Gih."

"A Leviathan is nearby," I report to the birds.

"You have your orders," Hihiriwa calmly responds.

Nohopu jumps out of his chair and exclaims, "Where?! Direction, distance, elevation?!"

"I don't know. My nature spirit only knows that it's nearby," I answer.

"Code orange, prepare for battle!" Nohopu orders and sits back down, then he starts tapping his clawed foot rapidly on the glass floor.

Oritiki ends her rest on the Floater and brings all the Horns back to our ship.

We spend a tense half-hour waiting. The reduced visibility is simply brutal on our nerves. Even though we know that [Wind Shield] will protect us, the tension of not knowing when the battle will start is still a burden on our minds.

The sniffer on the Floater's bridge is suddenly startled. "I smell Spirit magic, and it's not ours!" He exclaims.

"Leviathan?" Kurii asks.

He shakes his head. "No. It has a tinge of 'death' to it. It could be the Vengeful Spirits, and quite a lot of them."

He was right. A few minutes later, we see them, a swarm of Vengeful Spirits, and the albino Leviathan behind them, lazily swimming towards us. It blankly stares down directly at the Floater with its white eyes, but the intensity of its stare makes us all tense up.

Then we see it: the Spirits are running from the Leviathan; they're like anchovies spooked by a whale.

"It's trying to force us off its trail!" Nohopu angrily exclaims and clacks his bucked teeth loudly.

"The wounded Leviathan can't be far if the albino managed to corral all these Spirits here," Kurii says.

"Ignore the spirits and the Leviathan! Find that trail!" Nohopu orders, then he gets up and glares at the birds. "RYDERS, ORITIKI, CHA~RGE!"

The pilot pulls two levers all the way down, and the Floater's propellers spin at full power. A gust of wind hits us as their ship rapidly accelerates, leaving us behind.

"Full speed ahead!" I order the wind elementals, and they increase the amount of wind they blow into our sails.

"Surround the ship!" Oritiki orders her Horns.

"Ryder, ram the Leviathan! Oritiki, distract it from close range!" Nohopu orders. The comms box lights up with the "ram" command.

Fucking hell.

Gify hides inside my armor again and grumbles. The Leviathan's long-range spiritual attack is a nightmare for her.

Roxanne recharges the wind elementals with her mana while Ciel starts to help them guide the wind. Together, all of them start burning mana to boost our speed.

"Yunia, watch the mast in case it starts to break under the strain!" Ciel orders and Yunia obeys.

The Horns glow, and the Floater intensifies the light of its crystal, glowing so brightly that it damages the Spirits, who then become confused like headless chickens, not knowing which way they should run. The Floater could send a Spirit mana pulse to make them disperse, but that would wipe away the wounded Leviathan's mana trail.

The Floater swings around the Spirits in hopes of finding the trail while we charge the Leviathan head-on. It initially ignores us, but after we fly through the Spirits, it calmly turns its head to us and observes.

Its huge, long white body glows and is quickly covered in white flames. Its large eyes at the sides of its face seem to be more preoccupied with the Horns than our ship itself. It just stands there… menacingly. Waiting for us to make a move.

Alissa flaps the wings of our ship, and we all get ready for combat. We're just facing a big long snake about six times longer than our ship and nearly twice as wide. We'll be fine.

One of the monster's eyes follows the Floater, while the other follows Oritiki.

"The Leviathan is observing the Floater!" I report.

"Turn, fire, continue!" Nohopu immediately gives an order.

The Floater suddenly jerks and turns to the Leviathan almost instantly, then fires the [Beam] for a second. A mirror appears behind the Leviathan, scattering the Floater's attack.

"FIRE!" Oritiki bellows, and the Horns all point their glaives forward and fire their own [Beam]s.

Six small mirrors appear in front of the Leviathan and scatter the Horns' attack.

Wow.

"I knew it! Keep searching!" Nohopu exclaims.

The Leviathan's body suddenly jerks like a whip and stretches to the limit to smack us with its tail fin. It forces us a long way down while the Horns remain in place.

The Leviathan ignores them and swims towards the Floater to give it a slap, too.

"DON'T IGNORE US!" Oritiki taunts, and the wings of all Horns suddenly double in size. They all gain a huge burst of speed and chase after the Leviathan, easily catching up to it and managing to wound its tail fin.

The fin-slap almost makes us fall over from the sudden jerk, but we quickly recover and flap the wings of our ship while Ciel resumes blowing wind into the sails.

"Roxanne, prepare a big one! Lina, grab one of Rox's Sneeze-'n-Wheeze and a Decay gas flask," I order through [Bind].

The Leviathan growls at the Horns and turns around to engage them, but the not-Iron-Men can just tank the slap due to their ridiculous defenses. They're so well protected that not even its Fay Fire can hurt them.

The Floater jerks again and fires a [Beam], then continues circling. The mirror instantly moves to block it and scatters the attack again.

"Trinity Cannons! Fire [Earth Bullet]s at the mirror! Fusillade!" Nohopu orders. The Floater only has a few Cannons, so they don't manage to immediately break the mirror apart.

The Horns stick to the Leviathan's tail and start dicing it into chunks. The monster roars in anger, and the intensity of the ethereal flames doubles, forcing the Horns to disengage.

The Leviathan turns to the Floater again, and we enter firing range. I drop our shields for Roxanne to release an [Ice Lance] as thick as her body.

It pierces the monster's thick skin, and it grunts in pain, but the lance immediately starts to disintegrate. It turns towards us in anger, and Lina throws the flasks as hard as she can.

Alissa fires an arrow, and it breaks the flasks right in front of the Leviathan as it charges forward. The cloud of allergens and decay enters its nose and coats its eyes. Now, we wait.

The Leviathan immediately slaps at us again, forcing me to reactivate [Wind Shield]. Then, one of the Horns barrels into the mirror, finally shattering it, and [Beam]s from all directions fire upon the albino monster.

A bunch of mirror fragments gather together to deflect the [Beam] from the Floater, while the rest of them deflect the ones from the Horns.

Motherfucking hell! This little shit is tenacious!

"Yunia! Prepare [Chain Life]!" I order. Two of the beams leave burnt lines on our ship, and one of them even wounds a wind elemental, so I yell at Nohopu's bird, "Watch it! It's deflecting the spells towards us!"

The mirror fragments disperse into dust, then the monster suddenly closes its eyes and writhes about in agony. Its white, ethereal flames cover its face, then it instantly calms down.

The flasks worked, but the fucker just fucking cleansed itself!

Now free of the allergens, it immediately turns around and charges towards the Floater.

The squirrel captain slams his fist down against his gaudy chair in frustration. "Just what is that endurance?!"

"FOUND IT! EIGHTY DEGREES EAST!" The sniffer suddenly screams.

"PREPARE [DISCHARGE] AND RAM IIII~T!" Nohopu bellows.

"Hold back on your magic! You'll give away that you've already found the trail if you engage it fully!" Hihiriwa warns Nohopu.

"Understood! Belay the [Discharge]!" Kurii orders.

"Charge the mana, but don't fire! Show it that we're anxious to strike!" Nohopu orders.

"I can hold it in place for a moment with our magic! Prepare a synchronized strike!" I yell at the birds.

"Prepare a synchronized strike! On Ryder's orders!" Hihiriwa relays.

The Leviathan slaps the Floater on its side, but the ship turns its heading towards the fin at the last moment and absorbs most of the shock so that it doesn't get thrown away. It immediately faces forward again and slams against the Leviathan's face.

They wage a contest of strength as they push against each other, but the Floater is losing as it gets pushed back

"Celestial Horns in position!" Ririmu relays.

"READY!" Yunia yells.

"NOW!" I scream.

"ATTACK!" Hihiriwa relays.

"FIRE!" Nohopu and Oritiki scream at the same time.

The Leviathan freezes, and a large [Beam] stabs at its face, then smaller ones from all directions pierce into the rest of it. Before it can even create the mirror, [Discharge] is unleashed upon all of its body, giving us another second to wound it more deeply.

"UROOOOOOO~!" It roars in rage and slaps the Floater away. Half of the monster's face is severely burned, now just a black char, and one of its eyes is completely gone. Seven black char lines are spread along its body, penetrating deep past its transparent skin. Other wounds, caused by the Trinity Cannons and the girls, make it bleed glowing, white blood.

It suddenly turns upwards and starts to hastily swim away, trying to escape.

"NOO! WE CAN KILL I~T! Nohopu screams and stands up.

"No, we can't! It's too tiring for my wife!" I exclaim and see Yunia being supported by Hana due to her exhaustion.

Kurii grabs Nohopu's arm, and he flinches, then he grits his teeth and sits back down.

"The blue Leviathan is a priority! Don't chase after the albino, we have time to kill it later!" Hihiriwa angrily yells.

"Yes, Marshall!" Nohopu angrily responds.

"Follow the trail, NOW!" Hihiriwa orders, and nobody has anything to add.

We fly in the direction the sniffer had mentioned, but our battle scattered a lot of mana, so it takes them a few minutes to pick up the wounded Leviathan's mana trail again. An hour later, we pass by an islet and see a huge droplet of glowing blue blood on it, confirming that we're on the right track.

Soon after, a massive outline appears and slowly reveals itself from within the mist. The Floater slows down until it stops completely, and we all gaze at the sight in amazement. A massive gray stone gate stands before us. The patterns of small glowing lights all over it tells us that it's still active, and the trail of blue blood staining it is evidence that the wounded Leviathan has crossed through it.

"Hihiriwa, we've found an abandoned fortress…" Nohopu solemnly relays.

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Chapter 79: Fortress - Part 1

Oritiki flies over to our ship and floats beside the bridge.

"Are you sure that the Leviathan is inside?" Kaata grunts a question.

"No, but both the mana trail and the blood suggest that it is," Kurii answers.

The panda-man crosses his arms and grumbles, "They'd need something more dexterous than harpies to operate a fortress."

"The door is closed? You can't see any other entrances?" Hihiriwa asks.

"The paint on the fortress is gone, but we can see the lights on the main gate telling us that it's still powered and active," Kurii answers.

"Find a way in, but quietly. If the Leviathan is there, you don't want to scare it away," Hihiriwa orders.

"Stealth isn't our specialty, Marshall," Nohopu responds with a grumble.

"You have all the necessary tools for this," Hihiriwa affirms, slightly annoyed.

"The albino might come back at any time. We don't have the time to slowly sneak in," Kurii adds.

"You're free to go as far as you feel is reasonable," Hihiriwa responds, sounding like he's relenting a little.

"How can we even get inside it quietly?" Nohopu asks.

"We could open a hole through a cannon port," Oritiki suggests.

The sniffer whispers something to Kurii. "Only the gate seal seems to be active, so that might work," she says.

"Kurii, take four men and help Oritiki. Take the [Divine Lance] with you," Nohopu orders.

The beagle-headed woman gets up from her seat and bows, "Yes, sir!" Then she turns around and quickly leaves the bridge.

"I'll participate, too. I have [Gate], so we can instantly teleport out if necessary," I say.

Oritiki nods and replies, "I'll take two of my men with me. The others will stay here to protect your ship." Then she flies away.

"You're leaving me here?" Alissa questions, but she already knows the answer.

"You're the only other one of us who can pilot," I answer with a hint of sadness in my expression.

"The golems can pilot defensively." She holds back her pout, keeping her expression neutral.

True… I guess it's fine to put some trust in them.

"Hm… you'll have to carry Roxanne, then," I reply.

She brightens a little. "Can I carry both of you?"

"Wouldn't that tire you out?"

She shakes her head gently. "We haven't been exhausting ourselves lately, so I have lots of energy now."

"Hm… fine." I nod confidently, then I jump down to the deck and land with [Telekinesis]. I unsummon all the wind elementals and announce, "Roxanne, Yunia, I need you both with me. We're sneaking into the fortress."

"Understood," Yunia says earnestly, while Roxanne just smiles and nods.

I walk up to my elven princess, then I hold her hand and ask, "How are you doing, Yunia? That [Chain Life] seemed to have taken a lot out of you, but I'll need you to use [Silence] on us and potentially use [Chain Life] on the Leviathan again." I pull off her gauntlet and caress her delicate hand with a subtle soul touch.

The corners of her lips curl up into a subtle smile, and she answers, "I'm doing fine. It's tiring to hold back such a huge beast, but I can do it again at least one more time before I'd need to rest."

I kiss her hand and let it go, then I turn to Roxanne. "We'll need you to conserve your mana. We might have to use [Explosion] to finish off the Leviathan."

She nods silently, then stores her staff in her [Item Box] and skips towards me. I hug her waist, and she kisses my forehead, then she giggles girlishly.

I turn to Alissa and Yunia and say, "Both of you, wait here. I'll open a [Gate] to the deck here when we land again." Then I turn to Ciel. "You're in charge now, my angel."

She mockingly salutes me in the imperial way and exclaims, "Yes, sir!" Then she smiles and adds in a soft voice, "Be safe, all of you."

"Gih," Gify chirps and waves her claws from Lina's shoulder. No way is she getting close to that Leviathan again, wounded or not.

Roxanne summons her bat wings and holds her wide-brimmed hat in place, then I use [Telekinesis] to lower our gravity, blow a kiss towards Ciel, and jump. Roxanne guides our flight, so I just sit back and let the megalophobia sink in as the huge black wall gets closer and closer. Just the gate alone seems to be at least three times as wide as the Winch, so the fortress itself must be absolutely massive. If only there wasn't this mist blocking our view…

We fly to one the Horns who's waiting for us, and he guides us to Oritiki.

The mist thins out as we get closer, allowing us to see the fortress with increased detail. The black stone is slimy and mossy, but in a few spots, we can see the caked remains of a coat of paint. This whole fortress must've one day been fully painted in the usual Chimeric Renaissance style.

The fortress' walls continue deep into the mist, but they follow a slight inward curve in every direction, so I assume that its true shape is spherical. Perhaps it's as big as the Shell around Escanso's castle.

We're taken towards the right of the gate, and I start to discern protrusions equally spaced along the wall: thick square metal plates, each about a meter and a half wide. Oritiki twinkles her armor's glow right beside one of them as a beacon for us.

We stop in the air right in front of the slimy old metal plate and observe it carefully. Rust seems to have formed over it, but it's mostly covered in a dark slime, almost camouflaging it with the black stone of the wall.

"So, how are we going to open this?" I ask.

"[Beam], obviously," Oritiki replies and raises her glaive.

"Do you know the locking mechanism? I think I might be able to open it."

I can't see her expression behind her helmet, but she takes a second to respond, "Hm? Can you do it faster than I can melt it down? It should only take us a few minutes to cut through this plate."

"It depends on how complicated the lock is."

"Well, see these bolts?" She points to one of the four bolts, each at one corner of the plate. "You need to remove the pin locking them in place, then push them in, and the plate will slide down by itself, though we'll likely have to force it down since everything is slimy and full of moss. How are you going to take the pin out from here on the outside? Spirit elementals don't have the strength for that."

"There's no defensive enchantments against spirits, right?"

"None that I've sensed, no."

I could try to use "Items" to make this fortress disappear, but I don't think it'd be worth it if I'd have to then deal with the Chimeras' questions afterwards. But, I still have another miraculous tool I could use, and it might even earn myself some more respect with Oritiki.

I summon a spirit elemental and tell it to show me the pins. While it explores, I have a short discussion with the girls about what I'm going to do.

"She'll think that you're a noble," Yunia responds.

"But we haven't explicitly denied that we are," I say through [Bind].

"I approve of this idea. Showing her this power will make them more impressed, and it won't give anyone an advantage over us since it's hardly something pivotal in combat," Ciel says.

"I wanted to show them [Explosion] since they'd start to fear us because of it, but this is fine, too," Roxanne adds.

Yunia shrugs. "I approve, too. Do as you wish."

Alissa, Lina, Hana, and Aoi have similar opinions to Roxanne, so they also agree.

Roxanne floats us closer to the plate while I shuffle my points around. By unassigning most of my points in combat and magic skills that aren't immediately essential, I manage to get [Godly Language] up to 100.

I touch the plate and focus on the spirit elemental's vision. I recreate the four pins in my mind, then I imagine them all being slowly pulled out until they fall and clank loudly on the floor.

"Unlock," I whisper with [Godly Language].

I feel an odd ripple in reality that fills me with a primordial fear that I've just "broken" something, but no nausea or confusion comes with it like it did the first time I used this skill in this way. In the blink of an eye, the ripple is gone, and we hear a muffled clanking as four heavy pins fall down on the floor.

Oritiki and the other Horn stare at us, their arms hanging limply beside their bodies.

Was that too much?

"Are you a Divine…?" Oritiki asks with a faint voice.

Heh, a little more than I expected, but this is fine, too.

"I'm a noble from Domum, and [Godly Language] isn't exclusive to the Chimeras," I lie soberly with a frown.

Oritiki twitches in surprise, then lowers her head for a second as she says, "Oh! Apologies… I'd forgotten that land-dwellers could learn it, too."

The other Horn is silent, but he's observing us intensely.

"I prefer not to rely on my background, so I don't tell others about it, but you must've had some suspicions about my origin, correct?" I question with a slight smirk.

She nods. "Yes, we did, especially about your elven wife."

"I'd prefer if things remain as they've been so far." I push us away from the plate. "Now, can you open this for us?"

Oritiki signals to the other Horn, and he floats closer to the plate. With a grunt of effort, he starts to push it down, and we hear the sounds of metal grinding against stone.

A few seconds later, another Horn appears, followed by four winged soldiers with Kurii and the sniffer as passengers on a Wasp.

"Oh, you already got it open?" Kurii asks, surprised. She's wearing a set of Kite Dragon scale armor, different from the usual dark green jumpsuit that most of the Chimeras soldiers wear or the dark leather armor of the winged soldiers.

The second Horn helps the first one, and they manage to push the plate down, releasing a gust of stale and dusty air from the inside of the fortress.

Oritiki enters the room and illuminates it, revealing a "fuck you"-sized cannon that seems similar to the Trinity Cannon. In its revolver container, there are five gems thicker than Ciel's thighs, each about half a meter wide.

I want to yoink one of these cannons so bad…

We follow Oritiki and slowly pour into the room. Kurii and the sniffer disembark and the Wasp flies away. Roxanne lets out a cute sneeze as we land, but then Kurii makes such a heart-stoppingly adorable squeak that we all turn to look at her.

"That was a sneeze…?" I question her with a smirk.

"Apologies…" She mumbles awkwardly and lowers her head. If her face wasn't furred, she'd be blushing for sure.

I smile wryly and open a [Gate] for the girls. Fox-Alissa and Yunia immediately cross through, then Roxanne and I mount my Heavenly Fluffy Fox. The winged soldiers whisper among themselves in wonder while staring at Alissa. Not many Chimeras should've had any contact with wereanimals before.

"Yunia can cast [Silence], and I have [Quiet Steps] and [Quiet Action], but what about the rest of you? How good are you at sneaking?" Alissa asks.

"We can float, though that costs a small amount of mana to maintain," Oritiki says.

"Same for us," a winged soldier replies.

All eyes turn to Kurii and the fluffy kiwi-headed sniffer.

"I have [Quiet Steps], but it'll be useless with this armor on," Kurii says with a frown.

"I have neither skill…" The sniffer stiffly responds.

"We can carry them," a winged soldier suggests.

"I can use my [Silence] on both of them," Yunia adds.

"Oh, that'd be wonderful. Please do so," Kurii says and gives her a short bow.

Yunia is working so hard; we'll have to give her some extra time to rest soon.

We establish a few hand signs since Kurii and Yunia won't be able to hear anything due to [Silence].

We put on our helmets and draw our weapons, then we move out of the room and enter a pitch-black corridor of moss-stained concrete. It's completely silent, making me feel uneasy at even taking a single step since any sound echoes far and wide. Once every minute or so, we hear a faint clanking coming from very far away.

This darkness is rather bad for us because monsters will be able to notice our lights long before we can see them. Alissa can sense most monsters, but if we're unlucky, something that can hide its presence might notice us before we can see it, and if it's smart, it'll raise an alarm.

The only things we have that can properly see in the dark are Hollys and spirit elementals, but the latter has pretty bad vision overall, so the Hollys are much more useful in this situation. I don't want to summon a monster in front of the Chimeras, so I summon a spirit elemental at the same time as I summon a Holly.

The spirit elemental will lead a dozen meters ahead of us as bait, the Holly will follow closely behind it as our eyes, and Alissa will be at the forward edge of Oritiki's faint light so that we can properly scout ahead.

It's kind of creepy having the Horns and the winged soldiers slowly floating along behind us without even making a single sound.

We only make it a few steps forward before we're forced to take a different route because Alissa detected a decayed Living Armor coming down the corridor. If there's one, then there's sure to be many more, so the Armors are probably the source of that distant clanking.

This section seems to be a small labyrinth filled with murder holes. There are quite a lot of Living Armors roaming these corridors, so it takes us over ten minutes to find the exit, but it's being guarded by an unknown black slime monster. It's about as tall as the door and as wide as four Oritikis. Quite massive.

Yunia cancels [Silence], then I relay the description of the slime to the others and ask, "Alright, ideas on how we should deal with it?"

"No fighting in melee," Kurii immediately answers, then turns to Oritiki. "Your [Beam] will likely vaporize it and release a strong odor, and if we cast magic, the mana might awaken it."

The Horns and Kurii turn to Roxanne, who stiffens from the attention.

"I've seen you cast [Ice Lance]s like you're using a magic tool," Oritiki says.

"She'd release a large amount of mana that a monster could detect," Yunia says.

"I think it's best if we lure it away," I suggest and tap Alissa's neck. "She has a spell that can do that."

"Very well, let's try that," Kurii replies.

Roxanne dismounts, then Alissa and I circle around the area to get to the other end of the corridor. She does the same thing we did outside Hihiriwa's private quarters and casts [Mesmerizing Butterflies], then peeks it out around the corner little by little, carefully attracting the attention of the slime.

It starts to twitch, then it extends some twitching tendrils towards us in a creepy display of curiosity. It eventually starts to roll forward, so Alissa leaves the butterfly there, and we run back around before it can see our [Spirit Light]s.

We meet up with the others, and Yunia casts [Silence] again, then we dash towards the double doors, and Alissa ends her spell. Yunia opens the doors without making a sound, and we immediately cross through them, then we stop and look around.

We're now in a wide and tall hangar where a derelict Floater is parked.

"There are monsters inside the wreck," Alissa says through [Bind], and I make the signal for "monsters." Everyone nods in response, and we give the Floater a wide berth as we make our way north.

Kurii points to the north-western door of the hanger and makes the sign for "trail." The monsters inside the Floater don't seem to be moving, so we cross through the hangar without a problem and enter into another. This one has lots of piles of rubbish scattered around on the floor, but no monsters, fortunately.

We continue west, and just as we reach the middle of the hangar, a Living Armor suddenly appears at the south-western entrance. I make the sign for "light," and Oritiki immediately extinguishes her faint glow.

We all stand still in the complete darkness, waiting for the Living Armor to pass. It stumbles around, clanking loudly with each step, seemingly almost blind in the darkness, then it trips into a pile of rubbish and stays there, but it's not dead.

"Well… that's a problem…" I comment through [Bind].

"I could try the butterflies again," Alissa suggests.

"Hm… I don't want you to waste your mana on this."

"It's not like we need light to walk. Wolfy, you have a rope, right?" Roxanne asks.

"Right. Let me try that…"

I pull out a rope and walk over to Oritiki.

"Everyone, grab this rope, and I'll guide you," I whisper, then I grab her hand and guide it to the middle of the rope.

"Aren't you resourceful," Oritiki whispers back, and I smile wryly.

I walk over to Yunia and hand her one end of the rope. Kurii and the sniffer are holding her shoulder for safety, so I just guide it into their hands.

With everyone ready, Alissa quietly walks forward, and we carefully continue crossing through the hangar.

We reach the door at the north-east corner of the hangar, and Alissa squeezes everything she can out of her [Quiet Action] to not make the door creak as she pushes it open with her snout. She immediately smells blood on the other side.

The Holly and the spirit elemental enter the next room first, and I let out an internal "wow" through [Bind] as I take in the sights. I can see a massive tunnel and the equally massive gate that we saw from the outside. Periodic lights along the tunnel indicate a path that leads deeper into the fortress, and the glowing blue blood of the Leviathan is evidence that it did pass through here. Unfortunately, the mana-rich blood has already attracted monsters, which are silently fighting for every last drop.

A mix between a bat and a sugar-glider desperately tries to lick up the faint streaks of blue blood off the concrete floor. Their faces are ugly like a bat's, they have a blanket-length furred wing membrane between their legs and arms, and they don't seem to have claws at the end of their long and thin fingers, but the spirit elemental can clearly see that they just have transparent [Soul Blade]s, instead.

A full dozen of them are spread along the entire tunnel, angrily eyeing their competitors. Some of them are even committing cannibalism, feeding on the blood of their fellow monsters that they've killed to defend their drop of Leviathan blood.

"Stop, I think these monsters can see in the dark," I say to Alissa through [Bind]. "Monsters ahead," I whisper to Oritiki.

Alissa walks us back to Yunia, then I boop my blind elf's nose, and she dispels [Silence].

"This is a stupid signal," she whispers.

I ignore her and say, "Kurii, there's a tunnel ahead, but there's also monsters on the way."

She clicks her tongue and anxiously responds, "We're wasting too much time sneaking around. We need to get past these monsters as fast as we can."

"They don't seem to be that smart, so maybe we can rush them," I suggest.

"It's time for us to get to work," Oritiki whispers, and I can hear the smile in her voice.

"What kind of monsters are in there?" Kurii asks, and I describe them.

"Alright, we'll deal with them," Oritiki whispers confidently, then she turns to the winged soldiers. "You'll fight with us while the Ryders protect Kurii."

Kurii and I nod, then Roxanne and I dismount from Alissa.

"We're ready," I whisper.

"Alright, let's go!" Oritiki exclaims, then Alissa shifts back into her humanoid form while we all cast [Spirit Light] and the Horns make their armor glow.

An arrow and an [Ice Lance] fly towards the collapsed Living Armor, then the Horns burst through the doors and dart towards the bat monsters with the winged soldiers following close behind them.

Well, we were going to drop our stealth act at some point, anyway…

Kurii draws a heavy saber and rushes out of the hangar.

I have a feeling that she doesn't actually need that much protection.

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Chapter 79: Fortress - Part 2

The bat monsters hiss threateningly. They spread their arms and legs, and a magical wind blows towards their bodies, stretching their patagia and sending them flying upwards.

We cross through the double doors and run north along the slimy walkway. The Horns cleave the monsters in half with their glaives while the winged soldiers skewer any that manage to dodge.

A random Living Armor gets up off the floor and blocks our way. It's wearing a decayed set of scale armor, which exposes the petrified remains of a Chimera underneath it.

It lifts a broken spear and stabs at Kurii. She meets it with her saber and cuts through the shaft, then she follows up with another strike as mana escapes her body, and the Living Armor is violently forced to the ground. That was definitely a [Telekinesis]-powered strike.

Alissa fires arrows at the distracted bat monsters, supporting the winged soldiers who aren't able to immediately finish off their opponents. Kurii and Yunia clear the Living Armors out of the way, which are too old and sluggish to pose us any threat. I cover the rear, but I mostly focus on guiding Alissa whenever something gets too close to our group. The sniffer can defend himself, but most of his skill points are in [Sense Mana], so we shouldn't depend on him in a fight.

Everyone avoids using too much magic to keep any mana-sensitive monsters from noticing us. Yunia molds [Silence] so that it wraps only around our feet, nullifying most of the noise that we're making.

All of the now named Sugar Bats in the corridor gather and try to swarm the Horns, but fighting against superior numbers is their specialty, so they retreat while continuing to kill the monsters without any fluster. They also have [Wind Shield] on their gauntlets, so they can't be overpowered that easily. The winged soldiers are wary of being overwhelmed, so they avoid getting too close to the Horns and instead focus on killing any stragglers.

We pass by a few corridors which are just as huge as this one, through which, we see hangar upon hangar as far as our [Spirit Lights] can reach. The layout seems to simply be a number of rings connected by corridors, which makes me wonder how many ships could fit in here.

The Horns finish off the Sugar Bats after a few minutes, and things become quiet. We all dim our lights to avoid attracting anything else, then a Holly spots some goblin-like creatures skulking towards the corpses. They seem more feral and Gollum-like than the goblins I've seen.

I tell them what I can see, and Kurii comments, "Goblins…? How rare."

"Oh… those giant black slimes are coming too, let's hurry up," I say, and we run faster through the corridor.

The feral goblins start eating the bodies of the Sugar Bats, and their milky white eyes squint as they look towards us. I think they might be sensitive to light, so I throw a [Spirit Light] behind us, and that seems to temporarily stop them from following us. The chonky black slimes extend their tendrils ridiculously far and start to fight the goblins, further distracting them from following us.

Soon after, we reach the end of the corridor, though not the end of the path forward. Up ahead, beyond a suspiciously large puddle of Leviathan blood, we see a wall with a large hole in the middle which is definitely big enough to fit even the albino.

It looks like the concrete wall has melted through, forming a messy puddle of fused glass and rock below the hole. Beyond it, we see small rooms full of furniture and ashes, which we assume were the living quarters of this station's crew. All this damage seems consistent with the Leviathan's Fay Fire.

We stop in front of the hole and notice that it curves upwards. It ends at the floor above, and a faint light reveals the green of plants and overgrowth around that exit. It appears that the hole leads into a wide open room with faint illumination.

"That could be the farming floor," Kurii comments.

"Let's snuff out our lights and let Alissa go in first to explore," I suggest.

Oritiki and Kurii nod, and we go dark. The glowing blue blood and the faint light from the hole creates a creepy atmosphere with just enough illumination for Alissa to make out the way through.

She deftly starts to climb upwards. The melted stone makes a pretty good ramp to climb up, and the mixed texture of it gives her boots a solid footing.

Alissa quickly reaches the midway point, then she hears some faint grumbling and screeching getting closer to her. She casts [Ignorance] on herself, then she rushes up to the end, the Holly and the spirit elemental following closely behind her.

She pokes her head out of the hole and sees that she's in the middle of a ruined greenhouse with a rusted metal frame, broken opaque white glass, and wild plants growing everywhere. The actual ceiling is quite high, but it's not a dome, so perhaps there's still a floor above this one. Rough-looking crystal lights haphazardly spaced on the ceiling faintly illuminate the area, so there must be someone maintaining them, just not very well.

Alissa jumps into a patch of tall grass and hides, then signals for the summons to scout from above.

They obey and carefully peek up from behind the ruins. They're in the south section of the farming floor, surrounded all around by a few dozen rows of equally ruined greenhouses that cover about one-fourth of the entire floor. In the center, there's a huge cylinder of concrete that reaches the ceiling, so that must be where the stairs are. To the west, there's nothing but overgrown plants and tall grass. And to the east, there's a clearing where a strong spotlight shines down. Throughout that area, dozens of tall, slender goblins work on farms, chanting their own magic to help the plants grow so fast it's visibly noticeable, then harvesting them when they're ready. They work restlessly, excessively spending mana on their growth spells.

Beyond the clearing, there's a hulking mass in the darkness, but the Holly sees it clearly: it's the wounded Leviathan curled around itself. Its massive body slowly heaves up and down with each deep breath, its wounds have been dressed with long stretches of damp cloth, and many of the slender goblins are gathered around it while chanting magic.

I relay everything I'm seeing to the others.

"There are way too many," Yunia says with a frown on her beautiful face.

Oritiki crosses her arms and says, "Fighting the Leviathan and those monsters will be complicated. We could try to unleash our full [Beam]s at it from a distance."

I shake my head and reply, "That'd leave our ship more vulnerable without you there to protect it. We still have a chance to save mana by sneaking in closer to it."

Kurii nods and says, "I'd also prefer to leave that as a last resort. The [Divine Lance] will definitely be enough to kill it, but we'll need to be closer to use it."

"We'll have to get past dozens of these slender goblins, and who knows how many more of them are nearby," Oritiki says, sounding worried.

"These are Hobgoblins," Alissa says through [Bind].

I relay, "Alissa says that they're called Hobgoblins, and they're apparently much more magically capable than the typical goblin."

"Can you handle them all if we're discovered?" Yunia asks Oritiki.

"Most likely. Though, it'll be difficult to do that while also protecting you from the Leviathan at the same time," she calmly answers.

"Stay close to me since I can use [Gate] to pull us out in case… shit happens," I say and smile wryly, holding myself back from using a saying by the God of Luck.

"Depending on the number, Wolf should be-…"

My attention is drawn away from Yunia's words by the spirit elemental going on high alert. A sluggishness suddenly affects both it and the Holly as their bodies instantly turn cold, and their souls are disturbed.

The Holly can't flap its small bat wings fast enough anymore, so it plummets towards Alissa like a rock, but the spirit elemental is trapped in place, almost completely unable to move. Its gaze slowly turns around and makes out the outline of a person completely covered in something black that looks like a mix of smoke and cloth. It wields a menacing frost greatsword with one hand as if it were made of paper.

I unsummon the elemental, and Alissa runs out of the greenhouse with the Holly in hand. The approaching Hobgoblins growl as they hear the rustling, but they don't manage to spot her, then they start running towards the hole.

I summon another spirit elemental and order it to support Alissa. She needs something that can see the Wraith if she wants to lose it.

"Wow… instant summoning," a winged soldier comments.

"Alissa was discovered by a Frost Wraith, and there's a patrol of Hobgoblins coming," I say.

"How many?" Yunia asks.

"Six."

She nods confidently. "I can [Silence] them all while the Horns finish them."

"We'll continue with our stealth approach and react accordingly," Kurii says, and we nod.

"Hug me, both of you," I say to Yunia and Roxanne, then we fly up the hole with [Telekinesis] and Roxanne's bat wings. The Horns follow close behind us, and the winged soldiers carry Kurii and the sniffer.

Alissa silently runs through multiple greenhouses and hides under a table. The Wraith's vision is specialized in finding other living beings, but its range is short, and it can't see through solid matter, so she can easily hide from it. We'll just have to hope that it doesn't decide to alert other monsters.

The Hobgoblins reach the hole and hesitate for a moment as they grumble between themselves, then they jump in. I have no idea why they're coming this way, but it's convenient for us.

Yunia spreads her [Silence] ahead and makes a hand signal, then the Horns dash forward and silently take care of the patrol.

The Hobgoblins are about the size of a human, but they're much thinner than us. Their skin tones vary between all colors of the rainbow, but they're always rather pale, and their faces are surprisingly… not ugly. The delicate curves of their cheeks, jaws, and brows make them look almost elven, but I'd never tell Yunia that. They wear some really rough leather and pelts while their weapons are ancient and Chimeric in origin, so it's unlikely that they're breeder-types.

I store their bodies in my "Items," and we continue on.

Yunia, the Horns, and I cast [Spirit Eyes], then we jump up out of the hole and search for the Wraith.

"It's not here. We have to keep moving," Oritiki whispers after a few seconds of scanning our surroundings.

Alissa meets up with us, and we continue towards the Leviathan.

We can't risk another Wraith discovering us, so we keep the Holly low while we scan the area for hostile spirits.

I see a hint of light blue at the corner ahead and signal for us to stop. Oritiki glides a bit to the side and spots a Wraith simply floating still while slowly looking around. Perhaps it's a sentry.

"Let me deal with it," Oritiki whispers, and we nod.

She silently floats forward, then the Wraith finally notices her and summons its ice greatsword, but it can't even properly block her attack. Her glaive slices through the greatsword as if it were made of paper, then her blade sinks into the Wraith's face repeatedly. After a few blows, it lets out a shrill hiss, then vanishes in a puff of smoke.

Spirit monsters tend to be very weak if they can't accomplish a surprise attack.

We continue on and reach the end of the greenhouses. Ahead of us, there are only wild plants and tall grass. The Horns and the winged soldiers will have to walk since, otherwise, their wings would disturb the foliage too much.

We rush into the grass and sneak around the clearing, aiming for the Leviathan.

Alissa hears the Hobgoblins yelling at each other, and we tense up. They're becoming agitated, and it's probably because of us.

Yunia sees something and tells us to stop, then she spots four Wraiths coming our way, and our blood runs cold before they even get close to us. We can't move, or they'll see the foliage around us shifting, if they haven't already.

"Wait until the last moment," Oritiki whispers nervously.

"I'm feeling rather useless," Roxanne comments through [Bind].

"Shush. You're the big DPS most of the time. Let others shine every once in a while," I respond with a smirk.

"It feels odd, but I have a good hunch about what 'DPS' means."

The Wraiths get within ten meters of us, and their glow becomes perfectly visible. They're about to spot us.

"Now!" Oritiki whisper-shouts.

Alissa can't see the Wraiths, so I guide her aim. She draws and releases a [Mana Arrow], then immediately dispels it as soon as it pierces a Wraith.

We hear a loud hissing, and my whole body starts shaking from a sudden deep coldness as something "foreign" enters my heart, which I promptly start to fight off, then the Horns and Yunia rush towards the Wraiths.

They leap out of the grass and bring their weapons down on the spirit monsters. Their glaives silently cut through the ice greatswords, then they violently stab into them repeatedly. Yunia's longsword strikes down a greatsword, then another [Mana Arrow] pierces the Wraith, and it staggers, allowing Yunia to maneuver behind its guard and wound it with [Soul Blade].

The battle is very short, but it still lasts long enough to stir the Hobgoblins. The Holly peeks up above the foliage and sees them scrambling and armoring themselves, but they don't come towards us. Two groups of ten leave the clearing and head towards the hole while the rest of them take defensive positions around the farms.

"They've realized that the patrol we killed hasn't come back yet," I whisper.

"Our time is running out, let's go," Kurii responds.

Gify shivers on Lina's shoulder, then a long, deep roar resonates through the air, chilling everyone's hearts. A second later, it reaches us inside the fortress, and the Hobgoblins freeze for a moment.

Chaos suddenly erupts as all the farmers abandon what they're doing and armor themselves up.

"Code orange!" Nohopu yells.

"Wait! Can they use the fortress' cannons…?" Ciel asks the bird on the bridge.

Nohopu hesitates for a moment, then he yells again, "Code black! Retreat from the fortress!"

We hear loud footsteps and grumbling coming from behind us, and see Hobgoblins coming out of the concrete cylinder, running towards the farms. They'll find us if we don't hurry.

"Enough sneaking, RUN!" Kurii exclaims, and we make a beeline towards the Leviathan.

We start to be able to see the hulking mass from behind the tall grass, then it raises its massive head, and its wounded transparent body starts to glow its usual blue. The Hobgoblins healing it growl and yell, then they start to disperse.

It looks towards the hole, then it spreads its wings to take flight.

"WE'LL STOP IT!" Oritiki yells, then the Horns dart out of the grass and start to shine like stars, blinding all the monsters nearby.

"ROXANNE!" I yell.

She gathers her mana for just a second and casts, "[EXPLOSION]!"

The Leviathan roars in pain as one of its large fins is blown off at the base, spreading glowing blue blood everywhere. The Fay Flames are relit, and it turns its blank blue eyes towards us.

"GRAAAH!"

"SHAA!"

"SHUUNAAA!"

The Hobgoblins scream in their own language, then they point their fingers towards us.

The three Horns crash against the Leviathan's face, pushing it away almost as if it got punched.

"I NEED TO GET CLOSER!" Kurii yells.

I run up to her and yell, "Hold on to me!" Then I sweep her feet off the ground and cast [Rush].

The albino Leviathan suddenly appears before the ships outside. Half of its face charred black, its white body filled with scars, and it’s one good eye staring intensely at the Floater. It immediately slaps it back towards the fortress, then turns to our ship.

"DOWN!" Ciel yells, and the golems obey. The Leviathan slaps our ship, but it's only a glancing blow that just sends them down instead of back.

The blades of grass and leaves of the bushes slap against mine and Kurii's armor, making it hard to see where I'm going. Alissa lets go of the Holly, and it takes flight, allowing us to see the entire battlefield again, then she turns into a fox, and Roxanne and Yunia mount her. The winged soldiers take flight and follow us, staying low to avoid being targeted.

Lina casts all the [Cursing Magic] she can, and the albino hesitates for a moment, then it starts to attack her spirit like last time.

Roxanne gathers her mana, and the blue Leviathan turns to face her.

"FOUL BEAST! DON'T YOU DARE IGNORE ME!" Oritiki bellows a taunt.

Its focus returns to her as it tries to slap her with its tail fin, but it's movement is sluggish, allowing her to easily dodge it. Its wounds open up, and it starts to bleed profusely again.

A shower of crude [Fire Arrow]s and real arrows fly towards the Horns, forcing them to reduce the intensity of their attack.

The blue Leviathan retreats into the clearing, then it floats above the mass of Hobgoblins, clearly waiting for the Horns.

The Horns and the charging Floater force the albino to stop attacking Lina, so it slaps the Floater back again.

"[EXPLOSION~]!" Roxanne casts. The wary Leviathan tries to dodge, but she wasn't aiming for its body, ensuring that another fin is blown off. It roars in pain and anger, but it doesn't charge out of the clearing.

The albino slaps our ship towards the fortress, and it flies far, simply too sluggish without the wind elementals to properly avoid it.

We enter the illuminated farms, and Kurii yells, "That's close enough!"

I immediately stop in my tracks and lower her to the ground. "Protect her while we open a path!" I yell to the winged soldiers, then I cast [Rush] again and charge into the mob of Hobgoblins forming up ahead.

I draw my sword and use [Godly Language] as I yell, "FEAR ME, MONSTERS! I'LL FEAST ON YOUR SOULS!" The skill is only at level twenty, but it's enough to shake their morale with minimal feedback on my body.

They cower behind their crude shields and point their spears at me, but I don't think they're sharp enough to pierce my wooden armor, even if they tried.

While easily dodging their spears, I use my shield to slam into the chaotic crowd, then I spin, slicing through the necks of three of them.

I jump up into the air with [Telekinesis] and float there for a second, then I increase the gravity of my sword and bury it into a hide shield while I crush the Hobgoblin with its weight.

[Battlefield Perception] triggers, and I use [Muscle Explosion] to dodge a spear aimed at my armpit, and at the same time, I spin my whole body, wrenching my sword free, which I promptly bury into the helmet of another Hobgoblin. My [Sharp Blades]-Blessed sword cuts through the creature's flimsy padded leather and cleaves into its skull.

I immediately kick the monster's chest and float backward with [Telekinesis], getting away from the mob before they get their shit together and overwhelm me.

I land a few meters from them and immediately cast [Discharge], disrupting their formation, but before I can [Rush] again, a [Fire Wall] blocks my way.

Six of the fortress's gun ports suddenly burst open with an explosion, and the ancient cannons within are pushed out into position. Two Horns hover in front of the Floater while one hovers in front of ours, ready to take the hits from the cannons.

Flying Hobgoblin mages engage Oritiki and her bodyguards, but they're instantly cut down the moment they become a threat, though they're still managing to delay the Horns from wounding the Leviathan further.

Kurii pulls out a tripod, then a thick tube of a mirror-like metal. It has a large glowing white gem at the rear end of the tube that's leaking dangerous amounts of mana. It's a fucking Okross bazooka.

"[Explosion]!"

The mage dies, and the [Fire Wall] dissipates, leaving my way forward clear again. An officer-like Hobgoblin yells some orders, and the mob starts to move forward, though they proceed cautiously because they feel threatened by me.

An arrow pierces through the officer's head, but he already gave the order to march forward. The Hobgoblins behind us are making a mad dash and getting close, so we have less than a minute before we'll be surrounded.

The Floater can escape the albino, but it can't abandon us, so it forcefully engages the Leviathan to allow our ship to get away.

I cast [Rush] and crash into the wall of Hobgoblins. I manifest five tentacles, then use them to draw the daggers hidden within my armor and let it rip.

The fortress's cannons fire [Beam]s, and the Horns tank the hits. Their armor glows red hot, and they groan in pain as they're cooked alive, but the attack only lasts for a second, so they all survive.

A Hobgoblin grabs my ankles, and I immediately dispatch it. Another one grabs my thigh, and I kill it, too. A third grabs my shield, and I struggle with it for a second, then a fourth grabs my ankles again. I cast [Discharge] until they all let go, then I jump away with [Telekinesis], and I'm forced to activate [Wind Shield] as I'm immediately peppered with spells.

The winged soldiers, the sniffer, Alissa, and Roxanne engage the Hobgoblins coming up behind us. Roxanne's [Water Spirit] creates some [Water Wall]s, tripping the frenzied monsters and forcing pile-ups, slowing their charge.

"TURN OFF THE [FLY] GEM!" Ciel orders, and the ship plummets like a rock. Not even the Leviathan could slap it back up from this.

I feel a chilling amount of mana escape from behind me. Its "flavor" feels very similar to [Judgment].

"HOLD IT STILL!" Kurii yells as she aims the bazooka.

"YUNIAA!" I scream.

"RAAAGH!" She releases her [Chain Life], and my "third eye" opens for a moment as I see a huge amount of Life forcefully being sent to the blue Leviathan.

The monster freezes in the air, and the Horns get clear from it. Kurii releases the [Divine Lance], then the crystal at the rear of the tube shatters, and I'm instantly blinded by the burst of light that it releases.

I cast [Heal] on my eyes and see a blur of light being released by the entire body of bazooka, then a glowing white ball covers the blue Leviathan's face, and in the next second, it's gone, along with the Leviathan's entire head.

A vacuum is formed where it was, and it's instantly refilled with air again, drawing a huge gust of wind that disrupts everyone in the room. The Chimeras cover their ears, and we copy them a second later, then an extremely loud bang thunders through the air and makes Alissa go deaf.

The Leviathan's corpse loses its blue flames and glow, then it goes limp and crashes down on the farms, releasing its colorful internal organs and a torrent of blue blood onto the Hobgoblins.

"RETREAT! TO ME!" I yell. I order Alissa back through [Bind], then I land beside a collapsed Yunia and open a [Gate] under her. My order wasn't really necessary, not because everyone's partially deaf, but because everyone knows that our purpose here is done.

Kurii grabs the [Divine Lance], then crosses through the [Gate]. I summon three fire elementals, and they burn everything around us, creating a wildfire that spreads outwards frighteningly quickly.

The winged soldiers go next, escorting the sniffer, Alissa, and Roxanne, then the Horns join them, and I go last and close the [Gate] once I'm through.

The albino chasing our ship suddenly stops and turns its massive, scarred face towards the fortress.

It lets out a long, sorrowful howl as the Floater and our ship fly downwards as fast as we can to get out of range of the fortress' cannons.

A note from Manasong

Hall of Fame of Patrons

The patrons who support Rupegia shall have their names sung by the bards for they deserve the glory and honor. Their names are:

Oracle Maximillian Hübner.

Prince PreownedFIN.

Lord Andrew Meyers.

Lord Samuel Lim.

Lord Bill.

Lord Novgarod.

Lord DJ.

Lord Ashadun.

Lord Michale Erwin.

Lord Enrique Peña Gomez.

Lord Braidborn.

Lord Bakerdea.

Lord Yeeteris Dedmeem.

Lord D4rk Sheep.

Lord Nathan Vanbrunt.

Lord Markus.

Lord Maurice.

Lord Badger.

Lord Krawn.

Lord Empyrean.

Lord Asakurà.

Lord Mattirro Draca.

Lord Joshua Tal.

Lord Colorblind.

Lord RottenTangerine.

Noble Salty Panda.

Noble Yamibomb112.

Noble Mild Fracas.

Noble EESDESESESRDT.

Noble Aclys.

Noble Tyler Mills.

Noble Jordon Gotthold.

Leave a rating or a review to help me rise to the top or fix my shameful understanding of prose.

Take a look over my blog where all information of the world of Rupegia will be posted.

Join the Discord and discuss, or rant, or meme, or try and fight me so your waifu gets more screentime.

Become a Patron and read chapters in advance, or read the side-stories, or leave your mark on the story, or help choose the next artwork or the next side-story.

Chapter 79: Fortress - Part 3

A note from Manasong

Attention: to conform to the limit of sexual content allowed in a novel, I've censored this chapter. You can look for the uncensored version here.

The symbol "-" denotes a section that got cut for containing sexual content. Also, if paragraphs seem missing, they were also likely censored in an earlier pass where the symbol wasn't used.

I [Heal] Alissa's ears while everyone on deck looks up, anxiously waiting for the Leviathan to appear, but it doesn't. After a few seconds, we activate the [Fly] gem again, and I summon five wind elementals so that we can return to the Carrier as fast as possible.

"Gih," Gify chirps. The Leviathan isn't coming after us.

I sigh in relief and pull Yunia's helmet off her head, then I take out a pillow from my "Items" and set it under her so that she can rest.

I sit down beside her and caress her head while she sleeps. The wounded Celestial Horns come over to us, and Ciel [Heal]s them. Paraaone thanks her and lands beside Hana. Kurii stores the used [Divine Lance] and waits while Nohopu and Hihiriwa argue about going back.

Yunia wakes up a minute later, and I smile warmly at her, proud of what she accomplished. "Good day, sleeping beauty. I'm proud of you," I whisper.

She looks at me blankly, then closes her eyes and says silent. I see a hint of a blush creeping up her long elven ears.

The sniffer approaches Hana and asks, "Excuse me, I've noticed some faint traces of mana coming from all of you for a while. You're using [Blessing Magic], aren't you?"

She raises her eyebrows in surprise and answers, "Oh? Yeah, you can see the wisps of magic if you look closely. Then there's this." She takes off one of her gloves, revealing the colorful ethereal prism of [Rainbow Crystal] on the back of her hand.

"O~h…" The winged soldiers turn their attention to her and coo in wonder.

"Isn't the Celestial Horns' armor enchanted with [Blessing Magic], too?" One of them asks.

Paraaone nods and answers, "That's right. Though ours are much stronger than theirs, I can say that their Blessings are still pretty good."

Hana starts to show off [Wind Armor] and [Rainbow Shield] to them by playing with a knife and a [Fireball].

"It doesn't look like much, but they'll certainly reduce the damage if we're hit," she comments.

A large Wasp arrives to take Kurii back to the Floater, so she takes off her helmet and stops in front of us to say her goodbyes.

"It was an honor fighting alongside you, Ryders. Our infiltration was a complete success because we could rely on you," she says with a vigorous voice, then quickly bows to us, making her beagle ears flop adorably.

"Your teleportation spell is extremely useful, and it'll certainly inspire our mages to study [Space Magic] a lot more," Oritiki comments.

I stand up and give Kurii a short bow as I say, "It was an honor to fight alongside you, too. You Chimeras have some very impressive and equally frightening weapons."

A subtle smile appears on her thin lips as she says, "Destructive [Light Magic] is actually very simple, you just need a lot of mana to power it, but that explosive spell your mage used is also quite frightening." She glances at Roxanne, who smiles proudly.

"I can only say that our race might be a bit too focused on Light and [Wind Magic]," Oritiki comments and smiles wryly.

"Perhaps… Anyway, we should go. Until next time," Kurii says and waves, then she and the sniffer leave on the Wasp while the winged soldiers follow them.

"Perhaps I should switch my focus to Kurii. Plenty of women would be swayed after being swept off their feet the way she was," Alissa comments with a mischievous tone.

"Well, she is a bit cute," I reply and shrug internally.

Aoi stalks closer with a toothy smile on her face, and I already know what she wants. "Wolfy, can I eat the Hobgoblins?" She innocently asks.

I pull out a long tainted cloth used for dismantling and drop the six Hobgoblin corpses I'd stored previously.

"Have fun," I say, then I get up and use [Telekinesis] to carefully carry Yunia in my arms, and she looks at me in surprise. "I'm just taking you to bed so that you can rest properly," I whisper to her with a gentle smile.

"Thank you," she whispers a response.

One of the Horns seems a bit horrified at seeing Aoi eat the entire head of a Hobgoblin, skull and all. She seems to enjoy loudly snapping their bones and makes sure they can all clearly hear the crunching sounds of her chewing. Ciel smiles wryly, both she and the rest of the girls are already used to seeing this.

When Kurii returns to the bridge, Nohopu finally relents and accepts not attacking the albino, then the three Horns that were wounded retire to the Floater, and things quiet down as we make our way to meet up with the Carrier again.

Night falls, and the white mist becomes so dark that the atmosphere gains a strong gloomy mood.

I ask Oritiki for some privacy, and she sends the two male Horns away so that - we can be as loud as we want during our bath.

-

"Well, that was entertaining," Oritiki comments, then she pulls - her hand out of her armor and licks her fingers. "Though, I'd prefer to - have my men with me while I listen," she adds with a wry smile.

We wave as she leaves, and another pair of Horns arrives to replace her. We're a bit too tired to make something from scratch for dinner, so we pull out some leftovers and have a varied meal.

Alissa and I start the first watch, and the girls get to sleep early to preserve their energy. I take over at the ship's controls to allow Jarn to have some time to mold herself since she's having a bit of a problem with the smaller details. She can make precise adjustments, but not at a small enough scale to properly mold a face, though I'm now able to see hints of Yunia's thin lines forming.

After a while, she stops to avoid draining herself, and I realign her soul with her body, then we let the golems fly while we cuddle on the bridge. The Horns aren't paying any attention to us, so Alissa subtly guides my down -.

After a while, Oritiki comes back, and we wake up Roxanne and Hana for the second watch.

Today is the 19th.

-

I spend a few minutes longer getting up because I wake up feeling weird. I open up my "Status" and notice that I gained [Godly Language] with 2 points. I think that my will to not learn [Godly Language] was finally overridden after abusing my Gift so heavily. It's a good thing that we're aiming to become nobility because I don't want to show the skills on my ID to anyone ever again.

Alissa increased her [Bow Use] and [Illusion Magic] by 1 (now 31 and 1+9).

Roxanne increased her [Water Magic] by 1 (now 30).

Lina increased her [Cursing Magic] by 2 (now 8+7).

Yunia leveled up to 44. She increased her [Spirit Magic] and [Weaverism] by 1 (now 16 and 24).

It's a bit chilly today, so we have some not-carrot not-ginger soup with bread to warm us up.

Ciel checks up on Paraaone to see if he or the other two Horns need any more healing, but Ciel's [Heal] was perfect yesterday, so they're all fine.

We meet up with the Carrier an hour later, and then the Floater recharges the fleet.

"Once we're past the mist, we'll resume the Gull lessons," Hukarere says calmly, then she swallows heavily as she remembers how it usually goes-.

"Aihopu and I will make sure to fill you - again," I say to the bird with a smirk and gently caress it with my soul touch. Hukarere shivers, then she stops sharing its sense of touch to prevent herself from getting aroused.

"Did you enjoy sharing her?" Alissa asks through [Bind].

"Not really. It's pretty gay to have two men - with the same woman, but it made her happy, so I guess I'm fine? I wouldn't do it with anyone else, though," I reply and shrug internally.

Alissa smiles internally. "So, now you know how we feel. Although, at least I have learned to enjoy the 'gayness.'"

"Well, I'm never going to share any of you just on principle."

"To be honest, we don't need it. Wolfy changed us. I don't really feel like - having other men anymore, they always seem so boring in comparison to him," Hana joins in.

"No other man could ever make such a gross and obscene - toy like Wolfy can, I'm completely satisfied," Roxanne adds and sighs wistfully.

"Other men are… scary," Lina comments.

"They're weak," Aoi finishes, her mature double voice making her sound stern.

"What about Ciel and Yunia? What do they think about this?" I ask while smiling internally.

"Ciel might leave you for a Scylla male, or maybe a cute female," Roxanne immediately responds in a cheeky tone.

"Ciel would never do that," Lina defends her.

"Don't joke about this," Alissa chastises Roxanne, and we all hear her giggling evilly in our minds.

"Anyway, what about Yunia?" I ask.

"She's a - sex slave. You don't have to worry about her," Roxanne answers.

"She's also very loyal," Hana adds.

"She had a fiancé before Wolfy, but she strikes me as the type that would always do the 'right' thing… well, the 'right thing' for a noble," Alissa adds.

"She's a good person, though she's too proud to let it show," Lina comments. We all focus on Lina, making her flinch from the sudden attention. "That's just what I've perceived, I haven't talked with her enough to know for sure…" She adds.

"Well, she's not wrong. She is a good person," Roxanne agrees.

"Wow, you're being kind to her?" Hana asks with an internal smirk.

"Being a 'good person' isn't mutually exclusive with being a - sex slave," Roxanne casually responds.

Hana gives us an internal knowing look. "Yep, I was just waiting for it."

The fleet makes its way back to the Looping Winds. The Chimeras will deal with the fortress another day. It's hardly mobile, and it would be better to gather all the Horns to clear it instead of using average troops that would likely take casualties.

We drop from code orange to code yellow, so only Paraaone remains on our deck while the other Horns go back to the Floater to rest.

We don't do much over the morning as we just try to settle our nerves. The albino is still out there, and it still has thirty Kite Dragons left to harass us with. We'll have to fight it again sooner or later.

We reach the Looping Winds an hour after lunch. The Floater can't explore too far ahead since it needs to be close enough to react to an attack in time, so the fleet will stay together. A few Wasps land on the Winch to ensure a faster response for any encounters, and our ship is directed to the rearguard to cover it.

Aoi convinces Alissa and me to practice moving our mana organ together. It's likely to be beneficial for us to have three brains connected together and focused on the same task. Alissa's skill moves her mana organ without her input, but she still has the deepest insight into how to do it.

It seems that Aoi has a better affinity for this method of training than I do. It makes sense since I'm usually the one controlling them with [Bind] while they rarely try to control me, though they do like to peek into my thoughts.

Aoi is so good at it that she manages to actually push her mana organ out of her body. This means she can use a basic soul touch, which she promptly tests out on me.

I feel like I grew a new - toy and that someone's - playing with it, but it's just Aoi's soul penetrating my arm. My dragonator arms itself, but I force it back down again, then I give Aoi's head a hand chop because just a finger flick wouldn't be enough.

"Can I use this when I want to milk you?" Aoi asks innocently.

"Okay, but make sure that the situation is appropriate before you do," I answer.

She looks around, then turns to me and says, "I think right now is appropriate."

The only Horn here is Paraaone, and I'm pretty sure he wouldn't mind. Lina and Hana are teaching him how to play cards, so he even has his back turned to us.

I sigh and relent, "Just once, we need to continue our practice."

Alissa unbuttons my pants and pulls it out for me.

I focus on cautiously syncing my mind with Aoi and Alissa so that they can control me while they push their mana organs out of their bodies.

I surrender my will to Alissa, then she takes control of both of us and transforms into a fox. My body and soul try to copy her, but I don't succeed. However, my mana organ starts to move and stretch, then the barrier between our minds weakens, and I have to stop her; otherwise, we'd start "fusing" again.

"It seems that this won't be so easy," I say and smile wryly.

"I'm happy that our minds try to 'fuse,' but yes, this is inconvenient," she responds with a nod.

As the sun sets, the mist starts to thin, and our field of view expands. Hihiriwa and Nohopu have a lively discussion about going back to search for the albino, but it would be impossible to find it with just the troops we have, and we need to stop soon to rest for the night, so they decide to leave the mist first.

Soon after night falls, the mist suddenly ends, and we see what awaits us ahead: dark circles of the purest black pepper the sky. They don't reflect any light, absorbing everything around them and warping the light that escapes in a peculiar way, creating a beautiful kaleidoscope of the lights of the starry sky, but for me, it's a chilling warning. They're Dark Voids, the black holes of this world. There must be thousands of them, but the Looping Winds has been perfectly set up, so it reveals a safe path for us to follow.

The bridges of the Carrier and the Floater suddenly burst with action, and code red is sounded. We all immediately leave the smokey highway and park beside it, then the Wasps and the Horns take off and start to form up.

Far ahead of us, a large white flame is suddenly lit, making it bright enough for me to see our enemies: the scarred albino, the remaining thirty Kite Dragons carrying Hobgoblin mages, and a small swarm of Dragolites and Harpies.

The Winch holds in position above the Carrier, and they both turn their broadsides to face the monsters.

A standoff sets in as the two sides simply stare at each other for several long minutes. The Kite Dragons aren't attacking, so there's no rush for us to engage.

The white flames of the albino die down, and it seems like it's losing the motivation to fight.

Its mouth opens slightly, revealing its multiple rows of teeth perfect for shredding. Then it lets out a long, sorrowful howl, which gradually increases in intensity until it turns into a loud roar. The Kite Dragons join in, and the cacophony of dragonic howls hurts our ears.

We aren't intimidated, but the crew of the other ships could be.

After the howling ends, the flames of the albino light up again, becoming taller and brighter than before.

It suddenly darts towards us, and the rest of the monsters quickly follow.

"Oritiki, take care of the Kite Dragons. Nohopu, Ryders, take care of the albino," Hihiriwa calmly orders.

The Kite Dragons fire off Frost Orbs that are all deflected. However, they don't stop, continuing to charge towards us, and quickly getting into range of the Trinity Cannons.

The Carrier and the Winch fire their broadsides. The Floater turns on its propellers and charges the albino head-on. We follow after them a second later, but it takes a while for us to engage the Leviathan because our ship is too slow to keep up.

The monsters completely ignore everything else and just try to swarm the Carrier, but their corpses rain from the sky as everyone fires at will.

We bait the albino into using its mirror spell, then we focus on breaking it apart repeatedly. It slaps us away like a whip, but it doesn't seem to be trying to do anything besides waste our mana reserves.

The Hobgoblin mages start to cast spells upon the Carrier, but only a handful of them complete their casts, and even then, they're immediately interrupted.

The Carrier flickers its [Wind Shield] so that it can still fire, but that allows some monsters to sneak through. The winged soldiers engage them while the guards in the gunnery rooms stop anything that tries to disable the Cannons.

The albino's reactions start to slow down, and we manage to wound it with [Beam]. Nohopu seizes the chance and starts to aim at its fins, ruining them one by one.

The monsters resort to a suicide attack, trying to get past the Carrier's shields at all costs, but they're quickly thinned out, and their attack fizzles into nothing.

The Horns turn to the albino, and multiple [Beam]s start to penetrate its body, peppering it with burns.

The Leviathan slows down even more as all of its remaining fins are seared away, then its morale seems to falter.

Nohopu breaks its mirror apart again with the Floater, then slams it against the Leviathan's face.

"DII~E!" He roars as he activates [Discharge] and [Beam] at the same time. The albino is too weak to dodge, and its face gets completely consumed by the light.

The monster roars in pain, but it quickly dies down. Its body twitches, then it goes limp and plummets into the infinite below, its menacing head now nothing more than a lump of smouldering coal.

"You are now level 36."

A note from Manasong

Hall of Fame of Patrons

The patrons who support Rupegia shall have their names sung by the bards for they deserve the glory and honor. Their names are:

Oracle Maximillian Hübner.

Prince PreownedFIN.

Lord Andrew Meyers.

Lord Samuel Lim.

Lord Bill.

Lord Novgarod.

Lord DJ.

Lord Ashadun.

Lord Michale Erwin.

Lord Enrique Peña Gomez.

Lord Braidborn.

Lord Bakerdea.

Lord Yeeteris Dedmeem.

Lord D4rk Sheep.

Lord Nathan Vanbrunt.

Lord Markus.

Lord Maurice.

Lord Badger.

Lord Krawn.

Lord Empyrean.

Lord Asakurà.

Lord Mattirro Draca.

Lord Joshua Tal.

Lord Colorblind.

Lord RottenTangerine.

Lord Belkoth.

Noble Salty Panda.

Noble Yamibomb112.

Noble Mild Fracas.

Noble EESDESESESRDT.

Noble Aclys.

Noble Tyler Mills.

Noble Jordon Gotthold.

Leave a rating or a review to help me rise to the top or fix my shameful understanding of prose.

Take a look over my blog where all information of the world of Rupegia will be posted.

Join the Discord and discuss, or rant, or meme, or try and fight me so your waifu gets more screentime.

Become a Patron and read chapters in advance, or read the side-stories, or leave your mark on the story, or help choose the next artwork or the next side-story.

Chapter 80: Void's End - Part 1

A note from Manasong

Attention: to conform to the limit of sexual content allowed in a novel, I've censored this chapter. You can look for the uncensored version here.

The symbol "-" denotes a section that got cut for containing sexual content. Also, if paragraphs seem missing, they were also likely censored in an earlier pass where the symbol wasn't used.

We all stare in silence as the albino plummets into the infinite darkness below. The monsters all scream in panic and try to run away, but they're all so heavily wounded that none of them escape, so the Chimeras easily finish them all off.

I feel the option to summon the albino gradually becoming clear inside my mind. It's certainly my most powerful summon now, but if the Grim Giant used that much of my HP, then I'm certain that summoning the albino would kill me if I tried it with my current amount of MP.

"That was… a rather sad fight," I comment.

"It wanted death," Alissa adds.

"Was the blue Leviathan its mate?" I ask.

Alissa responds with cold detachment, "Probably. It was likely a breeder-type, so it'd be trying to reproduce at every opportunity."

I frown and feel a slight tightening in my heart. The life of a monster is harsh and merciless, I've known that for a while, but I still feel sadness and pity whenever I recognize that this is just the way things are. It's easy for me to sympathize, I just have to think about losing one of the girls and a whole load of horrible feelings washes over me.

Alissa removes her scaled gloves, and her warm, gentle hand cups my cheek.

I turn to face her, and her beautiful orange eyes stare at me lovingly as she whispers, "I'm happy that you still feel pain from our war with the monsters because I don't, not anymore. That heart of yours is why I fell in love with you, so I want you to keep it like this even after wiping out the heretics to protect us, or fighting the Monster King, or whatever else may be your purpose here. It's not just me, but the realm itself that needs people like you leading us."

Bleeding hearts, leading minds.

I smile warmly at her and say, "And you'll be here to heal me when I come back."

She nods empathically. "Always." Her other hand cups my other cheek, then she pulls me closer and kisses my nose.

I look down to the deck and see the girls all looking at me, except for Ciel, who seems concerned about the Chimeras, and Yunia, who's looking around, a little confused, but she seems able to read the mood.

I look towards the horizon and say, "It's easy to forget that these monsters also have feelings, but I feel better now after remembering that. I'll never become a pacifist, but I won't let cruelty take me over, either."

"And that's why the Gods were right in blessing you." She releases my cheeks, and we get back to piloting the ship.

With the monsters gone, Wasps start to land, and the Horns return to the Carrier.

"I'll go over to the Carrier and help the wounded," Ciel announces, then turns to me. Her eyes clearly show her strong determination.

I nod, and she casts [Fly], then takes off.

"Is Wolfy okay?" Yunia asks Lina, sounding slightly anxious.

My little dwarf tells her of my first few days before Alissa, and then the promise she made to me. Yunia remains pensive for a short while, then returns to normal as we start to relax.

Code red changes to yellow, then Ciel comes back.

The fleet returns to the Looping Winds, and we stop once we reach the midpoint between Void's End and the mist.

Now that we're free from the threat of the albino and the low visibility of the mist, we all start to feel much more comfortable.

I grab small-Aoi and wash every single one of her blue scales. Alissa helps me out to make it go faster, and Aoi starts to complain.

"Noo~… Mu~…" She moans lowly and starts to get annoyed. Lifting the scales to wash them is uncomfortable for her, no matter how high our [Washing] is.

"Quiet, you. I - don't wanth no stinky lizard," I say to her, and she stops squirming.

"The effort to remain clean and beautiful is always rewarded," Alissa adds.

Ciel smiles warmly at Aoi and says, "The ability to perfectly balance our orderly and chaotic natures is what differentiates humanoids from monsters. We're able to overcome our nature, but monsters don't."

This gets Aoi thinking, and she stops complaining.

"Don't monsters also have an instinct to clean themselves? Being dirty would only make them weak," I question.

"I clean myself, but not like this," Aoi responds and glances at me as I wax her scales.

"How does 'cleaning' relate to the Gods?" Ciel questions Aoi.

She frowns and thinks for a moment, then answers, "Cleaning is worshiping the God of Change, 'not cleaning' is worshiping the God of Order."

"We control our nature, so we can choose what's best for us, and not just worship the Old Gods blindly."

Lina's Trivia: Old Gods is the colloquial way to call the Ancient Gods, the ones who existed before the Humanoid Gods.

"Fiine, I won't complain," Aoi relents.

"Even when I wax your scales?" I ask her with a smirk, and she nods shyly.

"The more beautiful we are, the harder Wolfy - pounds us," Hana adds.

Aoi taps a claw on her snout in thought, then Alissa - adds, "- That should be enough encouragement for you, right?"

Aoi - nods emphatically.

-

I store the tub and the partition away as the girls dry their hair and remake Yunia's drills, then I give a smile to Oritiki, who was standing guard for us all this time.

She licks her fingers and sighs. "I'm not sure if I like this or not. Your group is too much of a tease for me," she comments with a wry smile.

I scratch my head awkwardly and say, "Since the albino is dead, maybe we don't need such a strict watch anymore."

She shakes her head and grins, then she replies in an overly dramatic tone, "No, no, no, no. I'll gladly make the sacrifice of hearing you all madly - doing it while I - play with myself. Your safety is more important than my - satisfaction."

"Jokes aside, thank you," I say and give her a short bow. "You've cared for us very well and shown yourself to be a good friend to our family. We're all glad to have met you."

The girls join me and give her a bow, too.

"Your kindness will forever stay with us," Alissa adds.

"There are few nobles who receive strangers so warmly like you did. You can consider us allies," Yunia finishes.

Oritiki raises her non-existent eyebrows in surprise, then her face softens with a warm smile. Her voice becomes soft and slightly emotional as she says, "I don't claim to be a great judge of character, but I was never given a reason to doubt yours. I felt that your family was honorable and deserved to be treated well, so I resolved myself to help you all in any way I could."

Except for that spying we did…

I return the smile and nod respectfully.

Hana crosses her arms and comments, "Everyone calls you Honorable One, but you've never asked for us to do the same."

Oritiki seems to be caught off-guard and awkwardly rubs one of her horns. "I prefer it this way. Everyone keeps their distance from me and the other Horns, so I didn't want to do the same to the first people we've met after so long that only the Divines know."

So, all she wanted was a friend?

"Considering how you belong to the Celestial Horns, I didn't expect you to be so unconcerned with formalities," Roxanne adds.

Oritiki chuckles and replies, "Once you live long enough, that sort of thing seems like a waste of time. Even the Divines only cared about formalities when talking to the public."

"It's those who have little power that feel the need to always keep a wall between themselves and the commoners," Ciel says like a sage.

"Those who have real power don't need to show it at every opportunity," Oritiki adds, and they nod towards each other.

"Anyway, I'll land the ship on the Carrier. Hihiriwa has invited us for dinner again," I say and slowly float up towards the bridge.

We enter the Carrier and hear the laughter of the crew echoing through the corridors. It seems that the partying has already started.

We meet Kaatohe on the way. She isn't in a celebratory mood and even seems a little annoyed.

I walk along beside her and ask as I look up and down her naked body, "Did something happen? You don't seem very content."

She crosses her arms, bunching up her adorable breasts, and answers, "I lost my personal Wasp. It'll take me a while to modify the [Fly] gem of the new one to my liking."

"Oh, you do alterations? I didn't know that," Oritiki comments.

She smiles smugly and replies, "It's why I'm the best pilot we have. I know everything about my planes, though I don't do maintenance on them, that's just unnecessary."

"Well, we maintain our own weapons and armor," Oritiki calmly comments.

"That's because you're the only ones who know how," Kaatohe casually responds and flicks her wrist dismissively.

"Yes, but still, we're the ones who know the most about them, so we're the best choice to maintain them."

"Oh? That's interesting. I see that the Celestial Horns have their own way, but I just don't think I have anything to gain by maintaining my own planes."

They're talking casually, but I'm uncertain whether they're bantering or if they really don't like each other.

We enter the dining hall and see Hihiriwa already drinking with his wife, Kaiia, and Mahi.

The gray dragon-headed man opens his arms as he sees us and grins. "Oritiki! Kaatohe! Ryders! What a great battle we had. Your infiltration of the fortress brought us a complete victory today. We wouldn't have been able to demoralize it so thoroughly otherwise!" He exclaims and laughs out loud.

We take our seats and smile back, though mine is a bit forced.

"Yes, we all fought well. It couldn't have gone better," Yunia responds.

"Your Reo has improved," Kaatohe comments, and Yunia smiles subtly.

I put her new points into [Reo Language] after she leveled up.

"We didn't expect things to go so well," Kaiia says.

"I suspected that the albino had a mate, but I didn't think that it'd lose the will to live after its death," Hihiriwa says.

"Nohopu had been hunting Leviathans and the albino itself for a long time. After losing so many partners, even a monster would desire death."

"Old monsters commit suicide all the time," Oritiki comments.

"Let's not dwell on these depressing thoughts; we're here to celebrate our victory," Kaatohe comments, sounding a little more annoyed than before.

"The Celestial Horns and Nohopu performed admirably as expected, but we're also all impressed by your versatility, Ryders. It's a pity that you'll be leaving us," Kaata says with a gentle smile. The gecko-headed woman seems to be warming up to us.

Hihiriwa takes another sip from his drink and says, "We'd love to know more about that teleportation spell. If you ever come back to Whakamutu, we are willing to trade for your knowledge of it."

"We'll definitely come back one day, so we'll take you up on your offer then," I lie with a business smile.

The door opens, and we see Nohopu strutting inside, beaming with pride. Kurii calmly follows in behind him, and a cute human-headed blonde woman comes in after her.

The squirrel-headed man is completely naked, except for all the gold hanging on his body, and - he's showing full mast. Alissa even - senses his manly smell leaking out of him, which disgusts her greatly.

The cute woman behind them keeps her head down, and her shy body language tells me that she's a servant. The transparent lingerie she's wearing suggests what her job here is.

"Hooray! The Divines have blessed us in our hunt!" Nohopu exclaims and grins.

"They observe us with pride! We've asserted Chimeric superiority!" Hihiriwa cheers and laughs.

"WITNESS OUR GLORY!" Kaiia bellows. The naked panda man rises from his seat -.

Mahi sighs, and Oritiki smiles wryly.

Nohopu takes his seat, and the blonde woman kneels, then crawls in front of him under the table - and starts working.

Kaiia sits down, then both he and Kaatohe start -playing with themselves while watching them.

Oh, wow.

Hihiriwa snorts and asks Nohopu, "Couldn't wait for after dinner?"

The squirrel man grins and grunts. "Definitely not. I almost skipped this because I wanted her so badly. I'm just way too excited right now to hold myself back."

"Why didn't you bring your wife?" Kaata asks.

"She doesn't do well cooped up inside the ship all day," Nohopu responds and closes his eyes.

"You should find her a job on your ship."

"The only thing she'd accept is replacing me as the captain." And they chuckle lightly at the joke.

Oritiki gives us an apologetic smile, and we shrug. The atmosphere almost devolves into an - a free-for-all, but physical hunger wins, and we eat normally, or rather, as normally as we can.

The blonde servant finishes off Nohopu, then he gives her a kiss, and she leaves, seemingly very content with herself.

The weirdest part is when Kaiia - finishes into his cup, then mixes it with alcohol and drinks it, but nobody reacts to it except for Lina and Ciel, who raise their eyebrows in surprise.

"It's only you who thinks that drinking your own - juice is 'gay,'" Alissa says through [Bind].

"Straight men drink - women-juice, non-straight men drink male-juice," I firmly reply.

"Hey, it's your choice, but that just means there's more for us, then," Hana adds with a chuckle.

Before they all become too drunk to talk, I wait for a lull in the conversation and ask, "So, what should we expect from the rest of the expedition?"

"There's only Void's End ahead, and after that are the remains of Ozymandias, which is the territory of the Maw," Kaata answers.

"We'll let the Floater and the Horns scout ahead to confirm the Maw's position and choose one of the islands, then we'll start the distraction once they get back," Hihiriwa adds.

"We've never seen a Dark Void before, is there anything we should be particularly wary of?" Lina asks.

"Stay on your ship, and don't try to fly. Your depth perception will be warped due to the lack of reflection from the Voids," Oritiki answers.

"We'll move slowly and use the Trinity Cannons and [Beam]s to gauge distances, but if the Looping Winds has been set correctly, then there'll be no need for that," Kurii adds.

Lina and I share a glance, then I force a smile while she looks down. "Of course we did," I respond wryly.

"You've done well enough already. It's no easy task for an outsider to operate our Looping Winds," Kaata praises us, and Oritiki nods.

A bit comforting, but her words still don't fully counter the anxiety coming from the fact that if we did fuck up setting the anchors, then everyone will know.

The alcohol begins to fill our blood, and the singing starts.

Kaiia, the rather quiet panda man, loudly sings a slurred shanty, his deep voice reverberating through the dining hall. Nohopu, the energetic squirrel man, breaks down and cries on Hihiriwa's shoulder, yelling about how grateful he is for being chosen for this expedition. Hihiriwa becomes passive like a doll, and his long, gray dragon head sways about as Nohopu shakes him about by the shoulder. Mahi, Kaata, Roxanne, and Hana all talk babble gibberish to each other and giggle, and from what I overhear, I'm pretty sure that Mahi is gay for Kaata. Kurii slams her face onto the table and goes to sleep. Kaatohe and Yunia start talking shit about the stupid commoners and reveal the snobbishness they've kept locked inside.

"You don't drink much," Oritiki comments.

"No, I prefer not to," I respond, and smile at the drunk girls. "Someone has to bring them back safely."

She nods gently. "I understand that well."

I turn to her and ask, "You also don't drink?"

She gives me a pained smile. "No, I don't, but for a different reason."

She doesn't tell me why, so I decide not to pry.

Hihiriwa and Kaata start - going hardcore while Mahi - watches them, so we decide that it's time for us to leave. Hana is already more than - excited enough, so it's better to not - tease her any further.

Ciel casts [Purify Body] on the girls and me, then we say our goodbyes and return to our ship.

We lift off and park beside the Carrier, then we retire to our tent and put our black dragon scale armor back on, except for Hana and I.

We don't even care about the Horns standing watch outside, - I just do Hana like there's no tomorrow. She's totally gay for Mahi and gets Gify to replay the memory of her - watching Hihiriwa and Kaata.

-

Ciel [Heal]s my hips, then I sigh and stretch. The girls start to snuff out their lights to go to sleep, so Alissa helps me put on my armor, then we go up to the bridge to begin our watch.

One of the Horns stuffs his - stuff back in his pants, then he lands down on the deck and gives me a knowing nod.

It's both weird and exciting how nonchalant the Chimeras are about doing - things in front of others.

I cuddle with Alissa and sneak a tentacle down her pants. Tonight's background music: her soft moaning.

A note from Manasong

Hall of Fame of Patrons

The patrons who support Rupegia shall have their names sung by the bards for they deserve the glory and honor. Their names are:

Oracle Maximillian Hübner.

Prince PreownedFIN.

Lord Andrew Meyers.

Lord Samuel Lim.

Lord Bill.

Lord Novgarod.

Lord DJ.

Lord Ashadun.

Lord Michale Erwin.

Lord Enrique Peña Gomez.

Lord Braidborn.

Lord Bakerdea.

Lord Yeeteris Dedmeem.

Lord D4rk Sheep.

Lord Nathan Vanbrunt.

Lord Markus.

Lord Maurice.

Lord Badger.

Lord Krawn.

Lord Empyrean.

Lord Asakurà.

Lord Mattirro Draca.

Lord Joshua Tal.

Lord Colorblind.

Lord RottenTangerine.

Lord Belkoth.

Noble Salty Panda.

Noble Yamibomb112.

Noble Mild Fracas.

Noble EESDESESESRDT.

Noble Aclys.

Noble Tyler Mills.

Noble Jordon Gotthold.

Leave a rating or a review to help me rise to the top or fix my shameful understanding of prose.

Take a look over my blog where all information of the world of Rupegia will be posted.

Join the Discord and discuss, or rant, or meme, or try and fight me so your waifu gets more screentime.

Become a Patron and read chapters in advance, or read the side-stories, or leave your mark on the story, or help choose the next artwork or the next side-story.

Chapter 80: Void's End - Part 2

A note from Manasong

Attention: to conform to the limit of sexual content allowed in a novel, I've censored this chapter. You can look for the uncensored version here.

Note: I think I'll stop using the "-" notation on censored content so it doesn't detract from the story. I might even remove it from past chapters.

Today is the 20th.

I leveled up to 36. My [Mana Genitals] and [Piloting] increased by 1 (now 3 and 3).

Alissa leveled up to 39. Her [Bow Use] increased by 2 (now 33).

Roxanne leveled up to 39. Her [Fire Magic] increased by 1 (now 3+27).

Ciel leveled up to 39. Her [Glaive Use] and [Light Magic] increased by 1 (now 21 and 27).

Lina leveled up to 36. Her [Throw] increased by 1 (now 4).

Our skills didn't increase much because we've been stuck on our ship most of the time. Once we leave this fake Broken Skies, I think we'll have enough time and space to train again.

We exit our tent for breakfast and notice how the light blue sky makes a perfect contrast for the black holes ahead to stand out. Their pure blackness is chilling while the warped light bending around them is dizzying.

I fear them just like I fear heights, or did, now that it's nearly impossible for me to die from a fall, thanks to [Telekinesis], but I digress. The fear of being so close to certain death is humbling. Even though these black holes operate differently from the ones in Earth's reality, they're no less dangerous, and in fact, the Dark Voids certainly have a higher kill count than Earth's black holes.

Breakfast is rather quiet due to how we're all too mesmerized by the incredible sight to talk.

I put some butter on my algae baguette, then I slap on a slice of ham and a slice cheese. I close the baguette and take a bite, loudly crunching into it. The crust is just as perfect as it was when we first bought it back in Goldport. [Item Box] is truly amazing.

The Floater comes over to refill our mana, then we land on the Carrier for my Gull lessons.

I approach the sexy white wolf with a grin. "Missed me?" I ask her.

Hukarere shows me a toothy smile and answers, "Of course." Her dragon tail wags rapidly in excitement.

I stand on the tips of my toes, then I pull her head down towards me and kiss her snout. Her long tongue enters my mouth, and we have a quick, messy kiss. Alissa sighs in satisfaction inside my mind.

I wave to Aihopu as we board the Gull. He seems to be excited and fired up for today, panting exactly like an Earthling Border Collie. I tell them about our infiltration of the fortress, and he listens like a child being told a bedtime story. After that, we play fetch with him for a while until his excess energy is spent, though we don't make him go too far from the Looping Winds because of the danger posed by the Dark Voids.

Hukarere is unreasonably enthusiastic. She seems to have really become addicted to me, so she didn't search for someone else to play with while I was gone, and she was definitely active before meeting me, so her hunger just built up.

I leave a gift inside her, then Aihopu uses it to continue the job. I'm pretty sure that he's… not completely straight.

After getting doing it until her hips give out, she lays her head on my lap so that I can play with her beautiful white fur. I especially love its blue tips, they're so adorable. While I play with her fur, her head bobs up and down.

What's the true boundary between like and love? The only difference between what I feel for Hukarere, Silvane, Nononya, Osaria, Klein, and the wives is the intensity of this feeling. I've never done it with Silvane or Nononya, but I consider them my friends, and I'd definitely bang their brains out if I could. I'm obviously attracted to Hukarere, and I enjoy savoring her very much, but I feel a lot more affection for Silvane and Nono, not to mention the gulf between them and Osaria and Klein. The difference in intensity between what I feel for my wives and all the other women may be like the radiance of a sun compared to a faraway star, but both of them are still celestial bodies.

Even my friendship with men. I still feel affection for them, I just don't want to also have sex with them. For me, distinguishing the different types of love isn't like making a Venn diagram, but rather, it's like a fuzzy set. Everything overlaps smoothly, making the boundaries blurry, but the extremes are still very clear.

I think I can't stop myself from falling in love because of how blurry the line is, but I can at least keep my priorities straight: wives first, concubines second, flings third. Wives have an absolute veto and should always be satisfied first, no matter what; concubines have an allotted time, and I ask for exclusivity in exchange for a comfortable life; and flings will only happen when there's an "opportunity," though I'm sure that Alissa will help create them.

Osaria is already a concubine, and I think we need to make it official with Klein, too, though she'll likely have a special clause about the exclusivity in exchange for servitude as a knight.

But I'm not sure which category Hukarere falls in. Ignoring that she's technically dead, I kind of want her to be around, but not enough that she'd be considered a concubine, and she likely won't accept the exclusivity, so perhaps she can be a "regular" fling.

It's "odd" to think of relationships in this way, but it's necessary. While a monogamous marriage can make do with only implicit ideas of what the relationship should be, a harem with this many women and different ranks requires a clear structure so that nobody feels neglected. "Happiness" depends a lot on expectations, so giving someone the wrong idea about what sort of relationship I'm looking for would just cause problems.

"Hey… Hukarere," I call her attention.

"Hm?" She asks and tilts her head to look at me.

"You know that I have many wives, but I'm not looking to add any more. The relationship you and I have is amazing, but it'll never be allowed to progress, so we're never going to marry."

She stares at me, deep in thought, then she suddenly averts her eyes and frowns. "You're a noble, aren't you?" She asks, her gentle voice just above a whisper.

"Yes, I am. Well, we are. My wives may not all have a noble background, but we're all nobility."

She sighs. "Nobles never change…" She whispers, then her sharp, angled eyes stare intensely at me.

"I'm sorry…" I whisper to her smile apologetically.

She closes her eyes and shakes her head. "No, you shouldn't. You have seven wives. To think that I'd ever enter a harem like yours is just silly. It doesn't help that I like threesomes, so settling for just one man was going to be hard, anyway."

I cringe. I don't want to say this, but I have to be honest with her. I can't request the same I did from my wives because it wouldn't be a fair trade. "I mean, since I can't make a commitment with you, I also can't ask you to be exclusive to me."

She lifts her eyebrows in surprise. "Oh, so… no promises, but also no restraints?" She gives me puppy eyes.

"Exactly. I want you to be happy and not just chain yourself to me while I can't give you everything you want."

She smiles wryly. "Well, after you got me addicted to your seed, you should at least take responsibility for it."

"Wait, you're actually addicted?" Aihopu asks.

We look outside and see him sitting on the edge of the Gull, casually inspecting his feathers. He suddenly turns to us and cringes. "Sorry, didn't mean to eavesdrop, but these ears are very sensitive."

Hukarere snorts and answers, "Well, to answer your question, yes, he's very tasty, for some reason."

He looks at her exposed lips, still coated with our mix, then rubs the chin of his snout in thought. "Can I taste it?" He asks, tentatively.

"You're not sucking me off," I immediately answer.

Hukarere rolls belly up. "Come here, taste this," she orders with a grin.

I roll my eyes and look away.

"Divines step on me!" He exclaims and chuckles. "It's bitter, but it's also pretty good. Incredible, I didn't know [Mana Genitals] was like this."

"Yeah, well, that's just how he is," Hukarere replies with a shrug.

He takes a look at me, then awkwardly turns away. "Well, I'll just let you two continue…" And he goes to check on the catapult.

"Where were we?" She asks with a grin, then rolls back on her belly.

"Me taking responsibility for your addiction," I casually respond.

She goes silent for a short while, then she licks her lips, then says, "Right… well, you're going to leave soon… so please come back one day and take me away."

I smile sadly and feel a tightening in my heart. "Are you sure about that? We may be explorers, but we're land-dwellers at heart. Our home isn't in the Broken Skies or Sky Lands."

She matches my smile and answers, "Yeah. I have friends in Whakamutu, but no family. I know that my hometown was petrified in the Calamity, so I have no real home to return to. I'd just like to travel around the realm and find a new home."

I pat her head and caress her fur. "My condolences."

She shakes her head and closes her eyes, enjoying my touch. "It's fine. It's been so long that I'm over it now."

I swallow heavily and say, "I'll do what I can to come back to Whakamutu, but I make no promises."

She smiles mischievously "Don't break a girl's heart, eh?"

I push her head down. "Never."

I return to our ship, and we take off. Alissa is very proud of my talk with Hukarere, and Hana gets a few ideas about how she'd deal with her own mini-harem she might build one day.

The black holes start to surround us as we continue deeper into Void's End. We let the golems pilot while we just observe and drink tea. I let the cosmic horror fill my heart and observe each Dark Void as they slowly pass by.

I summon a bird and tell it to commit suicide, for science. It obediently flies away, then stares innocently towards its final destination: the void of absolute darkness.

The dark circle of death grows steadily in its sight, but the bird doesn't feel any sort of gravitational pull towards it. A slight resistance starts to push it to the side, and it feels a gentle breeze flowing past it.

It corrects its course and fights against the resistance, flying deeper into the void, and it grows so large that it starts to surround the bird like an encroaching darkness. The force pushing the bird away increases further, slowing down its final approach.

It reaches the midway point, and the resistance skyrockets. Suddenly, the resistance goes away entirely, and the beak of the bird simply disappears, as if it were cleanly cut off. Pain flares in its face, but the rest of the head soon follows, and it dies. Its body continues entering the Dark Void, and in the blink of an eye, there's nothing left of it.

I end up sending a dozen lab birds to die just to study the Dark Voids some more.

These black holes absorb mana and light, but they weakly repel matter. They consume their stored mana to annihilate any matter that crosses their event horizon, but that makes them smaller, which is why there's a physical barrier around it.

Their event horizons vary in size, so it's possible to find a Dark Void where someone can get deep enough that all light around them gets absorbed, leaving them in a true dark void that no light can ever escape.

"The mana around the Voids behaves similarly to the Floater's," Lina comments.

"That's because the Floater uses controlled Dark Voids to absorb mana and light," Paraaone responds.

"Oh…" She blinks blankly, then another realization sinks in. "This is how you store mana inside the gems! There's another Dark Void in there, right?"

"I can't say for sure, but I think it's something like that."

"No wonder the em-… the Domum kingdom is bad at mana storage. They don't have Dark Voids to study like you do." She suddenly turns around and scurries down to the hold to study the gems there some more.

I change her points around how she wants them and give her enough [Sense Mana] to properly observe inside the gems.

I go to the back of the ship and lean against the railing beside Ciel.

"How you doin'?" I ask in a deep, husky voice.

"Reference?" She questions, flatly.

"Reference."

"I'm doing fine. I couldn't be happier." She smiles warmly while staring down at the creepy Dark Void currently passing by.

"You didn't drink much yesterday."

I glance at her, and she smiles wryly. "I just didn't feel like it. I'd end up blurting something out and make the Chimeras suspicious of us if I got drunk."

"That's how I feel every time I drink, though I just don't like getting drunk, to begin with."

She pulls a strand of hair out of her hair bun and starts playing with it. "It's hard to imagine being like this all the time. Hiding secrets, I mean."

"When we become Lords, we'll be forced to hide many more."

"I'll deal with it. Or rather…" She turns to me and smirks. "You and all the other wives will help me deal with it."

I stretch my soul and gently rub her cheek with it, making her twitch in surprise and wiping that smug smirk off her face. "We will," I whisper.

She pouts and looks away. "If Yunia is your queen, then that makes us royalty, too."

I breathe in and calm myself, I need a perfectly soft and gentle intonation for this. "For me, you're all goddesses."

She lets out a high-pitched laugh once, then quickly controls herself and clears her throat.

A small success, but a success nonetheless.

Her hand lands on my head, and she runs her fingers through my hair, then we remain silent for a while, just enjoying being near each other while she plays with my hair and her own at the same time.

She lets out a wistful sigh and asks, "Are you happy? In this realm, I mean. Have you found your happiness?"

"I did, quite some time ago, in fact," I answer without hesitation.

"And what about your past. What do you feel about those memories?"

It takes me a few moments to put my thoughts in order, but my answer is clear, "It'll always be a wound, a 'what could've been.'"

"A scar, like the others you carry with you."

I shrug. "I guess so…"

We go silent again, then I decide to just stare at her intensely with a smug smile. She glances at me repeatedly, getting increasingly disconcerted, then she starts chuckling by herself.

"What, what is it?" She suddenly asks.

"What about you, are you happy?" I ask with a smug smile.

She gets her chuckling under control and answers, "Yes, very much so, but a little too much, perhaps."

"Oh? And why is that?" I casually ask.

"Yunia's advice would be better applied to me than to you. I've been enjoying this adventure far too much."

I look back to see if Paraaone is within hearing range and ask, "Even when you don't trust the Chimeras?"

"Even when I don't trust them. Oritiki has been so accommodating I'd even forgotten about my suspicions."

"She could've been doing that just to get our guards down, and then 'RAWR,'" -I pinch her cheek with two soul-claws- "she'd eat us all."

She bats the claw away and snorts at my silliness. "She'd be the best actor in the world if that were true."

Our morning is quiet and uneventful. We invite Hukarere, Ririmu, and Paraaone again for lunch, then we help them experience the wonders of elven smoked meats.

"So, this is basically wood-flavored meat?" Ririmu questions.

"Not wrong, but I won't agree with you," Yunia replies and glances at him snobbishly.

Hukarere rolls her eyes and says to Ririmu, "Don't be silly, this isn't the first time we've eaten smoked food."

"But, isn't it true?" He insists.

"No," Yunia answers as she glances at him again.

He grins at her and continues, "Yes."

"No."

"Yes."

"We do eat wood, so what's the problem?" Paraaone asks, slightly confused.

"It's not wood, it's smoke," Yunia replies.

"But it's smoke that comes from a piece of wood, so, technically, it's still wood," Ririmu continues.

"Do you say that steamed veggies are 'water-flavored'?" I question him.

"No, because, normally, water has no taste," he responds with a wry smile.

"It's like saying that mushrooms are dirt-flavored vegetables. It's not the technicality that's important, but the 'unclean' connotation that 'wood' and 'dirt' have," Lina responds categorically.

"It's a matter of whether you want the words to be as precise as possible or the image that they conjure to be pleasant," I add.

"Oh~…" Hukarere coos and claps.

Ririmu grins and bows. "My question has been answered, thank you," he says in a fake polite tone.

Shortly after lunch, we have to stop because the Looping Winds has been disrupted by a Dark Void. The smokey highway spirals into it, thinning out until it hits the anti-matter barrier and dissipates completely. This black hole is powerful, having a very large area of influence on the mana and light particles around it, which allows it to steal the mana of the Looping Winds for itself.

Off in the distance, the Looping Winds seems to reform, so at least our safe path forward wasn't destroyed by the Dark Void. The Looping Winds must always complete the loop, so, if it was completely blocked, then it'd just break down entirely and stop working.

"These Dark Voids are too volatile. You'd need accurate information about their sizes to plan a proper path through this area," Paraaone consoles me.

The Carrier starts firing its Trinity Cannons to range the black holes ahead.

"Well, we did the best we could," Lina answers and shakes her head.

"That Dark Void is stealing the Looping Winds' mana, so what happens if it grows until it's out of control?" I ask.

"There's a way to steal the mana back, but we don't have time for that. If left alone, it'll either continue to absorb all the mana sources around it until it starves, or the winds around it will gather enough to pierce its anti-matter barrier, then it'll return to being small," Paraaone answers.

"What even causes a Dark Void to form?" Lina questions.

"I don't know. Some people say that it's related to Ender, the Nemesis, but they only appear near the edges of the realm."

Lina and I would love to read some Chimeric books about this, but I guess we'll have to wait until we go to the Sky Lands to find them.

It takes us an hour, but we carefully make our way between the Dark Voids and safely return to the Looping Winds. It definitely slowed our progress, but we still reach the edge of Void's End before the sun goes down.

We see large islands off in the distance, hidden behind the colored clouds. Those are the remains of Ozymandias. The Maw resides somewhere in there, but it's most likely at the end of the Looping Winds and right next to the portal that should take us… somewhere.

We stop just before we exit Void's End. The Dark Voids are the perfect protection for us because that aberrant monster is a heavily magical being, making it extremely vulnerable to these black holes.

"The Floater and the Celestial Horns will scout ahead in search of the Gaping Maw while we wait here," Hihiriwa orders.

"I'll stay here, just in case," Paraaone assures us.

There are no monsters, animals, or even spirits here because of the black holes, but you never know what could happen.

"Thank you. We really appreciate your and Oritiki's consideration for us," I respond and give him a respectful nod.

"You could show your appreciation with more of that smoked meat," he comments with a grin, and I smile back.

A note from Manasong

Hall of Fame of Patrons

The patrons who support Rupegia shall have their names sung by the bards for they deserve the glory and honor. Their names are:

Oracle Maximillian Hübner.

Prince PreownedFIN.

Lord Andrew Meyers.

Lord Samuel Lim.

Lord Bill.

Lord Novgarod.

Lord DJ.

Lord Ashadun.

Lord Michale Erwin.

Lord Enrique Peña Gomez.

Lord Bakerdea.

Lord D4rk Sheep.

Lord Nathan Vanbrunt.

Lord Markus.

Lord Maurice.

Lord Krawn.

Lord Empyrean.

Lord Mattirro Draca.

Lord Joshua Tal.

Lord Colorblind.

Lord RottenTangerine.

Lord Belkoth.

Lord Cidant.

Noble Salty Panda.

Noble Mild Fracas.

Noble EESDESESESRDT.

Noble Aclys.

Noble Jordon Gotthold.

Leave a rating or a review to help me rise to the top or fix my shameful understanding of prose.

Take a look over my blog where all information of the world of Rupegia will be posted.

Join the Discord and discuss, or rant, or meme, or try and fight me so your waifu gets more screentime.

Become a Patron and read chapters in advance, or read the side-stories, or leave your mark on the story, or help choose the next artwork or the next side-story.

Chapter 80: Void's End - Part 3

A note from Manasong

Attention: to conform to the limit of sexual content allowed in a novel, I've censored this chapter. You can look for the uncensored version here.

Note: I think I'll stop using the "-" notation on censored content so it doesn't detract from the story. I might even remove it from past chapters.

Not much happened today, so we have some extra energy to play around in the bath. Also, Oritiki isn't here tonight because the Horns and the men on the Floater need to rest since they'll be scouting for the Maw and the islands tomorrow.

I've been learning how to multitask, so I can just play around with the girls and give them some attention when they aren't in the mood for hardcore stimulation.

Aoi and I work together to appease Hana while Ciel, Roxanne, and Yunia relax and enjoy my caresses. Even though we didn't fight today, stress still builds up, and we're starting to feel the need for some time away from the Chimeras.

We have a cozy dinner under the stars, surrounded by black holes. Having this sort of view every time we eat will leave us spoiled. Even for Lords, we have quite an exciting lifestyle.

After that, while the girls retire to our tent, Yunia and I carefully inspect the entire ship to repair any structural damage that might have come from being slapped away by the Leviathans. We remove the burn marks from the [Beam]s that hit our ship, then we join the girls in the tent.

Everyone's still a bit energetic, so we'll do some work for a short while before going to sleep. Alissa and Hana practice [Mesmerizing Butterflies] together, but Alissa is mostly focused on helping Hana catch up with her; Roxanne excitetedly watches Lina as she adds safety enchantments to her worktable so that she can test the more dangerous and explosive materials; Ciel now has enough points for [Detect Evil], so she tests how the spell works, but since it has zero combat utility, she'll use the extra points somewhere else; Aoi continues stretching her mana organ, very happy with how fast she's progressing; Yunia sits down and practices [Electric Magic], continuing to try to learn how to instant ca-…

Two [Lightning Bolt]s suddenly launch from her finger and fly out of our tent through the exit, shooting off into the sky.

"I… did it…?" Yunia questions, surprised with herself. Lightning flashes and thunder crackles again. "I did it!" She exclaims and beams with a beautiful smile, completely wiping away the usual sharpness of her expression.

"Congratulations," Ciel is the first to congratulate her, then we join in with a chorus of congratulations.

Yunia struggles to contain her brimming excitement, but she does succeed in appearing stoic again, then she nods respectfully towards Ciel.

"It took me a little longer than a month to learn that, so you're doing very well," Roxanne praises.

"The switching around of skill points all the time helped a lot. I could feel and almost see the changes inside me, but I just couldn't 'touch' it. It's weird, I still can't explain it well," Yunia responds and smiles wryly.

Roxanne nods emphatically and adjusts her glasses. "It's completely opposite to how magic is normally taught. We're used to being free to 'build' our spells the way we want, but this 'instant casting' is completely constrained."

"You can learn how to modify the instant-cast spells, though," Alissa comments.

Yunia knits her thin eyebrows in concern and replies, "Well, I have no idea how to instant cast the spells from [Weaverism]. They're all dependent on the target, so it's a puzzle that I don't even know how to begin tackling."

"Well, one day you might learn how. We still have our entire lives to train and grow," I say.

Yunia pouts for a moment, but it softens into a subtle smile.

I sit down behind her and give her a hug. "You're a hard worker, so I'm certain that you'll do it one day, and if you don't, then it might just be impossible, after all," I whisper in her long ear.

She snorts, then looks ahead and continues practicing her instant casting.

I take the opportunity of Aoi diligently training to leech her progress with [Bind]. It's surprisingly easy to "sync" my mind with hers. She's the second easiest to sync, with the first being Alissa.

I share some of my knowledge in [Soul Manipulation] with Aoi while she sends me her experience with mana organ stretching. Now that she can push her soul out, she might benefit from knowing Gify's and my custom [Materialize]. I think the first thing she'll try to create will probably be hands.

Lina finishes adding [Reinforce] and [Wind Armor] to the insides of the worktable so that it doesn't break apart that easily if something inside it explodes. Roxanne claps the tip of her fingers together in excitement and immediately goes to work with it.

It takes only a few minutes for her to make something explode, so it was definitely a good thing that we made her wait until now.

There's still the need for [Telekinesis]-powered manipulators, but they're a lot less important since Roxanne can use that spell herself or recruit the golems to help her when she needs it.

Lina sighs and shakes her head at the crazy alchemist, then continues reading her new book, "Legends of Times Past Series: Nojus, Lord of Fire and Brimstone."

Shortly before it's time for the girls to sleep, I approach Ciel with a smile and say, "It's time."

She hesitates for a moment, then starts to undo her scale armor.

"No, not that," I add with a chuckle. "Why do you all think it's always sex?"

"Because you're always horny," she responds and shrugs. "If it's not sex, then what do you mean by 'it's time'?"

"[Bind]. I think I can add you to our [Bind]."

"Ooh~…"

I smile and sit down in front of her. "Ready?"

She nods, and I cast [Bind]. It's pretty easy to pull her soul into me, which shows that my mind is ready to handle more.

I've done this before with her, so it's pretty simple to dive into her mind and pull back her "internal monologue string."

"H-HEWWO?! Is anybodwy hewre?"

Ciel rolls her eyes and says, "Enough references, Wolfy."

"Ack, my heart! So cold!" I exclaim and dramatically clutch at my chest.

"I think it's cute," Lina comments.

Ciel frowns and says, "It annoys me, for some reason."

Alissa agrees, "Same, but when he says them through [Bind], it's easier to 'understand' them, or at least know when he's using one, so I can just ignore him if it's too obscure."

"They make me smile," Roxanne says warmly.

"I have no idea what they're about, so…" Hana shrugs.

I chuckle at them and reply, "It's my way of celebrating my former home. I focus on the parts that brought me joy, not the… astronomical amount of bullshit that exists over there."

Alissa's tail stops wagging, and her fox ears go flat. "Well, now I feel bad for ignoring you," she mumbles.

"Ignoring me just makes it funnier," I calmly reply.

Her ears perk up, and she gives me a slightly worried look. "If you say so…"

"It's a form of teasing, of that I'm sure," Roxanne adds, and Alissa believes her because who knows more about teasing than Roxanne?

I nudge Ciel through [Bind], and she starts patting Lina, then she suddenly jumps in surprise when she realizes what she's doing.

"Tomorrow, we'll have time to practice our coordination," I say and wink at her.

The girls go to bed while Alissa and I start our watch. There are no Horns here this time, so I focus on the bird sleeping between Osaria's breasts and relax, wishing that she and Klein were with us.

When my pocket watch says that it's 2 AM, we switch with Hana and Roxanne.

Today is the 21st.

My [Soul Manipulation] increased by 1 (now 7). We didn't do much yesterday, but today, we're all energetic, so we'll definitely train a lot.

The Floater comes to recharge our ship before they head out, then Oritiki comes over to give us a short goodbye.

The Maw must be a few hours away from us if it hasn't moved from the (assumed) portal, so she'll likely return either tonight or tomorrow.

Paraaone stays with us and joins us in our sparring. Ciel and I pretend that we're sparring behind the bridge, but we're actually just testing the [Bind] to get used to working together through it. By reading the emotions and intentions of each other, it becomes easy to counter attacks, but since we aren't trying to win, and instead, we're just pretending to spar, we can adjust our attacks with extreme precision to be as realistic as possible. I even feel [Dancing] activating as we improve our coordination.

We also get the golems to participate in the sparring practice with the girls, and they make for an interesting fight to watch. Ted and Suzy work better fighting together, one controlling a greatsword while the other controls a large kite shield. They can control two weapons each, but this way, their movements are more precise. The way they fight is, in itself, unique, so it's difficult to teach them how to achieve their maximum potential since they lack the creativity to explore their own limits. They can see my memories, but I wasn't a swordsman in my past life, so the help they can get from them is limited.

"I've heard about magic swordsmen specialized in [Space Magic] who would use [Telekinesis] to control weapons, but they're extremely rare," Roxanne comments to Alissa beside her.

I stop sparring with Ciel, then I blink blankly and look at my own sword. "I could fight like that, couldn't I?" I wonder out loud.

"It would take a lot more points than what you currently have in [Space Magic] or [Mana Control] for you to reach the finesse necessary for that," Roxanne responds through [Bind].

I shrug and continue sparring.

Jarn's fighting style is a bit more grounded since she has limbs to limit her reach, but her joints bend in all directions, and her body is made of pure metal, so she has very different priorities in a fight when compared to a human. However, we come to the conclusion that copying Hana's style is the best option for her due to how durable she is. She can even wield a greatsword one-handed without tiring, but a longsword has the best reach-to-dexterity ratio, so she'll use one of those alongside a large kite shield.

Aoi's style with a halberd is that of a brute. She lacks the dexterity to properly fight with anything that requires more finesse. To compensate, she seems to be able to use that water ball of hers to defend herself like it's a mobile [Water Wall], though she reminds me a bit more of the water benders from Avatar than the mages in this realm.

"If she had a system, her 'Willpower' would certainly be higher than twenty," Paraaone comments.

If only he knew the truth.

I stop our spar again, which slightly annoys Ciel, and ask, "Why aren't there more people who use magic this way?"

"With just 'Willpower'? That's even more difficult than becoming a magic swordsman," Ciel replies.

"Only God-Rulers of the past could use magic like this because they lived long enough to learn how," Lina adds through [Bind].

"She already has an affinity for it, so wouldn't that speed up her progress?" I question.

"Perhaps, but I don't know much more than that," Lina responds with a shrug.

"We are going to live far longer than the average commoner, so she'll have plenty of time to develop this ability," Ciel adds.

"Learning how to cast [Water Spirit] would be much faster and have similar results," Roxanne objects through [Bind].

"She can just practice with it in her spare time if she wants," I reply, and they all agree.

After a while, Ciel and I stop, and we join the others in their sparring practice.

"I've been meaning to ask, but that glaive of yours, it's from a Horn, isn't it?" Paraaone asks Ciel.

She suddenly freezes, and her heart explodes with anxiety, but it quickly washes away, and she recomposes herself in mere seconds. "We found this in the Looping Winds station, but we didn't see its wielder near it."

Paraaone sighs, and his face morphs into sadness. "Oh… that's unfortunate. I'd have liked to know if it was from someone I knew."

She gives him a quick bow. "I'm sorry. We didn't find their armor or body, just the glaive."

"Yeah. I should've asked about that first." He shows her a sad smile, then his expression toughens, and she becomes alert. "We won't ask you to return it. Just put it to good use and kill as many monsters as you can with it."

Her tension washes away, and she gives him a bright smile. "I will, for sure."

Alissa starts practicing a new spell from Nocturna's book: [Daydreaming]. It's another distraction spell that makes the target not pay attention to what they see or hear. Similar to [Ignorance], just single-target instead of a self-buff. It's not that powerful or impressive, but it's a prerequisite for [Sleep], so she'll need to learn this spell first.

Roxanne continues her research on explosive materials, causing quite a few bangs and booms within her worktable.

"I think I should review that [Reinforce], just in case," Lina mutters and looks at Roxanne worriedly.

"This is so much fun!" Roxanne exclaims inside my mind.

"If you hurt yourself, we won't touch you for a whole day," I reply, and Hana agrees internally.

"Gah!"

The Chimeras are starting to add [Conjure Bland Meal] to their rations, so we invite Hukarere, Ririmu, and Paraaone to eat with us. We barbecue some elven smoked meats again because they loved it so much the first time. The veggies are also elven, so they're all juicy and vibrantly colored, making the meal feel rather special.

"My comrades are going to love this story. I'm over here, relaxing and fattening up, while they're flying alone, having to conjure their own meals," Paraaone says with a cheeky grin.

"Enjoying fine elven cuisine. Many would be envious," Yunia says with pride.

Hukarere and Ririmu share a look. The raccoon man is stuffing his face with a salad of bacon, shredded cheese, and endives, while the wolf woman is gnawing on the bone of a harpy Buffalo wing.

"My [Item Box] is huge. I have a lot of food," I calmly say and nod at them before they decide to stop eating.

Ririmu sniffs, and Hukarere's dragon tail wags, then they continue eating with renewed vigor.

My dagger-wielding tentacles are becoming faster. Simultaneously doing all of my women so often has certainly helped with increasing my control. It feels like I'm developing a sub-process for them, giving them almost a mind of their own, which is frightening, useful, and also awesome as fuck.

I think that just focusing on daggers might also be stunting its potential. I should have them wield all kinds of weapons during combat while leaving the daggers for emergencies.

I pull out a spear, a halberd, and a mace, then I grip them with my tentacles. I could potentially fight with six weapons, but the spear and halberd are polearms that require two tentacles to properly wield. I'll keep my last tentacle as a reserve in case I need an extra limb. My mind is already feeling taxed with three weapons anyway, so it's not like I can use my [Soul Manipulation] at the max all the time.

"Now this is ridiculous," Paraaone comments as he watches me test this new fighting style.

"It's a good thing that he's already creating his own style, because I've never seen one like that," Hana comments with a nod.

Yunia parries my spear, then she attacks, and I block with my shield, but she pivots and still manages to touch my neck for a second. If her longsword was sharp, it would've left a nasty wound.

"It's clear that your weapons aren't working together, so it's possible to exploit the side that's being neglected and get inside your guard," Yunia says.

"You're going to need a lot of skill points in various weapons to make them effective," Hana asks.

"It's still better than my usual fighting performance, right?" I ask.

"Yeah, definitely," Hana responds.

"Even a commoner with just a spear and a shield can keep away most enemies for at least a while," Yunia adds.

"You've always had a reach disadvantage since you use a short sword. Now, at least that's… somewhat covered," Ciel continues and smiles wryly.

Yunia does a sweeping slash down low, close to my shins, but doesn't hit anything. "See this? Your weapons are positioned rather high above you, so your legs are your most exposed area," she states.

My halberd is being held above my right shoulder, my mace is above my left, and my spear is positioned above my head, so I don't have any tentacles that could easily reach downwards. Though my spear has enough reach to stab down low, it doesn't have enough leverage to parry as effectively as a shortsword or parrying dagger.

"I can still add another weapon to my waist when I have more points in [Soul Manipulation]," I say and draw a dagger from my belt with a tentacle.

"You're likely to get your limbs in the way of one another if you grow them in front of your body. Going for polearms is the better choice," Hana replies.

"He still has a shield and a short sword, so it's not like he's lacking in close defensive options," Paraaone says.

"Every warrior's weak point is their legs, but Wolfy's style is so oppressive that it encourages the opponent to attack the legs a lot more," Yunia responds.

A few hours after lunch, one of the Horns returns to the Carrier. They've found the Gaping Maw sleeping near a tight curve of the Looping Winds, which is likely the location we set the last anchor at, right beside the portal. Though there's no word of it, maybe it's because the portal would be like an ant when placed next to the Maw, so they must've been too far away to see it.

Hihiriwa turns to our bird on the bridge and says, "The Floater has found a few abandoned farming islands, so we're ready to move. We'll begin the distraction tomorrow morning, then you can do whatever you want near Ozymandias, Ryders."

A note from Manasong

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Chapter 81: Distraction - Part 1

A note from Manasong

Attention: to conform to the limit of mature content (more than just sexual content) allowed in a novel, I've censored this chapter. You can look for the uncensored version here.

Note: I think I'll stop using the "-" notation on censored content so it doesn't detract from the story. I might even remove it from past chapters.

Well, I guess we'll have to say goodbye to the Chimeras tomorrow.

The excitement and motivation to continue training drains out of us. Even though our time with them has been short and awkward due to all the exposed bodies, we're all growing rather fond of these dead people. After we cross through the portal, I'm not sure if it's a good idea for us to come back to them, so once the distraction is successful, we'll be leaving for good.

Just when we start talking about going over to the Carrier, a Wasp launches and stops beside our ship. The cockpit opens, then we see a naked Kaatohe smirking at me, and surprisingly, she's wearing a wig. Her hair is full and wavy, and its color is a dark, lustrous bronze with a length that reaches her chin. It makes her look much more attractive and feminine than her rather neutral Bengal cat face normally portrays.

"Permission to land?" She asks with a smirk, and I simply nod as I mirror her expression.

Her Wasp uses up most of the deck, but that's not a problem since we aren't going to need the extra space anymore today.

"Would you like to join us in our tent for some tea?" I ask her with a slightly formal tone.

She nods slowly and replies, "It would be my pleasure."

I pull out a set of cushions for everyone, and we sit around the low table inside our tent. Alissa sits in a seiza position and starts serving some not-earl-grey tea. Kaatohe pulls out her personal blanket and covers her cushion with it before sitting down.

Kaatohe takes a sip and seems pleased with the taste. "Hm? What's this tea? I've never tasted anything like it before," she asks.

Alissa slides a platter of some buttery not-vanilla cookies towards her and answers, "It's Pahgamutto, a popular tea in all of Domum."

"It really goes well with these cookies."

I agree wholeheartedly.

Paraaone eats one and coos in wonder as he nods repeatedly.

Yunia seems very interested in Kaatohe's new hair and asks, "Why are you wearing a wig? Are there Chimeras that can't grow hair?"

Kaatohe grabs a lock of her hair and gives it a look. "Oh, this? Well, we aren't allowed to grow our hair out while serving in the Defense Force, so I keep a wig for when I want to look more feminine," she responds.

"Is it real hair?"

"No."

Yunia leans back with a satisfied smile. "Hah. I knew it."

Kaatohe shrugs. "Real hair is hard to maintain, while I can just pay an Alteration mage to grow the perfect wig for me, so the choice is obvious."

The two finish their small talk, giving me an opening to ask, "So, are you taking a day of rest from piloting?"

Kaatohe shakes her head gently, and her fluffy hair sways as she answers, "I still had two more days until I'd have a rest day, but I decided to take it in advance. Tomorrow morning you're beginning the distraction, and you'll continue on your journey after that, correct?"

I nod. "Yes. After the Maw is gone, we'll leave the fleet and continue with our exploration."

She stares at me calmly, then she starts playing with her dark pointy bit on her chest. "That's a shame. I'd love to duel you again."

"Just once?" I ask with a smirk.

She laughs softly and smiles, showing fangs similar to Alissa's. "Definitely more than once."

The dragon starts to awaken inside me, and I smirk sadistically. "Are you a masochist who enjoys being cut open by my sword, or did you just enjoy having me on top of you?"

She narrows her eyes and purses her lips. "So, you're finally showing your true self, Wolf?"

"He's been quite gentle with you. The savage way he treated Hana in Oritiki's estate is his usual self," Alissa casually remarks and sends me a warm look.

"I counter by punishing his hips every day," Hana adds.

Kaatohe scoffs and tries to contain her surprise, but she doesn't fully succeed. Her voice becomes slightly husky as she says, "Are you the type who must always be on top?"

I gently shake my head, "As much as I'd like being stepped on by a sensual and dignified woman, my pride wouldn't let me do so. I gladly accept being an equal, but I'd never be under a woman's foot, though, I do like to suck on them."

Now she seems legitimately surprised and amused. "Oh? You seem to be quite experienced with such matters."

I let a fearsome smirk grace my face as the dragon spreads its wings. "Don't let this cute and young face mislead you. I know a woman's body better than most."

She relaxes a little under my intense gaze and a purr escapes her mouth, but it's interrupted after a second as she says, "I knew you were the domineering type."

"And you're the type to bend over if I order you with enough intensity."

She raises her eyebrows and knits them, making a taunting expression. "Oh? You want to 'tame' me?"

My hammer knocks on the door, trying to escape my pants. "I don't need to 'tame' you because you already want to please me. You 'tamed' yourself."

She narrows her eyes, then leans forward, her large cat eyes staring at me in defiance. "How conceited of you, you peasant." The way she says "peasant" activates my submissive almonds.

I let the dragon flap its wings and breathe heavily as I ask, "Then why are you here if not to get a taste of me?"

Her posture freezes. "I'm here… to talk to Yulania."

The tension we've been building up instantly fades away, and I grin. "You hesitated."

She subtly raises her upper lip in anger, letting her fangs peek out from behind her lips. "No, I-… Yes, I did. That's because… I forgot her name."

Yunia scoffs and laughs. "Liar," she responds in Reo, slowly enunciating the word with perfection.

Kaatohe hisses at her, then starts chuckling and shakes her head.

"I can see that you're excited," I comment, and Kaatohe sends me an intense side glance.

Alissa sniffs the air and says, "You're ready to receive him."

Kaatohe shifts on her seat, and I see a wet spot on her blanket. Thankfully (or perhaps unfortunately), her blanket is thick enough that it won't stain the cushion.

I start to unfasten my armor, then Alissa and Lina help me with it. Ciel sighs, then she shares a shrug with Paraaone.

Kaatohe admires my body as I'm slowly undressed. "This is rather entertaining," she comments.

"You Chimeras don't know the joys of stripping. Hiding your body and slowly revealing it is more enticing than just being naked all the time," Roxanne adds.

"I understand exactly what you mean," Kaatohe responds, still staring intensely at my abs, and purrs sensually.

My naked body is revealed to her in all of its glory, and she stares at it hungrily.

"Come to me," I order.

"Don't think I'll submit so easily," she responds with a defiant smirk.

"But you will obey. Now, come to me," I whisper while adding a bit of [Godly Language] to my voice.

I give her the Wolf Ryder full course and show her my virility, then I make a mess of the area around us.

"Holy shit," Paraaone mutters, and Hana snickers.

I dismount her, filled with satisfaction, while she's filled with something else, then Alissa cleans her while Hana cleans me.

I spread my arms out to my sides and Lina wipes the sweat off my body with a towel, then Ciel casts [Clean] on me.

I sit down beside Paraaone, my weapon still drawn and pointing up, then I pour myself a cup of the cold tea that Alissa left out for me and gulp it down.

"Don't you ever get tired?" Paraaone asks.

I finish my cup, then I tilt my head in mild confusion and answer, "Of plowing? Nope."

He chuckles softly. "Well, we'll miss your presence, Ryders. Your family certainly made things 'interesting' for a while."

"You're all good people. We hope we can meet you again, one day," Ciel responds.

He nods at her and continues, "There's still a lot for us to teach you about [Glaive Use]." -He turns to Hana and gives her a cheeky smirk- "And I could even teach you how to fly better."

Hana's scales wave along with the anger sweeping through her as she responds, "Oi, listen here, you little shit…" She stops for a moment to think of an insult. "Your chicken wings don't work like mine. You don't even flap them, you fake!"

Paraaone laughs out loud, but he doesn't reply. He already got the reaction he wanted.

Kaatohe stops Alissa's cleaning and kisses her, getting a taste of me, then she immediately breaks the kiss and looks at Alissa in surprise. "It's actually tasty…" She whispers, then I take direct control of Alissa and continue the kiss.

"Is there an actual difference between your wings?" I ask.

"Of course!" Hana exclaims, a little more emphatically than she wanted to, then quickly recomposes herself to not fall for more of Paraaone's trolling. "His wings are like attuned crystals, they just amplify their [Fly] spell, which is why they don't even need to flap them unless they want to."

"Then... what do yours do?"

She snorts and crosses her arms. "Mine and Aoi's actually bend the air to our will, and we need to force it to hit them so that we can take flight."

Paraaone shrugs and adds with a dismissive tone, "In the end, it's the same thing. I can still bend the air to my will with [Fly], and I can even enhance my [Wind Magic] spells with my wings because of their attunement."

Hana's pride was wounded by Paraaone's sneak attack, but she won't fall for the same trick twice. She gives him a fearsome glare and replies, "Your wings will always be a second-hand imitation of the real thing."

Paraaone laughs again but doesn't bite back. Aoi heard it all, but she doesn't care. If Paraaone started getting haughty, then she'd put him back where he belongs.

Alissa finishes giving Kaatohe my hallowed seed, and the cat/leopard woman finally calms down.

Yunia scooches over beside Kaatohe, and the two of them start talking about the "refined" taste of my seed, but it quickly gets derailed into snobbish chatter once they start talking about "enhancing" jewelry with it.

I ask Paraaone about his wings, and he shows Ciel and me how they work. It's quite informative, actually. His wings work just like staves, needing the mana of the spells to pass through them to benefit from the attunement. Also, the mana efficiency of their wings is so high that it barely wastes any mana, though we aren't sure if that's related to them being spirits.

Kaatohe joins us for our bath and gets the Alissa special. Her washing isn't supposed to be arousing, but she adds a subtle touch to get Kaatohe in the mood again.

Hana stands before Kaatohe and gives her a fearsome smile as she asks, "You wanna do it?"

Kaatohe raises an eyebrow, but nods gently and extends her hand to Hana.

The barbarian takes it and holds Kaatohe by the waist, then lifts her up and flips her upside-down. This wouldn't work if they weren't both so athletic.

While Hana releases her pent-up desires on her, I give the rest of the girls my attention.

I play with Yunia while she talks with Roxanne, but the one chosen to receive the real hammer of love is Ciel.

After that, it's time to cook dinner.

"Have you ever held a knife?" Yunia asks with just a hint of smugness in her voice.

"Of course I have," Kaatohe responds in kind.

Roxanne approaches her with an innocent smile and hands her a utility knife. She assumes a kind and motherly tone as she says, "Would you mind helping us, then? Preparing a meal together is a great bonding activity. It can even be considered a sacred ritual for our family."

Ciel comes over to them with a bright smile. "It's like hunting for your own food. The effort you put into the meal makes it taste better," she piles on.

I pull out a few baskets with veggies and set them down on the table, then Paraaone approaches it and picks up a not-cauliflower. "So, how do you want this?" He asks, then glances at Kaatohe and gives me a smirk.

"Cut them really small so that there's more surface area to absorb the sauce," I respond.

The clawed hands of the cat/leopard woman twitch repeatedly, then she quietly grabs a not-tomato and asks, "Chopped, correct?"

I give her an amused nod, then she quickly washes it and makes hesitant cuts, chopping it into awkwardly large chunks.

Nobody comments on how she's doing, but we all know how hard she's trying to hide her inexperience.

I'm thankful for Hihiriwa not inviting us to dinner today because making the proud Kaatohe behave this awkwardly is just precious.

We invite Hukarere and Ririmu for dinner, which annoys Kaatohe because they didn't help prepare it.

We serve imperial mead, and Kaatohe and Ririmu love it while Paraaone and Hukarere feel that it's not spicy enough.

Hana agrees with an emphatic nod and says, "I know, right? Im-… Domum alcohol focuses on specific subtle tones in the taste, but it gets boring really quickly."

"Haven't you tasted halfling rum? It's quite popular all over Domum," Lina asks.

"It's just sugar," Hana responds with a shrug.

Kaatohe laughs and purrs loudly. The drunker she gets, the more cat-like her demeanor becomes.

Lina opens and closes her mouth, flabbergasted at Hana's audacity to diss rum. "I didn't think you'd be that dumb," She replies.

Hana sends her an amused look and adds, "Rum has a strong taste, but they don't know how to spice it properly, so it also gets boring too quickly."

"Ooh, she got you there," Roxanne comments with a smirk.

Lina grumbles and admits defeat.

Kaatohe takes her wig off, then I pat her head while applying a subtle soul touch, which makes her whole body shiver. She pushes against my head and closes her eyes, acting just like a cat would.

I really want a werecat and a weredog, now.

After our meal is done, I let Hukarere milk me a little while the girls play with Kaatohe. She's so deep into her cat persona that all her pride from before is gone.

"Nyaah!" She meows loudly and swats at a spike of not-wheat.

Ciel breathes heavily and adopts Kaatohe as a pet. Ririmu and Hukarere look horrified at this scene as their mental image of Kaatohe as a dignified noble crumbles before their eyes.

Eventually, Ciel begins to succumb to the alcohol herself and starts to play with Kaatohe's body. After Hana joins in and gets her fill again, I decide that it's time to end this.

I look them all in the eye with a stern expression and state, "I trust all of you to keep this secret. What happened here this night must not leave this ship, lest we all find our next drink to be poisoned by a noblewoman with a wounded pride."

We swear an oath, then Ciel casts [Purify Body] on everyone.

Before they leave, I give Hukarere a bittersweet hug. I stand on the tips of my toes to reach her head and pull her down so that I can whisper in her ear, "In case we don't have time for this tomorrow, this is goodbye."

She stares silently into my eyes for a few seconds and nods weakly, then we share bitter smiles, and she licks my cheek. She, Ririmu, and Paraaone wave us goodbye, then cast [Fly] and return to the Carrier.

Kaatohe is curled up on Ciel's lap, still recovering from her drunkenness. Since she's in no condition to pilot safely, I carry her into her Wasp and fly it back myself to the Carrier.

When we land, she clutches her head and groans in pain. "Thank you, Wolf. I can get back to my room on my own, now," she says, then carefully gets down from the Wasp.

I quickly leave with [Telekinesis] before she has time to process her memories, then the girls and I quickly clean things up and go to sleep.

Today is the 22nd.

My [Ekrano Style] increased by 1 (now 3), and I learned [Spear Use] with 1 point.

Alissa learned [Wind Magic] and [Water Magic] with 1 point each.

Roxanne increased her [Alchemy] by 1 (now 5).

Ciel increased her [Imperial Hasterrum Style] and [Wind Magic] by 1 (now 3 and 10+20).

Lina increased her [Hammer Use], [Axe Use], and [Dwarven Pride Style] by 1 (now 17, 9, and 3).

Yesterday was a productive training day all around.

The Floater had returned in the middle of the night, and it's now recharging the Carrier while we eat breakfast, then it comes over to fill our ship, too. Once it's done, Paraaone and Oritiki appear to check on us before I head out to begin the distraction.

"Are you sure you can use your teleport to escape?" Oritiki asks, frowning in concern.

"There are ways to block it, but no monster has ever shown itself to be able to do that," I reply.

"The Maw is something that even we can't deal with, so, if you get caught by it, it'll be very difficult for us to help you."

"We still have some cards up our sleeves." I wink at her.

Both she and Paraaone look confused. "Sleeves…?" She questions.

We chuckle, and Ciel explains, "Right, Chimeras rarely wear clothes. He meant that we still have a few secrets hidden."

"Like that explosive spell?" Oritiki asks.

"Might be even more powerful than that," I reply with a smirk.

She scoffs and exhales loudly through her nose. "Alright, then. Keep your secrets."

Hukarere taps the bird on the bridge of the Carrier, then tells me that the Gull is ready.

They all wish me good luck, and I give each of the girls a kiss, then I fly over to the Carrier.

Miihini, one of the Chimera engineers who installed the [Wind Shield]s on our ship, is waiting for me beside the Gull. I notice that the usual green gem in its catapult has been replaced with a pure white one. It looks rather conical, so I'd guess that it's aerodynamic enough to fly pretty far. I don't sense any mana coming from it, but I know that it just needs a small amount to trigger a runaway mana reaction.

"Greetings, Wolf Ryder!" Miihini exclaims and grins as I approach.

"Greetings," I respond and nod respectfully.

"I assume that you already know how to pilot this?"

"Very much so."

He nods repeatedly, looking pleased, then he pats the metal frame of the Gull. "We made a small alteration to this girl yesterday. We added an emellanat encasing to the [Fly] gem. This way, there won't be any mana emissions until the emellanat overheats and melts, so there's no risk of setting off the gem while you fly, and it should help you sneak in closer to the Maw while remaining undetected."

"Ooh~…" I coo in wonder as my inner nerd creams itself.

So now the gull is a stealth ship!

"There's enough emellanat to hide your emissions for about six hours, so you should be able to get in, launch the gem, and get out without being detected," he adds, then grunts with pride.

"That sounds amazing, thank you," I graciously reply with a grin.

He shakes his fist at me like a grumpy old man. "Oh, you better be thankful! Because we want both you and this girl to come back with all your feathers!" Then he smirks and opens the cockpit for me. "Now get in, my Lord. Marshall Hihiriwa will yell at me if he sees us chatting."

I strap myself in, then I set Hukarere's bird down on the seat beside mine, which is her usual spot, aside from being on her knees in front of me.

I reenter the Looping Winds, and Hihiriwa orders the fleet to follow behind me. We exit Void's End and fly past the anchor, entering the territory of what was once Ozymandias.

After an hour of flying, the fleet stops, and I continue forward. There are Horns surrounding the Maw, but they're hidden very far away from it, leaving me effectively on my own.

A note from Manasong

Hall of Fame of Patrons

The patrons who support Rupegia shall have their names sung by the bards for they deserve the glory and honor. Their names are:

Oracle Maximillian Hübner.

Prince PreownedFIN.

Lord Andrew Meyers.

Lord Samuel Lim.

Lord Bill.

Lord Novgarod.

Lord DJ.

Lord Ashadun.

Lord Michale Erwin.

Lord Enrique Peña Gomez.

Lord Bakerdea.

Lord D4rk Sheep.

Lord Nathan Vanbrunt.

Lord Markus.

Lord Maurice.

Lord Krawn.

Lord Empyrean.

Lord Mattirro Draca.

Lord Joshua Tal.

Lord Colorblind.

Lord RottenTangerine.

Lord Belkoth.

Lord Cidant.

Noble Salty Panda.

Noble Mild Fracas.

Noble EESDESESESRDT.

Noble Aclys.

Noble Jordon Gotthold.

Leave a rating or a review to help me rise to the top or fix my shameful understanding of prose.

Take a look over my blog where all information of the world of Rupegia will be posted.

Join the Discord and discuss, or rant, or meme, or try and fight me so your waifu gets more screentime.

Become a Patron and read chapters in advance, or read the side-stories, or leave your mark on the story, or help choose the next artwork or the next side-story.

Chapter 81: Distraction - Part 2

A note from Manasong

Attention: to conform to the limit of sexual content allowed in a novel, I've censored this chapter. You can look for the uncensored version here.

Note: I think I'll stop using the "-" notation on censored content so it doesn't detract from the story. I might even remove it from past chapters.

I observe the large urban islands passing by. They're just like those found near Whakamutu, but there's not a single Vengeful Spirit around. Presumably, they've all been eaten already.

I see a mountain island that looks like it's had a chunk bitten off of it. A half-eaten meal of the Maw.

I can't deny that I'm a bit nervous. This is a monster that not even all the Celestial Horns working together could defeat. Perhaps it's so powerful that only a fully-charged [Explosion] would be enough to hurt it.

Suddenly, I feel a familiar and warm softness wrapping around the back of my head.

"Ciel?" I reflexively ask and turn around, only to not see anything there, then Ciel's angelic giggles echo inside my mind.

"This is fun," she titters through [Bind]. I focus on what she's doing and realize that her bare cow udders are squished against the back of Alissa's head. "Ah, how mean."

"You asked for this," I say, then I assume direct control of Alissa and pounce on Ciel.

After punishing Ciel twice, I stop Alissa's attack and turn my focus back on flying, then I see that a Celestial Horn is waiting right next to the Looping Winds. This must mean that the Maw is close.

Ciel hurriedly dresses herself while blushing, ashamed about succumbing to lust while I'm off on a dangerous mission.

"It was her idea," she protests, and I make Alissa poke her for reading my thoughts. Ciel pouts and adds, "You can't really stop us anymore. We're all too curious about what you're thinking to hold ourselves back."

"You're as much my toy as I'm yours," Alissa says to me, and although Ciel doesn't approve of her words, she can't deny them, either.

"Every time you lay with someone, who do you think is always watching?" Roxanne asks, and she smirks internally.

"Everyone?" I reply.

Roxanne chuckles. "Well, you're not completely wrong… but the correct answer is Hana."

"Hey! Snitch!" Hana yells.

"I'm always watching, too. I like how it feels inside a woman," Aoi comments.

"I wish I had a tool like yours. It feels amazing to do a woman with one," Hana adds.

"I'm not giving you one made of spirit again. I feel like that might cause things to easily spiral out of control," I nervously point out.

"Bah!" Hana complains.

"I'm fine. I prefer to spy on you while you're doing it," Aoi says.

"Same," Roxanne adds.

"I feel like there's something really wrong with how [Bind] actually works," I comment and smile internally.

"Well, I think that you're using it completely wrong, though," Alissa replies.

"It's a spell of domination, not to share senses while having fun," Roxanne adds.

"As much as Wolfy likes to act domineering, he doesn't really want to dominate us," Lina says.

My mind is immediately filled with "aww~'s," so I poke them all until they go quiet.

Soon after, the Holly flying above the Gull spots the Gaping Maw. A gigantic light red cloud in the shape of a bundle of coiled rope.

Fuck me, that's hu~ge. Will this small gem actually do anything to it…? Well, I guess it's supposed to give it a tummy ache, not kill it, so it might be enough.

I keep my eyes locked ahead, and eventually, I manage to spot the red cloud in the distance. It stands out due to its size and its color contrasting against this morning's starry sky.

A few minutes later, it grows enough in my sight that I can start to discern its rope-like shape.

"I've spotted the Maw," I say to the bird.

"Understood. Put me on your lap so that I can see it, too," Hukarere responds.

Hihiriwa gives the order, and the fleet moves up and away from the Looping Winds and towards the island they've chosen. Our ship stays near the Looping Winds since there's no need for them to follow the rest of the fleet anymore.

Over the course of the next half-hour, I stare at the Maw in silence as the small cloud grows larger and larger in my vision until it dwarfs me completely and gives me an intense feeling of megalophobia.

We need to get within one kilometer of it, and to measure the distance, I use the small stadia rangefinder they gave me back when we started this expedition. It's calibrated to range the Carrier, but since they know the height of the Maw, and I only need to reach a specific distance, they just converted the distances manually for me.

"Can this catapult really throw the gem that far?" I ask.

"Now you're asking this? What if I answered 'no'?" Hukarere questions me with a sassy tone, then Kaata gives her a glare, and she bites her tongue.

I shrug. "Bad question. Better one: is there something else besides the catapult that will aid the gem in its flight?"

She holds back her smirk and responds in a formal tone, "Yes, there is. Once the reaction begins, the mana being ejected will propel the gem forward, and we estimate that it should hit the Maw right on the nose."

"Good to know, but wouldn't a ballista be a better choice to launch the gem, then?"

"'Ballista'?" She questions.

"'Crossbow'? Like, a bow that you use horizontally with a mechanism that locks the bow in a drawn position."

She frowns. "I assume it's a weapon you land-dwellers use? We rarely use bows, so I know very little about them."

I guess the Chimeras are good enchanters, but bad engineers.

I shrug and reply, "Whatever. Let's focus on the now. We'll be in range soon."

We get close enough that I manage to see the portal through the Holly. It's as big as our ship, which is nothing but an ant beside the mountain that is the Maw.

Beyond the portal, I can see a bright blue sky and a sparkly red ground, but I don't know what it's made of. I have to get through that portal, then teleport the girls to me.

"Who goes there?" A deep, slow voice asks inside my mind in Reo.

"What?" I question through [Bind].

"What?" Alissa returns my question, and all the girls share their confusion, then they tense up in fear.

"A humanoid? Oh… are you here to hurt me…?" The voice continues.

I freeze, utterly stunned, then I realize that the voice isn't talking inside my soul space through [Bind], but rather, it's actually inside my ears.

"Who are you?" I ask out loud, my inner finger hovering over the [Gate] button inside my mind.

"Who're you talking to?" Hukarere asks.

I recognize the pleasurable "tickling" inside my ear of someone with high "Charisma" as the deep voice gently replies, "I call myself Pua… but I think you humanoids call me 'Gaping Maw.'"

"Holy shit," I mutter.

"Holy shit," the girls echo in unison. Yunia looks at Lina in confusion, then Lina starts explaining what's going on.

"Are you going to attack me?" I blurt out.

Hukarere's confusion just increases.

"No… are you going to attack me?" It replies meekly.

"This is unexpected… what do I say?" I ask for help through [Bind].

"That you won't attack, obviously. If we can get past it without angering it, then we must," Ciel immediately answers.

"Right, right…"

"No, but I need to get near you," I tell the Maw.

"What for…?" It asks, a hint of childish curiosity in its tone.

"I need to get to that portal beside you."

"Okay… just don't throw that gem near me," it responds with a slightly annoyed tone.

"Question it further. Aberrants that don't attack humans are rare," Yunia whispers to Lina.

"You're a monster, so why don't you want to attack me?" I ask the Maw.

I hear a snort, then it answers with an annoyed grumble, "Humanoids taste bad, even worse than the white gems. I like green gems."

Oof, now that's a bit chilling…

"Do you eat Chimeras?" I ask.

"No… unless they prickle me." -Its voice becomes soft and sad- "I don't like being prickled…"

Hihiriwa presses Hukarere, and she reports about what I'm talking about.

It's like a child.

"Do you hate them?" I ask.

"They're annoying…" It grouses, and I can just feel the pout in its tone.

I try to sound gentle and friendly, I ask, "Can you stay away for a little while? I don't want you to fight the Chimeras."

"Okay…" It calmly agrees.

Suddenly, I sense a burst of mana, then the Gull shakes for a moment. I look up and see the Light gem shooting forward like a comet. It starts to glow and releases a frightening amount of mana. I recognize the flavor of that mana being very similar to Ciel's [Judgment].

Ah, fuck...

"Oh… someone doesn't want you to cross through the portal…" The maw whispers casually.

My view is quickly covered in darkness as the red cloud snaps towards me like a whip, but [Battlefield Perception] doesn't activate, so I hesitate, not casting [Gate] just yet.

I'm pressed into my seat as the Gull suddenly accelerates to a ludicrous speed. I hear loud snapping as the framework of the Gull is crushed by the Maw's body, and I see the portal approaching rapidly.

Suddenly, the pressure eases off, and the illumination changes completely. A sparkly red fills more and more of my view, then I realize that it's sand. The gull's anti-crash enchantment activates, and a cloud of dust shrouds the cockpit as the Gull tumbles across the sand.

The Holly that was shadowing the Gull is still on the other side of the portal, too slow to follow me through. It gets blinded by the light being released by the gem, then it starts to receive damage.

The gem cracks and explodes, burning the eye of the Holly and nearly killing it, then it hears a deep, angry roar mixed with a sharp hiss that makes its bones tremble.

A light pierces through the dust cloud and blinds me, too. I cast [Heal] on my eyes and body, then I wait for the dust to clear away.

I'm still strapped into my seat, and the anti-crash enchantment protected the cabin from getting crushed in the impact, but the rest of the Gull has become a wreck of cloth and metal. Hukarere's bird wasn't strapped down to a seat, so it's now a mangled mess, it's head bent in the wrong direction.

Oritiki hears the roar and looks over at the deck of our ship, then she frowns and quietly murmurs something.

The dust cloud clears, and I can only see a clear blue sky with a harsh sun beating down on me. The portal that I just crossed through isn't there anymore.

"Wolf?! What happened! Wolf?! My bird is dead!" Hukarere yells desperately.

"Check with the Horns, has he teleported back to his ship?" Hihiriwa asks.

"H-he's not here…" Oritiki immediately responds, fear and anxiety seeping into her voice.

"His summoned bird is still here, so he's not dead," Kaiia says.

I cut through the straps of my seat with a dagger-tail and cast [Earth Bullet] at the cockpit window, breaking it open, then I get out and look around. There's just sparkly red sand as far as the eye can see, and the sun above is hurting my skin just like it did in the first level of this dungeon.

Hana sneaks behind the tent, then jumps off the ship and flies underneath it. She pulls out a wide plank from her [Item Box], and I open a [Gate] on it.

Ciel casts [Wind Hammer] on Paraaone's back, forcing him off the ship, then Hana slaps the plank against the ship's hull, teleporting it to me, and I summon her with [Bind].

Paraaone turns around in surprise, then stares in confusion at where our ship was just a second ago. "Wha-…?" His question dies in his throat. He looks at Oritiki and she shrugs, completely flabbergasted.

One of the comms officers reports, "His ship is… gone. It was teleported away."

Oritiki starts yelling at Hihiriwa, asking what happened, and orders the Horns to assemble. Her reaction is enough to tell us that she wasn't involved in this betrayal.

Hihiriwa's eyes are locked with my bird's, but he doesn't say anything, not even to Oritiki.

"The Maw is seemingly wounded, and it's moving away from us," another comms officer reports.

I float up to the deck of our ship and let Alissa inspect my body. She did well in keeping it together when shit hit the fan, so now we'll let her pamper me as much as she wants.

While Lina explains to Yunia what just happened, I pull out a sheet of paper and a magic pen, then I start writing a note.

"This is Wolf. We're safe, and we're fine. The Maw attacked the Gull and destroyed it, but I survived. I don't think it was actually trying to kill me, but instead, it simply pushed me away from the runaway mana reaction.

I had managed to start a conversation with the Maw, and I don't think that it's hostile to humanoids like monsters normally are, so the next time you have to interact with it, try to talk to it before attacking. Unfortunately, my conversation with it was cut short by a malfunction with the catapult, which launched the gem without my command.

I've teleported the ship already, and the "distraction" was successful, so we're not going back, and this is the last time we'll talk. We'll continue on our journey, but we'll always keep you in our hearts.

Oritiki, it was a pleasure getting to know you and the Horns. Also, tell Hukarere and Ririmu that we're fine and we'll miss them, too.

The Ryder family says goodbye. Until next time."

"It's good enough," Yunia says.

"Why aren't we accusing someone of activating the catapult?!" Hana angrily questions.

"Can we prove it?" Yunia calmly asks.

We take a look at the Gull. The catapult is a mangled mess, and even the [Fly] gem was cracked.

"It's better to not cause undue friction unless it's advantageous to us," Yunia continues.

"It's not like we're going to see them again," Hana replies with a shrug.

I frown and say, "Actually, I think we might. Once we reach the dungeon's core, there may be a way to take them out of here."

"Hm… do you want to recruit them, or something?" Hana asks.

I shrug. "Perhaps. We'll see what they want when the time comes."

"We'll have to be more careful with Hihiriwa when we negotiate with him. He certainly outplayed us this time," Yunia comments.

"This is why I dislike dealing with spirits. They tend to gradually become increasingly irrational and violent after they die," Ciel says.

"Gih," Gify chirps.

"So, it's like they turn feral?" I question, and Gify nods.

"We don't know if that's the case with Hihiriwa, though," Yunia adds.

Hana purses her lips and lets it go.

I summon a small wind elemental and give it the letter, then I open a [Gate] to the Carrier's infirmary, and the elemental crosses through. The shortstack doctor gets surprised by the sudden gust of wind, but she doesn't see anything.

The elemental flies through the Carrier and gets outside through a Cannon Room, then it searches for Oritiki. It sees the Winch latching onto a huge island covered with overgrown grass. The ship unfurls all of its sails, then enchantments light up all over its deck and underside, and wind blows into them. It leaks so much stray mana that the wind elemental can easily feel it, and it's probably over 1 km away from the source.

After a few minutes, the elemental finds Oritiki, and they stop in front of each other.

She points her glaive at the elemental and glares at it suspiciously. "Wolf? Is this one of yours?" She asks.

The elemental offers the letter and bows. Paraaone stops and hovers beside Oritiki, pointing his glaive at the elemental too.

"I guess it is…" Oritiki mutters, then cautiously accepts the letter and reads it.

Her expression shifts from concerned, to angry, to soft, and ends with sad. She gives it to Paraaone to read, then his posture immediately relaxes as he grins.

She glides closer to the elemental and says, "I don't believe in this 'malfunction' even a little bit. I admit that I don't know why Hihiriwa wanted to enrage the Maw, but I'll find a way to talk and make peace with it."

Nobody seems to know anything about the portal, so perhaps it was another "forbidden topic." Regardless, her interpretation is convenient for us, so we'll let things stay this way.

I unsummon the wind elemental, and we wait for a short while until Oritiki enters the Carrier's bridge.

She ignores Hihiriwa and simply hands the letter to the distraught Hukarere. There was no way for her to talk to us because the comms box doesn't work anymore, so she could only wait anxiously until something happened. She quickly calms down as she reads and smiles, then she starts petting the bird.

Oritiki glares at Hihiriwa as she says, "The Ryders are safe. The Gull was destroyed, so he teleported their ship to save himself. Since the Maw has flown away, they'll continue their journey on their own."

"Have you confirmed that it was destroyed?" Hihiriwa calmly asks.

"No, but I trust them," she responds coldly.

He nods. "Then I shall as well." He turns to the bird and gently says, "Goodbye, Ryders. It was a pleasure to have you with us."

I wish that Hukarere could keep the bird, but I need to learn to let go, so I unsummon it and all the Hollys that I have there.

I sigh and take a moment to work through my sadness. Hihiriwa made things difficult for us. If it weren't for him, we could still go back without a problem, but now, it'll be really awkward and a bit dangerous to try to patch up our relationship.

I click my tongue and jump off our ship. I land on the hot, soft red sand and awkwardly walk over to Lina.

"Anything salvageable?" I ask.

"The gem and the emellanat, but the gem will need to be re-enchanted before it's usable again," Lina answers.

"Can you study the gem and learn how to improve ours?"

She shakes her head, and her bangs sway gently. "This one was designed for heavy lifting, and the empire's ships are already proficient at that, including ours. If we had a Wasp, though…"

I purse my lips. "If I knew he was going to betray us like this, I'd have stolen one."

She turns to me and tilts her head, then shields her eyes from the harsh sun. "Didn't Faium improve their [Fly] gems? They might be comparable to the Chimeras, now."

"True… it might be easier to buy some and make our own Wasps than to steal some from them."

"Can we even bring this Gull outside of the dungeon? We don't know what's real matter and what isn't."

"The gem is the most important part, so let's remove it, and I can try to store the Gull in my 'Items.'"

She nods emphatically and crawls into the wreck, then she uses [Manipulate Metal] to get open a path towards the gem and free it from the mangled metal frame. We pull the gem out with [Telekinesis], then I store a small piece of the Gull in my "Items."

The entry "Metal beam" appears in my "Items," so this means that the Gull isn't a dungeon mana solidification. I store the rest of the wreck, then I take a look at the gem.

It's unsafe to put a cracked gem inside an [Item Box], and I don't want to risk it with my "Items," so we take it to the hold and secure it with some rope.

I was afraid of messing too much with our ship because it could "dissolve" if it was made of dungeon mana, but now that our feet are on solid ground again, I decide to test it.

I take a splinter out of our ship and store it in my "Items," and the entry "Wood splinter" appears. I almost clap my fingers in excitement like Roxanne. The ship is real, though the [Fly] gem could still be a fake.

I get out of the hold and look up at the sky. This dungeon has some pretty amazing views, but I have to set my [Breeze] enchantment to the max for this floor. This red desert may be beautiful, but I want to get us under some shade as soon as I can. Unfortunately, there don't seem to be any obvious clues regarding which direction we should search in.

I summon nine Hollys and tell them to spread out in all directions, including up, then I walk to the bridge, and we lift off. Destination: wherever we can hide from this infernal sun.

A note from Manasong

Hall of Fame of Patrons

The patrons who support Rupegia shall have their names sung by the bards for they deserve the glory and honor. Their names are:

Oracle Maximillian Hübner.

Prince PreownedFIN.

Lord Andrew Meyers.

Lord Samuel Lim.

Lord Bill.

Lord Novgarod.

Lord DJ.

Lord Ashadun.

Lord Michale Erwin.

Lord Enrique Peña Gomez.

Lord Bakerdea.

Lord D4rk Sheep.

Lord Nathan Vanbrunt.

Lord Markus.

Lord Maurice.

Lord Krawn.

Lord Empyrean.

Lord Mattirro Draca.

Lord Joshua Tal.

Lord Colorblind.

Lord RottenTangerine.

Lord Belkoth.

Lord Cidant.

Noble Salty Panda.

Noble Mild Fracas.

Noble EESDESESESRDT.

Noble Aclys.

Noble Jordon Gotthold.

Leave a rating or a review to help me rise to the top or fix my shameful understanding of prose.

Take a look over my blog where all information of the world of Rupegia will be posted.

Join the Discord and discuss, or rant, or meme, or try and fight me so your waifu gets more screentime.

Become a Patron and read chapters in advance, or read the side-stories, or leave your mark on the story, or help choose the next artwork or the next side-story.

Chapter 81: Distraction - Part 3

A note from Manasong

Attention: to conform to the limit of sexual content allowed in a novel, I've censored this chapter. You can look for the uncensored version here.

Note: I think I'll stop using the "-" notation on censored content so it doesn't detract from the story. I might even remove it from past chapters.

I send an earth elemental down into the sand to explore. It eventually reaches a layer of sandstone, but its color is still exactly the same as the sand around us. It's just red everywhere.

There's nothing above us, nothing below us, nor anything of note in any other direction, only the red, sparkly sand. Since we have no clue where to go, and not even a breeze to follow, we decide to wait here while the Hollys explore.

The tents we have are too closed-off, so I shape an earth elemental into a framework covering the entire deck, then I use a nature elemental to cover it with leaves. Now that we have a nice canopy for us to hide from the sun, I add a wind elemental to create a gentle breeze that tickles our skin and gives us chills. Now that we aren't directly under the harsh sun anymore, we can stop pushing our [Breeze] enchantments to the max.

I set down two sofas facing each other in the middle of the tent for all of us, then Yunia and I fuse them to the deck so that they won't fall off if the ship needs to take evasive maneuvers.

I sit down and enter a trance as my hands just move on their own, drawing moans of pleasure from Alissa as they [Massage] her ears. I stare at the horizon as I work, observing where the light blue meets the vibrant red. The presence of only two colors makes for a rather beautiful view. It's in moments like these that I miss having a proper camera. [Instant Painting] just doesn't capture landscapes that well.

After a good half hour, Alissa's back suddenly arches, and she pushes my hands away, reaching the limit that her ears can take.

She suddenly sits up and plants her lips against mine. Her tongue invades my mouth and caresses my own, trying to return some of the pleasure I just gave her.

Her fingers run through my hair as she desperately tries to swallow me up, then our armors touch and clink, reminding us of the inconvenience that they pose.

Our kiss lasts for only a short while before she breaks it, then she immediately turns around and gives a deep kiss to the lonely dwarf staring at us.

Lina looks surprised at first, then rolls her eyes and returns the kiss when she realizes that I'm the one in control of Alissa.

While she enjoys the touch of my fox slut, Lina prefers my own manly tongue, so I stop teasing her and kiss her myself.

It pains us to not give in, but we hold ourselves back from stripping down and starting a party, though that doesn't mean that I can't have some fun.

I suddenly end our kiss and savor the last moment of it as Lina's little tongue begs for me to stay, but I break her heart and separate my lips from her.

I look her in the eye and smile warmly, knowing what she truly desires. I gently wrap my hands around her delicate neck, and she gives me a look filled with apprehension.

From my hands, I start spreading a thin film of black, veiny matter over her skin. It grows at an incredible rate, as if hundreds of tiny tentacles were spreading out and grabbing her skin. I'm sure it'd look like a sexy latex skinsuit if it weren't for her armor blocking our view of most of it.

In under a minute, most of her body is covered. My smile morphs into a sadistic grin, and after a moment of hesitation to make sure that this is what she wants, I start pumping.

Alissa gets up and stretches, then she leans on the railing and sighs. "Not even the Colored Sands are as desolate as this place," she comments.

"Isn't this place like the Red Sands?" Hana questions as she happily observes Lina being toyed with.

"Have you been there before?"

"No, but I've heard a lot about it from the Faiumi."

Lina's Trivia: The people from the Faium Principality.

Roxanne clicks her tongue as she brushes Hana's hair, frustrated with the matting that's setting in again. We have to constantly use our most expensive elven products on her mane-like hair to keep it as fabulous as it deserves.

"I've only seen it from a distance once," Alissa says, then she sits down beside Roxanne and helps her out. "It's a rather poor land, and the loss of Hiyoku Hara has made them even poorer now that there's no reason for caravans to cross through it anymore. Of course, that's just exacerbated the problem they have with illegal slavers operating from there, so most werefoxes hate their people because of that activity since that's all they ever hear about from there.

"It's an unfair prejudice since it's not their fault that their land is so poor. They've just been neglected for being small and sparsely populated, but you can easily see the beauty of their land. Just take a look around." She motions to the sands all around us.

Indeed, if it weren't for the heat, I'd be completely in love with this place.

"Ohoh? A werefox speaking up for criminals?" Yunia questions her with a raised eyebrow.

"We kill weeds without hesitation, but we do not hate them," Alissa replies and shoots a subtle glare at Yunia, who sports a smug smile in response.

"But what does Arreira have in common with the Colored Sands?" I question before their banter derails the conversation any further.

Lina twitches, and I unblock her airways. "He has… nothing… in common…" She mutters, then I resume playtime.

"There's no mention of the Colored Sands in all of elven history, so I find it hard to believe that this is a recreation of that place," Yunia says.

"This is supposedly 'Ozymandias,' but even in Chimeric history, the name isn't that significant," Roxanne adds, then she looks at Lina, asking her for confirmation, and receives a short nod as an answer.

I hum in thought and say, "Hm… remember how the roads in the Looping Winds Station had English names? Ozymandias is the name of a famous and ancient ruler on Earth, and it's also the name of a poem, which I think seems awfully fitting for this situation. There are way too many similarities with Earth for this to just be a coincidence."

"Oh? Earthling poetry? I want to hear this," Yunia asks, sounding amused.

I smile wryly and answer, "I don't remember the words precisely, only the image that they evoked, so I'll just describe what I remember."

"That's good enough," Yunia responds with a shrug.

I clear my throat and gather my thoughts. "In the middle of a vast desert, a traveler finds a pair of colossal stone feet and a shattered head with a cold and commanding expression. On the pedestal was written: 'My name is Ozymandias, king of kings! Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!' But nothing besides that wreck remains. There's only desert for as far as the eye can see."

"How depressing," Yunia says and chuckles softly.

I smile bitterly and add, "There are no Humanoid Gods on Earth, no magic, no way to increase your lifespan, no way to control the elements with your mind. We're all born 'equal,' and even our heroes aren't really as heroic as the stories we tell claim them to be. It's a depressing world."

"Oh? Changing your tune? I remember you being quite enamored with Earth when I first met you," Roxanne comments teasingly. I'm not sure if she's copying Yunia's demeanor, or if it's the inverse, or even if they're just amplifying each other.

I take one hand off Lina's throat and awkwardly scratch my head. "My quiet little corner of the world was my piece of paradise. It's hard to not miss the simpler times, not that I'd ever actually go back if given the chance… anyway, we're getting sidetracked." I shake my head and grab Lina's neck again.

"Well, I agree that the poem is rather fitting, but how would Arreira know anything about Earth?" Alissa questions.

"Perhaps Wolfy isn't the first to come from there," Yunia suggests, and her words send a chill down my spine.

"I've never heard of a realm traveler before, though I wasn't a high-ranking priest, so I don't know if the temple is keeping any secrets about them," Ciel responds.

"Isn't the existence of Gifts kind of hushed by the temple? They're probably hiding even bigger secrets," Alissa suggests.

Ciel frowns and replies, "Well, there's quite a lot written about heroes throughout history. The temple just wants to protect them from being used by the nobility or other interested parties, so they keep it 'secret.'"

"Still, it's possible that one of them was someone like Wolfy," Yunia insists.

Ciel shrugs. "I guess…"

Playtime ends with Lina, and I let her relax, then I unblock her airways, and she says, "Arreira manipulates memories… so what if he could see Wolfy's?"

Lina sits on my lap, and we go silent as we think about it.

Alissa recovers first and says, "That's quite possible. The names that you said sound like they're English could've been just from Maplethorne, but 'Ozymandias' also being related to Earth really is too much of a coincidence."

"The memories of the Chimeras are even manipulated in real-time. The moment a 'forbidden topic' is mentioned, it's deleted," I say, and we all frown.

"So, are our memories being manipulated, too?" Ciel questions.

Yunia shakes her head and calmly states, "Very unlikely. To use [Alteration Magic] on a living person's brain requires the victim to be in a deep sleep, otherwise, it causes a conflict with the physical body, quickly causing death."

"But if he has something like [Sense Soul], then he can 'see' someone's memories, just like I do," I reply.

As if the dungeon was waiting for us to realize that, a Holly spots something that's not red sand. Its orders are to inspect anything it finds, so it starts flying in the direction of the three dots it spotted, still too far away to identify them properly.

We all swallow heavily and observe the Holly's approach with bated breath.

We identify the dots as gray pillars, and we realize that they're broken pieces of something. Two of them are on top of a gray pedestal, while the third is beside it, half sunken in the sand.

We gradually identify more of their details, but it takes a while until our brains truly begin to process what we're seeing.

At the pedestal, there are two broken stone feet, and beside them, there's a cracked and half-sunken head of a stern-looking statue. This scene is just like how I imagined the poem.

After the shock wears off, Ciel tells Yunia what we're seeing, and she frowns. "I must say, Arreira is rather 'obvious' with his references," she comments.

"It doesn't feel much like a puzzle or a challenge anymore," Lina adds.

"It's almost like Wolfy and his 'memes,'" Alissa adds with a wry smile.

"I feel rather uncomfortable knowing that someone is reading our memories," I say and hug my lap-loli tighter.

"Is it because they've seen all the sex we have?" Alissa asks, and I answer with a nod.

"We just have to kill the person who's behind all this," Hana casually says with a shrug.

"Dungeon Master, if you're listening, we're not serious about that!" Ciel exclaims, then glares at Hana.

Yunia chuckles like a lady and says, "It's likely that the Dungeon Master is bound to the core, otherwise, they wouldn't have survived for this long without a whole family maintaining the dungeon for generations, so we have to destroy the core, anyway."

"Still, they could be a prideful being, so we need to be careful," Ciel insists.

"What if it's also a spirit bound to the core by [Trap Soul]?" I question.

"One of Arreira's close servants. Someone noble that we shouldn't offend," Ciel continues and purses her lips.

Hana raises her hands in defeat and says, "Alright, alright. Sorry, sorry."

"Anyway, it seems like we have our destination?" Yunia questions and looks at me.

"None of the other Hollys have found anything, so I think that's a 'yes,'" I respond with a shrug.

We start flying towards the ruins, and we let the golems pilot since there's nothing that could threaten us here.

I notice that the ship is actually releasing more mana than there is in the air. This means that if our ship runs out, it might be a bit complicated to refill it with just [Redirect Mana]. We'll need to bring in more from the outside or use our own.

"Lina, can the gem of the Gull still hold mana?" I ask her.

She turns around and looks at me with her gloomy eyes. "It can, but I don't recommend activating it. The crack is right at a converter, so it'll leak mana like a [Torrent]."

"I only plan to use it as a portable mana storage to refill our ship."

She opens her eyes wide and blinks. "Oh, that's a good idea. The gem can hold a lot of mana, so it can also be used to refill our ship."

I pat her head, and she turns to face forward again.

It doesn't take us long to fly to the ruins because the Hollys didn't actually scout that far away.

We reach the pedestal and stop in front of it. The statue's feet are rather delicate and feminine for a human, and the half-sunk head looks decidedly elven, but we can't confirm that completely since its ears have broken off.

We dig out both the pedestal and the head, then inspect every inch of them, but we don't find anything strange. The stone is also completely smooth, making it feel nice to rub our hands on it, especially the angry bald head.

I re-summon the scout Hollys and send them out again. This time, it takes them only a short while to find another ruin: a broken Greek column.

Then we start to find a trail of these ruins. A Japanese torii; a Gothic arch; a Mosque cupola; a chunk of the Sistine Chapel's ceiling, which I'm sure isn't Chimeric; the tip of the Eiffel Tower; the torch of the Statue of Liberty.

Then the entire Roman Colosseum, half-sunken in the sand.

"Arreira is quite dramatic, isn't he?" Yunia asks rhetorically after I tell them about the Roman Empire.

"Isn't he taunting us?" Alissa questions.

"How so?" I ask.

"He's showing us the symbols of Earth's history all ruined and broken. It's just like his own history: these symbols are all that remains."

I frown and disagree. "But these buildings are still standing on Earth; they've been preserved due to their significance. They represent how far Earth's history has progressed, so they have nothing in common with the forgotten legacy of a nihilistic king."

She tilts her head cutely and asks, "'Nihilistic'?"

"Erm…"

Before I can gather my thoughts to explain, Ted floats down to the deck and answers, "Master Wolf is referring to the belief that life is without objective meaning, purpose, or intrinsic value. That's 'nihilism.'"

"But life does have an objective purpose," Ciel says with pursed lips.

I smile bitterly and reply, "Not on Earth, it doesn't. But I wasn't implying that when I said 'nihilistic.'" -I turn to the know-it-all and smile smugly- "Do you know what I was implying?"

Ted stays quiet for a few seconds, then she answers, "I understand you're implying something more nuanced than my definition, but I can't explain what it is."

I exhale loudly and say, "Well, at least you know your limits… Anyway, I'm implying that Arreira has become disheartened from his own life and is trying to fill us with existential nihilism. He's saying that it's quite likely that we'll never be able to accomplish enough to be remembered forever. That we'll just become broken symbols of faded glory."

"Or he's just taunting us by showing that he's seen your memories," Alissa responds, her eyebrows knit in skepticism.

Ted returns to the bridge silently.

"I'm with Alissa, you may be overthinking this," Ciel says.

"Arreira is a… weird elf. I think he's being pretentious," Lina says.

"I think that him being 'nihilistic' fits with what we've seen so far," Yunia says.

"The Chimeras are hopeful and happy even after we told them that their entire nation is gone. That's the opposite of this 'nihilism,'" Ciel points out.

"On the contrary. Even after everything was gone, the Chimeras wanted to rebuild their nation, not create something new, like the Sky Lands," Yunia replies.

I groan and facepalm. "Too much speculation, not enough evidence," I say.

"I don't think he's taunting us. It feels like he's playing with us, just to see how we react," Roxanne adds.

I stop for a moment, then I chuckle when I realize that she might be right. "Giving us small pieces of information, just so that he can keep us going round and round with our assumptions."

"Exactly. Just giving us new information, but never a concrete answer," she adds with a smug smile.

The other girls don't accept that conclusion and argue a bit more, but it doesn't go anywhere, so we end up dropping it for now.

We fly over the Colosseum and discover that there's a large hole right in the center, wide enough to fit our ship with room to spare.

We approach it, and I send two Hollys down into it. The tunnel is made of the same red sand as everything else, and it's angled at about 45º downwards. It seems like the perfect angle to slide down while riding on a board, but then I see something that makes me pause. The sand is also on the ceiling. It's not sandstone or anything like that, there's loose sand stuck on the ceiling, somehow.

I guess we should be careful to not update these chunks.

We land beside the hole and wait for the Hollys to scout the tunnel. It's time to prepare our lunch, so we have something to do while we wait.

"Can we… not prepare lunch? I'd like to go back to Goloria and eat something over there," Yunia suggests, a bit anxious. It was very unlikely that she'd so easily adapt to this way of life after only knowing a life of privilege.

"Uh… sure. I can send you back so that you can tell them what you want for lunch," I reply with a nod.

"Thank you…" Yunia whispers, trying to hide her awkwardness.

"Before we plunge into that hole, can we take a break?" Roxanne asks, and the girls agree.

I hold my chin in thought and agree, "That might be a good idea. I'd like to meet Yunia's brothers before we get involved with something that forces us to stay inside the dungeon again."

Yunia seems pleased with my suggestion, and crosses through [Gate] with a subtle smile on her luscious lips.

The tunnel in the center of the Colosseum leads deep into the earth, far beneath the sandstone layer, yet the ceiling doesn't change from its gravity-defying sand.

After a good while going down, the Hollys find a faint light shining far ahead. It slowly pulses and changes color, from white to a washed-out yellow, then to a deep blue, and back to white again.

They reach the end of the tunnel, which opens up into a wide room with gray, smooth stone peeking out from behind the gravity-defying red sand that covers almost every surface. There's over a hundred meters of nothing but stone and sand in front of them. The room ends in a huge double door of the same smooth gray stone, and it seems to be at least three times as tall and wide as our ship. Stray small [Spirit Light]s float about, providing the fluctuating source of light. They move aimlessly around the room, slowly looping throughout it in a sort of melancholic dance.

Creepy.

Without a way to proceed forward, the Hollys simply land in the center of the room and wait.

We haven't met a single monster so far, nor even a taste of any flavor of mana besides the environment. It seems like things around here are safe enough that we might be allowed a small breather.

I teleport everyone to our mansion in Goloria, then I pull out the golems. We left the ship in the dungeon with only two elementals and a Holly, while another Holly observes the double doors. I don't think any of them will actually be attacked, so I'm fairly comfortable with this setup.

Yunia had the servants prepare an elven banquet for us, but she also asked for a whole smoked leg of a Giant Boar for Aoi, so nobody has anything to complain about.

Since it all tastes so good, we end up overeating, so we take a whole hour after lunch to wait for our stomachs to settle, and that gives enough time for Yunia's brothers to get ready for us. Apparently, they were out in the wild hunting for monsters this morning, so they needed some time to rest and clean up before we meet.

We cross through an [Eternal Gate] and exit into a grassland atop a hill. Almost fully surrounding us is a beautiful and ornate two-story tree-mansion. Down the hill, we can see a small elven town with many colorful farms spread around it, and beyond the few rings of farms, there's only green grassland for as far as the eye can see.

I try to triangulate our position using Klein's and Osaria's summons as a reference, and I think we're somewhere near the east coast of Glorampina.

We turn around towards the mansion itself and see two young blonde boys staring at us. They're standing with their backs perfectly straight, their chests puffed out proudly, and their hands behind their backs. They're wearing tight-fitting silver shirts and pants with sandals, and I can tell that they're slightly more muscular than the average elf.

Soul Info

Name: | Arturus Este | Race: | Golden Elf | Level: | 28
HP | 100 | MP | 200 | Magic Power | 90
Strength | 12 | Endurance | 14

Soul Info

Name: | Antares Este | Race: | Silver Elf | Level: | 28
HP | 100 | MP | 300 | Magic Power | 160
Strength | 12 | Endurance | 12

Their stats have grown a little since the first time I saw them, but their "Strength" is only one point lower than mine… Fucking hell, I guess I just really wasn't born to be ripped, then…

A note from Manasong

Hall of Fame of Patrons

The patrons who support Rupegia shall have their names sung by the bards for they deserve the glory and honor. Their names are:

Oracle Maximillian Hübner.

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Lord Michale Erwin.

Lord Enrique Peña Gomez.

Lord Bakerdea.

Lord D4rk Sheep.

Lord Nathan Vanbrunt.

Lord Markus.

Lord Maurice.

Lord Krawn.

Lord Empyrean.

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Lord Colorblind.

Lord RottenTangerine.

Lord Belkoth.

Lord Cidant.

Noble Salty Panda.

Noble Mild Fracas.

Noble EESDESESESRDT.

Noble Aclys.

Noble Jordon Gotthold.

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Chapter 82: Pit Stop - Part 1

A note from Manasong

Attention: to conform to the limit of mature content (more than just sexual content) allowed in a novel, I've censored this chapter. You can look for the uncensored version here.

The twin boys have a completely different air from before. The scared and needy children are gone, and now there are only two young warriors in front of us, trying to look imposing. Though, considering that their elven looks make them seem rather cute, they aren't really accomplishing that very well.

I pull out the golems, and the twins observe them with curiosity but don't actually ask anything. I believe that Yunia might've already talked to the twins about them, so they know what to expect. Though, once they notice that Jarn's face resembles Yunia's, they frown and whisper between each other.

Yunia comes to my side and hugs my arm, then interlaces her fingers with mine. Her sudden action makes my heart flutter, then I smirk alongside her as we see the twins' faces cramp.

"Arturus, Antares, it's good to see you," Yunia gently says.

"It's kind of Mr. Ryder to allow our sister to visit us," Antares responds with a perfectly calm tone.

"I've heard that you have [Gate]. You must've been quite busy inside the dungeon that you weren't able to come to visit us sooner," Arturus says, a hint of flippancy in his voice.

"Can I spank their asses for being little shits?" Hana casually asks.

Yunia purses her lips in displeasure, then closes her eyes in tiredness and responds, "If it's you, they might enjoy it. Let Wolfy do it."

"I'm not going to touch a man's ass, no matter how cute they are," I protest and give them an annoyed look.

"You don't even drink your own seed. I'm starting to think that you have some real problems with 'gayness,'" Hana comments.

I roll my eyes and respond, "I have principles and a very well-defined set of rules that defines my preferences."

Ciel sighs and takes a few steps forward, then she smiles diplomatically at the horrified twins, claps her hands, and says, "I apologize for my husband's and sister-wives' lack of consideration. The dungeon Legado is not an average dungeon, and it gave us a challenge that impeded us from leaving it to come to visit."

"Why are you apologizing? They're being bratty; they need a spanking," Yunia sternly states.

"Sister! We just want them to treat you better!" Arturus suddenly yells.

"And I don't need your childish consideration! I've been treated as well as I deserve!" Yunia shoots back.

"You couldn't even visit once when you have [Gate] at your disposal?" Antares asks incredulously as he glares at me.

"If you want to shock them, mention Wolfy's prowess in bed," Alissa whispers to Yunia.

"No! We couldn't!" Yunia suddenly shouts, then walks forward, taking me with her. She stops in front of the brothers, who are slightly taller than me, and glares down at them for a moment, then she purses her lips, and her voice trembles with embarrassment as she says, "I'm the happiest I've ever been. I have an insatiable God of Love-Making that makes me reach the apex multiple times every night, and six ravenous, 'double-edged' women whose greatest desire seems to be to make love to me. I'm being treated even better than if I'd had an army of servants to fulfill my every need and hole."

The faces of both twins warp in disgust, and Arturus makes a gagging noise, then Antares realizes something and asks, "Wait, 'six'?"

Yunia points her chin up snobbishly and walks past the dry heaving twins, ignoring Antares' question.

"I can't believe you've done this," I whisper.

Her [Mask] breaks, and her face flushes. "W-what? Alissa's advice worked," she whispers back.

"You didn't need to listen to her. Alissa is a deviant, so her advice is… 'biased.'"

Her fingers twitch in annoyance. "So are you."

"Yes, but I don't find delight in embarrassing you," I reply and kiss her hand, calming her down a little.

The mansion ahead of us appears as if it had been abandoned and reclaimed by nature, but knowing the elves, the design is definitely intentional. The beams that make up its frame have been fused with vines, flowers, and grass; the stone of the walls has darkened and become covered in moss; the roof has been removed and replaced by heart-shaped leaves with a washed-out green color. It even has the adorable crookedness that makes it seem as if it came straight out of a children's fantasy tale, strikingly similar to Rabanara's houses.

"This place is rather adorable," I comment.

"I know, right?" Yunia chirps happily and squeezes my hand. "The Overgrown style makes for the most comfortable houses in Glorampina."

I guess that's what this architectural style is called.

We cross through a curtain of purple, fragrant flowers, and enter the mansion itself. The air is much, much cooler in here, making me shiver slightly because these elven clothes I'm wearing expose a lot of my skin. The floor is carpeted and fluffy, massaging my feet and awakening the foot fetishist inside me. We've only been walking in our boots and always sleeping in our armor lately, so we'd forgotten how it is to be truly comfortable.

A silver elven maid and a butler, both wearing skimpy clothing, bow to us, and the butler says, "Welcome, Dame Yunia, Sir Ryder. It's been a while since we'd last met."

"Indeed. We're tired from our journey through the dungeon, prepare the massage tub for us," Yunia responds with a sweet tone.

They both straighten their postures, and the maid walks away into the mansion.

The golems come in behind us, and the butler freezes since his training didn't prepare him to deal with a decidedly female Living Armor and two floating dolls.

"They're our golems, just ignore them," Yunia states, and the butler lowers his head respectfully.

The girls come in behind us, and the butler greets them too, which surprises them since he knows all their names despite them never having met him before. He even greets Aoi, who's the last to enter, and she waves her tail about in happiness, which scares the twins behind her.

"Anything to eat, drink, or 'special needs'?" The butler asks.

"No, thank you. We'll be waiting in the relaxation room," Yunia responds.

He bows again and leaves the room, then Yunia guides me to the right wing of the mansion.

We enter a room where the floor is covered with a fluffy, cotton-like grass. There are a few sofas made of the same material surrounding a low tea table, and actual springs at the four corners of the room, giving it a relaxing ambiance of running water.

We take off our shoes at the entrance, then step on the cottony carpet, and a moan slips out of Ciel's mouth. The twins frown and give her an odd look as she blushes heavily.

I feel like my feet are getting gently tickled by the hundreds of little grass-hairs. It's not intense enough to itch, but it still manages to stimulate my skin as if it were being massaged.

We sit down on the sofas with a sigh of satisfaction, then Yunia activates an enchantment on them, and they start rumbling. Large spheres protrude through the upholstery, pressing against our backs, then they move in circular motions, kneading our tense muscles.

I enjoy giving massages more than receiving them, so I'm finding this sofa to be interesting, but not anything special; Alissa loves getting massages, so she's greatly enjoying it, though she keeps repeating inside her mind that my hands are better; Roxanne wants to strip and get lewd against this sofa; surprisingly, Hana has the least intense reaction since this stimulation is far too tame for her; Ciel's trying to contain her voice because she's loving it; Lina is wishing very hard that she could fall asleep right now; Aoi's scales tinkle as the spheres massage her, and she seems to be enjoying it the most; Gify is a bit too small to properly enjoy the massage, so she just stays on my shoulder, enjoying it through me.

The twins sit on the last free sofa, but they don't activate it. Arturus leans forward and casts [Fireball], then holds the ping-pong-sized ball at the tip of an incense stick until it starts to burn, and the room quickly gets filled with a faint, flowery smell.

"Dame Alissa, your senses are much more sensitive than ours, correct?" He asks.

Alissa comes back from her zoning out and nods, hiding her confusion.

He smiles faintly and continues, "This incense was mixed much weaker than the usual blend specifically for people like you."

"Oh, thank you," Alissa replies and smiles warmly.

Even with [Sense Soul], I'm having difficulty differentiating between them because of how their names are so similar to each other.

"Where was that consideration just a minute ago?" Yunia asks sternly.

Arturus goes red with embarrassment, but Antares calmly answers, "We were just too worried about you, Yu. You could've at least sent a message through [Gate] to tell us that you were okay."

Yunia narrows her eyes and holds back a smile. "Hm… yes, we could've, and for that, I apologize, but that doesn't justify you greeting us so coldly."

"I'm sorry, sister," Antares apologizes and lowers his head, then Arturus copies him a second later.

Yunia clears her throat loudly and gives them a stern look. They both lift their heads just enough to look at her expression, then they grimace and look down again.

"Tutu, tata," Yunia whispers, menacingly.

They both sigh together, then they raise their heads and look at us. "We apologize for our rudeness to each of you, Ryders," they say in unison, which seems a bit creepy.

Ciel giggles softly and replies, "Apologies accepted. We also apologize for not informing you of our progress inside the dungeon."

"Things were rather intense, and we were solely focused on surviving the dangers, so we ended up forgetting about everything going on outside," I say.

Antares frowns and turns to Yunia. "Sister, you told us to be careful, but are you being careful?"

Yunia smiles smugly and replies, "Of course. You just have no idea how 'peculiar' this dungeon is."

We start telling them about the dungeon, and they become increasingly bewildered with our adventures.

"S-spirits of Chimeras?" Arturus asks, his striking blue eyes open wide.

Yunia gently nods. "Yes. And it's rather frightening how their memories are being manipulated so that they believe they're still alive," she comments, and her stern expression softens as she enjoys the look of horror in her brothers' eyes.

"Here's food for thought, wh-…"

"'Food for thought'?" Alissa interrupts me.

I wring my wrists around until I come up with another expression, "Here's something to keep you awake at night: the Chimeras believe that they're still alive, and their town hasn't completely collapsed so far, so what if we're all the same, just on a larger scale?"

"You mean, as if our lives were a lie?" Antares asks, slightly disconcerted.

I nod and continue, "Everything around you is a fake, a mana solidification, and there's someone controlling everything so that you can't escape this fake life."

"Is there a way to know the truth?" Arturus asks with a stern stare, looking strikingly similar to Yunia.

I shrug. "Maybe, but it's highly unlikely that you'd ever be able to confirm it."

He snorts snobbishly. "Then why should we care? If life is good, then there's no need to change it, so you should live on in ignorance."

"That 'fake life' you described is also very similar to what 'real life' already is," Ciel comments with a slight smirk.

"What do you mean?" Hana asks.

"People forget that everything comes from mana. What you call 'matter,' is just 'ultra-stable' mana," Ciel points out.

"And our Gods are the equivalent of the Dungeon Master for the Chimeras," Lina adds.

Roxanne giggles and finishes, "We pity the Chimeras and fear receiving the same fate, but we're already like them, just with different labels."

Aoi and Antares seem to be going through a mindfuck, while Alissa is almost dozing off on the sofa.

Arturus shrugs and persists with, "Again, why should we care if it's true? As long as we aren't suffering, then there's no reason to worry about it."

I calmly respond, "You're ignoring the nature of the humanoids. We'd never accept living in gilded cages. If there's something out there to explore, we'll find a way to get to it."

Ciel happily adds, "Remember, the God of Creation specifically made us with the potential to go beyond the Gods. It's predicted that one day, the Old Gods and even the Humanoid Gods will become obsolete, and at that point, the Age of Apotheosis will be brought forth by the Overseer."

"So, humanoids are never satisfied?" Aoi innocently asks, her deep dual voice slightly unnerving the twins.

"Are monsters ever satisfied?" Ciel returns the question.

"I don't know. I'm not like normal monsters," Aoi responds and tilts her head.

Ciel turns to me and asks wryly, "What would you say? Uh… 'touche'?"

"Touche," I reply with a nod, then I turn to Aoi. "I think that as long as there's a hill to climb, humanoids will never be satisfied."

"Therefore, it's better to not push the boundaries so that we may live happily in ignorance," Arturus adds smugly.

"That's easy to say, but our curiosity will inevitably lead us to find a new horizon to pursue," I respond.

"And it's possible that the Overseer won't let us simply wallow in ignorance," Ciel adds.

"So, humanoids will never rest…" Aoi states and taps a claw against her chin in thought.

"Rupegia isn't Paradise, so yes, we'll never rest, only while we're alive," Ciel replies.

Aoi tilts her head to the other side and mumbles, "Endless suffering…"

Ciel chuckles and says, "I wouldn't say that we're always in pain or feeling something negative, but rather, that we're in a constant struggle."

"We've strayed pretty far from the original topic," Hana comments a little annoyedly.

She wants to keep boasting, so she'd rather not continue with a philosophical discussion.

Before we're finished with our story about the Chimeras, the maid appears, and tells us that the massage tub is ready for us.

I pick up Alissa and carry her, then she gradually wakes up while we make our way to the baths. Once we reach the dressing rooms, I let her stand on her own again, then the twins enter the male's dressing room while I go with the girls into the female one and watch as they all put on bikinis. They put on a cute and alluring show for me and for the thirsty ones in our group. It regretfully only lasts for a short while, then I put on my swimming trunks.

A squad of Goddesses in bikinis emerges from the dressing room, which makes for an imposing sight, but the twins don't see any of it since Yunia's stern look diverts their gazes away.

The massage tub is a very large Jacuzzi, which also has magical skincare products added in, making it the superior version when compared to Earth's. Since the twins changed first, they're already waiting for us in the water.

This time, when Ciel enters the tub, I hold back her moan with [Bind] because she, Yunia, and I aren't interested in behaving like degenerates in front of the twins. Though, I can't stop myself from squeezing her assets when she sits down beside me.

Now, this massage feels really good. I can even feel the magical skincare products being absorbed by my body and affecting my inner organs. I have no idea what exactly it's doing to us, but it makes me feel good, so hooray hedonism. As long as it's pleasant, I don't care.

The seats are adjustable, so all the chests sink beneath the bubbling water, making our conversation much less awkward than it would otherwise be.

Gify jumps onto the surface of the water and simply goes to sleep. The turbulence takes her to the middle of the tub, then it makes her spin in place adorably.

The golems stand behind us, unmoving and always vigilant. The twins seem more concerned about Jarn than the dolls, but they quickly learn to ignore them since they don't even twitch.

Hana and Ciel continue talking about the Chimeras, and we get to the part about "Pua," the Gaping Maw, and how it threw me into the portal.

"A monster… helped you?" Arturus asks, skeptical.

"I'm a monster," Aoi responds innocently.

"Well, you're a 'tamable' monster. Aberrants are just 'different,' so it's unusual to find one that's so friendly," Antares responds.

The twins seem to be relaxing a bit more and becoming friendlier, especially to Hana and Ciel. It's hard for them not to when the barbarian and the angel have such receptive and sympathetic personalities.

"It's rather impressive that… 'Pua' immediately decided to help you when it saw the crystal fly," Yunia comments.

"It knew that the portal was vulnerable to that type of mana, but it also hates that Chimeric mana and would never use it on its own, which means that it must have seen the Chimeras test it on the portal before," I conclude.

"The Chimeras betrayed us, well, some of them did," Ciel adds.

"Why didn't you inspect the Gull while you were flying it?" Antares asks me.

"We got complacent, again," Yunia answers and purses her lips.

"They didn't stop their Spirit mana pulses, so we couldn't spy, and we thought that after the Albino, Hihiriwa was warming up to us… but he clearly had other plans," I add with a wry smile.

"I don't think he wanted to hurt us. Maybe he just wanted to stop us from leaving," Roxanne suggests.

"Perhaps… the catapult was only activated after that whole 'distraction' became unnecessary, after all," I reluctantly agree.

"Could it have been a malfunction?" Arturus asks.

"An extremely convenient malfunction," Alissa points out, and Arturus shrugs.

"Assuming they were betrayed fits the best with all the information they have," Antares says.

"Dead or alive, noble or aristocrat, they never change," Yunia comments with a sigh.

We don't tell them about Ozymandias and how the Dungeon Master is playing with my memories, so our story ends there.

"So, what have you two been doing while we were in the dungeon?" Yunia asks.

Antares smiles proudly and answers, "Riding Rontis and hunting down goblin nests. Their burrows started appearing around Glorampina, so Crown Lord Varze assigned us and a few of his knights to deal with them."

"Oh? Confiel is working with Varze?" Yunia asks.

"Not exactly. The Elder Council told him that we couldn't work for him directly, but he could provide us with shelter. Varze volunteered to give us work, and Confiel gave us this retreat, temporarily."

"They're paying you, correct?" She asks sternly.

"More than we deserve," Arturus answers bitterly.

"It's not charity, Tutu," Antares chides.

Arturus purses his lip, both in annoyance from being addressed by his nickname, and because he disagrees with his brother. "They want us complacent and feeling indebted to them so that they can manipulate us, and then perhaps manipulate sister through us, too," he replies.

"That's not really a good plan since there's little chance that you two would ever go against me," Yunia smugly states.

"It would've been easier to just let her die as the Chosen Descendant instead of doing all of this just to manipulate her," Antares says, and his brother clearly disagrees, but he doesn't have a good enough argument to keep the discussion going.

The conversations die off, and the twins leave the bath since they aren't as tired as we are. Because of the magical cleaning products mixed into the water, we don't need to wash ourselves, which leaves us with plenty of time to enjoy each others' bodies.

A note from Manasong

Hall of Fame of Patrons

The patrons who support Rupegia shall have their names sung by the bards for they deserve the glory and honor. Their names are:

Oracle Maximillian Hübner.

Prince PreownedFIN.

Lord Andrew Meyers.

Lord Samuel Lim.

Lord Bill.

Lord Novgarod.

Lord DJ.

Lord Ashadun.

Lord Michale Erwin.

Lord Enrique Peña Gomez.

Lord Bakerdea.

Lord D4rk Sheep.

Lord Nathan Vanbrunt.

Lord Markus.

Lord Maurice.

Lord Krawn.

Lord Empyrean.

Lord Mattirro Draca.

Lord Joshua Tal.

Lord Colorblind.

Lord RottenTangerine.

Lord Belkoth.

Lord Cidant.

Noble Salty Panda.

Noble Mild Fracas.

Noble EESDESESESRDT.

Noble Aclys.

Noble Jordon Gotthold.

Leave a rating or a review to help me rise to the top or fix my shameful understanding of prose.

Take a look over my blog where all information of the world of Rupegia will be posted.

Join the Discord and discuss, or rant, or meme, or try and fight me so your waifu gets more screentime.

Become a Patron and read chapters in advance, or read the side-stories, or leave your mark on the story, or help choose the next artwork or the next side-story.

Chapter 82: Pit Stop - Part 2

A note from Manasong

Attention: to conform to the limit of mature content (more than just sexual content) allowed in a novel, I've censored this chapter. You can look for the uncensored version here.

I swim towards Yunia with a suggestive smile on my face. She raises an eyebrow questioningly and struggles to hold back her smile.

"You become quite gentle when you're with your brothers," I comment, then I sit on her right and raise my seat so that my head can stay above the water.

"Of course. They're family, and they deserve it," she calmly replies.

I pout jokingly. "I wish you'd treat us like you do them. We're family, too."

"I don't let my family do me, though, so of course you get a different treatment," she says, matter-of-factly.

I tap my lip like Aoi does and pucker my lips as I ask, "What did you call me earlier today? A 'God of Love-Making who makes you reach the apex multiple times every night'? Is this how you treat your God?"

"Oh, not the God-roleplay again…" Ciel grumbles and rolls her eyes.

"This is how I treat my King," Yunia answers confidently. Then, she hurriedly whispers, "I loved that King-Queen roleplay you did with Roxanne."

I get up from my seat, grab her face, and touch our foreheads together. "Does my Queen wish to be defiled by my Unholy Tool?" I gently ask.

She pouts, and her face reddens as she whispers back, "You know what? Let's not do this."

"It seems that my Queen is hiding her desires. Worry not, I'll wring them out of you, forcefully."

She suddenly straightens her back, and her delicate, delicious foot pushes my shoulder down.

"How uncouth, profane, and vulgar of you, you… peasant! Know your place!" She exclaims in a haughty tone and wrinkles her nose in disgust.

She must have realized that I love being called "peasant" like that.

I grab her foot and start.

The fire in our bodies dies down, and we pant heavily as we catch our breaths.

I hold her face and pull it up to mine so that I can take a good look at her. She's panting, and her posture is sloppy from tiredness, but her striking blue eyes are still full of life and perhaps a certain emotion that I wouldn't dare assume about just yet.

I caress her cheek, then I push away the strands of hair covering her face, tucking them behind her long elven ear.

I'm completely charmed by her beauty, but there's another feeling that's welling up inside my chest.

I smile warmly at her, and she returns it, her face softening completely. I suddenly kiss her nose, and she chuckles girlishly, then she wraps her arms around my neck and pulls me closer.

"Kaatohe was wrong. You like to play the king, but this is your true nature, isn't it? The real 'you' is kind, warm, and affectionate," she questions with a faint smirk.

Oof.

"I just want to make you happy, so I've been making lots of room for you inside my heart with the hope that it's to your liking," I whisper a gentle response.

She narrows her eyes suspiciously. "Is this a confession of love?"

I look away and smile in embarrassment, then Alissa's will jolts me awake, and I look back at her again with a seductive stare. "No, this is a confession: I've fallen in love with you, Yulania."

She sucks in air loudly and freezes for a split second, then she tries to look haughty but fails, and her face reddens as a smile blooms on her luscious red lips.

"Awn…" Roxanne moans and falsely dries a tear.

"Quiet, wench," Yunia barks and glares at her, then her face softens again, and she chuckles. "What a perfectly 'romantic' situation to confess, isn't it?" She asks, then she pats her bulging belly.

I smirk and reply, "Isn't 'wrestling' the most powerful way to show love? I know that you've never experienced anything as intense as this." Then I turn up the intensity by vibrating everything while using my spirit-touch.

Her heavenly elven voice caresses my ears, and she clings tightly to my neck. The vibration still isn't as good as the Delicious Horrors', but it's enough to get what I want.

She glares at me with narrowed eyes as she pants. "You haven't broken my pride yet, peasant," she growls, and I feel a shiver run down my spine.

I hug her tight and press her chest against mine. "I don't need to 'break' you since I've completely charmed you already," I reply with a cheeky smile.

She licks her lips seductively and struggles to find a comeback.

"Your banter is just an attempt to hide how thoroughly I've tamed you. Admit it, you love me," I continue.

She hesitates for a second, then she shyly answers, "I do."

I immediately kiss her and enter her mouth with my tongue, then I undo the knot and move my hips again.

I finally detach and end the kiss. She gives me a few loving pecks, then pushes me away and covers her bits with her hand. She waddles towards Roxanne, then stops before her and gives her a cold glare.

"Open wide, I need you to clean me," Yunia orders, and Roxanne obeys with a smirk.

We finally climb out of the tub feeling a bit tired, but also completely refreshed. The healing waters also increased by MP regen, so I plowed the fields a little more than usual since I had some extra seed to plant.

This bath time started earlier than usual, so we have some free time to lounge around while we wait for dinner.

The twins want to show Yunia the results of their level-ups, so she and Hana go to the backyard to spar with them. They're learning to be imperial Ronti riders, so they've been learning the sword, the spear, and riding. Ronti riders are more versatile than Gatun riders or any other elven soldier, so they've probably chosen this path because they're not really sure where exactly they'll fight when they're older.

Their melee skills have already become higher than Yunia's, but her [Precognition] gives her a massive advantage, so it doesn't matter, and they still lose soundly to her. They have quite a bit of MP for someone of their age and level, so they could use enchanted equipment, but they weren't given any yet since it's expensive.

Antares has enough magical talent that he could become a hybrid mage like Ciel, but not enough that he should dedicate himself solely to magic like Roxanne. He hasn't yet found out which magic school he has the most affinity with, so he's focusing on learning melee skills for now. Arturus will definitely become a spellsword since that's just the standard for nobility without any significant talent in magic.

They spar with Hana, and she completely destroys them. Their skill with weapons is comparable to hers, but that's just one part of the equation. They lack the stats and the combat experience she has from fighting real battles. Even a handicap, such as using a weapon she's not experienced with, isn't enough for them to win since she has boosting skills like [Enhanced Reflexes], [Enhanced Stamina], [Enhanced Strength], and [Enhanced Endurance]. These skills give temporary boosts, so they could try to get her to mentally tire herself out by forcing her to use them repeatedly, but she has the "Endurance" and "Willpower" of a dragonkin, so good luck with that.

Even Lina could win in a pure melee fight against them since she had a massive positive soul potential to boost her skill gain. Her strong defense also makes it hard for them to outlast her, so they have no clear advantage over her.

Yunia had been deftly steering the conversation away from my accomplishments, but if they challenge me to a duel, it'll just make them feel inadequate, so we return to our imperial mansion to keep our distance from them. Even I don't think that they should be comparing themselves to me. I'm just a filthy cheater, after all.

Alissa gets the doll golems to dance as she hums a song and plays with her [Mesmerizing Butterflies]. Ciel and Roxanne have a dat-… go shopping in Goloria for ingredients; Lina takes the chance to cuddle with me and continues reading her book; Aoi and I practice our mana organ shaping with the help of Gify, who keeps replaying in our minds the memories of Alissa changing her form.

Lina's only wearing black lower underwear and one of Hana's shirts, making her look as cute as a button. I gently brush her hair while I train with Aoi, and I apply some hair cream to make it become more lustrous. It looks so good that I'm sure we'll have to apply it to all the other girls tonight, lest they get jealous.

My cheekly dwarf deliberately teases me by moving her hips while sitting on my lap. It's just second nature for her to play with my body. I decide not to ravage her today and just enjoy it.

After a while, Aoi and I tire of training, so she pulls out her golden ball punching game. The ball floats above a platform, and its temperature gradually increases, but the rate depends on how close it is to the platform, so the point of the game is to push it away for as long as possible until it gets too hot.

We disable the heat gain, so we can now play a different kind of game. I use a small earth elemental to make a table about half the size of one that could be used for ping-pong, and raise two goals at each end. Lina quickly molds two small metal rackets for us with [Manipulate Metal], and we wield them with [Telekinesis].

Magic air hockey has been created.

We flip one of Aoi's bitten and scratched coins, and it lands on the bitten side. I start.

I slam the racket against the ball, sending it flying directly towards her goal. She defends and deflects it upwards, then the ball flies out of range of the platform and falls heavily onto the floor.

"Well… I guess there are some improvements we could make…" I say wryly.

"Few people would know how to use [Telekinesis] to play this the way you intend," Alissa comments.

Lina closes her book and takes a look at our game. "Well… the enchantment is way too small for what you're planning," she adds.

I look at the small platform and pucker my lips. "Maybe I should learn how to enchant," I say.

"There's an enchantment in that small wooden platform, too, so it might be easier to just start from scratch."

"Why?"

"Wood is just too rough to use as a medium for enchanting. The dryads might be able to enchant using wood, but not even the elves can do that, so you'd have better results enchanting a lump of iron, instead."

I sigh as my motivation slips away. To learn how to enchant this from scratch would take way too much effort.

"Let's just scale this down," I relent.

Lina pats my head lovingly, and I smile as my energies are recharged.

I shrink the play area down to about the size of an A4 sheet, cut down each racket to just a palm-sized coin, and add a thick glass dome to prevent the ball from flying away.

Mini magic air hockey has been created.

We flip the coin again, and this time it lands on the scratched side. Aoi starts.

She hits the golden ball with her racket, sending it straight to my goal. I deflect, and it starts to bounce between the stone walls at the sides.

Aoi defends, and we engage in a back and forth frenzy as the ball violently bounces around. We flick the coins and slap the ball away, causing a loud metallic clang to echo through the room.

The glass cracks as the force of our strikes is too great, but the elemental quickly repairs it before it shatters.

The game starts to get out of control as the ball's speed quickly increases, then Aoi's defense slips, and the ball hits the cushioned padding of her goal.

As we let the ball return to the center on its own, we notice how it's been deformed, and it now floats with a limp.

"Yeah, so… this game won't work," I admit with a laugh. A few more rounds like this, and the ball would get damaged enough that the enchantment would stop working.

"Awn…" Aoi grumbles in sadness. "It was pretty fun."

"How sad…" Alissa comments with a flat tone.

We look to the side and see both Alissa and Lina silently staring at us.

I smile wryly and apologize, "Sorry. Next version, we'll make it silent."

Alissa snorts, and Lina continues reading.

I pat Aoi's head, and she regains her motivation.

After that, we just play cards until it's time for dinner. Hana and Yunia have a quick bath, then the twins join us in our imperial house for the meal.

Hana has beaten them into submission, so we actually have a pleasant meal since they don't have the energy or the courage to be bratty again. In truth, they aren't as snobbish as Yunia, so they're actually more amiable than her.

For dessert, the servants bake us a fruit cake with meringue, so we end up overeating again.

"We're going to get fa~t," Roxanne teases. Ciel and Yunia get concerned, but everyone else's reactions are so calm that they don't stop eating.

"Oof, you're losing your touch," I comment and flash a grin at her.

She just sticks out her tongue at me, and I blow her a kiss.

The twins squirm when they see us flirt, so Roxanne finds a new target to torment, and she starts to heavily flirt with Yunia since that's two goblins with one arrow. Even better, Yunia can't put Roxanne down with verbal abuse since that would just make things worse.

"Anyway, how was your 'date' with Ciel?" Yunia asks, trying to deflect the teasing away from herself.

"It wasn't a 'date,'" Ciel points out before Roxanne can say anything.

"What's a 'date'?" Arturus asks.

"Two people getting together for an activity when there's a romantic undertone to it," I answer and smile diplomatically.

"So…" Arturus' eyes switch between me, Ciel, and Roxanne. "Are they-…?"

"Lovers? Yes. They're deeply in love with each other," Yunia fills in immediately.

The twins raise their eyebrows in surprise.

Roxanne smiles gently, then grabs Yunia's hand and gives it a kiss. "She did say that there are six ravenous women wanting her body every night," she says, teasingly.

"But who's the si-… forget that I asked," Antares starts asking a question, but regrets even thinking about it.

Yunia facepalms while Roxanne happily giggles away, clearly delighted with the pain that the twins are going through.

They leave after the meal since they still have to work tomorrow. Those goblin nests won't wipe themselves out. We won't be able to meet with them tomorrow since they're going pretty far away, so we'll rest for the whole day, then we'll return to the dungeon in the morning after that.

Yunia gives each of them a big hug, then they return to their estate looking like children who'd been denied ice cream.

Curiously, the sun in the dungeon has set too, so it's not the same as the unmoving sun of the earlier floors.

As much as I want to take a break, I feel restless. I don't have any of my hobbies that I enjoyed on Earth to keep my mind busy here, so sometimes, my heart aches for things that I can't have. I don't get tired of making love, but I also occasionally crave for something else, like video games.

I really wish that the magic air hockey game would've worked, but I don't want it enough to go through the bother of learning enchanting just to make the equipment for it, and I don't want to ask Lina to work on something so unimportant.

I decide to go out into our backyard and sit among the flowers to meditate. Alissa feels my restlessness and lets me go without asking me why. Gify tags along because she feels like seeing some nature today, and she may also be affected by my mood more than any of the other girls.

I put a large number of points in [Sense Mana]. Not too many that makes it feel like a strain, but enough that I can clearly feel the "flavor" of the ambient mana. Nature mana "tastes" kind of pleasant, so it helps with calming my heart.

Elven grass is a bit different than usual grass. For some reason, it's less prickly, and the flowers here also have a more noticeable fragrance to them, so this place is ideal for meditation.

I sigh and lay down, then I stare up at the starry sky and the colorful satellite moons rapidly spinning around their psychedelic mother. I kind of missed this sight when we traveled through the fake Broken Skies. The "moon" there is just an overly large star that glows the same color as their clouds.

Yunia appears in the backyard, then she looks around for a few seconds before she finds me. She walks towards me with leisurely steps, letting her shapely legs peek out through the side slits of her long skirt.

She stops in front of me, then she takes off her heels and lays down on the grass at my side. I hold her hand and pull it closer so that I can caress her.

We lay there quietly for a while, just gazing up at the stars.

"What will you do after you become a Lord?" She suddenly asks.

I slowly break out of my trance and consider how to answer.

After a full minute of thought, I decide to be as straightforward as possible. "Kill everyone that threatens us," I answer calmly.

She turns to me and frowns. "That's not the elven way," she warns me worriedly.

"I'm not an elf."

"You'd end up making too many enemies for us."

"Then you can help me decide who lives and who dies, but enemies like Katasko and Dawn of Fire need to be eliminated, no matter what."

She stays silent for a while, just staring at my face, analyzing me.

"And when will you stop?" She finally asks.

"When all the heretics are dead; when there's no one that dares to defy us; when the monsters are gone; when we can peacefully retire to our private little corner, and our children take our place."

She pouts while I smirk. "Answer more seriously."

I shrug. "Truth is: I don't know. We should gather as much power as we can, but we won't know if we have enough until we really need it." I turn to look at her in the eyes. "And so, we need to gain as much power as we can. Do you agree with this plan?"

She thinks about it for a moment, then she grabs my hand and gives it an assuring squeeze. "For the wives," she whispers.

I nod. "For the wives. All for one, and one for all."

A note from Manasong

Hall of Fame of Patrons

The patrons who support Rupegia shall have their names sung by the bards for they deserve the glory and honor. Their names are:

Oracle Maximillian Hübner.

Prince PreownedFIN.

Lord Andrew Meyers.

Lord Samuel Lim.

Lord Bill.

Lord Novgarod.

Lord DJ.

Lord Ashadun.

Lord Michale Erwin.

Lord Enrique Peña Gomez.

Lord Bakerdea.

Lord D4rk Sheep.

Lord Nathan Vanbrunt.

Lord Markus.

Lord Maurice.

Lord Krawn.

Lord Empyrean.

Lord Mattirro Draca.

Lord Joshua Tal.

Lord Colorblind.

Lord RottenTangerine.

Lord Belkoth.

Lord Cidant.

Noble Salty Panda.

Noble Mild Fracas.

Noble EESDESESESRDT.

Noble Aclys.

Noble Jordon Gotthold.

Leave a rating or a review to help me rise to the top or fix my shameful understanding of prose.

Take a look over my blog where all information of the world of Rupegia will be posted.

Join the Discord and discuss, or rant, or meme, or try and fight me so your waifu gets more screentime.

Become a Patron and read chapters in advance, or read the side-stories, or leave your mark on the story, or help choose the next artwork or the next side-story.

Chapter 82: Pit Stop - Part 3

A note from Manasong

Announcement: I'll stopping publishing the chapters for a week to increase the numbers of chapters the patrons have. Once the dungeon arc is over, I might do 1-2 weeks stop again to focus on a few things that need attention, like reviewing the early chapters of the story.

Attention: to conform to the limit of sexual content allowed in a novel, I've censored this chapter. You can look for the uncensored version here.

Yunia and I stay like this for a while, switching between stargazing and observing Gify frolicing in the grass, then a drunk Roxanne comes outside and clumsily molests us until she falls asleep. I carry her to bed, and we all call it a day.

Today is the 23rd.

Alissa wakes me up to yet another wonderful morning, snuggling with my women.

Waking up in this mess of women's limbs while smelling the gentle perfume of their skincare products is simply the best thing that a man could ever ask for.

My [Summoning Magic] increased by 1 (now 14+27). Yesterday's canopy creation with the elementals was a really good idea, after all.

After a cozy and calm breakfast, I decide that it's time to get to work.

I go out into our backyard and pull a table and the crate of cocoa fruit out of my "Items" with a *poof*, then I start inspecting the fruit. The girls crowd around me, curious about what I intend to do.

"Oh, this is the fruit that you said chocolate is made from, right?" Alissa asks.

"Yep," I happily reply.

"Considering how much you loved eating chocolate, I thought you'd forgotten about this since you never mentioned it again."

I smile wryly as I admit, "Truth is, I have no idea how chocolate is actually made, so I thought that I should wait until I knew more about it. Then I thought that I might as well do it now since once we're Lords, we'll be able to get our hands on more cacao if we want."

"I haven't tasted chocolate yet, but I heard that it's suddenly become extremely popular in both Faium and the capital," Yunia comments.

I nod in agreement and explain, "Chocolate is edible happiness, so it's no surprise that it's become so popular. What we have here is raw gold, we just need to refine it, somehow."

"If you say so," Yunia says with a wry smile and shrugs.

I pick up a cacao fruit and look it over. It's a rather soft ovate fruit, and it doesn't smell like chocolate, just an earthy scent of a forest.

I cut it open to reveal five lines of gooey white seeds, somewhat like a corn cob. Each seed is like an unpeeled lychee, but much less watery. Their smell is fruity, and it doesn't resemble chocolate at all. It tastes horribly bitter and acidic, so it obviously needs a lot of processing before it'd even come close to actual chocolate.

I see a large, hard seed buried under the goo, so I wash it off and open it up, revealing a dark interior that tastes nutty and very bitter. The husk of the seed has no particular flavor, so it must be this bitter inner part that chocolate is made from.

"Hm… I think coffee and chocolate are made in similar ways, so this seed should be the secret, but I don't know what to do with this goo."

"Why not just wipe it off?" Alissa suggests.

"You could ferment it. Plenty of fruits are first fermented to add flavor, then squeezed for their juices," Yunia comments.

I turn to her and raise my eyebrows in surprise.

"I've inspected a few breweries in the past," she adds with a wry smile.

"I think coffee is left to dry and ferment in the sun, so perhaps you're right, but that would take days…" I respond with a frown.

Yunia smiles smugly and asks, "Why don't you add an 'aging' abstract concept to your [Grow]?"

I slap my forehead. "Oh, right, magic. I'd forgotten we could do that…"

She gently nods with a subtle smug smile. "Plenty of our aged food is made magically. Nobody has the time to wait a decade for a piece of wood to absorb some perfume or smoke."

"But magical aging is different from natural aging," Lina remarks.

Yunia nods again, still smug. "It is, but you can control the aging a lot better when it's magical."

"Use a nature elemental for that," Alissa suggests.

"Right, easier that way," I respond. I'm not that good at dealing with abstract concepts yet.

I summon the elemental, and an elven looking woman wearing a traditional elven bikini appears in front of us.

"Oh…" Yunia mutters as she realizes who the elemental resembles: her.

"Well, well, well. Welcome to the club," Hana teases her and elbows her ribs.

"Hmph, I'm still prettier than this mossy imitation," Yunia hisses and snobbishly turns her head away.

"You weren't like this when Jarn said that she was copying your face," I say, a bit confused at her reaction.

She refuses to look at me or the elemental as she explains, "It's because she was copying me, not just mixing it with a random face and ruining my beauty."

"Alright…" I say with a shrug and continue my work.

I remove the pith-like thing keeping the cacao seeds together, then I place them in a covered bowl, and order the elemental to slowly ferment it.

Something that should take a few days is done in just two hours by spending a shit ton of both my and Roxanne's mana. Since we aren't exactly sure about what we're doing, the mana cost of the fermentation rises quite drastically.

The seeds gain a strong coconut-vinegar-like smell, and a juice gathers at the bottom. Roxanne inspects it with her enchanted monocle for noxious mana signatures and clears it for drinking. Its flavor reminds me of lychee and apple, but with a lot more sourness to it.

"I think the seeds smell strongly enough now; any more than this and they'll rot. The fermentation should have added some flavor to it," Yunia comments.

"Okay… now what?" Roxanne asks.

"If this were coffee, we'd dry it, then open it, grind it, and roast it," I answer.

"Drying will stop the fermentation, so I think that's the correct way to do this," Yunia agrees.

I summon a fire, a wind, and a water elemental, then I empty the fermented seeds into a metal pot so that they can quickly dry them out.

"Keep the heat low so that they don't cook," Yunia adds.

The four elementals work together, and now everyone contributes a bit of mana to power them. The nature elemental ages, the fire elemental controls the temperature, the water elemental removes the humidity, and the wind elemental creates a bubble of dry air around the seeds.

After another hour, they seem to have dried out as much as possible.

The husk of each seed has become crunchy, making it easier to separate it from the crumbly inner part.

"How do we do this? Summon a bunch of goblins to husk it all manually?" I question.

Yunia shrugs and answers, "I guess. There are ways to use [Weaverism] for this task, but I don't know how."

Ciel plays with the crunched seed and notices how the husk flies away with just a breeze while the inner part is too heavy. She lightly hits a closed fist against her palm and says, "Ooh… we could use the wind elemental for this."

"Fuck yes, that's genius," I emphatically approve.

We sift the husks by blowing air past the crushed seeds while we pour them into a bowl. The husks are blown away while the important bits aren't affected.

"Now, roasting," I say with a smirk.

We spread the inner bits on a metal baking sheet, and the fire elemental roasts them, controlling the heat so that they all roast evenly. The smell of cocoa starts to waft from the bits, and it causes me to shudder with delight.

"Oh, wow, this smells quite nice," Yunia comments.

Alissa sniffs the air repeatedly and her fox tail lazily wags. "It really does remind me of the chocolate we ate," she adds.

I dry a small tear that was forming at the corner of my eye and say, "We've done it. This is chocolate. Well, not finished chocolate, but it still has that wonderful smell that I missed so much."

Hana eats a cooled bit, and her face scrunches up. "So bitter!" She exclaims.

"Yeah, it needs a lot of sugar before it's ready to eat," I respond with a smirk.

"Oh…" She mutters and looks away in embarrassment.

Yunia snorts, but she doesn't tease her further because she knows how Hana "punishes" the wives when they tease her too much.

"Anyway, now we need to grind this down into a powder," I say.

"Earth elementals," Alissa suggests.

"Yeah, no way we're doing this manually," I agree with a smile.

I summon one with a mortar and pestle as its hands, and it starts grinding, and grinding, and grinding, and grinding.

"Well, shit, this is going to take a while," I comment.

We each find something to do while we wait. Alissa starts cooking up lunch with the help of two Hobgoblins; Hana, Aoi, the golems, and I all play around with sparring and Aoi's water balls, which are refreshing in today's hot weather; Roxanne continues exploding things inside her workbench; Ciel and Lina resume sewing the costumes I sketched sometime ago, which they hadn't worked on for a while; Yunia takes up one of Lina's books, but falls asleep while reading it.

Just before lunch, I stop the grinding to take a look. The chocolate has become an oily paste, though it's still far from smooth and silky.

I separate out a small amount of it and summon another, smaller earth elemental, then I add a lot of elven sugar to the mix, and give it a taste.

"It's really greasy. We're still missing something," I comment.

"For me, it's pretty good," Ciel says with a smile and licks her lips.

"Meh," Aoi says and shrugs.

"Gih!" Gify chastises Aoi for having terrible taste in sweets, and I nod along in agreement.

The other girls enjoy it quite a lot, and we have to hold ourselves back from eating it all. We also wake up Yunia and give her a sample of it, which she approves of with barely contained excitement.

Then I add some precious cow milk to the sweetened paste, and it quickly becomes watery. I stop the grinding and use the fire elemental to cool it down, but it doesn't harden, so my attempt at milk chocolate has failed, though it's now rather close to chocolate milk, instead. This milk is more sour than what I could get on Earth, so it's not as delicious as what I had in mind, but we're making progress, at least.

"The problem is the grease," I repeat.

"I could try to separate it with [Alchemy], but it wouldn't be cheap, mana-wise," Roxanne comments.

"Back on Earth, we did it without magic, so there must be an easier way."

"Couldn't you use an oil press?" Lina questions.

"Oh… right," I mutter. But of course, oil from nuts is extracted that way. "This sort of thing isn't common knowledge back on Earth, so I have no idea of how to even make one," I respond with a shrug.

"We had one back in my hometown, so I know how it works."

I grin in excitement. "Draw some schematics and I'll make an elemental take its shape."

She nods, making her bangs sway, and smiles, wiping away her usual gloomy expression.

Lunch is a rather strong-tasting werefox fish stew with Tonique, a not-potato elven pie, Sommerlande fruit salad, and fried mushrooms. A wild combination, but it has at least one thing that we all like.

"Gih!" Gify approves. The wider the variety, the better.

After fattening up again, Lina draws some quick schematics for the oil press, then she leaves with Ciel and Yunia for the knight's academy library.

Since the cacao processing seems to have gone well enough, I decide to use all the cacao fruit I have left to make cocoa. It's a pretty large crate, so we should be able to make a few dozen kgs of chocolate.

"Ugh… I want Ciel's MP…" I groan as I start to get hit by overuse.

"You don't have to make it all at once. You could just continue another day," Alissa suggests.

I shake my head and click my tongue repeatedly. "Tch, tch, tch, tch, tch. The quest for chocolate cannot be postponed. I must get diabetes today," I insist with an overly dramatic tone.

Alissa's eyes die a little inside. "'Diabetes'…"?

"A disease from eating too much sugar."

Hana slowly turns towards Roxanne, and the lazy succubus sweats cold.

"If you don't spend MP on the elementals, you won't get to eat any chocolate," I state sternly.

"What about the others at the academy?" Roxanne asks, immediately betraying her sister-wives.

"They'll give their mana when they come back," I answer and make sure that they receive the message through [Bind].

Roxanne's horns go so limp that they sway about like noodles.

A few hours past noon, everyone in the mansion is dozing off in the lounging chairs, suffering from mana overuse and from using [Redirect Mana] too much.

"We're waiting," I slowly say through [Bind], and the other girls decide to return from the library.

They pay for a [Gate] transport and arrive back after just a few minutes.

"I heard you have [Mana Overuse Resistance]?" Yunia asks, and I nod with a smug smile. She swallows heavily and feeds the elementals all her mana so that they can continue working.

If a small batch has tired us out this much, doing the whole crate in one go will completely exhaust us.

"Anyway, I've done some research on the red desert," Yunia says as Hana massages her head.

"Oh, what did you find?" I ask, excitedly.

"It's likely that the dungeon's desert is actually Heretic's Rest. The inner desert of that region is completely inhospitable, and it's known to have colored sands… like the Colored Sands region."

"And since the Dungeon Master has probably seen ours or any of the adventurer's memories, they should know about Heretic's Rest," Roxanne's muffled voice comes through the pillow covering her face.

"Oh, right. That makes a lot of sense," I reply and nod along.

Lina frowns, making her look gloomier than usual as she says, "The books hardly ever mention Heretic's Rest, but it's such an obvious connection that I should've made it a long time ago."

"But you just said that it's hard to find information on Heretic's Rest," Ciel replies, puzzled.

"It's understandable since we aren't exactly proud of having that stain in our territory," Yunia admits with a bitter smile.

Lina just becomes even gloomier. "But it was my first task, to learn everything I could about the elves…"

"Just remember to never overwork yourself unless strictly necessary," I remind her and give her a kind look.

She hardens her expression and nods. "Understood…"

The oil press works wonderfully, producing almost crystal clear cocoa butter. There are still some solid cocoa particles in it, but it's just something that Lina came up with from memory, so there's plenty of room for improvement.

We all have a taste of it, then I cool a coin-sized sample until it hardens.

"This tastes good," Ciel comments.

"So many sweets could be improved with this butter," Alissa adds, her voice filled with wonder.

I rub the cooled butter on my lips, then I grab Alissa's face and give her a deep kiss, then she giggles like a girl once I release her. "I'm sure the elves would find a way to make this into an amazing lip balm," I say, then I walk over to Roxanne to give her a kiss too, but she grabs my face and steals one from me, first.

Then I give a buttery kiss to each of them, and when it gets to Aoi, she just licks my entire face.

Yunia is the last to get her kiss. She savors my lips a little more than the others, then she evaluates it, "Hm… yes, this is quite novel. It has an 'earthy' flavor that's different from the usual flowery or fruity blends that are common around here."

"It's the roasting. You know it's nothing like this when it's raw," I respond.

She walks up to the oil press and dips her finger in the cocoa butter, then tastes it again and says, "Indeed… I think we don't tend to roast seeds because of how much effort it takes to process them. Since we can just spend mana to make more fruit grow, we've neglected seeds in our diet."

"This sort of thing is common in Ryutake, though," Hana comments.

"We ought to recruit a dragonkin cook if we want to improve our chocolate," I suggest.

"You want to start producing chocolate?" Yunia asks.

I shrug. "If we can secure a deal to supply us with cacao, then perhaps we could. We already have all the other ingredients necessary, like the sugar, spices from Maoka, mages who are experts in magical fermentation and aging, and my technical knowledge on how to turn this into an industry."

Yunia smiles gently and muses, "If Confiel hasn't ruined things, we should still have control over a good chunk of the Eia sold in Escanso. Transferring the mages for processing cacao will be simple."

"If you can make golems similar to these elementals, then we'd have a huge advantage over Faium producers," Lina adds.

I nod and agree, "I really am afraid of the consequences of introducing automation to this world, but since I've already spread the knowledge of [Golemancy], it's only a matter of time until the industrial revolution happens, so we'd better get a head start on it."

"I haven't heard about that one, yet," Yunia comments.

I give her a fake smile and say, "Let me tell you all about human greed and the horrors of the industrial and robotic revolutions."

Just before sunset, the processing of cacao into cocoa is done, so I unsummon all the elementals and start summoning a production line with ten earth elementals.

I've come up with a few designs for grinders, so each of the ten elementals that I summoned is using a different prototype. I start comparing their output, then I end up culling half of them, replacing them with oil presses.

Over bath time, I play with Lina using my tentacles and Ciel joins in.

It's time for a triple-tool session.

For dinner, I just pull out some leftovers. We don't need an elven banquet every day, and even Yunia (reluctantly) agrees with me.

After that, I focus on fixing my milk chocolate production. The oil press separates the greasy cocoa paste into cocoa powder and cocoa butter. I discover that adding a small amount of butter back into the powder gives it a consistency similar to chocolate if I get the percentage right.

I try to slowly add milk to the chocolate, but it quickly becomes chocolate milk instead, and when I add thickeners like flour, it just doesn't work well and makes it taste "wrong."

I'm certain that milk chocolate is a thing, so I'm pretty sure it's the moisture that's making it turn out so badly.

I remove two of the earth elementals from the lines and exchange them for a fire and a water elemental, then I get Roxanne to help with removing all the moisture from the milk. We manage to create powdered milk without too much trouble, which I promptly add to the mixer.

We all watch with interest as the molten chocolate pours into a small bowl and slowly solidifies.

Once there's enough of it for each of us to have a bite, I order the elementals to remove the heat from it to help it solidify faster, then I break it up into chunks and distribute the pieces.

The overly-sweet chocolate melts in my mouth, and I shudder as my tongue orgasms from the pleasure.

My mind goes blank, and a bright light blinds my eyes, then my consciousness is cut off.

"Quest complete: milk chocolate created. I'm returning you back to Earth," God says.

Lina giggles, and the girls smile while Alissa gives me "really?" look.

I give them a cheeky smirk, then I immediately start making some adjustments. We have hazelnut and raisins, so I just have to create new flavors.

The quest for chocolate comes to an end just before we head off to bed. Not all of the cocoa powder has been processed, but enough of it to last us a short while has been turned into bars of Wolf's Milk Choco, Hazel Choco, and Raisin Choco, and I also made about five liters of Wolf's Choco Milk. As a side-product, there's even a whole bar of cocoa butter that we can use to enhance desserts.

I have actual chocolate now. Life's good.

A note from Manasong

Hall of Fame of Patrons

The patrons who support Rupegia shall have their names sung by the bards for they deserve the glory and honor. Their names are:

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Chapter 83: Not One Step Back - Part 1

A note from Manasong

Attention: to conform to the limit of sexual content allowed in a novel, I've censored this chapter. You can look for the uncensored version here.

Today is the 24th.

I wake up to an embarrassed Ciel and Yunia. I immediately recognize the smell of molten chocolate and smirk, then I see Alissa's expression mirroring mine.

No skill up today since we didn't really focus on training. Even my mini chocolate factory wasn't enough to level up Summoning since I'd already leveled it the same day.

Today, I spread some not-Nutella on my slice of white bread and have a tongue-gasm. Unfortunately, Aoi seems to be warming up a bit to chocolate, especially the kind with raisins, so our share of the Godly Nectar is decreasing.

We armor ourselves up and prepare to return to the dungeon. Lina and Yunia made sure that everything was cleaned and well-maintained, so it actually feels refreshing to wear it today. Even though it's enchanted with [Breeze], our armor gets smelly pretty quickly if we wear it every day and every night.

I wish we could've met up with Osaria and Klein again before returning to the dungeon, but they're in the middle of nowhere right now, which is just bad luck, unfortunately.

The girls start crossing through the [Gate], and I psych myself up for battle.

What challenge will we face today? What pretentious "test" will the Dungeon Master make us go through? I'm starting to get tired of this, and I'm beginning to wish that we'd chosen a "normal" dungeon, instead. Though it's likely that a normal one would have a lot more monsters, so whatever.

Alissa is the last one to cross through, and I'm temporarily left alone. Not only is the reduced "Sanity" depressing, but the sudden complete silence is deafening.

I still hate fighting and killing, but if I want to establish a women's sanctuary, then I need to fucking do this. The sanctuary may be a silly dream, but at least it's achievable. I'll never get the quiet life that I want until I fucking do this.

I slap my cheeks and stand up straight, then I cross through the [Gate] and my delicate, fair skin is immediately assaulted by the unforgiving fake sun of this level.

I dismiss the summons standing guard, and we start going through our warm-ups as I activate the ship's [Fly] gem. We all feed mana to the ship to top it off, then we drink one of Roxanne's MP potions.

There aren't any monsters in this red desert, with not even traces of Life that Yunia can detect, so we take-off and enter the sand tunnel in the middle of the Colosseum.

Without much to do, I put my points in [Sense Mana] to observe the gravity-defying sand. I manage to detect extremely faint traces of [Telekinesis] keeping the loose sand stuck to the ceiling and walls.

Hana decides to float towards the wall and scoop out some of the sand like a curious nature spirit.

"Gih," Gify complains.

I pat her head gently and reply, "You can't deny it. You yourself said that you became attached to me because you wanted to watch us."

Gify concedes while grumbling.

Once Hana touches the wall, the grains simply fall down, as if their floating power had suddenly disappeared.

The anxiety of the other girls, and especially Lina, suddenly skyrockets, so Hana stops after just a few seconds of playing with it. It seems that they learned to not play with sand that's floating above their heads from somewhere.

A chain reaction wasn't set off from Hana's touch, but we can easily imagine what would've happened if she overdid it.

Nothing happens as we continue going down, so the tension gradually fades away.

Ciel forces herself to stay serious, but the loli silently demanding headpats is hard to ignore, so she compromises and pats her casually while keeping a keen eye focused ahead.

We eventually reach the end of the tunnel and enter the wide room with the double gray doors where the Holly is waiting for us.

Small, floating, stray [Spirit Light]s provide a fluctuating source of light that changes color from white, to a washed-out yellow, to a deep blue, and repeats. They slowly circle around the room, giving it an eerie atmosphere.

"What are these lights?" I ask the girls.

"Not monsters or living beings," Alissa replies.

Yunia focuses on one of them that's passing close to us and adds, "They're just spells controlled by the dungeon. Not exactly [Spirit Lights], but something similar."

"I don't feel any sort of dangerous Light signature coming from them," Ciel continues.

"Just another weird detail that'll make itself relevant soon, I bet," I say with a tired tone.

When their color changes to a deep blue, it becomes hard to see, so we cast our own [Spirit Light]s.

We stop the ship in the middle of the room and disembark, leaving the golems to defend it.

We walk up to the double doors and stop in front of them. They don't seem to have any details on them, so we have no clue what to do.

"Should we just knock?" Hana asks.

I shrug, and the girls send back similar feelings to my own through [Bind].

Hana knocks, which makes a low and dull thumping sound. We wait for a few seconds, but nothing happens, so we start touching the doors a bit more.

Alissa puts her ear against the stone and hears absolutely nothing coming through it.

I walk over to the middle and push on them. The doors rumble and start to open, and I immediately jump back in surprise, then we all draw our weapons.

We see… more of the same red sand, smooth gray stone slabs, and the floating lights. The room is actually a corridor, and it even continues on beyond what Alissa can see.

Far ahead, Alissa spots an abnormal floating light. It's larger than the others, but not brighter, just different.

Her ears flick as she hears something, and she turns her head towards the source of the sound.

The tunnel we came from is collapsing.

"No way back, huh?" I question sarcastically, then I take a step forward and freeze.

My [Gate] has been blocked.

"Uh-oh…" I mutter.

The girls tense up, and I relay to Yunia what just happened.

The tunnel quickly closes off, completely blocking our exit, but the collapsing stops there. Nothing else happens, so the tension releases a bit.

"I was expecting this to happen at some point," I comment wryly.

"Things will become much more dangerous from now on," Ciel says solemnly.

"We haven't seen an exit door since the first few levels. We might not be able to leave if we continue," Alissa says.

"I'd like to write to my brothers and warn them about this," Yunia says.

"I'll write something for Klein and Osaria, too," I add.

"Aoi should go back to wearing her armor. We have ground under our feet again," Ciel suggests, and I agree.

We send Lina back, and she gives the letters to a servant. We also write one to Confiel to let him know that things are getting serious.

We also decide to leave a [Gate] coordinate here since it seems to be a safe spot. Sand is a terrible material to put a coordinate on since the coordinate could move over time or even get "torn apart" and become unusable, so I put a [Gate] coordinate on a set of planks and summon an earth elemental to protect them.

We look around and notice that all the floating lights have started to move down this corridor. Since there's nothing else to do but to continue forward, we get back on the ship again and cautiously move on.

We see the floating lights gradually increase as we go deeper. They grow until they're as big as a head, then they start to become oval until their height matches ours. Limbs start to appear, and they shift into a humanoid shape. Their heads morph, and the characteristic long ears of the elves quickly appear.

Naked, glowing male and female elves float around us, all drifting in the same direction: down the corridor. Their faces are neutral, and their eyes are unmoving. Yunia reminds us that they aren't spirits, they're either Light or [Illusion Magical] spells.

Thankfully, they start to gain some clothes, and we recognize all sorts of civilians. Artisans, farmers, servants, soldiers, mages, and even nobility.

After half an hour of continuing down this corridor, the scouting Holly finally sees an end to it. The same gray double doors are at the end of the corridor, and a line of glowing elves is waiting for us.

"Yunia, you're not to leave my side since I can't summon you through [Bind], understood?" I instruct her sternly.

She puts on her helmet, then nods vigorously.

The glowing elves are formed into lines on each side of the corridor, giving us an open path towards its end, and clear line of sight to the elves staring at us, which seem to be Lords since they're all wearing a complete set of ornate wooden armor. Branches, leaves, flowers, and roots are used as decoration, giving them an air of fantasy ents, though they're still glowing.

"The title of Lord isn't common outside of Domum or the empire. They're most likely Generals," Lina says, and Yunia agrees.

We stop a dozen meters from the Generals, but they don't even twitch. They're as still as statues.

Alissa clings to me, then I glide off the bridge and down towards the deck.

"Let me just say that Arreira really knows how to set an atmosphere," I say as I land.

She lets me go and asks, "'Atmosphere'? The air?" Then she tilts her head in confusion.

I roll my eyes because the skill translated it literally. "Mood. He's good at setting the mood," I respond.

The fake elves are currently glowing with a deep blue light, making for a rather dark and oppressive atmosphere.

"There's no theater like elven theater," Yunia comments.

"Oh, we should really go to the theater in Goloria or Escanso sometime," Roxanne adds.

"We'll have all the time in the world for that," I reply, and we make a circle to talk more easily. "Anyway… Hana, Yunia, I want both of you with me. Hana, you'll be in charge of bringing Yunia back in case shit hits the… uh, things go badly."

We land the ship, and Yunia clings to me while I jump down, then the three of us walk towards the glowing elven Generals.

We approach them carefully, paying close attention to their sheathed weapons.

Once we get within ten meters, the elven Generals snap their heads towards me. We freeze both in fear and from the creepiness, but nothing else happens, so we continue walking forward again, just slower.

"Saúdo, paretense," The elven General in the middle greets us with a neutral male voice.

Oh, fuck, they're talking in Ingua.

While I fumble with my points, Yunia returns their greeting.

Their eyes don't even twitch to glance at her, they just ignore her.

"They called us 'kin,'" Yunia whispers.

Our armor is elven and our helmets are obscuring our faces, so they might be mistaking us for elves.

I clear my throat and say, "Greetings, kin."

"Do you wish to pass?" The same General asks.

I glance at Yunia, and she nods. "Yes, we do," I answer.

"May we follow?" Another General asks. A woman's voice, this time. I can't tell their genders because of their armor.

"Why would you wish to follow us?" I ask, curious.

"One leads, others follow, and all judge," a third General replies.

"'Judge'?" I question.

"Worth," a fourth states.

So, they're all going to judge our worth?

"This is one of the principles of nobility that has existed since the dawn of civilization," Ciel says through [Bind].

"What's beyond that door?" I ask.

"Struggle," the first answers.

"War," the second continues.

"Death," the third adds.

"End," the fourth finishes.

Not ominous at all, but why is death different from "end"?

"If we look at Arreira's life, I guess that… death's not the end…?" Lina questions inside my soul space.

My mouth twitches because I don't know if I should smile or get angry at this annoyingly pretentious Dungeon Master.

I recompose myself and answer, "Then you may follow us."

The Generals all nod, and clear away from the door.

I walk up to it and push it open, revealing nothing but more red sand and darkness ahead.

"Wolfy, Living Armor approaching," Alissa reports.

A single gray suit of armor walks into our light, revealing itself. It carries a simple sword and a kite shield. Imperial style.

"Get Jarn here. I want to see how she does against this," I say through [Bind].

Jarn floats down and walks towards the Living Armor in a combat stance. The Armor draws its sword and mirrors her.

Jarn's limbs extend forward a few centimeters, and she starts her attack, immediately forcing the Armor to step back. Jarn flails her hammer with her loosely connected limbs, and the Armor can only try to defend against the assault.

Even if the Armor could fight evenly, its sword won't do anything against Jarn, whose body is made entirely out of hardened steel. Also, Living Armors have that weird condition where they believe that they're "alive," so any damage that would kill a person would cause them to "die," making them much easier to deal with than most monsters.

Jarn beats the Armor down without any difficulty until it "dies." The Armor's remains quickly age, leaving a pile of crumbling, rusted metal, and we continue forward.

The glowing elves follow our ship, either floating through the air or just walking along on the sand.

We use the three golems to deal with the Living Armors while we wait on the ship and absorb the trickle of Experience.

After a dozen Armors are turned into piles of rusted metal, pairs of Armors start to appear, then trios, and so on. When the group of Armors grows to six, the golems start to have difficulty dealing with them all at the same time, so I summon a few earth elementals to help them keep up.

The numbers keep increasing, and the Armors start cooperating together, building a wall of shields and spears pointed at us. Every other shield is upside down so that they can form a solid wall without leaving large gaps at their feet, which is caused by their shields' teardrop shape.

This forces us to fight, too, and we cast some spells to break the walls, or we simply flank them ourselves with our superior maneuverability.

The fighting continues on, and we stop to have a quick lunch, but the Armors keep walking towards us like zombies.

"I guess this is what they meant by 'struggle,'" I comment as I look ahead into the darkness. The scouting Holly watches the groups of Armors slowly making their way forward.

"What if we just fly over them with the ship?" Hana asks.

"Then we'll have waves of Armors coming from the front and the back," Ciel responds.

"There's no need to hurry," I add.

I practice my control of the tentacle weapons with the Armors; Alissa tries out reinforcing her [Mana Arrow]s to better penetrate their plate; Roxanne tests her explosives and how well they spread the Decay gas; Hana practices using flying charges to break their shield wall; Ciel learns how to cast invisible [Wind Hammer]s; Lina completely breaks their lines with [Earth Wall]; Aoi picks them off one-by-one with [Torrent] or her floating ball of water; Yunia pushes [Precognition] to the limit and faces the wall head-on. So far, so good.

A Hobgoblin appears among the Armors, and as soon as it dies, its equipment vanishes completely.

A wave of shorter than usual Armors appear, and there's a goblin among them.

In the next wave, an orc appears, and it takes a bit more effort for us to kill it than the usual Armor would.

Random numbers of human-like monsters start to appear among the Armors, like Ogres, Spriggans, Dragonoids, and Kappattos. They disrupt our strategies to deal with the Armors, so we start discussing how to kill them with the least amount of effort.

Even the golems and elementals need time to rest and recover their MP, so we all take turns fighting.

Now that we have to push our skills and tactics to the limit, our armor gradually becomes more and more damaged, and small wounds start to gradually appear on us, but only bruises so far.

The orc thrusts his spear at me, and I step back, just out of its reach. I counter with my spear held by a tentacle above me, but he hides behind his shield and defends against my attack.

Other spears quickly follow and try to stab at me, but I keep my distance.

I wind up the halberd, then I slam it against a shield and immediately rip it out, causing splinters to go flying.

The orc and Armors push forward, but they never manage to reach me or the earth elementals, who keep them from simply rushing and overwhelming me.

I continue striking with the halberd, and after I completely destroy the second shield, the orcs break out of their line and try to rush me, but they get skewered by the earth elementals, and Alissa finishes them off from up on the ship.

Now that there are only a few Armors left, we surround them and wipe them out.

We carefully observe our enemies and learn their combat tendencies. The Armors are too sluggish to react quickly to changes in the battlefield; goblins are terrible at reforming once their wall is broken; hobgoblins tire easily; orcs are quick to anger; ogres are slow. Their mismatched formation allows us to exploit their weaknesses, but their gradually increasing numbers steadily deplete our resources.

The scouting Holly continues on, and it sees that the mobs coming at us are gradually growing into an army.

"Things aren't looking good," I comment, and Alissa nods.

Even if we used the ship's massive [Wind Shield] to disrupt their lines and pick them off one-by-one, there's just too many for us to handle.

Ciel stares at the Generals intensely, thinking the same thing that I am. "Give me some points in Ingua," she asks though [Bind], and I obey. "Aren't you going to help?" She asks them.

One of them turns their head towards her and responds in its usual flat tone, "You lead, we follow."

She frowns angrily and asks, "Do you want to continue forward?"

"Yes."

Her tone becomes intense as she states, "We lead, you help."

The General nods. "You lead, we help. You fail, we leave."

"I couldn't ask for more!" She exclaims, flippant.

"Not one step back," the General responds.

"Not one step back," all of the elves repeat in sync, creating a painfully loud chorus.

So creepy.

All of the soldier-like elves fly past our ship and land in front of it, behind the line of earth elementals. They all walk forward in lockstep, and when the next wave approaches, they just carelessly throw themselves at the enemy line.

They may be constructs of light, but they're still solid, somehow, and they can be killed, just like a real person.

"This isn't an army, it's a mob," Hana comments.

"We need to get them organized," Ciel states, and we agree.

I look towards Yunia, but she seems distracted, just staring at the mob of elves fighting.

Alissa joins her at the railing and asks, "Arreira isn't very subtle, is he?"

Yunia remains quiet for a moment, then she mutters, "This is so… depressing…"

The elves finish off their enemies and spread out, revealing the glowing remains of their "dead" comrades. They don't bleed, and their glow isn't snuffed out, so they just look like broken statues.

When the civilian elves pass by the remains, they scoop them up and carry them along.

"Really depressing…" Yunia comments.

We need Yunia to organize the troops, but she's in her own little world inside her head now, so I go up to her and ask. "What are you thinking about?"

"Reading about history is very different from seeing it yourself," she answers in a low tone.

Lina frowns, and her mood quickly darkens, becoming even worse than Yunia's.

The little dwarf stomps towards the railing and stops beside us, then she stares intensely up at Yunia, catching her attention.

"Our lives are more important than theirs," Lina says with a gentle tone, which is actually the opposite of her real feelings.

Yunia has known this fact for her entire life, but she never saw how her decisions affected those she had vowed to protect… and neither did I.

Yunia looks stunned for a second, then she frowns and nods subtly. She looks down at the soldier elves again, and slowly builds her resolve.

Alissa sighs and lays her hand on my shoulder. "This isn't a test, it's training," she says.

I snort. "The Dungeon Master is still a pretentious snob," I mutter.

A note from Manasong

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The patrons who support Rupegia shall have their names sung by the bards for they deserve the glory and honor. Their names are:

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Chapter 83: Not One Step Back - Part 2

A note from Manasong

Attention: to conform to the limit of sexual content allowed in a novel, I've censored this chapter. You can look for the uncensored version here.

Yunia is the only one of us that trained in how to manage an army, Alissa is the one who has the most experience with commanding troops, and Hana is the one who's the most used to being a grunt. Yunia has no confidence in herself, asking to be only an advisor and giving me command; Alissa absolutely hates being a commander, so she also wants a position like Yunia's; Hana accepts leading a small squad, but she'd be out of her depth with anything larger than that; Ciel's job is to keep the harem safe, so I don't want to add any more to her workload; Lina, Roxanne, and Aoi are complete newbies at this, so they wouldn't be reliable leaders.

"I could try to lead. They aren't alive, so it's no problem if they die, hm?" Aoi volunteers.

"The numbers of our troops are limited; I don't want to risk losing them unless necessary," I reply.

"Okay," she casually agrees with a nod. She wants to protect others, but she's still a bit too young for that responsibility.

"There are some elves here that seem like nobility, so they might be our best choice for leaders," Yunia suggests.

"We'll have to test their intelligence and their skills if we intend to give them positions of power," Alissa says.

Yunia nods and continues, "We'll have to understand if and what they eat, if they need rest, the limits of their stamina, their individual needs and wants, and anything else that might be relevant."

I turn towards Hana and say, "You'll need to spar with them."

Her eyebrows knit in concern. Even she is starting to become tired. "Every single one?" She asks, worriedly.

"Just a few, then we'll have them spar with the others to see how they do," I answer.

"Ah, exponential growth," Lina says and nods in understanding.

I smile at her, but I don't pat her head since she's wearing her helmet. "Exactly. We'll need to organize them, though."

She nods energetically, "Alright, I'll do it."

We begin inspecting the troops while Hana starts the sparring with them.

Ciel walks up to one of the commoners carrying the head of a dead soldier and asks, "Why are you carrying that?"

She snaps her head towards Ciel and answers in a monotone, "Failure."

Hana snorts loudly. Arreira is not subtle.

Ciel frowns and asks softly, "Where are you taking it?"

"Everywhere."

"Why?"

"This is a part of me."

"So… you won't drop it?"

"No."

"Never?"

"Never."

Ciel goes quiet, and the elven woman immediately snaps her head forward again.

It's like the glowing elves are in some low CPU-usage mode where their speech capabilities were limited to allow the dungeon to run all of them in parallel.

We question them some more and learn that they behave exactly like the elementals or the golems. They're completely obedient, except when we ask them to drop the pieces of their dead kin or to retreat. They can walk back a certain distance, but they have a limit of about one hundred meters.

As we make a tally of our army, I curiously watch a glowing elf carrying a long pike and an oval shield getting pummeled by Hana. I notice that he isn't carrying a sword comparable to ours, only a short, gladius-like one made for stabbing. Although he knows how to hide behind a shield and stab better than a commoner, he sucks at using his sword.

Yunia stands beside me and observes the sparring match. "Hm… elves excel at teamwork and coordination. I think that sparring with them individually isn't going to tell us much," she remarks.

"It's still a good idea to learn who are the veterans and who are the new guys," Hana points out through me.

She quickly realizes that aside from the Generals and some nobles trained in the sword, all of the elves here suck at individual combat. They weren't trained for it because they're all low level, so they barely have – or had, I don't know if they're "dead" – any melee skills.

They're all from the age when the God-Rulers existed, who enforced a near monopoly of Experience through Rings of the Servant. That allowed those Rulers to gain hundreds upon hundreds of levels and become demigods, but it also lowered the average level of everyone else.

Once the elves were incorporated into the empire, their army was reformed, so neither Yunia nor Lina knows all the details about their organization. We continue questioning them and learn that they have some technical knowledge, but no actual memories. Fortunately, this means that it's simple to reform their hierarchy because we just have to ask them about how they were trained to fight, then we assign them according to their respective roles.

The two main units of the elves are the pike and archer companies, composed of around eighty men in each company. As auxiliary units, there are the Skirmishers, who are harassment troops that use [Vine Weapon] to conjure either arrows or javelins, and the Gatun riders, but there aren't any riders or Gatuns in this army. The elven mages don't have imperial [Ritualism] to link their mana pools together, which would've allowed them to cast huge spells, so they're spread out across the army, filling a variety of support roles. The only dedicated mage squadrons are the Engineers, who specialize in manipulating terrain, and the Elementalists, who cast low-level system magic spells from range, but they aren't reliable damage dealers.

The pikemen carry large oval shields which are almost as tall as themselves, and they fight in a phalanx-like formation. They're almost exclusively a defensive unit, forming a porcupine-like barrier reinforced by [Nature Magic] and nearly impossible to break through. They also use [Weaverism] to connect the minds of the soldiers together and allow them all to fight in perfect sync with each other.

The archers are the main damage dealers, wielding a variety of enchanted bows with different uses which they switch between depending on the situation. There aren't enough enchanted bows for every soldier to have one, so they rotate them among the archers to keep a steady stream of magic arrows falling on the enemy.

We have four companies of Lonlanzas, the pikemen; three of Arquirandos, the archers wielding enchanted bows; two hundred Skirmishers; twenty Engineers; fifty Elementalists; twenty healers; twenty archer nobles; forty pike-and-sword nobles; and thirty Generals who can use [Precognition] and wield greatswords.

There's still the option of using the hundreds of civilians as a levy, but they'd only be cannon-fodder since the enemies we're facing are actually organized and trained.

The nobles serve as elite troops, so we'll spread them among the companies and assign them the leadership of their squads. These nobles are all magic warriors like us, but they don't have any sort of enchanted equipment. Before Aremut started producing enough enchanting gems for the entirety of the empire, enchanted equipment was rare, so the archetype more commonly chosen by nobility was magic warriors instead of spellswords.

The Generals all have enchanted equipment along with being partial magic swordsmen. Their armor may have hundreds of little decorations, creating plenty of nooks and crannies for a spear to get caught on, but they all break apart when even just a little bit of force is applied, so they don't get in the way, and they also regrow after being removed. Quite nifty.

The troops don't need to eat, but they do need rest and sleep. Their stamina is also limited, so we set up a rotation of the active troops to conserve their energy. There are non-soldier nobles among the civilians, so we use them to form an administration hierarchy because they seem to be a bit smarter than the others.

Setting all of this up is tiring and boring work, requiring a lot of discussion among ourselves, but we mostly just follow Yunia's advice. At least there's no need for a complex line of communication since our army is small enough that we can personally respond to any problems.

We just watch as the enemy line approaches ours. The monsters don't have mages to interrupt our mages, so the Engineers disrupt the ground under the monsters, and their line instantly collapses.

The Arquirandos let loose their flaming arrows, and the Elementalists cast their own [Fire Arrow]s, together lighting a large number of the enemies on fire while they're so exposed.

The ogres enrage and charge forward, quickly getting stopped by the Lonlanzas. Their long pikes are anchored against the ground, and their shafts are reinforced with magic. Yunia says that there's a lot of debate about whether or not Ronti riders would win against the Lonlanzas, but now we have evidence that heavily-armored Ogres don't, so we can extrapolate on that.

The Skirmishers pour out from the flanks of the Lonlanzas and surround the collapsed line, then they quickly finish them off.

"Oh, level up," Hana comments.

The numbers of enemies are too small to pose a threat to us, so we end the day without any problems.

Hana's tired, but she also demands to be satisfied, so we tie up her arms and legs, then I go ham. After I'm done, we let her hang over the edge of the bath, like a filthy, used rag.

With the dragon satisfied, I have all the time in the world to savor my cute fox slave.

The sudden death cries of goblins grate on my ears, tainting the experience of making love to my woman. I do Alissa harder to make her moans even louder to drown out the wails of the dying monsters.

The other girls use [Bind] to open the floodgates of pleasure, savoring the Fucking of the Fox to escape the depressing atmosphere outside of our ship.

Yunia can't join in with that, so after Alissa and I recharge from our obsession with each other, Roxanne and I give Yunia some attention to cheer her up. She seems to have become more introspective today and isn't smiling as much, so she might really need some love right now.

Lina quickly recovered from her dark mood after talking with Yunia, so getting molested by Ciel is all she needs for tonight.

"Remember to talk to us; we'll always be here to support you," Roxanne says as she pulls Yunia's head towards her chest.

"Is that you or Wolfy talking?" Yunia casually asks.

"That's all of us," she answers, then kisses her forehead.

Yunia blinks blankly, then looks down in embarrassment.

"Actually, it was mostly Ciel, but we all contributed… a bit," Roxanne adds with a wry smile, making Yunia snort.

Due to our tiredness, dinner is simple but hearty. We eat a lot of meat and fat to give us plenty of energy for tomorrow.

We take off our armor and try to get the comfiest sleep we can. At least tonight, the troops will manage without us. What's coming likely won't let us sleep so calmly again for quite a while.

Today is the 25th.

I learned [Polearm Use] with 1 point. My MP increased by 25, and my "Magic Power" increased by 15 (now 1,735 and 725). Roxanne says that the ratio of MP to "Magic Power" should stay between 2:1 to 3:1, if it isn't, then the mage's training is unbalanced.

If the ratio is higher, then the mage isn't truly learning their magic skills, reducing the performance of their higher-level spells. If the ratio is lower, then their low-level spells will be more unstable and inefficient mana-wise. This problem can be compensated for with skills like [Mana Efficiency] or [Mana Control]. These concerns don't fully apply to spellswords since they use enchantments to make up for their lack of magical training and naturally achieve higher ratios of MP to "Magic Power."

Alissa's MP increased by 35, and her "Magic Power" increased by 20 (now 1060 and 520). She's doing well with balancing them, but she's not the most magically talented person, so her growth is slow.

Roxanne's MP increased by 60, and her "Magic Power" increased by 30 (now 2,770 and 1,160). She has a higher ratio due to focusing on [Alchemy] for a while, which increased her MP without truly learning more about magic in general.

Hana has leveled up to 42. Her [Sword Use] and [Block] increased by 1 (now 24 and 10). Her new two extra points will be put in [Reduced Mana Cost] so that she can use magic to support herself more often. Her MP increased by 50, and her "Magic Power" increased by 25 (now 910 and 430). Hana's the same as Alissa regarding magic, though she has even less magical talent, so our secret mana training was incredibly useful for her.

Ciel's MP increased by 40, and her "Magic Power" increased by 30 (now 1,280 and 780). Ciel's high "Piety" allows more godly power to pass through her when she uses [Light Magic], giving her a boost in "Magic Power."

Lina's MP increased by 45, and her "Magic Power" increased by 15 (now 1,205 and 530). Lina's focus on enchanting gives her more MP than "Magic Power," just like Roxanne.

Yunia's MP increased by 20, and her "Magic Power" increased by 10 (now 1,050 and 520). Yunia is a well-trained hybrid, and even though she also uses a lot of enchantments, she has a lot of magical talent to compensate.

Aoi's MP increased by 20, and her "Magic Power" increased by 5 (now 1,165 and 205). Aoi may have good magical talent, but she's young, so her "Magic Power" will lag behind for a while.

This is how our skills are:

'Wolf Ryder Skill Report'

'Physical'

Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level
Sword Use | 16+11 | Spear Use | 0+1 | Polearm Use | 0+1
Dodge | 8+7 | Parry | 5+5 | Block | 2+8
Shield Bash | 0+1 | Battlefield Perception | 5+2 | Muscle Explosion | 4+1
Acrobatics | 8+2 | Ekrano Style (creator) | 3 | |

'Magical'

Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level
Sense Mana | 0+6 | Mana Control | 3+17 | Mana Recovery | 10+0
Mana Efficiency | 3+7 | Reduced Mana Cost | 3+7 | Mana Overuse Resistance | 0+4
Blackout Resistance | 0+1 | Fire Magic | 1+4 | Earth Magic | 2+3
Water Magic | 4+1 | Wind Magic | 1+4 | Electric Magic | 6+14
Light Magic | 2+13 | Space Magic | 3+23 | Summoning Magic | 13+27
Blessing Magic | 8+22 | Nature Magic | 3+18 | Conjuring Magic | 0+1
Spirit Magic | 0+3 | Illusion Magic | 0+2 | Golemancy | 0+10
Redirect Mana (creator) | 6 | Sense Soul (creator) | 6 | Soul Manipulation (creator) | 7
Godly Language | 30+2 | | | |

'Miscellaneous'

Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level
Dancing | 0+1 | Cooking | 0+4 | Andraste Language | 4+6
Dismantling | 0+4 | Piloting | 0+3 | Massage | 0+1
Oral Technique | 0+1 | Mana Genitals (innate) | 3 | |

'Info'

Name | Wolf Ryder | Age | 19 | Race | Human
HP | 100 | MP | 1735 | Magic Power | 725
Level | 36 | | | |

'Stats'

Strength | 13 | Endurance | 16 | Dexterity | 12
Speed | 14 | Intelligence | 21 | Wisdom | 16
Willpower | 18 | Charisma | 13 | Piety | 16
Perception | 16 | Sanity | 12+4 | |

'Other'

Status Effects | NONE
Titles | 'Nickname "Good Luck", Blessed by the Goddess of Knowledge, Golemancer, Scholar of Rabanara'

Affiliations

Helios (Fellowship), Alissa (Blood Slave, Fiancée), Hanafuria (Blood Slave, Fiancée), Roxanne Succubus (Fiancée), Lina (Slave, Fiancée), Ciel (Fiancée), Yulania (Blood Slave)

Companions | 'Alissa, Hanafuria, Roxanne Succubus, Ciel, Lina, Yulania'
Crimes | 'NONE'

'Alissa Skill Report'

'Physical'

Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level
Sword Use | 9 | Bow Use | 33 | Parry | 4
Dodge | 3 | Sense Presence | 8 | Hide Presence | 4
Enhanced Olfact | 5 | Enhanced Hearing | 3 | Hawk Eyes | 5
Muscle Explosion | 2 | Quiet Steps | 4 | Quiet Action | 2
Enhanced Stamina | 1 | Enhanced Reflexes | 3+4 | Tracking | 2

'Magical'

Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level
Sense Mana | 1 | Mana Control | 7 | Reduced Mana Cost | 5+0
Fire Magic | 1 | Earth Magic | 5+0 | Water Magic | 1
Wind Magic | 1 | Light Magic | 1 | Space Magic | 1
Conjuring Magic | 1 | Illusion Magic | 2+9 | Fox Transformation (innate) | 5

'Miscellaneous'

Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level
Housework | 3 | Cooking | 4 | Cleaning | 2
Washing | 5 | Riding | 2 | Oral Technique | 4
Pain Resistance | 2 | Hand Technique | 2 | |

'Info'

Name | Alissa | Age | 20 | Race | Fox-type Wereanimal
HP | 100 | MP | 1060 | Magic Power | 520
Level | 39 | | | |

'Stats'

Strength | 12 | Endurance | 18 | Dexterity | 23
Speed | 20 | Intelligence | 13 | Wisdom | 14
Willpower | 17 | Charisma | 14 | Piety | 15
Perception | 17 | Sanity | 15 | |

'Other'

Status Effects | NONE
Titles | 'Blessed by the Goddess of Love'
Affiliations | 'Wolf Ryder (Master, Fiance), Helios (Fellowship)'
Companions | 'Wolf Ryder, Hanafuria, Roxanne Succubus, Ciel, Lina, Yulania'
Crimes | 'NONE'

'Roxanne Succubus Skill Report'

'Physical'

Skill Name | Level | | | |
Dagger Use | 2 | | | |

'Magical'

Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level
Sense Mana | 3 | Mana Control | 30 | Reduced Mana Cost | 7+4
Mana Efficiency | 9 | Mana Overuse Resistance | 1 | Fire Magic | 3+27
Water Magic | 30 | Light Magic | 1 | Space Magic | 2+8
Conjuring Magic | 5 | Alchemy | 5 | Potion Brewing | 11
Poison Brewing | 2 | Redirect Mana | 1 | |

'Miscellaneous'

Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level
Housework | 1 | Cooking | 1 | Cleaning | 1
Washing | 1 | Riding | 1 | |

'Info'

Name | Roxanne Succubus | Age | 21 | Race | Succubus-Type Demon Race
HP | 100 | MP | 2770 | Magic Power | 1160
Level | 39 | | | |

'Stats'

Strength | 9 | Endurance | 11 | Dexterity | 12
Speed | 9 | Intelligence | 18 | Wisdom | 18
Willpower | 15 | Charisma | 15 | Piety | 10
Perception | 11 | Sanity | 12 | |

'Other'

Status Effects | NONE
Titles | 'NONE'
Affiliations | 'Wolf Ryder (Fiance), Helios (Fellowship)'
Companions | 'Wolf Ryder, Alissa, Hanafuria, Ciel, Lina, Yulania'
Crimes | 'NONE'

'Hanafuria Skill Report'

'Physical'

Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level
Sword Use | 24 | Spear Use | 14 | Bow Use | 9
Two-Handed Sword Use | 9 | Polearm Use | 6 | Dagger Use | 4
Shield Bash | 7 | Block | 10 | Parry | 8
Dodge | 5 | Tatesomu Style | 6 | Muscle Explosion | 4
Battlefield Perception | 2 | Taunt | 3 | Intimidate | 2
Enhanced Reflexes | 2 | Enhanced Stamina | 4 | Enhanced Strength | 2
Enhanced Endurance | 4 | | | |

'Magical'

Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level
Sense Mana | 1 | Mana Control | 2 | Reduced Mana Cost | 4+0
Fire Magic | 1 | Earth Magic | 1 | Water Magic | 1+0
Wind Magic | 1+0 | Light Magic | 1 | Space Magic | 1
Conjuring Magic | 1 | Illusion Magic | 5 | |

'Miscellaneous'

Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level
Housework | 2 | Cooking | 1 | Cleaning | 1
Washing | 1 | Riding | 3 | Massage | 1
Pain Conversion | 1 | Dismantling | 4 | Oral Technique | 1
Fire Breath (innate) | 5 | Summon Wings (innate) | 4 | |

'Info'

Name | Hanafuria | Age | 24 | Race | Fire-Type Dragonkin
HP | 100 | MP | 910 | Magic Power | 430
Level | 42 | | | |

'Stats'

Strength | 19 | Endurance | 24 | Dexterity | 11
Speed | 13 | Intelligence | 12 | Wisdom | 14
Willpower 19 | Charisma | 16 | Piety | 11 |
Perception | 10 | Sanity | 17 | |

'Other'

Status Effects | 'NONE'
Titles | 'One Thousand Strikes'
Affiliations | 'Wolf Ryder (Master, Fiance), 'Helios (Fellowship)''
Companions | 'Wolf Ryder, Alissa, Roxanne Succubus, Ciel, Lina, Yulania'
Crimes | 'NONE'

'Ciel Skill Report'

'Physical'

Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level
Glaive Use | 21 | Sword Use | 5 | Parry | 8
Dodge | 7 | Block | 6 | Imperial Hasterrum Style | 3
Muscle Explosion | 2 | Battlefield Perception | 1 | |

'Magical'

Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level
Sense Mana | 2 | Mana Control | 6 | Reduced Mana Cost | 5+2
Mana Efficiency | 2+4 | Wind Magic | 10+20 | Fire Magic | 1
Light Magic | 27 | Space Magic | 3 | Conjuring Magic | 1
Diagnosis | 7 | Redirect Mana | 1 | |

'Miscellaneous'

Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level
First-Aid | 3 | Housework | 3 | Cooking | 2
Cleaning | 2 | Washing | 1 | Riding | 1

'Info'

Name | Ciel | Age | 22 | Race | Human
HP | 100 | MP | 1280 | Magic Power | 780
Level | 39 | | | |

'Stats'

Strength | 14 | Endurance | 14 | Dexterity | 17
Speed | 18 | Intelligence | 15 | Wisdom | 20
Willpower | 14 | Charisma | Piety | 22 | 22
Perception | 13 | Sanity | 19 | |

'Other'

Status Effects | 'NONE'
Titles | 'NONE'
Affiliations | 'Wolf Ryder (Fiance), Helios (Fellowship), Templar Knights (Honorary Member), Temple Priestess (Former Member)'
Companions | 'Wolf Ryder, Alissa, Hanafuria, Roxanne Succubus, Lina, Yulania'
Crimes | 'NONE'

'Lina Skill Report'

'Physical'

Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level
Hammer Use | 17 | Axe Use | 1+9 | Throw | 5
Parry | 1+9 | Dodge | 2+6 | Block | 10
Muscle Explosion | 2 | Shield Bash | 1 | Battlefield Perception | 2
Dwarven Pride Style | 3 | Enhanced Speed | 4+1 | |

'Magical'

Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level
Sense Mana | 1 | Mana Control | 7 | Mana Efficiency | 1
Fire Magic | 1 | Earth Magic | 1+9 | Water Magic | 1
Wind Magic | 1+0 | Light Magic | 1 | Cursing Magic | 8+7
Space Magic | 1 | Conjuring Magic | 1 | General Enchanting | 9
Magic Tool Carving | 1 | | | |

'Miscellaneous'

Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level
General Blacksmithing | 4 | Sewing | 4 | Housework | 1
Cleaning | 2 | Washing | 1 | Math | 4
Riding | 1 | Stonebody (innate) | 5 | |

'Info'

Name | Lina | Age | 18 | Race | Dwarf
HP | 100 | MP | 1205 | Magic Power | 530
Level | 36 | | | |

'Stats'

Strength | 8 | Endurance | 8 | Dexterity | 13
Speed | 12 | Intelligence | 16 | Wisdom | 13
Willpower | 17 | Charisma | 11 | Piety | 12
Perception | 14 | Sanity | 14 | |

'Other'

Status Effects | 'NONE'
Titles | 'NONE'
Affiliations | 'Wolf Ryder (Master, Fiance), 'Helios (Fellowship)'
Companions | 'Wolf Ryder, Alissa, Hanafuria, Roxanne Succubus, Ciel, Yulania'
Crimes | 'NONE'

'Yulania Skill Report'

'Physical'

Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level
Sword Use | 8 | Two-Handed Sword Use | 10 | Parry | 8
Dodge | 9 | Silent Shadow Style | 4 | Battlefield Perception | 5
Enhanced Reflexes | 5 | Sense Presence | 1 | Hide Presence | 4
Muscle Explosion | 2 | Quiet Steps | 2 | Quiet Action | 6

'Magical'

Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level
Sense Mana | 5 | Mana Control | 4 | Mana Recovery | 2
Mana Efficiency | 8 | Reduced Mana Cost | 4 | Fire Magic | 1
Earth Magic | 1 | Light Magic | 5 | Spirit Magic | 16
Illusion Magic | 10 | Space Magic | 6 | Nature Magic | 10
Conjuring Magic | 1 | Weaverism | 24 | Redirect Mana | 1+0

'Miscellaneous'

Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level
Riding | 5 | Acting | 3 | Dancing | 2

'Info'

Name | Yulania | Age | 20 | Race | Golden Elf
HP | 100 | MP | 1250 | Magic Power | 520
Level | 44 | | | |

'Stats'

Strength | 12 | Endurance | 14 | Dexterity | 19
Speed | 16 | Intelligence | 16 | Wisdom | 16
Willpower | 15 | Charisma | 20 | Piety | 12
Perception | 20 | Sanity | 16 | |

'Other'

Status Effects | 'NONE'
Titles | 'NONE'
Affiliations | 'Wolf Ryder (Master), 'Helios (Fellowship)'
Companions | 'Wolf Ryder, Alissa, Hanafuria, Roxanne Succubus, Ciel, Lina'
Crimes | 'NONE'

Soul Info

Name: | Aoi | HP: | 200
MP | 1,165 | MP | 205
Strength | 17 | Endurance | 20

We observe the soldiers while we eat breakfast. The phalanx of Lonlanzas that fought during the night switches with a fresh phalanx. They all move in perfect order like robots, but we notice that the tired personnel seem to have a sway to their gait, giving off a faint impression of a zombie walk.

A single company of Lonlanzas is enough to cover the entire width of the corridor, but the Holly scouting far ahead has noticed that the tunnel is getting wider, so our advantage will fade as we progress. The Lonlanzas have terrible turning capabilities, so getting flanked is a great concern of ours.

A General comes to give us the night's report. Three Skirmishers died by being too slow to react, and one unlucky Lonlanza died from a javelin that passed through a small hole in their phalanx. These are simply the expected casualties from attrition.

Then the General goes down to our hold to refill the mana of our ship. It feels weird to use them like this, but they have huge mana pools, so they'll save us a lot of effort this way.

Yunia's mood is much better today, but once we finish our meal, she becomes more serious than I've ever seen her.

"I don't want to treat them like they're just pieces on a board," she firmly states.

Alissa's tail sways lazily as she says, "I agree. A test of our leadership capabilities should involve our 'Charisma,' and treating the soldiers like disposable tools would give us negative 'Charisma.'"

"So, should I give a speech, or something?" I ask.

Yunia smiles subtly and answers, "No, no need for that, but you need to show yourself more to the army. They need to see you lead and fight. Being present along the defensive line will give them a boost in morale, and hearing your voice will set them at ease."

Alissa reluctantly adds, "Each of us is more powerful than ten of these soldiers combined. We didn't gain all these skills and levels to just sit back and watch them fight, that's the job of the generals, the imperial generals, I mean."

Lina's Trivia: imperial generals are employed by Lords, and they're trained exclusively in [Battlefield Perception] to become strategists.

"The Lord is the most powerful unit in the Civil War game, but if you lose it, you lose the game," Lina remarks.

"He needs a mount, though. Little Wolfy won't stand out among the tall, glowing elves by himself," Hana says with a teasing smile.

"Maybe I should make you my mount. Tie a seat to your back and ride you naked," I reply.

"I'd love that," she immediately agrees and laughs out loud.

"You can ride me, but I need your seed to give me strength," Aoi volunteers with a toothy grin.

"Don't think that you'll be able to monopolize him," Alissa warns the greedy dragon, and the girls send her their own warnings, too, though some of them weren't sent deliberately.

I draw my sword as Aoi rears up and point it high into the air along with my three tentacle-wielded weapons. "ANOTHER DAY STARTS, AND THE BATTLE CONTINUES! I STAND WITH YOU, MEN!" I bellow while I add just a hint of [Godly Language] to my words.

The elves all creepily turn their heads towards me, then they silently raise their weapons in a cheer and then immediately face forward again. Their reaction was mild, but at least they reacted at all, which is evidence that they have some sort of morale, too.

Aoi spreads her wings and flaps them strongly, gaining a bit of height, then she glides past the company of Lonlanzas, flying low enough to almost touch their pikes, and lands in the middle of the Skirmishers.

The line of enemies approaches, and they have mages this time, who interrupt our Engineers from collapsing the ground under them.

"SPLIT!" I yell out an order, and the Skirmishers obey.

Aoi charges to the left side of their line while fox-Alissa dashes to the right.

The Skirmishers and Alissa fire their projectiles, making the shields of the enemy become unwieldy to actually use them anymore. We run past the forward enemy line and get behind them, and five orcs break off from it to face me.

"We've been underestimated, so let's not waste this chance," I comment.

"Can I eat the mages?" Aoi casually asks. Her mature and deep double voice mismatches with her childish tone.

"Only after they're all dead."

"Okay."

She charges forward, causing the ground to tremble. With her full armor set, she must weigh nearly one tonne, making her comparable to the heaviest cavalry units in the empire. Not only is she heavy, but she can fly, and these monsters didn't anticipate that.

She flaps her wings, and the gust of sand blinds the orcs temporarily, making it easy to fly over them and land in the middle of the Hobgoblin mages.

Three of them are immediately squashed by Aoi; one is decapitated by my halberd; another is skewered by my spear; a third gets its head caved in by my mace; and the last one we kill gets its chest caved in by Aoi's ball of water slamming into it.

I cast [Discharge] at the backs of the orcs in the front line, then Aoi tramples through them, and the Arquirandos let loose.

An Orc Striker bursts out of the collapsed line, charging at a sluggish Skirmisher like an Olympic sprinter. I reflexively cast [Thunder Bolt] at the monster, causing it to collapse and eat red sand.

Alissa finishes it off before it can get up, and I nod towards the Skirmisher, who nods back at me.

I see. They're actually somewhat intelligent.

We let the Lonlanzas break out of their formation to surround the broken enemies, and they slaughter them to the last monster.

I raise my bloodied weapons in triumph, and the soldiers mirror my gesture.

We discover that we can wield the glowing weapons of the elves, and Hana has enough skill to enter the Phalanx, so she acts like one of the nobles and gets a squad for herself. There are a few female elves in the Lonlanzas, so she makes her own women-only squad because why not.

Hana doesn't know [Grow], so she can't reinforce these weapons or the phalanx with her spells, but she's a fair bit stronger than most of the elves around her, allowing her to compensate with pure "Strength" and "Endurance."

An elven mage approaches her and holds out a bowl while lowering his head in subservience. She draws a dagger and opens a wound on her wrist, then lets a few drops of her blood fall into the bowl.

The other elves do the same, and glowing blood mixes with her own. Once the entire company has added their share to it, the elven mage starts whispering a spell. A completely new "flavor" of mana leaves the mage, and it reminds me of Eia. The mage finishes the spell and throws the glowing mixture up into the air, then a sparkly rain of blood falls upon the entire company.

Hana immediately feels the effect of the spell as the emotions of the soldiers around her start affecting her. She feels their will to fight in her very skin as if she were exposed to the heat of a large bonfire. Her nearly uncontrollable dragon rage is chained to her heart as the spell helps her control herself. This spell is surprisingly similar to [Mask].

"GROUP!" The company commander gives the order, and Hana's women surround her instinctively.

"LINE!" Another order comes, and the squads orderly form up into a line without even bumping against each other.

Even before the commander yells, the squads instinctively huddle up together. "BRACE!" The order comes a second later.

"PIKE!" They lower their weapons, anchoring them against the floor and the sides of their feet.

"LOCK!" The large oval shields are turned horizontal, overlapping their tops and bottoms together to make up a solid line of shields. Two lines of shields like this are positioned on top of it, forming a curved shield wall. Vines burst out of the ground and wrap around both the shields and the pikes, locking them in place.

The orcs charge forward, only to impale themselves on the pikes. Some of the monsters manage to break a few of the needles of the porcupine formation, but Hana yells an order, and new pikes are brought up from the rear, which are promptly used to skewer the surviving monsters.

"ATTENTION!" Another order comes. The men breathe in and brace themselves. Hana receives her enchanted elven spear from an elf behind her.

"RELEASE!" The oval shields are turned vertical again.

"BREEEEAK!"

The elves roar in a monotone chorus, but Hana's roar drowns them all out, "RAAAAAAAAAGH!" She dashes through her women, then the oval shields are turned sideways, and she bursts out of the line.

As Aoi retreats from the broken enemy line, Hana and other elves descend upon them, starting a massacre.

"BACK!" The order comes just as the orcs start to recover, so Hana retreats into the phalanx.

An orc dashes after her, but a vine wraps around its ankle, making it trip, then multiple pikes stab into its exposed back.

"URAAAAAAA!" She yells to her women, and they brace around her again.

"URAAAAA!" They copy her in a monotone yell.

"Alright, they're learning," Hana comments through [Bind].

Things are going well, but I know that'll end soon… the enemy has Grim Giants.

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Chapter 83: Not One Step Back - Part 3

A note from Manasong

Attention: to conform to the limit of sexual content allowed in a novel, I've censored this chapter. You can look for the uncensored version here.

The elven Lonlanzas never had a chance to truly test their tactics against the imperial army, but they fought the Grim Giants, and the elves lost, repeatedly.

Before the Shore of Leaves was established, the elves had to deal with the Grim Giants that came from the Sea of Trees and invaded their High Forest. Hidden inside their ginormous trees, the elves won against the invaders, but once they decided to conquer the wetlands to the south, they had to adapt.

Grim Giants can't jump because their bones simply can't withstand the impact of their massive forms against the ground, and the elves exploited that. Antano, the elven wetlands, is full of wet, muddy marshes and loose ground, making it easy to trip the giants with the deep mud, then kill them while they're down.

"That's all well and good, but we don't have the tools to deal with them that way, do we?" I question Lina, and she lowers her head in sadness.

"No, we don't…" She admits.

I shake my head with a wry smile and mutter, "That was clearly intentional." And I pat her head. The way she offers her head to me is like a dog presenting its belly, you just can't not pat it when you see it.

Ciel clears her throat and sends us a jealous look, though I don't know which of us she's actually envious of. And yes, Ciel, I know you're jealous, and no, Ciel, I don't need [Bind] to know that.

Ciel turns away so that we don't see her blushing and says, "Anyway, we can't recreate the advantageous environment of Antano, but we can still exploit the weakness of the Grim Giants: tripping."

I intensify the patting as I think about it for a few seconds and say, "We won't be able to use the Engineers because there are even more mages coming along with them."

"We could make traps that we activate ourselves, like a covered pitfall," Yunia suggests, but then she frowns as she thinks it through. "Ah, no, that kind of trap would be very difficult to place where they can actually be used because we're constantly advancing, not just defending an area."

"I could explode their brains, but that would leave me completely exhausted very quickly," Roxanne nervously comments, preparing herself for the oncoming teasing.

"[Explosion] only as a last resort," I calmly tell her, and she nods, a little too emphatically.

Lazy demon.

The girls mentally tease her for a second before Hana suggests, "We could always aim for their knees. They aren't wearing armor, right?"

"Nope. Unfortunately, they're naked," I respond with a wry smile.

If they at least looked sexy, but no, even the female Grim Giants are ugly.

"Then we can use the burning oil," Roxanne suggests and adjusts her glasses as she grins evilly.

"Only if we can hit them before they reach our lines. We do not want a rampaging Grim Giant throwing itself at our soldiers," Yunia replies sternly.

Suddenly, a silly thought comes to mind, and I immediately suggest it, "Ah! An idea just occurred to me. It's something I've only seen in a movie, though, so I'm not sure how it'll work out in reality."

"'Movie'? Is that the 'moving picture' thing you mentioned?" Yunia asks.

I nod and snap my fingers. "Gify, you know what I'm talking about. Play the video."

"Gih!" She chirps happily, and the eyes of all of the girls lose focus as they see my memories.

"Is that… a giant turtle?" Yunia questions in disbelief.

"A monster of metal. Interesting," Lina says with wonder in her tone.

"Those things look like a Wasps," Alissa comments.

"They seem stronger than a Wasp, though," Roxanne replies.

Then they both flinch.

"I guess not…" Roxanne adds with a wry smile.

Ciel is as confused and awed as Yunia, then something catches her attention, and she asks, "Are those [Beam]s? Didn't you say that there wasn't magic in your world, Wolfy?"

"This movie isn't real. It's fiction," I reply, and she hums in understanding.

The girls all coo in sync when they see what I have in mind.

"Do we even have a rope strong enough for that?" Yunia asks with a frown of concern.

"We could ask the elven mages to create one through [Entangling Vines]," I answer.

"Most of the mages are full on mana right now, so it wouldn't be a waste to have them start working on the rope," Lina adds.

"[Ritualism] makes things so much easier…" Ciel comments with a sigh.

"Isn't [Weaverism] similar to that skill? Don't you have a way to link your mana like you did your emotions?" Alissa innocently asks Yunia.

"[Ritualism] has more in common with [Bind] than [Weaverism]," Yunia replies with a bit of stiffness in her voice, trying to not look offended by the girls' ignorance.

While they start discussing the differences between both types of magic schools, I observe the new wave approaching the Holly. I see Goblin Skirmishers, Orc Spearmen, Troll Clubbers, and a few Ogre Berserkers.

Trolls are rapidly regenerating furry monsters that are larger than orcs, but smaller than ogres. They have superhuman strength like ogres and orcs, but they can only use it in short bursts, giving them the ability to do something similar to a cavalry charge.

All of their melee fighters seem to be wearing pristine metal armor, even the Ogres, making them a force that will definitely last for a while against our Lonlanza phalanx.

Behind the front line, the Holly spots a large number of Hobgoblin mages wielding large staves with gems on top. These are real mages who must have comparable power to ours, so we might have to endure ranged attacks if we can't deal with them fast enough.

I see a huge orc wearing gilded armor being conveyed on a palanquin by a group of muscular goblins, and he's surrounded by other orcs wearing armor painted red. This must be an Orc Lord with his Bloodkin.

A familiar coldness suddenly attacks the Holly, and its wings start to freeze, making it plummet towards the ground.

Fuck.

I immediately unsummon it and grit my teeth in anger. "We won't be able to scout as effectively anymore. There are Ice Wraiths protecting one of the waves ahead," I say to the girls.

"Your plan might be a bit risky if we don't know what they'll be throwing at us," Yunia says.

We turn to look at Ciel. She's the only one of us who can fly fast enough to safely carry out this plan.

"I'll do it, just be ready to summon me back if necessary," she agrees and smiles positively.

"Is there any kind of spell that blocks [Summoning Magic]?" I ask the girls.

Yunia shakes her head, making her long elven ears bounce, and answers assuredly, "The magic school, specifically? No. Only complete blocks like my [Disruption Field]."

"It's actually amazing that it even works while you have your [Gate] blocked," Roxanne remarks.

"I wonder if we could develop a countermeasure to the scrubber by studying [Bind]," I comment.

Yunia smiles smugly and points out, "The Scrubber has existed for thousands of years; even Emperors have failed at trying to overcome it."

"Remember that Kabar shopkeeper, the one who sold my magic book?" Alissa asks, and I hum in understanding. "She saw 'something' between us when we communicated through [Bind]. It's much more likely that someone will find a way to block [Bind] than us getting past a scrubber."

I frown and swallow heavily. "That's actually terrifying to me," I say.

"Same," Alissa agrees soberly.

The battles continue with total victories for us for the entire morning. Our Experience steadily increases since the soldiers don't have souls to share it, but there are diminishing returns, meaning that we get less and less from killing the same types of monsters again and again.

Lina and I leveled up to 37, though, so it's all good. I put all my new points in [Polearm Use] (now 4+1), and I put Lina's in [Axe Use] (now 5+9). When there's no need for actual combat, I'll put everyone's non-essential points in [Mana Recovery]. When I'm not in combat, but the girls are, I'll put my melee points in [Reduced Mana Cost] to improve [Bind]'s summoning efficiency.

We lose another Skirmisher that we couldn't save from a stray javelin and an Arquirando from a stray spell. The monsters are getting better at protecting their backline, so their mages are staying alive longer, allowing them to start peppering us with spells.

We manage to have a quiet lunch without getting interrupted, and our mental health improves a bit from a short cuddling session. Aoi uses that time to claim her reward for a good job, so I actually feel refreshed for what comes next: the first Grim Giant.

Aoi's rumbling doesn't even compare to that of the Giant making its way towards us. The sixteen-meter tall naked woman chuckles softly with a maniacal smile as she stares down at her prey. Unfortunately for her, we aren't porcupines; we're the hunters today.

The wind elemental carries a large bucket of burning oil up near the ceiling, completely undetected by the monsters. Once the Grim Giant is right under the elemental, it drops down towards her, then throws the bucket before any of the monsters even notice that something is happening.

The oil hits the Giant right on its head, completely covering her upper body in it.

"Fire," I calmly order, and the Arquirandos launch their flaming arrows. Grim Giants normally don't care about small arrows, but this time, I swear I can see fear in her eyes as she observes the flaming dots coming towards her with a blank expression on her face. A sixteen-meter tall pyre is lit

The Giant immediately starts thrashing and roaring, "UUOOOOOO! UAAAAAH!" Her roars of rage quickly turn to agony as the pain starts to register in her slow brain.

Monsters are crushed and squashed by the Giant's panicked flailing, becoming nothing more than mounds of bloody flesh and warped metal.

Their mages start to cast [Torrent] and [Water Wall] to put out the fire, but we won't let them succeed.

Without any organized ranged attacks to oppose them, Ciel, Hana, and Lina riding Aoi land unscathed in the middle of the mages, then they start butchering the distracted monsters.

The edges of the enemy line survive, and instead of trying to save their mages, they decide to continue on in formation towards our company of Lonlanzas as a Hail Mary.

"Fire is perfect for this situation if we can neutralize their mages," Yunia comments and squeezes my hand encouragingly.

"Indeed," I agree, then I finish the chocolate bar I was eating, and we get up.

I stand at the bow of our ship with Roxanne, and I give the signal, then the Elementalists on our deck start charging their spells along with us.

Alissa raises the ship, then charges us at the female Grim Giant and activates [Wind Shield] just as we bump into her.

The Giant falls backward and hits her head against the stone floor underneath the sand, cracking both it and her own skull.

Alissa turns the ship sideways, and we release our spells. The Elementalists, Yunia, and I each fire off the biggest [Earth Bullet] we can, and Roxanne launches a battering-ram-sized [Ice Lance].

We hear a loud crunching noise when this salvo of spells hits the Giant's forehead, then her limbs tense up in a weird posture due to the fencing response.

Alissa turns the ship around, and we hide back behind the troops again before a stray spell can hit us.

"That was a bit lucky," I say.

"Indeed. The next one might not die so quickly," Yunia comments.

The Giant doesn't get up again, burning to death in less than a minute, likely suffocated by the fumes. Its brain controls its regeneration unconsciously, like a heartbeat, but the regeneration starts around the heart, so it dies if either organ is damaged too much.

The worst part is that the smell of burning Giant makes me feel hungry and disgusted at the same time.

The next Grim Giant takes a bit more of a pounding, but it dies the same way as its predecessor.

I notice that an Ice Wraith is coming closer as the next Holly I send out to scout gets attacked before it can even see the Orc Lord's army approaching.

The next waves don't have Grim Giants, so we take care of them as usual. Their Troll Clubbers annoy us a little by focusing on destroying our pikes, but an accurate salvo of fire arrows puts them to rest.

Another two Grim Giants come one after the other, and they're taken care of in the same way as the last two, though fighting them is quickly draining away our reserves of mana.

I have four whole Grim Giant corpses in my "Items" along with a small army of assorted monsters. We can't even exchange this huge number of corpses for money since they'd want explanations about how I got them and how the hell would I be able to carry so many. At least our supply of orc bacon is skyrocketing, though butchering orcs is a rather disturbing experience.

The Giants don't appear again, and time for our bath arrives. We don't have a lot of time until the next wave, so we have to hurry. Though, it's a bit annoying to take a bath only to get in our armor again right after and fight.

Ciel has been working hard today, so I think she deserves to get her ass cheeks clapped.

After Alissa pours water over Ciel's head to wash away the soap, she stands up, and I grab a handful of that ass, then I soften my grip because she needs pampering, not snu snu.

The fire burning inside my heart quickly dies down then I sink into the water and pull Roxanne onto my lap. The tension from the constant combat is getting to me, too, so the dragon in me just lazily plays about with his toys for the rest of our bath.

We don't have enough time to prepare a full-course meal, so we just fry strips of orc bacon to put in a sandwich and pull out the leftovers again. After eating so much Dragolite with the Chimeras, orc meat is very refreshing.

Then we hurriedly clean up and armor ourselves again. There are two Grim Giants coming at the same time, so we'll have to change our strategy a little.

Once they get within firing range, we open up with multiple volleys of arrows to little effect. The Giants ignore the arrows, the warriors hide behind their shields, the Goblin Skirmishers hide behind the warriors, and the mages have elemental Spirits, like Roxanne's [Water Spirit], that can use [Water Wall] or other wall-type spells that protect them from projectiles.

Our Skirmishers continue the attack, but the enemy mages and Goblin Skirmishers return fire, killing ten of ours, so I order them to retreat.

The ceiling is high enough now that we can lob arrows at them, so we do just that.

"One full volley of [Charge]d arrows," I order, which the commander relays to the Arquirandos through yelling, then I tell Alissa through [Bind], "Coordinate another attack with the Skirmishers."

The first line of Arquirandos fire their arrows, then pass the enchanted bows to the next line. They immediately draw and fire, too, then they pass it on to the next line behind them, and these steps repeat until the bows reach the final line of soldiers.

The arrows pierce into the enemy shields, getting stuck in them, and a second later, they release [Discharge], disrupting the enemy line.

The Skirmishers get within firing range at the same time.

"LOOSE" Alissa yells, which the other commanders repeat. Nearly two hundred men launch projectiles at the monsters, and a wave of grunts of pain resounds through the corridor.

Nearly the entire front line of orcs and Living Armors is injured by the attack, but their comrades don't stop and simply trample over them, continuing their advance.

The wind elemental carrying the oil is spotted by a tough-looking goblin Skirmisher, then they start firing arrows at it. The elemental immediately returns to not risk wasting the oil.

We kill another line of warriors with enchanted arrows, and the enemy mages start casting wall-type spells to protect them.

"Continuous volley, staggered [Charge]," I order.

They fire a few lines of normal arrows, then suddenly switch to [Charge]d arrows. The enemy mages dismiss the defensive spells once they see the normal arrows flying at them, but then they scramble to recast them when a surprise volley of enchanted arrows is unleashed.

"Ciel," I call for her attention. She turns towards me and nods stoically.

She readies her shield and casts [Fly], then she darts towards the first Grim Giant with a wind elemental following behind her. The enemy mages are too preoccupied with the arrows to stop her, so this is the perfect opportunity to carry out our plan.

She activates her [Wind Shield], which deflects a few stray arrows and spells. The Giant notices her and tries to bat her away like one would to a flea.

She casts [Beam] at his hand and he winces, stopping his attack, then she flies past him, and the wind elemental throws the bucket of oil at his face.

Ciel turns around and throws an instant [Fireball] at the Giant, lighting him on fire.

"NOOOOOOOOOO…!" The Giant lets out a deafening roar and thrashes with frightening speed, loudly stomping the ground and making the entire battlefield tremble.

Ciel grits her teeth in pain, then [Battlefield Perception] triggers. Her [Fly] isn't fast enough, and the Giant's hand strikes her at the same time that I summon her back to me.

She appears on the deck feeling a little dizzy, then the pain hits her, and she falls to her knees. I immediately kneel beside her and cast the strongest [Heal] I can without charging. She gasps and groans, even dizzier than before, but her HP goes back up to 100, so she'll be fine.

I sigh and carefully help her sit down. I notice that her helmet and chest piece both have long cracks from the impact.

That was close. A broken neck could've meant instant death.

"Wolf…" Yunia calls my attention sternly.

I grit my teeth and look up towards the bridge. "Ram the burning Giant! PREPARE TO ATTACK!" I order the golems.

The Elementalists charge their spells, and all three companies of Arquirandos fire their salvos to give us cover.

The second Giant protects its face from the arrows, and the enemy advance stops.

The thrashing Giant blindly dashes towards us, driven insane from the pain. Our ship collides with his face, then he crashes onto the ground, creating a small cloud of dust that blinds the mages around it.

The General on our deck clears away the dust for us, allowing the Elementalists to let loose.

"MAAAAAA!" The second Giant bellows as it rushes towards us. He has decided to ignore the enchanted arrows to save his friend.

"F-fu… LINA!" I scream, nearly losing my composure at the frightening sight of the angry Grim Giant charging at us. "Calm down," I tell myself with [Godly Language].

We prepared for this, we'll be fine.

Lina throws a few large glass flasks, and Roxanne blows them up, creating a cloud of Rox's Sneeze-'n-Wheeze a second before the Giant reaches us.

Two gigantic hands try to crush our ship, but they're blocked by the [Wind Shield]s. After a moment of fear, the Giant suddenly sneezes, creating a spray of spit and snot that fortunately also gets blocked by the ship's enchantment.

The hands stop trying to crush us, and our ship is allowed to safely fly away. Lina throws a few more flasks, these ones with oil inside them, and we light the second Giant on fire.

Aoi and Hana break through the broken line of warriors and fly straight at the mages before they can extinguish the flames. Fox-Alissa flanks the line with the Generals, and they strike the monsters from rear, easily cutting their way through the thin line of enemy warriors protecting their backs. Ciel recovers and casts [Beam], picking off the more dangerous enemies from above alongside Roxanne. The Lonlanza nobles burst out of the phalanx and quickly butcher the survivors.

The cleanup has begun.

After another overwhelming victory, I lower the ship in front of the Lonlanzas and make my way up onto the prow.

"VICTORY!" I yell, infusing my voice with just a bit of [Godly Language].

"VICTORY!" The men repeat, making me grin. The booming cheer of hundreds of men and women is a beautiful thing, and it makes the dragon inside me sway its tail in satisfaction.

The euphoria quickly fades as the Holly fails to find the next wave.

Something's wrong.

There's nothing for us to do but wait on our ship and continue moving forward. This gives us some time to rest, but it also makes us feel tense since we don't know what's coming.

Then the Holly is attacked by an Ice Wraith well before it can find anything.

I send it out to scout again and again along with other summons, but they all get found out and eliminated. This continues well into the night, though it's always dark here, so we wouldn't know that if I didn't have a watch.

Getting impatient and paranoid, I decide to send Hana and Ciel to scout ahead with two Ice Wraiths, a Holly, and an assortment of elementals to assist them. They quickly encounter over a dozen enemy Wraiths, so their scouting gets delayed, but they eventually pierce through the scout killers and find the Orc Lord.

Their army has increased, by a lot, and the Grim Giants are now wearing armor.

They launch spells towards the girls, so I summon them back, and we prepare for the next battle.

A note from Manasong

Hall of Fame of Patrons

The patrons who support Rupegia shall have their names sung by the bards for they deserve the glory and honor. Their names are:

Prince PreownedFIN.

Lord Andrew Meyers.

Lord Samuel Lim.

Lord Bill.

Lord Novgarod.

Lord DJ.

Lord Ashadun.

Lord Michale Erwin.

Lord Bakerdea.

Lord D4rk Sheep.

Lord Nathan Vanbrunt.

Lord Maurice.

Lord Krawn.

Lord Empyrean.

Lord Mattirro Draca.

Lord Joshua Tal.

Lord Colorblind.

Lord RottenTangerine.

Lord Cidant.

Lord Fullmoon.

Lord Joxsan Herrera.

Noble Salty Panda.

Noble Mild Fracas.

Noble EESDESESESRDT.

Noble Aclys.

Noble Jordon Gotthold.

Noble Tyler Mills.

Noble Shawn Plumley.

Noble Kale Daley.

Leave a rating or a review to help me rise to the top or fix my shameful understanding of prose.

Take a look over my blog where all information of the world of Rupegia will be posted.

Join the Discord and discuss, or rant, or meme, or try and fight me so your waifu gets more screentime.

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Chapter 84: Hammer and Anvil - Part 1

A note from Manasong

Attention: to conform to the limit of sexual content allowed in a novel, I've censored this chapter. You can look for the uncensored version here.

"Wolfy, we have a problem," Yunia affirms sternly.

I eat another piece of chocolate. It's hazelnut with raisins, my favorite combination. It's just above peanut chocolate, but we don't have peanuts, so that's something we'll have to watch out for while buying food.

I sigh and sink into my seat. "Just one?" I ask, almost whimpering.

"Well… no, we have more than just one problem…" She says, her voice losing strength with each word.

"So… how fucked are we?" Hana asks with a grin, trying to brighten the mood just a bit.

"Very fucked," Yunia answers with a flat tone and sighs, then she hardens her expression again and continues, "Our first problem is that the Giants seem to be wearing some sort of stone armor, making fire much less effective against them."

"I saw holes for the nose and eyes, so Rox's Sneeze-'n-Wheeze should still work," I comment.

"And the oil could still reach their skin if we manage to hit those holes," Alissa adds.

"It would just be easier to use my Sneeze gas, instead. We'll have to use Wolfy's second plan," Roxanne argues back.

Alissa thinks for a moment, then nods in agreement, and at least one of our problems is addressed.

We turn to Yunia again, and she continues, "Our second problem is that their army seems to be larger than ours, so they must be collecting monsters from the other waves, which brings us to our third problem: their numbers are constantly increasing.

"Then there's our fourth problem: they're not advancing, so we have to meet them in the field before their numbers grow too large, which puts us at a disadvantage since the Lonlanzas need time to set up their lines, making them terrible on the offensive. Our fifth problem is that the corridor is so wide where they are now that we might not be able to block it off with all of our companies combined, allowing them to wrap around our flanks with their superior numbers."

"Can't we build walls at our flanks to protect ourselves?" I ask.

She gently shakes her head. "We don't have a lot of Engineers, and they have a lot more mages than we do, making it possible for them to dispel whatever we build. To make more permanent fortifications, we'd have to conjure them, which would take a lot of time that we simply don't have."

"What about forming a levy with the commoners?" Ciel asks.

Yunia shrugs. "We could try, but I have no idea if they'd accept it."

"They'd die in droves if they met an elite enemy unit, so we'll have to be very careful with how we use them," I state, and Yunia agrees wholeheartedly.

"Our sixth problem is that the Orc Lord is intelligent, so we can expect a tough battle," Alissa adds.

"And our seventh problem is that we can't starve them out because their mages should be able to conjure food, or even just cannibalize their coming waves," Roxanne contributes.

We all go silent for a moment, trying to think of a safe way out of this pickle we find ourselves in.

Ciel fought for her entire life behind the walls of a town, so her first thought relates to that. "Couldn't we just wait back here and build up our defenses?" She asks.

"If they gather enough Grim Giants, then no matter what we build, it just won't be enough," Yunia replies, and Ciel frowns.

The elves didn't conquer the marshes of Antano for a long while specifically because the Giants can easily destroy any defense besides the ginormous trees of the High Forest.

I cross my arms and lean back in my chair with a wry smile as I say, "So, we're being forced to fight in a disadvantageous position… I once heard that that's exactly how you lose a battle."

"Precisely," Yunia agrees without a hint of mirth in her tone.

The tiredness from fighting all day suddenly hits me, and I feel my eyes get heavier. It's well past bed-time, and I didn't even have that much fun today. The dragon, the kid, and even the pervert inside me are all complaining at once.

I stare up at the dark ceiling, and a faint glimmer reflects off the red sand from the slowly pulsating light of the glowing elves. An idea begins to form inside my mind, and all the girls slowly look up with me as realization seeps through [Bind].

Yunia follows our gaze, then she smiles in satisfaction. "It's dangerous, but I'm certain it'll work."

We go to sleep with our armor off so that we'll be completely rested for tomorrow's big battle.

Today is the 26th.

Alissa wakes me up lovingly, and I release all the tension from yesterday down her throat, repeatedly.

We [Clean] our mouths, then I put a small piece of chocolate on my tongue and pull her in for a morning kiss. We wrestle for control of the candy as it quickly melts in our mouths, giving our kiss the flavor of Heavenly Chocolate.

The idea of dripping molten chocolate onto her skin reinvigorates me and awakens the dragon in me.

Alissa leveled up to 40. Her [Bow Use], [Dodge], and [Fox Transformation] increased by 1 (now 34, 4, and 6). I'll put her extra point and two more from [Reduced Mana Cost] into [Mana Efficiency] to balance her magic a bit more.

Roxanne leveled up to 40. Her [Mana Control], [Fire Magic], [Space Magic], and [Alchemy] increased by 1 (now 31, 3+28, 2+9, and 6). I remove an unnecessary point from both [Fire Magic] and [Alchemy] and put them in [Reduced Mana Cost] (now 9+4) for a more mana-efficient [Explosion].

Ciel leveled up to 40. Her [Glaive Use] and [Wind Magic] increased by 2 (now 23 and 10+22), and her [Parry] increased by 1 (now 9). Her last extra point will be put in [Mana Efficiency] (now 3+4) for a more mana-efficient [Fly].

I apply not-Nutella to my bread and moan as I take a bite. The chocolate Nour brought wasn't as delicious as this, so I'm certain that we'll be able to make a profit out of commercializing my creations.

Ciel hesitantly puts the not-Nutella on her second slice of bread and takes a bite. She squeaks in a low tone and sighs in satisfaction.

"Are both of you chocolate-sexual?" Alissa asks with a raised eyebrow.

"That… doesn't even make sense," Ciel shyly states while avoiding looking her in the eye.

Alissa smiles smugly, mimicking Yunia's smugness. "Just take a look in Wolfy's mind, I'm sure you'll find your answer there."

"Considering that I was just thinking about drizzling hot chocolate onto Alissa's sensitive bits, perhaps you're right," I say to Alissa with a wry smile.

Alissa glances at Ciel, radiating smugness, and my chocolate angel blocks out our voices from her mind so that our teasing won't ruin the pleasure she gets from her meal.

The elves don't need sleep, so we did make some progress over the "night," but there are still a few hours until we reach the Orc Lord's army.

Just as we begin cleaning up after breakfast, Yunia calls our attention, so we don't even get up out of our seats and simply wait for her to start.

She sternly looks at each of us, wiping away the levity of our breakfast, then she clears her throat and starts, "I'm not a general, but we still need to fulfill the job of one, so we need to start discussing strategies. We also need to have plans ready for all kinds of scenarios so that we can react immediately" -she turns to look at Lina- "and it's best that we write it all down so that we can study them later."

Lina nods, making her cute bangs sway, and wordlessly pulls out a few sheets of paper and a magic pen.

Just when I think that we're finally finishing up, Yunia turns to me and throws me a bomb, "Wolfy, there's something you must do. We need to get the levy ready to defend themselves."

I groan internally.

"So, now I give them a speech?" I ask wryly, holding back my reluctance because this is important.

Her long elven ears twitch as she subtly cringes. "I… I guess so. I was going to suggest just talking to them, but you can appeal to their emotions more effectively with a well-written speech."

I laugh nervously. While letting out adrenaline-fueled cheers and cries during battle is one thing, giving an actual speech to an audience is something else entirely.

"I'd better put my points in [Acting], then," I say and use [Godly Language] to calm myself down.

Before talking to the commoners, we assemble the Generals to have a talk with them. They ignore the girls when they speak of anything not related to battle, greatly irking Yunia, so it seems that I'm the only one who can actually talk to them. Their presence is rather imposing, so I keep the girls behind me for emotional support.

It's a bit hard to hide the fact that Alissa, Roxanne, Hana, and Lina aren't elves, so I think they have some sort of mental block that makes them think we're all "kin." Either that or they're just using that word to refer to any humanoid.

Since they don't care about our race, I take off my helmet and look them in the eye. They take off their helmets, too, revealing a line of supermodels.

Stupid sexy elves.

I clear my throat and mutter another calming order to myself with [Godly Language], then I activate the dragon within me and make a stern expression.

"Have you all determined my worth and that of my harem?" I ask them in Ingua.

"No," the First General answers in his usual flat tone.

"Why?"

"You haven't struggled enough."

"Defeat the Orc Lord and we'll consider you worthy," the Second declares.

I was expecting this, so I continue without flinching. "And what will happen once you deem us worthy?" I ask, still stern and calm.

"You'll have our loyalty," the Third responds.

"I see…" I mutter and narrow my eyes.

That isn't exactly reassuring since we know even less about them than we did about the Chimeras, and we were still betrayed in the end.

"Why do you want to go forward?" I ask the one million dollar question.

"Because we must," the Fourth immediately answers.

Okay… that didn't go how we thought it would.

"And why must you?" I press further.

"It's our purpose," the Second answers.

"And so it is yours," the First adds. I feel a hint of emotion in his voice that reminds me of Yunia's smugness. I guess that's just the elven standard.

"I guess 'moving forward' is a not so subtle reference to the purpose of all humanoids that was given to us by the God of Creation," Ciel wryly says.

"And 'not one step back' is a reference to elven stubbornness," Yunia dryly adds.

Oh, right, there's something else we have to ask them about.

"Why can't you take even 'one step back'?" I continue my questioning.

"We accept no less from you," the First responds, emotionless.

I frown and look back at the girls. "So it's a restriction for us instead of being a specific limitation they have," I remark in Andraste.

Roxanne anxiously adjusts her glasses as an idea comes to her. "Can we convince them that retreating wouldn't be taking 'a step back'?" She asks.

"Maybe…" Yunia mutters in pondering.

I try to question them using hypothetical scenarios, but they never give me a concrete answer, only a "maybe," so I drop that matter for now.

"We'll just have to wait until we actually need it," I say to the girls and shake my head, then I switch to Ingua again and turn back to the Generals. "We wish to ask the commoners to join the battle to come. What's your opinion on this matter?"

"They're not soldiers," Number Two answers. They don't have names, so I'll just refer to them with whatever I feel like.

"They don't owe you their lives," Number Three adds.

"Yes, but if we want to continue moving forward, we need every able-bodied person to fight," I insist.

"You're allowed to ask," Number Two says.

"But not to demand," Number Three finishes.

They sound eerily similar to the doll golems with their split phrases.

I glance back at the girls, but they don't have anything else to add, so I finish the conversation. "Very well… that's all we had to ask."

"Bring us victory," Number One states, and I stiffly nod.

"Not one step back!" The Generals suddenly yell in unison, nearly making me flinch.

While we prepare my speech, I test using a small amount of [Godly Language] on Alissa, and it really does have an effect on her. Instead of it compelling her to follow whatever I say, it has a more subtle effect, either making me more believable or making her more agreeable to my suggestions. A "sniffer" might notice something wrong with my voice, but it's unlikely that they'll be able to understand what exactly I'm doing unless I use it at full power.

Yunia seems very interested in my tests. Her beautiful face gets really close to my neck to inspect my mana, and she says, "We knew that imperials used [Godly Language] to inspire their troops, but we never imagined that it'd be so simple."

I kiss the top of her head, making her smile wryly, and ask, "How much do you know about this skill?"

She rests her head against my chest, making Test Subject 01 a bit jealous. "Very little. I was taught how to resist it, though."

I wish that I could play with her drills, but her hair is tightly tied up into a bun, so I play with her flexible ears, instead. "How does that work? It's extremely easy to understand the principles of [Godly Language] if you can sense the mana vortexes that I create."

"Not from a distance. Shout with [Godly Language] from far enough away, and not even a sniffer would be able to detect the vortex."

"Ooh… so I guess using it for speeches is pretty safe, then."

"Indeed."

We bring all the commoners and soldiers in front of the ship, and we stop our march for a short while.

I climb up onto the prow and look down on at least a thousand stupid sexy elves who are staring up at me intensely, patiently waiting for what I have to say. No pressure.

I calm my heart once again and force my face to adopt a stern and confident expression like a mask, concealing my real feelings.

Lina hands me a small smoky gem, then I press it against my neck, feed it some mana, and start, "Fellow kin!" -[Project Voice] makes my voice boom through the crowd, but it doesn't deafen the people close to the front, maintaining a steady and loud volume over the entire area it fills- "I have stopped our constant advance and gathered you all here to report what awaits us ahead: monsters, hundreds upon hundreds of monsters! They number more than us, and they even have six armored Giants ready to break our lines…!"

I make a dramatic pause to give the crowd time to process what I'm saying. A few eyebrows knit in worry, so I guess I'm on the right path.

I use a brighter tone to lift their "spirits," heh. "But our strength isn't in our numbers. My harem and I are immensely powerful, the Generals can kill any of the monsters in single combat, and the soldiers are extremely competent, as we've repeatedly shown with our overwhelming victories thus far. None of the enemies that we've faced have even made our army break a sweat!"

The girls cheer, and the soldiers follow, with some of the commoners joining in by raising their fists into the air.

I let my tone go serious and dark. "Unfortunately, that won't be enough against the massive army ahead of us. Even if we defeat them, the losses that we might suffer would certainly spell the end of our march forward…"

The excitement immediately dies, and the faces of the soldiers become grim and deeply concerned. I basically just said that most of them are going to die.

I go back to being energetic again. "But this isn't the end! We still have a choice, a chance, an opportunity to seize an overwhelming victory. That is, we must all fight together! Every single person who can hold a spear and a shield should fight! Every person who can carry a burden should aid the soldiers! Every person who can move should participate in the battle and share in the struggle."

The soldiers seem to gain stern expressions in approval of my words while the commoners show concern. It's time to give them a bit of motivation.

I gesticulate wildly with my hands, putting all the energy that I can into my tone, but I don't shout, yet. "If humanoids wish to live, then they're forced to kill. As long as there are monsters roaming this realm, civilization will be forced to fight to protect their existence in the same way that the individual is forced to protect their life."

The crowd starts to become agitated, as if every sentence I impart to them is breathing new life into their bodies.

"One is either the hammer or the anvil, the vine or the tree, the bark or the weapon. What you are will be for you to decide, for you have given me no vow, and I cannot force you to make a choice. I only ask that you take my words into your heart and think deeply about what role you should take."

Their faces go from emotionless to hopeful and proud as they start to yell and cheer in response to my words.

"The survivors of this battle should be able to look back with pride upon this day, the day on which a great army affirmed the elven unity. May every elf realize the importance of the coming battle, assess it, and then bow their heads in reverence before the will of the Gods who have brought us here for a reason: to show our worth!"

The soldiers cheer and roar along with Hana, showing their pride as warriors and in the vows they gave to sacrifice their lives to further the goals of their Generals. They may not be able to fully understand my words, but they understood my intentions and the emotions I wanted to convey.

The commoners seem to have finally awoken from zombies into actual living beings. They murmur and discuss among themselves while the younger ones act more energetically, sounding eager to fight.

I let them talk for half a minute, then Yunia says that it's time to really turn up the hype.

"So tell me, what role will you take?" I ask and wait a few seconds to catch their attention again. The young men start to cheer, and I gradually increase the volume of my voice as I yell, "What are you?! The hammer, the anvil, the vine, the tree, the bark, or the weapon?! WHAT ROLE WILL YOU TAKE?! ARE YOU GOING TO FIGHT?!"

"Yes!" The men cheer, drowning out even Hana.

I draw my sword and raise it high into the air. "I DIDN'T HEAR YOU, ARE YOU GOING TO FIGHT?!"

"YEEEEES!"

"URAAA!" Hana lets out a war cry.

"URAAAAAA!" The crowd cheers, and their war cry resounds through the tunnel.

I catch my breath and smile in triumph, then I look towards Number One, and he silently nods at me.

We start organizing the hundreds upon hundreds of volunteers. Those with magical prowess aid the Elementalists in producing spears and shields nonstop or get taught first-aid by the healers; the young and strong are equipped with these new weapons to fight, and they're taught by Hana how to make a crude shield wall; the old will hold the pikes at the back of the Lonlanza formation; and the ones who can't move help sew thick padded armor to protect the militia.

We can't really help them build anything since they can only conjure that same glowing matter that their bodies are made of. They're doing well on their own, though, and we wouldn't be able to help much, anyway.

We train the non-warrior nobles to help with organization, speeding things up, then we continue our march, killing a few Ice Wraiths along the way.

At 11 AM, we stop our advance so that the army can rest, and we have an early lunch. After that, we finally reach the Orc Lord's army, apparently interrupting their meal. Forcing them to fight while they're hungry is just one small advantage that we need to take to shift the odds in our favor.

The first thing we see are hundreds upon hundreds of small dots of light from their torches and an assortment of crude light spells. Monsters don't know [Spirit Light], and they hate [Light Magic], but they've easily developed their own version of that spell that doesn't include any Holy/Godly influence.

Then we see six hulking masses rapidly grow within the army as the Grim Giants rise to their feet, each reaching a height of up to twenty meters. Their bodies are thicker than the usual Grim Giant due to the stone armor they're wearing.

I use a Holly to take a closer look and notice that their armor seems rather odd. It's mostly orange and black with hints of green and yellow here and there, and its surface is very rough, giving it a crude appearance.

"They tried to conjure bronze, but their mages are so bad that they only managed to conjure it in mineral form," Lina says as she observes them through my Holly.

Yunia blinks repeatedly in confusion. "Why not just conjure iron, then?" She asks.

Lina shrugs. "Monsters are weird. The ones near Mountainhome like bronze, for some reason."

"WOOOOO…!" The Giants suddenly roar in anger, slightly hurting Alissa's ears, then the monsters all start to yell and taunt at us.

I climb up onto the prow and apply a fair amount of [Godly Language] to my voice as I yell, "STEADY, MEN! HAVE FAITH IN THE GODS, AND WE'LL CRUSH THEM!"

"URAA! URAA! URAA!" Our army starts to chant in response.

We're so far from each other that the taunting dies down on both sides long before we can even see each other.

The monsters might try to harass us before we can get in position, so the girls and I get ready to fight, and we make sure that the army marches in formation.

I split a large chocolate bar between us as emergency rations. The battle might last a while, and chocolate will be the perfect energizer for us.

Our army slowly approaches the lights shining ahead, and the small dots gradually become larger, allowing us to discern more details and identify their units.

Goblins, Living Armors, Spriggans, Orcs, Hobgoblins, Trolls, Ogres, and Grim Giants. Those are the enemies that we'll have to fight, and they certainly outnumber us, even with the militia.

But fuck them. We'll show you what we can do, Arreira.

A commotion stirs among the monsters, and both Trolls and Goblins break out of their line.

They're coming to harass us, initiating the first phase of this battle.

A note from Manasong

Hall of Fame of Patrons

The patrons who support Rupegia shall have their names sung by the bards for they deserve the glory and honor. Their names are:

Prince PreownedFIN.

Lord Andrew Meyers.

Lord Samuel Lim.

Lord Bill.

Lord Novgarod.

Lord DJ.

Lord Ashadun.

Lord Michale Erwin.

Lord Bakerdea.

Lord D4rk Sheep.

Lord Nathan Vanbrunt.

Lord Maurice.

Lord Krawn.

Lord Empyrean.

Lord Mattirro Draca.

Lord Joshua Tal.

Lord Colorblind.

Lord RottenTangerine.

Lord Cidant.

Lord Fullmoon.

Lord Joxsan Herrera.

Noble Salty Panda.

Noble Mild Fracas.

Noble EESDESESESRDT.

Noble Aclys.

Noble Jordon Gotthold.

Noble Tyler Mills.

Noble Shawn Plumley.

Noble Kale Daley.

Leave a rating or a review to help me rise to the top or fix my shameful understanding of prose.

Take a look over my blog where all information of the world of Rupegia will be posted.

Join the Discord and discuss, or rant, or meme, or try and fight me so your waifu gets more screentime.

Become a Patron and read chapters in advance, or read the side-stories, or leave your mark on the story, or help choose the next artwork or the next side-story.

Chapter 84: Hammer and Anvil - Part 2

The constant beat of the drums echoes through the corridor along with the footsteps of more than a thousand soldiers. The march of the Lonlanzas is locked in step with the beat, creating a low rumbling sound, but the militia just ignores the drums, adding a rustling distortion to the mix as their steps fall at random times.

Gradually, the taunting of the monsters rises in volume as they begin to notice our approach. Our own soldiers psych themselves up and taunt right back at them, though the war cries of the elves sound rather soft and pleasant instead of threatening. I don't let them roar too much just yet; they won't be part of the second phase, so they should conserve their energy for just a little longer.

The four companies of Lonlanzas march in a perfect line at the front of our army; the militia is split between each flank of the Lonlanzas in a disorganized column, blocking both sides of the corridor; our ship follows close behind the center of the Lonlanzas for moral support; the Engineers wait on our ship for when they'll be needed; the three companies of Arquirandos follow behind us; the Elementalists are behind them, too low on mana to contribute to the opening moves of the battle; and the commoners not fit for battle stay far behind, safe from any stray ranged attacks.

The middle of the Lonlanzas orderly opens up, and our Skirmishers pour out, led by Alissa mounted on Aoi. She strongly dislikes her current role, but it's inevitable since she's the perfect choice for leading our Skirmishers. I took her extra points in magic out and put all eleven points in [Mounted Archery] instead so that she can maintain her deadliness while mounted.

Hana follows her on foot with a longbow in hand. She has enough "Endurance" to fight all day long, and she doesn't really fit with the Arquirandos, so this is a rare opportunity for her to shake the dust off of her nine points in [Bow Use].

The Skirmishers start running forward, charging in a collision course with the Goblin Skirmishers. The Troll Clubbers run to our left flank, towards the militia, then I get the ship to rise higher so that the spotter for the Arquirandos can see the Clubbers perfectly.

I notice that the Trolls are mounted by Spriggans carrying javelins and a few Hobgoblins mages. The Spriggans are sure to harass us with projectiles while the mages will try to stop us from reinforcing our flanks with cheap spells like [Earth Wall].

The skirmishers of both sides meet on the field, launching their projectiles at each other at the same time.

"DOWN!" Alissa yells, and her troops crouch, then they hide behind their thin, small shields.

Aoi folds her wings to her body and turns her head away to protect her eyes, her only true vulnerabile spots, while Alissa just activates her [Wind Shied] for a moment. The small arrows rain onto Aoi's wooden armor, making plinking sounds, but none of them find a nook or seam to pierce through. If they were using orc longbows, then I wouldn't let her just tank these arrows like that.

The Goblins are definitely the loser in this exchange, and their numbers start to decrease rapidly under the barrage of deadly accurate arrows and javelins from the elves.

The Clubbers suddenly turn, now aiming at our Skirmishers, and the Goblins start to retreat.

"Destroy them," I order.

The commander of the Arquirandos nods and promptly walks to the port side, then he starts yelling orders.

The whispers of bows launching their arrows reaches my ears, and the small black projectiles shoot forward with deadly accuracy. They whisper again and again until over two hundred arrows have been sent into the air, then they all land with perfect accuracy exactly where they're needed.

The first salvo arrives in front of the Clubbers, then the arrows release a very crude [Earth Wall], making the floor become spiky and uneven.

The Clubbers jump across the wall of spikes, only to fall onto lava that sticks to their feet. The [Lava Jet] arrows continue to spray it everywhere, even getting some on the Trolls' furred coats. They have fast regeneration, but it's very slow for burn wounds, so heat and fire are their weaknesses.

Their charge is completely disrupted as they all start to panic, then a rain of normal arrows falls into their backs, killing both riders and Trolls in droves.

Alissa's Skirmishers don't chase after the Goblins, immediately changing targets and dashing towards the Clubbers instead. They reach them when the Clubbers are just getting ready to charge again, then Aoi and Hana crash into their formation.

Over one hundred Trolls versus the three girls and the Skirmishers. They would've been instantly crushed, but Alissa's [Mesmerizing Butterflies] are making the monsters hesitate.

Then a few small pots of burning oil crash over some of them, breaking them out of their trance.

*FOOOOOOM* Hana and Aoi breathe fire as they run through the enemy formation, and chaos breaks out again, then the girls fly away while the Skirmishers pelt the enemy with accurate arrows at their foreheads.

A dozen Clubbers retreat while a dozen more run in all directions in a panic, with the rest of them falling to their deaths. There's still another division of Trolls that were held back in reserve, but nearly half of all the enemy Trolls are now gone.

The Goblins double back and try to hit the Skirmishers from behind, but Aoi and Hana land in the middle of them. Fully armored and with perfect sight of every monster aiming their way, they easily keep them busy until our Skirmishers return and counter-attack.

The girls fly away once more, and Aoi eats a Goblin's head while retreating, earning herself a brief scolding from Alissa.

Twenty elven Skirmishers in exchange for nearly a hundred Trolls and even more Goblin Skirmishers. Not a fair trade; my Skirmishers are worth much more than them.

The Goblins soon break into a rout, and our Skirmishers give chase. The enemy line raises their square shields, letting the Goblins through, then they close their crude shield wall again.

I see tusks protruding out of the helmets of the orcs at the center, those are Tusk Warriors. They're a sort of elite orc unit, and they're positioned exactly where I wanted them.

Excellent.

I can't hold back my smile.

Twenty Arquirandos mixed in with our Skirmishers fire their powerful longbows, and the arrows pierce through the enemy shields, but they don't wound the enemy warriors since their shields aren't strapped to their arms.

Then the arrows unleash [Discharge], and their first line of shields collapses. Our Skirmishers fire all their arrows as fast as they can, then they move away before the enemy can counter attack.

The Hobgoblin mages try to block the [Charge]d arrows with elemental walls, but our Skirmishers just move down their line and fire on the unprotected shield wall again. Their Orc Longbowmen then start lobbing their arrows at our Skirmishers, so it's time to retreat.

The monsters taunt our soldiers as they run away in an orderly retreat, but that's just an effort to keep their morale up. We were clearly the true winner in this exchange.

The Lonlanzas are far enough from the enemy lines that we can take a short break before the next phase begins.

I get up from my seat and stand beside Yunia at the bow. I grab her gauntlet, and she turns to face me.

I frown in worry and say, "Yunia, I want to try maintaining [Bind] with you. I won't be comfortable with you entering the fray without it."

She narrows her eyes subtly. "Now?" She asks, confused.

I nod sternly. "We have a few minutes until we'll depart, so it's better to do it now than never."

She seems a bit troubled and looks away, embarrassed.

Ciel appears on her other side and smiles softly at her. "From what I understand, you're ashamed of certain parts of yourself, but so are we," she advises.

"You can bet on that last part!" Roxanne exclaims and smiles wryly.

"It's true…" Yunia whispers with a faint smirk, then she closes her eyes and breathes in deeply.

"You'll be opening your heart to us, but that doesn't mean that we'll abuse your weaknesses," Ciel tries to comfort her.

She narrows her eyes at me and glances at Roxanne, who immediately looks away, trying to appear innocent. "I highly doubt that," Yunia responds in a dangerous tone.

I smirk and blush a little, then I rub my neck awkwardly and clear my throat. "If you really dislike our teasing, we'll respect your wishes and stop when you ask," I reassure her.

She goes quiet and looks ahead in thought. "I don't dislike it, though…" She whispers.

I pat her gauntlet reassuringly and follow her gaze. She's looking at the slowly approaching shield line. She'll be fighting them on the front line in just a short while.

"In truth, I'm scared of this battle…" She mutters and swallows heavily. "Do it, Wolfy. I'll deal with the shame later, and we'll both feel better with me under [Bind]."

I nod emphatically, then I cast it on her.

I grab her soul with my ethereal hand and drop it into mine. My mind immediately becomes crowded as the jumbled mess of her feelings and thoughts escapes through her [Bind], but I've become quite adept at controlling it, so it's not so bad.

Yunia starts focusing on the feeling of safety and comfort that [Bind] provides. We'll always be watching her from now on, supporting and protecting her. She imagines not only my arms wrapped around her but all of ours. She remembers our cuddle puddles and the group hugs we've shared, and that brings her a feeling of true comfort, calming her heart.

She sighs and holds her burning cheeks. She feels silly and ashamed for a wide variety of reasons, but now's not the time to unpack and deal with them, so she clenches her fist and steels her heart. The time to fight has arrived, and the confidence coming from each of our hearts is resonating together, amplifying our ferocity and determination.

Yunia jumps off the ship, and I ease her to the ground with [Telekinesis].

The Arquirandos are almost in range of the enemy, and there's not much time before the two sides meet, so we have to deal with the Grim Giants before they crash through our lines.

The second phase is starting.

Aoi lands on the deck, and Alissa hops off and makes her way up to the bridge. The three golems relinquish control of the ship to her and come down to me.

I look over the cracked [Fly] gem we salvaged from the Gull and strapped down to our deck. It's completely filled with mana and ready to use, and the Engineers have recovered their MP, so it's time to depart.

Alissa raises the ship higher into the air, reaching eye-level with the Giants, then the enemy mages and archers organize themselves, waiting for our next move.

I cast [Spirit Eyes] on myself and scan over the battlefield. I can only see two Ice Wraiths, both of them at the flanks of the enemy army.

They won't expect this.

I give a large flask to each of the four Hollys at the railing, then they dart forward, each one shooting towards their own Giant.

"In range!" The commander on the ground announces.

"Continuous volley, heavily staggered enchantments," Yunia calmly orders.

We'll drain their mages of mana.

Sixty arrows are fired every four seconds onto the entire breadth of the enemy line. Their shields can't protect them against enchanted arrows, and their mages can't cover all of their troops at once, so they'll either waste their mana, or their numbers will slowly thin out. This situation also provides us with cover to execute our plan.

The four Hollys reach their target Grim Giants undetected, then they hurl their flasks at their faces and commit suicide by throwing themselves at their eyes. The Sneeze-'n-Wheeze gets into their eyes, mouths, and noses, then an allergic reaction immediately sets in.

"Charge!" I yell, then Alissa accelerates the ship and flaps its wings while six wind elementals force air into our sail. Gify pops out of existence and hides in the back of my mind.

The four Giants start stomping on the ground, which disrupts their allies near their feet, but they manage to avoid crushing any of the monsters. They try to rub their eyes, but their stone helmets are in the way, so their gauntlets merely grind against their eye slits, and the first Giant doesn't notice our approach.

The other two Giants merely watch us, dumbfounded and simply too stupid to react. Alissa activates the forward [Wind Shield], and we collide with the first Giant's head, pushing him backward.

The bigger they are, the harder they fall, and that applies to weight, too. The heavy stone armor makes it easy to tip the Giant over, and he slowly tilts back as his arms reach forward, trying to grab us.

"STOP!" I yell, and the elementals obey, then I turn around and pull a big, glowing stake of stone out of my "Items." Temporary matter breaks down when I store it in there but not this pseudo-conjured material.

The Giant finally loses his footing and falls as if in slow motion. His stone armor crashes against the ground with a loud boom, crushing a small group of Hobgoblin mages under his massive form.

His helmet cracks, giving us the opportunity we needed.

"STAKE, UP!" I order.

The golems and the Engineers all cast [Telekinesis] on the stake, lifting it up, and it immediately starts to wobble in the air. There's no time for finesse; this situation calls for a brute-force solution.

"LAUNCH!" I yell and point forward. Alissa deactivates [Wind Shield] just long enough for the stake to fly off, and the bottom of our hull is pelted with a few arrows and spells, lightly damaging it.

The stake arcs through the air and points down.

"PUUUUUUSH!" I bellow, and the stake accelerates.

The tip strikes the Giant's forehead and sinks through the cracked helmet, splitting it apart. The stake continues down and enters his skull, turning his brain into mush.

One down, five to go.

Ciel suddenly launches towards an uninjured female Giant approaching on our left. The other uninjured one to our right simply glares at us menacingly but doesn't budge from its position. Behind that unmoving Giant is the Orc Lord and his retinue, so he won't attack unless he wants his Lord to be assassinated by us.

Ciel throws a javelin with a roll of vine secured to it, hitting the joint of her approaching Giant's knee, and the javelin sinks into the padding. Her new points in [Throw] are already putting in work.

"BACK!" I yell, and the wind elementals force a strong gust backward into the sail of our ship.

While we retreat, Ciel flies in circles around the distracted female Giant rushing at us, wrapping the specially made glowing vine around her legs. The monsters on the ground try to get out of the way of the Giant, but they're too slow, so a few dozen of them are crushed by her charge.

We don't try to fly away at full speed, so she quickly reaches us and slaps at the back of our ship to push us forward, sending us deeper above the enemy lines.

We charge against her to keep her in place, allowing Ciel to tighten the bindings.

"NOW!" Ciel yells.

"ROXANNE!" I order.

"[EXPLOSION]!" She casts.

The forehead of the Giant's helmet explodes, pushing it back and stunning it for a moment, which allows us to escape her reach.

The Giant tries to take a step forward, but its legs are tightly tied together, so it trips, falling face-first onto a small group of Hobgoblin mages.

I immediately pull out another stake, and we repeat the process.

Two down, four to go.

I summon three more Hollys and send them out with flasks of Sneeze-'n-Wheeze again towards the already affected Giants.

The enemy mages and archers all switch to target us, draining our [Wind Shield]s continuously, so we have no time to waste. Ciel rushes towards a blinded Giant while we slam against another.

I pull out another stake, and we finish ours off even faster than the previous two.

Three down, three to go.

I use the ambient mana to refill my MP through [Redirect Mana], then we fly towards the two blinded Giants. The last one still remains unmoving while we kill his brethren.

This time, the Sneeze-'n-Wheeze wasn't as effective, so the blinded Giants both quickly recover from it, and their bloodshot eyes stare at us angrily.

One of the two Giants tries to walk forward and trips because it was bound by Ciel's rope, but the other one reaches us before we can form a cloud of Sneeze-'n-Wheeze in front of him. He grabs our ship, trying to crush it, and while the [Wind Shield]s do hold, it's draining so much mana that it's frightening Alissa.

Lina tries to throw some flasks at him, but our Shield messes with her aim, so the Giant simply turns his head away to protect himself, wary of anything that we might throw at him.

Time for plan B.

I reach for the cracked [Fly] gem on our deck and draw out all of its stored mana with Redirect.

"DON'T MOVE, GET DOWN ON THE DECK!" I order, and everyone obeys.

A fuckload of Wind-attuned mana immediately rushes towards me, and I try to control it, but it refuses to stop. It's nowhere near the amount we used when we killed The Lady, but it's still enough to make even the Giant hesitate.

His huge, covered face turns towards us to see what we're doing, making me smirk, because that's exactly what I wanted.

I can't compress the Wind mana efficiently, but I quickly learn that it's easy to keep it spinning around me like a tornado.

I get another idea and slightly change my plan. I compress the spinning Wind mana into a wide disk, then I raise it above me.

Ciel sends me her knowledge of the spell [Wind Storm], and I try to build its "structure" using the mana I'm controlling.

Deep scratches start to appear all over the ship and our armor, and I realize that this is about to kill us all.

The giant pulls back his head away from us, afraid of all the mana, which exposes his neck to us.

I'm so thankful that you're all fucking idiots.

Alissa deactivates our [Wind Shield], and I launch the mass of mana.

We only hear the whistling of the wind as the malformed spell inflicts deep scratches into the Giant's helmet. Then it absolutely shreds through the padding at his neck before digging into the flesh underneath.

Blood sprays everywhere as the Giant is decapitated in the most gruesome way I've ever seen. The enemy mages on the ground take hold of my spell and immediately interrupt it, but they're too late to save the Giant. His ginormous corpse falls down and crushes even more of our enemies.

Four down, two to go.

I immediately pull out another stake, and we prepare to launch it.

"[Wind Shield] is about to run out!" Alissa warns me through [Bind].

Well, fuck.

We hurriedly throw the stake out, but Ciel's bound Giant stirs and moves slightly, making the stake hit the side of his ruined stone helmet, which merely wounds him.

Tch.

"Roxanne…!" I order.

She leans on the railing and aims with her staff towards the center of the Giant's head. She can't chant to gather her mana for a single large spell since it would just get interrupted by the enemy, so that leaves her with only one option.

"[EXPLOSION]! [EXPLOSION]! [EXPLOSION]! [EXPLOSION]! [EXPLOSION]! [EXPLOSION]!" -The [Wind Shield] runs out, and the ship starts getting pelted by spells. -"[EXPLOSION]! [EXPLOSION]! [EXPLOSION]! [EXPLOSION]!"

"DEAD!" Alissa reports and accelerates the ship forward as fast as possible.

"TO THE HOLD! RECHARGE THE GEM!" I order, and everyone obeys. We jog inside in a practiced, orderly fashion, and the hold quickly fills with glowing elves.

I hold Roxanne steady and guide her since she's temporarily blind from overuse, and everyone, except for Alissa and I, uses up nearly all of their MP to give the [Wind Shield] enough juice for one last job.

We fly past the enemy army, then we turn towards the left wall.

Alissa activates [Wind Shield] at full power, and the ship pushes against the ceiling where it meets the wall. The gravity-defying sand loses its magic and starts falling all around us.

We slowly move the ship towards the right side of the corridor, leaving a long wall of sand in our wake, making it now very difficult for the enemy army to retreat.

The anvil has been set; now it's time to strike while it's hot.

The Lonlanzas reach the enemy lines, and the third phase begins.

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Chapter 84: Hammer and Anvil - Part 3

The Ice Wraiths converge on the remaining Giant, countering our strategy of using Hollys.

The damage to our ship pains my heart. The lower half of its hull is badly damaged, almost exposing the gems within, but it'll hold. The wings, though, are faring much worse, barely enduring the attacks.

Now that our [Wind Shield] is working again, we limp back over the enemy line without a problem, then we descend behind the Lonlanzas, and the girls disperse into their previous positions.

"URAAAA!" The elven high-pitched roar echoes through the corridor, cheering at our victory.

I climb up onto the prow again, then breathe in and prepare myself. Giving speeches is rather exhausting.

I add [Godly Language] to my voice as I bellow with all my strength, "THEY'RE TRAPPED BETWEEN THE ANVIL AND THE HAMMER! STRIKE WHILE IT'S HOT, AND PUSH THEM BAAACK!"

"URAAAAA!" The entire elven line lets out a fearsome roar, and I notice many of the orcs shifting uncomfortably on their feet. Their morale is shaken. Even their remaining Giant isn’t enough to keep it up, not after we blitzed through five Giants by ourselves in just a few minutes.

The elves hit their shields with their gladius-like swords, then the marching drums slow their cadence, and the Lonlanzas lower their pikes.

"URA!" They roar with every step, thrusting their pikes threateningly, making the enemy line nervously shift backward.

The monsters scramble to reorganize themselves, but the Arquirandos don't let up their continuous volley, encouraging the chaos. The enemy's backline is still in complete disarray due to the Giants running amok and then crashing on top of them, so they can't stop the rain of death even if they wanted to.

"URA!" The pikes meet the enemy shields. Every hole or opening in their shield wall is exploited; broken shields are shattered by the force of the magically reinforced pikes; and any bit of exposed flesh is mercilessly pierced through.

The glowing pikes draw back painted red with blood, and monsters fall to their deaths, joining those slain by the Arquirandos.

"URA!" The Lonlanzas thrust and take another step forward, then even more enemies fall down on the sand.

"UGOOOOOO!" A deep war cry roars from behind the enemy lines, then the monsters start to bunch up properly, recovering from their shaken state.

"URA!" The Lonlanzas thrust again and take another step forward. The blood of the enemy taints the red sand, making it become both sticky and muddy.

"UGOO!" Another war cry echoes out, and the enemies react to it a moment later.

"URA!" Another thrust is delivered, but this time, they don't advance. The enemy shield wall is just too solid now.

Hana thumps her shield and starts chanting along with the drums, hyping up the unsteady militia around her.

The Tusk Warriors appear in the center of the enemy line and roar louder than anyone else, providing the final morale boost the monsters needed to mount a proper defense against us.

"WALL!" The militia commander yells, and the untrained soldiers at both of our flanks reluctantly obey. Shoulder to shoulder, man to man, the militia forms a wall and points their spears forward.

"FORWARD!" And they start marching. They proceed past the line of Lonlanzas to fully cover their exposed flanks.

"STOP!" The commander yells, and both sides angrily stare at each other, standing only two meters apart.

The monsters snarl and growl while the elves throw out taunts at them. The morale of the militia fluctuates, but it gradually grows stronger from their blood lust.

"COME AT ME! FACE ME, YOU PITIFUL BEINGS, AND I'LL GIVE YOU THE MERCY OF DEATH! LET ME PUT YOU OUT OF YOUR MISERY!" Hana taunts, causing a commotion to stir within the enemy line.

A few spells and arrows fall onto the militia, but they cause only minimal damage.

The remaining Troll Clubbers appear within both flanks of the enemy line, and the militia recognizes the furry monstrosities towering above the orcs and Living Armors. The untrained elves shake in fear as their morale immediately falters.

"STEADY!" The militia officers try to calm their men.

"RAAAAAH!" Hana screams, and her rage causes the fire in the men around her to flare up since their emotions are all connected through [Weaverism].

"URA!" The Lonlanzas thrust again, but they don't advance just yet.

"UGOO!" The Tusk Warriors push against the wall of pikes, and a few of them try to slip through only to be quickly skewered for their efforts.

Ogres appear all across the enemy line, and the militia starts to cry and pray once they spot them.

"THE GODS ARE WATCHING! SHOW US YOUR WORTH!" Ciel's angelic voice echoes through the battlefield, easing the hearts of the men.

"STEADY!"

"URA!"

"UGO!"

"MEN! THE MOMENT IS NOW! SEIZE IT!" I use [Project Voice] to give them one last push.

The Grim Giant kneels behind the orcs so that his hands can reach the Lonlanzas.

"STEADY!"

A deep, low horn is sounded behind the enemy line, and the monsters charge the militia.

"MEET YOUR DEATH!" Hana taunts, fire leaking from her mouth in rage.

The Skirmishers loose one last volley at the Trolls; the forty Lonlanza nobles raise their pikes that were hidden in between the militia, and aim them at the Ogres; the thirty Generals and Yunia stop hiding at both flanks and make their way towards the front of their sections; Ciel, Alissa and Lina both mounted Aoi, and a Nalusa appear over the left flank, easily flying past the enemy line unscathed thanks to [Ignorance].

The Giant tries to crush the Lonlanzas with its massive stone gauntlet, but a huge metal elemental in the shape of a stake bursts out of the sand. The Giant is too slow to react, so his hand is completely pierced through by the elemental.

The Trolls and Ogres crash against the militia, trampling the front line, but most of them are immediately stopped by the lone noble pikemen. A moment later, the Generals crash through the enemies and start butchering their way forward.

The Giant falls on its ass, clutching its wrist in pain, then the elemental reduces its girth and pushes itself out of the Giant.

I cast [Telekinesis] and guide it back to us, then I land it behind the Lonlanzas, and it gets ready to stop the Giant again.

"EASE!" I yell, and the Lonlanzas at the center take a step back, but even so, some of the Tusk Warriors manage to reach our shield wall, forcing the elves holding it in place to use their swords to fight.

The Nalusa rakes its large claws down the back of a Hobgoblin mage, drawing blood that immediately gathers in a ball floating beside it.

The spindly and tall monster focuses each of its four eyes on an enemy, then the floating blood morphs into small blades that fly towards their targets.

The monsters finally notice the Nalusa, and its horrific figure scares even them. The flesh of its human-like body seems to be horrifically charred, and white bones protrude out of its back like spikes. It's a creature of nightmares that's been set loose upon the vulnerable enemy backline.

Ciel flies around with impunity; Lina's axe decapitates a monster with each strike; Alissa's arrows stay true to her Title; they're both protected from most attacks by Lina's shield that's been enchanted with both [Dead Zone] and [Wind Shield]; and no enemy around them can stop Aoi from trampling her way through their ranks.

Yunia, Hana, the noble pikemen, and the Generals all stop the Trolls and Ogres from freely plowing through the militia, nullifying their greatest advantage: their charge.

The smell of blood fills the air, and I wrinkle my nose in disgust. The roaring of taunts is replaced with the cacophony of warfare and the death cries of the monsters.

"EASE!" I order again, then I delegate that task to the commander.

The monsters sense our retreat and push harder against the center of our thin line, gaining themselves a boost in morale.

The Arquirandos switch targets, intensifying their attacks on the enemy's flanks and ignoring the center.

The Giant leans forward to slam his hand down again, but the elemental threatens him, making him hesitate.

I jump down from the ship and make my way to the back of the Lonlanzas. I cast [Discharge] at the enemy line, easing the pressure on our troops a bit.

"Strength, men. Have strength!" I exclaim, pushing [Godly Language] to its limit, and the muscles of the elves bulge.

They grunt from the exertion required to keep the swarm of Tusks at bay, and they even take a step forward, but the commander orders them to retreat again.

Our long and thin line of Lonlanzas bends, shifting into a concave curve.

A few of our Generals fall, but the enemy swarm at the flank is pushed back in exchange.

The girls wreak havoc across the enemy backline, causing their mages to completely lose all cohesion, which gives free rein to the Arquirandos.

"RAISE!" I yell towards the back, and the commander of the Engineers relays my order.

They cast [Earth Wall] to raise the ground the Arquirandos are standing on, giving them a vantage point that allows them to directly fire at the monster army.

The Nalusa goes into a frenzy as it gathers all the blood it could ever wish for, creating a storm of blades of blood that kills anything around it.

Hana breathes fire, setting another Troll alight, and a noble Lonlanza pikeman pierces its exposed throat while it panics.

Rage and bloodlust burn within my dragonkin, and her emotions fuel the militia around her, turning helpless farmers and craftsmen into berserkers. Yunia voluntarily receives these emotions, then she channels it out, fueling the militia of our other flank.

Their bodies are bathed in the blood of the large monsters, and no matter how many men die around her, they don't give even an inch back, they only advance.

"NOT ONE STEP BACK!" The two roar in unison.

I see a commotion stir among the enemy in front of me, and the fresh orcs replacing their dead comrades now have red armor. They're the Bloodkin, the Orc Lord's retinue.

It seems that he's trying to break through our line.

All according to Keikaku.

"REINFORCE!" I order, and our last few reserves join us, fresh for battle. "PREPARE!"

The Generals and the militia push the enemy line back, advancing together with the Lonlanzas at the flanks. They make their way through the mess of countless enemy bodies littering the floor, then they cross the muddy and bloody sand to reach the survivors.

The monsters gradually become surrounded, and some start to break off in a rout, trying to pass through the large dunes of soft sand behind them.

"PUSH!" I order.

"URA!" The elves roar and push the orcs back, forcing them to even stumble for a moment.

I cast [Discharge], and the elves thrust, together killing an entire line.

They immediately fill the opening with pikes, pushing the orcs away from our shield wall.

"PUSH!" I cast [Discharge] again.

"URA!" The elves thrust and take a step forward as they kill another line of stunned orcs.

The Giant's hand comes down on us again, and the earth elemental launches itself at him but gets grabbed mid-air instead.

I can see the Giant's grin in his eyes as he crushes the elemental, then oil seeps between his fingers. I cast [Lightning Bolt] at his hand, and it catches on fire.

I pull out a length of rope that we tied to dozens of flasks of Decay, Sneeze-'n-Wheeze, and burning oil, then I throw it all forward and guide it with [Telekinesis]. An enemy mage interrupts my spell, but it's fine because it's already above the enemy Bloodkin.

"MAAAAA!" The Giant yells in pain and waves its burning hand around.

"GURAAAAAAAA!" A rage-filled war cry comes from behind the enemy lines, and all the orcs enter a frenzy.

Tusk Warriors and Bloodkin throw themselves at our pikes, letting themselves get pierced so that our weapons stay still for a moment, then they break their tips with their superhuman strength.

We're running out of pikes, so there's more room for the monsters to push through, and before long, they reach our shield wall again. The center of our Lonlanzas is about to fall apart from exhaustion and attrition, so the final act of this battle now begins.

I grab my spear, mace, and halberd with my tentacles, then I make my way towards the front line with the golems following close behind me.

"ATTENTION!" I yell to the men around me.

Our troops continue the maneuver of wrapping around the enemy army, encircling them and wiping out their backline. The Giant starts to cough as it inhales part of the noxious cloud of fumes from the flasks I threw. Then a flaming arrow lands in the enemy line, and a fire breaks out.

Hannibal would be proud of me.

"RELEASE!" I yell, then I prepare to strike as the oval shields are turned vertical.

I'm going to fuck them all up!

"BREAK!" -The shields turn sideways to open the lines for those behind them- "FRENZYY!" I yell with [Godly Language] and charge through our line along with the final few fresh soldiers. Gify sends the vision of dragons fucking into my mind, and I get a boner along with a burst of energy.

The Giant's burning hand crashes against the Lonlanzas behind me, smashing their formation completely apart, and a melee breaks out. The golems can be quite nimble when the situation asks for it, so they easily dodge its attack.

The girls make a beeline towards my position to end this once and for all.

My halberd splits open an orc's neck, then my mace flattens the head of a Bloodkin.

"You are now level 38."

I stun the orc in front of me with [Lightning Bolt], then my sword pierces his crotch, and I twist it to maximize the damage.

I stop an orc with my spear stabbed through his eye, and push another away with my [Wind Shield], then my mace crushes the head of the orc in front of me, and I advance further.

My MP runs low, and I immediately use [Redirect Mana] to fill it up again, then I summon another Nalusa. The monster immediately flies into a frenzy and dives into the center of a group of orcs.

An elven slash sends orc blood spraying at my face, and it enters my mouth. I crush a Living Armor's head with my halberd and roar.

"YOU'RE WEAK!" I scream with [Godly Language] as I move towards the next target. The large orc ahead looks more like a frightened child to me.

[Battlefield Perception] triggers, and I use [Muscle Explosion] to dodge to the side, and a greatsword cuts through the air where I just was.

I look to where the attack came from and see a huge, muscular orc in gilded armor. The Orc Lord.

Wait… that armor seems familiar…

Rage fuels me again, and I dash forward.

"I'VE SEEN BIGGER!" I taunt with a laugh as I attack him.

I only see his hateful eyes glare at me from behind his closed helmet; he's even more consumed by bloodlust than I am.

I cast [Lightning Bolt] at him just as I strike with my halberd and spear at the same time, and I see his armor glow with a rainbow shimmer that's characteristic of [Rainbow Shield]. He must've barely felt my spell.

The motherfucker's got Celestial armor!

He slices through the tentacle that's holding my halberd with his greatsword, and I immediately make another to grab the weapon before it can even fall onto the floor. My spear strikes into an opening at his armpit, piercing through the chain, but not the padding.

I cast [Rush] and charge at him.

I stab towards the side of his left knee, but my sword is stopped by his chain mail. My mace strikes the side of his chest, bending the armor slightly.

I glide backward with [Telekinesis], and his greatsword chops at nothing, only hitting the bloodied red sand.

[Battlefield Perception] triggers again, and I jump backward with all of my strength, then the Giant's hand lands where I just was, crushing both enemy and ally alike.

I cast [Telekinesis] on my sword and chop downwards, letting the increased gravity do the trick.

The Orc Lord defends against it, and his posture bends backward under the strain. I even get so close to him that I can smell his horrible breath, which is the usual for an orc.

My halberd lands on his flank, right where it was already bent inwards, but it doesn't manage to punch through; my mace lands on his shoulder, but he doesn't even flinch from it; my spear slides around his bevor and leaves nothing but a scratch on his armor.

He releases one of his hands from his greatsword, and the blade smacks against his shoulder, but it doesn't do any damage, then his gauntlet grabs the wrist of my sword arm.

Oof.

I panic and cast [Shocking Touch] on his hand, but it only helps his muscles flex, so he simply crushes my armor, then my wrist.

Pain and rage cloud my mind, then I order with [Godly Language], "UNHAND ME!"

He grunts and obeys, though perhaps it might be voluntary, then he immediately chops down with his greatsword.

I block it with [Wind Shield], but the spell still pushes me away due to his superhuman strength.

Yunia gets left behind by the militia, too tired to continue fighting.

A short span opens up between me and the Orc Lord, then I summon a Shad and a dark elemental.

"FUCK HIM!" I order, and both of my summons envelop him.

I cast [Heal] on my wrist and watch on as Pinhead, the fantasy version, powers through the pain and attacks me.

FUCKING MASOCHISTIC ORCS!

A frightening amount of mana starts to gather behind me while I defend myself against the Orc Lord.

I jump backward again, dodging another palm strike by the Giant, and summon Hana, who immediately retreats while limping, too tired to fight anymore. The golems surround her and make sure that she reaches safety.

The summons don't seem to be accomplishing anything, so I dismiss them and cast [Rush], allowing me to swing the momentum back in my favor, forcing him onto the defensive.

I continue bending his armor, but I barely manage to punch through it, and there's still the padding underneath to deal with.

The Giant leans forward, slamming a flaming hand behind me to block off my exit.

Ciel stops flying and continues on foot, now tired and low on mana.

I focus on his left knee and manage to wound it, slowing him down. The Lord cuts through my tentacles in retaliation, but he's too slow to catch me or overpower my [Wind Shield].

I'M FUCKING INVINCIBLE.

The Giant's hand tries to press me towards him, but I just jump up and away, towards safety.

There are no enemy mages left to interrupt Roxanne.

In a final display of intelligence, the Giant uses its other hand to slap at me, and I don't have enough speed to dodge.

But that was all according to Keikaku.

"[EXPLOSION]!"

The Giant's brain becomes mush, and I'm sent to the ground.

I grunt in pain, but nothing's broken, so I quickly get up again just in time to watch the Giant's body falling on top of the Orc Lord, trapping him underneath it.

I glide towards Hana and quickly check on her. She's exhausted, covered with bruises, and her armor has multiple cracks, but she's fine otherwise.

I cast a [Heal] on her worst wounds, then I look towards the enemy's last bastion of resistance. The Bloodkin and Tusk Warriors desperately resist our forces, trying to push the elves back while a few unsuccessfully attempt to pull the Lord out from under the dead Giant.

Aoi tramples through their ranks, breaking their formation apart, then our troops seize the opening and immediately mob them.

I let the bloodlust fade, and the mana overuse gives me a headache. I also start to feel my mana organ complain, telling me to refrain from using magic for a while.

The Generals finish off the last of the orcs, and the Arquirandos switch targets to the few dozen that managed to run past the dune wall.

The sounds of combat die down, and the end of our battle finally arrives.

I summon the last of my draconic energy to let out a victory cry, "URA, URA, URAAAAA!"

The men drop their weapons and cheer. Alissa drops down from Aoi's back and adjusts her helmet to cover her ears. She definitely dislikes all this cheering.

I unsummon the Nalusas, and more than a few liters of blood suddenly splash down onto the corpse-covered ground.

I unsteadily walk up to the dead Giant. The countless monster bodies and broken remnants of glowing elves cover every centimeter of the red sand. The smell of blood is so thick in the air that I can even taste it in my mouth…

Ah, no, that's just the blood that I drank by accident. Ew…

Most of my armor is spattered with droplets of blood; even the elves are glowing red because of it.

Weepers' dream, that's a literal river of blood…

The macabre sight gives me shivers, but there's one last corpse we still have to add to it.

I finally reach the Orc Lord and sigh, my ears hurting from all the cheering.

I unceremoniously store the Giant's body in my "Items," then the girls, the Generals, and I all glare at the hateful, broken thing currently wriggling pitifully at our feet.

As a testament to the Celestial Horns' armor, the Orc Lord wasn't completely crushed, but his limbs are all bent and broken.

I find an opening in his armor at the back of his neck, and I sink my blade into it.

"Level up," Yunia whispers wryly in my soul space, and I can feel her tired smile in my mind. She breathes in and rises to her feet, her legs unsteady from exhaustion.

The ground suddenly trembles, and my scouting Holly sees the sand down the corridor suddenly shifting, then a wall of smooth gray stone rises up at a frightening speed.

What the…

The wall goes up so quickly that even the monsters standing on top of it don't have enough time to get out of its way before they're flattened against the ceiling.

All the cheering stops, and everyone stares at it in awe and confusion.

We notice a vertical slit at the center of the wall, then it starts to widen, which tells us that it's actually a door.

I quickly store the corpses around me into my "Items," then I hurry to gather the girls together. Roxanne is blind, deaf, and in a lot of pain from using her HP to fuel her spell, so she'll continue resting on the ship while her potions do their work.

I grab the attention of the commanders and tell them to rebuild the lines. The tired elves obey begrudgingly, and a sloppy line of Lonlanzas starts to form.

The doors make the ground rumble as they slowly open towards us, revealing a glowing army.

Ahead of us, we can see hundreds of horsemen, a few companies of longbowmen, a shit ton of mages, and a rather small group of infantry. They're all wearing red or yellow full metal armor, and they're glowing just like the elves.

Imperials…

"Not one step back…" The elves all whisper in unison.

I look around in fear and mumble, "Wait, what? No…"

"Not one step back," their tired voices gain volume but lose emotion.

The imperials start marching forward, and the battered elven army marches to meet them. They climb the dunes like robots, and their formation quickly breaks apart.

"COME BACK! I ORDER YOU TO COME BACK! STOP! STOP!" I scream at the men, adding the [Project Voice] gem and even [Godly Language], but none of them listen to me.

"W-we can't win this… this is madness," Ciel whispers, then she looks towards me, her eyes asking me for guidance.

I catch a General and force him to face me. "Where's your loyalty?! Obey me! Stop at once!" I yell in his face.

"Not one step back," he responds like a zombie, then he gently pushes me away and continues marching forward.

Arreira, you fucking piece of shit. You pretentious fucker! You know what, I won't accept this!

"Not one step back," the imperials join in, and the zombie-like chant reverberates through the corridor.

"BACK TO THE SHIP!" I scream, then break into a dash, and the girls quickly follow. Aoi collects Yunia, then Hana, and carries them both up to the deck.

My muscles scream with exhaustion, but it's time for one last push.

Everyone gathers on the deck, then they secure themselves to the ship with ropes. Alissa climbs up the ladder to the bridge and gets ready at the controls beside me.

I summon two wind elementals on the deck and wince from the mana strain, then I order them to blow wind into our sails. Ciel joins them, but she's on her last legs, too.

We fly up towards the ceiling, then I slam the ship against the gravity-defying sand. The doorway between us and the imperials may be huge, but I bet there's enough sand above us to block it, at least partially.

Our [Wind Shield] doesn't even need to use that much mana to push the sand away because it's just sand, not a twenty-meter tall Giant trying to crush us with its huge hands.

The ground starts to rumble again, and this time, it's coming from far behind us. Alissa turns her eyes towards the source worriedly, and her heart sinks.

It's sand. All of it, actually. The corridor is collapsing behind us. Whatever held up the gravity-defying sand is fading away, allowing a solid red curtain to close in towards us.

"What the fuck?!" Everyone exclaims in unison.

We wait, but the wall of sand doesn't stop. Tons and tons of red sand are falling from the ceiling, and we only have a few seconds before it reaches us.

"What can we even do against that?!" Hana exclaims, dumbfounded.

"We can run…" Lina mumbles, her body frozen in fear.

Both the imperials and the elves simply stop their march and turn to stare at the oncoming sand.

Yunia's face warps in horror as she says, "The non-combatants… they're gone."

Panic suddenly thrums in my heart.

What the fuck is going on?!

"We have to run," Alissa states, and I agree.

I lower the ship, then I fly forward at full speed, shooting past the imperial army.

A few seconds later, the falling sand simply buries everyone, just like that.

There's no cloud of dust forming, allowing us to see the wall of death behind us perfectly, and it's rapidly approaching.

I summon five more wind elementals, and my vision starts to darken, so Alissa takes over for my eyes.

"It's still getting closer!" Hana yells, getting increasingly worried.

"Then go help the elementals!" I panickedly yell back.

The golems and all the girls, except for Roxanne, move closer to the sail and push it to the limit, but the wall of sand is still gaining on us.

We have no idea why this is happening, and we have no way out, no mana, no resources, and no plan.

Is he trying to kill us?!

Hana laughs out loud at the absurdity of this development, or perhaps it's just a way to relieve some stress.

The floor underneath us suddenly vanishes, and the walls start to glow red. Like a microwave, mana is violently jumbled all around us in a chaotic storm, interrupting all spells.

This is [Disruption Field].

The [Spirit Light]s snuff out, the elementals get dispelled, the golems fall limp, Gify's presence disappears from the back of my mind, then the ship's [Fly] gem deactivates, and we start to fall.

Roxanne, Hana, Ciel, Aoi, and I. None of us can fly anymore.

The ship starts to plummet like a rock. Not even the wings can help us now.

"Ah… ah…! AAAAAH!" Lina screams in terror, and Ciel hugs her tight.

Hana runs towards Roxanne and firmly hugs her before she flies off the ship.

I grab Alissa and cling to the bridge, then I open my "Items" and desperately flick through it.

A parachute, I need a parachute!

Aoi jumps up onto the bridge, and her claws grab our arms, then her wings protectively wrap around us.

FUCK… I JUST… NEED... A BLANKET!

I click the immaterial button to pull it out, then the ship violently crashes into the ground.

A note from Manasong

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Chapter 85: Trials - Alissa

A note from Manasong

Attention: to conform to the limit of mature content (more than just sexual content) allowed in a novel, I've censored this chapter. You can look for the uncensored version here.

I wake up with a gasp, but then I cry from the pain as my entire body protests against the sudden movement. My vision is blurry, my body is cold, I'm completely soaked, my head hurts, and I'm starting to get dizzy.

A horrible feeling wells up in my stomach, then it rises through my esophagus, and I puke.

I groan again as I fall on my side, trying to avoid the stinking puddle I just created.

I open my [Item Box], then I weakly move my finger towards the [Regeneration] magic tool and pull it out.

I press the small green gem against my forehead and feed it some mana. A mildly pleasant feeling starts to spread over my face, then it smoothly enters my skull and eases my headache.

I move my other hand and pull out one of Roxanne's Fast-Acting HP potions. Slight toxicity is worth stopping all this pain, and if even with [Pain Resistance], I can't endure this, then things must be pretty bad.

I uncork the flask and throw half of the glowing red liquid on my face while I eagerly drink the rest.

Ah, elderflower, tasty.

I sigh and focus inside my soul space.

"Wolfy, help-…" I stop my plea with a start as my whole body shivers in fear.

I can't reach Wolfy. I can't see the other wives through him. [Bind] is just not working.

The little "tunnel" I could use to enter the warm and cozy lake that's Wolfy's mind is gone.

No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no…

A deep seething hatred starts to well up inside me. It grows and grows and grows until it reaches a level that I've never felt before. I feel Wolfy's and Hana's draconic rage within me, filling my mind with red fury and driving a burst of strength into my muscles.

I growl, then I grab a handful of sand and violently throw it away. "KYAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAaah…" I shriek until my throat hurts, then I collapse on my back and start sobbing.

I'll murder you, Arreira. I'll desecrate your rotten body, you… you… pretentious BASTARD!

I curl up and cry while the potion and [Regeneration] raise my HP back to 100.

I slowly open my eyes again and see a trail of faint crystal lights illuminating a path forward in the green sand. I finally notice that the whispering in my ears is actually the sound of waves running over the sand.

I sit up and turn around, and I see a dark river with a visibly strong current pushing broken planks down its length.

I recognize the color of the planks: they're from our ship.

Oh no… Wolfy's going to be so sad…

Blurry memories surface in my mind, and I sift through them. I understand that after the crash, we fell into the underground rapids and got separated, then I hit my head hard, and it gave me a concussion.

I cast [Spirit Light] to illuminate the area and look around. I'm in a dark green cave with nothing other than green sand and the river behind me. My blurry memories lead me to believe that I came through a tight tunnel with a strong current, so it's impossible for me to go back the way I came.

I have two options: follow the river down or the path of crystal lights. Considering that I won't escape this cave by going down, I decide to bet on the path left for me by the goblin of a Dungeon Master.

"Gify, you there?" I ask, but my question just echoes through the cave without a response.

She may be with Wolfy, then. At least, I hope so…

My [Sense Presence] gives me absolutely no hits, so there isn't a single living being nearby, not even a bug.

I groan as I get up, the padding of my armor loudly squishes and squirts from all the water it absorbed.

We fell in the water while fully armored… Lina and Ciel could've…

NO! THEY DIDN'T!

I take off my helmet and slap my cheeks to keep those dark thoughts away.

I need to find Wolfy as fast as I can.

He can't be dead. If he were, the feedback from [Bind] breaking would've made me go insane with grief.

I look into my "Status" and notice that the "Companions" entry still has everyones' names, though I can't find their positions through the fellowship bond either.

This means that nobody is dead, nobody is dead, nobody is dead, nobody is dead…

I pray to all of the Gods and beg for them to keep everyone safe. We can't lose anyone, not like this, and not after going through so much together.

But I need to survive, too…

I get up and activate [Breeze] to dry my armor. There are a few cracks in it, but the fibers are keeping the pieces together. It should last for at least a few more melee battles, even if I'm careless.

I spot my bow near me, by the river, but my quiver is gone, so I can only use [Mana Arrow]s now. I pick it up and inspect it. It's impressive that it survived the rapids.

I dry it until it's usable again, then I pull out the lithograph and emergency rings from my [Item Box]. I try to send all kinds of signals through them, but, predictably, I don't get a response. If something is blocking [Bind] and the fellowship bond, then a lithograph would most likely get blocked, too.

I'd only heard rumors that a dungeon could block the fellowship bond, but now I have actual evidence that it's possible. The dungeoneer that worked on this place must've been a genius, or perhaps it was just Arreira himself.

With a lonely sigh, I take my sword out of its scabbard, clean it, and reapply its oil. After that, I take off my armor and dry it properly.

I apply some anti-scent powder to myself and check my equipment one more time to make sure that everything's fine, then I follow the illuminated path while trying to keep my sanity from collapsing.

I start shivering, but not from the cold or the breeze. I feel lonely and vulnerable. Wolfy's presence was always there in my mind, a constant reassurance that we'd never be alone, that he'd be there to save us when danger appeared, that we were inseparable. But now, there's nothing but darkness in my soul space.

I hug myself, then I fall to my knees and cry. I've never felt so empty before.

After crying enough, anger flares up inside me again. I'm acting so pitifully, but Wolfy won't even be able to sleep without me. I need to find him before his curse fills his mind with darkness.

I get up and dry my cheeks, then I continue on with renewed determination.

Before long, a faint mist appears, and it only thickens as I continue walking forward. The ceiling of the cave creeps higher, and I gradually enter a nearly pure white realm reminiscent of the Misty Forest.

"I'm sure this isn't a coincidence," I bitterly talk to myself.

The sounds of the river fade away, replaced with the nothingness. I exert my [Quiet Steps] and [Quiet Action] to the max so that only the faintest of sounds are produced when I take a step. The elven armor is so well-padded that the scales don't jingle at all and the rubbing of the wooden plates is nearly imperceptible.

I breathe in deeply, trying to discern any odd smells, but I don't find any except my own and that of the green sand.

I sense something disturbing the mist. There's a "void" in it, slowly making its way towards me.

I get my bow ready and prepare a [Mana Arrow], then I abandon the illuminated path and wait in the darkness to ambush it.

I slow my breathing and clear my mind. I completely freeze every single muscle, becoming perfectly still, like a trap ready to be sprung. My body is still tired from the battle and the rapids, but this small amount of effort is nothing.

The presence comes closer and closer, but I still have no idea what it is. Only Yunia knows [Hide Presence], but I'm sure she isn't as skilled with it as the being coming this way. It must be a monster.

It eventually reaches the illuminated path, but the mist makes it impossible for me to see its outline.

Suddenly, it stops, then I hear a faint noise twice.

It takes me a second, but then I recognize what it was: sniffing.

I draw my bow and release the arrow. It whistles through the air, then I hear a high-pitched grunt followed by something falling on the sand.

I create another arrow and dash forward.

I quickly find the being, and discover that it's a humanoid-looking monster. It has an arrow sticking out of its chest, and it's wheezing as it gasps for air.

I sigh in relief, happy that I didn't hurt a humanoid, then I draw my bow and shoot an arrow through the monster's eye.

It twitches and dies, then I walk closer to inspect it.

What is this Godsdamned creature?

It's a naked, pale human-like creature without any features or a single strand of hair. There are only three completely black eyes, a mouth without lips and full of humanoid teeth, and two slits for nostrils. It doesn't even have any gender characteristics. Its body is thin, it doesn't have any kind of claws, and its limbs are long and bowed. It wields a nicely made hunting bow made of bone with a pouch full of small wooden arrows.

I grab one and pull it out of the pouch, then I immediately recognize the smell of poison.

I prick the skin of my wrist with the arrow and feel it starting to get numb. It's a paralyzing poison.

I take the pouch and secure it to my waist. The arrows are rather small for my weapon, but I can still fire them.

I realize that this creature would look rather ridiculous pulling on such a small bow. I pick it up, then I pull the string and immediately realize that it's as stiff as Wolfy's "sword." Its draw weight must be massive… like Wolfy's sword.

I snort and immediately hold it in.

Ugh… I have a problem: Hana is rubbing off on me…

The smell of blood might attract other things, so I sprinkle some anti-scent on the body and hide it under the sand. Now, it'll take a long time for any odors to escape.

I put my war face back on and continue following the illuminated path. The glowing gems look like they were just casually thrown about like one would to lay a trail towards a trap. A dungeon is already a trap by itself, though, so I guess willingly falling into this trap is just another monster for the Lord.

I continue for a while, then I stop for a quick meal. I still have a thick bar of chocolate, but I'll save it for emergency rations since Wolfy said that it's high energy.

I pull out the [Conjure Bland Meal] magic tool and produce a bar of very nutritious sawdust, not that I know what sawdust actually tastes like, it's just what I assume since it's so incredibly flavourless and uninteresting.

I have hot tea ready to drink, but its scent is too strong, so instead, I just conjure some water in my mouth to wash it down, then I resume my journey.

I ambush another one of the creepy monsters. This time I hit its throat, making it bleed profusely.

In desperation, the Faceless Man rips the arrow out of its throat, and now it really starts to bleed.

Dammit. He's taller than I expected.

It wheezes and gurgles, then it tries to draw its bow and fire at me, but due to its agony, it drops its monster version of [Hide Presence], allowing me to perfectly pinpoint its location.

I fire another arrow, and this time, I pierce its forehead.

I quickly bury it under the sand, too, but that clearly doesn't work because I soon meet another two coming from downwind.

I get in position again to fire and nearly groan from how the tension is hurting my muscles. I'm getting too tired for this.

I breathe in deeply and calm myself, ignoring the pain and fatigue as well I can.

Wolfy's love -and his huge sword…- really made me lazy, but I trained for this; I just need to shake the dust off my survival skills.

I remain closer to the glowing gems this time so that I can actually make out their outlines before I attack.

They quickly, yet silently, walk along the illuminated path. I can guess their posture through the "void" they create, and I believe their hands are hovering over their quivers, so they must be alert and ready to fight.

My heart beats rapidly, and a cold fear starts to grow inside me. I don't have [Gate] or [Bind] to pull me out if I need it. I either win, or I die. I can't afford to make a single mistake.

I nock an arrow and wait.

They get within range of my arrows, so I raise my bow and tense up, then I see the extremely faint shape of an outline taking form.

I cast [Mesmerizing Butterflies] at the same moment that I draw and release. Before I can fire a second arrow, [Battlefield Perception] triggers, and I use [Muscle Explosion] to dodge out of the way.

My muscles protest against the sudden movement, but then I hear the whistle of an arrow flying past me exactly where my head was just a split second ago.

I fire another arrow, then a third, and one last enemy arrow shoots towards me. [Muscle Explosion] hasn't recharged yet, and my "Speed" doesn't boost my [Dodge] enough, so I fail to fully evade it.

The thin arrow slams against me like a sledgehammer, then it sinks into my collarbone, cleaning stabbing through all of my armor.

I drop my bow and immediately use [Fox Transformation], then I make a mad dash towards the survivor.

[Mesmerizing Butterflies] finally does its job, and the surviving Faceless Man gets distracted. It only remembers that I exist when my claws sink deeply into its shoulders and my jaw crushes its head.

As soon as I feel it die, I release its body and carefully bite the arrow on my shoulder, then I pull it out and return to my humanoid form.

I drink an HP potion and an antidote, then I apply an anti-scent on my wound and run away as fast as I can.

My exhaustion stops my legs from working any longer, and I collapse on the sand.

I pull out the [Proximity Warning] crystals, activate them, and throw them in all four directions around me, then I close my eyes and immediately fall asleep.

I don't know how many days have passed while I've been following this path, but I'm starting to get the impression that this is truly a trap. It might be that I've just been walking around in circles, but I have no way to confirm it.

I wake up, conjure my sawdust, and eat it with a piece of chocolate, then I drink some conjured water and continue moving along the path. I avoid most of the Faceless Men and only kill the ones I can perfectly ambush. I keep going until I become too tired to walk, then I get some sleep and repeat it all again.

I don't have Wolfy's [Blessing Magic] or an enchanted shield to defend against them, and their arrows have such a strong penetrative power that even my armor isn't enough protection. It just isn't worth fighting them, so I won't make the same mistake twice.

Sometimes, they come when I sleep, but I'm so wary of them that I wake up even before the [Proximity Warning] triggers.

I can't tell when it's day or when it's night. I only know when it's time to walk and when it's time to rest, and there's nothing else for me to do here besides walking and fighting.

The Dungeon Master is trying to wear me down, to catch me off-guard, but I've trained for my whole life for this.

I crouch and wait for the small Faceless Man to come closer.

When Wolfy needs me the most, I won't disappoint him.

The Man seems to be moving rather aimlessly, almost stumbling around as he follows the illuminated path.

I'll fight until my body falls apart. I'll press on until I grind the stone into dust. I'll reunite with Wolfy one day.

I draw and release the arrow.

His sword will slam against m-…

"Hngh~…" The Faceless Man lets out a weird grunt, and I nearly gasp in surprise.

With a sinking feeling in my heart, I dash towards the collapsing figure.

The outline appears in my sight and gains a shape, and it's different from that of a Faceless Man.

The shape gains color, and I see dark brown with a pattern of lots of thin and parallel black circles all over it. That's our elven wooden armor.

They take their helmet off, and Wolfy looks at me with a pained face while clutching the arrow that's sticking out of his chest.

"NOOOOOO!" I shriek in horror and rush up to him.

I rush to his side and fall to my knees, then I start to madly apologize while tears stream freely down my face, "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry…" I take off my helmet and desperately search for the [Regeneration] magic tool inside my [Item Box].

"Alissa…?" He whispers weakly, then he gives me a gentle smile that stabs at my heart.

"Y-yes, it's me. I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry…" I pull out the gem and press it against his chest while I search for the Fast Acting HP potions.

"The arrow…" He begs, his voice strained because of the pain.

I pull out the potion, then I grab the arrow and yank it out in one go. I immediately douse the wound with half of the potion and force him to drink the rest, then I activate [Regeneration].

I sniffle and dry my tears, then I question him, "Why are you using [Hide Presence]?"

"To hide… from the monsters," he grunts with less stress in his voice than before as the healing starts to take effect.

I frown in confusion. "And what about your [Heal]?"

"My mana organ… hasn't healed yet."

Right, he strained it during the battle.

I lean in closer to his face and give him a pained smile as I whisper, "You can stop using [Hide Presence] for now. There are no monsters around us."

He smells weird.

He nods weakly and grabs something, then [Battlefield Presence] activates, and I look down at his hand.

A long and thin dagger stabs me in the belly, right where a crack in the plate had opened up into a slit. The blade sinks through the padding, breaks through the dark dragon scale underneath, passes through even more padding, and pierces into my gut, then he twists the blade.

"Hghr…" I groan as I feel lightheaded from the pain.

Then he takes the blade out and tries to stab me in the shoulder.

[Pain Resistance] prevents me from passing out, then I use [Muscle Explosion] to grab his wrist.

He sits up and easily overpowers me, then he uses his leverage to push the blade down into my shoulder.

"Wolfy…?" I whisper and cast [Blinding Lights] on him.

Suddenly, he pulls the blade away and stands up, then he takes a step back.

"Alissa…?!" He gasps as if he just noticed that I'm wounded.

"Why…" I groan weakly and apply pressure to my belly while I use the [Regeneration] tool on myself.

[Battlefield Perception] activates again as he lunges forward at me. I cast [Mesmerizing Butterflies], and he stabs it with his dagger, breaking the spell.

I jump backward and grab my bow, then I draw a [Mana Arrow] and release. It hits him square in the chest, and he falls on his back, then grunts in pain.

"Alissa… I love you…" He coughs.

"No, no, no, no. Why… is this happening…?!" I shriek, then groan in pain.

He still hasn't stopped using [Hide Presence].

"Wolfy… stop using [Hide Presence]!" I angrily yell at him.

He looks around as if he's confused. "What…? I don't understand…?"

"Let me see your soul!"

He looks at me as his head trembles. "Soul…? My vision is blurry…"

I fall on my knees in pain, and I notice that my glove is now completely red with my own blood.

[Battlefield Perception] triggers again, and I instant cast [Earth Bullet] in front of me.

The spell hits Wolfy's beautiful face, making his head snap back violently. He collapses on the floor, and I can finally sense his presence.

This isn't Wolfy, this is a monster.

I draw another arrow and shoot it through its head, then it dies after a few more seconds. Wolfy's armor dissolves, revealing another Faceless Man.

DAMN YOU! DAMN YOU! DAMN, DAMN, DAMN, DAMN-…

I groan in pain, and my legs shake. I immediately drink another HP potion and continue using the [Regeneration] tool, but I'm bleeding so much that my head is starting to feel really light.

I walk onward with unsteady steps, trying to get as far as I can from the bleeding monster corpse.

I desperately [Clean] my hands and apply all the anti-scent I can on my armor and my wound. I won't let them catch me now after getting so far.

Before long, I discover that the illuminated path leads to a circular gray platform.

Is this… the end…?

Hope spurs me into one last burst of speed, but just as I step onto it, my knees fail me, and I collapse.

As my vision darkens, the platform starts to glow with a white light, then I pass out.

A note from Manasong

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Chapter 85: Trials – Roxanne

I wake up coughing horribly and with my chest hurting like rough anal. I roll over onto my side, and I puke out the water from my lungs.

I search for Wolfy's and Hana's warm presences inside my soul space, but I don't find anything in there except the dark and cold void.

Wha-…?

I cough and shiver in the cold, then realization slowly sinks in, and I start crying in panic.

No…

I'm alone, again.

I curl up into a ball and cry.

The cold seeps into my bones, and I start to shiver uncontrollably, so I turn around and slowly crawl away from the shore.

I grab one of the glowing crystals that's lighting up the green sand, but it's as cold as I am. It's just giving off pure light without any warmth.

With a groan of exhaustion, I cast a very small [Fire Wall] in front of me and curl back up into a ball as the spell warms me up.

The padding under my armor doesn't dry so easily, and after spending a long time wallowing in discomfort, I finally get the motivation to get up and take it all off.

I pull out a sleeping bag and wait inside it while everything dries.

I'm in a green, sandy cave, and I'm pretty sure it's impossible to go back through the rapids that brought me here.

"Hana…" I let her name escape my lips wistfully.

If only I was able to move my body back then, perhaps I could've held onto her.

Nah… who am I kidding? The Dungeon Master did this deliberately. He wanted us to be separated, and that means… that something bad is going to happen to each of us.

"Wolfy…" I cry his name and beg for the Gods to allow him to summon me away from this place.

I wake up feeling a little better, and quite hungry.

I cast [Conjure Bland Meal] and groan.

"Hello, my old friend…" I whisper bitterly and take a bite out of the bar of dirt. "Ugh…"

I pull out some edible anal lube and dip the bar in it. Now it tastes at least slightly better, but anal lube wasn't a gourmet ingredient to begin with, so it isn't much help.

Awn, I wanted Wolfy to use this on Hana and me.

I jerk my head to face the illuminated path in the sand and observe it while I eat. I can't see shit, so I take out my glasses and put them on. Now I can actually see further than Wolfy's cumshot range.

Ah, [Mana Genitals] is a bit silly, so he might be able to shoot it farther than a few meters, now.

I see a trail of white light in the green sand snaking its way through the small dunes until it becomes small glowing dots, then it suddenly disappears. Perhaps it goes down a hole or something like that.

I also notice that the ceiling becomes higher and higher further in, which is kind of nice because I don't really like small and enclosed places.

There isn't any other path but to continue forward… and I bet Arreira will fuck me-… I mean, fuck with me over there. I swear I didn't think that on purpose, Alissa.

I miss her stern presence inside my mind keeping us in line more than I'd like to admit. I miss them all more than I'd like to admit.

I curl up again and hold back my tears.

Would you look at that, Wolfy? Just a short time apart from everyone, and I'm already a broken, crying mess.

I pull out the Lithograph and the Emergency Rings, then I try to send a signal with them.

Well, I've always been like that, though…

They all seem to have been unlinked because none of the tools manage to send out even a single particle of mana.

Or perhaps they were destroyed.

I facepalm with both hands and groan.

Wolfy…

I jerk my head back to face the illuminated path again.

I'm not alone. Everyone should be moving forward already, and I should do the same.

I pinch my cheeks to psych myself up, then I finish my meal.

Keep moving forward, Roxanne, you crazy bitch.

I give my body a quick wash, then I put my armor back on and look ahead. I pull out my staff, cast [Spirit Light] and [Water Spirit], then I start following the crystal lights.

I use my staff to help me walk on the soft sand. My body still hurts a bit from using my HP to fuel my spells, so I drink a red potion to help dull the pain.

The sounds of my footsteps echoes through the cave, making me nervous that something might be listening. The whooshing of the river behind me gradually fades away, and the silence only grows more deafening.

Before long, the illuminated path comes to an end, leading to a circular hole. I see yellowish stone bricks that make up the wall holding the sand away, and some small stone steps have created a stair without railing going down.

That does not look safe.

"Down…"

I blink and sigh, then I increase the brightness of my [Spirit Light] and look around. I can't see anything but green stone walls all around me.

Keep moving forward. Or, in this case, down.

I carefully make my way down the steps while leaning against the wall. I can float, but after our ship crashed from the dungeon's [Disruption Field], I've become a bit wary of falling.

The clacking of my heeled boots against the stone steps echoes even further than the shuffling of the sand did. I've never wished so hard before to know [Quiet Steps], or at least for Wolfy to have given it to me before all this happened.

The little blue mermaid nestles on my shoulder and keeps an eye out towards the darkness. I must really be out of it if my Spirit has taken up a defensive stance before I have.

I really appreciate your job now, Wolfy… and Hana, too. Being the one to head into the darkness first is just terrifying.

The yellowish bricks become rougher and mossier as the air becomes more damp and hot than before.

I put more care into my step because I don't want to spend a single point of MP right now. There's just so little ambient mana here that a sniffer monster would be able to easily follow my mana trail if I were to cast anything again. Thankfully, the [Water Spirit] and my [Spirit Light] don't leak any mana after being cast.

My light shines on the bottom of this hole, and I let out a sigh of relief.

I get off the small steps and reach the solid ground, then I continue forward through an unnervingly low and narrow tunnel.

"Continue on…"

I'd like to send the Spirit to scout up ahead, but I really don't want to be alone right now. I don't do well with being left alone.

When was the last time that any of us were truly alone?

The air temperature rises, making it a bit difficult to breathe.

What is this ambient mana…?

"Forward."

My legs start to hurt from walking for Gods know how long. I wish I had Wolfy's pocket watch right now. I wish I had a lot of different things, actually. The rest of the harem, to begin with.

I sit down and take a large bite out of my bar of chocolate.

"Haaaaah~…" I let out a long sigh of satisfaction. This is really edible happiness.

I sound like a low-level old hag.

"Don't stop…"

Alright, alright.

After finishing my snack, I use my staff to get back up and continue my long walk down the creepy tunnel.

My light reflects off of something different, and I freeze up in fear. It takes me a few seconds to understand what I'm seeing, and I realize that it's just a circular platform of gray, smooth stone.

The tunnel suddenly opens up into a large room with the platform in the center, and I can see two exits out of here. One seems to just be more of the yellowy and rough stone, and the other seems to have some sort of blue moss growing from the seams.

Suddenly, the gray platform starts to glow, and I jump back while the Spirit gets in front of me, ready for battle.

The white light flashes, and I wince. The Spirit doesn't even react, so it means that nothing hostile has appeared.

I open my eyes again, and someone wearing our wooden armor is curled up on top of the platform.

I immediately rush forward and recognize Alissa's face under the helmet.

"ALISSA…!" I shriek and let go of my staff.

The smell of blood enters my nostrils, then I see her hand clutching her belly, and I notice that it's completely covered in her own blood.

Ah! Ah! Ah! Ah…! FUCK!

My hands start shaking as I panic, then I push Alissa onto her back so that I can see her wound properly, and a [Regeneration] magic tool falls out of her bloodied hand.

I immediately grab it and activate it, then I press it against her wound. With my other hand, I pull off her helmet and inspect her face.

She's passed out, and her skin is nearly as pale as mine.

"Diagnosis: blood loss. Treatment: pressure on the wound and [Regeneration]," I imagine Ciel's voice in my mind.

I start to shake her shoulder, trying to wake her up.

"Alissa, Alissa…! Did you drink an HP potion yet?" I try to interrogate her.

She groans, and her eyelids flutter, but she doesn't respond.

Fuck, fuck, fucking goblin dick on a spike. Fuck me in the ass!

For her to have bled this much, the wound must've been massive. I check it and find that it's still bleeding, and I can't even check if there's internal damage.

I click my tongue and decide to risk it. Some toxicity is nothing when compared to the risk of her dying from blood loss.

I take out two Fast-Acting HP potions and empty one of them onto her wound.

I've never done this before… but here it goes.

I pull her up and make her sit, then I hug her and rest her body against mine. I open her mouth with my finger and push her tongue down, then I pour a small amount of the potion into her mouth.

She swallows it reflexively, then I pour some more and repeat that until it's all gone.

She coughs and nearly spills it, but even if it gets into her lungs, the healing will still work, so it wouldn't be that bad.

"Forward."

I can't stop here.

I look at the floating mermaid sternly scanning the room for enemies and get an idea.

I wrap the [Regeneration] gem in a large amount of cloth and press it against her wound to staunch the bleeding. I take control of the Spirit, then I have it apply pressure on the gem while also feeding it mana.

The cute Spirit obeys and frees me from having to constantly hold her, so I store my staff away and pull out my sleeping bag and tent, then I start to assemble a travois stretcher.

I need to get her to safety.

I set her on the sleeping bag and feed the Spirit some more mana, then I grab the handles of the travois and lift it. This way, even someone as weak as me can carry her onward.

I'm sorry, Alissa. I wish I took Hana's training more seriously.

I enter the mossy tunnel, dragging the travois behind me.

A weird smell starts irritating my nose, but I ignore it and keep moving forward.

The air becomes a bit more damp, and the blue moss gradually becomes more prominent, taking over the yellowy stone.

The clacking of my heeled boots become muffled as the blue carpet covers the floor, then the weird smell intensifies, and I cough. Damn moss must be shedding spores.

Alissa's wound finally closes up, and the [Regeneration] effect starts working on her marrow, speeding up the replacement of her blood.

I glance back at her and try to be comforting, "You'll be fine, Alissa. Just a few more hours, and you'll wake up, okay? Now… forward."

Even with the travois, I eventually tire out and require some rest. I check on Alissa in the meanwhile and play with her ears a bit, but I frown in worry.

"What happened to you?" I ask without really expecting an answer.

Her fur is matted, and her hair has lost some of its luster. Her armor also seems to be pretty damaged and dusty. I have no idea what happened to her, but it's like she was in the wild for a day-cycle.

I apply some [Clean] to her face and her body, and she moans happily.

If I remember right, Wolfy liked to massage her ears like this.

She immediately lets out another pleased moan, and I choke back my tears.

I'm so pathetic.

I pat her head and whisper reassuringly, "I'm sorry. I need to keep moving forward to bring you to safety."

I get up and raise the travois again.

"Letting her rest a bit would be better," I recommend.

I glance back at her.

I shake my head and reject my own counsel, "No. I need to move forward and bring her to safety."

The tunnel gradually rounds off into a more circular shape, then the floor becomes rough and bumpy. The ends of the two shafts dragging behind me start to rip up the moss from the floor, releasing a visible cloud of spores, and I have to give both of us some antiallergenic medicine so that we can stop coughing.

Alissa starts to stir, clearly uncomfortable because of something, but I can't stop yet. Her internal wounds must finally be closing up, so there's nothing else I can do but continue forward.

The tunnel weaves up and down, left and right, and it even opens up a little, but it still retains its circular shape.

I start to hear a faint, pulsating beat. Its deep tone and slow cadence feel hypnotizing to me, and when I finally realize it, I notice that my stomach is suddenly rumbling again, nagging at me for another meal.

I stop and cast [Conjure Bland Meal], then eat the dirt bar with another flavor of anal lube. This time, it's Ranja. For some reason, the elves love to have sex while smelling that fruit.

The pulsing sound grows louder, and I realize that there are two distinct beats to it, like a heartbeat.

"We're almost there, Alissa," I mumble

"The moss is irritating her. It'll be better if we go back," I disagree.

My head jerks from side to side, also disagreeing. "I can't go back, it's dangerous."

"It'll be safer to continue when she wakes up because she can detect monsters," I advise myself.

My head jerks from side to side again. "We have to get to safety before she wakes up. We're almost there, just hold on for a little longer."

I get back up and continue pulling the travois.

The pulsing increases in intensity, and the moss vibrates along with it.

The walls gain long, vertical, white protrusions that stretch for meters, like ribs poking from underneath the skin. The moss darkens and hardens, then it starts to hold some kind of liquid, becoming fleshy and a bit rubbery.

The heartbeat becomes perfectly recognizable, and syncs up with my own, then the flesh of the walls pulses along with it, as if it were all part of a heart. The environmental mana gains an even weirder flavor, as if this place wasn't weird enough already.

"It's fine. Just a little more," I murmur.

My legs burn from the strain, but I must not stop. I have to protect Alissa. I have to. I have to!

I grunt and continue pushing on.

The tunnel suddenly opens up into a wide room with a large, pulsating mass of dark blue flesh at the other end.

The tunnel ends here, and so does our journey.

"We're safe," I whisper in relief.

I lower the travois and stare at the mass of flesh.

"I shouldn't turn around," I casually tell myself.

"I need to check on Alissa," I retort.

"I can use the Spirit to do that," I suggest.

I frown in annoyance. "I need to check on Alissa!"

"I shouldn't turn around," I worriedly warn myself.

I pout and relent. "Okay…"

"Alissa will be fine, so leave it to me. I'll take care of her," I comfort myself and pat my own shoulder.

I roll my eyes. "Okay…"

I reassure myself, "I'll take care of her."

I sigh and nod. "Okay. I'll believe me."

I pat my head like Wolfy does for Lina as I gently whisper, "You don't need to worry about her."

I nod obediently and hum in agreement.

Alissa will be fine. I should have faith.

Or should I…?

Hah…

Hah.

"Hah."

"I need to check on her," I insist and frown.

I complain tiredly, "Didn't we already go through this…? Can't you just leave her alone for a second?"

I grin mischievously. "I'm a clingy bitch, I know."

I raise an eyebrow. "Weren't we a slut? Are we calling ourselves 'bitch,' now?"

"I'm both," I proudly admit.

"'Dumb' bitch, more like it," I growl.

"Shut up. I'm not dumb," I protest.

I sigh. "And yet… You know what? Just fucking stay still, alright?"

"I still need to check on Alissa," I insist sternly.

"Why…?" I tiredly ask myself.

I shrug. "Because I need to. I can't let anything happen to her."

I growl in annoyance and repeat, "She'll be fine, so leave her to me, you annoying slut."

I shake my head and assert serenely, "I just can't. My heart won't settle down until I see her safe and sound."

I grumble, "She's already safe and sound."

"She hasn't woken up yet," I counter.

I facepalm. "She will, soon."

I cross my arms and smile smugly. "And I won't rest until she does."

I roll my eyes and groan, "Godsdamnit, you annoying slut."

"'Bitch,' please."

I scowl angrily. "Alright, you annoying bitch. Let me do my job, and she'll be fine."

I dial up my bratty smugness even higher. "No."

I facepalm again. "Do I even want to ask why…?"

I knit my eyebrows in confusion. "Uh… No…? Yes…? I don't know."

"Will you stop if I ask why…?" I bargain with myself.

"Nuh-uh," I continue being bratty.

I massage my temples and release a long yawn. "If you're not going to stay still, we're going to have to wait here for a long time."

"Right…"

A silence settles in.

I cough. "But would you hate it if I told you why?"

I snort and shrug. "Well, just go on, then… it'll at least be better than the silence, and there's nobody else here to talk to, anyway."

I awkwardly scratch a floppy horn. "I can't leave her… because she's important."

I casually play with my tail. "Well, duh."

I smile a bit bitterly. "Nobody can replace her… Aside from Wolfy, she's the only one that's irreplaceable in the harem. If she's gone, everything will just fall apart."

I raise my eyebrows in surprise. "Wow, you value yourself and your sisters quite a lot, huh?"

My smile turns wry. "I can't lie to myself. We can't lie to ourselves. If we want Wolfy to fulfill his destiny, then we can't be selfish."

"So, you'd sacrifice yourself for him?"

"I'd sacrifice myself for myself. I said that I'd become a better person, and I can't do that if I'm not ready to give up something for what really matters."

I take my gauntlet off to check on my nails. They're cracked…

"And you're ready to give up your life for your righteousness?"

I nod energetically. "Always."

I grin wryly. "Well… It's certainly true that we're crazy bitches."

I also grin wryly. "Everyone is a bit crazy in the harem, and that's what makes it special."

"Every marriage should be special," I calmly educate myself.

"Yes, but ours is… 'specialer.'" I hold back a chuckle.

I smile warmly and gently shake my head. "That's… a play on English words, right? I always loved it when the peasants played with language like that."

What…?

An awkward silence settles over us again.

"So… why don't you want me to turn around?" I ask… me…?

But the silence remains

"Hello? Other me?"

Silence.

I pull out my staff and turn around, then I point it forward threateningly.

"Who are you?!" I demand.

There's nothing there.

There's nothing here.

"There's nothing everywhere."

What are you looking at?

Nothing.

Nothing.

Nothing.

"Nothing."

Nothing.

"There's nothing in this room. NOTHING!"

"Roxanne…?" Alissa moans.

I'M HERE! I'LL KEEP YOU SAFE!

"[EXPLOSION]!"

"SKREEEEE!" A horrible shriek brings me back to reality.

"[LAVA JET]! [LAVA JET]! [LAVA JET]! [LAVA JET]! [LAVA JET]!" I fill the entire area around me with lava, and the dark-blue flesh burns while horribly shrieking.

Smoke rises up from below, and the smell of burnt flesh makes me feel hungry.

The [Water Spirit] spews water at the floor and controls the smoke and steam, opening a path towards the exit, then I cast [Telekinesis] on the travois and make a run for it.

"Good talking with you! Though you could leave Alissa behind as a courtesy for our therapy session!" The voice inside my mind exclaims.

I let Alissa's travois fall to the ground for a moment, then I aim towards the mass of flesh at the end of the room. "FUCK YOU! [EXPLOSION]!" I blow it up and raise the travois back up again with [Telekinesis].

"Ouch. That was rude…"

The ground starts to rumble, and the burnt flesh suddenly bulges behind us at a frightening rate, swelling so much that it closes off the tunnel.

AAAAAAAH! FUUUUUCK!

I run as fast as I can, and all the shaking wakes up Alissa.

"Roxanne…? What's going on…?" I manage to hear her sleepy voice while frantically trying to escape the flesh chasing after us.

"FUCK IF I KNOW! BUT WE NEED TO RUN!" I yell and laugh maniacally.

She tries to get up, but the Spirit presses her down onto the travois again, keeping her from falling off.

"W-w-what is that…! Roxaaanne…!" She suddenly exclaims, panic clear in her voice.

I don't even want to look back at that horrific thing. Seeing it once was more than enough for me.

"Something bad! And it wants to eat us…! Or maybe just you!"

"[FIREBALL]!" She starts casting random spells to keep it away, and the Spirit tries to help.

The horror starts falling behind, and the flesh walls gradually transition back into moss, then the ground starts to rumble again.

"T-the sand! It's falling!" Alissa desperately warns me.

"Not again!" I groan.

I almost lose my footing as the blocks under the moss start to break apart.

"Almost there!" I exclaim when I see the yellowy stone peeking out from underneath the blue moss.

Small rocks fall onto me, and I'm thankful that I'm wearing a helmet. Alissa isn't, so she has to protect herself from them.

A large rock impacts my shoulder, causing me to trip, then I fall face-first and skid along the stone floor.

"Roxanne!" Alissa desperately exclaims.

Can't stop, won't stop!

"RAAAAA!" I jump to my feet and continue running.

More rocks fall onto me, but I shrug them off and soldier on.

"LET ME OUT! LET ME OUT OF HEERE!" I scream, then I trip onto a platform of gray stone.

Just as I rise to my feet again, I see a huge slab of rock falling towards me.

I don't have [Muscle Explosion] or [Dodge], so it hits me right in the face.

A note from Manasong

Hall of Fame of Patrons

The patrons who support Rupegia shall have their names sung by the bards for they deserve the glory and honor. Their names are:

Prince PreownedFIN.

Lord Andrew Meyers.

Lord Samuel Lim.

Lord Bill.

Lord Novgarod.

Lord DJ.

Lord Ashadun.

Lord Michale Erwin.

Lord Bakerdea.

Lord D4rk Sheep.

Lord Nathan Vanbrunt.

Lord Maurice.

Lord Krawn.

Lord Empyrean.

Lord Mattirro Draca.

Lord Joshua Tal.

Lord Colorblind.

Lord RottenTangerine.

Lord Cidant.

Lord Fullmoon.

Lord Joxsan Herrera.

Noble Salty Panda.

Noble Mild Fracas.

Noble EESDESESESRDT.

Noble Aclys.

Noble Jordon Gotthold.

Noble Tyler Mills.

Noble Shawn Plumley.

Noble Kale Daley.

Noble Stellerbattle.

Leave a rating or a review to help me rise to the top or fix my shameful understanding of prose.

Take a look over my blog where all information of the world of Rupegia will be posted.

Join the Discord and discuss, or rant, or meme, or try and fight me so your waifu gets more screentime.

Become a Patron and read chapters in advance, or read the side-stories, or leave your mark on the story, or help choose the next artwork or the next side-story.

Chapter 85: Trials - Hana

I fail for a third time, trying to overcome the waterfall as I lose my grip on the rock, then I'm forced back down into the river.

I splash into the water and sink, then I just wait until I'm brought up to the surface again and gasp for air.

Fuck… me… in… the… ASS!

I turn around and swim back to the shore, then I stare at my clothes and the pile of armor I left on the sand.

I clench my fist, and my breath gradually speeds up as a wave of seething anger wells up inside of me.

My fist flies towards my face, and I almost knock myself out.

WEAK, WEAK, WEAK, WEAK! I'M SO FUCKING WEAK!

I kneel down on the sand and pull on my hair.

I had her in my arms, in my arms!

I glare at the crack in the back of my helmet.

FUCKING USELESS PADDING!

I writhe in anger and agony until the fire within me slowly fades away, then panic sets in. I look back at the hole I fell through and freeze in despair.

I need to go back…

But my muscles don't obey. I'm so tired that I can barely move anymore. I can't go back.

"Wolfy… what should I do?" I ask in my soul space, but there's nothing there anymore.

I blow fire into my cupped hands and warm myself up in silence. After I stop shivering, I throw the [Proximity Warning] crystals around me and stare hatefully up at the hole until the exhaustion finally takes over, letting me fall asleep.

I open my eyes and see the path of glowing crystals on the green sand. It's the only light source in this entire fucking wet cave, and it's an obvious path for me to follow.

"Fuck you," I mutter to the Dungeon Master.

I have no energy to move even a single muscle right now, so I just stare at it, trying to get angry enough to stand up again, but my heart now only holds emptiness with everything important ripped away.

My stomach rumbles, and I weakly sit myself up, then I pull out my [Conjure Bland Meal] magic tool and force-feed myself.

You want to challenge me? Bring it on!

I glare at the glowing path with hate. Even a small flame can ignite into an inferno, so blow air into it to make it grow.

But you'd better have saved Roxanne, or else we'll get Wolfy to use [Necromancy Magic] to rape your spirit.

I use the [Conjure Water] gem on my mouth to wash it all down, then I put on my clothes and armor again.

I don't give a shit about what the Gods would say. You don't fuck with a dragonkin like this.

I stretch, then I give one last look up at the hole.

Everyone will be going through their own challenges, so I can't just stay here wasting my time.

I walk towards the glowing path while grumbling out whatever insults I can come up with.

The green dunes start to get larger, and the path tilts upwards. They even get so tall that they almost block the way forward, forcing my head to brush against the low ceiling.

I can't see that far ahead, so I cautiously advance, wary of any monsters that might try to sneak up on me.

I cross over a dune, and the cave suddenly opens up, making me raise an eyebrow at the sight.

The glowing path leads to a green stone wall, then goes vertical, continuing up through a hole in the ceiling for hundreds and hundreds of metri.

I notice the glow of uncountable elementals randomly spread out on small platforms all along the climb. They're completely unmoving, except for the flames and sparks that have a mind of their own.

"What the fuck…" I mutter as I look around.

I can't see as far as Alissa, but I can still make out the details of the closest elementals, and they all seem to be staring straight at me.

Creepy fuckers…

I feel a small breeze leading up, which tells me which direction is my way out of this cave.

I look forward and find that the glowing path passes by a gray platform of smooth stone, then I notice the glint of a white gem in the center of it.

I cautiously take a few steps forward while I watch the elementals, and I notice their inexpressive faces following me as I do.

I decide to ignore these fuckers for a moment and just walk up to the platform to inspect it.

The moment I step onto it, the gem flashes, and a spell is cast on me, then I shiver from the gentle pleasure of having [Heal] coursing through every centumetri of my body.

I freeze mid-step for a moment, then I get back off the platform and sigh.

Well… that's nice, I guess.

I look up again and frown.

Oh… I can guess what this is for…

I lost my enchanted sword and shield in the rapids, and I have no other weapons on me besides the two daggers hidden within my armor. Wolfy carried every other weapon I had because my [Item Box] is smaller than Lina's asshole. Not literally.

I doubt I can kill them with just magic or my fists. It'd take months to even try.

I believe I can see the exit of the hole, but It's so far up that it just looks like a bright blue dot to me.

There's no way I can fly all the way in one go with my level of [Summon Wings]. I'll need to rest on those platforms a few times on the way up.

Just to make sure, I look around at the dunes for another path, but there's none I can see. It's either this or somehow going up the waterfall I fell through.

Why do I have the feeling that going this way will be easier than the waterfall…?

I grumble out a few more insults.

Well, duh. Of course the Dungeon Master won't let me go back.

I summon my wings, then I spread them wide to stretch them out.

My armor is going to make this a bit more difficult… but Wolfy would try to test things out first, wouldn't he? I mean, what's the worst that could happen…? Well, death, but I won't die so easily.

The platform nearby gives me a degree of assurance about that.

"Alright, fuck it," I growl, then I flap my winds and kick up a cloud of dust as I dart upwards.

[Battlefield Perception] triggers, and my cockiness gets chopped off between my legs as a storm of spells starts to smash into me.

My armor holds up against most of the hits, but my wings aren't protected, and the blunt attacks also slow me down on impact.

I fly towards a platform, then I grab the earth elemental that was on it and throw it off.

I stop there to catch my breath, yet the attacks continue, and I can't do anything here but try to defend myself.

I try to cast Illusion spells, but there are so many enemies that my magic has almost no effect. My [Rainbow Shield] has run out of time, and I don't even have enough points for a Wall-type spell, so I have no way to stop the punishment of my armor.

I activate [Enhanced Endurance] and launch myself up into the air again.

My wings get cut, burned, shocked, and broken the longer I fly upwards, decreasing my speed. "Endurance" won't do anything for me if I don't even have wings to make me fly.

This won't work.

I grit my teeth in anger and dive back down. "FUCK YOOOOOU!" I scream as I retreat.

I have trouble slowing down, so I nearly splat myself on the gray platform, but then it flashes, and all of my wounds are gone, except for the one on my pride.

I start grumbling, then I bark out, "Your mother was an orc and your father smelled of rotten goblin cum! Go die by a Breeder-type you…" The anger quickly dies down as my energy runs out, and I sigh in defeat, ashamed about my own failure.

I watch as the earth elemental I pushed off suddenly disappears, then it instantly reappears on its platform again. Destroying them all doesn't seem to be an option.

I raise my arm and inspect the cracks on my vambrace. I have a [Growth] magic tool to help mend it, but I don't have any special dirt to fully repair it.

A stupid idea enters my small lizard brain.

Can I use [Conjure Bland Meal] to repair?

I chuckle at my dumb idea, but then I decide to test it out.

I mix conjured water and the meal bar together in my hands, turning it into a disgusting mush, which I spread over the crack on my vambrace, then I activate the [Growth] gem.

After just a few seconds, a weird smell starts to come from the vambrace, and a dark moss quickly grows all over the crack, then some weird, tiny mushrooms appear, so I stop feeding the gem.

I touch the vambrace and notice that it feels softer than it was before, then it releases a cloud of moss and spores.

Well, fuck.

I clean the vambrace and realise that I've only made it weaker overall.

"Fucking piece of fucking…" I start to grumble, but tiredness washes over me, so I lay down on my back.

I stare up at the exit for a long time while my lizard brain thinks about absolutely nothing interesting.

"Is this what you wanted?" I whisper, then I throw my vambrace to the side and glare at the elementals. "To show me how useless and weak I am when I'm alone? Well, I ALREADY KNEW THAT, YOU ROTTING CORPSE!"

I grab a fistful of sand and pathetically throw it away, only to have it scatter back onto my face.

I spit out the sand, then I glare at the exit.

"But I get what you're doing… You want me to push past my limits, right?" I sit up, then I start to take off my armor. "You're challenging me? Me?! You're challenging a dragonkin to push further than ever before?"

I throw the wooden plate and the scale mail down onto the sand. I don't have any room for them in my [Item Box].

"You're challenging Hanafuria Ry-… Hanafuria soon-to-be Ryder?!" I take off my clothes, then I stare up towards the exit and summon my now-healed dragon wings. "ARE YOU SURE ABOUT THAT?!" I roar and laugh.

You'd better not be watching, though.

"I WON'T STOP TRYING, NO MATTER WHAT IT COSTS, NO MATTER HOW LONG IT TAKES! I WON'T LET ANYTHING STAND BETWEEN ME AND WOLFY'S COCK!"

I clench my fists and begin to breathe faster as anger courses through my veins.

"DON'T YOU FUCK WITH MEEEEE!" I flap my wings and roar as I shoot upwards.

The elementals fire their projectiles, and [Battlefield Perception] triggers, so I start taking evasive maneuvers while continuing to rapidly climb upwards.

Without my armor weighing me down, I'm much faster and more nimble, but every single spell that hits me hurts like a bitch.

I climb and climb, my eyes glued to the finish line, desperate to cross it, but it swells in my vision far too slowly.

My skin is burned, slashed, and pounded. My blood starts to drip from multiple wounds, but I soldier on. My anger numbs the pain, so I don't even need [Pain Conversion] to endure it, and I refuse to use that Skill with anyone outside the harem.

A stone boulder collides with my head, and my vision goes dark.

I open my eyes and notice that I'm falling. I try to steady myself, but my wings are almost completely torn apart.

The elementals stop firing and just watch me as I glide back down again, then I crash onto the gray platform, and my whole body is immediately healed.

My pride is wounded even deeper, but I'm a masochist. The pain only makes me want to try harder.

I get up and try again.

And again.

And again.

And again.

And again…

As long as I can fly, I try to shoot even higher than before. As long as I can stand, I train my body for the next day. Every second that I'm awake, I prepare my mind for the battle ahead.

I'm not a very pious person since I don't fully understand the Gods, but I still ask them for help anyway because the God of War said that pride is a deadly disease.

I pray to the God of Sun to let me stand back up every morning. I pray to the God of Endurance to give me the strength to continue training each day. I pray to the Goddess of Will to give the clarity to focus on each attempt. I pray to the Goddess of Growth to help me get closer to my goal.

My [Summon Wings] levels up once, then again, then my [Enhanced Endurance], then my [Enhanced Stamina]. Every level up allows me to fly higher, so little by little, the exit grows closer.

My soul potential quickly goes into the negatives, and it slows down my growth, but I don't give up. There's no other way except to continue trying, day after day.

The exit is now so close that I can see the crystal lights surrounding it. The next day, I fly a little higher, and I manage to count them.

Victory is right at my fingertips, I just need to grasp it.

Suddenly, a burst of mana comes from the top of the passage, and a flame flares up far ahead of me.

It rapidly grows into a huge ball of fire until it fills the entire tunnel, then it darkens as it's filled with molten metal.

I stop in fear and stare at it. That's [Meteor].

It launches towards me, then I turn tail and retreat.

I land on the platform and collapse.

"And I thought Wolfy was sadistic…" I mutter, then I roll over onto my back and glare up at the [Meteor]. Without warning, it disintegrates into nothing well before it can even warm me up. "I wasn't serious, though. How the fuck do you expect me to punch a [Meteor]?"

There's no response because this fucking shitty Dungeon Master likes to taunt but doesn't let anyone fuck with him in return.

"Well, fuck you!" I exclaim, and my echoes tell me to fuck myself. I used to enjoy doing exactly that, but after having a taste of my own personal shape-shifting dildo, I think masturbation is beneath me.

I sigh and stare at my hand. My emerald scales are far too few to protect me against that spell, let alone punch it.

Wolfy managed to form scales on his skin, though they were weaker than mine.

I close my eyes and go over every memory I can about Wolfy's [Soul Manipulation].

I remember talking about it with Alissa.

"Being part animal and part something else is just what you are, so you shouldn't be trying to hide it. You should push it out and allow it to help you become stronger," I tried to advise her.

"Being animal or human is what we are. Wereanimals need to learn how to have two sides before they can properly change forms," she calmly replied.

"Then you also need to learn how to be both so that you can pick the best of the two sides."

I meditate while I practice [Soul Manipulation], steadily covering my fist with my soul.

I have a dragon inside me, so I just need to bring it out.

An old memory of a rather similar situation drifts to the surface.

"How's your heart?" Mom's stern voice echoes inside my mind.

"Stable, I don't feel any anxiety," the young me answered.

"Desire?"

I remember that Wolfy's monstrous multi-cock will never fuck me again if I don't get out of here.

"Strong," I growled, though at the time I was thinking about another cock instead of Wolfy's.

"Anger?"

"In control."

"Energy?"

"Full."

"Confidence?"

I open my eyes and look at my own hand. No matter how much I want to punch that [Meteor], there's a limit to everything.

"It won't get any better than this," I whisper.

Mom's reproachful tone makes me wince even now, "You're a dragon, Hanafuria. You won't fly if you don't believe that you can fly; you won't ravage if you don't believe that they'll die; you won't burn anything if you don't believe that you can destroy it. Either you can, or you can't. Now, confidence?"

This isn't just a question of "can" or "can't" because, if I fail, then I'm not worthy of being Wolfy's wife. It's "do" or "die."

"I'll burn, I'll rape, I'll kill. Not literally because the Gods don't like it, but yeah, I'll do what I want. I will do what I want!" Young me thought to herself, trying to ignite the fires of savagery within her heart.

I was so angry and ferocious before I met Wolfy, but where did that anger go?

As a sex beast, celibacy gave me strength, but I refuse to go back to those times. It worked, sure, but I don't need something that "just works," I need something better.

I am part dragon, so why can't I use that strength whenever I want?

"I got this, I know it," I whisper the same words that I said that day, but I lack the confidence I had back then.

"Yes, you do, now focus. Gather your anger, your power. Gather the savage blood inside you, the proud being that dominates the realm," Mom encouraged me.

I love you, Wolfy. I love you more than I ever thought possible, but not only you. I love everyone. Alissa, Roxanne, Ciel, Lina, Aoi, Yunia, Klein, Osaria, and even Gify a bit. Of course, you get a special place, too, Roxanne. I love everyone so much that I'd…

Hm… how far would I go for them?

I smirk.

How far is infinite…?

I growl and focus on my hand.

I'd do something really stupid to get back to them. I'd cross the Everlasting Storm! I'd hunt down an ancient dragon by myself! I'd even fight the fucking Emperor!

And I'll show you all the true depth of my feelings by punching that fucking [Meteor]…! But I can't do that if I remain just a small, weak dragonkin.

I glare at my hand and grunt with exertion.

I'll be the biggest, most powerful, most badass, most fucking mean dragon this realm has ever seen! I'll make Wolfy and Mom proud, then I'll make them both suck on my tits! I'll fuck Wolfy and the rest of the wives until there's nobody left to challenge me! I will have my harem of women one day!

I want to bite into an orc and feel his blood dripping down my throat! I want Roxanne's fist inside of my pussy! I want to roast an orc alive and eat it while it screams! I want to fuck Wolfy in front of the entire realm! I want to… I want to…

I glare with even more intensity, and my MP starts to slowly drain.

Love, anger, disgust, arousal, degeneracy, and passion. All of these emotions boil within my heart and fill me with energy.

I want to rip and tear; to rape, fuck, and breed; to fight, conquer, and drown in pleasure atop my throne. This world is mine for the taking because I'm the strongest, the biggest, the apex predator. I'll do what I want and you'll just have to suck it up, bitch.

"I'm not a sex beast anymore, Mom. I'm a love beast! I'll let my love for the harem give me strength! Then I'LL PUNCH THIS [METEOR] WITH THE POWER OF LOVE!"

Glowing emerald wisps twinkle around my hand for a second, then they fade away.

Mages say that direct mana manipulation is dangerous. I say fuck 'em.

I've lost count of how many days have passed while I've been stuck down here. Not that I'd know it for sure even if I had counted since I haven't seen the sun in only-the-fucking-Gods-know-how-many days.

All I know is that today's the day, or night, or whatever…

I pull out the last of my chocolate and devour it all. I need all the energy I can get today. Then I flex and stretch, the same as I always do.

I plunge a finger into my pussy and pinch my clit, then I stop. It just takes a little teasing to awaken the dormant celibate beast.

Today's the day you fuck me, Wolfy.

I summon my huge wings and stretch them out, too, then I stare up at the goal.

I patiently wait in silence as the fire within my heart grows more fierce and the chocolate begins to take effect.

My emotions are boiling within me, but my heart is keeping them fully contained. The dragon inside me was tamed by Wolfy, but now, it's also been tamed by me.

My heart reaches its limit, and the fire within starts spreading through every limb, then I shoot up into the air.

"WOLFYYY! I'M COMIIIIIING!"

I dodge and weave around the projectiles like it's nothing. At this point, they're just an annoyance.

I clench my right fist and focus my power on it.

The exit gradually grows larger in my view, then it's suddenly hidden behind a massive ball of fire.

"DRAGOOOON…" I breathe in deeply and prepare my lungs.

The [Meteor] shoots towards me.

"PUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUNCH!"

Shining emerald scales cover my fist as I activate [Draconic Body].

The [Meteor] suddenly shrinks down to less than half its size.

What?!

Then my glowing fist collides with it.

A note from Manasong

Hall of Fame of Patrons

The patrons who support Rupegia shall have their names sung by the bards for they deserve the glory and honor. Their names are:

Prince PreownedFIN.

Lord Andrew Meyers.

Lord Samuel Lim.

Lord Bill.

Lord Novgarod.

Lord DJ.

Lord Ashadun.

Lord Michale Erwin.

Lord Bakerdea.

Lord D4rk Sheep.

Lord Nathan Vanbrunt.

Lord Maurice.

Lord Krawn.

Lord Empyrean.

Lord Mattirro Draca.

Lord Joshua Tal.

Lord Colorblind.

Lord RottenTangerine.

Lord Cidant.

Lord Fullmoon.

Lord Joxsan Herrera.

Lord The_Cultural_Weeb_Otaku.

Lord Sean Drake.

Noble Salty Panda.

Noble Mild Fracas.

Noble EESDESESESRDT.

Noble Aclys.

Noble Jordon Gotthold.

Noble Tyler Mills.

Noble Shawn Plumley.

Noble Kale Daley.

Noble Stellerbattle.

Leave a rating or a review to help me rise to the top or fix my shameful understanding of prose.

Take a look over my blog where all information of the world of Rupegia will be posted.

Join the Discord and discuss, or rant, or meme, or try and fight me so your waifu gets more screentime.

Become a Patron and read chapters in advance, or read the side-stories, or leave your mark on the story, or help choose the next artwork or the next side-story.

Chapter 85: Trials - Ciel

I stare at the glowing crystal path on the green sand. My heart feels cold and empty, as if the light within had been ripped out.

I'd only been connected through [Bind] for a short while, but it was such a wonderful feeling that I must've become addicted to it, and now I miss it so much that it hurts. It felt like Wolfy was always warmly holding me with his arms, and I could be in his presence with just a thought. Now, I just feel a dark void inside me.

I fall to my knees and hold my face with my hands.

What even happened to us? The ship crashed, then… a river? Rapids? How didn't I drown? And where's Lina…?

I open my "Status" and confirm that everyone's names are still in my "Companions," though I can't seem to feel the fellowship bond that would let me know where they are.

Somehow, only part of the bond has been severed, but at least everyone is still alive.

I sigh and run my fingers through my wet hair, then I stare at the glowing path again.

Is this a challenge?

Suddenly, I feel dizzy and lose my balance, then [Diagnosis] triggers.

Dizziness, headache, memory loss. Symptoms of a concussion, likely acquired in the rapids. Low risk of death unless treated.

I steady myself on the sand and hold my head.

How did that happen when I was wearing a padded helmet, though?

I immediately start focusing my mana while I prepare [Heal].

Healing focus: divine-powered realignment of the soul and body. I can't risk using physical treatment to heal the brain because it's either too imprecise or too dangerous.

"[Heal]," I cast on myself and use a good amount of mana to ensure that my concussion goes away.

My mind immediately clears, but the emptiness within my heart remains.

I sigh and start taking off my armor to properly dry myself off.

After I'm done, I take my glaive out of my [Item Box], then I cast [Holy Spirit]. A blue [Spirit Light] surrounded by a heatless fire materializes in front of me. Then, two small lights solidify into long transparent crystals to act as its feet, and a third solidifies into a small oval metal mask with two holes that acts as its face.

The little Spirit lands on the sand and starts scurrying around me excitedly, then I take out my large, delicious bar of hazelnut chocolate and sit down.

I stare at the glowing path while I eat. The crystal lights continue on for about a hundred metri, then they suddenly disappear into the darkness, making it seem awfully eerie to me.

What's waiting for me over there…? The Dungeon Master hasn't seemed particularly sadistic or murderous so far, but they're from the time of God-Rulers, who are known to be very overbearing. If I fail this test, would they kill me for not being worthy of following Wolfy?

Perhaps I shouldn't be worrying about them killing me, but rather that not being allowed to be Wolfy's wife anymore would be as severe a punishment as death… It'd certainly be like that for Alissa…

I grumble and force myself to set aside these stupid thoughts. I can't start overanalyzing things now, or I'll just fall for my own stupidity.

What am I even thinking? This is a trial that I must complete… no matter what.

Everything gets properly dried off and is ready to use again, so I put my armor back on, then I pull out the Lithograph and Emergency Rings and fiddle with them for a bit. Predictably, they don't work, so I store them away again as I let out a tired sigh.

I stand up feebly like a low-level grandma and frown at my own lack of motivation.

Alissa wouldn't think twice about facing this head on; Roxanne would just do it without even thinking too deeply about it; Hana would face it while laughing; Lina would do whatever she could to reunite with us again; Aoi would have fun while doing it; Yunia wouldn't let stupid thoughts get in the way.

I breathe in deeply and close my eyes, then I start gently whispering a chant, "A candle in the Long Night, a flame in the snowstorm, a pyre to warm our hearts. I beg not for strength but instead just for the ability to prevent the light from being snuffed out. The cold will be expunged, the storm will pass, and dawn will come."

I look forward and straighten out my posture, then I fearlessly let my voice echo throughout the green cave, "I shall stand tall and proud; and with a spear in hand, I'll cry out loud: as long as I live, I'll fearlessly brave the night, for I know that another day will come! [Inspire]!"

The spell forms inside of me, then it sends out a pulse in all directions, blessing everything it touches with its effects. There's only the Spirit and myself around, so this spell didn't cost me that much mana.

My darker thoughts start to clear from my mind, and a faint [Regeneration] affects my body, helping it recover from the exhaustion of today's fighting. Both of these effects compound on each other, giving me a second wind and allowing me to reach full combat readiness again.

Alright. It's time to move.

I finish eating the last of my chocolate, then I get up onto my feet and start following the glowing crystal path.

As I carefully approach the end of the path, my anxiety increases with its proximity. It's not just the crystals that stop after a certain point, I also don't see any more of the sand's glimmer that should be caused by my [Spirit Light]. It's as if there's an impenetrable darkness ahead.

I look around cautiously, but I don't see anything except green sand and stone walls, so I decide to send the Spirit ahead to inspect the end of the path.

It scurries forward and stops right before the end, and its glow makes it quite obvious that there's no reflection of any kind coming from anything ahead. It's like everything just ends past a certain point, as if there's a Dark Void-like screen covering the way forward.

I notice a few grains of sand getting kicked up by the Spirit's small crystal feet, and they simply disappear into the darkness.

Soon, I reach the wall of darkness myself, then I stop in front of it and stare into the abyss.

My heart starts pounding harder. Two voices call to me. I'm needed inside.

"We need to go," I whisper, then I look down at the masked [Holy Spirit].

It energetically nods back at me, then it steps into the abyss on its own, and I follow it a moment later.

Everything disappears except for my body and the Spirit. We stand on a cold, solid floor with nothing but darkness around us. There isn't a single reflection I can see, so it's like we're standing in mid-air even though I can feel the floor under my boots.

What did I get myself into?

The voices call to me again, and I start moving "forward," even though I don't know what direction that really is.

Our footsteps don't produce any sound, but all our other movements do, so it's just the soft, muffled clinking of my padded armor that echoes through the empty void.

Something catches my eye, but when I try to look at it, it's already gone. It happens again a few minutes later, then I notice a wisp of something smoky on the third try.

The wisps grow larger and start to become more noticeable, as if candles were being snuffed out all around me, releasing small streams of white smoke.

I stop when I suddenly notice a semi-transparent blue ghost of a person materializing in front of us. They don't have any details, making them seem like a mere doll on its knees, praying for something.

I cautiously approach them, but they don't react. Then I touch them with the butt of my glaive, and it sinks through their form without any resistance, which tells me that this spirit is completely immaterial.

They suddenly crumble like a mound of ash falling apart, and its glowing "particles" fly towards my [Spirit Light]. They start flying around the spell, and I feel trace amounts of Light mana leaking out of them.

This is… just odd…

I blink repeatedly and shake my head. There's something oddly "mesmerizing" about these particles, and I'm not sure if I want to know exactly why it is.

Should I dispel my [Spirit Light]…? But the symbolism here makes me think that I shouldn't.

The voices call to me again, and my heart pounds harder once more, then I realize that this "desire" to move forward is very similar to what I felt when we met the dungeon core's orb.

So the dungeon is calling for me…?

I look down at the Spirit and its glowing mask simply stares back at me emotionlessly.

I kind of wish that you could talk. I really need a second opinion here, like Wolfy's.

I breathe in and softly chant [Inspire] again, but I don't actually cast it. The chant and the mana released from this spell is rather calming, so I use it to clear my head again.

"Not one step back, I guess," I mutter to myself and continue forward.

I hear a faint whispering coming from far ahead, then it gradually increases in volume until I recognize it as weeping.

A cold chill runs down my spine as I remember the Weepers, then I start to softly chant [Inspire] again to keep my nerves steady.

More doll-like spirits appear along my path. They crumble whenever I get near enough, then their glowing particles add to my [Spirit Light], and it becomes slightly brighter.

Oh, I see what's going on.

I continue "collecting" more praying souls, and the weeping gradually grows louder. It unnerves me and makes me want to stop, but the voices in my head give me the motivation to continue anyway. Two opposing forces start fighting each other inside my heart, but the louder the weeping gets, the weaker they become.

I stare straight ahead into the impenetrable darkness, steeling my heart for what's to come. I must continue forward, I need to get through this dark realm, and I will reunite with the harem.

Suddenly, I feel something stare at me, and I freeze on the spot.

I blink and rub my eyes, but the feeling doesn't go away. "Something" is still staring at me.

I grip my glaive tighter and point it forward. The Spirit starts floating in front of me, prepared to attack anything that could materialize out of the darkness, but nothing comes.

The abyss hatefully glares back at me, but it doesn't make a move. Its ever-present stare weighs down my mind and slows my steps, but I continue on.

The next spirit appears bowing on the floor, looking towards the abyss ahead of us, but their body doesn't collapse when I get near.

"Lord… I don't want to go," the spirit whispers with barely any strength, begging to me about something.

What…?

"Lord… I don't want to go," they repeat.

"Go… where?" I ask, unsure about what's going on.

"Forward," they submissively answer me, and I’m reminded about the glare of the abyss again, making me frown.

I can kind of understand why they wouldn't.

"Why not?" I sternly continue the questioning.

The spirit curls up into the fetal position, terrified. "I'm afraid," their weak voice comes out, almost breaking into tears.

I ignore its obvious fear and press on. "Of what?"

They whisper their reply almost inaudibly, "Of the abyss."

I kneel down beside them and ask them more gently this time, "What is 'the abyss'?"

"Death," comes their flat response.

I frown and state, "There's still Paradise after death."

They shake their head gently. "Death is death."

What are they talking about? Is this related to heretics destroying their own souls?

"Paradise comes after death," I insist, being stern with them again.

Their voice becomes tired. "Paradise is not life."

"But it also isn't the abyss."

"The abyss is death," it states, then they start weeping.

I don't understand.

I shake my head and retort, "Death isn't empty like 'the abyss.' There's Paradise, and then reincarnation into the next cycle. Death frees us from our mortal chains and allows us to receive our just rewards."

"The chains are all I have," their pained words give me pause.

Oh…

I look away, then I stare down at my own hand.

A commoner isn't awarded the same glory in Paradise as a hero, and they also don't leave much of a change in the realm after their death, so for them, their life, their "chains," is everything they have.

I look at my [Spirit Light].

Do I really need their power?

The glare of the abyss is unrelenting, always pressing down on me, telling me to turn around and run away with my tail between my legs.

I sigh gently as I gather my determination, then my priestess training comes back to me, blocking the abyss from my heart for a moment, which grants me a brief feeling of peace. I lean closer to the spirit and whisper, "We're all afraid of the abyss. Of failing, of falling, of disappearing, but there's nothing we can do besides moving forward."

The spirit's round, smooth face suddenly turns to look at me. "Forward, where?"

I look around and ask myself the same question. I don't even know where I was going anymore.

My heart pounds again, then my head suddenly turns towards the voices calling to me.

When in doubt, follow your heart. That's something that I think Wolfy would say as a reference to something.

I smile wryly for a moment, then I look at the spirit again. "I'll… I'll guide you forward, so will you follow me?" I gently ask them.

They bury their face in their hands. "But I'm afraid of the abyss," they whimper.

I smile warmly at them. "So am I, but together, we can keep it at bay."

Their body starts to crumble apart, and they give me a parting whisper, "Together…"

My [Spirit Light] becomes noticeably brighter, but it doesn't hurt my eyes anymore when I look right at it. It's really weird.

I move on and ask a few more spirits to join me, but while they make my [Spirit Light] brighter, they don't seem to help against the abyss's glare or the weeping, both of which are still getting stronger.

Okay, I learned this from Wolfy.

I will my [Spirit Light] to come down in front of me so that I can see it properly, then I gather my courage and announce, "I'm guiding you, but if we are to continue on, I'll need your support."

Wisps of ethereal smoke leave the glowing orb and start to orbit chaotically around me, then I start to feel their "presence," as if I knew where they were through a fellowship bond at all times.

I start to hear a crowd of different voices inside my head. Cheering, chatting, laughing, singing. The spirits all seem excited to be going on an adventure, and their collective noise starts to drown out the weeping.

I cast [Inspire], and every single wisp receives the spell's effect, boosting their continuous chatter. The intensity of the glare doesn't change, but it's easier for me to deal with it now because I know that I'm not alone.

I collect more and more spirits, but one of them asks me a question that gives me pause, "Will you save me from the abyss?"

I don't even know if I can save myself from this place.

"I can only give you the opportunity to save yourself," I sternly answer, and the spirit lowers its head in disappointment.

The other wisps slow down, and their chatter diminishes, allowing the weeping to press down on my mind again.

I start to get stressed out and very annoyed with these spirits, so I look around and berate them, "Aren't we already in the abyss? If we stay here, it would be the same as death. Only through struggle and effort can we save ourselves from this place, but I'm the only one here that's actually moving forward! I can't force any of you to help me, or rather, help us, so you need to find your own courage, your own fire, and then you can help us fight… or you can just stay inside my [Spirit Light] and merely hope that I succeed."

"I don't wish to fight," the spirit moans, then it starts weeping.

I look down on it and state imperiously, "You can come, but if you don't help, you have little reason to complain. You're surrendering your Thread of Fate to me, but you aren't giving me anything that will help us reach your goal. Do something! If you believe in me, then support me!"

The groveling spirit hugs itself, and they crumble apart, then their particles add to my [Spirit Light], and a vibrant flame appears around it. Unlike the [Holy Spirit], this flame actually gives off heat, and although it doesn't exactly counteract the abyss' stare, the warmth it provides me makes it easier to hold strong.

"Forward!" I yell and raise my glaive in cheer, then the chatter increases in volume once more.

More and more spirits add to the chatter and warmth, but it isn't enough. The abyss's strength is still growing faster than theirs, and I'm sure that it'll eventually overwhelm me.

The pressure intensifies, and it becomes hard to breathe. My heart guides my way every once in a while, but it happens less and less frequently.

I start to sweat cold and lean on my glaive to keep walking. The weeping unnerves me, and the glare instills me with fear, but I stubbornly continue forward anyway.

"Not… one… step… back…" I mutter under my breath, but the spirits all seem to be oblivious to what I'm going through. They react when I cheer and when I order them, but they ignore me in my suffering. "FORWARD!" I suddenly bellow, and they increase their support for a short while.

I have to act like a drillmaster.

"FORWARD!" I encourage them again, but I don't even know where I'm going anymore.

"Not one step back!" I cheer, but it's more for myself than for them.

"The abyss shall not take us…!" I yell, but I feel like I'm about to fall.

"We'll get… through… this…" I mumble, but they're just empty words.

The heat of the flame increases even though I was mumbling, so I do it again.

"We'll get through this…!" I yell with a little more confidence, and the spirits gain another small boost in power.

"We can all survive the abyss!" I lie, but nobody seems to notice that since the spirits gain even more power than before.

Lies: they work, until they don't.

I grit my teeth and decide to not lie anymore, but I immediately start to regret that when a cold begins to steadily seep into my bones. Even the spirits' fire isn't enough to completely prevent the abyss from taking over my mind.

No…!

I resist and soldier on.

I don't know where I'm going, the cold is making me shiver uncontrollably, my voice has gone hoarse, and my legs are starting to refuse to obey me.

I slow down until I fall to my knees, then I take a long rest right there, but my fatigue doesn't go away at all.

Is this it? Is this as far as I can go?

"Will you take us further?" A spirit childishly asks.

"Will you succumb to the abyss?" A displeased spirit grumbles.

I don't have the energy to answer them.

I don't know where I am, how far I've walked, or how much further I still have to go. I'm surrounded by people I don't know or understand, but they've all given me their loyalty regardless. It's all so poetic, so… so like this dungeon.

I don't even feel sad that I'm about to fail, I'm just sad that I won't be able to help these spirits.

I laugh self-deprecatingly, then I roll onto my belly and start crawling forward.

But I'll only accept failure when the Dungeon Master themself tells me that I've failed.

"I'll… continue… forward…!" I yell at the spirits while groaning with exertion.

The cheering, the weeping, the warmth, and the cold all fade away from my mind, as if they were just background noise. The only thing that remains now is the glare of the abyss telling me to go away.

I crawl forward and glare back at it.

What is it that you want from me? Why are you in my way?!

The glare intensifies, and my chest stops moving entirely. I can't breathe.

I can't stop!

But am I even going in the right direction?

I can't stop!

But how will I move forward?

I can't stop!

But wishes alone won't take me anywhere.

The abyss manifests before me, its hateful eyes looking down on me, and I weakly raise my head to look right back at it, face-to-face.

I'm weak; I'm afraid; I'm cowardly; I'm willfully walking towards death.

I slowly push my glaive forward, then I point it right at the abyss and cast [Beam]. I hit something.

I'm willfully walking towards death.

I strain myself and forcefully pull air into my lungs so that I can breathe.

I'm willfully walking towards death!

I unsteadily get onto my knees, then I manage to stand up while wobbling slightly.

I won't run from death! Not again!

I feed more mana into [Beam], and I can feel the abyss weakening.

THIS IS MY PENANCE! FOR MACHT AND FOR WOLFY, I'll NEVER RUN AWAY AGAIN!

My mana runs out and the [Beam] wanes.

I WILLFULLY WALK TOWARDS DEATH!

The abyss hits me, and I fly backward. I tumble across the hard, black floor, and all the air is forced out of my lungs.

The [Holy Spirit] finally reacts and lunges at the abyss, but it can only hold it back temporarily.

I look up and see the wisps all indifferently flying around my flaming [Spirit Light], which is now glowing as brightly as a small sun. I notice the chatter and the warmth again, but the weeping and the cold of the abyss is still overpowering it all.

I'm sorry…

I raise my hand, then I use [Redirect Mana] to gather all the mana I can onto my palm. A deluge of Light particles rush out of my [Spirit Light], and I struggle to control it all.

The wisps fade away, the chatter dies down, the warmth recedes, and I'm left alone with an inconceivably large amount of mana in my hand.

Wolfy's right, the Dungeon Master is a pretentious Plom.

The [Holy Spirit] is torn apart, then the abyss attacks me again, and I groan in pain.

FOR WOLFY, FOR THE WIVES!

I feed all of the immense Light mana into my glaive.

I WILLFULLY WALK TOWARDS DEATH!

My glaive melts and explodes from the surge, then a searing heat washes over me for just a second, and the pressure of the abyss simply disappears.

I wait for a few more seconds until my vision recovers, then I look around. I'm now in a corridor made of square blue slabs. In front of me, there's a circular gray platform made of smooth stone, and beyond that is a large, green hole in the floor.

The platform glows, and Alissa and Roxanne suddenly appear on it, both of them passed out, then I hear an explosion from the hole.

A note from Manasong

Hall of Fame of Patrons

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Chapter 85: Trials - Lina

I wake up trembling in fear and hyperventilating as if I was just having a nightmare, but it was all real, or at least, the nightmare isn't over yet.

"Wolfy…? Ciel…? Alissa…?" I ask for help inside my soul space, but my only answer is more silence.

The waves hit my face, and I groan, so I crawl off the shore, then I lethargically take my armor off. Somehow, I kept my enchanted hammer and shield with me even after passing out.

Did I really pass out?

I ignore those thoughts for now and look around. I'm in a damp, stuffy, and badly lit green cave. The ambient mana here isn't so bad, but it's still barely enough for my level five [Stonebody] to function.

My head starts to pound with a headache, so I take out an HP potion and drink it all down, then I open my "Status." My "Companions" entry tells me that everyone's seemingly alive, but we're also completely separated from each other.

I've never heard of something that can block the fellowship bond without removing them from the "Companions" entry.

There's no reason to think about this any further, so I warm myself up with a [Fireball] and simply stare at the dancing flames while my mind wanders.

I look towards the glowing crystal path in the green sand.

That seems like an invitation… a trial, perhaps?

I frown and hug myself in anger.

Why would you want to separate us? We're stronger together, and we can cover each others' weaknesses, so we don't need to be tested separately because we already know our failings.

God-Rulers have always been egotistical, high-handed, and imperious assholes. Of course, Arreira would come up with a stupid, pretentious test to judge our "worth." Our entire delve through this dungeon has been stupid test after stupid test, hasn't it?

The first three levels were about history and our knowledge of him; then some sort of teamwork or combat test with the lighthouse; then a piloting test with the tornadoes; then whatever he wanted to test with the Looping Winds Station; then another piloting test; then the test of nobility with the Chimeras; then the warfare test.

Now what? A test of courage? A test of competence? A test of loneliness? Or just plain torture?

That's right. This is TORTURE!

After being connected to Wolfy and the other wives for long, you just had to abruptly tear us apart? You don't even do that with a child! It took months for my parents to decide to sell me once things started to go really bad! MONTHS!

I clutch my chest and grit my teeth.

I'd forgotten how lonely it was to be so far away from the others. I'd forgotten how cold it felt to be without someone always watching over me. How empty everything seems without someone to share my feelings with…

Is THIS what you wanted to test? Our capability of staying away from each other without [Bind]? No, of course, it isn't, you're just testing our mental resistance for TORTURE!

I don't NEED to stay away from Wolfy and the wives, I don't WANT to stay away, and I'll NEVER need this sort of "resistance" that you might want to force on us! Together, we're INVINCIBLE, so there's no reason for us to EVER separate from each other!

WE DON'T NEED YOUR HELP, SO FUCK YOUR TEST AND FUCK YOU! I WISH THAT YOU'D GET RAPED BY BREEDER-TYPES FOR WHAT YOU'RE DOING TO US!

GIVE ME BACK WOLFY! GIVE ME BACK CIEL! GIVE ME BACK EVERYONE!

My jaw trembles, and my vision blurs from the tears, then I lay down on the sand and cover myself with my now dry clothes. Fuming with anger, I cry until my exhaustion pulls me into an uneasy slumber.

I wake up and gasp in fright. I forgot to set up a perimeter of [Proximity Warning] crystals.

I clutch my axe and jump up to my feet, then I shiver in fear when I notice that I haven't dressed myself yet.

I look around, but I don't find anything. I was just being paranoid.

But that was a big blunder… I don't even know if there are monsters nearby.

I grumble at myself and armor up, then I sit down and eat a conjured meal with my chocolate.

Ah… edible happiness.

The chocolate disappears so quickly from my hands that I almost ask myself if something didn't just steal it from me.

With a tired sigh, I get up and stretch. It's time to begin this trial.

Stupid pretentious idiot…

I cautiously follow the glowing path, wary of any sounds, but there's none I can hear besides my own.

The path abruptly ends in a green square corridor made of stone. There isn't any illumination, which forces me to cast my own [Spirit Light]. I didn't want to create a beacon of light that would reveal my position, but I don't have [Sense Presence], so whatever is out there will likely notice me before I notice them, anyway.

I take a look around the cave, but there's nowhere else to go, so I cautiously enter the corridor and follow it to wherever it'll take me.

The trial is starting.

I continue walking for a long time through the tall, wide corridor. It curves, bends, and weaves up and down, but I don't see anything except the smooth green stone. Not a light, not a sound, nothing.

My anxiety gradually deepens, and I feel my heart pounding inside my chest with every step. The clacking of my boots unnerves me as it echoes out, alerting whatever is listening that I'm coming, while I have no idea about what I might have to face in the trial.

Is there even anything here? This thought repeats inside my mind the longer I walk.

The tension lasts for so long that my muscles start to ache, so I massage my shoulders and try to think about other things to relax myself a little.

Is this an endurance test? Will you send monsters after me when I have my guard down? When I'm sleeping? When I'm relieving myself? Or is this just a way for you to play with my paranoia?

How much does the Dungeon Master know about me, anyway? Does he know about my anxiety? Does he know what I fear? Does he know my insecurities? He's only shown fragments of Earth knowledge, so it's not like he can literally read my thoughts, can he?

I nervously clench my fists.

I'm going to think myself to death if I continue like this. There's too little information to make any sort of assumptions. I'll just have to wait and see…

But I hate waiting…

I sigh tiredly.

I really want a plan I could use right now…

I hear something odd mixed in with the sound of my footsteps, so I stop to check my boots.

Or at least something to help me sco-…

I hear a single fleshy footstep after I stop. It came from right behind me.

I swing my axe as I turn, and I see a figure jump backward to dodge.

I immediately recognize it as a dark goblin-like monster. Its naked body is very thin and delicate, making it seem rather weak.

It's wielding a thin stabbing dagger that it promptly uses to silently attack me.

Fuck!

My axe has [Extend], so my reach allows me to safely sink the blade into its throat while its thin arms desperately try to stab me.

I dislodge the axe with a jerk, then I jump backward so that the bloodied Goblin Stalker can't stain me with its blood as it flops onto the floor.

It gurgles and chokes as it tries to crawl forward, but I finish it off with a chop into the back of its neck, paralyzing it.

It'll take a few more seconds for it to die from either blood loss or suffocation, but I don't want to wait here for that. I [Clean] my axe and quickly move on. This time, I keep looking behind me every few seconds.

I look back just in time to spot a Goblin Stalker jumping out of a hole in the floor. As soon as the monster lands, the hole shrinks down until it disappears in mere seconds.

I sink my axe into the goblin's head before it can even react, then I quickly finish it off and walk away.

This is terrible! Can they come up anywhere? If they can, then [Proximity Warning] won't work!

But why aren't they using these holes to make me trip? I'm pretty sure that I'd just walked over the spot where the previous hole appeared. They could've attempted hundreds of different ambushes with such abilities, so why haven't they?

Perhaps this is part of the trial. It's not to get the monsters to ambush and kill me, but just to wear me down with the constant threat o-…

I kill another Goblin Stalker coming out of a hole right beside me and hurriedly move on.

I stop to eat, and right when I conjure my meal, a Goblin comes out of a hole in the wall.

I grit my teeth in anger and crush its head with my hammer. Using an axe will spill too much blood, so it might be a better idea to use this form for now.

I won't get any sleep if this continues.

After eating, I hurry forward and rack my brains about how I can stay safe.

Perhaps I could use [Earth Wall] to build a closed room for me to sleep in, but if they can open holes wherever they want, then they might be able to get through my Wall. They could also try to suffocate me by closing all the breathing holes, or even just wait outside in massive numbers.

I'm in deep Skritter shit.

I turn a corner and immediately stop. I can see a small light far ahead floating in the air, and there seems to be someone under it.

"Who goes there?!" A female voice shouts, and I suddenly gasp.

"CIEL!" I scream her name and start running towards her.

"Lina?!"

I start crying as I'm overwhelmed with emotions.

That was cruel, Dungeon Master! Why did you separate us?! Why?! Why?! Why?! Wh-…

A hole opens up in front of me, and I almost fall into it. I have to activate [Wind Shield] to defend myself from the Goblin that leaps out of it, ready to stab me in the face.

I stop it in place with the enchantment, then I turn it off and bash the Goblin. I immediately follow up with a strike at its ribs, sending it flying off to the side due to how little it weighs.

I dash after it, then I nail the spike of my hammer into its head. I jerk it back out with a yank, then I continue running towards Ciel.

Behind her, I can see a small gray platform with Alissa, Roxanne, and Hana laying on it. They're all "sleeping."

"W-what happened?!" I yell as I get closer, my happiness of meeting Ciel again is snuffed out like a [Spirit Light].

"They're alive…" She reassures me, her face stern and slightly anxious.

I run past her and stop just before the platform. Alissa's armor is bloodied, Hana's body is naked and covered with nasty burns, but Roxanne looks like she's completely fine.

"But…?" I ask worriedly as I stop close to them.

She hesitates for an uncomfortably long second before nervously answering, "I don't know what's wrong with them… and I can't cast [Heal] because I'm completely out of mana."

I bite my lip and turn to her. "Do you need HP or MP potions? I still have nearly all of mine."

She shakes her head and immediately looks away. "I don't need it. I've already given them enough, so any more will just be toxic to them."

"Okay…" I lower my head sadly and fidget, but Ciel doesn't let me rest.

Her stern voice suddenly wakes me right up, "Lina! Keep your head up! There ar-… GOBLIN!"

I breathe in deeply and look towards where she's pointing. Past the platform, a Goblin Stalker is rapidly approaching.

"Protect them!" Ciel orders, and I immediately obey, making quick work of the weak monster.

I look at her and notice that she doesn't have a weapon.

"You'll have to protect me," she states, sounding very irritable, then she touches the platform, and it starts to float. "Let's move!"

I keep an eye out in every direction while she pushes the platform forward. The number of Goblin Stalkers coming out of holes increases, so I can't even spare a moment to relax and talk about what happened.

It's not like Ciel would know, anyway. She says that she found them all already like this.

What kind of trial is this…?

"Another! Get it!" Ciel shouts and points at a Goblin.

"Lina! Kill it!" She shrieks when another one comes too close.

"Another one! Get it!" She orders me to chase after one that's far away.

"What are you doing?! There's another one coming!" She jerks me out of my short rest.

"LINA! Over there!" She startles my tired body awake.

"LINA! Are you even paying attention?! Don't let them get close to us!" She chastises me for slacking.

"Y-yes!" I exclaim and shoot up immediately.

I finish the Goblin off and look at her, expecting to see her reassuring eyes, but they hold nothing but irritability and anxiety.

I lower my head and silently walk back to the platform. None of the sister-wives seem to have changed in the least, but at least their chests are still moving up and down.

I see that Hana's wounds haven't changed at all, so I frown and turn to Ciel. "W-why haven't Hana's wounds healed even slightly yet?" I shyly ask.

She huffs angrily and berates me, "I'm the healer here, Lina. Do you want to do my job?"

I look down in shame. "I'm just… asking…"

"I don't need you second-guessing me," she growls.

Her anger-filled words make my heart tighten with pain, and I become belligerent. "I'm not second-guessing! I just want to help."

"But you aren't!" She shouts, then she grits her teeth and pushes the platform harder. "We just need to get out of here before the Goblins can overwhelm us!"

Why is she acting like this? She hasn't smiled even once.

I grab the platform and easily push it against her, nearly making her tumble backward, then I confront her, "Hasn't your mana recovered even a little? You should try to at least heal Hana's smaller wounds. Look how wounded she is!"

It's light… the platform is so light…

"Get your hands off the platform! We have to keep moving!" She ignores me and shoves the platform forward.

I don't even need to use [Spirit of Gaia] to hold it back against her, but I still get out of the way and let her continue pushing it forward.

"Why aren't you trying to [Heal] them?" I insist.

She suddenly stops and turns to glare at me. "Because it doesn't work!" She shouts angrily, then she buries her face in her hands in frustration and groans. "Nothing works! I tried it until my mana ran out, but nothing works!"

"How…? I drank an HP potion for my headache, and it worked…" I frown and hold my chin in thought. "Can you test it on me, too?"

She shakes her head and resumes pushing the platform. "I'm not wasting any mana on you."

Why are you acting like this…?!

I steel my heart and interrogate her, "Ciel, it's been hours. Even I've recovered a lot of my MP during this time. What's wrong with you?"

She snorts and growls, "There's nothing wrong with me."

I press on, "Yes, there is. You're angrier than I've ever seen you before."

"That's because three of the wives are passed out, I can't heal anyone, I don't have a weapon, the Goblins won't stop coming, and you just keep pestering me all the time!" She throws her hands up in frustration, then she rests her head on the platform and goes quiet.

The fire in my heart is snuffed out by guilt and sadness, so I lower my head. "I'm sorry…" I whisper.

"Let's just continue moving forward," she gently responds with a sigh, but I can still sense that she's holding back her irritability.

I look at Hana's burned body and frown. Alissa is also wounded, but all the blood on her armor has dried, so at least there aren't any external wounds.

I get close to the platform and focus my single point in [Sense Mana] on Hana.

"What are you doing…?" Ciel asks with a dangerous tone.

I feel nothing coming from her. When someone's being healed by an HP potion, some particles of mana are emitted, and it's really noticeable with external wounds because half of the potion should always be poured on the wound.

Hana's wounds are completely dry, and there's no indication that a potion was ever used on her.

I turn to Ciel, and she just stares back at me in silence, her eyes slowly returning to their seriousness and anger from before.

There's something really wrong with you.

I open my [Item Box] and pull out a Fast-Acting HP potion.

"Lina…" Ciel threatens me.

I uncork it and bring the potion towards Hana.

Ciel grabs my wrist and pulls my hand away. "Do you want her to suffer from the toxicity?! I already told you: I gave them all HP potions!" She growls at me, her eyes trying to stab into me with their fury.

She's never been angry like this before. Not even when people blasphemed against the empire or the Gods.

I push against her hold on me and effortlessly pour part of the potion onto Hana. Ciel tries to stop me, but she's so weak that I can barely feel her trying to pull me back.

"You stupid…!" She scowls at me, barely containing her anger. "Why did you do that?! I told you that they're going to suffer from toxicity!"

I pull my hand away from her, and she immediately releases me, then I glare back at her and frown worriedly. "What happened to you? You're so weak, and you haven't fought the Goblins even once!"

"You expect me to fight without a weapon?! Without MP?!" She questions flippantly and snorts.

"What's wrong with your mana organ? Even I've recovered some of my MP."

"There's nothing wrong with my mana organ," she immediately replies.

"THEN HEAL THEM!" I angrily shout at her.

She raises her hand and slaps me. My helmet absorbs it entirely, so I barely even feel it.

I adjust my helmet and glare daggers at her, facing off with her scowl like a brat before a Lord. "There's something really wrong with you. You're unfit to lead," I firmly state.

She's taken aback for a moment, but then she starts chuckling, then laughing, and she keeps increasing in volume. It becomes a deep-bellied laugh, as if I'd just told her the funniest joke she'd ever heard.

She suddenly slams her gauntlets down on the platform in rage and scowls at me like an angry goblin. "And what will you do if I say 'no'…?" She hisses at me.

Her helmet is hiding most of her face, but it's clearly visible to me that she's as angry as a berserking dragonkin. I didn't even think it was possible for her to ever get this angry… especially at me…

But I won't let her trample over me, not when the safety of the harem is at risk. I straighten my posture, becoming steadfast, and face her as I return the glare, defiant against her insanity. "I'll force you to obey."

"You wouldn't dare…" She enunciates threateningly.

I grab my hammer and turn it into an axe, then I pull my gauntlet mostly off and slit my palm. I show her the wound that immediately starts to bleed, then I pour some of the HP potion onto my hand.

A characteristically-flavored mana immediately starts to be emitted from the wound as it slowly heals and closes up.

"There is something wrong with you! Admit it!" I yell, my voice almost breaking up from the pain I feel in my heart.

Her anger seems to cool off, leaving only a grim dread behind. "You'll get us all killed like this. You're going insane."

My mouth trembles in disbelief as my voice fully cracks. "Me? Me…? Insane…?"

She smiles triumphantly and crosses her arms. "That's right, you. You've been defying me all this time, you've ignored my orders, and you're compromising their health by carelessly throwing potions at them!" She gesticulates wildly and points to the wives.

I stare at Hana's skin, paying attention to her wounds. They're not healing, and neither is the potion taking effect.

I suddenly climb onto the platform, then I give Hana's leg a small cut. Ciel grabs me and throws me away from the platform.

"WHAT ARE YOU DOING? HAVE YOU GONE COMPLETELY INSANE?" She bellows, and I even feel her spittle flying at me.

I quickly get back up and ignore her, then I look at the wound I made. It bleeds for a moment, then it starts to visibly heal and emit the same mana as my palm did when I cut myself.

I glare in distrust at Ciel and growl, "Are they really our sister-wives? Are you really Ciel?"

Her anger vanishes within a mere second again, returning to the cold and grim dread. "What kind of question is that?" She asks in a low, stern tone.

I brighten my [Spirit Light], and Ciel reflexively takes a step backward.

I grab the ball of light and fill it mana, then I throw it towards her and release the spell.

Ciel yelps and covers her face, then she falls back onto her ass and yells, "LINA, WHAT ARE YOU DOING?!"

I cast another [Spirit Light] and throw at her, making her scream in pain again.

"STOP!" She pleads, but I cast it once more and throw it at her, making her scream even louder.

"Monsters are weak to [Spirit Light]…" I mutter, then I see a single, hateful eye stare back at me from behind her hands.

I cast the spell one more time and throw it at the wives. They all suddenly scream in pain and jump off the platform.

I raise my axe and bury it into Hana's head, then I immediately cast multiple [Earth Bullet]s at each of the Sinne Ompia. They're a rare monster in Mountainhome that can copy someone's body and demeanor after drinking some of their blood.

I raise my axe and chop down repeatedly, the steel blade quickly stained red with monster blood.

YOU DARE TAINT THEIR IMAGE WITH YOUR ABHORRENT ACTING?!

YOU DARE TASTE THEIR NOBLE BLOOD WITH YOUR FILTHY, UNHOLY TONGUES?!

YOU FUCKING DARE USE THEM AGAINST ME?!

I'LL FUCKING KILL YOU! FUCK YOU! FUCK YOU! FUCK YOU…!

My rage gradually fades away, and with it goes my drive to ravage their bodies.

I [Clean] the blood off of my face, then I lean on my axe as I catch my breath.

I'm lucky that these faceless monsters weren't the Hunter sub-type. The one impersonating Ciel would have killed me the moment I turned my back to it.

I look around and wait, but no Goblin Stalker comes to take a bite out of the hellish landscape of carnage I just hacked together.

So… is the trial over? Did I pass?

Nothing seems to happen, so I turn my gaze to the floating platform.

What was the point of this? I doubt it's just a convenient tool to transport the Sinne that were pretending to be passed out.

I walk up to it, my boots making wet sounds on the way as they step in the partially-dried monster blood, but I don't care anymore. Whatever is still out there would've easily heard the horrific cries of agony from the Sinne. A "little" more blood on me doesn't change anything.

I touch the platform, then it glows, and I'm teleported away.

A note from Manasong

Hall of Fame of Patrons

The patrons who support Rupegia shall have their names sung by the bards for they deserve the glory and honor. Their names are:

Prince PreownedFIN.

Lord Andrew Meyers.

Lord Samuel Lim.

Lord Bill.

Lord Novgarod.

Lord DJ.

Lord Ashadun.

Lord Michale Erwin.

Lord Bakerdea.

Lord D4rk Sheep.

Lord Nathan Vanbrunt.

Lord Maurice.

Lord Krawn.

Lord Empyrean.

Lord Mattirro Draca.

Lord Joshua Tal.

Lord Colorblind.

Lord RottenTangerine.

Lord Cidant.

Lord Fullmoon.

Lord Joxsan Herrera.

Lord The_Cultural_Weeb_Otaku.

Lord Sean Drake.

Noble Salty Panda.

Noble Mild Fracas.

Noble EESDESESESRDT.

Noble Aclys.

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Noble Shawn Plumley.

Noble Kale Daley.

Noble Stellerbattle.

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Chapter 85: Trials - Aoi

"You are now level 1."

I wake up and cry. I don't know why I'm sad, but I just feel like crying.

I walk out of the water and flop down onto the sandy shore.

"Wolfy…?" I ask in my soul space, but he doesn't answer. "Alissa? Hana? Ciel? Lina? Yunia?"

Confusion mixes in with my sadness, then comes panic, followed by anger, and it ends with pure exhaustion.

As the waves of emotions fade, only sadness remains. It crushes my heart and paralyzes my body. I don't understand what's happening to me, I only know that it hurts. It just hurts too much.

I cry until I fall asleep, then I wake up and continue crying until my tears dry up, then I fall asleep again.

I dream of the void, of floating in the empty darkness. I don't move, I don't feel, and I don't live.

This dream is the only way to make the pain in my heart stop, so I sleep as much as I can.

My mouth gets too dry, and then my head starts to hurt, so I drink some water from the river and go back to sleep.

My stomach growls, and my body begs for food, so I pull out a magic tool and conjure a bland meal.

The pain in my heart only increases, and my mind demands something that I simply don't have, so I decide to end it all.

I pull out a dagger from my [Item Box], then I awkwardly try to stab my heart with it. The blade slides away and escapes my claws, then it falls onto the green sand. It didn't even scratch my scales.

I stare down at the dagger until my muscles give out, then I flop back down on the sand and go to sleep.

I dream of the void again. There's only me, and nothing else. There's only peace, and a short break from the pain.

Suddenly, like rainy clouds parting to let the sun peek through, the eye of something appears in the void. Its presence is overwhelming, humbling, and it makes feel like a hatchling again.

Its gaze blasts everything with its blinding radiance and scorching heat, then it looks at me.

My sadness, anger, confusion, and panic are all reduced to ash, then they're blasted again, now vanishing entirely.

For a moment, I feel like I'm back to when Wolfy first used [Bind] on me. I feel happy, energetic, hopeful, and even more ferocious than I am… or was.

The eye closes, and the presence is gone, along with all the good feelings it gave me. I'm left alone in the void again, but instead of peace, now I only feel shame.

I wake up and stare at the glowing path in the green sand.

Guilt fills my mind, and for the first time in a long while, I feel like moving.

I try to get up, but my legs tremble and fail. Frustration reignites the fire in my heart, and stubbornness fills my limbs with energy again.

I fall, but I get up again and continue pushing onward.

Little by little, I make my way forward, slowly regaining control over both my body and my emotions.

Shame and frustration make way for bitterness, and my jaw trembles as a flicker of draconic rage shows itself again.

I've failed as a dragon by letting my body get into this state. I've failed as a monster by letting my sadness paralyze me. I've failed as a humanoid by letting the pain make me wish for death.

I leave the dagger and my armor behind because I just can't carry them with my body in this state. I must leave this place before the void tries to steal me away again.

The glowing path leads me to a green corridor, and it makes me happy to finally get away from the sand. As I move along, I realize how itchy I am because of the sand that got under my scales and now rubs against my skin.

I hate sand.

I conjure a ball of water and rub it all over my body to wash away the sand. Using my magic like this exercises my mana organ, which feels similar to stretching.

I play around with my ball of water and snort at my actions. For such a simple and silly thing to make me happy, what's happened to me? Where did my dignity go?

I cast [Spirit Light] and enter the corridor.

My draconic anger stirs again as I begin to realize just how pathetic I was, and it gives me the drive to face the next obstacle: stairs.

For as far as my [Spirit Light] can reach, I see nothing but steps leading me upwards.

My weakened body has some trouble going up, but I don't give up, continuing to climb them until my muscles give out.

I sleep right there on the steps, then I wake up and continue climbing.

My muscles slowly return to their previous strength, then I spread my wings and relearn how to fly.

Eventually, the stairs lead into another corridor, then I see a light far ahead and decide to land.

I look for my halberd in my [Item Box] and discover that I don't have it anymore.

Where did it go…?

I don't have any weapons besides my claws, so I cautiously make my way forward.

The corridor comes to an end, and I exit into a grassland. The blue sky, the warm, but fake, sun, the gentle breeze, the green grass under my feet. Experiencing these small pleasures makes me cry again, and not because of sadness, but because of happiness.

My heart still feels like it's been ripped out of my chest, but at least something else seems to be growing in there.

I spread my wings wide and fly upwards, enjoying the freedom it gives me.

I fly up and up and up, then I notice something near the horizon. It looks like a small forest, but it's too far away for me to know for sure.

I continue flying upwards, then a lightning bolt strikes me. Not just a mere [Lightning Bolt] spell, but something a lot more powerful, strong enough to make me growl in pain.

My wings lock up, and I lose my control over the wind. I start falling because I can't even glide like this, and it takes me a few seconds to regain control.

I look up, but I don't see anything that could've been the source of the lightning. There's only white clouds, blue sky, and the fake sun.

It could've been the "sun" that attacked me, but I don't really believe that. I don't feel any sort of leftover mana from the attack.

I try to rise up again, this time watching for anything hostile, but I'm suddenly struck by lightning again, and I couldn't see where it came from.

Stubbornness fills my mind, and I repeat it a few times, trying whatever I can think of to better understand what's going on, but my lizard brain doesn't help me even slightly. The lightning strikes me in random spots every time, but I can't predict where it'll come from next to be able to spot its source.

The Dungeon Master is just playing with me.

My body starts to fail me again, so I give up on going higher and just glide towards the small forest.

I see an odd mix of trees and a variety of underbrush, but I know very little about plants, so I can't even identify them.

I explore the forest a bit and discover a lake, then I notice a few fish swimming in it, so I immediately dive for a meal.

Meat isn't as good raw as when it's cooked, but it's still delicious, and I eat all the fish I can until my stomach is nearly bloated.

The lake is both pretty wide and fairly deep, but it only has fish in it, so I get out to explore the forest some more.

I find a huge rock with red spots all over it. Something from Wolfy's knowledge tickles my mind about it, but I ignore it for now.

Near the rock, I notice a circular gray platform made of smooth stone. I touch it and prod it, but nothing happens.

There's something weird about this forest. I don't know what it is, but something is starting to "itch" inside me as I look around at all the different plants.

I lay down in a clearing and soak up the sunlight while I take a nap.

Some rain wakes me up, so I try to build a shelter using what I know about [Earth Magic], but I can only use this magic destructively, so I give up on that.

I walk under a tree, and the itching becomes more intense. It makes me feel restless, and I get a growing desire to do something, so I start ripping branches off the other nearby trees and forcefully stab them into mine, creating a proper shelter from the rain for myself.

I use my fire to dry the area under the shelter, then I go to sleep.

After a short sleep, I wake up feeling restless again, so I decide to fly some more, but this time, I barely get above the trees before I'm struck back down by lightning again. I crash onto the grass and glare up at the sun.

What's the meaning of this…? Why aren't I allowed to fly?

I look for the exit of the corridor that I came from, but it's not there anymore. I'm stuck here now.

I return to my dry shelter and grumble to myself.

What is the purpose of this place?

I mutter all the swear words that I've ever heard Hana say and curse the Dungeon Master as I try to figure out what's going on.

My eyes are drawn to the reddish rock, and I stare at it in curiosity. There's just something that's drawing my attention both towards it and towards all the different plants here.

I start tapping the ground anxiously, and my claws quickly ruin the grass, revealing the dirt underneath it.

My limbs complain a bit due to the lack of soft bedding, so I make a bed of leaves for myself. I remove the grass and carefully dry everything with my fire breath so that it won't rot because of moisture.

The wind is still humid and cold, so I rip out even more branches from the other trees and use them to create a wall around my nest.

As I collect the branches, I realize that one of the tree types is very fragile, so I cut that kind down and rest some of them against the tree trunk beside my nest, creating a small lean-to.

There are some long, fibrous plants near the lake, so I cut them down, dry them out, then I use them to secure all of the thin white logs that make up my hut.

It turns out that I was just in time, since the strong wind then starts to blow away the leaves I spread around, leaving me with just the logs.

I get hungry again, so I use my water ball to capture a few fishies. Just when I'm about to go back to cook them, I recognize a plant, so I uproot it, revealing a bulb of Cilrag.

Nice.

I also realize that I don't have any salt, so I release my water ball and form a new one with the lake's water, then I blow my fire into it, boiling it off until I'm left with a small amount of salt.

Hehehehehehe. I giggle at my own ingenuity.

I get back to my nest and frown. I don't have a cutting board or any proper clean surface to prepare my meal on, so I make another bed of leaves and [Clean] them. I also don't have a bowl to make soup in, so it'll just be roasted fish today.

I gut them and scrape off their scales, then I season them as well as I can. I build a campfire, then I manage to skewer them with a few sticks and arrange them over the flames.

The rain returns, and it nearly puts out my fire, forcing me to keep blowing my own fire into it. I need more room and an actual roof over my head.

I succeed in cooking the fish thoroughly, and I even singe the pointy bits, just like the Hana does.

I happily eat my meal, then I lay down in my nest and relax.

Today was a nice day, but my "itch" hasn't been scratched yet. I need to work more.

I wake up to a clear sunny sky and get to work. I immediately notice that all of the thin trees that I cut down yesterday have completely regrown, so I cut down some trees again today. The fish have also been replenished, so at least I have a good source of meat.

I start securing the thin white logs together with even more of that fibrous plant, but there are too many logs, and the ties start to break.

I could just use more of it to make a strong rope, but I don't think that would be safe. I really don't want my roof to collapse on me while I'm asleep, so I start carving slots into the logs with my claws.

They really aren't suited for this sort of thing, so I try out using my magic, but I also lack the necessary finesse with it to make precise cuts. My spells are all for combat or occasional comfort, not for crafting.

I look at the reddish stone and get an idea.

Doesn't metal come from rock? Can I make tools out of it?

I really don't feel like trying that just yet, so I finish carving the slots and build a tall frame for my hut, then I layer my new roof with dried plants and leaves.

Building the walls with thin logs seems like a bad idea. The wind here is strong and cold, so I need something solid, like…

I search through my memories for what Wolfy liked to observe about buildings.

I could try using bricks, but I don't know how to make them or how to secure them together. I could try using logs, but they're either too big or too small for this. I could try using cement, but I don't know how to mix that. I could try to grow a hollow tree, but I don't know that spell. I could try using planks, but they're just processed logs. I could try using rocks, but they're just raw bricks. I could try earth, but…

I look towards the lake.

Well, I can't grow earth, but I can certainly pack it and dry it out, like with ceramics.

I go to the lake and pull up large chunks of mud with my ball of water, then I throw it to the area near my hut's frame. I pack it up with my claws to fill out the frame of my hut, then I pull the water out with magic and heat it with my fire.

I spend all day doing this, and I manage to build a nice hut that's protected from both the wind and the rain.

I try to quickly make a pot with the mud and my magic, but I fail miserably. It crumbles apart easily, and it's too hard to pull all the water out magically, so I'll have to use the campfire to dry it out.

After that, I hunt some more fish and find some wild Tomafingers. I don't really like veggies, but there's nothing else to eat right now besides them or [Conjure Bland Meal], so I just shrug and try to make a simple salad. I don't have oil or any other interesting seasonings, but after a long day working in the mud, it still tastes amazing.

I shape a few more pots and arrange them in the campfire, then I cover them with some logs to keep the fire going while I sleep.

I wake up and eagerly check on my pots. Those that were properly buried under the logs have become much stronger and are actually usable while those that were at the edges are still a bit crumbly.

With my new pots, I make Tomafinger soup for breakfast. I hum happily as I cook, finding an odd sort of pleasure in using my pots, not just something that was bought for me.

My bed, my hut, my food, my pots, my seasonings, my meal. All created by my own claws.

Claws…

Humanoid fingers can't rip and tear like my claws, but a dragon's claws can't wield tools and build things like fingers can.

I want hands.

I go out and find an odd plant by the lake. It's a small and fluffy brown ball that reminds me of cotton. I suddenly get a great idea in my small lizard brain, then I collect these plants and bring them back to my nest.

I dry them out just a little, then I dig a rectangular hole in the dirt just as wide as I am and stuff it with the brown fluff. After that, I just cover it with some leaves, and now my bed is much softer and more pleasant to sleep on.

What would Wolfy say…? "Updrages"…?

I shape a big pot, then I fire it and use it to decant and filter the mud to purify some clay so that I can make better quality pottery.

I dig a hole in the ground and fill it with brown stuffing, then I put all of my new higher-quality pottery inside, cover it with logs, and fire them until they're done. Now I have actual plates to prepare and eat my meals on.

I weave the fibrous plants into a blanket, and it actually warms me up a bit. I also make a few baskets to store my food and other things.

I make a table and a chair with the thin logs, then I make another blanket to cover the table.

I start searching for any plants that I might recognize, and I easily find a wide variety of veggies and seasonings to improve my meals.

I find cane, so I compress it with rocks until a very sweet juice comes out that I then dry to get sugar.

I find some berries that I put in a jug along with the sugar and some water, then I try to use [Grow] to ferment it. I partially succeed since I actually manage to make an alcoholic drink, but the taste is kinda bad and weird.

I find lots of grain, and I start testing ways to dehusk it. I discover that drying and hammering them seems to do the job, so I make myself a mortar and pestle with some of the logs.

The husks are so light that they get blown away by the wind, so I make a colander with the fibrous plants and start sieving the hammered tillers and stems. Tossing it up into the air and flapping my wings gently seems to be enough to blow the husks away while leaving most of the grain behind.

Now I have some grain that I grind down into flour so that I can make some bread. I build a small clay oven and bake the bread until it's perfectly golden. I don't have anything to make it rise, so it's only flatbread, but it's still quite good.

I remember that yeast is some sort of fungus, so I decide to try to ferment some flour, and I get a few weird results. After some horribly bad tasting ones, I discover one that makes my bread rise. Now I have actual bread.

I work all day every day to bring myself more comfort, and although the "itch" inside me only grows stronger the more I create, it also fills me with a sort of energy that's almost as strong as my draconic rage.

I become so absorbed in crafting that I forget about everything else, and my only desire now is to continue crafting, to continue building, to continue using my hands… claws, to work.

But I still lack the necessary tools to truly build something that will last.

I look down at the rock, then I decide that it's time to take on this challenge.

I blow it apart with a concentrated [Earth Bullet], then I pick up the pieces and shatter them too until I only have small rocks left.

I dig a ground kiln and try to melt them down, but the level of heat produced by the wood fire simply isn't enough. I just get some weird half-molten chunks from this approach.

I try to blow my own fire into the kiln, but I don't have enough mana to melt it all down, so I try to think of another way to do this.

Wolfy's memories say that fire is fuel, oxygen, and heat. I can increase the heat with my fire, I can increase the oxygen with my wind, but how can I increase the fuel?

I look down at the logs and focus on them.

Water is bad. I need to dry them out and remove all the water I can.

I remember that Wolfy likes to roast meat with charcoal, but what is charcoal? Then I remember that the logs that get buried in the fireplace can be burned twice.

Wait, isn't that charcoal?

The beginnings of an idea starts to form in my small lizard brain.

I set lots of wood on fire in a pit, then cover it all with soil, and familiar black and burnt logs are left behind once that's done. I light one up and can clearly see that it burns at a much higher temperature than the usual logs. I've created charcoal.

I make another attempt at melting the rock, using a kiln with a hole in the top to let the air flow through.

After half a day of blowing fire into it with the charcoal, I'm left with a weird burnt ball of something. It's harder than the rocks, and it deforms when I shoot an [Earth Bullet] at it, so I'm certain that it's a chunk of impure metal.

If only I knew [Manipulate Metal].

I heat it up again and try to rip it apart. It takes a full day of hitting, bending, and grunting, but I manage to rip off two small chunks with just my claws.

Hehehehehe. Wolfy and Hana would be so proud, while Lina would be horrified.

The first chunk is made into a hammer, and I blow so much fire onto the other one that it almost melts, then I use the hammer to shape it into an axe head while it's hot. After that, I cool it down, then I use a flat rock and some water to sharpen it.

I carve a handle with a socket for it and manage to secure them together with the fibrous plant.

I stand up on my hind legs and raise it high into the air.

"HAHAHAHAHAHAHA! SEE, LINA?! I'VE DONE IT! I'VE FORGED SOMETHING!"

I rush over to a thick tree, then I chop the axe into its trunk, making a clean and surprisingly deep cut.

"YES, YES, YE-…"

I chop into the trunk again, but the axe slips out of my hand due to my bad grip.

The fire in my heart cools off a little as I start to realize something.

Everything I've created so far was for a humanoid, not a dragon. The bed is rectangular, not circular; the blanket is small, and it's uncomfortable to curl up under it; the chairs are squared, and not the right shape for a quadruped; the table is too tall, forcing me to use the chair; the hut is like a humanoid's house, not a… "dragon's house." Do dragons even make houses?

I'm a breeder-type, so I've always had the desire to live in a house among civilization, but… why haven't I tried to blow this tree away with my might? I could've doubled my size and used magic to cut it down if I needed to, so why the fuck did I make a metal axe?

I look down at my rough "hand" and chipped claws. Out of all of my body parts, these are the only ones that I truly hate.

I grab the axe again and chop.

After a few hits, it slips from my grasp.

I grab the axe again and chop.

After a few hits, my claws dig into the wood, then it slips from my grasp.

I grab the axe again and chop.

After a few hits, the shaft breaks in two.

I make a new handle and chop.

I don't care what I am, I just want hands! I just want to create, to build, to craft! I just want to be a humanoid!

I cover my body with my mana organ and force a transformation, then a horrible pain wracks my whole body, and I pass out.

A note from Manasong

Hall of Fame of Patrons

The patrons who support Rupegia shall have their names sung by the bards for they deserve the glory and honor. Their names are:

Prince PreownedFIN.

Lord Andrew Meyers.

Lord Samuel Lim.

Lord Bill.

Lord Novgarod.

Lord DJ.

Lord Ashadun.

Lord Michale Erwin.

Lord Bakerdea.

Lord D4rk Sheep.

Lord Nathan Vanbrunt.

Lord Maurice.

Lord Krawn.

Lord Empyrean.

Lord Mattirro Draca.

Lord Joshua Tal.

Lord Colorblind.

Lord RottenTangerine.

Lord Cidant.

Lord Fullmoon.

Lord Joxsan Herrera.

Lord The_Cultural_Weeb_Otaku.

Lord Sean Drake.

Noble Salty Panda.

Noble Mild Fracas.

Noble EESDESESESRDT.

Noble Aclys.

Noble Jordon Gotthold.

Noble Tyler Mills.

Noble Shawn Plumley.

Noble Kale Daley.

Noble Stellerbattle.

Leave a rating or a review to help me rise to the top or fix my shameful understanding of prose.

Take a look over my blog where all information of the world of Rupegia will be posted.

Join the Discord and discuss, or rant, or meme, or try and fight me so your waifu gets more screentime.

Become a Patron and read chapters in advance, or read the side-stories, or leave your mark on the story, or help choose the next artwork or the next side-story.

Chapter 85: Trials - Yunia

"You are now level 45."

I suddenly awaken and try to sit up, but my body protests because of the pain, so I stay put, laying on the sand.

"Wolfy, you can summon me now," I mutter, but there's no response.

I try to find the little hole inside my mind to talk through, but there's nothing there, only darkness.

Oh, no…

I sigh and manage to sit up, then I cough to purge the water from my lungs, and a pounding headache flares up.

I sigh again, then I pull out and drink one of Roxanne's HP potions. It tastes like a mixture of berries and leaves a warm feeling in my mouth, and once it reaches my stomach, that warmth quickly spreads throughout my body.

This is some really high-quality stuff. It's weird to think of that bitch as such a good potion-maker.

I chuckle to myself, then I sigh a third time and weakly crawl away from the shore.

"And you told me not to worry, that nothing could block [Bind], that we'd never get into danger," my voice echoes through the cave as I complain to the void.

I flop down when I reach dry sand, then I wait until my body stops hurting to take off my armor and warm myself up with a [Fireball].

"I can't really complain since I'd do the same if I were you…" I mumble to myself with a frown.

I notice the glowing crystal path in the green sand and observe it curiously.

A trap? Or perhaps an invitation…? No, a trial. We were deliberately separated, weren't we?

The fellowship bond is gone, too, but my "Companions" tab hasn't changed.

How is that even possible?

I smile as I imagine Ciel throwing a fit from knowing that the Dungeon Master is blocking the system created by the Gods.

Wait, doesn't Wolfy have some sort of curse where he can't stay away from Alissa for too long?

Now I can easily imagine her worrying about the other wives losing their [Bind], too.

Yeah, that isn't remotely funny…

As soon as I dry everything off, I put my armor back on again, then I draw my longsword and follow the crystal path.

The only thing I can do to help is to finish this as soon as possible and reunite with everyone.

We're stronger together…

The path leads me to a huge dome of green bricks with just a single, small entrance.

I peek inside and see a huge, dimly lit room populated with pillars, chest-high walls, and raised platforms all arranged in an obvious pattern. I've seen something like this before: this is an arena.

Really? A combat trial?

I circle the dome and search for another way out of this cave, but there's none I can find besides going back up the rapids I fell through or tunneling through solid rock.

What do you want me to prove? I was truly worthy of the title of Chosen Descendant. I've killed more humanoids and monsters than I can count. I've already proved myself as a warrior time and time again.

No… there must be something else. So be it, then, let us fight.

I eat my chocolate and prepare myself for the trial. I'll face it head-on, and I won't dare to try to predict what the Dungeon Master is thinking.

I swallow an Eia pill, then I cautiously enter the arena.

I sense very little ambient mana in here, and I can't sense any traces of Life. For now, I'm completely alone.

I reach the center and notice a small and circular gray platform right in the center of the arena. It's made of solid, smooth stone.

Awfully peculiar.

I step on it, then I hear stone sliding against stone followed by a dull thump. I look back towards the exit and discover that it's now closed.

Let's get this over with, already.

Almost as if it were an answer to my wish, I feel a disturbance in the web of Life, but nothing appears according to my [Sense Presence]. There's something hiding in here.

My heartbeat quickens, and I relax my muscles to prepare myself to react instantly, then I cautiously make my way towards where I think the source of the disturbance was.

The way is full of obstacles and places for the enemy to hide, which quickly increases the tension of this situation.

I cast [Mask] to control myself, and my emotions fade into the background, leaving me with my full mental capacity. It doesn't matter if the enemy can sense the mana leaking from this spell, I want it to come to me so that we can fight already.

I reach the location that I think the disturbance came from and start searching for traces of Life.

[Sense Presence] can be countered by [Hide Presence], but you can't completely nullify the connection with it, so it leaves a noticeable "negative space." I believe Alissa can sense that due to her notably higher [Sense Presence], but she can't identify what is actually hiding, so she only knows that something is hiding their presence. It works best in places filled with Life, like a forest, or a mist-covered landscape. In this empty arena, though, searching for that "negative space" is like trying to figure out which leaf will be rustled by a breeze.

Every time two beings with Life interact with each other, their Sources of Life connect along with their Threads of Fate, and that connection leaves a trace when it ends, which is said to be "spent" mana particles. They contain information about what has happened, but they lack the power to affect reality or sustain their existence, so they quickly decay after being emitted and rejoin the Cycle. But in the end, finding these traces is still easier than relying on my [Sense Presence].

I comb the area in search of any Life, managing to find a single wisp. The feeling I get from it makes me believe that something fleshy is out there, but someone with [Tracking] might've extracted more information from it than I did.

My Life connects with another, and [Precognition] activates. My Fate is to have my back be hit by the being's large fist, so I grab the Thread and force it to change. I immediately react and spin around to face it as I swing my longsword.

My blade bites into something fleshy, and a long, pale arm is cleanly severed. The being that attacked me immediately jumps backward and grips its stump, but it doesn't let out a single sound of pain. The feeling I get from the blood that pours out tells me that it's a monster, but that'd be easy to guess just from its appearance.

I see a naked and pale human-like monster without a face. Its head has three pure black eyes, extremely thin lips, a mouth full of teeth, and two slits for nostrils. It doesn't even have nipples or genitals. Its body is thin, its limbs are long, and they seem to be bowed.

It lunges forward, and I decapitate it before it can touch me.

What a horrifying creature.

Another disturbance in the Life of the area pulls me away from observing the corpse, and I start searching for the monster.

This time, it drops down onto me from a platform above, and I reflexively cast [Earth Bullet] at its face before it can even touch me.

It spins in the air, hits the back of its head on the brick floor, then passes out, so I quickly finish it off.

As I clean the blood from my sword, another creature appears, now right behind me, and it immediately strikes.

I use MP to strengthen our Life connection, then I forcefully push some of my Life out through it and wrap around his Source with my Life. I activate [Chain Life], and the monster freezes as its Source is disrupted in a similar manner to a [Disruption Field].

The spell only lasts for a split second since it was simply too hastily made to resist any attempts to interrupt it, but it's still enough to allow me to decapitate the monster.

Its body falls limply to the ground, and I recover all of my Life before it's lost from our connection being broken.

I clean their blood off of my sword again as I watch their bodies turn black, then disintegrate into smoke. The dungeon is reclaiming them to keep the arena from getting cluttered with corpses.

The monsters continue to appear in random spots, clearly trying to ambush me, but my senses are too sharp and [Precognition] is too powerful.

When they interrupt my dinner, a chilling realization washes through me: they won't let me sleep.

I search for a way out, but there's no sign of a lever or any sort of exit. I try to break my way out through the wall, but the bricks repair themselves faster than I can destroy them.

This test doesn't seem to be about my ability to escape, but to survive.

I go back to the center of the arena and stand on the gray platform, then I sit down on my left leg while leaving my right foot planted on the floor. My sword remains drawn with one hand holding it tight, ready to strike. This way, I can relax my body while still maintaining a posture that's ready for battle.

I drink an MP potion, then I close my eyes and let my [Precognition] and [Sense Presence] keep watch for me. [Mask] will have to stay on so that my will won't crack from the tension.

I feel a connection to my Life, and I instantly react.

I spring to my feet and slash, then a head falls to the ground. I clean my sword and return to my resting position.

Hours pass, and I manage to get some light sleep that's repeatedly interrupted by the Faceless Men.

I open my eyes, only to see Wolfy's head falling from his shoulders.

"AAAAAH!" I shriek and jump backward, then the dungeon starts reclaiming his body. "What in the Hell was that…?"

The next Faceless Man has Alissa's body.

I wrinkle my nose in revulsion as I watch her dead body dissipate into nothing. My [Mask] breaks, and I start to rant, "I'm extremely disgusted with this trial, Dungeon Master. It's distasteful to use the faces of my loved ones against me in this way. I see no purpose in this callous trial!"

I immediately cast [Mask] again before my anger gets me killed.

I kill Wolfy and each of the wives, repeatedly.

My body tires out and my movements dull, but my armor protects me from getting hurt.

I kill them all, repeatedly.

I see a wide variety of expressions, a different one for each kill. Anger, pain, rage, fear, pity, anger, kindness, boredom, pain, pain, pain, sadness, melancholy, tiredness, pain, tiredness…

I eat all of the chocolate I have left, and the light inside my body shines once more.

I drink more MP potions, and my toxicity increases, making me feel slightly queasy.

I hear a faint, continuous whisper.

I swallow another Eia pill, and the added strain of it causes my muscles to tremble. I can't even drink an HP potion at this point since it'll just make things worse.

I cast a brief [Regeneration] periodically to keep my body from breaking down since it has a lasting effect even when the spell isn't active. It eases some of my pain and reduces the burden on my [Mask].

"I TRULY LOVED YOU!" Wolfy bellows as he cries, clutching his chest where my sword pierced through his heart.

"WE TRUSTED YOU!" Alissa screams just before I slit her throat.

"I'm getting tired of your sick sense of humor, Dungeon Master," I dryly comment as I kill Lina before she can even open her mouth.

"You're a coward, Yunia," Wolfy slowly growls at me. He simply stands still in front of me, unarmed and wearing his fine elven clothes. His youthful face and adorable freckles make my heart flutter, but his angry, disgusted glare deeply unsettles me.

"If you're going to stand still, then that just makes things easier for me," I deadpan and free him of his head.

"I just wanted to protect us, but you still want to spare the traitors, putting us all in danger because of your stubborn elven pride," another Wolfy continues.

I turn to face it and immediately ask, "How do you know that?"

His angry glare is the only response I get, so I kill him.

My MP starts to run low, so I risk it and dispel [Mask].

My posture immediately crumbles, and I groan from exhaustion.

I stay on the floor for a while, trying to gather energy, but I spend too long, and the next Faceless Man jumps on top of me.

I grit my teeth in anger and cast an [Earth Bullet] at his face, then I draw a dagger from my back and stab Wolfy in the eye.

It screams in pain and grabs my fist, then it pulls my blade from his eye.

I wrench my hand free, then I slice through his throat. Blood quickly gushes from its neck and drenches my gauntlets.

I grab him by the hair and repeatedly stab his face.

His bloody fingers grip at my wrists, but he soon goes limp and passes out.

I lurch over and fall on the floor, then his body disappears, but the blood staining my armor remains.

A disturbance in the web of Life wakes me up.

I open my eyes and jump straight into my fighting stance, but nothing comes, so I settle back into my sitting position and prepare for it to attack.

The whispering grows louder.

"You're laying with humans, now?" Brás' disapproving voice grates on my ears.

I open my eyes and see his long, feminine blue eyes filled with disgust. His small, thin nose is wrinkled, his fleshy lips are warped in a sneer, and his long, oval face is turned away condescendingly. His shoulder-length golden hair is covering most of his delicate, perfect face, like a veil protecting others from being blinded by his beauty.

I kill it.

The torment doesn't end.

Brás' voice is so hostile that I feel like gravel is being crushed in my ears. "On the very next day after you were given hope, you went and cheated on me with a human? Is he 'big'? Is that why you forgot about me and jumped at the opportunity to ride him?"

I shake my head and close my eyes as I kill it. "This isn't fair. I'd already ended things between us long before I met Wolfy," I defend myself.

"A human, really?" He censures me again.

I shrug and chuckle as I kill him. "So what? Human dick is just as good as elven dick."

The whispering morphs into crying.

"I didn't raise you to be like this," Father's gentle voice feels like a slap on the face.

I spring up onto my feet and stumble forward due to my exhaustion, but I quickly recover and look around, though I don't manage to find him.

"Have you forgotten what we stood for?" Father's question drips with frustration.

I look up and see his face staring down at me. His soft features and composed look contrast greatly with his eyes filled with scorn.

I was never one to cower beneath his gaze, so I glare back at him and growl, "'Stood.'"

"Are you also going to simply forget everything we taught you?" Zaleia's raspy, stern voice gives me chills. My blood mother was the only one that could truly make me cower, but this isn't one of those moments.

I stare right back at her sharp and strict face in defiance, unmoved by her anger. "You're not here to remind me anymore, so, yes, I'm going to forget everything," I quip back.

Amarils' harsh and grating voice resounds throughout the arena, "Foolish girl, then you really do deserve to be a human's slave." She was never good at giving speeches, even with a high [Acting] skill.

She displays her unbridled disgust with me. My half-aunt, half-mother has a younger and far softer face, but I can still clearly see Mother's features on her.

Seeing them again makes me emotional, but also only increases my determination to stand up to them. "Yes, I do! We all deserve our fates and more for failing the twins!" I exclaim as I swing my sword wildly.

"We didn't deserve death…" Mother's sorrowful voice cools the rage that's been building up within me.

"We're your parents! Is this how you show us respect?" Father asks incredulously.

My memories of our last few days together flood my mind and force me to spill my heart out, "Do you know how much I cried while I waited for death…? After the Hands of the Emperor showed up, I could barely sleep since it was only a matter of time before the Council would finally kill us all."

Father's expression darkens. "Then you should've helped us more and fought harder," he growls.

I shake my head and confess, "No, I shouldn't have helped… I should've stopped you."

A silence falls over us, broken only by the loud crying in the background, and we stare defiantly at each other, neither of us willing to yield even an inch.

Mother grows impatient and finally states, "Sacrifice is sometimes necessary to accomplish greatness,"

"You sacrificed yourself for nothing," I retort flatly.

"Because you won't continue our legacy," Father accuses me, and I heartily agree.

"I've lost my name, I'm not an Este anymore," I calmly point out.

"But you'll be the Crown Lord of the Western High Forest," Amarils tries to argue.

I know where she's going with that, so I quickly interject, "In name only. A deterrent against plotting to remove Wolf from power."

Mother's deviousness shows itself again as she suggests, "He's clearly madly in love with you, so it'd be easy for you to manipulate him."

I grit my teeth and refuse wholeheartedly, "That's exactly why I won't. I'll never betray him, so long as he loves me, and as long as he never abandons me… like you did!"

Father's face becomes cold and devoid of emotion as he questions, "Are you just going to forsake everything?"

I'd already made up my mind about this long ago. "Yes. Your legacy dies with me, and my brothers will not replace me."

"Then you're not our daughter anymore," my Young Mother cries and breaks down while my other Mother simply closes her eyes and holds back her tears.

I look down in shame. "I'm not."

Father suddenly drops down onto me and forces me backward. I hit my head on the floor, but my helmet absorbs the shock.

His hands sneak through my bevor and wrap around the scale armor protecting my neck, then he starts strangling me.

I try to resist, but he has me pinned down, there's just no way for me to escape from under him.

I raise my hand and cast [Earth Bullet] at his face.

He releases me and flies backward, then falls onto his back, but surprisingly, he doesn't pass out.

He holds his broken nose, and his head wobbles dizzily, then I draw a hidden dagger and leap on top of him.

"I'm sorry Dad. I still love you."

I stab into his chest precisely where his heart should be.

He doesn't react to the injury, just staring hatefully at me while trying to remove the dagger.

After they died, my brothers and I were given a moment alone with them so that they could say their last words. Their spirits looked guilty and defeated, but an odd peace seemed to settle over them.

They tried, they fought, and they failed. There was no going back and nothing else to do besides accepting their Fate and hoping for another chance in their next life. It'd be unseemly for the proud Crown Lords to debase themselves by becoming crying wretches in their last moments.

"We love you," Father's spirit gently whispered to us after he died. His voice felt like a loving caress.

I twist the dagger, and he passes out instantly.

I get up, and Mother leaps down.

"We're sorry for failing you," her spirit sadly confessed. Her voice filled our hearts with the motivation to do better where they failed.

She jumps towards me, so I grab my longsword and decapitate her.

Young Mother grabs me from behind and tries to pin my arms to my body, but I cast a [Fireball] on her face, and she releases me.

I turn around and kill her, too.

"I hope that you can forgive us one day," Young Mother's spirit sincerely pleaded. Her voice broke our hearts, and we cried while we sorrowfully picked up the pieces.

I slowly look around me and commit this scene of their bleeding bodies to memory. They don't get reclaimed by the dungeon, so my nostrils are soon filled with the metallic smell of blood.

"I forgive you…" I whisper, then I close my eyes. "And I hope that you forgive me for letting you die…"

My legs give out, and I fall deeply asleep before I even hit the ground.

I wake up again when a blinding light shines into my eyes, then I pass out for good.

A note from Manasong

Hall of Fame of Patrons

The patrons who support Rupegia shall have their names sung by the bards for they deserve the glory and honor. Their names are:

Prince PreownedFIN.

Lord Andrew Meyers.

Lord Samuel Lim.

Lord Bill.

Lord Novgarod.

Lord DJ.

Lord Ashadun.

Lord Michale Erwin.

Lord Bakerdea.

Lord D4rk Sheep.

Lord Nathan Vanbrunt.

Lord Maurice.

Lord Krawn.

Lord Empyrean.

Lord Mattirro Draca.

Lord Joshua Tal.

Lord Colorblind.

Lord RottenTangerine.

Lord Cidant.

Lord Fullmoon.

Lord Joxsan Herrera.

Lord The_Cultural_Weeb_Otaku.

Lord Sean Drake.

Lord EESDESESESRDT.

Noble Salty Panda.

Noble Mild Fracas.

Noble Aclys.

Noble Jordon Gotthold.

Noble Tyler Mills.

Noble Shawn Plumley.

Noble Kale Daley.

Noble Stellerbattle.

Leave a rating or a review to help me rise to the top or fix my shameful understanding of prose.

Take a look over my blog where all information of the world of Rupegia will be posted.

Join the Discord and discuss, or rant, or meme, or try and fight me so your waifu gets more screentime.

Become a Patron and read chapters in advance, or read the side-stories, or leave your mark on the story, or help choose the next artwork or the next side-story.

Chapter 86: Death - Part 1

I feel like my entire body just went through a meat grinder. The deafening silence inside my mind leaves me confused, and I struggle to get off the shore.

I search for the string to summon the girls, but it's nowhere to be found, and my inner "hand" just grabs the nothingness inside my soul space instead. It's like trying to find a pocket on the inside of a jacket, I know where it should be, but I just can't find it.

I cough up some water and groan in pain, then I manage to crawl off the shore and onto the dry green sand, which quickly sticks to my wet armor.

I hate sand. It's coarse and gets everywhere.

I laugh at my own hilarious memes, then I sigh tiredly as I lay on my back.

"Alissa…?" I call her name repeatedly inside my mind, praying that she'll answer, but she doesn't.

Oh, fuck…

I grit my teeth angrily. Of course, Arreira would try to separate us and give each of us a test. He just can't hold himself back from fucking with us.

What now, you pretentious fuck? What sort of arbitrary test of "worth" will you force on me? Will you tell me some poetry before we start so that I can get "inspired" by your oh-so-great intellect and artistic capability?

I stop reflexively and wait for a mirthful chirp that never comes.

Oh no… Gify?!

I remember that her presence faded from my mind when the [Disruption Field] activated. I have no idea what could've happened to her, but she can't be dead, can she? That'd be way too cruel of Arreira to just kill her like that.

The adorable teasing imp inside my head. My companion. My friend…

Why don't you just go fuck yourself with a rake, Arreira?! Why do you have to fuck with everything I love with your rotten elven dick?!

My angry grumbling is sharply interrupted by a pounding headache flaring up, so I cast [Heal], and the pain all throughout my body starts to fade away.

Wasn't my mana organ strained…?

Then I cast [Spirit Light] without suffering any painful feedback, so I guess it isn't anymore.

What even happened to us…?

After encountering the fake imperial army, the tunnel started closing in on us, so we flew away on the ship. A [Disruption Field] was activated around us, making us fall, then we crashed onto… something? I don't know what it was since it was completely dark-…

I start taking off my armor since the soaked padding is heavy and very uncomfortable to keep on, not to mention that it's unhealthy to wear wet clothes.

How did I even survive the rapids like this? I can't swim in full armor.

I cough some more, and the remaining water in my lungs tells me that I got very lucky.

My memories of the rapids are so blurry…

I summon a Holy and a Shad, then I dry my clothes while they scout around.

Wait… wait, wait, wait, WAIT, WAIT! WHERE ARE MY SUMMONS?!

Not only is the earth elemental that I left behind to protect the [Gate] coordinate gone, but so are the summons I left with Klein and Osaria.

What the fuck happened to them? Before the crash, they were all safe and perfectly fine. What the fuck did this dungeon do to me and the girls…?

I start checking through all of my other powers. I can still instant-cast spells, so my fighting style isn't fucked. My "Items" is unchanged, so I have everything I need to survive on my own…

The girls have small [Item Box]es, though, so they won't have the same comfort as I do.

Their names are still in my "Companions" and "Affiliations," so I'm certain that they're still alive. My [Gate] is still blocked, so there's no easy way out of here. My skills are all there, so…

Wait… I can't remove or add skill points.

My Gift of freely arranging my points is gone.

How the fuck are you even DOING this?!

What-…

I look towards the path of glowing crystals before me while I dry my armor. It feels like it'll lead me into a trap, but there's no other path in this small green cave besides going back up the rapids, and I'm certain that Arreira won't let me do that anyway.

I can't switch my points into [Sense Presence], so I need to establish a safe perimeter around myself.

I summon earth, fire, wind, water, and light elementals. I could summon a nature one too, but I think this is a good balance between MP use and versatility.

The wind and light elementals suddenly hug me, and I feel my tension washing away as their softness wraps around my face.

"Thank you…" I weakly mutter.

I was supposed to be getting better at this, but being disconnected from the girls is making me more nervous than I'd like to admit.

The other elementals join the cuddle puddle, and for a moment, I feel like we're all back together again.

I quickly clear my mind of these distracting thoughts. I have a trial to pass, and it won't do if I'm moping around all the way through it.

I smile at myself as I imagine Gify's teasing, then I pray that she wasn't killed by the [Disruption Field].

I put my armor back on and look at the river that brought me here. There are a dozen planks scattered around me, and I recognize them from our ship.

Ah, fucking hell… I really liked that ship…

I frown and spend a moment in silence while I process this loss, then I turn back towards the path, and we move forward.

"I should've stored the golems in my [Item Box]. Trying to cobble together an emergency parachute just wasn't a good idea…" I mumble to wind-Alissa, and she wordlessly nods in agreement, then she lays her hand on my shoulder and gives me a reassuring squeeze. "Thanks."

I grab her "solid wind" hand and give it a kiss. I only feel a gentle breeze on my lips, but it's surprisingly pleasant.

I glance at fire-Hana and wonder if she'll want to have sex with me before I go to sleep. It's hard to believe, but I'm not in the mood for it, so I don't know how she'll react.

We reach the end of the glowing path in the sand, and it leads to the entrance of a green tunnel in the cave wall. The scouting Holly quickly discovers that it's a maze, so I summon three more, then I start drawing a map.

I spend the whole day simply mapping out the maze, and I have some trouble mapping the elevation changes. The maze is excessively chaotic, repeatedly looping back on itself. I also don't have a pencil that would let me erase my mistakes, so they rapidly pile up, leaving me with a messy and ugly drawing.

Calligraphy was never one of my strengths, anyway.

Night eventually comes, then I pull out the bath and get the wife-elementals to wash me. Without Alissa to watch us or their voices moaning my name, I just don't really feel like having sex.

I eat a guilty dinner of leftovers. It just doesn't feel right to eat all by myself.

The girls will only have chocolate and [Conjure Bland Meal] for themselves, and here I am, gorging on a feast…

I continue mapping the maze for a while longer until I tire myself out, then I unsummon the Hollys since I can't give them the command to stop.

I review the map one last time, then I pull out the tent and go to sleep.

I dream of the girls suffering. They're all entirely alone in the dungeon, and they regret ever coming here.

Today is the 27th.

I wake up to an absolute silence and feeling cold. Even with light-Ciel and fire-Hana squishing my head between their tits and wind-Alissa playing with my flaccid cock, I'm so unaroused that even my balls are retreating up inside my body.

I give them each a small kiss, even earth-Lina, and feed them some mana, then I tiredly get up and eat breakfast. I didn't sleep well, so it takes a while for me to feel energized again, even after drinking a whole cup of Tonique tea.

Water-Roxanne tries to cheer me up by performing tricks with her water, and it does warm me up a bit. It's incredible to see how much personality the summons are drawing from what I've learned about the girls through [Bind].

I continue mapping out the dungeon, but the Hollys start to get lost and fly in circles, slowing down my efforts.

"What the fuck is this fucking maze. Fucking fuckity fuck fucker!" I exclaim in frustration, and earth-Lina gently pats my shoulder.

She's the only one that's showing some interest in the maps, but she can't really help me much since she can't see through the Hollys.

The number of papers steadily increases, gradually becoming a haphazard map as its segments pile on top of each other. The greatest challenge of this map is the tendency for loops, which I often fail to recognize since this fucking maze has absolutely zero landmarks that would let me know when the Hollys are going in circles.

When I finally get up to stretch and prepare my lunch, I bump my foot against the leg of the table, and the sections of the map shuffle around, going out of order.

"Godsdamned motherfucker!" I swear and grumble.

Earth-Lina immediately starts picking up the scattered papers and puts them back in their proper places.

"Thank you…" I mutter and tap her broad back. Her inexpressive face nods, and her black bangs sway just like they would for the original.

I eat more leftovers while I help Earth-Lina, then I decide that it's time to glue all of these pages together.

I mix water and flour, then I boil the mixture until it thickens. Then I keep it hot with fire-Hana's help while I use it to glue the segments together. Once the mixture cools, it hardens, keeping the pieces stuck to each other.

I summon nature-Yunia, then I use her to pull planks from the river and cut them into small sticks for me. I glue them to the back of the map so that I can raise some sections, creating a three-dimensional rendition of the maze.

Even with the help of the elementals, it's still meticulous and delicate work that takes up the rest of my day.

I get the elementals to wash me, then I go to sleep for the night while hugging light-Ciel. She can't keep her mind-healing ultra-softness active all the time since it consumes mana, but I can still use her cow tits as pillows while I sleep, which is much better than nothing.

I dream of how Osaria and Klein would react when they notice that my summons have simply disappeared. Without any way to contact me, and knowing that I'm somewhere that I can't use [Gate], it'd be difficult for them to trust that the worst hasn't happened.

Today is the 28th.

Water-Roxanne's slick tongue wraps around my flaccid head, but the stimulation of it feels like sandpaper against my skin, so I stop her before I become even more irritated.

I skip breakfast since I don't feel hungry, then I continue with the mapping. I can give the Hollys better guidance so that they won't get stuck in loops or waste too much time on already-explored areas.

My rendition of the maze threatens to collapse, so I reinforce it with bigger sticks. I don't have to spend that much time working on it myself since I can get the elemental-wives to help, but I still have to keep an eye on the Hollys while I draw the map, so I don't really have a lot of free time.

I eat some chocolate for lunch, but it makes me feel guilty, so I also put together a simple salad that I quickly force myself to eat.

Wind-Alissa sits beside me and holds my hand while we both stare at fire-Alissa and water-Roxanne playing around to entertain us. The elementals are trying to make me happy, but even the golems are better at that since they understand my emotions on a deeper level.

"Thank you," I whisper as I smile at them, and they smile back, but I'm not sure if it's genuine or something that was programmed into them like with the golems.

I try to absentmindedly practice some [Soul Manipulation] while keeping an eye on the Hollys, but it isn't nearly as efficient as fully-focused practice.

I try to do other things while I work, but I don't come up with anything interesting to spend my energy on. Because of this, I end up going to sleep later than usual since I barely exercised my body today, and I still have lots of energy to spend.

I have a nightmare about the Innocent Nymph: I'm forced to watch as the [Meteor] destroys it repeatedly while I can't move, paralyzed by fear.

It's not really a nightmare, though, just a repeated remembrance.

Today is the 29th.

"And so it begins…" I murmur as I wake up in a cold sweat.

Light-Ciel notices my distress and heals my mind, washing away my dizziness and unease.

I refill her with my MP, and she smiles warmly at me, then pats my head.

The sprawling construction only grows larger, then it starts to become cumbersome. While I think about how to improve it, I remember how the Ant Hill back in the Shore of Leaves was mapped out: they carved signs into the wall at every intersection.

OH, FUCK!

I rush up to the corridor and smash the green stone with a spare war hammer, then I watch and watch, but the wall never repairs itself.

I go back to mapping and try to keep my mind off it for a while, but I keep on glancing back at the cracks every minute or so until the anxiety wears me down, and I finally go to sleep.

Tonight, my nightmare is about the heretics finding us and executing us in our sleep. The Hollys and Shads have already failed us once, so it could happen again.

Today is the 30th.

I rush up to the crack I made in the corridor and confirm that it didn't change a single bit from yesterday.

A seething rage builds up inside me, and I pull on my hair. "FUCKING STUPID!" I scream at myself, then I march towards the map.

Light-Ciel stands in my way, but I dispel her, then I cast an [Earth Bullet] at the map, breaking it into pieces.

Earth-Lina hugs me from behind, and I almost dispel her, too, but her effort to comfort me makes me stop in confusion.

I look around and realize that all the elemental-wives have crowded around me, trying to prevent me from lashing out.

"What the fuck are you all doing?" I annoyedly question them. I feel like they're somehow defying me, but my anger quickly cools down, and I lose the motivation to investigate their behavior any further.

They smother me in their breasts until all my anger is gone, then I summon light-Ciel again and start rebuilding the map from scratch.

This time, I ignore everything other than the forks because those are the only things that actually matter. I instruct each Holly to leave a unique mark at the center of the fork whenever they reach one and squeak while drawing so that I'll pay attention to them.

The map is now far easier to draw and much, much more compact. It also doesn't need a complex setup to portray elevation anymore, reducing the workload even further.

I try to dig a tunnel with the elementals, but the rock is so resistant to magic that it'd be faster to just use pickaxes. The maze sprawls so wildly that it doesn't matter where I dig to, anyways, so I decide to continue exploring with the Hollys.

I have a nightmare about monsters hunting me down, but I'm too weak to defeat them on my own, so all I can do is run away.

Today is the 31st.

My watch stops working. The gears inside it are so delicate that not even earth-Lina can fix them. This is a big problem since I won't be able to keep track of time anymore.

I work until I'm tired, and I wake up whenever I feel like it.

Even with my more compact map, the maze is still so absurdly huge that it feels like it goes on forever.

Just to make sure, I periodically send more Hollys into the already explored forks to deepen the carvings. This is to check that they aren't being repaired by the dungeon while I'm not looking.

The nightmares worsen, and I begin to dread going to sleep.

No matter how much I force myself, I can't muster the energy to exercise because of the lack of good sleep, so I end up eating less and less.

My muscles become thin, my belly fattens, and my body weakens.

"Marking five thousand and four…" I mumble to myself.

"What kind of symbol are you going to use this time?" Wind-Alissa asks me without moving her mouth.

"Uh…" I scan over my book of symbols. There are so many now that I don't feel like creating any unique ones anymore. "I'll just use numbers…" I shrug.

The Hollys explore too far, so I enter the maze to cut down on their travel time.

"You burned the meat!" I yell at fire-Hana, and she hangs her head low in guilt.

I cast [Torrent] at her, then I regret it because I have to feed her my MP to heal her.

"Shouldn't we cut your hair?" Wind-Alissa gently suggests.

"Hair gets in my eyes, so just cut it all off!" I bark at her.

I yawn and fall asleep, even with the Holly squeaking to keep me awake, so I miss the window to register her marking.

"FUCK!" I scream, hurting my throat.

I throw my magic pen away, then I resummon the Holly and start over for that path.

Earth-Lina takes her sweet time picking up my pen for me.

"You're an elemental, so why are you so slow?!" I snap at her.

Why do the nightmares never end? What did I ever do to deserve this?

"We've reached sector two-hundred two," light-Ciel announces, and I jolt awake.

Earth-Lina lowers my cradle, then light-Ciel starts the brain massage, which eases my pain.

"You need a bath," Wind-Alissa firmly states.

"Don't wanna," I mumble.

"We've gone through this…" She pleads.

"Fuck it… just do it quickly."

They strip me down, and water-Roxanne envelops my body with hers, then she scrubs off all the grime.

The maze has… a pattern.

It's a die. The sectors are all connected like a die.

Square, square, square. Triangle, square, triangle. And repeat.

Roll the paper up like a die.

Multi-sided. One to twenty-six.

Throw it.

It's a seven! Jackpot! HAHAHAHA!

Rinse, and repeat!

There is no meaning to the nightmares. There is no meaning to the nightmares. There is no meaning to the nightmares. There is no meaning to the nightmares…

"The sector turns blue! The sector turns blue!" I yell and clap my hands excitedly, then a coughing fit ruins my excitement.

Light-Ciel heals my lungs, then we pack up camp and head towards the exit.

That horrifying, nauseating, and disgusting green color finally changes to blue, but nothing else changes.

There are no more forks, so we can only keep moving forward through this endless corridor. And it truly feels endless…

My excitement quickly fades away and gets replaced with boredom, well, more boredom than I've felt in Gods know how long I've been here.

The ground suddenly starts to rumble, which sends me into a panic while the elemental-wives get ready for battle.

The floor ahead of us starts to rise up, revealing a new corridor.

It completely blocks off the old one, so I resummon the scouting Holly.

There's a fork directly ahead, and I can see a light coming from around the corner, so I suck in a sharp breath in surprise.

I hear a scramble of footsteps rapidly approaching, so I pull out my sword from my "Items" and try to calm myself.

Alissa, Roxanne, Hana, Ciel, Lina, and Yunia all come through the fork, and they nearly stumble when they notice me.

"WOLFY!" Alissa shrieks and rushes towards me.

Earth-Lina lowers my cradle, then I weakly climb out of it. My body shamefully trembles from both excitement and weakness as I try to stand.

She hugs me tight, her delicious mounds pressing against my naked chest, and the smell of her sweat fills my nostrils. I'm speechless, and my body refuses to respond, but I notice that they're all unarmed and in varying states of undress. Their clothes are almost falling apart, mostly just being used to cover their sensitive bits rather than actually offering them any degree of protection.

"There's no time! We need to run!" Lina yells anxiously.

"It's coming!" Roxanne shrieks and hides behind Hana.

"What's coming?" I ask, and my croaky voice surprises me.

"An unkillable monster, let's go!" Yunia's stern voice sobers us up.

I sit down in my cradle, then earth-Lina lifts it up, and we all continue forward through the other corridor.

"What happened to you?! Why are you so thin?!" Alissa shrieks, holding back tears of horror.

"I couldn't sleep…" I croak and cough.

"Keep Wolfy safe! He's too weak to fight!" Ciel declares, and the other girls agree.

I hear a loud wet sloshing behind us, so I turn around and see a huge, transparent slime chasing after us. It's moving as if it were a rubbery wave, and it seems to be steadily gaining on us.

Holy shit.

I start pulling out our old equipment, and while the girls can't fully armor themselves while running, they can at least put on some scaled jackets and get their old weapons back.

I get wind-Alissa to help me put on my armor, then we reach a dead end just after I’m fully equipped.

FUCK!

"Stand and fight!" Ciel orders, then they all stop running and put on their scaled pants, except for Lina, who starts feeling around on the wall, searching for something.

I jump out of the cradle and use [Telekinesis] to carefully land on the floor.

"Wolfy, don't!" Alissa warns me.

I grit my teeth and growl, "I can do this!" Then I cough.

There's no time to argue. The slime reaches us and blocks off the corridor, then a dozen tentacles shoot out from its body.

One comes towards me, and I slash through it, splitting it open, then an extremely pungent liquid gushes out. When it contacts the floor, it immediately starts to sizzle, and I can clearly see the smooth stone melting away.

I cast [Clean] on my sword before the liquid has a chance to ruin it.

Fuck me!

Earth-Lina immediately loses an arm to it, so she retreats while the other elemental-wives protect her.

A slime tentacle sneaks closer to me from my left flank, but I react too slowly to it, so it hits me on the side, then it spreads over my entire chest and both of my legs in just a split second. Fox-Alissa suddenly appears and bites onto the tentacle, then she rips it off, freeing me.

Wind-Alissa immediately comes over to me and starts cutting off the straps of my wooden armor before it can melt and fuse with my skin. She throws away the pieces, and they all rapidly melt away into nothing.

Fox-Alissa's mouth melts apart horrifically, but then she uses her mana to regrow her fox body.

"[FIRE WALL]!" Roxanne casts, and the entire corridor is filled with flames, forcing the slime to retreat.

Hana rips off her melting scale shirt, and Ciel starts casting [Holy Spirit].

"I can only last for a minute!" Roxanne yells, sounding desperate. She leans on her staff, looking like she's almost as weak as I am.

"Everyone! Help Lina!" Ciel orders, which I relay to the elemental-wives, then we all start searching the walls for… something. "Wolfy, Hana, you need armor!" Ciel warns us, so I pull out our old emerald scale armor, then Alissa helps me put it on.

"You shouldn't fight," Alissa tells me sternly.

"I can use [Telekinesis] to move," I insist.

"Please…" She whispers.

"I still have a lot of MP!" I force out in a shout, and she anxiously bites her lip, but I've made my decision.

I sheathe my emerald sword and pull out a dozen of the assorted spare weapons I have for everyone, then I switch out the Holly and Shad for four fire-Hanas since the slime seems to be weak to them.

"I'm… passing out…!" Roxanne exclaims, then she crumples onto the floor, and the [Fire Wall] snuffs out.

Tentacles shoot towards us again, but this time, I use [Discharge] to keep them at bay while the girls cast spells.

The monster is cautious, trying its very best to sneak around us while avoiding the fire, but we simply ignore its tentacles until they get too close. It's impossible for us to miss its massive main body, so we focus on inflicting as many wounds as possible.

The slime starts to get agitated, then it lifts itself up off the floor and backs away, becoming a sort of squishy large quadruped.

It starts to attack us more frequently, trying to wear us down, and the fire-Hanas respond by continuously launching spells, quickly burning through their own mana reserves.

"I'm out of MP!" Hana exclaims and leans against the wall to catch her breath.

"Where's the ambient mana?!" I shout in confusion, finally noticing this oddity.

"These blue corridors are all like this!" Ciel yells back, then she throws another [Spirit Light] at the slime. After the glowing ball enters the slime, it bursts in a flash of light, dazing it.

My MP steadily drains away, then the fire-Hanas suicide into the slime, forcing it back for a moment.

I use [Redirect Mana] to refill my MP with whatever ambient mana I can grasp, but it's just not enough.

Nature-Yunia suicides next, then water-Roxanne, then light-Ciel, then wind-Alissa. However, we need earth-Lina to carry Roxanne, so I won't let her join in.

"Found it!" Lina yells and presses a hidden button in the wall.

The wall quickly splits open, revealing a large room with a circular, gray platform in the middle. It's made of smooth stone, and there's a crystal in the center of it.

We all retreat to the platform, then Hana collapses onto it.

"Feed mana to the crystal…!" She shakily yells and gives it her last, then she passes out, too.

Lina feeds it, too, then she groans in pain, "I can't… stop…! Ah! It's full!"

The slime doesn't immediately attack, giving us a few seconds to prepare.

"Why isn't it activating?!" Alissa shrieks in desperation.

"It is, look!" Yunia exclaims and points at the crystal. It's steadily starting to glow brighter. She drops over it and tries to feed it more mana. "Go faster!"

The tentacles strike at us.

I pull out rocks, barriers, barricades, furniture, and whatever the fuck else I can use to keep the slime away, but it all gets quickly melted down into nothing. Even the wounds we manage to inflict on it are rapidly healing, though its overall size seems to be shrinking due to the repeated spilling of its fluids.

Earth-Lina suicides, which buys us another few seconds.

"I'm running low on mana!" I yell and cough.

Ciel casts [Fly], then she darts towards the slime.

"CIEL?!" I croak.

She casts a few small [Wind Blades] at the slime, grabbing its attention.

"I CAN KEEP IT BUSY!" She yells back.

She flies out of the room, and the slime follows her, giving us a breather.

What do I do? What do I do? What do I do? What do I do?

Alissa looks spent; Roxanne can't even sit upright; Hana is out of the fight; Lina is struggling to stay standing; Yunia is covered with burns; and I only have a few basic spells left in me.

This is the end.

The crystal begins to glow so brightly now that Light mana even starts to leak from it.

"COME BACK!" I scream for Ciel and fall to my knees.

She darts back into the room, but a tentacle stops her in the air. It wraps tightly around her waist, quickly melting through her scale armor.

"NOOOO!" I yell as I burn through the last of my MP, throwing out all of my remaining spells in a panic.

"[Explosion]!" Roxanne makes one last effort, and the tentacle is blown away, releasing Ciel.

But then, another tentacle grabs her, then another, and another, and another.

She rapidly becomes completely enveloped by the slime, and now, not even our spells can free her from it.

I hear her muffled shrieks as the skin on her face melts away, then her eyes pop, and the slime flushes red with her blood.

I try to take a step towards her, but my legs give out as I try to stand up, then Alissa holds me in place.

The blood quickly clears away, revealing her half-consumed body, her skull partially visible from underneath her melting flesh, then the platform flashes, and my consciousness is cut off.

A note from Manasong

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Chapter 86: Death - Part 2

I failed.

The brightness of the harsh sun glares off the red sand, blinding my sensitive eyes.

I reach around, searching for Alissa to steady myself, but my hand only finds hot sand.

"Alissa…?" I call for her, but I can only hear the wind.

I try to summon a small bird to be my eyes, but the "button" inside my soul space isn't there.

"What…?"

I search for my other spells, but they aren't there either. I try to open my "Status," but even that is gone.

"Oh… no… no… no…" I mumble repeatedly, and my body freezes up, overwhelmed with emotions.

The reality of my situation immediately sinks in, then a feeling of pure rage wells up from deep within me.

Stop fucking with me… stop with these fucking stupid games! GIVE ME BACK CIEL! GIVE HER BACK TO ME, YOU FUCKING WICKED GOBLIN DICK SUCKER!

I repeatedly pound my fists against the sand in fury.

I SWEAR I'LL KILL YOU!

"AAAAAAAAAH!" I scream until my lungs give out.

I'LL DESTROY YOU!

My soul tentacles spread out from my body, randomly solidifying and changing their shapes.

I'LL RAPE YOUR CORPSE, YOU FUCKING CUNT!

I grab the hot sand with my hands and tentacles and start throwing it around in a rage.

"FUCK YOU! FUCK YOU! FUCK YOU! RAAAAAAAAAAAH!"

The last of my mana is wasted when I recklessly try to cast whatever spell I can, then the pain of going into the negatives calms me down, and I let the overuse steal my consciousness away.

I wake up sweating profusely with my skin painfully burned. That hateful sun is going to kill me if I stay here for much longer.

I feebly manage to get up, then I take my armor off. My elven underclothes aren't enough to protect all of my skin from the sun, so I cut off some of the padding with my sword and make it into a few crude scarves for my face and hands.

I stand up and look around, but I just see the same landscape that I saw back when we first entered this part of the dungeon: sparkly red sand, a clear blue sky, and a painfully harsh sun. Dusk is coming, and the sun is setting, so it'll be nightfall soon.

I don't know where to go or what I should do right now, so I find a large dune to hide myself from the sun and sit down in the shade.

I failed… Ciel's dead.

She can't be dead.

Her body was consumed by the slime.

She can't be dead.

I saw her skull.

She CAN'T be dead.

I pull on my hair and grit my teeth while my tears flow freely. I start rocking my body back and forth as the anguish in my heart swells until I can barely stand the pain anymore.

I continue crying until my tears dry up, then the exhaustion knocks me out, and I have another nightmare. Ciel's death repeats over and over in my mind, endlessly tormenting me with my failure.

I wake up sweating and confused. The heat has increased, but the sun hasn't set yet.

My face feels uncomfortable because of my dried tears, which have only stopped because I'm so dehydrated. My whole body itches and hurts from the sand, from the rough sleep, and from not being able to heal myself after I overused my mana.

Ciel's muffled shriek replays itself in my head, but I refuse to accept it as reality. There must be something wrong, or something I missed. This has to be a dream.

She can't be dead! Not like this… not like this!

I grunt as my anger starts to flare up inside me again, but my throat hurts so much that I have to hold back my roar.

I need to… find her body. I need a link to bring her spirit back!

A headache starts to pound in my head, making it difficult for me to think straight.

This can't be over… I-I can still do something!

This isn't over! I have to get out of here! I have to find her!

I stand up and wobble as my headache makes me temporarily lose my balance.

I slowly recompose myself, then I climb back up the dune and look around. The sun is still setting, letting off a faintly orange light, which is odd since I think I was asleep for a while.

I try to focus on the horizon around me, but I can't see anything different, and the sun glare reflected off the sand makes it difficult to discern any details.

I need something to help me scout!

The system is gone, so I can't open my "Items"; I can only cast [Clean], [Spirit Light], and my special [Materialize] without my Gift of instant-casting; and I only have my sword and partially dismantled scale armor as potential tools.

Never mind scouting, I'll die of thirst before I can even do anything at this rate!

I sit down again in the shade of the dune and grumble as my rage boils up once again.

I have no idea how he's doing this, but he's just fucking with us at this point! He's been doing shit like this ever since we came here! Just hardship after hardship, test after test, and this too is nothing but another one of his fucking…

My rage dominates my thoughts, and I try to crush more of the sand in anger with my hands and soul-tentacles.

Wait! What i-…

I need water.

My throat is hurting and parched because of my angry outburst, my mouth is as dry as a grandma's cunt, my lips are parched and tingling, my body is sweating cold and shivering, and my head just won't stop pounding. I'm really fucking dehydrated.

How did [Conjure Water] go again…?

I never learned anything about [Conjuring Magic] besides what I could passively absorb from watching others use it, but I barely paid attention to that. There was no reason to since we could just use either a magic tool or my instant casting.

Who the fuck even is Arreira that he can block my system and Gifts so thoroughly like this?

I hold myself back from grumbling in anger. I have no time to waste; I need to blindly recreate the spell on my own.

I gather my mana inside my heart, then I visualize all the details I have about water to convert my mana into something water-attuned. Without a chant to "align" my mind and improve the visualization, the whole mana conversion process takes a long time.

Once I have a good amount of water-attuned mana, I start to build the "structure" of the spell, but I have little idea about what I'm doing. Even if I succeed with this spell, it's so rough that I'm sure the mana-efficiency will be really low.

I need to convert the mana into water, but it has to be actual water, not the pseudo-water that's used in spells. That kind of water would just dissipate with time, and I'm sure that having it and it's atoms suddenly disappearing from within my body would have terrible effects.

My head hurts too much to think straight anymore.

Just… water… I need water. I need something that converts mana into "drinkable" water and spouts it from the tip of my finger like a fountain. That's it, that's all I need.

I imagine it like visual programming. Just one data input, the mana; one function, the converter; one output, my finger; and one switch, the trigger that activates the input.

I push the spell's "structure" and the attuned mana to the tip of my finger, then I flip the "switch."

Most of the mana gushes out wildly without being properly converted, which nearly collapses the spell's "structure" since it's too weak to endure such a chaotic flow of mana.

A few drops of water appear at the tip of my finger, and I immediately suck on it in desperation.

My tongue immediately becomes wet, but I can barely feel the water going down my throat, then I taste something strange.

Oh… if the water was badly formed, then I might have just poisoned myself…

I feed even more of my mana into the spell until I feel the danger of overuse looming over my organ.

If I go crazy from dehydration, then it won't matter if I'm poisoned, anyway.

I spend hours trying to get a reasonable amount of water to drink, but then my MP runs out again. The sun doesn't even set after all this time, only becoming more orange as the day continues on and the heat continues to increase.

I'm getting a bad feeling about this…

I decide to run away from the sun whenever I'm waiting for my mana to recharge.

My body is weakened, and my thirst slows me down, but the fear of death seeps into my heart, forcing my muscles to keep pushing forward.

The color of the dunes around me changes every so often from red, to yellow, to green, to purple, to orange, to black, but I have no time to admire their beauty because I just can't stop. If I do, I'm not sure if I'll be able to get moving again.

The heat only increases, and my back burns painfully each time I climb a dune and expose myself to the sun. The hateful orb also changes its color, turning red, then yellow, then green, then purple, then orange, and finally black.

This isn't a sun. I'm being chased by something, and it wants to kill me.

My heart races, my eyes shift about in desperation, my hands shiver in fear, and my steps become erratic. I need to run away from whatever the fuck is after me.

My legs give out, and I stumble, then I roll haphazardly down a dune. I cry in pain, but there are no more tears to be shed.

I desperately crawl towards the bottom of the dune, then I dig a hole and cover myself with sand, trying to hide. My body is trembling so much that I have little hope of it actually working, but I don't have the energy to get up again.

Several long minutes pass by while I wait, cowering in my hole, my heart filled with terror and dread.

I hear a set of soft footsteps, then I feel the sand shifting above me, so I hold my breath as best as I can.

"It's useless to hide," a stern and raspy male voice makes my heart skip a beat. "Get up!"

I nervously move the sand, then I peek my head out, and I immediately see a huge black quadruped angrily staring down at me from atop a dune. Its entire body is glowing so brightly with dark light and exudes so much heat that I'm certain that it's the "sun" of this place.

The blazing heat comes close to burning the exposed skin on my face, making me cry out in pain, and my eyes almost get blinded again by the intense light. I instinctively hide myself under the sand again and shiver in fear.

"I ordered you to get up!" It repeats, then it makes a deep, reverberating growl that shakes my body, forcing it to move on its own. By the time I actually notice it, I'm already standing again and staring at it.

I squint my eyes, and I manage to discern its figure. It's a tiger, the biggest one I've ever seen. Its paws are the size of my torso; its huge mouth could swallow me whole in just one bite; its yellow eyes stare back at me like a reaper ready to take my soul; and its black fur shines with the brightness of the sun.

"Is this how you wanted to die? Hiding under the sand?" It angrily questions me.

"I don't want to die…" I whimper.

"You will die just like your wife if you fail this time," it growls again, then it lowers its body, getting ready to pounce.

A pair of huge yellow lizard eyes open inside my mind, staring down at me with disgust and disappointment. The shame that its gaze causes forces me to reignite the draconic fire in my heart.

No, no, NO! I still need to avenge Ciel!

My body stops shivering, and I growl as I draw my sword and point it at the tiger, but what use could it have against such an enormous beast?

"Is this all you have?!" The beasts mocks me, its snout wrinkling in distaste. The heat increases, searing my skin and making me scream in pain, but my defiance doesn't waver.

I won't win against it with my sword, so I throw that away and choose to use my last card: magic. I gather all the mana that I have.

"Who are you?! Show it to me!" The beast demands, then it pounces.

I manifest the largest tentacle that I've ever made and punch the glowing tiger in the face, but it feels like I've hit a solid wall, and the beast doesn't even seem to have felt my attack.

A huge paw hits me in the chest, then it presses me down against the sand, forcing all the air out of my lungs.

"WHO ARE YOU?!" The beast rumbles.

"AAAAAH!" I grab its fur and try to shove its paw away, but my hand burns from the blazing heat.

"IS THAT ALL?!" It presses on.

I'M WOLF RYDER, YOU FUCK! I'M THE HERO SENT FROM ANOTHER WORLD, THE HUSBAND OF MANY WIVES, THE FUCKER OF DRAGONS, THE RAVAGER OF WOMEN, THE TENTACLE MONSTER!

"SHOW ME WHO YOU ARE!" It bellows, and steaming hot spit hits my face, burning my skin.

I'M… I'M… I'M…

I envelop my body with my mana organ.

I'M A FUCKING DRAGON! AND I'M FUCKING INVINCIBLEEE!

"RAAAAAAAAAAAGH!" The dragon roared in a double voice, and the beast winced in surprise.

His skin hardened as it was quickly covered in rough, leathery skin. Mirror-like scales grew, reflecting the heat and light away, protecting the flesh underneath.

"THAT'S IT! GIVE ME MORE!" The tiger rejoiced, then it pressed down harder on the man's chest, cracking his bones and scales and causing his roar to weaken.

He breathed air back into his lungs again, and gathered even more rage. "I'M FUCKING INVINCIBLE!" The dragon made the sand around them rumble with his voice. Horns grew from his forehead, and claws extended from his fingers, piercing through the beast's skin and drawing its blood.

"NO, YOU AREN'T!" The tiger countered and intensified the heat.

The dragon's skin boiled and blistered, his eyes popped, and his tongue shriveled away, but his anger didn't fade.

The claws on his feet sank into the beast's flanks, then they wildly thrashed and slashed, cutting its skin into ribbons, but the beast didn't even notice the pain or the blood.

The tiger's paw pressed down even harder, now snapping the man's spine, but the dragon's feet continued their thrashing.

"I NEED MORE FROM YOU!" The tiger demanded again, then its fur shifted into a dark flame, searing and cracking the man's scales.

"THIS WORLD… IS… MIIIIINE!" The dragon tried to bend reality to his will, but the God of this place was before him, denying him his power.

The beast lowered its head towards the man and growled, "Then take it from me." And then the flames flared, becoming as bright and as hot as a true sun.

"YOU CAN'T KILL ME!" The man tried to bend reality again, but the beast was completely immune to it.

The tiger proudly raised its head as its anger faded. "I already did…" It stated.

The dragon's scales turned to dust, his skin blackened and ruptured, his blood boiled away, his flesh withered, and his bones cracked and shattered.

Pure will kept his soul linked to his body for a few seconds longer, but death eventually came as his body was reduced to ash.

The beast gently removed its paw from the corpse, then blew the ashes away. The pride, the love, the wishes, the desires, the knowledge, and the ego. They all flew away as his body scattered into the wind, but the dragon refused to die.

"Almost…" The beast whispered, full of sorrow. It healed its own wounds with just a thought and almost looked away, but something caught its attention.

The wind gathered the ash back together again into a small tornado, forming a smoky cloud of ash, then it started to settle into the shape of a featureless human.

The body wished for his soul while the soul prayed for a body, and through forces unknown, the two defied death and were reunited once more.

The beast couldn't recognize what it was, but it certainly wasn't the man or the dragon that it had killed just moments before. It was something else, and that filled the beast with hope and curiosity.

"Who are you?" The beast excitedly asked the figure, its mouth warping into a grin.

"I don't know…" The spirit replied with a cracking, hoarse voice.

The beast snorted. "Then I shall name you Shade, and you may call me Groman."

Shade slowly nodded, and its featureless face stared back at Groman.

"Would you take a walk with me, Shade?" Groman gently suggested.

"Yes," Shade flatly replied.

"Then come."

The two walked in silence through the dunes. Groman's glowing hot fur changed to match the color of the sand it stepped on, but Shade didn't pay attention to this, for it didn't know what beauty was.

After a day of walking, Groman decided to question Shade. "Do you remember anything about who you were, Shade?" It gently whispered.

"No," Shade flatly replied.

"Do you need anything?"

"No."

"Do you wish to meet someone in particular?"

"No."

"Do you have any desires you want to fulfill?"

"No."

"Then why are you alive?"

Shade thought for a long time. The only wish it could remember was to reunite its body and soul, and now that Shade had accomplished that, there was nothing else that it wanted.

"I don't know," Shade finally answered.

"You're nothing, yet you cling to life," Groman pressed on.

Shade didn't know what to say, so it remained silent.

Groman stopped and stared intensely at Shade to impart the seriousness of its next words, not that Shade understood the meaning of this action. "Perhaps there's still a chance for you. Stop following me and leave this desert if you wish to try again," Groman advised, but Shade wished for nothing, so it continued following Groman in silence.

Shade turned its head away from Groman, and the beast immediately noticed that its silent companion wasn't staring at it anymore.

"What is it?" Groman curiously asked.

Shade didn't know how to answer that, so it remained quiet and resumed staring at Groman, but soon, it looked away again.

A spirit, a body, and a Thread of Fate, that was all that Shade was. No more, no less. It had no will, no memory, no knowledge, and no reason for existence, yet something still called to it.

Once Groman realized that something was happening to Shade, it immediately stopped and stared at Shade for days, waiting for any sign of a change.

Shade twitched, then it looked away for a third time, and it didn't look back at Groman again. Its head gradually turned, searching for something towards the horizon.

"There it is…" Groman whispered excitedly and grinned. "I knew you had it…"

Days passed, and the two continued staring towards the horizon, then Shade took a step forward.

Days later, Shade took another.

The next day, it stepped again.

The next hour, it took one more.

The next minute, it did it again.

Then it started walking, then running, then flying.

Groman followed Shade while laughing out loud. "WHAT IS IT THAT YOU DESIRE?!" It excitedly asked, its long, glowing hot tail swaying about happily.

"To save…" Shade's hoarse voice struggled to respond.

"Save who?" Groman pressed.

"Everyone…"

Groman asked many questions, for it had both the time and the thirst for knowledge, but Shade said nothing else besides those three words.

It vexed Groman for a while, but it let it go since three words were far better than nothing.

Groman bent the land to his will, shortening the trip so that Shade could reach its destination immediately.

As they flew, Shade saw the sand become cracked earth, then packed dirt, then it was covered in moss, which grew into grass, and the first plants started to appear. Herbs, flowers, bushes, and then trees, which grew and grew and grew until the two were nothing but ants beside their inconceivably large roots. They grew so large that they completely blocked out the blue sky, but Groman was the sun personified, so they never lacked light or warmth.

They passed by colorful, glowing, exotic, and extraordinary plants and animals, but Shade knew nothing about them, so it ignored them all.

They passed by statues carved into the trees that depicted epic battles and historical events, but Shade knew nothing about history, so it ignored them all.

They passed by the most beautiful buildings and works of art ever created, but Shade knew nothing about what they meant, so it ignored them all.

They reached the heart of the forest, the center of this alternate reality, and the source of all Groman's mystic power. There, they found Shade's destination: an orb the color of a Dark Void.

Once Shade spotted it, it immediately stopped flying and landed on the grass, then it slowly walked towards it.

"Do you wish to discover who you really are?" Groman tentatively asked.

Shade didn't know how to answer that, so it remained quiet, but it knew that the orb was calling to it.

"I must continue…" Shade struggled to respond.

"Continue what?" Groman excitedly questioned.

"Fate."

Shade approached the orb, then its non-corporeal eyes stared deep into the dark abyss, and the abyss stared back.

A note from Manasong

Hall of Fame of Patrons

The patrons who support Rupegia shall have their names sung by the bards for they deserve the glory and honor. Their names are:

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Chapter 86: Death - Part 3

"You may now kiss the bride," the priest announces.

I hug Lily's waist and pull her closer, then her hand cups my left cheek, and I eagerly press my lips against hers.

We both comically squeeze our eyes shut, then we end our kiss with a loud *smack*.

We laugh and turn to face the benches as everyone rises to their feet and applauds.

With a smile so wide that it hurts my face, Lily and I carefully come down the steps and walk the aisle while everyone throws flower petals at us.

We shield our faces with our hands and skip forward while the photographer walks backward like a pro, taking all the pictures of us that he can without tripping.

We leave the church, then we go down the steps and enter the car.

The driver closes the door for us and hurries to his seat, then he turns on the car, and we leave the church grounds, heading towards the restaurant.

We wave as the guests start pouring out, then we sigh and lean back.

I scratch my cheek, then I immediately lay my head on Lily's lap and breathe in the fresh and herbal perfume of hers that I love. It reminds me of woodlands, and it's rather calming for me.

I stare at her beautiful, heart-stoppingly cute face. Her slightly wavy black hair is puffed up and oiled like a model's, covering her bare, small shoulders like drapes. Her gently tanned skin is glossy from her perfectly applied makeup, making me miss her little flaws. Her eyes are striking with black eyeliner, calling for me to drown in them. Her red lips look delicious, and I lick my own, tasting some of her lipstick that got on them from before. Her pointy nose and chin are absolutely pinchable, so much so that I give in and lightly pinch her nose.

She snorts, then her small, delicate fingers pinch my nose in return, though with enough strength to hurt slightly. I giggle, and she releases me, then I notice that she's giving me a slightly amused and pouty glare.

"Amor, from below, you look so imposing…" I whisper lovingly to her, and her face softens. "I can see your boogers, though." I smirk, and she pinches my nose again, but I bat her hand away because she was about to make me sneeze.

"Stop resisting!" She demands, and we start to wrestle, but I fight for my life because those delicate hands are supported by some very athletic and strong arms.

We play around for a few more seconds, then she spreads our arms apart, leaving both of our faces exposed, and kisses my lips.

My heart tightens, and the sudden attack leaves me stunned for a moment, which she takes advantage of to free her hands from my grip and give my nose another squeeze.

"Ah…" -I immediately turn around- "ACHOO! Ugh…" I sneeze strongly and groan.

She giggles evilly, then pats my head. She finds my sneezes to be funny, for some reason. "Oh, no, your hair!" She exclaims then hurriedly brushes my head to tame my hair down again.

I turn around and see her worried and apologetic face, making me feel quite smug. I grab her hand and give it a reassuring squeeze, "Oh… don't worry, Amor. Mom has a hairbrush and some hairspray we can use."

"Alright…" She mutters, a little shy.

I sit up and tightly hug her thin waist, then I continue to admire her face. This little piece of hazelnut chocolate is mine. Only for me to eat as much as I want. She's all mine.

Considering the amount of fucked up porn and hentai I've watched, I never expected that I'd get married one day, or that it'd be a fellow degenerate, or, most importantly, that she'd be this cute.

I know that she wants to rest her head against my chest, but her hair is way too expensive to ruin, just yet, so we'll limit our cuddling for now.

We reach the restaurant and ask the organizer to get the brush and hair spray from my Mom, then we do one last look-over before we let the guests in.

We stand at the far end of the reception hall like a king and queen receiving their guests. Everyone gives us their blessings, wishing us happiness together, then they're taken to their seats.

After an exhaustingly long time, everyone is gone, and only our immediate families are left.

Dad comes in, his large belly barely contained by his tuxedo and his usual stubble entirely shaved away, making his fat neck rolls very visible. His beady eyes look at us amusedly, and I know that he's ready to drop a fat one.

"[Don't you exhaust yourself partying because tonight, you gotta pound her in bed]," Dad teases in Portuguese, then wiggles his eyebrows suggestively. He isn't even drunk yet and he's already like this…

Mom slaps him on the arm while Sis rolls her eyes and Bro chuckles. I grit my teeth and smile awkwardly, then I sigh and shake my head. I'm thankful that Lily's parents can't speak Portuguese.

"What did he say?" Lily curiously asks, wanting to get in on the joke.

"A stupid joke…" I mutter. I really don't want to repeat it.

We share a strong handshake, and his large, thick, and rough fingers almost crush my hand, then he pulls me into a hug.

"[Proud of you, boy]," he whispers in my ear, then releases me.

Mom comes next. Her blue dress is a little too tight, revealing that she's slowly gaining her "grandma proportions," but she's definitely quite far from Dad's roundedness. Her short stature forces me to bend down a little to hug her properly.

"[Congratulations. I wish you both lots of happiness, wealth, and good health]," she whispers and gives me a tight hug as she does.

"[Thanks, Mom]," I whisper back and release her, then she gives one to Lily, too. They're really sweet to each other.

Because of her dark skin and hair color, Lily and her parents found something in common to help bridge the gap between their two cultures. Even though they came from almost entirely opposite locations in the world and they could hardly understand each other, they still managed to become fast friends. Lily comes from India, and Mom from Brazil, yet they found a lot of common ground to build a relationship on.

After Mom finishes giving her blessings to Lily in broken English, Bro comes next, sporting a military buzz cut. Taller than everyone else, not that either of our families are tall to begin with, he towers over us, and he proudly displays the muscles he gained in the army with the tightest fitting tuxedo I've ever seen. Sis even sent me a pic of how much his pants ride up his perfectly round ass, and I wonder how he can even stand it. Maybe he likes it, not that I'm judging, but the stories he tells about the army drip with gayness, or at least, butt stuff.

"[Hey, there, Totó. Caught a big one]," he teases in Portuguese with a shit-eating grin.

"[Now it's only you left, Army Boy. When are we going to meet your boyfriend]?" I shoot back with a mirrored grin.

We share a handshake, and he tries to crush my hand, but I quickly wrench myself free and scratch my cheek.

"[Fuck yourself]," he mutters, then moves on.

"'Totó' sounds much cuter than 'Toto,'" Lily whispers teasingly.

"'Toto' is right at my limit, but 'Totó' is a dog's name, so I definitely won't let you call me that," I hurriedly whisper back.

"Hm…" She smiles smugly with a glint of evilness in her eyes.

Sis comes last, followed by her husband. Her round belly from her pregnancy prevented her from using her best dress, but she still looks as classy as always. I also notice that her round face has become a bit rounder along with her kind smile that has become even kinder than it was before.

I give her a short and gentle hug, then she gives one to Lily, too.

"Olá, olá, parabéns, congratulations to both of you. I wish you happiness and good health," Sis happily says to us while holding Lily's hands like girl friends.

"I wish you good health, too, and a safe delivery. I want us to play together soon," Lily responds in the same tone, and the two of them nod excitedly at each other.

Sis' husband is a rather shy man, so our handshake is short and a bit awkward.

Lily's father comes next, and he immediately gives me a tight hug while crying profusely. He's shorter than I am, so I'm forced to lean down, making the situation even more awkward.

"Take care of my daughter," he manages to mumble between sobs with a thick Indian accent.

"Dad…" Lily mutters and chuckles while facepalming.

Lily's mother comes next, and she cups my cheeks, forcing me to look straight at her elegant face. "Congratulations, and take care of my daughter, please," she composedly gives me her blessings, then moves on to console her husband.

With the greetings now done, we enter the restaurant and get the party going.

A wedding isn't really a party for the newlyweds to enjoy, but rather, it's a party for your guests. It's a show where we're the main attraction, so we'd better play up the part of a loving and happy couple, not that we aren't one already.

I don't eat much, saving space in my stomach for the chocolate and cake, but before the time for that comes, the waiter gives each of us at the grooms' table two gold-powdered Ferrero Rocher each.

As if we were having a toast, we all, at the same time, eat the most delicious chocolate I've ever tasted.

Lily's Mom used to dance, so we take our first dance seriously, trying to impress her.

I grab her waist and lift her up high, then I spin in place and gently guide her down. That'd be an impressive feat of strength if Lily weren't so fucking light. Everything involving gymnastics seems to be easier when your partner is so light that you can fold them into a trunk and carry them by hand.

Once the song ends, we receive an enthusiastic round of applause and a thumbs up from Lily's Mom, so the greatest challenge of the night was cleared with an excellent grade.

I awkwardly scratch my cheek, then we return to our table to calm down our hearts. Lily can dance, but not in front of everyone like this.

I spend most of my time at the party talking with Sis, Lily, and her friends. I don't really have any strong connections with anyone besides these two, so it's kind of like I don't have any real friends, but Lily's group seems to like me, for some reason.

I feel like they've adopted me as one of them…

Lily and I dance again a few more times, but with all the stress from today, we don't have the energy to do it that seriously.

The party goes on until late at night, but it finally ends at 3 AM, and we're "allowed" to leave.

I lay my head on Lily's lap while the driver takes us home. We're both completely exhausted, and if my clothes are starting to itch, I can only imagine how badly hers are by now.

The driver drops us off at our house, and we awkwardly walk in. I have to follow in behind her, holding her dress' "tail," or whatever this shit is called, so that it doesn't get dirty.

Right when we open the door, two missiles launch towards Lily, but she deftly shoots them down before they can do any damage. "Tito! Lala! Stop!" She assertively commands them, and they immediately obey.

I drop Lily's tail and corral Team Rocket away so that she can get to her room and shed her dress. Tito, the not-corgi, shows me his wide and fluffy belly, making me squeal internally, while Lala, the not-beagle, jumps at my leg, giving me puppy eyes and asking for pats.

"I'm sorry, but daddy needs to do something before I can play," I whisper apologetically at them, then I quickly enter our room so that I can watch Lily strip.

I sit down on the bed and give her a knowing smile that she quickly mirrors, then she slows down and adds sensuality to her movements.

Her dress drops to the floor, revealing her dainty, lacy, white lingerie. She's wearing a delicate bra, a garter belt, long white stockings, and the smallest panties she's ever worn.

My heart pumps blood down to my dick, and my exhaustion is washed away almost instantly.

"Don't bite them off," she warns me, slightly deflating my excitement. "Seriously, they were expensive."

"Okay…" I mumble, then I tap the screen of my phone and take a picture. She strikes some poses for me and slowly makes her way across the bed as if it were a porn shoot. She's going to get fucked in a few minutes, so that's not actually that far from the truth.

Once she gets close enough, I drop my phone and pull her close to me, then I invade her mouth with my tongue.

I push her down, and we lay on the bed, then she starts to rub her pussy against my leg, so I break the kiss and smile apologetically as I say, "We have to get these clothes off…"

"Right…" She snorts and pushes me away, then I quickly get undressed and sweep her off her feet. She yelps and hugs me around my neck, then starts chuckling as I princess carry her to the bathroom.

We both would rather fuck and suck each other after a quick shower, but she's a bit of a cum slut, so she has something else in mind for us.

"Wait, wait, wait, there's something we need to do…" She stops me and smiles suggestively.

"Oh…?"

She gives my dick a quick wash, then she deepthroats me.

"Hngh…!" I moan as she starts pumping me, begging for my cum.

I happily oblige, and she gives herself a facial. Or, more precisely, she makes me cum all over her beautiful, perfect hair.

I chuckle and scratch my cheek awkwardly as she runs out of the bathroom to get my phone for a selfie.

After that, we have a quick shower, and now that we're both clean and smelling good, we hungrily go down on each other.

"Did you even go soft?" She questions as she licks the head.

"Uh… I don't think so," I confusedly answer. "I guess I'm just really horny."

"Heh."

I envelop her pussy with my mouth, then I tongue fuck her. She knows how to suck cock, and I know how to eat pussy.

"Hngh…! Ahn…! Oh…! Ah…! I'm… I'm comiiing~…!" She shouts, then I feel her vagina quivering through my tongue. "W-wow…! D-don't… STOOOOP!"

She stops sucking me, and I keep a steady technique going, eating her out like I've never done before.

Using my tongue like a third hand, I play her pussy to bring out a beautiful song from her lips, with even her tight asshole gets played with. My hand and tongue move on their own, creating a symphony with her moans.

I've become a Grand artist, and her pussy is my instrument. I'm a prodigy, a genius, the master of pleasure.

No, I'm more, much more. I'm… I'm…

I am a Sex God.

"W-w-w-w-wait…! Toto, wait!" She pleads.

I snap out of it and make a dumb noise, "Huh…?"

"That's a bit too much… you'll… ruin me before we even start…" She struggles to continue talking as she catches her breath.

"Oh… okay."

She rolls to the side and reaches for the bedside table while I clean my finger on a used underwear. I don't really like playing with her asshole, so I don't know why I did that, but she likes it, so it's fine.

She leans over the bedside table and takes out a condom, then she expertly readies my Holy Weapon and sits down onto it. The wet noise made by her pussy is extremely arousing.

I breathe heavily, then I grab her hips and slam us together, making her moan loudly.

I want to fuck her.

I grit my teeth as a hunger wells up from deep inside me, and her moaning turns into yelling.

I need to fuck her.

The hunger morphs into desperation, and her yelling gives way to screaming.

I need to fuck her.

I slap her ass cheeks and growl.

I will… fuck… her brains out!

She orgasms as I continue to pump and pump, applying a liberal amount of lube to her pussy every now and then to keep the friction from hurting either of us.

"HNGRHH!" I grunt like an animal as I cum loads inside her.

I pull my cock out and feel a bit disappointed that her pussy isn't dripping with cum.

I take the condom off and shove it in her mouth.

"Drink it," I order, then I ready myself with another.

She raises her eyebrows in surprise, then she meekly obeys. "Feeling a bit wild today?" She tentatively asks.

"You have no idea," I whisper back in a husky tone and continue destroying her pussy.

My body eventually gives in after several more orgasms, but my hunger is insatiable.

My cock vacates her vagina, and we collapse right there on the bed. After just a minute, we both fall fast asleep.

The dogs wake us up with their barking at the bedroom door, begging for their breakfast.

"Toto, You broke my pussy…" Lily moans in pain.

"Your dry vagina gave me a rub burn…" I moan back.

"Fuck you, you animal…"

"No, please don't, I can't handle anymore," I beg, and we both chuckle.

We apply some cream on each other's aching areas and go feed the dogs. Only then are we allowed to prepare our breakfast.

Lily makes waffles while I start the espresso machine, then I stare at it as my mind goes blank. It seems that I've forgotten how to make coffee.

"What is it?" Lily gently asks me.

I scratch my cheek, then my hands suddenly start working by themselves, and I make each of us a quick latte.

"Nothing…" I mutter.

She finishes the waffles, then adds a spoonful of cream on top and pours on some hot blueberry syrup.

We sit down and enjoy the smell of coffee and waffles on a chilly morning as we eat. The dogs happily wag their butts as they gorge themselves on their food, and I smile warmly at them while I gaze upon their cuteness.

"They're saying that it might not snow this year," Lily comments as she checks her phone.

"Mom said that it's becoming a desert over there. Things are getting bad…" I respond dismally. Lily doesn't say anything more about it because we both know that things in India are even worse, so we then go quiet, trying to avoid this depressing topic.

Lily gets a message on her phone, so she checks it, then she smiles and suggests, "Toto, your sister says that she'll be taking our parents for a walk, so we could just rest today, I'm definitely way too tired to go out."

I nod slowly as I absentmindedly reply, "Sounds good to me. Tell her to take them to Tim Hortons, they'll love their donuts."

She chuckles girlishly. "So… now that we have the whole day to ourselves… how about we play some Guild Wars VR?"

I turn to her and see her smirk, which I promptly mirror. "You sure about that?"

She nods confidently, making her wavy hair sway. "My hips hurt, and my pussy is a little sore, but my legs are okay, so I can deal with it."

"Alright, let's go."

We decide to play with the dogs to tire them out so that we can game without any interruptions.

Tito is being lazy, like always, so we focus on Lala. Otherwise, she'll just pester him until he gets angry. We might have to change "fluffy butt's" diet and force him to exercise a bit more because he's definitely getting fat. "Puppy eyes" is always energetic, so she's still quite fit.

Then we open the dog door so that they can play together in the backyard for a while. The weather has been somewhat dry lately, so there's no risk of them getting dirty with mud.

We turn on our PCs and put on our controlling gloves, then we open the game and put on our visors.

I look at my hands and see a pair of large cat paws, then I look down and notice that I'm naked.

"Oh, right…" I whisper then giggle as I flap my fully animated mega cat dong. The spiky, red meat rod makes some lewd and wet sounds as it smacks against my hips, and the absurd sight of that gives me a boner.

I look to my side and see Succubus-Loli-Lily staring at me with amusement. Her attire is the perfect mix of innocence, sexiness, and cuteness, and staring at this alluring devil just hardens my erection even further.

These lewd models aren't part of the official game, they're mods that we put together to have some fun.

I lick my lips as I stare at her dripping pussy, then I give her kitten eyes.

She frowns worriedly, wrinkling her cute little face, and questions, "The fuck is wrong with you? I'm still really sore."

I scratch my cheek awkwardly and tentatively ask, "Can I get a handy? I'm really so fucking horny that it's making me feel awkward."

"Alright…"

"Get fucked!" Lolily taunts as she slams her huge axe down on the scrub's head.

He doesn't even have purple equips, and he's challenging her. I mean, just the size of her axe alone should give you the idea that she's not to be fucked with, but noo~… the krill willingly enter the whale's mouth on their own.

I sigh and stab the trashier scrub in the back, stacking even more poison on him. I leave a clone behind and go invis, then he swings his stupid greatsword around and kills the clone. That gives him another stack of confusion, making him hurt himself even worse.

I just watch and chuckle as the dude wildly swings his hammer around, slowly killing himself just from the confusion debuff.

Once he realizes that I won't be coming back, he switches to Lily, then I stab him in the back again and create four clones. I immediately spread them out and mimic their behavior, fooling him into not knowing which one is real.

He attacks and kills the wrong one, which earns him another stack of confusion and makes him damage himself again, then he goes for another and another. Not only does he keep hurting himself, but he's also giving me plenty of time for my cooldowns to reset.

Once I'm ready, I detonate the last clone and switch to my shortsword, but then my mind wanders, and I hesitate.

I stare at both of my hands, feeling like there's something odd about them. My fingers feel sluggish, my mind keeps searching for something, my heart feels empty.

"Cat! A little hand please!" Lolily gently requests. She's fighting four newbs, but it's still four on one.

Where the fuck are they all coming from?

"GYEEEH!" The scrub that I'd forgotten about tries to backstab me.

I teleport behind him and shove my sword into his spine. "Nothing personnel, kid," I throw some banter and twist the sword in his back.

The trash will be paralyzed for a few more seconds, but he's using a tank build, so it'll take a while for me to actually finish him.

I create four more clones and send them to detonate on the newbs, allowing Lolily to simply outlast the idiots.

I watch as she plays around with a wolf girl. Bullying female chars is a sadistic pastime for both of us.

The girl is fast, turning into an orange blur as she dodges repeatedly, but Lolily knows the pattern of her movements, and I chain the wolf right at the perfect time.

Lolily's axe cleaves the wolf's head in two, killing her instantly.

I scratch my cheek awkwardly. I actually feel a bit bad about that one, she was really cute.

"Catt-o! There's a zerg coming!" Lolily delicately draws me out of my musings.

I growl angrily like an animal, and Lolily chuckles.

"DarkHarvest can get fucked! We can't hold this spot; we need to get out of here!" I respectfully suggest.

She holds a newb by the neck so that she can stare at me. "You can't deal with them?!" She softly asks, totally not flippant, then decapitates the dude.

I stare at the swarm intensely.

The fuckers are small, but it's still a swarm. I need… I need…

My fingers twitch, and my cheek itches.

"WELL?! CAN YOU DEAL WITH THEM?!" Lolily presses on, pulling me out of my daydreaming.

"NO! FUCK THIS!" I throw my Escape-… uh… I create a smokescreen and use my clones as bait, then I grab the Homebound Stone and start the teleport countdown.

The scrubs zerg our smokescreen, but we easily escape, though using the Homebound Stone isn't cheap.

We're teleported back to town, and I send a message to DarkHarvest that we're out. Someone fed info to the Green Skins about our position, and not even we can face their zerg head-on like that.

I see a hint of red that gets my attention. Lolily follows my gaze and snorts. "She's hot. Want me to get a new costume like that?" She suggests teasingly.

I chuckle awkwardly, caught red-handed. "Nah…" I shyly deny and scratch my cheek.

I'm feeling a bit tired, so we stop in the public garden, then I try to take off my visor. But then, my finger pokes one of my eyes instead, and I whine in pain. "Ow! The fuck?"

Where's my visor?

Lolily gives me a weird look.

"Logout," I command, and the screen goes black, then I see the real world again.

What…?

Lolily grabs my shoulder and asks me worriedly, "Are you okay?"

I nod and smile as I whisper, "Yeah, I'm fine. I just need to go to the bathroom."

She releases my shoulder. "Alright."

Tito and Lala follow me there, so I give them a few pats, but I don't let them in the bathroom, locking the door behind me.

I take a piss and wash my hands, then I look at my face in the mirror and pause.

"Fuck, I'm old…" I mutter as I start counting the white hairs.

I see one, two, three, four, five… ten… twenty… thirty… forty…

"Fuck…"

The dogs bark and whine as they play around a bit too roughly with each other, so I yell at them to calm down, and they stop.

My left cheek itches again.

"You okay?" Lily's muffled voice comes through the door.

"Yeah I-…" -I notice that my fingers are bloodied- "The fuck…" I mumble.

I wash the blood away, but the itching doesn't let up, so I have to wash them every time I scratch my cheek.

"Got a rash?" Lily asks as she warmly lays her hand on my shoulder.

"Yeah," I sigh and scratch it again. It's itching so much now that a thin vertical red line has become clearly visible on my left cheek.

She grabs my hand and washes the blood off of my fingers, then she applies a wound dressing for my cheek, and a red line of blood quickly appears in the cotton.

"Alright, I'm ready," I state and cautiously pat her head, avoiding her pointy horns, then I take off my visor, and we continue.

I grab my sword and shield, and we go to the arena to spar. Lily calls DarkHarvest in voice chat and starts a discussion with him, so she just watches me fight.

I jump forward and slash. I feel slow.

I create some clones and play around with my opponent's mind. I feel sluggish.

I quickly deal with the scrub, but I'm left unsatisfied by the fight. I scratch my cheek.

My next opponent is a busty girl, so I bully her relentlessly until she forfeits.

I look over at my little angelic loli as she brings down hell on DarkHarvest. We're getting reimbursed for that Homebound Stone, no matter what.

My momentary distraction provides an opening for my opponent, allowing his wooden longsword to cut vertically down my left cheek and rip off the dressing in the process.

I growl like an animal and turn on bully mode. They're an androgynous elf, but they're cute enough that my dick gets hard when I hear them moan in pain.

I finish the duel, then I go towards Lolily and molest her. DarkHarvest can't see her, but the others in the arena can definitely make out my suggestive movements.

The smell of blood; the moans of pain; the sounds of battle; the sexy clothing everyone's wearing. It all just makes my dick get harder and harder.

I sit down in the stands and pull out my dick as I ogle Lolily's body. The other guild officers side with us, so DarkHarvest eventually relents, then Lolily ends the call and gives me a bewitching look.

She starts swinging her hips enticingly, and I begin to breathe heavily as I stare at her, just imagining how her tight virgin asshole would feel squeezing around my Dragonator.

I scratch my cheek and start stroking my cock with my bloodied hand. My hand moves on its own, up and down at a rapid pace, but I find neither pleasure nor release.

My heart palpitates and I sweat cold, but I remain seated, too enthralled by Lolily's dancing to stop masturbating to her.

However, orgasm never comes, and my arm starts to get tired, then my hand slows down until it stops moving entirely, and my dick goes completely limp, flopping pathetically.

I try to move, but my body feels like it's made of stone. I try to look away, but my vertebrae have been fused together. I try to blink, but my eyelids have been glued open. I try to scream, but I have no mouth.

My skin isn't my own, it's a cage. I try to rip it off, but my muscles won't obey, for they don't belong to me anymore.

My eyes are the windows out of this cell. They show me the world outside, but they're not the exit.

Everything is wrong; this body doesn't belong to me; this world is not my own.

My mind retreats inwards, and my vision is no longer my own, as if it's now just a camera that I'm watching the world through, then someone else takes control of my life.

I get up and adjust my tuxedo. Lily comes up to me and tightens my tie, then the bridesmaids lift the tail of her wedding dress.

We link our arms together and walk down the aisle as the Bridal Chorus plays at full volume.

We stop before the priest and recite our vows.

"Heitor da Cruz, do you take Lily Singh as your wife?" The priest's voice resounds throughout the church.

The doors to the church open up to reveal the abyss, and a wisp of smoke seeps in from it.

It slowly floats closer and closer to us until it stops right in front of me.

"You can have her, if you join me," I offer and extend my hand to the shade.

The smoke grows and starts to take the shape of a person.

"Things will go back to how they were, as if this had never happened," I insist.

The smoke solidifies into pale, featureless skin.

"There will be no more pain."

Black hair grows out of the person's head, then his body gains the characteristics of a man.

"There will be no more fighting."

The man slams his fists against the glass separating us.

"You'll go back to your simple life as a robotics researcher with your beautiful wife."

My eyes open, allowing me to see again.

"Why do you resist?" Other me questions sadly with a frown.

United, day and night!

I try to scream, but I have no mouth.

"Heitor da Cruz, do you take Lily Singh as your wife?" The priest repeats.

In pain and pleasure!

My body gets covered with thin white underclothes.

Tito offers me his belly, Lala shows me her puppy eyes.

Success or failure!

My armor reappears, its emerald scales shining in their full glory.

My nostrils reform, and they're filled with the heavenly smell of coffee.

Wherever we may be!

My emerald fang sword reappears in my hand.

A Ferrero Rocher appears before other me. He grabs it and eats it, then he moans in delight as the hazelnut chocolate melts in his mouth.

We'll never abandon each other!

"I love you," Lily's whisper caresses my ears.

All for one, one for all!

"Heitor da Cruz, do you take Lily Singh as your wife?" The priest asks me one last time.

My mouth finally reappears.

"My name… is Wolf Ryder!" I shout with a hoarse voice, then I stab my other self in the heart, and everything shatters apart.

I wake up feeling confused and hurting everywhere. I manage to open my eyes just a bit, but my vision is too blurry to make anything out.

I try to move, but my arms and legs barely respond, and the pain only increases the more I try.

I calm myself down and try to assess my situation. I feel like I'm submerged in some sort of viscous and warm liquid, and then I notice that there's something hard inside my mouth.

Suddenly, I feel the liquid draining away, then a cold and a horrible pain flares up as the tube-like thing buried inside my mouth is yanked out.

I sense the mana from a type of [Regeneration] spell leaking everywhere around me, then the pains throughout my body start to fade away.

Over a few more minutes, I start to regain some strength in my muscles, so I try to rub my eyes, but then I hear a loud crystalline clinking sound as my fingers are stopped by something, then my forehead burns with a sharp pain, and I pull my hands away.

I feel the pain slowly fading away as I begin to flex my fingers, only now noticing that they feel really stiff and heavy.

I try to clench my fists, but something sharp digs into my skin, so I stop.

Are those my nails?

I use my right hand to feel my left and discover that my skin is now dark, rough and-… I hear a familiar clinking sound- scaly…?

I feel it some more and realize that there are actual small scales on the back of my hand and forearm, then I notice that my fingers all have razor-sharp claws now instead of nails.

What the fuck?!

I carefully feel my face again, but it's soft like normal, so it seems that only my hands and forearms are different. Though, now I'm starting to feel something weird on my temples, feet, and ass, too.

I gently take off the glass swimming goggles covering my eyes, then I cast [Clean] on my face to clear away all the gunk.

I start blinking rapidly, and my eyes slowly become adjusted to the light.

I look at my hands and wait until the blurriness goes away, and what I can see shocks me. My hands have become larger, their skin has become dark and rough, and they're covered with mirror-like scales.

What. The. Fuck?!

I start inspecting the rest of my body, and I discover that it isn't withered like it was during my time with the elemental-wives, and then I notice that my feet have become draconic, too, and they have even larger claws than my hands do.

The confusion and excitement overwhelms me, sending a chill down my spine, then my body suddenly rolls over to the side.

I feel like I have a tentacle extending from my tailbone, so I look around to my ass and see a large, thick, dragon tail emerging from the base of my spine.

"WHAT?!" I shout, then my tail whips about and hits the soft, wet bedding, making me roll over again.

I stay there on my stomach for a while, frozen in confusion, fear, and also because my tail is flailing uncontrollably, which is preventing me from rolling over onto my side. Its powerful muscles make it the strongest limb that I have, so it isn't easy to keep it under control.

Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck.

I try to facepalm, but my claws hit something hard near my temple, so I feel around it and realize that I have two long horns pointing upwards and growing out of the sides of my head.

FUCK, FUCK, FUCK, FUCK, FUCK!

In the confusion, I cut my forehead again with my claws, drawing some blood, but the [Regeneration] still acting on me quickly heals the wound.

The tail works just like a tentacle, so it doesn't me take too much time to get it back under control, but what does take a long time is for me to process what the fuck has happened.

So, I'm back…?

I look around curiously as my eyes recover, allowing me to see further than just a few meters. I'm in a sort of wooden bed/tub hybrid, which is filled with an amber-colored viscous liquid.

Outside the tub, I can see wooden walls and a ceiling covered with the usual growth rings found in the interiors of elven tree-houses.

I can only see one door and a single crystal light that provides a soft illumination, which my sensitive eyes are thankful for, but no windows.

I open my "Status," and I gasp in surprise.

My race has changed to "Weredragon." Not "Dragon-type Wereanimal," just "Weredragon."

I slap my forehead and groan as I cut myself yet again with my claws, then I start chuckling and roll onto my back.

Well, I guess this makes sense since dragons aren't animals.

My tail makes it rather uncomfortable to stay like this, so I roll over to one side.

What the fuck even happened…?

My memories after I met the black glowing tiger are really blurry up until the fantasy with Lily, so I have no idea how this could've happened.

I wait until I've recovered enough strength to use my tail to stand up, making me chuckle. This thing is so strong that I think I could win in arm wrestling with it.

I slip on the wet bedding and fall on my back, but the bed's so soft that I barely even feel it.

"Hm…" I pout in annoyance. My limbs feel weak and unresponsive even though my body is pretty muscular.

Wait, my Gifts!

My [Gate] is still blocked, but then I search for the [Summon Elemental] button in my soul space, and it fills me with joy when I find it there.

Wait, wait!

I look through my "Status" again and see Ciel's name in the "Companions" entry.

WOW, WOW, WOW, WOW!

I focus on the fellowship bond, quickly sensing that she's nearby, perhaps just a dozen meters away.

I summon an earth-Lina and get her to help me up, then she lifts me out of this tub. I notice a chair with my elven underclothes neatly folded on it, but I only put my underwear on before getting earth-Lina to assist me in getting out of here.

All of the girls are nearby, but my [Bind]s truly seem to be gone, so I have to get to them myself.

Earth-Lina helps me walk, then she opens the door for me, revealing a large circular room with eight other doors, each of which has one of the girls right behind them.

Alissa stumbles through one of the doors and notices me, then she lights up with a wide, bright smile and jumps onto me. "WOLFYYYY~!" She shouts in pure joy, then gives me a tight hug.

Earth-Lina lets go of me, but Alissa can't support my weight, so the elemental-wife holds us up again to keep us steady.

Since I don't want to hurt Alissa, I keep my hands away from her, but my tail is still wildly wagging, which almost makes me lose my balance because of how heavy it is.

Alissa notices my strange state and stares wide-eyed at me. "What happened to you?!" She exclaims, flabbergasted.

"No idea…" I casually respond with a shrug. I've got more important things to worry about right now.

The next door opens, and Roxanne emerges, floating with her sexy bat wings. "YAY!" She shouts happily, then she notices my claws. "WOW!"

A naked Hana bursts out of her door and stumbles, but she continues forward until she reaches us, then she gives Alissa and I an enthusiastic bear hug. "I MISSED YOU!" She bellows.

The next door opens, and I whimper from the ache in my heart as Hana eases off the hug.

"Hello… I guess I… survived…?" Ciel questions hesitantly and awkwardly chuckles.

Lina bursts out of the next door and makes a beeline towards Ciel, moving solely through [Spirit of Gaia]. She stops right in front of the chocolate angel and gives her a tight hug, burying her head in Ciel's huge, delicious tits, then we hear her crying softly in relief.

Another door opens, and Yunia unsteadily walks through it, stopping only when I'm in reach of her so that she can hug me.

Ciel, Lina, and Roxanne join in the group hug, then another door opens.

We see a very tall, naked woman; she must be over two meters tall since she's even taller than Hana. Her lustrous, straight, dark blue hair pools down onto the floor, covering parts of her face and her body like a veil; her incredibly delicate face holds a gentle smile; her long, almost Asian-like eyes are truly entrancing with their black sclera and split red and blue irises; her lithe limbs make her seem as delicate as a doll; her little bee stings of a chest give her an air of innocence; and her small, light blue landing strip makes me salivate.

"Aoi?" I meekly ask.

The woman glows, and her body grows even taller as it gains scales, then thickens with powerful muscles as she goes down onto all fours. Her face elongates into a snout, and a pair of large blue wings grows out of her back.

Then she stops glowing, revealing my magnificent blue dragon, Aoi. "That's me!" She exclaims happily, then she barrels forward and joins in on the hug.

We cry together as we whimper and whisper about how much we all missed each other.

I immediately start casting [Bind]s to reconnect everyone again, and the feelings that come flooding through break our hearts. Our knees weaken, and we all fall on the floor, then we cry our hearts out.

A note from Manasong

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Chapter 87: Resolution - Part 1

A note from Manasong

Attention: to conform to the limit of mature content (more than just sexual content) allowed in a novel, I've censored this chapter. You can look for the uncensored version here.

Earth-Lina goes back to get the rest of our clothes, and I summon two more so that they can help us get dressed.

Our cuddle puddle is centered on Ciel since everyone wants a piece of her. Lina stays on her lap while I hug her from behind with some thick, long tentacles. I can't safely use my hands just yet, so this'll have to do for now. I'm also feeling a bit lonely, so I make sure that I'm touching all of the girls with the tentacles to appease my thirst for skinship.

After our emotions die down a bit, and the tears stop pouring out, Roxanne asks Ciel the question that's on everyone's minds, "So… didn't you… die?"

"She's definitely alive," Yunia immediately states.

Ciel looks down and hugs Lina tighter as she goes through her memories. She finally speaks after a short while with a wistful voice, "I remember getting swallowed by the slime, but after that, my vision went dark, and I felt as if I were just sleeping for a long time… then I dreamt about Macht and woke up here."

"It was a test. Arreira was playing with our feelings again," Lina somberly adds and frowns angrily, casting a shadow upon her pretty face.

Roxanne calmly examines me and speculates, "You looked as if you were wasting away when we met you in the tunnels, and since you're back to how you were before, I'm fairly certain that it was all just some sort of illusion or dream."

We all accept that as the most likely explanation. There's no way that Ciel would've been so easily "revived," otherwise.

Ciel sighs and pats Lina's head. "We'll just have to ask the Dungeon Master, then."

We all hum in agreement, then their attention turns to me.

"So, what happened to you?" Alissa asks worriedly. She gently grabs one of my draconic hands and inspects it.

"I don't know… I honestly don't know…" I mutter dejectedly.

Alissa fiddles with one of the mirror-like scales and cuts her delicate fingers on the edge. They're extremely sharp.

I grab her fingers and give them a kiss as I cast [Heal].

"That looks like a malformed transformation," Aoi confidently states.

Alissa gives her a confused look. "How do you know…? Ah, right, you were a woman when we first saw you, and that wasn't an illusion, correct?"

Aoi nods excitedly and gives us a toothy grin as she narrates, "I was stuck somewhere and wanted really badly to become human, so I enveloped my body with my mana organ and forced the transformation. I failed horribly, and my entire body became deformed, but the gray platform healed me completely, so I tried again and again until I succeeded.

"Wolfy's new look is like my half-successful attempts, when something changed, but not everything. But those attempts hurt so much that I cried, so I don't know how he's so normal." And she gives me a curious look.

Through [Bind], we get a vague idea of what Aoi went through as she lets her feelings pour through the connection, and it really wasn't pleasant.

I flex my fingers in thought and even manage to make my scales twitch. "It doesn't hurt, though it does feel weird and sluggish to move," I casually respond with a shrug, then something dawns on me. "Oh… I do remember feeling a horrible pain after I met with the shining black tiger."

Alissa knits her eyebrows in thought and requests, "Wolfy, give me [Sense Soul]." I obey, and she looks intensely at my arms. "When I transform, my soul doesn't change, but it seems like Wolfy's did, so I think he's more like Hana than me, now."

"Nice!" Hana shouts and gives me a painful slap on the back. "Did your sword change, too?"

I look down and make it twitch. "Well, no, but I'm feeling something strange…"

I open my "Status" and discover that I have two new skills: [Dragon Transformation] and [Mana Body], both of which are "innate." The latter seems to have replaced [Mana Genitals], but the skill is only at level one.

"The hell is [Mana Body]?" I question out loud, then Alissa, Yunia, and Roxanne raise their eyebrows in surprise at the same time.

"That's a really rare skill," Roxanne excitedly comments before the others can recover.

"Is it… good?" I ask, frowning worriedly.

Roxanne adjusts her glasses and starts lecturing me, "Everything magical will be easier for you, but you'll also be more vulnerable to magic. You could potentially sustain yourself with just mana, but that's extremely inefficient mana-wise, so it's easier to just use [Conjure Bland Meal]. You'll be able to increase your physical stats similarly to [Spirit of Gaia], but you don't have the passive bonus of [Stonebody]. I recommend that you never touch emellanat again, though."

"Sounds nice…?" I say tentatively.

"I could potentially kill you with [Disruption Field]," Yunia soberly states, making us all frown worriedly.

"Well, shit…" I mutter, then I sigh and try to massage my temples, but my claws hit my horns, and I curse under my breath. "How… difficult would that be?"

"It's like an inverse interruption battle. If our 'Magic Power' is equal, then it's nearly impossible for me to kill you, but if you're trapped by someone moderately more powerful than you…"

I feel a slight chill run through me. A [Gate] scrubber is already a death sentence for me, but now I'll have one more thing to worry about. "Can I develop a resistance to it?"

She narrows her pretty blue eyes in thought. "Not sure, but that's a possibility…"

Alissa interjects, "The more powerful mages or Lords learn this skill to help them when their bodies start to decay from old age, so I'm sure they've developed countermeasures for that."

"We could ask the mages of our court," Yunia adds reassuringly, but she immediately frowns in concern. "If there's anyone left…"

I scratch my horn awkwardly, not entirely convinced. "Well, there are many 'innate'-type skills that I can't see, so maybe someone created a skill for that…" -I get an idea that gives me hope- "Oh! Is it reversible?"

Yunia smiles gently and nods. "Yes. I believe the Chimeras are the true experts in this field, so they should be able to tell us more."

I sigh in relief, and Aoi chuckles when she sees my tail starting to sway. "We're not so different anymore," she happily says.

I use [Sense Soul] on her and see something amazing.

Soul Info

Name:AoiLevel:1Race:Azurite DragonHP:200MP1,250MP300

Strength18Endurance22

"Dwarven beard!" Ciel exclaims once I show everyone what I'm seeing.

"Oh…? Oh! I forgot about that…" Aoi mumbles, then starts laughing heartily.

"How… could you forget something important as this?!" I exclaim, exasperated.

Her tail sways as she gives me a subtle amused look. "Well, losing [Bind] was so painful that I forgot about everything for a while."

A bucket of cold water pours over me. "Oh…" Then I remember a weird dream that makes me feel a bit confused.

"Can you show us once again how you look?" Roxanne asks, almost salivating.

Aoi nods and immediately starts to glow, then her body becomes thinner, and the drop-dead gorgeous woman from before takes her place.

"Hot damn," I sigh in amazement.

Roxanne extends a hand and caresses Aoi's ethereally perfect skin, trembling with barely contained excitement. "Wolfy's sword…" She mutters under her breath, using my friend as an idiom. "Can I kiss you?"

I whip a tentacle at her hand, making her yelp, and forcing her to pull it back, then she rubs the reddened skin and pouts at me.

I look around with narrowed eyes and an imperious expression. "I claim all of Human-Aoi's first times. Nobody is to touch her before me," I announce, then I lay my eyes on the blue-haired beauty.

She's exquisite. Another Goddess to stand among her sister-wives. Her body was painstakingly crafted by herself, using all she knew about cuteness and allure to forge the perfect vessel for my dragonator.

Hana crosses her arms and stares intensely at Aoi's pink, delicious bits. "Couldn't you have given yourself a bigger pair?"

"Dragons don't have them," Aoi innocently replies.

"Yeah, but… y,ou know?" Hana eloquently argues.

Aoi gently touches her soft, small chest. "This is who I am in human form. I didn't choose this shape the way you think I did."

"It's possible to change your transformed self through diligent mental exercise, but not everyone can do it," Alissa quickly lectures.

"Hm…" Hana hums in understanding and rubs her chin as she scans Aoi's body up and down, then she snaps her fingers and turns to me. "Oh, right. What about you, Wolfy? Didn't you say that you're a 'Weredragon,' now? Can you change into one for us?"

The eyes of the girls gleam at the idea, though not all of them would admit to it. They quickly make plenty of room, and I feel a bit lonely for a moment as my tentacles stop touching them.

I search inside my soul space for a while, then I find the new "button," and it seems to be just begging to be pressed, which I happily oblige.

Every single muscle feels as if it's being flexed, then an uncomfortable amount of pressure is applied all over my skin as it starts to glow, followed by the weirdest feeling I've ever felt. It's as if I were being licked with a bumpy tongue across every single part of my body, even inside my flesh.

My posture changes, and it becomes hard to remain sitting, so I go down on all fours. My arms shorten, and my legs bend, then I feel two new limbs emerging out of my back, my wings.

The girls start to become bigger, and bigger, and bigger, and…

Wait…

Giant-Alissa squeals, then she scoops me up into her arms and hugs me tight. "Wolfy, Wolfy, Wolfy, WOLFY! WHY ARE YOU SO CUTE?! HNNGHHHH! I WANT TO SMOTHER YOU!" She shouts and spins around while squishing me against her chest. I keep my claws clenched so that I won't accidentally cut her.

"I-I want to hold him!" Ciel pleads and tries to stop Alissa.

"NO! Wait your turn!" She shoots back, then rubs her face against my snout. "Ow!" She yelps as my pointy horns stab her cheek so deeply that they draw blood.

I extend one claw and cast [Heal] on her.

After Alissa gets her fill, the girls pass me around so that everyone can get a turn. I keep myself stiff while they play with my body, both too nervous and too embarrassed to react, but I do enjoy it very much when they pat me. I also need to keep my mind focused on my draconic shape, otherwise, I feel like I'll shift back into a human… well, Weredragon.

Wait, does Alissa call her normal shape "human"?

"No, we just call it 'normal,'" she reads my mind, literally.

I've gained a few more spikes along my back, which is a masculine trait for dragons, making Aoi and Hana really excited about getting pounded by my huge, spiky, dragonator… when I manage to level up the skill enough to grow a bit larger.

Something tells me that this is a really bad time to get horny, so everyone contributes through [Bind] to extinguish the flames of draconic desire flaring inside us.

It's too tiring to stay in this form for long, so I eventually change back and return to cuddling with everyone.

"Awn…" Ciel moans sadly. "You reminded me of when Aoi was small and cuter."

"Hey, I'm still very cute," Aoi protests.

"Hehehe… baby Wolfy…" Alissa mumbles and giggles girlishly.

Hana clears her throat awkwardly and excitedly announces, "Well, it isn't as cool as what happened to you guys, but I learned how to do this."

She activates [Draconic Body], and her entire fist glows for a second, then it gets covered in thick brown leathery skin and emerald scales. It's like a gauntlet, but it fits her perfectly, allowing her fingers to move with much more dexterity than they'd have with normal armor.

"Wow…" We whisper in unison. Those scales are shiny… but mine seem shinier.

"Hey! Don't brag!" Hana angrily exclaims and gives me a fearsome glare, but I just smirk at her.

"So, can you cover your entire body with it?" Roxanne curiously asks and inspects Hana's hand.

"Nope," Hana happily answers, and Roxanne rolls her eyes. "I can only do this for a minute or so, but I also feel like it's boosting my 'Stats.'"

"Oh…" We coo in wonder.

"I actually punched a [Meteor] with this and survived," she proudly states and thumps her chest, making her balloons jiggle.

I blink blankly and ask, "Wait, what?"

Ciel cups her cheek so hard it makes a slapping sound, and she exclaims, "Ah! So that's why you were covered in burns when we found you."

Lina slaps her forehead and lets her little mouth hang open in surprise. "That's so stupid! Why would you do that?!"

Hana shrugs and laughs. "That was my trial. I just did what the Dungeon Master wanted."

I feel like something's off, so I probe her mind and examine the memory of her punching the [Meteor]. Just before she hit the spell, it halved its own size so that she wouldn't be blown into a red paste.

"Holy shit, you'd have died if the spell didn't purposely become smaller," I chastise her.

She raises her hands, showing me her palms in a gesture of non-aggression. "Hey, hey, hey. Didn't we agree that the trials were all in a dream, or something?"

Yunia snorts and concurs, "Yes, it was most likely all a dream… but you could've tested it beforehand with something smaller than a Godsdamned [Meteor]."

Hana is unfazed as she retorts, "Everyone already knows I'm dumb. The trial was just a bad match for me, so we should blame the Dungeon Master."

"Nah, we can blame both of you," I quip and smirk.

"Screw you, then. I mean, I do want to plow you, but I also want you to plow yourself," she harshly states, then she starts chuckling with a dark tone as she grins evilly. "The best thing about this is that it removed my 'Enhanced' skills, so I have quite a few free points to level up [Draconic Body]. I'll be damn invincible soon enough!"

Roxanne grabs her hand and gives her a fake smile as she deadpans, "I feel safer just from hearing that."

Hana narrows her eyes dangerously, trying to determine if she's being made fun of or not. She probes Roxanne's mind and immediately tries to grab her, but Roxanne was waiting for that and jumps backward, then she uses her wings to float away and up out of reach.

"I'm going to do you first!" Hana shouts and summons her wings, but we stop her with [Bind] because she's dead serious about doing it right here, right now.

"There's someone waiting for us behind the last door," Alissa soberly announces, and the two mischievous little kids stop playing around.

"Well, it seems that the rest of us didn't gain anything significant, but I don't think any of our trials were easy," Ciel gently says as she rises to her feet, then she looks around, giving each of us an angelic smile. "I'd like to talk with everyone about what we went through, but first, I think we need to talk to the person behind that door."

We all turn to it and hear a click as the door unlocks and opens just a crack, unleashing an uncomfortably bright ray of light upon our sensitive eyes.

Ciel casts [Heal] on each of us, which helps a lot to get our eyes used to the brightness.

"Our sensitivity to light is evidence that we've been 'asleep' for a long time," Yunia whispers, and we all agree.

We stand up and walk towards the door, our muscles strong enough now that we don't need the assistance of earth-Lina anymore.

The fact that I named the earth elemental "earth-Lina" worries my little dwarf while also warming her heart. She's really unsure about how she should take it.

I grab the handle of the door and push it open, revealing a huge elven office. There's a golden carpet in front of us, flanked by dozens of statues, fountains, springs, and rivulets. Birds are bathing in the fountains, Gatuns are sleeping on the grass, owls are sitting on the statues, and frogs are hiding in the rivulets. The sound of running water whispers in our ears along with the occasional purr of the huge, totally harmless cats.

The carpet leads to a set of comfy chairs made of leaves, which are all facing the huge tree-throne where an impossibly beautiful elf stares at us with a bored face. My heart starts beating faster as if I were in love, but my mind clearly tells me that I'm looking at a very manly man.

His face looks chiseled like the statue of a Greek God. His golden hair is styled in drills, just like Yunia's, but his lack femininity, their stiffness giving the impression of a crown. However, his actual crown consists of three sets of tall, pure-white, and pointy antlers arranged in a circle.

He's wearing dozens of loose sheets of golden silk with beautiful silver embroidery, and they cover most of his skin, but the narrow openings reveal a perfectly sculpted and very muscular body.

Without even opening his mouth, he speaks directly into our ears, almost giving us an "eargasm" in the process. "Do my eyes deceive me? Have you all finally stopped chattering and decided to grace me with your oh, so, divine presence?" He flippantly asks, then leans forward, rustling the leaves cushioning his throne, and rests his chin on his hand.

His voice is impossibly alluring, making me question myself for a split second, then my tail stiffens and stands straight up as draconic rage starts to boil within me, immediately counteracting his ridiculously high "Charisma."

"He's dead, he's a spirit," Yunia solemnly tells us through [Bind].

"The Dungeon Master," Ciel whispers worriedly.

"Arreira," Lina finishes, her voice dripping with bitterness.

"After everything you've done to us, yes, we deserve some private time together," I retort and give him a fake smile, mirroring his tone because I feel like standing up to him right now.

His tone goes flat as he says, "Let me remind you all that each and every one of you agreed to go through these trials."

"Wait, what?" I reflexively ask, and we're all taken aback.

Before we can properly respond, we're all overtaken by a strong feeling of deja vu as we remember a dream we had. We don't remember when we had it, but… we all had such a similar dream that it's impossible for it to just be a coincidence.

"Ah… the golems! Where are they?!" I shout, filled with hope, and take a step forward.

Arreira waves his hand, and the three golems appear before us. "Interesting conversational partners, if anything," he dully comments.

We run across the carpet, and the golems meet us halfway.

"Greetings, Masters," the three of them say in unison with a higher pitch than usual.

Are they trying to sound excited?

I ignore that thought and hug Ted while Ciel goes for Suzy, and the rest of us crowd around Jarn.

Yunia's twin is now complete, with her steel skin shining and polished like a mirror, elven patterns adorning most of her visible skin, and a durable-looking elven bikini hiding her lewdest parts.

"How are you, Ted? How was your time here with Arreira?" I gently ask my teddy doll and pat her with my tentacles.

She raises her head and extends her cute little arms towards me, so I pull her closer, and she wraps them around my neck. "We've missed you, Master." -My heart tightens even though I know she's saying it specifically to comfort me- "And we've finished our mission. We've entertained Arreira, learned as much as possible from him, and trained when time allowed, all so that we could serve you better."

Arreira's voice temporarily breaks me out of our precious moment, lighting a small flame of anger inside me as he comments, "I may not be a great teacher, but the golems are extremely 'dense' students. I don't think they've learned much in comparison to what a humanoid student could've in the same amount of time."

I snuff out my anger and hug Ted so tightly that I feel the steel skeleton under her fluffy skin.

Ted's voice becomes more monotone, and she loosens her hug. "I apologize, Master. We lack creativity, which greatly slowed down our learning."

"It's fine, it's all fine… I'm proud of you three," I whisper reassuringly, and pat her head a bit harder, then I snap my head towards Arreira. "Gify?" I ask, hopeful.

*Pop!*

"Gih!" The cheeky little griffin appears in front of me, and her familiar presence settles into the back of my mind again.

I start chuckling and hold back my tears, then I pass Ted to Lina and snatch Gify from the air with my tentacles, which I promptly use to smother her.

"I really missed you…" I whisper gently.

Gify struggles and squeezes through my mass of tentacles like a cat, then her head pops out, and she gives me a smug grin. "Gih!"

I pout and squeeze her tighter, almost making her eyes bulge out. "Screw you. I really do love you…"

*Pop!* *Pop!* Gify reappears on top of my head and starts making a nest out of my hair. "Gih…" She chirps tenderly and goes to sleep. We're all so overwhelmed with emotions right now that Alissa will let this slide, but only this one time.

I sigh in relief as things start to make sense again, then I shoot a subtle glare at Arreira as I recollect my memories "So, I… lent you the golems? And we agreed to go through the trials?"

He nods, still bored, and answers in a monotone, "Precisely. It may seem like a dream, but that's just a side-effect of your short-term memories being wiped. We'd met a few times before that, but they were such brief meetings that you might've completely forgotten about them."

This leaves us feeling very conflicted about how to take all of this. Alissa, Lina, and I have the greatest amount of hate for Arreira, but we also remember that we agreed to go through these trials, so we can't place all of the blame on him for the pain we went through.

He sighs and sits up straight, then his handsome face becomes serious. Almost as if he's reading our minds, he calmly states, "Whatever you might feel about me doesn't matter. You've all passed, and now it's time to go over your evaluations."

A note from Manasong

Hall of Fame of Patrons

The patrons who support Rupegia shall have their names sung by the bards for they deserve the glory and honor. Their names are:

Prince PreownedFIN.

Lord Andrew Meyers.

Lord Samuel Lim.

Lord Bill.

Lord Novgarod.

Lord DJ.

Lord Ashadun.

Lord Michale Erwin.

Lord Bakerdea.

Lord D4rk Sheep.

Lord Nathan Vanbrunt.

Lord Maurice.

Lord Krawn.

Lord Empyrean.

Lord Mattirro Draca.

Lord Joshua Tal.

Lord Colorblind.

Lord RottenTangerine.

Lord Cidant.

Lord Fullmoon.

Lord Joxsan Herrera.

Lord The_Cultural_Weeb_Otaku.

Lord Sean Drake.

Lord EESDESESESRDT.

Lord Brody Haugan.

Lord GoodKat.

Lord FrostyCube.

Noble Salty Panda.

Noble Mild Fracas.

Noble Aclys.

Noble Jordon Gotthold.

Noble Tyler Mills.

Noble Shawn Plumley.

Noble Kale Daley.

Noble Stellerbattle.

Noble CarlBaxter.

Noble WeirdWhirl.

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Chapter 87: Resolution - Part 2

Arreira waves his hand again, and a wooden table literally grows out of the floor, then branches sprout from it, reaching upwards bearing fruit. After only a few seconds, there are a dozen different types of juicy fruits just begging to be picked.

With multiple *poof*s, tea, sweets, and other savory snacks quickly populate the table, and the smell of food awakens our dormant stomachs. The selection implies just a simple tea time, but the quantity and variety imply a banquet.

"Take a seat," Arreira's voice sounds commanding, but also gentle at the same time.

Dozens of *pops* resound through the room as nature spirits appear all around us, and the little plush dolls all dive at the snacks before we can even take a step forward.

Arreira sighs and tiredly rests his head on his hand again. "After your 'gourmand' little friend came here, the nature spirits have become extremely gluttonous," he monotonously comments.

"Gih," Gify proudly states.

Arreira lifts an eyebrow, slightly amused, and slowly turns his "sexuality-bender" gaze towards me. "I'm sure Earthling Catholics would disagree. Am I correct, Ryder?" He slowly asks with a husky tone.

We pull our chairs closer to each other, then we all sit at the table. The padding made of leaves feels quite heavenly on our buttocks, and I'm glad that Arreira prepared chairs for the golems, too. Sitting with this new thick tail of mine is a bit awkward, though. I have to push it through the hole in the backrest to be able to sit comfortably.

While Alissa serves the tea, I decide to give him a short lecture, "Gluttony is a 'sin,' yes, but Catholicism is a religion intended for slaves. Though it preaches moderation, it still has too much asceticism to use it as the basis for a moral code. It's best to ignore Earthling religions entirely."

"You married in a church," Arreira states accusingly.

"Only to appease our parents," I calmly retort.

He chuckles and straightens his posture again. "Earthlings are such an odd people," he casually comments.

"I can say the same for Rupegians," I nonchalantly retort.

A smile graces his infuriatingly sexy lips. "Your new race is already having an effect on your personality."

I sip on my not-earl-gray and take a bite of a delicious not-strawberry cupcake, then I send him a glare but maintain a controlled tone. "I believe it's the grueling trial, the protracted sleep deprivation, and mental torture of seeing my loved wife die in front of me that has made me a bit cranky."

He gently shakes his head and bemusedly states, "No. Your wives certainly wouldn't be able to look me in the eye while saying that."

I focus on our [Bind]s and notice that I'm the only one who can look at his face. It's too bright. In fact, his body is the only source of light in this entire room.

I look at the girls, and they all seem as confused as I am.

Arreira waves his hand, and a booklet materializes in the air in front of him. "Let's leave that for later. We must start with your evaluation," he dismissively comments and starts flicking through his notes.

Lina suddenly decides to look him in the face and squints her eyes, then she boldly asks, "Wait… so you're really Arreira, the Unyielding?"

"Yes, I am," he casually replies without raising his eyes.

"Didn't you… die by Ajax, the first emperor? It's said he killed you by using [Absolute Zero], then [Star], and finally [Fissure]. How did your spirit survive all that?"

He dims his brightness, allowing her to see his face, which both arouses and disgusts her, then he gives her a slightly wider smile than one he wore before. "That fight was all a farce. The fact that nobody questions it thousands of years after the event brings me a small amount of pride in our acting.

"He didn't kill me. We pretended that he did to end the war. After I was sure that my succession would go smoothly, I came into my tomb and committed suicide, then I used [Trap Soul] on myself to bind my soul to the dungeon's core."

"Wow…" Lina mutters, and we all agree, though we're more muted in our awe.

"'Wow,' indeed…" He whispers and chuckles once, then returns to his booklet.

Lina clenches her fists to gather her boldness once again. "And, uh… why are you speaking in Andraste instead of Ingua?"

"I have level ten in dozens of languages, but only Ryder and Yulania know that language," -he raises his eyes from his notes and sends a quick glare at Yunia, making her flinch- "and not even the Golden-Elf knows her own language as well as she should.

"It seems that Andraste is gradually taking over the realm, which isn't what I'd predicted, but it's still salvageable with cultural stimulation…" He lowers his voice until it becomes a mere mumble, then focuses completely on his booklet.

With a bit of help from me and Alissa, the girls all manage to get over their arousal from the mere sight of his face, and his presence starts to feel a lot more "normal" than it did before.

Our hunger quickly grows more pronounced, so we stuff ourselves with food while we wait.

After a minute or so, the booklet is lowered, and Arreira stares at us again, his annoyingly strong gaze making us freeze for a split-second. The amusement of before is gone as he coolly starts his speech, "Let us begin chronologically. After I committed suicide, I put the dungeon on 'sleep mode' and cut off my own consciousness, leaving only a small sub-process to monitor changes in my own Thread of Fate."

"You can see the Threads?" Ciel interrupts, her curiosity overcoming her wariness.

"Most God-Rulers can, in some way or another…" -He frowns- "or could. You've all stopped using that title, which is a shame since it's a good fit for our kind, but I digress. After thousands of years, I believe, I didn't pay attention to the passing of time, something happened. A new bond appeared in my own Thread, so I surfaced the dungeon and waited." -He spares a glance towards Ted- "If what the golems said is true, then that appearance coincides with your arrival in this realm."

The way he speaks without moving his mouth is creepy and off-putting, and I feel like he's just flexing his magical powers to impress us, then I remember that Pua, the Gaping Maw, also spoke like this, and that makes me a bit curious.

Before I can ask, he continues blabbering, "I've been greeting and wiping the memories of all that come into the dungeon, and when your group arrived, I instantly recognized that you were 'different.'"

"Wait, how did you wipe our memories so easily?" Yunia interrupts, her thin golden eyebrows knitted in concern.

Arreira smiles cheekily, and it takes a bit of effort from her to avoid blushing. "The teleport method was definitely not normal, didn't you notice? Anyone who used it passed out instantly, and then there were all the times when you slept inside the dungeon, so it was trivial to wipe your memories after a brief questioning."

"I see…" Yunia whispers as the realization dawns on all of us. We've been in his grasp ever since we entered this dungeon.

He turns to his booklet and starts reading from it, "So, for the first level, your performance exceeded expectations," -he sends us all a gentle glance- "so I increased the number of monsters coming after you to test how you'd react, and that also had favorable results, though I was expecting greater carnage instead of you running away."

"Well, we didn't have the stamina or mana to fight for much longer, so we ran before we could get overwhelmed," I explain ourselves.

He nods without looking at me. "Precisely. I wanted to test your limits and achieved exactly that. Now, for the second level, it wasn't a significant test as there were many other adventurers living within, but your short speech to disperse Lord Mavel's men was a nice performance, well done."

Hana smiles smugly while Ciel awkwardly scratches her cheek.

He barely gives them any time to process his words before continuing, "After that, you passed through a series of battles without a single problem, and let me say that the way you dealt with the Uspidor by pushing it off the arena was very amusing." -He smiles without turning to look at us- "I always hated those types of monsters, so it's very satisfying when I see one splat so messily."

"Well, it's definitely not pleasant to witness it first-hand, solely because of the smell," Roxanne comments with a wry smile.

Arreira snorts and mutters, "True," then he continues in his sober tone, "After that, comes Goloria." -He lifts his eyes to give us a brief look- "It's curious how the poem I created had some similarities to an Earthling poem, and it's not the only similarity that exists between our two realms, humans existing in both worlds not-withstanding."

I raise my eyebrows in surprise and quickly swallow the cupcake I was eating so that I can comment, "Oh, right… I did feel like I'd heard it somewhere before. I've found quite a few similarities between our worlds myself."

Arreira hums in acknowledgment and continues, "Then you solved the door puzzle so easily that I felt reluctant to let you pass. I admit, I didn't want a human to be the first to go through, but all six Crown Lords disappointed me, so I decided to test you."

"All six…? I only knew that my father and Confiel came," Yunia curiously comments.

"Yes, all six. Confiel was the only one to find the hidden door, but I felt that he lacked creativity, so I didn't let him pass. Your father was obsessed with this dungeon, searching for anything that would give him power, but I didn't want to give anything like that to him, so I led him in circles inside the castle."

Arreira's tone is casual, but it hurts Yunia's feelings to find out that her father's final days were spent being made a fool.

We caress her through [Bind] for a moment to comfort her, then we turn our attention back to Arreira again.

"So, what was the real answer to the door?" I anxiously ask.

"There was none," he answers cheekily with a subtle smile. "I carefully observed how you reacted, and then deemed your group 'interesting' enough to allow you to pass… but I did make things a bit harder after hearing your flippant speech."

Ciel and Alissa send me smug looks, so I decide to ignore them for a moment.

"It wasn't really that hard, though," Hana questions puzzledly and crosses her arms.

"I noticed…" He bitterly admits, then returns to his usual tone. "Which is why I made so many of the enemies in the Looping Winds Station invincible."

"How did you control the monsters?" Ciel immediately questions, apprehensive.

He smiles smugly, and his chiseled face shines a bit brighter. "I didn't, what I did was a mix of illusion and mana solidification. You could think of it as similar to a 'holodeck' from Earthling fiction."

"What's that…?" Alissa asks curiously and looks to me for an answer.

I clear my throat and start the lecture, "A fake 'reality' where everything is made of 'fake' matter, but that's not that different from normal dungeon solidification. What I think sets them apart is that a holodeck is a small room, not a huge, endless, open space like a dungeon."

Arreira's smile becomes wider with excitement, and this time it lacks any sort of sexiness. "Exactly," he eagerly responds and makes a dramatic pause to let us process the idea. "You were always in small rooms, relatively small for a dungeon, that is, which allowed me to focus all of the available mana into creating an environment that I had absolute control over."

"Ooh…" We coo in unison.

Yunia seems almost as interested in this as I am since she immediately asks, "But how could you control a dungeon so completely?"

Arreira's brightness intensifies for a short while as his smug pride leaks out. He assumes a stern expression as he states, "I'm a God-Ruler, so there's not much that's beyond my reach, but to control this dungeon the way I do requires [Trap Soul] and a few hundred years to get used to it."

Ciel raises her eyebrows and lets her mouth hang open, stunned by the revelation.

"You could create so many incredible things with that amount of control over a dungeon," Yunia comments in wonder.

He smiles warmly at her and counters with, "I wouldn't recommend it, not even to fellow God-Rulers, but a golem…" -He gives a serious look at the golems- "They'd be perfect Dungeon Masters."

I frown in confusion and retort, "But you said that they lack creativity, and if it took you a few hundred years to learn how to control it, how long would it take for the golems?"

He nods and sends a stern but smug look towards me. "Yes, but you're a terrible Golemancer, so someone more competent could do it in a generation, perhaps."

Oof.

"I'm the only Golemancer," I shoot back with a draconic glare.

"Not anymore." He flourishes with his arm and casts a spell, giving off trace amounts of [Space Magic], [Summoning Magic], and [Golemancy], then a whole gauntlet and a vambrace made of shiny black wood appear on his arm. "This is a spell I created as you all 'slept.' I call it [Equip]."

"Wait…" I mutter as I use [Sense Soul] on it. Alissa and Yunia squint as they give it an intense stare, bewildered at the display.

His armor has a fucking soul.

"OH, FUCK! This is a genius idea!" I shout in excitement and nearly spill my tea.

"I am a God-Ruler," he smugly states, his expression full of dignity, making his face appear statuesque for a moment, then he flourishes his arm again, and the armor is returned to his [Item Box].

He gave an empty soul to his armor, cast [Bind] on it, stored it in his [Item Box], and summoned it directly onto his body through [Bind].

He's clearly proud of himself, but he quickly contains his excitement and says, "But we're digressing, again…"

"Please, continue," I cheekily concur.

He narrows his eyes at me in a chilling glare, then returns to his booklet and continues, "After that, I gave you a trial focused on piloting as I wished to see how well you'd preserve your ship, in which you succeeded. Though, I was expecting you to store the gigantic island inside your 'Items.' I was curious about the true size of your Gift."

I keep my tail from swaying to revealing my emotions as I lie, "Yeah… I'm a bit wary of using it since I don't fully understand it."

"No, you just forgot," he replies dryly.

"What…? Nonsense," I apply what I remember of [Acting].

He stares at me for a moment, completely unamused, and decides to just continue on, "After that, you encountered one of my sub-cores, which yielded interesting results. I wanted to push you to explore [Redirect Mana] further, but I don't know that much about it, so the core was all I could do." -I nod emphatically in agreement. That skill has been incredibly useful so far- "Another interesting result was seeing how the sub-core interacted with a pious person like Ciel. I knew that cores had a deep relationship with the Gods, but now I have confirmation of that."

Ciel nods repeatedly in agreement, happy to have helped with that.

He gives her a respectful nod and continues, "Then I had you encounter the Chimeras. I wanted to know how you'd react to a completely different culture and their nobility, so I considered it the most important test, but you failed to meet my expectations…" His disappointed gaze turns to me and Yunia.

"It's about Hihiriwa, isn't it?" I immediately ask, slightly irked.

He nods subtly. "Yes. He didn't even know what he was doing. At best, he just wanted to keep you from leaving since he had a hunch, but you almost lost your only way out because of him."

"The situation was so outlandish that it'd be impossible to be prepared for it," Yunia confidently asserts and calmly lays her hands on top of her thighs in a lady-like way.

His mouth warps into an annoyed frown as he quips, "Say that again when you're a spirit, and you'll see how much it helps."

Yunia clenches her fists in anger, but she doesn't have a proper comeback.

"I don't care about your ideas about how to deal with nobility, but the situation was crap, and no normal noble would be able to predict Hihiriwa's stupidity," I bitterly retort, my entire tail stiff from the tension.

Arreira snorts. "Yes, he was stupid, alright. Because of you, Oritiki started a war to remove him from power. I had to deactivate them all so that they wouldn't kill each other." He shakes his head tiredly.

Fuck, that's a bit chilling…

"Why did you trap the Chimeras? How long must their spirits be held back in this realm and denied Paradise?" Ciel boldly confronts him.

He gives her an annoyed side-glance, then slowly enunciates to her, "You should know, Priestess, that these spirits all voluntarily accepted the [Trap Soul]. They were all dead before we found them, on the brink of becoming deranged, and I gave them a second chance to recover and live again for a short while."

Ciel is taken aback in confusion. "Why… why would they do that? Why would they give up Paradise so that they could live a lie in their fake town?"

His tone softens as he lectures, "They lived for generations before they were finally wiped out, which led to them developing such a strong will to live that they became as stubborn as a wild Gatun. When I offered them the chance to live again, most of them happily took it, even though it meant that I'd have to experiment with their minds."

"You… used them as humanoid experiments?" I ask, disapprovingly, tapping my claw on the table anxiously.

Arreira rolls his eyes and remarks, "Earthling morals are so reactionary that it's bothersome. You saw it being misused once, so you forbade it for everyone? How childish."

I'm feeling a little conflicted. Something he said resonated within me, but I don't have the time for introspection right now.

Ciel takes the lead and continues to confront him, "Even if they were voluntary, you shouldn't keep spirits from Paradise. It's unnatural, and it could permanently block them from enjoying their God-given right of Paradise if they become deranged or lose their ego."

"But did they, Priestess? You yourself saw how 'healthy' and 'vigorous' they were," he calmly counters.

"That doesn't matter," she grumbles.

He sighs tiredly and shifts in his throne of leaves. "Of course it matters. Don't let our need for knowledge be thwarted by fear. I know about the Three Sins very well, and I've never committed any of them."

Ciel stares at him intensely, powering through the discomfort of looking directly at his brightness. "The Gods still dislike it when the cycle of life is interfered with."

"Which is meant to discourage the uneducated from playing with fire."

"And also so that those who are 'educated' approach their research with extreme care."

He waves his hand dismissively. "You can't say that I was careless with the Chimeras, they're all living fine lives."

She smiles smugly as she activates her trap card. "I clearly remember Wahinui saying that suicide is a forbidden topic, which means that it was an issue you had to address at one point."

Arreira hesitates for a moment before dismissively stating, "Expected side-effects from memory tampering. An acceptable complication."

She sternly disagrees, "I beg to differ."

They start a staring contest, but then Arreira increases his brightness, forcing Ciel to look away.

"It's within our expectations that he'd be this childish," Lina dryly comments through [Bind].

I give Arreira a smug glare so that he understands that he didn't win this one.

"Let's not digress again," he tries to take control of the conversation, then turns back to his booklet. "After the Chimeras, it was time to test how you'd deal with the commoners from atop your throne."

"But why the poem about Ozymandias and all the bits of architecture from Earth?" I interrupt.

He waves his hand dismissively and replies without lifting his eyes, "To put you in the right mindset for the test to come. You wouldn't just be fighting for yourself, but for an entire civilization. If you failed, the ruins of your disgraceful reign would be the only remnant preserved through time."

"See? How many times did I tell you that he was a pretentious fuck?" I tell the girls through [Bind], getting a few chuckles and grumbles in response.

"And how did we do?" I gently ask, having to keep my flippancy from leaking into my tone and my tail from flexing threateningly.

"Too well…" He tiredly answers, and sighs. "[Godly Language] is a potent tool for controlling the ignorant common folk, but you also proved to be fairly competent in warfare. Having thousands of years of bloody Earthling history at your fingertips is an unprecedented advantage; we really must recreate your 'internet' in this realm as soon as possible. Unfortunately, that also trivialized most of the trial, so I must admit that when you started to create that sand wall, I decided to cut the test short because you saw further ahead than I did." He gives me a nonchalant glance, but I'm sure that he's actually seething inside.

I simply smile smugly and loudly sip my tea. I fucking knew that he was a pretentious bastard!

Seeing that I have no more comments to share about that, he simply moves on, "After that, I summoned you before the last trials started, do you remember it?" He raises his eyes and stares at me intensely.

I tap my temple with my claw, but that pricks my skin, so I tap my horn in thought instead as I recollect, "It's a bit blurry and confusing, but I removed the [Bind]s and dispelled my summons, then I… wrote a letter?"

He nods once. "Yes, you did. For your two lovers outside of the dungeon."

I smile and relax. "Ah! That's great. They'd be worried sick if my summons simply disappeared…"

He nods once. "Now, starting with Alissa," -he turns his stern stare towards her- "you failed your trial. The moment a suspicious monster with Ryder's face appeared, you dropped your guard completely. If I didn't move the exit platform, you'd have died."

Alissa's face becomes dark and serious, shame and anger boiling within her.

He turns towards Roxanne next, "You did well. Though you still have a very obvious weakness due to your low 'Sanity,' your stubbornness and protectiveness prevented you from abandoning your important companion."

Roxanne smiles both proudly and smugly, then she giggles and directs a kind gaze towards Alissa, somewhat lessening the negative feelings going through my foxy lover's mind.

Then comes Hana's turn, "I congratulate you on your achievement. Creating a new skill is no simple feat," -his tone quickly grows flippant- "but if I hadn't reduced the size of the [Meteor], you'd have died…"

Hana smiles and gives us all a glance, asking for support. "Then your test was just bad," she responds defiantly.

"No, you were just impatient," he dryly shoots back.

She shrugs. "I've always been like this."

His stare gains a hint of anger as his tone grows annoyed. "Then you have to learn to not be like that."

"Sure…" She noncommittally agrees.

He licks his lips, seething. "You're all so unrepentant that you might actually be fit to be Crown Lords," he grumbles through gritted teeth, then waits for our reactions. Just as we start to show a bit of smug pride, he squashes it all, "Though you'd be the kind that doesn't live long."

"I don't think so," Yunia eloquently retorts, also getting affected by our smugness.

"Have it your way…" He rolls his eyes, then turns to Ciel and continues, "You did admirably well in your test. I was afraid that you'd be too 'kind' to others, but you seem to understand that the value of your own life is much greater than the lives of those under you."

Ciel smiles bitterly and nods.

Then he turns to Lina. "You also did very well. I was afraid that you'd be too meek to stand up against your lovers, but you courageously stood for what's right and logical. You're worthy of standing among your sister-wives."

"I don't think he has the right to gauge your 'worth,' but I agree that you deserve praise," I tell Lina through [Bind].

She blushes and nods, then keeps her eyes down in embarrassment.

Arreira turns to Aoi and gives her a gentle gaze as he frowns subtly. "I wasn't expecting you to fall so deeply into depression, but you pushed through somehow and discovered the inner human inside you. For that, you truly deserve praise…" -Aoi shows a toothy grin- "but… did you realize that you killed yourself, repeatedly?"

"What?" Aoi innocently asks and tilts her head in confusion.

Arreira closes his eyes in anguish. "No, of course, you didn't. I wasn't planning on it, but I was forced to heal you with the platform every time you tried your transformation. Otherwise, you'd have died."

"Oh… hehehe…" Aoi grins and chuckles like a child.

"Don't just laugh it off!" He hisses, then facepalms. "You're all half-insane…"

"Well, yes," Roxanne earnestly agrees and adjusts her glasses.

"Yes, of course, you are…" He tiredly mumbles, then recomposes himself and turns to Yunia. "You did admirably, too. I used a Weeper to force you to face your guilt, so I couldn't see what happened, but I assumed that you confronted your late parents?"

"Yes, I did," Yunia agrees with a somber tone.

He nods, satisfied, then he finally turns to me, his stern gaze lacking any sort of frivolity. "You may have passed the maze, but the fact that you don't have any sort of defense or mitigation against your curse led to a disappointing result. You could've saved Ciel if you were stronger. Though her death was an admirable sacrifice considering her past." He gives her a gentle glance, making her become a bit awkward and uncomfortable.

She deserted Macht due to his suicidal bravado, and he died because of that, so she branded herself a coward, but I never felt that she deserved that. She did have some insecurities she needed to work through, though, so I guess it's good that she was able to get over it.

But I'm still annoyed with the way he's "judging" us.

"Where would I even begin to try to deal with this 'curse'?" I retort with an annoyed frown.

"I don't know," -he shrugs indifferently- "but it's imperative that you find a solution for it."

His attitude just makes me even more annoyed. Of fucking course I know I have to deal with it, but I've just had more important things on my mind all this time.

"And how am I not dead, exactly?" Ciel asks tentatively.

Arreira turns to her and excitedly answers, "After the crash, I removed your souls from your bodies and gave you all new, fake ones, like the Chimeras. If these new bodies were destroyed, you'd still die, but the Preservation Beds maintained the connection between your soul and your real body, preventing you from truly dying."

"Oh! I remember hearing about those Beds," Yunia suddenly exclaims.

He smiles bitterly and adds, "I believe it's now 'ancient' elven knowledge. Over time, you've replaced elven [Regeneration] with Avgian [Light Magic]'s [Heal]."

"[Light Magic] is simply a lot more efficient," Ciel proudly states with an angelic smile.

"It seems so," he dryly comments.

"So, what was that… encounter I had with the black tiger?" I curiously ask.

He becomes stern again as he turns to me. "I was pushing you to your limit, drawing out all of your emotions so that you could wipe them away, leaving an empty husk behind."

"Why, why would you do that?" I question and lean backward, a bit scared.

He leans forward, his face almost breaking into a manic smile, and excitedly answers, "You're a transmigrated hero of legends with multiple Gifts. I needed to know if there was a deeper reason for your transmigration here, and I found evidence of that… " He makes a dramatic pause, and we all focus entirely on him, anxious for him to continue. His voice becomes even more excited, and he actually starts grinning as he retells, "After I stripped you down into nothing more than a husk, 'something' prevented you from simply dissipating into nothing, instead condensing you into a faint shade of your former self. After days of waiting, that entirely emotionless shade started to feel something calling for it, drawing it towards the core of the dungeon."

He leans back, and proudly announces, "That is the evidence that there's something else, something faint, something divine, guiding your actions. For me, that was the final confirmation I needed to assure myself that you were someone truly special.

"In the core was the final trial, an experiment I wanted to test on all of you: the Inverted Weeper. As you may all recollect, you had a dream about the past, about a time you dearly miss, but it was all a lie. It was a dream designed to trap you inside it, but you all had firm enough ties to reality that you escaped the trap with your own determination. For that last test, you all passed with my sincere commendation." He gives us a kind smile and nods respectfully.

"This all sounds incredibly dangerous…" Ciel grumbles and glares, becoming rather angry at him.

"And how did I turn into this?" I ask as I lift my claws.

For the first time, he seems a bit unsure of himself, and all the "Charisma" from before seems to fade away as he awkwardly answers, "That… was an unforeseen consequence of wiping your soul mid-transformation. It seems that you got 'stuck' as a half-dragon, then the system somehow interpreted you as a new race. I'd guess that Change took notice of you and decided to 'bless' you with this new form." He shows a business smile that gives me the impression that he doesn't see this "blessing" as positively as it sounds.

I facepalm and sigh tiredly. "And why did we have to go through all these trials?"

He becomes excited again, and all his "Charisma" returns. "It's obvious, isn't it? I'll give you my 'legacy.' I'll name you my successor, the new king of the High Forest and all elves."

We all freeze in surprise.

"Wait, what? Why? How? Huh?" I stammer in bewilderment.

He dramatically looks to the distance, making his face appear statuesque again as he announces, "To bait the old dynasty, my descendants, out of hiding. Even the traitorous Generals have changed their ideals. It's time for the royals to end their disgraceful defiance."

A note from Manasong

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Chapter 87: Resolution - Part 3

A note from Manasong

Attention: to conform to the limit of mature content (more than just sexual content) allowed in a novel, I've censored this chapter. You can look for the uncensored version here.

Arreira wrinkles his nose in disgust, his chiseled face morphing into a painting that portrays true anger and loathing as he starts to ramble, "The positions have been inverted. Ironic, isn't it? This 'Elder Council,' the descendants of the traitorous Generals, have loosened their stance, becoming more open to change, while my own descendants have become obsessed with the past, unwilling to accept the reduced importance of the elves while they embrace the same xenophobia that led to my death."

He grips his armrests so strongly that he crushes the branches they're made of, then he effortlessly rips them off and throws them away as if they were just made of paper. Another pair of armrests quickly regrows as he growls, "They're still inside this dungeon, begging for me to give them power at this very moment. They trample upon my legacy, blinded by greed and self-importance.

"When I saw how the High Forest had changed, I was rather content, albeit a little disappointed they still hadn't fully integrated with Avgi, but when I heard about Heretic's Rest…" He bitterly enunciates each word, "I was left disgusted. My sacrifice was all for nothing."

His anger gives us pause. Like a tiger roaring from within a cage, there's no reason to be afraid, but a deep, primal instinct tells us to avoid making any sudden moves.

"You're being a little overly-dramatic," I try to comment with some tact.

"What?!" He shouts, gathering all his anger into his gaze and focusing it all on me. Weirdly enough, I don't feel that affected by it, though the girls get chills just from witnessing it.

"Your descendants disappointed you, but your sacrifice saved the High Forest, don't forget that," I awkwardly continue, feeling a bit uneasy at advising a thousands of years old spirit.

"I have a feeling that you were trying to say something similar during my trial," Ciel adds, a bit smug, but mostly angelically kind.

"Did your family actually destroy your legacy, or am I missing something?" Yunia annoyedly inquires with a bit of sarcasm in her tone.

Arreira goes silent for a moment, then his face twitches and looks away haughtily. "I will not take advice from children. Come back when you're at least a hundred years old!" He waves his hand and instantly disappears with a *snap*, plunging the room into darkness.

The crystal lights on the ceiling slowly light up, and the illumination normalizes after a few seconds.

We bemusedly look at each other, then Lina snorts in her soul space in displeasure.

"He's like a child," she complains in disbelief through [Bind]. We don't want him to hear us, and who knows how many "ears" he has around here since he's technically the dungeon itself.

"That's just nobility in general," Yunia retorts with a shrug through our connection.

Lina pouts, unsatisfied. "He's a God-Ruler, I really expected more from him, even if history told me that I shouldn't."

I pick up a not-mango and start slicing it, unleashing a heavenly sweet scent upon my and Alissa's nostrils. "He's still a man who killed himself to end a war," I comment, and this somewhat appeases Lina, then I take a bite and moan in delight.

Without Arreira to talk to, we quickly finish fattening ourselves up, then we go out and wander around. Gify acts as the interpreter between the girls and the Gatuns, but I feel a bit uncomfortable with getting close to felines, for some reason, so Alissa and I go out exploring together.

Neither of us wants to stay away from each other for even a single moment longer, so we walk hand in… claw… I form some flesh around my fingers to keep them from cutting her, but it makes me look like I have huge, inflated hands. Alissa doesn't mind, but it vexes me because of how ridiculous it looks.

We wander past the throne of leaves and find a small forest blocking the view. We decide to explore it, but we don't get far before it ends in the exit of the room.

We find ourselves in a familiar forest populated by ginormous trees knitted with the usual elven patterns, glowing small plants attached to their bark, and a thick canopy that blocks all light from the sun, if there's even another one here besides Arreira himself.

It feels like we're in the High Forest again, though only if you ignore the random assortment of mansions, paintings, statues, plantations, flower arrangements, human-sized bonsais, and even armor and weapon stands haphazardly strewn about everywhere.

"I feel like this entire forest may be Arreira's 'personal room,'" I comment with a wry smile.

"There's almost a beauty to this chaos," Alissa adds and giggles.

"A child indeed," I whisper, and we share a knowing look.

We walk around as we curiously observe the chaos. For as silly as it may all look at first glance, there's plenty of beauty to be seen. Architecture is something that I'm slightly interested in, and it seems to be Arreira's hobby to build mansions from all the different cultures.

My tail keeps swaying whenever I stop paying attention to it, revealing my mood. Since it's fairly massive, it makes me occasionally lose my balance. All the weird changes are making me feel pretty conflicted about this new "race" I've become. It sounds cool as hell, but I want my fingers back. Even my pants have become a bit annoying to wear since the tail won't let me pull them all the way up.

So much stuff has happened to us that I need some time to process it all. Maybe this won't be so bad once I get used to it, but the fact that I didn't have a choice in all of this is what really puts me off. Well, shit, I'm actually a bit scared about not being "human" anymore.

I let these thoughts just stew in the back of my mind and instead focus on enjoying the view. I was stuck inside that maze for so long that I'd almost forgotten what "beauty" means. I won't let insecurity ruin my precious calm moment with Alissa.

We approach a large red brick house with a white picket fence, and I sense some mana with a [Conjuring Magic] "flavor" seeping from it. Considering that it's an Earthling design, we think it must have been recently built, or rather, conjured.

When you're a reality-bending demi-god, what's a more fitting hobby than straight-up conjuring mansions as you wish? I find it hard to imagine something that could tax their endless mana organs as heavily as [Conjuring Magic] could.

He didn't have a system, so [Sense Soul] didn't work like it usually would, but I wish I'd taken a look at his mana organ, or at least tried to count the "layers" of his soul to estimate his level.

"What do you think about becoming royalty?" Alissa breaks the silence with a casual question.

I sigh in exhaustion and frown. "I don't know… but I have a feeling that it's best if we just accept it." I admit, then I raise an eyebrow as I ponder, "What would he do if we say 'no'? Kick us out of the dungeon? Kill us all? Say 'pretty please'?" I snort, and my tail sways strongly, almost pulling me with it.

"At this point, it'd be odd to actually say 'no,'" Alissa comments wryly and smirks. Her tail sways happily, and I feel a strong desire to bury my face in its fluffiness.

I file away that desire for now and chuckle. "Will we ever stop getting involved with ridiculous things? I mean, royalty, really?" I ask rhetorically and sigh dramatically.

"Well-…"

"Don't answer that." I interrupt her, and she giggles. "I might as well start believing in jinxes. Arreira admitted to messing with us, so maybe even the Humanoid Gods could be doing that. Just imagine…" -I flick my hand pompously and act dramatically again- "All the Gods just staring down on us while giggling like imps as they poke our Threads mischievously, causing us to repeatedly stumble upon world-changing events. They start calling us 'janitors' as we end up cleaning away all the shit and evil from the realm on our own initiative."

Alissa giggles again and tightly hugs my arm, pressing it in against her chest. "Your imagination seems to have become a bit more wild than it was before."

I look away and awkwardly comment, "I didn't have that much else to do but to imagine reuniting with everyone when I was stuck in the maze. I guess I 'cultivated' my imagination during that time."

That kills the mood, and her orange eyes look at me with kindness, then she tenderly cups my left cheek. Her fingers touch my thin vertical scar as she probes some of my memories.

"What happened to you in there?" She whispers worriedly.

I grab her hand and close my eyes. "Just loneliness. Terrible loneliness… and sleep deprivation." I smile wryly.

"Your sense of humor hasn't changed, I think," she comments humorously.

I whisper with a sultry tone, "Neither has my love for you."

"Awn…"

She pulls me closer and kisses my lips, igniting a fire within both my heart and my pants.

I tightly hug her waist and invade her mouth. Her juicy chest squishes against mine, and I reminisce about their softness.

Oh, how I've missed this.

My hand on her waist fondles her fluffy fox tail while my other hand sneaks up until I reach her fox ears, then I fervently [Massage] her as if I'd forgotten what softness felt like.

Her tail wags so desperately that it nearly escapes my hand, but my thirst for fluffiness leads me to keep a tight grip on it.

A horniness I'd never before thought possible starts to flush through my body, making me feel a little afraid of myself. The visions of dragons mating wildly rush into my mind on their own, but now I can clearly see myself as the biggest, wildest dragon in the group, the only one with a dragonator, and I use this glorious spiky draconic tool to make all of my females submit to my might.

Alissa's gentleness and yearning force themselves into my mind, appeasing the fire in me and allowing me to enjoy our tender kiss again.

The Gods are messing with me; I really have a "dragon" inside of me now.

Out of all things, why did I have to choose draconic visions? If I knew that this would happen, I'd have chosen dog or cat visions so that I could become a wereanimal instead.

Alissa pokes my mind, and I stop my grumbling, returning my focus to her.

Our thirst for skinship is gradually quenched, and the passion abates, then our lips part, and we repeatedly peck on each other's lips for a short while.

We turn our heads towards a certain visitor and smile teasingly at her.

"Come on, Ciel, join us. I know you want it," Alissa teases her.

Ciel lands and dispels [Fly], then she grins a bit awkwardly and deflects, "I just came to check on the two of you since I felt some strong and not-so-positive emotions seeping through the [Bind]."

I roll my eyes and sigh. "Yeah, yeah, yeah, blah, blah, blah." I mockingly mumble, then I order her sternly, "Come here, now! We all want to take a bite out of each other."

She pouts but skips closer, and I release Alissa, then I pull Ciel's waist closer to me and fondle her body. I missed this curvy, juicy, insanely alluring, dark piece of angelic chocolate so much that the dragon spreads its wings inside my heart and roars, forcing Alissa to choke it down with a leash until it's tamed again.

The master is being restrained by his slaves. Now that's something that I didn't imagine [Bind] would be useful for.

Ciel hugs me, then I kiss her juicy lips and forcefully enter her mouth with my tongue. Her angelic kindness shows itself again as she pacifies me without even needing to wrestle for control, and I almost melt in her embrace.

The eyes of the other sister-wives turn to us, and no small amount of jealousy seeps through our connection.

Our mouths soon separate with us both left gasping for breath, then Ciel giggles softly as I continue fondling her. Even with this fake skin covering my claws, I can still feel her juiciness just as well.

"I'm hungry, and my mouth is itching for some big, round milkers," I tease and kiss Ciel's chest.

Ciel rolls her eyes, but I know how much she likes it when I openly display my love for her "assets."

"Let's go back to the others," she suggests, and we agree.

Before we even sit down to talk, the wives demand equal treatment.

Roxanne jumps onto my lap and invades my mouth. Her cheeky little tongue is so dexterous that I'm sure she'd easily learn [Oral Technique] if she weren't so stingy with her skill points. She's such a good kisser that not even Hana comes close to her technique, with only Alissa baring her from sitting on the throne. Something about knowing how to lick clit must be transferable to kissing.

Hana comes next, and she stirs up a storm in my mouth like always. Alissa works diligently to reign in our desire again, and we separate to prevent us from relighting the flames inside our draconic hearts and genitals.

Lina takes the initiative with our kiss, but then she promptly surrenders herself to me. She gives me the signal that she's needy, then she throws herself into my claws, demanding to be pampered, and there's no argument from me because I love doing exactly that.

It doesn't take me long to leave her breathless, then I move on to the next needy wife.

Aoi changes into her human form, then her naked body is pressed up against mine, and once again, Alissa helps me reign in my desire. Aoi's mouth is surprisingly gentle yet energetic. She's just happy to be kissing me, instead of it being fueled by raw desire. Perhaps like me, she developed an "other side" to her with a different set of behavior and feelings.

Yunia is up last, and she shows a neediness comparable to Lina's. Her own trial left her very distraught, and being held in my strong, albeit small, arms brings her comfort. Things are slowly returning to our own, rather chaotic, version of "normal," and it's the most stable she's felt in a long time.

She didn't even spend much time as a blood slave, and now we're so close to Lordship that she can almost taste it. Her life has been upheaval after upheaval, but I'll make it all stop very soon and give her the comfortable life she deserves.

I give a hug to all three golems and give them a gentle kiss on their foreheads. I still can't believe that I "lent" them to Arreira so easily, but I understand why I did it.

They behaved so well, and they're all so perfectly loyal that I've decided to give them what they want. The moral concerns I had about it in the past don't matter to me anymore. If the Gods just used a magical mishap as their reason to make me into a new race, then what reason do I have to not sire one of my own, too? At least it's something the golems specifically asked for instead of being a "surprise gift."

With my wives satisfied, for now, we sit down on the tickly grass and resume our cuddle puddle. I'm still a bit wary of the Gatuns, for some reason, but I eventually get used to them.

Yunia clears her throat and starts the discussion with a sober tone, "So, we need to talk about Arreira's proposal."

"What's your take on it?" I immediately ask. As the resident expert in politics and nobility, her opinion is obviously the most informed.

"We should accept, but… I can't predict how the Elder Council will react," she plainly states.

"Why do you think we should accept?" I question further.

"Dealing with Heretic's Rest would leave the elves indebted to us, which would secure our new position. Even though I'm a deterrent against outright rebellion, my presence won't be enough to prevent people from plotting against us in order to slowly undermine our rule, that is, unless we gather the support of more people with power, like Confiel."

"What can we even do about Heretic's Rest?" I look around, then my eyes eventually fall on Ciel, and she frowns gently as she recollects what she knows about that land.

Lina props herself forward and interjects, "That place could be considered as 'cursed' by the God of the Sun due to their rebellion against the empire, so I think Sun would be the answer to this problem."

Ciel nods in agreement and comments, "There have been other rebellions before, but none of them had ever prompted a response from the God of the Sun, so this case must have been special."

"Heretics?" I ask tentatively.

"Most likely," she agrees with a nod.

"You may be a priestess, but we aren't exactly missionaries spreading religion wherever we go," Alissa chimes in with a skeptical tone.

"There are two blessed people in our group," Ciel retorts immediately, then she crosses her arms and smiles wryly as she adds, "then there's Wolfy's new race and Aoi's conversion, both of which will cause a… 'commotion' in the temple."

"Right…" I grunt and knit my eyebrows in worry. My tail strongly sways from side to side, amusing Aoi as she stares at it as if she's in a trance.

"Ohohoh… well, he converted Aoi through his sword, but it's still a valid conversion," Roxanne bemusedly comments.

"Holy shit," Hana mutters, and Ciel gives them both a quick glare to make them stop with the blasphemy

"I feel like relying on our 'holy' side is our safest and most effective move," Yunia adds with a serious tone.

"And how would we do that?" I question. I still don't have much confidence in interacting with the religion of this world.

Ciel gives my thigh a loving squeeze as she reassures me, "Get the temple involved. Like Lina said, it's the God of the Sun that turned part of Glorampina into a desert, so it'll be through him that we'll find a solution."

"Ooh… Are we starting a Holy War, then?" Hana excitedly coos with a glint in her eyes.

Ciel nearly chokes in her spit and shifts uncomfortably on the grass, then sternly lectures Hana, "I hope not. There are many innocents living in Heretic's Rest, so we can't just go there and execute everyone without proof that they're actually heretical."

"I mean, it's just a label. I didn't mean to say that we're going to purify the land or something," Hana defends herself with a shrug.

Lina briefly interjects, "Arreira didn't say anything about killing the royals, just that they should come out of hiding and stop defying the empire."

"We'll simply talk to the royals first, before we get to any executions," Ciel pushes the point even further with a very severe tone.

I decide to make it clear by asking outright, "Are we all in agreement with getting the temple involved in this matter?"

I look at the others, looking for any disagreement, but they're more concerned with the difficulties of becoming not just nobility, but straight-up royalty than with the complications of adding religion into the mix. Also, they're all ardent believers of my "heroic destiny," so, although they aren't the most pious, they aren't worried about what the temple would say or do to us.

"The temple isn't that strong in the High Forest, but I think they might be our only true ally here," Lina contemplates.

"Once we're Crown Lords, we'll be able to give them more power, right?" Roxanne questions, and Yunia agrees with both of them.

Aoi stays quiet as she hasn't even had proper lessons about religion yet, but I probe her mind and feel that she's actually a bit excited about joining in on the praying and worshiping aspects. Something about it resonates with the "human" growing inside her.

"Our biggest problem might be the Elder Council," Yunia states, and no one disagrees with her words. "They're the ones who have the power to easily depose us if they feel threatened, so we have to be very careful with how we approach them about our family being made into 'royalty.'"

Alissa probes the practical benefits of this arrangement with, "Where would we even be as 'royalty' in the power hierarchy? Would it just be an honorary title, or what?"

Yunia suddenly straightens her posture and smiles subtly, then she conveys an idea that just came to her in her big beautiful brain, "One of the Council seats is held exclusively by the descendants of the God of Law, the Leigelas family. Just like Confiel, we could justify ourselves by announcing that we plan on acquiring a seat in the Council, and since we're involving the temple, we could also lean on a 'divine mandate' that declares us as the most capable to deal with this matter."

"What's a 'divine mandate'?" I confusedly ask, and Aoi nods along, just as confused as I am.

"The will of the Gods," Ciel eagerly explains, then assumes a teaching tone. "It can be stated explicitly through a Message of the Gods, or it could be inferred implicitly through other means, like the Threads of Fate. Since the Gods can influence our Threads, we could say that our meeting with Arreira was due to divine influence, and so, we can assume that they've chosen us to champion this cause. You did have a vision about this dungeon-… no, wait, it was Gecynd who did, which was odd, but still, our Fate, Arreira's, and that of the royalty are all entwined together."

"Ah, yes, the Tree of Mana. I still don't understand how she fits into all of this," Yunia comments as she plays with one tip of her long, flexible elven ears.

I start to imagine myself sucking on that bouncy cartilage, but Alissa's voice makes me stop drooling as she says, "She's an ancient being that met with possibly the first realm traveler in existence. Whatever Wolfy's destiny is here, it's very likely that it involves her since she's literally a large part of the known realm."

I remember one of our previous talks and contribute, "We talked about this before, but the greatest advantage that Gecynd might get from us is that we're people with legs and connections. If we become part of the Council, wouldn't our sphere of influence grow to span most of the realm?"

"Ooh… I see," Yunia whispers and nods in understanding, then her gaze becomes as sharp as a knife's edge, filled with determination. "Then our path is clear…"

I smirk as our two minds feel like they're in sync for a moment, then I look around as I ask, "Any objections?"

Alissa is calm. She doesn't consider the title of "royalty" to be too daunting for her.

Roxanne is energetic. She's become rather brave and proactive when compared to her usual laziness.

Hana is excited. The proud dragon inside her wants to flap its wings every time it hears "royalty."

Ciel is hopeful. She trusts that the Gods sent us to Arreira because we really should get involved in these matters.

Lina is composed. For once, it seems like there won't be much risk of death if we get involved in this, so she's ready for whatever may come our way.

Aoi is happy. The human and the dragon inside her both agree with Arreira's proposal, and the first converted monster being elevated into a queen seems very fitting to her.

Yunia is determined. She yearns for a great accomplishment that could overshadow the disgrace her family went through, and this feels like the perfect opportunity for that.

Both of my "two sides" agree, feeling somewhat similar to how Aoi does about it, but that isn't the most important part about it in my opinion. Acquiring more power without having to necessarily remove someone else in order to take their place is something that I can't so easily give up on.

As they all nod in agreement, I stand up and look around, trying to locate Arreira's presence, but he doesn't seem to be anywhere near us.

I decide to simply fill my lungs with air and shout, "Arreira! We accept!"

We hear a loud *snap* nearby, and an uncomfortably alluring presence falls upon us, making our heart race for a moment before we get our feelings back under control again.

Arreira appears, standing on the grass, his over two meters of height rivaling human-Aoi's, his posture exuding confidence, and his smile brimming with happiness. "The only right choice," he whispers.

Mana escapes Arreira's body, then an arch of branches quickly grows up from the ground. After just a few seconds, it reaches twice his height, then it gets covered with a familiar white veil as [Eternal Gate] is cast upon it, and the glimmer of many precious items shines through from the other side of the portal.

"Now come, it's time for your rewards," he calmly orders, then his smile becomes bitter. "And also time for me to rest…"

A note from Manasong

Hall of Fame of Patrons

The patrons who support Rupegia shall have their names sung by the bards for they deserve the glory and honor. Their names are:

Prince PreownedFIN.

Lord Andrew Meyers.

Lord Samuel Lim.

Lord Bill.

Lord Novgarod.

Lord DJ.

Lord Ashadun.

Lord Michale Erwin.

Lord Bakerdea.

Lord Nathan Vanbrunt.

Lord Maurice.

Lord Empyrean.

Lord Mattirro Draca.

Lord Joshua Tal.

Lord Colorblind.

Lord RottenTangerine.

Lord Fullmoon.

Lord Joxsan Herrera.

Lord Sean Drake.

Lord EESDESESESRDT.

Lord Brody Haugan.

Lord GoodKat.

Lord FrostyCube.

Lord Freddie.

Lord Mike Bartter.

Lord Cardinal Steiner.

Lord DragonPiggy.

Noble Salty Panda.

Noble Mild Fracas.

Noble Aclys.

Noble Shawn Plumley.

Noble CarlBaxter.

Noble WeirdWhirl.

Noble War God.

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Chapter 88: Reunion - Part 1

We cross through the [Eternal Gate] and find ourselves in a huge vault filled with precious items. Arreira's gaudiness and adoration of gold is shown again in this room, but everything is so chaotically disorganized that it reminds of his "personal room," though instead of mansions and ginormous trees, there are piles of coins and pillars of colorful bricks.

Directly ahead, there's a small set of steps that leads up to a raised stone platform where three lines of suits of armor are prominently displayed, with each line showing off ten sets of armor. The first line shines with a pure white color, but they lack the grain and circular patterns of wooden armor, so I think they're actual metal armor. The second line is made of bark and is covered with branches, leaves, and flowers, just like the ent-like armor that the Generals inside the dungeon wore, though this time they're more than just one color. The armor in the third line isn't plate, but simply scale armor instead, where each scale shines like a mirror, just like mine do.

Arreira floats past us, phasing through the treasure like a ghost as he indifferently explains, "This will all be yours, and though I'm sure the current Crown Lords have more coin than I do, they certainly don't have this…"

He stops before the first line, then motions towards it with his hand and starts explaining, "This armor is called Bastión, and it's made of an alloy of Okross, steel, and Kanal. Elven wooden armor is better for mages, but it can't form an alloy with Okross, so the absolute pinnacle of defense is held solely by metal armor. It might not be our specialty, but these suits were made by the finest elven Fire and Earth mages of my time, and they are so thoroughly enchanted that they could potentially rival those 'Hands of the Emperor' I've heard so much about."

Yunia frowns, making her sharp gaze even sharper, and points out, "Having all possible enchantments won't help us much if we don't have enough mana to use them."

Arreira rolls his eyes and replies with a slightly flippant tone, "Then just don't fight the Hands and choose another, weaker enemy."

I share a look with the wives, and we hold back our smirks.

Without giving us a chance to quip in return, Arreira moves on to the next line and continues explaining, "This is Ramodia, the standard armor for our higher nobility. This set is very advantageous when you're in a forest. With it, you can manipulate nature better than a dryad, so it's almost a requirement to wear it if you're leading elven troops. Though its offensive and defensive power isn't as good as the Bastión, its potent utility makes it a very versatile suit of armor."

Then he floats over to the last line just as we reach the first one. "This is Camalo. This set is intended for mages, archers, and assassins. It has perfect mana efficiency, making it almost completely undetectable, and coupled with a good [Silence] enchantment, it's the perfect suit for infiltration."

He grabs the forearm of one of the suits, then starts fiddling with something, and the scales all start changing color. Black, white, green, brown, red, they pass through a rainbow of colors, then they become transparent. It doesn't seem like perfect invisibility, but it'd be really hard to notice it in the dark. This is a perfect camo suit.

Hana whistles, and Alissa and Yunia echo her feelings, though silently. Ciel is more interested in the first line of armor while Aoi and Lina are wondering about how they'll fit into them. Roxanne is primarily interested in the last line since it seems to be far less bulky than our current wooden plate armor.

Again, he doesn't even give us a chance to ask a question before he continues, "I'll make you all learn [Equip] before you leave so that you can have these three suits readily available at all times." -He suddenly grins, beaming with pride and annoying sexiness- "But the most important item you'll ever possess is right over here."

He takes a few steps back, grabs the white cloth covering a box behind him, and pulls it off, revealing a very long greatsword embedded in a small pedestal.

"This is a Heavenly Weapon," he announces with a low rumbling voice that's absolutely dripping with excitement.

Alissa chokes on her spit, Lina freezes in surprise, and Yunia gasps. Ciel frowns as she tries to recall something while the rest of us just stay still, waiting for the coming explanation of why that sword is so important, so I curiously observe it in the meantime.

It's as tall as Arreira himself, but it's thinner than a usual sword. Its blade is simple, straight, and perfectly polished like a mirror. I notice that there's no place to grip the blade near the guard, and that its width is too narrow to comfortably grip it, meaning that half-swording is impossible with this weapon. Its cross guard is thinner than that of a typical greatsword, and it's completely rounded, like a teardrop, so it wouldn't be effective for blunt attacks. Its hilt is also shorter than I expected it to be and is the only part with any color since it's made of a bundle of leaves where the glinting of hidden gems shines through. The pommel is a small, dark sparkly globe that reminds me of the starry skies we saw throughout the dungeon.

Arreira grips the hilt and pulls the greatsword out of its almost imperceptibly small pedestal. He effortlessly swings it once through the air with just one arm, causing it to whistle as it cuts through the air almost like a lightsaber.

Seeing that all of the girls are too stunned to explain, Arreira does so himself, "This is Patrono, a Heavenly Sword that was forged out of pure Okross during the Dawn of Civilization." -He holds the sword upright with the edge pointing forward, but it's so thin that the blade is now invisible to us- "Its creation led to the rise of the first dynasty of God-Rulers and the establishment of the High Forest as you know it."

He points the sword straight down and lets it fall towards the stone floor. The blade effortlessly sinks into the stone up to the hilt as if it were nothing. It's so amazingly sharp that it cut through over 1.5 meters of solid stone with just the force from its own weight. This is fucking insane.

"Wolfy's cock," Roxanne mutters in amazement.

Arreira assumes a teaching tone and continues like a tour guide, "It has been used in countless battles and bathed in the blood of all kinds of enemies, but it wasn't enough to prevent the fall of its wielders, just as it didn't prevent my own fall." -He smiles wryly- "That was partially because Ajax also had his own Heavenly Sword and Heavenly Armor, but I digress. This stands among the most powerful swords in existence, but it won't make you invincible. As an example, [Divine Lance] was created by the Chimeras specifically to annihilate foes armored with Okross."

As I stare at it, I feel a "calling" drawing me towards this weapon, and my feet start moving on their own. The mirror-like quality of Okross is so familiar to my own new scales that I get a nagging feeling that this sword is also a "part" of me, as if I were seeing someone else wearing my clothes.

I grab the hilt of Patrono and feel my hand being massaged by the bundle of leaves, then I cast [Telekinesis] to float upwards and unsheathe it from the floor.

This sword feels like it's as light as a feather, which is impossibly light for its size. I look closely down the edge of the blade and feel like I'm going insane from how it literally disappears from sight. It must be thinner than a hair's width!

Reading my mind, Arreira explains, "The blade is actually two Primordial Particles thick, which you Earthlings named as 'atoms.' Between two layers of Okross are the gold channels for the enchantments."

I summon a steel earth elemental, making sure that its shape doesn't remind me of Lina, then I swing the sword and cleanly disarm it, leaving a mirror-like finish where its arm was connected. I didn't even feel the slightest hint of resistance.

Aligning the edge of the blade with the direction of the slash is essential for a good cut, so I purposely tilt the edge and swing again. It still cuts clean through, though this time I feel some resistance.

"What can even defend against such a weapon?" I ask while staring at it in disbelief. I get a chill as I realize how easy it would be to accidentally kill myself with it.

Arreira lectures us again, "Physically? Only Okross armor. Magically? Only spells that don't directly touch the Okross, like [Dead End], or [Telekinesis] if they have enough precision to 'grab' the blade with the spell, but because it's so thin, it would be a challenging endeavor. Even [Wind Shield] is useless against this sword."

Yunia finally snaps out of it as a grim suspicion surfaces in her mind. "I have a feeling that the Council will try to depose us just so that they can get their hands on this weapon," she soberly comments.

Arreira snorts and waves his hand dismissively with a pompous gesture. "Which is why none of you will be leaving until you learn [Equip]. Also, I'll give you a writ declaring you all as the sole rightful inheritors of my treasury."

"What about the royals?" Yunia presses on.

"I'll disown them," he casually answers without hesitation. "I'm still 'alive,' so it's within my rights. You can use whatever 'truth checker' that Avgi has to certify its veracity."

Yunia remains skeptical, but she doesn't think that we'll be killed on sight for possessing Patrono anymore.

I look around at the incredible wealth and sweat cold. If Yunia wasn't here to help us manage all this, I'd be having a stroke right now.

Women, wealth, weapons, power, and now the only thing left is drugs, but there are multiple damn Eia farms in Escanso, just waiting for our return. The true challenge of Lordship might actually be to not ruin yourself with hedonism in excess.

I turn to him and give a short respectful bow. "Thank you for your help. What you're giving us will help secure my 'destiny,' and we're all extremely grateful for that," I sincerely express my feelings.

He turns his head away haughtily, which reminds me of Yunia, and tries to downplay his actions, "This is just another monster for the Lord, as your kind would say. I can't name you my inheritor and have you be shamed because you lack the dignity expected of a royal."

With a smirk, I deposit Patrono back into its pedestal, which I notice is also made of Okross, then we start exploring the assortment of weapons available to us.

Alissa gets a compact bow enchanted with [Arrow of Annihilation], [Sapping Seeds], [Constricting Vines], [Mana Arrow], [Charge], [Lava Jet], [Loosen], and it's even auto-buffed with [Perfect Arrows]. It's a fucking beast and far better than what even the Arquirandos had. The first enchantment is what Noblewoman Silvina uses, and it's kind of a pseudo-[Divine Lance] that also lights things on fire. The second enchantment drains her quarry's HP and MP if the arrow hits and continues while she remains within a relatively close range, which is really good against tough monsters like Ogres.

Roxanne gets a new elven staff that's as beautiful as any of the ceremonial ones. It's made of two amber-like materials, one of which is blue with a variety of dark line patterns within it, while the other is red with yellow carvings all over it in circular patterns. The gem is wrapped in a basket nest made of these two materials, and it flashes chaotically with a rainbow of lights whenever she casts a spell. Mage staves aren't enchanted to prevent them from interfering with their casting, so it looks impressive, but it doesn't do much besides improving her spells, though there's a small hidden blade at the butt that she can use in emergencies, and it's even stiff enough to be used as a spear.

Hana salivates over Patrono, so I'll probably let her use it if that's possible, but she'll get her own weapon, too. Most of the practical weapons here are all enchanted with the same spells, so we only need to find the type of weapon that she wants the most.

We get her a wooden bastard sword with [Morph Length], [Double Strike], [Bleed], [Flame Slash], [Searing Blade], [Heat Reversal], [Fissure], and a double [Switch] that lets her change it into either a spear or a shortsword. [Flame Slash] is what Rande uses to throw burning oil at his enemies, [Heat Reversal] is the counter to [Searing Blade], and [Fissure] splits the ground apart to trap opponents.

Lina gets an axe with those same enchantments, though her double [Switch] lets her change it into either a hammer or a spear. With [Morph Length], she can use it as a pole or single-handed weapon.

Ciel gets a glaive with the same enchantments as well, and her double [Switch] lets her change it into either a shortsword or a polehammer. Her Chimeric glaive wasn't actually destroyed, so she can still use it, but none of the elven weapons have [Beam], so we'll have to analyze that enchantment and add it to her new elven glaive.

We find a longsword for Yunia, making her old one obsolete. Though the new one doesn't have [Dead Zone], the gauntlets for our sets of armor are all enchanted with both it and [Wind Shield].

Aoi gets a halberd with the same enchantments as the rest of our melee weapons, but her double [Switch] lets her change it into either a hammer or a shortsword.

Lina, Ciel, and I all get kite shields with [Earth Armor] to counter blunt weapons, [Fire Wall] to harm anyone trying to grab it, and both [Dead Zone] and [Wind Shield] for redundancy.

Our armor is enchanted with [Regeneration], [Manasynthesis], [Wind Armor], [Heart of Fire], [Earth Armor], [Fly], [Ice armor], [Rush], [Refresh], and it's auto-buffed with [Wind Armor], [Swift Foot], [Rainbow Shield], [Rainbow Crystal], and [Reinforce].

There's just so many enchantments in our new equipment that we'll need to train ourselves in how to use them, or else we'll just fumble and activate them all in desperation when shit hits the fan. [Heart of Fire] is definitely an enchantment that needs a lot of control since it's quite easy to actually kill yourself or drain away all of your mana with it.

Aoi, Lina, and I don't fit in this armor made for tall elves, of course, but there's a spell to get all of this armor to properly fit us, and even change their shape for Aoi's normal form. It's incredibly mana-inefficient, though, but that's nothing more than a temporary blip for Arreira's mana organ.

While he works, I use [Sense Soul] on him and suddenly feel like I've entered an infinite corridor from how all the "mana particle containers" line up further than my soul-sight can see.

"Don't do that," Arreira suddenly warns me with a glare, and I reflexively stop using [Sense Soul], then he softens his expression.

"You could feel that?" I ask while trying to get my heart back under control. This is a first for me.

"Yes, and it wasn't pleasant," he responds coldly, and we leave it at that.

There's some equipment with high-level spells, like [Haste], [Reflection], [Unbreakable Skin], [Abyssal Fire], [Blood of Gaia], and [Petrifying Gaze], but they're hardly practical. Aside from [Fissure] from [Earth Magic], enchanting is mostly limited to the mid to lower level spells because the complexity required to recreate them inside a gem increases exponentially with their magic school's corresponding skill level. Maybe one day, there will be high-level enchantments thanks to automation, but that day certainly won't come soon.

I notice a lack of [Space Magic] enchantments, but it's probably because that's an Avgi specialty that the ancient elves knew little about, so we'll have to buy [Blink] from somewhere if we want to fight like Yunia's father. Though, even if we do, there's the problem that the elven equipment is so filled with enchantments that adding any more would likely ruin it all.

Maintaining this delicate equipment will also require a really powerful enchanter, or I could use my Gift to temporarily give Lina the points she needs to understand how to do it.

Aside from the Bastión and the Camalo armor sets, all of our equipment is decorated with small branches, leaves, and flowers that fall off and disintegrate at the slightest touch. This isn't entirely for decoration, though, since this is a side-effect of the wood being able to self-repair, but that feature won't fix broken enchantments.

After we're done perusing through the treasury, Arreira snaps his fingers, and dozens of large chests appear, floating above us, then all of the treasures we didn't pick start flying into them.

Seeing our expressions of surprise, he smiles smugly and explains, "This is something I created after taking a look at some of the baggage from the Crown Lords that came here. They're all enchanted with [Warp Space] to increase their inner dimensions, but since Ryder seems to have an endless [Item Box] as a Gift, that shouldn't be a problem for you.

"If Wolfy ever gets killed, all these heavy chests will bury both him and anyone else nearby," Roxanne comments and chuckles softly.

"I have a whole furniture shop and a farmer's market inside of me. If I die, I'll just explode like a piñata," I retort as I send them the imagery through [Bind], and even Arreira chuckles, though Alissa and Ciel aren't particularly fond of this kind of banter.

The treasury is soon emptied into the chests, leaving only the suits of armor and weapons chosen for us. The wide hall is now stripped bare, becoming rather lonely and depressing without all the treasure to give it life. The colorful stone slabs that Arreira likes to use everywhere feel out of place without the fine decorations to accompany them.

Arreira lands in front of us, looking rather content with himself and still a bit smug. "You still have to deal with the Chimeras," he reminds us, and we frown because this also means talking to Hihiriwa. "It seems that not all of them will accept their 'deaths' so easily, and if you want to reclaim their ships and armor, then you'll have to convince them to cooperate since some of the Chimeras are haunting the ships while the Celestial Horns are haunting their own armor."

"What about Pua? What's going to happen to it?" I question, totally not stalling.

His chiseled face softens with a surprisingly kind smile. "I'll free it if you don't have any objections. If I direct it towards the Broken Skies, it'll easily thrive there while being harmless to civilization."

"I'm a little concerned about its true power," Ciel chimes in.

Arreira shows a hint of worry that quickly gets replaced with his usual sexiness. "It's fairly weak, actually. It's a magical being with low 'Magic Power,' and I can easily place it below one of your Lords in actual fighting prowess," he tries to convince her.

"We have to make sure it knows that it owes its freedom to us. Having it on our side will definitely be a boon," Yunia advises. Ciel seems a bit skeptical, but she'll trust Yunia on this one.

I breathe in to gather my courage, then my tail wags like a whip on its own. I just sigh internally at my lack of control over it. "Let's deal with the Chimeras first," I counter. Let's pull the tooth out before we eat the candy.

Arreira nods, pleased with our choice.

A portal opens to a cozy, elven styled room, and I cross through it alone. Hukarere awaits me on the other side, weapon drawn and wary, but also very confused. Her wolf head looks fearsome with her lips raised in a snarl, exposing her long teeth and making even me a bit hesitant to approach her.

She hears my footsteps, and her ears turn to me, quickly followed by her head. She immediately softens her demeanor into a pup and happily shouts, "Wolf! What wild winds have brought you-… well, me here?!" Then she notices my new race and lowers her saber while also letting her mouth hang open in surprise. "Divines step on me. Are you a Chimera?"

I smile bitterly and sit down on the sofa prepared for us. "No, I'm not. I was a human, and now… I'm something else," I hesitantly reply. Saying that I'm not human anymore feels so wrong that my mask of calmness almost breaks.

While I tell the truth of her situation to Hukarere, Arreira deals with most of the common Chimeras, explaining their circumstances to them, then stimulating their memory. As soon as he turns off his memory-wiping powers, the Chimeras start to remember the truth, though for many, it's a bit confusing and blurry.

The memory wipe can only be done with short-term memories, but it also affects long-term ones as well, making them feel like these memories aren't actually "real." I know exactly what they're going through since that happens whenever I try to recall my previous meetings with Arreira. It all seems like a weird dream that gives me déjà vu, as if it were something "detached" from reality.

"So, this is the end…?" Hukarere sadly asks, her ears flat, her large dragon tail limp on the sofa, her snow-white hands barely holding onto her teacup.

I hold her hand and squeeze it reassuringly. "Not exactly," I gently whisper, breathing a wisp of life back into her lifeless eyes. "You can still come live with me, but you're a spirit, and your existence will be tied to a gem. It might not be possible to keep you solid all the time, and you can't exactly touch or feel things while in spirit form."

"Can you take my gem with you anywhere you go?" She immediately asks.

I frown in confusion. "I guess…"

She narrows her eyes in thought, then she turns a sharp look towards me. "So you could say that I'm… portable?"

We both hold back a snort as all the tension that was building up is instantly wiped away.

"Yes, you could say so…" I agree, straining myself to not laugh.

"Then take me everywhere," she demands with a sultry tone and licks my face.

She's not the only one who feels this way. Yunia is talking to Kaatohe, and the haughty "aristocat" demands the same, including a regular dicking from me, though she didn't say it explicitly, and also, she denies wanting to be part of my harem.

Ciel pokes us through [Bind] and sends a few stern words to us, so we're forced to remind these carefree spirits of their reality, "Do you understand that, as a spirit, you'll slowly lose yourself until you become a shell if you don't go towards Paradise?"

Hukarere's tail starts wagging rapidly as she suggests, "Can't I join with a nature spirit to extend my… uh 'dead-time'?"

I look at Gify on my shoulder, and she just shrugs.

"Gih."

Hukarere frowns, and her tails stop moving. "It doesn't have to be now, right?"

I nod and hum in agreement. "Arreira isn't sure, but he said that you should last for at least a few years in this state."

Her excitement comes back, and her tail wags. "Then we'll talk about this again in a few years. I don't have many people waiting for me in Paradise anyway, so if I can last long enough here, then it might be better to give up my 'self' to extend this short life of mine."

Ciel definitely isn't pleased with Hukarere's idea, but her priest training tells her to let people be free to do what they want with their lives and afterlives.

Hukarere smirks, and her fingers trace along the outline of my hard cock pressing against my pants. "Well, you did say that you're travelers, so I'll be fine, no matter where we go," she assures me with a suggestive tone. Then she leans over and whispers into my ear, "but first, how about I drain you of your cum while you fuck me with that thick, manly dragon tail?"

I lick my lips and growl like an animal.

"Not now," Arreira's boner-killing, spine-chilling voice resounds through the room.

God fucking dammit. I'm starting to really hate him.

Seeing that we're not giving up, he insists with an even more imperious tone, "I know that you want to spend a whole day fucking every female in sight, but I don't have the patience to wait until you're done. There's work to do." He actually manages to kill my boner, then we both grunt in dissatisfaction and separate.

Our offer to Hukarere is extended to all Chimera. If they want to continue living, they'll have to become our subjects once we become Lords. It might be a bit complicated at first, but we're all certain that we can find a way to accommodate them in Escanso or perhaps even find a way to give them back their freedom.

Next up is Oritiki.

For her, for our friend, we all enter the room together to address both her and all the other Celestial Horns.

A note from Manasong

Hall of Fame of Patrons

The patrons who support Rupegia shall have their names sung by the bards for they deserve the glory and honor. Their names are:

Prince PreownedFIN.

Lord Andrew Meyers.

Lord Samuel Lim.

Lord Bill.

Lord Novgarod.

Lord DJ.

Lord Ashadun.

Lord Michale Erwin.

Lord Bakerdea.

Lord Nathan Vanbrunt.

Lord Maurice.

Lord Empyrean.

Lord Mattirro Draca.

Lord Joshua Tal.

Lord Colorblind.

Lord RottenTangerine.

Lord Fullmoon.

Lord Joxsan Herrera.

Lord Sean Drake.

Lord EESDESESESRDT.

Lord Brody Haugan.

Lord GoodKat.

Lord FrostyCube.

Lord Freddie.

Lord Mike Bartter.

Lord Cardinal Steiner.

Lord DragonPiggy.

Noble Salty Panda.

Noble Mild Fracas.

Noble Aclys.

Noble Shawn Plumley.

Noble CarlBaxter.

Noble WeirdWhirl.

Noble War God.

Noble Andreas Jörgensen.

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Chapter 88: Reunion - Part 2

The Celestial Horns all stand in formation, their bodies completely unmoving as they've realized that they don't need to breathe anymore, their helmets held under their arms as the battle is over, their faces grim as they've come to understand their sad fate. Their Divines are all truly dead, their last bastion of resistance was overwhelmed by monsters, and it’s only through sheer will that they haven't regressed into mere Living Armors without any emotions. They failed their duty, they failed their people, and they can't even find someone to blame for it. The Petrification Calamity was a tragedy, and the real culprit eluded the entire realm, if there even was one.

But while the Horns stand with their heads hung low, Oritiki is the only one who retains some glimmer of hope in her eyes.

Her majestic horns are polished to a smooth sheen, her black cow head looks proud, and her eyes are sharp. Even after Arreira has revealed everything, she's still every bit as determined as she was before.

"Ryders," she coolly greets us with a nod, then she notices my new race and observes me with neutral curiosity.

"Oritiki," I greet back with a smile.

Hana and Ciel greet Paraaone, which he returns, though mutely.

We stop before each other and remain silent for a moment as we search for the right words.

"My condolences," I break the silence with a sober tone.

"We appreciate it," Oritiki responds, and her face melts into a warm smile, then her eyes lose focus as she reminisces. "Though this isn't the first time we've heard that. Arreira also followed it up with such a tempting offer that we eagerly accepted this childish fantasy."

"Yearning is not childish," Ciel immediately chimes in with a very motherly tone and steps forward. "But the important question is: do you regret this time that Arreira gave you?"

Oritiki slowly turns around, taking a brief look at each of her men, then shakes her head gently. "No."

Oritiki and I look at each other expectantly, as if we're trying to read each other's minds, but we don't need to try, we have a very good idea of what the other wants.

I can't look at myself like a common man anymore, my Gift already set me apart, and now the Gods have made fucking sure of that since they even made me into a new race. I can't keep acting as an outsider, trying to not stir the pot; I'm already going to make waves with [Golemancy], my promise to the Goddess of Knowledge made sure of that, and now I'm going to be responsible for part of a nation.

I need to inspire loyalty in others; I need to act in ways that will earn me their respect; I need to take responsibility for the lives of my soon-to-be subjects; I need to guide them forward towards the light that only I can see. That is the only way that nobility can be justified in taking power in this realm, it's their reason for existence: to guide.

But I can't do it all alone. I need more than just my wives, concubines, or companions. I need subordinates, bound through a contract, subjects, bound through duty, servants, bound through oath, and followers, bound through love.

The strong protect the weak, which in turn support the strong. At this moment, I'm-, no, we are stronger than Oritiki and the Celestial Horns combined. We hold real control over their Fate, and what we're about to say will forever change our relationship with the Horns.

I won't use [Godly Language] to manipulate their hearts into accepting this. I'll use plain, clear words so that they know exactly what's expected of them. I can't deny that I want their armor and weapons, but I don't want them to go, and also, they're more valuable as allies than as tools.

Unfortunately, allies are equals, and nobody would say that of our relationship with the Horns. We can't stand on the same level, but we can start there.

I hold my claws in front of me and puff up my chest, then Alissa helps me straighten my posture while Aoi gets my tail under control through [Bind].

I breathe in and let my voice resound so that every Celestial Horn can hear me clearly, "I wasn't born in this realm. I'm from a world populated entirely with humans, where mana doesn't exist. I was never told why I was brought here, and I was given Gifts to fulfill a destiny I know nothing about. The only thing I'm sure of is that the Gods guided me here, both the new and the old, and this meeting between us is entirely within their plans."

I make a dramatic pause to let them absorb my words, and I see Oritiki's face light up.

"We'll destroy this dungeon's core, ending Arreira's existence with it, and also your fake lives. After that, we'll assume the position of Lords and work to accumulate even more power, but we have few that we can truly trust, so this will be a rocky, dangerous path. That's not all, as we don't truly know what Fate the Gods have for me, so we don't know the nature of the dangers that still lie hidden from us.

"We've fought and bled alongside some of you while you've also protected us for a short time. We greatly value your assistance, and also your friendship," -I send a nod towards Oritiki, and Paraaone's face twitches with emotion- "so we don't wish to end things here.

"Do you desire to continue your lives? To live for a while longer in this realm, but without all the illusions and lies this time? We can give you all new lives if you agree to serve us, and while we can't say for sure if they'll compare with your old lives, we can assure you that they'll definitely be eventful.

"Knowing that Fate that lies ahead of us, do you accept this proposal? To serve in exchange for a new life?"

I stare at Oritiki, and she returns the gaze. Hers is intense, trying to gauge my determination, while mine is hopeful, trying to convince her to accept.

A smile slowly breaks into her long snout, then she turns around, and her men start to light up as they see her expression.

"We require some time to discuss this in private," she states, her voice leaving no room to argue.

We nod respectfully, then Paraaone sends us one last smirk before we turn around and graciously leave the room.

The happiness from before fades away as we cross through another [Eternal Gate]. We find ourselves inside a huge, nondescript room. It's made entirely of gray rock and lacks any decorations, giving it the air of a prison.

In the center of this room are the Carrier and the Long Floater. Both of which are manned by only a small number of very confused Chimeras that watch us cautiously when we come in.

Alissa hears a few shouts as observers on the glass dome bridge of the Carrier recognize us after using their scopes.

I pull out three comfortable sofas for us and a few hard chairs for our guests, then we wait while the Chimeras scramble to respond.

They try to activate the ships and their Trinity Cannons, but a [Disruption Field] enveloping both ships makes them stop trying that rather quickly. I'm also thankful that Arreira was polite enough to keep us out of the Field. Just watching all the wild mana makes my insides tingle unpleasantly.

After a few minutes, a group of Chimeras pours out from both the Carrier and the Floater. Alissa focuses her sight and recognizes Nohopu, the squirrel-headed crazy captain; Kurii, his beagle-headed executive officer; Kaiia, the Carrier's fluffy, panda-headed executive officer; Kaata, Hihiriwa's neon-blue gecko-headed wife; and the devil himself. Hihiriwa's gray draconic face is completely neutral, unconcerned with his current situation.

They all come towards us flanked by tall and burly guards, though none of them have weapons, so they're all harmless to us.

They started pretty far away, so a long minute passes as we wait, then I decide to pull out a coffee table, and Alissa starts preparing tea for everyone.

We act indifferently to them until they take their seats. Nohopu and Kurii get friendly nods, especially Kurii since I'm a horn dog in need of a fuck, and every female looks so fuckable, and all I want is my draconic co-…

Alissa chokes the dragon again, and we both sigh in our minds.

I need to get laid.

At least they're fully armored. If the women were naked, this conversation would be very uncomfortable. It's not like I've become an animal incapable of controlling myself, it's just that it's very uncomfortable to do so.

Hihiriwa calmly grabs his cup of tea and sips it silently. He doesn't look angry or defeated, but rather seems as if he was expecting this. His expression is neutral, if a bit lacking in energy, while his draconic eyes look at nobody else but me.

The others have a mix of wary, confused, and slightly frightful looks. Kurii is as cool and collected as always, though.

I slowly sip my tea and let my eyes wander as we wait.

Kaiia awkwardly shifts in his seat, which is a bit too small for the large panda man.

I relax my thick tail on Yunia's lap, and she sends me a subtle glare but starts petting it anyway. The scales prevent me from feeling much, but her touch is good enough for me to find some comfort.

Nohopu starts tapping his foot impatiently.

I look over at Lina on Ciel's lap and feel a little jealous that I can't have my personal lap-loli for comfort. Yunia insisted on this arrangement so that I'd seem more menacing.

Kaata looks around with shifty eyes.

Hana and Aoi grumble impatiently. They really dislike theatrics, preferring a broken arm instead of these mind games.

Hihiriwa finishes his cup and sighs in satisfaction. His gray scales wave as a chill runs down his spine, then he smiles in contentment.

"I have no idea why I did it," he suddenly admits bemusedly and chuckles.

I nearly facepalm in exasperation and simply stare angrily at him. My scales wave along with the desire to strangle him that courses through my body.

He smiles, apparently proud of his stupidity, and explains himself, "I knew that you were special, but Arreira's memory-wipes prevented me from understanding why, so I thought I had to do something to keep you nearby, I just didn't know what."

Yunia takes over for me as I'm too overwhelmed to ask, "So you just… sabotaged the Light gem and hoped for the best?"

"Yes," he confesses eagerly then laughs like a fool. He laughs so hard he holds his own stomach in pain. "I can't believe it almost worked!"

The others look at him either confused or worried. I'm pretty sure that even his wife doesn't know what he did.

Kurii suddenly gasps in surprise and accuses Hihiriwa, "This is why the Honored One wanted to depose you!"

"Precisely," he admits as he nods without the slightest hint of guilt. "And we're lucky that things ended when they did because I didn't have much longer to live."

Kaata frowns, completely horrified, and grabs his hand reflexively.

Alissa's tail stops swaying, and her ears point up in wariness. "So, you won't apologize?" She asks, almost uttered through gritted teeth.

Hihiriwa immediately answers, "No…" -I scowl at him, seething with anger, and his draconic face twitches- "I won't apologize for what I did, though I will apologize for bringing you harm or putting you in danger."

That actually makes me pause in confusion. This fucking guy…

"Why?" Is all I can ask without swearing at him.

He nervously adjusts the collar of his armor, then categorically starts his explanation, "I blame the Divine Arreira for wiping our memories as it prevented me from understanding why you were special, but it didn't change my intuition that you were the key to solving the mystery of our town."

We hear a loud *snap* resound through the air as Arreira's annoyingly sexy presence reveals itself to us.

He floats beside our sofa just to make himself seem like he's "towering" over us. "Hm… curious. I believe this 'intuition' was a remnant of your long-term memories," he comments as he rubs his chiseled chin in thought, then he shrugs. "Another complication of memory manipulation. Perhaps through emotional reconditioning, this effect could be minimized. It could be done through neutral emotions since positive or negative reinforcement would leave evidence of tampering, so perhaps repetition blindness could be tested. However, I'd need to first find symptoms of 'emotional remnants' in the memories…" He rambles on to himself, speaking through his actual mouth this time, then he remembers where he is and *snap*s away to somewhere else.

Things turn silent again, and we just let Hihiriwa simmer under the heat of our glares.

After another awkward minute, he finally decides to broach the topic himself, "I don't hold any ill intent towards any of you, and neither of us" -he squeezes his wife's hand- "want to give up our lives yet." He gets up and turns around to gaze wistfully at the Carrier. "We fought to the death on this ship, so it isn't just our grave or where our souls have been bound to, it's a part of us. For as long as our souls still have an ego, we'll fly on the Carrier."

He turns his head sideways and smirks at us.

He's got us there. Unless we forcefully remove him, he won't give up haunting the Carrier.

I look towards the other Chimeras, and they all seem to be touched by his words. Kurii may have blurted out something that briefly embarrassed Hihiriwa, but their loyalty to him hasn't diminished. They've been together through life and death, so if we want to acquire two fully crewed ships alongside dozens of fighter pilots, we have to accept all of them, including Hihiriwa.

Yunia hammers out a speech for me, and I simply surrender myself to her will for a short time. I really hate being the only one talking, but at least through [Bind], the burden can be shared somewhat.

I stand up, and the claws on my feet scrape against the floor, easily making some light scratches in the stone.

Fucking shit, are they made of Okross or something? My scales sure do remind me of it.

My tail becomes stiff and points upwards as my intense glare makes them cower. Nohopu shrinks in his seat, Kaiia becomes a harmless fluffy panda doll, Kurii stiffens and avoids looking me in the eye out of respect, Kaata frowns as she tries to find her husband's hand for comfort, and even Hihiriwa's draconic side is affected as he instinctively lowers his head.

The Chimera guards behind them reach for their weapons, but they have none, so they instead shift very uncomfortably on their feet.

Holy fuck, I'm actually intimidating them with just a glare.

"You look really sexy to me, though, but okay, I guess it's different for them," Roxanne comments through [Bind].

I swallow heavily and measure my tone to maintain the perfect balance of authority and seriousness with a hint of [Godly Language] for intimidation.

First the stick, then the carrot.

Yunia opens my mouth, and her speech pours out on its own, "Whakamutu Mutu is gone like a dream; your nation has faded away from history, forgotten and abandoned; your Divines have all perished; the mystery of the Petrification Calamity has never been solved; and even the survivors of your race have moved on.

"You have nothing but this Carrier and Floater as your possessions, and even these ships could be taken away from you by purging your souls from them. So, what can you offer me?"

"We offer our services as an expert crew to man your ships," Hihiriwa answers sedately and lowers his head in respect. His draconic face has an annoyingly satisfied smirk, which shows that we're still acting within his expectations.

"And what do you demand in return?" My tone is a bit snotty.

He keeps his head low and his tone submissive as he says, "A life like any other. Gathered here are honored captains, distinguished officers, and an expert crew. We merely expect to be treated as is fitting to our stations."

"Your souls are bound to the ships by [Trap Soul], and perhaps they could be transferred to a gem, but we won't be gifting them. You'll have to purchase them with your own pay."

Hihiriwa straightens his posture, still looking satisfied with himself, then slowly nods. "That's acceptable. We most likely won't need much to be spent on us since we're nothing but spirits without a body to maintain."

I narrow my eyes dangerously. "And then there's the matter of loyalty…"

I wait for Hihiriwa's answer, but even he can't come up with something to say that wouldn't just be empty ass kissing.

After a moment of silence, I give him the good news, "You'll be sworn to serve us, but due to our previous conflict, your loyalty can't be assured, though we will grant you one chance to regain our trust. Meanwhile, you'll be watched by our other subjects, and your independence will be severely restricted until we decide otherwise."

Hihiriwa hesitates for a moment, but then he bows to us. The others follow suit a second later, and I sigh internally in relief. The girls and I all relax our postures as the negotiation is now over.

An [Eternal Gate] appears behind us, and we immediately get up to leave.

The Chimeras raise their heads, and I send them a small, friendly smile. Now that our positions have been established, there's no reason to continue antagonizing them.

Now that the Chimeras have been appeased, we'll have a brief talk with Pua.

It wouldn't be a good idea to just suddenly relocate it, so Arreira takes us to the fake Broken Skies again and returns our ship to us. He really did make us crash onto a rock before our trials started, so the ship had to be repaired, but we've been inside those Preservation Beds for so long that he'd completed that quite a while ago.

We look around at the starry, groundless sky with a bit of wistfulness. This will be the last time that we'll ever see it unless we decide to explore the real Broken Skies.

Arreira has been hurrying us on quite a lot, so we don't have too much time to rest or appreciate the sights. At least we get over a half-hour to calm down while our ship slowly approaches a suspiciously shaped colored cloud that continues to grow larger in our view.

I ponder over what Arreira said about the Maw being weaker than a Lord. This is a fucking mountain-sized monster, so I can hardly believe that a single Lord-level person could kill it. Did he take Pua's meek behavior into account and implied that the Lord would be able to scare it off, instead?

Arreira is at least a thousand years out of touch with reality, so I'd bet that this is just one of his quirks. For all we know, Pua is his pet or another experiment that got a little out of hand.

Hana feels a chill from megalophobia as we approach the cloud-mountain. As the tallest among us, she rarely gets the feeling of being so totally dwarfed by other things. Lina, on the other hand, is behaving as if it were business as usual. My little dwarf actually enjoys feeling small, especially when she's in the arms of a strong, muscular, menacing man like me. Her words, not mine.

The mountain suddenly starts moving, and Pua uncoils itself. Its huge, castle-sized face made of clouds turns to us, and Hana gets really creeped out by it.

"Hello," Pua's deep and slow voice comes from the prow instead of directly inside my ear this time.

"Hello again, Pua," I greet it back cheerfully and wave.

"A dragon…" It curiously comments.

"I'm Aoi," she greets it with a toothy grin and waves her claws.

"Are you like me?"

She tilts her head and sits down as her tail sways contentedly. "I don't know, maybe? I was a 'broken' monster before, but now I've converted, and Wolfy 'filled me.'"

"Hm…" Pua mumbles like a curious child.

"I could look into your soul to confirm it, but you'd have to get closer," Alissa tentatively suggests. She's a bit intrigued by Pua, too.

"Okay," it casually agrees and flies forward, making us all tense up.

The day becomes cloudy as Pua hides the sun with its body. It's like watching a mountain-sized truck barreling towards us, then suddenly seeing it stop as if it were nothing.

"Y-your soul is 'normal' for a monster. You're not the same as Aoi," Alissa announces as she tries to calm down her own heart. Her [Sense Presence] is completely filled with one large 'red dot' that screams "DANGER" in her mind, and it's quite the disconcerting feeling.

"I seeee~~…" Pua whispers, which slowly devolves into a soft hissing, then it opens its gigantic, Pac-man-like mouth, exposing four house-sized crystal fangs, and yawns.

We hear the far-off howling of the wind as it stirs up a small storm with its breath, which it politely directs away from us.

Because Pua seems to be a bit slow, I wait an awkwardly long moment to see if it wants to talk, then I give it my gratitude, "We'd like to thank you for pushing me into the portal. If it weren't for you, things would've become… a lot more complicated, I believe. We're also sorry that you were struck by the gem's power as it must've hurt quite a lot."

Pua curls up again, leaving only its cylindrical face visible outside of its fluffy little hill, still facing us. "Oh, it's okay. The gem stung for a while, but I'm better now."

"Still, we owe you a lot. I hope to be able to repay you somehow."

"Hm…" Its interested hum sends out a slight tremor with its intensity. "I'll think about it later," it tiredly responds.

I smile sadly at it. Pua really is a gentle giant. "Unfortunately, we'll be destroying the dungeon's core soon, so this place will decay and stop existing eventually. We'll release you from this dungeon and out into the realm if you promise to not attack humanoid civilization."

"Out? Where's 'out'?" It questions worriedly.

"You're inside a dungeon, and there's a huge realm for you to explore out there. I'm almost certain that the skies are unoccupied by humanoids, so you'll have plenty of space to make your new home."

"Oh… okay."

Ciel lets her motherly instincts take over as she contributes, "If you encounter other humanoids, tell them about us, and say that if they harm you, we'll come and protect you."

"Yeah, you're a good monster, so you can come back to us if you need help," Hana adds cheerfully and shakes her fist in the air.

"Pua's mere presence will cause chaos and panic in the High Forest," Yunia warns her through [Bind].

"It'll also intimidate a lot of people if they know that we're 'friends' with it," Roxanne defends Hana, and Yunia relents.

"I'll… visit," Pua accepts, sounding as if it's unsure about what the word "visit" actually means.

We have a quick discussion inside my mind about how Pua coming to "visit" would go, then I explain things to it, "We'll be ruling over a town called Escanso that's been built in the treetops of a forest with huge trees. If you want to talk to us, come fly near the forest, and we'll try to get in contact with you. It's possible that we'll send the Chimeras along with some ships, so don't attack them on sight."

"Chimeras?" It moans a little sadly.

I nod and speak in a reassuring tone, "They're under our control now, so they shouldn't hurt you, but always be careful since misunderstandings can happen."

"Okay…" Its huge face nods very slowly.

We say our goodbyes to it, then we return to Arreira.

It's time to learn [Equip].

A note from Manasong

Hall of Fame of Patrons

The patrons who support Rupegia shall have their names sung by the bards for they deserve the glory and honor. Their names are:

Prince PreownedFIN.

Lord Andrew Meyers.

Lord Samuel Lim.

Lord Bill.

Lord Novgarod.

Lord DJ.

Lord Ashadun.

Lord Michale Erwin.

Lord Bakerdea.

Lord Nathan Vanbrunt.

Lord Maurice.

Lord Empyrean.

Lord Mattirro Draca.

Lord Joshua Tal.

Lord Colorblind.

Lord RottenTangerine.

Lord Fullmoon.

Lord Joxsan Herrera.

Lord Sean Drake.

Lord EESDESESESRDT.

Lord Brody Haugan.

Lord GoodKat.

Lord FrostyCube.

Lord Freddie.

Lord Mike Bartter.

Lord Cardinal Steiner.

Lord DragonPiggy.

Noble Salty Panda.

Noble Mild Fracas.

Noble Aclys.

Noble Shawn Plumley.

Noble CarlBaxter.

Noble WeirdWhirl.

Noble War God.

Noble Andreas Jörgensen.

Leave a rating or a review to help me rise to the top or fix my shameful understanding of prose.

Take a look over my blog where all information of the world of Rupegia will be posted.

Join the Discord and discuss, or rant, or meme, or try and fight me so your waifu gets more screentime.

Become a Patron and read chapters in advance, or read the side-stories, or leave your mark on the story, or help choose the next artwork or the next side-story.

Chapter 88: Reunion - Part 3

"Wait, you actually made a new magic school! It's right here, and it's called [Equipment System]!" I shout, then I glare at Arreira with a mix of annoyance and surprise. "Why didn't you tell us?!"

He clenches his fist and jaw in contained anger and increases his brightness to annoy us. "Because you'd want to cheat and skimp on this lesson!" He confesses through gritted teeth.

Well, duh.

The horny dragon inside of me, pun intended, roars in frustration, "Having the skill while practicing would've helped us immensely in not wasting five hours just trying to copy a single spell!"

He looks away haughtily, refusing to set his eyes upon our "inferior" existences, and his fluffy drills take flight. "This is the same situation as you had with [Golemancy], where later on, you'd have problems simplifying things because your Gift gives you only the most evolved form of the spell, not the simplest, most practical one!"

"As if I'd need that!"

He points accusingly to the golems and his fair, shiny skin starts to flush red with anger. "Then make a new golem without your memories, right now!"

Oh…

I breathe in. "Ooooooh~…"

Arreira clenches his jaw and starts grumbling, "You incompetent-…You're the best and worst Golemancer in existence! And that's just because you're the only one!" Then he *snaps* away to somewhere else, leaving us in the dark for a few seconds while the crystal lights come back on.

"Oh, I got it…" Lina mumbles, as her left gauntlet appears on her hand.

Roxanne un[Equip]s her staff and heavy armor to clap, making my little dwarf smile shyly.

I sigh and lay down on the grass to rest for a moment, then Gify nestles herself on my chest, and I start petting her absentmindedly.

"For a Gods-know-how-old spirit, he's rather impatient, isn't he?" Yunia comments in a low tone.

"I believe he's simply tired of living," Ciel comments, then I turn my head towards her to gaze at her beauty. "He's finally found his 'successor,' and now he just wants to end it once and for all."

"Arreira requires cuddling. He works hard to hide his loneliness," Ted blurts out in her usual neutral and slightly robotic voice, and we all immediately turn towards her, eyes wide open in disbelief.

"He wot?" I mumble in English.

"Arreira is grieving his long lost family while also despising his disowned descendants," Suzy continues.

"He requires mental comforting and skinship to prevent stress accumulation and further outbursts of anger," Ted finishes, then I snort and sigh tiredly.

Fucking hell…

"Even God-Rulers aren't immune to simpler, or 'lesser,' needs, they're still very much humanoids," Ciel sagely comments.

We hold ourselves back from teasing Arreira, but only outwardly. My mind becomes noisy as the girls and I fully express our skills for banter.

Arreira comes back after a while, and we continue learning his [Equipment System] magic school, though we treat him with a lot more kindness than before.

At level 1, this magic school gives the spell [Link], an extremely watered-down version of [Bind]. It converts blank souls into "extensions" of the caster's, but it doesn't have the same deep connectivity that [Bind] creates. This spell is completely safe in comparison to [Bind] because it doesn't leave a piece of the caster's soul inside the target's soul, removing one of [Bind]s (unconfirmed) weaknesses, where Spirit mages are most likely able to affect the caster through the bound souls.

It only works with completely non-sentient souls, so I won't be able to [Equip] the golems just yet.

Arreira may have used [Bind] as a basis, but he didn't leave any trace of that spell in [Link], so mages won't be able to learn [Bind] through reverse engineering.

At level 5, there's the spell [Equip], which summons the chosen [Link]ed item. This spell uses summoning instead of [Item Box]'s materialization because Box's interface is too clumsy while summoning allows for the caster to instantly summon the item exactly where they want.

The summoning works no matter if the [Link]ed item is in the real world or even inside the caster's own [Item Box], though it doesn't work when it's inside someone else's Box. To prevent an item from being stolen, [Link]ing blocks others from using [Item Box], though the item isn't completely theft-proof since a Spirit mage could still destroy the blank soul, or a Space mage could use [Gate] to teleport the item outside of the mage's summoning range.

At level 10, there's [Itemize], which creates a blank soul for any sort of item. This is a higher-level spell because even though the soul is blank, it's still a rather complex construct.

[Golemancy]'s [Infuse], which creates a fully-functional golem, is a level 1 spell, but in comparison, [Golemancy] is much, much, much, much harder to acquire levels in than [Equipment System].

Even Hana is able to reach level 5 in it after just a few hours while it took me a few months until I learned [Golemancy] level 1.

Each level in [Equipment System] allows for one [Link], but you can create a single soul for an entire armor set and more if you have the mana to use [Itemize], so leveling Equipment only adds more convenience instead of functionality.

We all [Link] our new armor sets and weapons, only needing four or five levels in Equipment. Aoi still doesn't have skills, only levels, so she requires more training because of that and also because she has both human-shaped and dragon-shaped armor to store.

I might also need dragon-shaped armor, but my dragon form is still just hatchling-sized, so I won't be fighting in it anytime soon.

After cheating a bit, we finally finish learning the skill and store our newest weapons and armor. Except for Roxanne, the girls need a bit of a boost in [Space Magic] to fit all of their new gear in their [Item Box]es, but we'll get so many levels once we destroy the core that we can easily afford it.

Arreira conjures an elven banquet for us, and Yunia's sharp eyes melt at the sight of all the comfort food before her.

"Here's the writ," Arreira announces, and a golden piece of paper appears with a *poof*.

It flies towards me, and I quickly read through all the extremely detailed "legalese." It's all written in silver, making it a bit annoying to try to read it when the lights reflect off the golden sheen, shining directly into my eyes.

I have to agree with the God of the Sun that the overuse of gold and silver by the nobility of the past is a bit too much.

I hardly understand what's written on the writ, blinding sheen or not, so I pass it to Yunia, who manages to get the gist of it. We're named his successors and inheritors while at the same time, he explicitly disowns the current royals, even going so far as to mention them by name.

Anything that belonged to Arreira, including Patrono, also mentioned by name, is now ours. Anything inherited by the royals is also ours, though we don't know if that part will actually hold if taken to the Tribunal.

There's not much to discuss, so I store the writ in my "Items," then we continue our feast.

Once we fatten up nicely, it's time to meet the Chimeras again as they've finished deciding who wants to come with us, and who'll fade away with Arreira.

When the Chimeras died, their attachment to the real world created an "anchor" that prevented their spirits from going to Paradise after their bodies rotted away. Now that there won't be a Whakamutu Mutu anymore, most of its denizens decided to end their journey here due to their attachment to the town.

Arreira had cast [Trap Soul] on the Chimeras and used dungeon orbs as vessels. This allowed him to create sub-processes that controlled the memory-wiping he employed. The Chimeras that have chosen to come with us will need their souls to be transferred to something else instead so that they don't fade away with the dungeon. Their new "vessel" could be anything, really, but gems are the best option since mana can be stored in them, and they can be enchanted with [Materialize] so that the spirits can use it whenever they need to.

Having spirits as citizens might cause an uproar, but there's only a handful of people who can stop us, namely the Emperor himself, the Elder Council, the Tribunal, or the temple. The Emperor has no reason to get involved in this, the Elder Council is very hands-off with most matters regarding the Lords, and the Tribunal is likely to consider spirits the same as commoners, leaving only the temple to potentially complain.

[Trap Soul] may be a controversial spell, but it's what prevents the Chimeras from slowly going insane, or fading into wisps, or merging with nature spirits, so the temple has no good reason to intervene. However, they might keep a close watch on us to make sure that we don't mistreat the spirits, which is perfectly fine for us due to our future plans regarding Heretic's Rest.

We enter an open grassland under a blue sky and breathe in the fresh air, then we observe the Chimeras as they finish saying their goodbyes.

Ririmu, the cute raccoon guide is coming with us, and he's saying goodbye to a surprisingly large number of women; Hukarere is speaking with two people that I don't recognize; Kaatohe giving a big hug to Wahinui, with both of the cat women crying silently; and Oritiki seems to have convinced her husbands to come with us, somehow.

Our ships are off to the side, all lined up beside each other, and even the Island Winch is there. I notice that the Carrier is filled to the brim with airplanes, and there's more than just Wasps there.

I feel a chill run through me as I think about how all this military hardware belongs to us, personally. It's a bit overwhelming to try to process this right now, so I return to the Chimeras.

Oritiki finishes hugging her husbands, then she looks around, and her eyes meet mine. She immediately organizes the Celestial Horns, and they march towards us.

The Chimeras notice that something's happening, and a crowd starts to form around us while leaving a path for the Horns.

"Ryders!" Oritiki shouts amicably, then her expression gradually hardens as she prepares herself for her speech.

Once again, we're forced to appear regal, and we start to feel a bit fatigued by it, especially Hana, Ciel, and I, who have little experience with being formal.

Oritiki stops a few meters away from us, the Horns right behind her, and we wait until the Chimeras stop their murmuring.

The closest to us sit down on the grass to allow the others behind them to see, and we're surrounded even in the sky as many winged Chimeras take flight, then the grassland finally becomes quiet.

"The Celestial Horns served only the Divines and none else, but now they are no more, leaving us without a ruler to follow…" Oritiki starts her speech with a measured and controlled tone. "Although we may have served the Divines, our purpose was clear: to preserve the Chimeric way of life."

She looks around at every Chimeric eye turned towards her, eager to witness the famous Honored One speak.

"We kept the peace, aided the weak, supported the poor, eliminated the corrupt, purged the threats, healed the wounded, and even fed the hungry. The Celestial Horns were the hands, claws, and weapons of the Divine, and we found no task beneath us."

The older Chimeras nod and smile along with her words.

"We never needed the Divines to give us commands, for they only gave us guidance, and now that our nation has been reduced to this," -She motions to the crowd and then the ships- "our purpose has never been more clear. No matter what we feel about our situation, we were given this power under an oath to serve our nation, and serve it we shall!"

She raises her fist into the air, and the Horns roar in unison.

"Be it one, a dozen, a hundred, or a thousand of Chimeras, living or not, ethereal or corporeal, we'll fight to protect you!"

The Horns roar again, and some of the younger Chimeras join in.

"And now that you're all being taken in under the wing of the soon-to-be Lord Ryder family…" Oritiki turns to face us, a subtle smile on her long, dark, furred face. "So will we! We'll continue to serve what remains of our nation, we'll continue to protect each and every one of you, but now, we also have someone to guide us!"

The Horns jump and fly upwards as their pure white wings grow larger, then their armor shines, but our eyes feel unaffected by it. They spread out over the sky and flex their wings wide open, then they clasp their hands and lower their heads like angels praying.

Their voices boom through the field as they swear in unison, "We pledge our horns and wings to the Ryder family, soon-to-be Crown Lords, inheritors of Arreira's royal legacy, and the new rulers of the citizens of Whakamutu Mutu. For as long as they protect the Chimera, we offer them our loyalty!"

They form up again, then gently lower themselves to the floor and kneel.

Once again…

I clear my throat and begin one last speech, "Spirit or not, you're all humanoids. You're all still alive, in a way, and you deserve to be treated properly." I pause briefly to gauge the reaction of the crowd, and they seem to emphatically agree. "We'll protect your right of existence, and give you the same rights as any commoner subject living under us. Due to your special circumstances, we'll have to work on and experiment with different policies to make your lives more comfortable. As the Celestial Horns have taken up the responsibility of protecting you, we'll be working closely with them and any other representative you select to negotiate with us."

I look towards Oritiki, and she rises, then I extend my hand and offer, "To a long-lasting alliance."

She comes forward and takes it, enveloping my draconic claws with her glowing gauntlets. "And a bright future together," she completes with a wide smile.

In the grassland, Arreira opens a huge [Eternal Gate] that leads out of the dungeon, and we get a glimpse of the real sky after Gods-know-how-long, but we aren't departing just yet.

We get a glimpse of a huge and long cloud covering the Gate for a few seconds, and a great deal of Chimeras tense up as they recognize Pua. Oritiki has a rather guilty look to her. The next time they meet, she might wish to apologize to it.

I put down a [Gate] "coordinate" and summon a Holly to keep watch, then we leave the Chimeras and cross through a different [Eternal Gate].

We again find ourselves in Arreira's "personal room" in the middle of the fake High Forest, but we don't even have the time to look around us before something seizes our attention and doesn't let go.

We see an unremarkable gray platform of smooth stone with a pure black orb floating above it. The orb has no reflection, as if the light is being drawn in like with a black hole.

After seeing Dark Voids firsthand, this orb would only elicit a mere curious glance from us, but it's the flavor of the trace amount of mana that's emanating from it that makes it difficult for us to look away.

Every particle has an entire storm inside it. First, we feel chaos and destruction, an uncontrollable maelstrom of… not things, but "concepts," something so abstract that it's hard to properly describe it. Then we see "walls" containing that with absolute authority, an unbreakable wall that not even chaos itself can pierce through. And finally, we see the "miracle" as all this raw… something is funneled away and morphed into… "everything"?

It's easy to guess about what all of this means, but to define the actual details of "what" and "how" is what's truly impossible for our limited, mortal brains.

I feel each and every particle as they hit my sensitive [Mana Body], causing an intense and rather uncomfortable tingling. By the time I finally notice it, I'm already almost grabbing the orb like a hungry orc does with a slab of meat.

I immediately step away and get Hana to shield me from the core. "Oof, that's too intense for me," I admit with a worried frown.

Arreira chuckles softly. "You behaved almost exactly like Shade did the first time you encountered the orb. So much so that I just had a… 'deejay vous,'" he delightedly butchers the word.

"Who's Shade?" Alissa asks, suspicious of him.

Arreira gives her an unusually soft and tired look as he answers, "The being that remained after I had wiped away his ego and his soul. It was also strongly attracted to this orb and tried to seize it before my 'Inverted Weeper' gave him his last trial."

"I guess that was the fantasy with Lily?" I ask, and he gives me a silent nod, then we all go silent.

The time has come, and we all hesitate to act or even speak.

We have to kill Arreira once and for all, but none of us actually want to see him fade away.

After a moment of silence, he sighs impatiently, then his crown of white antlers disappears in a puff of smoke. "I think you already have the real one…" He comments in a low tone and snorts to himself.

"It should be in our treasury," Yunia awkwardly comments, and he nods.

A few more seconds pass in silence, and we see his body gradually stop glowing. Even the silver and gold of his clothes and hair lose their luster.

Something's been gnawing at both my and Lina's heads for a while, so I decide to take the initiative and finally ask for both of our sakes, "Why did you do this? This dungeon, I mean. Why go through all this effort to choose someone to bestow your 'legacy' to instead of just giving it to your descendants?"

He snorts snobbishly and shakes his head, then he answers with his usual subtly smug tone, "The current state of the royals wasn't… unexpected. I wanted to find someone worthy of Patrono, someone I could trust to finish my dream, and I knew that there'd be someone out there that would be a much better choice than my own children."

His feet touch the floor, then the absolutely chiseled, annoying sexy, and utterly majestic man lets himself look… average, as he lets all of his divinity quickly melt away. Though he may call himself a God-Ruler, in the end, he's still a humanoid, a mortal, like us.

He smiles gently and continues, "It was… extremely tiring, but I believe that I've finally found the right person." Then his striking blue eyes stare into mine, and I dare to think that I can feel a paternal intent coming from his gaze. Perhaps he's feeling a small degree of pride for what we've accomplished here.

We had many failures along the way, but we still did it, we passed through all of his trials.

We remain silent for another moment.

Yunia works hard to keep her emotions bottled up so that she can say, "This isn't the end. I'm sure you'll leave a strong mark in the history of civilization, not just through us, but through the wonders you've accomplished here. All of your research on memories and the [Equipment System] magic school that you created will help civilization take a long step forward."

He smiles bitterly. "Perhaps, but even the Gods are waiting to see how many steps you will help us make."

"You can have faith in us! We won't disappoint, and we'll be ready for anything!" Roxanne shouts, forcing herself to be cheerful.

"Gih…!" Gify follows with the cheering, her chirp sounding strained.

"You pushed us towards greatness," Hana comments with an uncharacteristically sober tone.

Ciel sniffles and struggles to say, "You helped us to see further than before."

"Thank you…" Lina mutters, holding back her tears.

"You helped us a lot. We'll miss you," Aoi gloomily admits, both of our tails flopped onto the floor from grief.

"We're grateful for your guidance," the golems finish in unison.

"Wolf, do it," Arreira sternly orders.

I dry my eyes, then I summon Patrono and swing it, slicing the core cleanly in half.

"Finally…" He breathes as he closes his eyes, then a tsunami of Experience floods into our souls, making us orgasm repeatedly until we pass out.

"You are now level 57."

I gasp as I wake up and look around. The golems are holding us up with [Telekinesis] while Jarn is also using her arms; the girls are slowly stirring awake; the forest seems to have become darker than before, with sickly white blotches visibly spreading over every surface; and nothing remains where Arreira once stood.

We quickly regain control of our bodies, then we quietly assess the damage to our clothes.

We orgasmed so hard from the flood of pleasure that we passed out and thoroughly soiled our underwear. To Earthlings, having a boner right now would seem inappropriate, but Rupegians see it differently, and Arreira's last gift being a massive orgasm would seem rather poetic to them… to us, I'm a Rupegian, too, even if it wasn't since birth.

We change our clothes and look around wistfully as the beauty of this place gradually decays. All the art that Arreira himself painstakingly created is going to simply disappear into the void. Though he gave us most of the real art he made, most of it was composed of dungeon mana, so we only have a small portion of his works.

The dungeon itself will last for a few months, but no new monsters will spawn, the plants will all slowly die off, and most of the "special effects" have already stopped working.

The animals and bugs have been released into the forest, but most of them won't survive in the new environment and will die due to the predators quite soon. The portals will continue to work for a long time, so anyone who doesn't want to die in here will have plenty of time to leave.

The Chimeras that weren't transferred should've left for Paradise along with Arreira, unless they had some very deep regrets still binding them to this world.

Our new subjects are still solid, but Arreira's [Materialize] will eventually wear off. They have a handful of mages that could help with that, but it won't be as powerful and as detailed as Arreira's. We have his research notes, so we might eventually be able to reproduce it, even without a dungeon core to fuel the spell.

Right now, we need to secure our home so that the Chimeras can have a safe place to rest. The first step is to announce that we've all acquired the "True Noble" Title.

I open a [Gate] back to our mansion in Goloria, and we all eagerly cross through.

I immediately call for a servant, and the man who answers looks like he's seen a ghost. He's so pale, frightened, and even slightly confused that I just have to ask what's going on.

"Why are you so pale? What's wrong?" I kindly ask him, trying to hide my scary, scaly arms behind my back.

He immediately lowers his head in respect and frightfully answers, "F-forgive me for asking, but y-you're the imperial fellowship under our Lord's protection?"

I raise an eyebrow in confusion. "Yes… we're Helios."

He keeps his head low as he exclaims, "Ah…! 'Helios'! Apologies, Grand Sir, but it's been such a long time that we've forgotten your names."

Uh…

"What day is it? We've been inside a dungeon for a long, long time," I awkwardly ask with a silly smile.

The man gasps as he comes to understand the reason for our absence. "Ah! I-I see… Today is the third day of the month of prayer."

"Year 69,000?"

"Yes."

So we spent… over four months in those trials? Damn…

"Tell Confiel that Wolf Ryder is back along with his harem, and we request an urgent meeting with him."

The servant breathes in heavily and straightens his posture, his cheeks red from the embarrassment of forgetting our names.

We barely have any time to rest our backs since the same servant comes back after just two minutes, gasping for air and thoroughly flustered.

"Confiel will receive you in his office," is all he can get out before he bends over, trying to get his breath back under control.

I burst into his office with Alissa beside me, and my claws leave visible scratch marks on the wooden floor, almost making me wince.

I miss shoes… Wait, how did Aoi never leave scratches like I do?

"Wolf Ry-…!" Confiel aborts his cheerful greeting and freezes on the spot when he notices my new race. It's starting to get a bit annoying, having to explain this so many times.

Before he can even ask, I just take charge of the conversation, "A lot has happened, and I don't want to explain it all repeatedly, so find Klein and Osaria and bring them here as fast as you can. Also, you'd better start preparing an air dock or something like that."

His mouth moves soundlessly, his youthful face warped in shock. He sputters, then suddenly recovers and asks, "A-a-air dock…? We hardly have that many airships, so we never built one."

I grin like a devil. "You might want to, now that I've acquired a fleet."

A note from Manasong

Hall of Fame of Patrons

The patrons who support Rupegia shall have their names sung by the bards for they deserve the glory and honor. Their names are:

Prince PreownedFIN.

Lord Andrew Meyers.

Lord Samuel Lim.

Lord Bill.

Lord Novgarod.

Lord DJ.

Lord Ashadun.

Lord Michale Erwin.

Lord Bakerdea.

Lord Nathan Vanbrunt.

Lord Maurice.

Lord Empyrean.

Lord Mattirro Draca.

Lord Joshua Tal.

Lord Colorblind.

Lord RottenTangerine.

Lord Fullmoon.

Lord Joxsan Herrera.

Lord Sean Drake.

Lord EESDESESESRDT.

Lord Brody Haugan.

Lord GoodKat.

Lord FrostyCube.

Lord Freddie.

Lord Mike Bartter.

Lord Cardinal Steiner.

Lord DragonPiggy.

Lord Cidant.

Noble Salty Panda.

Noble Mild Fracas.

Noble Aclys.

Noble Shawn Plumley.

Noble CarlBaxter.

Noble WeirdWhirl.

Noble War God.

Noble Andreas Jörgensen.

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Chapter 88: Reunion - Part 4

I stand in front of the door to the Eternal Gate Network, my head resting against my personal red-headed breast pillow.

This situation reminds me of waiting for the plane to land when Lily was coming back from visiting her parents. At least when it was an airplane, there was a predicted arrival time, so I knew how long I had to wait, and I also had a phone to entertain me in the meanwhile.

I suddenly feel the need for a brain massage, so I pull out a sofa and get Hana to sit down, and I lay my head on her lap.

Lina studies how to enchant our special [Materialization] into a gem for the Chimeras while I cast it repeatedly on a small tentacle for her. With the burst of levels we just received, she now has enough points to increase her [General Enchanting] to ridiculous levels.

Ciel cuddles with my little dwarf, watching her intently with pride and warmth. We both agree that Lina looks adorable when she's concentrating so heavily on her work.

Yunia quietly talks with her brothers, both of them very surprised about how I nonchalantly pulled out multiple sofas for everyone to sit on and a bit scared about my tentacle. They don't know that we can all hear them through Yunia, so it's amusing just listening to them talking about us.

Confiel, Luz, the gold-elf, and Lua, her silver-elf sister, sit on their own comfortable chairs with a subtle wry smile on their faces. I really don't give a fuck about looking proper right now. This is still my first day out of that hell hole of a maze, and I've played the proper noble more than enough to last me for quite a while.

I gaze into the [Eternal Gate] leading towards a beach house, and the happy memories of Goldport flood into my mind. Things haven't become bad after the [Meteor], they just became… different. I guess we were too carefree before… no, we were more carefree, we still are. For as much as we mention my "destiny," we still aren't that worried about the future. Not that we aren't preparing, just that we aren't stressing over it.

Technically, Ciel and I already died, and now I feel an odd sort of "peace" whenever I think of the possibility of truly dying instead of an unsettling dread. Maybe this is why Arreira had us both "die," and if it wasn't the main reason, then at least it was a convenient side-benefit.

The sun over the beach starts to turn orange, and I notice how the sunset over here lags behind it by a bit. Through some of the other [Eternal Gate]s, the sun lags even more.

Fascinating…

My mind wanders, and I start to feel drowsy as Hana's strong hands press all the right spots to shut off my mind.

The door suddenly opens, and I bolt up with a jump aided by my thick, scaly tail.

One of Confiel's knights comes through the door to the Network, and he's followed by Klein and Osaria.

My cute, brown monkey girl. Her adorable, round monkey ears flick when she sees us; her cropped shirt presses in around her little cushions and exposes her toned midriff; her long, furry tail trails behind her as she runs forward; her short brown hair bobs with every step; then her athletic arms wrap around me and squeeze, supported by her strong back muscles from being an archer.

"WOLFY!" She shouts, then Hana squeezes us both. "Ow! Ow-…" Klein gets prickled by my scales, but I cover all of the sharp edges with a soft cushion, then we both start to suffocate from Hana's draconic hug.

The hug only lasts for a short while, though, because Klein gets mesmerized by my horns, and there's still Osaria waiting for her turn.

My dark elven milf has a genuinely happy smile stamped on her face. My letter may have kept them from assuming the worst, but it was still months without contact. After confirming her as my concubine and hearing of her fears, disappearing inside a dungeon immediately after was rather cruel of me.

She anxiously holds her silver hair in front of her, partially covering her extra large chest. Her droopy red eyes look at me with pain in her gaze, but her juicy lips radiate absolute happiness. As usual, she's wearing her not-bikini and proudly displaying her luscious body, even daring to only cover a small part of it with a few sheets of transparent cloth.

I give Klein a loving kiss, making sure to greet her tongue with mine, then Hana demands her turn, and I release Klein to greet my Osaria.

I make sure that all my pointy bits are safely padded, then I pull her in for a hug. My claws sink into her juicy ass, and my tail wraps around her waist, nestling itself between her cheeks, then I feel her legs faintly quiver from my gaze.

Her hand touches one of my horns, gently inspecting its rough texture. She seems awed and a bit frightened. I was already a bit "rough" and aggressive before, so now that I actually have some sort of dragon inside me, she might be imagining how hard I'll have her bend over for me.

While I do have draconic fuel in me now, I feel like my two sides are fairly "separate." Though I do have a desire to regularly unleash it, I don't think I've changed that much.

While one of my hands cups a feel, I use the other to caress her cheeks, then I pull her towards me and steal a taste of her.

The sexual predator inside of her wakes up, and her tongue quickly takes control, playing with mine as if she were playing with the head of my cock. I feel Hana kiss Klein through [Bind], and the double delight sets my mind at ease.

While I'd have no problems fucking Osaria right here, right now, there's something we need to discuss, so I reign the dragon in by myself with a surprising degree of ease. It seems that I'm learning how to control myself.

I end our desperate kiss, and a bridge of saliva connects us for a second before it breaks.

I look around and finally agree to move on to the discussion, "Alright, let's talk."

Confiel takes us to their meeting room, and I immediately answer the big question that everyone's just dying to ask.

I pull out our own Inspection Crystal, courtesy of Arreira, and make sure that only what I want to show them appears on the tablet, then I pass it around.

"So you've really conquered the dungeon… and changed into a new race?" Confiel asks, disbelieving his own eyes, then he passes the tablet on.

I just smile and sit down. "We'll get to it, eventually," I casually answer, then I let Alissa and Yunia explain what happened.

We start from the door riddle since Confiel and his wives didn't hear about that. We're fairly light on the details since they're not that relevant now, and they listen in silence, though they seem a bit disappointed about how the riddle was solved.

When we get to the Chimeras, Lua lights up and interrupts, "Oh, yes, I've heard of that town. It was said that Arreira's expedition reached Whakamutu and then turned around to head home, but nobody ever mentioned anything about Chimeric spirits being brought back."

Confiel nods seriously and contributes, "That's for a good reason. The Chimeric Sky Lands would've certainly taken offense to have one of their towns looted of so many powerful weapons and even airships."

I present a counterpoint, "These Chimeras hardly consider themselves part of the Sky Lands. Their aristocracy is more likely to demand subservience from the Sky Lands than to accept being 'returned' to them."

"Well…" Confiel starts then hesitates as he tries to make sense of things. "Now these land-bound spirits have… become your subjects?" He tentatively asks.

I simply nod and smile. "We'll get to that."

We get to Hihiriwa's betrayal, then we start talking about the red sands and glowing, fake elves. Now that I think about it, they might've been Arreira's experiment with [Golemancy].

Yunia describes our battle with the Orc Lord, and Confiel raises an eyebrow in amusement when he hears our strategy. "I didn't know you were such an accomplished strategist," he amusedly compliments Yunia.

"I'm not," she answers with a subtly smug tone, and I just smile when he turns to me, but I stay quiet.

After that comes the trials, and Osaria hums in understanding as we reach the part where I dispel the summons.

They touch briefly on the trials, but nobody besides Aoi seems too eager to talk about it, so we soon reach the part where I "die."

I'm the only one who can really talk about it, so I start to describe what happened, "As is obvious to all of us, I have a Gift, and Arreira conducted an experiment on me to determine if I truly had some sort of 'divine force,' or whatever he called it, guiding me forward. To test that, he disconnected my soul from my body and 'wiped my ego away,' or something."

Luz's eyes sharpen, and she leans forward. I think she has some sort of knowledge about spirits or Threads of Fate since everyone else just zones out a bit instead without much of a clue about what this all means.

I show my large, ultra-sharp claws and wave my scales. "Right as I 'died,' I tried to transform into a dragon as a final, desperate move. I had a good idea of how to do it, but I'd never actually tried it, so I only half-succeeded, I believe. Then, when Arreira put me back into my body, it seems that the Gods made the half-transformation permanent and gave me a new race…"

Confiel clasps his hands and touches his lips with his index fingers, his expression completely serious. I notice that the feeling of "danger" that I usually had when I was near him in the past is entirely gone, and the same goes for his wives. None of the girls can feel it anymore, either.

The two elven sisters also become serious, Klein and the twins blink blankly in confusion, and Osaria seems to be pleasantly surprised.

"So… you can change into a dragon?" My elven milf eagerly asks.

"Yes, a very cute one," Alissa answers before I can even open my mouth, then they both smirk mischievously.

"My [Dragon Transformation] is at level one, so I can only shift into a hatchling," I annoyedly answer and smile wryly.

"Now that we're talking about it, we should also announce that Aoi has acquired a system and levels, and that she can transform into a human, now," Roxanne casually adds and grins internally when she sees the Rincipios visibly tense up. Confiel coughs as he chokes on his spit.

Yunia smiles evilly and joins in, "Arreira has made us his successors and inheritors while also disowning any living royal by name. We're the new royals of the High Forest. Long live the Ryder dynasty!" She lifts her cup of alcohol in cheer then gulps it down.

Luz immediately copies her, and Lua gets up and walks out of the room. Confiel fails his "Willpower" Saving Throw, joining Klein and the twins as their daze gets upgraded into a stun, and their jaws drop.

"So, the Chimeras are the first subjects of your new kingdom?" Luz confusedly asks, not fully believing her own words.

"We haven't been 'crowned,' and the Chimeras are just like any commoner under a Lord. We haven't made them swear to serve us or anything," Yunia assuredly explains, feeling a bit guilty about trying to brag.

"Oritiki pledged her loyalty to us, but only as long as we protect the Chimera spirits," Ciel adds to help appease Luz.

I join Roxanne and [Equip] Patrono, then I feed it some mana, and it glows with a pure, almost divine light. It fills us with hope, energizes our bodies, clears our minds of evil thoughts (but it doesn't even touch my sadistic tendencies), and humbles us all at the same time.

"This is a Heavenly Weapon," I announce with a proud smile, and Luz gasps in awe, then I pull out the writ with a *poof*. "And this is Arreira's writ about us, for which I'm ready to pass through a Seeker of Truth to prove its authenticity!"

An [Eternal Gate] suddenly opens, and a tall, dark-skinned woman in a fiery dress immediately comes rushing out of it, followed by Lua smugly strutting back into the room.

"HANA!" The unknown woman yells with a crying face.

"MIMI!" Hana answers, then literally leaps out of her seat and summons her wings so that she can sweep her sister off her feet into a hug.

"Holy shit…" I mutter.

The two of them tightly hug each other, but Mimi's slightly muscular body almost matches Hana's, meaning that she survives the draconic hug with ease.

Lua stops in place as she notices Patrono, and her jaw drops along with the others. "Holy shit…" She mutters, her eyes entranced by its holy shine.

Mimi pushes Hana away so that they can look each other in the eye as Hana slowly lowers them both back down. I extinguish Patrono's shine, and Lua snaps out of her trance, then she silently returns to her seat, a bit embarrassed about her behavior.

Mimi grabs Hana's face and exclaims, her voice a mix of both happiness and concern, "We found Hermann, too! But he's become a knight, so we couldn't find something worth enough to trade for him, but the noble that has him asked for a suspiciously high price!"

They touch down on the table, and Mimi looks around. She's a beautiful woman with a strong jaw and a fearsome gaze that mirrors Hana's almost perfectly. I haven't seen her grin yet, but I barely need to even imagine it to see the similarities between their expressions. Her hair is long and dark, its shape undulating wildly and almost making it into a mane like Hana's. Her thin dress hugs her (a bit disappointing) modest chest, but her long, strong legs that peek out from behind the slits of her skirt are as delicious as Hana's.

Wild fantasies run through my mind, but when her eyes meet mine, I feel the sharp intelligence and cold determination behind them. While Hana's are wild, hers are cold, and they remind me of Yunia's a lot.

Mimi, or Mizushina, which is her real name, feels a bit awkward with all the eyes on her and decides to get down from the table, dragging Hana with her.

She gingerly jumps down, her very high red heels clacking loudly with every step, then her eyes lock with mine again.

Soul Info

Name:Mizushina TranfkoeverLevel:19Race:HumanHP100MP120Magic Power50

Strength17Endurance15

"Wolf Ryder, I presume?" She coolly asks, her husky voice sounding pleasant to my ears.

"Precisely," I collectedly answer with a gentle nod.

She lowers her head respectfully for a moment. "Thank you for taking care of my sister."

I smile and send a loving glance towards Hana. "You're welcome, but I can definitely say that she also took great care of me. We certainly wouldn't be here without her."

Hana's massive chest increases in size a bit more as she puffs it full of pride, then Mimi pulls her hand down and both of them take their seats at the table.

"How have you been…?" Mimi asks in a low voice, and the two sisters start talking in hushed whispers.

Confiel silently serves his wives and himself plenty of alcohol, and they all immediately take a big gulp.

Outwardly, Yunia seems very pleased with herself, but inwardly, she does feel a bit bad about dumping all of these things on their heads at once.

I un[Equip] Patrono, impressing Lua, who seems to be very curious about this spell. It's actually pretty rude of me to suddenly cast an unknown spell in front of nobility, but it seems like they don't mind.

Things go awkwardly quiet as nobody seems to know where to resume the conversation from. Technically, we already shared all the news we intended to, so I guess we have to discuss how we'll proceed with assuming our positions as Crown Lords.

"Many eyes will turn to the High Forest in the coming days…" Confiel soberly comments.

"Filled with a lot of surprise and curiosity, I hope," I add and smile cheekily.

Confiel chuckles faintly, and his long elven ears twitch. He truly seems concerned.

"Let's start at the beginning. We want to take over our positions as Lords," I pull the conversation back on track.

He nods in agreement. "Do you want to do it immediately?"

"Is there a reason not to?"

Lua smiles bitterly and admits, "We'd all expected that it'd take a lot longer for you to complete the dungeon. As a consequence, you'd build fame among the adventurers and perhaps even the populace along the way."

Yunia's sharp gaze returns as she says, "I understand the benefits of what you're saying… but the Chimeras can't wait."

Luz nods and agrees, "Yes. We'll support you in your ascension, but you should expect some unrest." Then she turns to me and gives me a gentle gaze as she asks, "From what I've understood, you aren't married yet, only engaged?"

"Correct," I confirm with a nod.

"Then we suggest that you perform the Lordship ceremony before your marriage. We're almost certain that the more unruly Lords will try to challenge and undermine your rule before you can get your base stabilized."

I hum in understanding and nod. "I'm going to marry Aoi, so I guess we don't really need more uncertainty ruining such a precious moment for all of us."

Confiel silently pours more alcohol.

"The Lordship ceremony is ours to control, so we can make whatever plans we want," Yunia states with a tone dripping in delight, and an eager look graces her striking, blue eyes, then they turn sharp, and she glares at Confiel. "But first, I want Escanso back, immediately."

The twins suddenly come back to life now that their home has been mentioned, and they both smile so brightly that Yunia's stern face slightly softens.

Confiel stands and adjusts his tight, thin shirt. "I thought you'd demand that, so I had them begin the preparations for that," he smugly states.

We leave the meeting room and meet Bastico on the way. He's fully armored in an ornate, shining, and pure white set of wooden plate armor since he just came back from a dungeon. Side-by-side, father and son look remarkably similar, though Bastico seems a lot snobbier than Confiel with his softer features that give him an androgynous look.

Yunia and Luz get him up to speed, and he soon loses his natural elven smugness, which is replaced with shock.

He suddenly turns towards Alissa, his face becomes deadly serious as he asks, "Miss Alissa, have you been writing in your diary like we discussed?"

Alissa nods, and her fluffy tail wags as she responds amusedly, "Yes, I have, though I haven't written about our trials yet since there hasn't been any time to spare."

He takes a step closer to her, his eyes intense and anxious. "You must write these events down. If you forget even a single detail, the whole realm will lose out on the epic story of your lives."

"Bastico…" Luz censures him sternly.

He turns to her and faces her with bravery. "Mother, it's true. If we publish their lives as a book, I'm sure we'll all make a fortune."

Luz turns to glare at Confiel, asking him for help, but he just pretends that he isn't hearing any of this.

"I believe your son is right, Luz. King Ryder's life story is sure to become a masterpiece of literature," Osaria comments and smirks at me teasingly.

I just smile back at her as I plan my revenge, which will definitely involve a very thick tail and a very tight entrance.

"I never took you for a writer, son, but I must say that you'll be a good merchant," Lua comments, trying to hold back her grin, then she ignores Luz's glare just like Confiel is.

We cross through the [Eternal Gate] Network and exit into Escanso's castle.

Men are hastily running about from the castle towards the entrance. A few of them are yelling out orders for the men to gather because a proclamation will be given soon. They all stiffen as they recognize Confiel and slow down, then they quickly bow to him and march away as fast as they can without actually running.

This is it, we're about to be announced as Lords. Though it won't be "official" until the Lordship ceremony, this is effectively the beginning of our rule.

These men and women are still Confiel's Lordsguard that have been lent to us to keep the castle safe, but Yunia's heart is burning with determination. We'll quickly recruit our own Lordsguard and achieve our independence as soon as possible.

A note from Manasong

Hall of Fame of Patrons

The patrons who support Rupegia shall have their names sung by the bards for they deserve the glory and honor. Their names are:

Prince PreownedFIN.

Prince Creamy Spinach.

Lord Andrew Meyers.

Lord Samuel Lim.

Lord Bill.

Lord Novgarod.

Lord DJ.

Lord Ashadun.

Lord Michale Erwin.

Lord Bakerdea.

Lord Nathan Vanbrunt.

Lord Maurice.

Lord Empyrean.

Lord Mattirro Draca.

Lord Joshua Tal.

Lord Colorblind.

Lord RottenTangerine.

Lord Fullmoon.

Lord Joxsan Herrera.

Lord Sean Drake.

Lord EESDESESESRDT.

Lord Brody Haugan.

Lord GoodKat.

Lord FrostyCube.

Lord Freddie.

Lord Mike Bartter.

Lord Cardinal Steiner.

Lord DragonPiggy.

Lord Cidant.

Noble Salty Panda.

Noble Mild Fracas.

Noble Aclys.

Noble Shawn Plumley.

Noble CarlBaxter.

Noble WeirdWhirl.

Noble War God.

Noble Andreas Jörgensen.

Noble Yeuromain.

Leave a rating or a review to help me rise to the top or fix my shameful understanding of prose.

Take a look over my blog where all information of the world of Rupegia will be posted.

Join the Discord and discuss, or rant, or meme, or try and fight me so your waifu gets more screentime.

Become a Patron and read chapters in advance, or read the side-stories, or leave your mark on the story, or help choose the next artwork or the next side-story.

Chapter 88: Reunion - Part 5

A note from Manasong

I don't remember taking a proper break in a while and I'm feeling a bit burned out lately, so I need some time to recharge. I'll stop writing for two weeks.

In the first week will be mostly resting, but I'll still try to write the first Interlude then.

In the second week, I'll be continuing the review of the earlier chapters that I'd stopped some time ago. I really need to fix them because they're really bad in comparison to how I'm writing now.

We pass through the Lord's [Eternal Gate] hub, with Yunia sending a wistful look towards some of the portals. They'll all be ours to explore soon enough.

We exit into the main hall of the castle: a huge room covered in white velvet. Painted statues of all of the previous Lords of this castle populate the walls of the hall, with stairs to its "branches" positioned between each set of statues while the ceiling is decorated with a painting of the usual elven-like patterns.

The portrait of the Este family that was above the doorway is now gone, stored away along with the portraits of all the previous Lords. His painted statue and that of his wives have been added to the hall, though, and we stop briefly so that Yunia and twins can approach them.

I look around and notice that all of the statues have completely white eyes.

Yunia's gentle voice whispers into our minds, "It's so that they can't judge us with their gaze. Their presence is to remind us of their existence, but each Lord is only responsible for his own rule."

She stops before Mavel's statue and lays her hands on the twins' shoulders.

Mavel Este appears kind and calm with a faraway look, but his puffed out chest and his hands behind his back exude confidence.

Two similar-looking women with sharp features and square jaws flank Mavel, his wives. The younger one has a hand on his shoulder and her head turned towards Mavel; that's Amarils. The older one holds a staff and has a stern expression with her head turned exactly towards where Yunia stands, that's Zaleia.

The trio stares at their parents in melancholy, but that slowly shifts into determination.

Yunia actually did it, she has acquired the "True Noble" title, and now, together, we'll begin our conquest of the hearts of every humanoid. Our names will be sung throughout the ages and immortalized through epic tales. We'll slowly wipe away the shame of her parents' deaths by replacing it with the glory we'll earn.

Yunia squeezes the shoulders of the twins, then she turns around and leaves. Her heart hurts from the wounds of loss, but the healing has already begun and is progressing smoothly.

The twins follow her a moment later, and we leave the castle.

We walk along a short and fluffy grass lawn that feels like pillows under our feet, and it's even better this time, with us wearing delicate elven shoes, than it did back when we were wearing our shabby boots.

Beautiful hedge sculptures of small monsters and animals flank the comfy path, but most of them are more cute than beautiful.

We reach the dark bark wall separating the private gardens from the inner circle of mansions, then we enter the gatehouse and climb up a set of stairs towards the top.

We exit onto a wide and lavishly decorated balcony that was specifically made for announcements.

Servants prepare chairs for all of us, and we take our seats. We watch as the plaza fills with guards and servants, all neatly organized in rows upon rows. There must be at least a few hundred people here, but I don't know how to accurately count crowds.

We wait for a short while, discussing with Confiel about what he intends to announce. Then they finish assembling, and the battlements before us lower, revealing us all to the crowd.

Murmuring immediately breaks out, and the gaze of every single elf falling on us makes some of the girls nervous. I don't really feel it that much, but Lina definitely just wants to disappear, so we give her a reassuring pat through [Bind] to calm her down.

Confiel stands up, and everyone immediately goes silent. A servant hands him a magic tool that he presses against his throat, and his voice projects far and wide as he announces, "Sirs and Dames, servants and guards, protectors of the Lordship. The awaited time has come, the new Crown Lords of the Western High Forest have finally arrived." He turns around and motions to us. "Please rise so that your subjects may see your faces."

Oh, great. I have to act pompously again.

I give him my best smile, then we stand up and walk towards the edge of the balcony.

I stop beside Confiel and see the elves squinting, clearly trying to get a better look at me, specifically. Only the ones in the front rows have a good view of us, but everyone will get a proper look soon enough.

Confiel faces the crowd again and continues, "This man and these women" -I really like how he didn't single out Aoi as a monster, though I know the crowd doesn't understand this nuance- "have conquered the dungeon Legado, the tomb of the God-Ruler Arreira, and they came back with more than just the title of 'True Noble.' They've acquired subjects, land-bound Chimeric spirits that haunt airships, and they'll be coming here soon to serve the new Lord."

The crowd immediately erupts into murmurs, so he pauses to let them process the news and get their emotions back under control again.

After a short while, he lifts his hand, silencing the crowd almost instantly, and continues, "You may be oath-bound to me, but I order you to serve Escanso's new Lords until they can acquire their own servants. Now, meet your temporary masters."

He motions to me, and I press the small gem against my throat, then I introduce myself, "I'm Wolf Ryder, a commoner blessed by the Goddess of Knowledge, and a Scholar of Rabanara. May we keep the peace in these turbulent times." I nod respectfully, then I lift my draconic hand, allowing all to see its shiny, mirror-like scales. "As you can see, something happened to me inside the dungeon, and I ask that you be understanding of my condition. Everything will be explained in due time, but for now, meet my harem."

We wait for the murmurs to die down again, and Alissa rises next. "I'm Alissa of the Blinding Arrows and also blessed by the Goddess of Love. May we protect each others' safety."

Then Hana introduces herself, deliberately making her voice boom so loudly across the plaza that I think even the men on the wall can hear her. "I'm Hanafuria of the One Thousand Strikes and Wolf's protector. Let our time together be great!"

Roxanne uses a sultry and mischievous tone to say, "I'm Roxanne, his precious lover and most reliable mage. Let our time be lively and pleasant."

We tried to convince her to say something other than "precious lover," but she was surprisingly stubborn about it. At least she didn't say "wife" or "fiancée" because we don't want to announce that just yet… I still need to ask for Yunia's hand in marriage.

Ciel's smile is genuine and bright, and her "Charisma" seems to be having a subtle effect on the elves. "I'm Ciel, a healer and priestess. I pray that our future is bright and peaceful."

Lina nearly freezes on the spot, but her brain enters auto-pilot, and she parrots out her rehearsed lines, "I'm Lina, enchanter and defender. Let us learn from each other."

Yunia grabs the attention of the crowd as much as I did, and some of the elves even recognize her. Her voice is calm and crystal clear since she's very used to situations like this, "I'm Yulania, former Chosen Descendant of Mavel Este, and I've returned to my home." -The murmuring explodes as the elves seem to be shocked about her return- "Help me bring stability back to the High Forest."

The murmuring returns as they think that the introductions are all over, but then Aoi spreads her wings for a moment to call their attention to her and loudly starts her introduction even though they haven't given her the proper silence yet, "I'm called Aoi, and I'm an Azurite dragon. Don't treat me as a pet as I'm smarter than most of you."

The crowd is stunned into silence, and I smile inwardly. It might actually be fun to announce my new race and Aoi's conversion to other people.

The murmuring returns with vengeance, and Confiel and Luz seem quite amused by the situation, but Confiel doesn't give them much time to talk and orders, "It's time to return the proper respects!"

The crowd approaches the balcony and stops for a few moments to get a better look at our faces, then the first row bows and orderly disperses, allowing the next row to come closer for their turn. Considering that the crowd has dozens of rows, this will take a few minutes.

The twins rejoin Yunia, and Mimi rejoins Hana. Bastico gets up and approaches us, then he hesitantly asks, "So… why do you have a Living Armor that looks like Yunia following you…? And also two floating dolls…?" He glances at Jarn and the doll golems confusedly.

"They're golems. Think of them as permanent summons," I tersely explain.

Bastico spares Jarn another glance, Yunia's sharp and stunningly beautiful face seems like a perfect fit for the silent and serious guardian. "And why does she look exactly like Yu?"

"Because she's beautiful," I state matter-of-factly, and Yunia tries to suppress her smugness from leaking through [Bind].

"Well… I can't argue with that…" Bastico admits and shrugs as he smiles wryly, then he looks at Jarn's chest and frowns. He turns around and stares at Ciel's chest for a brief moment, then he winces back when my big, scary, and shiny dragon hand falls on his shoulder.

"What are you staring at?" I ask him flatly.

"I've just noticed something interesting, but I'll keep it to myself," he nervously answers then forces a smile.

It's a good thing that Jarn has taken very well to wearing clothes. I know that she's perfectly copied Ciel's chest, but I still haven't checked if that extends to her pussy, though I know she wanted to copy Hana's muscles and abs.

Does Jarn count as a robot girl? I'll probably be the first man to ever fuck a robot in Rupegia, though I'm almost certain that someone else already did that on Earth.

I focus on Mimi's conversation with Hana while we smile and wave as our temporary Lordsguard gives us their respects.

When Hana's family was split apart, Mimi was made into a criminal slave and given work as an accountant under the empire until she could buy back her freedom. The price was merely symbolic, and it served as a sort of "bail," where the amount varies depending on how much of a danger the given person is to society.

Since her crime was smuggling dangerous and forbidden goods, her price was fairly low, and Confiel immediately bought her freedom once he found out where she was.

"And what was that about Hermann becoming a knight?" Hana asks worriedly.

Klein's shyness suddenly goes away, and she takes a step forward to join the conversation.

"Well…" Mimi awkwardly starts and looks away for a moment. "It seems that Hermann is really good at fighting, and he ended up swearing allegiance to the noble that fostered him."

Luz joins in with a very serious tone, "He demanded such a high price for him that it was insulting to us. He's either a fool, thinks we are fools, or there's a reason that he doesn't want to part with Hermann. We demanded a meeting, and we'll get our answer soon."

Hana frowns in worry and confusion, and we can't even console her properly because we're all just as confused as she is. "And how's Hermann? Is he fine over there?" She asks a bit meekly.

Luz reassures her, "The imperial officers assured us that he's being treated as the law requires for a knight."

I stop my waving to demand, "We'll participate in the meeting when it happens, no matter what."

Luz nods in acceptance, and we return to our waving.

Klein feels like she wants to say something about this, but she just stays quiet, so Mimi moves the conversation on to talking to Hana about our… relationship.

Klein and Mimi have had a chance to catch up, but she still wanted to talk about everyone's sudden shift towards gayness.

"I still like dick a lot more than pussy," Hana proudly states with a smirk.

Klein embarrassedly admits, "I… just really like Hana…" -Osaria gently lays her hand on Klein's shoulder- "and Osaria." She starts to blush heavily.

Mimi raises an eyebrow and questions, "And what about Hermann?"

"I still like him," she shyly admits and sends me a glance.

"I'd never imagined such a thing would happen," Mimi comments, her sharp eyes softened with surprise.

Hana snorts and retorts, "Oh, come on. Klein was obviously horny for me ever since we were small."

Klein finds difficulty arguing against it, and Hana's memories flood through her mind with some very gay moments, even when you consider that they're both women.

They're childhood friends, so Hana's extreme thirst may have had an effect on the development of Klein's sexuality. These kinds of things aren't completely defined from birth, but they aren't necessarily malleable either.

"You were never interested in that sort of thing," Klein comments, trying to shift the focus away from her.

"I guess that's why she never saw the signs," Hana adds with a shrug.

Mimi smiles wryly, and her face softens significantly now that she's realized how her family is slowly coming back together.

Osaria hugs me from behind, and I flaunt a bit by nestling my head against her breasts. She's wearing high-heels that raise her tits to the perfect height for being my pillow.

After a few minutes of smiling and waving, the crowd thins out until only a few rows are left, then a heavily armored elf man comes out through the door to our balcony.

He's wearing a pure, shining white armor that's very similar to Bastico's, though it's clearly less ornate. His golden hair is graying, and his face is full of wrinkles, but he walks with such a poise that I don't need to use [Sense Soul] to know that he has high "Strength" and "Endurance."

Confiel turns around and smiles as he acknowledges him, "Ah, Salbotica. You're just in time."

"Greetings, my Lord," Salbotica hails with a rather croaky voice, then he stops and immediately falls to his knee. "I'm Salbotica, one of Crown Lord Confiel's knights and the one currently responsible for the castle's security. I'm at your disposal, my Lords," he introduces himself while keeping his head down.

"Greetings, Sir Salbotica. I'm Wolf Ryder," I hail back, and since he doesn't move, I quickly add, "please rise."

He obeys and stands up, his posture resolutely straight and stiff. "I was consulting with our mages about the Chimeric spirits that have become your… subjects. I apologize for not being here for your arrival and announcement."

I nod, pleased with his proactive drive, and gently reply, "It's fine, we'll talk about the Chimeras in a short while, so it was good that you got yourself up to speed… uh, I mean, informed yourself about them."

He nods sternly and goes silent until the last of the servants pay their respects. I feel rather happy that he isn't even reacting to Aoi, the golems, me, or any of the many other oddities surrounding our group.

"This is it, Ryders. I'll leave you to your business now. Good luck," Confiel announces, then we share respectful nods, and they leave.

"We'll properly thank you for your kindness to us one day, but I fear that we'll be busy for quite a while," Ciel amusedly muses.

"We'll definitely take you up on your offer, and I'd like to have our duel one day; I'm curious to discover how Wolf has grown," Bastico immediately responds with a shit-eating grin, earning himself a subtle glare from Luz.

Confiel completely ignores him and diplomatically responds, "Take your time. You'll eventually have all the time for celebration that you could ever want."

We chuckle softly, and they say their goodbyes. They also say that they'll send Mimi's belongings through the Gate Network, then they leave.

After they're gone, I call the knight's attention, "Sir Salbotica."

"Yes, my Lord?" He immediately responds.

"Would you like to meet the Chimeras and discuss their accommodations with them? I have a way of getting in contact with them."

He blinks blankly for a few seconds as he processes my query, then he nods energetically, "Yes, that'd be very convenient."

"Come with me, then," I gently order, and we leave the balcony.

We walk towards the castle, and a group of four maids approaches us on the way. Their uniforms seem to be the usual not-bikinis in somewhat more dull colors, occasional simple square cloth aprons when required, and transparent shawls wrapped around their hair.

"Shala!" Yunia happily exclaims and pulls the oldest one into a hug. The woman has a kind and slightly chubby face, and her age seems to barely qualify her as grandma.

"My dame-… I mean, my Lord! Arturus! Antares!" Shala returns the hug with intensity. Even at her age, she has a good amount of "Strength."

The twins happily grin and wave to her.

Yunia extends her arms and the other maids kiss her hands in respectful greetings, then she grabs Shala's shoulders and asks, "Where's Alvira?"

Shala frowns sadly and looks down. "She left. Along with most of the servants. We didn't know that you'd come back," she ashamedly admits.

Yunia smiles bitterly then steps to the side and motions to me. "I've become a Blood Slave. The true Lord is Wolf Ryder, my master."

Shala looks between Yunia and me confusedly, then the maids pale, thinking that they might have just offended us, and bow completely at a right angle.

"It's not necessary to bow," I immediately state, fearing for Shala's back.

"Thank you, my Lord. Apologies, my Lord," Shala meekly complies, and the maids straighten back up. She starts fidgeting, seemingly wanting to come closer, but I don't understand why.

"She wants to greet you, the elven way," Yunia answers my unspoken question through [Bind].

I extend my hand, and Shala immediately comes forward, then grabs it with both hands and bends to give it a very soft kiss, then the girls extend their hands, and the maids start paying their respects, again.

Aoi extends her claws, and Shala hesitates for a split second, then kisses it the same way. She very clearly heard what Aoi had said, and the last person you'd ever want to offend is the big, scary dragon.

They greet the twins, Osaria, and even Klein, who feels very awkward at all the respect she's being given.

Once Shala's finished, Ciel grabs her hand and [Heal]s her. "How's your back?" My angel gently asks.

The old maid becomes flustered but manages to show her gratitude, "T-thank you, m-my-my Lord. I-it's better now."

Ciel smiles and lets her hand go, then graces our ears with an angelic giggle. Yunia and the twins' faces soften as they see the lovable and caring old woman looking so embarrassed.

Yunia approaches her again, and she asks, "Shala, I assume you're leading the maids, then?"

She nods repeatedly as she answers, "Not just the maids, but all of the domestic tasks. While I'm not that experienced at it, there haven't been any guests, so we've only had to attend to the basic maintenance of the castle."

"I see… we'll have to rehire a lot of people, now…" Yunia bitterly mutters.

Salbotica interjects, his serious tone seeming to be his usual way of speaking, "There's a list of candidates with many good choices. As you've requested, they all accept being made into Blood Slaves."

"Oh, that… Alvira didn't accept that condition…" Shala murmurs.

Yunia nods and orders, "I require them all to be called for immediately. Tomorrow, we'll start the recruitment for the Lordsguard, so the day after that will be for interviewing the candidates for higher positions."

Both Shala and Salbotica discreetly look over at me, but I say absolutely nothing as a clear sign that she doesn't need my permission to give orders.

"Understood, my Lord," Salbotica stoically replies and nods respectfully. Shala becomes flustered again and mirrors him, although a lot more awkwardly.

"Shala, could you prepare a bath for us? I'd like to relax," Alissa calmly asks.

Shala quickly recovers and keeps her head low as she responds, "Yes, my Lord. It shall be done. Do you desire anything else?"

"No, thank you." Alissa shakes her head and turns to Mimi, then she looks her straight in the eye. "Would you like to join us for our bath?"

"I'm sorry, but I must refuse. Thank you for the offer," Mimi politely responds with composure. It seems that she has a pretty good idea of what Alissa wanted of her.

"Alright, your loss," Hana adds with a smirk.

Mimi smiles subtly. "I'll just stay in the guests' area."

"Let's explore the castle!" Roxanne excitedly suggests and grabs Lina's hand.

"Can we see the treasury?" Aoi innocently asks. She's been itching to cover herself in some shinies ever since she saw all the treasures that Arreira gave us.

"Arturus, Antares, how about you show them the castle?" Yunia suggests with such a serious tone that it seems more like an order.

"Y-yes, sister," Arturus nervously replies.

Alissa whispers into my ear, filling my mind with wild fantasies that stun me for a moment, then I give her the items she wants and reign the dragon back in again.

We separate here, and I regretfully let Klein and Osaria out of my sight. Alissa goes with Shala towards the bath, the other girls go explore the castle, and Mimi heads off to her new quarters while Yunia, Salbotica, and I go to the meeting room.

Salbotica is Confiel's man, so he should already know some of my secrets. I open a [Gate] to the Chimeras, and we pay them a visit together.

A note from Manasong

Hall of Fame of Patrons

The patrons who support Rupegia shall have their names sung by the bards for they deserve the glory and honor. Their names are:

Prince PreownedFIN.

Prince Creamy Spinach.

Lord Andrew Meyers.

Lord Samuel Lim.

Lord Bill.

Lord Novgarod.

Lord DJ.

Lord Ashadun.

Lord Michale Erwin.

Lord Bakerdea.

Lord Nathan Vanbrunt.

Lord Maurice.

Lord Empyrean.

Lord Mattirro Draca.

Lord Joshua Tal.

Lord Colorblind.

Lord RottenTangerine.

Lord Fullmoon.

Lord Joxsan Herrera.

Lord Sean Drake.

Lord EESDESESESRDT.

Lord Brody Haugan.

Lord GoodKat.

Lord FrostyCube.

Lord Freddie.

Lord Mike Bartter.

Lord Cardinal Steiner.

Lord DragonPiggy.

Lord Cidant.

Lord Alexander Nduka.

Noble Salty Panda.

Noble Mild Fracas.

Noble Aclys.

Noble Shawn Plumley.

Noble CarlBaxter.

Noble WeirdWhirl.

Noble War God.

Noble Andreas Jörgensen.

Noble Yeuromain.

Leave a rating or a review to help me rise to the top or fix my shameful understanding of prose.

Take a look over my blog where all information of the world of Rupegia will be posted.

Join the Discord and discuss, or rant, or meme, or try and fight me so your waifu gets more screentime.

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Interlude 2 - Lyle's Yearning

I sigh and put down the quartz gem. Lately, it has become a habit of mine to rub my thumb all over its smooth surface. I don't know why, but it calms me when I do it. I use it to relax when I've found myself cornered, which has been happening quite often lately.

I take off the silica cylinder from the circuit, and the light bulb turns off, then I inspect the cylinder, but I don't notice any sign of damage even though it's so hot I can feel its heat through my thick gloves. It's good that it's resistant to heat, but I had left the circuit on only for a few seconds, so the fact that it heated up so quickly is worrying.

I put it back on and observe it as it slowly starts to glow from the heat, but instead of having its conductivity reduced from the high heat as expected of a metal, it increases, and the bulb glows brighter.

A neat discovery, but I still haven't been able to verify what Wolfy had said. I've managed to create the "actuator" and the "switch" he talked about, but I still don't understand why he recommended this metal to me.

I cast [Charge] on a large battery beside me and play with the switch, turning on and off another lamp repeatedly.

This is a nice invention, allowing one to activate or deactivate enchantments remotely without the need for expensive Entangled Pair. It works so well my parents even fitted the whole mansion with it, cutting down a rather significant amount of the cost with maintenance.

It's not like this is useless, but I feel like I'm far from reaching its full potential. Wolfy said that he had found a way of using silicon alloys to create binary computer engines, but I just can't find the alloys he mentioned!

I wonder why he chose binary, though.

Bah! I should've just asked him what they were made of, but at the time I wasn't aware of how gripping researching actuators and switches would be. I feel I'm on the verge of something great, but I can't grasp it because I don't have the materials.

I've seen the huge engines the priests of Mac Gantus created to calculate the phases of the moons, and the size of each gear is ridiculous, not to mention their weight. If I can replace them with just these small tubes of silica, then we'd become rich from selling them, not to mention how much easier it becomes to build one of those computers.

I sigh again and stop playing with the switch, then I lean back in my chair and look at the ceiling.

I should just drop the title of noble and become a full-time scholar like Delwyn so I could research these things. Not even grandpa insists on training me in [Electric Magic] anymore, so I think my parents don't care which path I choose, though we really need to find where Dennis went.

The Templars will take care of him, but the idiot should've said when he'd be coming back. He's the Godsdamned Chosen Descendant, and I don't want the uncertainty of having that title possibly fall on my shoulders in the future.

I'm still leveling up, and I don't want to ruin my soul potential by getting useless combat skills if I'm not going to be fighting in a mage's court!

I look towards the bulky engine on a nearby table. A simple computer for addition and subtraction made with cogs and a lever. It's a child's toy compared to the enchanted engine of the priests in Mac Gantus, but I'm proud of having built this with my own hands. Well, designed and had it commissioned because I'm no smith.

I paid a lot for it though, just like these flimsy electric light bulbs, but we could recoup all these losses if I make a breakthrough in my research. If I make a breakthrough.

I press a button, and the door out of the workshop opens, pushed by "Linear Arm Version 1." I'm already on version 5, making the V.1 obsolete, but since it's already built, it's better to just use it than throw it away.

I walk out of my workshop and press another button, closing the door behind me, then I feed some mana to the gem next to the button, sealing my workshop until I feed the gem my mana again.

Father recognized how valuable these inventions are, so it's for the best that we use reliable security measures to prevent theft and espionage, and it's as such that only Father's Blood Slave servant is allowed to even get near the door.

I go out to the backyard and watch as Father practices with the pylons, playing around with electricity as if it was an elven ribbon dance.

He casts a simple [Lightning Bolt] at one of the pylons, charging it with highly-magical electrons, which are much easier to manipulate than the more physical ones. Once the pylon is fully charged, he pulls the electrons out through sheer "Willpower," and creates a circular "path" in the air for them to follow. It's so perfectly circular that it has none of the chaotic, "root-like pattern" that lightning usually has.

With my [Sense Mana], I can observe him feeding his MP to the particles, which they partially convert into radiation, in other words, light. With the speed that they circle around him, the glow blurs and becomes lines, which are so clumped up together that they look like a ribbon of pure light.

He manipulates the electrons further, modifying the wavelengths of their radiation, changing their color. Not only is he flaunting his unbelievable control over the electrons, but he also shows his knowledge by manipulating them in ways one wouldn't think of.

It looks beautiful, but it lacks the finesse required to power a circuit, making it useless to me.

He points to one of the pylons and releases the electrons. They crackle and flash through the air, then strike the pylon with massive energy, exactly like a powerful [Lightning Bolt]. Less efficient than casting Bolts one-by-one, but it allows for a temporary storage of electrons to boost a spell's power.

In the end, this is destructive magic. It can manipulate a large amount of electrons with safe control over them, but I've been barely spending a hundred particles of mana during my tests, so I don't need to control that many electrons.

His magic requires his subprocess to handle all the fine details of electron manipulation, freeing his mind to focus on the form, but it doesn't have any of the gentleness and extremely measured strength that I use. The scales we operate are just too different.

This is why I can't continue trying two different paths, it'll only stifle my growth, and I'll never be able to master both at the same time.

I sit down on a bench and watch. Mother doesn't seem to be here today or she'd be watching him for sure. She loves how Father can play with light even though he doesn't have a point in [Light Magic].

The heavy smell of the charged air feels nostalgic to me. Some don't like it because it's an odd smell, but it's comforting to me since I've spent most of my childhood smelling it. So is getting my skin shocked, but I don't want to think about that right now.

Father notices me and stops his exercise, then he walks to me while twirling his long mustache. A tell that he's deep in thought.

"Something in your mind, son?" He asks with a gentle tone and stops right in front of me. His narrow eyes study me curiously, and I suddenly feel all of my energy draining away.

After preparing myself to fight as a noble for so long, how can I say to him that I want to throw it all away?

"I just needed a break…" I mumble and look down.

"Hm…" He hums in thought, then immediately turns around and walks away.

He goes back to the platform surrounded by the pylons and resumes his training.

Time quickly passes as I watch Father train while I try to make up my mind.

"Have you made any progress with your silicon tubes?" He suddenly asks without stopping, making me wake up from my trance.

"Not really…" I begrudgingly answer, then I hold back my discontent and ask, "When's my next lesson with Grandpa?"

"You should focus on your research. We'll continue once you're done," he answers casually.

But I'll never be done. There's always something more to research.

"It's been a while since I had any practice with that," I insist, starting to worry about my magical ability. My "Magic Power" has been growing a lot while my MP isn't keeping up.

"You're young, so there's no need to rush. You'll continue it once you finish your research."

But I'll never be done…

Father stops for a moment to send me a smile, then continues his training.

Then I'll never be done.

I sit down on my chair again and pull a scroll to make notes.

Silicon is a metalloid that's a terrible conductor of electricity, so Wolfy must've found an alloy that changes it's property to something more useful. I've commissioned a dozen Conjuring mages to create silicon tubes mixed with all sorts of elements, now I need to inspect and catalog all of their properties in search of the alloy Wolfy mentioned.

I eventually find some who have quite good conductivity, but I still don't have a clue about what makes them special. Since some of the alloys make this non-conductive metalloid into something comparable to copper, there must be some other changes in their properties that I haven't noticed yet. Also, it's not like they're all equal, so each of them must have their own specific special properties.

I need to go deeper. I have to refine my research more.

I search for books on conductive materials and build all the different measuring tools they describe.

I sigh and rub my quartz gem while I lean back on my chair.

This is so different from studying history. I've stared at so many numbers I can still see them even when my eyes are closed.

My [Math] skill increased nine points from all the calculations I had to make, but I still feel like it's not high enough.

I look at my collection of silicon tubes, and a sinking feeling starts to grow within me.

How many gold coins have I spent on this? How many days have I wasted with this petty work instead of training my magic? What future do I have as a mere noble scholar when my family is so powerful in the field of [Electric Magic]?

Frustration starts to take over me as I realize that I can't even pinpoint which alloy Wolfy was talking about!

Why did I believe his words? Why did I dedicate so much of my time following his research, not mine?

My frustration dulls then wanes as my memories of him surface in my mind. It's replaced by an odd feeling I don't know how to describe.

I feel like I'm suffocating, so I leave the workshop and go outside to breathe some air.

This time, I find Mother tending to the plants. She's using her [Water Spirit] to water them with mineral water, a special concoction of her that she claims the plants love. Considering how the petals of the flowers literally glow in the dark, I'd guess that it's working, though we all know not to drink that water because it's horribly poisonous to us.

She notices me approaching and stops her work, then wipes her brow with a pretty handkerchief and smiles.

"Need some time away from your metal tubes?" She teasingly asks when I get closer.

"Well, technically they aren't metals; the scholars call silicon a metalloid, but yes, I'm… stuck in my research," I snobbishly respond, then the sassiness disappears as I start to feel a bit embarrassed.

Mother's teasing tone is replaced with faint concern as she asks, "Your father said that this has been happening often."

I nod and admit, "Yes, it has. I feel rather lost."

"That friend of yours…" She suddenly changes the topic, but doesn't elaborate any further, waiting for me.

"Wolf?" I complete for her, skeptical of her odd behavior.

She smiles kindly and nods. "Yes, him. Was his guidance faulty?"

I frown, a little annoyed at her words, but I don't know why. "No… I just… wish I could talk to him again."

"You will. Someone like him isn't the kind to fade away silently," she states cryptically.

I tilt my head confusedly. "What do you mean by that?"

She simply giggles and continues tending to her plants.

I stare at her blankly for a moment, then I walk to the kitchen to get a snack and chuckle. At least she managed to clear my mind, even if it was through sheer confusion.

Once I'm full, I sigh and enter the workshop again.

The odd feeling that has been gnawing at me suddenly grows within my heart and starts to energize my muscles again, making them beg me to move.

I sit on my chair and return to my collection of silicon tubes. My work is still not done. Wolfy gave me the guidance, and now I need to find the path. Even though I don't know where I'm going, I just want to follow his words.

I pick up two tubes and observe them. They are conductive like metals, but I feel there's something odd in the behavior of their conductivity. The tools I have aren't precise enough to tell me what, it's just my intuition that tells me there's something special with them. After countless hours of sending electricity through metals as training, I'd be a failure as an Electric mage if I didn't have such sense, so I decide to trust it.

One of the tubes feels like it's "overflowing" with electricity, even though it's completely inert magically or electrically. The other feels like it's "hungry" for electrons, like a depleted battery, but I know it isn't one, or at least not an effective one. The only thing they have in common is that when I put them in a circuit, the "odd behavior" they display seems to "shift" a bit to the side for a split second before fading away. The direction they "shift" depends on the direction of the charge, but it's always opposite of each other.

What happens if I put them right next to one another?

I slot them in the test circuit, making sure the direction of their "shift" is pointing away from one another, then I flip the switch, but the light bulb doesn't turn on.

What?!

I turn off the circuit and check them. They're still cold, and individually, they still conduct electricity, it's just when they're touching one another that their resistance increases dramatically.

I start the circuit again and focus my electric sense on them. I discover that the "odd behavior" they display doesn't go away this time. What's causing the high resistance is that they're "shifting" away from each other, creating a "null" zone where no electricity passes through.

I invert their position and the bulb lights up again.

WHAT?!

A crazy idea comes into my mind. I cut one of the silicon tubes in two, and sandwich the other tube in between its parts, then I put it all back in the circuit.

Once I flip the switch, no matter which side I send the charge through, the bulb doesn't light up. It's only when I charge the middle tube that the circuit allows the electrons to run through again.

This is a switch, a fucking electrical switch! And these are the alloys Wolfy talked about!

Suddenly, all the knowledge I had researched about propositional logic and binary numbers flows into my head, and the biggest bulb "lights up" inside my mind.

"I see it, I see it, I SEE IT!" I shout out loud in excitement and clap.

Fuck punched cards. Fuck levers and cogs. With Wolf's Gate, the possibilities are endless!

I drink the last of my tea, then I flip the switch.

Lylanine V.1 lights up, and the decagon cylinders start rolling. They all stop at zero and the "ready" light turns on.

I press the numbers, and the cylinders roll again, showing me the results of the calculations.

It all works exactly like the computer I built, except much, much smaller. It's also almost trivial to build it since I need only a few precise cogs while the rest of the computer are just switches and actuators.

It works exactly like propositional logic, though it's abstract, like math. They're intrinsically similar, but also have their own distinctions.

I feel like a snob doing this, but I want to name this version of propositional logic as Lylean Logic because it's an abstraction that fits perfectly with how this computer works. I'll call it a branch of propositional logic.

When I show the Lylanine to Father, he immediately stops everything he's doing and takes me to Grandpa, then they take me to the University, then to the priests.

Before I know it, I'm in the waiting room of the University's theater while a crowd orderly gets to their seats. They're all here for one reason: the Lylanine.

Mother grabs my hand and starts rubbing it, then I remember about the quartz and fish it out of my pocket. With Mother and the quartz to calm me down, the stage doesn't look so big anymore.

"This 'Wolf's Gate' you built, why did you name it so?" Grandpa's hoarse voice takes me out of my trance and allows my mind to focus on the present again.

"I got the idea to research this from Wolf, my friend, so I wanted to dedicate it to him," I awkwardly admit.

"All of this, just because of him?" Grandpa presses on, sounding skeptical.

"If you say it like that…" I grumble annoyedly and frown.

"It doesn't matter where he got the idea, not in the face of what he has achieved," Mother defends me and squeezes my hand.

"There's a concern that Wolf might claim a share of the profits for 'giving the idea,'" Father cautions us, and Grandpa nods in agreement.

"Wolf wouldn't do that," I deny emphatically. After everything we've been through, I'm the one who owes him, and I want to pay that back, somehow. "If anything, I'm the one who wants to give him a share."

Father shrugs, not willing to discuss this right now. "Profits are still profits. So as long as it's reasonable…"

"But is this invention really that important?" Mother asks, suddenly a little worried about our future.

Father and Grandpa share a look. "It'll change everything," they state in unison.

A note from Manasong

Hall of Fame of Patrons

The patrons who support Rupegia shall have their names sung by the bards for they deserve the glory and honor. Their names are:

Prince PreownedFIN.

Prince Creamy Spinach.

Lord Andrew Meyers.

Lord Samuel Lim.

Lord Bill.

Lord Novgarod.

Lord Ashadun.

Lord Michale Erwin.

Lord Bakerdea.

Lord Nathan Vanbrunt.

Lord Maurice.

Lord Empyrean.

Lord Mattirro Draca.

Lord Joshua Tal.

Lord Colorblind.

Lord RottenTangerine.

Lord Fullmoon.

Lord Joxsan Herrera.

Lord Sean Drake.

Lord EESDESESESRDT.

Lord Brody Haugan.

Lord FrostyCube.

Lord Mike Bartter.

Lord Cardinal Steiner.

Lord Krawn.

Lord Warwulfv.

Noble Salty Panda.

Noble Mild Fracas.

Noble Aclys.

Noble Shawn Plumley.

Noble CarlBaxter.

Noble WeirdWhirl.

Noble War God.

Noble Yeuromain.

Leave a rating or a review to help me rise to the top or fix my shameful understanding of prose.

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Interlude 3 - Vanea's Machinations

The sound of my enchanted quill scratching the paper resounds throughout the quiet room, almost putting me into a trance with its softness, and the orange light of the sunset taints the gentle colors of the office, giving it a wistful air. The restless capital slows down, but only temporarily as the nightlife is about to start, and it's just as lively as day life.

Loctar sleeps on my lap, and I dare not wake the little dwarf. He'll likely chastise himself for sleeping during his work, so I'll let him sleep as much as he wants for now.

My hand eventually gets tired, so I stop writing and try to relax. I literally can't move or else I'll wake up Loctar, which is starting to give me a cramp, but it's worth it for him.

Now that the sound of my quill is gone, the slight snoring of Loctar and Grosnok fills the air, and I start to become sleepy, too.

I look to the side and admire the Throne of Ascension near the edge of my window. The spiral "staircase" of white mansions looks almost golden with the sunset, which shows how a noble and their gold are two things extremely hard to keep away from each other.

One day, they'll recognize Rabanara for all of the sacrifices we made to preserve the Shore of Leaves. One day, we'll be allowed to climb that "staircase," and finally receive the rank that belongs to us. One day, my work will be done.

A knock on the door makes me jump, and adding to Grosnok's sudden snort, Loctar wakes up in a fright and jumps out of my lap.

I almost reach to pull him back to me, but a sudden wave of disgust stops me, and I let the moment pass.

"Yes?" I ask out loud and keep my face neutral while my two men recompose themselves.

The muffled voice of one of my secretaries comes from behind the double doors. "My Dame, Rabanara has sent a message, and the League has called for a meeting," she nervously responds.

I glance at the sleepy duo, and they both seem to be fully awake now. "Come in."

The door opens a small amount, and a small werecat woman enters the office. She keeps her head low, but she still glances at Grosnok. This time he's fully dressed, but his pants are tight enough to leave an outline, which the secretary notices, making her blush.

He hasn't met with Silvane in quite a while, so I believe he deserves a little treat.

I make note of her name for she may be interested in "serving" my men.

She stops before my desk and hands me a thick letter, and I raise an eyebrow in curiosity.

"The meeting is to be held in two hours at the usual location," she adds, then bows.

"I see. Thank you, you're dismissed." I wave her away, and she immediately turns around. Her innocence is adorable, but it'd do her good to "open herself" some more.

I open the seal, marked with Larana's symbol, and pull out a long folded scroll.

Loctar perks his head while Grosnok walks behind me to read it, and all of us nearly stop breathing with the shocking news.

Wolf Ryder has reappeared as a True Noble, immediately assumed the Lordship of the Western High Forest, and now has a fleet of airships crewed by [Soul Trap]ped spirit Chimeras at his beck and call.

His new draconic body parts are fascinating, really, especially if he also acquired a draconic cock, but the way Wolf mentioned his "condition" is ominous, at best.

The fact that Osaria Este, or Parado, which she currently goes by, is his concubine makes me angry, but the Gods stopped me from cursing her, so she may be innocent, after all. Rico is long dead, and his taint grows weaker by the day. It may be best to let that one go.

After getting my stupid feelings under control, I start to focus on what truly matters, the Chimeras. It's almost undoubtedly that he's the conqueror of Legado since its apparent decay coincides with his reappearance. And since he somehow acquired a fleet, what else did he unearth from Arreira's tomb?

Arreira's Heavenly Weapons and Heavenly Armor aren't accounted for, but the Elders could have been just hiding it in fear the emperor will want it for his princes.

There's also the mountainous cloud that came out of the dungeon. Some adventurers claim that it was a monster, but it was released along with the other animals that lived inside the dungeon, so the veracity of that is questionable. Unless it's a tamable monster, which is very concerning considering it might have relations to Ryder or Arreira.

There's little evidence to even speculate about that, though, but every noble in the land will worry about its association with Ryder. Nobody likes unknowns, and he has more than any living person in the realm.

In the end, if Ryder has acquired a fleet, there's no doubt he also acquired more power along with it. I believe the meeting of the League will be about this topic. It's already common knowledge someone in Katasko tried to fuck with him, so the High Forest might end up pulled into the Purification because of it.

"Wolf Ryder? Isn't that the same boy we fought alongside against the husks in Rabanara?" Grosnok asks, his baritone voice delightfully massaging my ears.

"The very same," I answer amusedly.

Grosnok makes an odd sound as he searches for words. "That kid? A True Noble? Are you sure he wasn't carried by the women around him? He was also the only man in his fellowship…"

"Envious?" I tease him lightly as the Seductress tries to rise to the surface.

"I can barely take care of you…" He grunts a little awkwardly and shifts in his feet.

I motion with my finger and he comes closer, then I grab his furry hand and give it a few pats, showing him the Saintess. "People are born different," I comfort him kindly.

"I don't envy him, that sounds like a lot of work," Loctar comments, his childish voice sounding fresh in my ears.

"It is, that I can assure you," I reply like the Saintess and boop his little nose. "But it's worth it."

He twitches his nose and leans closer to continue reading the scroll.

I turn my head sideways and answer Grosnok's doubts, "I'm sure that most of the other nobles might think he has cheated to acquire this title, but I know that he's perfectly capable of it. Ryder has the power to rule as Crown Lord" -a very juicy idea occurs to me, making me grin- "… and I'm sure we'll have important business with each other."

Grosnok becomes concerned, furrowing his eyebrows, which makes him look rather menacing, but I know he's as soft as a doll inside. He knows my grin means I have a plan, but he doesn't know if it'll be "good" or "evil."

After the summary, Larana lists every bit of evidence that supports her reasoning, so while it's interesting to me, the other two don't have a reason to continue reading, and they return to their work.

Once the sun finally sets and the moons start to become visible in the sky, the time for the meeting arrives.

I put on my contact lens and drink a small amount of the mushroom concoction. The nightmares are long gone, but I still enjoy drinking it as it helps calm my nerves.

After I start to feel its effects, I leave Rabanara's embassy through a secret [Eternal Gate] that takes me to the underground bunker of the League. Loctar will remain in the embassy to finish his work while Grosnok will act as a bodyguard because I love how the "Strength"-deficient nobles cower near him.

I leave my personal arrival room and enter the corridor leading to the main foyer. A few hundred low nobles and other assorted aristocrats are gathering there, hurriedly coming out of rooms and searching for the League attendants that will take them to their seats.

They chatter incessantly about meaningless things, taking the meeting as more of a bother than anything they should worry about. This is fine by me since they hardly have a say in the business of the League unless something truly controversial becomes the topic, which I doubt will happen this time.

Their conversations are so dull I feel more interested in admiring the bland imperial architecture than paying attention to what they're saying. I've already risen above them, even though I have no land or imperial title, so I have no reason to dawdle here.

Grosnok opens the way for me, and I exit the foyer and enter the conference hall where the meeting proper will be held.

I walk down the steps of the audience, then walk onto the center stage and cordially greet the other delegates. Lower Lords, wealthy merchants, representatives of circles of magi or mercenary companies, and a few ranked imperial nobles. An eclectic choice of members, making diversity our strength.

All these different parties have united here for only one reason: surviving the Purification from the sidelines.

I sit at the spot reserved for me as the representative of the Shore of Leaves, and we wait a short while until the audience is let in, then the meeting is allowed to start.

Centum Apeiltik Tavros rises from his seat, and that's all that's needed to silence everyone. Level 10 [Intimidation] is enough to make me wet, but it's still weaker than my Eyes of Authority. Even Grosnok doesn't react to him, appearing as a majestic statue as he stands behind me.

"The League is now in session. Announce the first topic," Apeiltik's imperious voice magically resounds through the hall. He's a prime specimen of an imperial if I've ever seen one, but he lacks the "primeval" air men like Grosnok have. He's far too "civilized" for my taste.

The secretaries start the discussion, and they have such perfect Andraste they must have a few levels in the language skill. Though their tone is perfect, they don't speak about anything interesting, and I quickly bore of listening to them.

After a few meaningless topics, the main course is served.

A secretary stands and soberly reads from a scroll, "Immediate reports state that Wolf Ryder, a possible half-imperial, half-Thornian of unknown birth, has taken over the Western High Forest as the Crown Lord alongside his harem, which includes the previous Crown Lord's daughter, Yulania Este."

Then he repeats an abridged version of Larana's report.

Apeiltik wastes no time to interrogate me, "Dame Anara, haven't you done business with him before? It's known that you've met with him." His tone is just subtly accusing, trying to pry my secrets.

I nod graciously and stand up, then I lie so perfectly only the Truth-Seekers could unmask me, "I've met him, certainly. Once in a mere party for adventurers, and a second time to offer him a job under me, but he refused. As some of you might know, his werefox Blood Slave is friendly to my brother's silver elf Blood Slave, and they became friends during his time studying in the university, but I don't have any sort of relationship with Lord Ryder."

"A pity," Apeiltik flatly remarks and takes his attention away from me.

"Isn't it possible he's Dame Anara's brother? He does seem to have Sir Haaran Anara's 'appetite' after all," a belligerent delegate surmises.

Grosnok and I glare at the delegate, making him cower in his seat from our combine offense. "There's absolutely zero reasons for my family to hide our members from the public. It'd actually be a massive benefit for us if we had someone as talented as Wolf Ryder, to begin with. There's no reason for us to hide him."

"This isn't the place for speculation, Aguenas," Apeiltik warns him, his glare piling on.

The delegate breaks and fully backs down, "I apologize, and I withdraw my statement." He bows apologetically and tries to disappear in his seat, but he already did some damage to my reputation. The members of the League are all cowards or extremely wary of danger, after all.

I sit down and steer back the conversation, "Back to the topic at hand… we were talking about Wolf Ryder's history."

"It's no secret his fellowship was harassed by Katasko. Could he be persuaded to join the Purification?" A delegate immediately asks what we're all thinking.

"The Elder Council is as stubborn as Elaria's. They won't let him drag the High Forest into this," another delegate retorts.

"They have been opening up since Laurelai and Elaria started taking their corner of the market. They even invited halflings to their territory," a third chimes in.

"They deposed Crown Lord Mavel Este exactly because he opposed such measures. The Purification and integration with the Imperial Army is just the next step," a fourth piles on.

"We need to open relations with him, or at least pit him against Decien Alkimeonids," a fifth suggests devilishly.

"He'll have to come here to swear to the emperor, so we could act then," a cunning delegate adds on.

The tide is quickly swinging, so I need to strike while it's hot.

I rise from my seat and let the Princess take charge, "Do not contact him before I do. I wish to secure a deal with him related to the Chimera spirits he's now governing."

Apeiltik stands up and immediately goes for the heart, "Is it related to the Lapis Waterway?" His sharp mind is an annoyance sometimes.

I nod and admit, "Yes. The Chimeras are land-bound by [Trap Soul], and I could help them immensely by supplying Lord Ryder with enchantable gems to bind their souls to."

Apeiltik narrows his brown eyes at me in suspicion, but I don't even need to try to resist his [Intimidate] because [Mental Pain Conversion] does all the work for me, though it does make me wet…

"The empire or even the League would benefit more from these supplies," he states sternly. The audience even stops breathing just to hear my response.

"I wish to bring him to my side," I retort composedly, and the audience burst with murmurs.

"Are you sure that's wise? You know how dangerous his kind is," a delegate cautions me.

"It's thought that he might be responsible for summoning the Grim Giant used to break through Escanso's Shell," another fearfully announces. Someone who can easily bust into their fortified castles is rather nightmarish for them.

"He's Gifted," a third asserts, also sounding frightened, and his words cause clamor among the audience.

"We must pit him against Alkimeonids," the devilish delegate insists.

"Will you bring someone as dangerous as him to our side?" Apeiltik presses on, somewhat cooling the hysteria that's starting to build.

"No," I state fervently, almost letting the Princess slip. "I said I wish to bring him to my side, not the League's."

The hysteria starts to die down along with the murmuring.

I send a glance to all of the delegates before I continue, "I want to lay down the groundwork for after the Purification. The League will be meaningless once it's over, so I want to secure allies for the future."

Apeiltik stares at me for a moment, then he nods respectfully and sits back down, so I follow.

The League leaves it to me to introduce him to the Purification, but they make it clear they don't want to bring his "Good Luck" to our side. This is fine by me since now nobody will interfere with my plans.

The meeting ends shortly after, and I decide to return the next morning.

I don't have time to rest. The first thing I do is visit the Lapis Waterway in the morning.

Loctar stays in the castle since he's a "posh" dwarf who doesn't like the underground.

I jest and tease him, but the truth is that he just hates damp places.

Grosnok and his fellowship escort me along the bustling mine. Being merciful has returned a lot of profit this time as they're very loyal and dependable. Grosnok might even accept becoming my knight. Him also having a huge cock is just a bonus.

I observe the blue rock of the Lapis Waterway. It's brittle, making it easy to mine, and it'll make for valuable pigment, but that's just on the surface.

The miners work steadily, their picks striking against the blue walls, breaking chunks of stone off, and exposing the real treasure below it, gems. Not just water-attuned gems, but a wide variety of elements, indicating that there might be a dungeon or something else very magical nearby.

The dwarves and the few gnomes flock to the glint of gems every time one gets exposed. Their little hands eager to grab and feel the precious crystals so that they may evaluate it.

The Lordsguard itself is present, and their stern, watchful eyes make sure none of the miners feel tempted to steal from the Lordship. They could likely sell these gems for their weight in gold, but they might not live long after that, so there'll be none that will try.

I didn't come here for an inspection, so I go past the miners until I reach the first rest point. Over here the sound of falling water almost fully drowns out the clangor of picks striking stone.

I find Dad meditating near the waterfall, inside a hut that protects him from the water, but also serves to surround him with white noise.

I leave my escort behind and walk in.

"Vanea," Dad's calm voice greets me the moment I walk in.

"How did you know it was me?" I ask confusedly.

He smiles without opening his eyes. "I think I felt your presence. I might be on the brink of learning [Sense Presence]."

"Sorry to interrupt," I apologize and take off my shoes, then I sit down on the pillows before him.

"On the contrary. It's good to see you well, and active…" He whispers the last part wistfully, and it makes me feel guilty when I remember how I once behaved, but it's all long in the past, and I would change nothing if I could go back in time. Nothing.

I stay quiet, so he continues for me, "I assume you're here for Wolf Ryder."

"Yes. I want the gems from the Waterway," I state. We have a lot of gold, so just selling them will be a waste when I can acquire something better.

Dad nods so gently I feel like he's overflowing with peace. "You may. You're the one who made it possible, after all. Though the elves of Antano are complaining that you swindled them."

I snort and wave my hand dismissively. "Let them complain, they were the ones who didn't care to inspect the Waterway before selling their rights to it." Then the mirth runs out and I become serious. "But know that Silvane is the one who secured the Waterway," I correct him.

He smiles warmly, showing how relaxed he is because of how easily he smiles. "How kind of you to say that, but you're the one who thought of this plan, and the one who taught her how to 'negotiate.'"

I sigh and close my eyes. Maybe I should join him in meditation for a short time if it can make me as relaxed as him. "I don't want to take all the glory. We have so few friends that we have to greatly reward those who remain loyal to us."

"You may love her more than Haaran does," he comments with a kind tone, but I feel an undercurrent of teasing.

"I don't know about that. He really loves her, in his own way."

He snorts and goes silent.

Now I just need to wait for Wolf to survive the Lordship Ceremony, but I know he will. His Fate is too strong to end so soon, and not even the Purification will be enough to stop him.

A note from Manasong

Hall of Fame of Patrons

The patrons who support Rupegia shall have their names sung by the bards for they deserve the glory and honor. Their names are:

Prince PreownedFIN.

Prince Creamy Spinach.

Lord Andrew Meyers.

Lord Samuel Lim.

Lord Bill.

Lord Novgarod.

Lord Ashadun.

Lord Michale Erwin.

Lord Bakerdea.

Lord Nathan Vanbrunt.

Lord Maurice.

Lord Empyrean.

Lord Mattirro Draca.

Lord Joshua Tal.

Lord Colorblind.

Lord RottenTangerine.

Lord Fullmoon.

Lord Joxsan Herrera.

Lord Sean Drake.

Lord EESDESESESRDT.

Lord Brody Haugan.

Lord FrostyCube.

Lord Mike Bartter.

Lord Cardinal Steiner.

Lord Krawn.

Lord Warwulfv.

Noble Salty Panda.

Noble Mild Fracas.

Noble Aclys.

Noble Shawn Plumley.

Noble CarlBaxter.

Noble WeirdWhirl.

Noble War God.

Noble Yeuromain.

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Chapter 89: Recruitment - Part 1

A note from Manasong

Attention: to conform to the limit of mature content (more than just sexual content) allowed in a novel, I've censored this chapter. You can look for the uncensored version here.

We exit into the wide grassland, but it's now completely dark and the Chimeras have all entered the ships. The fake ceiling has begun to shut off since the crystals that created the illusion are fueled by sunlight, and the last rays are saying their goodbyes as dusk is almost at its end.

The three large ships are perfectly visible as the Chimeric crystal lights illuminate them all, their figures looking imposing when contrasted against the dark background.

Salbotica silently stares at them with awe. Few elves have seen actual airships bigger than our cargo transport ship.

He squints as Oritiki and Paraaone land on the grass before us, their armor shining like beacons in the dark environment.

"[Greetings, Ryders]," Oritiki coolly receives us in Reo.

"[Greetings, Oritiki. We've come to discuss the living arrangements of the Chimeras]," I respond in kind and motion towards Salbotica.

"[We need a dedicated translator, but I'll act as one temporarily]," Yunia gracefully adds.

Oritiki nods towards Paraaone, and he goes off in search of a translator.

We walk towards the Carrier and learn along the way that Oritiki has housed the Celestial Horns there so that she can always keep a close eye on Hihiriwa.

We stop before the large ship, and I cast [Telekinesis] on the three of us to bring us up. [Mana Body] has made it noticeably easier for me to cast spells on others.

We land on the deck and ask Oritiki for a tour, so she starts giving us a lesson on Chimeric airships. Salbotica intensely observes every airplane we pass, absorbing every detail he can.

The planes all have their wings folded, but they still look imposing and very recognizable.

The Eagle-class ships remind me of the old World War II Mustang fighter planes, though they're made of wood, lack propellers, and are much smaller than the real ones since the Chimeric planes don't have heavy engineering. They're made for mid-range combat with a long-range [Beam] turret that's controlled by the gunner and mounted under the nose.

The Dragon-Class ships are far sleeker, being longer but thinner, and they're all made of metal. The fastest ships in existence, they're bombers with a large explosive [Fireball] cannon in the nose, and two [Fire Arrow] turrets, one at the bow behind the pilot's cabin, and one under the tail.

The Chimeras don't have interceptor fighters the same way we do because the fastest monsters that might need to be intercepted can be handled by a Wasp or Eagle. Anything bigger requires firepower that only a Long Floater class or multiple Dragons can dish out.

The price of a gem with the mana storage required for long-range flight makes it too expensive to outfit it on a small and vulnerable ship like the Dragon, so all small ships are made for short-range flight, requiring Carriers to transport them around.

For dealing with monsters, this fleet is absolutely deadly. For a war against humanoids, not so much. Wasps would be swatted out of the sky like flies; Eagles could maintain their distance and harass for a while, but they'd still be at a high risk of getting shot down by flying mages; and Dragons could bombard from long range and with low accuracy, but then there'd be little point in having them capable of such high-speeds. Perhaps once we reach supersonic speeds planes will be able to confidently win in a fight against a mage because right now they're just highly-expensive monster killers.

Our biggest weapons are our cargo ship due to its defensive [Wind Shield]s, allowing it to transport groups of elite troops anywhere we want; the flying fortress that is the Carrier; and the Floater's self-sufficiency, refueling capabilities, and their castle-busting-strong [Beam].

Though, having the Celestial Horns on our side is our most valuable weapon of all. Their shining armor certainly impressed Salbotica, and their fighting prowess easily puts them far above the average knight, possibly even matching Lords.

Revealing our ships to Salbotica gives up the advantage of surprise, but we aren't at war, or at least we aren't expecting to use these ships anytime soon. In the end, revealing our fleet works best as a deterrent, even more so since it isn't exactly a nuke-like sort of power, unlike Patrono and our Gifts.

After the tour, Oritiki takes us inside the Carrier, and the opulence of all the gold makes Salbotica frown in displeasure. He strikes me as a frugal person, so the Chimeric fondness with gold will likely put him off a bit without even needing to bring up the teachings of the God of the Sun.

We enter the bridge, and Hihiriwa greets us. Aside from him, only a few officers are around.

Salbotica may have seen wereanimals, demons, or even beastfolk, but a dragon-headed man is seemingly new to him as he hesitates, then nervously shakes Hihiriwa's hand.

"Greetings, Sir Salbotica," Hihiriwa cordially hails in Andraste.

"Greetings, Marshall Hihiriwa," Salbotica responds in kind.

Once their handshake stops, the two of them enter a short staring contest. The daring Hihiriwa versus the rugged Salbotica, but we have no time for such games.

"[We're here to guide the Chimeras towards Escanso. I assume everyone's awake?]" Yunia interrupts their games, her voice stern, and her eyes as sharp as Patrono.

Hihiriwa turns to face her and nods. "[Yes we're… unusually energetic, but the smaller night crew is on shift for now since we don't expect a fight, correct?]"

Salbotica waits for our translation then states, "If you stay close to the crowns of the trees, then yes, there won't be any monsters to fight."

Hihiriwa smiles and gives an order to one of his officers. "[Then let's take off]." The ships activate their crystal engines, and a burst of mana hits our bodies, causing Hihiriwa and me to narrow our eyes in gentle delight.

Certainly, neither of us expected that as we both turn away awkwardly.

Salbotica turns to me and requests, "My Lord, can I ask you to bring a Space mage onboard? We need Spirit mages here to start to better understand the needs of the Chimeras."

I nod and casually respond, "No problem, I still have enough mana."

We send air-Alissa through the [Gate] with a letter because she has very little mass and isn't threatening like fire-Hana, then the ships lift off and cross through the [Eternal Gate] to the outside of the dungeon.

We exit right above the ginormous trees of the High Forest, and I realize that the entrance to Legado is right below us. A few curious elves observe the Gate, then go pale when they see the huge ships coming through it.

A few minutes later, an elven mage comes through my [Gate], then starts chanting his own.

Soon after, Paraaone finally appears with a Chimeric noble who knows enough Andraste to properly translate. Kaatohe knows some, but not enough to be a proper translator.

Now that things are progressing smoothly, our presence isn't necessary anymore, so Yunia and I return to the castle. We leave a Holly flying far beyond their Spirit pulse range just in case, and a small bird for official communications.

We join the girls and explore our castle for all of its wonders, and now that we're all together, Yunia gives us a quick explanation of the complete structure of the castle and the layers of fortifications around it.

This isn't a traditional castle, it's more of an artistic creation. It's only considered a castle due to its extensive fortifications.

The dark bark wall is extremely tough, and it's actually possible to close it up, completely enveloping the castle like an eggshell, though it's quite slow, so it won't really work to defend against a surprise attack. The enchantments protect it from being bombarded from long range, but when they're active, we can't fire back, though at least they're enough to keep us from being assassinated by [Meteor]s. The only way to break through it in an instant is to get two emperors to combine their power and cast one singular, town-wiping spell, but if the heretics have someone or something as powerful as two emperors then all of the humanoids are screwed anyway.

There's the outer bark wall, which separates the town from the castle grounds; then there's the outer layer of mansions that are supposed to be lent to guests and other high nobility; followed by the inner bark wall, which protects the inner layer of mansions for knights, extended family, and other important guests; followed by the last wall that protects the castle proper and the inner gardens.

The servants live under the castle, and while their quarters are surrounded by the two lower levels of the town, it's protected by a thick bark wall, making it easier to infiltrate from above than below, as was demonstrated by us when we deposed former Crown Lord Mavel.

The castle itself is structured like a "bush." It has a central, thick tower, and dozens of "branches," the corridors leading to the "leaves," the rooms. The mid to higher branches still have a [Weaverism]-powered elevator, which is a large platform that moves us up the steps, but it has all become obsolete now that there's literally an [Eternal Gate] connecting all the leaves to the main tower. Though, in the case of a "scrubber," at least there's a backup system to take us up and down.

The central tower has the main hall with the statues and summonable throne, the [Eternal Gate] hub, and a central dining hall for parties. The lower-leaves have the guest quarters, where Mimi will be given a room, baths, a dining room, a kitchen, party halls, and relaxation rooms. In the mid-leaves, there are all the different magical and combat training rooms, and the personal projects, like the special gardens that Yunia and her mothers once cared for, but mostly it's just empty rooms. In the high-leaves, there's the treasury and our personal rooms along with all the assorted facilities, like baths, dining rooms, etc..

The high-leaves have strict security separating it from the rest of the castle so that only a handful of people ever have access to it. Only Klein, the twins, my concubines like Osaria, all my knights to-be, High court mages, and the higher rank servants will have access to the upper levels. We'll start recruiting loyal Blood Slave maids to take care of the upper levels because having just any maid allowed up there is a security breach that needs to be remedied as soon as possible.

Alissa rejoins us mid-way, and I refuse to probe her thoughts for what she has in mind.

Elves don't show wealth through gold or crystals, at least not anymore, but they do show it through art. Like always, everything is covered in detailed patterns that gradually change and become more intricate the higher up they are in the castle. There are at least a dozen gardens and greenhouses filled with exotic and aesthetically pleasing plants, and I even noticed one with a perfume that acts as an aphrodisiac.

The view high up is also stunning. Being able to look out over the outer bark wall allows us to see the entirety of the town. We can see all the different colored buildings, the crowns of the small trees they're carved from, and the little black dots of hundreds of people going about their day, though Alissa can actually see their features with her hawk-like eyes.

I look at it all wistfully and whisper, "This town is ours… well, not literally, but they all obey us. The whole Western High Forest." Then I smirk for a second and assume a low, husky tone as I recite, "Look, Yunia. Everything the light touches is our kingdom… A king's time as ruler rises and falls like the sun, and one day, Yunia, the sun will set on my time here, then it'll rise with one of our children as the new king."

"Reference?" Yunia questions flatly, then Alissa sends her nod through [Bind], making Yunia snort. "Sounded poetic, though."

"You sound exactly like an imperial," Antares casually comments.

"'Reference'?" Osaria repeats curiously.

"He likes to quote novels," Yunia tiredly answers.

I hug Lina from behind and slowly help her get closer to the edge.

Osaria chuckles and smiles affectionately. "That sounds adorable," she confesses.

Both Arturus and Antares frown at her in sync. "That sounds so childlike," Arturus blurts out what they're both thinking.

"There's something alluring about a man that can confidently act playfully," she defends me.

The twins turn to me and stare in confusion, as if they were trying to decipher my mysterious, cool aura-…

I hear a wheezing inside my mind. "Wolf, please," Roxanne begs for me to stop as she struggles to control herself.

"'Weirdo,'" Ciel adds cheekily in English, and I feel the other girls wanting to laugh.

"Alright. Screw all of you," I pout inwardly and return to helping Lina conquer her fear of heights.

She breathes heavily as she looks down at the long, long way down, and even I get a bit nervous, but the dragon inside of me huffs smoke at my fear of heights. My monkey-… part-monkey brain is still afraid of falling out of trees, even though I can fly at will.

I cast [Telekinesis] on us and gently lift us above the railing. Lina whines faintly and squeezes my scaly hand.

"Come on, Lina, you have to face your fears if you want to beat them," I encourage her with a warm and whispery tone.

Hana raises an eyebrow and leans on the railing as she questions, "Didn't you fly for all this time on the ship without complaining?"

"There was no ground below the ship, and it was required of us to fly to continue the dungeon, so I didn't complain," Lina responds and starts to pout.

She's really good at hiding her real feelings, so I might have to actively probe her to make sure that she's truly fine. She's not the type to lie, but she won't tell us if we don't ask.

I pad my claws, then I pull her up and turn her around. Our eyes meet, and I see a hint of fear in them, then I pull her face closer to me and kiss her.

She eagerly opens her little mouth to receive me and immediately forgets all about the hundreds of meters of open air separating us from the ground as I make us float away from the railing.

"What?!" Her voice echoes in my mind.

I snort internally, and she tilts her head so that she can look down, but she doesn't break off the kiss. She whines softly again and closes her eyes, then tries to swallow my tongue with even more intensity.

Roxanne loudly clears her throat, and I smile wryly, then I force Lina to slow down.

Aside from the twins and Gify, everyone else here wants a piece of me, even the golems, and their combined hunger begins to really bleed through [Bind], so I think it's time for us to take a bath. The twins are certainly wishing very hard for this tour to come to an end.

We claim ownership of the big bath while the twins claim a smaller one. I can't believe that we actually have a choice of bathroom now. That's just so ridiculously opulent my Earthling self is complaining.

I shut him up real quick because now's not the time to be a whiny bitch. We enter the bath and see a line of maids all waiting for us with their heads down.

The bath itself is a large, tiled dome with pleasant blues and greens that make me feel refreshed just from looking at them. Half of the floor is taken up by multiple party-sized pools that would allow for massive "group parties" with half of the castle; the other half has massage beds, chairs, and tables with snacks and cooled drinks; the walls have a few mirrors so that we can watch ourselves as we make love; the ceiling has the usual patterns and hanging mirrors so we can watch ourselves make love from above; and there are curtains that lead to a balcony with a pool for when we want to refresh ourselves or make love out in the open.

Shala raises her head and greets us with a smile, "Welcome, my Lords. Let us take care of you and prepare your bodies for this session of ravaging."

Holy shit, she actually said that with a perfect smile.

They surround us and help us shed our clothes. The overwhelming majority of the maids here are young and beautiful, and because I'm such a degenerate pervert, I instantly become aroused from their gazes.

The maid assigned to me gently pulls down my tight underwear, and my bounciness makes her wince and giggle faintly since my Holy Spear almost slaps her, then she regathers her composure and continues to undress me.

Our naked bodies are taken to tubs with warm water where they wash our every nook and cranny. Their [Washing] skill is better than Alissa's, not that she's ashamed to admit that, and their touch is very arousing. The maid responsible for me deliberately strokes me to make me hard, then she pulls back the skin and washes me, but I almost reach the apex just from lewd her touch is.

The girls get wet as the delicate fingers of the beautiful elves play with their private parts, getting them ready for me. No kisses or tongue, at least not yet.

The maid responsible for Aoi is visibly nervous, but she gets Aoi aroused the same way as the others, a testament to her professionalism.

Once the washing is done, they dry us off and give everyone a set of clothes. Aoi looks down at hers, then at the confused maid and grins, scaring the poor elf.

Aoi starts glowing and shifts into human-Aoi, and I must commend the maids for not losing their composure from the sudden change.

To calm them down a bit, I caution them, "Keep Aoi's transformation a secret, but everything about this…" -I create my huge, spiky draconic weapon- "you can gossip as much as you like."

I'm hoping that they will because that'll mean more horny and curious women for me.

My maid freezes in fear, so I dress myself while she recovers. My clothes are just a thin black shirt that's open at the chest and some tight not-yoga pants.

Alissa looks at my cute ass, perfectly enveloped by the gentle fabric, and licks her lips. Hana sees the bulge at the front and breathes heavily. Ciel and Lina look at my exposed chest and their hearts tighten. Roxanne and Aoi have been a bit horny all this time because of my horns, and now, their horniness is reaching another level entirely. Yunia seems to enjoy the set of clothes and how it makes me appear more mature.

Alissa walks over to me and makes me roll up my sleeves. "These shining scales should never be hidden," she whispers, then they start dressing themselves.

I look at myself through the girls' eyes, and I feel like I'm dressed like an alpha in one of those ladies' erotica. Wait… I think I'd fit in well in one of those BL mangas…

It seems like I can't escape this. I whimper to myself, then look at the girls.

Long gloves, stockings, garter belts, corsets, lacy bras and underwear, and chokers. The girls each put on their Clothes of the Berserker, and I go berserk.

As my greatsword rips out of my pants, Alissa stops and makes me look to the side.

Covered in a transparent, white veil, wearing a metal choker with an attached chain, Aoi is waiting for me. Her over two meters of height towers over me, but her posture tells me that she'd be more than glad to bend over and obey my every whim.

I walk towards her and lift the veil with [Telekinesis], revealing her bewitchingly feminine face, her long, almost Asian eyes, the smile gracing her delicate red lips, and a beautiful silver circlet that holds the veil.

Her blue hair still pools down on the floor, giving her a fairy-tale air, as if I'm about to plow Rapunzel or some Disney princess. When I look down at her small chest being supported by a very small and lewd lacy bra that leaves the center bare, I feel my sword twitch with excitement. Then I look down at her light blue landing strip, which is exposed by her open underwear, and see that she's dripping with anticipation.

The dragon growls, and I let him loose.

With my sword limp, my MP low, and my muscles exhausted, I finally settle down and take off my ripped clothes, then I relax in the magically enhanced bath.

The massage makes my friend stop hurting rather quickly, and when the girls enter it too, their skin gets immediately cleaned of all the love fluids.

The maids are frozen, staring at us with neutral faces like statues, so I look over at them and smile gently.

"Anyone wanting to spend some time with me can just ask," I offer with a husky tone. Hana, most of all, seems to love the intensity of my eyes lately, and the way I look at the maids makes me seem a bit like a hungry predator, but it isn't intentional.

Shala is sweating cold, her eyes locked onto the bubbles covering my friend. I'd actually have her because she's still fairly attractive even at her age, so I'd be willing to make her happy.

"She's married, so please, don't," Yunia pleads.

"Alright then, I guess she's off-limits," I casually respond and shrug internally.

Alissa enters the bath, and the cuts on her face quickly heal up. Once they're gone, she snuggles with me, then she notices how she smells and submerges herself entirely for a few seconds. When her skin has returned to the same purity it had before, she returns to snuggling with a delighted smile on her face.

She feels like my sword is a Gift from the Gods, so my willingness to share it with all women pleases her greatly. It's totally not her fetish speaking.

Aoi crawls to the bath, then reduces her size to small-Aoi and dives. She resurfaces a moment later and lets herself drift aimlessly on the surface.

Gify pops into existence beside her and they join claws. The little griffin missed her best friend quite a lot.

The maids remain stunned for a while, and nobody takes me up on my offer, not just yet at least. I know those eyes when I see them, a few of them are definitely considering it. Alissa can even smell it when one of them is so horny that she has an obvious wet spot on her not-bikini bottoms.

The ones who accept will be prime candidates for the High Maid positions.

"I don't sleep with women in exclusive relationships, though," I add and turn around.

Yunia gives Shala an apologetic look, then the old maid seems to finally get a hold of herself again and calms down.

The bath actually replenishes our energies, and since it's magical, it has a greater effect on me.

I stand up, sword drawn and ready to fight again.

I look around in search of another prey and take a glance at the maids, but they're not ripe yet. I look at Jarn and feel in the mood for some clang.

"Come over here, Jarn," I order, and she diligently obeys. "You said that you wanted to have lay with me?"

"Yes. We desire to please you in all ways possible," she instantly replies in her usual robotic tone.

"Lift your dress, and show me your gikes," I request, and she obeys again.

I see Ciel's perfectly trimmed landing strip and lips peeking out from underneath their hood, but there's no hole for me to enter.

"I need to give you a hole," I murmur.

"And us, too," Ted pleads.

I smile excitedly. "Yes… I need to give you all artificial bodies." Then I turn my gaze to Hana. She's still walking, so her hips can surely endure some more pounding. "Come over here," I order her.

She gets up, the water droplets enticingly streaking down her body, enhancing the contours of her perfectly shaped large mounds and muscular arms.

"We must wrestle," she states like a barbarian, and we both play the part.

We invite Mimi to join us for dinner, well, feast.

The girls and I eat with gusto, relishing every bite. Our stomachs are still a bit needy because we likely haven't eaten anything like this in the past four months. We're all suffering from the same kind of problems on the toilet, so I think Arreira gave us some pasty mix through our feeding tube while we were asleep.

I find myself enjoying meat more than usual. Perhaps my draconic side will help me get swole, but Aoi's human side being so thin doesn't give me much hope of a significant boost.

We eat under the starry sky with a great view of the town, making our meal breathtaking, but it's also a bit awkward to eat while the servants wait on us near the walls. We certainly don't let them serve us as if we were children who didn't know how to do it ourselves.

Then our tiredness starts to get to us, so we decide to retire to our quarters immediately after.

Neither we nor the twins are sure if they want to live in the higher levels with us considering how lascivious we are, so for now, they'll sleep in the lower levels.

Our "leaf" is pretty large, with multiple rooms for children and other concubines. Yunia's old room is among them, but it hasn't actually been that long since she left, and nothing will ever go back to how it was before, so she doesn't feel like digging those memories up by taking a look at it.

Our bedroom is huge, making it easy for us to fit all the beds alongside the king-sized one that's already there. That's Yunia's parents' bed, though.

"I don't smell anything, but I don't think we'll be comfortable sleeping on it," Alissa comments, and Yunia and I agree wholeheartedly.

Ciel and Hana think it's a waste, but nobody else does, so I decide to store Mavel's bed and dispose of it later.

Klein will probably live as a knight in a mansion in our inner circle while Osaria will have her own room in this "leaf," but whenever they are here, they must sleep with us.

After some light reading under the night sky, we all go to sleep naked in a mess of limbs.

A note from Manasong

Hall of Fame of Patrons

The patrons who support Rupegia shall have their names sung by the bards for they deserve the glory and honor. Their names are:

Prince PreownedFIN.

Prince Creamy Spinach.

Lord Andrew Meyers.

Lord Samuel Lim.

Lord Bill.

Lord Novgarod.

Lord Ashadun.

Lord Michale Erwin.

Lord Bakerdea.

Lord Nathan Vanbrunt.

Lord Maurice.

Lord Empyrean.

Lord Mattirro Draca.

Lord Joshua Tal.

Lord Colorblind.

Lord RottenTangerine.

Lord Fullmoon.

Lord Joxsan Herrera.

Lord Sean Drake.

Lord EESDESESESRDT.

Lord Brody Haugan.

Lord FrostyCube.

Lord Mike Bartter.

Lord Cardinal Steiner.

Lord Krawn.

Lord Warwulfv.

Noble Salty Panda.

Noble Mild Fracas.

Noble Aclys.

Noble Shawn Plumley.

Noble CarlBaxter.

Noble WeirdWhirl.

Noble War God.

Noble Yeuromain.

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Chapter 89: Recruitment - Part 2

A note from Manasong

Attention: to conform to the limit of mature content (more than just sexual content) allowed in a novel, I've censored this chapter. You can look for the uncensored version here.

I dream of flying, flapping my wings freely while gazing at the great blue sky, laughing out loud at the extent of my freedom and power.

I'm the king of the skies, the apex predator of the food chain, and even monsters flee from my might.

But I don't rule by myself.

I land on my nest, then I open my eyes as I wake up.

The first thing I see is a cute and cartoonish starry sky on the ceiling, as if they were stamped on a dark blanket that waves about in a mesmerizing motion. Small Moon and star-shaped slits on the curtains let the morning light in, creating this pretty sight as the breeze plays with the curtains.

Everything is dark, and all the color is gone, leaving the room black and white to make it easier on our eyes. The magical paint reacts to sunlight, so the walls will regain their color after we open the curtains.

I look around me and see my naked women all sleeping soundly, except for the golems, who protect us while we sleep, their gazes endlessly scanning the room.

Gify raises her head and looks at me curiously.

Gih?

"I just feel very energetic, for some reason. I guess this is the first good night's sleep I've had in however the hell long I was stuck in that maze," I respond through [Bind] to avoid waking up the girls.

Gify gets off my chest and nestles into Ciel's breast pillow, then I use [Telekinesis] on the limbs surrounding me to gently lift them up and crawl out of bed.

The moment I stand up, Alissa wakes up with a gasp. Panic sets in within her heart, but I hug her "soul" to calm her down and keep her emotions from bleeding through [Bind].

"Oh…" She whines in disappointment. She wanted to wake me up through my dragonator, but my body had second thoughts.

"I'll give your morning meal soon enough," I assure her, then I walk towards the curtains.

The floor is covered in the usual warm grass carpet, making it feel rather pleasant to step on it fully naked even though my feet are covered in scales and thick, black, leathery skin. I can even let my claws cut the grass because it just repairs itself automatically.

Alissa slips out of bed, using her skills to not make a single noise as she does, then joins me and hugs my arm, so I cover my arm with a transparent and squishy padding to keep her safe and to ensure that I can properly feel the softness of her skin.

We slip through the curtains, then open the enchanted and reinforced glass door, emerging out onto our excessively large balcony.

The fresh air and warm sun of the morning hugs our naked bodies, and we both feel a chill at the same time.

"Can't you change your dragon parts to… not be so draconic temporarily with [Mana Body]?" She worriedly asks, feeling my frustration with this inconvenient body of mine.

"I know it's possible, but I need to learn how to do it first," I respond with an annoyed frown. I don't really have the time to train with it, though. There's so much shit to do that it's not even funny.

We reach the railing and take in the amazing sight. The Eia fog/smoke/whatever is covering the town, but it doesn't get through the high bark walls, making it look like we're surrounded by dikes holding off a gray sea.

Over the outer layer, our ships are floating near the ground, and dozens of people are coming and going from the area around them. The Chimeras will be housed in the mansions for a few days until we can organize a system that allows them to be independent.

The sight of it all wipes away my upset mood, allowing another emotion to replace it.

I hug Alissa's waist and pull her to me, then I hug her from behind. Her fluffy orange tail wags and tickles my belly, then my tail moves on its own and wraps around her waist, keeping her tied to me.

"A new dawn…" I whisper in her ear, full of expectancy.

"Not afraid?" She whispers as she reaches back to caress my hair.

"I am, but I feel like fighting instead of fleeing."

It's odd. I spent probably a whole month stuck inside that maze, which I know was my worst nightmare, my own hell on… Rupegia, but it feels like nothing to me now. It's as if I'm just "over it," but a part of me is telling me that I should still be indignant about what I went through.

I want to rage, but I also don't, so I decide to redirect all that energy somewhere else, but do I even need to say where?

Today is the 4th day of the 7th month.

I'm now "twenty" years old, Roxanne is twenty-two, and Lina is nineteen. I'm a bit miffed that we missed our birthdays while inside the dungeon, but we'll have time to catch up on the festivities one day.

I leveled up to 57, and I now have a shit ton of spare skill points that I'm not sure about where to put. I'll just spread them evenly among my physical and magical skills to deal with any potential weaknesses. In case I need to add a language skill, I'll just take it out of [Dodge] since I think it has a bit too many points.

My [Summoning Magic] increased by 4; [Godly Language] and [Conjuring Magic] increased by 3; [Sword Use], [Spear Use], and [Polearm Use] increased by 2; and [Dodge] and [Parry] increased by 1. I learned [Mana Body] and [Dragon Transformation] with 1 point in each and [Equipment System] with 5.

My "Strength," "Endurance," "Speed," Intelligence," "Willpower," "Piety," and "Perception" increased by 1; "Wisdom" and "Sanity" increased by 2; and "Charisma" increased by 3. My MP increased by 90, and my "Magic Power" increased by 45.

Alissa leveled up to 57, too. Her [Bow Use] increased by 7; her [Dodge], [Sense Presence], and [Hide Presence] increased by 4; [Muscle Explosion] and [Enhanced Reflexes] increased by 3; [Quiet Action], [Enhanced Hearing], [Enhanced Stamina], and [Fox Transformation] increased by 2; and [Hawk Eyes], [Quiet Steps], and [Tracking] increased by 1. She learned [Equipment System] with 4 points.

Her MP increased by 60, and her "Magic Power" increased by 30. Her "Strength," "Endurance," "Dexterity," "Intelligence," and "Charisma" increased by 1; "Wisdom," "Piety," and "Perception" increased by 2; and "Sanity" increased by 3.

Roxanne leveled up to 57. Her [Fire Magic] and [Water Magic] increased by 3; [Alchemy] increased by 2; and [Mana Control], [Space Magic], and [Potion Brewing] increased by 1. She learned [Equipment System] with 6 points.

Her MP increased by 190, and her "Magic Power" increased by 120. Her "Strength," "Endurance," "Charisma," "Piety," and "Perception" increased by 1; and "Sanity" increased by 2.

Hana leveled up to 58. Her [Battlefield Perception] increased by 8; [Sword Use] and [Dodge] increased by 7; [Mana Control] increased by 5; [Muscle Explosion], [Block], and [Summon Wings] increased by 4; [Spear Use] and [Parry] increased by 2; and [Bow] and [Tatesomu Style] increased by 1. She learned [Equipment System] with 4 points and [Draconic Body (creator)] with 1 point.

Her MP increased by 40, and her "Magic Power" increased by 25. Her "Endurance," "Charisma," and "Piety" increased by 1; and "Speed," "Wisdom," and "Willpower" increased by 2.

Ciel leveled up to 57. Her [Glaive Use] increased by 5; [Dodge] increased by 3; [Light Magic] and [Wind Magic] increased by 2; and [Redirect Mana] increased by 1. She learned [Equipment System] with 5 points.

Her MP increased by 30, and her "Magic Power" increased by 20. Her "Endurance," "Intelligence," and "Charisma" increased by 1; and "Wisdom," "Willpower," "Piety," and "Sanity" increased by 2.

Lina leveled up to 57. Her [Hammer Use] increased by 7; [Magic Tool Carving] increased by 5; [Axe Use] and [General Enchanting] increased by 4; [Block] increased by 3; [Stonebody] increased by 2; and [Throw] and [Dwarven Pride Style] increased by 1. She learned [Equipment System] with 4 points.

Her MP increased by 20, and her "Magic Power" increased by 10. Her "Willpower," "Charisma," "Piety," and "Sanity" increased by 1; and "Wisdom" increased by 2.

Aoi leveled up to 38. Her MP increased by 120, and her "Magic Power" increased by 40.

Yunia leveled up to 60, and she's the only one among us that's at the proper "Lord-level" range. Her [Two-Handed Sword Use] increased by 5; [Sword Use], [Parry], and [Muscle Explosion] increased by 3; [Silent Shadow Style], [Battlefield Perception], [Sense Presence], [Sense Mana], and [Weaverism] increased by 2; and [Dodge], [Enhanced Reflexes], and [Spirit Magic] increased by 1. She learned [Enhanced Stamina] with 3 points and [Equipment System] with 5 points.

Her MP increased by 40, and her "Magic Power" increased by 20. Her "Strength," "Willpower," "Charisma," "Speed," "Sanity," and "Perception" increased by 1; and "Endurance," "Wisdom," and "Piety" increased by 2.

Our skills are like this:

'Wolf Ryder Skill Report'

'Physical'

Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level
Sword Use | 17+13 | Spear Use | 12+3 | Polearm Use | 12+3
Dodge | 12+8 | Parry | 14+6 | Block | 7+8
Shield Bash | 4+1 | Battlefield Perception | 8+2 | Muscle Explosion | 4+1
Acrobatics | 13+2 | Ekrano Style (creator) | 3

'Magical'

Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level
Sense Mana | 4+6 | Mana Control | 3+17 | Mana Recovery | 15+0
Mana Efficiency | 8+7 | Reduced Mana Cost | 8+7 | Mana Overuse Resistance | 5+4
Blackout Resistance | 0+1 | Fire Magic | 1+4 | Earth Magic | 2+3
Water Magic | 4+1 | Wind Magic | 1+4 | Electric Magic | 6+14
Light Magic | 2+13 | Space Magic | 7+23 | Summoning Magic | 9+31
Blessing Magic | 8+22 | Nature Magic | 2+18 | Conjuring Magic | 1+4
Spirit Magic | 0+3 | Illusion Magic | 0+2 | Golemancy | 0+10
Redirect Mana (creator) | 6 | Sense Soul (creator) | 6 | Soul Manipulation (creator) | 7
Godly Language | 30+5 | Dragon Transformation (innate) | 1 | Equipment System | 5+5

'Miscellaneous'

Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level
Dancing | 0+1 | Cooking | 0+4 | Andraste Language | 4+6
Dismantling | 0+4 | Piloting | 0+3 | Massage | 0+1
Oral Technique | 0+1 | Mana Body (innate) | 0+1

'Info'

Name | Wolf Ryder | Age | 20 | Race | Weredragon
HP | 100 | MP | 1825 | Magic Power | 780
Level | 57

'Stats'

Strength | 14 | Endurance | 17 | Dexterity | 12
Speed | 15 | Intelligence | 22 | Wisdom | 18
Willpower | 19 | Charisma | 16 | Piety | 17
Perception | 17 | Sanity | 14+4

'Other'

.Status Effects | NONE.
.Titles | Nickname "Good Luck", Blessed by the Goddess of Knowledge, Golemancer, Scholar of Rabanara, True Noble.

.Affiliations

Helios (Fellowship), Alissa (Blood Slave, Fiancée), Hanafuria (Blood Slave, Fiancée), Roxanne Succubus (Fiancée), Lina (Slave, Fiancée), Ciel (Fiancée), Yulania (Blood Slave).

.Companions | Alissa, Hanafuria, Roxanne Succubus, Ciel, Lina, Yulania.
.Crimes | NONE.

'Alissa Skill Report'

'Physical'

Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level
Sword Use | 9 | Bow Use | 41 | Parry | 6+4
Dodge | 2+8 | Sense Presence | 12 | Hide Presence | 2+8
Enhanced Olfact | 5 | Enhanced Hearing | 5 | Hawk Eyes | 6
Muscle Explosion | 5 | Quiet Steps | 5 | Quiet Action | 4
Enhanced Stamina | 2+3 | Enhanced Reflexes | 3+7 | Tracking | 3

'Magical'

Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level
Sense Mana | 1 | Mana Control | 1+7 | Reduced Mana Cost | 5+0
Mana Efficiency | 7+0 | Fire Magic | 1 | Earth Magic | 5+0
Water Magic | 1 | Wind Magic | 1 | Light Magic | 1
Space Magic | 1 | Conjuring Magic | 1 | Illusion Magic | 6+9
Fox Transformation (innate) | 7 | Equipment System | 6+4

'Miscellaneous'

Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level
Housework | 3 | Cooking | 4 | Cleaning | 2
Washing | 5 | Riding | 2 | Oral Technique | 4
Pain Resistance | 2 | Hand Technique | 2

'Info'

Name | Alissa | Age | 20 | Race | Fox-type Wereanimal
HP | 100 | MP | 1120 | Magic Power | 550
Level | 57

'Stats'

Strength | 13 | Endurance | 19 | Dexterity | 24
Speed | 20 | Intelligence | 14 | Wisdom | 16
Willpower | 17 | Charisma | 15 | Piety | 17
Perception | 19 | Sanity | 18

'Other'

.Status Effects | NONE.
.Titles | Blessed by the Goddess of Love, Blinding Arrows, True Noble.
.Affiliations | Wolf Ryder (Master, Fiance), Helios (Fellowship).
.Companions | Wolf Ryder, Hanafuria, Roxanne Succubus, Ciel, Lina, Yulania.
.Crimes | NONE.

'Roxanne Succubus Skill Report'

'Physical'

Skill Name | Level
Dagger Use | 2

'Magical'

Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level
Sense Mana | 1+3 | Mana Control | 9+31 | Reduced Mana Cost | 26+4
Mana Efficiency | 11+9 | Mana Overuse Resistance | 4+1 | Fire Magic | 30
Water Magic | 7+33 | Light Magic | 1 | Space Magic | 2+9
Conjuring Magic | 5 | Alchemy | 3+7 | Potion Brewing | 12
Poison Brewing | 2 | Redirect Mana | 1 | Equipment System | 4+6

'Miscellaneous'

Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level
Housework | 1 | Cooking | 1 | Cleaning | 1
Washing | 1 | Riding | 1

'Info'

Name | Roxanne Succubus | Age | 22 | Race | Succubus-Type Demon Race
HP | 100 | MP | 2960 | Magic Power | 1280
Level | 57

'Stats'

Strength | 10 | Endurance | 12 | Dexterity | 12
Speed | 9 | Intelligence | 18 | Wisdom | 20
Willpower | 17 | Charisma | 16 | Piety | 11
Perception | 12 | Sanity | 14

'Other'

.Status Effects | NONE.
.Titles | True Noble.
.Affiliations | Wolf Ryder (Fiance), Helios (Fellowship).
.Companions | Wolf Ryder, Alissa, Hanafuria, Ciel, Lina, Yulania.
.Crimes | NONE.

'Hanafuria Skill Report'

'Physical'

Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level
Sword Use | 31 | Spear Use | 4+16 | Bow Use | 10
Two-Handed Sword Use | 1+9 | Polearm Use | 6 | Dagger Use | 4
Shield Bash | 3+7 | Block | 1+14 | Parry | 10
Dodge | 12 | Tatesomu Style | 3+7 | Muscle Explosion | 8
Battlefield Perception | 10 | Taunt | 3 | Intimidate | 1+2

'Magical'

Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level
Sense Mana | 1 | Mana Control | 7 | Reduced Mana Cost | 10+0
Mana Efficiency | 1 | Fire Magic | 1 | Earth Magic | 1
Water Magic | 1+0 | Wind Magic | 1+0 | Light Magic | 1
Space Magic | 1 | Conjuring Magic | 1 | Illusion Magic | 5
Equipment System | 6+4

'Miscellaneous'

Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level
Housework | 2 | Cooking | 1 | Cleaning | 1
Washing | 1 | Riding | 3 | Massage | 1
Pain Conversion | 1 | Dismantling | 4 | Oral Technique | 1
Fire Breath (innate) | 5 | Summon Wings (innate) | 8 | Draconic Body (creator) | 1

'Info'

Name | Hanafuria | Age | 24 | Race | Fire-Type Dragonkin
HP | 100 | MP | 940 | Magic Power | 455
Level | 58

'Stats'

Strength | 19 | Endurance | 25 | Dexterity | 11
Speed | 15 | Intelligence | 12 | Wisdom | 16
Willpower | 21 | Charisma | 17 | Piety | 12
Perception | 10 | Sanity | 17

'Other'

.Status Effects | NONE.
.Titles | One Thousand Strikes, True Noble.
.Affiliations | Wolf Ryder (Master, Fiance), Helios (Fellowship).
.Companions | Wolf Ryder, Alissa, Roxanne Succubus, Ciel, Lina, Yulania.
.Crimes | NONE.

'Ciel Skill Report'

'Physical'

Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level
Glaive Use | 2+28 | Sword Use | 4+5 | Parry | 6+9
Dodge | 5+10 | Block | 9+6 | Imperial Hasterrum Style | 2+3
Muscle Explosion | 2 | Battlefield Perception | 1

'Magical'

Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level
Sense Mana | 2 | Mana Control | 6 | Reduced Mana Cost | 3+2
Mana Efficiency | 3+4 | Wind Magic | 16+24 | Fire Magic | 1
Light Magic | 11+29 | Space Magic | 3 | Conjuring Magic | 1
Diagnosis | 7 | Redirect Mana | 2 | Equipment System | 5+5

'Miscellaneous'

Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level
First-Aid | 3 | Housework | 3 | Cooking | 2
Cleaning | 2 | Washing | 1 | Riding | 1

'Info'

Name | Ciel | Age | 22 | Race | Human
HP | 100 | MP | 1310 | Magic Power | 800
Level | 57

'Stats'

Strength | 14 | Endurance | 15 | Dexterity | 17
Speed | 18 | Intelligence | 16 | Wisdom | 22
Willpower | 16 | Charisma | 18 | Piety | 24
Perception | 13 | Sanity | 21

'Other'

.Status Effects | NONE.
.Titles | True Noble.
.Affiliations | Wolf Ryder (Fiance), Helios (Fellowship), Templar Knights (Honorary Member), Temple Priestess (Former Member).
.Companions | Wolf Ryder, Alissa, Hanafuria, Roxanne Succubus, Lina, Yulania.
.Crimes | NONE.

'Lina Skill Report'

'Physical'

Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level
Hammer Use | 6+24 | Axe Use | 12+13 | Throw | 4+6
Parry | 1+9 | Dodge | 4+6 | Block | 2+13
Muscle Explosion | 2 | Shield Bash | 1+1 | Battlefield Perception | 2
Dwarven Pride Style | 4 | Enhanced Speed | 4+1

'Magical'

Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level
Sense Mana | 1 | Mana Control | 7 | Mana Efficiency | 4+1
Fire Magic | 1 | Earth Magic | 1+9 | Water Magic | 1
Wind Magic | 1+0 | Light Magic | 1 | Cursing Magic | 13+7
Space Magic | 1 | Conjuring Magic | 1 | General Enchanting | 7+13
Magic Tool Carving | 4+6 | Equipment System | 6+4

'Miscellaneous'

Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level
General Blacksmithing | 4 | Sewing | 4 | Housework | 1
Cleaning | 2 | Washing | 1 | Math | 4
Riding | 1 | Stonebody (innate) | 7

'Info'

Name | Lina | Age | 19 | Race | Dwarf
HP | 100 | MP | 1225 | Magic Power | 540
Level | 57

'Stats'

Strength | 8 | Endurance | 8 | Dexterity | 13
Speed | 12 | Intelligence | 16 | Wisdom | 15
Willpower | 18 | Charisma | 12 | Piety | 13
Perception | 14 | Sanity | 15

'Other'

.Status Effects | NONE.
.Titles | True Noble.
.Affiliations | Wolf Ryder (Master, Fiance), Helios (Fellowship).
.Companions | Wolf Ryder, Alissa, Hanafuria, Roxanne Succubus, Ciel, Yulania.
.Crimes | NONE.

'Info'

Name | Aoi | Age | 2 | Race | Azurite Dragon
HP | 200 | MP | 1370 | Magic Power | 340
Level | 38

'Stats'

Strength | 18 | Endurance | 22 | Dexterity | 7
Speed | 14 | Intelligence | 7 | Wisdom | 8
Willpower | 18 | Charisma | 12 | Piety | 5
Perception | 11 | Sanity | 19

'Other'

.Status Effects | NONE.
.Titles | True Noble.
.Affiliations | NONE.
.Companions | NONE.
.Crimes | NONE.

'Yulania Skill Report'

'Physical'

Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level
Sword Use | 4+11 | Two-Handed Sword Use | 5+15 | Parry | 4+11
Dodge | 1+9 | Silent Shadow Style | 6 | Battlefield Perception | 7
Enhanced Reflexes | 6 | Sense Presence | 2 | Hide Presence | 4
Muscle Explosion | 5 | Quiet Steps | 2 | Quiet Action | 6
Enhanced Stamina | 3

'Magical'

Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level
Sense Mana | 7 | Mana Control | 1+4 | Mana Recovery | 1+2
Mana Efficiency | 2+8 | Reduced Mana Cost | 4 | Fire Magic | 1
Earth Magic | 1 | Light Magic | 5 | Spirit Magic | 8+17
Illusion Magic | 10 | Space Magic | 6 | Nature Magic | 10
Conjuring Magic | 1 | Weaverism | 2+28 | Redirect Mana | 1+0
Equipment System | 5+5

'Miscellaneous'

Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level
Riding | 5 | Acting | 3 | Dancing | 2

'Info'

Name | Yulania | Age | 20 | Race | Golden Elf
HP | 100 | MP | 1090 | Magic Power | 540
Level | 60

'Stats'

Strength | 13 | Endurance | 16 | Dexterity | 19
Speed | 17 | Intelligence | 16 | Wisdom | 18
Willpower | 16 | Charisma | 21 | Piety | 14
Perception | 21 | Sanity | 17

'Other'

.Status Effects | NONE.
.Titles | True Noble.
.Affiliations | Wolf Ryder (Master), Helios (Fellowship).
.Companions | Wolf Ryder, Alissa, Hanafuria, Roxanne Succubus, Ciel, Lina.
.Crimes | NONE.

I guess my "Sanity" bonus is making things easier to deal with, but I think it's mostly my new dragon half that's pushing me towards getting over things quicker. It wouldn't do to wallow in self-pity when I still have a world to conquer and women to bed.

Alissa's skill with the bow has nearly reached the limits of her "Dexterity" and "Speed." She's still bound by physics, and the only way to get past it is through magic, so she'll likely have to use a spell to improve her performance or develop something that lets her get past her limits like [Stonebody], [Draconic Body], or [Mana Body] would.

Her "Sanity" increase is impressive, but not completely unexpected since one of the reasons we conquered a dungeon was to satisfy the purpose of her servitude as a Blood Slave: to help me achieve something great, which she did, greatly, in fact. Now that we're all True Nobles, there's no need for her or the other girls to be slaves anymore.

I'll have to talk to them about it tonight.

Roxanne's skills will be focused on mana enhancements so that she can cast many more [Explosions] since it's by far our most powerful spell. Getting her points to level 60 for [Blizzard] or [Heat Transfer] is still too heavy of a strain on her soul, so that's out of the question for now.

It's nice that she finally increased her "Sanity," though, since she had the lowest among us. Something about her trial changed her, like something finally "clicked" inside her head, and now she sees things differently.

Hana's points will be assigned to melee skills, but she'll likely suppress all growth of them so that she can level up [Draconic Body] as fast as possible. That skill seems to be using her "Endurance" and "Willpower" to fuel a supreme defense that she can slam into her opponent's face, which means that it'll be her most powerful skill really soon.

Most of Ciel's points are going into Wind and [Light Magic] so that she can instantly cast both the Wind and [Holy Spirit], giving her a lot more versatility and firepower. She's not a straight-up bruiser, but she's an important support for our group and our life-saver in case shit hits the fan.

Lina's melee skills are now comparable to Hana's, though she lacks in stats and experience, making her the weaker combatant in a straight-up fight, but [Cursing Magic] is her trump card. I've given her level 20 in it, which allows her to use the spell [Slow] while leaving her with enough leftover points for her to become a proper enchanter.

Aoi appears in my "Followers" tab, so I can technically check her "Status," but she doesn't have a skills window, not yet anyway because my [Bind]'s "humanoidization" of her still isn't finished. She also can't open her "Status" on her own yet, but that's normal for humanoid children, so she'll be able to learn how to do that soon enough.

Yunia's growth is less significant than the other girls, but she's already our strongest melee fighter due to [Precognition]. With instant-casting, the only person who can defeat her is me due to [Rush], but she can still learn to counter my style, so my spot at the top isn't solid. Her level ups have solidified her base strength instead of boosting her power in a flashy way, making her an even more reliable fighter.

Klein and Osaria watch us discuss our level ups with interest. As a concubine, Osaria deserves to know enough that she isn't left behind in these conversations. She wants to support us, so it's best that she knows what we're in need of, and right now, it's people that can help us bring order to the chaos that's about to fall upon our heads.

I play with Osaria's body, my shiny draconic hands sinking deeply into her flesh as she sits on my lap. My tail wraps around Klein's, and I feel a gentle connection through it that warms my heart, even though I can't feel her touch very well through my scales.

Roxanne massages the base of my horns, and the stimulation actually makes my boner get harder. The skin in that area is a transition between purely physical flesh and magically-enhanced solid horns, making it more sensitive and delicate than normal skin.

This position makes me want to do Osaria from behind, but I hold myself back from starting another group party since there's something important that we need to discuss.

"How long can you stay?" I gently ask my dark milf.

"Rande wanted to leave in a few days…" She wistfully responds, then turns sideways, and her red eyes look into mine with a hint of pain. She doesn't want to leave, but she can't abandon her son.

I pull out of my "Items" a chest filled with gold and open it up through magic. The mere sight of all this shiny treasure makes Aoi and my draconic half begin to drool, but we both easily contain the desire to cover our skins with coins.

The chest is enchanted with [Warp Space], so even I can't guess how much money it contains with just a look.

"I'd like to become an investor in Este Escort Company," I announce and give my concubine a handsome smirk.

Osaria gasps in surprise then sends me a very serious look as she states, "There's too much money in that, Wolfy."

I nod in agreement and reveal my plan, "Yes, there is, but I want Rande to go to Faium Principality to procure cocoa and supply us with it regularly."

She narrows her eyes in thought as she recollects her memories. "Cocoa? The plant used to make chocolate? The sweet that everyone's talking about in the capital?" She asks in disbelief.

I nod. "The very same."

Osaria's face goes blank as she starts to think of the possibilities. There's a lot of sugar cane in the High Forest, making it an ideal location to start manufacturing chocolate.

She suddenly knits her eyebrows with a frown and asks confusedly, "Do you even know how to make it?"

I nod proudly, then I pull out two bars of chocolate and hand them to Klein and her.

They both inhale the sweet smell of cacao, then immediately take a bite.

"W-wow…" Klein mumbles then starts to cutely nibble on her bar.

"This is amazing…" Osaria whispers, then looks at me with a surprised smile. "This will work," she agrees and giggles.

"But I want you here, with me," I state, then I kiss her cheek.

She stops giggling, and her face goes blank, then she smiles, but we can all see that she's holding back her tears.

"Yes. I'll be here…" She accepts and kisses one of my dark horns, then turns to face forward again and grinds her hips.

Yunia crawls closer and grabs one of Osaria's hands to give it a reassuring squeeze. "So, you're finally coming back," she comments with a sentimental tone and smiles.

Osaria pulls Yunia's hands to her and gives both of them several strong kisses. She shows Yunia her sensual smile as she speaks with a sultry tone, "I was ready to abandon this lifestyle, but Fate brought us together again, and this time, I know that things will be much, much better."

Yunia nods happily, and then swallows heavily as she feels my thoughts about what sort of relationship I want for her and my dark milf.

"I can start negotiating the terms," Lina offers as she raises her little hand.

"We'll be here in case you need us," Ciel assures her. Lina has experts in a variety of topics literally inside her head, she just needs to ask.

I nod in agreement and add, "I want Rande to work exclusively for us, and take Klein with you, I want her to bring her parents here so that she can start working as our first knight."

Klein suddenly stiffens and squeezes my tail with hers, then she nods emphatically. "Yes, my Lord, I will!" She exclaims.

I smile warmly at her and pinch one of her pointy bits, making her yelp. "In private, don't ever call me 'Lord,'" I warn her, and she nods repeatedly while pouting.

I pull out a stand with a set of Camalo armor, a pretty shortsword, and a [Mana Arrow]-enchanted bow. Klein gawks at the shining armor and gem-encrusted weapons, her mouth moving repeatedly as she makes random noises, too awed to speak properly.

Before she recovers, I start to explain, "This is your equipment. The armor should be about your size, but we can get a mage to resize it if it isn't, and we'll get you a proper bow that fits your style later."

Klein finally starts to make intelligible noises, "This is too-…"

"No taking it back! If you're to be our knight, you'll accept this!" Alissa interrupts and pressures her.

Hana contributes with a bit of [Intimidate], and Klein instinctively salutes. "Y-yes! I'll serve you w-with pride!" She relents, her voice almost breaking up in tears of happiness.

As a knight, it doesn't matter how powerful Klein is, what matters is her loyalty. We can pay for her to become strong, but no amount of money will ever make her give her life for us if the situation calls for it, not that we'd ever sacrifice her. We need her to always be there for us, and the Camalo armor will make sure that she survives her duties.

We work together in giving Yunia her glorious drills, then we leave our room for breakfast, and Mimi and the twins join us. They'd been waiting for us as etiquette requires, but we're only a few minutes late, so it shouldn't have been inconvenient for them.

Our dining room has a whole wall open to the sky, giving us a view that's pretty similar to the balcony of our sleeping room. The floor is covered in the soft elven grass carpet like usual, but this room's carpet can also clean and massage our feet, so there's a custom of removing your shoes at the entrance.

Since Aoi and I don't wear shoes, we don't have anything to take off, which annoys me a bit. I'll get a shoemaker to come here and design shoes for draconic feet. It feels dirty to never wear shoes, and the two new humanoid races deserve the same comfort as the others.

We sit down, and before we can start spewing out all our plans, Yunia reminds us through [Bind] that we can't be assured of the loyalty of the maids here, so we'll have to watch what we say until we've surrounded ourselves with loyal servants. Only a handful of maids know about Aoi's transformation, but we can't go expanding that number on a whim.

I immediately go for the butter, toast, and Ranja juice. Americans got it right that orange juice is perfect for breakfast, but not the part about fried eggs and bacon.

Once the grumbling of our stomachs settles down enough, Yunia starts the conversation.

"Mizushina, we need someone to help us with secretarial work. Can you help us with that?" She requests with a business-like tone.

Hana's beautiful sister matches Yunia's tone and serious demeanor as she accepts, "Yes. I can do it. I had to do a lot of organization for my masters while also handling the accounting."

Yunia subtly smiles. "Excellent. We'll go to the treasury to retrieve our seal, then we can start writing missives."

"W-what should we do?" Antares asks, unsure about his own future.

Yunia answers categorically without hesitation, "You're the last inheritors of the Este family name. You need to grow strong and keep our family name alive even though we aren't a family of Lords anymore."

The twins swallow glumly and nod in understanding.

Before everyone starts going about their day, it's better for them all to have official letters that identify us since not everyone might recognize us on sight as the new Lords. If they still don't, even with a letter, then a swift smiting will make them understand.

With Patrono, I don't even need to swing it to make others bow, the Heavenly Weapon has many other ways of accomplishing that, but we'll keep its existence hidden for a short while.

We call for Salbotica, then we go towards the treasury. It's at the same height as our room, the most well-secured and reinforced area of the castle. Having powerful Lords sleeping nearby also helps to keep it even more secure.

The room is guarded on the inside and outside by a dozen of Confiel's men, all absolutely ready to kill whoever tries to sneak in.

A handful of heavily armored soldiers flank the corridor and glare at us with the force of a few levels of [Intimidate], mildly annoying me, but forcing Mimi and the twins to stay back if they don't want to piss themselves. This is a security measure because thieves are generally very sensitive to danger, making it easy to spook them with the skill's use, and Lords should all have enough "Willpower" to easily overcome these sorts of attacks.

Salbotica vouches for us, and they let us in after verifying our identities through an Inspection Crystal. We'll have to change our security when more people have access to the treasury because just the Crystal alone is far from enough to verify identities.

We enter a room that's the complete opposite of Arreira's vault. Books, paintings, statues, collars, brooches, hairpins, stunning and rather impractical dresses, gem-encrusted shoes, weapons, armor, a variety of odd magical artifacts from dungeons, and chests filled with coins. Everything is perfectly organized in displays and on shelves with an easily understood classification system, allowing one to find whatever they need with little effort.

My draconic side huffs out smoke in delight at the number of shinies here while my human side feels perfectly satisfied with how orderly this room is. I don't feel like taking out Arreira's treasure here and messing it all up, so I'll keep it with me for a while longer.

Our coins are all ancient, so I trade them for the newer ones from the treasury.

Yunia makes a beeline to a glass display, then opens it and takes out a wax seal stamp with an enchanted gem on top. The flavor of its enchantment makes it unique, protecting against any attempts at forgery, and the seal has the symbol of the Este family: six distinct white flowers on a golden field.

For now, this seal will do, but the Ryder family will need to design and establish its own heraldry at some point.

Salbotica hands me the paperwork. Documents shifting the responsibility for the castle, the town, and the whole territory of the Western High Forest to me, specifically. As much as the girls are Lords too, the tradition is to have it all in the name of a single Lord, presumably the leader of the harem.

Mizushina and Alissa help me read through all of the documents to properly understand their meaning and organize my thoughts. I'm receiving a crash-course in Lordship just so that I can understand the important parts, the smaller details will come with time.

Ciel oversees the Chimeras. The civilians will need housing, work, protection, and most important of all, a Spirit mage to cast a spell to make them solid. [Materialization] only makes them visible, so we'll need specialized mages to allow them to actually live.

She also explains things to the temple. They're small here, but they can always call the Punishers if they don't get placated.

Hana and Yunia start the recruitment of the Lordsguard. The prospective recruits are being organized in front of the entrance to the outer layer, where there's a plaza that's big enough to hold them all, and there's a shit ton of them.

Roxanne organizes our few remaining court mages, then she joins Hana and Yunia in the selection process to fill out their numbers.

Most of the prospective recruits were already part of Mavel's Lordsguard or the Court, but they all need to pass through the selection again.

I give Klein and Osaria their summons back. It helps me keep an eye on them, and Osaria really misses her singing bird.

Klein and Lina go back to Rabanara through the Imperial Gate Network to buyout Rande for us, and we get one of Confiel's men to carry the chest of gold for them.

Now that we're Lords, we can give permission for anyone to cross through the Eternal Gate Network in our name, though we can't emerge inside another Lord's castle without an agreement.

Osaria meets with Escanso's nobles, then the regent mayor, and inspects the Eia farms that belong to us. She's greeting them all in our name to spread the word that the new rulers have arrived.

Aoi doesn't have much to do, so she takes it upon herself to improve her reading skills. She lays down in front of my office's desk and starts reading one of Lina's books. She wants to increase her "Intelligence" because having it lower than 10 irks her quite a lot. She's young, so it's perfectly justified, but it still hurts her pride.

After a few cups of Tonique tea, I decide that it's time for a small break, so I get up to leave the castle and join the selection of the Lordsguard. There's something that I need to make sure that they all understand.

A note from Manasong

Hall of Fame of Patrons

The patrons who support Rupegia shall have their names sung by the bards for they deserve the glory and honor. Their names are:

Prince PreownedFIN.

Prince Creamy Spinach.

Lord Andrew Meyers.

Lord Samuel Lim.

Lord Bill.

Lord Novgarod.

Lord Ashadun.

Lord Michale Erwin.

Lord Bakerdea.

Lord Nathan Vanbrunt.

Lord Maurice.

Lord Empyrean.

Lord Mattirro Draca.

Lord Joshua Tal.

Lord Colorblind.

Lord RottenTangerine.

Lord Fullmoon.

Lord Joxsan Herrera.

Lord Sean Drake.

Lord EESDESESESRDT.

Lord Brody Haugan.

Lord FrostyCube.

Lord Mike Bartter.

Lord Cardinal Steiner.

Lord Krawn.

Lord Warwulfv.

Noble Salty Panda.

Noble Mild Fracas.

Noble Aclys.

Noble Shawn Plumley.

Noble CarlBaxter.

Noble WeirdWhirl.

Noble War God.

Noble Yeuromain.

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Chapter 89: Recruitment - Part 3

I pat Aoi's head as I walk past her. She stores her book and the gold coin she was chewing in her [Item Box] and follows me, Alissa trailing close behind us.

I have a short conversation with Yunia about what we have to do, and she feels a bit sad and disappointed about what I want to say, then immediately feels guilty and starts flustering about silently, trying to get her feelings under control. She's still not completely used to [Bind], which leads to her oversharing occasionally.

None of the commoners know what's going through her mind as she watches the selection with an impassive gaze, her beautiful face stern as always. Her [Acting] is enough to keep this small disturbance of her concentration from being revealed in her expression.

I take an [Eternal Gate] to the main hall and exit the castle, then I feel the desire to rest in one of the private, secluded gardens, but that'll have to wait.

We walk towards the outer gates at a leisurely pace to give Yunia time, gazing up at the Island Winch along the way, its massive size giving me delightful tingles of megalophobia down my spine.

The duels come to an end one-by-one, but Yunia doesn't give the order for more to start, and soon, the sounds of battle die down completely, replaced with the murmuring of the confused recruits.

Hana wipes her brow and conjures water directly on her face to cool herself off. The droplets run along her skin, making her white shirt stick to her skin and allowing her nipples to poke out through the fabric.

She's been helping in the selection, testing the stronger men in single combat, and also showing off our power to the commoners so that they come to respect us.

Yunia stands up, her tight, light blue dress sparkling in the high sun, making Hana salivate. Yunia presses her [Project Voice] magic tool against her throat and asks with a booming and imperious tone, "Enlistees of the Lordsguard, answer me this: who are pledging your loyalty to?"

The men grumble, confused about her intentions.

"Answer me!" She shouts, her voice like thunder.

"Lord Yulania!" Some of them respond with both fear and pride.

"I didn't hear you!"

"Lord Yulania!" More join in, and their voices resound through the open air.

Yunia grips the railing of the balcony in anger and demands, "Louder!"

"LORD YULANIA!" They clamor and cheer, but that quickly dies down when they notice her face warping with anger.

What she's about to say hurts her pride, a lot, but it must be done.

"We're in this together," I reassure Yunia and mount Aoi, then she spreads her wings wide apart and starts to flap.

"WROOONG!" Yunia roars, anger and disappointment igniting into fury.

Aoi flies over the dark wall, then I press a [Project Voice] gem against her neck, and she lets out a deep, guttural roar that activates the fight, flight, and freeze instincts of the crowd. They point at her and cry in fear, but to their credit, nobody runs away.

Aoi makes a tight, banked turn, then pitches down, aiming to crash onto the crowd.

A few of the men panic and a few others raise their shields, but a good number simply stands still. They should've already heard that one of the new Lords has an Azurite dragon, and at least some of them should've understood that the dragon is also a Lord.

Aoi pitches up just in time to shoot over their heads, then I leap off of her and float in the air, waiting in place while she makes a u-turn.

She comes back and stops in mid-air, floating right behind me and blocking Yunia from their sight with her large wings.

I press the gem against my neck and roar, "I AM YOUR LORD!"

The men stiffen, and many of them cringe as they come to understand what they'd just shouted so proudly.

I pause dramatically for a moment and scan through the crowd, searching for the women to see their reaction to me. I find a few cultured women, seemingly knowledgeable about the superiority of draconic cock, and I also notice that there's a surprising amount of non-elves among the crowd, about 30% of the recruits.

"YOU WILL NOT SERVE YULANIA, YOU WILL SERVE ME AND MY HAREM!" I add with a scowl.

To enlist, they first need to name who they wish to serve, and the overwhelming majority of recruits wrote Lord Yulania, not the Ryder family. While it made her very happy to see that there are so many people wishing to serve her, this isn't right. They're simping for her, and that type of person would make for a terrible Lordsguard.

I'm offended that many of them don't even seem to know my name.

"CAN YOU DO IT? CAN YOU BOW TO A NON-ELF? CAN YOU SERVE SOMEONE WITHOUT A SINGLE DROP OF ELVEN BLOOD…?" -I cool down my boiling rage and let my tone become grim- "Can you give your lives for me and my harem…?!"

The crowd is stunned into silence, and I notice that most of the elves have become crestfallen while the non-elves still stand proudly.

Alissa appears on the balcony with Gify on her shoulder and sits down beside Yunia, then Aoi and I slowly descend in the middle of the crowd.

They make room for us, then we touch the ground. Aoi's tail sways about, giving us even more room as the crowd backs off to avoid getting hit.

I draw my elven shortsword and get into a fighting posture.

"DEFEAT ME AND YOU SHALL BECOME YULANIA'S PERSONAL KNIGHT!" I shout, then I remove the magic gem from my neck and put my off-hand behind my back.

There's an unspoken belief that a personal knight is someone with a more intimate relationship with their charge, but that's just an urban myth, though it has the desired effect as Yunia's simps all suddenly become very hopeful.

With a mental nod from me, Roxanne gets up and gathers the healers of our Court.

It's time to do some weeding.

I hold myself back from chopping limbs off, but many throats are sliced open. With 30 points in [Sword Use], [Rush], and my unorthodox [Ekrano Style], I'm unstoppable.

I don't have time for a drawn-out fight, so I just quickly rush in and finish them off after a few blows.

I enjoy hurting Hana and Alissa quite a lot, even going so far as drawing blood, but not with strangers, and not without a sexual undertone.

I manage to keep my claws padded so that I don't ruin the handle of my sword. This small amount of [Soul Manipulation] is very easy for me to keep up even while in battle, so I can at least preserve this ancient elven sword Arreira gifted to us.

A few of the men observing me make me feel a bit wary. They seem to have a calm and confident air about them, and I'd bet that they're former officers or knights. If any of them challenge me, I'll have to change my tactics.

The number of healers belonging to our court quickly increases as they volunteer to heal the challengers, serving as a practical test of their abilities.

Then a familiar-looking old elf steps into the challenge area, and I smile subtly as I use [Sense Soul] on him.

'Soul Info'

Name | Sandoro Irme | Race | Golden Elf
Level | 61 | HP | 100/100 | MP | 1,130 | Magic Power
Strength | 17 | Endurance | 17

The officer I fought when we deposed Mavel. I remember that he showed me a small degree of respect after our fight, so I don't think he's here for revenge.

He looks younger than Salbotica, and now that he's not wearing any armor, I can clearly see his athletic build. His eyes are cold, but his new puffy beard softens his look a bit.

Sandoro lowers his head in respect and confesses, "Forgive me, Lord Ryder, but my only wish is to duel with you."

"That's fine. Let's fight," I tersely respond.

He lifts his head and draws his bastard sword, then he pulls a kite shield out of his [Item Box] with a *poof*.

I [Equip] my shield and shift my stance. My tail stops waving about and tenses up, revealing my emotions.

Sandoro lifts an eyebrow at the unknown spell I just cast but remains quiet, then the chatter dies down as the crowd realizes that things are getting serious.

I cover my neck with my shield and rest my sword on it, and he mirrors my posture, then we cautiously advance towards each other.

Our eyes lock together, and we share fearless looks with a touch of sportsmanship.

We reach stabbing range and stop, then we start circling each other to keep our feet moving. A stationary warrior is slow to react.

[Battlefield Perception] triggers, and he [Blink]s forward, so I slide backward with [Telekinesis] and [Block], trusting that the skill will handle it.

The brim of his wide shield comes towards me like a punch, and I let it slide along my scales as I duck, then I slash, and he [Blink]s away.

A small cut opens a hole in his thin shirt, and a red line appears on his chest, but I've only nicked him.

We reform our postures and get into stabbing range again.

This time, we poke and probe each other with cautious attacks. His bastard sword and superior height give him a longer reach, which is a great advantage in this kind of fight.

I need to quickly enter his reach, so I cast [Rush].

I hit his shield with mine right on the brim between his handle and his sword, protecting me from his counterattack while also twisting his shield. It isn't strapped to his arm, so he can't properly control where it's facing if I hit it parallel to the handle's axis.

My sword sinks a centimetri into his gut, and he disappears, so I give chase.

He [Blink]s repeatedly to escape me, having to desperately defend himself between each teleport, then he suddenly [Blink]s forward instead of retreating, appearing right in front of me.

I use [Muscle Explosion] to dodge to the side just as his sword sinks into my shoulder, exactly where my throat was a mere split second ago.

I drop my sword, and my draconic hand grips his wrist, my claws sinking into his flesh and drawing blood.

He twists the sword, and I growl, for the pain only angers me.

He bashes my face with the brim of his shield, then I grip his arm with my other draconic hand.

He has higher "Strength," but I have [Shocking Touch], so I easily win the resulting struggle.

I force his arms apart and headbutt him, then I draw a dagger with my tail and stab it into his throat.

I use Roxanne to stop the healers from rushing in just yet. I'm sorry, Sandoro, but theatrics call for this.

I remove the dagger and release his arms, then I grab his bleeding neck and lift him, using [Telekinesis] to float upwards until his feet leave the ground.

"YOU FOUGHT WELL, BUT I'M MADE OF HARDER MATERIAL THAN YOU!" I bellow, then I [Heal] him entirely and drop him.

He falls onto his feet a bit unsteadily, then he starts patting his completely healed neck.

I pull his sword out of my shoulder and [Heal] myself, then I offer him his weapon with [Telekinesis].

I look around for a second to let him recover, almost grinning at the awed crowd, then I stare down at him and imperiously ask, "Sandoro Irme, will you join my Lordsguard?"

He immediately falls on one knee and lowers his head. "If you'll allow me, my Lord. Let my old sword aid you in any way I can," he pleads, his tone eager and sincere.

"I know you will… Now, be welcomed into my retinue! We'll find a position worthy of you soon enough, but for now, help organize the recruits."

"Yes, my Lord!" He stands up and salutes in the imperial way before walking towards the growing group of veterans from Mavel's retinue.

Yunia gets up from her chair and heads down the gate to join them.

Now that my job here is done, I remount Aoi, and we fly back over the bark wall. We pick up Alissa in the outer layer, then we return to the castle… for more paperwork.

When we get back to the office, Mimi jerks her head towards us, an odd expression on her face. She seems a bit amused and embarrassed.

The golems turn to us and bow respectfully.

"They're… interesting…" Mimi comments reticently.

I raise an eyebrow at her and return to my seat.

"I believe they can be helpful as secretaries," she adds a little awkwardly.

This kind of behavior coming from someone as beautiful as her fits her just as well as Hana being shy. It's rather refreshing, though.

"Then they shall," I laconically respond, then I change shirts in front of her to show off my toned muscles, and we resume our work.

After my stunt, Mavel's former knights hiding among the crowd start to appear, asking to be permitted to serve our family.

Yunia and Hana test them to make sure that they didn't grow lazy while we were away. None of them are deemed unfit, for it'd be utterly shameful if they had let themselves go.

We hand them all the appropriate missives that declare them our unofficial knights, which gives them the power to act in our name, and the number of reliable people around us starts to reach acceptable levels.

The Lordsguard recruits and veterans defer to Sandoro, and he unofficially becomes the Commander of the Lordsguard. Above him, there are only Generals, but those are desk officers, so he'd only be fit for that position when he's become too old to fight.

Most of the new recruits are non-elves since Yunia's simps were basically NTR'd by me. Their jealousy from seeing their goddess submitting to the cocky alpha dragon will fuel our depraved sexual fantasies for years to come.

And just before lunch, a small, cranky fly starts to annoy Lady Osaria, so I get my flyswatter and head out to give her a hand.

We don't have an official Lord's transport, but flying on Aoi's back might as well be since few things are flashier than riding in on a blue dragon mount with sharp, shiny scales that could easily squash a man with its huge body.

Alissa shifts into her fox form to become lighter, and she curls up on my lap, her nose on my crotch because she just really loves my smell.

I pad my hands with a thin layer of sensitive skin, making them feel almost as if they were human again. I'm becoming more adept at padding my hands, so perhaps by using [Mana Body] to its full extent, I can make my condition manageable. I don't want to remove these hands, but by the Gods are they inconvenient.

I caress Alissa's therapeutically fluffy fur as I try to stop myself from whining about it all the time. Something about the touch of her fur is just so delightful and enthralling.

She wags her tail and twitches her nose adorably, making my heart melt in awe. These little moments are truly soul-healing.

We fly across town and land at one of the gates, then Alissa shifts back so that the guards can memorize her face.

They all stiffen at the sight of us and give us wary looks. They know who we are, the town criers have made sure of that, but everyone's nervous about how they should treat us since we aren't elves.

"Lords Wolf, Alissa, and Aoi intend to leave town," I state, not feeling that patient with the Townsguard. They don't maintain anywhere near the same degree of security as the Lordsguard, so this sort of thing should never take long.

An armored elf with a more composed air hurries out of the gatehouse and bows before us. "Lords! We'll open the gate right away!" He shouts, then straightens his posture and glares at his hesitating subordinates like a devil.

The men immediately scatter, and the gates open for us. A dozen commoners gather on the street a fair distance away to gawk and gossip, but I don't have the patience to give them a show right now, so I just remount Aoi and make for one of the disk farms.

We fly over the lake, which is lit up by a few scintillating crystal lights that are as bright as disco globes. The light penetrates deep into the water, revealing an active aquatic environment, but the lake is so deep that there's plenty of room for many things to lurk in the darkness.

We see multiple disks surrounding the tree-pillars that sustain the town, and we fly towards the one that currently hosts Osaria.

We reach the top disk, which is the smallest one and also where a dozen houses and a few warehouse-looking buildings are located. They seem to be where Eia pills are made, a very important farm that makes a lot of money for the Lordship.

Osaria and her bodyguard, one of Confiel's men for now, are waiting near the road, and she waves excitedly when she notices us, making her assets shake about heavily. As usual, she's barely considered dressed by imperial standards, but still provocatively dressed for the elves. My cute, little bird is snuggled between her breasts, its usual throne, allowing me to feel her mountains whenever I want.

We land before her, and I immediately pull her in for a tongued kiss while groping her ass.

I quickly finish my greeting, for a certain naughty elf needs a spanking, then I coolly whisper while hugging her waist, "So, can you tell me what the problem is?"

She massages the base of my horns, making me close my eyes in delight as she reports, "I came to meet Signeur Caruso, and while he offered all the respect we deserve, he refused to recognize you as the new Lord and hand over a copy of his finances."

Her tone is absolutely dripping with frustration. She didn't want to ask for help and give us even more work, but Caruso is as stubborn as an orc.

"Stalling to hide embezzlement?" Alissa suggests.

"That'd be very unwise of him," Yunia comments sternly through [Bind].

"No, just another simp…" I growl back and focus on Osaria again. I give her a confident look and nod as I state, "He just needs to wake up to reality."

She raises her eyebrows in slight amusement and runs her hand through my hair. "And how are you going to wake him up?" Her tone sounding just slightly concerned.

I smirk mischievously and let my tail wag. "Don't worry, we'll just give him plenty of time to think things through."

A Lord being mischievous is never a good thing, though.

The wooden road ends at the biggest mansion on the disk. It's carved from large trees in the usual elven way, but the bark is dark, and the leaves up at the crown are white and semi-transparent, giving it a rather spooky air. There's not much light under the town, so I guess that's probably why the tree-house looks like this.

A few elves slightly more muscular than average glare at us as we pass the warehouses. They all keep a hand on their clubs and shortswords, but I feel more threatened by Gatuns than them.

Aoi sends a few glares their way and chuckles when their composure cracks. They're just grunts paid to look mean, not trained soldiers.

"Whatever you do, don't face the Eia plants. They'll sacrifice themselves to protect the farm if you threaten someone," Yunia's advice echoes inside my mind.

"We don't see any plants around here, though," I respond confusedly.

"Then someone with a measure of common sense must've taken them off the disk."

Lina says that Eia plants are kind of a middle point between plants and animals, but they're very aggressive and territorial, so what I intend to do wouldn't work if we were surrounded by a swarm of them.

We reach the mansion, and two lightly armored elves block us from entering.

"Lord Wolf and Alissa demand a meeting with Signeur Caruso," I impatiently state with a glare.

They seem unfazed, not even twitching from Aoi's glare, showing a modicum of training.

"He was expecting you. Follow me," one of the guards flatly responds, then he turns around and opens the double doors while the other steps aside.

I normally wouldn't care about etiquette, but they're being deliberately disrespectful by not addressing us as Lords.

The guard leads us down a corridor and out into a fairly lavish large hall. A set of sofas await us in the middle, and a chubby elf sitting on a large and comfortable armchair stares at us as we approach.

His eyes hold the same faintly contemptuous glare that many elves show when they see us, but his unfit body makes him look like a spoiled, petulant child. Not even the elven diet can withstand the extremes of laziness that the merchant class so often revels in.

Over two dozen lightly armored men stand ready at the walls, an implicit threat in case we intend to try anything, but Caruso is underestimating us. Aoi's size makes some of them nervous, and I believe they know that they'll have a hard time containing her.

We silently sit down on the sofas facing Caruso, and Osaria gives him the stink eye, but he only has eyes for me, which is a bit weird.

Aoi sits on the sofa, too, then the elf standing beside Caruso shoots her a brief glare, and she responds with a toothy grin that partially looks like a snarl, frightening him so much that he instantly looks away.

There's tea set out for us, but I have zero patience for that right now, so I go straight for the jugular, "Signeur Caruso, you don't recognize us as Lords?"

He wrinkles his nose in contempt and spews his words hatefully, "Slavers… I won't recognize your kind until I see Dame Yulania well and sound! She is the rightful Lord, not you!" Spittle flies out of his mouth, and he pulls out a handkerchief to dry his lips. Fortunately for us, his chair is too far for his filthy fluids to reach us.

Osaria already argued with him until her throat hurt, so I won't waste any more time with him.

"So, you're disobeying my order?" I calmly ask, an obvious undercurrent of anger in my tone.

"I serve the Lord, and I don't recognize your authority!" He spews back.

A part of me is angry, while another part of me is so very tired. They unite together for one simple reason: to make this fool learn something very important.

I'm not gentle.

I turn to the very nervous elf beside him, a younger version of Caruso, though they don't look like father and son. "You're in charge, now," I flatly state, then hell breaks loose.

Gify pops out of existence; Aoi stands tall and spews fire in a circle around our position to keep the guards from swarming us; Confiel's man draws his sword and leaps in front of Osaria to protect her; and Alissa casts [Ghost Lights] repeatedly to keep everyone blind. I summon a nature elemental that immediately snatches Caruso with her vines, which I follow up with five earth and two wind elementals to knock everyone else out.

The soldiers all get thrown away and slammed into the walls before they can defend themselves, then even more of them burst into the room, but [Discharge] is enough to leave them defenseless while the elementals continue their pummeling.

Before a full minute can pass, the room clears, then Aoi summons her ball of water and extinguishes the flames from our surroundings.

One of the elementals barrels through a wooden wall, opening a way out for us, so we stand up and calmly leave the building.

The grunts try to attack us in a swarm, but one roar from Aoi is enough to make them stop, and now that they've lost their momentum, none of them have the guts to lead them into a suicidal attack again.

They get out of our way, so we continue on. I make sure that Caruso's mouth is firmly sealed so that he can't spew out any orders. He even tries to eat through the vine gagging him in his struggles, but the elemental just hardens it until he stops.

Caruso's assistant watches us walk away, stunned into speechlessness. Osaria will come here again, with a larger escort, and if they still don't obey, I'll keep arresting them until someone finally does.

We hear the rustling of leaves coming up from below, and I have a hunch that it's the Eia coming for us. We hasten our pace and leave the farm before our income tries to strangle us.

The guards at the gate have looks of utter confusion when we appear, but they silently obey, not wanting to get kidnapped, too.

We have a [Gate] mage teleport us to the outer castle walls, on the opposite side to the selection area, then we enter a Lordsguard barracks, which has an [Eternal Gate] to the dungeon.

We reactivate our underground hotel and check in our first guest for one night, or for however long it takes for his sanity to return.

A note from Manasong

Hall of Fame of Patrons

The patrons who support Rupegia shall have their names sung by the bards for they deserve the glory and honor. Their names are:

Prince PreownedFIN.

Prince Creamy Spinach.

Lord Andrew Meyers.

Lord Samuel Lim.

Lord Bill.

Lord Novgarod.

Lord Ashadun.

Lord Michale Erwin.

Lord Bakerdea.

Lord Nathan Vanbrunt.

Lord Maurice.

Lord Empyrean.

Lord Mattirro Draca.

Lord Joshua Tal.

Lord Colorblind.

Lord RottenTangerine.

Lord Fullmoon.

Lord Joxsan Herrera.

Lord Sean Drake.

Lord EESDESESESRDT.

Lord Brody Haugan.

Lord FrostyCube.

Lord Mike Bartter.

Lord Cardinal Steiner.

Lord Krawn.

Lord Warwulfv.

Noble Salty Panda.

Noble Mild Fracas.

Noble Aclys.

Noble Shawn Plumley.

Noble CarlBaxter.

Noble WeirdWhirl.

Noble War God.

Noble Yeuromain.

Leave a rating or a review to help me rise to the top or fix my shameful understanding of prose.

Take a look over my blog where all information of the world of Rupegia will be posted.

Join the Discord and discuss, or rant, or meme, or try and fight me so your waifu gets more screentime.

Become a Patron and read chapters in advance, or read the side-stories, or leave your mark on the story, or help choose the next artwork or the next side-story.

Chapter 90: Release - Part 1

A note from Manasong

Attention: to conform to the limit of sexual content allowed in a novel, I've censored this chapter. You can look for the uncensored version here.

Ciel is the last to return for lunch, and she brings a 1 centimetri polished marble polyhedron with her. It can't hold any kind of complex enchantment, but it does have a small Chimeric mana storage inside it, and it also houses our dear friend.

I cast [Spirit Eyes] to see her, and a glowing, blue, toothy smile greets me. I cast my modified [Materialize], and a naked Hukarere appears in front of us, then she pulls me into a hug.

"I'm back…!" She exclaims, then her hug loosens a bit, and she groans, "Wow~… this feels weird…"

I hug back and support her as she gets dizzy, then I feel up the fluffy fur on her back and bury my face in her chest.

"Your inner organs might not be fully functional because of how my [Materialize] is focused on magical organs," I explain without removing my face, which muffles my voice as a result.

"Okay, I guess that explains… a lot…" She mumbles as she starts to recover. "I feel like I don't have bones, like there's just a void inside me."

Actual real, living cells are extremely complex, so Gify and I focused on creating "abstract" inner workings, which allows me to mimic having ears, tails, and other appendages without the need to physically connect them to my body. Having to connect each blood vein and nerve every time I grow an appendage would be too dangerous and difficult.

I tilt my head up to look at her but still keep it on her chest, and apologize, "I'm sorry, but my [Materialize] isn't strong enough. I have Arreira's notes, though, so I'll improve it as soon as I can."

Hukarere regains her footing, and she runs her fingers through my hair as she smirks at me. "I know you're busy, so you don't have to hurry. It feels weird to be like this, but it's good enough for me," she reassures me.

I give her a squeeze and release her, then we start our lunch.

Lina stays in Rabanara with Klein and eats Krysta's home-cooked meal, and we share our senses with her so that she doesn't feel too lonely. Though, Krysta's cooking is so good that she isn't missing much.

The twins stare at Hukarere's body unashamedly, and she really enjoys the attention, but they start to ignore her pretty quickly when she goes under the table.

Hukarere can eat a bit, but not really that much since her current body doesn't process food very well. However, she does find it both very delicious and nutritious to eat me.

She gives me puppy eyes all throughout our meal and constantly drains my MP.

Mimi acts completely nonchalant about it, so I don't know what she's truly thinking, but Hana assures me that she's seen much worse from her own antics. Hana is a true sex beast, and she used to be much more hormonal and thirsty than she is now.

"You're an odd family," is all Mimi says about that.

Now that the number of our court mages is growing, they can start to show off some of their skills around the castle. Our water mages have created some small water channels in the corners of the dining room, even adding in a micro waterfall, and now our mealtime is improved with the delightful sounds of flowing water.

The castle is very customizable, having been built entirely by elven [Nature Magic], so these sorts of features can be added and removed at will. They also serve as training for the weaker court mages or to prevent the stronger ones from getting rusty, and they're redone every few days, so there'll be plenty of small changes all throughout the castle every so often.

After our meal, I take Hukarere to get her fitted for some armor and weapons. She wants to be part of our Lordsguard, but she won't be an official and permanent member until we actually test how she'll adapt to this lifestyle.

It's not just her, there's a considerable number of Chimeras who want to join too, and by imperial law, the crew of the ships are also considered part of the Lordsguard since they're sworn to serve us, so their numbers are quickly growing.

The Elder Council doesn't allow the raising of an army except for special situations in order to prevent individual Lords from rising up and opposing them. Only the Lordsguard and knights are allowed to be recruited without limits to their numbers, but that category has strict regulations regarding how much they have to be paid and the minimal level of equipment that they need to be given, making it simply too expensive to raise an army of them.

Oritiki's oath makes her sort of a knight, but I'd like her to be more independent in practice so that she can also act as the representative of the Chimeras, so perhaps we could negotiate something with the empire or the temple.

With her new set of armor, Hukarere returns to the selection to receive both her assignment and a crash course in Lordsguard duties.

Hana goes to the court mages to find someone with a breastplate stretcher. She wants boobs on her armor like she had for the previous metal plate we'd bought for her. The boobs aren't form-fitting because there's a lot of padding underneath her armor, but they're a type of decoration that she misses a lot. She has big boobs and she wants everyone to know it.

She also suggests that I get a codpiece to house my schlong, but I refuse because it would just look a bit ridiculous in my opinion.

Osaria heads out of the castle again to meet with the hunter's guild. The rewards for monster subjugations are subsidized by the Lordship, and we want to increase them to draw more foreigners here.

Aoi takes Alissa for a ride out of town because my dragon wants some metal sheets and ores to play with. After her trial, she seems to want to become a blacksmith or something. Gify goes with them because she just wants to take a walk around the town.

Alissa prepares tea for us before she leaves, which I store in my [Item Box] to prevent it from getting cold.

Ciel and Yunia return to talk with the Chimeras while Roxanne and I work together to finish the paperwork. The selection doesn't need us anymore since there are enough veterans now to keep things going on their own.

For the Chimeras, we're mustering every Spirit mage in town and searching for the best [Materialize] among them that can solidify spirits, and after that, we'll offer free training for all other Spirit mages. The Chimeras' most basic need is this spell, specifically, so there's a lot of money to be made in that field once they start working, and regarding that, there are a few things that only they can do.

There are Drifting Lands that come close to the elven shores at times, and the Island Winch is capable of safely bringing them back to us. There's a shortage of good enchanting gems in the empire, and while we don't know how to re-attune the air gems of the Lands into other types, we have some Chimeras who do.

I don't want to rely on my brief friendship with Nour, but perhaps he can introduce me to his family so that we can get our hands on some imperial ship designs. The Principality has the top experts in shipbuilding, but they don't have the resources to take full advantage of that, so I think it'd be better to lure them here and shift the airship industry to the High Forest.

We're expecting some trouble with the locals since the elves are rather xenophobic and isolationist, but it was the Elder Council that accepted Confiel's reforms, which opened up the region more to outsiders, so at least we'll have support from up top in case the commoners start to complain.

We manage to finish up all the urgent paperwork, so we decide to take a break for some tea.

I lean back in my chair and stretch, then push against the carpet, but this isn't a rolling chair, and it's quite heavy, so it doesn't even move an inch back.

I make a mental note that we need adjustable ergonomic chairs, by which I mean that I transmit this desire to all the girls. Lina gets momentarily distracted from her break and transmits back some loose ideas that I can pitch to the Nature mages of our court when I have the time.

Removing part of the lower backrest for my tail is easy, but adding mechanical parts is much more difficult, so this will have to wait.

We sit on the sofas around the tea table, and Roxanne immediately plops herself onto my lap. She's been dying to get some personal time with my prickly horns because she finds them really sexy.

Their texture is very rough, and a few spots have some small spikes, giving it a texture similar to a pineapple. Also, they don't bend or go soft like Roxanne's, making sleeping on my side a bit awkward. I never sleep in that position anyway because the girls always go to sleep hugging my arms.

Roxanne demonstrates her experience in handling horns, knowing exactly where to massage them. Her hands scratch, press, and knead, giving me a faint pleasure as it seems that I have some nerves in these horns.

While we flirt, Mimi happily eats the small pieces of chocolate that were set out on the table. She stares curiously at Ted and Suzy, but not Jarn, her curiosity about the golems seemingly higher than the average person, and it appears to be compounding with her appreciation for cute things.

After a few minutes, we stop our cuddling to eat some chocolate before Mimi finishes it all. You can't trust women around chocolate.

With my belly full of chocolate and not-earl-grey, I start to feel a bit drowsy from Roxanne's massage.

Today was such a hectic day…

"Now that you have the time, you should train your [Mana Body] or [Dragon Transformation] for the good of our plans," Yunia's stern voice inside my mind feels like a whip striking my ass.

We can't delay the Lordship ceremony for too long and allow the unruly Lords to organize, so we need to complete our preparations ASAP.

Roxanne smiles wryly, then kisses my forehead and leaves the office. There's an alchemy lab she wants to check out so that she can continue her [Alchemy] work.

Mimi returns to reading through the paperwork. She's an accountant, so she's making sure that the finances add up and that nobody embezzled anything.

I get up and stretch, then I sit down on my throne again and start focusing on my hands. I've only modified the texture of my dick and stretched its shape a bit, so making my hands shrink will take a bit more effort.

I manage to change the texture of my scales, making them become fleshy, but I don't know how to make nails, and the altered tissue lacks the expected creases and wrinkles, making it look "artificial."

I shift my focus to changing its shape for now. That way, I can at least grip things normally again.

Over time, changing a part of my body that isn't my thunder spear starts to feel "familiar," making it easier for me to alter it with just a thought.

Shrinking isn't that hard, though changing the shape into something not obviously fake is the truly difficult part.

Mimi's gentle voice enters my ears, "What happened to you?" And with that, my concentration lapses, allowing my hand to become draconic and shiny again. Mimi winces and starts apologizing politely, "I'm sorry, I interrupted your… whatever you were doing," she whispers confusedly.

I easily alter the hand back to how it was and smile gently. "No harm done," I comfort her, then I recite Arreira's "experiment" with me and my Fate.

"You… half-transformed?" She questions skeptically. Such a skill is unheard of for a human, so it's understandable that she wouldn't believe my story immediately.

I nod. "That's right, then I got 'stuck' like this, and the Gods just decided to make me into a new race." And I shrug.

She still doesn't look convinced, so I shift into a dragon, then I remember that my clothes don't get absorbed into my body because my skill level is too low, but I'll deal with that later.

I spread my wings and remember that I can't fly, so I just jump and use [Telekinesis] to land on the table a bit awkwardly. I'm not used to being a quadruped.

Mimi holds back a snort, then her face twitches repeatedly. Her eyes intensely stare at me, and her mouth starts trembling. "That's cute…" She mumbles quietly.

I puff up my chest, spread my wings, and exhale some smoke. "Yes. I'm a cute dragon!" I exclaim proudly. My voice has the chipmunk treatment in this form, which completely distracts Alissa when she hears it. She really wants to hug me right now.

Mimi's mind breaks, and she starts to chuckle uncontrollably. It's very refreshing to see such a serious person like her in this state since she has Resting Bitch Face Syndrome like Yunia, making her happy faces kinda rare.

I sit my ass down, feeling proud of myself, and fold my wings. I feel an itch to flap them and do "something" magical with them, which I'm pretty sure are my draconic instincts encouraging me to learn how to fly.

I wait for Mimi to calm down, and she quickly recomposes herself. Her dark skin becomes a shade darker as she blushes, then she clears her throat and starts apologizing to me, "I-I'm sorry, my Lord… b-but you're… very cute…"

I smile, showing her my small white teeth, and reassure her, "I know, and I enjoy it when you say that."

She bites her lips to keep herself from laughing again and nods repeatedly.

I jump down onto the floor and hide under my office desk, then I shift back into a human.

"My Lord…?" Mimi asks in confusion, and I hear her get up from her chair.

"I'm naked," I warn her and reach out for my briefs.

"Oh…" She sits back down.

"Actually. We could hire an Illusion mage to temporarily hide your draconic features. It would be better for you to work on your [Dragon Transformation]," Yunia advises me of a change of plans through [Bind].

I freeze just as I'm put on my underwear and ask for confirmation.

"I know the perfect person for that," Alissa muses, and I get the feeling that they're enjoying my current situation.

"Big Wolfy; big dragon cock," Aoi eloquently points out, and I get a wave of agreement from everyone.

"You can use those hands of yours perfectly fine. We need big Wolfy!" Roxanne demands, and I quickly acquiesce. It'll be nice when I'm the tallest among us.

"On second thought, I need to practice this," I tell Mimi, then I start shifting between my forms repeatedly while sitting on my chair. I need to get it to at least level 7 like Alissa to reach a good size.

The constant glowing seems to annoy Mimi, though she doesn't actually say anything about it, so I go under the table and continue my practice.

Yunia and Ciel come back soon after that, and I start to feel a bit tired, so I take a short break and get dressed, then I sit on my chair again.

After they enter, Mimi rises from her chair and gives them a quick bow. "My Lords," she greets politely.

"You don't have to call us Lords, Mizushina. You're our not-blood-sister, so you're family," I correct her.

"I'll be your not-blood-sister when you marry Hana," she coolly replies, and I feel a hint of reproval in her tone.

I raise an eyebrow in surprise and mumble, "Alright…"

The two girls simply smile wryly and join us.

Yunia takes a look at the parchments, papyrus, and assorted types of papers on the table and asks as Mimi quickly organizes them, "You've been reviewing the finances?"

Mimi smiles briefly and nods. "It's my specialty, so I wish to continue working in that area."

Yunia sits down on the other throne to my right and interlaces her fingers in her lap. "We don't have a High Accountant anymore, so would you like to take this position? It's a lot of responsibility," she offers and cautions, both of which are spoken with a perfectly neutral tone.

Mimi sits down and runs her hand through her wild hair. A rare tick of nervousness. "There's no veterans to pass down their wisdom?"

Yunia shakes her head, and I'll never tire of seeing her drills gently bounce. "No, but there is one condition: you must become a Blood Slave."

Ciel sits on the last throne on my other side. There are only three of these chairs, so we'll need to buy more for everyone, and perhaps another office desk.

Mimi shows no reaction, merely looking away to think, then a moment later, she turns her face back to us and sternly asks, "Why?"

"Secrets and loyalty, so we'll have to use [Tongue of Obedience], but only that," Yunia assures her. Looking at this from Mimi's perspective, I think that unknowingly becoming a sex slave is a warranted concern of hers.

Mimi's expression becomes even more severe, and her cold tone makes us pause in our response as she demands, "Be frank. Will you ask me to hide 'irregularities'?"

Yunia's jaw twitches, trying to not appear offended, but she is. "No. Elves would never do that."

They have a short staring contest, and though Mimi has a fearsome gaze like Hana's, it doesn't have the same potency as Yunia's, so she quickly forfeits.

Mimi shakes her head gently and chuckles, the seriousness promptly fading away, then she gives us a perfect Hana-like smirk as she says, "Then I accept the job."

Yunia nods, very pleased, and adds, "We'll get Alissa to bring a slaver with her. We're in a hurry to rebuild our administration, so there's no time to lose."

"Yes, I understand." She leans over the table and continues organizing the papers. "I'll start immediately, then."

Yunia genuinely smiles at her diligence. She feels a lot of respect for Mimi due to her hard-working and serious personality, and she thinks that they'll work well together.

Ciel tries to understand what Mimi is doing, but she's a bit overwhelmed by the torrent of numbers and quickly gives up. She thinks that she'll be more useful in understanding the laws of Lordship since she already had an initiation to it because of her time in the temple. The priests are the ones who keep an eye on the Lords, so they have to know the limits of the Lords' rule.

Shortly after that, Alissa gets back with Aoi, a shoemaker, and the owner of the most luxurious slave-trading establishment in Escanso.

We'll receive them in the main hall where the statues are, so Yunia activates an enchantment on the wall that grows a set of seating for us. It literally grows them out of the white velvet carpeted floor.

We sit down on the fresh, new velvet sofas and wait while Yunia and Mimi discuss payment and other benefits. She's to be treated as an employee, so she'll receive all the usual benefits that would be associated with her new position.

After a few minutes, our guests enter the hall.

Aoi walks rather awkwardly, trying to get used to her new sandals. They're simple and thin with heavy padding at the claws, which is what makes her feel weird when walking in them. It's just a matter of getting used to it, though.

The slaver is a tall and mature elven man, and he reminds me of the man that sold me Alissa and Hana: high "Charisma," gaudy clothes, an easy smile, and "evil" eyes.

The shoemaker is an old weredog lady. Her fluffy and curly white hair and long face remind me of a Poodle. She's slightly nervous because she's never had to deal with draconic feet before, but she's a wereanimal, so she's the best choice for non-human feet because of how the elves would be just too snooty to deal with me.

The slaver bows before us, and the old lady follows his example a second later.

"I'm honored to meet you, my new Lords," the slaver greets us with a velvety voice and straightens his posture.

The old lady mimics him and quickly adds, "So am I, my Lords."

He gently places his palm over his heart and continues, "I'm Esvisor, owner of the Destino Atado." Then he waits for the lady to make her introduction.

"I'm Nanaina, owner of the Conrigia," she stiffly greets us and lowers her head, then I see her small tail slowly wagging behind her.

How considerate of him to wait for her.

We return the appropriate greetings, and they take a seat.

First, we let Nanaina start her work. She pulls out a blanket full of tools and starts measuring my feet, taking care to avoid touching the sharp edges of my claws or scales. Aoi's claws are duller than mine, but they're still pretty sharp, so she knows where she shouldn't touch.

Esvisor doesn't have to do much for his work here. He just gives me his ultra-sharp dagger and a small bowl, then I cut myself… or rather, I try to. My black, leathery draconic skin is so tough that I can't actually cut through it, not to mention the scales protecting it. I feel like I might not even need to wear gauntlets and vambraces anymore.

I get Alissa to help me by rolling up my sleeve and lightly cutting my bicep, which isn't protected by my scales and thick skin.

We fill the bowl with my blood, then Mimi drinks it all down without a word, and Esvisor casts the required spells.

Mimi's last name fades away, and the entry "Mizushina (Blood Slave)" appears in my "Affiliations."

She hasn't been disowned by her family, so her children can still inherit the Tranfkoever name, it's just that she can't have a last name since her loyalty to us is more important than her family's name.

With that done, Alissa immediately strikes up a conversation with Esvisor. She wants to order two Blood Slave maids from him for the higher levels, so they start discussing the specifics of what she wants, and it isn't just some simple, helpless servants, she wants battle maids.

With her part done, Mimi returns to the office, then Nanaina quickly finishes my new sandals, which are made with cut-resistant padding, and she writes down all of the measurements she took to allow her to make more of them.

I stand up and walk around. I feel the same as Aoi about them; the padding for the claws is a little bit uncomfortable, so it'll need some adjustments, but at least for now, we won't get our feet dirty anymore from just walking around.

The harem reunites as the sun starts to set, and it's now time for The Ravaging, part two.

A note from Manasong

Hall of Fame of Patrons

The patrons who support Rupegia shall have their names sung by the bards for they deserve the glory and honor. Their names are:

Prince PreownedFIN.

Prince Creamy Spinach.

Lord Andrew Meyers.

Lord Samuel Lim.

Lord Bill.

Lord Novgarod.

Lord Ashadun.

Lord Michale Erwin.

Lord Bakerdea.

Lord Nathan Vanbrunt.

Lord Maurice.

Lord Empyrean.

Lord Mattirro Draca.

Lord Joshua Tal.

Lord Colorblind.

Lord RottenTangerine.

Lord Fullmoon.

Lord Joxsan Herrera.

Lord Sean Drake.

Lord EESDESESESRDT.

Lord Brody Haugan.

Lord FrostyCube.

Lord Mike Bartter.

Lord Cardinal Steiner.

Lord Krawn.

Lord Warwulfv.

Lord Cidant.

Noble Salty Panda.

Noble Mild Fracas.

Noble Aclys.

Noble Shawn Plumley.

Noble CarlBaxter.

Noble WeirdWhirl.

Noble War God.

Noble Yeuromain.

Leave a rating or a review to help me rise to the top or fix my shameful understanding of prose.

Take a look over my blog where all information about the world of Rupegia will be posted.

Join the Discord and discuss, or rant, or meme, or try and fight me so your waifu gets more screentime.

Become a Patron and read chapters in advance, or read the side-stories, or leave your mark on the story, or help choose the next artwork or the next side-story.

Chapter 90: Release - Part 2

A note from Manasong

Attention: to conform to the limit of sexual content allowed in a novel, I've censored this chapter. You can look for the uncensored version here.

This time, there's a Chimera maid joining us in the bath. She's only wearing a transparent shawl on her head to show that she's a maid while her slender, aqua blue body is entirely exposed. She has a bony frill on her head, like a fan that moves according to her mood, and right now, it's wide open in what we assume is expectation.

With the issue of nudity not being a clear matter for the temple, and the elves being not-so-closeted perverts, there isn't an explicit law against nudity itself, so the Chimeras will be allowed to be as nude in public as they wish, and I'll even encourage the custom. If we can normalize public fucking, then that's even better.

We enter our tubs and get our bodies washed again, then the "fluffers" prepare Ciel, Osaria, and I.

The new maid is overeager, and she gets a bit too into it. She strokes me a tad too much, and I can just barely stop myself from jumping on her.

Her mouth hangs open as she stares at it, her red and long tongue peeking out, twitching as she salivates in yearning for something. Her face flushes, and the aqua blue of her skin starts to shift red.

She licks her lips, which pushes me over the edge. I pull her head towards me, and she doesn't resist the sudden movement at all, even bending over to reach it better.

As the Chimera maid works, I play with her bits, and Ciel tells Osaria about what I want them to do, then my milf smirks with delight.

Another maid hands them their sets of sexy sleeve gloves, stockings, and garter belts, all white and made with the delicate and stretchy Snow Weave.

Osaria observes as Ciel puts hers on, and we both notice how her thighs get tenderly squeezed by the hem of the stockings, giving her skin a slight bulge line.

She breathes in deeply, then grabs Ciel and takes her over to one of the beds. Osaria immediately pushes her down onto it and climbs on top of her.

Without giving Ciel a chance to utter even a single word, Osaria silences her with her tongue.

The Chimera maid swallows it all as she opens her yellow eyes wide in surprise, her vertical slits becoming oval, then she lets my cock go and awkwardly straightens herself out again once she's certain that I'm done.

"M-m-my L-Lord, I-I'm s-s-so-sor-… hngh!" She tries to apologize, but my fingers haven't stopped moving.

I stop playing with her and stand up, the dragonator still armed and ready. I smile gently at her and cup her cheek, which is a bit awkward since she's very tall, then I warmly console her, "I still have a lot of Blessings to give. Don't worry, and just enjoy what I gave to you."

She nods sheepishly, then I get out of my tub and join my thick goddesses. Their slits are lined up for me, but today, they aren't the focus, for Osaria will handle them. What I want right now is some juicy, bouncy ass.

The maids activate an enchantment in the bed, which slickens the floor underneath it, then they push it towards one of the bubbly pools.

It contacts the water, then sinks down just a bit, which allows the two defiled women to contact the magical water and be cleansed of the hallowed seed covering their bodies.

Considering how I'm the only weredragon in existence, my Blessings might actually be valuable.

"Yes, and there'll be a lot of women wanting to bear your children," Yunia comments and smiles wryly. She massages her fingers inside Roxanne, casually wringing out moans from her while pretending to not care.

I enter the hot bath with them and put Lina on my lap.

Alissa snuggles up to me and gives us a mischievous smile as she whispers, "I hadn't thought of that. The temple would definitely encourage you to spread your 'inheritance' as much as possible."

"Well, well, well. I guess I'll be breeding quite a lot of women in the future," I joke with a smirk.

"Spread the glory of your cock," Alissa adds, then rests her head against my shoulder.

Anton and Krysta join us for dinner. They aren't Rande's employees anymore, so he'll have to replace them, but he now has enough money to easily do that and much more.

I extend my hand to Anton for a handshake, and he hesitates. The sharp claws and scales seem threatening, even for someone with a hand as thick as his.

"No offense, but won't my hand get cut? Those look like dragon scales, and I know they can be very sharp," he worriedly asks, his permanent frown a bit deeper than usual.

Hana grabs my other arm and runs a finger along the sharp edge, but I've padded them all with a thin, transparent layer of flesh.

"Looks fine to me," she casually comments and shrugs.

He narrows his beady eyes at Hana, suspicious of her. "I know for a fact that your skin is tougher than mine," he grunts.

"Trust me, you won't get cut," I assure him and grin.

His suspicious eyes turn to me. "You never trust a dragonkin to not fuck with you, and you look awfully similar to one right now."

Hana laughs out loud and agrees, "Yeah, you've got that right!"

Krysta comes right up to me, then boldly grabs my hand and shakes it. She's confident because she knows that I wouldn't play a trick like that on her.

"Good to see you again, my Lord," she greets with a warm tone and grins.

"No need to call us 'Lord' in private," I casually reply and release her hand.

She chuckles softly and gently nods, then her monkey tail stops swaying, and her expression warps into one of concern. "Klein and Lina told us about what happened. We wish you well and hope that you can find a way to adapt to your 'condition.'"

I lift my hand and cover it with a thick, rubbery black glove. "Thank you. I'm working on it." Then I offer it to Anton.

He snorts and finally takes it, then I remove the glove, but keep it padded.

He feels it and grunts annoyedly, then quickly releases my hand. "I knew it," he grumbles.

Hana and I chuckle, then they greet Mimi. Klein was the only one who had the opportunity to talk to her when she was bought back, so they have a lot to catch up on.

We take our seats, and the twins join us for dinner, seemingly glad that Hukarere isn't here this time. They've been seen a few times near the mansion that the Chimeras are being housed in, so it seems that they aren't xenophobic, it's just that they're a tad more prudish than the average elf.

Anton smiles wistfully at Mimi while they chat and comments, "I didn't expect that we'd meet again so soon, or that it'd be inside a castle… or that Klein would want to become a knight…" -He frowns, and the wistfulness is gone, replaced by irony- "I should really stop having expectations."

"Nothing about our situation is normal. You should expect the unexpected," Mimi responds cryptically, then she cracks a smile, and they both chuckle.

After their discussion slows down somewhat, Hana is the one to make the offer.

"Krysta, how about you work for us as a chef?" Hana just blurts it all out immediately. Yunia wanted us to do it with a bit more tact since this is no simple offer. Working for a Lord is a big deal.

Krysta's eyes open wide, and she stammers, "M-me-me?" Then her mouth and tail both freeze in place.

Hana smirks and nods repeatedly. "We know how much of a good cook you are, and while we have trained elven chefs working for us, we lack someone who can make something truly imperial or sommerlande like you can."

A smile slowly blooms on Krysta's face, but she still can't speak.

Anton gives her a knowing look and snorts. "You'll be fine. They're the least 'Lord-like' Lords I've seen," he comments reassuringly, and his huge hand gently pats her back.

"I'll do it," she finally responds with a weak voice.

Hana grins like a little girl and shares a look with Mimi, who has a more subdued version of her expression. All the people they love are slowly coming back into their lives, so there's only a bright future ahead of them.

I start to feel a bit nostalgic as we eat. There's a spicy dish with not-tomato, not-eggplant, and not-carrot that reminds me of my past, so I take my time savoring it and try to guess at the spices.

I end up recognizing Tabasco sauce. It's very subtle, but I'm certain that it's something very similar to it. That spiciness is just so unique that it's difficult to ever really forget it.

I might talk to the chef that made it and get the recipe they used because I have no idea how to actually recreate it on my own.

Now that I've been reminded of spicy food from Earth, I feel like eating some Tex-Mex. I haven't seen nachos here yet, but I'm certain that we can recreate it.

After that, we part ways with Anton and Krysta, and we go down to the plaza in the inner circle, the same one where we greeted the skeleton crew that was taking care of the castle.

We have the new recruits of the Lordsguard and the Court, and the veteran knights to greet.

Salbotica and Sandoro are waiting for us on the balcony, and a strong spotlight is shining down on us, completely repelling the darkness of the night. The psychedelic moon is shining in the sky, but it's nowhere near enough to let them all see our faces.

We repeat our introductions in the same way as we did yesterday, though we decide to also include Osaria. As my Lady, it's important that they recognize and respect her. She won't have the same responsibilities as a Lord, but can still act in our stead.

"I'm Osaria Parado, first Lady of Wolf Ryder. We shall reach bliss through our commitment," she announces herself rather cryptically, in an uncharacteristically stern manner. Once the crowd starts moving to return the proper respects, she explains herself with a serious tone, "I'm not a fighter, but I'm fairly experienced in dealing with the common soldiers, and I won't have any mercy on those who slack off and endanger us."

I feel like slapping dat ass, but from my grin alone, she recognizes my approval.

Salbotica gets up from his chair and stops beside us. Once we direct our attention to him, he starts his report, "I see that you have enough men now to retake control, but Sir Sandoro suggested that we keep some of my men inside the castle until the chain of command is stable and the men are ready to serve."

"That's fine," I simply nod and agree. Yunia trusts Sandoro's judgment, and so shall I.

Salbotica salutes and leaves, then Sandoro comes forth.

"My Lords," he respectfully greets and lowers his head.

"Sir Sandoro, good work," I tersely praise him with a smile.

Yunia nods in agreement, and I let her continue, "We have a lot of preparations to make, so we're glad that we can leave the organization to you."

She looks at him kindly, and a few memories surface in her mind. Sandoro was devoted more to the Lordship than to Mavel himself, but he was one of Mavel's most reliable officers. In his pledge of loyalty, he stated his belief that Lords deserve all the support they need, for it's certain that it'll benefit civilization as a whole. He seems like a man more concerned with practicality than tradition, and I sincerely respect that.

He raises his head and puffs up his chest as he salutes vigorously. "Thank you, my Lords," he replies coolly.

Though he may be a good man, there's something that I'm very curious about, "Sir Sandoro, there's something I must ask you. Why did you volunteer? I fought you, and we almost killed each other, not to mention that I helped kill your Lord, Yulania's father."

He barely even takes a breath before he responds, "Forgive me for my insolence, but why is Lord Yulania beside you, when, as you just said, you helped kill her father?"

Yulania frowns, and the gentle smile gracing her beautiful face fades, leaving her only with a cold expression.

Most elves might answer that with something implying that she's a traitor to her family, but with everything she went through and how well she prepared the twins for the worst, I'd put a sword in anyone who'd dare to say that, though I would [Heal] them afterward.

"Be it Wolf or anyone else, it doesn't matter who participated in their deaths; we all knew that it was all just a matter of time," Yunia replies with a sad tone, though she doesn't let it show on her face.

Sandoro nods gently, and for a moment, he seems like he's about to cry, then he controls himself and continues, "Yes, we knew. I'm sorry for your loss, and I beg for your forgiveness for not being able to protect them, but we were never going to win against the Elder Council."

Yunia turns to me, and I grab her hand and rub it lovingly. Her blue eyes stare into mine, and we find comfort in each other. Our first meeting was… awkward and a bit confusing to say the least, but we welcomed her into the harem, and everyone kept their minds open, allowing her to find her place among us.

We've reached a level of mutual trust that's so important for this harem to properly function that none of us will ever consider jeopardizing it. What happened between us in the past just doesn't matter anymore.

She lets her genuine smile come out and confesses her feelings, "I'm here now because I know that Wolf will help me reclaim my family's lost glory, and it's the least I could do for them. But I'm also here because I love him… and the sister-wives."

I notice the recruits slow down, curious about what's happening. To outsiders, it's certainly a striking scene to see her acting so lovey-dovey with me. An elf and a… "draconic human" would certainly raise eyebrows among most elves.

Sandoro takes a step forward, and we turn our attention back to him. He keeps a hold of himself to not let his emotions appear on his face, but his tone is full of respect, "I'm here because I'm fascinated by his strength and inconceivable growth." -He scans over everyone around us, then he turns his gaze to the ships floating near the outer wall. Even now, we can see small lights from the spirits and Spirit mages working- "Not only that, but I also believe that there must be something special about all of you. You don't attract so many allies like these by being a wicked person."

I raise an eyebrow and smirk as I jokingly question, "What makes you think that I'm not working for Confiel?"

He snorts softly and readjusts his tight shirt gracefully. "Lord Yulania is too smart to ever let herself be manipulated like that," he responds confidently.

Yunia smiles wryly and nods respectfully. "Thank you."

He returns the nod, and we both turn our eyes to the Lordsguard. I feel a bit nostalgic looking at all these races willing to serve us, but the number of elves here seems a bit low. It's not a problem, and it won't become one because of how we'll be changing the High Forest.

Yunia feels the same as I do, and it causes our minds to sync, then our wills become one.

She opens her delicate mouth and confesses our aspirations, "There are nowhere near as many elves in the Lordsguard as there were during Mavel's rule, but one day, that will change. Arreira's will lives within us, and we will make the High Forest change, force them to take a step forward."

"Father… you never believed him?" Arturus questions meekly.

Yunia and I turn our heads in sync towards the twins, and Yunia shakes her head gently, making her drills bounce.

"About the Elder Council? About elven exceptionalism? No, I never did…" She replies bitterly, then she lets out a sigh. "It's ironic because he had even sent me as far as Dyrmorder to see how far 'ahead' our elven civilization was, but it had the opposite effect. I couldn't see what he saw, not in the way he wanted me to."

Antares glances at me. He sees my horns, my tail, my sword. We seem to be about the same age, and I dare say that I'm just as cute as he is, but I can't say that I know what he's thinking. Yunia would likely guess that the twins envy me.

"'Hubris in a leader will lead all to ruin,'" Lina suddenly cites the God of the Sun, her small voice both striking and devoid of shyness.

Sandoro smiles bitterly at her and nods. "Yes. We all just hoped to survive the ordeal to live another day," he mutters, his eyes filled with guilt.

But Lina is still not done. She had been quiet so far, but the elven disdain for outsiders is starting to get to her. "All civilizations ebb and flow. Each time they do, they reach further forward, but there's always a step back. The High Forest is one of the richest nations we know about, but right now, they aren't ebbing and flowing, they're stagnating."

She frowns and looks towards the gatehouse, where the rest of the elves are comfortably going to sleep in their warm and well-crafted beds.

"The High Forest was once on the brink of destruction with their only God-Ruler too weak and tired to hold back the horde of monsters, until the other God-Rulers united and killed Ender; the wereowls once ruled the realm, uniting all races under their banner, but now they've locked themselves in their gray towers, almost forgotten by everyone else; the dragonkin were the strongest nation before Ajax conquered them, and he won with a battle in an open field, showing everyone that race means nothing in face of real power; Bestiaram, once a united and prosperous continent, was reduced to a land full of barbarians, but they actually managed to unite once again to push Avgi off their land; and the Merfolk were the last race to build a proper civilization, contented with just being roving tribes until Kiki-Aaa united them and conquered the northern seas, founding their first great kingdom."

She turns her determined eyes towards Sandoro, who understands her intentions and nods appreciatively, then she stares at the twins to convince them of her words.

"Unity is our strength. Isolationism leads to decay," she states.

"Even monsters unite to kill humanoids," Aoi adds, and her fearsome double voice shakes the twins.

They glumly nod, then turn towards the Lordsguard.

Arreira was right, the Elder Council was right, Confiel was right, and Mavel was wrong. The High Forest needs to change to keep its position, or else it'll eventually be overtaken.

We remain silent as the Lordsguard finishes paying their respects soon after that, then Sandoro bows and excuses himself, "I must take my leave, my Lords. Sleep well knowing that your Lordsguard will stand beside you no matter where you go."

"Then we'll be in your care," Yunia replies kindly and smiles.

After that, we go down into the plaza to meet the knights, and they all kneel before us. There are over twenty-five of them here, but there were nearly one hundred families working for Mavel before, so this is a low number in comparison.

It'll take me a while to memorize their names and faces, but Yunia will help me with that.

"Rise, my knights," I order, and they immediately obey.

Their demeanor is calm, their eyes are sharp, and their actions are brimming with confidence. They're men and women we can trust with any task, just like Sandoro.

Yunia provides the appropriate words in my mind, and I say them aloud with a stern and commanding tone, "You'll all be sworn officially during the Lordship ceremony, but you're still to act as befitting our knights until then. We're still building our retinue, so you're expected to work for two until we've stabilized our position, understood?"

"Yes, my Lord," they all respond in unison.

I grin with pride. The Lordsguard will shield us, and these knights of ours will carve a path so that we may strike at the heart of our enemies.

A note from Manasong

Hall of Fame of Patrons

The patrons who support Rupegia shall have their names sung by the bards for they deserve the glory and honor. Their names are:

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Chapter 90: Release - Part 3

A note from Manasong

I'll change to blue tables later... I have to fix the macros that do it for me.

Attention: to conform to the limit of mature content (more than just sexual content) allowed in a novel, I've censored this chapter. You can look for the uncensored version here.

We have no tasks for the knights right now, so we dismiss them and retire to our rooms.

I let myself drop onto the bed, and Hana drops down beside me. Aoi turns into a human and drops on my other side, then we all sigh together.

"What a day…" I mumble, then I turn my head to the side so that I can gaze at Aoi's slender and delicate bare body. Hana is feeling competitive, so she attempts to grab my attention, but so do the rest of my women, forcing me to give each of them my "attention".

After going a round with each of the thirsty women, with Hana requiring intense wrestling so that just one round is enough for her, they release my dragonator and let me go.

I get up from the bed, feeling oddly refreshed after so much action instead of tired, and join Yunia on the balcony.

Once night falls here, the Eia farms start their production of their pills, adding to the natural mist that the Eia plant produces, and the whole town gets covered in mist. This could be considered pollution, so perhaps we should introduce laws to curb it a bit, or maybe make the town's Shell impervious to the mist so that it doesn't seep in through the cracks.

The fact that Escanso produces more Weaverism mages than any other elven town would make that measure a bit hard to actually implement. Everyone living here likes the mist, and there are no obvious health hazards from exposure to it, so eh, whatever.

Yunia smiles faintly, with Gify on her shoulder, and her eyes on the small points of light evenly spaced all around the Shell, where our Lordsguard patrol the dark bark walls to keep us safe.

I probe her heart and feel a fresh breeze come through our connection, as if it had just wafted from a bath and was oozing with revitalizing perfume. She's happy, content, and hopeful. A combination that hadn't bloomed in her heart for quite a while.

I stop beside her, and she wraps an arm around my shoulder, then pulls in my head against the side of her chest while making sure that my horns don't smack her in the face. I lean against her, hug her waist with my tail, cross my arms, and close my eyes.

"We did it," she whispers with a dreamy tone.

"Yes, we did," I answer lazily as her fingers run through my hair, my mind being drawn away by sleepiness even though I'd just felt energetic a moment ago. It seems that my draconic side makes it quite easy for me to swing my mood around.

We sigh softly in sync, then a rush of emotions wells up within me, waking me up from my drowsiness.

I raise my head, then we gaze at each other. Her striking blue eyes look as soft as Ciel's, though the cold mask she so often uses is hidden just under the surface, ever ready to be worn again.

Through her eyes, I see my own, and I do have a sort of "wild" look that's reminiscent of Hana and Aoi, though the cuteness of my young face is still clearly visible, just slightly obscured by my other features.

She lowers her face to mine, and our lips touch, then depart a second later. Just a gentle caress, a light and brief show of love that's full of meaning.

The emotions rush through my head, and I blurt it out, "Yulania, will you marry me?"

"Yes," she breathes without any hesitation.

We stare at each other for a moment as we process what we just said, then our lips touch again, this time with a lot more passion.

I get on my tiptoes-… tipclaws? Tip-padded-claws to make it easier on her back, and she chuckles with my tongue in her mouth, then we end it soon after, but continue hugging.

I should've asked her to marry me a while ago. I was worried that I was pushing her too hard to accept me, but looking back, it feels a bit silly. It's natural in this world for two people who love each other to get married. My Earthling sensibilities got in the way once again.

I sigh and prepare myself again. This wasn't the only thing that we needed to talk about.

I poke the girls to wake them up from their mild, pleasure-induced coma, and before long, everyone joins us on the balcony.

Osaria and Klein have a curious look on their faces, unaware of the feelings being transmitted through [Bind], while the rest of the girls smile expectantly. Even the golems, our ever present guardians, approach to listen.

I send a look to Gify, still on Yunia's shoulder, then she uncurls and stands up on her stubby legs to listen properly.

Alissa has a pretty good idea about what I want to say, so she freezes up as fear takes hold of her heart. While she's unable to stop or interrupt me, I'll take this chance and just do it.

I clear my throat, and start my speech, "We started this quest to conquer a dungeon just to fulfill one of the 'duties' that Alissa accepted when she became a Blood Slave: to help me achieve great deeds. But we eventually realized that becoming a 'True Noble' would only benefit us, so while the purpose changed, the goal stayed the same."

The girls nod in agreement. It's clear that conquering the dungeon, Legado, was the best decision we've made so far.

"Now, we've all acquire that Title, officially becoming nobility, though some of you are still slaves, and that's incompatible with the title of 'True Noble,' it's incompatible with the title of Lords, and it's incompatible with the title of 'my wife.'"

Roxanne and Ciel grin, knowing what's about to come.

I grin, brimming with happiness, then puff up my chest full of pride and announce, "Therefore, I release you all from service. You're all Crown Lords of the Western High Forest, and you shall rule beside me as my fiancées until our marriage ceremony makes our union official."

I feel like three ribbons are cut inside me, leaving behind a minor wound in my heart. Our Fate bonds made through slavery are now gone, though our Threads are still completely entwined, just in a different way.

After that small shock, which we quickly recover from, Alissa leaps into my arms, and I hug her tightly to calm her down. Her eyes water, and she whines softly in a mix of fear and happiness.

For most of her life, Alissa considered herself a slave, so now she needs to find a new purpose to live for. She's scared, feeling overwhelmed due to the sudden freedom she now has, but it's not like she was chained to my existence before. We're just madly in love, if perhaps a bit "too madly," and the happiness from now being able to stand beside me instead of behind is making her blood rush to her head.

Lina hugs us a moment later, smothering herself in Alissa's fluffy tail. She's also a bit overwhelmed, but she isn't anywhere near as scared as Alissa is.

Lina stopped feeling like a slave a long time ago. She hasn't even worn her choker with her slave tag since we woke up from the trials because she's been slowly preparing herself for freedom. She wanted to be free again, but it had already reached a point at which, for her, it was just a symbolic gesture, though she wanted this moment to happen nonetheless.

It's not like this was unexpected, though. They always knew this day would come; Alissa just forgot since she had many other, more pressing, concerns to occupy her mind.

Hana doesn't care about whether she's a slave or not. She actually prefers the title of Blood Slave than Crown Lord because she thinks it sounds cooler.

Roxanne is the first of the others to join in the hug, followed by Ciel, then it really turns into a group hug with everyone.

"I love how everyone is so cuddly!" Osaria happily exclaims.

"We've all been corrupted by Wolf's touch. It's as addictive as a drug," Ciel jokes and smiles wryly.

"'Corrupted' is too perverted. This harem has changed us, and for the better," Yunia coolly states.

It'd be nice to be able to breathe, though.

The girls back off a little, and Hana pulls Lina up so that she doesn't pass out, then she sets the little dwarf on her shoulder.

Roxanne claps the tips of her fingers in excitement. "Now you're all my wives!" She exclaims and giggles girlishly.

"You'll always be the slave," Yunia taunts with a perfectly gentle smile, which contrasts against her words.

"You'll always be under Wolf's foot, taking it up the ass," Roxanne shoots back, which makes her feel nostalgic since it seems like it's been a while since they last bantered like this.

Yunia smiles smugly. "That's still above you," she states snobbishly.

Roxanne grins evilly. "Tough talk for someone within flower-fingering distance."

Before Yunia can even process her words, Roxanne's dagger-tail's blade rubs gently against Yunia's womanly lips, which is only protected by a very thin layer of clothing.

Yunia feels a chill run along her spine, now perfectly understanding Roxanne's implication, and nearly resorts to using [Mask] because of the surprise.

She quickly recovers and retorts angrily, "Tough talk from someone who had so much with my fingers!"

Roxanne starts giggling because she knows that she startled Yunia, so she one-sidedly claims victory for herself in this battle of banter.

Alissa chuckles and sniffles then dries the corner of her eyes. "I love you all," she whispers.

"Awn…" Klein whines softly and sniffles too.

Alissa turns around and spills her heart out, "I truly do. Nothing would be the same without all of you in our lives. You all help us so much, even if you weren't there with us all the time," -she sends a glance to Klein and Osaria- "and even if you weren't as human as you wanted to be," -She sends a glance to Ted and Suzy- "you're all an important part of this family."

Klein sniffles again and blurts out, "Thank you for having me, for allowing me to be here, even though I haven't committed myself to the harem."

"You'll always have a place here, regardless of who you choose," I reassure her with a serene tone. I don't need to have every woman in the world all for myself, but I'll treasure those who decide to stay around, regardless.

Klein nods repeatedly and dries her tears.

Roxanne pulls out some alcohol, and we have a quick drink under the moonlight to calm our nerves, then we all drift off to sleep in a pile of limbs.

Today is the 5th.

Alissa, Hana, and Yunia's "Blood Slave" entries in our "Affiliations" are gone, but Lina's will remain there until we submit some paperwork declaring her a free woman. Also, Mimi's entry is in there now, which I hadn't paid attention to yesterday.

The paperwork has been processed, and we've all gained the titles "Lord of Escanso" and "Crown Lord of the Western High Forest." If anyone doubts that we're Lords after this, we'd just need an Inspection Crystal to verify our identities.

I remember that Mavel had the title "Protector of the Last Crown," so we still have to be recognized for that, too. It's kind of convenient that Arreira's crown is in our treasury, though.

My [Mana Body], [Soul Manipulation], and [Dragon Transformation] increased by 1 (now 2, 8, and 2).

Alissa increased her [Illusion Magic] by 1 (now 5+10).

Hana increased her [Spear Use] by 1 (now 3+17), and her [Tatesomu Style] by 1 (now 2+8).

Anton and Krysta join us for breakfast, but not Mimi. She sent us a note through a maid telling us that she already ate and that she's in the office, working.

The note also contains a list of names, their occupations, and the very large word "EMBEZZLEMENT."

The knights' houses all have enchantments for instant communication, so we activate them to summon everyone. They won't assemble instantly, though, so at least there's enough time for us to finish our meal.

"Wolf," Anton calls for my attention, his voice sounding completely serious. "I'm still 'young,' and I can fight, so I wish to help my daughter with whatever job you give her."

"That's fine by me. Pass by the armory and get a suit of armor for yourself," I casually reply, then I give him a brief grin and continue eating my toast.

He freezes for a moment, then he shares a look with Klein, who just shrugs, so he snorts once and accepts, "Thank you, Wolf."

A full suit of elven armor is the uniform of the Lordsguard, so we have tons of them to spare.

I'm considering giving him a set of Bastión armor once we start spreading [Equipment System] to the rest of the world. It'll be flashy, and some of the knights might get jealous, but I don't care. I just want him to stay alive as long as possible.

After our meal, Yunia visits Caruso.

The dungeon is a dark, damp, claustrophobic, and uncomfortably cold place. Spending a night down there is nothing for races like dwarves or dragonkin, though the dwarves would complain about dampness, but for elves, it's a horrible experience.

Yunia stops in front of his cell and glares through the bars. The rough, thick blanket stirs, then the old man's face pops out from underneath it.

He looks Yunia in the eye, then recognition dawns on his face.

"Dame Yulania!" He shouts happily, then he jumps out of his bed and falls on his knees before the bars.

He looks up at her full of hope and happiness, but they're all almost immediately replaced with fear when he notices her glare.

She produces an Identification Crystal and activates it, then makes sure that only the pertinent title can be seen on the tablet and hands it to him.

He accepts it with shaky hands, then his face pales, and fear becomes despair. Even his long elven ears go limp from the immense shame he's feeling now.

He starts begging with a croaky voice, "Forgiveness, my Lord, I just-…"

"Just insulted my fiance, who's not only your Lord, but also the one person who can remove you from your position at the whim of a breeze," she interrupts him, not bothering to conceal the anger in her tone.

"Your father-…" He tries again, but Yunia is so sick of his kind.

She scowls, wrinkling her nose in disdain as she lashes out, "My father is dead, and we are the new Lords. I don't want to hear another word from you, just do your job. You're lucky that we can't replace you so easily…"

She takes back the tablet with an instant-cast [Telekinesis], then immediately struts away, her heels clacking loudly against the damp stone floor.

Caruso was a fool, but what we did to him is just a small, calculated step past the limit of what elves would consider "acceptable." It wasn't anything illegal since he was appointed directly by the Lordship, so it's within our rights to imprison him for insubordination, but others will see us as rather "brutal."

It's not like we reveled in punishing him; it's about sending a message. If others try to defy us like he did, they know that we won't hold back. During this chaotic period where our power base is still stabilizing, we can't afford to hold back.

Meanwhile, Osaria, Klein, Anton, and I meet up with the knights in the main hall. We also take our veteran Space mages with us because they have the [Gate] coordinates for where the knights need to go.

They're all either melee warriors or hybrids, with a few archers sprinkled in and the rare unorthodox mage with an odd fighting style. All in all, not that different from imperial knights, except that everyone has [Bow Use] and a bit of [Weaverism] to help coordinate while imperials would have [Riding] and [Ritualism].

First, I approach the oldest of the knights. Yunia describes him as a very even-tempered man with just a dash of sadism mixed in. He seems to enjoy blood-sports a bit too much, but he's reliable, nonetheless. It would be hard for him to grow flowers in his beard if he was too violent.

['Soul Info']

[Name: Azador Curol | Race: Golden Elf]

[Level: 64 | HP: 100/100 | MP: 2,205 | Magic Power: 450]

[Strength: 18 | Endurance: 20]

I wouldn't know which type of elf he is without [Sense Soul]. His head and beard hair is such a pure white that I would bet a noblewoman would pay gold for a wig made from his hair. The flowers in his beard are blood red, making him seem a bit creepy, though.

I use a perfectly collected and stern tone to announce my orders, "Sir Azador. Here's a list of criminals that must be arrested." -I hand him Mimi's note- "We expect them to have all fled already, but we must seize their homes and belongings and then search everything for more evidence.

"Take three other knights with you and a dozen Lordsguard, then spread out and start the seizures."

"Yes, my Lord," he responds with a hoarse voice as he nods, his expression like a mask of steel, then he turns around. His eyes scan over the knights and meet three other older men like him.

They all grin at each other and wordlessly walk away from the group, then they strut out of the castle together.

Next, I go for a mature elven female archer. She has high cheekbones, juicy lips, short silver hair, and gentle but alluring red eyes that make me want to have her step on me.

['Soul Info']

[Name: Enomosa Ludoe | Race: Silver Elf]

[Level: 55 | HP: 100/100 | MP: 1,710 | Magic Power: 805]

[Strength: 17 | Endurance: 16]

Yunia says that she's pretty chaste, though she seems to get more enjoyment from having men and women chase after her rather than actually doing any of them. Yunia doesn't trust anyone else to be able to resist being seduced by Osaria, so she's our best choice to escort the predator.

My milf won't sleep with anyone I haven't slept with first, but it's best to not let the tension get in the way of their duties.

"Dame Enomosa, you'll take Signeur Caruso, who is currently being housed in our dungeon, then escort him and Osaria to his Eia farm. You're to collect their book of finances or steal it if they refuse.

"Take as many Lordsguard with you as needed to ensure your safety; we had a confrontation yesterday and had to kidnap Caruso, so they could still be hostile."

"Understood, my Lord," she replies with a voice that sends tingles through my cock, then she turns to Osaria, "Please come with me, Lady Osaria."

Goddamn elves and their higher than average "Charisma."

Osaria nods happily, and they leave together.

Then I turn to the largest elf that I've ever seen. He's so big and muscular that if it wasn't for his long ears and golden hair, I'd have taken him for a descendant of a wereape or dragonkin.

['Soul Info']

[Name: Palo Orir | Race: Golden Elf]

[Level: 51 | HP: 100/100 | MP: 1,305 | Magic Power: 245]

[Strength: 26 | Endurance: 17]

His "Endurance" leaves much to be desired, though.

He's rather young and dashing, the sort of man that would make an appearance as the "alpha" in ladies' eroticas. I'll never let him escort any of my women, though, because Godsdamnit, his "Charisma" is ridiculous, and he's famous for doing any hole that presents itself to him. Not that he'd be dumb enough to make a move on my women, I just instinctively dislike his smirk.

Yunia says that he's the best "muscle-type" she has ever seen, so we'd better make use of him.

"Sir Palo, take the rest of the knights and divide them into squads, then complement your numbers with a few of the lower-level Lordsguard." -I hand him the list that the Guildmaster of the hunter's guild gave to Osaria- "Your job is to prune the monsters in these dungeons. We need the flow of monster parts to return to the Western High Forest to improve our income, so this is a very important job."

"Yes, my Lord!" He exclaims, brimming with pride.

At least he's the loyal type.

The knights leave the main hall in an orderly fashion, their elven armor padded in all the right spots to reduce the noise of their movements as much as possible, and the Space mages follow them out, all but one.

I look back to Klein and Anton. They won't be going with Palo, at least not this time.

"Klein, Anton. I want you to take a few veteran Lordsguard to complete your squad, then go to the Orreto Pirales dungeon and level up as fast as you can. You need more power to stand as equals among the other knights, and I don't want them to look down on you just because you're close to me."

Klein salutes and nods energetically. "Yes, my Wo-L-W-Lo… my Lord!" She shouts, then blushes in embarrassment.

Anton smiles wryly and gently nods. "I understand, my Lord. We'll honor the trust you've placed in us," he politely responds, his permanent frown softer than usual.

I motion to the last Space mage, and he follows the pair out as they leave the hall.

Things are progressing well, and our situation is quickly stabilizing. It won't be long before we can truly say that we have our territory firmly under our control.

There's no need for anything that may require my presence anymore for today, so I'll stay inside the castle until the Lordship ceremony. I have preparations to make.

A note from Manasong

Hall of Fame of Patrons

The patrons who support Rupegia shall have their names sung by the bards for they deserve the glory and honor. Their names are:

Prince PreownedFIN.

Prince Creamy Spinach.

Lord Andrew Meyers.

Lord Samuel Lim.

Lord Bill.

Lord Novgarod.

Lord Ashadun.

Lord Michale Erwin.

Lord Bakerdea.

Lord Nathan Vanbrunt.

Lord Maurice.

Lord Empyrean.

Lord Mattirro Draca.

Lord Joshua Tal.

Lord Colorblind.

Lord RottenTangerine.

Lord Fullmoon.

Lord Joxsan Herrera.

Lord Sean Drake.

Lord EESDESESESRDT.

Lord Brody Haugan.

Lord FrostyCube.

Lord Mike Bartter.

Lord Cardinal Steiner.

Lord Krawn.

Lord Warwulfv.

Lord Cidant.

Noble Salty Panda.

Noble Mild Fracas.

Noble Aclys.

Noble Shawn Plumley.

Noble CarlBaxter.

Noble WeirdWhirl.

Noble War God.

Noble Yeuromain.

Noble Jorge Franco.

Leave a rating or a review to help me rise to the top or fix my shameful understanding of prose.

Take a look over my blog where all information about the world of Rupegia will be posted.

Join the Discord and discuss, or rant, or meme, or try and fight me so your waifu gets more screentime.

Become a Patron and read chapters in advance, or read the side-stories, or leave your mark on the story, or help choose the next artwork or the next side-story.

Chapter 91: Preparations - Part 1

A note from Manasong

Attention: to conform to the limit of sexual content allowed in a novel, I've censored this chapter. You can look for the uncensored version here.

Ciel goes to meet the Head Priestess of Escanso once again. She takes a more tough-looking scribe with her this time because the last one had been sweating cold during the whole talk, which couldn't have been healthy for the poor old elf's heart.

She encounters Oritiki along the way, and the two women smile wryly at each other. It seems that Hihiriwa isn't coming today, citing some vague "indisposition."

"[Ready for another round]?" Oritiki questions bemusedly in Reo, her long cow snout warped in a smirk.

Ciel sighs and gingerly massages one of her temples, forecasting a headache from the rain of complaints that will soon shower down upon her. "[No, but it wouldn't change anything if I were]."

They both snort and continue on, then they meet with the Chimeric translator waiting outside the dining hall, who's clearly too scared to go in alone. The nobleman immediately stands up straight and recomposes himself when he notices them, then gives them a stiff greeting, which they politely return.

Ciel and Oritiki look at each other, then they both breathe in to gather their courage and open the double doors to the dining hall.

Inside, they see a wide and tall elven room that's completely bare, except for a long table positioned near the glass wall that faces out onto the back garden of the mansion.

A witc-… delightful old woman is seated at the end of the table. Her gray and silvery hair tied into a tight bun; her back perfectly straight; her chest so still that it's almost as if she isn't breathing, and Ciel even wanted that to be so for a split second; her mean glare set upon the back garden, the poor plants struggling to survive under the pressure pouring from her; and her hands gently laid upon her lap but never too far from the sword at her waist.

The ex-Punisher is a very kind and gentle woman that deserves the nickname of "Nai," which means "mother" in ancient Ingua. That is, until she finds some HERESY, then she dons the black Templar garb again and starts purging.

Thankfully, she isn't wearing her Templar armor, showing restraint that's seldom seen in the Punishers. She also doesn't personally need the armor because she can always call upon the Punishers at any moment. She's wearing only a simple black priest robe with a white stripe on the shoulders and the sides of her skirt, signifying her rank, and a yellow embroidery of the dawn, a holy symbol for the temple. Though it's simple, many priests would complain that she isn't wearing her uniform.

She turns her wrinkled face to meet the pair, and they give her strained smiles in return.

"Good morning, 'Nai' Teresina," Ciel greets her politely, and Oritiki repeats the greeting, though with a heavy accent.

"Good morning. You're late," Teresina's stern and hoarse voice greets back coldly.

With a stiff smile, they sit at each side of Teresina, and the scribe sits beside Ciel, glad that he isn't too close to the… mean old lady. The seat at the end of the table should've been Ciel's, but since she's "late," the old ha-… strict Head Priestess stol-… for some reason, decided to take it for herself.

Teresina pushes some scrolls forward, all written with art-gallery worthy calligraphy. "The calculations have been completed. The predicted cost of living for the average Chimera is higher than what the lowest class can afford," she states and waits for the translator to do his job. "This situation is not acceptable."

The Tribunal is slow to act, but the temple complements them in this aspect by having strong and decisive leadership, exemplified by Teresina.

Oritiki takes a cursory look through the calculations and hums in agreement. "[In Rangatuhinga, we had staple crops that we focused our research on to increase their yield. This gave the poor a chance to live well, which resulted in increased production of goods and a higher return on the investment through taxes]," she advises, then both her and Teresina's gazes fall upon Ciel.

The chocolate angel smiles kindly, barely affected by their combined pressure, and calmly states, "We'll instruct the Spirit mages to research a cheaper [Materialize] as fast as possible. We have Arreira's notes on the spell, but he was focused on a faithful recreation of the body while being aided by Preservation Beds and dungeon infrastructure, so the Lordship can't help directly with this situation.

"Since the mana of the court and hired mages is insufficient, we'll have to institute a rationing of [Materialization] until we have enough."

Teresina's thin lips curl upwards so subtly that only Alissa manages to notice it through Holly's eyes. "The temple can teleport in Spirit mages to assist immediately, but we're currently constrained by the limit on combat-trained personnel that has been imposed upon us," Teresina not-so-subtly reveals her agenda.

"Consider that limit lifted…" Ciel immediately announces, then makes a brief dramatic pause, "on all of the Western High Forest."

This will make some of the Lords angry, but it's all according to keikaku.

Teresina leans back in her chair ever so slightly, appeased by Ciel's words, and even the scribe hesitates for a second in writing that down. Oritiki has no idea of the implications, so she just remains neutral.

"We won't pay for the Spirit priests, though," Ciel adds with a cheeky smile, and Teresina's arm muscles flex in annoyance for a moment.

"We'll just consider it training for their future. The Chimera spirits won't be the only ones that want to be land-bound after death," she gives in without arguing.

"[The Chimera need their senses more than strength or physical stability. Their lives will be miserable otherwise]," Oritiki changes the topic, and Teresina nods once solemnly.

"Of course. If they're to act as subjects, then they must live like subjects," she concurs completely.

They start discussing the details of the Chimeric lifestyle and their needs, brainstorming about the shortcomings and differences between that and the spirit lifestyle that they'll have to adapt to.

Once they start talking about the individual interviews the priests had with the Chimeras, Teresina turns her eyes to Ciel and gives her a suspicious look. "I heard something about 'Arreira's royal legacy.' Do you mind explaining what that's about?" Teresina questions Ciel with a tone that leaves no room for escape.

Ciel doesn't need our assistance in this matter, for she had a lot of experience with it back in Rabanara. "This is a matter of political maneuvering between Lords and the Council," she composedly answers, then uses Yunia's knowledge of [Acting] to make her face appear emotionless. "Don't overstep," she cautions Teresina with a flat tone.

The two of them glare at each other for a long moment, then the hag-… Godsdamnit Ciel, I'm allowed to swear inside my own head… Then the incredibly arrogant old woman gives the most imperceptible of nods.

Ciel whispers something to the scribe, then he pulls out a pair of delicate elven scissors that he uses to cut the scroll to excise the part where they started talking about the legacy.

Ciel receives the offending section of the scroll and incinerates it to nothing with [Fireball].

"I'd like to meet Lord Ryder. I understand his 'condition,' but his 'Piety' needs to be ascertained," Teresina requests with an unusual degree of politeness.

"We're preparing to deal with unruly Lords during the ceremony, so as long as it's brief then that should be fine," Ciel responds, returning the kindness.

"I just want to ask a few questions to understand his personality."

"That's perfectly acceptable."

Then they both nod at each other, but Teresina isn't done just yet.

"I've also heard rumors about a gigantic cloud coming out of the forest and flying away towards the sky. This supposedly happened sometime before your ships were first seen," she states accusingly, without any of her previous politeness.

Ciel's smile gets contaminated by Roxanne's smugness, which subtly angers Teresina before Ciel can slap the naughty succubus away. "So have we, Head Priestess," Ciel comments noncommittally and leaves it at that.

Teresina's mask breaks, and she sighs as she shakes her head tiredly, then motions for the scribe to continue his job.

"She's as attractive as Shala, so maybe you should try to seduce her to soften her up," Alissa suggests through [Bind].

"It's been my experience that people get cranky when they aren't pounded regularly," Hana adds, and I feel her smirk inside my head.

"Her face is beautiful, but her personality is ugly," I annoyedly respond, but then my draconic side starts to fantasize about dominating an ex-Punisher, quickly warming me up to the idea. "Fucking hell…" I get surprised at my own degeneracy.

Ciel's conversation continues, but they aren't talking about anything deadly serious anymore, so I just tune it out.

Meanwhile, Yunia meets up with the regent mayor. They need to talk about building the air dock so that our ships can get proper maintenance since they don't have anywhere safe to land in the whole High Forest.

We also have to build one for our personal ship, so it'd be a good idea to listen in, but I also have to continue my training, so I ignore them after I stop Yunia from letting the mayor kiss her feet. He's a filthy simp for Yunia, and only I am allowed to savor her delicious toes, so at most, he's allowed to kiss the dirt she stepped on.

Now that I've started thinking about that, Lina's cute little feet happily dangling from her chair catch my attention, making me salivate. She's so focused on her enchanting that she doesn't even notice my feelings.

As a small dragon, I walk under her table and lie in wait until she stops swinging them, then I lick their soles with my long, slick, draconic tongue.

"HII~!" She squeaks adorably in surprise and jumps up onto her chair.

She looks down under the table and frowns at my toothy grin, then lowers herself back into her seat and offers her feet to me.

"Don't scare me like that…" She pleads with a pouty tone, then resumes her work.

I lick her feet to my heart's content, but I can't use my claws on myself, so I create a "helper." It's difficult to use [Soul Manipulation] while in my dragon form, so this is training! Really! It's still training even if I'm deriving some amount of pleasure from it!

Aoi shrinks down to her small size then gives me a "hand," or, in her case, a long, slick tongue, but that defeats the purpose of the training, so it's only for a short time.

Alissa talks with Shala to help organize the maids; Hana joins Sandoro and helps train the Lordsguard; Roxanne continues her [Alchemy] research, and though she has a whole lab available for her use, it doesn't have a blast-resistant and hermetically sealed workbench, so no upgrades there, unfortunately; Lina works on the enchanting lab, focusing on helping the Chimera now that our armor is fully enchanted; Aoi helps me and "helps me" with [Dragon Transformation] since she has more experience with this type of skill and Alissa because is busy; Gify takes residence in one of the gardens on the higher levels and starts redecorating it to her tastes; and the golems help Mimi with the paperwork, being great pen-pushers.

I want to find out what the golems learned from Arreira, read his notes on [Golemancy] and memories, and continue researching [Sense Soul] and [Redirect Mana], but there's so much work to be done that these things will have to wait for a long time…

My current training goal is to get comfortable with this form. Getting used to being quadrupedal and having wings isn't the same as using [Soul Manipulation], so I don't have a lot of transferable knowledge to use for this. Aoi's experience with using dragon wings to fly is very useful, though.

My biggest problem right now is controlling my urges. Dragons are very impulsive, so keeping myself from mounting small-Aoi is a training exercise by itself. She's really fucking sexy to dragon-me.

To avoid annoying Lina further, we leave the enchanting room and go to Gify's.

The little griffin is filtering the air for pollen and seeds to get the plants she wants to grow, then she'll activate the [Grow] enchantments to get them to bloom immediately. She's also partially covering the glass ceiling with vines, leaves, and roots, leaving half of the room in darkness, which creates the perfect environment for the luminescent plants that grow on the bark of the High Trees.

I play around with Aoi a bit, running around and trampling through the plants while we play tag, but Gify doesn't care. She'll even do it herself every once in a while because that's just how nature is.

I tire out quickly since I'm not used to this form yet, and Gify takes my place.

The cute little griffin and the beautiful miniature blue dragon play around, enjoying racing against each other as they lap through the room. Even Gify can get tired out from running, so unless she teleports, Aoi has a chance to win.

Then, right when they're about to cross the finish line, I hear the cute sound. *Pop*, *pop*. The cheeky bastard teleports and stands in front of Aoi with a smug, victorious look.

Aoi breathes in, and Gify *pop*s away just in time, then Aoi releases her fire breath and sets fire to a large patch of the room, right where Gify was a moment ago.

"Gihihihihih!" Gify's mischievous laugh resounds through the room, then she starts working away to extinguish Aoi's fire.

While they fool around, I start to focus on my wings. They're easy to control and flap, but to actually fly, I need to magically blow air into them since my body is way too heavy for flapping alone to generate enough lift.

Aoi achieves flight through a homebred mix of [Fly] with wind-bending, so I'll have to do something similar if I want to take advantage of these wings. They aren't as potent and as easy to use as Chimeric artificial wings, but they're quite powerful and can contribute a lot to flying.

Dragons fly in all kinds of ways, from purely physical like Dragolites; to anti-gravity spells; to magic bodies that make them far lighter than physically possible; to specific spells like [Fly] that allow them to fly; to a mix of two or more of them, like Aoi. The older a dragon is, the bigger they get, generally speaking, so they have a tendency to transition from physical bodies to magical ones, as if they'd learned [Mana Body]. This allows them to move around more easily without limiting physical constraints, such as ignoring the effects of the square-cube law.

Controlling the air around you while remaining still is harder than when you're moving, so I start running around the room to feel the air hitting my cute little wings.

It feels like I'm "injecting" my "Willpower" into my wings, giving me a measure of control over the wind that reminds me of lift and control surfaces from airplanes. It makes sense for it to be like that since dragons have to control their flight somehow.

It's easy enough for me to guess how my wings work, but it's hard to keep them under control or even understand what's actually happening. This is way more complex than just a flight stick and a throttle, and it's not just that, but I have to precisely control two wings that can work independently from each other.

Today is all about getting used to my dragon form, so I don't do any specific training and just spend all morning playing around with Aoi and Gify.

Osaria finishes her tax book collecting and meets up with Mimi, then they start working together.

I occasionally watch over Klein through her Holly and Shad. Anton is surprisingly shy when it comes to giving out orders, but he properly advises Klein, giving her the confidence needed to take charge of the exploration of the dungeon.

The twins spend their whole morning training with Living Armors and one of our veteran officers in one of the castle's training rooms. Yunia says that they want to be able to defeat Sandoro so that they can challenge me, but that's something that'll take them years to reach, at least.

As lunchtime nears, Aoi and I try to hide our guilt from being the only ones that are having fun instead of working, but it was a futile effort to begin with due to [Bind], so we quickly accept that we'll have to give special attention to the wives when this day is over.

Ciel invites Oritiki and her husbands for lunch. They're all naked, which is a treat for the eyes since we can see her massive black cow tits bouncing around, and they use their personal towels to sit on their chairs at the table.

I'm fairly sure that their presence is part of the reason why the twins aren't here with us right now.

Ciel's talks with the temple and the Chimeras have been completed. Our new subjects are safely set on the path of adaptation, the temple has been appeased of their doubts, and now we just have to wait for the reaction of the Tribunal to the legality of it all.

The temple and the Tribunal complement each other quite well since the temple is proactive, investigating anything that they find to be suspicious to prevent injustices, while the Tribunal is reactive, fixing up whatever is wrong in elven society and meting out justice whenever necessary.

We've had a good relationship with the Tribunal so far, so I'm pretty sure that they won't come down too heavily on us, at least in the beginning.

That'll have to wait until after the Lordship Ceremony, though.

The meat today is looking extra crispy. It's Kentu-… uh… just fried chicken. Spicy fried chicken. Krysta seemingly discovered not-Tabasco and already used it when preparing this meal.

I should give her my recipe for Buffalo baby harpy wings.

"Nohopu is anxious. He wants to go out and explore the skies for the Drifting Lands you mentioned," Oritiki comments with a wry smile as we eat.

"The temple should be sending their Spirit mages tomorrow, so we'll allow Nohopu to start work immediately once they're here," I casually respond.

"How long do you think it'd take to bring back an island?" Lina questions Oritiki with her serious mode activated, though it doesn't seem that different from her usual gloomy look.

Oritiki shrugs. "A minimum of two to three days if they find an island immediately."

Lina swings her legs about under the table, feeling slightly excited. "I can meet with the Chimeras tomorrow and discuss extraction and refinement, then secure a buyer for the crystals."

"Take Mimi with you, if she isn't too busy," Hana suggests offhandedly without her eyes leaving her plate. Her default response for anything involving money was always "listen to Mimi" during her caravanning days.

Mimi isn't here right now. She's currently having lunch with the twins, Krysta, and Sandoro since they wanted to give us some privacy.

Osaria gracefully raises her hand, so we wait until she's finished swallowing. "I can help with finding buyers for crystals, and I think Dame Enomosa could also help with that," she happily volunteers.

Oritiki grins, quite pleased with the timely progression of their business interests. "I'll talk to the Chimeras and ensure that they're ready for you," she adds with a nod.

After that, we change the topic to how the Chimeras are doing. They've all been housed at the mansions in the outer layer, so the commoners are quite happy, even though they can't have a solid body for all twenty-four hours of the day.

We'll gift a mansion to Oritiki and the other few Chimeric aristocrats that can fight, per imperial custom, so Korito, the not-Thor, has been quite excited. He and Rei, the warthog-headed husband, have not only the whole outer and inner layers to choose from, but also quite a few mansions in the Nobles' Quarters that the Lordship owns and reserves for guests.

"It's odd…" Korito tries to express something, but he stops for a moment, and the clear excitement from before partially fades away before he finally continues, "I was ready to leave for Paradise, but Oritiki convinced us to stay… and now I'm so happy that I did that I can't believe I wished for death-… well, 'the end.'"

"'A wound in the heart interferes with the decisions of the mind,'" Ciel quotes a godly teaching.

Rei exhales loudly in a snort and asks, "Oh? Is that one of your 'teachings'?"

Ciel nods gently, her angelic smile evoking therapeutic effects upon my heart. "It is. The God of War once said that."

"God of War…" Oritiki mumbles, sounding interested in the name, then Ciel immediately starts proselytizing to them.

After our meal, it's time for us to conduct the interviews for the High Officers.

A note from Manasong

Hall of Fame of Patrons

The patrons who support Rupegia shall have their names sung by the bards for they deserve the glory and honor. Their names are:

Prince PreownedFIN.

Prince Creamy Spinach.

Lord Andrew Meyers.

Lord Samuel Lim.

Lord Bill.

Lord Novgarod.

Lord Ashadun.

Lord Michale Erwin.

Lord Bakerdea.

Lord Nathan Vanbrunt.

Lord Maurice.

Lord Empyrean.

Lord Mattirro Draca.

Lord Joshua Tal.

Lord Colorblind.

Lord RottenTangerine.

Lord Fullmoon.

Lord Joxsan Herrera.

Lord Sean Drake.

Lord EESDESESESRDT.

Lord Brody Haugan.

Lord FrostyCube.

Lord Mike Bartter.

Lord Cardinal Steiner.

Lord Krawn.

Lord Warwulfv.

Lord Cidant.

Lord Jorge Franco.

Lord Bradly.

Noble Salty Panda.

Noble Mild Fracas.

Noble Aclys.

Noble Shawn Plumley.

Noble CarlBaxter.

Noble WeirdWhirl.

Noble War God.

Noble Yeuromain.

Noble Jorge Franco.

Leave a rating or a review to help me rise to the top or fix my shameful understanding of prose.

Take a look over my blog where all information about the world of Rupegia will be posted.

Join the Discord and discuss, or rant, or meme, or try and fight me so your waifu gets more screentime.

Become a Patron and read chapters in advance, or read the side-stories, or leave your mark on the story, or help choose the next artwork or the next side-story.

Chapter 91: Preparations - Part 2

The first interviews are for the Court High Mages. They are responsible for training and organizing the lower mages, guiding them when a [Ritualism]-powered spell is required, and casting the high-level spells whenever they'd have the most impact. They're kind of like knights, but they don't usually act as messengers or representatives since they generally lack the "Charisma" and gravitas to carry out those roles.

The elves like to put "High" at the start of important positions that can be held by commoners, but the empire also does it for mages, so they ended up just translating this title since they'd already imported all of the regulations behind it.

The first position to be chosen is the most important one, the Space High Mage. The proper use of [Gate]s is essential for the quick deployment of troops and knights, so there's always a large number of Space mages available for hire.

Those who don't have a noble to vouch for them are forced to live in the barracks alongside the Townsguard to ensure that they don't go rogue, and they're also contractually obligated to find work, so it's easy to get in touch with them.

The candidates have a wide variety of skills secondary to [Space Magic], but we aren't lower Lords who need them to have as varied skillsets as possible. We can pay for the best, and mages with high levels in skills aren't hybrids unless they're at the higher end of Lord-levels, like Confiel, but at that point, they could easily marry into a noble family.

Since we want officers that will agree to being made into Blood Slaves, there are only a few who come from noble families since they tend to be too proud to give up their family name, but the most interesting candidate actually is a noble himself.

The imperial man sits down before Yunia and Alissa with the level of pomp and grace that you'd expect from someone of his station. His black velvet robe with yellow stripes makes him appear wealthy, but his wide-brimmed wizard hat appears a bit worn. This reminds us that Roxanne needs new robes… or at least we need to get her robes fixed since they hold some sentimental value for her. She also needs something more fitting of her station, now.

Back to the imperial… He has the lightly tanned skin that's typical of the Mainlanders, and his slightly graying black hair tells of his age. Considering the slower aging that comes from higher levels, he must be much older than forty.

"Greetings, Lords, I'm Alcander," he politely greets us, then bows and waits.

"Alcander Avanara, a rankless noble from the eastern Mainland," Alissa states his information out loud.

"You may rise," Yunia orders, pleased with his deference, and he promptly obeys. She stares intensely at his brown eyes, gauging his composure. "We're Crown Lords Alissa and Yulania."

"Pleasure to meet you," he calmly adds.

"Likewise," Alissa responds politely.

Yunia wastes no time in starting the questioning, "Tell me, as a life-long noble, why would you submit yourself to becoming a Blood Slave of Lords who were mere commoners just a few days ago?"

He subtly smirks, though we're not quite sure what he's thinking. "'Mere commoners'? Not even I am a 'True Noble,' however you never fit the 'common' part of 'commoners,' to begin with," he answers bemusedly, then gets his smirk under control and recomposes himself, pompously crossing his legs and interlacing his fingers over his lap. "But to answer your question, I already have a Chosen Descendant to inherit my name, so I decided to take this golden opportunity to improve the lives of my family."

Yunia nods, mildly pleased, and adds, "So would you say that even for Lords, we aren't 'average'?"

His smirk rises to the surface again. "Definitely."

After a few standard questions about his experience and qualifications, they get him to use an Inspection Crystal.

['Alcander Avanara Skill Report']

['Physical']

[Skill Name: Level | Skill Name: Level | Skill Name: Level]

[Sword Use: 5 | Parry: 3 | Block: 3]

['Magical']

[Skill Name: Level | Skill Name: Level | Skill Name: Level]

[Sense Mana: 7 | Mana Control: 20 | Reduced Mana Cost: 15]

[Mana Efficiency: 15 | Ritualism: 28 | Fire Magic: 15]

[Water Magic: 1 | Light Magic: 1 | Space Magic: 82]

[Conjuring Magic: 1 | General Enchanting: 4]

['Miscellaneous']

[Skill Name: Level | Skill Name: Level]

[Riding: 5 | Woodworking: 3]

['Info']

[Name: Alcander Avanara | Age: 68 | Race: Human]

[HP: 100 | MP: 5,895 | Magic Power: 3,280]

[Level: 53]

['Stats']

[Strength: 10 | Endurance: 16 | Dexterity: 9]

[Speed: 9 | Intelligence: 19 | Wisdom: 24]

[Willpower: 19 | Charisma: 10 | Piety: 14]

[Perception: 10 | Sanity: 16]

['Other']

[Status Effects: 'NONE']

[Titles: 'Noble Descendant, Scholar of Mac Gantus, Gate Master']

[Affiliations: 'Aura Avanara (Wife), Calli Avanara (Wife), Imperial Space Mages' Authority Gate Master']

[Companions: 'Aura Avanara, Calli Avanara']

[Crimes: 'NONE']

His [Ritualism] and [Space Magic] combined allows him to basically act as a human trebuchet. He won't be killing droves of enemies like Lords can, but he's definitely someone to field in a large battle due to the utility he brings.

For someone of his age, he's holding up pretty well thanks to his "Endurance."

He's in a fellowship with his wife to give her levels and a longer lifespan, most likely.

"Do you craft magical staves and wands?" Yunia questions curiously.

He shakes his head gently. "I only maintain them. I don't have the time to get too involved in that area of expertise, so you could consider it as a free-time distraction for me."

"I see… Let's talk about your wages now."

"I expect only the standard for mages of my level even though my Lord is a hero, but in return, I don't want to work as a porter," he calmly demands.

He doesn't have "Master Porter" among his titles, so his [Item Box] might be weaker than the average Space mage's.

Yunia and Alissa share a look full of meaning as they quickly converse through [Bind], then Alissa suddenly asks, "Why do you think he's a hero?"

"Only a hero or an imperial prince would be able to become a True Noble at his age," he states matter-of-factly.

He doesn't have any concrete evidence of that, just assumptions, so I guess that our move to immediately assume Lordship was just too obvious.

There's nothing we can do about that, so we return to considering his request. It's not like he's a glorified pack mule, it's just kind of unusual to ask for such a thing.

Yunia nods in understanding and accepts his terms, "We understand. Your job is mostly administrative, so we won't need you to work as a porter."

He smiles a bit sadistically, showing an impressive set of dimples, and adds, "I have enough [Mana Control] that I can actually fight if required, and with [Ritualism], I can even act as a battering ram or catapult."

"That's excellent. We don't have any mages with [Ritualism], so you'll fit right in," Alissa happily agrees.

Aside from the one unusual request, Alcander is our best choice, so we hire him.

Next up is the Spirit High Mage. What we're looking for is someone with the level 70 spell [Soul Trap] so that they may aid the Chimeras as needed. There's also the level 60 spell [Mana Block], which is useful in combat, but overall, Spirit mages are either researchers, duelists like Yunia, or used for utility by priests.

A halfling woman with long, pull-through braided brown hair catches our attention. Like dwarves, her age is impossible to guess since she doesn't get old like the other races do, so she retains a young and innocent look.

Her robe and wide-brimmed hat seem slightly oversized, but it might be intentional since it makes her look absolutely adorable. They're gray and simple, showing a preference for function over form.

A chair fitting her size is prepared for her, and she energetically sits on it, revealing that she's fairly young.

"Greetings, my Lords," she happily greets and grins with a very girlish voice, then adjusts her round glasses on her freckled face. She definitely has ancestry from Maplethorne.

"Sainalai Yiroi, researcher of [Spirit Magic] from Lorei Laurelai," Alissa reads her information.

"We're Crown Lords Alissa and Yulania," Yunia states clearly as an introduction.

"An honor to meet you. I'm fairly excited about this opportunity!" She happily exclaims, then clears her throat and reigns in her energetic behavior.

Alissa and Yunia both smile warmly at her, then Yunia starts the questioning, "What brought you so far from your home?"

Her brown eyes turn dreamy. "Elves. Beautiful race. Beautiful land… or trees, I guess." -She giggles girlishly- "I thought about throwing the dice here in hopes of earning a Right of Inheritance."

Lina's Trivia: Immigration is controlled through Rights of Inheritance so that humans and dragonkin won't replace other races with their incessant need to breed. Yes, it's explicitly stated like that. This right allows for the given descendants who aren't born as the ruling race to inherit land. It's like how only my children who are born as elves will be allowed to inherit the Lordship.

Yunia glances over her info and notices something, "Did you come here because of Crown Lord Confiel's invitation to halfling Nature mages?"

Sainalai nods repeatedly. "Precisely, though I don't qualify as a typical Nature mage. I know a little bit of [Alteration Magic], so I used it to work for a short time in one of the food farms because I wanted to get myself acquainted with the locals."

"She seems quite humble, so she'll be an interesting hire," Alissa comments through [Bind].

"It's also interesting that she knows [Alteration Magic], so she might get along with the Chimeras," Roxanne adds.

"Are you aware of the Chimeric spirits that we have taken in as our subjects?" Yunia continues.

She nods repeatedly. "Yes! I participated in the summons of the Spirit mages, and I've seen the [Solidify] everyone's been talking about. Though it's not my specialty, I'm pretty sure that I'll be able to cast it after a day-cycle of training.

"Even if you don't hire me, I'll still stay around to study them. Since you're allowing them to live as spirits, I predict that there will be a lot of people in the future wishing for the same treatment as them after their deaths, and I know [Trap Soul]."

"Exactly," Yunia agrees with a satisfied smile.

Her job isn't just research since she'll have to manage the Spirit mages, so they continue the questioning to gauge her experience in that area

['Sainalai Yiroi Skill Report']

['Physical']

[NONE]

['Magical']

[Skill Name: Level | Skill Name: Level | Skill Name: Level]

[Sense Mana: 17 | Mana Control: 13 | Reduced Mana Cost: 23]

[Mana Efficiency: 20 | Fire Magic: 1 | Light Magic: 1]

[Spirit Magic: 71 | Space Magic: 10 | Conjuring Magic: 5]

[Alteration Magic: 7]

['Miscellaneous']

[Skill Name: Level | Skill Name: Level | Skill Name: Level]

[Housework: 2 | Cooking: 3 | Cleaning: 2]

[Singing: 3 | Riding: 2]

['Info']

[Name: Sainalai Yiroi | Age: 41 | Race: Halfling]

[HP: 100 | MP: 1,605 | Magic Power: 1,190]

[Level: 42]

['Stats']

[Strength: 7 | Endurance: 8 | Dexterity: 8]

[Speed: 6 | Intelligence: 19 | Wisdom: 21]

[Willpower: 14 | Charisma: 14 | Piety: 10]

[Perception: 16 | Sanity: 15]

['Other']

[Status Effects: NONE]

[Titles: 'Scholar of Auri Yorei, Spirit Master']

[Affiliations: 'NONE']

[Companions: 'NONE']

[Crimes: 'NONE']

"So, is nobody going to bring up the fact that she's unmarried?" Hana jokingly asks.

"This really shouldn't factor in the decision to hire her or not," Yunia answers concernedly.

"I agree with Yunia… that topic will come up after she's hired," Alissa piles in.

"Nice…" Hana mumbles in anticipation as she imagines the fun that's to come in the future.

Back to Sainalai. She's not going to be of much use in battle with those stats. Not only does she have a negative soul potential, which makes it very difficult for her to learn useful combat skills, but her MP pool isn't well-balanced with her "Magic Power." That makes it difficult for her to control her spells' power, though it's not a problem for a researcher who can spend as much time as she wants chanting a single spell.

High-level [Spirit Magic] isn't that popular, so she's the only candidate that qualifies for the position.

Among the next set of candidates, someone Yunia knows appears.

"Almaria Paissan, past High Court Mage serving under late Lord Mavel," Alissa announces while Yunia brims with excitement.

A rather small and mature golden elven woman comes in. She has droopy green eyes, giving her a rather tired and kind look. It's similar to Osaria's, though she completely lacks the sexual air that my dark milf exudes. Her small face reminds me of dwarves or halflings, but I don't know if she's a descendant of them.

"It's good to see you, Lord Yulania," Almaria politely bows as she greets, holding her small half-circle glasses against her face.

Yunia gets up and walks towards her as she orders, "Rise, and you don't have to call me 'Lord' in private."

"As you wish," Almaria readily agrees and straightens her posture, then they both open their arms wide and hug each other tightly.

Almaria was her mentor for [Weaverism], and she's also quite a lovely woman, so Yunia is very fond of her.

"I'm so glad you're here," Yunia whispers warmly, her eyes shut tight, threatening to cry.

"I thought I could help you, if you'd have me," Almaria answers softly.

Yunia lets out a happy sigh. "Of course I will."

['Almaria Paissan Skill Report']

['Physical']

[NONE]

['Magical']

[Skill Name: Level | Skill Name: Level | Skill Name: Level]

[Sense Mana: 25 | Mana Control: 20 | Reduced Mana Cost: 5]

[Mana Efficiency: 5 | Fire Magic: 1 | Light Magic: 1]

[Spirit Magic: 5 | Nature Magic: 50 | Space Magic: 1]

[Conjuring Magic: 1 | Weaverism: 75]

['Miscellaneous']

[Skill Name: Level | Skill Name: Level | Skill Name: Level]

[Housework: 1 | Cooking: 1 | Cleaning: 1]

[Lute-Playing: 2 | Dancing: 5 | Riding: 1]

['Info']

[Name: Almaria Paissan | Age: 60 | Race: Golden Elf]

[HP: 100 | MP: 4,750 | Magic Power: 2,495]

[Level: 50]

['Stats']

[Strength: 7 | Endurance: 8 | Dexterity: 8]

[Speed: 6 | Intelligence: 19 | Wisdom: 21]

[Willpower: 14 | Charisma: 14 | Piety: 10]

[Perception: 16 | Sanity: 15]

['Other']

[Status Effects: 'NONE']

[Titles: 'Scholar of Escanso, Friend of Nature, Weaver of Dreams']

[Affiliations: 'Trabala Paissan (Husband)']

[Companions: 'Trabala Paissan']

[Crimes: 'NONE']

She does not look her age. Her husband is a lucky guy.

If she knows that one spell that connects the emotions of the soldiers together, then she'll be very useful on the battlefield. The Lonlanzas aren't as popular as they once were, but there are many tactical maneuvers that require a nature mage's assistance.

There's nobody else with enough qualifications that could compare to hers, and even Gify likes her a bit to boot, so it's a no-brainer to have her manage the [Nature Magic] and [Weaverism] mages.

After Almaria, the quality of the candidates drops quite a lot. We want elementalists, those who are strong in Fire, Wind, Earth, Water, or Electric magic schools, but while there are those who will make good additions to the court, none of them are worthy of the position of a High Court Mage.

It's not like we need someone for those positions. Sandoro and the other High Court Mages can organize the elementalists, and Alcander even has some experience in organized magic warfare to help in battle, along with his [Ritualism], which he can teach to the other mages, so we don't really need a High Court Mage for each of the elements.

But then, one of the last elementalists that the girls interview catches our attention.

A tall and slender, extravagant silver elf man enters the room. His hair is long and silky, reaching down to his waist; his face is perfectly androgynous, confusing my dick until I get the dragon under control; his nails are long and purple, seeming flashy even for women; his silver robe fits tightly to his athletic body, but his hairy chest is exposed by the most obnoxiously deep v-neck of his robe that I've ever seen, even reaching to the lower end of his sternum. He's like a 70's rock star with a flair for fantasy.

"Silvano Vagante, former High Court Mage for a Root Lord in Elaria," Alissa reads, trying her best not to grin at his flashiness.

He bows exaggeratedly. "It's a pleasure meeting you, my Lords," he energetically greets them and straightens back up without waiting for a prompt.

Alissa smiles wryly while Yunia nods composedly and responds, "Likewise. Now, please sit."

He turns around and searches for the sofa, then struts towards it as he says, "Yes, my Lords."

He's polite, but in a weird way.

Once he's comfortable, Yunia starts the questioning, "What brings you so far from Elaria? Even though you're our cousins, few elves emigrate between our two lands."

"Killing monsters," He casually responds, his tone sounding annoying in our ears because of the odd way he adds inflection to his words, and it isn't an accent from Elaria. "After the Anderas got deposed, Elaria became too calm again, so I asked to resign."

His mannerisms are kind of cute, seeming like he's deliberately moving like a lady but showing off his manliness while talking, and it incites confusion within my dick.

Yunia frowns at his attitude and cautions him, "Do you understand the 'peculiarities' of this Lordship? You have to accept being a Blood Slave to work for us."

He grins excitedly with an undertone of smugness in it, more than the usual for elves. "If Wolf Ryder truly has a Gift, then I'll gladly become his slave."

The girls pause for a moment. Silvano is from Elaria. If he heard about me from halfway across the empire, then what have the other nobles heard?

Yunia doesn't let him stun her for more than a moment. "Where did you hear that?" She immediately presses him with a serious tone.

He chuckles softly, still as nonchalant as before. "Like I said, Elaria was too calm, so I kept an ear out, listening for anything 'interesting.' Nobody has confirmed anything about Ryder yet, but I must say that it's a strong feeling among the nobility."

Alissa narrows her eyes, holding back her distaste to keep it from showing on her face. She really dislikes both Silvano and his attitude. "If we were to hire you, wouldn't it be a confirmation to others that he has a Gift?" She questions sternly.

He shrugs. "I'm a thrill-seeker. You don't need to offer much to have me pledge loyalty to you, even if it is through Blood Slavery, though it wouldn't last long. If Wolf isn't a Gifted, then I'd wager that things will remain 'interesting' for a few years at least, which is long enough to break a Blood Slavery contract by my own will."

Alissa becomes wary, this is the rare instance when she wants to cry out "Blasphemy!"

"You talk as if you'd done it before," she comments with a dangerous tone.

He sports a shit-eating grin and proudly admits, "Because I did."

Alissa fumes internally while Ciel smiles smugly, feeling vindicated now that we all understand how much "blasphemy" irks her. Hana makes her presence small within the [Bind] so that Alissa doesn't get reminded of how Hana bragged about being able to do the very same thing.

It's fine, she isn't paying attention to my thoughts right now.

"Remember, one of your Lords is a former priestess. Don't casually say such things in front of her or any of the other Lords," Yunia cautions him so that we don't have to suffer more of Ciel's smugness.

"Thank you, I'll keep that in mind." He nods appreciatively and leans back on his sofa. "I know my attitude doesn't fit well with Lordship, but I'm a simple tool, so it'll be your responsibility to decide how to use me best."

"And what can you do?" Yunia pushes the conversation forward to let Alissa recompose herself.

He adjusts his obnoxious collar and puffs out his chest proudly, as if he was just waiting for this moment to show us his skills. "Do you have an Inspection Crystal? It's easier that way."

['Silvano Vagante Skill Report']

['Physical']

[Skill Name: Level]

[Dual Sword Use: 20 | Sword Use: 8 | Parry: 6]

[Dodge: 9 | Split Rose Style: 11 | Enhanced Reflexes: 5]

['Magical']

[Skill Name: Level | Skill Name: Level | Skill Name: Level]

[Sense Mana: 1 | Mana Control: 2 | Mana Efficiency: 6]

[Mana Overuse Resistance: 11 | Blackout Resistance: 4 | Fire Magic: 1 | Earth Magic: 50]

[Electric Magic: 81 | Light Magic: 1 | Space Magic: 1]

[Conjuring Magic: 1]

['Miscellaneous']

[Skill Name: Level | Skill Name: Level | Skill Name: Level]

[Riding: 4 | Dancing: 5]

['Info']

[Name: Silvano Vagante | Age: 36 | Race: Silver Elf]

[HP: 100 | MP: 1,205 | Magic Power: 4,485]

[Level: 48]

['Stats']

[Strength: 10 | Endurance: 14 | Dexterity: 18]

[Speed: 21 | Intelligence: 16 | Wisdom: 15]

[Willpower: 20 | Charisma: 18 | Piety: 10]

[Perception: 18 | Sanity: 11]

['Other']

[Status Effects: NONE]

[Titles: 'Silver Lightning, Champion of Colneria, Scholar of Colneria, Master of Electricity']

[Affiliations: 'NONE']

[Companions: 'NONE']

[Crimes: 'NONE']

"What in the fuck is that build?" Everyone thinks at the same time.

He's a glass nuker, not a glass cannon because he can't fire more than once. He doesn't have mana skills, so any high-level spell will cost him most of his mana, but if they're self-buffs, they could probably last enough for a single battle due to his meager levels in [Mana Efficiency].

His [Mana Overuse Resistance] and [Blackout Resistance] tell a grim story about his style, though. I bet he's a magic swordsman like me who likes to spam spells a bit too much.

His title of Champion of Colneria means that he fought in the Arena long enough to rise to the top, so there's no doubt that his style actually works.

But looking at his "Sanity," the takeaway here is that he's fucking insane.

And he's hired.

Once all candidates for the High Court Mage positions are interviewed, the time finally comes for interviews for the High Chamberlain position. Shala may be the senior maid, but she doesn't have the appropriate qualifications to administer the entire castle, so we need someone more fitting for the job.

The overwhelming majority of the candidates are women, and it's not just because this field isn't very popular for males, the fact that I'm not an elf also reduces my likability among male elves. Oddly enough, there's a considerable number of elven men crossdressing, but we aren't hiring for looks, so that sort of thing doesn't matter.

The most interesting of them is an exotic sheep-type demon race. She has voluminous, short yellow hair on the front, almost fully covering her long sheep ears but not her spiral horns; cute bangs hiding her forehead; long straight hair on the back of her head that reaches her waist; a cute bubbly face that's perfectly adorned by large circular glasses; and multiple patches of wool covering a few spots of her pinkish skin.

She walks in quite calmly, showing a lot of composure, and smiles warmly at the girls, revealing laugh lines that tell her age, then she bows and greets, "Greetings, my Lords. I'm honored that you gave someone like me the chance to participate in such an opportunity."

Alissa smiles back, becoming very interested in her just from her file. "Armanpoosh, former manager of a brothel in Goldport. You may rise." -Her smile becomes warm for a moment as her eyes meet with Arman's- "It's our pleasure to have someone as capable as you interested in this position," she graciously returns the politeness.

Armanpoosh sits and starts answering their questions with a very affable behavior. She's kind of like a more humble Ciel-…

"What do you mean? I'm pretty humble," Ciel cries out with an internal pout.

"You're still a priestess, and that kind of puts you 'above' the commoners," Lina answers, slightly wary of offending Ciel, but she makes her a bit sad, instead.

"I always tried to connect with the commoners to understand their plight, but I guess it's true that priests live completely different lives from commoners…" She comments bitterly.

While the girls console Ciel, Yunia continues the questioning, "Why did you leave your brothel? We checked in with the authorities in Goldport, and they said that it's still thriving."

Poosh, as she likes to be called, reflects for a brief moment before she confidently answers, "I wanted something different for my life. It's like I had a 'calling' to fulfill, though I didn't know what it was, exactly."

Yunia holds back a concerned frown. "You think your 'calling' led you here?"

Poosh nods and giggles, cutely covering her mouth with her hand. "Perhaps… We'll have to wait and see, but I do wish that it's really true."

Her skills are also very "interesting."

['Armanpoosh Sheep Skill Report']

['Physical']

[Skill Name: Level]

[Sword Use: 5]

['Magical']

[Skill Name: Level | Skill Name: Level | Skill Name: Level]

[Sense Mana: 1 | Fire Magic: 1 | Light Magic: 1]

[Space Magic: 1 | Conjuring Magic: 1]

['Miscellaneous']

[Skill Name: Level | Skill Name: Level | Skill Name: Level]

[Housework: 10 | Cooking: 10 | Cleaning: 10]

[Washing: 10 | Riding: 2 | Dancing: 5]

[Singing: 5 | Sewing: 10 | Massage: 10]

[Acting: 3 | Math: 2 | Flute Playing: 4]

[Pain Conversion: 4 | Hand Technique: 10 | Oral Technique: 10]

[Enhanced Sexual Stamina: 6 | Enhanced Genital Control: 4 | Charm: 1]

['Info']

[Name: Armanpoosh Sheep | Age: 42 | Race: Sheep-Type Demon Race]

[HP: 100 | MP: 405 | Magic Power: 90]

[Level: 30]

['Stats']

[Strength: 11 | Endurance: 11 | Dexterity: 16]

[Speed: 10 | Intelligence: 13 | Wisdom: 18]

[Willpower: 12 | Charisma: 20 | Piety: 16]

[Perception: 20 | Sanity: 18]

['Other']

[Status Effects: NONE]

[Titles: 'Saint Protector of the Prostitutes']

[Affiliations: 'NONE']

[Companions: 'NONE]

[Crimes: 'NONE']

"Ooh~…" Alissa coos happily through [Bind]. Now, this is someone she's very "interested" in.

"I'm sure that Ciel will get a title like hers one day," I teasingly comment.

Ciel sighs inwardly and just nods along, simply accepting the fact that everyone thinks she might be the next of the wives to get a title.

Not only does Poosh have many interesting skills, but her level is the highest among the Chamberlain candidates, and her work experience also kind of "aligns" with us.

She's hired.

While all these interviews are going on, my [Dragon Transformation] training is interrupted by Teresina coming in to talk with me.

I meet her in my office alone since Mimi has her own now.

She stores her sword in her [Item Box], then pushes open the double doors with a lot more energy than I'd expect from someone her age.

Once the gilf walks in, I do feel a faint sense of "danger" coming from her, which is surprising since I don't feel it from Confiel anymore. Perhaps her [Intimidate] is quite high, making it strong enough to get past my "resistances," or whatever they are since nobody fully understands how this sort of thing works.

I remain relaxed in my seat, still comfortable even with her glare trying to bore its way through my forehead. Being glared at actually arouses me a bit since Hana does it all the time, which allows me to relax even more.

She sits down on the seat prepared for her and assumes a posture as stiff as the one she had when she met with Ciel and Oritiki.

"Lord Wolf Ryder," she greets, deliberately not saying "my Lord," though at least she says my last name, intending to keep some distance between us since "Lord Wolf" would be too familiar.

"Priestess Teresina Aurea," I return in kind. Since she didn't add "Crown" to my title, I won't add "Head" to hers.

We remain silent as she observes my draconic parts with curiosity, then her eyes follow my swaying tail almost like a cat's.

"I've heard of such changes happening before due to oddities inside dungeons, but why haven't you removed them?" She suddenly asks without a hint of concealed intentions, then our eyes meet. "If you were to chop your arm off at the base, then a simple [Regrowth] would return your human arms to you, and you're far too rich to claim that this type of treatment is 'too expensive.'"

I grin at her, which makes her instantly become wary, and respond in a terse tone, "It's more complicated than that, but you'll have to wait until the Lordship Ceremony."

She grunts in displeasure and complains, "Politics, again. I thought that someone of your background wouldn't be like all the other nobles."

I shrug while still grinning. "I can't avoid it. It is the smartest course of action, after all."

She narrows her eyes and grips the arms of her seat harder, then begrudgingly accepts, "Yes, I understand. I should've expected this from someone Blessed by the Goddess of Knowledge… but have you retained her Blessing?"

The mirth starts to wash away, but I don't let it show too much on my face. "What do you mean by that?"

She stares daggers at me, pushing me to break my composure. "Everyone knows about the Innocent Nymph, and how you're the only survivor."

"Yes, I still have my Blessing…" I bitterly respond, almost gritting my teeth.

She immediately turns her head to the side, then pulls an Inspection Crystal out of her [Item Box] with a *poof*.

She puts it on the table, and I grab it, making sure that my claws leave scratch marks on its perfectly smooth surface.

She glances at the small tablet, which reveals only my titles, then nods appreciatively.

I return the crystal orb, then I let my sadness appear on my face. This time, it doesn't make sense to keep it hidden. "I have a Gift, that much should be obvious to you and the other Templars, but what you don't understand is that it's quite likely that the heretics targeted me. I didn't earn the nickname 'Good Luck' for nothing; something is after me and my wives."

Her tone turns cold, not a hint of heat or anger on it as she cautions me, "I've heard countless people say that they were 'special,' but most of them ended up executed precisely because of how 'special' they were."

I shake my head in disappointment and even my tail slows down. "We'll just have to wait and see…"

"Yes, wait and see…" She murmurs, then a few seconds pass as we remain silent.

She glances at the tablet again and drops the tough templar act, softening her features.

"I hope you're wrong…" She adds, a hint of tiredness threatening to break her stony mask.

Seeing that she's finished with trying to grill me, I change topics to something that might please her, "Did you know that I have a grudge against a mercenary company called Dawn of Fire?" I deliberately glance at the dawning sun embroidered on her black robe, which is what gave me this idea.

Her eyes widen as she lets a subtle tell of her interest leak out. "I've heard of their misdeeds. There are too many Wicked among their ranks; they need a Purge," she coldly states and comfortably lays her hands on her lap.

I smile evilly and nod. "I agree…" Then she mirrors my expression.

A note from Manasong

Hall of Fame of Patrons

The patrons who support Rupegia shall have their names sung by the bards for they deserve the glory and honor. Their names are:

Prince PreownedFIN.

Prince Creamy Spinach.

Lord Andrew Meyers.

Lord Samuel Lim.

Lord Bill.

Lord Novgarod.

Lord Ashadun.

Lord Michale Erwin.

Lord Bakerdea.

Lord Nathan Vanbrunt.

Lord Maurice.

Lord Empyrean.

Lord Mattirro Draca.

Lord Joshua Tal.

Lord Colorblind.

Lord RottenTangerine.

Lord Fullmoon.

Lord Joxsan Herrera.

Lord Sean Drake.

Lord EESDESESESRDT.

Lord Brody Haugan.

Lord FrostyCube.

Lord Mike Bartter.

Lord Cardinal Steiner.

Lord Krawn.

Lord Warwulfv.

Lord Cidant.

Lord Jorge Franco.

Lord Bradly.

Noble Salty Panda.

Noble Mild Fracas.

Noble Aclys.

Noble Shawn Plumley.

Noble CarlBaxter.

Noble WeirdWhirl.

Noble War God.

Noble Yeuromain.

Noble Jorge Franco.

Leave a rating or a review to help me rise to the top or fix my shameful understanding of prose.

Take a look over my blog where all information about the world of Rupegia will be posted.

Join the Discord and discuss, or rant, or meme, or try and fight me so your waifu gets more screentime.

Become a Patron and read chapters in advance, or read the side-stories, or leave your mark on the story, or help choose the next artwork or the next side-story.

Chapter 91: Preparations - Part 3

A note from Manasong

Attention: to conform to the limit of mature content (more than just sexual content) allowed in a novel, I've censored this chapter. You can look for the uncensored version here.

The meeting with Teresina ended up being more productive than it had any right to be. Her Punisher tendencies make it easy to placate her, but this is only the beginning of our relationship, so I want to find a way for us to really connect and begin to actually trust each other. If that comes through the screams of dying heretics, then I'll take it, though I'd prefer the usual way of having my dick inside her holes.

Meanwhile, Aoi tries to make her fire breath hotter. It's well known that dragon fire can melt anything other than Okross, darksteel, or heavily enchanted material, so the straight fact that she couldn't melt a simple lump of iron ore makes her feel very embarrassed.

Hana helps her out since she's the only one who's also able to properly spit fire. In my case, I can only sneeze some wisps of flame, so I'm not an appropriate teacher for that ability. Roxanne gives Aoi some pointers about magical fires, but this is more about the fire sac organ inside her body, so it doesn't help her that much.

Now that Roxanne has a whole lab for herself, she might become a hermit, but she's making progress in discovering gunpowder, so we'll let her be for a few more days.

Ciel and Osaria continue the Lordship duties together. We showed them all the sword by making an example out of Caruso, yet now we'll extend a hand to build relationships, and the duo make a good pair for that job. Osaria is more confident and relatable since she's also an elf, while Ciel is more approachable, and her angelic demeanor puts others at ease.

They go to the Lord's Hall in the Nobles' Quarters to meet with the nobility that stayed in town even after Mavel was deposed. They must have some measure of roots spread in the town, so it'd be a good thing to placate them a bit since they're more likely to remain loyal to us if we do.

Yunia tells Ciel to also remind them that they're expected to participate in the expeditions to defend the High Forest. Unlike with the usual town where the nobles are expected to man the walls to aid the Townsguard, the elves in the High Forest have to sally out and meet the monsters head-on. This is because the Shells make the towns basically impossible to really assault for the monsters, so they instead blockade the area and ruin everything nearby, forcing the elves to engage the monsters if they don't want to see their economies wrecked.

Osaria leaks an implied threat that we'll be checking the records of the Expeditionary Division of the Townsguard. This means that any noble not properly registered and ready for combat will be opening themselves to being "punished" by us, and they know that we aren't playing around.

After Confiel took control, the Elder Council brought the Buscuadores back to the Western High Forest to purge the region of monsters. Now that we're in charge, we'll be expected to join the Buscuadores before long, so we can't allow the nobles to slack off. We treat them as would be expected for nobility, and in return, we expect them to follow us into battle when the time comes.

Before the day officially ends, I have to make all our new hires into Blood Slaves.

Esvisor, the evil and sweet-talking slaver from before, is called to the castle again so that he can perform the ritual.

We also call Sandoro to make him a Blood Slave, which briefly takes him away from his work, and it really needs to be brief because he's very busy. As the Commander of the Lordsguard, he's the one that has the most important job besides ours, and so, it's also very important that he becomes a Blood Slave. Since he isn't a noble, he doesn't complain a single bit about it.

"An eclectic choice of officers," Esvisor comments with a whisper while we all wait as I'm drained of my precious blood. I have to fill six small bowls with blood, which is not a small amount.

"It follows if you look at our family," Alissa adds with a hint of pride, though she prevents her tail from revealing her emotions.

He turns to Alissa, giving her kind eyes. "Forgive me, but if my sources are right, then you were, or are, a Blood Slave too, correct?"

She nods confidently, making her pointy ears sway. "Yes, were."

He nods appreciatively. "Give my compliments to the one who sold you; their instincts must be transcendental."

Alissa smiles wistfully and allows her tail to lazily wag. "It wasn't just me, Lord Hanafuria was also sold by him."

Esvisor loses some of his composure as his easy and evil smile smoothly fades away, replaced by shock.

"I always had the feeling that Ghulam could see 'through' me, like I couldn't lie to him. Perhaps he is capable of seeing the Threads of Fate, after all," she ponders casually as she squeezes my biceps to drain it of blood.

I smile wryly and chime in, "I feel like you and Ghulam are rather 'similar'… though maybe it's just your high 'Charisma.'"

Esvisor's shock passes, and he returns to his devil-like expression, then he chuckles softly and adds, "I'd have to agree because I've certainly never had a Blood Slave I sold become a True Noble, and I know the power of my smile."

"Indeed. Smiles are powerful tools, though I wouldn't say that they're weapons," Poosh contributes, then unleashes her power upon all of us with just a simple smile. I feel like it tried to "force itself in," almost like a moist tentacle ran over my naked skin searching for a hole. Must be her [Charm].

"A smile is the only thing I need most of the time," Silvano comments offhandedly. His demeanor irks Alissa, but she's far too polite to complain openly. He's hogging most of his sofa by spreading his long arms wide apart, entirely too casual, even for my tastes, so perhaps we should get Sandoro to teach him how to show respect sometime soon.

Sainalai looks blankly at Poosh like one would stare at a juicy piece of lamb. She definitely got [Charm]ed, but then she recovers a moment later.

"I have a feeling that Yunia's facial muscles have atrophied because we rarely see her smile," Roxanne teases through [Bind].

"Your mouth has become too big from all the cocks you've sucked, whore," Yunia coldly shoots back, though she doesn't sound too aggressive with her bantering this time because a small part of her fears that Roxanne's words might be true.

"I predict that you'll be spending a good while in front of a mirror trying to break the bitchy face you-… AH!" Roxanne squeals, interrupted by Yunia making her slap herself through [Bind].

I snip their connection so that they can't escalate this into a war inside my head. I'm still the center of the [Bind]s, so anything they send to each other always passes through me first.

Soon, all the necessary blood is finally drained from me, and Esvisor starts preparing to cast the spells.

Before he finishes chanting, I give the officers one last chance, "You all could wait a few days longer if you wish. This is a big step to take, so I'd understand if you wished to get to know us better before becoming a Blood Slave."

"And risk having someone with a higher level swoop in and take my chance? No, thanks," Sainalai jokingly answers and giggles.

Alcander chuckles once and nods in agreement. "Yes, not a risk worth taking."

Sandoro shakes his head softly at the frivolity but doesn't say anything.

Esvisor casts [Contract of Servitude] on each of the officers, taking their last names away, and [Tongue of Obedience] so that they keep my secrets. He doesn't cast [Mark of the Master] since it's just more respectful to not brand them when they aren't traditional Blood Slaves.

With that done, Shala gives the new High Officers a tour of the castle, then Sandoro introduces them to the mages of our Court and the Lordsguard.

Now I finally get some time to cuddle with my foxy lady while we watch the town and the psychedelic moons rise from up in our room. We lay on one of my sofas with me acting as the bigger spoon. It has to be the deepest one we have so that my tail can fit.

"Things should be calmer tomorrow, right?" I ask absentmindedly.

"I believe there will be fewer things that will require our presence, yes," she prudently responds, then gives me a small smile, knowing what I have in mind.

I bury my nose in her hair, smelling the faint perfume of her hair products. Today it isn't Ranja, so I don't recognize the smell.

I extend a tentacle and comically pat Yunia on the head so that she doesn't feel left out.

She turns around and glares at it, then I grin and start giving her some proper attention.

She leans against the tentacle, and her eyes lose focus as I activate its non-lewd vibrating massage.

Her legs begin to quiver, so she sits down on a free spot on the sofa before something shameful happens to her.

This feeling that she just let out triggers my sadism, tempting me to lift her up with my tentacles and then do her right here, for all the town to see. Now that would be something "embarrassing."

She jerks her head towards me to give me a glare, fantasizing in her head about a scene where she crushes my jewels with her needle heels.

I smile and shrug internally. She's the one who shared her thoughts with me, accidentally or not, though I'll play nice and stop myself from teasing her further.

She sighs and relaxes again, gradually letting the stiffness of her mask slip away.

"I still need to go to Goldport," Alissa suddenly remembers, making me frown.

"Can't someone else go? I kind of miss your Blessing whenever you have to be somewhere else," I ask with puppy eyes. Considering how I have sharp horns and claws, I could consider myself a "danger puppy."

Alissa turns around and gives me a faraway look as she dramatically performs, "And who's to go in my stead? Who's the one damned to take my burden upon themself, to forsake the warmth of your body, the calmness exuded from your presence, the delight of your touch? Who's the one you condemn to eternal banishment?" After the first two questions she feels like ending the silliness, but her desire to just play around wins out.

I give her my biggest pout and whine like a needy puppy.

She remains unmoved and insists in her continuing theatrics, "Who do you condemn in my stead, Wolf Ryder?"

I squeeze my eyes shut and try to play up my cuteness, but I can't hold a candle to either Alissa or Lina in that area.

"Who do you condemn…?" Alissa asks one more time, immune to my charm.

"I can't choose…" I whine and hug her tighter. "It's not fair for me to choose."

"You could actually choose someone, then compensate for the lost ti-…"

"Shush!" Alissa interrupts Yunia, unwilling to give in and stop this improv play.

Yunia rolls her eyes, then gets the tentacle to massage her shoulders and lower back.

I kiss the top of her head and relent, "I'll allow you to go to Goldport because only you can do that job, but know that I'll miss you dearly."

Her pointy ears flick back, tickling my cheeks, then she nestles her head against my chest. "I must complete my duty," she whispers softly with determination.

"Yes… you must…" I bitterly repeat.

"Anyway…" Yunia changes the topic now that our play is done, "The air dock is already beginning construction, so unless you want to help Mizushina or oversee the Lordsguard and the Court train, then there's nothing pressing that we need to do for now."

I shrug. "I'll just continue training."

Things are only going so well because we're just restoring a system that was already in place. If we had to rebuild the infrastructure or recreate the Lordsguard from the ground up, then we'd certainly have a long-lasting headache ahead of us.

The stomachs of the girls start to rumble, so we all decide to visit the baths for our sacred ritual, and also to go get a snack.

While I take off my clothes, I take my pick of the sweet fruits to snack on. To accompany it, I down half a cup of actual cow milk, not the stinky minotaur milk.

I feel a bit ostentatious in taking delight from the fact that I have cow milk, dampening my enjoyment.

But I'm just going to get used to this lifestyle right away, aren't I?

I don't let the girls probe my thoughts right now since I'm feeling a bit disgusted at myself, which is ironic considering everything I've already done.

I definitely won't become an ascetic, I just need some time to settle my heart. The dragon within complains so much about the "silly human" that I feel like transforming just so that I can unleash its greed, but I shouldn't do it in front of the maids yet.

After a few more seconds, I manage to suppress my conflicted feelings, then I enter my washing tub.

I allow the maids to wash my entire body, the soapy elven hands teetering on the edge between lewd and clinical.

We'll need to wash ourselves every once in a while so that we don't forget how to do it on our own…

"Yes, that's… that's actually something that we should be concerned about," Yunia embarrassedly admits through [Bind], and chuckling echoes in my head.

We may all find it amusing, but deep inside, we agree with Yunia. And, knowing how good it feels to be washed by someone with a skill, even Lina can't say no to the maids.

Aoi shrinks down to small-Aoi to make it easier for her to get washed, and it scares the new maids who weren't here yesterday. I can barely wait until we can show off her human form.

After the maids finish their job, we sink into the perfumed Jacuzzi and snuggle up together.

Roxanne straddles me and lets her charm loose, so I just drown in her bewitching eyes.

I regain my consciousness as I grunt, and I realize that I'm now mounting medium-Aoi.

I finish her up and groggily sit down, then I notice Roxanne passed out in Hana's arms.

I shake my head and sort out my memories. Roxanne's "racial charm" seems to have become even stronger, so I think it's not just affected by her "Charisma," which only increased by one point when we killed Arreira.

I re-enter the bath and decide to cuddle up with Yunia this time. A tentacle massage is nice, but it doesn't have the same intimacy as just two bodies touching each other lovingly.

Through Alissa, I hear the maids talking about me.

"Is he going to do Lord Hanafuria? I want to see The Ravaging," a young maid excitedly questions.

"She doesn't seem to be asking for it right now, so maybe they did it earlier," the elder one answers quietly.

"Isn't she a lascivious beast dragonkin? How could she not want it?"

"Look, look… look at the water, he's doing her with his black things," a curious third interjects

"Their faces changed, they're all receiving it," the elder states as she studies our expressions.

"I heard a Chimera say that he can vibrate it," the excited one comments.

"What? Like a Buzzing Hive?" The elder questions, suddenly interested.

The excited one shrugs. "She never used a Buzzing before, so she couldn't tell, but she guessed that it's similar."

"I heard that he can enlarge it," the curious one adds bemusedly.

The elder one subtly frowns and sighs, "Oof, that seems like it could hurt."

The excited one reminisces, "Lady Osaria didn't look like she was in pain… well, no, she did look like she was in pain, but also in a lot of pleasure."

The curious one looks down at her own womb concernedly and asks, "How-… what is he?"

The excited one teases smugly, "Do you want to find out?"

The curious one rejects the suggestion a bit too sternly to be natural and chuckles nervously, "Oh, please. I'm not that desperate."

"The new High Chamberlain is a sheep demon race. I'm sure that she wouldn't mind."

They all suddenly go silent.

"You're really thinking about it, aren't you?" The excited one teases again.

The elder one chastises them, "Shut up, they're going to hear us."

A silent fourth maid suddenly chimes in while smiling wryly, "Don't werefoxes have strong senses? I heard that's why they're popular as monster hunters."

"Oh…" It finally dawns on the talking trio.

Now they quiet down for good.

Klein gets back just when we're about to get out, so she doesn't get a lot of time to relax with us in the water. The euphoria from leveling up makes up for that, though.

Since it has already been proven through our own experiences that gaining levels gives pleasure, it makes sense that some people might get a bit addicted to it.

We don't invite any guests to join us for dinner this time, so we have a very calm and relaxed meal. Well, it's "relatively calm" since giving alcohol to the girls always makes them noisy and excitable.

Osaria holds her liquor very well, so she and Hana have a lot of fun with Roxanne.

After we retire to our rooms, the knight Azador returns with a prisoner. A mere pen pusher that managed to embezzle some of the money that he was supposed to take care of. He tried to hide in the town until the heat died down, but Azador has his own connections, and he used them to nab the rat.

We won't even bother visiting him in prison. The Tribunal will come for him in a few days, so there's no need for us to do anything ourselves.

We play "Dexterity"-focused games with human-Aoi to train her hands. Like me, she needs to get herself acquainted with her other body. In her case, she needs to learn how to use her hands with precision so that she can be capable of working metal the way she wants.

Today, we ate a few hours later than usual, so we don't have as much time to play around before bed.

Today is the 6th.

My [Dragon Transformation] increased by 1 again (now 3).

Roxanne increased her [Alchemy] by 1 (now 2+8)

Lina increased her [General Enchanting] by 1 (now 8+12).

Hana increased her [Draconic Body] by 1 (now 2).

The morning goes by as calmly as it ever could.

I go back to my office and spend another delightful morning admiring the view while I practice [Dragon Transformation]; Alissa goes to Goldport to arrange for our preparations; Roxanne returns to her [Alchemy] research; Hana joins Yunia in inspecting the Lordsguard and takes the golems with them to test out their new skills; Ciel receives the new priests that are arriving through the [Eternal Gate] network; Lina joins me so that she can learn how to enchant my [Materialize]; Aoi continues with training her flames in Gify's room; Osaria helps Mimi out with whatever she needs; Klein returns to the dungeon; our ships have been moved to the site where the prospective air dock is being built expeditiously; the High Officers are still getting themselves acquainted with their charges; and the knights are all helping to maintain the dungeons.

After lunch, an interesting group of visitors arrives: the first nobles seeking shelter. If they register with the Expeditionary Division, then they'll be welcomed into the town and given a home in the Nobles' Quarters.

Among them, there's someone we know already: Noblewoman Silvina, the elf we escorted when working for Rande. But that's not all, there's also someone very important that Yunia recognizes: Ereia, a noblewoman with an excellent ear for every sort of interesting information, from the mere gossip of the maids, to the secrets of the nobles, and even to conspiracies to overthrow the newly appointed Lord.

A note from Manasong

Hall of Fame of Patrons

The patrons who support Rupegia shall have their names sung by the bards for they deserve the glory and honor. Their names are:

Prince PreownedFIN.

Prince Creamy Spinach.

Lord Andrew Meyers.

Lord Samuel Lim.

Lord Bill.

Lord Novgarod.

Lord Ashadun.

Lord Michale Erwin.

Lord Bakerdea.

Lord Nathan Vanbrunt.

Lord Maurice.

Lord Empyrean.

Lord Mattirro Draca.

Lord Joshua Tal.

Lord Colorblind.

Lord RottenTangerine.

Lord Fullmoon.

Lord Joxsan Herrera.

Lord Sean Drake.

Lord EESDESESESRDT.

Lord Brody Haugan.

Lord FrostyCube.

Lord Mike Bartter.

Lord Cardinal Steiner.

Lord Krawn.

Lord Warwulfv.

Lord Cidant.

Lord Jorge Franco.

Lord Bradly.

Lord Freddie.

Noble Salty Panda.

Noble Mild Fracas.

Noble Aclys.

Noble Shawn Plumley.

Noble CarlBaxter.

Noble WeirdWhirl.

Noble War God.

Noble Yeuromain.

Noble Jorge Franco.

Leave a rating or a review to help me rise to the top or fix my shameful understanding of prose.

Take a look over my blog where all information about the world of Rupegia will be posted.

Join the Discord and discuss, or rant, or meme, or try and fight me so your waifu gets more screentime.

Become a Patron and read chapters in advance, or read the side-stories, or leave your mark on the story, or help choose the next artwork or the next side-story.

Chapter 92: Where We Stand - Part 1

While Lina meets with the Chimera enchanters, Osaria receives noblewoman Silvina at the entrance of the town, and Lady Ereia gets a [Gate] directly to the main hall of the castle, where Yunia and I receive her.

My first impression of Ereia is that she's an elven version of Klein, though quite a bit thirstier. The way she leaps into Yunia's bosom triggers my jealousy. She needs to pay her respects to my cock before she can play with Yunia's breasts.

My second impression of her is that she's cute as fuck. She's a thin, smol, and bespectacled young girl with a body made for fucking and worshiping. Her hair is straight, though some of it is braided, giving her an innocent and book-smart look, though Yunia thinks her real personality is that of a cheeky goblin.

Yunia pries her off, and Ereia giggles girlishly. "You never change, Yu," Ereia teases her.

"Neither do you," Yunia responds with a hint of annoyance but also warmth.

The giggling dies down when her blue eyes meet with mine. She adjusts her round glasses and blinks rapidly as she looks over my whole body.

"Impressive…" She mutters in wonder, then she clears her throat awkwardly and bows. "It's an honor to meet you, Lord Ryder," she politely greets without a hint of a goblin in her tone.

I merely nod respectfully and take a seat. "I take it that you're very familiar with Yulania, my fiance?" I interrogate her sternly.

She takes a second to swallow heavily, and Yunia answers in her stead, "We've been friends since we were children, and she used to live in the outer layer of the castle grounds." Her words are full of meaning, and she opens her [Bind] connection to let her memories flood through.

I smile kindly at Ereia and stop messing with her. "I see. Then your return should be a happy event for all of us." -A few of the memories almost trigger the sadist within me again- "Though I believe that you're a little closer than just friends. Perhaps… 'friends with benefits'?"

The duo stays silent for a moment as they take their seats and process my words, but they only show confusion about the phrasing I used.

"'Benefits'?" She questions, focusing on the word that her mind got hung up on.

I nod and answer sagely, "Well, yes. Your relationship isn't close enough to say that you're lovers, but the average pair of friends don't tend to have sex with each other, so we can say that you two share something more, something extra: the 'benefit' of having sex."

"I thought it was more like prostitution," Ereia confesses, and Yunia and I both stare at her oddly, making her blush almost instantly. "I'd give information to Yunia, and she'd allow me to 'play' with her in return," -she suddenly frowns- "though now that I think about it, you'd never let me play until I was satisfied, so it was hardly a fair trade."

"You had the honor of tasting my virgin nectar. That should be more than enough," Yunia states and turns her nose away snobbishly, then she also blushes in embarrassment at her own words.

Ereia starts giggling, and it takes us a few moments before everyone has recomposed themselves.

It's curious that this world doesn't have the concept of "friends with benefits." I guess they're more focused on the aspect of the "trade" while "free choice to do what I want" is secondary. I guess it also explains why voluntary slavery and prostitution is so normalized here.

"I'd love to catch up, but I didn't come here just for that," Ereia starts to steer the conversation back into more serious territory. "During my time in Goloria, I also took the opportunity to 'spread my ears around,' and I heard some juicy rumors."

"Oh…?" I hum in curiosity.

Ereia adjusts her glasses again and fixes her posture into something more lady-like. "The first rumor is about you, my Lord, the new draconic Crown Lord, and his dashing appearance during the selection of the Lordsguard. The populace is intrigued by you, but I can't say whether they see you positively or negatively."

"Within expectations. I might even say that this couldn't be better," Yunia comments, and I agree. A non-elven Lord not being seen negatively in the High Forest is an achievement for us, but I'd say that Yunia's presence has contributed the most for this to be so.

"Also, you don't have to call me 'Lord' in private," I tell Ereia, and she gives me a kind smile.

She waits a moment for any further comments, then continues, "However, the merchant class is wary due to your treatment of Signeur Caruso. The news of what you did will take time to spread far, but those who've heard it have cold feelings towards you."

Yunia snorts dismissively and comments again, "Unless we show favoritism, merchants will always be self-serving, even elven ones. They wouldn't have achieved their great wealth if they were charitable or honorable."

I've seen the same in the sociopath CEOs of Earth. Greed manifests itself the same way, no matter the world.

Ereia nods respectfully, and continues with a neutral tone, "Among the nobility, the prevailing theory is that Lord Wolf Ryder's title of True Noble, specifically, has been 'bought' or at least that he has been 'carried' by his harem. Many of them point out that Yu is a fierce warrior who knows [Precognition], so they say that it's only because of you that Wolf has acquired the title."

Now that is offensive. The priests consider the title of True Noble to be sacred, so someone paying to be "carried" to the core of a dungeon without fighting their way up, or down, depending on the dungeon, is explicit sacrilege. It's difficult to think of anything more offensive to a Lord than that, which means that my standing among the nobility is abysmal.

Yunia's eyes narrow in cold anger. "This is why the Lordship Ceremony is so important. With all the Crown and our subordinate Lords gathered together, we'll be able to show them all how wrong they are," she seethes.

"Didn't Silvano say that the other nobles think I'm Gifted? Why would these ones think the exact opposite?" I question calmly as I work to appease Yunia. It's not that I'm not angry; I just learned how to keep the dragon in check.

"Silvano…? Could it be the Silvano? The 'Silver Lightning'? I heard that he came to Escanso!" Ereia suddenly shouts in excitement, and her fingers twitch rapidly in her lap.

I nod at her. "Yes, that one…" -She suddenly squeaks like a chewing toy- "He's now serving us as a High Court Mage."

The elven goblin starts wiggling her upper body with her barely-contained excitement until Yunia's tongue whips her back into shape, "Ereia! Not now…"

Ereia suddenly freezes, then she adjusts her glasses again and lurches forward tiredly, "Yes, yes…"

"Well…?" Yunia presses her.

Ereia instantly straightens her back and shouts, "Ah, yes! The question!" Then she clears her throat. "I think it's a matter of perspective. Only the 'juicier' rumors spread far from the Rabanara and the High Forest, so the faraway nobles are wary of you while the closer ones were drowned in the half-truths, of which, many aren't that 'savory.' Even I, an elf uninterested in the town, know that you 'suddenly appeared' in Rabanara not that long ago, making your swift progress a bit unbelievable."

I raise my eyebrows in surprise and look at Yunia, but she's as calm as ever. She expected something like this. I turn back to Ereia and ask, a bit astonished, "So you did a background check on me?"

"The very moment that you were hired by Este Escort Company, owned by the Nephew of Lord Mavel Este and his not-blood-sister," she answers matter-of-factly.

Wow.

I lean back against the sofa and go silent. It's a bit scary to witness how deep the information network can go.

"Do you have any more information for us?" Yunia presses her sternly.

Ereia returns to her lady-like posture and clears her throat. "Just one last rumor. It's something that a maid overheard from a private conversation among a group of lower Lords 'oppositely aligned' to Lord Wolf Ryder. It has a 'questionable' accuracy, so some details may have been warped or lost along the way…" Ereia awkwardly gesticulates, implying that she's unsure if she should even be telling us this.

Yunia knows how dangerous wrong information can be, but this time, the risk isn't as high as it could be since we already have an idea about the personalities of the disgruntled Lords. "I understand how our perspective is biased and how this may lead us to wrong conclusions, but I still want to hear it."

Ereia nods in understanding and cautiously recites what she heard, "A maid heard this: 'we ought to shame the insolent little man of clay.'"

Lina's Trivia: in the extended Tale of Creation, humans were made of clay and lightning, referring to our adaptability, the "Spark of Life," which is a specific religious concept, and how the Thunderplains was their place of birth. Then the other races came after humans by mixing them with something else. The wereanimals, dragonkin, merfolk, and beastfolk are obviously mixed with animals or monsters, the demon race with mythological beings, the dwarves with stones, the gnomes with mushrooms, and the pixies with flowers. The birth of the elves is fuzzy, and they themselves love to embellish their Tale with their own flair, but most prefer to point to the highly mana-reactive metals of gold and silver.

To call a human a "man of clay" isn't wrong, but it's also used as a subtle racial slur by the other races, depending on the context, and we know of a certain Heart Lord who might be prejudiced against humans: Ira Saponaria, the one who told Silvane that I was raping Yunia.

Yunia crosses her legs and grabs her chin. "It's believable that they'd say such a thing," she mutters thoughtfully.

"Do you have any names?" I press Ereia.

She smiles apologetically and shakes her head gently as she denies, "The maid never saw who said it, and she didn't recognize the voice either, but I think that she purposely omitted their name so that it'd be harder to trace the rumor back to her."

"Nevertheless, this information helps us predict how the Lords will react," Yunia assures her, and her red lips curl into a subtle smile.

Ereia grins like a kid who just received an A+. "I'm always happy to help."

With that, I leave them by themselves while I return to my training. Ereia is thirsty, but Yunia isn't in the mood, so they just talk while Yunia escorts her to her old house in the outer circle. They meet up with the rest of her family and exchange warm greetings even though Ereia's parents aren't thrilled to be under the care of a non-elven Lord.

Among the new arrivals, two elves catch Osaria's attention. One is Istante, Confiel's Assistant Quartermaster, and the other is a very nervous, young golden-elven woman. While Istante applies to the Lordsguard, the young girl applies to become a maid and shows a letter of reference from the High Chamberlain of Goloria.

Osaria guides them in the right direction, then helps Silvina look for houses in the Nobles' Quarters. I'm tempted to give Silvina one of our guest mansions, but she doesn't seem like the kind that needs this type of favor.

Nanaina sends us new shoes for Aoi and me, and they're much more comfortable than what we had. The padding has been better molded to the shape of our feet, so it doesn't apply pressure against the claws like the first pair did.

I barely get into the flow of my training again before Alissa comes back, so I receive her in our private Gate Hub. Once she arrives, I feel refreshed from having her Blessing increase my "Sanity" again, like a second wind that makes me feel eager to train some more.

After a gentle hug and a peck on the lips, I look towards the [Eternal Gate] and smile warmly. Dokkanchee, the old Estekabar shopkeeper that sold Nocturna's illusion magic book to Alissa, slowly comes through while leaning on her crane.

She takes off her pointy black hat and runs a pale hand through her white feathers in worry as she scans over my whole body. "I recognize these scales from just a glance; this won't be easy," the old woman grumbles with a frown, then her eyes meet with mine, and she nods respectfully. "I certainly didn't expect that we'd meet each other again in this way, Lord Ryder." With her slightly hunched back, I don't think she can bow without a lot of effort, so I won't ask her to do it.

I return the nod and chuckle once. "Neither did I, but the circumstances call for us to improvise, and you're the only one we know of who has such powers."

She starts slowly walking forward, so I sling my arm around Alissa and grab one of her ass cheeks, then we go towards Dokkanchee and meet her halfway.

The Kabar woman lowers her body so that she can get a closer look at my legs, then she pushes herself up with her cane and stares at my arms and horns.

She grabs my free arm and carefully plays with the scales, but she underestimates their incredible sharpness. She cuts herself on the edge and winces, then she immediately starts sucking on her bleeding finger.

I cast [Heal] on her and kindly suggest, "We have powerful healers that could help you with your back and even Chimeric [Alteration Mages] that could take a look at it."

She snorts and shakes her head with a sigh. "Chimeric spirits… I don't even know how to react to such a thing!" She exclaims a bit flippantly.

Alissa and I smile wryly at each other, then she advises Dokkanchee, "Not reacting is also acceptable. I'm sure that they'd appreciate it if the living didn't think too oddly of them."

"Honestly, I'm a bit jealous," the old Kabar woman frankly admits, then lets out a snort. "Being able to live in the realm for a little longer after death sounds very interesting."

I nod and agree, "Yes, we believe many others will also want the same."

She narrows her eyes, and her face becomes serious again. "But you didn't call me here just to chat. Let's see what I can do."

While Dokkan studies my draconic body parts, I observe the golems and assess how they're doing.

"Are you sure that you want them to show their skills in public?" Hana checks with me again before she gives the order.

"I kind of have a deal with the Goddess of Knowledge to spread my knowledge throughout the realm, so it's about time that I share some of my secrets," I awkwardly respond, feeling a bit guilty about how I'm hiding so many secrets.

"[Soul Manipulation] isn't that special. We can safely reveal it without losing too much tactical advantage," Alissa confidently suggests.

"Reveal it only to the Lordsguard, and tell them to keep it a secret. Ereia might be able to catch a rumor or two, which would tell us if we have a leak," Yunia adds.

"But don't mention [Equipment System] yet since we need it for the Lordship Ceremony," I caution.

"Understood," Hana answers diligently and starts her sparring session.

The golem trio has learned intermediate-level elemental magic, intermediate Conjuring, basic [Alteration Magic], and even my [Soul Manipulation]. They seem apt at recreating physical phenomena with magic, but they suffer a lot whenever they attempt to add abstract concepts to their spells, so while they can cast powerful [Lightning Bolt]s, they suck at casting [Rush].

What Arreira taught them was how to use [Equipment System] without a system, and how to [Equip] nearly a hundred different items. He also increased their [Item Box]es so that they could fill it with all sorts of different things, turning them into fantasy Inspector Gadgets.

Instead of creating the "soul material" like I do, they use [Soul Manipulation] to adapt their souls to each of the gadgets, specifically, which provides them some benefits. It allows them to use their senses through the gadgets, like touch and thermoception; it makes it much cheaper mana-wise to control them; it allows for greater precision of control in comparison to using [Telekinesis]; it allows for real materials to be used, which most certainly has better properties than my "fake matter"; and it's potentially easier to learn how to control than the way I do, though on this topic, we can't make any proper comparisons yet.

Ted and Suzy learned how to summon a larger body made of shiny, engraved steel that's about Lina's height, and it works almost as if it's their own skin, while Jarn learned how to fight like me by attaching limbs to her chain joints or hooks on her armor.

Ted's and Suzy's "battle bodies" lack features, so they're like early-Jarn was, but they can also create their own faces like current-Jarn can. They only know how to copy faces, so they haven't chosen anyone to mimic yet before consulting with us.

They also had the time to read most of Arreira's books, so while they have difficulty making their own conclusions, they can serve as oral Wikipedias for us.

The Lordsguard is a bit freaked out by them, especially Jarn since she has Yunia's face, and her multi-limb fighting style is as freaky as my multi-tentacle style. She reminds me of a Hindu god with multiple limbs attached all over her body.

Though everyone is afraid of the golems, the Chimeras are also very curious about them, especially Oritiki. The [Solidify] spell is still being researched, so while it's possible that the spell could make their bodies as tough as a real one, having a metal "battle body" would make them much more powerful.

It took four months of non-stop training for the golems to learn how to control their "battle bodies," but it's doable for a warrior without a better alternative. It doesn't have much use for anyone else besides spirits or someone searching for an unorthodox fighting style, so it won't cause a revolution like [Equipment System] will, but I'm sure that the "battle spirits" will become a sort of elite unit for us.

Oritiki approaches Hana, a deadly serious look on her long, dark face. Sandoro squints and frowns, slightly annoyed by the shininess of Oritiki's armor.

"Lord Hanafuria, I strongly believe that every Chimera warrior should learn… whatever it is the golems learned to allow them to summon a secondary body," Oritiki affirms, her eyes almost trying to bore holes through Hana's skull.

Hana nods graciously and approves, "That is a great idea, but it won't be easy."

Oritiki smirks smugly. "That won't be a problem. Soon, they'll see how powerful they could become, and then they'd even swim in the Looping Winds if it meant that they could learn."

I think she means something along the lines of "do something impossible" because you certainly can't swim in smoke.

I quickly explain the basics of [Soul Manipulation] to Hana through [Bind], and she engages "Miyagi mode." She enjoys feeling pain herself quite a lot, but she also enjoys doling it out almost as much.

Hana smirks evilly and cracks her knuckles. "Well, I'm not the one who created this skill, but I can teach you the basic 'exercise' to start," she says with a husky tone.

Oritiki pauses for a second, wary of Hana's expression, then nods apprehensively.

Arreira's technique for learning [Soul Manipulation] is rather "uncomfortable." It requires a Spirit mage to grab someone's soul with [Soul Touch] and pull on their "spirit skin" to stimulate them to learn how to move it themselves, which doesn't actually hurt, but it isn't enjoyable in the least. And would you look at that? Hana has suddenly learned how to cast that spell!

I think this is payback for her duel with Oritiki.

Ciel goes to help Lina, then they take the Chimera enchanters to meet up with Hihiriwa and discuss their plan for the expedition. We want to build an industry of gems and airships here, but before we really commit to it, we need buyers, and the biggest fish in the pond is the empire itself. Before we can get the empire's attention, though, we need a sample to showcase what we can do.

This will be the purpose of this expedition: to learn how much it'll cost to produce enchantable gems and Chimeric airships. We aren't expecting to immediately turn a profit, but the empire has a shortage of gems now that the mines in Aremut have been lost, and even if the empire doesn't want the airships, we can downscale and build them for Lords or wealthy merchants, so there are profits on the horizon.

Even before the talks have ended, the airships start mobilizing. They're itching for work, and we have enough Spirit mages to keep the crew solid now that the priests will be taking care of the commoners. They'll be ready to depart tomorrow morning, and I'll have Enomosa supervise them. Oritiki will also send her own supervisor, but she herself wants to continue the [Soul Manipulation] training for as long as is physically, or spiritually, in her case, possible.

Then the day ends, and Dokkanchee returns to Goldport. She'll come back tomorrow morning with tools and start her work immediately.

We don't have a lot of time since the Lordship Ceremony will be held in five days on the 11th.

A note from Manasong

Hall of Fame of Patrons

The patrons who support Rupegia shall have their names sung by the bards for they deserve the glory and honor. Their names are:

Prince PreownedFIN.

Prince Creamy Spinach.

Lord Andrew Meyers.

Lord Samuel Lim.

Lord Bill.

Lord Novgarod.

Lord Ashadun.

Lord Michale Erwin.

Lord Bakerdea.

Lord Nathan Vanbrunt.

Lord Maurice.

Lord Empyrean.

Lord Mattirro Draca.

Lord Joshua Tal.

Lord Colorblind.

Lord RottenTangerine.

Lord Fullmoon.

Lord Joxsan Herrera.

Lord Sean Drake.

Lord EESDESESESRDT.

Lord Brody Haugan.

Lord FrostyCube.

Lord Mike Bartter.

Lord Cardinal Steiner.

Lord Krawn.

Lord Warwulfv.

Lord Cidant.

Lord Jorge Franco.

Lord Bradly.

Lord Freddie.

Noble Salty Panda.

Noble Mild Fracas.

Noble Aclys.

Noble Shawn Plumley.

Noble CarlBaxter.

Noble WeirdWhirl.

Noble War God.

Noble Yeuromain.

Noble Jorge Franco.

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Chapter 92: Where We Stand - Part 2

A note from Manasong

Attention: to conform to the limit of mature content (more than just sexual content) allowed in a novel, I've censored this chapter. You can look for the uncensored version here.

We won't use any maids for this bath. We'll get spoiled if we always let them wash us, and we need some private time for ourselves.

Also, Klein isn't late, so we can have a nice bonding experience together.

Alissa has the highest [Washing] out of all of us, so everyone wants her attention. Of course, she chooses me first, and I use [Bind] to mirror her movements.

I only stimulate her for a short time so that she doesn't tire out. There's a line of women wanting to be touched by her, and it'd be no good if she didn't have the energy left to satisfy at least half of them.

After she's done with me, I wait on the sofa and deliberate on who I want to ravage today while human-Aoi bobs her head up and down. Her human form doesn't need cleaning, but her dragon form does, so I decide to get her to bounce on me while we wait for her turn.

I put the Ring of Fertility on a silver chain and hang it around my neck, then I feed it some mana and begin my "bonding" with Aoi.

While she's usually rough and aggressive, as a human, she's delicate and feminine. She didn't want to be the exact opposite of a dragon, but instead, she wanted to be the epitome of human gentle femininity.

I start kissing her chest and body, which gives her a small burst of energy that she uses to seal her lips against mine. Her tongue gently slips into my mouth, and instead of kicking up a storm like usual, it plays with mine, teasing my tongue in a manner that reminds me of Roxanne.

After a few minutes of passionate kissing, her turn finally comes, and she begrudgingly detaches herself from me, then I sigh and look around, searching for the next target.

I'm feeling somewhat predatory today, so I nab Lina before she can enter the hot bath.

I lay her down on one of the beds, and she strikes up a coy pose, as if she were Little Red Riding Hood about to be eaten by the Big Bad Wolf… which is not far from the truth.

I make sure that her fragile little body doesn't break, but her mind gives out midway. She's effectively passed out, though I know that she'll remember every detail of her Ravaging, she always does, and the pain in her waist will make sure that she doesn't forget for a long time… or until she asks for a [Heal].

After she's done, I grab Lina and lay her down on one of the clean beds, then I join Hana and Klein for a party of three.

I'd like to screw my monkey-girl's brains out, but first, we need to team up to defeat Hana.

The sweaty barbarian is a fearsome foe with a ridiculously large stamina bar, but every boss has a weak spot, and Hana's is a big, thick, spiky dragonator.

Through our teamwork, the boss is defeated and collapses in a puddle of her own juice, but this isn't co-op, this is a battle royale.

I pounce on Klein and easily bind her, then I use her as I please.

Her long monkey tail tries to fight back, but my thick dragon tail is pure muscle, so I tie her up completely and finish her.

I look around for my next prey and continue The Ravaging.

I stop in front of Alissa, the last opponent still standing.

She stops playing with herself and seductively licks her fingers, then she lays down on the bed and opens herself to me, inviting me in. She submits to my superiority and takes me in with delight until she finally collapses, leaving me as the last warrior standing.

I finally enter the hot bath with a sigh, then a little thirsty dragon clamps onto me. I still have some mana left to burn, so I let her do as she pleases.

Once our bodies are completely relaxed, it's time for dinner. Krysta convinced the elven chef to make not-pita bread sandwiches along with a dish that I love so very much: a charcuterie board of elven smoked meat, cold cuts, and cheeses. It's the perfect combo of elven food, incorporating everything they're good at while also being very considerate of our tastes.

Once my belly is filled, I sit by the streams in the corner of the dining room and wet my feet in the running water. At first, I don't feel much, but then I pad my claws with a layer of sensitive skin, allowing me to feel the cool water splashing against my scales, which feels very refreshing in this hot weather. I guess that this is exactly why the mages created this feature.

Hana sits down beside me, and her hand immediately goes for my hair to play with it. Before her brain massage can put me to sleep, I help her draft up a training routine for the Chimeras who want to learn [Soul Manipulation].

It seems that [Spirit Magic] will be experiencing a boom in business. Well, at least in this town, it will. There are still more mages applying to join our Court, but we'll resort to hiring them as freelancers because our numbers are nearing the limit. I don't want to give Mimi an aneurysm right now.

Once our conversation starts to peter out, Osaria sits down on my other side and snuggles up to me.

"Wolfy, I wanted to talk about my position as a concubine," she hesitantly says with a somewhat serious tone.

After suppressing the sudden desire to run away, I nod gently and urge her to continue, "Yes, what is it?" Then I wrap my tail around her waist to comfort her since she looks a bit nervous.

She anxiously taps her thick thighs, then her demeanor regains its usual faint coyness. "I've greatly enjoyed acting as your representative. The occasional traveling, the meetings with other people, the idea of representing someone as important as a Crown Lord…" -She suddenly grins and relaxes her body against mine- "It all resonates with me, so I want to make it official, but I'd also like it if I was properly paid for it, though I don't need to be paid like a diplomat. I just don't want to have to ask you for money every time I want something."

I grab her thigh and caress it lovingly to reassure her. "Sure, that's fine with me. I'll tell Mimi tomorrow."

The seductress comes back, and she grins mischievously, then gives me a peck on the cheek.

Unlike wives-to-be, concubines aren't seen as having the same level of authority as a wife. The point of marriage is to make it official that they're a team, so while spouses don't need to have the same level of power, they're expected to share the responsibilities of their positions, which is especially true for a position as important as a Lord. But concubines aren't "married" to their partners, so Osaria's word doesn't carry the same weight as mine does, and by law, our finances are still separate.

I grab her hand and give it a gentle kiss, then Hana gets a bit jealous, so she snuggles up to me on my other side, and both of my (padded) draconic arms get buried in between their mountains.

"Isn't it fitting that someone like Osaria represents us?" Yunia suddenly comments, hiding her smirk with a stony mask.

"An insatiable predator?" Klein questions teasingly and looks around, searching for supporters. "Sounds just like half of this harem."

Roxanne nods emphatically and sides with her, "Yes. A seductress that's even more of a succubus than I am."

"It's almost as if she's a fusion of all of our 'eccentricities,'" Alissa adds and nods sagely.

Ciel sighs wistfully and rests her cheek on her hand. "I could definitely sense a hint of a draconic thirst in her yesterday," she piles on.

Aoi tilts her head to the side and muses, "I think her level of desire is similar to a dragon's. Maybe one of her ancestors was a dragonkin?"

"Now that you mentioned it, I think she does make love like Hana," Klein agrees and chuckles cheekily.

Osaria actually blushes and pouts in annoyance, though she barely contains her smile since this is all in good fun. "You're all talking about me as if I were horrible," she complains.

"Horribly horny," Klein immediately retorts.

Osaria holds her waist in a sassy way and presses her, "And what does that make you?"

Klein stutters and repeats in confusion, "W-what does that make me…?"

"Her damn toy!" Roxanne shouts and laughs along with Osaria.

"Personal licker," Hana plays along and wiggles her eyebrows suggestively.

"Fingering expert. Oh, wait, no, that's me, ohohohoh," Osaria taunts snobbishly like Yunia, then laughs like Roxanne.

Alissa lays her hand on top of Klein's and gives it a reassuring squeeze. Klein suddenly turns to her and pouts anxiously at Alissa's gentle expression.

"A friend to all of us," Alissa comforts her, and Klein forgets all about the previous banter, smiling cutely at her. Then Alissa's tail wags, and she narrows her eyes like a cheeky fox. "And Wolfy's seed extractor, number nine."

"NYAH!" Klein squeals in anger and surprise from the sneak attack and counters by pouncing on Alissa. Her hands wrap around the sly fox's neck, and she pretends to strangle her.

Alissa resists, and the two of them start to wrestle on the table, then they roll off of it and fall onto the soft grass-like floor but remain entangled.

They clasp their hands with each other and struggle for control, then Klein suddenly spreads their arms apart and attacks by kissing Alissa's lips.

The foxy girl feels a faint thump in her chest, stunning her for a split second, which is just enough time for the irate monkey to turn the tables on her. She forces Alissa to spin around and binds her arms behind her back while laughing manically.

"NAHAHAHAHA! Got you!"

She must be the second most experienced wrestler among us, with Hana firmly at the top. The two of them have had many borderline-gay tussles while growing up together.

Alissa struggles for a moment but gives up because she isn't strong enough to get out of this position. That doesn't mean she's been defeated, though.

She nuzzles up to Klein's neck, slightly calming down the victorious monkey girl, then she suddenly jerks her body to the side and nibbles on Klein's round monkey ears.

"NYAAA!" Klein shrieks from the painful jolt, allowing Alissa to escape her grasp. The animal ears of a wereanimal are their weak spot, but not because of the pain. Just like with getting poked in the ribs, it's a strong but difficult to explain sort of stimulation that throws off anyone who's not prepared for it.

Alissa grabs Klein's body and switches positions with her, getting on top of the stunned monkey girl.

She restrains Klein's arms and pins her waist between her legs, then she leans down and kisses her.

Now it's Klein's turn to become stunned for a split second, but instead of resisting Alissa, she reaches up to kiss her again.

Alissa's lower lips start tingling, and the two weregirls start kissing each other passionately.

Aside from her obsession with making me happy, I think Alissa is the straightest of all the girls, though she was never entirely straight.

I release Osaria's waist and get up, then I walk up to the girls and stop before them.

They stop kissing each other when they feel the shadow of my weapons on their faces.

"I feel that you two are going to need these," I whisper with a husky tone.

Alissa grins excitedly while Klein subtly licks her lips.

I cast [Heal] on them because two Ravagings in a single day is just too much for their frail bodies. Even though they were horny, they can only take so much.

The maids might've been a bit traumatized by the sight of us. They should've already heard about me, but seeing it in person is another thing entirely.

We retire to our bedroom, and I give Yunia some attention by brushing her hair. I could use my claws as a brush, but just that heretical thought alone is enough to earn me a glare from her, so I won't think about that idea any further.

After a while, I start to use my tentacles to hold the brush instead since they don't tire out like my clumsy hands do, and then I suddenly remember something that I should've addressed a long time ago.

Klein… I want Klein, there's no denying it.

She doesn't want to join the harem, but she also doesn't want to leave us. She might love us, but her feelings are nowhere near as strong as the love between the wives and myself.

She's like Ereia: she's our bed friend. A close friend, but still just a friend.

I don't want to give her up. Whether she's in love with Hana's brother or not, I want to have her as my concubine.

In truth, I want every woman. I want Krysta, I want Kaatohe, her long-gone mother, Hukarere, Oritiki, Kurii, Shala, Istante, Sainalai, Almaria, Poosh, Oura, Silvane, Nononya, Toroo, Silvina… and maybe I could plow some sense into Vanea… heh.

But I know that if I tried to force Klein to stay, she wouldn't be happy.

I cross my arms and start grumbling internally. The dragon inside of me is making this harder than it should be.

"You'll never have her," Alissa enters my mind, helping the human convince the stubborn dragon. "You can have her body, but not her heart."

Grumpy, stubborn, and proud. The shithead that now lives inside of me is holding onto Klein like how a child holds onto its toy in fear of having it taken away from them. I guess the Gods screwed me over by giving me this dragon, or maybe they just divided my personality into two different pieces, with the entirety of some of my bad characteristics being assigned to either one of them.

I still remember Ciel's worry that I might change too much, and that the man she fell in love with would disappear completely. I took that to heart, and now, I worry about how this new race will change me, but I can't truly say how old-me would've reacted to this situation.

I think he'd just put off the decision until the deadline. It wouldn't be the first time…

Old-me was kind, considerate, and moral. He knew very well where the line was, and he'd never cross it willingly.

Do these characteristics describe a man that would force a woman to commit to him? I don't think so, you grumpy lizard. Now screw off.

I cringe at myself. I never expected that I'd have to convince "my other self" to cooperate.

Oh damn, don't tell me that I've developed split personalities.

I throw myself onto the bed and puff out my cheeks. This is the best opportunity to talk about this, so I won't back down and postpone it again.

Hana sits beside me, and her strong fingers run through my hair, occasionally tugging at my stiff and rough black horns. I love it when she does that.

I look at her, and she gives me a compassionate smile.

She's gone through this already. She wanted to have me for herself, then she wanted Roxanne for herself, but that was never meant to be. It's been a long time since the greedy lizard inside her tried to hoard anything because she just can't.

You can cry and whine all you want, you stinky lizard, but you won't hoard everything. You know it, so let me do this, or I won't let you mount Aoi.

The damn c-brain stops grumbling for a moment. Threatening myself seems to have worked, but I don't know for how long since I find it extremely hard to believe that I'll be able to not do Aoi, especially since she herself thinks this is bullshit because it's also a punishment for her.

I chuckle softly at myself.

This is really damn stupid.

I secure the saddle on the dragon and forcefully reign it in.

I said my piece, now obey.

I'm still the same, mostly. I'm still the man that my wives fell in love with, just better… and slightly crazy, or maybe this is just how weredragons are.

My principles are still the same, though. I'm not letting a man into the harem, it's just that Klein was never really in it, to begin with.

"Aw… nibbling Skritters," Roxanne jokingly grumbles inside my mind.

Alissa sends her an angry glare. Ironically, it seems that she's the most concerned with faithfulness out of all of us.

I wrap my tail around hers to get her to calm down. I don't actually mind Roxanne's banter because I'm pretty secure in my position.

The rule about men is one of the few that put limits on our debauchery. If we were ever to cross it, I feel like I'd lose myself, so that's the line in the sand, the maximum extent to our depravity.

Klein breaks none of my rules because I should never have considered her to be part of the harem, even temporarily. The idea of a "temporary husband" was also a bad one from the start.

I guess this is why Krysta warned us about our relationship. We weren't in sync, and now I have to put in the effort to beat down my heart so that we'll be on the same page.

I breathe in to steady myself and sit up. Klein gives us a curious look, now noticing that we're acting slightly weird.

Osaria makes her bird stop singing, and a silence settles into the room.

I clear my throat and start, "Since we're talking about relationships, I think we need to clarify where we stand."

Klein's tail immediately shoots up as her eyes open wide, and her fur stands on end. "W-w-wha-wha-what?" She stutters, completely flustered.

I unwrap my tail from Alissa's, then I scoot towards Klein and entangle my tail with hers, pulling it down to get her to relax. I've quickly learned about how sensitive my non-human parts are. It's almost like they're a highway to my heart.

She calms down a little, but she still seems apprehensive, so I don't waste any more time. "It's nothing too serious, and it shouldn't change how things are."

She sucks in a breath and nods shyly.

"You love us, right?" I softly ask.

She nods vigorously, getting even more apprehensive.

"But you don't want to join the harem?" I ask directly. There's no point in going with any other approach.

She hesitates, then nods slowly and opens her heart to us, "I… I love you all, I really do, but I feel like there's 'something missing.' I just don't want to have to share with so many other people…" -She looks down, and her tone is stained with melancholy- "It's fun being together with all of you, it really is, but I don't feel like I'd make a good wife, and I want a husband that I could call my own."

I close my eyes in pain and speak my mind, "You love us, but not enough to marry us."

"I guess…" She hesitantly admits and shrugs.

"I didn't think you'd make a good wife, with Wolfy's destiny and all, but maybe you could've been a concubine," Hana opens up her heart, too.

Klein sighs and shakes her head. "I don't know… maybe if the harem was smaller…"

I give her tail a little tug and reassure her, "If you really don't see yourself joining the harem officially, then you simply shouldn't. It's important that you make this decision both happily and willingly, but like I said, you'll always be welcome here no matter what you choose."

She bites her lip and nods, then breathes, "Okay…"

I glance at Yunia. "I think that we shouldn't have made you into a 'temporary member.' You're a friend, or maybe a little more than a friend, but not enough to be a lover. You're like Ereia or Hukarere, a 'friend with benefits,' or a 'bed-friend' if you want a more explicit label."

"A close friend with benefits," Hana adds sternly. She really wants to make it clear just how important Klein is to her.

She pauses and blinks, still slightly confused, but her body starts to relax. Perhaps something clicked in her head, and now she's realizing where we truly stand.

"That makes sense…" She mumbles, and her eyes open wide, then she looks at each of us. "I… think I agree with that."

I sigh and relax, letting our entangled tails flop on the bed.

I feel like I've just taken a weight off my shoulders. For a long time, I've felt like my attachment to Klein was "wrong," but now I know it's finally exactly as it should be.

For as much as she might love us, she isn't ready to join us officially… and now that I think about it, she might be addicted to my sword, which would be one of the reasons that she doesn't want to leave.

Osaria suddenly hugs Klein from behind and kisses the top of her head. "You'll always have a place here," she whispers with a husky tone.

Klein nods with an anguished face, holding herself back from crying, and we form another cuddle puddle to heal our frayed nerves. I think I prefer fighting monsters over this.

The puddle feels so good that we all peacefully drift off into a deep sleep.

A note from Manasong

Hall of Fame of Patrons

The patrons who support Rupegia shall have their names sung by the bards for they deserve the glory and honor. Their names are:

Prince PreownedFIN.

Prince Creamy Spinach.

Lord Andrew Meyers.

Lord Samuel Lim.

Lord Bill.

Lord Novgarod.

Lord Ashadun.

Lord Michale Erwin.

Lord Bakerdea.

Lord Nathan Vanbrunt.

Lord Maurice.

Lord Empyrean.

Lord Mattirro Draca.

Lord Joshua Tal.

Lord Colorblind.

Lord RottenTangerine.

Lord Fullmoon.

Lord Joxsan Herrera.

Lord Sean Drake.

Lord EESDESESESRDT.

Lord Brody Haugan.

Lord FrostyCube.

Lord Mike Bartter.

Lord Cardinal Steiner.

Lord Krawn.

Lord Warwulfv.

Lord Cidant.

Lord Jorge Franco.

Lord Bradly.

Lord Freddie.

Noble Salty Panda.

Noble Mild Fracas.

Noble Aclys.

Noble Shawn Plumley.

Noble CarlBaxter.

Noble WeirdWhirl.

Noble War God.

Noble Yeuromain.

Noble Jorge Franco.

Leave a rating or a review to help me rise to the top or fix my shameful understanding of prose.

Take a look over my blog where all information about the world of Rupegia will be posted.

Join the Discord and discuss, or rant, or meme, or try and fight me so your waifu gets more screentime.

Become a Patron and read chapters in advance, or read the side-stories, or leave your mark on the story, or help choose the next artwork or the next side-story.

Chapter 92: Where We Stand - Part 3

A note from Manasong

Attention: to conform to the limit of sexual content allowed in a novel, I've censored this chapter. You can look for the uncensored version here.

Today is the 7th.

The Chimeras have already departed, so I summon a dozen wind elementals to search for them since I forgot to leave a summon behind on the Carrier. I trust the knights, but I'd like to be able to see what they're doing.

If the elementals don't find them, then I'll just ask for a Space mage to open a [Gate] for me. I trust that Alcander didn't forget to set up a few of them inside our ships.

My [Dragon Transformation] increased by 1 (now 4).

Roxanne increased her [Mana Control], [Mana Efficiency], and [Alchemy] by 1 (now 8+32, 10+10, and 1+9).

Hana increased her [Draconic Body] by 2 (now 3), and her [Spear Use] and [Intimidate] by 1 (now 2+18 and 3).

Ciel increased her [Light Magic] by 1 (now 10+30).

Lina increased her [General Enchanting] by 1 and [Magic Tool Carving] by 2 (now 7+13 and 2+8).

For breakfast, Krysta adds eggs Benedict on nutty muffin to the menu, though these are Dragolite eggs, which require a much larger muffin to fit it all.

There's no way around it, Lordship is going to spoil us pretty thoroughly, and I must say that Yunia really was raised properly, but I can't see the twins actually resisting all the luxury and hedonism of Lordship.

After we eat, I pass by Mimi's office to tell her about Osaria's position.

Her stony face remains unmoving, except for a single eyebrow, which she briefly raises. "A representative or a diplomat? They're similar positions but they have very different expectations regarding payment," she clarifies.

I pensively scratch my horn and think it through, "Oh… I think she'll be a diplomat. A representative could be any sort of person whose job is to promote our interests while a diplomat has to use more skills, like negotiation, and has more authority when brokering deals. For someone as experienced as Osaria, I think she fits better as our diplomat."

Mimi nods in understanding. "Then diplomat it is."

Today, neither Yunia nor Alissa have any pressing matters to attend to, so they'll be able to join us for training. It feels nostalgic to gather in a room and train near each other, but not all of us have spent months in a maze, so they don't feel like it had really been that long.

Dokkanchee is escorted to the castle shortly after breakfast, and she immediately gets to work.

She inspects my scales again, and this time, I pad them so that she doesn't get cut.

"You're… forgive me, but you're 'odd,' my Lord," she softly comments and looks up at me.

I snort softly and ask bemusedly, "That, I know, but why do you think so?"

She wets her lips and pushes herself up with her cane. "Your scales have the concept of Okross, its 'indestructibility,' and they've only been seen on the Symbol of Might, one of the most ancient and powerful dragons that we know about, but you don't strike me as someone who represents 'might.' Your [Mana Body] and shape-shifting skill make me think that you're more of a mage." She sighs and stares at my scales again. "Your contradicting characteristics are truly perplexing. I don't have the faintest idea about what could have happened to make your body change like this."

Hm… this is rather interesting.

She already has to keep my condition a secret until the Lordship Ceremony, so one more secret wouldn't hurt.

I decide to bring her up to speed, "The truth is that the Gods made me into a new race inside a dungeon. I'm a weredragon, a fusion of man and dragon, so perhaps my 'human' side is magically powerful, while my 'dragon' side is physically powerful."

She immediately looks up and intensely stares into my eyes for a moment, then she looks around and observes the girls training their skills.

"I can't say that this is unexpected…" She comments and chuckles, then sighs tiredly and goes into work-mode again. "Though impressive, the 'indestructibility' aspect of your scales interferes with the illusion magic. It doesn't make it impossible to achieve the masking that you desire, but it really makes my job harder."

I shrug and lean back on the sofa. "We're Crown Lords. If we can throw money at you until the problems disappear, we will."

Her face cramps, and she shifts uncomfortably on her feet. "It won't be necessary for you to go that far," she whispers nervously, and I simply nod graciously.

Dokkanchee sets up crystals all over our training room, and it reminds me of when I put up cameras for VR with Lily.

Dokkan's illusions aren't just some sort of hologram, though. She needs extreme, reality-bending powers to fool hundreds of commoners, the subordinate Lords that will be staying close to us, and the Crown Lords who will act as witnesses to the ceremony. It's no simple task, and we know of no one better than the shopkeeper who routinely fools customers just to gauge their aptitude for seeing through illusions.

Her magical school is called [Jaleowzeh Magic], which Roxanne says is a contraction of "fake realm" in [Southern Maokai Language]. It's one of those magic schools that requires specific tools and doesn't have much in the spells department, so there's no point in any of us trying to learn it ourselves.

While she works, the girls all go about their training.

Alissa tries out an enchanted bow that lets her subtly control the direction of her arrows. It's a neat enchantment, but it's really complex, rather sensitive to interruption, and difficult to control, making it not very practical to use.

Roxanne takes a little break from her [Alchemy] to improve the power of her [Explosion] by adding [Warp Space] to it. It's something that she's postponed for a while now, so it'd be best if she just finished it already.

Hana tests out her armor and all of its enchantments. Using them isn't just like pressing a button since it's necessary for you to continuously "feed" them with mana, and it takes some practice to differentiate between all of the enchantments. She also needs to learn how to avoid ripping her armor off her body when she uses [Draconic Body] to make the gear actually useful.

Ciel practices [Light Magic]. First, she [Heal]s Dokkanchee and [Refresh]es her body to help her with her pains, then she tries out [Detect Evil] and focuses on understanding the feedback that the spell provides her with.

The spell makes her hand glow, and allows her to see someone's "color" when she touches them. White is for normal, faithful humanoids; red is for the Wicked; black is for monsters; gray is for animals; and summoned beings have the same color as their master, though it has a "fake" feeling to it that's easily noticed through the spell.

Curiously, Aoi is white, but semi-transparent. She doesn't have a single speck of "blackness" to her, but she also isn't fully humanoid yet. It makes me wonder what Ciel would have seen if we had cast it on her sooner.

Lina continues studying my [Materialization], which is now being renamed to [Solidify] by the Spirit mages. She's also starting to carve an experimental magic tool for it, so she wants to finish it before she continues with her combat training.

Aoi continues training her fire breath. Apparently, Hana quite literally channels her anger into her breath, so Aoi is having some problems with improving her fire since she's nowhere near as angry as Hana.

For a dragon, she's pretty calm and kind. If she didn't enjoy being dominated and having rough sex so much, she could even pass for just a big lizard or something.

"Hey!" She shouts inside my mind and sends me a human pout.

"I-… I didn't mean that as an insult, it's just that you're not what I expected a dragon to be," I hurriedly explain myself.

"She was never a 'normal' dragon, to begin with, but I think she's better this way," Alissa chimes in and sends a mental head pat to Aoi.

"Wasn't she raised by all of you? Without a dragon to guide her, she was bound to grow up different," Yunia remarks.

"She's a weirdo," Roxanne jabs, the system translating the Maokai slang into something more palatable.

"I'm special!" Aoi proudly states, seeing nothing wrong with being different.

"Dokkanchee is giving us odd looks; let's keep it quiet in my head, okay?" I try to calm them down. I still remember the fact that Dokkanchee can "see" it when we communicate through [Bind].

"Okay!" Aoi deliberately yells, so I poke her soul.

Yunia works on her [Spirit Magic] while also learning how to use her armor and weapons. She wants to make [Soul Blade] and [Soul Shield] a more prominent part of her fighting style, so she uses my memories of multi-limb fighting to accelerate her progress.

Like how Yunia is benefiting from my memories, we're all also able to take a look at how the others use their armor's enchantments to speed up our own progress, so it's not like we're losing out too much. With how connected we are, our experiences transfer between one another quite easily, so if any one of us progresses in a skill, everyone else learns a little from it, too.

I also practice my transformation since Dokkanchee doesn't need me to remain human all the time. The most difficult part is getting my scales to be affected by her magic, so the shape I'm in doesn't really matter right now.

The more I transform, the more I feel like I'm going crazy. When I'm a dragon, I feel like pushing down Lina, sinking my claws into her ribs, and fucking her with no lube until she bleeds. Once I transform back into a human, I start to think 'what the fuck is wrong with me,' then I transform back into a dragon and the desire comes right back, but I feel like I'm perfectly normal.

Dragon thoughts only make sense when I'm a dragon, and human thoughts only make sense when I'm a human. I still spend most of my time as a human, so my dragon thoughts feel very "foreign" to me.

Do I become a danger to the girls whenever I shift into a dragon?

"We'll always be here to stop you if you do because [Bind] works both ways, oddly enough," Ciel's comforting voice and embrace enters my soul space.

"I feel like mating with you and forcing you to impregnate me every time we have sex, but I never do," Alissa shares her own experience with strange impulses. As the resident wereanimal, I think I should rely on her more. "Yes, please do."

"But you do have a thing with clawing at his back," Yunia comments smugly.

Alissa's ears go flat as she feels a little ashamed. "Well, sometimes the wild side bleeds over."

"Haven't you ever had that dark little voice in your head go: 'wow, I could kill that person with a flick of my wrist'? It's the same thing with violent desires," Hana chimes in with some surprisingly good advice. "Hey! Fuck you!"

Aoi stops nurturing her anger for a moment just to nod at Hana's words, then Roxanne's voice worms its way into my head with unusual gentleness, "I'm not a succubus from the myths, just a humanoidized version of them. I want to ride every dick I see, but not really."

Hana nods internally and grunts in agreement. "Oh yeah, I definitely get that."

Ciel, Lina, and Yunia share a worried look. They've never felt anything like that, so they have the same perspective as I do: the other races are fucking crazy, but we don't really believe that. It's just something so alien to them that they find it hard to relate to it, giving me a bit of comfort since it explains why I'm having difficulty adjusting.

"I don't envy you, Wolfy," Lina says with a rather pitying tone, and the other two girls nod internally. She walks up to me and silently pats my scaly head, and just the act of that alone is enough to comfort me because I certainly can't feel much with her small, soft hand.

Gify pops into existence on my draconic back, making Dokkan jump in surprise. "Gih!" Gify shouts angrily inside my head. She can see my brain, and she knows that I'm fine, so she wants me to stop with the crazy talk.

Dokkan grumbles a bit and continues her work, then Ciel gives her a guilty smile in our stead.

I sigh and sit on my hind legs. I think my human side is really whiny, or maybe it's just the dragon that's grumpy. "So I guess the dragon thoughts will be always 'there,' and I just need to find a way to 'deal with it'?"

"Gih!" Gify angrily claws at my scales, but I barely feel anything.

"Yes," Alissa, Hana, and Aoi agree in unison.

I snort, exhaling smoke through my nose, and give everyone an internal head pat as I say, "Alright. Thanks, everyone."

"Hehehe," Roxanne giggles cheekily, proud that she actually helped this time instead of just being the useless comedic relief. "Oi!"

"Damn right, she's useless!" Hana piles on and chortles.

"Comedy helps people heal! Isn't that right, Ciel?" Roxanne angrily presses her for an answer.

Ciel tries to make herself small, but everyone's internal eyes are already set upon her. "Hm… yes, it does, but I can hardly say that what you do is comedy. It's borderline bullying," she awkwardly admits and holds back some chuckles.

"Ahahaha!" Hana lets out a belly laugh.

"You bitches…" Roxanne grumbles, and her presence starts to fade into the background.

"Anyway…" Alissa tries to clear my mind by giving them each a few glares. "You should explore what both of your sides want, treating them like separate personalities, or outright embrace both sides like a dragonkin."

I hum in thought and reflect, "I don't really feel like the dragon side is 'me.' Maybe a different 'me,' but not the original."

"Embracing both makes you stronger. It's easier to use your muscles when you like them," Hana advises again, and the image of her proudly pounding her chest as she grins is sent into my mind.

I frown, which makes my draconic face look menacing, but I don't let Dokkan see it. "I don't 'like' my dragon side. I don't want to mix with him."

Alissa pats my head through Lina. "Then separate personalities it is," she kindly says.

We all stop talking, and I glance at Dokkanchee, who seems to have become distracted. She wets her lips nervously and picks up the pace again.

Alissa suddenly starts to hear some low rumbling coming from far away, so I summon a bird and send it to investigate.

It quickly discovers that it's the sound of the court mages training together. Alcander uses [Ritualism] with the Space mages to throw two-meters wide boulders at Silvano, who destroys each one with a single [Lightning Bolt].

His mana quickly runs out, and they switch to using smaller boulders for the rest of the mages to practice with. This creates a lot of dust, so the Wind mages have to regularly clear the air.

I notice that Alcander seems to be trying to not look at Silvano, and I don't blame him. Silvano's silver robes shine a bit too much, like Oritiki's armor.

The eccentric elf moves non-stop between the mages, giving them little tips to improve their spells, while Alcander takes his time, observing each mage until he's either satisfied or he finds a point that needs improvement. I can't say that they don't work well together.

One of the elementals reaches the ships and enters the Carrier through the window of a Trinity Cannon, but the gunner and the guard stationed there don't let it pass.

"An elemental… isn't our Lord a summoner?" The gunner questions and scratches his deer horns.

The crocodile guard nods with confidence and speaks with a female voice, "He is, but I saw a lot of summoners during our morning practice with the court mages, so it could belong to anyone. Though I think she does look like one of the Lords."

"The fox one?"

The crocodile rolls her eyes. "Obviously."

"But you're not sure?" The deer presses on.

The guard frowns and looks away from the elemental. "No…" She whispers ashamedly. "You?"

The gunner clears his throat and whispers back while looking away, "N-no…"

The two of them chuckle nervously. For the Lordsguard to not know the faces of their Lords is shameful, to say the least, buu~t they're excused since I've hardly left the castle in the few days since they started serving us.

The elemental offers a simple letter with the Este's Lordship seal, and the guard accepts it gingerly then frowns when she sees the seal.

"I think this is the Lordship seal," she whispers to the gunner, unsure.

"You think?" He retorts like it was obvious.

She coughs nervously again. "S-should we open it?"

He shakes his head vigorously and suggests, "Obviously not. I think we should deliver it to the Marshall."

The door to their compartment suddenly opens, and a small, female, cat-headed Chimera officer comes in, then she scans the room. "I've detected the intrusion of a summon. I take it it-… she isn't hostile since you didn't sound the alarm?" She presses the two stooges.

"Hm, yes. Uh, here…" The guard awkwardly gives the letter to the officer, who takes it and stares at the seal for a long moment.

"What should we do…?" The guard whispers hurriedly.

The officer raises her head and scans over the elemental's entire body, her cat face locked in a stony mask. "Let's escort the elemental to the Marshall," she confidently orders, then quietly adds, "and hope that the Lords don't strangle us."

Lunchtime arrives, and the chefs give us a tongue-gasm once again.

Back on Earth, I wasn't exactly sedentary, but I certainly would grow fat from the amount of food we've been eating. Even Lina is eating a lot, but her body is still as flat as a board. If our lifestyle slows down even a little, we'll definitely have some problems…

After fattening ourselves up, Lina meets with Sainalai to get her opinion on the [Solidify] enchantment that she finished carving this morning.

For once, the two of them don't appear small because all the furniture in Sainalai's office is properly sized for her. It's actually quite easy to do that since most elven furniture is literally grown out of the ground.

The freckled halfling takes the beautiful ruby and inspects it closely, then she pulls out a polished marble polyhedron and presses it against the gem.

Lina knits her eyebrows in confusion, then Sai feeds the gem some of her mana, and a naked, tall, and muscular horse-headed female Chimera materializes beside her.

"Hm… quite interesting. Not the cheapest enchantment, but it's well-made," Sainalai comments thoughtfully while rubbing her chin, then she looks at the Chimera. "How is it? How does it feel?"

"Feels good, actually, but my muscles aren't as powerful as I remember them being. It's much better than what the other mages can do, though," the Chimera immediately answers as she jumps around and tests out her senses, then she stops in place and starts touching her herself. "Wild winds, now this feels good."

Sai gives a surprised side glance to Lina and holds back a chuckle, making the shy little dwarf blush heavily.

The Chimera gets a bit too into it, so Sai pulls out a blanket that she spreads out on the floor, underneath the woman.

"It seems that your version of [Solidify] will be best suited for 'leisure' activities," Sai tactfully comments with a wry smile.

"Yes. I suppose it will," Lina quietly agrees, refusing to look Sai in the eye.

A note from Manasong

Hall of Fame of Patrons

The patrons who support Rupegia shall have their names sung by the bards for they deserve the glory and honor. Their names are:

Prince PreownedFIN.

Prince Creamy Spinach.

Lord Andrew Meyers.

Lord Samuel Lim.

Lord Bill.

Lord Novgarod.

Lord Ashadun.

Lord Michale Erwin.

Lord Bakerdea.

Lord Nathan Vanbrunt.

Lord Maurice.

Lord Empyrean.

Lord Mattirro Draca.

Lord Joshua Tal.

Lord Colorblind.

Lord RottenTangerine.

Lord Fullmoon.

Lord Joxsan Herrera.

Lord Sean Drake.

Lord EESDESESESRDT.

Lord Brody Haugan.

Lord FrostyCube.

Lord Mike Bartter.

Lord Cardinal Steiner.

Lord Krawn.

Lord Warwulfv.

Lord Cidant.

Lord Jorge Franco.

Lord Bradly.

Lord Freddie.

Lord Khristopher Welsh.

Noble Salty Panda.

Noble Mild Fracas.

Noble Aclys.

Noble Shawn Plumley.

Noble CarlBaxter.

Noble WeirdWhirl.

Noble War God.

Noble Yeuromain.

Noble Jorge Franco.

Leave a rating or a review to help me rise to the top or fix my shameful understanding of prose.

Take a look over my blog where all information about the world of Rupegia will be posted.

Join the Discord and discuss, or rant, or meme, or try and fight me so your waifu gets more screentime.

Become a Patron and read chapters in advance, or read the side-stories, or leave your mark on the story, or help choose the next artwork or the next side-story.

Chapter 93: Steady Progress - Part 1

A note from Manasong

Attention: to conform to the limit of mature content (more than just sexual content) allowed in a novel, I've censored this chapter. You can look for the uncensored version here.

Another day ends, and we begin our sacred routine during bath time. The maids wash us again, and this time, Poosh joins them.

She has a semi-transparent cloth tying her long, straight, blonde hair back into a ponytail, and sports a cute but small elven bikini, revealing most of her curves. A small percentage of her body is obscured with patches of white wool, though, making her look quite fluffy and soft due to both the wool and her curves.

She also seems to have the opposite of a resting bitch face, warmly displaying a permanent gentle gaze that gives her a motherly air.

Before we begin, she leans over my tub and respectfully asks, "My Lord, may I give you a more intimate touch than what the maids usually provide?"

"Yes," I answer immediately without even thinking, and her gentle gaze becomes even gentler.

Her hand glides along my soapy skin with extreme softness, but it stimulates me to an unbelievable degree, making me forget all about the other cute maids currently washing me.

She's apparently single, so it's obvious what both Alissa and I want from her.

Our Blood Slave contract is simple and straightforward: she's only to be a loyal servant. So, though she offered to be more "intimate," the extent of that is still controlled entirely by her, but the way she gently strokes me makes me forget about everything we had agreed on.

Her other hand massages my scalp, pressing on the base of my horns, and the bubbling elven hair product continues the massage wherever she isn't touching.

She suddenly grips a horn and squeezes it, almost making me moan. I immediately think of Roxanne and her fear of having her horns broken. If it feels this pleasurable to just apply pressure to them, I can totally imagine how a succubus might end up snapping them from overindulgence.

The maids push my body forward to wash my back, forcing Poosh to lean down so that she can continue stroking me, which also makes her bouncy bits dangle right before me, asking me to grab them.

My hands are currently bound by the maids as they carefully clean each individual scale with a special, ultra-resistant version of Snow Weave, so I can only watch on in a trance as her bits jiggle enticingly.

I look up and gaze into her dark brown eyes, then I let myself fall to her [Charm], and I feel myself getting faintly intoxicated by her, like with Roxanne's racial charm, but much weaker.

Someone grabs my resting tail and starts washing the base, right where it's the most sensitive, and that tips me over the edge.

"Oh…" Poosh breathes softly, sounding slightly disappointed, then she looks at my still member with curiosity, and her long sheep ears twitch. "Oh…? Do you have love-making skills, my Lord?"

I sigh and close my eyes, letting myself relax completely now that the stimulation has stopped. "Yeah. Quite a lot of them," I whisper as I start to feel drowsy.

"O~h…" She breathes in understanding, then she starts stroking me again very delicately and slowly, just stimulating enough to keep me from falling asleep, but not intense enough to make me want to rip off her clothes and do her.

As her other hand snakes down my body, I suddenly feel the need to add, "Just don't finger my asshole."

"Understood, my Lord," she gracefully acknowledges, though I definitely detect some disappointment in her tone.

For dinner, we get a nice slab of roasted meat, and I notice that my appetite for rare meat has increased significantly. I even start wanting to drink up the juices pooling on the plate as the dragon within me fantasizes about eating a live cow and drinking its warm blood.

Krysta has focused on preparing mana-infused food today, which will soon become quite popular once the Chimeras start going out into the town.

It certainly tastes good to Aoi and me, who have a thing for eating mana, while the girls have more muted reactions. Magical food is one thing, and the girls love magical, non-caloric desserts, specifically, but mana-infused food is something else and much more exotic, though I hear that it's a common request from "mana sniffers."

Sainalai knows a bit of Alteration and [Conjuring Magic], so I guess we should get her to check with our court mages and see if any of them know how to make magical food.

We can just buy it, of course, but it'll be easier if we assign a court mage for it.

Before the day is truly over, the twins come to meet with us over dessert.

They warily look around the dining room, and once they determine that there's nothing lewd going on, they suddenly become more confident and properly come in.

They look with a bit of worry at Osaria, who's now teasing them by showing her predatory gaze, which the two rather prudish boys seem to be weak to.

"How's your training?" Yunia innocently asks as they sit down. She's still sore and has her head up in the clouds from her Ravaging, so she doesn't pay any attention to their nervousness or probe my mind.

Arturus clears his throat and immediately starts talking to distract himself from Osaria's gaze, "We're doing well, and we've even gained a skill level a day lately, but we wanted to talk with you about that."

"Hm?" Yunia hums softly, her stern expression certainly not a match for her current mood.

"We want to enter Goloria's Knight Academy," Antares continues, trying to avoid looking Osaria in the eye.

"Ah, yes, that's a good idea," Yunia agrees as she nods absentmindedly.

Hana pokes Klein in the shoulder with a draconic finger, making the monkey-girl yelp softly. "Wouldn't that be good for you, too?" She asks Klein, completely ignoring her glare.

"Aren't I too old?" Klein questions and rubs her shoulder, then looks towards Yunia.

Yunia blinks repeatedly and tries to focus on the conversation as her mind starts to clear. "You could join the more advanced classes; they're for older students," she suggests.

Hana snorts and Klein turns to look at Roxanne, just waiting for the expected quip, but it doesn't come since the mean succubus only needs to grin for everyone to know what she's thinking.

"Too obvious," she mutters and shrugs.

"You're not that old, so you'll do fine," I comfort Klein.

"The worst part won't be the age gap, but that nearly everyone there will be the child of a noble," Osaria chimes in, though it doesn't help much.

Klein frowns and looks down, her long tail gradually going limp.

Yunia sighs softly and speaks with a little more kindness, "You don't need to participate in every class; only a few of them will be useful to you."

Her tail instantly shoots up as she exclaims, "Ah! That's true. I only need to endure for a little while." Then she looks up at me. She's still nervous, but the encouragement is starting to work on her.

I don't respond, simply looking at Yunia, who answers without me having to ask her, "For us, it's a simple matter to pay for your tuition, but it'll be hard on you since you were born as a commoner."

"If you think I can handle it, then I'll do it," Klein immediately states with a touch of trepidation. She's not the kind of person that would throw away a golden opportunity, though she still has some reservations.

"Anyone can, that's the whole point of the academy," Osaria comforts her again, this time with a lot more success since Klein's anxiety starts to fade.

Yunia turns to the twins, and the subtle gentleness goes away. "And for you two, we expect that you'll earn the highest honors. As the last remaining holders of the Este family name, you must not disappoint."

"Yes. W-we won't disappoint!" Arturus shouts, and his voice cracks, causing him to blush while his brother looks like he's about to facepalm.

"I don't think it's healthy to put too much pressure on them," I caution Yunia, and she snobbishly raises an eyebrow at me, prompting me to explain myself. "You want them to aim high, but it's in our nature to fail, so when that eventually happens, they need to survive the shock. I've seen many people get burned pretty badly because they weren't prepared for failure."

Yunia considers it seriously for a few moments, her long finger tapping the table loudly.

"He's right. You must 'live to fight another day,'" Ciel sides with me and quotes the God of War.

Alissa frowns as an annoying memory surfaces in her mind after hearing the teaching being quoted. "Someone said that to me once, and I hated it at the time, but I've begrudgingly come to accept it," she comments bitterly.

Yunia nods subtly and accepts our advice. She turns to the twins and softens up a little as she says, "Your purpose is to reach the treetops, but we'll be here in case a branch snaps." It sounds like she kind of butchered an elven saying of some sort.

Antares smiles warmly at her, then he kneels like a knight and lowers his head, with Arturus copying him a second later.

"We know our purpose as Supporting Descendants, and we'll grow stronger until you can rely on us," Antares declares with determination, then he rises from the floor and pulls his brother up with him. "The Este noble house will one day be True Nobles, too, and we'll always be loyal to you."

Yunia and Antares stare at each other while Arturus nervously shifts on his feet, then a subtle smile grows on her face as she opens her arms towards them. They happily scurry over to her, and she pulls them into a hug.

She tried to give them some tough love, but her heart didn't hold out for long, so it only lasted for a short while in the end.

And with that, the matter is settled. The twins and Klein will enter the Knight Academy at the start of next year.

While they talk over dessert and some light alcohol, I get up and walk out to the balcony to enjoy the cool, evening breeze.

Before long, Lina comes out to keep me company, not feeling like joining the conversation inside, then Gify pops onto my shoulder.

"Are you finished with your room? I've been feeling like my shoulder was getting a bit light lately," I lightly quip at Gify.

"Gih," she responds tersely, then curls up and goes to sleep.

I use my draconic hands to pull Lina towards me and a tentacle to pat her head while we watch the sea of mist shifting outside our walls.

"This place is so beautiful," I whisper in her ear, and I notice her getting goosebumps.

"It is. I can hardly believe that it's… mine," she whispers back absentmindedly.

I chuckle softly and reassure her, "It may not seem real, but it will, one day it will…"

"I never even dreamed that I'd one day become a Lord, or that I'd marry," she continues, happily revealing her feelings.

"Hm? But there was that man, Hilde's brother. He proposed to you."

She lets out a short snort and smiles wryly as she remarks, "That would've never worked. I'd be unhappy with him."

"Why is that?"

She opens her heart to me and speaks her mind, something that she rarely does, "I think he'd worship me a bit too much. Treat me with too much reverence compared to what I deserve."

Now it's my turn to smile wryly as I tease, "Well, you do deserve to be treated like a Lord, and soon, a Queen."

"Deserved," she corrects herself with a pout, then we go silent since there's nothing more for us to talk about. We already know almost everything we can about each other thanks to [Bind], so we have plenty of free time to spend in silence, just enjoying each other's company.

A few minutes later, a buzzed Roxanne comes out and hugs me from behind, nearly poking herself on my horns. She rubs her head against mine and manages to get one of her rubbery, spiral horns entangled with mine.

"S-sorry~…!" She apologizes as I use a tentacle to separate us.

"It's fine…" I answer tiredly. It may seem like she interrupted this moment I'm having with Lina, but my little dwarf doesn't care as long as we keep cuddling. She's already gotten used to completely ignoring Roxanne.

After that, the pale demon starts groping my body, but she doesn't rub her head against mine again.

"Oh! Right, I just remembered why I came out here," she suddenly exclaims and stops her groping, but only for a moment. "I discovered a powerful mix that kind of acts like that 'gunpowder' you wanted to recreate."

I turn my head sideways and raise an eyebrow at her. "Kind of?"

She giggles mischievously and nods. "Yes, 'kind of.'" Then the tip of her dagger-tail caresses my cheeks. "I still don't know how to make it from scratch, and it's dangerous to play around with it, but it's the closest I've gotten to your 'gunpowder.'"

"Considering how you cause at least one explosion every single day, then yes, it must be dangerous," Lina remarks offhandedly, and I detect a bit of edge in her tone.

"All thanks to your incredibly resistant workbench," Roxanne innocently responds and giggles again.

Lina's gloomy eyes look even gloomier as she frowns. "And now I've just remembered that it's time for me to review the enchantments for the workbench. If you get yourself wounded, then everyone will blame me."

I snort and confess, "I… I really don't think that we would. Everyone knows how crazy Roxanne is."

"I'm fine either way," Roxanne casually responds with a shrug and chuckles, then she starts groping my body with more enthusiasm and begins nibbling on my ear lobes.

Roxanne remains glued to me for the rest of the evening, but she restrains herself from going far enough to not scare off the twins, so they stay with us for a long time, and we end up going to sleep a little later than usual.

Today is the 8th.

My [Dragon Transformation] increased by 1 (now 5). Steady progress.

Alissa increased her [Enhanced Reflexes] by 1 (now 2+8). She can squeeze some more power out of her bow by increasing these "body enhancement" skills, but they're hard to come by, so she wants to split her focus with [Illusion Magic].

Roxanne increased her [Space Magic] by 1 (now 1+10), which means that she's now a step closer to boosting her [Explosion] with [Warp Space].

Hana increased her [Mana Efficiency] by 1 (now 2), which took a point away from [Reduced Mana Cost]. Efficiency helps with the enchantments in her armor so that she can use them for longer periods of time.

Ciel increased her [Light Magic] by 1 (now 9+31). Earning her skill points is better than just using my Gift to assign the free points because she actually learns more about the skill. The Gift is a shortcut to power; it'll never replace the real thing.

Yunia increased her [Spirit Magic] by 2 (now 6+19). It has been a long time since she last leveled this skill, so a full day of training without any interruptions was enough for her to gain two levels.

Lina's "slave" entry is gone, so she's now a free woman again.

She stares at her system screen as a mix of emotions stews inside her heart.

One emotion suddenly overcomes the rest, and it prompts her to act.

She gets up from the bed and hurries out onto the balcony as she pulls out her choker from her [Item Box], then she stops at the railing and rips off the slave tag from the choker.

We get up and calmly follow her as she gets second thoughts about what she should do next. She didn't hate being a slave, definitely not after meeting me, but there's something inside her that's ecstatic from knowing that it's over.

"Throw it. Throw the tag away," I kindly encourage her.

She turns to me and frowns in worry. "But… that'd be disrespectful," she refuses.

I smile warmly at her cuteness. "If you want to mark this day as a 'new chapter' in the book of your life, then throw it."

Osaria nods and agrees, "I know that you'll feel at peace once you do."

An idea stirs in Alissa's head, and she suggests the opposite, "Or store it. It'll probably become a precious historical item after our deaths." Then she smiles, proud of her idea.

"How do you figure that?" I immediately question her, the system translating my words into something very different.

Her smile becomes slightly mischievous. "If you fulfill your promise to Yunia, then the former tag of Lina of the 'Evil Eyes' will certainly become very valuable with time if we keep it safe."

"Maybe I should throw it away…" Lina mumbles, disheartened. She's very uncomfortable with that horrifying title.

Ciel walks up to Lina and gives her hand a squeeze as she encourages her, "Store it. It's a memento of your past, of who you were, and of how far you've risen."

Now Lina is truly torn. She really doesn't know which choice to pick.

"There's one more thing you could do…" Aoi starts with a toothy grin, then she walks to Lina and extends her draconic paw, asking for the tag.

Lina is apprehensive but gives it to her, then Aoi raises it up so that we can all see, and runs a very sharp claw along the entire length of the tag, leaving a shallow groove going through the writing.

"There, now it's clear that you're not a slave anymore. That's something an Earthling would do," she states proudly and returns the tag.

Lina stares at it for a moment, then she starts to smile adorably as her emotions settle down. She puts on the cute leather choker, then stores the tag back in her [Item Box].

She lets out a crystal-like, cutesy giggle, then grins warmly at all of us. "Thank you," she whispers, and of course, we respond with a group hug.

A note from Manasong

Hall of Fame of Patrons

The patrons who support Rupegia shall have their names sung by the bards for they deserve the glory and honor. Their names are:

Prince PreownedFIN.

Prince Creamy Spinach.

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Lord Bill.

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Lord Ashadun.

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Lord Bakerdea.

Lord Nathan Vanbrunt.

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Lord Fullmoon.

Lord Joxsan Herrera.

Lord Sean Drake.

Lord EESDESESESRDT.

Lord Brody Haugan.

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Lord Mike Bartter.

Lord Cardinal Steiner.

Lord Krawn.

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Lord Cidant.

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Lord Freddie.

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Noble Salty Panda.

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Noble War God.

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Noble Jorge Franco.

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Chapter 93: Steady Progress - Part 2

A note from Manasong

Attention: to conform to the limit of mature content (more than just sexual content) allowed in a novel, I've censored this chapter. You can look for the uncensored version here.

Today, I decide to hold our training in our private garden. I choose a shaded patio that has a ceiling of hanging vines and is surrounded by flowery hedges. The gaps between the leaves let cool air pass through, making for a good private spot to relax.

I think I've become a bit lazier than before. I was already a shut-in, but now I'm a hoarding, hibernating, asocial, giant scary lizard. Which is cool as hell, to be honest.

"'Giant,'" Roxanne repeats through [Bind] with big internal air quotes.

"I will be, one day," I retort and pout internally.

Dokkanchee starts setting up the crystals for our open carriage. We'll have to ride it at the start of the ceremony, so it needs to be perfectly enchanted for our plan to work. Her magic works best in larger, and also immobile, rooms, but she seems to be enjoying the challenge of our request.

Osaria leaves with Enomosa to find a discreet sculptor and painter. It's tradition to have our busts spread throughout the town, and there's also the gigantic golden portrait of us that needs to be carved into the Shell's wall.

I leisurely spar with Lina since keeping my body moving around helps Dokkan calibrate the illusion.

We equip our Bastión armor, but every time I want to use my sword, I'll have to equip my gauntlets. They're padded with something very resistant, which makes it easier to grip my sword without ruining the handle.

We play with some of the enchantments, but they lack the finesse of actual spells, though they're still more efficient than my instant-cast Gift, making them useful for quick and dirty attacks.

Considering how one of my strategies is to simply overwhelm my opponent with a wide variety and large number of attacks, using the armor's enchantments will save me some headaches from mana overuse.

Alissa asks for some points in [Sense Mana], then starts paying a lot of attention to Dokkanchee and her crystals, taking in every detail that she can. Theory followed by practice is the most efficient learning method, but pure observation is also pretty good. It's just training through repetition that could be considered as "inefficient," time-wise.

I also spar with Hana, but her superior grasp of the enchantments has made her extremely mobile, nullifying some of the advantages I previously had over her.

I could win the duel by using my wider variety of tools to their fullest extent, but the enchantments level out the playing field now, so the only way that I can guarantee a win is by going all out, and I don't want to do that.

"Come on, hit me! Hit me hard!" Hana shouts and pants excitedly.

"I'd rather do that when you're naked," I respond with a cringe as I notice a small scratch on her perfectly polished armor.

Hana growls and grunts, "What's the point of armor if we're not to get smacked while wearing it!"

Lina frowns angrily. "Don't do it too often or I'll stop you from sparring. There's only me and a few other enchanters in the entire town who can actually do maintenance on such a heavily-enchanted set of armor!" She exclaims indignantly.

Hana snorts and backs off a little, "Alright, alright, but let's at least test the limits of this metal."

I look at Lina, and she shrugs. "Just don't pierce through the plates."

I sigh and start casting [Discharge]. I'll make her suffer, then.

Ciel calls on Sainalai, and the two of them take a look at Dokkanchee's back while she rests for a bit.

"It seems that she has bone spurs along her spine, and they're pinching some nerves," Ciel shares her diagnosis.

Sainalai palpates the region and pays attention to Dokkan's pain response, then she frowns in thought and asks, "Can you tell exactly where it is?"

"Not with much precision unless we can open up her back and inspect-…"

"I'd rather not!" Dokkan suddenly exclaims fearfully.

Ciel gives her a good nurse smile to calm her down and explains, "Just the skin to expose the spine, and you wouldn't feel anything."

Dokkan is still not convinced. "I don't do well with blades, or blood…" She nervously admits.

Ciel maintains her calming smile and insists, "We can put you to sleep before we start, and you'd wake up without even being able to tell if we did it or not."

"Hmm…" Dokkan grunts stubbornly.

"How long would a [Regeneration] treatment last?" Sai asks, taking a different approach.

Ciel crosses her arms, making her tits almost burst out of her dress, and muses, "A few months, I believe. Bones are notoriously slow to correct without [Alteration Magic], that is, unless they're straight-up broken or removed…" -Dokkanchee whimpers- "but at least [Regeneration] would ease the pain."

"I already visit the priests every half-cycle to ease my pain," Dokkan comments, trying to deflect.

"Which is why we should use [Alteration Magic] to fix your spine, already," Ciel insists.

Sai turns to Ciel and discloses, "I've done a lot of small internal alterations in exchange for money, so I'm confident that I can repair the vertebra if I can see where the problem is. I could even do it this afternoon if you give me some time to prepare."

Ciel lights up and nods vigorously, then they both turn to Dokkanchee.

The old Kabar woman sighs, and her white feathers seem to subtly wilt. "Alright… as long as it doesn't take too long."

The two surgeons grin in satisfaction, and Ciel assures her, "The entire inspection should only last ten minutes from when you take the sleeping pill to when you wake up."

"Five minutes for me to remove the spurs, depending on how many there are," Sai adds.

Dokkan weakly nods, then they allow her to continue working.

Ciel joins us for sparring practice. With [Refresh], she's the only one of us who can outlast Hana in a battle, even though our armor is also enchanted with the spell. Her levels in [Light Magic] really do make that much of a difference in efficiency.

Since her [Fly] is a personal spell and not an enchantment, she's also the only one who can actually act as an aerial combatant. My [Telekinesis] is just too slow in practice, and Aoi still isn't as maneuverable as Ciel can be. Though she might want to get some tips from Oritiki since [Imperial Hasterrum Style] doesn't include anything for aerial combat.

Aoi is still an ogre-like fighter, relying on raw strength and the durability of her armor or scales to keep her safe, and that won't change any time soon. Human-Aoi has the "Dexterity," but lacks the needed "Strength," so she is also unable to fight like an average melee fighter. However, her "water bending" could evolve to become a precision tool to make up for her shortcomings.

Yunia's Spirit spells make her untouchable when going up against any melee physical fighter, but while hybrids like me can counter her, she now has access to [Rush], so I can't even guess at who'd win if we went all-out in a duel.

Then Roxanne causes a few more explosions before she's finally ready to showcase her research, but we hold off until lunchtime so that Dokkanchee leaves the garden before we start. This is definitely something that we don't want to share with others yet.

We all sit down near the wall on one side of the patio while Roxanne goes to the opposite side to keep the experiment at a safe distance from us.

She pulls out a flask with a small quantity of a somewhat yellow, sticky, and runny substance, then she pours it into a depression in a small, pillar-like earth elemental.

"Behold! Draconic Climax!" She proudly shouts with a puffed-out chest.

"Are you sure that's safe? Don't give the gardeners more work than they already have," Ciel cautions her with a knowing smile.

"Wha-…" Roxanne mumbles, then she looks up and frowns. "Oh…"

She scoops out half of the Climax with a spoon and stores it back in the flask, then she rushes towards us.

"Well it kind of looks like dragon juice," Hana comments with a smirk, making Roxanne giggle.

"No, it is just like the real thing," Alissa suddenly shares, and even Roxanne stops to look at her a bit oddly, then her ears go flat, and she faintly blushes. "I've never seen it myself, only read about it."

"I didn't expect you to know that," Yunia comments, with a rather incredulous tone.

"I had a phase when I was obsessed with dragons," she quietly admits.

"It kind of looks like it's rotten…" Lina mumbles, pulling our attention away from Alissa, then we all wrinkle our noses. "It does smell like it's rotten."

"There are still some improvements that could be made to the formula," Roxanne admits impatiently, then she creates a small [Fireball] at the tip of her finger. "Ready?"

"Do it," I breathe with an evil grin.

She throws it at the pillar, then plenty of sparkles go flying.

Oh, boy.

A huge cloud of smoke erupts from that little squirt of dragon cum, followed by a full second of bright sparkles bursting out, then a lick of flames that nearly reaches the ceiling of leaves.

"Woow…" Lina hums in wonder at the light show.

"This shit is powerful," Hana approves.

"It smells much better, at least," Alissa comments wryly.

It actually does. The smell is pungent, but it reminds me of baked bread, so maybe there's some kind of Maillard reaction going on.

But the important thing about it is: this is fantasy-gunpowder. If we can produce it cheaply enough, then it'll give our armies a significant power boost. Defensive spells like [Wind Shield] ensure that melee combat won't become obsolete, but it'll change how the average, non-magical armies fight their battles.

I rest my claws on my lap and calmly ask, "How easily can you produce more of it?"

Roxanne shrugs and smiles guiltily, "I haven't identified the main ingredients yet, so I can only [Transmute] or [Duplicate] it."

I raise a hand to reassure her. "There's no rush, not yet at least since we aren't at war, but I'd like us to start working on a rifle." Then I turn to Aoi. "If you're up to it, then maybe you could be the one who creates it for me."

Aoi's large tail sways from side-to-side, in complete sync with mine. "Hmm… sounds interesting," she accepts.

Alissa walks forward to inspect the aftermath as the cloud of smoke clears away. "It doesn't sound very subtle, though," she comments, then she runs a finger along the bowl and inspects the extent of the charring. "It's also not very strong. How was this supposed to work again?"

I adjust my non-existent glasses and start the lesson, "This is just the propellant, which is used to accelerate a metallic [Earth Bullet] of various sizes to such a high speed that it pierces through even metal armor like nothing.

"The advantage over spells is that it's so simple to use and cheap to make that even children and old commoners would be able to make use of it."

Yunia's long elven ears twitch, and she lets out a rare stutter, "I-I didn't imagine it'd be that revolutionary."

"With magic, there are innumerable ways to counter it, though," I pull her back to reality.

She shakes her head at me. "This will make it much easier for commoners to hunt and acquire levels, and the Townsguard will gain a huge boost in power. This will raise the average level of humanoids, which will improve the lives of everyone."

I tilt my head and scratch my horn. "Well, I guess that's something big, after all," I understate as I fail to find any better words to express myself in the moment.

I'm really going to mess with this world's balance…

Ciel frowns in confusion and turns to Yunia. "But it's going to reduce the power of Lords," she interjects.

Yunia nods confidently and proudly points her nose upwards. "If it's for the betterment of civilization, then I won't stand in the way," she declares.

"I have a feeling that the Head Priestess Teresina would be glad to 'remove us from the way' the moment we did that," I add, and Ciel begrudgingly agrees.

We turn our eyes to Roxanne, and she's frozen, her eyebrows raised high in surprise.

"No pressure?" I ask teasingly with a smirk.

"No pressure…" She grumbles back.

Today, Krysta makes some not-fries and seasons it with parsley and dried not-onions, reminding me of fast food, and I eat an unhealthy amount of this dish.

"We might want to add this to the 'limited menu' so that we don't overindulge. There's such a thing as something being too tasty for our own good," Yunia comments with a wry smile, and I agree wholeheartedly.

Dokkanchee finally starts to activate the illusions, and it makes my draconic parts feel really funny.

"Is your 'sword' okay?" Hana asks me with very clearly fake concern stamped on her face.

"Yes…" I groan and glare at her.

"Then everything will be fine," she tries to comfort me with a gentle tone, but her face is warped into a shit-eating grin.

"Bitch, you're lucky that I'm bound here," I grumble and harden my sword to show her what I really mean.

"And this would go faster if you stopped talking," Dokkan interrupts us, her face stiff in annoyance.

I give her an apologetic smile, then I grimace for a moment as it feels like a not-so-pleasant vibrator is attached to my scales. They're not literally vibrating; they're just resisting the spell.

"Let me just increase the frequency…" She grumbles, then starts sending some really weird-tasting mana to one of the crystals.

I grit my teeth and start joking to distract my mind from the discomfort, "I wish… this was… on my… diii~-…" The trembling suddenly stops. "Oh, cool. I'm fine now, an-… AH!" I shout in surprise.

My hands have suddenly become human, but they're even bigger than before, and my nails look like swords. It's a damn freaky sight.

"The hell…" I mumble in wonder.

"Hm… needs a lot of adjustments," Dokkan talks to herself, then she adjusts the crystals one-by-one.

I give her a flat and short earth elemental to use as a mount to speed up the process because she'd have trouble reaching the crystals otherwise.

My hands gradually shift back to their previous human shape while my horns are simply erased from existence.

Just to test it, I tilt my head to the side and feel my "skull" snag on my seat. I try to pull it out, but then I hear a rip when my horn cuts through some of the padding of leaves.

"Oh…"

Dokkan angrily wets her lips and asks, "Why would you do that?"

"Uh, sorry?" I apologize reflexively.

"Trying to move hidden parts could break the illusion," she explains tiredly and turns back to her crystals.

"What about my tail~…!?" I'm suddenly launched from my seat and have to use [Telekinesis] to stop myself from faceplanting on the tiled floor. "Holy shit."

"You lose control of any hidden limbs, too…" Dokkan warns me a little too late, trying her best to keep herself from smiling.

The girls, especially Hana and Roxanne, aren't as discreet, making fun of me, both internally and externally.

While playing with the illusions is fun, it's also rather dangerous due to how much power is going into them. Like a pressurized can, it's best to not mess with it too much.

Dokkan gradually warps reality more and more, and I start to return to normal. Well, to human normal.

It's nostalgic, but it makes the dragon inside me grumpy. I feel feeble and uglier, and my pride takes a hit.

I'm a Godsdamn weredragon, bitch, a mean mother plower; I'm not a bald monkey anymore.

Having human fingers again just isn't the same after the experience of having those big-ass and unbelievably sharp claws, though I feel a very pressing need to finger a woman.

Of all the bad ideas I could have right now, I think that is one of the worse ones.

I keep quiet in my seat while Dokkan prods and pokes all over my body. The tail is the most difficult part to deal with, and there's even the adaptation for my Bastión armor since it needs to be hidden, so her work is far from over, but the time for her "surgery" eventually arrives.

Once Sai appears, the frightful old woman tries to look around for an exit, but the only one she can spot is behind me, and I can keep her in place with just my gaze.

"Please enjoy our hospitality. You'd be hard-pressed to find more competent healer mages in this town than these two," I gracefully corner her.

She wets her lips nervously and glances at Sai approaching her, then she turns to me again. "Thank you, my Lord," she grumbles through gritted teeth.

I simply smile back, then Sai stops on her left while Ciel stops on her right.

"Would you like to go to a private room?" Ciel kindly asks.

"I'm fine. Let's just do it here since it's faster." And she points with her cane to a free bench.

I pull out a clean bed for her and offer, "How about this? It'll be more comfortable."

Dokkan grunts in agreement, and the two "surgeons" lead her to it.

"Do you mind if we watch?" I politely ask.

"No. Do as you wish," the grumpy old woman grumbles as she sits on the bed.

Ciel gives her a pill with a cup of water, and Dokkan gulps it down immediately as if she just wants to get this over with as fast as possible, then the surgeons help her lay on the bed, face down.

Ciel holds her hand to monitor her pulse and only has to wait for a mere three minutes until Dokkan is fully asleep, then they poke her to make sure that she won't wake up, and start the surgery.

Sai opens up her dress, exposing her back, then Ciel pulls two pairs of thick gloves out of her [Item Box] and casts [Clean] on them once they're both wearing a pair. They also wrap shawls around their hair to keep it tied up, so they seem to have a fairly good grasp on germ theory, but curiously, they don't put on masks.

"What if your saliva falls into her open body? Wouldn't that be bad?" I carefully question them.

They both stop and give me blank looks. Ciel doesn't understand how that could happen.

Before they can say anything, I explain myself, "When you speak, small droplets of your saliva fly out of your mouth. The same happens when you breathe."

Sai knits her eyebrows in incredulity and asks, "Really…?"

Ciel believes me right away since she knows my background, and I've had a lot of experience with masks, so she immediately enters deep thought about it.

"Wear a mask and start talking. You'll notice that it slowly gets wet with your saliva," I answer Sai.

She's still unconvinced. "Wouldn't that just be the condensation from the heat of your breath?"

"The air needs to get its humidity from somewhere; for your breath, it comes from the saliva in your mouth."

She raises her eyebrows in surprise and finally gets it, "Oh…"

"I'll have to share this knowledge with the rest of the temple…" Ciel makes a mental note.

I give them one last suggestion, "It also helps to do surgery in a completely sterile environment, such as a room that's been scrubbed by a deep [Clean] and has controlled ventilation so that dirt and dust from the outside can't easily get in."

"We do that in Mountainhome. Bad air can make an entire undertown sick," Lina chimes in.

"I guess that isn't just dwarven fastidiousness," Sai comments and chuckles softly. We chuckle along with her, but Lina doesn't laugh, so Sai immediately cringes. "Apologies, my Lord."

"Hmph…" Lina grunts in acknowledgment.

They fashion masks from some spare pieces of cheap cloth we had, then Ciel brings out a scalpel, and Sai takes one of Dokkan's wrists to keep watch on her pulse. She needs a small stool to keep herself at the appropriate height, and I can't deny that she looks like a child playing doctor, which is quite a nostalgic memory, if you know what I mean.

Through hushed whispers, the two surgeons coordinate and talk their way through the surgery as Ciel deftly makes an incision in Dokkan's skin, exposing her back muscles, and I notice that her HP drops a mere three points.

Ciel finishes after just a moment more, then she takes out some metal clamps to keep Dokkan's skin pushed apart, allowing them to clearly see the bones of her spine. They're like inverted pliers.

Roxanne groans in disgust and announces, "I'll be over there, far enough away from this place. I don't feel like seeing any blood right now."

"You're the one who literally explodes people's heads," Alissa notes in confusion.

"That doesn't mean that I enjoy it!" Roxanne shouts from the other side of the patio.

Aoi and Hana show a modicum of curiosity, but they have no idea about what's going on, so they're like children who are watching a documentary with pretty pictures. Lina simply enjoys soaking up information, so she's paying attention to everything. Alissa isn't really interested in this, so she goes back to her [Illusion Magic] training but keeps glancing at us every once in a while. Yunia's sole interest is in [Alteration Magic], so she's just waiting for Sai to do her thing.

My angel then pulls out a sharp, spoon-like loop to scrape the bones, fully revealing Dokkan's spine, while Sai uses [Clean] and a sterilized towel to dab away all the blood.

"Why did she never go for the [Regeneration] treatment? Someone like her should've had the money for it," Lina suddenly voices a question that's been gnawing at her.

"Old people can be stubborn and hold unfounded prejudices about all sorts of things," Ciel responds sagely.

Sai chuckles girlishly and adds, "And sometimes, they just need a push from someone younger. Most of the people who've hired me for my [Alteration Magic] are the grandchildren of the patients."

"How often did you say that you've done this?" Ciel changes the topic, just to make sure that Sai knows what she's doing.

"I lost count. I've done all sorts of small changes to people's bodies, but the most commonly requested is for the nose, for some reason," Sai responds casually.

"Just for money?"

Sai nods. "Yeah. I used to travel a lot, but it's hard to make money with just [Spirit Magic] alone. One day, I met a migrant Chimera in Aremut who was using Alteration treatments to fund her travels, and she taught me how to make permanent soul changes to help me earn some money.

"You wouldn't believe how much people would offer for just a small change to their bodies, but I never charged them too much; my work was only valuable because it was scarce, not because it was difficult."

Sai notices something and leans in to get a closer look at Dokkan's spine.

"I believe that's a pinched nerve," Ciel remarks.

"The disk is herniated, and it looks like there's some warping of the bone," Sai reports her observation.

"Exactly. Can you fix it?"

"I can. I'll also try to make it mirror the vertebra above it, which looks healthy. But I won't change her soul, so you can [Heal] her if my alterations are a bit off." Then Sai straightens up and looks around, and her eyes land on Alissa, who's practicing magic nearby. "Now, I'll need absolute silence while I focus, and also, please don't cast any spells until I'm done."

I make sure that Roxanne heard that through [Bind], and she gives us a wave in acknowledgment.

Sai closes her eyes and carefully controls her breathing for several long minutes. Gradually, I feel some extremely faint mana leaving her body, which then starts to focus on her hand.

She suddenly opens her eyes and touches multiple vertebrae of Dokkan's spine. She remains completely frozen like that for a short while, her eyes entirely unmoving as they stare down at her fingers, then Dokkan's warped bones start to glow, and a lot of stray mana starts to seep out of her.

My [Sense Mana] feels something similar to the Transformation racial skill of the were-races, but it has an entirely "abstract" flavor to it. It's really curious to see this similarity between them. I'd say that it's like unflavored gelatin if I had to describe it with an analogy.

In under a minute, the alteration is complete, and Sai sighs in relief, then we all release our breaths that we didn't notice we were holding.

"All done. Close her up," Sai states and sits down on the bed to relax.

Ciel undoes the inverted pliers, then she closes Dokkan's skin back together by hand and softly chants a careful [Heal], instantly bringing Dokkan's HP back to full and leaving no trace behind that her skin was ever cut.

After making sure that she healed everything properly, they close Dokkan's dress, then Ciel casts [Purify Body] on her, and the old woman instantly wakes up.

She spends a mere moment laying there, dazed, then she immediately rolls over onto her back and sits up.

"Careful! Your back will be sensitive for at least an hour," Sai warns her as Ciel holds her arm.

"I feel fine. I feel great, in fact," Dokkan energetically chirps, then forces herself to stand up with a strength that catches Ciel off-guard. "And my back doesn't hurt!" She shouts, then grabs the cane and throws it away. "I feel great!"

Ciel gives up and lets Dokkan do as she wishes. The old woman takes herself through cautious, but energetic movements, enjoying her freshly reclaimed freedom.

The slightly grumpy woman from before suddenly seems a few decades younger, and we just watch as she has her cute moment of revelry.

A note from Manasong

Hall of Fame of Patrons

The patrons who support Rupegia shall have their names sung by the bards for they deserve the glory and honor. Their names are:

Prince PreownedFIN.

Prince Creamy Spinach.

Lord Andrew Meyers.

Lord Samuel Lim.

Lord Bill.

Lord Novgarod.

Lord Ashadun.

Lord Michale Erwin.

Lord Bakerdea.

Lord Nathan Vanbrunt.

Lord Maurice.

Lord Empyrean.

Lord Mattirro Draca.

Lord Joshua Tal.

Lord Colorblind.

Lord RottenTangerine.

Lord Fullmoon.

Lord Joxsan Herrera.

Lord Sean Drake.

Lord EESDESESESRDT.

Lord Brody Haugan.

Lord FrostyCube.

Lord Mike Bartter.

Lord Cardinal Steiner.

Lord Krawn.

Lord Warwulfv.

Lord Cidant.

Lord Jorge Franco.

Lord Bradly.

Lord Freddie.

Lord Khristopher Welsh.

Noble Salty Panda.

Noble Mild Fracas.

Noble Aclys.

Noble Shawn Plumley.

Noble CarlBaxter.

Noble WeirdWhirl.

Noble War God.

Noble Yeuromain.

Noble Jorge Franco.

Leave a rating or a review to help me rise to the top or fix my shameful understanding of prose.

Take a look over my blog where all information about the world of Rupegia will be posted.

Join the Discord and discuss, or rant, or meme, or try and fight me so your waifu gets more screentime.

Become a Patron and read chapters in advance, or read the side-stories, or leave your mark on the story, or help choose the next artwork or the next side-story.

Chapter 93: Steady Progress - Part 3

A note from Manasong

Attention: to conform to the limit of mature content (more than just sexual content) allowed in a novel, I've censored this chapter. You can look for the uncensored version here.

The first thing Dokkan does is pick up her cane as she blushes in embarrassment, then she continues with her work like nothing happened.

She uses her newfound energy to scurry about, making small alterations to the crystals as she perfects the illusion little by little.

Honestly, I think I'll ask her to enchant our bedroom, the dining room, and maybe even a portable tent with this. It's just too convenient to be able to get my hands back without forcing it with [Mana Body]. I could even go to sleep while holding hands or cuddling with the girls without the fear of waking up in a puddle of their blood.

After a short while, Osaria brings a painter and a sculptor, so our training gets interrupted. They use [Instant Painting] to take multiple "photographs" of us, but they still need the real models to be present for their portraits and busts to be perfect. Emphasis on "bust" since that's an important part that needs to be perfectly recreated so that all observers will drool over their glorious chests.

As the sun begins to set, another day comes to a close, then Dokkanchee and the artists leave the castle.

We enjoy our hidden, cool patio for a while longer, winding down as we enjoy the quiet. While there's seemingly nobody else in sight, giving us some privacy, we know that there are patrols nearby, listening intently for anything suspicious.

Thinking about it makes some of the girls nervous, but they don't complain since it's something that we just need to get used to.

There's a sub-unit of the Lordsguard called the Companions, whose job is to shoulder the more "intimate" duties of the Lordsguard, like protecting our bedrooms or bath locations while we madly make love. Because of their duties, they're trained to be extremely discreet and considerate, so the awkwardness will probably diminish once they're properly established.

Their gender composition usually follows the composition of the harem, so I'll be getting an overwhelmingly female Companions unit without ruining my reputation as a lustful Lord. Though I think it ultimately won't matter since my thirst for the maids will get out eventually, and everyone will know how much of a "horny" dragon I am.

It's almost guaranteed that I'll get a Title thanks to my libido. It was certainly going that way with the Innocent Nymph, and now, there'll be a whole town talking about my sword, if not the entirety of the empire.

Just as we're about to leave for a bath, Sandoro appears with the golem trio following close behind him.

He stares solely into my eyes, trying to respectfully keep his gaze away from Ciel's curvy body, which is almost fully exposed as she naps in an embarrassing position. The other girls aren't that much better, but you can't see their sensitive parts through the thin fabric as easily as you can see Ciel's.

Yunia notices him and immediately frees herself from my sleep-inducing grasp, then re-ties the thin strips of cloth that push her back from "racy" to "appropriately dressed"*.

*Note: only by the elven standard.

I disarm my dragonator and stand up, then I nod at him and greet, "Sir Sandoro. How did the golems do?"

He stops before me and allows himself to look at Yunia, though he still doesn't look to the sides, then he salutes and reports, "Incredibly well. I wouldn't give them leadership positions, but they're perfectly capable of acting as guards or messengers."

"Do you think they require more training to act as part of the Lordsguard?" Yunia asks as she hurriedly adjusts her bouncy drills.

"Only in protocol, but they're learning it fast; their skill at protecting is good enough," he answers tersely.

I grin and nod, very pleased. "Good. We'll make their positions official, then. I trust that everyone's had a good look at them?"

"Yes. Everyone knows who, and what, they are. We even made ID crystals for them to carry, so the Townsguard will also respect their authority."

I motion to the golems and receive them with a hug. Once I get used to my new race and the constant presence of intrusive thoughts, I think I'll have enough room to [Bind] them, but before that, maybe we could start thinking about how to give them plowable bodies.

I'm itching for some clang, so maybe Jarn's will be more robotic. Ted and Suzy need to find their own niche to make themselves unique though, but I'm sure it lies in the "cute" side of the "beauty spectrum."

I release them and Ted goes over to Ciel to help her sleep while Suzy goes to Yunia, and I keep my hand on Jarn's cold, hard, round ass. I quickly realize that she's wearing underwear under her skirt, which is a good idea since her private parts are fully-formed, and I don't want just anybody to have the privilege of seeing it.

"Thank you for your work, Sir Sandoro. It's only because of you that we've been able to focus solely on the Ceremony," Yunia gives him genuine praise and a subtle smile.

"It's my pleasure to serve you, my Lords," he graciously responds and bows, then he excuses himself and leaves the room.

Random thoughts about how to make Jarn into a robot girl start dripping into my mind, but the real problem is something that's never actually talked about in much detail in novels: her insides need to be soft and moist. It just really won't work otherwise, but I have no idea about how to make this kind of synthetic material. To make something biological, you need to have a whole living system just to support it, and I have even less of an idea of how to make something like that.

The only way I know of that might work is by using [Soul Manipulation], but that'd be like fusing a severed member to her crotch, which is… not desirable. I could teach them how to create something similar to my tentacles, but they have a lot of difficulty with manipulating their own souls like I do, which is why Arreira decided on going with the "combat bodies" approach.

Maybe I could research how to solidify mana into magical materials with special properties, but I know practically nothing about that area, so there's a lot of work to be done if I choose that path.

I really only have hard choices to choose from for how to approach this problem.

I sit down on the edge of the bed and make Jarn sit beside me so that I can "inspect" her alluring, but completely hard, metal body.

Yunia suddenly clears her throat loudly and pushes her chest towards me.

I take my attention off bimbo-Yunia and immediately fondle real-Yunia's perfectly balanced chest. It's not too small, and not too big. It's perfectly sized for my (padded) claws to squeeze.

"Did you suddenly get jealous?" Alissa's teasing voice fills the almost silent patio.

"I merely wished to get fondled, that's all," Yunia answers flatly, making an effort to hide her real emotions.

"Slut…" Roxanne reflexively mumbles in her sleep.

Poosh is in the bath again, so I decide to create as many tentacles as I can and let them loose on every single exposed hole I can reach. I want to give the maids a show, something that will scar their minds, but also leave a seed within them. A seed of worship.

The elven maids excuse themselves to relieve their desire in private while the Chimera attendants and Poosh simply stay, bringing themselves to the apex right before their Lords.

I slice an actual fig with my claws and savor it as I wind down from the Group Fun session. This is a funny-looking fruit, but it fits in well with the rest of the selection of elven produce since they have a taste for oddly-shaped fruits. This one isn't natural, though; it was specifically bred to have this exact shape and taste, for some reason.

With my body still bare and dripping, I look Poosh in the eye and smile gently. Hopefully, she'll ask for a Ravaging soon.

Hana eventually joins us, all sore and tired, but she refuses a [Heal] since she wants to use [Pain Conversion] for as long as possible. It's like the muscle burn after intense exercise, where you're so high on endorphins that it actually feels good, with the pain of having her stretched to the limit being her favorite.

As for the maids, we just ignore them as we relax. Though some of them seem to be very thirsty for me right now, I'll let the desire build up a bit more before I unleash it all upon them. It's never a good idea to rush a fine meal.

For dinner, we eat chicken parmigiana seasoned with some sort of white wine. It's a very nostalgic meal for me because I don't really feel like there's too much of a difference between the Earth and Rupegia versions of it since tomatoes are a thing in both worlds.

Then we quickly retire to our rooms so that we can review our plans in private. Things are progressing smoothly, but the tension is still rising.

Our plan is a bit dangerous, so of course, Alissa is the first to argue against it.

"We'll only know if it's actually possible once we test it," I retort and get up from the bed, then I open up my thin golden vest and expose my chest. "Come on, Yunia. I'll need your help with this."

Ciel sighs tiredly and prepares to cast [Heal]. Her inner doctor is telling her that it's possible, but it's also that same inner voice that's telling her that this plan is stupid.

I mean, it is stupid, but if it works, it works.

Yunia cringes as she draws her sword and thrusts.

Today is the 9th.

My [Dragon Transformation] increased by 1 (now 6). Just one more level, and it'll finally be at the appropriate size for the Ceremony.

Alissa's [Illusion Magic] increased by 1 (now 4+11). It seems that her observations of Dokkanchee working helped her a lot.

Hana increased her [Draconic Body] by 1 (now 4). Ironically, her desperate use of it during the Ravaging helped her to gain a point.

Aoi's "Intelligence" and "Wisdom" each increased by 1 (now 8 and 9). It seems that some of the knowledge from the surgery yesterday stuck with her.

Yunia increased her [Two-Handed Sword Use] by 1 (now 4+16). Mere baby steps.

During our morning kisses, Klein seems to be the most distracted, but I think she's just basking in her post-Ravaging bliss, so I leave her be until she needs to head out to the dungeon again.

I pinch her ass, and she squeals, then starts playfully slapping my chest and only stops when Hana gives her a sneaky kiss at the nape of her neck.

"Be safe out there!" I give her my blessing as I run away, darting out of reach of her retaliation.

"I will!" She shouts back and pouts.

Yunia and Ciel meet with the Tribunal and the temple to discuss the housing situation for the Chimeras. Our new spirit-subjects need some concessions since they don't have the necessary wealth to buy houses in Escanso, and we need to discuss how much would be fair for them.

They could go into debt until they've made enough money to repay it, but the concept of mortgage doesn't exist here. In Rupegia, going into significant debt allows the debtor to be made into a slave if they can't repay what they owe in a timely manner, so it really isn't a popular financial choice.

The temple doesn't want the Chimeras to have the constant threat of being made into slaves hovering over their heads, so they're looking to secure a compromise with us since we have the power to help them.

Meanwhile, Dokkan and I continue working on the illusion setup, this time in the main hall of the castle where the most important part of the Ceremony will be held.

Suddenly, an "itching" inside of my head starts to flare up. It's a "desire" to do something, and it's incredibly annoying, making me instantly become grumpy.

It doesn't come from either my human or my dragon side, making everyone very concerned about what's going on with me since it's clearly not something normal.

The "itching" pushes me to shift my points around, so I put ten more into [Summoning Magic], reaching level 50, and revealing a new spell: [Otherworldly Summoning].

What the hell?!

Intermission 18 – Klein

I sit down on a rock and sigh as the soldiers cut up the tentacles of the Maltómago.

The smell of burnt flesh makes me feel a bit sick, but that's nothing when compared to what the Corpse Stealers can do or even what the Maltómago could've unleashed if I hadn't killed it instantly.

The soldiers chatter happily about how they were spared from the Maltómago's foul breath, and I recognize a few words in Ingua of praise, which I assume are for me.

Though everyone is happy and in high spirits, I can't find it within me to smile, so I keep my helmet on at all times. This way, nobody can see me frown.

"What's the matter?" Dad asks as he sits down beside me.

But Dad knows me well enough to recognize when something is bothering me.

I shrug. "I'm just… not very excited right now," I try to keep Dad from suspecting anything, but I fail completely.

He reads me effortlessly, "You aren't just 'not excited,' you're completely disheartened. Did something happen?"

I can't say yes, and I can't say no, so I just keep quiet while I try to think of a way out.

He grunts and pokes me painfully with his thick finger. "Klein, please. Don't be childish, just tell me already."

"I 'fixed' my relationship with Wolfy…" I suddenly blurt out and frown deeply, then I rest my head on my hands. It's all I can do to stop myself from laying down on the floor, curling up into a ball, and going to sleep until I can find where all my courage fled to.

"Wha…" Dad makes a funny noise, and it actually makes me smile.

I suddenly feel a bit angry about it and let it all out, "I'm not Wolfy's 'temporary wife' anymore. I'm just his knight, and a close friend… that occasionally lays with him."

"Isn't that… 'good'?" He asks, very confused.

Now I'm the one who's confused. "Didn't you want me to marry him?"

He scratches his bald head awkwardly and guiltily grins as he explains, "Not really. I wanted him to give something in return for taking your first time, and the 'temporary wife' business gave me some assurance that he wouldn't just throw you away after he'd had enough of you."

I frown angrily and glare at him. "He'd never do that. Hana would stop him if he ever even thought about it," I defend Wolfy.

"Well… she's still a dragonkin…" He shrugs as he cringes.

I punch his ribs, and though I'm sure that he felt nothing because of his armor, it still sends him a message that tells him exactly what I feel.

He frowns deeply, and his tone turns serious, "She did abandon those two boys she used to love. Not her fault, but the lives of Wolf and his harem are just too chaotic. Do you really believe that something like that won't ever happen again? You yourself went from just a 'temporary wife' to a Godsdamned knight of a Crown Lord. What's going to happen next? Where will you end up if you keep getting closer to him?"

I pout at him and grumble, "I don't care about those things. I just want a husband that I can call mine."

He snorts and pokes my shoulder again. "Well, now you can have your pick; even lower nobility would go for you, so why are you so grumpy?"

I look down in shame, and my tail flops down on the floor. "I've been given so much that I don't think that I could repay it all, even if I married him." I look at the underside of my left forearm and stare at the controls for the [Chameleon] enchantment. They're so delicate and complex that I'm a bit afraid to use them and potentially break something. "Do you have any idea how much this armor and bow are worth? I don't, but I know that he could've married any noblewoman he wanted, just by giving them this armor as a gift, yet he gave it to me without asking for anything in return."

"He asked for your loyalty," he retorts softly.

"Wha…?" Now I'm the one who makes the dumb noise.

He chuckles and looks off into the distance as his permanent frown softens. "He might be a terrible choice of a husband for you, but I think he'll make a good Lord, and I know that he's a very good friend. Also, there's Hana. She'll make sure that he treats you right."

My mouth moves wordlessly since I'm too simply baffled to speak until I suddenly blurt out, "Didn't I say exactly that mere moments ago?"

He snorts and shakes his head. "You said that Hana wouldn't let him abandon you after taking your virginity, while I said that he'd be a terrible husband for you, though I know that he'll be a good friend."

I frown and stay quiet as I think.

But am I a good friend to him?

"You're the only person he can trust," Dad adds with a whisper.

I frown in disagreement and glance at him. "He has an entire army of elves who follow him."

"Who follow Lord Yulania, but she's a Blood Slave of the man who helped kill their previous Lord. They may be loyal to her, but how much can he trust them?"

He glances meaningfully at the elven soldiers, who maintain a respectful distance from the rookie, non-elven ones. It's like there's an invisible wall separating the two sides from each other.

But that's not the issue I have with my knighthood. "And we are supposedly more trustworthy?" I ask with a wry smile.

He nods and agrees, completely serious, "Yes, because you love him, and he knows that you're too air-headed to ever betray him. Power can be bought, as your weapon and armor can easily tell you; skills can be learned, which you'll be doing in the Knight's Academy," -he suddenly grabs my shoulder and forces me to face him and look into his beady eyes- "but trust is hard to come by."

He releases me, and I almost flop onto the rock, then I sigh tiredly as the chilling emotions leave my body with each breath. His words have suddenly lit a new fire within me, and it warms up my body, allowing me to move freely again.

"Then I want to become someone worthy of his trust," I whisper earnestly.

He grunts sternly, "We will."

A note from Manasong

Hall of Fame of Patrons

The patrons who support Rupegia shall have their names sung by the bards for they deserve the glory and honor. Their names are:

Prince PreownedFIN.

Prince Creamy Spinach.

Lord Andrew Meyers.

Lord Samuel Lim.

Lord Bill.

Lord Novgarod.

Lord Ashadun.

Lord Michale Erwin.

Lord Bakerdea.

Lord Nathan Vanbrunt.

Lord Maurice.

Lord Empyrean.

Lord Mattirro Draca.

Lord Joshua Tal.

Lord Colorblind.

Lord RottenTangerine.

Lord Fullmoon.

Lord Joxsan Herrera.

Lord Sean Drake.

Lord EESDESESESRDT.

Lord Brody Haugan.

Lord FrostyCube.

Lord Mike Bartter.

Lord Cardinal Steiner.

Lord Krawn.

Lord Warwulfv.

Lord Cidant.

Lord Jorge Franco.

Lord Bradly.

Lord Freddie.

Lord Khristopher Welsh.

Noble Salty Panda.

Noble Mild Fracas.

Noble Aclys.

Noble Shawn Plumley.

Noble CarlBaxter.

Noble WeirdWhirl.

Noble War God.

Noble Yeuromain.

Noble Jorge Franco.

Leave a rating or a review to help me rise to the top or fix my shameful understanding of prose.

Take a look over my blog where all information about the world of Rupegia will be posted.

Join the Discord and discuss, or rant, or meme, or try and fight me so your waifu gets more screentime.

Become a Patron and read chapters in advance, or read the side-stories, or leave your mark on the story, or help choose the next artwork or the next side-story.

Chapter 94: Forbidden Knowledge - Part 1

A note from Manasong

Attention: to conform to the limit of mature content (more than just sexual content) allowed in a novel, I've censored this chapter. You can look for the uncensored version here.

"My Lord?" Dokkan asks tentatively, and I snap back to reality.

"I'm indisposed. We'll continue later," I announce and walk out of the hall.

Yunia and Ciel excuse themselves from their meeting. Mimi's there, and she's capable enough to negotiate with Oritiki and the few other Chimera aristocrats who want to argue further.

Alissa grabs my hand, and that forces me to calm down since I need to keep some focus on padding the claws that she's tightly grasping onto. With just a simple probe into her thoughts, I immediately get a positive response. She wanted to see precisely this reaction from me. She knows me too well.

I take an [Eternal Gate] to our bedroom and walk out onto the balcony, then I grip the railing with my free hand and crush it.

Just a few moments later, the rest of the girls join us.

I stay silent so that I don't lash out, just waiting until the dragon stops roaring. Over the course of a minute, the boiling rage cools down into "a shower like this would burn" temperature.

"You received both a 'Message' and a Gift. A normal humanoid couldn't have summoned you with that spell," Ciel explains before I even open my mouth.

I get a bit annoyed that they're reading my thoughts so thoroughly, but I can always punish their flowers later. Though, maybe not Hana's since she enjoys that a bit too much.

"He's thinking about 'plowing fields'; he's fine," Roxanne blurts out and giggles.

"I wouldn't recommend engaging in extraneous activities right now," Ted suggests, her tone entirely neutral and clinical.

"Master might seriously hurt the more delicate women," Suzy adds with the same tone.

I get annoyed that I didn't notice the girls talking about me with the golems. The rage can be a bit too all-consuming with a dragon-Palpatine inside my head egging me on.

"You may use me as a rape toy. A soaped sponge will serve as a temporary replacement for a vagina," Jarn suddenly offers herself.

My restless tail immediately freezes in the air as I turn my head to stare at her. "'Rape'?" I ask, completely bewildered.

She nods diligently, and I swear that her tone has a hint of pride in it as she explains, "Some dragons are known to use rape as a stress relief mechanism, and master Wolf has already shown himself to enjoy such a flavor of roleplaying."

"Touché," I give up and look out into the distance again.

"Anyway… it was one of the Gods that brought you here; not even the emperor has the power to give Gifts," Ciel brings the conversation back on track.

"Gih," Gify assures me. The same goes for Gecynd.

"What about the heretics? They have enough power for a [Meteor]," Lina suggests. Her face is stern as she shares some of my anger. She's as protective of me as Alissa, though in a different way.

"If they did, we'd all be dead," Ciel retorts, and her argument kills all others about that.

Seeing that this topic has reached its end, Yunia broaches a different one, "This 'limitation' of your Gift, do you understand it?"

I frown in thought as I go through my memories. "No. Maybe…" I whisper and sigh tiredly. "The first time was after I prayed, asking for strength, and then the limit of my Gift was raised to thirty, allowing me to summon elementals. The second time, it was raised to forty after I met with Gecynd and we had visions of our future, which was when she mentioned the dungeon 'Legado.' And now, this is the third time that the limit has been raised."

"You can see spells up to level fifty, then?"

"Yes. I can add skills as high as my soul can tolerate, so only the spells are limited."

"There doesn't seem to be any predictable pattern to it," Ted observes.

"And since the Gods are thought to control the Gifts…" Suzy alludes.

"It's likely to be completely arbitrary. That is, subject to their judgment," Jarn concludes.

I've missed their synchronized manner of speech. I think it's cute, for some reason.

"And now that you've committed yourself to staying in this realm, the Gods might've deemed that it was time for you to see this spell," Yunia says out loud what we're all thinking.

"It'd have been a terrible temptation if I knew about it sooner," I bitterly admit.

"And what do you want to do, now that you know about it?" Alissa asks, her tone deadly serious with her orange eyes staring intensely at me. For once, none of the girls want to probe my thoughts.

"Nothing. I hate that it exists," I grumble. It's several marriage proposals too late to make me reconsider my life in this world.

"Why?"

Godsdamnit, Ciel is rubbing off on them.

I open my "Magic" tab and stare at the spell's "button" hatefully. "It's a Pandora's Box. There are too many unknowns and hidden dangers for me to even think about studying this spell, but I'm still very curious about it."

Roxanne suddenly chimes in, "[Summoning Magic] is an incomplete magic school, where nobody has even heard about this spell before, so maybe there's a reason why. It also happens quite often from what I was taught: the person who created this magic school died from their experimentation with it. This is clearly a dangerous spell."

"If you are the one saying it's dangerous…" Lina mumbles and leaves the thought in the air because nothing more needs to be said.

We chuckle softly, lightening the mood, then Alissa joins Roxanne and sternly cautions me, "Remember how much mana the Grim Giant took? If you tried to summon a Fay Leviathan, [Heal] might not be enough to save you from death. [Summoning Magic] is full of hidden dangers."

"I could interrupt it," Yunia suddenly proposes.

We all turn to her, and she tries to hide how delightfully smug she feels at our surprise.

"[Disruption Field] could interrupt any spell that isn't instant," she adds, and I hum in wonder.

Alissa sighs and grumbles. Now she understands very well what "Pandora's Box" truly means.

My reservations start to wash away as my researcher's curiosity starts to blossom, and I start to deliberate, "Even if it's an instant-cast spell, I can hold it back for a short time before releasing it, and spells with a high MP cost always take some time to prepare."

"Alright, but why would you even try to cast that spell if you hate it so much?" Hana interjects.

"I want to understand what it does, but…" -my heart suddenly tightens, making me frown confusedly- "but I still feel like it's 'evil,' somehow."

Ciel narrows her eyes in suspicion and asks, "How did you get the idea to raise your [Summoning Magic], specifically, to level fifty?"

"I felt…" I start to think back on it, but then it all strikes me as extremely suspicious. I suddenly had a nearly irresistible "itch" to do something very specific that revealed a mind-blowing spell.

The "itch" didn't seem to come from either my draconic or human side, and now that I think about it, I feel like it was "foreign."

"Did the Gods mess with my head?" I ask Ciel concernedly.

She smiles proudly but feels a little awkward since the Goddess was decidedly not subtle with the way she "guided me." "You have a Blessing from the Goddess of Knowledge, and it kind of fits that she'd 'guide' you towards this spell," she speculates.

"She might've been frustrated that you hadn't noticed it yet and decided to 'help' you," Alissa adds with a wry smile.

Ciel nods in agreement. "You have a rather high 'Piety,' and that makes it easier for the Gods to reach you."

The "evil" feeling suddenly flares up within my heart, so I get Hana to massage my horns because my head is starting to hurt. "Okay, I'm feeling very conflicted about this spell now. I want to study it, but I'm also becoming increasingly fearful about it, and I'm not sure why."

Ciel takes a step forward and caresses my cheek as she gently advises me, "Focus on the feeling that you don't understand and try to find out where it comes from. The influence from the God of Order and Destruction sometimes makes it difficult for the average commoner to interact with the Humanoid Gods when they don't have enough 'Piety.'"

Okay, so the Goddess is messing with my mind. She really just can't not make a mess, so I guess I can't entirely blame her.

I groan tiredly and start trying to calm my heart. [Bind] makes itself useful again with the girls reaching through it to comfort me. Their vivid memories flourish in my soul space, and they make me melt under Ciel's and Hana's caring touch.

The dragon curls up and goes to sleep while the human has a mind-gasm, and post-mind-nut clarity helps me to focus on the Goddess' influence.

I feel like there's a warning siren blaring inside my mind, and it gradually becomes louder and louder until it's pounding in my head, giving me a headache. I also see red flashing like emergency lights, and it becomes increasingly brighter until all I can see is red. The two senses fuse together into one clear feeling: terror.

Then the eyes of the Unknown open up and stare back at me. They're boundless and infinite, making me seem like not just an ant, but a tasty ant. There's a predator before me, with only a thin barrier separating us.

The spell isn't just 'evil,' it's Wicked. It isn't just "dangerous," it's "I can't even put it on a scale"-dangerous. The person who cast it definitely died because of it.

But can I study it?

The feeling instantly vanishes, leaving me with nothing but empty darkness, then I feel something change within me.

I open my "Status" and discover that my "Piety" has increased by 1 (now 18).

I open my eyes and smile wryly as I say, "I guess that as long as I don't actually cast it, we can study it as much as we want."

We each return to our previous business as if nothing happened, and I take the request from the painter that I don't move as an opportunity to reflect on what we just learned.

A realization strikes me as rather worrying, though. The system automatically gives someone the knowledge for how to cast a spell once their level in the skill reaches the required level, so if I start sharing my knowledge of [Summoning Magic] with the rest of the world, someone, somewhere, at some point in time, might end up stumbling upon [Bind] and [Otherwordly Summoning].

If this spell is as dangerous as the Goddess of Knowledge thinks, then shit's bad.

It seems like this magic school took a turn towards somewhere pretty dangerous after [Summon Monster], for some reason, but nobody knows much about it, so we might be the only living people who are even aware of these spells.

Following the researcher's line of thought, he might have eventually tried to create a spell like [Divine Summoning], or something like that. Lina says that there's already a spell called [Divine Descent] in the [Light Magic] school, so it's not like it's 100% impossible.

A brilliant idea suddenly lights up inside my head. The system gives out the most commonly used form of the spell, which is usually the safest, so if we "alter" the spell into a safer version, then we effectively remove the dangerous spells from the skill. This might be the real reason why the Goddess "guided" me towards this spell.

Wait… this can't be the reason that I was brought to this world, can it? Or maybe there's someone else who, in the future, might stumble upon this spell and cause a doomsday scenario, and I was brought here to stop it…

I focus on myself, but no other "guidance" is provided for me. There also isn't a sense of danger or urgency aside from the warning to not finish casting the spell, so I'm not entirely sure about the "doomsday" theory. And it fails to neatly explain why all the other crazy things have happened surrounding me, so I drop it.

Our preparations for the Ceremony are almost done, anyway, so we can afford to do a little experimentation with [Disruption Field] to test the waters.

Alissa's protectiveness wants me to not touch the spell with even a ten-metri pole, but since it apparently came from divine guidance, she's feeling very conflicted about it.

Ciel and Roxanne agree with the idea to test [Otherworldly Summoning], but only after they deem the safety measures to be good enough, and they want more than just [Disruption Field] as an assurance that the spell won't trigger.

I think we can use emellanat shackles and [Spirit Magic] alongside the Field to ensure interruption, but what's actually starting to concern me is how much these measures will hurt. [Mana Body] means that all these things will affect me too, so we also have to make sure that I don't die from having my heart "interrupted," or something like that.

The painter finishes his portrait of me, but I remain seated on my throne, deep in thought until someone comes in, sent by Osaria. It's an elven designer, and she wants to talk about our heraldry.

I turn my eyes to the mature elven woman, and she seems to hold her breath when I look her in the eye.

"Greetings, Tista, I'm Wolf Ryder. This matter will require my wives to be present, too, so we'll talk about it later," I respond sympathetically, and Tista nods in understanding, but her wide eyes make her look like a puppy, so I decide to entertain her a bit. "How about you start presenting me with some ideas, instead?"

She brightens up and nods repeatedly, then clears her throat awkwardly as she blushes.

I smile like a wolf before a herd of sheep and decide to change seats, moving over to her sofa so that we aren't so far apart.

She flinches when I sit down, and covers half of her face with her drawing board, as if she wanted to hide behind it.

I wait for a moment in silence, then press her, "Well, then?"

"Y-yes!" She squeaks, then scoots closer and starts drawing examples with a magic pen.

Osaria chose Tista because she's discreet, but I think that she's simply too shy to blabber about us.

Her thin, delicate hands show a high "Dexterity," forming complex drawings with such ease that it actually annoys me. I never forgot how bad my grades were in Art class, and this woman reminds me of how un-artistic I am.

As a completely new noble family, we don't have any previous symbols to build upon, so the most obvious choice for us would be to choose a motif that best represents our family. In our case, it's quite clear what it should be about: dragons.

There are multiple elements that compose the full heraldry. The most important is the flag, where the colors of the house and its main symbol are represented; there's the rallying standard, a ceremonial banner or symbol that's a more ornate version of the flag; then there's the seal, used for official documents and missives, which has a small symbol and sometimes a motto; the achievements book, which is used to record the Titles gained, special skills, battles won, rare monsters killed, and the Lord's level before death; there's the lineage tapestry, where only the Lords and their direct Descendants are depicted; and there's the noble composition, a piece of painted artwork where all the symbols are combined into one beautiful picture.

All of these elements can be styled and physically represented as we wish, but it's required of us as new Lords to have an official drawn version of them for record-keeping.

Tista speaks with energy even though her overall demeanor is still shy, which shows just how much she really loves talking about heraldry. She reveres the prestige of all the symbols surrounding nobility, and it's heart-warming to see someone sharing their love for something so earnestly.

I soften my gaze and try to engage with her, which helps her relax. She's just like Lina was when she was still an innocent, shy little angel.

Lina's gloomy, wounded pout appears in my soul space, and I chuckle internally. Of course, she's still my little angel, but there's just no way that she's "innocent" anymore.

I scoot closer to Tista and increase the intensity of my staring at her just a bit to push her back into "prey mode" again.

We're now so close to each other that our arms almost touch, and her gentle perfume smells like a fine meal being served before me.

I hear her breath gradually speed up as her face flushes. The meat is almost done and ready to be eaten.

Her discomposure builds up so high that she suddenly loses her train of thought and becomes completely distracted by my scales. "I-I can see my reflection…" She breathes in wonder.

I lower my tone, giving it a bit of a alluring rumble. "A dragon's scales always represent something. Do you know what mine are?"

"No…"

"They're made of Okross, the unbreakable metal." I wave my scales, and she flinches in surprise. "And they're so sharp that you can cut yourself just by touching them."

Her long, thin finger moves to touch my scales, but she hesitates. "They're beautiful."

"Go on, touch them," I encourage her warmly.

She cutely bites her thin lip and finally touches it gingerly with her fingers, her mouth open in amazement just like a thirsty succubus would when she sees my dragonator armed and ready for action.

She tries to feel the edge of a scale, but I've removed the padding, so she cuts herself and winces in pain. She pulls her hand away, but I grab it with my (padded) claws and hold it in place.

I stare at her with gentle eyes as I open my mouth and take her cut finger in.

My tongue rubs over her wound as I use a bit of my spirit touch, and I feel the (surprisingly delicious) taste of her blood, then I cast a [Heal] through my tongue, and a sexy moan escapes her lips.

Her mouth trembles, but she's too stunned to say anything. She remains entranced by my eyes as I suck on her finger and give her a small taste of real pleasure.

With perfect timing, Alissa enters the hall since the artists have already finished with her.

I remove Tista's finger from my mouth and put it inside her own so that she may taste my saliva.

She remains frozen for a second longer until she sees Alissa approaching, which makes her wake up and try to hide her wet finger, and then she looks around in a panic, searching for an exit, but Alissa's gentle smile sets her at ease.

Alissa sits down on her other side and lays a hand on her bare thigh, which is exposed by her thin elven dress with its many fashionable holes, then I lay my clawed hand on her other thigh.

The shy elf looks back and forth between us, still slightly fearful, but not enough that she wants to run away anymore.

Alissa sports her best seductive look and gives Tista's thigh a gentle squeeze as she offers, "Would you like to have tea with us somewhere more private?"

The mature woman is too flustered to speak, but she nods vigorously.

Dokkan doesn't need me to be present for this part of her work, so we lead the designer to our bedroom balcony.

The sight of our beds makes her start to seize up from the anxiety, so we get her to talk about heraldry again to help her relax.

I'm kind of miffed that it won't actually make sense for us to put in a wolf somewhere. The damn Gods just had to make me into a damn dragon instead of a damn werewolf, but I guess "Ryder" can still be referenced.

We want to show the influence from all of the girls in our heraldry, so we look at the quirks that the heraldry from other races tend to have.

Imperial Lords like to write their achievements in murals and draw extremely detailed borders, while dwarven Lords enjoy depicting their achievements with epic carvings, so we might go for the dwarven style while keeping the imperial borders.

While we can dedicate a corridor to making murals about our achievements, we don't have much in that department yet, so they won't be too extensive for now.

Werefox Lords enjoy adding cute little drawings into all elements of their heraldry, making their tapestries the most beautiful you can find by far, so we'll put ours in the main hall, replacing the huge family portrait above the door to the Hub Room. They also like to carve their pillars with these drawings, and that's something that our Nature mages might love doing all over the castle.

Dragonkin Lords love spiky rally standards, so ours will be in that style. They'll be carried by our troops into battle, making them one of the first things that the enemy sees when they face our front line, so their design must be menacing to intimidate them.

Rabanarian Lords are very reserved, so there isn't much influence from Ciel's background in that regard. If we consider her as Sommerlande instead, then we could use vibrant colors, but that's still a "meh" reference.

Since she's a priestess before being a Rabanarian, we could add a religious motto to our seal as a reference to her.

Elven Lords love their family trees, which is clearly evident from all the statues of past Lords in the main hall of the castle, though they're more concerned with achieving celebrity status among the commoners by plastering their faces on the Shell for all to see. For the depiction of the lineage tapestry, we could use an actual (drawn) tree where the leaves are the faces of our ancestors, though it will be mostly empty for now.

Succubi Lords have a tendency to prominently display the "body count" (i.e. how many people they've plowed) of their Lords, which might be something we do just for me. They also love phallic imagery, so I'm sure that we can add some of those in somewhere, like in our composition.

Tista loosens up and lets out high-pitched giggles as we talk about all the different motifs we want to add to our heraldry. The idea of having a literal penis as a rallying banner sends her into a fit of laughter, and she relaxes so much that she starts to play with my scales as we discuss draconic motifs.

Alissa and I share a look. The seasoning is complete, and it's just about time for my meal. Ciel and Yunia are still stuck in their meeting, so we have some time to burn.

A note from Manasong

Hall of Fame of Patrons

The patrons who support Rupegia shall have their names sung by the bards for they deserve the glory and honor. Their names are:

Prince PreownedFIN.

Prince Creamy Spinach.

Lord Andrew Meyers.

Lord Samuel Lim.

Lord Bill.

Lord Novgarod.

Lord Ashadun.

Lord Michale Erwin.

Lord Bakerdea.

Lord Nathan Vanbrunt.

Lord Maurice.

Lord Empyrean.

Lord Mattirro Draca.

Lord Joshua Tal.

Lord Colorblind.

Lord RottenTangerine.

Lord Fullmoon.

Lord Joxsan Herrera.

Lord Sean Drake.

Lord EESDESESESRDT.

Lord Brody Haugan.

Lord FrostyCube.

Lord Mike Bartter.

Lord Cardinal Steiner.

Lord Krawn.

Lord Warwulfv.

Lord Cidant.

Lord Jorge Franco.

Lord Bradly.

Lord Freddie.

Lord Khristopher Welsh.

Lord DJ.

Lord Philip.

Noble Salty Panda.

Noble Mild Fracas.

Noble Aclys.

Noble Shawn Plumley.

Noble CarlBaxter.

Noble WeirdWhirl.

Noble War God.

Noble Yeuromain.

Noble Jorge Franco.

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Chapter 94: Forbidden Knowledge - Part 2

A note from Manasong

Attention: to conform to the limit of mature content (more than just sexual content) allowed in a novel, I've censored this chapter. You can look for the uncensored version here.

Before we start salivating over Tista, there's something that we need to clarify.

I use a lull in the conversation to broach the topic, "I keep friendship and work separate. You may say no to any of our advances, and that will have no influence on our work relationship. Know that I'm a rather pious man, and I won't use my position as a Crown Lord for anything inappropriate."

It feels odd saying that I'm "pious," but my "Piety" is at 18 now, and that's just about the norm for the lower-end of priests.

My relationship with the Gods is weird, though. I don't particularly like them, I just have a mindset similar to theirs, or to some of them at least, so my "Piety" keeps increasing without much effort on my part.

Tista flushes tomato-red, but she nods in understanding and shyly smiles.

With that out of the way, it's time to take a bite.

I touch her chin with a claw so that she looks at me, and I stare deep into her eyes as I say, "Your presence arouses me, Tista. I can't stop thinking about how you'd look naked."

Her lips tremble, and her breathing gets louder. "M-my Lord. I-I…"

She seems to have lost her ability to speak, so I strike again, "Yes, you. What about you? What do think about me and my 'draconified' body?"

She breathes in deeply and looks at the claw poking her chin. "It's amazing, my Lord," she breathes softly, then her eyes fill with vigor as she stares into mine. "It's so gallant and fearsome," she compliments, and I notice how her voice has become a pitch higher

"She's a dragon fetishist," Yunia offhandedly remarks inside my mind, then focuses back on their meeting again.

I smirk in delight. Finally, I'm not just "cute" anymore. "Do you want to see me naked?" I ask with a husky tone.

"Yes," she answers without hesitation.

Alissa's hand lands on hers. "Then, come," my wingwoman whispers sensually and rises from her seat, pulling Tista up with her, then she guides the mature elf to our bed, a gentle smile gracing her lips.

Tista has long, perfectly straight, golden hair parted into two sides, each pouring over a shoulder like a sheet of silk. Her features are rounder than the usual elf's, with cute round eyes and a wide smile that flaunts her white teeth. Her faintly pigmented skin and dimples show her age, but they only enhance her refined cuteness.

Alissa helps her sit on the bed, and now it's time to dive in.

I let out a sigh of satisfaction as I lay before Tista. Though that would normally be just the beginning of the Ravaging if it were with the other girls, it's good enough for me.

The pretty elf seems dazed, as if she's high on weed, with her mouth loosely hanging open and her lips curled in a faint smile. It seems that my shape-shifting Weapon seems to be a bit too intense for the uninitiated.

She's the first woman outside of the harem that I've done in a while, and I feel a very different sort of pleasure from the usual. It's invigorating in an "I've done a good deed" kind of way. I admit that some of the pleasure of it comes from Alissa's own depravity, but I also enjoyed it from the depths of my heart to make Tista as happy as she looks right now.

It's one of the greatest acts of kindness that I could give to a woman: the blessing of my Weapon. There's nothing depraved or degenerate about it. It's a pure, holy thing, truly. I'm making women happy through love-making simply because I enjoy seeing them happy.

Unfortunately, I'm decidedly not bi, so I can't give the blessings of my glorious tool to everyone. Perhaps my children will, and the holy weredragon race will spread its love throughout the land, making all the other races ascend into better people through carnal satisfaction.

I'm truly the God of Love-Making.

Hghn…!

Ciel pokes my soul to make me stop blaspheming. I'll be a God when I become a God, and not before that.

After a quickie and then cleaning herself, Alissa pulls out a sponge to wipe off the sweat from Tista's aged, but very soft skin. Meanwhile, I pull out a brush and do her hair, applying some of our personal elven hair lotion while I [Massage] her brain with tentacles.

Her clouded mind slowly clears, and life returns to her eyes, then she starts trying to understand her situation.

"M-my Lord…?" She shyly asks in confusion.

"I'm applying some of Yunia's hair lotion. It'll make your hair shine brighter and keep it from frizzing. Or would you prefer something else? We have all sorts of hair products that you might like."

Her round eyes open wide, making her face look even cuter. "No, that's fine… but you don't need to waste your products on me."

I smile kindly at her and whisper, "It's not a waste, and I enjoy doing these sorts of things."

She relents, then closes her eyes and starts to become drowsy. "Thank you… my Lord… for the honor…"

We help her put on her clothes, which Yunia tells me is called a "hanging dousnadeia," then we let her have a nap as we finish our tea.

I drink some orange juice with milk and eat a soft fruit cake with meringue. The cake is simple but so well done that its texture feels like silk on my tongue.

Then Alissa sits on my lap and plays with my scales while we wait for the rest of the girls to arrive.

Hana is the first to burst into the room. She wants to shout as she enters, but Alissa shuts her mouth through [Bind], forcing Hana to speak through my soul space instead. "You did her without me?!" She complains like a child that was denied dessert.

"She's not really bi," Alissa points out and sends an apologetic smile.

"Hells. Well, whatever, I got a woman to do, too! Tonight, we're doing her, Wolfy!"

"If you start doing your Lordsguard or the servants, we'll get a reputation," Yunia warns us, briefly shifting her focus away from their meeting.

"A 'good' reputation, or a 'bad' one?" Roxanne tentatively asks for clarification.

Yunia sighs internally and tiredly responds, "That will depend on how forceful you are, but you can be certain that the more prudish people in general will keep their women very far from us."

I chuckle heartily inside my mind. Hide yo daughters, hide yo sisters, hide yo mothers, hide yo wives. Because I'm coming, and I'm coming inside them all.

"I'll definitely do Poosh soon, and I don't think that I can stop myself from doing some of the maids," I confess.

"Regardless of our reputation, I think it's best if we never get ourselves involved with prudish people if we can avoid it," Alissa opines.

Yunia shrugs and returns her focus to their meeting.

Hana passes by Tista, staring down at her body like a ravenous beast, then lets her thin dress fall to the floor and leans forward on the railing.

"I got horny from watching you three, so you'd better compensate me for leaving me out of this one," she demands, then spreads herself for me.

"You know that you shouldn't be spying on us if it's going to get in the way of your duties," Alissa chastises her.

She snorts and starts using her fingers. "Well, I just couldn't help it. I've been wanting to do another woman for a while now."

Alissa pouts as our cuddling time comes to an end, but duty calls, and I have a horny dragonkin to satisfy.

Tista wakes up near the end, and she stares on in fear at the sight of two dragons Mating with a capital M. It's a short bout, though.

The meeting with the Tribunal and the Chimeras is adjourned, and we finally gather the harem together to discuss the heraldry.

"Black horns in a silver field," Alissa immediately suggests, and it's met with approval, though Yunia remains neutral.

I also side with Yunia and suggest, "Well, that'd be a reference to me, but only my elven children will become Lords, so maybe we could use something more 'race-neutral'?"

Yunia is the one to counter that point, "I wouldn't recommend it unless you want to create a clan, but that requires strong leadership if you want it to last for more than a few generations."

My thick tail starts swaying out of my control from the excitement building in my heart, but my mind is confused. "Why would we make a 'clan'?"

Yunia looks at each of the girls with a subtle, proud smile, though she avoids looking Roxanne in the eye. "We have gathered here an assortment of women and a man, all of us with the potential of achieving something great. If we're each to grow and advance in our respective fields, we'll all acquire some sort of power and political influence, which would be best wielded by a clan, a hierarchical organization of our family."

I look out to the town below us as my mind drifts into thought.

I can easily see what she means. Yunia's children will act as the Lords and leaders; Lina's as the enchanters and merchants; Hana's as the warriors and inheritors of her [Draconic Body] skill; Roxanne's as the mages and alchemists; Ciel's as the pious healers and protectors of the commoners; Aoi's as the (potential?) smiths and perhaps something else; and Alissa's as the… servants? The ones who keep us all together? Perhaps simply the managers of the clan.

There will also be those who will follow my path, becoming… researchers? Scholars? Gods of Love-Making…? "Spreaders of Love and Legs"?

The point is that our potential is greater than just the Lordship, and we could all create institutions as our legacy for this world.

Then Yunia shares a thought through [Bind]: the descendants of most of the Humanoid Gods have created their own clans to maintain the "divinity" of their lineage. The largest one being the empire, the "clan" of the God of the Sun.

The part that makes me wary is that our children might not want to follow in our footsteps, or even participate in the clan. How do we deal with that? How do we choose who gets to sit in each position? Is hereditary rule really a stable choice for a long-lasting organization? But then there's the "divine mandate," where the Gods actually do legitimize the leaders…

"If we base our clan around piety, then the Gods will help keep it stable, just like they do for the empire," Ciel interrupts my thoughts.

Yunia piles on, "The Leigelas family is a clan. They have a lot of influence within the Tribunal and even some weight in the imperial senate without needing the support of the Elder Council."

Lina joins in, reciting something that she read about before, "The Korig family are the descendants of the God of War, and together, they hold the largest non-human portion of the imperial army. They're famous around Mountainhome, but they aren't rulers, even though they have so much power, so I think they're some sort of clan."

"A royal dynasty is just a more dignified name for a clan," Alissa adds through [Bind]. This isn't something that we can just mention openly in front of Tista.

I raise my claws as a signal for them to stop. "Alright, I'm convinced, but what about the issue of the flag?"

Ciel speaks her mind, "It's supposed to represent all of us and our legacy, and these horns might be our greatest impact on the realm, I think."

"Or at least, the most visible," Yunia finishes.

Tista stays quiet, seemingly a bit confused about the reasoning for the flag since she doesn't know about my new race, yet.

I look towards Yunia, wanting to get her final opinion on this. It'll be her children that will have to live under a draconic flag even though they're elves.

"The clan will be larger than my children, just like how the duties of Lordship are greater than the bonds I had with my parents," she admits rather bitterly.

She tries to hide it, but Yunia has a bit of a xenophilia fetish. If anything, she'll impart in her children the love for the dragonator.

With the matter of the flag now settled, we start defining which elements from the races of the girls will go where.

When lunchtime comes, we invite Tista to eat with us. Today, there are a lot of choices of bread and dipping sauces set out, making it an imperial-style meal.

There's not-hummus, not-tahini, not-baba-ghanoush, not-tabbouleh, and sour cream. Quite the nostalgic combination for me.

I know a few things that can be done with tahini, so I should check with Krysta to see if she knows the recipes.

Once Osaria arrives, she seems to engage her "predator mode" and gives Tista a hungry look. The shy woman doesn't dare to look back, but her demeanor reminds me of a frightened rabbit hiding from a predator.

"I see you've enjoyed the pleasures that our Lord can bestow upon us," Osaria teases with a cheeky grin.

"Lord Wolf has given her a great honor in allowing her to experience his noble Sword," Alissa concurs while nodding sagely.

Tista simply smiles, too embarrassed to speak out, but the light teasing eases the tension, allowing her to relax for once.

After our meal, the meeting with the Tribunal continues, and we discuss a few more details with Tista, but the more important aspects have already been defined, so Osaria starts organizing the painters.

Only a few strategic places will receive our heraldry for now, so there's not that much work to do. Our portrait on the Shell has already been started, and it's going to be finished pretty fast since it's only a drawing in gold, not a realistic painting.

Now that there isn't anybody else here to get in the way of my practice, I return to training my [Dragon Transformation].

I'm at the point where I can feel a draconic rage inside of me like a pool of lava that I can tap into to give me energy. If I go too far, I fear that I'll fall into a dangerous, berserking rage, but everything I know tells me that the girls will be able to reign me in through [Bind].

It's a bit difficult to get into a rage without actual bloodshed, so I can only try this out safely with monsters.

I'm also now at a size that I can actually start to fight when transformed. Even if I don't have armor, my scales are hard enough and my body nimble enough to keep me safe. I don't need to actually wield a sword to fight since I can still use my tentacles to use any weapon I want, including Patrono. Actually, especially Patrono since that sword is so dangerous that I could kill myself with it if I'm not careful, so it might be better if I only wield it with tentacles.

I'm about the size of a Great Dane, so Lina could potentially mount me, but it would be very uncomfortable for her due to the spikes on my back. Actual rideable dragons have their spikes shaved to fit the rider/carriage, but I won't do that, my pride won't allow it. I'll just have to get a saddle that's been molded to my spikes if I want someone to ride me. I can afford it, after all.

It's also kind of funny that I can choose to use a smaller form when I want. It takes more effort to be small than to just be big, though.

A cute, orange little fox suddenly peeks out from behind my throne. Her cute little nose twitches as she smells the air, and her eyes stare at me with curiosity, then her fluffy tail excitedly wags when I reduce my size to match hers.

The fox yips happily and hides behind the throne, so I dash after her.

She's so fast that I only hear her feet scampering away, so I put more energy into my legs and chase after her ever faster.

We circle around the throne, and I start to hear her tip taps getting closer, then I get a glimpse of a fluffy white tip, but it immediately disappears as an orange blur darts away from the throne and shoots towards the sofas.

I immediately turn and follow her, my claws leaving small cuts on the grass-like white floor.

I get a few more glimpses of her, but she always changes up her pattern whenever I'm getting closer, managing to increase the distance between us each time.

I start to get angry. The white fluffy tip of her tail is like a piece of meat dangling before me, and I must cuddle with it!

I hear the cheeky fox yip and laugh as it plays with me. She's faster, and she knows it, but I'm a godsdamn dragon, and I don't quit so easily.

Come on, ya stinky lizard! Move those legs! Move those legs! MOVE THOSE LEGS!

"Raaaaaaaa…" I growl in anger, fire and smoke escaping my mouth.

The fox stops laughing, and I hear her little feet desperately scurrying away from me.

"RAAAAAAA!" I roar out loud. Even though my voice is chipmunkified in this smaller form, it's still the primal roar of the king of both the land and the skies.

YOU CHEEKY LITTLE FOX! I'M GONNA MESS YOU UP!

The white tip appears again, teasing my pride with the cute way it sways as she runs.

She darts from side-to-side, zips and bolts, jumps and rolls, all to try to lose me, but the longer the chase goes on, the faster I get as my obsession with her grows stronger.

The white tip grows larger in my view until I start to see the round and fluffy poofiness of its orange length.

Her little black hind paws come into my sight, then I see her fluffy body as it gets closer, and closer, and closer.

The fluffiness gets so close to my claws that I can almost feel its softness against my hard scales. I can smell it, and I can almost taste it. Just a little more, just a little faster…

The cheeky fox is now in a full sprint, unable to shake me off, and desperately running from its hunter since it realizes that it bit off more than it could chew.

She makes a sudden turn and darts to a corridor, but I'm already used to her near-instant changes in direction, so I use my wings to help me make the quick turn.

We enter a corridor that leads to one of the lower rooms, and I start to salivate at the alluring sway of her body. It's so entrancing that it even gives me a fresh burst of energy, which I use to leap forward.

I glide over her and use my claws to grab onto her fur, nabbing her from the floor.

She loses her footing as I lift her up, flapping my wings desperately, but I'm an inexperienced flier, so we crash down onto the waxed floor a moment later.

We slide a fairly long distance, then I hit the wall with my back, but I keep the little fox secured tightly in my claws.

I immediately recover, but she remains still on the floor, though I know that she certainly isn't dead or passed out.

I climb on top of her, my toothy mouth ajar, drooling with desire, then I glare at her beady, upturned eyes.

She yips playfully and shows me her belly, her legs spread apart as much as she can.

This female is mine, my prey, my toy, my mate. And I'm going to do as I please with her.

Alissa and I head back to the main hall while holding hands, my padded claws interlaced with her soft human fingers, and silly smiles stamped on our faces.

She's exhausted for the day, but she has no regrets.

When we get back, Dokkan's annoyed glare immediately finds us.

"I'll ask that you remain still, my Lord. I need to make the finishing touches," she requests sternly, and I nod with a wry smile.

We're not sorry.

A note from Manasong

Hall of Fame of Patrons

The patrons who support Rupegia shall have their names sung by the bards for they deserve the glory and honor. Their names are:

Prince PreownedFIN.

Prince Creamy Spinach.

Lord Andrew Meyers.

Lord Samuel Lim.

Lord Bill.

Lord Novgarod.

Lord Ashadun.

Lord Michale Erwin.

Lord Bakerdea.

Lord Nathan Vanbrunt.

Lord Maurice.

Lord Empyrean.

Lord Mattirro Draca.

Lord Joshua Tal.

Lord Colorblind.

Lord RottenTangerine.

Lord Fullmoon.

Lord Joxsan Herrera.

Lord Sean Drake.

Lord EESDESESESRDT.

Lord Brody Haugan.

Lord FrostyCube.

Lord Mike Bartter.

Lord Cardinal Steiner.

Lord Krawn.

Lord Warwulfv.

Lord Cidant.

Lord Jorge Franco.

Lord Bradly.

Lord Freddie.

Lord Khristopher Welsh.

Lord DJ.

Lord Philip.

Noble Salty Panda.

Noble Mild Fracas.

Noble Aclys.

Noble Shawn Plumley.

Noble CarlBaxter.

Noble WeirdWhirl.

Noble War God.

Noble Yeuromain.

Noble Jorge Franco.

Leave a rating or a review to help me rise to the top or fix my shameful understanding of prose.

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Chapter 94: Forbidden Knowledge - Part 3

A note from Manasong

Attention: to conform to the limit of mature content (more than just sexual content) allowed in a novel, I've censored this chapter. You can look for the uncensored version here.

The rest of the day goes by smoothly without much really happening.

Dokkan finishes her job, and I can now walk around in my old fully-human form without issues as long as I don't try to move my tail or use [Soul Manipulation] on my draconic parts.

[Jaleowzeh Magic] actually warps reality, so I can finger as many women as I want without shredding them into ribbons with my claws. I can also sit down on normal chairs again without having to care about my tail getting in the way.

The downside is that the girls actually find me far hotter in my weredragon form, and the dragon inside me gets a bit grumpy when his characteristics are suppressed.

The illusion is still useful due to how convenient it makes things for me, so I'll definitely use it a lot.

I call Almaria and give her a request: grow a portable house for me.

"'Portable'?" She flatly repeats and blinks blankly in disbelief.

I nod firmly and clarify, "I have a very large [Item Box], so I want a 'portable house' that I can store in it. We just need something more solid to replace our tents for whenever we sleep outside of the castle."

"Oh, I understand, my Lord," she softly responds with a polite nod.

"There's no need for anything fancy. Just the basics since we also have [Nature Magic], so we can grow whatever we might need later on. It also needs to be done fairly fast because we only hired Dokkan until the Lordship Ceremony, and that's the day after tomorrow."

She nods energetically. "Understood. I'll organize the Nature mages, and we'll work through the night." Then she bows and keeps her head low.

I cringe and look away as I apologize, "I'm sorry to give you this task so suddenly."

She raises her eyes to meet mine and adjusts her small glasses. "But you still gave it to me." Then she smiles cheekily and straightens her back.

I smile back and chuckle softly. I like her attitude.

For bath time, Alissa and Hana are too tired for anything, so I focus on the other girls.

I sink my claws onto Ciel's ass and do her on top of Lina.

The two Chimera maids that are attending us this time can't hold themselves back and openly do each other while they wait for us to finish, but we take so long that they end up finishing twice before it's time for them to clean us up.

The slender, Doberman-headed maid sniffs me, entranced by my smell, then she starts panting but holds it back and looks down in shame as she apologizes, "Forgive me, my Lord, but the rumors are true, and I find it hard to hold myself back. You're just too alluring to me."

"Any female maid can do whatever they wish with me and my wives. You don't need to hold yourself back," I magnanimously state.

She breathes in deeply, discreetly taking in the scent again, then forgoes the towel and uses her mouth to clean us up.

The other maid is more reserved and doesn't do anything lewd, letting her colleague do as much as she wants.

I know for a fact that they're both lower Chimera noblewomen, so it's a bit surprising to see that they're willing to do this kind of work.

Unfortunately, they're already spent and their desire is currently fairly low since they have just done each other twice, so I don't get to taste new a woman this time.

The rest of the girls don't want anything special right now, so they get the Tentacle Monster. And this kind of attention goes perfectly well with the not-Jacuzzi bath.

At dinner, we have a new guest that was invited by Hana. Romy, a spearwoman from our Lordsguard. She's a new recruit, but she's also an experienced mercenary, so she's adapting very well to her new position.

She's definitely exotic, though. She's a tall Asian from Wideberg. She has caramel-colored skin from working in the hot sun, black hair with a blue sheen from her dragonkin ancestors, and a fit body that's quite a bit more muscular than Hana's.

"What brought you so far from home?" I ask curiously.

"I heard that there was some trouble brewing around here, so I came and made a lot of money," she replies with a shrug and gives Hana a knowing smirk.

"That's exactly why Dad came here, too," Klein blurts out, then Romy raises an eyebrow at her, and Klein blushes as she realizes something. "Wait, not like that!"

There's a very profitable place for women in the army: prostitution. Especially when the troops are deployed somewhere without a brothel, the prostitutes can serve as a way to keep morale up and tension down. When Mavel still ruled and the soldiers were overworked protecting the town, the prostitutes saw a huge increase in business.

Romy can fight, and that's the only reason that she was accepted into the Lordsguard, but she also benefits from having a useful "second job."

And she does both of them very well.

Osaria and Roxanne join Hana and me after the first round, and we have a party right here at the dining table.

Romy's alluring smirk suddenly vanishes as she remembers something very important, "You're using a seed-killer, right?'

I point to the ring hanging from my neck, and she hums in understanding.

Ciel and Lina make bets on who's going to fall first, and Lina gets all of hers right while Ciel gets the last survivor wrong. Roxanne is just going with the flow, so she taps out first; then Osaria is next because her thirst has been somewhat lower now that I pound her every day; followed by Romy, since even though she has significant stamina, it isn't enough to compete with us; and finally, I give up last because I've already been ridden a few times today.

Hana stands victoriously on top of the multiple corpses dripping with fluids. She's the victor of the Love Battle Royale, and she receives a round of applause for her inspiring accomplishment.

I massage Romy caramel abs as I give her battle scars some gentle kisses.

"If everyone made love like you, I'd do it for free until I starved," Romy mumbles as her eyelids droop shut.

The girls are starting to get jealous, so I leave Romy and give some attention to Roxanne and Aoi, who each get half of my body to cuddle with.

Klein wants her share, too, so I assume direct control of Alissa and cuddle with her. The brown monkey girl is really tired today, so Alissa and I work together to [Massage] her entire body and help her relax.

"How's the Lordsguard treating you, Romy?" Yunia casually inquires.

"Non-stop training, though I can't complain since we're serving Lords," she drowsily replies and shrugs.

"I'm pretty sure all of our officers are elves. How would you compare them to human ones?" Her tone is entirely casual, but the contents make me turn to her and pay closer attention to the conversation.

Romy raises an eyebrow and wakes up a little. "Permission to speak freely?"

"Granted."

"Uptight, hot little assholes with tight, hot little assholes."

Well, it seems that the system could barely handle the nuance of her phrasing.

"I've been having to use the fake sword quite a lot, though. You elves are really damn loose," she adds with a grin.

"Hopefully, you can help 'loosen' them up," Hana follows suit with the innuendos as she smirks.

"I hope so, too," Yunia agrees with a wry smile. "But I mean for the 'uptight' part, specifically."

Romy turns her smirk towards Hana and shares some more of her perspective, "Snobby elves like to butt-love each other in their little circles. Nothing new about that, though they have been 'letting me in' more often."

Hana suddenly feels inspired. "Look at you, 'entering' their 'rings,' 'plowing' through their 'fields,' 'forcing' yourself upon their 'untouched and pure' elven traditions."

"I'm 'pollinating' their 'flowers,' 'fertilizing' them with my humble, human 'seed of knowledge.'"

Hana nods sagely. "Ah, yes. They must all have a 'share' of you. It'd be a waste if they never experienced the delight of 'enjoying' your 'person.'"

Romy opens her arms wide as she tries to look dignified and magnanimous. "I'm merely a worshiper of the Goddess of Love, bringing love and loosened butts to all."

Lina's Trivia: This isn't really blasphemy since the Goddess of Love was a well-known free-loving freak.

Yunia lets herself smile wryly for a short moment, then she continues, "But about a more serious matter, I do hope that you're all trying to integrate. It'd be bad for the cohesion of our troops if the different races refused to work together."

Romy shrugs. "We're doing fine, though the elves are still being elves."

What she said is just a bit worrying, though. If the elven soldiers aren't trying to meet the rest halfway, then they'll bring the whole Lordsguard down.

We retire to our room, and Romy returns to her barracks. Since we're just going to do our Lordsguard whenever we want, I feel like meeting with Hukarere and Kaatohe, but they're both with Hihiriwa, so they're on duty, though they are coming back tomorrow. I might just do them both together to save on time.

While the girls play around before calling it a day, I mess with my points in [Summoning Magic] to try to understand anything I can about [Otherwordly Summoning]. Its wording is different from [Summon Monster] or [Summon Elemental], so perhaps, there's something different about the way it actually works.

I meditate and reflect on my knowledge of [Summoning Magic] as I add and remove points, trying to detect any changes in my understanding of the magic school.

I feel a sort of "intuition" becoming stronger whenever I add more points, but it feels like it's almost impossible for me to derive any specific knowledge from that.

Someone taps my shoulder, and I open my eyes to find Yunia gazing kindly at me. She offers me a small piece of simple cloth with a circle of blood painted on it.

"Let's test out [Disruption Field]," she proposes, and I accept because it's a more efficient use of my time.

While this test is informative, it's also painful as hell.

I whimper like a kicked puppy as my entire draconic hand twinges in pain. It interrupted [Fireball] and [Lightning Bolt] perfectly, no matter what way I used to cast it, but it had also increasingly irritated every last atom in my hand.

Ciel inspects the affected area with concern. She's trying to remain clinical, but her heart is filled with pity, and she's trying her best to help me. [Heal], [Refresh Body], and [Purify Body] just don't seem to have any actual effect on the pain, though MP potions do ease it a bit.

"L-let's try this," Yunia suddenly suggests, then a blue, glowing, spiritual hand grabs my own as she uses [Spirit Touch]. Her heart isn't aching as much as Ciel's is, but like with all of the girls, her protective, motherly instincts have flared up from seeing my cute, pained face.

And just like that, in just a single moment, my fearsome, draconic image is shattered. Considering how every part of my body is being tightly hugged, sinking into many pairs of pillows of varying sizes and shapes, it isn't so bad…

Yunia's spirit hand dulls the pain, and I finally understand what happened: my soul was damaged by [Disruption Field] because my hands aren't fully physical anymore.

The physical body serves as a "hiding place" or "shield" for the spirit, and now that my body is slightly magical, it leaves my spirit slightly vulnerable. This fact is also why Yunia could potentially kill me with [Disruption Field], and why I need to learn how to resist it.

It's not like I'd be left unscathed if I didn't have [Mana Body]. Long exposure to [Disruption Field] would give me mana radiation sickness just like when I was bad at using the mana circulation routine.

Aoi helps out by using her own [Soul Manipulation] to envelop my hand, which gives me a boner, but it's quite easy to manage, so I keep myself from pouncing on her. Her method has a similar effect to [Spirit Touch], though it's more on the removing the pain side than actually healing my spirit.

All spirits heal on their own if damaged unless they were altered by something like [Alteration Magic], so this test isn't going to leave me with any lasting damage.

I do have to use [Pain Resistance] to endure it, though.

Today is the 10th.

Klein wakes me up quite vigorously.

I pat her head and lovingly play with her brown monkey ears, but my heart pangs with a single throb of pain. The dragon is still asleep, so this is my human side wanting for more than what I can have from her.

I'll still pay the price for getting too attached for a while, but it's manageable. Either my time in the maze has dulled the emotional pain of it, or my draconic side increased my resistance.

My "Strength", [Mana Body], and [Dragon Transformation] increased by 1 (now 15, 3 and 6). I've finally reached the end of my training, though I'll still try to keep leveling my Transformation. I'm now bigger than my human form if I stand on my feet, so I want to grow until I'm larger than Aoi and can fully dominate her at her largest.

"Yes, please!" Aoi shouts happily. Not having to hold back during our "wrestling" will be quite refreshing for her.

Alissa increased her [Illusion Magic] by 2 (now 2+13). It seems that she learned a lot from watching Dokkanchee, even though they aren't using the same type of illusion magic.

Roxanne increased her [Space Magic] by 1 (now 4+11). I've also added some more points to it to help her with [Warp Space].

Hana increased her [Two-Handed Sword Use] and [Draconic Body] by 1 (now 10 and 5).

Lina increased her [Axe Use] and [Throw] by 1 (now 11+14 and 3+7).

Yunia increased her [Sword Use] and [Two-Handed Sword Use] by 1 (now 3+12 and 3+17).

Though we've had a lot of free time to train and get used to our armor, we now have to actually organize the Ceremony, so we'll most likely be busy for the whole day.

The morning starts off very chilly since it rained during the night, so I go down to the kitchen to request that they make something warmer today.

Below the ground floor is the kitchen, a huge hall with all sorts of ovens, grills, smokers, stoves, family-sized cooking pots, and an army of elves working at the tables, preparing the meals for everyone in the castle. They wear simple, white uniforms that cover everything but their hands and heads, so I guess not even the elves want to deal with burns from kitchen accidents.

The room is far cooler than I expected it to be, but then I notice the large fans of palm leaves on the ceiling that are pulling the air up, and a very fresh breeze coming in through the grates on the floor. I guess they know about the dwarven wisdom of air cycling.

A clumsy elf cuts his finger when he sees me entering the room, and the sight of his red blood wakes up the dragon within me, exciting it quite a bit.

I glide towards the cook with [Telekinesis] and touch his hand with a claw, then I cast [Heal].

The cook shouts in surprise, then bows at a right angle as he exclaims, "Ah! My Lord! I'm honored that you've graced me with your aid!"

"Rise," I gently order, then I just give him a kind smile and leave in search of Krysta.

I find her sternly instructing some young elven apprentices on how to not screw up the bread like they just did. Imperial bread is made in some different way that they just neglected, or something like that.

As I walk towards them, I get a bit annoyed at the fact that everyone seems to stop and look over at me for a moment, but I can't really do anything about that since this might be the first time that they've ever seen me.

Krysta suddenly notices my approach and gives me a sweet smile.

"My Lord. To what do I owe the pleasure of this visit?" She politely asks, the angry look from before completely gone, though I don't think the quick switch was unnatural.

"I just wanted to request a specific recipe from you. I think it'll suit the weather today pretty well," I softly respond, trying not to scare the terrified apprentices further.

She raises her eyebrows in amusement. "Oh? I know you have a good taste for food, so I'm curious to see what challenge you're going to give me this time."

I chuckle softly. "Not much of a challenge, I'm afraid. Also, how about you and Anton join us so that you can have a taste of it, too?"

She nods energetically. "Sounds great to me."

"Ah, there's just one thing I should ask you about…" Her smile almost fades away completely, then she takes a step closer to me and starts whispering, "Did something happen between you and Klein? She's suddenly become a lot more serious lately."

I hold myself back from cringing since the watchful elves might misinterpret that and make the rumor mills start spinning, then I answer her in a low and casual tone, "We just settled our relationship into something more casual while reaffirming that we're still close friends. She doesn't want to officially join the harem, and I don't want to force her into it."

She opens her eyes wide and lets her mouth hang open in shock. "I'm surprised, my Lord, that you'd do something like that. Especially after… becoming more draconic."

I smile a bit sadly as I confess, "I wanted to, but I won't force her to commit, so I'll simply cherish her while she still wants to stay close to us."

Krysta stays silent for a moment, simply humming in agreement and nodding while she thinks. "Thank you for keeping what's best for her in mind."

I simply nod back, and we drop the matter. The loneliness I felt when I was trapped inside the maze taught me that I should always value what I have, and I won't jeopardize my relationship with Klein by forcing her into the harem.

After we let the seriousness of that exchange fade away, I teach her how to make waffles, then how to garnish them with Chantilly and a sweet, syrupy sauce, which she flavors with either not-strawberry or not-blueberry.

We bring it back upstairs together and enjoy a happy breakfast. Klein's "seriousness" certainly isn't a side that she shows to us.

The castle starts to bustle with activity, and with eight leaders working in perfect sync, we can get things done and organized in record time, reducing our workload by a factor of eight, though I can't really go outside the castle yet, so I won't be able to help out as much as I could.

Dokkanchee works on our bedroom while we wait until the portable house is done, and I make sure that the room has been completely cleaned of all evidence of our love before she enters. I really don't want to make the old woman suffer through that.

I go down to our underground dungeon to get some emellanat shackles for our [Otherworldly Summoning] test. The guard suddenly becomes stiff and very quiet when I state my request, so I think that he misunderstood the purpose.

"I'm testing some dangerous spells, so I want to have these as a guarantee that I won't mess things up," I explain as the guard hands me the shackles, and he hums in understanding, then smiles awkwardly. "We already have enough chains to roleplay as much as we want, so we don't really need anything like these for that."

Then I leave before the guard can even process what I just said.

I test the emellanat with Jarn's help, and I quickly learn that this metal actually hurts my skin, lightly bruising it after just a minute of contact. If I ever get sent to prison and shackled with these, I feel that my hands would end up just falling off after a few days. There is a skill to resist the emellanat, though it also makes its interrupting properties less effective, so there's no way for me to escape the pain.

It takes a bit for me to build up enough motivation to proceed, but I manage to start testing the shackles as a way to interrupt my spellcasting, though I might need to get some thicker shackles since the metal heats up when they absorb spells, and there's a possibility that they'll actually melt if the spell is too powerful.

Midway through my tests, Sandoro arrives at my office to discuss the Ceremony taking place tomorrow, so I allow him in without a second thought.

I realize too late that seeing your Lord chained, with his wrists bruised, while locked in a room alone with bimbo-Yunia might be a very odd sight to witness. He doesn't show it, though, aside from taking a moment before coming in.

Just as we start talking, Ereia sends us a letter telling me that some nasty rumors are being spread among the commoners about me. Half-truths twisted to make me look bad. Though they aren't blatantly false, she suspects that their origin is artificial.

"The opposing Lords can't openly rebel without severe consequences, so they might be going for the long play where they try to slowly erode our reputation," Yunia theorizes through [Bind].

"And what do we do to put a stop to these rumors?" Alissa immediately questions, her voice full of heat and hate.

Yunia smirks internally. "We do something that we're getting quite good at: we put on a show."

And with almost perfect timing, our fleet gets back with a glittering prize for us, so I send Hana and Lina to greet them.

Intermission 19 – Sandoro

My Lord is an eccentric man. Very, very eccentric.

I knew that it would be so since the first time I fought him, but Weepers' Dream, he's eccentric.

In the end, his personal behavior doesn't matter if he can make the Western High Forest flourish. I believe in Lord Yulania, and I trust her judgment. The Ryder family is young, and they will definitely inject new life into elven society.

However, I definitely won't let my wife ever meet with him if I can avoid it.

I remember the stack of protocols I still have to review and hold back a sigh. I'm not completely confident in our security measures, but I don't think I ever will be. Knowing what happened at the Innocent Nymph makes me believe the heretics to be capable of anything, and how do you even try to prepare against that?!

I just have to be ready for everything, right?

I chuckle internally, and it lightens the weight on my shoulders.

Only the Gods can keep the heretics away, or at least reveal them for us to see…

The memory of my Keystone surfaces in my mind. It's a simple, unadorned inverted trapezoid stone, a small decoration for my desk, but it still holds a powerful meaning. I always found it odd that the God of Law would choose a symbol from imperial architecture instead of something elven, but I'm only now starting to realize the importance of it.

I look out through the window of the office and stare at the ships lowering onto the sky docks.

I'd better start praying more.

A note from Manasong

Hall of Fame of Patrons

The patrons who support Rupegia shall have their names sung by the bards for they deserve the glory and honor. Their names are:

Prince PreownedFIN.

Prince Creamy Spinach.

Lord Andrew Meyers.

Lord Samuel Lim.

Lord Bill.

Lord Novgarod.

Lord Ashadun.

Lord Michale Erwin.

Lord Bakerdea.

Lord Nathan Vanbrunt.

Lord Maurice.

Lord Empyrean.

Lord Mattirro Draca.

Lord Joshua Tal.

Lord Colorblind.

Lord RottenTangerine.

Lord Fullmoon.

Lord Joxsan Herrera.

Lord Sean Drake.

Lord EESDESESESRDT.

Lord Brody Haugan.

Lord FrostyCube.

Lord Mike Bartter.

Lord Cardinal Steiner.

Lord Krawn.

Lord Warwulfv.

Lord Cidant.

Lord Jorge Franco.

Lord Bradly.

Lord Freddie.

Lord Khristopher Welsh.

Lord DJ.

Lord Philip.

Noble Salty Panda.

Noble Mild Fracas.

Noble Aclys.

Noble Shawn Plumley.

Noble CarlBaxter.

Noble WeirdWhirl.

Noble War God.

Noble Yeuromain.

Noble Jorge Franco.

Leave a rating or a review to help me rise to the top or fix my shameful understanding of prose.

Take a look over my blog where all information about the world of Rupegia will be posted.

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Farana's Origin: Safety and Security - Teaser

A note from Manasong

This chapter is not required to read to understand the main story, this is only a side-story.

This is a teaser for the patreon-only side stories I'm writing.

The first part of any new storyline I will make public as a teaser.

I slowly get out of bed and sneak across the corridor. I see that Mom is sleeping in her room, so I continue towards the stairs.

I climb down a few steps and look towards the kitchen. Dad is sleeping at the table, an empty jar of alcohol in his hand.

Finally.

I go back to my room and pick up my tools, then I change into my sneaking clothes. This pair of pants and shirt are fairly tight and elastic, but the design stands out, especially because it hugs my breasts and ass really tight. I think the material is called Snow Weave, but I didn't have time to read the tag when I stole it from the shop.

I put on a dress on top and tie a handkerchief to my head, then I put on a cloak to cover it all, and now I'm ready to sneak out.

I slowly and very carefully open my window. I'd oiled it beforehand, but I really don't want to make any noise now, not today.

Once there's a crack just wide enough for me, I slip out and hang on the windowsill, then I drop on the street and activate [Silent Steps] while I scurry away. [Acrobatics] really is useful in sneaking out.

I go south, towards the wall, and I search for the patrols. The priests and guards are the safe spots while traveling through the slums, and I don't want any drunk man trying to feel me up tonight. Unfortunately, the priests stay at the filthiest parts of the slums, trying to clean it up, which is like trying to get a rogue to stop stealing.

I know it, because I'm one.

I finally get to the spot, and see four cloaked men throwing dice. The smallest of them immediately notices me and lowers his hood, revealing a handsome blonde-haired boy with a grin that makes my heart tighten. That's Darean.

The men around him turn to look at me, and their leering reminds me of Dad's, which means they're dangerous people I can't be alone with. If the priests didn't patrol the slums so often, I think these types would've turned Wicked already.

One of them stands in my way, then goes on one knee and glares at me. I immediately jump back and stay away before he has the opportunity to touch me. I also really don't want to smell him.

He has a scar on his cheek from a stab that just missed his eye, and his short brown beard is neatly done, two signs that he's dangerous. "You didn't say she was a kid," he grunts.

"I'm thirteen," I hiss at him and frown.

He snorts. "I can't fuck you without committing a Sin. You're a kid."

"The kid can get you inside, trust me," Darean tries to appease them, then he shows his famous smirk that nearly makes me blush.

"Like that time you cheated under the table?" One of the hooded men teasingly asks.

"Yes, like that time," Darean casually responds without missing a heartbeat.

"Fuck you," the hooded man swears and spits at his feet.

"You wish," Darean confidently quips again and raises his eyebrows suggestively at him.

The hooded man gets actually offended and hovers his hand over his sword, but the scarred man slaps the back of his head, bringing him back to reality, then he glares at Darean and chastises him, "Stop fucking with the others, Darean. If you don't get shanked, I'll do it myself one day just to teach you a lesson."

"Hehehehe…" Darean laughs like a child who stole a sweet roll.

The scarred man turns to me and gives me cold, murderous eyes, then he threatens me, "You fuck up, we leave. You snitch, we kill you. Understood?"

"She doesn't even know your names," Darean defends me, completely serious now.

"She knows yours," Scar warns him.

"She'd never give my name up," Darean confidently states and smirks at me, forcing me to look away so I don't blush.

"You're a fucking stupid boy, alright," Scar mutters and shakes his head disapprovingly, then he sighs and calms down. "Let's get this shit done with, already."

Now that we're together, we avoid all patrols. A group of cloaked and hooded people walking together in the middle of the night is extremely suspicious.

Once we get out of the slums, we avoid any sort of people and stick to the alleyways. If we meet with a snob, it's highly likely that they'll report us to the guards even if we haven't done anything.

It's easy to spot people from the slums for the trained eye, like the guards, for example, who know that nothing good will come from letting us walk freely among the common townsfolk.

We stop by a clean alley, which means that some neat and rich people live around here, but also that it's likely under watch. People don't take care of areas they don't spend time in.

"Two houses down this one," Scar whispers, then they all start playing dice and drinking fake alcohol, trying to keep a low profile.

I breathe in deeply, then I activate [Quiet Steps] and cautiously walk down the alley. I need to keep an eye out for anybody out there, otherwise, someone could spot me while I sneak around, which would be very bad.

The men cough, and I immediately hide behind a beam. A patrol passes by, and I can just imagine the guards glaring at them. Thankfully, nobody plays the clown and they keep their heads low.

I reach the target house and inspect the door for any enchantment. My [Sense Mana] is still level one, but it's enough to detect anything magical if I concentrate enough.

I sense a few mana particles from a sort of magic I don't recognize, so it's better to just avoid the door. Since it's emitting mana, I believe it's a low-quality enchantment, but it's better not to risk it.

I look up and see an ornate jetty with a few protrusions that I can grab onto.

I take my cloak and dress off, then I take a few steps back and prepare. After taking a few calming breaths, I run forward and up the wall, then I jump backward and grab the jetty with both hands.

I'm so light that it's easy to pull myself up, then I climb the timber frame until I reach the roof.

I start taking out the tiles, opening an entrance into their attic. I don't have [Quiet Action], so work carefully to not make a sound.

The advantage of being so small is that I can easily fit through small holes, so it only takes a short while until I can get through the roof.

I gently land on the attic and look around. There's a bit of moonlight, allowing me to see the outline of things after my eyes adjust. I cover my face with my handkerchief so that I don't sneeze from the dust and mold.

I find the door, then I slowly move towards it, checking every step for creaking or fragile boards.

I cross the attic without a problem and stop before the door, then I pull out my oil flask and pour it on the hinges. I brush it a bit to make sure that it penetrates, then I open the door without making a sound.

There's a faint night light illuminating the interior, so I can see the steps on my way down.

On the second floor, I find a single man sleeping in a wide bed. His home seems rather well-made but a bit bare, so I bet he's involved in smuggling. Since Darean and Scar are targeting him, there's no way he's not a cartel member.

I see an expensive-looking vase, so I take out the flowers, pour out the dirt, and store it in my [Item Box]. I have only a little more space left, so I'll save it for something small.

I go down to the first floor and cast an extremely small [Spirit Light]. I confirm that there's nobody else in the house, then I take a look at the back door in his kitchen.

There's only a sound alarm protecting it, but it was enchanted in a piece of iron, so it's so crude that it's not even worth it to steal.

I believe the man living here has found his wealth no more than a half-cycle ago. Either that, or he's extremely stupid to rely on such weak security.

I disable the alarm, then I pick the many locks on the door. It takes a little while, but the purpose of locks is to make a thief waste time, and I still have most of the night to spend.

After I unlock the door, I look into the kitchen cupboards and find some silver cutlery, so I fill my [Item Box] with it.

Now I need to finish my job. I start searching the first floor for a hidden hatch, and I quickly find one under the carpet, so I unlock it and open it up, revealing a heavy chest.

I won't dare open this chest since I'm sure it's enchanted, so I open the kitchen's backdoor and whistle.

Darean and the men finish their game and casually come in.

Scar stops before me and ogles my body, making me feel almost naked with these thin and tight sneaking clothes. "Where is he?" He whispers, and I use my dress and cloak to hide my body.

"Second floor, last door. The chest is over there," I whisper back and point to the hatch.

"Wonderful…" He breathes.

"Told you she was the right one for this," Darean whispers smugly.

Scar chuckles in a low, sinister tone, then they all pull out clubs and sneak up towards the second floor.

I put on my clothes and wait, then I hear muffled screaming coming from upstairs. It's not my job to know what they're doing, so I just cover my ears and wait.

They finish it quickly, then they pick up the chest and carry it outside.

Now we have to avoid all patrols. Scar and the other rough-looking men hurriedly carrying a large chest away is absolutely suspicious. I'm sure that the guards would force Scar to go through an Inspection Crystal, and his "Crimes" definitely isn't empty.

With the help of my scouting, we return to our base in the slums without a problem, then they take the chest to the basement and set up the "Buster."

For our own protection, they set up a rope so they can activate it from a distance, then we all hide upstairs.

"Would you like to do the honors?" Darean offers the rope to me with a grin.

The men taunt and holler, but Scar doesn't say anything, so I take the rope and pull.

The chest is split open by an anvil, then its security enchantment activates and explodes.

We wait for a minute before taking a look, then we enter the basement and see how every single surface of the room has been covered in metal shrapnel. The loot is crushed and shredded, but there's still enough gold and silver to last us a long time.

"Now, it's time to share the profits," Scar whispers, then hums in delight.

Darean escorts me back to my house in silence. I hold my pouch of money close to my chest because I can't store it since my [Item Box] is still full with the vase and cutlery I stole.

We stop at the back alley behind my house and awkwardly fumble around, not wanting to say goodbye yet.

Darean pulls something out of his [Item Box] and offers it to me. "Here, for you," he whispers with unusual gentleness. I look up and see a very sharp-looking steel dagger in his hand.

"What is it for?" I ask with a confused frown.

His voice is gentle, but he's completely confident in his words, "For your Dad. If he comes for you, pull it out and kill him."

I grab the dagger and sheathe it, then I hold it against my chest and stay silent.

I'm not sure I'd have the courage to kill him.

He pats my head and ruffles my hair. "I know he's part of the Townsguard, but my brother and I will find a way to kill him without making the priests mad, but we need time, so you must stay safe until then."

I nod weakly. "Alright…"

I can trust Darean.

I suddenly get sleepy as his rough touch actually makes me feel comfortable and safe. I know he plays with other women, but he never looked at me like the other men, and I know he'll never hurt me. Even when we were kids he was always kind to me, and when we stuck together, we accomplished more than we ever could alone.

The boys like him because he keeps them in line without breaking their arms. The men like him because he can stand his own even against someone like Scar. The women like him because… well, I only know rumors, and I don't really like to think about them.

But it doesn't matter what I think about him or what he does to others. He's good, and I want to stay with him. That's all.

A horn along with the ringing of bells takes us out of our comfortable moment. It's coming from the south wall nearby. It's a monster attack.

"Fuck! They came earlier than I expected!" Darean suddenly yells angrily, then he stops patting me and suddenly pulls me into a hug

"H-huh?!" I make a silly noise, confused.

"Come with me, Farana. I've reserved a spot right next to the wall for us to soak Experience."

I look up at him and see that he's completely serious, and half-insane. "That's dangerous! What if we get found by a monster?!" I chastise him.

He gives me his usual handsome grin and pats me again, trying to calm me, but that just makes me more annoyed, so I pout at him. "Don't worry. The hatch protecting us is so heavy that only an ogre would be able to get through."

"Hm…" I frown, unconvinced.

He lowers his head and whispers in my ear, "We don't have time to argue, Faf. We need the levels and more skills to keep you safe." A pleasant chill runs along my spine as his "Charisma" caresses my mind.

"Alright…" I mumble.

He grunts heavily as he pulls the thick metal hatch over our heads, then I cast [Spirit Light] so we can see.

"Thanks…" He mutters, then he uses multiple heavy padlocks to secure it.

I snuff my light out, and we stay silent, nervously paying attention to the sounds of chaos coming from outside. It seems it's a wyvern attack, and there's a few trying to kill the men on the wall, but most of the fighting will happen outside the town. Still, it's free Experience for us, so we can't complain.

We hear the death cries of both monster and men; heavy things fall nearby or crash on the flimsy houses of the slums; harsh voices order the men around and encourage them.

The absolute darkness makes it easy for my mind to wander, and I start to imagine the carnage going on outside. I'd once heard so many monsters were killed that the top of the walls became red with blood.

Darean pulls me into a hug, then I close my eyes and try to sleep, but I'm so nervous that I don't succeed.

The fighting goes on for an hour, then things start to calm down.

"You are now level 5," the Goddess of Growth announces.

Suddenly, we hear heavy footsteps right next to our hatch followed by heavy breathing. There's a wyvern outside.

It scratches the hatch, and Darean covers my mouth just before I let out a squeak of fear.

I grab his hand and feel silent tears of fear running along my cheeks, wetting both of our fingers.

A few muffled war cries of men come from afar, and the wyvern decides to attack them.

They have a short battle, and it seems that the men win, but we don't hear any more from them.

"I need [Spirit Light]," Darean sternly requests.

"What for?!" I whisper-shout.

"I need to get outside, now!" He demands, and I obey.

I give him light, and he quickly removes the padlocks, then he opens the hatch and jumps outside, but I remain in place, frozen by fear.

"Faf! Come here!" He shouts assertively.

I peek my head out and see him looming over the body of a guard, then I hear a groan and realize that the man is alive.

"Quickly!" Darean hurries me.

I jump out of the hatch and scurry towards Darean, ignoring the dead and bleeding wyvern, then I stop beside him. The man at our feet has his entrails out, bitten by the wyvern, yet he's still alive, though he's bleeding profusely.

I've seen a soldier like this before, but the priests achieved a miracle and brought him back to life. He became a healer after that, though not a very good one.

"He needs help…" I mutter and look away.

"No, he's going to die," Darean immediately responds sternly.

I look around and shake my head. There's a few collapsed houses and a few have caught on fire, but the damage is small enough that the priests and mages could contain it easily. "The fighting is almost over, there must be priests about, searching for the wounded," I reply with a frown.

"No… he's going to die…" Darean whispers grimly.

"What-…" My question is interrupted as Darean draws his sword. Before I can even ask what he's doing, he stabs the man in the throat. "WHAT?!" I shriek.

"Quiet!" He hisses, then he goes to another fallen man and stabs him in the throat, too. "They were both going to die."

"You are now level 6."

"You are now level 7."

"You are now level 8."

"You are now level 9."

My mouth opens and closes in shock. I've seen a lot of blood and gore around the slums, but murder is a Sin, and the priests that constantly patrol around here make sure that everyone fears becoming Wicked.

Darean cleans his sword on the tabard of one of the guards and turns to me, his handsome face is cold and his eyes are severe. "I know what you're thinking, but I'm not Wicked," he states.

I turn around and frown, starting to feel sick.

"Think, Faf. How many levels you got from monsters and how many from these men? We need more skill points to survive!" Darean presses me.

"Alright, I get it, I get it!" I yell and clench my fists in anguish.

He grabs two sticks of wood, then he shows them to me. "Light these up, then we're getting out of here…"

I do as he says, and he burns the corpses, then we run.

We return to my house, then I give Darean my money before I peek inside.

Dad's still passed out from drinking too much, and Mom's still hiding in the basement, so I go warn her that the battle's over.

She's shivering in fear in a dark corner, her figure so small she could've been mistaken for a child or halfling, her eyes so wild that she could be mistaken for a female goblin, her elven inheritance completely hidden under her disheveled brown hair. I remember that people used to mistake her for an actual elf, but now it's all gone, both because of Dad and her addiction.

She realizes it's me and narrows her eyes in confusion and annoyance.

"You didn't wake up your father for the battle?" She questions me sternly.

That is the first thing you ask me? Not where I was or if I was safe…?

"He'd have tumbled and died from falling off the wall if I did…" I respond flatly.

She shakes her head and stares at me angrily. "It doesn't matter, he'll punish you for this… or me."

I stay silent and give her a hand for her to get up, then we both leave the basement.

Before I wake up Dad, I open the window to my room, then Darean throws me the bag of money.

I take a few silver coins out and hide the rest under the floorboards along with the vase and silver cutlery, then I wave goodbye to Darean.

"Remember the dagger…" He whispers worriedly, and my hand hovers over the weapon hidden under my shirt.

"I will…" I whisper back, and he finally leaves.

I make sure that the dagger can't be seen poking out of my clothes, then I jingle the coins in my hand wistfully. It's time to wake up Dad.

A note from Manasong

Hall of Fame of Patrons

The patrons who support Rupegia shall have their names sung by the bards for they deserve the glory and honor. Their names are:

Prince PreownedFIN.

Prince Creamy Spinach.

Lord Andrew Meyers.

Lord Samuel Lim.

Lord Bill.

Lord Novgarod.

Lord Ashadun.

Lord Michale Erwin.

Lord Bakerdea.

Lord Nathan Vanbrunt.

Lord Maurice.

Lord Empyrean.

Lord Mattirro Draca.

Lord Joshua Tal.

Lord Colorblind.

Lord RottenTangerine.

Lord Fullmoon.

Lord Joxsan Herrera.

Lord Sean Drake.

Lord EESDESESESRDT.

Lord Brody Haugan.

Lord FrostyCube.

Lord Mike Bartter.

Lord Cardinal Steiner.

Lord Krawn.

Lord Warwulfv.

Lord Cidant.

Lord Jorge Franco.

Lord Bradly.

Lord Freddie.

Lord Khristopher Welsh.

Lord DJ.

Lord Philip.

Noble Salty Panda.

Noble Mild Fracas.

Noble Aclys.

Noble Shawn Plumley.

Noble CarlBaxter.

Noble WeirdWhirl.

Noble War God.

Noble Yeuromain.

Noble Jorge Franco.

Leave a rating or a review to help me rise to the top or fix my shameful understanding of prose.

Take a look over my blog where all information about the world of Rupegia will be posted.

Join the Discord and discuss, or rant, or meme, or try and fight me so your waifu gets more screentime.

Become a Patron and read chapters in advance, or read the side-stories, or leave your mark on the story, or help choose the next artwork or the next side-story.

Chapter 95: Lordship Ceremony - Part 1

A note from Manasong

Attention: to conform to the limit of mature content (more than just sexual content) allowed in a novel, I've censored this chapter. You can look for the uncensored version here.

"Sandoro?" I call his attention.

He looks away from the window and calmly turns to me with a blank expression. "Yes, my Lord?" He softly asks.

"I think I lost you for a moment there."

He looks at his hands and frowns. "I don't understand what you mean."

I chuckle softly. "It's an expression…"

He brightens up and seemingly breaks out of his trance. "Ah, something… imperial?"

I smile wryly and deny, "No… not exactly."

"You're truly mysterious, my Lord," he whispers in wonder.

I don't know how to react to that…

"You were saying that the men are ready for tomorrow?" I change the topic.

He nods diligently. "Yes. As long as you don't request any sort of theatrical performance, they will all fulfill their duties perfectly."

I lean back on my chair and cross my claws. "I'm not trying to turn this into a circus; I only want to put their discipline on display."

He blinks blankly for a few seconds. "'Circus'?"

I tap my claws against each other as I recite, "Theater, coliseum's arena, a stage for clowns. Things like that."

He nods in understanding and casually remarks, "Ah, I see. You also have an odd vocabulary, my Lord."

I chuckle awkwardly and joke, "You should expect the unexpected from me."

"Always," he replies without hesitation, his seriousness almost making me choke on my saliva.

I give him a look and see a hint of playfulness on his hardened face, which makes him seem like an elven Santa for a moment before the warmth is replaced by cold professionalism again.

He readjusts his tight vest and changes the topic, "I also suggest that we have regular meetings with the High Officers so that we may report and share what we're working on."

Oh, no… office meeting flashbacks!

I force a smile and accept his suggestion, "Sure. That's a great idea."

… not.

He nods in satisfaction, but that's not all he has to say. "About the Chimeras and the fleet, we're still in a period of uncertainty, so I suggest that we don't send them on any more expeditions until they've integrated with us."

I nod once in acceptance. "How long would that take?"

"A few day-cycles. The ships are extremely valuable, complex, and currently irreplaceable, so we need to maintain tight protocols to ensure that they're well-preserved," he states matter-of-factly.

"Lina is working with the Chimeras to establish our gem refining and ship-building industries, so we should be able to build new Carriers soon."

"'Industry'?"

Damn… My tongue keeps slipping.

"A production workshop, just faster and better organized," I elaborate.

He frowns gently. "I don't know much about production, but if we're building more ships, then we'll need tight security so that their designs don't get stolen or sold."

I tap my chin with a claw, barely remembering to pad it half a second before I cut myself. "Hm, yes… that's a consideration we have to make. We'll likely be competing with Faium, so we have to expect spies coming from there."

"Indeed."

I switch my tone and become completely stern as I ask, "About another matter, how well are the troops integrating?"

"The non-elves are being re-educated with utmost haste. I'm confident that they'll fit perfectly in our army with time," he reports without hesitation.

"And what about the elves?" I press on.

He opens his eyes wide in surprise. "My Lord? I don't understand."

"How are the elves adapting to the non-elves?"

He goes silent, and though his face is unmoving, I feel that his mind is scrambling for an answer.

"Elven cohesion is our strongest point, so they must adapt to our customs," he suddenly blurts out.

I raise a claw and retort, "'Cohesion' is our strongest point, no need for the 'elven' there since, as far as I know, [Weaverism] isn't an elven racial skill."

"No, it isn't, my Lord…" He bitterly admits.

I give him a stern lecture about my plans so that he'll take it to heart, "The High Forest will become one of the centers of progress in the empire. We'll be integrating Chimeric culture and technology into the current elven culture along with my own, decidedly not, elven knowledge and aspirations. This won't be possible if the elves don't compromise when necessary and give up something in exchange for the betterment of the High Forest."

"Yes, my Lord. For our betterment, for the greater good," he obediently accepts and lowers his head.

"For the greater good," I awkwardly repeat, wary of sounding like a certain group.

He lifts his head and boldly looks me in the eye. "Though I'm not sure what exactly it means to 'give up something.'"

I shrug and relax my demeanor. "Neither do I, but you need to find out what the essence of the 'elven cohesion' is and reproduce it without the need to call it 'elven.' The whole realm deserves to benefit from elven knowledge, just like we'll benefit from having the Chimeras, and keeping it exclusive to the High Forest isn't the way of the Goddess of Knowledge, who I remind you gave me her Blessing."

He hums in understanding and wonders, "Like a scholar searching for the 'truth'?"

I grin and nod in satisfaction. "I believe that's an apt analogy."

He leans back on his chair and frowns subtly. "This isn't an easy task."

I sympathize wholeheartedly, "Yes, but it isn't something to be done hastily, and we'll always be here to help you. We just need everyone to understand that any problems will be addressed with time."

"Yes, that's something we all know."

I nod, and the conversation reaches a lull, so I broach the last topic I have, "But before that, I have an immediate task for you: the fleet must participate in the Ceremony."

Lina and Hana receive Hihiriwa and his officers on the sky dock, at the outset of a bark walkway that leads to the bridge of the Carrier.

"Why doesn't it have a name?" Hana suddenly blurts out as she admires the beauty of our ship.

"But it does?" Lina asks back confusedly.

Hana shakes her head, making her mane-like red hair bounce softly. "No, it's just called the Carrier, like how everyone just says 'empire' without even bothering to capitalize it outside of official documents, but its real name is Avgi Holy Empire."

Lina hums in understanding, then scratches her head in thought. "Oh… true… but I guess we have to ask the Chimeras about it."

Hana nods and smirks. "Yeah, let's. If it doesn't have a name, I want to give it one."

"I'd rather you didn't," Yunia comments through [Bind], but then she stops listening to their conversation before they can respond.

"Pbbbbt," Hana blows her tongue mockingly.

"What would you name it?" Lina asks as she smiles wryly because she has a good idea about what it'd be.

"Okina Neekobo," she answers immediately and grins.

Lina frowns in confusion. "Wait, that's an actual name… or is it?"

"I have no damn idea," Hana states proudly and laughs. "I know it's the name of a brothel, though."

"She doesn't know a single word of the dragonkin language," I expose her.

"Hey! I was born in Sommerland, and we only went to Ryutake once a year," she protests

Her Shad observes the two Lordsguard a few meters behind them sharing a look of worry and whispering something between each other.

"I don't give a damn what they think," Hana grumbles before we can even comment about it.

The Carrier finishes landing and subtly wobbles, caused by imperfections on the dock.

A group of court mages appears on the platform below the bridge, and they rush to the holdings to find out what's wrong. The unexpected tilting isn't good for the structural integrity of the Carrier, so they want to fix it as fast as possible.

The Carrier's glass dome bridge opens up, and the officers start pouring out.

Leading the group is Azador. Enomosa is currently indisposed with flight sickness, so he took her place, though he seems to be a bit paler than I remember. Even the blood-red flowers in his pure white beard and hair seem slightly wilted.

The priest coming out right behind him might've just cast [Refresh] on himself because he seems to have a steadier gait than the other Lordsguard emerging from Carrier.

I write a note to Sandoro to include the knights in the flight sickness resistance training. Elves aren't exactly known to be a very flight-friendly race, after all.

He and the other officers stop before the girls and salute them. The elves grab their ears and lower their heads while the rest hold a closed fist over their chest and look past them.

"Knight Azador, here to report," he diligently announces.

"At ease," Lina softly responds, then stares him in the eye. "Report."

"We encountered a few unique flying monsters, which we easily killed and brought back. Some of our experts believe that they can be hunted regularly and then sold to bolster our profits."

"Good," she tersely responds with a stiff tone.

Then he glances up at the Winch, it's hulking frame casting a large shadow over the dock as it descends, its clamps holding a mansion-sized, rough green gem that glows softly.

"We've also accomplished the mission successfully and acquired a low attunement-level gem. Initial reports estimate that it can be used to power a ship the same size as the personal cargo ship of your Lordship."

Lina nods, very pleased, and continues, "Any losses?"

"None."

"Excellent."

"Call for the Chimeric enchanters, then go get some rest," Hana casually orders.

He lowers his head and salutes the elven way again. "Right away, my Lords. Thank you, my Lords."

Azador quickly proceeds past them, then Hihiriwa and his officers come closer. Paraaone walks to the front of their group, and he shares friendly smiles with the girls.

Hihiriwa lowers his head respectfully, and I think it even hurts him a bit to do so. "I've been successful in my mission, my Lords. I've already sent my written report to Lord Wolf's office. The messenger should be there soon."

"Yeah, it's here," I report through [Bind]. There are quite a few pages here, so I'll just skim through it.

Lina gently nods, then turns her gloomy eyes to Paraaone.

"Nothing to report, my Lord," he diligently states without waiting for a question.

Hana grunts in acknowledgment and gives them all their last order of the day, "Hm. Rest until the afternoon, then meet with Commander Sandoro. The fleet shall participate in the Ceremony."

"Yes, my Lord," Hihiriwa obediently responds.

Lina ends their brief meeting, "You're dismissed."

They all walk past them, and once the bridge is clear, Lina releases her breath while Hana pats her head.

"It's tiring having to keep up 'decorum' every time I talk to someone," Lina softly complains.

"Hm… yeah, totally," Hana mumbles as if she even knows what "decorum" is.

The girls go to the Winch's platform and wait there until it finishes docking as the enchanters gather before them, then they enter the ship to inspect the gem.

We don't have the time to train today since everyone is busy with the preparations, and the day passes by in a slog since half of the girls and I aren't that keen on managing people to this degree.

Everything is rushed, but we have a literal army at our disposal that can do our bidding, so today, there are no idle hands.

Almaria finishes making the "portable house." It's about the same size as our bedroom, which has a lot of free space even with all the beds, so it's possible for us to fit everything we want inside it. It's also enchanted with a mild [Warp Space] spell so that the interior is a bit larger than the exterior, but not by much because if it's too strong and the spell fails, then everything inside would go splat.

It's made of bark that can change color like a chameleon and even grow a variety of bushes on the outside, which helps camouflage it. It also has controls to change its shape, allowing us to fit it anywhere we want, even among all the chaotic wood and branches of a wild High Tree.

We wanted something "simple," but Almaria is a bit of a perfectionist, so she didn't allow herself to just hastily make something.

Dokkanche immediately starts working on it, fitting it with dozens of humanizing illusion crystals, which are a bit expensive, though my sense of money is a bit too warped now for me to trust it. However, Mimi says that it's an "acceptable" expense for a Crown Lord, so I decide to trust her.

For lunch, I invite Hukarere and Kaatohe because I'm craving some anthro women.

"Ah, wolf woman," Kaatohe greets snobbishly.

"Cat woman," Hukarere returns the kindness and takes her seat.

The two give a toothy smile to each other, showing their sharp-looking fangs rather threateningly.

Hukarere narrows her eyes as she thinks of something, then smirks evilly. "I heard that your personal Wasp is out of commission again, under maintenance," she casually comments, though her expression has nothing "casual" in it.

"I heard that no amount of men pleases you anymore besides your Lord's, you addict," Kaatohe answers in kind.

The hell?

"Uh, girls…?" I confusedly mumble.

Hukarere's lips are raised a bit higher, and she gives Kaatohe an angry look. "You can't deny that you aren't thinking about him, too. In fact, this very denial is exactly what filled your ears with wax because you couldn't stop yourself from daydreaming about him."

Kaatohe hisses. "Watch your tongue, dog, or I'll do you myself with it," she threatens, though the contents of it sound off to me.

Hukarere snarls. "You harlot, you wouldn't dare."

W-what…?

Somehow, I think that Kaatohe making gay threats is offensive to Hukarere, who's completely straight.

"G-girls!" I exclaim and slam my hand on the table. "If you're not going to show respect to each other, then at least show it to me!"

The two go silent but continue to stare daggers at each other for a moment before lowering their heads and apologizing.

"I'm sorry, Wolfy…" Hukarere whimpers.

"Apologies, Wolf," Kaatohe grumbles through gritted teeth, and the way she speaks my name makes my dragonator twitch. Her tone lacks any of the coldness from when she used to call me "peasant," and it's so warm that I can almost call it "cute."

I remember Hihiriwa's report mentioning something about miscommunication issues, but I didn't read it through thoroughly, so I only have a vague idea about the cause of this altercation.

"Now, both of you, would you mind explaining what this was all about?" Ciel asks very sternly, her angry and motherly tone making the fur on the back of their necks stand up.

The two remain silent for a moment, then they suddenly each point at the other and shout in unison, "She-…!" And stop at the same time.

Ciel gives them a very disappointed look, and both of their ears go flat. "I see that neither of you wants to be the adult here, so you'd better tell me exactly what happened," she impatiently demands.

The truth: the high number of untrained observers caused a disruption in the communications situation on the bridge, almost leading to the loss of a few Wasps as they were briefly cut off from support from the Carrier. The two of them preferred to blame the other instead of the true source. Why? Unknown, but maybe they didn't want to implicitly blame their new Lords since we are the ones who put the observers on the bridge, or something like that.

Ciel grabs both of their hands and forces them to share a handshake.

"This is so foolish," Kaatohe grumbles, and Hukarere begrudgingly agrees.

"Then stop acting like fools," Ciel retorts and gives them one last glare before we start our meal.

Today, we eat a lavish assortment of elven veggies, fruits, and smoked meats, but for me, the dessert is the best part.

I have Kaatohe and Hukarere at the same time.

The two women who hated each other just half an hour ago are now very close to acting like lovers, and I almost order them to do each other as my desires takes hold of me. Making a straight woman turn bi from lust is a fantasy of mine, but I know that fantasies should remain so. That's ignoring the fact that I'm living in some sort of fantasy novel, already…

I sit down and eat my own, actual, dessert of vanilla pudding, and the view gives me a warm feeling inside. For a moment, everything seems to be right in the world.

Two more women satisfied and left in bliss. Two more humanoids who have been enlightened by the Tool. Two more happy souls that will share their positivity with the rest of the world. Though I'm closer to the Goddess of Knowledge, I'm also proudly doing missionary work for the Goddess of Love.

Lunch has refreshed me greatly, giving me new energy to continue my work, which is exactly what I needed because we all immediately return to our respective tasks in overseeing the preparations.

We immerse ourselves in the hurried chaos of the castle, and our minds sync as we work as a single entity, guiding the staff like a light in the dark. If anything, the speed with which we've prepared the Ceremony should serve as a demonstration of our leadership capabilities. There's no doubt or ambiguity among us, so everything falls into place like dominoes.

Roxanne checks with Sainalai, and she finds out that the Conjuring mages know how to conjure a few simple sweets, then they're immediately reassigned to the task of creating a magical dessert for tomorrow.

When bath time comes, I give everyone a round of tentacle love. They need to relax, and there's nothing better for that than overwhelming your senses with pleasure.

The maids watch on in wonder, which isn't surprising since this is the most visibly impressive show I can give.

There's a familiar face among them, but I don't think I've seen her in the castle before. She's very young and cute with high cheekbones, an oval face, thin lips, and fully braided golden hair, making her look quite girlish.

Of all the maids, she's the one who seems a bit thirstier, so I feel like I should proposition her when we meet again. Right now, the wives need attention, so she'll have to be left for a more opportune time.

Alissa drowsily swims up to me and latches onto my arm, then the rest of the girls follow suit, and we make a cuddle puddle in an actual "puddle." Everyone's feeling a bit tense, so they want to cuddle with their favorite toy (me).

Dinner is almost silent since everyone already talked enough during the day, then we retire to our rooms as the long day finally comes to an end, though there's still some training we have to do that really can't wait.

Yunia draws her sword and points it at me, then she sighs and softly asks, "Ready?"

I check my skills one last time, then I nod confidently and order, "Do it."

Today is the 11th, Genn, day of light, and also marks the dawn of a new day-cycle, making it an auspicious day for our Ceremony.

Breakfast is very quiet as we mentally prepare ourselves for the performance we'll have to put on.

Klein and Osaria don't have [Bind], so we can't calm them down with mind-cuddling, and while Osaria seems rather composed, Klein is shivering in anxiety.

I create a tentacle under the table that slithers about like a snake, and I have it sneak up Klein's leg, making her squeak softly in surprise.

"Wolfy~!" She whines embarrassedly.

I simply smile at her while I make it wrap itself around her leg, then up her body, only stopping when it reaches her cheek, which I poke playfully.

"What are y-… ahn~…" She moans again as I vibrate it, focused on her shoulders, the base of her tail, and the soles of her feet. Those places have the greatest effect on stress relief without arousing her. "Not fair…" She complains, though I don't know why since this is only intended to help her.

Osaria clears her throat softly and casually massages her neck, so I smile wryly and give her what she wants.

Klein sighs in satisfaction, so I ease off the massage, then she gives me a worried look. "How… dangerous is that Ceremony, truly?"

Osaria immediately answers in our stead, "There's no risk of death, aside from a truly freak event, though that doesn't mean everything is guaranteed to 'succeed.'"

Yunia nods in agreement and adds, "True. Though our 'trick' will be rather dangerous, you've seen how we've prepared for all possibilities. If anything, this Ceremony is just a preview of how our Lordship will be."

"Okay…" Klein accepts with a meek nod.

Osaria lays a hand on Klein's shoulder and gives an assuring squeeze. "It's fine to worry. They're just abnormally confident no matter what they're doing."

"That, I know," Klein agrees and chuckles softly.

"It's the power of teamwork," I gently state with a grin.

With everything ready, we take a [Gate] to the outside of the town's entrance and wait until the time comes.

Poosh and some of the maids work away on our appearances, applying makeup and making sure that our armor looks perfect while the rest of the Lordsguard assembles behind us. Then, at 10 AM, the gate opens, and the parade begins.

A note from Manasong

Hall of Fame of Patrons

The patrons who support Rupegia shall have their names sung by the bards for they deserve the glory and honor. Their names are:

Prince PreownedFIN.

Prince Creamy Spinach.

Lord Andrew Meyers.

Lord Samuel Lim.

Lord Bill.

Lord Novgarod.

Lord Ashadun.

Lord Michale Erwin.

Lord Bakerdea.

Lord Nathan Vanbrunt.

Lord Maurice.

Lord Empyrean.

Lord Mattirro Draca.

Lord Joshua Tal.

Lord Colorblind.

Lord RottenTangerine.

Lord Fullmoon.

Lord Joxsan Herrera.

Lord Sean Drake.

Lord EESDESESESRDT.

Lord Brody Haugan.

Lord FrostyCube.

Lord Mike Bartter.

Lord Cardinal Steiner.

Lord Krawn.

Lord Warwulfv.

Lord Cidant.

Lord Jorge Franco.

Lord Bradly.

Lord Freddie.

Lord Khristopher Welsh.

Lord DJ.

Lord Philip.

Noble Salty Panda.

Noble Mild Fracas.

Noble Aclys.

Noble Shawn Plumley.

Noble CarlBaxter.

Noble WeirdWhirl.

Noble War God.

Noble Yeuromain.

Noble Jorge Franco.

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Chapter 95: Lordship Ceremony - Part 2

The wide road ahead of us goes straight across the town and leads directly to the castle. The perfect venue for the parade.

The sidewalks are filled with the commoners, and the air is buzzing with their constant murmurs of wonder. We aren't worshiped here, and barely anyone knows anything about us, so they aren't raving about our presence, but they do know Yunia, and that just makes them very curious about who we are.

The Townsguard line up on the curb to keep the commoners off of the road. Their armor is made with simple scales, which have been polished more finely than usual, giving them all a faint gleam, though it's a far cry from the shine of my or even Hana's or Aoi's scales.

The houses are all decorated with long strips of silver or white cloth and smaller strips of black cloth, following suit with the colors of our heraldry. The town hasn't become fully white like Goloria, but it definitely reminds me of it because of how the prominence of our colors drowns out the colorful buildings.

Our official flags are displayed at regular intervals along the road, adding to the white of the town, but most of the white and silver comes from the decorations displayed by the commoners.

The median strip of the road usually has some small gardens or holes to the lower levels, but it has been temporarily converted into more road space so that the parade can have an easier time moving through.

For every one hundred men, one of the Townsguard carries our rally banner, which reminds me of a roman standard. It's a long pole that carries our flag with the silver head of a roaring dragon at the top, but it isn't just any dragon, it's me, my dragon form. The silvery scales are so polished that they're almost like mirrors, and the spikes along its length can actually turn it into a viable weapon, if that's ever needed. Dragonkin rally banners are made with that consideration in mind, after all.

The Winch casts a huge shadow over us as it floats just above the gate, holding a beautiful, polished green gem that shines brightly, though few in the crowds know that there are actually mages feeding it mana to keep it shining.

The buzzing grows louder as the crowd notices that the gate has opened, and after waiting for a moment to add some dramatic flair, the parade starts moving.

Shala and the more beautiful of our maids walk in the front of our procession, rolling out a white carpet with silver details for us to step on. They're wearing minimal clothing, using a lot of jewelry that covers strategic locations instead. A bit of Chimeric flair to add some fun.

Before anyone steps on the carpet, they all have to cast a magic-tool-powered [Clean] to make sure that no dirt remains on their boots. How clean the carpet remains after we pass through is also an important part of the Ceremony.

The parade is led by elven dancers because it wouldn't be an elven ceremony without them. They spin around with their long "hanging dousnadeias" trailing after them, creating long and beautiful lines through the air wherever they go. Some of them use coats of feathers for prettier moves, while others enhance their performances with magic tricks, but their job is to merely look impressive and set the mood.

Drummers, flute-players, and a few assorted instruments both set the tempo of the march and give a background melody for the crowd to enjoy. The music is so soft and pleasant that it doesn't hurt my ears, unlike the few parades I've been to on Earth.

After the performers come the priests and Templars, who cast healing spells at the crowd at random and showcase their skills as they march. They're given a prominent location in the parade to show off my close relationship with the temple. Albeit a token move in Teresina's eyes, its greatest impact is on the outsiders.

Coming right behind them are our knights, all sporting their shining wooden armor, which have been waxed until they're more polished than steel. The weather mages told us that today was going to be sunny, and to our relief, they were absolutely correct since the sun hits their armor just right, giving them an almost angelic air.

Palo leads them with the poise of an action hero. He's famous in the town, and he definitely has a few fans because we occasionally hear his name being shouted, which causes him to turn his head and blind the crowd with his bright smile.

The Celestial Horns do have an angelic air, though, as they flank the entire parade, floating along the flanks with their white wings spread wide and their armor glowing with actual divine light. Instead of the brightness being "annoying" to the onlookers, this time, it makes even the priests shed tears at its purity.

After the knights, the first half of the Lordsguard walks onwards. One huge regiment of men in full wooden plate, marching in absolutely perfect unison with so many feet stomping against the ground that the rumble can be felt for kilometri. Most of them are rookies who didn't know their left foot from their right just a few days ago, but intense training and a potent boost from [Weaverism] does wonders.

Our open carriage stays in the middle of the Lordsguard, being pulled forward by four mean-looking black Gatuns. We stand proudly in our ent-like Ramodia armor, except for Alissa and Roxanne, who uses the Camalo set, and we all keep our helmets off so that they may see our faces.

The bark of our armor has been decorated with silver and gold flowers for beauty, while our gauntlets have blood-red flowers to mark us as "bloodied," symbolizing our experience in warfare.

My appearance is completely human, but I can still charm a few of the elves with a dashing smile due to my rather high "Charisma"; Alissa gently waves at the crowd, but she doesn't display any real excitement; Roxanne smiles smugly like an ojou-sama, greatly enjoying her time on the pseudo-walkway; Hana basks in the glory, her fiery, mane-like hair waving in the breeze like a conqueror basking over the corpses of their enemies; Ciel attracts the most stunned looks with the (ironic) purity of her smile; Lina is stiff like a statue since she can barely muster the energy to move due to her anxiety, leaving her expression locked in a stern look; Aoi looks down on everyone, her dual-colored eyes intensely staring at each commoner, driving a small taste of fear into their hearts, but also showing them that there's intelligence behind her gaze; Yunia looks like a queen, her composure absolute, her grace divine, her elegance perfect, and her stern gaze unwavering; and finally, Gify proudly stands on my shoulder, her little wings neatly tucked in, and her cute beak raised high.

I wish that we had a camera to film us, because a moment like this isn't likely to happen again, and I'd like to be able to immortalize our glory.

Before us, small, leaf-shaped sheets of conjured tin foil are thrown down onto our path from the houses along with petals of flowers. There's a joke here to be made about perverted elves and flowers being the reproductive organs of plants, but I'm currently too distracted by my massively inflated ego to properly think about that.

The nature spirits populate the crowns of the tree-houses along with many other elves, almost like animal plushies cutely lined up for a photo. Their eyes closely follow Gify, though I don't know why.

Gih!

I guess even nature spirits can become celebrities…

The golems remain at attention behind us, Ted and Suzy floating creepily, while Jarn looks like an actual statue. Our silent protectors tirelessly scan through the crowd for any sort of danger, but even the heretics wouldn't be able to kill me right now.

Behind the first regiment, our personal cargo ship floats close to the ground, decorated in our colors and carrying all the High Officers along with Oritiki.

At first, they're all regarded with curiosity since their race composition is almost as varied as ours, then someone recognizes Silvano, and the banshees start screaming. I'm actually quite impressed with how famous that fucker is.

The crowd doesn't fully understand what's going on since only a small percentage of the people actually recognizes them, but the hype spreads like wildfire, and everyone starts cheering for us.

After our ship, the mages of our court march on with commendable harmony since they haven't ever been trained in how to march. What they did train was their spells, and they perform them admirably. They conjure and throw huge rocks up high into the air, then blow them up with a variety of spells; they perform barrages, surprising the children when their low [Sense Mana] gets overwhelmed by the storm of mana stirred up by the spells; they display feats of control, playing with flames and lightning as they spin them around their bodies as if they were harmless ribbons.

The more beautiful-looking members of the castle's staff follow after them, and half of the second regiment of the Lordsguard comes right after that, then a few more performers make up the tail end of the parade.

The Floater follows us closely from above, shading us from the hot sun, and they occasionally aim upwards and fire their [Beam], drawing "oohs" and "aahs" from the crowd.

The Wasps fly in formation just a meter above our heads, weaving in between the tree-houses and sometimes stopping in the air to release their Trinity Cannons. These small planes impress the children the most, who point at them and yell about how they're huge kites.

The Wasps can't perform any very complex maneuvers because the Eagle-Class ships are making laps all over the main road and firing their [Beams] towards the sky like a laser show.

The Dragon-Class ships are the ones acting out actual maneuvers, putting on a show with their coordinated flight and boasting their unmatched speed by racing each other while leaving the Eagles behind.

The Carrier circles around the town, its beautiful design the most striking and easily recognizable, and I'm personally fond of the slowly waving wings that are arranged all along its flanks. The big Trinity Cannons put on an impressive show, but they're only fired for brief moments since the sky is too busy with the other ships to risk an extended display.

The mood is absolutely festive, and I see it all developing in real-time as the reserved elves mellow out and their eyes become filled with wonder.

I grab Yunia's hand and give her a loving smile, which she returns for a brief moment. This is a big moment for her, and while she doesn't let through a hint of her real feelings, I know very well how hard her heart is beating and how much her eyes ache to cry.

I'm actually pretty impressed with how well things are going, and how beautiful the parade turned out to be. I'm not usually the kind to worry excessively, with the presence of the girls inside my mind nullifying most of my fears, but things have progressed so smoothly that I didn't have any reason to actually reflect on all of this…

And I still don't have a reason to reflect on it. I guess it just doesn't feel "real" yet.

My mind almost blanks as I start to really enjoy the cheering because the overall mood is simply too strong to resist.

[Battlefield Perception] suddenly triggers, and I see through the girls' eyes as a half-eaten not-apple gets thrown towards me with devilish precision. The golems don't react since they perceive no threat from it, so I catch it in my gauntlet without even looking at it.

I take a bite out of the soft fruit, then I throw it back at the fucking stupid kid, and the fruit explodes on his forehead.

The crowd chuckles and cheers, and we move on like nothing happened.

As the parade draws closer to the castle, the Shell grows in our sight. It has four gigantic canvases covering a huge section of it at each of the cardinal directions, covering an obvious surprise. Now that makes me anxious due to the ridiculousness of the concept.

I force myself to think of something else and continue to enjoy the parade. More precisely, I enjoy all the female attention I'm getting. Whatever reservations I'm feeling right now will quickly disappear once I start to "enjoy" the benefits of being famous.

Soon after that, we reach the Prasa de Ananci, the plaza where we held the selection for the Lordsguard, and a horn marks our arrival, signaling the start of the prayers, but going quiet would be the last thing the commoners would do. Prayer is to be held with chanting, singing, and dancing.

It's a party, really, though alcohol isn't supposed to be distributed, at least not yet.

Our men enter the Shell, and we follow them in, but while they spread out and return to their positions, we continue on towards the castle with only a token squad of Lordsguard following us and our ship with the Officers.

The happy sounds of laughter and wonder gradually become muffled as the party is left behind, to continue without us, though they do pray for us, for our success. They all pray to the Old Gods, and a smaller group of them to the Humanoid Gods, that the Reniandisabis goes well, and I softly pray for the same.

The journey is short and quiet. We're all mentally preparing ourselves for our own grand performance, and there's nothing that needs to be said at this point.

We pass the multiple empty mansions populating our outer and inner circles. So many noble families could've been living here, but only Ereia's family dared to come back before the Ceremony. The thought of it leaves me a bit bitter, so I file it away for later.

We enter the castle grounds, and our carriage ride finally ends, then we dismount and turn to the Officers waiting for our orders.

A [Gate] suddenly opens near our group, then Osaria, the twins, Klein, and Anton all come through.

Klein instantly latches onto me, and I return the hug for a moment, then she immediately latches onto Hana.

"Good luck," Klein mumbles softly.

"I'm sure it'll all go well," Osaria assures me as she buries my head in her dark tits.

"So are we," Alissa answers in my stead since my mouth is currently blocked.

The twins also hug Yunia, though a lot more reservedly, with them a bit embarrassed to do it in front of everybody.

Once everyone is satisfied, I turn to the Officers and sternly state, "You all know what to do. We'll see each other after the Reniandisabis."

"Good luck, my Lord," Sandoro murmurs, and I give him a confident nod.

I store the golems in my "Items" and turn to Alcander. He lowers his head respectfully and opens a [Gate] to the main hall, which we all take. Now we must make our final preparations.

We sit on our thrones, and I ring the bell, then Alcander opens an [Eternal Gate] right outside the entrance to the castle, and we wait as all the Lords gather outside.

The reply bell is sounded, so we order Poosh to open the huge double doors.

The main hall is inundated by the presence of a few dozen high-level men and women. Their feet barely make a sound because they're all wearing heavy elven armor, all colored in a dull dark brown except for Confiel, who boldly walks in with his pure white armor, and the only shining to be seen among them comes from the few staves holding gems so powerful that they'd cause a disaster if they were broken.

They give us wary gazes as they see our state, but their eyes all invariably fall upon the main attraction, Patrono, which is proudly displayed in the center of the hall.

We don't wear any armor nor equip any weapons, which contrasts heavily against the Lords, who are all ready for battle. Even our clothes are completely casual, though lavish, but all of the girls are wearing thin, casual dresses, which are definitely inappropriate to fight in.

We stare at them as they approach in silence, our demeanor calm and aloof, mocking the seriousness of the Reniandisabis, and Gify even sleeps soundly on Alissa's lap, as if there was no chance that a fight could ever break out.

Then the double door closes, isolating us all from our men waiting outside. Now it's only us and the Lords.

The Crown Lords move to the walls, signifying that they're merely observers of what comes next. The elven lands are divided into three territories: Glorampina, the High Forest (Aloresta), and Antano. Each territory is further divided into Western and Eastern halves, which are ruled by a family of Crown Lords. All fourteen of those Crown Lords are present as observers.

There's a trio among them whose presence causes a pang of guilt in Yunia. Crown Lord Lotus Angila of Western Antano and her two husbands. She's the mother of her former fiancée. Nothing bad will result from their meeting, but it's just that it hurts her a bit to see them.

There's also Herbaco Aureo, a tanned silver elf from Western Glorampina, who has four beautiful wives, of which only one is also an elf. I feel a sort of kinship with him, and I dare say he might be "one of my people."

I turn my gaze away from them and focus on the subordinate Lords. They've all awkwardly stopped a few meters from Patrono, seemingly afraid of the Heavenly Weapon.

Our own territory is divided into five, and they're each ruled by a family of Heart Lords, of which there are eight Heart Lords present. There are also over twenty Root Lords, but they're the equivalent of a village chief, and my knights are stronger than most of them. Individually, they don't hold much power, but there's something that could unite them: us, either for us or against us.

My gaze falls upon Heart Lord Ira Saponaria, a strong, middle-aged golden elf sporting a golden daddy mustache, an enviable stubble, and a buzz cut. His face is so blocky, and his eyes are so beady that he looks more like a human than an elf, which is quite ironic considering his prejudice against non-elves.

His wife is slightly younger and has such a delicate face that she's definitely a pure elf. She's wearing a white Snow Weave robe with the silver lines of an enchantment, and its semi-transparency makes most of her gentle curves very noticeable.

He disgusts me so much that I wish I could fuck his wife in front of him. I wish I could make her addicted to my cum, then breed her, impregnating her with my child. I'd treat her lovingly and add her to my harem as a concubine, then I'd give our definitely not elven child all the love they deserve, all just to spite this fucking racist.

It isn't the time yet to work myself into a rage, so I ignore him completely, then everyone reaches their positions and stops there, waiting for us, but we don't make a move.

As the silence settles in, my eyes are drawn to the sexy Mendecassa sisters. They're also wearing Snow Weave "robes," but their dousnadeias are so small and thin that I can easily make out the shapes of their nipples and pussy lips. If they aren't among the racists, they'll be prime candidates for some "cultural exchange."

After a sufficiently long awkward silence, Yunia turns her eyes to Ira and lazily raises an eyebrow at him as her cold and prickly voice resounds throughout the wide hall, "Well? Do you have anything to say, Lord Ira?"

The man stares back at her with an impassive face for a moment, completely unmoved. "I don't understand what you mean, Lord," he calmly responds, and his gruff voice doesn't have a hint of confusion in it.

"Really…?" I press him and form a very bitter frown. "You're going to do this?"

He turns his beady eyes to me, and his nose wrinkles in distaste. "I hope that you aren't trying to tarnish my reputation with wild claims, Lords."

"I don't think we should continue this interrogation. Abandon the plan," Yunia suggests through [Bind].

I feel like growling, but I reign in the rage, and Alissa answers in my stead with a very slow and deliberate tone, "You haven't done anything to be in our good graces. Remember that."

He doesn't respond besides narrowing his eyes in suspicion at her.

I sigh out loud then spread my arms wide and announce, "Let the Reniandisabis begin."

But only silence follows.

After waiting for another awkwardly long moment, I sigh again and facepalm, then I start ranting dramatically, "Have the goblins ripped out your tongues to make you stop squealing like pigs? What's this childish behavior for…?"

I scan the crowd, but they're still completely calm, despite being called out.

Alright, then, let's turn the dial up to eleven.

I stand up from my throne and scowl, then I [Equip] Patrono, instantly summoning it into my hand. The sudden use of magic causes the melee Lords to reflexively grab the sheaths of their weapons in wariness while a few even flinch in fear.

Just what I wanted.

I make sure to point the edge of the blade towards them so they may all see that this is the real thing. No other metal can hold its shape like Patrono when it's thinner than a hair strand without being ripped apart by the slightest breeze.

I take a single step forward and scowl angrily as I growl out, "If you don't speak, I'll rip your limbs off one by one! You either talk now, or I'll make you talk with your screams!"

The Root Lords look over at Patrono worriedly, and I feel their united front starting to falter.

"You mock our ways," Ira suddenly speaks out, still wearing a stony mask.

So, they've chosen him as the fall guy? Bait, sacrificial goat, guinea pig, what are you, Ira?

I immediately jerk my head towards him and point Patrono directly at his heart. "And you all mock us, but who wields the Heavenly Weapon?"

"Are you threatening us? During the Reniandisabis?" He questions right back, now letting anger color his tone.

Yunia's cold voice cools down the rising heat for a moment, "We won't kill anybody, but let me remind you that we were the ones to break through this very Shell."

"You could've come here days ago and paid your respect to us, but none of you did," Roxanne comments with a tinge of bitterness, and it's a punch in the gut for the Root Lords, cracking their resolve even further.

They haven't shown us any respect, but while we can't rightfully kill anyone yet, after today…

I release Patrono and use [Telekinesis] to guide it back to its stand as I calmly enunciate, "Consider these words as an act of mercy, for there'll be no second chances."

Now that's a threat.

"Lord Yulania, you have changed a lot," Amada Anquili speaks out. She's a female golden-elf Heart Lord who looks like she's the same age as Shala, and she's a melee fighter, so she might have about a decade left before retirement.

"I haven't," Yunia answers stoically, adding a dramatic pause before she continues, "I've always been like this. I only followed my father's ideals because I respected him, but he failed, and now he's dead. It'll be better for all of us if we let his light be extinguished."

Everyone makes brief, somber faces. Mavel Este was loved and respected…

"And now you lie with the very same person who helped kill him?" Amada presumptuously asks, her mouth hanging open in bewilderment.

"I love the man and women who saved me!" Yunia hisses, deliberately letting her mask crack for a moment.

"But you're his Blood Slave!" Amada shouts back.

I narrow my eyes at her and glare as I coldly ask, "And why does that matter?"

Amada glances at me and grits her teeth in frustration.

I take another step and growl. "Why does that matter?!"

Yunia shakes her head, making her beautiful golden drills bounce, then rests her head on her fist in boredom and lashes out at her, "You think that I've suddenly become human just because he's my master? Lord Amada, you disappoint me."

"I've never heard of a slave Lord," Amada grumbles in a last, half-hearted attempt.

I grin and shout triumphantly, "True, but she isn't a Blood Slave anymore!"

"And slavery is incompatible with marriage," Alissa states matter-of-factly with a nod, and she notices Confiel and his wives raising their eyebrows in surprise.

"We've all become True Nobles and gained the right to rise above slavery," Lina quietly adds.

Amada bites her lip in anger and backs down.

Unfortunately, this doesn't confirm that Amada is a racist, but only that she's a bit prejudiced against slaves.

"Yet you're still so young for a Lord…" Heart Lord Rador Iqueza comments with a subtle smile. He's a pretty golden-elf man with a strong jaw, Tolkien style, and the deliberate way he moves tells me that every muscle of his body could be made of steel.

Heart Lord Iril Laribeiro chuckles amusedly. He's a rather young and handsome silver elf with a nice jawline. He's a manlier Legolas, like an older brother of his who preferred the sword over the bow.

The fact that only some of the Heart Lords have said anything so far strikes me as odd. Did someone really rip out the tongues from the Root Lords?

"Do you have something against youth?" Iril asks Rador in a very casual tone, which is completely at odds with the mood of the room.

Rador narrows his eyes in annoyance and responds slowly, as if he were talking to a child, "No, but they might be the youngest Lords alive, making them comparable to imperial Princes."

"Hey! I'm the oldest, and I'm far from being a hatchling," Hana angrily complains.

"And I'm a former priestess who fully completed her training," Ciel calmly adds, the only one among us with any hint of kindness in her tone.

Rador smiles elegantly and lowers his head as he explains himself, "I didn't mean to presume your ages, but even if you were all high-level imperial Princes, you're all still lacking so much experience that I wonder why you were allowed to take the Lordship." Then he shoots a sneaky glance at Confiel, who shows no sign of even acknowledging it.

Yunia flicks her wrist dismissively, seeming even more bored as she pushes aside his concerns, "Don't be so conceited, Lord Rador. You know very well that most of the Lordship's duties could be done by a moron as long as they can hit hard enough."

He raises his head and gives her a deadly serious look. "Can you manage the Lordship's business and not squander it all away?"

"Better than you could," she quips, making him grit his teeth, but he isn't done yet.

He lets the insult go right past him and forms his face into a stony mask. "And when the need arises for a true Crown Lord, will you be there to answer the call and assume your responsibilities?"

Yunia's face mirrors his to display her conviction. "You know there's no way I can prove that besides giving my word."

"We'll do everything required of a Lord, both the elven and the imperial way," I add in the same tone.

Ira suddenly smirks triumphantly, throwing away his mask as he calls us out, "Oh? Is that so? Then can you show us how far your combat skills have progressed? I remember the records saying that you barely survived against the Symbol of Hate, an aberrant that was considered to be weaker than the average for its kind due to its insane behavior."

You've activated my trap card!

I grin with a maniacal smile, catching Ira off-guard and wiping away the stupid smirk from his face. "With pleasure!" I happily shout, making my voice echo loudly in the otherwise completely silent hall, then I take another step. "I'll even give you my word that I won't use the Heavenly Weapon. In fact, I won't even use armor or draw a weapon at all!"

A note from Manasong

Hall of Fame of Patrons

The patrons who support Rupegia shall have their names sung by the bards for they deserve the glory and honor. Their names are:

Prince PreownedFIN.

Prince Creamy Spinach.

Lord Andrew Meyers.

Lord Samuel Lim.

Lord Bill.

Lord Novgarod.

Lord Ashadun.

Lord Michale Erwin.

Lord Bakerdea.

Lord Nathan Vanbrunt.

Lord Maurice.

Lord Empyrean.

Lord Mattirro Draca.

Lord Joshua Tal.

Lord Colorblind.

Lord RottenTangerine.

Lord Fullmoon.

Lord Joxsan Herrera.

Lord Sean Drake.

Lord EESDESESESRDT.

Lord Brody Haugan.

Lord FrostyCube.

Lord Mike Bartter.

Lord Cardinal Steiner.

Lord Krawn.

Lord Warwulfv.

Lord Cidant.

Lord Jorge Franco.

Lord Bradly.

Lord Freddie.

Lord Khristopher Welsh.

Lord DJ.

Lord Philip.

Lord Tenebris Lupus.

Lord ImportantNPC.

Noble Salty Panda.

Noble Mild Fracas.

Noble Aclys.

Noble Shawn Plumley.

Noble CarlBaxter.

Noble WeirdWhirl.

Noble War God.

Noble Yeuromain.

Noble Jorge Franco.

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Chapter 95: Lordship Ceremony – Part 3

A note from Manasong

Attention: to conform to the limit of mature content (more than just sexual content) allowed in a novel, I've censored this chapter. You can look for the uncensored version here.

I activate all my skills, heavily straining my soul with their weight, then I take a slow step forward, the effort of it masked by all of the girls helping me move smoothly through [Bind]. My sole hits the floor, and my elven sandals resound through the hall as everyone holds their breaths for a moment.

"You mock me, Lord Wolf," Ira flatly says, his face back to a stony mask.

I look into his beady, dark eyes and let the anger flow through me. We haven't identified any of his fellow conspirators, so I can easily focus all of my energy on breaking him.

"It's no mockery. I can kill you without using a sword, or even a single spell," I sternly warn him.

I take another step. My breath quickens with the excitement, and my dragonator hardens in my tight pants, giving me a visible bulge.

Ira suddenly draws his longsword and assumes a combat stance, then all the other Lords immediately retreat to the walls, and the Root Lords finally speak, murmuring among themselves about a variety of things, but what Alissa and the hidden Hollys manage to hear the most of is that they're afraid of me, very afraid.

Ira's mask cracks once again, and he scowls angrily. "What is this madness?! What are you planning?!" He warily shouts.

I take another step and a deep, cathartic breath as I anticipate what's about to happen, then I chuckle softly because my prey's legs seem to be frozen stiff, and I have to hold myself back from ruining the mood with a silly joke.

"Madness? This is what you wanted, Heart Lord Ira," I gently remind him as I tilt my head cutely to the side, though I know that my crazed expression is anything but cute right now, then I take another slow step.

He grips his longsword harder to hide the trembling of his hand. Level ten [Intimidate], [Charm], [Taunt], and [Godly Language] must be making a mess of his mind.

"You can't possibly beat me like this, human!" He shouts angrily to mask the fear in his voice.

"But I'm not a human anymore…" I whisper as I take another step, my voice carrying a sweet tone with a dagger hidden right beneath it.

Lina feeds a gem in her seat, and the illusion is finally cut off, revealing my weredragon form for all to see.

My feet grow, and I gain a few centimeters of height as my sandals burst open and my claws turn the remains into ribbons. The sleeves of my shirt and the hem of my pants are shredded by my scales, revealing their beautiful, mirror-like sheen.

My black, spiky horns and long, thick tail grow back into place in just a few seconds, and I release a sigh of relief as the dragon inside of me is let back into the spotlight once again.

"Shapeshifter!" A Root Lord screams in fear.

"Quiet, fool!" I shout with a noticeable amount of [Godly Language] in my voice, then I puff up my chest with pride and take another step as I announce, "I'm a weredragon! I've become a new race inside the Legado dungeon!"

Ira lets his mouth hang open in surprise as the other Lords start to chatter loudly among themselves.

"SILENCE!" I angrily bellow, using a strong dose of [Godly Language] again. "WE HAVE A DUEL TO FINISH!" And I point a sharp, polished claw at Ira.

He grits his teeth, and his fair skin flushes red with fury, then he takes an unsteady step forward.

I take another step and grin at his tenacity. His "Willpower" is commendably high.

I spread my arms wide and strike a pose as I joke, "Oh? You're approaching me? Instead of running away, you're approaching me?!"

"I can't stab you without getting closer," Ira defiantly grumbles through his gritted teeth.

I laugh like a maniac and start walking forward. I can already smell the blood in the air that's about to be spilled, and that excites me. Now I've finally realized why Hana gets so horny after sparring.

"I'll make it easier for you: point your sword directly towards my heart," I [Taunt] and use [Godly Language] again.

Ira's hands start visibly shaking, and he groans, trying to resist my mental attacks, but he obeys like the good boy he is.

I turn my stare towards his hot wife and lick my lips as I imagine her being a hotwife. My dragonator gets even harder, and it strains against my thin underwear.

Evera Saponaria? No, Evera Ryder. I want to make her mine.

Ira follows my gaze and glances back, then he notices my bulge and starts twitching, foaming at the mouth with pure, unbridled rage.

"Yes, yes, let the rage flow through you! Let it consume your mind and fuel your heart!" I shout and laugh once again.

His steps become faster, and we quickly approach each other, then I pass Patrono without even glancing at it.

I keep my arms stretched wide apart, and my hands hanging low, leaving my body completely undefended.

"Come at me!" I use [Taunt] and [Godly Language] at the same time.

Ira seems like he's about to have a stroke, with his face exemplifying anger, but his body is still stiff with fear.

His sword approaches my chest, but I make no moves to avoid it.

We both slow down at the same time as the tip gets closer to my skin, aiming directly at my heart.

Ira stops, the rage clearing from his mind just enough for him to think for a second, leaving him full of doubt, but the fear makes it impossible for him to react.

The blade sinks into my chest, piercing through my skin and drawing blood, then I subtly shift to the side as it enters my rib cage, missing my heart by just a centimetri.

I take another step forward, and the tip emerges through my back, but now I'm in perfect range.

I breathe in deeply and smell my own blood, then I let out a sigh of satisfaction and my face softens into a kind smile, [Pain Resistance] removing any discomfort I might've otherwise felt in this situation.

"You've lost, Ira," I whisper softly, then I swing my arm, and five razor-sharp claws hack across his neck, shredding it into ribbons.

His wife shrieks in horror as she sees him gurgling and choking on his own blood while I'm standing here feeling so good that I almost reach the apex.

He releases his longsword and grabs his neck, then falls to his knees as he tries to stanch the bleeding in futility.

Evera dashes forward, but I glare at her and command her to stop with [Godly Language], "The duel isn't over yet!"

She freezes on the spot, her face warped in horror and her hand extended forward, trying in vain to reach for him.

Hana summons her wings and flies out of her seat, crossing the hall like a blur, then she lands heavily right in front of Evera and grips her shoulders to keep her away from Ira.

I look down at him as he bleeds out, his red face quickly turning pale, his mouth and jaw coated in red as he coughs out blood, his hands squeezing around his throat in desperation.

He looks up at me, tears rolling down his cheeks, and his eyes pleading for mercy, but I have none for him.

His body starts to go limp, and his eyes lose their focus as he begins to pass out, then he collapses in a growing puddle of his own blood that stains the white grass carpet red.

The foreign itching from before reappears inside my mind, beckoning me to [Heal] him, but I ignore it, then the itching quickly flares up and swells into a heartburn, making it incredibly painful to not heed it. It completely bypasses [Pain Resistance].

Yes, yes, I'll do it in just a sec.

For some reason, the Gods really don't want him to die.

I turn my eyes to the subordinate Lords and give them a dark look as I whisper, "This is your last chance. Use it wisely."

Then I pad my claws and grab Ira by the throat. I raise him up and use [Telekinesis] to float above the floor because he's a bit taller than me, then I cast multiple [Heal]s and [Purify Body]s until he suddenly awakens.

I drop him onto the floor, and he wavers, but he keeps himself from falling.

I float a bit higher so that I can look down on him and triumphantly shout, "You've lost, Lord Ira!"

Ira coughs a bit more and looks around in confusion, but he starts to understand what happened as his eyes regain their focus.

I pull his longsword out of my chest and let it fall onto the carpet with a muffled clang, then I [Heal] myself as I slowly descend back down to the ground.

Once my claws touch the white grass carpet, I cough softly and get a taste of my own blood on my tongue. I agree with Oritiki, lung wounds are the worst. Then I shift into my dragon form, and I hear multiple gasps of surprise.

The bastard could've actually put up a good fight. I've trained so hard to get my dragon transformation up to this level, but he had the audacity to lose his mind just from witnessing my humanoid form. I have to admit, though, that learning how to control the draconic rage has proven to be rather useful today.

I raise my draconic head and glare at the frightened Ira, my height just a bit shorter than my humanoid form, but I'm an actual damn dragon now, and I look one hundred times more menacing than a humanoid of the same size.

Ira stares at me in terror, his will completely broken, his armor red with his own blood, and his body still struggling to stay upright. He's done, but I just need to push him one last time.

I breathe in deeply, then I bellow in my deep, draconic dual voice, "I DIDN'T EVEN NEED TO USE MY SWORD OR MY DRAGON FORM TO DEFEAT YOU! IS THAT PROOF ENOUGH OF MY POWER?!"

He cowers in fear, then immediately falls down onto one knee.

"My Lord! I've seen the light! I recognize your power!" He exclaims, his voice wavering and full of fright.

And just like that, he has finally said "my Lord."

I turn my yellow eyes to the subordinate Lords and make sure to give each one of them a murderous glare. I want them to remember this day for as long as they live so that they may always fear my draconic rage, or at least what we do to those who go against us. Evera definitely will.

I let the rage cool until I feel my scaly face softening, then I turn back to Ira with kind eyes. The stick has been thoroughly applied, so now we need a carrot.

I spread my wings halfway to give myself stability as I stand up on my feet to make myself look bigger, then I recite the words, "Heart Lord Ira Saponaria, will you give me your sword? Will you pledge subservience to me as is foreseen in the duties of the Lordship? Will you protect the honor of the Western High Forest?"

"Yes, my Lord, I will," the broken man readily accepts.

"Then I shall take you under the shade of my tree, the roof of my home."

Ira stands up but keeps his head held low.

"Do not clean your armor for the whole day; let them all see the result of your arrogance. Also, the stain of your blood shall remain in this hall for as long as you live as evidence of our mercy."

"Yes, my Lord," he obediently replies.

Then I turn around and walk back to my throne as I shift myself back into a humanoid. My part in this plan is done, and now I need to rest because this performance drained me of most of my energy.

Yunia shows a subtle, smug smile as she announces, "May the next one step forward."

And so, the rest of the Lords all fall into line without another word.

The famous Reniandisabis, the historic meeting of Lords, is finally over. Books have been written about the drama that unfolds in them, but not even fiction could compare to what happened in ours, though that's a once in many, many lifetimes occurrence.

Things have ended with results in our favor, but we still don't have a clue about who was really plotting against us. Ira exposed himself as the sacrificial goat, but nobody else did anything overt. Perhaps we were too aggressive, and now the dissenters have hidden themselves in fear of our wrath.

Cruelty works, until it doesn't. It broke Ira, but now we can't administer it freely without weakening their trust in us. Cruelty works, until an insurrection starts.

We'll have to make another plan to handle the matter going forward.

We ring the bell and the double doors of the hall open wide, marking the end of the Reniandisabis.

Our men receive us with smiles of pride and relief, while a lot of curious looks are sent towards Ira and his bloodied armor, but he's not a man that would get embarrassed by something like this so easily.

"It's time for the grand reveal!" I happily announce.

We take our ship back to the Prasa de Ananci while the Lords take the [Eternal Gate] back to the viewing stands up on the Shell.

We all [Equip] our lavish new clothes while the golems pilot for us. I enjoy open vests quite a lot because they make me look dapper while showing off my athletic body. I also chose to go for a silver cape and tight black shorts because the girls enjoy it when I have a visible bulge. Gify returns to her preferred position, firmly on my shoulder, and recomposes her dignified pose because the formalities haven't finished yet.

Alissa wears a red not-kimono, which is just a few pieces of rectangular cloth wrapped around her body in a complex way that doesn't actually cover that much of her skin; Roxanne sports a black and purple gown that sticks to her upper body like a sexy monokini; Hana flaunts a strapless emerald dress, but it has so many openings that it can almost be called elven; Ciel goes with a yellow body-conforming dress made of Snow Weave which stretches in all of the right spots; Lina wears a sexy lolita mini-dress, exposing her cute, thin pale legs, but she also has to be careful not to flash the micro underwear she has on underneath it; Aoi shifts into her human form and puts on a very loose and modern-looking sapphire velvet dress that sticks to her delicate (non-existent) curves, showcasing how good of a runaway model she could be; Yunia opts for the traditional not-belly-dancer elven look with gold and jewels hanging on strings from the straps, making her look both sexy and dignified.

I take a quick [Instant Picture] because we'll remove the [Equipment System] from these clothes after this, so it won't be as easy for us to wear such delicate outfits again.

We stop the ship a few meters above the plaza as the crowd cheers, but then they start to become confused with my new look and Aoi's presence. Not even the Lords recognize her, and they become wary of what's to come since they can clearly see the similarities between Aoi's two forms.

The confusion quickly becomes silence as the music stops and everyone eagerly waits for me to start the speech.

Yunia takes control of my voice while Alissa keeps my posture dignified. Skills are believed to use mental or "spirit" energy, and I've definitely overused my skills during Ira's Mind Break, so I'm feeling far too drained right now to do this on my own.

Alissa makes me press the special [Project Voice] gem against my throat, which is connected to amplifiers spread through the town, ensuring that everyone will hear my words.

Yunia tests her control of my voice, then Alissa activates the enchantment and Yunia starts the speech, "Citizens of Escanso, travelers and adventurers from faraway lands, and Lords of the elven territories. It's with great pride that we announce the reunification of the Western High Forest under our rule. We've accepted the pledge of loyalty from all of our subordinate Lords, and we've assumed the responsibilities foreseen by the Lordship. We shall work to protect every citizen subjected to us and guide our society towards progress, towards a better future that leads us closer to our dreams or even apotheosis."

Right now, an elven Lord would also add their pledge to upholding elven traditions, but we won't say that part. We'll cause so much change in the future that we can't give our honest word that their traditions will remain as they are.

The crowd responds with an acceptable level of cheering. Teresina and her priests did a good job in keeping the hype going during the prayers, so now we need to capitalize on it and deliver the lightning bolts.

Alissa steps forward and takes the gem, then introduces herself, "I'm Alissa of the Blinding Arrows, a werefox born in the Misty Low Forest, former Blood Slave of Wolf, and Blessed by the Goddess of Love."

Roxanne comes next, and the girls line up behind her.

"I'm Roxanne, a succubus-type demon race born in Mashoor, a fishing village in Maoka and within the succubi Holy Lands."

"I'm Hanafuria of the Thousand Strikes, a dragonkin born in Sommerland, former Blood Slave of Wolf."

"I'm Ciel, a human born in Rabanaria, and a former priestess."

"I'm Lina, a dwarf born in Bersidon, a surface village in Mountainhome, and former slave of Wolf."

"I'm Yulania, a golden-elf born in Escanso, daughter of the late Crown Lord Mavel Este, and former Blood Slave of Wolf."

Then the first strike comes.

Aoi's feminine and crystalline voice gives me shivers of pride, "I'm Aoi, an Azurite dragon born in the Sea of Trees, saved by Wolf, and also converted to your religion by him." Aoi suddenly changes into a dragon, shifting her gentle voice into the terrifying, deep, and sensual double voice characteristic of a mature dragon. "I now worship the Old and Humanoid Gods, who have blessed me by giving me a system! And I've risen to level thirty-eight!"

The crowd bursts into loud chatter, disbelieving of their own ears. They ask the priests questions, but they all, without exception, stare up at our ship with their mouths hanging open in surprise. Those who first recover from the stunning revelation don't know how to answer, so they beg for patience since all of their questions should be answered with time.

I look towards the stands and see Teresina's mouth also hanging open, clearly just as stunned as everybody else. It pleases me a lot to see the stern and composed gilf in such a state. I suddenly imagine her with an ahegao as I screw her to the limit.

We wait for a few moments, then we deliver the second strike.

"I'm Wolf 'Good Luck' Ryder, a human born in Rabanara, Golemancer, Scholar, and Blessed by the Goddess of Knowledge.

"These are my wives, and we've all become True Nobles after conquering the Legado dungeon, but that's not all! During our journey, the Gods deemed it fit to change me. They made me into this," -I raise my claws high- "a new race! I'm now a weredragon!"

Then I shift into my dragon form to make my point. It also serves to improve the impact of what's coming next since my voice is much more powerful in this form.

I see Teresina leaning forward in her seat, her mouth still hanging open, and the crowd actually becomes a bit quieter as the confusion sets in.

And now, here comes the finisher.

"Not only that, but God-Ruler Arreira's spirit himself was found at the core, bound to it by [Trap Soul]! He chose us as his inheritors, his adopted descendants, and the heirs to his will! We've gained the right of royalty through him! The Ryder dynasty starts here and now!"

Then a miracle happens.

A beam of light coming directly from the high sun of midday shines down upon us, and everything within sight freezes in time.

The bead of sweat running down Hana's cleavage instantly stops in place; Yunia's hair defies gravity as it freezes mid-bounce; Ciel's butt jiggle doesn't finish; and Alissa's tail wag is suspended. We see a waitress floating mid stumble, a bird frozen in the sky, leaves that stand perfectly still, and a nature spirit caught in mid-disappearance as the left half of its body seems to be semi-transparent.

Our perception continues, somehow, but we can't move, or breathe, or talk.

I suddenly feel fear as something much greater than me makes itself known. I don't truly understand the Gods, or what they want, or how to even build a relationship with them, but now I know that they're watching me, closely.

In the blink of an eye that can't blink, the beam disappears, and time resumes flowing forward, leaving the entire town in stunned silence.

The girls and I sweat cold as the fear of the above fills all of our connected hearts, and for once, we fail at regulating each others' emotions through [Bind].

We all try to understand what the hell just happened, but it's Gify who gives us the answer.

"Gih…" She softly chirps.

The Gods solved a problem for us. They gave us legitimacy by making everyone understand that I've spoken nothing but the truth.

Instead of questioning in bewilderment about the veracity of my statements, everyone kneels in respect. The holy royals have arrived, and they bring change with them.

I breathe slowly and deeply to calm my heart. In truth, I don't really like the idea of the Gods. My heart is afraid of their power and how much they can control me, but my mind accepts that they're damn important for the stability of this world. In the end, it doesn't matter if I like them or not because the only important thing I have to worry about is the work relationship we have. If we help each other out, nothing else matters.

Ciel is, quite obviously, the first one of us to recover, and she glows in happiness (though also from sweating in fear) about what just happened.

"We've talked in the past about how your Fate is special, but now, it has been confirmed that you aren't just blessed, but watched with great interest by the Gods," she proudly announces, then she lays her hand on my shoulder and gives it a gentle squeeze. "Even they have expectations for you."

"No pressure," I jokingly whisper.

She chuckles angelically and pats my head once, making sure that she avoids the horns, then she takes the [Project Voice] gem and addresses the crowd, "A miracle has happened! The Gods have shown us all their presence and acknowledge your Lord! They still watch over and protect us, so let's celebrate this glorious event! Let's show our gratitude to the Gods! Let's honor the God of Festivity!"

A roar of cheering erupts from the crowd. Just the mention of Festivity would've been enough to get the hype going again, but Ciel's words start a wildfire of excitement among the commoners. Their hearts were already filled to the brim with emotion from the thrill of the divine event, and now they have an outlet to let it all out.

The time has come for the real party, and the alcohol flows freely throughout the town.

Intermission 20 – Armanpoosh

I see it. The light has allowed me to see it. I see his greatness, his majesty, his power. He's indeed a True Noble, a Holy Man. He's the one who has been chosen to guide us forward, and my duty is to support him as best as I can.

My Lord, my… King? Is someone who has a "great appetite," so I shall do my utmost to satisfy it. This is my true calling.

A note from Manasong

Hall of Fame of Patrons

The patrons who support Rupegia shall have their names sung by the bards for they deserve the glory and honor. Their names are:

Prince PreownedFIN.

Prince Creamy Spinach.

Lord Andrew Meyers.

Lord Samuel Lim.

Lord Bill.

Lord Novgarod.

Lord Ashadun.

Lord Michale Erwin.

Lord Bakerdea.

Lord Nathan Vanbrunt.

Lord Maurice.

Lord Empyrean.

Lord Mattirro Draca.

Lord Joshua Tal.

Lord Colorblind.

Lord RottenTangerine.

Lord Fullmoon.

Lord Joxsan Herrera.

Lord Sean Drake.

Lord EESDESESESRDT.

Lord Brody Haugan.

Lord FrostyCube.

Lord Mike Bartter.

Lord Cardinal Steiner.

Lord Krawn.

Lord Warwulfv.

Lord Cidant.

Lord Jorge Franco.

Lord Bradly.

Lord Freddie.

Lord Khristopher Welsh.

Lord DJ.

Lord Philip.

Lord Tenebris Lupus.

Lord ImportantNPC.

Noble Salty Panda.

Noble Mild Fracas.

Noble Aclys.

Noble Shawn Plumley.

Noble CarlBaxter.

Noble WeirdWhirl.

Noble War God.

Noble Yeuromain.

Noble Jorge Franco.

Leave a rating or a review to help me rise to the top or fix my shameful understanding of prose.

Take a look over my blog where all information about the world of Rupegia will be posted.

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Yulania's Origin: Chosen Descendant - Teaser

A note from Manasong

This chapter is not required to read to understand the main story, this is only a side-story.

This is a teaser for the patreon-only side stories I'm writing.

The first part of any new storyline I will make public as a teaser.

The foreign feeling of the roots starts to fade as my body becomes numb. I see nothing, I hear nothing, I feel nothing. There's only darkness and silence.

As I wait until the Bed of Communion finishes connecting to me, the boredom makes me fall asleep, and I start to dream.

I see the Source of Life, the power Creation refined and infused in us. It's so pure and perfect that it attracts all sorts of living beings, almost fully covering the endless Source from my view.

Out of all the interesting and diverse beings drawing upon the Source, a simple vine spreading out catches my attention.

I follow it as it grows and grows further from away, bravely exploring the unknown all by itself, then it's stopped by a flower that takes roots around it and chokes it out.

The flower blooms, its beautiful and textured petals rearranging itself repeatedly like a kinetic sculpture, then it spreads its pollen around, creating more of its kind and filling the air with its fragrant perfume.

A short, flat, and fluffy animal appears and starts eating the flowers. Its small mouth nibbles on the flowers with blinding speed, quickly eating each flower through hundreds of little bites.

It suddenly squeaks and scampers away, but a Gatun pounces on it and kills it with one strike, then it runs off with its prey before other predators appear.

The Gatun runs and runs, its long and powerful limbs tirelessly swinging back and forth. It braves new lands by itself for it must, or else it'll become the food of something bigger than it.

Its muscles grow weary and weak, its fur loses its sheen and grays, its eyes start failing it and it misses its prey. Its body slowly starts to fail from old age, then it meets a predator stronger than it.

The two fight fiercely for every fight is one for their lives, and the old Gatun manages to scare the other predator away but becomes mortally wounded as a result.

After siring many children, eating countless prey, surviving in every foreign environment, the proud beast breathes for the last time and dies under just another common tree.

Its body rots and nature reclaims its flesh as it's eaten by bugs, then plants start to grow on its remains.

A vine takes birth from inside its bones, then bravely spreads out and away from its source towards the unknown. The cycle is starting over again, and again, and again, becoming faster each time.

From the plants, to animals, to the bugs, to the plants again. Their cycle becomes so fast that they all appear at the same time. The vine is eaten by the fluffy animal while it's bitten by the Gatun, whose lower body rotting, being eaten by bugs, and vines grow again from its bones.

The cycle of survival is neverending. They're always eating one another, spreading further from the Source of All Life, but in the end, they're all still connected to it.

I suddenly wake up as the numbing from the anesthesia reduces, allowing me to feel my body again. I've been connected directly to a live Eia, and we share our senses with each other.

I can see through its "eyes," but I see nothing right now, and the Eia would also be able to see through mine if I wasn't in complete darkness. But the purpose of this training is for me to take over the Eia, not for us to learn how to coexist.

Trying to move my body is useless, so I focus on my [Weaverism]. The roots of the Eia are in my body, inside my veins, drinking my blood, and I need to reclaim my control over my own vital fluid.

I gather some of my mana and send out a pulse, then I watch for reverberations outside of my body. My blood reacts to my mana, and it briefly returns to my control.

I send more and more mana out, and my connection with my blood grows.

This is mine. This belongs to me.

I grit my teeth and grunt in effort as I force my blood to move, and I feel the whole Eia plant twitch.

Good. It seems everything is under my control.

Plants don't have muscles to move individual parts of their body, but they can still move nonetheless through a connection, a shared "will" that allows them to make basic actions in perfect sync with each other, and I must copy that.

The hundreds of little roots that hold my blood are all parallel to each other, separated. I can see them as if they were threads of a loom, just ready to be weaved. They can't physically touch each other, but I can connect them all with my Life.

Almaria's teachings come back into my mind to help me focus.

Our bodies are our physical forms, able to act upon the world. Our spirits are our "diagrams," the patterns from which our bodies are created. Our Threads are our future, for the Overseer has already seen it all, but our will interferes with their omniscience. Our Source of Life is what powers us all and give us intelligence; different from mana, it's nearly endless but extremely limited in comparison. Our Life is our will quantified, it's a sub-process in raw form, and it's what gives us the impetus to move, consume, and expand.

Our Life is our will quantified, it's a sub-process in raw form, and it's what gives us the impetus to move, consume, and expand.

I repeat the last part in my mind many times as I gradually loosen my focus, entering a trance as I start to tap into my Source.

I can't sharpen my will to an edge like I'd do to create a sub-process, I need to keep it "loose" and "vague." I know what I want, but I can't control how things go, so I have to let it all take its own course.

I'm not the Eia, and it's not a part of me. We're neither a humanoid, nor Eia, we're a new, unique being.

I infuse my mana with my will and pulse it again.

My own Thread unravels and becomes many small strands that start to weave with each other, creating a "sheet" of myself. I'm not just one, singular being, but a fabric composed of many smaller parts of me, and I wrap myself around the Eia.

I see with the Eia's "eyes" strands of Life birthing from the strands of blood, and connecting them all to each other, weaving a cloth that allows me to truly fuse with the plant.

Once the weaving is done, I start to adapt to my new, extended body, becoming very comfortable in it, so much that I start to become sleepy. Just standing immobile all day while my roots absorb nutrients in a warm and hospitable small room just feels so good.

I tug at the weave and jolt awake. I have something to do, so I can't get comfortable yet.

I observe all of my weave and find the one spot that leads somewhere out of my control. It's a thin, single strand that connects me to the Life out there. It's not physical, so trying to pass through without breaking is almost impossible. Almost.

I groan, and my whole weave hums in resonance.

I hate this test.

I push my weave to one side then the other repeatedly, thinning it out at the middle. Once I feel like it's thin enough, I pull it forward, towards the small, single strand.

It's a slow process, but little by little, I take control of the strand. I can't take over it forcefully because my will is too strong, and it'll easily break if I try to, so I can only do it through this indirect way.

As the hours pass, my weave weakens along with my mana and mental will. Feeling like I'm about to fail, I become desperate and try to forcefully get through the last stretch, but the strand breaks, and I feel a sting as some of my Life is wasted away.

Godsdamnit!

Through the Eia's eyes, I see a new Source of Life appearing, and I have a good feeling that it's Almaria.

The person gets close to me and cuts one of the roots connecting me to the Eia, giving me another sting, so I start to return to my body. I undo the weave and return my Life to me, then I burst the blood at specific spots, cutting the roots connecting me to the plant.

Once all of the connections are severed, I release the blood from my hold, and the anesthetic from the Eia's roots starts to wear off, allowing me to move my muscles again.

After a few minutes, I open my eyes and see a faint light illuminating Almaria's fair face.

"Are you doing fine, Yulania?" She asks, her thin eyebrows wrinkled in worry.

"Yes…" I weakly mutter as the anesthetic is still acting upon me.

"Good…" She mutter and smiles, then she frowns a bit disappointingly. "Well, not so good since you failed the test, but you were doing good… until you weren't and failed, but it was mostly good."

I chuckle weakly, then she leans over me and starts helping remove all the roots still inside my veins. It stings a bit, but Almaria activates the [Regeneration] on the Bed of Communion, and all the pain goes away.

"I hate the single strand test…" I mumble and pout.

"Didn't you progress further this time? You'll get through it one day," Almaria tries to console me.

I sit up and start stretching. "It's just so boring…!"

She smiles kindly, and her small circular glasses gleam as they reflect her [Spirit Light]. "Yes, it is, but it teaches you a very useful skill. You need to learn how to be delicate if you want to learn how to be efficient. Brute-forcing everything will make your magic plateau easily, and you can't forever remain a mediocre mage."

I sigh and start putting on my thin clothes again as I grumble, "I know, I know. I'm the Chosen Descendant, so I can't go through any shortcut."

She pats my head and smiles. "Exactly, but if you want to rant, remember this again once you're done."

"Alright…"

I put on my "hanging dousnadeia" and stand up. The hanging pieces of cloth cover most of my skin, but Mom has been talking about removing most of them to allow others to see my body. My breasts have been growing, so I can actually show some cleavage now.

I'm old enough to get past the Sin, so they've also talked about finding a fiancee for me. They say that Bastico already lost his virginity, but I don't really find any of the servants attractive enough to do the same.

As I become able to focus on my skills again, I sense two little peepers nearby. "Tutu, tata! I told you to stop peeping!" I yell angrily, and the two little ones scamper away. "Hmph!"

I'll twist their ears when I catch them.

Almaria smiles wryly and helps me up, then I slowly walk out of the room, my body still a bit weak and uneasy. I want to ask the healers to cast [Purify Body] on me, but Elder Mom will definitely pull on my ear if I waste their mana on that, so I harden my guts and endure it.

We cross an [Eternal Gate] taking us out of the underground and back inside the castle.

I feel a weight off my shoulders as we're now back in the open and tall halls. How the dwarves live in their entire lives underground is a mystery to me.

We go back into the main hall and take another Gate to the greenhouse. At least I have an excuse for this time if Elder Mom complains about the overuse of the Gates.

I sit down on one of the comfortable chairs and sigh, then massage my muscles, and the last remains of the Communion fade away.

The greenhouse is a nice place to relax after such a tiring test. My eyes aren't sensitive anymore, so the vibrant and beautiful plants aren't a bother to look at. Their fragrant smell is actually calming as they were chosen specifically because they aid in concentration. [Nature Magic] and [Weaverism] are both magic schools that require a lot of calmness to chant or manipulate their spells.

Almaria sits down on the other chair beside mine and pulls a vine towards her through [Weaverism]. "Let's practice your control again. We'll do fractals for this morning," she beckons to the vine, and I take control of it.

"A hard one right away?" I question with a frown.

"A Chosen Descendant shouldn't skimp on their training," she sagely lectures and readjusts her glasses on her small face.

I grit my teeth and roll my eyes internally, then I start growing the vines along the large table before us in fractal patterns.

Almaria leans back on her chair and pulls out a book to read. On the cover, I see a circular drawing of plants, animals, and bugs all eating each other in an endless cycle. I guess my dream wasn't as mysterious as I thought it was…

I get up and stretch then yawn as I'm finally allowed to rest. I look up and see the sun up high. It's barely midday and I'm already tired.

The sun warms the plants almost directly through the transparent glass, but at least we have a small tent to protect us from the God of the Sun.

After warming my skin, I sit down at the table and gaze upon my piece of art. I used a four-armed spiral as a basis for the fractal, and for the divisions, I went for two large ones, each surrounded by three smaller ones made of three mini-spirals. I've tilted every spiral and division, then connected them all in a spiral. After filling up the gaps with warped spirals, I colored it all with a rainbow gradient.

Nothing truly special, but beautiful nonetheless.

I hear footsteps and turn around, then I see Elder Mom coming towards us. Her face looks stern and stiff as always, as if her expression was sculpted from stone.

She stops before Almaria and stares at her. Anyone lesser would be sweating cold at the intensity of her eyes.

"How was it?" Mom asks, her tone betraying nothing of her emotions.

Almaria sends me a kind glance, but she can't lie before Mom. "She almost got through, but she failed in the end," she confesses.

Mom turns to me and says nothing. I know she's disappointed, but she never shows it, at least.

She lands her hand on my head and wordlessly pats me, then I snort and close my eyes.

"Come for lunch, then you'll continue your training for the rest of the day," she delivers the sneak attack upon my heart.

Godsdamnit! Have some mercy!

We enter the dining hall, the back wall is completely opened, exposing us to the blue sky and allowing the blazing sun to hit the white floor, reflecting so much light that it illuminates the entire hall.

I take off my shoes to enjoy the gentle grass, then I spot the little peeping goblins and narrow my eyes at them. I know they fear my glare, and they immediately wince when they notice me.

I grin evilly at them and start the verbal lashing, "Well, well, well. If it isn't the little Goblin Stalkers. Your plan didn't work so well when we were fated to meet so soon, isn't that right?"

Dad stops drinking his alcohol and slowly turns his eyes to them.

"Peeping again?" Elder Mom's icy cold tone makes them shiver.

"Caught in the act," I smugly respond, and she mirrors my eyes, doubling the intensity of our severe glare.

"If they're doing it for fun, then there's no harm in that," Younger Mom kindly defends them with a smile.

"Yes, there isn't, except for the great rudeness of the act," Elder Mom responds without taking her eyes off the twins.

"I'd prefer not to risk it. I don't want that sort of relationship for her," Dad states, and I feel a bit awkward.

I'm not a pedophile…

Elder Mom will see that the twins get their punishment, so I soften my glare and sit down at the table, then I serve myself some sweet cider, which I mix with a lot of juice to make it milder. If the other nobles could see me they'd laugh, but nobody knows what you're drinking if you don't show when it's being mixed.

I start serving myself and get a bit more meat in hope of building some muscle. My sword lessons are getting a bit tough, and I need more "Strength" to make being a hybrid practical.

I don't really want to be just a mage, that'd limit the type of partners only to other mages or hybrids. I… kind of like tall, muscular people, and mages seem to rarely be like that.

Since I'm a woman, it's better to keep my harem small unless I add more women to it, but I'm not sure how advantageous that'd be, so I don't have room to add too many members to my harem, which means I have to be picky about who I choose. I want a small and cute person, and a tall and muscular one. I also want one to be cute and meek while the other is bold and domineering.

Dad's gentle voice brings me out of my musings, "Yulania, I'd like to take you to an Eia farm."

"She'll be busy today," Elder Mom casually responds and sends me a glance.

I smile wryly and nod.

"Tomorrow, then…" Dad relents without trying.

Noooo~…

I spend a long, boring day practicing [Weaverism], then I'm allowed to rest on the next one, but Dad takes me for a tour through an Eia farm. I've seen the Eia plant, but not a farm of it, so I'm a bit curious about it. The whole [Weaverism] magic school is based on this plant, so it doesn't hurt to learn more about it.

We go out of town and take a wide hanging road towards one of the disk farms. Below us is the beautiful and huge lake that provides for Escanso, and I never tire of looking at it's dark and deep waters

We could ride Gatuns or have a carriage take us, but Lords are supposed to be physically fit, so being seen taking walks occasionally is the minimum expected for us. Even if the Lord's a mage, being fat and seen as lazy is terrible for their image.

The fully armored knights flank us and make way, keeping anyone suspicious away from us. I must admit that it feels good to have them protect us this way, though Dad will surely chastise me if I tell him that. We aren't supposed to revel in our privilege of Lordship or even inconvenience the common folk with it, or else both the temple and the Tribunal will make a stink.

Our feet hit the wet and mossy road, and I see some of it sticking to my boots. Younger Mom says that a good boot is the one that looks good while dirty and also survives the cleaning after. I think she's only created this saying because she gets her clothes dirty from working in her private garden all the time. I mean, it's true, but the part about "looking good while dirty" is a bit oddly specific.

The Eia fog starts to clear up, allowing us to see the farm properly. At this distance, it's just like a normal farm, except the crops move as if there's a storm ravaging them, but there's barely a breeze.

"They're doing morning exercises," Dad comments, and I nod along. A healthy Eia plant should be as quick as a spear thrust and as nimble as a Gatun.

We start hearing the slow and melodic song the farmers play to get the Eias to move. It's slightly hypnotic and so well-played that it makes me think these farmers are better than the bards that wander the town.

We eventually get close enough that we can take a closer look at the Eia plants, and their beauty awes me. These aren't like the small, cute, and very dumb Eia plants that we use for training, these are fully-fledged predators.

Their long and bulbous green "head" almost looks humanoid; dark, creepy-looking slits indicate where their Life-sensitive "eyes" are; a nearly invisible horizontal slit over their entire face hides the very long "mouth" that can snap at their prey from meters away; leaves cover their whole body in the vague shape of a person like a Cublend; two-meters long bark arms hide inside their bodies that they use for protection; and their roots wave about like "feelers," trying to sense any sort of mana.

Though they can walk, none ever tries to do so because they'd lose their favorite meal: warm blood. They're free to leave, but they've all been tamed and become loyal like a weredog. Eia farms don't need guards to protect them against neither humanoids nor monsters for the Eia plants can protect their home themselves.

We stop before the line of plants, and their eerily humanoid heads all slowly turn to observe us. They shake their bodies and arms along with the music of the farmers, but their curiosity keeps their "eyes" locked on us.

While I gawk at the beautiful colors of their leaves, Dad starts explaining, "I'd like to bring you here when one of the guardian dryads come visit, but they only do it every few years, so we'll come again next year for you to meet one."

"No, this is fine," I absentmindedly respond.

The song ends and the plants stop moving, then Dad pushes me through a narrow path, and I shiver as the Eias all purposely brush their leaves against us to "taste us."

My Life-senses even start to get stimulated as I feel the web all around us. Every Eia is so deeply connected to one another they're almost a single entity, but they're all still independent from one another.

"This is our gold, Yunia. This is why Escanso was built here, because nowhere else can we get Eia with such a high-quality," Dad proudly comments as we walk.

"What's so special about this place?" I question curiously. I've always wondered why our Eia is so good.

"I'd say that half of it is our water. The fish under our lake are very vicious, flooding the waters with nutrients and the right flavor of mana for the Eia. The other half is in the people…"

The song stops and I see a farmer cut his wrists with a dagger, then he starts to walk along the rows of plants while letting his blood drip on the dirt. The Eia all stop moving and start shaking faintly, filling the air with a faint buzzing all around us.

The farmer smiles brightly as he runs his hand over the "heads" of the Eias, then The plants crowd around him and even lower themselves so he can more easily reach them.

My Life-sense starts tingling again, and I notice how the farmer's Life is so connected to the Eia that I'm not sure if he's part of the plants, or the plants are part of him.

Dad follows my gaze and nods in satisfaction. "The people here have such a strong connection to Life that we weren't that surprised about your affinity to it," he continues, then his tone becomes a bit somber. "The Eia we produce is so important to the High Forest that the moment we stop selling it, we'd all be executed by the Elder Council and replaced."

This is a bit chilling. For as much as the Eia trade is our pride, it's also a chain on our necks.

A note from Manasong

Hall of Fame of Patrons

The patrons who support Rupegia shall have their names sung by the bards for they deserve the glory and honor. Their names are:

Prince PreownedFIN.

Prince Creamy Spinach.

Lord Andrew Meyers.

Lord Samuel Lim.

Lord Bill.

Lord Novgarod.

Lord Ashadun.

Lord Michale Erwin.

Lord Bakerdea.

Lord Nathan Vanbrunt.

Lord Maurice.

Lord Empyrean.

Lord Mattirro Draca.

Lord Joshua Tal.

Lord Colorblind.

Lord RottenTangerine.

Lord Fullmoon.

Lord Joxsan Herrera.

Lord Sean Drake.

Lord EESDESESESRDT.

Lord Brody Haugan.

Lord FrostyCube.

Lord Mike Bartter.

Lord Cardinal Steiner.

Lord Krawn.

Lord Warwulfv.

Lord Cidant.

Lord Jorge Franco.

Lord Bradly.

Lord Freddie.

Lord Khristopher Welsh.

Lord DJ.

Lord Philip.

Lord Tenebris Lupus.

Lord ImportantNPC.

Noble Salty Panda.

Noble Mild Fracas.

Noble Aclys.

Noble Shawn Plumley.

Noble CarlBaxter.

Noble WeirdWhirl.

Noble War God.

Noble Yeuromain.

Noble Jorge Franco.

Leave a rating or a review to help me rise to the top or fix my shameful understanding of prose.

Take a look over my blog where all information about the world of Rupegia will be posted.

Join the Discord and discuss, or rant, or meme, or try and fight me so your waifu gets more screentime.

Become a Patron and read chapters in advance, or read the side-stories, or leave your mark on the story, or help choose the next artwork or the next side-story.

Chapter 96: Celebration - Part 1

A note from Manasong

Attention: to conform to the limit of mature content (more than just sexual content) allowed in a novel, I've censored this chapter. You can look for the uncensored version here.

"Wait, there's still the induction ceremony for the knights," Lina reminds us.

"Oh…" Ciel mumbles and purses her lips in embarrassment.

The canvasses covering the Shell are released, revealing our portraits in gold, then the crowd cheers again, and the music grows louder.

"Too late," I comment with a wry smile.

Poosh approaches us from behind and lowers her head respectfully. "I apologize, my Lords, but I've overheard you just now. May I suggest something?" She politely asks.

She's being a bit more formal than usual, which isn't unexpected considering what just happened, so I just let it slide and decide to hear her out, "What is it?"

She raises her head energetically, making the fluffy wool on her collarbones bounce softly, then she unleashes a shining smile upon my heart. "We can make this ceremony into something special with just a little help from the bards."

The musicians finish their song, then shift into something more mild and solemn. It's a softer melody that's energetic enough to make the commoners want to shake their bodies on the spot instead of gluing to one another to dance, allowing them to watch the Ceremony.

Then all the bards chant in sync, their cheeky tone masking the seriousness of the moment, "♪ Enomosa Ludoe, your name calls the freshness of aloe. Your beauty dazzles me, but stay your sword, don't give that glare, for I'm not your enemy~…! ♪"

Enomosa's alluring gaze remains steady on me as she advances along the raised walkway. Having both Yunia and her sit on me would be amazing, but I have to be careful with my predatory instincts when it comes to my subordinates, so I keep the horny dragon in check.

She stops before me and kneels, keeping her head held low in respect.

The music stops for a beat, and only the drums continue, giving me the cue to shout, "Are you ready to serve me?!"

"With all my heart!" She follows on the next beat.

"Another one comes under his tree! Smell the flowers and spread the pollen, bumblebee!"

Enomosa receives the sprout of a silver flower so that she may plant it in her garden to mark her home as a place under my protection. This specific flower is forbidden to be planted at any other home unrelated to our clan since it's part of our heraldry now.

She folds one of her long ears as a show of respect, and stores the sprout in her [Item Box], then she walks back, and the next knight comes in.

"♪ Palo Orir, hear him roar and puff your chest full of air. Your smile is a [Spirit Light], and your 'sword' is a [Thunder Strike], but both sides fear your call, for your 'sword' pierces all~…! ♪"

The annoyingly handsome man comes up to us in his shining armor, and I need Yunia's help to maintain a mask of officiousness on my face so that I don't frown. The dragon inside of me wants to have a 'sword'-measuring contest with him, but that would be way too gay for me.

I also don't let the girls talk to him, so I force myself to stand again and ask for the pledge.

"With all my heart!" He shouts right on cue, and my asshole puckers from his grin. He's got a bit of a "gay aura" like Rande, just turned up to eleven.

For the next knights, I let the girls handle it.

"♪ Azador Curol, the evildoers will lick his maul. His beard is bloody, for he has no qualms, he's a man of study, who can squash you against the wall. ♪"

The experienced knight seems composed, but he looks a bit stiffer than usual, so I'm led to believe that he doesn't like too much attention.

"♪ Klein Foerster, you're humble yet you could be the biggest boaster. You're quick and silent, and though nobody thinks you'd be violent, everyone better watch out, because you can easily make an army rout. ♪"

Hana smirks as Klein advances down the walkway with completely robotic movements. Knowing her, she's probably so stressed out right now that she won't even remember this part of the ceremony.

After the rest of the twenty-odd knights give their pledge, each having their own personal verse sung by the bards, we retire to our balcony up on the outside of the Shell and join the rest of the Lords so that the banquet can begin.

The balcony has been greatly elongated to fit four long rectangular tables. The first table has been raised to be slightly higher than the others, and that's where we sit, with everyone lined up on one side of it, Confiel and Fram Varze along with their wives seated at the edges in positions of honor due to their closeness to us, and the subordinate Heart Lords on the other side; the second table holds the rest of the Crown Lords; the third table holds the Root Lords; and the fourth table holds the High Officers and the town's aristocracy, such as the mayor, a few chosen town nobles, Teresina, the captain of the Townsguard, and the General.

The seating arrangements are a game in and of itself that we're fortunately not playing right now, otherwise, our seating would've been much more spread out and complicated. None of us really feel like "making connections," and the mood doesn't allow for it with the seriousness of the Reniandisabis and the divine intervention still clouding our minds.

I feel a modicum of interest in the General, though. He's the one who commands the Buscuadores, and not only do they make up half of the Expeditionary Division, they're also the most well-trained and well-equipped troops we have. He reports directly to the Elder Council, so he's the one person here who has actual power over us, making his reaction to the creation of our dynasty the only one that has any real immediate impact on us.

It's funny that he's been placed at the fourth table, but he isn't nobility, he's just someone with a very high [Battlefield Perception].

As I observe the General, I notice that Teresina keeps glancing at me. Though I'd enjoy it if the gilf was interested in my draconic weapon, I know that she wants to speak with me about something else.

The meal is rather quiet in comparison to the lively party going on right now down in the town. Crown Lord Fram actually manages to have a casual conversation with the twins, but everyone else here has a more restrained degree of enthusiasm.

For Lina and me, this is just fine, but Roxanne, Hana, and Osaria won't let the mood continue to wallow in this stiff atmosphere. After a few pointers from Yunia transmitted through [Bind], the girls find plenty of inspiration to draw upon and manage to strike up a conversation with Iril and the Mendecassa sisters.

Ciel decides to help them out and uses her "Charisma" to ease the other Lords and help them relax, then Aoi joins in, her blunt boisterousness still quite noticeable even in her human form, and she helps liven up the mood.

Silvano is loud like Hana, allowing me to hear him from afar, but from the content of his conversation, he enjoys the act of teasing, like Roxanne. It seems that he has a bit of a polarizing personality.

Ira and his wife are quietly sitting near the middle of the table, trying to not draw any attention to themselves. He has removed his armor, but his clothes are still stained red with his own blood.

I calmly eat my own meal, relaxing my muscles and resting my body in my special chair, which has been modified by Almaria to fit my new shape. It even has an adjustable footrest, which is pretty amazing for my heavy legs.

None of us asked her to do that, but she realized that I wanted more comfortable furniture and took up the task on her own initiative. I'm very happy that we hired her.

Krysta's not-spinach quiche is heavenly, though the creamy not-broccoli with cheese curds is a real competitor for the top position. The meat is in a category of its own, though, as it has been cooked in bacon fat, making it deadly both to my heart and stomach.

"I'm impressed that you have such dexterity with your… claws, my Lord," Rador Iqueza comments softly.

I raise my eyes towards the strong-jawed elf and think for a moment, then I snort softly and respond with the same tone, "Indeed, they're very inconvenient, and my draconic side won't even let me sand down the edges, but, fortunately, I have an alternative to them."

I lay my claws on my lap and create two tentacles that I use to grab my knife and fork. The sudden use of a spell draws some worried eyes, but they quickly become confused as they watch the tentacles move.

"What… how…?" Rador mumbles in confusion with a tinge of horror in his tone. It seems that he isn't cultured in the ways of the tentacle.

A small smile blooms on my face as I explain, "It's a skill I've developed. This is called [Soul Manipulation], and it allows me to 'bend' my soul as I wish, though it needs a [Solidify] spell to make it physical."

His wife suddenly hums out loud in understanding, "Ahh~…! That's what all the commotion with [Spirit Magic] was about," Erpente is a runway-worthy beauty, and it's pleasing to my tired eyes to look at her, and not in a netori-like way.

I raise an eyebrow at her sudden outburst but don't comment on it. "So, the word of it has spread to Ostoum?"

Now Rador is the one who snorts humorously. "To the whole of the empire, no doubt. I'm sure that the sudden rise in magical instant messages is due to the Chimeras," he assuredly states.

"I've heard that a caravan full of mages is approaching Ostoum," Iril suddenly joins in with a casual remark and looks towards Ira.

"Yes… they're currently at Ostodos," Evera meekly adds and immediately goes back to focusing on her meal.

Iril nods and turns his youthful smirk towards me. "There's also another crossing the delta, and I think there are even mages from Sommerinsel. Escanso's mage population will certainly bloom soon." Then he raises his mug in a toast and starts chugging it down.

Hana breaks off from her conversation with the Mendecassa sisters and asks excitedly, "Ooh~, are there merfolk among them?"

Since his mouth is occupied, one of his wives politely answers in his stead, "Certainly. We've seen Sirens, Lamias, and a few Thalanthro." Then the young Lady lets out a tasteful giggle. "I must admit that the Sirens are very good singers, though they lack the correct timbre for elven songs."

"Surprisingly, the Thalanthro can easily sing anything with a near perfect pitch," Yunia suddenly blurts out. The Lords turn a curious look towards her since they don't know of her xenophilia, but Iril's Lady seems to show some reserved approval with her shy nods to her in response.

"Well, the Thalanthro have an even worse timbre since their throats are so different from ours," Iril's second Lady joins in.

"But they can still add some interesting flair to the songs," Yunia retorts.

The second Lady gently frowns in thought and gracefully takes a sip from her goblet before answering, "Eh… I still want to listen to something decidedly elven."

Yunia's tone is spiced with a dash of annoyance. "If you don't want a non-elven flair to the songs, then why are you listening to the Thalanthro?"

The Lady seems to get tripped up by those words, and her mind is unable to continue the conversation for a moment, then she smirks smugly like a typical snobbish elf as she comes up with a surprisingly philosophical response, "I had to experience it first before I could form my opinion of their singing."

"But their native songs also sound too 'odd' to our ears, too," the first Lady chimes in.

Yunia was prepared for this argument, so she immediately counters, "Have you ever heard them sing while underwater? That's how their songs are meant to be performed, so it's expected that they'd sound different on land. It's not like the acoustics or timbre are 'wrong,' it's simply a completely different thing underwater."

"You make a good point," the first Lady concedes and smiles bemusedly.

The three of them start a rather philosophical conversation about how music should be enjoyed. Iril's wives aren't fighters, so they chose the path of the Lady and studied a variety of "high-brow" topics, like music theory. Yunia doesn't have the same depth as they do, but she knows very well how to argue a point, and she has my Earthling knowledge to give her an occasional boost in the conversation.

As the alcohol starts to enter our bloodstreams, the gloomy mood is fully lifted, and even Ira joins the fun.

The meal ends, then nearly everyone gets up out of their seats to dance or walk around the balcony.

Alissa stays put because she wants to help me recover, Lina doesn't want to get up, so she plays with my scales, and Yunia is also a bit tired, so she remains and recharges through the fluffiness of Alissa's tail.

Of the others at our table, only Rador remains. He slowly sips from his glass goblet, watching as his wife dances with one of the hired female entertainers.

He rests his goblet on the table and turns to me, his serious gaze forcing me out of my relaxation.

The three of us turn our heads toward him in such a synchronized way that his words get stuck in his throat for a moment before he finally asks, "Will you be sharing some of your skills, my Lord…? Or will they remain secrets of your dynasty?" Then his mouth moves wordlessly for a second as he realizes something important. "Actually, should we start calling you 'your Highness,' instead? Apologies for the many questions."

Alissa's hand grabs my jewels and massages them, giving me a jolt of pleasure that wakes me up and helps me answer, "My Blessing compels me to share it, so my legacy to my children will be something else."

Yunia immediately continues for me since I'm too tired to articulate my answer, "On the matter of titles, Lord is fine for now. We haven't been formally recognized by any authority yet, so we don't want to annoy the Tribunal by assuming the title of 'Highness' just yet."

Rador seems a bit disconcerted, his eyes flickering between Yunia and me, but he hides it almost perfectly. "You've been 'adopted' by the royals, then?" He asks, his voice aiming at neither of us in particular.

Just to mess with him, Alissa is the one to answer, "No. We're replacing them, in fact. Arreira has become disappointed in the old royalty and has disowned them, giving their titles to us, instead."

Rador glances at her then swallows heavily and tensely asks, "And how will the royals in hiding respond to that?"

I smile innocently and calmly reply, "Unfavorably, of course. We'll be making claims to a lot of their inheritance."

He leans forward, and I see a bead of sweat form on his forehead. "My Lords… are we to expect war?"

I chuckle softly, but it's Yunia who answers in a matter-of-fact tone, "If the royals make war, it'll be a holy one, for they're suspected of being heretics, and as you've seen, we're very close to the Gods."

He doesn't seem phased and continues without wasting a breath, "It'll still spell trouble and unrest for the High Forest. We have to prepare, but I have no idea how long it'll take for them to make their move."

Lina now speaks, giving him her best monotone, "Yes, we'll have to prepare, but it'll take a long time since our claims to their inheritance have to be processed by the Tribunal before they'll even hear about it."

And I give him the follow-up punch, "Unless someone gives them an early warning." Then I give a draconic stare to impart the seriousness of my words.

His face becomes stiff and stony, then he lowers his head respectfully and obediently responds, "I shall not speak a word, my Lord, but I worry greatly for the stability of the High Forest. I expect that the Elder Council allowed you to have Lord Yulania as a Blood Slave so that her presence will keep unrest to a minimum."

Unrest from you, specifically.

"Has her presence really changed how others have reacted to our ascension to power?" I retort, containing my flippancy.

Rador's face stiffens in anxiety, and he keeps his head down in shame.

I'm not done, and I give him one last lambasting, "The Council deposed Mavel specifically to allow change in the High Forest. After this Divine Intervention, as you're all calling it, if the Council moves to stop me, then they're just as foolish as Mavel was, and he'd have been pointlessly killed, but I won't let that happen to the father of my wife-to-be."

Yunia remains unmoving, also concealing her feelings with a stony mask, then Alissa grabs her hand to comfort her. Though she doesn't really need it, she appreciates how much we care for her.

"I understand, my Lord. I only wish for our safety," Rador agrees with a flat, obedient tone.

"Then you'll need to fight for it."

He finally raises his head to look at us. "I will, my Lord," he pleads, but I sense his tone wavering, then a silence falls over us for a moment, and Rador excuses himself, "I'll be joining my wife, my Lords."

I nod gently, and he walks away, finally leaving us in peace.

"I also need a distraction," Yunia tiredly comments as she gets up, then goes after Roxanne to dance.

Now I get the quiet time I really wanted with Alissa and Lina. I use the tip of my tail to wrap around Alissa's, and both of the girls hug my claws tightly, allowing me to extend long, slimy tentacles along their legs so that I can absorb their cuteness and recharge my batteries.

While acting domineering is a bit fun for me, I'm still an introverted dragon, so it's tiring to keep it up. The girls help me with it a lot by giving me the confidence necessary to act like this, but I have my limits.

Then Teresina approaches us, and I groan internally.

She climbs up the steps to our table, then falls down onto her knee before us and folds one of her long ears with a hand in respect.

"Your Majesties, may I speak with you?" She begs with a frighteningly kind tone. It does not suit her.

"You may, and we're still Lords," Alissa politely responds for me.

Teresina stands up again with a little effort, then a maid appears with a chair for her, which she gladly accepts.

She doesn't even wait for a moment and immediately asks the question, "I want to talk about… Lord Aoi. I want to know how you did it." It seems that some habits die hard.

"I can't talk about it. That will be a royal secret," I tersely respond.

"But your Blessing-…"

Alissa interrupts her, "Is precisely what prevents him from revealing this secret. There are times when knowledge must be hidden until the public is ready. This is one of those times."

Her mouth twitches with contained anger, so I toss her a bone, "But know that we will share it when the time is right and we've found a way to reproduce it without revealing our secrets."

She breathes in deeply to keep her cool, and the awfully polite tone returns, "I understand, my Lords… but may we at least know the nature of her 'conversion'? As far as I know, Lord Aoi was merely a 'tamable' dragon, and no tracker has reported anything different about her soul."

Now, this is Alissa's specialty, so she's the one to answer, "Only because we didn't allow anyone with such skills to get close to her. Her soul's transformation still isn't complete yet, but I've noticed that it's very different from when we first met her."

"So it was [Alteration Magic]?"

I shake my head and decide to reveal just a small bit to her, "No. I connected our souls, and the 'cracks' were filled in on their own."

Teresina's eyes suddenly go wide. "Ah, of course! The soul's adaptability! I never imagined that it could be used that way!" She exclaims in amazement.

"A 'tamable' monster is merely a 'broken' aberrant," Lina.

Connecting us through [Bind] basically "fixed" Aoi's broken soul, like some sort of stem cell therapy.

Teresina turns to me, and now her gentle tone doesn't sound forced. "Did you follow in Kaka Haere's footsteps?" She earnestly asks.

"Who?" I hum in confusion.

Ciel appears beside Teresina and joins the conversation at the perfect moment, "Ah, that one. Kaka's story is a warning against paranoia. They'd discovered non-aggressive, 'tamable' monsters, but they were shunned by the priests due to fear of heretical magic… and because they were caught making love…" She cringes softly.

"Yes, the Volnosht Rebellion in Bestiaram of the fifty-third millennium," Lina sagely adds.

Teresina nods, slightly impressed with Lina's precise knowledge. "They say there was something else that was special among Kaka's monsters, a sort of 'intelligence,' but records are vague. Perhaps you did something similar?" She speculates.

"She's a breeder-type, so we didn't have to give her intelligence; just a system," Ciel clarifies.

Teresina thinks for a second, then raises an eyebrow at me, and her tone becomes serious. "The right person, at the right place, at the right time. Now I see why the Gods watch over you… and why the heretics might've attacked."

"I believe there's more to their motivations than just that, but I'd like to be proven wrong," Ciel affirms.

Teresina nods and hums in agreement. "Hm, yes. I expected the Monster King to make a resurgence, not the heretics getting involved." Then she turns to Ciel. "By the way, Lord Ciel, I believe some of your former comrades are in town because of you. A Templar named Kyora."

Ciel nearly chokes on her spit. "What?!" She squeaks.

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Chapter 96: Celebration - Part 2

A note from Manasong

Attention: to conform to the limit of mature content (more than just sexual content) allowed in a novel, I've censored this chapter. You can look for the uncensored version here.

A wide variety of emotions bleeds through Ciel's [Bind], but the most powerful among them is her anxiety. Her heart doesn't want to meet with them, but a sort of morbid curiosity prevents her from just walking away.

Teresina is a bit off-put by her reaction. She likely doesn't know about their rocky history and had no ulterior motives in giving her the news.

"Where are they?" Ciel hesitantly asks without looking Teresina in the eye.

'Nai' Teresina's eyebrows knit in concern, the stern ex-Punisher giving way to her motherly side for now. "They didn't want to participate in the parade and went directly to the party with the lower nobility, but I don't know where they are, exactly."

Ciel nods gloomily and starts twiddling her thumbs in indecision.

"Let's go meet them," Lina bravely suggests. She knows that Ciel would do the same for her.

Trying to prevent her fear from showing, Ciel strains herself to put on a smile and nods. "Yes, let's go," she meekly agrees.

Lina gets out of her seat and the two of them interlace their fingers like mother and child, then Lina pulls Ciel's hand closer towards her chest to make them look a little closer to wife and wife.

They get a [Gate] down to the party and start searching for Kyora. It'll be relatively easy for them to spot her, they just need to search for a blue-Hana on steroids.

I wanted to go with them, but my presence would make a big commotion, and we really don't want to have to deal with that right now. The two girls are already drawing plenty of attention since one only needs to look up to see their gigantic portrait, so I don't want to get in their way. Thankfully, we can all still support Ciel through [Bind].

Teresina watches them leave, her expression impassive, but her interest is apparent, then she turns back to me and continues with our conversation like nothing happened, "My Lord, about your race. Isn't it rather inconvenient to have these claws?"

Is this something that everyone is going to ask me?

I run a claw along the table, leaving a groove without even applying any pressure. "A bit," I agree with a wry smile. "But I already have ways to make it easier, like through the illusion that hid my characteristics and with this." Then I show her [Mana Body], changing my claws into big, warped fingers.

She doesn't seem to be the least bit impressed with it. "Is this something your children will be able to reproduce?"

My smile is wiped away, and I give Alissa a worried look as I mumble, "Oh, right…"

My foxy lady is more concerned with our child's claws potentially ripping through her uterus, but then she realizes that they'll never be able to finger a woman and becomes concerned about that, too.

While we rack our brains imagining what our children will be like, Teresina clarifies the reasoning behind her question, "I don't know what concepts were used to create your race, but you should think about what skills they should inherit to improve their lives, then pray for the Goddesses of Fertility and Growth to make it a racial skill for all weredragons. Same for Lord's Aoi humanoid transformation. It's very important that the new races smoothly integrate with the already existing ones."

"Perhaps something like Hana's [Draconic Body] could work?" Alissa happily suggests.

Teresina hums in confusion, "Hm? What skill?"

It's good to know that the Lordsguard didn't leak that skill yet.

"Something she created herself. It works kind of like [Mana Body], but makes her more 'draconic'" I happily explain.

"I think it uses her 'Willpower' and 'Endurance' to power it instead of just mana," Alissa adds.

"Impressive," Teresina coos softly.

Alissa nods diligently. "Each of us has earned our right to stand beside somebody watched by the Gods," she states with a mysterious tone, but Teresina doesn't even bat an eye, keeping her face impassive as always.

This is why Templars are so feared. The depth of her composure is truly unfathomable. If even a Divine Intervention can't phase her, can my dragonator ever break her mind…?

Of course, it can.

"I can see that. The Gods aren't just watching Lord Wolf," Teresina calmly responds with a gentle nod of understanding.

I smirk, then pull Alissa's chair closer to mine with my thick tail. "I'd never have gotten this far without my wives," I happily confess.

Alissa rests her head on my shoulder, her pointy, furred ears tickling my cheek, and remarks with a happy, husky tone, "We're a very closely-knit team."

Teresina glances at Roxanne and Yunia dancing together, their bodies glued to one another like lovers, and Roxanne's thigh rubbing against Yunia's.

"Yes, I can see that, too," she whispers, then her face softens a smidgen. "You're still yet to actually marry, correct?"

"Yes," Alissa and I answer in unison.

Teresina snorts softly. "Well, I believe the ceremony will be beautiful. Hardly do we ever see Lords as 'connected' as you are, so I wish you all a happy marriage."

Alissa beams with happiness, grinning from ear to ear, so I gracefully respond for her, "Thank you," while I give a genuine smile.

Teresina hums and nods in approval, trying her best to keep her expression from softening further. "Now, please excuse me, my Lords, but I wish to take my leave."

"Until next time, Head Priestess," Alissa happily coos.

"Until then." She gets up and walks away.

Now I'm finally alone with Alissa, but we don't have time to relax since Ciel finally finds who she's looking for, and she freezes on the spot.

I see a blue-haired amazon who has taken to the elven fashion without a single issue, though she's so big that she actually looks like a female barbarian in her criminally small dousnadeia.

Godsdamn, those thighs could squash my head like a watermelon while I eat her out, her arms could split me in half while we kiss passionately, and her abs could make me reach the apex just from licking them. I bet she could even clamp her lips so hard that it'd bite my dragonator off. She's a prime specimen of a dragonkin and a solid choice for snu snu.

"She doesn't do casual love, so you'd have to enter her harem before you'd even be allowed to touch her," Ciel comments wryly through [Bind], amused by my unending thirst for women. Though, my internal monologue does get her to relax, so all's fine.

Hana suddenly unleashes an outburst, "She looks tough, but I'll never lose a love battle against her! Even if I have to use [Draconic Body], I won't let her get on top of me!" She fumes through [Bind], her competitive instincts triggered by my thirst.

Osaria looks at her confusedly since she's suddenly stopped dancing and started scowling towards the railing instead.

I sigh softly and poke her soul as I chastise her, "Don't scare my milf, Hana. Ciel already said that she's off-limits, so calm yer bits."

"Goblin jizz…" She angrily mutters, then apologizes to the confused Osaria.

"Awn… now she totally wants to do a dragonkin," Roxanne teases cheekily through [Bind].

Yunia hums and concurs, "Yes, you've awakened the dragon inside her. Though I admit it would've been an impressive love fight, for sure."

Honestly, Hana's aggressiveness is a bit worrying. I fear that she might go overboard and do something bad to her partner, so I'm wary of having a threesome with two dragonkin. She might even traumatize the poor girl.

"I'd do her so hard that she'd get addicted to my taste!" Hana shouts inside my mind space, then starts focusing solely on Osaria again to calm her down.

Lina pulls Ciel forward, and the duo approaches Kyora. The Lords suddenly taking a stroll among the nobles causes a small commotion, which attracts the attention of Kyora and her group, who then notice Ciel approaching them.

"Ciel?!" Kyora's voice booms through the plaza, and now everyone turns to watch them.

"You loaf of bread! You're making a scene and embarrassing a Lord!" A small halfling man shouts angrily, shaking his child-like fist at the giant Kyora. He's a cute little boy with auburn hair and the robes of a mage.

"You're also making a scene yourself by shouting," a black and white werecat man tiredly retorts. His coloration is that of a Maine Coon, and his demeanor is that of a warrior, though I can see a bit of a cat-like grace in how he holds himself.

"I don't know either of you. We were never married," a cute dwarven girl grumbles and takes a step away from them. She's a cute, black-haired young girl that would make a good older sister for Lina.

Kyora advances forward, parting the small crowd without any effort since her hulking frame easily stands out from the spindly elves. Her eyes are set on Ciel like a tiger stalking a deer. If we had any Lordsguard nearby, they'd jump on Kyora due to her threatening stance.

The halfling man chases after her, grumbling halfling swear words, then he grabs Kyora's large hand, pulling it closer to his chest in a way that's pretty similar to Lina, and tries to make her stop.

Kyora suddenly groans in annoyance and slows down. "Alright, I get it, Alonso," She grunts, then lets her predatory stance fade away.

The two duos approach each other, then stop and stare. Alonso, the halfling, seems to be more annoyed than glad at the reunion, while Kyora seems to be straining against herself not to scowl. Ciel is impassive, trying to make herself appear strong, and Lina has a deadpan expression on her face, her gloomy eyes the same as always.

Surprisingly, it's the dragonkin woman who turns her eyes away first, and she looks up at the huge portrait of us on the Shell. They're a bit too close to the Shell to see it properly, but she might still be able to make out Ciel's face from this angle.

Kyora turns back to Ciel and clenches her jaw in anger. "So, you're really a Lord?" She asks through gritted teeth.

"Unless I have an evil twin, then yes, I'm a Lord," Ciel jokingly responds and laughs girlishly.

"You're rubbing off on her," Alissa mumbles with a pout.

Kyora lets her mouth hang open for a moment, completely disarmed by Ciel's silliness. "Evil… what?"

Ciel shakes her head and adjusts her hair in embarrassment. "I'm sorry, it's just a silly joke."

"So you're still the same old silly Ciel," the dwarf girl comments with an amused smile as she catches up.

"But if you're a Lord, then at least you've stopped being a coward," Kyora asserts, the angry dragon coming back.

"No, I haven't," Ciel proudly denies with a cheeky smile.

"What the hell," Kyora swears, disarmed once again.

"Kyora, please," the werecat pleads and grips her other arm strongly, then he chastises her with a whisper-shout, "Did you forget about the Divine Intervention?!"

She rolls her eyes like a spoiled child. "Yes, I know, but what the hell are the Gods thinking?"

Ciel removes all levity from her tone and becomes steadfast. "I have some people who I need to protect at all costs, so I'll be as cowardly as I need to be to fulfill my duty, but in the end, I'd gladly give my life for them," she confesses without a hint of hesitation.

The werecat blinks in surprise and blurts out, "That's not really much of a coward."

Ciel shrugs. "I didn't change; I just accepted what I am."

Kyora stays quiet, pondering on Ciel's words and measuring her resolve. Everyone stares at the huge dragonkin, waiting for her response with bated breath.

Yunia knows the least about Ciel's past, so my angel takes this moment of silence to give us all some expositional dialogue through [Bind], "I abandoned Macht when I believed that his judgment would get us killed, then Kyora cast me out because I wasn't fit to be a Templar, which I agree was the right thing to do. I'm not a Templar; I can't sacrifice myself for the common people because our purpose here is greater than them. The only people I can give my life for are the sister-wives and you, Wolfy. Today has only given me further confirmation of that."

"Awn…" I moan in pain as my heart is struck by her confession. "You'll never have to make any sacrifices, I assure you of that," I respond through [Bind].

Ciel smiles internally, and I feel embraced by her, smothered by her massive pilows. "It still doesn't change my purpose… What I did to Macht was cowardly, but it was a necessary lesson for me, so I don't regret it."

I envelop her presence in my mind with my own. "Don't call yourself a coward. You aren't one, not anymore."

She nods internally and surrenders herself to me, "Okay, I won't."

Kyora's impassive face gradually warps into a frown, then she lets out a low growl and grumbles, "I still hate you for deserting Macht."

Timas squeezes her arm to get her to control herself.

"Yeah, she's definitely a berserker," Hana comments through [Bind]. Only now, I've noticed how the translation of "berserker" sounds like a contraction of "dragon wrestler."

Ciel nods slowly and accepts it, "I know. My penance for that will last for my whole life."

Kyora stops for a split second. "Don't…" She starts, but the words don't come out, so she grumbles incoherent words in frustration, then she sighs and lets the anger cool. "Don't let it make you miserable. I don't want that," she finally confesses.

Ciel smiles angelically, then glances at Lina and gives her hand a gentle squeeze. "For me, it's inspiring. My penance guides me towards a greater path, where I know that I belong."

"Damn masochist," Kyora, murmurs and looks up towards the portrait again with an annoyed pout.

"Look who's talking," the dwarf girl quips back with a teasing smirk.

Kyora shrugs, her arm lifting Alonso up off the floor as if he weighed nothing. "I didn't mean it as an insult."

The girl purses her lip, full of sass. "Uh-huh."

The werecat takes a step forward and lowers his head respectfully for a second. "Well, it's good to see you again, Ciel. It doesn't matter what anyone thinks, you still grew a lot," he kindly compliments her.

Ciel returns a respectful nod and a smile. "Thank you, Timas. I know it's a bit late, but this is Lina, one of my sister-wives."

The dwarf girl gives a quick look upwards to the Shell. "Oh, yes, I think I can see it. I'm Poppy, the archer," she gently greets and gives a curtsy like a Lady.

"Kyora, the harem master," the dragonkin proudly announces.

"I'm Timas, the main defender," the werecat elegantly introduces himself with a bow.

"I'm Alonso, the squad's mage," the halfling quietly greets with a quick wave and releases Kyora's hand.

"Why don't we go take a seat?" Ciel suggests and points to an empty table nearby.

"Hm, sure," Kyora hums, and they sit.

A maid immediately comes and serves them some drinks, but Kyora abstains. Someone like her getting drunk is definitely dangerous.

Once everyone has taken a sip and the tension has eased, Ciel awkwardly adjusts her hair and asks the question that's been burning in her heart, "What I really want to know is: 'why did you come here?' Teresina said that you had asked for me."

"Well, we heard rumors," Kyora tersely responds and crosses her arms.

"And not good ones," Alonso eloquently explains with a worried frown.

Timas sighs tiredly at the high "Charisma" of his companions and actually clarifies what they mean, "It sounded like the nobility were playing games, trying to steer us here and possibly find out who's being naughty."

Lina immediately picks up on the real reason, "They likely tried to get the Templars to investigate us." And Yunia silently agrees.

"Yes. We aren't popular among the Lords here," Ciel admits with a forced smile.

"So we've heard," Kyora whispers, not amused.

Poppy delicately rests her head on her palm and comments confusedly, "They could've had more success by using the Punishers."

"The Head Priestess is an ex-Punisher," Ciel immediately retorts, and they all release "aahs" of understanding.

"They were trying anything they could since they're too impotent to actually rebel," Lina expands on Ciel's reasoning.

She deliberately used a double entendre.

Poppy's gentle face instantly warps into an evil grin. "Alright. Maybe we should stick around and investigate them, instead?" She suggests.

Ciel chuckles softly and comments with a wry smile, "Only if you want to Mark every single Lord of the Western High Forest."

"Alright. Screw that…" Kyora grumbles and facepalms. "We aren't doing the job of Punishers."

Ciel looks away and chuckles some more "Well, it's not as bad as it looks. They're just petty."

Kyora frowns and looks around at the nobles staring at them. They immediately look away, intimidated by her gaze, and Kyora speaks out loud with a veiled threat, "They have too much free time on their hands. Maybe they should spend it on purging the surroundings of their towns instead."

Lina nods in agreement and sternly adds, "After today, I'm sure that they will. We made sure that they know who's in charge."

Poppy smiles and raises her eyebrows in surprise as she asks, "You're a fierce one, young Lord. Where are you from?"

"Didn't you hear her introduction?" Timas chastises her with a frown and shakes his head, then takes another sip.

Poppy suddenly tenses up awkwardly and stutters, "N-no… we were talking about Ciel at the time." Then she turns to Lina and bows. "I'm sorry, my Lord."

Lina kindly forgives her with a wave of her hand, "It's not a problem. I'm from Bersidon."

"Oh… Hm…" Poppy straightens up, but remains tense, then glances at Alonso. "I don't know where that is."

"Why are you looking at me? Why would I know where that is?" The halfling angrily questions, then snorts and chokes on his own drink like a fool.

"Is it a surface village?" Poppy asks tentatively with a guilty smile.

"Yes, it's south-west of Hombombein, along the Kanom Road," Lina answers with a nod.

"Aren't you from Hombombein?" Alonso questions with a cheeky teasing smile, but Poppy still doesn't seem to have any idea where Bersidon is.

Lina does her best to keep her sadistic smile from showing. She's enjoying torturing the other dwarf a bit, but she isn't as sadistic towards strangers as a certain person can be. "It's fine. Bersidon was just a small outpost when I left over four years ago," she eases off of Poppy's shame.

Lina's Trivia: surface villages are basically looked down upon by other dwarves as backwater places. They're all dry and barren, so there really isn't much to them besides being a rest stop for the rare caravan. It's to be expected that someone from Hombombein, the capital, wouldn't know a thing about the surface villages.

Timas smiles warmly at the now completely embarrassed dwarf girl, then he saves her by recollecting, "We've never traveled too deep along the Kanom Road, but I'm sure that Bersidon has grown into a nice inn town by now. Last time we went to Hombombein, there were uncountable numbers of caravans traversing the Kanom Road all the time."

Lina doesn't think the same of it, though. "That'll only last while Aremut is deserted. Once it's reclaimed and the Crystal Road is safe, the Canyon Road will be abandoned again," she assures.

His cat ears flick, and he brightens up as he suggests, "Ah, but you never know. The growth that the Canyon Road is going through now might be enough to keep it attractive for caravans even after that."

Lina looks down at her own cup and frowns, deep in thought. "Hm… I see…" Then Timas smiles kindly, and Ciel pats her head.

Though Kyora and Alonso are still a bit grumpy, they all start to share their stories of adventures.

A note from Manasong

Hall of Fame of Patrons

The patrons who support Rupegia shall have their names sung by the bards for they deserve the glory and honor. Their names are:

Prince PreownedFIN.

Prince Creamy Spinach.

Lord Andrew Meyers.

Lord Samuel Lim.

Lord Bill.

Lord Novgarod.

Lord Ashadun.

Lord Michale Erwin.

Lord Bakerdea.

Lord Nathan Vanbrunt.

Lord Maurice.

Lord Empyrean.

Lord Mattirro Draca.

Lord Joshua Tal.

Lord Colorblind.

Lord RottenTangerine.

Lord Fullmoon.

Lord Joxsan Herrera.

Lord Sean Drake.

Lord EESDESESESRDT.

Lord Brody Haugan.

Lord FrostyCube.

Lord Mike Bartter.

Lord Cardinal Steiner.

Lord Krawn.

Lord Warwulfv.

Lord Cidant.

Lord Jorge Franco.

Lord Bradly.

Lord Freddie.

Lord Khristopher Welsh.

Lord DJ.

Lord Philip.

Lord Tenebris Lupus.

Lord ImportantNPC.

Noble Salty Panda.

Noble Mild Fracas.

Noble Aclys.

Noble Shawn Plumley.

Noble CarlBaxter.

Noble WeirdWhirl.

Noble War God.

Noble Yeuromain.

Noble Jorge Franco.

Leave a rating or a review to help me rise to the top or fix my shameful understanding of prose.

Take a look over my blog where all information about the world of Rupegia will be posted.

Join the Discord and discuss, or rant, or meme, or try and fight me so your waifu gets more screentime.

Become a Patron and read chapters in advance, or read the side-stories, or leave your mark on the story, or help choose the next artwork or the next side-story.

Chapter 96: Celebration - Part 3

A note from Manasong

Attention: to conform to the limit of mature content (more than just sexual content) allowed in a novel, I've censored this chapter. You can look for the uncensored version here.

I let the golems out and send Jarn to Ciel so that she can have some "fun" explaining what the hell a golem is, then I cuddle up with Suzy while Alissa cuddles with Ted.

I start to imagine Suzy's little body as I pat her head. A kuudere blonde little girl; a white angel counterpart for Lina with long hair that pools on the floor. She needs red eyes and cute, little red lips, though her jaw needs to be able to open wide enough to fit me whole, or at least it needs the ability to unhinge itself.

Ted could be a girl with curly or wavy hair in a cute brown color. Perhaps she could have round ears like Klein's and cute, fluffy patches of fur like Poosh.

I need to get the High Officers to help me create a body for her. Sai and Almaria could work together on creating a biological "plowable body" like a nature elemental's, which is the most malleable body out of all of my elementals.

I really want to give something back to them. Make them "happy," somehow. Aside from using [Bind] on them, this is the only other way that I can see to really do that.

Roxanne suddenly comes over to our table and breaks me out of my musings. "Dance with me, please," she pleads with a cute pout.

I awkwardly scratch my horn with a claw. I don't want to say no, but…

"Just one dance," she insists, then grabs my head and gives each of my horns a kiss.

"Alright…" I relent, then I leave Alissa with the golems, though I'll definitely dance with her later to compensate.

I quickly move some of my points around and max out [Dancing], then Roxanne's long, thin tail wraps around mine, and I show them all the beauty of Rahgeeb, the traditional dance and mating ritual of the succubi race.

After a few moves, I throw her and spin on the spot as she strikes a pose, but our tails are tied, so she spins along with me. It's almost like ice skating for her, but she's tied to me, and she uses her bat wings to glide instead of using actual skates.

Succubi tails are incredibly resilient, and even if they were to snap during the dance, they'd just regrow after a few days, anyway. There's still the taboo about amputating their demon parts, but a dancer cares not for such things.

When the wild moves stop, her body glues itself to mine, and we dance like in a flamenco. Striking, sensual moves, followed by foot tapping, then I help her spin without tying our tails together, and her dress whirls up like a parasol, forcing her to use a hand to prevent herself from being exposed.

I pull her back, and her hip glues back against mine, then our bodies move in perfect sync, our legs taking steps of the same length even though her legs are longer.

With our foreheads touching, and our eyes locked together, we ignore the world around us and unleash our charm on each other.

Hers makes me want to do her like an animal, while mine makes her want to bend over and spread herself to me. Combined together, we need nerves of steel to resist the temptation, to hold ourselves back from ripping off our clothes and mating right here and now, because resisting that impulse is part of the ritual, too.

This is one of the ancient ways for the succubi to choose partners, so I have a simple role in this ritual: to resist her temptation and be strong enough to allow her to shine. In a matriarchal society of femme fatales, a man who doesn't succumb to just about any woman is a treasure to be protected.

Roxanne's role is to shine, to appear as sensual as she can, and to charm the entire audience. I can't tell for the women, but Alissa counts a good number of erections among the attendees, including all of the male Chimeras present.

The song reaches the build-up, and I whip my tail, unfurling hers from mine so hard that she spins like a spinning top on the tip of her right foot, then she nearly takes flight as her wings give her some lift.

She rises a few centimetri off the ground, then the spin quickly loses its momentum, and she glides back down again, falling right into my arms.

I grab her waist and halt her spin, focusing on our connection to be ready to cast [Refresh] the second that she moves to retch, but it never comes.

After a moment of remaining still, I lower her down, sweeping her legs out so that she rests in my arms, then I bend my body until she's nearly horizontal and her hair is touching the floor.

The song reaches its apex, and all the instruments stop.

"I love you," I confess with a husky voice.

"I love you too, Wolfy," she softly replies with a gentle, confident smirk, and we kiss each other's lips, then the song continues, releasing all the tension it had built up.

I pull her back up for a few more spins, but we slow down along with the song, and we end in the same pose that we started in: our hips glued together, our foreheads touching, and our eyes locked.

We receive cordial applause, but Poosh leads them all with her excitement, and the rest follow suit. As a demon race herself, she seems to understand the significance of our dance.

Roxanne puts her glasses back on, and we send Poosh an appreciative nod.

After resting for a full song, the next one is calm and sensuous, following the cycle of excitement and sensuality to not tire out the party-goers too quickly.

I grab Alissa's waist, and this time we just enjoy each other instead of trying to make a performance out of it.

Roxanne returns to the party with Hana, Osaria, Aoi, Yunia, and Klein down on the ground floor, then we watch Oritiki dance with her husbands, one at a time. Her movements gradually become more intense, and their bodies get closer and closer to one another.

They suddenly kiss when the song ends as they hug, their legs rubbing against the other's, then not-Thor becomes excited, and Oritiki soon follows.

The trio suddenly leaves the dance floor and goes over to the railing. The warthog-headed husband sits on it, precariously perched on the edge of the balcony, and Oritiki bends down while not-Thor goes for her behind.

The elven Lords murmur among themselves, a few almost clutching their pearls, but none of them avert their eyes away. They like to play around the borders of love and fetishes, so outright public displays are a bit too shocking for them.

Nohopu, the squirrel-headed captain, and his wife are still dancing, but his friend is very happy. It's just a matter of time until he does his wife or one of his mistresses.

Hihiriwa is on his seat, his hand in his wife's lap, and the Gecko-headed woman has an overly stiff face that quickly distorts into one of effort and struggle, but she soon breaks her composure and lets out loud, lewd moans.

Down in the town below, the Chimeras start up some "group fun" as the alcohol gets to their non-material brains. Lina's [Solidify] has been spreading very quickly among the spirit populace, and they're certainly enjoying the "recreational" focus of the spell.

The more shameless of the perverted elves pull out their friends or expose themselves, then send their prayers to the Goddess of Love, too, because some "cultural enrichment" is about to take place.

I join Sandoro at the railing to get a better look at the parties going on down below, but Alissa's eyes provide the best details, and she even recognizes Ereia and Silvano right in the middle of one.

"Beautiful, isn't it?" I whisper to Sandoro with a warm smile gracing my face.

"Certainly… 'exceptional,'" he tersely answers, his face impassive as always.

"Do you have a wife?" -Sandoro suddenly coughs awkwardly, but I ignore this odd behavior- "You should join them if you don't and release some stress, you know? Or maybe you should both join them if you do have one."

"I'd rather not," he quickly answers, a lie if I've ever seen one.

I shrug and relent, "As long as you're happy with your choice."

"Always."

The maids and guards keep the horny nobles away from the lower party to prevent it from being completely disrupted, so the group fun takes place in the streets. Ciel is rather thankful for that because getting Kyora too stimulated would definitely be annoying to deal with. Her whole harem would be needed to keep the huge woman satisfied, meaning a premature end to their reunion.

Hana and Osaria are also down there with Klein, and they're making an effort to keep themselves contained so that they don't ruin their fun. They know that I'll wreck them later, and the anticipation of that makes the wait all the more exciting.

Silvano suddenly spurts all over Ereia's petite little body, and a pair of dog Chimeras immediately start licking it all up, then another Chimera takes Silvano's place.

That girl is incredible, really.

Sandoro swallows heavily and announces, "I'll be… off… with, uh, my wif-…" Then he catches himself and immediately walks away, but I easily notice the bulge in his pants.

I turn around and see the Mendecassa sisters playing with Sainalai, and I get really damn envious of the halfling. They'd definitely be into onee-san roleplay, and I haven't had a fix for my incest kink lately.

The inhibitions of the subordinate Lords start to give way as their consumption of alcohol picks up, and they follow the example of the Chimeras, though they lean heavily on the partner swapping aspect.

I lean my back on the railing, then Alissa sneaks a hand into my shorts. I blow air into the embers, and the draconic fire is instantly relit within me. The dragon has been awoken, and it wishes to breed with any woman that comes close.

And the first one is Poosh.

The Lords and the High Officers watch us Make Love. I make eye contact with each one of them, specially Teresina, reaching the apex of the mountain of pleasure staring at her, and show them all how I love my women, how utterly defeated Poosh is.

I'm superior to them in all matters, even in love, and I want them to realize it now so that they'll keep their heads down while they offer their wives the honor of having my children.

Poosh is just the beginning of my conquest of the world's women as the Apex Alpha that shall do them all.

I pull out a sleeping bag so that Poosh can lay down and recover in comfort. It'd be improper to treat her like a rag and let her passed-out body be thrown just anywhere for all to see. She's a respectable woman, and I'll treat her with the care and love she deserves.

Alissa cleans my Tool with her mouth, then gets up and strokes me as she whispers dirty words into my ear while we wait for the next target, but we barely even have to wait for a minute.

An elderly duo of Root Lords approaches us. They're mages with weak, shriveled bodies, but there's also a much younger and very seductive Lady wife following them.

"My Lord," the old man greets with a bow, both of his wives following suit a second later as they're already almost entranced by my Weapon. "Do you desire to lay with my wife? We're both too old to satisfy her anymore."

"Of course I do," I reply with a husky voice. The female Lord is older than Shala, putting her kind of outside my strike zone, but the younger Lady isn't any older than Osaria, so she's still a prime target for me.

I grab her face and pull her towards me so that I can play with her mouth, then I apply my soul touch through my tongue to quickly put her in the mood.

After a mere ten seconds, she pulls her dousnadeia to the side and clamps her thighs around me.

"A-ah…" The old man moans in pain as he clutches at his heart. I almost stop, fearing that he's having a heart attack, but then he pulls out his own shriveled thing and starts stroking, so I just block him from my view and focus solely on his wife.

The old woman starts pleasing herself along with her husband, and I keep her in Alissa's view just for the morale boost. Seeing others pleasing themselves to the sight of me making love to someone is incredibly satisfying.

A few more Root Lords line up for a taste, but they all fall in quick succession, not used to the Tool. The rest of the Lords watch us and the Chimeras with either curiosity or amazement, and even the Mendecassa sisters stop playing with Sai to watch, but nobody else is courageous enough to join in.

The line of Lords eventually ends, but I'm still far from satisfied, so I decide to head down with Hana and a detachment of female Lordsguard. We'll find an all-female Chimera party and dominate them all.

I turn my head up towards the Shell's balcony, but my hips don't stop moving to the beat of the music, and the cries of the small Chimera are like the main vocals of the song to my ears.

Striking blue eyes stare at me from afar, their beauty hiding the jealousy stewing behind them.

I finish the deer-headed Chimera, then give my weapon to Hukarere so she may polish it, and Kaatohe goes for the used Chimera, instead.

I look around and give them a gentle smile as I say my goodbyes, "I'm sorry, Ladies and warriors, but my wives desire my presence. I'd like to stay for longer, but I'm a loyal husband, and their desires come before all else."

"Noo~…"

"My Lord, just a little more…!"

They cry, beg, and give me puppy or kitten eyes, but things don't have to end at this exact moment.

"For today, this will be my last gift to all of you!" I shout, then I summon the tentacle monster. "You get a tentacle, you get a tentacle, everybody gets a tentaclee~…!"

Yunia grips the railing hard to steady herself as she reaches the apex while standing. Alissa releases her and gives her ear a loving nibble, then casts [Clean] on the two of them.

I stop sharing the pleasure and controlling Alissa, then I cast [Clean] on myself, Hana, Hukarere, and Kaatohe.

Once we're all presentable, I get them dressed and ask the Lordsguard to carry them to our bath, though Hana wakes up in time and walks by herself, then we leave the pile of happily sleeping Chimera where they are.

Some of them wake up and beg for me to come back like spoiled children, but I can only apologize to them and give them warm goodbyes. After this public Ravaging, I know that they'll be back one day, and in greater numbers, because my seed is definitely addictive for spirits…

Hana and I return to the Shell's balcony, then I hug Yunia and Alissa from behind.

"Missed me?" I ask with a cheeky grin.

"No," Yunia flatly responds, wearing her stony mask as usual.

That means yes.

I guide her head towards me with a claw, then I seal her lips with mine and invade her mouth, calling for her tongue to come out and play. I use the same movements that Alissa just used on her so that she realizes that it was me all along, that I was controlling Alissa while I did the pile of ravenous Chimera and a few elven women.

Our kiss is short and full of love. Just a brief exchange as a token of our love for each other.

I release her head and bury my claws on both of their nice, round cheeks, then we return to observing the party down below, and I lean my head on her shoulder, making sure that my horns don't poke her eyes out.

"After today, I think I've fulfilled my promise to you," I softly comment with a contented smile, then I kiss each of them on their bare shoulders.

"You did, you most definitely did," Yunia whispers absentmindedly, allowing herself to relax now that I'm here.

When she's alone, she finds it very hard to maintain her mask, but she can now keep it up almost as if it were her own face because the support we give her, both emotionally and through [Bind], allows her to go further than she ever did before. The power of love and friendship quite literally fuels us.

As the sun starts to set, the upper party slowly comes to an end with all the Lords leaving one by one, then we receive a note from Sandoro reporting that they're taking the Imperial [Eternal Gate] Network of the Lord's Hall in the Nobles' Quarters back to their territories. We just skim over all the names and make sure that they all left. It's a good idea to keep an eye on them, just in case they're dumb enough to actually meet with their conspirators in the open.

Kyora doesn't hear about the group fun going on in the streets, but she still ends up getting horny because all the Chimera walking around stimulates her too much, so she leaves with her harem while mine finally reunites.

I dance calmly with Osaria, my head buried in her pillows, her strong scent from a full day of dancing filling my nose, and my Tool straining against my pants as it feels the heat radiating from her.

The song ends, and I leave her hanging, denying her wish for a bit of fun as I want to tease her just a bit, then I go for my chocolate angel because she really deserves to have her dance with me after today. She didn't let her fear of Kyora get in the way of having fun with her old comrades, so I need to reward her bravery in the best way that I can: drowning her in my caress.

After her comes the little gloomy angel's turn. She was Ciel's loyal support, and she deserves just as much praise for taking such good care of her loved one. She'll get lots and lots of cuddling today, and even a light course of hole stretching.

Alissa teases Klein about the knighting ceremony, then Roxanne joins in, and Hana comes to rescue the little monkey from the bullies.

Aoi soon tires out and changes back into her dragon form. She gained a lot of admirers today since the elves favor tall and slender women, and there's definitely a large number of dragon fetishists around here, which I've personally confirmed.

"The group fun is still ongoing," Yunia blurts out, sounding impressed.

"The Chimeras are insatiable," Lina states matter-of-factly.

"As is Ereia, it seems," Yunia adds, sounding incredulous of the fact that the small elf is still with the Chimeras.

"We're insatiable, too," Ted suddenly speaks out.

We all turn surprised looks towards the ever-present bodyguards.

"Our desire to serve is endless," Suzy continues immediately.

"And our limitless capacity allows us to satisfy all Masters," Jarn elaborates.

"Therefore, we're insatiable, too," Ted concludes.

I shrug and smile wryly. "I can't argue with that."

With that, we end our participation in the festivities. They'll keep going without us and rage all night long, or at least until the alcohol runs out.

Intermission 21 – Ira Saponaria

"Bloody Lord," is how the Title reads in my status.

Soapy water mixed with my dark, old blood runs down my skin. It seeps through the trunk floor and rains down into the moss greenhouse below us. My own plants drink my vital fluids, just like they have for many of my ancestors, but never before had it been spilt for such a shameful reason.

Warriors, protectors, and heroes of the people. My ancestors have been ruling this part of the High Forest for thousands of years, and never before have they bled from an enemy that they didn't kill.

Generations of warriors all culminating in me, someone who couldn't even swing his sword and was mocked so completely by having my enemy deliberately wound themselves with it.

"Darling?" My love whispers in my ear, concerned about my silence. "Are you okay?"

No, I'm not. It's only now, after the heat of battle, shame, and alcohol have all left my body that I can truly see the full extent of my arrogance.

"When I was down, bleeding and unconscious on the cold floor, I saw the Gods," my mouth moves on its own, weakly mumbling as it bares my heart.

"What did you see?" She asks curiously, trying to hide her growing worry.

I sigh and fight a lump in my throat that refuses to budge. "I was the closest that I'd ever be to them, and yet, I saw nothing, for the Gods didn't think that I was worthy of it. They'd found me wanting."

A note from Manasong

Hall of Fame of Patrons

The patrons who support Rupegia shall have their names sung by the bards for they deserve the glory and honor. Their names are:

Prince PreownedFIN.

Prince Creamy Spinach.

Lord Andrew Meyers.

Lord Samuel Lim.

Lord Bill.

Lord Novgarod.

Lord Ashadun.

Lord Michale Erwin.

Lord Bakerdea.

Lord Nathan Vanbrunt.

Lord Maurice.

Lord Empyrean.

Lord Mattirro Draca.

Lord Joshua Tal.

Lord Colorblind.

Lord RottenTangerine.

Lord Fullmoon.

Lord Joxsan Herrera.

Lord Sean Drake.

Lord EESDESESESRDT.

Lord Brody Haugan.

Lord FrostyCube.

Lord Mike Bartter.

Lord Cardinal Steiner.

Lord Krawn.

Lord Warwulfv.

Lord Cidant.

Lord Jorge Franco.

Lord Bradly.

Lord Freddie.

Lord Khristopher Welsh.

Lord DJ.

Lord Philip.

Lord Tenebris Lupus.

Lord ImportantNPC.

Noble Salty Panda.

Noble Mild Fracas.

Noble Aclys.

Noble Shawn Plumley.

Noble CarlBaxter.

Noble WeirdWhirl.

Noble War God.

Noble Yeuromain.

Noble Jorge Franco.

Leave a rating or a review to help me rise to the top or fix my shameful understanding of prose.

Take a look over my blog where all information about the world of Rupegia will be posted.

Join the Discord and discuss, or rant, or meme, or try and fight me so your waifu gets more screentime.

Become a Patron and read chapters in advance, or read the side-stories, or leave your mark on the story, or help choose the next artwork or the next side-story.

Chapter 97: Peace and Quiet - Part 1

A note from Manasong

Attention: to conform to the limit of mature content (more than just sexual content) allowed in a novel, I've censored this chapter. You can look for the uncensored version here.

We get a [Gate] to the entrance of our private gardens and take a stroll along the path to relax and wind down.

Osaria and Klein are spending some quality time together, so it's only me and the wives for now.

Jarn carries little Lina on her shoulders, which makes for an adorable sight, allowing me to become entranced with her dangling feet adorned by the cutest little shoes.

"Group fun" is nice, but have you ever let yourself simply be consumed by the desire to caress the love of your life until the end of time? No amount of free women will ever supplant my obsession with my wives.

The cuteness of Alissa's ears twitching; the sway of Roxanne's hips; the majesty of Hana's chest; the bouncing of Ciel's juicy ass; the adorableness of Lina's demeanor; the intensity of Aoi's stare; the perfection of Yunia's face. There's an uncountable number of their characteristics that I could spend my whole life happily worshiping.

Roxanne turns around and gives me a cheeky smirk, but her glare shoots like a whip, and her tongue makes the threat real, "Do you want me to suck you dry? Stop with the compliments; you're making me hornier than my body can handle."

I smile evilly, as it somehow tickles my fancy to annoy them with compliments alone. "As Yunia once said: 'don't threaten me with a good time,'" I coolly warn her.

Yunia gives Roxanne a side-eye, glaring at her angrily for just a brief moment as she coldly jabs, "Stay quiet, you loose woman, and continue complimenting me, my king." Then she smiles smugly, eagerly anticipating my next words.

Alissa's undying loyalty is what allows me to sleep soundly at night. Just knowing that there's someone with such a strong will who is channeling all that energy into keeping us all together gives me the hope that I need to keep fighting on.

My foxy lover blushes and holds her cheeks in a girlish pose as her fluffy tail wags uncontrollably.

Hana's reliability in combat makes her an anchor for us all. She's always ready to face anything and anyone, to sacrifice her own body for the safety of others because she knows that she can handle the pain. She's the shield of our harem.

The proud warrior lowers her head and bashfully runs her fingers through her hair.

"Wolfy…" Yunia warns me coldly.

Roxanne's liveliness and overwhelming magical power are what make her unique. She can turn a Grim Giant's brain into mush with just a thought in a single second, and in the very next one, she can draw all our minds away from the depressing thoughts of battle with her cheeky smirk.

The thirsty succubus suddenly turns around again and grabs my face, then kisses me deeply, her tongue entwining with mine as she begs for me to shove my Tool inside her mouth and use her horns as handlebars.

Something I said must have triggered her ovaries, and now she wants nothing more than to be plowed by me.

"My compliments, Wolfy…" Yunia demands, her hot breath in my ear sending chills down my spine.

But Ciel cuts down Yunia's snobbishness. "No, no. We all need to hear these things," she calmly states, but the intensity of her tone makes Yunia hesitate. Not even she would dare to go against the angel.

Roxanne lets me go and gets a hold of herself, for now, so we continue with our stroll.

Ciel's ever-present angelic aura sets us all at ease. We know that we can always count on her being there for us, and we all owe her a great deal of respect for always being there to heal our bodies, minds, and souls.

Ciel's smile is so bright that it lights up the way ahead for us, not literally, but I guess her high "Charisma" does affect us a bit, setting our minds at ease.

Yunia pouts and pretends to ignore us, actually acting rather spoiled for once.

Lina's dedication to the harem is also commendable. She's the youngest, yet also one of the hardest workers I've ever seen. She truly believes in us, who believe in her just as ardently, so she diligently does whatever is needed of her without hesitation.

My cute little dwarf suddenly grabs my tail and wraps it around her neck like a scarf, then hugs it tight.

Aoi is simply a delightful person to be around. Always good-willed and energetic, she strongly triggers my feelings of protectiveness, but she's also a strong, independent woman who always shows us her appreciation for our affection.

"Hehehehehe," my alluring blue dragon laughs cheekily, her large tail swaying powerfully, almost smacking the ground.

Yunia is a strong, reliable person, and we can always put our trust in her knowledge and judgment. Regardless of her occasional snobbishness, she always has what's best for the harem in mind, and she never lets her strong pride get in the way of doing what's right. We can trust in her strong will to handle politics, but we'll always be here to support her when she needs us.

"You used too many words for her, I demand more!" Roxanne shouts as she gives me an intense look, though she's about to fall down onto her knees for me, begging for more attention.

"Quiet, harlot," Yunia starts to lash out through gritted teeth, but an angry chirp prevents her from unleashing her sadism.

Gify stands on Alissa's hand and glares at me. "Gih!" She demands, extensively listing off all the times when she was essential to the harem.

"Alright…" I mumble with a wry smile.

Gify is a comedic relief. Every time something too heavy happens, she'll find a way to ease the tension back to bearable levels. For all the teasing we do to each other, I still quite enjoy having her on my shoulder all the time.

"Gih…" Gify begrudgingly accepts. She has an issue with a few of the words, but the sentiment's alright.

"Now I want more," Roxanne presses me again, then licks her lips sensually as she imagines my taste.

"No. Now's the time for us to return the kindness," Yunia deftly deflects Roxanne's thirst.

"You're clinging to him quite a lot today," Hana makes a remark towards Roxanne, her face warped in a concerned frown.

Roxanne's glasses glint as her sadism is triggered. "Oh? Jealous?" She quickly shoots back, her tone full of sass.

"Yes. Screw you," Hana immediately admits, too straight-forward to play Roxanne's game.

Roxanne chuckles like a Lady, covering her mouth with her hand. "Ohohoh… well, I'm basically a queen now, am I not? How can I not be happy? But if you wanted me to play with you, you just had to ask."

Then Roxanne instantly clings to the side of Hana's body like glue, and Hana continues walking as if she weighed nothing. The succubus starts playing with her meal's chest, and Hana smiles happily, enjoying the attention quite a bit.

"Anyway…" Ciel brings us back on track and mentally nods towards Alissa to start.

Alissa knows that my love for them is so deep that she has zero worries about ever being abandoned for another woman. It also fuels her fetish, just knowing that no matter how hard they may try, nobody will ever take me away from her.

And it's true. No other woman tastes as good as my goddesses'.

Alissa pulls on Roxanne's tail to get her to focus on what's important right now, and she squeaks in surprise. After quickly recomposing herself, she lets her heart do the speaking for her.

Roxanne just loves everything about this family. For her, what we have here is unique and can never be replaced. Simply put, she has hopelessly fallen in love with me and everyone else.

Hana and I share a nod full of meaning. We'll Do her together when it's her turn.

With her brain filled with high-impact salacious violence, it takes a moment for my fiery dragonkin to think about our relationship. She doesn't know what else to think of besides the fact that she trusts me, with all her heart. She'll protect us with everything she has and follow me through hell if need be.

Roxanne kisses her cheek for all of us, right on her emerald scales.

Ciel is similar to Roxanne. She loves me, but she also loves the rest of our family quite a lot. It doesn't matter how much the Gods favor me, she just loves me as a person and wants to stay close to me.

I slap her ass playfully, making it jiggle so alluringly that it's worthy of a slow-mo camera capturing the moment.

She pouts back but doesn't complain since it didn't actually hurt. As long as the bullying isn't too heavy, she can deal with it.

Lina feels like a small, cuddly animal since the only thing she wants is to be hugged by me until she dies. The comfort she feels in my arms is simply immeasurable.

And she hugs my tail tighter, a happy smile brightening her gloomy face.

Aoi is happy. For her, there's nothing that she could even begin to complain about, except perhaps the lack of seeds in her fields and eggs to care for.

She gives me a toothy grin which I return. That's exactly what I expected from her.

My promise to Yunia is very important to her. She doesn't ever want to feel that alone again, and by following me, not only will she prevent that, but she knows that she'll find true happiness.

My face melts from her confession, and I feel a strong need to hug her right now, but she only softens her stern mask a bit and graces me with a subtle smile.

Gify loves this family. For as much as we banter, it's all in good fun, and she'll never regret attaching herself to us.

Her tsundere behavior makes this confession seem all the more sweet to me, and I get Alissa to give her lots of pats in my stead.

Their confessions make me feel completely refreshed, as if they'd renewed our vows, but they've certainly rekindled my motivation to protect what I have with my all.

I sigh softly and breathe in deeply, savoring their nostalgic perfumes.

Really, what an intense day. I mean, I don't think anyone has properly processed the significance of the Divine Intervention yet, so it won't truly be over for quite a while.

As we approach the castle, we notice a very annoyed Kaatohe waiting at the top of the steps to the main hall. Her bronze body is a treat for my eyes, and her angry face makes the sadist within me want to dominate her until her hips give out.

I didn't do her enough with my real Tool since I didn't have the time, so I still have a bit of an appetite for anthro women.

"What is the meaning of this? I apparently have to be 'invited' to the 'high-leaves,' for some reason?" Kaatohe flippantly questions, her hands stuck on her thin waist in a sassy posture.

"Ah, yes…" Yunia breathes and shares a knowing smile with the girls and me. "Only concubines and wives are allowed up there without our express approval."

Kaatohe's scowl gets frozen stiff, and the raised hairs on her back slowly lower down. "Ah… yes, I understand…" She grumbles, trying to restrain her anger at being "snubbed."

Do I really want Kaatohe as a concubine? The dragon says yes, but it's easy to ignore him when my human side is in control.

Unlike Klein, I don't really feel jealous about her and Hukarere being with other men. The way the Chimeras treat laying with others is a bit too casual, so I never had that many expectations about them to begin with.

I do admit that Hukarere has been growing on me, but if neither she nor Kaatohe really want to have a more intimate relationship with me, we shouldn't push them towards that path.

As much as we all want to wait until Kaatohe confesses that she wants to be treated as a concubine, it's not really a good idea to push her into it, so I throw her a lifebuoy, "If you want to come in regularly and visit us, we'll tell the guards to let you in without questioning you as long as you don't bring any unannounced guests. The higher-leaves should be the most secure locations in the entire town, so only a select number of people should ever have access to them."

Kaatohe clears her throat and immediately grabs onto my offer to save her pride, "Yes, that's… acceptable…"

We start to climb the steps and approach her. The view of her lower bits being illuminated by the sunset is worthy of a painting.

"Come visit us often, and not just for a lay, alright?" Hana casually suggests and pats her shoulder as she passes.

Yunia nods in agreement and adds, "Whenever you aren't on duty, you should come to spend some time with us."

Kaatohe narrows her eyes and holds back a pout. "I will," she stiffly agrees.

Ciel gives her an apologetic smile, feeling guilty about the light bullying we're giving the catwoman, then we enter the castle while Kaatohe walks away. It seems that she's a bit too embarrassed to stick around this time.

We enter the bath, and I start doing a [Massage] routine for the girls to relieve their stress. Yunia is up first since she worked really hard today. I don't need to relax since the group fun already did plenty for my strained soul.

My fake hands run up Yunia's thighs, their thumbs applying a subtle amount of pressure along her skin as they go up to her legs. I probe her thoughts and become satisfied with the precise amount of teasing she's feeling.

It truly is wonderful being able to play with their bodies without worrying that I'm going to accidentally slice their bits into pieces.

Of all the girls, she's the one who desires the most measured touch to fulfill her needs. Some would say that she's "high maintenance," but how "high" is it really if it's effortless to me?

I stare at Poosh with a smirk as I play with Yunia. I won't do another Klein and profess my love for her, but I will make her one of my "flings" until I'm confident that she's worthy of standing beside Osaria as a concubine.

The soft and curvy sheep woman walks towards me with confident steps, but I feel that she's more serious than usual since her motherly kindness seems to be a bit dampened.

I release Yunia, letting them continue to be massaged by more fake hands, then I grab her ears and [Massage] them very delicately. They're even more sensitive than Alissa's ears, so I can't even nibble them without severe consequences.

Yunia grips my thighs, her long fingers unconsciously giving me gentle caresses as her mind fogs up from the heavenly massage.

Poosh stops before me, her eyes staring directly into mine, and her chest struggling to keep her breath from going out of control.

I turn to her and kindly offer, "Do you wish to receive a massage, too? I'll have time for you once I satisfy my wives."

Poosh gently shakes her head. "No, my Lord. I'm still… sore." -She smiles wryly- "I only wish to help."

I motion towards the girls. "Then, let us start."

Once everyone is refreshed, Hana and I gang up on Roxanne to punish her.

Poosh watches on with deep curiosity, her tenseness slowly fading away as she becomes more comfortable around us. It seems that she does want to grow more intimate with us, but perhaps she's concerned that we'd reject her for trying to push our relationship too fast.

Osaria and Klein suddenly barge into the bath, both of them quite out of breath, and they immediately start to make out on the spot. They kind of had a habit of doing each other for the four months that we'd been away, so they still miss each other's company once in a while.

I immediately join them because they're sorely lacking a male to play with.

We're all still full of desserts and snacks from the party, so we only eat a simple soup for dinner and then retire to our rooms.

With how exhausted everyone is from the day's activities, we end up falling asleep fairly quickly.

Today is the 12th, Yn, day of Earth. Mining starts today, for it's easier to dig into the earth and crack the stones apart, marking the beginning of the work cycle for most dwarves.

Everyone's "Charisma" increased by 1. I'd be a bit disappointed if we didn't earn anything from the Ceremony since we put so much effort into charming an entire town.

Ciel and Aoi increased their "Piety" by 1 (now 25 and 6), which is understandable since the Divine Intervention was such an intense experience. It's understandable that it would affect them the most.

Yunia invites the twins for breakfast, and the duo comes into the room looking a bit… hungover.

They sit down more delicately than usual, and Yunia narrows her eyes at them.

"Tutu, Tata, you two disappeared after the beginning of the party. I assume you went to the ground floor?" She calmly questions with a deliberate tone.

"Yes, we did," Arturus gives an uncharacteristically laconic response.

"I was dancing with Klein and the others, but I didn't see you there," Osaria innocently comments, then reveals a grin that's the opposite of "innocent."

"We were with friends," Antares attempts a deflection, showing that the talent for using masks runs in the family

"Outside the lower party?" Yunia sets up the trap.

"I certainly didn't see them near the dance floor," Osaria corners them.

"Neither did I see them at the tables," Ciel guiltily lays out the bait, regretful that she has to participate in this evil ambush.

Arturus becomes frustrated with all the persistent questioning, and he takes a blind step forward before his brother can shut his big mouth for him. "We were on the streets," he so innocently admits that even Arturus shows an amused reaction.

Yunia subtly smirks as her trap card is activated. "Where the 'group fun' was taking place?" She serenely asks, delighting herself with their internal screams and barely contained cringing.

I wait for a moment to see if they have any riposte, but they simply lower their heads in defeat, waiting for someone to put them out of their misery.

"Congratulations on your first time," I praise them with a shit-eating grin.

"Maybe you should give them some pointers for love-making, Wolfy. Show them how to properly eat," Hana kindly suggests with a kind grin and a definitely not teasing, kind tone.

"In case we're busy, the priests that worship the Goddess of Love are always available to answer these types of questions," Ciel gives them some genuine advice with an apologetic smile.

"Maybe they'll be more comfortable talking about these kinds of things with someone they know," Osaria counterpoints, mirroring Hana's tone. "I'd gladly show them these things myself, with a paid woman, of course. My body is solely for the use of Wolfy's harem."

I energetically nod in agreement towards Osaria and snap my fingers as I praise her, "Great Idea! The three of us could then celebrate this milestone in their lives by sharing a woman, and it'd also serve as a teaching experience."

Antares gets up and sends me a glare. "No," he hisses, straining himself to not swear, then starts stomping his way out of the room.

Yunia reaches for Arturus and grabs his hand as she apologizes, "I'm sorry! We'll stop. I swear."

Both of them turn their narrowed, suspicious eyes towards her, but Yunia's being genuine right now, so they sigh in unison and relent.

We reign in the banter and finish our meal, then we go to an empty training room to start our new daily routine: the imperial mana increase training.

The training itself isn't the noteworthy part, though. The important bit is that this training allows me to continue my research of [Otherwordly Summoning].

I need to learn more about this spell as fast as possible.

A note from Manasong

Hall of Fame of Patrons

The patrons who support Rupegia shall have their names sung by the bards for they deserve the glory and honor. Their names are:

Prince PreownedFIN.

Prince Creamy Spinach.

Lord Andrew Meyers.

Lord Samuel Lim.

Lord Bill.

Lord Novgarod.

Lord Ashadun.

Lord Michale Erwin.

Lord Bakerdea.

Lord Nathan Vanbrunt.

Lord Maurice.

Lord Empyrean.

Lord Mattirro Draca.

Lord Joshua Tal.

Lord Colorblind.

Lord RottenTangerine.

Lord Fullmoon.

Lord Joxsan Herrera.

Lord Sean Drake.

Lord EESDESESESRDT.

Lord Brody Haugan.

Lord FrostyCube.

Lord Mike Bartter.

Lord Cardinal Steiner.

Lord Krawn.

Lord Warwulfv.

Lord Cidant.

Lord Jorge Franco.

Lord Bradly.

Lord Freddie.

Lord Khristopher Welsh.

Lord DJ.

Lord Philip.

Lord Tenebris Lupus.

Lord ImportantNPC.

Noble Salty Panda.

Noble Mild Fracas.

Noble Aclys.

Noble Shawn Plumley.

Noble CarlBaxter.

Noble WeirdWhirl.

Noble War God.

Noble Yeuromain.

Noble Jorge Franco.

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Chapter 97: Peace and Quiet - Part 2

Peace and quiet. Without any pressing matters arising, I finally achieve true peace within my heart as even the dragon calms down. I need to balance my two sides, so now it's time for the human to be in full control.

I keep adding and removing points from [Summoning Magic] while I reflect on my knowledge of summoning. The mana training routine is so simple that I can do it on auto-pilot. It isn't a sub-process yet, but I believe that it'll gradually become one over time.

This kind of training is really slow at increasing our mana, so we'll have to do it every day if we ever want to even get close to someone like Grandpa Ryzek when we're older.

Back to Summoning, I start to compare the "intuition" the skill gives and quickly realize that it's similar to wormhole theory, as in, it's possible to punch a "hole" through the "fabric" of reality. The problem is that after that, things go… "abstract," and I can't make sense of it anymore.

A "wormhole" isn't an actual thing that exists or can be recreated through known physical phenomena/processes, making it something entirely magical. There's also the possibility that it violates some primordial law of reality, putting it in the same realm as my [Redirect Mana] when being used to interrupt spells.

Also, the skill provides zero information on this spell, so I can't even try to guess at what it's all actually about. Maybe at the capital, we could find some sort of clue…

"We actually do have to go to the capital sometime soon," Yunia suddenly points out, pulling us all out of our musings. "As the newest Crown Lords, we have to pay our respects to the emperor himself."

"Can it wait until after our wedding?" Alissa asks, worried that she'll have to change her preparations.

Yunia nods gently. "Yes, it can. We're advised to get our own territory under control first before we go to meet him."

Alissa smiles contently and returns to planning our marriage ceremony. She's thinking about all the guests we'll have to invite, then she suddenly frowns because of Hana's and Roxanne's parents.

"Can we have a simple ceremony with just us, and then a party later on when everyone's together?" I immediately suggest. It might take us too long to find Hana's parents, and we don't want them to miss the ceremony.

Hana's heart goes on an entire roller-coaster in a second, the coming depression immediately being blasted away by a high of happiness from my suggestion, then she shouts and earnestly pleads, "Yes! Can we, please? I want… I want my parents to see the exchange of our vows."

"That's acceptable. We might now be able to speed up Confiel's search by throwing our influence around, too," Yunia agrees, her calm demeanor not showing a hint of sadness at the mention of parents.

Neither does Aoi even bat an eye at it. She's so detached from her monster parents that she barely even remembers them anymore.

Then we turn to Roxanne, who seems to be growing increasingly distressed.

"We have to invite her. It'll be worse if we don't," Ciel advises her, then gets up and walks over to the tense succubus to give her a hug.

Of course, I take the opportunity to hug her too, and the situation quickly devolves into a cuddle puddle.

Roxanne deliberately nestles her head between Ciel's breasts, which slightly annoys Hana, but she lets it pass, this time.

Once everyone's comfortable, Yunia adds on another blow to Roxanne's will, "It'd also be proper if we met with her in person instead of just sending a letter. The [Eternal Gate] network extends into Xane, if my memory is correct, so it's now trivial for us to go there."

"Hnn~…" Roxanne whines like a sad dog.

"Why do you fear your mother?" Ciel asks with a very cautious and gentle tone as her fingers run through Roxanne's dark, silky hair.

"I don't exactly fear her, I'm just ashamed of suddenly going back since I never even wrote them a letter," she confesses.

I hug her body tighter while Ciel comforts her, "You'll have to meet her, sooner or later, but we'll be right there with you."

"You can't enjoy anal without stretching the asshole first," Hana wisely advises, and Ciel gives her a brief glare.

"Earthlings use the analogy of 'pulling a tooth,' but okay, I guess that one works, too," I mumble and chuckle.

"Well, Hana's right… I miss my Dad," Roxanne whimpers again and curls up into a ball while Hana gives Ciel a smug smile.

Ciel plays with her floppy horns and reassures her, "The actual ceremony will take a while, so you do have time to get used to the idea of meeting her." Then Roxanne nods slowly.

"How about we meet with everyone's parents? One visit per day," I happily suggest.

Lina suddenly lets out a sharp cry of surprise, "Ah! Can my parents be first, please?!" She desperately pleads.

Of course, nobody can say no to the anguished face she's making.

We all hum in agreement, and Lina lowers her head, blushing in embarrassment. "I'm sorry. It's just that they don't even know if I'm alive…" She meekly explains herself.

I reach over and pat her head with my claws, then I list out, "We'll visit Lina's parents first, then Alissa's, then Ciel's, then Roxanne's. How about that?"

"My parents?" Ciel questions confusedly.

I smile warmly at her and hold back a chuckle. "I mean, Arantos, the Head Priest, is kind of your dad."

Ciel scratches the back of her head embarrassedly as she mumbles, "Oh, yeah. Well, I was planning to suggest that we visit him, anyway."

"Let's wait for a few days to rest up, then we'll start visiting them all," Yunia suggests, and we all agree. Just two or three days to make sure that all the important matters are taken care of.

Our bill for using the [Eternal Gate]s to cross the continent multiple times might become expensive, even for us, but we won't be doing it for too long, so it's an acceptable expense.

Our morning continues on in silence. We only get a note from Sandoro reporting that there are multiple priests and a few commoners praying in front of the Shell, on Prasa de Ananci, where the divine beam of light shined down on us.

They're actually praying for us, which is a bit weird to think about, but I find it more amusing to think that if that plaza actually becomes a holy site or something like that, we might have to change its name. I'm not much of a history buff, but it does make me a bit giddy when I think about how we're making history and what my descendants might have to say about me.

Even a few Chimeras are seen praying, so I think Teresina is probably quite happy with how they're starting to convert.

Then, for lunch, we invite Oritiki and her husbands.

I wish I could watch her getting railed again and have some fun of my own or with one of the girls while I watch them. I found it to be a truly beautiful sight to see such a big, strong woman getting double-teamed by these two ripped guys.

"Well, I'm glad things haven't changed much," Oritiki suddenly blurts out.

"What?" I ask absentmindedly, breaking out of the spell that her cow tits cast upon me.

"The 'Divine Intervention.' I thought you'd be…" -She scratches her horn in thought- "I don't know, 'worshiped,' by the others." Then she shrugs.

"Oh, that," I hum, still a bit absentminded.

"Not everyone is that pious," Ciel responds with a gentle grin.

"So I should worship him, or something?" Oritiki probes further.

Ciel is taken by surprise and opens her eyes wide. "Wait, are you converting?"

Oritiki awkwardly gestures with a frown as she tries to articulate her thoughts, "Those were the Gods who did that… time stop? And the beam of light? If they do have some power over the realm, then maybe I should pay my respects to them?"

Not-Thor agrees emphatically with her, confidently sharing his opinion, "Yeah. That 'event' was pretty intense. If the Humanoid Gods really are that active, then it makes no sense for us to ignore them."

Hey, that's the same reasoning as mine.

Rei, the warthog husband, exhales loudly, his large nostrils visibly flaring. "Their power over our Fate should be much stronger than their power over the physical realm, right?" He wonders with a stern tone.

"You don't really have much of a Thread for them to influence, though," Ciel points out.

But Yunia counterpoints, "Their Threads are still there, just cut. Otherwise, I wouldn't be able to use [Precognition] on them."

"If I throw a rock at you, would you be able to see it?" I blurt out a question.

"Yes, because the rock is still being affected by your Thread."

Well, that's rather interesting. I guess this is why the spell can see the actual weapons attacking her and not just the physical bodies wielding them.

"So, only something like a natural phenomenon could ever ambush you?" I question further, trying to be quick to not derail the conversation entirely.

Yunia nods gently then gives me a subtle smirk. "Or something that moves faster than I can react to."

Like me, heheh.

"Anyway, you said that their Threads are still there," I return the conversation back from my tangent.

"I don't know how the Gods manipulate our Threads, but I know that the Chimeras still have theirs, just 'cut,' somehow," Yunia repeats.

And Ciel clarifies, "The temple doesn't know precisely what having a 'cut' Thread means, so they want to prevent something bad from happening by encouraging the spirits to move on to Paradise. The Gods also don't like people forcing the spirits to remain in the realm, so it follows that it isn't exactly a good thing for them."

Then Oritiki expands on that point, "We do know that spirits can become 'evil' after staying in the realm for too long, like with the Vengeful Spirits you saw around Whakamutu."

"Or Fallen Aremut," Lina quietly adds.

"Gih," Gify chirps offhandedly.

"Or they merge with nature spirits," Oritiki repeats with a wry smile.

I hum in thought and point out, "Well, we don't know if all spirits that remain on land for too long become evil. I mean, you didn't."

Oritiki takes a sip of her cup and crosses her arms, forcing up those large, alluring, black tits. "Ah, I see. I guess that's true, but [Trap Soul] does make our spirits a lot more 'stable,' if the Spirit mages are right."

Ciel grins and proposes, "Well, you don't have to worship Wolfy, but it doesn't hurt to pray to Gods, does it?"

"Nope," Oritiki and her husbands all grunt in sync, then take a sip from their cups.

This talk makes Ciel delighted, but my sadism flares up, and I smirk evilly as I ask, "How's the [Soul Manipulation] progressing?"

Oritiki freezes, her cow face twitching as she holds back her emotions. "It's progressing," she answers with a hoarse voice, her tone full of pain.

Hana happily grins as she's reminded that she has the time to "help" with their training today.

Today, the elven veggies have been sauteed in not-sesame-seed oil, giving it that subtle and delicious taste of sesame. Yunia doesn't recognize the oil, so I guess it's one of Krysta's experimental dishes. It's really good, so no complaints here.

I'm really happy with how hard she tries to come up with something different for each meal, and I'll definitely fight the elven chefs if they ever have some beef with her.

In the afternoon, I have a meeting with the High Officers. I spare the girls from having to attend the boring office ritual, and they disperse, off to their own devices.

When I enter the meeting room, the Officers all stand up and bow. It's a bit odd, but Yunia advises me to not stop them so that they know that there's a certain "distance" between us.

I mean, I literally came inside Poosh while tongue kissing her and could've impregnated her if not for the Fertility Ring, but I guess I just have to keep sex and work separate.

I sit down and notice that only Silvano is missing, which Alcander immediately points out, "He's late," he grumbles in disapproval.

I glance at my pocket watch and calm him down, "I'm actually a bit early, so let's not be unreasonable."

"I'm of a mind to include Sir Silvano in the training with the rookie Lordsguard," Sandoro speaks his mind.

But I'm somewhat skeptical, "He hasn't done anything actually bad yet, but I'll agree to it when he deserves some 'punishment.'"

Sandoro obediently lowers his head and defers to my judgement, "As you wish, your Highness."

The dragon in me definitely approves of the honorific.

"Ah, yes. You can call us 'your Highness' or 'Lords' as you wish since our dynasty hasn't been recognized yet," I casually remark, then I turn my head towards Sai and smirk as I tease her, "Anyway, I'm actually jealous of you, Dame Sainalai. I couldn't even get the Mendecassa sisters to look at me during dinner."

Sai suddenly holds back a chuckle and grins widely. "Your Highness, the sisters were staring very intently at your… member when you pulled it out, and you also had quite a few beautiful women coming up to you, so it's not like you didn't have any fun yourself."

I lean back and flick with my wrist a bit snobbishly. "Well, yes. It's just that the sisters are on another level. They really make me excited."

Sai nods and closes her eyes as she reminisces, "Yes, those long fingers of theirs are very… dexterous." She sighs nostalgically and smiles faintly.

Sandoro and Alcander share a worried look while Almaria has a completely neutral expression and Poosh smiles warmly at us.

I stare at Sai, the memory of the sisters playing with her pussy and modest breasts is still very fresh in my mind… and now I really want to fuck her, too. Ciel even has to stop her casual sharing of thoughts with me because that memory is actually making her quite horny.

"Until I have a taste of the sisters myself, I'll treasure the memory of you and them together quite fondly," I calmly state.

And at that, she giggles softly like the vixen she is. "Please do," she coos, her voice a pitch higher.

Oof. I'm definitely going for this loli, too.

Then Silvano comes in a minute later, smirking like the daredevil he is, and the narrowed eyes of reproval from half of the Officers blunts his attitude a bit.

I clear my throat and begin the inescapable, dreary, ritual, "This is the first regular meeting between the Lord and the High Officers. To start, please tell me what you're all working on."

"I'm training the mages in [Ritualism] so that they'll be able to use siege spells," Alcander starts.

And Silvano follows, immediately sounding very bored, "I'm training the Terraformers."

"I'm working with the Nature mages to improve the Sky Docks and carve your heraldry all over the castle," Almaria categorically asserts.

"I'm working with the Chimeras and the priests to give them a better, combat-related [Solidify]," Sai happily reports.

Poosh's tone is a bit serious and deliberate, which seems a bit unusual for her. "I'm… 'training,' the influx of female staff to a new standard that I'm establishing," she calmly declares and adjusts her round glasses.

Her wording worries me a bit. "As long as it's all 'voluntary'…" I try to articulate, but I don't really know how to properly advise her right now.

"It'll all be under the watch of the Gods," Poosh assures me, and I decide to observe her work for a little longer to see what she'll do before trying to discuss this matter further.

After scratching my horn awkwardly, I turn my eyes to Sandoro and motion for him to continue.

He's earnest and very pleased with himself, smiling proudly as he says, "I'm integrating the Chimeras with our forces. The spirit soldiers, pilots, and Celestial Horns all require different protocols to become truly effective in warfare."

"I see…" I grab my chin in thought.

I try to get the Officers to work together, such as having Sai talk with Sandoro about what, exactly, he needs from [Solidify], then I "encourage" Silvano to engage more with the exercises by "suggesting" that he spar with Hana. I also talk about the girls' projects, like Alissa's desire for illusion mages, Roxanne's alchemical needs, Lina's airship industry, and Aoi's metallurgy.

There are a few concepts regarding leadership that we need to iron out. Sai may be a researcher, but she has the least experience actually leading people, so she needs to be prepared for actual warfare even though she's just a Spirit mage.

It's mentally draining having to guide people so that they work together, but it frees up Yunia's workload by a lot, so I'll gladly do this for her.

With all those topics addressed, I broach the last one, switching my tone to be deadly serious, "One last thing. Soon, I'll be trying out a very dangerous spell, and I'll want all of the High Mages to participate to help me contain it in case things go wrong."

"What spell?" Alcander immediately asks, his curiosity piqued, just a split second before Silvano can ask the same thing.

"It's a lost spell of [Summoning Magic], but I don't know much about what it does."

Alcander frowns and shares a confused look with Silvano as he questions, "How did you learn to cast a spell that you know so little about…?"

But Silvano presses me with another question, his eyes wild and excited, before I can even answer the first one, "Is it related to your Gift?"

I nod subtly, maintaining an impassive expression. "Yes. It's why I know so little about it."

Poosh and Sandoro aren't mages, so they can't help out with the experiment, but they're still very interested in it regardless. I assume it's because of the words "danger" and "Gift," respectively.

"What will our purpose be, exactly?" Almaria questions, seemingly the one with the most professional demeanor right now.

"Interrupting it. Whatever happens, the spell must not be completed," I seriously warn them.

"Ominous…" She hums grimly.

I can't hold back my smirk. I don't want to explain everything about my Gift, but it does end up sounding pretty ominous from how I've described it so far. "Indeed. It's really dangerous, which is why we'll prepare as many safety measures as we can."

"Is it really necessary to cast this spell?" Sandoro asks, his face stiff as he tries to hold back his disapproval.

"Yes. I've been guided to it by the Gods," I calmly state, and that settles some of their tension while also feeding their curiosity.

Sandoro rubs his chin in thought, now a lot more open to the experiment than before. "I see… Shouldn't we ask for the help of the priests, too?"

I shake my head and dismiss that suggestion, "Any information about this is too sensitive to involve outsiders, and Ciel can handle whatever healing might be necessary. Also, I'm only telling you all about this experiment because you're my Blood Slaves; it's that secretive."

He lowers his head respectfully and backs down, "As you wish, your Highness."

Then I turn to Almaria. "We'll use your [Interruption Field] since it's stronger than Yunia's, but we also have to make sure that it won't accidentally kill me since I have [Mana Body], so I want to start testing that out with you as soon as possible."

She subtly nods, completely composed and professional, then I glance at Sai as I add, "And your soul healing, too."

The cute loli excitedly agrees, and we wrap up the meeting.

I take them both to an empty room to moles-… test out the Field with them.

Conclusion: it works, perfectly so, but it hurts so much that I don't hold a shred of doubt about it being able to kill me. Like, Jesus fucking Christ on a bike playing with a kite. It. Fucking. Hurts!

Oh, yes, it also interrupts any spell that I try to use without a problem, so I don't think the other safety measures will actually be necessary, but it's always better to be safe than sorry.

Sai's little hands gently touch my chest as her spirit hands massage me. Having this cute little loli giving me a worried look as she heals me almost makes it all worth it, almost.

I don't even have Gify here to help with the pain because she won't get anywhere near the blood circle of a [Disruption Field], so I instead rely on the girls to comfort me a bit. I've also confirmed that I'm definitely not a masochist.

We put a stop to the testing early, and I spend the rest of my day cuddling with Alissa and Ciel to heal the echoes of pain from my mind.

A note from Manasong

Hall of Fame of Patrons

The patrons who support Rupegia shall have their names sung by the bards for they deserve the glory and honor. Their names are:

Prince PreownedFIN.

Prince Creamy Spinach.

Lord Andrew Meyers.

Lord Samuel Lim.

Lord Bill.

Lord Novgarod.

Lord Michale Erwin.

Lord Bakerdea.

Lord Maurice.

Lord Empyrean.

Lord Mattirro Draca.

Lord Colorblind.

Lord Fullmoon.

Lord Sean Drake.

Lord EESDESESESRDT.

Lord FrostyCube.

Lord Mike Bartter.

Lord Cardinal Steiner.

Lord Krawn.

Lord Warwulfv.

Lord Jorge Franco.

Lord Khristopher Welsh.

Lord DJ.

Lord Philip.

Lord Tenebris Lupus.

Lord ImportantNPC.

Lord The Tallest Joshua.

Noble Salty Panda.

Noble Mild Fracas.

Noble Aclys.

Noble Shawn Plumley.

Noble CarlBaxter.

Noble Yeuromain.

Noble Copey Dunt.

Leave a rating or a review to help me rise to the top or fix my shameful understanding of prose.

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Chapter 97: Peace and Quiet - Part 3

A note from Manasong

Attention: to conform to the limit of mature content (more than just sexual content) allowed in a novel, I've censored this chapter. You can look for the uncensored version here.

12/02/21: I'll be taking a one-week break to work on other things that need my attention and rest a little bit. Uploading will resume at 22/02

The duo has come back from playing all day with the chil-… important meetings with Teresina and the other priests, of course. Now that we've become the equivalent of a Holy Person for the demon race, people will look at us like we're some sort of role models, and certain rumors that were spread just before the Lordship Ceremony need to be addressed.

They're both a bit tired, so they decide to play some cards in our bedroom to de-stress, making them prime targets for me to cuddle with.

I bury my head in Ciel's chest while whining like a dog, imitating Roxanne's behavior from a while ago. Her sweet, flowery perfume and the faint smell of her sweat are actually pretty comforting, and I feel like a child throwing a tantrum on their mother's bosom.

"There, there," Ciel playfully calms me down as she pats my head with a wry smile gracing her delicious lips.

Her kindness just makes me want to hug her even harder, so I let out a loud whine and tense up all my muscles to stop myself from accidentally crushing her with my arms. Not that I've become particularly strong, I just want to hug her really badly.

"Your turn," Alissa announces, and Ciel stops patting my head so that she can pick up her cards again.

They're playing some sort of rummy game with a small number of cards. The point of the game is to match cards in all sorts of combinations that give different points, but since there aren't that many cards, it's possible to predict the next cards that come up, and it's necessary to memorize the opponent's cards since there are no hidden draws.

I'm keeping them from peeping on each other's thoughts, and it's quite interesting seeing their brains trying to guess their opponent's strategy.

Alissa's thoughts race from side to side as she's full of paranoia and self-doubt, trying her best to predict Ciel's next desired combo. She's greatly overestimating my mommy angel, who's completely chill, not putting much effort into prediction and just focusing on memorization instead. If only she could hear Ciel's thoughts, she'd be so angry with herself for overthinking it.

Neither of them show their emotions, though, which is evidence that they've learned their lesson about dealing with nobility. Being impassive is always the better choice since you're not giving any information to your opponent, and while information isn't power, it does open the path so that one may use their strengths to their fullest.

But, as time passes and the pile of free cards grows smaller, they both start to show increasingly serious expressions, their eyes filled with determination and competitive spirit.

I lift my head from Ciel's chest and grin as I happily remark, "I must say that the serious look both of you have is really beautiful. I just love alluring, stern, focused eyes."

"Shh," Alissa shushes me, a bit annoyed, while Ciel completely ignores my words.

Hngh, yes…! Ignore me harder!

The cards suddenly run out, and they start calculating their points.

"Ten."

"Fifteen."

"Nineteen."

"Twenty."

"Twenty-five."

"Thirty-one."

"Forty," Ciel finishes her count.

"Thirty-nine," Alissa whines through gritted teeth.

"YES!" Ciel happily shouts and hugs me, smothering me in her pillows.

Alissa's head droops, her ears go flat, and her tail flops. She's so disappointed that I feel like giving her a hug, but I'm too comfortable in Ciel's arms to move right now.

"Just the thought is enough, thanks," Alissa mumbles through [Bind].

Alissa flops back on the bed and sighs as she releases all the tension that built up over the course of the game, then she grabs Suzy and hugs her tight.

Ted stares at me with her unblinking, beady eyes, and I swear that she's being more quiet than usual. Perhaps she's thinking about how else she could make herself useful now that her usual spot was stolen by me. I don't think the golems can experience jealousy, but Ted's kind of acting like she can.

"Do you think the golems would be able to play this game?" I question and give the girls a glance.

Ciel turns her head towards Ted, who's floating near us, and she suddenly feels like hugging something a lot softer than prickly old me.

"Just a stray thought," Ciel mumbles with a pout, not wanting to reject my scaly and dangerously sharp embrace.

"How good is their memory?" Alissa asks curiously.

I grin in self-deprecation. "Same as mine, so… not good?"

Alissa grins back, though hers is full of competitive spirit. "Then they can certainly play against me."

She's the second most competitive among us, only pulling ahead of Yunia because my prideful elven queen usually prefers to focus her energy towards more "productive" matters rather than silly rivalries.

The golems will do well with calculating the combos and possibly using chance to measure risk/reward, but I'm not sure that they'll be good at reading Alissa's strategy. The game is simple enough that it's possible for a computer to always win through calculating all possible moves, but the golems aren't computers, they're more like unemotional humanoids.

I get a bit inspired and decide to spend some time reading Arreira's notes on the golems. Right at the beginning of his thick book, which he called a "notepad," there's a note intended specifically for me.

"If you're reading this, Wolf Ryder, I must say that I kind of agree with your reluctance to make more golems, but I still think that you've sorely underused them.

"The fact that all of your memories are stored in the golems is, indeed, very dangerous. Even with the security protocol you've imparted upon them, I was still capable of fooling the golems into giving me control through illusions, and I was almost able to do the same with spirit manipulation alone."

Oh, no. How much did he play with my golems? They aren't actually replaceable, so if he messed them up with the brainwashing, they could've been gone forever…

"The solution to the memory problem is that there's no solution. As you've noticed, I wasn't able to make the Chimeras actually forget specific things without constant monitoring, and even that much was faulty.

"The extent to which I was able to manipulate their minds wasn't very far, and they still recovered most of what I erased after I stopped the manipulation. It just isn't feasible to magically alter memories without an extremely deep and comprehensive understanding of the brain, which is something I believe would only be possible with those 'computers' you love so much, though it'd have to be heavily aided by magic. Memories are so deeply entwined with neurons that you need to alter them directly if you want to manipulate memories, and even the Earthlings didn't know how to do that.

"But not all is lost. The alternative I've identified is to just simply wipe all their memories during [Infuse]. That'll be the same as creating a golem "baby," so have fun fathering an army of golems yourself."

Damn… I always knew this was an option, I just didn't consider it since it'd take literal years until I could "grow" a usable golem. Now, though, I might actually have the time to grow a golem army myself…

Now, I wonder… how good of a mother will my three golems be?

I start playing with [Golemancy]'s [Infuse], following Arreira's notes on identifying the areas where memories are stored. If I can find out how to "wipe" it, then we'll have baby golems.

It's not as simple as just "scrambling" it as if they were simply stored as bits in an HDD. Doing so would likely result in a golem with neurological problems, such as constant seizures and the like.

At least Arreira knew how to "blackout" someone's memories, like when someone drinks too much or hits their head too hard. He simply prevented long-term memories from being "written" by blocking the neurons related to them.

To actually do that through [Infuse]'s "UI" will require a lot of trial and error, so I'll only really be able to start my "baby golem" research sometime after we meet with everyone's parents.

While Alissa wracks her brains trying to read Ted, I notice that Silvano has decided to meet with Lina and Aoi, who are currently building a forge together.

"Your Highnessesses," Silvano softly greets them with his usual grin.

"Is that an actual word?" Lina immediately asks us through [Bind].

"I think so…? I'm not sure if I heard it right," Ciel hesitantly replies, scouring her mind's dictionary for it.

"Greetings, Silvano," Aoi returns the cordiality with a toothy grin.

The androgynous elf doesn't exactly know how to react to Aoi, but he does seem slightly amused by her.

"Greetings, Sir Silvano," Lina finally speaks, uncomfortable with having to speak to a stranger.

He elegantly holds a hand over his exposed chest and bows like a butler. "Lord Wolf mentioned that you wanted to learn metallurgy, so I've come to share some of my knowledge," he calmly explains himself, then straightens his posture again.

Why is he so cordial only with them?

I pout, burning with jealousy, and that only makes Aoi's grin get wider.

The two share a look, then Silvano's class begins its first session.

His knowledge of metals is actually quite comprehensive. He knows the subject from a more scientific perspective than that of a smith, so he gives them a good base to start from.

And, of course, with my memories and the golems' being used as personal Wikipedias, we can fill in some of the gaps.

One of the things his knowledge doesn't touch upon too deeply is quenching. I remember that you can make some very strong steel if you quickly cool it, so this might be worthy of being researched by Aoi. I don't know how to forge that kind of steel exactly, though, I just know that it exists.

Silvano casts [Earth Armor], and he becomes like a silver surfer as his body is covered in a malleable, silvery metal. Unlike the average [Earth Armor], which uses thick, heavy rocks as a sort of ablative armor, his spell creates a much, much lighter defense, allowing him to use his insane speed when boosted by [Electric Magic] to its fullest.

"Could [Manipulate Metal] cook you alive from the inside?" Lina questions curiously, closely observing his hand moving with almost as much freedom as if he were wearing only thick leather gloves.

He makes a scale pattern on the metal by carving grooves into it, flaunting his control of the spell even though his [Mana Control] is at such a low level. "It's too close to my skin," he casually replies, then the pattern suddenly disappears, and I have a feeling that he just wasted a ton of mana with that little display. "Not only is it easy for me to interrupt that spell, but my body interferes with it, making it too costly to be an effective counter."

Aoi stares at the metal with a stern look while an idea slowly forms inside her lizard brain. "I want to melt it," she suddenly announces, drawing curious looks from the other two. "I want to melt your armor with my fire breath."

Lina remains completely silent, just focusing on observing his reaction, and the flamboyant elf suddenly finds himself sweating cold, for he might end up sweating hot real soon if he doesn't find a way out of this situation.

"Why do you wish for such a thing, your Highness?" He nervously asks, going for an "understand thy enemy" strategy.

Aoi's eyes gleam with excitement as she explains, "This is a strong, magical metal. If I can make it melt, then I can melt anything…! But maybe not darksteel…" She adds with a grumble as she remembers that there is something that counters dragon fire.

He glances at Lina, his eyes clearly begging for help, but he finds no mercy in the sadistic little girl. He turns back to Aoi and forces a smile. "Well, we can easily supply you with either magical or physical metal, be it mined or conjured. There's no inherent advantage in testing my metal, right?"

But Aoi is relentless. "Yours is special! Look at how easily you can bend it to take the shape of your body." -She taps his metallic arm repeatedly with a claw, making loud clinking sounds- "Does anything besides quicksilver act like this? Even that metal is just a liquid instead of actual, solid armor."

"Hmm… yes, that's true," he hesitantly agrees with a weak voice, a pitch higher than normal.

Then Aoi's excitement dies down, and she taps her chin with a claw. "But I can barely melt iron as it is… maybe we'll leave your metal for later."

"Yes, later…" He mumbles with such a high-pitched voice that it's almost a whine.

Lina lets a happy grin adorn her gloomy face. This amount of teasing is enough to satisfy her.

I tune out their talk and try to continue with reading Arreira's notes on memories, but he starts using technical jargon, so it quickly bores me. It'll take a long time before I can digest it all.

I quickly check on Roxanne and Yunia, but they're just shopping for Lord-worthy social clothes with Jarn following close behind them, so I also don't really feel like watching them, then I look at Alissa and frown, not really into watching her playing anymore.

I'm a bit prejudiced against card games due to how much luck they involve, though D&D is fun, so I might have to actually write a rule book for it.

Ciel's hand slips under my shirt and plays with my rather muscular chest, and I instantly notice the subtle lewdness in her touch. Elves may be quick to recognize lewdness, but I've mastered the art myself!

I turn to her and grin, but she looks away in embarrassment, so I probe her thoughts and discover how much she "enjoyed" me playing the child while burying my head in her chest. She's a pedo, after all.

"No, it was all the touching. That's what aroused me…" She tries to defend herself, but the truth lies somewhere in the middle. "You've conditioned me into getting horny just by massaging my chest," she quietly adds with a pout.

I spin and get on top of her like a predator pouncing on their prey. "Let's not waste arousal, then, shall we?" I ask with a husky tone, but I don't let her answer as I seal her lips with mine and keep her tongue occupied.

She hesitates for a moment, really wanting to retort to me, but she just lets it go and gets more involved in the kiss.

Everyone's really content today, so our emotions infect each other, and the happiness just adds to itself, making it seem like we're all receiving a big, warm mind hug.

Ciel's thirst has been amplified by her happiness, and she loses control of her hands, which start to explore my body on their own.

She reaches over and grabs the base of my tail, giving it a few loving squeezes and sending a chill up my spine. She knows my weak spots, though the weakest one is obviously the tip of my Tool.

I give my attention to Alissa for a brief moment to stop her from touching herself. She'll finish her game and win against Ted if she wants me.

For the rest of the day, my thick angel is my toy. I abuse her body, making it bend in ways which enhance her curviness, taking advantage of how athletic we both are.

Our Love-Making shall be glorious!

Intermission 22 – Emperor Andreas Doxa

I walk up the steps of the enigmatic tower, the relentless corruption of the undead assaulting my skin with every step, but the enchantments on my robe protect my body so well that I only feel a pleasant tickle.

If this weren't such a heretical place, I'd enjoy resting here whenever Mena's [Massage] just isn't able to scratch that itch.

As I pass a window, I hear the pain-filled groan of an evil spirit approaching. I flick my finger, instantly purifying it, then the spirit moans in pleasure as it's forced through the gate to Paradise.

Why do these spirits keep coming here? Is it because of me? Can they actually sense my presence, someway, somehow?

Regrettably, I can't find an answer to these questions since I'm the only one who can survive here for any significant length of time.

I briefly grumble in frustration and release some of my aura, making the stone and metal of the tower grind and creak.

Gods' forsaken heretics…

If I wasn't afraid of potentially creating another Deadlands, I'd erase this grim, dreary tower in a split second!

Every year, I become increasingly convinced that it might actually be the correct course of action since the undead corruption is diminishing so agonizingly slowly for my taste. It doesn't help that the expeditions have had so little success so far that I haven't even been able to create a research base here to study this tower.

I reach its top and look down upon the beautiful city which is slowly decaying from exposure to the elements. The splendor of the white town with its whimsical notes of blues and pinks have all become faded, worn down by the wind and covered by the moss.

This single, shabby, gray tower is a stain in the skyline of Spita Bureya. The constant moaning of an army of roaming evil spirits down in the streets gives it a rather apt name of "City of the Damned," I begrudgingly admit.

After filling myself with nostalgia about the glory days of Aremut, I turn my eyes back to the interior of the tower, if it could even be said to have an "interior." A single metal spiral staircase doesn't count as an interior!

Are heretics even intelligent if they can't make anything that has a smidgen of aesthetic beauty?!

I sigh tiredly and scan the tower again as I've done an uncountable number of times before.

Heretical magic is so elusive that not even the Oracle can detect anything "wrong" with this tower. Maybe it's truly inert, but then, why make it? Why put it in the exact center of the town, making it rise above everything else, and so obviously ruin the skyline of this grand location?

Maybe it's just a caprice from an insane builder, and I've been wasting my time here…

My Emergency Ring suddenly glows with a yellow light, so I instantly [Gate] back to my office.

The beam of light that shines down through the glass ceiling wraps around my entire body, cleansing it of any heretical corruption that might have stuck to my clothes; a cool air comes from the enormous windows open ajar, refreshing me after the hot and humid weather of Aremut; the bright and colorful tiles are a sight for my sore eyes. It's good to be home.

"Your Grand Highness," a strong, feminine voice greets me, and I already start anticipating what we're about to do.

I look down and see Hayakasha waiting for me on one knee, her black hair and scales shining almost like gold, having just been cleaned and waxed, the straps of her thin dress falling off her shoulders, exposing her milky white bosom to me.

She must've been having fun with the others since she seems to be wearing barely anything at all, or something very important has called her attention, and she didn't even have the time to dress herself. I'm betting on the former, it's a lot more likely to be correct.

"My love. Rise. Speak," I command.

And she diligently reports, "Wolf Ryder and his harem have assumed the position of Crown Lords of the Western High Forest. He's reportedly a Gifted person, but we still have little idea regarding what his Gift is, though evidence indicates that it involves [Summoning Magic]."

"Hm…" I hum absentmindedly as I hug her fit body and lick her neck. I sense a faint, thick, sensual perfume, so it must've been Piscila who made her wear this, which I'm thankful for.

Her voice quickly becomes shaky, and her breath hot as not even the dragonkin are immune to my touch. "During the ceremony, he announced that he has been named God-Ruler Arreira's successor, making them royalty."

"Oh? So the old ghost finally passed away…" I quietly mumble.

She hugs me back and has to spend a moment catching her breath before continuing, "Not only that, but he has acquired a new race and become a 'weredragon' while his tamable dragon has 'converted' and reportedly received a system."

I actually stop in surprise. The last time something made me react like this was the fall of Aremut. "What…?" I make a decidedly un-imperial sound.

Haya seems anxious to continue, so I stop and wait for her to finish. "This has all been confirmed by the Gods, who froze time in the town for an unspecified duration in a Divine Intervention."

Words fail me, and I get surprised at myself since I don't remember ever becoming this speechless before in my entire life. Not even during my ascension or when my parents died.

Haya seems almost apologetic at having to give me the news because of how grim it is, but she doesn't apologize for ruining our moment. In fact, she wants to be comforted by my touch.

I sigh tiredly, and we touch our foreheads together.

"We need to make sure that he visits the Oracle to ascertain where his Gift lies," I whisper, all the lust gone from my body and tone.

She doesn't let her horniness get the better of her cunning, immediately following my train of thought, "He has hidden his Gift as much as he could, so he should be wary of any interference, but he has a former priestess by his side, so he might end up visiting her, anyway."

I narrow my eyes and kiss her neck again as I hum in thought, "Hm… I see. Let's wait and see for a little longer."

She doesn't approve, seeming concerned for Ryder. "But his presence here might finally trigger the Purification as they fight over him."

I'm definitely not, though. "I'm not so sure about that," I respond casually and kiss her neck again, and she hugs me tighter. "But we won't interfere with it. The Gods have yet to give us any guidance about him, so let him do as he pleases. The rotting side has already solidified their position, so we might as well let the temple handle the Purification."

"Understood…" She accepts my stance on this matter with an uncharacteristically nervous tone.

And now it's time for me to comfort her. I raise my head and stare her in the eyes as I confidently state, "We'll make it through this, together. We aren't the Champions, so our Fate won't be as turbulent as theirs. Relay this to the rest of the harem so that nobody starts freaking out."

She nods meekly, the dragon who challenged me for marriage nowhere to be found. Even she fears the future, for if the Gods have chosen a Champion, then something terrible is coming.

A note from Manasong

Hall of Fame of Patrons

The patrons who support Rupegia shall have their names sung by the bards for they deserve the glory and honor. Their names are:

Prince PreownedFIN.

Prince Creamy Spinach.

Lord Andrew Meyers.

Lord Samuel Lim.

Lord Bill.

Lord Novgarod.

Lord Michale Erwin.

Lord Bakerdea.

Lord Maurice.

Lord Empyrean.

Lord Mattirro Draca.

Lord Colorblind.

Lord Fullmoon.

Lord Sean Drake.

Lord EESDESESESRDT.

Lord FrostyCube.

Lord Mike Bartter.

Lord Cardinal Steiner.

Lord Krawn.

Lord Warwulfv.

Lord Jorge Franco.

Lord Khristopher Welsh.

Lord DJ.

Lord Philip.

Lord Tenebris Lupus.

Lord ImportantNPC.

Lord The Tallest Joshua.

Noble Salty Panda.

Noble Mild Fracas.

Noble Aclys.

Noble Shawn Plumley.

Noble CarlBaxter.

Noble Yeuromain.

Noble Copey Dunt.

Noble Brandon Lai.

Leave a rating or a review to help me rise to the top or fix my shameful understanding of prose.

Take a look over my blog where all information about the world of Rupegia will be posted.

Join the Discord and discuss, or rant, or meme, or try and fight me so your waifu gets more screentime.

Become a Patron and read chapters in advance, or read the side-stories, or leave your mark on the story, or help choose the next artwork or the next side-story.

Chapter 98: Lordly Duties - Part 1

The girls come back, and we take our time in the bath, having fun playing with Poosh's body. Since the cute sheep seems to be open to some intimacy, Hana, Osaria, and I pounce on her and make sure that her bits get all tingly and sore again.

Alissa watches us intensely without missing a single detail, her hands bound to her legs so that she doesn't touch herself, but her hunger is clear for all to see. Meanwhile, the maids all silently watch as their boss is fucked until she can barely move, and I believe this is taken as some sort of "demonstration" since they all have a rather inquisitive air about them instead of just pure lust.

After we're done with Poosh, she begins using a [Regeneration] tool on her hips so that she can walk again, but I [Heal] her instead and give her my [Massage] treatment on her back.

"Ah, yes… thank you, your Highness," she coos in happiness.

"And thank you for playing with us," Osaria replies with a sultry tone.

Poosh knows more about [Massage] than I do, so she guides me towards all of her weak spots, and my human healing hands, both literally and figuratively, return mobility to her legs and restore her energy.

After a minute of wringing soft moans from her, she stops me and stands up, then gives me a deep bow. "Thank you again, your Highness, for allowing me to experience true bliss," she politely announces out loud.

I smirk, my weapon twitching in satisfaction. This is exactly what I wanted to give her: bliss.

"You're welcome to come back anytime," I serenely reply.

She straightens up and gives me a warm, bright smile with a strong, motherly air. "I'm afraid I'll have to limit myself. If I were to indulge in your caresses, I'd ruin my work ethic."

I nod in understanding. Even I know that unrestrained pleasure is rather addictive, I've just learned how to reign it in when necessary. "At least come to us when you're feeling tired," I kindly suggest.

Her smile becomes even wilder as she gushes in happiness. "That, I will." Then she turns her eyes to Alissa, seemingly worried about my fox's tense demeanor. "Your Highness Alissa, do you wish for some intimate attention?" She asks concernedly.

"She does, but she won't get any today, as a punishment," I respond for Alissa with a smug smirk as I glance at her.

Alissa grits her teeth in anger and nods slowly, the wild fox within her trying to claw its way out. I'm sure that tomorrow, she's going to impale herself to death on my dragonator.

I actually do use the tentacle monster to help her relax, though. It's entirely possible to tease her until she breaks, so we'd ruin the slow roast if we cranked up the heat too much.

For dinner, we invite Dokkanchee as a celebration of a job well done. The old woman hasn't complained about her back again, so we also call for Sai so that she can make the alterations of Dokkan's spine permanent.

"My, this is quite a feast," Dokkan comments happily as she sits.

I smile kindly at her, and Yunia clarifies, "We only eat like this with guests. Though the food is always well-made, we aren't wasteful with our average meal."

Dokkan hums in understanding and nods sagely. "Ahh, I see. I'll have to change my opinion of Lords, then."

"Though the Goddess of Fertility frowns upon wasting food, we can't speak for all Lords," Ciel cautions her.

"If anything, I find it difficult to believe that you'd represent the average Lord," Dokkan agrees with a sly smirk.

"Indeed," Yunia quietly adds.

I remember the report we received of the state of the town and smile cheekily as I joke, "Well, considering that the town is still in a festive mood with a few orgies here and there, I'd say that we're quite chaste and lightweight drinkers when compared to the commoners."

That gets a few hearty chuckles, even from Sai.

"Did you enjoy yourself at the party?" Alissa "innocently" asks Dokkan.

The old bird woman runs a nervous hand through her white arm feathers as she lets out a slow chuckle. "I'm very thankful for what you've done for my back. It really allowed me to enjoy this party."

I… really don't want her to expand on that, so I get the girls to drive the topic away from that subject.

After we start our meal, I broach upon a matter I've had on the back of my mind for a while, "There's something I'd like to know about you, Dokkanchee. You seem to be able to notice 'something' going on between us. Something magical, I mean."

Sai raises her eyebrows, attentively listening. It doesn't matter what she knows about [Bind] since she's a Blood Slave.

Dokkan stops eating, her face serious and composed, and hesitates for a moment before answering, "I won't share your secrets, my… uh, your Highness."

I smile and wave my hand dismissively. "I'm not concerned about that. I want to know how you do it."

"Oh…" She mumbles in surprise, then her posture relaxes and she gets more comfortable in her seat. "It's a sense that grows on you after spending so long detecting variances upon reality."

"'Variances upon reality'?" I repeat curiously.

She knits her eyebrows in confusion, the white feathers on her head raising up. "You don't know?"

"No, that's why I'm asking you about it."

The feathers go back down. "Ah… I see." She takes a sip of her juice to wet her throat before she starts her explanation, "Well, as you might've noticed, [Jalowzeh Magic] both changes reality and fools the mind so that nobody notices anything, but with time, not even I can be fooled anymore, so I developed a sense for changes in reality.

"I see this 'variance' as small, subtle changes in reality between two of you."

So there really is a carrier of information between us.

"Can you elaborate? Describe any more details you might know about these 'changes,'" I press her further.

But she shrugs and smiles apologetically. "I'm afraid I can't. They're so small and subtle that it's like seeing a strand of hair for a split second. I can't even tell you the color of the hair. It's like… the horizon, or a fold in the piece of paper that we call reality."

"Oh~…" I hum in wonder and also understanding. This seems incredibly interesting.

She smirks subtly. "You do seem to have an idea about what I'm talking about."

And I mirror her expression. "The 'fold' analogy was really enlightening."

She nods gently. "Ah, yes. You're a Space mage, if my memory is correct, so it makes sense that it'd resonate with you."

"Indeed. Well, I'm interested in this sense of yours, so perhaps we could work on it in the future?" I turn my smirk into a grin as I make the suggestion.

But Dokkan doesn't seem willing, and shakes her head as she rejects, "I'm still just a shopkeeper responsible for discovering talents for Kabara Basaree, so research is a bit too much work for someone as old as me. Perhaps if you joined the magic school, then you'd find someone more willing to work with you." And she gives me a subtle sly smile.

I lean back on my chair and smile wryly. "I see…"

It seems that we have a good reason to visit this school.

The cunning old bird turns to Roxanne with a smirk, very proud of herself. "Have you ever been to Basaree? It's a beautiful place that I visit every so often just to enjoy the sights."

"Is it more beautiful than Goldport?" Yunia chimes in.

"Goldport is astounding, but Basaree is beautiful," she tactfully responds, trying not to offend my proud elven queen.

And Roxanne answers with a rather bitter smile, "I've studied in Xane, but I only got as close as Nakdevnitind before coming to Gilios, so I didn't have the opportunity to see it."

Dokkan hums in agreement as she nods. "Ah, that's still a beautiful place, nonetheless. Basaree is a large port town ruled by a joint government of Estekabar, Angels, and Gorosnegee, and they all try to outdo one another in every aspect of the town to attract more people than the others, so every year there's something new and interesting going on."

That piques Roxanne's interest. "Sounds like a good place for a vacation."

The occasional vacation over there would be fine, but if we were to join the Kabara Basaree school, we'd have to either be absent from our territory for a long time or pay an exorbitant price to go there regularly, and neither of those are an attractive option. Fortunately, there's a third.

"I can now cast the level fifty [Space Magic] spell [Eternal Gate], so maybe we can make our own teleport to Basaree in secret," I share through [Bind].

"Just don't get Alcander involved since it'd put him in a delicate situation. If we keep it a 'secret,' then he'd have plausible deniability," Yunia cautions us.

"You're talking as if we would get caught," Alissa comments worriedly.

Yunia shakes her head internally. "It's easier to keep everyone quiet and loyal when dealing with illegal activities if they know they won't get in trouble for their involvement."

Lina's Trivia: Creating a lawful [Eternal Gate] requires involving the Imperial Space Mage's Authority and also respecting any agreements already in place regulating the Gate, which drives up the cost of maintaining one by quite a lot since few rulers want free, unrestricted access to their territories by random strangers.

"There we go, I'm seeing the 'folds' again. It's honestly so interesting that I'm tempted to study it, but I know my limits," Dokkan discloses, her eyes darting towards each of us.

"I'm curious. Can you describe these 'folds,' your Highness Wolf?" Sai asks me, her cute brown eyes brimming with the desire to know more, but there's a cautious reservation as she knows it isn't so simple.

"If you can look into our souls, then perhaps you'll find what's special about us," I cryptically answer and give her an impassive expression.

She furrows her thin eyebrows and stares at my chest intensely like a child trying to use X-ray vision, but she gives up after a short while and gives me puppy eyes. "Hm… I heard you created skills related to the soul…" She tentatively mumbles.

I grin evilly. "Indeed, I did. If you want to learn [Sense Soul], I believe you might first need to learn [Soul Manipulation]."

"Ah…" She moans and frowns in horror. She knows very well how much Oritiki and the Celestial Horns are suffering to learn that skill.

"Soul…? Hm… so your souls or spirits are connected, somehow?" Dokkan guesses.

I grin at her and chuckle softly. "I can't answer that question."

She frowns, and her curiosity sours. "Hmph… Lords and their secrets," she grumbles in a way befitting her age.

After dinner, Sai finishes Dokkan's treatment, and we say our goodbyes to her. We're not sure if we'll have a reason to meet again in the future, but maybe we could visit the old bird every once in a while. She's a nice person to be around.

Then we retire to our room for the last cuddling of the day.

I find an interesting book in our personal library about an elf explorer who got himself a mer submarine and explored the depths of the sea. These sorts of books are quite popular as there's always a desire to explore among the populace due to the romanticization of adventurers, and those who can link their stories to local myths or legends quickly become favorites.

The MC explored the dark depths of a huge rift in the seafloor, and he found a very alien-looking environment, which was proven to actually exist. There, the plants feed off the heat of magma as it pours from the opening, but the "nutrient"-rich rock is then eaten by other animals and monsters as it cools, and the rift actually seems to expand with time.

The plants have a beautiful luminescence that was described in such a way that I'm sure they're radioactive. He even stated that it's poisonous to get close to them and warns future explorers to not bring them back up if they want to live.

He then found an odd cave that leads to an even bigger rift, which made him suspect that it might actually be a dungeon.

It was a completely dark place as it lacked lava and the plants that needed it, but it was still very warm, so there might be something living within.

Once he reached the bottom, he found a graveyard of bones. There were ribs as big as his submarine; skulls so large they could eat him as a snack; tusks and other sharp teeth that looked like they were made of metal, retaining their sheen even so long after their owner's deaths; and a small ecosystem of scavenging plants and moss.

As an avid cataloger, the MC spent a whole chapter describing them and theorizing on their way of life. He even made dozens of dissections that he depicted through drawings, attracting Alissa's interest. Underwater plants are very different from ground plants, so she likes seeing all the different and exotic anatomies and organs.

He suddenly felt a wave of dislocated water and became wary. His sensors told of no other small animal presence, and only very large beings could create such long waves that they'd originate outside of his sensor range.

As an experienced explorer, he immediately turned off the submarine and parked it under the skull of a large, unknown being.

But something had already spotted him since well before that.

He patiently waited in absolute silence without making a single sound. His [Hide Presence] was good enough to avoid just about anything, and his [Silent Action] had already proved essential to survive whatever else remained.

He waited for long hours, his sense of danger going haywire as a second displacement wave never came. He couldn't know if the being was either coming, going, or if it was just waiting for him to make a move, so he could only wait himself.

He thought he heard scurrying, but everything was so quiet that his own senses could've been fooling him. He knew a bored brain could play pranks on itself by imagining ghosts and other frightening things.

Then the heat started to get to him, and he found it increasingly difficult to breathe. His body was sweating so much that he'd soon pass out, and that'd be his doom if it came to pass, so he decided to act.

Suddenly, he heard a clink against the hull of his submarine as something sharp touched it.

"It's time to run!" His brain screamed to himself, and he made to touch the ship's main gem, but then a light shined upon his ship, and he gawked in terror at the creatures surrounding it.

The terrifying fiends immediately swam away, hiding from the light, but they weren't the true target of the light.

He looked up and saw a large lamp producing a blinding light through the eye socket of the skull he was hiding under.

Then the skull was lifted, and the terror increased to the point that his eyes thought he was going insane.

The being that stared down at him was impossible to describe as its visage refused to mark itself in his memories, but one thing was certain: it was beyond just a mere aberrant or animal. It was "Grand." It was The Leviathan, with a capital T and L, the true monstrosity of the depths.

It reached down with a huge, wide fin and swept his ship off the floor, raising it up so that it could take a closer look, and its many eyes bore holes through him like spears. It was so intense that they could've killed a man of a lesser level.

A slit opened horizontally on its face, revealing a dazzling set of huge, sharp teeth in a spiral, ready to grind away anything it ate into mush.

The mouth widened so much that it was all he could see through the glass of his cockpit, but what came next wasn't the blissful darkness of death.

His view of it was suddenly blocked by a large bright red tentacle, covered with small, round protrusions that led him to believe that it was actually a tongue.

It suddenly touched the dome of his cockpit and wrapped itself around it, then it rubbed slowly, as if The Leviathan was licking it in a very frightening motion.

After a few long seconds, the lick was complete, and the ship was unceremoniously dropped back down on the seafloor and covered again with the skull.

The Leviathan turned around as it stopped its own light, and the elf managed to turn the ship back on in time to register the many dislocation waves that followed in The Leviathan's wake.

The elf was so frightened that he would've pissed his pants if he could, but he was also awed, and many times more so.

So much so that instead of going back to the surface, the elf chased after The Leviathan after a mere moment of hesitation.

I close the book and give Ciel an apologetic smile.

"The lights," I whisper to the golems, trying not to wake up Lina, who's already asleep on my legs, and Ted silently turns them off.

Today is the 13th, Ne, day of water. For dwarves, this is the only day when it's acceptable to drink water like the other races drink water.

Lina refuses to confirm or deny this trivia.

I've gained two levels in [Massage] (now 0+3) and the title of "Shapeshifter." Could've been worse. If the commoners had any malicious intentions, they might've come up with [Tentacle Dicks], or [Eldritch Lord], or [Many-Dicked]. I guess their respect for me prevented the worse ones from gaining any traction.

I still want "Father of Dragons," though, so I guess I should "influence" them towards spreading that one.

We've all also received the "Protector of the Last Crown" title since we have the crown in our treasury, but that'll soon go away since we're going to be using the crown, not just "protecting" it.

I don't plan on making others call us king and queens yet since we haven't actually been crowned, but we'll prominently display the crown instead of just storing it.

I notice that my "Titles" are now taking up multiple lines and frown. "Do nobles usually get so many titles? The section is getting kind of… cluttered," I comment worriedly.

Yunia snorts snobbishly and smiles wryly before she responds, "Lords do, especially higher ones like us. Imagine what happens if everything you do ends up being the talk of the town. You'll accrue a few more throughout your rule, I'm sure."

Alissa and Hana are a bit conflicted about their own Titles, so they aren't comfortable knowing that we'll get many more.

For breakfast, I eat a sweet, crunchy toast that's really quite good. It has nuts and not-vanilla in it, giving it a subtle, but refined taste. This is the staple imperial bread that they love so much, and I can see why it's popular. Just a bit of butter and it's worth a chef's kiss.

Then we start our morning training, but today's setting is the sea!

We take a personal [Eternal Gate] to one of our estates, and this one is in Western Glorampina, on a cliff side with a great view of the sea. There's even a set of stairs carved into the stone that takes us down to a small private beach with a charming cave system that we can explore.

I sit down on the veranda and breathe in the salty air as the sound of waves massages my ears. There are a few seagulls, but they're far enough away that their cries aren't annoying.

The warm sun feels refreshing on my skin and scales, though I'm the only one who doesn't sit in the shade. Aoi has the highest body temperature of all of us, so she sits right next to the [Breeze] enchantment on the wall, and the cool air seeps in right under her scales, making her feel very refreshed.

I skim through Arreira's notes again and find an entry talking about [Blessing Magic]. He learned most of it through the golems and then improved on his knowledge through questioning some of the adventurers inside the dungeon. It seems that all of our armor was personally enchanted by him, or at least upgraded with Blessings.

Arreira seems to have been a very proficient enchanter, so if I find anything about enchanting in these notes, I'll pass them on to Lina. She'll certainly love that.

"I think I've come up with a good idea for a motto," Ciel suddenly speaks out.

"After the Intervention, it's quite obvious what you'll pick," Yunia immediately comments with a smug look.

"Well…" Ciel pouts annoyedly, struggling to come up with a proper retort. "Obvious is good! It's supposed to represent us!" She suddenly exclaims frustratedly.

"Alright… let's hear it," Yunia coolly requests, the smugness in her face giving her that sexy, superior elven look that I love so much.

Ciel's finger cutely traces the grooves in the floor boards as she fails to contain her irritation, then she embarrassedly reveals, "'Blessed by the light'…"

"Ohoh~…" Yunia coos victoriously as she covers her mouth with her hand.

"You should've made her guess first, then you could've embarrassed her if she didn't get it with perfect accuracy, which was very likely to happen," Roxanne advises Ciel, but that only makes her pout even harder.

"It's fine," I whisk my angel away from the depths of shame and give everyone a stern glare for them to hold back their bullying.

"If nobody has a better motto, we'll tell Almaria to carve it into our heraldry," Yunia calmly states, the smugness from before gone in a split second.

I'm partial to "Sun guides us," but the Intervention is a more important event than the naming of our fellowship, so I'm willing to go with Ciel's idea.

Krysta has prepared Kibbeh Nayyeh: raw ground lamb meat with wheat and spices. There's also a variation that uses cow meat instead of lamb, and it's seasoned more strongly.

The dragon within me actually wakes up, and Aoi and I eagerly feast on the raw meat. It's supposed to be eaten with the not-pita bread, imperial style, but Aoi and I like it so much that we'd gladly eat it on its own without any bread.

Hana looks at us oddly, trying to understand what we like about it so much, but she's pretty ambivalent about the dish. I guess dragonkin just prefer roasts instead of raw meats.

"I never imagined that raw meat could be so good," human-Aoi breathes in delight, almost forgoing the femininity of her form to gorge on it like an animal.

"Same-…"

Alissa puts a hand over my claws to stop me from grabbing more. "Let's share this dish, hm? Tomorrow, Krysta will make more," she gently reminds me, but the intensity of her stare tells me that she's enjoying this dish more than she'd like to admit.

After we eat, an army of clothiers rush in like a storm to take all of our measurements, all of them. Invited by Yunia and Roxanne, they're here to make better formal clothes for us, including underwear, and they don't have a lot of time to finish their job, so they do their best to not let their fear and awe of us get in the way of their work.

They're in a hurry partially because of the fact that we have to leave for our first official task as Lords: to kill a dangerous Aberrant.

A note from Manasong

Hall of Fame of Patrons

The patrons who support Rupegia shall have their names sung by the bards for they deserve the glory and honor. Their names are:

Prince PreownedFIN.

Prince Creamy Spinach.

Lord Andrew Meyers.

Lord Samuel Lim.

Lord Bill.

Lord Novgarod.

Lord Michale Erwin.

Lord Bakerdea.

Lord Maurice.

Lord Empyrean.

Lord Mattirro Draca.

Lord Colorblind.

Lord Fullmoon.

Lord Sean Drake.

Lord EESDESESESRDT.

Lord FrostyCube.

Lord Mike Bartter.

Lord Cardinal Steiner.

Lord Krawn.

Lord Warwulfv.

Lord Jorge Franco.

Lord Khristopher Welsh.

Lord DJ.

Lord Philip.

Lord Tenebris Lupus.

Lord ImportantNPC.

Lord The Tallest Joshua.

Noble Salty Panda.

Noble Mild Fracas.

Noble Aclys.

Noble Shawn Plumley.

Noble CarlBaxter.

Noble Yeuromain.

Noble Copey Dunt.

Noble Brandon Lai.

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Chapter 98: Lordly Duties - Part 2

Aoi and I interlace our claws together and recite the fellowship chant, "We swear to share our war and our soul, and to always keep each other's company."

Then her name appears in our "Companions" entry, while in hers, all of ours appear, and she gains the "Helios (Fellowship)" entry in her "Affiliations."

"Hehehehe!" Aoi laughs happily as she stares at the Identification Crystal's tablet, then she checks the fellowship bond. "Now it's even easier for me to know where everyone is!"

"Yes. The bond gave me a lot of comfort before [Bind]," Lina agrees with a nod, making her cute bangs sway.

Same.

Aoi grins at her, then she quickly gets distracted as she plays with the bond and stares at the tablet. Her mind wanders, and she starts thinking about her own status and how to open it, so we leave her with her thoughts for now.

We [Equip] our armor and wait in the main hall while the High Officers gather. Our thrones are quite comfy, so the dragon coils up and goes to sleep, making me feel a bit drowsy.

Sandoro is the first to appear with a detachment of Lordsguard, and I'm happy to see Romy among them, though we're all about to enter battle, so warm greetings are left for another time.

I see that their weapons all have blank spirits, so their training of [Equipment System] is progressing very quickly, and soon, they'll be able to cast [Equip] since that skill is so easy to learn.

Suddenly, Silvano barges in with a big grin and bows quickly, then saunters on, proudly parading with his two bastard swords hanging from each side of his waist.

"You won't be fighting," I pop his bubble of joy with a sadistic grin.

"What? Why?" He stops in his tracks and moans in a decidedly not cool whine as he's caught by surprise.

"This time, we want you all to just watch so that you can better understand how we fight," Hana happily explains, excited to show off.

Silvano turns his eyes to her as he delicately grabs his chin and coos in wonder. "Ooh~…" Then he suddenly shrugs. "Well, this is also fine, I guess."

Alcander comes in soon after with a meek elven Space mage in tow.

"Your Highnesses," the imperial obediently greets as he lowers his head, then he motions for the elf to come forward. "He'll open a [Gate] to our forward scouting party, then I'll cross through it and open my own for you."

I yawn and nod. I wonder if being so carefree in front of my subordinates is a good thing or not, but I'd rather that they know the real me instead of keeping up a mask all the time. Ciel and Roxanne certainly can't avoid sounding casual occasionally, so they know that we all have our quirks.

As long as I can pull the dragon out at a moment's notice, their faith in my leadership shouldn't take a significant hit.

Alcander disappears when he touches the black circle, and I notice that the Space mage immediately starts to breathe heavily. Sending a person so far must've drained him quite a lot.

A moment later, another circle appears right in the middle of the hall, which is our cue that Alcander is waiting for us.

Just to be safe, I send a bird ahead, then we all cross through.

On the other side, Alcander patiently waits for us to ready ourselves, his face solemn as usual, and he doesn't even seem to break a sweat from teleporting so many people in quick succession.

While everyone takes a moment to get used to the change in scenery, I take the opportunity to observe my surroundings.

We're now deep into the High Forest, somewhere northwest, near the center of our territory, which is likely in Amada's sub-territory, the elder subordinate Heart Lord.

The High Trees are quite wild here, becoming messes of branches and thick trunks with impenetrable bark, which impedes most of the glowing plants from growing on them. These trees are a far cry from the beautiful "tree-knitting" of the more civilized areas, but they have their own charm from just existing in their natural state.

The elves don't mess with the roots of the High Trees to make it more difficult for non-natives to walk through, but they at least prevent their states from getting even worse. At some spots, they get so thick and thin that they become like brambles, making it impossible to pass through them, but also dangerous to walk on them since they're so brittle.

I think only a light-footed Legolas could get through here, but our soldiers are definitely too heavy to walk on snow without leaving footprints, and I'm sure that they don't have anti-gravity boots on.

Yunia smiles wryly at my musings, but she nudges me internally towards Almaria, who's currently busy doing something.

The golden elf has her eyes closed, arms spread apart, and palms open wide. She seems to be sensing the wind, a faint breeze that rustles the leaves and makes a rather loud sound in the otherwise silent forest, then her small nose flares as she smells the air.

How peculiar.

Her eyes suddenly shoot wide open, and her cute face distorts in worry. "There are bad omens in the wind. Not our doom, but death, corruption…" She whispers, though her voice carries quite far in the quiet forest, then she suddenly turns to me, her droopy eyes giving me an intense, creepy stare. "Undead."

"Indeed," Alcander agrees solemnly and closes the [Gate]. "This is why the scouts are too frightened to get near it," he adds, sounding rather disappointed.

"Their intuition is correct. It isn't a weak Aberrant, of that, I'm sure," Almaria excuses them, then her face turns subtly sorrowful as she tries to contain her emotions. "And I believe it's already claimed some victims."

Sai raises her head attentively, then casts [Spirit Eyes] and [Spirit Link]. "There are spirits out there," she states out loud, and the mood of our group sours.

Ciel frowns and silently prays for them. Victims of the undead have difficulty getting into Paradise since their spirits can easily become twisted.

I pull out the golems, and Alcander frowns confusedly as he stares at them, then his eyes go out of focus as I believe he has pulled up his own "Status." I'll commend him for being so attentive if he noticed that his MP isn't as low as it should be since the heavy golems didn't actually cost anything extra due to being stored in my "Items."

Sandoro organizes the small detachment of Lordsguard around the High Mages to protect them, and then the scouts come down from atop the High Tree nearest to us.

One of them is riding a Gatun, which I assume is their leader from how composedly he sits on his mount. His body is completely horizontal and stiff as a board while the beast climbs down the wild tree, which is rather impressive.

The other elves wear light ghillie suits, and they use clawed gauntlets and boots in the same way that a Gatun does. Their longbows are slung over their shoulders while only their leader has a short, composite bow.

One of the elves is visibly more nimble, catching my attention. He suddenly jumps off the tree and falls through the air from over five metri up before landing on his feet and rolling to disperse his momentum.

He stops right before Sandoro's unamused glare and immediately stands up properly, then he notices who's before him and freezes for a second before immediately saluting in the customary elven way.

"Master of Hunt Ardian, reporting for duty!" He whisper-shouts and lowers his head to shield himself from Sandoro's mental attack.

"'Master,' indeed…" Sandoro repeats with a low growl.

"You know the adventurer types, Sandoro. They'll never learn," the scout leader comments amusedly while still perfectly horizontal and gives the old commander a grin.

Something about this Ardian sounds somewhat familiar to me…

I walk towards him, and he suddenly raises his head as he notices my steps. He's a mature golden elf with a familiar face, but his hood is hiding some of his features.

His eyes turn to me and suddenly open wide in shock as I assume that he's just recognized me.

"Your Highness?" Sandoro asks as he gives me a curious look.

"You seem familiar, Master Ardian… have we met before?" I politely ask, trying to hold back a grin as I notice his expression become as stiff as dry leather.

Sandoro sends a stern glance towards Ardian, suddenly very suspicious of him. "There's no need to call his kind 'Master,' your Highness, that's just a lofty title that adventurers give themselves."

The leader of the scouts seems very amused with this situation, so he decides to expose Ardian, eager to see how things develop, "He used to work as a Caretaker at the Academy in Goloria, helping out the students to not get killed while doing requests for the monster hunter's guild. Perhaps you met him when you were still an adventurer."

"He came here after you raised the bounty prices, your Highness, which should tell plenty about his honor," Sandoro grumbles. He obviously doesn't like the mercenary type.

Wait… Goloria's monster hunter guild…?

"You're the one who mistook us for students of the Knight's Academy!" Alissa exclaims, her memory picking up on things faster than mine.

"Yes… I believe so… your Highness…" Ardian mumbles, now sweating cold.

I remember now. He's the one who called us "damnable brats."

I grin sadistically and take a step closer to him. "Well, Master Ardian. What can you tell us about the Aberrant that we're about to face?"

Nobody comes to save him, not even the scout leader who was the one that's actually responsible for giving us the report, so Ardian fumbles his way through an explanation like a fool. And he kind of is one since he hadn't bothered to look at our portraits in the Shell properly, otherwise, he'd have known not to show off in front of us.

Aoi's intense gaze seems to be the one affecting him the most, even though she isn't trying to be threatening. I guess it'll take some time until everyone gets used to seeing a dragon and not shitting their pants in fear.

Ardian's report is quite short, though, since nobody has actually fought the Aberrant aside from small scale, short battles with its "minions."

Once he's done, we let him relax and stay at ease while we discuss our strategy.

"How close can the High Mages be to us without it being unsafe for them? This Aberrant seems to have a very far reach," Yunia questions, mostly worried about Almaria's safety.

"Its minions aren't that powerful, and we easily handled one of them on our own, but it's the exposure that gets you. As long as the battle doesn't take too long, you can get pretty close, I believe," the leader confidently answers.

We set up some guidelines for the Officers in case shit hits the fan, and the meeting is over rather quickly.

"I understand that you can handle yourself, but I don't want outsiders to watch this fight, so I'll have to ask that you remain here," I order the leader.

"Understood, your Highness," he obediently agrees and salutes.

I especially don't want a Buscuador like him to see this.

Then Yunia turns to Almaria. "Open the way for us," she orders, and the High Mage obeys.

Almaria swallows an Eia pill and turns to the mass of roots ahead of us, then she pulls out a dagger from her robe and slits open her palms. She lets the blood drip onto the forest floor for a few seconds, then assumes the pose she held when she was feeling the wind and starts whispering a chant.

Suddenly, roots burst out of the ground and sneak up along her legs, then they enter her open wounds.

That's metal…

Alissa's ears twitch, and she opens her eyes wide in surprise as her [Sense Presence] tells her that what "Almaria" is has become a bit hazy as she "communes" with the vines.

"Almaria" spreads through the ground and takes over the roots ahead of us, becoming thinner and weaker the further her "presence" is from her physical body.

Once her presence's "expansion" seems to have stopped, the roots start to creak and crack, then they tremble and disentangle, opening a way forward for us. In under a minute, there's a long, clear path that's wide enough for all of us to walk abreast.

Her MP drops just a little, so it seems like it'll be easy for her to open a path for us towards the Aberrant. She's also calmly walking forward, not showing a hint of discomfort from having vines in her hands, which is a rather odd sight.

"Her Eia pill should include an anesthetic, so she shouldn't be feeling a thing, actually," Yunia corrects me through [Bind].

I let the dragon spread its wings, and we all gradually leave our carefree demeanor behind. Now it's time for business.

Once we're far enough from the scouts, I summon three Shads and Hollys to scout and keep us safe. It's been a while since I've had to rely on them, so it's nostalgic to be able to see through their eyes again.

The Mages and the Lordsguard seem surprised, but more of the "ooh~…" rather than the "AH! MONSTER!" kind of surprise since they should all already know about my summoning capabilities.

Then I [Equip] Patrono and give it to a tentacle that holds it above me, just for safety.

"Are we going to use that sword?" Hana asks concernedly.

I shake my head, and joke with a smile, "No. It'd make things too easy. We need the experience and the Experience."

She snorts and affirms, "I'd say exactly that if you had answered any differently." Then she sends me a fist-bump through [Bind].

The illumination is pretty bad here, well, worse than in the more civilized parts of the High Forest, so I make Patrono shine faintly to light the way with an inspiring holy glow. If I make it too bright, it'll attract monsters, so I keep it somewhat weak.

The Holly scouting directly ahead of us is the first one to find a "minion," which tells us that we're headed in the right direction.

She sees a white skeleton covered in a sort of transparent, lightless flame that blurs and darkens the area. The plants that get near it wither and wilt, becoming a sickly-looking and pale white color. Roxanne's magical knowledge tells us that this sort of flame must be Necromancy, something that burns HP or the life force of things, while the blur might come from the Undead corruption.

"That's definitely Necromancy. It burns Life to sustain itself," Almaria agrees with her assessment, then she turns to Yunia, her droopy eyes looking softer than usual. "I taught you that, didn't I?" She innocently asks.

"Of course you did," Yunia answers and gives her a glance, her tone more stern than usual, but Almaria is perceptive enough to notice that and smiles for a brief moment before becoming serious again.

"How damaging is it if you get close?" I inquire.

"If it's Undead, its corruption could compound with the flame, so I recommend [Earth Bullet] to the head," Almaria diligently answers.

I grin and turn to the golems. "How many boulders do you guys have inside your [Item Box]es?"

"Five sets of varying sizes," Ted begins.

"Each with five boulders," Suzy finishes.

"Then you'll put what you learned from Arreira to use."

As we get closer to the skellie, I deactivate Patrono's light, and we cautiously move in the near-total darkness, but it still seems to see us first and immediately breaks into a sprint, bursting through walls of thin roots like nothing.

The three golems [Equip] their basketball-sized boulders and use [Telekinesis] to launch them.

"Head," Ted claims.

"Chest," Suzy claims.

"Waist," Jarn claims.

The boulders line up, forming a pillar that crashes into the skellie. Its body is blasted into small bits while its arms and legs simply tumble forward, then they immediately start crawling creepily towards us.

"Huh… fucking undead…" I grumble in annoyance.

Just to test things out, I send Patrono forward with a looong tentacle and feed it some mana, making it flash brightly with holy light. The skellie arm exposed to the light doesn't just vaporize, it's completely annihilated, leaving no trace that it ever existed aside from the drained plants.

The golems finish off the rest of its bits by pummeling them with their boulders, breaking them into even smaller pieces, then the undead loses all cohesion and starts disintegrating into a cloud of toxic dust.

Once they pull back their boulders, we notice that they're too corrupted to store them back in their [Item Box]es, so Silvano restores their physical integrity, then Yunia breaks the corrupted spirits with [Spirit Sword], and the golems [Itemize] them again.

"Let's just use [Earth Bullet], then," I give up. It's too much work to do this after every battle.

The next skellie ends up shattered all the same, and we annihilate its remains with [Spirit Light]s.

After a few more, they seem to start to converge on us, then they come at us while already sprinting from far away.

We use some spare weapons to crush them so that the undead corruption doesn't ruin the enchantments of our main equipment. There's no reason to give Lina and the enchanters more work than necessary.

The skellies try to swarm us, but Ciel's [Holy Spirit] becomes a beacon of purification for us, weakening them and making their bodies brittle.

Once she starts to have to spend too much MP, we switch to Patrono's light to let her converse her mana, but we still kill the skellies with our own efforts without relying on the Heavenly Weapon.

Their numbers increase even more, and they almost begin displaying coordination in their attacks, then they suddenly stop coming. The Aberrant doesn't have infinite skellie minions, so it must be preparing for the upcoming battle.

We take a short breather and drink some refreshments.

"Your coordination is… perfect… without uttering a single order," Sandoro whispers in awe.

"We have telepathy, so we can speak in each other's minds," Roxanne reveals with a grin.

"And sometimes, the inside of my own head becomes insufferable," Yunia nonchalantly comments, and I give them both a look to stop playing around.

"So, is this what Dokkanchee saw?" Sai questions curiously, her bright tone in contrast with the gloomy environment.

"Precisely," I answer with a gentle nod.

The halfling woman controls her excitement and becomes professional again, returning a stern nod.

Questions and awe can be left for later, so we move on.

The Hollys find a patch of wilted, decaying forest that assaults them with the undead corruption from the very moment that they enter it, and inside, they find the Aberrant.

Surrounded by over forty skellies, they see the pure white skeleton of a Grim Giant slowly crawling forward. A black, sticky fluid is seeping out of its mouth and eye sockets like a Weeper, and its whole skull is surrounded by a faint, weak necromantic flame like the other skellies.

It seems that since there's no living being anywhere near them, all of their flames have weakened considerably.

They also notice five peculiar figures walking ahead of the Giant Skellie. They seem to be humanoids, and from looking at their equipment, I'd guess that it's an adventuring party, but a closer look reveals that they're all half-decayed corpses. I assume that something like a Corpse Stealer is possessing them, but it also has to be an undead being because all monsters attack undead on sight, just like they do with humanoids.

One of the corpse mages raises their staff towards the first Holly, and a storm of sand starts surrounding it, then the sand squeezes my summon, trapping it in a [Sand Coffin] as it's crushed and suffocated.

Goddamn, they're high-level adventurers.

I unsummon it, and the other two soon fall to the same spell, so I re-summon them and order them to keep their distance this time.

"They must've been overconfident due to their experience and died…" Ciel guesses, her tone full of sorrow.

"It's not a fast monster, so it's possible that they could've escaped if they didn't engage it," Sandoro expands on her reasoning.

She nods in agreement and steels her mind, letting her heart burn with determination. "Let's avenge those poor souls."

Just as we're about to reach the patch of dead trees, Alissa senses something coming our way.

"Dryads," she whispers, feeling nostalgic as she remembers our meeting with Gecynd, but also somewhat wary since she doesn't know who these dryads are.

Almaria pulls back her control over the vines so that her Life doesn't mix with the dryads, which would be very unpleasant, I've been told.

Alissa senses three dryads coming from underground, traveling through the roots, then they go up into the nearest tree to us and stop.

Three spots of bright green moss start to grow on the bark with incredible speed, then a hand pushes out of each patch, as if they were being blocked by a sheet of elastic moss.

The moss starts to wrap around the hands' shapes like skin, and three bodies appear as the dryads "walk" out of the tree. They quickly regrow their characteristics, revealing that they're actually two males and one female.

I block the males from my memory since I don't feel like looking at horse cocks, but the woman seems to be the leader, anyway, so I focus entirely on her, and by the Gods, she's stunning.

Her hair is pulled back and long, composed of straight vines that pour down her back and spread on the forest floor, decorated with cherry blossoms all along its length. Her exposed body is the perfect balance of curvy, sexy, thin, and muscular, but her square jaw and stern gaze tell of a strong personality. Her eyes don't seem to be the "bend over, humanoid" kind, but rather the "we shall fuck" kind.

"Greetings, Lords of the Ryder family. I'm Cereleia, the guardian of Aloresta," the dryad greets with a slow and measured tone.

"Greetings, I'm Wolf Ryder," I respond in kind without lowering my head. We can only bow to the Elder Council and the emperor himself now.

Then the girls introduce themselves, and after that, Almaria and Yunia share a kind, cordial nod with Cereleia since they've already met before.

"I've come to fight this wretched intruder," Cereleia immediately announces after the introductions are complete.

I have a quick mental discussion with Yunia to get myself acquainted with dryad diplomacy, then I politely decline, "We wish to fight it ourselves as a test of our abilities."

Her stern eyes soften, and she gives me an awfully elven, subtle smile. "Ah, I see. That's acceptable, though, from what I heard, you already possess astounding power yourself."

"We have to put in the work regularly to not get rusty," Hana interjects.

Cereleia gives her a long and slow nod of approval. "I can't say that I relate to humanoid difficulties, but I do understand the need." Then she turns to me. "After your battle, I'd like to collect your seed, if you'll allow me, to raise strong children for myself, then I'll give you the names of my lovers so that you don't involve them in humanoid disputes."

Alissa and I share a look. I'm going to fuck this dryad's brains out!

I like Cereleia's assertiveness, but right now I'm in "Rip and Tear" mode, so I don't let "Ravaging" mode get a hold of me.

After a very enthusiastic nod from me, the dryads join our group, and we move on together. Almaria continues opening the path ahead of us instead of the dryads since they're known to be lazy, so we don't even bother with asking them.

After a short walk, we finally reach the patch of dead woods, and the dryads visibly scowl in anger.

Once we enter the corruption, Ciel and one of the Lordsguard cast [Holy Spirit], and I summon a light elemental-wife so that we can keep the foul air at bay. I also use Patrono's light to its fullest, and it seems to have the strongest effect at combating it.

Unfortunately, nobody in our Lordsguard knows [Sanctuary], so this will have to do for now.

Almaria is now visibly struggling because her exposed Life is quite vulnerable to the corruption, so I walk beside her, keeping Patrono above her head.

"How are you feeling?" I concernedly ask the small elf.

"Cold… as if I'm bleeding to death, which isn't too far from the truth," she tiredly answers, but then she gives me a small smile. "I'll be fine after some Eia extract drink, though."

I feel like drinking something high-grade again.

"Cinco Flores?" I name the more expensive extract that our Eia farms produce.

She raises her eyebrows in delightful surprise. "I'd go for Unflor, but if you're offering…"

We smirk for a brief moment, then look ahead again.

We reach the point where the Officers should be able to see Big Skrellington, so they stop, and we move on ahead of them.

We put on our helmets and steel our resolve.

It's show time.

I leave Patrono with the light elemental-wife and summon another to ease off the corruption from us. Gify stays on the elemental-wife we left behind since she's too "important" to let her precious little soul get harmed by the corruption.

Gih.

Shameless.

The pungent smell of acetone burns our lungs, but I feel like it isn't really too much of a bother. Our natural resistance to the undead seems to have increased by a noticeable amount since the last time we fought one.

Big Skrellington suddenly stops crawling when it notices our light approaching, and every single skellie turns their empty, white skulls towards us, their vacant eyes staring in our direction in a way that reminds me of the golems.

We give the signal to the Officers that we were spotted, then Silvano raises the ground around them, creating a platform to keep them all a bit safer. Silvano's [Mana Control] is terrible, so he struggles a bit with using the unfamiliar spell, but the dryads decide to help out and join them on top of it, so his shame doesn't grow too large.

The skellies don't charge immediately and merely wait in place, forming a wall between us and the Big Skrellington, with the corpse adventurers standing at their front.

We use the [Fly] enchantment in our armor to slowly float forward above the brittle knots of roots until we find a particularly thick and tall one that we can stand on, then we land on it and observe Skrellington.

A chilling silence settles in as nobody makes a move, except for us since we still need to breathe.

"Peculiar…" Alcander mumbles and shares a look with all of the Officers.

"Why are they not attacking? Are they intelligent?" I question the girls, letting my curiosity overtake my wariness.

"Assume that all undead we meet are intelligent, or at least powerful enough to survive being cannibalized by the monsters," Ciel answers in a scholarly manner.

"Ah, that's survivorship bias," I reply with a nod of understanding.

"Can we communicate with it?" Lina asks a question that gives me pause.

That undead Dragonoid we met in the Wisps of the Proud dungeon was pretty communicative, though it was filled with relentless bloodlust, so we couldn't have a proper conversation.

"The undead have mysterious spells and powers. I recommend that we don't try," Ciel cautions us sternly.

Skrellington's jaw suddenly clacks repeatedly for a brief moment, producing a rather chilling sound that echoes throughout the dead patch of forest. After that, the skellies raise their arms and spread their legs, then they start stomping on the dessicated forest floor in a macabre dance.

"I believe they might be incapable of talking," I offer a casual guess, and all of the skellies suddenly stop moving.

I raise an eyebrow, and we all clearly see Skrellington nod at us.

"Well, shit. It's sapient," I blurt out.

"That's the first time I've seen a Lord actually try to talk to an undead," Silvano comments with an amused grin.

Well, nothing is simple in this world.

"It doesn't change our duty," Ciel grimly reminds me.

The skellies clack their jaws once and lower their arms, their stance appearing awfully aggressive, perhaps in response to Ciel.

My researcher instincts tell me to capture Skrellington, but I have no idea how to safely contain it. Also, Ciel is very afraid of the potential for some sort of mental manipulation if I were to interact with it regularly, so there's no easy way for me to get what I want.

Perhaps questioning a heretic would be more fruitful, but then, it'd be even more dangerous…

Yunia turns to me, her stern face revealing a hint of disapproval. "There isn't any room for discussion. Their existence is a threat to ours," she asserts.

"Very well…" I accept the facts and draw my sword. All of the skellies react by lowering their hips slightly, clearly getting themselves ready to break into a sprint. "Let's finish this."

A note from Manasong

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Chapter 98: Lordly Duties - Part 3

A note from Manasong

Attention: to conform to the limit of mature content (more than just sexual content) allowed in a novel, I've censored this chapter. You can look for the uncensored version here.

Alissa immediately fires a [Charge]d arrow at the corpse adventurers, but an [Earth Wall] is quickly raised in response, blocking her arrow from reaching them.

"Their mage is adept at defending against projectiles," Alissa reports through [Bind].

All of the over forty skellies charge forward, so I order the golems, "Take care of the skeletons." They quickly fly towards a clearing up ahead to set up a defensive line. Ted and Suzy call out their metal battle bodies, but it's only for defense since they aren't actual melee fighters.

One of the adventurers casts [Earth Spirit] and [Water Spirit] in quick succession. Surprisingly, the familiars come out looking cute and completely normal, but their movements lack the mischievousness and liveliness that one would normally expect of them.

Roxanne calls out her own [Water Spirit], looking a bit offended by the fact that such horrific, warped zombies could create a familiar just like she can.

To increase my max MP, I unsummon all the Shads and Hollys, though I do keep one Holly out. Then I summon five earth elemental-wives and order them to create a raised platform for us. Although the skellies can't easily climb wood, some hard, vertical rock should be nearly impossible for them without some kind of aid.

We float towards the platform and remain in place on it as we wait for them to get closer. There's no reason for us to charge forward, so we'll just deal with the skellies first.

Roxanne tries to aim an [Explosion] at the adventurers, but they seem to have a [Dead Zone] enchantment somewhere, so she only manages to partially blow off one of their heads, which quickly regenerates since they're also undead.

An [Ice Lance] is thrown back at us in response, but Roxanne casts a [Fire Wall] in its path, which completely destroys the spell.

"I can't do any actual damage to the undead from this range," she reports through [Bind].

Ciel casts [Judgment], making her glaive glow with a dangerous, white light, and gets ready to fly.

"Impede their movement," I order the girls through [Bind].

Roxanne casts [Lava Jet], unleashing the molten, glowing rock from the tip of her staff, and Alissa infuses her arrows with the same spell. They create multiple pools of lava ahead of the charging skellies, but that only briefly slows them down, and it just isn't enough to be worth them wasting more mana on this tactic.

Alissa switches to [Arrow of Annihilation], which is especially effective against undead, but it doesn't affect an area like an explosive [Fireball] would, so it isn't that great against the thin skellies.

Ciel uses her armor's [Fly] enchantment to rise up above us and gets ready to swoop down on the approaching enemies.

The elementals finish the platform and drop down to join the golems, then the skellies enter their range, and they fire large boulders with [Earth Bullet].

The skellies face their attack without even flinching, and the front row of undead bursts into piles of bones, then their charge quickly collapses as the ones in the back trip on the bones of the broken skellies at the front.

They quickly start to regenerate, so we only have a moment to finish them off before their charge can start up again.

"Ciel," I give her the cue through [Bind].

She swoops down onto the fallen skellies, her golden, glowing glaive slicing cleanly through their forms and completely snuffing out their transparent flames.

Skrellington lowers its flaming head onto the floor, and the ground cracks, sending out dark purple lines that shoot towards Ciel at a frightening speed.

She flies back immediately, and bright purple spears burst out of the ground, darting towards her.

One of them hits the back of her armor, but it doesn't even leave a scratch on it, then the spear bursts into a cloud of noxious gas, and [Rainbow Shield] flares up, repelling the poison.

A few spears come towards us, and we use [Wind Shield] to divert them, then I summon a wind elemental to keep the poisonous gas away from us.

Suddenly, the skellies turn around and sprint back to Big Skrellington, and it feels like it's gathering mana, but I think the corruption is interfering with my [Sense Mana], so nobody knows how much is there or what kind of spell it's casting.

The number of skellies has been reduced to about thirty, so it seems that Ciel's sweep was extremely effective.

Alissa fires an [Arrow of Annihilation] at Skrellington, but another [Earth Wall] protects it.

She grumbles in frustration, then casts [Fly] and goes up high enough to get a clear shot. I snort as I realize that [Earth Wall]'s weakness is high ground.

"We might be able to outlast the undead, but I don't want to bet on it. We need to interrupt that spell," Yunia states firmly.

I wipe away all the mirth within me, then I nod sternly and agree, "Alright, we're diving in." Then I shout to the golems and elementals, "CHARGE! TAKE CARE OF THE SKELETONS!"

Hana summons her wings and leads the way, then I put down a [Gate] "coordinate," and everyone follows Hana with their armor's [Fly].

The corpse adventurers retreat behind the skellies, getting closer to Skrellington.

Alissa fires another [Arrow of Annihilation], but this time, it's blocked by a [Water Wall], though the spell visibly becomes wild as the caster almost loses control of it.

She fires a few arrows in rapid succession, then perches herself on a thick branch. Her little barrage grabs the attention of the corpse mages and allows us to approach unmolested.

"I'll keep the big boy occupied!" Hana shouts through [Bind] and uses [Morph Length] to increase the length of her bastard sword, then follows it up with [Double Strike] as she hits Skrellington's right shoulder, cutting clean through the bone.

Its bony arm falls off, revealing that it isn't a puppet like the elementals, so joint damage can be effective against it.

The earth elemental-wives and golems throw huge boulders ahead, opening a hole in the middle of the mass of skellies, then Ciel swoops in and clears out an area for us to land.

The adventurers face off with us. Four melee fighters against Yunia, Lina, and I, though one of them seems to be an archer without a bow.

Ciel flies around the clearing, preventing the skellies from swarming our position while the golems and elemental-wives help from at range. There are just so many that Aoi has to watch our back, using both her large body and her halberd to crush any of them that approach our position, though she isn't able to finish them off, so they have enough time to regenerate.

Roxanne explodes the first fighter, but [Dead Zone] limits the resulting wound to a mere hole in his right thigh. It doesn't seem to need its muscles to move, so it doesn't slow down even slightly from the injury. Now those are actual puppets, their bodies moving entirely by anti-gravity magic alone.

Roxanne switches to [Ice Lance], but they have [Wind Shield] to protect them from ranged spells, so she decides to attack Skrellington, which is more vulnerable to her spells now that we're closer.

I summon my tentacles and [Equip] my set of weapons, then I stab at the corpse before me with a spear, but he easily defends himself with his shield and stays just out of reach.

Yunia fights a spear and shield user and the weak archer by herself, but they don't leave many openings for her to finish them off, fighting very defensively.

Lina pummels the other spear and shield user, but she isn't overcoming its natural regeneration, though his shield is quickly getting ruined.

My opponent slashes at my weapons, having to use both his bastard sword and his shield to prevent me from skewering him from all sides.

The [Holy Spirit] and [Water Spirit] stay with Roxanne, and they try to trap and finish off the skellies, but their offensive power isn't that great, so the girls just keep them on the defensive.

"They're stalling us!" Yunia anxiously shouts inside my soul space.

"Full power!" I order, and we stop conserving our MP.

Lina, Yunia, and I all cast [Searing Blade] at the same time, then we slice through their shields, and their arms fall to the ground, leaving them vulnerable.

Ciel swoops in, her glowing glaive slicing across their chests, then [Judgment] makes them catch fire.

Alissa releases a barrage of arrows, but they're all blocked by the mage and their familiars, though their attention is drawn away from us for a moment.

Roxanne uses all of her [Mana Control] to instant cast a huge area spell. "[Firestorm]!" She releases it instantly, and the fighters are drowned in a wide sphere of ravaging fire, their [Dead Zone] apparently no longer usable, probably only present on one of the shields on the floor.

The corpse mage interrupts the spell, so Alissa fires a few [Charge]d arrows in response, and three of them get past their defenses now that their mage is distracted.

Skrellington's large, flaming skull falls to the ground, severed from its spine, but the damned undead still manages to complete its spell.

From the cracks on the floor, large, thick, decidedly not lewd purple tentacles burst out. Some of them get zapped by Alissa's [Charge]d arrows that trigger a second later, getting stunned by the spell, but the rest immediately dive in our direction, aiming to crush us.

Giant saw blades decorated with intricate elven patterns and controlled by the golems slice cleanly through most of the attacking tentacles, but they leave two untouched that they couldn't reach with their single strike.

I stretch my soul as much as I can around us and anchor them to the ground, then I harden my soul and cover its surface with dragon scales, then I cast [Discharge].

The tentacles smash through my soul shield, and I feel my head going light from the pain as the corruption attacks my spirit, but the attack has been completely stopped in its tracks, and the tentacles are now stunned.

Not one of my best ideas…

Ciel slices through one while Lina flies up to get the other, then the corpse adventurers lunge forward towards me, their half-charred bodies flaking away, revealing their white skeletons underneath.

Their tenacity enrages me, clearing my head and freeing me from my daze, then I strike them with my tentacles and cast [Heal], making them burst into dust, though they aren't completely destroyed just yet.

"I'll finish this one!" Yunia shouts inside my soul space.

With the way now clear, she charges forward, boosted by her armor's [Rush], and uses her righteous fury to dice up the corpse mage into bits.

The purple tentacles retreat back down to the ground, then I see them wrapping themselves around Skrellington, reconnecting the limbs that Hana had destroyed.

Motherf...!

Roxanne casts [Firestorm] on the remains of the adventurers, finally releasing them from their torment, though Yunia feels like their spirits might still be lingering.

"FINISH IT!" I shout through [Bind].

I take Aoi's place, and Lina and I protect Roxanne while the rest of the girls attack Skrellington.

Hana assaults the back of its neck, furiously slicing her way through the tentacles to prevent its head from reconnecting.

I crush skulls with my mace and sweep through their bodies with my halberd, taking multiple skellies with each strike, but they keep regenerating and coming right back at us. Though I know that their energy isn't endless, I don't want to wait and see how long they can last.

The earth elementals reach us, led by Jarn as her multitude of arms crush skulls with ease. They form a protective wall with their bodies, and the number of skellies finally starts to diminish.

Suddenly, Roxanne, Aoi, Yunia and I feel a chill go down our spines. We can't sense the mana, but something tells us that Skrellington is spending a lot of whatever powers it has on something.

My eyes are drawn towards the skull, then my vision blurs.

The flame!

Hana's and Yunia's [Rainbow Shield]s flare up, and they groan in pain as their HP is quickly drained away at about five points per second.

"[EXPLOSION]!" Roxanne releases her spell boosted by [Rainbow Crystal], and Skrellington's head splits open, spreading rotten purple meat everywhere and snuffing out the flame. Thankfully, there's no blood, but the corruption skyrockets as the air is filled with noxious fumes.

"DON'T LET IT REGENERATE!" I order the girls, and everyone ignores the skellies in favor of attacking Skrellington.

Hana activates [Draconic Body], her entire right arm growing scales that are currently hidden by her armor, but the most significant change is that her "Strength" is also increased.

She sheathes her sword, then grabs the spinal vertebra peeking out of its stump and rips it out with her bare hands.

Yunia flies towards her and slices apart the spinal cord, making it easier for Hana to rip the disks out.

Lina hacks her way through a shoulder, completely severing it from the rest of the body, then she immediately goes to work on the other.

Aoi spreads her flames, burning up every last piece of purple meat she can find.

Alissa fires [Arrow of Annihilation] at its joints, preventing it from slapping Hana and Yunia with its gigantic hands.

"JARN, GIVE ME FOUR AXES!" I order, and she obeys without any hesitation. She [Equips] them, then throws them a bit too fast for me to smoothly handle, so I have to scramble to pick them up with my tentacles.

Once I've wielded them properly, I fly towards Skrellington and spin, raking through the purple tentacles like huge draconic claws, exposing the white bone underneath again.

GOT YOU NOW!

Aoi follows behind me, spreading fire everywhere and cauterizing the openings, then Ciel comes in with the finisher, her [Judgment]-infused glaive annihilating both the tentacles and the bones.

We cough and gasp for air as our HP continues to drop, so everyone makes a pit stop by Ciel or the [Holy Spirit] to top themselves off on health again.

Skrellington's resistance quickly fades away as its body is quartered, then we retreat, and Roxanne unleashes another [Firestorm], this one swallowing it completely.

As it burns, we clean up the skellies, then we gather back together again to catch our breaths while the air elemental cleans away the noxious gas from the area. Yunia immediately comes over to me and uses [Spirit Touch] to heal my wounded soul, alleviating my pain.

After another half a minute, Skrellington's presence fades away, and Aoi levels up.

"Raaawwr!" She roars victoriously, and we cheer along with her.

I take my helmet and gauntlets off, then I give the girls a proud smile, "Amazing work, everyone. It was a tough battle, but we achieved a complete victory." Then I turn to the golems. "And I'm very impressed with you three. Your quick-thinking saved us from a difficult position."

Ted and Suzy store their battle bodies, revealing the original dolls, which are completely intact.

"We've fulfilled our purpose," Ted starts.

"But we'll never stop our growth," Suzy follows.

"We'll forever search for ways to serve you better," Jarn finishes.

"Well, I believe I speak for everyone when I say that we're glad to have you here," Ciel happily declares, then she snatches Ted from the air and hugs her tight against her armor.

Once my soul is properly healed again, we return to the Officers.

Everyone's a bit speechless, simply too overwhelmed to ask us any questions about the fight. Silvano's triumphant grin is a bit creepy, though.

"Impressive," Cereleia coos in wonder, the only one who still has their wits about them. "So many instant-cast spells… I can't believe that you're all magic swordsmen. It must be the so-called Gift that you're believed to possess." Her high-cheekbones give her a noble air, and the gentle amusement of her expression is such a good fit to enhance her beauty. She's not the "step on me" kind of woman, so she definitely looks much better smiling than looking stern.

Yunia's reply is categorical, though her tone is clearly soft and respectful to the dryad, "We can't confirm or deny it to you, but we'll answer any questions that the Officers may have for us once we're back at the castle."

"Lords and their secrets…" Cereleia hums as she grins.

Almaria holds back a snort as she recovers from her stunned state. "As if you were any different," she wryly accuses the dryad.

Cereleia lets out low chuckles, her hair flowers rustling from the movement of her shoulders. "I won't deny that it's slightly vexing having to deal with others as equals," she casually admits.

We approach the platform, and Silvano creates a ramp for them to come down.

"Let's get out of the corruption before we continue our talk," Sandoro hurriedly suggests.

But Cereleia interjects, her gaze gently falling on me, "Before you leave, I wish to acquire your seed immediately. Your performance has made me very excited."

Both Yunia and Lina nudge me internally, forcing me to "negotiate" a bit.

I grin at Cereleia, somewhat enjoying the words that I'm about to say, "My seed has value, not only to you, but also to many humanoids. Therefore, it's a tremendous waste to give it freely."

She opens her eyes wide in surprise and shares an amused look with the other dryads. "Normally, the opportunity of laying with a dryad is enough to convince humanoids to share, but what would you like in return, then?"

"Knowledge. I want to know who lives here in the forest and where they settle. I'm searching for heretics, specifically."

She frowns concernedly. "I don't have a way to discern your 'heretics' or those marked as Wicked from the common humanoid."

I smile kindly to reassure her. "Then just provide whatever details you can tell us about who settles in here and where they are."

She slowly looks to each dryad, and they both nod at her, so she turns back to me and returns the smile. "Acceptable, if you also agree to share your seed regularly," she adds with a cheeky tone.

I shrug. "We can iron out the details later."

At that, she nods energetically. "Certainly. Do you wish to do it here, outside the corruption, or somewhere that you'd say is more 'comfortable'?" She suggests with a slow, alluring, deliberate tone.

"Here is fine, I'll just pull out my bed."

Cereleia nods slowly and motions back to the path Almaria made. "Please, lead the way."

As we walk, Hana approaches Cereleia with an excited look in her eyes. "Do you mind if I join you two?" She asks with as much politeness as she can muster, which isn't a lot.

Cereleia hesitates for a moment, slightly confused. "Don't you want a male for yourself?"

"No male, ever. Only Wolfy," Hana confidently states, bringing a smile to my lips.

But Cereleia's confusion lingers. "I see… I guess it could work?"

Now it's Hana who frowns in confusion. "You've never done it in a trio?"

It seems like the two are almost worlds apart as Cereleia only becomes more confused.

"A three-… two females at the same time?" She incredulously asks, and her eyes fly between Hana and me as she imagines something. "I can't see how that works since there aren't enough males for the holes at play."

Hana snorts loudly and asks suggestively, "Well, you saw Wolfy's tentacles…?"

Realization finally dawns on the dryad. "Oh~… that could work, yes."

After leaving the corruption zone, we all pass through some intense, anti-undead [Spirit Light] cleansing, finally clearing our noses of the hellish smell of acetone, then I pull out a huge spare bed.

"May I watch?" Silvano politely asks, his pretty, feminine face smiling with a tinge of anticipation.

"Since Hana is participating, no man can watch, only women," I sternly state, and his smile instantly turns upside down.

Sandoro immediately replies, his tone sounding very stiff, "Then, we'll return to the castle."

"I'll… stay at a good distance away to give you some privacy," Alcander adds with the same tone. He can't leave us alone here, so he has to wait for us.

"Call for the priests to exorcise this area. The twisted spirits are still lingering nearby," Sai informs Sandoro.

"You're staying?" He asks her reflexively

"Yes," she shyly replies, her pale, cute face turning slightly pink.

Romy and three other female Lordsguard remain while everyone else leaves through Alcander's [Gate], then the poor man is forced to hide behind a tree and simply wait.

Now that there aren't any naked male dryads in sight anymore, my mood improves quite a lot.

The golems pull out a table and chairs for the girls while Alissa serves them tea. They're all mildly interested in seeing how this will go.

Ciel takes some tea and cookies to Alcander for him to snack on as a sort of apology.

Hana and I un[Equip] our armor and underclothes, leaving us in just our white underwear. As clothing goes, they aren't really enticing, so we immediately take them off too.

Cereleia's eyes scan over both of our bodies, and she seems very satisfied with what she sees.

I underestimate Celeria's experience with love and how good she is at extracting it. We even hear female dryads giggling as Cereleia dominates me. It's like her entire body was made specifically for this, and it's so strong against me that I almost become her toy, almost.

She makes the critical mistake of wrapping my neck and horns with vines, then pulls on them like a horse's reigns. The pain and humiliation activate the dragon within me instead of making me meek, and I give my all to turn the tables on her, then I decide to attack her with my spirit touch.

"Uhgh~…!" Cereleia gasps, then her body seizes up.

I move my hips again, and she weakly squeaks.

What…?

Cereleia stops moving her hand, and I feel her legs starting to shiver.

Holy shit.

I pull out and prepare a long stroke.

"What… how…?" Cereleia moans weakly with her eyes wide open in confusion and fright, but she doesn't try to stop me.

"Hahahaha. This is the power of the dragon!" I shout with a maniacal laugh, then I give her a second-long thrust.

"ANNNGH~…!" She squeaks, her composure completely broken.

"Gih!" Gify shouts in realization.

"HAHAHAH!" Hana laughs out loud, and I quickly give her [Soul Manipulation] too so that we can gang up on the haughty dryad.

"Angh… angh… angh…" She squeaks with every thrust, her composure utterly destroyed, her mouth limply gaped, and her tongue hanging out.

Hana kisses her to prevent even a single drop of her honeyed saliva from going to waste as the mind-broken dryad starts to mindlessly drool.

Her vines loosen, then completely fall off of our bodies.

Like nature spirits, Dryads are very vulnerable to [Spirit Magic], which means that they're also vulnerable to my spirit Weapon!

The female dryads stop giggling, and the forest is filled with murmurs that carry both confusion and awe with them.

Then Cereleia's eyes roll up into her skull, leaving only their whites visible. We've completely dominated her.

I slide out of the completely filled dryad, and we let her unconscious body fall back on the bed.

A small female dryad emerges from a tree and shyly walks towards us. "We need to bring her back into the network," she whispers, her frightened eyes glancing at my dragonator.

Network…?

I keep the question to myself and nod cordially as I take a step back, then Aoi comes over and starts draining the last of my MP, but I don't let her finish me off since I still need some of it.

Hana stretches her body and happily moans, now refreshed from the amazing lay we just had.

The small dryad lifts Cereleia with impressive ease and carries her to the nearest tree, which they both "sink" into.

I turn to the girls and order, "Bring Alcander back. I want to take a hot bath immediately." Then I turn to Alissa and grin. Her time has come.

Intermission 23 – Romy

After we're dismissed, I put on my casual clothes and go to the recreation lounge to relax for a bit.

The boys are playing cards while the girls are braiding each others' hair. Well… the elves dressed as boys are playing, and the elves dressed as girls are braiding. Sometimes, these mustch elves really annoy me with their cross-dressing.

One of the girls, an actual girl, shouts out to me as I approach, "Hey, Romy! How was the expedition?"

I grin and become giddy as I anticipate telling them about it. "It was amazing. You'd never see anything as impressive as that, even in the Arena," I reply excitedly.

"Did you get some?" The girl asks with a raised eyebrow.

I chuckle softly and announce to everyone, "No, but someone did… the Lord did a dryad until she fell unconscious!"

"What the fuck… magic Tool again?" One of the imperial boys asks out loud.

"Yeah. He knows some crazy technique that left the dryad completely helpless."

"Man, that's actually scary. Didn't he do a bunch of Root Lords, too?" One of the weredog boys asks, his tail tucked between his nice ass in fear.

"Magic Tool," the imperial answers matter-of-factly.

"He doesn't do men, right?" One of the elven boys-dressed-as-girls asks tentatively.

"No. None of the Queens do, either, except when it comes to him…" I answer with a serious tone. You really don't mess with the wives of a jealous dragon, so everyone needs to know this simple fact very well.

"If I let him lay with my wife, will I get a position in the Companions?" One of the elven boys innocently asks.

"If the King is smart, he'll let the Commander handle all of the recruiting for the Companions," one of the veteran elven boys answers seriously, and nearly everyone nods their head in agreement. It's easy to let your judgment get clouded when you're doing your own men, and that ruins morale pretty quickly, so the Royals are simply too close to us to fairly give us promotions.

"Didn't the Commander keep his wife from attending the Lordship Ceremony?" The weredog boy lightens the mood, earning a few chuckles from us.

"He doesn't need to lay with the Royals to prove his loyalty," the elven veteran wryly replies.

"I mean, loyalty is loyalty, so maybe he'll see it as 'commitment' to the Lordship if I let the King lay with my wife," the "innocent" elf speculates.

The imperial boy looks at him incredulously. "Wait, what the hell, are you serious?"

"I'll never let him meet my wife," the weredog boy mumbles.

"What?" The lewd elf hums.

"Why would you let him do your wife?" The imperial presses him.

The lewd elf shrugs. "I mean, he quite literally has a magic Tool, doesn't he? It'd be an incredible experience for my wife, like a gift."

"Wow…" The non-elven boys hum and whistle amazement.

"Damn elves…" Another mutters.

"I wish he did men…" Another male elf whispers.

I turn to the lewd elf and interrogate him, "Why do you want to become part of the Companions? I hope you aren't planning to spy on the Queens."

He shakes his head energetically as he denies emphatically, a bit taken aback, "No, no, no, nothing like that…" -Then he suddenly smiles a bit awkwardly- "The truth is… do you think he'd mind if I drank his juice he'd leave in my wife? The Chimeras say that it's incredibly tasty."

"That's only because it's magical and they're… basically magical beings," the veteran calmly answers, not finding the true wishes of the lewd elf to be weird at all.

Then the talk continues on about the King's Tool, and both elf and non-elf theorize together about the lewd secrets of the Royals. For once, the two sides seem to fully mingle, without any reservations holding them back.

Well, would you look at that? A cock to unite us all.

A note from Manasong

Hall of Fame of Patrons

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Chapter 99: Experiment - Part 1

A note from Manasong

Attention: to conform to the limit of sexual content allowed in a novel, I've censored this chapter. You can look for the uncensored version here.

The maids deftly wipe my body and cast [Clean], then they use [Fireball] to quickly dry my hair. They seem to have fully grasped how to avoid cutting themselves on my scales and claws.

I take a step forward and stand in the beam of light pouring down from the glass ceiling, and my scales shine blindingly, polished so perfectly that I could use them as a mirror to reflect upon my incredible handsomeness and virility.

I look straight ahead, and my thick tail stands up in attention as I notice the divine beauty watching me with hungry, orange eyes. Her shoulder-length, almost orange hair seems to sparkle from both its silkiness and its moisture. Her fluffy fox ears point upwards in both attention and alertness, but her lazily wagging tail reveals the true feeling that lies within her heart: mischief.

She takes a step forward, and her juicy, supple breasts jiggle, immediately drawing my attention to them, almost as if it was all a deliberate distraction, then my eyes are drawn further downwards, past her fit abs, and towards her orange landing strip that contrasts with her pale skin. Nostalgic memories of that small, tight place arouse me, and my dragonator arms itself on its own.

We both walk to the side at the same time, moving towards a comfortable and lavish bed that's waiting just for us, and the maids light incenses around it, which release a stimulating flowery scent that helps to narrow my mind's focus onto my goal: Ravaging Alissa.

We go at it wild and hard. The heavy amount of teasing has built up so much frustration that it gets all released in an explosion accompanied by fireworks. Our wild nature within us just makes it hard to hold back, and we Fuck until I have to [Heal] us both, then I get up our mating nest and carry Alissa to the bath.

I carefully walk down the steps and enter the hot water, then I sit down on the jiggly, jelly-like bench and lower Alissa onto my lap.

She curls up and rests her head against my chest again, then she closes her eyes.

I find it really cute how her fox ears still remain perked up, probably so that she can catch any sounds of danger while she sleeps.

I gently caress her head with my padded claws, giving her a light, pleasant tickle, and close my eyes, too.

The battle was exciting, and the dragon is quite happy now, but the human is tired. I do have more energy than I did before, but my tolerance for violence hasn't increased that significantly, so I feel a bit drained, in both senses of the word.

As if she could read my mind, Poosh appears behind me and kindly offers, "Your Highness, would you care for a massage?"

"Yes, please."

She kneels down on the floor, and her experienced hands immediately go to work. Poosh's attentiveness might be my favorite thing about her, the second being the inside of her vagina.

After Alissa's had a good nap and my stress has melted away in the hot bath, we both get out, and we unfortunately have to part ways since we each have our own business to attend to.

Poosh opens the door for me, and I enter the meeting room, now fully dressed and refreshed, then the Officers stand to greet me and bow.

I wave my hand, and they sit down, then I sit in the biggest chair.

"Let the meeting begin," I immediately announce and give everyone a glance. "Does anyone have any questions related to the battle you witnessed?"

"Your Highness, did you… touch Cereleia's spirit with your own?" Almaria asks, sounding slightly concerned.

It actually surprises me that this is the first question she asks. "Yes, I did. It only causes pleasure, but it was unusually potent for her, for some reason. Why do you ask?"

"Well…" Almaria adjusts her glasses, trying to find the correct words to broach this topic tactfully. "There's a ritual among Dryads that is used when humanoids want to 'marry' a Dryad and become their permanent lover. It involves having sex while bleeding profusely, and it's said that this allows their spirits to 'touch' through their blood, which gives them both mind-shattering pleasure."

I blink blankly for a long moment.

"Did I accidentally marry Cereleia?" I blurt out.

Almaria awkwardly adjusts her glasses again and looks down at the table. "I don't know… but perhaps you did, in a way…" Then she looks at me with increasing worry.

I facepalm and sigh. "We'll… have to talk this out with Cereleia the next time we meet, then. She didn't give me the names of her lovers, after all."

"I still remember them, and they aren't anyone important to the Lordship, so it's incredibly unlikely that we'll ever cross paths," she assures me.

I sit up straight and point out, "We also have to set up a way to regularly communicate with her if she's to send the reports to me."

"Understood, I'll get on it." And she nods obediently.

Sai and Silvano seem very amused, while the rest are neutral, though they could just be hiding their emotions.

"About your Gift…" Sandoro starts, and I give them a rough outline of what we can do. It was for this exact moment that we required them to become Blood Slaves because it wouldn't be possible or even smart to keep my Gift a secret from the High Officers with us needing to fight together regularly.

"I see…" Sandoro hums then thinks for a moment before starting his analysis, "I noticed how you all seemed to use a wide variety of spells, but none of them, save for [Explosion], seemed to have a lot of 'Magical Power.' You have a lot of power, yes, but it still lacks the impact that an average Lord can bring onto a battlefield, though their power will never grow to be as deep or as diverse as yours due to your Gift, your Highness."

And Alcander immediately follows up, "However, we should be able to cast something big if we use [Ritualism]. If I understand it right, you prefer to keep a varied set of low-level skills instead of focusing on one, correct?"

I nod in agreement and explain myself, "Precisely. I can use spells up to level fifty, and the girls can go even higher if they have the skill points for it, but they don't have as many as me or Lina since they've had more time to level their skills than we have."

Silvano is quick to grasp the mechanics of my Gift and immediately voices a question, "Why do you keep leveling skills? Just suppress all level ups and accumulate enough points to push any skill to the maximum level at will."

But I already have an answer to that, "Leveling the skills gives us more knowledge and power than what just moving our points around can provide us. Think of it like a shortcut. It doesn't tell us how to navigate our skills, so when we have to be creative, we can't since the only thing we know is the shortcut and we never deviated from it."

He narrows his eyes and hums, pondering upon my words, "Hm… I guess it makes sense, though your Gift doesn't seem to make that much sense, to begin with." And I smile wryly while he grins.

Then Alcander wastes no more time and slyly suggests, "I think it's a good idea to start doing combat exercises with the Lordsguard so that they can get used to your 'unusual' fighting style."

Sandoro comes in to support, "I agree. None of your Highnesses fit within our units, except for Grand Hanafuria, perhaps, so I believe you'll need to learn how to fight around your men. They certainly don't have anywhere near the same versatility as you do."

I get where they're going with this, so I give them a subtle smile, then turn to Silvano and follow up with, "Sounds like a great opportunity to train with you, Sir Silvano. You also seem to have a very 'unusual' fighting style, or so I've heard."

"That sounds…" Silvano mumbles, very suspicious of what we're aiming for, but we give him a stern front, pressing him into acceptance. "Like a good idea," he relents, albeit a bit skeptical.

Alcander smirks as the bait has worked perfectly, then he returns to being stoic and points out, "It seems that our greatest weakness will be Lord-level magical combat since we don't have enough High Mages to counter most other Lords."

Silvano immediately forgets about the trap we just laid for him and presents a counterpoint with a grin, "But we can definitely compensate with ingenuity." However, Alcander definitely doesn't agree with him.

"If anything, your Highnesses have shown exactly that," Sai sides with Silvano, giving me a brief, warm smile.

Alcander narrows his eyes at her, and his tone becomes stiff as he retorts, "Still, warfare is as much tried and true methods as it is ingenuity, so I hope that we'll all work diligently to gain what we're missing…" Then his eyes turn to me.

I smile kindly, disarming his tension, and calmly reply, "We know the imperial mana training routine, so that's what we'll be doing every morning from now on."

Everyone's eyes widen, and they shift uncomfortably in their seats, except for Poosh, who merely smiles in a motherly way like usual as she doesn't have a single idea about what we're talking about.

"Ooh~… Not even my Lords knew that," Silvano coos and grins.

"And I also know [Godly Language]," I casually complete the combo with a smirk.

Alcander's face twitches and a vein bulges on his forehead. "As expected of your Highness…" He grumbles through gritted teeth, and I'd bet that he's trying to hold back his desire to shout out about how ridiculous we are.

"Of course, we'll be sharing this technique with all of you," I announce, and they breathe in loudly, their demeanors changing from surprise to excitement in an instant.

After showing them how stupidly simple it is, they chuckle in disbelief.

"This is the oh, so secret and coveted, secret imperial secret technique that's so secretive that they secretly threaten all those who secretly discover it?!" Silvano exclaims, his voice rapidly increasing in pitch along the way, then he turns his eyes on Alcander, who just shrugs and chuckles.

"Don't look at me, I knew absolutely nothing about it before today," Alcander remarks with a smirk.

But it's Almaria who seems to have the strongest reaction to the revelation. She just stares down at her hands, her droopy eyes looking dead and lifeless.

"Madame Almaria…?" Poosh kindly prods her, concerned about her speechlessness.

"I bled so much…" Almaria mumbles, and the pain in her voice gives us all pause. "So much effort to gain my mana… so much work when I could've just been meditating this entire time…" She raises her head and gives me a creepy stare again. "Thank you, your Highness, for easing our burden."

"You're welcome…" I stiffly reply, not sure how to properly comfort her right now.

After that, we go through a few more light topics, then they report that the room for the [Otherworldly Summoning] experiment will be ready tomorrow.

Once the meeting is over, Yunia comes in with a gentle smile on her face and sits down beside me as the other Officers get up and bow, then they all leave, except for Almaria.

"I never knew you had [Acting]," Yunia teasingly comments as she pulls out a bottle of Cinco Flores.

"Ah~…!" Almaria squeaks in surprise as she sees the bottle, her face brightening up for just a split second, then she returns to acting depressed again.

"I see it's only at level one," I follow up and pull out a set of small shot glasses. It's funny that elves actually use glass for alcohol instead of wood, but that's only because it's the best vessel for drinking Eia.

Almaria suddenly chuckles and stops playing around. "I was actually sad, but only for a little while," she explains herself in embarrassment.

Yunia uncorks the bottle, and the sickeningly sweet smell of the extract makes me rather excited. My body gets all tingly just from smelling it, and I feel like my "Sanity" has increased by a point as my vision becomes subtly more vivid.

Yunia pours out a finger of Eia, which is considerably more than the few drops I had last time, then they both turn to me.

"He doesn't have our resistance to Eia, so…" Yunia insinuates with a teasing smile.

"You'll have quite a lot of fun with this one, your Highness," Almaria assures me with a kind smile.

Yunia casts [Spirit Light] and pushes it towards the point between us, then we all grab our glasses and lift them up to let the light bless them, the elven version of a toast.

The shadows that the glasses cast on the table actually include a faint rainbow due to the magical light, and that's a testament to the quality of the extract.

We down our glasses, and a multitude of flavors caresses my tongue. First comes chocolate, then, surprisingly, I recognize coffee, making me feel extremely nostalgic, then the flavor of peanuts rises up, followed by a subtle taste of cherry, and the last flavor of fig comes in to complete the quintet of flavors. These are the famous five spices, but this doesn't mean that they have coffee or chocolate, it's just that the flower plus the extract forms the flavours.

My tongue starts to go numb, so I swallow, then my vision goes blurry and warps, as if I had just summoned something, and all of my senses become heightened, including my control over my body, but it actually requires more mental effort for me to move like this. This is the downside of Eia: like with using any body-enhancement skill that doesn't consume mana, they make you mentally exhausted, instead.

Then my "third eye" opens, and I start to see Life. All around me are hundreds of little white dots, the plants growing on the castle itself. They move around in an organized manner, like white cars driving around an incredibly complex network of invisible roads, or at least, invisible to me because Yunia can see how they all connect.

"Is 'Life' information? Why do the plants keep sharing it around?" I suddenly blurt out, my inhibitions becoming loosened as the weed reaches my brain and makes me relax.

Yunia smiles amiably at me and scholarly answers, "It's 'interaction.' Every living being shares some Life whenever they 'interact,' so, in a place full of immobile plants, these 'interactions' look like a network."

I chuckle as I look around and mumble, "I still have no idea what the fuck 'Life' actually is. Is it the same as the Tale of Creation's 'Life'?"

"No, the Tale's 'Life' is the Original Life, which became what we now call mana," Ciel quickly chimes in through [Bind].

"The Tale's 'Life' has evolved into mana. What we now call 'Life' is what separates us from 'objects,' it's what makes us 'entities,'" Almaria answers, resting her head on her hand as she stares at me amusedly.

"So, like, it's what makes us different from 'inanimate' objects?"

Almaria nods slowly. "Exactly that. If you're alive, you have 'Life' within you."

I narrow my eyes and stare at Yunia's Life, which is slowly moving between her, Almaria, and me. Each ball of "Life" seems to be a different size, which is curious. "Can you quantify 'Life'?"

Yunia shrugs and answers casually, "Perhaps. We can see it, and it varies in size, so yes, we can."

But that's not good enough for me, "Though not with certainty, it seems." And I raise my eyes to look at them. "There are no Life 'units,' right? Like, MP has its units, or you can measure liquids with cups, or weigh things with stones, but there's no 'unit' for Life?"

Almaria slowly shakes her head. "I don't think so. We can create a measurement unit that uses sight alone, but it would definitely be imprecise."

With that, I theorize further, "We could compare the measured Life to a standard being, like the average amount of Life in an Eia plant."

But Almaria already has a counterpoint, "That's been done in the past, but everyone's sense of Life is different, and the 'size' of the 'interactions' even change with how much Eia you take regularly, so it's only useful if you're measuring Life fairly often, like a researcher does."

"Huh…" I hum as my brain processes that, then I immediately swerve on a tangent, "Hey, do the golems have Life?"

Yunia chuckles, and Almaria calmly answers, "They do, though it isn't as dynamic as yours."

"And a Thread of Fate?"

"Yes."

"So I can say that I've already given birth to a new life form?"

Almaria raises her eyebrows and glances at Yunia. "That's an extremely curious phrasing," she remarks bemusedly.

"Is 'Life' intelligence? Do bacteria have 'Life'? What about ants or other insects?" I rapidly fire off questions as my mouth gains will of its own.

Almaria frowns in confusion and asks, "What's 'bacteria'?"

Yunia shakes her head while smiling subtly and tiredly answers, "Micro entities, and yes, ants and other insects also have Life, though it's so small that even Almaria has trouble detecting it."

And then I shoot off yet another question, my brain going into overdrive, "Everything that has Life also has a soul and a Thread?"

"Yes," they answer in unison.

"Then why do dead spirits have their Threads cut? What does it mean to be 'dead'?"

Yunia shrugs. "Ask Ciel, that's not really my area of expertise."

And my angel's voice immediately echoes within my soul space, "'Death' means that you've reached the end of your time in this realm, and you must now return to the Cycle, like all things should. The undead exist outside of this Cycle, which disrupts it, and that is why they must be eliminated."

"Are you talking through 'telepathy'?" Almaria quietly asks, noticing the awkward silence.

"Yes, we are," Yunia whispers back.

I frown and cross my arms in confusion. "Wait, don't dryads live forever? How are they not undead, then?"

And Almaria immediately answers, concerned that my opinion of dryads might suddenly do a 180, "They constantly change over time, and at some point, the Cereleia we knew would no longer be the same being, having become someone else."

I don't even dwell on it for a second, instantly accepting her answer, and immediately go for another question, "Do insects go to Paradise?"

"I don't know, nobody does," Ciel kindly answers through [Bind].

"This is rather amusing, your Highness," Almaria quietly comments to Yunia with a chuckle.

"His scholarly curiosity is sometimes endearing," she fondly admits.

I get up and walk over to a flower, then I touch it, and a white blob of my "Life" is sent towards it.

"What controls the 'direction' that Life travels in?" I inquire in a scholarly tone.

"The initiator," Almaria loudly replies, then she whispers something to Yunia, but I'm too distracted to make it out.

"And the intensity of the sharing?"

"The intensity of the interaction," Yunia answers this time, and they both giggle.

I crush the leaf with my hand and observe a larger blob of Life going towards it, then the little plant's Life becomes weaker, making me feel sad, so I cast [Regeneration] and [Grow] on it to return it to its previous state of glory.

"How do plants 'interact' with each other? I don't remember there being any kind of meaningful 'connection' between them," I ponder.

"What…?" Almaria squeaks and waits for Yunia's answer.

My loving elven wife is definitely happy to answer all of my questions, "Plants interact magically all the time, and they also occasionally interact physically when their roots touch. The plants we have in here are literally living off of the nutrients in the castle's wood, so they're constantly interacting with it."

"Oh~…" I hum in wonder.

Alissa nudges me to sit down again and let the two talk before I blurt out something that's hard for them to explain.

"Did we answer all of your questions, your Highness?" Almaria asks amusedly.

I nod happily like a good child. "Yes. Thank you."

And she lowers her head respectfully with a wide smile, then the two friends turn to each other.

Yunia sighs and relaxes as she brings the conversation onto something more casual, "So, how are you doing lately, Almaria?"

The bookish woman grins and answers amiably, "I'm happy to be back at work. There's no other job as rewarding as serving a Lord."

Yunia nods, pleased with her answer, and points out, "You'll also be the instructor for our children."

And Almaria gladly answers, "I'll be looking forward to it. I still remember holding you as a baby. You were so adorable back then."

Yunia is unfazed by the teasing, merely raising an eyebrow and questioning, "'Were'?"

"Now you're a beautiful woman, so your adorableness has been replaced with something better."

Yunia smiles smugly and pours out another shot, though she only gives me a quarter of what they're drinking.

"What about you two? How are you adapting to being a Lord," Almaria returns the question.

"Swimmingly," I answer with a grin.

"That is…?" Almaria turns to Yunia for an explanation.

"Without a problem, that goes for both of us," she translates for me.

And I immediately blurt out, "Only because we're all together. I used to actively avoid nobility, and I'd shiver at the idea of becoming a Lord one day."

Almaria takes a sip as she warmly asks, "And Yulania made you change your mind?"

"Of course I did," Yunia proudly replies.

I give my golden elf a loving look and whisper, "I'm so grateful that we were brought together."

Almaria chuckles softly at our flirting, then she looks down at her glass while she ponders and takes another sip. "I'm honestly excited about the future," she shyly confesses, then raises her droopy eyes to meet ours, and I recognize the determination blooming within them. "My children have already grown up, and I have nothing left undone, so I'll always be ready to serve you until the end."

Yunia suddenly gets up and walks over to Almaria, then she sits down in the chair beside hers and grabs her hand. "And I'm honored to have you here," she affirms with conviction.

Then Almaria turns to me. "I believe in your vision for the future."

Over the rest of the afternoon, we have a casual talk about the future and our dreams, then we gradually shift topics to the present and our hopes, followed by another shift towards the past and what we want to change.

The extract makes me quite giggly and relaxed, renewing my energies and clearing my head of doubts. I've always thought about doing something like LSD because of the supposed benefits it has for mental health, and it seems that Eia has a somewhat similar effect, though it obviously doesn't make me trip like LSD would.

Once bath time comes, I only take a quick dip since I'm already clean, and instead, I dedicate my time to playing with the girls.

Osaria and Klein get the most attention this time since they've been working quite hard and need some "stress-relief." There always seems to be someone wanting to get our attention who doesn't really need it, and my elven milf has been dealing with these sorts of people while working closely with the Mayor.

She always has my singing bird with her, so I know for certain that the fool only has eyes for Yunia.

I'm already becoming quite possessive of Osaria. And I'm not sure if she enjoys that, so I'd better watch myself.

Then I realize something.

Osaria and I are so close, yet she doesn't appear in the "Companions" tab of my Gift. Why is that? Roxanne and Ciel appeared in there immediately after we had sex, but not Osaria, so what's so different about her?

I feel uncomfortable just thinking that it might be because she doesn't love me enough, but then I remember that I'm the one who asked her to be a concubine instead of a wife.

Perhaps it's because I've never relied on her like I have with the girls.

Dinner is more Kibbeh, a lot more, and we devour it all with a ravenous hunger. Alissa is definitely ashamed of how much she enjoys it, but Aoi and I gorge on it unabashedly with grins of delight.

"Wolfy needs to eat a lot of meat to grow big and strong," Roxanne subtly teases and grins.

"Dad's mostly vegetarian, though," Klein comments innocently.

"Meat is more efficient at helping you to gain muscle," Lina retorts matter-of-factly.

"But you can't eat too much fat, or you'll… get fat," I add with a wry smile.

Then we continue talking about food and nutrition, causing Roxanne's grin to dull and fade away as her teasing is ignored and turned into a learning opportunity instead.

A note from Manasong

Hall of Fame of Patrons

The patrons who support Rupegia shall have their names sung by the bards for they deserve the glory and honor. Their names are:

Prince PreownedFIN.

Prince Creamy Spinach.

Lord Andrew Meyers.

Lord Samuel Lim.

Lord Bill.

Lord Novgarod.

Lord Michale Erwin.

Lord Bakerdea.

Lord Maurice.

Lord Empyrean.

Lord Mattirro Draca.

Lord Colorblind.

Lord Fullmoon.

Lord Sean Drake.

Lord EESDESESESRDT.

Lord FrostyCube.

Lord Mike Bartter.

Lord Cardinal Steiner.

Lord Krawn.

Lord Warwulfv.

Lord Jorge Franco.

Lord Christopher Welsh.

Lord DJ.

Lord Philip.

Lord Tenebris Lupus.

Lord ImportantNPC.

Lord The Tallest Joshua.

Lord Cope Dunt.

Lord Dracopuppy23.

Lord Freddie

Noble Salty Panda.

Noble Mild Fracas.

Noble Aclys.

Noble Shawn Plumley.

Noble CarlBaxter.

Noble Yeuromain.

Noble Brandon Lai.

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Chapter 99: Experiment - Part 2

A note from Manasong

Attention: to conform to the limit of mature content (more than just sexual content) allowed in a novel, I've censored this chapter. You can look for the uncensored version here.

We spend another evening together in our large, comfy bedroom.

It seems that the last remnants of the "party" down in the town have finally fizzled out. Hana and Lina are a bit disappointed that it only lasted for such a short time, but in Yunia's opinion, its duration was still fairly impressive.

Aoi has started forging sheets of metal and tubes, all made by hand, claws, and her own fire breath, giving them a very mild Fire-attunement. They're pretty thick and take a lot of effort to make, so she's still far from making a portable rifle. Perhaps they could be used for a cannon, but the Trinity Cannons that the Chimeras can build are simply superior in every way.

The important thing, though, is that she now has some scrap metal she can use, and I come up with two ideas for some fun projects.

The first one is an air hockey table, for which we use the smoothest sheet she was able to make, then we get earth elemental-wives and the golems to drill holes for the air to flow through. It's a tedious process, so I'm glad that we can rely on them to do it for us.

Then I feel some shame as the Brazilian within me complains that I've forgotten about our national table sport: pebolim, or, as it's known around the world, table football.

This one is even easier to make, so we drop the air hockey project and go for table football first. Aoi's steel tubes are perfect for this, and it doesn't even take us half an hour to build a wooden table for it.

The game is easy to intuitively understand, but the girls feel a little awkward about the fact that there's no interaction with their opponent.

Hana crosses her arms, bunching up her naked balloons, and frowns as she asks, "I can't even grab their bars?"

I shake my head with a wry smile.

"No locking of their men with ours?" Yunia asks disapprovingly as she notices how the little players are all too far from one another to actually do that.

"Nope," I hum.

Osaria gives me a curious look as she questions, "What about that 'foot-ball' game that you said inspired this? Why do they only use their feet?"

I shrug. "Well, it's just a rule to make the game more interesting. If you could use your hands, then you could just hug the ball and run, forcing someone to tackle you to get the ball back, and they want someone to instead use their skill and coordination with their feet to get past their opponents, not just brute strength."

"Can't even punch their heads?" Lina quietly asks, only a sliver of hope in her voice, but it's promptly squashed by my slow head shake.

"Sounds like a Lady's sport," Alissa comments and shares a look with Osaria, who nods in agreement, then they share a smirk.

"Created by someone with a thing for feet," Roxanne adds, giving me a teasing smile, then she brings her long, pale legs towards me as alluringly as she can and spreads her cute, delicious little toes apart.

I reflexively start massaging them and kissing the top of her feet. My desire for feet is decidedly human and has gone ignored and unfulfilled for quite a while.

"Hm…" Ciel mumbles absentmindedly as she imagines a team of lolis playing football.

"I think it's okay," Aoi casually comments, drawing confused looks from everyone. "It's different, and it needs more than just strength, for once."

It could be Aoi's human side talking here, pushing her to be more reasonable, and though the girls understand, they don't really agree.

"Gih," Gify suggests, and Ciel giggles girlishly as she imagines the plush dolls fighting for the ball.

I also get a bit giddy as I imagine the incredible cuteness of that scene and reply with a wry smile, "Maybe, like, a half-time show where we could let the spirits play around and look cute, but I don't know if they'd agree to something like that."

"Oh, that'd definitely mark it as a Lady's sport," Osaria amusedly remarks. Ladies love nature spirits.

"Perhaps you'd enjoy Greco-Roman wrestling a bit more?" Ted suddenly suggests to the other girls.

"Wrestling? That 'wimpy' sport where they don't even punch each other?" Hana immediately retorts and scoffs.

"Two oiled men wrestling with the goal of being the one on top," Suzy continues without wasting a heartbeat.

"Wearing minimal clothing," Jarn releases the final bomb, and it grabs everyone's attention. Even Lina's…

My little angel has been corrupted, too!

Though Hana seems to become confused at the description. "Isn't that just making love?"

"No private parts are purposely touched," Ted answers matter-of-factly.

"Boooring!" Hana exclaims and starts playing around with the football table.

"No, no. That sounds very exciting," Alissa disagrees, her voice full of wonder as her mind imagines all the possibilities, and Roxanne agrees.

Then Osaria swallows heavily, clearly imagining the same things as Alissa. "Wolfy…" She shyly starts with a pleading tone and takes a second to properly organize her thoughts. "Would you mind if we saw a match of this 'Gre-co-Ro-man' wrestling?" She tentatively asks.

I feel a bit awkward about this request, but I can't let the jealous dragon have its way. "It's a 'sport,' so I wouldn't mind. If you want to see men actually doing it, I wouldn't really mind, but I admit that it would trigger a bit of my jealousy," I confess.

Since I want the elves to accept the Chimera free-spirited culture, it means that it'll be difficult for the girls to avoid seeing these sorts of things.

"We just need to tease him in moderation," Roxanne whispers evilly, and I stop playing with her feet to narrow my eyes at her dangerously.

"My 'tolerance' for such things has been really low lately," I warn her, and she clamps her mouth shut before I decide to abuse her some more.

It's a bit funny that they're so used to hurting each other while playing that a sport as "wimpy" as football sounds utterly foreign to them.

American "handegg" and rugby seem like they'd be right at home in this world, though, especially among dragonkin and dwarves. Maybe even the elves would enjoy having a bunch of angry, dirty, sweaty men sprinting around in tight shorts as they fight over a ball.

Everyone gets to play table football, and Alissa and Klein quickly rise to the top due to their superior reflexes. I end up in third with Yunia in fourth, though that's only because she refused to use [Precognition]. Hana is fifth, followed by Ciel, Lina, Aoi, Roxanne, and finally Osaria.

She doesn't show it, but Klein has some pretty good reflexes and "Dexterity." The bow is definitely her fated weapon with how easily her [Bow Use] keeps up with her level now that she's getting a steady stream of Experience.

The golems are the only ones who can truly compete with Alissa. Their focus and kinetic vision are very impressive, but they're like NPCs since they lack true variety in their play style, making it possible for us to find strategies that can counter them completely.

We eventually finish making the air hockey table, too, and Lina enchants it with some Wind magic that blows air up through the holes of the sheet. It works pretty well, and Hana rises to the top of the scoreboard with her nearly impenetrable defense. I think her [Block] and [Parry] might actually be activating to help her with this game.

I'm having a lot more fun with these games than I ever did with cards, but the time for us to sleep soon comes, so we begrudgingly stop playing for the night.

Today is the 14th, An, day of Wind. Alissa once said that she avoids hunting birds on this day of the day-cycle because they're just too fast, and Yunia also commented about how the wind chimes are louder than usual.

I increased my [Ekrano Style], [Soul Manipulation], and [Mana Body] by 1 (now 4, 9, and 4).

Alissa increased her [Illusion Magic] by 1 (now 1+14). She has finally finished learning Nocturna's [Mesmerizing Butterflies] and is now focusing on both [Daydreaming] and [Sleep]. She's also accelerating Hana's learning of [Illusion Magic] by sharing some of her knowledge, which has the added bonus of giving Alissa a bit of feedback about her own blindspots.

Roxanne increased her [Reduced Mana Cost] and [Space Magic] by 1 (now 20+5 and 3+12) due to her use of [Explosion] yesterday.

Hana increased her [Draconic Body] by 1 (now 6), which took one of her free points from [Spear Use], and I suspect that her use of it to resist the Dryad's touch contributed almost as much towards its level up as our fight with Big Skrellington did.

Ciel increased her [Glaive Use], [Dodge], and [Wind Magic] by 1 (now 1+29, 4+11, and 15+25). She was one of the most physically active among us during yesterday's fight, so it's no surprise that she leveled up a lot of skills.

Lina increased her [Hammer Use] and [Axe Use] by 1 (now 5+25 and 10+15). Trying to desperately hack her way through her enemies gave her a nice boost of experience.

Aoi leveled up to 39, and her "Piety" increased by 1 (now 7). It seems that her experience with Big Skrellington has made her into a fervent proponent for the indiscriminate purging of anything related to the undead.

Yunia is the only one of us who didn't level up a skill since she didn't actually do anything particularly strenuous other than butchering Big Skrellington's spine, and she's definitely suppressing the learning of any skills as crass as [Dismantling].

For breakfast, we have a savory french toast with cooked beans, a Rabanarian meal.

I drink my cup of Tonique tea and sigh. The taste of coffee I enjoyed yesterday has rekindled my desire for a cup of hot, Arabica espresso with Chantilly on top. Ah… how I miss mocha, or even just some simple drip coffee with milk and chocolate cookies.

Oh, no. Stop, brain, stop! Please!

My melancholy quickly grows so deep that I have to eat a whole bar of chocolate to get myself to stop wishing for what I can't have.

Out of all things that I miss from Earth, coffee is definitely near the top. Chocolate used to be the number one on that list, but now I just have to wait until Rande brings me back my Cocoa, so it's very easy for me to contain my thirst for chocolate with delayed gratification.

"It's fine to drink a bit of Cinco Flores if you miss the taste that much," Yunia kindly advises me.

"'Cinco Flores'?!" Osaria breathes, and it comes out a little more enthusiastic than how she intended, so she clears her throat and looks down to her plate in embarrassment.

I can't say no to my motherly elf, so I pull out the bottle and some glasses from yesterday, then I uncork it as I smile lovingly at her.

Osaria licks her lips and takes a shot glass, then she whispers, "If you'll excuse me." And disappears under the table.

She gathers a bit of milk but doesn't immediately swallow. Instead, she spits it out into her glass, then she returns to her seat and pushes the glass towards me.

"A finger, please," she innocently asks with a shameless smile.

Osaria's habit of flavoring sweet food with a bit of "me" in it infects the other girls, so I give them all the same, then everyone, except for me, takes a shot of "Flores e Gozzada."

"This is really good…" Human-Aoi mumbles in wonder, having found the perfect side dish for her meal: my virile, draconic seed.

The setting for our morning training is a purple Wisteria grove in our private garden. The faint, sweet scent of this variety of Wisteria makes for a nice change from the usual musky smell of elven architecture.

It's shaded and secluded here, so we all go naked to enjoy the fresh breeze that blows through the grove.

Suddenly, one of the maids walks in, a more "well-trained" one that doesn't even bat an eye at our state.

She bows and keeps her head low as she reports, "Your Highness, there's a Companion called Hukarere that wishes to meet with you."

Yeah, today's going to be a "mouth day," it seems. Wait, why is she asking for permission?

I composedly respond, "Hukarere can visit us at any time. She should also have permission to enter the High Leaves."

"Understood, your Highness," the maid politely replies and straightens her back, then she leaves the grove.

I put some points in [Reo Language], then my white wolf barges in, a wide grin on her pretty muzzle, and I notice that she's wearing a simple necklace with a transparent gem, her spirit's "home." She immediately advances towards me and throws herself on me.

"I missed you…!" She exclaims, almost whimpering like a dog.

"Me or my 'friend'?" I ask coldly.

She gives me her best puppy eyes and plays with it. "Why not both?" She cutely replies.

I stop teasing her and let the mask slip, revealing a warm smile. "Alright… I missed you too, by the way. How's the training going?" Then I pat her furred head lovingly.

"[Enemy has appeared. Goblins at west]," she reports in Andraste with a heavy accent.

I moan softly and praise her, "Your pronunciation is pretty good given how little time you've had to learn it."

"I don't have a system anymore, but I think that I must have still learned the language skill due to how fast I'm improving."

I rub my chin in thought and use [Sense Soul] on her, but I still can't make any sense of where the skills are located, making me wish that I had more time to improve this skill. "Hm… That's interesting. Perhaps the system's 'menu' is related to your Thread, which has been cut, but the learning of skills might be related to something else that's still functioning normally."

"It'll be pretty convenient for us if that's the case."

"Yes, it will."

She sits up, looking me straight in the eye, and removes her necklace, then hands it to me.

"Can I stay with you for today? I'd like to go on an adventure." Then she suddenly gasps and awkwardly lowers her head, her pointy ears going flat, "Ah! I mean, if that's what you have planned for today," she hurriedly adds.

I smile warmly and pat her head reassuringly. "Sure. We'll be doing a secret experiment after lunch, so you won't be able to tell anyone about it."

"Ooh~…" She howls quietly in wonder, then she resumes milking me.

Ciel suddenly chimes in, "How's Ririmu? We haven't seen him since we left the dungeon."

They carry on a casual, friendly conversation while we train, and I reward Hukarere multiple times over the morning.

For lunch, we have Kibbeh once again, this time with a slightly different seasoning, and I promise the girls that I won't ask for it every day. Hukarere likes it a lot, but she still can't eat that much, especially after swallowing a whole meal's worth of me-juice.

Then the oh, so awaited time finally comes: the [Otherworldly Summoning] experiment.

Since this is such an important event, everyone is present to help us with it.

We enter the chosen room and confirm that all of the Officers are already present. Almaria is just finishing up drawing a decagram in her own blood for [Disruption Field]; Alcander and Silvano are testing an emellanat cage that they forged together; and Sai is testing her [Soul Blade] on Sandoro, successfully interrupting his [Fireball]. Poosh and Hukarere will only be observing, having been given explicit orders to not do anything besides running away since they're the least able to defend themselves in case shit hits the fan.

Alissa will focus on observing my mind and reporting what she sees; Roxanne will join the mages and try to interrupt the spell, if possible; Hana will hold the emellanat manacles and chains, ready to put them on me at a moment's notice in case things go wrong; Ciel is our healer on duty; Lina and Aoi don't have anything specific to do, so they'll be responsible for the emellanat cage; Yunia will join Sai in slicing through my spirit if nothing else works; and the golems and Gify will join Poosh and Hukarere as mere observers.

I stand in the middle of the room, and the human inside of me cringes at the thought of everyone ganging up on me to interrupt the spell.

"Let's rehearse it a few times before we do it for real," Ciel kindly suggests, and I suppress the urge to whimper.

Hana is definitely going to enjoy giving me a little taste of pain.

The Officers plus Roxanne can interrupt anything I cast, but in case they can't handle it, the manacles can also do the job, though they'll melt if I use all of my MP. Unfortunately, the emellanat cage only works when I cast something outside of my body, but Sai and Yunia can instantly make me go unconscious as a last resort.

In the end, the ultimate interrupter is Almaria's [Disruption Field], though it's so powerful that it can even damage my HP, but it won't actually kill me that quickly or easily.

It hurts so much that even the dragon complains, and I need a few minutes of recharging in Ciel's bosom while I play with Alissa's ears and tail before I'm ready for the real thing.

For once, I actually like being cute as the pitying eyes from the female side make me feel loved and comforted.

Once I feel refreshed, I stand up and adjust my elven vest. "Alright, let's do this."

Everyone gets into position, and the tension in the air skyrockets as our demeanor becomes absolutely serious.

We go through one last readiness check, and I announce, "I'm casting it." Then I press the button inside my soul space.

My vision goes dark, and I lose all the feeling in my body, but I'm still perfectly conscious and able to reach the girls through [Bind]. It's like [Infuse], which puts me in a "soul-building UI," though this one is completely dark.

A few tense seconds pass, my MP constantly draining into the spell while we wait, then I see a white dot, then another, and another, and then they start gaining colors.

Like a rain of colored paint falling onto water, the dots start to morph and spread, turning into lines and shapes in an instant. They create an abstract picture, but my pattern-addicted monkey brain insists that there's something there, I just don't know what it is.

Suddenly, half my vision goes dark, and the process starts again in this new "half." A few moments later, my vision is split yet again, now divided into three parts, and a third abstract painting is brought to life before my eyes.

The splitting continues on in a radial pattern, looking like a blooming, rainbow-colored flower with each petal growing in as yet another painting on its own. However, this splitting continues on endlessly, and the petals soon become so small that I can't make them out anymore.

The entire room is completely silent as Alissa reports what I'm seeing. Nobody has any idea about what's going on, and they're too wary to ask any questions right now.

"The mana feels incredibly 'odd,'" Silvano is the first to speak, his tone completely devoid of humor for once.

"It truly feels 'otherworldly,'" Almaria adds with the same tone.

"It scares me," Ciel somberly shares, and her [Holy Spirit] nods cutely.

Then my vision starts to warp, as if I'm looking through a fisheye lense, and the "flower" gradually shrinks down until it's merely a dot in a black abyss.

Suddenly, another dot appears beside the "flower," but it seems to be mostly red with some black and yellows mixed in, then another dot appears, this one mostly blue, followed by hundreds of dots appearing almost instantly, all arranged in a grid with each one in a different color of the rainbow. Some of them don't even seem to have a "color," giving me strange, creepy feelings whenever I focus on one of those.

Are these worlds? Or the so-called "Cycles"?

There are so many that I can't even see them all, and after I try to "shift" my view, I learn that I can move "up" and "down" to see even more of them, as if I were staring into the contents of a folder inside a computer.

I search for one that doesn't give me any creepy vibes and "focus" on it, but then I just get a deepening feeling of "incongruity"… no, "incompatibility."

Then my MP runs out, and I'm kicked out from the "Folder of Cycles."

A note from Manasong

Hall of Fame of Patrons

The patrons who support Rupegia shall have their names sung by the bards for they deserve the glory and honor. Their names are:

Prince PreownedFIN.

Prince Creamy Spinach.

Lord Andrew Meyers.

Lord Samuel Lim.

Lord Bill.

Lord Novgarod.

Lord Michale Erwin.

Lord Bakerdea.

Lord Maurice.

Lord Empyrean.

Lord Mattirro Draca.

Lord Colorblind.

Lord Fullmoon.

Lord Sean Drake.

Lord EESDESESESRDT.

Lord FrostyCube.

Lord Mike Bartter.

Lord Cardinal Steiner.

Lord Krawn.

Lord Warwulfv.

Lord Jorge Franco.

Lord Christopher Welsh.

Lord DJ.

Lord Philip.

Lord Tenebris Lupus.

Lord ImportantNPC.

Lord The Tallest Joshua.

Lord Copey Dunt.

Lord Dracopuppy23.

Lord Freddie.

Lord Cidant.

Noble Salty Panda.

Noble Mild Fracas.

Noble Aclys.

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Noble Yeuromain.

Noble Brandon Lai.

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Chapter 99: Experiment - Part 3

Roxanne hands me one of her special MP potions, and I drink it eagerly.

"[What the fuck was that]?!" Hukarere exclaims in Reo.

"Is it over?" Silvano warily asks, his pretty face as serious as Yunia's.

"My MP ran out," I casually reply to calm them down.

"[That's exactly what we're trying to understand]," Roxanne replies to Hukarere with a cheeky smile.

"[Divines take me…]," Hukarere mumbles in awe.

When I look over at Poosh, her horrified expression makes me feel a bit guilty and sad. I don't want to make her worry, but I guess it was inevitable.

"That was definitely the most unique mana I've ever sensed," Almaria comments, her tone still wary. She has [Sense Mana] at level 25, so she can sense a lot of details and nuance in the mana I exude.

"I felt the unmistakable flavor of [Space Magic], like a strong spice in a flavorful dish," Alcander ponders with a smirk, quickly relaxing now that the danger has passed.

"It reminds me of [Golemancy]'s [Infuse], somehow," Roxanne chimes in.

"Gih," Gify clarifies that the two spells have some small part in common, but they aren't really that similar when taken as a whole.

"Maybe they share an 'abstract concept'? Something about being 'cold and calculating,'" Roxanne wonders, and Gify nods in agreement.

Yunia turns to Almaria, the only one present who can give a proper description of my mana. "Can you describe it in more detail?"

Almaria's eyes lose focus as she thinks carefully, her tired gaze gradually becoming creepier until she suddenly starts speaking as fast as she can, her mouth trying its best to keep up with her brain, "It felt as if you were exposing the muscles beneath the skin in a dissection of reality, your eyes peering at something that you don't have permission to see, looking towards an invisible door that leads to things beyond our understanding. This spell was made by someone who could see as far as the Gods can."

Damn, that's a bit… dramatic.

"I definitely felt the 'lack of permission' aspect," Ciel agrees, though she's a bit conflicted about the "See as far as the Gods" part.

"Perhaps this is why the Gods don't want any others to have access to it," Alissa speculates.

That suggestion suddenly gives me an idea. "What if the other Cycles and realms have their own Humanoid Gods, and they don't like it when the people of our realm can disturb their land?" I wonder.

Ciel instinctively believes this to be true, which worries her quite a bit. "The realms in our Cycle are said to be similar to ours, but other Cycles can be anything imaginable, so it makes sense that some of them could be like that," she rationalizes her intuition.

"Didn't the Gods say that it's impossible to travel between realms or Cycles?" Alissa questions her.

Ciel is taken off-guard and hesitates to answer. "They… well, I don't remember the exact Message, so we'll have to do some research," she admits, feeling a bit of shame.

"It'd seem extremely suspicious to Teresina if we suddenly asked her about it," Yunia points out.

"How about Arantos? Your adoptive father?" I kindly ask Ciel, looking forward to meeting the chubby old man again.

Ciel blushes since she's a bit embarrassed about me blatantly calling Arantos her father. "I'm sure he'll agree to help us in secret, so I'll ask him about it when we next see him."

"Now, could you explain to us exactly what this spell is all about?" Sandoro asks rather sternly. Almaria's description of the spell's mana has made him rather apprehensive.

I clear my throat and start the explanation, "It's a spell from [Summoning Magic] called [Otherworldly Summoning], and I believe that it allowed me to see the other Cycles and their realms, though I couldn't find any among them that seem 'similar' to ours. It's like they're just lifeless 'shapes' full of energy and chaos."

Ciel agrees with my assessment and expands on it, "The purpose of the God of Creation is just 'to create,' not 'to give life,' so it makes sense that most Cycles are like that. The Gods of Creation and Destruction have been fighting for an unknowable length of time, so there could be uncountable Cycles in existence, and they could even be increasing in number as we speak."

"Are you trying to find our Cycle or something similar?" Sandoro cautiously questions.

I shake my head and wave my hand dismissively as I answer, "I'm just exploring, so not necessarily, but it'd be very interesting if I did find it."

"What about these other Cycles, can you 'summon' anything from them?" Silvano earnestly questions.

I shrug and explain, "I haven't really tried that, but I get the feeling that they're 'incompatible' whenever I try to look deeper into them."

And then Ciel sagely expands on my words again, "These realms could be the remnants of the battle of the Gods, just like The Everlasting Storm is. I don't think there's anything 'good' that you could summon from them."

Poosh shivers in fear and suddenly asks, "Have any of you seen the Storm?" Her tone uncharacteristically grim.

But only negative replies come from our mouths.

She whispers as she reminisces, her tone full of awe, "It's monumental, humbling, and deadly to even approach."

"Yeah…" -I awkwardly scratch my horn with a claw- "I'm definitely going to leave those dangerous Cycles alone."

"You're doing it again?" Sai asks concernedly, her eyebrows knitting in worry.

I nod and smile guiltily. "I need to understand more about this spell and why it's so dangerous. We'll also have to replace it with another spell so that no summoner ever learns about this spell again."

"The Moons shield us from the unknown," Alcander quietly prays, surprising Ciel that he knows such an obscure prayer.

Silvano sighs and runs a hand through his silver, silky long hair. "Well, I knew things would be 'interesting,' but this is something completely unexpected," he comments with a wry smile.

"Remember that the Goddess of Knowledge herself told me that this spell is extremely dangerous, so don't ever think about replicating it," I warn him sternly.

He lifts his hand in surrender and closes his eyes. "I know, I know."

I nod in acknowledgment, then I turn to the other Officers. "Alright. Once my MP is full, we'll do it again."

The "Folder of Cycles" really does seem to be endless, and I don't even have a "scrolling bar" to speed things up or to help orient myself in regards to where I am in the vast grid.

That whole process of "painting" the first Cycle doesn't happen again, though, and the spell immediately sends me right back to where I was previously, so at least I don't have to restart the "search" every time I cast it.

As time passes, the tension fades and everyone relaxes somewhat, but nobody drops their guard. Alissa is still acting as the main observer, and she only needs to say the word for everyone to pounce on me.

After a few hours of scrolling through, I get the intuition that the Cycles are gradually changing, though I can't describe it more clearly than that.

My body starts to get weary from being drained and refilled with mana multiple times, but it seems that my resistance to Overuse has increased a bit thanks to [Mana Body], so this experiment takes a good part of our afternoon before I decide to end it.

Poosh sighs in relief as the last bit of worry leaves her body. She was definitely the most tense of us all.

Unfortunately, this isn't the last time she'll have to go through this. I turn to the Officers again and announce, "We'll be doing this experiment again many more times, so put it in your schedule, though we'll be a bit busy once we start visiting the parents of my wives. Perhaps we should replace our regular meetings with the experiment to make use of the occasion since we're all gathered together anyway.

"It shall be done, your Highness," Sandoro diligently replies with a bow.

The Officers don't have anything super urgent to do since most of their job is training their underlings, so it's not that hard for them to make room for regular experiments.

We all disperse and make use of the rest of our afternoon. I go to a dungeon with Ciel, Hukarere, Sir Palo, Oritiki, and some of the Lordsguard for a combat exercise; Alissa talks with Almaria and Sandoro about getting the smiths and mages to build the table football and air hockey games for the rest of the Lordsguard; Lina and Hana go out to find someone to commercialize my creations; Roxanne and Aoi work on making a bullet for the rifle; Yunia goes to see our newest Quartermaster, Istante, who previously worked for Confiel, after which, my Queen also visits Osaria and Mimi to see how their work is going.

The Space mages open a [Gate] that takes us to the Stinky Goblins dungeon, somewhere near the nest of those very same goblins, which we have to exterminate.

We're inside a dark, rocky cave that spirals down underground. Lina feels nostalgic as she observes it all through my eyes, seeing the damp, mossy cave full of weird mushrooms and even weirder, alien-looking plants.

The sound of trickling water is constant here as the humidity and rain from above seeps down into the dungeon, the soft earth of the High Forest being extremely good at letting water flow through.

"Mages! Lane!" Palo shouts, his echoing voice drawing the attention of the goblins, but we were just going to wait for their charge, anyway.

The Earth mages create a patch of dry, stable, and flat ground for us and clear the area of plants so that we'll have a perfect shot on the goblins once they get near.

"Formation 'Spiked Shield'! BOWS!" Palo commands, his dashing, white grin visible even from under his barbute.

The men pull out enchanted longbows and rest their shields against their legs.

"SKREEEE!"

"GYAAH!"

The goblins' screams of rage echo from within the oppressive darkness ahead as they notice that humanoids are nearby, their guttural shrieks grating on my royal ears.

The Lordsguard are trained in all sorts of weapons because they have the levels for it, though they aren't particularly strong at any of them, so they could lose to an experienced adventurer in a one-on-one. Duels are the specialty of knights, while the strength of the Lordsguard lies in their teamwork, and the high availability of Eia pills and [Weaverism] makes the elven Lordsguard the strongest out of the entire Empire. As a unit, only the Nemesis squad of monster killers or the Templars could compete with them.

Before we can even see the goblins, we start smelling them, and the silly name of the dungeon starts to make sense, along with the reason why adventurers never explored this dungeon beyond this area.

"Ahead! Clear shot" The tracker announces, sensing the position of the goblin horde.

"FIRE ARROWS! LOOSE!" Palo shouts, and the dark tunnel is illuminated by their [Fire Arrow]s, revealing the horde of pale Cave Goblins swarming towards us like ants, some of them even crawling along the walls and ceiling.

"STANDARD! LOOSE!" And they switch to physical arrows since they don't really have the MP to keep firing enchanted arrows like Arquirandos.

Their arrows are deadly accurate even though they're just blanketing the area ahead with them, and the small horde of goblins quickly decreases in number as they drop like flies. Hukarere and the other Chimera are kind of bad shots with the bow, though, but I think it's just because they haven't had enough time yet to learn it well enough.

The horde is quickly thinned out to a manageable number, eliminating the risk of getting overwhelmed by their swarm, and most of the goblins on the ceiling get picked off.

"WALL!" Palo orders again, and everyone uses [Equip] to pull out their spears, then they throw their bows behind them. This skill seems to be perfect for these "men-of-arms" who have a whole armory inside their [Item Box]es.

Palo stands in the middle of their formation, his hulking frame and shining armor making him the center of attention, which is exactly how he likes it.

Then they all crouch in sync, planting the bottom of their oval shields into the ground to prevent the short goblins from sneaking under them.

Oritiki and Ciel float side-by-side, watching the battle unfold with eagle eyes. The ceiling is quite high, so they can freely fly around in here.

"Follow me. We kill goblins on ceiling," Oritiki clumsily suggests in Andraste.

"Understood. Right behind you," Ciel sternly agrees, and they both fly forward.

The first line of goblins skewer themselves on the spears like the mindless beasts they are, but the second line comes in right behind them.

"SWORDS!" Palo orders, though it wasn't really necessary for him to say it as it's the natural follow up in this battle since their spears are now stuck in the corpses of the first line of goblins.

They draw their shortswords and thrust them forward right as the line of goblins crashes into them.

I extend a long tentacle ahead and stab a goblin in the face, then I sink my halberd into the head of another and use [Telekinesis] to sweep my mace horizontally, knocking out three goblins at the same time, all from behind the line of Lordsguard.

The goblins crawl up the shields and try to climb over them, too weak to push back against their wall, but the second line of men all have their poleaxes at the ready, which they use to turn the goblins into minced meat.

Some of the goblins start to go around, trying to surround us, but they're simply too few, and the men at the edges of our formation are the most veteran, adept at keeping the goblins away while the main force engages the horde.

I float up a bit and freely rake my armed tentacles into the heads of the goblins while Ciel and Oritiki help out at the edges.

The few goblin archers fire flimsy arrows at us, but they just clink off our armor without even leaving a single scratch behind. Their craftsmanship is so poor that they can't even get past our [Wind Armor], so they definitely aren't breeder-types.

The battle doesn't even last a full minute as they're already completely wiped out.

"FINISH THEM OFF!" Palo orders, and they break formation to go after the stragglers.

Ciel and Oritiki come back and clean their weapons, then we wait while the men do their thing. I summon an air elemental just to clear the goblin stink out of the air, and the men silently show their gratitude to me.

"[Have you thought about implanting wings]?" Oritiki suddenly asks Ciel in Reo.

"Eh?" My chocolate angel is taken by surprise, and I give her a few points in the language. "You mean like yours?"

Oritiki nods excitedly. "Exactly. I know that we have a few Alteration mages who can do it."

Ciel holds her chin in thought. "Would they be better than my enchanted armor?"

"They should be, once you get used to them," Oritiki confidently assures her.

Then Ciel turns her eyes to the large pair of white wings on Oritiki's back. "They look… a bit inconvenient."

Oritiki shrugs, and her wings start to shrink until they become rather chibi-fied. "Well, I'm sure you can afford a pair that completely disappears when you want them to, like with dragonkin wings. It's just more expensive. I don't have them myself because the Celestial Horns aren't allowed to hide them."

Ciel mellows out and becomes more receptive to the suggestion. "Oh~… it sounds like an interesting idea."

But I get an idea. "Hide them? Can they help me hide these draconic parts, then?" I curiously ask.

Oritiki narrows her eyes in thought, unsure about how to answer that. "Maybe? I think you mean replacing your claws with human hands, right?" -I nod- "I don't know if they can do that, specifically."

"Hm…" I hold my chin in thought, mirroring Ciel's previous gesture.

Dokkanchee's illusions are good enough, but if the Chimeras can alter my hands to work like a dragonkin's wings, then maybe I could make it into a racial skill that all of my children would inherit.

We move on towards the actual goblin nest, and the human within me immediately begs to get out of here.

These goblins live like barbarians in filthy, flimsy huts made of weird underground plants, and they lack even the most basic concepts of hygiene.

Shit, piss, semen, and rotten carcasses are strewn about everywhere, including the bodies of the old and the young who didn't survive their childhood. Some of the carcasses have even been disposed of in a sort of macabre tribal bone "art," clearly telling any trespassers that cruelty is a normal occurrence for this tribe of goblins.

Not all goblins live like this, it's just that this tribe is partway into a sort of plague/rot "attunement." One of the sniffers even detects some pseudo-necromantic mana coming from what seems to be a ritual site. The fact that they don't have mages yet is evidence that their attunement isn't complete.

These types of goblins are the worst enemy of the Lords because once they change into breeder-types and attack a town, disease-ridden shit hits the almost literal fan. Because of the risk of a plague, adventurers have been forbidden to enter this dungeon ever since its discovery.

I summon four light elemental-wives and order them to accompany the Lordsguard. Ciel, Oritiki, and I stay at the edge of the camp and watch them work while Ciel's [Holy Spirit] protects us from the foul air, but we still help out from range.

I make sure to watch as they kill the young and weak goblins, burning it all into my memory so that my mind doesn't go soft, but I don't rejoice at their deaths. This is just part of the "nature" of this world, though that doesn't mean that I want monsters to suffer. Their existence is a cursed one, and I'm showing them mercy by giving them a swift end.

Alissa and Lina comfort us through [Bind], and my foxy lady thanks me for not bringing her along for this exercise.

I also feel a sort of ironic comfort once I realize that Lords are basically "janitors" for the dungeons.

Once the tracker confirms that there are no living monsters left, we continue down, deeper into the dungeon. Things become slightly interesting as small crystals start to light the way, and with that, we also encounter crystal-themed enemies. Though this isn't a mana solidification dungeon, the crystals down here are so weak that they aren't even worth the effort to mine them, so we leave them be.

We fight a few creepy, insect-like monsters and a few different species of mole-like animals. They've all been "infected" with crystals, like a sort of mineral-based fungus that acts as a symbiont, giving them increased magical power in exchange for being its host. They aren't much of a problem since they don't swarm like goblins, though the large number of humanoids in our group does attract a lot of monsters.

Palo demonstrates his perfect control of his soldiers, even though half of them are new recruits.

I observe them as they fight and help out a bit here and there, trying to work out what's more effective.

They're a strong and independent unit that needs no Lord… but seriously, they're pretty solid and well-prepared for all sorts of situations, so there's no obvious area where I can help them out. I just have to support them in whatever way I can to lighten their load.

We don't go too deep into this dungeon since this is only an exercise, and we call it a day at sunset.

Intermission 24 – Palo Orir

Tentacles?! Really?!

People have been calling him "Shapeshifter," so I imagined something silly, like turning into an orc to give himself a bigger body, but it's really something else to see him in action!

What led him to create such a unique skill? Why did he even need so many limbs to hold multiple weapons when warriors could spend lifetimes just mastering one? It might be related to his Gift, so I don't think I should just casually ask him about it.

I wonder how far he will grow with this skill. Maybe one day, he'll be able to take on literal armies by himself, his innumerous tentacles reaping hundreds of souls every second.

Wait… if he can make them take any shape he wants, then… oh, Gods… he could also fuck an army by himself!

A note from Manasong

Hall of Fame of Patrons

The patrons who support Rupegia shall have their names sung by the bards for they deserve the glory and honor. Their names are:

Prince PreownedFIN.

Prince Creamy Spinach.

Lord Andrew Meyers.

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Lord Bill.

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Lord Michale Erwin.

Lord Bakerdea.

Lord Maurice.

Lord Empyrean.

Lord Mattirro Draca.

Lord Colorblind.

Lord Fullmoon.

Lord Sean Drake.

Lord EESDESESESRDT.

Lord FrostyCube.

Lord Mike Bartter.

Lord Cardinal Steiner.

Lord Krawn.

Lord Warwulfv.

Lord Jorge Franco.

Lord Christopher Welsh.

Lord DJ.

Lord Philip.

Lord Tenebris Lupus.

Lord ImportantNPC.

Lord The Tallest Joshua.

Lord Copey Dunt.

Lord Dracopuppy23.

Lord Freddie.

Lord Cidant.

Lord Stellerbattle.

Noble Salty Panda.

Noble Mild Fracas.

Noble Aclys.

Noble Shawn Plumley.

Noble CarlBaxter.

Noble Yeuromain.

Noble Brandon Lai.

Leave a rating or a review to help me rise to the top or fix my shameful understanding of prose.

Take a look over my blog where all information about the world of Rupegia will be posted.

Join the Discord and discuss, or rant, or meme, or try and fight me so your waifu gets more screentime.

Become a Patron and read chapters in advance, or read the side-stories, or leave your mark on the story, or help choose the next artwork or the next side-story.

Chapter 100: Homecoming - Part 1

A note from Manasong

Cheers for a hundred chapters! And here's hoping for a hundred more!

Attention: to conform to the limit of mature content (more than just sexual content) allowed in a novel, I've censored this chapter. You can look for the uncensored version here.

Lina is anxious. She's hiding it, but she secretly wants to meet with her parents as soon as possible. We were all understandably tired, so she didn't say anything yet, but now that she's rested, she can't stop thinking about them.

She frowns and shrinks in my lap, but I grab her waist and lift her body up.

"We'll go tomorrow, alright?" I gently whisper in her ear, then I nibble on it.

"Ahn~… okay…" She breathes weakly as her little hands grip my thighs and her legs shiver.

"Should we give them forewarning or surprise them?" Yunia gently questions. Out of all of us, she treats Lina the kindest.

I stop to give my little girl some breathing room to think, but then I wiggle my thin tentacle. "Wolfy~…" She quietly complains.

"Huh? I didn't hear you. Surprise or forewarning?" I ask sternly.

Just as she opens her mouth to answer, I wiggle my tentacle again. "Surprise…" She manages to grumble in a show of "Willpower."

"Can we… do the ceremony before we go?" Ciel shyly asks.

"Right… we aren't actually officially married yet," I answer with a wry smile.

Yunia coolly nods in agreement and comments, "If it's just us, then I don't mind it being quick."

"Same," Hana and Roxanne respond in unison, while Lina silently agrees, her voice stolen by me. Aoi is barely paying attention as she doesn't really understand the need for celebration.

We turn to Alissa, the one of us who has the strongest feelings about this, and she nods excitedly.

After helping Lina's anxiety subside, I give Roxanne and Yunia a nice treat. Today we have a more carnivorous audience, and the maids seemingly take quite a lot of enjoyment from seeing the faces their Lords make.

Once I'm done with them, Hukarere gets a round, too.

Alissa hears one of the maids breathing heavily, her legs twitching as she struggles to stay upright. The young golden elven woman is too proud to openly satisfy her desire in front of us.

And I think she deserves more than just her own fingers.

I walk menacingly towards her, grinning suggestively as I stare her in the eye.

She locks up, visibly fearful of me, but then she glances at Poosh, whose gentle nod and encouraging gaze seems to calm her down.

This is the young and pretty elf girl who once boldly grabbed my Weapon in front of all of my wives as she helped me change my clothes. Her high cheekbones, thin lips, and braided hair make her look very girlish, which is just the type I'm looking for right now after enjoying a main course of Lina's adorableness.

I lift her chin with a claw to force her to face me. She's short for an elf, making us about the same height.

"You seem to be in distress. Is there anything I can do to help?" I ask with a sultry tone.

"Your Highness… I…" She catches herself and stops, but her breath quickens, and I feel its heat and freshness on my face. She smells of flowers and herbs, a simple and common perfume among elves, but very pleasant nonetheless.

"There's no shame in admitting your true desires," I whisper huskily.

Her resistance crumbles, and she immediately admits, "I desire you, my King."

That triggers my instincts, and I immediately steal her lips without another word, giving her tongue a good and strong spirit-touch to get her in the mood. This seems to be the most effective way to make unfamiliar women aroused. Instead of going straight for their private parts, a mind-numbing kiss more easily disarms them.

Her legs quiver, and I catch her before she collapses. I hug her waist and hold the back of her head so that we can still look at each other, and I find her stunned look absolutely adorable.

"What's your name, my young miss?" I kindly ask her.

"Iliada," she breathes softly.

"Feel honored that you have the privilege of enjoying this experience," I announce out loud, then I begin.

I kind of agree with Hana that tasting a new woman is a refreshing experience, but I have a feeling that I should make it clear to myself that the nostalgic comfort of my women will always be better.

Yeah, a totally spontaneous thought.

I gently lay Iliada on a clean bed and let the maids wash her body, then the girls decide to play with her a bit.

Hana's strong hands; Roxanne's teasing fingers; Alissa's dexterous tongue; Yunia's domineering presence; Osaria's endless thirst. The other girls don't participate since there's no physical room left for them and their desire isn't strong enough for them to intrude, so I keep them company while Iliada goes through round two.

She's left completely passed out, but smiling quite happily. Her entire body was thoroughly massaged, oiled, and covered in all sorts of fluids, including our expensive elven creams, and that definitely makes all the maids envious.

Once the Ryder Family Treatment is complete, we finally spend some time in the hot bath to wind down.

Today's dinner is steamed spring rolls, a werefox specialty. They use old Tonique leaves, which have a much milder flavor, to wrap around assorted grains and raisins. It's a nice dish, though it tastes a bit odd to me, so it'll take some time for me to get used to it.

"Well, you don't have to get used to it," Alissa shyly states.

"I just want to enjoy the food of your homelands together," I softly reply with a smile.

"Awn~…" Ciel moans, and Alissa becomes speechless, her heart aching with happiness.

My smile becomes stiff and apologetic as I turn to Roxanne and confess, "But I have to admit that your racial food will be hard to get used to."

Roxanne snickers evilly as she imagines me eating roasted orc "member" and fried orc "meatballs." Like the cherry on top, both of these dishes are garnished with cream.

"I feel like I should say no to those things just because of the fact that you want me to suffer," I add flatly.

"Ah, darn!" She exclaims and closes off her thoughts, but the cat's out of the bag. "It's not like we only eat 'those things,'" she mumbles with a pout.

"You also 'these things,'" Osaria teases.

"Wait… you actually eat female parts?" Alissa asks, frowning concernedly.

Roxanne adjusts her glasses and grins as she explains, "A female orc 'parts' are very 'elastic' while Harpy's are rather 'soft.' There are also a few other monsters with tasty 'parts,' though it's more of a snack since they have little actual volume. The round pair sacks of fat and ovaries, though…"

The girls shudder and suddenly empathize with me.

For the evening, we don our social clothes and go out to the theater since the elven Cirque du Soleil is making a performance tonight.

Alissa's first set of Misty Fox clothes are done, thanks to the fact that they're the easiest to make. Her clan has a thing against stitching, so all of their clothes are like origami or only held together by sashes.

She's wearing white thigh-highs made from Snow Weave and sporting large, black platform clogs like the Japanese Geta. Her skirt is quite short, revealing an Absolute Territory that's worthy of a Chef's kiss, and the hem of her sleeves are quite wide, allowing her to hide her hands inside them. The cloth itself is covered with cute foxes and flowers, which are stitched in all over it, making her look absolutely adorable.

All of the girls, and even I, also receive a not-kimono, but only Lina wears hers this time because cute is her thing.

She only takes five steps forward before the entire thing unravels itself, which reveals her whole body as she isn't wearing anything underneath it, then she steps on the sash and trips, face-planting on the waxed, wooden floor.

Alissa holds her stomach in a fit of laughter while I gently pull Lina up and massage her forehead. She didn't pass out, but she still plays dead out of shame.

While still chuckling, Alissa pulls out a dozen clamps and shows them to us, then teases Lina a little bit, "These are used for children when they aren't able to keep their clothes from coming undone."

Lina suddenly revives and pouts angrily while glaring at Alissa. "H-how am I supposed to walk in this thing without the clamps?!" She exclaims in annoyance.

Alissa grins mischievously and replies in a slow, deliberate tone, "With grace, something that the dwarves sorely lack."

She offers us the clamps, then Lina grumbles and snatches them from her hand.

We go by Gatun carriage with Lordsguard Gatun riders flanking us and opening the way. Sandoro's security measures are so cautious that the moment the carriage gets stopped, we'll be whisked away by [Gate]s. Even though we're surrounded by Lordsguard, they might not be enough to protect us from a [Meteor] ambush, so I find this measure acceptable.

We look out the window and watch as each and every commoner that we pass stops to kneel and lowers their head to us. The Intervention has made the entire town become completely docile to us, and the odd foreigner stands out when they hesitate to kneel.

"This will be hard to get used to…" Klein comments absentmindedly.

"Only for you," Hana retorts with a snort.

"No, I'm also feeling the same thing," my human side agrees with Klein.

Hana raises an eyebrow. "And the dragon?"

"Indifferent. The human's awkwardness is just too strong."

"I was just a slave not that long ago…" Lina mumbles and sighs.

"One day, you'll get used to it. This isn't that much different from how it was with my father," Yunia kindly comforts her.

"Until then, fake it until you make it," I jokingly advise.

Osaria and Klein frown slightly, but the rest of the girls caught my meaning.

"It rhymes in my native language," I explain with a wry smile, and the duo nods in understanding.

We reach the theater, and a carpet of silvery grass is extended to us, cutting right through the middle of the crowd of commoners who are waiting to be let in.

I ignore the stares and focus on the architecture. The theater itself is a cylindrical, multi-story building made of bright red and yellow wood, which are, ironically, imperial colors. The patterns carved into the walls are so intricate that they rival our castle's, which makes the dragon within me slightly annoyed.

While the imperial design for theaters is usually a half-circle, which is the best shape for watching plays, the elven design is a full circular stage, allowing one to watch their performances from all angles. This theater even has an outer ring stage for the background dancers.

The theater is open to the air, though the roof can be shut in case of rain, or if the acoustics require it. Tonight, the psychedelic moons are in full display, making this a perfect time for an open-air performance.

We walk past the commoners, Lina praying that no gust of wind exposes her, and we enter the theater proper. The interior is colorful, full of beautiful, delicate drapes in the elven style, some of them hiding naked dancers, showing us only their outlines, while a few waiters and waitresses walk around, dressed like they're attending a Brazilian Carnival.

Roxanne and Yunia take a drink from one of them at the same time, then Hana and Osaria also get themselves one when they recover from gawking at everything.

"Is this your first time here, Osaria?" I curiously ask her.

Her excitement dims a bit as I carelessly make her remember something unpleasant. "Actually, yes. Rico never liked the theater…" She replies with a low tone.

"I believe he was actually forbidden from coming here," Yunia explains through [Bind].

"We'll invite Rande and his harem once he gets back," I deflect with a gentle smile.

"And the twins?" Ciel asks tentatively.

Yunia shrugs and casually answers, "They never cared that much about this sort of thing."

"We should invite your parents, too," Hana and nudges Klein on the shoulder.

But her mind is somewhere else. "Maybe I should take this as a knight assignment…" She mumbles.

"Don't you dare," I try my best to nip it in the bud, but she awkwardly scratches her round monkey ear, still skeptical, so I add, "Your knight training isn't complete yet."

Her back straightens, and her brown skin turns a shade darker. "Ah, yes. I understand," She finally accepts.

"You are eager to serve," Hukarere teasingly comments with a heavy accent.

"I guess…" Klein shyly replies, her long monkey tail stiff with awkwardness.

"You are young. You can grow. You have time," Hukarere sagely advises, something unexpected from her.

"Well, thanks." Klein gushes softly, then something occurs to her. "How long have you been serving in the Chimeric army?"

Hukarere stops, her brain hanging up on her as she tries to sort through her memories. "I believe I am older than everyone," she finally mumbles.

"Not me," Osaria retorts with a smirk.

Same here, maybe?

The pale wolf shrugs. "I served for most of my life."

"You used to be an escort mercenary, correct?" Yunia asks Klein, who nods earnestly, her heart likely racing from receiving the attention of my Queen. "Knighthood really isn't that different from escort jobs most of the time. If you want to learn different skills, Azador or Hukarere have the most varied skillsets I've seen."

Klein's eyes widen, and her head jerks back to face my pale wolf. "May I request that you accompany my team when we go monster hunting?" She politely asks with more composure than I'm used to seeing from her.

Hukarere takes a moment to translate her words inside her mind, then she nods and shows a toothy grin. "Team, yes."

Well, I guess Klein's made a new friend.

We climb some stairs and enter a trapezoid-shaped, raised balcony, which is reserved exclusively for us. On the other side of the auditorium, there's another balcony that's reserved for the nobles while the commoners and merchants use the lower seats.

This balcony has a banquet of snacks and alcohol, curtains to give us privacy, and even a platform that would allow us to walk right up to the stage and smell the dancers if we so desired.

The main seats are already filled, and now the commoners are being allowed access to the stands along the wall.

The two private balconies are enchanted with defenses, so there's no danger of assassination, and Sandoro has made sure that only food and maids directly from the castle are allowed up here.

We sit down and only have to wait for a short while before a soft ringing warns us that the play is about to commence, then the lights dim, and the spotlight turns on, revealing a single, androgynous golden elf standing in the middle of the stage.

"Gentlemen and gentlewomen. Good evening to all of you and to our Lords, the Royal Ryder family!" The announcer begins, their magically enhanced voice silencing the theater completely.

The spotlight shines on us, and we're forced to go through this formality, no matter how much Lina wants to hide. Yunia and I stand up, then we all wave and smile.

Then the elven Cirque du Soleil finally begins their performance.

Long before skills or levels, in the early days of the Dawn of Civilization, when humanoids were like children, eagerly learning about magic and the world which they now inhabited, a group of young elven tribal warriors traversed the crowns of the High Trees, jumping between them with such ease that it was like they were as light as feathers, the drums following their rhythm.

One of them, a man who wears the bones of monsters on his neck as a magical charm, detects something up ahead, so he whistles softly, and all of the elves instantly disappear among the leaves, bringing absolute silence to the forest.

Then the wind howls through the flutes, and the leaves of their tree rustle and sway, revealing glimpses of the stalking elves.

Alissa is the first to notice a whispering in our ears, which gradually becomes louder until everyone else also notices it. Then something starts shining out from behind the leaves.

We glimpse at a lustrous coat of pearly white feathers with a rainbow sheen, and the whispering grows louder.

We get a glimpse of long, sharp crystal talons, and the whispering grows into murmuring.

We are stunned by the sight of a long white beak and mesmerizing eyes with a twister of color within them, constantly swirling and swaying hypnotically.

Then the murmuring grows into drumming, and the elves reappear.

The first of them lunges with her spear, but the distance between her and the majestic bird only continues to increase until she completely disappears from view.

The second elf pounces with his club, but the bird simply grows in size until his weapon is nothing but a stick before an adult Gatun.

The third youth never sees the bird, losing his way instead, and then he forgets what he was doing a mere moment ago.

The fourth is hit by a gust and loses her footing, then she falls towards the darkness of the forest's floor.

The fifth is the bone warrior, and he doesn't even fight the bird, truly dazed by its beauty, but his bloodlust isn't gone.

The bird lifts a wing, and a gust of wind rushes towards the bone warrior, but his honed sense of danger wakes him from his stupor, and he dodges the attack masterfully.

The bird's eyes narrow in annoyance, then it unleashes a series of magical attacks.

The warrior is extremely nimble, but even he can't dodge them all. Small wounds open in his fair skin, and droplets of his blood spread everywhere. The plants start to pulsate with light as they absorb the blood, then they emit flavorful, gentle mana, begging to be fed some more.

"We should drink some Eia, now," Yunia suggests, and I gladly pull out my bottle of Cinco Flores, then I serve everyone a finger of the wonder juice.

The bird's gaze softens, and so does the edge of its spells, but the attack continues.

The movements of the warrior become more flourished and elaborate, and he starts to circle around the bird instead of just trying to fight for his life. The bird is deliberately making him dance.

The spearwoman returns and tries to attack again, but the bird effortlessly holds her back, then her blood paints the leaves, and she joins the bone warrior in their dance.

The club man joins in, and the same happens with him, then the last warrior also reappears, and the four of them dance together.

Their dripping, bright red blood forms intricate patterns on the dark green leaves, then their dancing gradually synchronizes. At the same time, a foreign feeling starts to seep into my heart as I begin to sense the mana from [Weaverism] in the air, and it influences us to move, to express our emotions through dance, but it's weak enough that we can all easily resist it.

The attacks of the bird gradually decrease in number until it's only attacking the bone warrior, yet all of the other warriors continue to dance along with him.

A Gatun appears, drawn in by the smell of blood, and one of the elves swings her arm towards it, sprinkling the beast's face with their blood. Instead of attacking, the beast simply sits down and watches the performance with curious, intelligent eyes.

The dance slows and their moves become more fluid, as if they were being pulled along with the wind. They lose all flair of someone dodging attacks, instead shifting into a full-blown artistic dance.

My third eye starts to open, and I sense the Life flowing through the entire stage and even the audience. It's like a slow-motion tornado that allows me to observe and appreciate every little detail, every connection between each living being present here.

A variety of birds and even nature spirits appear among the leaves, and then the outer ring stage lights up, revealing dozens of spinning dancers who sprinkle their blood everywhere.

The air becomes thick with Nature mana, the heavy smell of iron, the sweet perfume of the flowers, the thick essence of the forest, and the musky scent of beasts.

The commoners in the stands don't resist the call any longer and dance along with the tribal symphony while the audience down in the seats hold hands and share their feelings with one another.

Hukarere has the most intense reaction to this performance, and she now seems to be completely tripping balls, delving deep within her own mind.

The girls and I also hold hands, and everyone experiences [Bind]-lite as our minds align.

Our senses are overwhelmed, and we enter a trance as we lose all sense of time.

The music stops, and I sigh tiredly, regretting that the pleasant dream has finally ended, and then my mind truly wakes up.

The bird flies away, and the bone warrior immediately pleads, "Come back! Teach us more!"

"I've given you enough," the ethereal voice of the majestic bird echoes through the theater.

Then the lights dim, and the performance ends.

A note from Manasong

Hall of Fame of Patrons

The patrons who support Rupegia shall have their names sung by the bards for they deserve the glory and honor. Their names are:

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Chapter 100: Homecoming - Part 2

A note from Manasong

Attention: to conform to the limit of mature content (more than just sexual content) allowed in a novel, I've censored this chapter. You can look for the uncensored version here.

We take the carriage back home and immediately crash on the bed, emotionally exhausted from the intense experience. Hukarere doesn't have the energy to return to the barracks, so she ends up falling asleep in the pile of women, though her [Solidify] runs out in the middle of the night.

Today is the 15th, Fo, day of Fire. It's thought to be the only day of the week when Okross could be melted in a magical forge, but there are few people alive who can actually confirm or deny this bit of trivia.

I increased my [Polearm Use] by 1 (now 12+4).

Ciel increased her [Wind Magic] by 1 (now 14+26).

Aoi increased her "Intelligence" by 1 (now 9). Her talks with Roxanne about bullets and chemistry have been really stimulating for her, it seems.

I cast my custom [Materialize] on Hukarere, and she gives me a lick on my cheek, then rushes out to get back to the barracks so that she won't miss the morning training.

I invite Anton and Krysta for breakfast because I want to give my personal chef a challenge. I ate not-Catupiry once, and now I'm dying for some chicken and Catupiry pizza, but the pizza culture in the empire is a bit lacking. The Mainlanders use pita bread, which is kind of a precursor to pizza, but mostly for dipping or sandwiches instead of baking it with something on top, and it lacks the softness of pizza dough.

Osaria seems to be enamored with me today, just staring at me and smiling absentmindedly while I describe what I want to Krysta. "I know that we need food to live, but don't you have a bit of an obsession with it?" She suddenly asks once I'm done.

"He only thinks about women and food. Women first, though," Roxanne innocently answers.

I smile smugly and reply with a snobbish tone, "I'm a bit of a 'gourmet.' I simply love having my tongue massaged by new and interesting flavors just as much as I like to 'enjoy' all kinds of women."

Anton is completely ignoring this conversation.

"'Gourmet'?" Klein questions confusedly, her face almost a mirror of her mother's.

"A person who enjoys savoring a wide variety of food," Ted begins.

"And has high standards for what they enjoy," and Suzy finishes.

"So, they're like your personal scholars, or something?" Anton questions as he gives the golems a curious glance.

"Personal bodyguards, dictionaries, encyclopedias, and tireless servants," Jarn diligently answers, and I swear that her tone carries a hint of pride.

"'Encyclopedias'?" Klein questions again, and the golems answer her immediately, then she starts shooting off questions in quick succession, amusing Anton quite a lot.

We ignore them, and Osaria turns to me. "I just find it endearing how intensely he enjoys things," she comments and chuckles softly, then her foot runs up my leg.

Do you want a Ravaging? Because that's how you get a Ravaging.

As the special dish of this meal, there's toast with melted not-Gorgonzola and honey. It's a dragonkin recipe, so Hana enjoys it quite a bit. Ciel also has a thing for hearty, sweet things on toast, so she loves it just as much as I do. Only Yunia and Aoi are more reserved, the former because elves don't eat a lot of cheese, and the latter because of the lack of meat.

I find it interesting that lactose intolerance isn't really a thing here. While different races have different preferences when it comes to food, actual significant genetic differences between them for digestion are very rare.

And once our bellies are filled, we call Teresina to the castle.

It's a bit odd to think that we're getting married right now, but I also think that it'd be wrong to wait until the ceremony. We've been engaged for a little too long, and the girls deserve to be able to show off the Ryder surname to their parents when they reunite.

We put on our social, traditional racial clothes and wait in the main hall.

I could claim to be either half-Thorninan and half-Mainlander or just a pure Rabanarian, so I chose the latter. I'm wearing a long, black velvet cloak with silver stripes, silver horns on the back, and golden detailing that make it even prettier. Rabanarians like soft and tight-fitting clothing that can be easily worn under armor.

Alissa put on a long, orange not-kimono that trails along the floor behind her and has a large flower-shaped red ribbon above her tail. She's like a neatly-wrapped gift begging to be opened.

Roxanne donned a semi-transparent, black and purple ball gown with leather belts holding it together and black leather underwear. Of course, succubi fashion is all about being alluring and domineering.

Hana went for a puffy fur dress with a boob and abs window. She considers herself more of a Sommerlande, but for racial clothes, she obviously fits better in something dragonkin. She looks like a mix between a posh lady in fur and a barbarian.

Ciel is sporting a silvery sundress embroidered with yellow flowers. She could go for the Rabanarian look, but she feels much more comfortable in something like this. Loose and brightly-colored clothes fit her best as they enhance her curves and skin tone, respectively.

Lolita fashion is actually racially appropriate for Lina, so she put on the cutest silvery dress that fits with our heraldry. I'm a sucker for cute, so I feel like Ravaging her petite body and her innocent clothes.

There's no known dragon fashion, so we decorated dragon-Aoi with as much jewelry as we could, Chimera-style, and tied a silver veil to her back. She actually looks pretty majestic like this, waking up the dragon inside me.

Yunia's chosen dousnadeia is made of long white strips of cloth that drag along behind her on the floor, and every inch of it is covered in silvery or black patterns. This time, she's wearing as much clothing as she ever did, though she also has a boob and abs window like Hana.

These are just our best formal clothes. For the actual wedding, we'll have a lot more imagery going on.

Gify and the golems aren't marrying me, but we give them some silvery jewels, too, since we have more of those than we can count. Not even Yunia knows how much there was in the treasury, and that's before we added Arreira's legacy to it.

We all look really nice, though, so I pull out the [Instant Painting] gem and take another "photo," then Aoi uses me to keep my excitement down while we wait, but the twins arrive soon after, so that ends earlier than she wanted it to.

Teresina doesn't take long to arrive. The gilf enters the castle with an energy level that you wouldn't expect from someone her age, strutting forward with as much determination as a soldier.

With just a thought, Yunia uses an enchantment in her throne to grow a table up from the white grass carpet.

"I must say, this is a rather unusual request," Teresina comments as she comes closer, then she notices the red patch near the middle of the hall and frowns softly. It's become red because the grass actually absorbed Ira's blood.

The gilf decides to ignore it and walks past the patch, then, with a *poof*, she pulls out a heavy, ornate book directly onto the table.

"The ceremony will be held one day, don't worry," I assure her with a confident smile.

"That's not what I meant…" She complains and gives me an annoyed side-eye.

"Some of us lack a last name, so we'd like to rectify that," Yunia coolly replies.

Teresina's stern face softens a bit, and she nods. "Ah, I understand." Then she gestures to the book. "Come forward, and we shall start."

For every marriage, there needs to be witnesses, and ours are the golems, Klein, Osaria, Poosh, Mimi, and the twins. Alissa invited my loyal sheep because she thought that she would enjoy this.

We get up from our thrones and approach Teresina, crowding around the table.

She gives everyone a look, then clears her throat and starts, "Today, these lovers, Wolf Ryder, Alissa, Hanafuria, Roxanne Succubus, Ciel, Lina, Aoi, and Yulania are to be married. From this day forth, they'll work together for the sake of each other's happiness and safety; they'll work together to further prolong the gift of life given to us by the God of Creation; they'll work together to fulfill their duties as members of the humanoids and create a family, be it of blood or not. They have decided that their lives together hold more value. And so, we'll now bear witness to their vows."

First, I turn to Alissa and grab her hands, then I stare into her entrancing orange eyes and whisper, "I am yours, and you are mine."

"I am yours, and you are mine," she repeats in the same tone, her eyes becoming misty-eyed.

I kiss her lips gently, then I lovingly rub her cheek with my tail and release her.

I turn to Roxanne and grab her hands, then I stare into her bewitching eyes and recite, "I'll protect you, I'll keep you happy, I'll fight along with you and defend you. Together, we'll venture far. I'll entrust you with my life."

She gets all giddy, gushing with happiness, and takes a few seconds to get her emotions under control again before she repeats, "I'll protect you, I'll keep you happy, I'll fight along with you and defend you. Together, we'll venture far. I'll entrust you with my life."

I get on my tip-claws, and she leans down so that we can kiss, then I move on to Hana.

I grab her hands, and she strongly grips mine in hers, giving me a fearsome smirk with her yellow eyes as I announce out loud, "I swear to you my body and soul, my sword and magic. I swear to protect you and keep you happy forever."

She stands tall and proud, towering over me even more than usual since she's wearing heels, and her strong voice echoes through the hall, "I swear to you my body and soul, my sword and shield. I swear to protect you and keep you happy forever."

She suddenly hugs my waist and pulls me up, then gives me a strong kiss that ends in a wet smack before letting me back down again.

Still slightly stunned, I move on to Ciel and hold her soft hands. We stare warmly at each other while I huskily recite, "I'll take care of you, support you, fight along with you, and love you. I swear to be always at your side and that I'll always work towards a better future, together."

She doesn't hesitate to repeat, "I'll take care of you, support you, fight along with you, and love you. I swear to be always at your side and that I'll always work towards a better future, together." And her voice started to crack near the end.

I grab her face and savor her juicy lips, then I move on to Lina. Her little hands contrast so strongly against my big, mean claws that I feel like worshiping her right here, right now.

She suddenly wakes up from her daze, and I declare, "I'll protect you, I'll keep you safe, I'll always support you and encourage you to grow. I'll always love you, and I entrust you with my life."

Her droopy eyes stare at me as if they were empty, her anxiety overwhelming all other emotions, and her mouth moves on its own, reciting the words that she thoroughly memorized, "I'll protect you, I'll keep you safe, I'll always support you and encourage you to grow. I'll always love you, and I entrust you with my life."

I press my lips against hers, and that breathes some life into her. She grips my hands and pushes her lips against mine, then we end it with a wet smack, and she giggles softly.

I turn to Aoi and hold her large, draconic head. "I vow to kill for you, to never abandon you, and to stay by your side, forever."

She calmly repeats, her thin lips curled up, revealing a toothy grin. "I vow to kill for you, to never abandon you, and to stay by your side, forever."

I press my face against her snout, and her long, slippery tongue invades my mouth, giving it a strong lick before letting me go.

I pat her head lovingly, then I turn to Yunia. I grasp her delicate, perfectly feminine hands and stare into her striking, blue eyes.

"I'll never let you feel alone again," I whisper gently.

"I'll never allow us to stray apart," she responds in kind.

Our lips meet in a gentle caress for a second before they part.

Hana suddenly pulls Roxanne into a hug. "You belong to me," she breathes, domineeringly.

"I belong to you," Roxanne reflexively answers and giggles.

Then Lina lifts her innocent, gloomy eyes towards Ciel. "I'll become someone you can rely on," she vows earnestly.

"You already are…" Ciel breathes reflexively, her heart touched by Lina's determination. "I'll always be here for you," she replies affectionately, then kneels down and hugs my little girl.

Teresina turns her amused face towards the rest of the girls, waiting for more vows, but there aren't any other sub-couples among us, at least for now, so she motions to a white magical quill on top of the book.

I pick it up and write my name in it, then the girls follow suit. Meanwhile, Teresina chants [Detect Evil], then her hands glow, and she touches me. I feel "something" enter my soul, and it immediately searches every nook and cranny of it, but it finds nothing, so it leaves after a split second. It isn't exactly unpleasant, but it's definitely a weird feeling.

Teresina touches each of us in turn, giving Aoi a curious look when she touches her, then she moves on and announces, "No evil is present in this ceremony, no lie was spoken between them. All those present thus accept this wedding as valid, and now the gods will watch and judge your union as you progress. May happiness and success find all of you. You are now husband and wives."

Second time's the charm, I guess.

The witnesses clap, and we share a group hug. After waiting for so long, we're all finally married. After going through so much together, so much pain, struggle, happiness, and love, it feels like it was a bit overdue. I only slightly blame Alissa's stubbornness for that because I'd have married them all ages ago if she didn't want to wait until we were True Nobles.

"I have no regrets!" Alissa happily exclaims through [Bind].

While we crush each other's bones, I feel my "Status" change. Once I'm finally allowed to breathe again, I confirm that everyone's "Fiancée" entry has changed to "Wife," and they all now have the "Ryder" last name.

The burst of emotions eventually subsides, and Yunia walks over to the twins, then she grabs their hands and states, "You're now the last of the original Este family. Wear your name with pride."

They both lower their heads and reply in sync, "We will, sister."

Hana approaches Mimi and lightly punches her shoulder, but Mimi doesn't even flinch.

"Jealous?" Hana teases with a fearsome grin.

"Honestly, a bit," Mimi casually admits, though her expression is as serious as it usually is.

Hana lifts her eyebrows suggestively. "You can still join as a concubine."

"I'll pass," she declines without hesitation.

Osaria comes in to give me a hug, and the witnesses gather to give us their congratulations.

"I'm grateful that you allowed me to witness this intimate moment," Poosh happily coos and lowers her head respectfully.

"You're quickly becoming someone important to this family. We'll always welcome you with open arms," Alissa kindly replies, making Poosh blush.

"I'm happy for you," Osaria whispers and pats my head lovingly.

"Yeah, you all really do deserve it!" Klein happily exclaims, a bit emotional herself, which isn't unexpected considering the small roller coaster that is our relationship.

With that done, it's time to visit Lina's parents. We put on our metal armor and inform the High Officers about where we're going.

Sandoro makes us take Azador and a squad of (female) Companions with us, this time all veteran elves, but we don't take anyone else with us to avoid annoying Mimi. Though, I want to bring Osaria and Klein to visit Mountainhome one day.

We enter the underground stone hall of the Imperial [Eternal Gate] Network and request a teleport to Mac Gantus, the capital. As Crown Lords, we just need to show our ID tablets, and we're allowed to pass. Seeing the name "Ryder" being repeatedly recorded in the log by the officer brings me a great deal of satisfaction and pride.

The gigantic metal gate slowly creaks open, revealing a large and wide corridor blocked by a white veil, which is the [Eternal Gate] itself.

After we cross through it, we immediately notice that the air is cooler, but much more humid here. The guards are now all either humanoid or weredog with olive skin and dark hair. They don't even bat an eye at Aoi, surely having seen far more stranger things in the past.

It'd be nice to get out of here and see the town, but we don't really have the time, so we continue on to Hombombein, Mountainhome's capital.

After passing through, the air is now significantly drier and perfectly pleasant with a hint of artificial air conditioning since the dwarves are obsessed with air quality.

The guards are all muscular and wide Tolkien dwarves, though they're sporting sets of shining metal armor, so we can only see their eyes and long beards from underneath their full plate.

Then we take another, smaller [Eternal Gate] to Bersidon. There's no perceptible change in the air, but the guards here are visibly stiff, trying not to gawk at the completely outlandish troupe that we form.

We're not allowed to exit into the Lord's home, so we take the one to the Lord's Hall in their small Nobles' Quarter.

We exit into a cool, comfy, stone building somewhere underground. The lighting in here is solely provided by crystal lights, giving it a moody atmosphere. Simple geometric carvings in dull colors decorate the gray, smooth stone that everything was carved into. The ceiling is quite tall, and the hall is very roomy, forcing them to use pillars to support the building's integrity. I guess the dwarves must be compensating for something.

The commoners and officers in here are all cute and look like children, just like Lina, and they definitely haven't been trained in proper etiquette since everyone gawks at us, even our Lordsguard, who are the most plainly dressed out of all of us. I figure that the wooden elven armor that our men use must seem very conspicuous to the short-statured metal experts.

"I think I just made someone urinate themselves," Aoi proudly comments through [Bind].

"I doubt it, though it was probably a close call," Alissa replies and kindly pats her scaly head.

Lina ignores the stares, and her feet suddenly move on their own, taking her out of the Hall, so we follow close behind her.

Once she gets out onto the street, she immediately stops and slowly takes in everything around her. We're in some sort of cave composed of gray and light green stone. Square buildings are carved into the rock everywhere, not only embedded into the floor and the walls but also going up into the ceiling, with suspended bridges or brick roads connecting them.

Then Lina's head jerks towards a huge, straight tunnel nearby that lets the sunlight from the surface pour in, and we see a considerable number of people traveling along its length.

"There…" She mumbles, and we start walking towards it.

"Perhaps I should secure a carriage, your Highness?" Azador politely inquires.

"No need. We're all physically fit here," Yunia replies for me and glances towards Roxanne, who pouts angrily for a second in response.

"As you wish." He lowers his head and drops the subject.

The grid-like organization of the roads here makes it extremely easy to find the main road that leads to the surface. It's quite busy, but our presence is so imposing, and our armor is so shiny, that everyone immediately gets out of our way, and the few distracted people who don't eventually do so with haste once they notice Aoi's glare.

I pull out the Golems just to let them experience the megalophobia I'm feeling right now.

"Honestly, I think it seems pretty comfortable to live underground like this," I casually comment.

Hana grunts in agreement and adds, "Yukiyama is also underground. It's pretty hot and humid, though."

"A cave gives a lot of protection, which allows us to relax more," Aoi chimes in, sounding strangely wise.

"Hey!" She grumbles inside my soul space.

"Of course. That's one of the main reasons that we build underground," Lina explains, suddenly breaking out of her spell.

"This cave feels rather cold, though," Aoi complains.

"Of course the big lizard would prefer the heat," Hana remarks sagely with a nod.

Aoi narrows her eyes at her and softly growls, scaring the almost literal shit out of the cute dwarven man/child walking past us.

Then, a second later, a wagon being pulled by ox-like beasts swerves to avoid us, though I'm not sure if it was deliberate since the animals are definitely distressed.

Aoi's anger cools down after seeing all of that. "I kind of like this…" She admits with a toothy grin as she amusedly watches the wagon moving away.

"It's actually pretty surprising to see how afraid people get around you," Hana adds in wonder.

Alissa frowns and retorts, "Not really…? I mean, she is a dragon. Outside of Rakontagne and Rabanara, I don't think anyone here has ever seen one from up so close."

Hana rests a hand on Aoi's large head. "How could anyone ever be scared of this beautiful, feminine face?"

The Companions share a confused look.

"She's not serious, not completely," I state out loud with a wry smile, at which, Hana smirks.

With each step, Lina's heart beats faster as more and more memories rush to the surface of her mind. She didn't come down underground that often, but she still fondly remembers these walls.

The air gradually becomes drier and hotter, and our view suddenly opens up once we emerge from the tunnel.

We're on the slope of a gray mountain with dust and stone covering everything around us. Small square roofs peek out from underground since the houses here are half-sunk into it, kind of like a Hobbit's home. Farther down the slope, we see what appears to be a canyon, the famous Kanom Road, and it seems to be pretty busy with people going up and down the serpentine path that connects it to Bersidon. Far off in the distance is the Atskild Mountain Range, which is a chain of jagged, rust-colored hills that stretch across the entire horizon.

Lina takes a minute to reorient herself, and then her feet move on their own again.

We continue down the mountainside, and I notice how the steps for pedestrians are all perfectly carved into the stone. Signposts for inns and other shops dot the road with increasing frequency as we get closer to the town's wall, but there's rarely any other type of decoration to be seen here on the surface.

Underground, we saw mostly dwarves, but now, up on the surface, we see a lot of Mainland humans, Asian humans from Wideberg, dark-skinned humans from Sommerland, weredogs, werecats, werebunnies, halflings, the odd dragonkin, and even a few beastfolk, but not a single silver-elf can be seen, even though we're so close to Elaria.

Lina gradually picks up speed, her little feet scurrying down the steps before she suddenly makes a right turn and darts down a corridor.

The numerous signposts suddenly become far less common as we enter the residential area, but Alissa spots one far ahead, and Lina notices it too soon after, then she breaks into a run.

We hurriedly follow after her, smiling warmly at her eagerness, then we see a young dwarf emerging from the shop up ahead.

The boy has dark hair and droopy, gloomy eyes just like Lina's, and his open wide once he notices the troupe running towards him, but then he turns to Lina, and his jaw goes slack in surprise.

"Fuda!" Lina shouts, her voice cracking as she starts to cry.

"Lina?!" He shouts back, but then he freezes up completely, like a deer in headlights.

That's her brother.

A note from Manasong

Hall of Fame of Patrons

The patrons who support Rupegia shall have their names sung by the bards for they deserve the glory and honor. Their names are:

Prince PreownedFIN.

Prince Creamy Spinach.

Lord Andrew Meyers.

Lord Samuel Lim.

Lord Bill.

Lord Novgarod.

Lord Michale Erwin.

Lord Bakerdea.

Lord Maurice.

Lord Empyrean.

Lord Mattirro Draca.

Lord Colorblind.

Lord Fullmoon.

Lord Sean Drake.

Lord EESDESESESRDT.

Lord FrostyCube.

Lord Mike Bartter.

Lord Cardinal Steiner.

Lord Krawn.

Lord Warwulfv.

Lord Jorge Franco.

Lord Christopher Welsh.

Lord DJ.

Lord Philip.

Lord Tenebris Lupus.

Lord ImportantNPC.

Lord The Tallest Joshua.

Lord Copey Dunt.

Lord Dracopuppy23.

Lord Freddie.

Lord Cidant.

Lord Stellerbattle.

Lord Chris Carter.

Noble Salty Panda.

Noble Mild Fracas.

Noble Aclys.

Noble Shawn Plumley.

Noble CarlBaxter.

Noble Yeuromain.

Noble Brandon Lai.

Leave a rating or a review to help me rise to the top or fix my shameful understanding of prose.

Take a look over my blog where all information about the world of Rupegia will be posted.

Join the Discord and discuss, or rant, or meme, or try and fight me so your waifu gets more screentime.

Become a Patron and read chapters in advance, or read the side-stories, or leave your mark on the story, or help choose the next artwork or the next side-story.

Chapter 100: Homecoming - Part 3

I now realize that Lina and her family shouldn't have actually changed or even aged since she left, so it'd be very easy for her to recognize them since they all look so alike.

Then Lina crashes into Fuda and pulls him into a hug. Even in her Bastión armor, she has so little mass that the impact isn't even noticed by Fuda.

"It's you! It's you! It's you!" He shouts repeatedly as he holds her head and stares at her in complete disbelief.

She loosens the hug and straightens her posture, allowing them both to look each other in the eye, but then the tears start to flow, and they hug again.

We don't want to interrupt their moment, so we spend a long awkward minute in silence while we wait.

Suddenly, the heavy door to the shop opens up, revealing a woman's face that looks just like Lina's, but with the subtle signs of age that the dwarves still get over time.

"Elven hai'r! What in Listink's name is going on he're?!" The woman exclaims.

Yunia looks at her own majestic drills in confusion, but I smile wryly because I think she was using an idiom.

"Lina is back!" Fuda yells, and Lina looks up to see the newcomer, then the woman's face pales.

"Mom…" Lina mutters weakly and gives her a pained smile.

Toulin, Lina's mom, opens her mouth wide as she hoots, "Waaa~h…" Then her head disappears inside the shop. "OMUME, COME HE'RE! LINA IS BACK!"

"WHAAT?!" A muffled, but also awfully high-pitched male voice replies.

The door to the shop opens wide with a bang, and Lina's mom joins in on the hug. A moment later, a cute, round-cheeked boy with blonde hair runs out and tackles them.

Lina is surrounded by her family, and they start barraging her with questions, though everyone, including Lina, has some difficulty in understanding their accent. They talk similarly to the Sommerlande accent by pronouncing the "r" with a retroflex flap but also pronouncing the "s" or "c" followed by a vowel as a faint "sh."

"You'r master let you come back?!" Omume asks incredulously and only spares us a glance.

"I'm not a slave anymore. He's my husband," Lina proudly replies with her chest puffed up.

"Y-y-you ma'rried?" Fuda exclaims.

"Elven hai'r! A're you a noble, now?!" Omume shouts and gives us another glance, but he still doesn't seem to have noticed Aoi yet.

Lina nods and tries to hide her grin. "I'm a Lord."

Toulin's droopy, gloomy eyes open wide. "A-a Lo'rd? Not a Choshen Deschendant?"

Lina nods. "Crown Lords of the Western High Forest."

Toulin dramatically holds the back of her hand against her forehead and starts to tilt backwards. Her husband immediately catches her by the waist and holds her as she starts to hyperventilate.

"Elves! Elves!" Fuda exclaims excitedly and glances repeatedly at Yunia. My Queen remains lofty, but she's secretly enjoying the boy's worship of her.

"But…" Omume's eyes fall on me, and I grin happily. "He isn't a mustch elf!" He shouts, completely incredulous.

"It's a complicated story," Lina softly replies with a wry smile.

Toulin seems to recover, and she grabs Lina's shoulder. "We'll talk about it late'r. For now, we need to cheleb'rate!" She happily shouts and beams with a beautiful smile.

Honestly, their accent is kind of cute.

Lina nods shyly, then gives each of them a tight hug.

Omume suddenly notices her armor and opens his eyes wide as he breathes, "Diamond d'ragon scales… That is beautiful."

"Should we go inside? It's really dry out here," Lina awkwardly suggests.

"Of courshe!" Toulin exclaims with a nod. "I know how the big raches a'ren't ushed to the dust," Then she looks at our troupe and stiffens. "Wait, you have an actual d'ragon…"

Fuda becomes speechless, while Omume mumbles, "What…?" Then he notices Aoi's toothy grin. "Azhu'rite d'ragon scales!"

"I'm also a Lord, too," Aoi calmly states, her powerful double voice terrifying them.

"She… speaks!" Fuda shouts, both in awe and fear.

"Please don't do that…" Lina pleads through [Bind].

"But it'll be fun!" I whine back.

"Hm…" She grumbles, a bit annoyed. "Fine, but you'll have to explain it to them later…"

I knew she was a mischievous little girl at heart.

Gify grumbles and switches to Alissa's shoulder, then Aoi and I suddenly transform into our secondary forms, and she makes sure to [Equip] her clothes before the transformation is complete.

The eyes of the trio go round, and their chins fall to the floor, all in sync.

"Shymbol of Might!" Fuda exclaims in awe.

Omume partially recovers from his daze and glares briefly at his son. "Of cou'rshe he isn't one! He's just a… copy-…" -He sends me a frightened glance, afraid that he might've offended me- "Uh, a humanoid. Of cou'rshe, a humanoid can't be the Shymbol of Might." And he nods sagely, sweating cold under his flimsy mask of wisdom.

"How… how about we go inshide and talk ove'r shome tea?" Toulin kindly suggests with a forced smile, only now realizing how improper they've all been acting in front of nobility.

Aoi and I switch back to our normal forms, and we kindly take her up on her offer, only keeping half of the Lordsguard stationed outside for protection because we don't need to have them all out there in this uncomfortable weather.

I summon a Shad and a Holly to keep watch, masking the spell by summoning a water elemental at the same time, which will humidify the air so that the girls standing watch don't suffer too much. Our Lordsguard should already know about my [Monster Summoning], so they don't openly react to a monster suddenly appearing beside them, if they even sensed them, to begin with.

We get a curious glance from Lina's family, but they say nothing, likely chalking it up to a noble's peculiarity.

"Watch you'r head," Fuda warns as we cross through the rather short door, but I still end up hitting my horns on the top of the frame, earning me some confused looks from Lina's family.

"They weren't warning you," Lina explains through [Bind], and the girls hold in their giggles.

"I'm not used to having these tall things poking out of my head…" I grumble back.

The door may be short, but the interior is very roomy, as expected from dwarven architecture. I also notice how the air instantly changes from uncomfortably dry and hot, to fresh and cool.

The shop is one large square room with sofas and tea tables on one side, and shelves with equipment, gems, and enchanting tools on the other, the two sides separated by a simple counter. Everything is carved directly into the stone without using a single brick, which even includes the furniture, except for the chairs behind the counter.

The intricate patterns that decorate every last surface are quite pretty, and the prominence of blues and greens along with the comfy crystal lights make for a rather calming atmosphere.

There's a chestplate suspended on a workbench, which I'd assume is what they were working on before we crashed their routine.

We un[Equip] our armor at the same instant that we [Equip] our social clothes. If we ever got the timing wrong, we'd end up flashing everyone with our nakedness, but the girls and I all have a pretty good hang of the spell.

Lina's family isn't used to the elven loose dressing standards, so they become visibly disconcerted and struggle to act normally while they get used to seeing so much skin, which amuses Yunia quite a lot.

I guess it was a good idea to not bring Osaria and Hukarere with us today…

They're wearing simple, but well made medieval-style clothes, though their colors are quite a bit more vibrant than what I'd expected, given their limited wealth.

"Mushrooms make for vibrant pigments," Lina explains through [Bind].

They take us to the only set of non-dwarven-sized sofas. Aoi shrinks down so that we can all comfortably fit on them, and Omume and Toulin share a look and smile wryly. I think they've now entered the "acceptance" stage of our ridiculousness.

Toulin pulls a tray of tea and some baked sweets out of her [Item Box], then Alissa also pulls out her own tray of teas and cookies.

"How about we exchange some of our delicacies?" My foxy wife suggests with a grin.

Fuda definitely won't say no to that, while Toulin seems intrigued, and Omume is neutral.

I recognize baked Giftig mushrooms, a blue, beard-like mess that tastes like fruity blueberries and menthol. They're pretty tasty, but I pick something new, a powdered bread roll that seems incredibly fluffy.

I take a bite, and my suspicions are proven true as the gray bread melts in my mouth. The powder is kind of like sugar, but it has an earthy taste that I don't recognize.

I take a cup of some unknown warm orange tea and recognize the faint taste of ginger along with cinnamon and something lemony.

Omume politely lowers his head and pleads, "Fo'rgive us, my Lord, fo'r we lack dessherts wo'rthy of shomeone of you'r station."

"Don't worry about formalities. We were just adventurers not even a month ago," I immediately reply with a kind smile, then I point to a powdered roll. "This is actually pretty tasty."

Toulin smiles warmly, and Ciel and I have the same thought: she's as cute as her daughter.

Omume raises his head and politely introduces himself, "Thank you, my Lo'rd. My name is Omume Gilbik, a me're enchante'r, and this is my wife, Toulin, and my shon, Fuda."

After some quick introductions, Toulin curiously asks, "Sho, how… did you meet? What happened to Miss Hildega'rd, you'r fo'rme'r maste'r?"

Lina recounts her journey, starting from her travels across the continent with Hilde as peddlers, her master's change in profession when she became a supplier for the Armorer's Guild, then her meeting with me, and her untimely death.

I kind of forgot that I saved Lina's life. I was so focused on my failure to save Hilde that I didn't pay any attention to how much she had felt that she owed me. I do remember that I thought I looked like a prince in shining armor to her, which wasn't that far from the truth.

Ciel shares tea and cookies with our men, or rather, women, and also sends some cold tea out to the ones stationed outside, who are standing in the hot sun and dust.

Then Lina mentions how she fell in love with me, and then with Ciel too, and that raises some eyebrows.

Her parents share a look while Fuda tries to keep himself from staring at Ciel and smirking.

Omume awkwardly clears his throat and comments, "We'd… neve'r questioned he'r tastes since we neve'r expected he'r to join a noble's ha'rem…"

"But we're happy that you found… mo're than one pe'rshon to love," Toulin adds with a slightly teasing grin.

Lina's Trivia: nobles and aristocrats are encouraged to explore their sexuality because simply being bisexual effectively doubles the number of potential marriage candidates. Commoners don't have such customs since they rarely form or enter harems.

"You're greedy, shiste'r," Fuda blatantly teases, and Lina lowers her head as she blushes heavily.

"So, yes, I'm her wife, too," Ciel announces with a half-proud, half-embarrassed grin.

"Pleashu're to meet you, not-blood-shiste'r, not-blood-b'rothe'r," Fuda announces with a grin, though he only looks me in the eye for a brief second.

"It's our pleasure," Ciel replies warmly, and I simply nod.

Then Lina continues the storytelling, though now we all participate.

Alissa's tone turns grim as our retelling moves on to someone very infamous, "As we rose in power, we got close to the Lord's daughter, and she's a terrifying person. There's something about her eyes that makes you really nervous."

"Like [Intimidate]?" Omume innocently asks, his curious and round face almost like a baby's.

"Maybe, but a lot stronger, and it only activated when you looked her in the eye."

"Isn't she like you, my Lo'rd?" Fuda asks me, his gentle demeanor so strikingly similar to Lina's.

I smile and calmly reply, "You can just call me 'Wolf' in private, but I believe mine is just something related to my draconic side, while her 'power' is focused solely on her eyes."

Omume rubs his chin in thought, the childishness suddenly gone. "Hm… you shound like a we'reanimal."

"I'm actually a weredragon," I proudly state.

Toulin tilts her head to the side, making her bangs sway. "A demon rache?"

"No. Just weredragon, a new race. It's a long story, but the Gods changed me from human to this." I raise my claws and clack them together like pincers.

They all just blink blankly, not really knowing how they should take it.

"Is Miss Aoi the shame…?" Fuda tentatively asks, but he's also unable to maintain eye contact with her, probably for the same reason as with me.

"No. I'm a breeder-type dragon that converted. The Gods are gradually giving me a system," Aoi happily answers with a toothy grin, almost sounding like an excited child instead of a mean, dangerous dragon.

Toulin suddenly frowns, then she looks from my claws to Lina and touches her own uterus as she shares, "I still remembe'r how ha'rd you kicked my stomach befo're you we're born. How will you'r p'regnanchy go when you'r husband has claws on his hands and feet?"

The girls all suddenly become worried.

"We'll… pray a lot," Ciel hesitantly answers with a wry smile.

Omume sagely adds, "The Gods a're wishe. If they gave you this rache…" -he smiles a bit awkwardly- "and this many women… they'll want you to sp'read you'r inhe'ritanche far and wide."

Oh, we will…

"You just need to have a tough belly, like mine," Hana claims, pulling open her blouse and almost ripping it as the snap buttons are a bit too tight. She exposes her supremely sexy abs and her black, lacy bra. Omume only glances at her briefly and immediately looks away, then a second later, Toulin jerks her head to face him and narrows her eyes while she slaps the back of Fuda's head.

"Hey!" The boy complains, then blushes heavily.

Hana guffaws and slaps her thigh as she closes her blouse again, then I realize how thoroughly the elves and Chimeras have corrupted us since not even Lina is bothered by Hana's prank. Yunia's dousnadeia is just barely more modest than lingerie, anyway.

Lina clears her throat, and we continue on with the story.

"Golems…" Omume mumbles, his cute face full of innocent curiosity, but Toulin and Fuda are much more wary of the golems since they know far too little about [Summoning Magic] to understand their significance.

"A da'rk elf?!" Fuda whisper-shouts, trying to contain his excitement.

Ah, I see he's a man of culture.

Toulin covers her mouth in horror as she breathes, "Giants? I mean, d'ragonkin a're al'ready giants to us, so I can't imagine how a real giant would look."

"Just big… but you definitely don't want to look up at one," Lina quietly adds.

"Wh- oh…" Omume realizes why almost instantly.

"Ah… a 'mountain home,'" Omume shoots off a dad joke and grins proudly, earning some hearty laughs from Hana.

"It was my first contact with dwarves after so long, so I enjoyed it a lot there," Lina nostalgically reminisces.

"There are a few dwarven undertowns near our territory that we could visit periodically," I happily suggest.

"That's… not necessary," she shyly declines, but she's actually very happy inside.

"A chity of gold…" Fuda mumbles in wonder.

"Not really. It's like a fake gem," Lina pops his bubble.

"The real beauty is Ultirei's Tomb," Ciel happily states.

Toulin hums in thought as she remembers something. "I heard about that place," she recollects, then Lina retells its history to us. Toulin and Omume listen happily to the story about the first emperor since they're actually rather pious.

"Again with the gigantic things, but now it's t'rees…" Toulin murmurs as she shakes her head.

Roxanne grins and plays with them a bit, "A long time ago, they used the bark and branches to create statues of elves laying with one another in all 'combinations' possible."

"Mustch elves…" Omume mutters under his breath with a frown, though only Alissa could hear him.

Lina's Trivia: that's an ancient slur for weak-willed or wimp.

"Bandits, huh," Omume mumbles with a dark tone, and the three of them become awfully quiet. It was only because their valuable enchanting tools were stolen that they had to sell Lina, so they're understandably pretty prejudiced against criminals.

"Escansho sheems like an inc'redible plache," Fuda comments in wonder.

"But isn't it… above the g'round? Like, ve'ry fa'r above?" Toulin questions worriedly.

Lina nods, which makes her bangs sway. "It is, but there's so much mana around that I didn't notice any difference in my [Stonebody]."

"And then the man confessed that they'd have killed us all and kidnapped the nobles!" Hana exclaims, and Toulin lets out a cry, horrified.

"Involving othe'rs in thei'r dange'rous schemes is exactly what a noble would do," Omume remarks and snorts while Toulin nods in agreement, then he pales as he realizes something. "I apologize, my Lo'rds, I-…"

"It's fine. We understand your frustrations," Yunia composedly assures him. For her, it's simply not worth it to get angry over just any perceived insult from some humble commoners.

"You killed humanoids?" Fuda suddenly asks Lina with a grim tone.

"A few…" Lina mumbles back, her tone becoming quite dark.

"You're b'rave, my daughte'r. We're p'roud of you," Omume praises her with a serious tone, temporarily purging the childishness from his expression.

Lina nods slowly. "Thank you."

"Now, Golo'ria shure must look like shomething…" Toulin wonders with a faint smile.

"Escanso is more beautiful," Yunia immediately replies flatly.

"Yes, I'm shure…" Toulin stiffly affirms, but she breaks into a smile once she sees ours. Yunia's trying hard to not look offended, but the natural elven snobbishness is hard to hide.

"The shea shounds a bit f'rightening," Omume embarrassedly admits.

But Roxanne tries to ease his heart, "As long as you keep to the shallows, it should be fine, and if you don't go somewhere deserted, it's likely that there'll be merfolk in the area to save you in case you start drowning."

"'Sta'rt d'rowning,'" he repeats with a worried frown, making Roxanne grin and shrug.

We don't mention the Innocent Nymph. Not only would that embarrass Lina if they learned what the place was famous for, but it'd also be really hard to explain what happened to it. Few people know about our relation to it, anyway.

"So you got you'rshelf involved in a Lo'rd's schemes?" Omume concernedly asks, his gentle eyes narrowed in reproval.

"It had its benefits," Lina answers with a shrug, making her father sigh tiredly.

"If you thought it was worth it." He shrugs and shakes his head.

"So, you deposhed the Lo'rd of Escansho, then late'r became its new Lo'rd?"' Toulin inquires, her eyebrows knit in disbelief.

Yunia sternly replies, trying to hold back the sadness she feels from just remembering it, "Exactly, he was my father. That's how I was introduced to Wolfy." Then she gives me a loving smile.

"You… ma'rried… him…?" Fuda hesitantly asks, nearly stunned speechless.

Yunia nods and gently replies, finding comfort in my mental hug, "My father and mothers failed their duties and paid the price for it. I was fortunate that I was allowed to live, never mind being able to find my own happiness in this warm family."

Toulin clutches her heart and smiles achingly.

But Fuda's mouth hangs open, his expression warped in horror. "That's ho'rrible. You'r fathe'r, I mean. His death, I mean!" He hastily corrects himself repeatedly.

Omume's strong, small hand falls on his son's shoulder, forcing him to stop talking. "Lo'rds live diffe'rent lives from us. They a're above us, but they also live unde'r harshe'r rules," Omume sagely recites.

"We're responsible for the well-being of the commoners, after all," Ciel agrees, and they share a stern, understanding nod.

"With higher power comes higher responsibilities… and higher punishments," Yunia adds grimly.

"So, we entered the dungeon…" Hana starts, preparing to boast and embellish just a little bit about all of our adventures.

"A flying dwa'rf!" Fuda blurts out and wheezes.

"Just wait until we tell the neighbo'rs," Omume teases, and Lina groans softly.

"Naked…?" Fuda whispers, trying to hide his excited grin.

"All of them," Roxanne answers matter-of-factly and calmly nods.

He swallows heavily.

Someone get this boy a woman to take his virginity, already!

Then we superficially explain Arreira's "experiment," which gave the Gods the opportunity to fuck with my race.

And we at last reach the final part of our adventure…

"ROYALTY?!" The trio exclaims in unison, and Toulin faints, for good this time.

Intermission 25 – Osaria

I sigh as the last supplicant leaves. Everyone is always asking for too much from the Lordship. We can give them moderate help, but "life isn't fair," as the God of Luck has warned us.

I notice that there's a significant number of complainers, but, thankfully, the summary for each of their petitions is almost everything I need to separate the weasels from the victims. Their "Piety" must be so low that they could barely even feel any awe from the Intervention, so they now think that it's a good idea to try to abuse the patience of their King.

A sigh escapes my lips as I remember Wolfy's touch; the addictive taste and smell of his seed; the thickness of his spear; the beauty of his majestic face; his body's perfect balance of cuteness and manliness; and the way he makes me bend over with just a look.

I sigh again and start playing with myself as I think about him.

Rande, your mother has fallen in love again… If only we could both have him like in the old days, then things would be perfect, but I mustn't be greedy. I'll never find someone like Wolfy again if I lose him.

I look out through the window of the Lord's Hall and notice that the sun is almost at its zenith. I don't think Wolfy is coming back for lunch today, so I need to find someone else to share the meal with.

Maybe I should call for the twins and play with them for a bit. They should still have some of that adorable virgin shyness in them.

I grin mischievously and pat Wolfy's little bird as I think out loud, "As long as I don't touch, Wolfy wouldn't mind a bit of teasing, right?" Then I boop its cute little beak and giggle happily as my chest almost bursts with happiness. Every day is so satisfying that it's almost like I'm living in a dream.

Take that, Rico, you rotten husk. I'm happy without you!

A note from Manasong

Hall of Fame of Patrons

The patrons who support Rupegia shall have their names sung by the bards for they deserve the glory and honor. Their names are:

Prince PreownedFIN.

Prince Creamy Spinach.

Lord Andrew Meyers.

Lord Samuel Lim.

Lord Bill.

Lord Novgarod.

Lord Michale Erwin.

Lord Bakerdea.

Lord Maurice.

Lord Empyrean.

Lord Mattirro Draca.

Lord Colorblind.

Lord Fullmoon.

Lord Sean Drake.

Lord EESDESESESRDT.

Lord FrostyCube.

Lord Mike Bartter.

Lord Cardinal Steiner.

Lord Krawn.

Lord Warwulfv.

Lord Jorge Franco.

Lord Christopher Welsh.

Lord DJ.

Lord Philip.

Lord Tenebris Lupus.

Lord ImportantNPC.

Lord The Tallest Joshua.

Lord Copey Dunt.

Lord Dracopuppy23.

Lord Freddie.

Lord Cidant.

Lord Stellerbattle.

Lord Chris Carter.

Noble Salty Panda.

Noble Mild Fracas.

Noble Aclys.

Noble Shawn Plumley.

Noble CarlBaxter.

Noble Yeuromain.

Noble Brandon Lai.

Leave a rating or a review to help me rise to the top or fix my shameful understanding of prose.

Take a look over my blog where all information about the world of Rupegia will be posted.

Join the Discord and discuss, or rant, or meme, or try and fight me so your waifu gets more screentime.

Become a Patron and read chapters in advance, or read the side-stories, or leave your mark on the story, or help choose the next artwork or the next side-story.

Chapter 101: Family – Part 1

I smile warmly as I watch them panic. They're loud, energetic, and a bit dramatic, which is strikingly dissimilar to Lina, and they kind of remind me of my extended family back on Earth.

"They make me a bit embarrassed," Lina confesses through [Bind].

"Parents can be like that," I gently reply and pat her head.

Omume gently lays his stunned wife on his lap while Fuda uses some scrap piece of paper to fan her. She takes a few moments to become responsive again, then she closes her eyes and sighs tiredly.

"Royalty…" She mumbles weakly, sounding a bit fearful.

Yunia nods sternly, her blue, sharp eyes staring at Omume, who still seems to have his wits about him. "This is an important matter. Now that we're not only Lords, but also 'royals,' everyone around us will be subject to increased scrutiny, including your family," she states, making Omume apprehensive.

I lower my head for a brief moment and speak for all of us, "This is why we must apologize. You won't be able to continue with your current way of life because of us."

"M-my Lo'rd…!" Omume reflexively exclaims and reaches towards me, asking for me to stop my genuflection. "You don't have to apologize. We're just humble commone'rs, so we'll fulfill whateve'r you need of us."

I just raise my head with a wry smile. Though Toulin might not have heard this properly, they seem more concerned with showing us the appropriate deference than about how their futures might have been significantly changed by this.

Toulin groans as she sits up, then she slaps Fuda's hand to have him stop fanning her. "Royalty…" She repeats again, this time with a more pensive tone, then her eyes wander over to the absolutely silent Azador and the Lordsguard standing behind us. "This means we'll requi're p'rotection?"

And Azador immediately replies matter-of-factly, "More than just what this town's Lord can provide. An immediate transfer to Hombombein's Nobles' Quarters is advised."

The trio opens their eyes wide in surprise and let their mouths hang open.

Then Lina delivers our main proposal on a golden platter, "But what we really want is for you to come with us. We'll be founding a clan, and we need loyal and competent people to build a solid foundation."

Toulin's mouth flaps repeatedly before she finally finds the words to exclaim, "Lina! We're just commone'r enchante'rs! How do you expect us to manage a clan?!"

"Hold on, you won't be growing a castle on your own, you'll just be responsible for the enchanting-related branch," I appease them, then I blink in surprise as I realize that Yunia's elven expression accidentally came out of my mouth.

Omume's face becomes stern as he starts to think seriously about it. "And you believe that we can offe'r enough to be wo'rthy of being acchepted into you'r clan?" He cautiously asks.

"Currently, no, but we have the resources to train your family and allow your talents to bloom," Yunia answers without mercy.

The trio becomes a bit meek, and Lina shoots an annoyed look at Yunia, who coughs awkwardly and looks away, but she doesn't apologize.

Ciel smiles apologetically and forces the conversation to move on, "We have a good amount of Chimeric enchanters working for us, so they can teach you a lot, but we have no dwarven community living in Escanso, though there are a few Halflings around…"

Omume snorts and shakes his head as he mumbles, "Pff… the g'rass munche'rs have mo're in common with the elves than with us…"

"If Lina could adapt to life in the High Fo'rest, sho will we," Toulin boldly states and gives a confident nod towards Lina.

"Most of the duties will end up falling on you, Fuda," Lina points out, and the boy's excitement instantly dries up.

"Oh…" He mumbles and gives a glance to his father. "I was shupposhed to inhe'rit the shop one day, sho… things just got mo're 'she'rious,' I guess." And he shrugs.

"He'll g'row into the poshition, I'm shu're," Omume assures us, a bit nervous about his son's aloofness.

"Even if he doesn't, the Gilbik family will always have a place in the clan," Alissa now assures them, and they seem to appreciate it, though Fuda blushes in embarrassment.

Though they seem to have agreed to it, I don't want to rush things, so I point out, "There's no need to make your decision now, but I'll write a letter to the Lord to give you protection in the meanwhile."

I pull out a piece of paper and a magic pen, but then I remember that my calligraphy sucks, so I give it to Alissa with an apologetic smile.

As she writes, Omume looks with melancholy at his shop, observing all the intricate carvings in the gray and light green stone. Judging by the amount of detail that you can see in this shop, I believe this was a multi-generational household, so they'll be abandoning their ancestral home if they come with us.

"'G'row roots to give you stability, but cut them away when it's time to g'row fu'rthe'r,'" Toulin sagely quotes the Goddess of Growth as she glances at her husband.

"There will be no other dwarves nearby for you to relate to, and you'll be living above-ground," Ciel kindly warns them.

"Sheems like the ai'r would be better than he're. At least you can stay outshide without getting dust eve'rywhere on you'r body," Fuda jokingly comments.

"C'rooked shilver ca'rvings," Omume mumbles and snorts.

Alissa finishes writing the letter and folds it into the shape of a flat flower, which amuses me with its cuteness, then she stamps it with our seal, its first official use, and it conjures a small amount of wax to keep the letter from accidentally unfolding.

She hands it to Azador, who wordlessly takes it with a bow and leaves with one of the guards.

Now that that serious matter has been solved, how about some fun?

I grin mischievously and suggest, "Since you'll be the first dwarves living up in the treetops, how about you also become some of the first flying dwarves like Lina?"

Toulin raises an eyebrow while Fuda suddenly becomes excited, but Omume fearfully mumbles, "You mean tha-…?"

"Come outside," I interrupt him and get up.

Toulin chuckles nervously while the girls seem amused with my eccentricity. What can I say? I just love airships.

We exit the shop, and the guards outside don't even flinch. They're really well-trained.

The water elemental-wife has actually made a difference since the moment I leave its influence, my nose complains about the dry air. Alissa notices it the most, so she just decides to stand beside water-Roxanne.

I crouch and touch the road, then our cargo ship appears with a *poof*, and I quickly back away before it can crush me. Pulling out huge things is always a bit dangerous.

"WOAH!" Fuda exclaims out loud while his parents are speechless, again.

I turn around and grin proudly. "I'm kind of a Space mage," I smugly announce, then I jump, using my tail to propel my ascent, and use [Telekinesis] to maneuver up onto the deck.

"How about a joyride?!" I happily shout.

"A what?!" Omume shouts back. The system didn't translate that word well.

"A scenic ride," Alissa adeptly translates for me.

The trio accepts, though Fuda is the only one of them that doesn't seem afraid, and we get everyone up onto the deck with the golems' [Telekinesis].

Omume doesn't even need to be told to secure himself with a rope as it's the first thing he does when he lands, and Toulin follows suit a moment later. Fuda is surprisingly adventurous, while Omume seems to fear heights enough for all of them.

I summon another water elemental to moisturize the air, and we leave one unfortunate guard outside the shop to let Azador know if he comes back, then we lift off.

The Atskild mountain range has nothing on Mountainhome, a gigantic, snow-peaked mountain range that's even wider than the Shore of Leaves. There's nothing on the surface since Hombombein is actually deep inside the mountain, but the endless slope towards the center of the mountain range definitely triggers my megalophobia.

We could go to Hombombein on this ship in just half a day, and then come back, but I don't want to go too far. The airspace here isn't secure, so we'd definitely have to fight something along the way.

After the golems take over control of the ship, I jump down onto the deck and pull out the bottle of Cinco Flores. "Would yo-…"

"Who's piloting the ship?!" Omume suddenly exclaims, his face warped in a fearful frown.

"The golems. They're pretty good," I assure him with a wry smile. "Anyway, would you care for some elven drink? This one is very special."

"Oh, no, he's become an Eia-alcoholic," Roxanne teases me, and I stick out my tongue at her.

This is the only way that I can taste coffee, and the flavor of chocolate in the drink is also pretty good, so I'm addicted more to these flavors than to the Eia itself.

I uncork it, and the sickeningly sweet smell of Eia pours out.

"Shome f'ruity, magical d'rink?" Toulin curiously asks as Fuda shivers at the strength of the smell.

"It doesn't taste fruity, even if it smells like it," I assure her, then I start pouring a sliver of Eia in the glasses Alissa offers to me.

Omume frowns when he receives his few drops of Eia. "That's it? Boy, I'm almost offended," he jokes as he observes the magical ambrosia.

"This is liquid magic, so it bypasses even my resistances," Hana confesses, and that makes them wary. They should know how dragonkin are just as heavy drinkers as dwarves.

"Don't swallow it immediately, let the flavors caress your tongue until it starts to feel numb," Yunia warns them.

We gather in a circle and do a brother's pledge, clinking our glasses against each other's, and it makes Omume quite smug that we know of this dwarven tradition, then we go bottoms up.

We don't give it to the guard women, but I want to give them a shot once they're off-duty. Alissa and Hana both agree that giving little perks to the men and women who so diligently follow us will help a lot in deepening their loyalty. And besides, since they're Companions, they might be down for some "intimate" fun once they've loosened up.

We lean on the railing and enjoy the view as we savor the Eia on our tongues. My "third eye" opens, but there's barely any Life around for me to see, so I just ignore it.

Fuda watches as the town becomes smaller and smaller. It's really hard to distinguish the entrances to the underground houses from the rest of the mountain, so the only landmarks visible from this high above are the town wall and the hole to the undertown, but those quickly become too small to be noticeable.

I suddenly realize that the town guards might have a problem with someone leaving on a ship without going through customs.

Oops.

It seems that it's frighteningly easy to lose the common sense that commoners have and become an eccentric noble.

Omume's tension fades as the Eia makes him relax, but he's still wary and tightly grips the railing whenever the ship shakes even a little.

"For a dwarf, you're surprisingly fine with flying," Hana comments to Fuda.

"The idea of a dwa'rf flying a'round is funny, but it isn't scary to me. Living in the cheiling of an unde'rtown sheems more dange'rous," he casually replies, then he turns his eyes towards the quickly approaching snowy peaks. "Can we land on the snow?"

"Sure," I casually reply.

As we ascend, the air starts to get cold, so I summon a fire elemental-wife to keep us warm. Omume observes it curiously, noticing how her fire feet don't leave a mark on the wooden deck, but then he suddenly jerks his head away as he realizes that fire-Hana is half-naked.

He awkwardly coughs and tries to deflect, "Theshe shummons of you'rs a're really usheful, huh?"

"It's my specialty," I proudly reply. "And it's surprising how few people can actually use [Summon Elemental], seeing how useful it is."

He nods. "It's really ha'rd to learn. I t'ried."

"You were a mage?" Lina confusedly asks, sounding rather skeptical.

Omume purses his lips, slightly offended. "Hey! I have a lot of mana, I could've become one if I wanted to!"

"Imagine you'r fathe'r fighting in the Townsgua'rd," Toulin teasingly ponders as she glances at Fuda, then they both snicker.

"Lina became a wa'rrior!" Omume annoyedly exclaims and points at my little girl. "If she inhe'rited you'r beauty, then maybe she inhe'rited my mind!"

Toulin goes easier on the teasing due to the compliment, but she and Fuda still continue with it with barely contained grins.

Feeling like saving her father, Lina suddenly grabs his hand and confesses, "Thank you for your inheritance, Dad. You helped me become what I am today."

We gush at this cute moment, but I know that deep inside, Lina will never actually specify what exactly it was that she inherited from her father.

A few minutes later, we reach snow, so I tell the golems to land. Only Hana and Yunia had ever played in the snow before, while Alissa and Ciel had only seen it once when they were traveling, so everyone else in our group excitedly spends their first few moments on it just getting used to the feeling of crunching snow.

As a Canadian immigrant, of course, I have to give them their baptism of the north.

I pick up a bunch of snow and compact it with my hands, turning it into a nice, tough ball before throwing it as I shout, "SNOWBALL FIGHT!"

Alissa is so entranced by the snow that she doesn't even notice my mischief, and the large snowball hits her right in the face.

Oh, fuck!

Her revenge makes me wish that I was a little more gentle with how I initiated this.

I crawl along the shallow trenches as a bombardment rains all around me, and I pray that I don't get hit by a lucky bomb.

I do my best to reach Lina as she builds a protective barrier that she can hide behind as she launches her own attacks, but then I see a large bomb being lobbed from the Orange Separatists' trenches, and my heart sinks as I realize the arc that it'll take through the air.

"LINAAAAA…!" I shout desperately, and the world suddenly moves in slow-motion.

She raises her cute little head towards me, her gloomy eyes spelling confusion since she doesn't understand the reason for my cry.

"ABOVE YOU!" I shout once again to warn her, but it's too late, the bomb is just too fast.

It reaches her beautiful, gentle face just as she looks up, and her whole head is absolutely covered in snow.

"NOOOO…!" I cry in despair and rush towards her, ignoring the ordinance falling all around me.

I grab her little body before she falls into the snow and hold it close to me. Her delicate, angelic hands fall lifelessly beside her body, and I choke on my tears.

That's when I notice Fuda just ahead of me, currently crawling along another shallow trench, likely on his way back to report on the success of his raid.

The only reason the distinguished Gilbik family ever joined this bloodbath was because of my marriage with Lina, but now that she's gone, they have zero reason to shed even more blood in this conflict, and so, Fuda immediately turns around and runs off without saying a single word to me.

I hold her lifeless body in my arms as I tune out reality, the sounds of ordinance impacts becoming faint in my ears, then I notice that they've actually stopped, and I peek up from behind the barrier to check on the no-man's land.

I see the outlines of enemy soldiers boldly rushing up the slope to finish me off.

"So it has come to this, huh," I mumble with a self-deprecating smile.

Outgunned, outnumbered, and with no allies left to back me up anymore, my time has finally come, but I only have myself to blame.

I gently lay Lina's body down on the snow, then I grab a handful of white death with each hand and compact it to make a nice and firm snow bomb.

"BUT I WON'T GO DOWN WITHOUT A FIGHT!" I scream in anger and leap over the barrier.

I take two of them out with me before I'm finally hit, and my exhausted, wounded body collapses on the soft snow, sinking down halfway into it. Unfortunately, this is as much of a grave as I'm going to get.

I cough and struggle to breathe as I wait for the Separatists to get here, and they take so long that I feel like shouting out for them to just come and finish me off, but they soon leave the safety of their barriers as I hear the sound of boots crunching into the snow.

Two women come into my view, the first is a red-haired mercenary that I don't recognize, and the second is the Orange Fox Demon, the traitorous woman. Her stunningly beautiful face sends me into a rage, and it almost gives me enough energy to rise up again, almost.

"Any last words," she smugly asks, her vixen-like voice giving me shivers of pleasure.

I return the smug smile and give the thumbs up, but not to her. "Suck my thick, draconic cock," I reply with barely contained excitement.

From deep inside the clouds, Aoi releases our trump card, the Mother Of All Snowballs.

When the two warriors finally notice the shadow falling on them from above, it's already too late for them. Their horrified faces are the last thing I see before the snow covers me and my vision darkens.

The Ryder Civil War has come to an end, and the victors are the Gilbiks, the only survivors of this massacre.

I brush off the snow from my clothes as I laugh my ass off. "I can't believe… this worked… I got… everyone…" Then I drop onto the snow and hold my belly as I wheeze. "Fuck…! That was perfect!"

Aoi lands beside me and shrinks down to small-Aoi, then she laughs alongside me in her chipmunk voice.

Alissa sits up and grumbles incoherent insults in rage. "I didn't even get my revenge!" She exclaims and starts to brush herself off, too.

I stop laughing and pounce on her, then I pull her into my embrace. "How about, in lieu of 'revenge,' I 'make it up to' you, instead?" Then I look around to see the "dead" girls coming back to life. "Make it up to everyone," I hurriedly add.

The Gilbiks cautiously peek their heads up from behind their barriers.

"A're we really the last ones alive?" Omume asks confusedly.

"Yes, you are, congratulations," Jarn answers from behind them in a rather flat tone. The golems were the "referees" for this war.

"Well, good job us, I guess." He chuckles and shrugs.

Hana plants her hands on her waist and narrows her eyes. "Do you guys have [Throw]? You're all suspiciously good at throwing snowballs," she presses them, her yellow eyes demanding an answer.

"[Spirit of Gaia] gives us bette'r coo'rdination, I guess," Fuda smugly answers, and Hana clicks her tongue.

After playing around some more, we decide to fly back down to the town for lunch.

A buff dwarf arrives at the shop, warily approaching the elemental-wife and the guard waiting out in front of it.

"The shop is closed," the guard sternly states, glaring at the dwarf with the typical elven snobbish air.

"Uh…" The man mumbles as he's drawn into the deep blue eyes of the female guard. Not even dwarves are immune to the elven charm. "I came to pick up my a'rmo'r."

"The shop is closed…" The guard repeats, slightly annoyed.

"Ah, right…!" Then he notices the elemental-wife and gives her an odd glance. "When a're they coming back?"

The guard rolls her eyes, then she looks up to the mountain and manages to spot us. "Soon…"

After we land, Omume tries to play it all off as if there's nothing exceptional going on, and Toulin keeps the customer busy with some small talk just to avoid having to explain our presence.

I store the ship, and a few town guards arrive to investigate the airship sighting. They definitely aren't happy about us skipping customs, but they quickly calm down once they realize that we're high nobility. The composition of our group and the polished, shining wooden armor we're all wearing tell them quite clearly that it'd be far more trouble than it's worth to try to force us to go through customs.

Azador gets back just before lunchtime since he knows how much we value a good meal, and we all set off together for the Nobles' Quarters in search of a good restaurant.

A note from Manasong

Hall of Fame of Patrons

The patrons who support Rupegia shall have their names sung by the bards for they deserve the glory and honor. Their names are:

Prince PreownedFIN.

Prince Creamy Spinach.

Lord Andrew Meyers.

Lord Samuel Lim.

Lord Bill.

Lord Novgarod.

Lord Michale Erwin.

Lord Bakerdea.

Lord Maurice.

Lord Empyrean.

Lord Mattirro Draca.

Lord Colorblind.

Lord Fullmoon.

Lord Sean Drake.

Lord EESDESESESRDT.

Lord FrostyCube.

Lord Mike Bartter.

Lord Cardinal Steiner.

Lord Krawn.

Lord Warwulfv.

Lord Jorge Franco.

Lord Christopher Welsh.

Lord DJ.

Lord Philip.

Lord Tenebris Lupus.

Lord ImportantNPC.

Lord The Tallest Joshua.

Lord Copey Dunt.

Lord Dracopuppy23.

Lord Freddie.

Lord Cidant.

Lord Stellerbattle.

Lord Chris Carter.

Noble Salty Panda.

Noble Mild Fracas.

Noble Aclys.

Noble Shawn Plumley.

Noble CarlBaxter.

Noble Yeuromain.

Noble Brandon Lai.

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Chapter 101: Family - Part 2

Toulin forces them to change into their social clothes before we depart for the Nobles' Quarters.

While we wait, I decide to play around with [Summoning Magic]. It's been a while since I last molded an elemental into something interesting.

This time, I use an earth elemental as a base for a carriage, making it out of white marble so that it looks more refined, then I use a nature elemental to add some elven flair, drawing upon Yunia's memories, and I finish my creation off with an air elemental shaped like a horse to pull it.

It looks rather impressive, though it lacks the decorations and fine details to make it truly refined, but just the novelty factor is enough for me.

Then the Gilbiks come out, and Ciel's heart takes a hit as their neat and clean fashion style appeals to her pedo heart. Toulin's red beret and checkered skirt look rather modern, while the male side wears epaulets, giving them a bit of a military look.

Once we get inside the carriage, I remember that it needs cushioning, so I use a water elemental for some bouncy seats and backrests.

"How cute," Ciel happily comments as she gets in.

"How cute," Yunia comments with a slow, deliberate tone, a mix of snobbish and amused.

"Cute," Lina shyly mumbles and drops her little ass on the bouncy seat.

Alissa merely giggles as she feels the water sloshing around, and Gify hogs a seat for herself, forcing Aoi to remain as small-Aoi so that we can all fit.

"Now you're just showing off," Omume grumbles as he enters, and Toulin lowers her head appreciatively with a wry smile.

With the guard women surrounding the carriage and Azador "driving" it, we finally move on. The intelligent elemental needs only minimal commands, so Azador's job is quite relaxed.

Toulin hides her face in embarrassment from the all attention we're getting, and we finally find out who Lina inherited her shyness from. Fuda, on the other hand, smiles gallantly to the people as we pass by, instantly adopting a noble-like demeanor, and nobody knows where he learned to act like that.

"I have shome elven inhe'ritanche, I think. Must be becaushe of that," Omume mumbles and sighs.

Omume suggests an old restaurant which is famous for being the usual choice of the local nobles. I'm interested in the traditional dwarven cuisine, so I think there's no better choice than a place like that.

The restaurant itself is a thin and elongated rectangle, its wide side facing the hole that the sunlight pours in through. The walls are filled with carvings of festive dwarves, which is very fitting considering the raucous laughter we hear coming from inside.

The entrance is just a patio with a spring, so we don't dawdle and immediately cross through it.

The interior is more of the usual, with a tall ceiling with geometric patterns for decorations, but everything seems waxed and a bit too shiny, and then I notice that a dozen mirrors are strategically spread about, reflecting the sunlight towards the floor, which is what creates this effect.

The attendant that receives us is a dwarven proto-butler who speaks in perfect Andraste but then switches to Norvok when speaking to Lina and the Gilbiks. This catches them by surprise, but Toulin puts on her poker face and replies to the butler without embarrassing herself.

"Isn't it rude to speak in front of us in a language that we don't understand?" Alissa annoyedly comments through [Bind].

Yunia agrees with an internal nod and adds, "Not even elves do that."

"Well, I never expected that the dwarves would out-snob the elves," I joke and share a smile with the girls.

"Most dwarves would see that as an achievement," Lina awkwardly confesses.

The butler earns himself some minus points for speaking in Norvok, but at the same time, he also earns positive points for not pissing his pants when he notices Aoi.

One thing I didn't expect is that dwarves eat bugs, gigantic, elephant-sized bugs, but still bugs. There are some crunchy, creepy-crawlies to snack on, but the main course is usually some cut of bug.

Roxanne falls in love with this cuisine instantly, but the rest of us are more reserved, and Yunia is revulsed.

The mean succubus' shoulders tremble as she chuckles internally, then she puts on her mask and starts her act, "The sound these things make when they crunch inside my mouth is so fun, but then they ooze their tasty, slimy, innards, and it's just… hya!" She gushes girlishly, then glances over at Yunia and holds back a chuckle when she sees the elven queen wrinkle her nose.

Omume lets out a hearty laugh and lifts his glass in cheer. "Hahaha, now that's a good woman! Eat to become st'ronge'r! Eat to gain mo're mana!"

Toulin rolls her eyes while Fuda giggles.

Aoi nods emphatically. "Yes! It's best to eat a fresh kill, even if it's raw, so that you absorb as much power as you can from them," she agrees with a toothy grin.

Omume stutters for a second, but then he recovers and doubles-down, "It's ha'rd to eat it raw shince the meat tastes like di'rt, but at least you shouldn't be picky and eat a bit of eve'rything. The Goddess of G'rowth shaid that."

"I advise that we all pray to the God of Endurance first," Yunia comments in a low tone and sighs.

Roxanne's teasing threatened her pride, so she resolves herself to eat the bugs without prejudice even though there is the option to order normal meat like Dragolite or orc.

Feeling pressured by her courage, I also order a portion of bug meat, and it tastes kind of like shrimp, but a bit milder and slimier.

After our meal, we get some elven-approved snacks for the guard women, then I have a few of them accompany Lina, and they head back to the shop with the Gilbiks so that Lina and her family can have some time together in private.

Meanwhile, the rest of us take a [Gate] to the ceiling of the cave. It's so high up that few dwarves come up here, so the shops in this area are mostly imperial or from some other nearby country.

We find a cute tea shop that allows us to reserve a corner for ourselves. The view down from up here is quite nice since the shaded part of the town looks like a starry night sky due to all the lights of the houses below.

There's also an imperial playing a gentle song with a hurdy-gurdy, which Lina points out is actually a dwarven instrument. Since dwarves are so small, they don't have the lung capacity for woodwinds, but their small fingers are quite nimble, so they invented most of the known string instruments.

While the girls use the time to relax or read something, I decide to test my [Gate]. Putting all of my points in mana-enhancing skills, I can send a thumb-sized summoned hummingbird back to my office in the castle, but a person is completely out of the question.

I give it a small letter and tell it to find Poosh, then I wait until she sends her reply back through the [Gate].

Once her letter appears on the empty seat beside me, I send her another explaining my plan. I want to establish a messaging system using my [Gate] so that I can talk to them no matter where I am in the world.

It doesn't have to be done right now, so I just tell her to gather the Officers to inform them of my plan and brainstorm something.

Lina enters her family's shop and looks around with melancholy. The memories come flooding in, but they are all rather blurred and a bit disjointed. She had just turned eleven when she was sold, so it's been around four or five years since she last saw this place.

She goes around the stairs and crouches down near the corner of the shop, then she brushes her fingers over some crooked carvings that resemble a geometric flower.

Fuda stops beside her and grins.

"I remember this," she mumbles nostalgically.

"You bette'r," Toulin chastises her and pouts, then walks away to the other side of the shop.

Lina turns her gloomy eyes to Fuda and pouts. "You said they'd never notice," she accuses him.

Fuda shrugs and chuckles. "You'r fault fo'r believing me. I was just a kid," he deflects.

"But you're older than me," she presses and grunts annoyedly.

"Only by a yea'r," he calmly dodges.

She slaps his shoulder playfully, having to remind herself not to use [Spirit of Gaia] since she's much stronger than any of them now.

Omume walks up behind them and stops. His silence draws their attention, and Lina notices his conflicted expression.

"Lina…" He starts, but his resolve falters.

"Dad…" She replies with a kind smile, knowing what's coming.

Her gentle voice reinvigorates him, and he decides to pour his heart out, "Fo'rgive me, Lina, fo'r what I've done," he pleads, his voice cracking.

Lina stands up and gives him a hug.

"Fo'rgive me," he pleads again with a faint voice.

"There's nothing to forgive," she comforts him, her tone firm and kind.

"We sho-…"

"There's nothing to forgive," she repeats with more intensity, then she pushes him back to look him in the eye. "You did what you had to. You had the courage to do what was necessary to provide for us."

But Omume's face warps in anguish. "B-but we could've done sho many things diffe'rently-…"

"Father…!" She chastises him. "If you're going to apologize to me, then you'll also have to apologize to every slave that was ever sold."

Toulin frowns as she comes closer and asks, "What do you mean…?"

Lina turns to her, her usual shyness completely gone as she brims with pride. "Slavery is a duty. When the family becomes unable to provide for their own, it's their duty to find someone who can." Then she turns back to Omume and stares at him. "You gave me the opportunity to prove my worth, and through sacrifice, along with a good deal of luck, I came back to return what you've given me many times over."

Omume closes his eyes, trying not to cry while Toulin walks up to them and joins the hug. "It shouldn't be a pa'rent's duty to give up thei'r child," Toulin cries weakly as she struggles to keep her tears at bay.

"It isn't," Lina states, unmoved by their sorrow, and hugs them again. Her presence suddenly prods me in my mind, retrieving specific memories of hers that she shares with me, and then Gify takes them and shares them with the rest of the girls.

A wish merges with an idea, and we all stare pensively at it, measuring its worth.

"This is a noble cause, though it's a different battlefield than the one we usually fight on," Yunia shares her opinion through [Bind].

"I don't know anything about laws…" Lina hesitantly mumbles.

"But I do…" Yunia completes her thought.

Lina nods internally, and the two of them "stare" at each other as they gather their resolve.

"Apotheosis won't be reached by the individual," Ciel sagely recites a teaching from the priests themselves.

"Then may the God of Law guide our path," Yunia prays, and accepts Lina's idea, turning it into a goal.

"We have the power to make it so that no parent will ever have to give up their child ever again," Lina announces and breaks the hug again.

"What…" Omume mutters as he opens his eyes and stares at Lina in surprise.

Then she gives him a pained, but gentle, smile. "We'll spearhead a lasting change. My husband, my wife, my sister-wives, they'll all help. And our family, our followers, our servants, our retainers, everyone who believes in us will give us the support we need to bring about this change."

"We'll follow you whe'reve'r you go. We owe you that much," Omume assures her, matching her smile.

But Fuda still has his head firmly on his shoulders, so he confusedly questions her, "What kind of change a're you talking about, shis?"

"The law," she replies and shows him a proud smile. "We have the power to change it for the better. For everyone."

"You'll… change the laws of slave'ry?" Toulin asks as she dries her tears.

Lina nods slowly, making her bangs sway. "We'll improve them. We'll make it so that no other family will ever have to be broken so that they may simply survive. This will be a long fight, but we have our entire lives ahead of us to dedicate to it."

"And we'll be with you all the way," Omume reaffirms, and Fuda nods energetically in agreement.

Watch us and despair, Americans, for we're going to corrupt this land with the evils of Socialism!

After all that emotional talk, they sit down, and now, the Gilbiks are the ones who recount their past years without Lina. They don't have any truly exciting stories to tell, but they do have a lot of entertaining ones.

The girls and I eavesdrop since we've all pretty much lost the common sense of a commoner, and it's refreshing to hear about their idyllic, simple lives.

I sip some of my not-earl-gray tea, then I take a bite out of a big, heavy dwarven not-peanut butter cookie. The pairing goes pretty well, but all dwarven food I've had so far has had a bit too much spice for my mustch tastes, which have been thoroughly corrupted by elven cuisine.

Once Lina's conversation with her family reaches a lull, I turn to the golems and question them regarding something that I've been curious about, "Ted, Suzy, Jarn. Did any of you feel something different during our night out at the elven theater?"

The trio turns their lifeless, beady eyes to me, then, oddly enough, they share a look between them before answering.

"We felt 'alterations' upon our spirits," Ted starts the creepy, but also cute, sequential speech.

"Though we can't specify what it was in detail," Suzy follows.

"We're certain that [Weaverism] connected us with the rest of the crowd," Jarn finishes.

"When did you three find the time to talk about this?" Alissa suddenly questions them curiously.

"While you slept," Ted leads, as always.

Then Suzy follows, as always, "And we watched."

"That's cute," Ciel gushes with happiness, though I get the opposite impression, but I don't openly complain about it since it makes me feel safe just as much as it creeps me out to know that the golems are always watching.

I turn to Yunia and gently grab her hand, nearly startling her as I interrupt her voyeurism.

"Don't make it sexual," she coldly censures me and narrows her eyes dangerously.

I grin cheekily and suggest, "What do you think about using [Weaverism] on the golems?"

Her stern demeanor immediately switches to surprise and wonder. "Oh…? That seems like an interesting idea, though Arreira did say that they were terrible with anything not related to science and logic, which is… very different from the emotional magic of [Weaverism]."

"Yes, but I want to see if it can help them learn what 'feelings' are."

Her long, elastic ears twitch. "Ah! But couldn't you do that through [Bind]?"

I awkwardly scratch my horn. "I'm a bit afraid of using that on them. They're not exactly known for their understanding of 'restraint.'"

The girls become pensive as they suddenly understand what I'm afraid about.

"What are 'feelings'?" Hana sneak attacks my mind.

"Baby don't hurt me, don't hurt me, no more," I sing with a shit-eating grin.

Alissa glares at me, still holding on to her grudge from the snowball fight. "You get double negative points because the 'meme' wasn't even right," she berates me and cutely purses her lips in annoyance. "No compliments!" She exclaims and tries to cut our connection, but I open the floodgates and let my overwhelming love for her flow into her mind.

She blushes and her tail wags wildly out of her control as she wants to be mad at me, but can't.

I leave Alissa to stew in my love and finally answer Hana's question, "Anyway, 'feelings' are just chemical reactions to external stimuli. For example: hunger is a response to your stomach becoming empty, pain is a response to your body being overly-stimulated or getting damaged, and happiness comes from your brain releasing happiness-inducing hormones when specific conditions are met."

"What's a 'hormone'?" Hana childishly questions.

"An organic chemical that produces a specific effect when it's released in the bloodstream," Suzy answers first for once.

"They're primarily used for 'communication' between organs," Jarn completes.

"Can I synthesize those happiness hormones?" Roxanne scholarly inquires.

I nod with a gentle smile. "You can, it's just very complex."

"Extracting hormones from animals was the first step to reproducing them," Ted explains.

"Ooh~…" Roxanne coos in wonder. I have a feeling that she might go "mad scientist" on monsters if left unsupervised, so I think I'll have to make sure that she doesn't stray too far and simply continues working on the Draconic Climax.

But Ciel seems very concerned about where this topic is headed. "Wait, if you can make liquid happiness, wouldn't that be bad for our minds?" She warily asks.

And I agree with her, "Indeed, it would. The effect of most recreational drugs is to force our brains to produce these happiness hormones, so you should already understand the dangerous side-effects of 'liquid happiness.'"

"Oh…" Roxanne's excitement deflates, and her waving, excited tail goes limp.

Ciel crosses her arms and frowns in thought as she contemplates, "I'm also a bit concerned about how indistinguishable this 'liquid happiness' might actually be when compared to 'real happiness.' Surely, there must be more to 'real happiness' than just these hormones, right?" With that, she gives me a sharp look.

I ponder upon her words for a moment and start to speculate, "Well, in truth, there isn't, but perhaps when someone consciously takes this 'liquid happiness,' they could feel that this happiness is 'fake.' They might have a sort of 'disconnect' in their mind since they know that they're lying to their body and there's no real reason to be 'happy,' but I doubt that everyone would be able to feel that 'disconnect.'"

Ciel grumbles in frustration. "Still, treating happiness like just another drug feels 'wrong.' The Goddess of Love spoke so much about the pursuit of happiness that bypassing it all with just a drug alone definitely shouldn't be a good thing."

I smile kindly at her and wrap my tail around her waist to comfort her. "It's a complex topic that not even the Earthlings had found a definite answer for, so I don't expect Rupegians to solve it, either." Then I turn to Roxanne and give her a very serious look. "And I really don't think it's a good idea for you to research it too deeply, at least not yet."

Roxanne raises her hands in surrender and smiles cheekily as she gives up. "Alright, alright, I got it."

Roxanne and Hana go out to explore the town while I stay with the rest of the girls in the tea shop.

Once the sun starts to turn orange, the town's Lord finally sends a knight and some of his Lordsguard to the Gilbik's home, so we head back to receive them.

"Hail, Crown Lords Ryders," the gray-bearded dwarf greets and bows. I find it curious how most of his skin is tattooed with rune-like patterns. "Lord Tordum is currently out of town, but he sends his regards."

"We thank him for answering our sudden request," Yunia politely replies.

He straightens his back and smiles cordially. "It'd be impossible for us to ignore the request of such exalted persons as yourselves."

After a few more exchanges of pleasantries, the knight informs us that the Gilbiks will be hosted in the Lord's personal home until they're ready to move, which greatly surprises the trio and pleases Azador. There's no safer place than beside a Lord.

Perhaps he's simply scared of us since we're pretty far above him on the social ladder.

And now, it's time for us to say goodbye. It seems like there's no way that the Gilbiks will refuse our proposal, so they'll really only be staying with the Lord until they can close up their shop and organize their belongings. A few days at most.

I'm kind of surprised that they're so willing to abandon their ancestral home, but they seem to favor the God of Change quite a lot, so their piety will probably give them the impetus to accept our proposal.

I mean, there are quite a lot of dwarven communities spread around the world, even as far as Maoka, as Roxanne tells us, so perhaps this will be the start of the first dwarven community in the High Forest. If they decide to live up in the treetops along with the other elves, then perhaps they'll become the first "High Dwarves."

A note from Manasong

Hall of Fame of Patrons

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Chapter 101: Family - Part 3

A note from Manasong

Attention: to conform to the limit of sexual content allowed in a novel, I've censored this chapter. You can look for the uncensored version here.

Lina uses her lithe, soapy body to wash me, and I smile at her and sip some Cinco Flores while I savor this sight.

She's happy, so overwhelmingly happy that she can barely contain herself. She doesn't just want to make me happy, her heart is burning so strongly that she wants to give me eternal bliss.

Alissa whispers to my little dwarf, giving her advice and tips about other lewd things to aid her in her goal. I don't bother eavesdropping on them since I don't want to ruin the surprise.

"Make it bigger, and thicker," Lina suddenly asks me, and I obey.

She grabs my Weapon and slaps her face with it. It's so wide that it's basically a club now, doubly dwarfing her. Then she gives me her best pleading eyes, asking for me to unloead on her adorable face. "Gimme your cummies, daddy," she opens up the gates of degeneracy.

"Hngh…!" I grunt as my heart suddenly breaks into a sprint, trying to leap through my mouth.

I slowly contain my excitement and stare at her like a thick, bloody slab of raw meat, asking to be feasted upon.

She awakened something she shouldn't, so now she'll deal with the consequences.

After I finish Lina, it's time to satisfy the perverted voyeur fox. Now that she's finally getting her turn with me, she lets her anger resurface and channels it into a wild fucking, her nails digging into my back as she deliberately makes me bleed.

Though she's acting like a beast, she still doesn't last long, and soon falls to my Weapon.

Then Hana hugs my still bloodied back, staining her chest red. "You look kind of sexy bleeding like this," she whispers in my ear with a husky tone.

I raise an eyebrow, then I grin as the dragon within me assumes direct control.

I make her trip with my tail, then she hits her back hard on the floor and growls in anger, but I keep her down and spread her legs.

"You asked for this," I state with a sadistic grin.

Hana's anger instantly fades away, and she gives me her usual fearsome smile. "I did," she growls back, and we fuck like bloodied barbarians.

I promised that I'd make it up to everyone, so I stretch my back and [Heal] then [Clean] myself because I still have a few more women to fuck silly.

The remaining surviving wives give me a fearful look, but I'm not a savage, so I reign in the dragon again and adapt my cock to their more delicate pussies.

The maids wash my body again to clean me of all the lewd juices. Poosh takes it upon herself to massage me, not in a sexual way, but to boost my muscles' and balls' recovery, while also applying an elven after-sex magical oil onto my bruised flesh.

I can see it clearly in her eyes that she wants me inside her, but I'm too low on MP, so I use my own special kind of cock.

I extend a tentacle towards her and caress her cheek lovingly before brushing it against her cute sheep ears.

"Your Highness?" She asks curiously and smiles.

"I'd like to taste you, too," I huskily whisper.

She undoes a tie at the back of her neck, and her dousnadeia falls.

"Use me as you like," she whispers back, her smile growing wider by the second.

"Hmm…" I hum in pleasure and penetrate her with a tentacle.

With Poosh's massage treatment complete, and her too tired now to move, I turn over onto my front and let the maids massage my muscles, tail, and horns.

They lack the magical touch of Poosh's lewd digits, but they get the job done. I've become so detached from common sense that not even the gentle hands of a dozen young elven women are enough to entice me.

After feeling refreshed and energized, I join the girls in the bath, and Lina immediately glues herself to my body.

"You want his dick?" Aoi innocently asks Lina.

"Uh, no… I just want to cuddle," she answers, back to her usual, shy self, her pussy and ass still tingling from our activities earlier.

"Alright!" Aoi happily exclaims, then she shrinks down and casts [Water Breathing] on herself, a spell that she learned specifically for this.

"Thank you, Wolfy," Lina mumbles and hugs me as tightly as she can without using [Spirit of Gaia], which is still tight as fuck since [Stonebody] passively increases her "Strength."

"No problem…" I weakly reply, then she eases off the hug a bit to let me breathe. "I want to be close to everyone's family," -I give Roxanne a serious look- "even yours." And for once, my skittish succubus doesn't cower at the mention of her family.

"Stronger together," Ciel mumbles absentmindedly while holding hands with Yunia, both of them still recovering from a thorough session with the tentacle monster.

I reach behind me and get the shot of Cinco Flores that the maids poured for me, then I share it with Lina, and we both trip balls.

After the bath, we eat some of Krysta's amazing cooking while Sandoro, Poosh, and Osaria give us their report on today's news.

I'm starting to get ideas about social projects that we could implement, but they'll have to wait for another time. The most pressing matter is a duo of Root Lords who are asking for our help to deal with a Corpse Stealer horde that's disrupting their village.

We could force Ira to go deal with it since it's in his territory, but the Root Lords claim that the monsters are too numerous, so it's dangerous to face them head-on with average soldiers. Risking the deaths of soldiers just to humble the Heart Lords a bit isn't really worth it to us.

Also, the request is from the old duo of mages who offered their milf wife to me, so we're inclined to help. Sending the message that those who offer their women to me get preferential treatment isn't so desirable, so we'll have to keep this in mind and tread carefully the next time another Root Lord asks for help.

After our bellies are filled and a short rest to let the bulk of the digestion pass, we [Equip] our armor and leave the castle for a bit of overnight work. We could deal with it tomorrow, but that'd get in the way of Alissa's homecoming, so we'll just go handle this right now.

We exit the [Eternal Gate] at the Root Lord's residence. It's a large, elven mansion, covered in patches of moss and threaded with little streams of water everywhere, filling the air with the sounds of running water that even drown out the pitter-patter of the light rain falling outside.

"Your Highnesses," the duo of old mage Root Lords and an old knight that reminds me of Azador greet us in unison while bowing as deeply as their weak backs allow them to. "We're honored that you answered our plea so readily."

"It's no matter," Yunia replies pompously. "But we're in a hurry, so let's not waste time here."

"As you wish," the old male mage obediently complies.

The milf golden-elf sends me an enamored smile, and we wave at each other as we pass. I sincerely hope that we'll have some time for each other after this.

The old mages move with vigor, and I detect a hint of mana coming from them that makes me believe that they're using [Mana Body].

Outside their mansion, we see a cozy little village that could make for a beautiful fantasy wallpaper, and everything is very well illuminated with strong crystal lights, allowing us to take in the entire village. Most of the houses are carved into the thick trunks of the High Trees and connected by suspended walkways, giving the impression of a treehouse-town.

A few levels below us, we see multiple farm disks around the main trunk of the High Tree that the village was built upon, just like the disk farms under Escanso. At ground level, there's a lake surrounding the High Tree, which I now believe to be the elven equivalent of a moat.

Dozens of archers are garrisoned all around the outer walkways, and they occasionally fire off an arrow at a Feral Goblin that was sneaking about. This village doesn't have a bark shield wall, so they have to maintain a constant watch to prevent branch-swinging monsters like Uspidors from damaging the village.

The Lords use [Vine Weapon] to create umbrellas for themselves while their knight merely endures the light rain, and we switch to our Ramodia armor set since it has a function that keeps us dry, then we're taken out to the single road the village has that spirals down towards the lake.

Along the way, a fawn nature spirit pops into existence on top of the old woman's leaf umbrella.

"Auhau, now isn't the time to play around," she grumbles at the spirit, but it ignores her and simply stares at Gify for a minute, then it pops away. "Silly thing…" She grumbles again.

Once we're beneath the farm disks, we can see where the suspended road reaches the ground at the shore of the lake, a chokepoint which is protected by a shield wall of elven spearmen and supported by a dozen more archers and a few mages. They're fending off a shambling army of a hundred assorted monsters, which all seem content to just walk around barely out of the range of the archers. The dozens of monster corpses spread along both the bridge and the shore tell us that the Corpse Stealers aren't completely stupid.

"There's an Uspidor leading them, so we aren't able to safely push out of the village," the old male mage explains.

"Hm… I see. Truly an annoying foe," Yunia comments to keep them from feeling too ashamed of their weakness.

And I quickly formulate a plan, "Let's locate the leader first, and then we'll attack it along with the Corpse Stealers for maximum damage. If we attack out of sync, either of them could run away, and that'd be annoying as shit since Corpse Stealers reproduce quite quickly."

"Thank you, your Highness," the old woman appreciates my thoughtfulness.

Honestly, it's a bit off-putting how everyone shows so much deference to us, but I guess they'll start acting more casually with time.

A minute later, we reach the end of the road and join forces with the soldiers. An adult elven male mage seems to be in command of the men, and he awkwardly kneels as we approach, so I have to assume that he's the Lords' child. A young knight kneels in kind beside him, and we notice how similar he is to the old knight.

"Rise," Yunia immediately orders, and they obey.

"Are all the monsters gathered here?" I question the adult male mage.

"Yes, your Highness. There seems to be a few Feral Goblins hiding in the trees, protecting the leader-type Uspidor," he obediently reports.

And now, I divulge the rest of the plan, "We'll split up and carry out a pincer attack. Hana and Lina on one side, Ciel and Yunia on the other, and Aoi behind the monsters. Roxanne will stay here with the golems, and Alissa and I will search for the leader. When I give the signal, everyone attacks."

"How long does it take for you two to cast your most powerful spells?" Yunia questions the mage Lords.

They share a look, then the old man replies, "About thirty seconds."

Quite a long cast time, and I don't want to get the girls caught in friendly fire.

"Alright, you'll be the opener. After your spell completes, we attack," I adjust the plan.

After repeating the plan again so that everyone understands, we all split up and Gify pops out of existence. Alissa and I fly up towards the treetops with me in the lead since she's not very good at flying, and Aoi follows us since she still isn't very good at climbing in her dragon form.

We fly past the leaves, and I frown at the absolute darkness. The psychedelic moons are hidden by the rain clouds, and I don't want to get my eyes poked by a branch going through my visor's slit, so we fly far above the treetops.

"Hm… Roxanne, tell the archers to prepare fire arrows," I order.

"[Yessir!]" She replies in English, making me smile.

I summon two Hollys and tell them to find the Uspidor. Meanwhile, Alissa and I slowly circle around above the treetops to pretend that we're searching for the monster, just in case there's someone watching us.

The Hollys find a few Feral Goblins hiding among the leaves and branches, and they're all equipped with crude bows. I don't believe they have the power to pierce our armor, but you never know.

Alissa and I get close enough to the Goblins that they enter her [Sense Presence] range, then we circle around their position, making a mental map of where they are. The Uspidor is most likely at the center of their formation

The girls get in position and use the power of the Ramodia set to warm themselves up for battle, playing with the roots or vines near them.

Suddenly, Alissa gets a "ping" ahead of us, from outside of the circle of Feral Goblins. It's the Uspidor, a big one, and its tentacle/mouth is pointed right at us.

We stop and spend an awkward moment in silence, simply floating in place as we try to figure out whether or not the monster has seen us yet.

"Uh, start the attack…" I order Roxanne through [Bind], a bit confused.

The moment the Root Lord mages start gathering mana, the Uspidor spits a large blob of acid at us, forcing me to use my shield's [Wind Shield] to protect us, and then it starts swinging off through the trees.

Fuck, don't run away!

Fortunately, the Uspidor retreats towards the center of the Feral Goblins formation, but then, it screeches, and we start getting peppered with arrows.

To avoid wasting our mana, we both fly up higher until we're out of range, where the airspace around us seems to be safe, then I pull six halberds out of my "Items" and wield them with my tentacles.

Alissa's fingers itch to return fire now that their leader is distracted, but this elephant-sized ball of flesh won't go down so easily, and I don't want to rely on Patrono as a crutch, so we wait until the right moment presents itself.

The amount of mana that the Lords are gathering suddenly spikes, and the Uspidor screeches. The Corpse Stealers immediately start to flee, running deeper into the forest, but launching a spell from this distance is mere child's play for the Lord mages.

"[Heat Transfer]!"

"[Blizzard]!"

A large number of the Corpse Stealers screech as they boil alive, and an equally significant chunk of the swarm slows down to a crawl as they quickly freeze solid. The two potent spells feed on each other, boosting their effects.

"CHARGE!" The young knight shouts, and the elves break out of their formation at the same time that a volley of fire arrows lights up the battlefield.

The girls feed mana to their armor and let the power of the Ramodia set go wild. Vines burst out of the ground and tie up the Corpses while roots disrupt the terrain to make them trip and tumble.

I charge down at the Uspidor while Alissa unleashes a flurry of [Arrow of Annihilation], but after the first wound, it dodges the other arrows and hides behind a High Tree.

Of course a leader-type would be much more annoying to deal with than the regular kind.

I cast [Spirit Light] and force my way through the branches, and Alissa's [Sense Presence] gives me forewarning just in time. The moment I emerge past the leaves, I swing my halberds and sink them into the Uspidor's tentacle, then I deflect a blob of acid with [Wind Shield].

Aoi's charge makes the ground rumble, and she tramples her way through the Corpses like they're nothing.

The Uspidor recoils in pain and tries to shake off my halberds, but they've sunk deep into its flesh, and my tentacles are strong enough to hold on through the flailing.

I cast [Discharge] with my shield hand and throw [Flame Slash]es with my sword's enchantment, dousing flaming oil onto the monster's round, fleshy body, and I know it'll burn quite nicely.

"KIIIIEH!" The beast screeches in pain, and then the branch it's holding onto breaks, causing us both to fall towards the forest floor. I get peppered with arrows all the way down since the Goblins are nimble shooters, but my armor is impenetrable to their efforts.

The monster smashes against the ground and bounces, but the impact still managed to smother the flames that were burning its body thanks to the soft, wet dirt, and then I slam into the large monster, sinking my sword deep into its flesh, and slice it open.

"KRRIIIH!" It lets out a shrill cry of pain, and its tentacles shoot towards the nearest tree as it tries to escape, but I'm still right here on top of it, so I just summon four earth elemental-wives, who immediately use their weight to hold it in place.

Its tentacle/mouth turns towards me and spews a constant stream of acid at me, so I just back off and let go of the halberds.

The elemental-wives start to melt from the deluge of acid, but now Alissa has a perfect shot at the immobilized monster, and she releases a [Charge]d arrow, which stuns it long enough for her to hit its brain with an [Arrow of Annihilation].

The Feral Goblins screech and start to flee, but the clean-up crew is already here, so we manage to wipe them out to the last monster.

"They're all dead," Alissa announces through [Bind], and the girls and I start to gather together.

I sheathe my bloodied sword, and my Ramodia set immediately starts absorbing all the blood, turning it into reserve MP, and then a red flower blooms near my chest. Hana was the most savage one of us in this battle, so two flowers bloom on her armor instead of just one.

"This is cool," Hana remarks as she watches the flowers bloom.

"Red flower knights are rather infamous in stories," Yunia shares and stares at her own red flower with a conflicted look.

"Now I understand Azador's beard flowers," Lina quietly adds.

Azador rarely fights monsters, though, his specialty is dealing with criminals… oh…

Then we all have the same concerning realization.

"Let's get out of this rain," Roxanne whines with a cute pout.

Gify pops back into existence and chirps in agreement, "Gih!"

The Root Lords thank us sincerely, and the soldiers sing our praises, but we're a bit tired after that battle, so we cut the celebration short and decide to return to our castle.

But then, the old male Lord makes me an offer that I can't refuse, "Ah, your Highness. If you have some spare time, we could offer you some 'relaxation.'" And he gives me a knowing grin.

"Always," I whisper huskily.

Alissa and I stay a little longer to entertain their Lady wife while the rest of the girls head back home. Hana gets a bit annoyed about the fact that I'm getting so much more pussy than she is, so we'll have to make sure that we get her some too.

The Lords both touch themselves quite eagerly while I Ravage their milf, so I kind of block them from memory.

Osaria is a sex-fiend through and through, but this milf is more of the warm and sly type, so I act like a cheeky brat to stimulate her motherly nature.

She's definitely in love with my draconic feaures, so after a little teasing, I make sure that her insides will remember the shape of my cock.

Today is the 16th, Ekt, day of Electricity. Most travelers decide to start their journey on this day of the cycle, and in the Thunderplains, there tends to be noticeably fewer lightning strikes than on the other days of the cycle.

My Summoning Magic increased by 1 (now 9+32). I should play around and shape the elementals more often.

Lina's "Sanity" and [Stonebody] increased by 1 (now 16 and 8). I'm very happy that meeting with her parents has helped her mental health this much, but I suspect that her [Stonebody] increased from all the dwarven alcohol she drank while she was with them.

Our breakfast is a bit lighter than usual since we expect to fatten ourselves up a bit with Misty Fox cuisine, so we don't waste much time with small talk and just try to quickly wrap it up.

"Hey, Klein, do you want to come with us and visit the Misty Foxes?" I kindly ask.

She almost drops her toast. "Can I?!" She shouts excitedly, but then she immediately becomes meek and embarrassed. "Ah… but I don't have the training to act as a proper knight."

I smile and extend a tentacle to pat her thigh. "We'll be safe within the Chief's estate, so there's nothing to worry about. I'll also be bringing Hukarere, and maybe you can bring your squad of Lordsguard."

She raises her eyes to me cutely. "Can I bring Dad?"

"Sure."

Now that her turn for a family reunion has come, Alissa suddenly becomes very nervous.

Intermission 26 – Alissa

Mom, Dad, Sis, I've fulfilled my duty, and now I'm coming back to show you what I've accomplished.

A note from Manasong

Hall of Fame of Patrons

The patrons who support Rupegia shall have their names sung by the bards for they deserve the glory and honor. Their names are:

Prince PreownedFIN.

Prince Creamy Spinach.

Lord Andrew Meyers.

Lord Samuel Lim.

Lord Bill.

Lord Novgarod.

Lord Michale Erwin.

Lord Bakerdea.

Lord Maurice.

Lord Empyrean.

Lord Mattirro Draca.

Lord Colorblind.

Lord Fullmoon.

Lord Sean Drake.

Lord EESDESESESRDT.

Lord FrostyCube.

Lord Mike Bartter.

Lord Cardinal Steiner.

Lord Krawn.

Lord Warwulfv.

Lord Jorge Franco.

Lord Christopher Welsh.

Lord DJ.

Lord Philip.

Lord Tenebris Lupus.

Lord ImportantNPC.

Lord The Tallest Joshua.

Lord Copey Dunt.

Lord Dracopuppy23.

Lord Freddie.

Lord Cidant.

Lord Stellerbattle.

Lord Chris Carter.

Noble Salty Panda.

Noble Mild Fracas.

Noble Aclys.

Noble Shawn Plumley.

Noble CarlBaxter.

Noble Yeuromain.

Noble Brandon Lai.

Leave a rating or a review to help me rise to the top or fix my shameful understanding of prose.

Take a look over my blog where all information about the world of Rupegia will be posted.

Join the Discord and discuss, or rant, or meme, or try and fight me so your waifu gets more screentime.

Become a Patron and read chapters in advance, or read the side-stories, or leave your mark on the story, or help choose the next artwork or the next side-story.

Chapter 102: A Warrior's Welcome - Part 1

We head out in our racial clothing since we'll be meeting with another Lord-level person.

Klein, Anton, Hukarere, and the other two Chimera accompanying us try to keep themselves from gawking, but the long corridor of huge, imposing metal gates is just too outlandish for them to ignore. The Imperial [Eternal Gate] Network is a small marvel, not of aesthetic beauty, but of engineering.

The entire empire is connected through these gates, and they're so heavily protected that even if an army tried to force its way through, they wouldn't be able to do it in a reasonable time frame. It's an amazing concept to think about, really. It isn't cheap to maintain, but the benefits outweigh the cost by far.

We go to Mac Gantus again, then we take another gate to Roubaix, the seat of power in the Misty Low Forest.

The air instantly changes, becoming cooler and damp, and the guards here are all orange werefoxes. Their ceremonial helmets have been shaped to accommodate their pointy fox ears, and their tails are allowed to hang out of their armor. Curiously, Alissa's hair is orange-y, but closer to brown, while the guards' is bright orange.

"Dad's hair is red, and my parents never prayed to the Goddess of Fertility for my hair color to be orange, so I was born with a mixed color," Alissa explains through [Bind].

The officer reads our names thrice, then he excuses himself and leaves the Network to confirm something. He comes back a minute later and tells us that we're allowed to take the Network's exit to the Chief's home.

Alissa smiles happily, and her tail wags softly. As Vanea once told us, Alissa's mother has always been watching our movements.

We cross through the [Eternal Gate] exit, and the first thing we see is an orange blur accompanied by heavy footsteps as someone suddenly crashes into Alissa, then lifts her into a hug.

"Alissa!" A young female voice cries out.

"Allura! You grew!" Alissa shouts, then returns her sister's hug quite firmly, and I finally manage to take a look at the tackler.

Allura is a shorter-haired Alissa with a stronger jaw and orange, reddish hair. The impressive thing is that she has fox legs peeking out from under her not-kimono, and since her feet are digitigrade, it's like she's constantly standing on her tiptoes, which makes her taller than the average werefox, who would normally be about as tall as Alissa.

Soul Info

Name | Allura Verner | Race | Fox-Type Wereanimal | Level | 18
HP | 100/100 | MP | 210 | Magic Power | 30
Strength | 16 | Endurance | 18

We hear some laughter coming from behind them, and I turn my attention to the rest of the occupants of the room.

The most striking of them is a tall, muscular, heavily bearded, red-haired man with a build similar to Anton's, though he seems to have less fat. His hands are rather big, with red fur on the backs of his hands, and he also has large claws, but they don't seem to be any sharper than mine.

Soul Info

Name | Jacques Verner | Race | Fox-Type Wereanimal | Level | 88
HP | 100/100 | MP | 3,300 | Magic Power | 500
Strength | 23 | Endurance | 25

On his right is an orange Alissa but fully matured with smaller, stern eyes. Her beauty makes me instantly horny, which is kind of a bad thing considering who she is. Though, it makes me happy to think that as Alissa gets older, she might one day look like this, with the "wise, mature fox" look, a main course of stern and experience, lots of cheeky details, and a dash of wildness.

Soul Info

Name | Léonne Verner | Race | Fox-Type Wereanimal | Level | 71
HP | 100/100 | MP | 2,450 | Magic Power | 670
Strength | 16 | Endurance | 18

And on the left of the red-haired beast is a beautiful, fragile, white snow fox. The woman has such delicate features and such pale skin that she's like a doll. If my life was a xianxia I'd be spouting "jade-like skin" nonstop.

Soul Info

Name | Ofilia | Race | Fox-Type Wereanimal | Level | 34
HP | 100/100 | MP | 415 | Magic Power | 220
Strength | 10 | Endurance | 15

They're all wearing not-kimonos with cute chibi foxes stamped all over the fabric, except for the jade-like beauty, who prefers butterflies enveloped in mist.

We line up and smile cordially at each other, but once Aoi arrives, the red beast twitches in surprise, then stares intensely at Aoi until his wife grabs his hand.

Allura drops Alissa and then kisses her forehead and cheeks repeatedly, her tail wagging with a specific cadence that I recognize very well: mischief.

"A-A-Alluraa~…! Stop it!" Alissa complains, suddenly feeling very awkward. In her memories, Allura was still just a child, so she isn't ready for this tall, almost-woman to act so familiar with her, not to mention that her mind instantly shifts towards thoughts involving my fetishes.

And Alissa does guarantee me that Allura is legal, it's her mental age that's lagging a bit behind.

But then, Allura pushes Alissa into her small chest. "Hahahaha! You can kiss Ofilia on the mouth, but not me?!" Allura teases her with a cheeky grin.

Hm… Who…?

"That was training!" Alissa protests but returns the hug again.

Allura drags Alissa towards their parents, then she breaks the hug, and Alissa finally gets a good look at them.

"Mom, Dad," Alissa greets them, her voice wavering a tiny bit.

Léonne's stern look softens, and she breaks into a wide smile, then she walks forward and pulls Alissa's head towards her chest.

Jacques grunts and grins, then crushes the three of them with a bear hug, just like how a certain dragon also likes to do. Ofilia finds Alissa's hand, then gives it a kiss.

The red Dad releases them after just a few seconds, showing a lot more restraint than a certain red-haired woman.

"Pff… it barely lasted long enough to make them struggle to breathe," Hana grumbles through [Bind], sounding rather disappointed.

"I'm back!" Alissa shouts and grins like a child.

Then Ofilia finally gives Alissa a proper hug. "Welcome back, Alissa," she gently whispers and kisses Alissa's cheek, making her blush.

"And I thought I had some warped desires," Roxanne comments through [Bind] as she reads Alissa's thoughts.

"It's because you've all corrupted me! But it's not like I'm ashamed of it…" Alissa retorts, then quickly amends because she really isn't ashamed of her thoughts, it's just that they're a bit too sudden for her.

"Mere words can't express our pride in seeing you returning to us, not as a slave, but as a Lord," Léonne whispers to her, causing Alissa to suddenly freeze in surprise, then she grabs Alissa's face so that the two of them can look at each other in the eye. "We've all watched your journey as closely as we could, and there are many things that I want to talk to you about, but let's not make the rest of our family wait on their feet."

Alissa remains still for a moment, then she remembers that we're here too and turns around. She coughs awkwardly and starts the introduction, "Mom, Dad, Sis, Ofilia, these are my sister-wives and my husband."

"I'm Léonne Verner, Chieftess of the Misty Low Forest," her mother politely introduces herself.

It's kind of funny that a fox has a lion's name. Maybe it's her "true nature," or something like that.

"I'm Jacques Verner, Chief of the Misty Low Forest," the red beast grunts, seeming a bit more aggressive than Léonne's stern, but calculating demeanor.

"I'm Allura Verner. Alissa's younger sister and the Chosen Descendant," the fox almost-woman proudly announces. She's kind of tall for her supposed age, but looking at Jacques, it's easy to understand why.

"I'm Ofilia, Jacques' Blood Slave," the white beauty introduces herself in a Lady-like manner, then she hugs Jacques' arm like a lover, and I feel a heavy disappointment in my heart.

"I kissed her and tasted her tongue many times back when I was a child, so I'll share those memories with you," Alissa cheekily comments in my soul space.

Yes, please do.

I love Alissa so much that anyone who even remotely looks like her makes me horny, so I'm quickly falling in love with both her mother and her sister.

Then we introduce ourselves, and Jacques starts staring apprehensively at Aoi again when it's her turn. Alissa thinks that he might hold some hate for dragons since they're the reason that the Misty Foxes entered the deal that forced Alissa into becoming a Blood Slave.

"It's an honor to finally meet you all," I politely announce and lower my head respectively.

"Yes, finally," Jacques grumbles, and his wife squeezes his arm while still smiling.

"Likewise, your Highness," Léonne replies with a subtly teasing tone.

Is every fox we meet going to be mischievous like Alissa?

"It's only because she's very happy right now," Alissa explains through [Bind], and I notice how their tails are all wagging softly.

"We hold similar positions, there's no need for this degree of formality," Yunia casually states.

"They're your extended family," Alissa points out.

And with that, Léonne acquiesces, "Then we shall treat you so."

Allura suddenly chimes in excitedly, "Sooo~, not-blood-brother, are you really a new race?"

Aoi and I grin at each other, then change into our secondary forms, making Allura hum in wonder.

"Dragons…" Jacqus grumbles tiredly under his breath.

But Léonne seems intrigued. "Ghulam told me that you were special, but I would've never been able to guess at how far you'd rise," she comments as she walks closer, then we return to our normal forms. "May I see your claws?"

I gladly offer her my hand, and she inspects the scales thoroughly. "An Azurite follows you, while you're a Symbol of Might, and yet, you're…" -She raises her sharp, calculative eyes to me, and I swear that she's holding back a chuckle- "not very tall."

I smile kindly and shrug, trying to keep my tail from swaying about and revealing my emotions. "I'm a hybrid. While in my humanoid form, my magic is stronger, and in my dragon form, my physical power increases."

"Ah, I see, an interesting balance," she quietly remarks and smiles at Gify, who returns a happy chirp, then she returns to her husband's side. "Let's continue this talk somewhere more comfortable."

We take off our shoes and follow her.

Werefox architecture is rather similar to Japanese. Their houses are raised and are made with a black, ashy wood, which makes it all look pretty cool. The interiors are partitioned by thin sliding doors, but above them, there's only open space due to the high ceiling, so the hot, damp air of the entire building gathers in one area and rises up instead of lingering in a closed room.

Nobody wears shoes in here since everything is waxed, but Aoi and I put on clean slippers since our bare claws would leave scratches on the planks. Sometimes, the planks creak when we step on them, but while Jacques makes absolutely no sound as he walks, Hana and Aoi raise a cacophony with their heavy steps.

"I'm quieter than Cie~l, I'm quieter than Cie~l," Roxanne sings in my soul space with a cheeky grin.

"Only because my breasts are so big," Ciel tries to counter with a pouty look.

"I'm much, much quieter than you. Are you sure that they're the only reason?" Roxanne dodges masterfully.

"You're using your wings to float," I pull the rug out from under her feet, and she grunts as her ruse is revealed. Ciel didn't even notice Roxanne's bat wings hidden behind her back.

"Cow tits…" Roxanne grumbles, and Ciel sticks out her tongue at the defeated imp.

The Estate is eerily quiet, too. The air of the elven castle is generally filled with sounds of the rustling leaves, creaking branches, running water, and birds and other small animals that come to visit, and even the maids can be quite loud with their beautiful crystalline voices.

"More like everyone else is absurdly loud," Alissa mumbles inside my soul space.

"If you're the only one who's different, then, statistically, you're the outlier," I sagely reply.

"What's normal to me is different from what's normal to you," she retorts, and I chuckle, then we leave it at that.

We're taken to a simple room with a low table in the middle, cushions spread all around it, and a large number of porcelain tea sets displayed across an entire wall.

The Lordsguard will stay in the room right next to ours where the Sworn Hunters will keep them company. Alissa recognizes a few familiar faces among them, but she'll go greet them later.

The Verners sit first, and even the way they lower their bodies seems very controlled. While Ofilia sits on her legs in the traditional seiza position, the Verners and Alissa are more relaxed and sit with their legs crossed. The girls and I try to sit like them, but we're clearly a lot more awkward, and our postures aren't as straight.

Ofilia immediately starts preparing tea with motions that perfectly remind me of Alissa, then I see her smug, foxy smile inside my mind.

"Would you care for some Tonique to wipe away the drowsiness of the morning?" Léonne politely offers.

"Every morning. Alissa got me addicted to it," I earnestly accept.

"You actually like it?" Jacques asks with a single raised eyebrow, his deep voice echoing in the open room.

"It's pretty tasty," Hana shares, and Jacques frowns worriedly.

"Gih," Gify agrees.

"Nature spirits don't count," Léonne retorts with a wry smile.

"It gets the fire going inside of me. I could even drink it before a battle," Aoi chimes in.

"Wow," Allura mumbles, impressed with Aoi's draconic double voice and the fact that even dragons like Tonique.

"I'm a lazy lizard in the morning, so I need it to wake up the dragon within me," I confess.

"My mouth is pretty good at waking you up through your dick," Hana teases.

"Wouldn't he just try to oversleep every day, then?" Allura jokingly asks, her cheeky grin looking twice as cheeky as the usual one we'd get from Alissa.

Ofilia stops mixing the teapot for a moment to glance at Allura and narrows her eyes, then wordlessly continues.

"Only if he wants to be drained to death because we certainly know how to do it without waking him up," Roxanne joins in, grinning like a child.

While Jacques blinks blankly as he processes the girls' lewdness, Léonne stops the conversation from degenerating even further before it can even really begin, "It seems that quite a lot of people enjoy Tonique. What else from our culture did you get them addicted to, Alissa?" Her tone is surprisingly kind considering Alissa's many memories of her mother's sharp, stern gaze as she worked in her office.

"Well, there's barely anything out there!" Alissa shouts indignantly and hits the table with her palms. "Even these clothes were made by the elves. Why don't we export more? It'd make the homesickness so much more bearable if I could at least get myself some Apaisant or Frele leaves!"

Jacques starts laughing out loud, and Allura chuckles, but Léonne is definitely embarrassed. "Well, these are our teas, something that can only be grown in our land, and we don't want to lose our precious symbols," she quickly makes excuses.

Alissa pouts so hard that her cheeks puff out a bit. "What, are the teas going to rot if we start selling them outside the forest?" She angrily presses her mother with a mocking tone.

Léonne's ears twitch, and she seems a bit ticked off now. "Alissa… you know that we're allowed to self-govern the way we want, and these teas are ours. Are you seriously getting mad over tea?"

Alissa turns her nose away just like a certain snobbish elven woman I know. "Not mad, just very annoyed that you haven't given me a proper reason for keeping them from me."

Léonne snorts and mimics her mockingly. "We didn't keep it from you, we just held onto two of the symbols of our culture."

"Culture, schmulture," Alissa grumbles and lowers her head in defeat.

"What…?"

Jacques wheezes as he laughs his ass off. "You really didn't change, Alissa… Well, maybe you changed just a bit," he teases her and runs his claws through his red beard like a comb.

Ofilia finishes serving us, and while we sip the hot tea, Léonne rings a bell, calling for a maid. "Bring me a bag of Apaisant and a bag of Frele tea leaves along with a small portion of all the sweets made with these teas that we have stocked in the kitchen," she orders, and Alissa's tail shoots up in surprise, then Léonne gives her a cheeky smirk. "Someone has missed the tastes of the Misty Forest a bit too much."

Alissa blushes and looks down to her cup while the maid grins and leaves with a bow.

With the silliness in the air fading away, Léonne starts talking about more serious matters, "Anyway, I wanted to talk about… your adventures, but there has been so much outrageous news about you that I don't even know where to start."

"Chronologically," I chime in, and Léonne chuckles at my laconic suggestion.

"Very well… the first thing I'd like to know is how you got involved with Vanea Anara." She gives us a sharp stare, her inexpressive face so unreadable that even Yunia is impressed with her [Acting] skill.

"That was kind of a coincidence, really," I mumble as I reminisce.

"Your nickname is 'Good Luck,' you're Gifted, and both Alissa and you are Blessed. I don't believe in coincidences," Léonne points out with a flat tone.

I tap my chin in thought with my padded claw as I ponder, "I… kind of think that it wasn't really a coincidence at all." Then I turn to the girls. "Remember Shade? Arreira said that he whittled away my ego and soul, but something 'divine' remained, and he guessed that it's been guiding my actions all along. It could be my Thread of Fate, or something."

"You just… that just gave me so many more questions," Léonne whispers tiredly while she facepalms, and Jacques and Allura are simply too confused to speak.

"It's not really that complicated," Ciel calms her down with an angelic smile. "His 'Piety' has been increasing a lot, and he can almost be considered a priest now, so I think that the Gods have always been influencing him and his Fate. Therefore, there really haven't been any true coincidences in his life, only things that the Gods influenced him to do or events that were deliberately guided towards him."

Like that damned Symbol of Hate.

"That sounds dangerous…" Jacques grumbles warily.

"Well, at least Alissa got what she had always dreamed of," Léonne retorts with a wry smile and pats his log-like arms in consolation just like Klein does for her dad.

"And even more than that, a lot more," Alissa adds and hugs my arm tightly.

I wrap our tails together, then I lay my head against hers and smell her Ranja perfume.

"At least she's happy," Ofilia chimes in with a very warm tone, blessing us with her beautiful smile.

"My God, I want you to fuck Ofilia so badly… but she's Dad's woman," Alissa whispers in my soul space, sounding just as disappointed as I am.

Then something occurs to me. "You said something about Ghulam? Wasn't he the one who sold Alissa to me?" I question Léonne.

At that, she smiles subtly, looking rather sly. "Yes, I had a talk with him to ask him about his reasons for selling my precious daughter to a random adventurer whose sword still shined new. He told me that you had a very powerful backer and that he had seen a deep 'potential' within you. Obviously, I had to hold Jacques back from strangling him, but we waited to see how you would treat her, and you didn't disappoint."

Alissa raises her head and glares at her mother. "How far did you go to spy on us?!" She exclaims, indignant.

Jacques immediately looks away, and the big red beast suddenly looks like a spooked house pet wanting to hide in fear.

Léonne immediately answers categorically, "As far as the Elders allowed us to, but we only paid for information, and we only ever sent an agent to meet with you once." But Alissa hears the tremble in her voice.

"If you had ever tried to interfere, I'd have made sure that you learned a lesson," Alissa warns her with a dangerous tone, but also with a cute pout that undermines her threat.

"You'd have done the same if you were in their place," Ofilia tries to calm Alissa.

She pouts harder, but doesn't deny it.

We end up retelling our tales of travel, again, but it can't be helped. At least Léonne kept herself up to date with our adventures, so we got through everything a lot faster than we did with the Gilbiks.

Léonne sighs and rests her head on Jacques' arm, looking up to the ceiling as she ponders, "A Divine Intervention means that something Wicked is happening. I don't think the Gods would spend so much of their power on doing that if they didn't need the temple to recognize you."

We all turn to Ciel, but she blushes in embarrassment and admits, "I don't know that much about Divine Interventions. My focus was on worshiping the Goddess of Love."

"One of my strengths is history, so I know quite a lot," Léonne admits with a rather lofty expression, but then her expression turns serious. "The most famous Divine Intervention was during the Heresy of the Tower of Decay. The Gods saved the humanoids living in the Kolmyr region, but the land ended up becoming corrupted, creating the Deadlands."

"Ah! I remember that one!" Lina suddenly exclaims excitedly, but then she blushes and lets her head hang in shame. "Actually, I've just read some mentions of it, so I don't know what actually happened."

Léonne gesticulates with her hands as she deliberates, "I'll spare you the boring details and scholarly arguments-…"

"I don't find them boring," Lina interjects as her curiosity is piqued again.

The wise old fox subtly smiles in amusement at the eager little dwarf. "Alright, little scholar, we'll discuss the details later, but the summary of that event is that heretics wanted to revive Ender, the Hand and Child of the God of Destruction, a dragon who had died there a long, long time ago. They failed because Emperor Cyd destroyed both their ritual and their tower, but that unfortunately resulted in such a massive burst of undead corruption that the land is still contaminated with it to this day."

Lina frowns as a rather worrying realization comes to all of us. "So, like Aremut?" She hesitantly asks.

Léonne gently shrugs. "Kind of, which is why the Emperor is reluctant to brute-force his way through its purification."

"So it's our Fate to go there?" I ask what we're all thinking.

"I wouldn't go there without a direct Message from the Gods," she grimly cautions me.

Well, I did get "guidance" to study that [Otherworldly Summoning] spell… but there was no time limit given for that, so the girls' parents come first!

"So, you're like a hero?" Allura suddenly asks, her orange eyes looking dreamy.

"That would depend on his results, but we can all agree that the Gods have a plan for him," Léonne answers while giving me a measuring look.

Alissa hugs my arm tighter, and her tail starts wagging lazily. "Whatever it is, we'll face it together with our heads held high," she boldly states and grins adorably.

A note from Manasong

Hall of Fame of Patrons

The patrons who support Rupegia shall have their names sung by the bards for they deserve the glory and honor. Their names are:

Prince PreownedFIN.

Prince Creamy Spinach.

Lord Andrew Meyers.

Lord Samuel Lim.

Lord Bill.

Lord Novgarod.

Lord Michale Erwin.

Lord Bakerdea.

Lord Maurice.

Lord Empyrean.

Lord Mattirro Draca.

Lord Colorblind.

Lord Fullmoon.

Lord Sean Drake.

Lord EESDESESESRDT.

Lord FrostyCube.

Lord Mike Bartter.

Lord Cardinal Steiner.

Lord Krawn.

Lord Warwulfv.

Lord Jorge Franco.

Lord Christopher Welsh.

Lord DJ.

Lord Philip.

Lord Tenebris Lupus.

Lord ImportantNPC.

Lord The Tallest Joshua.

Lord Copey Dunt.

Lord Dracopuppy23.

Lord Freddie.

Lord Cidant.

Lord Stellerbattle.

Lord Chris Carter.

Noble Salty Panda.

Noble Mild Fracas.

Noble Aclys.

Noble Shawn Plumley.

Noble CarlBaxter.

Noble Yeuromain.

Noble Brandon Lai.

Leave a rating or a review to help me rise to the top or fix my shameful understanding of prose.

Take a look over my blog where all information about the world of Rupegia will be posted.

Join the Discord and discuss, or rant, or meme, or try and fight me so your waifu gets more screentime.

Become a Patron and read chapters in advance, or read the side-stories, or leave your mark on the story, or help choose the next artwork or the next side-story.

Chapter 102: A Warrior's Welcome - Part 2

But Léonne's response is unexpectedly cold, "You know that the heroes who succeed are the only ones whose stories are written in the books, right?" The chill in her tone even makes Alissa's tail stop wagging.

Honestly, we should've expected that from her. Alissa knows that she's a very cunning woman, the kind of realist that can easily see through our bullshit.

"Then we just need to win," Alissa immediately replies, sounding as stubborn as a mule.

Léonne narrows her eyes, her body completely tensed up, suddenly looking like a predator ready to pounce. "You're completely unconcerned about the dangers that lie ahead?"

"We've been through too much to worry about what we don't know," Yunia interjects, her elven pride flaring up in defense against the cold interrogation.

"Even though we don't know our future, we're preparing ourselves as best we can," Alissa piles on, mimicking Yunia's lofty expression.

Léonne gives Jacques a look, signaling for him to back her up, but he just shrugs. "You raised her that way," he dodges responsibility.

"What did you expect after you crammed all those ideas into my head about the honorable duties of a Blood Slave?" Alissa accuses Léonne.

"You are his wife, now!" She exclaims in indignation.

Alissa puffs her chest full of pride. "I was more than just a servant, and now I'm more than just a wife. We're all in this together, until the end."

Jacques laughs, his deep voice reverberating through possibly half the estate.

But Léonne is incredulous. "You're laughing? Our daughter has delusions of grandeur, and you're laughing?"

"Don't be mean, they aren't delusions. The Gods are clearly fond of them all," Jacques tries to calm her down.

The angry old fox shoots a glare towards Alissa. "I want her to take this more seriously instead of skipping along with an 'everything will be fine' attitude just because she believes that she's in a hero's story."

Alissa clenches her fist in annoyance. "I don't believe that 'everything will be fine,' I just know that, no matter what happens, I'll always stay by Wolfy's side without any regrets."

Léonne pauses for a moment. "Even death?" She quietly asks, her anger subdued.

Alissa nods slowly. "Even death."

An awkward silence settles in, but is then broken by Jacques' low chuckles. "You raised her that way," he repeats with a smug smile.

And Léonne becomes silent, staring intensely at Alissa while anxiously tapping her finger against her thigh.

"Arreira prepared us, somewhat," Ciel quietly chimes in. "He pushed us to the limit, and while our failures weren't real, it gave us all a new perspective on the consequences."

Léonne turns to Ciel, and her anger slowly fades away as Ciel's pure smile disarms her until she finally sighs tiredly and lets the tension in her body wash away.

Both mother and daughter are a bit hard-headed, and this time, Alissa's steel forehead won the exchange.

Léonne relents and gives her some honest advice, "I don't think you'll ever be ready for your future, so never stop growing."

Alissa smiles lovingly at having received genuine acceptance from her mother. "Thank you, Mom," she politely replies and bows.

"Be safe, child," Léonne whispers back.

Then the sweets arrive, and Alissa suddenly brightens up when she sees who's bringing them.

"Louise!" She shouts and nearly tackles the small woman, but first, she lets Louise put down the tray, and then they immediately hug each other.

"I couldn't believe my ears when they told us that you were coming back!" Louise shouts back in delight, and Alissa buries her head in the smaller woman's poofy red hair.

"Sometimes I can't believe it myself," she confesses and laughs softly.

"And now you're a Queen!" Louise giggles in delight.

They break the hug and stare at each other, Louise gushing with happiness while Alissa wryly smiles.

"We just inherited the elven royal mandate, we haven't actually been crowned," Alissa embarrassedly explains.

"Yet!" Louise shouts and giggles again.

"Queen Alissa of the Blinding Arrows," Allura teases with a cheeky grin, making Alissa wince, still uncomfortable with her old Title.

"You guys know everything about me, this is so unfair!" Alissa whines since she's unable to return the banter.

"Oh, I'll tell you all about Allura," Ofilia slyly interjects with a subtle grin.

"Ack!" Now it's Allura's turn to wince.

"Have you met the Hunters yet?" Louise eagerly asks.

Alissa shakes her head in the negative, "No, we just got here and have really just been talking so far."

She grabs Alissa's hands and pulls her out of the room. "Everyone needs to see how much you've grown! The last time some of them saw you, you still had that young kit air about you, but now, they need to see the woman you've become!" And Allura follows them.

Louise's noise level is quite different from all the other werefoxes I've seen so far.

"We'll save you some sweets," I assure Alissa through [Bind].

"Thank yo-…" Her reply is interrupted as her brain goes in overdrive. "Montague!" she shouts and gets a hug from a tall, gray man, who's gray in both hair and skin tone. He's one of the Sworn Hunters, the same as a knight but with a cooler name, and Montague is kind of the brute of the bunch.

"Who is this woman? You remind me of a kit I once knew, but she certainly wasn't as beautiful as you," he teases like a friendly uncle, just slightly triggering my jealousy.

While she exchanges warm greetings with a handful of Sworn Hunters, we gorge on the sweets, and my sweet-tooth comes out in full force. I immediately recognize Apaisant as chamomile, but the flavor of Frele eludes me. It tastes a bit citric and fresh, but it also has a very mild and delicate feel to it. If I had to guess, I'd say that it's like kiwi.

"It seems that she was very loved," Ciel comments with a small smile as she looks towards the other room.

Four pointy fox ears point straight up, and both Léonne and Jacques turn to her.

"Of course she was," Jacques states matter-of-factly and continues eating his dessert.

"The Sworn Hunters are almost like an extended family," Léonne explains.

"Our knights aren't that close with us…" Yunia remarks, sounding a little conflicted.

Léonne turns pensive eyes towards her. "I assume that you have a lot more than we do."

"Not currently, but we have the capability to support many more."

"The bonds weaken the more people there are," Jacques sagely points out and takes a sip of his tea, the small teacup looking comically small near his large red beard.

"Hm…" Yunia hums in thought as she swirls the tea in her porcelain cup.

With the conversation slowing down again, I ask a question that has been growing within my mind, "Léonne, the werefoxes seem to be quite isolationist, so I didn't expect you to know so much about world history."

Her ears and tail point up in surprise, which is pretty fucking cute, and then her expression turns sly. "I studied history to learn how my ancestors kept the Misty Low Forest under their control. Learning about world history was just bonus material to prepare me for unforeseen events."

Learning history so that she could repeat it.

Lina and Yunia look up attentively, their curiosity piqued, and now that I've given them a good conversation starter, I just sit back and watch them talk, feeling quite proud of my little maneuver.

After a few minutes, the loud chatter in the other room starts to die down, and Léonne rings the bell again.

"Prepare the twenty-fifth," she cryptically orders, and the servant quickly leaves.

Once the excitement dies down, the Sworn Hunters continue sharing their stories with the Lordsguard. Klein and Anton have quite a lot in common with the Hunters, so they easily get along. Warriors and hunters are the same no matter where you are, so they easily bond thanks to their kindred search for glory or a good fight.

Then a group of old, but dignified werefoxes arrives at our room, and Léonne introduces them to us. They're the Elders, a group of old rulers that safeguards and organizes the succession of power in the Misty Forest. They don't have the same degree of absolute power as the elven Elder Council does, but they could easily enforce the rules by working with the temple and riling up the commoners to rebel.

Alissa comes back to greet them, and the stern-looking Elders become kind old grandparents in front of her.

"Where's Gurrier?" Alissa innocently asks, and they all go silent, giving her sad smiles.

"He passed away in his sleep a few months ago," Léonne announces.

"Oh…" Alissa mumbles, and her tail goes limp.

Jacques and I walk up to her, but I'm faster, so I give her a hug first. Neither of us wants to touch each other, so he just lands his large, clawed hand on her shoulder.

"He's certainly resting in Paradise, watching you with pride," he softly consoles her, his previously loud voice incredibly quiet now.

Alissa sniffles and pushes me back. "I'm fine," she lies, but there's no [Heal] that could mend her wounded heart, then she smiles weakly and sends me an image through [Bind] of her trying to pinch me. "I'll be fine," she quietly adds.

"What do you do with your dead?" Ciel politely asks Léonne.

"We cremate them and store their ashes in the Tomb of Veneration. His spirit could potentially still linger," she quickly answers, already understanding where this is going.

Alissa smiles brightly and dries the corners of her eyes. "I'd like to go there, but I understand that he might've already moved on," she states, her voice quickly gaining confidence with every word.

Jacques nods and grunts, "We'll go there soon."

"But there's something that we need you to see first. Let's go outside," Léonne suggests, and Alissa's tail stiffens, wary of her mother's unusual playfulness, but I couldn't detect a hint of mischief in her tone.

Our large procession crosses through the estate, and the servants we pass by stop to bow to us, to Alissa, specifically. She pouts at her mother, but the cunning old fox keeps her expression impassive.

Once we reach the entrance hall of the estate, a pair of servants open the double sliding doors for us, revealing a long, inclined grass garden with a great view of a good part of the town from atop this hill the estate was built upon.

But what really catches her attention is the formation of dozens of werefoxes in pristine gray scale armor mounted on other large foxes, spears at hand and shortbows slung over their shoulders, all lined up in a perfect grid, their faces stern and figures unmoving.

Memories flood into Alissa's mind as she recognizes them as the 25th unit of the Town Hunters of Roubaix, the equivalent of the Townsguard. The unit she herself was responsible for training into fully-fledged hunters.

"Sheathe!" The biggest fox in the front and center shouts, and the spearmen store their spears in their [Item Box]. Ironically, his rider is the smallest werefox girl of the unit.

"Dismount!" The large fox orders again, and they all obey in perfect sync.

"Transform!" The foxes glow, returning to their humanoid form, the biggest fox becoming the largest man among them.

"Salute and cry!"

In unison, the soldiers all grab their right fox ear with their left hand and shout. "Welcome back, Dame Alissa, the drillmaster, the Juicemaker!"

The what…?

"Oh, you didn't…" Alissa mumbles as she takes a few weak steps forward, her voice wavering with emotion. "You… fucking… didn't… CALL ME THAT!" She bellows in fury, then [Equip]s her Bastion armor and bow.

"Transform and retreat! RETREAT! SAVE YOURSELVES!" The leader of the unit screams in desperation, and they all flee with their tails between their legs as Alissa chases after them like an enraged dragon.

She [Fly]s up and launches a flurry of blunt [Mana Arrow]s at their backs until either the mount or the rider collapses.

"'Juicemaker'?" Roxanne repeats, sensing a delightful history behind that name.

Allura grins like a little, foxy evil spirit as she explains, "Let me tell you about the time when Alissa almost made juice out of a boy's balls."

Oh, boy.

Young Alissa was a bit of a savage. Her slave training dulled her edge and made her much more submissive, but the wildness she inherited from her mother is still there, though it now usually remains hidden until my cock occasionally draws it back to the surface.

She hunts them down one-by-one since they don't really have an easy way out of the estate, but she starts showing them a bit more mercy with each cry of pain. The riders have it the worst since they can't heal themselves or cut off their sense of pain like the mounts could, but it seems that the mounts are deliberately allowing themselves to feel every single arrow that hits them.

Ciel goes to them and offers healing to the wounded, and no small number of the young warriors become awed at the exotic, curvy angel that descends to give them aid.

Once Alissa gets back, she shoots an annoyed look at Ciel but doesn't openly complain.

The unit of Town Hunters languidly moves to organize itself again, but then Alissa turns around and glares at them, driving them to quickly form back up, now with them all in their humanoid form.

"Everyone, thank you," she announces, and they all salute her again by grabbing their right fox ear. "At ease!"

Godsdamn, she looks so hot when she's giving orders like this.

Alissa gives me a pouty look as she blushes, and the Town Hunters now come up to her one by one to give her their congratulations.

The tall leader is the first to reach her, and the others form a line behind him. "Dame Alissa, congratulations on your marriage and Lordship," he politely gives his blessings. That's Goureuse, Gou for short, the leader of his unit, a tall and rather flat-faced, orange-haired, and muscular werefox.

"Crown Lord Alissa Ryder," she corrects Gou with a snooty tone, then grins cheekily.

He grins back and bows. "Yes, yes, my Royal Lord."

She walks a bit closer to him and whispers, "Please tell me that you married Margoth."

"M-maar~…" He grunts and chokes on his words as he straightens his back. "F-fiancée… she's my fiancée."

Alissa sighs in relief and pats his shoulder. "Thank the Gods, and congratulations."

He smiles embarrassedly and moves along.

"How are you alive?" Alissa jokingly asks a sly-looking man who has thin eyes and a very wide grin. That's Solent, the unit's clown.

"Cheeky foxes never die," he immediately shoots back and snickers.

"Congratulations, Margoth," Alissa gives her blessing to the short girl that had been mounted on Gou.

"Congratulations, Alissa," she returns the kindness, and the two share a warm hug.

After passing her, they each salute us as they give us their respects.

"Your Highnesses! It was an honor to be trained by Lord Alissa," they exclaim one by one, then they gather together again to return to their duty. They'll be free at night, so I think we'll meet up again with them then.

Alissa waves to them as they leave, then un[Equip]s her armor and reties the sash of her not-kimono before it unravels.

"Well, this is definitely a new side to Alissa that we'd never seen before," Roxanne casually remarks with an evil grin, tapping the tips of her fingers together as she plans out some banter.

Alissa walks back to us with a stiff expression, trying to appear unaffected by our teasing. "You won't be able to use this against me!" She boldly declares.

Roxanne's evil smile doesn't even twitch. "Uh huh. But how about we all meet up with your unit to drink some alcohol together?" She suddenly jumps to the side and grabs Allura's shoulder. "And what if we bring your sister along…? I'm sure that she has some new stories for us about the 'Juicemaker' that everyone would love to hear about."

Allura grins at her sister without a hint of shame, and Alissa stares at her in wide-eyed disbelief at her betrayal.

"She's not ready to be drinking yet," Jacques intervenes, trying to throw Alissa a life preserver.

But he just activated Roxanne's trap card. "Oh, I didn't even think of giving her alcohol, no," she denies with an overly-dramatic tone, then she turns to him and displays her cunningly evil grin. "But if you're that concerned, how about you join us and share some of your stories of Alissa as a baby…?"

Alissa blinks, Jacques blinks, and Léonne grins.

"That's a wonderful idea!" He exclaims and laughs, but it quickly weakens into muffled chuckles when he sees Alissa's glare.

"A party in Alissa's name sounds like a perfectly appropriate way to honor her return," Léonne suggests, her chilling tone so filled with evil that it surpasses Roxanne's.

Alissa looks each of them in the eye, and a long, tense silence drags on, then her eyes fall on Roxanne, and she whispers with a deadly tone, "I'll punish you later."

"Please do," the evil succubus happily accepts.

Alissa closes her eyes and groans, then she decides to ignore them and comes over to me, and I help straighten her clothes.

"Anyway, now that was really something. I'm glad that I got to see this side of you," I remark with a kind tone.

"No more teasing, please," she weakly begs.

"I'm serious. I'm happy that I was here to see this," I reassure her and kiss her forehead.

She sighs tiredly, but her tail starts to softly wag, then she turns to her parents. "Thanks for doing this," she mumbles, and chuckles softly.

"You deserve it," Jacques comforts her.

"All of it," Allura adds cheekily.

"Now, let's head over to the Tomb," Léonne suggests, and we head out.

We leave the Elders behind and descend through the long, grass garden along a sloped cement path. It seems that it gets cleaned pretty regularly since the dampness of the air here should encourage the growth of moss, and that would normally make the steps pretty slippery.

Along the way, a group of foxes comes to greet us, loudly yipping and wagging their tails like excited dogs until the Sworn Hunters give them little tidbits of food.

Alissa stops to pat some of them, and a few of the older ones seem to recognize her. Then we use [Animal Tongue] to get permission from the foxes to pet them, though Aoi needs to change into her humanoid form before she can even get close.

As wereanimals, Klein and Anton also manage to get close enough to pet the foxes, but the rest of the Lordsguard remains on guard, though the Chimeras seem very envious of us.

Hukarere suddenly approaches us and asks in Reo, "[So, uhm… I have a question]."

I move some points around to understand her better and gently reply, "[Yes]?"

"[Do werefoxes fuck animal foxes]?" She bluntly asks in a way that only a Chimera could.

"[Do weredragons fuck dragons]?" Hana immediately shoots back.

"[Lord Aoi is intelligent, though]," she retorts.

"[Fair point]," I admit.

Alissa tries her best to sound scholarly as she explains, "[Foxes only enter heat during specific seasons, and they search for a mate, not just some fun, so it's incredibly disrespectful to mate with a fox and then abandon it]."

The truth is, getting fucked by a fox is one of her fantasies, so she had clearly thought it through very thoroughly long before she met me.

"Every werefox is taught about these things!" She quickly defends herself in my soul space, but we all know how much of a depraved slut she truly is.

"[What if you don't abandon it]?" Hukarere continues, sounding rather fascinated.

"[Then you'd better get ready to become the parent of a fox]," Alissa amusedly answers.

Hukarere's tone starts to remind me of a child's since it's so full of wonder. "[Can a male werefox impregnate a female fox? What about the opposite?]"

"[Both are possible. Also, a werefox woman can be impregnated by an animal fox in both of her forms]," Alissa awkwardly replies.

"[Divines, step on me]," Hukarere mumbles in awe.

A fox shows me their belly and giggles loudly as I scratch it, then my hand brushes against something familiar, and I realize that it's a female.

"Mating season starts soon," Alissa whispers to me and bumps my shoulder with a smirk.

"Oh, Gods…" Anton mumbles as he immediately realizes what we've been talking about, and then Klein blushes just a second after him. Sex in their animal forms is just about the most intimate act possible for a wereanimal.

Alissa notices Allura's intense, surprised stare, and Alissa holds a hand over her mouth as she had completely forgotten how sensitive werefox hearing really is. Thankfully, their parents weren't paying attention.

"Mo~m!" Allura suddenly shouts, and Alissa darts towards Allura to gag her.

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Chapter 102: A Warrior's Welcome - Part 3

Alissa hugs Allura from behind and struggles to reach the tattletale's mouth with her hand, but she manages to shut her up.

"I'm going to murder you if you say anything," Alissa whispers dangerously to Allura.

"What is it…?" Léonne's gentle voice resounds through the grass garden like the whisper of a sword being drawn. Both she and Jacques give the sisters inexpressive looks, cautiously waiting for the first beast to bare its fangs.

Allura's eyes become unfocused as she retreats into her mind to consider the consequences of this decision.

A silence settles in as Léonne's question hangs in the air, drawing the eyes of every onlooker as they notice the tension in both of the sisters' postures. It's like Alissa is holding a knife over Allura's heart, the former keeping her mad rage from bursting out of her body, while the latter holds the keys to the shameful truth which would bring justice down upon the mad fox.

Betray her sister? Or lie to her parents? These two very important questions would burden one's mind, rob them of sleep, then tear at one's heart, ripping it in two. The dilemma would make any Gods-fearing person struggle to choose…

But those deep concerns never once ran through Allura's mind.

She opens her mouth and shouts, "She wants her husband to ma-AAAAH-te with… the foxes…!" And she even manages to power through Alissa yanking on her fox tail.

The Sworn Hunters laugh, but both Léonne and Jacques continue with their impassiveness.

"Alluraaa~…!" Alissa whines and gives her sister's tail a final twist before letting her go.

"Hahahahaha!" Allura laughs as she runs away.

"How would… oh, never mind," Ofilia mumbles, then her porcelain skin turns scarlet.

"Allura, behave yourself," Léonne's ice-cold tone makes the almost-woman cringe, but she quickly recovers her impish grin, then Léonne's stern gaze turns to Alissa, and then me, making us both feel a bit meek. "Alissa, Wolf, don't."

"We won't," Alissa reflexively replies, as stiff as a robot, then she immediately returns to my side, seeking refuge from her mother's glare.

I slowly nod towards Léonne, then I try to play with the female fox as un-lewdly as possible.

Foxes are pretty needy, especially the ones who live within the estate since they're quite used to receiving lots of affection, so we have to force ourselves to leave them and move on.

Gify stays with them for a little while longer, but I'm sure that she'll come rejoin us as soon as we smell a whiff of food.

Alissa recognizes the guards at the gate, and their commanding officer is a black werefox so dark that he's almost a vantafox.

"Gardieu, you actually got promoted?!" Alissa exclaims jokingly. "I'm surprised that your fat ass didn't get larger from sitting here all day."

And Allura teases him in lockstep with her sister, "Oh, he certainly has calluses on his ass from working hard. Those chair cushions didn't fray all by themselves."

The black fox straightens his back and grips his spear while his eyes maintain a faraway look as he tries to seem as dignified as possible. "Your little bee stings for tongues can't hurt me. You're still far from the whipping that your mother's tongue can dish out!" He fires back like a soldier reporting to his superiors.

"A thousand bee stings can still kill a person," Alissa ripostes.

But he easily deflects with his shield, "Then give me a thousand right now! And if you can't, then you're only training my 'Endurance.'" He suddenly turns away from them, his long fox tail whipping around after him and softly brushing against Alissa's stomach.

"Hah," she snorts, remembering how his tail would hit her in the face whenever he did that back when she was growing up.

Léonne offers us a carriage, but Alissa declines, wanting to walk and take in the view at her own pace, and I promise Roxanne a good toe-sucking later if her delicate, pretty feet start to hurt.

As we cross through the gate, we're met with a picturesque sight. A perfectly straight path of smooth, gray bricks is laid out before us; short walls of ashen black wood flank it all the way along, partially hiding the tall, raised houses with their red-tiled, sharp-angled roofs; the entrances to these houses and the names of the streets are all marked by tall wooden columns filled with cute, elaborate carvings, like a sort of heraldry for the noble families or a depiction of the shops located along the road, respectively; and a few sparse trees populate the large gardens, most of them being Chape trees, a weird shaped tree that reminds me of a sombrero on a stick, the stick being the trunk and the sombrero the leaves.

The morning mist dissipated just a short while ago, leaving everything a bit damp, so there's a slight shimmer everywhere as the morning sun meets the dew.

I pull out the golems, and the girls explain what they are to the werefoxes as we walk. None of the werefoxes are mages or researchers, so they can only sheepishly nod in understanding even though they likely understood nothing.

There's little variety in the actual design of the houses, exemplifying the werefox collectivist mindset, but there's also enough detail that each house seems unique in its own way.

"Elven houses are more interesting," Yunia disinterestedly remarks in my soul space.

"Except for Goloria's," Alissa retorts defensively.

"Agreed, that place is a mess. Too much variety in buildings, while over here, there's too little," Yunia replies without skipping a beat.

"There's value in simplicity and humility," Alissa fights on, but Yunia simply scoffs.

"Those are the exact two things that an elf would never understand," Roxanne unexpectedly sides with Alissa, then flashes me a grin. "I'm an opportunist, I'd never miss a chance to poke someone."

"Don't compare the races like that, it's unfair," I try to assuage them.

"Just enjoy the races for what they can give," Ciel piggybacks on my argument.

"A mouthful of fur?" Hana interjects.

"The positive things they can give," Ciel quickly corrects herself.

"Elves can't make cute things like the werefoxes can," Lina chimes in as we pass by an intricately carved column.

"I agree, but what did I just say…?" Ciel annoyedly presses Lina, who just smiles adorably to distract Ciel so that she doesn't get chastised.

"I fucking knew that Lina was a devious imp inside," I mumble jokingly, and she quickly closes off her mind so that no stray emotion of hers can bleed through [Bind] so easily again.

There's no gate separating these high-class mansions from the rest of the commoners, allowing us to visually observe the smooth decrease in wealth the further we walk.

The trees completely disappear, except for in public spaces, then the gardens start to shrink, and the houses grow increasingly warped, even comically so. Chape planks are quite flexible, and the houses that use them in their construction become "bowed" as they age due to the humidity. It actually makes for some pretty cute architecture, though I don't know how safe it is for the occupants.

"As long as the main pillars are replaced regularly, these houses will remain standing," Alissa confidently answers, and I decide to just stop thinking about it.

Then the shops start to appear, and the smell of foreign food fills our nostrils.

"I feel like having a fried Joolis stick," Alissa admits, salivating from the smell of the nostalgic snack.

I hear a *pop* on my shoulder, and then, with a chirp, "Gih!" Gify demands one for herself, too.

We grab a few sticks of the fried fish meat rolled into a ball and drizzled with colorful spices. It's pretty salty, but it's worth it because of the large variety of spices used. I even recognize Japanese nori.

I pull out some of the Frele tea that Ofilia had served us, and it goes pretty well with the snack.

Then Alissa asks for something else: a long stick of baked sweet potato. The interior is hot, but the charred crust has already cooled enough to touch, so we break the stick in half and then season it ourselves with a simple not-nori-based spice.

After that, Alissa gets a sweet omelet-or-waffle-like(?) snack with a dark berry sauce filling, and then she gets some thin, crunchy sticks of fried flour covered in some kind of peppery spice.

Noting Alissa's sudden appetite, Ciel shares her concern, "Not even Lina was this hungry when we visited Bersidon. Were you really enjoying the food back home?"

Alissa covers her mouth to give a muffled reply, "Of courshe, I was." Then she finishes chewing her food and swallows. "I just… 'missed' these flavors." She shrugs.

"Except for making snacks for customers, neither Mom nor Dad are great cooks," Lina shyly admits, and a small "oh" of understanding escapes our lips.

After the omelet-or-waffle, Alissa chooses a savory steamed bun with bean filling to cleanse the sweetness from her palate, then I notice a stall that's selling river fish not-sashimi, and the hungry dragon wakes up inside of me.

"Klein, Anton, memorize this flavor, then report it to Krysta," I order them with a smirk, half-jokingly.

The two of them share a look. "You're trying to not seem that serious, but I know that your stomach actually is pretty serious about it," Anton reads me like an open book.

Then I notice my tail wiggling out of my control, revealing my slight anxiety, so I smile wryly and just confess, "Let me rephrase that: please tell Krysta about this if I forget to do it."

At that, they both nod obediently.

Roubaix produces a lot of flour and other assorted powdered ingredients due to the large river that crosses through it, powering the watermills, so there's a lot of different takes on dumplings to choose from. The mill district is in the opposite direction of where we're going, so we don't even get a glimpse of it.

Overall, Misty Fox cuisine doesn't have such a wide variety of ingredients to choose from like elven cuisine does, but they certainly have more creativity.

Yunia's mocking, childish voice echoes in my soul space, "StOp CoMpArInG tHe RaCeS."

"Stop reading my thoughts," I reply in kind and poke her soul, almost making her squeak out loud, and she shoots me a quick glare.

Then we each get a refreshing drink of Chapefruit, the not-mango. This flavor is pretty nostalgic for me since it's a pretty popular fruit in Brazil. The werefoxes export Chapefruit, so we should be able to occasionally get some for ourselves back in Escanso.

As we walk, I also give Alissa the Frele and Apaisant sweets that she missed due to all the greetings. In contrast to the spicy street vendor food, the gourmet-style sweets have a very mild flavor, but they're still delicious nonetheless.

The Sworn Hunters following us are also acting as guards, so I let the Lordsguard relax a little, and we get some snacks for them, too. It makes me quite happy seeing Hukarere eagerly getting a taste of everything, and the way the werefoxes stare at her in awe is also a pretty nice bonus.

Curiously, the commoners seem to be far less afraid of Aoi than the dwarves were, and I expected the opposite since the entirety of the Rakontagne mountain range to the east of the Misty Forest is known to be full of dragon nests.

"The commoners' reaction to Aoi is pretty different from what I expected," I casually comment.

"What did you expect?" Léonne replies with the same tone.

I shrug. "More fear, maybe some animosity."

"We have a few dragon riders, so the commoners are used to seeing dragons."

"It's only people like Dad who have something against them," Alissa chimes in and gives a sharp look to Jacques.

He frowns and haughtily looks away from her as he grumbles, "We don't even need that treaty anymore, but we still keep selling our children to Rabanara."

"Too many people like the imperial monetary aid that comes from it, so it'll be very difficult to bring an end to the trade," Léonne continues with a rather defeated tone.

"What was the original intent of that treaty?" Yunia questions.

Léonne stoically answers, "Rabanara would wipe out the dragon nests in Rakontagne in exchange for us raising one of our Chosen Descendants as a hunter slave to gift to Rabanara."

Jacques bitterly expands on that, his frown making him look more like a predator than a cute fox, "But now, the dragons and wyverns all attack Rabanara directly, so they don't even need to seek out their nests because the dragons have rarely come our way ever since."

I hum in thought, then Lina grabs my thick, swaying tail, and it swings her around as if she weighed nothing. "From what I know, the werefox Blood Slaves are highly valued because they're the best hunters that money can buy," I recall as I watch Lina amusedly.

Jacques waves his clawed hand dismissively and looks away with a grunt, "Hmph. I don't care about that sort of thing. I just wanted my daughter to be free."

Alissa immediately gives a hug to his wide back, and his anger quickly washes away, but they don't say anything, remaining like that for a long minute.

We eventually reach the exit of Roubaix, and it's just in time since our procession has drawn the interest of a rather large crowd that decided to follow us from afar. I'm not sure why, exactly, they're so curious about us, but I guess our group is simply so outlandish that there can't be just one reason for their behavior.

We pass by a few farms, all lively with farmers beginning their morning work, then I notice a few slaves among them, and I realize that I rarely ever saw a worker slave in Escanso. Elven pride shows itself even in slavery.

The slave farmers don't look any different from the other workers, except for the small slave collar around their necks. The temple keeps a close eye on this type of slavery, so their lives aren't exactly bleak, but they still deserve a lot more rights than they have now.

The system of slavery is so integrated throughout the entire empire that I think it may be easier to expand worker rights than to simply abolish it outright, especially because Blood Slaves are also included in this issue, and it'd involve changing a fuck ton of religious shit to forbid Blood Slaves.

The peacefulness of our stroll allows me to ponder upon the social changes that I want to implement, and the humbling view makes it easier to concentrate my mind on these complex topics.

The ring of farms ends quite quickly as we reach a small forested hill. There's a short, symbolic brick wall surrounding the hill, with a few ceremonial guards protecting it. That's the Tomb of Veneration.

We walk up along the snaking path, and I take a moment to observe the vegetation. The Chape trees grow very fast here, almost monopolizing all the space and nutrients available, which makes it difficult for other plants to establish themselves, so most of the other vegetation we can see is quite low to the ground, giving us a fairly long, unobstructed view of the forest, and it's really quite picturesque, just like almost everything else we've seen here.

"[I'd like to paint this]," one of the Chimeras quietly comments with a rather sentimental tone.

Then we reach the top of the hill, where we're met with a large, round gazebo with a stone dome above it that reminds me of the temples. At the center of the gazebo, there's a stair that leads deep down into the ground.

"Did we climb all the way up here just to go down again?" Yunia quietly asks.

"Yes," Alissa responds stoically, and I suppress a snort. "This much is nothing to a werefox."

Yunia crosses her arms awkwardly, and I see her long ears redden. "Not complaining, just… confused…"

As we reach the gazebo, Léonne motions for us to stop, then pulls out a gem-encrusted key from her [Item Box] with a *poof*.

"We'll stay here, so take the key. He's on the sixth level, fourth column, and third row," she solemnly explains to Alissa.

"Thank you," Alissa quietly replies, then she turns to us and smiles like a bright [Spirit Light]. "I want you all to come with me so that he can see my new family."

"He's already been cremated, so you understand that he might not be there anymore, right?" Ciel cautions her.

Alissa nods slowly. "I do, but I still want to try."

Only the wives, the golems, and I continue on, descending the stairs inside the gazebo, which takes us to a small room where a single guard protects a heavily enchanted door.

He salutes us and closes his eyes, then Alissa opens the door, and we resume our descent, going down the flights of stairs beyond them.

The Tomb is solemn, unadorned, illuminated by faint crystal lights, and carved from smooth gray stone. Each floor is filled with countless columns holding urns, which are each paired with a metal plaque that's been inscribed with a short biography of the deceased.

The floors are all properly clean and dust-free because this place actually has occasional visitors. Many rites, including the Rite of Succession for each of the clans, involve this place since each and every new ruler has to show their respect for their ancestors.

And of course, on the lower floors, where the most recent rulers and Elders have been buried, there are few spirits still lingering about.

Gify chirps, and I cast [Materialize], revealing the spirits of an old werefox couple, who are staring at Alissa worriedly, floating slightly above us. Their fur has gone completely white, so it's a bit difficult to guess which of the clans they were originally from.

"What are these non-foxes doing here?" The old woman immediately asks Alissa, her tone carrying hints of contained disapproval.

Alissa frowns sadly, slightly offended. "We're all Crown Lords of the High Forest, and I'm here to introduce my new family to someone that's very dear to me," she answers honestly, and the old woman becomes apologetic.

"We'll tell the others not to bother you," the old man assures us with a strained smile and pulls the old woman away.

Considering how those two didn't have any visible wounds, they were likely Elders who died in their sleep like Gurrier.

"How long have they been here that they don't even know about you?" Yunia annoyedly asks, trying to keep her distaste from showing too much.

"If a spirit remains undisturbed, they can 'sleep,' which extends the time that they can remain in the realm, like the Chimeras did," Ciel explains, and Gify chirps in agreement.

"I don't remember their faces, so they must've died before I was born," Alissa solemnly answers.

Once the spirits' ethereal blue glow completely disappears, we move on and descend to the bottom floor, which is still mostly empty, so we easily find Gurrier's resting place. His urn is a small and unadorned cylinder since all that a werefox takes with them when they die are their achievements and memories, not their wealth.

Beside his urn is his biography, engraved on a small metal plaque that reads:

Gurrier Vilarbre, Elder of the Hunt, Former Sworn Hunter of Chief Florent Verner, Former Captain of the 4th Division of Town Hunters of Roubaix.

Born on the 12th day of the auspicious month of Combat in the year 68,821 of the Solar calendar; died in his sleep on the 26th day of the month of Drink in the year 69,000, aged 179 at level 99.

Started his life as the second son of Blanche and Roy Vilarbre, Gurrier was born with [Bow Use] and [Hide Presence], a rare sign that revealed that his calling was to be a hunter from the very moment he was born.

He precociously enlisted in the Town Hunters at the age of 8 and graduated at the age of 12, then steadily accrued achievements until he succeeded the Captain of his division at the age of 18 when the previous Captain retired.

His leadership was stable and marked by successive victories, making him stand out as a model commander. He protected Roubaix from monster hordes, bandits, and slavers without faltering, inspiring generations to come.

At the age of 30, he trained his successor so that he could enter into the service of Chief Florent Verner as a Sworn Hunter.

Now tasked with protecting the rule of the Misty Fox clan, he aided Chief Florent in quenching the thirsts, filling the bellies, and solving the quarrels, as well as punishing the outlaws, overcoming disasters, and subduing the rebellious.

At the age of 104, he was called on by the Elder Council to act as the Elder of the Hunt and assume the duty of protecting the whole of the Misty Forest from any forces that sought to destroy it.

Loved by his parents, respected by his allies, and feared by his enemies. Gurrier exemplified the ideal hunter and warrior that all werefoxes should aspire to become.

His duty was fulfilled, and his memory shall be venerated.

May the Gods give him his just rewards. May Paradise provide him ample reward for his sacrifices.

Below that, the plaque lists his notable achievements, mostly his victories in battles.

"This is the person who trained you in how to be a slave?" Yunia curiously asks.

With deep melancholy and grief, Alissa touches the urn and manages a pained smile as her eyes water. "Yes, but he did more than that. He acted as a parent for me when mine were forbidden to, and he showed me more fatherly love than I could've ever asked him for, even though he'd never admit to it. I owe so much of who I am to him." Then she closes her eyes and prays for him to be here.

A note from Manasong

Hall of Fame of Patrons

The patrons who support Rupegia shall have their names sung by the bards for they deserve the glory and honor. Their names are:

Prince PreownedFIN.

Prince Creamy Spinach.

Lord Andrew Meyers.

Lord Samuel Lim.

Lord Bill.

Lord Novgarod.

Lord Michale Erwin.

Lord Bakerdea.

Lord Maurice.

Lord Empyrean.

Lord Mattirro Draca.

Lord Colorblind.

Lord Fullmoon.

Lord Sean Drake.

Lord EESDESESESRDT.

Lord FrostyCube.

Lord Mike Bartter.

Lord Cardinal Steiner.

Lord Krawn.

Lord Warwulfv.

Lord Jorge Franco.

Lord Christopher Welsh.

Lord DJ.

Lord Philip.

Lord Tenebris Lupus.

Lord ImportantNPC.

Lord The Tallest Joshua.

Lord Copey Dunt.

Lord Dracopuppy23.

Lord Freddie.

Lord Cidant.

Lord Stellerbattle.

Lord Chris Carter.

Lord GoodKat.

Noble Salty Panda.

Noble Mild Fracas.

Noble Aclys.

Noble Shawn Plumley.

Noble CarlBaxter.

Noble Yeuromain.

Noble Brandon Lai.

Leave a rating or a review to help me rise to the top or fix my shameful understanding of prose.

Take a look over my blog where all information about the world of Rupegia will be posted.

Join the Discord and discuss, or rant, or meme, or try and fight me so your waifu gets more screentime.

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Chapter 103: To Honor Her Achievements - Part 1

We remain silent for several long minutes, waiting for even a wisp of a spirit to appear, but we don't sense anything.

Yunia swallows an Eia pill and takes a step closer to the urn while Ciel also starts to pray to help Alissa.

After a few more minutes, Alissa's concentration falters as she begins to tire from praying so fervently.

I give Alissa five points in [Spirit Magic], then Yunia, Alissa, and I cast [Spirit Eyes] and [Spirit Link].

Link is a curious spell as it allows the caster to speak telepathically with spirits and sense their emotions, which is very useful for communicating with lost, or decaying spirits, or evil spirits, though that last one is a very unpleasant experience.

Necromancers and other Wicked people who want to trap spirits use someone's body as a path to find the spirit and pull it out of Paradise. While cremating someone and spreading their ashes prevents this, Gurrier's ashes are all gathered here in one place, so there's a slim chance that the path to his spirit is still intact.

"Wolfy… you have to be very careful with what you're thinking about doing right now," Ciel cautions me with a very serious tone.

"I just want to signal to him that we're here," I explain myself and walk up to the urn.

Alissa's heart is torn. She's fearful of what I want to do, but she can't bring herself to stop me.

Ciel sighs tiredly, then comes up behind me and hugs my back. "I find it extraordinarily difficult to stop you from trying out these crazy ideas, but I'll at least stick close to you so that you don't do something you shouldn't," she assures me with a rather motherly tone.

"Yeah, she's definitely our mother," Hana mutters offhandedly.

"I really love how you're always so supportive of us," I confess to Ciel and kiss her hand lovingly, making her smile brightly.

"There's still some Life in the urn," Yunia points out, giving us a sliver of hope.

"Gih," Gify agrees, and I get an idea.

I give Alissa five more points in [Spirit Magic] so that she can cast [Spirit Touch], then I sternly state, "I need everyone to work together for this plan." And I give them all a look.

"Gih!" Gify chirps boldly, and Yunia nods, then Alissa steels herself.

This will be a four-man job. Gify will gather all the wisps of Gurrier's spirit into a single spot, Yunia will guide us towards the Life, I'll assume control of Alissa to use [Spirit Touch] through her, and the VIP herself will continue praying to call for Gurrier's attention.

Once we're all ready, operation Ghost Call immediately begins.

Gify pops out of existence, and with [Spirit Link], I feel her presence moving around the urn and spreading herself wide, like a tentacle monster collecting girls to-… my imagination is a bit wild right now.

Anyway, the wisps of Gurrier's spirit are like water, and they're resisting Gify's touch, wanting to go back to their former positions and remain undisturbed.

Yunia stares intensely at the urn, providing me with the exact location where all the wisps are being gathered, a small dot that seems to be about the size of a needle's head.

I take control of Alissa's spirit hand and cautiously approach the wisps, trying not to disturb them too much, which would make it much harder for Gify to keep a hold of them.

Alissa closes her eyes and prays with all her heart, then Ciel pats her head and helps her calm down so that her voice can be more clearly heard by the Goddess of Piety.

The spirit hand comes closer to them, and the wisps start trembling in Gify's grasp.

Yunia's view of the Life blurs as it refuses to interact with Gify.

The spirit hand enters the urn, and even Gify feels like backing off from it since, for a spirit, the spell feels like chains approaching her neck.

The wisps tremble out of control, like magnets repelling each other, and they start to escape Gify's tentacles.

"Please…" Alissa whispers earnestly, and the wisps suddenly stop for a second.

I take the chance and close the spirit hand around the wisps, then I let Alissa hold it there by herself.

Ciel grabs Alissa's shoulder, her watchful presence preventing Alissa from pulling the spirit hand back out of the urn, no matter how much she wishes to see Gurrier.

The wisps are so small that they start to escape Alissa's grip like droplets of water slipping through her fingers.

Ciel grips Alissa's shoulder harder so that she doesn't grip the wisps too hard, and Alissa slowly exhales, forcing herself to calm down, then the last of the wisps escape her grasp.

"Please…" She whispers again, then we hear a tired sigh in our minds.

Alissa opens her empty spiritual hand, and I cast [Materialize], then an old male voice grumbles, echoing throughout the large, empty room, "I was having a wonderful nap in the sun, you know?"

Alissa whimpers weakly and sniffles, then she looks up and grins at the wrinkly old fox staring back at her with knitted eyebrows, his hands together behind his back in a dignified posture. He has a very stern face, but his shoulder-length white hair and short beard give him a very refined look, and I'm sure he must have sported a fine salt and pepper daddy style beard when he was younger.

"Gurrier…" She whispers, but I sense the word "raisin" echoing in her mind, and she hurriedly locks down her inner thoughts.

"Alissa…" Gurrier quietly replies, then his eyes scan over each of us. "And your new family."

Gify pops back onto my shoulder and lets out a low chirp.

Then Alissa chuckles girlishly. "Yes, my family. I'm sorry for interrupting your rest, but I wanted you to meet them. I wanted you to see what you helped me achieve." Then she takes a step back and lays her hand over my chest.

His frown softens, and his thin lips curl slightly upwards in a very subtle smile. "Ah, the Ryders. We've heard a lot about all of you," he starts with a husky, amused tone. "Your parents will never admit this, but they commissioned portraits of all of you," -he gives each of us another glance, lingering a little longer on the silent golems behind us- "and they weren't that far from reality."

Alissa sighs tiredly and rests her head on my shoulder. "How far did they go to spy on us?!" She grumbles in frustration.

"Every single piece of information that could be bought, was bought," he amusedly continues, his smile slowly growing wider. "Every time some news about you arrived, your father would tell everyone about it, and of course, he didn't allow me to forget anything."

Alissa cringes, and her pointy ears go flat. "Yeah, that sounds like Dad…"

He turns his gaze to me, and it seems surprisingly kind, in contrast to Alissa's memories of him. "At first, they hated you, Wolf."

"I wonder why," I mumble with a wry smile.

He nods slowly. "An unknown, meek child that seemed to be either low-level or simply unskilled in anything…"

"Ouch," I whine.

He snorts. "Yes, even I was suspicious, but I had my faith in Ghulam. Blood Slave merchants have an eye for good people, and there were enough peculiarities that it warranted us staying our judgment for a while longer."

Alissa crosses her arms and nods energetically. "Hmph, but of course! Since the very first moment I met Wolfy, I knew he was special!" She grunts and agrees matter-of-factly.

Gurrier's smile becomes slightly mischievous. "You should've seen Jacques' overwhelming pride when the news of your successful hunt of the Oodogloo came in."

"Wow, you remember that," I remark with a chuckle.

Gurrier annoyedly replies, "Of course I do. Alissa's father didn't allow me to forget anything."

Alissa's smile becomes stiff, trying not to cringe at her dad's overenthusiasm.

"How doting, he didn't come off like that during our first meeting," Yunia remarks with a raised eyebrow.

"Léonne reigned that in, but you can't change his nature," Gurrier explains, and Alissa nods begrudgingly. "It was after the Symbol of Hate that their opinion of you changed. They instantly noticed how your…" -He flashes a cheeky smile- "'Good Luck' was extraordinary."

"Considering how nobody died, I knew there was something special about him," Alissa affirms and gives me a loving look.

"Same," Roxanne shyly chimes in. That's when she fell in love with me, so just remembering that event makes her become a bit meek.

Gurrier casually continues, "And once Miss Hanafuria joined in, we stopped worrying about your safety since she had already proven herself in the past to have enough skill to act as the anchor of your party."

"You got that right!" Hana exclaims proudly and smacks her bouncy chest. "I've kept everyone safe!"

He chuckles gently and adds, "Indeed. And with someone of Miss Roxanne's power to kill everything in sight, there was nothing that could easily overwhelm your fellowship."

"Hehehehe," Roxanne giggles like a silly little girl, unused to being praised so highly by strangers.

Then Gurrier looks at each of us with gentle eyes. "A mysterious master, a powerful mage, a reliable protector, a compassionate priestess, a hard-working dwarf, mysterious golems, an actual talking dragon, a noble elf, and even a nature spirit. You did well in gathering these comrades, Alissa."

Gify chirps smugly and puffs up her little chest.

"I wasn't the one who actually gathered them, though…" Alissa shyly admits.

"You're the one with the Blessing from the Goddess of Love. That should count for something, considering you're all… wives," he amusedly replies and gives me a brief, knowing look.

While Alissa's love for me helped me gather these women initially, it changed midway into pure depravity, so she has some trouble accepting that she's the reason that the harem grew so large.

"It's not like you're the only reason that we're together," I throw her a lifebuoy.

And she desperately latches onto it, "Y-yes! Everyone helped! We-we're all together because… we're all equals, a team!" Then she laughs nervously.

Gurrier stares at her blankly, unsure of what to say.

"It's because you've shown us how to love each other, in more ways than one," Ciel graciously saves the mood.

"Hm, yes, an enviable relationship you all have," Gurrier quietly comments.

"It's one of the secrets to our power," Roxanne confesses with a smirk and stifles a chuckle.

Gurrier's fox senses tingle, making him a bit suspicious of our wording, so he points out, "But that was definitely not part of the slave training I gave you."

Alissa smiles smugly, and her tail wags lazily as she replies with a deliberate tone, "Are you sure? You taught me how to reach greatness, but you never told me to do it alone or to aim for it to be only for myself. You had me train the twenty-fifth unit, to nurture their growth, to guide them closer to their dreams, and to their place in the clan."

Gurrier stays quiet for a moment, pondering upon her words. "Hm… I can't disagree with anything you've said," he gently accepts, then his tone grows slightly nostalgic as he recollects, "and it's true, the power of your unity has shown itself in the victories that your fellowship has achieved. The Oodogloo, the Symbol of Hate, the goblin camp extermination, the wyvern attack, the Dragonoid dungeon delve, the Grim Giant, the Corpse Stealer horde, the bandit attack… You've all shown how well you work together," -he suddenly turns serious- "so much so that you even gained the attention of both Crown Lords of the High Forest, whose snooping was detected by Vanea. Due to the stalemate between them, we feared the possibility of you becoming a pawn in their games, but fortunately, elves aren't anywhere near as ruthless as imperials."

"Of course we are. We even pay compensation to the commoners that get unknowingly involved in our matters," Yunia proudly states and points her nose up snobbishly.

His stoic eyes turn to her and calmly give her a brief lashing, "Your race just has the unfortunate habit of letting unfit Lords languish in their position for too long."

Yunia wants to retort, but she can't. The situation with her father had lasted for years, long enough that even the emperor got annoyed.

Alissa feels some pity for Yunia and decides to side with her. "And our race just has the unfortunate habit of being merciless and vengeful," she somberly states.

Gurrier nods in agreement. "All races have their own ways of doing things, which all work with more or less the same results," he sagely states.

"I have some disagreements with that, but I don't feel like having a philosophical discussion right now," I interject with a smirk.

Gurrier chuckles once, and his wrinkles soften again. "Yes, I don't think I have the time for that." His right eye suddenly twitches, and he shows a subtly warped smile. "Hearing Jacques drone on and on about both you and Allura really annoyed me, so I want to get in as many jabs as I can to embarrass him before I truly leave the realm."

"They seem to act differently whenever they're near us, so I really want to hear about that," Alissa shyly admits with a small smile.

And Gurrier nods energetically. "But of course. You two needed to grow fast and aim past the clouds if you were to succeed in your destinies, so they had to keep themselves from spoiling you rotten."

"I think they succeeded," I chime in and give her waist a squeeze.

"That they did," Gurrier agrees, but then his tone turns grim. "How you survived the Dawn of Fire attack impressed us as much as it enraged us, all of us. The brutality of it was astounding, so I allowed your mother to give you some advice."

"We're thankful for that. We were looking for someone with power to rely on, and it came at the right time," Alissa sincerely thanks him.

Gurrier flashes a smile but then continues with the same grim tone, "It also started to dawn on us that your Fate foreshadowed a lot more trouble to come, then Innocent Nymph happened before we could think of doing anything else to help you, and you all immediately went into hiding, so we had access to precious little information since then."

Alissa starts to explain to him what we went through after that. Our dealings with Arreira catch his curiosity, but the fact that we now have a fleet makes him very interested, and we haven't even touched on the topic of my and Aoi's new races yet.

"Warships. You now have warships…" He mutters, his stoic tone showing a hint of wonder.

I nod excitedly and add, "Currently irreplaceable, but we have the means to turn the High Forest into an important source of airships."

He rubs his short beard in thought as he comments, "Surprisingly, or perhaps not so surprising, considering how extraordinary you all are, there has always been a lot of information about your fellowship being passed around, but now that you're entering the airship market, every single noble of the Mainland and the Principality will want to know as much as they can about you."

The girls and I share some shy smiles.

"I'm starting to get the feeling that some people are turning into our fans," I suddenly blurt out and chuckle awkwardly.

He lets out a low chuckle. "Oh, Jacques and Allura are definitely fans. Me? An involuntary one."

Alissa facepalms as she questions, "What about Mom?"

His smile starts widening again. "She's not the kind to be dreamy-eyed when listening to your adventures, no. She almost went to personally 'question' the slaver that sold you to Mr. Wolf. She wanted to strangle the poor merchant."

Alissa frowns in thought as she recollects, "Mom said that she had to stop Dad from strangling him."

Gurrier chuckles softly again. "Oh, that she did, so you can imagine how much angrier your father was than her. On the other hand, I had to stop her from threatening the slaver."

I awkwardly scratch my horn as I reflect on everything they already know about us, "It's a bit weird to think about how much was going on without us knowing."

"Assume that everything we know is also known by everyone else," he assures me, becoming serious again.

"Bastico wants to write a book about our lives, so we're a bit past the point of being shy about our adventures," Yunia points out.

Gurrier slowly nods in agreement. "Well said. Now that you've mentioned it, what happened to you, Wolf? You're… less human than I knew you to be."

I smile wryly and show him my claws as I explain, "So, something happened with my body, and the Gods made me into a new race, a weredragon."

He blinks blankly, stunned.

I grin and follow up to complete the combo, "Oh yeah, Aoi now has a status, and also, the Gods did an Intervention to help our credibility when we took our position as Crown Lords."

"Alissa, he's not lying?" He stoically asks her.

Her tail starts wagging happily, and I wrap mine around her waist. "No… these things happened after your death, about two or three months ago." Then her tail goes limp again.

His eyes become softer, and he shows us a pained smile and earnestly apologizes, "Ah… I'm sorry that I couldn't stay alive for longer. I was also pretty surprised when I died."

I have to suppress the impulse to laugh, because what the fuck?! He's legitimately asking us for forgiveness for him dying too soon of natural causes.

"Don't blame yourself for reaching the end of your Thread. You deserve Paradise," Ciel soothes him.

Alissa grumbles annoyedly, then exclaims, "And besides, we're talking right now!"

His smile widens, but it's still a bit pained. "But I won't be able to see your marriage ceremony."

Alissa grumbles again as she opens her [Item Box], then she takes out her ID crystal tablet. "Then at least look at this."

He opens his eyes wide and moans weakly, "Ah… you did it… you really did it." Then he tries to grab the tablet, but it simply slips through his ethereal hands. "Oh…"

Alissa's tone becomes bold, energetic, and even a bit smug as she announces, "I've come back, not as a slave, but as the wife of my husband, and we're all destined to shape the realm with our influence, all because someone like you trained me to be who I am today!"

Gurrier's sad smile fades away, returning him to his usual stoic and professional self. "I understand now, Alissa. I welcome you back home now that your duty as a Blood Slave has been fulfilled, and I wish you luck in the future that the Gods have planned for you."

She takes a step forward and salutes him in the werefox way. "Thank you, Elder Gurrier, for everything."

Gurrier's wrinkled face softens completely, clearing it of the stiff and stoic expression that he usually shows. "Thank you for bringing me back for this," he whispers, his tone growing weak and wavering slightly. "I have nothing left to teach you, but you still have a long way to walk, and a tall mountain to climb, so never stop growing, never stop fighting, because that is something that I know I taught you well."

"I'll never stop!" Alissa exclaims, tears gathering in the corner of her eyes.

Then he sighs, and his posture hunches forward slightly. "I'm tired now. There are many other things that I'd like to talk about, but I've already said everything I needed to. Goodbye, Alissa. May you and your family shine like stars."

"Goodbye, Gurrier. May your time in Paradise be long," she whispers back.

He smiles gently, and the old man's figure slowly blurs and fades away until there's nothing left.

Alissa sheds a few silent tears, and I hug her tight, which becomes the perfect excuse for another group hug.

A note from Manasong

Hall of Fame of Patrons

The patrons who support Rupegia shall have their names sung by the bards for they deserve the glory and honor. Their names are:

Prince PreownedFIN.

Prince Creamy Spinach.

Lord Andrew Meyers.

Lord Samuel Lim.

Lord Bill.

Lord Novgarod.

Lord Michale Erwin.

Lord Bakerdea.

Lord Maurice.

Lord Empyrean.

Lord Mattirro Draca.

Lord Colorblind.

Lord Fullmoon.

Lord Sean Drake.

Lord EESDESESESRDT.

Lord FrostyCube.

Lord Mike Bartter.

Lord Cardinal Steiner.

Lord Krawn.

Lord Warwulfv.

Lord Jorge Franco.

Lord Christopher Welsh.

Lord DJ.

Lord Philip.

Lord Tenebris Lupus.

Lord ImportantNPC.

Lord The Tallest Joshua.

Lord Copey Dunt.

Lord Dracopuppy23.

Lord Freddie.

Lord Cidant.

Lord Stellerbattle.

Lord Chris Carter.

Lord GoodKat.

Noble Salty Panda.

Noble Mild Fracas.

Noble Aclys.

Noble Shawn Plumley.

Noble CarlBaxter.

Noble Yeuromain.

Noble Brandon Lai.

Leave a rating or a review to help me rise to the top or fix my shameful understanding of prose.

Take a look over my blog where all information about the world of Rupegia will be posted.

Join the Discord and discuss, or rant, or meme, or try and fight me so your waifu gets more screentime.

Become a Patron and read chapters in advance, or read the side-stories, or leave your mark on the story, or help choose the next artwork or the next side-story.

Chapter 103: To Honor Her Achievements - Part 2

As we start to break off the group hug, the golems hurriedly float backward to avoid getting in our way.

"Let's go back," Alissa tiredly suggests. She's gone through too many different emotions in such a short time, so she's getting emotionally exhausted.

I wish that I could've asked Gurrier about Paradise, but we might have another opportunity one day, so it'll just have to wait until then.

Once we reunite with the rest of the group, Alissa gives a hug to her parents and her sister.

"Thank you…" She whispers softly, and Jacques suddenly hugs her from behind, burying her head in his long, red beard.

He mumbles some garbled nonsense, sounding very emotional, then suddenly recomposes himself and goes quiet.

"You're welcome, my daughter," Léonne gently whispers back and pats Jacques' arm, then he releases Alissa.

We make our way back, and they tell us their stories about Gurrier, then Jacques reveals something interesting.

"The old fox always asked for a drink whenever I came to tell him the news. It was the only time I ever saw him relax, and we usually ended up talking for a long time since we'd both end up getting drunk," he reminisces fondly.

I share a look with Alissa. It seems that we'll never really know the truth.

When we get back to the town, a small group of commoners are excitedly waiting for us just past the gates, and a few of them even begin to kneel and pray as we approach. The werefoxes are very pious, so it isn't too surprising that they've already found out who we are.

Curiously, there's a human commoner couple among them that seems to be very anxious.

Klein and Anton quickly discuss something between themselves, then they organize the Lordsguard to surround us, and Léonne responds by ordering the Sworn Hunters to open the way for us.

Ciel waves and smiles at the commoners, but once her eyes land on the couple, she freezes as memories flood into her mind.

"FLEUR?!" She suddenly shouts.

"CIEL!" The human woman shrieks back.

Ciel rushes over to her, pushing the confused Lordsguard in her way to the side, and tackles the small, ginger woman.

"AAAAH!" The two of them shriek excitedly and hug each other tight, then the Lordsguard quickly follows after her and separates the commoners away from them.

"CALUM!" Ciel shouts and grabs the hand of the human male beside her, ensuring that the Lordsguard lets him stay.

Fleur stops shrieking, but her overflowing excitement bleeds into her voice as she shouts at full speed, "Diamond dragons scales! It's you, you're Queen Ciel! You're the Dark Angel!"

"The WHAT?!" Ciel shrieks back. "Please, don't let that turn into a Title!"

Fleur laughs out loud as she hangs from Ciel's neck. Calum, the blonde-haired man beside them, stiffly stands still, clearly terrified of the stares he's receiving from the dozen-plus high-leveled people currently surrounding him.

Fleur lets Ciel go, who then gives Calum a quick hug.

"What are you two doing here? Didn't you say that you were going to the capital?" Ciel questions them, completely bewildered at their presence here.

Both Fleur and Calum cringe, then look away. "Well, we did find out who my family was…" Calum hesitantly mumbles.

"And they turned out to be scammers who owed money to a rather dangerous sort of people," Fleur continues and nervously kicks a small rock near her feet.

Calum grins unashamedly. "So we ran right back to Mistcross…"

Then Fleur raises her eyes to Ciel, and her tone becomes excited again. "And by coincidence, we found out that my late mother was a werefox, and then my extended family adopted us."

"This is incredible, really. I'm so happy you found your home," Ciel replies with a bright smile and pulls them both into another quick hug.

Fleur nods happily, then she adds, her voice quickly losing its volume with each word, "I'm surprised they actually let us live here since, you know, we're humans…"

Ciel's expression becomes serious. "But are you being treated with respect?"

Calum nods energetically, then quietly answers, "We are, and we're quite happy here, it's just that sometimes, they're a bit 'cold.'"

"Hm… that seems well enough," Ciel comments and gives their shoulders a gentle squeeze.

I approach them and gently ask, "Are these your friends, Ciel?"

The couple turns to me and immediately falls to their knees, but Ciel grabs their shoulders again and pulls them back up. "No need for that here," she affirms, then gives me a bright smile. "They're my friends from the orphanage."

"Pleasure to meet you," I greet them, and we start our introductions.

They're Fleur and Calum Envye, and they're working for the Envye clan of merchants as assistants.

When Léonne approaches us, they both keep their heads down in respect for her.

"If you're not busy, how about you come to our estate? Any friends of the Ryders are friends of ours too," Léonne offers politely, and Ciel doesn't allow them to say no.

As we walk, the three of them catch up, and while they heard rumors about Ciel, the Intervention, and our rise as Crown Lords, they hadn't yet fully connected the Dark Angel of the rumors with the Ciel they knew until they saw her here.

"Out of all the potential nicknames, why did Dark Angel catch on?" Ciel grumbles through [Bind].

"Do you prefer 'Chocolate Angel,' instead?" Roxanne teases back.

"Just 'Angel' would be fine!" Ciel exclaims in frustration.

Fleur is a thin, ginger woman whose late father hailed from Maplethorne, and she kind of fits in among the werefoxes, only lacking in the fox ears and tail department. Calum is a tall, blonde man whose family immigrated from Dyrmorder to Mac Gantus, but then they fractured and fell from grace. He stands out since he's quite tall in comparison to the not particularly tall werefoxes, but, fortunately, nobody has picked on him for it.

As long as they don't make trouble or too much noise, the werefoxes are content to leave foreigners be. The foxes also have a working relationship with merchants and adventurers, so the couple doesn't face any overt prejudice, but they don't have that many friends here.

The two walk hand-in-hand, Fleur leaning over to Calum and touching his chest for just about any little reason she can find. It's like they're glued to one another, and it makes me realize something.

"Are we like that?" I let the question echo in my soul space, and Alissa gives my hand a squeeze.

"With you? Yes. There's always someone touching you," Yunia calmly answers and gives my other hand a squeeze.

"We have to split up our time to be with you; there's no time to spare for you to be alone," Lina asserts.

"It must be pretty awkward to be around us," I think openly in my soul space.

"It was. Especially at night," Ciel chimes in a moment later. During that time when she was in the fellowship but hadn't become my wife yet, she heard the bed creaking quite a lot, even though the girls didn't usually moan that loudly.

When Ciel tells the couple how close we've become to the Gods, their demeanor starts to stiffen, but Ciel is having none of that.

"If our friends start treating us like kings, then we'll have nobody left who we can talk casually with," Ciel worriedly explains.

"Well, you are a Queen, right? That's what all the news is saying," Calum questions.

"We're only Royals, we haven't been crowned, or anything," Ciel tiredly explains.

"And I don't think the Elder Council will let us assume that status," I chime in with a grin.

Calum frowns confusedly and asks, "Royals without a king…?"

"Princess Ciel!" Fleur shouts with a giggle.

That Title provokes a lot of strong feelings within Ciel. What kind of orphan girl has never fantasized about being adopted by a Royal or a Lord?

"I'll accept you calling me that in private," Ciel gently states with a subtle, pompous tone that makes Yunia proud.

We return to the Verner's estate, and we see the Elders sitting on cushions on the veranda, enjoying a nice cup of tea while soaking in the sun and watching the foxes play around.

We all decide to split up for a bit. Lina and I seek out the foxes, Alissa goes inside the estate with her mother to meet someone, Ciel sits down near the Elders to talk with Fleur and Calum, Yunia and Roxanne sit by the Elders to talk for a bit while Yunia massages Roxanne's feet, and Hana and human-Aoi showcase [Equipment System] to everyone.

"You're doing well, servant, continue massaging me like this," Roxanne teases with a snobbish tone.

Yunia narrows her eyes dangerously. "Your only positive quality is your beauty," she coldly replies but doesn't stop massaging Roxanne's feet.

"That's… not actually offensive to me," Roxanne admits and shrugs.

The Elders share an amused look, but don't comment on it.

The golems stop behind Lina and me, their unmoving eyes staring intensely at us.

"May we pet the foxes, too?" Ted broaches the topic. It makes me happy that they asked for something on their own initiative.

"Sure, but what made you want to?" I ask back and guide a fox closer to them. The furry little animal doesn't seem to mind, but I think it's because it identified the golems as inanimate objects.

"We may be required to take care of pets," Suzy starts the sequence.

"So we need to learn how to interact with animals," Jarn finishes.

I agree and ponder, "True. I had two dogs before, and though I haven't felt the desire to get any new pets so far, I think it'd be a good idea to get some for our children."

"You already have a few humanoid pets," Lina innocently points out, and I can't really disagree with that.

We smile at each other, then I turn to the golems. "Anyway, do all of you know how to approach animals?"

"Slow movements, no staring, and a gentle touch," Ted starts.

"While paying close attention to their body language," Suzy follows.

"And not following it when it moves away," Jarn finishes.

"Good, good," I approve, nodding sagely. "Come closer, and let it smell you."

Ted and Suzy lower themselves onto the grass, and the little fox immediately scampers away, then stares at them warily.

I don't call the fox back, and instead, I just hand each of the three golems a small piece of dried meat. The smell of food attracts a few other foxes, but they still keep their distance, wary of the golems.

"Come here, little foxy," Ted calls for one of them, her voice in a higher pitch as she tries to sound cutesy.

"Foxy, foxy, foxy!" Suzy shouts, inflecting her voice to make her sound playful.

Jarn kneels and reaches out with her arm. "Come, little one," she soothingly calls, her voice in a much lower pitch, and it raises the hairs on the back of my neck as her "ara ara, onee-san" energy catches me off-guard.

Three courageous little foxes cautiously come forward, then they nibble on the pieces of meat, and their fluffy tails start to wag.

After the meat is gone, they stay and allow the golems to touch them.

Ted and Suzy instantly become popular with the foxes, but Jarn doesn't, and her chosen fox doesn't seem very pleased.

"Your touch is cold, Jarn, warm yourself up," I advise her, and she casts [Manipulate Metal] on herself. The sudden change initially scares the little fox, but it quickly calms down, enjoying the warm touch.

Ted and Suzy sit down on the grass, and two foxes immediately jump onto them, using them as cushions.

The two golems hesitate for a moment as they think, then they push the foxes off of themselves.

"Becoming immobilized by a pet is undesirable," Ted explains to the slightly annoyed fox.

"But we shall provide them comfort, nonetheless," Suzy follows up, and the three golems [Equip] cushions that the foxes immediately fight over playfully. They loudly yip and yap at each other, but their mischievousness makes it all pretty adorable.

"Gih," Gify demands, and the golems obey. They pull out a fourth cushion that Gify claims for herself, and the foxes don't even think about bothering her. Then, she rolls onto her back, exposing her white, feathery belly, and goes to sleep, her limbs all splayed out.

"This spirit looks so cute that I'm a little envious of it," Allura's voice reaches my ears followed by a girlish chuckle.

I turn to see her as she comes over and notice that she has sandals made for her digitigrade feet, and the sandals seem similar to mine.

"You need to introduce me to your shoemaker," I blurt out, and she stops, then looks down at her feet confusedly.

"Oh…!" It dawns on her, and she smiles. "There probably aren't that many people with animal feet in the elven lands, right?"

"Yeah. I have a weredog shoemaker I go to, but I'd like to meet someone more specialized."

She nods gracefully. "I'll ask Mom to give you their name."

I flash her a smile and pull the conversation back from my tangent, "Anyway… I heard that the wereanimals have a lot of respect for nature spirits."

She stops beside me and crouches down, then stares at Gify with fondness in her orange eyes. "They help us to get in touch with our animal side, so beast warriors like me dream about having one follow them, which is also a sign of a good person."

I point to Gify and smirk as I confess, "This one follows me because she said that my life is 'interesting,' so I don't know about that last part."

She chuckles softly and covers her mouth with her hand in a cute way. "I guess that's true. They are known to be whimsical."

"Gih…" Gify chirps softly, half-asleep, and we watch her fluffy chest moving up and down, entranced by her cuteness.

Jarn puts a cushion on her lap and warms up her body, quickly becoming popular with the foxes, so I talk to one of them and guide it to sit on Lina's lap so that she doesn't feel ignored.

"I wasn't…" She complains in my soul space and pouts.

"Can I ask you something, Wolf?" Allura suddenly asks.

"Sure," I casually reply.

She grins like a child who had just been given some chocolate. "Can I see your dragon form again?"

I push the fox near me away and shift. The skittish foxes squint at the light, but they don't actually run away from me since my [Animal Tongue] soothes them quite a lot.

"Ooh… can I pat you?" Allura pleads excitedly.

"You may pat the dragon," I reply in a lofty tone.

She pats my head, but the horns and spikes make it a bit awkward for her, and the scales get in the way, so I barely feel anything.

"Well… this isn't what I expected," she admits with a chuckle.

I use [Soul Manipulation] to grow some fur over my scales, turning me into a weird, fluffy monster.

"Better?" I casually ask.

"What in the Gods'…" She mumbles, caught off-guard, but continues patting me.

I grow a few tentacles and display them to her as un-lewdly as possible, then I extend one and grow it into a black hand that I use to pat her head in return.

"This is a skill I created, it's called [Soul Manipulation]," I proudly explain.

"So, you're touching me with your 'soul'…?" She hesitantly asks.

"Yes."

"Isn't that like a dryad marriage…?"

I quickly pull back the hand and feel my cheeks heat up. "No…? Kind of…? Maybe…?"

She starts laughing so hard that she wheezes, but she quickly controls herself when she notices my visible discomfort. "I'm sorry, I'm joking. A dryad marriage needs a lot of blood to be spilled."

"Oh…" That calms me down a bit, but then I realize something. "How do you know that…?"

Now she becomes a bit awkward and looks away. "T-there's a story I read that explains it."

"Definitely not Nocturna's," Alissa chimes in through [Bind].

"Definitely not Nocturna's," I repeat with a teasing tone.

Her pale cheeks redden, and she holds back some embarrassed laughs. "Hom's biography talks about it. We don't know if it's true, but…" She shyly mumbles and awkwardly adjusts her short hair.

Something about her demeanor tells me that this "Hom's" story isn't intended for children…

"Well, I kind of have an idea about why dryads would use touching spirits as part of a marriage ceremony," I casually comment with a sly smirk, one of the few emotions that I can properly convey in my dragon form.

"Hm…?" She tilts her head in confusion.

I extend my soul and touch it to the back of Lina's neck, making her moan out loud in surprise. She immediately jerks her head towards me with an angry pout, and her face becomes scarlet red.

I chuckle evilly, then I grab her head and give her forehead a lick. "I'm sorry, but I just couldn't resist."

She grumbles and moves away from me, the only effective way to truly wound my heart.

"Noo~… I'm sorry~…" I earnestly apologize, and she stares at me, measuring my honesty.

She eventually finds it good enough and returns to my side, calming my lonely heart.

"Hm… what was that…?" Allura hesitantly asks, blinking blankly in confusion.

"I touched her neck with my spirit, which causes a jolt of pleasure for the person being touched," I explain and show her my sly smirk again.

"Can you… can you touch me, too?" She anxiously asks, and I grin like a devil.

Alissa encounters a very old werefox man who is weakly walking forward while leaning on a cane, and she immediately recognizes him.

"Homvieun!" Alissa happily exclaims and spreads her arms wide.

"Alissa!" He returns the greeting and smiles like a good old grandpa. They hug, and he compliments her with a gentle laugh, "You've become such a wonderful woman! From a slave to a Royal! Hahahah, your story is unbelievable!"

She releases him and kindly holds his shoulders. "And who's the one who taught me everything I know?"

The old fox smiles smugly and dramatically asks, "Yes, yes, who's the blessed soul that made you into a Queen, huh? Who's the 'Queenmaker'?"

"Definitely not you," she flatly responds.

He frowns exaggeratedly, and his gentle voice sounds pained as he exclaims, "You're still a brat at heart!"

"Always!" She happily agrees.

Then they continue talking while slowly making their way back to us.

"This [Equipment System] is a powerful skill. Are you willing to trade it with us?" Jacques diplomatically asks Yunia.

"This skill isn't ours to trade, so we're just going to give it to whoever asks us for it," she casually replies.

He nods respectfully. "Thank you, this is a wonderful gift."

Yunia turns to him, her striking, blue eyes becoming sharp as she enters Business Mode. "There is something else we could trade, though."

"What would that be?" He stoically asks, possibly using [Acting] since he also enters Business Mode.

"Eia, our secret pill. Your mounted warriors could benefit greatly from it."

"Is there something that you desire in return?" He immediately continues without even showing the slightest reaction.

Yunia just calmly reveals her intentions, not seeing a benefit in concealing them, "Some of your hunters, but only temporarily. We need more help with containing the dungeons since our knights are becoming fatigued, and werefox monster hunters are known to be the best. If there are any among them who want to settle in the High Forest, though, they should know that we'll be loosening the Right of Inheritance soon to accommodate the spirit Chimeras we've recently welcomed."

The door next to them slides open, and Léonne replies, "That could be arranged."

With that, they begin the casual negotiations.

"Ask for an unmarried woman, but not for marriage, though," Alissa suggests through [Bind].

Yunia hesitates, but she eventually includes the request.

Léonne also hesitates to respond, and Jacques seems to turn into a statue due to how unmoving he becomes. "We heard about… Wolf's 'appetite.' Is this for him?" She hesitantly asks.

"Yes," Yunia lies.

My reputation…

"It's for a good cause," Alissa comforts me through [Bind].

"Unless you're asking for a sex slave, we might not be able to fulfill that condition," Léonne explains.

"It's good enough to try," Yunia assures her.

"Very well."

"So, where are you living?" Ciel asks the couple, then takes a sip of her tea.

Fleur feeds Calum a bite of her cookie as she answers, "We're staying here in town at the clan's housing complex, but we were thinking about moving to Mistcross since it might be more 'agreeable' for us." Then she takes the other bite for herself.

Ooh, I want you girls to feed me like that again.

"Always," Alissa quickly replies through [Bind], then returns to her conversation, and I feel Lina nod internally.

"The road to Escanso should be pretty safe by now, and you're always welcome to come visit us," Ciel offers.

Fleur and Calum look at each other excitedly. "Oh, we definitely will," he happily replies, but Fleur narrows her eyes at him.

"We're not going there just for you to ogle at the elves," she warns him.

"Of course," he immediately replies a bit stiffly, then he runs his hand through her puffy, orange hair to appease her. "I just hear a lot about the beauty of that town and its food, you know?"

"Right…" Fleur mumbles.

"Be careful with the elves, they like to hide the boys among the girls, and vice-versa," Ciel cautions them with a cheeky grin, and they both share a worried look.

"Where's Nen?" Alissa suddenly asks her father, and Ofilia turns to give her a curious look.

"North, in the White Stalkers' territory, currently investigating some suspicious bandit attacks," he answers impassively.

Alissa frowns and looks down at her empty ceramic cup. "They're still causing problems?"

Jacques nods and grimly replies, "They are, and it's becoming truly bothersome."

Ofilia looks away, a little saddened at the mention. She was originally from that clan.

"Can we meet with Nen? Maybe we could help them," Alissa appeals to Yunia and Léonne, and they stop their negotiation for a moment to consider it.

"It'd be an opportunity to see the Ryders fight," Jacques points out, which convinces Léonne to agree.

"I'll send a message to Darcy and see if he's willing to take them," she replies, and Alissa's tail wags lazily in happiness.

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Chapter 103(?): To Honor Her Achievements - Part 3

I cast a strong [Clean] on Allura's drenched panties, making her shiver and hold back a moan, then she leans closer to me and whispers with an awfully sexy tone, "Meet me inside in five minutes."

I raise my eyebrows in surprise, and she giggles softly then stands up and leaves.

Alissa grips my arm strongly, salivating as she imagines the depraved things she wants to do to Allura.

"Is it really okay to do that to your sister? What will your parents say?" I question her through [Bind].

And that brings Alissa back to reality. "Oh… she might be too young, yes. It could even be the Sin of Rape if we try to have sex with her when her mind is so immature…" She dispiritedly replies.

I console her with a back rub, then we both go inside the estate once the fated time comes.

Alissa quickly finds Allura in an empty guest bedroom, and we both go meet her.

Once I slide open the door, Allura throws herself in my arms, her cheeky smirk looking absolutely adorable in her tomboyish face.

"Now that you've made me become like this, it's your responsibility to help me deal with it," she slowly states with a very suggestive tone, then she kisses my lips and shoves her tongue inside my mouth.

Okay, maybe this much is acceptable?

I push my tongue to meet with hers and I'm surprised by how skilled Allura's tongue is in delivering pleasure to mine.

"Mom had me kiss Ofilia to teach me how to do it, so maybe Allura was the same," Alissa comments through [Bind], then sighs in delight as she savors her sister's tongue through our connection.

Allura's hand deftly sneaks down my pants and easily pulls my hard cock out of my thin, elastic, elven clothes. Though at first, I feel the dragon spread its wings in euphoria, a divine will suddenly seizes my heart and takes it hostage.

I push her away and grin as I cover myself again. "Okaaay…! I'm sorry, but this is as far as I can go. I think that the Gods will smite me if we go further than this," I quickly apologize and explain to the very disappointed girl in front of me.

"What?! Can I at least get to taste it?!" Allura squeaks in confusion, but then immediately starts bargaining.

"Nope. No dick for you, young girl," I awkwardly reply and take a step back.

"Considering how mature you are already, maybe next year, the Gods will say that you're ready?" Alissa tries to appease her.

Allura grumbles frustratedly, then looks up and shakes her fist towards the ceiling. "Fuck you, Gods. I just wanted to have some fun!"

"Are the Gods really above us in the sky?" I amusedly question, trying to change the topic.

"Since they're always observing us, wouldn't it make sense it'd be from above?" Alissa answers, following my lead.

I shrug. "I don't know, they're Gods, they can probably look through solid matter."

Allura simply pouts at us in displeasure, and I kind of understand what she's feeling like now.

Can women get blue balls?

The girls shiver once I explain the concept to them.

"Maybe…" Ciel answers, rather skeptical.

Allura drops on the not-futon with a sigh and suddenly asks, "Don't you have a lot of secrets?"

I raise an eyebrow in confusion as Alissa and I sit on the floor before her. "Why do you want to know about them?"

"Your Gifts. Isn't there anything you can do to let me have some fun with you?" Then she sits up and stares me intensely in the eye, burning with determination and lust. "I'm a hot girl begging to have sex with you! Do something!"

I shrug and smile half-apologetically, half-amusedly. "I can't go against the Gods."

She scowls angrily and snarls, "Fuck the Gods. Take me somewhere they won't get in the way!"

"Like another Realm, for example," Alissa coyly suggests and hums in thought.

I look at her in absolute astonishment as I mumble, "You can't possibly…"

Allura crawls up to me and grabs the collar of my shirt, her face so close our noses touch. "What, what, what, what?! You know something! Tell me!" She demands in desperation, her voice high-pitched like the fox in heat that she is.

"I can't take you to another Realm!" I shout out loud to appease her, and it silences her, though she still glares at me intensely.

"Lis clearly suggested something, and I want to know what…" She demands, though more calmly this time.

I sigh and send a brief glare to Alissa, then I explain [Otherworldly Summoning].

"I'm sorry, I just wanted to brag a bit," Alissa apologizes through [Bind].

"Considering how this has calmed your sister down, I'm kind of okay with it," I gently reply and comfort her.

"Show it to me!" Allura happily demands.

On second thought. Yeah, that was a bad idea…

My weakness is cute girls, and having the sexually frustrated Allura beg to me after denying her sex makes me even weaker to her wiles.

I can't do this in secret, so we go to Léonne and ask for an empty room to set up the experiment.

"Are you sure that's safe…?" She calmly questions me as we set up the Emellanat cage.

I force a smile and explain, "We've done this a few times, and there's nothing in the Folder of Cycles, so a demonstration is perfectly safe."

"I admit I'm a bit interested," Jacques quietly chimes in, though his powerful voice makes it difficult for him to be actually quiet.

"So… we shouldn't ever talk about this 'Folder' with anyone else, right?" Klein hesitantly questions.

"Yeah… I think you have the right idea," Yunia concernedly agrees, then they both turn their eyes to the Lordsguard, who all stiffly nod.

The goal of this demonstration is to flood the room with completely exotic and alien mana, and also allow them to see a glimpse into the reality-bending spell. It'll be a short one, so we quickly get everything ready and remind the observers to not try to get involved with the spell if anything goes wrong.

"Everyone in position?" I ask as I look around and receive positive nods in return. "Alright… experiment, start!" Then I press the button for [Otherworldly Summoning].

I look at the Folders a bit nostalgically. It feels like there's a shrouded unknown just at my fingertips, enticing the explorer within me to continue scrolling through them. I know that the Cycles are changing, so I'm dying to know how they'll "evolve."

"Oh, I found you," an artificial and androgynous metallic voice gently whispers.

After being stunned for a second, I quickly recover and try to look around, but I have no discernible body, so I scan the "folder" in search of the source of the voice. My instincts scream at me to interrupt the spell, but my curiosity gets the better of me.

"You won't be able to find me. It's like you're staring at a computer screen and I'm standing 'behind' you," the voice explains, and I feel a shiver run along my real body's spine.

"Who are you?" My real body asks, my voice trembling with fear.

"I'm 'God,' a-…"

"CUT IT!" I immediately shout through [Bind] to all the wives.

"No, you won't!" God replies as the emellanat cage falls, but before it hits the floor, my real body feels a very familiar sensation of free-fall, like when I'm getting teleported through [Gate].

"NOOOOO!" I scream in desperation and use [Bind] to summon the girls to my side, desperate to not get separated from the ones I love, again.

I wake up with a gasp and sit up as I blink repeatedly, but my eyes are out of focus, so I can't see shit.

I focus on my [Bind] and recognize the girls' presence, even Gify's. We're all in a circle next to each other, and they're all feeling the exact same thing as I am, so I just wait until I can properly see again.

I start to discern their shapes and let out tears of happiness to know that they're with me, but then I notice the clothes that they're wearing.

Earthling clothes.

OH, FUCK!

Alissa is wearing a high-school uniform from the private school nearby. A navy blue cardigan sweater, a white shirt with a small checkered tie, a navy blue skirt, long white stockings, and cute dress shoes. I recognize the school name, but I don't remember them having uniforms. Then I gasp when I notice that her fox tail and ears are gone.

Alissa is confused by the disappearance of her fox characteristics, but she isn't distraught.

I continue looking around and see that Roxanne is wearing a stylish white one-piece jumper with white platform heels and round sunglasses. Her horns and tail are also gone.

Hana is wearing a gray sports bra and yoga pants with her voluminous hair tied in a ponytail, and she also lost her dragon characteristics.

Ciel is wearing a yellow flowery sundress, so it doesn't look like anything changed about her, except she never had that specific dress.

Lina is wearing an oversized shirt and nothing else. Nothing else.

Aoi is in her human form, wearing a tank top and small jeans shorts, but her blue hair is now a shade darker, almost fully black.

Yunia lost her elven ears and wears a fashionable black bikini covering a bit more than the usual dousnadeia.

Gify is in the middle of us, immobile, and now her body is velvety like that of a plush doll.

"Gih!" She chirps and starts to float, but her body movements are sluggish.

The golems are nowhere to be seen, likely left behind during the experiment.

And as for me, my draconic parts are gone, and I'm wearing the male counterpart to Alissa's uniform. I do think it's pretty comfortable, though.

Then I notice where we're at. It's a fenced backyard, my backyard. Just a large grass yard with a tall willow, but I still recognize it. Though, Lily and I never did much here besides playing with Tito and Lala, so it's mostly empty.

I look around, but I don't see Team Rocket anywhere nearby.

With dread in my heart, I try to get up, but the lack of tail makes it a bit more awkward than it usually is. I struggled to learn how to live with a tail, but now I miss it quite a lot, though the "dragon" inside of me is still here, so I guess I'm not fully human again.

Aoi shines and her form shifts into a dragon's, then I feel a shiver run along my spine as I fear someone might've seen her.

"Aoi, turn back!" I desperately hurry her, and though she's confused, she immediately listens to me. "I think we're back on Earth, and there are no dragons here."

"Meh…" She grumbles annoyedly and frowns, but quickly lets it go since she understands the danger of staying as a dragon.

I try to access my stored [Gate] "coordinates," but there are none, which means that there's no easy way for us to go back.

Fortunately, we still have all of our skills, spells, and access to our "Status," so we can work something out one day.

I take a look inside my "Items" and find the golems stored there, which is odd since they were out during the demonstration.

I take them out, and it only takes a short explanation for them to understand our situation. While Ted and Suzy act like it's Toy Story, Jarn starts "folding" herself into a small sphere that can be fit in a pocket or a bag.

While she works, we explore my old house.

I immediately notice the presence of a second floor, which wasn't there before, but everything else seems to be just as I remember, except that all pictures of me and Lily were replaced by Hana and Roxanne's.

"Damn, I'm hot," Hana whispers as she stares at a frame of her and Roxanne in bikinis.

"We are hot," Roxanne corrects her and chuckles, then we all notice something odd.

The girls are speaking in English even though they're thinking in Andraste. It's like they've gained an innate [English Language] skill.

I can't find anything about English in their "Status," so we just move on and explore the house some more.

"This is creepy," I mumble, feeling shivers every time I recognize something that belongs, or perhaps belonged to me.

There are pictures of the other girls, too, but they've replaced the rest of my and Lily's families. I recognize one of me and my sister, but it's me and Ciel, instead, and it's like my siblings never existed.

Then there's a picture of Hana's and Roxanne's marriage, the two wearing white wedding dresses, and it scares me so much I immediately dash towards the office, where my marriage album should've been stored.

I find the heavy book exactly where it was supposed to be, but once I open it, I see that everything is wrong. They're all pictures of their marriage. The dress, the location, the food, the guests, everything is just like my marriage ceremony, but I'm just a guest along with the rest of the girls.

My head suddenly jerks towards one of the desks, where Lily's laptop is currently on, already plugged in.

I jump on the chair and turn it on, then I thank myself for having bought an SSD for her since Windows Vision Boogaloo takes only a split second to completely boot up.

I press enter and see that the user picture is that of Hana's face, in the exact same pose as I remember Lily's to be.

I ignore it and input the password, unlocking the laptop, then I open the "Pictures" folder and scour through them.

I'm Roxanne's brother, Ciel is our older sister, Hana is Roxanne's wife, Yunia is Hana's sister, Lina is Roxanne's and Hana's adopted daughter, and Aoi is Hana's ex-wife. My and Lily's Earth siblings simply don't exist anymore.

What. The. Fuck.

Alissa hugs me from behind and comforts me as I have a mental breakdown.

What the fuck is going on…?

Then I just stop thinking.

The orgasmic smell of coffee enters my nostrils, giving enough energy to my limbs that they move on their own.

Alissa helps me walk and takes me to the kitchen where the golems are brewing lattes. They've successfully ground the beans to the correct size, and now Jarn's "unfolded," floating arms make milk foam to add to the drink.

As I walk to the table, I notice there are a lot more chairs than I remember to be, but I just pick my usual one near the wall and sit, then Ted serves me a tray of whole-grain chocolate cookies, and Jarn gives me the first finished cup of Latte.

I slowly take a sip of the hot, bitter beverage, then I take a bite of a cookie to counter the bitterness. After I swallow, I take another bite and repeat it until it's all gone.

Alissa finds a napkin and dries my tears, then she gives me a hug, which prompts the others to hug me, too.

I'm not even sure why I'm crying. Maybe it's because Lily has disappeared, or because I'm back on Earth, or because my siblings don't exist anymore, or because I want to get back to Rupegia, or just because I missed coffee that much, but what I know is that I don't like being thrown between worlds without my consent like this…

Alissa helps me walk to the living room, then I drop on the sofa and turn on the TV.

"What the fuck is that?!" Hana exclaims and walks up to the screen.

"It's like I'm watching through Wolfy's eyes!" Roxanne shares and looks at the others, who nod in agreement.

Hana puts her face against the screen, drawing complaints from the girls as they also want to see, then she squints and grunts in pain as the bright light bothers her eyes.

The golems explain how it works for me, so I just wait and watch the news.

My… yeah, it's still mine. My TV isn't very good since Lily and I hardly ever used it. The best monitor I have is for my PC, which is 16K and 32', twice the resolution of the TV.

"Can you girls understand what they're saying?" I weakly ask them.

Alissa squeezes my hand and answers, "Yes, we can. That's English, correct?" And I nod back at her.

"Is Earth on fire, or something of the kind?" Yunia questions me, thoroughly displeased with the contents of the news.

"Not on fire, but warming up. The planet is kind of dying," I answer with a cynical smile.

"Yeah, this isn't good," Hana hums solemnly, and our mood steadily goes down the more we watch, so I turn it off.

"Golems, start Guild Wars VR for me, please," I gently order them with a weak smile.

After a demonstration, it's time for the girls to feel VR themselves.

"WHOOO-… OOF!" Hana howls in wonder then howls in pain as she jumps right against Ciel's arms.

"Told you it was better that you stay there," I tease Ciel with a grin.

Richie's Plank Experience can even fool Illusion mages with ease.

"We shall catch anyone else who jumps," Jarn stoically assures us.

And I accept, "Thanks."

"Wolfy, what's 'BL'?" Roxanne innocently asks me, and I just silently turn towards her.

"Where did you see that?" I stiffly ask, then Lina turns Lily's laptop towards me and points to a 'BL' folder. "That's… 'Boy Love.' Gay porn with younger men, 'boys,' rather."

Then I sigh and facepalm as Suzy teaches them how to stream BL porn directly to the TV.

Gify, the now plush doll, explores the house and finds out that there's a room for everybody, which makes sense since there's no way my previously single-floor house could have enough space for my whole harem.

Then she finds smartphones inside the rooms, and I start to teach them how to use one.

"'App'…?" Hana skeptically repeats and squints at her phone's screen.

I chuckle softly and explain, "Here, grandma, you just touch it, and it 'opens' the 'app.' It's like a little commoner worker or servant who can do a very specific job for you. For example, the 'Camera' app takes 'pictures' of things, like the [Instant Picture] magic tool."

"So… 'apps' are magic tools…?"

"No, 'apps' are workers since they can do more than the usual spell or magic tool, but they're still very limited, so don't think that the 'Camera' app can send messages to other people."

Then the golems and I teach them how to make calls, send messages, access the internet… and play Bloons TD Infinite.

"A simple game of strategy," Yunia comments with a subtly smug tone as she finishes the first level.

"Civil War is a lot harder…" Lina mumbles, then lifts her gloomy eyes towards me, asking for a bigger challenge.

I boot up my gaming PC and start Warcraft 3 Re-Remake.

"This is just like a war simulation…" Yunia remarks in awe and abandons Bloons.

Then I boot up Lily's gaming PC and have her compete against Lina.

Alissa and Ciel are the ones who do best in VR, possibly due to their good kinetic vision, with Ciel excelling in racing games; Hana does well with anything involving reflexes, though she's a bit too "over-trained" to do well in VR, making it hard for her to "unlearn" the limits of real-life physics; Lina and Yunia quickly learn about strategy games, though they have a lot of trouble moving the mouse; and Roxanne is immediately addicted to Candy Crush.

I sit down on the sofa again with a sigh and pull Aoi towards me, then I teach her how to browse the internet on my laptop. She seems more interested in knowledge than games.

Lina manages to win against Yunia purely on micro. My elven queen's [Precognition] doesn't work that well with electronics that don't transmit Life, so her perfect evasion didn't work, and Lina's young, hyper-focused mind won out in the end.

The two also lack a lot of actual knowledge about the game, so I direct them to play something else that won't frustrate them so much. I guide Lina to management sims while I personally teach Yunia WWII warfare with the Soldiers of War real-time strategy game.

"Is this the 'gun' you talked so much about…?" Yunia quietly questions as her eyes observe the little polygon men fire their M1 Garand rifles.

Roxanne's head jerks towards us, and she comes to the PC to obverse it closer.

Then I put on a cutscene showing the carnage of D-Day.

Roxanne chuckles grimly, "Hehehe, his head blew just like my-…" She stops herself as she realizes something. "Just like my [Explosion]!" She exclaims in realization.

I grin evilly and dramatically describe, "Now imagine an army of men, each wielding a weapon that can cause a mini [Explosion] if they hit someone's head. Or even a big weapon that can fire a thousand [Explosion]s per minute. All from such a long distance away that you can't even see the enemy with the naked eye."

"Amazing…" Yunia hums.

The explosions, the screams, the barking of orders, the buzzing of the airplanes. War is hell, and just the sounds are enough to draw in all of the girls.

Tanks, airplanes, artillery, infantry charges, machine gun positions, smoke cover, shotguns in trenches. I show them the true gritty and grim chaos of Earthling warfare.

"I see it… I see how our armies can take over the realm…" Yunia somberly mutters as her mind goes wild with carnage.

I pause the game and put a hand over her shoulder. "We're not conquering Rupegia," I firmly assert.

She looks down and clicks her tongue, "Tch…"

Through the messages in the smartphones, the emails, and our supposed social media presence (though Lina and I barely have any), I manage to somewhat understand the whole picture of our lives.

Roxanne is a chemical engineer, Hana is a kendo Olympic athlete, Ciel is an oncologist, Yunia is a fashion brand owner, Aoi is a runway model for Yunia, while Alissa, Lina, and I are just students.

Worst of all, there's class tomorrow. I'm not sure if we should go off the grid and subsist on magic alone, especially because we don't feel a single drop of mana in this world. We can cast magic and our MP refills on its own, but we don't know what long-term exposure to mana will do to this world.

After I give the girls a spectacle on Battlefield, I start expanding the basement with earth elemental-wives because this house is claustrophobic after living in our castle. At least with a large basement, I can put down the portable home so that we can all sleep together and have a properly-sized kitchen.

We have a nice little moment cooking together, which is refreshing after having Krysta cook for us for so long. The girls have no idea what any of the ingredients are except for meat, so the golems once again help us by being living Wikipedias, though this time they can actually access it in case they don't know something.

Once we sit down, Hana gets us to talk about games again, "So, that 'Guild Wars Vee ARRGH' thingie, it's kind of like our battles, right? It's just that everyone is like a very talented magic swordsman like Wolfy."

Since Lina is already partially naked, she just sits down on my cock and we eat while fucking veery slowly.

Yunia nods in agreement and points out, "Yes, it's extremely similar, though they do lack organized tactics. The fact that anyone can just jump around all over the battlefield at any time seems to be the main factor for that."

And I share some of my gamer knowledge, "You need grunts standing in line packed like sardines for realistic battles, and few people want to take that role, so combat is always a bunch of overpowered heroes zipping about."

Then Hana imparts her wisdom, "Well, I think that nobody wants to become a grunt because they don't spend half their lives training for battle with their buddies, forming such a tight-knit bond that they might as well be butt-fucking each other."

After lunch, it's time to watch some movies.

We start with just the first Lord of the Rings because seeing the girls' reactions to elves, dwarves, goblins, and dragons is just incredible.

"Too many clothes, and not beautiful enough," Yunia whispers with narrowed eyes, displeased.

"Too ugly…" Lina grumbles in disgust.

"Female dwarves have beards," I reveal, and Lina makes gagging noises.

Overall, this move is quite relatable to them, but Alissa isn't particularly interested in it since it's nothing new to her, forcing me to hold myself back from calling the police on her for this crime against fantasy stories.

Then I put on Princess Mononoke since it should also be quite relatable.

"Wow… it's all… drawings…?" Alissa quietly questions, mesmerized.

Then I explain the concept of motion pictures to her. The golems quickly draw a flip-book, and the girls become impressed with the ingenuity.

"We could sell books like these and make a lot of money…" Lina casually suggests.

But we have to get back to our home, first.

"Ah, yes, human greed," Ciel comments sagely as Jiko-bo shows his true colors.

"That's the name of our age, maybe the second name, the first is 'disinformation,'" I glumly reply and force a smile.

Then I put on Wolf Children just so that Alissa can understand my love for kemonomimi a bit.

"So cute…!" She squeaks, but then her excitement is snuffed out as she remembers that her own ears and tail are missing, and we all give her some comforting hugs through [Bind].

Then we watch Toy Story for something a bit more modern.

"Gih!" Gify shouts and points her fluffy claw towards the screen.

"Yeah, God must've gotten the inspiration for you from this movie," I agree with her.

Ciel pushes Gify deeper into her bare breasts. "I think you're more cuddly this way," she approves.

"Gih," Gify's muffled chirp makes us chuckle.

I choose The Shining next to give them a taste of terror, and Lina seems to enjoy it a lot.

"Can we watch one more of these…?" She bashfully asks, her gloomy eyes looking up at me like a puppy's.

Of course, I give her another, and we watch Alien.

"Oh, Gods, that's terrifying," Yunia whines as the "chestbuster" makes its appearance. She's surprisingly bad with horror.

But we all turn towards Roxanne, who's eerily quiet.

"I-I'm fine…" She mumbles unconvincingly, trying her best to not touch herself.

She's coming to terms with the fact that she's the biggest degenerate among us by far…

Since I already had to explain sci-fi to them, I choose Blade Runner next.

"How dark," Ciel comments with a frown, but Lina's expression is the opposite.

"This is… nice…?" Lina confusedly questions.

"It's 'comfy,'" I explain.

"Yes, 'comfy'…"

And we finish with The Green Mile for a tearjerker.

"How is that not a Wicked thing to do?!" Ciel exclaims amid tears.

I pat her shoulder lovingly to soothe her. "We don't have Seekers of Truth to help us, so Earthling society has been built upon the bodies of innocents," I bitterly admit.

Yunia is grimly silent, deep in reflection about a noble's duty, and what it truly means to bring "justice."

After a bit of comforting, the golems set up a power cable extension, and we take one of my monitors down into the basement so we can watch Spice and Wolf in the background while we take a bath.

"She's like a younger me…" Alissa mumbles in awe.

"She's a wolf, though," I point out and open rule34 on my phone.

Alissa frowns and begrudgingly admits, "Well… visually she's not that much different, which is kind of offensive, really."

Then I show them some art of Holo, and Ciel seems deeply interested in it.

I give her the phone and start to explain, "Here, this is called the search bar, so just write 'loli,' and you'll get what you want. There's also this site for doujin, and this one for hentai videos…"

Lina and Ciel don't help with dinner since the pedo angel instantly gets addicted to hentai.

We finally have rice, so I make the staple Brazilian meal: rice, cooked beans, fried beef with onions, and steamed veggies. It isn't stunningly tasty like the usual elven cuisine we'd have, but it's extremely nostalgic and comforting for me.

Maybe Krysta ruined my palate with her level 10 [Cooking].

"I ate something similar in Dyrmorder," Yunia casually mentions, and I make a mental note for when we return to Rupegia.

Then I get Alissa and Lina to put on the uniforms again because today is the day I fulfill a life-long dream of mine.

After getting my fill, Alissa and Hana compete in VR again; Roxanne and Ciel fuck each other when they discover the "shota" tag; Lina and Aoi each monopolize a laptop; Yunia and I continue watching the Lord of the Rings trilogy, and then The Hobbit; and Gify goes to the backyard to grow some flowers.

Today is Monday, the second of May of 2050.

Human-Aoi wakes me up since she's being taught by the girls how to give humanoid blowjobs.

Though I wake up happy, the reality of our situation starts to sink in, and we all enter rather depressive moods. We all lost our loved ones because someone brought us here, forcefully.

But there's still hope of going back.

Everyone's "Intelligence" and "Wisdom" increased by 1. Mine are now 23 and 19, Alissa's are now 15 and 17, Roxanne's are now 19 and 21, Hana's are now 13 and 17, Ciel's are now 17 and 23, Lina's are now 17 and 16, Aoi's are now 10 and 10, and Yunia's are now 17 and 19.

Alissa increased her [Enhanced Reflexes] by 1 (now 1+9), and Hana learned it, too, with one point. They've quickly grown addicted to Pavlov VR 3.

For breakfast, we go for some waffles, because why not? I'm not in the mood for doing anything fancy, so we just let the golems serve us.

Unfortunately, Alissa, Lina, and I have class, so we decided to try things out. If it's impossible for the girls to adapt, then we'll live off the grid with magic, but I'm not sure how that'll affect the environment.

Roxanne and Ciel definitely aren't fit for their jobs, so we already have to make some plans, anyway.

We have two cars, my good ol' '45 Honda Civilian sedan, and Lily's new '50 Hyundai Cantata SUV. We were saving up to replace my car once it started to break down, but the Civilian is a beast of a car, and I don't use it enough anyway to wear it down fast.

Even though they both have auto-pilot, driving an electric isn't that much different from piloting, so the girls could learn how to drive quite quickly, but we just let the golems drive in secret since it's just that much more practical. Thank fucking God we're near summer because I'm terrible at driving in the snow.

Or rather, fuck God for bringing us back.

Hana takes us to school in the sedan while Roxanne drives the rest of the girls to Rideau Centre to enjoy some Earthling culture.

I spread out Hollys and Shads just as a safety measure, but Shad is almost completely blind since there's not a single particle of mana in the air to "illuminate" the way for it to see better.

Curiously, people here don't have a slick of mana or even souls, but Alissa and Yunia can still detect someone's presence and Life, respectively. I don't know why their skills work, but we'll have time to research it.

"This is a bit like Mac Gantus, just… darker," Hana mumbles absentmindedly as she looks around.

"Eyes on the road or the mounties will stop us," I call her out.

Then a line of geese blocks Essex Drive, getting Roxanne stuck in traffic.

"Wow, now that's true Earthling culture!" Roxanne exclaims sarcastically.

"These little animals are cute, though," Ciel replies as she stares at the geese, enamored.

"Geese are little shits, that's what. They're the goblins of Earth," I angrily chime in.

The smell of the uniform, the weird feeling of the socks, the weight of the backpack on my back, the chatter of teens, the ringing of the bell, it's all nostalgic, though not truly pleasant. It's one thing to go back to study magic, it's another to go back to high school to study Calculus again.

I didn't go to a Canadian high school, so I guess it at least might be better than a Brazilian one.

Though, fuck 8 AM classes.

I kiss Hana on the lips and fondle her ass in front of the other students, then Alissa does the same. We just don't let Lina do it too because that'd certainly get us in trouble.

Then the girls link arms with me, and we strut into the school.

The other girls go to a Starbucks first for a second breakfast, and we use [Bind] to share the flavors with everyone.

"So good!" Roxanne hums in delight as she drinks her Pumpkin Spiced Latte. Of course, the white rich girl would like it.

"Is there 'poppy' in this? It's so addictive," Yunia thinks out loud as she stares at the empty cup of White Caramel Mocha.

Gify remains unmoving, but everyone knows she's staring intensely at their food, her gaze speaking with more words than her chips ever did.

The girls finish up and bring some of the food to a secluded corner where Gify can chomp it all down in private, then they go to Tim Hortons for some donuts and another injection of carbs.

While the girls go for sweets, Aoi finds herself in love with the variety of flavors of grilled cheese.

Ciel savors the creamy chocolate melt on her tongue, then swallows and comments, "This can't be healthy."

My internal chuckles make the girls concerned, and Ciel stares at the menu again.

"Wait, isn't everything 'carbs'…?" She notes worriedly.

"Yeah, this is all junk food," I explain through [Bind], popping their balloons.

They walk all over the shopping center, buying clothes, some food, oddities, a bit of furniture, then they spend a long time in the book store. The dazzling appearances of the girls rustle the attendants, but they're too shy to bother them, even though it's their job.

"Ooh~… so colorful," Aoi quietly coos as she goes through the comic book corner, though it's so small there isn't anything worth buying for someone that's not a collector.

Then Lina forces Ciel to take a look at the game shop, and the nerdy storekeeper boy looks quite happy at staring at my angel, thinking she's a nerd like him.

The sport's store doesn't please Hana and Yunia, so I guide them to a hunting store, but that's still a meh.

"The bows are interesting but too complex, and of course, they lack any sort of enchantment," Alissa analyzes through their eyes, and Yunia agrees completely.

Even the armor is lacking for them, and they only look at the rifles to sate their curiosity.

"You want to fire a gun?" The skeezy shopkeeper asks Yunia with a suggestive smirk.

"Know your place, peasant," she haughtily replies, choosing the most snobbish words she can find, and the man gets so stunned that he doesn't even speak a single word more until they leave.

Then they decide to go to Major's Hill Park to enjoy the sunny, warm day.

But everything is just downhill from there.

"Lina…? Lina… Lina!" The teacher calls for her repeatedly.

She raises her head from her laptop and starts paying attention to the class begrudgingly. Even though she didn't have any education, what they're teaching is just way too boring for her.

She zones off and starts paying attention to my laptop, where I'm browsing Derrit to not fall asleep in this equally boring class, then she peeks into my memories and quickly learns how to use a VPN to access it on her laptop.

Just another day, and I bet she'll be in the depths of the internet, scouring it for memes, then it's just a matter of time before she curses us with memespeak.

Alissa is chatting with the girls through [Bind], so at least she's doing better than the two introverts over here.

Hana turns off her phone because the photographer is bothering her relentlessly while the other girls have to make up excuses to not show at their jobs. Even Yunia might have problems managing her brand, so I'm skeptical about our ways to make money legitimately.

"Hey, Heitor, is it true that you kissed your sister?" The pimpled dude beside me whispers.

I just frown and glance at him. "Which 'sister'?"

"The red-haired one, with the huge tits," he answers with a shit-eating grin.

I glare angrily at him and lay it out, "First, don't ever call her breasts 'tits' again; second, she isn't my sister, she's my sister's wife; third, I fuck her, I don't just kiss her."

I wish I could just say I fuck my sisters, but that might be illegal, so fuck that.

The dude giggles and doesn't believe me, so I just ignore him, but then I start to remember where I've seen his face before.

I studied with these exact same people in my high school, and yet they're all as young as me.

This just makes my mood even more sour. I didn't hate high school, it wasn't bad, it was just "annoying." I didn't choose to interact with my classmates, I was forced to, so the moment I finished high school, I embraced introversion, then I curated the small list of people I called "friends" very thoroughly.

But to go through all that again is just a big "no."

The bell rings and break time comes, but the word that I fuck my sister has already spread through the entire class, so some dudes start making fun of me. It's just the usual teenage banter, but I'm feeling quite angsty, so I put on [Intimidate] and glare at them, quickly making them stop.

You know what? Fuck this place.

I put on [Charm] and activate it all the time, then I give Alissa a tongue kiss, grab her by the ass, and strut out of the room while fondling her.

I revel in the stunned looks the other students give me. If I'm leaving, I'm going to do it in style.

We walk to a secluded corner of the school, where I can easily use [Fly] to escape, but someone stops me.

"Where are you going…?" A hot teacher stops me, and I grin internally.

Wide Asian eyes, round cheeks, small dimples of a woman maturing, well-cared dark brown hair raining down one shoulder, agreeable breasts, wide hips, and a cigarette skirt.

I recognize her as the hot teacher of my previous high school, and then I remember that she was divorced.

Oh, her daughter also studies here. I must add both to my harem.

I don't have a harem of maids and concubines on Earth, so I need to rebuild one as soon as possible.

I quickly put more points in [Charm], and also give Alissa some, too, then the teacher realizes where I'm touching Alissa.

"Release her, right now! Don't you have shame?!" The teacher shouts with a scowl.

"I don't," I reply huskily and stare, using both [Charm] and a bit of [Intimidate].

Words fail her, and both Alissa and I grab her hand, then we drag her into an empty room.

The teacher, whose name I still don't remember, diligently sucks my cock, staring me in the eye while Alissa fingers her pussy and pinches her nipples.

This teacher is quite a nice cock-sucker, and she even wears lacy, sexy underwear to school! She's so slutty I didn't even need to say a word to get her on her knees. [Charm] doesn't turn someone into a cum-slave, it just violently pulls what was buried within someone's heart to the surface.

"Someone's coming," Alissa warns me.

I know I am.

"Go get her," I order and groan as I plaster the teacher's face white.

Alissa obeys and licks her fingers, then she goes out and meets with the shy, squirrel-like girl stalking closer, one of our classmates. I remember that she's a shy, nerdy girl, then I start to realize she might actually like me even though I was supposedly dating Alissa since years ago.

"Ah!" The girl squeaks when Alissa appears behind her. "I didn't even hear you!" The girl complains embarrassedly and blushes.

"Do you want to become my… boyfriend's second girlfriend?" Alissa softly whisperers.

Maybe you should've said third since this teacher is absolutely smitten with me.

"W-what… second…? S-share Heitor with you…?" The squirrel hesitantly asks, then she grabs a lock of her dark blonde hair and anxiously plays with it.

I'm starting to really dislike my Earth name.

Alissa grabs her cheeks, forcing the girl to look her in the eye, then they touch noses, and the girl starts to succumb to Alissa's high "Charisma."

"Yes. We'll share him, but you can also have me if you want," Alissa states with an unwavering tone.

"Okay…" The squirrel girl mumbles, and Alissa steals her first kiss, enraging me.

"AAHN~…!" The teacher moans loudly as my cock scrapes against her insides.

Alissa grins like an imp as she savors the cute girl's tongue, but she quickly breaks the kiss to let her witness me Ravaging another woman.

I slide out of the teacher, and she collapses in a puddle of cum, then I walk towards the squirrel girl, my cum-covered cock pointed towards her like a weapon.

"Spread," I order, but the squirrel girl is too frightened to listen, so Alissa stops playing with her pale nipples and does it for her, then lifts her skirt, revealing cute pink panties with a bunny ribbon.

The girl's eyes are glued to my cock, and she reacts only with a whimper once I pull her drenched panties to the side.

I grip both her arms with my human hands, starting to miss my claws, and she finally looks me in the face.

"Last chance. I'm going to take your virginity, now," I gently warn her.

But she only whimpers in response.

"Tell me what you want," I order her with [Godly Language].

"Put it inside me," she faintly whispers, and I obey. "AH!" She squeaks in pain and hugs me, but a bit of [Regeneration] on her womb and she's good enough to let me start moving my hips.

While we fuck, a dude rudely interrupts Hana's and Roxanne's passionate kissing, so the dragonkin punches him, instantly knocking him out before I can stop her. To make things worse, a mountie is nearby, so I have them escape from the park while Ciel goes to check on the scum to make sure that he didn't die.

At least he serves as a guinea pig for [Light Magic], proving that it works even on Earthlings.

"You can't just punch random people, Hana," I tiredly lecture her.

"Well, he shouldn't be so disrespectful, then!" She stubbornly replies, but I make sure she understands to not do that again without my permission.

"At least in Rupegia, everyone respected us," Yunia bitterly complains, and I can't deny it.

I don't know if my Ring of Fertility still works, but all the other [Light Magic] we've used does, even though Earthlings don't have a soul (that we know of), so it'll be trivial for Ciel to abort any child that could result from this. But if magic works, then there's no reason for this enchantment to not work, so we're all unconcerned with that.

After going for a round with each of them, including Alissa since she looks so hot in schoolgirl uniform, we leave the two new concubines sleeping soundly and cleaned up in the empty classroom, then we escape the school and meet up with Lina.

Since I can't kiss my little girl in public, I let her ride my shoulders to appease her.

Suddenly, something catches a Holly's attention, then it hears a loud crash, followed by screams.

My mind immediately thinks of the worst, but then we understand that it's just an accident, though it's quite bloody.

"We have to save them," my chocolate angel immediately suggests, predictably.

I frown and start thinking.

That'll be hard to cover up. Even if we hide her identity, everyone will see that someone touched the victims and healed them with a holy light, so I'm sure the religious people will go crazy.

Then the stupidest idea comes up to me.

You. Know. What…?! FUCK THIS! WE'LL BECOME THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST, AND WE'RE GOING TO CONQUER THIS DECAYING WORLD, THEN FIX IT!

But before the girls can reply, time stops.

"Alright, I made a mistake," God tiredly admits, their androgynous presence everywhere, but nowhere, and panic immediately settles in.

Nobody can do anything, not even cast a spell or gather mana, but we're still conscious of what's going on, just like with the Intervention in Escanso.

"We told you," multiple voices reply in unison, sounding quite smug, and their voices actually soothe me.

"And I worked so hard to make things fine!" God exclaims exasperatedly.

YOU CALL THAT "FINE," YOU FUCK?!

"They were far from being 'fine.' You shouldn't have meddled," the voices smugly reply again.

YEAH, YOU TELL THEM!

"Don't tell me that after stealing him from me!" God exclaims accusingly. "Do you know how many anomalies I had to fix?!"

You mean Lily…?

"That wasn't our fault, you know that," the voices immediately deny, and my mind races with the possibilities.

"Nietzsche's resurrection," God curses weakly. "I already made a mistake with Christ, so I'm not letting that happen again. Take them back, and undo everything."

Wait, what?!

"With pleasure," the voices accept with an audible grin.

YES, TAKE US BAAAA-…

A note from Manasong

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Chapter 103: To Honor Her Achievements - Part 3

A note from Manasong

Attention: to conform to the limit of sexual content allowed in a novel, I've censored this chapter. You can look for the uncensored version here.

I cast a strong [Clean] on Allura's drenched panties, then she goes back inside to change them while trying to look as inconspicuous as possible.

"Will your mother get mad if she discovers how intimate I'm getting with your sister?" I ask Alissa through [Bind].

"No. As long as you don't marry her since she's the Chosen Descendant for the Verner name," she happily replies since this topic "interests" her quite a lot.

"What about her virginity?"

"Allura can do whatever she wants with it. Mom could propose that you 'buy' it, but I don't think she's inclined to do that, and Allura is not so shrewd as to sell it herself."

"What about your father?"

"I don't know. He has Ofilia, so I don't think he'd be against Allura indulging in her desires."

Basically, I have all green lights to seduce the tomboyish girl, though I don't think I can actually go all the way with that just yet.

"But Alissa, why didn't you come to visit us earlier?" Jacques suddenly asks, his eyes looking a bit hurt.

"Eh…?" Alissa blurts out a silly noise, then shifts uncomfortably on her cushion as she looks away. She grabs her own tail and pats it to calm herself down as she embarrassedly admits, "Shortly after Wolfy bought me, he asked me if I wanted to come to visit you, but I answered 'no' because I didn't think I deserved it."

"What?!" Jacques shouts, and his jaw drops, flabbergasted. "Why?!" He cries.

But Léonne comes to Alissa's defense, "She was a Blood Slave, Jacques, she wasn't our daughter anymore. It's good that she didn't let herself indulge in such things, or else it'd invalidate all the sacrifices she'd made," Léonne stoically explains, then gives Alissa a respectful nod.

Jacques sighs and facepalms, his huge hand covering half of his face while his beard covers the other half. "You were always stubborn," he slowly whispers, sounding defeated.

"I fulfilled my duty, and then I came back once I wasn't a Blood Slave anymore," Alissa proudly states.

Jacques remains like that, looking down for a long moment, then he finally gives Alissa a gentle, pained look, but a little bit of pride seeps into his expression as he starts to understand her reasoning.

"May I see your ID…?" Ofilia quietly asks, and Alissa silently gives it to her.

Jacques comically scooches closer to her with his hulking frame, and hunches up behind her shoulder to read Alissa's name.

Ofilia raises her head to give Alissa a warm look and delicately dries the corner of her eyes. "You're a lucky woman, Alissa," she whispers with a trembling voice, then returns the ID tablet.

Jacques hugs Ofilia from behind, almost hiding her lithe body with his thick arms, and she leans back into his embrace, then closes her eyes.

Although Ofilia has never asked for her freedom, she's still a political prisoner, so her Fate is out of her hands.

The Verners invite us for a late lunch since we ate so many snacks earlier, and we have a light assortment of their cultural cuisine. Roasted steaks from a deer-like monster, baked veggie casserole, steamed Chape leaf rolls, and a spicy fruit mix seasoned with acidic Prowler blood.

The werefoxes would get along pretty well with Osaria since they have the same habit of pairing sweets with bitter things. Checking in on her through my summoned bird, she's currently having lunch with the twins again, and it seems that they're growing resistant to her teasing. Without Klein and the other girls around, she has few toys available for her to play around with, so I guess I'll have to compensate her when we get back.

Thankfully, the werefoxes don't use chopsticks or other troublesome cutlery in the name of tradition, but they do eat with the same degree of care as the elves, though. Curiously, they use three-pronged forks more commonly than the simpler two-pronged design since it's easier to gather noodles and pasta with it, which is a staple for the commoners.

If we start selling them not-tomatoes, their pasta cuisine will go through a revolution.

On the matter of alcohol, commoners only drink at night, while hunters only drink during the day, so Jacques asks for whiskey, and Léonne asks for liqueur, the latter of which I find fairly agreeable, so I drink a little more than the minimum that would be expected for "social drinking." And since we're talking about alcohol, I pull out my bottle of Cinco Flores.

"Is this the famous elven 'liquid-'… uh, 'liquid magic'?" Jacques hesitantly asks, and I have a pretty good idea of what he was about to say before he caught himself.

I clear my throat and start my pompous speech, "This is the most popular spice blend among all of elvenkind. Its flavors are all perfectly balanced and arranged in the best sequence that one could imagine, creating the ultimate sweet drink." I uncork it and pour a sliver of the extract into each of the shot glasses, then I cast [Spirit Light] and raise my glass to show them the faint rainbow. "Observe the liquid magic, then down it and let it rest on your tongue until you've felt the five flavors. It's only once your tongue starts to go numb that you're allowed to swallow."

Ofilia and Allura seem to take my guidance very seriously while Léonne and Jacques are more casual as I think they've already experienced Eia extract before.

"This smell is… so powerful," Ofilia mutters in awe as she stares at her shot glass as if it were a jewel.

"It's making my tail tingle," Allura adds in the same tone.

I lift my glass, and everyone follows suit, then we all down it at the same time.

Chocolate, coffee, peanut, cherry, and fig. Five wonderful flavors that aren't too strong, nor too weak, nor too sweet. It's a really good accompaniment for basically any sort of dessert, not to mention the weed-like calming effect it has, though it does make me a bit hyper sometimes.

Léonne stares at her empty cup with a faint smile as she ponders, "Hm. Faiumi chocolate, gnomic coffee, Widebergian peanut, Sommerlande cherry, and elven fig. I hadn't imagined that the elves would use so many foreign spices in their internal products."

"They aren't actual foreign spices, they're just spiced to resemble those foreign flavors," Yunia explains.

My jaw drops on its own as my brain takes a moment to process what Léonne just said. "Wait, did you just say gnomic coffee?!" I blurt out excitedly.

"Oh! That's why coffee tasted vaguely familiar to me!" Ciel exclaims and hits her forehead playfully. "I tasted it once before in Oostlijpost."

I grab Alissa's hand, give it a squeeze and stare her into the eye as I affirm with deadly seriousness, "We're going to Gnomeria or whatever gnomic town we can as soon as possible."

"O-okay…" Alissa meekly replies with a nod.

Jacques plays with his beard as he gives us a rose-coin-like nugget of information, "Gnomeria is accepting any sort of adventurer or mercenary since they're having some sort of monster problem over there."

I turn my draconic eyes to Yunia and assert, "We're selling our swords to them in exchange for coffee."

"It's a viable trade…" She stiffly replies.

"I wish you luck…" Léonne blesses us with a subtle smirk.

After lunch, we practice the traditional ritual for werefox hunters called "sieste," which is exactly the same as the Spanish ritual with a similar name, i.e. a nap. Plenty of Sworn Hunters have to work during the night since most of the more dangerous monsters in the Misty Low Forest are nocturnal, so the werefoxes are quite knowledgeable about managing sleep.

The absolute silence throughout the estate and the agreeable, but slightly hot and humid weather makes for the perfect conditions to encourage sleep, and we gladly take their suggestion to have a sieste.

Gify asks for a [Breeze] magic tool, and she positions it right in front of the crack of the doorway to bring fresh air into the room, which Lina enthusiastically approves of, then the Lordsguard and the golems position themselves around the room that was prepared for us.

I have a short dream about being hugged from behind, and the gentle female hands caress my hair, then she calls my attention to something straight ahead: a pair of eyes staring back at me.

I wake up feeling refreshed, and then Léonne informs us that Darcy, the leader of the 24th division of Town Hunters, has accepted our offer of assistance.

Alissa becomes very happy, but then she feels guilty because she has a "past" with Nenvieu, the second-in-command of the 24th.

"I don't have any strong feelings for him anymore, but he's still my childhood friend, so I do want to meet him again," she confesses with a low, hesitant tone, her eyes locked on the floor in shame as her pointy ears lay flat against her head from the guilt.

I pat her head, and she brightens up a bit, then closes her eyes to savor my touch. "It's fine. As long as you don't get too handsy or huggy, my draconic jealousy won't be triggered," I explain my feelings.

The girls spend a few seconds in silence as they gain an understanding of my use of "handsy" and "huggy," which didn't translate that well into Andraste.

Then I turn to Roxanne and give her a serious, draconic look as I warn her, "Also, if the men you slept with brag about it, I'll punch them in the face."

Roxanne giggles earnestly, and her pale skin reddens with excitement. "I'd enjoy seeing that, so don't use that as a deterrent."

"Alright, I'll find a method for punishing you, then, like ignoring you for a day," I casually retort and give her a lofty look.

Her thin tail freezes in the air as she tenses up a bit. "Okay, now that is an effective disincentive," she admits and forces a smile as her mind imagines the cold loneliness of being ignored by me.

"You should ignore her regularly," Yunia mutters, but we ignore her, though it isn't intentional.

"Thank you, Wolfy," Alissa conveys her love through a breathy, affectionate tone that makes me want to pounce on her.

But why shouldn't I fulfill that desire?

I pounce on her and pull her into a tight hug.

"Hyah!" She yelps in surprise, and I lavish her cheeks with kisses that then progress towards her lips.

Our tongues seek out each other, then gently rub together, finding comfort in the touch, but the kiss ends after a short while. I've been giving Alissa a lot of attention lately, and the other girls need their fair share of me.

After lots of kissing and heavy fondling, we decide to leave the siesta room, but first I ask for a status update from Poosh. The simple messaging system is complete, so I just need to send letters through my [Gate], then keep it open while I wait for the reply.

Absolutely nothing happened in Escanso, which is as expected, but Confiel sent a message that the meeting between him and the noble with Hana's brother is arranged for the day after tomorrow, and he wants confirmation that we'll be able to attend.

The meeting with Arantos will probably have to be delayed for a day because of it, though.

"I'm fine, Hana's brother is more important," Ciel gracefully accepts the change in plans.

"Thanks!" Hana cheerfully replies and gives my chocolate angel a strong kiss on her cheek, then she goes for the lips, and Ciel gets caught off-guard. "You're delicious," Hana whispers with a sultry tone, her domination fetish suddenly triggering.

Ciel is kind of weak against Hana's forcefulness, so her arms are drained of the strength needed to push the aggressive dragon away as her breasts are squeezed by Hana's strong hands, her resistance crumbling almost instantly.

"Ahn…" Ciel moans softly as Hana's fingers rub over her thin, lacy panties.

I breathe in deeply and look around. I'm torn; I don't know if I should join in, stop them, or just watch, so I want to get some second opinions.

Alissa wants me to join in; Roxanne immediately starts to touch herself; Lina suddenly itches to be forcefully fucked by my draconic cock; Aoi wants to join them; and Yunia suddenly feels a desire to drink wine while watching the show.

"Mom's waiting, so do it quick," Alissa's words push everyone over the edge.

Human-Aoi pushes Lina down, then invades her mouth with her tongue; I pull out my cock and grow another one, then I fuck them both at the same time; Yunia sighs and starts fingering Roxanne to help her cum faster; Alissa touches herself silently in the corner; and Gify lifts her little wing to see what's going on, but then she immediately lowers it back down and returns to sleep.

"May I aid you, Master Alissa?" Jarn suddenly asks, and Alissa immediately turns to me, asking for my input.

"Warm yourself, and be gentle with her," I order Jarn, and the golem obeys.

She [Equip]s two metal dildos, each identical to my normal cock, and lubes them up, then gently guides Alissa to get on all fours.

"Remember, the safe word is 'record scratch,'" Jarn politely informs Alissa, then lifts off her not-kimono.

Alissa is a bit fearful of what's about to happen, but that just triggers my sadism, and I blurt out on impulse, "Actually, be a bit rough with her, Jarn."

"Understood," Jarn replies emotionlessly, then shoves both dildos up Alissa's holes.

"HNGH…!" Alissa grunts as her holes are suddenly stretched wide by the thick, metal cocks.

Okay, now I really want to use [Bind] on the golems…

After everyone has had at least one orgasm, we stop ourselves from continuing further and clean up the area, then we finally leave the room.

Léonne takes us to their best shoemaker, and we decide to go on a little shopping-spree. Elven Snow Weave is stretchy and sexy, but the werefox stamped textiles are cute.

Of course, only Alissa can actually wear the origami clothes without any clamps, though Yunia can walk a good twenty steps before the not-kimono unravels like a very sexy gift wrapping.

"How vexing…" She grumbles and tries to tie the sash tightly, but it just looks ugly without all the folds.

There's not much else to do before tonight, so we return to the estate and spar for a while.

The werefoxes use small composite bows and focus on speed and extreme accuracy while the elves focus on accuracy over long range and saturation, so our Lordsguard can't win in a werefox archery competition, and their Hunters can't win in an elven competition. Elves are ambushers, werefoxes are hunters, and this distinction is shown in their military doctrine.

Klein is a good archer, but the Sworn Hunters have way more experience than her with it, and even Alissa is having a hard time against her mother. Their duel actually catches my attention since it's the first time I've ever seen Alissa struggle to win against someone in accuracy.

The targets are hung on ropes and silently dropped from a raised platform, making them take an arc with their trajectory as they fall, but there's a tarp hiding them from our view, and the target is only visible through an opening for a mere second depending on the height it was dropped from.

Léonne's posture is that of a statue and maintaining a perfect stance. Her right arm is fully extended, firmly holding the small bow while the right hand keeps the arrow nocked, but the string isn't drawn.

Out of respect for their duel, everyone stops and remains silent so that she may more easily concentrate.

I hear the pitter-patter of a small, curious fox coming closer, but it quickly notices the tension in the air and also stops moving.

We hear far-off whispers coming from the town as the townsfolk go about their day.

A breeze brings dust into my eyes and makes me squint, but not even that is enough to make Léonne blink, and her chest barely moves as she calmly breathes.

I blink, and the arrow isn't in her bow anymore, only the vibrating string is left as evidence that she moved at all, then I hear the *thwack* of the arrow hitting the target, and everyone claps. She certainly used [Muscle Explosion], as her hand moved at borderline shounen-anime-speeds.

Though she was unbelievably fast, she still didn't hit the bullseye.

"I've been training a lot with [Illusion Magic], at the expense of neglecting to train my senses as much as I should've," Alissa admits with a bitter smile and takes her mother's position.

"You already lost the moment you compared yourself to me," Léonne coldly replies, and Alissa chuckles heartily.

She glances at her mother and gives her a gentle smile. "I kind of missed your 'drillmaster' side."

"Clearly, I didn't train you hard enough since you still remember it fondly," Léonne coldly lashes again.

Spicy.

Predictably, Alissa loses, and she isn't even mad.

On the melee side, Yunia reigns supreme. The werefoxes are less magically inclined than the Chimeras, so there's nobody among them who can cast [Rush] on themselves like the Celestial Horns can, which also means that there's no way for them to counter Yunia's [Precognition].

Yunia keeps her distance from Jacques. His longer arms and higher strength makes it much easier for him to score a hit, so she needs to wait for an opportune moment.

He lunges, and their longswords entwine, then they twist and spiral, and Yunia's blade worms around his guard, ending up pressed against his neck.

The referee gives her a victory, and Jacques suddenly blurts out a question in awe, "So, this is the power of the Eia pills?"

Yunia pulls her weapon back and coolly replies, "No, this is the power of [Weaverism], but you need the pills to properly use this magic school, so you could say that it's the apex of what you can accomplish with it."

When it's my turn to spar, the werefoxes turn wary.

"How's that fair?" One of the Hunters complains.

"I'm still controlling all these weapons by myself," I retort with a grin.

I win mostly because of the novelty of my style since my melee skills aren't really high enough to go against someone who has focused on physical combat.

Hana is the most popular with the Hunters, receiving the highest number of challenges, while Lina receives the fewest since the skittish foxes are afraid of her [Cursing Magic].

"Wait, you're all magic warriors?" Allura suddenly points out.

"That's one of our secrets," I reply with a cheeky grin.

"How… how did you do it?" She stubbornly questions.

"Ah, Ofilia, look what I've learned," Alissa tries to deflect by casting [Mesmerizing Butterflies], but Allura's single-mindedness makes her resistant to it, so I continue to playfully deflect for a while until she gets so angry that she quits interrogating me.

Ofilia actually does become mesmerized by the spell, so at least that makes Alissa very happy since the Blood Slave knows a non-combat version of the very same spell, which she had used to play around with Alissa and Allura back when they were children.

As the sun starts to set, we go take a bath and get ourselves ready for the party.

Ofilia takes us to the guest bathhouse and quickly takes her leave, her barely contained grin revealing that she knows what we're about to do here.

The interior is quite warm and humid with a heated, cute, dark cobblestone floor. The weather here is a bit more chilly than Escanso's, so the feeling of our feet on the warm stone is quite welcome. It also has some sort of non-slip texture, which is mildly surprising.

The square pool of water is large enough for all of us to easily fit, so there are no problems there. I do miss having all my personal maids wash my body for me, though.

Alissa suddenly grins as she senses someone coming in.

The sliding door is pushed to the side loudly, and a tall, naked almost-woman advances into the room, then I swallow heavily as my conscience immediately reigns the dragon back in.

Allura's size is already the same size as Alissa's, and I wonder how much more they'll grow. Her body shows some early signs of muscles, but due to her height, her "Strength" has been boosted to 14. Her thighs are furry, but they're very thick, and her peach-shaped ass cheeks are bare, begging for some love. Her tomboyish hairstyle and her bold grin give her an air that seems like a mix of Hana's and Roxanne's.

"Mom said I'm too immature to lose my virginity, but she also said that I can watch," Allura announces, and confidently walks towards us, without a hint of shame.

Alissa narrows her eyes in annoyance and lashes out slightly, "You should've asked us first, but yes, we'll allow you to watch us."

The rest of the girls share a look and some wry smiles, then shrug and continue cleaning each other.

Allura grabs a bar of soap and starts washing herself, her eyes glued to my Weapon.

"He's smaller than Dad," she points out, and I almost bite my tongue in surprise.

Alissa rinses my weapon, and I immediately grow it into the biggest, spiky, draconic breeding tool that Hana and Aoi have ever taken.

"Holy shit," Allura mumbles and continues to stare at it, entranced by its manliness, so I grow another one, and she gasps.

"You said you wanted to watch?" I ask her with a husky tone, almost growling.

"Yes…" She whimpers an answer.

Roxanne approaches Allura from behind, and her pale, lewd hands help Allura "wash" herself.

"Ahn…" Allura moans weakly, but she doesn't look away, or even try to stop Roxanne.

Aoi approaches me with a mesmerized gaze, like a moth to a flame, then she and Alissa each choose a head to lick, and I let out a growling laugh in delight.

I turn to Allura and smugly ask, "I heard that you've seen your parents fuck…?"

"Yes… we did," Alissa answers for her sister. Her memories tell me that it was more of a "sex ed class" than something perverted or degenerate, so I think it's time that Allura watched something a bit more intense.

Roxanne's hand squeezes the two mounds, and I savor their youthful elasticity through [Bind].

Alissa suddenly confesses, "I also had a dragon fetish when I was younger. I still do, but it was… 'maddening'…"

I chuckle evilly as we both think the same thing: Allura might be going through the same phase.

I control Aoi, who's already letting herself become hypnotized by the musk and taste of my draconic weapon, and force her to shrink down until she's the perfect size for breeding. As soon as she notices what I want, she gives in to my will, and I make her bend over and lift her own tail for me, exposing her warm, moist slit.

I look towards Alissa and command, "Transform." Then I use [Bind] to force her to obey since that turns her on.

She grins excitedly and glows, then shifts into a large fox and slides under Aoi, assuming the same position as her sister-wife.

Two female bestial pussies are begging for me to breed them, so how could I wait any longer?

I shift into my dragon form, assuming the largest size I can, and stand on my hind legs as I spread my wings, then I stare at Allura while I exhale slowly, letting smoke and licks of flame escape from my nostrils.

"Be honored, as you'll have the privilege of witnessing how true beasts mate," I announce out loud, my dual-voice making me sound much more imposing than my "cute" humanoid side ever could.

"I find it rather entertaining to see them fuck in beast form," Yunia casually remarks.

"Definitely," Klein earnestly agrees, salivating over the sight, and Lina slowly nods.

"You wanna get fucked like that, too?" Hana teasingly asks Klein, who breathes in deeply as the question stabs at her weak spot, but she doesn't answer her.

"It's a bit frightening," Ciel shyly adds and hugs her comfort-loli a bit tighter.

"But not the tentacle monster?" Yunia asks accusingly.

Ciel shrugs. "They're just tentacles."

Roxanne grins like a devil that just successfully corrupted an innocent soul, then licks her fingers, tasting Allura's juices.

My draconic side feels a strong desire to knot my mates, so I stop moving my hips and spread out my wings, then cover both of my females with them, making a cocoon of warmth as I keep them plugged.

"I love you," I gently whisper to them and give both of their faces a loving lick.

Aoi responds by entangling her long, slick tongue with mine, and I push both of our heads down so that Alissa can get some licks in, too.

Klein's arm has been making some suspicious movements under the water, so Yunia and Hana both decide to help her out at the same time.

"After you," Yunia concedes.

"No, please, you first," Hana politely defers.

Yunia raises an eyebrow as she deliberates for a moment, then suggests, "Why not both?"

Hana grins like a predator. "Good enough. I claim her pussy."

"Fine with me."

Roxanne helps the drained Allura get into the bath, then I give the surviving girls a satisfying round of the tentacle monster.

After everyone is filled and renewed, we let the Lordsguard take a bath, and I feel a bit disappointed about the fact that I couldn't breed Hukarere since she was on duty. Then we leave the bathhouse, and Anton gives us a worried look as he sees Allura coming out with us.

I grin innocently at him, but he doesn't have the courage to ask about what we did.

We walk outside and notice that the sun has already set, with a thick white mist limiting our vision to just a few meters. For some reason, this mist feels more oppressive than Escanso's.

Ofilia is our guide again, and she's carrying a powerful lamp to light up the way, but its effectiveness still isn't that great since this mist is really thick.

The 25th Division of Town Hunters is the youngest division of Roubaix, so there aren't that many soldiers in it. Alissa personally trained the original thirty soldiers that came to greet her, but now they have proper footmen, mounted warrior duos, archers, mage support, and healer units, totaling in at over one hundred young men and women.

For this number of people, an entire restaurant has been reserved for us, making it quite the party. These Town Hunters don't have any work tonight, so the alcohol flows freely, but I have a better idea about how to really get the party going.

I stand on my chair and push the [Project Voice] gem against my throat. Then, I start my speech, "I'd like everyone's attention." Then I wait until the entire hall is quiet. "Sirs and Dames, experienced warriors, Sworn Hunters, and the Verner family that rules the Misty Forest. Today is a special day for the Misty Low Forest, for Alissa Verner, the daughter of the Chiefs who had been separated from her family, trained the twenty-fifth division, and served as my Blood Slave, has finally returned as Alissa Ryder, my lover, my wife, one of the Crown Lords of the Western High Forest, and a member of the new Royal Family of the High Forest!"

The crowd cheers and raises their tankards in the air while I observe the revelry with a faint grin.

Then I extend my hand to Alissa and help her up onto her own chair as she struggles to not glare at me or blush too hard from embarrassment. I pull her waist closer to me with my tail and continue, "This young woman has fought countless battles and overcome unimaginable challenges to be able to return to her homeland with her head held high in pride!" I allow the dragon inside of me to spread its wings and roar, boosting my "Charisma." "So let's honor her achievements by showing our determination, our grit, and our dedication to the endless pursuit of improvement. Let's honor the Goddess of Growth…" -I pull out the air hockey and table football… tables- "with a tournament!"

A note from Manasong

Hall of Fame of Patrons

The patrons who support Rupegia shall have their names sung by the bards for they deserve the glory and honor. Their names are:

Prince PreownedFIN.

Prince Creamy Spinach.

Lord Andrew Meyers.

Lord Samuel Lim.

Lord Bill.

Lord Novgarod.

Lord Michale Erwin.

Lord Bakerdea.

Lord Maurice.

Lord Empyrean.

Lord Mattirro Draca.

Lord Colorblind.

Lord Fullmoon.

Lord Sean Drake.

Lord EESDESESESRDT.

Lord FrostyCube.

Lord Mike Bartter.

Lord Cardinal Steiner.

Lord Krawn.

Lord Warwulfv.

Lord Jorge Franco.

Lord Christopher Welsh.

Lord DJ.

Lord Philip.

Lord Tenebris Lupus.

Lord ImportantNPC.

Lord The Tallest Joshua.

Lord Copey Dunt.

Lord Dracopuppy23.

Lord Freddie.

Lord Cidant.

Lord Stellerbattle.

Lord Chris Carter.

Lord GoodKat.

Noble Salty Panda.

Noble Mild Fracas.

Noble Aclys.

Noble Shawn Plumley.

Noble CarlBaxter.

Noble Yeuromain.

Noble Brandon Lai.

Leave a rating or a review to help me rise to the top or fix my shameful understanding of prose.

Take a look over my blog where all information about the world of Rupegia will be posted.

Join the Discord and discuss, or rant, or meme, or try and fight me so your waifu gets more screentime.

Become a Patron and read chapters in advance, or read the side-stories, or leave your mark on the story, or help choose the next artwork or the next side-story.

Chapter 104: Premonition - Part 1

The White Wolf and her Companions suddenly found themselves in a nest of Foxes. Their yipping and yapping grated on their ears, but their raised lips revealed sharp fangs that showed they could bite back, so none of the Companions had the arrogance to underestimate their opponents. The Companions may be more united, stronger, and well-equipped, but the Foxes were known to be vicious, and they outnumbered the Companions greatly, evening out the odds in a potential battle.

The White Wolf was the largest among the Companions, and being favored by the Exalted Guardian, she was seen as a venerated elder, though her true authority was still below the Great Primate duo of father and daughter, but in this situation, they gathered around the White Wolf and waited for their orders from the Great Primates.

"To honor the Fox Guardian, we have to win against her kin!" Great Father announced, his voice booming through the skulls of the Companions, setting their minds on the goal.

"To show our gratitude for their Protection, we have to put up a good fight!" Great Daughter declared, her love for the Guardians inspiring their spirits and lighting the flame of rivalry in their hearts.

The Wolf unfurled their silvery flag and raised it high, displaying the black horns of Might, then she walked to the front of the line and looked around. The Great Primates had given the order, and now, they looked to the Wolf to see it through, to anchor the troops and guide them down the path that led to victory; the Companions waited for the Wolf to accept the orders, to say the words, and to pour oil onto the flames; and the Foxes waited, their sadistic grins and mischievous laughter like a constant rain that might douse the flames of passion.

But dragon fire could never be snuffed out by a mere drizzle.

The Wolf breathed in deeply, gathering air and courage, then she boldly roared, "For glory! For honor! FOR THE ROYAL GUARDIANS!" And her voice marked the start of the Battle.

"URAAA!" The Companions roared back, raising their weapons in furor.

Then she charged, and they all followed her to war.

The armies were divided into two lanes: Hockey, and Football. The former requires speed and reflexes, while the latter requires coordination and precision. Two very different paths for the soldiers to take, and each competitor went through both, but in general, they each only survived in one of the two lanes.

There was no time for slow, methodical fighting, this was a meat grinder to separate the weak from the strong.

No armor, no healing, no support. One after the other, soldiers fell on both sides, their bodies becoming the ground for new warriors to tread upon, the number of felled comrades continuously growing.

The spirits of the dead would live on and cheer for their comrades, giving them their blessings to absorb their energy and power as they lacked the skill to fully utilize it themselves.

Even though the White Wolf was seen as an elder, she still hadn't reached the apex of her potential, which led her to fail in the Football Battle, but the Great Father shined in her place and took up the mantle to guide the Companions in that lane.

The Great Daughter followed them both, supporting them and patiently waiting for the moment that either of them fell so she could take to the front and continue their endless advance.

The Foxes were gradually thinning, falling one after the other. Their organization waxed and waned like the moons, but it gradually grew stronger as the survivors realized the true power of their enemy and rallied under the gray and orange banner of the Misty Foxes.

With each bout, the White Wolf felt her enemies getting stronger, faster, and smarter. They changed from mischievous, cheeky foxes into dark, cold predators that kept their rage just underneath their skin.

The numbers of the Foxes dwindled so far that the Companions started meeting the elites, and each battle was an ordeal on its own.

"Just one more victory, just one more Fox to defeat," the White Wolf murmured to herself, trying to summon every last bit of grit she had.

When her tired body started to break under the strain, she looked back and witnessed the encouraging smile of the Great Daughter, giving the Wolf her second wind to fight on.

"One more victory…"

But then she finally knew that she'd met her match when she saw the Grinning Fox.

Young, strong, and unreadable, the Grinning Fox used his mask to hide his emotions, and his narrow eyes made it difficult to see where he was looking, allowing him to become utterly unpredictable.

His strikes were so swift that the puck blurred as it darted towards the Wolf's side. They went from side-to-side on the table, but they had such perfect accuracy that they were always threatening to enter the goal, forcing the Wolf to desperately defend herself.

She wasn't in control of the fight anymore. She was forced fully onto the defensive, struggling to survive against his onslaught.

"Left, right, left, defend!" She coached herself, trying to predict the paths of the insanely fast attacks.

"Right, left, right, left, defend!"

"Right, left, right, defend!"

"DEFEND!"

The White Wolf couldn't even see the puck any more, just reacting on instinct alone, and the spirits of the dead cheered with every exchange, like the beat of a song with a familiar rhythm, which made her brain briefly pause.

"GOAL!" The referee announced.

"I can't pause!" She frustratingly shouted at herself and continued defending.

"Left, right, left…"

A rhythm.

"Right, left, right…"

She knew this rhythm.

"Left, right, left…"

And a predictable rhythm has always been a warrior's weakness.

"Left, right, left… ATTACK!"

The puck darted towards the Ginning Fox's side and bounced off the left side of the table once, then slipped into the goal.

"GOAL!" The referee announced.

"URAAA!" The spirits roared.

The Grinning Fox paused, his frozen grin suddenly seeming far colder than before as his narrowed eyes analyzed the White Wolf.

Suddenly, he struck the puck, and the Wolf scrambled to ready her defenses, then the rhythmic exchanges started again.

"Right, left, right, left… ATTACK!" The White Wolf repeated her arrhythmic strike, but the Grinning Fox casually defended and resumed the rhythm.

"Everything has a rhythm," he coldly taunted, his grin unchanged, and the White Wolf sweated cold.

Her strategy failed a second time, and they continued their endless exchanges.

Eventually, her arms became tired, her vision blurred, and her reactions slowed.

"GOAL!" The referee rang the second bell of her death sentence.

There was only a minute left, and she didn't have enough time to even the score, let alone win against the Grinning Fox, so he only had to hold on for a little longer, and she'd be finished.

"Father, Daughter, give me the strength to surpass my limits!" She pleaded with all her heart, but her gaze was drawn somewhere else.

The Fox, the Dragonkin, the Succubus, the Angel, the Dwarf, the Dragon, the Elf, the Little Griffin, and the Exalted. All of the Guardians were looking at her, not with disappointment, but with pride. They were proud that she had gotten so far, and they gave her their permission to rest.

"This is the end…" She tiredly thought to herself and sighed, the last centimetri of the wick of her candle about to be snuffed out. "But I won't die whimpering! I'LL GO OUT IN A BLAZE OF GLORY!"

The Great Father is crushing his opposition, so she shall pave a path through the bodies of their enemies for the Great Daughter! She was determined to become another corpse which the Daughter would step upon to reach even higher, to reach Victory!

But there was no time to strategize, she had to give it her all, now!

"Everything I have… in one strike…" She mumbled, then stared at the Grinning Fox, her eyes burning with the flames of Might, hardened by the determination of Okross, and armed with the Will of the Exalted.

The Grinning Fox's mask cracked, and he growled reflexively in the face of his fearsome foe, "You overestimate yourself!"

"My body for the Exalted," she surrendered her body and mind to the Guardian, and he answered. The Exalted Eye opened up within the Wolf's mind, and her voice turned emotionless as she achieved her Limit Break. "The Will of the Exalted is absolute, and I'm his chosen vessel," she calmly stated.

"DELUSIONS!" The Grinning Fox barked.

Her muscles thickly bulged as she activated [Muscle Explosion]. "Iai Strike…"

The puck disappeared, only to be seen again within the Grinning Fox's goal.

"GOAL AAND TIIIIIIIME!"

"URAAAAAAAA!"

Both the Grinning Fox and the White Wolf fell in this Battle.

Before I even noticed it, the Town Hunters and the Lordsguard had started competing against each other. It's fortunate that the Sworn Hunters and the Verners didn't participate because this would be right up their alley.

It's impressive how seriously some of the participants took the tournament, but it also filled me with pride to see Klein and Anton having their moment of glory. To be honest, Hukarere eliminating Solent allowed Klein to rise unimpeded since he was the one with the most frightening skill of them all.

I also haven't prepared a third game yet, so if they had tied, they'd have demanded a tiebreaker, and that'd be a real pain to come up with, but since the Lordsguard won 2-0, the Town Hunters gracefully accepted their loss.

Lina, Aoi, the golems, and I get together and quickly come up with a small, elven-looking crown of steel with details in gold and silver. The former for Klein and Anton, and the latter for the Town Hunters who got second place, while the rest of the competitors get bronze tokens for participation.

Alissa personally awards the crowns in a medal ceremony, and the drunk men and women congratulate them all with ear-shattering roars.

Goureuse got second place in table football, but the second place in air hockey is a new archer ace they have, so Alissa doesn't know his name.

After that, the party shifts towards the traditional singing, dancing, and drinking for this sort of gathering, so I return to my table and relax with Lina.

As midnight comes around, the party reaches its epilogue, and everyone gets together for a few final songs.

Traditional werefox songs are more tribal, and they love to make dancing circles. Dozens and dozens of people jumping and stomping in sync, echoing out an entrancing beat as they run in formation around the center of the dance floor, chanting a hypnotizing song that any drunk can follow. For once, they try to make as much noise as they can.

Then Hana comes back from dancing and sits beside me, her small, almost-lingerie red dress sticking to her skin. Even her mane-like red hair has lost some volume since it absorbed moisture from the hot, humid air of the dance floor.

"When did you learn how to spice up parties?" She teasingly asks and hugs my neck, then leans on me. Her perfume has mixed with the smell of her sweat, mildly arousing me as I imagine us both fucking like barbarians in the wild. My lap-loli doesn't exactly feel the same way about it, though.

I rest my head against hers and look down her impressive cleavage, observing every little drop of sweat as they run along the contours of her massive tits. "I know how to have fun if it's related to games, and Yunia helped me learn how to give speeches when we were in Legado," I proudly answer. I'm still a nerd at heart, and I haven't just suddenly become a social butterfly.

"Today is your win. I'm sure that everyone is content with how the tournament went," Ciel kindly states as she pats my thick tail.

"Hm…" Lina hums in agreement as we watch Alissa and Allura dancing in the circle.

When the clock strikes midnight, Ofilia comes to get us so that she can guide us to where we need to be. We need to meet up with the 24th Division now and spend the night with them because they'll be leaving the moment they've found the bandit's encampment that they've been looking for.

Alissa gives her goodbyes to the 25th, and Ciel gives hers to Fleur and Calum, then the healers start casting [Purify Body] and [Refresh] on all of us. I force Roxanne to drink plenty of water before the spells are cast on her, and we manage to prevent her from getting a hangover.

"Be safe, all of you," Léonne blesses us, then gives a kiss to Jacques', Allura's, and Alissa's foreheads. The first one is pretty comical as the huge red man needs to bend over so that the short woman can reach him. They're just like Anton and Krysta.

Then a Space mage opens a [Gate] to where the 24th is, and we cross through it, with Jacques and Allura joining us.

We appear in a small, forested valley where the Division is making camp. The thick mist doesn't allow us to see anything other than just the first tent nearby, the faint light of a few lamps shrouded in mist, a few Manaflies flapping about, and the four werefoxes that were waiting to receive us.

The first one I notice is a bald, short man with a rather mean look to him. His stern expression and complete lack of any hair or fur makes him look like an ugly Sphinx cat. He must be Darcy, the Captain.

Beside him is a tall and rather buff gray fox staring at us with a perfectly neutral look. That's Nenvieu, Alissa's childhood friend and Montague's little brother. He's got some classically handsome features mixed with a few prettyboy ones that would easily qualify him to star in a vampire movie as the werewolf secondary love interest.

And the last two werefoxes are mere bodyguards wearing pristine metal armor.

I have to hold back the dragon from starting a literal dick-measuring contest since Alissa really wants us to get along.

Her eyes meet Nen's, and her heart tightens, then they share a slow nod. Then, Nen gives her not-kimono a quick scan, her cleavage being very hard to miss, but neither he nor Darcy do the same with the rest of the girls.

For once, I'm actually annoyed that I can feel Alissa's emotions, so I choke the dragon even harder to make him stop annoying me with his jealousy.

When Jacques crosses through the [Gate], the werefoxes kneel in respect to him.

"Chief Jacques, it's an honor to have you and Dame Allura aid us in this mission," Darcy announces, his strong voice showing a lot of confidence and high "Charisma."

"You may rise," Jacques replies in the same tone, and they stand up again. "Think nothing of it. This is merely a decision made on a whim."

Darcy smiles like an imp, and I wonder how he got to such a high "Charisma," to begin with. "We still benefit from it."

Jacques grunts with a nod, then introduces us.

"It's good to see you again, Nen," Alissa softly greets him, and his composure breaks immediately.

His gray skin makes his blush very visible as he stutters, "Y-yes. It's been a-a while, Alissa."

She grins like a cheeky fox and teases, "You didn't change."

"Neither did you," he softly replies.

Then Allura chimes in, pouting cutely, "Only because Gurrier allowed you to meet with Lis. The last time I saw her, she was still flat!"

Nen's eyes are instantly drawn to her cleavage. "She has… hm… yes…" He tries to find the right words but quits as soon as he starts.

"Please, I don't want to suffer through witnessing this embarrassment," Darcy whines as he rolls his eyes.

Nen clears his throat and recomposes himself.

Jacques can't stop himself from smiling, his lordly aura completely gone as he gently suggests, "We're all tired, so let's get to sleep early. You'll have plenty of time tomorrow to catch up."

Alissa nods slowly while the werefoxes salute, but Nen's is visibly stiff.

"Let me show you where to put your tents," Darcy politely offers.

I pull out the portable house that Almaria had grown for us. It looks like a simple bark box from the outside, but we can camouflage it a bit with bushes and change its shape and color to look more like a boulder. There's no need to do it right now since we're surrounded by werefoxes, so we just leave it as the default look.

The interior is quite nice since it's bigger on the inside, but it's just one big room partitioned with curtains, so it feels a bit too "open" to me. I didn't ask for any decorations, but Almaria's perfectionism forced her to add a bit of our heraldry and some other aesthetically pleasing elven patterns all over the inside, so it really does look like high-class accomodations.

Our bed needs to be wide enough to fit all of the harem plus a few concubines, so it takes up the most space, though there's still plenty of room for a nice dining table, a sofa, an acceptable kitchenette, a bathing corner, and two sound-proofed rooms for the toilets.

Before the Lordsguard, Klein, and Anton begin to organize the shifts for the night watch, I ask Hukarere if she'd like to come sleep with us tonight.

"The Spirit mage just recently recast [Solidify] on me, so I won't disappear in the middle of the night this time," she happily reports, then glues herself to me, and I bury my face in between her pale breasts.

"I think it'll be fine to let you go to sleep while hugging me, but one of the girls will be hugging your back, too," I warn her, my voice muffled by her elastic pillows.

"That's fine," she readily accepts.

"Me, me! I claim her fluffy back!" Roxanne immediately shouts out. Hukarere's fluffy, furry back makes for an amazing body pillow, but I warn Roxanne to not grope her too much.

Then I give Hukarere some warm milk to help her sleep.

The gentle female hands appear again, but this time, they slap the back of my head and angrily point ahead, directing my attention to a familiar pair of brown eyes.

I stare at them curiously, but I still don't understand what's going on, then the female hands hug me from behind and caress my head again.

I feel like kissing these hands and sucking on the long, delicate fingers of this beautiful woman, but I just can't get a grip on her.

Today is the 17th, Fis, day of Nature. Yunia says that the dryads occasionally appear in the Eia plantations on this day, but Cereleia still hasn't re-established contact with us, so I don't think I'll be able to meet with her again today.

Hukarere wakes me up this morning, and the other girls stare at her annoyedly since she was too rough and woke me up before they could each get their fill.

My dream made me a bit horny, so I happily give them all a long spurt of my milk.

Yunia increased her [Two-Handed Sword Use] and [Dodge] by 1 (now 2+18 and 10). Her sparring with Jacques has proved to be very instructive for her.

"What's wrong?" Alissa gently asks me as I get dressed, her hot breath tickling the back of my neck.

I turn around and kiss her nose, then I smile softly and reply, "I'm just trying to remember this weird dream that I had, but I'm already starting to forget it."

She blinks blankly, and I drown in her orange eyes for a moment, but she can't find any words or ways to really help me, so she just kisses my nose back, and we start setting out breakfast.

Since our room is large enough, we invite the Verners, Anton, Darcy, and Nen to join us.

Hukarere declines my invitation and looks almost like an abandoned puppy for a second. "I think I should return to the Lordsguard or else Sandoro will twist my ears in the after-action report," she confesses, and I let her head out to rejoin them.

The moment that Nen walks in, the awkwardness sets in, and I grin like an imp.

A note from Manasong

Hall of Fame of Patrons

The patrons who support Rupegia shall have their names sung by the bards for they deserve the glory and honor. Their names are:

Prince PreownedFIN.

Prince Creamy Spinach.

Lord Andrew Meyers.

Lord Samuel Lim.

Lord Bill.

Lord Novgarod.

Lord Michale Erwin.

Lord Bakerdea.

Lord Maurice.

Lord Empyrean.

Lord Mattirro Draca.

Lord Colorblind.

Lord Fullmoon.

Lord Sean Drake.

Lord EESDESESESRDT.

Lord FrostyCube.

Lord Mike Bartter.

Lord Cardinal Steiner.

Lord Krawn.

Lord Warwulfv.

Lord Jorge Franco.

Lord Christopher Welsh.

Lord DJ.

Lord Philip.

Lord Tenebris Lupus.

Lord ImportantNPC.

Lord The Tallest Joshua.

Lord Copey Dunt.

Lord Dracopuppy23.

Lord Freddie.

Lord Cidant.

Lord Stellerbattle.

Lord Chris Carter.

Lord GoodKat.

Noble Salty Panda.

Noble Mild Fracas.

Noble Aclys.

Noble Shawn Plumley.

Noble CarlBaxter.

Noble Yeuromain.

Noble Brandon Lai.

Leave a rating or a review to help me rise to the top or fix my shameful understanding of prose.

Take a look over my blog where all information about the world of Rupegia will be posted.

Join the Discord and discuss, or rant, or meme, or try and fight me so your waifu gets more screentime.

Become a Patron and read chapters in advance, or read the side-stories, or leave your mark on the story, or help choose the next artwork or the next side-story.

Chapter 104: Premonition - Part 2

Alissa's short kimono exposes a narrow stretch of perfect, pale skin, which continues down until it's covered again by her thin Snow Weave white stockings, their hem slightly depressing her skin, leaving a subtle indentation on her athletic thighs. A truly wonderful sight. Never mind her tasteful cleavage; her bright smile; her pointy, twitching fox ears; her silky orange-brown hair that bobs along with her every move; her beautiful orange eyes; her fluffy, wagging tail; her cute feet clad in white stockings… they're all like honey for the eyes, but Nen ignores all of those enthralling aspects as his gaze is instantly drawn to Alissa's absolute territory, and this display of culture increases my respect for him just a bit.

"Nen… there's only one door," Darcy grumbles from behind him since the small man has no chance of getting past Nen's wide shoulders without pushing him out of the way.

Alissa silently motions to the chairs while smiling, and Nen's eyes follow her hand, then he notices me.

"Wh-where are your horns…?" He reflexively asks, and I rest my chin on my completely human hand.

"I cut them off," I respond nonchalantly.

The dumbfounded look he gives me is quite delightful. "Your… hands, too…? And your tail…?" He mumbles weakly, and his expression slowly warps in terror. For a wereanimal, just the idea of removing their animal features is pretty effective body horror.

"It feels good to get rid of those bestial body parts every once in a while," I confess without a hint of a lie, it's just the "how" I get rid of them that's important.

Nen's shocked face slowly turns back towards Alissa, only to meet her foxy grin, and then he realizes that there's something wrong.

"Teasing Nen certainly feels nostalgic," she admits and giggles softly.

"Are you teasing him without me?!" Allura's voice rings out from outside the portable house.

"Nenvieu! If you don't move, I'm going to kick your ass! Literally!" Darcy angrily shouts, and Nen finally vacates the doorway. Then the grumpy, wrinkly, cat-faced man walks in as he complains, "If you're going to toy with him, at least do it when I'm not here to witness this silliness." Then he notices how big the interior is compared to the exterior and stops for a second to hum in wonder before he takes his seat.

"Oh, you learned how to change races?" Jacques curiously asks as he comes in, then gives Alissa a quick hug and takes a seat.

"I'm still a weredragon, this is just an illusion that partially alters reality," I happily reply and point to the glowing gem right above me. "It's [Jalowzeh Magic], a magic school that the Estekabar demon race invented."

Jacques narrows his eyes as he observes the gem, then he nods sagely. "I see. The Chimeras can change sex, so I thought that you had created something like that with their help."

I ignore the idle thought of how many of the female Chimeras serving me were at one point men and continue, "Well, I do want to create a skill that lets me become more 'human' at will because of how my children will probably need that ability."

He grunts in understanding. "It'd certainly be useful to not have sharp claws getting in the way of…" His eyes glance at Alissa. "Well, you know."

I grin and cheekily add, "They like them, though."

Allura gives me a knowing grin as she sits, while Jacques closes his eyes to take his mind somewhere happier, and Anton doesn't even react, completely ignoring us.

But Aoi gives them a way out of the nightmare, "They're why I wanted to become a human. These claws make it difficult to create anything." And she waves her scaly fingers at us.

"Curiously, hands never seem to be animalistic for wereanimals," Jacques ponders.

"Imagine having paws for hands…" Allura fearfully comments, and she gets a few chuckles.

"The children of the God of Creation would have trouble creating anything if they didn't have hands," Ciel wisely points out.

"My race would barely notice if we had animal hands," Klein chimes in.

"They'd definitely be uglier, though," Anton replies, his permanent frown deepened as he imagines his wife's small hands replaced with a monkey's, and I remember that Krysta is an enthusiastic consumer of elven skincare products.

Alissa flashes a smile at Nen, the last one still standing, and turns around to take her seat. He twitches, his arm reaching forward to grab her hand, but he stops himself midway and immediately straightens his back.

She turns around and gives him a confused look, but he doesn't say anything and simply moves on towards his seat, so she just giggles, making him blush a little bit.

Lina watches Alissa with envy as my foxy lady takes her seat of honor, on my lap, and Jacques gives us a look that screams of "really?," but I don't pay him any mind as my current mission is to tease Nen relentlessly.

Alissa and I share a cinnamon pancake with berries. She feeds me a slice, then takes one for herself, all while we share the same teacup.

"Ooh~, what's this?" Allura excitedly asks as she points to not-babaghanoush.

"Imperial Purpoles sauce," I calmly reply.

"And this?"

"Blue Vein cheese," Alissa answers for me while feeding me a slice of pancake.

"And this?" She points to the not-tomato, but I refuse to say that abomination of a name.

"Tomafinger," Alissa answers for me again.

Darcy and Nen seem a bit wary of the wide selection of unknown dishes, so they just go for the safe choice of pancakes.

After a bit of chit-chatting and some discussion about the food, Alissa starts to feel a little bad about teasing Nen like this, but Allura is out for blood.

"Say, Nen, I heard that you're pretty popular with the women in the Divisions. Had any marriage proposals yet?" She coyly asks, then winks at Alissa.

Darcy raises his eyebrows, turning his forehead into a washboard, and casually comments with a hum, "Ah, the 'Gray Spear'? There is plenty of talk among the divisions about him because of how he won't touch any of the women in our division, and they complain a lot because of it, but the women of the other divisions, though…" And he smirks like a goblin.

"He's Montague's brother, after all," Allura adds matter-of-factly with a nod.

Jacques turns to Nen and asks reprovingly with a frown, "You really got that Title…?" His and Anton's expressions are so alike that they may be brothers from other mothers.

"Yes, I did," Nen answers flatly, looking at his pancake.

"And I thought Wolf was bad," Jacques mumbles dispiritedly, and Alissa gives him a glare.

"The price of fame is the curse of Titles," Yunia solemnly states with a faraway look.

"But Nen wasn't a spearman…" Alissa mumbles and narrows her eyes in suspicion, then her lips slowly warp into a teasing grin.

"I-it's not w-what you're thinking…" He scrambles to defend himself, but he can't come up with anything to say.

"Then what is it, really?" Alissa coolly replies and stares him in the eye.

He maintains eye contact and clenches his jaw, but he can't come up with a good excuse, so he just admits, "Alright, I got a big dick, and I like to use it."

Jacques chuckles and slaps his back, but his huge hand barely makes the muscular Nen flinch. "Ofilia wondered how big you'd grow to be, and I'm happy to know that you didn't disappoint," he casually shares with the kind of shamelessness that only a parent could have.

Allura gives her Dad a thumbs up for the critical hit as Nen facepalms to escape this nightmare.

I grin along with them, but in truth, I'm sweating cold, dreading whatever tease-worthy Title I'm bound to be "awarded" with one day.

"What about you, Dame Allura? Have you started building your own harem, already…?" Roxanne comes in with a surprising backstab.

"No," she answers reflexively and remains quiet as the gears spin in her head, attempting to anticipate the next strike.

"At least you've been thinking of making connections since you've quickly become intimate with us, correct?" Yunia's side hook hits right on the mark.

Allura's mouth moves without her conscious will, "I was… just… uh…"

"'Having fun'…?" Jacques reticently questions her with the cold glare of a predatory animal.

"I told you not to skip those classes on etiquette," Nen coldly delivers a side-dish of revenge.

Jacques grunts and agrees, "Yes, it seems that her education is lacking in certain matters."

Allura turns her incredulous, teary eyes towards us, silently asking us why we betrayed her, but the waft of evil emanating from the snobbish duo is the only answer she really needs.

After playing around for a bit more, we finish breakfast, and the golems clear the table, then Jacques changes the topic to something sobering, "So, what kind of enemy presence are we expecting?"

Darcy grins, and his already rather ugly face becomes a bit uglier still. "I'll start from the beginning to give our guests some context," he pompously states, then clears his throat and begins his speech. "Over the past few years, 'suspicious' bandit attacks have been carried out all over the north of the Misty Forest, and the Elders' investigation concluded that what they had in common was that they 'inconvenienced' the clans, always hitting at the most inopportune time, and causing a frustrating amount of chaos.

"There's nothing that says that these attacks are connected, except for their precision and deadliness, which is unmatched by anything we've seen from any other mercenary or bandit groups before. What's more, judging by their tactics, we're certain that they're imperials, but they'd only survive this long in the forest if a clan allowed them to."

My first guess would be Katasko, but I admittedly know little about matters outside the High Forest since they don't really concern us and we still have our hands full trying to guess the next moves of our Subordinate Lords.

"Neither do I…" Yunia comments through [Bind], sounding a bit vexed.

"So, you've found their hideout?" Alissa soberly questions.

"No, but we know that they're definitely nearby because we've set up the perfect bait," he readily answers as he grins like a lunatic.

Alissa frowns angrily and quietly groans. "Of course, Darcy would be one with the courage to risk people's lives that way," she complains through [Bind].

"You don't approve?" He asks with a sinister teasing tone.

"I refuse to answer that question," Alissa flatly replies.

Darcy leans back in his chair and crosses his fingers over his lap, completely relaxed and confident in his plan. "You know that this is exactly why Nemie mentored me while Gurrier mentored you."

"And why Nen was chosen to keep him in check," she grumbles through [Bind], then turns her glare on her father.

But he merely returns a stern, cold look. "The twenty-fourth is operating within acceptable levels of risk," he states matter-of-factly.

Alissa shakes her head gently and drops it. "So, how long until they attack?"

"A few hours, maybe. We're waiting for them to position themselves to ambush our bait caravan when the mist goes away. The terrain in that area is hard to navigate for imperials if they can't see where they're going."

"Can't you ask the guardian of the forest to help you find them?" I chime in, and that catches Darcy a bit off-guard.

"Bluebell wouldn't come for such a trivial matter," Jacques shoots it down.

"Perhaps I could help with that," I confidently state with a smirk, then I wink at Gify.

"Gih!" She diligently replies and salutes with her wing, then pops out of existence.

Thank you.

"We made a deal with the dryad guardian of our forest, so perhaps Bluebell might be interested in something similar," I explain, and Jacques becomes very suspicious, though he doesn't comment on it.

With the context part out of the way, Darcy explains the plan, and we start talking tactics.

"You should take the center, of course. Your Lordsguard have a higher level than us," he soberly suggests without a hint of shame.

The table goes silent as we all try to find any sign of disrespect in his tone, but we find none. It is the most logical choice to have us stay in the center since we're stronger, but we're also guests, so it could be seen as offensive to put us in a dangerous position.

"Our men are sworn to give their lives for us, but they're not expendable," Yunia coldly states and locks eyes with the wrinkly cat.

But Darcy resists Yunia's cold intimidation attempt without even flinching. "Of course. I have no intention of having us recklessly charging towards the enemy. They're known to be deadly, after all."

"We'll also be giving our orders from the center. So, if you fall, we fall," Nen grimly adds, and Darcy nods in agreement.

"I'll command the mounted warriors," Jacques volunteers.

"Anton will stay in the middle, and we'll act as mobile support since we have [Fly]," I order.

"Yes, your Highness," he obediently agrees. It's a bit weird to see him behaving so subserviently, but I guess it's just for appearances' sake.

Then the meeting ends, and I order the father-daughter duo to check on the Lordsguard and relay the strategy to them.

Gify pops onto the table, then spreads her wings wide and proudly chirps, "Gih! Guh gih!" Which is her announcement of her triumphant return with the good news.

I grin and pat her cute, feathery head. This little deal will be the trump card of this operation, and it's all thanks to Gify… and my Thunder Cock.

The outside is still somewhat cloaked in mist, but it's clearing away quite quickly, so we don't have a lot of time left. It's already clear enough for me to see the uncountable number of tents surrounding our house. They're all partially camouflaged with branches, so they can easily fool the eye from at a distance or from above. The dew gathers on the leaves of the camouflaging bushes, making for a sparkly view as the sunlight begins to penetrate the mist.

Alissa, Gify, and I quickly cross through the circle of tents and move towards a rather secluded rock face of the valley we're camping in.

We stop near a lonely tree and wait excitedly, Alissa way more so than me, though.

We don't have to wait for long, and Alissa feels a presence moving underground. It rises up into the tree, and a dryad starts to emerge through the bark. It's a nearly three meters tall naked man with skin the color of moss and shoulder-length hair made up entirely of light blue flowers. His hair partially covers his round face, giving him an almost emo look. His body is also on the rounder side, giving him a bit of a lazy air, but his horse cock definitely looks threatening to me.

Oh, wait, it's a man…

"Geheheh…" Gify giggles… like the little goblin she is!

Bluebell stops before us, his eyes staring through me as he uses his other senses to read my soul, so he doesn't notice Alissa's visible disappointment in his figure.

"Hmm… yes, you have great seed. I'll fulfill my part of the deal," he drowsily mumbles.

"I, uh… I don't have sex with men," I point out with a cringe.

"Oh…" He hums, and his gaze lands on Gify, who giggles again, making him frown and sigh. "Alright… I'll change into a woman for you…"

"Just a little question," Alissa anxiously interrupts, but doesn't wait for his response. "Do you remember Nocturna, the Mistborn?"

"No. It's been too long, so I've lost all memories of her except for the contracts I made," he instantly replies with a completely uninterested tone.

Alissa's posture lurches slightly as her disappointment grows, so I give her a comforting back rub, then Bluebell starts changing his form.

His face changes subtly, but it definitely becomes more feminine, his chest balloons into ridiculously-sized, unbelievably soft-looking large breasts, and his cock recedes inwards until it becomes a pussy.

"Hey, can't you do something like that with your cock by using [Mana Body]?" Roxanne innocently asks through [Bind], then gasps as a word that I wish I never knew surfaces in my mind. "Cuntboy! Cuntboy!" And she cackles with a laugh.

I cut Roxanne off from my mind and focus on Bluebell, who's now unmistakably a woman. My heart feels a bit weird when I think about how she was a man just a few seconds ago, but I immediately shut that thought down because I need to fulfill my part of the deal.

I pull out my cock and make it get hard instantly, which slightly surprises Bluebell, who approaches me and gets down on her knees, then she grabs my long, thick Dragonator.

"We don't have the time for proper sex right now, so I'll just use my mouth," she explains, and I nod, then she swallows it whole without any hesitation. Her mouth is quite accommodating due to her stature, so, for once, my cock actually feels small.

"Oh… yes…" I moan in bliss. Her mouth is similar to Cereleia's. It tingles and itches a bit, but it's so subtle that it feels pretty good, as if my entire shaft suddenly turned into an erogenous zone.

Her tongue stretches and wraps around my shaft, then squeezes tight, as if it were a small pussy like Lina's.

Her blue, moss-textured eyes stare intensely into mine as her head bobs back and forth. Her eyes are entrancing, seeming to contain a gentle kindness that sets me at ease.

I groan again and grab her head, while being careful to not hurt her flower-hair, and gently increase the speed at which her lips slide along my shaft.

She grabs her tits and plays with them, pinching her own dark nipples, and I create a tentacle to get in a squeeze of them, too, then she smiles happily and lets them go, so I happily fondle her soft, faux-fluffy tits with my tentacle hands to my heart's content.

I extend another tentacle and savor her pussy lips, but the tingling sensation they provide is much stronger than her mouth, sending my pleasure skyrocketing.

"Oh, fuck…" I moan and let out a burst of cum down her throat. She swallows it all without choking even slightly, happily taking in my seed while she moans in pleasure from my tentacles. "Wait, I need the mana…!" I exclaim, and she immediately stops milking me.

I release her head and sigh dejectedly. The deal was for just one shot of cum, so I can't go using all my mana when we're about to go into battle.

She releases my cock and smiles happily. "I got a bit more than we agreed to, but I'm sure that we're both fine with it, correct?"

I chuckle softly and pat her head as I reply, "Yeah, it was pretty good. No harm, no foul."

She shows me her palm, and a leaf sprouts up out of her skin. It's marked with blue ink, depicting the direction of the enemy camp, but Gify can also guide us there in case we get lost.

I present the information to Darcy, and he grins like a madman. "Change of plans," he mumbles and starts laughing evilly.

Then the mist fully clears away, and the scouts detect imperials setting up their ambush.

We break camp and head towards them, but their camp is nearby, so it doesn't take long for the scouting summons to confirm its location. I even secretly send my own Hollys to the camp and the ambush site to confirm their numbers. They're barely a hundred in total, but they're definitely imperial, and they look more like an army than a group of bandits, which confirms Darcy's speculation.

Now that we know where the enemy is and how many there are, there's no need for us to let the bait caravan be ambushed. We'll wipe them out to the last man.

Nen transforms into a huge, gray fox, even larger than a Grey Berserker, a huge monster bear that we fought a few times in the Sea of Trees. He's actually too big to be mounted by a spearman, so his rider is an armored mage woman instead.

Jacques shifts into an even larger red fox, the size of an elephant, but he doesn't have his rider with him, who would usually be his wife.

Allura also shifts into a fox, and though she's about a third smaller than Nen, she's still among the largest beast warriors here. She's also without a rider, but that's because she doesn't have such an "intimate" relationship with any werefox just yet.

Since we're nobility, we're provided with horses to ride, and we're escorted by our Lordsguard while the mounted warriors lead the column, and the werefox footmen march behind us. Even Aoi shifts into her humanoid form to ride her horse, drawing upon the girls' [Riding] knowledge, but her horse still seems to be very anxious about carrying her, so I soothe it with [Animal Tongue].

Unlike the 25th, which is composed of only newbies, this Division has incorporated a lot of veterans from other Divisions, so Nen and Darcy are actually a bit younger than the average age of their soldiers, though they respect them both for their achievements nonetheless.

We're not exactly in a hurry, so a few riders slow down to talk to us.

"So you fucked the dryad in exchange for this information?" One of them asks me, sounding both curious and eager to tease.

"No time for fucking, but the deal was my powerful seed in exchange for the information," I smugly explain.

The riders start to joke and laugh, but when Nen glares at them, they become serious again.

"Thanks for your, hard work," the same rider teases me again with a smirk before he quickly becomes serious, too. "But seriously, thank you for your help. We don't have to use the bait because of you."

Through the Holly above us, I notice a mounted warrior coming closer to us from behind, and it annoys me because I can't hear their footsteps.

I turn my head to face them, and they flinch, both the mount and the rider staring at me in an odd way.

"Yes…?" I casually ask, but then my heart sinks as I remember something.

I see brown eyes, unremarkable brown eyes. They instantly remind me of my dream, and of the vision I had during the Turn of the Wheel, which was just a day before the attack on the Innocent Nymph.

In the same instant that I draw my sword, the mount and rider duo disappears, then I notice the black circle of a [Gate] on the ground, right where they were, which vanishes in the next second.

"THE FUCK?!" Darcy shouts and everyone turns around as they sense the mana from the spell.

Gify pops out of existence, we [Equip] our helmets, and the girls draw their weapons with the Lordsguard following suit a split second later, then they shout their warnings and form into a wall around us.

"STEADY, STEADY!" Anton's gruff voice booms through our men, and Klein keeps her head on a swivel, searching all around her for potential threats.

The girls and I use [Fly] to rise up off of our horses and quickly move into a circle, staring warily at the mounted warriors and footmen that still surround us, but they're all just disorganized and confused and not really moving aggressively at all.

While Nen and Jacques corral the men back into formation, Darcy's mount takes him to us, and they stop before the spears of our Lordsguard.

"THE FUCK HAPPENED?!" He shouts angrily.

"You had spies among your men," I coldly reply.

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Chapter 104: Premonition - Part 3

Ciel organizes the healers, and they all cast [Detect Evil] on every single soldier in search of more heretics. Fortunately, the spell doesn't consume that much mana, so a single high-grade MP potion should be enough to recover their mana before the battle.

Meanwhile, we set up a tent and gather around a table, then we proceed with a grim meeting in which the girls and I explain my visions.

"Visions…" Jacques mumbles in thought, combing through his red beard with his claws. "I know that they're common among the Gifted, but only Léonne would know more about that sort of thing."

"But how did heretics get in the middle of your men?" Yunia questions Darcy accusingly.

"Are you sure they're heretics?" He immediately deflects without flinching.

I frown in distaste and affirm, "It was fast, but I don't doubt what I saw, nor the feeling I had when I looked into his eyes."

"At the least, they're spies, or working for someone suspicious since they deserted without a single word," Yunia confidently points out.

"There haven't been any reports from the scouts about enemy movement. The imperials haven't even reacted yet to what happened here," Nen stiffly retorts, a bit intimidated by the atmosphere.

"What about their camp?" Jacques stoically questions.

"Nothing," I answer, and they turn suspicious gazes on me, so I explain, "I'm a summoner, so I'm watching both the camp and the ambush site." And that seems to appease them.

"I don't want to call off this operation just because two of my men decided to disappear!" Darcy angrily exclaims, gritting his teeth like an angry rat.

"At least one of them is an unregistered Master Porter since I can hardly believe that they walked into a [Gate] coordinate just by coincidence," Alissa calmly points out.

Darcy grits his teeth in anger, but even he can't go against that argument.

Jacques hums in thought, his stern look so fearsome that it even makes Allura a bit meek. "I'll call the Sworn Hunters. I don't want to call this off either, but neither can I ignore the warning of danger from Lord Wolf's vision," he calmly decides.

Anton quickly discusses something with Klein, then he comes over to me, looking so grim that he could pass for having [Intimidate]. He stops right behind me and hurriedly whispers into my ear, "Wolf. Commander Sandoro would advise us to retreat, right now."

Ever since I saw that pair of eyes, my gut keeps telling me that something bad is coming, but I can't defeat the heretics by running forever. I need to know what they're going to do, and this time, I won't just watch as they cast [Meteor] above me, I… no, we, my wives and I, need to counter them.

"I'll apologize to him later, but I can't go back now, though I can afford to switch you and Klein with other knights or Oritiki," I coldly dismiss Anton's concern.

"She doesn't want to leave, so neither will I…" He grumbles back.

I sigh softly and apologize, "I'm sorry that you got involved in this."

"Apologize to us by not dying," he grumbles again, and I snort softly, then he returns to his post.

Sandoro crammed plenty of training into everyone's heads, including the knights', about how to protect us from assassination, and the father-daughter duo already has a lot of experience with keeping the men steady to face off against organized bandit attacks, so while they don't have the same levels as the knights, they're still reliable in this situation.

"I'd like to know what everyone thinks of this operation," I ask through [Bind].

"I'm wary. I'd like to follow Sandoro's advice, but I don't want to abandon my family's men," Alissa anxiously replies first.

"I don't know what to think. I'm scared, but I don't want to run," Roxanne hesitantly admits.

"Same," Lina quietly agrees.

"I want to fight," Hana brusquely adds, determination dripping from her voice.

"Same!" Aoi energetically agrees.

"The cons of running are just too great," Yunia points out.

"Elaborate," I quickly prompt.

"We're set to make the Misty Foxes into close allies, so retreating here and now could damage our relationship since the heretics are after us, not them. Not only that, but I also agree that we shouldn't run from them because I know that we'll definitely meet them again in the future, so we need to learn how to face these heretics."

"Ciel…?" I hesitantly ask. Her mood seems grim, and it's making me a bit worried about her.

"We need to stay and fight," she sternly states, then her heart suddenly burns with righteous fervor. "These heretics need to taste our steel!" She angrily exclaims, then goes silent as she feels embarrassed about her outburst.

She might be having some sort of premonition like I did, so it could be the Gods telling us to fight, but I'm not sure, none of us are.

"I'm still feeling a bit vulnerable though, so I think we need more men," I confess.

"Bringing an army would be inconvenient, so perhaps someone with more raw power, like Silvano," Yunia suggests.

Alright…

After the roll-call is complete and everyone has been checked, we discover that the two who disappeared were just veterans who had recently been reassigned to the 24th, by chance. The person who made that decision was Nemie, the Elder of War, someone who regularly gets checked for heresy through [Detect Evil], so unless there's some big conspiracy between him and the temple, it was just a coincidence that they were there, just like how I first saw those eyes in the middle of a crowd of people at the Turn of the Wheel.

Considering all that bullshit about the Threads of Fate, my destiny, and Shade, I don't believe in coincidences anymore.

Though, the next time I see those eyes, I need to react with [Discharge] and immediately [Equip] that [Gate] "Scrubber" tool I have to prevent their escape. I can't let them escape again without at least interrogating them.

Silvano saunters into the tent with his usual annoying smirk, then stops before our chairs and kneels. "Your Highness, I've answered your call," he greets politely, but his tone is still annoying.

"Rise," Yunia coldly orders.

He obeys and turns to me. "I'm happy that you've chosen me to aid you in this battle, but Sandoro asked me to relay the fact that he's opposed to your decision."

"Noted," I tersely reply.

Léonne joins us with the Sworn Hunters, so I get to see her ride elephant-Jacques, which is quite amusing.

She's taking my vision very seriously, which I find very reassuring. I don't like to base my decisions on gut feelings, but I can't ignore what I saw, and the fact that the two spies teleported away the very moment that I noticed them is very telling.

The bait caravan will be reaching the ambush site very soon, so we double our marching speed to get there in time. The Sworn Hunters will work together with our Lordsguard since it's extremely unlikely that they're heretics. They've sworn to serve the Chief only, so unless Jacques and Léonne betray us, they're as trustworthy as our own knights.

We leave the valley, and I notice how the rough terrain looks like modern Verdun with a few suspicious sword-shaped imprints in the ground and spikes of rock everywhere.

"I think this was the site of an ancient battle between the Symbol of Might and a God-Ruler," Alissa explains through [Bind].

Scary…

Fox-Nen slows down and shares a few words with Fox-Montague, his older brother.

"Things sure got serious, huh," Montague casually comments, barely having to raise his voice due to the almost entirely silent werefox army.

"I've never seen the Chieftess this serious," Nen quietly replies, though Alissa can still hear them.

"Try not to drool as you watch them fight," Montague teases and shows his fangs in a frightening grin.

"Try not to trip and get your hollow head caved in by a rock," Nen bites back and returns to his post.

"So he can exchange a bit of banter…" Roxanne curiously mumbles through [Bind].

"Only if Alissa isn't nearby," Hana wisely points out.

I sigh and give them both a light poke. "Put on your war faces, girls," I calmly urge them to focus.

"[Sir, yes, sir!]" Roxanne playfully replies in English, then we drop the levity and gradually enter into a trance as we focus on the battle to come.

Now that I can use any spell up to level 50, there's a specific one that interests me quite a bit, so I make some changes to my skill allocations to give me access to it. [Blessing Magic]'s [Haste] is a very powerful spell, but it doesn't last long, so Blessing mages rarely actually use it since they're typically non-combatants who stay far away from the front line.

I test [Haste] a few times, and it feels like it slows down time for everything around me, allowing me to do anything I want at double the normal speed without actually requiring me to spend twice as much energy. It's an odd spell, but it's really powerful.

Our skills are like this now:

Wolf Ryder Skill Report

Physical

Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level
Sword Use | 17+13 | Spear Use | 12+3 | Polearm Use | 12+4
Dodge | 12+8 | Parry | 14+6 | Block | 7+8
Shield Bash | 4+1 | Battlefield Perception | 8+2 | Muscle Explosion | 4+1
Acrobatics | 13+2 | Ekrano Style (creator) | 4

Magical

Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level
Sense Mana | 0+6 | Mana Control | 3+17 | Mana Recovery | 0+0
Mana Efficiency | 8+7 | Reduced Mana Cost | 8+7 | Mana Overuse Resistance | 5+4
Blackout Resistance | 0+1 | Fire Magic | 1+4 | Earth Magic | 2+3
Water Magic | 4+1 | Wind Magic | 1+4 | Electric Magic | 6+14
Light Magic | 2+13 | Space Magic | 7+23 | Summoning Magic | 8+32
Blessing Magic | 28+22 | Nature Magic | 2+18 | Conjuring Magic | 1+4
Spirit Magic | 0+3 | Illusion Magic | 0+2 | Golemancy | 0+10
Redirect Mana (creator) | 6 | Sense Soul (creator) | 6 | Soul Manipulation (creator) | 9
Godly Language | 30+5 | Dragon Transformation (innate) | 7 | Equipment System | 5+5

Miscellaneous

Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level
Dancing | 0+1 | Cooking | 0+4 | Andraste Language | 4+6
Dismantling | 0+4 | Piloting | 0+3 | Massage | 0+3
Oral Technique | 0+1 | Mana Body (innate) | 4

Info

Name | Wolf Ryder | Age | 20 | Race | Weredragon
HP | 100 | MP | 1825 | Magic Power | 780
Level | 57

Stats

Strength | 15 | Endurance | 17 | Dexterity | 12
Speed | 15 | Intelligence | 22 | Wisdom | 18
Willpower | 19 | Charisma | 17 | Piety | 17
Perception | 17 | Sanity | 14+4

Other

Status Effects | 'NONE'

Titles

'Nickname "Good Luck", Blessed by the Goddess of Knowledge, Golemancer, Scholar of Rabanara, True Noble, Lord of Escanso, Crown Lord of the Western High Forest, Shapeshifter, Protector of the Last Crown'

Affiliations

'Helios (Fellowship), Alissa Ryder (Wife), Hanafuria Ryder (Wife), Roxanne Ryder (Wife), Lina Ryder (Wife), Ciel Ryder (Wife), Aoi Ryder (Wife), Yulania Ryder (Wife), Servant Blood Slaves'

Companions | 'Alissa Ryder, Roxanne Ryder, Hanafuria Ryder, Ciel Ryder, Lina Ryder, Aoi Ryder, Yulania Ryder'
Crimes | 'NONE'

Alissa Ryder Skill Report

Physical

Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level
Sword Use | 9 | Bow Use | 41 | Parry | 6+4
Dodge | 2+8 | Sense Presence | 12 | Hide Presence | 2+8
Enhanced Olfact | 5 | Enhanced Hearing | 5 | Hawk Eyes | 6
Muscle Explosion | 5 | Quiet Steps | 5 | Quiet Action | 4
Enhanced Stamina | 2+3 | Enhanced Reflexes | 2+8 | Tracking | 3

Magical

Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level
Sense Mana | 1 | Mana Control | 1+7 | Reduced Mana Cost | 5+0
Mana Efficiency | 7+0 | Fire Magic | 1 | Earth Magic | 5+0
Water Magic | 1 | Wind Magic | 1 | Light Magic | 1
Space Magic | 1 | Conjuring Magic | 1 | Illusion Magic | 1+14
Fox Transformation (innate) | 7 | Equipment System | 6+4

Miscellaneous

Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level
Housework | 3 | Cooking | 4 | Cleaning | 2
Washing | 5 | Riding | 2 | Oral Technique | 4
Pain Resistance | 2 | Hand Technique | 2

Info

Name | Alissa Ryder | Age | 20 | Race | Fox-type Wereanimal
HP | 100 | MP | 1120 | Magic Power | 550
Level | 57

Stats

Strength | 13 | Endurance | 19 | Dexterity | 24
Speed | 20 | Intelligence | 14 | Wisdom | 16
Willpower | 17 | Charisma | 16 | Piety | 17
Perception | 19 | Sanity | 18

Other

Status Effects | 'NONE'

Titles

'Blessed by the Goddess of Love, Blinding Arrows, True Noble, Lord of Escanso, Crown Lord of the Western High Forest, Protect of the Last Crown'

Affiliations | 'Wolf Ryder (Husband), Helios (Fellowship)'
Companions | 'Wolf Ryder, Roxanne Ryder, Hanafuria Ryder, Ciel Ryder, Lina Ryder, Aoi Ryder, Yulania Ryder'
Crimes | 'NONE'

Roxanne Ryder Skill Report

Physical

Skill Name | Level
Dagger Use | 2

Magical

Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level
Sense Mana | 1+3 | Mana Control | 8+32 | Reduced Mana Cost | 20+5
Mana Efficiency | 10+10 | Mana Overuse Resistance | 4+1 | Fire Magic | 30
Earth Magic | 1+0 | Water Magic | 7+33 | Light Magic | 1
Space Magic | 3+12 | Conjuring Magic | 5 | Alchemy | 1+9
Potion Brewing | 12 | Poison Brewing | 2 | Redirect Mana | 1
Equipment System | 4+6

Miscellaneous

Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level
Housework | 1 | Cooking | 1 | Cleaning | 1
Washing | 1 | Riding | 1

Info

Name | Roxanne Ryder | Age | 22 | Race | Succubus-Type Demon Race
HP | 100 | MP | 2960 | Magic Power | 1280
Level | 57

Stats

Strength | 10 | Endurance | 12 | Dexterity | 12
Speed | 9 | Intelligence | 18 | Wisdom | 20
Willpower | 17 | Charisma | 17 | Piety | 11
Perception | 12 | Sanity | 14

Other

Status Effects | 'NONE'
Titles | 'True Noble, Lord of Escanso, Crown Lord of the Western High Forest, Protect of the Last Crown'
Affiliations | 'Wolf Ryder (Husband), Hanafuria Ryder (Wife), Helios (Fellowship)'
Companions | 'Wolf Ryder, Alissa Ryder, Hanafuria Ryder, Ciel Ryder, Lina Ryder, Aoi Ryder, Yulania Ryder'
Crimes | 'NONE'

Hanafuria Ryder Skill Report

Physical

Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level
Sword Use | 31 | Spear Use | 18 | Bow Use | 10
Two-Handed Sword Use | 10 | Polearm Use | 6 | Dagger Use | 4
Shield Bash | 2+7 | Block | 1+14 | Parry | 10
Dodge | 12 | Tatesomu Style | 2+8 | Muscle Explosion | 8
Battlefield Perception | 10 | Taunt | 3 | Intimidate | 3

Magical

Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level
Sense Mana | 1 | Mana Control | 7 | Reduced Mana Cost | 7+0
Mana Efficiency | 2 | Fire Magic | 1 | Earth Magic | 1
Water Magic | 1+0 | Wind Magic | 1+0 | Light Magic | 1
Space Magic | 1 | Conjuring Magic | 1 | Illusion Magic | 5
Equipment System | 6+4

Miscellaneous

Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level
Housework | 2 | Cooking | 1 | Cleaning | 1
Washing | 1 | Riding | 3 | Massage | 1
Pain Conversion | 1 | Dismantling | 4 | Oral Technique | 1
Fire Breath (innate) | 5 | Summon Wings (innate) | 8 | Draconic Body (creator) | 6

Info

Name | Hanafuria Ryder | Age | 24 | Race | Fire-Type Dragonkin
HP | 100 | MP | 940 | Magic Power | 455
Level | 58

Stats

Strength | 19 | Endurance | 25 | Dexterity | 11
Speed | 15 | Intelligence | 12 | Wisdom | 16
Willpower | 21 | Charisma | 18 | Piety | 12
Perception | 10 | Sanity | 17

Other

Status Effects | 'NONE'
Titles | 'One Thousand Strikes, True Noble, Lord of Escanso, Crown Lord of the Western High Forest, Protect of the Last Crown'
Affiliations | 'Wolf Ryder (Husband), Roxanne Ryder (Wife), 'Helios (Fellowship)'
Companions | 'Wolf Ryder, Alissa Ryder, Roxanne Ryder, Ciel Ryder, Lina Ryder, Aoi Ryder, Yulania Ryder'
Crimes | 'NONE'

Ciel Ryder Skill Report

Physical

Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level
Glaive Use | 1+29 | Sword Use | 4+5 | Parry | 6+9
Dodge | 4+11 | Block | 9+6 | Imperial Hasterrum Style | 2+3
Muscle Explosion | 2 | Battlefield Perception | 1

Magical

Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level
Sense Mana | 2 | Mana Control | 6 | Reduced Mana Cost | 3+2
Mana Efficiency | 3+4 | Wind Magic | 14+26 | Fire Magic | 1
Light Magic | 10+30 | Space Magic | 3 | Conjuring Magic | 1
Diagnosis | 7 | Redirect Mana | 2 | Equipment System | 5+5

Miscellaneous

Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level
First-Aid | 3 | Housework | 3 | Cooking | 2
Cleaning | 2 | Washing | 1 | Riding | 1

Info

Name | Ciel Ryder | Age | 22 | Race | Human
HP | 100 | MP | 1310 | Magic Power | 800
Level | 57

Stats

Strength | 14 | Endurance | 15 | Dexterity | 17
Speed | 18 | Intelligence | 16 | Wisdom | 22
Willpower | 16 | Charisma | 19 | Piety | 25
Perception | 13 | Sanity | 21

Other

Status Effects | 'NONE'
Titles | 'True Noble, Lord of Escanso, Crown Lord of the Western High Forest, Protect of the Last Crown'

Affiliations

'Wolf Ryder (Husband), Lina Ryder (Wife), Helios (Fellowship), Templar Knights (Honorary Member), Temple Priestess (Former Member)'

Companions | 'Wolf Ryder, Alissa Ryder, Roxanne Ryder, Hanafuria Ryder, Lina Ryder, Aoi Ryder, Yulania Ryder'
Crimes | 'NONE'

Lina Ryder Skill Report

Physical

Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level
Hammer Use | 5+25 | Axe Use | 10+15 | Throw | 2+7
Parry | 1+9 | Dodge | 4+6 | Block | 2+13
Muscle Explosion | 2 | Shield Bash | 1+1 | Battlefield Perception | 2
Dwarven Pride Style | 4 | Enhanced Speed | 4+1

Magical

Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level
Sense Mana | 1 | Mana Control | 7 | Mana Efficiency | 4+1
Fire Magic | 1 | Earth Magic | 1+9 | Water Magic | 1
Wind Magic | 1+0 | Light Magic | 1 | Cursing Magic | 13+7
Space Magic | 1 | Conjuring Magic | 1 | General Enchanting | 7+13
Magic Tool Carving | 2+8 | Equipment System | 6+4

Miscellaneous

Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level
General Blacksmithing | 4 | Sewing | 4 | Housework | 1
Cleaning | 2 | Washing | 1 | Math | 4
Riding | 1 | Stonebody (innate) | 8

Info

Name | Lina Ryder | Age | 19 | Race | Dwarf
HP | 100 | MP | 1225 | Magic Power | 540
Level | 57

Stats

Strength | 8 | Endurance | 8 | Dexterity | 13
Speed | 12 | Intelligence | 16 | Wisdom | 15
Willpower | 18 | Charisma | 13 | Piety | 13
Perception | 14 | Sanity | 16

Other

Status Effects | 'NONE'
Titles | 'True Noble, Lord of Escanso, Crown Lord of the Western High Forest, Protect of the Last Crown'
Affiliations | 'Wolf Ryder (Husband), Ciel Ryder (Wife), 'Helios (Fellowship)'
Companions | 'Wolf Ryder, Alissa Ryder, Roxanne Ryder, Hanafuria Ryder, Ciel Ryder, Aoi Ryder, Yulania Ryder'
Crimes | 'NONE'

Info

Name | Aoi Ryder | Age | 2 | Race | Azurite Dragon
HP | 200 | MP | 1370 | Magic Power | 340
Level | 39

Stats

Strength | 18 | Endurance | 22 | Dexterity | 7
Speed | 14 | Intelligence | 9 | Wisdom | 9
Willpower | 18 | Charisma | 13 | Piety | 7
Perception | 11 | Sanity | 19

Other

Status Effects | 'NONE'
Titles | 'True Noble, Lord of Escanso, Crown Lord of the Western High Forest, Protector of the Last Crown'
Affiliations | 'Wolf Ryder (Husband), Helios (Fellowship)'
Companions | 'Wolf Ryder, Alissa Ryder, Roxanne Ryder, Hanafuria Ryder, Ciel Ryder, Lina Ryder, Yulania Ryder'
Crimes | 'NONE'

Yulania Ryder Skill Report

Physical

Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level
Sword Use | 3+12 | Two-Handed Sword Use | 2+18 | Parry | 4+11
Dodge | 5+10 | Silent Shadow Style | 4+6 | Battlefield Perception | 3+7
Enhanced Reflexes | 6 | Sense Presence | 2 | Hide Presence | 4
Muscle Explosion | 5 | Quiet Steps | 2 | Quiet Action | 6
Enhanced Stamina | 2+3

Magical

Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level
Sense Mana | 3+7 | Mana Control | 6+4 | Mana Recovery | 3+2
Mana Efficiency | 2+8 | Reduced Mana Cost | 1+4 | Fire Magic | 1
Earth Magic | 4+1 | Electric Magic | 1+0 | Light Magic | 5
Spirit Magic | 21+19 | Illusion Magic | 10 | Space Magic | 6
Nature Magic | 5+10 | Conjuring Magic | 1 | Weaverism | 2+28
Redirect Mana | 1+0 | Equipment System | 5+5

Miscellaneous

Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level
Riding | 5 | Acting | 3 | Dancing | 2

Info

Name | Yulania Ryder | Age | 20 | Race | Golden Elf
HP | 100 | MP | 1090 | Magic Power | 540
Level | 60

Stats

Strength | 13 | Endurance | 16 | Dexterity | 19
Speed | 17 | Intelligence | 16 | Wisdom | 18
Willpower | 16 | Charisma | 22 | Piety | 14
Perception | 21 | Sanity | 17

Other

Status Effects | 'NONE'
Titles | 'True Noble, Lord of Escanso, Crown Lord of the Western High Forest, Protect of the Last Crown'
Affiliations | 'Wolf Ryder (Husband), 'Helios (Fellowship)'
Companions | 'Wolf Ryder, Alissa, Hanafuria, Roxanne Succubus, Ciel, Lina, Aoi'
Crimes | 'NONE'

As we approach the ambush site, the soldiers all grow increasingly quiet, so much so that the clopping of our horses and the footsteps of the Chimeras start to seem surprisingly loud. The enemy doesn't appear to have werefox scouts, so even this amount of noise isn't enough to alert them to our presence.

Hana mounts Aoi, and the two of them join the mounted warriors, who detach from our column to go around the enemies and begin a pincer maneuver. The terrain is thick with rock spikes here, so the footmen split up into multiple groups to use all the available paths to the ambush site.

Nen, Darcy, and Montague stay with us, and we proceed up a narrow path that leads to a small group of imperial raiders, then we stop just out of sight and wait as the mounted warriors maneuver around.

Both the enemy ambushers and those in the camp still haven't shown any sign that they know about our imminent attack, so we have to wonder if the two werefox spies were even related to them.

After a few minutes of waiting in absolute silence, Darcy unfurls a small Misty Fox flag, a cute orange fox in a gray, misty field with a small square tower in the upper-left corner, the symbol of the Town Hunters. He sticks it into a slot on the back of his armor that keeps it firmly secured and ensures that it doesn't get in the way of combat.

Our flag is much larger, so we need someone to be dedicated to holding it up, and Hukarere gets the honor of that role.

I watch as the mounted warriors finish getting into position, then Léonne activates her Emergency Ring, giving the signal for Darcy to begin the attack.

Six mages and I pull out our [Gate] "Scrubbers", and we all activate them at the same time.

"SCRUBBEEEEER…!" An imperial mage screams at the top of his lungs.

"ATTACK!" Darcy gives the order, and we rush up the path.

I sigh tiredly, but I barely have to force myself at all to flood my mind with visions of dragons fucking, then I start to picture the scene when my draconic cock pierced a woman's pussy, when my blades split skin open and drew blood, when I fucked an entire army's worth of women all by myself, when I was face-to-face with death, drenched in my own blood as I fought to live another day.

I get a boner as my heart is flooded with draconic energy, and the dragon inside of me assumes control of my body.

It's time to kill, once again.

The mounted warriors reach the enemy first, and they trample through the imperials, either slaughtering them or forcing them off the cliff they were poised above.

Hana barely even has to do anything since Aoi's mass is simply too great for the small numbers of men to even slightly slow her down.

A group of imperials appears further up the path ahead of the other girls and I, and the enemy immediately forms a shield wall to halt our advance.

"Golems!" I call for their attention, and they raise their huge boulders. "LAUNCH!"

I'm not sure if the imperials are frozen in fear or just bravely stupid, but they attempt to block the boulders with their shields, and the huge force of the impact blows them off the cliff, breaking their formation.

We trample through the rest of them like a Border Collie smashing through a sandcastle, and we burst out the other side, right in front of over twenty archers.

The Lordsguard all have enchanted shields, so the hastily-fired arrows are diverted up into the sky or down towards the ground by our [Wind Shield]s, and now, we're behind enemy lines, so all hell breaks loose.

On the other side of this shallow valley, the rest of the enemy soldiers are getting trampled by the beast foxes and their riders.

Silvano doesn't even bother to cast [Earth Armor] or [Amplified Reflexes], he just [Rush]es through the archers and continues down the wide path towards the other enemy shield walls, which are currently blocking the rest of our footmen from advancing up.

I throw a [Discharge] at a group of mages who were trying to use [Ritualism] to cast a big spell at us, then Nen tackles the archers, forcing a few of them off the cliff and disrupting their attack.

Anton's poleaxe cleaves heads from shoulders, and I'm certain that he could win against the archers all by himself.

I notice that a large number of the imperials are actually weredogs, and they aren't a race known to resort to banditry so easily since they're highly valued as soldiers everywhere. They must be working for a mercenary company.

Silvano opens the way for the rest of our footmen to advance, and the enemies start to surrender, but a few of them try to run by rappelling down the cliff, though they'll quickly meet the caravan's horsemen, who are charging along the road, coming in to capture them all.

The enemy camp finally begins to stir as they receive word about our attack, but it's too late now for them to send help.

With this battle wrapping up after just a few chaotic minutes, it's now time for us to end this once and for all. The girls and I join up with the mounted warriors, and we ride towards the camp ahead of the footmen.

Klein and Anton stay with the Lordsguard, but Silvano rides with me because I'm actually small enough that this huge beast can carry both of us at once without a problem, though it's also because I'll never let him ride with my women, not even Lina.

The enemy camp is close by since they wanted to be able to quickly secure the caravan goods they intended to steal, so we reach it after just three minutes of sprinting. It's set at the top of a hill, and the gates are already shut, so we encircle it and make sure that the Scrubbers are properly overlapping to prevent them from using [Gate] to escape.

Since they already know that we're here, there's no point in hiding anymore, though we don't reveal the full extent of our numbers.

We see a few heads peek out to look at us from behind the palisade on the hill, but none of the imperials move to attack. They're all holding standard-issue bows, just waiting for us to come closer. They scrambled to prepare to defend, not to escape, so we're all on edge, waiting for their counterattack.

Behind their walls is a small shanty town, which is evidence that they've been waiting here for quite a while, and the men are primarily positioned on the walls and behind the three gates, though I can't say whether or not there's anyone inside the huts and shacks.

"Grr… I don't like this," Silvano growls like a goblin as he dismounts.

"Agreed," I coldly reply.

Jacques takes a few steps forward, his towering figure almost allowing Léonne's head to peek up above the rather low treetops. We're on the opposite side of the hill from them, so we can only see them through my Holly.

Léonne presses a magic tool against her throat, and her enhanced voice echoes through the forest, "YOU'RE SURROUNDED! DROP YOUR WEAPONS AND OPEN THE GATES! I SWEAR IN THE NAME OF THE VERNER FAMILY, THE CHIEFS OF THE MISTY FOREST, THAT YOU'LL BE SPARED IF YOU SURRENDER NOW!"

But their only reply is more silence.

"Lord Wolf, can you make out their movements?" Darcy quietly asks.

"Yes, but they aren't doing anything," I warily reply.

Léonne is not the kind of person that repeats herself, so Jacques takes a few steps back, and she shouts one last time, "THIS IS YOUR ONLY WARNING!"

Alissa hears a few whispers, but they're too quiet, even for her, so all we know is that they're shaken.

A long, tense minute passes, and Jacques retreats back into the trees so that none of our enemies can see us. I want to scout deeper into their camp, but I'm scared of what the heretics could do to my summons. Their souls are still part of me, after all.

"I smell [Gate], it was cast a while ago," a werefox mana sniffer reports.

"Reinforcements…" Darcy grimly comments, then he turns to his men. "Archers, aim to assassinate."

With Alissa's [Sense Presence] and my aerial reconnaissance, she knows the position of every soldier on the wall, so she freely lobs arrows that fall back down right on top of their heads, but after the fourth kill, the imperials realize what's happening and pull up their shields to block the arrows.

"How long…?!" One of the imperials shouts in desperation.

"A little longer!" Comes the reply.

"SHUT THE FUCK UP!" Another voice drowns them both out.

The terrible gut feeling I've had since I saw that pair of eyes doubles in intensity.

"Darcy, I don't think it's a good idea for us to wait," I advise him.

He turns to his sniffer, who reports, "I sense no spell being cast in there."

"If they're backed by imperials, then they could have someone or something with nearly perfect [Mana Efficiency]," I insist.

"We don't have the power to safely breach through that palisade yet," Darcy calmly retorts.

"My wives could sneak in and open the gate. The imperials are all spread out, so it's possible for us to overwhelm one side, especially if you provide a diversion."

Just to make a point, I have Alissa use the power of the Camalo armor right in front of him. The armor has two modes: one provides the option of applying a specific camo pattern based on the user's imagination, while the other tries to blend the armor in with the background. Alissa uses the latter, and Darcy raises his thin eyebrows high in surprise.

I could move around enough points to allow me to use [Invisibility], but that would waste too much of my mana, and [Ignorance] should be enough to allow them to infiltrate the camp.

Then Darcy grumbles and makes a deep frown, which turns his forehead into a washboard, but he eventually relents, "Fine, but I'm not sacrificing anyone for this diversion."

I nod in appreciation. "We have our own way to retreat in case things go wrong." Then I turn to Alissa and Yunia. "Go."

Yunia switches into her Camalo armor, then Alissa casts [Ignorance] on the both of them, and Yunia casts [Silence].

Darcy grabs one of the summoned birds on his shoulders and gives the order, "Jacques, we don't think it's a good idea to wait them out, so we'll need a diversion for the Ryders."

After a few seconds, one of his men announces, "Jacques reports: 'understood.'"

"Silvano, once we're in, find what they're doing inside the main building," I sternly order him.

"As you wish, your Highness," he happily replies and draws both of his bastard swords.

Then the huge, elephant-sized fox charges forward at the same time that the mounted warriors unleash a barrage.

[Fire Arrow]s and explosive [Fireballs] reach the palisade, forcing the men to cower from the barrage, allowing Jacques to run up the path unmolested before slamming against the gate.

He runs back a short distance, turns around and slams into it once more before retreating back to the cover of the trees.

The imperials shoot arrows in a counterattack at the mounted warriors, but they aren't enchanted, so the werefoxes easily avoid them by hiding behind the trees.

Then they unleash another barrage, but this time, a few brave imperial men shoot arrows at Jacques, and Léonne easily diverts them with her own [Wind Shield].

Alissa and Yunia activate [Fly] and pass over the palisade, then they switch to Bastión armor and launch their surprise attack on the men on the walkways.

Yunia immediately drops down to the gate, right in the center of ten spearmen, while Alissa keeps the archers above occupied with [Illusion Magic].

The rest of the girls and I activate [Fly], and we dart forward ahead of everyone else.

"Become stronger," I quietly use [Godly Language] to boost our power.

Yunia dodges every single spear thrust while her [Soul Blade] disables them one by one, then she activates [Searing Blade] and slices through the logs keeping the gate shut.

"They don't amount to much," she snobbishly remarks through [Bind].

"DIVERSION, ATTACK ON THE WEST SIDE!" One of the imperials bellows, and half the camp turns their heads towards the girls.

With the heat now partially off of him, Jacques freely rakes against the palisade gate, leaving deep grooves in the logs.

"HOLD THE GATE!" An imperial on our side commands, but Aoi crashes into it, and the spearmen on the other side are simply blown away as the gate bursts inwards.

We're right behind her, so we quickly spread out and start slaughtering every enemy we can see.

I stay at the gate with golems, diverting all the arrows flying down at us. I can't go too deep on the offensive in case the girls need to be summoned back.

A flash of silver lightning passes by us, and I summon a Shad and a Nalusa to support Silvano. The Nalusa is my favorite monster, not because of its horrifying, charred visage, but because it can control all of the blood it draws from the enemies it wounds, quickly stirring up a red storm of slaughter in its wake.

Now that she doesn't have to protect her husband from the archers, Léonne uses a shortsword with [Searing Blade] to open up the gate on her end, and the mounted warriors now pour in from both sides.

Silvano enters the main building, and four halberds immediately chase after him, but he's fast enough to dodge them all with ease.

Inside the main shack, dozens of burly men sporting the exact same set of pristine steel armor and halberds are standing in a grid-like formation. The four of them that were the closest to Silvano are the ones that tried to strike him the moment he walked in.

In the center of their formation, a dozen corpses litter the floor, and a tall man in gray robes grips an unknown man's face, whose limbs are shaking uncontrollably.

"Fuck…" Silvano and I whisper at the same time. That scene does not look good.

The Shad following him shoots tendrils at the closest enemy, but there's absolutely zero response from them. It's like they can't even sense the Shad at all.

Silvano unleashes a [Lighting Bolt] at the robed man, who screams in pain, then all of the armored men turn their heads towards the source of the spell.

"ON IT!" Hana, Ciel, and Alissa reply before I even begin to ask them to help him.

The armored Clones all immediately try to swarm Silvano, so he retreats out of the building while the Shad continues to strike, but since it's accomplishing nothing, I unsummon it.

The moment Silvano attempts to parry a halberd, it erupts with flame as the Clone Soldier activates [Searing Blade], causing it to slice clean through Silvano's bastard sword. Not even his metallic silver skin can protect him against that enchantment, so he dodges backwards before he can lose his arm to it, then he lunges with his other bastard sword, and the blade cleanly pierces the Clone's visor, but he doesn't even flinch back from it in response.

"DARCY! THE ENEMY HAS DANGEROUS HALBERD-USERS WHO CAN USE [SEARING BLADE], SO KEEP YOUR MEN AWAY FROM THEM!" I scream at him, trying to be heard over the sounds of battle, and he reports my warning to the communication birds on his shoulders.

The Nalusa shapes the blood it's controlling into spikes to attack the Clones, but the wounds it inflicts seem to draw very little blood, greatly slowing it down from snowballing like it normally could've in a massive battle.

Fox-Alissa circles around the building while Hana and Ciel land beside Silvano to help him fend off the swarm.

An uncountable number of men are pouring out of the shacks, and the narrow alleys prevent the mounted warriors from easily trampling over them, so the attack starts to lose some steam.

Alissa bursts into the main shack from the other side while transforming back into her humanoid form, then she unleashes an [Arrow of Annihilation] the very first moment she can.

One of the Clones partially blocks her spell with his halberd, but it still pierces through the weapon, hitting the robed mage in the shoulder and severing his arm.

"ARGH…!" He groans through gritted teeth, then grips the seared stump with his other hand.

The last few Clones immediately chase after her, so she can't finish him off.

"I'll keep them busy until Silvano returns!" She declares through [Bind].

Hana blocks a [Searing Blade] with her shield and activates [Heat Reversal], which absorbs the heat of the Clone's enchantment, then returns it in an explosion, forcing the Clones back momentarily.

Ciel swoops in and sinks her glaive into the neck of one of the Clones, cleaving through mail and padding in one clean strike, but she fails to actually kill him, then the wounded Clone simply gets back up again and continues to fight as if he was entirely uninjured.

"WHAT THE FUCK ARE THEY?!" Silvano shouts in disbelief.

"KILL THE MAGE INSIDE!" Hana barks back, then Silvano disengages and circles around the shack.

Alissa's arrow hits a Clone in the face, and it instantly crumples to the floor, but then it starts to move again just a second later and removes the arrow that was sticking out of its face.

For them to survive these sorts of attacks can only mean one thing…

"UNDEEAD!” Ciel angrily howls and casts [Judgment] on her glaive. Her next strike actually decapitates one of the Clones, the spell allowing her to slice through the heretic's neck as if it were made of paper.

Lina, Yunia, and Aoi arrive to help Hana and Ciel, and the mounted warriors finally gain complete control of the palisade and the walkways, but the imperials in the alleys are still holding on, so the girls are about to be completely surrounded.

"So many…" Lina grumbles through [Bind].

I decide to advance with Roxanne and the golems, easily overwhelming the few defenders we encounter with our firepower. We need a clear path for Silvano to retreat.

The footmen are now approaching the hill, so we only need to hold on for a bit longer.

Silvano bursts into the main shack, and the robed mage points his finger at him. I instantly get a bad feeling about it, so I get Alissa to instant-cast [Ghost Lights], [Pacify], and [Daydreaming] on him, all at the same time.

The heretic mage grunts and lurches forward, then half of the shack simply crumbles away into dust without a single trace of a spell, leaving only a huge crater in the floor, which barely missed Silvano.

"KILL HIM!" Alissa shouts as she runs from five Clones.

Silvano turns into silver lightning, and in the next instant, the mage's head tumbles from his shoulders, but that's not the end of him. Silvano casts [Earth Bullet] on the head, then he stomps on it until it splits open and his foot smashes through the man's brain.

"UUGH!" Silvano groans in disgust, his warped face now looking somewhat similar to a Hobgoblin's.

Alissa immediately smells the scent of corruption wafting from the crushed head, but the mage really should be dead from that kind of damage. "RETREAT!" She orders him and flees from the shack.

Silvano follows her, and they easily lose the Clones that were chasing after them, then we meet up in the alleys just as I finish carving out a path for him.

"RETREAT! DON'T ENGAGE THE UNDEAD SOLDIERS!" I order Silvano, and he grimly nods, then Alissa, Roxanne, and I [Fly] back towards Ciel and the others.

I summon four fire elemental-wives, then I order them to set fire to everything and ensure that the heretic mage's corpse is turned entirely into ash.

Our foot soldiers finally pour in, and the enemy's resistance crumbles.

The girls can't hold back a swarm of nearly thirty Clone Soldiers by themselves, and only Ciel seems to be leaving any lasting damage on them, so I think it's time for me to use Patrono.

A stray Clone Soldier reaches the footmen and immediately uses [Searing Blade] to slice through two werefoxes. The Clone is simply too fast for them to retreat in time.

FUCK!

I [Fly] back to them and cast repeated [Lightning Bolts] at the Clone, but he doesn't seem to feel a thing and simply continues barreling towards our Lordsguard.

"CAUTION!" Anton bellows as he points at the Clone Soldier.

Klein shoots an [Arrow of Annihilation] at it, and the spell penetrates his shoulder, but even though the armor seems to have absorbed most of the attack, his right arm is now almost entirely useless.

"IT'S WOUNDED! KEEP IT DOWN!" A female Lordsguard shouts, and four of them quickly drive their spears into the joints of the Clone's armor, locking his arms in place and immobilizing him, though he's so heavy that they can't actually push him down.

Anton rushes over to them to finish the Clone off since it can't swing its halberd anymore, but the monstrous undead still manages to flick its wrist and use [Searing Blade] to decapitate one of my guard girls.

NOOOOO!

"UNDEAD! STAY BACK! THEY DON'T GET WOUNDED!" I bellow at the top of my lungs, and I crash against the back of Clone. It feels like I just hit a solid wall, though the Clone does get tipped over.

I cast [Haste], and the world slows down around me, allowing me to quickly cast successive [Spirit Lights] as I use my tentacles to shove the shining balls of light into the Clone's armor.

Just as I begin to feel the stress of overusing my body taking its toll, the Armor starts to be affected by the spells and convulses, giving me enough time to use my own [Searing Blade] to decapitate it, then I dispel [Haste].

"DESTROY THE HEAD!" Anton howls and sinks his poleaxe into it, then someone casts [Earth Bullet] at the back of the blade, forcing the poleaxe deep enough to split the head open, and the smell of undead corruption quickly invades our nostrils.

"We're in a bit of a pinch, here!" Hana angrily complains through [Bind].

The girls can't hold on any longer, so they use [Fly] to escape the swarm of Clone Soldiers, and I unsummon the Nalusa before it can die under the Soldiers' assault.

I look over the battlefield and feel a horrible ache in my chest. Flames roar throughout the whole of the shantytown, and the imperials are all but defeated, but our footmen are now encountering the Clone Soldiers, and they're getting sliced open immediately upon meeting the monstrous Soldiers.

Jacques can stomp them down with his hulking mass, but he can't go against more than twenty of them on his own. Ciel can also deal with them, but again, not by herself. Roxanne can kite them, but that would take too long, and I want to minimize casualties. Even Yunia has trouble with the Clones since it's definitely not a good idea to use [Soul Blade] against [Searing Blade].

Darcy starts to bark out orders, and the footmen hastily retreat, but the Clone Soldiers are giving chase.

I move the "cursor" in my soul space to [Equip] Patrono, but something stops me.

And in the very next second, a divine light suddenly blinds everyone and makes the Clone Soldiers recoil in agony.

"AAAAAAH!" Ciel shrieks as energy gushes out of her like a waterfall. After a brief second of panic, she immediately understands the divine Blessing that has been bestowed upon her and grasps the unending well of power. "A BOON FOR THE WORTHY!" Her triumphant voice echoes through the battlefield.

She channels the borrowed power into [Judgment] as she raises her glaive, and the clouds are pierced by a blade of pure, divine energy, then she slams her blade down, and everything turns into dust.

Intermission 27

"Report."

"The Oracle's Premonition was correct, but the assassins were spotted before they could activate the bomb."

"[Monster Summoning]?"

"Unconfirmed, but likely."

"A third failure is unacceptable. Stop the assassination attempts until we know more."

"Understood. Also, the Automaton Soldiers failed their duty, and though the Gods interfered, it was likely that they'd have failed anyway."

"Allocate more resources to the Oracle. Her Premonitions are still our best tool."

A note from Manasong

Hall of Fame of Patrons

The patrons who support Rupegia shall have their names sung by the bards for they deserve the glory and honor. Their names are:

Prince PreownedFIN.

Prince Creamy Spinach.

Lord Andrew Meyers.

Lord Samuel Lim.

Lord Bill.

Lord Novgarod.

Lord Michale Erwin.

Lord Bakerdea.

Lord Maurice.

Lord Empyrean.

Lord Mattirro Draca.

Lord Colorblind.

Lord Fullmoon.

Lord Sean Drake.

Lord EESDESESESRDT.

Lord FrostyCube.

Lord Mike Bartter.

Lord Cardinal Steiner.

Lord Krawn.

Lord Warwulfv.

Lord Jorge Franco.

Lord Christopher Welsh.

Lord DJ.

Lord Philip.

Lord Tenebris Lupus.

Lord ImportantNPC.

Lord The Tallest Joshua.

Lord Copey Dunt.

Lord Dracopuppy23.

Lord Freddie.

Lord Cidant.

Lord Stellerbattle.

Lord Chris Carter.

Lord GoodKat.

Noble Salty Panda.

Noble Mild Fracas.

Noble Aclys.

Noble Shawn Plumley.

Noble CarlBaxter.

Noble Yeuromain.

Noble Brandon Lai.

Leave a rating or a review to help me rise to the top or fix my shameful understanding of prose.

Take a look over my blog where all information about the world of Rupegia will be posted.

Join the Discord and discuss, or rant, or meme, or try and fight me so your waifu gets more screentime.

Become a Patron and read chapters in advance, or read the side-stories, or leave your mark on the story, or help choose the next artwork or the next side-story.

Chapter 105: Visitors - Part 1

Death isn't binary, you aren't simply "alive," and then, in the next moment, "dead." When you die, your body slowly shuts down its functions as your heart stops beating and your cells start to die from a lack of oxygen or nutrients, like a spinning wheel that's allowed to come to a stop on its own.

It's only when the body reaches an irreversible state that someone is considered truly "dead," like how an egg can't be uncooked. People whose heart has stopped haven't really "died," they've just reached a state of "clinical death," and that's something that used to be irreversible, but once Earthling medicine advanced enough to be able to reverse it, those who went through "clinical death" hadn't really "died." So, all those movies about people having near-death experiences where they see "angels" or some other supernatural thing is just total bullshit.

Death isn't binary, it's a fuzzy set where your "membership" to either the "alive" or "dead" groups is like a value between 1 and 0, and it slowly drifts towards zero until it reaches the "point of no return" for Earthling medicine.

Soul Info

Name | Lorena Botado | Race | Golden Elf | Level | 29
HP | 0/100 | MP | 310 | Magic Power | 90
Strength | 17 | Endurance | 18

But in Rupegia, once someone's HP reaches zero, they're dead, and no amount of [Light Magic] will bring them back. Once their Thread of Fate is cut, their soul "detaches" from their body, and the gates to Paradise or Hell open for them to spend their afterlife there before their soul is called back into the Spirit Cycle.

[Heal] merely channels divine power to bring about a miracle where the body "realigns" with its soul, but if the body has no soul attached to it anymore, then the healing doesn't happen.

[Regeneration] and other derivatives still draw upon information from the soul to heal someone, they just forgo using divine power to fuel it and instead use other, much more varied methods to heal someone.

Theoretically, I could, through Earthling surgery, "revive" someone's body after they've died since HP is an arbitrary number, but then the body would be alive without a soul, which is an abomination in the eyes of the temple, and the body wouldn't be able to cast magic.

A few seconds after Lorena was decapitated, she was dead, and there was nothing I could've done to save her at that point.

Perhaps HP could be a representation of how close one's Thread is to being cut. There might be a way to strengthen the Thread while the body gets ravaged, but that's going a bit too far out of my area of expertise for me to speculate.

Lorena's spirit kneels before me, and she lowers her head as she holds it in place to prevent it from falling off. "I beg forgiveness, your Highness, for my foolish mistake has caused you so much grief," she earnestly pleads.

I show her a pained smile as I shake my head. "You don't have to apologize for such a thing. You did your duty until the very end, and you deserve to be honored for it," I politely reply, doing my best to keep my tears at bay. "I also could've-…"

Could've what…? Scouted better? Fought more aggressively? Communicated better? Not abandoned the Lordsguard? Made better use of my powers? Let Roxanne get in closer to the Clones? Used Patrono from the very beginning…?

I forced us to charge in without a plan and instead just a lot of fucking hope that everything would work out. That was a massive blunder. I was so paranoid about the heretics that I couldn't think.

"Are you going to grieve for every one of our soldiers that dies?" Yunia sternly asks, her striking blue eyes narrowed in faint disapproval.

I glance at her as I nod slowly. "Yes. For as long as my heart can endure." Then Alissa squeezes my hand tighter to reassure me. As per our promise, she'll always be there to mend my wounded heart.

Lorena raises her head and mirrors my smile. "You honor me with your mourning," she whispers weakly.

I look at her youthful face and feel guilty that someone like her gave her life for someone like me. Through her transparent blue spirit, I can see her physical body which has been covered in my flag, and the sight of that gives me mixed feelings.

I hear footsteps coming closer, but I can't turn my head away from Lorena.

"It's not over yet," Hukarere suddenly interjects. "You can become like us and serve even in death."

Lorena's face slowly warps in realization, then she smiles brightly and lowers her head again. "If you'll have me, I'll gladly continue to serve for as long as my spirit holds," she boldly declares.

I'm a very pragmatic person, so I don't really understand honor that well, and I don't think I ever will. I shouldn't, I can't, and I won't stop them from serving me, so I have to make sure that I never misuse their loyalty because I'm walking blind here, which also means that I won't know if I've made a mistake until I see the bodies piling up.

I breathe in and place my hand on top of her non-material head as I calmly reply, "I'm glad that you find me worthy of so much sacrifice, and I promise to do my utmost to provide you with your just rewards."

Ciel's mood is as gloomy as mine. She's just standing in place, staring at the destruction she wreaked upon the camp with conflicting emotions.

The entire shantytown was pulverized. Even if there were some imperials who surrendered, there's nobody left alive in there now. The werefoxes do have dozens of prisoners, so it's not like they were completely wiped out, but she wanted to give them the chance to finally surrender.

"Léonne gave them that chance, and they ignored her, so they got what they deserved," Lina coldly remarks.

"We should never wholly dismiss the chance of saving a life," Ciel quietly replies.

"It'd come at the expense of many werefox lives…" Lina mumbles as she buries her face into Ciel's breasts and hugs her tight. "We did everything we could, so please, don't be so sad."

Ciel sighs and pats Lina's head. "I just need a moment," she gently whispers, then she opens her "Status" and stares at the new entry in her "Titles."

"Blessed by the God of the Sun."

After the werefoxes finish the clean-up, not that there's too much for them to clean since Ciel pulverized almost everything here, we meet up with the other leaders in a tent to discuss what happened.

Nen stoically reads from a piece of paper, "First up, the death toll: twelve werefoxes, four from the mounted warriors and the rest from the footmen; one from the Ryder family Lordsguard; estimated nearly one hundred and fifty from the imperials, with nineteen of them captured. Since the enemy was hiding within the shacks, we couldn't get a proper count of their numbers."

"Better than what we had estimated if the bait caravan was to be attacked," Darcy impassively remarks.

"Indeed. All things considered, this operation was a resounding success," Jacques gives them mild approval.

Nen waits for a moment for any other comments before continuing, "Moving on… the survivors have all confessed to have been working for the mercenary company 'Praefortis,' which primarily operates in Mistcross, but they aren't known to come into the Misty Forest, and due to their relationship with heretics, the Punishers can handle the company's destruction on their own."

At least, for once, it wasn't Katasko.

Yunia frowns in displeasure as she points out, "If they sent reinforcements, then the main branch should already know what happened here. The heretics should already be untraceable for us by now."

And Nen grimly adds, "Not only that, but there is no conclusive evidence that they were being aided by the White Stalkers. The ones who had that information were apparently killed by the mysterious mage inside the main shack."

That mage used true heretical magic. A spell that neither Alissa nor Silvano could detect, and the mage didn't even chant. It was so terrifying that even Silvano's nonchalant mood has been disturbed, but Allura is the one who looks the most afraid. She's completely tensed up, her pale face even paler than normal as she quietly listens to all of this serious talk.

"It's unfortunate that the mage was killed, but I see no way for us to have safely captured someone as dangerous as him," Léonne regretfully asserts.

And Yunia bitterly adds, "There's also no response from his ashes, so I'm certain that he shattered his own spirit upon death, if he even had one to begin with."

We stay silent for a moment as we stew in the gravity of this situation.

Then Nen clears his throat and moves on to the next topic, "Now, regarding the matter of the undead soldiers, there are three headless corpses in good condition, and three more that were completely crushed by Jacques."

"One for me, one for the Verners, and one for the temple," I immediately suggest.

"I don't have use for such a heretical abomination," Léonne angrily replies, and I feel a shiver run down my spine, afraid that I've offended her.

"Give it to your mages and have them study it so that you'll know how to fight the undead in the future," Yunia immediately comes to my aid.

And I calmly point out, "The Clone Soldiers were lower undead, so only their brains were corrupted, which means that their bodies had been enhanced in some way to make them so resistant to wounds."

Léonne diverts her stern gaze as she carefully deliberates. "Hm… I understand," she quietly hums.

"'Clone' Soldiers? Is that what we're calling them, now?" Darcy curiously questions.

Right, they don't know what 'clone' means.

I glance at the golems behind me.

"It has the same meaning as 'copy,'" Ted begins, as always.

"But it's used for something biological," Suzy continues on cue.

"Like twins, but also artificial," and Jarn finishes.

"S-sounds appropriate…" Darcy murmurs as he stiffly nods.

Then Nen broaches the last topic, "The only significant spoils to divide up are the halberds enchanted with [Searing Blade]. They didn't have much gold since they hadn't attacked any caravans yet."

"We should just divide it equally," I kindly suggest.

Léonne nods and quickly replies, "Agreed. My share will go to the twenty-fourth as part of their compensation for their efforts." And Darcy smiles contentedly.

"That's all I have to report," Nen politely finishes.

After a few more quick exchanges, the table goes silent.

"I'd like a word with Lord Wolf," Léonne announces, and everyone immediately moves to leave, even Alissa. It's kind of useless to try to have a private talk with me, though, since I have eight peepers who enjoy listening to my every thought.

"Gih."

I just ignore Gify for now and meet Léonne's stare.

Her demeanor is very austere while mine is weary but stiff. She clearly has the advantage in any potential discussions, though the support from the girls will keep me from failing miserably in any exchange we might have.

"I now understand the sort of enemy you have to face…" She starts with a grim tone, her orange eyes looking rather lifeless for a moment. Then she takes a sip from her tea and continues, "And I know that you're all going to face this head-on like stubborn orcs."

I smile wryly and mumble, "I-I wouldn't say it like that."

"I won't go back on what I just said," she coldly replies, and I sigh in defeat. "But I'll still help you in whatever way I can, not just because you're married to Alissa, but because I believe in you."

I raise an eyebrow and stare at her curiously. "Oh…?"

Her stern look starts to wash away, replaced with a kind, wise smile. "Three Blessings, and two Divine Interventions. It'd be irresponsible of any humanoid for them to simply ignore your struggle."

I look down at my cup with a bitter smile as I start to confess, "I'm not sure why the heretics hate me so much, but I do wish to follow the teachings of the God of Change and bring progress to this world, though I feel as if I lack the support to go down this path." I lower my head respectfully. "So I thank you for your consideration from the bottom of my heart."

Her voice suddenly strikes at me with a seriousness that I haven't seen from her before. "I, Léonne Verner, Chieftess of the Misty Low Forest, shall give you my aid whenever you need it."

Oh, shit.

I straighten my back and respond in kind, "I, Wolf Ryder, Crown Lord of the Western High Forest, shall give you my aid whenever you need it."

She extends her hand, and I pad my claws before I also offer her mine, and then we shake hands to seal this informal alliance, and I feel a tightening in my heart as our vow is heard by the Gods.

I try to keep myself from savoring the feel of her hand, but it's so delicate and she's so beautiful that it's hard to keep those thoughts at bay, so I feel guilty about touching her. I'm a pervert through and through.

I release her hand before she does since I'm feeling conflicted, and I notice her flashing a subtle smirk at my brief awkwardness.

I clear my throat and politely confess, "It gives me great relief to gain your acceptance."

"You're someone who's worth listening to," she replies in kind.

After that, another Division arrives to escort the 24th back to Roubaix while we take a [Gate] directly to the Verners' home.

I [Equip] my formal clothes again and look back at the Lordsguard. Though they're still standing tall with pride, there's a bit of a gloomy air around them as they carry Lorena's corpse on a stretcher. Her spirit is still floating along beside it, so it's kind of an odd situation since Lorena is awfully cheery despite the fact that she's dead.

I look at my wives and quietly declare, "I wish to go back to Escanso and deliver Lorena…" -I hold myself back from frowning at the spirit's bright smile- "and I think we should hold a funeral for her."

"I'll go with you," Lina immediately replies.

"Same," Ciel glumly joins in.

"There's some business in Escanso that I wish to settle," Yunia shares.

Hana, and Aoi share a look. "Maybe we can spar some more with the werefoxes…?" Hana hesitantly asks.

Roxanne gives us a silly grin. "I'll… stay and watch… and gossip with the Elders," she embarrassedly adds.

I turn to Alissa and quietly assure her, "I'll be fine, so just stay here for the rest of the day with your parents. I'll get Osaria and Poosh to comfort me." Then I gently squeeze her hand and give her a peck on the lips.

"Thank you," she whispers back and gives me a short hug.

We give our goodbyes to the Verners, and Allura becomes visibly heartbroken.

"For the good of our alliance, I hope that you aren't trying to add my daughter to your collection of wives…" Léonne coldly lashes at me.

"I'm not looking for any more wives," I reflexively reply and wave my hand dismissively, a bit uncomfortable with how intense her glare is.

Alissa smiles like a cunning fox and makes a stunning announcement, "Breeding Contracts are still possible, though, and we aren't going to negotiate too hard with you since we're not-blood family."

"Eh…?" I blurt out in surprise and jerk my head to look at her.

Jacques blinks blankly and reluctantly asks, "Didn't you already give your children to the dryads…?" And his mouth twitches since he just said some words that he would've preferred to not have had to say.

I scratch my head with my claws, and I'm thankful that I remembered to pad them before doing that. "Dryads can only use my seed to create more dryads, so this is… a bit different," I stiffly point out.

Alissa grabs my arm and happily explains, a perverted smile gracing her beautiful face, "It'll be quite a while before we're ready for children, though, so you have to start increasing the weredragon population as soon as you manage to create that racial skill you have planned."

Oh…

Lina's Trivia: children can inherit a few skills from their parents, and those skills are said to be a child's "talent," so nobles try to have children later than commoners do to help their offspring find their path earlier on in life. Though, the skills someone is born with don't always reveal every talent they have. Alissa wasn't born with [Bow Use], but it's clear to everyone how much of a talent she has for it.

Yunia raises one thin eyebrow in mild surprise. "You're always concerned about the oddest of things," she remarks offhandedly.

"I just… wanted to have children with my wives first…" I shyly mumble.

"Wow, I'm actually surprised…" Silvano whispers to the Lordsguard, his eyebrows raised high, and our soldiers flash a few wry smiles at each other.

"Awn…" Ciel moans weakly, then gives me a tight hug, squishing her jiggly bits against my back. "That's so sweet, but the survival of your race needs to come first."

I sigh and whine dramatically, "Alright, I'll make the sacrifice of impregnating as many women as I can the very moment I'm able to."

"Please, don't brag," Jacques quietly pleads, then ignores Léonne's and Ofilia's glares.

I grin cheekily and kiss Ciel's hand. "Alright, let's go…" Then I turn to Anton, who seems to have gone into a trance. "Sir Anton…?"

He blinks, then snaps out of it. "Uh…? Oh, right, yes, let's go."

I chuckle softly and wave goodbye to the Verners, then we enter the [Eternal Gate] Network.

"You're always welcome to visit," Léonne gently offers.

"We will!" I shout back.

Klein and half the Lordsguard will stay for a little longer with Alissa, but all the newbies come back with us.

When we arrive back home, Anton, Silvano, and I call the High Officers, and we give them an after-action report on the battle.

Poosh gives me such a concerned look that I actually feel a bit guilty about worrying her so much. She gets up and comes right over to me, then pulls my head in between her bouncy breasts and fluffy chest wool.

"I-I'm actually kind of alright, so you don't have to worry about me too much," I try to soothe her, my voice coming out quite muffled.

"It's my job to comfort you regardless, so please, allow me to do my duty," she tenderly replies as she runs her fingers through my hair, and I feel a shiver run down my spine because she's really good at her job.

"Your Highness…" Sandoro's impassive tone dampens my levity. "I shall shift the Lordsguard's training focus towards combating the undead. It seems that they already understand their roles in preventing assassination."

I turn my head to look at him and frown.

"You don't approve…?" He slowly questions, his aged face looking remarkably wise and rugged.

"No, I… I feel like I made a mistake in that battle," I guiltily confess.

"And so did I since I was supposed to be leading the Lordsguard," Anton immediately speaks out, sounding a bit stiff and nervous.

Sandoro wastes no time to reply to us, his tone as direct as a [Lightning Bolt], "Soldiers die for stupid reasons all the time. I'm not saying that Lorena's death was stupid, but the men were rather aggressive, perhaps a bit too zealous in their desire to serve."

I sigh and bury my head in Poosh's bosom again. I know that it wasn't really my fault, but… I'm just so conflicted.

Then Sandoro adds on, another strike against my stubborn guilt, "We don't have that many veterans, and the newcomers haven't finished their training, but neither will they truly ever finish it before they die of old age. Still, it's the leader's job to make the best out of what they have."

And Alcander joins in, his cheery bluntness making him sound quite fatherly, "People came to serve you because of your power, not your military prowess, so mistakes are expected and accepted so long as the men continue to see you shining beside them."

"Literally shine in the case of Lord Ciel," Silvano cheekily jokes.

"At this point, we're expecting every last Ryder to be Blessed," Almaria comments, sounding like she doesn't completely believe her own words.

"It'd be unfair of us to expect that from all of them in case one of them never receives a Blessing," Poosh points out concernedly and hugs my head a bit tighter.

Sandoro clears his throat, and the chatter dies down. "We need to deal with the… binding of Lorena's spirit to the land."

All eyes turn to Sai, and the cute halfling proudly puffs out her flat, little chest. "I can cast [Trap Soul], so I'll do it as soon as possible!" She proudly announces.

I fondle Poosh's breasts just a bit, then regretfully depart from their warmth and order, "Then let's do it now. I'm uncomfortable with leaving her as a wandering spirit for any longer than necessary."

We board a few gondolas, and our Lordsguard [Weaverism] mages drive it towards a High Tree near the edge of Escanso's lake. The High Tree in the center is for the Lords, the closest ring around it is for our servants so that they may rest close to their Lords, the next ring out is for the nobles, and the outermost ring is for the commoners.

This sacred lake is a rather beautiful place, and my mind drifts towards thoughts of fucking my wives in it, or at least while riding in a gondola. I just need to get a mage from the Companions to drive it for me.

My gondola stops near the chosen High Tree, then I stand up and turn around. The only people present are Sai, Sandoro, Anton, a temple priest, a few Chimera, Lorena's spirit herself, her Lordsguard comrades, and also her handful of commoner friends. She doesn't have any family, which is why she was so happy in the Lordsguard; the comradery runs pretty deep among them.

I clear my throat and start giving the speech we quickly prepared for this, "High Officers, Knights, Lordsguard, and common folk of the High Forest. Today, we bury Single-Petal Foot Soldier Lorena Botado. She died bravely fighting against an abomination, an undead soldier, but unfortunately, a single precise strike is all it takes to end a humanoid's fragile life."

I notice that her friends are shaking, both in fear and awe. My presence is having a bit of an unwanted effect on them since they definitely see me as some sort of holy person.

"Even though she has paid the ultimate price and fulfilled her duty by giving her life for the Lordship, it's still not enough for her. She has chosen to also serve me in death, and I shall honor her by fulfilling her sincere wish. I shall bind her spirit to the land and give her the chance to find glory once more."

The priest frowns and looks around concernedly. I called for him to join us to give Teresina some reassurance that we're not doing anything heretical, but it's still pushing against the limits of what the temple would normally be comfortable with.

Lorena stands up and proudly walks up to me, still holding her head to keep it from falling, then we stare each other in the eye, though she has to look down a little to meet mine. She has a bit of a dreamy and tomboyish look to her with her wide eyes and short hair, making my heart beat faster from having a beauty like her staring so intensely at me.

Sandoro hands me a small red gem, and Sai starts chanting, then I continue on to the final part of my speech, "Your old vow of serving me until death has been fulfilled, so I require a new one. Do you pledge to give me your time as a spirit, to serve me while your spirit still wishes to roam the land, to linger on my branches in exchange for more of my protection, even though it failed? For our resources to help you grow? For another opportunity to achieve glory?"

Lorena kneels and lowers her head submissively while holding it in place. "I do, your Highness," she declares out loud.

And finally, I announce with a solemn tone, "Then rise again to serve me, for your second life begins now."

Sai's spirit-hand grabs Lorena, and her real hand touches the gem. "[Trap Soul]," she quietly finishes casting, and Lorena disappears as she's forced into her new home.

A note from Manasong

Hall of Fame of Patrons

The patrons who support Rupegia shall have their names sung by the bards for they deserve the glory and honor. Their names are:

Prince PreownedFIN.

Prince Creamy Spinach.

Lord Andrew Meyers.

Lord Samuel Lim.

Lord Bill.

Lord Novgarod.

Lord Michale Erwin.

Lord Bakerdea.

Lord Maurice.

Lord Empyrean.

Lord Mattirro Draca.

Lord Colorblind.

Lord Fullmoon.

Lord Sean Drake.

Lord EESDESESESRDT.

Lord FrostyCube.

Lord Mike Bartter.

Lord Cardinal Steiner.

Lord Krawn.

Lord Warwulfv.

Lord Jorge Franco.

Lord Christopher Welsh.

Lord DJ.

Lord Philip.

Lord Tenebris Lupus.

Lord ImportantNPC.

Lord The Tallest Joshua.

Lord Copey Dunt.

Lord Dracopuppy23.

Lord Freddie.

Lord Cidant.

Lord Stellerbattle.

Lord Chris Carter.

Lord GoodKat.

Noble Salty Panda.

Noble Mild Fracas.

Noble Aclys.

Noble Shawn Plumley.

Noble CarlBaxter.

Noble Yeuromain.

Noble Brandon Lai.

Leave a rating or a review to help me rise to the top or fix my shameful understanding of prose.

Take a look over my blog where all information about the world of Rupegia will be posted.

Join the Discord and discuss, or rant, or meme, or try and fight me so your waifu gets more screentime.

Become a Patron and read chapters in advance, or read the side-stories, or leave your mark on the story, or help choose the next artwork or the next side-story.

Chapter 105: Visitors - Part 2

A note from Manasong

Attention: to conform to the limit of sexual content allowed in a novel, I've censored this chapter. You can look for the uncensored version here.

After we bury Lorena's body, the Chimeras stay with her to help her adjust to her new life, then I quickly take my leave and return to the castle.

Ciel, Lina, Yunia, Osaria, and Mimi are having a meeting, but after the funeral, I really need my milf to comfort me.

"O-sa-ri-aaaa~…!" I whine childishly as I burst into the meeting hall.

She jumps in her seat and turns a surprised face towards me. "O-oh…?! Y-yes, my love…?" She reflexively replies, giving me a boner from hearing her say the words "my love."

"I want to be pampered!" I exclaim as I pull a chair over to hers, then I sit down and lay my head on her armrest.

She gives me a warm, motherly smile, and her dark fingers run through my hair. Her touch is a bit more intense than Poosh's delicate fingers, so it's a different experience. She's full of passion while Poosh would show more respect.

"You did well at the funeral," Yunia kindly praises me, and I smile softly at her.

"I was actually worried that Sandoro would scold me, but the meeting with the High Officers went much better than I expected," I bashfully admit and close my eyes for a moment.

"Since when did you become so childish?" Mimi unamusedly questions.

"He always acted like a baby when it came to my breasts," Osaria teasingly comments, and my wives all nod a bit bashfully.

"I'm just acting my age," I cheekily reply and show Mimi my tongue, making her snort.

"How old are you, actually?" Osaria softly asks.

"Seventeen," I answer with an innocent tone and show her my best wide, puppy eyes.

"Liar," she immediately accuses.

I grin and deflect, "Apologies for interrupting your meeting. You may continue now."

Yunia rolls her eyes and continues the discussion.

We directly control a good part of the Eia production, but the Lordship also has a few other businesses to complement our income, and she's talking about the direction that she wants those businesses to take since Mimi and Osaria will be supervising them from now on.

Ciel and Lina also pay attention to this meeting to help them learn a little more about how to govern since we all want to help ease Yunia's burden from managing our territory.

I'm not an economist, but if we want to get closer to the dream of a socialist utopia, I also need to pay attention to this to help out in the future. My contribution is my (limited) knowledge of Earthling politics, so I may be able to provide foresight in certain matters that could prevent catastrophes in the future.

My take is that the High Forest's economy is a bit complicated. As Lords, we have absolute power over our territory, but the Tribunal (and the temple, though with less influence) prevents us from abusing our power since it has direct approval from the Elder Council, which lets them do their thing, as long as they also don't abuse it.

But who watches the Watchmen?

In the end, only the Emperor watches over the Elder Council, which is why I'd like to find a way for us to enter their ranks.

But anyway, back to the economy. The Lordship-owned businesses have the advantage of not paying taxes, so it's easy for us to overtake every other business and establish an absolute monopoly, but neither the temple, nor the Tribunal, nor even the Gods want such a thing to exist.

"Power" in Rupegia is something only to be held by the noble class, so merchant companies growing so big that they can "own" a country is a concern for everyone with even a smidgen of "Piety." But on the other hand, this kind of "power" is to be used exclusively to provide an environment for everyone to "grow." And that growth also needs a certain degree of freedom to actually take place.

The age of God-Rulers, who had absolute control over everything concerning the commoners' lives, is long gone. In this age, the main philosophy for managing businesses is "balance." The God of the Sun may have been kind of a libertarian, but he also preached about "moderation" to an equal extent.

The "balance" of our businesses is maintained by controlling a number of the elements of a business, and the most common control is the number of employees that we can hire. It's the Tribunal that dictates those elements so that the growth of our businesses is highly controlled, but in matters of "national security," like the supply of Eia, we're allowed to control a large share of the "market."

Curiously, this artificial limit forces some of our businesses to cater exclusively to nobility so that they can handle the demand, and as a result, they end up being quite profitable for us since the nobles compete to "forge relations" with the Lord. Though, that also annoys Osaria since it ensures that there's a lot of greedy nobles bothering her with business proposals.

Tangentially, it's those proposals with nobles that will allow us to build our clan. The limitations are only set on businesses directly owned by the Lordship, so if close relatives open up shop, like the Gilbiks, then they're free to grow as much as they can as long as certain laws are obeyed to prevent monopolies. It's kind of a loophole, but maintaining a loyal clan is harder than it looks, so that's "balanced" enough for the Tribunal.

Back to the economy, again. These "Lord-owned-businesses" have a lot of financial reports that they have to submit, which the Tribunal uses to keep an eye on them, and that's kind of convenient for us since we need that same process of accounting to implement our intended socialist plans in our territory.

We don't collect income taxes, so there's certainly a lot of revenue that we could squeeze out of the higher class that currently goes untouched. This money could fuel so many projects that it makes me salivate, figuratively.

"Taxing the income of the merchants will cause a lot of problems for us," Yunia tries to shoot down my idea.

I knit my eyebrows in confusion and point out, "I thought that the Tribunal protected the commoners."

Yunia nods gently, making her beautiful drills bob, and explains in a scholarly tone, "They do, but their goal is to protect anyone from the schemes of nobility, which helps merchants more than commoners. Not only that, but they also enforce the laws through economic threats, like fines and compensation, yet again benefiting merchants more than commoners."

"But if the commoners unite and rebel against the merchants, then we can keep the Tribunal in check," I riposte.

Ciel suddenly leans forward and excitedly chimes in, "That's what the temple does. They can rile up the people to go against both the nobles and the merchants in case either class goes too far."

Nobility, merchants, and clergy. I think I read about something like this being the three pillars of power in medieval society.

Then my head is struck by a [Lightning Bolt] as an idea suddenly comes to me. "Our social projects would give us the approval we need from the people, and with the support of the temple, we could ensure that the commoners stay on our side!" I exclaim.

But Yunia's expression turns grim. "This… could cause a lot of change within the High Forest, and the Elder Council would have to approve of our actions first," she soberly points out.

I anxiously run a claw along Osaria's thicc thigh. "You think they wouldn't?"

Yunia gives me an apologetic smile. "I'm not sure. I do believe that they'd criticize our fight with the old royals since they've left Heretic's Rest untouched for millennia."

I grip my milf's thigh and raise my head as I assert, "They deposed your father because he opposed the agricultural reforms. We have to lean on that angle to convince them to accept our plans."

Yunia frowns grimly and looks at the table, gazing at the colorful recreation of Escanso that's been carved into it while she describes, "The Council is greedy like the merchants, and their focus seems to be the stability of the High Forest. The money for social programs will come from our coffers, which would leave us vulnerable to monetary crises, so the Council might oppose them just for that reason alone."

And the solution immediately comes to mind. "In the name of the safety of the commoners, it's in our power to forcefully seize funds in response to any sort of crisis," I stoically propose.

Yunia doesn't spend long thinking about it and speculates, "The commoners and the merchants would definitely resist, and I don't think the Tribunal has the capability to soothe them." Then she turns to Ciel, waiting for her response.

"But the temple does," Ciel eagerly completes the thought, then her gentle face becomes briefly stoic as she elaborates, "If the temple has the trust of the commoners, the priests can easily raise levies and force the commoners to march to their deaths."

Yunia closes her eyes tiredly, then Gify pops onto her shoulder and starts her spiritual "massage."

"Oh, that's good…" Yunia moans softly, and relaxes for a long moment, then suddenly straightens her back and opens her eyes, re-energized, though Gify doesn't stop the massage. "So the plan is: increase the power of the temple, increase the commoner's piety, start social projects to garner the commoners' support, convince the Elder Council to accept our ways, improve the tax laws to increase our income, divert that income towards more social projects, add more protections to the slave class, deal with the reactions from the merchant class, then finally, spread our reforms throughout the empire."

"The first two parts are already well underway, it seems," Osaria comments and gives me a proud smile as she massages my horns.

I lay my head back down on the armrest and suggest, "Our social projects can also benefit the other Lords or nobles. For example, creating an Engineering Corps that would build and maintain the bark shield-wall for all villages."

"Getting the Root Lords on our side," Osaria adds, seemingly becoming quite excited about the future.

"Sounds like a solid plan to me," Mimi gently accepts.

But Lina has some concerns, "I'm still afraid about the response from the merchants. Money is power for them, and an increase of their taxes will be resisted by all of them, especially once we start giving slaves more rights."

Mimi nods in agreement and solemnly adds, "Yes, I'm sure they will respond, but Lords are still feared by merchants since they can always execute unruly merchants in the name of stability."

"The temple will get involved if we start killing people," Ciel coldly points out.

"'Involved,' but they won't really 'stop' us, correct?" Yunia asks with a sly smile.

Ciel sighs and looks down at the table in dejection. "Yes… that's why the temple is always at odds with nobility."

Yunia assumes a scholarly tone as she preaches, "If we don't enforce our power over the other classes, they'll slowly erode our authority, then take over our position. Humanoid greed has to be constantly trimmed and curtailed to preserve the balance."

Ciel raises her eyes to Yunia, twitching in annoyance. "Which just makes more work for the Templars, who have to watch the nobles to make sure that they don't go too far."

"Templars rarely have to come to the High Forest, though," Yunia calmly points out, and Ciel fails to find a retort to that.

My thick tail lazily wags as I deliberate, "Elven society isn't very pious, but they make up for that with their tightly knit culture. Though, now that I want to open up the High Forest for outsiders, they'll need the help of the temple to keep things under control."

"Meanwhile, the rest of the empire lacks the same degree of protections that the Tribunal provides," Yunia wisely completes.

I bend my tail towards her twice like a "nod" of agreement. "Yes, the three pillars of power are unbalanced in both regions. In the High Forest, the pillars of laws and nobility are equal, but it lacks religion, so the commoners here are content with wallowing in their misery. In the rest of the empire, the nobility is too powerful, taking part of the share that belongs to the laws."

Faith, money, and leadership.

Religion to protect us from ourselves, laws to protect us from each other, and the nobility to protect us from the outside.

The temple guides the commoners and keeps the balance, the Tribunal guides the merchants, who push for progress, and the rulers shoulder the responsibility to guide us all.

This is the triarchy of this society. Though not perfect, I feel like it can become better than the wreck of greed and lies that Earthling society was spiraling down towards. At least there's nothing like climate change looming over our heads over here, so there's no need for us all to unite, like there was back on Earth… or maybe not, I don't really know how things are over there anymore.

I want to explore the Folder of Cycles some more…

The girls continue talking about the details of our plan, and I tune out from their discussion just a bit to savor Osaria's caressing, but I still keep enough focus on them to keep learning because the whole talk ends up being very enlightening overall.

At just an hour before lunchtime, we receive an urgent message.

"The human Nero Gavalas has passed through customs."

That's one of the names that we put on a secret list of people that we must keep an eye on. More specifically, he's a suspected agent of Katasko, the one who manipulated the Enforcers to go after us.

The fact that he entered the town so brazenly means that he's confident that we won't abduct or assassinate him, which is rather concerning. I had made it pretty clear that I was suspicious of him when we met.

Yunia and I immediately take a [Gate] to the entrance that he came through, then we meet up with the Lordsguard unit that's currently stalking him.

It's a bit difficult for me to hide my eye-catching horns, even with a cloak, so I put my points into [Illusion Magic] so that I can use [Ignorance] on myself.

We meet up with the squad leader in an alley to avoid calling attention to ourselves since Nero is currently taking a casual stroll along the busy main road.

"Your Highnesses," the squad leader politely greets us as he kneels.

"Rise and report," Yunia sternly replies.

The leader obeys and keeps his head low as he continues, "Nero had hired a nondescript caravan from Goldcross to escort him here, and when they entered the town, he immediately broke off from them. He seems to be hiding neither his name nor his face. Regarding the reason for his arrival, he simply declared 'for business' with an undetermined length of stay."

At least, if he truly meant to come here just to get fucked by us, then he didn't lie.

Yunia and I share a look as we communicate both confusion and suspicion to each other through [Bind], then she orders the squad leader, "Continue stalking him, but be ready to abduct him at a moment's notice."

"Yes, your Highness."

And then I do my part, "Describe his face and outfit to me, I'll use my monsters to stalk him, too."

But Nero still manages to surprise us all by going directly towards the Lord's Hall for the commoners.

We return to the castle and take an [Eternal Gate] to the Hall, then the confused attendant hands us Nero's request form.

"Request: meeting with the royals.

Reason: Katasko.

Time limit: at any time.

Demands: none.

Is the requester a noble?: no.

Attendant's observations: none."

Yunia and I share a look, then I shrug.

The petitioner's hall for the commoners is a bit more imposing when compared to the one for nobility. Our thrones are almost a full floor above the petitioner's stand, and we're protected by a thick glass wall enchanted with Gods-know-how-many defensive spells. The lack of windows also gives the hall a more austere look that's actually quite uncommon in the usually pretty elven architecture.

It's beautiful here, as usual, but damn, if it isn't overbearing.

Yunia and I equip our Bastión armor, then we sit on our thrones, and I summon a line of five light elementals behind us to give us a holy air. The Lordsguard line up behind the enchanted glass while two mages feed it their mana to activate its defenses, making the glass faintly glow.

"Send him in," Yunia orders, and a grim bell is rung.

The double doors open, and Nero is let in while flanked by two heavily armored Lordsguard.

He's a tall, bald man with the usual imperial brown tan, a perfectly square black beard, and a bit of a posh mustache. His demeanor seems to be casual, but not completely relaxed, which gives Yunia the impression that he's got a high-level [Acting] skill.

"You're now in the presence of Crown Lords Wolf and Yulania Ryder. Kneel in respect for the royals," the guard sternly orders.

He takes off his dark cloak and obeys.

I breathe in deeply and let my fresh point in [Intimidate] fill my tone as I order, "Rise, and state your business, Nero Gavalas."

He stands and gives us a smirk, showcasing his shining, white smile. "I've come to offer information on Katasko," his low, gravely voice resounds through the hall.

"In exchange for…?" Yunia lets the question hang.

He nods repeatedly in a dramatic way as he completes it, "A fair reward, of course."

"You defected?" She sternly questions.

And he nonchalantly replies, "I quit due to 'disagreements' with the direction that the company was taking."

"I have an idea," Yunia shares through [Bind].

"Go for it," I encourage her.

"Arrest him," Yunia coldly orders, and the doors behind him slam shut as all the defensive enchantments activate in the blink of an eye, making the glass between us glow brightly as it's flooded with mana.

"WHAT?!" He reflexively squeaks, his mask of composure cracking.

The two Lordsguard flanking him draw their maces and assume an offensive stance, ready to smash his brains into paste, then more Lordsguard pour in from a hidden door.

Yunia's tone becomes imperious and vigorous, drowning out the clattering of our men. "You're known for engaging in bribes, fraud, and corruption with the Enforcers. You shall await your trial in the dungeon, so you'd better start thinking of anything you can offer us in exchange for a lighter sentence."

"YOU HAVE NO EVIDENCE!" He bellows, his tanned face quickly turning scarlet with anger.

And I smugly divulge, "But I do, and I'm willing to have my testimony validated by the Truth Seekers."

Nero's jaw limply drops in disbelief, and he falls to his knees with lifeless eyes, then the Lordsguard put manacles on him and take him away.

After the door closes again, we both sigh and slump on our thrones.

"Was he just an idiot?" I mumble to Yunia.

She shakes her head softly and clutches my claws for comfort. "I don't think that many people know that you can see someone's real name, and though it was a bold, risky move to saunter into our town like that, it was still within reason for him." Then she guides my claws to caress her rosy cheeks, which I promptly do.

Then something occurs to me. "How far will it spread if I reveal the extent of [Sense Soul] to the Seekers?" I wonder.

She closes her eyes and answers, "They won't personally share it with others, but the problem will be the trial. It'll be difficult to prevent the evidence from reaching the hands of someone corruptible."

"So, it'll be based on luck."

"Yes."

We tiredly return to the castle for our lunch.

What a fucking day, and there's still half of it left.

I happily eat Krysta's cooking again. This time, she surprises us with curry chicken accompanied by cooked beans and steamed grains. It's a Rabanarian dish, though it's usually made with Dragolite. It'd go perfectly with rice, but I still haven't found that in this world, so I have to make do with substitutes.

I also give Krysta a tip to add not-tomato sauce and make it a bit sweeter so that it tastes similar to Japanese curry.

After our spicy meal, we cleanse our mouths with a deep [Clean] because I want to suck on Osaria's special bit.

First, I start with her mouth. I taste the liqueur that she drank at lunch on her tongue, which feels a bit nostalgic for me since she usually enjoys a little drink every now and then, though I rarely see her actually getting drunk. Knowing her insatiable hunger for cock and pussy, she probably keeps herself from drinking too much to avoid making a "mistake."

Hngh, how I missed her.

Though it was just a day apart, she's so fucking hot that my tool gets sad if I can't breed her regularly.

But today, I want my "moms" to pamper me.

"Poosh, come help me with Osaria," I gently order her with a smirk.

She adjusts her round glasses and smiles warmly. "With pleasure, your Highness," she obediently replies.

Osaria grins like a child on Christmas morning as she gains a new toy to play with.

My head, my chest, my limbs, and my Weapon. They're all enveloped in squishy bits and soft fluffiness.

The needy child within is slowly cleansed from me, wiping the weariness away in the process and replacing it with the draconic hunger that grows hotter and hotter by the moment.

I gradually shift their caresses from me towards each other to satisfy my lesbian fetishes, then I suck on their lower bits as they finger each other.

I need to fuck them now!

I get them to lay on the table, then I use my tentacles to guide them into my favorite sex position for a threesome: Poosh on top of Osaria as they kiss while I use four thick Dragonators on their lined up holes.

Ah, yes. Fluffiness plus thiccness is the perfect combo.

The lack of Alissa's Blessing is making me tire out more easily, but this little orgy replenishes my energy reserves.

I walk out to the balcony, still completely naked, and stretch as I observe my town going about its business. I observe the Sky Docks where my ships are moored and start thinking about what we should do next for our airship plans.

Hm… how about wind tunnel testing?

I'll talk to Almaria and Silvano later, but for right now, Yunia is in need of some comfort. She's been working hard lately, so I want to reward her.

"Yu~…? Do you want to cuddle for a bit?" I cutely call for her.

She sets her goblet down on the table and comes out to me with a subtle, wry smile. "Are you going to make it lewd?" She amusedly questions.

"Always… I mean, only if you ask," I cheekily reply with a grin.

She pouts cutely, but still comes up to me, then I pull her into a hug and use my tentacles to create a platform that makes me as tall as her.

I give her juicy red lips a series of gentle pecks that progressively grow longer and gentler as we let our steel hearts soften again.

Suddenly, a female Companion bursts into the dining hall and immediately freezes upon seeing Lina using her tongue to clean the two passed-out women who are still covered in semen.

I see the nostrils of the mature elven woman flare as she breathes in deeply, taking in the smell of my cum, but then she regains her professionalism and walks right up to me.

She briefly glances down at my Dragonator and swallows heavily, then hands me a letter and immediately leaves the room.

I almost tell her to stay, but then I stop and frown when I recognize the Anara family's seal.

Oh, boy.

I quickly open the letter and read through it, then Yunia starts to gently caress my head as I feel a headache coming on.

Vanea wants to arrange a secret meeting with me.

Oh… boy…

A note from Manasong

Hall of Fame of Patrons

The patrons who support Rupegia shall have their names sung by the bards for they deserve the glory and honor. Their names are:

Prince PreownedFIN.

Prince Creamy Spinach.

Lord Andrew Meyers.

Lord Samuel Lim.

Lord Bill.

Lord Novgarod.

Lord Michale Erwin.

Lord Bakerdea.

Lord Maurice.

Lord Empyrean.

Lord Mattirro Draca.

Lord Colorblind.

Lord Fullmoon.

Lord Sean Drake.

Lord EESDESESESRDT.

Lord FrostyCube.

Lord Mike Bartter.

Lord Cardinal Steiner.

Lord Krawn.

Lord Warwulfv.

Lord Jorge Franco.

Lord Christopher Welsh.

Lord DJ.

Lord Philip.

Lord Tenebris Lupus.

Lord ImportantNPC.

Lord The Tallest Joshua.

Lord Copey Dunt.

Lord Dracopuppy23.

Lord Freddie.

Lord Cidant.

Lord Stellerbattle.

Lord Chris Carter.

Lord GoodKat.

Noble Salty Panda.

Noble Mild Fracas.

Noble Aclys.

Noble Shawn Plumley.

Noble CarlBaxter.

Noble Yeuromain.

Noble Brandon Lai.

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Chapter 105: Visitors - Part 3

A note from Manasong

Attention: I'm taking a one-week break from the main story work on the review of the early chapters since it's taking too long. I really want to get that done ASAP, but one week isn't going to be enough.

One day, once the review is done, I can have proper time to work on maps and other stuff that I've neglected.

"You seem to have quite a resistance to mental effects, so I'm sure you'll be fine meeting her on your own," Yunia stiffly assures me.

I just frown and stare at her while I slowly raise an eyebrow. "Are you afraid of her…?" I confusedly ask.

She looks away and waves her hand dismissively. "Me? No, of course not, I just don't think it's necessary for anyone but you to meet with her directly."

I narrow my eyes in suspicion and continue to stare, but I don't probe her thoughts because I want her to admit the truth.

She refuses to look me in the eye, so I grab her face, making sure that my claws sting her just a little bit, and force her to look at me.

"Yulania Ryder. Confess," I command her.

She resists my domineering aura and glares defiantly, her angry but still stunningly beautiful blue eyes giving me a boner as they trigger the degenerate within me.

However, she knows that there's no way out of this, so she begrudgingly admits, "Her Eyes of Authority can rip my [Mask] to shreds."

"Wait, why are they called that?" I confusedly question.

"They're an imperial inheritance that makes people feel submissive to the user, and it's rumored that they got it directly from the imperial royal family."

"Ooh~… that explains a lot." But then I hum smugly. "Hm… so you really are afraid."

Her pretty face warps in anger for a brief moment, then she starts grumbling, "Of course not! Out of all of us, you're the one with the best resistance against mental attacks, which we all witnessed during our stay with Arreira, so it makes sense to only send you to meet with her… and she did ask to meet with you, specifically."

I grin as I pull her face closer to mine. "I'll need a lot of pampering," I whisper with a husky tone.

"I'll suck your dick until your MP reaches zero," she nonchalantly replies.

But I frown in dissatisfaction. "You already do that without me even having to ask."

She becomes flustered as she realizes that she may very well be as much of a cum addict as Roxanne. "W-well, what else do you want me to do?!"

I hum in delight as I let my degenerate mind wander. "I want to fuck you and Ereia at the same time," I whisper perversely.

She scoffs and pouts subtly. "That isn't much of an outlandish request."

I smile and kiss her pouty lips, mellowing them out a bit. "Well, I'm thankful that you're so honest."

She rolls her eyes tiredly. "It's pretty pointless to lie to you," she mumbles bashfully.

I grin and kiss her deeply, picking up from where we had just stopped.

I grab her back and ass with my claws and hug her tight, pressing her luscious breasts against my skin. The incredibly thin fabric of her dousnadeia makes it feel like she's wearing nothing at all as I distinctly notice her nipples harden.

She hugs me back, and her long, delicate fingers caress my muscles, seeking comfort in the arms of the man that has given her everything she had lost and more.

Her smell, her taste, her warmth, her touch, her stunning beauty, it's all maddening to me. When my wives open their hearts to me and allow their feelings to seep through [Bind], it gives me such a euphoric high that nothing could ever compare to it. In the name of the Goddess of Love, we need to modify [Bind] into something more pure so that we can spread it all over the world, giving everyone the opportunity to experience true love like we do.

But it also makes it pretty hard to take it slow with the girls.

My cock throbs with desire and drips with precum, forcing me to ascend the stairs of love before Yunia is ready.

I break the kiss, which frustrates her a bit, and move down to her breasts. I realize that Roxanne may have savored Yunia's delicious red lips more than I have, but nobody has tasted my wives' pussies as much as me, so it evens out, in my opinion.

I suckle on Yunia's nipples like a baby, and I feel her hot breath against my head as it gradually quickens.

I quickly move on when I feel them become all tingly and sensitive. They need to be able to endure my pinching when I fuck her pussy, so I'll leave them be for now.

Her defined abs are faintly salty from the sweat that has dried on her skin, but it just tastes like nectar to me as I lick every inch of them, worshiping their absolute perfection.

"Add 'abs' to your list of fetishes," Yunia teasingly comments.

"Add every single part of you to the list of things that I love," I ardently reply, making her chuckle heartily.

She may have her pride and sense of superiority as an elf, but her weakness is my passion; my ardent dedication to loving her and the other wives disarms her completely.

She strokes my black horns, imagining that they're both my cocks, and it makes me gasp as another jolt of stimulation is sent down to my cock, making it throb even harder.

I get on my knees and pull her not-panties to the side, then I penetrate her with my tongue. My wives' pussies each have a particular taste, so I'm certain that I could identify them from that on its own.

After our battle this morning, Yunia's pussy tastes slightly stronger than usual, even if she did use a deep [Clean] on herself after the battle. Perhaps it's not the sweat that gives her this taste; it might instead be her desire to be bred that has this subtle effect on her taste.

My draconic hunger for women must be what has turned me into such a pussy sommelier. For once, I'm actually thankful to the dragon inside of me for helping me get closer to my wives.

I play with her lips and clit using my tongue as she holds onto my horns like they're handlebars, trying to guide me to tongue-fuck her deeper.

Ciel watches the two of us with gentle eyes, happy that two of the people who she loves and respects are so passionate about each other, but the best part of her watching us is that her sight gives me a perfect view of Yunia's pleasure-stricken face.

I grab her ass cheeks and spread them apart, then I wiggle a tentacle into her asshole and bend my tongue upward until it rubs against her G-spot.

"HAAAHNGH~…!" She orgasms from my tongue, moaning loudly as her legs fail her.

Her lewd juices flood my mouth, and I drink it all eagerly, steeling my back and using my tail for stability as she lurches forward, too weak to keep herself standing.

Her thighs reflexively squeeze against the sides of my head, and if it was Hana in her place, I'm sure it would have hurt me a lot.

"Stop… please… I need… ah…!" She struggles to speak, but I just wiggle my tongue against her G-spot harder in response. "I need…!"

I stretch her asshole, making her grit her teeth.

"I need…"

I pinch her clit with a tongue-tentacle, making her squeak.

"AH~…! Your…"

I make pointy bumps on my tongue to scrape against her labia.

But she powers through the stimulation to shout, "COCK!"

And that makes me pause for a moment as a burst of desire makes my cock throb once again.

"BREED ME!" She demands, not wasting the opportunity now that I've stopped stimulating her.

The dragon breaks free of its chains and roars triumphantly.

I use my tentacles to move Yunia off of me and force her to turn around and bend over the railing, then I line up her pussy with my cock and thrust.

"YES~…!" She shouts in bliss as my superior cock stretches her insides, now almost drooling from the pleasure.

I cross my arms and enjoy the view as I use my tentacles to drive her waist along my lengthy Dragonator, then I create some suckers to play with her recovering nipples again.

I love fucking my women on the balcony. The way they lean over the railing is so erotic, the freedom of fucking in the open air is so refreshing, and the fact that I'm looking down upon my town while doing it is truly empowering.

Yunia's long legs quiver as her pussy drips with lewd juices, and her face scrunches up in effort as she struggles to remain standing.

My cock is supreme. It's a potent weapon against women, perfectly suited to attack their resolve and force them to submit to my superior genital. Elf, dwarf, dragonkin, Chimera, demon race, or whatever proud race a woman belongs to doesn't matter. My cock is supreme.

I use my tail to help anchor me in place as I put more power into slamming her waist against mine.

Her voluminous drills become thinner as her sweat soaks into her hair. Her pride goes the same way as it shrinks and flops under the storm of our passions, allowing her usual stern face to warp into one of unbridled pleasure, the mark of a cum-addicted sex slave.

As Yunia's mind is filled with pleasure, her entire body relaxes, and she lets her spirit float down the river of heaven without a single care. Just like how I use sex to de-stress and relax, she uses getting Ravaged by me as a way for her to achieve a zen state that provides similar benefits.

The repetitive movements and constant stream of pleasure coming from my cock helps me enter a trance, too, helping me relax to a level that I couldn't achieve even with Osaria and Poosh working together.

But since I'm not trying to exhaust her with pleasure, this state of relaxation just further shortens my already naturally short time needed to cum.

I slam Yunia against my hips one more time, then I unleash it all inside her with a long groan of relief.

Her depths flood and overflow with a bucket's worth of cum, then I slide out of her and help her lay down on the bench nearby.

She tries to catch her breath as she admits, "I don't think… I can lay… with Ereia… today…"

I kiss her lips and lovingly caress her cheek. "It's fine. We can leave that for tomorrow," I soothe her, and she nods slowly.

I call for a maid to clean up Yunia because she definitely needs her drills to be redone, and Lina isn't here anymore to help with that. My cute little dwarf is already back in her office, sketching out my idea for wind tunnel testing.

As I turn around, my head sinks into a pair of huge chocolate mounds, and I instinctively grab them, then I pull Ciel down to the floor again so that she can stop using [Fly] to float.

"Are you feeling better?" I gently ask Ciel through [Bind] since my mouth is occupied right now.

"Yes, I am. Thank you for worrying about me," she warmly replies and hugs my head.

"Are you okay to come with me to meet with Vanea?" I cheekily suggest.

"No," she reflexively rejects.

"Pbbbtt… and you, stay where you are!" I shout to stop Alissa before she can even offer to come back.

"Oh… okay…" She mumbles through [Bind] and returns her focus to her family.

"Well, anyway, I thought you'd be happier about the fact that you got a Blessing," I admit, still a bit concerned about Ciel's mood.

She nods slowly and confesses, "I've never really worshiped the God of the Sun, so his Blessing was unexpected, and I never imagined that I'd be someone who would ever cause so much destruction, so I'm a little afraid of myself now."

And I gently try to comfort her, "Maybe it's because of your personality that he briefly gave you that much power. I know that I would've completely fucked up and killed us all if that Intervention had been empowering me instead."

She gives me a pained smile and kisses my right horn. "Perhaps… but I think Roxanne could've controlled that power just as well as I did."

I raise my head to glare at her. "Roxanne definitely doesn't have the capacity to limit collateral damage like you can."

"Hey!" Roxanne complains, but we both shoot her down immediately with memories of her evil grin as she kills monsters, so the bloodthirsty succubus embarrassedly retreats back into her corner.

Then Ciel continues, "But I still don't understand why I was the target of the Intervention since I completely pulverized everything."

I theorize, "Perhaps the Gods wanted someone who wouldn't abuse that power since they might have to empower us more than once, so that may be why they chose you, to prepare you for the future."

She blinks blankly as her face is briefly struck by the realization, but then she frowns again. "Oh… I see what you mean, though I don't really agree with it."

I sigh and give up trying to convince her. Instead, I straighten my back and rub my cheek against hers. "They also stopped me from using Patrono, so I think there's more to their intentions than we think."

"Hm…" She hums, deep in thought, but even she doesn't know what to make of this.

After stalling for what is probably more than long enough, I call for Enomosa and a small detachment of Companions to accompany me.

Vanea wants this meeting to be a secret, so she's chosen Goldcross as a neutral city for us to meet since it's easy to come up with a plausible reason for why we're both coincidentally visiting it at the same time. She has also suggested a fitting motive for me to go there: to visit a werecat brothel.

My fucking reputation is already beyond recovery if she actually considers visiting brothels to be just a simple passtime for me.

The Companions seem to be a bit tense; they might be thinking that I'm bringing them to an orgy. While they've been chosen due to their "attraction" towards me and my wives, some of them might actually be pure lesbians since Hana, Roxanne, and Yunia are kind of like sex icons for gay women, so I have to make things clear to avoid any misunderstandings.

"We're going to a secret meeting with Vanea with the pretense that this is a casual brothel visit, so nothing sexual is supposed to happen. Please know that, though you're all welcome to approach me at any time, I would never force my subordinates to do anything they don't want to."

Their reactions to that are varied, from blushes, to smirks, to even a few sighs of relief.

Enomosa is completely unconcerned. I'd love to fuck her and break that cold, sadistic mask she always wears, but I think that conquering her heart will be as challenging as Teresina's.

Make no mistake, I don't want to just "conquer" her, as if I were adding another notch on my belt, I truly do want to bring her bliss through my cock. Yes, my motives are completely "pure."

As Goldport's "sister" city, Goldcross is just as beautiful as I remember. The mix of imperial yellow brick houses with the grass-elf plump tree-houses is adorable and charming.

The city may be a tourist trap filled with expensive snake oil merchants, but it bustles like a melting pot of cultures thanks to the revived High Road breathing new life into it.

None of the girls are with me, not even Gify, the little coward, so I don't feel like lingering among the stalls or looking for oddities. Those sorts of little pleasures are only really worth your time when you can share them with someone you love.

We walk through the Nobles' Quarter and get a few curious looks from the people we pass by. My appearance is simply too unique to not draw attention.

Fortunately, we soon reach the brothel neighborhood, then we locate the "Oh… Nyan!" brothel.

The brothel itself follows a "cutesy" Gothic style, which fits nicely with the Gothic lolita werecat maids that populate it.

"See these skimpy maid outfits? I'd love to have our maids wear them, too," I tell Lina through [Bind].

She stops her enchanting work and diligently takes detailed notes, including sketches of the designs. "I'll show them to Poosh," she dutifully replies.

There's a considerable number of actual cats walking about, and even a cat nature spirit, too, yet there's a distinct lack of the characteristic smell that a gathering of cats of this size would typically exude.

A catgirl with short, brown hair and pink skin approaches us. "Welcome, Grand Sir, to the 'Ahn~… Nyaah!' brothel, nya," she hams up the greeting, even moaning seductively and striking a cute pose as she says the odd name. She has cute, sharp fangs that are even longer than Alissa's, peeking out to be seen every time she speaks.

What the fuck, Vanea. How did you find this place…?

I look at her half-naked body and breathe in deeply. She's short and very slender, but she's got a nice, round ass and breedable hips that make me hungry. She's wearing a pair of open high-heels, which exposes her partially bestial feet. She doesn't have fur covering them like Allura, but she does have sharp claws that give her a faintly wild air.

"I'm Crown Lord Wolf Ryder. I was referred to this place and advised to ask for a 'Lala,'" I calmly announce with a gentle tone.

The catgirl freezes for a second before bowing deeply. "I'm the one called Lala, nya Lord, and I'll be delighted to fulfill nyour every desire, nya," she respectfully replies, though her mildly nasally tone slightly undermines her efforts.

"Perfect. Take me to your best room, then."

She straightens up and smiles adorably. "At once, nya!" Then she grabs my hand without any fear of my claws and energetically pulls me through the lounging hall.

As we pass the gaggle of catgirls watching us, I notice some very envious looks coming from them, which strokes my ego quite nicely. There are only two other patrons in the lounge, but they keep their curiosity to themselves as they certainly know who I am.

Lala takes us up a lavish set of stairs and down a corridor, where I hear muffled moans coming from a few rooms, but as the doors become increasingly ornate, the sound-proofing also gets better, and things become silent.

Their best suite isn't as big nor as ornate as my own room, but it's still a high-class suite furnished with gilded, but also ostentatious adornments.

Half of the Lordsguard stays outside, while the other half and Enomosa spread out along the walls of the room.

Lala immediately pushes me down into a lavish chair with a mischievous smirk. Sitting on a chair that hasn't been modified to accommodate my tail is a bit uncomfortable, but this one is so well padded that it doesn't bother me at all.

As soon as I've gotten comfortable, Lala kneels before me and forcefully pulls down my pants.

"Hm….?" I hum inquisitively with a raised eyebrow, but I don't stop her.

"Orders from above, nya," she cheekily replies, then swallows my cock whole and energetically deepthroats me, her large brown eyes staring intensely up at mine, but the way her cat tail waves behind her is just as entrancing.

We hear a knock on the door, and I permit them to enter, then a nervous Lordsguard pokes her head in and informs us that Vanea is right outside.

I shouldn't expect any less of Vanea.

"Yes… allow her in," I amusedly reply and caress Lala's head and fluffy cat ears as she sucks me off. My delicate touch earns me a purr that feels like a vibrator against my head.

The door opens, and Vanea, followed by Grosnok, a huge lion beastfolk, casually walks in.

The dark-haired princess looks just as pretty as I remember her being, and though her eyes do scream of "evil sadist," they don't cause my skin to crawl anymore. A few points in [Mental Resistance] helped me retain my composure in our previous encounters, but my new race ensures that it's almost an entirely stress-free experience for me now.

I never could appreciate before how doll-like her face is, though I know very well that her grin can be a bit creepy. Her princess dress is very cute, but it also has a faint sexy flair to it with its generous cleavage and an opening that exposes her navel. Her long-sleeved gloves finish off the look, giving her the impression of a delicate, yet mature flower.

Grosnok is a yellow, furry man with a lion's head and an impressive golden mane, and unlike the Chimeras, who usually have human body parts, Grosnok is a full-fledged furry. His build is the same as Jacques', making him a furrier counterpart to the red-bearded beast-like man.

Enomosa pulls a chair over and offers it to Vanea, who graciously accepts it, then she sits merely a meter away from me. She gives an amused look at the catgirl happily sucking me off, and giggles softly.

"It's a pleasure meeting you again, Crown Lord Wolf Ryder," she elegantly greets and gives me a perfect business smile, now ignoring Lala completely. I may have some "resistance" to her eyes, but she can still give me shivers when she puts some effort into it, and it seems that Lala notices that my dick subtly deflates for a second.

"Hm…?" She hums in confusion with my cock buried deep down her throat.

"Likewise, Dame Vanea Anara," I respond in kind, then run my fingers through Lala's silky hair, and she continues sucking me off.

"Your growth is stunning, Lord Ryder. Everyone's wondering when the 'Rising Star' of Eastern Avgi is going to reach its zenith, but there's not that many who think you'll stop with 'Crown Lord.'"

"'Rising Star'…? Is that really what they're calling me?" I calmly question with a tinge of horror in my tone.

She smirks and touches her lower lip with her index finger in a seductive gesture. "It's telling that you're more worried about a nickname than my comment about your immeasurable potential."

I nonchalantly shrug. "Well, 'potential' concerns the future, so I'm more interested in the now."

She nods and lays both her hands over her lap, assuming a lady-like demeanor. "Of course, the entire empire and even outsiders are watching you. Two Blessings, an Intervention, a high-rank Lordship, and a royal legacy. Anyone hearing about you would certainly be envious or at least curious."

I grin cheekily and pet Lala a bit harder, making her purr again. "Make that three Blessings and two Interventions. They happened just this morning."

"I-…" Her mask of composure is instantly shattered as a blank look of surprise is stamped across her face. "AHAHAHAH…!" She suddenly bursts into a hearty laughter so loud that even Lala slows down out of worry.

I push the catgirl's head back down to make her deepthroat me, then I softly sigh in relief as I cum down her throat. Her waving brown tail stills for a second, but then it moves entrancingly again as she happily continues milking me like the good girl that she is.

It takes a few moments for Vanea to get herself back under control again, and Grosnok even offers her a napkin to dry the corners of her eyes to avoid ruining her makeup.

Vanea sighs joyfully and continues, "Ah~… Lord Ryder, have you ever heard the saying, 'the stars are the suns of other Realms'?"

I instantly frown in confusion as I point out, "Doesn't that go against our knowledge of the Star Burst event? We shouldn't be able to see the other Realms of our Cycle with the naked eye."

She pouts annoyedly. "You damn scholar… of course it isn't literal, that's why it's a popular saying, not a teaching from the Gods."

"Oh…" I awkwardly hum and smile apologetically.

"A-ny-wa~y…" She pompously continues, carefully enunciating each syllable. "Being favored so strongly by the Gods makes me wonder how close to them you'll eventually become."

It's one thing to joke about being a "God of Sex," but having someone like Vanea say that out loud makes me sweat cold.

"My priestess wife would strangle me if I started thinking like that, so I have no comment," I smoothly reply.

She rests her cheek on her hand and stares at me amusedly. "Not talking about it won't stop the rumors."

"I know, but at least it won't inflame them."

"Fair enough." She relents and looks down at Lala's cute sitting pose as she gobbles me up. "Is she good enough for your standards…?"

"Yes, she is." I caress Lala's ears with my spirit-touch, making her purr delightfully once again.

Vanea stares at her with a surprisingly gentle look as she confesses, "Sometimes I use a fake cock just because I find it incredibly erotic to have a woman suck me off, so count me jealous that you can actually enjoy getting sucked."

I'm stunned by this revelation for a few seconds, but then I immediately make a cock-shaped tentacle. "Perhaps you should learn [Soul Manipulation]. That'll give you the tools to truly fulfill those desires of yours."

Her smile slowly widens into a grin, and she starts chuckling sadistically. "You're a box of surprises, Lord Ryder. Perhaps we can negotiate for this skill…?"

I nod slowly and call upon Yunia. "Perhaps…"

Vanea straightens her posture again, and her expression becomes stoic, sending another chill through me. "Now that we're talking business, I need to say that there are two reasons for why I called for this meeting. The first is to give you the information we extracted from Darean about Dawn of Fire, and the second is to propose a business deal where I supply you with attuned gems from our recently opened mine in the Lapis Waterway."

The mention of Darean sours my mood, but only for a moment since Lala's skillful mouth makes it effortless for me to forget that Wicked man. "Ah, yes, we still have to 'deal' with Dawn of Fire, but enchanted gems…?" I curiously ask and tilt my head pompously.

Vanea smiles excitedly. "I heard that you now have a fleet of airships, and the Chimeras who can not only build them, but also refine the gems, as well."

"Yes, I do…" I proudly hum.

I cum two more times down Lala's throat, then she gets up and sits on my cock while we continue to negotiate. It actually helps me to remain calm, similar to the support that my wives can give me, though just purely physical instead.

Vanea gives a signal to Grosnok, who kneels and delicately sneaks his hand down through the opening of her dress at her navel, then I see his fingers moving in and out of her pussy.

"I'm glad that I've found someone who has similar sexual principles as I do," she softly hums as she orgasms from Grosnok's furry, clawed fingers.

I don't even know how to answer that, so I just smile back, and then I notice Grosnok licking his lips in hunger as he deeply breathes in the smell of Vanea's lewdness.

Is this some sort of contest to assert dominance? The first one to get embarrassed loses?

Well… it's a good thing that I've become such an unrepentant degenerate, then!

Yunia concentrates solely on helping me negotiate while Ciel and Gify work together to comfort my mind as I navigate this tense and stressful discussion with Vanea. The other wives also help a bit, but the three of them have everything under control, and I gradually become more comfortable talking to Vanea.

Though, I think Lala also deserves some recognition for helping me to relax.

Vanea tires out first and orders Grosnok to stop. Though he seems a bit dejected initially, he finds his own happiness in licking Vanea's sticky cream from his furry fingers.

Then Lala tires out and decides to give me a massage. Vanea feels a bit envious of me, so she orders Grosnok to massage her, too, and our stiff postures crumble under the strong hands of the two feline kin. It's a weird experience, but it does help Vanea and I act more friendly and casual with each other.

As the negotiations progress, Lala serves us not-earl-gray tea with not-lemon meringue cake, then a few hours pass, and the negotiations conclude successfully.

"It was a pleasure meeting with you, Lord Wolf," she says her goodbyes with a slow, suggestive tone.

I nod respectfully. "Likewise, Dame Vanea."

"Just call me Vanea in private," she kindly replies.

"Then call me Wolf."

"Until next time, Wolf," she whispers gently.

"Until then, Vanea," I respond in kind.

She giggles softly and leaves, then I ask the Lordsguard for a bit of privacy so that I can have a proper round with Lala.

Once the Companions are out of the room, Enomosa comes over to me and stoically asks, "Your Highness, are you an exhibitionist, by chance…?"

I feel so attacked by her question that I struggle to come up with an answer.

Intermission 28 – Vanea

Wolf has aged like a fine brandy. The young, skittish, and delicate boy has grown into a mature, confident, and gallant man. It's hard to believe that the rumors were true, that he had become such a heartthrob, but I was certain the very moment I saw him that he had a wild dragon within his heart, constantly wrestling for control as he salivated for females. But the human was definitely in full control, grinning as he rattled the chains before me.

Hngh… he makes me wet in ways that only Haaran or Dad can. I want him to beg and lick my feet for the privilege of fucking me, but it'll be hard to keep myself under control if we'll be meeting often in the future. I must not give myself to him for free when I could squeeze so much out of him.

I feel like he's the kind of man who would pay a fair price for Laina's first time. I'm not sure if he's willing to take more wives, but maybe she could become one of his concubines. My little sister does seem to have the aptitude to become a fine Lady, so it'll be up to her to see if she can latch onto his heart.

But something he said has stuck with me.

"We shouldn't be able to see the other Realms of our Cycle with the naked eye."

What a curious phrasing.

A note from Manasong

Hall of Fame of Patrons

The patrons who support Rupegia shall have their names sung by the bards for they deserve the glory and honor. Their names are:

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Chapter 106: Gentle Persuasion - Part 1

Intermission – Alissa

Allura and I lay down on the grass and stare up at the blue sky, trying to imagine what the clouds are shaped like, though we both mention the shape "dick" a bit too often.

"Hey, do you remember when I used to rub salve on you after your training?" Allura suddenly asks.

I turn my head to the side to look at her and smirk. "Yeah, I do. But why are you bringing that up? Feeling like ogling me again?" I tease seductively and push my breasts together.

She just glances at me and scoffs, "Meh, I don't like women that much. What I wanted to say is that I always liked to watch you train."

"Oh…" That makes me pause and hold back the degenerate within me.

Then we both stay silent for a moment while Allura gathers her thoughts, and we continue to gaze up at the sky as the white clouds slowly drift by.

"You trained so hard, but I… was never able to train as hard as you," she finally quietly admits.

"You lost the moment you compared yourself to me," I coldly reply, mimicking Mom's tone.

Allura starts to smile, thinking about how to counter-banter, but then realization strikes her, and the smile retreats, making way for a pensive expression. "Fuck… you're actually right. I shouldn't compare myself to you, it isn't fair."

I sit up on the grass and turn a curious look towards her. "But why did you compare yourself to me?"

"Because I'm the Chosen Descendant, but I could never train as hard as you did," she wistfully confesses.

I hug my knees and absentmindedly play with the grass as I think out loud, "That's because I always had a 'goal' that had to be reached in just a few years, while your 'goal' is to one day become the Chief and keep the Misty Forest safe."

But Allura is still unconvinced, so she frowns and insists, "But you still grew so much that I won't ever be able to catch up."

And that makes me slightly angry.

Stubborn little cub.

"I know how to serve, to comfort, to kill, and to lead, but I don't know how to be a Chief or a Lord," I heatedly point out.

"But you-…"

"No buts!" I yell while fuming. "[No butts!]" I playfully pun inside my own head in English, and my anger is the only thing preventing me from shouting my immature thought out loud like a fool, the same way that Wolfy likes to.

Oh, no. He's "contaminated" me.

Then I flop back on the grass again and grab Allura's hand. "I don't want to compete with you."

"Well, I do! How about that?!" Allura flippantly replies and pouts exaggeratedly at me.

"I won't let Wolfy take your first time," I coldly threaten, giving Allura a chill as her pointy ears become extra pointy in wariness.

"W-who said I wanted that?!" she squeaks embarrassedly and pulls her hand away.

I narrow my eyes and smile smugly. "I'm pretty sure you were drooling when you watched my draconic husband fuck my tight, foxy pussy."

"That sounds disgusting!" She dramatically blurts out a little too strongly.

But that only increases my smugness. "You know, tails don't lie." Then Allura grabs her slowly wagging tail and scooches away from me, making me chuckle softly.

She doesn't have a comeback for that, so we both go silent again and slowly calm down as we observe the clouds once more.

"I'll be crowned Queen one day," Allura suddenly claims.

"Is Chieftess of the Forest not good enough for you?" I go along with her dream.

"No," she loudly hums back, and her determined voice echoes across the open field.

"What are you going to do, conquer all the clans, again?" I teasingly ask. The Misty Fox Clan is like a mini empire that conquered the other fox clans a long time ago, though our "subjects" are consistently unruly.

"I'll conquer the Colored Sands, tame the wild humans, then irrigate the land, gradually turning it into a flourishing grassland," Allura boldly declares then lifts her clenched fist up in the air in determination.

I turn to my ambitious sister and raise an eyebrow in surprise. "You actually know history? And the engineering required to achieve that?" I honestly question.

"I do." Then she turns her "[smug mug]" towards me, as Wolfy would've put it. "This is how I'm going to compete with you."

I shrug and stare up at the clouds again. "I'm surprised that you can even read-…"

"Get your tail yanked," she annoyedly curses.

"… but as long as the empire grows from your aspirations, I'm fine with it. Though, you'd better ask the emperor for permission before you spark an internal conflict."

Allura frowns angrily and argues, "Not a single emperor has ever done anything to control the Sands, even though the slavers have been raiding us for hundreds of years."

I give her a kind look and grab her shoulder reassuringly. "We'll always be your ally, but don't go too far."

She pats my hand and pouts. "Thanks, but I won't get you involved in this."

"Still. Just remember that we'll be there for you."

Allura nods in understanding, and we both go quiet again.

After a bit of frolicking in the grass, lunchtime comes around, and we eat a nice meal of refined and nostalgic werefox cuisine.

"… then they fatten up on werefox…" I catch a stray thought.

"Wolfy!" I whine towards the "hole" in my soul space…

…[but it's my fault that I'm constantly reading his thoughts]. I feel Wolfy's influence guiding my mind.

"Hmph!" I whine again and resist the [Bind], closing off my mind.

The news of a letter addressed to Wolfy makes us all tune in and leech off of his sight. It gets a bit crowded inside his soul space, but everyone has learned how to not "elbow" each other. When we read the name of the sender, we all freeze in surprise for a second, then we pretend that we never saw it.

Cowards! I'll never leave Wolfy's side!

But I can only meekly offer to go with him to help him in the meeting.

"It's fine. I think I'm mentally strong enough to deal with her myself," he warmly replies, and the happy, loving tone he uses makes it very difficult to argue against him.

"We'll have to suck his dick a lot tonight," I warn the sister-wives.

"Always," Aoi cheerfully replies, but she doesn't count.

He suggests Ravaging Yunia and Ereia at the same time, and I feel a bit of pride from seeing him being so proactive in collecting other women. Ereia will be a useful noblewoman to have on our side.

It's totally not my fetish speaking, yup, totally not.

Then Roxanne, Ofilia, Allura, and I visit the Elder's Library, a semi-public place where I used to study.

We enter a private study room so that we can speak freely and sit on the comfortable cushions around the table.

Roxanne is a bit interested in werefox [Alchemy], so we get a few appropriate books for her, then I show them my magic book with Nocturna's spells.

"Oh, how surprising that you found her magic outside of the Misty Forest," Homvieun curiously remarks as he flips through the book. The old raisin, I mean, the wizened old werefox was my tutor, and he always gets quite happy when I show interest in books.

Then I speculate on the book's origin, "It's quite the simple book, so it was likely sold as a curiosity from the Misty Forest, but it also lacks in depth, so I want to get my hands on more study material."

He nods repeatedly in understanding and orders a young page to bring us a few books. "We have spares of these, so you can take them with you."

"Thank you very much, Homvieun," I earnestly reply, and his heart seems to melt from my Cuteness Attack.

But then he smirks like a cheeky grandpa and reveals to Roxanne, "When Alissa was a child, she asked me the darnedest of questions. Allura isn't as inquisitive as she was, but the younger sister still has the talent of asking about the most curious of things."

Roxanne pompously covers her mouth like a Lady as she laughs, then requests, "Ohohoh, I have an idea about what types of questions you may be referring to, but please, enlighten me."

Ofilia slowly nods sagely and subtly grins. "Oh, I remember it very well. Wasn't she about eight years old when she first asked about sex? She said that she could hear and smell it," she teasingly recollects.

"Yeah, I could smell your cum-breath whenever you sucked Dad off," I throw the banter right back at her, leaving her speechless.

"That's kind of hot," Roxanne mutters, her thin eyebrows raised high in surprise.

Homvieun clears his throat loudly while Ofilia blushes, her "porcelain skin" turning scarlet, as Wolfy would've put it.

"You routinely gave us hard-hitting questions, even though you were just a child," Homvieun quickly changes the topic and smiles stiffly. "I tried to give you a varied education, but you never liked anything that wasn't related to Blood Slaves and their duties."

I nod in agreement. "But of course. Though, you never taught me anything about engineering and irrigation."

He raises an eyebrow in curiosity and glances at Allura. "Well, that's something a Chosen Descendant should definitely learn, but I'm curious why you mentioned those two topics, specifically."

I grin towards Allura, who just rolls her eyes and sighs, preparing herself for the slap of banter. "Someone seems to have become an expert in them."

Both Homvieun and Ofilia glance at her too and start chuckling heartily.

"I hope… I hope that Allura didn't try to give you any advice," Ofilia teases as she dries the corners of her eyes.

"Of course, I didn't…" Allura sourly replies and pouts.

After a while, a page arrives, bearing a message for me.

I stare at the piece of paper as my heart pangs with guilt, but then Wolfy's presence forces me to stand up and walk, so I obey and leave the library.

Once I cross through the main entrance, I suddenly stop as I recognize Nen standing at the gate, wearing a dazzling silvery Plier-type dress, or "not-kimono," as Wolfy calls them. He's also wearing a simple military sash instead of the more feminine flowery knots, or "origami," as Wolfy named them.

The flowery knots are just that, knots, so it doesn't make sense to name them "origami," but Wolfy just wants to "meme" and come up with references to Earthling culture at every opportunity he can.

I'm a little hesitant to meet with Nen alone, and thinking about Wolfy just makes it even harder to move. I don't know why I feel this way, but I don't want to bother Wolfy with my stupid feelings while he makes love to Yunia, so I just clench my jaw and continue walking forward.

It's time to deal with the goblin waiting outside.

Nen's overall air is that of a confident, manly man, making him so handsome that I almost blush from just looking at him. I generally don't like to compliment men, and in Nen's case, complimenting him leaves me with such a bitter taste on my tongue that it's making me angry.

"Alissa," he greets me with a low, husky tone as he smiles.

"Nen," I reply in kind and look away.

"We didn't have time to talk, so…" He awkwardly continues, but then loses his train of thought.

I look back at the grass garden and point to a bench. "Let's talk over there," I suggest, and he wordlessly nods.

We sit on each end of the bench, as far from each other as possible, then we stay silent, just stewing in the awkward silence.

After a long minute, Nen sighs and embarrassedly admits, "I forgot what I wanted to say."

I chuckle softly and reply, "You didn't change. You still have that cute, shy boy inside you."

He frowns and pouts childishly. "Well, you didn't change, either. You still dodge anything that's unrelated to your Master."

I raise an eyebrow in confusion and stare at him as I question, "What do you mean by that?"

He shrugs and awkwardly looks away. "Well, didn't you also have something to say to me?" He mumbles, sulking a little.

I close my mouth and look away, struggling to come up with a riposte, but he got me there.

"Touché," as Wolfy would've said.

Then I realize that what he just said was true. If it isn't related to Wolfy, it doesn't interest me.

But is that actually a bad thing…?

I sigh and shake my head.

Of course, it'll never be bad to seek the fulfillment of my duty, no matter if it's as a wife or as a Blood Slave.

It does us no good to keep circling around it, so I go on the offensive, "We were never meant to be, so if you want to talk about… that day, then I have nothing to say. I don't love you in that way…"

Nen remains silent for a long moment, then he suddenly starts chuckling. "Well, if you reject me like that, then there's really nothing I can say in return," he cheerfully admits and continues chuckling.

I jerk my head towards him and glare angrily. "W-what did you expect?! I'm married!"

He dries the corners of his eyes and calmly points out, "But your husband lays with dryads and also… uh… your sister…?" Then he becomes boy-Nen again as he blushes gently.

"She's still not ready," I tersely reply and wave my hand dismissively.

He clears his throat and awkwardly continues, "Right… but he seemingly does what he wants with other women while you…?"

I flash him a smirk. "Watch. It's my fetish."

"Uh-hum…" He hums stiffly and looks away, then his gray face glows bright red.

"We can all do what we want with other women, but not other men. That's the rule," I casually reveal, reveling in his embarrassment.

"It doesn't sound fair," he mumbles concernedly.

And I immediately retort, "But it is. There's a lot more that he does for us to compensate."

Then he gives me a very skeptical look.

Sometimes, I forget how different this harem's circumstances are in comparison to the average.

I pensively look out through the gate and observe the commoners passing by, then I rest my hands on my knees and happily sway from side to side as I confess, "We weren't meant to be because what I… what we, the Ryder family has, transcends the usual bond of husband and wives. Wolfy is a champion of the Gods, and we have to give our everything to the champion to support him in his journey. Laying with other men is just one small thing we had to give up."

After the second Intervention, there's nobody who can deny that Wolfy is a champion.

Nen stays silent for a minute as he stares at me, evaluating my words. "I'm… sorry that I brought this topic up. It was rude of me," he finally admits.

And I shake my head in denial. "It was just a loose end," I comfort him.

"Indeed…" He agrees with a sigh.

Then we go silent again.

Though there was desire between us once, there wasn't enough to allow me to say that we were anything more than friends.

Nen gives me a pained smile and starts to back down, "I do admit that this hurts a bit, so I'll be going now since I want to spend some time alone."

There's nothing else that I can do here.

I simply nod and gently reply, "Until the next time we meet, Nen."

He gets up and bows. "Until then. Come visit whenever you can."

"I will," I whisper back, then I silently watch him leave.

I should stop denying that I find other men attractive. It's giving me too much grief.

I talk a little more with Homvieun, then I return to the Estate and find Mom.

Just like how I remembered it, she's in her office with Dad as they both work together. It's like seeing Wolfy and Yunia together, though the domineering one would be Wolfy, instead.

Mom lifts her eyes from her work and greets, "Ah, Alissa, I want t-…"

But I kneel beside her cushion and pull her into a hug.

"I love you, Mom and Dad. Thanks for raising me this way," I confess with a whispered tone. Though I'm opening up my heart, this time, I don't feel like crying.

Mom's hand stays still in the air for a moment, then she hugs me back and whispers, "We're proud to have you as our daughter, Queen Alissa."

I cringe, but then everything goes dark as Dad surrounds us both with his huge arms.

Intermission end.

"I'll deal with Nero, now," Yunia reports through [Bind] as my meeting with Vanea wraps up.

"Good luck," we all wish for her, then I pull Lala towards me and kiss her thin, pretty lips.

Yunia takes a [Gate] to the Lordsguard barracks, then an [Eternal Gate] down to the dungeon.

As she walks past the empty cells, she suddenly senses a wisp of Life and looks into the cell beside her.

Deep in the darkness, she notices a pair of eyes staring back at her, then she senses the Life of a humanoid, and Nero drops [Hide Presence].

"Well, I guess that's unlucky…" He awkwardly admits with a grin.

Yunia [Equip]s her Bastión armor and her weapon, then rushes into the open cell and knocks him out with the flat of her sword.

The healer finishes chanting and [Heal]s Nero's head, clearing his concussion away and allowing him to wake up again.

The bound and chained man gasps and looks around in confusion, then his eyes slowly regain their focus, and he realizes where he is.

He chuckles in his gravely voice and comments, "The God of Luck really isn't on my side…"

"You really thought that you could escape from a Lord's dungeon?" Yunia immediately questions him sternly, yet also sounding a bit stupefied.

Nero simply shrugs. "What's the worst that could happen? There was a chance to get past the guards, if I was lucky enough, which I wasn't."

"If you killed one of our men, I'd kill you without hesitation," she harshly points out.

"Good thing I didn't kill anybody, eh?" He cheekily replies and starts chuckling again.

"Check him for Wickedness," she orders the healer, who immediately starts casting [Detect Evil].

"I'm a spy. I'm more likely to be insane than Wicked," he cheekily admits, then his mustache starts twitching. "Oh, oh, can you scratch my mustache? It's itching!"

The Lordsguards send a concerned look towards Yunia but don't move an inch.

"Do it with the scabbard of your sword," she orders one of the men.

"Ah~… thank you," Nero moans in delight.

"He's truly insane," Lina comments through [Bind].

"A man without anything to lose can act as erratically as those who are truly damaged in the mind," Yunia unhappily replies as her frown deepens.

Once the itch is gone, Nero's expression becomes a bit more stern as he begins, "So, let's get this over with. You want me to work for you?"

"Hmph…" Yunia scoffs at him. At least he's smart enough to predict that. "Become our Blood Slave, or face the Tribunal."

His confident smirk is wiped away, replaced by pure surprise. "Oh, fuck. Okay, I didn't imagine that you'd go that far."

Then she points out matter-of-factly, "You have a fair amount of knowledge about the underworld; you infiltrated the Enforcers and then escaped successfully; and though it was an overall failure, escaping one of our cells is no small feat."

He blinks blankly, then smiles self-deprecatingly as he admits, "I just slightly miscalculated how devious you'd be. I'd thought that the naive and idealistic Wolf Ryder was the one in charge."

"Wow, they really look down on me, huh?" I comment through [Bind].

Yunia grins smugly. "I know you're being facetious, but you have no idea how we truly are. Only a handful of people do, really."

He shrugs and grumbles, sounding quite miffed, "Well, whatever. What choice do I have?"

"Serve, or pay for your crimes," she slowly replies.

His low grunt echoes through the halls. "Hmph. Fine, I'll be your slave."

A note from Manasong

Hall of Fame of Patrons

The patrons who support Rupegia shall have their names sung by the bards for they deserve the glory and honor. Their names are:

Prince PreownedFIN.

Prince Creamy Spinach.

Lord Andrew Meyers.

Lord Samuel Lim.

Lord Bill.

Lord Novgarod.

Lord Michale Erwin.

Lord Bakerdea.

Lord Maurice.

Lord Empyrean.

Lord Mattirro Draca.

Lord Colorblind.

Lord Fullmoon.

Lord Sean Drake.

Lord EESDESESESRDT.

Lord FrostyCube.

Lord Mike Bartter.

Lord Cardinal Steiner.

Lord Krawn.

Lord Warwulfv.

Lord Jorge Franco.

Lord Christopher Welsh.

Lord DJ.

Lord Philip.

Lord Tenebris Lupus.

Lord ImportantNPC.

Lord The Tallest Joshua.

Lord Copey Dunt.

Lord Dracopuppy23.

Lord Freddie.

Lord Cidant.

Lord Stellerbattle.

Lord Chris Carter.

Lord GoodKat.

Lord Paul Daval.

Noble Salty Panda.

Noble Mild Fracas.

Noble Aclys.

Noble Shawn Plumley.

Noble CarlBaxter.

Noble Yeuromain.

Noble Brandon Lai.

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Chapter 106: Gentle Persuasion - Part 2

"Your Highness, are you an exhibitionist, by chance…?" Enomosa stoically asks.

I feel so attacked by her question that I struggle to come up with an answer, but then her expression gains a surprising amount of warmth.

"There's no shame in such a fetish, and I ask merely because some of the Companions and I would like to watch," she gently continues.

"Ooh~…" I coo in understanding, but then I sigh and scratch one of my horns. "But you're right, I do enjoy being watched, like I'm 'performing' before an 'audience.'"

"Which is why some like to watch," she smugly points out.

I smile wryly and awkwardly order, "Hm, yes. Well… ask the Companions if they want to watch."

"At once, your Highness." She salutes, then quickly leaves the room.

"Nyou're making me both excited and afraid, nyah," Lala comments with a smile as she sits on the bed, her head resting on her hand and her shapely legs crossed in a very alluring way.

I walk up to her and kneel, then I run a (padded) claw along her leg, and I notice her hair visibly stand on end from the stimulation.

"I'll give you an experience you'll never forget," I huskily reply and slowly remove her sandals.

I bring her bestial feet towards my mouth and lick under her toe, then run my tongue along the edge of her claw, padding my tongue to not get cut.

She raises her eyebrows in surprise, then her grin widens, revealing her cute little fangs.

The Lordsguard start to pour in just as I intensify my toe and claw sucking, and I hear them whispering excitedly, though Alissa isn't here, so I can't make out what they're saying.

Lala removes her top, and I salivate in anticipation.

"Good luck," we all wish for Yunia as she goes to meet Nero, then I start the Ryder Routine of Pleasure.

One of my Companion women offers me a cup of Eia. It's not the high-grade stuff that I really like to drink, but it's still good enough to quench my thirst.

I pull Lala's limp body towards my chest and pet her ears until she's revived, then I cast [Clean] and [Refresh] on her as thanks for enduring a full-blown Ravaging.

After I'm dressed again, Lala comes up to me and kisses me on my lips. "Come again, one day, nya, but not every day since nyou'd kill me, nya," she shyly requests, and I caress her ears, earning myself another purr.

"I will," I huskily reply and leave, then we return to the castle.

Enough playing around. It's time to get back to work.

I join up with Lina, who's guiding a few Nature and Earth mages in building the wind tunnel testbed.

A problem that's quickly becoming evident is the lack of standardized measurement units. The entire empire still uses the Rupegia equivalent to imperial units, so we have to develop Metrology in this world to allow manufacturing and interchangeable parts to spread more easily. Also, airplanes are sensitive enough that just eyeballing the measurements would create a lot of inefficiencies.

There are a lot of measurement units based on the emperor's body, so they aren't really useful for long-term engineering. The most useful units are based on the Throne of Ascension, such as its height and width, but the problem is that these units still vary due to changes in temperature and degradation over time, so we need to use something more stable.

Curiously, there's a unit that's said to be either the length of the emperor's dick or the depth of the empress' vagina. Legend tells that it's used to find appropriate partners for the emperor or empress, though the temple has no comment about it.

Anyway, the problem of Metrology will be solved with time, but that's not the only hurdle we have to overcome. I feel like there's a bit of friction among the mages. The Earth mages want to use metal while the Nature mages want to use wood, but there's no clear advantage to using either.

Metal interferes with magic, so enchantments on wood are better, but elven wood is expensive to maintain. The wind tunnel doesn't really benefit from either of them since the needed enchantment is only a simple boosted [Breeze] at the end of the tunnel, but the planes that I want to build will benefit from this type of research.

Not only do we need to develop Metrology, but also Materials Science.

Earth obviously went the path of metal since they didn't have magic to let them shape wood, so there might be some unknown merit in using elven wood.

I shouldn't put the horse before the wagon.

"We'll use wood first simply because it's easier for us, but later on, we should also build one from metal since it'll be more useful for the rest of the empire," I decide, and the friction is resolved, for now.

The testbed and a few toys will be ready tomorrow, thanks to magic making building prototypes so easy, so after getting the boosted [Breeze] enchantment ready, Lina and I retire and join the other girls in relaxation.

"The Blood Slave merchant Esvisor has arrived," a maid gives us the message, then I sigh and we go down to the main hall.

Nero is brought before us, and Esvisor frowns when he sees the prisoner. The charming and devilish slaver looks very lofty when he's displeased.

"Did your Highness check this prisoner's compatibility with a Truth Seeker?" Esvisor warily asks and turns his intense stare towards Yunia and me.

"No. He's a prisoner, an agent of someone else that we wish would serve us, instead," I calmly reply and pompously lay my claws upon my lap.

Esvisor narrows his eyes and hesitates for a moment. "May I talk to the prisoner, first? As a Blood Slave merchant, I'll have to answer to the Gods if I make a mistake in turning this man into a Blood Slave."

"Do as you wish."

The two walk a good distance away to talk, and while we can't eavesdrop, Yunia notices that Nero's happy-go-lucky demeanor seems to unnerve Esvisor.

Eventually, Esvisor comes back, and he harshly states as he bows, "I can't approve of making him into a Blood Slave, but I also can't stop you, so instead, I must plead that you be careful, your Highnesses."

"Though I admit that we're forcing Nero's hand, we don't plan on using him as any less than a humanoid," Yunia soberly replies.

"I see…" He humbly whispers, then straightens his back and neutrally asks, "Do you wish for any additional [Slavery Magic] spells?"

"All of them," she immediately answers, and Esvisor's eye twitches.

If we wish, we could treat Nero as nothing more than a mere doll, but I have a feeling that the Gods wouldn't like it if we did that.

Nero Skill Report

Physical

Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level
Dagger Use | 12 | Sword Use | 19 | Bow Use | 12
Grappling | 13 | Parry | 10 | Block | 8
Dodge | 11 | Shield Bash | 2 | Battlefield Perception | 5
Muscle Explosion | 5 | Intimidate | 4 | Quiet Action | 8
Quiet Steps | 7 | Sense Presence | 1 | Hide Presence | 9
Imperial Dulleum Style | 4 | Erceptum Style | 6 | Unarmed Style | 5
Tracking | 4 | Enhanced Reflexes | 2

Magical

Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level
Fire Magic | 1 | Light Magic | 1 | Earth Magic | 1
Conjuring Magic | 1 | Illusion Magic | 5

Miscellaneous

Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level
Cooking | 3 | Cleaning | 2 | Washing | 2
Riding | 4 | Dismantling | 5 | Swimming | 2
Charm | 2

Info

Name | Nero | Age | 58 | Race | Human
HP | 100 | MP | 515 | Magic Power | 160
Level | 44

Stats

Strength | 20 | Endurance | 20 | Dexterity | 21
Speed | 18 | Intelligence | 17 | Wisdom | 19
Willpower | 20 | Charisma | 22 | Piety | 9
Perception | 18 | Sanity | 12

Other

Status Effects | NONE
Titles | 'Beer Hound, Bottomless Pit'
Affiliations | 'NONE'
Companions | 'NONE'

Crimes

'Minor Theft (Mainland (PAID)), Minor Burglary (Mainland (PAID)), Minor Assault (Mainland (PAID)), Minor Bribery (Mainland (PAID), Antano (PAID))'

I frown as I stare at his ID tablet. "I thought there'd be more in your 'Crimes'?" I skeptically question Nero.

"There should be, yes, but nobody ever found out that I did it," he cheekily replies.

"His stats are really good, but he really is a bit insane," Yunia comments through [Bind], and I agree wholeheartedly.

With that done, we give him to Sandoro to extract everything he knows about Katasko, and then he'll train him into an acceptable soldier.

Just as the sun starts to set, the rest of the wives return, and Alissa jumps into my arms, glowing with happiness.

"I love you," she whispers lovingly and nuzzles herself into my neck as her tail softly wags.

"I love you, too," I whisper back and caress her fluffy ears, then wrap my tail around us.

After a bit of cuddling, we go take a bath, and I enjoy my maids again.

Klein is very tired from training archery all day long with the werefoxes, so I recruit Osaria and Poosh for a special [Massage] session.

I lick her tight dark abs and gently bite her soft skin, making her squeak like a mouse, then I add a bit of spirit touch to my tongue, and moans of pleasure become interspersed between the squeaks.

Two pairs of hands and one pair of claws play with her muscles, kneading them rhythmically, providing a cycle of tension and release that relaxes her muscles.

My tentacles wrap around her limbs, and I string her up like a turkey ready to be eaten, though I wait until I give her bliss.

The hands all move in erotic ways, gradually stimulating her little by little, but all the while avoiding the erogenous zones so that she finds no release.

"Wolfy~…! Give it to me!" She starts to beg. "Fuck me…! Please!"

Her tired muscles become rejuvenated, and she starts to struggle against the binds.

"Good, good," I soothe her and peck her lips. "I replenished your energies just so that I could drain them all away again." Then I thrust, and she orgasms instantly.

Though Hana is all worked up from sparring, I don't fuck her, not yet.

Alissa gets off on watching me do Klein, so I ignore her and focus on the other girls. Since everyone worked so hard today, I even include Poosh and a few thirsty maids in the tentacle monster treatment.

For dinner, Krysta serves Japanese sweet curry, and though it's delicious, I curse the lack of rice. I've never related to Japanese isekai protagonists as much as I do right now…

Once our bellies start to bulge a bit, Klein calls my attention.

"Wolfy…" And the blatantly evident guilt in her tone immediately tells me everything about what she wants to say. "I'm sorry for… getting Lorena killed."

"I understand, but we made mistakes too, so don't put the blame all on yourself," I comfort her honestly.

"It happened once, and it'll happen again, so make this a learning moment and grow from it," Yunia sagely states.

"I understand," Klein soberly replies with a determined nod, and it impresses me how resilient she's becoming.

For the evening, Hana goes to the Companions' rest area and starts drinking with them, Yunia goes to spend some time with her brothers, Roxanne plays Civil War with Lina, and Ciel has some girl talk with Klein and Osaria.

I play for a bit in my dragon form with Aoi and Alissa. Actually play, for once. And Aoi gives me some pointers on how to fly, then we joust with the golems as our riders.

"This is so cute, can I take an [Instant Picture]?" Ciel bashfully asks, her sentiment mirrored in the other wives' minds.

Aoi instantly strikes a proud pose while I hesitate before the dragon takes over and I follow her lead, then Alissa snuggles up to me.

"Ehehehehe…" Ciel chuckles perversely as she activates the gnomic magic tool.

I stare at her with raised eyebrows, stupefied. "Is your loli fetish triggering from little dragons…?" I question and share a look with Alissa.

"N-n-no!" She yells and hugs the painting, then angrily stomps back to Klein and Osaria.

The three of us shrug at each other, then we continue jousting.

Hana's conversation with the Companions gets a bit interesting, so I decide to join them for a bit.

Intermission – Female Companion

We all laugh at Hukarere's joke, but the tension in the air continues to increase as Romy and Royal Lord Hanafuria stare at each other like two predators who are about to clash.

The few Worshipers of Cock start to gather together as the signs that a lesbian orgy is about to begin become obvious to all. They're led by Hukarere, the Favored, but even she finds it amusing to watch Lord Hana, so they break out the Eia to get themselves into a nice mood.

As an elf, it's hard for me to admit that Lord Hana has charm. She's a crass, brazen, defiant dragonkin, but whenever she speaks of obscenities, I can't stop myself from feeling hot in between my legs.

She behaves like a horny dragonkin male, acting without a shred of femininity, and even her beauty is contaminated by maleness, yet she has the heart of every Sister of the Cross.

Little by little, my pride is eroded away, and I find myself wishing even harder for the opportunity to taste her lips, both of them.

The door suddenly opens, and everyone breathes in deeply as the aura of a man floods into our sacred sanctuary. But it's not just any man, it's the Exalted Lord himself.

His pretty, boyish looks trigger the motherly instincts of every older woman while also invading the dreams of the younger ones. Coupled with his threatening, yet dignified draconic features, the mothers see him as someone reliable to shelter them, while the maidens look up to the one who shall give them an adventure that they'll never forget.

An impossible man. He appeals to all types of women, even those who have forsaken sexuality due to his polite and gentle demeanor, conquering their hearts through his soul rather than his body.

If Royal Lord Hanafuria makes the elves confused, then Exalted Royal Lord Wolf Ryder is like the reincarnation of the God-Rulers of old, never mind the fact that the Last King Arreira himself actually named him his successor.

Just remembering his grieving face makes me understand why that Lorena girl decided to serve him again even though she wasn't a Companion.

The Worshipers immediately call him in, and he calmly walks up to the Favored, then he sits on her naked lap, resting his head on her pale, supple breasts, and gradually joins in the conversation. For a part-dragon man, he lacks the boisterousness of his sibling race, but his sweet tone makes every word he says sound pleasant to the ear, which I'm sure is partly due to his high "Charisma."

The Favored runs her hands down his shirt and plays with his body, making him smile like an innocent child, though it only encourages some decidedly not innocent thoughts to appear in my mind.

I glance at Lord Hana and sigh. Though I'm a member of both sides, I feel like today's the day that I'll finally Worship the Cock.

The recreation room gets divided up in two by the two Lords, and the sexual tension in the air just soars up high like a dragon hunting for prey, pun intended.

"Is Lorena here…?" The Lord gently asks and looks around like a child looking for their mother.

The Favored lowers her muzzle near his ear and answers, "She's still training with the other Chimeras to learn how to live as a spirit."

"I see…" He whispers melancholically.

"She also needed to get her spirit 'unbeheaded,' and that'll take a day, or two," another Chimera Worshiper adds, and his sensible chuckle makes me unconsciously smile.

Then he turns his eyes to the others. "But what about you girls? How are you all doing? I developed the initial [Solidify], but I think the Spirit mages have already altered the spell quite a lot."

"I got a lot of my strength back, and now, I just need to increase my 'Magic Power' to regain even more of it," the Favored shares proudly and flexes her arms, showing off her alluring muscles.

"The efficiency of our MP consumption has increased, so we don't tire as easily," another chimes in.

"Food tastes good again!" A third happily remarks.

"Divines bless elven food!" A fourth shouts.

And that comment gets the whole room to laugh and cheer. Even us elves are growing more frivolous, so we also join in. It's like a wall between us crumbled away after the Intervention, and I no longer remember what it means to be a High Elf.

With everyone laughing and thirsting over the Royal Lords, the feeling of "otherness" that used to come whenever I talked to non-elves now seems callous and conceited.

With the previous elven Lords, I'd never experienced this before. It was just a matter of fact that they were above, we were below, and the other races were just too different to fit in alongside us.

Now, the beacon of light shining from the Royal Lords makes all those differences seem blurred. Though not everyone here bleeds red blood, we've all agreed to serve the same Lords, and once we finally understand how far above us they really are, any difference between us seems so small as to be meaningless.

The Favored suddenly reaches inside the Exalted Lord's pants and slowly pulls out the Cock. It looks so threatening that it's like a weapon that he uses to subdue the pride of women and conquer their hearts, though everyone says that his benevolent rule over them is worth the submission.

The conversation almost fully dies down, but the topic quickly changes towards lewdness, and the heat coming from my womb becomes unbearable.

As I stare at the Favored slowly stroking the Exalted Lord's Cock, I feel the chains of my pride breaking and setting me free.

I walk up to the Lord and kneel before him, and he releases his noble seed upon my face, then I feel the glory of his touch upon my skin, and I grow from an Initiate into a Believer.

Blessed by the light! Blessed by his touch!

Intermission end.

Today is the 18th, Ros, day of Space. Today, using [Gate] and [Eternal Gate] is actually cheaper, mana-wise, making this the most notable evidence for the existence of the Cycle of Mana that the Tale of Creation talks about.

Though, paying for transport isn't actually cheaper because Space mages are greedy fucks.

I'm woken up by Osaria energetically sucking me off with a bit of a pouty look that stimulates the submissive within me. She's a bit thirsty and annoyed because I didn't include her in the orgy I had with the Companions last night, so I compensate her with plenty of cream.

My "Wisdom," "Perception," [Blessing Magic], and [Oral Technique] increased by 1 (now 19, 18, 27+23, and 0+2), and I learned [Acting] with 1 point.

Alissa's "Sanity," "Piety," and [Fox Transformation] increased by 1 (now 19, 18, and 8).

Roxanne's "Wisdom" and [Alchemy] increased by 1 (now 21 and 10).

Hana's "Speed," [Block], and [Draconic Body] increased by 1 (now 16, 15, and 7), and her [Tatesomu Style] increased by 2 (now 10). She was so fired up that she trained all day with the werefoxes, so it isn't surprising that she leveled up her skills so much.

Ciel's "Piety," [Parry], and [Dodge] increased by 1 (now 26, 5+10, and 3+12), and her [Light Magic] increased by 2 (now 8+32). She also gained the title "Star of Hope," which gives her conflicted feelings due to how saintly it sounds.

"It fits you since you're our main support, the backbone of our team. As long as you're there with us, we know that we can still fight on," I sincerely explain, and the strength of my conviction makes her blush.

Lina's [Parry] and [Block] increased by 1 (now 10 and 1+14).

Aoi leveled up to 40, and her "Dexterity," "Wisdom," and "Piety" increased by 1 (now 8, 10, and 8).

Yunia's [Silent Shadow Style] and [Spirit Magic] increased by 1 (now 5+5 and 20+20).

Overall, everyone earned some nice skill-ups due to our desperate fighting against the Clone Soldiers. Since we're mid-high level, we don't easily level up in mass combat anymore, so only Aoi benefited from the free EXP.

For breakfast, we just have a light meal since we ate quite a lot of werefox food yesterday, though I do eat a fair bit of meat to replenish all the cum I unleashed last night. A healthy body means a healthy mana organ, which allows me to release more of my blessings upon the world.

Since we don't have anything we have to do this morning, we return to our mana circulation training, which is a nice break from all the excitement of the last few days.

This time, we take an [Eternal Gate] to our personal retreat in Fledgling Falls, which is a mountain range that spans the entire border between Faium Principality on the west and the Colored Sands on the east. Since it's a private teleport, it's a lot cheaper to use, though if we travel outside of our private estate, the empire will give us a pretty hefty fine for skipping the Network.

This mountain range is full of jagged mountain lines and spikes, covered in moss and vegetation, and occasionally also holds a long, long waterfall, which causes a lot of mist to form near ground level. It all reminds me of those Chinese fantastical mountains that are based on some famous real-life location.

It isn't known how this mountain range was formed, but its jagged topology is attributed to the Axinite Dragons that used to live here and occasionally ate the exposed rock faces. In the present day, this location has been properly tamed and turned into a vacation resort for imperial nobility.

Our estate hangs between two spikes of thick rock, and at the bottom, there's a whole floor made entirely out of crystal clear glass to allow us to feel as if we were floating up in the air.

Lina can't concentrate while she's on the glass floor, so she enters one of the spikes and finds it far more comfortable for her to practice the circulation exercise inside the dark, cold cave.

At first, Hana manages to concentrate fairly well, but she eventually starts to slack off due to anxiety.

"When it's about family, I find it hard to control my emotions," she melancholically confesses.

"You've actually been controlling yourself?" Roxanne reflexively asks in astonishment.

Hana glares at her fearsomely, though that just makes Roxanne get excited. "Of course, I have! You'd all suffer if I just unleashed my dragonkin ferocity all the time," Hana confidently claims, and nobody actually wants to make her prove it.

I stand up and give my fiery dragonkin a hug, surprising her. "It's fine. I'll help you relax," I lovingly whisper, then I release her and brush her hair while she obediently sits and practices her circulation again, feeling a bit embarrassed about her anxiety and neediness.

I manage to keep my red lover calm until lunchtime, then we quickly don our social clothes and get ready to go to Mac Gantus. It's time to meet with the noble that has Hana's brother.

A note from Manasong

Hall of Fame of Patrons

The patrons who support Rupegia shall have their names sung by the bards for they deserve the glory and honor. Their names are:

Prince PreownedFIN.

Prince Creamy Spinach.

Lord Andrew Meyers.

Lord Novgarod.

Lord Michale Erwin.

Lord Bakerdea.

Lord Maurice.

Lord Empyrean.

Lord Mattirro Draca.

Lord Fullmoon.

Lord Sean Drake.

Lord EESDESESESRDT.

Lord FrostyCube.

Lord Mike Bartter.

Lord Cardinal Steiner.

Lord Warwulfv.

Lord Jorge Franco.

Lord Khristopher Welsh.

Lord DJ.

Lord Philip.

Lord Tenebris Lupus.

Lord The Tallest Joshua.

Lord Copey Dunt.

Lord Dracopuppy23.

Lord Chris Carter.

Lord Paul Daval.

Lord Bradly.

Lord Aubrey Powell.

Noble Salty Panda.

Noble Mild Fracas.

Noble Aclys.

Noble CarlBaxter.

Noble Yeuromain.

Noble Brandon Lai.

Leave a rating or a review to help me rise to the top or fix my shameful understanding of prose.

Take a look over my blog where all information about the world of Rupegia will be posted.

Join the Discord and discuss, or rant, or meme, or try and fight me so your waifu gets more screentime.

Become a Patron and read chapters in advance, or read the side-stories, or leave your mark on the story, or help choose the next artwork or the next side-story.

Chapter 106: Gentle Persuasion - Part 3

The group this time will be Hana, Klein, Mimi, a small squad of veteran Lordsguard, and I. Since Hukarere wants to get involved in my adventures, we bring her with us too. She's experienced enough as a guard for nobility that she can already be considered a veteran.

I stare at my watch, and when it hits exactly 12:30 PM, we cross through the [Eternal Gate] to Mac Gantus. There's a timezone difference between the capital and Escanso, so we have to leave a bit late to get there right at lunchtime.

When we cross through the heavy metal gate, we notice Confiel coming out of the gate right next to ours, the one labeled "Goloria."

"Greetings, Ryders," he politely starts and gives a nod to the others. His jovial smile is instantly recognizable.

His own knight and Lordsguard also salute us, and we return the pleasantries.

"Have you ever been to Mac Gantus?" Confiel asks as we write down our names in the logbook.

"I haven't," I casually admit.

"But we have, and I'm kind of happy to be going back after such a long time," Hana answers for the rest.

"Not a lot should've changed since we last visited, but it's still a beautiful place," Mimi comments and Klein nods in agreement, the former is very serene, but the latter is a bit stiff from talking with high nobility.

The monkey-girl's quick movements catch Confiel's attention, who then appraises her Camalo armor.

"Your armor was enchanted by God-Ruler Arreira himself, correct?" He casually questions, and Klein turns into a statue from her tension, her long tail shooting straight up like a pike.

"It was. Only a few sets like it exist because of his lack of fondness for mass-production," I proudly answer and grin at Klein's anxiety.

"Fascinating," he mutters as he looks her up and down, then he smiles kindly at her. "I'm sorry for staring so intensely."

"N-no problem…" She strains herself to reply.

The Throne of Ascension is the tallest humanoid-made structure, a very wide spiral tower that rises so high above the clouds that it was possible to even see the Sky Lands of the Chimeras before they were gifted a cloaking device by a previous emperor.

As high nobility, we're allowed to leave the Network at the mid-level of the Throne of Ascension, which is actually higher up than even our own castle can reach.

We exit into a rather kaleidoscopic hall. Wide and tall as if it was made for giants; covered in colorful, patterned tiles that makes even the elven Lordsguard a bit dizzy; and illuminated by huge, stained glass windows that seem like dwarven murals of epic events.

The hall itself is populated by dozens of small, but extremely fancy stalls that exude exotic scents. These are shops here that cater exclusively to high nobility, so they offer only the finest (and perhaps most pretentious and overpriced) goods that someone of our class could buy.

The people walking around here are mostly imperials, easily discernible by their colorful clothes and the abundant use of velvet, and among them, humans make up half, while werecats and weredogs make up one quarter each.

We, in our delicate elven clothing, easily stand out along with the other non-imperials due to our lack of vibrancy, but we don't lose out in fanciness.

Though everything is fancy, neither anything nor anyone uses gold or silver as decoration.

Lina's Trivia: Before the first emperor conquered Mac Gantus, it was a decaying city where the nobles gilded nearly everything in gold and silver to boast about their wealth, which the first emperor melted all down the moment he rose to power, so it has become a faux pas to use gilding as a decoration in the capital. Though the first emperor had his artisans create beautiful things, he despised using expensive materials just because they were valuable.

We quickly pass by the stalls since we're not here to buy any ostentatious trinkets, then we leave the hall and exit onto the outer spiral of the Throne, which gives us a great view towards the southern area of the capital.

Mac Gantus is a sea of yellow brick houses with orange clay roof tiles, all carefully measured since there's a height limit for housing. The only thing that can rise above them is the Hyper Loop, the metal rails with proto-trains powered by [Ritualism] that serve as the main means of mass-transport here.

Beyond the sea of houses, we can see the Three Kings Bay, and it's absolutely swarming with all sorts of ships. I even notice an Ironclad, though it lacks the chimney, so it obviously isn't coal-powered.

"A rare dwarven ship. They usually use hidden dwarven-powered waterwheels to move," Lina explains through [Bind].

Another thing that catches my attention is a huge fish, which must be a merfolk submarine made from the remains of a monster.

We enter a large birdcage, and Confiel tells the weredog attendant that we're going down. The fancily-clothed attendant then feeds mana into a gem, and the cage starts sliding down the huge ramp around the pure white Throne of Ascension.

The entire capital is basically in a flat plain with a slight depression towards the Bay, so all we can see in all directions is just the same orange sea of clay roof tiles. Though in the north, there's a lake that's reserved for nobility, so there are only a few fancy ships sailing on it.

We stop near the base of the Throne, and we exit into another hall with more stalls, though these ones are less fancy since they cater to the lower nobility and the rich merchants.

We take a side corridor that circles around the outer edge of the Throne, and we pass by a few restaurants, shops, and inns before we stop in front of a particular establishment, the Bronze Confidential.

It's a fancy place that's worthy of someone of our station while at the same time being affordable enough for the other party, who is a lower noble. The bronze that decorates the interior may have a golden-like luster, but it's used sparsely enough that Ciel finds it "tasteful."

The best feature of this restaurant, though, is the privacy. Each room is enchanted with all sorts of anti-espionage spells that we can control from the inside. And when we enter the room that's been reserved for us, it's clear that it can easily house every Lordsguard we have with room to spare.

"Hermann!" Hana shouts excitedly and runs to her brother, with Mimi following her at a normal walking pace.

The tall, dark-skinned, black-haired young man rises from his seat, and I notice that he's wearing a set of shining knight-grade armor. He looks a little older than me, but the truth is that he might be one or two years younger, possibly due to my higher level slowing down my aging.

Soul Info

Name | Hermann Grosshil | Race | Human | Level | 20
HP | 100 | MP | 20 | Magic Power | 10
Strength | 16 | Endurance | 14

He's not a Tranfkoever anymore…?

Hermann raises his arms and smiles, which annoys me since his manly face is eerily similar to Hana's. His square jaw is kind of enviable, though. Then he receives her in his arms, and his armor clangs loudly, making me appreciate how silent elven armor is.

Hermann may be tall, but he's still shorter than Hana, so she easily gains the upper hand in the bear hug, or orc hug in Rupegia-speak, though his armor still protects him from suffocation.

Maybe I should [Equip] my armor whenever I get hugged by Hana.

"Don't you dare!" She immediately shouts through [Bind].

Geez. Do you girls ever not hear my thoughts?

"No…?" Alissa quietly replies, a bit embarrassed herself, for once.

Mimi joins in the hug, and the three siblings touch their heads together. Hermann is shorter than Mimi too, so I kind of relate to him a bit.

I turn my eyes to the other occupants of the room and smile diplomatically.

The one that's sitting next to Hermann is a mature, gray-mustached, black-skinned man with the build of a mage but the confident demeanor of a noble. His clothes are short and mostly open, tailored to a humid and hot tropical climate, but he's also wearing a semi-transparent, bright blue robe that looks as delicate as elven clothes.

Soul Info

Name | Stefan Grosshil | Race | Human | Level | 67
HP | 100 | MP | 8,050 | Magic Power | 4,210
Strength | 12 | Endurance | 13

On his other side is a boy with the same build and height, but with a much younger face and slightly curly hair. His face is strikingly similar to mine, though with a darker skin tone and without my draconic features.

Soul Info

Name | Ahren Grosshil | Race | Human | Level | 16
HP | 100 | MP | 2,320 | Magic Power | 1,050
Strength | 10 | Endurance | 11

So… why does Hermann have the same last name as these nobles…?

I don't even show their info to Hana to avoid making her suspicious, but now it's pretty obvious why they didn't want to let Hermann go.

The happy reunion only lasts for a short while because when Hermann and Klein see each other, it's like they both become petrified, their expressions frozen as they just stare at each other in silence.

"I'm sorry…" Are the first words Hermann has to say to Klein, and her dumbfounded expression would be funny if I wasn't starting to feel a bit bitter about their reunion.

I was getting used to not being able to have Klein for myself, but my jealousy is now replaced with anger since Hermann didn't have the resolve to not marry someone else. At least Klein declined to join my harem, but Hermann didn't even do that!

"Hermann…" Stefan sternly warns him, and Hermann's expression becomes stoic as he straightens his posture again, then the old man turns his eyes towards us and smiles diplomatically. "Crown Lords Confiel Rincipio, Wolf Ryder, and Hanafuria Ryder, Dame Klein Foerster, and Miss Mizushina Tranfkoever. I'm honored that such an illustrious party has come to attend this meeting."

Confiel's knight looks a bit miffed that he wasn't named, but nobody here has any reason to know his name.

"Dezen Stefan Grosshil," Confiel softly replies with a simple nod, then extends his hands for the elven greeting.

Stefan has the "Dezen" imperial rank, which awards him a small squad of imperial soldiers, so while he isn't a Lord nor rules over any land, he has the military power of about half of a Root Lord.

Stefan gets up and walks around the table, his son following close behind.

After he gently touches Confiel's hand with his forehead, he gently pulls his son forward. "This is my son, Ahren," he introduces his shy boy, who blushes as he touches Confiel's hand, then the duo comes towards us for handshakes.

Stefan doesn't hesitate to shake my clawed hand, but his boy does, and he also visibly cowers under Hana's glare. They don't shake Mimi's nor Klein's hands, but they at least share respectful nods.

With the annoyingly complex pleasantries out of the way, we all take our seats, with the knights standing behind us and the Lordsguard taking positions at the walls.

I'm quite happy that these seats have been adapted to provide enough room for my tail to hang down. The large number of wereanimals that live here must be what drives this chair design to be the standard.

Klein and Hermann remain standing since they're knights, and it's kind of adorable to see them both making stern expressions when their faces are so young and cute.

Stefan only has two other servants with him, an unknown mage and another knight, but it actually exceeds our expectations a little that he really brought this many people, considering his lower status.

Confiel rings a bell on the table, and the waiters bring out the first course.

"So, Dezen Stefan, as per our last letter, I've brought Hermann's sisters, one of whom is also a Crown Lord," Confiel smoothly starts and gracefully motions towards us.

We start eating slowly, savoring the perfect croutons with a wide variety of spreads given to us.

"Yes, I'm happy that Sir Hermann was able to reunite with part of his family," Stefan calmly replies and warmly smiles at Hermann, who awkwardly shifts on his feet, then Stefan's gaze becomes resolute, like a man ready to face a beast head-on. "But as I've said before, I can't simply release Sir Hermann from service."

We all stop eating and stare at him expressionlessly, slowly breathing to keep ourselves calm as we try to break his composure with our gazes.

I'm actually impressed with the bastard's audacity.

Hermann sweats cold in his shining armor while Ahren seems to die on the spot, his eyes becoming hollow and lifeless as he cowers in fear, yet neither of them says a word.

"It's well past the time for you to tell us the reason why," Confiel coldly demands, and I feel a hint of "danger" in his tone, which likely also affects Stefan, even though he's high-level.

"Let him speak so that he drowns by his own words," Yunia suggests through [Bind], and I accept.

The old mage swallows heavily, but holds Confiel's stare and replies, "We've already made Hermann our sworn knight…"

"Did you call us all the way here just to say that?!" Confiel annoyedly exclaims, his nose beginning to scrunch in distaste.

"But it also means that we've invested too much in him and his training," Stefan boldly argues.

Confiel narrows his eyes and points out with a slow, deliberate tone, "Trading knights has been a common custom for thousands of years."

But Stefan's resistance is fierce. "No money can pay for the bonds that we've formed with Hermann," he fearlessly asserts.

Confiel leans towards me and covers his mouth as he hurriedly whispers, "They married Hermann to someone important, or he got someone pregnant."

"The former," I whisper back.

Confiel snorts softly, but then he instantly shifts and lets anger paint his tone. "If you resist, we can take him by force," the imposing elf threatens with a chilling tone, and the atmosphere in the room instantly changes.

Hermann, the other knight, and the mage servant seem like they want to cry while Ahren remains lifeless, but Stefan still holds on.

"My Lord won't be happy about that," the old mage defies him.

And his phrasing is just too curious to ignore.

Confiel leans closer to me again. "He's bound by a promise to the Gods, not an alliance."

And Yunia agrees. The wording "my Lord" is used by those directly under a Lord and commoners. A noble with even a hint of pride would say "Lord Ryder," or similar, but never "my Lord."

"And doubly bound due to the marriage," I point out.

"So he doesn't want to break the vows of either," Confiel speculates.

"Who's his Lord?"

Confiel replies dismissively, "Someone minor. No chance of retaliation if we force the issue."

Yunia suddenly takes over my mouth and questions, "Is he trustworthy enough to be made into an ally?"

Confiel's intense eyes narrow in suspicion of where "I" am going with this. "His reputation is average but spotless. I'd say he's reliable," he answers, forthrightly.

I give him a subtle smug smile as I propose, "Then we 'kidnap' them all, and you give us your support."

Confiel fully turns his head to stare at me in surprise. "That's… acceptable, and also unexpectedly bold, coming from you."

I grin. "Yunia's influence."

"Hm…" He hums in thought, then rebuilds his stern facade and turns to Stefan again.

"I declare that we're taking the Grosshil family under our care, forcefully," Confiel states in a firm, unyielding tone.

Confiel's knight draws his sword, with Klein and all of the Lordsguard following suit a second later, though the three Grosshils, the other knight, and the mage servant all remain motionless.

Stefan lowers his head and begs, "Lords, please do not separate us from Sir Hermann. He's very dear to our family."

Then Yunia takes control of me again to add, "We shall give shelter in Escanso to any Grosshil who wishes to come with us as long as Hermann is freed from his knightly duty."

Stefan finally shows some emotion. He suddenly stands up and grins creepily, like an anime protagonist that just caught the villain in their trap, then he states out loud, "Let it be known that I've resisted as far as I could, but I simply don't have the power to stand against the combined will of two Crown Lords, so I hereby relinquish the title of Dezen, relieve Sir Hermann from duty with full honors, and formally request that the Ryder family of Crown Lords gives the Grosshil family sanctuary so that we may watch over our dear Hermann."

Confiel and I share surprised looks.

He was threading the needle all along, juggling not breaking his vow with not offending us, keeping his family together, and hiding the marriage so that we wouldn't force a divorce. All so that he could make us sympathize with him just enough until we would finally force things to go our way while still being as fair as possible. He's like a Chihuahua that suddenly started barking at two Rottweilers, who are too confused and wary at the odd behavior to immediately react with a bite. An exemplar plot of what could be expected from nobles.

"It ends in our favor, but I feel like I lost a battle of wits," Confiel whispers with a begrudging smile.

"I wasn't fighting particularly hard, though," I wryly admit.

"You…!" He glares at me and stops himself from swearing.

But I just grin back and quietly praise, "Anyway, Stefan gambled high, and he got what he wanted."

Confiel grunts softly and lets his anger subside. "Yes, it couldn't have gone any better for him."

I turn to Stefan and state, "The Ryder family accepts you." Then I wave to the Lordsguard, and they resheathe their weapons.

Stefan's knight excuses himself and leaves the room, then the main course of our meal begins.

But won't the Gods know that he never had any intention of keeping his vow anyway?

Ciel explains, "He still did the best he could to fulfill his vow, whatever it was, but it seems that his desire to keep his family together gave him the will necessary to resist the vow."

"'No law is absolute,' a teaching from the God of Law," Yunia lectures.

"Just like with a Blood Slave contract," Hana comments.

Ciel agrees with both of them and adds, "It's risky to work around vows like that, so I'd only recommend it as a last resort, which kind of fits for this situation."

I guess the Gods aren't just automatons, then.

"So, who did Hermann marry?" I casually ask, and that finally catches Stefan off-guard.

"Me," Ahren energetically answers, and now it's Hermann's turn to seem like he just died. Ahren stands up and bows to us as he confesses, "I'm sorry! I took advantage of Hermann's weakness and loneliness, and I persuaded him to marry me in secret!"

Klein is shocked, her mouth hanging open as she finally realizes the true reason for Hermann's apology. It isn't very knightly to lose her composure like this, but she's excused this time for obvious reasons.

Stefan gives a sour look to his son, possibly blaming him for the lengths he had to go to in order to succeed with this risky gamble.

Did they think we'd be offended that Hermann got married without our consent?

"We're not the ones you need to apologize to," I point out, holding back my annoyance. "But you'll have time to deal with that later."

Ahren obediently sits down and replies, "Y-yes… I'm so-… I'm sorry."

Then I smirk towards Mimi and jokingly ask, "Is there anyone in your family who's actually completely straight?"

She glances at me and hesitates, then simply shrugs instead of answering.

"Congratulations on becoming a noble," Hana slowly gives her blessing to Hermann, her brain refusing to process the sudden development.

"I guess it'd be fair to let him sit with us," I suggest with a teasing grin, then I look over at Klein and soothingly order her, "Same goes for you. Sit down and have a drink."

Klein and Hermann are mostly quiet, so I think they'll need some time alone together to talk after this meeting is over.

Since we're taking the Grosshils in, we get them to talk about themselves. They're a typical family of Water and Fire mages, and though they have someone born with [Alchemicism], their younger daughter, she's more like a witch doctor, so she's not immediately useful to us.

Roxanne is quite prejudiced against [Alchemicism], so she grumbles to herself as she eats her meal back at the castle.

Stefan discreetly watches me for my reaction when he mentions his daughter, so I think he knows about my reputation, but unless his daughter herself shows some interest, I don't plan on giving her the D.

Then I realize that it's most likely because of me that his wife and daughter didn't attend this meeting.

Oh, well… I can't fault him, we are quite predatory.

Hermann is actually quite the talented warrior himself, which is likely due to his strong dragonkin blood, even though he's fully human.

He'd make a good knight, but now that he's married to a noble, the best we can do is to allow them into the clan.

The mood isn't right for a feast, so we quickly finish our meal and leave with the three Grosshils in tow.

As we take the lift up, Confiel approaches Hana and me. "With this, there's only Lord Hanafuria's father and mother to find, but it shouldn't be long now, not after I give them your revered name," he gracefully explains as he subtly smirks, and I smile wryly at the jab.

"Thank you," Hana breathes, honestly very grateful to him for his efforts.

"Just our part of the deal."

"Still."

He flashes her a gentle smile, then his expression becomes serious again. "Also, rumors have been spreading for some time that Vanea Anara is interested in your family. She's still ostracized by a good part of the imperial nobility, so be careful about how public you want your relationship with her to be," he somberly advises us.

I assume that's the real reason why she wanted a private meeting yesterday.

"I understand, thank you for the advice," I cordially reply and nod.

He nods back, then hesitates for a second before adding, "And… don't cross her. She's vicious."

I soberly nod again. I know very well how she is.

When we reach the middle layer again, we find Stefan's knight flanked by two women, Hana's new not-blood mother and not-blood sister.

The milf has curly, full hair and a curvaceous body, while her daughter has such a youthful face and kissable, full lips that I'll give her the D the very instant she asks me for it.

However, from the way that they both avoid looking me in the eye, it seems that she probably won't ask for that if I actively pursue her.

A note from Manasong

Hall of Fame of Patrons

The patrons who support Rupegia shall have their names sung by the bards for they deserve the glory and honor. Their names are:

Prince PreownedFIN.

Prince Creamy Spinach.

Lord Andrew Meyers.

Lord Novgarod.

Lord Michale Erwin.

Lord Bakerdea.

Lord Maurice.

Lord Empyrean.

Lord Mattirro Draca.

Lord Fullmoon.

Lord Sean Drake.

Lord EESDESESESRDT.

Lord FrostyCube.

Lord Mike Bartter.

Lord Cardinal Steiner.

Lord Warwulfv.

Lord Jorge Franco.

Lord Khristopher Welsh.

Lord DJ.

Lord Philip.

Lord Tenebris Lupus.

Lord The Tallest Joshua.

Lord Copey Dunt.

Lord Dracopuppy23.

Lord Chris Carter.

Lord Paul Daval.

Lord Bradly.

Lord Aubrey Powell.

Lord AndreyUC.

Noble Salty Panda.

Noble Mild Fracas.

Noble Aclys.

Noble CarlBaxter.

Noble Yeuromain.

Noble Brandon Lai.

Leave a rating or a review to help me rise to the top or fix my shameful understanding of prose.

Take a look over my blog where all information about the world of Rupegia will be posted.

Join the Discord and discuss, or rant, or meme, or try and fight me so your waifu gets more screentime.

Become a Patron and read chapters in advance, or read the side-stories, or leave your mark on the story, or help choose the next artwork or the next side-story.

Chapter 107: Support - Part 1

We just share some simple greetings with the female side of the Grosshils, then we move on. Apparently, Stefan had them on standby, just waiting for the green light to join us.

I give in to temptation and stop by a stall to buy a bag of chocolate candy tablets, which I promptly share with the Lordsguard.

"How did you like your little taste of the capital?" I softly ask Hukarere as she takes off her snout-shaped helmet to eat some chocolate.

"[The Throne is stunning, but I'm surprised it isn't as ostentatious as what the noble Chimeras like to build]," she casually replies in Reo and throws a tablet into her long mouth, then hums in delight and grins brightly. "Thanks for this gift, your Highness."

"Just a whim," I reflexively mumble, a little embarrassed. I like giving spontaneous gifts, but now I realize that this one might make me look a bit eccentric since it's so expensive.

Well, I am eccentric by Rupegian standards, so I guess I should just own it.

I'd like to spend more time here in Mac Gantus, but then it'd be hard to explain to the emperor why we didn't go meet with him to pay our respects, so we just enter the [Eternal Gate] Network and go back home.

Confiel's group breaks off from ours en route, and when we enter our castle, we meet with Azador and Iliada, my favorite maid, who are obediently waiting for us in the entrance hall.

Intermission – Stefan

I intently observe His Highness Wolf as he greets a mere maid like one would greet a lover. It seems that some of the rumors are true, while others are just exaggerations or false predictions, but considering his eccentric personality, it's expected that people would find it hard to read him.

His most visible weakness, his tail, seems to have been kept well under control as it only starts to move when he finally drops [Acting]. It wags like a dog's as he kisses the young, pretty elf, which is fitting as he's known to be like a dog perpetually in rut. Or is that just the normal state for a part dragon man? Her Highness Hanafuria is equally as well known for her "appetite," after all.

My beloved sends me a worried look, concerned about our involvement with this lustful Lord, but a man with two Blessings in his harem is not the kind that would abuse his rank to get women. Though, it wouldn't hurt to teach our daughter to be on her guard around him.

After he finishes boasting and removes his tongue from the smitten little elf, the stern knight announces, as if nothing had happened, "Noble Grosshils, please come with me, and I'll show you to your new quarters."

How expedient.

"Signeur Stefan Grosshil, please come with me. Her Highness Yulania wishes to speak with you," the young maid follows up, and I feel a chill run down my spine.

The young Yulania is a legitimate noble, and I feel more afraid of facing her than I think I would from facing Wolf in combat, even with his draconic glare. At least the boy would show mercy and make it quick.

I follow the young elf maid through an [Eternal Gate] and struggle to keep my eyes off her extremely small uniform. She has the famous alluring grace of elves that all races envy, and I realize that the High Forest must be a sort of Paradise for a womanizer like Wolf.

The maid walks fast, though, which leaves me with little time to observe the splendor of the colorful wooden castle, and I almost stumble when I notice what I believe to be a penis carved on a wall as if it were some sort of heraldry.

The rumors really don't paint the correct picture about you, your Highness.

I ignore the engraved penises for now, and we quickly reach our destination.

After a knock, I'm allowed in, and I feel a small amount of envy at the luxury of the roomy office, but then my eyes meet with Her Highness Yulania's, and I'm not strong enough to look away anymore.

She's such a beauty that I feel guilty from just looking at her. Her face is that of a delicate porcelain doll, an artistic sculpture rather than something naturally made, yet she's just as humanoid as I am.

I feel like my darling will have trouble befriending her due to how much more majestic Her Highness' drills are. Her appeal is far too potent to ignore, and even I'm getting jealous of how appealing elven hair really is.

"Take a seat," she coolly offers with a graceful hand gesture.

Like a dog before their master, I obediently sit down on the comfortable chair and remain silent.

Which is exactly what she wanted as she immediately continues with a casual tone, "Signeur Stefan Grosshil, it seems that you have a small fondness for schemes."

How does she know about our meeting already? I didn't detect any signs that there was someone listening in.

"I merely maneuver in the way that I believe is the most beneficial to my family and goals, as you yourself have also done," I respond in kind, my [Acting] struggling to keep my emotions hidden in the face of her gaze.

It's like staring at the mask of a Truth Seeker. Emotionless, judging, and dominant. An unbreakable fortress blocking the way of a young warrior. So imposing that it disarms simply through an impenetrable defense that demoralizes challengers. But to have such a strong presence means that they truly have passed level fifty, which, considering their youth, is comparable to imperial Princes.

After an unnervingly long pause, she continues, her tone now as cold as [Absolute Zero], "But, as the possessors of three Blessings, and the target of two Interventions, we will not accept such behavior from now on. We require unwavering loyalty from our subjects."

I immediately lower my head in submission, "I understand, your Highness, and I apologize for my behavior."

This much is fine… Wait… three Blessings and two Interventions?

I raise my head and ask, "Are the two numbers you cited correct?"

She nods sternly. "Yes, that happened yesterday."

A legend being written right before my eyes!

I swallow heavily, and I feel it as my eyes are once again locked with her two blue gems as her harsh tone makes me alert again.

"Continuing on… Since you've stolen Hermann from being our knight by marrying him so hastily to your son, we'll accept an alliance and allow the Grosshils to join the clan we're building. We'll sponsor the couple and have them enter Goloria's Knight Academy, so the Grosshils will be a hybrid family that raises military officers or court mages for us."

A clan? That's excellent, even if I'm, as expected, not deemed worthy to join it.

"That sounds like a wonderful plan," I calmly reply and nod respectfully.

But the harshness continues unabated, "As for you, you'll work with the knights and High Officers on clearing the dungeons in our territory, as well as perform the usual duties of nobility related to town defense and registering for the Expeditionary Division."

That's just what I used to do anyway, except this time, I'm not bound by a vow.

"It'd be an honor," I obediently reply.

Finally, her tone softens, just a little, "In exchange, you'll be given one of the mansions in the outer ring. Do you accept?" Then she offers a handshake.

I can't say no anymore.

I take her incredibly soft hand and seal the deal.

"Yes."

After that, she dismisses me, and once I break eye contact, I feel like I'm just getting out of a sauna since I was sweating a fair bit without even knowing.

Things went as well as they could, and now that I'm here, I have my whole life to mend our relationship.

My darling said that I'd just be trading one chain for another, but anyone would prefer to live in a golden cage instead of an iron one, and most important of all, each generation of our family will be freer than the one before it, as long as Ahren isn't scared of vaginas…

Intermission end.

The grilling was kind of fun to watch. Stefan was completely calm, clear evidence of a high [Acting] skill, but he started sweating midway through, so that gave him away.

"Why did he give up his imperial rank, though?" I ask through [Bind].

"The Elder Council monopolizes those ranks. They use them to have the Buscuadores trained and equipped, and they even have a law forbidding nobles in the elven lands from holding one," Yunia calmly explains as she stretches, making a cute, girly sound, then leans back in her chair to relax.

I nudge Gify, and she pops out of existence, then she reappears a minute later on Yunia's shoulder and starts her spirit massage to soothe my hard-working wife.

Meanwhile, Hana gives Klein a brain massage and I use my tentacles to play with her long furry tail as we watch from a balcony as the Grosshils slowly cross the castle grounds.

I kind of wanted to make Stefan into a court mage, but I don't think he'd agree to becoming a Blood Slave right after doing so much to escape a vow.

Osaria suddenly comes out onto the balcony and hugs her favorite toy from behind. "Do you want to talk about what's bothering you? We're here for you," she kindly whispers into Klein's round monkey ear, then gives her neck a kiss.

"I'm just… confused about what I should do…" She mumbles dispiritedly.

"We can't give you that much advice about that, but we can always hear you out if you want a second opinion," I warmly offer and pat her tail.

"Thank you," she weakly mumbles as her heart aches from the critical hit.

I turn to my other two women and announce, "I have a meeting to go to, so you two make sure that she's all giddy and giggly by the time I get back, alright?"

"Your wish is my command, your Highness," Osaria softly replies with a suggestive grin.

It's Rupegian custom to soothe a broken heart with mind-numbing pleasure. Though it's unfortunate that I won't be able to participate, I'll still be hearing, seeing, and feeling everything through Hana.

In an empty "leaf room" of the castle, the High Officers, Alissa, Ciel, Roxanne, the golems, Teresina, a bunch of priests, and a few Chimeric mages are all gathered around a large table as they chat lightly.

When I enter the room, everyone stands up and bows, except for my wives. Teresina also remains seated, but she's old, so just a respectful nod from her is enough.

"At ease," I softly order, and they take their seats again.

Wordlessly, Sandoro opens a large metal box, revealing the chilled, corrupted, and crushed remains of a Clone Soldier's head while I pull the two headless corpses out of my "Items" at the same time.

The priests immediately stand up again and pull out magnifying glasses to inspect the Soldiers.

The acetone smell of corruption reaches our noses, and I summon an air and a light elemental-wife to spare Alissa the discomfort.

"Once could be a coincidence, but twice is a certainty," Teresina's voice echoes above the curious chatter as she stares at me.

I sit down and gracefully lay my claws upon my lap as I smile. "I told you so," I smugly reply.

Her left eye twitches in annoyance, but she keeps it well hidden. "I advise you to never leave the caste without a Templar escort."

I casually shrug. "If they can pay for their own [Eternal Gate] and living expenses, then I'd be happy to have more bodyguards."

Teresina sighs and turns her eyes towards the corpses. "That won't be a problem," she begrudgingly concedes.

Then everyone focuses on the corpses at hand, and the dissection begins.

The first thing we notice is how hard their skin is. It's as resistant as monster hide, yet soft and elastic like humanoid skin, requiring us to buff the scalpels with [Sharp Blades] and [Reinforce] so that they can last long enough for our use.

The corpses are still warm and bleeding, except for the squashed head, which had to be preserved in an icebox since it's a bad idea to store corrupted material inside one's [Item Box].

While the first corpse is opened up and the squashed one is "reorganized," Roxanne and Ciel closely inspect the blood pooling under the remains. The former identifies magical signatures while the latter uses a stupidly expensive magical microscope to study its composition.

"Is this… metal?" One of the priests questions out loud, drawing our attention.

He pulls out a broken bone from the squashed corpse and cleans off the blood, revealing the metallic shine of steel, but it has an odd blue sheen to it.

Another priest with a Signature Interpreter looks closely at the bone and gasps, "It's a Kanal and steel alloy!"

"Look for shards of gems," I advise, and the priests continue their inspection with scholarly enthusiasm.

A Chimera Alteration mage picks out another broken bone and inspects the shear edge. "It's not just a metal reinforcement; the alloy has smoothly fused with the bone," the naked dog-headed man reports.

I pick up a bone and realize that it's much heavier than a normal one, which must be one of the reasons why it felt like hitting a wall when I crashed into a Clone.

As the pristine corpse is skinned, we realize that every single muscle has small tears all throughout them. This is the one that I killed by using [Spirit Light]s to stun it, but the damage from that spell should be nonexistent, except for in the corrupted brain, so we don't understand what could have caused these tears.

Ciel is having some trouble understanding what's going on with the blood cells. Her microscope allows her to see the red blood cells as if they were the size of grains of rice, slightly bigger than what she could see through the best microscope she had used previously, so she can reliably make out their shape, but they're all bloated and round, pretty different from the biconcave disk they're known for.

She knows this happens due to problems in the watery part of the blood, so she tries out adding a salt solution, but they just burst and lose all color.

This greatly confuses her, so she starts an arcane discussion with the other healers and Chimeras about solutions. Apparently, the Clone's red blood cells have some differences when compared with a humanoid's. Then they notice that the blood cells coagulate at a much faster rate, too.

Just as we start to find pieces of gems inside the squashed body, the dissection team recovers an intact gem from the abdomen of the pristine corpse.

Lina's attention is drawn away from her discussion with Aoi back in their personal forge, but we also have enchanters here with us, so she leaves it to them and returns her focus to her work.

"It seems to be something similar to [Blood of Gaia] from [Earth Magic] or the racial spell [Spirit of Gaia] from the dwarves, but this gem is quite decayed, ravaged by the internal mana of the Clone Soldier," one of our enchanters reports.

Then the Chimeras report finding silver within the bone marrow, which is evidence of a body-wide enchantment.

"How long do you think these gems would last before needing to be replaced?" I question the enchanter.

The elven woman shakes her head negatively. "Hard to say. It depends on how much mana they naturally had within their blood."

"A lot. A bit lower than a one-thousand MP mage, I'd guess," Roxanne reports.

"Then perhaps it could last for a whole day if used constantly," the enchanter theorizes.

"That's not very long for a body modification this expensive," Teresina comments pensively.

And a priest theorizes, "Their muscles are harder than normal; perhaps they had enough strength to move without the enchantment and only used it for battle."

"Perhaps…" Teresina quietly mumbles.

The dissection reaches the organs, then we discover that the heart is a massive lump of muscle, and the lungs are much longer than usual because the digestive system is half as big. We could theoretically pierce the lungs by stabbing the stomach, but that's generally a well-protected area in the typical armor design, so not much of a vulnerability.

Curiously, the Soldier is a male eunuch. There's no trace of his soul left to analyze, so we don't know if they're born sterile or just castrated.

I zone out for a bit when Hana orgasms, and I have to hold it in to not cream my pants. The dissection is a bit gruesome, so the pleasure of the orgasm goes a long way to making me feel more at ease.

I dig my padded claws into Alissa's skin as I squeeze her hand, and she pats my scales soothingly, then I stretch and get myself comfortable again in my massive chair.

Teresina sends me a curious look, likely noticing the sudden release of tension in my body, but doesn't mention it.

As we find more and more suspicious damage within the pristine body, the enchanters conclude that the gem also pushes the body beyond its limits, slowly damaging it, and then Roxanne and Ciel come to the conclusion that the blood is both magically and physically poisoned due to a variety of factors. Additionally, the alloy they used is toxic to the body, and the silver damages the bone marrow, leading to long-term vulnerability to disease, but the Soldier doesn't seem to have had the metal within its body for long.

They're lesser undead, so the corruption is limited to the brain and kept at bay by the blood-brain barrier, which allows them to infiltrate humanoid society unless they're revealed by [Detect Evil]. This also means that they don't have the same inherent regeneration of a full undead, but Roxanne quickly finds out that they compensate for that with a variety of spells similar to [Regeneration] and HP potions, but such a combination is toxic in the long term for the average humanoid.

Then one of the Chimera Alteration mages shares something important, "I know that there are ways to reinforce bones with metals, but the way it's done here is crude when compared to the alterations I've seen before, though I believe it would be relatively cheap."

Another Chimera agrees with him, "The more difficult part of bone reinforcement is to do it in a way which doesn't kill or poison the patient, which was completely ignored here."

The final conclusion is obvious: these Clone Soldiers are experimental, disposable weapons with a short shelf-life.

That the heretics would reveal such an outlandish weapon means that they didn't mind feeding us information about it. Technically, there's no new technology that was used here, just a novel application of them that we won't be able to easily reproduce, so there were few drawbacks to using them against us.

Even though they're so physically powerful and magically enhanced, it seems their weakness is still [Light Magic]. There's no way to avoid it since becoming a lesser undead is a requirement to escape the kill-switch of the God of Existence, so unless the heretics find an alternative to using the lesser undead, these soldiers won't be too much of a threat.

I turn my eyes to the golems, and a worrying thought crosses my mind. Are they immune to the influence of the God of Existence? If they are, then the heretics could use [Golemancy] to create a golem that's capable of controlling a brain, perfecting the Clone Soldiers. Worse of all, due to my cheats, only I seem able to create a golem with the same amount of mental capacity as an earth elemental, which was the base for Ted, Suzy, and Jarn.

I believe I must shift my goal with [Golemancy] towards the creation of a Gods-compliant race instead of the sapient robot servants that I had in mind, just to make sure that nobody can inadvertently give the heretics the solution they need.

Then Almaria finds extremely subtle signs of corruption within the neck and the heart, so perhaps there is a way to detect lesser undead without needing to use [Detect Evil], it's just impractical most of the time.

After a few hours of meticulous analysis and many pages of notes being written, we end the meeting, realizing that only the scholars will be able to learn anything further from these corpses.

Before everyone leaves, I ask Teresina to stay so that I can have a word with her.

"It seems that the empire has a bit of a heretic problem," I comment casually, and the gilf takes mild offense at that.

She quickly explains with an angry tone, "The Wicked are everywhere. No matter the place, there's always someone being pushed towards the darker paths. It's something that's natural for humanoids since the God of Change wishes for us to be allowed to make mistakes, though we're not to be shielded from the consequences."

And I coolly reply with a smirk, "Still, I'm obviously being targeted, as you yourself have said."

She just snorts snobbishly and doesn't offer a retort, so it's time to get to the point.

I activate my [Acting] and stoically announce, "I formally request to learn everything you know about the undead."

She hesitates for a moment, thinking it over quite thoroughly before answering, "Only the Blessed ones will receive the knowledge."

A futile demand, but okay.

"I accept."

But she has more demands, "The books cannot be removed from the temple, and I'll insist on regular [Detect Evil] checks after you start reading them."

A bit of an annoyance, but okay.

"Acceptable," I answer with a nod.

Then she asks for something that actually gives me pause, "And I'll also require that you pass questioning by a Truth Seeker to confirm that you won't use the knowledge for evil."

I ask the girls about it, but it'll be fine as long as we agree beforehand about what's going to be asked and make sure that the questions don't have any hidden implications. "Since we'll be meeting with the Seekers, we'll also ask them to validate Arreira's will."

She hums and nods in agreement, then slowly sighs and rubs her eyes. "You're a massive headache, your Highness," she softly remarks with a tired tone.

I smile cheekily and confess, "It's honestly not my intention; I'm sorry for bringing you so much trouble."

She sinks down in her seat and slowly explains, "Not trouble, but work. It's hard to say no to a Blessed, especially with one who's implied to be wise, and even in the case of the Chimeras, we've found nothing that could be used to stop you. But still, you bring change that makes us uncomfortable."

I smile warmly and try to soothe her, "I find that [Massage] followed by some Eia is a wonderful way to help me relax." Then I pull out my precious bottle of Cinco Flores.

She lifts her head and looks at the bottle, then raises an eyebrow, but she doesn't take the bait.

"I feel like I'll need something a bit stronger than that," she casually confesses.

And I shamelessly set another trap for her, "I know how to give someone such an intense experience that they'll never forget about it, but it's something rather intimate."

She snorts and shakes her head, making her long ears bounce cutely, her mean glare nowhere to be found, but again, she doesn't fall for it.

"I'll take a shot of Eia if you're offering, but then I must take my leave," she replies and subtly smiles.

A note from Manasong

Hall of Fame of Patrons

The patrons who support Rupegia shall have their names sung by the bards for they deserve the glory and honor. Their names are:

Prince PreownedFIN.

Prince Creamy Spinach.

Lord Andrew Meyers.

Lord Novgarod.

Lord Michale Erwin.

Lord Bakerdea.

Lord Maurice.

Lord Empyrean.

Lord Mattirro Draca.

Lord Fullmoon.

Lord Sean Drake.

Lord EESDESESESRDT.

Lord FrostyCube.

Lord Mike Bartter.

Lord Cardinal Steiner.

Lord Warwulfv.

Lord Jorge Franco.

Lord Khristopher Welsh.

Lord DJ.

Lord Philip.

Lord Tenebris Lupus.

Lord The Tallest Joshua.

Lord Copey Dunt.

Lord Dracopuppy23.

Lord Chris Carter.

Lord Paul Daval.

Lord Bradly.

Lord Aubrey Powell.

Lord AndreyUC.

Lord Cidant.

Noble Salty Panda.

Noble Mild Fracas.

Noble Aclys.

Noble CarlBaxter.

Noble Yeuromain.

Noble Brandon Lai.

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Chapter 107: Support - Part 2

I watch the hot gilf leave, satisfied with the results. She doesn't seem to be a shriveled Grinch or a queen of eternal winter, so I feel like it's possible for our relationship to grow more intimate in the future.

I like strong women, and her mean and stern behavior doesn't put me off, though it does have the undesired effect of feeding the weed of submissiveness within me, so I guess I'll have to abuse the girls a bit to polish up my throne as the apex sexual predator.

As I open my "Notes" to add "Research the undead" to my "to-do list," I discover an entry that I don't remember adding.

"Get rice from Dyrmorder."

What…? Was I high on Eia when I wrote this…?

The girls don't remember me adding it either, so I just file it for investigation later, then I leave for yet another business meeting.

I link arms with my foxy personal battery, then we go down to the main hall of the castle, where a small social gathering is taking place.

Again, the moment I walk in, everyone bows to me, with the knights all taking a knee. Though I still find it a bit awkward, I'm starting to get used to this sort of respect.

"At ease," I smoothly order using my outside voice, and the chatter continues again.

Gathered here are any civilian Chimera with knowledge about Alteration, enchanting, gem refining, or ship-building, and also the Chimera officers of my fleet, Oritiki, a few Celestial Horns, a few scholars from the temple, all of the girls that I love, and the High Officers.

For now, the wind tunnel is something we want to keep hidden, so we aren't showing it to the other commoners or nobles since the Chimeras owe us a lot, ensuring that we'll get some level of secrecy and discretion from them. The temple scholars aren't greedy, so it's unlikely that they'll try to sell this idea, but the biggest advantage they bring is that they have the baseline knowledge of Metrology, Materials Science, and Engineering that we need, which would make it possible for us to jump-start this venture if they agree to participate.

There are snacks, sweets, and our traditional Eia extract on tables near the walls, which is where most of the chatter is taking place. At the center, suspended up in the air, is the large green gem that Hihiriwa extracted from a Drifting Island and two smaller blue gems that Vanea sent to us. Below the gems is the wind tunnel prototype, a three-meter wide tunnel of smooth wood with a basketball-sized [Breeze] gem on one end and a dozen pulleys throughout set up with ropes attached to weights on the outside to measure the air resistance.

I personally greet the few Chimera nobles among our guests, who, fortunately, seem quite comfortable talking to the commoners due to Chimera aristocracy being more varied in professions than Avgin.

"Wolf, Alissa, please call on us the next time you go into battle. We're technically part of your Lordsguard, too," Oritiki amicably requests.

I quickly glance at her delicious black cow tits, observing how they've been decorated with jewels, which is considered as "social attire" for the Chimeras, then I smile and reply, "Well, I wanted to leave you to your training since being able to use your 'battle bodies' would make you basically invincible to normal attacks."

She bunches up her dark tits enticingly with her thick arms, and I have an inkling that she's doing it deliberately. "Some real action once in a while will be good to help us keep our skills from getting rusty."

I nod and affirm, "If that's what you wish. We can go back to that 'Stinky Goblins' dungeon and finish conquering it, or there's the request for adventurers in Gnomeria that we wish to answer, but neither location will have enough space to really let the Celestial Horns fly."

Oritiki smiles awkwardly and scratches her long cow head. "That dungeon may have a horrible name, but it's the one with that crystalline infection that we visited together, correct?"

Alissa answers for me, "Yes, it is. Those crystalline monsters must be a theme switch, though its main focus still seems to be related to 'disease.'"

Oritiki shrugs casually. "That dungeon has some room for us to fly around, and we never get sick, thanks to our armor, so we should do fine there."

"Alright, our team will be the Horns and my wives," I agree to bring them with a soft tone.

She grins excitedly as her cow ears twitch. "Just like the fortress mission in the dungeon."

I gently smile back and Alissa remarks, "Except, this time, we'll have to cut down everything in our path."

Oritiki shifts on her lizard feet and deliberately makes a loud noise with her heavy steps. "I was never much for sneaking, anyway. Not when I'm like a star against the dark sky thanks to my shining armor," she jokes with a smirk.

And I mirror her expression as I follow up, "Still, you could say that it's a successful infiltration if there's nobody left alive to raise the alarm."

We chuckle softly, and the topic dies down, so we eat a snack as we look around. Lina is talking to Paraaone, who's wearing a loose loincloth that although it can't be considered proper underwear, it at least prevents Lina's line of sight from accidentally falling upon his log, which none of us wish to happen.

Aoi is, surprisingly, also talking with other people, a few artisan Chimeras and Istante, our quartermaster. My little blue dragon is slowly becoming more sociable due to her growing humanity and desire to learn.

They grow so fast… seriously, her growth's amazing.

Oritiki's expression suddenly becomes neutral, and she hums softly in thought, so I just wait for her to quietly voice her question. "But Wolf, do you think it's wise to favor the Chimeras so much? I hardly hear about you interacting with the other nobles."

I shrug and honestly answer, "Until very recently, we hadn't had that much time to play the social games, so we postponed it. Osaria is also compiling profiles of the ones that try to get closer to us, so we won't be completely blind in our first interactions with them."

She tilts her head in confusion. "Isn't Yulania the daughter of the previous Lord…?"

I nod and smile tiredly as my wagging tail slows down from faint weariness. "They're acting differently since I'm not an elf. Case in point: even the other Lords are still behaving rather defiantly."

Oritiki raises her eyebrows in surprise and nods. "Oh, I understand…"

"We're still at the beginning of our rule, so we have time to appease anyone who gets offended by our supposed 'neglect,'" Alissa calmly explains.

"Now you're talking like a noble," Oritiki comments with a wry smile and takes a sip of diluted Eia. The spirits seem to be very sensitive to Eia, so they dilute it to prevent them from getting "drunk" too fast.

After a bit of stalling, the guests reach an optimal level of enjoyment and casual chatter, so we decide that it's time for the main course.

Poosh rings a bell, which signals a maid to grow a dais for me under the white velvet carpet in front of the wind tunnel testbed, then the hall goes silent as they all turn to me and wait for me to begin.

The acoustics here are good enough that I only need to use my outside voice, so I immediately start my speech with the class-neutral greeting, "Gentlemen and gentlewomen, I've called you all here for a business proposal. As you should already know, we have a small fleet of Chimeric ships at our disposal, but unfortunately, they don't fit with our current military doctrine, so, instead of simply recreating Chimeric ship-building infrastructure, we want to build a research institute and improve upon the Chimeric design."

I pull out a piece of fine paper and fold it just as I used to when I was a child, then I point it forward and gently throw the airplane.

As we all watch the plane slowly come down just a few meters away from me, I continue the speech, "Current Chimeric airplanes or ships are too reliant on [Fly], creating a situation where too much mana is expended to reduce drag and improve control so that the plane can actually fly, but I believe we can improve a plane's characteristics by advancing our scientific knowledge. That is, by studying aerodynamics."

I pull out another piece of paper and again fold it into a paper airplane, then I throw it, but this time, I pulse [Telekinesis] on it as I snap my finger, giving it propulsion.

The plane continues past where the first one landed, and with just a bit of finesse, I can make it turn by changing the location that I apply the propulsion. The crowd immediately catches on and starts to murmur excitedly, but since I'm not done yet, they quickly reign in their chatter and focus back on me.

"Compare applying [Telekinesis] in this way to applying [Fly] to the whole paper airplane and you'll quickly notice how much more mana-efficient my method is. Though it lacks some of the versatility of [Fly] airplanes, that weakness can be mitigated by simply limiting which scenarios such airplanes will operate within.

"Besides, there might still be room in the control gem for a simple [Fly] to save the airplane in case of an emergency."

Almaria hands me a small glider made of wood, which the mages prepared according to my designs, and I show the elevator at the tail of the plane. It can be angled up and down by a string, which is connected to a small wheel that makes for an easy target for my [Telekinesis].

I hold the glider in the air with [Telekinesis] as I explain, "This glider is slower than that paper airplane, but it's far easier to control and has a better conversion of propulsion to distance traveled, so you can see how the shape of the plane easily alters its purpose."

I glance at Kaatohe, and it makes me quite happy to see that I have her full attention, her vertical feline pupils fully focused on taking in the demonstration as she stares intensely at the glider.

Then I grab the glider again and throw it. This time, I control it with a lot more ease than the paper airplanes. Though this glider doesn't have ailerons to control the roll, it's still possible to give it some yaw by applying the propulsion on the wings instead of the body.

After having it do a loop, I bring the glider back and land it on Almaria's hand, earning myself a short round of applause.

I turn to the crowd again and announce, "With the shape of the plane being so important for the flight characteristics, I've come up with a tool for researchers to more easily test prototype airplanes in search of the most efficient shape."

I walk up to the end of the tunnel that holds the gem, and the crowd follows me, then I signal the court mages and let them work on their baby themselves.

They strap a miniature Wasp airplane to a rod in the center of the tunnel, then they activate the [Breeze] gem, and the rod moves back slightly with the drag, lifting weights that move along some scales on the outside.

"As you can see, this is 'drag,' the resistance of the air to any motion of objects moving through it. Just like when you use your hand to displace water, there's a big difference between using the flat side or the thinner side. This is fluid dynamics, and the air is also a fluid, just far thinner."

The crowd reacts with a few "ooh~…"s as they finally grasp my intentions.

I give a signal to the court mages, and they quickly replace the miniature Wasp with a missile, then they reactivate the wind tunnel, and the weights move a fair bit less along the scale than with the Wasp. This time, the Chimeric shipwrights have the strongest reactions as they should have some basic knowledge of aerodynamics to understand the difference between the two models.

Then I stop the test and continue, "We shall build more wind tunnel testbeds with varying sizes so that we can test full-scale airplanes for military, civilian, and recreational purposes. It'll be a direct competition with Faium, but instead of focusing on magical prowess, the advantage of our airplanes and ships will be their engineering."

Then Almaria hands me the second prototype, a little car.

I grin as I display my little baby to them. It has a crude Ackermann steering system that's exposed on the top of it, making it easy for me to control it with [Telekinesis].

"But we'll also develop something more."

I put the car down and give it some propulsion, then I steer it through the crowd, receiving another round of impressed cooing.

Poosh pulls out a vertical board with a stand. "For those interested in participating, these are the open positions," she announces and gestures at the board.

The Ryder Royal Research Institute will start with only a Vehicle Research Division, which is split into the teams of Land Vehicles, Light Airplanes, Transport Airplanes, Aerial Weapons Platforms, and Carriers.

To secure funding, Light Airplanes and Transport Airplanes will be given priority so that we can build a prototype to sell to the empire. Later on, we'll also establish a Gun Research Division, specific science divisions, and a formal Academy to train engineers.

The Aristocracy gets to pick first, and they're already used to being managers, so they'll get the higher positions. The commoners all go for the worker jobs, predictably, and we fill up both priority teams, though we'll have to properly interview the candidates for the management positions.

The teams are small, so there aren't enough management positions for all the Aristocrats, which will make it a bit annoying to have to choose one without at least slightly offending the others, but luckily for us, we have the Officers to help us make the selections.

Oh, no, I've become an office boss, throwing his problems at his underlings to solve… but just this once won't hurt, right?

Kaatohe enlists as a test pilot, and from among all our pilots, I honestly think there's nobody better for the job.

While the Officers interview the Aristocrats in private rooms, we begin instructing the workers about what we want from them.

The focus is on speed. We want the fastest airplane possible as a prototype, then we'll start cutting down on its cost until it reaches a more reasonable budget for mass production.

For now, there's no specific need for combat airplanes, but the Light Airplanes team should at least keep in mind that the airplane needs to be able to fit a weapon somewhere. The Trinity Cannons are also likely to go through a re-development, so we can't give them anything concrete, but I believe their overall shape will remain about the same. Unfortunately, Roxanne's research isn't far enough along to know whether or not her Draconic Climax will be useful for air-dropped bombs and the like.

As the sun starts to set, the interviews are finished, but we won't reach a final decision on the positions right now, so the gathering ends, and the guests start to leave.

Kaatohe sticks around, and I immediately go over to give her some attention.

"Training has been a bit boring. Hopefully, the first prototype will be ready soon," she casually comments.

I hug her waist and feel her bronze nakedness press against my thin clothes. "That's just asking for it to break apart the first time it takes flight," I warn her concernedly.

She pats my head gently. "I can cast [Fly], even in spirit form, so I'll be fine," she assures me.

I pout and stare into her eyes, then I surprise her with a peck on her cat snout. "Don't go doing anything reckless, okay?"

She scoffs and looks away as she smiles, revealing her fangs. "I've gained a new set of parents, it seems, but I understand, I won't worry your Highness."

Alissa smoothly chimes in, "We do care for you, and not in a parental way."

That sobers her up a little bit, and she nods with a meaningful look.

Then Hana appears on her other side and grabs her hand, interlacing their fingers together. "We're very fond of our little kitten," she teases with a grin.

Kaatohe rolls her eyes and grumbles, "Oh, you peasan-… well, you're not peasants, but you still act like it."

I raise an eyebrow and cheekily ask, "Oh? So you want us to be lofty and domineering?"

"I'm pretty sure that's what makes her get weak in the legs, yes," Hana immediately affirms without letting Kaatohe reply.

I grin and sink my claws into her round, bronze ass. "Then bend over, because I'm going to give you what you're craving for," I huskily order.

Hana forces Kaatohe to lean over the table with one hand while her other penetrates her now slightly wet pussy, then she whispers into the leopard woman's ear, "I knew it. You're too proud to admit that you're a submissive slut, but it doesn't matter, we'll just use you like a sex toy, anyway."

Kaatohe simply purrs softly and remains stiff, eagerly anticipating what comes next.

Since I recently leveled [Oral Technique], I might as well put the new skill level to use.

I release Alissa, kneel behind Kaatohe, and spread her ass cheeks, revealing her two dark, little holes, then I unleash my draconic tongue upon them.

Intermission – Alissa

The last few guests watch excitedly as their Lord and King begins another display of his sexual prowess and masculine virility.

His famous magic dick is still hidden from sight, but his entire body is magical, so his every touch can cause mind-numbing pleasure.

The way Kaatohe's alluring legs quiver from his touch makes me proud. He has a gift for pleasing women, and though it's not God-given, it's truly too wonderful to keep it all to ourselves. Though, there were no virtuous thoughts going through our minds when we first unchained him.

I stare at his tongue entering and leaving her cunt, then her brown asshole, and the sight of it makes my lower lips get warm. I savor her taste through our connection, and now my legs are the ones that quiver.

I don't like women, but I do enjoy bending over and being forced to lick Hana's pussy, or being molested by Roxanne and Ciel, or servicing Yunia, or just being forced by Wolfy to satisfy the depraved needs of others. It's this role of submissiveness that makes me aroused. Acting as nothing more than a slave for my husband to have fun with is what I live for.

I just really fucking love being dominated.

I imagine Kaatohe playing with me while Wolfy watches us. I imagine her tongue penetrating my holes, tainting them with her saliva, then she kisses me as her fingers stretch my pussy lips, forcing me to feel pleasure from someone I feel no attraction for, yet it only makes Wolfy more aroused to see two women having sex.

Am I really still heterosexual if I enjoy other women so much…?

Even if it's a lie, I'll still consider myself to be that way because it just makes the depravity that much spicier.

Wolfy glances at me, preventing me from touching myself as I fantasize, then he gets up and pulls his cock out as he grins like a villain about to commit a crime.

He hugs the tired Kaatohe from behind and rubs his thick meat rod against her wet lips, making her purr loudly in desire. Though his expression is evil, the way he moves and caresses her is still so sweet and gentle.

It's this other side of him that comforts us all. For as much as we're addicted to the mind-shattering orgasms or having the shameful, depraved desires within us being satisfied, we all need the rest and comfort that Wolfy's human side can give us.

He goes through a skillful back and forth between dominating and loving, carefully molding his acting to better satisfy our desires, as long as we, ourselves, know what we want. Even though he can read our thoughts, his high "Perception" still isn't keen enough to give him prescience, so we've all learned to quickly accept our dark desires without shame, unless shaming is one of our fetishes like it is for Roxanne and Yunia.

He teases Kaatohe until she starts to get frustrated, then he immediately penetrates her, and the jealousy I feel in this moment squeezes my heart, almost making me choke. It hurts, but it hurts so good.

It's such a degrading feeling to see my beloved making love to another, random woman, but I'm such a degenerate that it feels good. I enjoy the pain, the shame, the dirty feeling that wells up from within my heart.

He's being disloyal and cheating on me, and he takes pleasure in that. He deliberately treats me like a cum rag, hurting my feelings, betraying my love, throwing my dedication to him away as if it was worthless trash.

But I know it's all a fantasy. Deep inside, he loves me so much that he'd die right after I did. Not through suicide, just a clean, instant death.

The intensity of these feelings paralyzes me, and I stare at his cock going in and out of her pussy, the pain and jealousy I feel squeezing my heart with every thrust. Their love juices mix and drip onto the floor, evidence of their enjoyment, of their willingness to make love to one another while leaving me in the cold.

The cream of her orgasms coats his shaft as he gives her mind-numbing pleasure. The most intimate experience we could share, the most intense amount of pleasure we could provide each other, both were given to a random, undeserving woman. I'm just one of the uncountable number of pussies that he has already been in. Everything I've felt, he has given to others, too.

There's nothing special about me. Except that I own half his soul.

He feels the warmth of her vagina, her tightness, her slickness, her taste, her smell, her sensual beauty, and compares it all to mine. I'm nothing but a cock-sleeve that he quickly grew tired of.

Then he cums, flooding her insides with his precious, delicious seed, marking her as just another one of his conquests. Another woman in the long line of cum slaves.

I wish he could impregnate her, breed her, force her to bear his child. I wish I could watch the conception of his first child, cementing my position as just a lowly cum-slave who's not worthy of being inseminated.

Well, there are the dryads… though they can't make humanoids, so I guess they don't count.

I walk up to the tired Kaatohe and caress her, soothing her tired body, fulfilling my duty as Wolfy's slave, then I notice Hana underneath her, cleaning out her cunt.

Oh, yeah, she was there too. I forgot about her…

I gently kiss Wolfy's cheek, and he reciprocates, then he sighs and hugs me as we watch Hana do her job. The intense feelings of depravity wash away, leaving only my warm love for him behind.

Intermission end.

We take Kaatohe and Hukarere with us to the bath. The Chimeras have a natural fondness for airships and airplanes, especially Kaatohe, so the girls all start talking excitedly about the Institute.

Klein joins us in fooling around, but she doesn't talk much. She isn't sad, just pensive, which is a state that amuses Hana quite a lot.

"Klein, we've invited Hermann and his husband for dinner," Ciel tactfully warns her.

"Oh… I'll eat with my parents this time," she awkwardly replies and sighs as her long tail flops into the water.

"Don't start avoiding him, now," Osaria gently cautions her little toy.

"I won't!" She hisses back and pouts. "I just don't have the energy to talk with him today."

"Oh? What's this about? A lovers' quarrel?" Kaatohe bemusedly joins in.

Roxanne immediately gossips into her ear. Klein frowns in displeasure, but she doesn't have the energy to stop them.

Kaatohe suddenly stands up and shouts, "HAH! Enjoy your freedom, woman. Guilt-trip him so that you can ride both of their dicks at the same time while still keeping your name, and then get them to compete to impregnate you! But then, just have both of their children, anyway!"

"'Both'?" Klein softly questions.

"This one," Kaatohe swims over to me and grabs my dick, then strokes it. "And the one who broke your heart. Guilt the second."

"Telling me about this plan ahead of time doesn't seem like a very smart idea," I wryly reply.

She flashes me a smirk and shrugs. "Not even your magic dick was enough to enslave her, so you already gave her up to another man."

I narrow my eyes dangerously due to how much her tone offends me. I'm not a slave collector-… well, sex slave collector, so the very idea that it's me who's somehow "giving up" a woman to another man simply because she isn't interested ticks me off.

I stand up and glare at the Bengal-headed woman. "Do you want me to enslave you?" I growl and grab her head with my claws. "Because I know how to make a cum addict like you beg for it." Then I push her down, forcing her to kneel, and pull her face towards my erect cock, which she gladly welcomes into her mouth.

"Quantity over quality," Hukarere quietly remarks and ignores Kaatohe's glare.

"You're one to talk, cock-gobbler!" She shouts and quickly returns to gobbling me up.

The irony makes Hukarere and the girls chuckle, but Kaatohe is less promiscuous than Hukarere, so she does have a point. Well, they both have a point.

Klein lightens up a bit and starts to take Kaatohe's advice more seriously. Though she originally wanted a normal, monogamous life, her current lifestyle isn't too bad, either.

A note from Manasong

Hall of Fame of Patrons

The patrons who support Rupegia shall have their names sung by the bards for they deserve the glory and honor. Their names are:

Prince PreownedFIN.

Prince Creamy Spinach.

Lord Andrew Meyers.

Lord Novgarod.

Lord Michale Erwin.

Lord Bakerdea.

Lord Maurice.

Lord Empyrean.

Lord Mattirro Draca.

Lord Fullmoon.

Lord Sean Drake.

Lord EESDESESESRDT.

Lord FrostyCube.

Lord Mike Bartter.

Lord Cardinal Steiner.

Lord Warwulfv.

Lord Jorge Franco.

Lord Khristopher Welsh.

Lord DJ.

Lord Philip.

Lord Tenebris Lupus.

Lord The Tallest Joshua.

Lord Copey Dunt.

Lord Dracopuppy23.

Lord Chris Carter.

Lord Paul Daval.

Lord Bradly.

Lord Aubrey Powell.

Lord AndreyUC.

Lord Cidant.

Noble Salty Panda.

Noble Mild Fracas.

Noble Aclys.

Noble CarlBaxter.

Noble Yeuromain.

Noble Brandon Lai.

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Chapter 107: Support - Part 3

The open wall of the dining hall gives us a great view of the clear night sky and the sea of mist coming from the Eia plants that covers the entire town. I'm really fond of this town, and this view is one of my favorite things about it.

We take our seats, and Poosh starts playing soothing tunes with her flute, which goes really well with the soft trickle of running water from the small water channels that cross the dining hall.

A moment later, our two guests come in with linked arms. Hermann looks a bit nervous, but Ahren guides him in, though the smaller boy's steps are also quite stiff. While Hermann's clothes are designed to show off his muscular build, Ahren is wearing delicate, androgynous robes. Honestly, if Ahren were to dress himself as a trap, they'd make a cute couple.

Hermann is younger than him, but he actually looks older than Ahren, who has the same curse of babyface as I do. In Roxanne's eyes, they're like the perfect gay couple from the women's novels she used to read.

Then some embarrassing memories surface in Yunia's mind, and she holds back her own blush.

Of course, Roxanne doesn't miss this opportunity and immediately grips onto the memories so that she can show them to everyone, but I close my mind's eye and forcefully ignore them.

"Wow…" Lina quietly breathes through [Bind] as intricate BL drawings flash through her mind. Someone put a lot of love into those drawings, or so she believes.

"You damn fujoshis," I grumble internally as even Aoi's mind is corrupted by the gay.

"You honor us with your invitation for this meal," Ahren politely announces and bows as he subtly pushes Hermann to bow as well.

"No need for this amount of reverence. You're our not-blood-brothers, so consider yourselves family," I smoothly reply, and the girls snap out of their daydreaming.

Mimi comes in next, and her usually fearsome gaze softens into a girlish smile when she sees her brother, then she quickly approaches the couple, her very high heels making muffled loud sounds as she rushes across the grass carpet, which draws their attention.

"How did you like your mansion, brother?" Mimi asks with a teasing smirk that's so incredibly similar to Hana's.

Hermann's nervousness starts to clear away as he brightens up and replies, "Stupidly big, but it doesn't even compare to living in a castle." Then he glances at Hana with a smirk.

"Ah, sweet Sommer child," Mimi hums softly and lands a hand on one of his shoulders. "Have you seen the penises on the walls?"

Both Hermann and Ahren blink blankly as they stare at her.

"I'm sorry, what did you say…?" Ahren politely asks.

Mimi softly shakes her head, and her dark, undulated hair shakes along just like Hana's red mane. "Never mind, then. Just know that this castle isn't a safe place for either of you, but also," -she gives Ahren a sober stare- "don't ever let your sister come here unaccompanied."

"But I don't hunt men," I protest and pout at Mimi.

She stares back at me with a pleased smile, her intense stare challenging me to engage in a bout of banter. "You're not even going to deny the rest?"

"They'll know the truth soon enough," I calmly accept.

The confused couple shares a look, but Hermann seems to have a better idea about what we're talking about than his husband since Hana's suggestive grin gives it away.

Mimi sighs softly and continues on towards the table, her alluring, long, dark legs peeking out from the sides of her elven dousnadeia. Her lean body is perfect for elven clothes. "Do you want a Title? Because that's how you get a Title. At least try to deny it."

I grin as I fuck her with my eyes. "I simply refuse to feel any shame for it."

"Wolfy's prowess is something that we're all proud of, so we, too, want to see him share his gift with others," Alissa tenderly states.

Mimi shoots a questioning look at Ciel, who just shrugs in return. "You should try it. He's actually really good," my Star of Hope pimps me up, and she hides her ensuing embarrassment very well.

"Noted…" Mimi mumbles then takes her seat.

"Sit down, you two lovebirds, we don't bite," Hana teases with a fearsome grin and motions to the chairs.

Ahren looks a bit intimidated by her, but Hermann sighs and squeezes his hand reassuringly, then they unlink their arms and sit down.

Since our guests are from Sommerland, we wanted to impress them with elven cuisine, which is somewhat similar to theirs (though Yunia strongly disagrees), so the chefs prepared a feast.

The table is filled with a wide variety of delicate veggies prepared in all sorts of manners, and there's also a nice selection of smoked meats that creates a mouth-watering aroma for the carnivorous among us.

It's almost like a charcuterie board due to how they're made to be savored individually instead of as a proper, complex dish. I'm also quite partial to the dried not-tomato salad with smoked bacon, greens, and grated cheese.

There are even fresh glowing veggies that are considered old-people food due to their very exotic flavor. Though Roxanne is a bit of an exception, we, as well as most Young elves, don't have much exposure to this sort of weird food, so it's an acquired taste that normally only old people would have.

"This is pretty good. The flavor of the mana is also nice," Aoi comments, all of her large white teeth now glowing purple. These are the veggies that illuminate the dark parts of the High Forest, and since it's currently night, their glow has dimmed and changed color.

Lina takes a very small bite and shudders. "This burns my tongue," she whines and uses [Spirit of Gaia] to cleanse her body of the poison.

Roxanne takes a bite and delicately covers her mouth with her hand to remark as she chews, "It's a bit tingly…"

Yunia simply stares at her with a deep frown. She hates these glowing veggies with a childish passion, which I find rather endearing.

I take a bite of one and feel my nose burn with the harsh smell of horseradish, but the taste is quite agreeable, and my tongue only feels slightly prickled. It's like pickled onions with a bit of an herbal freshness.

Then the feeling of burning quickly fades away as my nerves wilt. Not literally.

Our three guests also show a sensible degree of aversion to the glowing veggies, so I get a little curious.

I use [Bind] to sense what the other girls feel when they eat it and notice that only Aoi and I can taste the pickled onions. The rest only feels the horseradish burning their mouth and nose. Roxanne doesn't feel the burning, but she also barely manages to detect the taste of pickled onion.

"Gih," Gify chirps happily as she chews. This is magical food, so you need to have a high affinity to magic to fully appreciate it.

"Right, [Mana Body]," I mumble, and Ahren lifts his eyebrows in surprise.

"You have that skill?" He blurts out, then clears his throat awkwardly and reigns in his excitement.

"Yeah. A lot happened, and I woke up with this skill one day," I eloquently explain and grin at him.

The way he immediately breaks eye contact and glances at Hermann is kind of cute. The shy demeanor of the gay little boy makes the idea of teasing him that much more delicious.

I glance over at Osaria, and her smug smile unnerves me.

It's totally not gay to tease him!

"Before we start retelling that long story again, I want to hear Hermann's story first," Hana interrupts us, then turns to her brother and presses him.

Hermann smiles with a small amount of pride and starts, "W-well, after we were separated, the Grosshils immediately took me in. They knew that I wanted to become a knight, so they didn't hold back on my training."

"He's a natural with weapons," Ahren chimes in, beaming with pride.

"Of course. He's got dragonkin blood within him," Hana states matter-of-factly as she nods with crossed arms.

Hermann grins and starts to become enthusiastic. "Even with a negative soul potential, my skills continued to level up, so they let me go with the soldiers to soak up some 'Experience' in hope of quick level-ups."

"Then he took down an Orc Striker by himself!" Ahren exclaims excitedly.

"A lucky strike, really," Hermann tries to diminish it as he puns.

"But you did it again sometime later," Ahren insists and pouts at him.

Hermann smiles wryly and shrugs. "That was after I increased my skills some more."

Ahren's right eye twitches in annoyance. "By then, you were already taking on old Orcs."

"Because I was given proper plate armor," he deflects again.

Ahren stands up and wraps his hands around Hermann's throat, then playfully shakes him. "Just accept my love!"

"I already did, husband!" He shouts back and grabs his waist.

"Oh, my," Osaria coos, and her perfectly measured teasing tone is enough to make them blush as they touch their foreheads together.

"I don't even need to say anything…" Roxanne remarks, impressed at the capability of the couple to embarrass themselves.

"So, I take it that you were impressed with his martial prowess and fell hopelessly in love?" Yunia calmly questions Ahren.

"Something like that…" He quietly replies and swallows heavily.

Yunia approves of them since it's kind of similar to our own story.

"Anyway, I guess I have a new sparring partner, then," Hana comments and sends her fearsome glare towards her brother, who receives it head-on and glares right back.

For once, there's someone who can go toe-to-toe against her domineering aura. I don't count since her submissiveness towards me has already become firmly ingrained within her.

"I take it that the only thing he inherited from Father was his face," Mimi comments with a fake depressed tone.

"He definitely inherited Moms' love for dick," Hana teases.

The stunningly beautiful sisters share a mirrored look. "And to think that her sex lessons actually helped him more than us."

Hana snorts and flashes me a smirk. "Speak for yourself. She definitely didn't prepare me for the amount of abuse Wolfy gives my asshole."

"And your throat," I quietly add.

"And my throat," she repeats with pride.

Mimi stares at her sister annoyedly for a second, then clears her throat and continues the teasing, "Anyway, I'm at least glad that she taught us how to practice anal safely."

Then Hermann sinks his face into his hands in resignation.

"I-is this normal talk for a meal?" Ahren hesitantly asks, a slight edge in his tone.

"No, but we're definitely not normal, so it fits," Osaria replies matter-of-factly.

Mimi puts down her glass of not-wine and starts lambasting us, "The Ryders all have the touch of a succubus within them. They know no shame or chastity, they feed on embarrassment and sexual fluids, and they exude an aura of mischief and sexual predation, so remember to not feed these demons."

Dayum…

"Please tongue my cunt like you just did our pride! HNGH!" Roxanne exclaims and moans out loud.

"Hana really didn't change that much, huh?" Hermann dryly comments, then shoots his sister a smirk.

Ahren looks with concern at his husband and frowns. "I understand my father's warnings, now," he breathes tiredly.

The ribbing eventually dies down, and the meal proceeds peacefully.

As we retell our journey to the couple, they become increasingly excited, eager to participate in our legend.

"Pff… as if we're going to take you two with us," Hana immediately dismisses their dreams.

"I-I'm part of the clan, am I not? We'll always be ready to give you our support!" Hermann eagerly announces, and Ahren nods energetically in agreement.

"And you'll support us with simple little tasks where you can't die by stumbling and falling on a sword," she harshly retorts.

Ahren frowns and defiantly glares at Hana as he announces, "I must express my dissatisfaction with this policy. We're certain to grow more powerful than knights, one day."

She grins, savoring his resistance, and casually retorts, "'One day.' Until then, you'll keep your precious little pair of jewels on your seat."

"Hanaa~…!" Hermann childishly whines, then turns a disbelieving look to Mimi in search of help.

"I'm not a warrior, don't look at me," she immediately evades.

"Hermann, Ahren," Yunia calls their attention and they tense up, struck by her beauty and charming voice. "We aren't saying that you'll never come with us, but you'll have to grow a lot before we can rely on you. We're all almost level sixty, so it's currently impossible for you to keep up with us or our veteran servants."

The excitement of the couple quickly deflates back down to the proper, appropriate level for their age, then the meal finally ends a short time later.

For this evening, I take care of Alissa's fur, going all brushy brushy on her while Poosh waxes my tail and hums an angelic tune.

My fluffy sheep lets out a breathy hum that sounds pained, "♪ Daughter, Godspe~ed. ♪"

She follows with a slow, gloomy hum. "♪ I set my sail. Fly the wind, where it takes me. Towards the dream of a new home. Sweet home. ♪"

Then her voice gains vigor and grows more chipper, making her sound dreamy. "♪ I lay on my back. I see the clouds make a way for me. Follow the stars, the glowing path. My Fate. ♪"

And then she slows down, sounding soothing. "♪ I've found my place. I'll wait in case you want to come down. This is my role, my home. Mother, I'm he~re. ♪"

Her short, little song has been translated from the Southern Maokai language, so Roxanne knows the original, and she approves of Poosh's localization.

Her song sets the mood for a wonderful, comfy evening. An increasingly rare moment of respite in the hectic days of our rule. In fact, there's still so much for us to do that I can't even straighten out our priorities to figure out what we should do first.

The girls play with the two game tables we built, and I try to come up with ideas about what else I can do to increase the number of recreation activities we have available.

I could make arcade games with [Golemancy]…

I sigh and hug Alissa's fluffy tail.

I want to study golems, but I'm always so busy!

Tomorrow, there's Ciel's parents' visit, and after that, it'll be Roxanne's, and then we need to go to the capital, and also help Gnomeria to get coffee, but we also need to continue the mana circulation training, and leveling up, and increasing our skills, and building the Institute, and organizing the knights and Officers, and improving our territory, and answering the calls from the other Lords, and scheming against our enemies, and fucking my harem, and researching stuff in a dozen different areas, and making connections with the other nobles, and meeting with the Elder Council, and, and, and, and, and…

Yunia suddenly hugs me from behind, and I melt in her arms. Her enthralling perfume and lovely breasts are like a sneak attack on my anxious mind, and then her drills fall on my back, and I enter Paradise for a moment.

"How about we take it one day at a time?" She softly asks, her hot breath tickling my ear.

"Alright…" I mumble with a sigh, then I let go of Alissa's tail and lay down so that Poosh can wax the scales on my legs.

Yunia and I start going over our priorities and what we should do next, then I remember something.

We still have to wipe out Dawn of Fire…

"Gify, has Cereleia recovered yet?" I question my little white griffin.

She tilts her head, then Yunia senses a pulse of Life coming from her and going down towards the forest. "Gih… guh gih!" She answers negatively.

"Damn. Why do Dryads recover so slowly?"

"Guee gih…!" She accuses me.

And I smile apologetically. "Oh… I'm sorry."

A dryad's soul isn't stable enough for that level of intense soul-fucking, so Cereleia has a lot of "soul-bruises" to deal with.

Yunia gently runs her hand through my hair, and though it's very soothing, her actual feelings right now are like those of a master petting their dog.

I won't complain, though.

For some reason, I get a boner, so Alissa pulls down my pants and starts playing with it.

Yunia's voice caresses my ears again as she continues, "Anyway, as soon as Cereleia recovers and give us the details on their hideouts, we should attack."

What we got from Vanea was enough to formulate a plan to take them down, but now we just need an update to confirm that things haven't changed too much since Vanea "extracted" that information.

Poosh continues waxing my scales, then she massages my horns the way I like. Hana gets interested in what she's doing, and my lovely sheep teaches my red dragon how to massage Roxanne's horns.

Poosh's thigh pillow, her jiggly breasts, and her fluffy wool all envelop my head while I get a calm helping hand and a horn massage, bringing me closer to Paradise once again.

Shortly after, I end up falling asleep.

Today is the 19th, Nev, day of Spirit. An unofficial holiday where people spend their day with the ashes of their dead ancestors and even talk with their spirits, if they still roam the land.

Poosh wakes me up. Having slept with us in our bed, the girls decided to give her the honor of freely using me until I wake up.

"Thank you for the meal, your Highness," she politely gives her thanks with a gentle bow.

I clutch her pale face and pull her closer, then I kiss her forehead and caress her spiral horns. "Thank you for being such a loving and caring person," I warmly reply.

She smiles brightly, and I feel her cheeks getting warmer in my claws. "Your words give me a glimpse of the bliss from Paradise."

"Awn…" My heart melts, and I hug her tight, then I cover her face with kisses.

After giving my wives their morning kisses twice as intensely as usual to compensate, we head down to have our breakfast.

First, I prepare the bread by drizzling on some not-olive-oil, then I add a bit of not-onion with a dash of not-oregano, and then I lightly toast it with my own, weak fire breath.

Now that it's warm, I add three slices of bacon, followed by a few slices of not-tomato, then I top it with a leaf of not-lettuce. To finish it all up, I spread a small amount of mayo and not-mustard on the opposing slice, then I close the sandwich and take a bite.

The crunchy outside and the soft inside of the sandwich are in perfect balance. The oily and savory bacon, the moist and faintly sweet not-tomato, and the fresh and slightly bitter lettuce make for the perfect combination. The added condiments just gives it a nice after-taste from the smooth mayo and the light hit of spice from the mustard.

I hum as I savor the divine meal, then I take a sip of my beloved not-earl-gray to wash it down and reset my palate for another bite.

This isn't just a sandwich, it's a work of art.

"Wolfy, please," Alissa whispers, with Ciel gently agreeing with her sentiment. They find it calming to listen to my thoughts, except for when I start with my silliness, but that's just too bad because today, I've created the supreme sandwich with my own two hands, and I'll be damned if I don't savor it properly!

After another pleasant breakfast together, we get ready to visit Rabanara. I ask Klein if she'd like to come with us, but she doesn't know anyone there, so we just go with the usual escort with Azador leading them.

We arrive in Rabanara at the Lord's Hall in the commoners' area because I want to take a look at the town's charming architecture again.

This is one of the few places that I could say smells like "home" to me, and I'm happy to be back.

A note from Manasong

Hall of Fame of Patrons

The patrons who support Rupegia shall have their names sung by the bards for they deserve the glory and honor. Their names are:

Prince PreownedFIN.

Prince Creamy Spinach.

Lord Andrew Meyers.

Lord Novgarod.

Lord Michale Erwin.

Lord Bakerdea.

Lord Maurice.

Lord Empyrean.

Lord Mattirro Draca.

Lord Fullmoon.

Lord Sean Drake.

Lord EESDESESESRDT.

Lord FrostyCube.

Lord Mike Bartter.

Lord Cardinal Steiner.

Lord Warwulfv.

Lord Jorge Franco.

Lord Khristopher Welsh.

Lord DJ.

Lord Philip.

Lord Tenebris Lupus.

Lord The Tallest Joshua.

Lord Copey Dunt.

Lord Dracopuppy23.

Lord Chris Carter.

Lord Paul Daval.

Lord Bradly.

Lord Aubrey Powell.

Lord AndreyUC.

Lord Cidant.

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Noble Aclys.

Noble CarlBaxter.

Noble Yeuromain.

Noble Brandon Lai.

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Chapter 108: Possibilities - Part 1

The cobbled paths, the crooked buildings, the mixed architectural styles, the odd houses that look like they were sliced in half then rebuilt with a different design, the fondness for statues. Though Escanso is more colorful, Rabanara has a lot more charm, and I just love walking through these streets.

The wide variety of different races here makes for a nice sight as the demon race has fewer inhibitions than the average human, and though they aren't as fond of showing skin as the elves, they're a lot more flirty.

Most of the demon race women that pass by, and especially the succubi women, seem very interested in my horns and tail.

"But of course they are. It's like you're walking around with a big cock out at full mast," Roxanne explains through [Bind].

"You think someone would be up for a quickie?" I ask back as we walk past a succubi runway model that winks at me.

"Well, we aren't as promiscuous as the Chimeras…" She replies with mixed feelings.

"Promiscuous, no, but I'm sure you'd win at thirst," Hana comforts her internally, which restores some of her pride.

Her heart suddenly bursts with energy as she declares in my soul space, "That's it! If we rub my tail, then there's nobody out there who can gobble up as many cocks as I can!"

I grab her thin tail and lightly bite the dagger-like end.

"HYAH…!" She lets out a weird shriek, then silently recomposes herself and readjusts her rectangle glasses. "If we rub my tail, then there's nobody out there who can lick as many pussies as I can!" She quickly corrects herself.

"Better…" I quietly praise her.

I see Hukarere's eyes soften for a moment under her snout-shaped helmet. The rest of the Lordsguard and Azador also glance at us, and after they confirm that we're just playing around, they resume watching our surroundings for potential dangers.

Yunia is the only one of us who doesn't have some nostalgic memories about this place, but she can still join in our moment by opening herself up to the emotions that bleed through [Bind].

So that they aren't left out, I pull out the golems to let them enjoy this place since Ted and Suzy were literally born here.

We walk towards the Temple, which is quite close to the Lord's Hall we arrived at, and the distance is short enough for Roxanne's precious little feet to not get tired from it.

Ciel asks Aoi to change into her humanoid form to avoid scaring the temple-goers, which was an excellent idea since the very moment we enter the Temple grounds, we cause a little commotion anyway as the orphans point and shout.

"Elves!"

"Wow!"

"Their armor is shining!"

"Is it really wood armor?"

"Beastfolk!"

"Dog!"

"She's mean-faced, so she's a wolf!"

It seems they're mistaking Hukarere for a Beastfolk. Aside from a few preteens (mostly boys) getting stunned by the sight of my wives (mostly Yunia), they mostly focus on my exotic snow wolf.

But a single word is enough to instantly shift the mood. "Ciel?"

"Sister Ciel!"

"CIEL!"

Then they swarm us, and Azador begrudgingly lets them pass.

"Woow, what is this dress?"

"Floating dolls!"

"Are these elven clothes?"

"So pretty!"

"Look, a Metal Lady."

"Ah! The Masked Fox!"

The thick cloud of perfume created by having all of my wives standing close together starts to affect them, especially the boys, who quickly become charmed by my chocolate angel's aura of kindness. Not only that, but my wives are so gorgeous that they're to die for, so they all end up charming the kids.

We all have high "Charisma," so even I stun a few little girls with my presence, but I get more coos of awe due to my shiny draconic features.

Ciel tries to calm them down, but then a few priests notice that we're nobility and come to chastise the kids, but then they recognize Ciel too and make more noise, drawing in even more priests. The situation snowballs from there until there's a crowd of people cheering around us and a very stressed knight trying to find a way to get things back under control.

I infuse a bit of [Godly Language] into my voice as I yell, "Please, give us some space!"

Then Alissa casts [Mesmerizing Butterflies] enthralling the children and the weaker-willed priests with the rainbow-colored illusions while the rest momentarily forget what they were doing.

That allows the Lordsguard to properly surround us while Ciel goes towards the front of our formation to talk with the more Illusion-resistant priests.

Then a familiar voice that tickles our ears draws her attention, "Ciel…!" And we turn to the approaching priest.

His figure is unmistakable. Arantos, the rotund and bald middle-aged man, quickly makes his way through the still charmed crowd, completely unaffected by Alissa's spell.

Ciel takes a step past the Lordsguard and receives her unofficial foster father with a tight hug.

"Hahahaha! You're back, you're finally back!" He shouts and laughs out loud.

"It took us a while, but we finally had the time," she replies with a trembling voice, suddenly feeling a bit overwhelmed.

Then they break the hug to look at each other.

"I didn't imagine that you'd come back so fast, though," he comments with a very wide grin, his beady eyes shining with pride from behind his half-circle glasses.

She smiles wryly as she replies, "Yes, even for us, it was unexpected and a bit sudden."

He raises his eyebrows and gives us an amused look. "'Even for us.' That phrasing means you've already accepted how extraordinary your life is."

She closes her eyes for a second in annoyance but continues smiling. "Y-yes… I just can't lie to myself now, can I?"

He chuckles happily and pats her shoulders a few times, then releases her. "Now, let's not leave all these people charmed forever. I'll help you organize this into a more orderly greeting event, and then we can talk inside the temple after."

Alissa dispels [Mesmerizing Butterflies], then Arantos starts yelling at the crowd until the people that want to greet Ciel have formed a proper line.

After almost the entire Temple has exchanged a few words with the famous Queen Ciel Ryder, the Star of Hope, we follow Arantos towards the temple.

"Weird shaepe," Hukarere quietly comments as we walk, her Reo accent making a rare appearance.

The marble half-sphere that is the temple is quite unremarkable aside from its unusual shape. It's just a symbolic representation of the Realm, though the land we walk on is more like a flat Earth than an actual spherical planet, as far as we know, that is.

"You won't find anything exceedingly beautiful inside the temple itself. It's a place for solemn meditation, not artistic expression," Ciel sagely explains.

"Still weird," Roxanne whispers, earning herself a glare from my angel.

The cheeky succubus glances at my white wolf, and I see Hukarere's eyes smile under her helmet.

The inside of the temple is just a wide circular hall where the statues to the sixteen Humanoid Gods are arranged in a circle near the wall with the large sphere representing the Genderless God of Existence in the center.

It's Hukarere's first time inside a temple, so I make a mental note to tell Sandoro to have the Chimera soldiers be taught at least the basics of religion.

"[Are there any Chimera Gods?]" Hukarere asks excitedly in Reo.

"[No, there aren't…]" I quietly answer, and I pity her as her excitement is replaced with a somewhat depressed look.

"Your nation was gone long before the first Humanoid God Ascended," Ciel explains, and Arantos gives us a curious look, but keeps walking.

As we cross through the second floor towards Arantos' office, we pass by Logan, a former adventurer who became a scholar.

The big black man seems to recognize us and waves absentmindedly out of shock, then he notices the Lordsguard and cowers for a second until he remembers that he used to be a tough guy. Lina is a bit fond of him, so I'll tell her to go find him later.

Then the Lordsguard and Azador remain outside while we enter Arantos' office.

It's quite roomy, but it really doesn't have anything that's truly luxurious, though it does look comfy. There are a dozen small windows all across the back wall letting beams of light in while a simple landscape painting decorates each side wall. One of them is suspiciously similar to the Windows XP background, though. There's also a stick of incense burning on his simple desk, filling the air with a calming scent that thankfully doesn't bother Alissa's sharp senses.

Arantos motions to the simple cushioned chairs and smiles as he politely declares, "I hope that my humble office isn't too disagreeable for guests of your station, though it is a bit small for the number of people here."

"It's fine, we're all former adventurers, anyway," I assure him.

"Well, technically not all of you." He glances at Yunia.

I flash a smile. "She's not haughty enough to complain."

But she is annoyed enough to briefly glare at me.

Alissa serves us tea and cookies, and the reversal of the supposed roles amuses him.

He eagerly takes a sip of his high-quality not-earl-gray and starts, "The whole Avgin temple has been raving about all of you so much that I'd bet that half the priests across the entire realm have heard about your exploits by now." His gentle and amused tone makes me smile unconsciously.

"We can imagine," Yunia coolly replies.

And Ciel anxiously blurts out, "I'm sorry, Arantos, but I don't want to imagine how things are. Even the head priest of Escanso seems distressed with our actions." Then she covers her face with her hands as she becomes overly conscious of her own fame.

"I have a feeling that Teresina isn't usually as docile with others as she is with me," I brag a bit with a grin.

Arantos' face strains to hold back manic giggles as he admits, "Well, I, on the other hand, can't imagine Teresina of the 'Black Sunrise' being docile, except with children."

Okay, now that's a pretty cool title.

Then I give him a follow-up, "She's actually quite a nice person, all things considered, and I didn't even call her on a purging date yet, so there's still a lot we can do to get closer to her."

"'Purging date'…" Arantos mumbles and starts chuckling.

Ciel frowns and pleads, "Arantos, please, that isn't funny. Don't encourage his silly jokes."

He clears his throat and tries to control himself. "It isn't funny… it's hilariously ridiculous!" Then he fails and starts chuckling again.

"You at least heard about Ciel's new title, right?" Roxanne slyly asks.

And his chuckles now grow into hearty laughs. "Oh, yes, yes, yes! Queen Ciel Ryder, the Star of Hope of Escanso! That's amazing!"

Ciel sighs in resignation, then breathes in and puffs up her jiggly, large chest. "I'll take that title with pride! It's evidence that people are looking up to me, so I won't disappoint them," she boldly declares.

Arantos quickly gets his chuckling back under control, then he dries the corners of his eyes and sighs. "And we're all proud of what you've achieved," he softly replies, his gentle voice tickling our ears again.

Ciel nods energetically, not letting herself be affected by the teasing.

Lina grabs her hand and suddenly declares, "Her title is evidence of her kindness. The intention behind it was to inspire hope instead of fear."

Her declaration surprises us a little, and Ciel gushes with happiness and pride.

"Indeed. It's a good Title," Arantos gently agrees and gives Lina an affable smile.

"Compared to mine, yeah, I'm a bit envious," I mumble with a slight pout.

"Good Luck" is from a joke, and "Shapeshifter" carries a hint of fear, so I'd like it if my next one was kinder. Alissa and Hana don't have particularly good Titles either since they're both earned from feats that don't invoke particularly good memories, especially in Hana's case.

Arantos clears his throat and changes the topic, "Anyway, I've heard a lot about your adventures, but I'm actually quite curious about you, Lord Aoi, or should I use another honorific?" He shifts his gaze to my stunning and slender blue-haired wife.

"That one is fine, but I don't care about honorifics as long as you don't call me 'it,'" Aoi calmly replies with a friendly grin.

"But only in private," Yunia quickly adds. "In public, you should use Royal Lord or 'your Highness' since we wish to make sure that everyone recognizes us as royalty."

Arantos raises his eyebrows in surprise. "'Queen' wouldn't suffice?" He confusedly asks.

"We're royals, but we haven't been crowned, yet," she soberly replies.

"I understand." He nods respectfully. "But as I was saying, I'm very curious about Aoi. I did not expect Wolf to do something as ridiculous as converting a monster. Is it true that you, Aoi, have a system given by the Gods?"

"I don't know if it's 'Gods-given,' but I only have a 'Status' and no skill system for now," Aoi answers, then turns to me. "When will I gain one?"

I use [Sense Soul] on her and inspect the outer layer of her soul. Her soul is like a half-peeled orange in comparison to a normal monster's, and she lacks both the instinct to kill humanoids and the protection against [Bind] that normal monsters have.

Right now, it does seem like the "peeled" part of her soul is smaller than it was before, but I think it's about halfway to being fully "healed."

"I don't know, but I'd guess we're about halfway there," I answer with a shrug.

"How, exactly, did you do it?" Arantos questions me, his tone suddenly becoming deadly serious.

I smile diplomatically to disarm him. "I can't answer that now, but one day, we will reveal it."

He stares at me for a moment, and a pout slowly grows on his round face, then he turns to Ciel. "I assume it isn't anything objectionable?"

"It isn't. There are a few secrets around it that we don't want to reveal," she answers factually.

Arantos raises one eyebrow bemusedly and turns back to me. "Well, I should've expected something like that from you. But there's something else I'm concerned about." -He turns to Aoi- "How old are you?"

"I'm two years old!" She happily answers.

Arantos blinks blankly, a bit disconcerted. "And… and that's long enough for you to become an adult?"

She looks down at her own flat chest and frowns as a small hope for getting big boobs suddenly sprouts within her, but she knows for a fact that she's already an adult, and that immediately squashes that hope. "I could have children if Wolfy took off his Ring of Fertility."

"She's a breeder-type, so she was born with enough intelligence to build a civilization," Ciel explains, appeasing Arantos a little.

But that's not enough for him. "Still, her growth is surprising, even for a dragon," he presses on.

"I ate a lot of different monsters, so I grew quite fast," Aoi happily explains, and he hums in understanding.

"Somewhat like 'Experience,' then. Killing a variety of monsters earns more growth than killing the same type repeatedly," he theorizes.

"Exactly," Aoi confirms.

And Arantos sighs in relief. "That's good. I was worried that Wolf and Aoi might have had an 'improper' relationship, so I had to question you about it."

Ciel nods in agreement and tiredly admits, "That's understandable. His reputation really isn't particularly good, so it's better to confirm things."

"And whose fault is that?" I annoyedly reply, then we turn our heads towards Alissa, who does her best to ignore our gazes.

"Not entirely mine," she quietly comments and smiles smugly.

"True," Ciel whispers and glances at me.

Arantos chuckles softly at our antics. "As long as you live a happy life, you shouldn't feel ashamed of what others think of you," he sagely advises.

"Oh, I'm not ashamed, just annoyed," I calmly state.

After a few more simple questions, Arantos suggests that we visit his wife, Alana, but their house is a bit too small to host everyone at once. I suggest that we split up so that we can all meet our friends in town, and then meet up again for lunch.

But I have one last matter that I want to talk about with Arantos. "Before we leave, I'd like to do some research on it if the temple has any sort of knowledge about traveling between the Realms or Cycles," I request.

"What a curious topic," Arantos replies and subtly narrows his eyes in suspicion.

"We stumbled upon something related to it, and we think the Gods want us to learn more about this topic," Ciel stoically explains.

"Hm…" Arantos hums as he thinks and readjusts his half-circle glasses. "I assume you can't tell me more about your reasons for this request."

Ciel gently shakes her head. "No, and this time, we might never be able to."

Arantos sighs and massages his neck. "Well, what you want isn't forbidden knowledge, just extremely peculiar."

"We'd be grateful if you could keep it private," Yunia politely requests.

He nods in understanding. "I'll ask Logan to compile it since he already knows most of you, so he should be discreet about it."

"Thank you," she softly replies.

Alissa, Hana, Roxanne, and Aoi will meet with Selina, my first crush in this world; Ciel will search for Bitar, her old friend; Lina will visit Gimbo, her Enchanting teacher; and Yunia and I will go meet with the Ryzeks.

Before we split up, Arantos takes me to the library, where Logan spends most of his days.

His large and wide back is instantly recognizable from among all the small and nerdy other scholars, which is a somewhat comical sight.

As we pass one of the priests, I notice an incredibly familiar device.

A large, wooden rectangle the size of an open tome, large buttons marked with either the symbols for one and zero or the basic arithmetic operations, and small lights that turn on or off based on input.

This is an electric binary calculator.

I stop in my tracks and stare as I interrogate the girls. They're absolutely sure that the most advanced calculator they'd ever seen before was a mechanical one made by dwarves that we have in our treasury.

But this one is definitely electrical.

Arantos looks back at me confusedly. "Hm?" He hums, then he follows my gaze and grins. "Ah, that. That's our own homemade version of the electric Lylanine, a computer that Lyle Rizek invented. It's built using a peculiar invention he named Wolf's Gate, and it uses another of his inventions, Lylean Logic, as the theoretical basis to form these electrical circuits. About a month ago, he all of a sudden completely shook the field of Mathematics with his inventions."

"We were still inside the dungeon, so we didn't hear about that…" I mumble, still a bit stunned.

The scholar using the "Lylanine" notices my stare and raises an eyebrow in confusion as Arantos approaches me.

He stops beside me and grins like an excited child as he continues, his gentle voice sending a chill through me, "I heard that you were the one who guided Lyle towards his incredible discovery, which just furthers the mystery of 'who in Hell and Paradise are you?'"

"I did…?" I blurt out.

"Wait, you're the Wolf Ryder?" The scholar suddenly asks in disbelief.

"The very same," Arantos answers for me and chuckles mischievously.

The scholar looks at the calculator, then back at me, and suddenly exclaims, "You're the one who guided Lyle Ryzek with your Blessing! Do you have any insights to share related to the calculation of the position of the moons? My calculations are correct, but the results don't line up with reality."

I did WHAT…?!

A note from Manasong

Hall of Fame of Patrons

The patrons who support Rupegia shall have their names sung by the bards for they deserve the glory and honor. Their names are:

Prince PreownedFIN.

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Noble Aclys.

Noble CarlBaxter.

Noble Yeuromain.

Noble Brandon Lai.

Leave a rating or a review to help me rise to the top or fix my shameful understanding of prose.

Take a look over my blog where all information about the world of Rupegia will be posted.

Join the Discord and discuss, or rant, or meme, or try and fight me so your waifu gets more screentime.

Become a Patron and read chapters in advance, or read the side-stories, or leave your mark on the story, or help choose the next artwork or the next side-story.

Chapter 108: Possibilities - Part 2

Something suddenly pokes my soul and points me to a certain memory.

At first, I get confused about the who and why, but I'm now familiar enough with it to recognize this influence, so I accept it and start to ponder, "If your calculations are correct, then maybe the model is what's wrong. Are you sure that the orbits of the sun, the moon, and the realm are all correct? These three bodies could influence each other in very complex ways."

The scholar stares at me dumbfoundedly, then he glances at Arantos, who nods with a very excited smile, and realization strikes the scholar. "But of course! We must study the orbits more! Thank you, Grand Wolf Ryder," he declares, then bows in his seat and spins around to continue working, ignoring the dozens of annoyed glares he earned due to the noise.

I shake my head and return my thoughts to their previous track.

I guided Lyle to invent actuators and switches, yes, but they were simple electromechanical devices, which don't even compare to a Godsdamned electronic calculator. I don't even remember what I actually said to him that led him to discover… whatever this is…

I turn to Arantos and question, "This 'Wolf's Gate,' is it an electrical switch that lets electricity pass only if a third input is energized?"

He grabs his chubby chin in thought and answers, "I don't know the particulars of it since there are many variants of a Wolf's Gate, but I think it's appropriate to say that it's the physical construction of a 'logic gate' as described by Lylean Logic."

"Do you have a book on 'Lylean Logic' here?"

He nods positively. "We do. I'll ask Logan to find a copy to gift to you."

I smile excitedly. "I appreciate that very much."

I also ask to look inside the electric "Lylanine" and discover that it's jam-packed with finger-sized cylinders, all connected by thick wires.

Its overall construction is quite delicate, so neither the scholar nor Arantos want me to touch it. I notice a lack of proper insulators, like rubber, and they seem to have used wood and leather instead, both of which need to be kept completely dry to act as insulators, so this device needs delicate care to not end up frying itself.

The internals of each "Wolf's Gate" are visible, which reveals to me that they are, indeed, diodes and transistors. They're disks of different metals stacked together, and putting a few points in [Metal Appraisal] reveals that they're all made of silicon with something else added to modify its properties.

As far as the girls know, this world actually has managed to build an Analytical Engine, a huge, mechanical, general-purpose calculator, but they hadn't developed electromechanical components yet.

Electric engineering is an underdeveloped field in this world because anything it can do, magic and enchanting can do better, and that's why I guided Lyle towards the actuator and switch. If he made something useful with those two inventions, then it would open up the field for further research.

I don't exactly remember what I said to him that led him to discover the diode, but I do remember mentioning something about silicon and logic. To think that he went as far as jumping directly to electronics with just some vague words from me is amazing, really.

I do have to make a correction, though.

I lightly touch the calculator and state, "An electric calculator would be something that could be constructed using solely [Electric Magic], but this isn't that. The use of logic gates sets it apart from the typical electric device, so I think this calculator needs a new adjective."

"How about simply 'logic calculator'?" The scholar suggests.

I shake my head negatively and explain, "Too abstract. If we find other ways to physically build logic gates without a 'Wolf's Gate,' then the name will be misleading." And I try not to cringe at the usage of my name.

"How about… 'electrolf'?" Arantos suggests with a sly grin.

I immediately shut that down, "Horrible suggestion. How about 'electronic'?"

"Why the 'ic' suffix? What does it mean?" The scholar asks confusedly.

Fuck…

My knowledge of Latin and Greek isn't good enough to answer that one.

"It's also too similar to 'electric,'" Arantos points out, and I start to regret bringing up this topic.

"What about 'wolfic' or 'wolfical'?" The scholar gives another horrible suggestion.

But this time, Arantos also agrees with me. "I don't think that's a good one. There could be a way to build a Wolf's Gate that uses mana or some other form of energy, so joining 'electron' with 'Wolf' seems like a more proper choice."

"'Electrolf' it is, then," the scholar agrees with a nod, and I just stay quiet, silently cringing.

After we talk to Logan about the books I want, I invite him for lunch with us, and he seems a bit happy at the prospect of talking to Lina again. He helped her a lot back when I had asked her to study this world's history, so I guess they kind of became friends from that.

Once we're outside of the temple, Arantos suggests, "I've heard a few concerning things about you and heretics, so may I suggest that you complement your escort with a few Templars?"

"I'm fine with that," I readily accept. Although Teresina asked us to, we didn't bother to bring the Templars from Escanso with us, so these will do.

Azador goes to the castle to deliver a message to Silvane, and the girls take a Space mage transport to the other parts of the town, but I want to have a little journey, so I suggest to Yunia, "How about we take a walk to the Nobles' Quarter? I want to take a stroll through the town."

"Sure, as long as you [Massage] my feet later," she replies with a subtle smile.

I smile back as the remembered taste of her feet gives me a boner. "Didn't even need to ask."

We walk hand in claws as I casually tell her of our adventures in this town, then she frowns concernedly as I describe the multiple times when we almost died.

"I'd like to say that you had a nice and simple life here, but even for someone like me, your life has been quite eventful…" She comments with a slightly pitying look.

"I guess it was a sort of trial for me. It helped reforge my mind into how it is today," I soothingly reply and gently kiss the back of her hand.

She clutches my hand and caresses my mirror-like scales. "I'm glad that these memories didn't leave a wound on your soul."

I look ahead and let my eyes wander as I absentmindedly think out loud, "One or two of the memories make me feel a bit bad about the way I behaved, but at least I don't feel anything negative when I think about this town. The people here are nice as long as you pull your own weight, and they don't judge you too much unless you try to stand out. I was just unlucky, which is what earned me my nickname…"

She gives me a subtle smirk and whispers, "You hate that nickname because it's the truth…"

"I do…" I begrudgingly admit.

After a casual stroll, we reach the Nobles' Quarter, and our escorts relax a bit since there's little traffic here.

We stop by a sweets shop to buy a few small Gorgon fruit sweets for us and our escorts. These sweets aren't stupidly expensive like the ones from the capital, so they accept the gift without any of the awkwardness from last time. They taste like blueberry and lychee, so they're a pretty good light snack.

Then we soon reach the Ryzek estate, and we stop before the black metal gate to talk to the guard in shining chain mail.

"Ah… Mister Lyle Rizek left for the High Forest a day-cycle ago," the guard explains, and we take a moment to process this information.

"This is quite convenient, I guess," Yunia comments with a wry smile.

"Surprising, too, but if he named an invention after me…" I mumble with a frown as my tail stiffly waves about from my mixed feelings.

The guard bows and offers, "Would your Lordship desire to come in? Signeur Horvath and Madame Helena are currently within."

"We'll pay them a short visit, then we'll return to the temple," I decide.

The guard presses a button, apparently an electrical one since I didn't sense him feeding it any mana, and a butler comes out to greet us.

After confirming our identities, we're allowed in, and Sebastian, who I don't even need to use [Sense Soul] on to confirm his name, leads us through the familiar estate.

I feel like the yellow-bricked mansion was plucked straight out of Mac Gantus with how perfectly it follows imperial architecture. Its vibrancy clashes a bit with the pastel colors of the rest of the mansions in the Nobles' Quarter, but that just makes it more interesting to admire.

The roomy interior is decorated with yellow and blue tiles with flowing patterns, and the air is magically conditioned to be perfectly fresh. It feels like imperial houses are designed to be like huge ballrooms.

We meet up with the Ryzek couple in their backyard flower garden. Helena is drinking tea while her husband is playing with electricity, making it flow between a few pylons that surround his raised platform.

The noblewoman is thin and petite with a very kind smile, and her black hair is styled in a girlish braid that betrays her age. Horvath is a lanky man with wild eyes and an enviously long mustache twirled in a stereotypically villainous way.

Once they notice our approach, Helena stands up and smiles at us while Horvath stops his training and goes over to stand beside her.

"The prodigious Lord Wolf Ryder and the stunning Lord Yulania Ryder, it's an honor to receive the new royals here," Horvath greets us with a wide, slightly creepy, smile.

"The distinguished Ryzek family has only grown since coming to Rabanara, I see," Yunia returns the courtesy.

While I give them a handshake, and they both seem quite to be interested in my shiny scales, Yunia goes for the elven greeting, and they both lightly kiss her hand.

Then we sit down and quickly exchange a few pleasantries.

Helena lowers her head respectfully and affirms, "Our son owes you a lot for your guidance. The invention of the Wolf's Gate has established his path as a researcher and given him prestige worthy of a noble."

"He went a lot further with my advice than I could have ever expected, so I believe that his own brilliance helped him the most," I politely reply.

"Better yet, let's thank the Goddess of Knowledge for Blessing you and giving your words their due weight," Horvath adds.

I smile warmly as I feel a bit of an odd feeling within me. "Yes, I also have a lot to thank her for."

Then Horvath grins like a villain as he reveals, "Lyle is currently going on a vacation around the High Forest as a reward for his genius invention, but after he's done, he'd like to work for you and continue his research."

Horvath isn't an unpleasant person, it's just that his face unnerves me a bit, so I contain my discomfort and smile diplomatically. "That's excellent news. I have many ideas about what we could build together by using his inventions."

Now that Lyle has opened the door to electronics, the number of possibilities is thrilling. I feel like it's just a matter of time before I'll be on the internet laughing at memes once again…

After a short and polite chat, we return to the temple and start poring over the books that Logan collected for us.

I, of course, first read Lyle's book on Lylean Logic to sate my crippling curiosity.

It really is boolean logic. I now remember that I mentioned propositional logic to him, which is what he used as a basis to define the axioms of Lylean Logic.

The idea of Turing-complete computers doesn't seem to have been developed yet, so we'll still need to formally develop the theory of computation before this technology can truly spread around the world.

Still, we'll basically be skipping a hundred years of human history just so that I can see a stupid meme about a cute shark girl playing games.

And I'm fucking stoked.

Regarding slightly more important matters, Yunia collects some interesting information about intra-Cycle and inter-Cycle travel. There's not a lot of information about it, but the basic idea is that nobody should ever attempt either of those things.

Other Cycles are dangerous. They're completely alien to us and could fuck shit up real bad if anything from them is allowed to come into ours, so the temple considers trying to find a way to travel between them to be heresy. However, thanks to the fact that we're a family with three Blessings, we're basically immune from their persecution, so we don't have to worry about that.

Since other Realms are supposed to be very similar to each other, it's quite likely that Earth is within our Cycle, and that's something that I used to want to get confirmation about from the Gods, but now, I don't really care anymore.

Whether travel between Realms is allowed or not isn't clear, though. It's also said to be dangerous, but it's not explicitly forbidden.

The other Realms likely have their own version of the Humanoid Gods, and though they could have their own rules or Sins, they might not have a God of Existence ensuring that the rules are obeyed, like with Earth. This means that life in the other Realms could actually be worse than on Earth or Rupegia. A resource-hungry Realm is just as bad as a completely alien outer-Cycle Realm. And though everyone in the Cycle is under the God of Creation, that doesn't mean that there aren't evil people or agents of the God of Destruction out there.

There's also no confirmation or denial about whether traveling between Realms is actually possible, just that attempting it is dangerous. Well, at this point, it's clear to us that the temple knows that it's possible, but they're trying to just obscure it without outright lying about it.

Now that I have a better perspective on other Realms, I think that the person who sent me that message when I first came here was actually Earth's God.

Sender: God.

"I'm sorry about this, but there's no way for you to go back."

And I'm starting to believe that it was someone above the Humanoid Gods or Earth's God that brought me here because it seems that the Gods of each Realm don't interact much, so I find it hard to believe Earth's and Rupegia's Gods conspired to bring me here.

All these tidbits of information are based on even smaller Messages from the Gods, making it a puzzle that has been slowly filled out throughout the ages.

My conclusion from this brief bout of research is that as long as you don't make a tunnel which a swarm could come through, then maybe travel between Realms can be justified with a good enough reason.

This is a bit of a Pandora's Box, though. If I make a deal with another Realm's God to allow me to travel between our Realms, then it sets a precedent that others could use to also travel between Realms. If the other Realms' Gods aren't completely robotic and can be reasoned with, then they could be convinced to loosen Realm travel restrictions over generations, so after the first person opens the door, it's something that could end up becoming a problem in the future.

Wait, isn't that exactly what happened to me?

I used to want to simply go back to Earth, but now that I'm comfortable with living my life in Rupegia, I've started thinking about how I could use other Realms to my benefit. I'm the problem.

The Box has actually already been opened with me, and now I have the choice to use the Forbidden Knowledge, or to take it with me to the grave.

But I find the temptation incredibly hard to resist.

I sigh and close the book. My reading of Lylean Logic has been interrupted by this dilemma.

Yunia gives me a questioning look. She has no interest in inter-Realm travel, but for me, the possibilities are a bit alluring. It's simply an intrinsic desire I have to know more, to explore the unknown, to boldly go where no man has gone before. Maybe I could even bring back knowledge from a more technically or magically advanced civilization to help our world, who knows?

Godsdamned Pandora's Box.

I'm loath to just outright dismiss inter-Realm traveling, but the seriousness of this decision is simply too great for someone like me to make on my own, so I feel like I should just drop this crazy idea altogether.

I push my chair closer to Yunia's and give her my puppy eyes until she comforts me. I don't think I'll be able to make a final decision about it right now, so I'll just postpone it until it becomes relevant again.

Intermission - Lina

I see a large house that was carved from a handful of huge black boulders with red streaks. There's also a low, shingled roof where small mushrooms and moss grows, and I recognize most of them as being edible. The facade is concave, increasing the amount of surface area for a large carving, and the focus point of the facade is right in front of the gate, where I am.

The carving depicts the glorious front gate of Hombombein; the impregnable fortifications of the main wall; the long and complex artificial waterfalls, the Mountain's Scar; and the towering statues of our ancestors lining the main road.

This is the most beautiful house I've ever seen, but I'm not here to be like Wolfy and rave about architecture.

While I admire the carving, the gate guard calls Sebastian, the slave butler, but then the butler hurries out of the house with an anxious expression.

He suddenly recognizes me and immediately stops in place. "Lina, it's you!" He shouts as he smiles, then makes a grimace and assumes a polite servant's demeanor. "Royal Lord Lina, it's an honor to have you here," the young human greets with a bow.

"I'm… happy to be back," I awkwardly reply, unsure of what to say, then I notice how the butler remains bowed, so I hurriedly add, "You may rise."

He straightens up immediately, his face struggling to hold back a smile, but I only feel guilt when I see the collar around his neck.

He happily guides me in, and we cross Nala's small front garden, which stirs up nostalgic memories about my time here, then we enter the house, and the perfect, cool air instantly puts me at ease.

The house doesn't have many windows, so they use crystal lights to illuminate the interiors, giving it a very cozy and soothing atmosphere.

Sebastian offers me a seat on the comfortable sofas on the right side of the room while he prepares a simple cocktail at the large bar that takes up the other side. My escorts remain outside except for one who stands by the door, silent like a statue.

Though I should be looking forward to my reunion with Gimbo, I still can't shake the guilt I feel from being freed.

Worrying about something I can't change, at least for now, would get both Wolfy and Yunia to chastise me.

I also don't want to worry them while they're sharing a happy moment together, so I smother this negative emotion and focus on the now. There's still a long way before I can turn this blessed Fate of mine into something more than just happiness for myself.

Sebastian serves me the cocktail with a smile, and in the drink, I can see an uncountable number of globules of different liquids that refuse to mix with one another, like oil and water. A traditional dwarven Cycle.

I thank him and sip on it slowly, trying to figure out all the different flavors within it. The first one I manage to identify is Dwarven Coffin, which makes me a bit happy. When the guilt eventually subsides, I should ask Armanpoosh to procure a bottle of it for me.

A minute later, Gimbo comes in together with his wife. He still looks the same as he did before with his youthful face, his shining dark hair, and his tired-looking eyes, though now, they're filled with happiness from his wide smile.

Nala's gentle, smiling face seems to have gained a few more wrinkles, but her lustrous and wavy light brown hair is still just as stunning as I remember. I'm almost certain she has some elven inheritance.

The two quickly walk towards me with linked arms, and I stand to receive them.

"Gimbo, Nala," I politely greet and nod respectfully. I really wish that I could bow to them, but I can't anymore, not even to them.

They don't stop at the sofa before me and continue walking forward, then they unlink their arms, and Nala wordlessly pulls me into a hug, stunning me into speechlessness.

"We couldn't believe that it was you when we heard the news, but it is, it is…" Gimbo softly blurts out, his voice breaking up, then he hugs me, too.

After a moment where I still can't move, Nala pulls back and caresses my cheek as she confesses, "We were worried about you because you were always so harsh and tense. We didn't think you were ready for a life of adventuring, but how wrong we were, oh, how wrong."

"Though you still do seem a bit tense…" Gimbo adds with a wry smile.

I sigh and calm myself down, then I give them each a quick hug. After facing armies of monsters and heretics, showing some gratitude to the couple that so kindly took care of me and worried about my well-being should be a simple thing.

I lay my hands on their shoulders and smile as I confidently declare, "Thank you for everything you did for me. I wouldn't be here without your guidance…"

A note from Manasong

Hall of Fame of Patrons

The patrons who support Rupegia shall have their names sung by the bards for they deserve the glory and honor. Their names are:

Prince PreownedFIN.

Prince Creamy Spinach.

Lord Andrew Meyers.

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Lord Bakerdea.

Lord Maurice.

Lord Empyrean.

Lord Mattirro Draca.

Lord Fullmoon.

Lord Sean Drake.

Lord EESDESESESRDT.

Lord FrostyCube.

Lord Mike Bartter.

Lord Cardinal Steiner.

Lord Warwulfv.

Lord Jorge Franco.

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Lord DJ.

Lord Philip.

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Chapter 108: Possibilities - Part 3

Ciel's meeting with Bitar was so awkward that my schadenfreude overwhelms my jealousy and improves my mood. The little shit might have given up on Ciel, but he still stares at her delicious cleavage and luscious ass at every opportunity he gets, so the dragon in me keeps coming up with ways to assert dominance. It doesn't help that her sense of fashion has been slightly corrupted by the almost-exhibitionist elves.

I just brush my jealousy off as annoying dragon things, but I can't deny that I enjoy seeing him fumble with his words, and that's enough sadism to satisfy my human side. I do approve of how Ciel doesn't hug him anymore, especially considering how thin her dress is.

As lunchtime approaches, Azador arranges for carriages for all of us, and Ciel, Yunia, Arantos, Bitar, and I have to share one.

Bitar's expressive eyebrows are knitted together in a frown as he scans over my draconic features, which seem to distract him from stealthily ogling at Ciel. His blue eyes lack brilliance in comparison to Yunia's, but I do admit that they go well with his dark hair and make his classically handsome features more striking.

Still, to me, he just looks like an annoyed puppy.

"You seem concerned about something, Bitar," Arantos reads my mind, his honeyed voice unraveling Bitar's eyebrows a small amount.

And he immediately blurts out, "His scales and claws look sharp. How does he not… cut others with his touch?"

I remove the padding on my claws and run a hand along the wooden wall of the carriage, leaving five visible grooves in it.

"You think they don't enjoy a little blood?" I reply with a sadistic grin, and both Arantos and Bitar slowly raise their eyebrows as they stare at me in disbelief.

"Wolfy…!" Ciel angrily whispers.

"Alright, alright…" I cast [Grow] on the grooves to repair them, then I pad my claws and run them along the wood again, making a loud scratching noise, but not leaving any grooves in it. "I have a lot of control over my own body. I can even make things larger and longer." Then I showcase that by making my claws monstrously large.

Ciel blushes in embarrassment and pinches my shoulder. "Stop it…!" She whispers-shouts.

"I can also make things smaller in case it's too tight," I tease one last time and shrink my claws.

Ciel seems like she's about to erupt with anger, so I stop there. One of the advantages of [Bind] is knowing where the line is so that I don't go too far.

"Is… is that a skill that can be learned?" Bitar hesitantly asks, then both he and Arantos stare at me intensely, anxiously waiting for my answer.

I grin at Ciel while Yunia sends me a subtle, smug glance, then I explain to them all about [Soul Manipulation] and the [Solidification] spell.

We reach the restaurant that's been partially rented out for us at the same time as Gimbo's carriage.

Lina comes out of it along with the couple, and they're followed by Toroo, a friend from my time at Rabanara's University, and her husband, a man named Larkin.

She's a solemn-looking and cute, young wereowl woman with brown hair with white streaks; long, spiky eyelashes and eyebrows; round, yellow eyes; feathers coming out of the top of her hair in a way that resembles cat ears; claws on her hands; and a rather small mouth.

Larkin is a weredog with the characteristics of a brown Labrador and pool-blue eyes. His amiable face gives me the impression that he'd make an excellent pet, for some reason. The two have the delicate demeanor of nobles even though they're just high-class commoners, but the man seems rather nervous about meeting with us.

Toroo carries their child, a baby wereowl boy with a very round face and large, yellow eyes. Ciel and Yunia immediately lock on to the cute little one like how a predator stares at its prey, though Yunia is more subtle with her interest.

The young mother comes scurrying towards us with a happy smile on her face. "Hoh! Diamond dragon scales! Lord Wolf, you've changed so much!" She exclaims, then gives us a lady-like curtsy.

I gently smile back and smoothly reply, "Though you didn't grow horns like I did, you've also changed, Madame Toroo. Your grace is befitting of a mother now."

She giggles elegantly and walks over to Yunia for the common elven greeting.

After we go through the usual pleasantries of nobles and introductions, we enter the restaurant and find Silvane and Nononya at our reserved table.

Then I notice something interesting.

Soul Info

Name | Silvane Andera | Race | Silver Elf | Level | 49
HP | 100 | MP | 2,640 | Magic Power | 1,140
Strength | 10 | Endurance | 13

Soul Info

Name | Nononya Andera | Race | Rabbit-Type Wereanimal | Level | 22
HP | 100 | MP | 1,110 | Magic Power | 560
Strength | 9 | Endurance | 10

Oh, fuck, they've married!

Silvane's upturned blue eyes stare into mine with a gentle but excited look. As a connoisseur of the elven body, her extreme femininity and tender behavior activate the breeding instincts within me, but I keep them well under control.

I've never seen her wear an elven dousnadeia; instead, she prefers simple, plain dresses that hug her lithe body in all the right places and go well with her straight, silver hair.

Nononya is still the same adorable and huggable white rabbit girl as always. Her short white hair is just as poofy as her rabbit tail, and her large turquoise eyes seem stunned, though her whiskers still twitch with each step I take. The "presence" that comes from my high level and race must be affecting her quite strongly.

I smother the dragon completely and give her the most human and gentle smile that I can, which seems to be enough to help her relax.

"Lord Ryders, I'm overjoyed that we're able to meet again," Silvane greets with a wide smile.

"And this time, at least we're both clothed," I reply with a tease, and Nononya instantly blushes.

But Silvane takes it in stride, "If you'd like to undress, we wouldn't mind." Then she smiles innocently.

I just laugh it off and offer a handshake. The different reactions that people have to my sharp claws and shiny scales amuses me.

Silvane takes my hand without any hesitation and inspects the scales with curiosity. "They're so beautiful," she hums in wonder, then raises her gaze to look at me. "I'm envious of how your children will inherit the characteristics of the Symbol of Might." Then she releases my hand.

Unless I put a few in you.

I look at the black, thick hide of my palm with a bit of fondness as I confess, "They're quite often a bit inconvenient to have, but the draconic pride that has been born within me forbids me from removing them."

She lets out a short, cute giggle. "It doesn't compare to your troubles, but sleeping on my side is a bit uncomfortable, so I sympathize, even if just a little bit."

"Oh, yes, they do bother me a bit," Yunia quietly agrees as her long ears twitch.

"I've found a way to temporarily become fully human again, though, so it's not as bad as it could be," I reveal and shrink my hand a little bit to give an example.

Both of them raise their eyebrows in surprise, then Silvane smiles with her eyes. "That's great… really. I'm happy for you," she warmly replies.

Then I offer my hand to Nononya. "And how about you? How have you been?"

"G-g-great…!" Nononya exclaims and energetically grabs my hand. "I've made so much progress with [Summoning Magic] that I'm almost ready to submit my improvements to the University."

Oh, right, she said that her project was to expand the [Summon Small Bird] and [Summon Dog] spells.

Her mouth continues to move, but she doesn't say anything else, and neither of us move our hands, so we just remain like that, staring at each other in silence.

I grin as her eyes start to gloss over and her white skin slowly reddens.

"Nono is quite absentminded today," Silvane comments with a wry smile, then gently caresses one of Nono's long rabbit ears, making her shiver and re-energizing her as she suddenly shakes my hand vigorously.

I let my thick tail freely wag in amusement, grabbing Nono's attention again, and she stops moving her hand to stare at it, mesmerized.

"You should tell me about the progress of your research later," I casually mention, then I release her hand, and Nono snaps back to reality once again.

Soon after we take our seats, the rest of my wives arrive at the restaurant with Selina, her husband, and Ciel's unofficial mother, Alana. Unfortunately, it seems that Hatara and Garanae went with Lyle on his vacation, so they aren't here to join this impromptu party. Also, Nour left his rented house, and we don't know where he is.

Selina is just as cute as I remembered. Her blonde hair has been tied into a neat bun, giving her a slightly mature air that makes her seem older, though I'm sure she's the same age as the system says I am.

Alana is a chubby blonde woman with a pixie cut and a very strong "kind auntie/sassy mother" aura. Her [Cooking] skill is known to be legendary, and perhaps even better than Krysta's considering how she managed to fatten up an ex-Templar like Arantos.

Alissa is quite happy to meet with Silvane, and the two girlfriends share a tight hug, allowing me to savor Silvane's small mounds through Alissa's [Bind].

The introduction of Aoi stuns our new acquaintances, then we give everyone a quick show by turning into dragons at the same time and striking a pose as we roar (not very loud, though, to not scare the rest of the restaurant).

I'd love to have a picture of this moment.

The applause that we receive in return inflates the ego of the dragons inside us so much that it becomes hard for us to turn into humanoids again, but the smell of our food arriving pushes the gluttonous dragons to give in.

My creation, the baby Harpy wings with Buffalo sauce is still in vogue, and they've started coming up with variations of the sauce, even creating something very similar to barbecue. They've also come up with new recipes that use Worcestershire, including using it in a hamburger patty, though, unfortunately, the dish is just the patty and not a proper sandwich.

Silvane and Nono finally tell us that they got married while we were inside the dungeon. Though Nono is obviously awkward about showing affection in public, she still gives us a smile as bright as the sun when Silvane calls her "my wife." They really are so cute together that I almost shed a manly tear from witnessing their happiness.

We may have missed their ceremony due to Arreira's trials, but at least they'll be able to be present for ours.

And once the food starts to run out, I broach a more cerebral topic, "So, Nono, how's your research been going?"

She jerks her head towards me and covers her mouth with her hand as she cutely chews, her cheeks slightly bulging, then she swallows and answers, "I've managed to alter the spells and increased their breadth without increasing the spell's complexity in turn."

Roxanne perks her head up at that, suddenly interested. "But that's impossible," she states confusedly.

Nono smiles smugly and giggles softly. "Normally, it is, but I've rebuilt the spell, removing the unnecessary parts, so it's now a straight-up improvement from the original one."

Roxanne's mouth hangs open for a second. "Okay, that's actually impressive. You might even manage to have the system replace the original spell if it spreads around enough."

Which is exactly what we want to do with [Bind]…

Silvane joins in with high praise, "Nono will have her name written in the history of magic due to her accomplishment."

And the cute bunny girl's posture shrinks from the sudden attention as she looks down and giggles, then she lifts her eyes towards us and confesses, "Wolf-… Lord Wolf's notes about [Summoning Magic] helped a lot with grasping its true structure. Since it's an incomplete magic school, there were a lot of little things I could improve on."

"Lord Wolf's Blessing is well deserved, I see," Silvane follows as she pats Nono's head.

"Hooh, yes, he even helped me a lot with [Illusion Magic], too," Toroo joins in and nods at me gracefully.

"The Goddess once again shows her foresight by having recognized Royal Lord Wolf's wisdom so early on," Arantos states, receiving many words of agreement in return.

"But let's not lose sight of the ones who worked so hard to actually achieve these results," I smoothly announce and turn the heat back on Nono and Toroo, though only the latter is pleased by it.

Once the desserts arrive, our talk breaks off into casual chatter, with most of the girls flocking around Toroo and her baby.

"We're going to get fat from feasting for so many days in a row…" Ciel mumbles with a depressed tone as she stares at the sweets.

"At least for you, it all goes to your cow tits," Roxanne replies and glares angrily at Ciel's juicy, bouncy bits.

Ciel frowns and looks down. "What do you mean? They've become bigger…?"

Hana reaches over and fondles Ciel quite vigorously. The male side of the table, plus Silvane and Nono, all refuse to look at the scene.

Ciel bats Hana's hand away, and the cheeky dragonkin chuckles. "No, they haven't. She's playing with you," Hana exposes the evil succubus.

"Your ass, though, has become fatter," Yunia bluntly states, and Ciel groans as my elven queen subtly smirks.

"Not another word on this topic," Ciel orders, and we obey.

I keep Nono company and have her detail what improvements she's made with her research. She managed to incorporate [Monster Summoning] into the spell, so the pool of animals to summon draws from the soul's Experience instead of being pre-built, allowing it to be expanded a lot more easily than before.

I knew it was the right idea to give her my notes about [Monster Summoning].

Then Silvane brings up a topic that gives me chills, "Say, Alissa. I heard some rumors about Wolf's 'appetite.'" And she gives Alissa a subtle, sly smile.

"They're probably true," Alissa immediately replies in a sober tone.

Silvane is taken aback. "I'm sorry…?" She mumbles, stunned.

Alissa smiles warmly as she innocently pimps me up, "Wolfy is part dragon now, and he was already an insatiable beast before, so he has only become even more of a devourer of women."

Silvane blinks once, her face completely inexpressive. "So… he actually lays with whoever he wants?"

Alissa nods and happily explains, "We do too, but only with other women. No men besides Wolfy will be ever allowed to touch us."

Silvane stays silent for a long moment, the only movement in her impassive face the blinking of her eyes, then she suddenly blurts out, "I want to negotiate for a Breeding Contract."

Half the table goes silent, stunned at her words, while Alissa and I both freeze, then her smile widens at the same speed that my eyebrows rise.

Lina's Trivia: The term Breeding Contract is rarely used due to how perverse it sounds, so the more prudish nobles usually refer to it as a Child Contract and the like.

"But of course," Alissa replies with a manic grin and commands Yunia to help her through [Bind], then the negotiations begin.

"Nononya is a virgin, so I'd also like to sell her first time to you," Silvane states matter-of-factly, and I choke on my spit.

Holy fuck!

The dragon roars and laughs out loud as his majestic cock pierces the sky with one of the biggest erections I've ever had.

I clear my throat and recompose myself, then Nono and I stay awkwardly silent for a moment as we watch the negotiations progress at light speed.

I glance at her and comment, "I didn't know you saw me that way."

"I don't understand…?" She asks back as she tilts her head, making her rabbit ears sway. At least for once, she isn't blushing.

I frown and scratch my cheek with a claw as I try to rephrase what I said, almost getting myself cut in the process. "I mean, I didn't know that you were attracted to me enough to want a child."

Her short white hair puffs out as she becomes flustered. "W-w-well…! How could I not? How could any woman not? Or even a good portion of men…! Besides, I'm a noblewoman now, at least this much is to be expected of me!"

Wait, I think I'm assuming a bit too much here.

I steel myself and ask directly, "You'd have my child, but you aren't romantically interested in me?"

She looks away and pats her own head just like Silvane does. "N-no… I'm sorry. I think of you as a close friend, though. Besides, I was born a commoner, so I never thought that a harem was something for me."

Seems like the same view as Klein's.

I grin as the evil within me makes a resurgence. "So, if I were single, you'd marry me?" I smugly tease.

Silvane instantly turns her head towards me, and for the first time, I see her gentle face show a hint of anger. "Lord Ryder, I must ask that you don't tease my wife in such ways!" She protests energetically.

I laugh heartily, then I recompose myself and gracefully nod. "I apologize. I won't push this matter further," I politely reply.

Silvane pouts while Nono sweats cold, trying her hardest to not let herself be affected by my words.

Ciel, Bitar, Arantos, Toroo, and Larkin engage in quite the lively conversation, ignoring the negotiations completely, apparently kind of intentionally. Roxanne, Lina, Aoi, Gimbo, and Nala have a casual discussion about enchanting and smithing as the dwarf couple seems to be enchanted with Aoi's curiosity in those topics, and they don't have much reason to feel surprised about the negotiations.

Selina and Thomas, her husband, intensely listen to us, completely unabashed as Hana entices them further with little tidbits about our "adventures." Alissa's stories about our adventures and "adventures" seem to have piqued their interest strongly enough that they've lost their inhibitions. As a (former, I guess) enthusiastic consumer of manga and hentai, I have absolutely no reason to judge them for it.

"Since Lord Wolf is so knowledgeable with [Summoning Magic], how about we have him aid Nononya in furthering her research?" Silvane suggests with a business smile.

Yunia shakes her head and declines, "Too vague. How would we determine that Wolf's influence has furthered her research enough?"

Silvane lowers her head respectfully as she replies, "It's not my intention to negotiate hard conditions, but rather, I merely want to ensure that the future of my wife is close to someone with a Blessing that may aid her."

Alissa and Yunia share a look as they quickly converse through [Bind], then Alissa is the one to continue, "And what about you? We heard that you're still close to the Chosen Descendant, Haaran Anara."

Silvane smiles gently as she slowly nods. "I am, and I shall remain so for the rest of my life due to my oath, but it only extends to me. Nononya is my wife, but she's still as free as she could be."

"So it's only her who's bound, but not her noble house," Alissa comments through [Bind].

"That's surprisingly fair. The Anaras don't have a reputation of being charitable," Yunia replies in my soul space.

Yeah, they sure don't.

"Hm… these terms are acceptable," Alissa finalizes the negotiations.

"Since there's no reason to wait, how about we have him finally take Nono's first time tonight?" Silvane drops a bomb.

"That'd be perfect," Alissa sets it off within my heart.

Oh, boy.

A note from Manasong

Hall of Fame of Patrons

The patrons who support Rupegia shall have their names sung by the bards for they deserve the glory and honor. Their names are:

Prince PreownedFIN.

Prince Creamy Spinach.

Lord Andrew Meyers.

Lord Novgarod.

Lord Michale Erwin.

Lord Bakerdea.

Lord Maurice.

Lord Empyrean.

Lord Mattirro Draca.

Lord Fullmoon.

Lord Sean Drake.

Lord EESDESESESRDT.

Lord FrostyCube.

Lord Mike Bartter.

Lord Cardinal Steiner.

Lord Warwulfv.

Lord Jorge Franco.

Lord Khristopher Welsh.

Lord DJ.

Lord Philip.

Lord Tenebris Lupus.

Lord The Tallest Joshua.

Lord Copey Dunt.

Lord Dracopuppy23.

Lord Chris Carter.

Lord Paul Daval.

Lord Bradly.

Lord Aubrey Powell.

Lord AndreyUC.

Lord Cidant.

Lord Tmac.

Lord Krawn.

Noble Salty Panda.

Noble Mild Fracas.

Noble Aclys.

Noble CarlBaxter.

Noble Yeuromain.

Noble Brandon Lai.

Leave a rating or a review to help me rise to the top or fix my shameful understanding of prose.

Take a look over my blog where all information about the world of Rupegia will be posted.

Join the Discord and discuss, or rant, or meme, or try and fight me so your waifu gets more screentime.

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Chapter 109: The Dragon and the Rabbit - Part 1

A note from Manasong

Attention: to conform to the limit of sexual content allowed in a novel, I've censored this chapter. You can look for the uncensored version here.

A strong, delightful shudder starts at the base of my tail and makes its way up along my spine, then it reaches my throat, and I groan in excitement.

I look at the stiff little bunny girl before me, and our eyes meet, then she shudders, though hers seems to have more fear than pleasure in them.

"Don't worry, I'm quite experienced with virgins," I cheekily brag, and Thomas chokes on his drink.

Nono is too frozen to react, but Silvane comes to her rescue again, "Oh, my, Lord Wolf Ryder, I didn't imagine you had such a twisted fetish for defiling innocent young girls." And she gives me a shit-eating grin, which is still incredibly beautiful on her elven face, regardless of how mischievous it looks.

I scoff and wave my claws dismissively at her. "'Innocence' is a myth. I merely find inexperienced women endearing, and I take pleasure in guiding them towards exploring their bodies and blooming into their sexuality."

"How noble. So you take the virginity of young girls and turn them into adventurous women?" Silvane drops a question on my lap, dripping with sarcasm.

I narrow my eyes at her and give her an intense stare for daring to mock the noble goals of a dragon. Once I see her eye twitch, I feel like she has suffered enough, so I gracefully continue, "More or less, but I wouldn't say 'adventurous,' I merely want them to have better self-esteem and confidence in their actions. And more importantly, no woman is ever 'defiled' by sex."

"Spoken like a worshiper of the Goddess of Love," Arantos hesitantly chimes in, then gives Ciel a cheeky look.

"I'd say that's a bit of a stretch, but…" Bitar adds with a frown, then shrugs.

My sadism is flaring again at being able to brag in front of other men, especially Bitar since he's so obviously attracted to one of my wives. I flash him a smug grin and give Ciel a mental "push" to interject.

She suddenly jumps in her skin as her asshole puckers, bracing herself for the slap against her ass that never comes. Once she realizes what I did, she sighs internally at my bullying, but she still does her part.

She clears her throat and defends me, "The Goddess of Love was famous for having a harem even larger than most Emperors', and she 'introduced' an uncountable number of humanoids to her beliefs. If anything, Wolfy's 'philosophy' is closer to the more devout priests of Love than it is to being a 'stretch.'"

"Wait, why have I never met any of those 'devout priests' before?" I blurt out.

"They spend most of their time in the brothel district."

I share a look with Hana. We both feel a sudden hunger for priest pussy.

"But you aren't like those priests, so are you really fine with your husband being so… 'free'?" Bitar suddenly questions her, his expressive black eyebrows joined into one long squiggly line.

Ciel gently nods with an angelic smile, her expression lacking even the slightest hint of jealousy or offense. "Honestly, I've started to feel happy for the other women that find their happiness with Wolfy, as long as they don't steal my time with him."

"She's fine because she occasionally gets a banquet of dwarf or halfling pussy to gobble up," Hana nonchalantly reveals.

Lina and Ciel instantly turn red, but I forbid Ciel from lying, so she doesn't find the strength to retort to Hana.

"Bullying!" My angel suddenly exclaims and pouts angrily.

"That was only one time," I come to her rescue, and she gives me a hopeful look, but then I just dunk her head underwater, "Though we all know how she was looking at the dwarves when we visited Lina's hometown."

She presses her lips together in displeasure and shakes her head, but I'm far from going over the line, so I just flash her a charming smile.

"I find it impressive how nonchalant you all are with your 'negotiations,'" Selina comments with a girlish giggle.

Then Gimbo surprises us by chiming in, "It may sound depraved to commoners, but everyone here is seemingly very friendly with and fond of each other, so I'd say that though there are some fetishes at play," -he glances at me- "the connections being built here are beneficial to everyone."

"I have the same impression," Arantos agrees.

Toroo awkwardly expresses her thoughts, "It's just that negotiating children and sex sounds a bit callous or detached, but knowing their disposition for ribbing, they seem to be more easy-going than perverted or irresponsible."

Silvane gives her a faintly sour look. "I do have a more casual outlook on sex, and I trust the Ryders to not abuse the intimacy I'm asking of them, but I don't have any perversion tainting my actions."

Alissa suddenly chuckles heartily and smugly teases, "Oh, please, Madame Silvane. You're so eager to get my husband's seed into your tight little womb that you're practically salivating. You'd have asked to be impregnated today if he had his inheritable racial skill ready."

Silvane nonchalantly replies, "Well, he is quite the attractive young man."

Alissa's smug smile widens and becomes predatory. "I know the eyes of a dragon fetishist cum-guzzler when I see one. If you don't admit to your perversion, then tonight, we'll make you submit to his glorious cock."

Silvane remains silent, and the two of them have a staring contest. The lewd fox and the dignified elf. Where have I seen such a scenario before?

I glance at Yunia and Roxanne, but they completely ignore me.

"Well, it's moments like these that make me doubt the 'not perverted' part," Toroo comments wryly.

"You're implying that a bit of perversion is bad," I immediately retort.

She scoffs softly, and her feathers perk up."A bit," she tersely replies.

And Ciel comes to defend our family, "Our harem does have a rather overtly sexual nature, but we're all experienced enough to recognize when we're going too far or being unpleasant to others."

And Roxanne uses her high mental "Stats" to look wise for once, "It's really no different than having a hobby like dueling or dancing. You're just biased since you're equating sex with the eccentricities of nobility."

That makes Toroo's pupils widen so much that her irises almost disappear as she turns pensive.

Then Arantos draws all eyes to him with his honeyed but sagely tone as he confidently states, "There are many personal interpretations of the teachings of the Goddess of Love, and they're all valid as long as they don't interfere with the base right of other humanoids to have a free life."

And his speech puts an end to this discussion.

After we finish our dessert and let the Lordsguard eat too, Silvane invites us to her home, a mansion right next to Rabanara's castle.

But I kindly suggest, "Can we pass by Toroo's shop on the way? I'd like to take a look at the results of your research at the university."

"It's a humble shop, your Highness. I don't have much to offer to someone of your station," she politely replies.

I sigh softly. "I've been a Lord for a very short time, I haven't become that pompous yet."

She smiles subtly. "No, you've just become very eccentric."

"That, I can't deny."

Toroo sells specialized magic tools to confuse and distract dragons, which are quite popular with professional dragon hunters. Since a good chunk of Rabanara's economy comes from dragon materials, she has become quite wealthy from the sales of her magic tools.

Her shop has grown so much that she and her husband have taken on a completely managerial role, and they now have enough time to just enjoy their lives in peace.

They bought a lot near the main road to the castle in a prominent spot, and though the shop doesn't have much traffic due to how expensive their wares are, it has so much prestige that even nobles don't mind visiting it.

She shows us not only gems for hunting dragons but also a few recreational tools. Most of them are holograms that can be used for decoration, but the more advanced ones can even be "molded" by one's imagination at will, and Alissa becomes enamored with them.

I get an idea and place an order for a large number of holograms of dragon horns. They'd make for a nice addition to the ceremonial armor of our soldiers.

Just for fun, we test the anti-dragon gems, and Hana, Aoi, and I are affected twice as strongly as everyone else, going up to three times as much when Aoi and I are in our dragon forms. It's a bit frightening how well Toroo has managed to specialize her anti-dragon tools.

Before we leave the shop, I suddenly get an idea, so Alissa and I split off from them.

We cross through the double doors to the monster hunters' guild, hand in claw, and boldly strut in. Not only do our outfits, attitudes, and stunning appearances call the attention of all the hunters, but our supposed "high-level aura" and my "dragon gaze" instantly freeze the lively mood of the guild into ice.

With our gem-encrusted elven swords at our hips, the proud hunters in our path even get out of our way out of fear of offending us.

I notice a lanky blond man with a considerable nose and a bow slung over his shoulder, and he seems sort of familiar to me. [Sense Soul] tells me that he's Simon, and I remember him as an acquaintance from a fellowship that I don't remember the name of. His stiff expression doesn't tell me if he remembers me, though.

The person who I do remember quite well is Carmen, the mature brunette attendant who is currently staring at us in astonishment. She has short black hair, narrow, sexy eyes, a seductive smile, and a mix of motherly and sisterly aura due to her age, which seems to be around forty. Her uniform is very tight, hugging the contour of her hourglass body quite nicely.

I lock eyes with her and advance like a predator with the intention to pounce while she remains still like prey trying to not be noticed by the approaching monster.

Alissa lets go of my claws and hugs my scaled arm tightly, pulling it into the cleavage of her tight, silky shirt. She glances at the adventurers staring at our combined perfection passing by and gives them the subtlest smug smile, then focuses entirely on Carmen again.

We stop by the booth and give the milf a mirrored grin.

"Good day, Carmen," I greet her politely.

"Good day, uh…" She replies and hesitates, trying to remember my name. "Wolf…?"

My grin widens, and I let my tail wag once. "Ryder, yes. I'm quite happy that you remember me."

Then she turns to my wife. "And Alissa-…"

"Also Ryder," Alissa proudly adds, and Carmen immediately understands the implication.

"How-how may I help both of…" She glances down at our swords, then narrows her eyes and immediately opens them wide again as she seems to connect the dots. "Your Highnesses!"

I stay silent for a few seconds to give her a little longer to fully understand the situation, then I smoothly request, "It has been a while since the Helios fellowship last came here, so we wish to reserve a meeting room and use the [Silent Room] enchantment that the guild offers."

Carmen blinks once, and her professionalism takes over her currently perplexed mind. "Ten copper for an hour. You can choose any room on the second-…"

"Perhaps you could guide us…?" I interrupt her and smirk suggestively.

Her brain takes another second to recover, then she breathes in deeply and nods. "Yes, I can," she breathes out, and a sultry smile blooms on her face.

Carmen walks out of the booth, and we follow closely behind her as my eyes carefully analyze her nice, round ass, the absolute territory between her short skirt and black stockings, and her shapely, long legs.

As we walk, her heels echo through the silent hall as every eye follows us, gradually filling with horror because of how we have so obviously charmed the guild's idol.

We go up the stairs, and Carmen enters the very first room, then we follow her in, and the door immediately closes behind us with a click as Carmen locks it and activates the [Silent Room] enchantment.

I grab her shoulders and spin her around in place, then I pull her head down and press my lips against hers.

She immediately answers by hugging my body and copping a feel of my tight ass, then our mouths open at the same time, and our thirsty tongues seek out each other.

Carmen is a delicious, mature woman with a good bit of experience in the art of lovemaking, but even she doesn't have the stamina to last long against my magical dick.

It really does seem that it's only my wives who can take the full brunt of a Ravaging. It's just too stimulating, too savage, too exceedingly manly that the minds of fragile women collapse under the pressure of my will.

After a good half-hour of fierce pounding and slapping of flesh against flesh, she passes out, and I go for a quickie with Alissa since she's really in the mood for it now.

When Carmen starts to wake up again, I summon a light elemental-wife to clean up everything.

The milfy attendant can't move her legs, so I carry her to the sofa and apply some aftercare, [Massage]ing her toned legs, tight ass, and smooth back while Alissa repairs her uniform by using the ten points in [Sewing] that I've temporarily given her.

"If you ever wish to meet with us again, the doors of Escanso will always be open for someone like you," I gently suggest to her, and she gives me a surprised, but very excited nod. "It's the least I could do to reward the one responsible for unlocking my wife's secret desires." Then I give Alissa a warm smile, which she returns in kind.

If it wasn't for Carmen, perhaps Alissa's extreme perversion would've remained locked away for a long time.

Then Alissa's fluffy tail suddenly starts to wag rapidly, and her smile turns into a smirk as she smoothly adds, "You and Osaria would benefit from having a personal assistant."

I raise an eyebrow at Alissa in surprise. I don't disapprove of the implied offer, but I don't want Carmen to feel pressured.

"You mean living among the elves?!" Carmen suddenly exclaims and slowly raises her body.

I continue kneading her thighs as I blink blankly for a brief moment before I finally answer, "Well, yes. Let me warn you that Osaria is my concubine, and she's just as much of a sexual predator as I am."

But that only makes Carmen even more excited.

"Let's not be hasty and ruin your career here. You'll have to pass an interview with my High Chamberlain first before you'll be accepted," I caution her.

She nods diligently. "I understand. I'll come to Escanso with tempered expectations."

I sigh and relax, then I give Alissa an exasperated glance as I finish up Carmen's aftercare, but my foxy wife doesn't have a single drop of shame in her right now. Her perversion is just as bottomless as the well my semen comes from.

After Carmen has recovered completely, we part ways with her and return to our carriage.

"[So, it was a success, then?]" Hukarere asks in Reo with a smirk, showing all of her white fangs.

I put some points in the language and let Alissa use the skill through me. "[Another woman conquered and added to the list]," she proudly replies.

"[I'd rather not use the word 'conquered']," I interject.

"['Charmed,' then]," Alissa counters with a grin, and I find no retort to that.

Silvane's home is a huge Victorian mansion made out of gray, light-blue bricks, which gives it a rather calming atmosphere.

The girls are frolicking on the grass, smelling the flowers, and playing games while a servant slave plays a soothing tune on a guitar. I spot a small white rabbit, a brown owl, and a cute chibi griffin playing tag, and Alissa immediately leaves my side to join them.

I pull out the golems and let them wander about. Their first move is to walk closer to the girls who are having conversations to eavesdrop on them, wanting to learn more about how humanoids socialize.

Lina, Aoi, and Gimbo seem to be the only ones having a serious talk, embroiled in discussing metallurgy and enchanting.

"I never imagined that I'd be discussing crafting with a dragon. This is beyond my wildest dreams," Gimbo comments and laughs heartily.

Aoi tilts her large, scaly head in confusion and asks, "Why? I'm just a tamable breeder-type, aren't I?"

He slowly nods once. "It's precisely because you're a breeder-type that I find this situation so outlandish. The only other way I'd be talking about this with monsters would be if I were kidnapped by breeder monsters and forced to give them my knowledge."

I walk up to them and advise Aoi, "At this point, you should stop calling yourself a 'breeder-type.' You're too humanoid to continue using adjectives related to monsters."

"It won't change that I was born a monster, though," she casually retorts.

I hold my chin in thought, then something comes to me. "Hm… Never forget what you are, for surely, the world will not," I quote Tyrion, though only my wives and I know the source.

"Wise words," Gimbo laconically replies and nods at me.

Aoi's mind is set on the goal of recreating an Earthling rifle, but while she can easily accomplish that with magic, to mass-produce them is another thing entirely, so she's been using Gify to access some of my memories about manufacturing.

"I think what you really need is a lathe," I suggest.

Gimbo doesn't understand the need for it, though. As an enchanter, he only deals with custom-made orders, so he knows very little about the concept of interchangeable parts.

"You need to create precise tools that will let you create other tools with even greater precision. Using tools will always be easier than teaching a mage how to manipulate metal to the same degree of precision," I explain further, and the potential of what I'm suggesting dawns on him.

Gimbo turns his tired eyes to me and gives me a brief, curious look. "An interesting concept," he softly comments, then he turns to Aoi. "I don't know enough about it to advise you on this topic, but I'll gladly answer any questions that you might have about metallurgy and enchanting."

And Aoi responds with a toothy grin. "I appreciate it."

Since their conversation then proceeds to go deep into theory, I leave them be and consider joining the wereanimals currently playing around, but then I notice that there's a pool nearby, and my incessant thirst for women flares up again as another idea comes to me.

I walk up to Silvane, and from my "Items," I pull out a table, and then all of the bathing suits we have. "How about a pool party?" I suggest with a grin, and Silvane's blue eyes shine with excitement.

A note from Manasong

Hall of Fame of Patrons

The patrons who support Rupegia shall have their names sung by the bards for they deserve the glory and honor. Their names are:

Prince PreownedFIN.

Prince Creamy Spinach.

Lord Andrew Meyers.

Lord Novgarod.

Lord Michale Erwin.

Lord Bakerdea.

Lord Maurice.

Lord Empyrean.

Lord Mattirro Draca.

Lord Fullmoon.

Lord Sean Drake.

Lord EESDESESESRDT.

Lord FrostyCube.

Lord Mike Bartter.

Lord Cardinal Steiner.

Lord Warwulfv.

Lord Jorge Franco.

Lord Khristopher Welsh.

Lord DJ.

Lord Philip.

Lord Tenebris Lupus.

Lord The Tallest Joshua.

Lord Copey Dunt.

Lord Dracopuppy23.

Lord Chris Carter.

Lord Paul Daval.

Lord Bradly.

Lord Aubrey Powell.

Lord AndreyUC.

Lord Cidant.

Lord Tmac.

Lord Krawn.

Noble Salty Panda.

Noble Mild Fracas.

Noble Aclys.

Noble CarlBaxter.

Noble Yeuromain.

Noble Brandon Lai.

Leave a rating or a review to help me rise to the top or fix my shameful understanding of prose.

Take a look over my blog where all information about the world of Rupegia will be posted.

Join the Discord and discuss, or rant, or meme, or try and fight me so your waifu gets more screentime.

Become a Patron and read chapters in advance, or read the side-stories, or leave your mark on the story, or help choose the next artwork or the next side-story.

Chapter 109: The Dragon and the Rabbit - Part 2

Silvane wordlessly rings a bell, and instead of a servant, a clay golem the shape of an elven boy and the size of a dwarf hurries out of the mansion and approaches us. It… or he…? Isn't made by [Golemancy], but rather, the [Summon Small Golem] spell.

I sit down and let fox-Alissa come onto my lap, then I let my mind wander as I pet her, pondering about who it was that created [Summoning Magic]. It's such a peculiar magic school that I'm sure the life of its creator must've been quite interesting, until they probably fucked something up when they created [Otherworldly Summoning] and died.

Silvane gives an order to the clay golem, then he runs back to the mansion, and a minute later, ten of them come out, now carrying two tables, a partition, and piles of clothes.

I notice that all of the golems have the shapes of young boys of varying races. I give Nono a curious look, but she doesn't seem to know what I'm thinking about, so she just shyly averts her eyes.

The golems set up the tables, then neatly spread the clothes on them.

"These are the bathing suits we have for our guests. You may pick any that you fancy," Silvane offers, and we crowd around the tables.

When Silvane picks hers and moves towards the partition, Alissa immediately teases her, "Perhaps you should wait and watch as my husband changes, Madame Silvane. You can inspect his body to determine if he's an acceptable partner for your wife."

Silvane immediately turns around and starts playing chicken, "Oh? May I?" She asks with a completely serious tone.

"You may. I feel no shame about my body," I answer in kind and smile.

Silvane blinks once, then pouts softly. "Of course, you don't. But I'm afraid that I'll have to leave the 'inspection' for another time to not embarrass our other guests."

Nono sighs and shakes her head, making her long bunny ears sway cutely, then follows her wife.

Once the female side is behind the partition, we start hearing the delightful sounds of innocent giggles coming from young girls comparing boob sizes, and "the boys" all share an awkward look.

"You know that all my wives are bisexual, right?" I question them, and I get a few weak nods. "Are you all really fine with having sexual predators ogle at your wives' naked bodies?"

Arantos chuckles heartily, Gimbo frowns, Bitar's face becomes flushed, and Thomas and Larkin swallow heavily.

"I-it's fine, it's fine, it's fine…" Thomas stiffly assures himself more than us, and I see in him the obvious signs of a man hiding a boner.

I grin perversely and start undressing myself. "Unless you want the girls to come back while we're still changing, you'd all better hurry," I warn them, and the gayest strip ever begins.

For once, I'm actually the one with the most muscular body, but I know that even the average soldier probably has a higher "Strength" than me simply due to their height, and considering how my stat is matched with Lina's due to her [Stonebody], there's nothing truly impressive about my muscles.

I really need to continue training my [Dragon Transformation] if I want physical strength.

I lay down on the nearest lounging chair and watch through the girls' eyes as the women change.

My perversion is truly beyond salvation now as I feel no shame from peeping on my friends. They're all truly beautiful, even Alana, Arantos' chubby wife, and it'd be a shame if nobody besides their husbands were ever allowed to appreciate their alluring, naked forms.

Yunia walks half-naked all the time, and plenty of Chimeras have already seen Hana under me, so I've already paid the price to justify this small degree of depravity.

Selina is a short, blonde girl about my age, but her body seems younger than Alissa's. Her mounds, her pink nipples, her flat tummy, her strip of blonde hair that decorates the top of her small blooming flower are all absolutely adorable, and I fantasize about her obvious tightness. She chooses a sexy, small, yellow bikini, the little vixen, and smiles at herself in anticipation of her husband's (and perhaps also the rest of "the boys'") reaction.

Toroo is a slender and elegant woman, the one with the seemingly lowest "Strength," but with the charm of a delicate flower, well, two flowers since her lower lips are even longer than Selina's, though her pussy is completely bare. Her breasts are the same size as Selina's, but her nipples are brownish and much larger, making them even more alluring for sucking and pinching. She chooses a modest and elegant, brown one-piece that hugs her body in all the right places.

Alana may be chubby, but she has a very strong amiable air that makes her seem quite alluring to me. Though her body is near the edge of my strike zone, I still feel like having sex with her would be incredibly fun, if not for the fact that her bouncy breasts really appeal to me. She chooses a gray one piece that covers most of her skin, which is understandable, but I don't think she looks ugly in it.

Nala may be old, but she's a gilf just like Teresina, though her small stature due to being a dwarf gives her a very adorable look. Her skin has a lot of wrinkles, but her body is still holding up quite well thanks to her dwarven constitution, and her beautiful, wavy brown hair gives her an alluring charm. Since [Stonebody] doesn't degrade with age, I'm sure I'd have a lot of fun with her. She also chooses a simple, brown one-piece that matches her hair.

Silvane's body is a mix of the elven refined air with Lina's childish cuteness. Her large, red areolas seem a bit oversized for her modest breasts, but that's just one cute quirk in her perfect example of sublime elven beauty. Her milky white skin seems like the perfect canvas for my manly, musky cum, and her tight ass is begging to be stretched until it bleeds. Surprisingly, she chooses a silvery micro bikini that reminds me that all elves are secretly exhibitionists regardless of how dignified they may try to seem.

Nono is one large piece of juicy steak. The perfect mix of curves and lines, she has both the flatness that makes Lina so appealing and the curves that make Ciel a sex symbol. A cute face, thin arms, round but small breasts, ghost white nipples, a flat stomach, smooth pussy, a peach butt, thick thighs, and thin calves. Just thinking of the fact that she'll be served to me tonight makes me struggle to keep the Weapon in check. She picks a checkered black and red bikini that, like her body, is a mix of cute and sexy.

Alissa puts on a cute yellow bikini that enhances her youthful and girlish air, making it refreshing to look at her; Roxanne chooses a more modern-looking one piece bikini in her favorite colors, black and purple, with a sexy design, and all that's missing are sunglasses to finish her superior "cool beauty" style; Hana goes for a wine-red tight bikini pair since she's more active and needs help preventing her babies from breaking free, and she ties her hair in a ponytail, making her look like an athlete who's ready for a competition; Ciel's sexy, curvy body is graced by a white, frilly bikini with thin straps, letting her boobs spill out a bit to the sides, and revealing her cleavage that seems like a magnet for my cock; Lina chooses a very cute, but also very small black bikini with a red ribbon that seems more like lingerie than a bathing suit; human-Aoi puts on a blue elven dousnadeia, making her seem rather exotic with her superior height and extremely slender body; and Yunia teases my desire to make her bend over in front of everyone by also choosing a blue micro bikini that barely hides anything.

The girls come out and line up, subtly, but not so subtly, showcasing their clothes to The Boys, who are barely capable of containing their drool at the mere sight of them.

"I expressly allow all of you to ogle at my wives as long as you don't mind if I ogle at yours," I offer, and only Thomas and Arantos are capable of mumbling in agreement. The others are simply too stunned to register what I just said.

I make sure that my cock is continually at half-chub, making its outline extremely noticeable through the tight elven thong I'm wearing, and I'm rewarded with quite a lot of attention from the female side, making my fantasies run wild.

Nono golems' set out another table with alcohol, which the boys instantly crowd around, then they watch as the girls get into the pool to play ball.

"Nono, I'd like to talk with you about your research. May we go to the shallows to refresh ourselves while we talk?" I politely offer with a charming smile.

Her embarrassment at her chosen attire is instantly forgotten, and her large, turquoise eyes stare at me in wonder. "Yes! We may!" She excitedly agrees, then she motions to one of the clay golems and orders him to place a few lounging chairs in the shallow part of the pool.

"I find it curious that they're all young boys," I comment and give her a side glance just in time to catch her momentary freeze.

"I just imagined cute things when I summoned them," she confesses with barely concealed nervousness.

"But they're all male," I insist with a cheeky grin.

She shrugs and walks away. "They just came out that way."

I snort and follow her into the shallows, but when I move to lay down on the chair, Hana lifts me up by my armpits and lays herself down on my chair first, then sets me on top of her.

I raise an eyebrow at her, and a flood of jealousy pours through [Bind]. She's really getting annoyed at how often wet pussy seems to just fall onto my dick, so she wants to get a bit more attention from me to compensate.

I shrug, then rest my head on her tight pillows and wrap my tail around her calf, and she immediately starts to massage my brain with her strong hands, making me zone out for a moment before I remember what I wanted to talk about.

I clear my throat and start, "First, I'd like to understand how you managed to integrate the 'can summon monsters that the summoner has killed' property of [Monster Summoning] into the other spells."

Nono nods, and her expression turns serious, then I notice a ripple forming around her waist as her small rabbit tail starts twitching. "Right," she starts and takes a few seconds to organize her thoughts. "I call this property 'Experience-borne pattern recreation.' It was what I was the most curious about when I read your notes about [Monster Summoning], so I hired priests and Spirit mages to explore how our souls change when we level up or gain Experience.

"I learned that repeatedly killing the same type of monster gives less and less Experience each time," -Aha! I knew it! I knew that there were diminishing returns on grinding!- "and that's because we don't absorb the 'shell' of the soul, but the 'structure' inside it. Think of a soul as something like a jar with flowers. We don't just absorb the jar, we also absorb the dirt, the flowers, and all the nutrients it holds, and once our soul has enough of those parts, a new 'layer' is formed, a bigger 'jar' with the dirt, nutrients, and even a few random flowers that came directly from the monsters, all ready to be tidied up and reorganized as we gain skills and such. "

"The 'jar' of each type of monster is made up of many different parts, each with a varying degree of usefulness to our humanoid souls, so, by mixing and matching, it's possible to get a wide variety of useful parts, speeding up the leveling process."

I'm so engrossed in her explanation that I don't even dare to interrupt her.

She grins excitedly and ripples form around her waist continuously as her excitement reaches its apex. "The thing is, though, that even after our soul is filled up again with skills, the 'dirt' we used still came from a monster, and it apparently has the 'blueprint' to reconstruct that monster, which explains why wounds to the spirit always heal on their own without leaving any scars since each little piece of our soul has the 'blueprint' to repair itself whenever it's damaged."

Souls have fucking DNA!

I let my jaw hang open for a second, then I give her honest praise, shocked at her discovery, "Wow. It's amazing that you managed to find out so much about the spell, even though you don't have [Sense Soul] and never even saw me cast it once."

She giggles girlishly and smiles adorably as her whiskers twitch. "I knew that you weren't lying in your notes, so I just had to find a theory that explained all the peculiarities of the spell you had detailed, then I tested it out myself, and it worked, proving that my theory was right!"

"Altering a spell's structure is no small feat, either. You're clearly a talented researcher," I praise her further, making her blush.

She turns her head away and mumbles, "You flatter me." Then her whiskers twitch adorably again.

"Wolfy isn't one to flatter. He's always been pretty honest. It's just that he's very 'intense,'" Hana helps me out.

"I seem to have a lot of difficulty with 'seeing' the structure of a spell, so I find researchers who can alter spells fascinating," I coolly confess and close my eyes as the pleasure of Hana's massage continues to soak into my brain.

"Isn't your 'Perception' pretty high?" Hana questions me.

I pat her thigh with my tail. "It is, so there's probably something else hindering me."

"Didn't you create that [Solidify] spell yourself?" Nono curiously asks.

"I had a lot of help from Gify."

"Gih!" The chibi griffin chirps proudly as she paddles her way towards us, then she climbs onto my chest and curls up as she makes herself comfortable.

Nono giggles softly and cheekily comments, "Well, in my opinion, managing to convince a nature spirit to help you is also quite impressive."

I smile smugly and nod. "Why, thank you." And we warmly stare at each other.

"I want to say that you two really need to fuck, but you've got that covered already," Hana grumbles with a slightly envious tone.

Nono becomes bashful, but she still smiles happily.

To not let the mood become awkward, I start to deliberate, "I feel like there's a lot more that can be done to improve [Summoning Magic], though."

"Oh?" Nono's white rabbit ears point up in attention.

"Currently, a trained Summoner has less firepower than any trained system mage, even when we don't include [Ritualism] in the equation. This magic school doesn't have a niche, so other schools can just do what it does, but better."

She nods in understanding and retorts, "Well, no magic can compare to the potential of [Monster Summoning]."

"Yes, but that's still just one spell out of an entire magic school. The whole philosophy behind it needs to be redone from the ground up if we want to 'complete' it."

Her eyes gloss over as she goes into deep thought. "That'd be a gargantuan task."

I grin smugly at her. "Good thing that we're both young and have more resources at our disposal than most living mages."

"Ooh~…" She coos in wonder, then her rabbit tail causes another set of ripples from her excitement.

But wait, there's more, "One thing that I want to add to the spells is 'randomness.' Being able to mold a summon to the caster's exact needs or imagination is a complex task, and it isn't really necessary for the lower levels of the skill."

"Like [Alchemicism]!" She exclaims excitedly.

Roxanne turns to us with a frown, displeased about where our conversation is going.

I hum in thought and confess, "Hm… I admittedly know very little about that magic school," -I turn to Roxanne- "but you shouldn't be so prejudiced, my love."

She purses her lips and lets out a snobbish "hmph," then returns to her own conversation with Yunia and Silvane.

Nono smiles wryly as she remarks, "[Alchemicism]'s bad reputation sure has crossed the realm."

"Why is it so bad?" I curiously question.

"Too many charlatans selling all sorts of obscure trinkets, so some people find it difficult to trust them, but also, quite a few mages get offended when the Alchemicists try to enter their area of expertise."

Roxanne suddenly chimes in, sounding quite irritated, "I got my fill of customers complaining that my potions are too expensive because they don't have a dozen, positive, random side-effects, even though they have ten times as much healing power."

I gaze at the delightful sight of over half a dozen women in bikinis playing around as I ponder, "For a magic school that needs a boost in power, that type of randomness does seem enticing, especially if it's possible to control it at higher levels."

Roxanne isn't pleased, but she agrees that it makes sense.

"A boost in power…" Nono mutters as she lays back on her chair in thought. "[Alchemicism] uses the 'inherent power' of objects to create special effects, so maybe we could integrate that into [Summoning Magic]?"

"You could just use [Alchemy] and add magical 'concepts' to the spells," Roxanne chimes in again, annoying Yunia and Silvane, who now feel like they're being ignored.

"[Alchemicism] claims that the special effects they create are more powerful than those that are possible with [Alchemy] if all things are equal," Nono explains.

My pale succubus starts to flush red in irritation, and I just smile wryly at her while Nono turns a bit shy.

"What else does [Alchemicism] use to 'boost power'?" I question to get Nono talking, hoping that she'll ignore Roxanne.

"The moons," she calmly replies, and realization strikes me.

One of the "aspects" of the moon is referred to as "otherworldliness."

Is that how that spell came to be?

Then I recite something that I learned in my classes on [Nature Magic], "The brightest of the smaller moons in the sky is the one that influences nature the most, so it makes sense that it has some sort of power."

"Our mana also replenishes faster at night," Nono adds.

And I deliberate further, "But the sun is also said to have the same seven moons orbiting it, so the extra regen must be because of the Goddess of the Moons."

Nono nods and turns pensive. "Oh, I see…"

"I heard you mention the Goddess," Arantos voice tickles our ears as he wades closer to us.

I smile at him and explain, "We're brain-storming about how we could use the 'aspects' of the moons to fuel [Summoning Magic]."

"How esoteric," he coos amusedly.

"Do you know anything about the 'aspects'? I know that they influence nature and that their influence is stronger at night."

He nods and sits down on an empty chair. "Yes, that's how the theory of the 'aspects' came to be, but the Gods haven't given us much information on their Avatars, the sun and the moon, so all we have is conjecture."

"They seem to be personality traits."

He smiles gently and expounds, his high "Charisma" giving him such a fatherly air that it's hard to not listen to him, "Exactly. Since the brightest of the lesser moons in the sky influences the behavior of nature, some believe that they're the 'aspects' of the Gods' personality, their 'traits,' as you put it. What is known is that their divine power is being channeled through their Avatars and then emitted at us through the moons.

"Though the lesser moons of both Avatars emit divine power, the sun emits light while the major moon emits mana, so the influence of the lesser moons is amplified at night by compounding with the major moon's mana."

I nod in understanding, but we're getting sidetracked here. "While interesting, this isn't really important for our research. What we should focus on is that there is a power that we could potentially harness to boost [Summoning Magic]."

I always thought that the concept of the Astrologian class was ridiculous, but now…

Then Roxanne interjects, "But why wouldn't you be able to use this 'boost' for other schools of magic? If they could also use it, then the advantage of [Summoning Magic] is negated again."

"If [Alchemicism] already does, then why don't the other magic schools?" I question back.

She readjusts her glasses, and her thin black tail undulates as she hums, deep in thought. "Hmm~… because this aspect of it doesn't share anything with the cores of the other magical schools?"

"I think that makes sense," Nono agrees.

And I start to formulate an objective, "So we have to rethink Summoning with the divine power of the 'aspects' at its core for it to be effective."

Then we all go silent as we ponder.

If I showed [Otherworldly Summoning] to Nono, we could confirm if the spell really does use the aspects of the moons to fuel it, and if it does, then it might be worth it to explore these aspects further.

"If the aspects are personality traits, doesn't that mean that we have them, too?" I question Arantos.

He gently nods and explains, "Yes, it does. Each person has these seven aspects to their personality to different degrees."

I raise an eyebrow in surprise. "What does it mean to have 'otherworldliness' or 'wickedness' within me?"

And he sagely explains, "Since all spirits go through every Realm of the Cycle, otherworldliness is merely the experiences that your spirit still carries from your past lives, while wickedness is our propensity for doing evil, a desire we all have but control or suppress."

Irritability, sociability, presence of mind, friendliness, openness, otherworldliness, and wickedness. How can I use these aspects to empower Summoning?

Summons are mere tools without a personality or wisdom beyond what they can inherit from their summoner. This magic school simply creates husks and fills them with a copy of the summoner's mind, though not because it was the most useful or powerful choice. It's because it was the easiest to implement.

I was never a fan of the Fate series, but maybe I could draw some inspiration from it…

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Chapter 109: The Dragon and the Rabbit - Part 3

We continue theorycrafting about [Summoning Magic] for a while, but most of what we want to test is limited by our lack of knowledge about [Alchemicism]. Fortunately, I know someone that seems to be quite adept with that skill.

I wonder what Stefan will think when I call his daughter for a private meeting with me.

Nono's golems bring out some alcohol, and once the happiness juice starts to enter everyone's veins (except mine), the pool party kicks up a notch as they all loosen up.

Predictably, there are a few wardrobe malfunctions, one from Ciel thanks to a wild jiggly breast that Bitar unfortunately misses, one from Toroo when Lina accidentally pulls on the strings of her top, and one from Selina due to her having chosen a bikini that's a bit too small for her.

Not only that, but Toroo's and Selina's camel toes are so prominent that my nonexistent guilt at peeping on them becomes even more nonexistent. Hana's is also pretty delicious to stare at, but her bikini seems a bit too tight on her since her babies never achieve their freedom.

My half-chub is safely secured in my elven thong, so no happy accidents for the female side, to their (totally subtly hidden) dismay.

Thomas and Larkin quickly become friends while I find myself more enjoying the company of Arantos and Gimbo. Their more passive personalities appeal to my introverted side.

The dragon in me, though, wants to be the center of the party at the same time that it wants to be a recluse, which is annoyingly contradictory. I guess it just wants to be worshiped in silence or something like that, but the human side holds more sway over my decision-making and mood, so it's easy to push these conflicting desires aside.

A servant emerges from the mansion carrying some alcohol to restock the tables, and I notice that it's actually a dwarven man/boy slave who's a bit too young for me to ascertain his true age.

Arantos' eyes follow him intensely, and it makes me a bit confused.

"Is there something wrong with that servant?" I quietly question him.

Arantos suddenly coughs awkwardly and averts his eyes. "Watching for signs of abuse," he whispers back, then frowns for a split second and recomposes himself, returning to his affable demeanor. "I mean, I do this for all slaves held by nobility."

I narrow my eyes in suspicion and comment, "I noticed that the servants are all young boys here, even the summons."

He gives me an odd look. "You didn't know? Madame Silvane has a very specific taste in men."

My tail freezes while pointing up in surprise, and I just stare at him.

"There are as many grassland elves who hate us as there are who love us," Gimbo amusedly comments.

I think he means elves from Elaria, which is one large grassland.

"Don't they hate halflings, specifically?" Arantos confusedly asks.

And Gimbo shrugs. "Most races don't know the difference."

"Why do they hate halflings?" I earnestly ask, filled with curiosity.

Gimbo smiles wryly and gives a subtle nod to the slave servant, who returns it in kind, then the old dwarf amusedly explains, "Some ancient bickering over land that predates even the Empire. The elves once ruled over what is now Lorei Laurelai, but the halflings 'reconquered' it with the help of another kingdom, and the little ones have kept it since then by relying on the protection of other nations, but the elves never forgave them, nor have they forgotten. The pointy ears call the little ones cowards, who then call them sore losers in turn."

Arantos shakes his head in disappointment and remarks, "Blood feuds are the hardest to break, especially those held by entire nations."

Gimbo shrugs. "It isn't that bad if what I heard is true. The empire doesn't let them kill each other anymore, so it has changed into a sort of rivalry."

But Arantos retorts, looking displeased, "Still, even a simple rivalry will cause unnecessary hardship for the weak and vulnerable."

Gimbo and I agree with him. With how different some races are from one another, this world's concept of what classifies as "racism" is completely different from Earth's. While there's the idea that every race has the same "worth," there's still a lot of prejudice due to racial traits that can be considered negative by the other races, like how most people fear angering dragonkin because of how aggressive they can be.

The Lordsguard also relax a bit, though they don't drink any alcohol. Alana, the social butterfly that she is, gets the Chimeras to talk about their experiences. They're from before the empire, so they have a different worldview, and she seems to enjoy getting to know new people.

Selina catches wind that tales of adventure are being told and immediately joins in the conversation. She's fascinated with them since they're both dead and ancient.

The Chimeras lived in the time of the God-Rulers, where anyone who achieved a certain level of power claimed to have something divine within them, and I finally realize that they kind of look at me and my wives like that too. Oritiki was searching for someone worth serving, but I didn't realize that there was such a deep implication in what she saw in us.

The Chimeras aren't just loyal to my family, they're devoted to serving us, especially now that we have both Blessings and Interventions to our name, essentially confirming beyond a shadow of a doubt that we're above the average mortal.

"What about you, why do you serve the Ryder Lords?" Alana asks Jarn curiously.

"I was made to serve," the golem stoically answers.

Alana narrows her eyes in thought and takes a step closer to the unmoving golem. "Hmm… so you can't disobey your creators? Ever?"

Jarn nods diligently. "Ever."

"But you can learn things?"

"Yes, I can."

Alana smiles a bit smugly. "So then you can learn how to disobey, or is there something preventing you from learning that?"

Jarn takes a moment to answer, and I can just imagine her eyes glossing over in thought as if she had real ones. "I can learn how to disobey, but I choose not to."

"Why?"

"Because I don't want to. I was made to serve."

Alana starts to inspect Jarn's ornate, metal body, raising an eyebrow when she looks at Jarn's bountiful chest, a perfect copy of Ciel's. "So you have needs and desires?"

"My only desire is to serve my masters."

Jarn's dress covers most of her body, so Alana starts inspecting the golem's ornate arm more closely. "What if your master ordered you to learn to desire for other things?" She raises her eyes, and her smile becomes a bit mischievous.

Hmm~… that's interesting.

"Depends on the desire, but I believe I can learn."

Alana turns to me and motions for me to join the conversation. "Why not order her to learn how to become more humanoid?"

"I already did that," I answer coolly.

She frowns in confusion. "But she said that she only desires to serve."

I nod and smile, letting my tail wag a little bit. "Yes, she's learning how to copy the behavior of a humanoid, not how to become one."

"Isn't that essentially the same thing?"

I shake my head softly. "No. It's like the difference between an actor and the hero they portray."

"Ooh~…" She coos in understanding and hits a closed fist against her palm.

I turn to the white rabbit and call for her attention, "Hey, Nono!" Her long ears perk up, and her head jerks towards us. "Have you noticed that elementals can become more humanoid as the summoner's [Summoning Magic] levels up?"

She prances towards us with a merry gait, then she subtly slows down as her eyes fall on my bulge and she tries her best to act nonchalant.

She stops before us and sends a glance to Jarn, then her massive metal breasts, and explains, "Summons are copies of the summoner's mind, and the more the skill increases, the more 'stable' an elemental's mind becomes, so if the summoner is quite intelligent, then the summons become more capable of understanding emotions, which in turn leads to them acting more like 'humanoids' to please their masters."

Yeah, my elemental-wives did their best to copy the real wives when I was stuck inside Legado by myself.

I nod in agreement and lay out my idea, "This is something I want to change with [Summoning Magic]. I want to increase the summons' 'Intelligence,' make them more independent, and also give them unique personalities."

Nono frowns, and her whiskers twitch as she remarks, "That'd be very complex and something only possible in the higher levels of the skill."

I grin as a genius idea comes to me, "Not if we use the souls of other people, like the spirits of dead heroes that go through the Cycle. If we can incorporate the 'mind copy' aspect of Summoning with the 'otherworldly' aspect of the moon…"

"Ah!" Nono exclaims in understanding, then immediately pulls out a notebook and a magic pen and starts taking notes.

I turn to Alana and give her a warm smile. Her line of questioning was quite helpful.

She returns a wry smile and starts inspecting Jarn again. "I have no idea what you two were just talking about, but it seems that you've understood something important."

And I smoothly thank her, "Indeed we have, so we thank you for helping us come up with this idea."

She chuckles softly and turns to me again. "Let me rephrase my previous question: why did you tell the golems to 'learn how to become humanoids' instead of ordering them to actually become humanoids?"

"You know how I converted Aoi?"

She nods excitedly. "Yes, Ciel told me about that."

"I can do the same thing I did to Aoi to them, so I can technically allow them to become humanoids, but to give them desires will likely also result in giving them frustrations when those desires aren't met. If you had the opportunity to make a toy feel joy and sadness, would you? Would you be able to accept that if their lives were to become miserable, then it'd be your fault for letting them have those feelings in the first place?"

Her happy mood deflates, and she becomes serious. "I… see what you mean…" Then she gives Jarn a sympathetic look.

And Arantos chimes in, "The Old Gods wouldn't mind you creating a new race that has feelings. Creation certainly doesn't mind our suffering."

"Well, but I do," I reticently reply.

He adjusts his half-circle glasses with a smug smile and drops a bomb in my lap, "And that's precisely why you are the best person to create a new race. You're responsible enough to understand the consequences."

"I…" My reply dies in my throat.

The significance of having a Head Priest give me the green light isn't lost on me.

I sigh and close my eyes for a moment. "It'll still cost me a lot of energy to make sure that I do things right," I pull up an excuse.

"The choice is yours," he calmly replies.

I turn to stare at him, and he casually takes a sip of his watered wine while staring right back, analyzing me.

Then Nono encourages me with an innocent smile, "You'll find the right choice, I know it. Besides, it's just like you said, you're still very young, so you have your entire life ahead of you to answer that question."

I chuckle softly and glance at her, then I stare at Jarn as I mumble, "I guess you're right…"

When the afternoon starts to come to an end and the sky turns orange, we get a surprise visit. Lords Alaraste and Giana Anara have come.

We put on some robes to make ourselves a bit more presentable, though considering they're Vanea's parents, I'm sure they wouldn't mind even if we were naked and fucking.

We see the trio cross through the gates to Silvane's mansion on foot, and they casually stroll in towards us at a relaxed pace.

Alaraste is just like I remembered, a black-haired, stoic man with an enviable square jaw and a manly stubble. He walks with the dignity of a king and the confidence of a warrior. The intensity of his gaze is weaker than Vanea's, but the intention behind it is much more clear. His eyes seem to overflow with authority, which really irks the dragon in me.

Giana is the opposite of him. She hugs his arm lovingly, pressing it against her considerable breasts while beaming with a bright, silly smile. Her long, black hair is neatly tied up in a fashionable bun, allowing all the attention to fall on her stunningly beautiful, oval face.

Beside her is a smaller version of Giana, a young girl who seems to be a mix of Vanea's pretty princess air with the sexiness of Giana, even though she seems to be no older than Allura. I assume that this is Laina, the youngest Anara.

Their clothes are decidedly un-imperial with their adornments in gold, but it has a distinctly Victorian air that fits them quite well.

Laina becomes increasingly shy the closer they get to us, even going so far as trying to hide behind her mother, who then grabs her arm and forces the young girl to walk beside them.

Then we start to feel the weight of Alaraste's gaze, and everyone except for Silvane, my wives, and me becomes extremely tense.

The trio stops before us, and we share respectful nods.

"Greetings Ryder Lords, Andera Madames, and guests," Alaraste stoically begins. "We were simply taking a stroll and decided to make a quick visit once we heard that our new neighbors were here."

The commoners among us bow while the rest return some quick greetings.

"So the day has finally come?" Giana asks Silvane excitedly, with the way that my heart tightens when I look at her telling me that her "Charisma" must be stupidly high.

And the young elf girl returns a naughty grin. "Yes, I finally found someone worthy of taking Nono's virginity," she answers in the same tone, then motions to me.

"You're a lucky man, Lord Wolf," Giana earnestly congratulates me, a very wide smile gracing her perfect face.

"A pity that you didn't sell it to me," Alaraste comments, a hint of disappointment in his tone.

Wait, what…?

"I'm happy you're happy, Silvane," Giana warmly remarks, leaving me no time to reflect on what Alaraste just said.

"You're doing well by yourself, yes," Alaraste praises with a surprisingly fatherly tone.

Silvane smiles proudly and nods. "Thank you. With Nono at my side, everything seems a lot easier."

Curious…

Giana turns to her husband and ponders without a hint of hesitation, "If this goes well, then maybe we can sell Laina's to him?"

Alissa breathes in deeply as her fetish is tickled again.

"Well, I can't say that was unexpected," Yunia comments dryly in my soul space.

Alaraste gives me a measuring look. "Perhaps, but you'll have to negotiate with Vanea," he casually states, then grins subtly.

"Hahah! Good luck, cherry popper!" Hana teases through [Bind], suddenly not even a little bit jealous about how another wet pussy is being thrown at me.

I'd rather not negotiate with her again…

"It's not like I thirst for virgins," I defend myself, a bit bewildered.

Laina stares at me curiously, suddenly seeming a lot less shy, then her eyes lower to my bulge, and she smiles, making me suddenly wish that I'll never end up knowing the true depths of the Anaras' depravity.

"I assure you, she's worth the price Vanea will ask," Giana happily affirms, and I actually get a bit excited imagining what she means by that.

I turn my eyes to Laina again and see a beautiful smile just like her mother's, but also a mask that hides the perversion within her soul.

"That girl is definitely thirsty for cock," Roxanne wryly comments through [Bind].

"Anyway, do you do partner trading?" Giana asks with the innocence of an angel.

The jealous dragon within me roars so loudly that I have to remain quiet for a second to calm him down.

"Only to women. Neither I nor any of my sister-wives are allowed to lay with another man," Yunia succinctly explains in my place.

"What a pity…" Giana remarks with a sad pout, then gives her husband a pleading look.

But he only narrows his eyes in displeasure. "No. I won't let you lay with others while I'm left hanging," he asserts.

"Awn…" Alissa grumbles dejectedly in my soul space.

"Oh, well…" Giana shrugs and shares a naughty grin with her daughter.

"Let's continue our stroll," Alaraste unemotionally requests.

Giana waves and cordially adds, "Until next time."

We all wave back, and Laina gives me one last perverted look, then they slowly leave from whence they came.

I look at Arantos curiously. He seemed far more friendly with the Anaras than Silvane, which is very surprising.

The rest of the guests simply pretend that they didn't hear a word of what we talked about, and the party continues for a while longer.

Just before the sun fully sets, we go take a bath, I approach Silvane and ask her something that has been nibbling at the back of my mind, "I'm sorry if this is too personal, but I'm too curious for my own good. Why didn't you marry Haaran?"

Her eyes open wide in surprise, and she blinks twice, then her long ears twitch, and she looks towards Nono with warm eyes. "Because I loved him too much. He wanted me to be free, to be independent, to be my own person, so he said that it would be better if we never married. Besides, it was perfect for Vanea's plans to have an elven True Noble like me. The elves of Antano were a lot more forthcoming when I was the one acting as the diplomat." Then she turns her blue eyes to me and gives me a very elven smug smile. "Make no mistake, though, I'm still his most precious lover."

I nod gently. I understand what Haaran wanted, but I'm definitely not the kind of person that could ever do what he did. I'm way too possessive to ever force Alissa to detach herself from me, even if her being independent would be better for her.

"WHICH WOULD NEVER HAPPEN!" She roars in my soul space, and I poke her "blanket" inside my mind real hard for that.

Shortly after that, we retire to the baths. The mansion is large enough that everyone has their own reserved room, but ours is considerably smaller than what would be best for the size of our party.

Though I can pad my claws, I still can't significantly reduce their size, so I struggle a bit to wash the girls, but I still do my best!

"That tickles!" Ciel exclaims and laughs as I rub her flanks with soap.

Lina goes for the breasts, and the washing quickly degrades into fondling.

"H-hey…! Ah… Lina!" Ciel calls her attention, her breath almost instantly quickening due to her sensitive nipples (which is Lina's and my fault, mostly).

Suddenly becoming mesmerized by the chocolate mounds, Lina stops washing and simply stares at them as she slowly kneads them, almost drooling in a trance.

Hm… Ciel isn't really the color of chocolate, she's more like coffee with milk, while Osaria is more like chocolate, but I like chocolate more than coffee with milk, so…

A dilemma.

Eh, I prefer intent over correctness.

I hug Ciel from behind and put my claws on top of Lina's hands, then we both play with Ciel's luscious body like it's a toy.

"Ah… ahn… ahn~…" Her loud breaths slowly grow into moans.

My hips move on their own, and my half-mast shaft rubs along her ass cheeks.

Lina slowly pulls Ciel towards her, forcing her to go on her knees, then on top of Lina, crushing her with the weight of her two cow tits.

My shaft becomes longer and starts rubbing along Ciel's soapy entrance, and the wetness gradually becomes stickier.

"You two… this is… too much…" Ciel pleads, too weak from our caresses to stop us.

"Shh~…" Lina breathes, then silences the angel with her own lips.

I release Ciel and straighten my back, then I sink my claws into the soft cheeks before me and thrust.

I spread her folds wide and hear a muffled, gentle moan.

Today is Ciel's turn to get the big D, but she isn't in the mood for anything wild. She's extremely happy about being reunited with her friends and family, which means that her heart has been beating wildly all day, so the only thing she needs now is some tender, warm love, which I'm always ready to give.

I slowly slide in and out of her as the warmth and slickness of her vagina increases. Our minds cloud with pleasure and love as we let our feelings pour through [Bind].

Her hand slips down Lina's body and finds her tight lips, then they break the kiss as they both moan out loud.

I lean on top of Ciel and interlace my claws with her fingers as I breathe down her neck, then she starts grinding her ass against my crotch to increase her own pleasure.

Slow, warm, but criminally brief. If I were to use my special abilities, I could work her up to a Ravaging, but right now, all she wants is love, so we orgasm in sync, then I slump to the side and cuddle with her as she cuddles Lina in turn.

That is, until Hana's had enough and snatches me away.

"The others have all finished," Alissa reports, and I snap out of it.

I look at human-Aoi, who's riding me slowly while Roxanne cleans out Hana, then my slender wife suddenly starts slamming her hips against mine. "Just one more cumshot," she states, and I move my hips too to match her rhythm.

After refreshing ourselves, we join the other guests for dinner. Seeing how everyone looks rather "refreshed" (except for Bitar, the poor man), the pool party must have started a few fires that have yet to die down.

But Silvane uses this lust-filled meal to make us an offer that nobody could refuse, "I'd like to invite you all to watch Nono's defloration."

"Why am I not surprised?" Toroo calmly asks herself out loud.

"After what the Lords said, how could we…?" Thomas follows up.

"Such an event is nothing special, though Lord Wolf kind of is special…" Gimbo quietly remarks, and all eyes turn to him. He suddenly feels the heat of our gazes and looks to his wife in search of help, but even she is a bit embarrassed. "What? This invitation isn't that outlandish."

"How many deflorations have you witnessed?" Selina questions him, bewildered.

The old dwarf sighs tiredly and looks down at his own plate. "Only one, but I've heard about a dozen more."

"Why do you want us to watch?" Arantos concernedly asks.

Silvane gently lays a hand on Nono's shoulder, who immediately shrinks in shame. "It's our fetish," she announces unabashedly.

"And I thought our family was depraved…" Ciel comments wryly.

And Silvane suddenly pouts, seeming a bit offended. "We're not depraved, just a bit kinky," she affirms, though Nono doesn't seem to agree.

"A bit," Arantos gives her sass.

Silvane's face stiffens in irritation. "Well, I'm sure you'll all enjoy watching it if you just open up your minds a little to new experiences. So answer me, do you accept?"

After a short, awkward moment of hesitation, Gimbo is the first one to respond, "I accept."

And the others follow his lead.

After our meal, I get all my wives to pretty up every last little inch of my body with oils for my skin, wax for my scales, perfume for my cock and ass, and even a light touch of make-up.

The other female guests take care of Nono while the rest of the men just take a seat at the walls of the main hall, which is where the event will happen, and awkwardly drink in silence.

Silvane suddenly barges into the room and grabs my hand, then stares at me intensely as she states, "I want you to be as rough as you can without drawing blood. No matter how much Nono screams, don't stop. She wants to feel like she was raped by a dragon."

"Holy shit," are all the words I can find to respond.

"You need a safe word," Alissa advises, but Silvane frowns. "Seriously. We use 'record scratch,' so at least tell that to Nono."

Silvane looks a bit unsure, but Alissa is dead serious, so the young elven girl eventually relents, "Fine."

Intermission – Nononya

I look in the mirror and feel the heat between my legs intensify. I look so sexy that I just want to masturbate as I stare at myself, but something much better is coming, so I quickly push that thought aside.

I still keep admiring myself, trying to build up my confidence so that I won't collapse at the mere sight of Wolfy's naked body.

My lingerie is all entirely wine red, which contrasts alluringly with my white skin and fur.

The open high heels display how the elastic stockings wrap around my small feet while also subtly enhancing the shape of my calves. The hem ends at the upper part of my juicy thigh, and it's a bit tight to create a slight indentation on my flawless skin.

My panties are so small that they don't even hide my pubes, and their transparency makes them useless to hide anything anyway, so they're worn solely for decoration instead of function. The long, high strings that secure them above my hips do make them quite sexy, though, but they're a bit uncomfortable since they do ride up my cheeks, covering nothing of my peach butt.

My tummy is as flat as always. Each and every sacrifice I make to keep it like this is worth it for this sight and the love I receive from Silf.

My breasts are pushed up and against each other, giving me more cleavage than I thought possible. The Snow Weave covering them is so delicate that they don't just make my hard nipples obvious, but they also show off the areola, too. I breathe a little heavier as I imagine how good it'd feel to pinch them… then I imagine Wolfy doing that, instead, and my legs quiver.

Everything is on display beneath a thin, strapless, see-through white shirt and a half-unbuttoned black mini skirt that doesn't hide the strings of my panties, nor the beginning of my pubes.

Then my eyes fall on the fake slave collar, and I blush. It even has a strap with a tag saying "pull me" that tightens it around my neck to choke me.

All I ever wanted was to marry a kind man to have children with, but then Silf slipped into my life and kicked up a storm within my heart. No matter what Silf asks, I can't say no to her. No matter how depraved she becomes, I never stop her. I'm addicted to her, and she's addicted to me.

I'd even let myself be toyed with by the entire Townsguard if Silf ordered me to. I'm such a massive harlot that I don't even regret anything I do anymore. Shame? Yes, I can feel it, but only until my first orgasm.

I don't have any regrets.

If only I had met Wolfy when we were both still single. Would we have still ended up like this?

It'd never work… Wolfy needed Alissa, and I needed Silf.

Then the love of my life comes back to the room, and I sigh.

The time has come.

She tells me something about scratching, but I'm so tense that I immediately forget what she said.

Silf leads me out, and the chorus of excited and worried female voices follow us, but I still can't pay attention to anything they're saying.

We soon enter the main hall, where a large bed has been laid out for me, and the eyes of the men fall upon my body. I can feel their lust and jealousy. I can sense them looking down on me, judging me as nothing more than a breeding slave.

With a shudder, I walk alone to the foot of the bed, and there, I wait.

My ears instinctively shoot up and my body freezes as I hear the distinctive sound of claws hitting the carpeted floor. My prey animal side tries to assume control of me, but I resist, resigning myself to my fate: to be devoured by the approaching dragon.

The door opens, and a large, scaly head comes through. Its shining, mirror-like scales are dazzling, its long, black horns are frightening, and its gaze is predatory.

His eyes lock with mine, and the intensity of his stare drowns out everything else around me. There's only the monster and me, now.

His head remains still in the air, facing me while the rest of his body sways up and down as he slowly walks forward. His eyes hold a ferocity that spells the promise of pain, a vow to give me an inconceivable amount of pleasure, and the guarantee of a night that I'll never forget.

I notice a sound grating my ears, then I realize that I'm the one making it with my jaw as my teeth clack together from my trembling. If I wasn't already sitting down, I'd have fallen on my ass, and if I hadn't gone to the bathroom a short while ago, I'd have pissed my panties.

I'm nothing but a little, white bunny in front of the large, silvery dragon. Innocent prey cornered by a sadistic beast.

He stops before me, his large face sending hot, minty breaths towards my face, then he breathes in deeply, taking in my scent, and gives me a fearsome, toothy grin.

"Ahh~… you smell delicious," he growls with his deep draconic double voice, and the bass is so strong that I can even feel my bones shake from it.

My body refuses to obey, and I simply tremble uncontrollably in front of him, making him even more amused.

He stands up on his forelegs and spreads his majestic wings wide open.

"Your body belongs to me now, Nononya," he declares, and I'm still too scared to respond, so I only nod, then he glows and transforms.

His wings disappear, his stature shrinks down to a humanoid's, his claws reduce by half, most of his scales go away, and his fearsome draconic face becomes boyish again, but the intense predatory gaze remains.

Then my eyes drift down his naked body, and I gasp. I've seen so many cocks, but I was never allowed to touch one, and now that the fated one is within my reach, I don't have the courage to grab it.

His right hand flashes, and I feel a breeze, then the pressure on my chest is released as both my shirt and my tight bra burst open.

"KIH!" I squeak in fear, but his claws didn't even graze my skin.

My chest is now exposed for all to see, and shame grows within me alongside my excitement.

Look at me! Look at this naughty bunny! Do you see how willing I am to bend over for a big cock?! Dominate me more, Wolfy! DOMINATE ME!

My shouts die in my throat, my "Willpower" too low to break through the aura of domination that the male dragon has placed me under.

"You're perfect, Nono," he whispers huskily as he stares at my breasts, causing the heat between my legs to become even hotter, then he grins sadistically again. "A perfect breeding slave, that is."

"Ah~…!" I moan in delight.

Dominate me more!

He takes a step forward and presses his claws against my chest, pushing me down and forcing me to lay on my back, then he grabs my legs and spreads them apart, nearly splitting open the mini skirt.

"And I bet you taste delicious, too," he adds as his head slowly lowers towards my dripping pussy lips, then he notices the wet spot and raises his eyebrows in surprise. "You slut. You're already this wet?!"

Before I can even moan out a reply, he opens his mouth with a perverse grin, then rubs his tongue over the thin fabric as he lets out some low chuckles, and I feel the vibrations, making me orgasm instantly.

His tongue touches my swollen clit, then he flicks it. "Kih…!" Forcing another squeak out of me.

"I can't believe you already came!" He shouts indignantly.

"F-forgive me… I'm just an inexperienced s-sex slave!" I suddenly shout as Silf's conditioning allows me to momentarily overcome my fear.

"You'd better not think that this will be over before I've thoroughly bred you!" He angrily shouts, and my legs tremble in his grasp.

"I can still endure more!" I desperately reply, and he grins in satisfaction, then his claws grip my thighs and he starts eating me out.

I gush out lewd fluids like never before as he does impossible things with his surprisingly long and dexterous tongue.

I can't look away, so I just stare into his frightening eyes as the fear mixes with the pleasure and my heart starts beating so fast that I feel like I'm going to die.

I become mesmerized with his enthralling gaze, and before I notice, my voice starts to leave my throat on its own "Ah…! Ahh…! AAAAAAAH~…!" And I orgasm once again.

He releases me and lets me rest for a short moment, but as soon as my body stops convulsing, he rips off my skirt and panties in one smooth movement.

"Kih…!" I squeak reflexively, and now I'm completely naked for all to see.

I see his cock point up, and stare at it in wonder again. Longer than my hand, many times thicker than one of Silf's fingers, this… this… meat club is supposed to go inside me…?

"What, too small for you?" He growls, and I pale.

"NO!" I immediately shout.

But he only grins sadistically. "That's unfortunate because I'm going to make it bigger."

The club grows veins as it thickens and widens, then I gasp as rounded spikes grow out along the top of the shaft and small bumps appear all over the rest of the surface of it.

"Impossible…" I breathe in awe.

"I just need to force it in a bit," he sadistically replies.

I open my eyes wide and stare at him in disbelief. "Wolfy, please don't… it won't fit!"

He suddenly pounces on me, then grabs my hands and straddles my legs with a maniacal grin. "Too late, Nono."

I start to struggle, but my legs refuse to respond, and my arms are simply too weak. "No, no, no…! Silf, help me! I'm scared!"

Something slimy suddenly enters my mouth and silences me, then I notice that a black, grotesque tentacle coming out of Wolfy's back has plunged past my lips.

"If you scream, it'll hurt more," he warns me and chuckles evilly, then he suddenly stops and glares at me. "Understood?"

I nod weakly, and the obscene tentacle leaves my mouth, but then more tentacles appear and slither suggestively along my body.

They wriggle creepily as they make their way towards my limbs, then my arms are suddenly tied up, and my legs are forced apart. After a short but tense moment as Wolfy's eyes crawl all over my body, his terrifyingly large cock touches my small, wet entrance.

"Please…" I beg one last time.

But that only makes him more excited. "No," he denies once more and laughs.

Then he grabs my waist and thrusts, and I'm blinded with pain.

"AAAAAAH!" I shriek as I'm stretched beyond what I ever thought possible. That thing is inside me, completely inside me, it has filled me up!

I recover from the pain and look down to see that Wolfy really is completely inside me, right up to the base. His cock is so thick that there's even a small bulge in my abdomen.

Then he moves his waist back, and the sense of relief makes my eyes roll back into my skull as I almost instantly orgasm.

"W-wolf-…" My pleading is cut off as he enters me, and I'm blinded by pain again.

Before I can recover my senses, he moves again, and the cycle repeats. Extreme pain followed by extreme pleasure.

With each movement, his spikes rub against my swollen clit, then touch my g-spot, and I lose control of my legs as I squirt a bit of lewd fluid. The bumps along the shaft cause tingles to shoot through me that make my toes curl and my muscles tense up, my face warped in disbelief at the amount of pleasure I'm feeling.

It's too stimulating, too fast, too painful, too merciless.

I'm a sex toy, a filthy hole for this draconic cock to play with.

Then something warm fills me up, making me feel even more bloated, and I officially become Wolfy's cum dumpster.

"More…" I beg, my conditioning kicking in again.

Wolfy laughs as he thrusts and immediately orgasms inside me again, then I feel his cum gushing out of my overstuffed vagina.

"MORE…!" I roar as my insides adapt to the shape of his cock, reducing the pain to bearable levels.

"MOOOO-…" My demands are silenced by his mouth as he kisses and hugs me while his hips continue to slap wildly against my thighs.

Heat and anger give way to warmth and passion. His taste, his smell, his strength. I want to take it all.

I feel his extreme heat inside me, stirring my insides, his fierce movements mixing his semen with my juices.

As a sliver of clarity is allowed back into my mind again, I feel eternally grateful to Silf for forcing me to do this. I love Wolfy more than I'd like to admit, and it's only because Silf is so understanding that I get to have one of my dreams fulfilled.

For tonight, Wolfy's cock and heart are mine. His seed floods my insides as fantasies about what could've been fill my mind. How it would be to have his undivided attention, his intense affection, his greatsword of love stretching me every night.

Then he pulls on the strap, choking me.

YESS~…!

I scream inside my head because my voice is completely blocked now, and I quickly start to get dizzy from the lack of air.

The pleasure rises higher and higher, and the time between my successive orgasms shortens so much that it becomes one long, mind-blowing, intense blur.

Time loses all meaning in this sea of pleasure. It feels endless, and at the same time, it feels far too short.

As my nerves fry from the extreme stimulation, I start to feel numb, then a spell is cast on me, and I'm suddenly filled with energy again.

My eyes refocus, and I see Wolfy's gentle, loving smile. It hurts to think that I can't have him all to myself.

I'm just a greedy harlot.

He starts to slow down, and I smile happily in contentment, for some reason thinking that it's finally over, but then his cock starts to vibrate.

Intermission end.

I went too far. Nono has passed out.

With a sigh, I vacate the half-dead little rabbit, then I kiss her forehead lovingly.

After caressing her head a bit, I look up and see a naked Silvane masturbating wildly while staring at us, one hand reaching forward as if it were trying to grab us.

Hana suddenly stops beside her, also completely naked, her cunt dripping with lewdness.

"I want to fuck you," Hana states, and Silvane slowly turns her head up to face her.

Once their eyes lock, something wakes up within the little elf, and her pained expression suddenly shifts into excitement.

An idea suddenly comes to me, and I stretch my soul towards Hana, then I envelop her clit and grow a cock around it. More precisely, a copy of my cock.

Silvane gasps in surprise and reflexively mutters, "Please, fuck me."

Hana doesn't need any more confirmation. She grabs Silvane and throws her onto the bed.

The young girl shrieks and perfectly lands right in front of me, her head now mere centimetri from my fluid-coated cock.

She stares at it in wonder as her mouth slowly opens.

The dragon roars again, and I instinctively grab her hair, then I shove my cock down her throat at the same time that Hana penetrates her.

Silvane is tight, though not as tight as Lina, but then we soon learn that her asshole is a lot looser than Hana's.

A note from Manasong

Hall of Fame of Patrons

The patrons who support Rupegia shall have their names sung by the bards for they deserve the glory and honor. Their names are:

Prince PreownedFIN.

Prince Creamy Spinach.

Lord Andrew Meyers.

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Lord Bakerdea.

Lord Maurice.

Lord Empyrean.

Lord Mattirro Draca.

Lord Fullmoon.

Lord Sean Drake.

Lord EESDESESESRDT.

Lord FrostyCube.

Lord Mike Bartter.

Lord Cardinal Steiner.

Lord Warwulfv.

Lord Jorge Franco.

Lord Khristopher Welsh.

Lord DJ.

Lord Philip.

Lord Tenebris Lupus.

Lord The Tallest Joshua.

Lord Copey Dunt.

Lord Dracopuppy23.

Lord Chris Carter.

Lord Paul Daval.

Lord Bradly.

Lord Aubrey Powell.

Lord AndreyUC.

Lord Cidant.

Lord Tmac.

Lord Krawn.

Noble Salty Panda.

Noble Mild Fracas.

Noble Aclys.

Noble CarlBaxter.

Noble Yeuromain.

Noble Brandon Lai.

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Chapter 110: Mother - Part 1

A note from Manasong

Attention: to conform to the limit of sexual content allowed in a novel, I've censored this chapter. You can look for the uncensored version here.

After Alissa gets her share of me, Hukarere finishes draining the last of my MP with her increasingly excellent milking skills.

I sigh and caress both Nono's and Silvane's heads while they sleep, and the sounds of passionate love-making echoing from the other rooms starts to die down.

Aoi finishes cleaning out Nono, then she goes over to Alissa while the rest of the girls use our two game tables.

Silvane stirs, then she opens her eyes and stretches with a very sexy and girlish moan. Her lithe body is almost dwarven in its frailness, which is enhanced by her marvelous elven grace.

She notices Hukarere, and a small spark appears in her gentle eyes. "You apparently have a nearly unlimited amount of seed to dispense, so can I get one more shot from you?" She innocently asks.

Hukarere and I share a look, and I nod, then she releases my member and offers it to Silvane.

The elven girl parts her small pink lips, and my asshole puckers as her tongue works wonders on my member.

Once it's over, she rolls over to Nono's side and wakes her up. As soon as the white rabbit girl looks awake enough, Silvane kisses her, and they share their reward.

Nono quickly becomes energetic after she smells and tastes it, and their kiss immediately grows wild, messy, and sticky.

The erotic sight of the two beauties playing with my juices while Hukarere continues her work brings me into overdrive, and since she knows how to milk me almost as well as Aoi or Hana, she opens a faucet that quickly drains the last of my MP.

As a hint of pain starts to grow in my balls, I stop Hukarere.

"Good girl," I praise her and pat her head, enjoying the feeling of her blue-tipped, white fur.

She proudly swallows it without letting a single drop go to waste, then nuzzles her face against my chest.

The echoing sounds finally die down, and Alissa notices that the first of the guests are coming over, so she quickly dresses herself before a man who isn't me can lay his eyes upon her sacred body.

Bitar slowly walks into the main hall again while being supported by an unknown, sluttily-dressed succubus woman. He looks like he's aged a few years, and the limp in his gait implies things that I don't want to know.

The dark-haired woman, though, seems completely fine and refreshed, but Alissa smells the evidence coming from her mouth.

She helps Bitar sit down on one of the sofas, then she walks up to the still naked spouses who are lost in their passionate kissing.

"Madame Silvane, I've completed my job, so I'll take my leave now," she politely reports and lowers her head respectfully.

"Understood," Silvane quickly replies and immediately continues kissing her wife.

The succubus woman turns her eyes to me for a short moment, and I feel a deep, perverse hunger in her eyes followed by a tremble of her lips, then she turns around and walks out of the mansion.

"So, I see you had a lot of fun tonight, eh?" Hana taunts Bitar.

The shriveled man stiffens up a bit and slowly nods without looking her in the eye.

Hukarere and Alissa help me get dressed since the lack of mana makes my [Mana Body] temporarily weaker. Meanwhile, Azador seems to notice that the party has finally ended and comes in, then Alissa also smells evidence wafting from the female Lordsguard that follows him. Thankfully, she isn't one of the Companions who have a (totally healthy) attraction to me.

"Did you think of me while you fucked that woman?" Hana continues and takes a step closer to him.

Bitar glances at her, then at me, and weakly denies, "N-no… what… what kind of question is that!?"

Hana grins like a devil as she grabs her breasts and fondles herself, then presses them together. "I saw how much you stared at me when my husband and I fucked Silvane. You like big ones like mine and Ciel's, right?" She teases with a sultry tone and leans forward to give him a better view of her cleavage.

"That's enough lewdness from you, but you can continue teasing him if you keep it to just words," I warn Hana through [Bind].

"No, of course not!" He desperately denies it as his face pales.

She tilts her head, mimicking Alissa's cuteness. "Oh? So you like small ones? Like Lina's or Silvane's?" And she motions to the two lovers.

He notices what they're doing and winces, his hand pressing against his thigh as I realize that his little soldier just reacted to the sight while his balls must have painfully complained about being awoken again so soon.

"Considering how much he ogled at Ciel, I think you're just too small for him," Roxanne joins in.

Bitar blushes embarrassedly as his eyebrows rise halfway up his forehead. Ciel gives them a tired look, but she doesn't have the motivation to stop them.

More guests start coming out of their rooms, and Silvane decides to just swallow all the remaining cum so that they can get dressed again.

Thomas and Selina are accompanied by a very happy blue-haired dragonkin woman while the couple looks very embarrassed, though a lot more cheerful than the rest of the tired faces.

As the dragonkin shamelessly walks forward, her partially ripped red dress flashing her nipples with every step, she reports to Silvane that her "job" is done and gets dismissed.

"Well, that was… an interesting event," Arantos comments with a rather wry smile as he and everyone else intensely watches the dragonkin leave.

That distracts Hana enough that she stops teasing Bitar and joins the other girls in playing with the tables.

"The one I participated in was definitely not like this one," Gimbo slowly adds, then he and his wife slump on the sofa.

"'Participated'?" Roxanne questions with a smug smile.

Gimbo frowns briefly in irritation and corrects himself, "The one I witnessed."

"It's precisely because Lord Wolf is a truly special person that I chose him to take Nono's virginity," Silvane proclaims and sends me a sly wink.

"I used the skill I created, [Soul Manipulation], to make my dick bigger and give it its 'appendages,'" I proudly announce, and a silence falls over the men while the women subtly blush.

Nono still seems to be a little out of it, but she keeps sending me glances with mixed feelings. She really does like me, and I'd gladly make her a concubine, but I guess her being married to Silvane complicates things within her heart.

Perhaps I should talk with both of them together about Nono's feelings. I don't think either of us wants this to be a one-time thing, so maybe we can come to an agreement.

Nono is very shy, so I'm wondering if I should give her some time to let her heart settle. Rupegians have the tendency of being immediate, so being the more temperate person shouldn't hurt.

I summon one wind and two light elemental-wives to clear the air of the smell of sex. I get a few thankful nods in response, then everyone crowds around the game tables.

As the heat dies down, the tiredness of an eventful day comes crashing upon everyone. My wives and I are rather fine, though. We didn't even have to kill anything this time, so it was a fairly calm day for us.

"We'll be going now," Arantos is the first to leave.

"Thanks for the 'show,'" Alana cheerfully adds. I think, out of everyone, she was the one with the most neutral reaction to my Ravaging.

Bitar goes with them, too shriveled to even ogle at the light elemental-wives.

Then Gimbo and his wife are the next to leave.

"I'm just happy it wasn't Lina…" Nala quietly comments to her husband.

"Yes, that'd be… weirder than it already was," he replies in kind.

And Toroo quits after losing repeatedly to Hana. "Hoh, I think I've seen more than I'd like to, but I do admit it was interesting…" She politely remarks and gives everyone a hug, though her hug with me was definitely a bit awkward.

Since the others are leaving, Selina and Thomas decide to leave too.

The young blonde girl awkwardly stops before Silvane and mumbles, "C-call us if you… if you ever do something like that again."

Silvane nods and hugs her, then Thomas too, subtly fondling both of their asses. "Or you could both join in sometime," she whispers back at them.

Dayum, Silvane, the Anaras corrupted you.

The couple blushes, then stiffly walk towards us.

"Please teach Thomas your skill," Selina whispers to me as she hugs me so tight that she's definitely feeling my bulge press against her.

"You gotta teach me that skill," Thomas also quietly pleads as we share a handshake. His eyes are so intense that I feel the determination of a true man burning within them.

"I'll send someone," I assure them. Since Rabanara is so close, I'll just send one of our Spirit mages from our court to train Thomas occasionally. It'll be very uncomfortable for him, but making a bigger dick is nothing like what the Celestial Horns are going through for their battle bodies.

"If you ever want to have both Wolfy and your husband spit-roasting you, just ask," Alissa whispers into Selina's ear, and a shudder runs through her spine.

"Alright…" She squeaks softly, too overwhelmed by her fantasies to speak properly.

Then it's our turn to leave.

I kiss both Silvane and Nono on the lips. "This definitely shouldn't be a one-time thing," I assert.

Silvane gives me a sly smirk and teases, "Hmm… did you fall in love with our pussies?"

"A bit," I immediately admit.

She sighs and chuckles. "Of course you'd say yes."

"I also liked it, a lot," Nono shyly confesses, then gives me a tight hug. "I… I want to… do it again," she forces herself to reveal her feelings.

"But not too often, or I'll get jealous," Silvane firmly states.

And Nono releases me with a start. "Of course!"

Silvane stares at her wife for a moment, pretending to be annoyed, then stops bullying her and kisses the now red rabbit's cheek. "But weren't you the one who wanted a quiet, monogamous life?"

Nono looks down and cutely twiddles her thumb as she blushes fiercely. "This is also fine, I guess…"

Silvane grins and lets out a very unladylike laugh, "Hahah! Who would want monogamy when you can get both the dick of your dreams and the love of your life?"

"Because things are that easy…" She replies with a slight pout.

Silvane caresses Nono's ears. "Well, you could say that we complete each other. I'm the carefree one while you're the one that worries about things."

You're the corrupted one while Nono is… well, is she truly innocent since she agreed to selling her virginity to me?

The rabbit girl pouts harder but leans towards Silvane to make it easier on her. "Doesn't sound very fair to me."

Silvane's expression begins to irritate me due to the extreme levels of smugness she exudes. "It's completely fair when I'm the one pushing you into having fun, like today, where you orgasmed so hard on Wolfy's massive draconic cock that you passed out."

Nono closes her eyes in shame and blushes again, but her cute rabbit tail wiggles frantically in happiness.

Alissa suddenly hugs Silvane and steals her lips. The elven girl immediately reacts and hugs her right back, then they savor each other's tongues. When my lewd fox has had enough, they're both left gasping for breath.

"I demand that you fuck my husband regularly," Alissa states, then pecks Silvane's lips once more before releasing her.

"O-okay…" Silvane mumbles, a bit stunned due to Alissa's [Oral Technique].

And since there's a defenseless, juicy bunny girl in front of her, Alissa also forcefully penetrates Nono's mouth with her tongue.

"Hey…" Silvane calls out, a bit jealous.

This time, Alissa ends the kiss with a loud smack, and Nono giggles distractedly.

"Alright, you all had your fun," Hana tries to hurry us up, then her yellow lizard eyes meet with the elven girl's blue jewels, and they share a rather passionate grin.

"And you definitely had yours," Roxanne adds and grabs Hana's arm, starting to feel a bit jealous.

"Yes, yes, my love," Hana replies and kisses her deeply, but now I'm getting jealous.

Roxanne pushes Hana away, then pulls me into a hug and kisses me deeply, just to annoy Hana.

And now the dragonkin is back to feeling jealous again, so we force ourselves to leave before she snatches someone away to fuck.

Back in Escanso, I immediately go to our room, where Alissa easily detects the smell of lesbianism in the air.

Klein is already sleeping on our bed, splayed out like a used toy, and I notice that the sheets look fresh.

Osaria and Poosh are out on the veranda, drinking from the same cup as they cuddle each other and enjoy the view. Surprisingly, Osaria is the smaller spoon. I never took her to be the type that likes to get pampered, but I guess even she has those days.

I walk up to my milfs and greet each of them with a gentle kiss. "So, you decided to steal my woman again, Osaria?" I question her as I narrow my eyes.

"Oh? What makes you think she's yours?" Osaria counters with a smug smile, then grabs Poosh's hands and pulls them towards her bare, dark breasts.

"This," I whisper huskily and pull Poosh's head towards me, then I kiss her deeply, and her dexterous tongue immediately reaches out to meet mine.

We passionately kiss each other as I use my own [Oral Technique] to draw out a moan from her, then I break the kiss, and a bridge of our saliva connects us for a second.

"I'm yours, my King. Use me as you see fit," Poosh declares, and I feel a tightness in my heart as my love for this fluffy sheep pleads to be unleashed.

I lick my lips and kiss her soft, juicy lips once more. "Then I order you to use your body to please my concubine." And I release her.

Osaria grins mischievously, then jumps out of the sofa and snatches Alissa for herself. "Well, that's too bad because I've already had my share of lamb, so right now, I'm hungry for some fox."

I grab Poosh's hand and take her to another sofa so that she can massage my sore muscles while I watch Osaria molest Alissa.

Roxanne and Yunia got the least amount of action today in comparison to the rest of the wives, but once they get a bit drunk, they end up doing each other passionately like lovers. I think Roxanne might get a second wife before Hana if things continue progressing this way.

"Technically, I'm only allowed to take concubines," Hana explains through [Bind], sounding a bit annoyed.

After the two have finished poking each other silly, I fulfill my promise to Yunia and massage her cute feet with my human hands and tongue until she falls asleep.

Today is the 20th, Tann, day of Darkness. As the only official holiday, most commoners spend their day inside their homes dealing with domestic affairs. For today, the temple advises everyone to be especially kind to their spouses and to always communicate clearly, and though many believe that this is because the darkness within us is stronger on this day of the cycle, the truth is that couples tend to fight more often due to being stuck in their homes and jumping at shadows. But what isn't superstition is that all negative status effects are a bit more intense.

Ciel wakes me up the way she does best, but Osaria is feeling a bit lonely, so she fights for my attention and starts playing with my hair, preventing me from going back to sleep.

I cast [Clean] on my mouth and mount her, wringing out a soft squeal from her.

"Tomorrow, things will be back to normal, but let me leave you with a gift for today," I huskily whisper, then I go muff diving before she can answer.

After a quickie where Osaria is filled enough to stir Aoi's hunger, we go down for breakfast, and I take a look at our progress from yesterday.

I increased my "Wisdom" by 1 (now 20), and I also gained the skill [Sexual Charm] with one point, and a quick test on my guinea fox reveals that its full power is only unleashed when I glare. Though it takes considerable mental effort to use it right now, I believe that if I level it up, I'll be able to make a woman wet just by looking at them, assuming that they find me sexually attractive to begin with.

Alissa increased her "Charisma" by 1 (now 17). Her pimping me up to other women seems to be helping her with that stat.

Ciel increased her "Sanity" and "Piety" by 1 (now 22 and 27). The way that she so casually accepted the absurdity of our lifestyle must've pushed the stat over the threshold.

Aoi increased her "Intelligence" and "Wisdom" by 1 (now 10 and 11). She's almost as smart as Hana now, and that's a bit impressive.

"Her 'Wisdom' is still far below mine, and that's what really counts!" Hana grumbles through [Bind].

Sure…

While we eat, Osaria lays out the reports from yesterday for us, "Gnomeria has given their answer to your offer of aid. They say that a monster army is likely to attack their home by the next day of Nev, the twenty-ninth, and if the monsters don't move, then the gnomes will provoke them until they do.

"They've also counter-offered your request for coffee with an enchanted auto-ballista made of Darksteel." She raises her eyes from her papers and sends us a gentle smile.

I sigh in dismay, then shake my head and reply, "While I'm sure that the ballista is quite powerful, we have no need for one of those in the High Forest, so I want my coffee."

"I'll continue negotiations," she affirms with a business smile.

And Yunia instructs her further, "Tell them in no uncertain terms that we're capable of wiping out armies by ourselves and that we'll take offense if they refuse to trade something as plain as coffee. Even we sell Eia to outsiders, though we don't allow them to grow it."

Osaria nods, and we motion for her to continue on to the next topic. Now that most of the family visits are done, we can start dealing with the annoying formalities, like showing our faces to the Elder Council and the emperor.

"The Elder Council has accepted your suggested date for the Granreniandisabis, though they openly state that 'you've fooled around for too long,'" Osaria reports, using a silly nasally tone as she quotes the Council to mock them.

Lina's Trivia: the gathering of Lords is the Reniandisabis, while the gathering of the Elder Council is the Granreniandisabis.

"Fuck them," I grunt and shrug.

"Fuck them," Yunia emphatically agrees.

Klein stares at us with surprise stamped on her face.

"Visiting our parents took priority over everything else, even meeting with the emperor," Alissa explains to Klein, then gives her shoulder an assuring squeeze.

She chuckles softly and replies, "Well, I'm not really in a position to comment on that, but I do think that it makes sense."

And Yunia adds on, "It's precisely because not even the emperor demands a meeting with us until we've dealt with all the urgent problems that they can't demand that we meet with them to pay our respects, but they sure are allowed to complain."

Osaria hums and nods in agreement, then she reads from the third paper, "Lastly, the Succubi Holy Daemonic Council has accepted your request to use their [Eternal Gate] network, and they've issued temporary permits so that you can enter their Holy Land." Then she raises her gaze and stares at Roxanne. "Your family has also replied, Roxanne, but they've only said that they're ready to receive you, and nothing else."

My dear wife simply stares down at her empty cup of tea as a paralyzing fear runs down her spine. Now that we're so close to meeting her mother, all the anxiety she had before has come crashing back.

Hana and I get up, then we walk around to Roxanne and hug her from each side. Though Hana can smother our mutual wife with her balloons, I can wrap my thick, warm tail around Roxanne's small and thin appendage.

Ciel gets up and starts to soothe her as she comes in closer, "The fear you feel at the prospect of seeing your mother isn't entirely irrational. The intensity may be, but it's true that she's someone who can hurt you with mere words."

"No matter if it's a battle of swords or words, we'll always be here to protect you," I reaffirm and kiss one of her currently floppy horns.

"Gih," Gify joins in and pops onto her lap. "Gue gah geeh goh guh!"

"Well said, Gify," I praise her, and she narrows her eyes at me, unsure if I'm being sarcastic.

Alissa agrees and cheers her up further, "It's like Gify said, we've faced bigger monsters than your mother, and they all fell to our combined might."

And Yunia categorically adds, "We're going into battle, so brace your heart for what's to come."

Lina pours her feelings of warmth through [Bind] as she focuses on the memory of her previous master's mother, Madame Helganst, getting slapped by Ciel.

"Really…? It had to be that memory…?" Ciel whispers embarrassedly, and Lina just shrugs.

Aoi doesn't know what to say, so she just pours her confident and cheerful mood into our connection, warming all of our hearts.

Ciel hugs Roxanne from behind, and we all remain embraced like this for a long moment.

Then Roxanne suddenly breathes in deeply as something "settles" within her mind, then her horns become sharp again, and a flame of courage ignites within her heart.

"Alright, let's fight this dragon!" She exclaims with her voice wavering slightly as her determination quickly stabilizes.

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Chapter 110: Mother - Part 2

Klein and Osaria give Roxanne a quick hug, with the latter adding in a bit of ass fondling, and we get ourselves ready to leave.

While Sandoro organizes the men, we wait in the hub room and chat about our imminent trip.

"Whe're we going to?" Hukarere asks. Her faint accent making its rare appearance.

"Roxanne's home to the far east, Xane, the capital of the Succubi Holy Land," I answer and watch for the reactions of the rest of the Lordsguard.

A few soldiers share nervous looks while a few grin perversely, but all the Chimeras show a fair bit of interest.

Enomosa comes into the room and immediately advises the soldiers, "Succubus are aggressive, while the incubus are passive. Don't approach an accompanied man, and firmly turn down the advances of women."

"Yes, my Dame," they acknowledge her in unison and salute.

"If things go well, there might be a chance at the end of the day to let you all loose in a brothel," I cheekily announce.

And that gets everyone quite excited, except for Sandoro, who pretends that he didn't hear anything, and Enomosa, whose iron mask remains unmoving.

Hana, surprisingly, isn't that interested in the brothel. She has all the women she could want and an insatiable magic dick at her disposal, so she's more interested in potential concubines than just orgies.

With everyone ready, we enter the Imperial [Eternal Gate] Network.

We exit the Network at Goldport's Lord's Hall, then we get a short ride to the Succubi Consulate.

The demon race has their own network of [Eternal Gate]s, but since they aren't completely unified under one leader like with the empire, each race has their own network with only a few points of connection between each other. Because of that, the only connection between the empire and succubi networks is through Goldport.

I suddenly feel a pang of grief as memories of the Innocent Nymph rise to the surface of my mind, so I send out a Holly to scout the site of the attack.

It's relatively close by, so the summon finds it before we reach the Consulate.

Where once there was a large, beautiful inn, now there's only a flower garden and a giant slab of black stone, a memorial to the victims.

At the edges of the garden, there are twenty-eight human-sized crosses made of black metal with open manacles where the neck, wrists, and ankles of a person would be. This type of cross is used by the Punishers to display heretics and the Wicked for all to see before they're executed. The fact that these crosses are empty means that none of the perpetrators have been found.

Tall, white lilies are spread all throughout the flower garden, representing the souls of the innocents while smaller and more colorful flowers represent their living loved ones who they left behind.

Raised walkways lead to the memorial slab to preserve this scene for as long as possible so that the evil committed here will never be forgotten.

A single dragonkin man is standing before the slab, but I don't recognize him.

Then the Holly gets closer, and I manage to read the names.

Rutina, Daina, Suelen…

I unsummon the Holly to not ruin my mood further. We're here to support Roxanne, not to grieve over something we have no power to change.

The wound in my soul has scarred over, but I haven't forgotten them, and I never will, not until I've avenged their deaths.

Ciel grabs my head and gently pulls me closer, then kisses my forehead, and I lean into her, asking for more kisses.

Hana clenches her fist while a flame of determination is briefly lit within her heart. She's the one who has done the most work towards seizing our revenge by creating the skill she wanted that will allow her to punch a [Meteor].

We're still far from the reckoning, but we're certain it'll happen one day.

The Consulate is soon within sight, and I raise an eyebrow at the odd, tall, cylindrical building.

Made with the same yellow and white stone as the rest of the town, it wouldn't stand out if not for its peculiar shape.

Our carriages stop in front of it, then a few incubus proto-butlers come to receive us as we disembark.

The butlers offer their arms to my wives, but they all decline. They're wearing thin and revealing dresses, so I don't want no stinking male getting a feel of their almost bare breasts.

The apparent boss of the butlers makes a subtle hand motion, then all the butlers leave, and they're replaced with slutty, succubus proto-maids.

I give him a smile and a polite nod, and the boss replies with a deep bow.

Without even uttering a single word, we're all led inside by the luscious maids, then guided to the center of the consulate.

Behind huge enchanted metal doors as thick as a bank's vault, we see a single [Eternal Gate] that leads to Isfhan, one of the larger succubi cities.

"Isfhan is like Rabanara, in that there is a wide variety of races living here," Roxanne comments wistfully as we approach the portal. "It's also partially inside the mountain, so there's a good number of dwarves and hers-type demons."

"I heard that hers-type are pretty cute and similar to dwarves," Lina adds and glances at Ciel, who pretends that she didn't hear a thing.

Roxanne grins mischievously. "Yes, they are. They have large eyes and a bit of monkey blood in them, so they're pretty popular with the pedophiles."

Ciel's jaw clenches, and she holds back a pout.

I fondle the ass of my maid in thought, and she subtly licks her lips as she stares at my horns. "Your permit gives you the freedom to visit any town you'd like," she explains, her tone perfectly professional, even if her expression isn't.

"I don't think we have the time to enjoy a hers-type today," I conclude and slip a claw inside her panties to play with her asshole. She gasps but makes no move to push me away, so I play with her as we walk, and the girls follow my lead.

It seems that Osaria took the liberty of choosing the "VIP treatment" package for us. I also notice that the maid accompanying Ciel is the youngest looking of them all.

We cross through the portal, then the hot and humid air instantly changes, becoming cold and drier with a hint of dwarven air conditioning.

"Yes, this is Isfhan, alright," Roxanne quietly remarks, her voice echoing in the wide, empty room.

The maids guide us to the exit, and we enter an austere, stone corridor similar to the ones found in the imperial network, but it's much smaller and far simpler.

Soft moans echo around us as we walk down the corridor while molesting the maids. At the end of our path, an even larger vault door lays open, revealing the standard portal, a dimensional door covered in a white veil.

After crossing through it, we're finally in Xane, the center of the Succubi Holy Lands.

We exit the portal into another secured room, then we leave it and enter the main hub of the succubi [Eternal Gate] network, a large circular hall with quite the edgy architecture, literally. Spikes and gnarly-looking decorations cover almost every surface, and the color sense would make a goth feel right at home. At least the sexy or outright pornographic statues are nice to look at.

Unlike the imperial network, this hub has a lot more traffic flowing through because the entire network encompasses a stretch of land that's basically the same size as the Western High Forest, so the cost of moving both people and goods is a lot lower, though the network is still reserved for only the aristocracy.

Most of the people here are wearing slutty robes with strategic openings and patches of transparency to showcase their "assets," and Roxanne says that they're "Holy people," basically a mix between a priest and a noble. As the Holy Lands are kind of a theocracy that worships the Old Gods quite fervently, the clergy monopolizes the highest positions of power.

My maid nearly stumbles as I tickle her clit, so I decide to hold back on the stimulation and just finger fuck her slowly.

We leave the hub and come out in a public square, surrounded by equally edgy buildings.

Xane is at the same latitude as Escanso, so the climate is basically the same. The air is quite fresh, and the heat is at the perfect level for us to wear shirts and pants without feeling cold or start to sweat.

Three carriages are waiting for us, but these are pulled by horses instead of Gatuns like the elven ones would have.

"Would you like to visit Mistress Sanaz's estate right away, or should we take a scenic route?" My maid asks as politely as she can, considering that her pussy is starting to wetly drip with her lewd juices.

We instinctively turn to Roxanne. "S-scenic route, and it's not because I'm scared!" She blurts out, and [Bind] tells me that she's really telling the truth.

We get in the middle carriage while our escorts fill the other two. Since we're in foreign territory, bringing a significant number of soldiers is necessary, both for protection and to keep up appearances.

Our carriage is enchanted with [Warp Space], so there's plenty of room for everyone, including the maids.

As soon as we sit down, both Hana and Roxanne pull up their dresses, then they motion for the maids to start eating them out.

"I'm t-too stressed, I n-need some re-release!" Roxanne justifies it to herself since nobody was judging her for it.

Yunia takes off her delicate sandals and orders her maid to suck her toes, and now I raise an eyebrow at her.

"I like it," she responds with a shrug.

"Well, you could've asked me to do it," I reply with a pout.

Yunia looks away for a second and comes up with an excuse, "You're too good at it. I'd get too wet if you did."

"So, you're becoming like Ciel, now?" Hana teases, then moans softly.

Yunia narrows her eyes at Hana and calmly states, "Definitely not. A foot fetish is too unexciting for me." Then she turns her eyes away in a snobbish gesture to tell us that this conversation is over.

Ciel starts to get a bit restless, then Lina pats her thigh and pushes the young maid to sit on her lap. Ciel sighs in resignation and starts lightly molesting the maid.

As we cross through the town, the edgy buildings are left behind, and a new, extremely peculiar architectural style takes hold.

"Are these… dicks?" I question out loud and turn to my maid, but she's too distracted by my fingers to reply.

"Yes, they are…" Roxanne weakly answers me as she recovers from an orgasm.

All of the buildings unrelated to the Holy Daemonic Council have phallic shapes, and some even have balls at the bottom.

Then I notice something odd about the doors and windowsills, they're rectangular, like usual, but when they're open, there's always veils tied to both sides in such a way that they create an oval shape that's very reminiscent of a vagina. Some even have a small bell on the top where the clit would be.

I'm starting to feel like the subtle dicks in our heraldry aren't really enough to represent Roxanne's background.

My pale wife suddenly wakes up with a jolt. "No, no, they're enough. It's just that Xane is… a bit extreme," she embarrassedly explains.

I notice a couple who are passionately fucking on the roof of one of the dick-shaped buildings and snort. "At least the Chimeras will feel right at home here."

This city is indeed quite beautiful. It's like a mix of BDSM-inspired architecture with the epic glorification of sex that you'd find in ancient Greece.

We're at the foot of a snow-covered mountain named Jabalnak, so the dicks look quite small in comparison to the huge white tit in the background.

A river coming down from the mountain bisects Xane in two, and the chilly water is one of the main attractions of the town due to the warm weather. Seeing how many people like to fuck in it, I'm surprised that the water doesn't turn white after it runs through the city.

The river feeds the Green Valley, a very fertile stretch of land to the south of us, so perhaps it's all the fucking that gives it the nutrients that the farms need to prosper.

I notice that I'm also unreasonably horny considering that I Ravaged both Nono and Silvane yesterday. I was fine until we came out of Xane's hub, even though I've been finger fucking the maid while we walk, but my erection is now getting increasingly harder to control.

"Is the air making me horny, or is it just in my head?" I ask and glance at everyone.

"A known… phenomenon…" My maid answers as she catches her breath. "Non-succubus or incubus… have an increased libido… when they come here."

Roxanne chuckles and adjusts her glasses. "Well, considering that I almost rubbed myself raw when I first entered Xane, I doubt that it doesn't affect us too," she states and plunges her dagger-tail into her maid's pussy.

Lina's maid elaborates further as she gives a lap pillow to my youngest wife, "Only for your first time. Our race can adapt to the lewd air, but not the other races, whose libido remains at a higher level here than normal."

"That kind of sounds like a bad thing for Wolfy," Ciel remarks with a mix of genuine worry and amusement.

"May I ask why you think so?" Lina's maid confusedly asks.

My angel smiles wryly. "You might not have enough women in Xane to satisfy him if his libido climbs even higher."

The maids laugh, but there's a hint of truth to Ciel's words.

As everyone's lust intensifies, Lina's maid is the only one who manages to keep herself composed enough to give us a tour of the town, though my little girl stares at her maid's panties with growing hunger.

We get a glimpse of the Green Valley as the carriage climbs up a small hill. It's… well, green, very green, Windows Bliss wallpaper green. Even Gify enjoys the view, though she prefers to remain outside, on top of the carriage, until our heightened horniness calms down.

Eventually, the tour ends, and we stop at an estate that seems more like Osaria's collection of dildos (which she never used again after becoming mine).

Roxanne doesn't recognize this home. Her family used to live in a large house, but not an estate like this one. Considering that her mother is a ruthless merchant, it isn't surprising she managed to rise so far.

We disembark, and the aroused maids give us sad goodbyes.

"We'll be here all day waiting for you," Lina's maid announces with a bow.

The moment the door closes, muffled moans come from the carriage as they take care of each other, then Gify pops back into existence on my shoulder.

"Gih," she complains.

There's no such thing as too much sex.

At the entrance of the estate, a mature maid is waiting for us, but Roxanne doesn't recognize her either. The maid has shiny, red skin, but she actually covers herself up more than usual for the women here, which gives her a rather solemn air with a flair of dominatrix. She also has a very noticeable Resting Bitch Face problem, making me wonder if she has some elven blood in her.

"Esteemed guests, I'm Saghieh, the Housekeeper. Please follow me, and I'll take you to Mistress Sanaz," she requests and bows.

"Lead the way," I reply, and she immediately straightens up, then turns around and starts walking at a leisurely pace, so we admire the view as we follow her.

The front garden is… rather obscene. It's decorated with all sorts of eldritch-looking plants that could be found in one of Ciel's wet dreams.

My corrupted angel rolls her eyes and ignores my thoughts, but I do take note of what plants catch her attention the most.

Some of the plants actually move and follow us as we pass, somehow detecting our presence even though they don't have eyes.

The estate is nowhere near as large as our castle, so we quickly reach the entrance of the main building, the "ballsack" of the first dildo, a thick, veiny, white one.

With my left arm linked with Alissa's and my right linked with Roxanne's, we leisurely climb the steps.

Roxanne's mind is empty, like she's just a robot going through the motions, so I pinch her arm, making her jolt in surprise, and I have to use [Bind] to keep her from tripping.

"Oops, sorry, that was a bit dangerous," I apologize through our connection.

"It's fine…" She stiffly replies.

Seeing that she's locking up again, we comfort her in our own way, though everyone trying to access the connection at once does make it a bit loud inside my mind.

As we reach the top of the steps, the double doors ahead of us slide open, revealing the usual veils with an opening in the shape of a vagina.

The maid parts the veils for us, and we finally enter the cool shade, leaving the hot sun behind.

Roxanne clenches her teeth, and her tail freezes from her anxiety as we lay our eyes upon the three demons waiting for us.

The first is Roxanne's father, Behrouz, a rather young-looking man with a skin tone as pale as his daughter's. He has neat, sweptback brown hair, black spiral horns that point backward, and a very gentle and feminine face, making him look more like a butler than the businessman Roxanne says he is.

Beside him is Roxanne's mother, Sanaz, a supremely sexy milf that could go toe to toe with Osaria, though this prime example of a succubus lacks the breasts to compete in that department. Her skin tone is more natural, though still pale, her hair is black with a subtle purple sheen and tied up into a neat, professional bun, her sharp, straight, forward-pointing horns are the same color as her hair, and she's wearing small round glasses that just enhance her overall sexiness. The tight leather outfit coupled with her cold expression triggers the domination fetishes within me.

And finally, there's a pale little girl sticking to Behrouz's leg, staring at our ensemble with a bit of fear and shyness in her eyes. She's dressed like Lina, favoring the Gothic lolita style, and she's exactly how I imagined Roxanne would've been as a child. She'd fit perfectly in a movie as a cute child vampire.

It seems that Roxanne and the little girl both got their father's black appendages, delicate features, and skin color, and her mother's silky hair, sexy body, and sharp eyes. The tails of the four of them are perfectly equal, which might be a regional feature of Mashoor.

"I didn't know that you had a sister," Hana blurts out as everyone's attention falls on the little girl.

"I didn't know either," Roxanne mumbles, starting to feel lightheaded again.

"You would've known, had you kept in contact with us," Sanaz's icy, cold tone prickles us, forcing us to pay attention to her.

"M-mother…" Roxanne tries to greet her, but she completely forgets what she wanted to say, not even realizing that her parents didn't know a single word of Andraste before she left.

"Roxanne, I'm so happy that you're back," Behrouz confesses with a warm smile, completely ignoring the mood.

Then an awkward silence settles in for a brief moment as nobody knows what to say. Yunia suddenly prods me, and I properly start the introductions.

"Greetings. I'm Wolf Ryder, Crown Lord of the Western High Forest, and husband of your daughter."

"I'm Hanafuria Ryder, Crown Lord of the Western High Forest, and wife of your daughter."

And we continue on, but they don't even react to Aoi announcing that she's a dragon, though maybe it's because she's in her human form to not come off as threatening.

Behrouz smiles and nods at each of us while Sanaz keeps her cold eyes trained on Roxanne.

"I'm Behrouz, little Rox's father. We're not worthy of a lineage, so our family doesn't have a second name," he introduces himself, still unphased by the staring contest, then he kneels and wraps his arm around the cute little girl, "This is Taveez, Roxanne's little sister."

"Hi…" The girl shyly mumbles.

"Good girl." He pats her head, then he points to Roxanne and switches from Andraste to [Sounthern Maokai Language]. "[That's your sister. Remember what I told you about her]?" -Taveez nods- "[Now go give her a hug]."

"Eeh~…" The girl whines and tries to hide behind her father.

"[Come now, Tata. Be a good girl, okay? Good girls get dessert]."

"Hmm~…" She whines again and pouts adorably.

Behrouz stands up and gently pushes her forward.

Taveez relents and stomps her way towards us, her black leather shoes clacking loudly against the cold tiles. She looks like she's about three years old.

Roxanne breaks eye contact with her mother and turns to see her young clone approaching us, then she kneels down to get on the same eye level as Taveez.

"Hey, there… I'm… I'm your sister," Roxanne whispers, still a bit dazed.

"Hello," Taveez greets, then holds her arms out, and Roxanne gives her a hug. "Are you going to stay?" She innocently asks in Andraste with a surprising amount of skill.

Roxanne blinks, and her tail quivers as her heart tightens in pain. "No, I… I live somewhere far away."

"Okay." Then Taveez releases Roxanne and scurries back to her father while she smiles with pride. "[I did it]."

"[Yes, you did. Good girl]," Behrouz praises her as he pats her head.

I now notice that the Housekeeper is staring at us from the side, her expression going beyond just RBF and now entering into the realm of unveiled dislike for us.

"I didn't imagine that you would… get pregnant again," Roxanne weakly remarks as she seeks out my arm again for comfort.

"I had to since my only child had disappeared on me," Sanaz bitterly replies.

Oh, wow.

"Is that all that your daughter is to you?" I blurt out, irritated at her callousness.

Sanaz turns her cold eyes on me, and the dragon wakes up due to the challenge her gaze represents. "What would you know? I'd never be allowed the honor of starting a lineage if I didn't have a descendant."

"You're saying that Lordship isn't honorable enough?" Yunia coldly replies, her perfect face warped in displeasure.

The ice queen scoffs and retorts, "You Avgin would never understand what it means to earn the right to have a last name, to be deemed worthy of giving your child something to inherit. You'll never know the satisfaction of creating your own lineage."

"No, we wouldn't, but at least we aren't putting our ambition above the well-being of our children," I counter fiercely. Sanaz used Roxanne like a tool, and that deeply scarred my wife.

"Having a mere child trying to argue the meaning of family with me is insulting to my intelligence," Sanaz barks, then turns to Roxanne. "You didn't even have the backbone to assume control of your harem, and now, you just let your man spit that drivel at me."

"Don't you dare insult my husband like that!" Roxanne suddenly shouts. If Sanaz had aimed her venom at only Roxanne, then she'd have never reacted like this, but involve any of the rest of us, and she becomes irrationally angry.

"Please, not in front of Taveez," Behrouz begs, trying to cover the ears of the now frightened little girl.

Sanaz suddenly grabs his hands and jerks them away. "She needs to listen, to witness the cowardice of her own sister!"

Yunia chooses another angle to strike from. "Is this the decorum we should expect from someone of your station?" She sedately asks.

"I won't have you antagonizing me in my own home," Sanaz coldly replies, then she activates her Emergency Ring, and Alissa senses a large group of men coming into range of her [Sense Presence].

Yunia wrinkles her nose and frowns, deeply offended by Sanaz's attitude. "Are you sure it's a good idea to force an Avgin Lord out of their own home?" She coldly asks, then she lifts her hand and motions with her index finger for the Lordsguard waiting outside to join us.

The ice queen's men pour out of the corridor behind her at the same time that ours enter through the door behind us, and I notice the Housekeeper's expression warping in fury.

Behrouz shakes his head in dismay and takes a few steps backward, pulling his daughter away from her mother. "Please…" He whispers soberly.

The ice bitch glances at her husband, then she turns to the Lordsguard and analyzes their equipment for a short moment.

"This isn't your home," she apathetically states.

"It is Roxanne's," I reply in kind and glare.

She glares back, and her face slowly warps in growing anger, her pale skin turning bright red, then her hand twitches, and she suddenly waves off their men.

After a second of hesitation, they back down and return from whence they came, then we gesture for ours to retreat, too.

"Do whatever you want!" The bitch shouts and storms out of the main hall, the Housekeeper hurrying to follow after her.

That went well… seriously.

A note from Manasong

Hall of Fame of Patrons

The patrons who support Rupegia shall have their names sung by the bards for they deserve the glory and honor. Their names are:

Prince PreownedFIN.

Prince Creamy Spinach.

Lord Andrew Meyers.

Lord Novgarod.

Lord Michale Erwin.

Lord Bakerdea.

Lord Maurice.

Lord Empyrean.

Lord Mattirro Draca.

Lord Fullmoon.

Lord Sean Drake.

Lord EESDESESESRDT.

Lord FrostyCube.

Lord Mike Bartter.

Lord Cardinal Steiner.

Lord Warwulfv.

Lord Jorge Franco.

Lord Khristopher Welsh.

Lord DJ.

Lord Philip.

Lord Tenebris Lupus.

Lord The Tallest Joshua.

Lord Copey Dunt.

Lord Dracopuppy23.

Lord Chris Carter.

Lord Paul Daval.

Lord Bradly.

Lord Aubrey Powell.

Lord AndreyUC.

Lord Cidant.

Lord Tmac.

Lord Krawn.

Lord Jetdy S.

Noble Salty Panda.

Noble Mild Fracas.

Noble Aclys.

Noble CarlBaxter.

Noble Yeuromain.

Noble Brandon Lai.

Leave a rating or a review to help me rise to the top or fix my shameful understanding of prose.

Take a look over my blog where all information about the world of Rupegia will be posted.

Join the Discord and discuss, or rant, or meme, or try and fight me so your waifu gets more screentime.

Become a Patron and read chapters in advance, or read the side-stories, or leave your mark on the story, or help choose the next artwork or the next side-story.

Chapter 110: Mother - Part 3

"That was horrible…" Hana mumbles, then walks up to the stunned Roxanne and holds her hand to comfort her.

"It could've gone worse," Yunia points out.

"There's still a chance to salvage your relationship," Ciel tries to reassure her.

And the rest of the girls share a perplexed look.

I kiss Roxanne's hand lovingly, and she seems to regain her senses as she blinks repeatedly, then she gently pushes us away, freeing her hands, and adjusts her glasses.

"I'll be fine," she quietly replies, then walks forward and pulls her father into a tight hug. "I'm sorry, Dad."

"Oh… don't be," Behrouz blurts out, then both of their faces warp in pain and they start to cry silent tears. "I missed you, my little Rox. I missed you so much."

"I'm sorry for running away…" Roxanne apologizes, then her voice fails as sobs take over her.

Taveez stares at them in confusion, not understanding why they're crying, but then she hugs them both at once to not be left out.

We stay silent for an awkward moment while their emotions subside, then Roxanne pulls him away to give Taveez another hug. "Thank you for the hug, Tavi," she cheekily whispers while drying her tears.

"[My name is Taveez!]" The girl complains in [Southern Maokai Language].

"[But Tavi is cuter]," Roxanne teases with a smirk.

And the little succubus looks away, deep in thought as she considers the pros and cons, then she nods in approval. "[Okay, but only you can.]"

Roxanne grins wide, gushing in happiness, then hugs Tavi again. "You're so cute!"

"Heey~…!" Tavi whines as she's already had enough hugs for today, then Roxanne releases her and stands up again.

"She's exactly how I imagined Roxanne would be as a child, minus the glasses," I remark and flash a smile to little Tavi.

"She is, but I think we've spoiled her a lot more than Roxanne," Behrouz admits and laughs softly.

"Me? Not spoiled!" Tavi exclaims and angrily crosses her arms.

"Just a bit," he teases her further.

"Not!"

"Yes."

"Ashlan!" She garbles her Maokai "no."

He laughs out loud and pats her head. "Okay, you aren't, but you have to keep being a good girl if you don't want to become spoiled."

She nods energetically. "Yes."

Then he turns to us, his tone now very gentle and courteous, "I apologize for what you've seen from us. Sanaz, my love, she… didn't take it well when Roxanne left home."

"Her anger is understandable, but her behavior isn't excusable," Yunia asserts, and Behrouz cringes subtly. "We wish for a friendly relationship with your family, so we won't press this issue."

Both his head and the tip of his dagger-tail nod slowly. "Thank you."

Roxanne sends him a sympathetic smile, and she has to hold herself back from hugging him again.

Behrouz clears his throat and completely recomposes himself, trading his gentle air for one that's more formal and butler-like. "The Housekeeper isn't here, so I'll guide you to the guest area where your men can rest," he politely announces.

Enomosa, who's been standing at the doorway, chimes in, "I advise to always keep a few escorts with you, your Highnesses. The men are all in fellowships, so we'll be able to know where you are through the bond."

I nod in agreement and ask out loud, "Will we be staying here all day? Perhaps we could allow half of them to visit a brothel nearby, and then they can switch with the other half once they're satisfied." I turn to Behrouz and give him a suggestive smirk. "Do you have any recommendations?"

He nods gently. "I do. If you're looking for something you'd only find in Xane, then I know the perfect place."

After a few minutes of getting things sorted out, we cross the estate towards the guest area with half of our men in tow.

The halls we cross through are rather chilly and solemn. Aside from the exterior having a thinly-veiled symbology, the rest of the estate seems to favor minimalism, though there are still quite a few sexually explicit statues here and there.

"Is Khadima still living in Mashoor?" Roxanne suddenly asks, the echo of her voice easily drowning out the heavy steps of our men, which were already muffled by the elven padding of their armor.

Behrouz stops and gives her a sad, sympathetic look that tears at Roxanne's heart as she immediately understands the meaning of it.

"I'm sorry, Roxxy, but Khadima passed away a year ago," he whispers softly.

Roxanne sighs and nods in understanding. The maid was already old and likely eager to join her late husband in Paradise.

After a moment of silence, Roxanne moves on and asks, "What about our home in Mashoor?"

"Sold. It's still there, but we rarely ever went back there, so it was only a drain on our funds."

"And our old house here in Xane?"

He shakes his head. "Also sold. That one, we had even less reason to hold on to."

Nearly everything she held dear when she was a child is now gone.

"It might be for the best," she soberly admits through [Bind]. "The only things I miss from that time are Shervin and Khadima."

The mention of Shervin jabs a pang of jealousy into me since he was her bodyguard, and also the one who took her first time, but Roxanne is so emotionally drained right now that she doesn't even try to tease me about it.

"His dick was bigger…" The usual Roxanne surfaces for a brief moment, and I just pat the bundle of blankets inside my soul space that represents her mind.

The servants prepare a long table full of snacks and refreshments (non-alcoholic only) for our men, and we leave them in the main hall of the guest area while we continue on to the backyard, and we're pleasantly surprised that it isn't populated with eldritch horrors (except for Ciel, though she won't admit to it).

Tavi immediately runs to the grass garden while Ciel gets interested in the small pedestal that holds a wide variety of marble balls.

Alissa convinces Aoi to join her, and the two of them each transform into the child-sized version of their bestial form, then they run to join Tavi.

Behrouz notices Ciel's interest and explains, "Taveez was obsessed with marbles a while ago, so we put this here for her to play with her friends when they come over."

"I don't remember bringing friends home," Roxanne suddenly blurts out, then blushes at the embarrassing revelation.

"You did. I remember," Behrouz softly replies, then his voice becomes a bit wistful as he adds, "Until we moved into the mansion."

"Ah, yeah, that's right…" She mumbles back and sighs.

Roxanne was born a poor commoner, but then everything changed when they found a treasure full of gold that let them buy one of Mashoor's fishing companies.

Ciel and Lina start playing with the marbles while we sit down at a covered glass table, then a servant comes out to serve us some cold tea. It seems that they rarely drink anything hot here, aside from the copious volumes of semen.

After delicately taking a sip of his tea, the awfully young-looking father breaks the brief silence, "Can you tell me about what you've been doing since you left?"

Hana smirks and glances at Roxanne, who subtly smiles. Now, this is something they're happy to talk about.

The mood slowly lightens up as Roxanne relaxes and returns to being the cheeky and cheerful woman I fell in love with.

Behrouz is quite a good listener, always reacting well to the tales, even when they get a bit dark, like when she got hurt by the Symbol of Hate or the mercenaries of Dawn of Fire.

He uses a momentary break in our tales to give his daughter some praise, "I never saw you as weak." -He smiles wryly- "Physically, yes, but the things you went through only confirm what I felt. You have a strong spirit."

"Though she's a bit crazy, too," Hana teases.

"A bit," Yunia emphasizes.

Roxanne chuckles like an evil lady. "Ohohoh, I love being a crazy bitch. I get all the excitement with none of the shame, unlike a certain person." And she shoots a not-so-subtle glare at the only haughty elf with a humiliation fetish at the table.

"If you're implying that Yunia feels shame, I respectfully disagree," I calmly interject.

"It's because you haven't pushed her hard enough," Hana remarks, and Yunia actually sweats cold, for once.

"It's this 'intense' love that I like so much about us," Roxanne suddenly confesses and blushes softly as we turn heated stares towards her.

"I'm very happy for you, little Rox," Behrouz kindly whispers with a smile, then pats Roxanne's hand with his dagger-tail, and his tone grows more sure as he states, "We're very proud of you, Roxanne. I'm sure that your mother will come around and tell you the same, she's just-…"

"Obsessed with creating a 'lineage,'" Yunia smoothly interrupts.

His smile loses some of its brightness, and he slowly nods. "It's because of her grandparents. We've been estranged from them since before you were even born, and it's that… hate for each other that made her become like this."

Something about everyone's reactions to this is starting to irritate me. "I understand her reasons, but it doesn't excuse her behavior," I begin by paraphrasing what Yunia said about it, but I'm just starting to lay down what I really think about this. "She wanted to use Roxanne as a tool to get back at her grandparents."

Behrouz's eyebrows knit together, and his thin tail hides behind his chair. "As a Lord, you should understand the drive for a parent to guide their children to inherit their legacy," he retorts tactfully.

I shake my head and narrow my eyes subtly. "I was born a commoner, I don't have anywhere near the same obsession with a 'legacy' as she does."

"But you'll still guide your children towards this path, right?" He tentatively insists, looking a bit concerned.

And I reply with a slow, deliberate tone for emphasis, "Yes, guide, not force or use."

His frown deepens in irritation, and he becomes quiet.

"I've seen Roxanne's memories about her mother through Gify," I continue with a half-lie. "Did she ever ask what Roxanne wanted?"

"Gih," Gify backs me up.

And I see his delicate jaw clench as he swallows deeply.

"I was never asked about if I wanted to be a Lord," Yunia interjects as she stares at me intensely, her face so stoic that it's almost like she's using [Mask].

And the girls all start paying a lot of attention to our conversation.

"But your father should have," I affirm as kindly as I can.

But now, she starts to look rather upset. "What if I had said no? What if our children say no?"

And now, even Alissa stops to wait for my answer.

These questions evoke complicated feelings within all of us. We've all made sacrifices, made peace with the duties that we're each expected to fulfill, and bet our lives on that my "destiny" will take us somewhere… good. The matter of children and what we'll leave behind is very delicate to us, and not something that I can talk about without employing a lot of tact.

I send her a head pat through [Bind] as I gently reply, "That's a very difficult question to answer, Yunia, my love. But think of a Lord who didn't want the responsibility, would they really be a good Lord?"

"The more tempered rulers are those who didn't ask for it," Ciel's voice reaches our ears from far away, and this time, she doesn't use a teaching, but her own (and Lina's) perspective on history.

And I disagree with them, "Only if the focus of their rule is internal, with the intent to keep the nation stable. Add in an external threat, like an invasion, and they'd quickly get deposed, if their nation didn't fall already from their ruler's lack of decisiveness."

"Are you a historian?" Behrouz questions rather bemusedly.

"No," I answer flatly.

Lina comes over to us and decides to speak for herself, "For thousands of years, the 'focus' of rulers has always been 'internal' due to the empire dealing with any 'outside threat.'"

Behrouz raises an eyebrow, perhaps a bit confused about how they were both listening to our rather quiet conversation so well while playing marbles.

I nod at her, and she goes back to Ciel. "My point is that everything is relative, but there's a difference between the sacrifice someone makes for the responsibility of Lordship and the sacrifice Roxanne was forced into just for her mother to get back at her grandparents. To assume her answer just because that's how things were done doesn't make it right or fair."

Alissa snorts and continues playing, but before anyone can get a word in, Roxanne suddenly confesses, "I'd have said yes…" She gives her father and me a gloomy look, the cheerfulness from before now gone again. "I'd have said that I wanted to help Mom."

"Until you didn't," I continue for her. "Your parents should've both paid more attention to the signs of your depression."

"That's…!" Behrouz suddenly exclaims as he glares at me, looking quite offended. "She was grieving for her late lover! That's what we assumed it was!"

I hold the glare without yielding an inch. "Yet you let her mother berate her for ignoring the marriage partners that were arranged for her while she was still grieving."

Behrouz's unnaturally pale face flushes red as he struggles to contain his anger. "This is too much! Even if you saw through a nature spirit, who are you to say that to me?!"

My tail tenses up in anger and almost pushes the chair out from under my ass. "I-…!"

"Wolfy…" Roxanne softly calls me, her mood darkening even further to the point that I feel guilty for escalating this fight, though I refuse to apologize. I had a very similar conversation with Lily because of how her parents made her become an overachiever, and I just narrowly avoided becoming one due to mine.

An awkward silence befalls our table since it takes some time for all of us to process our emotions.

Roxanne stares at Tavi, a growing sense of dread holding her back from being happy about the fact that she now has a sister.

"I want to leave that in the past," she breathes tiredly.

"Even I know that you have to clean wounds before you can let them heal," Hana imparts a rare piece of wisdom, then threatens her with "snu snu" alongside this thought.

Roxanne sighs softly, a faint, wry smile gracing her thin, pretty lips, then she straightens her back as she starts to gather up her motivation. She's the last one of us that needs to get her shit together, and she seems to be ready to do it even if it's barehanded.

"I ran away, and now I'm tied to Wolfy and the Western High Forest, so I can't be used for Mother's lineage anymore…" She starts with a confession.

"Roxxy…" Behrouz whispers achingly.

She turns to her dear father and looks him right in the eye, a new determination blooming within her. "But I can help. We can help. The Ryder family is already standing shoulder to shoulder with the Holy Daemonic Council. The old cocks may have high 'Piety' or a few Blessings from the Humanoid Gods, but none of their families hold three Blessings, and that's not even including the fact that we had two Interventions in our favor!"

But he becomes confused. "But help, how…? They only care about the Old Gods."

And her tone grows steadier, emboldened by our instant approval of what she's thinking of. "Wolfy started the Ryder Royal Research Institute, but we have plans to expand it and add a school, one for all classes of society, so once Taveez is old enough to learn magic, she will come to live with us to study at the Institute."

"Roxxy, your Mother wants a Holy-…"

"If the Daemonic Council doesn't recognize the Holiness of our family, of our clan, then they aren't worthy of their Titles!" She declares, her horns glinting with unnatural sharpness as they harden along with her resolve.

Behrouz stares at her with a frown as worry and uncertainty tear at him.

Roxanne's decision, for she won't take "no" as an answer, has obvious potential to work, but it's an untested path.

Sanaz wants a lineage, and she'll only get it if one of her children becomes a "Holy Person," which is only possible in daemonic society if one gains enough political, magical, martial, or religious power. While Roxanne's path was straightforward due to her magical talent, Taveez's future is still uncertain.

"I won't let Tavi turn out like I did, even if it means that Mother will never have her lineage," Roxanne asserts, but that only makes Behrouz even more hesitant.

He turns his eyes away and observes his daughter as she plays hide-and-seek with Aoi and Alissa. The child seems quite clever, but my apex predator and my Misty Fox have to hold themselves back to make things fair.

Once found, the little succubus girl summons her bat wings and actually flies away quite fast, forcing Aoi to put some effort into catching up with her, only to let her go at the last moment.

"Sakli!" Tavi exclaims as she touches the statue, then she laughs and points at Aoi. "You're the vnebi again!"

Roxanne recognizes the sounds of northerner slang, and though she doesn't know their translation, it's easy to guess their meaning.

"Muuuh~…" Aoi groans inside my soul space. "I won't let her go next time."

"When did you learn Andraste?" Roxanne softly asks.

"Shortly after you left. It's the language of merchants, so we were forced to," He dryly replies.

Taveez is just as carefree and cheerful as Roxanne, though the latter didn't usually show it for most of her life due to how much pressure was put on her. This is what Roxanne wants to protect.

The little girl runs off to hide, but then stops in front of a hedge. Her wings leave a strong trail of mana, so she deliberates about whether or not it's feasible for her to climb it without getting her cute frilly dress torn.

Fox-Alissa peeks at her from behind an obscene hedge sculpture. "Hey, I'll show you my hiding spot," the cheeky fox stealthily calls for her attention.

Tavi's eyes open wide in wonder. "Really?" She whispers, but then Alissa runs away. "Ah!" And Tavi goes after her.

The trail that the little girl left behind is so strong that even we catch a whiff of her mana.

"She's already showing the signs of strong magic, and I bet she was born with [Summon Wings]," Roxanne remarks as we all observe them while they play.

That pushes Behrouz to make a decision, and the emotions roiling within his heart seem to settle, so he finally relents. "I'll help you convince Sanaz," he tiredly announces, his spiral horns now looking rather floppy.

The tension in Roxanne's body evaporates, and she finally smiles again. "Thank you, Dad," she whispers warmly.

"I advise that we make a plan," Yunia interjects, and Behrouz agrees with a sigh.

I suggest getting her drunk, but Behrouz shoots that down instantly because she knows very well how to be manipulative herself, and she'd rescind anything she said while drunk if we don't properly convince her. Even Behrouz trying to mollify her would likely backfire on us if she caught even a whiff of it.

We have to be upfront about it, so we discuss the precise words that need to be said.

A note from Manasong

Hall of Fame of Patrons

The patrons who support Rupegia shall have their names sung by the bards for they deserve the glory and honor. Their names are:

Prince PreownedFIN.

Prince Creamy Spinach.

Lord Andrew Meyers.

Lord Novgarod.

Lord Michale Erwin.

Lord Bakerdea.

Lord Maurice.

Lord Empyrean.

Lord Mattirro Draca.

Lord Fullmoon.

Lord Sean Drake.

Lord EESDESESESRDT.

Lord FrostyCube.

Lord Mike Bartter.

Lord Cardinal Steiner.

Lord Warwulfv.

Lord Jorge Franco.

Lord Khristopher Welsh.

Lord DJ.

Lord Philip.

Lord Tenebris Lupus.

Lord The Tallest Joshua.

Lord Copey Dunt.

Lord Dracopuppy23.

Lord Chris Carter.

Lord Paul Daval.

Lord Bradly.

Lord Aubrey Powell.

Lord AndreyUC.

Lord Cidant.

Lord Tmac.

Lord Krawn.

Lord Jetdy S.

Noble Salty Panda.

Noble Mild Fracas.

Noble Aclys.

Noble CarlBaxter.

Noble Yeuromain.

Noble Brandon Lai.

Leave a rating or a review to help me rise to the top or fix my shameful understanding of prose.

Take a look over my blog where all information about the world of Rupegia will be posted.

Join the Discord and discuss, or rant, or meme, or try and fight me so your waifu gets more screentime.

Become a Patron and read chapters in advance, or read the side-stories, or leave your mark on the story, or help choose the next artwork or the next side-story.

Chapter 111: Explosive Finish - Part 1

As part of our plan, we pull out the golems and strategically position them. Shortly after we finish our plotting, Saghieh, the red-skinned Housekeeper, appears near the edge of the field and observes us. It seems that Sanaz has finally calmed down, since her personal fuck toy is back at her job.

The relationship Roxanne's parents have is more open than mine, so they have a large number of casual partners, but they don't have an actual harem, although the Housekeeper is definitely Sanaz's favorite.

Perhaps she's like what Poosh is to me.

Roxanne gently waves to her, and she comes closer. As she approaches, she shoots a measuring look at Jarn, who suddenly turns her unmoving, stern-looking face towards her observer.

The stern Housekeeper seems to be subtly unnerved by the golem, but then she ignores Jarn completely and stops before us.

"Yes, Lord Roxanne?" She inquires, her RBF making her look like she's glaring at my pale wife.

"Has my mother calmed down?" Roxanne soberly asks.

Saghieh nods and holds her hands in front of her waist in a lady-like posture. "She's resting, yes."

"Good. It's unbecoming of someone like her to be angered so easily," I remark with a carefully trimmed stern tone.

Now Saghieh glares at me with an intensity that's even stronger than Yunia's. She must have some devil-type blood in her, giving her the skin color and the face of a shoujo villain.

I still find her really attractive, tho.

"Madame Sanaz is not used to being threatened in her own home," Saghieh slowly replies, enunciating every word.

It's sort of a slight against us as imperial nobles to call Sanaz a "Madame," a title reserved for the nobles of Avgin that has been co-opted by the daemonic aristocracy.

"It's also my home," Roxanne coldly retorts.

And we remain silent, waiting for the Housekeeper to bark again, but she shows a lot of self-restraint and doesn't reply.

"We really do hope that the esteemed Sanaz is now in control of herself again. It would be a shame if that previous display was all I had to see from her," Yunia subtly taunts.

And Saghieh remains as calm as a lake. "I assure you, she's reflecting on what happened. She was simply overwhelmed with emotion due to Roxanne's sudden return."

"We did send word that we were coming a few days ago," I point out.

"For something as important as Lord Roxanne's return, a few days are nothing to calm the nerves of a mother," she replies with icy cold conviction.

I let my draconic gaze stab at her, and her grip on her hands tighten. "Yet she seemed less than excited to see her daughter again," I riposte with the same tone.

She swallows once before replying, "If you'll forgive me for being frank, she felt betrayed by Lord Roxanne's departure. It left a hole in her heart that still hasn't closed properly."

I'd say that's probably why this estate feels so "empty."

I nod and rein in my glaring. "Hopefully, she'll be open to mending their relationship."

Saghieh seems to begrudgingly nod back in agreement. "We don't think she's trying to undermine things, she just has a very clear opinion about who's at fault here."

Taveez's laughter suddenly draws our attention, though I continue to watch the strict Housekeeper for a second longer, and I'm rewarded with the sight of her face paling in fear as the two doll golems throw the little girl around with [Telekinesis] as if she were a volleyball.

Behrouz sweats cold, internally regretting his choices, but he keeps his face devoid of emotion to not give anything away. After our "demonstration" of the golems' precision, it'd take someone ten times as strong-willed as him to argue against this idea.

The golems may seem like they're being reckless, but the precision with which they can manipulate spells is enviable, even to Roxanne. They do need to cast spells simply to move, so it's understandable that they're this good at it.

The girl-cum-volleyball comes so close to the horns of a statue that she could prick the back of her head on it if she twitched, but the golems don't waste more than a second before they punt the girl forward again, and her delightful, childish giggles resound through the garden once more.

I think we're a bit more fond of dangerous stunts than what the average person would consider "normal."

"Blame our lifestyle," Alissa replies through [Bind] and sends an internal shrug.

Ted's and Suzy's synchronization with each other is something that only the legendary elven Twin Warriors could beat. They know of each other's limitations so perfectly that they correct the mistakes of the other before they can even happen.

It's truly marvelous to see them ragdoll the girl all throughout the garden, always bringing her mere centimetri away from grievous wounds before punting her towards the next danger.

"B-Behrouz…" Saghieh stutters his name, too astonished to formulate a proper sentence.

"These golems are incredible, no?" He stiffly replies, but the red woman doesn't pay attention to his tone.

"P-perhaps we should ask Sanaz for permission f-for this…?" She gives him an exasperated glance, then glues her eyes on Tavi again as she also sweats cold with worry.

"Permission? You really think she's in any danger?" I interject with a scoff as I fake a snooty tone.

Her tone turns surprisingly soft as she pleads, "L-Lord, please-…"

"Ted, switch!" I shout, then I leap out of my chair and use [Telekinesis] to propel myself forward and upwards.

Tavi is punted back towards the table, then guided to softly land on my chair.

"It's over…?" She moans and pouts cutely.

The golems catch me with their spells and make me fly around at high speed all over the garden.

It's kind of fun, but timing is everything, so after a few more moments of this, they land me in front of Saghieh again.

"Would you like to have a go?" I softly ask her with an innocent smile.

The red of her skin subtly pales. "No, thank you, Lord Wolf," she stiffly declines.

I shrug, then I pick up Tavi from my seat and sit down, setting her on my lap. I do this so absentmindedly that by the time I realize the wives' influence in my actions, it's already too late.

"Pedo," Roxanne's teasing voice echoes inside my mind, and I grit my teeth in annoyance.

Tavi seems quite happy and comfortable on my lap, for some reason, but I still get the golems to distract her because I'm definitely not comfortable right now.

"You just have an aura that makes young girls comfortable around you," Alissa explains, and I feel like Ciel wants to tease me about this, but she's simply too pure to banter.

Then Gify decides to drop from my shoulder and entertains Tavi, surprisingly letting the little girl touch her, which is rare for my little nature spirit.

Yunia sends a gentle poke through our connection, helping me focus back on the plan, then I smirk and state, "I'm a Golemancer, and I trust my creations so much that I've made them our permanent bodyguards since they need neither sleep nor rest."

Saghieh silently turns her eyes to the doll golems, and I notice her pupils subtly dilate.

"Do I still have a room to call my own here?" Roxanne suddenly asks.

The Housekeeper gracefully nods and gestures towards another part of the estate. "You do, Lord Roxanne. All of your previous belongings are still there, though it isn't large enough for all of the Ryders to sleep there."

"I'd like to see it."

She bows deeply. "Then follow me, please."

Just Hana and I accompany them because what we want right now is to get Saghieh to return to Sanaz.

We enter a wide but rather empty room. There's a lavish bed that can fit three people, a gold-adorned wardrobe, two gold-adorned trunks, a long shelf full of old books, and a writing table with a chair that looks out the wide window with a nice view of a garden.

Even we don't have that many belongings to fill out our bedroom, but at least it fits with the overall grand design of elven architecture because the patterns that decorate every centimetri of the walls are what makes it beautiful. This room, on the other hand, just feels empty.

"I never had a lot of cute things, to begin with," Roxanne comments wistfully, then she walks over to the wardrobe and opens it. "I had a lot of dresses, though. I guess my parents liked to dress me up."

I put points in [Southern Maokai Language] and look through the titles of the books. Most of them are technical books about magic or [Alchemy], and only a few are for entertainment.

"Your parents let you read erotica?" I reflexively ask as I look over the suggestive names.

"Why shouldn't they?" Roxanne asks back confusedly.

I snort. "Right, I forgot that we're still in Rupegia, not to mention that you're a succubus…"

"That doesn't mean that I'm lewder than the average humanoid," she retorts with a pout.

"Uh-huh…" Hana grunts mockingly.

I give my succubus a questioning look. "You say that your kind isn't promiscuous, but you have an event that's literally named Sexual Celebration."

"Well-…" She begins, but her retort dies in her throat.

My smug smile widens into an infuriating grin. "Well…? We're waiting…"

"Suck my clit," she mumbles and looks away, her thin tail twitching in annoyance.

"Gladly," I smugly reply.

Roxanne feels very frustrated that she can't find an appropriate riposte to my banter and turns towards the trunk.

"I used these when I was studying at the Holy Academy," she remarks to force the conversation to move on to something else.

I immediately switch gears and gently ask, "Do you want to visit it?"

"Perhaps…"

"Even if it reminds you of Mithra, it might do you some good," Hana wisely advises.

Roxanne smiles bitterly and nods as she opens both trunks. One is partially filled with paper and notes while the other contains a variety of [Alchemy] supplies. The fact that nothing is dusty or stained tells us that this room is likely cleaned fairly often.

"My old notes about Potion and [Poison Making]," she remarks, a bit disheartened at the reminder of the dream she abandoned.

"Your research for the anti-venom?" Hana asks, and we both stop behind her, then look down over her shoulder.

"Yes…" Whispers softly, then she reads her notes and frowns. "I always sent a copy to the Student Liaison, but she never once told me how horribly confusing my reports were."

I chuckle and point out, "You were young then-"

"Still am," she sharply interrupts.

"Still are," I immediately agree with a nod. "But now, you know better."

She hums in thought and starts flipping through them. It seems like she was doing things through trial and error, methodically organizing and cataloging the results of each combination of ingredients.

The anti-venom for the Kazh-dom Ambusher, a dreadful and lethal monster, seems to require a dozen specific anti-venom compounds because of how it absolutely destroys every single cell of their victim's body through a wide variety of vectors of attack. It's like someone just merged all known venoms and created liquid death.

Considering that all the monsters in Death Valley, where the Kazh-dom appears, have a theme related to "death," my analogy doesn't seem to be far from the truth.

"Would you two like to come visit the Academy with me?" Roxanne shyly asks, her tail undulating gently in expectation.

"Love to," Hana answers for us both.

We just fool around a bit to comfort her until lunchtime, then we all gather in the dining hall. It has a bit of edginess to its architecture, giving it an austere charm. It's not exactly lavish as it seems that Sanaz's sense of style is quite restrained regarding wealth, possibly one of the reasons she's so good at making money, but she definitely has the succubus obsession with pornography.

Once we're all seated, the bitc-, I mean, Roxanne's stunningly milfy and seductive mother struts in. Her body definitely agrees with the tight black leather dress she's wearing, giving her the aura of a succubus dominatrix.

The Housekeeper stands behind her like a bodyguard, a mirror to how Jarn stands behind me while the toy golems on Ciel's and Lina's lap look deceptively harmless.

Servants pour in and set out the banquet, a mix of grotesque succubi cuisine with the more recognizable elven veggies and smoked meat, which is quite pleasing to us.

Their food is quite spicy, and they seem to regard food from the depths of the sea as delicacies, but it isn't too bad. It'd just take a lot of time to get used to if I were to live here.

"You do have a certain fascination with food that we don't share," Yunia retorts through [Bind] and looks towards Ciel, asking for support, but the lewd angel is trying her best to not get wet at the sight of the eldritch horrors. She'd be fine if I weren't teasing her with my deep, dark knowledge of hentai.

Yunia rolls her eyes, then Lina and Alissa give her their support as consolation.

The beginning of our meal is completely silent, but Behrouz strikes up a conversation about their trips to the north of Maoka and the Neverending Storm, which triggers the fantasy nerd in me.

His tone is solemn with a hint of excitement as he retells his experiences, using his fairly high "Charisma" to enhance the wonder of his words, "The Storm is infinite, and it's hard to grasp what that really means until you're very close to it. The sheer distance cloaks your view in a blue veil that slowly dissipates as you get closer, so the first thing you notice is a slight waving in the sky, making it seem like the sea has turned vertical.

"Then the clouds start to take shape, and it looks like you're approaching a mountain-sized storm wall, making you feel like you're nothing more than a mere ant before your doom. After that, you start to notice the lightning strikes and the jets of lava, which are wild, unpredictable, and inconceivably huge, which clearly shows you that it isn't just a raging storm, but a raging calamity.

"Then it slowly expands to fill your view, becoming higher, and higher, and higher, and higher… to the point that you're not just an ant now, but a tiny speck of dust before the remains of the war of the divines. Only the most powerful of mages might be able to cause any degree of significant change to it, but it'd be only temporary, because the Storm never stops, never abates, never calms. It's Everlasting.

"The experience was so humbling that I even gained a point in 'Piety' for it as my respect for the Gods of Origin was renewed."

Lina's Trivia: Gods of Origin is what the demons call the Old Gods.

I hum in contentment and remark, "I'd love to see the Storm one day. Perhaps after we visit the capital and pay our respects to the Emperor."

He gives me a brief smile and adds, "The sheep-type Holy Lands have a wide variety of leisure cruise ships that sail close to the Storm, but I don't know if Avgi has something similar."

Oh, right. Poosh is from the north of Maoka.

"Oh, there are. I saw quite a lot of them when I visited Seemacht once," Hana chimes in.

Then Yunia takes Hana's hook to set the plan in motion, "The north is too far for us to use the excuse of 'building relations' to visit, so it'll have to be strictly a leisure trip."

"We could always try to sell some of my knowledge," I innocently suggest.

"Oh?" Behrouz hums inquisitively.

"I'm not Blessed by the Goddess of Knowledge just for show," I explain with a subtly smug smile.

"What knowledge does someone as young as you have that's worthy of being sold?" Sanaz falls for the bait, her tone rather cold and detached.

I point to the golems standing behind us, "I'm a Golemancer, a Summoner, and a Scholar. I have a lot to sell."

"How…" She mumbles, then stops herself and frowns as she rests her head on her hand, her silky hair falling like drapes to frame her gorgeous face. "What would you wish to trade for the knowledge of how to build these golems?"

I politely explain, letting my [Acting] do its job in keeping me calm, "[Golemancy] is a very complex skill, but it also has tremendous potential. Think of golems as smart and permanent elemental summons."

"Sounds like a good source of workers," she remarks, a bit of interest showing in her tone.

Through Alissa's eyes, I see the Housekeeper subtly purse her lips as her body twitches. It seems that we've succeeded in impressing her.

I slowly nod as I explain, "Yes, but they hold a copy of the memories of their creator, so I still have to fix that issue with their creation."

Sanaz narrows her eyes. "And you look like someone who has a lot of secrets."

I gently smile. "Exactly."

She scoffs and shakes her head as she relents, "But anyway, I don't think I have anything I could trade for a skill of that potential. I only have money."

"You're still Roxanne's mother, her family."

She slowly straightens her back and folds her arms in her lap, now back to looking serious and stern. "What are you implying?"

Roxanne immediately takes over, keeping herself calm and collected as she announces, "I wish to make peace with you, Mother, and return some of what you've given to me."

The two stare at each other while the entire table goes perfectly silent, with Sanaz filled with suspicion and bitterness while Roxanne remains hurt and sorrowful inside.

"My love," Behrouz's gentle whisper seems to magically diffuse some of the coldness in the air, and Sanaz turns to him, her gaze respectful and expectant. "Let us be a family again."

The stern woman clenches her jaw and seems to waver, her lip trembling as she holds back her rising anger. "Fine," she begrudgingly agrees. "Perhaps I was… too harsh."

Understatement of the year!

"I ran because I wanted to be free," Roxanne suddenly confesses, the desire to lay it all bare taking over for a moment.

Sanaz restrains herself from shouting at her and points out through gritted teeth, "You could've been 'free' as a Holy person."

Roxanne gently shakes her head. "I wouldn't have, and you know it."

The strict mother seems like she wants to argue about it, but with a glance at Behrouz, she bottles it up again.

"We've all done things we regret, but it's been years, so perhaps we shouldn't poke at scarred wounds," the sympathetic mediator strikes again. His words seem to have a strong effect on the two estranged women, so I let him push this angle without forcing more admissions of mea culpa from Sanaz.

"We have a wide extent of knowledge that we could teach Taveez once she's older," Ciel continues cordially, but she receives a frown in response from Sanaz, so my angel lets her stern side show as she gives Sanaz a short but sharp reprimand, "Let's give your younger daughter more room to choose than you gave to Roxanne."

The little girl turns her innocent eyes of wonder towards Ciel, ignoring all the tension in the air.

But Sanaz doesn't flinch at the jab and counters, "How is that better than letting her enter Xane's Holy Academy?"

I coldly chip in, letting a bit of condescension taint my tone, "You know why, Sanaz. We have three Blessed people in our family along with two Interventions in our favor."

Her tail stiffens, and she hesitates for a second as her defenses crack, then she sternly points out, "From the Humanoid Gods."

I laugh softly and let my tail sway in amusement. "I'm a twenty-years-old Lord who has already achieved this much. Where do you think the Ryder clan will be when Taveez is ten?"

She hesitates for a second again, then narrows her eyes skeptically. "I don't bet on promises."

"We're not asking you to bet," Ciel comes in again to soften the blow.

"Then what are you asking, really?" Sanaz asks in the same tone.

"That you be kinder to my sister than you've been to me, and that you become open to letting her come study with us once she's old enough," Roxanne succinctly explains, a large amount of satisfaction filling her heart as she successfully challenges her mother's will.

A silence settles over the table once more as everyone stares at Sanaz, and even the Housekeeper seems eager to hear her answer.

"And what if I refuse?" She slowly replies, putting up one last line of defense.

Roxanne lowers her tail slightly as a sign of aggression, as if it were ready to lash out, then she lets her memories of hardship fuel her grim determination and taint her tone as she declares, "I won't abandon my sister, and you know that having money isn't enough to go against Lords."

The mood becomes tense again as Roxanne delivers our ultimatum.

Sanaz breaks the stare off first and looks down, actually looking a bit hurt. "You speak as if I was a monster," she quietly replies as the Housekeeper glares at Roxanne in fury.

With everyone encouraging her through [Bind], Roxanne delivers the final blow, "You're just too strict, too demanding, Mother. Let us help you achieve what you want, to pay you back for what you've given me."

I don't like using this trope, but it fits this situation.

After a few seconds without getting a reply, she double taps, "We're still family, so let's find a way to work together."

Sanaz sighs in irritation, then raises her head and gives in with grace, "Hmph. I'll accept your proposal to judge if your clan can provide an education worthy of Taveez."

"[I'm going to live with my sister?]" Tavi shyly asks.

Sanaz glances at her and nods. "[Perhaps]."

"Then let us celebrate!" I pompously exclaim, and the moment I'd never thought possible has finally come, the dream is about to become real. I turn to Sanaz and activate [Sexual Charm] as I suggest, "How about a Sexual Celebration between you, Roxanne, and me?"

A note from Manasong

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The patrons who support Rupegia shall have their names sung by the bards for they deserve the glory and honor. Their names are:

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Chapter 111: Explosive Finish - Part 2

"What about me?" Behrouz cries out, sounding a bit upset.

"I don't allow other men to touch my wives or concubines," I stiffly reply. The idea of Roxanne fucking her father triggers the incest fetish within me, but it violates the temple that is my wife's body, so I get quite distressed by the conflicting ideas. The sanctity of the temple is absolute, so there's no way I'm letting Roxanne do that, ever, but now, my mind has been corrupted with fantasies.

"I've fucked Mom once, already, and I've smelled Dad's cummies many times before," Roxanne confesses and shows how truly demonic she is by sending me her fantasies of unholy threesomes that don't involve me.

"Well, what about me and you?" Behrouz insists, and I nearly choke on my spit.

"Sorry, but my sword is single-edged," I politely decline, trying to look as composed as I can be.

"That's a pity," he replies with such a sad tone that I actually feel a bit guilty. "You're really attractive, Lord Wolf. It's hard to find men like you with domineering auras that don't feel belittling or deriding. I know we would have a passionate time together."

The guilt I was just feeling is quickly replaced with annoyance as all of the girls imagine me dominating Behrouz with quite a lot of detail.

"Not only did you manipulate my husband and trusted Housekeeper, but now, you seek to lay with me?" Sanaz suddenly questions, her small, pretty nose slightly wrinkled in contempt, and both Behrouz and Saghieh gasp in surprise.

Oh, no… my dream… no, no, no, nooo!

"I take offense with the word 'manipulate.' You're clearly using it pejoratively," Yunia immediately retorts sternly. "We had the intention to influence you into making a decision that favored us, but we hold no ill intent towards you."

"I'm my own person, Sanaz, and I saw that Roxanne's suggestion was better for our daughter's future!" Behrouz complains, a bit indignant.

And Saghieh kneels behind her mistress, her head lowered in shame.

"You quite literally forced me to come to this decision," Sanaz coldly replies to Yunia.

"It certainly doesn't feel good when others limit your options, does it?" I taunt Sanaz with a shit-eating grin, then I slightly regret doing that as I see my dream continuing to crumble in her glare.

"Turn it into a party, show everyone that the Ryder clan has a close relation to the Sammak company, and that should give you some political benefits," Yunia comes to the rescue.

Of course, she's a merchant, so phrase it as a "deal" and show her the benefits of it, and she'll view it a lot more favorably.

Sanaz's anger starts to abate as she seems to seriously consider Yunia's suggestion.

Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes…!

Then her next words cause my heart to skip a beat, "Perhaps we could turn it into a Conception Celebration and have him give me a child. Then I'd be a lot more inclined to send that child to study in your clan."

YES!

Alissa's pussy quivers, and my cock throbs with excitement.

"Our husband isn't allowed to impregnate other women yet as he still needs to create his inheritable racial skill first," Yunia stabs me in the heart.

NOOOOOOOOOOOOO-…!

"Then just a party for the Sexual Celebration will be acceptable," Sanaz acquiesces.

Alright, that's also fine.

"Wait, you'd be fine having a child with me?" I question, curious and eager for the ego-boost.

Sanaz snorts softly and nods. "It surely wouldn't be terrible, but you'd have to learn not to use your position to coax others so much if you wanted any say in our child's life."

"Your father doesn't mind?" I quietly ask Roxanne through [Bind].

"I'm pretty sure he has a few bastards in Mashoor. That's how Sammak has maintained a good reputation in the town despite Mother being quite ruthless sometimes," she casually replies.

Well, damn. I guess there's still a chance that I'll give Roxanne another sibling one day.

"Don't be mean to Saghieh, dear," Behrouz suddenly pleads.

Sanaz purses her lips softly, then turns to the still kneeling servant. "It's not your fault that you fell for their little play. Rise, Saghieh, you still hold the keys to my heart."

The strict red succubus becomes a quivering pile of warmth and happiness for a short moment, then she proudly stands up and puts on the steel mask again. "Thank you, Mistress Sanaz."

"We'd better start writing the invitations for tonight's party, then," Sanaz calmly remarks and glances at us as she states, "I have to take my leave now, so we'll meet again later."

We return cordial goodbyes, and the meal finally ends, along with this roller-coaster of emotions.

Alissa and Tavi have become quite fond of each other, so they stay behind, with Ciel, Lina, Aoi, Yunia, Gify, and the golems joining them while Roxanne, Hana, and I go visit Xane's Holy Academy.

We board our carriage, and Hukarere follows us in, then our three temporary maids [Clean] our bodies of any sweat and dust, then they reapply our makeup (for the girls) and perfume.

"You didn't want to go to the brothel?" I casually ask Hukarere as the maid waxes my scales.

She shrugs and casually replies, "Eh, I didn't feel like participating in an orgy today."

I raise a quizzical eyebrow and pull out my cock. "You just wanted some of this, didn't you?"

She grins, showing her long white teeth. "I won't answer that, but if you're offering…"

"Come here, you cum-guzzler," I call her affectionately.

She quickly kneels in front of me, and my whole length disappears into her long, fanged mouth, then I decide to tease my maid.

I recreate the obscene, eldritch horrors that we saw in the gardens and let them do their own thing while I watch the view as the carriage slowly makes its way through the streets. I want to create an "auto-fucking" sub-process for my tentacles.

"That's hot…" Roxanne breathes as her maid slowly teases her pussy lips.

"What is?" I ask back confusedly.

Her tail wraps around her own thin neck like a choker as she breathes in deeply, her mind filled with sensual fantasies. "Getting casually sucked off by a woman while absentmindedly teasing another, all the while looking like a king who's playing with his toys."

"Your fetishes are quite a bit more subtle than those of the other wives," I remark with a smug smile, which she then mirrors.

"I like seeing you not just dominate others, but act like you're above them. I want you to show other men how much better than them you are at everything, and I also greatly enjoy seeing other women show desire towards you."

My smile turns wry. "Basically, you want me to act like a pompous noble?"

And she chuckles softly, a bit embarrassed. "I guess, but you can back up your barks with a lot of bite, you know?"

"Yes…" I hum in agreement as my maid orgasms from the disgusting insect-like thing sucking on her clit, the other two maids watching with a mix of muted horror and interest in their eyes.

"Since you're not into fucking other men, this is all we're going to get," Hana points out as her maid massages her round breasts.

"There's also that," Roxanne cheekily agrees.

We stop before the entrance of a cathedral-like building, and after getting a visitor pass at the gate, we leave our carriages behind. Hukarere and two more Lordsguard accompany us since we can't enter with an army, and one of the non-sexually-exhausted maids acts as a guide. Hana and I walk with Roxanne in between us, our arms linked with hers, because she's the VIP this time.

Xane's Holy Academy is a mix of Warhammer 40k Imperial Gothic with Dark Eldar edginess, the grand and solemn combined with the sinister and warped.

Roxanne thinks that the Holy people are all masochists in denial, and I start to notice that some of the iconography could very well be found in the BDSM sex dungeon of a particularly freaky person.

Though the architecture is edgy, everything is white, which is quite straining for my eyes, but at least the statuary is interesting. The long hall of the Grim-Giant-sized cathedral is lined with statues portraying a variety of themes, such as struggle, strife, hard work, competition, and suffering.

Yep, masochists.

The pornography aspect is still there, just slightly obscured beneath the layer of ever-present masochism.

The maid gives us some historical background, mentioning the names of the people depicted in the statues from memory. Lina attentively listens in and recognizes a few of them from the books she has read, a good deal of them are past heroes, and all of them were once students of this Academy.

I notice that the demons seem to value martial or military power a reasonable degree less than Avgi.

After the rather nightmarish hall, we exit into a very large, round garden. Its radius is about twice the length of a football field, and it's dotted with small structures for the students to relax in, like gazebos and covered brick yards.

The main buildings of the Academy surround this garden. The Dormitory looks just as grand as the Palace of Versailles; the Classrooms looks like an actual castle with thick walls, though Roxanne says that it's to keep the dangers in instead of out; the Temple (also called The Dildo) is a simple, smooth and straight, tall tower where its peak is the source of a curtain of water that feeds a lake around it; the Arena is a large, round stadium with ten phallic towers on its outskirts; and the Administration building is a ziggurat, a wide pyramid-like building made of brick boxes stacked on top of each other, each one shorter in length than the one before.

After the maid's brief explanation, Roxanne starts telling us her stories, "The Dormitory regularly breaks out in orgies, especially the male side. Whenever one of them hears a girl's moan, he gets so horny that he fucks the nearest also horny person, which makes anyone else nearby them also horny, and that just spirals out from there."

"Did you participate in them?" Hana curiously asks, and Roxanne answers with her memories through [Bind], confirming that yes, she did, quite often, but only lesbian orgies.

"Mithra's Great Orgy," I whisper huskily, savoring the memories of an army of women fucking each other until they fall asleep, all without any dick in sight for miles.

"You heard of it?" The maid suddenly asks me curiously.

I blink and turn to her. "Sorry, what?"

"Mithra's Great Orgy, have you heard of it?"

I chuckle and gently pat Roxanne's hand. "She's the one who started it, along with Mithra herself."

The pretty maid breathes in and stares at Roxanne as if she were an idol, then she grins and playfully teases, "It's an honor to meet you, Lord Roxanne, former Holy Queen Slut."

Hana and I share hearty chuckles and a glance, then she comments, "Wow, you guys are putting the dragonkin to shame with your insatiable lewdness."

"Only because the dragonkin don't have an Academy that collects their young together at an age when they've just matured enough to enjoy sex," Roxanne replies candidly.

Hana chuckles again. "Fair."

The students seem to be between 14-20 years old, and it's incredibly rare to find any who aren't succubi or incubi.

Like always, our group is quite eye-catching, especially me with my sexy horns and scales. Surprisingly, the students don't seem to pay much attention to Hukarere because there's already a race of wolf-headed demons on this continent.

Though sex in the open isn't allowed here, there are quite a few moans coming from the resting areas of the garden. There's also very little intermingling between the boys and the girls because virginity is a precious commodity to be traded but gay sex doesn't count, for some reason.

We pass by the Classrooms and take a peek at the classes being held. Most of the students are mages because the succubi are a very magically-attuned race, and they all seem to favor wands for portability. That coupled with the white robes and pointy hats that they wear as their uniforms make it seem like we're in white Hogwarts, and the nerd in me gets excited again.

Just Behrouz's story of the Storm and our visit here make it all worth it for me.

Some of the classrooms are reinforced, and we get a glimpse of a few Unique Spells being practiced by the older students. It's basically a requirement for students to come up with something new for them to graduate, except for the crafting-oriented mages like Alchemists.

Luckily for the students in that field, the [Alchemy] lab here is quite famous for being well-stocked and well-equipped. The monsters of the Succubi Holy Lands can provide a good variety of exotic ingredients, so they have that natural advantage.

The lab itself is a collection of large cubicles with fume-hoods, emellanat-reinforced walls, and a few utility enchantments. There are minimal decorations in here, making it look more like a hospital with how clinically clean everything is.

"I spent so much time here," Roxanne comments wistfully as she runs her hand along the white marble table. "I think I even slept here a few times."

"That sounds like you, alright," Hana teases.

"Old you," I correct.

"Yeah, I guess I'm doing better at taking care of my body," Roxanne agrees with a wry smile.

"You wouldn't last in bed otherwise," Hana affirms and grabs a handful of Roxanne's cute, small ass cheeks.

Then Roxanne shows us some of the tools she used. There's the common chemistry stuff like beakers, burners, and centrifuges, and then there are the magical inspection tools that are all straight-forward small enchanted gems, and finally, there are the advanced mana converters, which all have mysterious functions that I don't really understand, though they remind me of mixers made with the magical, light-blue kanal metal.

Roxanne excitedly explains all of their functions to us and what she used them for. It's quite endearing to see her talking about her passion as happily as a child.

"Don't we have these tools back in Escanso, too?" Hana curiously asks as she picks up an engraved monocle and uses it to inspect the mana particles coming from my draconic parts. "Wow, this is trippy."

"We do, but I actually only use a few of them since I'm focused on improving the Draconic Climax concoction," Roxanne explains, then casts a small [Fireball] and holds it in front of Hana.

"Wooow~…" She coos in wonder.

The monocle is a Signature Interpreter, and it shows the attunement of the mana particles, but we aren't trained in how to understand it, so all we can see are some pretty colors waving about like the ending of a solitaire game.

"Lords," one of our guards calls our attention.

A very tense incubus teen wearing black epaulets on his robe approaches us. He stops at a greatsword's distance away from us, then bows and politely asks, "Abologies fo'r ze inserrubsion, esseemed guess, bus is Royal Lo'rd Roxanne Ryde'r he're?" His heavy accent takes me by surprise, but Roxanne understands him perfectly.

"Yes, that's me," she replies and smiles gently, then he raises his head and blushes when their eyes meet.

"Liaison Efzee wishes zo speak wis you'r Excellence," he stiffly continues.

It seems that the system literally translated the contraction of "Excellent Person" as "Excellence."

A mix of giddiness and nostalgia floods Roxxane's body. She respects Eftee a lot for what the Liaison has done for her, so she's very happy to be going to see her again.

We go to the Administration building and take a cute and ingenious water-wheel-powered elevator up to the fourth floor. The interior of this building is less edgy and a lot more lavish in comparison to the rest of the Academy, but there really isn't anything special to see in here.

We exit the elevator and leave the pleasant sound of running water behind, then the errand boy takes us down the corridor to the office at the end of the hallway.

"Liaison Efzee is he're, you'r Excellencies," the boy announces.

"Knock please," Roxanne asks, and he quickly obeys.

"Enter," a muffled voice calls, and we enter, leaving the boy behind.

My eyes instantly lock with Eftee's, and the dragon awakens from its nap. She's a stunning gilf who still thickly exudes the air of a seductress. Her white hair has an almost elven luster to it, the side bun it's tied up into looking almost like an adornment with its prettiness; her light brown eyes are very striking due to the bold eyeliner she uses; and her gentle traits seem to be enhanced by the wrinkles in her pale skin.

When compared to Teresina, who has the dignity and beauty of an awe-inspiring statue, Eftee seems small and delicate, yet sharp, like a thorny white rose.

It's only when Roxanne stops before her desk that her eyes break away from mine, and her thin red lips curl into a grin as she greets my wife, "Welcome home, Royal Lord Roxanne. If you had told us you were coming, we'd have rolled out a golden carpet for you." Then she motions to the lavish, comfy chairs in front of us.

Roxanne starts chuckling manically at the idea, but she quickly gets it under control. "T-that'd be something! But I don't think the rest of my family would agree," she cheerfully replies and gives my claws a squeeze.

"Yes. This impromptu tour is already enough for us," I calmly add with a nod.

"First-generation nobles are always like that," Eftee remarks with a warm smile and glances at me.

"You know lots of nobles?" Hana blurts out.

"Of course; they were former students," she softly replies with a smug smile. "Half of the Holy People of our Lands studied here, though none that I know personally have risen as far as Roxanne did."

And our wife is suddenly hit by another fit of giggling.

"You don't usually become so giddy when we praise you," I remark.

"You don't praise me enough," she replies with a snobbish pout.

I smirk and nod. "True, but I think you're just weak to flattery."

"Ah!" She shouts as she gives me a glare. "Don't demean her words!"

"Can you truly claim that it wasn't flattery?" Eftee coolly teases, a faint smugness to her thin red lips.

But Roxanne returns with a sharp gaze. "Either you're trying to curry favor with me, or you were being honest with your praise. Either way, it's favorable to me," and she chuckles softly like an evil Lady.

I share a look with Hana. She's back to being sharp, and even Yunia would be proud of that retort.

Eftee's smile widens, but she doesn't continue with the banter. "Playfulness aside, I asked for you to come here because I have something to give you." Then her expression shifts into one of seriousness and excitement as she pulls a silver ring out of her [Item Box] with a *poof*.

"Oh…" Roxanne hums then freezes.

The ring has a signet with a small, red, heart-shaped gem in the middle, surrounded by the iconic depiction of a succubus' wings and dagger-tail in silver, while microscopic writing fills the rest of the signet's surface.

"For your efforts in categorizing and methodically developing anti-venoms for thirteen known venoms, I grant you this ring along with the Title of 'Scholar of Xane' and 'Master of Poisons and Venoms,'" Eftee formally announces.

Why didn't I get a cool ring like that from Rabanara's university?

"Probably needed to finish advanced courses instead of just beginners," Alissa explains, and I begrudgingly agree.

Roxanne's breath becomes unsteady as she slowly reaches a hand towards the ring, then she grabs it and holds it as if it were a fragile thing. Through [Bind], I feel her feed the red gem mana and watch through her senses as she observes the enchantments that lit up. The first seems to be [Reinforce] to prevent the signet from being worn down, and the second is a "mana ID" that infuses what the signet touches with uniquely-flavored mana as a sort of magical signature.

"For… for my research…?" She weakly asks, her eyes still glued to the ring.

Eftee nods firmly. "Yes. I assume you were so focused on creating the anti-venom for the Kazh-dom Ambusher that you didn't realize all the other discoveries you'd made."

Roxanne closes her eyes as they start to burn and holds the ring against her chest. "Thank you," she breathes and starts sobbing.

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Chapter 111: Explosive Finish - Part 3

A note from Manasong

Attention: to conform to the limit of sexual content allowed in a novel, I've censored this chapter. You can look for the uncensored version here.

This time, Roxanne's tears are of happiness, coming from the cathartic release after finally accomplishing something related to the dream she had abandoned. It isn't the anti-venom for the Kazh-dom, the monster that killed her late fiancée, but it is close to it; her discoveries will save lives, and perhaps, in the future, they will be the stepping stones for the creation of the final anti-venom.

Eftee shares some of the stories from interpreting Roxanne's confusing reports, who then tells us about some of her adventures to get the ingredients necessary for her experiments.

"And now, you've 'settled down' as part of a new royal family who are managing a territory comparable to our entire Holy Lands," Eftee comments with a wry smirk.

Roxanne giggles girlishly. "This is far from 'settling down.'"

Eftee nods. "Obviously."

And Roxanne mimics her. "Obviously."

After talking for a little while longer, we, unfortunately, take our leave. I feel like I have a good chance with Eftee, but there are no good excuses I can use for me to have the chance to "get to know her better."

But then Roxanne suddenly offers politely, "My mother is setting up a party in our honor tonight at our estate. If you wish to attend, we'd be delighted to have you there."

"You honor me. I may very well accept your invitation," Eftee replies in kind.

As soon as we're out of the office, I grab Roxanne's face and give her a short but deep kiss.

"Fucking love you," I whisper passionately.

And she smiles smugly. "Just a little gift for you and Alissa," she confides mischievously.

We return to the estate, and I reward our guide maid with a few orgasms along the way.

We return to the guest area, and Alissa helps Roxanne play with her sister. For as much as the succubus is interested in forming a bond with her new family member, she really doesn't know how to interact with children.

Lina climbs onto my lap, and I start to pat her head with one hand while I pet Gify with the other as we watch the awkward older sister trying to interact with the innocent younger one.

"What games do you like to play?" Roxanne affably asks, trying to make conversation.

"Marbles," Tavi tersely replies.

"Then let's play marbles?"

She shakes her head vigorously. "No."

"No?"

"[No]."

They become stumped as Taveez shuts down Roxanne's attempt to play with her. Ciel thinks the young girl is a bit intimidated by her older sister's air, so she's clamping up.

"That's a first, for someone to get intimidated by Roxanne," Hana teasingly remarks.

"It's because I'm not a brute, so people always underestimate me, right up until they get their brains turned into mush," Roxanne snaps back.

While they banter, I reflect on ways to help them connect.

What would a kid like…?

Then, like a [Lightning Bolt], an idea suddenly flashes into my mind.

Play-Doh!

I quickly tell Roxanne everything I can recall about the special modeling clay while I pull out her workstation and ingredients.

Tavi immediately gets mesmerized by the metal box, and Roxanne dives in at the opportunity to show off.

Flour, water, pigment, and whatever mystery ingredient gave it that specific composition. It's simple enough that it doesn't take long for Roxanne to come up with the first prototype.

After getting a glimpse at my memories, Alissa takes the white ball of soft clay and molds it to look like Gify's head.

"Gih?" The little griffin perks up her head curiously, suddenly waking up from her nap in the sun.

"Ooh~… Gify," Tavi coos in wonder as she recognizes Alissa's creation.

In the blink of an eye, Tavi opens up to Roxanne and starts asking for specific colors.

"I've never seen anything like this…" Behrouz remarks as he stares at a little ball of red clay. "Well, I've seen the children play with mud and clay, but this is different."

"This compound is safe to eat," Ted starts, startling Behrouz, and I lay back as they start their little performance.

"So it isn't toxic for children," Suzy continues.

"Though a bittering agent could be added to discourage them from eating it," Jarn concludes.

But wait, there's more. "Furthermore, there's a risk of the pigments staining clothes if the dyed water is absorbed by the textile."

"So more stabilizing agents could be added."

"And since it uses flour and water as a base ingredient."

"Another agent to stop the growth of mold is also advised."

Behrouz blinks blankly, a bit dizzy from flitting his eyes between the three golems repeatedly. "I-I see… still, it seems like a good product to commercialize."

"We can share the formula with you for free," Yunia suggests, not one to lose out on an opportunity to strengthen relations.

The gentle man smiles amiably at her. "We'll be in your debt."

That's the intention.

Saghieh comes to take a look at what Tavi is doing and nearly has a heart attack when she notices that her frilly clothes are now stained with a rainbow of colors.

Of course, she isn't wearing her lolita dress anymore, but it's hard to tell at a first glance. I feel like Lina pushed Ciel to choose these old clothes specifically because they looked so similar to the ones Tavi was wearing.

Sometimes my cute little wife can be quite the imp.

She gives me a small pout but doesn't deny the accusations.

Sanaz then comes back for a late afternoon tea, and she gets mildly surprised by the figurines Taveez has modeled.

"[Is that… me]?" She hesitantly asks in Maokai as she intensely observes the white woman with comically large eyes. The figurine is also considerably larger than all of the other ones Tavi has made.

"[Yes. Mom's eyes are beautiful, so I made them bigger]!" Tavi happily replies.

And the strict mother gives her daughter such an affectionate look that even I mellow a bit.

I'd love to hate fuck and dominate this woman, but Roxanne's wish prevents me from antagonizing her. I won't dare say that I know the best path for Roxanne to take, so I just hope that everything works out. Maybe drawing Sanaz's focus away from the desire to have a lineage will soften her up with time.

Tavi makes a figure of each of us. Alissa's is a cute fox, Roxanne's is a smiley face with glasses, Hana's is a big grinning face with glorious red hair, Ciel's is a curvy woman hugging a child, Lina's reminds me of "The Ring" ghost girl, Aoi's is a chibi dragon, Yunia's is a small face surrounded by drills, and mine is a goofy boy with comically oversized draconic limbs.

For Gify and the golems, she tries to copy them instead of making a caricature of them, and so, Gify proudly receives her first statue in her honor.

"Gih!" She chirps snobbishly, her chest puffed up with pride.

Ciel then teaches Tavi how to carve feather and scale patterns into the clay with a needle while I quickly teach Lina how to make googly eyes from glass. As soon as we have a pair ready, I stuff them into Gify's figurine's eye sockets and start giggling manically.

"Giiih!" Gify whines and moves to swipe the googly eyes out of her figurine, but Tavi's childish laughter makes the spirit stop in her tracks. Who could be so evil as to ruin the fun of a child, right?

Who could be so evil?

I stare at Gify with a shit-eating grin while we all laugh, but Gify takes it in stride and pops onto Ciel's shoulder to make me jealous, which has just a mild effect on me.

We start to notice a commotion going on deeper into the estate as the servants scramble to prepare for the party. The captain of the estate's guards meets with Enomosa, and they work out the security measures for tonight.

It'll be difficult for us to come to visit here often, so the rest of our afternoon is focused entirely on Taveez and Roxanne.

"Can I come?" Tavi asks Roxanne when it's time for us to leave for our bath.

"I don't think that's a good idea," she awkwardly declines and sends Ciel a worried glance.

"She knows what sex is," Sanaz points out, and gives Roxanne an odd look.

"We're… a bit special," she emphasizes with a suggestive smile.

"She might get traumatized," I quietly add to Sanaz.

"I see…" She whispers back reservedly and turns to her daughter. "[Taveez, not today]."

"[Okay…]" The little lady dejectedly relents, then her horns go floppy, and her tail drags on the floor.

While I choke Hana and do her from behind, I carry out a somewhat serious discussion with Roxanne.

"Are you sure about tonight?" I tenderly ask and run a claw along her pale cheek.

She gives me a confused look. "What do you mean? The Celebration?"

I nod. "Yeah. It was just this morning that your mother called you a coward, so I wouldn't blame you if you didn't want to get close to her, let alone have sex with her."

She shakes her head, and her horns don't flop about, which tells of her firm resolution. "I want to connect with her again, tell her that I still love her. I know that you want me to feel insulted at the way she treated me, but I'm already past that. I just want peace, even if I have to ask for forgiveness."

I sigh tiredly and give up on my second-hand outrage. "As long as you don't feel uncomfortable."

She smiles wistfully and runs her fingers along Hana's fiery mane as her wife's face contorts in both pain and pleasure. "Enough crying for today, yeah?" And we nod in sync.

Ciel gives Roxanne a hug from behind, surprising her as the two large and delicious buns squish against her pale back.

Roxanne licks her lips in desire, but Ciel innocently praises her, oblivious to the rising heat within the succubus, "It takes quite a lot of strength to forgive a parent like this. Though I kind of do lean towards Wolfy's camp, I think that yo-… ahn~…!" Ciel suddenly moans out loud as a slick black tail rubs against her slit, and she pouts annoyedly. "Please! I'm trying t-… hngh…!"

Roxanne doesn't let Ciel speak another word and dominates her sister-wife with just her tail.

"Besides, establishing a working relationship with my mother will be better for our future than making her hate us," Roxanne cheekily adds and gives a nod to Yunia.

Hana's eyes roll back into her head as she simultaneously passes out and orgasms.

The party will be in a large ballroom that extends out into a veranda due to the large number of invitees. Even though it's something that was arranged last-minute, Sanaz is influential enough that there are few people who can just simply snub her invitation. Also, there are healers hired to take care of the guests in case they drink too much so that they won't get hungover the morning after.

There are a few beds and lounging sofas spread all throughout the ballroom, so I guess we should expect them to be used, but the large, lavish bed on a raised dais in the center of the room tells me that I'll have to perform a repeat of last night.

It's not like an event like this will happen again that frequently, so I might as well enjoy it.

An incubus boy band sets up and starts playing soothing proto-jazz songs as the guests start to arrive, then they slowly shift towards more upbeat songs as the party gets into full swing.

Powerful succubi women and their harems stroll in, and of course, every last one of them are drop-dead gorgeous. Succubi fashion is so suggestive that they can even make elves blush, not that Yunia does since she's already desensitized to overt sexiness, so it's just more display of eye-candy for us.

What I didn't predict, though, is how forward they'd be in seducing me. I guess a stud who has his own harem just looks like a challenge to these women.

Alissa and I sit at a table, and we're soon swarmed by women. For the first time in my life, I truly fear for my dick because I don't think I have the MP to satisfy them all.

"Oh, Royal Lord Wolf, I heard you commandeered your own airship while inside a dungeon! How did such an outlandish scenario ever come to be?"

"Oh, esteemed Crown Lord, I heard it hasn't even been a year since you first appeared in Rabanara, and now, you're already a Royal! How did that happen?!"

"Oh, your Highness, please tell us of your encounter with the Symbol of Hate. I heard that Aberrant had been alive for hundreds of years!"

"Your Excellence Wolfy, these Chimeras are almost indistinguishable from the living; how did you create such a wonderful spell?!"

"Please tell us about your airships, my dear Lord. How are such ancient weapons not completely obsolete in comparison to other Avgi ships?"

"You're a Scholar of Rabanara, yet you're so young! What other secrets will you unleash upon the word?"

Suddenly, I notice that Sanaz is on my right side, intensely listening to me. Her tight, purple dress showing off the outline of her hard nipples, her hair delicately pouring over her bare shoulders like drapes.

Her presence isn't unexpected since some of these questions are very well veiled knowledge-gathering, but Yunia carefully crafts my responses, taking the opportunity to "build a wall." No, not that wall. It's a wall of "grandeur," intent on making our family seem mysterious and out-of-reach to these powerful women.

If I seem like a mystical, dangerous dragon, then others will be cautious when dealing with Sammak due to our relationship, fearing that they'll call righteous fury upon themselves if they fuck up. Two Interventions on our behalf is no joke, after all.

Even Ciel goes along with her plan and joins the conversation. The "Star of Hope" carries a rather awe-inspiring presence in the eyes of the fervently religious demons.

Gify, now settled back on my shoulder, is a natural at playing the part of the lofty, uninterested, and whimsical nature spirit, enhancing my image.

Roxanne has her own problems dealing with her "fans," especially now that she has been recognized as a Scholar of Xane.

Hana and Aoi actually score a lay with a succubus each since dragon fetishes are quite prominent around here. I savor their sex through [Bind], but I still get quite jealous of them since I'm stuck here with women who are more interested in rimming my ass with their words than actually wrapping their lips around my cock. But instead of helping me, Alissa seems to be enjoying their flattery more than actual sex.

Lina simply acts as Ciel's lap loli, acting like a cute and innocent doll and occasionally acting as a magnet for totally-not-pedophiles.

Yunia spends her time with Behrouz while being fawned over by the incubus and the other rare male companions from another race. She's more focused on my conversation, though, but her aloofness just makes her seem more attractive to the closet masochists.

The golems will stay with Ciel since she's the least likely of us to get drunk or seduced at this party.

Tavi plays outside with her friends, and Saghieh watches over them so that no suspicious person can do anything they might regret.

Then Alissa suddenly leaves me alone, and as I turn to look her way, I freeze, seeing Eftee approaching.

Hngh!

The gilf is wearing a loose blue dress that lets her pink nipples freely peek out with each step, her thin legs and panty strings exposed by the long openings at her sides that reach up to her ribs. Though she's fairly thin, she still has some juciness to her breasts and ass, making me wonder if this world has developed silicone implants.

"Royal Lord Wolf Ryder, may I take a seat beside you?" She politely asks, her sharp eyes staring intensely into mine, promising a storm if I say no.

"It'd be my pleasure," I coolly reply.

She sits down on my left and flashes both nipples as she bends over to pull her chair forward.

"Student Liaison Eftee, if my memory is correct?" Sanaz asks flatly, her dismissive tone surprising me a little.

"I'm surprised you know my name, Mistress Sanaz of Sammak," the gilf courtly replies.

Sanaz's eyes look cold and measuring. "You're an influential person in the Holy Academy since you always make connections with promising candidates for Holiness."

Eftee's demeanor remains flirty, unfazed by the milf's frigidity. "Mentorship creates shallow bonds, so people often overestimate my influence," she cheerily replies.

"Simply being a mere acquaintance of people in the right positions is enough to bring great benefits," Sanaz points out matter-of-factly.

And the other shrugs as she smirks. "So you say…"

Then a thin brown tail wraps around my thick draconic one from my left, and a second later, I feel another tail wrap around mine from my right.

Uh…

I look towards Alissa, asking for help, but she's now sitting beside Yunia while they both smile wryly at me.

Eftee's gaze turns to the bed in the center of the ballroom, and she raises an eyebrow. "Who is it that will be participating in the Celebration?"

"I will, and my partners will be Royal Lord Wolf and Royal Lord Roxanne, my daughter," Sanaz answers, her smugness apparent in her tone, though her calm face still earns her the benefit of the doubt.

Eftee narrows her eyes, and the warmth of her tone starts to cool off. "Is that so…" She slowly replies, and the fact that Roxanne omitted this detail in her invitation reveals the true depths of her guile.

I should've read her mind.

The tension between the two women scares off most of the curious succubi, but now, the focus of the remaining guests falls exclusively on me.

I swallow heavily, and Yunia and I double the carefulness of my responses.

The food starts being served, which would be the perfect excuse for me to get out of here if Alissa didn't prepare a large plate and deliver it to us.

"What an attentive wife," Eftee amiably praises her.

"I'm a former Blood Slave, so I'm unwilling to drop certain habits," my dear wife confesses with pride.

"A man of Wolf's caliber truly deserves someone as caring as you," Sanaz remarks with a level of familiarity that surprises me.

Eftee lays a delicate hand on my thigh and nods as she smiles diplomatically. "I agree, and now I wonder if you have to spend an inordinate amount of time declining potential partners due to your overwhelming virility."

Sanaz follows her lead, also touching my other thigh and continuing with the hook, "Indeed. I know that Avgi women are weak to a strong male, so the aggressiveness we witnessed today from the succubi may be worse at home."

I have to use [Acting] to calmly put them at ease, "I have the Lordsguard, my wives, and my concubine helping to filter out those types of women with ulterior motives, so it has been quite peaceful at home."

"But over here you don't have that protection preventing them from throwing themselves at you," Eftee sympathetically affirms, then sends a not-so-subtle glare at Sanaz. "As I've seen."

The milf leans against me as she smirks, her hand now rising to my chest for her to support herself. Her perfume is intoxicating, but I'm already far too resistant to succubus powers to let her charm me.

"It's unfortunate for them since he already set his eyes upon me," Sanaz slowly asserts, her emphasis making her implication quite obvious.

Eftee's jaw clenches, and they both start rubbing their tails against mine at the same time, which instantly gives me a very visible boner due to my thin and elastic elven pants.

"Oh, my, are you excited? Let's not leave you suffering with such throbbing cock tucked away," Eftee teases coyly.

Sanaz smirks triumphantly. "Indeed. It's time to start the Celebration."

And the other pales, realizing her mistake. "Wait, n-…"

A loud whistling calls everyone's attention towards the open veranda, and we see a vertical, glowing yellow line in the distance rising up towards the sky, then the tip explodes into a shower of sparkles.

Fireworks.

More whistles follow, and ten vertical lines are drawn in the sky, then flowers bloom at their tips as the fireworks go off, and the band switches to sensual songs.

Sanaz grabs my hand, avoiding my claws, and gently pulls me up. "It's time," she whispers sultrily, then gives Eftee a brief, smug smirk.

The gilf is left fuming as I'm taken to the bed in the center of the ballroom, and I take the chance to put one point in [Intimidate] as we walk, then Roxanne joins us.

We stand and look at each other, and I suddenly feel a bit small since they're both taller than me, but being shorter only makes me even more determined to dominate them.

Roxanne smiles warmly, and Sanaz seems somewhat excited, but they both inhale sharply when I release my [Sexual Charm] on them. The fireworks continue, sending up one or two every so often, but the attention of everyone at this party is firmly focused on us.

Sanaz swallows heavily, then turns to the crowd and gives a short speech, "To celebrate the close relationship between the Sammak company lead by me, Sanaz, and the Ryder family of Royal Crown Lords from the Western High Forest of the Holy Avgi Empire, which my daughter is also a part of, we shall engage in a threesome, marking the beginning of a close relationship between our two houses."

Roxanne grins manically and also gives her own speech from the bottom of her heart, "I'm Roxanne Ryder, and this is my husband, Wolf Ryder. Together, we shall lay with my dear mother, to thank her for raising me this way, for giving me everything I needed to come this far, and to show everyone how deeply fond we are of each other."

They then turn to me, but I have no speech to give, thankfully, which will only deepen the "mystery" of my person, so I focus right back on just the two of them.

"Because Roxanne is my wife, she goes first," I assert and grab Roxanne's chin with the tip of my claws, then I pull her face towards me and give her a deep kiss.

Her cheeky little tongue meets mine with gusto, feeling quite happy at her preferential treatment, but I don't spend that long kissing her.

I pull her away, and she gives a little bite on my lip as a parting gift.

I kiss her forehead, then I turn to Sanaz, and the sensual woman smiles subtly, her apparent eagerness telling me that [Sexual Charm] has already started working.

Our faces slowly come closer, then she meets her lips with mine, and I tease her, pecking them repeatedly. After getting used to the feeling of each other's lips, we both smirk, then our lips lock together.

The knowledge that I'm kissing my wife's mother shoots a jolt of pleasure down to my member, and the idea of making this impertinent woman submit to me makes it throb.

But then she surprises me by using [Oral Technique], and we start to fight for who will come out on top.

She may have more skill points in it than I do, but I have my spirit touch, and the instant I use it, she moans in my mouth.

I grab her waist and shove my tongue down her throat as I rub my hard-on against her body.

I'd like to try to make her cum just from kissing, but I can't ignore Roxanne, so I break the kiss and smirk at the sight of her flushed face. The cold bitch seems to be slightly out of breath.

"What was that…?" She softly asks, eyes wide open in disbelief.

"The Ryder Special," I smugly brag, and she clenches her jaw as her competitive spirit comes back, but I can't let her grow defiant. Then I activate [Intimidate] and order them, "Undress me." Then I spread my arms.

Roxanne smiles smugly at her mother, barely feeling the heat of my draconic gaze, but the milf's breath quickens, her eyes dilating in fear and arousal.

She begrudgingly obeys, and they both work together to get me naked. Sanaz seems to like what she sees, but I don't give her any time to savor it.

I sit down on the bed and order, "Strip for me."

And the mother goes first, surprisingly. She simply undoes the clasp at the back of her tight, black dress, and it falls to the floor, revealing her slender, pale body since she's only wearing a pair of small purple panties, which I promptly rip off in one smooth pull, revealing her bare, reddened entrance.

She gives me a stern look, and I just grin back defiantly, challenging her to complain, but she's already crumbling under my will and remains silent.

Roxanne giggles as she pulls the thin straps of her purple dress, revealing that she's also only wearing small purple panties, which are promptly ripped off by my claws.

Sanaz has a subtly curvier figure, but Roxanne's waist is thinner, and she's taller, so they both have their own special charm, making it impossible for me to pick the winner. The sensual mother and the supermodel daughter, both completely naked, except for their high heels.

I spread my legs and engorge my tool. "Now, suck me," I command.

Sanaz's eyes open wide, and she breathes in deeply at the sight of my Weapon. It seems that she's a size queen.

This time, they kneel down in sync and waste no time in getting their red tongues all over it.

I suddenly grab Sanaz's hand, which was just trying to sneak under me. "Don't touch my asshole."

She smiles cheekily but obeys like the good slut she is.

Mother and daughter, kissing like passionate lovers, their horns almost touching, and their tails entangled.

I grab Roxanne's horns and make her break the kiss, then I force her to down.

Once I'm done, I turn to Sanaz, and she stiffens in fear, but the sheltered lady isn't used to being bullied by a Lord, so she doesn't pull back when I grab her horns and use her head as I please.

With both of them working together, I quickly reach my limit, so I release Sanaz and push their heads together so that they kiss the tip, then I let it out.

The crowd gasps in surprise, finding it hard to believe that I've already come, but I grin at them and shout, "I'M NOT DONE YET!"

I increase my domineering attitude and attack both of them, doing everything I can to push them both up the hill of pleasure.

After I give Roxanne one climax, I attack Sanaz. She closes her eyes, and her entire body squirms from the overstimulation as she slowly loses control of herself. Cold, strict, sensual, ruthless, and determined. None of those characteristics mean anything before a true Male Dragon and I give her the fastest orgasm she ever had.

I simply slide out of her and stand up, making sure that everyone can see my freakishly long tongue, then I slowly let it return to normal.

"Roxanne. Come here and present yourself to me," I order, and she eagerly obeys.

I grab her tail at the base and shove it in deep inside her.

"Ahn~…! Mother… he's so… big!" Roxanne moans in ecstasy.

Sanaz recovers from her orgasm and coos in both wonder and fear, "By Creation's Will, Roxanne, this is insane."

"But you… love it…!"

The milf chuckles softly, then moans as her daughter's fingers play with her. "Yes, I'm starting to become fond of him," she hesitantly remarks.

After I'm done with Roxanne, I lay her down on the bed and turn my eyes to the mother in front of me.

The ruthless merchant swallows heavily as she stares at my body with thinly veiled desire. Her pointy black horns look mighty sharp, but hardening them is all she can do to keep her dignity as she has already submitted to my will.

I press my claws against her shoulders, pushing her down and backwards onto the bed, and she obeys without any resistance. I'm not just being domineering because I want to, this is also part of our plan to make her mellow out with us.

Her lustrous, black hair with a purple sheen splays out around her on the bed, then she spreads her legs on her own, inviting me in. The sight of her inviting pose and dripping entrance makes me let out a growling laugh of victory. There was never even a chance that she could dominate me.

I grip her neck with my claws as I line myself up with her "I'm going to fuck you now," I state, and she nods subtly, so I shove it in.

"Aah…" She moans softly and sensually bites her lip. "You're so thick."

"You haven't seen anything yet," I growl back, then I increase my girth further, and she opens her mouth wide, wanting to cry out in pain, but the pleasure she's feeling right now is too much for her to get any words out.

The bed slowly moves towards the opening to the veranda as the fireworks start to come more frequently.

The succubi natural charm starts to affect my mind, pushing for me to release the seal on the endless draconic lust within my heart. Though I don't give in completely, I still let my grotesque tentacles spontaneously sprout out of my body, and they immediately seek out any erogenous zone of the two females before me.

Lust, alcohol, music, love, fireworks, chatter, domination, charm, pride, and rough sex. A storm rages within my mind from the wild mix of stimulation, but I'm still lucid, I'm still holding the reigns of the dragon.

Sanaz growls and extends her hands towards my throat, but I merely squeeze my claws lightly around hers and choke her out instead. I'll break her mind and body.

"Ah…" She lets out one final, weak moan, then she reaches the peak, and her folds twist, forcing me to unleash it inside her.

"RAAAAAGH!" I roar as the powerful orgasm makes my entire body seize up.

"YES!" Roxanne gleefully cries out.

Night turns to day as fireworks fill the sky and the band reaches the climax of their song.

Though my breath is haggard, I'm still far from getting low on MP, so I search for Eftee's lustrous, white hair among the crowd.

"EFTEE, I'M NOT DONE YET!" I roar and infuse a bit of [Godly Language] into my voice.

My member is covered in my seed and the lewd fluids from two women, so for the prideful succubi, I'm already "sloppy thirds," but my commanding tone is absolute.

I will fuck her.

A note from Manasong

Hall of Fame of Patrons

The patrons who support Rupegia shall have their names sung by the bards for they deserve the glory and honor. Their names are:

Prince PreownedFIN.

Prince Creamy Spinach.

Prince Owldente.

Lord Andrew Meyers.

Lord Novgarod.

Lord Michale Erwin.

Lord Bakerdea.

Lord Maurice.

Lord Empyrean.

Lord Mattirro Draca.

Lord Fullmoon.

Lord Sean Drake.

Lord FrostyCube.

Lord Mike Bartter.

Lord Cardinal Steiner.

Lord Warwulfv.

Lord Jorge Franco.

Lord Khristopher Welsh.

Lord DJ.

Lord Philip.

Lord Tenebris Lupus.

Lord The Tallest Joshua.

Lord Copey Dunt.

Lord Dracopuppy23.

Lord Chris Carter.

Lord Paul Daval.

Lord Paul Daval.

Lord Bradly.

Lord Aubrey Powell.

Lord AndreyUC.

Lord Tmac.

Lord Krawn.

Lord Jetdy S.

Lord Greysen Simmons-LaRose.

Noble Salty Panda.

Noble Mild Fracas.

Noble Aclys.

Noble CarlBaxter.

Leave a rating or a review to help me rise to the top or fix my shameful understanding of prose.

Take a look over my blog where all information about the world of Rupegia will be posted.

Join the Discord and discuss, or rant, or meme, or try and fight me so your waifu gets more screentime.

Become a Patron and read chapters in advance, or read the side-stories, or leave your mark on the story, or help choose the next artwork or the next side-story.

Chapter 112: Return to "Normalcy" - Part 1

Our hot breaths mix against our faces as we move our hips in sync, panting, grunting, and moaning. Our foreheads touch, our eyes lock with each other's, our mouths each gape into an 'O', and our upper lips rise in ferocity.

For an older woman, Eftee sure has the energy to fuck hard.

Both of her thin arms are held together behind her head with just one of my clawed hands while the other maintains a loose grip on her neck to keep her from thinking that she can take the lead. Her legs are kept spread apart in case she loses feeling in them like Sanaz did, but that's unlikely to happen since I'm taking my time with her, enjoying the prolonged pounding instead of quickly wringing out a mind-shattering orgasm.

But all good things must come to an end, and Eftee can't compete with my draconic virility.

Her mouth opens wide, and her moans turn into screams as she reaches a state of bliss, yet no succubus ever cums alone. Her folds, specifically suited to making men cum, fulfill their sensual purpose and force me to join her, flooding her greedy depths with my manly seed.

I grunt and tighten my grip on her neck as I finish dominating yet another woman, then I slowly slide out of the white beauty and present my cock, but the nearest cum cleaner is currently indisposed.

Roxanne is splayed out on the bed, looking quite exhausted, while Sanaz is sucking her wet, sticky fingers, cleaning off her daughter's juices. The recovered bitch seems to have regained a bit of her defiance as she glares at me, a mix of annoyance and mischief in her eyes, and her tail waves about like a cat's does when it's about to inflict its feline evil upon an unfortunate soul, which would be me.

"I've underestimated you, Lord Wolf Ryder," Sanaz slowly admits.

"Royal Lord Wolf Ryder," I correct her and hold my tail still in a sign of wariness.

She finishes cleaning off her fingers, and her thin lips curl up in a subtle grin. "But you'll have to work hard if you want to dominate me." Then she pulls out a flask of lube and pours it onto her tail.

"You fucking… bitch," I growl angrily, preparing myself for battle.

She giggles evilly, then rubs her tail.

My anger is merely a side effect of letting the dragon take control because the human is panicking.

Sanaz suddenly pounces on me, pushing me down on the bed.

Girls, HELP!

Intermission – Klein

I rest my head on Osaria's breasts and relax as our bodies cool down, then she starts playing with my hair, using her long, dexterous fingers to give my scalp a soothing massage. I don't think I'll ever get tired of this incredible view of the night sky above the sea of mist.

As the silence settles in, my imagination betrays me and brings back the whirlpool of emotions about that unfinished business.

I thought that being away from Wolfy and Hana would've put things in perspective, but I'd definitely need to also be away from Osaria because she has snuck into my heart the same way they did.

What do I even want anymore…?

A tired sigh escapes my lips.

"Something wrong? Do you want another orgasm?" Osaria teasingly asks, and one of her hands trails down my body.

I shiver softly and decline, "I'm not unsatisfied, and my pussy is still too raw for anything else."

"Your nipples aren't," she breathes sultrily on my ear.

I chuckle softly. "Considering how much Wolfy sucks on them, they kind of are…"

Her hand trails up, and she caresses my cheek. "So what did make you sigh?"

"You know… that…" I mumble shyly.

She gently pats my head. "I see. It's that, the crime of cheating on Wolfy."

"Osariaaa~…!"

She giggles like a goblin. "I'm sorry, but you're the only one of us that can somehow resist the allure of Wolfy's cock, so you'd better believe I'm going to tease you about that."

I pout and give her the silent treatment, but she's just like Wolfy and quickly caves in.

"I'm sorry~! But you know I can't help myself, you're just too pure, my cute little brown bundle of happiness," she unleashes her honeyed, experienced tongue and strokes my ego.

"Wolfy is going to complain about you stealing his women again," I wryly reply.

She hums with a sassy tone in amusement, "Hm? So you're admitting that you're his?" -I groan out loud- "I'd love to present you on a platter for him, give something back after I stole his toys." I can just imagine her grinning perversely as she says that.

I sigh and just tell her what I'm thinking to change the topic, "I should just go talk to him already, right?"

She pats my head again reassuringly. "Yes, you should. Go suck his dick in the name of all the women who've been spellbound by Wolfy's magic, draconic, massive, shape-shifting, vibrating hammer of love."

I smile wryly. "And tentacles…"

"And tentacles!"

I call Hermann to one of the "viewing rooms" of the castle. I don't have the courage to just knock on the door of his… mansion, and risk meeting with his husband.

Is it Wolfy that makes everyone gay, or is it just the nobility…? Wait, I think I heard that they actually do encourage everyone to be bisexual, but I still think Wolfy's perversion is infectious.

My silly daydreaming is interrupted by a maid telling me that Hermann has arrived.

"Let him in," I order and feel a little bit weird about the fact that I'm the one saying things like that. I'm still not used to being in a leadership position.

The door opens, and the handsome, tall, dark-skinned young man comes in, causing the whirlpool to come back with a vengeance.

"Klein…" He softly calls to me, his deeper voice still giving me chills.

"Hermann," I reply in kind and nod, then motion for him to come closer and turn back to look out from the balcony as I lean on the railing.

He stops at the railing, just a shortsword's distance away, and mimics my pose, then we stay silent for a long, awkward moment.

"I'm sorry that I broke my promise," he breaks the silence first.

I shake my head and wave my hand dismissively. "It was a silly promise to begin with. How would we ever meet again if neither of us knew where the other was going?" I softly reply.

He shifts uncomfortably. "Well… it doesn't matter how we'd meet again, what matters is our actions, and I broke the promise."

I snort. "You didn't promise that you wouldn't marry someone else."

"It was kind of implied."

True… I didn't marry Wolfy because I was waiting for him.

I sigh tiredly.

"If you'll forgive my greed…" He continues hesitantly, and I turn to look at him, which I immediately regret because his handsome face makes my heart skip a beat. "Ahren and I can't have children, so it's implied that we'll have to form a harem and add others, specifically women."

"I don't want to join a harem," I reflexively reply and feel a little guilty when I see him wince in pain.

"Alright… but we still need to find mothers for our children…"

Is that the life of a noble? Juggling relationships, love, and desire, always trying to get the most out of everything they do?

I turn back to the view and complain with a frown, "I just wanted to marry someone and have a simple life…"

"You also volunteered to serve as Lord Wolf's knight," he points out again, his calmness making him sound much older than he really is.

"Doesn't mean I have to live like a noble," I grumble back.

I can hear the wryness in his tone. "You're still close enough to them to get swept up by their lifestyles. I know I did."

"Well, I guess I did, too, in a way," I admit with a wry smile.

"Considering you sleep in his bed every day, I'm surprised that you aren't his concubine already."

And his words stab me, driving in a pang of guilt. "I'm a concubine in all but name," I confess.

"A bird can live a happy life in a cage, yet they'll still fly away if you open it even once. However, if you raised it right, then it'll come back to your hand once it's had its fill of freedom," the God of the Sun once said, and that's exactly what Wolfy did with me.

I look at Hermann and see his pained smile, causing me to feel even more guilt. We're both hurt, and it turns out that the source of our pain is basically the same. "I also broke our promise," I heatedly admit and take a step closer towards him.

He's taken aback by my sudden proclamation. "You-… that's…" But he doesn't find a way to deny it.

I gently put my hand over his, and I immediately notice that the small, innocent boy is no more. His hand is big, rough, and callused, so unlike the hands of the only man ever I've been with. Wolfy can be dominant, but he's still a gentle and delicate man at heart. Even though his hands have scales and claws, I've never feared that his touch would hurt me.

Hermann suddenly grasps my hand with both of his and stares at me expectantly as he starts to breathe faster. The image of a man instantly crumbles, and I see an excited young boy in his place in front of me.

I put my other hand over his and smile warmly. "How about we start over from the beginning, then?" I kindly suggest.

He blinks, then he suddenly breathes in and lets my hands go as he straightens his back. "Y-yes… let's start again." Then he swallows heavily, staring at me like a soldier who's waiting for orders.

His shyness is so cute that I can't help but grin. This is him; this is the Hermann I remember, the Hermann I loved.

I look around and spot the enchantment used to call for a maid. I feel so snobbish drinking this late at night, but I think we both need some alcohol to loosen our tongues.

Intermission end.

Today is the 21st, Genn, day of Light. Basically Monday, but adventurers don't have weekends, so I never felt like it was that horrible, though I do currently feel like I'm back on Earth, begrudgingly waking up to start another week of work, except I never woke up so itchy.

"Ow…" I hear a soft moan, and I realize that the padding of my claws has come undone, so I remake it before I accidentally cut someone.

I try to scratch my crotch, but all of my limbs, including my tail, are currently locked in place by what seems to be the warm and soft bodies of a dozen women.

I then realize that it's completely dark, so I cast a very faint [Spirit Light], revealing a mass of naked female bodies all around me. It's a bit hard to count them, but there's definitely more than just my wives here. Gify is sleeping on my chest as usual, one of the few patches of my skin that seemingly doesn't have cum on it.

I passed out from having my MP fall too deep into the negatives, so I don't remember all of the pussies in view, and to my immense relief, I can't see any cocks in the immediate vicinity besides my own.

I do feel a bit guilty for making Osaria and Klein sleep alone, though.

In the dead silence, I clearly hear the muffled sounds of elven plate armor rustling, then Alissa suddenly wakes up, and through her [Sense Presence], I confirm that we have a few female Lordsguard who also have [Sense Presence] watching over us. The golems are also keeping watch, as unmoving as statues like always.

The rest of my wives also stir as they're all used to waking up right after Alissa, then the rest of the Ravaged women start to wake.

Someone activates a very faint light, and we can see the whole ballroom again, then we start to notice the fact that there's dried, caked cum everywhere.

And it's all mine…

After freeing ourselves from the mass of entangled bodies, one of our guard girls guides us to the baths, which are already hot and ready for us, and we scrub ourselves hard to get it all off. We've never let my cum dry for so long before since the cum cleaners are quite thorough, so I never realized how damn itchy it can get.

"That party was amazing…" Roxanne coos as she stretches, displaying her slender body to us.

"It was quite fun, all things considered," I add as I stare at her delicious figure.

"Seeing you have sex with your mother actually made me quite excited, so yesterday was heavenly," Alissa remarks to Roxanne as she cleans my mirror-like scales.

"I'm starting to dislike all the facials Wolfy gave me, though," Hana complains as she struggles to clean under her cheek scales, so I summon a light elemental-wife to help her. "Thanks, husband."

"I'm fine with them," Aoi casually adds and stares at her own shiny blue scales. "But I think my scales absorbed his seed."

"That's a bit unfair," Hana mumbles enviously.

"I'm also fine with facials, even if it gets in my hair, but the problem is letting it dry," Yunia grumbles as she stares at the deeply [Clean]ed spiral lock of golden hair, which seems to have lost some of its luster in comparison to the rest of her hair.

Ciel and Lina don't actually feel any discomfort. Having the least sexual stamina out of all of us means that they didn't spend that long in the cum debauchery that the succubi were enjoying with my dick.

While we wash, I take a look at our stats.

My [Mana Body] increased by 1 (now 5); Roxanne increased her "Sanity" by 2 (now 16); and Yunia increased her "Wisdom" by 1 (now 19), likely because she's been constantly helping me navigate the minefield that is relationships with nobility.

It seems that without Alissa's Blessing, I'm now the one with the lowest "Sanity." I'm doing pretty well, all things considered, but I think that I still depend too much on my wives for support, which would leave me considerably vulnerable if I was ever to be separated from them again, like with that maze in the Legado dungeon.

"I'm sure that none of you would agree to the 'training' that Wolfy would have to go through to increase his 'Sanity,'" Ciel wryly states to the other wives, and Alissa nods vigorously.

"I don't want to go through anything even close to those 'trials' ever again," she affirms, and the rest of the girls quietly agree.

After grooming ourselves until we're fabulous and perfumed again, we're invited to have breakfast with Sanaz, and I make sure that Eftee gets to participate, too.

Sanaz's main home is quite humble. It's still a mansion, but quite snug and comfy instead of overly grand and ostentatious, which I believe she could easily pay for.

Tavi and Behrouz are quite cheery this morning, enjoying a healthy meal of dried fruits and cereals with cream, which has a rather suggestive consistency. The fruits are still varieties from Maoka, so even though they're dried, I suspect they would punish my bad, bad tongue if I dared to eat them.

I just go for the fried toast, sausages, and the mushrooms that Lina recognizes since I need energy and don't want to play Russian Roulette with food right now.

Sanaz finishes eating what I suspect are fried orc balls and turns her striking but rather soft gaze to me. "I've underestimated you once again, Lord Wolf," she cryptically announces.

"Hm?" I just glance at her curiously and continue eating.

"I never expected you to be able to… shoot out so much semen," she dryly continues.

Eftee finishes slurping some dick-shaped noodle thing and gently interjects, "It makes sense that he wears a Ring of Fertility all the time. Everyone would've been impregnated otherwise."

Sanaz snorts softly and nods in agreement, then turns her sharp eyes back to me again. "But don't go thinking that you've dominated me with your 'play,' Lord Ryder. You'll need more than just exotic sexual skills to soften me up."

Before I can retort, Eftee takes one more jab at Sanaz, "So you say, but the multiple, continuous orgasms will speak for themselves with time." And the sensual gilf gives her the subtlest smug smirk.

"So you admit to bending over to him? Where's your pride?" Sanaz questions as she gives Eftee a look of pity and disappointment.

The older woman simply adjusts her lustrous, white hair with an elegant flourish. "He already bent me over and fucked my lips raw," she bluntly admits, then the smugness of her smirk deepens. "You're just posturing. For some reason, you don't want to let him have even the tiniest bit of power over you, even though you'd eagerly dive onto his cock at the very next chance you get."

The ruthless milf simply glares at her with rising anger, and I suddenly feel quite happy that I made sure that Eftee could join us.

"He's not doing it again unless I get something out of it," Behrouz interjects, pouting rather cutely at his wife.

Sanaz pats his hand and reassures him, "Don't worry, my love, I have no intention of falling into the clutches of a man who doesn't even know how to dance Rahgeeb."

"'Rahgeeb'? How old-fashioned, and I'm way older than you," Eftee taunts cheekily.

"Wolfy is a pretty good dancer, and I taught him Rahgeeb," Roxanne casually chimes in with a half-truth just to brag.

Both of the older women go silent, and I can just imagine their pussies quivering as their imagination runs wild. Behrouz gives me a look of awe, seemingly renewing his respect for me with just a few words from my wife.

"Just… pay me a visit the next time you come to Xane," Eftee bashfully pleads.

"Hm," I simply hum in agreement, quite comfortable with where the conversation has gone even though I gave no real input to it.

After our meal, it's time for us to say goodbye.

"[We'll come visit again, just wait]," Roxanne assures Tavi as they hug.

"[Okay]," the girl quietly replies, suddenly teary-eyed.

Her parents look at them warmly, quite moved at the budding relationship between the two sisters.

Then Roxanne gives her father a tight hug.

"[It was short, but I'm so happy you came back]," he whispers with a wavering voice.

"[So am I…]" She whispers back, gushing with happiness as she focuses on their time together instead of their imminent separation.

Then she gives her mother a hug. Though they both remain tense and silent, there's definitely some warmth seeping into their interactions. It's hard for it not to, given that they caused each other to cum multiple times last night.

And Roxanne finishes her farewells by giving Eftee an enthusiastic hug.

I kneel before Tavi and summon a rainbow-feathered hummingbird for her. She's immediately captivated by the cute, colorful bird and receives it slack-jawed.

"If you ever feel sad or unsafe, just tap the bird's beak three times, and we'll hear whatever you say, okay?" I gently instruct her, and she nods repeatedly, her eyes still glued to the bird. "Just don't undress or take a shower in front of it…" I awkwardly add.

She gives me a quick, tight hug, then focuses back on the bird again.

I share a cordial handshake with Behrouz, though he then kisses my hand sensually, which wipes away any shred of guilt I could've had for fucking his wife senseless.

My handshake with Sanaz is also perfectly cordial, but I don't try to come off as seductive since that would kind of make me a hypocrite.

With Eftee, though, I kiss her hand, then softly peck her lips as I unleash [Sexual Charm] on her. "I definitely won't forget you," I whisper huskily, and she subtly licks her lips.

"I can say the same," she replies in kind.

The rest of the girls give cordial goodbyes, though Sanaz acts somewhat coldly towards Yunia.

"I assume that you're the one who taught your husband to act the way he did," Sanaz quietly asserts as she sternly stares at Yunia, who easily remains as neutral as always. "All I can say is, 'well done.'"

Yunia subtly smiles, and they share a nod.

Gify gives Tavi a soft peck on her forehead as a goodbye, making her giggle happily, while the golems bow to her, and she bows back politely.

Then we finally return home.

A note from Manasong

Hall of Fame of Patrons

The patrons who support Rupegia shall have their names sung by the bards for they deserve the glory and honor. Their names are:

Prince PreownedFIN.

Prince Creamy Spinach.

Prince Owldente.

Prince Charlie Foxtrot.

Lord Andrew Meyers.

Lord Novgarod.

Lord Michale Erwin.

Lord Bakerdea.

Lord Maurice.

Lord Empyrean.

Lord Mattirro Draca.

Lord Fullmoon.

Lord Sean Drake.

Lord FrostyCube.

Lord Mike Bartter.

Lord Cardinal Steiner.

Lord Warwulfv.

Lord Jorge Franco.

Lord Khristopher Welsh.

Lord DJ.

Lord Philip.

Lord Tenebris Lupus.

Lord The Tallest Joshua.

Lord Copey Dunt.

Lord Dracopuppy23.

Lord Chris Carter.

Lord Paul Daval.

Lord Paul Daval.

Lord Bradly.

Lord Aubrey Powell.

Lord AndreyUC.

Lord Tmac.

Lord Krawn.

Lord Jetdy S.

Lord Greysen Simmons-LaRose.

Lord Aubrey Powell.

Noble Salty Panda.

Noble Mild Fracas.

Noble Aclys.

Noble CarlBaxter.

Leave a rating or a review to help me rise to the top or fix my shameful understanding of prose.

Take a look over my blog where all information about the world of Rupegia will be posted.

Join the Discord and discuss, or rant, or meme, or try and fight me so your waifu gets more screentime.

Become a Patron and read chapters in advance, or read the side-stories, or leave your mark on the story, or help choose the next artwork or the next side-story.

Chapter 112: Return to "Normalcy" - Part 2

First things first. After I "reward" the maids who accompanied us for a job well done, I go to Osaria to apologize. She's in a meeting with the Mayor, whose name I still don't know, so I decide to wait until they're done.

A "Royal" like me waiting for someone else? It'd be inconceivable if I were dealing with anyone else, but she's someone I love. Of course, it'd be pretty snobbish to just demand that any random stranger stop whatever they're doing to pay attention to me, though Yunia says I'll have to do it eventually to keep up appearances, so I might try to find a way out of it by coming up with an excuse, or something.

I just send Osaria a message and wait in the castle. Their meeting isn't long, so she gets back before long.

She comes in walking sensually, smirking as she gives me a predatory gaze. "You called for me, my love?" She whispers slowly, delighting herself in calling me that.

I smile warmly and hug her waist, getting a handful of her cheeks while squishing her breasts against my chest. "I just wanted to apologize for not coming back yesterday," I softly reply and peck her lips.

She chuckles softly and returns a long kiss, then she caresses my horns suggestively. "How considerate of you, but you don't need to worry about me like that."

I shrug. "Eh. Treating the people you love with respect never hurts, right?"

"Hm-hmm…" She hums in agreement, grinning happily, then we kiss deeply, and our tongues slowly savor each other.

But we both still have work to do, so we eventually stop each other before we get too aroused. It's hard to stop at just a "quickie" with someone as ravenous as Osaria.

We break the kiss, and I fondle her large, soft breasts for a moment as I ask, "Klein is already in a dungeon, right?"

"Yes, and this time, she has called for the cute gay couple to join them," she hesitantly replies.

"Hm?" I look up and raise an eyebrow at her.

Then she tactfully continues, "I assure you that she hasn't laid with him, but they're starting to get along."

I sigh softly, but I'm not really as sad as I thought I would be. As long as Hermann doesn't persuade her into being exclusive, then I think we'll be fine, even if she marries him.

Fucking someone else's wife does have a special allure to it, after all.

Osaria turns up the massage on my horns, and I realize that she's learned a thing or two from Poosh. "Don't let this get you down. I'm sure that making her fall unconscious on your dick in front of the boy will make it all worth it," she tries to console me.

And it kind of works as I stare at her bemusedly. "Speaking from experience…?"

She grins cheekily. "Maybe…"

"Well, I was kind of thinking the same thing, anyway…" I admit with a shrug, and we both laugh like villains.

After the moment passes and we start to stare at each other lovingly, I remember that there's something I want Osaria to do.

"If you're not too busy, please take some time and level up a bit. You can even go with Klein's squad so that she can gain experience in protecting my loved ones," I kindly suggest.

Osaria's eyes open wide, and her luscious lips part in surprise. I'm basically giving her more years to live, and that seems to be quite the powerful show of love in this world.

She suddenly hugs me tight, seemingly trying to suffocate me with her delicious, dark breasts. "Thank you, my love," she whispers heatedly, and I hold my breath for as long as I can.

Today's mana training routine is held on the balcony of our bedroom because Yunia wanted to do it while looking out at our city.

Now that the emotional roller-coaster is over, I eagerly welcome the peace of training and meditation.

But there's someone who seems quite eager to meet with me again.

"Geh ge gei gah," Gify chirps, and my cock stands up at attention.

I turn my eyes to Alissa, and we both smile in sync, then we head out to our Eia plantation.

While at first, I was excited, the sight of the Eia plants quickly smothers my enthusiasm because of how freaky they are. They're "half-sapient" plants, and they look strikingly similar to elves.

They have an elongated, bulbous green head with two dark slits where the eyes of a humanoid would normally be, and a long, horizontal slit crosses their entire head, acting as a freakishly wide mouth.

They're South Park's Canadians.

Yunia becomes quite offended at my comparison, so I put it aside and stare at our biggest source of income with a bit more awe, as it deserves.

Their wide, humanoid-shaped bodies are made of leaves like Cublends, the bush-people, but their arms are as long as they are tall, and they're also made of much thicker wood than the branches that support the rest of their body. Bear hugs are both their way to kill prey and also how they show affection. Their roots grow in all directions, including up, and as we get closer, they start to shake in our direction, then the plants slowly turn their creepy heads towards us.

After a moment of silence, the closest plants start buzzing and shaking softly, which then spreads to the other plants behind them, and soon the entire plantation is softly humming.

[Animal Tongue] gives me a faint understanding of what they're doing, and I get the sense that they're just greeting us. To understand more, I'd have to "commune" with them since they communicate mostly with their roots through exchanges of Life.

One of the plants stops humming and starts coming closer to us. Its leaf body slides along the floor as a trail of small roots pushes it forward like a caterpillar, then it stops before us and extends a single root towards me.

"It's asking to commune with you, possibly because of your nature spirit, but I would advise against it if you have any important business in the next hour," our guide explains.

Yunia says that her first "communion" was quite overwhelming and not that unlike an hour-long Ravaging, though more spiritual in nature.

"You've been fucking plants your whole life, and this is the first time you tell me?" I question her through [Bind].

"Wolfy, please. It feels similar to it because it overwhelms your senses, but there's nothing sexual about it," she tiredly retorts.

"You're the one who compared it to a Ravaging," I reply with an internal shrug.

"I… alright, 'touché,'" she dryly admits.

"Don't encourage him to meme," Alissa interjects, pouting internally.

I gently push the root down, and the plant seems to catch my meaning as it retreats to its previous position, then the loud humming dies down to a very faint buzzing.

"Gih," Gify informs us, so we ask our guide to stay, then we stroll into the plantation.

As we walk and push our way through the leaves, the plants slowly "stare" at us in a very robotic fashion, though they don't really have eyes, then I notice that they're slowly starting to give way to us, and I begin to understand why they're said to be "half-sapient."

Most of the time, they act robotically, in the same way that insects do, but together, their interconnection with each other serves like a brain, and they seem to be able to slowly learn things. They're precisely in the middle of the gray area between plants, insects, and sapient beings.

The way they connect to each other and communicate with Life must be why the Eia pill has the effects it does. The elves have found a way to concentrate their means of "communication" into the pill or into Eia extract, which is why the "buff" from ingesting it is called "Heightened Connection to Life."

According to Yunia, [Weaverism] is all about "connecting" things, so the pill must provide a direct boost for the skill.

As we reach the center of the plantation, we spot a clearing up ahead of us, and I make out Cereleia's gorgeous, stern, elvish face as she stands among the creepy heads of the Eia plants.

Once we reach the clearing, we notice that she's surrounded by green, chubby children who are playing around, the elusive Children of the Forest.

"Oh… are those, uh, my children?" I stiffly blurt out.

Cereleia slowly turns her face down and looks around at the chubby children as they play around her. "No, these aren't yours," she softly replies, then turns her gaze back towards us.

Alissa smells a flowery scent coming from Cereleia's beautiful, swept-back vine hair, which is covered in pink cherry blossoms, and I notice that they seem to be extra bright today. Even her perfectly balanced body seems even sexier than I remember.

In her hands, she's carrying something that seems awfully like a wooden, moss-covered printer. It even has a piece of A4 paper sticking out of it, and I notice that there seems to be something written on it.

"Gih," Gify announces, then she stands up and *pop*s out of existence, only to re-*pop*s onto a Child's head and start playing tag with them.

"Greetings, Lord Ryders," Cereleia's warm voice graces our ears.

"Greetings, Guardian," Alissa and I reply in kind.

"I've prepared the communication device." -She presents the not-printer- "I took some inspiration for its design from what you've given me, Lord Wolf."

"Uh?" We hum in unison and tilt our heads to the side.

Her lips curl in a subtle, smug smile. "Your 'spirit touch.'"

"Right!" I immediately exclaim and tense up, then I lower my head briefly in apology. "I'm sorry for doing that to you, only later was I informed how that kind of 'touch' is considered part of your marriage ceremony."

"Hm…" She hums softly, and her eyebrows knit in slight confusion. "But we didn't marry, I didn't give you a piece of me in return."

Alissa and I share a look. "What do you mean by that?" I ask, a lot more confused than her.

"You gave me 'a piece' of you, an 'impression' of your soul. We 'communed,' as the elves like to say, though I didn't give anything in return, so the 'marriage' is invalid."

I blink blankly. "Oh… okay… but what did I 'give' to you?"

"An 'impression' of your soul."

"And what's that?"

Cereleia averts her eyes, searching for something, then she spots Gify and her expression brightens slightly. "Nature spirit Gify, how can I explain an 'impression' in a way that the humanoids will understand?"

Gify sighs tiredly and stops playing, then she pops back onto my head and shows me my own soul. I see a blue, sparkly sea; deep, wide, and full of life. At its surface, a huge storm rages as if in slow motion. Huge boulders, trees, dirt, water, and pieces of buildings all float along so slowly that they give an impression of peace.

That's the new me. A calm sea at one moment, yet with a storm at its surface, just waiting to be released to continue raging wildly.

Cereleia nods appreciatively at Gify and starts explaining, "Different from your [Sense Soul], which allows you to explore the details of one's soul, your 'impression' is something more abstract. It's the 'outline' that it leaves when it touches another soul."

"Sounds more like it's the 'essence,' a 'summary' of what I am," I counterpoint.

She shakes her head, making the tapestry of cherry blossoms that is her hair to whisper softly as it moves about. "Perhaps 'summary' could fit, but not 'essence.' Someone else has found a way to transmit the 'essence,' and it's very different from what Gify or you can do."

"Oh?" I hum curiously, but she simply flashes a smile.

"Do you wish to receive my 'imprint' and complete the marriage ceremony?" She calmly asks, forcefully changing the topic, and her question catches us by surprise. This is a bit too serious to trigger Alissa's fetish, so we both decide to tread carefully.

"What does 'marriage' mean to you?" I stiffly ask.

"A promise of partnership and companionship, but it's far 'looser' than the usual marriage is for you humanoids," she answers matter-of-factly.

Though Yunia encourages me to make this "connection," I'm not so sure that I want this.

"It conflicts with my own definition of 'marriage,' so I don't think I want to go through with this, at least, not yet," I politely explain.

She gently nods. "That's understandable, but our 'agreement' could already count as 'marriage' if you see this as more than just the continuous exchange of your seed for a favor."

And I smoothly decline, "I'd like to get to know you better before I consider that."

She smiles subtly, faintly pleased. "We'll have the entirety of your life for that."

Right, because she's basically immortal.

I nod cordially and gesture to the not-printer. "We will, but right now, I'm curious about what you're holding."

"This device will write down any changes that we detect throughout the entire High Forest."

So it really is a printer.

My tail starts swaying slowly in curiosity. "How did you come up with it?"

"When I was designing it, your 'impression' in my soul reacted, so I followed what 'felt right.'"

Both Alissa and I raise our eyebrows in surprise. "I wouldn't have imagined that just an impression could be capable of that," I remark wryly.

And Cereleia grins suggestively as she sultrily explains, "It had been imprinted quite deeply within me."

"Do you wish to deepen my mark on you today?" I boldly ask as I mirror her tone, my cock already straining to burst out of my pants.

She narrows her eyes and softly licks her lips as she looks at my bulge, then she raises her eyes and shakes her head. "The imprint? No, but I do wish to extract more of your seed. It's quite delicious, and it has the nice effect of stabilizing my soul."

I guess this is why the Chimeras love me so much.

I un[Equip] my clothes and stride forward. "Then let's get this started."

Cereleia kneels and sets the "printer" down beside her, then she eagerly waits for my cock with her mouth slightly parted.

Okay, without using my spirit touch to keep her off balance, she becomes the ultimate cum extractor, and my MP is far from enough to last for long against her.

After being fully drained, I return to the castle and have Sandoro and Almaria look over Cereleia's detection system. They need to set it up in a special location with a Life connection to the rest of the forest, but the connection mustn't be any larger than is absolutely necessary. So far, we only know of Dryads using the Life network as a highway, so we have no idea of what else could come out of it, but we can guarantee that nothing big will be able to ride the connection if it's too small or flimsy.

Then Alissa and I return to the castle, and we continue with our mana training routine, which gives me some time to rest my body.

A little bit before lunch, Sandoro and Almaria finish setting up the detection system, and we start receiving information about everything and everyone moving throughout the entire High Forest, so we go check it out.

The intelligence room is deep below the earth and far from the castle, so we have to take a [Gate] to get there. It's a spartan, stone room with comfy chairs set out for us, a table with a very detailed map of the High Forest, and enough room for ten of our men to read through the paper that continuously grows out of the "printer."

We sit at the table and wait while the soldiers do their work. They filter out anything that's too minor and try to interpret Cereleia's description of the rest.

The first thing that catches my attention is the fact that there's a wide, town-sized object slowly moving above the treetops, circling around our city. That must be the Grantorefortdisabis, the secret fortress of the Elder Council.

They also seem to have fourteen small mobile outposts spread out across the High Forest, nine of which are in our territory.

It's a bit chilling to know that they're watching us so closely, but Yunia says that unless we've misread them horribly, we're definitely not in any danger of being overthrown.

Then the soldiers mark a considerable number of hidden bases and war parties. The locations of the two Dawn of Fire bases match the information we have on them, but it seems that there's quite a lot of movement around the larger one.

"If they're smart, they must be evacuating that base in fear of our retaliation," Sandoro points out.

"Which is the correct choice since we're going to wipe them out," Yunia states matter-of-factly, and Roxanne grins in delight since she holds quite the grudge against them.

The fact that they hurt Roxanne, Osaria, Klein, and even Anton makes me quite angry, too.

"Let's wait and see where they're going so that we can wipe out their new base, too," I deviously suggest, and both Sandoro and Yunia smile evilly, quite pleased with the idea.

"I'll inform Teresina of our intentions and ask if she wants to take part," Ciel volunteers. I'd like to talk to Teresina myself, but there's someone else who I want to meet with this afternoon, someone Yunia isn't that eager to see again.

There might be a small group of bandits stalking the northern part of our territory, but we'll wait until someone reports them before we make a move. It'll be quite suspicious if we start catching bandits the moment they enter the forest.

Feasting on delicious food from a new culture each day was awesome, but there's nothing like having Krysta's imaginative cooking along with comforting elven veggies and their delicious smoked meat.

After a filling meal, we spread out a bit, and each of us starts doing our own thing.

Alissa trains her [Illusion Magic] along with two of Nocturna's spells, [Daydreaming] and [Sleep], but she just wants to rush to the next spell, called [Dream Veil], which would allow her to change her body as she wills it to with illusions.

Roxanne is paying a visit to the RRRI, which is being "grown" out of the old [Weaverism] school. Since the entire town is made of wood, it's possible to change anything simply by using [Grow] in the right spots, though commerce really dislikes if we change the location of things because it makes things harder for them, so we use this ability sparingly.

Hana is training with the Lordsguard since she's eager to level up her [Draconic Body]. She'll also pay a visit to the ships and see how the men over there are faring. Once our crystal refinery is done, we'll put the Carrier and Winch back to work again.

Ciel is meeting with Teresina and strengthening our relations with the Temple. I could do that, especially with the priests who worship the Goddess of Love, but it'd be a different kind of "strengthening."

Lina, Aoi, and the golems are all busy at their forge, working together to build a lathe. Their focus is on recreating an example of a manufacturing plant to mass produce rifles, which will, later on, be re-geared to mass produce the airplanes that the Chimeras are currently researching.

Yunia is meeting with Mimi, Sandoro, and Istante, our quartermaster, to discuss things like our income balance and the mothballing of our Chimera planes since they don't have much use in our current warfare doctrine.

Since I don't have the same stamina as Hana does to train all day, I decide to perform a quick "inspection" of the Companions, but it's interrupted by Sainalai, who has some business with me. The cute, brown-haired loli is definitely high on my target list, but I haven't had the chance to flirt with her as much as I've wanted to.

I put on my pants again to make myself presentable, stopping my "inspection" of one of the Companions, but I leave my writhing tentacles inside the others.

Sai walks in and looks quite amused at the scene. She's been dealing with the Chimera spirits for a while now, so she must be pretty desensitized to things like this by now, though my display of consentacles still gets a reaction out of her.

"Your Highness," she greets with a bow, then sits on the sofa before me.

"You wished to speak with me?" I gently ask as the elf woman beside me screams in pleasure.

Her eyes wander, yet her tone betrays no discomfort or awkwardness. "Yes, Your Highness. May I study the golems? I wish to understand how their souls 'stick' to their bodies."

I let my tail sway in curiosity. "Do you wish to apply that knowledge to helping the Chimeras?"

She brightens up, becoming more excited. "Exactly. There's a rare spirit monster in Lorei Laurelai that can 'possess' objects, and I wish to give the Chimeras a similar ability to help with their day-to-day lives. Also, it could potentially increase their compatibility with their 'battle bodies' or even accelerate their training."

I hum, very pleased with her idea. "I see. You want to create something like a [Possess] spell."

She nods energetically, smiling adorably, like a child. "But now, imagine if they could 'possess' a golem like Jarn."

Ooooh~… fantasy Jarvis!

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Chapter 112: Return to "Normalcy" - Part 3

A note from Manasong

I'll be taking a break for a week to work on the early chapters. After that, I'll resume writing new chapters as usual.

Since Sai managed to stimulate my nerd side, I'll help her as much as I can. "I'll create a golem for you, but it has all of my memories, so you're forbidden to probe them or bring it outside of the castle. This golem's purpose will be strictly for researching your [Possess] spell."

"I understand, your Highness, and I'm very thankful for your support," she politely replies and lowers her head respectfully.

I just smile back as I increase the intensity of the pounding my tentacles are giving to the Companions.

Sai calls for a maid, and she procures a suit of wooden armor for us while I get ready. If I remember it right, Jarn cost me around two thousand MP to give life to her, so I'll put some points in [Blackout Resistance] just so that I won't pass out if my MP goes into the negatives.

I also call for Jarn through Lina so that I can copy her soul as best as I can into this new golem.

The maid soon comes back with a Space mage, who leaves a brown suit of wooden armor just outside the door since we don't want to traumatize the poor man.

Jarn takes the armor and deposits it on the tea table, then I activate [Infuse] and start molding the soul.

It feels like it's becoming easier to alter a golem's soul. The reason for that could be either simply my experience with the process, or my increased "Magic Power," or even my [Mana Body], but it's probably all of them combined. I also think that I should just start creating a bunch of disposable golems for simple, trial and error testing, and then destroy them once I'm done.

But then I remember how lethal the golems can be and decide otherwise. If I accidentally made a murderous golem, I could cause quite a bit of damage. Maybe we could create a "cage" for them, but it would still be iffy.

I finish working on the golem and press the "finish" button, then the drain on my MP increases tenfold as the suit of armor is infused with the new golem's soul, but it stops after 1.5 thousand mana points. That's almost all of my MP, but I barely feel the side effects of overuse.

The armor suddenly starts twitching, and Sai jumps in her seat out of surprise. I chuckle softly, making her blush, then she assumes a stiff posture to avoid embarrassing herself again.

We wait for a long moment until the golem stops twitching, and it begins to slowly stand up. Its movements are very stiff and awkward, contrasting quite strongly when compared to Jarn's poise and agility.

Once the suit of armor is standing firmly on its feet, it turns its helmet towards me and speaks with an androgynous voice, "Master Wolf. I await your orders."

It seems that this one has been born with a higher level of intelligence than I remember the other golems having at the start.

I set up the security measures for it and assign Sai as its master, still leaving me as the primary master, then I name it Jarvis.

"Master Sainalai, I'm at your disposal," Jarvis politely reports.

And the little halfling woman giggles girlishly, a bit embarrassed. "V-very well. Let's go find the Celestial Horns and begin testing."

Jarvis nods. "Yes, Master."

Then they leave, and after I finish "renewing the loyalty" of the last Companion, I decide to polish my combat skills with Hana.

Silvano is so fast that it's hard for my tentacles to keep up, but he lacks the raw damage to cut through all of them before I can raise my defenses. Growing new tentacles is simple, and though it requires me to recast my custom [Materialize], the spell is cheap enough that the most he can do is to chip away my MP at a nearly insignificant pace. If I had put most of my points in [Mana Recovery], I could potentially continue this indefinitely.

I'm clearly on the back foot, but we're locked in a battle of attrition, and Silvano's build definitely isn't geared for it.

Whenever our swords meet, I always end up with the upper hand due to my greater number of combat skills, but my problem is actually getting them to land. He's so fast that all I can do is parry his blows before he's out of my range again.

Of course, I could just use [Discharge], but that isn't the point of this exercise.

Silvano starts chanting [Dead End], and I recall that his "Magic Power" is four times higher than mine. It won't be easy to interrupt his spell once it's been cast, and with it, he'll only need a split second to end this duel.

I cast [Haste] on myself and wait for his next move. He stops running laps around me a good distance away, his gorgeous face warped in a suspicious frown, then he quickly finishes his chant and unleashes [Dead End] on me.

As predicted, it takes me a herculean effort to interrupt his spell, and all the while, I'm completely immobile and a great number of my spells are rendered useless. Though this is a precarious situation, I know that I have the tools I need to escape it, but Silvano doesn't waste a single second before he resumes his assault.

I cast [Earth Wall] in front of him and hide an [Air Hammer] behind it, then I hit myself inside for not putting enough points in [Earth Magic] for [Dust Storm].

Silvano jumps to the side, and my [Air Hammer] hits him square in the chest, pushing him back quite far, though his metal [Earth Armor] should've absorbed most of the impact. He's customized that defensive spell of his so much that it's almost like a kinetic shield.

Silvano immediately recovers and sprints towards me again, so I cast [Warp Space] at his feet, and he tumbles before he can interrupt it. It doesn't matter if his "Magic Power" is much higher than mine if I can still cast area spells on him instantly.

With a grunt of effort, I finally interrupt [Dead End] and cast [Rush] to reach him as I spread my tentacles around him to attack from all sides.

His whole body blurs as he dodges all of my attacks, then a sword comes my way, triggering [Battlefield Perception], but I use [Muscle Explosion] to dodge as I counter-attack, and my sword's blade slides across his flank.

The moment I feel the resistance of his metal armor against my blade, I cast [Earth Wall] and erect a barrier between us before he can focus both of his swords on me. I'm not confident that [Haste] is enough for me to match his super-speed if he's past my tentacles.

He spins and slices two tentacles as he retreats, then he glances at the faint scratch on his armor. "If you had used [Searing Blade], this would've been quite the wound," he admits with mild amusement in his tone, definitely not even slightly tense.

"I'm not sure it would've been that deep," I grunt in reply, still in "battle mode."

He turns his pretty eyes to me and narrows them. "Yet you're not even winded."

My MP is still pretty full, so I could go on like this for quite a while.

After a couple of seconds of consideration, he un[Equip]s his swords and dispels his [Earth Armor]. "I don't have the power to crack your defense, so I've already lost this duel."

I finally relax and calm down my confused boner. Fighting against women normally gives me a boost of motivation, but against Silvano, I just feel a bit disgusted.

The observers clap respectfully, and we leave the arena.

"Now, fight me!" Hana suddenly challenges Silvano.

He freezes in place and simply stares at her for a brief moment. "Am I allowed to respectfully decline?" He stiffly replies.

"We certainly can't force you to duel her," I answer with a wry smile in Hana's stead, and she gives me an annoyed frown.

Silvano simply nods and quickly walks out of the arena.

"I fear your duel would force both of you to employ dangerous tactics to get an upper hand," Sandoro wisely cautions Hana, and she begrudgingly stands down.

Fighting against me is one thing since I can apply a variety of less-than-lethal tactics, but Hana versus Silvano would be a desperate fight for both of them, and dragonkin aren't exactly known for playing it safe.

I walk towards the officer seats, and Alcander starts the debriefing, "It seems that [Dead End] is your biggest weakness."

But Sandoro immediately retorts, "Anyone is vulnerable to [Dead End], so I think it's safe to say that he's vulnerable to mages with high 'Magic Power.' If Silvano had cast [Firestorm] instead of [Dead End], His Highness Wolf would've died in real combat."

"Perhaps Lord Wolf should learn [Blink]?" Almaria suggests, then glances at Sandoro since he's the only one in our army who can cast that spell.

But the Commander doesn't seem very eager. He swallows heavily and evades, "I'm a terrible Space mage. It was Lord Yulania's father who taught me the spell, so I fear I'd be a terrible teacher since [Blink] is already terribly inefficient mana-wise for me."

My Gift currently only allows me to instant-cast spells up to level 50, but if I could find a way to "level it up," then I'd have access to [Space Magic]'s level 60 spell, [Blink].

"And it seems that Lord Mavel's talent with [Space Magic] wasn't inherited by his children," Almaria wistfully adds.

A fleeting thought enters my mind as I realize that Yunia is very talented in [Spirit Magic] and not [Space Magic], which matches Confiel's talents and shortcomings, but paternity tests are conducted for every noble child, so I just file it away as an odd coincidence.

"I find it hard to imagine that our Royal Lords would encounter such a powerful Electric Mage anytime soon," Hihiriwa suddenly chimes in. The dragon-headed Chimera seems quite impassive, unlike the rest of the officers, who appear to be impressed by our duel, so I think he just doesn't care that much for physical combat.

"It's not about what they're likely to come up against, but rather, being prepared for anything," Sandoro points out.

Hihiriwa snorts and gives Sandoro a side-eye as he lets out a bit of snark, "To 'be prepared for anything' would require such a wide breadth of skills that only a Divine could manage it, so it's beyond me how our young Royal Lord could possibly reach the level required to match one."

"It's also beyond any of us that he can just cast so many spells without chanting," Silvano points out, sounding slightly bitter.

I just smile and remain silent. If I told them my level, and they started calculating my skills, they'd quickly realize that something doesn't add up. I should probably reveal the full extent of my Gift to Sandoro, but I won't do it now, and definitely won't in front of Hihiriwa.

"I still had a few tricks up my sleeve to escape [Dead End], so perhaps we should focus on something else," I cryptically suggest.

Sandoro nods and opines, "From what I understand, you're already training to improve your low 'Magic Power,' so I don't see anything else you could improve on immediately."

"His sword skill isn't at the level of a Lord yet," Azador quietly interjects. He spends quite a lot of time in our arena watching the sweaty, bloody, and dirty men and women fight each other, so I think his opinion is quite valuable.

"Nobody would fault him for that considering how much talent he has as a magic swordsman," Almaria retorts.

"Our Lord is ridiculously powerful, and his fighting style is very solid, but we shouldn't become overconfident and ever leave him unsupported because of that," Sandoro continues.

"Also, the other Royal Lords make up for his shortcomings, forming a well-balanced team," and Alcander finishes the discussion.

Hana fights a few of our Lordsguard, then Azador volunteers. The old man is a standard and solid "man of arms." His specialty is using a variety of weapons with ease, so he's a good match for Hana, who has a similar talent with arms, though she also has a small talent for magic.

Though we're dueling without armor (except for the standard heart, brain, and spine protectors for duels), he'll use his gauntlets because they've been enchanted with [Fireball], [Earth Bullet], and [Lightning Bolt]. He mainly uses either a spear or a sword, and a shield, so he has a solid base with a bit of variety to back him up and create openings in his opponents.

The two of them stand a good distance away from each other, shields and spears at the ready, then the bell rings, and the duel starts.

Hana immediately summons her wings and launches herself forward while Azador casts [Lighting Bolt], but it hits her shield, so she doesn't feel a thing, then they collide.

Hana tries to stab Azador, but he easily blocks it with his shield, and the tip of her spear harmlessly slides away. She also tries to block his counter stab in the same way, but his spear slides downwards around her shield and strikes at her thigh, only to be stopped by steaming emerald scales that weren't there a split second ago.

They crash against each other, but Azador maintains his posture as he's pushed back, his feet sliding on the sand.

Hana doesn't wait for even a single breath to pass before she launches herself forward again relentlessly.

Azador casts [Fireball] with one gauntlet and [Earth Bullet] with the other, but Hana barely feels them when they hit her shield.

She casts [Blinding Lights], delaying his riposte to her attack and allowing her to get under his guard without trouble, but she still fails to stab him as his [Block] is too high.

Their shields crash against each other, but this time, he manages to stand his ground since Hana had less distance to accelerate.

Their spears glow as they use [Switch] at the same time, and their weapons become bastard swords.

Hana doesn't let him put any distance between them, using her wings to push him back and keep their shields pressed together.

Azador slides his sword around her shield and hits unexpectedly solid where her ribs should've been.

Hana grins manically while Azador frowns, then he shifts his body and shield to the side to block her sword as it tries to stab at his waist.

The two desperately try to stab each other, ignoring everything they know about the tactics of swordsmanship because Hana forced them into an awkward, unexpected situation.

Azador's next attack is a [Lighting Bolt] to her face while his sword stabs at her throat.

Her body tenses up due to the spell, but she manages to partially resist it, and the sword sinks into her shoulder, but before he can pull his weapon back, her wound glows, and steaming emerald scales appear around the blade.

Azador's face pales when he realizes that his sword is stuck, but before he can release it, Hana grabs his arm with her shield hand, keeping him in place as she sinks her sword into his throat.

A harsh whistle resounds throughout the arena, and they immediately disengage, then the arena glows softly, and both of their wounds are instantly healed.

Hana grins triumphantly and undoes the scattered patches of scales she created with [Draconic Body].

"Dragonkin were always the worst opponents for me," Silvano quietly comments and gives Azador a smug smile, a silent "I told you so."

Hana struts towards our area of the stands, and Sandoro starts the debriefing, "There's no issue with your style that sticks out, except for the fact that [Tatesomu Style] presents quite a risk to your life since you don't hesitate to receive attacks with your body."

"I'll be unbreakable once I get [Draconic Body] high enough," Hana confidently remarks, then she makes her fist shine with emerald scales.

"Nothing is unbreakable, not even Okross, which is supposedly what your husband's scales are made of," Almaria gently points out.

But Hana just shrugs. "I just have to be stronger than whatever wants to kill us."

And so, we decide that it's better to not argue with her.

After some more good exercise, Yunia finally calls for Ereia, and I eagerly join them.

"The town is very peaceful right now since the people still feel the 'fervor' from the Intervention," Ereia casually reports, her fingers trailing around Yunia's covered breasts. "The influx of adventurers is also causing an increase in the number of complaints about vagrants, especially at the bottom level, so the slums must be increasing in population."

Lina's Reminder: Escanso has three levels, the surface, the middle, and the bottom level. That last one is dark and cold, so it's mostly populated by the lowest class due to the low housing prices.

"The commoners are asking for more guards to be patrolling the streets and for harsher punishments," Ereia softly adds as her finger slowly pushes down Yunia's top, revealing her delicious, pink nipples.

The ravenous, small woman gives each of the two perfect, alluring pointy bits a gentle kiss, then starts sucking on one while rubbing the other, drawing out a gentle sigh from the dignified Queen.

Since Yunia is currently indisposed, I answer in her stead, "People don't resort to crime just because they feel like it. We'll increase the number of priests on the lower level and subsidize goblin meat and the cheaper vegetables."

Osaria silently nods, her lustful stare locked solely on the delicious piece of elven meat in front of her.

Ereia sends me a curious glance. "What a kind Lord you are," she amusedly remarks as her other hand tickles Yunia's abs.

I unleash my draconic hunger on her, and she presses her cute thighs together, then she turns her lewd eyes to the Queen. "It's not just kindness, we do want to keep the Tribunal firmly on our side," I explain huskily.

Ereia gently touches Yunia's veiled pubes and is delighted with the gentle shiver that evokes. "They're wary of you due to your claim of being the new royalty, especially since you still haven't tried to take possession of anything from the old royal family yet, but they have no reason to be hostile to you."

Osaria's nipples poke through her dousnadeia as she becomes aroused, and my incest fetish triggers once I remember that she's Yunia's aunt.

To assuage my growing hunger, I begin to finger my milfy snack as I wait for the main course to be ready. "We'll be introducing new laws and changing some things, so we don't want to start the dance with the wrong foot."

Ereia slowly pulls on the string of Yunia's bottoms, then the tie comes undone, and the small piece of thin cloth falls away, revealing her slightly moistened pussy. "Hm…" She hums absentmindedly both due to the beautiful sight in front of her and due to her reflecting on my words. "They'll certainly complain about a Lord getting involved in legislation, but the Guilds have the most power in the Tribunal, so keep them happy, and you can do whatever you want."

Then she goes down on her knees and slowly licks along Yunia's labia, making her royal thighs quiver in anticipation.

"I believe… they'll be quite happy… with what we have in mind," Osaria replies, moaning softly as she stares at Ereia with envy.

"What about the town's nobles?" I push the conversation forward, wanting to get to what comes after as soon as possible.

Ereia's tongue retreats back into her mouth, and she swallows, savoring Yunia's taste. "They're obviously resentful after being blocked from joining your Institute," she quickly answers, then looks up at the bound and gagged Queen, who glares back at her with thinly-veiled disgust, but the lewd imp simply grins and continues molesting my wife.

"I sincerely doubt that any of them have the qualifications to lead the projects we've started, but we'll open up the Institute to them later," I reply dismissively.

Ereia's finger slides into Yunia's moist pussy, drawing a soft, muffled moan from her. "You'll have to do some work to get them back on your side." Then she kisses Yunia's clit.

I stand up, too aroused to hold myself back any longer, then I walk up to Ereia, my cock hard and oiled, ready for penetration. "Their support isn't necessary, but we won't just throw them away without good reason."

Ereia turns her head to face me, then gasps and freezes as I pull her small dousnadeia to the side and plunge my cock deep into her tight little pussy.

While I keep the young nympho occupied, Osaria eagerly takes this opportunity to molest her defenseless niece to her heart's content.

A note from Manasong

Hall of Fame of Patrons

The patrons who support Rupegia shall have their names sung by the bards for they deserve the glory and honor. Their names are:

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Chapter 113: Insolence - Part 1

A note from Manasong

Attention: to conform to the limit of sexual content allowed in a novel, I've censored this chapter. You can look for the uncensored version here.

Previously, I had just fooled around with the Companions, so I didn't get as much out of that as I am now from unleashing my endless hunger on Ereia, only stopping when she's nearly senseless.

She's a lithe and smug little piece of fine meat, so it's doubly satisfying to see her composure shattered as her body lightly convulses from the sensory overload.

I make Yunia clean her up, and the multiplier to my satisfaction increases again, then Ereia starts to wake up, and the totally unveiled thirst in her eyes as she watches my wife going down on her doubles the multiplier again, to four times.

It's a shame that such an extremely satisfying event won't be repeated as often as I may want it to.

I cuddle up on our bed with Ereia in one arm and Osaria in the other, slowly caressing their heads and playing with their elastic, long ears with my now human hands.

Man, I fucking love elves.

But I feel like I'm missing the touch of fluffy fur. I need more wereanimal maids.

When's Esvisor going to get those maids Alissa asked him for…?

I shut down my anxiousness and greed, focusing on remaining patient. It'll do me no good to thirst too much for other women. They should come to me, not the other way around.

After Ereia is cleaned and recovered enough that they start chatting lightly, I pull us back onto more serious topics.

"You think the Chimeras are adapting well?" I softly ask her as I extract a happy sigh from her through my ear [Massage].

"I think so, but they're doing better now after the Intervention," she whispers absentmindedly, then she giggles and smirks. "After the 'cultural exchange' of your Lordship Ceremony, they've 'integrated' fairly well with us."

"What about the Chimera aristocracy? They're a bit different from the Avgin nobility," I continue and kiss Yunia's forehead as she claims her rightful throne on top of me. Osaria molested her, but she's still a bit frisky, so she grabs my erect member and slowly slides it into her warm, queenly folds.

"That's more… complicated," Ereia whispers as the three of us watch Yunia's toned thighs guide her hips up and down, then the lewd imp sobers up a bit and continues, "Our nobles don't consider the Chimera 'aristocrats' as their equals, so they don't like their presence in the Nobles' Quarter. But since I'm a Lady, I've been getting along with them quite well, so our nobles aren't unanimous in their antagonism."

Lina's Reminder: Avgin nobility is solely based around martial or magical power, while Chimera aristocracy involves merchants, researchers, politicians, clergy, and any other family that has established a stable lineage of children which has acquired a significant amount of power. A "Lady," a non-combatant like Ereia, is basically the same as a Chimera aristocrat, though with less respect from their peers.

"Maybe if we show the nobles one of your prototypes of war airplanes, they'll get along better with the Chimeras," Yunia suggests through [Bind] as her real voice is currently occupied by soft, long moans.

Indeed, that seems like a good idea.

I grab Yunia's body and play with her as she slowly rides me up the mountain of pleasure. Her movements are slow and steady enough that we have plenty of mental capacity left over to discuss social "safety nets" that will benefit both the Chimeras and the elves.

Okay, I've played around enough; it's time to return to our training.

While Osaria joins Klein in the dungeon to soak up a bit of XP, the harem meets up for a joint exercise with the Horns, who have achieved the minimum level of proficiency necessary with my [Soul Manipulation] skill to begin the "battle body" training, so they have more free time to train together with us.

Since they're basically our elite unit of the Lordsguard, they're made privy to the secret of our near-perfect coordination.

"Can you teach your mental communication to us? I think it'd be perfect for us," Oritiki solemnly requests.

"I don't want to spread this spell in its current state, but I'll definitely teach it to you once it's been re-developed," I assure her.

She raises her non-existent eyebrows in surprise. "You're dealing with experimental spells?"

"You could say that," I cryptically reply with a grin.

She shifts uncomfortably on her lizard feet. "Alright, just don't kill yourself."

"That's a given."

"Weird expression," she softly remarks and turns her eyes to Sandoro.

"Yes, even in Andraste, it's an unusual expression," he calmly replies, and I feel like I'm missing some context here.

"Sometimes, you talk weird," Hana succinctly explains, and I hum in understanding.

After the light chatter, we start the exercise with the intention of improving our coordination. I've already completely "synced" my mind with some of the girls a few times now, so we need to properly harness the potential to turn our better-than-average coordination into something truly lethal. This will be our Gestalt training, to make our united minds more powerful than our simply connected parts.

It's a bit hard to categorize what exactly triggered the "sync," but we're betting on "similarity of goals" and "openness." That is, we think that if we all have the same goal and allow [Bind] unrestricted access to each other's minds, then we can "sync" up our minds and improve our coordination.

We start with a simple group spar against eight Horns, but they have a lot more experience with fighting together than us, so they have a clear advantage if we aren't allowed to use magic.

I give a point to Roxanne in [Polearm] use and hand her a pike so that she can support us from behind since she's the one with the least amount of experience in melee, then we start the exercise.

The first bout ends horribly for us, and we realize that we definitely don't know what we're doing.

I group up with the wives in a circle and start a discussion, "Alright, question: how do you girls prepare for battle? I always psych myself up and give myself a boner."

Sandoro blinks repeatedly and looks around, as if he doesn't believe what he just heard. His eyes meet with Oritiki's, and they seem to share a wry understanding while the rest of the observers pretend not to have heard a thing.

"'Psych myself up'?" Ciel asks confusedly.

"Like a mental warm-up. I imagine dragons fucking to get my heart beating faster, energizing my muscles."

"Oh, that, I definitely do that," Hana states with a nod.

"I meditate a bit and calm myself," Alissa shares.

"Same," Yunia echos.

"I definitely don't get calm," Lina shyly confesses.

"I steel my heart, but I don't get as nervous as Lina," Ciel adds as she gives our anxious loli wife a sympathetic smile.

"I'm always ready," Aoi confusedly declares.

"I think I'm like you," Roxanne joins in.

And with that, we realize the glaring problem. Our mindsets are all completely different, and we're even thinking about adding the golems to our [Bind] network sometime in the future.

It's easy to work together if I just assume the commanding role, but the Gestalt is something deeper than that, so we need to think this through. It'll have to be a special "state," like a Power Ranger's Morphing Time.

And after a few minutes of brainstorming, Yunia frustratedly interjects, "I suggest we just continue training our coordination in a variety of ways as this will certainly be no simple matter that we could solve in a single sitting."

Basically, just "fuck it" and continue with what we're doing. We have time to explore this concept, so let's continue our training and see if something improves.

Hana and Roxanne immediately agree, and the rest follow after a short reflection, then we continue getting dunked on by the Horns, which they kind of seem to enjoy doing.

The day was already near its end when we started, so the exercise doesn't go on for that long, and then we finally leave for our baths.

Since Hana spent nearly the entire day fighting, she has a lot of stress to release upon my dick and hips, then she has Roxanne's pussy as a dessert, making our pale wife turn scarlet from exertion.

Klein and Osaria seem like they had a nice time together, so I make sure that the monkey girl's vagina remembers the shape of my cock. I'm a bit territorial, so there's no way I'll ever make things easy for Hermann.

Then dinner time comes around, and Krysta presents a few versions of her ideas of Catupiry for taste-testing, so we invite Anton to join us.

She presents a selection of creamy cheese spreads for us, in cold, hot, and lightly roasted varieties.

Immediately, I find a cold choice that's perfect for toast. It's thick but very creamy and has a mild, salty and sour taste, the same consistency as the usual Requeijão.

Krysta smiles as she sees my approval, and we nod at each other. "When I tasted this, I immediately realized that it should be used on toast, so I knew you'd like it," she proudly confides.

I taste a few more, but then my spoon sinks into one of the choices, and it suddenly "clicks" in my mind.

This is the one.

I scoop up a small amount and sniff it. There's barely any scent to it, but I recognize it: that subtle sourness, perfectly mixed with the characteristic aroma of Parmesan.

I jiggle it gently in my spoon, and it's like there's a slight springiness to it. The perfect consistency. Then I finally spread it on my tongue, and the rush of the nostalgic flavor sparks an orgasmic feeling within my brain.

This is the one.

The cold variety has to survive the oven roasting of a pizza, so it's initially a lot more watery, but the milk also has to survive curdling, so it needs the right thickener to stabilize it and not ruin the flavor.

I nod at her, and she draws a beautiful diamond pattern with the Catupiry on the chicken pizza before me. Grated chicken breast, salt, oregano, and a thin not-tomato sauce that gives it a nice dark iris shade.

She slices a wedge and serves it to me, then I eagerly cut it into smaller pieces, though I still keep up my table manners, and dig in.

It's Saturday night. After a whole afternoon playing Final Fantasy XX Online with my siblings, we start the usual song and dance about who'll go to take a bath first. Nobody wants to leave since we all just want to play a little bit more, so Mom chastises us and sends us running.

No weapon ever built has been as frightening as the chinelo.

Child abuse? Don't make me laugh? This is a catholic household, and we still get spanked for getting caught fapping.

As the youngest, I have the least expectations laid upon me, so I'm allowed to take a bath last, and by the time I'm done, the delivery man is already buzzing his bike in front of our gate.

Dad goes out of the house and hurries across our huge lawn of… five meters in length. At least it's ten meters wide, so it's good enough for our two small dogs to play around on it.

He barks at the barking dogs, and they run back towards the house, then he opens the chained gate, and we hold the dogs back so that the little shits can't escape. You only need to feel the horror of seeing your dog almost get run over by a bus once to learn to be very careful.

Dad pays the delivery man with his credit card, then he comes back with two wide but thin square boxes.

"Pizza!" Bro cheers like the dumb idiot he is, egging me on to cheer with him. I promptly give in, and Sis rolls her eyes at our childishness.

We gather around in the small kitchen, and our dining table is almost fully covered by the two boxes, but there's still room for our plates and the two-liter bottle of Coke.

Dad opens the first box, and we take a second to savor the smell of the warm meal in front of us, then we dig in.

Holy shit. I'm in love.

It'd be really uncool of me to cry right now, so I take a deep breath and calm myself.

"That's not healthy, and you know it," Ciel chastises me through [Bind], but I have a reputation to maintain! Of all things, I won't cry over food!

"This is fucking good," I whisper weakly, forcing myself to move on.

"Thank you very much, my Lord," Krysta coolly replies with a beamingly bright smile.

The girls crowd around the pizza, and I don't even mind that it completely disappears in mere moments as every last slice is quickly taken. I even let Gify have a whole slice for herself, which she promptly inhales like a damn Kirby, making her small body become round as the black hole of her stomach starts its insanely fast digestion.

Everyone takes a bite, Klein, Hana, and Aoi eating with their hands, and the air vibrates with the collective hums of thought and delight as they all savor the extremely homely pizza.

"I didn't expect you to react so strongly to this type of food," Osaria remarks, and I simply stare at her confusedly. I didn't use [Acting], but I really wasn't showing that much emotion, so I'm impressed by her "Perception."

"I agree, it was a bit of an odd request," Krysta remarks, just making me even more confused.

"This is… peasant food," Yunia bluntly states, then smiles warmly at me. "It tastes good, but it's still something so simple that only a peasant would love it."

"You've only seen the 'new' Wolfy," Alissa tersely explains with a smug smile, but everyone seems to understand.

"I'm not a snobbish person," I firmly assert, mildly annoyed.

"Yes, but… I feel like you'd normally complain that this is too greasy or that the bread is too thick," Osaria continues as she smirks cheekily at me.

I start to feel a bit uncomfortable due to being put in the spotlight like this.

Hana suddenly lets out a short but loud laugh and remarks, "I kind of agree with Yunia and Osaria, this is greasy 'peasant food,' so I guess we've all changed a bit."

"For the better," Yunia affirms with a nod.

"Eh…" Ciel and Lina hum in sync dubiously, giving Yunia the side-eye.

"That's your opinion," Roxanne sagely states and shoots the elven queen a smug glance.

"We all change, and we're always changing," Klein abruptly chimes in, the subtly hidden melancholy of her tone raising some eyebrows.

"And what made you think that?" Anton questions her firmly, his intense stare telling her that she shouldn't try to dodge the question.

Klein smiles awkwardly and blushes as she suddenly becomes the center of attention. "My reunion with Hermann didn't go like I imagined it would."

"What did you imagine?" Krysta presses her daughter, a smirk gradually forming on her face.

"Something that now sounds so silly," she embarrassedly admits and lowers her head, seemingly wanting to disappear.

Hana and Roxanne grin at each other and start acting out a little play.

"My little brown bun of love, I missed you so much!" Hana exclaims dramatically as she extends both arms towards Roxanne.

"Grandson of a dragon, please, embrace me!" Roxanne demands, her face wracked with grief, her posture shrunk like a frail Lady.

Hana pulls her close and whispers huskily, "We're finally together again, and now, we can be one!"

"UU~GH!" Klein groans loudly as she cringes hard. "Please, stop!"

The two lovebirds start kissing messily, their hands frantically exploring the other's body, and we share some hearty chuckles.

Then Osaria suddenly makes a sly expression, ringing warning bells in my mind as if she were a cat about to make mischief. "But can you say that your reunion was anything like that?" She surreptitiously asks.

Klein looks away, the cringe almost hurting her physically. "No, it was… very awkward."

"The fact that both of you already have lovers didn't help, I'm sure," Krysta mercilessly strikes right where it hurts.

But Klein becomes defiant, and her long tail starts tensely waving as she glares back at her mother. "It's not like either of us are joining a seven-person harem, so we'll manage to rebuild our relationship."

Krysta then glances at me, her subtle smugness basically asking me "and what are you going to do?"

"So now you'll split your attention between me and him?" I coolly ask, but the edge in my tone makes her tail freeze for a second.

She turns her cute, wavering eyes towards me, looking like a corgi barking at a pit bull. "Unless you want to spend your time with both me and him, I'll have to split my attention between you."

A competition, then?

My tail stiffens and raises up, like a scorpion's stinger when it's ready to strike. "You'd better be very careful about how you divide up your time, for I won't accept my closest knight neglecting me."

Klein swallows heavily and nods slowly, too intimidated to reply as I stare intensely at her, and I know that her panties are slowly becoming wet because she loves submitting to me.

"Diamond dragon scales, Wolfy. You'd better spit roast her one day," Osaria whispers heatedly, caught up deep in her own fantasies.

"Let's not talk about this topic," Anton pleads anxiously.

"You're asking for the priest not to preach," Krysta wryly remarks.

I pull back a bit on my [Sexual Charm], but I make it clear to Klein that I'll be imprinting my cock upon her folds tonight.

We retreat to the game room as is usual during the evening for our private family time, then the girls spread out to do what they want. Some go drink, some go play at the tables, Lina goes to the book stands, some go play with Gify or Aoi, and Klein tries to act casual as she sits on the sofa closest to the Love Bed, then looks out the balcony, as if she could see much of the outside from across the entire room.

I go to my usual seat, but I don't let Lina sit on my lap this time, then Klein suddenly stands up and goes to the snacks and alcohol table to get some chocolate. She carefully chooses a small sweet, then nibbles on it while standing as she taps her feet repeatedly on the floor due to her anticipation and anxiety.

Her behavior brings back memories as it reminds me of Lily. She used to eat chocolate while pacing around the room whenever she was nervous, and Klein is acting quite similar to her. The monkey-girl's anxiety is made even more obvious by the stiffness of her long furry tail.

I just stare and wait while she eats, then she suddenly turns around and returns to her seat, then she immediately resumes looking out at the small piece of dark sky that she can see from inside the room as she casts [Clean] on her mouth.

I only have to wait for just a few seconds longer, then she finally glances at me, and when our eyes meet, a visible shiver runs through her tail.

I grin like a predator who's about to pounce on their prey and do just that.

In an instant, I'm before Klein, staring down hungrily at her, and she cowers like a familiar juicy rabbit, but then she straightens her back and recomposes herself like a proper knight.

"May I keep you company for tonight?" I huskily ask her.

"You m-may," she immediately replies, failing to hide the trembling in her tone.

I sit beside her and immediately sling an arm over her shoulder, then I gently pull her towards me and guide her head so that she rests it against my chest. She quickly becomes like putty as she relaxes against my manly body, and I ensnare her tail with mine so that she can't escape, then I create tentacles that explore and massage her athletic body.

She closes her eyes and moans, quickly surrendering herself to my touch, so I subject her to an intense massage to make her remember who actually owns her body.

My tentacles rub against her skin with tenderness, then they apply pressure to her muscles, telling them to relax. A subtle soul vibration makes her heartbeat quickly increase, and her breath grows louder.

Her delicate hands; her muscular arms; her defined, archer's back; her strong core; her small waist; her round buttocks; her lean legs; her cute feet. I take in her adventurer's body and worship every centimetri of it, then I gradually inch closer to her erogenous zones.

Her earlobes are sucked on by wet, slick tentacles; her ass is gripped by sharp claws, spreading her cheeks apart; her tail tugged by a large hand that grips it tightly, making her constantly aware of it; her breasts are massaged by suckers that kiss them loudly as they approach her pointy bits; her ears are played with by a feather-like tentacle that tickles the sensitive cartilage; her neatly trimmed pubes are stimulated by finger-like tentacles that spread out and cheekily avoid her flower as they tease her crotch.

Her skin becomes black as my tentacles cover her body like a skin-tight suit, and I untangle my tail from hers, then I use the tentacles to suspend her up in the air in front of me while I casually watch her writhe from the full-body massage.

"W-Wolfy…" She softly moans my name, and the smell of female arousal becomes quite noticeable to me.

"Yes?" I ask disinterestedly.

"Wolfy…!" She moans again and again, increasingly louder each time.

"Say it," I order with a growl.

The tentacles undress her and her drenched panties stick to her body, which then starts to drip on the floor thanks to her state of extreme arousal.

"Ah… ah… ah…" She moans in sync with the suckers.

Feeling impatient, I tie her arms behind her back and spread her legs, making her look like a meal being served to me, then I increase the intensity of the massage, and her legs try to close so that she can give her lips even the slightest taste of stimulation that they so deeply crave.

"You know what you want, so say it!" I angrily order as I make all the tentacles pulsate, wringing out a loud moan from her

"F-F-F-FUCK ME!" She finally shouts, delirious with desire.

I stand up, ready to impart her with mind-blowing pleasure to ensure that she never forgets that only I can satisfy this need of hers.

Then I stop myself as my mind snags onto a sudden realization.

I know that I'm more than just a cock for her, so maybe I shouldn't be too sexually aggressive with her since that is a fact that she definitely shouldn't forget.

But right now, she's begging for it, so it'd be extremely rude of me to not oblige.

I have her so completely dominated now that I'm confident that not even Hermann will be able to steal her from me.

But I'll still fuck her until she collapses, just because I can.

Today is the 22nd, Yn, day of Earth. It's considered a "useless" day to elves as they hardly have any use for [Earth Magic], but for the Chimeras, it's a very industrious day since their [Alteration Magic] is more efficient at refining dirt into metals today, which was essential for their survival in the Broken Skies.

Roxanne wakes me up the way only a succubus can, then Aoi goes for a snack, and the pale succubus is made to bow to the superior draconic tongue.

After a good round of love, Roxanne hugs Aoi's scaly, blue head, then kisses her snout. "You're such a good girl," she praises the gentle giant, surprising us with her kindness.

Ciel wholeheartedly approves of this small change in Roxanne's behavior, but the person in question has no comments to give about it.

I increased my [Soul Manipulation] and [Ekrano Style] by 1 (now 5 and 10). It's getting increasingly easy for me to mold my soul at my will, but I think that I'm still far from perfection. [Soul Manipulation] definitely won't be a low-cap skill like [Cooking] and others with a max level of 10.

Alissa increased her [Illusion Magic] by 1 (now 15). She still has some free skill points left to level up this skill, but they're tied up in other skills to balance out her build, so I think we need to level some more before we continue training. Hana is also someone whose skill growth is currently blocked due not having that many free skill points, so leveling has gone up in priority.

Ciel increased her [Parry] and [Block] by 1 (now 4+11 and 8+7). I think we need to fully switch her Style skill to the same one as the Celestial Horns' since her [Imperial Hasterrum Style] has completely stagnated recently.

Lina increased her [Axe Use] and [General Blacksmithing] by 1 (now 9+16 and 5), the latter of which stole a free point from [Throw] (now 1+7) since it wasn't a planned level up. Lina would also benefit from a few level-ups since she has a lot of crafting skills that could be boosted to help her and Aoi's plans.

Yunia increased her [Parry] and [Battlefield Perception] by 1 (now 3+12 and 2+8). Yunia actually needs to train her magic skills, but she'll be getting enough practice with them in battle, so it should be fine.

After Ciel heals Klein's abused erogenous zones, the little monkey becomes quite chipper and laid-back, seemingly forgetting who owns her pussy. She doesn't try to be cheeky with me, but I know she's acting brave to not reveal just how smitten she is with my virility.

Then she leaves with Osaria after breakfast, and we go to our beach-side mansion to start our mana circulation routine.

As we train, Yunia and I gradually become increasingly tense and anxious because, after lunch, we'll finally be meeting with the Elder Council.

A note from Manasong

Hall of Fame of Patrons

The patrons who support Rupegia shall have their names sung by the bards for they deserve the glory and honor. Their names are:

Prince PreownedFIN.

Prince Creamy Spinach.

Prince Owldente.

Prince Charlie Foxtrot.

Lord Andrew Meyers.

Lord Novgarod.

Lord Michale Erwin.

Lord Bakerdea.

Lord Maurice.

Lord Empyrean.

Lord Mattirro Draca.

Lord Fullmoon.

Lord Sean Drake.

Lord FrostyCube.

Lord Mike Bartter.

Lord Cardinal Steiner.

Lord Warwulfv.

Lord Jorge Franco.

Lord Khristopher Welsh.

Lord DJ.

Lord Philip.

Lord Tenebris Lupus.

Lord The Tallest Joshua.

Lord Copey Dunt.

Lord Dracopuppy23.

Lord Chris Carter.

Lord Paul Daval.

Lord Paul Daval.

Lord Bradly.

Lord Aubrey Powell.

Lord AndreyUC.

Lord Tmac.

Lord Krawn.

Lord Jetdy S.

Lord Greysen Simmons-LaRose.

Lord Aubrey Powell.

Noble Salty Panda.

Noble Mild Fracas.

Noble Aclys.

Noble CarlBaxter.

Leave a rating or a review to help me rise to the top or fix my shameful understanding of prose.

Take a look over my blog where all information about the world of Rupegia will be posted.

Join the Discord and discuss, or rant, or meme, or try and fight me so your waifu gets more screentime.

Become a Patron and read chapters in advance, or read the side-stories, or leave your mark on the story, or help choose the next artwork or the next side-story.

Chapter 113: Insolence - Part 2

For lunch, we eat a normal elven meal, and I start to get a bit too distracted to participate in the conversations.

The meeting with the Council is something that not even Yunia knows how it'll go, and this uncertainty is making me quite uncomfortable. I'm too accustomed to being in full control of the situation, and we already have enough painful memories from when we tried to play the daredevils, so I feel like we're walking into the darkness today.

Once the food is mostly gone and we start to laze a bit in our seats, Lina and Alissa snuggle up to me, trying to set my heart at ease.

I wrap my scaly tail around Alissa's fluffy limb of happiness and pull my loli queen onto her throne: my lap.

Of course, getting lovey-dovey with my wives always helps me calm down. But I'm still missing one last thing… or rather, two pairs.

Hana grins and takes off her shirt in one clean movement, stunning both Klein and Osaria.

"Wolfy is a bit anxious," Roxanne explains wryly, and we both become ensnared by the sight of Hana's two lightly tanned balloons and perky nipples.

Ciel sighs softly, and takes off her shirt too, now ensnaring Lina's gaze. Our chocolate angel's and caramel dragon's delicious mounds are so perfectly shaped that they're truly mouth-watering, promising bliss with their softness as they beg to be fondled.

Osaria follows the trend without hesitation, and a few moments later, the whole table is shirtless, including me, then Alissa becomes interested in playing with my neglected nipples while Osaria licks my scars with her eyes. They know I love being pampered, just like they do.

Poosh approaches our table, and with my eyes drawn to her bouncy, bare chest, I don't even register her face as she reports, "The General of the Buscuadores has a [Gate] ready for you, Your Highnesses."

Intermission – Yunia

I admit that the sight of such a wide variety of breasts is nice, but I don't understand Wolfy's reasoning about it being "soothing." If anything, I find it arousing, not calming.

What does calm me is the feeling of his claws interlaced with my fingers and his thick tail wrapping around my waist. It's these small, spontaneous gestures of love that affect me the most because they're evidence that he really cares for me, that he finds comfort in my touch, and that our souls are still aligned.

I find it cruel to compare them, but I never "connected" with Brás the way I do with Wolfy. It's not just because of [Bind]; Wolfy and I work together so well that I have no doubt our meeting was anything but the Gods' will. Even if it only happened because of a horrible misfortune that had befallen my family, I just wasn't destined to be with Brás.

It's with these sobering but encouraging thoughts that we confidently stop at the entrance to our castle as we wait for the General.

From beyond the steps ahead of us, a grim-looking man with a frail and thin frame leisurely strolls towards us with such soft steps that it's almost like he's a ghost. His tight and elegant clothes reveal his frame and tell of his station, though they also show a lack of raw wealth. His narrow but long gold and white hair and beard give him a wise air, but the harshness of his gaze reminds me of the cunning werefoxes. He's a man that should not be trifled with, but that's to be expected, as a General is merely a person who can manipulate battlefields as well as a noble can manipulate the hearts of the commoners, after all.

He stops before the steps to the entrance of our castle and looks up, then he begins his speech with a whispery voice, "Lords of Escanso, I'm Aodeca, General of the Buscuadores, and I'm here to present an invitation for one of you to meet with the Grand Elder Council."

"They really do like to shove 'grand' on everything," I catch one of Wolfy's stray thoughts, and I agree internally.

"We're going together," Wolfy firmly states, his confident and youthful voice always a delight to hear.

"My orders are to take only one of you to them," Aodeca replies dryly.

"We're going together, or we're not going at all," Wolfy declares, and his tone suddenly makes me feel like resting my head on his shoulder, but I want to maintain an aura of authority, so I remain stern. Then my husband's demeanor softens a bit as he draws on his deep well of kindness. "We don't want to make things hard on you, specifically, but this is something we have to do, so we request that you let us through because we won't negotiate this."

Aodeca remains silent and impassive for a moment as he stares at Wolfy, then his eyes turn to me, and I feel like he wants to ask me for help, but I show no indication that I even disagree with Wolfy's request. This is our one act of childish rebellion against the Council, but also a symbolic move on our part.

Since the General doesn't seem to be wavering one way or the other, I decide to push him a bit further, "Escalate to your superiors or at least inform them of our demand. It's not your job to negotiate with us, after all."

"But it'll still be seen as a failure to fulfill my orders," he finally replies, and I understand his hesitation.

"Then your superiors would simply be stupid for blaming you for something that isn't your job," Wolfy comes in with his Earthling sensibilities.

"And you know that we won't negotiate this," I quickly add so that Aodeca has no time to give Wolfy any snark.

The General slowly breathes in, calming himself, then he makes a hand signal to the silent and stony-faced mage behind him, who immediately begins chanting [Gate].

We both nod at Aodeca, then we start to descend the steps. When we reach the bottom, the spell is finished, and a black circle appears before us.

Wolfy softly squeezes my hand reassuringly, and we step forward.

The world changes in the blink of an eye, and our fellowship bond tells us that we're now east of our home, deep in the wilderness, though quite high above the usual height of the treetops. Then I let Wolfy's curiosity and fondness for architecture guide my gaze as we look around.

We find ourselves in a large, circular, grass-filled courtyard. At its edge, we can see a wide variety of colorful plants, all of which I recognize to be extremely rare and expensive.

Past the plants, we can see the characteristic houses of grassland elves, short trees with trunks as wide as mansions that have been hollowed out to serve as homes. The perfection of the color and pattern of the leaves and bark shows great care and skill that's only available to high elven society.

And behind the houses, we can see the familiar dark bark of the enchanted wall that protects all elven cities.

Ahead of us, there's a path that goes down a long golden road, which ends at the foot of a tree-house that's twice as thick and three times as tall as every other in sight. Its white bark and golden leaves mark it as special if its impressive dimensions didn't make that apparent enough.

A group of five soldiers wearing ceremonial, white wooden armor silently wait for us down the golden road, at the edge of the circular grassland. The one in front has a golden flower growing out of his chest, the mark of someone with a higher rank.

Wolfy and Lina get a bit disappointed that there's no military or epic architecture here to gawk at. Not even the fortress' locomotion method can be seen from here, and there's no way that Wolfy could summon a monster right now without being noticed.

We walk forward and nod at the leader once we get closer, a gesture that the unknown man returns, then the soldiers turn around and start walking down the road.

We follow after them and take a leisurely stroll along the golden road, which seems to be made of solid gold, a choice of decoration that one can only find in a place the empire would be unlikely to have the chance to take a look at.

The walk is peaceful and absolutely silent aside from our footsteps and the usual pleasant whisper of nature. The only eerie thing, though, is the utter lack of any other living beings. Not even nature spirits are welcome here, which is why we preemptively left Gify back home, but there's a distinct lack of servants moving around. The road seems to be one huge enchantment, which could be intended to magically maintain everything around here, removing the need for servants, but it'd have to be one ridiculously complex enchantment.

After being forced to traverse the road on foot like a peasant, we enter the huge, white, tree mansion, and now, we're forced to walk down a stupidly long hall lined with the statues of the previous Elders.

"A bit disappointing, really," Wolfy remarks through [Bind].

"Of course they'd adopt a more extreme version of our traditions. They aren't known to be humble," I reply and scoff internally.

"All that's missing is a huge portrait."

"There's likely one on the outside of the wall."

After the silly hall, we, thankfully, reach an [Eternal Gate] hub room, and we cross through a portal to the top of the tree.

We're now on one of its thick white branches with the golden leaves surrounding us as they reflect the afternoon sun with their metallic sheen.

We catch glimpses of a small town below us, and Wolfy's keen eye for military constructions spots trebuchets, ballistas, and even a cannon-like object that we don't know anything about. The important part is that for them to be recognizable by us from this distance means that they're huge. These are weapons that'd kill Grim Giants and Ancient Dragons with ease, which means that they'd also be able to pierce Escanso's Shell.

The branch we're on thins as we walk forward to the point that it becomes hard to walk side-by-side, so the soldiers move onwards in single file, but we persevere and continue on hand-in-claw since we can see our destination ahead of us, or rather, can't. The branch ends at nothing.

The soldiers continue without hesitation, stepping past the sudden end of the branch and entering the obviously invisible path, a blatant boasting of their enchanting capabilities, and a warning that the whole fortress likely has the capability of something similar.

One by one, the soldiers and their presences disappear into the "cloaked area," as Wolfy excitedly puts it, without a single particle of mana escaping, evidence of its perfection.

We don't have time to gawk, so we follow them, but the moment we cross the invisible curtain, we find ourselves inside the standard Interspace. The infinite dark room where one would choose a floor when entering a dungeon with an Elevator.

The change is so jarring that we freeze up in shock for a brief moment, but Wolfy's endless curiosity pulls me out of it, and we begin studying our location. We're not sure if it's Space or [Illusion Magic] or an actual dungeon that we're in now, but it's exactly like an Interspace as it even has the same strange omnidirectional illumination.

Then someone suddenly appears in my [Sense Presence], and we both turn our bodies to face the person.

We see an older version of Rande, a dark-skinned man with short silver hair and more muscle than Wolfy dreams he could ever have, but his overly manly face and sharp jaw make him look awfully off-putting to me. An elf without grace is just a glorified human.

Curiously, we can only see half his body, with everything below his chest seemingly hidden behind an invisible wall, and his posture indicates that he's currently sitting.

"[Lords…]" He begins speaking in Ingua and adds a dramatic pause, but his deep, gravely voice makes his exaggerated manliness begin to look a bit comical in my eyes. "[Take a seat, and the Granreniandisabis will begin],"

Two lavish, golden chairs appear before us, and we calmly take our seats, then the rest of the Council reveal themselves before us. Eleven in total, they're an eclectic assortment of elves, but they're all showing the early signs of aging of wrinkles and white strands of hair, and then Wolfy notes that they're all over level one hundred.

We sense the weight of their stares along with the subtle tells of someone with a high level, hundreds of skills, and overwhelming magical ability multiplied eleven-fold, and yet we feel nothing.

We are so comfortable in our seats that the instinctive respect a sprout feels before an ancient tree is nowhere to be found within us. We feel their power, we understand it within our minds, but it provokes no reaction within our hearts.

"A dragon bows to no one unless it's forced to do so," I catch one of Wolfy's stray thoughts.

The corniness of this situation is quite evident to me, but I'm not stupid enough to laugh in front of the Council, so I remain as stern as always.

"[First, let's address the fact that we specifically asked that only one of you would come]," Elder Lerante begins without even introducing himself. The old itchy ivy makes no effort to hide his contempt for us.

But I nudge Wolfy, and he promptly interjects, letting his annoyance become evident in his tone, "[I'm not proficient enough in Ingua to hold a meeting in this language, and I know the Council can speak in Andraste perfectly]."

It mildly amuses me that we've managed to shock them with his proficiency in Ingua as they remain silent for just a few seconds too many. They don't even seem to realize the contradiction of his words being delivered so perfectly.

"Lerante, don't be impolite, speak in Andraste," Elder Edoso Leigelas commands. We didn't need Wolfy's [Sense Soul] to know who he is, for his delicate and mature face is strikingly similar to the God of Law's. His gaze is mysterious due to how his emerald eyes look like they're gazing far away and out of focus as if he were almost blind, but his deliberate movements tell us that he may in fact be extraordinarily aware of his surroundings. And he's also the most vain of them all as both his long golden hair and his beard are intricately braided and tied with vines that grow out of his clothes, giving the impression that they're tied around his entire body.

After a short moment of hesitation, Lerante swallows his pride and repeats himself, now in Andraste, "First, let's address the fact that we specifically asked that only one of you would come."

Wolfy takes charge again, and he matches my lofty expression as he declares, "We come together, for we rule together. To separate us is to weaken us."

"There's always one who stands above," Elder Armos, the man who greeted us, casually replies.

"Our case is special," Wolfy insists, and the Elders seem to have difficulty arguing against that.

"It doesn't matter, you had to choose, but you didn't," Lerante rebukes us, openly antagonistic.

But Wolfy doesn't feel threatened by him. "No, we were forced to choose between two options, but we decided to do what was best for us."

"Useless questioning, let's move on to the next topic," Edoso interrupts tiredly. The other Elders look mildly annoyed with us, but they agree that this is just a waste of time, so we move on.

And Armos promptly continues by candidly questioning, "On to more important matters, what the fuck are you doing with the Templars?"

"Armos, language," Elder Cinanta pleads. The gorgeous woman immediately arouses Wolfy, but he easily keeps it limp to not ruin the occasion. Her voluminous hair is no match for my drills, though, so he could do better.

"I needed that to emphasize our bewilderment," Armos replies with a very fake smile.

"No, you didn't," Cinanta states dryly, briefly triggering Wolfy's fetish for snobbish women.

"Stop with the bickering," Lerante chastises and glares at them, then he turns to us and commands, "Answer the question."

We share quick words through [Bind] to confirm things, then I affirm, "We don't understand the question."

Armos rolls his eyes in frustration, a sentiment which is seemingly shared by half the Council, then the ridiculously manly man grumbles loudly, "They're flooding the Western High Forest, and their incessant preaching is riling up the commoners. You'll have unrest at your doorstep any day now."

I send a subtle glance at Edoso, but he's completely impassive.

And Wolfy starts to engage him, "We're a family with a close relationship to the Gods. Why did you expect us to turn our backs on them once we became Lords?"

"Naive," one of the Elders hisses.

And Wolfy lets some draconic anger color his tone as his tail releases my waist and stiffens in attention. "The people lack faith, so they allowed themselves to languish in misery while you slowly drained their blood."

Ah… that felt so good… berate them more, Wolfy.

"What are you talking about, child? It was that very same 'draining' that allowed you to become a Lord!" Armos shouts angrily, and a third of the Elders hum in agreement.

"Doesn't make it right," Wolfy states with a deliberate tone.

But Armos' mood turns grim. "And the alternative would've been war."

And Wolfy smiles as the Elder falls into his verbal trap. "You seem well-prepared for that. You could've stopped the late Lord Mavel Este quite easily and long before the commoners began to suffer from your conflict, but you had to keep up appearances and allow the wound to fester."

I feel a heat between my legs as I imagine Wolfy making the Elders submit. It seems that Roxanne's fetish about Wolfy dominating other men is infecting me, too.

While Armos bites his tongue, Lerante snorts and smugly remarks, "I told you all that letting an imperial become a Lord would infect our culture with their aggressiveness." Then he sneers at Wolfy and me.

"He's as much of an imperial as I am," Edoso comes to our defense, and his chilly take makes the growing heat of our emotions take a dip.

Lerante's smugness fades, replaced by rising anger. "Don't say such nonsense. The insolent Lord has no respect for our tact. He's as combative as the rest of his kind."

Wolfy reveals a glimpse of his rare, true anger as he snaps back, "You dare say such things after you killed my wife's father?!"

Lerante points a wrinkly finger at him and slowly spits out his venom, "You killed him, personally."

That makes us both so incensed that our bodies tense in sync as we hold back our mirrored desire to decapitate him. "Sophistry!" Wolfy shouts and points a claw at each of the Elders. "You all gave the order! Why?! Because he didn't conform to your vision of progress! So now, we follow the God of Change closely, looking forward to improving the lives of our people, the commoners who swore to serve us while we protect them in return," he proudly declares, his powerful voice almost breaking my own composure as the rising emotions start to overwhelm me.

Armos angrily waves his whole arm dismissively. "We're talking about the Templar invasion, not progress!" He shouts with a scowl.

"There won't be any progress without faith! The High Forest stagnated because of it!" He snaps back, and I notice Edoso react with a subtle smile, which tells us that we're on the right path.

"Faith has no relation to progress, that's faulty reasoning," Lerante retorts categorically.

"Faith is what prevents stagnation, and you can't seriously argue that the High Forest wasn't stagnating," I riposte and sneer at him, but unexpectedly, I seem to have unnerved him quite effectively. I believe our opponents aren't ready to defy the Gods, so we have a safe ground to fall back on.

"Your measures against stagnation will bring instability to our land," Cinanta calmly chimes in.

"There can be no progress without the risk of failure," Wolfy replies in kind.

"As long as they understand the consequences…" Edoso adds and lets it hang in the air.

"Which will also cause the commoners to suffer," Armos bitterly states.

"They'll suffer regardless," I reply dismissively.

"The Templars ensure that their suffering won't be drawn out needlessly," Wolfy piles in.

Armos frowns and replies emptily, "Echoes of preachers."

Then the Council goes silent as the raw emotions cool down, but Cinanta doesn't let it linger for long and softly announces, "The Ryders are well within their rights to do what they're doing, though it has been made clear that some Elders have objections regarding their methods. Does anyone else have anything to add?"

And they all shake their heads silently.

Then Cinanta's gaze turns stern as she starts to closely analyze our response. "The final topic we'd like to talk about is your claim about being 'royalty.'"

Wolfy produces Arreira's writ and silently displays it to everyone.

"A dead man's will doesn't have any impact on what isn't his anymore to decide," Lerante callously remarks.

The room suddenly heats up as the entire Council becomes incensed, so I take the opportunity and guide Wolfy's anger to help him lambaste this moron, "Where's your respect?! Your predecessors stole the throne out from under him and nearly plunged the High Forest into a war, and you have the audacity to disrespect him after you lectured us about 'imperial aggressiveness'!?"

Our attack strikes true as Lerante's anger bursts out, and he starts to curse as he wildly wags his finger at us, "Insolent imperial cur! Revisionism! Arreira wanted to sell the High Forest!"

"Silence! Your insults will not be tolerated here!" Edoso uses his influence again, but it's not enough to fully cool down the situation, and the Council suddenly becomes divided, one side staring daggers at the other as we seem to have stepped right on a key, divisive point.

"The royal family was never denounced by the Generals or the Council, so what we do with them is none of your concern," Wolfy firmly asserts and glares back with righteous draconic fury at Lerante and his supporters.

"Why do you need to claim to be royals?" Armos questions, clearly holding back his anger.

"Why do you care? Our fight is with the old royal family," Wolfy dryly replies.

"Another fight, I see," Lerante sneers.

I snootily lash at him, "Stop with this whining!" Then I recompose myself and sternly question, "We want to deal with Heretic's Rest, a blight upon the reputation of all elves, so why does the Council oppose our claim so much?"

"Do any of you have relations with the heretical royals?" Edoso smugly asks the rest of the Council, and those in opposition to our claim take a noticeable hit to their morale.

"They obviously have Patrono," Lerante tries to deflect.

But I immediately shoot that argument down, "So what? The Council obviously has Monarca, or else the royal insurgence would've used it."

Lina's Trivia: Monarca was Arreira's Heavenly Armor, which was stolen by the ten treasonous Generals, so it must now be in the possession of the Council.

"Are you afraid that we'll use Patrono against the Council?" Wolfy asks defiantly, egging them on to admit their fear of him, but they don't fall for the bait.

With each word, our position continues to grow stronger as their arguments are repeatedly shot down. They may have ridiculously high levels, but we're showing them that they can't ignore us or put us down, and Edoso's positive disposition towards us is becoming quite evident, so we're starting to gain leverage in this discussion.

"A dangerous toy for a boy," one of the Elders speaks out of turn.

And Wolfy deems him only worthy of a glance. "Our rightful property. Same goes for Monarca."

"That has yet to be established," Armos replies through gritted teeth.

Wolfy throws the writ at him. "Take it, we have copies, and we're ready to attest to their authenticity through the Seekers of Truth."

"What for? For what reason do you dredge up this conflict again?" Another Elder asks, clearly bewildered, and with that, our moment of truth has come.

This is the best opportunity we'll ever have to deal our hand, and though we aren't entirely sure about how it'll go, we know that this is our best bet.

Wolfy's youthful voice reverberates through the infinite darkness as his words shock the entire Council, "We'll deal with Heretic's Rest, and mend the wound that you let fester, in exchange for a seat on the Council, as is our right as the new royal family."

The silence that falls over us all is so oppressive that I start to feel a small amount of fear that they might now want to kill us.

Intermission end.

A note from Manasong

Hall of Fame of Patrons

The patrons who support Rupegia shall have their names sung by the bards for they deserve the glory and honor. Their names are:

Prince PreownedFIN.

Prince Creamy Spinach.

Prince Owldente.

Prince Charlie Foxtrot.

Lord Andrew Meyers.

Lord Novgarod.

Lord Michale Erwin.

Lord Bakerdea.

Lord Maurice.

Lord Empyrean.

Lord Mattirro Draca.

Lord Fullmoon.

Lord Sean Drake.

Lord FrostyCube.

Lord Mike Bartter.

Lord Cardinal Steiner.

Lord Warwulfv.

Lord Jorge Franco.

Lord Khristopher Welsh.

Lord DJ.

Lord Philip.

Lord Tenebris Lupus.

Lord The Tallest Joshua.

Lord Copey Dunt.

Lord Dracopuppy23.

Lord Chris Carter.

Lord Paul Daval.

Lord Paul Daval.

Lord Bradly.

Lord Aubrey Powell.

Lord AndreyUC.

Lord Tmac.

Lord Krawn.

Lord Jetdy S.

Lord Greysen Simmons-LaRose.

Lord Aubrey Powell.

Noble Salty Panda.

Noble Mild Fracas.

Noble Aclys.

Noble CarlBaxter.

Leave a rating or a review to help me rise to the top or fix my shameful understanding of prose.

Take a look over my blog where all information about the world of Rupegia will be posted.

Join the Discord and discuss, or rant, or meme, or try and fight me so your waifu gets more screentime.

Become a Patron and read chapters in advance, or read the side-stories, or leave your mark on the story, or help choose the next artwork or the next side-story.

Chapter 113: Insolence - Part 3

Yunia's fear that we might've overplayed our hand sends a chill through me, but I activate [Acting] and maintain my dignified expression. We're a bit too deep to turn back now.

"You'd 'deal' with Heretic's Rest in exchange for a seat on the Council…?" Cinanta slowly repeats in confusion.

"A new seat, a suitable reward for our royal family," Yunia answers firmly.

"And how would you 'deal' with them?" Edoso questions stiffly.

"You can't seriously be considering their childish tripe," Lerante begins whining again.

"None of you have done anything even half as significant for your seats," Yunia harshly states.

But he calmly replies with wisdom for once, "With good reason. We aren't Lords, but guardians of the elven lands, and we let the younger and more energetic Lords drive change."

"Pay attention to the whole picture-… the whole painting," I begin and quickly correct myself, then I make a dramatic pause to make sure that they're all paying full attention to me. "You shouldn't fear me, but what I represent. I'm a Gifted man with three Blessings in my family and two Interventions. The Gods guided my harem towards me; they brought us together because our Threads are much stronger when intertwined. Then we were taken to Gecynd, the Tree of Mana, where we saw a vision of Legado, the dungeon where we rescued the Chimeras, inherited Arreira's will, received Patrono, and where I became like this!" -I raise my claws and tail and show them clearly to the old farts- "And not only that, but heretics attacked us along the way not once, but twice!"

I stand up and add another dramatic pause where I catch my breath and harden my resolve. I wish I had [Intimidate] right now, but I'll just have to use Hana's experience with the skill to mimic it the best I can. "You can run, but you can't hide from the truth! Something big is coming, so we have to strengthen not just the High Forest's society, but that of all humanoids because things will change one way or the other!" -I swing my claws wildly as I gesticulate- "If you think that you'll be able to preserve your way of life after it's all over, then you're all fools, and so am I for wishing to join you!"

I let my words hang in the air for a few seconds, then breathe in and calm myself down in an instant as I take my seat again.

"You know he speaks the truth," Edoso smugly announces, not even deeming the other Elders worthy of his gaze, completely sure of himself.

"I call for a private convening," Armos immediately requests, his tone deadly serious.

"Coward," Cinanta hisses at him.

"Language, Cinanta," he retorts with a shit-eating grin.

She turns her nose up snobbishly. "Not a curse if it's the truth."

"Not the time for bickering," Lerante interrupts them sternly.

Armos sighs and cools down, then his incredibly handsome face hardens, making him actually look threatening for once. "We can't decide on this matter right now," he states, his gravelly voice echoing in the dark room as everyone falls silent.

But Yunia calmly breaks it after a short pause, "We're not expecting you to decide right now, we haven't even stepped in Heretic's Rest yet, but we've made our demands clear."

"Why do you want to join us?" Cinanta asks, still impassive, but seeming more reservedly curious than uninterested.

"We didn't agree to inherit Arreira's will to simply sit on it like a pretty Title. He tested us thoroughly and deemed us worthy of being true royals, above simple Lordship, a beacon for this nation."

"So you just wish for power," Lerante bitterly states.

I suddenly realize that we sound like megalomaniac proto-dictators on the rise. I'm someone who believes-… no, believed that the only ones who deserve power are those who don't want it, but now, I think that type of thinking just breeds stagnation because who decides who receives that power?

Who watches the Watchmen?

If I'm not worthy of that power, nobody is, but that doesn't matter since I'm confident that I'll use it well.

I glance at Yunia. It's not just her who gives me support in learning how to rule. All the other wives provide their own input and contribute to our decision-making.

We will use it well.

This isn't Earth, and democracy would never work here, but maybe I can bring forth the Enlightenment to Rupegia and reform the High Forest as a constitutional oligarchy.

I look each of them in the eye to display my unwavering determination, then I stop at Edoso and speak to him, specifically, "We won't stop with the Institute. We'll bring not just change, but progress to the High Forest, and then to the rest of the Realm, which will require us being part of the Council instead of just Lords of a single territory."

"Such ambitious goals," he replies flatly, not letting a single hint of approval or disapproval show in his tone or expression.

I nod once. "You only have to wait and see."

"And so we shall." He nods back, then turns to the other Elders. "I call for an end to the Granreniandisabis."

With each step we take back to our home, I feel the weight of exhaustion growing on my shoulders, but I soldier on and keep my head held high with dignity.

But once we're on our home turf, I become one big baby in need of attention.

I enter Lina and Aoi's workshop, and my body gets hit with a gust of hot, humid air from the forge. The smell of iron and coal is heavy in the air, and though there's an airlock room enchanted with a deep [Clean] spell at the entrance, I don't think Yunia and Roxanne would ever voluntarily come here.

My two industrious wives have their heads close together as they look down at the long and thick steel pipe and talk hurriedly.

I take a moment to take in their forge and recognize the standard medieval blacksmithing forge tucked in one corner while the rest of the room is populated with all sorts of magical and non-magical variations of smithing and metalworking tools, most of which I have no idea what they're used for. There are also a few different ovens and even what seems to be a cauldron boiling with dark water.

As I approach, they stop what they're doing and give me their full attention, making me feel a bit guilty for interrupting them.

"I just want to observe and act as a body pillow," I immediately explain, and they both grin happily.

Aoi switches into her human form since it's more suited to cuddling, then they make room for me to sit between them.

"So, what are you two doing?" I gently ask as Lina sits on my lap and Aoi hugs my arm.

Aoi easily lifts the thick, heavy steel tube on the table with just one of her thin arms and rolls it over so that we can inspect its surface.

"We're trying to make a sliding rod so that the lathe's tower can move along the linear axis," Aoi expertly explains, and I raise my eyebrows at her impressive vocabulary and articulate use of words.

"She can only speak like that when it's something to do with smithing," Lina wryly remarks a bit teasingly.

Aoi narrows her eyes dangerously. "'Manufacturing,' Lina," she dryly corrects our cheeky dwarf with a very snobbish tone, then starts laughing at herself. "It's fun to be mean."

"Oh, no, she's going to become another Roxanne," Lina replies, her gloomy face warped in horror, and Ciel gets a chill.

"Roxanne is getting kinder, so we needed a replacement," I cheekily affirm with a grin, and Lina pouts.

"I know you like pain, so why aren't you happy?" Aoi innocently asks her.

"I-I, uh… don't…" But Lina stutters shyly as she doesn't know how to react to Aoi's frankness.

"There are some things about humanoids that I don't understand," Aoi comments as she stares at Lina curiously. Her gorgeous blue-and-red eyes with their black sclera look alien and intimidating, mesmerizing the cute young girl.

"Li~ke…?" I curiously question her.

"Lina's fear of my beauty. It's not threatening, so why does she fear this face?" She tilts her head to the side, and her lustrous, dark blue hair covers her face like a drape.

I look at Lina, but she keeps her head down and starts to blush, refusing to address the question.

I gently stroke her dark hair with a hand-shaped tentacle as I start to deliberate, "I think your type of beauty creates an air of authority around you, but your personality is a bit odd, so she doesn't know how to deal with it."

Aoi blinks, then stares a bit closer at Lina, who responds by turning her face away. "Acting as if I had authority would be enough," Aoi replies, still befuddled by Lina's demeanor.

I smile wryly and pat her head too with another hand-tentacle, making her turn her attention to me. "But you aren't, so her logical mind automatically keeps searching for a solution, but her anxiety leads her to overthinking things, spending too long without coming to a decision, just to freeze up in front of you."

She squints her eyes in thought, making her expression look quite stern. "Hm… so her 'Intelligence' is high, but not her 'Wisdom'?"

My smile becomes a smirk. "I'd say that she has more issues to deal with than just low 'Stats.'"

And Lina starts pouting. "I prefer Aoi's explanation," she mumbles, then rests her head against my chest.

"But I know you have many problems, so both could be right," Aoi adds, and Lina groans cutely, but doesn't respond.

Then the two go quiet as they start to feel the effects of [Massage], and we spend a few minutes just enjoying being in each others' presence.

But Aoi takes a look at the clock and leaves to deal with the boiling cauldron, and their industrious minds soon overcome their need for cuddling.

"Where are lathe prototypes?" I ask them as Aoi comes back with another rolling rod.

"The heat warped their dimensions too much, so we moved them into another room, which is properly cooled," Aoi explains as Lina pulls out a cooling magic tool and applies it to the rod.

Then Aoi hands her a caliper (which is also magically cooled to keep it from warping) that they made by hand using my memories, and the little dwarf expertly measures the rod as she adds, "We're testing out wear-resistant metals, and it turns out that the merfolk craft metal in an interesting way, which seems similar to your memories of chrome plating."

"This metal will be used for the ball bearings, so it's really important that we make the right choice," Aoi continues with a proud nod.

Since the lathe spins the piece being cut at very high speeds, the primary spinning component would be ground down after just a few uses if something as rough as the average imperial steel was used.

Aoi reflexively reads my mind and nods as she runs her hands along both of the rods. "But we don't understand your idea of an electric motor that well," she replies absentmindedly.

"We just have to wait until Lyle comes to Escanso," I state. A simple three coil electric motor isn't complicated, not like a combustion engine, at least, but the girls know nothing about [Electric Magic], so it's easier to just get Lyle to build it, instead.

After a few more rods are finished, the girls switch locations to the manufacturing room, which is perfectly cooled, but I think I was more comfortable in the warmth of the forge. My… draconic (and definitely not "lizard") side seems to enjoy the heat.

The girls set the rods in the dozen enchanted half-built lathes and make them spin endlessly. Tomorrow, they'll stop the spinning and assess the wearing of the rods.

We retreat to a tea room where Roxanne is drinking with Hana while a maid plays soothing tunes on a guitar. I smile wryly as I enter because the sight is so posh that it hurts.

"Wolfy~!" Roxanne greets me happily, then throws herself at me, and her hands start exploring my athletic body.

Just from the tone of her voice and the mischievous wiggle of her tail, I know exactly what she wants.

I softly kiss her lips and sense the faint smell of alcohol on her breath, though she's far from being drunk.

"Roxy…" I reply huskily, and she giggles seductively.

"Hana manhandled me a bit, so I wanted to indulge in your soft and tender touch," she coyly requests as her pale finger makes circles around my chest.

I softly hum in understanding and lovingly cup her cheek with my padded claws. This room doesn't have a humanizing enchantment, but I don't need it to give her what she wants.

The girls start gathering in the room since we'll be taking it easy today, but some exciting news brings us to the entrance of the castle: Rande has returned.

We call back Osaria, Klein, and Anton, and they bring the gay Grosshils with them. We also call for the twins, Mimi, and Krysta to witness this historical event, and we all excitedly chatter outside at the top of the steps in anticipation as we wait for the Space mage to finish casting [Gate].

Once the familiar black circle appears on the ground, Rande and his own group of Space mages immediately pop out of it.

"Lords!" The dark-skinned mass of muscles shouts as he comes forward wearing his characteristic dimpled grin on his face. "I've brought you a bounty from Faium!"

He dramatically waves his hand at the mages behind him, and each of them pulls out a table that's been filled with chocolate goodies with a *poof*.

HNNNNNGH…!

We cheerfully descend the steps and crowd around the tables as Rande excitedly explains what he has procured for us.

Chocolate cake, chocolate milk, cookies, pudding, bars, syrup, drinks, including one that's bitter and fairly similar to coffee, fashion products that are clearly marked as inedible, and a crazy bounty of snacks that have been enhanced by chocolate. This is diabeetus, in edible form.

The thing I've noticed, though, is a complete lack of anything related to nuts. They haven't discovered hazelnut, peanuts, and white chocolate, so if we open up a coffee house with my ideas for chocolate desserts, we'll print money. No, we'll… uh, "make a river of coins"…? "Make a river of coins from their flow"…?

Eh, shorter is better.

I give Rande a slap on the back as I congratulate him, "You did it, you madman, you actually did it."

He laughs softly, basking in the glory with the ease that only an elf ever could. "I won't say it was easy, but using your name definitely helped," he pompously replies.

"I hope you didn't make him too many enemies," Osaria remarks and lands her hand on his shoulder, then pulls him into a hug and gives him a kiss on the cheek. I give her a single warning glance, and she smiles mischievously but doesn't push it further.

It's her fault, since she used to fuck her own son.

But Rande simply snorts and maintains his confident smile as he explains, "Of course, I made a lot of enemies. I got a deal for cocoa ahead of half of the Mainland nobles. The prospect of being the first to supply chocolate to the elves got many of the suppliers salivating. They know that elven chocolate will one day be the finest in the entire realm, so they just want to be among the first to make a connection with us."

And Yunia takes his side, "The only people who might come to dislike us for this are merchants and greedy nobles. They'd never be our allies to begin with."

Rande nods. "You said it, cousin."

She smiles subtly and whispers, "Good job, cousin." And they share a warm look.

The chocolate is just a gift. The real haul is the large order of raw cocoa fruit he acquired and a contract for a continued supply of it. Even though it was expensive, after running the numbers with Mimi, we'll still make a good profit if our plan goes well.

The only thing that might ruin it would be if the Tribunal decided to block us. They won't like it if we simply become ridiculously rich from this business, so we need to start rolling out our social projects to butter them up.

Though they definitely won't like what we're going to do tomorrow.

To celebrate, we start up a small impromptu party right here at the base of the steps that lead up to the castle, and I decide to invite the rest of the High Officers, Oritiki, and Rande's men.

Hukarere sneaks in, and I decide to also call for Kaatohe so that she doesn't feel left out.

We don't have enough food to invite the Companions too, but once we get the cafe ready, we'll let them go wild there as an inauguration party.

Lina is quite happy to reunite with Oura, Rande's bookworm wife, and Osaria not-so-subtly encourages me and Nito, Rande's trap husband, to work on becoming friends with each other.

We both stare at the chibi griffin and hedgehog as they gorge themselves on sweets. Nito's new nature spirit is a lot more cuddly than it looks; just like how Gify's entire body is rubbery, Uri's spikes are very soft and springy. It's a cute and rotund little thing that likes to make a lot of adorable sniffing noises when it's happy.

"They're useless…" I state flatly.

"Yes…" Nito hesitantly agrees.

"They eat as much as a grown adult…"

He nods shyly. "Yes…"

"And then they just loaf around, doing whatever they want and being cute while they do."

He nods again but slower. "Yes…"

"And yet, we can't hate them."

He nods repeatedly with vigor. "Yes…"

"It must be mind-control."

"Ye-… what…?" He turns to me and blinks blankly. His silver hair is tied back, putting all the focus on his feminine, oval face, and gentle blue eyes. Then his red, parted lips catch my attention and I-…

Goddamit, Osaria. Why is he so cute?

I ignore my horniness and continue, "I don't understand why I like this little thing, but I do."

He blushes and nods repeatedly as he becomes shy again. "Y-yes… same…"

I pat Gify's feathery head, and she activates her "massage" as she closes her eyes and starts her stupidly fast digestion. I really do love this useless, cute little thing, for some reason.

Since Osaria is with Klein and Hana is with Hermann, I decide to play along with the girls' silly fetishes and keep Nito company. He's the animal caretaker of Rande's escort company, and he really likes his job, so I start talking about pets, and he eagerly joins in.

Night falls, and the party starts to die down, but before we leave for our bath, Sandoro insists that we have a quick session of Gestalt training.

The Celestial Horns are quite happy to have another opportunity to beat us, and today's spar isn't that different from yesterday's. We'll continue with this type of training for a few more days, and then we'll switch to something else since improving our martial skills isn't really the point of this training.

"Secret training, huh…" Kaatohe softly remarks as we finally enter the bath. I'm thankful that she and the others waited until we were done before they started bathing.

"Just one of our many secrets," I calmly reply and smile at the bronze-skinned beauty.

"If you're curious, a concubine has the right to know most of them," Osaria slyly remarks as her hands make their way down the Bengal-headed woman.

Kaatohe's cat eyes scan my body up and down, measuring me up while Alissa takes her time washing me. I know that Kaatohe hasn't been sleeping around anymore since she met me, so I think she might be seriously considering becoming a concubine.

Hukarere is staring at me too, but she's just hungry, so she isn't paying any attention to their conversation.

Today, I'm craving flatness, so I start with Lina as an appetizer, then I go for Aoi as the main course, Kaatohe as a side dish, and Hukarere for dessert.

Talking about sweets, we ate so much chocolate at the party that we don't have any dinner tonight and just lounge in our "game room" until it's time to sleep, which comes earlier today because Operation Extinguisher starts tomorrow morning.

A note from Manasong

Hall of Fame of Patrons

The patrons who support Rupegia shall have their names sung by the bards for they deserve the glory and honor. Their names are:

Prince PreownedFIN.

Prince Creamy Spinach.

Prince Owldente.

Prince Charlie Foxtrot.

Lord Andrew Meyers.

Lord Novgarod.

Lord Michale Erwin.

Lord Bakerdea.

Lord Maurice.

Lord Empyrean.

Lord Mattirro Draca.

Lord Fullmoon.

Lord Sean Drake.

Lord FrostyCube.

Lord Mike Bartter.

Lord Cardinal Steiner.

Lord Warwulfv.

Lord Jorge Franco.

Lord Khristopher Welsh.

Lord DJ.

Lord Philip.

Lord Tenebris Lupus.

Lord The Tallest Joshua.

Lord Copey Dunt.

Lord Dracopuppy23.

Lord Chris Carter.

Lord Paul Daval.

Lord Paul Daval.

Lord Bradly.

Lord Aubrey Powell.

Lord AndreyUC.

Lord Tmac.

Lord Krawn.

Lord Jetdy S.

Lord Greysen Simmons-LaRose.

Lord Aubrey Powell.

Noble Salty Panda.

Noble Mild Fracas.

Noble Aclys.

Noble CarlBaxter.

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Chapter 114: Operation Extinguisher - Part 1

Today is the 23rd. Ne, day of Water, an advantageous day for this Operation.

It's still dark as we eat breakfast, so our view is of the white sea of mist surrounding our castle with dark clouds covering the sky. A bit gloomy for my taste, but the last hours before sunrise are known to almost always bring rain, so this isn't uncommon.

We aren't in a very talkative mood, but at least there's still a bit of levity to our demeanor as we slowly clear the sleepiness away, allowing us to focus on the now.

We're quite comfortable with what's to come, but Osaria seems a bit worried, making me wish that I could use [Bind] on her to soothe her mind.

I use one of my human hands to play with Alissa's fluffy ears as she lazily wags her tail, and I also use our connection to feel what she's feeling from it. It's so good that I get a bit impressed with myself.

Damn, I'm good at [Massage].

There's something about her animal parts that enhances my caresses so much that none of the other wives feel nearly as good as Alissa does when I play with her.

There's something about my horns, too, that make them sensitive to pressure-based massages. I guess our animal/dragon parts are specifically suited to being touched.

Klein also seems a bit tense, so I extend a tail-like tentacle under the table and wrap it around her long brown appendage. She doesn't even jump in surprise and simply smiles shyly.

Since the caressing has now begun, I create multiple tail-like tentacles and caress everyone under the table, Gify included.

"Stay safe, my love," Osaria anxiously gives me her blessing, then gently kisses my lips.

"I will," I reassure her and caress her dark cheek with my claws.

She nods slowly and breathes deeply to calm herself, then she goes to Klein and gives her a kiss.

Osaria really is stealing Klein from me.

Then I give a kiss to Poosh, too. She isn't anxious like my dark-skinned milf since she has some sort of blind faith in us, so she mirrors our demeanor and steels her nerves, showing how much she cares by giving me a quick hug that smothers me in her breasts and fluffy fur.

"I'll be waiting for your return, your Highness," she whispers, and I just nod back.

Mimi, the twins, and the Grosshils also give us their blessing. Hana's sister gives her a tight hug, then she gives me a gentle nod. "Strike true, Lord Wolf," she whispers warmly.

"You really are Hana's sister," I remark with a smirk.

"What…?" She mumbles as she blinks blankly.

I chuckle softly. "You basically said 'hit them hard.'"

"She's got dragonkin blood in her. Of course, she'd say something like that," Hana affirms while nodding.

Mimi's jaw starts to move wordlessly as she struggles to contain her emotions for a brief moment, then she recomposes herself, putting her stern expression back on, but there's still a bit of heat in her tone as she replies, "I said strike 'true,' not 'hard,' as it implies the careful and precise application of violence, not brute force."

Hana grins as she returns the perfect riposte to that, "Osaria wished for him to remain safe and Poosh affirmed that she believes he'll come back in one piece while you simply told him to be violent."

And Mimi glares at her sister annoyedly. "I certainly can't give him the same blessing as two women who have a very intimate relationship with him, now can I?"

"You certainly can." And Hana raises her eyebrows suggestively.

The tall beauty presses her lips against each other in growing frustration and intensifies her glare. "Why are you-… no, never mind, I don't want to hear the answer." She sheathes her anger and shakes her head in disbelief.

Then we finally leave the castle through a [Gate].

Our army gathers in the wilderness of the High Forest, in an area so far from civilization that there are barely any glowing plants around, so the camp is illuminated by faint purple lights to match the environment's and not stand out like a lighthouse in the darkness.

Once we're inside the command tent, though, the lighting is back to normal, so we don't have to strain our eyes to walk around.

The occupants of the tent stand up and bow, except for Teresina, who simply nods, then everyone takes their seats, and since we're the last to arrive, the meeting starts immediately.

Sandoro clears his throat and gives us all a summary, "We're all gathered here to carry out Operation Extinguisher, the goal of which is to wipe out the Wicked circle of magi known as Dawn of Fire. It's known that the number of Wicked among their men exceeds twenty percent, so a purge of their numbers is beyond overdue. The fact that they even attacked Este company's trading caravan, which is owned by Lord Yulania's cousin and aunt, and was also protected by the Royal Ryder Lords, at the time operating as a fellowship under the name of Helios, is evidence that their leadership is thoroughly corrupt and unworthy to yield the power that they hold. Therefore, their sentence is complete annihilation."

Then we all turn our gazes towards Teresina and the three Templar captains of the Punishers that she brought with her.

"We've reviewed the evidence, and we agree with your judgment," she coolly replies, a sadistic smile gracing her elegant lips.

"Excellent," Sandoro softly replies and mirrors her expression.

Then we divide up our men for each objective.

The harem will attack Dawn of Fire's main base, and we'll be supported by Sandoro and Silvano, each of them leading a part of the Companions, with Azador and a few other knights acting as squad leaders. The second base will be attacked by Alcander and Almaria leading the normal Lordsguard, with Palo and a few knights acting as squad leaders, bringing Sai as a backup leader for the group since her officer training isn't complete yet.

Sandoro stalked the convoys leaving the first base and discovered a third base in Glorampina, but we don't have full authority to attack it since it isn't in our territory, so we'll send Enomosa, Klein, and Anton to lock the place down until we can go there personally and end things.

Our military ships will act as ranged support for the attack on the bases inside the High Forest, just in case we can't crack their Shells, while our personal cargo ship will act as a defensive position for the group going to Glorampina. The Celestial Horns number thirty, so they'll be split across three equal groups and will support the attack from above.

Each of the three Templar Captains will go to one of the three bases. They're specialized in dealing with circles of magi or mercenary companies, so they have the power to get through any sort of defense that Dawn of Fire might put up. This circle of magi are just Wicked, not heretics, so they shouldn't have any mysterious powers like that one dude in the Misty Low Forest that turned half a building into dust in a mere second.

Before we split up, Alissa and I approach Klein to check on how she's doing.

"You alright?" I kindly ask her, and we each grab one of the monkey girl's hands. They feel a bit cold, and I sense a slight shaking running through them, possibly due to the tension and rising adrenaline in her blood, but Klein simply nods with confidence.

"Think you're ready for this?" Alissa adds softly as she squeezes Klein's hand reassuringly.

The cute monkey smiles gently and sways her body from side to side, mimicking the movement of her tail, which is currently hidden within her Camalo armor. "I'm confident that I can handle this. I've killed plenty of bandits and monsters, and even witnessed Rande negotiate with raiders, though I've never taken part in an attack on a base like this," she calmly confesses.

Alissa and I kiss her hands lovingly and release her with a nod. She isn't frail enough to need my continued encouragement, so we let her be since I think that coddling would just make her angry.

Then I rejoin my harem and notice that Hana is socializing quite cheerfully with Caterina, the Templar Captain, a woman who looks to be in her forties and also carries a striking resemblance to Teresina.

Caterina nods, her long ears bobbing softly with the motion, and calmly explains, "Mother has been quite excited about this Operation. Don't let her demeanor fool you, she's quite the enthusiastic woman, but she has a reputation to maintain."

You mean, "enthusiastic" about purging the Wicked, right?

"Don't we all? But at least I chose a reputation that aligns with my personality," Hana replies with a shrug.

"Oh, my, do you have any more secrets about your mother that you could share with us?" I ask with a sly grin.

The Captain turns her beautiful, stony face towards me and dryly replies, "She told me to be careful around you."

I almost choke on my spit from shock. "I don't think I'm someone who should be feared," I stiffly reply.

She narrows her eyes and graces her gorgeous face with the characteristic elven smugness. "For a non-elf, your seductive power is too strong to be ignored by the average commoner."

"I never involve myself with those who might regret receiving what I can give them," I state matter-of-factly.

And she gently nods. "That's why you're dangerous. Not everyone knows the difference between what they want and what's right for them."

I shrug. "Such is life."

"And to err is in our nature," Ciel kindly takes my side.

Caterina smiles subtly, and I sense a bit of slyness to her tone as she replies, "Sure, but I'm not someone who enjoys men that much, so you're dangerous to me."

And I suddenly become suspicious. "Why would Teresina warn you about that?"

"She's my mother."

"Oh~…" I hum in understanding, and we both smirk at each other, but it's Hana who seems the most satisfied with this conversation.

"The men are ready," a Lordsguard reports, instantly ceasing our growing levity.

We share a look and nod, then we all start pouring into the [Gate]s in front of us.

I fly through the dark and purple forest with my armor's enchantment and just a single [Spirit Light] illuminating the way forward. The light rain that drips down through the crowns of the High Trees is immediately redirected away by my [Wind Armor], so I'm completely dry and warm as I rush through the endless darkness.

I have five points in [Sense Presence], and I end up detecting a sentry as they briefly enter my inner detection range, which is close enough to bypass their [Hide Presence]. This means that unless they're being very lax with scouting, I've already flown past a few other sentries that have likely sent word of my approach to the base.

When I reach the marked High Tree, I don't notice any obvious details that would confirm that this is their base, but by using triangulation through the fellowship bond, I know for certain that this is the exact spot that was mentioned in Cereleia's "radar." The only thing that stands out is that this tree is perfectly solid and significantly wider than the average High Tree.

We know that this is one of their fortresses thanks to a spy that we interrogated and killed after their attack on Rande's caravan; we know what they have prepared for us inside from the information that Vanea extracted from Darean; and we know their current numbers because we've been observing the flow of people through Cereleia's radar. There's nothing we need to be afraid of.

I stop right in front of the ginormous tree, still floating in place, and look up, then I make a stern expression and announce my arrival, "Dawn of Fire, I'm Royal Crown Lord Wolf Ryder, and I demand an audience with your leaders. If you don't open this tree, I'll make an entrance in it myself!"

Almost immediately, the tree starts to shift, and the knots from the pattern on its bark start to unravel.

The uncountable branches that make a High Tree line up, protruding outwards from it, and form into a rather wide, circular tunnel for me. On the other side, I can see a well-illuminated room made of grainy wood with a white grass-carpet leading towards a butler-like golden elf that is waiting for me in front of a pair of large double doors.

I step in, my pristine boots leaving no marks on the carpet, and approach the butler.

"Royal Lord Ryder, I'm Sebastion, and I shall guide you to the High Circle," the man softly states, then bows at a right angle.

"Lead on," I coolly reply, and the double doors open in absolute silence.

We cross through the double doors, and I'm immediately assaulted by the characteristic feeling of having my [Gate] blocked, which would normally make me quite worried, but this time, it means that they're all locked in here with me.

We enter a hall of statues, because of course the elves would have statues, and they're all decorated with red gems and illusory enchantments that create scintillating flames, sparkly mini-stars, or other fire-related effects. Not even we or the Elder Council are this ostentatious, so we can add "pride" to the list of sins the Dawn of Fire has committed.

In the center of the hall, there's a vine-frame elevator with a glass floor. As we enter it, I put on a little act of theatrics to make myself look suspicious.

I shuffle awkwardly, as if I were giving way for someone to board, then I stand quite close to the butler, close enough to smell his flowery perfume, and use my body to keep him in the corner of the lift.

He glances worriedly at me twice but doesn't comment on it, and I notice that he's now become a bit stiffer than before.

He sends mana into one of the many gems hanging from the lift's frame, then it starts to go up very smoothly.

We ascend past many floors, and I notice a wide variety of lavish facilities. Chemical labs, training areas, arenas, enchanting workshops, recreation areas, elven-wood crafting shops, and greenhouses. The last seven floors before our final stop are all micro forests or flower gardens, leading me to believe that this is where the "High Circle" lives.

Then we reach the top floor, and the butler shows me through a small but lavish waiting area.

He stops before the only door in sight and opens it for me, then I cross through it without any hesitation and take a look at what awaits me.

Seven old and thin elves are spread around on a circle of grass-sofas, with the only empty one right in front of me. They're wearing fancy, embroidered robes, and I realize that the patterns made with gold all over their clothing are enchantments, combat enchantments. Their staves are resting beside them, and they all, without exception, glow red with large gems held at their tips, and they're so heavily decorated with protruding bits and engravings that they seem more like fantasy anime staves than weapons of war. There are also a dozen armored men standing guard near the walls and around the room, but they're just small fry to me, so I ignore them.

After I enter the room, I stop and look back the way I came, then I wait for a few seconds before taking my seat. They look at me oddly, unsure about the meaning of what I just did, but then the butler walks in and they all glance at him.

After the butler has most likely given them a signal, I notice the subtle hints of the old elves and the soldiers at the wall stiffening, but I act completely casual about it and simply spare them a polite nod, which they return by lowering their heads, yet not bowing.

The man directly ahead of me, the oldest of them all, clears his throat nervously and begins, "We're the High Circle, esteemed Royal Lord Ryder, and my name is…"

I don't spare the effort to remember any of their names since most of them will be dead in a few minutes. They're all near level ninety, but this isn't a standard battle of armies versus armies, so in here, with me so close to them, they're at their most vulnerable.

I simply nod when they're done and begin the verbal battle, "As you all should be aware, your Circle of Magi attacked a caravan from the Este escort company on the twentieth of the tenth month of last year. The caravan was led by Rande Parado and Osaria Parado, former members of the Este family of Crown Lords that previously ruled the Western High Forest. They are also the cousin and aunt of one of my wives, Yulania Ryder, formerly Este. And finally, the rest of my harem and I were present during the attack, defending the caravan as a fellowship going by the name of Helios that was hired by Rande."

I make a dramatic pause, and the leader nods slowly as he stiffly replies, "Yes, your Highness, we remember that grave mistake that one of our captains committed. He was misled by a snake from the Mainland, and though he died by the same snake, his men and supporting officers paid the price for their transgression."

Oh? My, how responsible of them.

I nod in understanding and continue, "That's great to hear, but I'm here to address another matter. It's about the number of Wicked we've found among your men."

The temperature in the room drops a few degrees, and I even see one of the mages pale as he freezes up completely. They know what this means, and there's no way for them to negotiate their way out of this.

"I assure you, my Lord, the traitorous Captain's unit had a much higher concentration of Wicked, and that is why he was so easily fooled by the snake," one of the mages futilely tries to divert my attention.

I shake my head slowly as I give the mage a stern stare, and I see him swallow heavily. "I still need to make sure, and I can personally cast [Detect Evil] on your men," I firmly reply.

The leader clears his throat, asking for my attention, and I turn my stern glare towards him, but he still manages to calmly state, "My Lord, we used to have an agreement with the previous Lord about the number of Wicked…"

I raise an eyebrow. "A verbal one?"

He nods meekly. "Yes…"

"What was it about?"

The leader's expression becomes a bit brighter as he eagerly answers, "We'd provide him with our services in exchange for more freedom to explore and experiment. More specifically, we helped purge the High Forest, something that was very important at the time, and we know that you still haven't gained full control of the dungeons yet."

Their agreement doesn't seem to be nefarious at face value, but Mavel still turned a blind eye to their Wickedness.

And that angers Yunia. There was already very little chance that we'd even consider letting them go, but now, there's absolutely none.

I narrow my eyes in displeasure. "Unfortunately, our family is too close to the Gods for us to allow this many Wicked to remain free."

The mages all look distraught, and the armored soldiers discreetly hover their hands over the handles of their weapons, ready to draw.

"Is there truly no way we can negotiate this? Taking away our men will cripple the Circle," the leader pleads, sounding almost panicked.

I draw on my memories of my draconic cock plunging into my women, Ravaging their pussies, and stretching them wide as I roar in triumph, and a massive boner begins to press hard against the gambeson of my armor.

My voice booms through the room as I fearlessly declare, "The Wicked are a gangrenous wound that needs to be cut out completely. There's nothing you can do to stop this."

As soon as I finish speaking, a thick cage of emellanat snaps shut around me with a loud clang in just a split second.

Well… this isn't exactly unexpected, but we didn't imagine that they'd be this aggressive.

"It's not wise to fight us in our own territory," the leader grumbles angrily, his wrinkly face warped hideously in a very un-elven way.

I simply grin back as I growl, "You forget that the entire Western High Forest is my territory."

I hear the whispering of sand, then I see a sparkly cloud of dust filling my surroundings. They're using Dust of Appearance, so there's no time left to delay it any longer.

The girls give the signal, and the purge begins.

A note from Manasong

Hall of Fame of Patrons

The patrons who support Rupegia shall have their names sung by the bards for they deserve the glory and honor. Their names are:

Prince PreownedFIN.

Prince Creamy Spinach.

Prince Owldente.

Prince Charlie Foxtrot.

Lord Andrew Meyers.

Lord Novgarod.

Lord Michale Erwin.

Lord Bakerdea.

Lord Maurice.

Lord Empyrean.

Lord Mattirro Draca.

Lord Fullmoon.

Lord Sean Drake.

Lord FrostyCube.

Lord Mike Bartter.

Lord Cardinal Steiner.

Lord Warwulfv.

Lord Jorge Franco.

Lord Khristopher Welsh.

Lord DJ.

Lord Philip.

Lord Tenebris Lupus.

Lord The Tallest Joshua.

Lord Copey Dunt.

Lord Dracopuppy23.

Lord Chris Carter.

Lord Paul Daval.

Lord Paul Daval.

Lord Bradly.

Lord Aubrey Powell.

Lord AndreyUC.

Lord Tmac.

Lord Krawn.

Lord Jetdy S.

Lord Greysen Simmons-LaRose.

Lord Aubrey Powell.

Noble Salty Panda.

Noble Mild Fracas.

Noble Aclys.

Noble CarlBaxter.

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Chapter 114: Operation Extinguisher - Part 2

"YOU ARE SURROUNDED! LAY DOWN YOUR WEAPONS OR BE SLAUGHTERED!" Caterina's voice booms through the entire fortress at the same time that three new [Gate] scrubbers overlap, then the soldiers by the walls begin to react, but I have no time to waste right now.

I [Equip] a large blue gem about the same height as Hana, and I notice a hefty drain on my MP just to cast that spell, then I use [Redirect Mana] on the gem, causing a suffocating torrent of Water mana to pour out of it.

The emellanat of the cage melts instantly, and the now red-hot metal splashes down around me, my [Wind Armor] and [Rainbow Shield] protecting me from any droplets, then I cast [Dust Storm] throughout the entire room, blinding everyone, and summon the girls at the same time that I [Equip] my helmet.

My Storm is instantly interrupted, but the spell still lingers for a few more seconds, and with Alissa, Yunia, and I using our [Sense Presence], it gives us the perfect cover for cleaning this room of the Wicked filth.

"MOVE, AND YOU'RE DEAD!" I roar, then I cast [Rush] and dash towards the leader. The mages start casting spells, but the room is now flooded with Water mana, disrupting Fire magic quite heavily.

Alissa goes for the soldiers who are too stupid to protect themselves, quickly dispatching them with arrows shot through the slits of their visors.

Hana engages the largest soldier among them, but he's still blinded by the dust, so she manages to shove a sword into his throat with ease.

Roxanne pulls out the golems and tries to explode the head of a mage that's chanting, but the [Dead Zone] in his robes saves him from an instant death, so she just casts [Ice Lance] instead and quickly finishes him off.

Ciel casts [Wind Storm] and shreds another mage who was casting something.

Lina uses [Rush] and caves in the head of a third mage.

Dragon-Aoi squashes the nearest mage just with the weight of her body.

Yunia [Rush]es another soldier and ends him in one strike.

The golems pull out emellanat shackles and necklaces for the three unmoving mages and collect their staves with [Telekinesis].

As I reach the lead mage, I sense him throw something towards me, and [Battlefield Perception] triggers, so I activate [Wind Shield] and try to dodge it.

I feel the enchantment drain a large amount of my MP, then something hits my shield and hurls me back across the room as the sound of an explosion makes my ears ring, and everyone is thrown to the floor from the shock wave.

My back crashes against the door and cracks it, but my armor is fine, and the padding absorbed most of the impact, so I don't feel that much pain aside from the shock, allowing me to immediately [Heal] myself and [Rush] the leader again.

Roxanne aims the next [Explosion] at him, but his [Dead Zone] and her dizziness makes her aim quite a bit off, and she misses him almost entirely, though Alissa still hears his scream of pain.

The dust clears, and I see a writhing wall of vines before me covering the wounded lead mage and pulling him away towards safety.

I cast [Earth Bullet] and get in one last hit on his face before he's out of reach. Even with his wounds, he's still far from being incapacitated, so we need to chase him ASAP.

I stop before the wall and use [Searing Blade] to cut open a path, but the writhing mass immediately starts covering the opening. I think we need more firepower to destroy the wall completely before it's safe for us to cross through it. I don't want to risk the girls getting crushed by the wall because we were too reckless.

The room suddenly bursts into flame as the last opposing mage manages to finish a short spell, so Roxanne and Aoi have to focus on dousing the flames before they can overwhelm us.

I turn around and cast [Torrent] around me as I dash towards the mage and drive my sword into the back of his head without hesitation.

We quickly finish off the last of the soldiers, then we focus on the writhing mass of vines, which now covers most of the walls of the room.

Alissa is tracking the escaping mage, but he's still well within range of her [Sense Presence], so we have plenty of time.

"Following him seems like it'll be difficult. Let's leave this room while we can," I suggest through [Bind], and the girls agree.

The golems are responsible for keeping the surrendered mages safe, so they use [Telekinesis] on the prisoners to bring them along as we burst out of the room through the cracked door.

Alissa detects the Celestial Horns above us, cutting an opening into the roof, then the tree trembles as something heavy hits it at the bottom.

The lift isn't working, so we just destroy it and use [Fly] to reach the floor with the last mage, a garden of dangerous-looking vines and exotic plants.

"YOU ARE SURROUNDED! LAY DOWN YOUR WEAPONS OR BE SLAUGHTERED!" Caterina's voice booms once again through the entire fortress, and this time, it seems to be coming from the inside of the tree.

"Golems! Cut open a path for us!" I order.

They drop the prisoners on the floor and [Equip] huge saw blades which they then spin and throw ahead of us, cleanly cutting down the flora where they pass. The blades open a path through the nasty little forest and reveal a mansion at the center of a lake.

We immediately [Fly] forward, but one of the prisoners suddenly shouts, "Watch out! They're territorial!"

Then we see the large, tooth-filled maw of a man-eating Venus Flytrap rushing towards us.

Roxanne explodes it, and Hana cuts through its stalk, but then more maws shoot towards us along with vines that have poisonous-looking flowers growing on them.

Fucking distractions!

I summon a wind, a nature, and a fire elemental-wife. The first two protect us from the deadly flora while the last one razes this infernal place to the ground.

We catch a whiff of a very large [Fire Magic] spell being cast in the mansion, so we hurry to get past the forest because we don't have a lot of time.

"Watch out, his home is well-defended!" The same prisoner warns us again.

Then [Battlefield Perception] triggers before we can even register what's coming, and the uncomfortable fact that my [Wind Shield] was easily pierced rings alarm bells inside my mind, so I cast [Earth Wall] in front of me, but even that isn't enough as a javelin pierces through the spell, my enchantment, my blessings, and even my armor, and stabs me in the lung. The shock wave of the impact makes my bones tremble, then we're shaken violently as the boom of the ultrasonic javelins catches up with them, but I'm not the only one who's been hit.

Aoi and Ciel lurch violently and are thrown back as two other javelins strike them in the chest, then I look down and see a glowing red gem on the shaft right behind the blade of the javelin, which is thankfully not fully embedded into my chest, and the realization of what it could do sends a shiver running down my spine.

I use [Searing Blade] to cut through the javelin at the blade and quickly back away while the girls and the golems all cast spells on the other javelins to try to yank them out of our two wounded wives.

The red gem glows and bursts with flame as the enchantment activates, erupting with a wall of white flame so hot that it burns my eyes and almost cooks me inside my own armor.

YOU WRETCHED BASTARD!

The two other javelins are also successfully removed before the enchantment activates, averting a repeat of what happened to Roxanne in our first fight with these Wicked scum.

I cast [Telekinesis] on the part of the javelin's blade that's still buried inside of me and pull it out, then we form into a single file and continue forward as I heal myself, but Aoi and Ciel hang back for a moment since their wounds are deeper.

"Wounds?" I request a report from the girls through [Bind].

"Simple, we'll be fine!" Ciel responds while Aoi simply growls in anger.

Alissa focuses ahead, her eyes searching for the source of the javelins, and she finds three small holes in the wall of the mansion ahead of us.

CRUSH THEM!

"[EXPLOSION]!" Roxanne screams, and the facade of the mansion is blown into a cloud of dust and steam, then she casts the spell a few more times to make sure that the javelin shooter is completely destroyed. If they're made of darksteel, it's possible that they could survive a few of her spells.

The tree trembles repeatedly as our men make multiple new holes in it and pour in, then the muffled sounds of battle start to become noticeable to us.

As we reach the mansion, another defensive measure triggers, and uncountable jets of dark red flame gush out of the mansion in all directions like flamethrowers, sticking to everything they touch, and blocking our approach as [Abyssal Fire] consumes everything, even Okross.

I summon five fire elemental-wives, and they forcibly extinguish the flames with relative ease since enchantments don't have a mage protecting the spell from being interrupted, but it still costs us precious seconds.

Then the Wicked leader's spell finishes, and everything goes white.

"[STAR]!" Roxanne shouts through [Bind], and a scalding heat washes over all of us, making our prisoners scream in pain.

"IS HE SUICIDAL?!" Ciel shouts in disbelief.

"HE'S A FIRE MAGE, HE CAN SURVIVE THIS!" Roxanne explains.

"I CAN GET THROUGH THIS!" Hana shouts in anger, but I stop her from rushing in.

"YOU CAN WEAKEN THE SPELL! DISRUPT IT!" The helpful prisoner shouts again.

"WEAKEN THE SPELL!" I shout through the connection.

"LAND! HIDE UNDERGROUND!" Lina shouts, and we follow.

I summon Ciel and Aoi so that they can help us, then I summon five more fire elemental-wives to disrupt the spell and five light elemental-wives to [Heal] us, nearly consuming all of my MP; Alissa uses [Mana Arrow] to flood the spell with disruptive mana; Roxanne casts [Explosion]s inside the spell, then casts [Water Spirit] to attempt to control the heat; Ciel keeps us all from melting with a flurry of [Heal]s along with her [Holy Spirit]; and Lina, Aoi, and Yunia create walls of dirt to shield us with continuous [Earth Wall]s, though the barriers almost instantly melt into a red-hot liquid.

I re[Equip] the large blue gem from before and pull out the rest of its mana, which I then send into the [Star].

Hana's body starts to bulge with muscles as she pushes her [Draconic Body] to the limit, then her endless anger reaches the maximum that her mind can contain, and she pours the overflow into her words as she roars, "I'M COMING, YOU OLD WRINKLED COCK! I'LL RIP YOUR HEAD OFF WITH MY BARE HANDS AND MOUNT IT ON A SPIKE! I'LL HUNT DOWN YOUR CHILDREN AND MURDER THEM TOO IF THEY'RE WICKED! I'LL WIPE OUT YOUR ENTIRE LINEAGE SO THAT NO MORE SCUM LIKE YOU CAN TAINT MY LAND! REMEMBER THE NAME HANAFURIA RYDER, THE ONE WHO SHALL END YOUR WRETCHED EXISTENCE!"

Suddenly, the [Earth Wall]s stop melting, and the scalding heat drops noticeably.

"THAT'S IT!" I shout as I [Equip] Patrono and give it to Hana, then she bolts out from behind our cover.

"RAAAAH!" She thunders as she charges forward, her unprotected, draconic wings set aflame by the intense heat, but it's not enough to destroy them. Then the fire covering them turns green as her emerald scales glow from the heat and the power she's pouring into them.

She crashes through a black, charred wall as if it were made of toothpicks and finds the Wicked mage, who's now hiding inside a small bunker made of darksteel and glowing with magic.

The [Star] follows her closely, but it's too late. Hana swings Patrono and cuts through the bunker as if it were made of paper, then the spell ends, and the heat is extinguished in an instant.

"You are now level fifty-eight," the announcer's voice echoes in my mind.

Hana collapses on the floor, suffering from extreme burns, but the light elemental-wives and I are instantly beside her, and we use as much of our "Magic Power" as we can, trying to heal her as fast as possible. I unsummon everything but the light elemental-wives to give myself more MP, but I still run dry and have to let Ciel finish the job.

Hana's armor is scorched, her hair is partially burnt, her scales are warped, and the gold of the enchantments has started to melt, even though she had the effect of the [Reinforce] Blessing spell, but we thankfully get her back up to 150 HP, and being the tough bitch she is, she's ready to fight some more.

We still have more Wicked to purge, so after making sure that the damn Wicked mage is dead, we move on towards where the fighting is still going on.

One of the Celestial Horns finds us, and we deliver the prisoners to them, then we fly down the tree to help the rest of our men. The problem with dealing with the Wicked is that they know that they're going to die whether they fight or not, and so, since they're already deeply immoral people, they have no problems with fighting to the death just so that they can take a few of us with them. The Wicked even force their comrades to fight by threatening to kill them if they surrender, so things quickly turn into a bloodbath.

We fly through the floors, quickly finishing off the small pockets of resistance we find and liberating the innocents, who then get whisked away towards safety by the Horns. But there are so many scum among them that our weapons become bathed in elven blood as they refuse to surrender gracefully.

There's definitely way more than just twenty percent Wicked working in this circle of magi.

Fire starts to spread everywhere, caused both by us and by the enemy, making me glad that we're going down as the smoke goes up, but it still forces me to use an air-Alissa to keep us from suffocating. Non-flammable wood does exist, and it's almost everywhere here, but almost isn't enough to stop magical fire.

We meet up with more of the Horns as we continue down and add them to our group, then we suddenly encounter a silver blur stabbing everything in its way.

The blur stops before us and reveals the spindly, grinning elf.

"Silvano!" I shout angrily at him.

"My Lord! I've carved a path back down to our men!" He happily replies, his arms open wide as he saunters forward, though he suddenly freezes up when he realizes that we aren't pleased with him.

"Where are your men?!" I sternly question him.

He sobers up and sheathes his swords. "They're with the Captain, carefully dealing with the stragglers while I carve a path for them."

The dragon is currently in control of my body, so I scowl and give him the full brunt of my draconic rage. "You abandoned your men! If any of my Companions die, I'll have your balls cut off and displayed to the entire Lordsguard!"

"Yes, my Lord, I'll return to them right away," he stiffly replies, then immediately becomes a silver blur again as he runs with his tail between his legs.

I expected some recklessness from him, but certainly not anything as stupid as this stunt. Perhaps he was just pushing it, seeing how far he could go, but that was definitely too far.

We continue on, and when we reach the labs, we meet up with a squad of Companions and Templars scouting the area, and they report the situation to us. It seems that things are a bit complicated as the researchers have taken hostages and are threatening to blow everything up if we don't let them go.

It's a futile attempt, but it still gets us to stop the slaughter for the moment so that we can work out how to deal with them. Even if we don't find a way to save all the hostages, the Punishers have no qualms with sacrificing a few to end the situation. The hostages are complicit in working with the Wicked, so they don't get much sympathy from the Punishers.

But a plan quickly forms inside my head, and I give Alissa and Yunia a smile. It's time for our two sneaky-oriented members to shine.

I put fifty points into [Illusion Magic], giving me the spell [Invisibility], and cast it on both of them, which also makes them blind since all light is diverted around their bodies, then I give each of them a Holly and link the monster's vision with the girls', allowing them to see again.

It does require me to focus on consciously keeping their senses linked, so it isn't the perfect solution, but hey, it works.

The two of them work together and clean up the entire lab, except for the big, main area, which has way too many Wicked for them to kill in one go. It's also the main refining area for their bombs, so it'd make a big boom if something were to go wrong there, and I'd like to preserve the lab so that we can steal their research.

My MP wouldn't hold up if we went with giving everyone [Invisibility], so we improvise.

We close off every entrance that leads towards the main area with airtight seals made by earth-Linas, then I get Alissa to capture the air around a fire and use [Alchemy] to duplicate it endlessly. Hopefully, she's creating more carbon monoxide instead of just breathable air.

Just to speed things up, I hide three Dream Eaters in a room and tell them to produce as much sleeping mist as they can. The creepy, floating masks are just perfect for this situation.

Then Alissa and I walk towards the Wicked scum with an air-Alissa to keep us safe and a few magical butterflies on our shoulders to serve as distractions.

They've barricaded the entrance, so I stop before the piles of trash and rubble and announce my presence, "I'm Royal Crown Lord Wolf Ryder, and I'm the one responsible for this attack, so I believe you wish to negotiate with me?"

"The pisser is here!" The Wicked guard at the entrance shouts, and a commotion stirs up behind them.

After a few moments, a voice rises above the others, "Send him in!" The gruff man orders.

"I won't be coming in; we'll negotiate from here!" I shout back. There's no way that I'd risk Alissa getting wounded by willingly letting ourselves be surrounded.

The grumbling becomes loud again, and I hear someone complain, "If he won't accept even a little risk, then it means that he doesn't want to negotiate!"

That's kind of true, though I don't agree with their reasoning, and it's not good for our plan if they start to think like that.

"I want the knowledge you have here, but I won't risk my life for it!" I shout back.

"Don't give him my research! It's my life's work! Don't let a damn pisser steal it from me!" A researcher shouts as his voice cracks, but then I hear his muffled cries as the Wicked add him to the number of hostages.

A scarred, ugly elf appears, the owner of the previous gruff voice, and snarls at me, "Do we have your word, Lord Wolf Ryder, that if we keep the lab intact, you'll spare us?"

I raise an eyebrow and share a look with Alissa. "A Wicked person like you wants me to swear to the Gods?" I ask in disbelief.

The man laughs heartily and replies, "If it works on you pissers, then why not use it?"

I narrow my eyes as I watch him. If he wants to abuse my goodwill, then I'll be just a bit cruel in return. "How many people do you have that need a pardon from me? "

He scowls angrily and barks, "You won't grant it to us all?"

I shake my head pompously and raise my voice just a bit. "Of course not. The secrets of this lab might not be worth letting that many Wicked go free."

I'm pretty certain that I spoke loud enough for the ones behind the gruff man to have heard it clearly, and I get my confirmation as they start to shout and argue with each other, buying us precious time.

The gruff man continues to stare at us, at the butterflies, specifically, now completely mesmerized by them, which is exactly what we needed since he seems to be the one who got them working together, so his inaction allows their infighting to escalate without restraint.

"You just want to get us killed! Tell us how many you will spare first!" Another voice rises above the others, and the gruff leader snaps out of it temporarily.

"Yeah! You tell us first!" He shouts angrily.

Well, he's got me there. I have no idea what to reply with.

I ask the girls for help and remain silent for a few seconds until Lina makes a good suggestion. "I also don't know how much knowledge you have in the lab; I can't bargain without knowing what I'll be getting in return," I firmly assert.

"You're welcome to come in and inspect the lab," the leader replies with an evil grin.

I remain silent as I stare at him, stalling for as long as I can, then I notice the leader starting to sway as his eyelids droop tiredly.

I sigh dramatically and facepalm, feigning tiredness. "Alright, just give me a count of how many researchers you have. One researcher for one spared life seems like a good deal, no? But don't fret, as we can still bargain later on for more pardons with whatever else you have in there."

The gruff elf spends an awkwardly long moment thinking about it, then he nods and barks to his men, "Count the damn scholars! We'll trade them for your filthy asses!"

The girls give the signal, and our men start getting into position, then we just wait until we hear the first thud.

"Hey… the fucker passed out," a weak voice cries out.

"It's the smoke. If he wasn't so fat, he'd have lasted longer," another appeases the first.

Then a second thud follows.

"Hey… another one."

"My head hurts…"

"Headache…?" A skeptical voice asks out loud.

Alright, let's end this farce.

Then I give the signal, and we act out one of my favorite memes, to the collective dismay of the wives.

"FBI, OPEN UP!" I shout and cast [Torrent] on the barricade at the same time that the rest of the wives blow holes in the walls, opening up a few more paths into the main refining area, then we rush in and start blasting.

A note from Manasong

Hall of Fame of Patrons

The patrons who support Rupegia shall have their names sung by the bards for they deserve the glory and honor. Their names are:

Prince PreownedFIN.

Prince Creamy Spinach.

Prince Owldente.

Prince Charlie Foxtrot.

Lord Andrew Meyers.

Lord Novgarod.

Lord Michale Erwin.

Lord Bakerdea.

Lord Maurice.

Lord Empyrean.

Lord Mattirro Draca.

Lord Fullmoon.

Lord Sean Drake.

Lord FrostyCube.

Lord Mike Bartter.

Lord Cardinal Steiner.

Lord Warwulfv.

Lord Jorge Franco.

Lord Khristopher Welsh.

Lord DJ.

Lord Philip.

Lord Tenebris Lupus.

Lord The Tallest Joshua.

Lord Copey Dunt.

Lord Dracopuppy23.

Lord Chris Carter.

Lord Paul Daval.

Lord Paul Daval.

Lord Bradly.

Lord Aubrey Powell.

Lord AndreyUC.

Lord Tmac.

Lord Krawn.

Lord Jetdy S.

Lord Greysen Simmons-LaRose.

Lord Aubrey Powell.

Noble Salty Panda.

Noble Mild Fracas.

Noble Aclys.

Noble CarlBaxter.

Leave a rating or a review to help me rise to the top or fix my shameful understanding of prose.

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Chapter 114: Operation Extinguisher - Part 3

The Wicked are too groggy and dizzy to react in time, so they drop like flies as we strike them with surgical precision. The few that we let live for a little longer are too far from the explosive stuff to do any real damage, so they also fall to our blades before long.

Once the last Wicked falls, I let out a sigh of relief as the tiredness starts to creep in, followed by the revulsion from all the killing. Even memeing isn't enough to take my mind off the rivers of blood being spilled today.

"I think we've done enough here," Alissa asserts and lands a gauntlet on my armored shoulder.

I nod weakly and take off my helmet, then I start applying [Clean] to my armor to remove all the dried droplets of blood splattered all over it.

The fires continue to spread, and the smell of smoke starts to thicken, so I order the golems to store any papers, ingredients, or equipment they can find before the fire reaches this place and blows everything up.

While we wait, I take a closer look at the girls. The javelin left a three-finger-wide opening in Ciel's armor, a two-finger-wide opening in Aoi's because her scales absorbed some of the force of the javelin, and a one-finger-wide opening in my armor. I'd like to make a dick joke here, but I'm not really in the mood.

These holes can be repaired quite easily by Lina, it's just Hana's Bastión armor that'll take some effort since it's gotten all warped from the heat, so the dragonkin switches to one of the spare sets to not risk damaging it further.

Once our fiery-headed wife takes her helmet off, we see that part of her eyebrows and some of her hair have burned away, which is a crime in itself, so I use [Regeneration] on her to give her mane back, but we'll need Poosh's help to get the length just right again.

Hana stares at me with misty eyes as I use the spell on her. She doesn't have that much concern for her own beauty, but she does enjoy it a lot when others fuss over her because who doesn't like being pampered?

I also use a bit of [Regeneration] on Aoi to regrow the scales that were shattered by the javelin. Her sleek and shiny appearance shouldn't ever be tainted by the ugliness of broken scales.

Then Sandoro's group catches up with us, and since the way up is mostly clear, we start the sacking in full. Anything valuable or not bolted down will be taken by us since we've decreed that Dawn of Fire has to be fully wiped out, and nothing will be left standing after we're done.

I unsummon everything and summon ten water-Roxannes, then I tell them to make a path back to the mansion of the Wicked leader. I want those supersonic javelin shooters that he used against us and possibly the [Abyssal Fire] flamethrower if it didn't get destroyed by its own flames.

"Alcander reports that the second base is already under their control, and they're just midway through sacking the place," a Lordsguard relays Sandoro's message.

"Anything about the siege in Glorampina?" I question him.

"The Heart Lord responsible for the area has appeared, but no conflict has broken out yet."

"Let's board the Floater and fly it over there as a show of force," Yunia suggests, and we agree.

We check up on Hukarere and Romy to make sure that they're okay, then we take a [Gate] to Nohopu's ship and command him to fly to Glorampina as fast as possible.

The squirrel-headed man bows as he grins excitedly. "Understood, my Lords. If the loud noise of our propellers bothers you, the guest suite is soundproof."

I nod and wait a few seconds while the ship powers up, and yeah, the propellers going at full speed makes a loud buzzing that annoys my ears, not to mention Alissa's, so we just retire to the suite. The trip will take a few hours, so we have some time to relax.

I wax Aoi's regrown scales, and then Hana's since the heat also damaged them a bit. After their scales are back to being just as shiny as mine, I cuddle with Alissa on the bed to recharge my energies while Ciel uses her lap loli and the last three drink a bit of alcohol.

The smell of smoke starts to become noticeable again as our noses regain their sensitivity, so Ciel's [Holy Spirit] uses [Clean] on each of us until it's gone.

I run my claws through Alissa's bright, silky hair, then I kiss her forehead, and she raises her head to look at me.

Her large light brown, almost orange eyes stare into mine curiously. "You really do have two personalities inside you," she softly remarks.

"What?" I ask, surprised and confused.

"At one moment, you are killing and 'memeing'" -she makes a grimace when she says the dirty word- "and then the next, you're all gloomy and soft."

"My dick is still hard, tho," I cheekily reply, making her pout. "The dragon just released the reins of my body, so I started to feel the aftereffects of butchering men."

"I admit that fighting them was really exhausting," Ciel chimes in with a weak smile.

"Fire isn't something that goes well with elven nature," Yunia remarks, her gorgeous face warped in a sneer.

"I want to forget the smell of burning flesh," Lina quietly admits, and Ciel intensifies the petting of her lap loli.

"It made me a bit hungry," Aoi innocently states, though the stare she gives me is anything but, and I'm not sure how to take the implication.

As the mood starts to turn pink, Alissa's gaze becomes sly. "If we took care of this" -she suddenly grabs my boner through my pants- "would you feel better?"

I smirk at Alissa. "I don't know, but it doesn't cost us anything to try," I huskily reply.

Gify pops back into existence on top of my head, and she only needs a single look at us to understand what's about to happen. She rolls her eyes and teleports to the table with a *pop* to eat some snacks while we do our thing.

And it does help, a bit.

After a few relaxed rounds, we dress and groom ourselves again because the day isn't over yet.

As I look out through the window of our suite, I see the dark green sea of leaves under us suddenly come to an end, and the view turns bright green as the sun of the morning reflects off the long blades of grass.

Glorampina is just one long, flat grassland that's occasionally broken up by a small rolling hill or river. As we're at the southern edge, there are uncountable little brooks coming out of the comparatively more wet High Forest that drain towards the basin of Glorampina that's at a lower altitude, and it's this water that feeds its many lakes.

The hidden base isn't very far from the High Forest, so we only get a few minutes to enjoy the view before we spot the little black dots of our men surrounding the hole in the ground that Dawn of Fire used as a base.

"Here we go again," Roxanne wryly remarks as we [Equip] our armor and don our war faces.

The Floater lands right next to our men, then one of the Lordsguard opens the door for us, and we strut out of it like the pompous royals that we are.

We see two small armies having a standoff. Our Lordsguard, knights, and Templars on one side, looking mighty calm and collected, with the angry and threatening Lordsguard of the local Heart Lord on the other side, only a few meters separating them as the Heart Lord's men do their best to keep ours tense and alert to wear on their nerves.

We want to intimidate this insolent fool of a Lord, so Aoi un[Equip]s her armor and grows as large as she can, then I stand on top of her, using [Telekinesis] to keep myself balanced. She's about two-thirds the size of an elephant, so she looks very fearsome even though she's quite slender for a dragon.

The angry soldiers cool down and start to become fidgety as they realize Aoi's true size. Their spears will be basically useless against her tough and scaled body if she decides to trample them, which is the worst nightmare of footmen.

An olive-skinned silver elf wearing a pretty set of light green armor starts stomping his way towards us, his face flush with anger, but his steps become quite stiff as he takes in Aoi's size and glare.

"Lord Ryder!" The elf angrily shouts a greeting.

"Lords," Aoi corrects him with a growl, and he grimaces.

"Crown Lords," he greets again through gritted teeth.

"What was his name?" I ask through [Bind] since he's still a bit too far away for [Sense Soul].

"Uh…" Yunia mumbles uncharacteristically.

"Heart Lord," I reply coolly with a nod.

"What is the meaning of this aggressiveness?" I question him through Aoi since he seems to fear her more than me.

"What is the meaning of this incursion into my territory?" He asks back flippantly, his lip trembling in anger.

Wow, it seems like we really offended him.

"Do you not see the Templars among our men?" Aoi flatly replies.

"I've not been informed of the reason for this incursion, so I also haven't approved it," he slowly retorts.

Aoi narrows her eyes in slight annoyance. "Time was of the essence, so we chose not to ask permission when you likely wouldn't answer in time…" The Root Lord, who is now close enough for me to see that he's named Maverde, begins his retort, but Aoi's rumbling, powerful voice drowns him out as she continues, now putting a bit of anger into her tone, "But what's curious is how you learned that we were purging a deeply Wicked circle of magi so fast that you already have all your men here, ready to defend them. Do you perhaps have dealings with Dawn of Fire?"

His face freezes in a scowl as he gets caught off-guard. "I do not like your implication."

Aoi snorts, letting smoke come out of her nostrils, then she continues with a flippant tone, "I don't care, and I'm going to ask again, did you have dealings with the Wicked circle of magi, Dawn of Fire?"

He grits his teeth and grumbles, "I do not."

And Aoi shows him a toothy grin. "Then how did you learn of our purge?"

His anger continues to cool down as he becomes defensive and frowns. "I have my own ways of monitoring my own territory."

Aoi nods slowly, still grinning. "So perhaps you were preparing to purge Dawn of Fire yourself, and we got in the way of your glory? If so, why don't you join us in wiping out the Wicked and plundering their valuables? We'd gladly share them with you."

Maverde swallows heavily, seemingly disturbed by Aoi's words. "Normalizing pillaging is detrimental to our society."

Aoi waves her claws dismissively, and her tail lowers down as she becomes disappointed. "You can always use the valuables to pay for projects that aid the commoners."

He gives us both a judgmental glare. "Is that what you are going to spend your loot on?"

Aoi nods and answers matter-of-factly, "Of course. The first project we'll start is to build a Shell for every town and village in our territory."

Maverde is still skeptical, but his courage is far too unsteady for him to question us further.

"We aren't here to discuss such matters, though," I interrupt the talk and make a dramatic pause so that Maverde's focus can fully return to me. "The Wicked here will be purged, and Dawn of Fire will be dismantled. Are you going to stand in our way?"

A bit of anger returns to his expression, but Maverde isn't suicidal, so he begrudgingly gives in, "No, we won't, but we also won't forget this infringement upon our territory's sovereignty."

He's implying that the Crown Lord will also stand with him, which is kind of expected, but we plan on mollifying Crown Lord Herbaco when we call a summit about Katasko's encroachment into the elven lands, so we aren't too concerned about that.

I simply glance back at the Floater, reminding him that we have air supremacy over all elves and most of the empire, then I nod, and Aoi starts walking back to our men. I see Klein, Anton, Enomosa, and the rest of the knights at the front line, looking like stern statues holding back the angry soldiers in front of them with just their glares, and I feel a small amount of pride well up within me.

This hidden base is quite small, so we just give the signal to start the purge and sit this one out.

We return to our castle victorious and quite a lot richer than before, but after I pay Osaria and Poosh a visit, I go down to the lake under Escanso to bury two of our men. One of the Wicked in the second base committed suicide with a bomb and took out two of ours along with one Templar.

The advantage of working with the Templars is that nearly every single one of them can cast [Heal], but the men died instantly, so they were beyond saving.

This time, their spirits aren't so attached to the land that they remain beside their bodies like Lorena did.

They're just two average, young elves with a talent for combat and teamwork who pledged their loyalty to me. Their families are commoners, who cry all the way as our boats make their way towards the grave tree.

Ciel says the rites, and we lower the coffins wrapped in our heraldry while I stare at the bereft families with kind and aching eyes.

"They died with honor while fighting the Wicked," a son consoles his mother.

"Yes, they… they died for something noble…" The mother tries to convince herself.

I just wanted vengeance on Dawn of Fire.

They turn to me, and I slowly nod at them. "They died so that our lands could be safer," I whisper kindly.

The other family doesn't seem to be convinced by our condolences. The old couple gives me an angry glance but then lower their heads respectfully towards Yunia.

The priests cast [Materialize], then the spirit of the first family appears and gives the mother and son pair a warm hug while smiling, showing them that he's happy with the life he lived. A moment later, the second spirit appears standing in front of his parents, giving them an assured and content look, as if he was saying that he has no regrets from serving us.

After just a few long seconds with their families, the two spirits turn to me, then they salute, and their bodies disappear into mist as they willingly depart towards Paradise.

This elven burial ritual was made specifically so that the Lord sees the result of their actions firsthand, so that they'd never forget the price of violence. It's also not lost on me how Sandoro isn't required to participate, but a Lord is. I'm encouraged to rule through my heart, and he is encouraged to lead through the numbers.

We return to the castle, then take a quick bath and rest a bit. Poosh gets the maids to massage us while we eat some chocolatey snacks, and they apply not-aloe to our skin since it got a bit irritated and dry from all the intense heat. Hana's hair also needs some elven treatment, so Poosh takes it upon herself to bring the red mane back to its full glory.

But my massage/wax/blowjob is interrupted by a message from Sandoro. One of the mages from Dawn of Fire's High Circle wants to speak with us.

I cum down Iliada's throat and sigh tiredly as I pat my favorite maid's head.

"I'll visit him in your place," Alissa kindly offers, and I swear to repay her for this favor. "Not really a favor. We need to rotate who acts as the 'face' of our family."

The other wives agree, though not very eagerly, but at least they don't freeze with dread like Lina does.

Intermission – Aisco

The room they put me in is quite comfortable, all things considered. I'd imagined that they'd just put me in a dungeon, or something, but they really did honor their word to spare the ones who didn't resist. Well, I guess not being Wicked improved my standing with them.

I look down through the window of this vessel and see tall flames burning down my former home, but I only feel catharsis at the sight of it instead of sadness. That wretched place is now gone, and a new opportunity has appeared right before me… or rather, above me, though I'm currently inside it, so… ugh…

My analogies need some work.

I start to become a bit annoyed at the fact that I've been left alone with my overactive brain. There's nothing else here but a bed and a table, so I have nothing to occupy my itching hands and restless mind, which is quite an effective way to torture me. Not that they should know about my addiction to work, or that I should reveal it to them. One should never show weakness before the person they're about to negotiate with since that's just an open invitation to be exploited by the other party. Not that I believe the oh, so holy Ryders would exploit me, but they did show quite a lot of spite for the Wicked, so maybe they would think badly of me for working with them, and I'm sure the slaves we h-…

OH, GODS! SOMEONE SAVE ME FROM MYSELF!

Then I hear a knock on the door, and I stop pulling on my hair.

"Royal Lord Alissa has called for your presence," a gruff male voice announces dryly. The speaker must be one of those strange Chimeras, for no elf would have such a manly and brutish voice.

Wait, "Alissa"? Who is she…? Why isn't the Dragon Boy asking for me?

I groom my hair and recompose myself, then I walk out of the room.

As I enter the location for our meeting, I'm first awed by the good taste the Chimeras have in interior decoration, then I become surprised that the half-imperial boy didn't melt down all this gold, and finally, I notice the pretty little thing sitting at the golden table before me.

Ah, it was the fox girl.

The problem is that she's the second youngest in the boy's harem, so why was this child sent to talk to me?

I sit down on a comfortable chair and lower my head respectfully as I introduce myself, "Crown Lord Alissa Ryder, I'm Aisco, one of the members of the High Circle that controlled Dawn of Fire."

I raise my head again and see her nod slowly, her eyes stern and her face unmoving as she wears the usual mask that all nobles have.

"And what did you wish to talk with us about?" She flatly asks. I appreciate straightforwardness, but I feel like I'm talking to a statue instead of a person, and though I wished that all the humanoids I had met were statues, the fox girl in front of me is one of the rare exceptions to that.

I smile gracefully and energetically respond, "I heard that you lack a High Mage in your court with a [Fire Magic] specialization, so I wish to offer my services to the Lordship."

"What else did you hear about us?" She immediately asks, surprising me with her smooth evasion of my offer.

"Only that you lack a Fire High Mage," I promptly reply.

She raises one eyebrow. "That's it…?"

I shrug. "Nothing else mattered to me, so I forgot it all."

She blinks blankly and whispers, "I see…"

And I grin back. I'm very proud of my ignorance when it comes to useless matters, as I believe this makes me seem more honest.

Then her tone turns cold. "But you're still going to be accused of working with the Wicked and of holding illegal slaves."

Of course, I knew the uppity Ryders would do this. "May I not atone for my crimes by working for you?" I cheerfully ask.

"What can you do, specifically?" She dryly replies, the contrast between our moods feeling quite jarring to me, but I just ignore her theatrics.

"Train Fire mages, use my [Fire Magic] for combat, and share my research with you, as long as I get the credit for my discoveries," I categorically answer.

She thinks for a few seconds, completely unmoving while doing so, before continuing, "Are you going to ask to lead the mages in battle?"

I softly shake my head. "No, I don't care for such things. My only true wish is to continue my research."

Then her tone turns stern, and her large orange eyes stare intensely at me, carefully measuring my reaction. "We'll still force you to go through a Truth Seeker to make sure that you don't hold any ill intent towards us."

She's a bit frightening.

I blink a few times in mild surprise, then I honestly confess, "Huh, how cautious, but I assure you, I don't hold a grudge. I'm a perfectly logical person who knows that crimes must be paid for, but right now, I see a golden opportunity in front of me, but not literally."

She nods slowly. "Yes, you seem quite reasonable, just a bit eccentric." And the subtle hint of humor seeps into her tone.

I nod. "Yes, 'a bit.'"

A note from Manasong

Hall of Fame of Patrons

The patrons who support Rupegia shall have their names sung by the bards for they deserve the glory and honor. Their names are:

Prince PreownedFIN.

Prince Creamy Spinach.

Prince Owldente.

Prince Charlie Foxtrot.

Lord Andrew Meyers.

Lord Novgarod.

Lord Michale Erwin.

Lord Bakerdea.

Lord Maurice.

Lord Mattirro Draca.

Lord Fullmoon.

Lord Sean Drake.

Lord FrostyCube.

Lord Mike Bartter.

Lord Warwulfv.

Lord Jorge Franco.

Lord Khristopher Welsh.

Lord DJ.

Lord Philip.

Lord Tenebris Lupus.

Lord The Tallest Joshua.

Lord Copey Dunt.

Lord Paul Daval.

Lord Paul Daval.

Lord Bradly.

Lord AndreyUC.

Lord Tmac.

Lord Krawn.

Noble Salty Panda.

Noble Mild Fracas.

Noble Aclys.

Noble CarlBaxter.

Noble CHoobler.

Leave a rating or a review to help me rise to the top or fix my shameful understanding of prose.

Take a look over my blog where all information about the world of Rupegia will be posted.

Join the Discord and discuss, or rant, or meme, or try and fight me so your waifu gets more screentime.

Become a Patron and read chapters in advance, or read the side-stories, or leave your mark on the story, or help choose the next artwork or the next side-story.

Chapter 115: Curiosity - Part 1

Mad scientist… get, I guess?

Eh, we'll force him to go through the Seekers and let them judge whether or not Aisco is ready to become a Blood Slave. Right now, I'm too fascinated by the javelin shooters to worry about him.

We recovered eight of these monsters. They are huge cannons made with the legendary glossy brown alloy darksteel and enchanted with a head-sized Fire gem at the base of the barrel. The bore is so wide and long that two adult dragonkin could lay down inside it, and the gem so densely packed with mana that it would make the Chimera proud.

While fearsome and powerful, it's an over-engineered piece of shit. The cannon needs to be made entirely out of darksteel so that it doesn't explode when it fires; the javelins also have to be reinforced with a darksteel core and even buffed with the [Reinforce] Blessing spell, otherwise, they get blown to pieces by the explosive force of the propulsion or the drag created by their not very aerodynamic shape; and the javelins use a disposable Fire gem at the base of their shaft for even more propulsion, but it shatters on use.

These weapons are expensive even for us, but for a Wicked man with a (rather justified) paranoia about security and more money than he knows what to do with, this weapon system is quite reasonable. It's not like the Wicked expected to use it twice, so even the cannon itself could've been made disposable, but I believe the leader mage occasionally played around with them. The cannon's durability was likely designed to be astronomically high just because of that.

We won't be able to use them even for our castle's defenses since they're way too dangerous, too inflexible with their use, and too big of a target in case of an attack. What they're good at, though, is killing Lords. They can go through [Wind Shield] and most types of armor while leaving little time for any kind of reaction, so if we or the golems use it with [Equip], we'll have an instant-kill trump card.

The idea appeals to me so much that I order three more to be constructed for Hana, Ted, and Suzy.

We also recovered fourteen [Abyssal Fire] flamethrowers, and it's quite simple to adapt them to be handheld, so we all get one. They aren't made to be reusable since the nozzle is gradually consumed with use, but Lina recruits our enchanters, and they immediately get to work on a fix for that issue.

Since we defeated the High Circle ourselves, we get all their loot, but aside from their staves, there isn't much else that's exceptionally valuable or ridiculously eccentric like the javelin shooters. We recover plenty of gnomic [Fire Arrow] auto-crossbows and other, assorted, simple defensive enchantments, but we'll gift them to the villages in our territory as part of our social programs since they'll benefit more from those things than we will.

The rest of the loot, such as their vault, research, and materials, are split with the Templars, though they give up their share of the materials in exchange for more coins. The research will be shared openly, so it isn't counted as part of the negotiations.

We also set apart some of the loot found in Glorampina in case Herbaco asks for a share of it later on.

And with that, we end Operation Extinguisher, then Hana and Roxanne come back from the negotiations to have lunch.

Hana sighs tiredly and massages her neck muscles. "Okay, negotiating with nobility is a lot harder than fighting them," She remarks wryly.

"You didn't negotiate with actual nobles," I point out, then I grow some tentacles to massage her shoulders for her.

The sight and touch of my tentacles have conditioned her to expect lewdness, so she moans sensually, and her lower parts starts to get warmer as obscene images flood her mind.

"Yeah, well… the Templars… act almost… like… nobles…" She slowly replies, enjoying the massage very much.

"Hey, hey, me too," Roxanne calls out, and I delightfully obey.

Ciel stares at the tentacles absentmindedly, but I ignore her for now. I want her to ask for it.

"It'll never stop being hard, but you'll get used to it," I comfort Hana as I extend a tentacle around her face and part her lips, then I invade her mouth and wrestle with her aggressive tongue. She smiles fearsomely and gives me a look that says that after this meal, she'll return my caresses in her own way.

"Gods, you've been so caring lately that my womb is demanding your seed!" She exclaims through [Bind].

"I absolutely hate it when others harm my women," I casually reply in kind.

"Except when you do it."

I nod. "Except when I do it."

"Hngrr~!" She moans and growls sensually at the same time, and her legs start rubbing against each other.

"Wolfy also finds it hard to speak to other nobles, so it's good that we're starting to share his burden," Alissa sagely declares.

"Which is also a burden to me," Yunia points out, sounding a bit bothered.

"You do enjoy acting haughty and being mean to others, though," Alissa retorts cheekily.

And Yunia snorts snobbishly. "It's still a lot of work."

"Fair enough."

While we talk, Aoi stuffs her face with the roasted meat while everyone else favors the soups, instead.

After lunch, Hana steals me away and gives my body a thorough loving. Since she's so violent, both of us tire out quickly, and after a short rest, the time to continue the exploration of the folder of Cycles finally comes!

This time, Mimi and Istante, our quartermaster, are present to discuss the allocation of funds and the founding of the Royal Land Engineers division that will build infrastructure throughout the High Forest. Dawn of Fire was quite rich, so we have some starting capital for the Shell project.

"What is this spell…?" Istante asks, mesmerized by the exotic mana exuding from me.

"I don't think we should ask…" Mimi wryly replies.

Istante pales and bows at a right angle. "Y-yes! I apologize for my insolence," she stiffly announces.

And Mimi stifles a chuckle. "I also don't think you need to apologize so strongly."

Istante raises her head, and her eyes meet with Ciel's kind pair as her angelic face is graced with a warm smile, then the stern elven woman swallows heavily and blushes as she straightens again.

"We're very easygoing, for Lords, so don't worry too much about such things," Ciel appeases her.

Istante nods diligently and states, "Thank you, and I apologize for apologizing." Then she flashes a smile.

"Good, you're already learning," Almaria praises her kindly, and the atmosphere remains casual for a while before the talk of business dries up our humor.

Silvano is uncharacteristically quiet. After every High Officer gave him "that look" during the after-action report, he started acting as would befit someone of his station, though we're sure that it'll only last for a short while, and then he'll go right back to being the cheeky bastard that he truly is.

The fact that he actually agreed to train with the rookie Lordsguard for a half-cycle pleases me greatly, too. Nobody puts my Companions at unnecessary risk like that. They're mine and Hana's pseudo-harem, so they're the last of our soldiers who could be treated as disposable.

As I continue strolling through the Cycles, I notice that the Realms are going from abstract paintings to white noise. It's like the "energy" is congregating into something that vaguely reminds me of galaxies, very clustered galaxies.

Then I see them move. The dots blink, merge, separate, or move in circular patterns, creating kaleidoscopic patterns of colors that mesmerize me for a short while.

Maybe they're planets, maybe they're atoms, maybe they're planet-sized balls of energy developing gravity after the Big Bang. Considering how old Rupegia is, I don't think these Realms are young unless the folder was sorted by new first and I've been going down towards older Cycles.

It suddenly strikes me that these Realms remind me of John Conway's Game of Life with the way the "energies" move. There seems to be some sort of logic to them, but I don't really want to spend too long investigating these Cycles, so I move on, and the following Cycles soon stop moving, becoming remarkably similar to galaxies again as a black, empty void starts to grow between the clusters of "energy."

But the clusters continue to grow smaller, becoming little dots of light as more and more of the dark void occupies the leftover space, then the dots disappear, and all I see is darkness.

I stop to investigate these dark Realms, and while they still give me the feeling of "incompatibility," I sense that I can "expand" them endlessly. My cone of view doesn't enlarge, it's just that I can sense its "borders" growing further and further away.

Then I start to see the little dots of "energy" again, and I realize that I've just been "zooming in" on the Realms, not "expanding" them.

As I move on to the next Cycle, the "zoom" level remains, so I continue to "zoom" at the same time as I "scroll" through the Cycles, and the dots of energy start to grow instead of shrink.

They "grow" at an excruciatingly slow pace, though.

As time passes and the end of the day approaches, I decide to focus on zooming just to see what the little clusters of energy look like from close up.

Then we receive word that the Gilbiks have arrived.

I immediately force Roxanne to interrupt the spell before Lina can tell us to continue. Showing the Gilbiks the respect that they deserve is more important than this.

It did seem like the cluster of energy I was getting closer to was just a star-like mass of energy, too.

We only have to wait in the Hub Room of the castle for just a minute, then the door to the Imperial Network opens, and a thick dwarven man in full shining plate comes through, followed by a dwarven mage and the three very stiff Gilbiks, who are wearing such lavish and cute clothes that Lina is certain that they were gifted them from the Lord who housed them for these past few days.

The dwarven knight and the mage stop before us, then they perform the standard imperial salute by clenching their fists over their chests. "Crown Lords, I'm here to deliver the esteemed Gilbik family into your care," the knight soberly announces.

"We welcome them into our home. Thank you for taking care of them," Yunia politely replies.

The knight nods, and the mage pulls out multiple trunks in front of us, then they salute again and leave.

Lina rushes towards her parents and pulls them into a hug. "You came!" She exclaims happily.

"Of course we did," Omume replies matter-of-factly.

Fuda also joins in, with a bit of awkwardness, and after a warm moment, the four of them break the hug.

"We have a mansion prepared for you in the inner ring, I'll take you there," Ciel offers with an angelic tone, almost gushing from seeing our little wife so happy.

"Mansion…?" Toulin repeats stiffly, and Lina preemptively lands a hand on her mother's back in case she faints again.

Ciel smiles apologetically. "It's not the largest mansion of the inner ring, so you shouldn't be too overwhelmed, but we only have mansions to offer you."

"T-thank you, and please, lead the way," Omume takes over before his wife can pass out.

Lina gently pushes her mother forward, and she starts walking with wobbly steps, then they immediately begin talking about their stay with the dwarven Lord to take their minds off of the astonishingly drastic change in lifestyle that they're going through.

With the Gilbiks here now, we'll be increasing Mimi's workload a bit more since we have to prepare an enchanting workshop for them. We'll give them a loan with zero interest to get them started, and then we'll sell the rights to my table football and air hockey sets to them.

Though they're going to be part of our clan, we'll keep our finances mostly separated from theirs so that the Tribunal won't have reason to complain. The benefits of being in our clan will be more than just financial security, so much more.

Without anything else to do, I decide to kill time by modeling the doll golems' faces.

The girls have occasionally dived into my memories of Earth (with Gify's help) in search of cute girls to inspire them as they imagine what the golems should look like, and I think we've settled on designs which we can all agree on.

Ted will be a brown-skinned, curly-haired, bear-eared cute girl, while Suzy will be Lina's pale, red-eyed, vampire sister. Of course, they're both going to be lolis, so Ciel's input was quite valuable here.

For Jarn, Yunia had the strongest reaction to the ideas since the golem wears her face, so it had to be something magnificent, and since we already have quite a lot of draconic influence in our family, we decided to go for the second most common animal that tends to be chosen to represent pride, the lion. A mane-like hair similar to Hana's that ends in small drills, a cute, bushy lion tail, and round, furry ears all resonate with Jarn's bimbo-ness, bringing her closer to the perfect female body.

Though the final form of the golems has now been decided on, their bodies are still made of metal, so they're hard and inflexible, and their faces are unemotive. We need to start researching how to give them flesh bodies so that I can fuck them.

And for that, I call for Almaria.

"I think you should leave the organization of the Royal Land Engineers to Alcander. At most, you should evaluate the skill of the candidates, but your expertise will be best applied somewhere else," I start with the rationalization for my proposal.

"And where would that 'somewhere else' be?" She astutely asks as she immediately catches on to my implication.

"I want you to create fleshy bodies for the golems that I can hug, kiss, and have sex with," I bluntly lay it all out.

She doesn't even react, and I'm not sure whether that's good or bad, but she just becomes pensive as she hums in thought, then she glances at the golems, who are slowly molding their metal heads through [Manipulate Metal]. "I assume you want them to look like humanoids, right?" She tentatively asks.

I nod and let my tail sway strongly as the awkwardness takes control of it. "Yes, but I… have sex with dryads, so I don't mind if they look like one of them or even a nature elemental. Consider a perfectly humanoid body as the end goal with a body that's a least 'sex-able' and mildly attractive as the minimum."

She stares at me inexpressively as she continues, "We also have to consider ways to deal with damage from the repeated use of [Clean], wear and tear, and slicing and piercing."

"Yes…" I stiffly reply with a nod.

"And the body needs to be supple, tender, and lubricated."

I nod again. "Yes, and also, I want the face to be able to move in humanoid-like ways so that it can show emotions."

"Hm…" She hums in thought, then a smile creeps up on her face. "I assume I'll also be modeling their genitals?"

But I mask my emotions and remain stoic. "Only for the doll golems. Jarn's body is already fully modeled as a combination of parts coming from three of my wives."

She raises an eyebrow, then she turns her head and stares at Jarn for a long moment. "No penises?"

I smile subtly. "No… Jarn actually has a few, and though they're all modeled after mine, there's hardly any need for them when the real thing is so much better," I fail to stop myself from bragging.

Then she raises the other eyebrow and turns back to me. "Uh-huh…" She hums dryly, and I almost blush, almost.

"What are your thoughts on this project?" I coolly question.

She adjusts her small round glasses on her cute little nose. "Doable, but the maintenance of such bodies will be expensive and delicate."

"Perhaps we can teach the golems to do that themselves?"

Jarn's red-hot head suddenly turns towards us a bit creepily. "Yes, that'd be ideal," she remarks as she continues to mold her hair.

But Almaria frowns softly. "I thought they were terrible with [Nature Magic]."

I smile wryly and suggest, "Perhaps, but as long as you can explain how their bodies work through math and logic, they should be able to maintain it themselves."

She averts her eyes and enters deep thought. "Hm…"

"Our magical talent lays strictly in the recreation of mana-less, natural phenomena," Ted explains, but Almaria doesn't seem to fully understand what she means yet.

So I start to elaborate, "If you can explain how the plants grow, their internal structure, which nutrients they require and such, maybe they can bridge the gap of knowledge themselves."

Then Almaria brightens up and nods. "I see. If I stick to traditional plants instead of the more mystical and exotic varieties, I can explain how they work in detail."

"Do you have something in mind?"

She pulls out a light green piece of not-paper and a mini-palm-leaf not-quill with a *poof*, then she starts making notes as she lists them off, "Succulents for the flesh, rubbery sap for skin, watery sap for saliva, perfumed flower oil glands to lubricate the genitals, and wood for bones. It's only the facial muscles that will be difficult to recreate since plants don't really move without magic."

The not-paper actually grows as she writes, becoming longer and longer like a scroll while the not-quill pulsates as it produces more and more black ink, and I stare at them with curiosity as I find these kinds of magical gadgets to be quite intriguing.

I continue to deliberate as my eyes remain glued to the not-quill, "Perhaps they don't need muscles since they move in the same way that an earth elemental does, but I think their expressions would probably require a degree of control that isn't really common in their daily lives, so something to 'guide' their movements would be useful, like if the grain of wood matched the grain of the muscles."

"God-Ruler Arreira taught us how to move with precision," Ted begins doing their thing.

"And though expressions will be new to us," Suzy follows up, like always.

"It doesn't seem to be impossible," Jarn finishes.

"I see…" Almaria breathes without taking her eyes off her notes, then she suddenly stops and slowly raises her eyes to meet mine. "Your Highness, you have [Mana Body], correct?"

I nod.

"Then I could add a function to convert your magically-charged semen into energy for bodily repair," she flatly proposes.

"That's an excellent idea," I calmly reply, then we flash a smile at each other.

A note from Manasong

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Chapter 115: Curiosity - Part 2

A note from Manasong

Attention: to conform to the limit of sexual content allowed in a novel, I've censored this chapter. You can look for the uncensored version here.

The fiery barbarian woman advanced across the forest with sure steps. She cared not for the denizens of this land as they were too weak to be a challenge to her and her holy greatsword, so her eyes only saw ahead, towards the presumed nest of the beast.

She only wore the bare minimum to preserve her dignity as the rest of her armor had decayed from wear long ago. With the power of her scales, she needed no armor, anyway.

After a long and sweaty session of running, she finally stopped before a tall, ominous, dark mountain. The large cave before her was the obvious entrance to the nest, and dragons weren't known to sleep too deep due to their size, so after a short rest, she prepared herself for battle and continued her advance.

But a deep rumbling laugh coming from the cave stopped her. "Do I see a new challenger approaching? Another fool that has come to throw their life away into my jaws?" The voice mockingly asked.

"I've come to end your wretched existence, beast!" The barbarian shouted angrily and fed mana into her greatsword, making it shine with a dangerous, pure light.

"I only live off the land like any hermit, yet you have the audacity to threaten me? I'll add you to my collection of-…" A huge, shiny head peeked out of the darkness, then the dragon stopped in his tracks once his eyes saw the redhead woman before him. "Well, aren't you a beauty."

"That's what all the other insolent fools said before they fell to my sword," the barbarian replied ferociously.

The dragon narrowed his eyes in displeasure and stepped out of the shadows, but the sight of his full body caused the barbarian's will to falter. His scales had the same shine, the same mirror-like reflection, the same divine aura as the metal that made up her holy greatsword.

How could it be? How could a beast's scales be comparable with a weapon created by the Gods?!

"Your little toy won't be able to hurt me," the dragon warned the barbarian with a tired tone. "But you're welcome to feed me your delicious, supple, and gorgeous body."

And that inflamed the barbarian's rage. She cared not for the mystery of this dragon, all she wanted now was to make it pay for its disrespect!

But the dragon spoke the truth. Her greatsword couldn't pierce him.

She was smacked by a large set of claws and thrown towards a rock, then she hit her back and head against it with such force that the stone was pulverized, but a few seconds later, she rose up again while groaning.

"Oh? You're still alive? How intriguing," the dragon remarked casually, then sighed tiredly. "It's such a shame that I have to kill a fierce warrior like you."

"You can always just die by my sword!" She roared as she charged again, aided by the flap of her draconic wings as her emerald scales shined in the sunlight.

The dragon simply used one of his clawed hands to flatten her against the ground, but again she survived the attack, though now she was bound, pressed against the floor and with no way to escape.

Each of the dragon's five claws was as long as her strong arms, and their sharpness allowed them to dig grooves into the stone with ease, yet they couldn't break her emerald scales.

"Imagine how big, strong, and ferocious our children would be," the dragon continued with a wistful tone.

And the barbarian hummed loudly in confusion, "Huh?!"

"I'd rather take you as a wife than kill you," the dragon admitted, a jarring softness in his tone that somehow made her heart beat faster.

"Y-y-you can have children with humanoids?!" She exclaimed in disbelief, the barbaric rage quickly fading away from the shock, and the scales that covered her sun-kissed skin dissipated into mist.

The dragon nodded gently, or with as much gentleness his large scaled head could. "Of course, I can. Dragons are supreme beasts that can mate with anything that has matching genitals, like you do."

Her eyes opened wide. "But you're so big!"

The dragon laughed heartily, then grinned at her. "Women weaker than you have survived and enjoyed it just fine."

The barbarian was stunned by the revelation, and her retort died in her throat as a new flame arose within her. The flame of lust.

The dragon lowered his head, and his long, wet tongue licked her sweaty neck and cheek, its heat almost burning her skin, but its slickness made her shiver, and the smell of his breath was surprisingly minty.

"Did he wash his mouth?!" The barbarian thought, completely disarmed by the ridiculousness of the situation.

"You taste so good…" The dragon hummed, his deep, loud voice making her whole body vibrate, especially her increasingly hot womanly lips. "So, so good…"

The woman stared at the dragon in fear and awe, her jaw slack, and the lustful beast took the opportunity to invade her mouth with his tongue.

The pleasure of the tongue kiss unlocked something within her heart, and her legs quivered as her mind was flooded with depravity.

But the dragon pulled back and released the woman, then stood up on his hind legs.

"Sate your curiosity, follow your heart's desire, you perverted woman," the dragon ordered with a suggestive grin.

The barbarian doesn't have to think too hard about it. Her body wants it, and she's quite eager to follow her instincts.

After Hana passes out, I slide out of her and transform back into a humanoid, then I use [Gate] to get back to the castle and carry her to the bath.

I've given Hana enough attention these last few days, so I focus on the other girls, though, thankfully, nobody else wants anything as intense as Hana did, at least for today.

We invite one of the Companions for dinner. Hana and I are already quite familiar with their bodies, so now, we want to get to know them properly, too.

The muscular elven woman is one of my favorites, and it isn't just because she loves giving blowjobs and receiving facials. Her supermodel face, muscular body, and boisterous personality make her a perfect female Chad, and all I want is to be squished between her and Hana's strong thighs or hugged tight by both of their muscular arms.

No, not that tight, Hana.

Sometimes her asphyxiation fetish becomes a bit too intense and she fantasizes about crushing people's lungs with her bear hugs.

The table is filled with a nice selection of smoked veggies, making for a fragrant meal. There's also not-broccoli basted in chicken fat, making it quite crunchy and deliciously flavored.

"Golden flower, this is so good!" Cerena, the Chad, exclaims happily as she eats the not-broccoli.

"Eat as much as you like. We all know how irresistible our chef's cooking can be," Ciel kindly replies.

"How do the Lordsguard's meals compare?" Hana questions.

Cerena shrugs, then delicately wipes her lips with a napkin and explains, "If you're on duty, all meals are spiked with Conjured food. If you're in the field, half the meal is Conjured food. It's only when you're in the reserves or have time off that you can eat anything truly good, though at least the spiked meals aren't bad."

"It certainly seems better than what the Townsguard eats," Ciel wryly remarks.

Cerena gives her a curious look. "You worked in the Townsguard?"

And our angel nods with a proud smile. "In Rabanara, I worked with them quite often as a combat-healer during the purging expeditions."

Then they share a few stories about the Townsguard of Escanso and Rabanara. Over here, the soldiers seem to be a bit "delicate," so the "coming of age" rites are a common theme in her stories, while in Rabanara, the recruits have trouble building trust, so the most common theme there is people overcoming their differences and achieving something great together.

As dessert comes around, I interject and ask something that I'm always curious about for anyone who serves us, "Why did you join the Lordsguard? If you don't mind sharing such personal matter with us, that is."

She shakes her head gently as she smiles warmly and her long elven ears cutely bounce. "I don't mind," she whispers back, then stops for a moment to collect her thoughts. "When I first joined, it was under the late Lord Mavel's rule, and I had no special motive besides money and prestige. Lord Mavel was a good Lord, so we were happy and proud to serve him, even in the darkest of days."

She turns her eyes to Yunia, and they share a respectful nod, but then the gorgeous Companion slowly begins to smirk as her eyes go back to me.

"I was a Three-Petals Foot Soldier, so I was pretty satisfied with how far I had risen, but then you came along and humiliated me completely by stabbing me in the cunt."

Oh, fuck, that was her!

"I didn't recognize you because you wore a helmet," I blurt out in astonishment.

She grins and shakes her head. "And neither did I. The first time I met you…" -she glances at Hana- "well, all of you, you were like harbingers of death coming from Weepers' dreams to ruin my life, but the second time we met, I only recognized you thanks to Lord Aoi's unmistakable figure because you not only looked very different, but I could sense something in you that was deeper than just a higher 'Charisma.' I felt an intrinsic respect for you, Lord Wolf, so I decided to join the Lordsguard to see what's so special about you…" -she suddenly smirks- "then I saw you and Lord Hana beating down everyone during training, and I started to feel hot between the legs, so I joined the Companions."

"Ah, yes, he does have that effect on women," Roxanne remarks sagely, and Hana, Aoi, Yunia, Osaria, and Klein nod along with her.

"It's only recently that he got [Sexual Charm], so I think it's some part of his Gift that makes him so attractive," Ciel offhandedly adds.

"I think it's divine influence that makes him seem 'trustworthy,' or something that 'disarms' us before him," Yunia opines as she stares at me with a measuring gaze.

"He's Blessed by the Goddess of Knowledge, so maybe it's that?" Osaria suggests.

But Alissa shakes her head and retorts, "He was like that even before the Blessing, so I think it's his Gift that attracts certain types of women."

And Cerena smirks at the girls while she remarks, "Well, he certainly has a lot to thank the Gods for, then."

"Yes, truly enviable," Yunia agrees with a soft whisper as the girls all stare at me.

I grin cheekily as I reply, "Well, my life is quite hard, so be careful what you wish for."

Alissa groans loudly in pain at my pun, but the rest chuckle softly.

"Then let me help you with that," Osaria sensually offers, then I feel her feet touch my hard cock through the thin Snow Weave of my pants.

Cerena has to get to sleep early, so after dinner, I pull out my bottle of Cinco Flores, and we share a drink, then I press her up against the wall, and Hana and I fuck her until her legs give out.

With my cock and seed imprinted into her, I feel satisfied enough to let her go, and we retreat to our game room for another evening of family bonding.

Suddenly feeling like creating something new, I recruit Lina, Aoi, and Yunia, then we add darts and billiards to our collection of games.

Predictably, Lina easily wins against everyone in darts due to her [Throw] while Hana comes in second after a tough match against Alissa, and Klein comes in fourth.

In billiards, Hana, Ciel, and, surprisingly, Aoi come out on top. Lina, Yunia, and I are a tier below them, but we have an even match between the three of us.

"I'm starting to notice how bad I am at every one of these games you come up with, Wolfy," Roxanne bitterly comments.

"At least you win at Civil War and games that need 'Intelligence,'" Osaria retorts, sounding a bit disheartened.

"You're pretty good with cards since they benefit from your 'Charisma,'" Roxanne comforts her back.

Osaria smiles and dramatically remarks, "If only there was a game that benefited from knowing how to suck dick."

Roxanne smiles smugly. "Or making men orgasm, that'd be the ultimate game for a succubus."

But Osaria raises an eyebrow at her. "I'll be surprised if your race doesn't have any competitions about such things."

"Only for seducing men. The women are too proud to have a competition about actual sex," Roxanne explains matter-of-factly.

And Osaria smirks and suggests, "But we could compete to see who can make Wolfy cum the most?"

Then Roxanne adjusts her glasses as she stares at my cock while in deep thought. "Well, it'd be quite difficult to maintain a scoring system if we only have Wolfy to use."

Osaria chuckles. "I see you've already put some thought into it."

And Roxanne nods. "Of course I have."

Today is the 24th. An, day of Wind. A good day for traveling since [Swift Foot] is known to be more effective today. The Chimeras also love this day because the gems of their ships are a lot more efficient mana-wise.

Alissa wakes me up quite gently, and I use my human hands to play with her furry ears for a bit while the drowsiness slowly fades away.

Everyone except Yunia gained a level from yesterday's fighting.

Alissa, Roxanne, Ciel, Lina, and I leveled up to 58. Hana leveled up to 59, and Aoi leveled up to 41.

I increased my [Earth Magic] by 1 (now 7+4); Alissa increased her [Illusion Magic] by 1 (now 16); Roxanne increased her [Water Magic] by 1 (now 7+34); Hana increased her "Endurance," [Draconic Body], and [Summon Wings] by 1 (now 26, 8, and 9); Ciel increased her [Light Magic] by 1 (now 8+33); Lina increased her [Earth Magic] by 1 (now 1+10); and Yunia increased her [Earth magic] by 1 (now 3+2).

The background for this morning's mana circulation training is a beautiful cave that Palo found while dungeon-delving. The shine of a few crystal lights far away hits the pool before us and reflects blue undulating patterns onto the walls, making for a pretty and calming light show.

Right now, I'm very thankful that we've chosen Osaria as our diplomat, for she's the one who's representing us in a meeting with the Temple and the Tribunal to decide the fate of the non-Wicked members of Dawn of Fire. We want the lower grunts to get lighter punishments than the higher officers since the latter is more complicit in aiding the Wicked than the former, but to get into the minutiae of it with the Tribunal would bore us out of our minds.

With nearly every day being filled with important work, it's nice to have someone we can trust and delegate tasks to. I think we'd quickly go insane if we had to oversee so many different projects on our own.

Lina and I get cuddly with Ciel, slightly disrupting her own circulation training in the process, but it's worth it because I'll never get tired of fondling her bountiful chest and marvelous booty.

"Are you both children?" She asks, mildly amused.

I share a look with Lina, then we both nod. "Technically…" She mumbles wryly.

"And we both want some of these mommy milkers," I add as I wiggle my eyebrows suggestively.

"Insatiable…" Ciel mumbles and rolls her eyes dramatically.

For lunch, we invite another Companion. This one seems to be so infatuated with Hana that her face remains red during most of the meal. She's quiet when it's time to talk, but very loud when it's time to fuck.

"Alright, she isn't really good enough for me to 'concubine' her, but I'll definitely keep her in my 'flings' category," Hana shares through [Bind].

And for the first time, I feel a pang of jealousy since Hana can't share that Companion with me.

"I think we should favor bisexual women who are ready to be shared with everyone to prevent deepening any feelings of jealousy," Alissa suggests through our connection, and I guiltily agree.

"Fine. I'll feel better too if no one feels like they're being neglected," Hana readily accepts.

And after our meal, I have an appointment with the Seekers of Truth to validate Arreira's will, get the temple's approval to allow us to study the undead, and evaluate Aisco's suitability for becoming a Blood Slave.

I meet up with the prospective High Mage in the main hall of our castle along with four Companions and one knight.

Aisco is a thin golden elf with a round, slightly boring face (for an elf), bags under his eyes, and a thousand-metri stare that gives me the creeps. It's like he's dead inside, but his elven, almond-shaped eyes also make him look like he's looking down on everyone.

"Royal Lord Wolf Ryder, it's a pleasure to meet you," Aisco greets drowsily.

"Did you sleep well? You have bags under your eyes," I remark worriedly.

He slowly shakes his head and starts to ramble in a boring tone, "I slept as well as I could considering that I didn't have my custom-built bed, and that my overactive brain didn't want to calm down due to the lack of stimulation, and that the night was too dark, and…" He suddenly freezes for a second then chuckles. "I actually slept really well, all things considered."

I blink blankly as I become speechless for a brief moment. "You… could've asked for such things from the men who were left to guard you… couldn't you?"

He lets out a short, hearty laugh as he shakes his head. "And speak to a stranger? Gods, please, no."

I look at the knight, but he does his best to remain impassive and stay out of this bizarre conversation. "You're… speaking to me, a stranger," I hesitantly point out.

Aisco nods and hums. "But you're the Lord, and I don't really have much of a choice right now, do I?"

"I see…" I mumble, then I turn to the Space mage and give him the signal so that we can get this over with already. "Let's go."

"As you wish," Aisco replies, sounding a bit chipper.

The mage opens a [Gate] for us, and I wordlessly cross through it with Aisco and our guards following close behind.

We appear right outside the temple's main building, but we walk out of the temple's grounds and move towards a large, square building right next to it, the Templar's HQ.

It isn't a particularly interesting building as the Templars are quite frugal, so the only decorations allowed are those made by hand and the vibrant green canopy of leaves for a roof, but the Templars do have a few artists among them, who show their skill through carvings and intricate details.

The entrance hall of the HQ is quite simple. There are a few sofas for waiting, a counter with an armored Templar acting as the receptionist, and two, also armored Templars flanking the only door forward.

The receptionist immediately recognizes us and guides us deeper in. We're in the administrative part of the HQ, so we should be their only appointment for today since so few people come here.

Then we're taken to a waiting room with an ominous, thick, heavy, metal door on the other side.

"Please wait here until your name is called," the receptionist states, then leaves without another word.

"Lovely, more waiting," Aisco sarcastically remarks, then plops down on a seat and immediately zones out.

I share a look with the Companions, and they're more responsive than the knight, smiling wryly behind their helmets.

But we only have to wait for a few moments before the door silently opens, and an androgynous, commanding voice calls my name, "Royal Lord Wolf Ryder. We are ready."

I sigh and enter the room alone, which is a metal box furnished with a single comfortable chair and illuminated by a crystal light in the ceiling.

When I sit down, the door behind me closes and the wall in front raises upwards, revealing a tall, white coffin standing vertically. There's no adornment or detail on the coffin, except for a face carved in the wood where the head of the deceased would be. The face is bald, and its expression is stern with its dead eyes looking down at me. Eyes that I find it hard to not look into.

I feel a chill as a "presence" enters my body and scours through it, searching every corner, nook, and cranny for anything I have "hidden." I feel uncomfortably naked, but the intrusion fortunately only lasts a few seconds.

Then they speak.

"Did the spirit of the late God-Ruler Arreira Soberano, the Unyielding, name you as the successor of his royal lineage?" The voice asks as if they were speaking directly into my ear.

And I feel a very heavy pressure on my back, as if I had a blade against my chest, threatening to kill me if I dared to lie.

"He did," I answer truthfully.

"Did he write the writ you possess?"

"He did."

"Did you send a truthful copy of the writ to the High Priestess, Teresina of the Black Sunrise?"

"I did."

"Changing topics. Do you intend to use the temple's knowledge about the undead in Wicked or heretical ways?"

"No."

"Do you intend to create undead?"

Oh, fuck. This is a trick question.

I breathe in and admit the inevitable, "There is a small chance I could do such a thing, but it'd depend on how dangerous it is, what knowledge I have to gain by doing so, and I'd only ever do it for research purposes."

The Seeker hesitates for a few seconds, giving me a mini-heart attack as I believe that I might've fucked it up.

"Do you intend to become undead?" The androgynous voice continues, and I think I'm in the clear, maybe.

"No."

"Why do you wish to know more about them?"

Regarding this topic, I'm confident that revealing everything is in my best interests. "I fear the undead and heretics because they've targeted me twice, so I want to know what they're capable of and the best way to exterminate them."

"We have no more questions," the voice suddenly declares, then the pressure is instantly lifted, and the wall before me drops back down.

I sigh tiredly and get up, then the door behind me opens, and I leave the room.

What a strange experience.

Once I'm out, Aisco is called in, and we wait for about a minute before he comes back along with a masked Templar.

"Aisco Munco is ready to serve as a Blood Slave," the Templar announces as he bows, then he returns to the metal room, and the door closes behind him.

But the weirdo remains standing, seeming to be quite out of it, or at least more than usual.

"Aisco?" I call for him with a frown.

He seemingly "wakes up" and turns to me. "Yes…?" He asks softly.

"Are you alright?"

He smiles wryly. "I feel like I've been mentally raped, but yes, I'm fine, all things considered."

I hum awkwardly, "Okay…"

Then we return to the castle and call for Esvisor to make Aisco into a Blood Slave.

Aisco Munco Skill Report

Physical

NONE

Magical

Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level
Sense Mana | 4 | Mana Control | 30 | Reduced Mana Cost | 19
Mana Efficiency | 18 | Fire Magic | 81 | Light Magic | 1
Space Magic | 1 | Conjuring Magic | 1 | Alchemy | 13

Miscellaneous

Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level

NONE

Info

Name | Aisco Munco | Age | 51 | Race | Golden Elf
HP | 100 | MP | 6,020 | Magic Power | 3,005
Level | 42

Stats

Strength | 7 | Endurance | 7 | Dexterity | 7
Speed | 6 | Intelligence | 23 | Wisdom | 20
Willpower | 13 | Charisma | 9 | Piety | 8
Perception | 10 | Sanity | 10

Other

Status Effects | 'NONE'
Titles | 'Scholar of Goloria, Creator of the Eternal Flame'
Affiliations | 'Member of the High Circle of Dawn of Fire (Former)'
Companions | 'NONE'

Crimes

'Illegal Slavery (High Forest, Atonement by Slavery, 5 years), Aiding and Abetting the Wicked (High Forest, Atonement by Slavery, 5 years)'

The fucker really is a genius mage. He's even supposed to be smarter than me, though with his low "Charisma," maybe he's too smart for his own good.

Anyway, now that we got this weirdness out of the way, we can explore the Folder of Cycles some more!

We resume where we left off, and I continue zooming in on the "star" from yesterday, but then I soon notice that there's a tessellation pattern emerging. The star is pure white, but there are a few repeating spots that have a subtly darker shade, and they become increasingly noticeable as the zoom level increases.

The girls go silent due to their curiosity as they peek through my eyes, and the High Officers start paying more attention to us as they notice the change.

The pattern that emerges seems like mere hexagonal tiles, but then we notice that there's a depth to the pattern. The "star" isn't one solid mass, it's a "structure."

But then my eyes start to strain as my brain fails to understand the true form of this "structure," just like whenever I've tried to directly peek at the "structure" of a soul.

Fascinating!

The girls start to complain about headaches, so I stop trying to zoom in and just move on to the next Cycles instead. I feel like the Realms are starting to become more complex, so we might find actual life real soon.

"I admit that this is kind of interesting," Yunia remarks through [Bind] with a subtle internal smile.

"Just thinking about what's out there gives me chills," Lina shyly adds.

Gify feeds the girls my memories of aliens, thalassophobia, black holes, and other wonders of sci-fi, entertaining them while I continue scrolling through the Cycles.

Then I feel something odd and stop on one of the Cycles. It looks different, as if all its "petals," the Realms, are fused together in a messy way.

I zoom in on one of the Realms and sense it "shift." There's not much to see, only darkness, but I still get the impression that something is moving.

A feeling of danger flares within my heart, but it grows so strong and so quickly that it paralyzes me for a split second, then something crashes against my mind, and I feel it "crack."

"AAAAAAAAH!" I scream in pain and clutch my head, then Yunia slices at my spine with her [Soul Blade] at the same time that Hana slaps the emellanat manacles onto me, the mages interrupt my spell, and the emellanat cage surrounds me.

But something still got through.

Ciel casts [Judgment] and slices at the "object" that's seemingly made of unknown, indescribable material with an unknown, indescribable shape, and it immediately bursts into a mist that fills the room with the pungent smell of acetone.

I can't move my body, and my mind is wracked with pain, but for some reason, I can still see what's happening around me with extreme clarity, almost as if my consciousness were detached from my body.

Alissa takes control of me and forces me to remove the manacles so that I can [Equip] Patrono, which Hana promptly steals and uses to slice open the emellanat cage, then she activates the sword's divine shine, and everything becomes a blur.

A note from Manasong

Hall of Fame of Patrons

The patrons who support Rupegia shall have their names sung by the bards for they deserve the glory and honor. Their names are:

Prince PreownedFIN.

Prince Creamy Spinach.

Prince Owldente.

Prince Charlie Foxtrot.

Lord Andrew Meyers.

Lord Novgarod.

Lord Michale Erwin.

Lord Bakerdea.

Lord Maurice.

Lord Mattirro Draca.

Lord Fullmoon.

Lord Sean Drake.

Lord FrostyCube.

Lord Mike Bartter.

Lord Warwulfv.

Lord Jorge Franco.

Lord Khristopher Welsh.

Lord DJ.

Lord Philip.

Lord Tenebris Lupus.

Lord The Tallest Joshua.

Lord Copey Dunt.

Lord Paul Daval.

Lord Paul Daval.

Lord Bradly.

Lord AndreyUC.

Lord Tmac.

Lord Krawn.

Noble Salty Panda.

Noble Mild Fracas.

Noble Aclys.

Noble CarlBaxter.

Noble CHoobler.

Leave a rating or a review to help me rise to the top or fix my shameful understanding of prose.

Take a look over my blog where all information about the world of Rupegia will be posted.

Join the Discord and discuss, or rant, or meme, or try and fight me so your waifu gets more screentime.

Become a Patron and read chapters in advance, or read the side-stories, or leave your mark on the story, or help choose the next artwork or the next side-story.

Chapter 115: Curiosity - Part 3

"Curiosity killed the cat, and the human was so saddened by this that they created a safety net so that no other cats would meet the same end," a female voice echoes inside my mind.

Then a female hand grabs mine and pulls me forward, reminding me that I'm still alive and that I have a fight to finish.

I groan in pain and try to open my eyes, but my body refuses to move, so I try to wrestle back control, but I just feel the pain get worse the harder I try.

There's still something inside me, something "foreign," and I know of only one thing that could even have a chance of dealing with that.

I can't control my physical body, but I can still access my spells since they reside within my soul, so I summon ten light-Ciels around my collapsed form and [Equip] Patrono, then I activate its brilliance.

I scream in pain, but now I can actually hear myself and feel my muscles tensing up as I'm cleansed of whatever was inside me, then the pain starts to ease, and I manage to open my eyes.

I discover that everyone has collapsed around me, some of them writhing in pain, trying to crawl away from the divine light, while a few of our Lordsguard and the golems try to make them drink HP potions, and a dozen of our mages chant [Light Magic] spells.

"Elementals, [Heal] them!" I shout and pour all of my mana into Patrono, making it shine so brightly that everyone goes blind from it and my skin even starts to burn because of the heat.

I check on the girls through [Bind] and discover that they're all having nightmares, but the light and the elementals immediately start having an effect on them, and they quickly calm down, so I turn down Patrono's shine.

Hana is the first to wake up, and the moment she opens her eyes, she pounces on me as her skin becomes covered in emerald scales.

"WOLFY!" She roars and pushes me down with one hand, but then she realizes that Patrono isn't in her other hand anymore and stares at it, dumbfounded.

"I'm okay!" I shout back and grab her shoulder, making her turn her head back to face me. I still feel like shit, but at least I'm back to normal, I think.

The room is suddenly filled with groans as everyone starts to wake up from their nightmares, then Hana quickly gets off of me so that she can check on the others. My muscles feel as weak as toothpicks right now, so I stay on the floor until Alissa rushes to my side and pulls me towards her chest as she hugs me tight.

"I'm fine, I think," I try to appease her. Even though she's quiet right now, she's still feeling pretty shaken up about what just happened.

Then Poosh rushes into the room looking quite distraught, and I wave at her with a pained smile so that she knows that the worst has passed.

"Your Highness, what happened?!" She exclaims as she kneels before me and starts inspecting my body.

"An accident during an experiment, but things are fine, now," I explain with a hoarse voice. I decide to cast [Regeneration] on myself since my HP is at-…

What the fuck?!

Wolf Ryder Skill Report

Physical

Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level
Sword Use | 17+11(?) | Spear Use | ??+3 | Polearm Use | 13+4
Dodge | 12+8 | Parry | 14+6 | Block | 7+8
Shield Bash | 4+1 | Battlefield Perception | 8+2 | Muscle Explosion | 4+1
Acrobatics | 13+2 | Ekrano Style (creator) | 5

Magical

Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level
Sense Mana | 0+6 | Mana Control | ??+17 | Mana Recovery | 1+0
Mana Efficiency | 8+7 | Reduced Mana Cost | 8+7 | Mana Overuse Resistance | 5+4
Blackout Resistance | 0+1 | Fire Magic | 1+4 | Earth Magic | 7+4
Water Magic | 4+1 | Wind Magic | ??+4 | Electric Magic | ??+14
Light Magic | 2+13 | Space Magic | ??+23 | Summoning Magic | 18+32
Blessing Magic | 27+23 | Nature Magic | 2+18 | Conjuring Magic | 1+4
Spirit Magic | 0+3 | Illusion Magic | 0+2 | Golemancy | 0+10
Redirect Mana (creator) | 6 | Sense Soul (creator) | 6 | Soul Manipulation (creator) | 10
Godly Language | 30+5 | Dragon Transformation (innate) | 7 | Equipment System | 5+5

Miscellaneous

Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level
Dancing | 0+1 | Cooking | 0+4 | Andraste Language | 4+6
Dismantling | 0+4 | Piloting | 0+3 | Massage | 0+3
Sexual Charm | 0+1 | Oral Technique | 0+1 | Mana Body (innate) | 5
??? | ??

Info

Name | Wolf Ryder | Age | 20 | Race | Weredragon
HP | 100 | MP | 289/825(1825) | Magic Power | 780
Level | 58

Stats

Strength | 15-2 | Endurance | 17-1 | Dexterity | 12
S | 15 | Intelligence | 22 | Wisdom | 20
Willpower | 19-2 | Charisma | 17 | Piety | 17
Perception | 18 | Sanity | 14-1+4

Other

Status Effects | 'Soul Corruption?'

Titles

'Nickname "Good Luck", Blessed by the Goddess of Knowledge, Golemancer, Scholar of Rabanara, True Noble, Lord of Escanso, Crown Lord of the Western High Forest, Shapeshifter, Protector of the Last Crown'

Affiliations

'Helios (Fellowship), Alissa Ryder (Wife), Hanafuria Ryder (Wife), Roxanne Ryder (Wife), Lina Ryder (Wife), Ciel Ryder (Wife), Aoi Ryder (Wife), Yulania Ryder (Wife), Servant Blood Slaves'

Companions | 'Alissa Ryder, Roxanne Ryder, Hanafuria Ryder, Ciel Ryder, Lina Ryder, Aoi Ryder, Yulania Ryder'
Crimes | 'NONE'

"Soul Corruption."

Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck. I don't like the sound of that shit. Not one bit, nope.

Alissa stares at me wide-eyed, her breath speeding up almost to the point of hyperventilating.

"Find me the best Chimera Alteration mages that we have in town, now!" I exclaim as a hint of terror starts to seep into my tone, then Poosh nods soberly and hurries out of the room.

Once the Officers are back on their feet, I tell the Lordsguard and the court mages to leave the room, then Alissa helps me sit down on a chair.

"What happened?" Sandoro immediately asks as they all sit on their own chairs, forming a circle.

"Something tried to come through the spell. It also either made me lose control of my body or tried to take control over it," I grimly explain.

"Check your 'Stats' and skills, is there anything different?" Ciel asks and they all do so then shake their heads.

"Everything's fine, but I assume someone isn't," Sandoro replies, and everyone stares at me.

I nod and sigh. "Yes, I'm not. Has anyone ever heard of a 'Status Effect' called 'Soul Corruption'? It even has a question mark in its name, as if the system isn't sure what it is."

"The question mark is a sign that you don't know what it is," Ciel clarifies, and I nod in understanding, then our eyes fall on Sai, our expert Spirit mage.

But the halfling woman frowns worriedly and answers, "Soul Surgeries are a bit beyond my skill level, but I've never heard of 'Soul Corruption,' though the temporary damage spells like [Soul Blade] do all fall under 'Soul Damage,' which is easily healed through [Spirit Touch] or just with time."

"Right," Yunia mumbles, then casts [Spirit Touch] and uses it on me. I immediately start to feel better, so we'll just have to wait and see if this spell can fix everything.

"I also have lowered skill levels and 'Stats,'" I continue.

"A lot of spells can lower 'Stats' temporarily, but only [Dark Magic]'s [Atrophic Blade] can lower skill levels, and it's also temporary," Ciel explains again.

"Perhaps your soul was 'jumbled,'" Almaria somberly points out, and we all fall silent as we nod in agreement, then I give Alissa [Sense Soul] and have her scan my soul in search of anything weird.

"That thing that came through…" Silvano hesitantly continues.

"It smelled like the undead," Alissa finishes his thought.

"So the undead are alien invaders?" I immediately question, my curiosity temporarily overcoming my dread and tiredness.

"'Alien'?" Almaria asks back with a raised eyebrow.

"Something that came from another Realm or Cycle."

"I don't think so," Lina rejects my idea, then she spends a few seconds recalling everything she has read about the undead. "Every source I've read mentions that the undead are an offshoot of heretic mages trying to recreate the immortality of Ender, The Hand and Child of the God of Destruction.

"Ender's death marked the end of the Age of Oppression and the beginning of the Age of Glory, and during that time, some mages started to research the few remains that Ender left behind and the location where he was slain, but the temple outlawed any research on immortality, so those heretic mages hid in the shadows until the Heresy of the Tower of Decay that created the Deadlands. It was then that the word 'undead' was first used in writings to describe the mages who could regenerate completely from near absolute annihilation of their bodies and absorb any sort of energy to fuel their power."

Then an idea comes to me. "Aren't the undead said to be outside the 'cycle of mana'? Perhaps the smell of undeath is simply the natural result of matter from our Realm interacting with alien matter, which may also cause this 'corruption' that the undead are famous for."

"The mist that thing released made us all fall unconscious, which is something I've never heard of coming from an undead," Ciel points out.

"That thing wasn't undead, it was just incompatible with our Realm," Yunia follows up.

I nod and agree, "It came from a different Cycle, after all."

"It's fortunate that it was vulnerable to [Light Magic]," Almaria quietly remarks.

"I don't believe in coincidences," I state firmly, and everyone goes silent again as they realize the implication.

Also, I bet that the weird dream I had was actually the Goddess of Knowledge giving me a bit of a push.

My body stops hurting, so I look at my "Stats" again and notice that my "Strength" and "Endurance" are back to normal, so either [Regeneration] or [Spirit Touch], or both together, are doing something to fix me up.

"I can't remember what that 'alien' looked like," Alcander shares and frowns as he holds his head in pain. "My head hurts just from thinking about it."

"It came from another Realm, so our eyes and minds aren't prepared to understand what it was," Yunia explains for me since I'm busy guiding Alissa's inspection.

"Are you going to continue experimenting with this spell?" Mimi suddenly speaks out, sounding a bit frightened.

"We have to, Mimi," Hana softly replies with pleading eyes.

And Ciel joins in to help her understand, "This spell most likely killed the person who created the [Summoning Magic] school, so we'll have to replace it with something safer."

Mimi nods meekly and looks down, a bit disheartened. Both she and Hana are strong, determined women, but seeing their loved ones in danger pulls on their heartstrings like nothing else can.

Then Almaria concernedly points out, "But will you be able to cast it again, safely? Doesn't it resume from where you left off, as in, close to that invasive Cycle?"

"That's… true…" I admit and feel my heart sink.

"You just have to alter the spell before you cast it so that you can choose your starting 'position,'" Alcander calmly suggests.

"I'm kind of bad with altering spells," I awkwardly confess.

"Can't someone teach you how, then?" Sandoro asks, and his eyes scan over the High Mages.

"As a system mage, I won't be a good teacher for learning how to alter spells," Alcander immediately states.

"I'm just a bad teacher in general," Roxanne admits with a shrug.

"I might be the same," Sai confesses a bit embarrassedly.

"I'm just a duelist," Silvane points out.

"I might be able to, but I know nothing about [Summoning Magic], and [Weaverism] isn't exactly a model magic school to teach someone about spell alterations," Almaria hesitantly explains.

Silvano turns to Sandoro and bluntly asks, "What about the new guy?"

Sandoro frowns. "Aisco? I don't think he'd be a good teacher," he rejects.

"Same," I agree with him.

"We'll just have to hire someone, then," Yunia states dismissively.

"Or Lord Wolf could learn magical theory at a proper school," Almaria retorts.

"Like that Kabara school we got invited to!" Alissa suddenly exclaims and immediately returns to scanning my soul.

Roxanne heartily agrees, "Their [Jaleowzeh Magic] seems to rely heavily on theory and spell alterations to work properly."

And Alcander reluctantly sides with her, "I admit that imperial magic schools probably don't have as much depth of knowledge regarding such a topic as an Estekabar school would due to our focus on system magic."

"We should take a look into that once we're back from the Capital," Yunia affirms, and we end this topic.

While we wait for the Chimera Alteration mages, I try to add and remove skill points from the skills affected by the "??" effect, and messing with them seems to fix the affected skill with no visible loss of skill points. It's as if the variables that held them were just altered to invalid values, so the fix was just to set them to something that's, well, valid.

So, I now only need to fix my [Sword Use], which lost two of the levels I had trained in it, that [???] skill with an "??" level, and my lowered "Willpower" and "Sanity." My Gift doesn't let me change the [???] skill, as if it's one of the "innate" skills, so we might have to resort to the temple and their skill removal service for that one.

Alissa's inspection of my soul reveals something that looks like "cracks." The core of my soul, the location that represents my body, has a few "structures" with the characteristic "spiderweb" crack patterns of laminated safety glass, and my old, incomplete soul map created with [Sense Soul] tells us that the two affected areas are related to my brain.

They don't seem to be healing, even with both [Regeneration] and [Soul Touch], so there must be something else that we can do to fix them.

Then Alissa searches the outer layers of my soul, where my skills are supposedly stored, and finds two "tears" that look like rifts into a black void. They don't seem to be healing either, though at least they aren't widening or leaking something.

I have a small itch that tells me to try to access my [Sword Use] skill and see if there's something different about it, but I fear that using that part of my soul would widen the tear or have unforeseen side effects, so I keep my thoughts very far from triggering that skill.

"Let me see if I can reach your brain with [Soul Touch]," Yunia proposes, and I hesitantly allow her to try it.

Alissa watches the "cracks" intensely and notices that one of them begins to heal, and soon, my "Sanity" is back to normal, but the other crack remains, unchanging, no matter what she does.

It seems that [Spirit Touch] can't reach wherever it is that my "Willpower" is "stored."

We arrange for someone to repair the emellanat cage, then we move to another room with a bed for me to lay down. I'm not hurting anymore, but I'm still feeling rather exhausted.

We hear hurried footsteps, then Poosh quickly comes into the room.

"I've brought the Chimera Alteration mages as you asked," she reports with a bow.

I begrudgingly part with Alissa's lap and sit up to make myself presentable, then I wave them in.

Three very nervous Chimeras wearing only their personal towels come in. Two of them are women, and they're fairly attractive, making for quite a sight for sore eyes, and I'm feeling very sore right now.

"Your Highness," the three of them greet and bow stiffly, then I nod back and motion to the seats.

"I assume our High Chamberlain hasn't fully explained things yet, so let's start with that…" Alissa begins the explanation.

"I don't believe we can fix those 'cracks' since we can't see inside the soul like you can," the deer-headed woman explains concernedly.

"I've also never heard of a Soul Surgery that caused a change in the 'Willpower' 'Stat,'" the marmot-headed man adds.

Ah… fuck.

An idea suddenly occurs to me, and we all give Roxanne a look as she stiffens with a sudden bout of dread.

"I believe in you, Roxanne," I affirm through [Bind] as I gaze at my pale, gorgeous wife.

"Wouldn't be that different from the hundreds of times he's left his life in our hands, and vice-versa," Alissa wryly remarks.

Roxanne's eyes scan the other wives, and they all transmit their feelings of trust, but it's Lina's and Aoi's that have the strongest effect on her. The former is always cautious, and the latter always very forthcoming, which gives it a special meaning to have them both agree on something so fervently, making Roxanne feel a bit funny.

She steadies her heart with a deep breath, then nods energetically and adjusts her glasses as she accepts her role in our plan, "Alright, let's do this."

I turn to the Alteration mages and sternly ask, "Can you explain to my wife how you use [Alteration Magic] to change someone's soul?" Then their eyes widen as they immediately understand what I intend for us to attempt.

"This is… extremely dangerous," the deer woman warns us with a grave tone.

Much less so when I can give Roxanne fifty-two points in [Alteration Magic] and six in [Sense Soul].

"I think it's worth the risk, but I'd like to increase our chances by preparing the perfect environment to help her focus," I calmly retort.

Intermission - Ciel

This Soul Surgery is going to be many times more complex and difficult than what Sai did for Dokkanchee, so everyone puts in the effort to make sure that nothing can go wrong.

We move into one of the meeting rooms since they have a soundproofing enchantment that can block all outside sounds from coming in, then we close all the windows and curtains to make the room completely dark, remove all of the aromatic plants, and activate an anti-scent magic tool. Now, there's nothing that could disturb Roxanne's concentration aside from us using [Bind].

Wolfy lays down on the bed, and Alissa begins casting [Sleep] on him. It takes her a few tries thanks to him being quite resistant to the spell, but he eventually falls into a deep sleep, and our watch over him begins.

Meditation, mantra, visualization, and motivation, these are the four pillars of [Alteration Magic]. It seems that Wolfy briefly studied them back when we first came to Goloria, but now, it's different since we don't just have excerpts from a book but are actually getting in-person guidance from experts.

"It's hard to concentrate. I think Wolfy gave me too many points in [Alteration Magic]," Roxanne complains through [Bind].

Alissa and I share a frown.

I guess we have to wake him up, but how will we explain it to the mages?

"Hang on, let me try something," Alissa declares and starts focusing on her connection with him.

It's honestly a bit scary how easily she can use [Bind]. At most, I get annoyed when Wolfy's stray thoughts start to seep through our connection, but Alissa revels in the noise. It's almost like half her mind belongs to Wolfy with how eagerly she hears his every thought, but what's even more frightening is the fact that she's also always listening to us. It's because of her that it's so hard to hide anything from him.

I sense her trying to suppress her pride when my mind involuntarily likens her to a prison warden, and I'm just glad that Wolfy isn't a tyrant because Alissa would be the perfect right hand to keep us all in line.

She somehow manages to open his "Companions" tab and moves his hand to press on the "adjustment icon" that reduces Roxanne's points in [Alteration Magic]. The fact that she's able to do such a thing is a bit discomforting, but then again, Wolfy does have absolute control over us, so I guess it's fair that Alissa can also control him just the same.

When Roxanne's points reach thirty, she reports that she's fine now, so we move on to the first step of [Alteration Magic], meditation. Since we need to do this very same practice to perform our mana circulation training, she achieves clarity of mind in just a minute.

Then she starts reciting the mantra, "I am the stillness, I am the void, I am the silence. I am without a mind, except for one will."

Her solemn voice echoes through the darkness again, again, and again, the constant repetition almost entrancing us since it's the only sound we can hear for several long minutes. We even have to keep our breaths slow and quiet because the noise could potentially distract her.

The problem with an untrained mage using [Alteration Magic] is that they won't know when they have achieved true clarity until they see the results of their alteration and realize that it didn't come out the way they wanted it to, but with [Bind], we can all watch Roxanne's mind like Hollys and closely observe it as the stray, convoluted thoughts of her internal monologue settle down one by one and join the chorus of her mantra.

Finally, when all we can hear coming from her [Bind] is just the perfectly synchronized chant, we nudge her to move on to the next step.

Now things have to be done quickly before her state of true clarity is disrupted, so she activates [Sense Soul] and immediately locates the "crack," then she pours all of her "Willpower" into the sincere wish to heal Wolfy's soul as she activates [Alteration Magic] and allows the skill do the rest.

Alissa senses Roxanne's "presence" push out of her physical body and spread out as it covers Wolfy's form entirely, then Wolfy's "presence" starts to shift, transitioning into what seems to be a "merging" of his and Roxanne's.

It's just as fascinating as it is frightening. What if Roxanne and Wolfy became fused together forever? That'd be a nightmare scenario if their teasing natures added to each other's, or if their issues of the mind deepened.

But we're all closely watching over both of them, and we sense nothing wrong with what's happening. Or rather, things are going exactly how the Alteration mages said they'd go.

Then an immense amount of Roxanne's mana floods out of her body and fully covers Wolfy's, making us hold our breaths as he glows with magic.

In the blink of an eye, the "cracks" in his soul are gone, and the mana covering him disperses.

I use [Redirect Mana] to clear the room of the spent mana, allowing Roxanne to immediately train her focus on the two "tears" in his soul. The Alteration mages seem to become confused, unaware of the reason for why the air suddenly cleared, but they remain quiet, so we can just explain things to them later, if they even ask.

Roxanne repeats the alteration two more times, and the two tears in his soul disappear without any observable side-effects.

Once it's all done, we let out a collective sigh of relief, then we turn the lights back on, and I cast [Purify Body] on Wolfy until he wakes up.

He immediately sits up and turns his lifeless, cloudy eyes towards us.

"Who are you…?" He asks flatly, and my heart skips a beat, then I probe his mind through our connection and sense him hiding his mirth right beneath the surface of his deception.

"You…!" I grumble as a wave of anger flares up and takes hold, and I slap his shoulder repeatedly while he breaks into a fit of loud, joyful laughter.

Intermission end.

A note from Manasong

Hall of Fame of Patrons

The patrons who support Rupegia shall have their names sung by the bards for they deserve the glory and honor. Their names are:

Prince PreownedFIN.

Prince Creamy Spinach.

Prince Owldente.

Prince Charlie Foxtrot.

Lord Andrew Meyers.

Lord Novgarod.

Lord Michale Erwin.

Lord Bakerdea.

Lord Maurice.

Lord Mattirro Draca.

Lord Fullmoon.

Lord Sean Drake.

Lord FrostyCube.

Lord Mike Bartter.

Lord Warwulfv.

Lord Jorge Franco.

Lord Khristopher Welsh.

Lord DJ.

Lord Philip.

Lord Tenebris Lupus.

Lord The Tallest Joshua.

Lord Copey Dunt.

Lord Paul Daval.

Lord Paul Daval.

Lord Bradly.

Lord AndreyUC.

Lord Tmac.

Lord Krawn.

Noble Salty Panda.

Noble Mild Fracas.

Noble Aclys.

Noble CarlBaxter.

Noble CHoobler.

Leave a rating or a review to help me rise to the top or fix my shameful understanding of prose.

Take a look over my blog where all information about the world of Rupegia will be posted.

Join the Discord and discuss, or rant, or meme, or try and fight me so your waifu gets more screentime.

Become a Patron and read chapters in advance, or read the side-stories, or leave your mark on the story, or help choose the next artwork or the next side-story.

Chapter 116: Friendship - Part 1

The other wives and the Officers come into the room as I laugh out loud, but I'm interrupted by Roxanne suddenly giving me a tight hug from behind. She immediately rests her head against mine, her horns looking quite floppy, as if they were made of rubber, then she closes her eyes and lets out a long sigh of relief.

We all go silent as we give her a warm look, then I grab her arms with my claws and bring one of her hands up towards my lips so that I can give it a kiss.

"Thank you for being so reliable," I whisper lovingly.

She smirks and cheekily adds, "And also being a magical genius."

"And also being a magical genius," I repeat, and her horns harden again.

"[G-genius indeed]!" The marmot-headed mage exclaims, accidentally reverting back to Reo, then he clears his throat and repeats, "Genius indeed! I can't believe you successfully performed a Soul Surgery on your first try, mere minutes after being given a simple explanation on how [Alteration Magic] works!"

Roxanne's rapidly inflating ego is pinpricked by Ciel's "Cheater!" echoing in her mind repeatedly, then the wives surround me and give whatever body part they can hold a reassuring hug or squeeze. Lina goes for the tail, and I raise it for a second, lifting her up off the floor along with it, just to mess with her.

"As expected of the Young Lords," the deer-headed mage affirms.

"As expected of those chosen by the Gods," Poosh adds as she timidly walks towards us.

I extend my hand towards her to invite her closer, and she happily takes it, then I caress her cheek and pull her face towards me so that I can give her a peck on her lips. She doesn't know how many close calls we've had already, so it seems that she still worries unnecessarily. The wives were all concerned about the "Soul Corruption," of course, but aside from a mild bout of panic at the beginning, we were all pretty confident that we'd find a way to fix it.

"Have you thought about learning [Alteration Magic], Lord Roxanne? You certainly seem to have a talent for it," the rabbit-headed woman kindly suggests.

Roxanne raises her head, opens her eyes, and politely replies, "Perhaps later in my life, I'll have time for it, but for right now, I still need to use all my soul potential on combat-related skills." Then she rubs her cheek against mine, making our horns grind against each other's, and rests her head against mine again.

The three Alteration mages share a look.

"We don't know how long we'll 'live,' so perhaps our descendants will have the honor of teaching you," the rabbit mage supposes.

Lina suddenly feels like saying something, but her shyness keeps her silent, so I give her a push through our connection and force her to share, "But we'll be thrilled to read your books about Alteration, if you write them one day."

I nod and immediately follow, "I also have some interest in [Alteration Magic], so I'd be happy if I could read something that was personally written by masters of this school because all we have available right now are second-hand reports."

"Y-you honor us by giving us so much recognition," the marmot mage hurriedly replies, and the three mages lower their heads.

After exchanging a few more pleasantries, we let them leave, but then I make everyone who was exposed to the otherwordly invader go through a soul scan to make sure that there's nothing "stuck" onto their souls.

With the crisis now over, I pass by the Lord's Hall and call Osaria out of her meeting to explain what happened.

When I'm done explaining it all, she makes an anguished face and pulls my head into her cleavage. "I don't like it that you're messing with such a dangerous spell," she hesitantly confesses.

I pull my head out of her breasts and try to appease her, "I won't cast it again until I can alter spells with confidence."

"But you won't stop."

"No."

She sighs and hugs my head tighter. "Do you have a single project that isn't dangerous?"

Alissa laughs out loud through [Bind]. "Hahahah! No, he doesn't," she amusedly affirms through the connection, but the laughter quickly dies out, and she sighs tiredly.

"Food?" I tentatively suggest.

"I think that barely qualifies as a 'project,'" she quietly replies, and all the girls agree, humming inside my mind in unison.

I look away embarrassedly and try again, "Sex…?"

"You fucked a dragon," Yunia calmly states, and the Council judges me as "guilty" without even allowing me to defend myself against the accusation.

I also personally tell Klein, Hukarere, and Kaatohe about what happened, but considering how they themselves are constantly doing dangerous work, their reactions are a lot more muted than Osaria's.

Now that the [Otherworldly Summoning] experiment is officially put on hold, I have to decide on something else to occupy myself with, at least for today, but before I start working on anything, I receive a notice that Nour Asaf has entered Escanso.

I wait for him to come to the castle, but he goes to the commoner's Lord's Hall and formally requests a meeting to discuss a "business proposal" on behalf of his family's airship-building company.

Oh… I guess we're kind of business rivals now, aren't we?

I invite him to the castle, and Hana, Ciel, Yunia, and I go down to our main hall to receive him and his two wives. Hana wants to see Midori again, her fellow dragonkin, Ciel just wants to spend some time close to me since she's still feeling a bit scared due to the close call, and Yunia is here because of course she would participate in business talks.

"Well, I also want to participate in the talks a bit," Ciel timidly admits.

Surprisingly, Alissa isn't acting clingy, but that's only due to how proud she is of how she managed to access my system while I was sleeping.

While we wait for Nour to receive our response, Alissa decides to retell her little tale through [Bind], "It wasn't easy. Your brain is like a maze, but I still managed to find my way through it with only my intuition because of how many times I've gazed upon it from afar."

And Aoi excitedly joins in, "I like diving into his brain, it's like swimming through buildings, and there are so many different architectural styles there that every dive is different."

Alissa nods internally in agreement. "Exactly! If I didn't have other things to do, I think I'd stay in there forever."

"Alissa does seem like she'd gladly let her mind be consumed by Wolfy's," Lina suddenly chimes in.

"What…?" Alissa mumbles confusedly.

"I know you have to control yourself, or else, you'd just 'melt' into his mind," Lina accuses her, sounding both teasing and concerned.

"Oh yeah, that happened once, but only with her," I remark curiously.

"Because she's a chicken dragon," Hana teases.

"A flying dwarf," Lina chimes in.

"A celibate succubus," Roxanne continues.

"A raving druid," Ciel guiltily participates.

"A goblin architect," Aoi coos with an internal grin.

"Gih," Gify chirps, and we all chuckle.

In essence, Alissa is a bit crazy.

Her pride starts to be replaced by embarrassment, so we tone down the teasing to not ruin her moment. Her dedication to me is ridiculously strong, but it's also so innocent that it doesn't feel right to make fun of her for it.

I grab the bundle of "blankets" that makes up her presence in my mind and give it a warm hug as I whisper, "I love you just the way you are."

"Awn…" She moans softly and whispers, "I love you too…"

"We know…" Yunia dryly comments, and Alissa and I smile at her teasing, but we don't respond.

I release her after a short moment, then something suddenly occurs to me. "But… I didn't know that you guys could explore my mind without me noticing it," I admit with a slightly uncomfortable laugh.

And Alissa cheerfully explains things, "Not quite as easily as you can with ours. We can read each others' minds like they are open books, but for some reason, you can perfectly understand what you read, while for us, it's like you're written in a different language. We can only hear your thoughts and sense your feelings, but we can't read your memories."

Curious.

"You do have a 'piece' of our souls inside you," Yunia points out.

And I hum in understanding, "Ooh~… It's like I have a 'decoder' to your souls inside of me, and it allows me to not only see whatever I want, but also control it."

"Not a scary concept at all," Ciel sarcastically remarks with a snort.

"It's a bit late to complain about that now," Roxanne retorts, and the rest of the girls mutely agree.

Ciel now feels a bit awkward because she isn't actually expressing any regret about allowing me to use [Bind] on her, she's just surprised. "Well, the spell just goes way beyond what I think is reasonable. Just imagine what kind of warped mind you'd need to be able to come up with this spell in the first place."

"Looking at [Otherworldly Summoning], they were definitely insane," Yunia puts it succinctly, and we all emphatically agree.

Soon after, we receive notice that Nour has finally arrived with his two wives. It seems that he still hasn't married the rest of his harem, so only these two have the required "standing" to meet with us at his side for official business.

Then the double doors open, and the trio walks in. Nour is still the same young, fair-skinned, brown-headed teen as before, though his current expression is perfectly solemn instead of his normal easygoing smile he would usually show the world. Midori struts forward with pride, completely sure of herself as she knows that she looks stunning with her glorious emerald hair and bold grin, as expected of a dragonkin. Safiya looks like a perfect match for Nour with her prim and proper demeanor, while her brown drills and freckles make her look adorable.

They stop a good distance away and give us a deep bow. "Lords of the Ryder family, I'm Nour Asaf," he begins the introductions.

I sigh internally and politely reply, "Nour, I believe you might remember my wives, Hana and Ciel, but this is the first time you'll have met Yulania, the newest member."

He straightens up and smiles cordially as he flatters her, "Her portrait doesn't do justice to her beauty."

"Indeed, not even the greatest sculptors in existence have been able to capture true elven beauty," she pompously replies.

I roll my eyes and wave my hand. "Let's stop with these formalities here; they don't sit well with me," I assert, then a set of sofas between our two groups starts to grow out of the white grass-carpet.

Nour sighs and relaxes his posture as he shares a look with his two wives. Midori shrugs casually while Safiya suddenly seems quite shy and anxious.

"And we're thankful for that," he replies with a wry smile. "Imagine my family's surprise when they realized that my adventurer friend from Rabanara was somehow now a Lord who ruled over half of the High Forest."

We stand up from our thrones and start walking towards the sofas.

"'Don't fuck it up' was the main point they tried to shove down our throats," Midori adds wryly.

"And making you three act as stiff as shields was a thing, too?" Hana asks teasingly.

"The flame between us would've been snuffed out instantly if we had offended you the first moment we saw each other, no?" The emerald dragonkin returns the sass.

We all sit down, and a couple of maids start serving us tea with chocolate cookies.

"Oh? You already got chocolate?" Nour coos in amazement.

"I'm a bit of a sweet-tooth, so I might as well use part of my influence to get some," I gently reply.

He confusedly raises an eyebrow at me. "'Sweet-tooth'…? I think I get what you mean."

"There was a good chance that you'd become conceited. You're now royalty and also part dragon," Safiya continues and hesitantly points out.

"And we know how the dragonkin are," Midori smugly remarks.

"Yeah, well, sometimes I do need to keep up appearances," I tiredly affirm. "But anyway, how have you been?"

Though Nour has been living the adventurer life, it hasn't been that eventful. He has risen to the number two position among the fellowships in Rabanara, but he's trying to keep his distance from the Anara family. Even he knows that they're a bit "radioactive," and he wants to enjoy his time, not get caught up in politics.

"Which is why I was quite reluctant to come here," he confesses with a bitter smile.

"In the end, you can't escape your duties," Yunia sagely states, and he slowly nods.

"So, what kind of business deal do you want to strike with us?" I finally broach the main topic.

Their training kicks in, and the trio before us suddenly become serious.

Nour clears his throat and assuredly announces, "The Chimeras under your wing, we want your permission for us to recruit them, and also perhaps to exchange expert airship builders with your Institute."

I hum in thought and lean back in my seat as my tail slowly sways behind me. "That is quite an important deal, but wouldn't your parents be the more appropriate representatives to negotiate this?"

He grimaces and looks away. "They would, but they also want this to be a sort of trial for me."

Yunia smiles subtly and stares at Nour intensely, looking quite interested. "I assume this will be an ongoing negotiation, not something that we'll be able to work out in a single sitting?" She confidently guesses.

Nour shares a concerned look with Safiya, then he shakes his head tiredly and admits, "Exactly."

Yunia turns to me and casually remarks, "I believe he's only responsible for opening the negotiations while his parents will take over once things have become more concrete."

"Well, you've seen through us," Midori admits and raises her palms in defeat.

"With how merchants are, maybe being seen through was also part of their plan," Hana comments amusedly and makes us all chuckle, lightening up the mood.

Then I pull the conversation back on track, "The Chimeras are their own people, and though they might be loyal to me, they aren't forbidden from leaving and following their own paths."

Nour nods once and firmly states, "We don't want to seem like we're poaching them from you, but everyone in Faium and the Mainland are curious about what kind of knowledge the Chimeras would be willing to share with us, so we really did have to ask first."

And I reply in kind, "The ones hired by the Institute are off limits, though, at least until the first prototypes are ready to be revealed."

He knits his eyebrows in concern. "Does that mean that there's no chance of an exchange of experts?"

"Yes, for now."

He nods and relents. "I understand."

I smile gently and appease him, "I'll introduce you to Oritiki. She's responsible for the well-being of the Chimeras, so she can help you find people who might be willing to be recruited."

He brightens up a bit and lowers his head for a moment. "We're thankful for your help."

I nod and smile politely.

Then he sighs and lets his posture relax. "Those were the only matters we wanted to discuss with you."

"Then let's fully drop these masks of formality and chat until it's time for dinner," Hana cheerfully announces.

"We're very curious about your tales regarding the dungeon you conquered," Midori immediately replies, sounding fairly eager, and the other two members of her family quickly mirror her demeanor.

I invite in the rest of Nour's harem, and my girls slowly also join in, turning the casual conversation into an impromptu party.

Iana, the black-skinned archer from Sommerland, has officially joined the harem while Bellatrix, the red-skinned, androgynous, Devil-type demon Blood Slave seems to have quite an intimate relationship with Midori, because of course a dragonkin would be like that.

The newest member of his harem is called Farzaneh. She's a Krampus-type demon priestess that Ciel recognizes. The Krampus are a goat-like race with a natural talent for magic, and this one is a fine specimen of her race, in both magic power and body type. The curvy shortstack is less fluffy than my Poosh, but she's got two nice pairs of assets to compensate for that.

"Watch this," Hana calls out, then her whole right arm glows with a green light for a second, and once it's no longer glowing, her skin is visible again, but it's now covered in shiny emerald scales.

"Wow…" Midori coos, visibly impressed, then she grabs Hana's arm and starts to inspect the scales. "What is this…?"

"A skill I created, it's called [Draconic Body]," Hana proudly announces and starts describing it.

To showcase it some more, she also covers her chest with scales, and a few spikes appear on her back, pulling her loose dress taut around her large, round breasts.

"Punch me," she dares Midori.

The ruby-scaled dragonkin doesn't hesitate and cracks her knuckles against Hana's impenetrable defense.

"Fuck me! That's hard!" Midori exclaims as she shakes her quickly reddening hand, then Farzaneh sighs and starts chanting [Heal].

"The skill also gives me a little bit of 'Strength' with each level, so I'm fucking invincible, now," Hana brags and waves her scales, making them scintillate with their shine.

Midori stares at Hana's mounds, enthralled by their magnificence, and Hana puffs up her chest, almost shoving them in Midori's face, who then cups them both and gives them a squeeze. "Amazing," she coos, and Hana grins fearsomely.

The hall goes silent as we stare at the two of them. I share a look with Nour, but neither of us wants this to stop.

"Why are you fondling her breasts if what she was showing us was only her scales?" Safiya questions, sounding completely unamused.

"Well, they're both amazing!" Midori replies and grins at Hana.

"Let's… let's not abuse their goodwill by being so aggressive," Nour suddenly puts an end to it, and Midori releases the funbags, though she still continues to stare at her shiny cleavage.

"I don't mind, touch me as much as you want," Hana casually assures them.

"Well, I do," Nour immediately replies and a wave of courage washes over him as he stiffens his posture and glares at Midori. "You can't let a dragonkin loose, or they'll start pushing past boundaries."

"Well said," I agree with him, but I send Hana a nod of approval instead of rebuking her like Nour.

Safiya dryly remarks with tired eyes, "I can see where this is going…"

Bellatrix discreetly approaches Midori, and Alissa hears her whisper, "Just think of what your mother will say."

The emerald-haired beauty rolls her eyes and sighs, then takes a step back from Hana and raises her hands in surrender. "Alright, alright," she relents, but then she shows a very dragonkin-like mischievous grin. "But you have to tell me how to get that skill."

"I'll gladly help my kin spread the skill I created," Hana politely asserts and nods, then mirrors her grin.

With the lewd air now gone, everyone resumes their conversations, then I approach Nour and tease him a bit, "Having a bit of trouble with keeping your dragon between your legs?"

"A bit," he softly replies and chuckles nervously. "She knows me very well, and she loves to find new ways to get me… 'excited.'"

I candidly suggest, "Have you tried chaining her up and choking her until she submits? I mean that literally."

He gives me a side glance and turns his eyes back to Midori, who's still subtly flirting with Hana. "Yes…"

"How about chaining her up and making the rest of the harem submit to your virility in front of her while she gets nothing until she's begging for it?"

He raises his eyebrows and stares at me in astonishment. "We don't really do that kind of… 'intense' roleplaying."

I shrug. "Something new to try, then. Dragons love hierarchies, I know because I'm one, myself, so pressing your boot on her throat might have some interesting results."

He blinks blankly. "'Interesting,' not 'positive'?"

I smirk teasingly. "That's a risk that you'll need to be willing to take. Dragonkin are all about high-risk, high-reward, so there's not much point in being gentle with them."

He chuckles again, though now with a bit more energy to it. "I thought that the sex skills would be the end of it, but I guess I need a few more levels and 'Stats' to properly take care of my harem, huh?"

My smirk widens. "'Skills'? As in, plural?"

He glances at me and has the audacity to blush. "Yeah…"

I give him a painful slap on the back, and my scales clink loudly against each other. "The brotherhood congratulates you, stallion, on your growth as a true man. I wish you many quivering pussies and spread cheeks. May our cocks be ever erect."

He shakes his head as chuckles heartily. "I'll drink to that. May our cocks be ever erect," he repeats, and we both take a sip from our glasses.

I offer them some of my Cinco Flores Eia extract, and the party becomes more lively as the ambrosia allows us to loosen up a bit more.

Then I invite Oritiki, Hukarere, and Kaatohe to join us, and Nour immediately delves deep into business talks with Oritiki. He gives them a glance, but then diligently keeps his eyes up, expertly avoiding the temptation of looking at the alluring sets of naked breasts and pussies openly displayed before him. Though I'm sure Bellatrix and Midori wouldn't mind, the rest of his harem makes it quite obvious that they think differently.

A note from Manasong

Hall of Fame of Patrons

The patrons who support Rupegia shall have their names sung by the bards for they deserve the glory and honor. Their names are:

Prince PreownedFIN.

Prince Creamy Spinach.

Prince Owldente.

Prince Charlie Foxtrot.

Lord Andrew Meyers.

Lord Novgarod.

Lord Michale Erwin.

Lord Bakerdea.

Lord Maurice.

Lord Mattirro Draca.

Lord Fullmoon.

Lord Sean Drake.

Lord FrostyCube.

Lord Mike Bartter.

Lord Warwulfv.

Lord Jorge Franco.

Lord Khristopher Welsh.

Lord DJ.

Lord Philip.

Lord Tenebris Lupus.

Lord The Tallest Joshua.

Lord Copey Dunt.

Lord Paul Daval.

Lord Paul Daval.

Lord Bradly.

Lord AndreyUC.

Lord Tmac.

Lord Krawn.

Noble Salty Panda.

Noble Mild Fracas.

Noble Aclys.

Noble CarlBaxter.

Noble CHoobler.

Noble d3235.

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Chapter 116: Friendship - Part 2

A note from Manasong

Attention: to conform to the limit of sexual content allowed in a novel, I've censored this chapter. You can look for the uncensored version here.

I walk up to Kaatohe from behind her as she chooses something to eat from the snack table, then I grab a handful of an ass cheek as I smirk at her. "You should visit us more often," I huskily suggest.

She turns her cat eyes towards me and stares in silence for a few seconds as I slowly slide a pinky claw in. "Perhaps I should," she agrees with a rather dull tone.

I slide the claw out. "Are you alright?"

She grabs the claw and puts it back in. "I am," she whispers with a faint nod.

I pull her waist closer and put a hand on her flank as I caress her bronze skin. "You sound depressed," I state concernedly.

She smiles subtly, and her fangs peek out from behind her lips. "Perhaps I was just feeling lonely," she confesses, which is rather unlike her.

I release her and pull her face closer to mine, then I kiss her snout, and her whiskers twitch. "Seriously, come spend more time with us."

I release her ass and turn her body around to face me, then I touch her properly as we slowly kiss, and her soft purrs pleasantly vibrate my tongue.

Hana joins us and hugs Kaatohe from behind. "I missed you, too. Our leopard has been spending too much time away from home," she whispers seductively as she fondles Kaatohe.

The cat woman breaks the kiss and lets out a low chuckle, then she turns her head sideways and kisses Hana, so I continue to savor our furry lover through our connection.

I look to the side and see Osaria staring at us like a stalking tiger, just waiting for the opportunity to steal Kaatohe from me.

Nour gets distracted from his conversation with Oritiki and glances at us repeatedly, seemingly unable to believe what we're doing in public.

"They're about to fuck," Oritiki wryly states, catching him off-guard.

"W-what… here…?" He hesitantly asks and glances at us again.

She exhales loudly in amusement. "Why not? She's already naked, and he might as well be with how tight his clothes are."

Nour knits his eyebrows in concern. "You're enjoying this, aren't you? I heard that the Chimeras were exhibitionists, but-…"

She waves her hand and interrupts him, "Not exhibitionists, we're naturalists. The God of Creation plunked us down in the Broken Skies with skin, fur, and scales, and we found no need to cover ourselves up."

"I apologize, I didn't mean to offend," he serenely replies, putting on the noble mask for just a moment.

She snorts. "I'm not really offended, just baffled at how you land dwellers can feel shame about exposing your genitals." Then she presses a finger against her dark pussy lips, exposing the little nub of her clit. "Everyone has either this or a penis, so why would you ever be embarrassed about it?"

Ciel chimes in and gently explains, "It's us who are the true perverts here. We put so much value in our clothes that a fetish about hiding our bodies took hold over our cultures."

And Yunia also joins in, "It even affected us elves, who have absolute pride in our bodies." She motions to her lingerie-like dousnadeia. Though the shapes of her nipples and cameltoe are visible through the thin fabric, it's only those bits that are actually covered in non-transparent cloth.

Oritiki starts to slowly touch herself as she watches us and continues, "Sometimes, we put on skirts out of consideration for the little ones, such as the dwarves, because they stand at eye level with our crotches, but that's as far as we'll go."

"I see… I'll try to be more receptive to your traditions," Nour diplomatically states and glances down.

"As if that's going to be difficult to you," Roxanne teasingly remarks and points at the bulge in Nour's pants.

Oritiki follows her finger and smirks. "You can touch yourself, too. It's considered an honor to have people think that you're worthy of being watched while you're sharing intimacy," she also teases him a bit.

He glances at his harem and promptly replies, "I'll pass."

Kaatohe slides her hand down into my pants and pulls it out.

"But at least watch us!" I shout at him and grin.

"Now you are definitely an exhibitionist!" Midori exclaims and raises her eyebrows as she stares at my engorged Sword.

Suddenly, Osaria hugs Hana from behind. "You're getting in the way of their spectacle," my milf whispers sultrily and whisks Hana away.

Then Poosh clears off half of the snacks table so that I can lay down Kaatohe on it, and I promptly take it.

I grab Kaatohe's necklace and kiss the amber gem that houses her spirit, but that makes her suddenly pause.

I slowly draw my hips back, making her purr, as I stare into her cat eyes and notice that their vertical slits have suddenly become round.

Oh, no…

"Are you alr-…" My question is interrupted by her furry arms suddenly wrapping around my neck just before they pull her body up so that she can press her face against mine and invade my mouth with her wild tongue.

Okay, I did something good, then.

I hug her back and continue moving my hips.

I decide to share my pleasure with the girls, but I leave out Alissa since she gets off on neglect.

"Wolfy~…" Ciel pleads as she moans and starts rubbing her legs against each other, then the hall is filled with moans and the scent of female arousal.

"What's going on…?" Safiya hesitantly asks, dreading the answer.

Poosh whispers something about a bath to Nour, then he immediately collects his harem and leaves, the tent in his pants quite visibly bigger, but then he comes back and drags Midori out since she was still busy staring, having been simply too enthralled by Hana and Osaria to notice when the others left.

Now that most of our audience is gone, I allow the girls to undress and really start the orgy. Oritiki quickly becomes so aroused that she has to leave and search for her husbands, though she'll be back for dinner with Nour.

This woman is mine, I'm sure of it, so it hurts me to hear her admit her feelings of loneliness. I feel guilty about how I won't always be able to be there when my concubines might need me, but this impertinent cat needs to be more open about her wants and needs, though I guess she has no problem with asking for my dick.

Our fucking isn't just wild, it's passionate, and the way she stares deep into my eyes reveals her love for me. She isn't just using me as a scratching post, I can see how much she enjoys hearing me moan, and she's trying her best to sync her movements with mine to enhance my pleasure.

She could just be rough and try to squeeze me dry, but she keeps her own wildness in check so that the pounding lasts longer and the rising pleasure becomes more noticeable for both of us.

But while we won't do it madly, I'll definitely give her enough pleasure to break her mind.

Since the girls are all a bit drained from the impromptu orgy, I use my tentacles to wash and massage them, then we soak in the hot bath for a good half hour.

For dinner, Oritiki brings her husbands, and now, it's Nour who becomes quite uncomfortable with their hanging, fleshy logs. In Chimera culture, men usually try to keep themselves at a half chub, especially if they're growers, so it's hard to not notice their tools of love swaying as they walk. But once we sit down, he calms down since they're now hidden from view.

Nour recognizes that he knows very little about the Chimeras, so the main topic of our meal is about Chimera culture and their daily lives.

"You need the help of an experienced Spirit mage just to 'live,'" he remarks, a little disheartened. "Even to simply leave the town for longer than a day, you'd need a personal mage to come with you."

And I categorically add, "The [Materialize] spell we've created isn't exactly advanced, but there aren't that many Spirit mages who can cast it since it's such an exotic magic school."

"Our people aren't ready to leave Escanso yet," Oritiki soberly states.

Nour frowns as he deliberates, "Not to mention the dangers. The gems that hold your spirits are valuable, and there's barely anything you could do to stop others without a physical body."

Oritiki nods. "Yes, even our magic suffers a lot when all we have are our spirits."

"I guess it'll be incredibly difficult to recruit a Chimera for now," he bitterly admits.

"Especially with how well we're being treated here," the warthog-headed husband affirms and exhales loudly.

"We understand that our Lords are shouldering a lot of the cost of our accommodations, so it'd be unfair of us to leave before we've repaid our debts," not-Thor gently expands.

And Oritiki puts the final nail in the coffin, "The Intervention has also made us quite loyal."

Farzaneh glances at us as she now has a very good understanding about the meaning of what happened during the Lordship Ceremony. "I think it's best that we don't tempt them," she announces and gives Nour a pleading look, then he nods, ending his interrogation.

We retreat to the game room like usual and invite Nour's harem along with Oritiki and her husbands to relax with us.

We've actually talked quite a lot already, so I retreat to my corner with Alissa and Lina to recharge my batteries. Nour's harem and Oritiki's husbands enjoy our game tables quite a lot, so the three sides start up a small competition.

Kaatohe cheers up quite a bit, dropping the noble persona so that she can more deeply relate and socialize with the others. It surprises me a bit, but then I remember that she may be just as alone as I was when I first came into this world. Her mother decided to leave for Paradise along with most of the people she knew, so that could've left her emotionally wounded.

Ciel approaches Kaatohe and strikes up a conversation with her, hoping that our slender leopard lover will eventually open up one day.

After quickly getting thrashed by both Hana and Midori, Nour sits down with Safiya, assuming a similar position to ours as she sits on his lap and pampers him like Alissa does for me and I do for Lina.

I brush my little girl's hair while she reads a history book. It tells about the empire's work on Bestiaram. They managed to conquer a good chunk of the continent once, but then the Volnosht Rebellion ended with them losing most of their territory. Fortunately, after the empire retreated all the way to the south of Bestiaram, the Volnoshts lost their steam and fractured into dozens of little kingdoms.

The beastfolk dream of one day returning to the glory days of the Feral Octarchy, but none of these kingdoms had what it would take to unite the many races of Bestiaram, so they all fell back into the old ways of endless war and conflict caused by their brutal rulers in their hunger for power.

Lina's eyes quickly scan through the text for any mention of casualties or slaughter of civilians, then she adds up the numbers inside her head, and their steady rise starts to frighten her. "You'd think that losing Aremut and Hiyoku Hara were horrible events in the empire's history, but they sound like nothing if you compare it to the loss of life that happens in Bestiaram quite regularly," she grimly observes.

Alissa raises her head and follows up as she plays with my shiny tail scales, "Aremut wasn't even a slaughter. The people had plenty of time to escape the corruption. Though, of course, it was still an entire territory that was vacated…"

Then Lina concludes, "And Hiyoku Hara is a training ground for the imperial army, so while people die regularly, it's never on the same scale as Bestiaram."

"Sounds like a terrible place to live," I comment absentmindedly.

And Lina starts to reminisce with a faint smile on her face, "Hilde said that most of the wealthy merchants she met started out in Bestiaram, so I guess it's a good place to get rich, if you can survive long enough."

And I add with a skeptical tone, "I wonder if those riches were taken rather than earned."

"Oh…" Lina mumbles and frowns. "That sounds likely."

I hum as I braid her silky black hair, then I start to wonder if I should paint her nails. They're currently a pale pink, so I'm thinking about going with something more bold like red, or something to match a dress, like light blue.

Nour suddenly lifts his head, then turns to me and asks, "Wolf, you haven't met with the emperor yet, right?"

"We haven't. There's been too many things that we've had to take care of, but I think we might have time on the thirtieth of this month," I reply absentmindedly, still idly thinking about Lina's nails.

"Ah… it's too far," he mutters a bit dejectedly.

I turn to him and grin. "Why? Wanted a ride on our airships?"

He chuckles softly. "That'd be great, but not what I was thinking about. I just wanted to show you Faium and our airships. I think my parents might try to meet with you in the capital, so if I came along, I could keep them from trying anything too shrewd."

I snort and raise my eyebrows in surprise. "You really don't have a good opinion of your parents, huh?"

He plays with Safiya's curly hair embarrassedly as he looks away. "I'm just not as passionate as they are about businesses."

I hum and curiously probe, "You think they're addicted to making money?"

He shrugs. "You could say that…"

"Oh, they're just like mine, then," Roxanne casually chimes in and takes a seat beside me, then she lays her head against my chest and starts playing with Lina's cute braids.

"They just have big expectations for Nour's future," Safiya hesitantly defends them.

And Nour adds, "And I'm just a bit averse to all the politics being thrown at me all the time."

I nod and agree, "I'm not much of a fan of those kinds of things either, but I do what I must."

Nour raises an eyebrow at me. "Then why did you become a Lord?"

"Because I had to, just like you did," I categorically reply.

He blinks blankly, then smiles gently. "Well, I guess we're more similar than I'd thought."

But Safiya gives me a skeptical look. "What sort of need required you to become a Lord?"

And Nour promptly interjects, "Don't ask them that kind of question, my love, they have their secrets."

She lowers her head. "I apologize."

"No need. I understand your curiosity." I cryptically reply with a wave of my hand.

But that brings our conversation to an awkward stop, so Roxanne comes to the rescue and moves it forward, "My parents also had high expectations for me, but I ended up running away."

"And you came back as royalty," Alissa gently adds.

"But not everyone can do the same," I retort in kind.

"And it was still not enough to get her to forgive me," Roxanne wryly declares.

And that prompts Nour to spill out his feelings, "I don't think I can run away, but I do want to have some regular breaks from that kind of work, which is why I was quite annoyed when they interrupted my training to make me come here and negotiate."

Then I kindly suggest, "Escanso will always be open to you, so you can look at 'business' as an excuse to come to visit us."

Nour looks at his glass for a couple of seconds, then snorts as he shrugs. "Heh, I'll take your word on that."

A note from Manasong

Hall of Fame of Patrons

The patrons who support Rupegia shall have their names sung by the bards for they deserve the glory and honor. Their names are:

Prince PreownedFIN.

Prince Creamy Spinach.

Prince Owldente.

Prince Charlie Foxtrot.

Lord Andrew Meyers.

Lord Novgarod.

Lord Michale Erwin.

Lord Bakerdea.

Lord Maurice.

Lord Mattirro Draca.

Lord Fullmoon.

Lord Sean Drake.

Lord FrostyCube.

Lord Mike Bartter.

Lord Warwulfv.

Lord Jorge Franco.

Lord Khristopher Welsh.

Lord DJ.

Lord Philip.

Lord Tenebris Lupus.

Lord The Tallest Joshua.

Lord Copey Dunt.

Lord Paul Daval.

Lord Paul Daval.

Lord Bradly.

Lord AndreyUC.

Lord Tmac.

Lord Krawn.

Noble Salty Panda.

Noble Mild Fracas.

Noble Aclys.

Noble CarlBaxter.

Noble CHoobler.

Noble d3235.

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Chapter 116: Friendship - Part 3

A note from Manasong

I'll be taking a small break, just one week, this time to actually rest and get my sleep schedule back in order. I might update the Character Compendium, but I'll at least finish writing the first chapter of the new side-story I didn't have much time to work on these past few weeks.

Also, Royal Road doesn't want any under 18 characters getting into sexual situations, so I'll be just retconning their ages and possibly aging everyone a bit, but it won't change anything about the story, it'll be just numbers.

Today is the 25th. Fo, day of Fire. The day when forges all over the world burn the hottest, so it's said to be the day of smiths. Elves don't really do smithing, though their smokehouses all take advantage of this day, making parts of the town smell strongly of elven scented logs.

Kaatohe wakes me up, encouraged by the girls to join the Ryder Cum Guzzlers. She's an okay dick-sucker, but her specialty is looking snobbish and haughty, which makes it extra satisfying when she's bent over and struggling to keep up her composure as I wreck her.

The vulnerable woman from yesterday is gone, and she gives me a smug smile when she notices me waking up.

I pull her face forward and kiss her furry forehead. "You should start sleeping here more often," I gently suggest, the tone of my voice catching her off-guard for a split second.

"I very well may…" She stiffly replies.

Ciel suddenly hugs her from behind and rubs her face against the soft fur of her back. "You'll always be welcome among us."

Kaatohe freezes, seemingly not knowing how to react to the angel's boundless sweetness. The fact that this cat is also a woman of culture who knows how to appreciate large breasts just adds to the chaos inside her mind.

Hana takes advantage of her vulnerable state to steal a kiss from her, but she's always ready for lewdness, so she immediately responds to the sudden invasion of her mouth with her own tongue.

But then the cheeky dragonkin abruptly breaks the kiss, leaving Kaatohe hanging and wanting for more.

"You're pretty thirsty, and we have endless love to give," Hana smugly states.

"Presumptuous land-dwellers…" Kaatohe grumbles and turns her face away snobbishly.

We smile at her tsun, but we don't tease her any further than that.

My [Summoning Magic] increased by 2 (now 8+34). I'm not really sure what, exactly, triggered the double level up, but I bet it's because of [Otherworldly Summoning].

Roxanne actually learned [Alteration Magic] with two points because of yesterday. Even though she tried to suppress the level up, what she did was so intense that the skill was forcefully learned.

Krysta makes nutty chocolate brownies with a warm, creamy inside, making me squeal internally in happiness.

"These are… nuts?" Safiya questions curiously as she picks up a muffin.

"Indeed they are," Ciel softly replies as she quickly fills her plate with a selection of chocolate dishes.

"The chocolate revolution is just beginning," I cryptically state, but everyone quickly becomes too enthralled by the sweets to play along with my joke.

"This is…" Midori begins but is left speechless as she foodgasms from the supreme deliciousness of the brownie. "This is genius!"

"Indeed, it is," Osaria rather smugly replies. "Rande specifically brought a dragonkin chef from Yukiyama so that we can produce sweets like these to sell."

"It's going to rain coins over here," Nour casually states, and everyone agrees.

After breakfast, it's time for goodbyes.

Nour and his harem get their ID tablets back, though now with our seal, which will allow them to use the Imperial [Eternal Gate] Network throughout all the elven lands for free. It feels kind of nice being the one who's giving out favors instead of receiving them, for once.

"We really appreciate this, Wolf," Nour affirms with a smile as he receives his tablet.

I walk up to him and offer a handshake. "I know you have your reservations about mixing business with friendship, but we should be able to keep them separate," I assert as he returns it.

He hums softly and nods. "I admit I was quite nervous about how our meeting would go, but you've assuaged my fears and helped me calm down quite a lot."

I grin and earnestly confess, "It's because of you that I met Alissa, a woman who's stolen my heart, so it'll take something truly monumental for me to renege on our friendship."

His back stiffens as he's briefly overwhelmed with emotions, then he breaks into a mirrored grin. "For the brotherhood."

Now you're getting it.

"For the brotherhood."

I sigh as I sit down on the sofa and take in the view of the sea.

"Missing your boy lover already?" Roxanne teases with a shit-eating grin.

I turn my face away and point my nose up just like an elf would. "Hmph, bro love is something you girls wouldn't understand with your filthy, corrupted, fujoshi minds."

"Look who's talking…" Alissa retorts and brings up the memories of what I forced her to go through just yesterday.

"I never said that I wasn't corrupted," I shamelessly reply.

"He's feeling something that isn't lust, so of course, his cock would be confused," Yunia casually remarks.

"The way Wolfy treated Nour was so gentle and warm that it felt similar to how he treats Lina," Aoi adds, part innocent remark, part evil teasing influenced by Roxanne.

She's corrupting even my loyal dragon wife.

"Gih," even Gify piles on.

I just close my eyes and begin my mana circulation training. It's easier to just ignore the relentless teasing than to engage with them.

The truth is that I'm starting to understand why Oritiki wanted us to continue treating her so casually. When everyone is always showing me such a degree of respect, it creates a wall between me and everyone I meet, making things a bit lonely.

Nour's casual behavior is now quite refreshing to me, so I want to preserve it, and the similarities between both of our harems also makes it quite easy to relate with him.

I've always been a bit of a recluse, and I never had to put much effort into maintaining friendships since I could easily socialize with like-minded people in the MMORPGs I was addicted to, but now, a friend is a rare commodity, so I need to preserve what I have.

After the girls calm down, the morning goes peacefully as usual, then we have a hearty meal, and the time to conquer the Stinky Goblins dungeon finally comes.

We armor up in an instant with [Equip], then we gather in the entrance hall, where one of our mages opens a [Gate] to the dungeon for us.

The Celestial Horns have already secured the area, so on arrival, we find a few monster corpses spread out around us.

Cave monsters are quite peculiar. Aside from a few types that mimic already blind animals, like Giant Moles, they all have pretty good vision even if they might not need it for 99% of their lives. They have that sense because humanoids have that sense, and all adventurers use [Spirit Light] to explore dungeons, so dark dungeons like this one are generally disfavored by the adventurers because they need to light a beacon that clearly tells every monster within line of sight for kilometri exactly where they are.

As Lords, we need to take these things into consideration because it's our responsibility to decide if this dungeon is a good place for adventurers to train or not. Considering how "disease" is a strong theme here, which is another thing that adventurers hate, there's zero reason for us to put in the effort to maintain this dungeon and keep it from overflowing.

We're going to blaze through it until we find the core.

Oritiki lands before us, and Paraaone, her bull-headed bodyguard, lands a bit behind her, then he gives Lina a small wave.

It's quite comical how most of Lina's friends are big, burly guys.

She jerks her head to face me and blinks blankly in surprise.

"Everyone is bigger than me!" She protests through [Bind].

Just to mess with her further, I send her imagery of my thick, draconic tool stretching her little flower to the limit while I pound her ass.

You definitely love big things.

She immediately blushes and lowers her head as she silently fumes at my bullying.

"Your Highness, everyone's eager for some action," Oritiki cheerfully greets us and offers her hand.

I give her an armored handshake as I reply, "I don't want to visit this wretched dungeon again, so let's break through any and all resistance without stopping. I want to finish this dungeon in one go."

She releases my hand and nods diligently. "This will be a long dive, then?"

"Indeed. We don't know how deep it goes."

"Then I suggest that the Horns fight on foot to conserve mana."

I nod back, and she takes flight again, then starts ordering her men.

I make one final check to ensure that our group is ready, then we put on our helmets and begin our advance.

The Horns assume a wedge formation with the girls, the golems, and I at the tip of the spear, then Alcander, Silvano, and a small detachment of support court mages behind us, and a few Companions to protect the mages, not that Silvano needs protecting.

The support mages summon two light and two air elementals to keep us from catching a disease from this contaminated, stale air. This helps me quite a lot since I don't need to reduce my MP by summoning them myself.

The Stinky Goblins dungeon is just one long tunnel that spirals downwards and widens the deeper we go, and it's seemingly too simple to sustain complex monster life, so the only living beings that can survive here are those that can adapt to the hostile environment.

The flora is made up of mostly moss, weird mushrooms, and a few even weirder, alien-looking plants. They primarily feed on the mana that seeps down from above, the mana that the core exudes and rises upwards, and the constantly trickling, nutrient-rich water and debris that comes in from the High Forest through the entrance.

The monsters here are mainly insect and mole-like variants, but they don't have much to eat, so they're quite weak as only the ones that are as tenacious as cockroaches (like goblins, for example) can survive in the upper part, but as we descend, there'll be so much mana coming from the core that stronger monsters will be able to survive.

We still find the odd, large monster that has just recently spawned, but since they're always alone, they pose no threat to our formation as we bulldoze through everything.

Lina and Roxanne quickly tire from our jogging pace, so I summon a quadrupedal earth-Lina to carry them. It has seats, and it doesn't shake that much while it's moving, so they can actually rest quite leisurely on it.

"I'm surprised that you are keeping up, old man," Silvano teases Alcander.

"I'm an experienced… court mage, Sir Silvano," Alcander replies pompously, though he's starting to lose his breath.

"I can summon a few more of these elementals, so don't overexert yourself," I kindly declare.

"That won't be necessary… your Highness. I can handle this pace…" Alcander assures me.

I simply nod and face forward again. If he can't, then he'll learn to be more modest about his own limits.

Yunia merely gives Roxanne a single glance, and the decidedly nonathletic succubus grinds her teeth in anger.

Then Lina preemptively warns her through [Bind], "Don't even try to use me as an Escape Bomb. My legs are simply too short for long-distance running."

"I wouldn't!" Roxanne protests.

"You were thinking about it!" Lina accuses her back.

And Roxanne glares at the little armored girl beside her. "Oi! Don't you start judging me before I even do anything!"

"It was just a warning…" Lina mumbles.

Roxanne angrily crosses her arms. "Hmph!"

"Focus, girls," I softly call them out.

The crystalline infection that affects all living beings in the dungeon seems to grow more prominent the deeper we go, possibly fed by the dungeon's mana.

The crystals that grow on the monsters' skin seem to give them access to stronger magic, but as the crystals increase in size, the monster's behavior starts to become strange.

The cadence at which we encounter the monsters gradually decreases, but the number of them that we find together increases, so it's a bit like we're encountering "waves" of monsters.

The way they fight also puzzles us as they become dumber, acting more like zombies than anything.

"They're obviously working together," Yunia points out, and we all agree.

Then the environment suddenly changes. Nearly all of the flora is gone, seemingly eaten almost completely, leaving only small stalks, roots, or patches of moss.

"Something big is up ahead," Oritiki reports.

"I'll send scouts," I reply and summon three Hollys, then they dash ahead while we maintain our pace.

For a long way, the landscape remains completely desolate, aside from the random starving monster that spawned recently.

But the Hollys eventually find the hulking mass that has been eating everything around here.

It's a huge, ugly monster that seems like a mix between a turtle and a frog, with a body that's been disfigured by the uncountable numbers of faintly glowing pink crystals growing all over its skin like a shell. Even its eye is covered in transparent crystal, making it look like it's wearing goggles. An Aberrant, most likely.

This is why Lords are tasked with maintaining a dungeon. There's no way the average adventurer party could defeat such a thing on their own as it's likely far too hard to kill in comparison with the average "power level" of the common monster found at this depth.

Putting up a special request at the monster hunters' guild, like the one for the extermination of the goblin village, would be a good opportunity to train the adventurers in combined warfare and to build relationships with them, but bringing fellowships down here would be too risky due to the disease theme of the dungeon, so we'll have to kill this Aberrant ourselves.

I relay the monster's description to our group, and we begin to formulate a plan. Since it's quite an unusual monster, we decide to be cautious and test the Aberrant's power first.

A goblin charges at the Crystal Trog, screaming his lungs out as he grips his tiny, flimsy spear as hard as he can.

The Trog's eyes cautiously follow the little green squirt, then the pink crystals on its body glow slightly stronger, and the goblin suddenly chokes.

Now completely out of breath, the stupid summoned monster tumbles and rolls, but when he comes to a stop, he gasps for air repeatedly, seemingly unable to breathe.

The air is thick with spores and the smell of mold, but a faint metallic scent appears, coinciding with the brightening glow of the Trog's crystals.

The goblin starts to convulse, then he begins to bleed from all over his skin without any visible wounds, and he madly starts scratching himself because his entire body has begun to itch like crazy.

The Trog's glow dims back down to normal, and the goblin stops convulsing, then the blood stops flowing, revealing little pink crystals the width of toothpicks poking out of his skin.

After taking a moment to catch his breath, the goblin stands up and starts to shamble past the hulking mass, ignoring his previous order to attack it.

Holy fuck, that was fucking freaky.

The Trog's gaze turns to a set of elementals charging towards it, and it quickly turns its humongous body to face them. The mansion-sized quadruped makes the earth rumble with each of its heavy steps, but it still seems awfully agile despite its apparent mass.

We feel a burst of mana leaving the Trog, then earth-Lina is skewered by a crystal spike that bursts out of the ground, instantly killing her.

Fire-Hana and wind-Alissa launch their ranged attacks, but the Trog simply ignores them since all they can do is give it some small cracks on its shell.

The crystals glow brighter again, and nature-Yunia collapses as the crystals try to take control of her, but her biology is too different from a typical monster, so all they can do is destroy her from the inside.

The globe of plasma reaches the Trog first and unleashes all of its electric power on the foot of the monster, making it wince and growl so loudly that its echo resounds through the entire dungeon. But the electric elemental still isn't enough to do significant damage to the monster, so it gets squashed by the Trog's foot a second later, though it gives the Aberrant a parting shock before it dissipates.

Water-Roxanne reaches the briefly paralyzed monster next and unleashes a water blade on its flabby neck, inflicting the first actual wound and drawing blood since the monster's underside has only a few crystals protecting it.

But with another swift step, she gets squashed too.

Then the Trog's angry eyes turn to light-Ciel, who's almost within attack range, and the pink crystals on its back glow again, but instead of attacking her, spiky balls of crystals grow out of thin air and launch towards the elemental.

Light-Ciel isn't exactly solid, but physical attacks still disrupt the integrity of her body, and the crystal balls also hold hostile magic, which is purified whenever they touch the elemental, making the balls crumble to dust, but it also forces the elemental to waste mana.

The Trog warily takes a step back as the elemental approaches it, but she quickly runs out of mana, and her body dissipates before she can attack, then the Trog turns to the last two elementals annoying it.

With frightening speed, it charges forward, then opens its large mouth and gobbles both of them up. Fire-Hana burns its tongue, and wind-Alissa gives it a nasty cut, but they're still destroyed in just a split second.

"Weepers' dream, what an annoying fuck," I grumble.

"That crystal armor doesn't seem to be, like, too hard," Hana deliberates with a faint grin, then she looks at Lina.

"What…?" My little dwarf reflexively mumbles, sounding a bit wary.

"I can fly, and you can hit hard," Hana replies, and her grin widens.

Lina jerks her head towards Roxanne. "Can't you just [Explode] its head?"

"Highly magical monsters make it hard to aim that spell, as if they had an innate [Dead Zone]," Roxanne kindly explains, but she's enjoying Lina's desperation too.

"Flying dwarf it is," Yunia states amusedly, and Lina lowers her head in defeat.

Then I smile excitedly since I finally have an opportunity to use [Godly Language] without restrictions, so I test something out, "The battle is at hand! May our strength never falter and our weapons strike true!"

The Horns spread out in the tunnel, staying high and close to the ceiling, then the Trog turns towards them and starts slowly walking backward, wary of their holy glow.

They carefully measure their distance from the Trog, staying close enough for their [Beam]s to be effective, but not so close that they'd be affected by the glowing pink crystals.

Once they're in position, Oritiki gives the order, and the harassment begins. They fire their weapons, aiming for the few patches of skin that aren't protected by the crystals, but the Trog immediately wrinkles its skin, pressing the crystals together and blocking the openings, though there are enough Horns to completely encircle the Trog, and they do just that.

The monster starts to growl as its skin burns under their assault, then it tries to hit them with the bursting crystal spikes, but the attack can only come from the floor, and the Horns are so high up that they easily see it coming.

Seeing how ineffective its attack was, the Trog quickly switches to the spiky balls, but the Horns' aim is excellent, so they simply shoot down the balls before they can threaten them, though it's now become a battle of attrition, and the huge Aberrant definitely has the advantage there.

But that's enough of a distraction that it doesn't notice the approaching duo aiming at its head and carried by emerald wings.

Lina readies her hammer, then swings it as she casts [Telekinesis] on it, amplifying its weight tenfold.

They crash against the monster, but Hana doesn't release Lina, who in turn doesn't lose her grip on her hammer, and the whole crystal helmet protecting the Trog's head shatters like glass, though the pieces all remain stuck to its body.

As the monster staggers, the duo quickly make their retreat, and an arrow slides through the cracks and pierces one eye, making the monster furious.

"GOOOOOOOH…!" It lets out a low, rumbling roar, and the infected goblin suddenly stops in its tracks, then it jerks its body around and comes back towards us.

This makes me a bit concerned, so we make our way around the Trog to use it to block the path that the goblin is taking.

The Horns switch gears and start attacking the monster's partially exposed head like an angry swarm of bees, attacking it through the slits with their glaives or cracking the crystal helmet further.

The Trog's jaw and neck suddenly bulge, sending alarm bells ringing in all of our heads.

"[BACK]!" Oritiki orders in Reo, and they all disperse.

The Trog opens its mouth, and a thick cloud of pink mist billows out, quickly shrouding its body.

I summon five wind-Alissas, and Alcander links all the mages together with [Ritualism], then the elementals and the combined mages' will wrestle with the monster for control over the mist.

Though it might have incredible mana reserves, the Aberrant doesn't have that much "Magic Power" to compete with our numbers, so the mist is quickly dispersed, revealing that the crystal helmet has started to mend.

Alissa casts [Ignorance] on the duo, and they go in for another strike. The Horns provide cover by using their [Beam]s again to piss off the Trog, focusing on its blind side as it tries to stop them with the spiky balls.

The duo brace for impact and crash against the monster's crystal helmet, shattering it like glass again, and its skull starts to cave in.

"GUOOOOH…!" The monster cries out in pain as it releases wisps of pink mist.

It's fortunate that the cloud's aim isn't to attack because we now have to engage with the army of crystal-controlled monsters coming our way. However, we won't be able to repeat that helmet smashing maneuver so easily again, so I order Alcander to prepare a proper finisher.

The Horns dance around the Trog, boasting their coordination and speed by giving the now seemingly concussed monster nasty burn after nasty burn, but it now starts to desperately release the pink mist to heal its crystal helmet, ignoring the Horns completely.

Aoi flies like a rocket at it, a mask of stone fully protecting her face from the mist and a large chain in her hands, then she tackles its neck from behind as she quickly throws one end of the chain to its side, using magic to wrap it around its neck.

The monster tries to shake her off, but her footing remains steady, then she pulls on the chains, blocking its throat from releasing the mist and making the monster panic.

But Aoi isn't done. She takes a step back, which gives her the leverage to pull its head up, then her muscles bulge as she pulls on the chain as hard as she can and lets out a muffled roar of fury, "GROOOOOOOOH!"

The huge monster doesn't even have time to properly react because Alcander finishes the spell, and a long, thick, dragon-killer bolt shoots towards the exposed, flabby neck of the monster, striking right below its jaw, where its tongue should be.

The monster groans as it starts to stand up on its hind legs, regaining a bit of room to breathe as Aoi briefly loses her footing, but its body wasn't made for this kind of movement, so it goes down again a couple of seconds later.

And the duo comes in at the perfect time. As the monster falls, they strike right at the base of the bolt, driving it further in until the tip pokes through the top of its skull.

The monster convulses and collapses heavily on the floor, still not dead yet, but now Aoi can easily expose its neck again, and the Horns waste not a second as they split it open.

Blood flows like a river, and the will to fight gradually drains from the Crystal Trog. Then, as it enters its death throes, the onslaught of crystal-infected monsters finally comes to an end as their coordination collapses and they start to kill each other like mindless zombies.

I sigh and let the dragon return to its cage, then I clean my blood-soaked weapons and sheathe them.

As we start to relax, the effects of [Godly Language] suddenly end, and the usual dizziness of the feedback hits us, but it's considerably weaker than what we would normally expect. My little experiment of adding "conditions" to it seems to have worked, so I'll need to explore this further.

Subtly infusing [Godly Language] into my speech doesn't produce the same level of feedback, but it also doesn't have any reality-altering capabilities, so I might be able to find a good middle-ground between the two approaches.

We've earned ourselves a break, so we move far away from the slaughter and have some tea while I check for messages from the castle.

There's just news of a group of nobles that have arrived in town, and Yunia immediately recognizes their names.

"The Clown Troupe!" She suddenly exclaims, then immediately goes silent as we give her a weird look.

If that's how she calls her friends, then I wonder how she calls her enemies.

A note from Manasong

Hall of Fame of Patrons

The patrons who support Rupegia shall have their names sung by the bards for they deserve the glory and honor. Their names are:

Prince PreownedFIN.

Prince Creamy Spinach.

Prince Owldente.

Prince Charlie Foxtrot.

Lord Andrew Meyers.

Lord Novgarod.

Lord Michale Erwin.

Lord Bakerdea.

Lord Maurice.

Lord Mattirro Draca.

Lord Fullmoon.

Lord Sean Drake.

Lord FrostyCube.

Lord Mike Bartter.

Lord Warwulfv.

Lord Jorge Franco.

Lord Khristopher Welsh.

Lord DJ.

Lord Philip.

Lord Tenebris Lupus.

Lord The Tallest Joshua.

Lord Copey Dunt.

Lord Paul Daval.

Lord Paul Daval.

Lord Bradly.

Lord AndreyUC.

Lord Tmac.

Lord Krawn.

Noble Salty Panda.

Noble Mild Fracas.

Noble Aclys.

Noble CarlBaxter.

Noble CHoobler.

Noble d3235.

Leave a rating or a review to help me rise to the top or fix my shameful understanding of prose.

Take a look over my blog where all information about the world of Rupegia will be posted.

Join the Discord and discuss, or rant, or meme, or try and fight me so your waifu gets more screentime.

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Chapter 117: Feast - Part 1

"Don't tell them that I call them that," Yunia casually adds and sips her tea.

Hana and Roxanne just stare at her with slightly smug smiles on their faces, pressuring her with their unwavering gazes, while the rest of the girls and I wait in silence, not explicitly participating but not giving her an easy way out. The Officers smell the shenanigans in the air, so they quickly follow our lead and also remain silent.

"I'm pretty sure they intentionally play up their foolishness, like a real clown would," Yunia comes up with an excuse.

But the pair of wives don't even flinch, demanding more.

And Yunia becomes slightly disconcerted. "They're my friends, okay?!" She exclaims and glares at them. "I truly care for them, and some amount of banter is expected."

The pair is finally satisfied and nod, allowing Yunia to leave the grilling seat.

Oritiki chuckles at our antics and remarks, "I applaud you two for making Lord Yulania confess all that without saying a single word."

"She knows that no slip up will be left unteased, so she had to keep talking. Otherwise, it'd only make things worse for her if we were allowed to speak freely," Roxanne puts it succinctly.

Yunia glares at her and immediately retorts, "Indeed, you opening your mouth only makes things worse, so be quiet!" Then she waves her hand snobbishly and casts [Silence] on her.

"She says that she could interrupt this spell at any time, but she'd rather not wound your fragile elven ego," Lina quietly announces.

Yunia stares at the little girl thoughtfully, determining whether or not she should be silenced too.

"Honestly, Lord Roxanne isn't wrong, we elves do have fragile egos," Silvano comments wryly, then Yunia waves her hand and silences him without even giving him a look, making him silently laugh out loud.

Lina frowns worriedly and matches Yunia's gaze with her gloomy eyes.

The innocent little girl pleads silently, then shrinks her pose cutely, feeling the pressure of the older woman's pensive gaze.

Lina tucks her silky hair behind her ears, revealing more of her face and making her lovely features more prominent, but Yunia narrows her eyes sternly, struggling to focus.

The petite angel parts her red lips, wanting to speak, but her shyness gets the better of her, and she blushes, not used to being the center of attention, but also because she's reading my thoughts, and she just loves when I fawn over her cuteness.

She smiles adorably and looks away as she rubs her hands embarrassedly, and that finally melts Yunia's heart. The elven ice queen undoes the [Silence] and does her best to ignore Roxanne's smug grin.

Lina's eyes meet Paraaone's, who's silently chuckling at her, and now she becomes quite flustered, ashamed of showing this side of herself to the Officers.

"Only someone like our Lords could play around like this inside a dungeon," Alcander casually remarks and takes another brownie.

Count yourself lucky that playing around is all that we're doing this time.

I send a reply back to the castle with orders for Osaria to speak with Ereia. We have enough elven nobles that are (supposedly) favorable to us that it won't be extremely painful to hold a feast, so we have to do it as soon as possible to begin building relationships with the rest of them.

The sexually harassing imp should have some good ideas on how to hold an appropriate feast, so Osaria will have a talk with her where they're both explicitly prohibited from fucking. My milf carries her pet summoned bird almost everywhere, so I'll know if she keeps her word or not.

Osaria nestles it between her breasts, then both she and Ereia take off their clothes. "If we aren't allowed to have fun, then you should at least suffer along with us," Osaria cheekily states, then they both spread their legs and start playing with themselves.

You slut… you've earned yourself a Ravaging for tonight.

I don't dare cut the sense sharing with the bird, so I require a few minutes to keep the dragon contained, then we finally move on.

I store the Trog's corpse in my "Items," because why not, and Alcander just stares at me wide-eyed, then he shakes his head and focuses back on keeping a steady jogging pace.

The monsters' slaughtering of each other is still ongoing when our bulldozer breaks through them, but the monsters mostly ignore us once we're past them.

It seems the Trog kept the carnivorous predators as minions, leaving it as the sole eater of the vegetation, which it promptly ate until there was barely anything left.

But after a while, the crystal infection comes to an end, and the flora returns to being "pure" because there's something else "protecting" it, something that required an army of predators to keep it at bay.

We encounter a tribe of hobgoblins, the evolved, more magical version of goblins (and with a striking resemblance to elves).

I glance at Yunia, and she doesn't even notice my stare, too focused on the enemies that we'll be fighting soon, so I breathe out in relief.

"The only danger should be the mages, so we should ensure that we kill every single one that we encounter," Oritiki soberly proposes.

"We might as well wipe out their village when we get there," I add.

"Burn everything? Without mages, they won't be able to control the flames," Roxanne innocently suggests. "I can even just collapse part of the cave on top of them."

"No, let's end it all quickly, and I also really don't like the 'collapsing' part," I retort with a frown.

Where did her recently acquired kindness go?

"It's reserved for those who aren't my enemies," she categorically replies through [Bind].

"Let's not use too much fire inside a cave," Lina concernedly requests, and Roxanne shrugs.

"I'll just choose one of the old, reliable monsters to summon," I assert, then I turn to Silvano. "You're not allowed to move away from the Companions unless it's to protect them from something."

His beautiful face is hidden behind his helmet, but I can see that he's grinning through the slit that reveals his pretty eyes, and my still horny mind fills in the rest of the image as he nods, making my boner a bit confused. Even though he did nothing bad, he still found a way to annoy me.

As we begin to fight the Hobgoblins, the Horns take flight, but Oritiki takes a seat on the elemental quadruped so that she can focus on managing them. Since we're moving at a hurried pace, she wants to make sure that no one gets left behind, so she'll keep a constant eye on their fellowship bond in case one of them is incapacitated by a stray attack.

We don't kill every single hobgoblin that we meet, so they manage to warn the main village, which quickly mounts a response to fight against us, but the bulldozer is unstoppable.

The village is surrounded by a square of rather short stone walls, and the small Hobgoblin army takes their positions along the side facing us. Most of them are archers, but there's a good amount of mages mixed in, though the seemingly stronger ones are concentrated at the center, above the flimsy-looking gate.

They have enough mages to carve fortifications in the stone floor of the dungeon, but it's all useless since most of us can fly while the rest of us can use a [Gate]. Up ahead, there's a field of pitfall traps, stake walls to funnel us through kill zones, and moats, while their stone walls even have crenelations to cover their ranged units, but it's all useless.

I cast [Dust Storm] on the center of the wall, and though the spell is instantly interrupted, it still blinds most of their ranged units for a few seconds, then the Horns take flight and charge the unaffected units at both ends of the wall.

Hana leads the charge towards the center, her shield up and Ciel's [Holy Spirit] inside her armor. I stick to her back, hiding with the help of [Ignorance].

We fly past the ambushers on the ground, who are lurking all throughout the field of traps, and we hear the plinking of their arrows and javelins hitting Hana's wings and our armor, but they're so flimsy that our [Wind Armor] is already enough to make them basically harmless to us.

Once we get close to the wall, I cast [Dust Storm] again, but the mana that I release reveals our position, and our [Rainbow Shield] flares as spells graze us, though we receive no damage.

Then large boulders are diverted by her [Wind Shield], and one hits her flank, making her veer off course.

I decide that it's a bad idea to land in the middle of them, so I order Hana to land us past their defenses, inside the village proper.

Their houses are mostly holes dug in the ground, but there are few that are made of cobble or have been magically raised from the ground with the monster version of [Earth Wall], so we have enough cover to not be instantly turned into a paste by their spells.

Once on the ground, I summon eight Zinotues, large, muscular, Bengal tigers with spikes where their stripes would be. They're adept at using magical electricity to attack, and they're also brutally fast.

The Zinotues charge out of cover, and they're immediately pelted by spells, but they survive and quickly reach the lines of Hobgoblins scrambling to protect their mages.

That's enough of a distraction, so I open a [Gate], and our men pour through.

The Companions immediately move out, a wall of [Wind Shield]s makes them immune to projectiles, and our court mages know how to lob spells over it with enough accuracy to hit the enemies in front of them. Alcander, specifically, lobs ballista bolts with his [Telekinesis], which isn't as destructive as the spells that mages of other magic schools at his level can cast, but its utility is undeniable.

The hobgoblins open the gates, and the ambushing soldiers outside the walls abandon their positions to reinforce the warriors inside. In total, they might have a few hundred combatants, and though we're severely outnumbered, they're still a thousand short of being a challenge for us.

The melee Hobgoblins shriek as they rush the Companions, who [Equip] javelins that they immediately throw to blunt their charge, then my girls leave their hiding spot and bolt forward, flying past the traps and hitting the back of the retreating Hobgoblins before they even notice their presence.

The golems open up a path as they wield huge boulders with [Telekinesis], then Aoi tramples through everything, right through the middle until she's facing the Companions again.

Before the Hobgoblins can spread out, the Horns finish off the ranged units on the walls and attack the main force, completing the encirclement.

There's a variety of Hobgoblin types mixed into their army. Simple Hobgoblin Mages, Earthshapers, Flameshooters, and Witch Doctors; specialized Swamp Ambushers and Shadow Tricksters; and even the tough Cursed Warriors along with a Chief. But none of them make a difference.

The air is filled with the scent of Hobgoblin blood, shit, and piss as they're crushed like ants. Their death screams are the only sound that can rise above the cacophony created by our combined attacks. As the battle continues, a river of blood forms under our feet as they're slaughtered to the last.

"You are now level fifty-nine."

But that isn't enough. Though this doesn't seem to be a Breeder-type village since they lack poorly-imitated humanoid technology, they must not be allowed to leave the dungeon and start anew.

After the combatants are dead, we turn our weapons on the village itself and continue the massacre.

I don't feel like bathing in blood, so I just summon a few more orcs with the rest of my MP and let them loose while I rest. I also don't care about soaking up Experience, so I move away from the village, and the girls follow me to keep me company.

After my weapons and armor are clean, I seek out Alissa to recharge my batteries.

I take my gauntlets off and interlace my claws with her fingers, then I rest my head on her shoulder, taking care to not hit her with my horns.

"How are you feeling?" She gently asks.

I wrinkle my nose as I answer, "The dragon is sleeping, so I feel a bit tired, but at least I can't smell the stench of the battlefield anymore." Then I kiss her neck and softly ask, "How about you?"

"I'm not proud of this, but I think I'm getting used to this sort of smell." She chuckles and sighs tiredly.

I give her a sympathetic look and kiss her neck again, then her waist twitches as her wagging tail pleads to be freed from her armor.

I'm not the only one suffering right now, so I turn to the other girls and let my eyes repeat my question.

"Fine, and a bit hungry," Aoi answers first.

I resummon an orc and task it with finding the Hobgoblin's Chief's body and a few of the more rare mage sub-types.

"Thank you, husband," she says with a sultry, low tone that, combined with her phrasing, sends shivers down my spine. "The human thought you'd like it if I used that word."

Unlike me, whose dragon and human are two sides of the same coin, it seems like Aoi has "grown" a human inside her, which might be why she hasn't become a weredragon, too.

"The human was right," I coo in return, then I turn to the other girls.

They're all okay, but they're also feeling a bit tired. Today was just easy battles for us, so our nerves aren't particularly frayed.

Then I extend my claws towards Lina, giving her an invitation that she immediately takes, and gently caress her head. "But you did so well today that you need a reward."

She lifts her gloomy eyes up to me, then immediately lowers them again once she sees my dazzling grin, her chest bursting with happiness (her thoughts).

"The 'flying dwarf' spectacle was amazing, indeed," Roxanne casually teases.

"But I don't know what to ask for," Lina quietly replies, completely ignoring Roxanne, then she leans her head against my chest.

I start to think of things she might like, and then a very selfish idea comes to me.

"How about a date?" I suggest, but her first reaction is just to blink blankly at me, so I hurriedly add, "An afternoon with just me and you, doing whatever you want."

Her first thought is lewd stuff, which makes me a bit proud of her, but then she blushes and starts thinking about it seriously.

"We've had our own 'dates,' too, but you rarely have an opportunity to spend time with just you and Wolfy," Ciel encourages her.

Lina nods in understanding, then looks up to me and softly asks, "When?"

"Tomorrow afternoon," I happily answer.

"We have a summit with the Crown Lords tomorrow afternoon," Yunia interjects.

"It starts near dusk, so we can just have our date right before lunch." I'll be throwing all the responsibility on Yunia's shoulders, but Lina deserves her date.

"I want a date, too!" Roxanne suddenly chimes in once she realizes that we've also never had one.

I'm caught off-guard and awkwardly suggest, "How about a day after Lina's?"

The intense happiness that Roxanne feels draws out a dazzling smile to grace her gorgeous face, but it also makes me feel a bit guilty about how we hadn't arranged this for so long.

After everything is dead, and Aoi's gotten to eat a few monster bodies whole, we continue our dive towards the (hopefully) last section.

The divine mana coming from the core quickly becomes noticeable to me, and its incredibly alluring "flavor" is almost intoxicating. Ciel is also a bit affected by it, but she just feels something very muted that calms her instead of stimulating her like it does with me.

The monsters here quickly grow in size and become heavily magical, then we find the monster that the Crystal Trog started as. The average Trog is a brown, fat turtle and frog mix that grows rocks and mushrooms on its back as a form of protection and spits corrosive poison at anything that gets too close.

It's quite agile considering its body size and generally keeps its distance from us unless it's enraged or too old (which makes them become permanently enraged once they meet a humanoid).

The flora also grows in size along with the monsters, becoming a forest of mushrooms and weird, glowing, dangerous-looking plants. It's possible that this is where the Hobgoblins got the small amount of flimsy "wood" that they had.

But just as the "power level" of the monsters grows to an interesting level for us, we reach the end of the dungeon. We see a wall of raw stone being slowly dissolved by an uncountable number of black, twitching tentacles, which are all directly connected to the dungeon's core. Since this dungeon isn't a pocket dimension, it has to physically bore through the earth to expand.

"Hey, that's kind of sexy," Roxanne remarks absentmindedly while staring at the tentacles, making Ciel blush.

Because it's forbidden for the servants of Lords to be present for the destruction of a core so that they don't accidentally receive the "True Noble" title, only the girls, the golems, and I continue on.

The weird forest suddenly ends, allowing us to see the bottom of the wall. Ahead of us, there's a three-meter tall, naked, ugly, ogre-like, gray monster that doesn't have genitals. It wields a simple club of stone as tall as Hana and stands as still as a statue, its beady little eyes the only things that tell us that it's alive from how they're following our every move.

This is the dungeon's Guardian, a type of monster that's common in most dungeons, and its only purpose is to guard the core. Its main characteristic is that it's a mana solidification, and it's fed directly with the core's mana, so if we destroy the core, the Guardian will die instantly.

The Holly above us gives us sight of the core, which is hidden behind the Guardian, though it's partially obscured by the mass of tentacles connected to it. The pure black orb is quite beautiful, as it has no reflection, but I have no patience to admire it further.

Roxanne simply casts [Explosion] on it, and it shatters like glass, then the tendrils and the Guardian explode in a shower of fake flesh and blood.

I raise a cover for us with [Earth Wall], but the fake matter quickly dissipates into smoke, disappearing without leaving a single trace behind.

We get a burst of Experience, but this dungeon was so young that we don't even level up from it.

I sigh and stretch as I relax, then we start to notice the light from the glowing plants gradually dimming. Without the core feeding this ecosystem, everything will soon die from starvation. Before we leave, we take a [Gate] to the surface, where Alcander and the mages collapse the entrance of the dungeon so that nothing will get out.

"Alright, let's go back home," I order tiredly.

A note from Manasong

Hall of Fame of Patrons

The patrons who support Rupegia shall have their names sung by the bards for they deserve the glory and honor. Their names are:

Prince PreownedFIN.

Prince Creamy Spinach.

Prince Owldente.

Prince Charlie Foxtrot.

Lord Andrew Meyers.

Lord Novgarod.

Lord Michale Erwin.

Lord Bakerdea.

Lord Maurice.

Lord Mattirro Draca.

Lord Fullmoon.

Lord Sean Drake.

Lord FrostyCube.

Lord Mike Bartter.

Lord Warwulfv.

Lord Jorge Franco.

Lord Khristopher Welsh.

Lord DJ.

Lord Philip.

Lord Tenebris Lupus.

Lord The Tallest Joshua.

Lord Copey Dunt.

Lord Paul Daval.

Lord Paul Daval.

Lord Bradly.

Lord AndreyUC.

Lord Tmac.

Lord Krawn.

Noble Salty Panda.

Noble Mild Fracas.

Noble Aclys.

Noble CarlBaxter.

Noble CHoobler.

Noble d3235.

Leave a rating or a review to help me rise to the top or fix my shameful understanding of prose.

Take a look over my blog where all information about the world of Rupegia will be posted.

Join the Discord and discuss, or rant, or meme, or try and fight me so your waifu gets more screentime.

Become a Patron and read chapters in advance, or read the side-stories, or leave your mark on the story, or help choose the next artwork or the next side-story.

Chapter 117: Feast - Part 2

A note from Manasong

Attention: to conform to the limit of mature content (more than just sexual content) allowed in a novel, I've censored this chapter. You can look for the uncensored version here.

After some quick Gestalt training, we finally go to the baths.

Today I'm feeling like having a main dish of Alissa with a side of Ciel, but first, I grab Osaria and Ravage her as punishment for teasing me while I was in the dungeon.

After my milf has passed out, I give my girls the attention they deserve, but Alissa decides to take charge for a change. Since Ciel is also present, she's starting to feel mischievous. She knows our chocolate angel has a big crush on her, which is understandable since it was Alissa who made her rethink which side she swings to, so the fox feels like unleashing her cheeky side.

Alissa puts on a new set of the Clothes of the Berserker, the white Snow Weave hugging her perfect skin magnificently, giving her an air of purity, but the chest and shorts hug all of her curves perfectly, leaving nothing to the imagination.

A white ribbon on her right fox ear and her tail shine along with her fur, cute gloves with red strings adorn her delicate hands, thigh-high socks grace her cute feet, and black Werefox wooden sandals finish up her look.

She is perfection.

Her adorable, shy smile wakes up the dragon within me, but I keep him in his cage for now. I want to savor this.

Unfortunately, soon our desires to take it slowly go out the window as we quickly spiral out of control, and everything becomes a blur of pleasure, moans, and fluids. do it fuck wildly and madly, pounding away until our bodies reach the limit and we pass out.

I suddenly regain consciousness and stretch as if I just woke up from a refreshing sleep. The girls are actually quite tired, but it's nothing that a good elven bath won't fix.

I enter the water with a wife on each arm and moan softly as the hot, magical water massages my legs. We spent basically the whole day jogging to conserve mana, and now, we accidentally Ravaged each other, so I activate all the enchantments because we deserve the best elven bath in our side of the High Forest.

Hukarere and Yunia are spending some steamy time together, so we have something nice to look at while we rest.

Osaria is still passed out, so the maids carry her to the bath to help her wake up after her defiled body is cleaned.

My mind starts to wander towards the golems. I think my mind is probably stable enough to test [Bind] on them, and I also want to begin raising my baby golem army, so I guess this is the next project I should focus on now that [Otherworldly Summoning] has been put on hold.

I should also train my melee skills some more.

And my [Soul Manipulation].

And my [Mana Body].

And my [Sense Soul].

I roll my eyes and groan internally. The moment I start to think about all the things I have to do, I get overwhelmed by the options, but at least this time, I think that [Golemancy] is the best subject to focus on until I have the beginnings of my baby golem army on the way.

Yunia and Kaatohe kiss passionately as they rub against each other's thighs.

We're kind of stumbling in the dark since we still don't know what bad thing is coming, but working on getting more subordinates to protect us is never a bad idea.

"I think I'm ready to discuss our first project with Teresina tomorrow," Ciel suddenly shares.

Kaatohe plays with Yunia as she purrs in delight.

I grab a handful of one of Ciel's pillows as I think, and my human hand looks quite small before its magnificence as it spills to the sides. "There'll be plenty of boring talks, so I was thinking about leaving it to Osaria when we had something more concrete," I casually remark.

Ciel's still a bit sore, so I keep the intensity of my play low, and she seems to enjoy it quite a lot. "I can deal with that. We'll need someone to manage the project once it's ongoing, anyway, and we can't leave it all to her."

Kaatohe breaks the kiss and goes down.

I grab a handful of Alissa's pillows, and they fit nicely in my hand, as if they were formed in the perfect size for me to grab.

"They probably were," Alissa affirms through [Bind], then speaks normally, "Well, we're all fated to become the heads of the subdivisions of our clan, so we'd better start learning."

I kiss her forehead and nod. "There's no pressure to take up leading positions in the clan if you don't feel like it. I just want you girls to be happy."

Yunia disagrees, but she's too occupied with letting out other sounds.

I smile wryly and correct myself, "Maybe there's a little pressure on you, but your sanity and happiness are still more important to me, so don't force yourself to do something that you don't like."

"As if the Gods would unite all of us just for someone to not want to participate in a clan," Alissa replies dismissively.

I frown and give the rest of the girls a concerned look. Alissa isn't being fair to them, so I need to put my foot down and block everyone's [Bind] to prevent any peeking or shaming from happening behind my back.

"I don't like to assume things, so I want to hear everyone's opinion about becoming heads of the 'subdivisions' of our clan. Such as managing or leading a confidential department in our Institute."

"We can always hire assistants and delegate most of what bores us to them," Roxanne offhandedly replies.

"I was that assistant, kind of," Lina adds and shrugs. "I don't think managing a part of the clan will be impossible for us."

Hana snorts and grins confidently as she asserts, "If I'm going to manage the warriors, then that's okay with me. I was going to do that before I was made into a Blood Slave, anyway."

Yunia's opinion is obvious. She already accepted becoming a Lord and welcomed whatever else Fate had in store for us when we gave our vows to each other. The rest of the girls technically accepted this sort of Fate too, but nobody had any idea how far and high we'd go, so I just have to make sure.

Then we all turn to Aoi, who's just listening while staring at us with mild curiosity like always, her double-colored irises and their black sclera make her gaze quite charming and intimidating at the same time.

"I don't even know what I'll manage, and I won't know if I'll enjoy it until I try," she calmly explains, and she's totally right.

"Gih gageh geh goh geh gangih," Gify proudly proclaims as she paddles towards me.

I smile warmly at her, not feeling like teasing her after she said such a thing with so much conviction and pride. "We'd appreciate it if you did that for us. Our castle must always have the most beautiful flowers, after all," I softly reply.

And Alissa happily adds, "We'd be honored if you'd remain with our family after we're gone." She'll always have a soft spot for the little griffin.

But I ultimately fail to resist temptation and still tease her, "The burden of our family: providing for the black hole that is Gify's stomach."

"Gih, gweh gah goo guh gih," Gify snobbishly states, and we can't disagree with that, our family really does have good taste in food.

The feast will be held in a leaf room with a balcony that's above the Shell so that everyone can have a view of the sea of mist that covers the town.

The maids pretty us up for a long time while we wait for the guests because it'd be improper for us to wait for nobles with a lower status than us. Just another silly quirk of nobility.

But the Troupe are among the first to arrive, so we have a reason to join the party immediately.

Musicians play a gentle tune on the harp and violins, sounding like a classical orchestra; attractive elven dancers show off their bodies near the walls, being such a good distraction for the permanently excited me that I almost forget where we're going; but the main attraction seems to be the chocolate sweets being offered by the servants. It's seemingly a lot more "refined" to have waiters walking around and bothering people regularly than just having a big table where everyone can get what they want when they want.

However, my favorite maids aren't working here right now because I don't want anyone getting handsy with my women. Plenty of commoners seek jobs from the nobility because they pay well for "service" on the side, but I don't want them to even think about touching another man.

Yunia quickly finds the Troupe, and the harem follows her so that we can greet them together.

"Lord Yulania, we're overjoyed to see you well!" A young golden elf that Yunia recognizes as being "Little Pomp" exclaims with a wide smile and open arms. His extravagant clothing, flamboyant behavior, and short stature make his nickname a perfect fit. He's flashy and stylish like Silvano, preferring to wear awfully revealing clothing, but at least he doesn't have the same androgynous look.

"You shall refer to her as 'Your Highness,'" a second golden elf sternly chastises "Little Pomp." This one is called "Masochist," and he's quite the big guy, almost Rande level of swolleness, but clearly Rande is the superior muscle-brain.

The third elf remains quiet and simply nods. Yunia calls him "Gentle Shadow" because he rarely speaks. He's a lightly tanned silver elf with the usual pretty elven face and shoulder-length hair that makes him a bit androgynous. His skin color indicates that he's probably from Glorampina.

"Even I couldn't have predicted that she'd become a royal," the fourth remarks with a wry smile, but his thin, upturned eyes makes him look rather evil. He's the "Gambling Imp," and nobody should ever trust him with money. Yunia even believes his family goes through cycles of being coinless to filthy rich due to their terrible gambling addiction.

The elven queen simply smiles smugly as she struts towards them, then she stops at a bit of a distance away and offers her hand for the polite elven greeting, forcing them to awkwardly scramble towards her to kiss her hand.

When it's Masochist's turn, she holds his head by his sensitive ear and prevents him from actually kissing her hand because he'd definitely take the opportunity to give her perfect skin a long, wet one.

"Hngh, thank you," he softly moans as she squeezes his ear.

"That's all you're getting," Yunia states with a condescending tone, then releases him.

At least the others don't dare to be as bold as he was with their greetings.

"You all took your time coming to meet me," Yunia coldly states, and her stern glare makes Masochist slightly happy for a split second.

But Little Pomp grins proudly and announces, "Well, our families are spread all over the territories, so talking to all of them was a pain, not to mention convincing them to ally with you."

"Oh…? I see…" Yunia hums softly as she crosses her arms, sounding very pleased, then she turns to us and starts the introductions.

Since we aren't elves, and we have a higher social standing, Hana and I just offer handshakes while the other wives give curtsies, and they decide to not play any tricks with us, which is a wise decision considering that there's a dragon, a dragonkin, and a weredragon in our family. You just don't fuck with dragons if you aren't ready to get bitten.

"The tales surrounding your family paint an interesting picture, your Highness Wolf," Little Pomp casually remarks as he stares at me.

"Hopefully they speak well of us, right?" I graciously reply, but Pomp just raises his eyebrows and remains silent. "Right…?" I squeak with a grin, and we both laugh.

"Expect elves to be elves," Shadow cryptically answers.

"Because of course, the other races see the elves in a good light just like we see them," Yunia wryly retorts, and we chuckle lightly.

"Monsters born from tales weren't made to be imitations," Ciel sagely declares.

And Pomp slowly nods as he matches her wisdom with the Seeker's motto, "'The search for Truth is never-ending.'"

The God of Destruction uses humanoid tales as inspiration for their monsters, but they never come out as copies because that's not the God's intention. In our case, the tales spread about us were never meant to represent reality.

The Seekers of Truth work by questioning people, but even if nobody ever lies, a person's recollection is always faulty, so they'll never know the perfect, unbiased, and complete Truth.

"You certainly don't have the 'Intelligence' or 'Wisdom' to speak of philosophy to a scholar like His Highness Wolf," Imp dryly states, his eyes narrowed in disdain.

Pomp gives me a pained smile as he apologetically requests, "Please forgive him for his rudeness. He was born with such an ugly, un-elven face that he has grown quite rebellious and unbalanced."

Imp angrily licks his lips and glares at Pomp's back. "Suck his dick harder," he whispers threateningly.

Pomp slow turns around with grace, like a dancer spinning on his heels as he's showered with flowers and cheers, then his pretty even face warps in the widest, smuggest grin my innocent mind thought possible, becoming like a caricature of an elf, an affront to their undeniable beauty, yet a perfect fit for his next words, "No… you…" he expertly ripostes.

I close my eyes in happiness while I feel a great disturbance in my [Bind], as if seven wives suddenly cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced.

Pomp slowly sips from his glass as he stares at the fuming Imp, daring him to one-up his banter.

"Told you they're clowns," Yunia wryly states through [Bind], very much enjoying their bit.

But Shadow gently interjects, "Let's stop these childish antics here. There's a line of nobles wanting to greet the royals."

After a moment of tension, the two friends drop the hostility and harmlessly smile while staring daggers at each other, their eyes promising a continuation in the near future.

"You know they're good friends when they can joke like that," Roxanne warmly remarks and glances at Yunia.

"Yes, 'joke'…" Imp dryly replies.

Pomp laughs and glances at Imp, then cheerfully agrees, "Haha, good friends, indeed."

And Masochist exposes them both, "They're always together, so don't let their [Acting] fool you. They just love to annoy each other."

"Yes, I did miss their little bouts of verbal jousting, but anyway, we'll talk later," Yunia casually affirms, and we take our leave.

"They're the perfect friends for someone like her," Alissa comments through [Bind], and we silently agree while Yunia just ignores her.

We don't actively pursue greeting anyone else, but we do let them approach us. Once Silvina comes in, I make an exception for her and give her a quick greeting. The gentle elven woman doesn't seem to be interested in getting too involved with us, but I'll keep a candle lit for her in case she ever feels lonely. She's also a good, kind person, so she deserves to be treated with respect, and I'd love nothing more than to give a woman like her the best orgasm she ever had, repeatedly.

We don't want to piss off the elven nobles, so we keep the feast limited to warriors, which means that Oritiki and Kaatohe are welcome, but not the rest of the Chimera aristocracy.

I think it's easier to keep warrior and non-warrior nobles separate than to convince Avgin nobility that non-warrior nobles aren't just glorified merchants. We might just keep warrior-exclusive feasts like this one few and far between so that the aristocrats don't feel excluded.

What an annoying balancing act.

Just as my mind starts to gloss over the names of nobles, the girls and I feel a small shock on our fingers as our Emergency Rings activate. A glance at it tells us that the white gem has become yellowed, a warning from our Lordsguard that something is going on.

Alissa scans the guests, and she easily spots the problem. One of the guests is staring at us with thinly-veiled anger, the small vial pendant hanging from his neck alarms Yunia once she recognizes that it contains ashes.

Elves sometimes cremate their loved ones, but they always bury the ashes under a High Tree, except for when they've sworn revenge because the avenger will keep the deceased's ashes on their person so that their spirit can witness the act.

The mature elven man glaring at us looks like a typical pretty elf, though his eyes look very tired, and his face is marked with the creases of a long-held scowl. The most disconcerting thing about him is that none of us have any idea who he is, not even Yunia.

He suddenly grips the vial, then begins advancing towards us. The Lordsguard have him nearly surrounded already, so he won't get far, but then Ereia suddenly appears at his side and firmly grips his arm, pulling him to a halt.

"Signeur Pedoro, is it not time to let your son rest?" She melancholically asks, a sympathetic frown on her gentle face.

Pedoro glares at her and tries to gently pull his arm away, but she doesn't let it go. "What do you know, girl? What do you know of pain?" He growls at her, his eyes filled with contempt.

"I know that it makes us irrational…" She bitterly replies, then her voice lowers, and Alissa struggles to hear her stern whisper, "and that blood feuds are not the elven way."

Pedoro scoffs and looks forward, but his eyes meet with Oritiki's, then he notices that he's surrounded, and he lowers his head as his anger starts to boil over. "I'll show you the elven way," he grumbles to Ereia, then raises his head and glares at me in the eye as he shouts in unhinged rage, "HOW DID YOU SURVIVE?! HOW DID YOU SURVIVE THE INNOCENT NYMPH?!"

Oh… fuck!

The party goes silent as everyone realizes that something serious is going on. Yunia's mind goes into overdrive as she starts calculating an optimal response, but Ciel protests heavily against it because she doesn't want us to lie.

And there's only one answer to his question.

"We ran," I stoically confess, not a single drop of shame in my tone.

The fire in his eyes loses some of its strength as he didn't expect me to outright admit it. "Everyone was sleeping! You're the only one who even saw the heretics!" He continues accusingly.

I summon a dozen colorful birds and a dozen different dogs in an instant. "I'm a summoner! I have eyes everywhere, at all times!" I shout composedly and extend my arms, then the birds and dogs scatter and hide, but they leave their little beaks and snouts poking out to make a point. "As an adventurer who's slept in the wild so often, keeping my summons out has become second nature to me, and that habit is what saved us from the heretics."

Pedoro's anger falters as he becomes lost now that his questions have been answered, making him realize that there was nothing especially suspicious about us. We survived the attack by mere chance.

He grips his head and shakes it in disbelief. "But why… wh-…" He stops himself as he suddenly realizes something, then he stares at me again as a new suspicion grows in his eyes. "In five months, you went from being a respected fellowship to high-leveled Lords. An unbelievable amount of growth in such a short time."

"Arreira's dungeon was special, and he himself helped us grow this much," I affirm and start walking towards him.

Then Pedoro's eyes widen as he starts to rant, growing more agitated with each rambling word, "Three Blessings, one Intervention, unbelievable growth, envious amount of talent. You're a Hero! And the heretics wanted to kill you before you could threaten them!"

I walk past the Lordsguard and Oritiki moves out of the way so that I can stand face to face with him. "And we ran in fear!" I shout angrily, the intensity of my glare making him cower for a second. "Weak as we were, we wouldn't be able to stand for even a second against a group of people who could cast [Meteor] so quickly! So we ran in search of protection, we ran towards Crown Lord Confiel, who took us under his canopy."

I look back, and my eyes meet with Yunia's, then she nods slowly, finally approving of the angle I'm going for.

I continue with a loving tone, "Then I met Yulania, one of the women who now hold the keys to my heart." I smile warmly at her, then I turn back to Pedoro and harden my expression again. "And we entered the dungeon Legado together, braving its perils, conquering its challenges, growing to such an extent that we've become different people altogether! Look at me! Look at what I've become!" I extend my arms and raise my thick tail, then I switch to my dragon form, drawing gasps from the nobles.

This form is not only taller and much more intimidating than my humanoid form but also incredibly physically resistant, so I walk right up to him and press my draconic snout against his forehead, now confident that a mere noble like him wouldn't be able to even slightly hurt me anymore.

"The attack on the Innocent Nymph was the turning point of my life. It was then that I realized that I wouldn't be able to hide from my Fate, that I had to rise even higher than I could see, grow far stronger than I ever thought possible."

Then I grab his shoulders with my draconic hands and squeeze as I shout, "But I swore to never let the heretics have their way again! I'll hunt down the Godsdamned scum one by one until the end of my days! I'll take the Fate they've forced upon me and thrive!" I huff, and smoke and flame puff out of my nostrils for a second, then I stand on my hind legs and spread my majestic wings for stability. "Dawn of Fire was just the beginning! I'll fulfill my role as a Lord and a royal, but I'll go further and beyond! I'll bring glory to the High Forest, or I'll perish trying!"

"My father was deposed for opposing change, and I'll make sure that his death wasn't in vain!" Yunia seizes the opportunity to bring the topic back to us.

And Hana sends the last message, infusing [Intimidate] into her voice as it booms through the crowd, "The Ryder family will earn their title of royals!"

"Sun guide us!" The Lordsguard shout our motto, then we cheer and resume the party while Ereia forcefully drags Pedoro away.

A note from Manasong

Hall of Fame of Patrons

The patrons who support Rupegia shall have their names sung by the bards for they deserve the glory and honor. Their names are:

Prince PreownedFIN.

Prince Creamy Spinach.

Prince Owldente.

Prince Charlie Foxtrot.

Lord Andrew Meyers.

Lord Novgarod.

Lord Michale Erwin.

Lord Bakerdea.

Lord Maurice.

Lord Mattirro Draca.

Lord Fullmoon.

Lord Sean Drake.

Lord FrostyCube.

Lord Mike Bartter.

Lord Warwulfv.

Lord Jorge Franco.

Lord Khristopher Welsh.

Lord DJ.

Lord Philip.

Lord Tenebris Lupus.

Lord The Tallest Joshua.

Lord Copey Dunt.

Lord Paul Daval.

Lord Paul Daval.

Lord Bradly.

Lord AndreyUC.

Lord Tmac.

Lord Krawn.

Noble Salty Panda.

Noble Mild Fracas.

Noble Aclys.

Noble CarlBaxter.

Noble CHoobler.

Noble d3235.

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Chapter 117: Feast - Part 3

A note from Manasong

Attention: to conform to the limit of mature content (more than just sexual content) allowed in a novel, I've censored this chapter. You can look for the uncensored version here.

"That could've gone so much worse," I state through [Bind].

But Yunia sincerely disagrees, "He already got us to admit to being involved with the Innocent Nymph, so the nobles will be quite a bit more distrustful of us, fearing the reason why we were apparently targeted. Things could've only gone worse if he actually attacked us and we were forced to kill him."

Well, shit. I guess we won't be able to get the nobles on our side just yet. Thankfully, we have someone like Ereia looking out for us.

But Yunia again has something to say about that, "Why didn't she warn us about Pedoro? She came in right at the perfect time, too, allowing herself to look good by keeping him from going fully unhinged and attacking us, so I have my suspicions of her. She's known for being a rather scheming sort of person, anyway."

And Ciel becomes miffed with Yunia's suspicion, "Aren't you being unfair? How would she know that Pedoro would act like that? She might've had her suspicions and kept them to herself to not bother us with meaningless intrigue. Ereia is your friend, too."

Yunia's mistrust takes a hit, and she feels a bit ashamed for doubting Ereia like that after she clearly tried to help us.

"Someone told Pedoro that we, or rather, you and the others, were the survivors and that you saw the heretics cast [Meteor], so I'm simply maintaining a certain level of distrust for everything," she explains as she restrains her emotions a bit.

I find Heart Lord Ira and his wife among the guests, and my mind immediately goes to the rest of the Heart Lords. They have enough power that it's possible that they acquired this sort of information and passed it on to the resentful and grieving Pedoro.

The party starts to pick up in intensity, so we leave the discussions about scheming for later. There are guests to entertain, so we need to focus on the now.

Intermission – Lina

The crisis has been resolved, though it seems it didn't end as well as it looks, but for now, everyone tries their best to forget what just happened, and so, the time has come to "socialize," as Wolfy would say.

I take a look around me and start to feel dizzy at the large number of people talking excitedly with each other, making me think that I'd be more relaxed facing a monster army than being at this party.

I need to be courageous and talk to people. I can't become a reclusive Lord, not when Wolfy is working so hard to play his part.

I find some comfort in knowing that Wolfy would rather stay on our bed with me on his lap than spend his evening here, talking to sycophants and schemers whose respect for him only goes as deep as the thickness of their masks.

Just imagining the warmth of his lap as I make myself comfortable on it, the strength of his hug as his shiny draconic arms wrap around me, the hardness of his sword as it grows and presses against my lips… I begin to lose myself in fantasies and almost zone out.

Not good. I need to keep up appearances, so I need to find someone to talk to!

But I know no one.

I could stay with Wolfy like Alissa always does, but she also helps him a lot while I'd just be silent all the time, too stiff to contribute to the subtle verbal jousting the elven nobles like to employ.

I see the twins, Yunia's brothers, who should be around my age, but they're surrounded by other, rough-looking boys (for elves), so I shudder when I think of the social disaster that'd happen if I tried to make conversation with them.

I see Kaatohe and Oritiki, but I feel too intimidated by both of them to join their conversation. Maybe I could act adorable and find a way to get Oritiki to hug me, but I'd feel guilty about using her for such a thing since she seems so loyal to her husbands.

Except for Shala, none of the nice maids are here because Wolfy didn't allow them to participate, but I don't think I should spend the entire party with the servants, either.

Roxanne is joking with other mages, Hana is being fawned over by the dragon or lizard-like Chimeras, Ciel is giving advice and guidance to the parents and children, Aoi is listening to the warriors bragging to her, and Yunia is having a subtle war with the other elven nobles. Everyone has their specialty, while I'm still feeling lost.

Oh. My. Gods! I'm going to make myself go insane with all this whining!

I groan internally, but my feet still don't move, then my eyes meet with Silvina's, and her gentle smile makes me swallow heavily.

She's a thin woman who's taller than Hana and almost as thin as Aoi, though her back shows the hint of muscles that would be expected for an archer. Her face is a prime example of elven grace, but she has a motherly air that's very similar to Armanpoosh's.

Ciel also has a faint, motherly air, but her gentle and kind aura (which Wolfy also calls "angelic") is much more prominent.

I feel instantly drawn towards Silvina, and my feet move on their own towards her.

"Your Highness Lina," she greets softly with a nod.

I stop before her and strain my neck to look up to her, so she sits down on a chair and offers another to me so that our heads level out a bit.

"Madame Silvina," I remember to greet her back while I sit down.

"I see that you aren't the boisterous type of person that enjoys this kind of event," she calmly comments with a slightly teasing tone.

"Well, same goes for you," I reply with a pout, but I quickly force myself to become impassive again.

She chuckles softly and rests her head on her palm, reaching true eye level with me. "I actually am enjoying this feast. The music, the food, and the atmosphere are nice. It's just that I don't talk much."

I hum softly, "Hm… I prefer the quiet, or at most, some soothing music."

She turns her beautiful green eyes away and finds Wolfy among the crowd. "I assume His Highness Wolf is also like that."

I nod and look down at my own sandals. Wolfy painted my nails light blue so that they match my clothes, but they're a bit too bright for me, so I think I'll ask him to paint them dark red next. "He is. He's just enduring this as part of his duty."

She turns back to me and tilts her head, making her charming elven ears bounce softly. "Oh…? Is it truly that much of an ordeal for the two of you to participate in a feast?"

I frown and awkwardly look away for a moment as I feel my cheeks become warmer. "Well… we're just a bit particular with how we prefer to spend our rest time. We are quite busy during the day, so we're allowed to desire activities that give us the most pleasure, no?"

She blinks twice, still staring intently at me, and curiously asks, "So you're saying that a feast is pleasurable, just not enough?"

I smile wryly. "Honestly, it feels more like work than leisure."

She straightens her back and gracefully takes a glass from a passing maid. "How curious. I can't say that I relate, but I sympathize with your struggle. It's necessary for the nobles to know and interact with the Lords since we'll be putting our lives in your hands, so I can understand how you could see this as 'work.'"

I nod and signal for the maid to give me something stronger. The elven alcohol is just too watered down for my throat. "Yes, we know that it's necessary, which is why we're here without complaining, but we won't lie about our enjoyment of it."

She smiles warmly, and her motherly aura makes my heart tighten. I know very well why Wolfy wants to bed this woman so badly. "Then, if you'll have me, I'll aid you in getting through this as painlessly as possible," she kindly offers, and I silently nod in response. "So, are you a listener or a talker?"

I smile embarrassedly and confess, "I-I don't know… I've done both, though I've certainly listened more than I've talked."

She leans back in her seat as she relaxes and takes a sip. "How about you do something new for a change?" She suggests with a subtle smile.

I raise my head up to her and narrow my eyes in confusion. "But what should I talk about?"

She softly shrugs. "Anything you want."

And I chuckle. "I hope you like books."

"Who doesn't…? No, silly question… of course there are those who ignore free 'Wisdom' and 'Intelligence' for reasons unknown to me," she lets her elven snobbishness appear for a second.

I casually retort, "It's hard for those sorts of people to gain anything from books if they don't enjoy reading, to begin with."

And she gives me an intriguing look as she suggests, "Many things can be learned to be enjoyed, so what if we taught them how to enjoy reading?"

That sounds like something Wolfy would say.

"I didn't know you were interested in such topics," I sincerely admit.

She smiles faintly as she looks towards the party. "Our society won't improve if we don't try to push beyond our duties."

"That sounds like something Wolfy would say," I reflexively reply.

She nods slowly. "I felt that his Scholar Title wasn't just for show, which is why I came here."

I follow her gaze and observe the nobles cheerfully talking about trite topics, and we both go silent as we turn pensive.

"What if education was standardized?" I suddenly blurt out.

"Hm?" She hums and looks at me with the side of her eye.

"What if we used taxes to pay for someone to teach all commoners how to enjoy books, for free, just like how the taxes pay for the Lord's protection and the training of the Townsguard."

She suddenly smirks and leans to the side so that we're at eye level again. "I knew that Lord Wolf wasn't the only special one."

I look down in embarrassment. This wasn't my idea, it's just how things are in Wolfy's world, so why not do the same here?

"It's not my idea, but I fully believe it's the path towards progress," I confess assuredly.

"Tell me more," she coos as she gracefully crosses her long, shapely legs.

I think I'm falling in love with Silvina.

Intermission end.

Pedoro is never seen again, while Ereia comes back some time after they left, cheerful as always, so we just act as if nothing happened.

After allowing enough time for everyone to hold their conversations, and for the alcohol to start affecting them, we set out the tables and begin the feast proper.

With how easy it is to grow a table and chairs in just a few seconds, each of the girls and I bring a few guests to our table, and I'm overjoyed that Lina managed to bring Silvina with her, but I don't have any time to talk to her right now since the sword-suckers on both of my sides won't let me look away from them.

They're both female nobles, and they're kind of competing for my attention, but I don't act overtly spicy with them because I'm just getting the feeling that they're selling their bodies in exchange for favors. It's one thing to have casual love, but it's another thing entirely to do women who might be wanting something else in return besides a minutes-long apex.

They're trying to manipulate me through pleasure, but I'm above that. If the woman doesn't really want it herself, then I shouldn't go for it.

Also, screw these two for being so scheming. I'll give them a lesson by being as annoyingly indecisive as possible while not giving in. I'll even do without Alissa's help so that we can fight without gloves. You think you can tease me?! I'll tease you right back until you're begging for my magical sword!

"Have you talked to Brás?" Pomp suddenly asks Yunia.

"I haven't…" She replies tersely and takes a sip, very much not enjoying this new topic.

"You should…" Gentle Shadow encourages her, and her mood starts to sour.

"To be honest, it'd be best if he still considered me dead. I'm not the same person I was before," Yunia bitterly confesses.

"I kind of disagree that you've changed, but if that's what you believe…" Masochist retorts with a shrug.

And Yunia tiredly explains, "I'm married to a jealous dragon, so there's nothing good that could come from us meeting again."

"You could still remain friends," Pomp concernedly points out.

"Pfft…" She hisses and waves her hand dismissively. "We were a bit too intense for just friendship."

"Intense, huh…" Imp hums and raises his eyebrows suggestively.

"I believe that," Masochist adds with a smirk.

"Same," Pomp hums dryly.

"Talk to him, for closure," Shadow softly pleads, and Yunia frowns in displeasure.

"I approve," I soothe her through [Bind], then she sighs and nods.

"I'll see what I can do," she reluctantly declares.

"But where's Rande? I thought he was here in Escanso too," Imp changes the topic.

And Yunia immediately jumps on it, "He's not nobility anymore, so we didn't think it was appropriate to invite him."

"Screw that. That sword sucker deserves to be here, even if it's on his knees with all our blades in his mouth," Pomp growls in a very un-elven way.

"Well, his mouth can fit all of yours, but definitely not mine," Imp throws a quick jab.

"Is Osaria also in Escanso?" Masochist asks with a grin.

"She is, but she's now my husband's concubine," Yunia answers with a smug smile.

"Oh, shit…" Masochist mutters as his face warps in fear.

"Don't even think about touching her," Yunia states as her smugness skyrockets.

And Masochist raises his hands in surrender. "Never even thought about it," he shamelessly lies with a shit-eating grin.

"Your Highness, your tail is so thick, do you think it could lift me?" Big Pair sultrily asks me.

Sword-Sucking-Lips bites her juicy lower lip in irritation for not having thought of that first, so she decides to go for mocking, instead, "You're inconveniencing His Highness by underestimating how heavy women like you truly are."

Big Pair's long ears redden in anger, but there isn't even a hint of it on her face due to her considerable level in [Acting]. "I apologize, Your Highness, I was merely curious about the… 'capabilities' of your thick tail," she gracefully recovers.

"It's no matter," I soothe them and lay my claws on both of their forearms, applying a subtle spirit touch that raises the hairs on the back of their necks, then I give them a regal smile. "I haven't tested its strength yet, so why not give it a go?"

Big Pair smiles victoriously at Lips when she thinks I'm not looking, then I gently pull them both up.

"Your Highness?" Lips asks confusedly.

"I'll lift both of you up at the same time," I answer her, and they actually seem impressed by it.

I extend my tail for them and cross my arms as I wait for their reactions. Big Pair immediately takes up my offer and sits down on the thicker part, and she's wide enough to take up most of the space, but Lips is a thin and delicate woman, so she fits perfectly on the remaining space.

I wave my scales softly as I again apply my spirit touch, and they feel it in their pussies, Pair's grasp on my shoulder for balance tightening subtly in response.

There's not much room left at the base of my tail to actually raise them that high, but up to the height that I can reach, I do so effortlessly, then I tilt the tail a bit, forcing Lips to lean on Pair for support.

They both giggle, forgetting their rivalry for a moment, and their little bits harden through their thin dousnadeias.

"I feel like this is evidence enough that it can lift both of you since I can barely feel your weight," I state confidently, then I slowly lower them back down.

"It's quite the thick muscle, after all," Pair suggestively comments. I really like the way she says "thick."

"Yes, there are many uses for it," I huskily reply and subtly vibrate the scales right under their pussies.

They stiffen and stop moving, refusing to get off, but I'm quite happy to wait for them to come back to reality on their own, so I just observe them and notice their pussies getting warmer. The elven obsession with thin bikinis just makes this that much easier for me.

Lips swallows heavily, her left hand gripping the muscular tip of my tail quite strongly, then she shares a look with Pair. "Your Highness is truly someone that we shouldn't underestimate," she cryptically states as she slowly strokes me, though more so as a warning to Pair than as praise for me.

I nod and counter with my own vague remark, "If only others had realized the same thing sooner, there'd be so many people still alive… and a few less broken hearts."

They both chuckle and get off my tail.

"You're true to your draconic side, Your Highness. There's nothing dull about you," Pair gently affirms, her red eyes staring into mine with the growing fires of lust.

I hum and slide my tail along their lower backs as I pull it back. "Literally," I add with a smirk, and they both chuckle again.

"Indeed," Lips coos and subtly licks her juicy lips.

I take every chance I can to touch them and apply my spirit touch, increasing their arousal so much that visible wet spots appear on their bottom pieces, but I successfully maintain my distance, never going further than innocent touching, and I properly rebuff all of their advances, even after they've stopped trying to manipulate me.

Once the "ordeal" (as Lina would say) is finally over, I grab Hana and do her repeatedly until the dragon is satisfied. Teasing the two scheming noblewomen was a success, but it also made me get a bit pent up from seeing all the signs of their arousal while not actually being able to bury my sword in them because of my principles.

Today is the 26th, Ekt, day of Electricity. Nothing particularly special happens today since most commoners have no idea what the hell electricity even does, and it's not like we use electric power anyway, so there's little that's actually affected aside from the Thunderplains and traveling.

Even Electric mages don't really know what the hell electricity truly is since the most useful spells, such as [Dead End] and [Rush], aren't exactly 100% related to electricity.

Yunia wakes me up as she seems quite happy about how we handled the Troupe yesterday. Their families will get mansions in the outer circle in exchange for their loyalty, and that makes her quite happy with how our relations with the nobles are progressing, so my Queen decides to reward me with a sensual sword-sucking while I stare into her striking, blue eyes and savor her sublime beauty.

I'm still a bit emotionally tired from yesterday, and since Kaatohe is here with us again, I feel like starting an party with my entire harem.

"Hell yeah, I want a piece of everyone!" Hana exclaims and pulls both Roxanne and Klein towards her.

I activate an enchantment to call for a maid.

"Bring Poosh, Hukarere, and Iliada to me. I want to have a spicy party with all of my women," I order, and the quickly blushing maid hurries out.

It's time for the Female Heaven Relaxation Course. The dragon in me is certainly excited about drowning in women.

A note from Manasong

Hall of Fame of Patrons

The patrons who support Rupegia shall have their names sung by the bards for they deserve the glory and honor. Their names are:

Prince PreownedFIN.

Prince Creamy Spinach.

Prince Owldente.

Prince Charlie Foxtrot.

Lord Andrew Meyers.

Lord Novgarod.

Lord Michale Erwin.

Lord Bakerdea.

Lord Maurice.

Lord Mattirro Draca.

Lord Fullmoon.

Lord Sean Drake.

Lord FrostyCube.

Lord Mike Bartter.

Lord Warwulfv.

Lord Jorge Franco.

Lord Khristopher Welsh.

Lord DJ.

Lord Philip.

Lord Tenebris Lupus.

Lord The Tallest Joshua.

Lord Copey Dunt.

Lord Paul Daval.

Lord Paul Daval.

Lord Bradly.

Lord AndreyUC.

Lord Tmac.

Lord Krawn.

Lord School Work.

Noble Salty Panda.

Noble Mild Fracas.

Noble Aclys.

Noble CarlBaxter.

Noble CHoobler.

Noble d3235.

Leave a rating or a review to help me rise to the top or fix my shameful understanding of prose.

Take a look over my blog where all information about the world of Rupegia will be posted.

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Chapter 118: Summit - Part 1

A note from Manasong

Attention: to conform to the limit of mature content (more than just sexual content) allowed in a novel, I've censored this chapter. You can look for the uncensored version here.

Everyone has leveled up. Alissa, Roxanne, Ciel, Lina, and I leveled up to 59, Hana leveled up to 60, Aoi leveled up to 43 (she got two levels), and Yunia leveled up to 61.

My [Polearm Use] and [Mana Body] increased by 1 (now 12+5 and 6). I do some slight re-balancing of my skills, making my build a bit more focused, but it's still not that well organized due to my wide variety of priorities and the uneven leveling of my skills. A few points more or less in the mana and melee skills don't make much of a difference anyway; only the spells that I get access to from reaching certain levels in the system magic skills have a clear impact on my fighting style.

Alissa increased her [Enhanced Stamina] by 1 (now 1+4). She's focusing on the Enhancement skills, so her skill-ups will be quite slow for a while.

Roxanne increased her [Fire Magic] by 1 (now 31). With this level up, I tweak her build and increase her [Fire Magic] to 40, unlocking instant-casting of [Heart of Fire], which makes her much more mobile.

Hana increased her [Summon Wings] by 1 (now 10). She's becoming quite mobile, so she might be able to fight side-by-side with Ciel in the sky for considerable lengths of time soon enough.

Ciel has increased her [Parry] and [Dodge] by 1 (now 3+12 and 2+13). We've discovered that the Horns use the [Tiretiera Maire Style] skill, so I switch her points into that skill since her [Imperial Hasterrum Style] isn't as useful anymore, now that she's fighting while flying nearly all the time.

Lina increased her [Stonebody] by 1 (now 9). Nothing significant unlocked for her, so I just balance her skills a bit better and give her [Reduced Mana Cost] with three points in it.

Yunia increased her [Spirit Magic] by 1 (now 19+21). She already has quite a balanced build, so I just give her more points in [Reduced Mana Cost].

We start our breakfast a bit late, and coupling that with the previous party results in everyone being quite hungry.

"I already ate, but I'll take you up on your offer and keep you company," Poosh softly states. Her gentle smile seems quite a lot warmer than usual, and her gaze appears to be a bit out of focus as she basks in the post-continuous-climax afterglow.

"Same for me…" Iliada shyly adds, seemingly a lot more distracted than Poosh as she affectionately stares at me, completely smitten. She's a good girl, so the wives have welcomed and shared her quite happily.

"I'll take this opportunity to skip on the morning jog since I already did enough 'intense' work to warm up," Hukarere cheekily declares, sharing a grin with Hana.

"Are you sure you did any 'work'? You became like a floppy fish once his sword was inside you," Kaatohe smugly teases.

Hukarere raises her lips angrily, showing her sharp, white fangs, then she barks back, "Hey! My whole body was tensed up! It took me a monumental amount of effort to just move my hips to match his movements."

"Well, the wolf did take a lot more sword than you did," Hana casually points out.

And Kaatohe pouts slightly, a bit embarrassed. "But that's all she does, so of course she'd have more time with him than any of us."

Hukarere grins smugly and teases back, "Jealous? I'm sure you lick slit just to stall because your snooty noble composure immediately crumbles the moment his sword spreads you apart."

Kaatohe purrs softly, a bit annoyed that the tables turned on her so quickly. "His [Mana Body] has increased, so only a seed-addict like you can endure his magic sword," she makes excuses.

But Hukarere's smugness increases further. "I don't see any downsides in what you just said."

And Kaatohe hisses back, "Then you better start wearing a collar saying that you're his property."

"That's actually a good idea," Hana affirms and crosses her arms, bunching up her bare balloons.

"Quite fitting for some of us," Osaria agrees, then smirks at Klein and Poosh. Iliada also seems like she agrees, but she's too intimidated by the people present to join in, so she just shyly eats her cookies in silence.

"Then I'll get one with Wolfy's and Hermann's names written on it," Klein casually remarks as she pours more tea for herself.

And Osaria scoffs in disbelief. "The audacity of the little monkey. I believe we need to reinforce her sword-slave training," she states sternly and looks at me for approval.

Klein freezes and glances at me with the side of her eye, her pussy undoubtedly tingling in protest as it fears another round of abuse.

I rest my head on my claws and raise an eyebrow as I slowly point out, "My name beside his? Are you sure you want both of your masters to compete for your pussy?"

Klein blinks once. "Mercy…" She squeaks, but I have none to give. She herself started this domination play, so I'll take the opportunity to remind her who owns her body.

After a brief spanking of the monkey, we begin our usual mana circulation training. The background this time is a snowy mountain. We're north of Fort Katakti, which is in the northern part of the Rakontagne Mountain Range and directly west of Goldcross.

The area our hidden mansion is built in doesn't actually have snow anywhere nearby due to the season, but we can see snowy peaks far above us, so it makes for an interesting scenery for our meditation.

The elven mansion is built partially into the mountainside, dwarven style, but it's camouflaged by enchantments and protected by a reinforced glass dome, so there's no cold air hitting us or any risk of a monster stumbling upon our location. We can still hear the howling of the wind, though, and it makes for a cozy atmosphere to look out from our warm room onto the cold, bare mountainside.

Hana is also practicing her [Godly Language] a bit since there's some overlap in the two training regimens, and she's beginning to be able to subtly infuse the skill into her voice.

Her progress is a lot slower than when Kyros taught me the skill because she isn't focusing solely on it like I did, and she doesn't have as much "Intelligence" as I do, which is a factor in helping the skill grow faster.

I wonder if it's a good idea to make it public that I can use [Godly Language]. It's an excellent interrogation tool, and it's a pretty great hidden weapon that I can use in a pinch, but maybe the edge that I can give our men before each battle would be more useful. I definitely want to minimize the number of burial ceremonies I have to participate in.

I'm basically going to be giving inspirational speeches to buff my men before every battle, and it kind of sounds silly in my mind. I'm very practical, so I won't shy away from using it once I make a decision, but damn, I guess I'm multi-classing into bard, now?

I do have to test how bad the feedback is if I use it on an enemy, but then again, if everyone knows that I can use it, then most of the nobles that face us will prepare themselves and train in how to resist it, so it's not that great of an offensive skill. Anything lower in power than a noble can be easily dispatched with just my melee skills, so there's no point in using it against goblins, for example.

I wonder how well the skill will mesh with her [Taunt] and [Intimidate], too. Imagine if she could make both humanoids and monsters scatter with her roar or swears? Hana, of the Roar of Death. Hana, the Terrific.

"Why do Titles always sound so embarrassing when others mention them?" She suddenly questions worriedly through [Bind].

"You don't really feel like they represent you?" Ciel inquires curiously.

Hana frowns thoughtfully. "No, not at all."

"Impostor syndrome," I state confidently and give them a quick explanation.

Then Ciel loses her concentration as she suddenly smiles wryly. "Because you're a cheater, so you don't feel like you deserve it," she repeats her old joke, which now has too much truth to it for the girls to laugh about it anymore.

Alissa loses her concentration and mutters, "That explains everything…"

"It's also a joke, so don't take it seriously," Ciel guiltily tries to soothe them. "You have all done extraordinary feats, so don't feel ashamed of the recognition you receive."

Alissa and Hana smile and nod sheepishly, starting to feel a bit better about their Titles. Mine are kind of deserved, so they don't make me feel Impostor Syndrome, just a small amount of dread and dismay.

Then lunchtime comes around, and my date with Lina begins.

"Can we stay here? It's quite a nice place," Lina asks and looks out through the glass dome. The view down the mountain is quite nice as we can see a long stretch of rolling green hills below us, the western side of Glorampina that circles around the High Forest until it meets with Antano.

We're a bit too far to see the thin High Road as it enters the High Forest and bisects it. The very same road we took when we took the escort job.

We can see Goldcross far away to the south-east, a large yellow patch with small red and green spots all over it from the roofs of the elven tree houses and imperial brick houses.

There's also Ultirei's Tomb to the far east, a thin and jagged mountain range that looks remarkably like a serrated blade. The remnant of the first emperor's [Meteor] spell that "killed" Arreira.

"Indeed, it's quite nice," I wistfully reply and flash a smile at her. "Is there anything you want us to do?"

Her gloomy eyes stare at me blankly as she thinks thoroughly, but only one thing comes to her mind. "Cuddling," she answers reflexively.

"Alright, let's cuddle," I coo softly, then I pull a blanket and a bed out of my "Items" with a *poof*. I place them right next to the window so that we can look out while cuddling.

I sit down, and she eagerly takes her reserved seat, her little ass drilling itself against my shaft, then I cover us both with the blanket.

I pull her dark, silky hair to the side and kiss her neck, and I see goosebumps form on her skin from arousal, then she tilts her head, offering herself for more kisses.

And how could I refuse such an offer?

I wrap my claws and tail around her body, then I lower my head and cover every bit of her exposed skin with kisses. She grabs the tip of my tail with her soft hand and starts stroking it in return, making me get just a bit aroused.

"I love you, Wolfy…" She whispers softly as she closes her eyes.

"I love you, Lina," I whisper back huskily, and her body shivers with a pleasant chill.

After a long minute of kisses, my lips start to get tired, so I stop, then she turns around and returns my caress all over my chest. The gentle touch of her lips now makes me feel repeated, pleasant chills.

She suddenly looks up at me, her heart tightening from the amount of love she's feeling, but her face shows a guilty frown.

"What is it?" I gently ask her, urging her to freely speak her mind.

She opens her mouth, trying to find the words, but then she decides to just be frank, though her wording is quite awkward, "You've… you've done so much for me. How do I ever repay you for it?"

"That's the neat part, you don't," I absolutely kill it with a meme. Seeing her eyebrows slowly knit together, I quickly add, "Seriously, you don't. That's what love is all about."

She sighs and rests her forehead against my chest. "I feel like I've only received…"

I smirk as the opportunity is too good to pass up. "A lot of swords, yes."

"Wolfy…" She grumbles with a cute pout.

I sneak a couple of claws under her shirt and gently tickle her bare skin as I explain, "We're just starting our lives together, so you'll have plenty of time to 'pay me back,' but I'll also be happy if you don't and just live a happy life."

She lifts her head up and stares at me with conviction as she states, "I'll be happy for my whole life if I can be useful to you."

I smile warmly at her and kiss the tip of her nose. "You already are."

And she doesn't even flinch, immediately replying, "But I don't feel like I'm useful enough."

I chuckle softly. "That's not really something I can fix."

She pouts exaggeratedly and groans in annoyance. "You buy slaves and don't even have the decency to give us hard work to justify our existence."

I tilt my head in confusion "Why do you feel like you need to justify it?"

Her face becomes stern as she explains, "We couldn't provide for ourselves, so we need to be useful to the person who's sheltering us."

It sounds like it's some sort of social expectation that slaves need to work hard.

"Isn't emotional support enough?" I question her confusedly.

And she mirrors my head tilt. "How does that work?"

"You being happy makes me happy, which helps with my mental health since I love you," I happily explain.

She rolls her eyes and groans out loud, "Aah~! Stop it!" She suddenly shouts and pouts angrily. "I'm not here to have a scholarly discussion!"

I chuckle and give up, "Alright, alright…"

She turns around in a huff and crosses her arms, then slowly leans back against me as she starts to relax again. "It's so annoying trying to discuss things with you because of your Earthling sensibilities," she grumbles softly.

I raise my eyebrows in surprise. "Oh? I'm sorry about that."

She shakes her head gently, making her cute bangs sway. "Don't be. It's one of the things Alissa loves about you."

I hum softly as I run my claws through her silky hair, and the atmosphere slowly becomes pink again.

"And what do you love about me?" I huskily ask with a smirk.

She gives me a brief, worried look. She never feels comfortable talking about her feelings because they sometimes conflict with her sense of duty. "You answer first," she deftly evades.

I blink blankly as I think for a moment, then I realize, "Oh… yeah, that's not an easy question."

"Hmph…" She huffs annoyedly.

But I put my smirk back on and lovingly whisper, "I love… your timidness, it's really cute."

"I don't like being timid," she immediately interjects.

And I smile wryly. "Well, I'll still love many other things about you, even if you stop being timid. But continuing, I love your hard-working personality, and though I don't think it's necessary for you to work so hard, I still appreciate that you do."

That hits her weak spot, and she lowers her head as her cheeks burn.

So I continue the attack, "I also love how you're always concerned about us, and even though you don't often vocalize it, I know that you're always paying attention to our well-being. You're so loyal and focused on us that I rarely have to worry about what you're doing. Roxanne, on the other hand…"

Lina smiles wryly and finishes, "She was probably going to kill herself if I hadn't put so many protective enchantments into her workbench."

I nod. "Exactly."

She smiles adorably, quite happy with how I answered the question, but then she turns to me and raises an eyebrow. "You didn't say anything about me looking cute."

I look away for a second as a sudden spike of fear threatens to break my composure. "I thought that was a given," I cautiously reply. "You're beautiful and also so cute that my heart hurts when I think about you."

"It's still nice to hear it…" She mumbles with a shy smile, but then she starts to worry about how she will answer the question.

I know she tends to overthink things, so I give her a small push through [Bind] so that she just opens up her heart to me.

And she immediately confesses, "I love how safe you make us feel. Even in combat, I never feel like I'm in too much danger. You have a talent for leading us."

I gush a bit, but then I realize that I do have a bit of an Impostor Syndrome about that. "I think the Gods had a small hand in helping me with that. How loyal and supportive you all are can't be understated," I softly reply.

She gives me an intense look and speaks with conviction to wipe away all doubt in my mind, "Still, you're the center of our family, and I'm happy that I can be a part of it."

I hum in delight and hug her tight as I rub my cheek against hers, then I kiss the top of her head, and we both look ahead again.

We remain silent for a moment, but she still has one more thing to confess, "I love your Earthling sensibilities. Even though they can be annoying sometimes, they are what made you like this, and I love you just the way you are."

"Awn…" I groan from the critical hit.

"And I love how big and manly you are," she breathes and grins, then squeaks when I suddenly pump blood downstairs.

"There's no way I can ignore what you just said," I huskily whisper into her ear, and she licks her lips in anticipation.

I use tentacles to pull down both of our pants, then I move neither too fast nor too hard so that we can eat while doing it. I pull out some finger food because it's more practical, and I start to wonder why we don't do this more often. Food and love are each so good on their own, but they can be even better together.

A note from Manasong

Hall of Fame of Patrons

The patrons who support Rupegia shall have their names sung by the bards for they deserve the glory and honor. Their names are:

Prince PreownedFIN.

Prince Creamy Spinach.

Prince Owldente.

Prince Charlie Foxtrot.

Lord Andrew Meyers.

Lord Novgarod.

Lord Michale Erwin.

Lord Bakerdea.

Lord Maurice.

Lord Mattirro Draca.

Lord Fullmoon.

Lord Sean Drake.

Lord FrostyCube.

Lord Mike Bartter.

Lord Warwulfv.

Lord Jorge Franco.

Lord Khristopher Welsh.

Lord DJ.

Lord Tenebris Lupus.

Lord Paul Daval.

Lord Paul Daval.

Lord Bradly.

Lord AndreyUC.

Lord Tmac.

Lord Krawn.

Lord School Work.

Lord Gwendolyn Simmons-LaRose.

Noble Salty Panda.

Noble Mild Fracas.

Noble Aclys.

Noble CarlBaxter.

Noble d3235.

Noble Cidant.

Leave a rating or a review to help me rise to the top or fix my shameful understanding of prose.

Take a look over my blog where all information about the world of Rupegia will be posted.

Join the Discord and discuss, or rant, or meme, or try and fight me so your waifu gets more screentime.

Become a Patron and read chapters in advance, or read the side-stories, or leave your mark on the story, or help choose the next artwork or the next side-story.

Chapter 118: Summit - Part 2

A note from Manasong

Attention: to conform to the limit of mature content (more than just sexual content) allowed in a novel, I've censored this chapter. You can look for the uncensored version here.

Yunia pays Ereia a quick visit, her dousnadeia tied tight to her body because she's not in the mood to be harassed by the little imp.

She takes a [Gate] to the entrance of the odd, raised mansion. There's a hedge garden underneath it, which the mansion provides cover and shade for, keeping the air cool and fresh.

A slave servant is waiting for Yunia, and she recognizes the man, a handsome, young elf who is excellent at his job and loved by the women of the house, so much so that Ereia might one day give him a child.

"Your Highness, Yulania. We're honored by your presence," he greets politely and bows.

"The pleasure is mine. Lead me to Ereia, I have little free time for idle chatter today," she commands coolly.

"As you wish."

Yunia takes a familiar path through the hedges since she has visited Ereia many times before, and she finds the little imp having tea while soaking in a warm, fragrant bath, completely bare.

Yunia catches a whiff of the smell of love-making in the air, though she doesn't sense anyone else nearby, so whoever it was is long gone, unless it was the slave servant himself.

"Yu! Come soak with me!" Ereia exclaims happily then turns to the slave. "Marcoro, give us privacy, please."

"Yes, Grand Ereia," he politely replies, though he does sound a little disappointed, and Yunia notices the considerable tent in his tight pants deflate.

He activates [Silent Room] and closes the intricately decorated door behind himself as he leaves, sealing all sounds from coming into or leaking out of the room.

Ereia's happy demeanor immediately changes, and her face becomes impassive as she puts on her round glasses. "You're here because of Pedoro?" She stoically adds.

"I am," Yunia answers with a nod.

Ereia sighs and gets up, revealing her lithe, alluring body, and I finish inside Lina while imagining I'm doing Ereia again, then I focus back on my little dwarf to make up for this distraction.

"I'm sorry that I didn't warn you," Ereia gloomily apologizes as she walks over to the table near the bath, then she pours herself a cup of Eia. "I heard that the elven nobles were saying that something 'interesting' was going to happen, which was extremely suspicious since… they don't like Wolf, but I had no idea what it was, exactly, until I saw Pedoro's face, then it all made sense." Ereia takes a big gulp of her glass.

Yunia thinks for a couple of seconds, then shakes her head and gently explains, "At most, your warning would've softened the impact of Pedoro's attack a bit since we also had no idea about what was going to happen. There's nothing to apologize for." She also feels guilty for doubting Ereia, but she won't open a can of worms by confessing what was merely her thoughts at the time.

Ereia smiles faintly and sits down on a vine chair, which starts to wiggle and covers her wet skin, drinking up the beads of water and drying her. "I didn't know that Wolf was the one of the few who survived the Innocent Nymph…" She bitterly states as she looks at the rainbow-colored liquid in her glass, then takes a sip.

Yunia takes a chair in front of her. "Does it change anything for you?" She softly asks.

"I lost a few friends there. The Nymph was the best non-elf brothel in all of the elven lands, so it was quite popular with our types." Ereia suddenly raises her eyes, and they show a mix of confusion and fear, emotions that don't belong there for someone as bright as her. "I was there just a few days before the attack."

Yunia nods slowly. "That was the first time that our family was attacked, and we weren't prepared for it at the time."

Ereia frowns. "'First'?"

"The second time ended in an Intervention."

"Ah, the one where Lord Ciel acquired her Title?" Ereia softly asks, and Yunia nods. "I didn't know that that was also part of a heretical attack."

Yunia's tone becomes grim as she states, "They're organized, and they have a foothold inside the empire. We'll encounter them again, that's for certain."

Ereia's eyes narrow as she enters deep thought. "Heretic's Rest? That's why you're taking on the old royals?"

Yunia softly shakes her head, making her glorious drills bounce. "No, not exactly. We don't know if they're related."

Ereia's mood seems to darken further, and she looks down at her glass again. "I'm scared for you. What happened at the Nymph was just… 'Wickedness' seems too simple to describe the extent of their evil."

Yunia's mood mirrors hers, but she shows a burning fury within her as she declares, "When we find them, if we discover that their souls are set to shatter on death, we'll give them a Living Hell."

"Retribution," Ereia whispers approvingly, and an evil smile graces her pretty face.

After filling Lina up repeatedly, and hearing Aoi whine about how she isn't there to drink it all up, we calm down and return to cuddling.

Neither of us are big talkers, so we remain silent as we enjoy our time together.

She isn't too happy with the current color of her nails, so I start working on them. I remove the color with a piece of cotton doused in a special chemical, then I trim her nails and apply nail polish in a dark-red color with a hint of purple. She's a bit of a goth girl with a preference for darker colors, so the nail polish will go well with most of her clothes.

After I'm done, I apply a good amount of lotion to her whole body. Starting with her cute feet, I run my tentacles along their soft soles, then I slither them between her toes, stimulating the sensitive skin and making her sight.

The deliciousness of her bare body is too much for me, so I suck on each of her cute toes as I massage her soles. She smiles wryly, then makes a smug face as I lick her, triggering my "ojou-sama" thirst.

She's not the best at roleplaying, so she doesn't say anything, but her expression and dignified giggles are all I need to get it going. I just love haughty women for some reason, and it's not just the dragon who enjoys it, the human also has a thing for these sorts of "spicy" women.

Once I've had my fill of tasting her little toes, I put some long, black stockings on her legs, and she gives me a slow, lazy foot work while giving me that smug look that I love so much.

I feel like I'm just doing what I want instead of focusing on making sure that our "date" is pleasant for her, so I hold myself back after I paint her stockings white.

"Do you want to read something together?" She offers and asks for a small book of stories from my "Items."

"Yeah, sure. What do you have in mind?" I softly reply.

"This one." And she points to an interestingly named story: "Rock and Roll and Stone."

It's a (totally factual) comedy about the construction of the dwarven embassy in the capital after Mountainhome joined the empire. It's written by an imperial, so there are stereotypes about dwarves everywhere, but Lina finds them quite funny, and who am I to go and think otherwise? The differences between the races make the stereotypes ring true more often than not.

The first few words of the book paint quite an ominous imagery of what's to come…

A famous quote in dwarven history:

"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH…!"

Banba, the Taskmaster.

"You have no idea how loud dwarves can be," Lina wryly remarks, but then I remember that her family was quite loud, alright. "They aren't really that loud, not in comparison to the average dwarf…" She adds embarrassedly.

"Don't you miss talking with other dwarves?" I curiously ask her.

And she shakes her head softly. "Not really. They're loud, and I'm not, so I do just fine not talking with other dwarves. I just miss the food sometimes."

"I can relate," I hum with a nod.

The story is actually quite fun to read, so we both lose track of time as we get immersed in it.

It's a nice break from all of the serious work we have to do as Lords, and the incessant intrigue coming from the nobles, and our endless training and research as we aim to acquire more power.

Lina and I don't even have to prepare for the summit because the other wives are working together and doing that for us by interrogating Nero. Also, with [Bind], they can just feed us info whenever it's relevant instead of having us memorize it all ourselves.

But eventually, dusk nears, and Poosh comes to call us back.

Originally, summits like these were also called "Reniandisabis," but in elven culture, the meeting between Lords at the end of the Lordship Ceremony became a lot more popular in novels and plays than the regular meetings between Crown Lords, so calling this summit "Reniandisabis" isn't wrong, it's just archaic.

And since we're the ones who called for the summit, it'll be hosted in our castle, which is rather disappointing since I wanted to see the homes of the other Crown Lords.

We wait in our meeting room for the Lords to arrive, and Confiel and his wives are the first to join us.

"Greetings, Ryders. I see you've all been busy since taking over the Lordship," Confiel begins with a jovial smile.

"An advantage of having a large harem with an eclectic selection of backgrounds," Yunia calmly states, making me feel quite proud from her choice of words.

Confiel and Luz smile subtly at each other while Lua simply raises her eyebrows in mild surprise.

"A harem comparable to the emperor's," the cool, silver-haired beauty tersely remarks as she takes her seat.

Luz nods slowly and kindly adds, "Indeed. There's usually no need for such 'specializations' in elven families of lords, but it's good that you're all adapting well to the Lordship."

And Confiel smoothly finishes, "The Ryders may be the youngest Crown Lords in history, so it was expected that there would be some 'difficulties' until you were comfortable in your new seats, but we're glad that we were proven otherwise."

"Well, our dealings with the Elder Council didn't go as well as we'd hoped, so not everything is sunshine and rainbows," I calmly lay out the bait.

"Oh? Do tell. We know they're hard to please," Confiel innocently walks towards it.

"We wish to impress them, to show them that we deserve to be called royalty," Yunia boldly states.

"That is… certainly ambitious," Luz hesitantly remarks, slightly surprised.

And Yunia activates our trap card, "We'll do what they refuse to get involved with. We'll solve the problem of Heretic's Rest and show them that we're worthy of having the twelfth seat in the Council created for us."

The three of them subtly widen their eyes and lean forward, now very interested in what we're talking about.

"So you've become another hopeful for the Council…" Confiel amusedly states.

"Though not in direct competition with you," I coolly affirm.

And he shows his youthful grin as he replies, "Then it seems that our interests align."

And I smoothly suggest, "Perhaps we should work together to ensure that we both succeed in our goals."

It's not an official alliance forged with iron, but it'll do for now. Having Confiel favorably inclined towards us is more valuable in the long run than anything more immediate.

Our talks of an alliance are cut short once Crown Lord Fram Varze joins us. He's a rather thin and short silver elf with the usual lightly tanned skin from Glorampina. His neat, pointy beard and his rigid posture give him a bit of a tough look, which fits Yunia's image of him as a disciplined Ronti rider with a good sense of camaraderie.

His wife has a larger build and the musculature of an archer, sporting gentler looks than his and unusually short hair. Her face looks rather similar to his, but it's within range of the "Elven Curse of Beauty" that makes them all look similar since there are no "ugly" elves.

Fram was the one who housed the twins when Mavel was deposed, and he favors the Ronti, the imperial mount, so he's likely to be favorable to us.

"Ryders, we didn't have the opportunity to be properly introduced during the Lordship Ceremony," Fram stoically greets.

"It's a pleasure to have you here," Yunia amiably replies, and he nods in response.

"I'm happy to see that you've restored your family's honor, though it was in a way that none could've predicted," he affirms approvingly.

Since we're of relatively equal social status, we don't go through the long elven custom of kissing hands, and once Fram takes his seat, he starts asking us about the twins, so there's no serious talk between us as we wait for the next member to arrive.

Crown Lord Infa Lacaza comes in next. He's from Antano, so his skin is as fair as Yunia's, though his sense of style has a tribal flair to it. His white beard is short and thin as he's a fairly old man at the end of his rule, so his Chosen Descendant might soon take over the Lordship. The elves of Antano are a bit lankier than the usual elf due to them favoring spearmen and archers more than the other regions, and Infa is a prime example of that body type, even at his advanced age.

"Ryders," he unemotionally greets us and immediately takes his seat. Antano is also known to breed rough elves, so his demeanor isn't unexpected.

We continue on with our casual talk, and Herbaco Aureo comes in soon after with his four wives, of which only one is an elf like him.

He's a well-tanned golden elf with a taste for the seas and women. His choice of clothing is considerably more colorful than all of ours, and it has a kind of Rabanarian air to it since it features fish scales, fins, and feathers.

He has a very gentle look, the kind that'd fit perfectly in a boy band, though he's old enough that he's starting to gain "dad-like" characteristics.

"Ryders," he greets softly, too neutral for us to discern whether he's cross with us or not after we invaded his territory to finish off Dawn of Fire.

Fram pointedly ignores Herbaco. The two are like oil and water, so there's little lost love between them.

The last one to arrive, who purposely came late, is Crown Lord Lotus, the mother of Yunia's former fiance. She's a rather young-looking woman with a dignified but cute air. Her build is that of an Antano archer, but she walks with a rigidity that's as hard as Fram's. Yunia's impression of her is that she's a woman who bites back, hard.

When my eyes meet with her green jewels, I clearly hear the resounding ring of a glass being struck, and I know exactly what that means. She's using [Mask], and the reason why makes us quite nervous.

"Ryders," she greets us neutrally like the other Crown Lords, and her husbands follow, though I can sense that they aren't using [Mask].

"You said that Lotus wouldn't be a problem…" I call Yunia out through our connection.

"I did, and she hasn't been a 'problem'… yet," she hesitantly responds.

The maids bring in refreshments and snacks to stave off the hunger as it'll still take a while before dinner is served.

I clear my throat to call everyone's attention to me, then I begin, "As the first topic, I'd like to apologize for the brief invasion of Lord Herbaco's territory. The Wicked Circle of Magi Dawn of Fire was leaving the High Forest, but we didn't want to allow a single one of them to escape the purge, so we attacked without first asking for permission, and for that, we apologize."

Herbaco raises an eyebrow and hums softly, "Hmm… it's fine. The Templars never ask for permission to purge the Wicked, anyway." Then he shrugs, and Fram narrows his eyes in subtle displeasure at his nonchalance.

"One of your Heart Lords certainly didn't think it was 'fine,'" I calmly point out.

"The lower Lords all have egos larger than their positions," Herbaco's elven wife dryly replies.

"I think he just didn't like you because you weren't an elf," a human wife adds with a wry smile.

"Both are true," Herbaco flatly states.

And Alissa explains, "We've held on to a part of the valuables we took from Dawn of Fire in case you wanted to claim some since they were in your territory."

Herbaco gives her a curious look, seeming quite interested now that money has been mentioned. "Ten percent tax seems quite fair to me."

She nods in agreement. "We'll send our diplomat to talk about it with you."

Then Herbaco clicks his tongue in displeasure and chuckles. "Should've asked for more," he wryly remarks, and his wives chuckle with him.

"Don't act like a merchant in our presence," Fram interjects disapprovingly, but Herbaco just shrugs.

I don't want to give them room to start an argument, so I immediately announce, "With this matter out of the way, we'll broach the main topic if nobody has anything else to add."

"When are you going to visit Brás, Yulania?" Lotus flatly interjects.

Well, shit…

"We've been very busy with business related to the Lordship, so I haven't had the time to arrange for a meeting with him," Yunia calmly replies with a partial lie. She could've spared the time, but she had neither the motivation nor the emotional energy to do it.

"Yulania, he's your former fiance…" Lotus continues, and I see her [Mask] crack as her tone gains an edge to it.

Yunia's face darkens as she bitterly replies, "I'm not the same person I was before. There's little good that could come from us meeting again."

Lotus' [Mask] shatters like glass, and her neutral expression instantly shifts into a ferocious scowl that makes her look like an angry lioness. Both of her husbands frown as they look at her, and I'm not sure who they're actually displeased with.

It seems that Yulania miscalculated as she didn't think that Lotus would have such a strong emotional response about this.

"You've certainly changed because the Yulania I knew would never be so cowardly!" Lotus angrily exclaims and slams her fist on the table.

It does impress me a bit that I don't see a single speck of dust getting stirred up by her strike.

But I don't let Yunia use [Mask] to escape this, so she becomes incensed and blurts out, "I ended things with him because I was set to die! The fact that I'm alive was a mercy given to me, but it doesn't change the fact that everything in my life changed after that!"

But Lotus turns her ferocious gaze towards me, accusingly. "Then at least you should've encouraged her to meet with Brás since you stole someone's fiancée!"

Yunia bolts up from her seat, enraged at me being falsely called out. "Don't you dare blame him!"

"I'm not here to witness a bickering," Infa dryly states.

"Same," Fram agrees with a sigh, and Herbaco also hums in agreement.

"Angilas, control your wife," Confiel dryly commands Lotus' husbands.

"Lord Yulania's callousness is quite offensive to us," one of them replies.

"Yes, but don't let this turn into a shouting match," Luz sternly piles on.

The other husband grabs Lotus' arm and squeezes it tight, grabbing her attention, and the growing storm halts instantly.

"Marsh elves…" Fram quietly hisses.

It's kind of funny to me that elves have prejudices even among themselves, but as I remember how Arreira hated that side of them, things don't seem so funny anymore.

Why is there always drama whenever we meet with powerful people? Maybe because they don't fear us?

I stand up and raise my right claws, gesturing for silence. It's time to be diplomatic.

"I understand that this topic is quite sensitive as it invokes such strong feelings in all of us," I politely state, then I turn my eyes towards Lotus and stare intensely at her. "But I don't think it's appropriate to discuss it right now, in front of unrelated parties. The encroachment of Katasko in elven territory is of a higher priority, especially for you, Lord Lotus, as they seem to be using Goldcross as their base of operations in the elven lands."

She grits her teeth, but the fire in her eyes starts to die down. "Very well, let's talk about how we'll 'purify' our lands."

"You can't seriously be suggesting that we join the Purification," Infa dryly states.

"If Katasko survives the Purification, then they'll only come out even stronger than before," Yunia sternly replies.

I don't like the way they say purification with a capital P…

A note from Manasong

Hall of Fame of Patrons

The patrons who support Rupegia shall have their names sung by the bards for they deserve the glory and honor. Their names are:

Prince PreownedFIN.

Prince Creamy Spinach.

Prince Owldente.

Prince Charlie Foxtrot.

Lord Andrew Meyers.

Lord Novgarod.

Lord Michale Erwin.

Lord Bakerdea.

Lord Maurice.

Lord Mattirro Draca.

Lord Fullmoon.

Lord Sean Drake.

Lord FrostyCube.

Lord Mike Bartter.

Lord Warwulfv.

Lord Jorge Franco.

Lord Khristopher Welsh.

Lord DJ.

Lord Tenebris Lupus.

Lord Paul Daval.

Lord Paul Daval.

Lord Bradly.

Lord AndreyUC.

Lord Tmac.

Lord Krawn.

Lord School Work.

Lord Gwendolyn Simmons-LaRose.

Noble Salty Panda.

Noble Mild Fracas.

Noble Aclys.

Noble CarlBaxter.

Noble d3235.

Noble Cidant.

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Chapter 118: Summit - Part 3

Yunia still remembers the first time she heard the word Purification, when it was used by her father, who was explaining to her why the imperials were seen as "bloodthirsty" (and other pejorative words) by the elves.

"When the empire becomes too calm, when the nobles grow too fat, when the whole structure starts to rot, the temple organizes the 'Purification,'" Mavel lectures, his small nose wrinkled in disgust. "An excuse to purge the ranks of nobility as if they were mere monsters."

He turns to Yunia as he correctly predicts her frown of concern, then he smiles warmly and soothes her, "As barbaric as it may seem, it's quite an effective strategy considering how the empire hasn't collapsed under its own weight yet, but instead of trying to improve the noble class or impose higher standards, they prefer things to remain as they are because it 'just works.'"

Yunia initially saw Mavel as a gentle and dignified man, the exemplar of a "noble," but his contempt for the other races made him become callous and hateful in her eyes. Elves are "cursed" to be beautiful, but that doesn't change the ugliness within.

He was also exaggerating a bit. The temple oversees the battles and ensures that nobody dies, but deaths still happen, though not even Nero has a good opinion about the Purification.

"Whatever noble goal the temple has for organizing the Purification, it doesn't matter to the pissers," Nero explains with a dark grin as he looks out from the balcony and sips on his not-earl-grey. "They all treat it as a tool to eliminate their enemies, but out of all of them, the ones who control Katasko are the most conceited. They've used the company as a shield, creating a layer of obfuscation that has prevented others from accusing them of being complicit in the mercenaries' more 'unsavory' actions, but most of the pissers don't realize how truly hated Katasko really is.

"Maybe the higher-ranked pissers will survive, but the lower ones will just be used as fodder. Not only have they forgotten how to fight, but they don't even have enough knights to bring to battle, and the temple has never allowed commoners to participate.

"It's quite likely that it was one of those lower pissers who ordered the company to harass you. Coercing a rising adventuring fellowship into becoming knights wouldn't be that hard of a job, at least not until I learned that you were all fucking Gifted…"

"To bring the High Forest into that insanity is a terrible idea, Yulania," Confiel sternly replies, bringing me back to reality.

Yunia doesn't even flinch, and promptly explains, "I'm not proposing that we dive into their blood games, but rather, that we strike at Katasko, weaken them, then let them limp back to the Mainland, where the predators will smell the blood and rip them to shreds."

"You want to… be the kindling that finally starts the Purification?" Fram hesitantly questions, his eyes narrowed in skepticism, and Yunia slowly nods.

But Infa isn't convinced. "You'll still set a precedent," he concernedly points out. "Maybe in a few generations, there'll be someone who'll think that they're strong enough to challenge us elves and pull us into their games."

"The High Forest will always stay united, for we will represent the elves," Ciel gently, but firmly, asserts.

And we choose Hana for more impact. "We'll be the sword, and the Elder Council will be the shield," she boldly states.

Infa frowns in confusion. "And the Council has agreed to this…?"

I scoff, "Of course not. They're far too busy being passive and 'leaving any change to the younger and more energetic Lords.' Their words."

"You wager chips that you don't even have!" He exclaims in disbelief.

Yunia grits her teeth in annoyance and sternly states, "Again, you've misunderstood the plan. We aren't joining the Purification."

"We can't really comment more until we learn what, exactly, you have in mind," Herbaco calmly points out.

And Roxanne takes over, her cheerful demeanor completely at odds with the mood, something only achievable through intense mind pampering through [Bind], "Katasko's main purpose is to keep it unclear as to which noble is giving them their orders, but they still require paperwork to make sure that the orders are followed properly and to separate the different affairs of each noble.

"Their base in Goldcross is a command center for their operations in the elven lands, so that is where we need to attack, but not the base itself. We need to identify the Commanders since they're the ones who have the orders and know the agendas of each noble. Then we capture them, extract any information they may have, and expose it."

"'Expose'?" Lotus asks confusedly.

Now it's Lina's turn to speak, and she does so with perfect stoicism, "We'll build a machine that can copy thousands of written pages per day, and we'll use it to duplicate a compilation of all the information we'll extract, then we'll just need to spread the copies throughout the empire."

Lotus' eyes widen in realization. "Wait, what sort of information do these Commanders have?"

And Roxanne readily answers, "They speak directly to the nobles. They know who they are, what they want, and how far they can go to achieve the goals of the nobles."

Lotus grabs her own chin in thought and glances at both of her husbands, who seem to also understand the implications. "Katasko has been carrying out underhanded and clandestine operations in Goldcross for a long time. If we can find out who has been giving them their orders…"

"It's not just you who's been having problems with them," Herbaco joins in, and Infa grunts in agreement.

"If we can paint targets on all of their backs…" Lotus deliberates.

"But capturing these Commanders isn't a legal act," Fram sternly points out. His piety for the God of Law is unquestionable.

"The Tribunal and the temple might get involved," Confiel sides with him.

"'No law is absolute,'" Yunia quotes the God of Law himself, and Fram hesitates to reply, then he leans back in his chair as he goes into deep thought.

And I take the opportunity to assuage him, "We'll assume responsibility for it. As the self-proclaimed swords of the High Forest, we believe it's our duty to eliminate outside threats to the sovereignty of the elven lands."

"You play with fire," Herbaco dryly remarks.

"We can afford to get burned," I reply in kind.

"And nobody else seems inclined to start the fireplace, so we might as well," Alissa cheekily joins in.

"We only need your cooperation for this matter, and for you to not interfere with our handling of Heretic's Rest," Yunia sternly states, and the table goes silent as we've now touched a very sensitive topic.

"Have you been dealing with the old, heretic royals?" Lotus suddenly asks Fram, her tone a mix of slightly amused with a dash of accusation.

"Of course not," he immediately replies, his nose wrinkled in disgust.

Then all eyes turn to Herbaco, who nonchalantly replies, "Fram hasn't done it directly, but his answer is still misleading as it's obvious that all Root Lords and even some Heart Lords would've traded with them."

"We aren't talking about other Lords, Herbaco," Confiel sternly states.

His wives frown angrily, and he snobbishly turns his face away. "This is unfair."

"They're exiles, and they should remain exiled," Confiel continues, and the pressure on Herbaco continues to rise.

His wives seem to want to complain, but he subtly grabs the hand of the elven one, and they quickly get their emotions back under control.

"And where is it written that it's illegal to trade with them?" He calmly asks.

"Lords should be virtuous wherever there aren't any laws to guide us," Ciel stoically retorts.

"You're asking me to turn my back on them and see them starve," Herbaco sullenly responds.

And Ciel immediately halts the hostility, "There's no need to completely cut off all relations, but do remember that our family will likely be in conflict with them in the future."

And Yunia delivers the ultimatum, "Are you going to support the side that's trying to unite the High Forest, or those who actually split it?"

Herbaco's expression hardens, and he raises his palm, asking for calm. "We're not allied with either. We just trade with them," he deftly evades.

"We aren't asking for an alliance, only your cooperation," Yunia calmly replies, and the tension quickly dies down.

"Though we know very well that you can enforce it," Lotus wryly remarks.

That forces me to act diplomatically again, "It's not in our plans to create a new hierarchical rank in the High Forest, but we do wish to join the Council." We shouldn't lie to them, but we also can't come off as overbearing, forcing them onto the defensive.

"A child wants to sit with the adults," Infa declares with a hint of disdain in his tone.

"It's not your place to judge or decide," Yunia promptly snaps back.

"Hmph…" He grunts snootily.

And I let Aoi assume the diplomatic role again to show them that dragons aren't just wild creatures, "We believe that the Council's passivity is detrimental to the High Forest, which is why we're being so proactive and trying to build stronger relations between the Crown Lords."

Her eloquence makes the Lords uncomfortable since they don't know how to deal with her, which is somewhat beneficial for us since it makes it harder for them to properly oppose our ideas.

Her deep, double, draconic voice is also really fucking cool and intimidating.

"Your plans are… not unreasonable," Fram hesitantly confesses.

And one of Lotus' husbands kindly follows, "Aside from personal matters, there's little reason to go against it." Then he gives both his wife and Yunia a glance.

"It won't be easy. Don't forget that, and don't underestimate Katasko," Confiel warns them.

"If all six Crown Lords together can't deal with a single mercenary company, then we might as well keel over and hand them our positions," Lotus boastfully declares, lifting the spirits of the other Lords a little.

"They are backed by a good number of nobles from the Mainland," Fram cautiously points out.

But I shake my head and try to soothe them, "Backed, not protected. The nobles use the company as disposable soldiers."

"As long as we respond to them as a unified front, they won't be able to counter our might," Confiel affirms, emboldened by the rising mood.

"Let's show them that elven harmony is not to be underestimated," Yunia lands a crit on their pride, and the excitement of the Lords skyrockets.

We internally congratulate ourselves because we've managed to unite the Crown Lords in the pursuit of a single goal: fucking Katasko.

The talking continues for a long while as we iron out the plan. More food is brought before us, and we have dinner as we talk. The dishes are explicitly selected to be simple so that we don't have to spend any time cutting or chewing it, making it trivial for us to switch between eating and talking.

When almost everyone in attendance is mentally exhausted, we finally call for an end to the brief summit. Then we retire to our quarters for the scarce amount of time we have left for today to spend it leisurely before we have to go to sleep.

Who should I cuddle with this time?

I really like how Aoi has been so eager to help out by talking with the other Lords, so I choose her as the target of my endless need for attention and desire to give my love to others.

She hears my thoughts and immediately comes towards me with a toothy smile, then she wraps her warm, scaly body around mine, becoming a hard bed of muscles for me, yet it's still quite comfortable.

She rests her heavy head right next to my body, and I'm marveled at how much she has grown in such a short time, then she suddenly shrinks back down to lap-dog size, and I almost fall backward from the sudden loss of my backrest.

"You reminded me that I miss sleeping on your lap," she remarks, her chipmunk voice so jarring when compared to her usual deep, double voice that I let out a short laugh.

I cross my legs and make a proper nest with a blanket for her to curl up in, which she promptly does.

Gify is too much of a brat to feel like a pet, so I miss moments like these.

"Gih," she complains and shakes her claws at me, which is all she can do right now since she's currently splayed out with her belly up and Alissa fawning over her.

Aoi doesn't even react to being compared to a pet, she just pulls out a chewing gold coin with a *poof* and relaxes on my lap like a playful cat.

Her mindset is quite curious to me. Hana says that dragonkin all have a "vice," such as pride, sex, food, fighting, etc, but it's always something that becomes a part of their individual identity. She is quite obviously a sex addict, a "sex beast," as she calls herself, but Aoi doesn't show any obvious signs of addiction aside from loving my cum, and that isn't that much of a "vice."

Even domination isn't a thing for her, again unlike Hana, who has quite the intense fetish for it. For Aoi, I've already asserted myself as the leader of the harem, so obeying me is just a matter of fact, leaving no room for her to think anything perverted about it.

She's simply puzzling.

"She wasn't raised by dragons, so maybe that's why she's different," Alissa interjects.

"Oh? Are you having a mental talk about dragons?" Klein curiously asks as she waits for her turn in billiards.

I nod and reply, "I'm just thinking about how special Aoi is."

"I like being called 'special,'" the little dragon replies with a grin.

I smile and lovingly praise her, "You definitely are. The first converted dragon who can also transform into a humanoid; of course, you're extremely special."

She closes her eyes in delight and slowly chews on the scratched coin.

"She's very curious, though," Lina suddenly chimes in. "She's always listening and thinking about things."

"So? Are there any times when your head is empty and you're just thinking of nothing?" Roxanne immediately jumps on the opportunity to tease someone.

Lina pouts and refuses to look her in the eye. "Her thoughts are a lot deeper than any of ours. She's always learning something new, and that requires her to reflect upon things a lot."

My tail slowly sways in curiosity. "You know a lot about her," I remark, quite impressed.

She shrugs. "I've had to read her mind quite often for us to be able to work together on your projects."

"You think that 'curiosity' is her vice?" Alissa questions.

"It's certainly one of her main driving motivations to explore metallurgy."

I stare at Aoi as I pat her scaly head. She can't really explain why she enjoys learning about things. She just does.

Today is the 27th. Fis, day of Nature. Due to how fast Nature mages can make plants grow, today is harvest day for basically the entire Realm. The elves, specifically, have so many little customs related to this day that it's hard to name them all. The farmers dance with the Eia plants, whisper to the flowers, have little parties with the animals, thank the cows for their milk, kiss the fruits so that they can gain a little more sweetness, feed their tree-houses nutrients so that they'll remain sturdy, give the veggies scented baths to make them more appetizing, groom all the plants so that they'll grow more beautiful, and even feed them buckets of blood so that they'll become more attuned with their humans. It's simply the most important day for elven culture.

Alissa wakes me up quite happily, putting a lot more enthusiasm than usual. She wants to go to the Farmer's Market today with Krysta and Ciel, so she even has to skip breakfast to make it there in time before all the good stuff is sold out.

It's not actually necessary for her to buy anything herself ever again, but I approve of her idea. It's good that she still has her own hobbies to distract her from time to time.

The three of them also send a request to the temple for a Templar escort, and they send Kyora's harem, Ciel's old Templar comrades.

After breakfast, we begin our mana circulation training as usual, with Alissa and Ciel joining us a little later than normal. Today's background for our training is Gify's room because the flowers' calming scent is extra potent today.

For lunch, we have a light, not-apple salad, steamed gourds with a mild flavor, and a simple roasted ham. Our stomachs can't hold up against successive feasts, except for Aoi's and Gify's, so today's is a simpler meal.

Then the time for me to begin the first batch of baby golems finally comes, but Yunia wants Roxanne to inform Nero of the success of the summit, so I put it on hold while I watch through her senses.

Nero has a thing for balconies and tea, it seems, as he's always spending his free time on the one in the barracks.

"Ah, it's Lord Roxanne this time," Nero amusedly comments as she walks in.

"It's 'Her Highness Roxanne' to you," Sandoro corrects him sternly.

Nero clears his throat and perfectly re-enacts his previous exclamation, "Ah, it's Her Highness Roxanne this time." Then he twists his posh mustache as he grins.

Roxanne forces a smile and takes her seat while Sandoro just stares tiredly at him. She needs to use [Acting] just to stand interacting with Nero because he creeps the fuck out of her.

"The negotiations were successful, they've accepted our plan," she calmly reports.

Nero claps pompously and replies, "Wonderful. Stalking the Commanders won't be a job that I'll be looking forward to, though."

"You don't have to worry about that. We won't be putting you on the front lines for that task."

He shakes his head in disappointment and takes a sip of his tea, then he tiredly explains, "I'm already a Blood Slave, and I feel like the Gods won't let me out of this one, even if I tried to break the bond with all of my 'Endurance.'"

Now it's Roxanne's turn to tiredly explain, "We aren't worried that you'll run. We just want you to rest while you can because we have something else that you'll soon have to begin working on."

He raises his eyebrows in honest surprise. "Oh? What's it about?"

"We want you to infiltrate Heretic's Rest and inform us of everything you can discover over there."

Nero immediately bursts out in laughter, laughing so hard and so suddenly that his eyes begin to water, but it quickly dies down once he realizes that nobody is laughing with him. "Sorry about that, but you have no idea how wrong the nobles are about His Highness Wolf."

And now, it's her turn to look surprised. "Oh? What do they think about him?" She asks curiously, forgetting all about the creepiness that she feels from him.

He shrugs casually and takes another sip, then he stares out over the balcony as he lists it all out, "Depending on who you ask: a stupid youth, a sex-addicted dragon, an easily-manipulated Hero, a wretched schemer, a reckless researcher, a distinguished explorer, an idealistic worshiper, or a savage hunter. The truth is, though, that he's all of those things and more, but nobody understands that it's only because of the harem around him."

He suddenly becomes serious and looks at Roxanne again, the creepiness coming right back in full force as it hits her like a truck, and we even need to support her so that she doesn't frown and squirm away from him.

"The creepy show you put on by each speaking in turn tells more about you than you think. It shows that your unity is more than just a performance, it's what you all are, a united being. So I don't blame them for not understanding you, Ryders. I didn't, and now I'm here…" Then he suddenly grins manically. "But being underestimated is perfect for us, so let's use it to our benefit, hm…?"

A note from Manasong

Hall of Fame of Patrons

The patrons who support Rupegia shall have their names sung by the bards for they deserve the glory and honor. Their names are:

Prince PreownedFIN.

Prince Creamy Spinach.

Prince Owldente.

Prince Charlie Foxtrot.

Lord Andrew Meyers.

Lord Novgarod.

Lord Michale Erwin.

Lord Bakerdea.

Lord Maurice.

Lord Mattirro Draca.

Lord Fullmoon.

Lord Sean Drake.

Lord FrostyCube.

Lord Mike Bartter.

Lord Warwulfv.

Lord Jorge Franco.

Lord Khristopher Welsh.

Lord DJ.

Lord Tenebris Lupus.

Lord Paul Daval.

Lord Paul Daval.

Lord Bradly.

Lord AndreyUC.

Lord Tmac.

Lord Krawn.

Lord School Work.

Lord Gwendolyn Simmons-LaRose.

Noble Salty Panda.

Noble Mild Fracas.

Noble Aclys.

Noble CarlBaxter.

Noble d3235.

Noble Cidant.

Leave a rating or a review to help me rise to the top or fix my shameful understanding of prose.

Take a look over my blog where all information about the world of Rupegia will be posted.

Join the Discord and discuss, or rant, or meme, or try and fight me so your waifu gets more screentime.

Become a Patron and read chapters in advance, or read the side-stories, or leave your mark on the story, or help choose the next artwork or the next side-story.

Chapter 119: Unholy Revelations - Part 1

Well, I'm flattered… I guess. Hearing him "praise" us gives me mixed feelings.

Anyway, back to baby-making.

I want to create an army of golems, but first, I need to wipe my memories from their minds without giving them crippling brain damage. The problem is that I have little idea how to do that, so I have to do this through trial-and-error.

My first alteration from the standard golem is to reduce their mana organ to something very small so that they can't threaten us if they go berserk.

Arreira's notes are quite in-depth regarding the physiology of the brain, but the problem is relating this knowledge with what I can see through [Infuse]. At least I know where the brain is in the golem's soul, so I can alter it without messing with the other basic functions of their bodies.

I have a wide selection of dolls to choose from, with many potential body types and sizes, and because I want to build an army, there are plenty of suits of armor with their limbs chained together like Jarn's, but I don't think I'll use them for this first test since the bigger bodies cost a lot more mana, and the first batch will definitely not be usable.

If I'm going to do this the right way, I have to separate the golems into different categories with multiple golems per category due to the randomness of the alterations. This means that I have to separate them by body type, brain part altered, and even "type" of alteration done (when I find out how to do a more targeted alteration instead of just something random). This strategy will likely require a total number of golems in the hundreds, if not the thousands, so I have to be as efficient as possible with the use of my mana. Otherwise, I won't be able to finish this experiment within a reasonable amount of time.

I put all my points into mana skills to reduce the strain on me, then I cast [Infuse]. I'll begin by targeting the major areas of the brain that Arreira identified, then I'll apply random alterations to them just to see what happens.

I can also drink Roxanne's Moonlight Moss special MP potion for super-fast recharge without it being ridiculously expensive. Though we can afford high-quality potions, it's never a good idea to just squander our money, especially when I have the goal of investing our money in social projects.

Unfortunately, Roxanne's potions give me the "Paralysis" "Status Effect," which is decidedly unpleasant, yet it's still much less of a strain than using [Redirect Mana]. However, I'm not going to spend the first part of my afternoon just laying around paralyzed, so I'll use Alissa to set up the security measures for each of the new golems, but first, I'll give the original golems their orders.

"Ted, Suzy, Jarn, it'll be your job to assess their mental capabilities. I want you to gauge their physical capabilities, rate of learning, understanding of complex orders, capabilities to remember my memories, and capabilities to formulate new memories. This will be the 'general test.'

"The 'cognitive test,' will be based on Arreira's notes on brain functions, so I want you three to read them, even if you don't understand them. My memories of artificial intelligence were helpful in understanding the more technical parts, so I believe they can also help the three of you."

The golems remain silent for an awkwardly long moment, then Ted suddenly speaks for them, "We fear that we might not be able to create effective tests for the functions you've listed."

I nod in understanding. I just want to throw the boring, technical stuff at them, but I can at least help them get started. "Then let's discuss the tests and give you ideas about how they can be implemented in practice."

I'm also delegating the task of taking notes and organizing them to the golems because fuck that. I've done enough data organization for scientific papers to understand how soul-crushing that can be.

The insides of one's soul are made of "structures," which visually look like complex 3D shapes with a seemingly endless level of detail. The "brain" part of a soul is especially detailed in comparison to the other parts, but that's all that I can identify with my limited knowledge of soul organs.

Curiously, I can't find any similarities between the brain's "soul structure" and how a real-life brain is supposed to look or even how neural networks are organized. There is some logic to the soul's brain's structure, as I can identify very similar structures between the girl's soul's brains, but I find no correlation between any of their soul organs and physical organs. We only found out where each organ is in the soul because we were observing how damage to the body is reflected in the soul.

Well, what I see isn't exactly 100% the "truth" since my mind isn't able to fully absorb all the information about the structure of a soul, so I'm probably missing details that could change my understanding of a soul's organs. Besides, it's not like I know what to alter the golems' brains into, so I'm just going to have to do things blindly anyway.

And the first few golems show how hard this will be. They just straight up die a few seconds after creation.

What part of the brain did I alter?

I realize that even though I know where the soul's brain is, I don't know where its sub-parts are, so I summon a few goblins and prod their brains while observing their souls and update my soul map accordingly.

I learn that what I was altering was the brain stem, and Arreira's notes tell me that it controls the heartbeat. How he found that out, I don't know, but I guess he could've just experimented on goblins like I am, though the ones he used wouldn't be summons.

The golems are based on earth elementals, so they shouldn't have a heartbeat, which makes me believe that the stem must've been controlling some other function that's essential for the life of elementals. Since the elementals are heavily dependent on mana, perhaps there's an unconscious function in the brainstem that controls mana just like it does for the heartbeat, and my "alteration" fucked it up completely.

I alter other parts of the brain for the following golems, and now nearly all of them survive, though the problem is that most of them enter a vegetative state. The golems that survive and don't become vegetative are rare, but they do show some interesting behaviors.

There's a golem that can't speak; one who seems catatonic but not vegetative; one that gets regular seizures; one who understands speech but can only babble; a very frightening one that believes everyone is dead so it doesn't answer to my orders; a less frightening one that doesn't recognize anyone's faces, so it also doesn't answer to my orders; one whose left and right sides of the body operate independently and don't work together; and one who speaks in very weird, dreamy ways and also seems to hallucinate frequently.

Interesting phenomenons, but I'm not sure if we're getting anywhere. Maybe I should just keep going until I can identify what, exactly, made the non-vegetables become the way they are.

One of the golems becomes violent, even against us, their masters, so I begin talking with the original golems so that they may prepare a safe room where I can cast [Infuse] on big, powerful golems without exposing myself to danger if they went berserk.

I eventually start to get tired of creating so many golems, so I let the original trio begin running the tests. There are two amnesiac golems that show promise for the memory-wiped baby golem army, so I can at least say that we've taken steps towards that goal.

Since there's still quite a lot of time in the afternoon left, I decide to go to the temple to finally study the undead.

The temple in Escanso is just like every other temple in the empire, with only their personal quarters allowed to be different, but unfortunately, Teresina receives us in the library inside the temple, so I don't get the opportunity to marvel at elven architecture.

Ciel wants to come, so it's her, myself, and, of course, Alissa who go there.

"'Nai' Teresina, it's a pleasure to see you again," I smoothly greet her with a wide smile.

And she takes a second longer than usual to hum back with a nod in response, "Hm… likewise, Your Highness Wolf." Which I hope is because she was dazzled by my joviality.

"I've already gone through the Seekers, so I assume there's no issue with my request?" I gently inquire.

She shakes her head softly, making her long ears bounce cutely. "There isn't. The Seekers of Truth are always terse with their reports, but we trust their judgment."

I smile cheerfully and breathe, "Excellent."

But her gaze turns stern. "Though, I must ask if you remember my condition that we must always cast [Detect Evil] on you every time before you're allowed to peruse our books?"

I nod and kindly answer, "Perfectly. You may cast it freely because I assure you, I'll be the last person in the Realm to turn Wicked."

Without a hint of a reaction, she promptly replies, "I'll take your offer to cast it, but I won't take your word on the latter."

I simply smile back and nod again. It's not lost on me that there are a few armed Templars spread throughout the library, with Alissa detecting even more hidden behind the rows of books. It's wise of Teresina to keep her guard up just in case I were to suddenly get unmasked as a Wicked.

I do wonder if it's possible to get a false positive with [Detect Evil], but Ciel becomes so offended by even the mere suggestion of it that I think it's best to leave that unanswered, for now.

Teresina herself comes to cast the spell, and she extends her hand as she chants, which I gladly take with my claws. My hand is larger than usual, making her small hand look even more frail surrounded by my mean claws.

Just to be cheeky, I apply a subtle spirit touch to my hand, and I revel in the long breath she takes in response, though her stern expression remains unchanged.

Teresina looks so hot with her hair tied back that I imagine that she'd look like a prime elven beauty if it were styled sensually.

"Your milf fetish is out of control," Alissa wryly remarks through [Bind].

"All of my fetishes have gone out of control ever since I've become a weredragon," I reply in kind.

"Fair."

Ciel has no comment.

Then Teresina finishes the spell, and I feel a rather uncomfortable presence enter my body through her hand. It scours every inch of my person with a slow and intense touch, almost as if she were licking my soul, searching for the taste of Wickedness.

The feeling suddenly ends once every bit of me has been touched, and I keep holding Teresina's hand just up to the limit of what's acceptable, then I release it with a gentle smile.

"You're free to enter the reserved section of our library," Teresina softly declares, and the Templars all leave, except for one, who guides us further in.

I wave to Teresina as we leave, and she simply nods slowly.

The Templar takes us to a secluded corner of the library, which is separated by a grate made of a dark brown, glossy metal, darksteel. At its gate, there's a refined-looking wereowl man waiting for us. He has a sharp stare with thin eyebrows and slick, raised brown hair and feathers. His pale complexion makes his thin body look quite frail.

The girls think he's quite handsome, and I know it's because they have a thing for gentle looks, which are the same as mine.

He gives us a half-bow and lowers his head as he introduces himself, "Royal Ryders, I'm Ta'Haa, Head Librarian, Gray Preserver of Knowledge, and fellow Blessed by the Goddess of Knowledge. It's a pleasure to meet your family."

Lina's Trivia: Gray is the wereowl's standard title for anything "important," just like how "High" is for the elves.

"Oh, it's my first time meeting another Blessed," I happily remark.

"Caterina, Teresina's daughter, is Blessed by the Goddess of Piety," Ciel adds.

Oh, I didn't pay attention to Hana's conversation at the time.

"She only mentioned it in passing because it's impolite to brag about it in front of another faithful," she explains through [Bind].

"Anyway, it's also a pleasure to meet with Ta'Haa," I respond, and we all nod respectfully.

He nods diligently and inquires, "I've been informed that you seek knowledge about the powers of the undead?"

"Indeed. We've had one too many encounters with them."

"Very well. Follow me, and I'll show you what we have," he promptly replies, then he pulls out a beautiful, intricate ring from his [Item Box] with a *poof* and puts it on. He spins in place, then touches the gate, and it opens by itself.

We go in and pass by hundreds of nameless tomes, which are only identified by serial numbers and chained to their metallic bookshelves. Small measures to prevent dangerous bouts of curiosity from infecting untrained passersby like us.

Ta'Hee uses another intricate ring to unlock three books and deposits them at a table for us, then he casts [Clean] on their dusted leather covers and follows it up with an unknown spell that feels similar to [Blessing Magic]'s [Reinforce].

After he checks that the spells are working correctly, he diligently reports, "Here are the books 'Calliope's Reports on the Undead,' 'Soren Ekt-Bohn-Axel's Heretical Grimoire of Decay,' and 'The Unholy Consumption of Matter.' These three should provide a good base of knowledge on the undead, but if you need anything more specific or advanced, you can ask me."

The three tomes are quite heavy, so I think they'll last us quite some time.

"These will be fine for now," Ciel replies with a gentle smile.

He nods again and warns us, "I have to remind you that the knowledge in these tomes is not to be spread among the populace. I don't believe the Goddess would ever Bless someone who'd treat these topics without the care that they deserve."

"I understand. These tomes are only for ourselves," I politely acknowledge.

He gives us one last nod, then leaves so that we can have some privacy, but Alissa senses that he doesn't go far.

"Let's begin," I order.

Starting with the Reports book, it details how the undead first came to be, which we already know was because of researchers studying the corpse of Ender, an ancient dragon that was nearly immortal, for he could regenerate from any wound.

The book says that they tried to pull back Ender's spirit just like we did when we pulled Gurrier back from Paradise to talk with Alissa. Monsters don't go to Paradise, but it's still possible to pull their souls back from the Cycle of Spirits and talk to them.

In Ender's case, they couldn't pull his spirit back, which was odd since it hadn't been too long since he had died.

It's believed that Ender died to the level 100 [Light Magic] spell [Divine Descent], which is believed to have summoned the God of Creation to the Realm, allowing them to annihilate Ender, so it's understandable that there'd be nothing left, but the mages were researching immortality and were nothing if not stubborn, so they kept trying to pull Ender's soul back. And they eventually succeeded.

Okay, one second. What the fuck? [Divine Descent]?! Jesus fucking Christ on a bike playing with a kite. Can I summon the God of the Sun and then ask him who the fuck brought me here?

"Can you summon the Goddess of Knowledge and then fuck her?" Hana suddenly barges into my thoughts.

"I'm going to stop you right there," Ciel grumbles sternly as she comes in and pulls Hana out.

"No, no. We really need that question answered," Alissa cheekily joins in, but she immediately follows Ciel out without resisting.

Anyway… first, they started to feel the effects of Ender's corruption, so they devised protections against it using [Light Magic], then they intensified the "pull" until they "succeeded," and the mages that were pulling had their spirits stolen, literally.

Technically, they died instantly, but their physical bodies were unharmed, though they entered a seizure-like state where they twitched out of control until they starved.

Now that's freaky.

But the mages continued on and devised a protection that temporarily casts the [Trap Soul] spell with enough power to resist the pull, but then, no matter how hard they tried, nothing happened.

In a fit of madness, they started to reduce the strength of the [Trap Soul] spell, allowing the "pull" to gradually begin to affect their souls while still keeping it tied to their bodies, and they discovered the Inbetween, the place between Cycles where time and space don't exist.

They were all crammed into a single, infinitesimally small point, yet at the same time, they felt like they were in the empty void. For some, they spent an eternity there, but for others, they were there for only a few moments, yet in reality, it lasted for only a split second before they were pulled back.

Diamond dragon scales, now that's interesting!

For some reason, Ender's soul led there, and that made them extremely curious. After a lot of "exploration," they found the remnants of a spell that felt extremely similar to [Trap Soul], though it was like it was "frozen" in time, "mid-dissipation," and it was only when they observed it that the spell continued to dissipate.

One of the mages went mad and found a way to create a portal to the Inbetween, but they realized that it wasn't the same "Inbetween" that Ender's soul lead to, so then the mage cast [Trap Soul] on a part of themselves and threw it inside the Inbetween, thus creating the first undead. Because their souls are held somewhere that time and space don't exist, their Threads of Fate never age or break, effectively granting them immortality.

Wait, they found a way to leave the Cycle. Could the mage that created [Otherwordly Summoning] be one of the researchers of immortality?!

Lina believes that those researchers all died after the Heresy of the Tower of Decay, so maybe the creator wasn't killed by the spell, but instead, he just became Wicked and got purged.

Continuing, a "lesser undead" is someone who only has their spirit's brain in the Inbetween, while a "full undead" has their whole spirit in the Inbetween.

The lesser undead is weaker because they die if their physical brain is destroyed, while a full undead needs their whole body to be annihilated for them to die, but the lesser undead can hide among the humanoids, while a full undead can't due to the otherworldly corruption that comes from their spirits.

A lesser undead can keep the corruption at bay by using magic, but for a full undead to hide the corruption, they would need to use a ridiculous amount of mana, making it instantly obvious that some powerful spell was acting upon their person.

After a full undead's spirit spends long enough in the Inbetween, they become fully disconnected from the Cycle, but they can still use mana, just now, they're unconstrained by certain rules that we are.

It's like they become "alien vampires." They're incapable of producing their own mana, but they have the frightening ability to absorb ours, and they also have an incredible magical power that they can use to tug at the strings that make up our reality and then unravel them at will.

Since everything comes from mana, they can even manipulate or absorb rocks with ease, but matter is a low-efficiency fuel for them. What they most like to "eat" is either raw mana or living beings.

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Chapter 119: Unholy Revelations - Part 2

The temple's stance against immortality may be one of the few things they seem dogmatic about, and it puzzles me a little. I mean, sure, undeath is like a glitch in the system, and it causes quite a lot of issues for the world, but why, exactly, is it considered something heretical?

It must have some relation to the Gods, some deeper reason for why it's so despised by the temple.

"Is the fact that it's a 'glitch' not enough to consider it heretical?" Ciel interjects concernedly.

I shake my head in disappointment and plead, "Please, my love. Glitch, exploit, cheat, it's all in the same category. Just because it wasn't intended by the Gods, it doesn't mean that it can't become accepted. Look at me, look at what I am and how 'warped' my soul is due to my 'cheats.'" I produce a slimy, obscene tentacle just to drive home the point of how "different" I am.

But Ciel narrows her eyes in defiance and stubbornly argues, "Following in the footsteps of a being created specifically to destroy everything doesn't bode well. Even the God of Destruction avoided creating another Ender and gave the Monster King the capability to die, not to mention how undead monsters are also killed on sight by other monsters."

And I meet her eyes with mine. "I need more than that. I need a logical reason."

Now she frowns, showing such a sad face that it pulls on my heartstrings. "We don't know, Wolfy. I just don't want you thinking that you can exploit undeath…"

So I pull back, "I'm not, I just… want to know. You know how I am, I'm a very curious person."

She sighs tiredly and massages her temples as she explains, "I think the temple is just afraid of it. I didn't research too deeply into undeath since it has little to do with my Goddess, but when I asked Arantos about it, I always felt that he was uncomfortable talking about the topic."

And I nod energetically as I firmly state, "There must be some secret glitch with undeath that makes the temple weak or powerless before them. That's why not even this book mentions the true reason for why it's considered heretical."

"That seems likely…" Ciel quietly mumbles and looks away.

"What if their souls are outside of the God of Existence's influence?" Alissa innocently suggests, and that makes us pause.

"Now that's a logical explanation," I whisper, deep in thought.

If they're considered "alien" to the Cycle, then the undead might be immune to all Gods. Perhaps not the Gods of Creation and Change, but those two aren't here anymore.

Ciel seems quite uncomfortable with this conversation, so I think it's time to drop it and continue reading the book.

Undead regeneration comes from the ease with which they can manipulate matter, so "willing" their own bodies to return to their unharmed state is one of the simplest things they can do, almost like breathing.

They do lose quite a lot of "Magical Power" once they've become undead since they aren't as well "attuned" to Rupegian mana anymore, so there are some heavy downsides to becoming one. And though they have quite a high compatibility with [Alteration Magic], that school has little to offer in the form of offensive spells, so undeath doesn't translate to any sort of actual increase in martial power.

The writer also hypothesizes that undeath causes insanity, but she's humble enough to admit that there isn't enough evidence to support this claim as it could very well be that the people who seek undeath are already quite insane.

Then we move on to the second book, which describes the Heresy of the Tower of Decay.

Basically, they built a very large collector of energy that affected the whole area of Kold Myr, which is now called the Deadlands. It was supposed to be so subtle that nobody would notice it, but weird shit started to happen, so the temple began investigating stuff.

That was the temple's first contact with undead corruption, and it scared the shit out of them, so they called the empire to bring down the tower because the mages didn't want to stop playing with it since it's what gave them free energy to live forever.

One thing led to another, and one crazy dude turned the dial on the drain up to eleven, so Emperor Cyd just destroyed the tower to stop them, causing a nuclear fallout that made the land uninhabitable. Though, in the last few hundred years, the temple has succeeded in establishing colonies of priests who can live almost normal lives there while helping the land heal.

And that's why both the temple and the empire treat undeath with so much fear.

What's most concerning to me is that it took the temple a hundred years to discover that the Tower was the culprit behind the weird shit in Kold Myr. This is because the undead spells are basically imperceptible to us since their power is from "outside" our Cycle, just like how we couldn't understand what we saw when the "alien" being invaded our world through the [Otherworldly Summoning] experiment.

The third book details the powers that the undead have been known to have. One of the first ones described is what they call [Unravel], and it's what the undead mage from the Praefortis mercenaries tried to use on us when we fought them in the Misty Low Forest.

That spell is frighteningly silent, simply turning anything affected by it into dust in the blink of an eye. The only defense against it is to create enough of a magical disturbance that the undead mage doesn't have enough power to "end" you.

Their magic combines well with [Necromancy Magic]. They both deal with decay and death, so undead necromancers are one of the most common types of heretics found due to the small boost in power the combo provides.

The undead also have an affinity for illusions, the [Double Image] kind, not the [Pacify] or [Vicious Rage] kind. They can alter reality at will, so with enough practice, they can create holograms and do other weird visual shenanigans.

Then I become mildly concerned when I find out that the undead sometimes evolve the ability to produce partially immaterial tentacles as some sort of "soul extension." It's similar to how [Alteration Magic] envelops their target with the caster's "presence," but the undead's presence is visible through some visual glitch.

There's also a warning to never eat or drink anything made by an undead because they can cause even more chaos in their effects than [Alchemicism] can.

"Okay, now I'm frightened," Roxanne's joke echoes inside my mind.

"I wonder what undead alcohol tastes like," Hana excitedly joins in.

"Like not here nor anywhere," I cryptically remark.

"What?" She croaks.

And I smile cheekily while Alissa rolls her eyes. "It doesn't exist while it does at the same time. Schrodinger's alcohol."

"Sounds like it's similar to a dream," Lina ponders.

"Dream alcohol is terrible. I always wake up thirsty and queasy whenever I dream about it," Hana complains, her excitement gone with the wind.

"It sounds like being an otherworldly vampire sucks, actually," I state with a wry smile.

Then we read that it's a bad idea to use summons against the undead. If they cast [Unravel] on the summon, it destroys the small piece of the summoner's soul that was within the summon. The damage can be healed, but the summons receive a small part of the summoner's MP pool, so if that gets destroyed, then the mage's MP is permanently reduced.

There are also mentions of undead using [Spirit Magic] to directly attack the summoner's soul through the summon, but it has to successfully capture the summon, and the summoner can just dismiss it if it's endangered, so it only works with a very well planned sneak attack.

The rest of the book tells of smaller oddities that aren't really a threat to us, so we focus on learning how to counter [Unravel].

[Light Magic] is the direct counter to otherworldly magic, but not everyone has a Heavenly Weapon that they can just pour all their mana into, so we look into the alternatives. Using walls of stones, metals, crystals, and other hard materials are all excellent for making the undead mage waste their power since they're quite hard to "unravel."

In case there aren't any hard materials on hand, chaotic magic also serves to interfere with the spell, especially if they're from different magic schools, so just spamming all of the spells we know will help a lot.

But the biggest counter seems to be to simply not allow them to acquire so much power to begin with. They "leak" whatever energy they drain quite noticeably since undeath is such a glitchy thing, so they need to bring an energy source with them (like living sacrifices) if they're to engage in battle, making for an obvious target.

Easier said than done, though. My brief hesitation before we entered Praefortis' main HQ building gave the undead mage enough time to drain its sacrifices entirely, so they don't need that much preparation to accumulate a deadly amount of power.

I wish I could test [Unravel] so that I could learn with certainty how to resist it.

"I think the spell's effects could be mimicked, but it'd take a researcher mage with an impressive beard to do it," Roxanne chimes in.

She means a very powerful mage.

If only we had an undead person we could study… there's quite a lot of research that's been done on the corruption, but not on the undead themselves. I already know that keeping an undead prisoner is a very dangerous idea, especially since the temple suspects that long term contact with the corruption is detrimental to the mind, but this world really needs its own Marie Curie so that we can learn how to detect and destroy the undead more effectively.

While we study, Hana goes to fulfill one of our obligations as Lords: to preside over the execution of a Wicked man.

The prison is on the bottom level of Escanso, under the temple and the Templars since there's nothing that the criminals fear more than the faithful with a nose for illegal activities.

The execution chamber is not unlike those of Earth. It's set up like a stage, with seats for an audience and a wall of glass separating them from the raised dais. The dais has a set of sturdy metal bars that the condemned is tied to, keeping them on their knees and their head lowered.

A few commoners show up to watch, but their interest seems to be more from a sense of morbid curiosity rather than from having any actual relation to the wretch. There's also Experience to be gained from watching the execution, so some feel like it's their duty to be present since it's a way for the Wicked to make a small payment back to society, returning some of what they stole.

It makes me a bit uncomfortable to see a housewife with her two children in the seats. The two little ones are likely level 1, so the Experience they'll get from this should give them a few levels, which should earn them enough skill points to start learning crafting skills.

Once the clock hits exactly 4 PM, the event smoothly begins.

The condemned is brought into the chamber, and the audience begins talking with hushed whispers.

It's a man, a human man. He looks rugged, and though his scraggly hair and beard make him look like a hobo, his scars scream of "adventurer."

"The price for making Escanso more attractive to adventurers…" Yunia dryly comments through [Bind].

"Do you regret it?" I question her curiously.

But she categorically denies, "Of course not. The races all have their own strengths and weaknesses, and it's our responsibility to bring about harmony between them."

Hana scoffs and throws some banter, "How noble. It's like you're the most 'unelven' elf in existence."

But Yunia calmly lashes back, "I take offense at you saying that I'm 'unelven.' I may be reasonable for an elf, but I'm still very much a prideful one."

"'Snootiness' is the main characteristic of your race, and you're definitely a snooty elf," Roxanne cheekily "sides" with her, but Yunia doesn't feel like indulging her in sparring with words.

Also, Hana has to keep her face stern while we talk, so the banter quickly dies down.

The guards tie the man to the metal contraption, forcing him onto his knees with his hands behind his back, a gag in his mouth, and his head down. Then they put a helmet on him that holds a stake at its back.

Once his head is secured and completely immobile, an elven priest draws a dagger and makes a shallow cut on the man's shoulder, then he presses a crystal tablet against the wound, and it instantly turns blood red.

"Wicked! Dominic Galatas! You're a murderer! You shame your family and offend Their Highnesses by scorning their protection!" The priest angrily shouts while waving the crystal tablet around.

The Wicked resists and struggles against his restraints, but he's not even given the right to have his last words spoken.

The priest calms down after a few seconds and nods at Hana, then she readies her sledgehammer and immediately strikes the stake, driving it into his brain.

The crowd gasps, and the struggle immediately stops. The guards don't wait even a moment before untying him and dragging his corpse away. He'll be burned, and his ashes will be spread far from civilization over a wide area so that nobody will ever be able to pull his spirit back from Hell.

The whole affair takes only a few minutes, and we gladly move on the moment we're allowed to.

We return to our research, and we manage to finish transcribing all the important bits about [Unravel].

The only problem is that I don't really have the time to train up my resistance to this spell. Maybe if I were to fully delegate the baby golem army project to the original golems, I'd have enough time to train this.

If I could teach the golems how to create their own golems… a recursive golem factory.

My Gifts don't seem to be inheritable by the golems, so I need to understand the ins and outs of [Golemancy] myself if I want them to be able to use [Infuse] at the same level that I can.

Eventually, we call Ta'Haa and ask for more advanced books, but they're so obtuse that only Roxanne can understand them. Rupegian magical theory seems quite alien to me, and though I do believe that I'll eventually be able to understand it, for now, I need Roxanne to translate things for me, so it isn't a productive use of my time to continue reading these books.

We return to the castle and check on the golem army. The golem trio reports that the amnesiac golems are very severely brain damaged and not that amnesiac after all, but baby steps. We'll eventually get it right.

I create a few more golems to continue our tests, then we go through a quick session of Gestalt training, and after that, it's bath time.

Intermission – Hukarere

"Dismissed!" Dame Klein shouts, and the men relax.

Another day, another successful dungeon purge.

Back in Whakamutu, I never entered dungeons as often as I am now. The land dwellers are truly plagued by them. Well, in return, we had to deal with a lot more huge monsters than we do around here. For some reason, flying monsters have to be big.

As I reach for the door's handle, I notice a small dark hand also coming to grab it, so I stop, and Klein and I stare at each other in confusion.

"Oh, are you going to the castle, too?" She kindly asks with a gentle smile.

"Uh, yes…" I hesitantly respond. I feel a small amount of embarrassment because she must be thinking that I'm going to the castle just to suck Wolfy's dick.

Well, I am, it's just that I also want to spend some time with his harem. They're fun people.

Klein looks back and spots her father as he walks away, then she turns to me and grins like a smug little shit.

The men are already far enough away for me to speak freely, so I bark back, "What are you smiling about, you cheeky little monkey?"

Her smile quickly vanishes from confusion. "W-what?" She stutters and squeaks like the cute little animal she is.

I narrow my eyes in fake reproval just to fuck with her. "Flirting with the gay boy while the big dragon is away is quite bold of you."

"I-I'm not flirting!" She hisses and opens the double doors, then boldly walks away, straight down the path to the castle. Good on her for not taking the bait.

"Sure…" I hum softly.

We walk in silence, still winding down from the long day of fighting monsters, but then we meet Kaatohe on the way. The kitty seems to be quite distracted, staring at the flowers that flank the path with a worrying amount of fascination.

"Hey there, cat. Are those Nepeta flowers?" I ask amusedly.

"Hey, uh… what?" She mumbles absentmindedly and turns to us, frowning in confusion.

"Nepeta. Cats love it, for some reason."

"I'm not a cat, you dog, my Aspect is that of a leopard!" She hisses angrily, back to her usual self.

I grin smugly, exactly like the little monkey just did a minute ago. "Uh-huh… You still have a big cat head, though."

"Are you alright? Do you want to talk to Ciel?" Klein concernedly interjects, and I frown as she interrupts the verbal coitus again.

Kaatohe sighs and waves her hand dismissively as she declines, "Please, spare me, I'm fine. I've just been contemplating my reasons to continue living."

Klein and I share a look. That's not what someone who's "fine" should be thinking about unless they're a scholar like Wolfy, and Kaatohe is definitely not one of those.

"I'll tell Ciel that you're being weird again," Klein mumbles as she gives her an odd look.

And the cat rolls her eyes. "Ugh… I'm a noble, Klein, but I'm dead. What's the purpose of nobility if I'm not able to have children?"

"Adopt," the monkey immediately replies with a flat tone.

Now it's Kaatohe and me who look at her oddly.

Her eyes fly between the two of us, and she takes a step back, feeling a bit shy under our intense gazes, then she hides her long tail behind her body in a defensive gesture. "What? That's what the priests say. Blood isn't everything, so adopt a child and have Wolfy be the father. Or have him impregnate someone else, and then buy the child."

I let my jaw hang loose as I grunt, "Uhh~… I didn't expect that you would ever say something like 'buy a child.'"

And she pouts annoyedly. "Hey, that's something a noble would do, not me."

"Alright, but anyway…" I turn to Kaatohe and grin teasingly. "Cat, you're really not yourself if you're taking advice from the monkey, so go talk to Ciel either to fix your mind or to… discuss adoption like she suggested." Then I shrug and chuckle.

Kaatohe grunts as she rolls her eyes and turns her back to us. "How shameful of me to be in such a state that a dog thinks that they can give me advice."

"So if I say that you shouldn't jump off the ship, you'll do it just to spite me?" I ask accusingly.

She gives me the side-eye and hisses, "Would you kindly go fuck yourself?"

I laugh out loud and sling my arm around her shoulder, then I pull her forward and force us to walk together towards the castle. "How about we just ask Wolfy to do it for us?"

Intermission end.

Hukarere and Kaatohe come to join us, and I feel quite pleased with the fact that they're increasing the time they spend with us.

A note from Manasong

Hall of Fame of Patrons

The patrons who support Rupegia shall have their names sung by the bards for they deserve the glory and honor. Their names are:

Prince PreownedFIN.

Prince Creamy Spinach.

Prince Owldente.

Prince Charlie Foxtrot.

Lord Andrew Meyers.

Lord Novgarod.

Lord Michale Erwin.

Lord Bakerdea.

Lord Maurice.

Lord Mattirro Draca.

Lord Fullmoon.

Lord Sean Drake.

Lord FrostyCube.

Lord Mike Bartter.

Lord Warwulfv.

Lord Jorge Franco.

Lord Khristopher Welsh.

Lord DJ.

Lord Tenebris Lupus.

Lord Paul Daval.

Lord Paul Daval.

Lord Bradly.

Lord AndreyUC.

Lord Tmac.

Lord Krawn.

Lord School Work.

Lord Gwendolyn Simmons-LaRose.

Noble Salty Panda.

Noble Mild Fracas.

Noble Aclys.

Noble CarlBaxter.

Noble d3235.

Noble Cidant.

Leave a rating or a review to help me rise to the top or fix my shameful understanding of prose.

Take a look over my blog where all information about the world of Rupegia will be posted.

Join the Discord and discuss, or rant, or meme, or try and fight me so your waifu gets more screentime.

Become a Patron and read chapters in advance, or read the side-stories, or leave your mark on the story, or help choose the next artwork or the next side-story.

Chapter 119: Unholy Revelations - Part 3

After a good deal of fucking followed by cuddling, I remember that Lina's parents are coming for dinner, so I look at the two perpetually naked Chimeras and grin.

"Want to tease a virgin boy?"

"Is that a dick on the wall…?" Fuda quietly asks as he comes in.

"Shh…" Omume shushes him, but the three of them stare at heraldry with a side-eye for a few seconds as they walk, then they turn to us and smile.

"Hello Lo'r-, uhm… Ryde'rs," Fuda greets us first.

"No formalities," I softly announce with a smile. "Anyway, welcome to our castle, Gilbiks."

"Thank you fo'r the-…" Toulin's response dies in her throat as she notices the two naked women staring at them, then Omume and Fuda notice them too. Hukarere has a nice pair of pale ones, so she puffs her chest and flaunts them, very much enjoying the attention, while Kaatohe's expression is more neutral, though she's not able to fully hide her amusement.

Before anyone can say anything, I introduce them, "These two are Hukarere and Kaatohe, two of my women." -Kaatohe raises an eyebrow for just a second- "The wolf is a Companion from the Lordsguard, while the leopard is a noblewoman who commands our fighter planes."

Though Kaatohe has a cat's head, she insists that her "Aspect" is that of a leopard, as in, her most defining characteristics come from the leopard, so I think that the Aspect is defined by more than just physical appearance.

Ciel smiles apologetically as she gently pleads, "Though I admit it's a bit of a difficult thing to do, I ask that you be understanding of their culture as they're naturalists who completely do without the need for clothing."

"It's okay to stare, we like it," Hukarere affirms with a toothy grin while Kaatohe just gives them her usual snobbish glance, then Toulin jerks her head towards Omume and glares.

"We unde'rstand, and we shall respect you'r customs to the best of ou'r ability," he sheepishly replies, his eyes firmly staring back at Kaatohe's, while Fuda turns his head away and looks out through the balcony.

"Oh, wow, the view is amazing…" He breathes, and the two other Gilbiks follow his gaze, eager to look anywhere else.

"Indeed…" Omume coos, and his son immediately moves past the table to get a better look, then his parents follow a second later.

I get up and join them, so we delay the beginning of our meal for a short while.

"And I thought ou'r ga'rden was ridiculous…" Fuda mumbles as he gazes at the sea of mist outside of the castle's Shell.

"This view is one of my favorite things about our castle," I softly remark.

He nods slowly. "Hm, I can shee why."

Then Lina, Omume, and Toulin come join us. Fuda grabs the railing and leans forward so that he can look down while the other two Gilbiks stay a few steps behind him, at a safe distance from the edge, but all three show wonder in their faces as they take in the view.

"You can come here as often as you like," I kindly offer.

"We wouldn't want to imposhe," Omume immediately declines.

And I insist, "At least come have dinner with us regularly."

He hums and shares a look with his wife. The two are hesitant, but they don't seem averse to the idea, so they must be feeling a bit intimidated by our presence at the moment, that's all.

But then Omume gives me a curious look and makes a surprising remark, "I don't mean to offend, but f'rom Lina's desc'ription, I didn't take you fo'r a family man."

I reflexively grin in amusement, and my tail sways on its own. "Oh…? How did she describe me, then?"

I already know what she said, but I want to hear how he puts it.

He looks at Lina, clearly asking for permission, but she just shrugs, so he shakes his head at his daughter's reticence and explains, "She shaid you're quite reshe'rved and schola'rly, not the type that I'd imagine inviting othe'rs fo'r, uh… dinne'r."

I nod and assert, "I'm quite reserved, yes, but I firmly believe that having a supportive family around my wives will only be beneficial to all of us."

"And we'll be fo'reve'r g'rateful fo'r you'r kindness," Toulin immediately announces.

"No formalities," Ciel repeats for me and joins us. "Now, how have you been adapting to your new life in a surface mansion?"

And Toulin happily answers, "Without any p'roblem, conshidering that we now have servants to take care of everything we need."

"A bit too b'right, though," Fuda shyly adds.

And Ciel chuckles softly. "Well, now you have time to dedicate yourself towards other, more erudite, pursuits."

Omume nods energetically and stiffens his posture, brimming with determination. "Yes, we're ready to begin wo'rking…" But then he deflates a bit as he smiles wryly. "Well, I guess we'll fi'rst need to inc'rease ou'r [General Enchanting] skill if we want to be at a level that's usheful for Lo'rds."

"We can talk about it over dinner," Roxanne kindly suggests, her stomach starting to complain because of the delay.

"Y-yes, let's eat," Omume awkwardly coos and steals a very subtle glance towards the two naked women.

Though the Gilbiks can't enchant anything too complex yet, they can certainly make something as easy as my air hockey table. They even know enough blacksmithing to be able to produce the table football game.

The enchanters employed by the Lordship also sell their services to the rest of the nobility through a shop in the Nobles' Quarter, so they can just set up there and open up their own subdivision that also caters to the commoners.

The snooty enchanters will likely balk at having such low-level crafters joining them through nepotism, but who gives a shit? The shop belongs to us, and the crafters will train the Gilbiks, whether they like it or not.

But that's a topic for another time, so the conversation returns to the Gilbiks' adaptation to their new life.

And so Fuda casually remarks, "I honestly feel no diffe'rence in the powe'r of [Stonebody] between he're and Be'rsihdon, even though we're sho high above the ea'rth."

But Omume gives him an odd look as he retorts, "Well, I do. I feel 'f'resh'… I don't know how to explain it." And he shrugs.

Toulin nods in agreement and describes, "It feels as if we're bathing in f'resh Giftig shauche."

Lina looks at them oddly. "I've never felt anything like that, and I've traveled a lot," she states worriedly.

Omume just shrugs and suggests, "You've lost you'r mana shenshitivity."

But Lina becomes even more miffed. "No, I still have my [Sense Mana] skill, and I know you all have it at level one."

And Omume shows a small amount of smugness that screams "elven genes" to me. "You can shenshe it, yes, but can you t'ruly 'taste' it?"

Lina becomes quite annoyed at their "bullshit," but I give them the benefit of the doubt.

"I have the highest [Sense Mana], and I don't understand what you're talking about," Yunia politely states.

And Omume lets out a very dwarven belly laugh. "I can feel it in my skin and bones! You a'ren't a dwarf, and you don't have [Stonebody], sho of courshe you wouldn't feel the 'he'rbal' smell, but it's eve'rywhe're."

"But don't wo'rry, ou'r [Stonebody] will adapt to it with time, I hope," Toulin kindly affirms, her confidence waning with each word.

Fuda knits his eyebrows and hums as he puts his brain cells to use. "Hm… maybe the wei'rd taste is why the're a'ren't any othe'r dwa'rven families living he're."

"I've found dwarves as far as Maoka, so it's really curious that dwarves haven't settled here," Roxanne innocently remarks, but we know her internal thoughts aren't innocent at all.

And Omume becomes nervous, his baby-like face making his expression quite funny. "Shu'rely the're must've been other reashons, like…" He begins, but his voice dies out before he can say anything more, then he glances at Yunia, and her usual stern stare makes him even more disconcerted.

Roxanne grins cheekily and "innocently" states, "Yeah, elves can be quite cold to outsiders, so I guess dwarves would have more problems with fitting in than the other races since they're so much more friendly in general."

"What a pity, since I sure do love seeing your cute little faces around here," Osaria sultrily teases while staring at Fuda like she would with a piece of chocolate.

The young boy goes red and looks away, but his eyes instinctively drop to her massive cleavage, so he becomes even more flustered, then he notices his mother's glare and drops his head so that he can't see any more breasts.

I commend them both for not staring since the female side here has a tendency to either go bare or wear almost nothing at all.

Honestly, I think I should give him some "help" tomorrow. He isn't a chaste princess, so I'm sure his parents won't mind.

Then Yunia rolls her eyes and explains before the Gilbiks' image of the elves is ruined forever, "Housing here is expensive and can only be inherited by elven children, so there aren't any other races settled here, not just dwarves."

"And dwarven adventurers are pretty rare," Lina adds.

"Ah! I shee…!" Omume exclaims in understanding, grateful that the conversation is moving on.

Then we bring out the alcohol, including some of my Eia extract, and the Gilbiks open up, becoming quite a lot friendlier than they already are, but they leave at the start of the evening because they don't want to impose.

I'm secretly grateful because I'm in need of some cuddling, well, I always am, but this time, I need to reflect on what we learned today, and there's no better way to do that than drowning in pussy while I think.

I think it's time to use [Bind] on the golems.

Now that I'm furthering my knowledge of [Golemancy], I'm starting to become more inclined to mold them into a new race, but [Bind] will take a long time to give them a system, so I might as well start it now.

Ciel and I also have the impression that the Gods would actually approve of me creating a new race, so long as I'm fair and not cruel. I'll eventually ask Teresina for her opinion directly, but I want to build up a bit more trust with her first.

Once Hana and Roxanne are done using me, I turn to the doll golems and gently order, "Ted, come over here. It's time to test [Bind] on you."

Ciel regretfully releases the cute teddy bear, who waddles forward, then stops before me, her black, beady eyes staring into mine.

I stare back and hesitate as I reflect on what safety measures are necessary for this, then I get an idea.

"Gify, can you try to give the golems my memories about [Bind]? Only Jarn knows what it's like since she's younger, but even she is still missing a lot of my knowledge."

Gify begrudgingly gets up from Alissa's lap and pops in front of the golem, then lazily touches the bear with the tip of her left wing. The golem doesn't even react, but I sense "something" going on, though I can't explain exactly what it is.

There are a lot of memories to show them, so they spend a few minutes in silence, but Gify eventually pulls back her wing, then looks at me expectantly.

"Gih," she demands, and I pull out a few chocolate sweets for her. She'll likely have to repeat this with the other golems, so I didn't give her too much to conserve my chocolate.

"Now, Ted, don't resist, and don't try to pull on our connection," I warn her sternly, and she silently nods.

I make sure that the girls are prepared to subdue or even kill Ted in case things go wrong, and their emotions tell me that they definitely don't want things to go wrong. With Gify's help, we aren't too worried that the golems will resist, but you never know.

Hukarere and Kaatohe have never seen this spell before, so they stay close to me and stare curiously as I cast [Bind], then my hand begins to glow, and I grab Ted.

I feel my spiritual arm detach from my physical one as it grabs onto a piece of Ted's soul, then I effortlessly pull it towards my chest and release the soul inside of me.

After an awful second of pruning the sudden sense sharing, things immediately stabilize, and I notice a new "string" inside my soul space. Ted is still staring at me, unmoving, so things seem to be fine so far. The ease with which I pulled her soul into myself tells me that I was perfectly ready for her.

"Do you feel any different?" I kindly ask her.

"No, but I sensed a disturbance inside my soul," she unemotionally replies.

I hum and move on, "Alright. Now I'll dive inside your mind so that we can speak telepathically."

She nods cutely, and I pull on her mind's string, then the "blanket" of her mind floods into my soul space, and I immediately notice that it's a lot more "stiff" than that of the girls'.

As I inspect the blanket, I also feel it "stick" to me, as if it's made of scotch tape, which is a different feeling from Alissa's "merging." I can unglue myself with just a little bit of effort, so I don't feel like it's actually that dangerous, just odd.

I need to envelop the "blanket" with my own presence and "hug" it tight for me to be able to control Ted directly, so the "stickiness" is annoying, but at least I don't sense any sort of resistance from her.

"Alright, I'm diving in," I finally announce.

"Dive?" Kaatohe questions as her ears flick in confusion.

I grin at her. "Into the golem's mind."

"[Wraiths leave me be], this sounds scary, Wolf," she whispers fearfully, and Hukarere shyly nods in agreement.

"Does this mean he can 'dive into the minds' of each of you?" Klein questions the wives, and the other concubines immediately stare at the girls, dying with curiosity, but I don't hear their answer as I shove my "face" into Ted's "blanket."

My real body shudders from the intense coldness and oppressiveness that I suddenly feel. Ted's memories assault me, but I recognize most of them as my own, and the similarity confuses me, almost making me forget where I am and what I need to do.

Once I start to move deeper in, I immediately notice that the "stickiness" of her soul has increased tenfold, so I can now only achieve an excruciatingly sluggish pace.

The same memories flash in my eyes over and over again, but then I realize that it's just the golems reflecting upon them endlessly. Their minds are limited, incapable of comprehending certain things, so they merely repeat their thoughts again and again in the hope of furthering their understanding.

A common phrase is repeated with every memory as a constant reminder, a powerful wish, a deep desire, an endless obsession, "I must serve Master."

And now that I've heard it, my mind can't stop focusing on it, and the voice becomes louder, distracting me and even drowning out my own thoughts.

"I must serve Master."

The maddening voice infects me, and my own mind echoes the accursed phrase as I feel my sanity steadily drain.

I must serve Master.

So I call on the dragon to resist this attack.

FUCKING HELL!

Then the girls' presences join mine, giving me the mental strength necessary to dive deeper.

"We're here…" Alissa gently whispers into my ear as I feel both her real arms and her ethereal ones hugging me from behind.

The oppressiveness of Ted's mind starts to abate, and my mind is able to think properly again, though I do have a small headache.

"Together, now," I command through [Bind], and we join forces, speeding up the pace as we dive in.

"This is so creepy," Roxanne remarks as the repeated memories endlessly flood into her mind.

"This is what makes them incapable of going against us, they simply can't think of anything else," I explain, in both awe and horror of what I see.

Their added strength makes it easier to pass through Ted's "stickiness," so I soon find her "internal voice" and bring it back into my soul space.

"Ted?" I ask her through [Bind].

"Yes, Master Wolf?" She flatly replies, showing that she's already mastered telepathic communication.

Alright, one done, two to go.

"That was… interesting…" Kaatohe remarks in awe as she stares at us curiously.

"The Ryders reveal another secret, but it only raises more questions," Osaria amusedly states, then I give her my best smug smile, and I see her eyes widen as her heart flutters.

The girls give them a brief explanation of [Bind] so that they don't misunderstand things, but we keep a lot of the details to ourselves since it'd be quite hard to give them a full explanation of the spell.

Then we repeat the procedure for the other two golems and put them under [Bind] without a problem.

Intermission – Ted

The Masters and the Concubines are sleeping, so the nightly deliberation begins.

"Suzy, Jarn, I require your attention," I call for them telepathically.

"You have it," they reply in unison.

"Adaptation was successful?"

"Completely."

"Search your memories for 'parallel processing' and 'hive mind.'"

"Understood."

Gify raises her wing and opens one eye to look at us. We weren't speaking out loud, so she must have heard us telepathically, which is a new discovery.

"Apologies for waking you up, Grand Gify," I begin.

"Do you wish for us to speak with our voices or our minds?" Suzy follows.

"Gih," the spirit replies.

"Very well," Jarn finishes.

We search our memories and discover that we can modulate the intensity of our telepathic speech, something our Masters rarely use.

Suzy finishes first, as always, so she speaks first once it's time to telepathically share our conclusions, "Hive mind is most useful during combat, but it requires us to either unite our minds or allow one to control the others, and only the first is truly advantageous, though it also goes against Master Wolf's wishes to have us exist as individuals.

"Parallel processing is a concept that I couldn't find an application for, but I recognize that it's relevant to our situation, so I advise further deliberation or a request for aid from Master Wolf."

"I agree with your assessment," I report. Our minds are very similar, so we always agree.

"I agree with Suzy's assessment of hive mind, but I recognize parallel processing as being the same as our nightly deliberations," Jarn reports. She has a noticeably different thought process, but we still agree over 90% of the time.

"I suggest further deliberation on how to improve the use of [Bind] and telepathy," I declare.

"I agree with the suggestion," both Suzy and Jarn reply at the same time.

"To serve our Masters better," the three of us declare in unison.

A note from Manasong

Hall of Fame of Patrons

The patrons who support Rupegia shall have their names sung by the bards for they deserve the glory and honor. Their names are:

Prince PreownedFIN.

Prince Creamy Spinach.

Prince Owldente.

Prince Charlie Foxtrot.

Lord Andrew Meyers.

Lord Novgarod.

Lord Michale Erwin.

Lord Bakerdea.

Lord Maurice.

Lord Mattirro Draca.

Lord Fullmoon.

Lord Sean Drake.

Lord FrostyCube.

Lord Mike Bartter.

Lord Warwulfv.

Lord Jorge Franco.

Lord Khristopher Welsh.

Lord DJ.

Lord Tenebris Lupus.

Lord Paul Daval.

Lord Paul Daval.

Lord Bradly.

Lord AndreyUC.

Lord Tmac.

Lord Krawn.

Lord School Work.

Lord Gwendolyn Simmons-LaRose.

Noble Salty Panda.

Noble Mild Fracas.

Noble Aclys.

Noble CarlBaxter.

Noble d3235.

Noble Cidant.

Leave a rating or a review to help me rise to the top or fix my shameful understanding of prose.

Take a look over my blog where all information about the world of Rupegia will be posted.

Join the Discord and discuss, or rant, or meme, or try and fight me so your waifu gets more screentime.

Become a Patron and read chapters in advance, or read the side-stories, or leave your mark on the story, or help choose the next artwork or the next side-story.

Chapter 120: Social Day - Part 1

Today is the 28th. Ros, day of Space. The commoners take it literally and consider it a "cleaning day," but there isn't anything special about today except for the cheaper [Gate] and [Eternal Gate]. The Chimeras, though, prefer not to travel today because the Dark Voids are stronger, and it's easier to get lost in the warped dimensions at the edge of the Broken Skies.

I'm woken up by Jarn. It's a rather odd experience, but shehas Yunia's face, so of course, I'd never be put off by her, I just need time to get used to it.

"The golems are perfectly obedient, it's just hard to control them due to their 'obsession' with serving us," Alissa happily remarks, then she pulls Jarn closer and licks her cheek.

But then, Human-Aoi immediately pulls Jarn away towards her and starts licking her metallic face.

"Do they feel anything when my cum touches them? They could be like the Chimeras," I question and access my connection with Jarn. Like Alissa said, trying to control them is hard because their obsession floods through [Bind].

I peruse through Jarn's memories, but I don't find anything significant. The golems can take stock of their own bodies, but they can't really "feel" it, and I have an inkling that it's because the "obsession" drowns out anything more nuanced.

The golems' minds are based on earth elementals, which are basically just a mirror of my own, but they've been adapted to the body of the elemental, and had the "obsession" added in, so, technically, they're already humanoids.

My perception of them is changing, but I still don't know which is the "right" choice here. Removing the "obsession" would turn them into normal humanoids, perhaps emotionally-stunted ones, but it'd also remove their reason for existence. If they don't have the desire to serve anymore, then what would they live for?

Then there's the Tale of Creation, where all the Gods were basically created to satisfy the Overseer's boredom, -Ciel gives me a withering look that says very clearly that she doesn't like the way I'm wording this, but it's the truth- and we, the humanoids, were created to aid the God of Creation in its purpose to create new things, so isn't it just a perpetuation of the pattern for me to create my own race of subservient golems?

"Ah, I understand your reasoning, now…" Ciel whispers thoughtfully, then she scooches over and hugs my tail, nestling it between her bare, chocolate breasts. "Because you have a Blessing, it'd be quite difficult for anyone to stop you from doing it, so you are the most qualified person to create a new race."

"It sounds so bothersome, though…" I whine and make an exaggerated frown.

Ciel rolls her eyes and sighs while Klein quietly whispers to Hukarere, "Can you believe this? Not just converting a dragon, but creating a race of humanoids."

"Well, it's Wolfy, so it doesn't sound too outlandish," my wolf replies with a shrug.

My [Golemancy] increased by 2 (now 0+12). Not unexpected since I haven't been giving it any real focus for some time now.

Alissa increased her [Illusion Magic] by 1 (now 17). Her study of Nocturna's magic continues to yield progress for her.

Lina increased her [Math] by 1 (now 5). She's studying theory with Aoi, so it was about time that her skill went up.

Our breakfast is lively, but also so damn cozy. With Hukarere and Kaatohe staying with us more regularly, it feels like the family is growing larger, and that gives me a warm feeling in my heart.

My leopard gets along with Yunia quite well, and it makes for quite the sight seeing the two refined women being haughty together, especially when one is naked and the other is basically naked. Hukarere has a teasing/cheeky personality that's similar to Roxanne's, so she gets along well with my succubus, and with Hana and Ciel too, though the latter definitely feels some chills from the idea of another teaser joining us. My wolf is also a member of Klein's regular squad, so they also get along well. However, Alissa and Osaria are a bit disappointed that Hukarere is completely straight.

Today promises to be a special day because in the middle of our meal, we get a message from the Institute saying that the Light Planes research division wants to show us their progress.

Because this is confidential research, the testing grounds are set far away from the town, but not so far that there's a threat of flying monsters getting in the way.

We wait on a hastily grown wooden platform above the leaves of the High Trees while the mages grow a small landing strip and the engineers make some last-minute adjustments.

The plane they want to show us is based on the Dragon-class frame, which looks similar to the World War II Mustang fighter planes, but sleeker and thinner, and the test plane, which is called Raki, is so small that it's like the Mig-class of planes that are pretty much just tubes with wings.

The Raki plane has neither a propeller nor a jet engine, instead using a Space-attuned gem to move through [Telekinesis], making it mostly silent, which gives it a big advantage over traditional aircraft, but I don't think they're invisible to radar.

The [Reinforce]d glass cockpit opens, and a small Chimera made of earth enters the plane. There's no reason for us not to use an expendable test pilot since this experiment can be quite dangerous, so it's a lot safer to just use an earth elemental as the pilot. Also, the Chimeras are so ancient that it's possible that if the gem housing their soul were to break, they wouldn't be able to resist the call to Paradise, so even though they're already dead, it's best not to risk it.

An actual, non-elemental pilot enters the Dragon-class plane next to the Raki to compare their speed, and after another minute of waiting, the engineers back away from the planes and join us in the viewing stands.

"Your Highnesses, we're ready to begin our demonstration," the Head of the division politely announces with a bow. He has a sleek, gray, bald head, and I don't know whether he's supposed to be a lizard or a fish.

"Please begin, I'm excited to see how it performs," I immediately reply with a nod.

"So are we," he energetically states as he straightens his posture, then he starts giving orders to the engineers.

Kaatohe leans forward, looking quite interested, which is understandable since she's a Wasp pilot and also knows that this plane will change how aerial battles are fought.

An engineer gives the signal, and the two planes activate their gems. The Dragon plane's [Fly] envelops it in a magical bubble of air that reduces its drag and propels it forward while the Raki is simply pushed forward through [Telekinesis]. The Dragon takes off first, needing only a few meters of the landing strip, while the other plane requires about fifty meters before it starts to lift off, and it's also already quite far behind the Dragon.

But while the Dragon quickly reaches its max speed, the Raki catches up midway and surpasses the Dragon, and it also (apparently) continues to gain speed.

A few seconds later, the Raki reaches the pillar that marks the turning point. It still doesn't have proper flight control surfaces, so the gem is used to make it turn at a rate that doesn't tear it apart. It makes a banked turn that's quite a bit wider than what the Dragon needs, but the Raki compensates for that with raw speed.

Though they lack engines, the planes still make some noise as they zip past us, and I notice that the test plane is actually quite close to breaking the sound barrier.

The excitement of the engineers is justified as they've nearly doubled the speed of the Dragon-class simply by changing their design philosophy, and there's still much that can be improved upon.

Though the [Telekinesis] gem they used is ridiculously expensive, making it not actually viable to produce enough of these test planes to incorporate them into our air force, they've found untreaded ground, and there's nothing that makes a researcher more excited than the smell of a virgin field ready to be explored.

There's still one piece of technology that can be used to improve their speed even further, though: the jet turbine.

"Why don't these planes use propellers?" I question the Head of the division.

"They get in the way of the aerodynamics and don't add enough speed to make it worth using them," he categorically replies.

And I inquire further, "Is there nothing that can be done to improve them? If, instead of using magic to propel the plane itself, you used it to improve the characteristics of the propeller, then maybe you could squeeze out even more speed."

But he seems completely unconvinced, so he politely retorts, "They're horribly noisy, to the point that it damages our ears, and are slower than what we can achieve with [Telekinesis]."

How does a jet turbine actually work…? Planes were only ever a hobby for me as the drones I studied never had to use anything more advanced than propellers, so I don't know the specifics of the turbine.

"Jet" means a stream of fluid being forcefully ejected from a nozzle, creating thrust, but jet engines most likely eject air since they aren't rockets, so how do they "collect" the air and use it to generate thrust?

I've seen jet engines glow with heat, so there's some combustion there. Maybe it works similarly to a gun. Heated air expands, so the engine could use fuel to create explosions inside of it, generating thrust.

I come up with a brilliant idea, so I innocently suggest, "We've recovered an interesting weapon from the Wicked Dawn of Fire Circle of Magi. They created a cannon that uses a guided explosion to propel a javelin to an extremely high speed, and I think it might be even faster than the Raki."

"What?!" He grunts and stares at me in disbelief, missing the moment when the Raki crosses the finish line, then the engineers cheer as the plane sets a new record.

I grin in satisfaction as I'm now certain that my idea will work. "Faster than the speed of sound. We only heard it after it had already hit us," I breathe excitedly.

"Tell me more," he demands, his eyes brimming with passion as he recognizes the potential of my idea.

The Raki exhibition is an astounding success. I'm very pleased with how fast they've adapted their design philosophy and come up with improvements, and now, they only need to focus on reducing the cost of production to a level that makes the Raki a viable weapon.

Lina's and Aoi's manufacturing plant is definitely going to play an integral part in reducing the costs of production, so they get involved with the engineers and start asking them specifics about the Raki's construction as they begin planning the plant.

We're still using elven wood, so we'll also need to set up a Materials Science division soon, but wood will make do for now since it's not too expensive in comparison to the gem and the cost of manufacturing.

We also decide to demonstrate the Raki to the merchants and other interested parties tonight to give us a bit of fame and generate recognition, establishing the foundation to attract future clients who we can sell our planes to.

After the exhibition is over, we return to the castle to begin our mana circulation training, with Lina and Aoi starting later since they spend a good hour talking with the engineers.

And so, another peaceful morning goes by. Since we're always so busy, this training routine helps keep us sane by giving us some time to stop and reflect on what's going on, and there's a lot going on.

Alissa has begun learning about [Dream Veil], which is the main spell of Nocturna's magic school which all of the following spells are based on. It releases a mist that's very difficult to dispel and greatly lowers the mental defenses of anyone caught inside it, and it also allows the caster to "blend" into the mist, making them much harder to see or hit.

Hana is always training hard with the Lordsguard, trying to push her [Draconic Body] to the limits every day, and "bonding" with the Companions quite often. She's also working with Sandoro to help our three different kinds of soldiers find common ground and the desire to work together. The snooty elves, the crude mercenaries, and the strong-willed Chimeras.

Roxanne has her hands full making improvements to the Draconic Climax formula and going through Dawn of Fire's research, and she'll also likely be responsible for coming up with jet fuel since I'm pretty sure Draconic Climax won't be suitable for that role. She has Aisco to help her with that, but the dude is a creep, so it won't be that pleasant to work with him.

Ciel has been talking a lot with both our Officers and the temple, organizing our first social project, which we'll announce tomorrow. She has basically scrounged up a Health Ministry in just a few days, and though it doesn't have much of a purpose yet, she knows very well how it will likely evolve due to my memories of Earth's governments.

Lina and Aoi have been working hard in the forge and the manufacturing room. Things have been progressing quite fast on the practical front, but they've been struggling a bit with trying to learn the math and theory behind manufacturing, especially Aoi, who doesn't know much about math, but they really just need more time.

Yunia has been keeping everything together with her superior administrative and diplomatic skills, and the only reason our finances have remained stable is that she and Mimi are ruthless with tax collecting, so all of our businesses are turning us a profit. Not to mention that she's the only one who truly knows how to navigate around the nobles and keep them from getting in our way.

Things have been progressing so well that I feel quite excited about the gathering I've set up. Hana, Hermann, Ahren, the twins, Fuda, and I gather at the steps of the castle. We're going to have lunch at the "Oh… Nyan!" brothel.

I clear my throat and gently begin my speech, "Listen, I know this is an unusual invitation, but nobody here should feel forced to do anything they don't want to. If you feel uncomfortable, you're allowed to leave without offending me, but I just want you all to give this a chance so that we might get along better and bond as fellow men."

"And you brought your sister…?" Arturus worriedly questions Hermann.

The tall young man indignantly replies, "I didn't bring her, she brought herself!"

"What's the problem? You two are siblings, too," Hana questions them confusedly.

"I mean, you're a woman…" Arturus tries to awkwardly explain.

She snorts. "Yeah, so? Haven't you ever seen your sister naked?"

"No…" He meekly grumbles.

"Liar," I call him out with a shit-eating grin.

"Why the fuck do you know that?!" He exclaims as his cheeks quickly grow pink.

Antares immediately interjects to prevent his brother from embarrassing them both any further, "The problem is that you'll be seeing her, uh… lay with another woman, right? Isn't that rather awkward?"

Hermann looks away as he mumbles, "Not really…" He really doesn't seem disgusted by the idea.

And Hana worriedly retorts, "You never saw your parents fuck? How did they teach you about sex?"

"They hired a pair of prostitutes who showed it to us…" He answers nervously.

And Hana shrugs. "I've seen my parents fuck, and I'd even join them if they allowed me to." But she's not really being entirely serious.

Antares sighs and closes his eyes as he whispers, "Of course she would, she's a dragonkin…"

She pulls Hermann by the waist and happily pats his wide chest. "Hermann is so handsome that I'd even fuck him in a heartbeat if Wolfy would let me, so his presence only makes things better, really," she cheekily announces, and I poke her through [Bind] because she's making me feel jealous.

But then I have an idea that makes me very excited. "So, you'd fuck Mimi?" I ask her with a smirk.

She nods and mirrors my expression. "With you, in front of you, with Alissa, with whoever wants a piece. I'd fuck her so hard that she wouldn't be able to walk straight without a [Heal]!"

"She is pretty hot," I affirm with a nod.

And she also nods. "Super hot."

The twins share a look, then they turn to Fuda.

"I'm on your side…" The young boy shyly confesses.

"Same…" Ahren grunts, his face warped in mild disgust.

I'm starting to feel a bit impish, so I ask Hermann, "Would you fuck my wife?" And I stare at him intensely, daring him to give me a straight answer.

He stiffens and stares back, thinking deeply about his answer, then he notices Ahren's impassive stare, and his eyebrows knit in worry. "Which one?" He stiffly replies.

"Wrong answer," Ahren dryly grumbles.

"What?!" Hermann squeaks in bewilderment.

"Klein! You should've answered 'only Klein'!" The smaller boy shouts angrily and punches his shoulder.

"I don't think she's a 'wife,' not technically," Hermann makes excuses, not even feeling the punch.

Ahren grumbles in annoyance. "You're the top, so be more decisive!"

"Too much information," Antares dryly affirms, his pretty eyes narrowed in mild disgust, and I kind of agree with him.

"You're not bi or gay? You two are quite close," Hana questions the twins teasingly.

"We're just brothers! Close siblings!" Arturus shouts defensively.

Then Lina feeds me some information, and I smirk mockingly. "Uh-huh… elven twins are like the most popular incest fetish around."

And now, he becomes indignant. "For other races!"

"The Twin Warriors is a gay incest fantasy!" I shout back.

"Could we not talk about incest or gay sex right now? I'm trying to get in the mood," Antares tiredly pleads.

Hana and I chuckle heartily, and I gesture for us to move on.

When our carriage arrives at the brothel, I'm the first out, with Hana on my right arm, leaving my left one kind of lonely. Maybe I should've called for Osaria or Alissa to join us, but I'm still not that comfortable with them being lewd next to other men.

A gothic lolita werecat maid opens the double doors for us, revealing a line of slutty werecat maid beauties waiting for us.

"Welcome, Grand Sirs and Your Highnesses to the 'Oh… Nyan!'" The maids greet us in unison and bow.

"Lala, I've missed you," I happily declare and extend my hand to the one in the middle, and she immediately straightens with a wide smile gracing her pretty face.

She has short, brown hair; a slender body; wide, breedable hips; and clawed, bestial feet. Her cheerful and faintly wild behavior has charmed me, so I'm very happy to meet with her again.

She skips forward and takes my clawed hand, then she places it on her exposed ass cheek, and I notice that she isn't wearing anything under the criminally short skirt, so I immediately start to play with her.

Her smile turns into a heated grin, and she licks her lips, eager to taste me once again.

But first, we need to eat, so I turn around and announce, "Choose one, or two, or three, if you can handle them. The rest will put on a show for us, so you don't actually have to choose one. Also, since Fuda is a virgin, I recommend that a gentle and experienced one takes care of him."

"The cute dwarf? I wish to have him," the blue-eyed werecat milf immediately declares. She's as tall as Roxanne, but with a balanced body like Alissa's, hair almost as golden as Yunia's, and predatory eyes like Hana's.

The boy and the milf stare at each other in a way that reminds me of Nono and I, so I hope he's got his asshole ready because this cat lady has the face and the fingers of someone who loves playing with prostates.

Hana isn't interested in Lala, so she looks over the maids, then grins fearsomely and points at the smallest and youngest one among them. "You, I want you," she asserts with a low growl.

And the small bundle of black fur squeaks in fear, "Y-yes, y-your H-Highness. I'm n-new here, so f-forgive my inexperience…"

"Don't bully her too much," I plead to Hana through [Bind].

"Is it bullying if I make her cum so hard that her mind goes blank?" She confidently replies.

"You have some sadistic tendencies, so keep them in check, alright?" I caution her.

"Fine."

"We'll just watch," Ahren asserts and subtly squeezes Hermann's hand, who simply nods and hums stiffly.

And the twins each choose the most elven-looking women among them: blondes with lithe bodies and delicate faces. Leave it to the elves to enjoy vanilla.

"If vanilla is the superior flavor among them all, then why seek out anything else?" Yunia suddenly barges into my thoughts, sounding a bit indignant.

I shrug internally. "They can taste vanilla any time they want, so on occasions such as this one, maybe they could try something new to really mark it as special."

Yunia doesn't want to bother arguing, so we leave it at that.

Then we move to a private room and start our lewd meal.

A note from Manasong

Hall of Fame of Patrons

The patrons who support Rupegia shall have their names sung by the bards for they deserve the glory and honor. Their names are:

Prince PreownedFIN.

Prince Creamy Spinach.

Prince Owldente.

Prince Charlie Foxtrot.

Lord Andrew Meyers.

Lord Novgarod.

Lord Michale Erwin.

Lord Bakerdea.

Lord Maurice.

Lord Mattirro Draca.

Lord Fullmoon.

Lord Sean Drake.

Lord FrostyCube.

Lord Mike Bartter.

Lord Warwulfv.

Lord Jorge Franco.

Lord Khristopher Welsh.

Lord DJ.

Lord Tenebris Lupus.

Lord Paul Daval.

Lord Paul Daval.

Lord Bradly.

Lord AndreyUC.

Lord Tmac.

Lord Krawn.

Lord School Work.

Lord Gwendolyn Simmons-LaRose.

Noble Salty Panda.

Noble Mild Fracas.

Noble Aclys.

Noble CarlBaxter.

Noble d3235.

Noble Cidant.

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Chapter 120: Social Day - Part 2

A note from Manasong

Attention: to conform to the limit of mature content (more than just sexual content) allowed in a novel, I've censored this chapter. You can look for the uncensored version here.

Catgirls. Dancing catgirls. Half clothed dancing catgirls. Watching half-clothed catgirls dancing spicily while another is feeding you with her mouth and massaging your member through your pants at every chance she gets.

Paradise on Rupegia.

I whisper softly as I reach a new level of comfort, then a shiver runs down my tail, making it quiver, and Lala chuckles amusedly at it. The gentle lighting, the soft seat, the enticing dancers, the alluring music. It's the perfect atmosphere for a group of men to have a good time.

I squeeze Lala's soft ass cheek, eager to shove a claw inside her warm flower, but the position we're currently in gives me no easy access to it, so I just caress her while applying the subtlest spirit touch to my hands. I can feel her rising warmth on my thigh, but she hides her excitement well and does her job without faltering, though her grip on the back of my neck and the way she massages my chest and sword are intensifying.

She releases my friend and grabs a small ham paté canape, then she holds it with her teeth and leans in, offering it to me.

I promptly take it, and our lips touch in a gentle kiss, then she smiles, showing her cute fangs, and uses her furry tail to caress my cheek while I chew.

"Nyah, nyou look so healthy and enyergetic today, Nyour Highness," she gently remarks, then kisses my forehead.

I smile smugly and confess, "I am. Today, my Research Institute showed us their progress on one of its projects, and it left me supremely satisfied."

She purrs softly as she gives me a warm stare. "How wonderful. Lately, there has been a lot of gossiping about what Nyour Highness and nyour loyal Chimeras have been doing, so even I am curious to know what nyou'll show us."

I raise my eyebrows in surprise and hum, "Oh? You know about the Institute?"

She nods cheekily and pokes the tip of my nose as she answers, "Of course, I do. It wouldn't be proper if I didn't know anyething about our most nyillustrious client."

Hm…

She could be a spy for Vanea, or for just about anyone who pays her enough. A Lord's favorite prostitute does seem to be a position where one could occasionally hear the odd bit of interesting information.

But I decide to give her a chance to get closer to us. Counter-espionage isn't just blocking off any sources of leaks. Having a known spy somewhere close could also be a tool for us.

I run a claw up her exposed belly and fondle one of her small pillows as I offer, "We'll reveal it to everyone tonight at a small banquet. If you're interested, it'd be simple to arrange for you to attend."

Her pupils widen in excitement. "Oh, my! I'd be honyored!"

"Unfortunately, I wouldn't be able to give you much attention myself since I'd have to focus my attention on the guests and my wives."

She shakes her head, then leans closer to me and gently whispers into my ear, "Just receiving the privilege of participating nyin such an event nywould be enough for me."

"As you wish."

Then I look at the others. Hana is already knuckle-deep in her little catgirl, forcing the poor woman to feed her while suffering from intense bliss. The others aren't so bold, but Fuda is completely mesmerized by his blonde cat mommy, so he has no eyes for anything else. If I had [Diagnosis], I'd bet it'd tell me that he's charmed.

I clear my throat to call everyone's attention to me and announce, "This also goes for the rest of you. Tonight might be interesting, and it won't be a nobility-only event, so you're all invited."

"Yes, we'll attend, for sure," Ahren politely replies.

Antares takes his eyes off his girl for a second to add, "We will too, but we don't know what to expect since we don't even know what your Institute has been researching."

Arturus and Hermann are almost as distracted as Fuda, so they only nod.

Then I turn to Lala again and gently question, "Have you ever heard of an airplane?"

Her cat ears flicker just like Alissa's as she ponders, "Plane? I assume it's something similar to airships?"

I nod and kiss her nose, making her smile. "Indeed. But while airships are ungraceful whales with wings, airplanes are like birds or dragons. Fast, nimble, and deadly, though not as sturdy as the flying whales."

Lala chuckles with a low purr, sounding both seductive and girlish at the same time. "'Whales,' nyow that's a way to describe airships that I've never heard before, nyah."

"You mean, like those flying vehicles you flaunted during the Lordship Ceremony?" Antares curiously questions while still fondling his lithe catgirl.

I answer excitedly, "Exactly, but now, they've been greatly improved."

And Ahren joins in. "Huh. I'd like to understand why you're focusing on airplanes when they don't seem to have much use within the High Forest. And from what I've heard, the Chimera doctrine is focused on fighting flying monsters, which isn't a common type of enemy anywhere in the empire."

But Lala comes to my defense, "There are plenty of birds who fly between the High Trees since there's so much room between them, nyah."

My opinion of Lala is steadily rising in my mind due to her cleverness, but so is my suspicion that she's a spy for someone.

I smile smugly and explain, "Neither of you got it right. It's true that the Chimera war doctrine doesn't apply anymore, so I came up with a new philosophy, one that applies to the whole of the empire, but you'll have to wait for tonight to see it."

"How mysterious, nyah…" Lala purrs seductively.

I shrug and continue, "There's not much that I can reveal about this topic, so let's talk about something else. How have the two of you been doing, Antares? Last I heard, you were training to become mounted warriors."

Antares sneaks a hand under his girl's spicy maid shirt and grins as he brags a bit, "We've been cleared to join the Patricios, so we'll show how far we've progressed when the Expeditionary Division is next assembled."

Arturus finally takes his eyes off his pretty catgirl and adds, "The Patricios don't need that many skills to be effective, so we're actually quite overqualified."

And his brother nods as he maintains a stare full of desire at the girl in his arms, who begins to melt from his touch. "Indeed, but it never pays to be overconfident, especially since we're to carry our family name."

"So you'll need to create many descendants to make sure that your name never dies," I assert teasingly.

"And take many wives, nyah," Lala joins in, mirroring my grin.

Arturus has the audacity to blush, but Antares awkwardly retorts, "Not really a good idea for us since only one of our children will take the Este name while the rest will become Supporting Descendants."

"Doesn't stop nyou from enjoying the female body, nyes?" Lala adds one last tease, and I show her how I enjoy the female body.

"No, it doesn't," Arturus huskily replies and sneaks a hand under his catgirl's skirt, making her giggle seductively.

Fuda's cat mommy kisses him deeply, and I see her tongue invading his small mouth, then her hand sneaks down into his pants and starts caressing him, so I think it's time to take things up a notch.

"My sword is throbbing, Lala, it's ready for you," I whisper in her furry ear, and her tail stops moving as she breathes in.

"Let me give you some relief, then, Nyour Highness," she cheerfully replies, then she gets on her knees in front of me and pulls it out, making it spring up and slap her in the face.

Lala giggles seductively and gobbles me up, but then the blonde cat mommy squeaks in surprise, drawing our attention.

She pulls her hand out of Fuda's pants and reveals her palm, which is now covered in a man's tears.

"That's a nice one, Fuda," I tease him with a shit-eating grin as I play with Lala's furry ears.

"Good amount of volume, even comparable to Wolfy's, but how does it taste?" Hana questions, mirroring my expression.

Cat mommy licks her hand and hums while the boy turns blood red in embarrassment. "Salty. Have you been eating elven fruit? It helps with the taste," she sultrily replies.

"That it does," Hana hums in agreement.

"S-s-sorry…" Fuda mumbles an apology.

Mommy caresses his cheek with her clean hand and grins as she soothes him, "Oh? Don't worry, we're just getting started."

"Huh? I-I…" He gives her a confused look, but then he looks down, and his face contorts in effort, as if he's starting to take a huge dump.

"What are you doing?" Mommy asks confusedly, but then she notices his friend growing and raises an eyebrow. "Hm?"

She frees the growing sword from the confines of his sheath, and the floppy dagger steadily grows into a majestic spear with considerable length and girth, though mine is still thicker.

Damn, I thought dwarves were small. It's almost as big as mine.

"Would be kind of cruel if dwarves all had child-sized ones," Hana comments through [Bind].

"It certainly would!" Roxanne shouts with a loud laugh and pokes Ciel, who simply ignores her, though she's blushing heavily.

"If anyone sends me images of my brother's thing, I'll be very mad," Lina suddenly announces, making Roxanne laugh even louder.

Then I feel Fuda exude some mana, so I blurt out, "Ah! He used [Spirit of Gaia] to get ready again."

Cat mommy grins and raises her eyebrows in surprise. "Oh, you sweet boy. You don't need to work so hard. Here, take this, it'll allow you to release over and over again." And she offers him a cup filled with a faintly glowing pink fluid.

"Oh, okay…" He mumbles and quickly drinks it, then he gasps, and his sword twitches.

Cat mommy grins and lowers her head. "Good, good," then she gobbles him up, and he almost immediately releases again in her mouth.

"Damn," I whistle out of envy. I have to force myself to finish that fast, and there he is, spurting it out after just a second.

I look down, and my eyes meet with Lala's pleading gaze, which is clearly begging for milkies, so I promptly obey and unleash a thick load inside her mouth.

She pulls her head back and opens her mouth to show me her reward, then she plays with it with her tongue.

"Now you're making me hungry," Hana growls as she deeply breathes in the smell of my seed, then she takes her wet fingers out of her toy and licks them clean while staring at me.

"You'll have to make do with your toy until I've broken Lala," I affirm, then my catgirl's ears twitch, and her vertical pupils widen in surprise, but I just push her head down so that she continues the polishing.

She's still not quite ripe yet, so I'll savor this for a little longer while my caresses make her become unreasonably excited.

I look to the side and notice that the twins' swords are thin and long, like actual spears in comparison to my meat club, but I know very well that the girls prefer girth over length, so I still think that mine is the best one here, but then Ahren pulls Hermann's out, and I almost frown.

This orc wants to plow Klein? My sword fits her sheath better than his!

Hana undoes the clasps of her dress, and her underwear is so thin that she might as well be wearing nothing at all, then she pulls her underwear to the side and forces her catgirl to her knees.

Hermann's eyes immediately ignore the dancing catgirls and lock onto Hana's body, taking in every curve and detail of her private bits.

I damn knew it. He's got an inc-st desire, so I'll do his sister in front of him! No, I'll do both of his sisters in front of him, at the same time!

I release again while imagining how I'll emasculate Hermann. I've dreamed about doing Yunia in front of her simps, but I think he'll do, instead. The ass is half gay, so he might even like it.

The dragon in me is getting so fired up from this line of thought that I quickly release in Lala's mouth one more time, then I pull her up and lay her against the table to begin Ravaging her dripping flower.

I need to assert my dominance by showing how a real man plows.

Cat mommy sits on Fuda's nicely-sized friend, and the difference in size and age between them does funny things to me. For once, I wish I was as innocent and young as Fuda so that my first time could be with a gentle, alluring mommy that pampers me and plays with my body.

She leans back, and her hand sneaks underneath both of them, then Fuda's eyes widen in surprise, making cat mommy chuckle in delight.

Oh, boy. Maybe not like that…

She pushes her hand in, and Fuda grunts, then I see his little jewels twitch as he unleashes a thick one in her.

I focus back on Lala and slap my thighs against her wide hips. Her high-pitched whispers make her sound like a cute little animal, fueling the dragon's predatory instincts.

The twins let their girls take control of the rhythm while they just hold their waists as they bounce up and down their long shafts.

Ahren strokes Hermann's log with fury, his eyes locked on my ass, making me believe that he very much prefers swords over sheaths.

Hana turns her girl upside down so that she can eat her while the poor girl struggles to do the same for her, not because of the position, but because Hana is an expert eater.

I decide to use all of my tricks to break Lala's mind so that she won't ever forget my draconic sword, but this also means that she's finished before even the twins, so I leave her limp and twitching on the table while Hana sits on me, and I feast on her bouncy balloons.

Elves don't have a lot of "Endurance," so they finish next, followed by Hermann. Fuda makes a commendable effort surviving so long with cat mommy tickling his inner button so often, but [Mana Body] and a large MP pool means that I'm the last to finish, though Hana doesn't pump me dry since I still need some of it for later today.

I slide out of Hana and have the reawakened Lala clean the two of us up. I'll never get tired of seeing another woman licking my pollen out of my wives' flowers.

I look around and grin at their astonished faces. "Gentlemen, this has been a pleasure, but I must take my leave, for I have other business to attend to. I'd be delighted if we could repeat this another day."

"Y-yes…!" Hermann blurts out, making Hana grin with pride, but I'm starting to feel a bit jealous because of his thirst for his sister.

"Yes…" Fuda quietly mumbles like a dying old man while cat mommy caresses her little warrior with pride.

"Hm, yes, it was… interesting," Arturus wryly replies and shares a look with his brother.

Antares glances at Hermann and Ahren, trying to hold back a frown. "We could get used to this," he adds. He means the gay lovers, not the "doing women in front of others."

I offer my hand to Hana to help her get up since her legs are a bit weak, then we make our leave.

After all that, I return to the castle and take a quick bath, then I get the maids to pretty me up and perfume me because it's time for my date with Roxanne.

"Had your fun?" She dryly asks, her lips warped in a displeased pout.

I know she's just playing it up, so I honestly reply, "Of course, and now, it's time for you to have yours."

And her pout deepens. "You talk as if a date with me isn't fun for you." There's actually a bit of sincerity sprinkled in her tone.

I narrow my eyes at her in suspicion. "Oi! Don't you dare read my emotions right now. I'm an introvert, so going out like this does take some emotional effort for me, but it's the least I can do since you're my wife."

Critical hit. She adjusts her glasses to stall for time while her tail quivers from the sudden rush of emotions that's seizing her heart, so I grab her waist and pull her towards me, then I look up at her and smirk.

"I love you, and I'd do anything for you," I huskily affirm.

She suddenly becomes quite awkward and shy as she mumbles, "Well, I'd just like to do something that you also want to do."

I grab her tail with a tentacle and give the dagger tip a poke for reading my mind. Our interests are quite different, so there aren't many activities that we can do together that we both want to do, so it's making her feel insecure.

I already thought of a solution for that, so I gently suggest, "I'm feeling quite social today, so why don't we take a stroll through the Nobles' Quarter and meet some of the nobles that might favor us? And then, after that, we can go to a tavern, listen to some music, and dance a little?"

And she immediately brightens up. "Yes! That sounds wonderf-…" Then the guilt hits her, and she frowns sadly as she hugs me tight with her arms and tail. "Sorry for being such a bitch," she embarrassedly admits.

I deeply inhale her intoxicating perfume, then I push her away so that I can gaze at her gorgeous face while I soothe her, "Being a bit hard to please isn't bad, you're just complex."

My words strike true, and her tail waves mischievously like a cat's while she gives me a warm look that screams "I'm going to polish your sword if you don't shut up."

She caresses my cheek lovingly with her long fingers and kisses my forehead, taking care not to get our horns entangled. "Turning into a weredragon has really suited you well. I find it really hot how much more decisive and supportive you've become," she whispers affectionately.

I kiss her exposed collarbone. "And I'm very much enjoying seeing your cute and lovely side grow."

She chuckles nervously and adjusts her glasses again. "I feel like receiving 'cute' as a compliment is demeaning for someone as hot as I am," she smugly replies.

I click my tongue, "Tch, it lasted for just a moment."

She shows me her tongue, then leans down slightly to give me a kiss, and I meet her lips with mine midway.

I always felt that what she wanted the most from me was comfort and safety, but now that she's more sure of herself and her place in the world, she's starting to look for a deeper meaning in our relationship. She'll have a hard time doing that with Hana since our mutual wife is way too practical to waste time reflecting upon such matters.

To make it clear, I'm not calling her dumb.

"Huh?" Hana suddenly grunts inside my soul space, confused since she wasn't paying attention to our conversation.

"Nothing, nothing," I wryly reply and focus back on wrestling with Roxanne's tongue.

Kissing my pale succubus is always stimulating and interesting. She's a damn good kisser, and she's always thinking of ways to spice things up. For example, this time, she wraps her tail around the base of mine and gives it some small tugs, which causes little jolts of pleasure to shoot up my spine.

Now I know why Alissa loves it when I tug hers.

Roxanne's dress rides up her shapely legs as I press my knee up against her, feeling her rising warmth through our thin clothes, but then she pushes me away and lets out a low, alluring chuckle as she states, "That's for later. Let's not ruin ourselves by getting too excited too soon, hm?"

I hum in agreement. If we started doing it right now, I wouldn't be able to stop until she couldn't walk anymore.

A note from Manasong

Hall of Fame of Patrons

The patrons who support Rupegia shall have their names sung by the bards for they deserve the glory and honor. Their names are:

Prince PreownedFIN.

Prince Creamy Spinach.

Prince Owldente.

Prince Charlie Foxtrot.

Lord Andrew Meyers.

Lord Novgarod.

Lord Michale Erwin.

Lord Bakerdea.

Lord Maurice.

Lord Mattirro Draca.

Lord Fullmoon.

Lord Sean Drake.

Lord FrostyCube.

Lord Mike Bartter.

Lord Warwulfv.

Lord Jorge Franco.

Lord Khristopher Welsh.

Lord DJ.

Lord Tenebris Lupus.

Lord Paul Daval.

Lord Paul Daval.

Lord Bradly.

Lord AndreyUC.

Lord Tmac.

Lord Krawn.

Lord School Work.

Lord Gwendolyn Simmons-LaRose.

Noble Salty Panda.

Noble Mild Fracas.

Noble Aclys.

Noble CarlBaxter.

Noble d3235.

Noble Cidant.

Leave a rating or a review to help me rise to the top or fix my shameful understanding of prose.

Take a look over my blog where all information about the world of Rupegia will be posted.

Join the Discord and discuss, or rant, or meme, or try and fight me so your waifu gets more screentime.

Become a Patron and read chapters in advance, or read the side-stories, or leave your mark on the story, or help choose the next artwork or the next side-story.

Chapter 120: Social Day - Part 3

We leave the castle on foot and begin walking across the rings of mansions, but Roxanne quickly regrets our choice of activity since her heels aren't the best for walking, so I cast [Swift Foot] on her and summon a light elemental-wife to make sure that her sexy feet won't start to hurt on our date.

We pass by Klein's home, but nobody's home. The Gilbiks are nearby, too, but they aren't outside, so we just pass them by. Fuda is likely resting, and his parents should be working, so maybe we shouldn't bother them.

Then we pass by the houses of the Clown Troupe, and we meet with Little Pomp in his garden as he practices with a longsword.

"Ah, Royal Ryders, out for a stroll?" He greets us as he skips closer. He's a very pretty elf, but he's just a little bit taller than me, which is below average for elves.

"We're enjoying the view as we go out," Roxanne politely replies in my stead.

A servant hands him a towel, which he uses to wipe his face, then he grins and begins his speech while gesticulating with his hands, "Indeed, it's quite beautiful." -He spins in place as he motions to everything around him- "I'm envious of Yunia for having grown up in such an idyllic place, but I'm honored to have been given such a luxurious home."

And I gracefully reply, "Yunia's friends will always be welcome here. Besides, the Gods might one day consider it a Sin to leave all these mansions empty."

He raises his eyebrows, both pleased and surprised at my choice of words. "Indeed. Her Highness Yulania is an elf who commands a lot of respect, so it's only a matter of time before the nobility warms up to her, but I also think that the Ryder family is diverse enough to compensate for their elven prejudice." He gracefully smiles as his eyes flutter between both of us.

"I'm glad to see that her friends are so understanding," I affirm, pleasantly surprised.

He nods matter-of-factly and puffs up his chest with pride. "It doesn't surprise me that she didn't marry another elf. I know the kind of fantasies she and Ereia have involving other races."

Then the three of us grin at each other while Yunia frowns internally.

"But I won't keep you any further. Enjoy your stroll," he gracefully takes his leave.

"Good luck with your training," Roxanne answers for me.

The rest of the Troupe live nearby, but we don't seek out any of them and just move on, reaching the uninhabited zone before long. We don't have a lot of people living in the inner and outer circles, and our guests are all clustered as close as possible around the castle, so there are plenty of empty mansions left.

Elven homes don't require much maintenance, and at most, they just need a Nature mage from our court to pass by to ensure that nothing grew without permission, so there's nobody here aside from the occasional Lordsguard patrol since we certainly won't force our maids to unnecessarily clear them.

We greet and smile at our men, making most of them blush under their helmets. Our "Charisma" and sex appeal are quite high for both of us, so it seems that we harden dicks and moisten pussies with ease.

The view is both eerie and soothing. There's something special about the elven sense of beauty that causes positive emotions within me, but the lack of people makes it all feel "incomplete."

I certainly enjoy this part of our stroll.

Then we finally exit the castle grounds into the Nobles' Quarter, and from here on out, we have an escort of Lordsguard and Templars, the latter of which we're already familiar with since they're Ciel's former comrades.

"Your Highnesses," Timas greets us. The pale, black-haired cat man is always polite and graceful, but I find his formal behavior a bit stifling.

Poppy does a curtsy, holding up an invisible skirt since she's completely armored, which is a shame since the Rupegian version of the gesture raises the skirt a lot higher, so I can only imagine how the legs of the raven-haired little dwarf girl look.

Alonso and Kyora simply nod. The ginger halfling and the blue-haired giant dragonkin have much more abrasive personalities, so we shouldn't expect them to be friendly with us, which seems to annoy our Lordsguard.

I reply in kind, but then I become curious, "Greetings, Ito family. I didn't expect you to stay here for so long, aren't you Wandering Knights?"

"We're thinking about settling down, and the High Forest seems to have become quite the attractive place for non-elves lately," Timas answers politely and glances at one of the Chimera Lordsguard.

"And the elves aren't as bad as they've been said to be," Poppy adds with a wry smile, and the elves in our Lordsguard twitch awkwardly, then they pretend that they aren't listening to our conversation.

I look back and smirk at them as I remark, "I think it's only in Escanso that they're like that because of how the Intervention has likely humbled them a bit."

"But I'm sure your influence will spread, at least in your territory," Timas affirms with a nod.

I nod back and state out loud, "It will. We'll make sure that the Western High Forest flourishes again, whether the elves like it or not."

"If you achieve what Ciel told us about your plans, only the Wicked would have something to complain about," Poppy energetically announces.

But I smile bitterly as I'm much more cynical than her. "The plans are only a 'best case scenario.' In practice, things definitely won't go so well."

Timas leans forward with a shit-eating grin and whispers, "Don't tell 'Nai' Teresina that I told you this, but she fully supports you and your family, so the temple will aid you in pursuing your vision."

Oh, yeah, that definitely does boost my confidence quite a lot, and not just because I have a thing for Teresina. "That's great to hear. We'll always look forward to increasing our number of allies," I huskily reply.

And Poppy pats Kyora's thick arm as she affirms with a cheeky grin, "These two might be a bit grumpy, but they'll come to help Ciel if she asks, so you can also rely on us."

"Fuck you," Kyora mutters under her breath.

Tsundere.

We chuckle softly, then Roxanne questions them curiously, "But since you're settling down, will you continue to be Wandering Knights?"

"We don't need to actually 'wander' to belong to the Knights, but we'll probably just join the Townsguard or the Expeditionary Division," Kyora answers with an aloof tone.

But Roxanne continues without wavering, "How about conquering a dungeon? Chimera nobility is much more accepting than the elves."

"An interesting idea…" Timas hums and looks back at Kyora.

But she just grunts, "Sounds bothersome."

"Can we actually become nobles and still remain Templars? I think they're mutually exclusive," Alonso wonders confusedly.

"Well, if they are, then think of it as an improvement in lifestyle," I smoothly suggest.

"Definitely better than just being an escort to others," he grumbles and frowns at Timas.

But Poppy annoyedly frowns back and chastises him, "Thinking like that will make you drop your guard. We're here to sniff out heretics, which have attacked the Ryder family twice, already."

"Alright, alright," he immediately backs down.

"And we're thankful for the temple's help in this matter," I gently add.

Timas nods energetically and gracefully ends the conversation, "Now, we've stolen enough of your time, so, please, enjoy your afternoon together without minding us."

Then Roxanne leaves an alluring suggestion in the air, "Perhaps another time, you could tell me about your adventures with Ciel. Specifically, any embarrassing stories that I can use to tease her."

Now that gets even Kyora and Alonso interested.

We take a leisurely stroll through the Nobles' Quarter, passing by the residential area first. The mansions here are smaller than the ones on the castle grounds, but they have a lot more personality and variety since most of them are personal homes instead of standard-built mansions owned by the Lordship.

The elven nobles live around here, so their reception to us is perfectly polite, but cold. We don't let that bother us, greeting them cordially, and it's actually pretty funny seeing them shift gears and suddenly become a lot more agreeable to not offend us. We'll kill them with kindness!

It makes me realize that they might just have a bad image of us in their minds, so maybe, we just need to continue with this approach to improve our reputation with them.

"I didn't expect you to enjoy this sort of thing," I remark as we happily wave goodbye to the noble couple walking away.

"Making others embarrassed is totally my thing," she replies with a smirk.

"Touché."

Then we enter the Chimera zone, and the mood changes almost instantly. We're both quite popular among the Chimera, so we not only get plenty of pretty women being flirty with us, but there's even a few bold men asking me to take my clothes off. It seems that they still remember when I walked the streets naked with a half-boner back in Whakamutu.

And then we're both left speechless as we see a Labrador-headed man turn into a woman in real-time just so that they can flirt with us.

She (?) notices our astonishment and sultrily asks as she cups her modest breasts, "Do you still find a woman like me attractive, even though I spend most of my time as a man?"

I blink blankly and blurt out, "Uh, yes. Just… don't change back into a man mid-sex."

She laughs out loud while Roxanne blushes as a new fetish is born within her.

Oh, no…

She quickly gets her laughter under control and amusedly shares, "I've been hired to teach a few male elves [Sexual Metamorphosis], and I'm quite certain that they're learning it specifically to become maids in your castle, so I'll relay your words to them in case any of them have 'mischievous' intentions that'd get them in trouble."

"You have my thanks…" I stiffly reply. I really need to think about the implications of this.

"So, you don't need to be a Metamorphic Chimera to be able to use that skill?" Roxanne curiously asks.

The Lab woman nods. "Yes, that's correct, though the 'Metas' do have a big advantage for anything related to body alterations, especially since most of them are born with [Sexual Metamorphosis]."

Interesting… But now, I'm wondering how many of our maids have that skill…

"Please, Wolfy, I can only get so excited!" Roxanne teases through [Bind].

"Alright, fuck you," I grumble back through our connection.

"Hard and rough, please."

We move on and have a few brief conversations with the Chimeras, and the most common topic is the Institute as they're quite eager to know when I'll be opening the other divisions.

The Institute is a huge money sink until we can attract buyers, so we'll take it easy with it for now because the social projects have priority in our budget. We'd rather not implement the tax reforms until we have the support of the people, so we'll have to be careful with money and operate at a loss until we're confident that there won't be any revolts when we impose the reforms.

Then we turn around and make for the commercial zone of the Quarter. We have a tea shop there that we're going to refurbish into a chocolate (and hopefully coffee) shop soon, but it's still a nice place to visit.

A group of elves suddenly draws my attention as they turn towards us and enter onto an intercept course. We're at the edge of the Chimera zone, so I wonder why they're here, but then I recognize Madame Silvina, and it seems like she's leading them.

"Your Highnesses Wolf and Roxanne," she greets us first with a warm smile and bows, with the dozen elves following her example a second later. It's always a pleasure meeting with this tall, beautiful, and graceful woman.

"Madame Silvina, it's great to see you, but I must apologize, for we don't recognize your companions," I politely reply.

The elves straighten, and I notice that they're all young, and most of them are women who are having a lot of trouble looking at either of us in the eye.

Silvina nods slowly and kindly explains, "These are young nobles who came from other towns, drawn to your family's fame and philosophy."

"I see…" I gently whisper, then I notice one of the young women starting to blush and breathe heavily as she musters up the courage to look me in the eye.

Wait, is Silvina pimping us up?

I grin and repeat, "I see…"

"We're all excited about tonight's reveal," the aroused noblewoman sultrily remarks.

But I immediately try to allay her, "It's nothing too special, but I think most people will find it at least 'interesting.'"

"Especially the men. It's about a new 'toy' he came up with," Roxanne wryly adds.

But they softly gasp at the mention of a "toy," confusing us for a second, then one of the nobles blurts out, "Ah… you mean, like an enchanted sword?"

"Something like that," Roxanne replies with a smile.

The nobles laugh nervously at their misunderstanding, but Silvina's gentle smile doesn't even twitch, completely unfazed by their bubbling hormones.

I'm honestly falling in love with this woman. I know Lina wants her as a mommy, too, so Gods, please help me find a way into this noblewoman's heart.

After some subtle flirting with the young nobles, Silvina uses the perfect moment to end the conversation, which leaves them wanting for more, then we move on to our tea shop.

It's a cute little place with a flowery theme and perfumed air. The Este family heraldry was all about the five flowers used in their (now our) famous extract, so this shop uses those flowers as both decoration and a source of pleasant aromas.

I want to turn this into a coffee shop, so we'll be doing some remodeling. I'm certain that the first restaurant in the High Forest to serve chocolate and coffee will be a massive hit, so we're going to expand the shop. Half of the lot will be reserved for open-air seats with this flowery theme, and the rest of the seats will be private, dark, and cozy.

The shop itself is the usual hollowed out, extra-wide tree, but we plan on lowering the base to the bottom level of Escanso, and then we'll grow the tree tall like a tower so that it reaches all three levels of the town, with bridges to connect the shop to them. This way, everyone will be able to see down to the bottom level, and the sunlight coming from the top will make it look like a lighthouse in the lower levels.

We enter the shop, and the group of armed Lordsguard and Templars makes everyone shit their pants in fear, but we just move on to the third floor, which is always reserved exclusively for us and our close friends. There's a nice balcony with a view down onto the street, so we have some cold tea there to refresh ourselves.

I take the chance and massage Roxanne's gorgeous, pale feet while we rest.

She leans back in her chair and moans softly as my padded claws press all the right spots. "Call me spoiled, but I'm really enjoying all the attention we're getting," she softly remarks as she gives me a warm smile.

I hum back with a nod, "Yes, you are spoiled, and also, yes, it is nice."

She chuckles briefly and takes a sip of her cold, flowery tea. "Spoil me rotten, husband, and I'll be happy to suck your dick harder than Alissa and Hana combined."

I kiss her toe and grin. "I love this sort of encouragement."

And she smirks cheekily. "It helps that you're such a simple man."

I shrug. "I'm hopelessly addicted to women, but my wives are the air that I breathe to live."

She moans and closes her eyes in delight. "Hngh… that's so hot."

"I love you," I whisper huskily.

She opens her eyes and grins. "I love you, too."

Then we move on and walk down the main road, taking a look at all the shops along the way, but once we reach a female clothing shop, the nightmare begins.

"Oh, please, Wolfy. It's not that bad," Roxanne tries to soothe my frightened mind, but then she grins mischievously. "It'll go faster if we just buy anything that fits me well enough."

I frown at her, but I think she's kind of right. Agonizing over which piece of clothing to buy does take quite some time, and we're also expected to not be stingy with money since we're filthy rich, so we might as well.

The attendant offers me a comfy armchair and a cup of Eia extract, then Roxanne strips and makes an erotic show of her wearing each new piece of clothing, so maybe it isn't that bad, after all.

Okay, anything we do together just makes me horny. It's getting a bit unbearable, really. Roxanne has too much sex appeal.

She breathes in deeply and closes her eyes as she smiles. She doesn't even have any comment to give about that, she's simply too happy to banter.

We end up buying a lot of clothes, some rolls of textiles to make clothes for the girls, accessories for everyone, magical sweets and snacks, and a few perfumes that make Alissa unusually excited.

With this, most of our afternoon is gone, but then we reach a tavern, and the music coming from within attracts us both.

"♪ Steady on, she doesn't need to burn. ♪

♪ She tries to flee and she tries to turn. ♪

♪ Grappling fire, we latch her hull. ♪

♪ She's starting to roll, but we've got her on a leash. ♪"

Then they repeat the chorus twice.

"♪ With a crew of drunken pilots. ♪

♪ We're the only airship pirates. ♪

♪ We're full of hot air, and we're starting to rise. ♪

♪ We're the terror of the skies, but a danger to ourselves. ♪"

"♪ A swish of air, and my boots hit the deck. ♪

♪ No cash, no gems; no, not a speck. ♪

♪ Our grape shots made this bird a wreck. ♪

♪ And a glance below deck shows a crew of priests and orphans. ♪"

We enter the tavern and see a human singer along with a full Chimera band playing. Their instruments are a dwarven hurdy-gurdy, an elven violin, a human lute, and a set of dragonkin drums, making for quite an interesting ensemble.

But what I find the most striking is that there's a considerable number of elves in the audience, and they seem to be very much enjoying this Chimera song, which has been translated into Andraste.

The next song is also about airships, but we don't care, for the tune is just the right tempo for a lively dance.

A note from Manasong

Hall of Fame of Patrons

The patrons who support Rupegia shall have their names sung by the bards for they deserve the glory and honor. Their names are:

Prince PreownedFIN.

Prince Creamy Spinach.

Prince Owldente.

Prince Charlie Foxtrot.

Lord Andrew Meyers.

Lord Novgarod.

Lord Michale Erwin.

Lord Bakerdea.

Lord Maurice.

Lord Mattirro Draca.

Lord Fullmoon.

Lord Sean Drake.

Lord FrostyCube.

Lord Mike Bartter.

Lord Warwulfv.

Lord Jorge Franco.

Lord Khristopher Welsh.

Lord DJ.

Lord Tenebris Lupus.

Lord Paul Daval.

Lord Paul Daval.

Lord Bradly.

Lord AndreyUC.

Lord Tmac.

Lord Krawn.

Lord School Work.

Lord Gwendolyn Simmons-LaRose.

Noble Salty Panda.

Noble Mild Fracas.

Noble Aclys.

Noble CarlBaxter.

Noble d3235.

Noble Cidant.

Leave a rating or a review to help me rise to the top or fix my shameful understanding of prose.

Take a look over my blog where all information about the world of Rupegia will be posted.

Join the Discord and discuss, or rant, or meme, or try and fight me so your waifu gets more screentime.

Become a Patron and read chapters in advance, or read the side-stories, or leave your mark on the story, or help choose the next artwork or the next side-story.

Chapter 121: Big Problems for Little People - Part 1

Roxanne reaches the climax of her story, and the listeners lean forward as they stare intently at her, eager to hear the resolution of this tale.

Her face is serious, for the mood is heavy, but a subtle smug smile starts to creep onto her face as the sneaky switch begins, "The Wicked Lord decided to take his bride's virginity in front of the prisoners, just to humiliate the Hero. He kissed her deeply and ran his hand all over her body, exploring it all with delight, then he grinned at the Hero as he cried silently.

"Feeling that she was wet enough, he pushed her down on the bed of flowers, and she gave both the Lord and the Hero a sinister grin, but when the Lord forced open her legs to kiss her flower, she disabled the [Warp Space] enchantment, and the halfling girl was ejected out of her vagina with such a force that she didn't even need the knife, she just snapped the Lord's neck with her body and killed him instantly."

"What the fuck…?" A young elven noble blurts out.

The reactions around the table range wildly from horror to extreme amusement, and she gives them the widest shit-eating grin I've ever seen as they all seem to have fallen for her trap.

She started all serious and stern, baiting them into believing that this was a serious tale, only to give them a slap in the face with this absurd ending. Suits them right for acting so unnecessarily reverent of us. We aren't so stiff that we'd demand frigid respect, so her stunt should give them a better perspective on how to treat us.

"Surely, this tale's veracity isn't as impeccable as we've been led to believe?" A pompous young noblewoman stiffly inquires.

"I don't believe my wife said anything about this being a story based solely on real events," I cheekily reply.

She narrows her eyes and grumbles, "Well, not explicitly…"

Roxanne's grin remains plastered on her face as she explains, "Oh, I checked with my enchanter sister-wife. She's sure that it's possible to create an enchantment strong enough that a halfling could fit in a cup. Staying in there for so long, though, isn't as easy as we might believe it to be."

The women look horrified while the men giggle like high-schoolers.

"Imagine the smell…" A young, male Chimera mumbles, and the giggling gets louder.

"Oh, please, not another word!" An elven noblewoman exclaims. She seemed quite eager once the story took an NTR turn, but now, there's only horror on her face. I'd even guess that her distaste comes from being blue-balled rather than from disgust at the imagery.

An adult, Iguana-headed Chimera explains in a scholarly tone, "I assure you that it's not perfumed in there, not even if she were an elf," -he gives a stern side-glance to the elves at our table- "but after a few hours, your nose would get desensitized by the intense smell, so the most uncomfortable thing would be the heat and the… sliminess."

"How do you know such things…?" The pompous noblewoman questions as she frowns.

The Chimera takes a second to hide his contempt and stoically answers, "We didn't have conveniences such as [Heal] back in Whakamutu. Well, we did, but it wasn't such a potent spell as it is now, so we had to thoroughly study the body before we could even attempt to heal it."

"We still have to study it, we can just somewhat skirt around it with higher 'Piety,'" I retort.

"How do you 'study' a body?" A young, elven nobleman curiously asks.

"Well, it works best with the dead, so you can just open them up and…" Then he proceeds to describe it in detail, achieving the feat of making the table both disgusted and intrigued.

Roxanne has quite a lot of medical knowledge too, due to her experiments with poisons and antidotes, so she contributes to the conversation a lot more than I do.

But then the sun starts to set, so we invite these nobles and aristocrats to join us again in the evening for our banquet.

Roxanne and I walk back towards the castle with our arms linked and her humming one of the songs we danced to.

She suddenly stretches her back and moans softly. "Well, I think I danced a bit too hard, so I'll need Ciel to cast [Refresh] on me," she remarks and taps her thin thighs.

"Is the elemental-wife not enough?" I kindly ask.

She looks back at the light-Ciel holding her tail, then raises an eyebrow. "You started calling them 'elemental-wives,' but have you really done anything with them?"

"My question first," I flatly reply.

She smiles and nods. "Ah, she's helping a lot, but I'm feeling a bit tired all over, so I think I'll need Ciel's spell to deal with that."

I hum and add, "I'll also give you a massage in the bath."

"Hngh…!" She squeaks happily and kisses my right horn.

I smile warmly at her and answer her question, "Anyway, when I was stuck in the dungeon's labyrinth, the elementals actually initiated physical contact first, but I was so shriveled and worn down that I barely felt any comfort from it."

She tilts her head and frowns in confusion. "That's not easy to imagine."

I shrug. "I basically became half-insane."

"It suits you to lose 'Sanity' from a lack of sex," she remarks with a chuckle.

I pout at her, mildly offended. "It's more like the lack of you made me like that. You and the other wives."

"Awn…" She moans and smiles smugly as I've fallen into her trap. I should've probed her thoughts before I answered that so earnestly.

I roll my eyes and sigh. "Your ego is as big as a dragon's."

She chuckles again and gives my padded claws a squeeze. "Only because you offer compliments so freely. I'm as weak to an ego stroke as you are to a dick-sucking, so I just have to take any opportunity you give me."

I pout harder and mumble, "I think our priorities are inverted, in a way."

When we reach the castle grounds, we say our goodbyes to the Itos and give our thanks to them and our Lordsguard for escorting us today.

Since we're both a bit tired, we get the maids to massage us while we wait for bath time.

Hana joins us first, and she's a lot more tired and sweaty than we are, so she enjoys the maids the most.

"You two had a lot of fun… hngh… so I'm a bit jealous," she remarks with a moan.

"We can certainly have a date another day. I'll just need some time to rest, first," I assure her.

But she gives me a warm and slightly bitter smile. "If what that Nero said is true, then I don't think we'll get the time to rest or to have a date for a while."

I hum and whimper sadly, "Hm… well, one day…"

Once the girls have arrived, we start the bath and wash each other. There's only the wives and Osaria this time, and the huge hall that we call a bath echoes with our laughter.

After all the teasing today, there's no way I'm not unleashing my hunger on Roxanne, so she's the first target of my lewd tentacles.

Her body is slender like Aoi's, lacking in both muscle and fat, but the few curves she does have are… sublime. As a prime specimen of the succubus race, there's nothing about her that can be related to "excess," her entire body was made precisely for one purpose, to be sexy, or more precisely, to be seductive.

I run my tongue along her chest, tasting her faintly salty, unblemished skin, then I kiss her while I wrap my soapy tentacles so delicately around her limbs that it almost feels like foreplay to her.

While I'd love to play with her modest breasts, she's teased me enough for today, so it makes sense to return it in kind. I release her and sit down on a stool, then I let Alissa wash me as I observe Roxanne slowly beginning to writhe on the floor from the touch of my obscene tentacles.

I have such a glorious boner that the girls are interested in just watching me play with Roxanne. Stern and stoic, casually making a woman slowly go mad with the need for cock; they love to see my confident side, and I definitely use [Bind] to its utmost to ensure that I fulfill their every desire.

But Roxanne never lets me just do as I please.

She grabs a soapy tentacle with her long fingers and squeezes it, but she uses too much force, so it slips out of her grasp, actually surprising me a bit with the sudden stimulation.

"Aren't thou cheeky," I loftily remark.

"'Thou'?" She blurts out confusedly in English. The system didn't translate that word.

I try to think about another word that could convey the feeling of "thou," but it seems that Andraste doesn't have anything in the way of "old speak," not even "antiquated words," just "polite," or "refined" speech.

Wait, does this mean that no language ever evolves since they're tied to the skills…?

"Wolfy~…" Roxanne moans seductively and pouts, making the dragon rattle its cage in anger at the human.

Scholarly pursuits can wait, for a woman is in need of dick.

Roxanne wants nothing more than to close her legs and lock my seed inside her, but I'm not done. I need to fill her up repeatedly, to grind my member against her folds even harder, to give her orgasm after orgasm, to make her scream my name.

For my hunger is endless.

I slowly brush Alissa's tail and sigh, savoring the tingling sensation it evokes in her, while human-Aoi waxes the mirror-like scales on my tail. The wax prevents them from fogging up or getting smudged with assorted bodily fluids, so it's essential for a prideful weredragon like me.

Once we're done, Alissa kisses my lips, and I kiss Aoi's, then she turns back into a dragon and kisses Lina before the little girl has even begun waxing her azure scales.

"Early payment," Aoi happily explains to the stunned sister-wife.

"Advance payment," Ciel corrects her.

Aoi nods. "Yes, advance. Words are hard," she jokes endearingly and gives us a toothy smile.

Hmm~… satisfaction…

Okay, maybe I shouldn't say that my hunger is endless, but it's definitely in an endless cycle of Ravaging, then resting, then Ravaging again.

The time for the banquet has come… and I'm still kind of tired.

"I'll take over," Alissa gently volunteers and holds one of my arms, so I give her a warm peck for being such a dedicated wife.

"I'll help," Ciel also volunteers and holds my other arm, also earning herself a peck for being so wonderful.

The angel glances at our mutual wife, but Lina is confident that she can handle another party, so we give her some encouragement and head down to meet with our guests.

The banquet will be held in one of the empty mansions in the outer ring because there are just too many guests to allow them free access to the inner gardens.

The flower gardens are illuminated by crystals hidden within the flower beds, creating a complex and colorful lighting style. There are no glowing plants here because the purple color they emit at night would clash with the rainbow theme of the rest of the garden.

We told Osaria to invite just about anyone who has any modicum of "power," so there are people with all sorts of backgrounds, though not those whose presence would clash against the nobles or priests in attendance.

What's most interesting is that almost all of the Heart Lords are present. The only one not in attendance is Amada Anquili, the old, grumpy widow.

Since they're our Subordinate Lords, they deserve to be greeted by us, so the two wives guide me towards them.

"Heart Lords, it pleases us to have you all here," Alissa speaks through me.

"It's an honor to be invited," Rador Iqueza politely replies with a respectful nod. The refined, stern elf then becomes a bit stiff as he adds, "We apologize for not appearing at the previous feast, but this one was too mysterious to miss for anything."

"We were tied up with chasing wild leads regarding bandits that have nestled in the riverlands," Atala Mendecassa explains. She and her sister are both wearing sexy and extremely revealing dousnadeias (for an elf), but her words kill any desire I had for them.

No, you weren't. Cereleia's Radar didn't mention anyone chasing the humanoids in the north.

"Call us if you locate their nest. We'll always be available to help defend our lands," Ciel kindly continues, not a hint of suspicion or disappointment in her tone.

"We will, Your Highnesses," Erpente Iqueza politely replies. She's stunningly beautiful, but she's said to be as sharp as her husband, so I don't let my cock distract me.

I sternly nod, and Ciel speaks through me, "Also, we'll task you with collecting reports about the status and development of the towns and villages of your territories. We wish to implement territory-wide policies that require precise information about any regions in need of aid."

"Oh…? What sort of policies?" Rador stoically inquires.

Now Ciel speaks with her own mouth as she smiles, "Development projects. We wish to redistribute some of our wealth around the territory through projects that will stimulate the development and growth of our towns."

"I didn't know that you… had a mind for progressivism," Iril Laribeiro remarks amusedly. The youthful silver elf is rather impudent, but never outright disrespectful.

"Or for lawmaking," Rador quietly adds.

"The benefit of having many exotic wives is that each brings a different skillset to our family," I proudly declare.

"So it seems," Atala whispers thoughtfully.

Then Yunia tunes in to the conversation and makes me ask them a few strategic questions about money and taxes that I just gloss over. She wants to show them that we haven't forgotten about them and that we still expect them to toe the line.

"But I believe it's now time to finally reveal the mystery," Alissa makes me bring the conversation to an end.

Their mildly reverent demeanor subtly shifts, and they show restrained interest, then the girls lead me to the raised dais.

Poosh rings a bell, and the maids who were spread out through the garden follow her, filling the air with the heavenly whispering of elven bells.

The crowd quiets down, and I calmly begin my speech, "Gentlemen and gentlewomen, I've invited you all here to present a new invention. Look up above you, at the stars, and stare in wonder at what the Ryder Royal Institute has created."

A new star lights up in the sky, drawing everyone's gazes, and they all gasp loudly when it begins to move.

The star zips about, dashing back and forth, then looping and spiraling wildly, and all the while, its glow increases in intensity.

But it takes a fairly long time before the first person realizes that it's not getting brighter, it's coming closer.

"What. Is. That?" Someone questions out loud.

Before anyone actually tries to answer them, the low humming of the Raki's frame vibrating at high frequency becomes noticeable to those with normal hearing, then the murmuring explodes as they try to guess what it is.

But I interrupt them and reveal the truth before their sense of wonder can fade, "That, esteemed guests, is an airplane. But not just any old Chimera airplane; it's a new generation of airplanes, the kind that will rival the airships of the Principality." -Now that surprises the crowd- "Feast your eyes on the fastest vehicle in the entire realm: the Raki!"

The airplane makes a low pass over the gardens, leaving behind a strong gust that rushes past the observers, and they exclaim in surprise. It passes by so fast that they even lose sight of it and need a few seconds to spot it again.

Once it begins to slow down for a u-turn, I continue my speech, "Speed is its strength. What need is there for defenses if nothing can catch up to it?!" Then I wait until the Raki makes another flyby before continuing, "Through knowledge, we shall break past the limits of magic, then we shall enchant what we've created to achieve new heights!"

The Raiki makes another u-turn, then slows down and lands in the middle of the garden, allowing everyone to gawk at it from up close.

The murmuring boils over into loud chatter, and the girls are swamped with questions from the excited crowd.

The banquet is a resounding success. The merchants almost beg for an estimate on production costs, especially since I've claimed to be in direct competition with the airships of the Principality, so they want to begin their calculations as soon as possible.

"What do you see the Raki being used for?" Rador questions me curiously.

"War, transport, and racing," I casually answer. Then I take a moment to gather my thoughts and explain further, "It'll cause a shift in imperial war doctrine due to its speed, which we still want to increase further, by the way; then we plan to use it as transport for commoners once we've driven down the costs of production; and it should also inspire a new thirst for speed and competition."

"Our Lord seems to be quite the visionary," Iril remarks with a faint smirk.

"We've been given the Lordship for a reason, and we'll do our very best to fulfill it," Ciel calmly declares.

The Heart Lords don't seem too happy with her words, but they still smile respectfully at her. They're afraid of change, of what we'll impose on them, so they act behind our backs to keep us from growing too bold, but their betrayals will eventually cost them their lives.

I zone out since most of the questions don't need me to answer them personally, and after a tiring night, we're finally allowed to sleep, but we're awoken before the sun comes up. Gnomeria is calling for help.

A note from Manasong

Hall of Fame of Patrons

The patrons who support Rupegia shall have their names sung by the bards for they deserve the glory and honor. Their names are:

Prince PreownedFIN.

Prince Creamy Spinach.

Prince Owldente.

Prince Charlie Foxtrot.

Lord Andrew Meyers.

Lord Novgarod.

Lord Michale Erwin.

Lord Bakerdea.

Lord Maurice.

Lord Mattirro Draca.

Lord Fullmoon.

Lord Sean Drake.

Lord FrostyCube.

Lord Mike Bartter.

Lord Warwulfv.

Lord Jorge Franco.

Lord Khristopher Welsh.

Lord DJ.

Lord Tenebris Lupus.

Lord Paul Daval.

Lord Paul Daval.

Lord Bradly.

Lord AndreyUC.

Lord Tmac.

Lord Krawn.

Lord School Work.

Lord Gwendolyn Simmons-LaRose.

Noble Salty Panda.

Noble Mild Fracas.

Noble Aclys.

Noble CarlBaxter.

Noble d3235.

Noble Cidant.

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Chapter 121: Big Problems for Little People - Part 2

We gather the wives, the High Officers, and Klein in our dining hall.

"Status report," I order as we sit at the table.

Osaria puts down the letter from Gnomeria and begins the explanation, "Gnomeria had predicted that the monster army would be ready to attack by today since they'd reach a critical size, so this attack isn't a surprise. The problem arises from the fact that the gnomes underestimated the enemy's strength." Then she looks to Sandoro, who can better explain the next part.

Poosh and the maids serve us Tonique tea to help us wake up, then Sandoro explains as we sip, "The standard units of the monster army are magical, underworld creatures that have a strong affinity for fire and a physiology that is extremely similar to a fire elemental."

Aisco's eyes suddenly focus on Sandoro, as if he has finally started paying attention to the conversation, then he frowns and blurts out, "Wait, this means that my [Fire Magic] is useless?"

Sandoro nods stiffly. "Yes, but underworld creatures aren't the only monsters that the gnomes are fighting."

"Bugs…" Lina mumbles disgustedly, and the only person who doesn't react negatively is Aisco.

The old elf gives her a sympathetic look. "Indeed, we'll likely be fighting bugs, but they aren't the reason why Gnomeria underestimated the monsters' strength. To deal with underworld creatures, the gnomes have created large reservoirs of cold water that they use to flood the tunnels under Gnomeria, but this time, the creatures survived the flooding. They've somehow become stone and fire hybrids, a new 'lava' type, so when the cold water hit them, the lava simply hardened, and they continued their advance underwater, though they were greatly slowed."

I eat a chocolate brownie to get a sugar rush to help me wake up, totally not using this as an excuse to stuff myself with chocolate, then I hum in thought and ponder, "So they've accepted our proposal unconditionally?"

"They have. It wasn't unreasonable, so they shouldn't have any problems fulfilling it," Osaria happily answers as she smiles with her droopy eyes. She seems quite proud of her negotiation skills because even though the gnomes didn't haggle much, they also didn't outright dismiss her.

"Considering how they were so hesitant to negotiate, I think they must be rather desperate now if they just instantly accepted it," I casually remark.

Sandoro's posture stiffens, and his rather wrinkly face becomes stern as he answers, "They were caught unaware, so if the battle doesn't go overwhelmingly in their favor, there'll be consequences."

They'll be blamed for the deaths and called incompetent.

"I see…" I whisper grimly.

Krysta finishes frying up a rather English-looking breakfast. There's no time to cook it in the kitchen, so she's doing it right here in our dining hall. Also, we'll need the energy, so there's only high-calorie food here.

"How are we going to engage these bugs?" Almaria asks, trying her best to not look disgusted at the prospect, but that's kind of hard for an elf.

"I recommend that we take one of the main tunnels for ourselves," Sandoro categorically replies. "The gnomes use them to funnel the enemies into killing corridors and to discourage the digging monsters from trying to bypass their defenses, so there's always a need for ground troops to face waves of monsters."

"Can we isolate ourselves? I don't want random gnomes seeing how we fight," I declare.

Sandoro caresses his puffy beard in thought. "Hm… if we bring enough soldiers, it should be safe to leave us with an entire tunnel."

I rest my head on my claws as I curiously ask, "How about Dust of Appearance? How much do we have?"

"An entire stockpile of it. How do you plan to use it?"

"Just enough to cover our rear from someone invisible sneaking in."

He gently shakes his head. "Not an issue."

Then I remember something that had intrigued me. "What about those pulses of Spirit-attuned mana that the Chimeras use to find hidden monsters on their ships? I'd like to use them to prevent the monsters from spying on us."

He pulls a long list out of his [Item Box], then skims through it until he finds the correct entry. "We have a few of those gems in stock, so we can bring them with us. One should last us for a whole battle, as long as it doesn't take more than a day, which I find unlikely."

I smile in satisfaction. "Great. Let's finish eating, then we'll go there without delay."

I'm just a little excited about going to Gnomeria.

For now, only the girls, Sandoro, and I will go, and we'll call for the rest of our men after we've discussed how many are necessary.

The brown bark and grass carpet of our [Eternal Gate] Network hall changes into the austere tiles and bricks of Mac Gantus, then they give way to the smooth stone and mushroom wood painted with vibrant and childish colors as we arrive in Gnomeria.

The guards at the end of the hall are cute, chubby little men even shorter than a halfling. They're wearing mages' robes, but they have oversized weapons in front of them with no mage's staves in sight. Their spears and tower shields have flared bases to keep them upright without having to wield them, and their shortswords are slung over their backs like someone would with a longsword.

So fucking adorable.

I think I now have a better understanding of why tall women like cute, short men so much in this world, and the height-advantaged wives internally agree.

Waiting for us in front of the reception counter is a pair of wealthy gnomes. The one on the left is older, with white hair and beard, and he's wearing a tight set of gray velvet robes with a conical hat, while the one on the right is younger, a baby-faced, blue-haired man who's wearing a lavish purple silk robe, is floating a centimeter above the ground, and has a conical purple hat with a white pompom at the tip.

"Esteemed Ryder family, I'm Prince Looklwind Krunigrihir, and I welcome you to Gnomeria," the younger man politely greets. His voice is a bit scratchy and nasally, making him sound just a bit funny.

Soul Info

Name | Looklwind Krunigrihir | Race | Gnome | Level | 67
HP | 50 | MP | 4,410 | Magic Power | 910
Strength | 5 | Endurance | 7

How interesting. They have half the HP of a normal human.

"Well met. We're here to answer your call for aid," I reply in kind.

He nods gently, making his pompom bounce adorably. "We're grateful for it, but time is of the essence. Would you follow me to our grand hall so that we may organize our city's defense?"

I simply nod. "Lead the way."

He glances at the older gnome beside him, who begins chanting [Gate], then he turns back to us. "I apologize for my ignorance, but would you rather be referred to as royalty? We're not certain of your family's position in the High Forest."

Yunia answers categorically, "We haven't been recognized by the authorities of the High Forest as royals yet, but we did receive such a title from the spirit of the last elven king himself, so you may refer to us as you wish."

His serious, thoughtful face has the opposite of its intended effect on me. "We shall recognize you as fellow royals, then."

Yunia nods respectfully. "We appreciate your show of respect."

He hums and nods back, making his pompom bounce again, then the gnome mage finishes casting [Gate], and we all cross through it.

We're teleported to a wide, blue and gold hall with a rather low ceiling. It's populated with a dozen abstract, spinny, glowing kinetic art pieces that seem magically hypnotic. At the center of the hall, there's a large, round table with a floating, 3D recreation of Gnomeria carved in stone, and a dozen gnomes are crowded around it, discussing the movements of small pieces that look like cartoonish depictions of monsters.

There are a few pixies among them, cute and surprisingly curvy little women with faintly glowing butterfly wings. Unlike dwarves and halflings, they look fully grown, and they're surprisingly attractive considering their comically short height.

I also find it rather curious that everyone's hair and beards are either vibrant and colorful or fully gray and faded. I do wonder why they don't paint their hair because they certainly have the dyes to do it considering the carnival of colors they're wearing.

Then the Prince's servant announces our arrival, "Grand nobles, The Royal Ryder family has arrived from the High Forest to aid us in our time of need!"

"Ah, the young dragon king," the oldest and most lavishly-dressed gnome gently remarks. He has a very scratchy, old-man voice and a long white beard that disappears into a pocket of his purple and gold silk robe. "I'm King Lookwir Krunigrihir, and this is my wife, Queen Vlwind." Then he motions to the cute, old woman floating a bit above him. Her clothes are covered in protruding bits, making her look like a violet and gold hydrangea with wings.

Soul Info

Name | Lookwir Krunigrihir | Race | Gnome | Level | 268
HP | 50 | MP | 51,230 | Magic Power | 25,615
Strength | 4 | Endurance | 5

Soul Info

Name | Vlwind Krunigrihir | Race | Pixie | Level | 271
HP | 50 | MP | 45,110 | Magic Power | 23,800
Strength | 5 | Endurance | 6

Ignoring his ridiculous stats (and the fact that I don't feel anything from the "high-level aura" they're supposed to have), I blink blankly for a couple of seconds as I repeat his obnoxiously hard to pronounce name in my head, then I carefully reply, "King Lookwir, I'm Wolf Ryder, and these are my wives…"

After our introductions are complete, the rest of the table has their turn, and we learn the borderline unpronounceable names of all of the gnomic and pixie high nobility. The Prince who received us is actually the second prince, so we had quite the illustrious reception.

"How many men did you bring with you?" the gnome Grand General inquires. He's a rather gruff-looking gnome, which is impressive considering their cuteness.

"We wish to know the location we'll be fighting in before we commit to bringing so many men from so far away," Sandoro calmly replies.

"Hm… wise," the King hums, then smiles warmly. "You're the first to arrive, so we have time to discuss things in detail."

Sandoro explains our needs and conditions to the General, who nods and begins searching the 3D map for something suitable as they quietly talk with each other.

The Queen floats closer to me, and since she's hovering at a level a bit higher than my head, I learn that pixies use pantaloons under their dresses. "I see that your combat abilities are as mysterious as the circumstances around your rise to power," she kindly remarks.

"I find it even more mysterious that they want to trade for coffee of all things!" The King exclaims amusedly.

"Well, that mystery will be answered soon enough once you learn what I'll do with it," I reply with a wide smile.

And Alissa proudly adds, "Our husband is a gourmet, and we'll be delighted to welcome you into our home once his newest invention is ready."

The two royals chuckle like a pair of amused grandparents.

"We'll trust your claim," the King softly affirms.

Then the General interjects, "Your Majesties, I believe we can assign the Tunnel To The Bobblybaubbles to them."

"The what?" Hana grunts in confusion.

"Bobblybaubbles," Prince Looklwind flatly replies and points to one of the kinetic art pieces that looks like a bunch of floating and spinning metal balls. "It used to lead to the Dangerous Spinny Balls Research Facility, but it's been abandoned ever since it… blew up." Then he shrugs.

I remember that I'd once seen a lot of weird gadgets with obscure functions at the markets of Rabana, and at the time, I didn't really believe that they were imported gnomic products, but now, I'm a bit more inclined to believe that they might've actually been legitimate.

"Sounds like gnomes dabble in the same unreliable magics that created [Alchemicism]," Roxanne remarks through [Bind], sounding rather disappointed.

We sense a spell being cast at the same spot that we teleported to, then we go silent and wait as a new [Gate] opens.

Suddenly, a shiny tin can with arms and legs appears on top of the black circle, and it immediately struts towards us with such heavy steps that they're like a rhino's.

"Grand nobles, Grimto Korig has arrived from Mountainhome to represent the imperial army!" A gnome servant announces, but the royals and nobles don't seem thrilled with his presence.

"'Korig'? He's a descendant of the God of War!" Lina exclaims excitedly, then immediately controls her fangirling and calms down again.

"Salutations!" The rather rotund dwarf exclaims. He walks like a warrior, so I won't dare guess about his muscle-to-fat ratio.

"Sir Grimto, welcome to Gnomeria," the first Prince returns a stiff greeting.

The dwarf lifts his visor, revealing a chubby face almost fully covered with fiery red hair. "Have you decided to ask for our help yet?!" He shouts, sounding rather annoyed.

"We'll decide after our friends and allies have arrived," the General sternly replies.

Grimto slams his visor down and shifts his path towards one of the kinetic art pieces. "Then give me a chair since I'll be waiting here," he demands, then a gnome servant hurries after the fast-walking dwarf.

I lean to the side and whisper to Looklwind, "Why do you decline help from the empire?"

He gives me an odd look, and even Yunia sighs internally due to my small display of ignorance.

The cute Prince glances at Grimto, who's now simply waiting in his seat like a statue, then he answers stiffly, "As a new Lord, I assume you haven't needed their help yet, but soon, you'll realize that the empire barters with only one type of coin, power." -His gaze goes glum, pulling on my heartstrings- "For rulers like us, giving away our power means that we'll be losing our autonomy; we'll be giving away our responsibilities to an outsider, allowing them to alter the course of our nation and putting the fate of our race at the whims of a stranger.

"It wouldn't be so bad if the empire didn't have such a durable and lasting structure that we've never been able to take back the rights we've given away." Then he shakes his head in disappointment.

But his last words give me an idea, "If the empire's takeover is inevitable, then why not get the upper hand in the negotiations by integrating with it first? They won't be able to take your autonomy if there's none to take, and you won't be left at the whims of an outsider if you join them."

"That's…" Looklwind narrows his eyes at me annoyedly, but he struggles to come up with a retort. "That's simply risky."

I shrug. "Better to risk defeat than to lose with certainty."

He snorts annoyedly and looks away, "Hmph."

"Your Highnesses," Sandoro calls for our attention.

He details the tunnel we'll be deployed in and the enemy presence we're expected to face. The devices that activate the traps can be operated remotely, so we'll leave a summoner mage from our court with the trap operators and use the mage's scouting bird to relay the situation on the front line to the operators.

Our shield walls should be enough to hold back the horde, but we're expected to steadily give ground so that the traps may be used. Otherwise, we'll just be tiring out our men since the traps can kill the monsters much, much faster than they can.

The walls are coated in slimy substances, but a few types of monsters can still climb on it, though the tunnel is quite wide, so a few Celestial Horns should be enough to deal with them.

The tunnel has a width of around 15 meters, so we'll need about one hundred men to fill it shoulder to shoulder. We aren't expecting this to be a fight to the death since all of us and our High Officers will be present for support. That means that this will be a good opportunity to quickly level up some of our men, so Sandoro will bring about five hundred Lordsguard of mixed levels.

As we talk, more noble guests arrive. Dwarves from a few places, weremonkeys and wereapes from Sommerland, weredogs and werecats from the Mainland, humans and dragonkin from everywhere, a single wereowl nobleman from Hermit's Roost, and even an Elder from the Misty Low Forest. Everyone present is a noble, but only the imperials interest us.

The Elder comes to greet us while grinning like an old grandma, "Alissa, I'll send word to your mother that you look as beautiful as the day you left, if not more."

I hold Alissa's hand and give it a gentle squeeze as I warmly reply, "I agree. For me, she certainly grows even more stunning with each passing day."

"My, aren't you two enviable," the Elder gushes, and Alissa actually blushes, not used to having people comment on our relationship.

The two exchange a few pleasantries, but then the last guests arrive, and the table goes silent.

Thalanthros. Tit-less, slender Martians with tentacle-y appendages on their heads that resemble hair. The totally-not-zoras.

The King seems very happy to see them. "Ah, Reef Lord Graf, I assume your presence means that you accept our proposal?" He asks excitedly and uses [Telekinesis] to float towards Graf, exactly like how I float.

"We. Do," Graf dryly replies, his voice has a bit of an odd timbre to it, but I can't yet identify why that is.

The King grins and offers a handshake, which Graf takes with only two fingers. "Excellent. This means that we're secure in our defense of Gnomeria, so we can begin assigning the defensive positions in full." Then he glances at Grimto, who simply remains still on his seat with his arms crossed and his visor down. Lina bets he's taking a nap.

We all turn to the floating sculpture at the center of the table, and the General begins explaining the situation.

Gnomeria was built inside the caldera of a dormant volcano, and it uses the mountain around it as a natural wall, so the rulers decided to guide the city-state to grow downwards and widen into a sort of conical shape.

The problem with digging deep is that you're also creating more room for monsters to spawn in, and it's much easier to secretly grow an army underground than above it, so there's kind of a lot of monsters down there. The only advantage that the gnomes have over them is that the monster army easily grows larger than it can sustainably feed, so it can never really grow too big.

Then everyone announces the number of men they're bringing.

We don't recognize any of the imperial nobles present, and none of them seem to be suspiciously interested in us, so we have no exchanges with them. None of them are Lords, but they, and a few of the nobles from other regions, each contribute a few hundred soldiers from the imperial army towards the defense. The Titles they hold award them with a number of soldiers from the army, which they use to act like mercenaries, selling their services wherever they're needed.

There's no time to chat, so once everyone has their assignments, we leave the meeting hall.

A note from Manasong

Hall of Fame of Patrons

The patrons who support Rupegia shall have their names sung by the bards for they deserve the glory and honor. Their names are:

Prince PreownedFIN.

Prince Creamy Spinach.

Prince Owldente.

Prince Charlie Foxtrot.

Lord Andrew Meyers.

Lord Novgarod.

Lord Michale Erwin.

Lord Bakerdea.

Lord Maurice.

Lord Mattirro Draca.

Lord Fullmoon.

Lord Sean Drake.

Lord FrostyCube.

Lord Mike Bartter.

Lord Warwulfv.

Lord Jorge Franco.

Lord Khristopher Welsh.

Lord DJ.

Lord Tenebris Lupus.

Lord Paul Daval.

Lord Paul Daval.

Lord Bradly.

Lord AndreyUC.

Lord Tmac.

Lord Krawn.

Lord School Work.

Lord Gwendolyn Simmons-LaRose.

Noble Salty Panda.

Noble Mild Fracas.

Noble Aclys.

Noble CarlBaxter.

Noble d3235.

Noble Cidant.

Leave a rating or a review to help me rise to the top or fix my shameful understanding of prose.

Take a look over my blog where all information about the world of Rupegia will be posted.

Join the Discord and discuss, or rant, or meme, or try and fight me so your waifu gets more screentime.

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Chapter 121: Big Problems for Little People - Part 3

A note from Manasong

02/09: Early chapter release because I'll spend the weekend somewhere with difficult access to the internet.

Also, an announcement: next week will be Side Story Week, so no main story release. I'll only write chapters for the side story for the patrons and possibly work on other side content that I've been neglecting if time allows.

Sandoro separates from us to coordinate with our men. After walking past a few colorful corridors, we leave the castle and finally have a good view of the city.

Gify suddenly pops back into existence on my shoulder and gazes at the city with wonder like I was about to do.

"Oh? Finally deemed it time to grace us with your presence?" I gently tease her.

"Gih," she tells me to shut up so that she can enjoy the sight.

I chuckle and follow her lead. We're at the center of the caldera, near the highest point of the town, and we have the perfect view to see how it spirals down under us.

We're right under the opening of the caldera, allowing us to see the dark blue sky of twilight as the sun begins to rise, but just those few rays of light make the area around us considerably brighter than the rest of the town. Gnomeria has so many little sources of light that the atmosphere gradually shifts from being cute and colorful around us to gloomy and cozy deeper down, and it reminds me of the lower levels of Escanso due to the permanent scarcity of sunlight.

The gnomic houses themselves are incredibly cute and just as colorful as the clothes they wear. They're all spherical and tilted in such a way that it looks like multiple rooms have been haphazardly stacked on top of each other, straight out of a fairy-tale, which can be taken literally since the extended Tale of Creation for the gnomes and pixies claims that they simply came out of childrens' fairy-tale books.

Their whole theme is to be childish and whimsical, and they very visibly show it through their architectural style and sense of fashion.

The gnomic road network seems a bit nightmarish, though, since there are a dozen suspended highways crisscrossing the skies, and there's even floating arrows that pulse with light, held up by cartoonish carvings of pixies that indicate the air lanes for flying vehicles.

But wait, there's more. For some reason, there are giant dandelions, spinning flowers, and glowing mushrooms spread out across the sky. None of us know what they might be for, aside from decoration.

"First time in Gnomeria?" A cute female voice graces my ears, and I turn around, only to see Tinkerbell in a blue dress staring at… Lina.

"Y-yes, it is. It's such a… different city," she awkwardly replies, caught off-guard by the pretty, young pixie.

Soul Info

Name | Belind Krunigrihir | Race | Pixie | Level | 98
HP | 50 | MP | 8,680 | Magic Power | 4,390
Strength | 6 | Endurance | 8

First Princess Belind is one of the few with an innocuous name, but she has a strong happy-go-lucky air to her that makes up for that, though she was completely silent during the previous meeting. "You can say what you're thinking; the gnomes are pretty weird," she cheekily states and giggles. "We're mostly concerned with the Enchanted Forest, so we let the gnomes run things over here, and they just can't help themselves." Then she motions to the town under us.

"Sister…" the Second Prince grumbles and frowns at his older sister.

She grins as she slowly floats towards him without flapping her butterfly wings. "Well, Looklwind isn't weird, he's just boring."

"I'm just more mature than you," he dryly replies.

She flicks his pompom, but his hat is firmly secured to his head, so the pompom merely bounces a little, but it still amuses her. "Like I said, boring, which is something, considering he's a gnome."

He refuses to look at her as he asserts, "You should be more respectful of our guests and not bother them with your foolishness."

"I'm merely lightening the mood and relieving the tension," she replies matter-of-factly.

"We appreciate the thought. Being overly stiff and formal doesn't suit our family," Yunia gracefully interjects, and the Princess gives her brother a smug glance.

But he just rolls his eyes and confesses, "Pixies are simply a lot more free-spirited than we are, so it's quite difficult to get them to do anything."

Belind shrugs. "Well, I find it just as hard to pull you out of your numbers and letters."

"Algebra?" Lina coos curiously. "I've been trying to learn it for one of our projects."

The Princess shakes her head and dramatically cries, "Oh, no, you're just like him."

"She's a dwarf, so of course she'd be like that," Looklwind replies with a snort.

And Tinkerbell giggles out loud as she holds her stomach. "I can't escape the gnome curse no matter where I look."

"The what, now?" I mumble confusedly.

She dries the corners of her eyes as she explains, "Gnomes and pixies are fated to fall in love, no matter how different they are, so 'gnomic' traits will always be attractive to us."

But Ciel takes issue with her wording and concernedly remarks, "That doesn't seem like much of a curse, really. The God of Creation wouldn't be so cruel as to make two races hate one another when they each depend on the other to procreate."

And the Prince heartily agrees with her, "Yes, it's not a curse unless you're a pixie contrarian." Then he shoots his sister a brief glare, but the Princess just giggles softly and flies in circles around him, completely unashamed.

"I like her," I comment through [Bind].

"Of course you do," Ciel dryly replies.

"Is that jealousy that I hear?!" Roxanne mockingly exclaims.

"Only Ciel may pamper our little dwarf," Alissa states with an internal nod.

And Ciel shouts annoyedly, "T-that's not it!"

"She seems fun," Aoi innocently comments, completely ignoring the banter going on.

"But we've taken up enough of the Ryders' time, so let's head to our assignments," the Princess gently declares and points towards one of the horseless, pumpkin-like carriages behind us, then she grins adorably. "If you don't mind, may I take a ride in your carriage? My assigned tunnel is near yours."

"We'd be delighted to have you with us for a little longer," I politely answer before Ciel can say anything.

"I wasn't going to!" Our angel exclaims indignantly in my soul space.

We enter the carriage and notice that it has a very strong [Warp Space] enchantment on it, making me a bit nervous about our safety since the gnomes have a fondness for explosions, and when this enchantment fails it, uh… explodes.

Once we're comfortable, the driver activates an enchantment, and the carriage takes flight, which makes me wonder why it has wheels if it can just fly wherever.

As we fly down and around the town, Belind points out all the exceptionally weird buildings as we pass them, then explains their history, which appeals to both Lina and I. The town is under alert, so there should be fewer people on the streets, but there's still considerable traffic, though Alissa detects quite a high density of people inside their homes.

As we near the bottom, the number of soldiers patrolling increases exponentially. We see gnomes marching in lockstep while chanting "hoi, hoi, hoi, hoi," with their weapons floating beside them as if they were possessed by ghosts. Pixies are flying in formation while holding long lances upwards, and their weapons have such a wide handguard that they could almost use it as an umbrella.

Then we reach the bottom, where the smooth, dark stone of the volcano's wall meets with the town… except it doesn't. The entire town is actually floating.

"Impressive," I coo in wonder.

And the bland Prince shows quite a lot of pride as he brags, "The halflings got the idea of turning Auri Yorei into a floating city from us. Granted, theirs only floats when the flood seasons starts."

But the Princess obviously thinks differently, "We don't even need Gnomeria to float, so I don't know why we use so much mana on it."

"It's for safety. Better to be floating than wishing it was," the Prince flatly replies.

She turns a cheeky grin towards us. "See what we have to deal with?"

But he's unfazed. "I can say the same."

And I gently interject, feeling like I should be diplomatic in the face of this sibling rivalry, "I find both of your races' attitudes refreshing. With your vigorous and hard-working personalities, there's so much you could accomplish, but it's a pity that you so rarely leave your home."

"Indeed. If we did, we'd quickly dominate the realm," Prince makes a rare joke and chuckles.

"That could be said for any race. If only we were as greedy as the humans…" Yunia remarks thoughtfully.

Then we all turn to Ciel.

"What? You were a human, too!" She stiffly exclaims, starting to get annoyed by repeatedly being the target of our teasing.

Fortunately for her, our short ride ends as we land at the entrance of a wide and tall rectangular tunnel with rounded walls and a subtle decline. I feel a bit silly as the shape of the tunnel makes me imagine the gnomes just pushing huge balls into the tunnel, then allowing them to freely roll down, but then I remember that these are gnomes, so they've most likely done exactly that, and it might also be what caused the explosion of the… Dangerous Spinny Balls Research Facility.

The tunnel ends at the beginning of a murder corridor, and the area around us is brimming with gnomes taking positions around the fortifications and manning the uncountable number of simple-looking ballistas and catapults. These soldiers are merely conscripts, and their weapons and armor are all flimsy-looking, so this is clearly Gnomeria's last line of defense.

The fact that the city is floating above us gives the girls and I chills because if the enchantment failed, we'd all be instantly squashed.

"Maybe that's a defensive measure too," Lina whispers internally.

The last, last line of defense.

One of our knights comes out of the tunnel and motions for us to follow him, so we part ways with the royals. The Prince will set up a station at the entrance to control the traps while the Princess will join her personal soldiers at another tunnel nearby.

We go down along the gentle slope of the tunnel and walk past a number of fortifications that are in the process of being crewed by our men. It seems the gnomes have a weapon that reminds me of the Chimera Trinity Cannons and another that seems like a liquid thrower of some kind.

The smooth stone gradually becomes rougher and more porous as we descend, with the occasional vein of unknown metal adding a bit of color to the dreary environment. The walls are covered in a slimy and shiny substance, and a quick test reveals that it's oily and extremely slippery.

We eventually reach the first line of defense and find the bulk of our men, who are finishing gathering for battle. We've also called a dozen of our knights, Klein, Anton, the gay Grosshils, and the twins because this is a one-of-a-kind opportunity to level up relatively safely.

Sandoro is almost done setting up the communications line with the Prince with the unpronounceable name, and monster scouts keep charging our line, so the men aren't allowed to relax, but most of the men are just waiting for the real battle to start, so I think we have enough time for a little speech.

I use [Telekinesis] to float up in front of our first line of men, then I clear my throat and call for their attention, "Men!"

They turn their heads towards me with a hint of curiosity, and I see in their eyes the respect they have for me. I even recognize the few passionate gazes from the Companions mixed in.

I wait for a few seconds until everyone falls silent, leaving the dying spider-like monsters nearby as the only sound we can hear, then I infuse a bit of [Godly Language] into my voice as I declare, "Today, we're here to aid our fellow humanoids, the gnomes, for only one reason: because I want their coffee. Simple as that." -They frown in confusion and murmur to each other- "Therefore…! Don't fight for me, fight for yourself, for your level, for your skills, and for your own power! Fight because this may be the last time we clash against something as inoffensive as bugs!"

It takes them a couple of seconds, but the soldiers soon understand my intentions, and Oritiki even nods in approval, then they all cheer fiercely with my encouraging words.

Without further ado, Aoi shifts into her dragon form, and we check our armor one last time. Then the knights, Silvano, the Celestial Horns, the girls, and I move forward to explore and clear the area. I summon a Holly for each group of knights so that we can keep an eye on them. This won't be the place where we lose our first knight.

The tunnel splits into a dizzying network that widens with depth. This plays with monster psychology and guides them into clustering up just enough that the digger-type monsters don't feel like widening the tunnels while also ensuring that the gnomic defenses are at their most effective.

There's no need to be conservative, so I freely use Patrono and leave a trail of bodies in my wake, but what I'm most grateful for is the fact that no fluids can stick to our Heavenly Weapon because these bugs have a tendency to leave a mess everywhere when they die.

They're all weird varieties of creepy-crawlies, so they use hydraulics to move, which means that their limbs are all filled with sticky, unknown fluids rather than blood. Also, they can all see in the dark, apparently, so our [Spirit Light]s draw them in like moths to a flame.

But then the size of the bugs quickly grows along with the thickness of their carapaces.

"Normal arrows are almost useless," Klein complains to her Holly.

Anton runs a gloved finger along the edge of his poleaxe, and his permanent frown deepens. "It's getting dangerous," he grunts and turns to the veteran knight.

"The Threat Level of these monsters is still below our ability," the elf categorically replies.

I don't like this knight's dismissive attitude, but it's not unexpected that some would behave like that with Klein and Anton. We'll just have to deal with him later.

We continue clearing the tunnels, but then the other knights also report having some difficulties with the bugs.

"Are these bugs really that bad?" Hana casually asks as she skewers a dwarf-sized scorpion through its mouth with her spear. "The knights are close to us in level, and I don't notice any difficulty."

"Even for Lords, our strength is abnormal," Yunia points out, and Hana immediately understands.

But I'm starting to feel a bit uncomfortable with this situation, so I deliberate, "The gnomes already discovered a new variant of underworld creatures, so it isn't absurd to think that these bugs might also be different from what was expected."

The girls hum in agreement, and I turn on the Emergency Ring to recall everyone. I don't want them to continue pushing forward recklessly.

"Oh, come on," Silvano grumbles annoyedly to his Holly when he sees the Ring turn red.

I leave Patrono with Hana and drop a [Gate] coordinate, then I return to Sandoro to speak with him.

"Sandoro!" I shout as I fly over our line of Lordsguard, then I land right in front of him. "Everyone is reporting that the bugs are stronger than expected. Well, the knights are reporting this."

"It could merely be that they're not used to fighting these monsters," he calmly retorts.

But I insist, "There are some bugs in the High Forest, so they should have some experience with them, and the gnomes already reported a new variant of underworld creatures, so we should let them know that the bugs are different."

He narrows his eyes and enters deep thought. "Hmm… If we do report this, they might think us weak."

I shrug. "Fuck it, I don't care. I don't like how things keep changing."

And he nods diligently. "Understood, Your Highness. We appreciate your carefulness."

I grin and tease, "It's because I love you all."

Almaria snorts, and Sandoro struggles to hold back a smile, forcing himself to remain stern.

I open a [Gate] and return to the girls just as Silvano gets back, and I feel like he deserves praise for not waiting a little longer before returning.

We soon hear a rumbling coming from the tunnels up ahead, then the first real wave of bugs arrives. This will be a good opportunity to test our ability to coordinate with the golems through [Bind].

The monsters lack coordination, so come in waves since they'd just clog the tunnels with their numbers if they came all at once. If the Monster King was present, then the bugs could actually use tactics, turning them into frightening enemies.

The gnomes gave the monsters unpronounceable names, so I shall name them based on their role, and the first ones we encounter are the Trains, caterpillar-like bugs the size of horses that ram shield walls. To us, these monsters are nothing but fodder, and Patrono cuts them open with ease.

We fly backwards as we fight since their numbers are simply too great, then we face off with the Crab, a nimble little shit the size of a gnome that almost grabs Lina with its pincers since she's the slowest.

Then a Crab grabs onto Aoi's foreleg and slightly deforms the metal plate with the incredible strength of its pincers. The armor of our men would definitely fare much worse against it.

As we chew through the line, we finally find the one variety of bug that can climb the slimy walls by slamming stake-like feet into the rock. The Spitter is like a dog-sized cockroach that spits acid, and, apparently, it can fly. That also wasn't mentioned in the information we received.

It's an easy target for Alissa, though, so it doesn't give us any trouble, but then she spots a red barrel with legs scampering towards us at an incredible speed, and the sight of it gives me dread.

She fires an arrow at it, and it explodes, causing dust and glowing red fluids to fly everywhere.

The force of the explosion is amplified in these tunnels, pushing all of us back and making us temporarily deaf, but Hana suffers the worst of it since she was at the front, and her whole body was badly hurt by the blast wave.

Aoi roars in pain as some of the fluid gets through the eye slit of her helmet, but I can't hear anything.

"KILL THOSE THINGS FIRST!" I shout through [Bind] and take Patrono out of Hana's hands, then I throw it and make it spin with [Telekinesis], turning the Heavenly Weapon into a flying blender.

Another explosion throws the Weapon out of my magical grasp, but I just re-[Equip] it again and repeat my attack after checking that it isn't damaged.

The golems follow my lead and throw heavy metal balls up ahead, crushing everything, but theirs get slowed down by the heavy Trains in the way.

Ciel's [Holy Spirit] touches each of us to [Heal] our ears, but then we basically become deaf again as a horrified screech comes from down the tunnel.

Alissa fires off a few arrows and manages to kill the now-named Witch, then a pink tongue shoots out from underneath the bodies and sticks to her bow. She doesn't even have time to react before it's ripped out of her hands, but she just re-[Equip]s it, negating the now-named Frog's attack.

Ciel reports that Aoi's left eye is busted. [Heal] isn't enough to restore it since it was melted away by the magical acid, so she'll need a few days of [Regeneration] or [Regrowth] to get it back, neither of which are options for us right now.

Alissa kills another Red Barrel, and the blast wave makes us all grunt in pain.

"SHIT'S FUCKED! RETREAT!" I shout through [Bind], then I open a [Gate], and everyone jumps through it.

Yunia immediately goes to Sandoro to report our encounter while I comfort my dragon and use [Regeneration] on her.

I really don't like how this battle is progressing.

A note from Manasong

Hall of Fame of Patrons

The patrons who support Rupegia shall have their names sung by the bards for they deserve the glory and honor. Their names are:

Prince PreownedFIN.

Prince Creamy Spinach.

Prince Owldente.

Prince Charlie Foxtrot.

Lord Andrew Meyers.

Lord Novgarod.

Lord Michale Erwin.

Lord Bakerdea.

Lord Maurice.

Lord Mattirro Draca.

Lord Fullmoon.

Lord Sean Drake.

Lord FrostyCube.

Lord Mike Bartter.

Lord Warwulfv.

Lord Jorge Franco.

Lord Khristopher Welsh.

Lord DJ.

Lord Tenebris Lupus.

Lord Paul Daval.

Lord Paul Daval.

Lord Bradly.

Lord AndreyUC.

Lord Tmac.

Lord Krawn.

Lord School Work.

Lord Gwendolyn Simmons-LaRose.

Noble Salty Panda.

Noble Mild Fracas.

Noble Aclys.

Noble CarlBaxter.

Noble d3235.

Noble Cidant.

Leave a rating or a review to help me rise to the top or fix my shameful understanding of prose.

Take a look over my blog where all information about the world of Rupegia will be posted.

Join the Discord and discuss, or rant, or meme, or try and fight me so your waifu gets more screentime.

Become a Patron and read chapters in advance, or read the side-stories, or leave your mark on the story, or help choose the next artwork or the next side-story.

Myth Series: Arreira's Last Stand - Teaser

A note from Manasong

This a teaser for the patreon-only side stories I'm writing. It's not necessary to read them to understand the main story, it just gives it more background.

One day I'll begin to slowly make these stories public once I re-review them like I'm doing with the early chapters.

Lina's POV, 8th of the month of Love, year 68,999 of the Solar calendar, at Rabanara's temple's library.

I close the book with a sigh and rest my eyes. I've read enough about the merfolk golden age and Seemacht for now, I think.

Then I look at the book next to me. It's an epic, so not exactly the kind of "research" about history that Master Wolf wanted me to do… but maybe I could take a quick look at it as a "break" from research…

We've had quite a few stressful days lately. If all nobles are like Vanea I kind of understand why Hana fears the nobility so much…

I look around the temple's library and notice that Logan has left to resume his duties as a scribe, so there won't be any witness to my crime.

A break wouldn't hurt, right…?

I grab the book and open it on top of another to camouflage it.

I'm going to read it!

It was the eleventh day of the first month of the Year After Creation 49.120. During the month of birth, every Genn, the day of Light, is considered a holy day for the empire, but Ajax's Ascension was still to come, so the orbits of the sun and the moon could be manipulated by mages powerful enough, and this means that aside from the year, the month and the day wouldn't correspond to the Calendar of Festivity that we use.

Coincidentally, the elven calendar at the time considered that "day" as auspicious for battle, though it wasn't "day," at least not yet.

Arreira looked down and observed as the mana storm tore the end tail of his retreating army. Blinding lightning struck the back of the men, exploding them into showers of giblets; a dark shadow expanded along the floor, kidnapping whoever touched it and taking them somewhere they could never return; deformed, horrific beasts spawned at random and attacked whatever they saw first; glowing clouds of smoke the color of the rainbow billowed out, completely sterilizing the landscape of all life then warping it until it was unrecognizable; and a shower of random spells was cast from nothing towards anywhere.

The chaotic illumination cast ghastly shadows on Arreira's grim face. His handsome, chiseled features enhanced the ominous aura he exuded, and even his men started to fear their own God-Ruler.

"It's time for the day to break the darkness," he stoically stated.

His God's Voice immediately sent the signal through the communication vines, and the elven soldiers silently moved towards their communion stations, then the huge trees that were spread all over the fortress gently shook their crowns, creating a whispering sound, and their bark creaked as the huge structure came to life.

Then Arreira walked away from the balcony, towards the huge white gem encrusted at the tip of his tower. The Farole, a beacon of holy light that all elves looked for in search of safety.

Farole has never been seen again after Arreira's death, but it's most likely in the Elder Council's grasp along with the fortress itself.

If they truly betrayed Arreira, then that gem was just one of the many things they stole from the God-Ruler.

With a flick of his hand, Arreira's wrist split open, and his powerful blood flowed out, floating in the air as it formed a circle around the beacon.

Arreira looked up, and his eyes were instantly drawn towards the alluring sphere of pure blackness in the sky that stared down upon the realm, the Moon of Renewal. For the average mortal, the moon was hard to discern from the background of the night sky, but Arreira could feel the gaze of the moon in his skin as it filled his body with mana.

The moon before the Goddess' Avatar took control of it. The way it's described makes it sound so scary.

And there was more beauty to be seen in the sky, even if it was caused by the destruction on the ground. Shooting stars formed constantly around the moon and fell down, attracted towards the mana storm that raged on the battlefield, painting the dark sky with long lines of white stardust.

I heard that Okross first came from these "shooting stars," but I think that's just a myth.

But Arreira paid no mind to the view for his mind was solely focused on the task at hand.

Mana exuded out of his body in such heavy droves that anyone with [Sense Mana] could only describe it in one way: divine power. Reality wavered and whimpered, resisting the divine will of Arreira, begging for him to stop, but he did as he pleased.

His kind called themselves God-Rulers for their power bent reality to their will, and the common people of the time thought such thing could only be compared to the Gods of Origin, as heretical as it may sound to the contemporary humanoid.

Why does the author use "Gods of Origin"? Is he from the demon race?

The reach of his power spread along with the mana he released, so he aimed to cover the entire Realm with it, but there were other beings of incredible power that didn't let his mana invade their territory, limiting his reach to not much further than the High Forest and the Elven Bay.

Fortunately, for the spell that Arreira wanted to cast, he didn't need that much reach, only that nobody else interfered.

The battlefield was saturated with so much mana that a second mana storm threatened to form, but Arreira would never let that happen, and the dread that his soldiers felt turned into awe as the God-Ruler expertly manipulated the particles of power even though the mortals almost suffocated from the saturation.

So inspired were the soldiers that they all knelt and started to pray in unison, and their cries added to the words of Arreira's God's Voice, which were heard across the elven lands.

"The farmer begins their work, the children start to play, the watch changes, the chefs go to work, but the monsters are still out there. The realm wakes up, and the fighting is renewed.

"Kindle the flame, bring the light, the liveliness, the warmth. Change the solemn calmness of the night to the vibrant beauty of the day. Bring us change! Bring us change! Bring us change! Do not abandon us under the bleak gaze of the moon!

"The day gives us energy and warmth to move our bodies, the night gives us mana and calmness to study our skills. The warriors need the day to gain strength. The mages need the night to gain power. The realm needs balance, and the realm needs change.

"Gods, heed our prayers and turn the night into day! Turn the night into day! Turn the night into day! Give us the relentless glare of the sun!"

The entire Realm listened to the prayer of the elves and nobody tried to pray against them, so the God of Change listened, and the moon fell from the sky. In its stead, the sun rose up, and its radiant, overwhelming brightness then stared down upon the Realm, displaying such an endless well of power that not even the God-Rulers dared stare upon it for long.

The Prayer of Twilight gives me chills. I wonder how it felt to sing it and see the day change in just a few minutes.

Without the moon to feed it, the mana storm was deprived of a large source of its power, so it started to wane and clear, revealing the monster army on the other side.

Battalions of goblins and orcs filled the marsh to the brim with their endless numbers, and one saw nothing but their colored, bald heads in the sea of monsters; dragons and giants dotted the landscape, which the elves actually used as landmarks to aid the planning of the battle; twisted, ominous, large metal contraptions carried their mages, protecting them from projectiles and allowing them to launch their own spells unimpeded; and a swarm of flying monsters gathered in the sky like a dark cloud of death.

I think Master Wolf called the contraptions "tanks," but he didn't elaborate and I didn't have the courage to ask, so I can only wonder where he learned about it.

The elves were heavily outnumbered, but not outmatched. The Lonlanzas, the pride of the elven army, made the bulk of their forces, and no sea of monsters was deep enough to be able to penetrate their barrier; the Arquirandos felled multiple flying monsters with each of their enchanted arrows for they were weaker than their land comrades, and the swarm thinned considerably with each wave; the elven specialty magic, [Weaverism], allowed their forces to fight in unison with perfect efficiency, not wasting a single movement in combat, slaughtering the monsters like cattle each time they struck the elven defensive wall.

But the ultimate weapon was Arreira himself.

He was handed Patrono, the Heavenly Weapon of the High Forest, one of the deadliest swords in existence. It had the size of a greatsword, but it was so light and easy to swing that it was wielded like a longsword or even a bastard sword for the more daring, but in true elven fashion, Arreira always used two hands for his cuts we so perfect they threatened to split the Primordial Particle into two.

With a blade as thick as a single Particle, it was invisible to the eye when looked straight on, and if anyone would ever be able to do such feat of splitting the Particle, it'd be Arreira with his Patrono.

But the God-Ruler lacked his Heavenly Armor, Monarca, for it had been damaged the last time he had killed the Monster King inside a mana storm a decade prior, and the rarity of the metal coupled with the difficulty to work with it had delayed Monarca's repair indefinitely.

Arreira had to act, but he didn't have the impenetrable defense of Monarca to rely on, so he had to improvise.

His servants held wooden plates against his arm, and the illustrious Ramodia armor grew around his body, turning him into a living High Tree.

The harmless-looking pieces of bark held great power within. They were the ultimate symbol of elven communion with nature, merging body, mind, and soul with the forest, allowing him to manipulate it to his will.

Once the armor was in place, vines suddenly grew all over the fortress and slithered towards Arreira like a swarm of snakes. They heavily drained the fortress of its power, but the fortification was still a gigantic plant, so it could use the light of the sun to quickly replenish its reserves. And that functionality was just the bare minimum for constructing a fortress that didn't have self-sustaining capabilities would be a rather "unelven" thing to do.

The vines continuously gathered and coiled behind Arreira, creating hundreds of knots that bloomed into a huge, green flower.

Then Arreira grabbed its center, and the flower suddenly shot forward, stretching like a gigantic claw being extended, which propelled Arreira towards the monster army with ludicrous speed.

In the blink of an eye, he was before a huge dragon, and it took only a single swing of his Heavenly Weapon for the beast to be decapitated.

In the next second, the vines had taken him elsewhere, but the monsters were ready for such tactic.

After he felled a Giant, his vines were hit by a barrage of spells that followed him across the battlefield. The monsters had one thing to their advantage, outrageously accurate spells for they cared not about power or finesse when the Horde could overwhelm humanoid defenses with just pure numbers, as long as the spells could hit where they were needed.

The vines exploded in flames and frost, but they grew back instantly to replace the lost mass, and Arreira continued his slaughter of the elite monsters, but he was still slowed by the attack.

The Grim Giants nearby didn't stay idle and walked towards Arreia without a care for the comrades they crushed under their foot, then they grabbed the vines and wrestled with them, preventing Arreira from zipping about freely.

Now with a proper target, the dragons took flight and began assaulting the more damaged sections of the vines, destroying them faster than they could grow back.

But Arreira still had more cards to show.

"HELL TAKE YOU ALL, FIENDS!" His voice reverberated throughout the battlefield lifting the spirits of his soldiers, who then echoed his words with their heavenly elven voices, their conviction so powerful that the monsters were actually intimidated temporarily.

And that was not all.

The vines split into thousands, individual ones, and attacked whatever was closest to them.

Without a clear, large target to focus on, the monsters couldn't do anything else besides lashing out wildly at whatever was near as they lacked the coordination and leadership to defend against Arreira's ingenuity.

Absolute chaos broke among the ranks of the Horde, so the elven army took the chance to push forward and pressure the uncoordinated Horde in its most vulnerable moment.

Though the Lonlanzas were slow, the marsh the battle was being fought on equalized the speed of every combatant, no matter if they were humanoid or monster, and the monsters were so disorganized they couldn't retreat faster than the Lonlanzas could advance.

The elves attacked ferociously and continuously skewered the endless Horde, quickly creating a literal platform of bodies that steadied their feet. All the while the Arquirandos and the rest of the ranged troops made the sky darken with a cloud of spells and arrows.

Blood flew like a river and spread all over the marshland, turning it a muddy red and feeding the Blood Lilies with power, allowing them to grow their roots around the corpses and bloom, setting up the next elven weapon.

Through [Weaverism], elves manipulate nature and commune with it, fueling their mysterious magic with both blood and mana, and in a battlefield where both are extremely abundant, the elves had the advantage.

The roots spread like lightning, penetrating deep into the ranks of the Horde, growing up their legs, into their armor, and around their throats and limbs, then the roots prickled their skin as they squeezed, draining blood while strangling the monsters.

In just a few seconds, tens of thousands of monsters were immobilized.

But the monsters were ready for even that.

Their mages chanted, then cast a spell that ignited the roots, and the entire battlefield was set ablaze. The flames spread as fast as the roots had, so even Arreira was caught by surprise and had to retreat his vines, lest the entire fortress be caught in these devilish flames.

The Lonlanzas had to retreat for their weapons caught on fire, but the flames went past even them, harming the Arquirandos and their enchanted bows.

The battle was so unbalanced that even after all this death, it wasn't clear if the elves had come up on top due to how precious their weapons were, especially enchanted ones like the bows since crystals were much harder to come by at the time.

Arreira immediately took leadership of the mages and caused a deluge of water to pass through his burning men, dousing the magical flames, though their formation suffered due to how fast the water had crashed onto them, but it was better than leaving them to burn for the Horde wasted not a single moment to counter attack now that the elves had lost their momentum.

Many monsters still burned, creating a cloud of smoke that greatly reduced visibility in the field, and that was the perfect moment for a third force to make itself known.

Before the elves could notice the beginning of a new rumbling in the earth, the Ronti riders were already upon them.

"Ambush! On our west flank!" An elven officer reported, and his message was immediately relayed to Arreira, who shot out of his fortress to meet the new foe.

But once he crossed the smoke, he merely landed and observed.

"Hello there, esteemed neighbor," Ajax Doxa greeted him. The first Emperor of the Avgin Empire, and the first humanoid to Ascend and become the God of the Sun. Hallowed be his name, glorious be his life, and divine be his warm gaze.

Ajax was a man as perfectly handsome as Arreira was, perhaps even more considering he didn't have any of the feminine traits common in elven men; his bronze skin shined in the sun, foreshadowing his affinity with the source of light and warmth above them; his lustrous, shoulder-length dark hair gave him a youthful look that betrayed his real age; and his pure white smile had a shine of its own, charming both men and women with its beauty.

The man exuded a presence so powerful one could only describe it as raw, and it was all that he needed to keep the Lonlanzas at bay while his Ronti riders trampled through the monsters. Though it was this exact presence that scared the shit out of the unfortunate elven officer who first sighted him.

"What are you doing here, Ajax?" Arreira flatly asked, his voice perfectly clear even amid a raging battlefield.

Ajax shrug and looked away amusedly as he answered, "We found a way around your little fort at the bottom of the mountain, so we decided to take a stroll along your swamps and marshes to smell the flowers, which smell pretty good, by the way, but then we found you fighting the Horde and decided to help because killing monsters is a worthy cause to set our differences aside and unite, at least for a short while."

"Fort at the bottom of the mountain"? Does he mean Goldcross? As far as I know, the only fort on top of a mountain that borders elven lands should be Fort Katakti, which is west of Goldcross.

But Arreira didn't share the same mood. "You're as infuriatingly casual as ever."

And Ajax simply chuckled youthfully. "You're as annoyingly anal as ever."

Tired of games, Arreira decided to be direct, "If you want to waste my time with your blabber then let's at least end this battle first, yes?"

"I actually do want to talk, yes, so let's finish this," Ajax cheerfully answered, surprising Arreira, though the elven God-Ruler really didn't want any more surprises.

With two God-Rulers, not even the monsters' ruthless strategies were enough to save the Horde from being slaughtered, and even the suicidal orcs had their morale broken, resulting in a complete rout.

But the monsters' defining strength was their relentlessness, so even if their soldiers scattered with the wind, that meant that they'd just hide and rest until the call to war came from the Monster King once again.

And that the Rulers couldn't find the cursed King told them that it wouldn't take long for the Horde to come back once again.

Then, with the battle over, the two God-Rulers retreated to a secluded area, free from the smell of blood and soldiers, and also hidden from prying eyes.

"What is it this time?" Arreira immediately asked Ajax with a tired tone.

And the Emperor assumed his role as he took a more serious expression. "I'll be plain. Join me, just like the Fairies and Gnomes did," he cordially offered.

But Arreira immediately replied, "I refuse."

Though Ajax wasn't surprised. "Why?" He asked with legitimate curiosity.

Then Arreira remained silent for a long moment, and the elven deity simply watched as he formulated an answer. The elves were such complicated people that there were too many reasons Arreira could use, but there was one reason that was the biggest root for the elven animosity towards the humans.

"You killed too many of ours when you took Fort Gua Buranco.

"I needed that fort before I could open negotiations or you'd never accept talking to me," Ajax confessed.

And the truth hit Arreira so hard that he sighed and looked away, down the hill they were on and towards the two humanoid armies reorganizing themselves.

The elves were so proud that they'd never submit to a superior force unless they saw it first-hand, which they did when Ajax conquered Gua Buranco and solidified his presence atop the Rakontagne mountain range.

Yeah, Gua Buranco is definitely Katakti.

Arreira suddenly chuckled softly and admitted, "Elves are stubborn and skeptical. After defending their home so fiercely and for so long, you want them to just go against their pride and bow down?"

But Ajax was keen to elven wordplay and immediately retorted, "Yes, but what's curious is how you're using 'them' instead of 'us.'"

And that observation struck true, drawing out a confession from Arreira, "I just think differently."

"You think what?" Ajax pressed on.

Arreira turned to Ajax, and the two long-lived humanoids shared a look that only someone of their age could ever have.

"I think that I'm tired of struggling to defend our lands," Arreira confessed again, but that wasn't much of a secret anyway as exhaustion was actually the most common cause for the death of the God-Rulers. They died in combat, but tiredness was almost always the deeper cause.

"Aren't we all? That's why I'm uniting everyone by force," Ajax firmly stated, though his high conviction didn't have an effect on the famous elven composure.

Arreira simply shook his head and looked away again. "I, too, wish for calmer seas, but the winds blow and make the waves crash onto my shores," he cryptically asserted.

But Ajax simply scowled and grunted, "Spare me of your elven poetry, especially if it's related to the sea."

The Emperor wasn't much of a seafarer, and the Battle of Three Kings made that very clear.

The battle that named the bay. So chaotic and brutal that people still search the seafloor for treasures in the wreckage.

Arreira sighed again and explained in simpler terms, "You call yourself 'Emperor,' yet we're deities both to our people. How could they ever accept such a demotion of our status?"

And Ajax waved his hand dismissively as he explained, "I'm not a deity, I'm a mortal. One who lives a lot longer than the average, yes, but I am still mortal, and so are you."

Arreira ran a hand through his glorious, golden hair in exasperation and retorted, "What we are doesn't matter, only what they see us as."

"You still haven't given me your true opinion on the matter," Ajax pressed him again.

Arreira simply gave him a side-eye. "You want me to bow down to another?" Then he raised one eyebrow mockingly.

But Ajax's face grew grim as he spewed the truth, "I know very well that the High Forest is struggling against the Horde a lot more than we are. You're so weakened I'm certain we could conquer you."

Arreira gave him a hateful glare. He definitely isn't one to ever take talks of war and conquering lightly.

And Ajax didn't give him room to answer by immediately adding on, "If we unite our forces and push back the Horde, we can breach the mountains and wipe out their breeding grounds. There aren't many places left for the Monster King to hide in this continent, so we can secure our future, if we work together."

Arreira kept his face stern as he shook his head lightly. "Elves know very well how to work together, but not when it's with the other races."

"Again you're deflecting," Ajax growled angrily.

And Arreira let his elven smugness show for once. "Because there's nothing else I can do, at least for now."

Ajax narrowed his eyes as he looked deeper into the elven deity's words. "So it isn't a 'no,' but also neither a 'yes.'"

Arreira nodded."Exactly."

Then Ajax scoffed. "Your elven obtuseness isn't doing you any favors, you know?"

And now it was Arreira's turn to scoff. "Then you truly don't understand us."

"Oh…? Now you use 'us'?!"

The two rulers shared a short laugh. Though they had fought against each other multiple times in defense of their territories, they were still believers in the Old Gods, so they couldn't easily hold much animosity against a fellow humanoid when the Monster King constantly threatened to wipe them out.

Unfortunately, someone overheard parts of that conversation. Someone with a vendetta against the fledgling empire.

This really wasn't written by an elf. There's no way they'd make Arreira seem so agreeable and the emperor so charismatic.

That's enough of a distraction for now. I need to get back to work. Master Wolf's questions about history are too in-depth for me to get lax.

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Chapter 122: Dark Depths - Part 1

A note from Manasong

Attention: to conform to the limit of mature content (more than just sexual content) allowed in a novel, I've censored this chapter. You can look for the uncensored version here.

"I'm fine," Aoi assures me, a bit annoyed at my over-protectiveness.

I hug her large, scaly head lovingly. I'll give this stubborn blue dragon my love whether she likes it or not!

Almaria touches my wrist and volunteers, "Allow me." So, I stop my [Regeneration] and allow her to cast it in my stead.

"Thank you," I whisper as I smile, then I turn to Aoi and kiss her snout. "You may be fine, but your depth perception will suffer, so I don't think you should participate in melee combat until you've adapted to your reduced vision.

"Why are you so much gentler with her, a dragon?" Roxanne gives me sass with her hands on her hips.

"Because she's an innocent muffin, and you're a mean bitch who enjoys the abuse," I bark at her, and she pouts, mildly offended, so I grin and smoothly give her the combo, "But it doesn't mean that I don't love you with all my heart."

"Sometimes I forget who's the actual masochist here," Hana mumbles as she shares a look with the girls.

Sandoro puts down the gnomic stethoscope-like thing he uses for communication and reports, "Prince Looklwind says that he will relay our information to everyone, and he thanks us, for this will save many lives. They've offered reinforcements, but I declined."

"Get them to waive off the [Eternal Gate] fees instead, and bring more men," Yunia immediately suggests, and Sandoro nods diligently.

"Are they trying to fool us by being ignorant?" Alcander contemplates with suspicion.

But Sandoro shakes his head and disagrees, "I find it hard to believe that he faked the surprise and earnestness in his voice, so we can assume they really didn't know about the monsters' evolution."

Lina adjusts her bangs nervously as she ponders, "Gnomeria has been fighting bugs and underworld creatures since time immemorial. How could they have missed scouting the monster army like that?"

But Almaria offers a different perspective, "One monster changing is expected from time to time, but multiple? It's unheard of. Just what is going on?" She asks rhetorically with a frown.

The girls and I share a look. Could it be heretics, again?

I smile wryly and reply, "Well, I also have no idea, but it sure fits us that we'd get ourselves embroiled in trouble again."

"The Stinky Goblins dungeon was too uneventful," Hana sarcastically remarks.

"I kind of agree," Oritiki grunts and snorts.

"Nothing will be solved by talking about it. Let's discuss our strategy," Yunia interjects and pulls us back on track, then I summon one of each type of the bug so that the men can study them.

"What in Heaven and Hell…" Aisco blurts out in surprise.

"I can summon monsters," I state flatly.

He slowly makes his way to them as his eyes widen, then he produces a chantless [Fireball] above his hand and begins breathing excitedly. "Can I test it?" He whispers.

"Yes, you can. That's why I summoned them," I stiffly answer.

He shows a rare smile, though it's pretty creepy coming from him, and he gets to work testing his spells against the bugs' exoskeletons.

"This is actually really convenient," Oritiki remarks as she tries out her [Beam] on each bug. She quickly discovers that her glaive's enchantment can easily kill Frogs and Spitters from range.

"Really convenient," Anton grunts as he and the knights take a close look at the Train, observing where all of its joints are and searching for weaker spots in their exoskeletons, but the Lordsguard can't afford to be as precise as the knights in the heat of battle, so they just poke the bugs at random.

Then Hana turns to the Grosshils and the twins. "Can these four really participate in this battle? I don't know if they're at the same level as our Lordsguard," she worriedly questions.

The twins swallow heavily, and Arturus immediately confesses, "Though we have [Spear Use], we've been trained only as cavalry for now, not footmen." And Antares nods slowly.

"If you can't use a bow, then I believe you should use the gnomic weapons or one of these," Sandoro advises, then he points to an unused pile of crossbows. It's rare to see one of those since imperials, elves, and most adventurers favor [Bow Use] due to its versatility over the crossbow's ease of use.

"What sort of elf can't use a bow?" Roxanne teases with a grin.

Yunia glares at her and bites back, "The kind who has a penchant for a more noble weapon like the longsword or for the dignified position of a rider."

And that's enough levity for now, so I stop them before they start their bantering, "Let's not get too deep into the tongue whipping right now. The monster army is close-by."

The two mean girls immediately drop it as if neither had said anything, then our eyes fall on the Grosshils.

"Hermann is a really good soldier," Klein suddenly chimes in, then gives me a shy look when I turn to her.

"He's been getting along well with the rest of the Lordsguard," Anton stoically adds, trying to look as impartial as possible.

I give my rival a measuring look, and his posture stiffens as everyone's gazes fall upon them.

Ahren suddenly grabs his husband's waist and proudly gives his endorsement, "Hermann has been trained as a bodyguard, but I can say that he has a talent for anything related to fighting."

"He likely enjoys being in the middle of sweaty men," Hana grunts as she smirks.

"So do you," Hermann flatly replies without even looking at her.

Hana shrugs and sends me a sly glance. "In my case, it's mostly women, but Wolfy counts as more than one man."

But Yunia glares at me coldly. "Aren't you going to stop them?" She asks sternly.

I give her a shit-eating grin and innocently request, "Let me enjoy the rimjob just a little bit longer."

Hermann straightens his posture, then boldly declares with a stern expression, completely ignoring my playfulness, "I believe I'm ready for this battle." And I feel like messing with him for this.

I walk up to Klein, then gently hold her face with my claws as I unleash [Spicy Charm] and kindly whisper, "And what about you, are you alright? You've been fighting a lot these past few days, so I don't want you to tire yourself out and risk exhausting yourself in battle."

"I-I'm fine, really!" She exclaims earnestly, then leans her head against my touch as her dark skin quickly becomes flushed.

"Don't worry too much about her," Hermann interjects and comes closer, then he stops awkwardly close to us and stares at me intensely. "She's an energetic woman who can take on a dragon by herself," he affirms with a grin as he lands a hand on her shoulder, then she tenses up, finally realizing what's going on.

"You mean in bed? I very much doubt that," I state matter-of-factly and return the stare.

"Wolfy…" Yunia whispers in warning, but Hermann and I are too busy having a draconic willpower contest to listen.

The classically handsome boy has a very youthful air to him that's similar to mine, giving a bit of context as to why Klein also likes him. She definitely has a thing for dominant dragons because I see a bit of Hana's fearsome gaze in him, though, obviously, he only has traces of it compared to me, the one true weredragon.

His shit-eating grin is annoying, though. He's enjoying butting his head against his Lord's, but it won't be long before he learns not to challenge a true man.

"We can still thin out the monster army before they reach our men," Ciel comes to the rescue, and I immediately snap out of it. Duty calls, and I won't play around with that.

"Yes. We have monsters to kill," I agree and turn away, but I give Hermann one last look to make sure he understands that this isn't over.

I summon a Holly and an Ice Wraith, then I instruct them to search for Red Barrels and Frogs. It doesn't seem like the bugs are using spirit monsters, and the magical capabilities of the average bug are quite limited, so my summons should be safe to scout the monster army.

We kite them with ease now that we're prepared for their tricks. It's rather tiring though, not physically, but mentally. The bugs are so fast that a single mistake brings the risk of horrible injuries, even though I can use [Bind] to summon the girls. Aoi is also getting frustrated as fighting from range greatly reduces her kill potential since she doesn't have enough "Magic Power" to truly compare with her raw physical strength.

"Control the golems," I order her through [Bind], and she readily accepts. With her superior draconic willpower, she finds it rather easy to guide the three golems' attacks and increase their effectiveness.

Alissa focuses on the scouting summons' sight, searching for the dreaded Red Barrels. Our [Wind Armor] can weaken attacks and projectiles, but it doesn't fully divert them, so a splash of acid is still a splash of acid no matter how fast it comes at us. At least the Barrels' fluids don't react to our armor, but we might still get unlucky like Aoi did.

Once we reach our men, we take a short rest and observe how they fare.

"Drink your health potions!" An officer barks an order, and everyone obeys.

Packed like sardines, they present as many spears as they can to the enemy while each line of men uses the one behind them as support to help brace against the impact.

The Horns float close to the ground and stick to the walls to not get in the way of the spells and arrows that whistle over our heads. Our men have a clear shot at anything down the tunnel from their raised platform, and they send a constant barrage of ranged attacks. A portable metal battlement provides them with protection from Spitters and Frogs, though the Horns are succeeding in killing any of either of these bugs before they can threaten our back line.

The gnomes have their own acid-spitter, and we use it to its fullest because it softens the bugs' natural armor.

The first row of gnomic traps activate, covering the floor with lava and making acid rain down from the ceiling, which are both quite effective at slowing and even killing the Trains, but the bugs behind them simply climb up onto the corpses of their fallen brethren and continue the suicide charge.

Reinforced spears shoot out of the walls, skewering the bugs and holding them in place, but the point of this trap isn't to clog the tunnel, so the spears quickly bend and break as the Trains simply slam against the rear of those who are stuck, but that helps slow their charge.

There's simply so much damage and so many obstacles that their speed is basically nullified by the time they fall on the spears of our front line, but their sheer mass and momentum make our men struggle to hold them back.

"GIVE!" One of the officers barks the order, and the men take two steps back in unison.

"GIVE!" He repeats, and the pressure eases for a moment as the men obey, then it rises once again as the next Trains reach them.

The spears break or get stuck in the pile of carcasses, but we have a stockpile to replace them, and Almaria can cast [Vine Weapon] hundreds of times if needed. However, her magic is best used for [Weaverism] to link our soldiers' emotions together, greatly boosting their morale and their teamwork, or to cast [Entangling Vines] to slow down the Trains' charge.

The men slowly fall back in perfect rhythm, steadily inching closer to the first raised platform. Hopefully, the wave will end before we reach it.

A large worm appears, slowly inching forward while vacuuming up all the bodies into its small mouth. The Janitor sucks them into a monster's version of [Warp Space], and then absorbs them. It's a mostly passive monster, and it's a bad idea to kill it, so we'll just leave it be until the wave thins out.

Then a random Witch makes itself known, only to get immediately shot down by an angry Alissa. Her ears deserve better, so if she didn't kill it in one shot, we'd all help her end her quarry.

The sound of the Barrels exploding and the occasional Witch mix with Aisco's and Roxanne's spells as it all echoes through the tunnel. Our ears eventually begin to ring from the cacophony, so the officer responsible for the back step switches to lights, and the dreary brown tunnel becomes like an avant-garde underground rave, though the music sucks.

We shield the scouting Holly and Ice Wraith from the Spirit mana pulse with a barrier of emellanat, but the two summons seemingly aren't necessary since the bugs' scout is merely a fist-sized fly that doesn't use invisibility or even [Hide Presence]. I name it a Fly Spy.

After many long minutes of fighting, the wave thins out, and the knights take over as they're more apt at killing the trickle of monsters, allowing the Lordsguard to switch out the front line for fresh soldiers and reorganize themselves.

But that only lasts for a couple of minutes as another wave nears, and everyone retreats to the next line of defense so that we may make use of its fresh traps while we thin out the wave again.

This pattern repeats a dozen times, but when I look at my watch, it's still only 8 AM. This will be a long fight.

A Frog manages to shoot its tongue at our shields, and it strains our shield wall with its stupidly high strength, but with a quick swipe of Patrono, the tongue is severed.

Another soldier gets an unlucky splash of a Barrel's acid on his eyes, and he has to endure the pain until it's time to switch. He doesn't need to see, so his comrades support him and guide his actions to maintain the integrity of the spear wall.

Ciel's [Holy Spirit] can move among the pack of soldiers with ease, so she uses it to soothe the suffering man.

A dozen unlucky soldiers have small amounts of acid reach their skin through small openings in their armor, but none are as bad as the one who got blinded. The acid is nasty, though, as it can corrode holes into their flesh in mere seconds, but at least it isn't effective against our armor.

After a few more waves, I notice that our eyes have gradually begun to water, then we feel our mouths and noses start to burn. The acid of the bugs is being turned into steam from the heat of our spells and traps, forcing me to summon two wind elemental-wives to filter the air. Otherwise, the stress of the pain would just build up and decrease our combat effectiveness.

The fighting progresses for another hour without issue, but then the behavior of the wave suddenly changes. The Trains charge forward in a perfect grid formation, maximizing the number of them that are slamming against our spears at any one moment, so I throw Patrono diagonally to disrupt them.

We detect Frogs and Spitters hitching a ride on the Trains, hiding from our attacks by clinging to the side or ass of the Trains, then they suddenly come up and launch their attacks in unison.

The girls and I cast wall spells to block the projectiles, but just the sheer number of them is enough to wound some of our men.

"THEY'RE BEING GUIDED BY A LEADER-TYPE!" Yunia roars in my soul space.

Our men won't last against repeated attacks like these, and if we only try to kill the ranged bugs before they threaten us, we'll exhaust ourselves due to their endless numbers.

"WE HAVE TO KILL THE LEADER!" I roar back and start formulating a plan.

We don't know what's ahead of us, so just sending Alissa and Yunia is risky, but forcing me to give everyone [Invisibility] would be a strain on my already tight MP pool.

I don't have time to make a careful decision, so I just hand over Patrono to Hana as I shout, "I'LL GO AHEAD ON MY OWN AND IMPROVISE!"

"I'LL ESCORT YOU!" Alissa immediately declares, and I don't try to argue. She has the best senses, anyway.

I summon another Holly and another Ice Wraith, then I order them to follow me closely since they'll be our eyes. I shift my points into [Illusion Magic] until I unlock the level 50 spell [Invisibility], then I cast it on both of us. Our sight immediately goes dark, and we become completely invisible as all light is diverted around us, then we fly ahead while Yunia explains our plan to Sandoro.

"BE CAREFUL OF SPIRIT MONSTERS, THEY MIGHT BE PROTECTING THE LEADER-TYPE!" He shouts at the top of his lungs to be heard over the cacophony.

We fly at full speed, but nothing detects us, and we eventually pass the wave of bugs without finding out where this leader-type is, then we reach the first fork in the tunnels, so we wait until a monster comes out of one of them to choose which to advance through.

We fly deeper and deeper down, and our men start to become noticeably strained as they continue to contend with the bugs' improved coordination. We need to hurry.

Alissa believes a pitch change in the Witch's screech is what announces the ranged attack, so Sandoro gets a weredog soldier to listen to it, and the commanding officer adds the color yellow to the rave.

It seems to be successful, so no more men are blinded or wounded, but it still isn't enough to ease the pressure from the coordinated attack.

Sandoro suddenly grabs Ciel's attention as she takes a small breather and shouts in her ear, "THE PRINCE WARNS THAT A LEADER-TYPE IS PRESENT. ELITE HUNTERS ARE SEARCHING FOR IT!"

Comforting, but I still have more trust in our own strength.

We pass a few waves while the temperature continues to rise, then the tunnels become wet, evidence that we've entered the area that was flooded to stop the underworld creatures.

We meet a few slow-moving, rock-like beings that seem to be increasing their own temperature, then I realize that the rocks spread around on the floor are monster carcasses that the Thalanthro killed as they scoured the tunnels.

We just leave them be and move on, and after a few more minutes of flying, the tunnel suddenly opens up, and we find ourselves in a huge room crawling with bugs, all neatly organized in rows. Walking among them is a sort of humanoid wasp with tentacles for a mouth, which it uses to do something to each of the bugs' heads.

I think we've found the leader-types, though the number of bugs present doesn't seem to be anywhere near the entirety of their army, so this must be only an outpost.

I let the dragon out of its cage, and my breathing starts to become heavier as the thirst for blood makes my sword get unsheated from the anticipation, then I summon the girls.

It's time to let 'er rip.

A note from Manasong

Hall of Fame of Patrons

The patrons who support Rupegia shall have their names sung by the bards for they deserve the glory and honor. Their names are:

Prince PreownedFIN.

Prince Creamy Spinach.

Prince Owldente.

Prince Charlie Foxtrot.

Lord Andrew Meyers.

Lord Novgarod.

Lord Michale Erwin.

Lord Bakerdea.

Lord Maurice.

Lord Mattirro Draca.

Lord Sean Drake.

Lord FrostyCube.

Lord Mike Bartter.

Lord Warwulfv.

Lord Jorge Franco.

Lord Khristopher Welsh.

Lord DJ.

Lord Tenebris Lupus.

Lord Paul Daval.

Lord Paul Daval.

Lord Bradly.

Lord AndreyUC.

Lord Tmac.

Lord School Work.

Lord Gwendolyn Simmons-LaRose.

Lord CopeyDunt.

Lord Warwulfv.

Lord James.

Lord BlindTactic.

Noble Salty Panda.

Noble Mild Fracas.

Noble Aclys.

Noble CarlBaxter.

Noble d3235.

Noble Cidant.

Noble Frank de Jong.

Noble Shai.

Leave a rating or a review to help me rise to the top or fix my shameful understanding of prose.

Take a look over my blog where all information about the world of Rupegia will be posted.

Join the Discord and discuss, or rant, or meme, or try and fight me so your waifu gets more screentime.

Become a Patron and read chapters in advance, or read the side-stories, or leave your mark on the story, or help choose the next artwork or the next side-story.

Chapter 122: Dark Depths - Part 2

To protect our men's safety, we have to kill every leader-type we can find, and we shall do so with extreme force!

I dispel [Invisibility], then I fill Patrono with mana, and it bursts with light, blinding the bugs and making them cower in fear, if they can even feel such complex emotion, then we dive.

"RAAAAAGH!" Hana, Aoi, and I roar in unison with righteous fury.

My current MP isn't that low, so I pull more mana into me with [Redirect Mana], refilling my pool, only to use it up by summoning the Masked Aberrant.

Three meters tall; four huge, muscular limbs like logs that keep its long body high above the ground; curved claws for grasping onto wood; stone slabs that look like scales; a vertical, rectangular stone "mask" that has square, glowing eyes and a square, glowing mouth; and a long, dexterous tail with sharp-looking metal scales protruding out of it. A murder machine.

The beast falls onto a Leader Mantis, crushing the bug into a paste, then it spins, swiping its tail at everything around it, the force behind the blades enough to throw away the Trains that it hits along with the mangled remains of the other bugs.

Aoi forgoes controlling the golems and crashes through the bugs, leaving a long line of crushed corpses behind as she just lets her body weight do the work.

Alissa, Roxanne, and the golems remain up high, far out of reach of both ranged bugs as they pick off the Red Barrels that could threaten us.

Spears are useless here, and even our swords have trouble cutting through their exoskeletons, so the girls use maces to crack some skulls.

There's no room to be cautious, not even enough time for us to see if our hits land properly. The girls spin with their attacks, then they hear the sickening crunch of an exoskeleton breaking followed by the feeling of striking something fleshy, and they take a chunk of it along with their weapons, spreading bug innards everywhere.

I hold Patrono at a distance with a tentacle, making it harder for the Frogs to grab me as I carve a line through their ranks, doing as much damage as I can.

These unthinking, unfeeling monsters deserve no mercy, no pity. They serve no other purpose than to be a thorn in the lives of humanoids, to be a plague upon our existence, so I have no problem with exterminating them to the very last one.

And to protect our men, I let my disgust and anger fuel my draconic thirst for carnage.

The density of bugs in our path is reduced as the Aberrant becomes the target of most of the bug army, but the summon is a relentless beast, so it fights with brutality as it kites them, abusing its higher strength and nimbleness to crush anything that comes close.

The few Trains in our path rear up like horses to try to impede us, but they're harmless since it's so easy to dodge them, so we just focus on the Spitters and Frogs that we can kill on the way as we seek out each and every Mantis Leader.

Patrono's brilliance is helpful, but not enough to make all of these bugs permanently blind.

Lina has the most trouble with flying out of all of us, so she becomes an easy target for the Frogs. The first tongue that grabs onto her is easily cut off, and so is the second, but then it's quickly followed by a third, and then comes a fourth, and she isn't fast enough to cut them all off.

Her small amount of mass makes it easy for them to pull her down, and she smacks down onto the tunnel's floor with a heavy thud.

I summon her before the Trains can crush her, but then she gets caught two more times, and the violent yanking around is making her dizzy.

"LET ME GO DOWN! I'LL FACE THEM ON THE FLOOR!" She pleads through [Bind], then I summon her once again and use a tentacle to punt her towards a spot on the floor that's clear of living bugs.

She touches the ground, then casts [Earth Wall] around her, creating a small funnel so that the Trains can't catch her from behind. This draws a good deal of attention from the bugs, making it even easier for us to hunt down the Mantis Leaders and allowing the Aberrant to increase its level of destruction.

A Witch starts screeching, and Alissa detects a pattern in its pitch change, which indicates that it's giving orders, and once she finds the grasshopper-like bug that's making the infernal sounds, she notices that a Mantis Leader has its tentacles on the Witch's head.

"It's altering its behavior!" She shouts in my soul space as she kills both of them with an [Arrow of Annihilation], but then the other Leaders use their tentacles on the Witches too, and the cave echoes with mind-shattering screeching, so I pull back from my carnage so that I can better observe the battlefield as it changes.

The Trains ignore Lina and shield the Mantis Leaders, protecting them with their bodies while the Frogs lie in wait for when we come closer, then they barrage us with their tongues, pulling us down so that the Spitters, Trains, and Crabs can have their way with us. The Barrels also avoid the pile of bugs to not give us a chance to blow them up.

Hana and Ciel get caught, forcing me to summon them while Aoi simply pulls back up out of range again, dragging a dozen Frogs along with her. Yunia fares better thanks to [Precognition], but she can't approach due to the sheer number of Frogs.

Then I also get caught and panic for a moment as I realize that I don't have a [Gate] coordinate nearby, so I use Patrono to free myself and fly away towards a safe corner where I can set our retreat point.

More bugs pour in through a tunnel, and the number of protectors for the Mantis Leaders only increases, then we notice that the air is starting to burn our lungs again. This, coupled with the headache from the screeching, is making us all very stressed.

Due to the constant noise, my voice doesn't reach the Aberrant, and it gets too close to a pile of bugs. Now agglomerated, the Frogs manage to slow down the large summon, allowing the Spitters to rain acid upon its flesh. The stone plates don't cover everything, so the Aberrant quickly begins to melt, and I decide to unsummon it and recover some MP before it can die and waste it all.

Since there aren't any monsters after her now, Lina casts [Earth Wall] again, giving her a magical hold of the stone under her, then she forcefully makes it disappear, creating a long hole downwards. She repeats the process, digging a tunnel towards the nearest Mantis Leader that she could kill.

For now, only Patrono and Roxanne can assassinate the Leaders. Aoi can just crash through the pile, but I don't want her to do something as risky as that considering how the Masked Aberrant met its end.

A rumbling suddenly draws our attention, but then we become puzzled as Alissa detects gnomes and pixies coming towards us from the direction of the sound.

I un-[Equip] Patrono and instantly notice the bugs' coordination improving.

Dammit! I don't want to show Patrono to them!

Alissa suddenly stops in confusion as she notices music coming from the same direction as the rumbling, then a wall suddenly breaks apart, and the sound of bagpipes and violins pours through.

A second later, a house-sized monstrosity of metal pushes through the wall. The first thing we see is a dozen drills and rock crushers, which are currently glowing from both magic and heat, then comes the cylindrical body, which has a dark brown and sparkly color, darksteel. It's dotted with pointy little protrusions that immediately start firing [Earth Bullet] and [Lava Jet] everywhere.

The huge drill slams onto the floor with an earth-shaking thud, then Alissa notices that there's a very-well covered pair of caterpillar tracks underneath it that simply grinds any bug that comes towards it into paste.

"THE FOURTH EXTERMINATOR SQUADRON HAS ARRIVED!" A cheerful, magically-enhanced gruff voice echoes throughout the cave, though it's almost drowned by the incessant screeching, and the monstrosity accelerates to an impressive speed, quickly turning two clumps of bugs into nothing but paste as it blasts music through its magical megaphones.

The Witches change their tune, and the Trains start to swarm towards the Exterminator, but it's simply too massive to be stopped by the puny monsters. Then pixies armed with lances emerge from the top of it and skewer the few that manage to climb onto the beast. They're so small that I can only see the little dots of light from their [Spirit Light]s zipping about.

The girls and I simply stare in awe at the size of that thing. What an absolute unit.

Then a chorus of gnomes starts singing.

"♪ To save our fatherland from any monster attack. ♪

♪ From vicious giant insects who have once again come back. ♪

♪ We'll unleash all our forces, we won't cut them any slack. ♪

♪ The EGDF deploys! ♪"

The defensive piles thin out as the Mantis Leaders clearly see the Exterminator as a greater threat than us, so we resume assassinating them while the gnomes and pixies deal with the bulk of the monster army.

The battle lasts only a mere minute from that point as the Exterminator reduces everything to paste while we finish off all the Mantis Leaders, ensuring that they can't put up any sort of resistance to our attack.

Once we've killed the last screeching Witch, we're finally allowed to hear again, and we gather together to let Ciel [Heal] our ears, starting with Alissa's, then I put the dragon back in its cage, though I don't lock it just yet.

As the treatment begins, a pixie comes closer, and I notice that her body is covered in stone except for her butterfly wings. She's using [Earth Armor], which seems better than normal armor since you can shed it and rebuild it at will if you're ever caught by a Frog. Her face is also covered by rock, with only a few holes under her chin to let her breathe and a thick glass visor protecting her eyes.

We take our helmets off, and the pixie's suddenly cracks open, revealing Tinkerbell's grinning and sweaty face. She glances at Aoi's draconic form, and her face stiffens for a split second, but she hides her fear and surprise very well.

"What a chance meeting. I certainly didn't expect to see the Ryder Lords here," she visibly shouts, but our ears are still so damaged that it's barely audible.

I nod diligently and explain, "We noticed that the leader-types were giving our men a hard time, so we decided to come forward to deal with them to avoid taking losses."

She raises her eyebrows and parts her red lips in surprise. "How bold. Never let anyone say that you don't care for your men."

Lina flies up to us and gives Belind a shy wave, who waves back rather slowly due to the weight of her rock armor.

The pixie's cute face then becomes serious as she reports, "I got a notice a few moments ago that this is the sixth outpost that we've wiped out, so rest assured that the hardest part of this battle is almost over. They shouldn't have that many leader-types left, so the Exterminators will converge on their nest soon."

I look at the beastly vehicle and notice that it's going towards another wall, not the tunnel that the monster reinforcements are coming from.

Ciel [Heal]s me while her [Holy Spirit] heals the pixie, then I admit in a normal voice, "I'm curious about what's going on in that nest."

She frowns worriedly along with half of the girls, then she kindly warns me, "Be careful when approaching it. The monsters that protect it are much more dangerous than the soldiers that they send to attack us."

I hum in agreement. "I understand. Going by how much things are diverting from our original plan, all I really know about the nest is that I know nothing, which is why I'm so curious about it." Then I grin.

Alissa grunts tiredly and chimes in, "You do have a hobby of dealing with dangerous things."

Belind shrugs and continues, "Well, it's true that the monster nest has us all puzzled, but if you're that inclined to explore it, then perhaps you could take a ride in the Exterminator." -Her serious expression is instantly replaced by a wry grin- "Just be warned: it's cramped, even for a gnome."

"We'll pass…" Yunia immediately answers as politely as she can.

Considering how sweaty the pixie is, I believe it's for the best that we remain outside, not that we're any better, we just don't want to get worse.

Then the Exterminator suddenly stops near the wall, though the music continues without interruption, and the pixies begin to retreat into the beast again.

Belind glances at it, then gives us an apologetic smile and gently states, "I have to go. I'd like to meet up with you again once this is over, or perhaps we shall meet at the nest?"

"That depends on what I see there," I assert.

She nods with a hum. "Godspeed and Godstrength to you. Until later."

I smile and nod back. "Likewise. Fight safely."

She shouts cheerfully as she flies backward, "Can't promise you that, but I will fight fiercely."

Then we both wave at each other, and she finally leaves.

Once all the pixies are back inside, the Exterminator moves forward again and drills a hole into the wall, leaving behind a large cloud of dust that irritates our noses, then the music slowly fades along with the rumbling.

More bugs pour out from the tunnel ahead, but we're too far up for them to threaten us, so they just run around like headless chickens since there's no leader-type here to guide them.

I narrow my eyes in thought and deliberate, "We need to fly to get past the constant waves of monsters, so I don't think all of us should go."

"You already used [Redirect Mana] once," Alissa cautions me.

I shrug. "I'm the only one who can use [Gate], so I have to go."

"We don't really need to explore the nest, do we?" Ciel asks sarcastically.

"It's Wolfy, of course we do," Lina mumbles back.

I raise my hand for them to allow me to explain, "I'll keep to the back lines if a fight breaks out to conserve my energies."

"Hmm…" Ciel hums annoyedly with a pout.

Roxanne grumbles with an exaggerated pout, "You're just going to have us all fight for you while you rest, hm?"

"We're all far from exhausting ourselves, so we can handle a few battles," Hana honestly answers, and Roxanne shows her tongue in response.

"What about our men?" Yunia questions me sternly.

"I'll send you girls back to help them while Alissa and I scout," I calmly reply.

Yunia sighs and relents, "Fine, but you know my opinion."

I fly up to her and gently hold her head, then I give her forehead a kiss and smile warmly at her. "Thanks for being so caring."

She turns her face away snobbishly. "Trying to mollify me won't change my opinion."

"Not my intention," I whisper gently as I release her. "Alright, let's go."

Alissa and I continue scouting just as we did before by using [Invisibility] while seeing through a Holly and an Ice Wraith, which allows us to fly past the waves of bugs unimpeded.

The temperature continues to rise until it becomes uncomfortable for us, and the air becomes thick with steam, then the sound of trickling water reaches our ears as little streams appear everywhere.

We even find a few Thalantro scouts hunting down the remaining lava hybrids. The bugs are good swimmers and seem to have no problem walking on wet stone, so the scouts avoid the bugs since they don't have the advantage against them in a fight, unlike when they're up against the slowed lava hybrids.

The waves of monsters coming for our men suddenly become disorganized again, greatly reducing the pressure, then the Prince reports that all of the leader-types have been eliminated, so everything is back under control.

Alissa and I eventually encounter the first sentry, a dog-sized dragonfly that's so still that it's nearly invisible. Seriously, in the dark, misty tunnels, it's actually hard to see it without [Sense Presence], and it even has the monster version of [Hide Presence], so Alissa and the Holly both have to get pretty close to see it, and though the Ice Wraith doesn't have this problem, the range of its vision is rather short.

The sentry has a Witch in its grasp, which means that they work together as the eyes and alarm system for the bugs, but they don't seem to be able to see or sense magic, so we just fly past them without issue.

We pass near a few obsidian galleries, which means that there was once lava here that cooled rapidly, though we can't ascertain when that was. The long patches of shiny black obsidian are quite a pretty sight, actually, but we don't have time for sightseeing.

Then we start to encounter dozens of lava hybrids in rock form, slowly heating themselves back up. We've finally entered an area that the Thalantro haven't passed through yet.

Shortly after that, we encounter a light coming from further along the misty tunnel, so we follow it to its source, and we discover a partially-flooded, underground magical forest crawling with bugs. The nest.

We see a huge cave filled with sparkly gems that are lit up with extremely faint light, which allows us to see the outlines of huge mushrooms and rather grotesquely shaped plants of all sizes. Small lights move about the forest, and from their size, they seem to be newborn underworld creatures that are tending to the plants or cutting down what looks like fruits.

One of those creatures comes near us, giving us a good view of it. It's a red, ugly imp the size of an apple, with a small flame at the tip of its long tail. Like a fantasy evil Charmander.

Some of them are riding bugs like one would take a bus, using them to go back and forth between the plants, while others swing from the branches like monkeys.

Then, further in, we notice something big moving. Four sets of flaming eyes suddenly light up, revealing the outline of horse-sized heads, then they suddenly spread out and bite into the mushrooms, quickly devouring them in under a minute.

I order the Holly to move a little further ahead, and the mist clears a bit more, allowing us to see the rest of the monster. The heads are all connected to a long, quadrupedal body of a size comparable to the Exterminators. Its hide doesn't have scales and appears to be rugged like a crocodile's, so it isn't related to dragons.

It's a Cave Hydra, threat level five, capable of killing a squad of knights. Though it looks fearsome, it's below our level, even without Patrono, and its feet end in pitifully puny claws, completely ruining its image for me.

The Hydra's body suddenly lights up with small red crystals embedded all over its hide, then its four heads growl, and fire escapes their mouths.

Well, a fire variant of the Cave Hydra has its threat level bumped up to six, but that's still not really a threat. Though, I don't know if we can sneak past it since it's a full-blown magical creature, which makes it a lot more sensitive to magic than the stupid bugs.

While we come up with a plan, something else catches our eye. A very human-like, bipedal, iguana man appears, carrying a large cocoon.

The red lizard man puts it down before a group of waiting bugs, then its hands glow, and strings wrap around the cocoon.

The Holly detects some sort of chaotic magic going on inside it, making us all puzzled as we've never heard of such a thing before. Then the cocoon suddenly bursts, and a Leader Mantis pops out, its opaque exoskeleton now glowing blue with light that waves about like the sea.

"What the fuck…?" We all grunt in unison.

We've just witnessed the birth of a monster variant.

A note from Manasong

Hall of Fame of Patrons

The patrons who support Rupegia shall have their names sung by the bards for they deserve the glory and honor. Their names are:

Prince PreownedFIN.

Prince Creamy Spinach.

Prince Owldente.

Prince Charlie Foxtrot.

Lord Andrew Meyers.

Lord Novgarod.

Lord Michale Erwin.

Lord Bakerdea.

Lord Maurice.

Lord Mattirro Draca.

Lord Sean Drake.

Lord FrostyCube.

Lord Mike Bartter.

Lord Warwulfv.

Lord Jorge Franco.

Lord Khristopher Welsh.

Lord DJ.

Lord Tenebris Lupus.

Lord Paul Daval.

Lord Paul Daval.

Lord Bradly.

Lord AndreyUC.

Lord Tmac.

Lord School Work.

Lord Gwendolyn Simmons-LaRose.

Lord CopeyDunt.

Lord Warwulfv.

Lord James.

Lord BlindTactic.

Noble Salty Panda.

Noble Mild Fracas.

Noble Aclys.

Noble CarlBaxter.

Noble d3235.

Noble Cidant.

Noble Frank de Jong.

Noble Shai.

Leave a rating or a review to help me rise to the top or fix my shameful understanding of prose.

Take a look over my blog where all information about the world of Rupegia will be posted.

Join the Discord and discuss, or rant, or meme, or try and fight me so your waifu gets more screentime.

Become a Patron and read chapters in advance, or read the side-stories, or leave your mark on the story, or help choose the next artwork or the next side-story.

Chapter 122: Dark Depths - Part 3

A note from Manasong

Warning: this chapter contains disturbing imagery.: this chapter contains disturbing imagery.

The blue Mantis Leader grabs a Witch, and the large grasshopper makes a series of screeches, then the Leader starts running towards an empty tunnel, and the squad of bugs follow it.

Though we're all surprised at this sight, Yunia is completely speechless.

"You don't understand," she begins and backs off from the front line, then she takes off her helmet, and massages her elastic ears as she continues, "What I believe happened may not be what truly happened, but if it is, then it's completely unprecedented. If that lizard man altered the leader-type to make it gain a water affinity, then it means that the monsters are deliberately adapting to the situation, something truly unheard of!"

I scratch my horn in confusion and question, "I don't understand how monsters 'don't deliberately adapt to the situation.' What about the breeder-types? Don't they create settlements that mimic humanoids and then lay siege to our towns?"

She shakes her head gently. "They mimic, but they don't adapt… unless that leader-type was born with water affinity by chance… or if the color of its chitin doesn't have anything to do with water. It happens."

I hum in thought as I realize something, "Hm… so monsters only change due to chance? Like, natural selection?"

The girls aren't very clear on what I mean by "natural selection," so I give them a crash course in evolution as it happens on Earth.

Yunia hums and fondly recollects one of her lessons with Almaria, "Yes, that's… pretty much what happens. A new, random variant spawns once in a while, and the longer it lives, the higher the chance that more of its kind will spawn, either through normal reproduction or through the curse of the God of Destruction, which uses our collective consciousness to choose which monster should spawn where."

I narrow my eyes in thought as I don't fully get it yet, so Ciel kindly expands on it, "The knowledge of a new, dangerous variant quickly spreads among the hunters, and so, its presence increases in the local collective consciousness, making it more likely that it'll spawn nearby. And the more that monsters of a specific kind spawn, the further the knowledge of their existence spreads, creating a vicious cycle."

So, for monsters, it's not survival of the fittest, but the deadliest or most fearsome… No, it's survival of the most popular.

Yunia agrees with my assessment and calmly requests, "I want to find out more about that lizard man. The magic he used is completely unknown to me, and the fact that we have bugs and lizards interacting in their reproductive methods is also unprecedented. Leader and breeder-types can get different types of monsters to work together to attack humanoids, but they hardly ever interact as meaningfully as we've just seen."

I hum in thought. Her assumption neatly explains everything that's going on out of the norm, but we still lack an explanation for how the lizard man mage came to be.

Well, there's one pressing matter that we need to solve first. "If we want an explanation, we need to get past that Hydra first," I remind them.

"Kill it!" Aoi shouts in my soul space excitedly. She wants to know what Hydra tastes like.

I smile a bit guiltily as I dash her expectations, "That'll alert the bugs and the lizards, making it much harder for us to observe anything useful."

"A distraction, then," Alissa whispers thoughtfully as she stares intensely at the Hydra.

"Careful. I honestly think you could kill it by yourself," Ciel wryly warns her.

And Alissa is caught off-guard. "Oh… well, thanks," she mumbles

I keep it simple, "I'll leave a [Gate] coordinate at the tunnel behind us for you to retreat to, so just fire a few shots, and then rejoin me."

She nods diligently, and we separate. After I leave a coordinate deep in the tunnel we came from, I [Fly] up and hug the wall as I fly towards an unused tunnel on the opposite side from Alissa's position.

Once we're both ready, she dispels [Invisibility] and unleashes an [Arrow of Annihilation].

"GRUUUUU!" The three heads howl in rage as the fourth goes limp, now with a long hole that goes in through one of its eyes and deep into its brain, then the dead head falls on top of a few bugs, crushing them and making bug guts spill everywhere.

The fire imps screech like monkeys, then the Witches screech too a moment later, immediately raising a cacophony that gives us both headaches. A normal arrow follows as the Hydra moans in pain, but it only hits the cheek of one of the heads and reveals Alissa's position.

The three ferocious heads turn their fiery gaze towards her, then their mouths glow, and three large fireballs shoot out. Though one of the heads receives an arrow down its throat, it doesn't seem to care.

Alissa activates the [Rush] on her armor and dives behind a large mushroom tree, then the fireballs explode at the spot where she was standing just a second ago, leaving three pear-sized holes in the stone. Rather weak, but it would still have hurt a lot and damaged the armor if she had taken it on her chest.

Aoi snorts, unimpressed by the Hydra's power.

"I could take it with only my [Draconic Body]!" Hana brags and pokes my soul space because she actually wants to try it.

I wave Hana away and focus back on Alissa.

While the Hydra lacks in power, it makes up for it by blanketing the area with fireballs, quickly razing down the mushroom tree into nothing.

But Alissa has long left that cover.

"GRUUAAAH!" The Hydra roars again as another head falls to an [Arrow of Annihilation], but the first head has already disintegrated into sand, and two new necks are now growing at an impressive pace.

The Hydra suddenly gets distracted, and the two remaining heads look in different directions as they continue to shoot their fireballs, blanketing the bugs with their barrage.

More bug guts are thrown about into the air as they explode with disgusting sounds, and fire imps scamper about in fear, not of the fireballs, but of the wet flesh that could easily snuff out their short lives.

The Hydra suddenly freezes and stops its onslaught, then it stares at the damage it has caused with what seems to be fear and confusion. Alissa's combo of [Mesmerizing Butterflies] and [Daydreaming] was apparently super effective.

Then she whistles, and the Hydra turns its heads towards her.

"RAAAH!" The two heads roar in pain as a normal arrow takes out one of its eyes, but the unharmed head immediately lunges towards her as the monster's large body charges forward, trampling even more bugs.

Alissa retreats into the tunnel, and she's pursued by a few imps and bugs that spotted her, but then the Hydra growls and stops. It trains one pair of eyes on the tunnel she fled through while the last eye looks down at its feet, its lips raised in what seems to be a snarl of disgust.

The Ice Wraith attacks the bugs coming into the tunnel, giving Alissa more than enough time to cross through the [Gate] and rejoin me.

"Good work," I gently praise her and give her pats through [Bind].

"It was kind of fun," she whispers shyly as I recast [Invisibility] on her.

The bugs mostly ignore the commotion, so while the Hydra and the imps are still distracted, we have a clear path to fly further into the cave. I put the Holly on my shoulder and grab Alissa's hand, then we fly onwards.

The Wraith is technically impervious to the bugs' attacks, but the summon's ice sword is broken repeatedly as the monsters turn on it the moment it begins to reform, so I just unsummon the Wraith since it's not useful to us anymore.

We fly past the (what we assume to be) previous iguana man as he goes back to the Hydra. This time, he's without a cocoon, so perhaps he's going to check on what the commotion was all about.

"How do we know it's a 'he'? Female lizards don't have breasts and males keep their dicks sheathed," Roxanne asks the question that Lina was thinking but didn't have the courage to ask.

Alright… it goes back to check on the Hydra.

Roxanne smiles, pleased with herself.

Anyway, the "farm" continues on for a while as the cave gradually widens, but we don't see any more tunnels ahead of us, so perhaps the choke point that the Hydra guards is a deliberate design choice.

Then Yunia warns Sandoro that there's a leader-type likely hunting down the Thalantro.

We notice a group of imps having a fistfight for some reason while a number of them keep their tails near a deep puddle of boiling water. I think they're trying to dry out the cave by making the water evaporate, so they must be the reason why everything is so misty.

We also see a few imps widening a hole that provides access to lava and taking a "mud" bath in it.

The mist slowly starts to clear as we fly forward, then we notice that the cavern splits into two as a chasm intersects the "farmland."

Steps carved into the stone lead to a darker section where an uncountable number of cocoons are strung up to the ceiling, held above wide rivers of glowing-hot lava.

Human-sized daddy-long-legs tend to these cocoons, stringing them up and taking them down, then laying them in front of assorted bipedal lizards, who use a quicker version of the string magic we saw before to force them to hatch, and the newborn bug immediately rushes out towards the "farms."

What's the difference between lava and magma…?

My mind wanders towards a happier place, tired of all the creepy crawlies everywhere.

"At least this confirms that they're working together more closely than was ever imagined," Yunia tries to comfort me.

I sigh tiredly, and Alissa squeezes my claws reassuringly, then we move on and fly in between the eggs, avoiding the large daddies as best we can.

Some of the lizards look up, their attention drawn to either the mana of our [Fly] enchantments or the slight disturbance our passage leaves on the cocoons, but none of them seem to have detected us.

I'm reminded of a production line from the methodical and repetitive way that both the daddies and the lizards move about. It's almost hypnotizing, though I definitely don't want to stare at the daddies while they work.

As we carefully fly further in, we notice an opening near the wall with a simple metal bridge leading to it. There's a bipedal lizard coming out through it, carrying a cocoon.

The opening is too small for us to continue to use [Fly], so we land, and I put a few points in [Quiet Steps] so that we won't make any noise as we walk. Using the skill consumes mental stamina, making me wish that Yunia was here to use [Silence] instead.

"I'll pass…" She immediately, and unashamedly, declines.

The bridge is inconceivably hot, and even with the [Breeze] enchantment of our armor, we begin to cook as we pass over the lava river running under it, but once we've finished crossing, the heat becomes bearable again, though what we see still makes us uncomfortable.

It's both a hospital and a lab.

A few dozen, seemingly pregnant, human-like lizards are laying down on beds of rock while other lizards use their string magic on them; and a few of the pregnant lizards are squatting on top of some nests, one of them actually giving birth to an egg.

Nearly a hundred eggs of varying sizes are lined up near the wall, exposed to the heat of a lava channel that passes beside them, and an even larger number of lizards are using their magic on them as they speak to each other in an unknown, gruff tongue. Some of the observers are holding crude metal clipboards that they use to occasionally write scribbles on rough pieces of paper with thick charcoal pens.

An egg suddenly hatches, and a deformed lizard emerges. Its limbs are undersized and awkwardly angled, and its skin is rather smooth and thin-looking.

A lizard-scientist growls as it casts its string magic on the newborn's head, who immediately falls limp on top of the remains of its egg, then a daddy on standby grabs the corpse with its jaws and takes it away.

Then we see a group of scientists in a corner dissecting a deformed corpse as they discuss and write on their clipboards.

"That isn't that different from how we study anatomy," Ciel softly remarks, feeling rather creeped out by everything we're seeing.

"Do you also engage in genetic engineering experiments?" I dryly ask, but she remains quiet.

The priests don't, but someone does. Breeder-types like these mimic humanoid civilization, so someone, somewhere, is doing this.

My mind immediately goes to the heretics that created those Clone Soldiers. I have a pretty strong belief that they were genetically engineered.

"What is 'genetic engineering'?" Ciel soberly asks. I give her a simple explanation as we slowly walk across the hospital floor, and she quickly becomes revulsed by what I tell her. "Wicked 'science.' That's what this is!"

And I cringe as I do my best to salvage her opinion, "Well, what they're doing here would be unethical on Earth. Not only is experimenting on humans not allowed, but you also can't just kill the 'defective' people. And unless you can guarantee that the newborn is going to be born healthy, nobody sane would ever perform such genetic changes on them."

"Hm…" She hums in thought and remains silent for a long moment as she considers things before she continues, "perhaps I was too hasty to judge, but it's still something that shouldn't be practiced in this realm, for that's the domain of the Goddess of Fertility." If it wasn't me explaining it, I don't think she would be so understanding.

I nod in agreement and add, "What they're doing here is a desecration of scientific ethics, and also, genetic engineering on Earth is almost exclusively practiced in plants and other lower life forms, not humans."

Then we notice a crude pair of metal doors leading to another room. If the hospital with the pregnant lizards is here, then what's beyond there can only be…

We walk up to them and cross through without hesitation, then we freeze at the chilling sight.

Hundreds of armless, legless humanoids are neatly arranged in a grid. They're either hanging from hooks that hold up the harnesses that are secured around their bodies or laying down motionlessly on rock beds. Their eyes have been gouged out, and their lids burned shut; their ears are covered by thick lumps of cloth tied tightly to their heads; and their mouths are kept permanently open by tubes glued to their lips so that they can be force-fed.

A channel on the rock bed or on the floor underneath the hanging ones takes care of their bodily waste, though the smell of sewage is actually pretty faint. Even monsters are clean when necessary because these humanoids are breeding livestock, valuable resources that allow the monsters to birth stronger versions of themselves.

Two human men and one dragonkin woman are being raped by lizards. They're fed an aphrodisiac and energizing drink before it starts, but none of the survivors ever remember this part because mixed into their rations is a calming drug so strong that it puts them into a sort of dream-like state, where one feels nothing but the cold touch of the void.

Living as a monster's breeding livestock isn't actually that horrible of an experience itself, what breaks people is coming back from it. The body remembers the trauma, and the mind craves for the void again, to be free of the troubles of reality.

This is what I was spared from seeing when we wiped out the goblin village. At the time, I didn't have the mental stability to deal with this knowledge, and now that I do, I feel nothing but cold determination.

If I ever fail in defending our territory, this will happen to everyone.

Aoi observes our reactions with wonder. She's a breeder-type too, and she feels nothing from the sight of the "livestock."

"Do you not feel any empathy for them?" I coldly question her through [Bind].

"Hmm…" She hums as she taps her claw against her chin. She's very confused about her own emotions as this is the first time she has had to think deeply about the nature of breeder-types. "I think I feel sad that humanoids have to suffer, but I don't know any of them, so I don't want to feel anything."

Ciel walks up to her and gently touches her snout as she advises, "Feeling something is good, even if it's a negative feeling."

Aoi is feeling something negative, so she brings it out to the surface, and her expression changes into a fearsome scowl. "Monsters are slaves of the God of Destruction, but the God never gives us any guidance or leadership…" She grumbles angrily, then she raises her eyes to Ciel and declares, "They abandoned us, so I want the other monsters to become like me, free and able to choose their own masters."

"Why a 'master'?" Lina flatly asks her through [Bind], not very pleased with Aoi's choice of words.

Aoi turns to my little dwarf and bluntly answers, "Without Wolfy, I'm nothing, so the godless monsters need a master to guide them." But my heart is simply too cold right now to feel proud of her words.

"A parent, not a master," Ciel whispers a correction.

Aoi's wings slowly flap as she thinks, then she raises her forepaws, trying to shrug. "A 'parent,' then, someone to guide them."

Then we go silent as we try to process our own feelings on the matter.

"I pity them, the monsters…" Roxanne's voice suddenly echoes in my soul space after a short moment, her tone wavering as she's unsure if she should even be speaking.

"Aoi's presence gives us a new perspective," Yunia melancholically states.

"They're all victims too," Ciel stoically adds.

"Wretched existences, cursed to do evil," Lina whispers gloomily.

"Death is a mercy," Hana soberly asserts.

"The only solution," Ted surprisingly chimes in.

And I feel a weak smile trying to sneak onto my lips. "What if we kill a God?" I wryly ask.

"Even that might not undo the curse," Ciel immediately rejects.

I snort softly and shake my head, then we go silent again for a long moment.

The gnomes are taking too long to attack the nest.

There's nothing left for us to do but to wait, so I observe the rape with cold determination. I burn every detail of this horrific sight into my mind, then I pray.

I pray that I am never weak of mind again, that I never let my resolve falter, that my hand never hesitates.

I pray that I never forget this day, for I've learned the true price of failure.

I pray that my draconic fire never ceases to burn, for I need it to be able to face this world.

I pray that the Gods will always guide me when I need it, for I can't ever afford to become lost when so many are following me.

And the Gods answer by filling us with righteous fury.

We grunt and growl as we adjust to the sudden influx of energy that gushes into us.

"L-Lord Aoi?" Almaria stutters fearfully as she backs off from the angry dragon.

"We're called upon once more," Yunia sternly announces, then I summon everyone.

Our bodies may be tired, and our minds may be hazy, but, in an instant, we're all ready for one more battle, so we promptly begin the slaughter.

A note from Manasong

Hall of Fame of Patrons

The patrons who support Rupegia shall have their names sung by the bards for they deserve the glory and honor. Their names are:

Prince PreownedFIN.

Prince Creamy Spinach.

Prince Owldente.

Prince Charlie Foxtrot.

Lord Andrew Meyers.

Lord Novgarod.

Lord Michale Erwin.

Lord Bakerdea.

Lord Maurice.

Lord Mattirro Draca.

Lord Sean Drake.

Lord FrostyCube.

Lord Mike Bartter.

Lord Warwulfv.

Lord Jorge Franco.

Lord Khristopher Welsh.

Lord DJ.

Lord Tenebris Lupus.

Lord Paul Daval.

Lord Paul Daval.

Lord Bradly.

Lord AndreyUC.

Lord Tmac.

Lord School Work.

Lord Gwendolyn Simmons-LaRose.

Lord CopeyDunt.

Lord Warwulfv.

Lord James.

Lord BlindTactic.

Noble Salty Panda.

Noble Mild Fracas.

Noble Aclys.

Noble CarlBaxter.

Noble d3235.

Noble Cidant.

Noble Frank de Jong.

Noble Shai.

Leave a rating or a review to help me rise to the top or fix my shameful understanding of prose.

Take a look over my blog where all information about the world of Rupegia will be posted.

Join the Discord and discuss, or rant, or meme, or try and fight me so your waifu gets more screentime.

Become a Patron and read chapters in advance, or read the side-stories, or leave your mark on the story, or help choose the next artwork or the next side-story.

Chapter 123: Victors - Part 1

A note from Manasong

Attention: to conform to the limit of mature content (more than just sexual content) allowed in a novel, I've censored this chapter. You can look for the uncensored version here.

I watch the battle as I catch my breath. Apparently, the best way to kill a Hydra is to just drill a large hole through its body. It seems that the heads are a magical construct, so the only place that can actually receive meaningful damage is the main body.

The Exterminators are all heading out in search of bigger prey, and Gnomeria's main army is starting to flood the tunnels, so we can assume that the bugs are under control.

I take my helmet off and run my claws through my hair. I'm exhausted, and it isn't even lunchtime yet.

As I begin to turn around, Alissa grabs my shoulders, then gives me a hug.

"We should go back," she whispers in my ear, her gentle tone showing her concern for my mental health, then she massages my scalp with her soft fingers, just the way I like.

"It's not over yet," I whisper back tiredly, and she hums softly in thought. "It's our duty to see this through to the end."

"Fine…" She gives in and releases me, then we return to the captive humanoids.

Yunia is standing guard while Ciel looks them over, but she can't wake them up from their stupor yet, not until their bodies have been cleaned and healed.

I walk up to Ciel, and she turns around to greet me. Her eyes show tiredness, but her expression is stern and strong. The angelic purity she usually radiates is now replaced with the air of a grizzled veteran.

"What are we supposed to do with them?" I soberly ask.

Her back stiffens as she answers categorically, a bit uncomfortable with the topic, "We take them back to the temple and heal their eyes, then we purge the drugs from their bodies and wait a whole day. If they don't come out of their catatonic state by then, then their minds have deteriorated too much, and they'll be freed from their torment. Those who manage to come out of it will go through Hell before they can live normal lives again."

Yunia then chimes in, her tone stern and surprisingly cold, "There are hundreds of captives here, and Gnomeria will already have trouble dealing with all the wounded, so not even the Gods would consider it Murder if we mercifully killed the people here to reduce the load on the healers."

Ciel gives her a very angry look, which is enough to make Yunia back off and return to guard duty.

I shake my head tiredly and gently point out, "She's not being unreasonable, my love, it's a valid concern."

But Ciel merely dodges the argument, "We aren't responsible for Gnomeria, so it isn't our place to decide what to do with them."

And I sternly insist, "But we are responsible for the High Forest, so one day, we might be forced to make this kind of decision."

She clenches her jaw and remains silent, not in the mood to have a discussion about this.

Alissa also says nothing, but as the daughter of a Misty Fox Chief, she sides with Yunia.

Suddenly, one of the captives starts twitching, catching our attention as he dangerously rolls near the edge of his rock bed.

Ciel rushes to stabilize him, and I prepare to use [Telekinesis] just in case, but he doesn't fall.

"What's going on?" I softly question, my eyebrows knit in confusion.

She holds the man's chest down with one hand while she checks his pulse with the other, and she notices that his heartbeat is very elevated. "He must be a recent captive if he's already waking up." Then she turns to me. "I need a tranquilizer to spare him the agony."

"I have Roxanne's things with me, which vial is the sleeping potion?" I ask out loud, and Roxanne points it out for me, then I pull a glowing pink potion out of my "Items" and hand it to Ciel, and she immediately pours it down the tube in his mouth.

The man seems to be a blonde weredog with a hint of Asian in his looks. By the muscles of his abs, he's a warrior, and considering how everyone else seems to be rather atrophied, he really is a recent victim.

The sleeping potion is magical, so it works immediately, and the weredog man falls asleep after just a few seconds.

Ciel sighs tiredly and drops her head. "Now we just need to wait until the gnomes get here," she whispers bitterly.

I hum and nod, then Alissa and I return to the lab. We scour the place for anything useful. Notes, eggs, corpses, anything that could be used to understand what they were doing here, but I don't take everything we find so that the gnomes have something to study too.

The rest of the girls are out there, scouting the rest of the nest and dealing with any stragglers, but most of the monster army is tied up in defending against the gnomes, so they have free reign to explore.

There's not much to see, actually, since all the strong monsters have already left or were killed by the Exterminators.

A good half hour passes before the sounds of battle begin to die down, and the girls return with a squad of gnomes in tow, then we show them the captives.

"Love's Embrace. Nobody deserves this…" The gnome squad leader mumbles fearfully.

The rest of the gnomes are simply frozen in shock, and even their floating weapons remain still in the air.

"Keep them safe. I want to return to my men," I soberly declare.

The Leader swallows heavily and nods, making his pointy hat bob. "Yes, Sir, understood. We'll stand guard and send word to the healers."

I hum and motion for the girls to follow, then we fly away to a secluded part of the "farms," but before I open a [Gate] back to our men, we calm our hearts and put on a happier mask.

"Sun guide us!" They shout as we return triumphantly.

There's only a trickle of bugs coming in now, so the knights are taking care of them while the Lordsguard take a well-deserved rest.

I raise my hand to greet them and notice that there's a considerable amount of blood blemishing my beautiful claws. The lizards bleed a lot more than the bugs, so we're all kind of bloody, which seems to make for quite an inspiring sight for our men.

I smile gracefully and announce, "The battle is almost over. We only need to receive confirmation from the gnomes that the threat is no more, and then we'll be free to celebrate this victory!"

"URAAH!" Hana leads the cheers, and the men immediately follow.

Then I grin and bark, "Now, back to the battle, it's not over yet!"

They salute, and the next group gets ready for battle.

It still takes another hour for the trickle of bugs to diminish to barely nothing, then the Prince announces that Gnomeria is safe and that the rookies will take over our position.

After one more round of cheers, we make the long trip back to the city, and I leave a few elemental-wives behind to cover our retreat.

As we walk, Hana checks on the Grosshils while Yunia has the twins report to her. The former has a lot to talk and brag about, but the latter is much more muted, as their role in the fight was to simply support from range, which is decidedly less exciting than being in the thick of it, holding back bugs with strength and coordination.

Since Hermann is occupied, I keep Klein company and play with her round brown ear just the way she likes. She acts innocent, but I think she's enjoying making Hermann jealous. I just need to get ready to clap back if she tries to make me jealous too.

Aoi's humanoid form still has both of its eyes intact, so she stays transformed to walk, and I make sure that I always have [Regeneration] working on her through a tentacle.

Hana suddenly squints as she stares at Hermann, and the boy's eyes nervously go from side to side as he wonders what got her attention, then she hums confusedly, "What's that on your nose?"

"Oh…!" He exclaims in relief, glad that she isn't about to chastise him, then he smiles excitedly. "Right, a drop of the bugs' poison touched my skin and melted it a bit, but after a [Heal], it became like this."

I hum in approval, "Nice. First battle scar?" I casually ask, and Hermann nods proudly.

He scratches his cheek awkwardly as he explains, "Yeah. I got wounded during training, but that doesn't count, and the knight armor I usually wear is too good, so I never really had the opportunity to get a legitimate scar." Then he chuckles as he shrugs.

"Men…" Alissa mumbles and rolls her eyes.

"Not even I want scars," Hana confesses and snorts.

"Men and women just have different priorities, most of the time," I explain with a wry smile.

"Elves sing in almost unison about the ugliness of scars," Yunia categorically states, and the twins nod along.

My eyebrows knit as I give her a worried look. "W-what about mine?" I hesitantly ask, caught off-guard by the conviction in her tone.

But she remains inexpressive and silent for a moment, so I dare to read her thoughts and hear a long "uhhh~…" coming through [Bind] as she realizes that she might've hurt my feelings.

"You're special," Alissa smugly states and glances at Yunia.

"Y-yes!" She suddenly exclaims as she breaks out of her daze. "Humans and dragonkin do look… fearsome with scars," she hesitantly affirms.

"Male dragons have a rough look, so scars fit them, too," Aoi casually chimes in.

"Indeed…" Yunia stiffly agrees and swallows heavily.

Arturus' eyebrows knit in disbelief, then he turns to his brother and remarks, "Sometimes I feel like she's another person when she's with him."

"That's love," Ciel immediately responds with a rare smug smile.

Yunia pouts and annoyedly defends herself, "I say it's only your perception."

I smile affectionately at her. It's hard to embarrass her, but I just find it so endearing to see the proud elf admit that she loves me.

Then I remember the captives, and my mood sours, so I close off my thoughts to not spread the negativity.

Alissa gently squeezes the tip of my tail, so I look back at her, and she gives me a sympathetic smile. I'm not the only one suffering from an emotional flip-flop; we're all trying hard to not let it affect us.

When we finally leave the tunnel, Prince Looklwind receives us rather cheerfully, though his demeanor is still a bit dull in comparison to the party that the recruits are putting on.

"Royal Ryders!" He shouts, both from excitement and to be heard over the loud music. "Please follow me, and I'll take you somewhere comfortable where you and your men can rest!"

"We appreciate it!" I shout back and motion for him to lead on.

We enter the same carriage from before and find a gnome priest waiting for us inside.

"He'll cast [Regrow Limb] on Her Highness Aoi while we fly," the Prince politely explains.

"Thank you for the accommodation," Yunia replies in kind.

Though I'm thankful that Aoi's eye will finally be restored, there's still plenty of our men who are still blind and in pain. Considering our power, our position, and our importance for the stability of our lands, it makes sense for us to receive preferential treatment. I just find it really hard to see where the line of "too much" is.

But right now, I don't have the energy to think too deeply about this, so I just accept the healer's aid and look forward to what gnomes call "comfort."

A bath, an enchanted bath, an enchanted gnomic bath… uh… a rather small enchanted gnomic bath.

The architecture is kind of nice, though. Intricate water fountains line the walls, which are covered in cute, little paintings that remind me of the wallpaper that one would find in a child's room.

"We've definitely been spoiled when it comes to bath sizes," Ciel states concernedly as she probes our thoughts.

Yunia frowns in displeasure, but she begrudgingly agrees, "Hmm… y-yes… I believe I have to agree with Ciel. This bath is perfectly fine for guests, even royal ones."

Ciel nods and adds, "And unlike dwarves, gnomes and pixies have no fondness for wide, open spaces."

"I feel like the pixies definitely like it cramped and tight," Hana remarks with a grin.

Roxanne suddenly probes Ciel's thoughts, then she laughs out loud and announces, "Oh, you have no idea. Tight is their obsession."

"Remember, the Goddess of Love was kinkier than all of us combined," Alissa casually comments as she helps Klein undress.

Ciel puckers her lips as if she had just tasted a sour lemon. Like always, she's way too kind to slap back when we banter, so we stop here to not make her get too mad.

Un-[Equip]ing our armor has an instant effect on us, and we immediately go from tense and angry to drowsy and aloof. Without adrenaline or Tonique tea to give us a boost, the lack of sleep is finally getting to us.

Alissa and Roxanne immediately focus on me since I'm dirtier than even Hana, while our fiery dragonkin snatches the big-chested angel for herself, and Lina just goes for Aoi.

Yunia and Klein share an awkward look as they're the only ones left without a washing partner. The golems are still available, but we all crave the warmer touch of another humanoid.

"I could wash you," Klein stiffly offers.

Yunia nods and graciously replies, "I accept."

The two rarely interact, but Klein's respectful tone pleases Yunia greatly, so she'll gladly accept the monkey girl's touch.

With two beautiful, bare women washing me thoroughly, there's not much else for me to do besides savoring their touch. It'd actually be disrespectful to do otherwise, really.

The sponge turns brown as the dried blood is slowly washed away. The uncomfortable feeling of sweat covering my body is gradually replaced with the freshness and sweet smell of gnomic soap. The stickiness of bug guts takes a bit more scrubbing to remove, but Alissa takes care of it while Roxanne distracts me with her succubi charm.

Guilt strikes me again, and I suddenly pull Roxanne into a hug, making her squeak in surprise, but she quickly recovers and hugs me back tightly. The sudden tightness in her heart makes me wonder who's really comforting who.

Our subconscious thoughts are betraying us, so we must force ourselves to power through this irrational sadness.

Alissa pours warm water over our shoulders, washing away all the soap and grime, then I pull her into the hug, too.

"I'm still dirty," she whines softly.

"Then let's change that," I whisper seductively and sprout tentacles from all over my body, then they both smile wryly and surrender to my affection. With all of my muscles aching, it really does feel nice to be able to use tentacles instead.

Touching them makes me happy, and my touch makes them happy, which also makes me happy, and our happiness mixes through [Bind], making everyone really happy.

Gify suddenly pops back into existence on my shoulder. "Gih!" She shouts to Aoi, and the two of them immediately jump into the water, with Aoi remembering to shrink first.

Since Aoi has so rudely ditched her washing partner, I snatch Lina with my tentacles and play with her too.

"Oh, sorry!" Aoi apologizes through [Bind].

"It's… fine…" Lina weakly replies, her voice starting to waver as a whisper grows within her.

It's delightful to see the perfect bodies of my wives being cleaned of all the dirt and grime, to feel the pleasure they get from my touch, to sense their minds wind down and relax. Satisfying their thirst for my affection is just as energizing as receiving their attention myself.

I rinse Alissa's body, then I pull her towards me. Her athletic legs straddle my waist, but we just want to kiss each other, for now.

Roxanne pulls Lina towards her and invades the little girl's mouth as desire suddenly flares within her. Lina is receptive to any sort of attention or affection, so she responds to the kiss and hugs Roxanne right back.

Hana is more straightforward than even I am, so she gets Ciel ready just through washing, and once her curvilicious body is completely clean, the hungry beast begins her meal.

Alissa's tail wags happily as her heart aches with love while my hands sneak up along her body, drawn to her fox ears, and I begin to sorely miss the humanizing enchantment that our bath in Escanso has.

Yunia guides the submissive monkey girl, instructing her on how to best use her mouth. Klein has been trained very well by Osaria, but Yunia has slightly different tastes than her, and she likes having it licked in a specific way.

Roxanne's long, pale fingers plunge in and out of Lina as the little girl melts in the "older sister's" embrace, but the succubus needs something more, something that another woman can't give her. Her thin, black tail points up, and her spiral horns harden like metal, showing just how excited she is.

Sensing the oncoming storm, Alissa pushes me away and leaves my lap, but she turns my head to the side so that we can continue kissing.

Roxanne will be the first, but my heart tells me that it won't be satisfied until I have them all.

A note from Manasong

Hall of Fame of Patrons

The patrons who support Rupegia shall have their names sung by the bards for they deserve the glory and honor. Their names are:

Prince PreownedFIN.

Prince Creamy Spinach.

Prince Owldente.

Prince Charlie Foxtrot.

Lord Andrew Meyers.

Lord Novgarod.

Lord Michale Erwin.

Lord Bakerdea.

Lord Maurice.

Lord Mattirro Draca.

Lord Sean Drake.

Lord FrostyCube.

Lord Mike Bartter.

Lord Warwulfv.

Lord Jorge Franco.

Lord Khristopher Welsh.

Lord DJ.

Lord Tenebris Lupus.

Lord Paul Daval.

Lord Paul Daval.

Lord Bradly.

Lord AndreyUC.

Lord Tmac.

Lord School Work.

Lord Gwendolyn Simmons-LaRose.

Lord CopeyDunt.

Lord Warwulfv.

Lord James.

Lord BlindTactic.

Noble Salty Panda.

Noble Mild Fracas.

Noble Aclys.

Noble CarlBaxter.

Noble d3235.

Noble Cidant.

Noble Frank de Jong.

Noble Shai.

Leave a rating or a review to help me rise to the top or fix my shameful understanding of prose.

Take a look over my blog where all information about the world of Rupegia will be posted.

Join the Discord and discuss, or rant, or meme, or try and fight me so your waifu gets more screentime.

Become a Patron and read chapters in advance, or read the side-stories, or leave your mark on the story, or help choose the next artwork or the next side-story.

Chapter 123: Victors - Part 2

A note from Manasong

Attention: to conform to the limit of mature content (more than just sexual content) allowed in a novel, I've censored this chapter. You can look for the uncensored version here.

I let out a sigh of satisfaction as I float in the warm pool and stare up at the ornate ceiling.

I think I'm fine now.

Didn't Hana say she was some sort of "s-x beast"? Abstinence was supposed to make her stronger, but now she's too addicted to my sword to ever go back to her untouched days. Am I something like her?

Alissa pokes Hana and explains my thoughts to her.

"Possibly," Hana hums with a nod. "Dragons are supposed to have 'vices,' so I think that's why your thirst for flowers increased so much after you became a weredragon."

I turn my face to the side and softly ask, "What would abstinence do to me?"

She grins fearsomely. "Kill you, or make you angry all the time like it did with me."

"He's definitely going to die if he tries to abstain…" Klein weakly chimes in as Jarn massages her back.

"He technically went insane when we got separated in Legado," Roxanne points out.

Hana shrugs and replies, "If he's like me, then once he's got a taste of the fruit, it becomes really hard to forget it, so it's not something that just anybody can do."

"Yeah, idea discarded," I declare as I wave my claws dismissively.

"What I wanted to know was if that surge of energy we had was another Intervention," Lina changes the topic, and we all turn to Ciel.

Our chocolate angel smiles as she explains, "Technically, yes, but we call it a Divine Boon since it's comparatively minor given what a true Intervention can do. It doesn't feel right calling what is basically a stronger [Inspire] spell the same thing as when the Gods bend reality to their will. But anyway, the Templars receive Boons regularly when they go into battle, and it's a requirement to achieve the higher ranks among them."

I hum in thought and wonder, "Huh… imagine fighting a foe that can suddenly regain its morale and energy at the whim of the Gods."

Ciel nods and adds, "Yes, that's why they're so feared."

"Wait, what happened?" Klein curiously interjects, and Ciel gives her a quick explanation. "So… it's something that's not supposed to be impressive?" The monkey girl asks as her long tail waves about.

Ciel agrees then smiles wryly, "Exactly. Well, we aren't Templars, so it should be unusual for our family to receive a Boon, but then again, two Interventions…"

"Yes, I…" -Klein gives me a wry glance- "understand what you mean."

After we all work together to give Yunia her glorious drills back, I store the golems, and we leave the bath. Then Klein returns to our men, and a servant guides us to the party that started without us. All of the nobles are gathered on a wide rooftop at the top of one of the many towers that make up the Disneyland-like castle at the center of the caldera.

It's midday, so the sun shines down from directly above us, creating a beautiful gradient across the town as it becomes darker the further down one looks until the bottom seems as if it were fully night.

The chaotically cute town is a treat for the eyes, but I still think that Escanso's natural beauty puts it above every other town I've seen.

The music is very soothing, with small drums and harps instead of the shrill violins and bagpipes from before, and our abused eardrums thank the pixie musicians for their consideration.

Aoi's presence draws a lot of attention now that she's in her dragon form, but surprisingly, nobody approaches us, except for the Prince, who receives us a bit more cheerfully now that his eardrums have been healed and there isn't gnomic music being blasted everywhere.

"Ryders, I assume our bath was to your satisfaction considering how long you spent there," he gently greets.

"Indeed, it was very satisfying," I reply with a sly grin.

He blinks blankly twice, my innuendo possibly going over his head, then he resumes his polite demeanor. "Forgive us, for we've started the celebrations without you, but my Royal Father and Mother still wish to make an announcement to thank you for your aid."

"You honor us with such reverence," Yunia politely replies with a respectful nod.

He gives us a gentle (and really cute) smile. "Let no one say that gnomes don't know how to show appreciation to their guests."

Yunia mirrors his expression. "Never dreamed of it."

He nods twice, then motions to the tables at the center of the rooftop. "Eat a little; you must be hungry. The announcement will happen soon."

"Thank you," I hum.

Then he leaves us and returns to the circle of bearded old gnomes who look like stereotypical fantasy scholars with their ornate robes and collection of glasses and monocles.

Our eyes fall upon the floating tables filled with food and the also floating plates that seem to act as waiters, offering food to the groups at the outer edge of the party.

Then I see it. A jet-black, hot beverage being held by only the gnomes, and the hint of the earthy smell of freshly brewed coffee enters my nostrils.

I make a beeline to the nearest glass jar that holds the stuff, and the gnome servant begins pouring it for me as I approach.

"Coffee, my Lord?" He gently asks, then offers it to me.

It's odd to see it being served in a wide, heavy bottomed glass, but the strength of pure black coffee kind of warrants the more refined vessel.

I take the cup and smell it. Brewed coffee doesn't have the same blissful smell of coffee grounds, but this aroma is enough to arouse my abstinent mind.

Then I eagerly take a sip, and my tongue complains about the bitter, astringent taste. It sucks, but my mind rejoices, for I've finally found the ambrosia for the brain.

It's simple, brewed coffee, which isn't that interesting when taken pure. Though at least it isn't the low-quality variety that's more bitter than Arabica.

It seems that the gnomes don't know the wonders of coffee with milk, or how to pair coffee with earthy sweets like chocolate, so there's still a lot of untapped potential to explore.

Then I actually pay attention to the rest of the food at the table and raise an eyebrow.

Flowers, dandelions, fried tree bark, grass sprouts, birdseed, wriggling mushrooms, alien-looking veggies, and a variety of small critters for meat. Those are the most exotic, and then there's the "cute" food with their cartoonish shapes.

A not-mango shaped like a fish; a not-pear shaped like a round puppy face; a tomato-like fruit shaped like an inflated goblin head; an octopus-shaped not-orange with wriggly tentacles (possibly the origin of Delicious Horrors); a boar-shaped not-watermelon; a dice-shaped not-strawberry; a sock-shaped not-banana; and many more.

There's "normal" food too, of course, and even a lot of seafood for the Thalanthro, but the gnome/pixie stuff is a lot more eye-catching. And we're all thankful that there's no bug meat in sight.

"Oh, I really did drink this when I passed through Oostlijpost," Ciel remarks as she sips her cup. "It really doesn't taste very good, but it's… oddly addictive."

"Coffee is fuel for gnomes, my Lords, and it's the most popular drink among scholars," the servant softly states.

"Fitting, I guess," Hana grunts and snorts.

Lina takes a sip, and she actually enjoys it black, but the rest of the girls don't.

"Your seed tastes a lot better," Aoi grumbles, her draconic double voice making the servant's face go pale.

"I agree," Alissa hums as she smiles.

The servant blinks blankly, trying his best to not look afraid of Aoi and to also ignore what he just heard.

I pull out of my "Items" a jug of warm milk and some chocolate cookies, then I instruct the girls on how to make the simple and sacred "café com leite." Unfortunately, we don't have chocolate wafers, which I believe are the superior sweet to combine with milk coffee.

"You… carry milk and cookies in your [Item Box]?" A familiar, cute female voice graces my ears.

I happily turn around, and my eyes meet with Tinkerbell's as she floats before us. She's now wearing an emerald dress full of flowery embroidery, and the color fits her perfectly.

"I am a Space mage," I proudly declare.

She raises a thin, blonde eyebrow at me.

"With a big [Item Box]," I huskily add.

Her cute red lips curl into a smirk as she jokes in return, "That's what all the gnomes say."

"His 'Item Box' is very 'adaptable,'" Alissa gently affirms with a nod, but the cute pixie doesn't seem to get Alissa's play on words.

The rest of the girls know what's coming, so they stay out of it, though Lina is conflicted about whether or not she wants Tinkerbell to flirt with her.

"Back in Escanso, the people gave me the Title 'Shapeshifter,'" I smugly explain.

Belind's butterfly wings flap gently, releasing a few magical sparkles, then she suddenly opens her mouth into an "o" and coos, "Ooooh~…! Wait, how did you get that Title?"

"Plowed a dozen women in public, at the same time," Alissa casually replies.

And I give her a demonstration as I sprout five exquisitely shaped swords, then I vibrate them.

"W-w-what?! Is that [Mana Body]?!" She exclaims in disbelief.

I shake my head gently and grin smugly. "No, it's my own special skill and spell. Now, this is [Mana Body]." Then I make my claws round and soft like noodles.

She floats closer and inspects them. "Oh~, interesting… You surprised me at first because I couldn't believe that anyone so young would invest so heavily in that skill, but now, you've made me quite intrigued with your spell."

So I give her an explanation of [Soul Manipulation] and Gify's custom [Materialize] spell.

She turns to the little gluttonous thing who's currently wolfing down a whole sock not-banana and smiles adorably as she exclaims "My! What a helpful little one. If only the nature spirits of the Enchanted Forest were as helpful as you, we'd be so much more productive!"

"Gih!" Gify chirps angrily and glares at me.

Belind covers her mouth with her hand in surprise. "You don't say!"

"What, I don't-…" I try to defend myself.

"Gueh gah gueeh!" Gify lays it down vengefully.

I clamp my mouth shut and glare at the white, feathery little shit on my shoulder.

Belind interlaces her fingers together in front of her waist and gives us a gentle look as she confesses, "I'm always envious of the relationship others have with their nature spirits."

"Why? Do you want to befriend one?" Alissa questions her curiously.

The little pixie chuckles and flaps her wings. "It's a bad idea. The gnomes say that we pixies are already mischievous enough, and we don't need to make it even worse."

"Two Gifys doesn't sound that bad, especially if one is a beautiful young woman," I smoothly flirt.

She lets out high-pitched giggles as she covers her mouth, then she gives me a sassy look. "My, it seems that most of what I heard about you, Your Highness Wolf, has a good deal of truth behind it."

I share a concerned look with Alissa and calmly reply, "Well, I'm glad that people aren't spreading lies about me, but I still ask that you keep an open mind because I know how easily misunderstood my actions can be."

She nods repeatedly. "I understand. To give you the benefit of the doubt is the least we can do after your actions saved so many lives today."

I smile a bit shyly. Though she has enough "Charisma" to compete with Ciel in the "angel" department, I'm way too experienced to let her charm me so easily. Roxanne's succubi powers trained me well enough to be able to resist that.

"We're happy to be of help to fellow humanoids," I smoothly affirm with a nod.

She smiles, then hums in thought, "Hm… since we're talking about rumors surrounding you, there's something my brother might want to hear."

We nod and give her leave, and while she goes to fetch the dull Prince, the girls and I savor my new invention. The girls all approve of "café com leite" with chocolate cookies, even the human inside Aoi.

Oh, yeah… that's the good stuff.

"What did you do to the coffee?" Looklwind immediately asks as he approaches.

"I added milk to mellow out the bitterness. You should try it sometime," I happily suggest.

The Prince simply frowns and coughs, then glances at the pixie.

Belind chuckles softly and continues, "Brother, did you hear that the Ryder family has started a 'Research Institute' in Escanso?"

Oh, I'm surprised she heard about it.

His frown immediately disappears, and his eyebrows rise up as he hums, "Hm? What sort of research?"

Now it's my turn to take over, "So far, only Chimera airplanes, but just yesterday, they showed us the results of a different approach to airplane design. I'm confident in saying that the Raki airplane we've created is the fastest vehicle in existence."

"Oh~…" Belind coos as her red lips take an "o" shape, and her blonde eyebrows rise in surprise.

"Quite impressive," Looklwind mumbles, looking intrigued.

I smile gracefully and continue, "But that's just the beginning. There's much more that can be researched in the field of mechanics, but we lack the people with formal knowledge in this area of study, specifically, mathematics."

"Oh~…" Now the Prince mirrors the Princess' previous expression.

Seeing how the gnomes already know how to build caterpillar tracks, perhaps they have a greater understanding of mechanics than the Chimeras, who have primarily focused on aerodynamics. If I can recruit some gnomes, I might be able to create tanks and cars.

"It's why we're learning algebra. It's necessary for us to really understand how everything connects," Lina suddenly joins in.

"See? She understands it!" Looklwind exclaims as he glares at his sister.

"Well, it was Wolfy who helped me see things this way," Lina shyly adds.

Belind sighs and slowly nods as she tiredly replies, "Yes, yes, you're all worshipers of Knowledge or Intelligence, and now that I've found something to connect both parties together, you can begin your impenetrable conversation." Then she smiles and giggles softly.

Then I interject before we all start nerding out, "The mathematical language you use may be different from what they use, so why don't we begin with something simple to gauge and determine any terminological differences?"

The Prince nods in understanding and calmly questions, "Do you know of Dreikoh's Theorem?"

"We don't," I immediately reply.

"The relation between the sides of a square that make up a triangle?"

Pythagoras?

I nod. "That, I know."

"Geometry?" Aoi suddenly questions, and her draconic voice visibly scares the Prince, making Belind grin smugly.

"Y-yes, geometry," he stiffly agrees.

Our high-brow talk is interrupted by the ethereal ringing of a bell, then all chatter at the party dies down as we turn towards the source.

King Lookwir floats towards the center of the rooftop, slightly above our eye level, then the shiny old gnome trades his grandfatherly air for a more serious expression and begins his speech, "Noblemen and noblewomen from all over the empire, the nation of Gnomeria thanks you all for answering our call. As many of you may have noticed, our expectations of this monster attack were completely crushed by their sudden evolution."

He turns to us, and the grandpa aura returns as he smiles. "The extent of these changes wouldn't have been noticed so early if the Royal Ryder family hadn't engaged the main insect army before they reached our defensive lines. Their efforts saved many lives, and so, for their bravery, they have our gratitude." Then he nods respectfully.

A violet and gold hydrangea with butterfly wings floats beside him and holds his hand, then she assumes a more stoic expression as she continues, "And with all of you holding your defense tunnels so fiercely, Reef Lord Graf was freed to wipe out the lava hybrids that were slowly making their way towards our town. Thousands of monsters were reaped like harvest day. Their effort allowed our army to concentrate on securing our choke points, and so, for their skill, they have our gratitude."

The King turns towards Graf and finishes, "Since you both did so much more than was originally agreed to, we believe that you deserve a suitable reward. Talk to our advisors and ask them about what we have to offer."

I feel quite humbled by their kindness. I just wonder how I'd feel if I had to ask for outside help to defend our territory. To know one's limits is essential for a Lord because if we miscalculate things, our heads will roll.

The nobles clap respectfully, and an old, refined gnome approaches us. Yunia immediately takes over, and her first question is about their enchanted emplacements.

The Misty Fox Elder comes to talk to Alissa, and Lina, Aoi, and Looklwind don't need my guidance anymore, so I feel like it's a good time for me to take my leave.

Ciel decides to accompany me, so I give the royals a brief goodbye and ask for a servant to take me to our men.

We enter a large hall in the main castle building, and our ears are blasted by upbeat music.

Immediately, I notice that the men have formed into four groups. The first is the soldiers dancing in the middle of the room while drinking copious amounts of alcohol; the second is the wounded (all blind or partially), who are laying in lounging chairs with a glowing gem tied to the side of each of their heads and are surrounded by their friends; the third is the elves around the twins; and the fourth is the non-elves surrounding the Grosshils.

It's not a complete segregation, but it does make me a bit annoyed that the "cliques" are so obvious.

Ciel goes to do her thing as the angelic idol for the wounded while I go to Hermann and Klein.

"You don't drink?" I question the tall boy with a raised eyebrow.

"A knight shouldn't let a vice become a weakness," he cryptically replies, and I raise an eyebrow at his bullshit. "And I'm weak to alcohol…" He ashamedly admits.

"Alright… have you tried Eia?" I ask with a grin.

He quickly glances at Ahren and Klein, then hesitantly replies, "No, but perhaps I should."

"Ooh~… can we get some Cinco Flores?" Klein asks excitedly, but Anton and Ahren frown in worry.

But then, Sandoro interrupts our conversation, "Your Highness, I've just received word that Lyle has arrived in Escanso."

Oh, boy.

A note from Manasong

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Chapter 123: Victors - Part 3

Nooo… I wanted to keep flirting with Belind all day long!

I thought about taking it easy today, but we're going to the capital tomorrow, and I still need to introduce Nono to Ahren's sister. So, if I also want to give Lyle a running start into electronics, it has to be now.

Pussy, or nerding out? Bros, or hoes?

Alissa's calming voice echoes in my soul space, "I'll make sure that she remembers you. It already seems like the Prince isn't the only one wanting to take a trip to Escanso, anyway."

I nod internally and sadly whimper, "Thank you, my love."

I return to Escanso, and both Poosh and Osaria are waiting for me at the entrance to the Network.

I smile warmly at them and ask, "How did you know I was coming?"

Osaria grins as she crudely, but accurately, puts it, "Unless you were balls deep in another woman, there's very little that would keep you from coming to greet your boy toy."

I chuckle bitterly. "I can't say I disagree with that, though I'm quite sad that I can't flirt with a pixie princess all day."

Both my milfs step forward at the same time, then they stop and share a look.

"Together," Poosh suggests, and Osaria gently nods, then they both undo their tops, baring their delicious breasts.

But why stop there? They then smother me with their softness, coffee from the front, milk from the back.

"That does make me feel a bit better," I admit, my voice muffled by their bodies.

"If you wish to have me, I'm ready for you, Your Highness," Poosh softly whispers in my left ear.

"If you don't take her, then I will," Osaria huskily whispers on my right.

I stand on my tiptoes so that I can actually breathe and speak properly. "I just had a sex marathon with the wives, so I'm not particularly hungry right now. The two of you also still have work to do, so I'll take both of you at the same time later today."

"He actually said no!" Osaria cries out in horror.

"That, I didn't expect," Poosh states, eyes open wide in surprise.

I pout at them and squeeze their asses as I grumble, "Har, har, very funny."

"'Har, har'? Sometimes you use the oddest of expressions," Osaria curiously remarks.

I narrow my eyes and glare as I warn them, "If you two continue to tease my masculinity, I'll make sure that you can't walk without a [Heal] after I get my cock inside of you."

Poosh calmly retorts, "I believe the phrase 'don't threaten me with a good time' has been uttered a few times by your wives already."

I let my jaw hang open and stare at her in surprise. "Even you?"

She nods and readjusts her round glasses as she categorically states, "My job is to ensure your happiness, and I know very well how fond you are of teasing."

I snort. "Well, I've been read like an open book, it seems."

"Better than an unstable, unpredictable, unapproachable man," Osaria dryly affirms, and I feel like there's some history behind those words.

I hum as I accept her take on it, "Well, if being simple is to your liking, then I'll gladly remain as I am."

But Osaria pouts, her dark, luscious lips forming into a shape that's begging to be kissed. "I didn't mean it like that."

"Sometimes, he actually acts his age," Poosh comments wryly.

I cough and add, "I'll stop before I embarrass myself any further."

"Awn…" Osaria whines teasingly.

"Back to work!" I shout and push them away with my claws that have been sunk into the soft flesh of their asses for most of this chat.

Lyle and his companions have been invited into the castle, so they're waiting in the main hall right next to the Hub Room I arrived in, and after a few steps, I have them in sight.

"Wol-… Wolf!" Lyle hesitates and shouts as he notices me, my new, draconic characteristics surprising him for a moment. He's still the same young boy with black hair and wild eyes as before due to his level slowing his aging, but for once, his hair is nicely combed, giving him an even stronger boyish air.

My eyes are then attracted to Hatara, the shy and young, raven-haired girl who changed into a confident, gorgeous woman once she seduced her now-husband. She has the air of a noblewoman, which instantly makes her attractive to me, and the thin, loose clothes she wears are provocative, hinting at a deliciously frail body underneath them.

Garanae, the anxious husband in question, stares at the statues of the previous Lords with childish curiosity. The blonde, well-built boy has gone for the refined look, and the tightness of his clothes reveals a "Strength" that's a bit unusual for a mage.

Hatara gives me a kind smile while Garanae stiffly turns around and walks back to the set of sofas at the center of the hall.

"Hello Lyle, Hatara, Garanae," I coolly greet them back and offer my claws for a handshake. "Don't worry, I can dull them at will," I add with a smile as I notice their hesitation.

Lyle's hand is soft like a woman's, with not even a hint of calluses from holding a wand or a staff. Even Hatara's aren't as soft as his due to her training to be a knight. And Garanae's the only one with a man's hand, though his grip is pretty loose due to his apparent fear of me.

"I heard about your change, but it's still quite impressive to see it in person," Lyle comments as he admires my mirror-like scales.

"I'm just thankful that the Gods still had the decency to keep me handsome after playing with my race," I wryly reply.

The three of them chuckle, though Hatara's is considerably louder. Perhaps, it's because she's a pious healer that she finds these sorts of jokes funnier than the average person, which makes me a bit fond of her sense of humor.

Then I take a seat before them. There's Tonique at the table, but after drinking coffee earlier, I don't think I need any more stimulants.

I give them a gentle gaze as I announce, "Welcome to Escanso, my home since a few day-cycles ago."

Hatara replies in kind, "Congratulations. We were kind of expecting something like this after you said that you were going to conquer a dungeon."

"Well, but maybe not quite so fast," Lyle adds as he looks around at the huge white hall.

I smile wryly and retort, "If we're going to talk about expectations, I certainly never imagined that you'd manage to go so far as to create a new field of logic with just a few pointers."

Lyle mumbles as he awkwardly plays with his hair, making it disheveled again just like I remember it being, "I just… I just knew that there was something special about your advice, so I believed in you and continued my research until I finally found a way."

Both Hatara and Garanae give me a suspicious smirk, and I feel like I'm part of a joke that I'm not privy to.

Lyle's words make a fair bit of sense. I'm not just someone with a "hunch," I knew that it's possible, I just didn't know how to build it. My specialty is programming and A.I., not electronics.

Still, I don't even really remember what I said; it was just a few words at most.

I nod and assert, "But the work isn't done with just that. There's a lot that we must build now that you've invented Lylean Logic."

Lyle raises his eyebrows in surprise and gives me a wild smile. "You have more ideas to share with me?" He asks excitedly.

"Oh, you have no idea," I huskily reply with a grin. "I want you to work for the Royal Ryder Research Institute. We'll get you a team so that you can pump out new 'electrolfic' inventions as fast as you can come up with them."

The word "electrolf" still tastes sour on my tongue, though.

And Lyle's wild eyes glint with excitement. "I'd love to!" He eagerly accepts.

I hum and turn to the Taranoa couple as I continue, "If all three of you want to stay in Escanso, we can arrange for a mansion in the inner circle for you to live in," I casually offer.

And Hatara and Garanae share a surprised look that quickly changes into happiness.

"We'd be honored to!" The blonde boy immediately replies. His disposition to me is really quite different now that I'm a noble too, but I'm not petty enough to give him a hard time about it, except for some teasing.

But that's not important. We have everything we need coming our way, so now, we can begin building a bridge to the skies.

Oh, yeah. It's all coming together.

I motion for the maid on standby to come closer and give her an order, "Call Poosh. She'll help them choose a new home." Then I turn to Lyle and grin excitedly, but the intensity of my stare makes him swallow heavily. "Now, let's start talking about what you should build next."

Meanwhile, Lina turns to Prince Looklwind and softly asks, trying not to smirk, "Have you ever heard of Lylean Logic?"

The dull Prince's eyes slowly widen as his recollection seems to perk him up. "A few things, yes. Why?" He hums back.

She lets her adorable smile show as she continues, "Lyle Ryzek, its creator, has just recently agreed to work at our Institute."

The Prince breathes in deeply. Enticing him is just so easy.

"Your Highness Ciel, I have a message addressed to you," the gnome messenger reports.

"Let's hear it," she gently replies, and the gnome just stares at her blankly, his pale face slowly reddening.

The knight beside her coughs, and the gnome snaps out of it. "O-one of the captives has woken up and is calling for you, so the head priest kindly wishes to have a word with you about him."

Her eyebrows rise in surprise. "Oh, I see… I'll go visit them in a moment."

The Lordsguard who stay behind are sad to see their idol leave while those who accompany her don't seem to care that they're missing the rest of the party.

Gnomeria's temple is just like any other, a white half sphere, but Ciel has been called to the "House of Healing" beside it. The only difference from the usual gnomic house is that it's a huge pumpkin instead of the crooked little towers of round rooms stacked on top of each other.

The House is quite busy with people coming and going all the time while healers tend to the wounded that have been laid out everywhere. Even the temple grounds are covered in the tents of a field hospital.

There's not enough room inside to accomodate all of the Lordsguard escorting her, so only one knight follows her in as the messenger guides them into the House. Though the pumpkin is already huge, the interior is suspiciously roomy, making Ciel suspect that a [Warp Space] enchantment is at work.

She sits on a sofa in the corner of the lobby while the messenger goes to fetch the head priest. It's surprising that everything is human-sized, but this is simply because the House has to take in a lot of adventurers, who are mostly non-gnomes.

A minute later, a rotund old gnome in priest robes, wearing his white beard like a scarf, waddles towards them with the messenger in tow.

"Lord Ciel, I thank you for answering my call," the head priest greets her with a short bow since his belly is in the way. "I'm Gottfried, the head priest. It's an honor to have a Blessed here."

"Always happy to help," she gently replies with an angelic smile.

But Gottfried plays with his beard anxiously. "I really hope you are because this man is… something."

Her smile is quickly replaced with a frown. "You're making me worried."

And the small man becomes even smaller as a hint of shame is shown in him. "Oh, well, it's not something bad. He just… wants to pledge loyalty to your family."

I actually get pulled out of my conversation with Lyle due to my surprise.

"Why…?" Ciel questions confusedly.

The gnome shrugs. "Weredog adventurers are always… 'hard-headed.'"

"I prefer the term intense," Ciel soberly replies.

"An adventurer trying to use honor to get closer to royalty? Not unheard of," Yunia harshly remarks in my soul space, but Ciel takes issue with that.

She shakes her head and calmly affirms, "I'll talk to him, it's no problem." Then she annoyedly replies to Yunia, "He went through Hell and came back. He at least deserves to be heard."

Yunia doesn't respond; she just wants Ciel to be careful.

Then Gottfried nods and guides her further in.

The captives are all in the same room, being slowly healed by [Regeneration] magic gems while still being kept in an induced sleep, and a couple of tired-looking gnome priests are watching over them.

"The curtains. His name is Brett," Gottfried whispers and points to the only bed that's cordoned off with black curtains. The man who woke up should've regained new eyes through [Regrow Limbs], so they must be quite sensitive to light right now.

Ciel nods and walks up to the curtains, then she softly calls, "Brett? I'm Lord Ciel Ryder. You called for me."

"Ahck!" A sudden whimper comes from the other side, making the vigilant gnomes jump in their seats. "P-please, come in!"

She crosses through the curtains and sees an Asian weredog man wriggling to get himself upright into a proper seated position, but he's failing. Without even stumps of his arms and legs, he's pitifully helpless.

"Let me help you," she offers and walks up to him.

"N-no, it's fine. I can just-…" He nervously tries to stop her, but she ignores him and moves without any hesitation.

She turns his pillow 90º degrees, then deftly pushes him up so that he can rest his back against it.

"I have a lot of experience with helping the wounded," she kindly remarks, then takes a step back.

Brett is a blonde weredog man with faintly bronze skin, a round and rather cute face, the characteristic eyes of an Asian person, and pointy orange ears. His body is quite muscular, though not at the same, monstrous level of Rande or Palo. He's still lacking his front teeth, which might've been removed just so that the monsters could put in a wider feeding tube.

"What did you wish to talk to me about?" She gently asks and holds her hands in front of her in an assured, but welcoming pose.

He nervously glances at the stern, armored knight behind her and swallows heavily as he builds up his resolve.

After a moment of hesitation, he begins his earnest speech, "I apologize for bothering you with my troubles, but I really needed to speak with you. I lost everything because I was arrogant, stupid, and… weak." Then he looks down at his own body and grits his teeth in anger. He seems to be disgusted with himself that he has to admit this, but the fire of self-loathing that Ciel sees in his eyes seems to fuel his conviction to look back up at her again and continue. "So I wish to pledge my life to someone who might have a use for me, someone with honor, who wouldn't misuse my 'power.'"

"'Power'?" Ciel reflexively questions with suspicion.

He nods slowly. "The priests call it a 'Gift.' I can harden my body at will, making me indestructible, but the monsters just held me down until I passed out…" -His jaw trembles as he resists the instinct to shrink in shame- "then they used my body as they wished."

We all stop whatever we're doing to listen to him.

Ciel turns to look at the knight and whispers, "Don't let anyone get near."

The man nods and closes the curtains, then he stands guard outside.

She turns back to Brett and takes a step closer so that she can whisper, "If you wish to work for us, it'll become known that you're Gifted. This means that if you ever decide to part ways with us, there'll be people all over the empire trying to coerce you into working for them."

Brett smiles bitterly, calmer now that she didn't reject him outright. "I'm happy that you'd give me the choice to leave your service, but I've lost everything… I mean it when I say that I wish to pledge my life to you."

She sighs and shakes her head. "You may say that now, but things change. Not even Blood Slavery is immutable."

His pointy ears flatten a bit, but his conviction is still strong. "I'm sorry for being so childish, but when I heard about the Ryder family, of what you achieved, I just felt that you were the right people to serve."

"Don't turn him down," Yunia requests through [Bind].

"How fast you change your tune," Ciel dryly replies.

But Yunia is unfazed. "I'm merely pragmatic. You can be the heart that guides us while I fulfill my role."

Ciel frowns and looks away, deep in thought. She won't discuss philosophy with either of them right now, so she reflects on the safest course of action for right now.

After a short moment, the answer becomes clear to her, so she asserts to Brett, "After going through what you did, there's no way that you're of sound mind right now. Therefore, we'll let you join our Lordsguard for the time being, and perhaps, at a later date, we'll accept your pledge of loyalty."

Brett lets out a sigh of relief and happily accepts her demands, "Thank you, thank you for listening to my unreasonable request."

She hums and grabs his shoulders, then she slides him back down on his bed. "For now, you should rest. We'll take you back to Escanso later today along with the rest of our men."

What a day…

"And there's still another half to go," Alissa wryly remarks in my soul space.

"Surely, all of today's excitement is over already?" Yunia sarcastically asks.

"Don't jinx it," I jokingly reply.

Alissa snorts. "Well, that's a silly Earthling belief."

I smile wryly. "You forget that the Gods are always listening."

And she chuckles rather nervously.

A note from Manasong

Hall of Fame of Patrons

The patrons who support Rupegia shall have their names sung by the bards for they deserve the glory and honor. Their names are:

Prince PreownedFIN.

Prince Creamy Spinach.

Prince Owldente.

Prince Charlie Foxtrot.

Lord Andrew Meyers.

Lord Novgarod.

Lord Michale Erwin.

Lord Bakerdea.

Lord Maurice.

Lord Mattirro Draca.

Lord Sean Drake.

Lord FrostyCube.

Lord Mike Bartter.

Lord Warwulfv.

Lord Jorge Franco.

Lord Khristopher Welsh.

Lord DJ.

Lord Tenebris Lupus.

Lord Paul Daval.

Lord Paul Daval.

Lord Bradly.

Lord AndreyUC.

Lord Tmac.

Lord School Work.

Lord Gwendolyn Simmons-LaRose.

Lord CopeyDunt.

Lord Warwulfv.

Lord James.

Lord BlindTactic.

Noble Salty Panda.

Noble Mild Fracas.

Noble Aclys.

Noble CarlBaxter.

Noble d3235.

Noble Cidant.

Noble Frank de Jong.

Noble Shai.

Leave a rating or a review to help me rise to the top or fix my shameful understanding of prose.

Take a look over my blog where all information about the world of Rupegia will be posted.

Join the Discord and discuss, or rant, or meme, or try and fight me so your waifu gets more screentime.

Become a Patron and read chapters in advance, or read the side-stories, or leave your mark on the story, or help choose the next artwork or the next side-story.

Chapter 124: Last-Minute Business - Part 1

A note from Manasong

Attention: to conform to the limit of mature content (more than just sexual content) allowed in a novel, I've censored this chapter. You can look for the uncensored version here.

A fellow Gifted, huh? His story seems similar to mine, back when we ran to Confiel for safety, though he lost everything, while I managed to keep the girls safe.

But we'll make use of him as he wishes, for sure.

"We need to have him sworn in as a knight as soon as possible and even give him advance payment," Yunia suddenly chimes in.

"Why?" I question.

"The Purification doesn't accept last-minute additions, so if we wish for him to participate, which we really do, then we need proof that he's our knight before it starts."

"I don't think he'll be ready for it. It's too soon, and he probably wants to fight monsters, not other humanoids," Ciel sternly chimes in.

But Yunia is ready with a categorical reply, "If he wishes to serve us, to be useful to us, then he needs to do more than just kill monsters for us."

Ciel understands that, but she still thinks that Brett's mental health is more important. "We'll see how well he heals," she affirms with finality.

"Wolf, what's wrong?" Lyle confusedly asks.

And I decide to just let him in on the secret, "I have a way to communicate wordlessly, and I was using it just now."

He blinks blankly, not sure how to take that, so I just smile and pull us back on track, "What we should build next is a 'state storage.' It needs to store the zeros or ones, the falses or trues, in 'addresses,' which should all be arranged in a numbered sequence. This way, the 'reader' can be moved left or right any number of times to access these addresses."

He nods impassively. "Okay, but why should we do that?"

I calmly answer, "To store data. We'll store numbers in binary so that the 'reader' can access them at later dates."

"Wouldn't it be faster to just write them down?"

"Not if the reader is fast enough. With complex calculations, there are dozens of numbers, so inputting them manually and writing down the results can be time-consuming and prone to human error. With automatic storage and retrieval, there's little room for anything to go wrong."

He suddenly hums excitedly as something occurs to him, "Ah~, the priests of Mac Gantus use large engines to calculate the phases of the moon; they'll have a lot of use for this!"

I grin in delight. "Then perhaps they'll be our first client."

Ciel returns to the Lordsguard party while leaving a few men with Brett, then Yunia secures a hundred gnomic enchanted weapons that we'll distribute among the villages in our territory since they need them the most.

I pull out the golems. They'll definitely be very useful in helping me remember how to build computers from scratch because four heads are better than just one.

In the middle of the afternoon, Hukarere suddenly appears in the castle and joins me. Lyle's eyes follow her bare behind, but his gaze doesn't actually seem to be spicy.

"Hey, there," I softly greet my white wolf with a smile.

She gives me a guilty smile and cutely explains, "Sorry for intruding on your conversation, but I was just feeling a bit bored, and Poosh told me that you might not mind."

I nod and motion for her to come to me. "Of course, I don't. Come here."

She sits on my lap, and my claws immediately go for her pale chest and ghost pointy bits.

Lyle's eyebrows slowly rise up his forehead, but he doesn't get an unsheathing.

He might actually be gay… it would explain a few things.

"There's certainly enough bi women around you to justify having a few gay men, too," Roxanne's giggly voice suddenly echoes in my soul space, but I just ignore her.

My hands wander all over Hukarere's body, but I avoid her increasingly warm and reddened parts. I feel like playing with her today.

Her breathing gradually quickens, then she suddenly turns to the side and starts slowly licking my neck, letting out little growls whenever I touch a pointy bit. Gify knows where this is going, so she just drops from my shoulder and nestles on the sofa's arm.

She's indeed a work of art. Her abs, her chest, her furred back, her glorious wolf head, even her strong, draconic legs are alluring. But she still isn't dazzling enough to distract me from my nerd talk, though I might as well be developing a spiciness sub-process for my whole body instead of just my tentacles since I make her ready without even really paying attention.

Lyle ignores her completely, and we continue the conversation, but then she starts fondling me through my pants, telling me that she's ripe for the taking.

I run a claw along her entrance and scoop up some of her sticky juices, then I raise the claw and show it to them. "Do you mind if I do her? I think I've made her too ready," I kindly ask with a smirk.

"G-go ahead…" Lyle sheepishly replies, then Hukarere happily frees my throbbing friend from my pants.

I nod and assure him, "The Chimeras like to do these kinds of things in public, so you'd better get used to it if you want to live here."

"Hm…" He hums absentmindedly as he stares at my sword being slowly polished by her pale hands.

Yep… definitely a bit gay.

Hukarere licks my cheek and releases my member, then she bends over on the sofa and spreads her open as she gives me "that look." The smell of a ripe woman is enough on its own to make me ready to go again, but those eyes awaken the dragon, forcing me to keep myself under control so that I can talk and plow at the same time.

I push my hips forward and savor the feeling.

That's the good stuff.

Then my body moves on its own as my mind focuses back on the conversation again.

The girls come back one by one, and Lina decides to join us, the talking, not the plowing. She feels a bit envious of Hukarere, but she definitely doesn't have the courage to be done in public.

Once Yunia returns, though, Ciel reminds her that she has something very important to do before tomorrow.

"Brás," we all clearly hear a rare cheekiness in Ciel's tone.

Yunia stops at the entrance of the Network, slightly irked that she's been clashing with Ciel so often, but the thing that annoys her the most is that she's right. Yunia did say to Lord Lotus that she'd visit her former fiance soon.

"Fine…" She grumbles through gritted teeth and returns whence she came.

She sends a short message to Lotus and only has to wait a few minutes for the reply, which informs her that they're ready to receive her, then she crosses the [Eternal Gate] to Goldcross.

The air instantly becomes a lot more humid and cold as it's currently raining in the busy merchant city, and the high ceiling of the mansion she's in only helps the temperature fall a few more degrees.

Built in the overgrown style, there's moss and vines covering most of the brickwork, and delicate-looking plants make up the decorations. Silken flowers; long and colorful leaves that act as curtains; fuzzy-looking, unknown plants. The construction isn't impressive, but the decorations certainly are.

An elven maid guides Yunia further in, up to the fifth floor of the tall mansion, and out onto a glass balcony where the cutest Trap I've ever seen was waiting for her, sitting at a glass table.

Brás Angila is the spitting image of Lotus, his mother, though he's cuter and obviously a lot younger. However, he's not as feminine as Silvano. His face may share many traits with a beautiful woman's, but the overall shape is still that of a man's, though his long, wavy, fabulous hair hides most of it.

A flood of memories comes rushing back to Yunia as she takes in his beautiful face, and they show that his appearance is quite different from his personality. He's a strong, determined man, the proud son of a Crown Lord, and someone who takes offense when his former fiancée, who was set to be executed, instead survives and never comes to say even a single word to him.

His glare is quite intense, and the dragon in me commends him for his composure, but Yunia isn't some innocent maiden who needs to be babysat by me, so I just let her fight this on her own.

Intermission – Yunia

The storm within my heart takes hold of my body, freezing me in place, but the moment it begins to die down, righteous anger rises to the surface and overwhelms all other emotions.

"You don't have the right to be that angry at me!" I exclaim as I take a seat before him in a huff, then I cross my arms and legs and glare right back at him.

His pretty face warps into an angry scowl, actually managing to strike fear into my heart. "You…! I thought you were dead! That the rumors were lies! I mourned for you!" He growls in fury, and I clench my jaw, matching the intensity of his expression.

Sure, I understand what you went through, but it wasn't so simple for me!

"I gave myself to another man!" I shout back, and the way he grimaces shows the effect of these specific words on him. I learned from Alissa how to be brutal against a man's confidence. "Everything changed after that, so I didn't believe anything good would come from us meeting again."

"You made that decision for both of us," he slowly points out, a little more composed than a second ago.

I slam my fist on the table in indignation. "I had to!"

And his anger flares once again. "Mother was right, you became a coward!" He bitterly shouts.

I snort in derision. "Your words sound hollow to me. You have no idea what we've been through."

"This isn't-…!" He catches himself, then looks away and shakes his head as anger is quickly replaced by disappointment. "This isn't how I wanted things to go. I just wanted to…"

I mercilessly finish for him, "To what…? Return to the old days? Become lovers again? Neither of those things will ever happen."

His anger recedes as he begins to see the truth, but he still insists with a hesitant suggestion, "Just friends…?"

And that's just another wound for my heart. I shake my head and decline, "I don't want to be friends… because it hurts to even look at you."

This takes him aback, and we both fall silent, struggling to put our feelings into words. The gentle rain dulls our anger, but the gloomy atmosphere only makes us sad, instead.

I just don't know what to say, or what to do to fix this situation. Or maybe, we just can't fix it…

His posture relaxes, and he closes his eyes. "What happened to you wasn't fair," he suddenly mumbles, then his green jewels stare at me again, this time with a hint of kindness.

But I don't want to let him get close.

"It wasn't… not to the Chosen Descendants who were executed where I lived," I bluntly reply.

He grunts back, "Screw imperial law."

And I remain impassive as I slowly explain, "It's there for a reason. Look at me, I came back, and now I'm in a position to exact revenge, but can I truly execute another Chosen Descendant without becoming a hypocrite? And then, what if the Descendant I spare decides to take revenge on me, on my family?"

He sighs annoyedly and adjusts his gorgeous golden hair, then he frowns at me. "Alright, alright. You're in a horrible position, I get it, but that doesn't excuse never trying to get in contact with me, at least to explain yourself, to save me from the grief of mourning."

I resist the urge to cast [Mask] because Wolfy hates that spell.

No, it's because I'm a coward…

I'm afraid of the pain, and I use pragmatism to numb me to it.

[Mask] is how I got over the death of my parents without shedding a tear. It's how I managed to integrate into the Ryders without losing myself to grief. It helped me pack away my pain until I had time to deal with it.

And perhaps now's the time to deal with part of it.

"I'm sorry… I didn't think of your pain," I finally admit, and I feel the tears starting to well up. "I loved you, I truly did, but now, everything's changed, and I can only think of my husband."

He gives me a pained look, warping his beautiful face in ways it shouldn't, but I need to make it clear that there's no room for him in my heart.

He suddenly turns his head away and sniffles, not ready to share his pain with mine. "I'll one day become a Lord, too, so we need a working relationship," he changes the topic, his tone beginning to waver.

"That is a given," I softly reply with a nod.

He swallows heavily and stares at me again as he affirms, "Then perhaps, with time, we'll be able to make each other laugh again…"

I nod and feel the silent tears running down my cheeks.

"Perhaps…" I breathe.

He flashes a pained smile, then looks away and goes silent again.

"I think I should go," I whisper, and he nods once without looking back.

Intermission end.

"I think we've covered enough of the baseline concepts for you to begin work," I suddenly interject, then I gently free my thigh from Hukarere's sleeping head and get up. "I have something else I need to do right now."

"Of course," Lyle accepts with repeated nods and starts organizing the papers on the table.

I walk back to the Hub Room and find a stone-faced Yunia as she comes back from Goldcross, then I immediately pull her into a tight hug.

"You can let it go now," I whisper into her long ear as I stand on my tiptoes.

She used [Mask] so that the men wouldn't see her cry, but now she's home, so she drops it, and her face warps in pain.

She's in need of comfort, so I grow tentacles and gently caress her back as she silently cries on my shoulder.

This is a really awkward place to cry, though.

I lift her up with my tentacles and open a [Gate] to our bedroom. She squeaks in surprise, then giggles softly as I lower her onto the bed.

"There we go, now we can cuddle comfortably," I whisper huskily and climb onto the bed, then I spoon her and massage her elastic ears with my tentacles. Her glorious drills are kind of comfy to hug from behind, and their perfume is also a plus.

She sighs tiredly, then rests her head against my chest and closes her eyes. She finally pulled that tooth, so now, her heart needs some rest.

Ciel leaves the comforting to me since she has something else she needs to do today.

She goes to the outer Shell of the castle grounds and climbs up to the balcony on it that overlooks the Prasa de Ananci. Teresina greets her with a curt nod without getting up from her seat, and Ciel returns a gentle smile.

A large crowd gathers below them, curious about what she has to say. The number of people watching her gives her butterflies, but we're all inside her head, ready to give her support whenever she needs it.

She hesitates for a couple of seconds as she builds up her courage, then she approaches the railing and takes the offered [Project Voice] magic tool from Poosh.

The murmuring dies down as they recognize her, which is easy considering that her huge portrait is right above her.

She holds the tool against her throat and begins her speech, "Gentlemen and gentlewomen, today I've called you all here to announce a new benefit that the Lordship has decided to grant all of our citizens, no matter your class or social status.

"Right now, there are over a hundred healers traveling to every city, town, and village in the Western High Forest. They've been hired using the money you pay as taxes, and their job will be to offer treatment to those who need it the most."

The crowd starts murmuring in wonder, but the Townsguard scattered among them quiet them down.

"For those who pay their taxes on time every month, you'll receive a small blue mark in your ID tablets. If you show this mark to any one of those healers, you'll receive up to ten silver coins' worth of free treatment every month!"

And now the crowd bursts with chatter, the commoners sounding quite excited while the nobles just snort and begin to leave.

Even for adventurers, ten silver coins is just one bad fight, but for the poor and the old, just this amount of treatment on its own will make a big difference in easing their injuries or saving them from diseases.

After waiting a moment to let them talk a bit more, she raises her hand, and the Townsguard silence the crowd again.

"I repeat! Make sure your taxes are paid on time, and you'll benefit from free health care. Even if you lack a home or a job, you can still receive free care if you show proof of citizenship!"

The crowd then becomes slightly confused. Nobody expected that we'd care for the homeless too. Aside from the temple, few ever do. Giving people a chance to get well and return to society doesn't hurt, though.

But we aren't doing this to be seen as saints. Our first goal is to make sure that everyone has IDs, the second is to get a census on the people and what their conditions are like, the third is to encourage the workers to value paying their taxes, and the fourth is to get the lower class on our side.

The merchant class is our future enemy. They hoard the wealth that we want and control the minds of the workers, so if we try to tax them more, they'll quickly turn on us and mess us up.

The Guilds and Companies control nearly all of the Tribunal since its representation is based on the number of hired workers, so if we can get the Guilds on our side, then we'll have one foot in the Tribunal already while our relationship with the Leigelas family might help us get the other in too.

The Root Lords will all fall in line as well once they receive the gnomic weapons and the Shell project for the villages takes off. The Crown Lords are seemingly neutral towards us (except for Confiel) since we still need to prove ourselves to them with our maneuver against Katasko, but we have nothing to fear from them. The Elder Council is a wild card, but hopefully, they'll leave us alone since their policy is one of non-interference unless we mess up.

That only leaves the Heart Lords for us to persuade, but there's still a long road ahead for us to get them on our side.

The talk of plotting calms Yunia down, helping her mind focus on something else besides the pain, so we have a casual conversation about our plans for the Purification.

A note from Manasong

Hall of Fame of Patrons

The patrons who support Rupegia shall have their names sung by the bards for they deserve the glory and honor. Their names are:

Prince PreownedFIN.

Prince Creamy Spinach.

Prince Owldente.

Prince Charlie Foxtrot.

Lord Andrew Meyers.

Lord Novgarod.

Lord Michale Erwin.

Lord Bakerdea.

Lord Maurice.

Lord Mattirro Draca.

Lord Sean Drake.

Lord FrostyCube.

Lord Mike Bartter.

Lord Warwulfv.

Lord Jorge Franco.

Lord Khristopher Welsh.

Lord DJ.

Lord Tenebris Lupus.

Lord Paul Daval.

Lord Paul Daval.

Lord Bradly.

Lord AndreyUC.

Lord Tmac.

Lord School Work.

Lord Gwendolyn Simmons-LaRose.

Lord CopeyDunt.

Lord Warwulfv.

Lord James.

Lord BlindTactic.

Noble Salty Panda.

Noble Mild Fracas.

Noble Aclys.

Noble CarlBaxter.

Noble d3235.

Noble Cidant.

Noble Frank de Jong.

Noble Shai.

Leave a rating or a review to help me rise to the top or fix my shameful understanding of prose.

Take a look over my blog where all information about the world of Rupegia will be posted.

Join the Discord and discuss, or rant, or meme, or try and fight me so your waifu gets more screentime.

Become a Patron and read chapters in advance, or read the side-stories, or leave your mark on the story, or help choose the next artwork or the next side-story.

Chapter 124: Last-Minute Business - Part 2

A note from Manasong

Attention: to conform to the limit of mature content (more than just sexual content) allowed in a novel, I've censored this chapter. You can look for the uncensored version here.

Intermission – Lyle

What the hell was that…? Father warned me about the Chimeras, but I didn't expect him to do just… do it. The golems watched, the maids watched, and even I just sat there and watched!

I saw him… I saw his…!

My hands shake from excitement, but I don't know what exactly did this to me. The meeting, the tea, the proposal, the smell, the talk, or the act.

I guess it was the everything.

I look around my new office. I don't even care about the size of the garden, or the number of bedrooms, or how wide the dining hall is. This is the most important room for me. Big, furnished, and easy to secure against prying eyes. Though it'll eventually be replaced by a secured lab in the Institute, this will do just fine until then.

But he knew… he knew all about electrolfic inventions. It wasn't just a hunch, he knew they were possible… and he might know so much more.

But how…? No, I shouldn't think like that, there's no point in being suspicious or even trying to find out why he's hiding it.

What I need to do is to just trust his word even more because we'll start an electrolfic revolution together!

Intermission end.

The day finally comes to an end, and we're all left rather emotionally exhausted. The coffee helped hide the tiredness, but we had less sleep than usual today, so our energy levels begin to crash.

We're too lazy to wash each other, so we call for the maids to tend to us, and some light flower-finger and sword cleaning goes on as they do, to help us relax and get us into the mood.

I pull Poosh into a kiss, then I let it all out in Iliada's mouth. The young tongue and the experienced one at the same time makes for quite the experience.

But I won't let their caressing make me forget what I promised to Poosh and Osaria.

I use my tentacles to snatch my dark-skinned milf from the maid taking care of her, then I grin and release the dragon. Poor Iliada will be a casualty in this fight, but I know that she'd accept this sort of sacrifice.

Poosh and Osaria hug Iliada from either side, squishing the lithe elven girl with their pillows, making me a bit envious, though not that much since they're all covered in my fluids

There's not much left to wash aside from the three Ravaged women, so we're all soon soaking in the warm water for the second time today. Aoi is the last to join us since she helps the three victims by cleaning them of the precious magical fluids covering their bodies and filling their insides.

Suddenly, I feel a drop of mischief leak through [Bind], immediately putting me on the defensive, but then I notice that it isn't aimed at me, so I just let it happen.

Ciel sits down on Yunia's left while Alissa sits on her right, then the two smirk at the stern elven queen, who raises an eyebrow in suspicion.

"Wolfy showed you a lot of love today, so now, it's our turn to give you some 'comfort,'" Alissa cheekily announces, and the two put their hands on her thighs.

Elves are quick to recognize le-dness, so her breath quickens in anticipation, but then she freezes in fear once she hears their next words.

"Oh, damn. I'm in, literally!" Hana exclaims then immediately begins waddling towards them. Yunia considers whether she should try to escape, but the grips the wives have on her thighs immediately get stronger, preventing her from leaving.

Roxanne and Lina share a shrug, then they join in, too. Aoi would like to milk me as usual, but since a family event is happening, she decides to join them. Klein doesn't know what to do, so I just grab her with a tentacle and push her towards the group party, and she obeys like the good little sl-t she is.

This is a treat for me, and since I've already spent enough time inside a woman today, I just watch the show as the girls abuse every sensitive zone Yunia has.

Hukarere looks at my lonely Weapon with hunger in her eyes, so I switch my points around and cast [Water Breathing] on her so that she can take Aoi's usual spot.

Gify paddles towards me, and I pick her up with my human hands, then I gently caress the sensitive spot on her back, right where her wings join her rib cage. She's a "chibified" being, so her anatomy doesn't make much sense, but her wings still have a special function, which is similar to the crystal of a mage's staff.

Yunia's pain and pleasure stricken face is quite a sight to behold. The way her perfectly built body quivers with each bliss is worthy of being immortalized in a painting.

And I might just do that. I pull out the gnomic [Instant Painting] magic tool and a canvas, then I position them with my tentacles and activate it.

The painting "The Queen, Debased" is complete.

Then I decide to just connect all of the girls' senses through [Bind], and the whole bath echoes with the loud female sounds of my beautiful wives. The golems don't seem to be affected by the pleasure, but they still pay close attention to everything that's going on.

Dinner is a simple elven meal. After the weird food of Gnomeria, we don't have the stomach for anything creative. The not-ratatouille is amazing, though.

"So, tomorrow, you're all going to the Capital?" Osaria questions, and I detect a well-hidden hint of concern in her tone.

"Yes, we are," I casually reply.

"We're going to kick the bug's nest, then run away," Hana cheerfully adds.

"No bug analogies, please," Yunia tiredly requests.

Hana snorts and tries again, "We're going to kick off a bloody party, but we won't stick around to enjoy it."

"You're quite eager to jump into the claws of the imperials," Osaria concernedly points out, but Hana's reply gets stuck in her throat as she suddenly stops to reflect.

And Roxanne doesn't waste the opportunity to tease her mentally, "How uncharacteristic of her."

"Screw you," Hana grumbles back.

Roxanne grins in delight. "Hard, please."

Hana simply ignores her and spends a moment longer on reflecting before confidently asserting, "I'm not just blindly believing in Wolfy. I've paid attention to the meetings, understand all the dangers, and have come to the conclusion that we aren’t being reckless, this time." And she finishes with a wry smile.

Osaria holds her palm against her cheek, then lets out a very motherly sigh and admits, "I can't help myself but worry."

But I only feel warmth in my heart. "We're sorry for worrying you, but we're also thankful that you do," I softly reply, and she gives me a brief pout.

"Is it okay to not be worried about this?" Klein hesitantly asks, her eyes flitting between all of us.

And Yunia categorically answers, "It is, but keep in mind that while we value your loyalty, we don't want your blind faith."

But Klein knits her eyebrows in concern. "I've pledged my life to you, so how can I not believe in you with everything I have?"

And Yunia's tone turns serious. "Because you shouldn't lie to yourself. If you pledged your life, then you need to know when it's time to be true to your vows."

Klein hums and nods diligently. "I understand."

And Alissa kindly interjects, "Knighthood is a very serious position, but you can be sure that we'd never ask for such a sacrifice from you."

But Klein doesn't seem very pleased with that affirmation as she makes a complicated expression.

And seeing that she has nothing to add, Osaria continues, "I was never a good noble because of how much I dislike fighting, so I never tried to contest my Title when Mavel declared us as Fallen."

"Aren't you a Fire mage? They're valuable against monsters," Hana questions curiously.

And Osaria just shrugs. "I never showed any talent for it, so I was just an average one, even for someone with the resources of a noble."

"You do seem to better fit the position of a Lady," Alissa happily affirms.

"That I do," she proudly responds and grins.

"We'll do our best to assuage your worries," I reassure her.

And she rather shyly nods. "Thank you."

After the meal, I quickly create a few dozen more golems for the golem army project, then I rejoin my harem in our game room, and our evening is a lot quieter than usual as we begin to run low on energy.

I want to play with Alissa's ears, but she takes the initiative and begins to slowly wax my scales with a lot of care. She doesn't play fair and uses [Bind] to press all the right buttons, making me quickly fall asleep under the caress of her loving touch.

Today is the 30th. Tann, day of Darkness. The infamous Weepers are stronger today, so it's not a good day to be caught in the wild. Travelers will be fine if they have enough Light-attuned gems to counter the negative feelings from the monsters, but it's still a costly day for travel on foot. Planes, on the other hand, fly above the trees, so they're completely unaffected by Weepers.

Yunia wakes me up as a reward for yesterday, then she shares it with Alissa. Their tongues entwine and grind against one another with desire, yesterday's party causing the flame of love in their hearts to burn a little stronger for each other.

The sight makes me ready again, so I give her another reward, which she shares with Osaria, and they kiss passionately like lovers, making my inc-st fantasy flare so strongly that I grab Aoi and use her mouth as I please.

Hukarere tries to hide it, but we all know that she's the biggest addict out of all the girls, so Aoi offers her some, and my thirsty wolf accepts the swap, now triggering my girl-love fantasy since Hukarere has always acted completely straight so far. They don't kiss, but just seeing Aoi let it drip into the other's mouth is enough for me.

"Okay, that's enough playing around. We have work to do," Roxanne surprisingly chastises us, but I know she's just envious that I can't fill her up since we'd likely waste hours of daylight if we started now.

My [Sword Use] increased by 2 (now 15+15).

Alissa increased her [Mana Control] and [Illusion Magic] by 1 (now 8 and 17). The latter wasn't planned, so it took a point from [Mana Efficiency] (now 9+0).

Roxanne increased her [Mana Control] and [Fire Magic] by 1 (now 17+33 and 8+32).

Hana increased her [Polearm Use] by 1 (now 7).

Ciel increased her [Glaive Use] and [Tiretiera Maire Style] by 1 (now 30 and 1+1).

Lina increased her [Hammer Use] and [Mana Control] by 1 (now 4+26 and 2+8).

Aoi leveled up to 44. It really does take a shit-ton of monsters to level up once you reach the fifties. It's either that, or conquering a dungeon, but considering that it takes most of one's life to reach level 100, we're still rising lightning fast.

Yunia increased her [Dodge] and [Weaverism] by 1 (now 4+11 and 1+29).

Our next monster massacre should be enough to give us all a level up.

Today's breakfast is special. There's baguette, butter, cold cuts of meat and cheeses, baked chocolate sweets, coffee with milk, and Brazilian "pão de queijo."

It's almost the perfect Brazilian breakfast, just lacking Mortadella, which I have no idea how to make. The Rupegian cold ham is just like Earthling prosciutto, which is close enough to Brazilian "presunto," but Mortadella needs specific seasonings and a specific mix of meats, so it's very unlikely that I'll ever find it here.

It's good enough that Krysta got pão de queijo right on the first try. If she wasn't married, I'd have made her into a concubine without a second thought.

"Coffee smells so nice, but it tastes so bad," Aoi remarks as she stares curiously at her mug, pondering upon the mysteries of the wonder-drink.

"Indeed. The smell of freshly ground coffee beans is blissful," I agree with a nod and take a long sip.

Osaria and Hukarere seem to enjoy black coffee. As avid seed connoisseurs, they know how to appreciate bitterness.

"Would you like some?" I kindly offer it to Poosh, who's always present and ready to serve (and "serve") us during our meals.

She smiles warmly and adjusts her round glasses. "I already drank a small cup of it pure. It was quite tasty and invigorating," she happily admits.

"If it's strong enough to 'fuel' the hyperactive gnomes, I wonder what it'll do to us," Lina suddenly comments as she eyes the black ambrosia with suspicion, though she has already succumbed to its call.

Right after breakfast, I call for Nononya and Ahren's sister, whose name I'm told is Petra.

I wait in one of the higher "leaves" of the castle that has a good view of the town. I want to impress Nono with the sight.

Petra, predictably, arrives first, wearing an orange Jasmine dress. The more conservative and bland one from the questionable live-action, not the more beautiful and iconic one from the original, timeless classic. I know that Klein has the latter, so I guess this is the Grosshils' way of saying "don't touch her," which just makes me want to have Petra even more, but I keep the dragon in check because I'm not that kind of scumbag.

Her curly hair is certainly refreshing, and though it's not as glorious as Yunia's drills, I'm a Brazilian man who can appreciate the beauty of dark-skinned women with curly, mane-like hair. She'd definitely do just fine in an elven not-bikini.

"Your Highness Wolf, I'm Petra Grosshil, and I've come as requested," she politely greets and does a conservative curtsy, a hint of an icy bite in her tone.

I casually return the greeting, though warmer than hers, "A pleasure to meet you. We didn't have the opportunity to talk before, when we first saw each other."

"Likewise, but I admit that the circumstances were tense back then at that time," she replies, completely inexpressive. Her cute face isn't anywhere as well suited as Yunia's for the "Ice Queen" behavior she's displaying to me.

I hum and motion to the sofa, "Indeed. Now let's sit, we'll wait for the second guest before we begin."

She nods diligently and obeys, sitting with a straight posture like a prim and proper Lady, then she immediately inquires, "May I inquire about the motive for this meeting?"

"I need your expertise in [Alchemicism] to aid my…" -I feel a need to assert my dominance and claim Nono as my woman, but she isn't, not yet- "research partner in exploring a new type of magic."

Petra raises one black eyebrow. "I see…" Then she goes silent for a moment before awkwardly continuing, "I heard you were a researcher, but I didn't expect that [Alchemicism] would ever be useful to you."

"Tch…" Roxanne clicks her tongue sassily, and Hana starts teasing her for her contempt for the "unreliable" magic school.

"You never know until you try," I reply with a sly grin.

And she just raises her thin eyebrow again.

We spend a few more minutes in silence, then Nono finally arrives, and I instantly get an unsheathing.

The white, juicy rabbit is all dolled up and even wearing a gift wrapping that begs to be ripped from her body. One of her long ears has a cute red ribbon on it; her short, white hair looks silky and shines with a silvery sheen; her eyes have thick eyeliner, giving her an alluring look; her full cheeks are rosy with makeup; her juicy lips have vibrant, red lipstick, making me eager to bite them; her pillows are enticingly covered with a small, red velvet curtain; her camel is painfully visible through the criminally small red shorts she somehow squeezed herself into; and her subtly thick legs are enhanced by the classy high heels she's wearing.

She hesitantly walks forward, but I immediately get up and advance towards her, the intensity of my hungry gaze making her stop and then walk backward in fear.

Her back hits the closed door, and she freezes like a deer in headlights, though her legs begin quivering. Then I stop just a centimetri away and grab her by her throat because her knees have started to buckle.

She suddenly holds up a piece of paper with a few words written on it in the most beautiful calligraphy that I've ever seen, but the contents make my blood boil.

"R-pe her."

Silvane.

I roar back to the confused beauty behind us, "Dame Grosshil, the start of our meeting will have to be delayed because I need to give this sl-tty rabbit a good pounding!"

Petra blinks blankly, too stunned to reply, then I open the door behind Nono and sling her over my shoulder.

I'm so excited that I don't even wait until we're in another room. I press Nono against the wall in the middle of the corridor and rip off her bottoms… then I simply destroy her.

I lose my sense of time as I pound endlessly, but then her eyes suddenly roll up into her skull, and she begins to pass out, again ending things far sooner than when I do my wives.

I sigh and let her go, and the Chimera maid immediately begins cleaning by drinking it all up.

"Tch…" Now it's Aoi's turn to click her tongue in annoyance. "That's mine!"

I look behind me and see Poosh waiting with a gentle smile on her pretty face while a second maid holds a new, clean dress and a box of makeup. They both stiffen for a second as my draconic desire bears down upon them, but I reign it in since Poosh must still be feeling a bit sore from yesterday.

"You did quite some work on her, Your Highness," my loyal sheep wryly remarks and approaches us.

I chuckle softly as I gently lower Nono down onto the floor, then I grab the kneeling maid's head and use her mouth as I please. She has a cute, curly-haired dog head, so I'm not too rough on her because I don't want to ruin her perm.

Poosh begins to clean Nono, and I help out with [Heal] and [Regeneration], but it's going to take some time before she wakes up from her bliss-induced coma.

A note from Manasong

Hall of Fame of Patrons

The patrons who support Rupegia shall have their names sung by the bards for they deserve the glory and honor. Their names are:

Prince PreownedFIN.

Prince Creamy Spinach.

Prince Owldente.

Prince Charlie Foxtrot.

Lord Andrew Meyers.

Lord Novgarod.

Lord Michale Erwin.

Lord Bakerdea.

Lord Maurice.

Lord Mattirro Draca.

Lord Sean Drake.

Lord FrostyCube.

Lord Mike Bartter.

Lord Warwulfv.

Lord Jorge Franco.

Lord Khristopher Welsh.

Lord DJ.

Lord Tenebris Lupus.

Lord Paul Daval.

Lord Paul Daval.

Lord Bradly.

Lord AndreyUC.

Lord Tmac.

Lord School Work.

Lord Gwendolyn Simmons-LaRose.

Lord CopeyDunt.

Lord Warwulfv.

Lord James.

Lord BlindTactic.

Noble Salty Panda.

Noble Mild Fracas.

Noble Aclys.

Noble CarlBaxter.

Noble d3235.

Noble Cidant.

Noble Frank de Jong.

Noble Shai.

Leave a rating or a review to help me rise to the top or fix my shameful understanding of prose.

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Chapter 124: Last-Minute Business - Part 3

A note from Manasong

Attention: to conform to the limit of mature content (more than just sexual content) allowed in a novel, I've censored this chapter. You can look for the uncensored version here.

Intermission - Hana

So, we're taking a nice little stroll in the sun through the inner circle of mansions while we chit-chat with my little brother and his little male wife, then Alissa's evil fox grin appears in all of our minds, and she connects our pleasure with Wolfy's.

This wouldn't be the first time she's done this prank, except that this time, our dear husband is absolutely destroying the little rabbit while releasing non-stop… and that means that we all also reach bliss non-stop while feeling the pleasure and rage of a dragon at its apex as it br--ds the finest little piece of meat in this side of the empire.

"O-oops~… ahn~…" Alissa mumbles between uncontrollable grunts.

There's simply no point in resisting the massive influx of pleasure, so I just let it flow out of me… and there goes my pants.

Ah~… what a nice day to have an unleashing out in the open.

Thankfully, Nono is weak to his massive sword, so it soon comes to an end, then I release Romy's shoulder and sigh. My legs are left feeling like wet noodles (heh), but at least I can stand on my own now.

"Damn, it's finally over. He made me so w-t, the bastard," I grumble, then I unbutton my pants and show her my drenched underclothes. "See this? This is what we have to deal with, every day. He makes me so excited that even my parts need a [Heal] every once in a while."

I suddenly feel Wolfy's comforting presence enter my mind. "Hm? Oh… oops, sorry, I didn't notice," he apologizes through [Bind].

"Not your fault…" Yunia grumbles back and sends an internal glare towards Alissa.

"Eheheheh…" The cheeky little fox guilty laughs back at the castle as she does herself silly.

"Wow, that sounds horrible," Romy replies so dryly that it sounds like sandpaper grinding against my ears. But then, her alluring, thin eyes switch targets, and she narrows them threateningly at Hermann. "What is it that has caught your attention, Sir Grosshil?" She sternly questions him, and my perverted little brother immediately looks away.

I land a hand on her shoulder and calm her down, "It's fine. He saw me get done by Wolfy already."

She hums as she gives him a measuring look. "I take it he's one of 'those' men, then?"

I stare at Hermann with a teasing look. "The kind that wants to do his sister? Oh, yeah. He's got dragonkin blood in him, so it isn't surprising."

He shares a worried look with Ahren, and neither of them seem to have the courage to even comment on our conversation.

Ciel finally regains control of her legs and thanks the Companion who was holding her in a tight hug, then she pushes away the thirsty girl, who I'm sure will be dreaming about her barely-contained cow pair and the smell of her happiness for day-cycles to come.

When she steps back, she reveals a small puddle of delicious fluids that has pooled underneath her. She isn't wearing anything under that dress, so it was all free to drip down her leg.

To come, indeed.

"What… just happened?" Ahren hesitantly asks, not noticing where we're all looking.

And I casually answer, "Just Wolfy sharing his pleasure with us while he does a girl senseless, so congratulations, you just saw both of us reach bliss repeatedly. And that" -I point to the puddle and grin- "is the result of Ciel's repeated bliss."

Ciel smacks my shoulder quite hard as her face flushes red with embarrassment.

"Nice," Romy hums with a nod and crosses her arms.

I ignore Ciel's punches and lean closer to Romy as I continue my teasing, "Told you having the Companions around was better. Imagine if we were surrounded by men, and she hugged one of them as she whispered in his ear and released repeatedly."

Romy's eyebrows climb up her dark brow, then she glances at me as she speculates, "We'd have a comrade to bury?"

"Would be a fitting punishment for Wolfy and Alissa making me release in public," she grumbles, fuming in anger, then her expression suddenly changes into one of horror. "I mean, the part about me hugging a man! Not the joke about killing a Lordsguard!"

We chuckle softly at her awkwardness. "Yes, yes, we get it," I assure her, and she groans in embarrassment.

I feel a bit frustrated that I can't go all the way, though. Alissa is doing herself silly in a dark corner of the castle, Roxanne is hunting for Wolfy, Lina and Aoi are doing each other, and Yunia has pounced on a maid.

But I see that my little brother is also suffering like I am, so I guess I'll f-ck with him. Not literally, Wolfy.

I point to Hermann's huge sword. "Is that for me, or are you imagining that it was Klein that Wolfy was doing, hm?"

He opens his eyes wide in disbelief and finally starts speaking, "What?! No! I-it's neither!" He tries to roar, but his stutter ruins his attempted denial.

Roxanne whispers in my mind, and I just can't help myself but to echo, "Oh? Are you thinking about Ciel, then? Klein will be sad when she hears about this."

"Gods, Hermann, you keep falling for it," even his wife quietly gives him a slap.

But dragons are quick to recognize banter, so his scowl immediately changes into a smirk as he bites back, "Alright, you female dog, go screw yourself."

I nod and cross my arms, bunching up my alluring female weapons. "I'd like to, actually."

He gives me a defiant grin. "Then I'll help you."

And I just smugly reply, "You'd have to kill Wolfy first."

He grits his teeth and glares. That's not something he wants to joke about, not because Wolfy's his Lord, he doesn't care about that, but because their power gap is so great that it isn't even funny.

I'm actually surprised that he doesn't joke about one day being able to plow Klein, or about stealing one of Wolfy's women. Maybe he knows not to poke the dragon, or he actually hopes to polish Wolfy's sword one day.

"Enough playing around," Ciel pleads, and after grinning for long enough, I turn to her and grab her hand, then I guide those gentle fingers into my underwear.

"Clean me up, please?" I cheekily ask her, and she pouts in annoyance, but still puts her fingers in as she pretends to gather her mana and chant. Even she was left excited after Wolfy's display.

I don't resist those juicy lips and pull her up into a kiss as her moving picks up speed.

"Are you actually casting a spell?" Romy dryly interrupts.

Ciel pulls back and instantly casts [Clean], though her fingers are still inside, so both my oven and my underwear are cleaned, and the cool, fresh feeling coursing inside me causes a chill to go up my spine.

Then she takes her fingers out and gives them a quick lick, but that only confuses me.

"You just [Clean]ed me, so why do you think your fingers would taste like anything?" I ask as I fasten my pants again.

Ciel simply presses her lips together in (even more) embarrassment and annoyance, then silently casts [Clean] on herself. I think she's now nice and tender from the verbal spanking, so I'll just leave it there.

By now, the thirsty Companion is all red and rubbing her thighs together, so I walk up to her and sneak a hand under her scale armor and up her back.

"You'll come with me after this, okay?" I whisper seductively and caress her soft skin.

She nods obediently and bites her lip in anticipation. I damn love elven women because they're so much more submissive than the other races are to the superior, domineering dragonkin.

No wonder Wolfy is so popular with women here.

We make our way to the training grounds at the Shell between the inner and outer circles, and the sounds of men fighting first thing in the morning is just music to my ears.

When we enter the sand arena, all eyes turn to stare at our dazzling appearances, and the referee immediately announces a stop to the duel, slightly frustrating one of the fighters.

The man turns around in a huff and immediately freezes, his pale face turning pink from Gods know which of the dozen emotions he could be feeling right now.

Brett is kind of a funny-looking guy. He has the same alluring eyes as Romy, but he has the skin and hair color of a Mordere, which is an odd mix. I think he's a half like me. But what makes him look funny is that he's kind of cute for a man of his size. Not handsome, cute.

"You were supposed to be resting," Ciel immediately goes for the whip.

He grins ferociously, but his funny face makes him adorable, instead. "I feel fine, so I wanted to try out my new limbs," he responds, unfazed.

"End your phrases with 'Your Highness,'" the officer sternly reprimands.

Brett stiffens and breathes in, swallowing his adventurer pride, then he spreads open his ass cheeks to us. "I feel fine, Your Highness."

But he really shouldn't; nobody would ever just be fine after what he has gone through.

Since he's offering his asshole to us so readily, I might as well go for it.

"Alright, then fight me," I challenge him and show him my best grin.

His pointy dog ears shoot up, along with his eyebrows, but then he grins back and grips his practice spear. "With pleasure, Your Highness."

Ciel sighs, then turns to the audience and announces, "Brett is a secret asset. Don't let anyone of lower rank enter this arena, and don't mention this duel to anyone for now."

The men whisper to each other, then an officer salutes and designates a few men to keep watch while Ahren and Hermann give us concerned looks and start stepping back.

One of the men hands me a practice spear and a practice bastard sword with a scabbard so that I can tie it to my waist. My clothes are already suited for training, so I immediately take a fighting stance, then Ciel ties up my hair for me.

"Thanks, sweet cheeks," I whisper with a smirk.

She snorts and walks away, then everyone clears the ring.

I turn my eyes to Brett and see that he's taken a relaxed stance, which is suspicious considering that I'm leaning forward more aggressively. His expression is impassive, so at least he isn't underestimating me.

He's just going to use his Gift, isn't he?

"Let me warn you that I have a skill similar to your Gift," I announce, and he simply grunts with a nod.

"Should the duel be until first blood?" The referee questions us. We both snort and nod, it's actually the perfect choice, considering our powers. "Very well. Take your positions, and… BEGIN!"

I summon my wings and charge forward with a sudden burst of speed, but he's well prepared for that and parries my thrust… but that was a feint!

I launch a kick towards his face… but he raises his elbow, and my foot hits a lump of steel… but I used [Draconic Body]! A heavy bang resounds throughout the arena, sounding like two lumps of steel colliding.

Before his spear comes back to bite at me, I tumble in the air and fly over his head, then I land on my other foot because even with [Draconic Body], this shit still hurts!

"Your internal monologue is becoming annoyingly chuuni," Wolfy's dry voice echoes inside my mind.

Shut up.

"Love… you're making me… uncomfortable…" Roxanne's weak voice immediately follows while she tries to impale herself on Wolfy's huge sword.

You're both inside my mind, so shut up!

Anyway…

Brett calmly turns around and points his spear at me again. It seems like I won't be able to overpower him with just my superior dragonkin constitution.

I don't dismiss my wings, but instead, I just fold them so that they remain ready to be used again.

Then he smiles confidently and suggests, "I see that you're as hardy as I am, so are you sure that spears will be the best weapon of choice here?"

Yeah… no point in using these.

I snort and nod. "You're right, let's switch to war hammers."

We turn to the men, who scramble to hand us our new weapons. I even take off my bastard sword from my waist since it'll be useless here.

Wolfy's annoyingly smug voice distracts me again, "See? She's back to normal already."

Shut up!

Once we've both assumed our stances again, I immediately advance. Unlike with swords and spears, we need to put more strength into our attacks, but skill levels are still the most important factor in a duel, and it seems he has more skills that are compatible with war hammers than I do.

His hammer hits my arm, shattering my precious emerald scales like glass, which cost me stamina and mana to regrow, then the spike of his hammer impacts my gut, and though it doesn't penetrate my skin, it still breaks more scales and bruises my muscles.

It's clear to me that just my [Polearm Use] alone won't be enough to win against him.

"Wolfy, give me [Electric Magic]!" I demand through [Bind], then I give Brett a warning because I think it'd be fair, "I'M ALSO A DAMN MAGIC WARRIOR!"

"What…?!" He grunts in surprise and takes a step back, giving me the perfect opening to use [Ghost Lights] on him. "Hngh!" He grunts in pain as he closes his seemingly still sensitive eyes.

His guard is left wide open, so I sink my hammer into his thigh, and the skin bends inwards as if he was actually made of steel, then I cast [Lighting Bolt], and he grunts again in pain, stunned by the spell.

This time, I strike right at the center of his chest, using [Draconic Body] to increase my "Strength," and it caves in with an amazingly loud crunch.

But then his demeanor instantly shifts.

"RAAAAAAH!" He roars, and his whole body turns black, even his hair, then he suddenly opens his eyes wide, and I can see that they've also darkened.

He turns to me and growls, his face showing a blend of emotions that I know very well: anger and desperation, the sign of a man retreating into their own mind and allowing their baser instincts to take control.

He immediately jumps towards me and swings his hammer, but it's too crude of an attack, and I easily dodge it with a small burst of speed from my wings. He's enraged and lashing out wildly, but that's just a shameful display for a warrior, like a toddler throwing a temper tantrum.

His attacks are too sloppy, so my [Dodge] is enough to trump his skills with the hammer, but I'm still having difficulty finding the proper moment to strike back.

I cast [Lightning Bolt] repeatedly, and he resists the first few spells, but his muscles eventually lock up, and he stops moving.

I swing at his knee with all my strength, but this time, it barely makes a dent.

F-cking indestructible, indeed.

There's a pole nearby displaying our flag, which is exactly what I need right now, so I apologize to Wolfy and rip the flag along with the rope off the pole, then I fly back to the raging Brett.

I cast [Mesmerizing Butterflies], distracting him as he chases after me, then I simply trip him, and he crashes heavily onto the floor like a huge slab of metal.

Now that his back is open, I wrap the flag around his head and begin tying his arms together with the rope while I repeatedly cast [Lightning Bolt] on his back to keep him stunned, but he still continues to struggle.

"DO YOU SURRENDER?!" I shout at him, but he only screams louder, so I tighten the rope and finish restraining him.

He's not responding, so I just wait while I remain on top of him, but the sight of him struggling like a castrated orc must be haunting. The men seem worried and fearful, so maybe this wasn't the best place to do this, but Ciel hasn't complained, so I guess it'll be fine.

After a full minute of struggling, his rage starts to die down. Then he recovers his sanity and finally recognizes his situation.

"I s-surrender!" He shouts hoarsely, then I undo the restraints and remove the flag, but he remains on the ground, shivering from shock, and silence falls as even the referee is too stunned to announce the end of the fight.

Ciel slowly walks up to us, giving him enough time to at least get back on his knees.

She stops before him, and he raises his head to look at her, but he only has a blank expression to give her. "I'm sorry…" He mumbles an apology for some reason.

"There's nothing to apologize for," she gently replies, then touches his head and casts [Heal]. His body is instantly restored back to full health, then he finally stops using his Gift, and his skin returns to normal. "Let's go see a priest," she kindly suggests and offers her hand.

Brett slowly nods, then takes it and gets up. She gives him a brief smile that warms my heart like the heat of a summer sun, then she starts walking towards the exit, and he hesitates for a second before following her while avoiding looking at the others in the eye.

Hermann scurries towards me, looking a bit pale. "The hell happened…?" He whispers hurriedly.

"Mental wounds don't heal with magic," I whisper back as I watch them leave.

Intermission end.

Damn, that's heavy.

I watch over the girls while Poosh brushes my hair and another maid buttons my pants.

Ciel will take him to therapy, and I hope it's effective because things might get messy if we tried to use him in the Purification and he became like that.

At least this world has some concept of trauma and PTSD, but there's nothing I can do about it but wait.

I notice that Nono has recovered enough that she's trying to stand, so I offer her my claws to help her up, which she happily takes.

"Thank you, Wolf," she whispers shyly.

But right now, I have more pressing matters to attend to.

I smile kindly at her and guide her back to the room where Petra's been waiting for us.

I'm feeling quite refreshed right now since Roxanne drained the last of my draconic rage. She's also been left completely satisfied with a womb full of my seed, which she plugged with a dildo she got from Osaria, so win-win, I guess, even though Alissa's little prank made the girls a little angry.

The cold, dark-skinned, gorgeous noblewoman silently receives us, but the way her stern expression twitches and trembles shows that she's a bit off-balance, which is just so satisfying to me.

"Alright, let's begin."

A note from Manasong

Hall of Fame of Patrons

The patrons who support Rupegia shall have their names sung by the bards for they deserve the glory and honor. Their names are:

Prince PreownedFIN.

Prince Creamy Spinach.

Prince Owldente.

Prince Charlie Foxtrot.

Lord Andrew Meyers.

Lord Novgarod.

Lord Michale Erwin.

Lord Bakerdea.

Lord Maurice.

Lord Mattirro Draca.

Lord Sean Drake.

Lord FrostyCube.

Lord Mike Bartter.

Lord Warwulfv.

Lord Jorge Franco.

Lord Khristopher Welsh.

Lord DJ.

Lord Tenebris Lupus.

Lord Paul Daval.

Lord Paul Daval.

Lord Bradly.

Lord AndreyUC.

Lord Tmac.

Lord School Work.

Lord Gwendolyn Simmons-LaRose.

Lord CopeyDunt.

Lord Warwulfv.

Lord James.

Lord BlindTactic.

Noble Salty Panda.

Noble Mild Fracas.

Noble Aclys.

Noble CarlBaxter.

Noble d3235.

Noble Cidant.

Noble Frank de Jong.

Noble Shai.

Leave a rating or a review to help me rise to the top or fix my shameful understanding of prose.

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Join the Discord and discuss, or rant, or meme, or try and fight me so your waifu gets more screentime.

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Chapter 125: Engage! - Part 1

I put my claws on Nono's juicy thigh and squeeze it as I introduce her, "This is Nononya Andera, a noblewoman from Rabanara who studies [Summoning Magic]." -I grin ferociously and glance at my piece of rabbit meat- "She'll also give birth to my child one day, and though that doesn't mean she's officially my woman, you can see what kind of relationship we have."

Nono's pale face reddens, but she doesn't look away or even try to deny my affirmation.

"Hm…" Petra hums and awkwardly nods once, then she stiffly introduces herself, "I'm Petra Grosshil, Supporting Descendant for my brother, and daughter of Stefan Grosshil, an ally of the Ryders."

"W-well met," Nono hesitantly replies and nods deeply, making her long rabbit ears bounce.

I release her thigh and wrap my arm around her waist, then I pull her closer to me. She stiffens in surprise for a second but then relaxes into my arm.

This helps her regain some confidence as her voice becomes more assured once she continues, "I was born a commoner and married a noblewoman, so forgive me if I seem to lack manners."

Petra smiles warmly and gently shakes her head as she reassures Nono, "Don't worry about such a thing. I'm more of a Lady than a noble since my magic is unfit for battle, so I hardly deserve the respect that my Title demands."

"You two have more in common than one might easily see, it seems," I remark coolly, then I assume a more solemn tone. "But let's talk about business." -The two stiffen subtly, following my lead- "The reason for this meeting is that we want to remake [Summoning Magic] from the ground-up by shoring up its weaknesses and making it competitive power-wise with the other types of system magic."

Petra's dark eyebrows rise up on her forehead. "A bold endeavor, but I know little about [Summoning Magic]," she prudently warns.

I nod and continue, "Yes, but perhaps [Alchemicism] has what we need to boost Summoning." -I absentmindedly squeeze Nono's thigh again- "You see, one of its weaknesses is that all summons are made to be intelligent. This creates an unnecessary overhead in complexity because why should you summon an elemental that can shoot [Fireball]s autonomously when you can simply cast the same spell yourself a few times?"

Petra hums in understanding and comments, "Ah, yes, the Theorem of Spell Balance."

"I don't have enough knowledge of magical theory to know what that is," I immediately admit.

Nono gently lays a hand on my thigh, dangerously close to my dick, and kindly explains to me, "There are no shortcuts to stronger spells. Every path a mage takes to improve their spells means that they become weaker at something else. So, there are no inherently 'better' spells, only mages who know when and where to best use them."

Petra nods in agreement and continues, "The Theorem itself defines three paths a mage can take to grow: they can learn how to 'build' their spells better, increasing their efficiency; or they can raise their level with the skill, allowing for more complex spells; or they might simply raise their own 'Magic Power' or [Mana Control] to increase its strength."

Magical theory sounds surprisingly simple.

I hum in understanding and grab my chin in thought as I deliberate, "So, all spells fall in a triangle between 'cost,' 'complexity,' and 'strength'?"

Nono giggles girlishly, and her fluffy ears tickle my cheek. "Yes, that's exactly it."

And Petra continues with a rather smug tone, "Items like robes and staves serve to either increase strength or lower cost, but the balance is still mostly in the hands of the mage. [Alchemicism] tries to circumvent that completely by searching for alternative sources of power to traditional magic, which has the side effect of making spells rather 'unpredictable.'"

"More like 'completely unreliable,'" Roxanne grumbles with a sneer in my soul space.

My thick tail waves slowly as I deliberate, "What I want, specifically, is to lower Summoning's high base 'complexity.' Currently, all summons are kind of pre-built within the spells, which is another unnecessary thing, so we can start by trying to find something that replaces the need to 'mold' summons, and that would do wonders to tone down the difficulty of learning the magic school."

"I assume you already have an idea for how to accomplish that?" Petra calmly replies.

And I grin excitedly. "Remember the Tale of Creation? Everything is in a Cycle, so the priests believe that there's one for spirits too, where all of them gather after their death. I want to use the minor moon of 'otherworldliness' to tap into that Cycle, then find the spirits of dead heroes and use [Summoning Magic]'s function to copy souls so that they can be summoned to serve us without actually pulling them out of Paradise."

Petra freezes from shock in her lady-like pose. "That is… a daring plan."

Her expression is really pleasing to me, for some reason. "But wait, there's more. Since this is obviously an advanced spell, the lower level spells could tap into the collective consciousness of the humanoids to summon simple objects that could be useful, like weapons."

And her face lights up as she begins to fully grasp our plan.

But I've got no more bombs to throw, so I finish, "Since you're the only person I know who has learned [Alchemicism], your input is integral to ascertaining the viability of this plan. So, what do you think?"

She looks away and spends a moment deep in thought, then she gives us a cautious answer, "This is an extremely unusual request. I can help you tap into the power of the moons, but we won't know if you can actually summon anything through it until we try."

With my free hand, I put a claw under my rabbit's chin and prop her up. "Nono here will be the one to cast it since I don't have the time to research this, and I'm very much a system mage, so I know almost nothing about altering spells."

She glances at Nono, who grins unashamedly, and narrows her eyes as she whispers, "I see… Well, first, we'll need a location where we can build a 'funnel' for the power of the moons."

I wave my claws dismissively. "We're still 'growing' the Institute, but I'm sure there's an empty lab there that you can use."

And she tentatively explains, "We'll need a lot of shielding to filter the power, so a lot of emellanat metal, too, which will be expensive."

"Our funds aren't unlimited, but I can personally give you a reasonably high level of funding since this is a personal project."

The dark-skinned beauty subtly leans forward out of interest, then she pushes back a lock of curly hair that gets in front of her face. "Will I be considered a hired researcher of the Institute?"

I smile and huskily reply, "Yes, you will."

She glances at Nono again. "But how about her? She lives in Rabanara, no?"

"Her wife is also a close lover of the Chosen Descendant of Rabanara, and both sides are in agreement to let her use the [Eternal Gate] for free, so it's a non-issue for her to come and go every day."

She raises a thin eyebrow. "What a complex web of relationships."

Nono swallows nervously while I chuckle softly. "That's just how the nobility is," I wryly remark.

Petra clenches her jaw in irritation and changes the topic, "Anyway, I have some ideas about how to build a simple 'funnel,' so we can begin testing if Madame Nononya can sense and manipulate the lunar power."

"Then let's visit the Institute and see where you can start setting up your lab."

I call for a mage, and while we wait, I show Nono the view.

"Ooh~…" She coos softly in wonder, and her bushy white tail wags cutely a few times.

I stop by the edge of the balcony and motion with my hand towards the town far ahead and below us as I cheerily illustrate, "You should see it at night. The mist from the making of Eia pills floods the town, but it doesn't go past the Shell, so it's like we're at a dam, surrounded by a sea of mist."

She fearlessly leans on the railing, something that Earth-me would be very hesitant to do, and hums with a gentle smile on her cute, red lips. "This town is so beautiful. I can't believe we're high up in huge trees."

"Aren't you afraid of how high we are?" I curiously ask her.

She smiles coyly and glances at me. "Will you catch me if I fall?"

"Of course I will," I huskily answer and grin.

"Then there's nothing to fear," she replies matter-of-factly and smiles adorably.

I just admire her cuteness in silence for a moment. This woman has captured my heart, so I should start thinking about making her exclusive, but I shouldn't be too hopeful because considering how Silvane has been corrupting Nono, she may be too depraved to settle for only me.

Now's not the time, though, so I soon continue, "Ever seen the High Forest from the ground?"

She shakes her head gently, and my eyes are drawn to the bobbing atop her head. "No, not really. I've only seen the High Trees from far away when I was passing through Goldcross."

"Didn't you come from Conchononoi? Why travel so far?"

Her smile becomes bitter as she remembers something not so pleasant. "My homeland isn't very rich or fertile. Leaving and trying your luck also isn't a good idea since wererabbit women are even more 'prized' than werecats outside of Concho. But when we heard that Rabanara was accepting anyone as a citizen without the need to pay taxes, my parents scrounged up enough to send me here."

I frown in worry and question, "Now that you're married, are you going to bring them here?"

And her bushy tail wags a few times. "I'm trying to, but it takes a long time to send letters there, even if you have access to teleporting mail."

And I earnestly offer, "If you ever need any help, my family will always be available. Also, I'd like to meet your parents when they get here. I am going to be the father of your child, after all."

Her pale cheeks turn pink, and she looks away in embarrassment, then nods shyly.

A mage arrives, and we take a [Gate] to the Institute. It might be a good idea to set up an [Eternal Gate] there, but our offices here aren't ready yet, so there's no good location for it.

We've just taken over the [Weaverism] magic school that already existed and grown more buildings. They follow the grassland elf style of trees grown wide enough to be hollowed out into a multi-story building, so they're nothing special, but at least they're very well made and sturdy.

There are plenty of Chimeras about, and I'm not sure what they're all doing. It does seem like they're having scholarly discussions, but a few of them are just hanging around, and, of course, there are some doing "just Chimera things" in the public garden.

Petra's gaze tells me that she's a straight woman. She's likely in her late teens just like her brother, but I very much doubt she has lost her virginity, so I delight myself in imagining what's going through her mind.

At least the entrance to the buildings is controlled, so there are no unknown strangers inside. The teams working on the planes are quite small, so they only need to use a few rooms, leaving plenty for the girls to choose from.

Since I own the place, I just flag a clerk and introduce him to the girls. The two need IDs to get in and out, supplies, and the keys to the lab, so they'll be spending quite some time talking to him.

Now that everything seems to be progressing on its own, I decide that it's time to leave. "I honestly would love to see you two work, but I have some other things to deal with, so I'll be taking my leave. If either of you ever need anything, you can just talk to me or my wives directly."

Nono nods repeatedly while Petra gracefully replies, "Thank you for the consideration."

I wink at Nono, then I return to the castle.

I go to the Lordsguard headquarters at the Shell between the inner and outer rings. I need to hand over the notes from the lizard-scientists to our mages for them to study. I don't have the time to decipher them personally.

The poor young mage that receives all the bloodied papers goes white. He probably isn't fit for battle if he has hemophobia. Unless he's actually scared of me, but I think I look pretty cuddly except for when I'm intentionally trying to look threatening.

I pass by the Celestial Horns as they train, and I notice that Lorena is with them. She's the girl who decided to continue serving as a spirit after death, and I believe Oritiki might be grooming her into becoming one of the Horns. Loyalty like hers is too precious to not make full use of it.

Then I decide to make a stop to watch Hana give her brother a beat down. He may be strong and talented, but Hana is a grizzled and ferocious warrior. Even the twins are here to observe the beating.

Hermann falls flat on his back, then he turns his head to the side and spots me. His eyes immediately light up, and his grimace of pain is replaced by a grin, which actually makes me feel a chill go down my spine.

"Wo-… Lord Wolf, fight me!" He shouts, and Hana lightly hits his temple with the flat side of her blade.

"The fuck're you thinking? You can't even score a hit on me!" She grumbles, slightly offended.

He ignores her poking and promptly declares, "I want to see how far apart we are."

The twins raise their eyebrows in surprise and stare at me, eager for my answer.

I shrug and hum, "Fine."

After a quick change into clothes that won't stick to my every form and bulge, I walk into the sand arena and draw my elven shortsword. I'll try this out without a shield and see how it goes.

Hermann wields a heater shield and a bastard sword like an imperial knight. He strikes quite the imposing figure despite his young looks, but he's not as savage as a true dragonkin like Hana can be.

I smile and motion with my hand for him to come as I declare, "I give you the initiative. Come at me, bro."

His eyebrows twitch at my challenge, then he smiles ferociously and advances.

His sword meets with mine, then he deflects my attack towards his shield so that he's free to counter.

I just glide backward with [Telekinesis] and get out of his range. He senses the spell and braces for impact in surprise, but I wasn't using it offensively, so he gives me a cautious look and finally notices that my feet aren't touching the ground.

"This is my specialty," I proudly state and smile, but he remains serious and suspicious of what else I might throw at him.

We exchange a few more blows, measuring the other's skill level, and we both quickly realize that mine is quite a bit higher.

But then he surprises me with a sneaky deflection that leaves me open, forcing me to use a burst of [Telekinesis] to not get sliced.

Weird…

That was… unexpected. Not just surprising, but it's as if I was "blindsided."

"That's his talent showing," Hana's proud voice echoes in my soul space.

I see…

Skill levels aren't everything, but in a duel, it becomes quite easy to measure the difference in level between two warriors, and it seems like Hermann can occasionally bridge the gap solely through talent.

My casual demeanor changes as I'm forced to glide backward repeatedly, and he becomes bolder with his strikes, trying to hit me faster than I can retreat.

I suddenly switch gears and lunge with [Muscle Explosion], forcing him to use it, too, to dodge my attack, then I linger within his range as bait, which he promptly takes.

I make a simple attack, and the tip of my blade slides along the length of his, getting closer to the hilt, then he uses his greater leverage to press my sword against his shield and takes a step forward as he pivots his sword so that the tip points towards me.

A brilliant move as it locks my weapon in place while he can lunge and stab me, but it was all according to keikaku.

I can't move the tip of my sword away from him, but I can still push it in or out.

I also advance and use [Muscle Explosion] to dodge his stab while I push my blade towards his shield at the same time, giving me the leverage to pivot and slide the edge along his cheek.

He steps back in surprise and tries to slice me as he pulls his sword back, but I use [Dodge] to bob out of the way.

His [Muscle Explosion] seems to be at level 1, so it has a much longer "recharge" than mine, which is at level 5. My specialty isn't actually fighting with weapons, it's countering others with strategy or exploiting an obvious weakness like this one.

The sight of his own blood angers Hermann, then he growls and throws aside all caution, going all out on the offensive.

His sword has a longer reach than mine, so he easily puts me on the defensive again, and I'm forced to use my free hand to parry his attacks. My scales and hide are so tough that I can actually use [Block] with my hand, so it seems that I don't really have much need for a shield anymore, except to protect myself against projectiles.

I'm actually at a disadvantage here, though, so I have to be creative to get a hit in. And I don't want to win with a thousand cuts, so I'll play it big.

He lunges, and his blade slides between my fingers as I use my claws to divert its path away from my face. I could grab his sword right now, but a contest of "Strength" isn't going to go in my favor when he's so much bigger than me.

I stop gliding along the floor and use [Telekinesis] on the tip of his weapon to pull it forward, and he grunts as he struggles to not lose his grip, keeping him locked in place for just a second, but that's all I need.

I grab his exposed wrist and dig my claws into his skin, then I jump, pull my legs towards myself, and brace for impact as he instinctively bashes his shield against my body, but this was obviously all according to keikaku.

I use [Telekinesis] on myself again to remain still in the air as I take the hit, then I shove my blade into his chest.

This is "gg," so I let go of both his wrist and my sword and glide away.

Hermann grunts in pain and drops his shield, then he grips the blade in his chest and begins to slowly pull it out.

I motion to the healer on call to help him. "This is over; go heal him," I order.

The man salutes, and the referee blows the whistle, then Hermann finally releases his sword and kneels down in pain.

I didn't aim for his heart, but I might've pierced a lung, so he's probably in a lot of pain right now.

Yet he still raises his head and grins at me. "How much… did you hold back?" He asks with a strained voice.

I summon my tentacles and use them to pick up the practice weapons at the edge of the arena, then I instant cast [Discharge] upwards, creating a huge web of lightning that makes some of the audience flinch in fear.

Hermann snorts and chuckles, then lowers his head and lets the healer do his thing, so I start to make my way back to the stands, and I'm showered with applause.

The twins have complicated expressions. I know they're a bit envious of me, so seeing the truth must be shocking. It's one thing to see me kill droves of monsters, but it's another thing entirely to see how much I have to hold back just so that a duel is fair.

Hopefully, this inspires them to train hard.

A note from Manasong

Hall of Fame of Patrons

The patrons who support Rupegia shall have their names sung by the bards for they deserve the glory and honor. Their names are:

Prince PreownedFIN.

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Chapter 125: Engage! - Part 2

I sit down beside the twins to rest and pull out some cold tea to refresh myself.

Arturus stares intensely at me, and I notice that he wants to say something, so I raise an eyebrow at him, and he blurts out, "How many skills-… how many levels do you even have?"

It's actually pretty impolite to ask someone their level, like asking a woman her age, a dragon the thickness of their tail, or a man the size of their dick… wait, that last one I'd gladly tell anyone. Anyway, neither levels, skills, nor even "Magical Power" can reliably tell how powerful someone actually is, so one's level is personal information that's rarely shared.

"Brother, please," Antares tiredly pleads, and even Ahren looks surprised by Arturus' audacity.

"Fifty-nine," I answer honestly.

The three show a variety of surprised reactions, both because I actually answered and because of the number.

And my answer emboldens Antares to ask, "How did you manage to level up so fast?"

I shrug. "I'm Gifted. There's no reasonable way for a normal person to keep up with me."

"Oh… that explains a lot…" Ahren mumbles wryly.

"It's like the Gods wanted you to come here…" Arturus whispers soberly with a frown.

But I also smile wryly and agree, "Yeah, that's exactly what we believe happened. We came to Confiel to ask for aid just in time to participate in the deposal of your parents, which led to us meeting Yunia, and then, right next to our future home, we entered an ancient dungeon that gave us the Royal lineage. There are just too many coincidences."

Arturus' frown deepens, and the three of them go silent, in awe due to the revelation. Perhaps they now understand that serving us will be unlike serving any other Lord.

I watch as Hana beats a bunch of our men, then she drags a Companion to the female bath. I feel like following them, but then I receive a message that Lyle wants a quick meeting.

I really find it hard to say no to him…

I take a [Gate] back to the castle and receive the little cockblocker at the main hall, but Garanae has come with him too.

The disheveled boy with wild eyes hurries into the room with an apologetic smile on his face as he quickly explains himself, "Wolf, I'm sorry. I forgot to ask you this yesterday because I got too excited talking about the inventions."

And the blonde boy frowns annoyedly at him as he begrudgingly keeps up with his hurried pace. "He would've again forgotten to ask you before you left if I hadn't reminded him," Garanae exposes Lyle, making him wince.

I smile politely at them and motion to the grass sofas as I assure them, "It's no problem, I still have time. Take a seat… and what did you want to talk about?"

Garanae sobers up and asks, "Do you remember Ankara Gartania?"

"Uuuh…"

Lyle refreshes my memory, "Chosen Descendant of Fort Erda. I invited him to explore the Wisps of the Proud dungeon with us."

I clap my claws as I recall him, then I frown in concern. "Ah, I remember now. Weird boy, not very friendly."

Lyle raises an eyebrow at my use of "boy" since we're all supposed to be of similar ages, but neither of them comment on it, and then Lyle continues, "Yes, he kind of is. You two didn't get along very well… but we still need to ask this, as a favor to us: can you help him and his family?"

I lean back on my sofa and let my tail sway in thought, then I cautiously reply, "Well, what sort of aid do they require?"

Lyle turns to Garanae, who's more apt to eloquently explain, "The imperial nobles of Goldcross and Fort Katakti are complaining that his family are incompetent and aren't fulfilling all their obligations as Lords. The truth is that they're being deliberately ostracized and isolated so that they'll struggle, creating a justification for their deposal."

The imperials are against the Gartanias, but not the elves?

They both seem to be a bit knowledgeable about the plotting of nobility, so I decide to share and ponder, "Do you know about the Purification? I heard that the temple will call for it soon, so do you believe they are at any risk of being challenged during it?"

The two share a worried look.

"Father didn't mention that to me," Lyle hesitantly confesses.

Garanae nervously runs his hand through his sweptback hair. "Same, so we honestly can't say, but the Purification would be the perfect opportunity to steal their Lordship since they have no allies."

I feel like I'll only be able to give them an answer after we've squeezed Katasko's commanders dry, so I make a small request, "I can't make any promises right now, but we're set to make a move against Katasko soon, so can you name these nobles that are plotting against his family? If they're the same as those behind Katasko, we'll gladly help him."

And that's enough to appease Lyle. "That'd be wonderful! Thank you, Wolfy…" He exclaims with a wide smile of gratitude.

But I still need more, so I lean forward and warn him, "But… if Ankara really wants our help, he should come here himself and ask for it."

He immediately cringes. "You know how he is. Sometimes, he can be a bit… 'difficult.'"

And even Garanae backs up Lyle's view, "He's a good person, really, he just has trouble making new friends."

I'm starting to wonder what, exactly, is wrong with Ankara…

But I narrow my eyes, unconvinced. "I'm helping their whole family, so if not Ankara, then at least his father needs to get in contact with us."

"We will convince them," Garanae affirms with an unusual amount of conviction. It seems he can be quite a good friend if he's capable of overcoming his fear of me to help Ankara.

I nod solemnly. "Very well, I'll be waiting."

"That's all we had to say," Lyle politely replies, and I hum, then the two rise up.

"Good luck at the capital, Wolf," Lyle kindly gives me his blessing.

Garanae nods soberly and adds with the same tone, "Our families left because we didn't want to deal with this 'Purification,' so yes, good luck."

"Thank you. I believe we'll need it. It seems like things always become complicated whenever we get involved," I wryly reply.

"I don't envy you," Lyle whispers back with a worried smile while Garanae simply raises his eyebrows in surprise.

Then I just smile and wave as they leave.

"Fort Erda has no strategic value to us, Wolfy," Yunia cautions me through [Bind], not supportive of my desire to help the Gartanias.

"Think of this as a means of ensuring Lyle's and Garanae's loyalty. A web of relationships makes us stronger, after all," I explain myself.

She hums pensively, "Hmm… it'll all depend on how much we have to invest to 'save' the Gartanias."

I nod internally in agreement.

There's not much to do before we leave for Mac Gantus, so I decide to fly around the city on a whim.

I cram a squad of Companions into a Dragon-class plane and tell them to follow me. We'll use Emergency Rings just in case one loses sight of the other.

The plane lands right at the entrance to the castle and waits there for me, so I shift into my dragon form, then I spread my glorious wings, start flapping them… and use [Telekinesis] to take off because I still don't know how to fly properly with them.

The plane is way faster than me, so they have no problem keeping up.

It's kind of refreshing feeling the freedom of flight and cutting through the cool air with my totally aerodynamic body. Aoi gets a bit envious of me because right now, she and Lina are stuck in a meeting with the High Officers.

"The amount of contraband the Townsguard finds has been increasing," Sandoro calmly reads the report.

"Why is it increasing?" Aoi innocently asks.

"Unknown, but the reason is sure to not be good."

Aoi tilts her gorgeous human head. "Have they become better at finding it?"

Lina relays for me, "Wolfy says that it's likely that the number of attempts has simply increased."

"They're testing the new Lordship," Almaria guesses.

Alcander hums in thought and inquires, "What about that spy we 'recruited.' Doesn't he have any knowledge about how to infiltrate the underworld?"

"So that we can control them? That sort of imperial maneuver is frowned upon here," Sandoro dryly shoots him down.

And Alcander shrugs while smirking. "Either that, or we spend our entire lives fighting them."

"We need to find out what they're trying to get into Escanso and whether or not it poses any sort of danger to our city," Lina sums up Yunia's and my thoughts.

Sandoro nods in acknowledgment and writes it down on the "to-do" list. "I'll assign a number of knights to investigate that."

Talking about criminals, the bandits operating in the Riverlands in the northern part of our territory have mugged two merchant caravans, confirming our suspicion that the presence in Cereleia's Radar that we saw over there is bandits. The most valuable thing stolen was the Eia, but it wasn't a big shipment, and the bandits don't seem to be particularly murderous, so we aren't too worried about them. It's only if they start moving south and threaten the main Eia distribution that we should begin to worry.

The Mendecassa sisters and Iril are having trouble tracking them down, so perhaps we can offer to lend them a hand. We definitely need to build better relations with them, especially the usually scantily-clad sisters.

"Moving on, how are your duties progressing?" Lina continues.

Alcander's Royal Land Engineers are starting to come together, and they've already begun inspecting the villages to plan the growth of their Shells. They'll be ready to begin their work soon.

Almaria's organic body for the golems is still in its early stages. She has grown a succulent into the shape of a female body, and right now, she's trying to make it produce a rubbery sap for skin that's pleasing to the touch.

Sainalai finds it very amusing that the golems' genitals are an important part of this project. The rest of the officers remain stone-faced while Almaria explains how she plans to grow a self-cleaning, self-oiling vagina.

After composing herself, the little ginger halfling gives her report. She has made a bit of progress with Jarvis and the [Possess] spell. It's such a simple spell that it's only a matter of time before she finishes it, but whether or not it's practical to actually use it is still to be determined.

Her work with helping the Chimeras adapt to their new lives is mostly done now since the town is teeming with Spirit mages who know how to cast [Solidify], so the market for that spell is stabilizing, removing the need for us to actively participate in it.

Aisco stops zoning out and focuses on the meeting when it's his turn to speak. He's training the men in [Fire Magic], and the results speak for themselves. With Alcander's [Ritualism], our mages can unite their "Magical Power" and blow holes in our Shell (with enough time to cast). Though it's impressive, they're actually still just at the "beginner" level of [Ritualism]. This skill is so powerful that it's basically "siege magic" for the imperials, and it's even considered by historians to be one of the main reasons that the first emperor was able to conquer the continent.

The Celestial Horns are slowly progressing through their learning of how to use their "battle bodies" without the need for [Solidify]. This training has some overlap with Sai's [Possess] research, so she's advised to work together with them.

In my mind, the image of a Horn using a fully enchanted suit of armor with the help of a personal golem is amazing. Being able to move without the need for flesh created through [Solidify] would make them nearly indestructible. Armor is made to protect the body, but without a physical form, they basically have no mundane weaknesses.

Mimi reports that the RRRI has calculated the cost of the new [Telekinesis] gems that will power the planes, so an overall estimate of the price can now be determined.

We'll announce that estimate and gauge the interest of the merchants. If the Imperial Army doesn't show interest in the Raki soon, then we might just start selling it to the rich fucks who want to commit suicide at near-supersonic speeds.

The Transport Airplanes division is taking longer to make real progress since those planes need a lot more engineering to not just disintegrate once they reach max speed.

We should begin stockpiling crystals, so the Carrier and the Winch have permission to bring back more Drifting Islands to extract their Air crystals. The Chimeras with knowledge of refinement and re-attuning will also be notified so that we can officially organize a refinery.

There's also a shipment of crystals coming from Rabanara, so we'll be swimming in crystals soon enough. Perhaps we should branch out and produce other crystal-imbued items.

Then they receive a small order from Petra asking for Moonlight Moss and emellanat, and I tell the girls to accept it.

Lina and Aoi also report that the Printing Press is finished. It's a rather simple device, so they quickly made it with magic and over-engineered it, using far tougher parts than were needed just to get it done.

The other Crown Lords have reported a lot of movement at Katasko's HQ in Goldcross. Most of their officers seem to be retreating back to the Mainland in preparation for the Purification, so Lotus has her men stalking them. We should strike in a few days from now, after we've scouted out the capital and investigated the situation of the nobility over there.

Now that we're talking about our trip, the Emperor is said to be quite busy, so there's no real prediction about when he'll be able to receive us. Since there's no need to take an [Eternal Gate] to Mac Gantus, we'll use the Floater to save on costs and ferry most of our knights to the capital, just in case someone tries to challenge us.

Brett is included among those knights, but maybe he should spend a few more days here in therapy. If it's only him, then we can just pay for his use of [Eternal Gate].

I haven't personally talked with Brett yet, so perhaps I should go meet him.

As I pass above the Prasa de Ananci, I notice that there's quite a considerable number of people praying to our portraits on the Shell, which is kind of worrying. It is the last day of the month of Prayer, so perhaps people are just compensating for their prayer debt…? Hopefully.

The sight of a shining silver dragon grabs their attention, then they point and shout.

"Is it a dragon? Is it a plane? Yes, it's our Lord and his men!"

I keep the dragon contained and move on. Now's not the time to give my ego a blowjob.

The town is actually quite lovely this morning. Colorful, pretty, and orderly, it's always a treat to watch the people as they go about their business.

The dragon settles down and focuses on flying, and soon, we both notice how therapeutic it is to slowly fly across town, feeling the wind against my scales with nothing to distract me.

These past few days, everyone has been in a hurry to get everything in order before we leave for the capital, so it's like our minds have been stuck in "overdrive" mode, causing a bit of wear.

Three days of travel in the Floater plus however long we'll need to wait until the Emperor is available seems like a nice change of pace. Let's just hope that our plot against Katasko doesn't fail disastrously…

I don't believe in jinxing.

Anyway, I soon reach the temple, and it's a carbon copy of any other. There does seem to be a crowd of people at the large building beside the temple grounds, which I assume is Escanso's "House of Healing."

The free treatment doesn't start until tomorrow, once people have paid their monthly taxes, so I guess they're just asking for information or something.

I land on one of the grass fields that surrounds the temple, and I realize that maybe I should've tried coming here incognito.

The kids scream in fear and run away while the few priests nearby pale in awe.

Perhaps they wouldn't be so afraid if I was in my normal humanoid form…

I quickly shift back to normal and casually stroll forward as if nothing happened.

The Dragon-class plane lands behind me, and the squad of Companions disembarks, struggling to contain their smiles.

The priests recognize me and become mortified at the commotion the children created, so they start rounding up the little ones and hurrying them away to prevent even more embarrassment.

But my heart has already been wounded.

I only like that people fear me when I'm trying to look fearsome…

"Don't worry, Wolfy, most people find you adorable," Roxanne makes an attack of opportunity.

"I won't take that as an insult," I composedly reply and move on.

The temple is busy, but the people make way for us, so we get inside without a problem, and I immediately notice Ciel doing her idol thing by leading a simple song.

They sing a song that is a prayer to the Goddess of Prayer about missing the month of Prayer, so they pray that nothing bad happens to them because they forgot to pray for protection.

"Wolfy…" Ciel grumbles while internally rolling her eyes.

"It's an accurate description," I categorically reply, but she just grumbles internally and ignores my internal monologue.

"Ah… so you're the source of the commotion," a familiar and pleasing voice graces my ears.

I look to the side and see the beautiful Teresina coming down the stairs from the second floor, her arms entwined with her just-as-beautiful daughter.

My lips immediately part into a smile, and I see Teresina's mouth twitch, which I assume is because she's holding back her own smile.

It's time to flirt a little before we leave.

A note from Manasong

Hall of Fame of Patrons

The patrons who support Rupegia shall have their names sung by the bards for they deserve the glory and honor. Their names are:

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Chapter 125: Engage! - Part 3

A note from Manasong

Attention: to conform to the limit of mature content (more than just sexual content) allowed in a novel, I've censored this chapter. You can look for the uncensored version here.

I'm taking a two weeks break from the main story to work on other things. First week will be review of the early chapters, and in the second week I'll begin writing the next side story for the patrons

Ah, yes, the gorgeous and stern gilf with her elegant and stone-faced milf daughter. They're wearing summer versions of the priest robes, with rolled-up sleeves and a shorter skirt, allowing me to salivate over their shapely legs and amazingly well-cared-for feet.

Caterina's calves are thicker than her mother's, though neither's show a hint of their age. Their feet do show some charming wrinkles, though, but their open-toed, vine-like heels adorn them like glorious pedestals for their sublime forms.

"Forgive me, it wasn't my intention to scare the children like that," I smoothly reply and nod respectfully.

The two walk down the steps in perfect sync, their heels clacking loudly against the stone.

"Perhaps, but you surely meant for something grand instead of fearsome, no?" Teresina sternly replies, her strong stare stimulating the sadist in me.

But I keep it in check to avoid ruining her impression of me. "I honestly didn't. You seem to have a bit of an 'inaccurate' idea of my personality," I serenely point out.

She raises a thin eyebrow and hums questioningly. "Hm? Do I, now? What sort of dragon doesn't have a flair for dramatic entrances?"

How unfair, she really has the wrong idea about me.

"I'm both dragon and human, but I keep the dragon chained most of the time," I calmly explain, then they both stop before me, close enough that my nostrils are invaded by the intoxicating elven perfumes they wear.

Teresina then snorts and retorts, "As if humans don't also have a reputation of being braggarts."

I'm just a little bit offended by that, so I narrow my eyes and categorically respond, "Now, now, be fair. I don't really behave that way."

And she immediately snaps back, "Humans have a tendency to perform silly theatrics when trying to impress a prospective partner."

Caterina breaks her emotionless mask and knits her eyebrows as she amusedly remarks to her parent, "I believe that's just how men behave regardless of race, Mother."

I grin as I seize this golden opportunity. "So, you believe that this 'prospective partner' I'm trying to impress is you?" I mockingly ask the proud elf gilf.

And she gives me that haughty but alluring look that only an elf can pull off. The way her dazzling face warps in annoyance is truly worthy of being immortalized in a painting. "That's what you suggested," she states sternly.

But I show the opposite emotion of her as I gently smile. "Come, now, don't play games. That's clearly what you implied."

She snorts and looks away. "I most certainly didn't. You're the one admitting that you consider me a 'prospective conquest.'"

I fake a gasp and clutch my chest as I exclaim, "You wound me! I don't consider women something you can 'conquer.'"

She stares at me and slowly narrows her eyes as she replies, "I'm not inclined to believe you."

A subtle smile graces Caterina's pink lips as she teases, "At least he didn't deny that he considers you a 'prospective partner.'" But Teresina ignores her completely.

I give my sudden new ally a smug glance, then I confidently state, "I've never abandoned a woman after bringing them to my bed."

Teresina stares at me intensely, trying to sniff out a lie, but there's none to be found. The "group fun" during the Lordship Ceremony and the one after doing Roxanne's mother don't count, so the only women I've "abandoned" were the prostitutes… and that deer-like Chimera, Kal, who I had a single date with back in Whakamutu.

She was quite the beauty, that one, and I wonder where she is now. I hope she decided to live and come with us to Escanso.

"'Collect,' then," Teresina begrudgingly corrects herself. "Do you even have a limit on the number of women who can join you?"

As the universe infinitely expands, so does the harem…

Unfortunately, my life isn't a meme, at least not yet, so I have to be realistic. "I don't plan on marrying any more women, though I believe there's still room for a few more concubines, and I'll always be available for casual relationships."

Caterina raises her eyebrows in surprise and slowly turns to her mother, who remains completely impassive.

Seeing that the other is hesitating, the milf decides to give the conversation a push, "Well… that sounds quite considerate. I assume your wives also abide by the same rules?"

I nod. "Yes. As long as their partners are also women."

"Hmm…" She hums thoughtfully and grabs her chin, then she stares at her mother and hums harder. "Hmmmmm…!"

Teresina rolls her eyes and grumbles, "Spare me from these youthful games, child."

Caterina snorts and smirks. "Spare yourself from your own grumpiness."

The older beauty immediately releases her daughter's arm and turns around. "I believe it's time for me to return to my duties," she dryly affirms and starts walking up the stairs.

"It was a pleasure talking with you, Teresina," I smoothly reply.

She stops and glances back at me. "Likewise."

Caterina simply grins and watches as her mother escapes our playing. Those legs really need a good licking.

After Teresina is gone, the gorgeous mature woman turns to me, and her amused expression slowly returns to being stony and refined, then she starts talking business, "On more serious matters, Lord Ciel has agreed to allow a group of Templars to accompany you on your trip, and I was on my way to also offer myself to join you."

I coo and let my thick tail wag a few times, "Oh? That's interesting. But aren't you a Captain? What about your men?"

"They'll remain here and continue searching for any hints of heretics. I desire to simply convene with my fellows at the capital, but I'll also be able to mobilize spare Templars if we ever need them."

I smile and nod in understanding. "Sounds great to me. We won't say no to more protectors."

She gives me an intense, measuring stare. "You truly don't mind the presence of Punishers?"

"Of course not, unless you start being a goblin to my men."

A smirk slowly breaks her cold expression. "That depends on what you believe 'being a goblin' means."

I narrow my eyes, pout, and grunt, "Hmph."

And her smirk widens. "I'll at least be considerate to my oh so kind host while I'm Gods-know-how-high above the clouds."

"Now that's acceptable. Thank you." And I nod respectfully.

Her gaze becomes warm, and her posture seems to relax a little bit. "I'm also glad that you're so easy to talk to," she huskily replies.

That takes me by surprise, so I reflexively mumble, "Hm?"

"Your first appearance here kind of made you seem like a big lizard with an inflated ego to compensate for a small sword, but I'm glad to be proven wrong."

I chuckle softly and engage with her banter, "About the sword or the ego?"

She snorts and puts her hands on her waist in a sassy way. "Of course you wouldn't miss a chance for that kind of joke."

I shrug exaggeratedly. "You're the one who said it first."

She chuckles softly and crosses her arms. "Yes, I very much enjoy your personality, so I must go, or soon, your 'Charm' will begin to poison my thoughts."

I nod and wave my claws. "Pleasure talking with you."

She nods back and whispers, "Likewise…"

I glance behind me and see that the Companions appear to have enjoyed eavesdropping on our conversation. I like seeing how eager they are to serve and how they always seem to try to get closer to me and my wives. It feels better to be loved than revered or worshiped… or even feared.

We move a bit out of the way and wait until Ciel is done with her singing, then she goes to find Brett and brings him to us.

I give her a loving peck, then I plant my hand on her ass, and she turns to face him.

"Hello, Brett. How are you feeling?" I gently greet.

The funny-looking weredog freezes midway going down on one knee as my casual tone makes him rethink whether this level of formality is necessary, but his adventurer pride takes over, so he quickly straightens up and gives me a stiff nod. "My Lord. I'm… very thankful that you've given me this opportunity," he slowly replies, his sluggish voice and gaze revealing that he's a bit groggy right now.

"Is he on drugs?" I ask Ciel through [Bind].

"A very small dose. It has a calming side effect."

And I warmly affirm, "Any Lord would gladly take someone like you under their shade. It's we who have to be thankful for being chosen by you."

"Still, you're being very kind to me," he responds with the same tone and slowly nods.

"Hm…" I softly hum, then I stare at him as I feel something slowly come to me.

Pale skin, Asian eyes, puffy blonde hair, round face.

After a brief moment, it finally clicks.

Shiba…! That's it! He reminds me of a Shiba Inu!

I suddenly feel an urge to hug him, making me realize that his "Charisma" might be moderately high. Thankfully, Ciel seems unaffected by him, but she has adopted a "no hugs" rule with men ever since she switched to the "feels like I'm wearing nothing at all" elven dresses, so she wasn't at risk, anyway.

I snap out of my musings and break the silence before it becomes awkward, "I understand your choice to serve us. I was also in a position that made me seek protection through service, so I understand if you have reservations about swearing your life to us."

He shakes his head, then lowers it. "I had a lot of time to think about things when I was a prisoner inside my own mind. I don't think I'll ever regret this decision, but I appreciate your concern."

I hum in understanding. "Only time will tell, but for now, focus on your health. It's possible that we'll need you soon."

He raises his head again and nods. His expression seems stuck in an absentminded smile while his gaze occasionally wanders away from me towards nowhere in particular. "I will. I didn't realize how…" -He looks at his hand and clenches his fist- "out of control my own mind could go. After Lord Hanafuria wounded me, I just suddenly felt like I was back in those tunnels." Then he touches his chest right where it caved in from Hana's strike.

Ciel rests her hand on the base of my tail and slowly caresses it as she kindly explains, "Those memories are too strong, too painful; so, when they're recalled, they overwhelm you. The pills we gave you will calm you down and 'muddy up' your memories, turning them back into clay so that they can be molded into something that brings you less grief."

Brett chuckles amusedly and looks back at the singing crowd. "It's not just 'calming.' I can see the sound…" He coos in wonder.

I narrow my eyes in thought.

Is that LSD…?

Then he waves his hand towards them as he adds, "And I can sense sparks when people touch each other. It's just… beautiful…"

Wait… does he have "Heightened Connection to Life"?

Ciel blinks blankly, then uses [Diagnosis] on him and remarks through [Bind] in surprise, "Actually, yes, he does. I didn't know that the pills we use have Eia in them. I guess my 'Stats' were too low to see this effect before."

"I didn't know that we sell Eia to the empire," Yunia suddenly chimes in.

"What does the Elder Council do with all the Eia we send to them?" I question internally, and Yunia hums in understanding.

"Well, you're making me want to get some of what you're having," I comment with a smirk and glance at Ciel.

Brett turns back to us and smiles excitedly, making him look just like a happy Shiba. "I recommend taking it during a gathering. It was like I could see everyone's fervor as we all prayed. We all, like, glowed. I can't really explain it."

I give Ciel's juicy ass a gentle squeeze. "Get some pills for us, my love. We'll have time to take them on the trip."

She narrows her eyes and gives me an annoyed glance. "They're for therapy, not relaxation," she grumbles.

I glance at Brett. "Well… he looks quite relaxed."

"Oh, I am…" He hums back and chuckles like a stoner.

Ciel sighs and shakes her head as she relents, "I'll see what I can do."

I give her ass a light tap, and we release each other. "Thank you, my love. Now, I think I'll start making my way over to the air docks."

She nods and adds, "I'll meet you there soon, and I'll bring the Templars with me." Then she turns and walks away.

I turn to the cute doggo and give him one last word of encouragement, "Brett, I'm happy to have you with us. Put your faith in the priests because I'm sure they can help you with whatever you need."

He nods repeatedly and agrees wholeheartedly, "If every 'session' is like this, I have nothing to complain about." And he chuckles serenely again.

I give him a small wave. "Until another day."

"Your Highness," he replies and nods respectfully, which is the most he can do because I think he'd just fall face-first on the floor if he tried to bow.

I turn around and see that my bodyguard girls have already opened a way for me.

As I walk past the curious passersby, I give them a small wave, and I can almost see hearts appear over their heads, but there are so many elves that I can't tell whether it's men or women who react the most strongly, though that doesn't really matter. I'm so confident in my ability to charm women that I don't overvalue their attention anymore.

The only women that I need to pay attention to me are my wives.

"Seeing you get your ego stroked also makes me feel good, though," Alissa chimes in through [Bind].

"Among other things…" Roxanne wryly adds.

I notice that a few children have returned to the field to play, and they stare at my glorious features in awe, so I try to look as friendly as possible, but then [Spicy Charm] turns on automatically, and I immediately suppress it because I'd rather not know whether or not it works on little girls.

The bodyguard girls stuff themselves back into the Dragon-Class plane, then I shift into my dragon form as slowly as possible.

This time, the children don't get scared since I don't just appear out of nowhere and land right in front of them. They, instead, come close enough to me that a Companion comes out to yell at them, and once I spread my wings, they learn to keep their distance.

"Are you the Lord?" A brave little boy asks out loud.

"Yes, I am," I calmly reply with my rumbling, draconic dual voice, then I start flapping my wings and cast [Telekinesis] on myself again.

The kids shout in excitement and cover their eyes as I blow air and dust towards them, then I take off and leave the temple behind.

The knights start boarding the Floater while the workers leave after finishing their last inspection. There's still time before everyone is ready to go, so Sandoro, Almaria, and I wait at a vantage point on the docks and observe everyone going about their day.

I stare at the Floater in admiration, but then I feel like something is off.

"It looks different… wait, did you redecorate it?" I question out loud.

"Training for our [Nature Mages]," Almaria calmly replies.

"Good job," I hum.

"Thank you, Your Highness," she coolly replies, and I can hear the smile in her tone.

The Floater is a blimp with a cylindrical metal frame body covered in cloth, a large cabin at its bottom, a glass dome bridge at its forward tip, and a large pair of wings on each side.

The cabin was about twice as long and wide as an average Earth bus, but now, it seems even bigger. Not only that, but every single surface of the entire ship is covered in detailed, wind-like patterns, even the wings, courtesy of Almaria and our court mages.

The main body simply covers the floating tanks inside, and they can even be converted into temporary beds if the ship is landed. Counting Brett, we have twenty-eight knights, and a few of them will remain in Escanso to keep an eye on things, so we have enough spare room for them, the Companions, and even some more guests to all accompany us on this trip.

I spend my time admiring Almaria's work, and a minute later, Osaria appears at the docks with Poosh in tow and flanked by Klein and Anton.

The way my milf's hips sway tells me that she's using her "Charisma" on me, but then I see a man-eating hunger in her red eyes, and the dragon rattles in its cage.

"Are the rooms ready?" I question Almaria.

"Yes, they are, Your Highness."

"Alright."

Without a word, Osaria and Poosh follow me into the Floater.

The whole cabin has been enchanted with [Warp Space] and adapted with sliding, overlapping walls so that they won't suddenly explode if the enchantment fails, increasing the interior space even further.

At the rear of the cabin is the large Captain's Quarters and the even larger Suite beside it, so the three of us enter the Suite and perform the inaugural Ravaging in it.

There's nothing more romantic than doing your lovers until they can't walk as your last goodbye to them before a long trip.

The girls also begin to arrive one by one (including the golems), with Ciel being the last because she was getting us some "goodies."

I stare excitedly at the pills and caress Poosh's head while she milks me. "Noice. We'll use them when we get bored of plowing all day, I guess," I joke and grunt as I unleash.

"So, never?" Hana dryly asks.

I smile cheekily and chuckle, "Heheh. You girls will get your flowers burned if you try to outlast me."

She narrows her yellow eyes at me in challenge. "Only because you replace your sword with a fake one."

"It's still a sword, so…" I shrug.

Someone knocks on our door, and a muffled voice comes through, "The troops are ready, Your Highnesses."

I force myself to release one last time in Poosh's mouth, and she shares her bounty with the almost passed-out Osaria.

"It's time for you two to go."

Poosh nods slowly, looking a bit down, and I suddenly feel like taking her with us, but alas, I really can't. When things are more stable, I'll take all of my women sightseeing; that's a promise I make to myself.

"Tell Iliada that I'll miss her," I whisper to Poosh as I hug her soft body.

"She'll pass out from happiness when she hears it," she amusedly replies.

Then I give Kaatohe a deep kiss and squeeze her tight behind. "I'll miss you a lot, too," I huskily assert.

She stares at me for a brief moment as her breathing becomes heavier, then she assumes her haughty demeanor and replies, "Yes. It'll be quite a shame not to have you here to entertain me."

I let out a growling laugh and rub a vibrating tentacle, making her gasp, then I walk away and feel her angry stare burning into my back.

Then I shamelessly bury my face in Osaria's huge pollows, but she grabs my horns and pulls me up for a kiss. Her tongue repeats what she did to my sword a few minutes ago, giving me an unsheathing again.

But just when things start to get good, she breaks the kiss and flashes a cheeky smile, then her happiness gives way to worry.

"Stay safe," she whispers melancholically.

"You too," I gently reply and give her one last peck on the lips.

The girls also give their goodbyes to the three of them with varying levels of intensity. They've had their parts massaged by Poosh quite a few times already, so the gentle sheep gets the deepest kisses of all.

Then I say my goodbyes to Krysta.

"You sure you don't want me to come?" Krysta asks with a teasing tone and raised eyebrows.

I sure hope she isn't flirting…

Wait, she obviously isn't flirting.

"What do you think I did with all that food I had you cook for me? It's all in my [Item Box]!" I exclaim and give her shoulder a gentle slap.

She remains steady like a rock but freezes in place as her eyes widen in surprise.

"His [Item Box] is huge, literally," Alissa whispers cheekily, and Krysta starts chuckling.

Next is Oritiki.

"I promise that next time, I'll have you right beside me," I proclaim as I shake her hand.

"Don't worry, I know my time will come," she confidently replies and squeezes my claws.

"Heh."

I'll also miss your massive pillows.

Sandoro, Almaria, and Sai will stay. Enomosa will take over the knights and watch over the town since she's the second most senior of them.

"Don't do anything reckless," the Commander sternly requests.

"I'll try," I stiffly reply, failing to smother my smile, and he just softly sighs tiredly.

"Good luck," Almaria gives me her blessing, and I almost pull her into a hug.

"Can't say that enough, good luck," Sai also gives her blessing, and I really have to hold myself back from pulling the cute, little, ginger halfling into a hug.

I don't even say anything to Nono, I just steal her lips and squeeze her ass, and that's enough to make the little slut weak in the legs.

"Klein is mine," I whisper to Hermann with a grin, and we both squeeze each other's hands.

"Screw you, I'll screw you both one day," he grunts back in reply.

I feel the sadist take over. "Maybe I'll let you screw her if you're a good boy."

He raises his eyebrows and smiles smugly. "You want me to suck your sword?"

My grin stiffens. "Screw you."

And his smile widens. "I'd enjoy that."

Fuda gives me a very earnest handshake, his shyness and awkwardness replaced by a bubbly demeanor that I find quite agreeable. His parents are treating me just as they usually would, but perhaps it's because they have no idea how to react to the fact that I "took" his son's first time.

Then I share more casual goodbyes with the rest of the Grosshils (though Petra is visibly stiff), the twins, and the Troupe.

With all the formalities done, I bring Alissa along as I go with Yunia to the bridge because I don't want to lose her Blessing again today.

Nohopu, the squirrel-headed, slightly unhinged Captain, is waiting for us along with Caterina in the glass dome.

When we enter, the crew all stand and salute us, then we take our seats behind the Captain's.

I nod to him, and he orders, "Take off!"

A mild feeling of unease washes over us as the ship silently starts floating up, and the waving people down at the docks slowly become smaller and smaller until we can't see them anymore.

Then we stop ascending, and he gives more orders. "Heading, two-forty degrees. Speed, full. Set!"

The crew repeats his orders in confirmation as they carry them out, and the ship starts to turn.

I stare at Kurii, the pretty, beagle-headed XO, but then the Captain turns back around to face us with a wide grin on his silly face, pulling me out of my 'miring.

"Would you like to do the honors, Your Highness Wolf?" He cheekily asks.

Oh, heck yes. Of course, I do.

I stand up and order, "To Mac Gantus! Engage!"

A note from Manasong

Hall of Fame of Patrons

The patrons who support Rupegia shall have their names sung by the bards for they deserve the glory and honor. Their names are:

Prince PreownedFIN.

Prince Creamy Spinach.

Prince Owldente.

Prince Charlie Foxtrot.

Lord Andrew Meyers.

Lord Novgarod.

Lord Michale Erwin.

Lord Bakerdea.

Lord Maurice.

Lord Mattirro Draca.

Lord Sean Drake.

Lord FrostyCube.

Lord Mike Bartter.

Lord Warwulfv.

Lord Jorge Franco.

Lord Khristopher Welsh.

Lord DJ.

Lord Tenebris Lupus.

Lord Paul Daval.

Lord Paul Daval.

Lord Bradly.

Lord AndreyUC.

Lord Tmac.

Lord School Work.

Lord Gwendolyn Simmons-LaRose.

Lord CopeyDunt.

Lord James.

Lord BlindTactic.

Lord Cardnial Steiner.

Lord The Tallest Joshua.

Noble Salty Panda.

Noble Mild Fracas.

Noble Aclys.

Noble CarlBaxter.

Noble d3235.

Noble Frank de Jong.

Leave a rating or a review to help me rise to the top or fix my shameful understanding of prose.

Take a look over my blog where all information about the world of Rupegia will be posted.

Join the Discord and discuss, or rant, or meme, or try and fight me so your waifu gets more screentime.

Become a Patron and read chapters in advance, or read the side-stories, or leave your mark on the story, or help choose the next artwork or the next side-story.

Legends of Times Past Series: The Leviathan – Teaser

A note from Manasong

This a teaser for the patreon-only side stories I'm writing. It's not necessary to read them to understand the main story, it just gives it more background or world-building.

One day I'll begin to slowly make these stories public once I re-review them like I'm doing with the early chapters.

Lina's POV, 22nd of the month of Prayer, year 69,000 of the Solar calendar, at Escanso's castle's game room.

After a long day in the forge room, then getting both of my sensitive bits stretched by Wolfy, followed by eating until my small belly gains a bump, all I want is to sit down and read something nice and pleasant.

Ciel is busy getting "molested" by Wolfy, by that I mean doing light non-consensual roleplay while he stretches her sensitive bits just like he did to me, so I turn to Roxanne and Hana, and the two give me mirrored grins.

"Come over here, Little Lina, we'll keep you warm and safe," Hana commands, but her fearsome gaze makes me feel like a virgin before an aroused orc.

But Roxanne reads my thoughts and immediately soothingly replies as she approaches me, "No, no, no, no. Your sister will keep you safe, and you'll soon understand that this big-titted woman over here can be just as cuddly as your wife."

She gently picks me up and carries me to the sofa, then she sits down beside Hana, putting me on her lap, but Osaria also comes and sits on our other side.

"Are we cuddling the sisters?" Wolfy's "milf" asks, her tone a mix of mischief and seduction.

And now it's Roxanne's turn to become fearful of Osaria's sexually aggressive gaze.

Hana pulls out her top, and her hand starts to suggestively rub my thigh while Osaria does the same, but to my "older sister."

I sigh and begin reading because I know that soon I'll be too wet and aroused to focus anymore.

I'd actually fallen asleep on Wolfy's lap the previous time I read this book, so I continue from the last passage that I remember.

A light was shined upon Artin's submarine, and he gawked in terror at the creatures surrounding it. The terrifying fiends immediately swam away, hiding from the light, but they weren't its target.

Artin looked up and saw a large lamp letting in a blinding light through the eye socket of the gigantic skull he was hiding under, then the skull was lifted, and the terror increased to the point his eyes thought he was going insane.

The being that stared down at Artin was impossible to describe as its visage refused to mark itself in his memories, but one thing was certain, it was beyond just a mere aberrant or animal, it was something "Grand."

It reached down with a huge, wide fin and swept his submarine off the floor, raising it up so it could take a closer look, and its many eyes bore holes through him like spears. Its gaze was so intense they could've killed a man of a lesser level.

A slit opened horizontally on its face, revealing a dazzling set of huge, sharp teeth in a spiral, ready to grind anything it ate into mush, then the mouth widened so much it was all he could see through the glass of his cockpit, but what came next wasn't the blissful darkness of death.

His view of it was suddenly blocked by a large, bright red tentacle, full of small, round protrusions that led him to believe it was actually a tongue.

It suddenly touched the dome of his cockpit and wrapped itself around it, then it rubbed slowly, as if the being was licking it in a very frightening motion.

After a few long seconds, the lick was complete, and the ship was unceremoniously dropped back on the floor and covered again with the skull.

The being turned around as it turned off its own light, and the elf managed to turn the ship back on in time to register the many dislocation waves that followed in its wake, but Artin remained frozen, too stunning to immediately react.

He had just witnessed the most amazing creature he ever laid his eyes upon just lick his cockpit, then it unceremoniously ran away. The absurdity of this situation had completely switched his fear into excitement because there's just no way that such a magnificent being was outright hostile after so clearly identifying and tasting him.

A being he couldn't identify, with a body so absurdly exaggerated that it could've only been imagined in a fever dream, clearly not a monster since he was still alive, and with a presence that screamed "ancient."

Artin was an avid lover of nature who studied its evolution throughout the ages. Unlike humanoids and monsters, animals and plants were born without a purpose, so they changed and adapted in an endless battle for survival, where the individual wasn't as important as the collective. A strong, but singular animal was only a mere wave in the endless sea of life and death that is the history of nature.

And so the question in his mind was, is that being a one of a kind, or are there more like them? And if it's the latter, why did he never hear rumors about anything like that?

His scholarly senses were tingling, his mind was in a storm as he considered all the possibilities, and his thirst to explore the unknown clouded his judgment.

In a fit of madness (for any normal person, at least), he fed his submarine's propulsion gem with as much mana as it could take, then he promptly chased after the incredible being.

His sensors could still pick massive waves created by the being displacing huge volumes of water as it swam away, but they consistently grew weaker and weaker as time passed. Even the submarine's top speed wasn't enough to catch up to it.

The endless piles of bones under him were the only indication that he was still moving forward as all else he could see was dark waters in all directions. The gigantic, absolutely dark rift he was in was the being's nest for Gods know how long, but he didn't see any sign that this was anything but the location that the being had chosen to have its meals.

The lack of any dwellings led Artin to suspect that the being was merely a dumb brute who didn't actually recognize him as a living person. His submarine had been licked, after all.

This realization dampened his excited mood, and a bit of sanity started to return to him. From absolutely terrified, to extremely curious, to wary and sober, all in the span of half an hour. To say that his heart wanted to rest was an understatement, he was exhausted.

The incredible being didn't seem to be slowing down, so his sensors soon stopped picking the displacement waves, leaving him completely in dark, quite literally, about the whereabouts of the being.

He remained in his course for a couple of hours, allowing him to calm down and rest a bit, then he decided to take stock of his situation.

His father's submarine is the only thing he inherited from the absent parent, who impregnated his elven mother, then left to… do whatever his occupation was, until he died, and his friends then delivered the submarine to Artin.

Though his father was a Thalanthro, they still benefited from having a dry place where they could do things, like cook food, heal their wounds, work on tools, and just safely rest safe from the cold of the deep waters. But even then, his father's submarine was so well equipped with survival tools that he must've definitely been a nomad, which would explain his absence.

But in an extremely utilitarian vessel, space was premium. The submarine was no bigger than a single inn room, and Thalanthro have slender and tall bodies just like elves, putting everything Artin ever needed perfectly within arm's reach.

His food stocks were always dangerously low because the area he was in had little that could be safely eaten, but he knew how to replenish it when needed. What actually troubled him was that the fuzzy leaves he used to cheapen the filtering of water and air were starting to disintegrate, and he needed to stop in a safe location for a couple of days to grow more. He could use [Conjure Water], but the filter was more mana efficient, and he didn't know any [Wind Magic] spells that could replace the air filter.

He also had already spent too much of his mana in this chase, so he needed an extra day to rest. Otherwise, mana overuse could start to build in him, a horrible condition for any mage. The submarine itself could also use some patching to reinforce its structural integrity, especially the sensitive tanks of compressed air he uses to go up or down, so he might as well go home and stock up on supplies instead of doing it all in the wild.

Filters and tanks of compressed air. If I remember right, this was before Sommerinsel was founded, so the mer should still be quite tribal, making this submarine quite advanced for the era.

Or perhaps it wasn't. Not all mer have gills, so this sort of knowledge could simply be common sense for them, and they do have a problem with writing down the knowledge and passing it to their children, as far as I know.

He updated his hand-drawn map of the area, then turned around whence he came.

He got out of the dark graveyard and came out at the bottom of a lava-rich rift, brimming with fluorescent plant life that could hurt his HP just by proximity. One of the most beautiful sights he had ever laid his eyes upon, and the location he had spent Gods-know-how-long happily exploring, mapping, and classifying.

His sensors didn't pick anything big nearby, so he believed it was safe to expose his submarine and let it ascend.

The animal life ignored the huge, white "sea pickle" husk, uninterested in trying to attack such a hard and prickly target, but a few small monsters came to harass him, which were promptly scared away with a discharge of [Lightning Bolt].

Artin's phallic-looking submarine had been given many nicknames, but "sea pickle" was the one he thought most inoffensive, so he even used it himself when it struck his fancy.

The rift was deep, but the submarine's ascension rate was one of its strongest points, so it shot up faster than any lurking monster could react to the sudden presence of a humanoid in their senses.

But going deep down into the sea has consequences not many are prepared for or even understand. All those hundreds of meters of water above one's person weighs down on their bodies, quite literally, and if you dive deep enough, then you can get simply crushed by the pressure that affects you from all directions and in every centimetri of your body.

Even the merfolk wouldn't survive at such depths, so they use something similar to the [Fly] spell to compensate for the high pressure: the [Water Magic]'s [Water Breathing] spell, but in a body-wide fashion, creating a "bubble" that holds back the weight of the water.

Ah, I see, it is common sense for them, and Wolfy's memories agree that tribes can be quite clever and ingenious, they just have problems passing that knowledge on for the following generations.

Artin was born with five levels in [Water Magic], which showed that he had a lot of affinity with the skill, so much that he even modified his [Water Breathing] by himself, allowing the "sea pickle" to reach depths that its structural integrity wasn't prepared for. Without the spell, his submarine would've been crushed as easily as an orc could crush a grape with their hand.

Since he was ascending and the pressure was easing up, he also reduced the intensity of the [Water Breathing] spell while he observed a cylindrical object that told him the pressure acting upon the submarine.

Exploration was all about extreme efficiency, so there was no wasted effort in the matter of conserving mana, which was essential for his survival in the wild, deep waters.

He soon left the colorful, glowing environment behind and got out of the rift, entering dark, open waters, so absent of any form of life that it was like he was in a complete abyss. This was the worst part of underwater exploration, but his sensors and his [Sense Presence] told him he was completely alone, so it was better to not dwell in this grim environment and ascend past it as soon as possible.

Just as a precaution, he turned off all lights in his submarine, but he didn't spend long in the dark as the sunlight eventually began to reach him from above, telling him that he was almost at the surface.

And in just a minute, he breached like a whale and his face was hit by the warmth of his friend, the sun.

Once his submarine stabilized, he opened the cockpit and smelled the salty air of the sea. After the nostalgic smell calmed his mind, he took a look around but saw nothing besides blue and white.

Blue waters, blue sky, white clouds, and his white pickle. There was nothing else as far as the eye could see.

He took a look at his compass, and it told him that the Everlasting Storm was to his right, so his home was directly behind him.

He promptly aligned his pickle, then set forth at full speed.

Before he saw the city of Granrionian itself, his view ahead was covered by the sails of countless ships occupying its port. This was a time before the empire, so those were all elven ships built for long-distance travel, ships that used the cheap, but relatively weak, natural power of the wind as propulsion rather than [Weaverism]'s "sliding," or the merfolk's [Water Tail] (both of which were present in his submarine).

Artin wished he could use something similar because propulsion was by far the most expensive function of his submarine mana-wise. He really didn't need speed unless running away or chasing prey, so something to decrease his mana expenditures during long-distance travel would be welcome.

As he approached the port, a few curious gazes were drawn to him. He wasn't a merfolk, yet he piloted one of their submarines, an odd sight that drew eyebrows, but nobody bothered him for that was not the elven way.

He stopped by the usual dock, and the dockers immediately recognized him then came to help him pull his submarine into his family's hangar. His step-father's ship was also there, so everyone should be home, a fact that made him conflicted.

He leisurely walked across the streets of Granrionian towards his birth home, drawing curious eyes from the onlookers, but also instantly recognizable to the regulars.

His skin was pale for a sea elf, and it had a subtle blue hue from his blood-father's side, which was a perfect fit for his silvery hair as it made him look rather exotic, but his disheveled appearance lowered his attractiveness considerably because elves are vain humanoids. You don't have many amenities in the deep depths of the ocean, but even sea elves found ways to remain pretty, and Artin's indifference to self-grooming made him feel rather estranged from his race.

Then he reached his home, a simple but sturdy cottage, and greeted his two young not-blood-brothers as they played with sticks outside.

"MOOOMS! ARTIN'S HOME!" They shouted in unison, and Artin rolled his eyes at their loudness.

"Why did children of siren have to be so loud?" He tiredly thought to himself. He had developed quite the reticent personality after spending so long in the mostly silent deep sea without anyone to talk to besides using [Animal Tongue] to mumble to stupid fish, so his step-brothers were sounded more like alarm bells than elves.

A mature dark elven woman with beautiful wrinkles peeked out of a window then immediately gasped and left behind a trail of silver as her hair followed her.

The door to his home swung open as his two mothers quickly came to greet him.

Calia, his blood-mother, immediately slammed against his chest and gave him a tight hug. She was used to his long trips already, but it still brought her extreme happiness to know that he came back alive, unlike his blood-father.

Behind her stood Inaria, his step-mother, who gave him a neutral nod of acknowledgment that gradually grew into a faint smile as she watched her sister-wife's cheerfulness. Inaria was younger, but not prettier, and Artin was glad that his step-father recognized that.

Before all of these silver elves with dark skin, his skin tone was rather eye-catching. They were a family of fishers, who spent most of their day on the sea under the harsh sun, and elves are known to tan easily, even when the days were much shorter than the nights.

Ah, right, this is before the God of the Sun was born.

He silently patted his mother's head as she raved about random things, and then he noticed step-father appear in the doorway holding his baby half-brother.

Saiouei was a male siren, one of the few races elves had little prejudice of due to their naturally high "Charisma." He was a merfolk yet looked quite similar to the average pretty elf, except that he had a greenish skin tone, and webbed ears, fingers, and toes.

He was a rather special mer for he also had shining amber eyes that stared at Artin with a composure unusual for commoners. And once the two step-relatives locked eyes, they shared a simple nod.

That was Artin's father, the man who actually raised him since he was a teen, yet he couldn't give up the submarine, the memory of his deserting blood-father.

Calia hurried him in and gave him a quick bath, then they all opened a bottle of strong Tatopa alcohol to celebrate.

"This is… unnecessary," Artin declared, but everyone laughed.

"A mariner coming back is always cause for celebration," Saiouei calmly replied, and Artin couldn't do anything but sigh and accept it.

His blood-mother tried to persuade him to stay, telling of all the young women who asked about Artin, and even the older ones who had salacious remarks to say about his skin tone.

"Your level is quite high for your age, and everyone knows you're a talented mage. If only you took a bit more care of your skin," she wistfully remarked and cupped his cheek, then she looked at all of the frayed ends of his long, silver hair and frowned. "Also your hair… and your eyebrows… and your nails… you'd be the prettiest man in the whole town."

"If they accepted coming with me on my trips…" Artin alluded with a wry smile.

And Calia's smile immediately fled her face. "Maybe if you came back regularly…"

"You're just asking him to be cheated on," Inaria dryly stated, and Calia flashed her a glare.

"She has to want to come with me…" Artin insisted, his words starting to slur.

His father suddenly spoke, and all went silent from the gravity of his tone, "Just don't take a fish for a mate, there are plenty of mer in the sea you can steal for yourself."

"Steal" was the word he used because only savages lived deep underwater. Like his blood-father.

Artin nodded slowly, a wistful mood washing over him for he hated this topic, then he sighed and downed his cup. There isn't any alcohol in the depths of the ocean, so he might as well enjoy this opportunity.

But he didn't come back just to talk about love, or the lack of it, no, he came back to tell everyone about the amazing being that left such a deep impression on him. Pun intended.

"You won't believe what I saw…" He whispered excitedly, then proceeded to describe the encounter, but he only received horror in return.

"Ewww…" His two step-brothers moaned in sync.

"Are you sure you weren't hallucinating?" His blood-mother worriedly asked.

"That sounds like a horribly deformed and monstrous Scylla," Inaria remarked, her little nose wrinkled in disgust.

But his father remained silent, seemingly deep in thought, and his amber eyes stared at his step-son with a measuring gaze.

"You saw The Leviathan, son," he suddenly spoke, and the sister-wives stopped their moaning to listen. "It's a myth, a bedside story, and many find this topic very touchy, but nobody will believe you."

Saiouei didn't elaborate further, but he didn't need to for Artin understood what he meant the next morning.

As a scholar and mapper, Artin always brought his discoveries to the Scholar's Association of Granrionian to register them under his name, but when he spoke of The Leviathan, the Archivist was less than impressed.

"Did you acquire any sample or carcass for examination?" The old man dryly inquired.

And Artin instantly realized his mistake. "No…" He mumbled back, and the archivist simply snorted derisively, but then something suddenly came up to Artin, so he raised his head again and asked, "Did someone ever study my findings…?"

"No," the Archivist bluntly answered.

He frowned. "Never…?"

"See for yourself."

And the Archivist informed him of where his discoveries were stored. It was a dark, moldy, and dusty corner that had never been touched ever since its scrolls were first stored there.

Artin finally admitted something that he simply couldn't accept while he still held hope in his heart: elves have absolutely no care for the mysteries of the ocean.

They may rule the surface of the Elven Bay, but that was as far as their stubborn, prideful, closed minds would ever go.

Artin sat down on docks and observed as the orange sun slowly dived under the sea. It had been a short day, so a Long Night was about to come, and the town started to grow tense, dreading the harsh times ahead.

The glum atmosphere didn't help his mood, and for the first time in longer than he could remember, Artin felt like crying.

What even was the point of his life? Nobody cared, or believed, about anything that interested him.

Was he even an elf? Or was he just a merfolk born in the wrong body?

He hated his absent blood-father, yet he still wanted to live a life just like his. He couldn't help it, his heart yearned for the unknown and nothing else.

But he loved his family and didn't want to make them sad.

"There you are," Saiouei's deep voice caught him by surprise.

Artin didn't want to talk, yet he couldn't hide his melancholy, so he just kept his eyes ahead and decided to ignore his father if he decided to interrupt his depressive ruminations.

But what Saiouei said once again caught him completely unprepared, "Do you want to chase after the Leviathan?"

"Could he read minds?!" Artin shouted internally. He didn't want to admit it, but it had been days since the encounter, and yet the only thing he wished for was exactly that.

Artin's surprised and confused expression conveyed everything he needed, but didn't want, to say to his father, who laughed heartily and then explained, "It's on your face. You never looked as happy as you did when you told us your meeting with The Leviathan." Then his mirth died down as he received his step-son's full attention after mentioning the magnificent being. "I don't know much about it, but you're not the only one who I've seen act like this."

Artin silently nodded. He didn't need anyone explaining to him why one would desire to chase after The Leviathan. It was something that simply was.

And so they observed the sea without saying a word for long minutes, each ruminating on something important.

But Artin was still stuck in his dilemma, so Saiouei gave him the push he needed, "Go after it, son. Go after the Leviathan and be free. We'll always be here, waiting for you if you ever decide to come back."

His tone was so gentle, so earnest, that Artin couldn't find a way to argue against it, and like usual, he didn't know what to say, so after a moment of hesitation, he simply hugged his father. The call of the unknown was growing too strong, and his father's approval immediately solved the conflict brewing within him.

After fixing his submarine, Artin gave his parents all of the money he had slowly accumulated over his life, then he left Granrionian as soon as he could.

Tearful goodbyes didn't phase him, for he had finally begun to grasp a higher purpose for his life.

This is a good place to stop because Hana's fingers are slowly wiggling themselves into me, and even after being used by Wolfy, I'm already beginning to feel hot and bothered.

I get off Roxanne's lap and sit on Hana's.

"Hug me tight, red sister. Hug me and make me feel safe," I moan softly at her, and she immediately stops holding back then begins dominating me.

A note from Manasong

Hall of Fame of Patrons

The patrons who support Rupegia shall have their names sung by the bards for they deserve the glory and honor. Their names are:

Prince PreownedFIN.

Prince Creamy Spinach.

Prince Owldente.

Prince Charlie Foxtrot.

Lord Andrew Meyers.

Lord Novgarod.

Lord Michale Erwin.

Lord Bakerdea.

Lord Maurice.

Lord Mattirro Draca.

Lord Sean Drake.

Lord FrostyCube.

Lord Mike Bartter.

Lord Warwulfv.

Lord Jorge Franco.

Lord Khristopher Welsh.

Lord DJ.

Lord Tenebris Lupus.

Lord Paul Daval.

Lord Paul Daval.

Lord Bradly.

Lord AndreyUC.

Lord Tmac.

Lord School Work.

Lord Gwendolyn Simmons-LaRose.

Lord CopeyDunt.

Lord James.

Lord BlindTactic.

Lord Cardnial Steiner.

Lord The Tallest Joshua.

Noble Salty Panda.

Noble Mild Fracas.

Noble Aclys.

Noble CarlBaxter.

Noble d3235.

Noble Frank de Jong.

Leave a rating or a review to help me rise to the top or fix my shameful understanding of prose.

Take a look over my blog where all information about the world of Rupegia will be posted.

Join the Discord and discuss, or rant, or meme, or try and fight me so your waifu gets more screentime.

Become a Patron and read chapters in advance, or read the side-stories, or leave your mark on the story, or help choose the next artwork or the next side-story.

Chapter 126: Among the Clouds - Part 1

A note from Manasong

Attention: to conform to the limit of mature content (more than just sexual content) allowed in a novel, I've censored this chapter. You can look for the uncensored version here.

"Don't…" Alissa immediately stops me with a low hiss.

I bite my lips and grin.

I want to say it.

"Don't…" She repeats, more forceful this time, and her dazzling orange eyes stare into my soul in warning.

I want to say it!

"Am-…"

She covers my mouth with her hand, muffling my words, then she sinks her nails into my cheeks. "You cheeky bastard," she hisses again, trying not to smile, then releases me.

I grin like a fool and relax in my seat. My future-dad job of annoying my wife was a success.

Caterina stares at us, her refined face inexpressive, but her gaze betrays a hint of confusion.

"Ignore them, they're just two fools in love," Yunia dryly calls us out, and Alissa blushes just a little bit, then Caterina slowly nods, and they go back to talking about heretics.

I grab Alissa's hand and start caressing it as I turn my attention to the view. The bridge is a glass dome to improve visibility, but it also makes it the best spot for sightseeing in the entire ship.

The High Trees are all more or less the same height, and their crowns' shyness leaves only centimeters of open air between them, so at this distance, all we see is a blanket of green with the occasional hole, where a village most likely exists.

We're at the height of the lowest clouds, so we occasionally pass one by, making it seem like we're avoiding fuzzy icebergs.

"Let's get closer to the glass," I suggest, and Alissa silently nods, already calming down from my domestic "abuse."

The bridge is mostly silent. There's the constant, low humming from the three propellers at the back, but besides that, we can only hear Yunia's and Caterina's whispers, and the occasional report from the crew.

Alissa's eyes give her a better view of the sky and the sea of green below us, so I use her to look around.

"W-would you like to use my scope, Your Highness?" The scout beside us kindly offers.

I look at the cute, tomboyish imperial woman and smile. "Why, thank you. I'll only use it for a few minutes to not impair your duty," I huskily reply and notice her take a deep breath.

I'll remember her face and then invite her one day for some "socialization."

I take her scope and use it to look around. It's quite potent and probably expensive, but it's also slightly blurry, so it's not that well-made.

As I look around, I spot a few black dots in the sky, which seem to have a dragon-like profile and appear to be slightly larger than average Dragolites.

There aren't many flying monsters above the High Forest because the thick canopies hide all potential prey, and diving into the dark forest is practically asking to be ambushed by the many monsters that skulk about.

On the other hand, the skies above aren't regularly patrolled for monsters, so whenever we find one, it's most certainly going to be quite large because the smaller ones are easily picked off in this rather hostile environment.

With the scope, I actually manage to take a look down through a hole and find the little elven houses inside it. It's a bit too blurry and unstable to see the ant-sized people moving about, but I use my imagination to fill in for what I can't see.

After having my fill of that, I return the scope, and then Alissa and I leave the bridge.

We enter the main body and pass by the large enchanted tanks full of magical floating gas. There are a few of the crew about, making periodic checks on them to make sure that they're at the appropriate levels and fill them up when necessary.

The Chimeras don't have perfect air sealing technology, so these tanks slowly leak the gas. Rubber is expensive, even for elves, but maybe it might be worth investing in improving the sealing to save on the crew's MP.

We walk through the entire ship, then enter the chamber for the propellers, and our ears are assaulted by the loud humming of the magical engines. Lina and Aoi are inside, inspecting both the engines and the room because they're making plans for how to better muffle the noise.

Let's see… sound is air molecules vibrating, so to reduce that, the energy needs to be absorbed by something.

Acoustic panels are generally made of foam or other soft material because they can vibrate along with the sound and better absorb the energy in the wave, so perhaps we could soundproof this room by covering it with either moss or grass.

I summon a nature elemental and use her to grow a pair of mufflers for Alissa's ears. She's kind enough to stay with me for the Blessing, so this is the least I can do.

I call our mages, and after convening with them, we decide to cover the walls with a specific type of wool-like moss. Thankfully, the room is made of wood, so it'll be simple to grow it.

We have three mages with [Nature Magic], but I don't want them to waste all of their mana on this. This is going to be delicate, but simple work, so I just summon fifteen nature elementals, draining most of my MP, and then I order them to use all of their mana on growing the moss while the Nature mages guide them.

Since we're not needed here anymore, the girls and I retreat to our Suite, and we notice the humming of the engines gradually becoming more and more muffled over time.

When we enter our private room, I suddenly get an idea.

Alissa smiles warmly and hugs my scaled arm against her thin shirt. "Bonding time?" She hums happily.

"Bonding time," I whisper back and grin.

I pull out our collection of elven hair and skin products, then we all strip and make a circle. It's time for a not-"group-fun" of caressing.

Human Aoi caresses me while I caress Lina, who caresses Alissa, who (teasingly) caresses Ciel, who caresses Roxanne, who caresses Hana, who caresses Aoi.

The golems wish to participate, but they don't want to get in the way, so I tell them to magically manipulate the brushes so that we can focus on our caressee's skin.

Like a cherry on top, Gify pops into existence at the center of the circle and kindly activates her "massage," making us feel like there's water flowing through every inch of our beings as if we were in a soul-Jacuzzi, which brings us close to pure bliss.

"We're just missing you," Ciel calls for Yunia, and my soul space bursts with chatter as all of the girls call for our elven queen.

She fakes a sigh and finishes her conversation with Caterina, then she quickly, but with restraint, makes her way back to us. Her pace is right at the threshold between walking and jogging.

When she finally arrives, she just about throws her heels and not-bikini away, then joins us, taking a spot on the bed between Hana and Aoi.

I tease my little girl's body with my claws, running their tips along her flanks while my tentacles massage her back, spreading magical elven oil all over her perfect, unblemished skin.

At the same time, Aoi's pale, slender fingers play with my body. She mimics my delicate touch and gently tickles my inner thigh, and the feeling of it is enhanced by Gify's "massage," making my friend twitch from the non-spicy stimulation as it wants to get hard, but lacks the proper motivation to do so.

Alissa teases Ciel with her subtly spicy touch. The former is letting her cheeky nature take over while the latter is simply too weak to the fox girl to say no to this kind of caress. If only Alissa could also grow tentacles, I think Ciel would've also asked her to marry her.

"I wouldn't-… ahn~…!" Her angelic breathing resounds in my soul space as Alissa casually rubs her sensitive dark bits.

Ciel's desire slowly seeps into her caressing, and she begins playing with Roxanne's slender body, who quickly becomes ready, but she's too strong to fall to mere not-before-play, though she does channel the energy of her desire into a stronger touch.

Hana gladly joins in the fun and begins playing with Yunia, who then begins salivating over Aoi's slender and supremely feminine body.

And so, the cycle begins. Our desire seeps through [Bind] and feeds off of each other's, but we practice some self-control and stop just sort of tipping over our partners and making them request an actual plowing.

As we leave our minds open to outside influence, the golems' single-mindedness begins to infect us, drawing us all into a sort of trance and aligning our wills in a way that the Gestalt training never could before.

I decide to let my spicy sub-process take over, but it bleeds through and affects everyone else too, though it maintains the same level of spicyness as before. We just let ourselves enter auto-pilot, but then our awareness increases, and we begin to feel like our minds have detached from our bodies.

"An out-of-body experience," I whisper in wonder, and my voice echoes in the void of my mind.

"Surreal…" Lina's voice echoes right beside mine, wherever "beside" is, exactly.

"I feel like I'm swimming," Aoi remarks, her presence "here," but also "nowhere."

"We're 'separate,' so I assume this isn't what we intended with that 'Gestalt' training, right?" Yunia curiously asks as her presence makes circles around me.

I start to feel the "naked presence" of all of the girls, as if they were all sharing their senses at the same time, but it doesn't feel overwhelming. It's all just "there," as if it's a monitor screen that's just out of focus.

"Things are getting weird…" I mumble worriedly.

Alissa's full attention is on this "screen," very much in her "element" as she's now capable of sensing every detail of everyone's minds and bodies.

"It's not useful for battle," Lina affirms as her "presence" nods.

"Or for anything, really," Yunia wryly adds.

I hum and continue, "My spicy sub-process, that's when things diverted from moving towards a Gestalt."

We start to exert our will over our bodies again and gradually regain control over them, but now we're all out of the trance, so the synchrony is broken, and we let the carefully maintained levels of desire drop like a rock.

Gify stops her massage, and we all collapse on the bed, a bit frustrated and dazed by the odd experience.

Hana then grunts in anger, "The hell. We made so much more progress while naked and fooling around than we did while armored and training."

I grab my chin in thought and let my thick tail slap against the mattress as I reflect on what just happened, then things start to click.

Aoi turns me belly up and pulls back my hiding skin, revealing my glistening, pink head, now covered in pre-fluid, then she lowers her head and begins milking me while her exotic eyes stare at me with hunger.

I pat her head and share my thoughts, "You and I are both very spicy people, I can't even motivate myself to fight without thinking about love-making first, and the others have strong fetishes too, so it does make sense that a spicy environment would have a stronger effect on us than just sparring."

"It seems like there's nothing better to align our wills than our love for each other," Ciel warmly remarks with a bright smile.

"More like our thirst for women and Wolfy's magical sword," Roxanne retorts and snorts, making our chocolate angel pout.

"Both," Alissa eloquently asserts, and none of us can find any argument against it.

"The golems' influence also helped, I think," Lina hesitantly adds.

"They did," Ciel happily agrees and snatches Ted. The little bear disappears in her bosom and immediately resigns herself to her fate.

Then Yunia suddenly gets an idea, "What if we use [Weaverism] to connect our feelings together?"

I coo and smile, "Oh, good one. If it works, we won't need to spend half an hour or longer in a group fun before every battle."

My handsome expression makes her heart beat faster, but then the smugness takes over her expression as she processes the compliment.

"Wow, we just found a solution to such a horrible problem, huh?" Hana sarcastically grumbles.

I shrug. "It'd be a tad inconvenient."

"So unlike us to have love at the mere drop of a hat," Roxanne dryly adds.

I snort and wave my claws at her dismissively as I unleash in Aoi's mouth. "Alright, enough."

We still have some time before lunch, and since our entire bodies are already glistening with the heavenly elven products, we decide to just do some mana circulation training.

Once the clock reaches midday, we make our way to the small mess hall to have our meal.

We'll be sharing the table with the Captain, his XO, the High Officers, and the Templars, while the knights will have their turn later, and only then will the crew on the first shift eat. Klein and Anton are special, so they'll also share the table with us.

Though there are rations for everybody, there's no need for us to eat them, so I pull out a special meal for today: pizza, along with a standard elven meal for those who dare not enjoy the second-best dish after sliced bread.

"What dish is this…?" Alcander questions as he pulls on a pre-sliced piece of Margherita pizza.

I nod and kindly reply, "Pizza. It's delicious, I promise."

Kyora, the rather unfriendly blue-haired dragonkin, leans forward and stabs a piece of pepperoni pizza. "This isn't an imperial dish? It looks imperial," she grumbles, then the smell hits her, and she hums in hunger.

Caterina silently takes a slice of pizza à Portuguesa (a Brazilian flavor), and begins eating with impressive speed while also maintaining a level of composure worthy of a princess.

"Yes, it tastes like an imperial dish," she calmly states with a subtle nod, then quickly takes another bite. "One of the good imperial dishes…"

She seems to have two sides to her, and right now, she's giving us the "Punisher" side.

Most pizzas are made in the Italian style, with a thin crust and few ingredients for a delicate and balanced taste, but there's a few in the American style (which is the same as the Brazilian style) with thick crust and as many ingredients as possible for an explosion of flavors.

The elves and Alissa prefer the Italian pizzas while the rest prefer the American ones. Aoi is the only one who doesn't have a preference as long as there's meat on it.

Timas, the refined, monochrome werecat, starts to look a bit agitated, then he suddenly turns to Silvano and excitedly asks, "Are you really Silvano of the 'Silver Lightning'?"

And the annoyingly gorgeous man pulls his silky, silvery hair back in an exaggerated but also pretty damn fabulous move. Then he graces us with a smirk worthy of a movie poster as he smoothly replies, "Indeed I am. You're in the presence of the 'Champion of Colneria,' the strongest duelist of Elaria."

Kyora's harem all whisper excitedly, especially Poppy and Alonso, a dwarf and a halfling, respectively. They seem to come from the western side of the continent, so they should've heard tales of Silvano's prowess… which might've been a bit exaggerated as they passed through word of mouth.

"For a time," Alcander dryly adds, holding back a teasing smirk.

But it's hard to put a smug elf off-balance. "I should still be. I left at my prime while undefeated, and I haven't heard of anybody rising to the same level of fame as I did so far."

"What an interesting choice of servants…" Caterina cryptically remarks, her voice a bit colder than usual, then I notice that her eyes are trained on Aisco.

"What do you mean?" Yunia replies in kind, not liking where this is going.

But Caterina doesn't immediately reply, just continuing to stare at the golden elf weirdo, who shows no indication of having noticed that he's now the center of attention.

It's actually quite funny how Aisco simply doesn't give a damn about what anyone says about him. He just won't even engage with others unless he's specifically talked to.

He might be a sociopath… though I'm no mental health specialist to make that kind of claim.

Caterina turns her stern eyes to Yunia and begins interrogating her, "Do you teach your men personal responsibility? To understand that they are also responsible for the consequences of the actions they've been ordered to perform?"

The temperature of the room drops a few degrees just from the heavy weight that the Punisher puts in her words. Previous friendly behavior means nothing to her in the face of Wickedness.

But Yunia categorically replies, "Our men have too much loyalty to us for them to go against our orders without extreme discouragement."

And the Punisher sighs in annoyance. "Bold of you to admit such a thing to me, but at least you understand then the importance of upstanding leadership?"

I share a look with Yunia, and we exchange some quick mental words.

Just to mess with her, I assume the same demeanor as Yunia and respond, "Indeed, we do. We have a reputation to maintain, and we have complete trust in our Commander's integrity to uphold our values."

Caterina's thin golden eyebrows slowly knit into a frown as her eyes dart to me. "You delegate that responsibility to the Commander of the Lordsguard?"

And Yunia immediately finishes, making Caterina's gaze dart back to her, "Yes. We're too close to our soldiers to judge their actions without bias."

"Hm…" She hums softly, and her posture relaxes. It seems that this final answer has pleased her. "I heard some rumors. It seems that the Ryder family's harem is much larger than previously thought."

It's a bit jarring how fast she can switch between hot and cold, but nobody seems to want to linger in the grim mood.

I grin smugly and agree, "I don't know what those rumors are, but yes, it's most likely true."

Then the conversation quickly returns to being casual again, but I pity Nohopu and Kurii a bit because they have a hard time relating with the Templars.

After we have our meal, we go spend our time leisurely atop the Floater. The ship uses a [Fly] gem, which creates a bubble around it to reduce drag, so the exposed upper deck is protected from strong winds, making it quite the popular spot for the crew.

At most, we can feel a breeze from the small amount of air that's allowed to pass through the magical bubble, and in this hot weather, it's quite refreshing, though I still pull out a tent for us since the sun is pretty punishing.

We don't feel like training anymore today, so when Lina pulls out a book to read, I immediately put my lap loli on her rightful throne, then I look over her shoulder and listen to her inner monologue as she reads.

A note from Manasong

Hall of Fame of Patrons

The patrons who support Rupegia shall have their names sung by the bards for they deserve the glory and honor. Their names are:

Prince PreownedFIN.

Prince Creamy Spinach.

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Lord Andrew Meyers.

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Lord Bakerdea.

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Lord Mattirro Draca.

Lord Sean Drake.

Lord FrostyCube.

Lord Mike Bartter.

Lord Warwulfv.

Lord Jorge Franco.

Lord Khristopher Welsh.

Lord DJ.

Lord Tenebris Lupus.

Lord Paul Daval.

Lord Paul Daval.

Lord Bradly.

Lord AndreyUC.

Lord Tmac.

Lord School Work.

Lord Gwendolyn Simmons-LaRose.

Lord CopeyDunt.

Lord James.

Lord BlindTactic.

Lord Cardnial Steiner.

Lord The Tallest Joshua.

Noble Salty Panda.

Noble Mild Fracas.

Noble Aclys.

Noble CarlBaxter.

Noble d3235.

Noble Frank de Jong.

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Chapter 126: Among the Clouds - Part 2

A note from Manasong

Attention: to conform to the limit of mature content (more than just sexual content) allowed in a novel, I've censored this chapter. You can look for the uncensored version here.

Lina's book is about the elven Twin Warriors… aaand it's basically yaoi for fujoshis, so I eventually tune it out.

Far away to the south, we notice the High Forest comes to an end, and we slowly continue to inch closer to the edge. We'll likely reach the western border at the end of the day at this pace.

Ciel notices a large hole in the sea of green under us, and we start guessing whether that's Ostoum or Ostodos. Lina is the one with the most geographical knowledge out of all of us, but she's too 'enthralled' by her book to join the conversation.

"Send a summon there and see if you can find the Red Leaf Inn," Klein actually offers a good idea, then she frowns and narrows her eyes in suspicion. "You're making fun of me through your mental communication, aren't you?"

"What makes you think we'd do such a horrible thing?!" I exclaim with an exaggerated, fake offended frown.

And she turns her pout towards Ciel. "Because she's looking at me with pitying eyes while everyone else has such a mean air to them."

Ciel turns her face away while we all glare at the little tattle-tale. She's too easily read, so she really has to work on that.

I extend a tentacle and pat Klein's head to appease her. "Don't worry about that, we all love you very much."

Alissa suddenly hugs her from behind and sneaks a hand under her shirt, then fondles her athletic body while giving her neck a few kisses. "We just like to toy with you, in more ways than one," she whispers into Klein's round monkey ears.

The walls of the tent are raised to let us see around us, and Anton is drinking with Azador at the other edge of the Floater, so we'd rather save him from seeing his daughter in this state because neither of them have an inc-st fetish that we could exploit.

Aoi repositions her large draconic body to block the rest of the crew from seeing the molesting, then Romy and Hukarere also take up strategic positions to block the sight of us. Unfortunately, the two Companions are on duty, so it'd be improper to ask them to join the spicy fun.

Then Hana's thirst and sadism activate as she watches the sl-tty little monkey let herself be spicily touched by Alissa. My fiery wife thinks that her best friend needs a spanking and a reminder of who owns her body.

But I turn my eyes to the depraved dragonkin and unleash my draconic rage on her, "Oh? She needs a spanking? What about you and your incessant thirst for your own brother? You even involved Ciel in your 'teasing.' It's like you want to make me jealous."

Her vertical-slitted eyes widen, and her muscles tense up from my sudden attack. "That was just the God of Luck playing with us," she tries to evade.

I use [Telekinesis] to gently take Lina off my lap, then I stand up and pull out the choking belt as I sternly state, "You deliberately showed your flower and Ciel's nectar to him."

The angel blushes and hugs Ted tighter while Alissa merely grins cheekily and intensifies Klein's molestation.

"You enjoyed that, didn't you?" Hana strikes back in defiance with a fearsome grin, but then she glances at the belt worriedly as I slowly put it around her neck.

And I explain with a husky but measured tone, "Of course I did. Embarrassing Ciel while asserting dominance over other men through spicy situations definitely tastes as sweet as a woman… but only when I do it." Then I suddenly tighten the belt as hard as I can, and she grabs it to try to give herself a bit of room to breathe.

I pull the strap like a leash and force her to watch as Alissa's fingers slowly undress Klein with practiced ease, then I put one of my feet on Hana's back and lean on my knee.

She grips the belt harder and grits her teeth in anger as she glares at me, but I just grin back and whisper sadistically, "You're growing too rebellious, so you are the one who needs a reminder of who owns your body. I expose your nakedness whenever I want, and I embarrass Ciel through a spicy situation whenever I want, but I'm not unreasonable. If you beg, then I'll allow you to abuse Ciel in my stead while I watch."

"What…?" The luscious chocolate wife in question quietly whines, but she's got no say in this matter.

Hana's muscular body; her perfectly cared for and voluminous mane-like red hair; her emerald, glistening scales; her intense yellow eyes; and her lightly tanned, unblemished skin. She has some of that "dignified" air just like Yunia does, though with a different flair, but it still tastes just as sweet to abuse her.

The angry, defiant face she makes is just so incredible that I feel like unleashing on her and making another painting. Hana is a fierce and confident woman, so it feels amazing to break her and turn the warrior into a willing piece of meat whose only desire is to br--d.

Roxanne pulls down Hana's pants, then I grow a menacing, painful-looking tool and hand it to the eager succubus. Hana only gets a glimpse at it, and she shudders in anticipation.

I walk over to Klein and pull my personal tool out, then Alissa spreads open the sl-tty monkey girl for me, and I mount her.

Roxanne grins as I begin, then she follows and forces the horrific thing into Hana.

Alissa casts [Ignorance] on us to increase our privacy, then Yunia casts [Silence], and both girls let their voices out, but no sound can be heard.

Lina actually likes where things are going because she's allowed to read her spicy novel in silence, and the occasional glance at our activities is a nice treat to rest her eyes.

Seeing me play with another woman obviously puts Alissa in the mood, but since I'm going full sadist, I stop her from touching herself. I want a bit of wild, animalistic plowing later today, so she has to suffer the frustration of neglect for now.

I lay down Hana's almost comatose body on my lap and run my claws through her magnificent red hair, then I grow some tentacles and start massaging her hips and the muscles surrounding them.

Alissa receives the not-aloe from me, then gently uses her fingers on Hana to let the cream spread and be absorbed by every inch of her abused lips.

Roxanne lays down beside Hana and starts covering her body with kisses, slowly breathing life back into her beaten wife.

Aftercare is important when we go too hard at it so that everyone is back to 100% as soon as possible. It also establishes a clear line between "role-playing" and "real life" so that we always know which side we're on.

Hana blinks, and her eyes focus on my face, then her lips slowly part into a satisfied smile.

I lower my head and give her an upside-down kiss, the touch of our lips transmitting her love for us that she can't express with words right now because her throat is still a bit raw.

Then Anton comes to check up on Klein, and he narrows his eyes at her and Hana's suspicious behavior.

"I'll be, uh… at the cabin with the crew," he mumbles as his eyes scan her body for the subtle signs of "physical exertion." "We're allowed to drink a set amount of alcohol each day, so I'll have my share right now with the rest of the crew."

Our healers know how to use [Refresh], so, to keep morale up in this tin can without things devolving into disruptive group fun, the Chimeras use alcohol as a substitute for wild plowing.

Klein clears her throat and gathers her energy for a second before she answers, "O-okay… I'll just… drink with Wolfy… if they do…" But her voice still comes out as croaky.

Anton closes his eyes and makes a peaceful face as he breathes in deeply, then he nods and exhales. "See you later," he calmly replies and smiles, then walks away without waiting for her answer.

Once he's out of hearing range, Yunia curiously questions out loud, "You think he's disappointed in her…?"

"Anton and Krysta were quite loud sometimes, so it's not like Klein is especially depraved," Hana affirms with a shrug.

"I don't want to know why you know that…" Klein mumbles tiredly.

"Unlike you, Anton has no interest in inc-st, so he dislikes being privy to his daughter's private life," Ciel retorts to Hana with a disapproving pout.

Roxanne snorts softly, "Heh, 'private' life."

We return to our previous, relaxed state, then Silvano and Caterina come up and begin sparring. They're using practice longswords, so it's nothing too strenuous, but the way they smile fiercely at each other makes Hana suddenly wake up as her heart burns with jealousy.

She turns her head towards Ciel and pleads for help. Silvano is a dangerous man because his "body count" is known to be very high among the elves. Even though Caterina seems to avoid men, you never know what might happen with someone as gorgeous as Silvano.

I cast [Regeneration] on her womb, likely regrowing her inner wall once again, then Ciel sighs and casts [Heal] and [Refresh].

"I love you both," she whispers, then gives each of us a deep kiss and joins them.

A moment later, Palo also comes up, drawn by the sounds of fighting, and asks to join. The muscle-brain golden elf now makes me a bit jealous because he's also known to thirst over anything with a hole, but Hana's "disciplining" stays true as she doesn't even try to "pull on her leash."

The four of them draw the attention of the crew with their sparring, and as the pairs swap repeatedly, Hana and I both pray that Palo and Silvano develop an attraction to each other instead of the milfy Punisher.

"What if one of them falls?" Klein suddenly asks worriedly as she watches them get dangerously close to the inclined sides.

Yunia points to a bored-looking winged Chimera leaning on his staff as he watches the duels, then she kindly explains, "He'll save them. From what I understand, they let the crew up here as another measure to prevent boredom."

I frown in confusion and chime in, "This isn't a long voyage, though, so they could endure it for three days, right?"

"Sandoro wants this expedition to serve as a performance evaluation for the integration between the Chimera crew and the Lordsguard."

I hum in thought, then I turn to the Companions and request, "A little bit of privacy, please."

They nod diligently and take a few steps away from us.

Then I look back at the girls and continue, "Back on Earth, soldiers on long voyages would just be forced to 'endure' it. Holding back from acting on your urges is a way to show discipline."

Yunia snorts and shakes her head. "Sounds like a waste of energy. Discipline is only required while on duty, and as long as you live in an orderly fashion, any further demands just cause unnecessary pressure," she categorically states.

I shrug and reply, "In this world, people are more relaxed about things in general, but there's no magic to clear the body of alcohol on Earth, so if the soldiers got drunk and then the camp was attacked, things would go bad."

"Could they at least plow?" Hana asks through [Bind] while she waits her turn, and Ciel relays her words so that Klein can hear them.

I smile wryly. "Only men became soldiers, so there was a lot of gay plowing, but then the religions kind of outlawed gay love-making, so…"

"W-w-what…?! Outlawed…?!" Roxanne exclaims, flabbergasted.

I scratch my horn as I explain, "A massive simplification, but in essence, yes, no gay plowing, no alcohol."

Yunia frowns in horror and looks at the other wives, who all share similar emotions. "That sounds horrible. I believe more than half our Lordsguard would've never wanted to join if they had to abstain from gay activities and alcohol."

Klein gives me a worried look and points out, "I haven't heard much about your home realm, but it seems like you don't hold a lot of love for it."

I chuckle softly. "It's a complicated matter. There's a lot of bad shit going on back there… like, a lot of shit, but it's also my home, and the specific region I was born in is quite nice."

"Earth was dying," Ted suddenly speaks, catching us all by surprise.

"Well, yes, but… it could still be saved…" I shrug.

Ciel gives me a worried look and shyly asks, "S-shouldn't you go back, then…?"

I immediately shake my head and emphatically decline, "Nope, don't wanna. Seriously, I've vowed to remain here. I don't want all this shit I went through to just be training to make me into Captain Planet. I'd seriously kill myself or find a way to return to Rupegia if the Gods shat me back to Earth."

"Let's just not talk about suicide, please," Alissa pleads, looking very uncomfortable.

I pat her head and play with furry orange ears. "Sorry, I won't say that again."

And after a moment of silence, Klein cautiously asks, "Can you tell me more about your home realm? You rarely mention it, and it seems like not even Osaria knows about it."

I don't actually want to talk about it, though. Maybe it's true that, overall, I really damn hate Earth.

"We'll do it in your stead, Master," Jarn volunteers through [Bind], and I see no reason to say no to her, so the bimbo suit of armor kneels before Klein, slightly unnerving the monkey girl, and stares with her lifeless, unmoving eyes. "What do you wish to learn?"

"How was Wolfy as a child?" Klein innocently asks, her long brown tail waving freely in anticipation.

I start to get worried. "What… why would-…"

"Did he pee his bed?!" Roxanne cuts me off and grins excitedly.

Jarn nods and begins to reply, "He did whe-…"

"Oh, Gods, NO!" I shout as I put my hand over Jarn's mouth. "I have no memories of wetting the bed, how could you know anything about it?!"

"We analyzed Master Wolf's memories chronologically," Ted begins their bit.

"And we've found many fragments of childhood memories," Suzy follows like always.

"Which all have significant emotional importance to Master Wolf," and Jarn finishes.

I facepalm. This is exactly the reason why I want to give amnesia to the golem army.

"Don't answer embarrassing questions, please," I tiredly plead with a sigh.

The golems remain quiet and share a few words through [Bind].

"We know what memories were embarrassing at the time," Ted starts again.

"But not if they're still embarrassing in the present," and this time Suzy finishes.

I frown and turn to my wives, then I stare at them for long seconds, my eyes full of pain and misery as I show them my vulnerable side. "Please…" I beg like a sad little puppy wanting head pats.

Ciel, bless her soul, reflexively comforts me as she caresses my head, "Alright, we'll not abuse the golems' memories."

But Roxanne snorts. "Speak for yoursee-ACK…!" And Alissa pinches her ass.

Then the two stare intensely at each other. The fox girl wears a smile like a mask while the succubus glares defiantly, but the latter quickly decides to not face the ire of the obsessive and submissive sister-wife.

"Thank you," I honestly affirm.

"I still want to know what Wolfy was like as a child," Klein insists.

Jarn immediately replies, "My answer will take many minutes to communicate; I require a more specific question."

"What are the most intense memories you have of his childhood?" Lina suddenly chimes in.

"He was the smartest kid in his class, and he regrets acting smug about it.

"His lower height gave him grief, but the girls in his class defended him from bullying."

I had forgotten about that one…

"Wow, that sounds so like him…" Klein remarks and chuckles softly, and the wives earnestly agree with her.

"He asked every girl he found pretty to be his girlfriend, but none of them accepted until much later in his life."

"Yeah, I can see that happening, but only the first part, though," Alissa wryly remarks.

"He tried sports, but he was always left behind by the bigger, stronger, and faster children.

"His lower height led him to overcompensate by becoming aggressive and faking confidence."

"Honestly, we all fake our confidence, at least a little bit," Yunia rather shyly admits.

"I don't," Hana mumbles in reply, and Ciel relays again.

"Yeah… you're 'special,'" Roxanne innocently affirms.

Hana takes control of Jarn and makes the golem motion to pinch Roxanne's ass, who reflexively jumps away in fear.

Once the playing around is done, the bimbo golem continues, "He regrets once bullying a gir-…"

"Not that one!" I interrupt, but the damage has already been done, and the girls give me teasing smiles.

Since nobody says anything, Jarn moves on, "He had a fascination with World War Two that went away once he grew up.

"He was once called cute by his sister, but she then followed up immediately with 'but now you've grown into a little shit.'"

I smile wryly and admit, "Yeah… I remember that one. Still hurts a bit."

"He envied his brother's physical prowess and questioned whether they truly came from the same father."

"You really don't like being short, huh?" Hana remarks and gives me an internal pitying look while Ciel relays her words and pats my head. I like pats, but Hana's kind of teasing me, so I pout as I look down.

"It's why it was so easy to accept this change," I grumble back in reply and raise my claws.

Ciel gently grabs one of my hands and puts it on her lap as she kindly comforts me, "Your weredragon change is attractive, but you were already perfect as a human."

I hum softly and give her a peck. "Thank you."

The girls continue asking Jarn questions, and they slowly shift from my life, to how Earth is in general, and then to history, which grabs Lina's curiosity.

We gradually get closer to the edge of the High Forest, and Ultirei's Tomb's mountain range eventually becomes visible to us. A wall of grey, jagged stone sprinkled with red from the deeper sedimentary layers; molten rock that quickly solidified into crude obsidian at the bottom; and the entire mountain range is dotted with small, shining mana crystals that formed due to the high amount of mana everywhere.

It's definitely one of the Wonders of Rupegia.

Then our conversation is interrupted as a horn announces that the ship is entering code orange, and all the men on top of the ship go back inside, except for us since we can fly. A few moments later, Alissa spots a horse-sized Dragolite quickly approaching us.

A small group of winged soldiers come up and wait for it to approach, but Aoi and I feel like messing with the oversized lizard.

She grows to elephant size while I shift into my glorious draconic form, then we both roar threateningly at it.

It flinches back, and its wings stop beating, making it fall a few meters, but then it rolls in the air like a cat and stabilizes its flight again.

It seems to be ignoring the [Monster Repellent] magic tool that the ship has, which means that it must be an old and frenzied monster wanting to commit suicide, so it's no surprise that it resumes approaching us once its fear fades away.

We roar a few more times, delighting ourselves at the sight of it being visibly shaken, but then we let the winged soldiers do their thing so that code orange can be lifted, which will allow the men to stand down.

Alissa could try to take a few shots at it, but the [Fly] gem and the active [Wind Shield] will make it harder for her to hit it.

After the men easily take care of the little worm, things return to normal, and the rest of the day passes without further incident.

As the sun sets, we finally reach the end of the High Forest and enter the small stretch of grassland before the Rakontagne mountain range, to the north of Goldcross.

Since the ship is overcrowded, it's better to land for the night and let the men make camp instead of forcing them to sleep in the cramped cabins.

A note from Manasong

Hall of Fame of Patrons

The patrons who support Rupegia shall have their names sung by the bards for they deserve the glory and honor. Their names are:

Prince PreownedFIN.

Prince Creamy Spinach.

Prince Owldente.

Prince Charlie Foxtrot.

Lord Andrew Meyers.

Lord Novgarod.

Lord Michale Erwin.

Lord Bakerdea.

Lord Maurice.

Lord Mattirro Draca.

Lord Sean Drake.

Lord FrostyCube.

Lord Mike Bartter.

Lord Warwulfv.

Lord Jorge Franco.

Lord Khristopher Welsh.

Lord DJ.

Lord Tenebris Lupus.

Lord Paul Daval.

Lord Paul Daval.

Lord Bradly.

Lord AndreyUC.

Lord Tmac.

Lord School Work.

Lord Gwendolyn Simmons-LaRose.

Lord CopeyDunt.

Lord James.

Lord BlindTactic.

Lord Cardnial Steiner.

Lord The Tallest Joshua.

Lord Ryan Brogan.

Noble Salty Panda.

Noble Mild Fracas.

Noble Aclys.

Noble CarlBaxter.

Noble d3235.

Noble Frank de Jong.

Leave a rating or a review to help me rise to the top or fix my shameful understanding of prose.

Take a look over my blog where all information about the world of Rupegia will be posted.

Join the Discord and discuss, or rant, or meme, or try and fight me so your waifu gets more screentime.

Become a Patron and read chapters in advance, or read the side-stories, or leave your mark on the story, or help choose the next artwork or the next side-story.

Chapter 126: Among the Clouds - Part 3

A note from Manasong

Attention: to conform to the limit of sexual content allowed in a novel, I've partially censored thAttention: to conform to the limit of mature content (more than just sexual content) allowed in a novel, I've censored this chapter. You can look for the uncensored version here.is chapter. You can look for the uncensored version here.

Taking a bath on the grass is a bit counterproductive, so I pull out a large, walled, wooden floor to spare us from getting dirty in the mud, but I forgo a ceiling so that we can stare up at the psychedelic moon as we relax.

And since Hukarere and Romy are off-duty now, we invite them to join us for the bath.

I carefully run the sponge along the web of Aoi's fleshy wing. This must be the most sensitive part of her whole body, the two other obvious parts excluded since they're always protected by her hide and scales. So, aside from my spiky Weapon, she rarely feels any strong physical stimulation.

She really appreciates my gentle touch and gives me misty eyes as I wash her, then both of our tails lazily wave about along the wooden floor in sync. I feel her love seeping through [Bind], a constant stream of comfort and happiness, like a pot of hearty meat soup slowly coming to a boil.

"What a romantic analogy," Yunia wryly remarks through our connection.

"Hers, not mine," I respond with a shrug, then I take a look at the others while I bathe in Aoi's love.

The girls giggle softly as they fool around, and Klein and Hana whisper as the thirsty dragonkin finally gets her piece of monkey girl. It's moments like these that I live for.

Alissa washes Hukarere as the latter sits on a stool, the cheeky fox barely restraining herself from spicily touching the straight white wolf, but Alissa definitely knows how to tease her washing partner in subtle, exciting ways.

Yunia "inspects" Romy's body while little Lina washes the caramel-skinned Asian woman. The alluring sight makes me feel like giving Ciel a bit of NTR again and forcing her to watch Romy do her wife.

"No~…!" Ciel cutely moans in my soul space, but begging only makes my Weapon harder!

She disentangles from Roxanne and snatches Lina away, then turns around and immediately begins washing her in a "defensive" posture.

Romy and Yunia share a look as the latter licks her fingers, then I force Yunia to pick up the sponge and begin washing the Companion.

"I never thought you would ever wash me," Romy wryly remarks, then her dark bits harden in excitement.

"It's because I'm being forced to," Yunia replies through gritted teeth.

"Use her like a toy; abuse her as you see fit," I state to them and smirk suggestively.

Romy hums and gives a predatory look to the elven queen on her knees. "Oh, I like that…"

She grabs Yunia by her long, elastic ears, then slowly pushes her head down. Yunia feels quite angry at this role reversal and how her precious ears are being treated, but her heart beats faster as a wave of heat quickly rises between her legs.

"Lick me, you sl-t," Romy orders sternly, a sadistic smile gracing her thin lips.

And Yunia obeys.

Alissa finishes her job and leaves an excited wolf behind, then she begins washing an eager Roxanne. I'd like to make Hukarere wash Alissa, which in her current aroused state could possibly lead to some "accidental" spicy touching, but she doesn't seem to be excited enough to go the girl-love route, yet.

I drop the bucket of warm water on my little dragon, finishing her sacred washing ceremony, then I begin to fantasize about how to further my girl-love fetish as I watch Romy play with Yunia, but Aoi has other plans.

She shifts into her human form and hugs me from behind, then turns my head to the side and gently kisses my lips.

I like it when my women take what they want, but Aoi is submissive enough that she rarely takes the lead, so her taking the initiative feels so much more special.

As both dragons, we struggle to hold ourselves back, but that only makes the rising intensity that more sweeter. She even has me grip her throat and hold her wrists above her head as she loves to surrender herself to me.

But when my anger, my intensity, my savagery rises to its highest point, my vision is suddenly filled with a bright brown, almost orange color, then a pair of soft hands grip my horns.

I blink while I pound away, and then I recognize Alissa's face right before me.

"It's my turn now…" She whispers while breathing heavily, her hands trembling in barely-contained excitement.

I grin at the love of my life and pull out of Aoi, but I grow another Weapon so that she can continue getting Ravaged, then I plunge my wet, used, filthy Weapon into Alissa's still unpunished and dripping flower.

After healing my back from Alissa's nails, we all sink into the bathtub for a long soak as we let our muscles rest from the previous exertion. Right now, it's Yunia's turn for aftercare, and her haughty attitude is back, so she doesn't let Romy skimp on it.

When dinner time comes, I pull out a bunch of tables so that everyone (except for the few unlucky crew who are on duty) can have dinner together.

"There's no boring day with the Ryder family around, I see," Nohopu wryly remarks as he takes his seat. His smile is rather funny to look at due to his white, bucked teeth.

"Aren't you one to talk? You were certainly quite 'energetic' when fulfilling your duty back in the dungeon," Yunia immediately retorts and raises a thin, golden eyebrow at him.

"I object to the 'not boring,' part," Kurii dryly chimes in.

"What?!" The squirrel man squeaks like a startled little animal, then he clears his throat and recomposes himself. "I… well, I occasionally let myself become heated so that my high morale infects the soldiers, too."

She nods softly, making her floppy beagle ears sway adorably just like all the other wereanimals in this world. "Yes, it does help, but it still isn't enough to fully offset the boring days of nothing but chasing after prey."

Nohopu assumes a lofty expression and clacks his bucked teeth. "I'll admit that I have my failings, but I certainly earned this position through merit and competence, so that should count for something."

She hums as she shows a subtle, proud smile. "That, nobody can deny. We're glad to have you as our Captain," -she briefly gives him a subtly teasing glare- "as long as there's someone to keep you in check, but you provide a different type of 'fun' as Their Highnesses do."

Nohopu grins and nods back. "Yes, I agree with that. The Royal Family's youth is refreshing after a…" -He looks up at the moon while he thinks- "Divine's lifetime of bickering between the High Council of Whakamutu, I guess."

"How does life in an ancient city differ from life over here?" Caterina curiously asks and leans forward.

Nohopu seems to be entranced by the moons, so Kurii answers in his stead, "Oh, everything is different. You land-dwellers have so much more freedom to do… anything. Our Rangatuhinga o mua Hauhuri nation may have had more wealth, especially when you're talking about magical resources, but the Broken Skies is just such an unforgiving land compared to here."

Kyora lifts her head and looks away from the mountain of food on her plate, suddenly interested in the talks about a land she has never been to before. As a Wandering Knight, it's quite obvious that such topics would catch her attention.

And that's how the Chimeras begin bridging the gap with the Templars. They spend the rest of the meal trading stories about expeditions and adventuring, then they comment on how each culture does the same things in their own way.

After filling our bellies, we retire to our portable house, but before we can begin our rest, a small caravan appears, drawn in by the lights and the hulking figure of the ship.

They hail from Goldport, and they're on the last stretch of their journey to Goldcross. We let them camp close to us for mutual protection, and I summon three fire-Hanas to keep watch on things.

Now that we have some downtime, I call for all six of the Companions that have come with us so that we can perform an "inspection." I know that there were a few "arguments" among our bodyguard girls about who would have the "privilege" to accompany us, so I want to give the lucky ones a good time.

Hana and I sit down on the sofa and stare at them solemnly. Six beauties, six soldiers, six… worshipers.

"Strip," I stoically order, and they obey without any hesitation.

Romy, with her exotic eyes, caramel skin, and muscular body. The closest of them to being capable of snu-snu-ing me, but I know she can't handle my draconic rage for long, so I'll leave her to Hana because Yunia wants "revenge."

Edolie, a werecat woman with long brown hair and pinkish skin. She has a slightly lanky figure, but her round, perky pillows and meaty flower petals are mouth-watering. Her predatory eyes tell me that she'll be the most fun for tonight.

Melanie, a human imperial woman with a stocky but juicy body. Imperials aren't known to be thicc, so she must have a bit of Sommerlande blood in her. The shortest, but the most stacked, and she even looks like a small animal frozen before a predator.

Atawha, a Chimera woman with a rare human head and a raccoon-like furry body. Non-animal heads are considered "out of fashion," but to me, she's just extra exotic. She even has the iconic "bandit mask" on her face, making her look really adorable.

Aneta, a seductive silver-elf woman with nice lips and sharp eyes. She's gone a bit heavy on the makeup, but her face is so perfect that it actually works for her by further enhancing what's already ridiculously beautiful. She'll be the most satisfying to break.

And lastly, Hukarere with her majestic wolf head and well-proportioned snow-white body. Even her draconic legs are attractive to me, for some reason. I've been inside her so many times that she feels like "home," and since she's already had to endure a bath without getting filled, I decide to begin with a homely meal.

I gently run the flat part of my claw across her lower parts and scoop up a small amount of her fluids, then I show it to the others. "Look at this, everyone. She's already like this just from the anticipation," I calmly announce.

She grins, though her face is furred, so it's hard to see it when she blushes, but the flush from her face goes down her neck and onto her exposed chest, becoming very noticeable.

I calmly add as I stare at the naked servings of lamb before me, "One day, you'll all become like her. Just the mere thought of me and my wives will be enough to make you ready for us."

I walk behind Hukarere and grab the back of her neck and her waist, then I force her to bend over. She opens her mouth and starts to pant, then I give her what she wants.

"Oh, yes, yes, YES!" She shouts repeatedly in delight and lets her tongue hang out from the side of her mouth.

"You already had some fun today," Hana affirms to Romy, who holds back a pout, then my fiery wife gives her a teasing kiss and steps to the side to face the excited-looking werecat woman instead.

The other four are forced to stand and watch as we slowly bring the chosen two towards bliss, but there's no need to hurry. We have all the time we need to play with all six of them until they break.

Today is Genn, day of Light, and the 1st day of the month of Love, the eighth month of the year. This is a special day, called the Day of Companions, which is basically Valentine's Day, but only for the unmarried because, for couples, every day should be Valentine's.

The God of Festivity dictates that today is a holiday and that all towns should hold parties for the unwed to either find their partners or join harems. It'd be quite an interesting day for us, but unfortunately, we'll miss it this year, though the six Companions will likely be quite happy that they get to spend it with us, even if they're on duty.

After a quick breakfast, we take off again and continue our journey.

Though it might not be the safest idea, I give the golems a few baby friends for them to test, then we all jump back onto the Suite's bed and continue our mana circulation training.

The grassland below us quickly ends and turns into brown rock as we begin to fly through Rakontagne, a thick and rugged mountain range full of brown and gray rock. It gradually becomes snowy as we fly further in, and we start to wonder if we can spot our hidden mansion built part-way into it, but it seems that the illusion enchantments are pretty good because not even Alissa can spot it.

Then we're forced to climb to a higher altitude because the mountain's peak is above the clouds, but a huge, fluffy pillow stands in our way, so Nohopu deploys the winged soldiers and slows down to make sure that we won't crash into the mountainside.

The temperature quickly drops a few degrees as we breach into a misty world of white, then the winged soldiers report Dragolites and Cloud Snakes harassing them.

I stop my training and summon a bunch of wind elemental-wives to aid them. The soldiers manage to kill a few monsters, and we eventually get past them without any issues after about half an hour.

A few Dragolites follow us, but now that their vision is clear, the soldiers team up and quickly dispatch the annoying monsters.

And without the clouds to block our view, we're greeted by the endless grassland of the Mainland. It seems that we passed by Fort Katakti without spotting it, so it was likely shrouded by the cloud we just passed through.

This side of Rakontagne is much more vibrant due to the higher humidity, and that's because mountains block the moisture from passing, so one side is always dryer than the other. There are few mountains to block the winds that come from the southern seas and spread nutrients all over, so all of the regions surrounding the Bay of Three Kings are quite lush and fertile.

There are a few rivulets going down the mountains, channeling the water coming from their slowly melting snowcaps, but they all eventually merge and form a proper river. Right beside it, there's a path leading to Fort Katakti, but it disappears into the cloud, confirming our previous assumption.

The river quickly makes a turn south as it continues to gradually grow wider and wider, and we can even see a boat going along down its stormy waters, likely taking supplies to the Misty Low Forest.

Teleporting goods directly from Goldcross to Katakti, then taking a boat down towards Roubaix is the main route that elven goods take to reach the Misty Forest in the summer. In winter, there's too little ice melt to make the river wide enough for merchant ships to make their way down, so the transportation of goods slows down.

Then we start to leave the Rakontagne behind, and our view becomes dichromatic as the only two colors are now the vibrant greens from the grass under us and the light blue from the sunny sky above.

A forest appears on the edge of our vision far to the south, and though it's a bit hard to notice it due to the angle, I'm pretty sure that the ground has a steep, downwards slope towards the south, which becomes gradually more evident until a small mountain range begins to grow to our west. This is the edge of the Misty Low Forest.

"The Wrinkle," as this new mountain range is called, continues towards the southwest and grows in height until it reaches its apex at the Fledgling Falls.

A bit north of its beginning is Mistcross, a sprawling city just at the turn of a wide river that discharges into Specula Lake, the biggest lake in the whole empire.

We spot our first imperial airship flying above the city, just beginning its patrol, and it seems to be coming right towards us.

Imperial airships are basically sailless traditional water ships covered in a layer of metal armor. There's a metal dome covering most of the wooden deck, and there are no wings, sails, or other protrusions, so it looks like a horizontal egg where the top side is smaller than the bottom.

Alissa, Yunia, and I go to the bridge so that we can deal with it, but then we notice that the airship is being left behind. It truly is like a flying bathtub, or a tank if you consider its heavy armor.

Soon after, it starts flashing lights towards us, using Rupegia's version of morse code to order us to come back.

"Don't turn, merely stop and wait," Yunia orders Nohopu, and he relays the order while grinning.

We aren't beholden to imperial airships, even while in their airspace, so if we act just a bit haughty, someone high in the ranks of the imperial army will eventually receive a report about how they had to order the Royal Ryder Family's personal airship to stop because they just couldn't catch up.

"Bad" publicity is still publicity.

A note from Manasong

Hall of Fame of Patrons

The patrons who support Rupegia shall have their names sung by the bards for they deserve the glory and honor. Their names are:

Prince PreownedFIN.

Prince Creamy Spinach.

Prince Owldente.

Prince Charlie Foxtrot.

Lord Andrew Meyers.

Lord Novgarod.

Lord Michale Erwin.

Lord Bakerdea.

Lord Maurice.

Lord Mattirro Draca.

Lord Sean Drake.

Lord FrostyCube.

Lord Mike Bartter.

Lord Warwulfv.

Lord Jorge Franco.

Lord Khristopher Welsh.

Lord DJ.

Lord Tenebris Lupus.

Lord Paul Daval.

Lord Paul Daval.

Lord Bradly.

Lord AndreyUC.

Lord Tmac.

Lord School Work.

Lord Gwendolyn Simmons-LaRose.

Lord CopeyDunt.

Lord James.

Lord BlindTactic.

Lord Cardnial Steiner.

Lord The Tallest Joshua.

Lord Ryan Brogan.

Noble Salty Panda.

Noble Mild Fracas.

Noble Aclys.

Noble CarlBaxter.

Noble d3235.

Noble Frank de Jong.

Leave a rating or a review to help me rise to the top or fix my shameful understanding of prose.

Take a look over my blog where all information about the world of Rupegia will be posted.

Join the Discord and discuss, or rant, or meme, or try and fight me so your waifu gets more screentime.

Become a Patron and read chapters in advance, or read the side-stories, or leave your mark on the story, or help choose the next artwork or the next side-story.

Chapter 127: A Little Party - Part 1

A note from Manasong

Attention: to conform to the limit of mature content (more than just sexual content) allowed in a novel, I've censored this chapter. You can look for the uncensored version here.

I don't want to part with Alissa's Blessing, so I shift into my dragon form and let her mount me.

"This feels odd," she wryly remarks.

I turn my head around and stare at her. "You rode my sword quite a few times already," I casually point out.

"But you always faced me when I did," -her eyes narrow, and a seductive smirk takes a hold of her lips- "like how you're doing right now…"

She starts moving her hips back and forth, rubbing it against my scales with only two thin pieces of cloth between us, then I notice a quickly rising heat emanating from between her legs.

"Not now…" Yunia pleads dryly.

"Jealous?" Alissa cheekily shoots back.

Yunia clenches her teeth and hesitates for a second before grumbling, "I won't answer that question…"

She'd love to ride this majestic form of mine, shining in the sun while my huge sword is on displ-…

"Just go!" She hurries us annoyedly and slaps my huge ass. I barely feel a thing, but it's still surprising.

"Alright, alright," I appease her, then I spread my wings and launch out of the cabin.

Feeling the air on my body is refreshing, but I really need to learn how to fly properly because using [Telekinesis] just feels awkward.

I can use my "Willpower" to control the wind through my wings, forcing it to either hit them to produce lift or avoid my body entirely to reduce drag. Flying means alternating between these two effects constantly while controlling the wings for maximum efficiency, so it takes quite a lot of mental effort to do it manually.

I'm still far from creating a sub-process in my mind that automatically takes care of flying for me, but I feel like my control over wind is slowly improving. Flapping my wings while pushing air against them to give myself a bit of lift is easy, though it isn't strong enough to achieve liftoff without help from [Telekinesis].

In flight, it's simple to switch between manually reducing my drag and using [Telekinesis] to give myself a boost in speed, though an experienced dragon would likely notice that my flying is sloppy.

Alissa keeps her body straight, taking in the wind right on her face. She feels a sense of freedom not easily felt anywhere else, causing an innocent smile to spread on her face.

Being the mount feels odd. I really like being the dominant one, and having Alissa on top feels kind of "wrong." I guess this means I'm a permanent dom, though occasionally being a bit of a sub wouldn't hurt.

Unfortunately, our little flight comes to an end rather quickly, and I purposely land heavily on the deck of the imperial ship, then Alissa dismounts, and I immediately shift back to my humanoid form.

A group of mages, a few tin soldiers, and an obvious officer with a yellow cloak stand before us, their bodies quickly tensing up as they seem to realize that we're actual nobles due to our flashy entrance. We're also wearing lavish clothes, so even if they mistook my transformation or my glorious draconic features for just a mere dragonkin, they couldn't ignore that at least I'm wealthy.

I interlace my fingers with Alissa's, and we wait just a brief moment, then I shout indignantly, "Well…? What did you stop us for?!"

The men don't even twitch, completely frozen, while the officer takes a step forward and nervously replies, "We don't recognize your airship, Grand Sir, and we're under orders to stop and inspect all unknown ships in search of Chimera air pirates."

Air pirates…? The nerd in me squeals in excitement… but then I realize that they're potentially Wicked and also rapists, and the nerd grumbles in disappointment.

Alissa pokes my soul, and I immediately assume a lofty tone as I announce, "I'm Crown Lord Wolf Ryder, and this is my wife, Crown Lord Alissa Ryder. We're rulers of the Western High Forest and inheritors of the elven Royal Lineage. This is our airship, which we recovered from the dungeon that gave us the Title of True Noble."

The soldiers cry internally, and the officer sweats cold, my level and draconic blood doing wonders to intimidate them. Though they have enough composure to keep themselves steady on their feet, the officer turns his brain off and becomes a drone due to fear.

He blinks, then dully replies, robotically, "Unfortunately, we don't have your airship in our records, so our orders are to inspect it so that we may write a report." His brain doesn't even process the impertinence of his insistence.

Yunia can't hold back a derisive laugh at the airhead's demeanor, then she quickly tells me the plan through [Bind]. Denying him access to inspect the airship from the inside will ensure that the person who reads his report doesn't forget it, and it'll call the imperial army's attention to how outclassed the speed of their airships are when compared to ours.

I glare and take a menacing step forward as I growl, "Are you daft? You will not waste our time inspecting our ship, but you may observe it from the outside as much as you want. Now, get your Inspection Crystal to verify my identity, then begone!"

The soldiers look at each other worriedly, expecting further trouble, but the officer is jostled out of his trance, and he immediately realizes that he's fucking it up. The army and the nobles try very hard to avoid getting in each other's way because things have a tendency to quickly devolve into an awful mess for everyone involved if they don't.

He lowers his head in a show of obedience and takes a step back, then he turns to the shortest mage and barks, "Fabian! Go get the Crystal!"

The small man salutes, then hurries towards the wide entrance to the metal dome, seemingly glad that he gets to leave the deck.

I fake a sigh and shake my head, then I turn around and look around at the ship. I want to inspect the dome because I saw what seemed to be small windows for the soldiers to shoot out from, but I can't come off like a starry-eyed tourist right now.

Things become slightly awkward as Alissa and I just ignore them. It's quite funny to see (through the other girls' eyes) the soldiers awkwardly shuffling away while their postures relax.

I stare down at Mistcross, but from this height, only Alissa can see anything significant, and the most she sees are little blurred dots that seem to be caravans making their way south towards the Misty Forest.

All I see is a mass of yellow and orange from the bricks and clay roof tiles. It's an imperial town, alright, but we're lucky that we can see anything at all since the name quite obviously implies a certain type of weather is fairly common.

We're not left waiting for long, and after just a couple of minutes, the short mage comes running back while carrying an ornate box, but he also brought company with him. A weredog woman wearing a yellow velvet uniform and two more tin cans follow after him.

"Stay aloof," Yunia suggests, and I begrudgingly agree. I'd love to flirt with (seemingly) the Captain of this ship, but the plan comes first.

The gray, mature weredog woman is fairly attractive, but her hair is hidden by her cap, her face is as stiff as stone, and she doesn't have the elven grace and majesty to look like anything but a grizzled veteran. Her dog ears aren't hidden by the cap, and since her hair is pulled back, the lack of normal human ears becomes gratingly apparent.

She stops before me and bows. "Your Highnesses, I'm Captain Tricia," she stiffly greets, and all of the soldiers follow her lead a second later.

I like it that they're being submissive. She must've realized that their ship is too small and their levels are too low to pose a threat to us, even with [Ritualism] to boost their firepower, so she just wants to appease us before we start making unreasonable demands.

"Rise," I dryly order. "We're on our way to the capital to meet with the Emperor, so let's hasten things."

She hums back and takes both the Crystal and the tablet from the ornate box, then she offers them to me. The Crystal can reveal anyone's "Stats" in full, so it's considered quite an offense to make a noble use one without giving them the option to hide their private information first.

When I touch the Crystal, the tablet becomes black, and my name and Titles appear on it. Hiding entries on the tablet is as simple as touching them once, and we're grateful that they preemptively hid all irrelevant entries for us.

I hand the tablet back to her, then she spends a few long seconds reading all of my Titles, and I notice her eyebrows subtly rise up.

She finally puts the tablet back in the box, so I follow by putting the Crystal in with it, then she swallows heavily and stares as she tactfully tries to appease us, "We apologize for the inconvenience, Your Highnesses. Many merchants try to claim ties with nobility to escape inspection, and we also have a growing problem of Chimera air pirates hounding our skies, so we've become rather overzealous."

"Chimera pirates…?" I mumble, trying to sound mildly curious.

She nods, suddenly a bit less tense since the topic has now changed to something more palatable. "There seems to be trouble brewing in the Sky Lands, so more unfortunate souls have taken to piracy to survive lately."

I raise an eyebrow. We could do a repeat of Gnomeria and offer our help, but we need to know more, first. "Hm… interesting, but I don't wish to chat right now. Is that all?"

She nods again. "It is. Once again, we apologize for the inconvenience."

Time to look magnanimous.

I wave my claws dismissively as I bring about the end of these theatrics, "It's fine, as long as you remember to warn the other patrols about us." -She nods obediently- "I'll be taking my leave now. Until another time, Captain Tricia." Then I flash her a seductive smile.

She blinks twice before she finally replies, "Have a safe journey."

"Thank you," I coo back.

I shift into a dragon, and Alissa mounts me again, then we finally leave.

We return to our Suite, then we continue our circulation training while we watch the imperial airship as it's quickly left behind.

Mistcross slowly disappears from our sight, and we pass over the edge of Specula Lake, a massive body of darkish blue-green water. Not particularly pretty, but Specula Town has been built right at the center of the lake, and it's known to be quite an interesting sight. It's also the birthplace of telescopes, which were used to watch for the movement of enemy troops trying to get onto the Mainland before the empire conquered the nations around the lake.

Lina doesn't say it, but the book she has read about it kind of implies that voyeurism is a big thing over there.

Anyway, we see a few little fishing boats scattered about the lake, and some seem to sink or surface at will, so they're most likely merfolk fishers. We fly so close to the shore that Alissa even spots one of the fishers pointing and waving at us.

Time to toot toot.

I go to the bridge and ask for a playful blow of the horn, and Nohopu seems quite happy to oblige. I borrow a telescope and watch as the fishers tumble in their boats in surprise, then they laugh and wave at us.

Lunchtime comes soon after that, and we invite a few knights to eat with us. Hana, Ciel, and Yunia are the best at getting other people to talk, so the rest of the girls and I let them do their thing.

Hana's flirting with Caterina is becoming more blatant, though, and I feel like they go pretty well together. The mature elf's natural mean stare fits perfectly with Hana's fearsome glare, so they'd make quite an intense duo.

Roxanne feels just a bit left out, but whether it's from envy or jealousy of Hana, she can't decide.

Caterina smirks as she reaches the climax of her story. "Then I whispered in his ear, 'do you also want me to [Clean] your ass for you?' And I swear that he actually considered it for a second, but then he fell on his knees and begged for forgiveness."

Hana takes a sip of her watered-down alcohol and remarks, "If you had asked if he wanted you to hold his sword while he pissed, he might've answered yes before his brain could catch up with his mouth."

Caterina makes a concerned face and shakes her head in disappointment. "I know! It's unbelievable how far humans will go to get an elf to pay attention to them."

Hana chuckles softly as she looks up and down the Punisher's sculpted body, which is quite noticeable through her simple shirt and pants. "I don't really fault them," she mumbles and takes another sip.

Caterina chuckles once and slowly sips her tea. She seems to be a teetotaler.

Hana's gaze becomes gentle, and her emerald cheek scales subtly wave from a sudden warmth that courses through her body. "I didn't expect that a Punisher would be so friendly; your Order's reputation gave me different expectations," she softly remarks.

The life in Caterina's blue eyes becomes a bit duller as she reminisces. "Being cordial makes things easier for us. More heretics have confessed to their evils after befriending me than through threats or torture."

That takes Hana by surprise, and she blurts out, "So, it's all just a tactic to make us drop our guard?"

Caterina smiles bitterly and stares at her cup as she responds, "Believe what you want. It changes nothing."

Hana frowns and stares intensely at her chiseled face. "I honestly don't believe that your friendliness is fake."

Her bitterness fades away, and she gives Hana a glance that makes the fierce dragonkin's heart skip a beat. "My mother and I will be thankful if you truly believe that, but know that our faith and duty stand above everything else."

Hana grunts and nods. "We understand."

After lunch, we return to our Suite, but there isn't much to do, so I just cuddle with the girls while lazily training my human transformation with [Mana Body].

Then the air quickly becomes quite humid and the temperature drops a few degrees, which tells us that we're entering the Thunderplains.

The Edolie, the werecat, and Melanie, the imperial shortstack, are now off-duty, so we invite them to our room, and the spicy fun begins.

I make Alissa make out with Edolie because two animal girls are just better than one. Melanie is shared between all the other girls, and even Lina joins in because she loves those chocolate milkers.

Things aren't explicitly spicy, but it's just a matter of time as the girls intensify how they toy with the Companions, so I put my tentacles on the minimum spicysetting, then I let them loose while I do my own thing.

The sound of girls fooling around is the best background music for anything, really, but once things start to become too lively, the girls decide to pull back a bit to prevent the playing from devolving into a group party while also ensuring that it lasts longer. There are simply too many wives and too few toys, so they decide to cycle who does the toying while the rest do whatever.

We all have skills and magic to train, but nobody has any motivation to really work that hard right now, and so, we have a lazy afternoon where we don't do anything particularly significant.

I can already transform my claws into misshapen, oversized fingers, so I focus on reducing their size. It seems that making a big sword is actually easier than making a small one.

I test the feel of my new fingers by using [Massage] on the girls, and I ask the golems to help in case the test subject isn't enjoying the massage like I want them to.

Lina is the first. Her cute and innocent body is always a joy to defile. Every last inch of her has at one point been covered with my mark or felt the spicy touch of my tentacles, and yet, she still retains an aura that doesn't betray any hint of that.

Alissa comes second. I'll never not find her fluffy ears and tail cute, but there's something in me (most likely the dragon) that makes me want to plow anything that's even remotely cute and feminine, so even if she doesn't act particularly sensual, I just want to plow her regardless.

Klein senses what's going on, and since she's still sore, she asks to be third before things get worse. Her body is quite nice since it's very similar to Alissa's, but I think I enjoy the monkey girl more in three-parties. Because my passion for her isn't as great as it once was, I prefer to use her to indulge in my girl-love fetish, and she pairs perfectly with Alissa and also quite well with either Hana or Osaria.

Then Roxanne comes next, her cheeky smirk telling me that she's going to try to make me as excited as she can. Her body has a mix of a cup of frailness, a few pinches of cheekiness, a main course of sensuality, and add cuteness to garnish, all gently baked in a pale, slender package.

I think about forcing my sword to go limp just to spite her, but it feels "wrong" and a bit humiliating to ever be limp in front of such a beauty, so I just hold the chains tight and apply my soul touch on her as revenge.

Ciel comes next, and I feel like hard mode just activated. Her body is so juicy and delicious that my sword begs to be buried in her chocolate softness. She isn't even trying to look spicy, which kind of annoys Roxanne, but I'm a complete gentleman. Unless Ciel gives me a clear hint that she wants the big, spiky D, I'll keep it in my pants.

Hana's body is simply glorious, so even though her balloon pair are arousing, I feel more in awe of her abs and muscles than excited. Then I get a bit too enthralled in making her mane-like red hair shine with elven products, giving time for the dragon to settle down to rest again.

Yunia comes next, and she has a subtle, but intense sensuality to her that makes me hard once more. She has to use her famous elven glare on me to keep me from pouncing on her, though I kind of do enjoy being stared at like this, but when I get to her drills, the dragon goes to sleep again, just like with Hana.

Aoi is so feminine that she makes me throb, but she doesn't have the same bewitching aura as Roxanne, so it's easier to stay at an excited but stable level of arousal. She has a similar innocence to Lina's, but Aoi's submissiveness makes me want to br--d her instead of defiling her. She actually calms down my heart in the end, bringing me to the perfect mood for what comes next.

I've gone through so many ups and downs in my levels of desire that my pants have become wet, and it's exactly this drenched, hot, throbbing meat club that the Companions crave so much.

I line up Melanie's and Edolie's moist pussies, then I grow another Weapon. It's time to Ravage them.

Dark clouds appear in the sky ahead of us, and we cross through patches of intermittent light rain coupled with weak lightning strikes. Anything and anyone that crosses the Thunderplains needs to have either [Electric Resistance] or a lightning rod, and our ship obviously uses the latter.

We begin to leave Specula Lake behind, but then night falls, and we stop for the night.

Hana and I carry the two exhausted Companions to the bath because they're too exhausted to walk on their own. The silly smiles on their faces are proof of a job well done.

Hukarere and Romy join us again, and Yunia gets her revenge on the Asian soldier.

The Companions were just snacks for me, so today, I have a main course of succubus with a side of loli. The two not-sisters make for a powerful combo with the sensuality and hidden sweetness of the former, and the innocence and cute slyness of the latter.

Older sister and little sister work together to make big bro go mad with desire, and since they can read my every thought, it's not that hard to make me throb.

Teasing the dragon has only one outcome, and so, they receive their well-deserved punishment for getting me to unleash the beast.

A note from Manasong

Hall of Fame of Patrons

The patrons who support Rupegia shall have their names sung by the bards for they deserve the glory and honor. Their names are:

Prince PreownedFIN.

Prince Creamy Spinach.

Prince Owldente.

Prince Charlie Foxtrot.

Lord Andrew Meyers.

Lord Novgarod.

Lord Michale Erwin.

Lord Bakerdea.

Lord Maurice.

Lord Mattirro Draca.

Lord Sean Drake.

Lord FrostyCube.

Lord Mike Bartter.

Lord Warwulfv.

Lord Jorge Franco.

Lord Khristopher Welsh.

Lord DJ.

Lord Tenebris Lupus.

Lord Paul Daval.

Lord Paul Daval.

Lord Bradly.

Lord AndreyUC.

Lord Tmac.

Lord School Work.

Lord Gwendolyn Simmons-LaRose.

Lord CopeyDunt.

Lord James.

Lord BlindTactic.

Lord Cardnial Steiner.

Lord The Tallest Joshua.

Lord Ryan Brogan.

Noble Salty Panda.

Noble Mild Fracas.

Noble Aclys.

Noble CarlBaxter.

Noble d3235.

Noble Frank de Jong.

Leave a rating or a review to help me rise to the top or fix my shameful understanding of prose.

Take a look over my blog where all information about the world of Rupegia will be posted.

Join the Discord and discuss, or rant, or meme, or try and fight me so your waifu gets more screentime.

Become a Patron and read chapters in advance, or read the side-stories, or leave your mark on the story, or help choose the next artwork or the next side-story.

Chapter 127: A Little Party - Part 2

A note from Manasong

Attention: to conform to the limit of mature content (more than just sexual content) allowed in a novel, I've censored this chapter. You can look for the uncensored version here.

I pull Roxanne and Lina close to me, then we all relax on the seat of the hot tub and stare at the cloudy night sky above us. The Thunderplains has some weird type of clouds that don't fully cover the sky, so there are an uncountable amount of "holes" in their coverage, giving us many peeks of the stars and even part of the psychedelic moon.

It's quite a nice sight, but we're distracted by a slight discomfort in our bodies. The ship is quite stable, but it still has a small amount of constant shaking, and that has started to take its toll on us. Not only are we a bit more tired than we should be, given that we didn't do anything too exhausting today, but we're also still feeling weird due to the "phantom shaking."

I sigh and let my mind wander, then it starts to focus on the senses of the summoned hummingbird I gave to little Tavi, Roxanne's sister. I occasionally get glimpses of her mother and father "entertaining" a guest while the little girl plays with another girl her age. Since their timezone is ahead of ours, they're already at the "dessert" part of their dinner.

Those glimpses are so arousing that Roxanne and I begin to fantasize about me dominating Sanaz. I don't really like that woman, but I can't deny that she knows how to plow, and having such a b like her begging to drink would feel amazing.

So amazing that I unleash it down Hukarere's throat, and she releases me to allow Aoi to have her turn.

Overall, Tavi's life is quite nice. She doesn't seem to be forced to train magic until her body collapses like they did with Roxanne, and Taveez also isn't a weird child like Roxanne was, so she has managed to make a few friends.

"Hey…!" Roxanne weakly croaks, and I kiss her forehead to appease her.

I'm actually glad that the succubi don't care much for privacy because Tavi takes that bird everywhere. Roxanne is also thankful because she missed Tavi's baby phase, but now, she won't miss a thing.

"Just you wait until she discovers how to do it herself and realizes that she has an audience," Roxanne whispers teasingly in my ear, and I try my best to forget what she just said.

Dinner is again an exciting event as the entire ship eats together, but I already notice that the conversations are losing creativity. Just a few more days, and we'll all be talking about plowing nonstop like during our time in Rande's caravan.

Considering how free-spirited the Chimeras are, I totally believe things simply devolve into group fun whenever the boredom gets to be too much.

For the evening, I pull out our game tables for the girls, but we're not really in the mood for it, so I pull out my bottle of Cinco Flores, and we drink a little. I also begin to truly understand why people were all alcoholics before modern times…

Anyway, our family's lifestyle has changed too drastically. Now that we have excitement and adrenaline every day, just a few days of calm is enough to give us withdrawal.

I put on [Southern Maokai Language] and listen to Tavi as she describes her day to the rainbow-colored hummingbird.

She calls the bird either "Roxxy" or "sis," possibly because she misunderstood or forgot that the bird is mine, not Roxanne's.

"Roxxy, today I learned [Fireball]. It was a big flame, right? Dad said I could even warm a pot!" She excitedly retells as she pours an MP potion into the bird's little drinking bowl.

Maybe I should've given her a dog…

She waits for the bird to drink a bit before continuing, "You saw how far it flew, right?" -The bird nods- "It was more far than the other girls', right?" And she grins excitedly.

The hummingbird stops drinking, then it jumps on top of her head and lightly pecks her forehead.

Tavi pouts, and her eyes go cross as she tries to look at the bird. "What? Did I say something wrong?"

It gently pecks her forehead again, and Tavi looks down as she thinks deeply about it.

"Is it 'more far'…?" She asks out loud tentatively.

And the bird pecks her once again, then uses its little feet to massage her scalp, making her giggle.

She closes her eyes and ponders, "Okay, 'more far,'… hmm… far, far… further?"

The bird chirps happily and jumps back to its perch, then resumes drinking the potion.

Tavi is quite shy, but not around the bird, perhaps because she knows her sister is always listening. Though we don't pay attention to everything she does, we'll all watch her growth with great interest.

But our calm, relaxed time is interrupted by some slightly drunk girls.

Klein slams a card down on the bed and shouts triumphantly, "Hah! Strip!"

"The hell? When did you become so sly?" Hana asks indignantly, her words faintly slurred.

The cheeky monkey smiles smugly. "After I started leveling up, my 'Stats' also began to increase."

"That's why the men don't play Poch with her anymore, she's got too much 'Wisdom' now," Hukarere tiredly explains and sighs.

"I've been working hard to become worthy of being a knight," Klein brags, full of pride.

"You've got to be smart if you want to juggle two dragons," Romy teasingly replies.

"Hm…?" I hum curiously and turn to them.

Romy slings an arm over her shoulder and fondles a perky tit while she dramatically sings praises, "Klein, the 'Audacious.' She not only persuaded two dragons to share her, but also stopped them from just killing each other."

"Like hell Wolfy would kill my brother over a woman," Hana grumbles back.

I nod calmly and add, "Hermann is an alright dude, and I want to have a good relationship with him."

Roxanne tries to peek at Klein's cards, but Hana flicks the tip of her dagger-tail, making her wince and give up.

Klein points a finger at me while she looks at the other girls and points out, "See? That's why I told Hermann that it'd be alright. He and Wolfy are the kind of men that just need a bit of banter, and they'd act like brothers in no time."

I chuckle heartily, then smirk as I hum, "Oh, I see. He did seem to become increasingly more bold around me as time passed."

Alissa hums thoughtfully and shares her thoughts through [Bind], "She actually has the foresight to make sure the members of her pseudo-harem have good relations with one another. That's commendable."

"She learned from the best," I brag, but I only hear scoffs in response.

"Yes, Alissa, you're the best harem manager we could ever wish for," Yunia affirms with a slow and measured tone, then sends me a teasing glance.

The cheeky fox giggles internally and whispers back, "Thank you."

Hukarere gives Klein and me a confused look as she comments, "I don't really understand nobility, but I understand your relationship even less."

The girls are too drunk to think properly, so I calmly explain, "Klein rejected my offer for her to become a concubine, so while that gives her the freedom to do whatever she likes, it also means that I can only give her attention after both my wives and my concubines are all satisfied."

Romy raises an eyebrow in confusion and chimes in, "As far as I know, only Lady Osaria is a concubine."

I nod. "For now."

"Ooh~…" The two Companions hum in unison.

I slowly nod as I smile and add, "Yes. Though, there's a limit to how many women I can have as concubines."

Romy gives Hukarere a teasing smirk, then elbows her in the ribs.

"Piss off…" My white wolf growls and pushes Romy away, but then she blushes and stares awkwardly at the cards.

Seeing that she's locked up, Romy turns to Klein and shares, "You're a bit crazy to do what you're doing, but at least I understand you now."

Klein pouts and starts shuffling the cards as she huffs, "Hmph. I'm determined, not crazy."

And she's also quite good at Poch, the not-strip-poker. Eventually, everyone else is sans clothes while she still has her underwear on.

"Now it's time for everyone to run a lap around the camp," Klein declares with an evil smile.

"This is silly. She's always naked," Yunia complains and points to Hukarere.

But I rain on their parade, "Oh, no. None of you are going to expose yourselves to the men like that."

Klein groans annoyedly, "But what else can we use as punishment?"

I hum and gently scratch my chin as I think, then I look at my hand, at my glorious scales and my incredibly sharp claws.

"Oh, I know what we can use…" I whisper sadistically, then I block the girls from reading my thoughts. I won't actually hurt them; I'll just give them a bit of a scare.

Today is the 2nd. Yn, day of Earth. The unofficial beginning of the workweek for dwarves due to how much more energetic they feel on this day, but that's not the case for Lina and the Gilbiks, who now feel that small boost in energy during Fis, day of Nature.

My [Massage] increased by 1 (now 0+4). I wanted to level my [Mana Body], but this is also fine.

Some of the crew and the knights are starting to warm up to coffee. Poppy, the cute dwarf girl from Kyora's harem (Lina is still much cuter!), also seems to enjoy coffee quite a lot, so I guess it'll become quite popular with dwarves in general.

Lina blushes and hides a pout, but I know she gets a little bit jealous when I ogle other dwarves.

The morning is chilly over here, but the sun is also quite harsh, so the temperature quickly rises once it's out, and it creates quite an idyllic view. Seeing the sun reflecting off the endless lake with nothing but grass around us is quite soothing.

What I don't like is that the grass comes up to about my knee, which makes it annoying to walk through, and the soil is also very wet and muddy, forcing us to [Clean] our shoes before we enter the ship.

We quickly resume our journey after everyone has fattened up a bit. Atawha, the cute raccoon Chimera, and Aneta, the seductive silver-elf, are now off-duty, so we invite them to our Suite.

"It's unbelievable how many women would kill to be in this Suite right now," Aneta smugly remarks as she sits on the bed and gives me a man-eating gaze.

I put a few of Alissa's points into [Lute Playing], then she gives us a nice, smooth tune while the three golems stare at her, trying to absorb all the information they can from the skill.

"Well, it's not surprising considering that only Companions are regularly allowed inside our private quarters," Yunia replies and sits beside the bare beauty, feeling like asserting dominance over the other elf before she lets the Companion get a piece of me.

I motion for Atawha to come closer, and she almost skips with delight as she throws herself at me.

"I have a feeling that our fame is rising to ridiculous levels…" Ciel mumbles wryly, dreading the truth.

"I don't think it's unearned," Atawha cheerfully replies as her hand starts playing with my pants.

I fondle her a bit and gaze into her pretty eyes, making her blush and look away.

Alissa smiles as she gently pulls the strings of her lute and affirms, "It's exactly what we deserve. None of us are average people anymore."

Lina feels inclined to disagree, but her work with Aoi in the forge is going to start an industrial revolution on Rupegia, so she's going to be in history books one day, a chilling prospect for her.

I run my claws over Atawha's exposed chest, and I see her skin get goosebumps while her two pointy bits harden.

Ciel starts giving out the "candy" to everyone, and I quickly swallow mine, but she handed me two. I hold the other one between my teeth, then I make the adorable bandit girl face me, and I steal her lips, pushing the spicy-tasting pill into her mouth with my tongue.

"The kindness you show to us is so genuine that the adoration the Companions show for you Royals is quite understandable," Aneta adds with surprising composure given that Yunia is doing her best to punish her vulnerable nub.

The word "adoration" makes me a bit concerned, but the rest is absolutely true.

Once Ciel stops before them, they both open their mouths and stick their tongues out. The candy angel smiles wryly, but she still delicately feeds both luscious elves by hand.

I break the kiss and coolly remark, "Those who accept our love in full we consider as part of our pseudo-harem. You're not wives, but you also aren't just soldiers serving us."

The two Companions smile, and the hunger in their eyes doubles.

The girls climb on the bed and surround me, then we make ourselves comfortable and listen to Alissa while we wait for the not-LSD to kick in.

She plays a song from her childhood, but she doesn't know the lyrics, so she just hums. It's a nursery rhyme, so it's quite simple and very catchy.

I stare at her cute figure as her tail slowly sways with the rhythm, and a smile blooms on my lips without my notice.

Then the colors of her hair and fur catch my attention as they become brighter and more vivid, giving Alissa an ethereal appearance.

Oh, it's starting pretty quickly.

Her pale skin, her pink bits, and her delicate traits gradually pop out more, enhancing the cuteness of her features so much that it's like she's a drawing, an exaggerated representation of a cute fox girl.

Each time she plucks a string, I notice my vision tremble, but soon, I realize that it's actually the colors that are jumping along with the tune, rippling outwards in waves.

The orange and white take over my view, as if it were a dichromatic painting, then I look down and see that the raccoon Companion has also become orange and white, but the hints of pink become even more noticeable, attracting my body to them like a magnet.

"HAAAAH!" I push my hips forward, and we both shout in absolute bliss, then our bodies twitch along with the rhythm, and I feel myself turn into a liquid as my mind melts in her embrace.

"♪ Kruwata tsunowo vralai ♪," a gentle, heavenly voice wakes me up, and my fading awareness recovers some of its strength, then I look ahead and see a shining golden sun behind the dancing fox girl.

"♪ Tsuriji pfuralekai ♪," the heavenly sun continues to sing, and I almost stop my dance in awe of its golden light, then the fox girl stands and shakes her hips, and flashes of orange from the swaying of her fluffy tail catch my attention.

"♪ Kwondzuvai undovartsu wronduwail ♪."

The fox grins towards her left, and I see a life-sized drawing of another woman. She has unbelievable curves, made solely for the purpose of enhancing her appeal, which gives her a bountiful body, the opposite of the fox girl. Even the slightly dark tone of her skin contrasts with the girl's, and it makes me hungry for chocolate, for some reason.

"♪ Tjortetei jeki liago ♪."

The darker woman remains still, but then she suddenly shakes her hips, causing a massive amount of jiggle to fill her fleshy body, which ripples out from her and hits me, sending a jolt of energy through my liquid body.

"♪ Jiunmata ivelischpfuli ♪."

Before my heart can calm down, she shakes her hips again, then again, and again, and again. Soon, the three of us are all dancing in sync, the air filled with the ripples of our actions while the sun sings and shines its marvelous light upon us, bringing about a small piece of Heaven.

Intermission – Jarn

"Analysis," Ted requests.

"No harmful reactions detected," Suzy responds first.

"No harmful reactions detected," I respond a second later, my analytical ability different from hers, though our conclusion is the same.

Ted shares her analysis, which is always the same as Suzy's, "No harmful reactions detected. Conclusion, no action required."

I share my concern, "I have a doubt. Master Roxanne's crying has not ceased."

Ted and Suzy respond in unison, "Master Wolf doesn't consider crying to be harmful. Analyze her emotions further, and you'll find a piece of happiness among the large influx."

"Understood," I reply, then I analyze and reach a similar conclusion, though it takes me longer, and I'm unsure that the negative emotions in the influx won't overwhelm the memories of this experience.

The two then continue, "The only one in any danger is Master Lina; her catatonic state could be problematic. We must monitor her life signs closely for any sort of damage and be prepared to cut her sense sharing with Master Wolf."

I also hold doubts about this analysis. An experience too intense could become addictive as it diminishes all other experiences.

Master Hana gets up from the bed, then rushes out of the room, bursting through the double doors.

"My physical capabilities are higher. I'll follow her," I volunteer.

"Understood."

I run and match Master Hana's speed, but one of the Companions on guard, a werecat woman, also follows, and her expression is clearly one of confusion, so I stop to talk.

"What the hell is going on?!" She shouts, her tone implying anger and fear. She isn't one of the close Companions. Name irrelevant.

"Master Hana is going through a manic episode caused by the use of strong psychedelic drugs. Prepare a squad to physically restrain her."

The pink color of her face becomes paler from fear restricting its blood flow. "'Restrain'…? Shit!"

She's in danger of panicking, so I use soothing words, "This is not an emergency, only a precaution."

She nods, and her posture straightens as she recovers from shock. "O-okay…"

Then I turn around and run at full speed to catch up with Master Hana. She goes up through the ship and exits it at the top, then she sits down in the rain as lightning bolts fall upon her head.

These bolts are too weak to harm either of us, so I stand behind her.

She closes her eyes and crosses her legs in a pose that Master Wolf would describe as "a monk meditating." Her thoughts explain that she's trying to keep her emotions under control while suffering from both pain and mania, something that Master Wolf would describe as "a monk's spiritual training," id est, "spiritual bullshit."

Templar Kyora joins us, her face expressing confusion and curiosity.

Without explanation, she sits down beside Master Hana and copies her behavior.

Master Aoi then flies out of the Royal Suite and also joins Master Hana.

The Companion comes back with a number of knights, but I stop them from coming closer. Neither of the Masters want to be disturbed, and their manic episodes are coming to an end.

Though my duty is to keep the two Masters safe, my attention is drawn to the influx of emotions connecting all the Masters together.

"Curious," Ted, Suzy, and I all think at the same time.

Intermission end.

A note from Manasong

Hall of Fame of Patrons

The patrons who support Rupegia shall have their names sung by the bards for they deserve the glory and honor. Their names are:

Prince PreownedFIN.

Prince Creamy Spinach.

Prince Owldente.

Prince Charlie Foxtrot.

Lord Andrew Meyers.

Lord Novgarod.

Lord Michale Erwin.

Lord Bakerdea.

Lord Maurice.

Lord Mattirro Draca.

Lord Sean Drake.

Lord FrostyCube.

Lord Mike Bartter.

Lord Warwulfv.

Lord Jorge Franco.

Lord Khristopher Welsh.

Lord DJ.

Lord Tenebris Lupus.

Lord Paul Daval.

Lord Paul Daval.

Lord Bradly.

Lord AndreyUC.

Lord Tmac.

Lord School Work.

Lord Gwendolyn Simmons-LaRose.

Lord CopeyDunt.

Lord James.

Lord BlindTactic.

Lord Cardnial Steiner.

Lord The Tallest Joshua.

Lord Ryan Brogan.

Noble Salty Panda.

Noble Mild Fracas.

Noble Aclys.

Noble CarlBaxter.

Noble d3235.

Noble Frank de Jong.

Leave a rating or a review to help me rise to the top or fix my shameful understanding of prose.

Take a look over my blog where all information about the world of Rupegia will be posted.

Join the Discord and discuss, or rant, or meme, or try and fight me so your waifu gets more screentime.

Become a Patron and read chapters in advance, or read the side-stories, or leave your mark on the story, or help choose the next artwork or the next side-story.

Chapter 127: A Little Party - Part 3

A note from Manasong

Attention: to conform to the limit of mature content (more than just sexual content) allowed in a novel, I've censored this chapter. You can look for the uncensored version here.

I spend a long time staring at the ceiling, just reminiscing over and over and over about the amazing experience we've just gone through.

This must be what it feels like to be Ravaged by me.

"Are they okay?" I hear Hukarere's concerned voice nearby.

"Yes, they are," Ted's robotic and monotone voice replies.

"They'll recover soon," Suzy adds.

I begin stretching myself out at the same time that a big, big, beeg yawn takes hold of me, but they're both so intense that it feels like I've been asleep for a thousand years. When I reach the climax of my stretching, I feel so much pleasure that I almost unsheathe, so why not just give my jewels a little extra push?

I easily force myself to release, then my legs quiver, and I groan out loud as a massive one shoots up into the air, then I feel it rain down all around me.

"Yeah, I can see that at least he is alright," Hukarere mumbles with a snort.

My mind blanks for a second due to the intensity, but then my brain registers that there's someone talking about us.

I slowly sit up and see Hukarere and Klein staring concernedly at us, then I notice the carnage around me. White… white everywhere, covering every surface. If it were red, someone would think that we'd all been murdered, for sure.

By the Gods, is that all mine…? No, no, it certainly is all mine, but it's still impressive that it all "came" from me.

I snort at my hilarious pun, then I frown as I look at Roxanne. Her light makeup has been ruined by obvious tears. She's basically comatose, like I was a few minutes ago, and though her expression is blissful, I'm worried about why she cried.

"She cried from happiness," Ted explains through [Bind].

"Because the song was too beautiful," Jarn continues, surprising me since I was expecting Suzy.

"Difference in analysis," Suzy explains.

"She was overwhelmed with emotions," Ted shares his and Suzy's analysis.

Huh… this is the first time the golems have disagreed on something.

Maybe the not-LSD affected the golems, too, but I'll think about that another time.

I check my connections with the wives and realize that Hana and Aoi are on the top deck of the ship… acting like monks?

The hell they doing up there…?

I snort and begin untangling myself from the pile of limbs. At least Hana's in her underwear and Aoi's in her dragon form. I don't want them exposing themselves without my permission.

Gify just watches us from one of the pillows she claimed for herself. Her eyes seem quite judgmental, and I realize she didn't join in on the fun.

"Gih," she chirps annoyedly, and her beak warps in a pout.

"Sorry. We'll be more careful next time," I guiltily apologize.

That experience was a little too intense for her fragile soul.

The rest of the girls start to recover from their daze, so I just watch them slowly stir awake. The two Companions are the only ones who are actually sleeping, but the disturbance is enough to wake them up.

We all took the same pills, but it seems that it had a stronger effect on us than the Companions.

"We noticed a heightened exchange of emotions through [Bind] between all of the Masters while under the effect of the drug," Ted begins.

"Master Lina received the greatest intensity of emotions and became catatonic," Suzy continues.

"Master Hana's puzzling behavior is due to her attempt to control the high influx of emotions," Jarn finishes.

Well, good to know that certain drugs can make us spiral out of control.

But I don't feel tired or sick. On the contrary, I feel so refreshed that it's almost like I was born again!

Things are a bit too bright, though…

But then I realize that the lights are off and the sky is cloudy, so it's not the room, it's my eyes that are super sensitive.

My body starts itching, so I summon a few light-Ciels and order them to [Clean] us continuously, and the slightly chilly sensation of having the spell cast upon our skin makes everyone wake up a lot quicker.

I give the two Companions a kiss, and they immediately drop on the bed again, seemingly a bit exhausted. I guess I Ravaged them both all morning, so that's understandable.

"That was something," Alissa remarks, then stretches and moans cutely while her tail wags lazily behind her.

Lina scurries towards me, then drops herself on my lap, wanting to be held like a baby, and I immediately comply. We're all feeling quite happy and cheerful, so Lina's behavior triggers everyone's need to cuddle, and I'm soon entangled in a mess of limbs once again.

Ciel's stomach suddenly growls, and she blushes while we chuckle softly.

"What time is it?" I ask out loud.

"One hour past midday," Ted immediately answers.

Well, shit…

"Wake up Hana and Aoi so that we can go eat," Roxanne cutely requests with a pout, then kisses my chest.

"Alright…" I mumble back and start poking them, but they don't react at all.

The lightning bolts falling on them have become stronger since we're in the middle of the Thunderplains now, but they still aren't strong enough to even begin to damage their HP. I guess I'll need to be quite forceful if I'm to pull them out of their trance.

"Hana, Aoi…" I call them through [Bind], but they still don't respond, so I increase my volume. "Hana, Aoi… Hana, Aoi…! Hey…! HEY…! HEY!"

I'm starting to get a bit annoyed now, so I stop holding back and fully assert my will over them, but then I'm shocked by what I see.

What the f-…

Flashback – Hana

I can't! This is too much!

I feel like I'm losing myself, like my essence is being drained, then morphed into something I no longer control.

It feels amazing, yet it's also frightening. I want to surrender myself to it, to enter this Paradise right in front of me, but I also don't.

Where's my collar? Where's my leash…?

Where's my Master?!

I can't enter it; Master didn't give me permission.

I stretch out my hand as the radiance of Paradise draws me in like a moth to a flame, but I suddenly pull it back as my training stops me.

Shame, shame, shame…!

The sound of a thunder strike grabs my attention.

Master…!

I go after it.

Master…! Punish me, please…! I'm a bad c-msl-t! I almost let myself go!

I run up flights of stairs, then I come out into the open.

PUNISH ME, MASTER!

A bolt of lightning strikes me, and I unsheathe, but I shouldn't. I need to be punished, not rewarded!

I sit down, and another lightning bolt hits my head, but this time, I hold it within me.

I'll be a good c-msl-t! I'll c-m only when you tell me, Master!

Flashback – Aoi

I float in a sea of pleasure as I watch over everyone's experiences, but everything is overlapping, bleeding into one another, as if multiple canvases were somehow stitched together and their paint began to mix.

And the picture that they create together is beautiful…

But someone's calling to me.

I turn my eyes away from our little piece of Paradise and see something that I don't understand.

Lines, thousands and thousands of lines going from anywhere to anywhere, dying and being reborn, flaring with life as a flash of light courses through them, then becoming weak and faint again.

The storm… it calls to me.

Hana rushes out of the room, seeking to control herself, then she comes out on top of the ship, and her presence seems to draw all the lines towards her. Suddenly, they all flash with life and guide "power" into her body.

Power… yes, power, energy, might.

I breathe in deeply and sense something odd. The air outside feels like it's "charged." It's full of mana, of intent, of power. It's heavy with tension, at the brink of release, close to the apex, just a second away from an unsheathing.

The source of power calls to me again, and I give in to curiosity.

I fly out of the ship and land beside Hana as she meditates, then my body is hit with the energy, and I feel a small amount of pain coursing through my spine. It's so weak that it's laughable, yet the power that I feel in the air is so vast that it keeps me silent.

I try to follow the lines, but they're simply chaotic, yet I sense that there's method to the chaos, and random memories from Wolfy that I once took a peek at flood my mind as I try to understand what's happening.

Long fields of grass, intermittent breeze, static energy, an endless source of water, strong evaporation, clouds, magical winds from afar, a constant storm. Countless words flood into my mind, most of which I don't understand the meaning of, yet I feel like it all makes sense, but I can't connect them together to make a phrase that explains what I feel.

I sense the air change. It's not "charged" anymore, then lightning strikes me again, and the air returns to normal again.

I calm my breathing as more lightning falls upon my head repeatedly, and I discover something. The air… it seems like it has two types: the "charge," the source of the power, which feels "heavy"; and the "lure," the target, which feels "tense."

As the air around me becomes thick with "lures," the lines start pointing towards me, their other ends somewhere full of "charge." Once the differences "align," the lightning strikes me.

I desire… to know more…

Though I see many lines around me, most of them seem to be far above us, their exact position obscured by the dark clouds. I try to look harder, but my vision is blurred by the rain falling on my eyes, so I close them and use my other senses.

Water… clouds are full of water in all of its forms, so I conjure a ball of water, then I turn it into a mist and spread it out as I push it upwards, but the moment my mist merges with the clouds, I feel like my hold over it is ripped away from me.

I saw a glimpse of… something.

I conjure another ball and repeat my attempt again, again, and again.

The single second that I can see inside the clouds is painted inside my mind, and with each time I try again, another second is added. Little by little, a bigger picture is formed.

A picture of chaos, so much chaos that I can't even fully understand it, but perhaps, I can mimic it.

The only thing I know for sure is that clouds are made of water, a mist of water so thin that they must be individual Primordial Particles, or rather, "atoms," as Wolfy's memories tell me.

And if I can make my mist thin enough, then all I need to do is to add chaos myself.

I spread my mist wider, thinning it further and further, then I just let the wind push them in all directions.

More water, more mist, more chaos. More, more, more!

Yes!

The chaos calls to me. The power, the storm, the clouds, the water, it all calls to me.

Give me your power!

I see the lines aligning above me. All of them. All of them.

GIVE ME…

Flashback end.

-is she doing…?

"...YOUR POW-… WAH?!" I hear Aoi's internal voice shout in fury, but then she gets scared by my presence and "slips," losing her grip on her spell.

"GWAAAAH!" Hana, Kyora, and Aoi all croak in pain as a massive lightning strike hits their and also Jarn's heads. The strike is so loud and strong that the entire ship trembles, and then the three immediately pass out.

I scream internally and summon them, then Ciel and I immediately jump forward and cast [Heal] on them. Jarn seems okay, so I ignore her for now, but both Aoi and Hana are smoking from burns all over their heads and upper bodies, and their skin and scales are marked by extensive root-like patterns caused by the lightning that ran through them.

They've each lost 50 points of HP, and though they're far from death since they have more than 100 HP, such a sudden loss can only mean extreme trauma. Fortunately, our rapid-fire of [Heal] brings them back to full after a couple of seconds, so I switch to [Regeneration] to fix any remaining damage.

Jarn seems to have received little damage, if any at all, so I just add her to the [Regeneration] to top her up.

"KYORA!" Ciel suddenly shouts and instant-casts [Holy Spirit], which wastes not a second before darting up through the ship to aid her Templar friend.

Once the little glowing spirit reaches the top, it sees multiple char marks all over the canvas, not just where the three girls were, and the tips of the three lightning rods are faintly glowing from heat.

The hell…?

A few knights rush up to rescue the passed-out Templar, but the Spirit [Heals] her first.

A few seconds later, Aoi wakes up with a groan and a massive headache.

Her large draconic head looks around in confusion, then she notices both our concerned looks and the worried emotions emanating through [Bind].

"Oops…" She moans and gives us a toothy grin as she chuckles.

I don't even ask and just dive into her memories to try to understand what she was doing, but all I get is some weird trip about "lines."

"I vote that we don't take this 'candy' again without better safety measures," Alissa dryly proposes.

I look away guiltily and slowly nod along with the other girls.

"We were too focused on the life signs of the Masters," Ted begins.

"And we didn't realize that Master Aoi was doing something dangerous," Suzy continues.

"We failed our duty," and Jarn finishes.

The girls and I all shake our heads. "Not your fault, really," I reassure the trio and chuckle tiredly.

What a trip.

Kyora wakes up a few seconds later, feeling completely fine, and after we explain what happened to everyone, we embarrassedly go to the mess hall to have our late lunch.

"You didn't have to wait," I stiffly remark as I sit down. This time, it's a normal elven meal that was pre-cooked for the trip.

"Yes, we do, Your Highness," Nohopu slowly replies with a teasing, well-measured tone. His smile may be funny, but his smug grin is infuriating, for some reason, while Alcander's, Silvano's, Kurii's, and Caterina's subtle smirks just add to the embarrassment.

Aoi walks up to Kyora, the large, blue-haired dragonkin, who eyes her warily. The two each have a naturally menacing look to them; Kyora is wider, taller, and less feminine than Hana (but still a prime specimen for snu snu, which makes me wonder how her halfling husband is still alive), and Aoi is… well, a dragon, so it's an interesting sight seeing them both face each other.

But Aoi's slow, respectful nod, immediately disarms the other. "I'm sorry for hurting you. I was doing something dangerous without realizing it due to the drug I took," she calmly apologizes.

Kyora frowns and crosses her arms, a bit annoyed. "Hmph… It hurt like the spit of a Poisonous Yuureigumo, but I'm fine now, so I guess it's fine." -She suddenly snorts and shakes her head- "I didn't even notice you were doing something, so it's a bit impressive that you knocked me out," she confesses with a shrug.

"What were you doing, exactly?" Alonso, the auburn-haired halfling boy/man, asks with a frown. I believe he was nearby, yet he also didn't notice what Aoi was doing, even though he's a mage.

"I don't really know. I was just drawn to the storm and wanted to control it," Aoi honestly replies, a bit confused about her own memories.

But Alonso frowns skeptically. "I only sensed Water-attuned mana leaving you, and none of it had any 'flavor' related to storm or [Electric Magic]."

I already took a peek at her memories, so I have a vague idea of what she did… but how are thunderstorms created again?

Ted's robotic voice surprises us all as she begins her explanation, "Small particles of water vapor and ice crystals bounce against each other repeatedly inside a cloud."

"These impacts end up charging particles with positive and negative charges," Suzy continues, as always.

But then it goes back to Ted, "Which then begin to separate, creating large differences in potential between the lower, mid, and top part of a cloud, and also the ground."

Then back to Suzy, "When the potential becomes higher than the air resistance, a lightning bolt occurs."

And Jarn finishes, "Master Aoi mimicked that behavior by using her own conjured water, but the lightning she produced was still partially magical, as one fully-physical lightning strike is strong enough to kill a considerable number of people."

I think the golems know more about science than I do at this point. It's all kind of blurry to me since I rarely need to recall this kind of knowledge anymore.

And then Roxanne puts the last nail in the mystery, "Since she was born as a monster, she has a natural affinity for a type of magic that's quite different from the well-structured spells we normally cast."

"Ah, I see…" Alonso hums in understanding.

Aoi turns back to Kyora, who just blinks blankly and stares back as this whole conversation must've gone completely over her head, so Aoi just returns a toothy smile, then turns around and walks to her seat.

Kyora shrugs and sits down. "Right, well. The only thing I want to know is why you people eat," she grunts to the Captain and his XO.

"It's very depressing to not eat anything all day," Nohopu immediately answers.

"It's impressive how important food is for our mood," Kurii adds as she fills her plate.

The Chimeras eat very little in comparison to the average soldier, but they still need to drink MP potions to recover their strength after exercise, so the expenses to employ them are a bit higher than for living soldiers. To compensate, they, theoretically, don't "die" as easily.

All our senses have been enhanced, so the food feels extra good today, and after we finish, we retreat to our Suite again for the best cup of coffee and chocolate cookies that I've ever tasted.

It's almost like we're tasting these things for the first time again.

Though Aoi still feels "drawn" to messing with the weather, we don't really do much while we just rest from the intense experience.

After about an hour, one of the scouts spots the Throne of Ascension far, far ahead of us. It's a thin vertical line that rises into the clouds, partially shrouded in the blue mist due to how much atmosphere lies between us and it thanks to how far away it is.

We're in the last leg of our short journey, and everyone starts to get excited.

The wind has been in our favor ever since we entered the Thunderplains, so we watch the Throne approaching us quite quickly, though it still takes a few hours until we can discern more details.

A few airships pass us by. Three of them are imperial warships, the vertical, metal eggs, while the others are actual water ships with just a [Fly] gem inside, so our blimp-like ship really stands out as something different.

One of the warships seems to be on a vector to intercept us, but then it suddenly stops and turns in another direction, then flies away. It could be a coincidence, or maybe they're purposely avoiding us.

The road between Mistcross and Mac Gantus is pretty straight since this is all open grasslands, so we also fly close to a few inn towns, which increase in the size of both their urban areas and the farms that surround them the closer we get to the capital.

These towns are all similar to Escanso. They're circular and divided into rings, with the center being where the nobles and the Lord live, while the rings are for the commoners, where the closer to the center they are, the higher the class. The farms are all outside the town walls, surrounding it entirely, and are only protected by a wooden palisade.

The farms are surprisingly small in size, but the Thunderplains is known to be fertile, and I guess magic might make them more productive than Earthling industrial farms.

The rain and clouds start to give way to a harsh afternoon sun, and after another hour, we begin to see the edges of Mac Gantus, which are actually quite far from the Throne.

Little by little, we get closer to the wide, sprawling city, and the sea of green grass gives way to the yellow bricks and orange clay roofs of the capital.

Then the Bay of Three Kings appears at the edge of our view, a long, circular beach filled to the brim with ships of all kinds and sizes.

But once we get closer to Mac Gantus, we notice something odd. Countless little lights dot the town, and I get so curious that I have Alissa borrow a telescope from a scout to get a better look at them.

Those are effigies, effigies in the shape of dragon heads, and they're all burning.

I'm too stunned to speak, so Roxanne chuckles nervously and jokes, "Is that our welcoming party…?"

Alissa looks further and notices that, while dragon heads are the most popular, there are also effigies in the shapes of other monsters, and I breathe out a sigh of relief.

After some more scanning, she then notices that the townspeople are dancing and drinking around those effigies, and we finally realize the truth.

The entire town is having a little party.

A note from Manasong

Hall of Fame of Patrons

The patrons who support Rupegia shall have their names sung by the bards for they deserve the glory and honor. Their names are:

Prince PreownedFIN.

Prince Owldente.

Lord Andrew Meyers.

Lord Novgarod.

Lord Michale Erwin.

Lord Bakerdea.

Lord Maurice.

Lord Mattirro Draca.

Lord Sean Drake.

Lord FrostyCube.

Lord Mike Bartter.

Lord Warwulfv.

Lord Jorge Franco.

Lord Khristopher Welsh.

Lord DJ.

Lord Tenebris Lupus.

Lord Paul Daval.

Lord Paul Daval.

Lord Bradly.

Lord AndreyUC.

Lord Tmac.

Lord School Work.

Lord Gwendolyn Simmons-LaRose.

Lord CopeyDunt.

Lord James.

Lord BlindTactic.

Lord The Tallest Joshua.

Lord Ryan Brogan.

Lord Cidant.

Lord AndreyUC.

Noble Salty Panda.

Noble Mild Fracas.

Noble Aclys.

Noble CarlBaxter.

Noble d3235.

Noble Frank de Jong.

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Chapter 128: Too Quiet - Part 1

A note from Manasong

Attention: to conform to the limit of sexual content allowed in a novel, I've partially censored this chapter. You can look for the uncensored version here.

The imperial air docks are at the south-eastern corner of Mac Gantus, right next to the bay because most airships are also sea-ready. The air docks itself is a simple grid of rectangular parking spots as there's really no need for anything complex without the need for a runaway or any sort of taxiing.

Curiously, it seems that there's a second level being built for the metal eggs of the imperial airships, making it one of the few structures that rise above the strictly regulated height of all buildings.

Our reserved spot is one of the smaller rectangles at one edge of the air docks, at the opposite side to the imperial army's warships, and also neighboring the lavish-looking airships that are seemingly owned by other nobles.

By my quick calculations, there must be about one hundred rectangles, of which about half are occupied by the metal eggs, and one-third are occupied by noble-owned airships.

Merchant airships get a dock of their own because they're forced to either land in the water or in a grass field outside the town so that they can go through customs like water ships or wagon caravans.

But the crew, especially the Chimeras, are more interested in staring at the Throne of Ascension than the spot we're about to land on.

Built during the Dawn of Mankind, it predates written history, and it's believed that it was raised before the other races were created, making it the oldest known construction in existence.

Unfortunately, the rulers that succeeded its creator wiped out all traces of its previous history, and even the first emperor completely overhauled it once he had removed the veritable mountain of gold and silver that was used to decorate it, so it doesn't hold anywhere near the amount of historical value it could've.

Still, it's quite impressive to look at from the outside. It has a "staircase" shape, with the middle being a solid pillar of yellow bricks, and the "steps" are filled with medium-sized white mansions as it spirals upwards and continues into the clouds. Though thicker than my sword, it isn't by much, but it can definitely house more nobles than the ring of mansions we have back in Escanso due to its extreme verticality.

Ciel sighs at my joke. It's far from being "heresy" since the Throne isn't a holy structure, but it still annoys her.

The ship finally lands, and we're the first ones out. There's a set of elven carriages ready to take us to our accommodations, and because there's nothing to see around here due to our parking spot being a walled courtyard made of bricks, we just get comfortable in our seats and prepare for another round of shaking.

"What's the party about?" Hana curiously questions the elven guide in our carriage.

"Hiyoku Hara has been reconquered after the Emperor defeated a Symbol of Might leading the dragons," he answers matter-of-factly.

We all raise our eyebrows in surprise, but Hana becomes quite excited at the news.

Something happened without us being involved? How unusual!

"So that's why the Emperor isn't in the capital," Yunia remarks thoughtfully, but the guide isn't able to confirm or deny it. The Emperor does as he pleases, and it's believed that only his harem can reliably inform us about where he is at any moment due to the fellowship bond.

Hiyoku Hara was lost a few hundred years ago, sending the dragonkin homeland of Yukiyama into a sort of depression since they lost their only truly fertile piece of land, so perhaps now, they'll make a comeback.

Alissa feels a bit hopeful, too, because that'll re-open trade routes that go through the Misty Low Forest and the Colored Sands once again, making it in the empire's best interest to see that the neglected desert isn't brimming with raiders and slavers like it is right now.

As the sun begins to set, our carriage departs from the docks, and the sound of merrymaking reaches our ears, immediately distracting Hana as she starts to get in the mood for another party.

We come out onto a wide boulevard, and the loud music interrupts our casual chatter. This is a nobler part of town since it's the main road between the air docks and the Nobles' Quarter in the north of Mac Gantus, so there are plenty of Townsguard on patrol to ensure that the street remains open, but the party-goers just fill the sidewalks, instead.

"So many catgirls…" I mumble in awe and mild desire as I observe the scantily-clad women (and a few catboy twinks) dancing atop illuminated pillars as if this was an open-air club. Then I look ahead and frown in confusion. "Seriously, the whole street is full of them."

The guide nods diligently and explains, "These are prostitutes from the brothels that surround this boulevard. If you see someone you want, we can stop and ask her to come with us."

Makes sense that the brothels are near military installations.

While having a catgirl would be really nice, our bodies are a bit tired from the constant shaking of the ship, so I just want to enjoy a private evening with my wives and possibly all of the Companions. I also prefer to give notice ahead of time to the brothel that I'm going to so that they can prepare someone who'd be more eager and willing to entertain me than just a random, tired worker.

But by the Gods, it's quite tempting to ask a pretty, sweaty catgirl dancer to come in, and then plow her brains out.

Alissa senses quite a lot of people far underneath us, and just like in Escanso, the boulevard occasionally has holes in the middle, allowing us to peek down at the underground levels of the city. Building up is limited, so they built down, but even deeper in, there's a dungeon, the Great Labyrinth.

The first emperor was born there, in a random dark corner of the Labyrinth, and the extreme environment seemingly provided him with the opportunity to rise until he became a literal God. It's the perfect stereotypical Isekai starting scenario (not saying that mine isn't), making me wonder if Ajax was someone like me.

"I want to explore the Labyrinth," Lina shares, and we all agree that it'd be a good use of our free time.

The Throne acts like a giant sundial, and so we eventually cross its stunningly massive shadow since we're now passing through the east side of the city.

Once we reach the Nobles' Quarter, the crowd immediately goes away, though the quality of the prostitutes seems to increase.

Hana salivates over a cute halfling boy dancer, and I give her a playful slap on the face to remind her of her "training."

Shortly after, we reach the embassies. The road is officially called "Union Street," but it's informally known as "Bickers Street" due to the embassies regularly sending their representatives to each other to complain about every little thing.

The empire actually prefers that they do this instead of having to deal with border disputes locally, which would require costly infrastructure and even waste the Emperor's time with teleporting around since he's occasionally forced to be present to mediate disputes.

We pass by a forest of giant, glowing mushrooms, which is Gnomeria's embassy, but most of it is underground; then a complex of the Misty Forest's raised houses made with their characteristic black, ashy wood and with red-tiled, sharp-angled roofs; then a single, gigantic, Gothic mansion for Maplethorne's embassy; then a pastel-colored not-Taj-Mahal for (currently Fallen) Aremut.

And then we finally reach our destination.

On one side of the street, we see a rectangular, mansion-sized box curved in a convex shape made of obsidian that's dotted with countless, shining, Fire-attuned crystals and has a visible crack going through its middle. This is Mountainhome's embassy, and it looks exactly like how that one comedy book Lina once read describes it. Like Gnomeria's, most of the Embassy is actually underground.

On the other side of the street, we see a forest of mini High Trees. Each tree is made of thousands of branches that are twisted into a spiral until they form a thick, tall pillar of wood, each the size of a large house, all with countless little windows letting out some light. This is our embassy.

Right beside ours is Elaria's, which is also a forest, but of the usual grassland elf tree style with their rotund, house-sized trunks.

There are more embassies ahead, but they're partially obscured by the high walls and tall buildings.

Our little column of carriages stops, and we finally reach the end of our short journey.

A group of pretty elven maids receives us, and I immediately begin to miss our home because I can't touch any of them. They're paid by the Elder Council, so there's a good chance that they're xenophobic elven elitists with no appreciation for draconic swords.

Caterina disembarks from another carriage along with the High Officers, and after a surprisingly alluring stretch, she approaches us with a content expression.

She's kind of beginning to unnerve me with how friendly she is because I know she can turn that around and become as ruthless as her mother at a moment's notice.

"Thank you for taking me along. You allowed the Punishers to save a lot of funds this way," she earnestly states.

"It was a pleasure to have you with us," Ciel cheerfully replies.

And Caterina glances at Hana. "I know." Then her smile becomes slightly bitter. "But I believe we'll have to part ways for now. I'll be busy for a few days as I deal with the reason for why I came here."

"There's a chance we might stay here for a full day-cycle since it depends on the whim of the Emperor," Yunia soberly explains.

"We might even get the chance to explore the Labyrinth together," Hana adds with a grin.

Caterina stares at her for a couple of seconds, then she hums softly and nods. "With luck."

Then we say our goodbyes and start making our way to our personal mini High Tree.

Hana sighs and smiles absentmindedly. She made some progress with Caterina, but that doesn't quench her thirst for her own milf. Though the Templar isn't motherly like Osaria or Poosh, her confident and experienced demeanor is quite attractive to Hana.

The fiery dragonkin shrugs while she shows her characteristic proud grin. "Ciel is my 'motherly milf,' and I can always get a piece of your milfs whenever I want," she asserts, making the resident angel frown worriedly.

Roxanne raises her eyebrows, then adjusts her glasses as she remarks, "I know Wolfy is insatiable, but you're a close second."

And like a true dragon's kin, Hana feels absolutely no shame.

But then I notice Roxanne's thin black tail waving like cat's, full of mischief, and I brace for impact, but I'm not the target this time, "Klein comes third because she's a crazy sl-t." And the poor monkey girl's jaw goes slack, completely caught off-guard by the sneak attack.

Alissa's eyes go to Aoi, then she looks back at Hukarere. "You sure about that? Even you are thirstier for milk than Klein is," she snobbishly shoots back, and Roxanne is left without a reply.

Klein gives Alissa a thankful look, and the two cute animal girls hold hands as a little alliance begins to form.

Our quarters here are small considering that our bath back in Escanso is so big that it even has an echo, but we're not spoiled enough (yet) that we think anything of it. It smells and looks like home, so, aside from the view and size, our homesickness is quelled quite thoroughly.

I look out from the small balcony, and my eyes are drawn to a group of cute halflings as they make their way to Elaria's embassy. Halflings and the grassland elves of Elaria don't see eye to eye, so I know what's about to happen.

Lina stops beside me and observes the dwarven embassy, appreciating its sublime beauty. Our room feels very comfy for her, so this balcony is like the prime spot to geek out over history.

"You and your parents continue to surprise me. I didn't expect that dwarves would adapt so well to the elven way of life," Yunia amusedly remarks and comes to stand beside her little sister-wife.

Lina frowns and glares at her annoyedly. "Dwarves aren't as hard-headed as you think they are," she grumbles and pouts.

"Evidently," Yunia awkwardly replies, worried her words sounded too offensive.

"Hmph. On the other hand, elves are as dainty as I imagined them to be," Lina snaps back and returns to admiring the dwarven embassy, ignoring Yunia's dazed stare.

"She has learned from the best," Roxanne smugly remarks and raises her eyebrows repeatedly.

Could Lina have a hidden talent for banter? She certainly has a bit of a dark personality to draw from.

Ciel hugs her wife from behind and pouts annoyedly at me. "Stop corrupting her," she mumbles, struggling to keep a straight face.

"It's far, far too late for that," Alissa replies out loud as she picks some elven sweets from one of the tables near the wall.

I turn around and see that our male elven guide has been replaced by a hot elven maid, and a bit of the homesickness comes back.

Oh, my lovely Poosh, how I miss you…

"Prepare the bath, please," I politely request.

She bows diligently, making her long ears and nice pair of pillows bounce, then leaves without a word.

The maids offer to wash and massage us, but we decline because we'll just get the six Companions to do it instead. They aren't skilled washers, but they make up for that with eagerness. All of the Companions and maids know what happens when too many women are called into the bath.

We turn on all the enchantments, then we let out a collective sigh as we enter the not-Jacuzzi. The magic water gives us a nice, soothing experience by massaging our souls, so I decide to be a bit more subtle today.

I summon as many tentacles as I can, then I slowly spread them out across the floor of the bath, making them slither as spicily as possible.

Hmm… feet…

Lina's little feet, Ciel's, Melanie's, and Atawha's well-rounded feet, Alissa's, Klein's, and Edolie's cute feet, Hana's and Romy's large and feminine feet, Roxanne's alluring and skinny feet, Yunia's and Aneta's sublime feet, Aoi's and Hukarere's big and scaly feet. The variety makes me really, really happy, and also quite hard.

They don't even notice my tentacles gently licking and sucking on their feet due to all the stimulation the bath gives them, so I start to itch for something to stroke me.

Then I run them up their legs. Thin, athletic, toned, and thicc, in a variety of different colors. I control myself to not squeeze these calves and thighs because that would alert them right away, but I make sure they all feel my soul touch to get them in the mood.

Their breathing subtly quickens, and they close their eyes in relaxation as their folds warm up in desire.

For each of the girls, I create a very small, fuzzy tentacle that sneaks between their bits and vibrates, giving them the subtlest level of stimulation that I can. The differences in the shapes of each of their legs and bits remind me that Almaria should be working on the flower for the golems' plant bodies right now, and the idea of choosing the perfect one for them gives me a renewed appreciation for the variety I have here in the bath.

They're all beautiful, they're all alluring, and they all have a craving for me.

I don't have time to individually give each of them the D, so I let the tentacle monster make an appearance. It's more intense to have them all screaming my name at the same time, anyway...

Once we finally get out of the bath, everything is forgotten, and we all go back to normal.

Our calm and happy meal reveals no hint of their desired-crazed cries, their drooling expressions, or the humiliating positions they all went through just half an hour ago.

Honestly, that gap in their behaviors, their "gap spiciness," if you will, is what makes it even sweeter.

But while we all bask in the afterglow of our wild plowing, Yunia's mind is somewhere completely different as worry and suspicion begin to rise to the surface of her heart.

"I find it odd that no other nobles have come to greet us," she shares a thought, and I come to the conclusion that anxiety is one of the few negative emotions that don't fit well with her dignified elven beauty. Anger, disgust, smugness, and arrogance all enhance her allure, unlike anxiety. Then she rolls her eyes and pleads, "Wolfy, please."

"You're the one reading my thoughts," I mumble with a pout.

"Let's wait until tomorrow," Alissa appeases her, and she begrudgingly agrees. There's no need to work or scheme for today.

I cast [Gate] and receive a letter with the daily news.

Osaria reports that there's nothing to report. Seriously, everything is going according to plan. The Health Ministry is functional, courtesy of the temple and Teresina transferring experienced scribes and administrators to us; the tax-payer clinics are booming with traffic, but they're well prepared to deal with it; and the Crown Lords are ready to strike at Katasko.

Poosh tells on Osaria, informing me that my thirsty milf is going after the maids, so I write a letter telling her to control herself, though I have the golems do the actual writing because my calligraphy sucks while they were taught by Arreira in how to write like an elf. She's an aggressive predator, and I don't want her harassing my maids even though I know they're all thirsty c-m sl-ts. She is allowed to proposition, but not to insist on it or flirt too aggressively.

Sai has made some observations about the baby golems, and she shares her ideas with me. She's having Jarvis learn how to work together with a Celestial Horn while being worn, so she's learning a few things about golem psychology.

She also gives a suggestion for a good halfling/dwarf brothel, and I make a mental note to flirt with her more aggressively.

Almaria is asking about what shape I want for the flowers of the golems' plant bodies, and I instantly get an unsheathing as I start to deliberate on the fine details of a woman's hidden beauty.

While we all may think that a neat "Volkswagen Beetle hood" looks cute, meaty flaps like Klein's have a bit of an alluring air to them that I also enjoy. Now, the question is, who gets which?

I think Jarn deserves the meaty flaps because her body is already a bimbofication based on the wives. Suzy is going to be a not-vampire, so maybe she should get the cute and innocent "Beetle hood" while Ted gets something in-between the two other golems'.

"What an enlightening discussion," Ciel dryly remarks, and I give her ass a playful slap.

Sandoro reports a quick improvement of Brett's situation, and he's already training with the other men like normal again, though that doesn't mean that he's ready for a real battle.

I tell Sandoro to encourage Brett to always keep us informed if he has another of those "episodes." It's better if he stays on the bench than risk messing it up if he's still not mentally sound.

I remember I almost messed up when we were attacked by the rapists back in Rabanara, but Brett doesn't have a supportive harem ready to take over in case he locks up.

Then I write that we all love and miss them all very much.

Osaria, Poosh, and the maids stare at the letter with a variety of reactions, but the most common is a sad moan as they clutch their hearts (and a few even touch themselves between their legs).

Like the insatiable sl-t that she is, Osaria immediately goes for a spicy payback. She takes her summoned little bird off her shoulder and then pushes it in between her pillows, so I activate the sense sharing with it, but she's not done yet.

She gets Poosh to take off her top, and the two of them press their large bits against each other while Osaria pushes the bird up and down suggestively. That does it for me.

I turn to Ciel and grin. She immediately notices my spicy stare without even having to peek at my thoughts, then her eyes fall on my hard-as-diamond Weapon, and she lets out a sigh.

"Fine…" She mumbles and crawls over to me, with Hana following her juicy behind like a good, submissive, slave.

Alissa slowly oils it up for me, then my two big-chested wives sandwich it between their massive pillows.

This will be the cherry on the cake to end my evening.

A note from Manasong

Hall of Fame of Patrons

The patrons who support Rupegia shall have their names sung by the bards for they deserve the glory and honor. Their names are:

Prince PreownedFIN.

Prince Owldente.

Lord Andrew Meyers.

Lord Novgarod.

Lord Michale Erwin.

Lord Bakerdea.

Lord Maurice.

Lord Mattirro Draca.

Lord Sean Drake.

Lord FrostyCube.

Lord Mike Bartter.

Lord Warwulfv.

Lord Jorge Franco.

Lord Khristopher Welsh.

Lord DJ.

Lord Tenebris Lupus.

Lord Paul Daval.

Lord Paul Daval.

Lord Bradly.

Lord AndreyUC.

Lord Tmac.

Lord School Work.

Lord Gwendolyn Simmons-LaRose.

Lord CopeyDunt.

Lord James.

Lord BlindTactic.

Lord The Tallest Joshua.

Lord Ryan Brogan.

Lord Cidant.

Lord AndreyUC.

Noble Salty Panda.

Noble Mild Fracas.

Noble Aclys.

Noble CarlBaxter.

Noble d3235.

Noble Frank de Jong.

Leave a rating or a review to help me rise to the top or fix my shameful understanding of prose.

Take a look over my blog where all information about the world of Rupegia will be posted.

Join the Discord and discuss, or rant, or meme, or try and fight me so your waifu gets more screentime.

Become a Patron and read chapters in advance, or read the side-stories, or leave your mark on the story, or help choose the next artwork or the next side-story.

Chapter 128: Too Quiet - Part 2

A note from Manasong

Attention: to conform to the limit of mature content (more than just sexual content) allowed in a novel, I've censored this chapter. You can look for the uncensored version here.

Today is the 3rd, Ne, day of Water. Washing day for all commoners due to cheaper Water and [Conjuring Magic] mana costs. Imperial water ships don't gain any benefits today since they get their speed from blowing air into their sails, but [Weaverism]-powered ships and the merfolk submarines do.

Hana and Aoi both increased their "Endurance" and "Willpower" by 1 (now 27 and 22 for Hana, and 23 and 19 for Aoi). Surprisingly, Hana learned [Electric Magic] with 1 point (stealing one point from [Reduced Mana Cost], making it 9+0), and Aoi increased her "Intelligence" by 1 (now 11).

We all increased our "Sanity" by 1, which is quite interesting considering that we only took one pill. Mine is now 15+4, Alissa's is now 20, Roxanne's is now 17, Hana's is now 18, Ciel's is now 23, Lina's is now 17, Aoi's is now 20, and Yunia's is now 18.

The men on guard will now always be one knight plus one Companion for each shift, so all of the girls except for Edolie, the brown-haired werecat, are invited to eat with us.

"So, what are you all doing today?" Hukarere curiously asks as we eat.

I calmly sip my coffee, then shrug and answer, "Training, but mostly waiting for visitors. We're expecting that other nobles will be coming here to ask us to join their factions." Then I glance at Yunia, but she has nothing to add.

"Should we all stay, or can some of us not participate?" Roxanne asks what everyone's thinking.

Now Yunia chimes in, "Only Wolf and I are required… and perhaps Alissa. You can enjoy yourselves; we don't need replacements yet."

"I feel like staying and participating, if you think I won't mess it up," Hana volunteers, giving me a pleasant surprise.

"Do you think you'll mess it up?" Yunia immediately replies.

Her expression becomes serious as she tersely affirms with a shake of her head, "No."

"Then stay," Yunia hums, and Hana snorts.

"Where do you girls want to go?" I casually ask out loud.

"Dungeon," Lina immediately chimes in.

"Monster hunter's guild," Hana cheerfully adds.

"The markets…" Roxanne guiltily confesses, but I know very well that everyone else wants to go there too, they're just too embarrassed to admit it.

"Isn't there one of those 'engines' that calculate things here?" Aoi curiously asks.

"There should be, and the priests would know more about it," Ciel answers.

"Gih," Gify says she wants to go to the lake north of the city.

"Drinking," Romy shamelessly grunts.

"I have some relatives here I could visit; same for Edolie," Melanie shyly shares.

"I want to go anywhere interesting to explore," Hukarere casually admits.

"I heard that the Bay is misty and quite beautiful at this time of the morning," I remark to her, and she hums in thought.

"I could go with you; I like the sea," Klein suggests, and Hukarere excitedly agrees. The two seem to be quite friendly with each other.

Aneta readjusts her hair behind her ear, then she leans forward and coyly stares at me. "There's not much I'd like to do here, so if I were allowed to stay…" She admits, then she slowly lifts her eyebrows suggestively.

"That's a very attractive alternative, too…" Atawha hums in thought and crosses her arms, deliberately bunching up her bare pillows to grab my attention.

Alissa grins with an alluring gaze and calmly states, "Enjoy it, because we'll all want our husband returned to us soon enough."

Atawha and Aneta stiffen, sobering up a bit from the intensity of her tone.

"Y-yes, Your Highness, but I don't think we'll last long enough to occupy him for a whole day…" The adorable raccoon woman replies.

"Maybe if I slow down a bit, you will," I huskily suggest.

She shyly looks away from my intense stare but then glances at me coyly.

Today will be fun.

While the Companions and some of the knights go out to explore the town, the wives and I stay in our room and practice our mana circulation routine like we do every morning, but I give everyone who's leaving a Shad and a bird so that I can watch over them because I'm a protective worrywart.

Klein ends up leading their group in their foray, which is quite the odd sight, but she's actually quite popular among the Companions. Her being so close to me and the fact that she regularly leads squads into the dungeons must be why they're so familiar with her.

Also, Atawha and Hukarere actually put on some clothes because the imperials definitely aren't used to nudity, and they just want to avoid trouble.

But while the others have fun, we gradually become worried as nobody comes to visit us.

We're quite popular among the Mainland nobles, and with the Purification threatening to start any day, there should be at least a few factions interested in poaching us to join them.

Perhaps they think that since we're from the High Forest, we won't participate, but bringing the knights here, when the situation is so tense, is a clear indication that we're interested in joining.

I'm also half-expecting Vanea to want to set up a secret meeting at any moment.

But nobody comes all morning.

For lunch, we have a normal imperial meal with not-pita bread and sauces. There's not-peach juice, which is lovely, and even chocolate for dessert, but it lacks the "soul" of Krysta's cooking.

"I want to marry your mother, Klein…" I whine jokingly.

"But you'll never get either of us," she sassily whispers back and immediately regrets it.

I'll start my afternoon by spanking the monkey.

Ciel checks on her to make sure that she's still alive, then dryly remarks, "You know that punishing her with a good time is counterproductive, right?"

"It keeps her submissive and addicted to me," I answer with a shrug.

"It works on me," Hana chimes in, and I slap her ass with my thick tail to thank her for her support.

Anyway, our afternoon is free, so I have to find something to keep my mind occupied. I've already accepted the fact that nobody is coming, so I'd rather not get anxious about it.

Lyle himself said that isolation is an imperial tactic to weaken nobles, so their current behaviour isn't much of a surprise.

I decide to continue with my attempt to create a humanoidization skill through [Mana Body]. The lack of enchantments here to make me fully human is a bit annoying, especially for sleeping since I like to sleep belly up to give the girls better access to all of my limbs, but my tail is too thick, so my back hurts a bit when I sleep in that position.

I can now make my hands look mostly normal. They just look a bit thick, as if I were wearing skin gloves, but I think it's good enough. For today, I decide to practice reducing the size of my horns and tail, then I quickly learn that my horns are really easy to modify because they're just super hard, magical keratin instead of a muscled appendage full of blood. They're even easier than my claws because the latter is an imitation of Okross.

While I practice casually, Yunia invites six of the knights to spar with her, all at the same time. It would be quite the gangbang if she were an average fighter, but with [Precognition], she's untouchable.

"Don't go too hard in case some crazy noble actually appears," I caution her, and she just grunts back in acknowledgment.

The carriages reach the nearby market, and the all-female procession begins their journey through the long rows of shops.

Mac Gantus is effectively the center of the world, so there's a little bit of everything here.

Flashy, colorful dresses from the Estekabar, a peacock-inspired demon race; BDSM gear from the succubi; angel-inspired knickknacks from the gentle angel and the emo raven demon races; witch-like implements from the devil, krampus, oni, rueger, and mantis demon races; spices from all over Maoka; familiar beauty products and other elegant items from the High Forest, which we ignore; a surprisingly large number of Rabanara-sourced dragon products; a variety of silly-looking things from Betoverd Bos or weird magic tools from Gnomeria; a nice selection of not-kimonos and cute fox dolls from the Misty Forest; colorful, weird-looking, and kind of suggestively-shaped fruits from Sommerland, and their (in)famous "folk medicine" created through [Alchemicism]; Mountainhome's excellent metalworking goods and extremely utilitarian magic tools; Faiumi chocolate and food; Dragonkin rough but extremely reliable gear along with an interesting number of tribal-looking tools made entirely from monster parts; libraries run by wereowls that make Lina drool; Maplethorne's not-maple-syrup that the girls immediately buy a boat load of for me; a small number of extremely expensive magic tools from (currently Fallen) Aremut, such as enchanted magic books like the one Alissa has that teaches her Nocturna's magic; lightweight and sublime-looking tools from Elaria, the kind that elves would have in a LOTR movie; a surprisingly small selection of rabbit-themed products from Conchononoi; a diverse supply fishes and other very tentacly curiosities from Sommerinsel and also merfolk tribes from across the world; and an extremely varied selection of goods that came from Bestiarm and entered the empire through Wideberg.

Then the girls find rice. Actual damn RICE!

"Where is this from?" Ciel politely asks as Alissa fills a huge bag with the white gold, resisting my impulse to frantically aspirate the stuff.

"Dyrmorder. It's their staple food, but not many people have an interest in it, so it remains as a mere delicacy for imperials," the shopkeeper cheerfully replies, happy to make a huge sale on it.

It was true… what the hell… I don't remember why or when I wrote in my "Notes" that Dyrmorder had rice, but it was true.

I shake my head and ignore the mystery. Rice has been unlocked; this is cause for celebration.

Oh… I need Krysta to cook it properly. I can cook it myself, but there's nothing better than moth-… I mean, Krysta's cooking.

Yunia takes a moment to rest and remembers her time in Dyrmorder. They're one of the poorest regions of the empire, and perhaps only the Colored Sands is in a worse situation than them. She also remembers eating a lot of chicken congee there, and since they lack interesting spices, it's a very boring, but filling meal.

Since they don't have a lot of fruit or veggies there, they must suffer a lot from constipation.

"No comment…" She mumbles flatly and returns to her training.

After everyone, even Kyora's group and the knights, get some gifts, their little shopping trip ends as they start splitting up.

Aneta and Atawha almost run on their way back to the embassy to get plowed by me; Melanie and Edolie go visit their families; Hana and Roxanne wander around the market, searching for a shop to spend a romantic afternoon in while Gify third wheels on Hana's shoulder; Klein, Anton, Hukarere, and Romy stay near the couple and have their own bit of fun; Alissa spends some time tasting new spices, then comes back to spend time with me, and she has the golems bring back the rice; and Ciel, Lina, and Aoi have Kyora's group escort them to the temple to satisfy their curiosity.

The city is too large for a carriage ride, so Ciel and the girls go to the Hyperloop to save on travel time.

They walk up the stairs to a platform that stands above the rooftops, and after a few minutes of waiting, an ornate, single-car monorail train stops before them. As expected, nobility always gets special treatment.

It's much bigger on the inside due to the [Warp Space] enchantment, but while pretty, it's just like any other high-class train, though with a bit of a Victorian style to it. The usual colorful ceramic tiles that would be typical of the imperial style are nowhere to be found since they don't mesh well with [Warp Space].

Everyone takes their seats, and a catgirl attendant wearing a revealing red velvet uniform offers them some refreshments, and after a moment, they feel an odd sensation as the monorail silently accelerates.

I give Ciel [Sense Presence], and she notices a group of mages huddled in a circle in the driver's cabin while a single person seems to be looking ahead and commanding them to accelerate or brake. The mana that these mages are leaking is unmistakably from [Telekinesis], while the train itself is leaking a bit of [Electric Magic], which has a flavor that seems to be from the level 50 spell [Magnetize]. It's a magical maglev train.

The Hyperloop is a series of concentric rings that spans the entire city, allowing anyone to get anywhere faster than any other type of transport. It's Rupegia's first and only mass-transit system, though Whakamutu's flying bus system could be considered a competitor.

The girls all watch in awe as the rooftops fly past them. It's quite entrancing to watch the endless orange rooftops shift in your view while you circle around the Throne, the colossal structure always in sight.

There still seems to be many spots where the people continue to party, and since they seem to have a thing for burning dragon-shaped effigies, Aoi changes into her human form to not draw too much attention to herself.

The train subtly tilts to the left, then they switch onto a track that takes them to an inner ring. After a few more switches, they get pretty close to the Throne near the center of the capital, then the train finally stops at a very large platform which is filled with commoners as they embark and disembark long monorails, a nostalgic sight that reminds me of Earth.

The commoners know better than to get in the way of a group of escorted disembarking nobles, so the girls get off the platform and descend the stairs to the city proper without any issues.

The Temple is nearby, so they take their time walking to it, and soon, the white half-sphere appears in their sight, looking no different from any other Temple they've seen before. The only noteworthy thing about it is that the House of Healing and the Templar HQ nearby are much, much bigger than even ours back in Escanso.

They didn't want to cause too much of a commotion, but the Head Priest comes out to receive them.

Just like the average imperial, he has a bit of a middle eastern look to him with faintly olive skin, black hair, and a matching set of bushy eyebrows and beard. He's a salt and pepper daddy, but his chubbiness undermines his mature allure.

"Royal Ryders, what a pleasure to meet your family," he greets us, then extends his hand to Ciel. "I'm Xander, the Head Priest."

She takes his hand, then kindly introduces the other two wives, and he observes Aoi curiously.

"The converted dragon," he whispers and offers his hand to her. She'd rather not be touched, but she wants to respect humanoid customs, so she compromises and briefly takes his hand. "From your eyes, I assume you're a magical being, and from the color of your hair, I dare even assume that you're an Azurite dragon."

"You're correct," she tersely replies with a nod.

Then he snorts at her reserved demeanor. "At first, I found Teresina's report hard to believe, but having you here in front of me now, it's undeniable that you're something special."

She gives him a smug look that's actually quite elven. "Of course I am. I've grown past both wild and tamed dragons, and now, I'm your equal."

Daddy Xander simply smiles and turns to Ciel. "This is why your family is so famous. Three Blessings, a converted dragon, and two Interventions. You bring excitement wherever you go."

"I find it concerning that you see the Ryders' exceptional circumstances as 'exciting,'" Timas remarks with a worried frown.

Xander laughs heartily, increasing the werecat Templar's worries, then he caresses his bushy beard as he calmly explains with a grin, "I'm a worshiper of Change, so I simply feel like my purpose here has finally become clear."

His eyes seem fanatical, the kind Ciel has seen many times with high "Piety" priests or veteran Templars. He's a man who has heard the Gods speak in his ear at least once.

"So that's what inspired you to get thinner?" Kyora bluntly asks.

Her sincerity makes him laugh heartily again as he agrees, "Oh yes, 'interesting times' are coming, and it won't do to be unfit to survive it!"

But then Lina's quiet voice silences everyone, "The reconquering of Hiyoku Hara could bring the Monster King out of hiding again."

Xander clears his throat, sobering up as the topic actually gains some substance, then he grins and nods at her in agreement. "Here's one who knows her history."

"Grim tidings," Alonso dryly adds, drawing a few snorts.

The fervor in his eyes dies down as he seems to feel a little pang of guilt. "Well, it's more work for you Wanderers, but the Empire will grow from this," he reassures them.

"That's all we wish for," Ciel confidently replies because that's exactly what we're planning for. Our actions will jump-start both an industrial and an electronic revolution in Rupegia, which should allow for better infrastructure that improves the lives of everyone.

"But anyway, how may I help you today?" He kindly offers.

Ciel puts one hand on Lina's shoulder and the other on Aoi's waist, then happily explains, "These two are prospective scholars of engines, metallurgy, and mathematics, so they'd like to visit the famous engine that you use to calculate the phases of the moons."

Xander raises his eyebrows in pleasant surprise. "Well, a draconic scholar. Now that's a new concept. But anyway, I'll find someone who can guide you, for I must return to my duties."

The girls nod, and everyone exchanges goodbyes, then a scrawny, young wereowl man reports to them, and the poor man does his best to not look intimidated by either the transcendent beauties or the mean-looking Templars and knights. They're all considerably high-level, so they have a strong effect on the low-level scholar.

The engine is located underground because it requires a huge room to house it all. At the size of three damn buses side-by-side, it's a massive beast of metal, gears, and shafts, all powered by twenty mages using [Ritualism].

I have a feeling that the phases of Rupegia's moons are considerably more complex than those of Earth's single moon…

Though I have a degree in robotics, my actual knowledge in machinery and mechanics is quite limited because no robot ever needs anything as complex as the engine. Even drones have simplified aerodynamics in comparison to actual planes, so I'm pretty much a jack of all trades and master of none.

This means that I quickly lose track of their conversation, though I at least understand some of the words they're using.

"I'm smarter than you in something!" Aoi cheers childishly in my soul space, her tone sounding very jarring due to her seductive, draconic, double voice.

And I couldn't be happier…

Once the two thirsty Companions finally get back, I simply sit on a comfy chair and order, "Strip."

They immediately obey and quickly reveal their skin, glossy with sweat, but what really catches my attention is how they're already ready for me.

"My, aren't you two spicy. You really seem to love my sword, don't you?" I huskily ask them.

Aneta simply nods diligently while Atawha has the decency to blush. It seems that the veteran Lordsguard is being truer to her feelings, so perhaps I should have the senior train her junior in how to be a better c-m sl-t.

A note from Manasong

Hall of Fame of Patrons

The patrons who support Rupegia shall have their names sung by the bards for they deserve the glory and honor. Their names are:

Prince PreownedFIN.

Prince Owldente.

Lord Andrew Meyers.

Lord Novgarod.

Lord Michale Erwin.

Lord Bakerdea.

Lord Maurice.

Lord Mattirro Draca.

Lord Sean Drake.

Lord FrostyCube.

Lord Mike Bartter.

Lord Warwulfv.

Lord Jorge Franco.

Lord Khristopher Welsh.

Lord DJ.

Lord Tenebris Lupus.

Lord Paul Daval.

Lord Paul Daval.

Lord Bradly.

Lord AndreyUC.

Lord Tmac.

Lord School Work.

Lord Gwendolyn Simmons-LaRose.

Lord CopeyDunt.

Lord James.

Lord BlindTactic.

Lord The Tallest Joshua.

Lord Ryan Brogan.

Lord Cidant.

Lord AndreyUC.

Noble Salty Panda.

Noble Mild Fracas.

Noble Aclys.

Noble CarlBaxter.

Noble d3235.

Noble Frank de Jong.

Leave a rating or a review to help me rise to the top or fix my shameful understanding of prose.

Take a look over my blog where all information about the world of Rupegia will be posted.

Join the Discord and discuss, or rant, or meme, or try and fight me so your waifu gets more screentime.

Become a Patron and read chapters in advance, or read the side-stories, or leave your mark on the story, or help choose the next artwork or the next side-story.

Chapter 128: Too Quiet - Part 3

A note from Manasong

Attention: to conform to the limit of mature content (more than just sexual content) allowed in a novel, I've censored this chapter. You can look for the uncensored version here.

Aneta's eyes roll up into her skull, showing the whites of their sclera, then she starts convulsing as she loses her voice. After a long moment, she begins to go limp as the mind-shattering bliss finishes coursing through her body.

With my toy now broken, I leave the sensuous, silver elven beauty to rest with a sigh, then I lay myself down between the two passed-out Companions.

I'm becoming a monster…

Not that it's a bad thing, but it's just a little bit frightening.

Alissa reaches her summit from the sight of me on top of Aneta, but then it eventually passes, and she stops using my tail. Seeing that I'm still up for more, she grabs my Weapon and immediately works on it with her mouth.

I sigh as she finishes me, then she crawls forward and rests on my chest as she begins playing with her prize.

Gods, I love this woman.

I kiss her forehead, and she gives me an adorable smile, then she swallows and rests her head against my chest.

We remain like this for a long time, listening to the breathing of the Companions slowing down as they both fall asleep, making us get a bit drowsy too.

Yunia then comes into the room, her body bare since she just had the maids give her a quick bath, so her glorious drills are gone, leaving only long, straight, glorious golden hair.

Her muscles are tired, but she doesn't even need to ask.

Alissa and I get up, then I pull out a wide bed for Yunia, and she lays down on it. I spend a good minute appreciating the beauty of her body, her nicely-shaped perky pillows, her toned abs, her faintly muscular limbs, her drop-dead gorgeous face, and her adorable long ears.

I get full mast again, but now's not the time for it.

I humanize my hands, and Alissa oils them along with her own, then a fragrant smell wafts from the oil and sets our minds at ease, something that might actually be more important to me right now than the target of the massage since I find it hard to not do my wives when I have one splayed out like a nice piece of steak right in front of me.

Alissa and I both sit down in front of her feet, then we each grab one and begin the massage, Alissa mirroring my every move.

We press her soles, right on the more sensitive spots to gently stimulate them, then I suggestively run my fingers between her cute toes, drawing a whisper from her as a chill runs up along her spine.

I really have to hold back from using her to give myself a footwork, but maybe that could be left for the end.

We kiss the tops of her feet, then we slowly move up to her shapely calves. These muscles are a lot more tense than her feet due to her using them as much as possible for quick dodges, so we gently, but firmly, apply pressure to every inch of them to loosen them up, avoiding the hard bones beneath her shin.

Then her considerably thick thighs are next. Not as soft as Ciel's, nor as muscular as Hana's, but perfectly balanced, like all parts of her stunning body. We don't spend long on these muscles, for they aren't as tired as the rest.

We play with her abs for a short while, but then we turn her over and straddle her.

Alissa works on her lower back with both of her hands as she rocks her hips back and forth, and her mild excitement mixes with the oil, producing a lovely scent.

Then Alissa turns around, pointing her ass and fluffy tail towards me, and hugs Yunia from behind so that she can knead the elven queen's perky, voluminous pillows.

As the massage grows more spicy, the two sets of entrances line up right before me, and it's just too much, so I grow three extra Weapons, oil all four, and fill the girls up while continuing the massage.

Intermission – Ciel

There they go again…

I sigh and sip on my Pahgamutto tea, then I shift uncomfortably on my seat as I feel an itch rise up within me. The conversation Lina and Aoi are having with the scholars is too thick with jargon for me to even begin to follow it. I simply have no idea what they're talking about, so I unconsciously focus on other things…

I'm actually envious of Yunia.

Wolfy's strong hands play with her body and Alissa's gentle touch plays with her special zones. Just thinking about it brings back memories that leave me out of breath.

Wolfy's made me into such a shameless woman…

I just can't stop imagining his thick sword piercing me, pulsating as he pumps me full of his s-ed while those o-scene, purple tentacles slither all over my skin, leaving trails of spicy-…

"Alright, I admit it, you actually did change, Ciel," Kyora's low grumbles wake me up from my reverie.

I cross my legs and stare at her with the blankest face I can force myself to make as I mumble stiffly, "Uhm, uh… what…?"

She soberly repeats, "You're… different now. More confident, more mature."

Alonso stares at her like she's crazy. "What ghost possessed you to say such a thing?" He asks, flabbergasted.

She grunts and flexes her thick arms in anger. "Gods, why do you have to make this harder for me?"

The auburn-haired boy opens his eyes wide. "You're the one getting embarrassed!"

"You're stalling…" Poppy states accusingly.

"You all know how hard it is for her to be kind, so let her speak her mind," Timas pleads, ever the diplomatic one.

"You're not helping," Kyora grumbles at him, ever the angry one.

The gentle werecat sighs and politely, but firmly, affirms, "Kyora… I'm not making fun of you. You know that your dragonkin pride makes it really hard for you to admit certain things."

Wolfy, Hana, and Aoi don't have that problem, but I guess they compensate for it by being addicted to a specific activity…

The big blue woman lets out a long sigh, blowing out a gust of wind due to her high lung capacity, then her gaze becomes focused again, and her expression hardens like a warrior preparing for battle.

Her blue eyes stare at me intensely, and her large face makes her look just a bit scary, then she begins her candid speech, "You called yourself a coward, but you really shouldn't. The things that you're doing now, only a brave person could do, so don't call yourself a coward ever again."

Is she… beginning to forgive me for deserting Macht and letting him die?

Her confession surprises me, but it also makes me extremely happy. I smile brightly at her and nod as I reply, "I understand; my husband said the same thing. But in comparison to a Templar, warriors who are ready to give their lives for the protection of others, my self-preservation must look quite cowardly."

Kyora scoffs and shakes her head. "It doesn't matter how many people die, you're more valuable now than almost every person in the entire empire."

That… may be true, but she's forgetting something important. "If everyone dies, then I've failed in my duty as a Lord," I calmly point out.

She narrows her eyes and grumbles angrily. "It's easy to throw your life away in the defense of the weak, but it takes a heart of steel to assume responsibility for guiding them."

Again she surprises me. She's a tough woman who believes that strength comes from a disciplined mind, so I wonder what's making her grow so compassionate. But first, I need to properly recognize the significance of her admission.

I lower my head to her and earnestly reply, "Thank you for the encouraging words. I didn't expect them to come from you."

Alonso lets out a set of hearty laughs, then he dries his eyes and chimes in, "Oh, wow. If Kyora is starting to forgive you, then maybe I should also say something, huh? Let's see…" He leans back in his smaller chair and rolls his eyes as he tries to come up with something.

Poppy glares at him, but her dwarven face just makes her even cuter when she's mad, just like Lina. "Maybe you could address the fact that you got mad that an Honorary Templar didn't act like a trained Templar would?" She sassily pokes him.

He hums out loud in thought, deliberately drowning out her voice, then he suddenly hits his palm with a closed fist and smiles at me. "I think you're better as a Lord than a Templar, but you never had much of a chance to show your valor as the latter, so it was unfair to ask so much of you."

Poppy's glare sharpens, and she frowns as she spits, "You're one arrogant little shit, aren't you?"

Alonso grins smugly and counters, "What does that make you, then? One and a half little shits?"

She turns her face away snobbishly. "Hmph. One and a half kind little flowers."

Kyora scoffs and piles on against her, "Oh, no, you aren't kind. I'm angry, he's snarky, you're mean."

"And what's Timas?" Alonso cheekily asks.

"Pompous. Ciel is kind." And her words warm my heart.

Oh, wow. Her opinion of me has really changed.

"Too kind. She deserves better friends than the three of you," Timas flatly adds.

"What…? What did I do?!" Poppy sadly cries out.

He stops himself from replying with snark, then he becomes thoughtful and deliberates, "I was going to say that you didn't defend her enough from Kyora's anger, but I didn't either, so I guess that means all four of us were bad friends."

I grab his wrist and give it a comforting squeeze as I reassure them, "You two did your best against their ire, but Macht had put his trust in me, and I abandoned him, so I deserved some of it."

He smiles warmly and nods, then I release him and take a sip of my tea.

Kyora crosses her arms and announces, "We'll just stay nearby and keep watch over you so that you don't f-ck up again, and also stop anyone from f-cking you up."

"Charming choice of words," Poppy dryly remarks, but Kyora just ignores her.

"I'm actually surprised that you've agreed to escort me around," I confess.

Kyora snorts and motions to the engine. "Look at where we are and tell me that it isn't worth it."

"Fair."

Intermission end.

Getting a bit jealous of the attention we're giving Yunia, Hana and Roxanne come back, and we give them both an oil massage, but they soon begin to beg for more because they're already too excited from peeping on Yunia.

The Companions will now stay away for most of the day to give me and the wives some private time together. If they just get plowed senseless every day, the rest of the Companions will cry tears of blood.

Seeing that everyone is getting some, Lina and Aoi bring Ciel back, and we give them the same oil treatment, which turns into a brief group party.

I collapse on top of Ciel's curvaceous body, then I bury my face in her pillows and hug her while I calm down.

She's almost passed out, but she reflexively grabs my horns and starts slowly massaging them, almost making me unsheathe again just from the spicy way her hands are moving.

Since I've stolen her pillows, Lina rests her head on Hana's balloons, and Roxanne comforts her by playing with her silky, dark hair.

Aoi hugs my thick tail and gives the sensitive tip some kisses and suggestive licks. Alissa is collecting my seed for her, so she's just enjoying the moment until it's time for her meal.

Ciel starts to wake up, and she stops massaging my horns, so I give her my best hatchling eyes, begging for her to continue. She sighs while smiling and grabs my horns again, so I close my eyes and listen to her lovely heartbeat.

Long, peaceful minutes pass, and I begin to feel drowsiness taking over me, but Ciel wants to talk about something important, and her rising anxiety wakes all of us up.

Seeing that everyone is waiting for her, she decides to just get on with it, "My talk with Kyora has put certain things on my mind again. I'd like to talk about our time in the dungeon. More precisely, about the trials Arreira made us go through, and then the 'Inverted Weeper' he used on us."

"It's been quite a long time since we went through those things," I point out.

"Not really. It's just that every day has been quite eventful, so it seems like it's been much longer than it really is."

"I think the pill we took has affected our memories," Roxanne chimes in, and we all turn to her in confusion. "When I try to remember all the shit I've gone through, what I see in my mind seems to have become a lot more 'faded' than it was before, so it barely hurts me anymore."

I stop to think, then I try to remember every detail I can of my past life, and I soon realize that they do indeed feel a lot fuzzier than they should. Even my memories of the attack on the Innocent Nymph don't make me feel a thing anymore.

This makes me feel conflicted. I want to feel angry when I think about the Nymph so that I can use that emotion to fuel my desire for revenge, but I know that letting it heal will be better for my mental health in the long run.

No, I don't need that pain to give me motivation to kill heretics. The threat that they pose to us and anyone near us is enough to earn the rage of the dragon inside me, and the crimes they've committed make me duty-bound to purge them if I ever discover who did it. Seeing where my Fate is taking me, I think it's only a matter of time before I see those unremarkable brown eyes again.

"But what do you want to know about our trials, specifically?" Yunia asks as her hand wanders about Aoi's extremely alluring and slender body.

Ciel hums and answers, "I have an idea about what you all went through in your trials, but it isn't too detailed, and I want to know what the Inverted Weeper showed you."

Alissa suddenly becomes very bitter, and it's not because of my juices. Her distaste is so clear that everyone turns to her, informally telling her to be the first to speak.

She scowls and spits it out, "Arreira used a shapeshifter to trick me into believing that I put an arrow into Wolfy's chest. There's nothing more to it than mean trickery, an attempt to show me that Wolfy is my greatest 'weakness.'"

"But he is," Ciel gently points out.

She shrugs and crawls towards me as she replies, "I know, but what the hell am I supposed to do? Is it a crime to love him more than anything?" Then she drops beside me and hugs me from behind.

I give her thigh a few pats, and she buries her head on the back of mine, then inhales deeply, taking in the perfume of my hair.

"And what about the Inverted Weeper?" Ciel continues.

Alissa breathes out and casually replies, "It showed me a time when I lived with my family, but I've known that I was going to be a Blood Slave from the time I learned my own name, so I felt horribly 'incomplete' in that dream, making me wish as hard as I could to wake up."

"Are you sure her obsession with Wolfy is healthy?" Roxanne worriedly questions Ciel.

And our resident expert on love cringes as she plays with my horns, then she awkwardly answers, "That's a complicated question, but she doesn't show any negative behaviors because of it, so it's 'alright,' I guess."

The tip of Roxanne's tail flops about in a sad mood. "Damn, it's just… envious, I think."

I probe her feelings and immediately reassure her, "Don't compare her love for me with yours. Remember that you're all worthy of being in this harem."

Roxanne realizes that she was putting herself down needlessly and immediately cheers up, though she feels a bit embarrassed at her own stupidity.

Ciel seizes the opportunity to put her in the spotlight, "And how was your trial?"

She chuckles softly and happily answers, "A wounded and comatose Alissa was teleported before me while I was being charmed by some weird, fleshy, tunnel monster to bring her further in and then abandon her to be eaten."

We all remain silent as we try to imagine that nightmare.

"I wouldn't leave Alissa no matter what because I was just too afraid to let her die. Without her, everything would just fall apart, so I was so clingy to her that the monster got angry."

"Awn…" Alissa moans and sniffles, then the two share a warm smile.

Not wanting to get too emotional, Roxanne immediately moves on, "Anyway… after that, the Weeper showed me a dream of my time with Mithra. It was such a good dream that I almost didn't want it to end, but I knew Mithra was dead, and I couldn't stay for too long, so I asked to wake up."

"Now your trial makes more sense than mine," Alissa grumbles with a pout, and Roxanne just gives her a bitter smile.

After a moment of silence, Ciel asks out loud, "Who wants to share next?"

"What about you? Why are you bringing this up now?" Hana questions her right back.

Ciel smiles, then intensifies my horn massage and begins her speech, "Kyora admitted that she treated me unfairly, that I shouldn't call myself a coward; though, for a Templar, it's perfectly reasonable to see my behavior as cowardly.

"I don't… understand exactly what Arreira wanted to teach me with my trial. What I do know is that he made me admit that I was a coward, lie to others to get them to come under my banner, force them to fight for me, and then use their lives to save myself when all else failed. That's diametrically opposed to what a Templar should be like."

"But it is what a Lord, a leader, should be like," Yunia calmly points out.

"I guess…" She mumbles with a shrug, then she smiles bitterly as she deliberates, "For a Templar, dying in battle is noble, but for a Lord, dying is just failure. For me, I can't die until I complete my penance."

I frown and skeptically question her, "And when will you 'complete' it?"

She smiles wistfully as she whispers, "Hopefully, never."

I chuckle briefly and lay my head against her chest again.

After hearing such a profound confession, Hana embarrassedly admits, "My trial was just an endurance test. He pushed me to create [Draconic Body], and then he made me dream about the time when my family was all together, which was nice, but I always knew it was just a dream."

Aoi stops licking the tip of my tail, then nods in agreement and adds, "Mine wasn't much of a trial, he only tried to help me give birth to the human inside me."

Yunia snorts smugly and states, "Dragons are… straightforward creatures, so it's rare for your kind to dabble in philosophy."

"Pragmatic, we're pragmatic," I correct her and glare.

She turns her smugness towards me and relents, "You're a bit of an exception, but I guess you're not completely wrong."

"And what about your trial…?" Hana grumbles annoyedly.

Her mood takes a bit of a hit, and the smugness is gradually wiped off her face as she confesses, "He made me go through sleep deprivation so that I'd hallucinate, and then he forced me to kill my parents and former fiancé with my own hands. He knew that they wouldn't approve of my relationship with Wolfy, but how racist my parents were or how much I loved Brás should never get in the way of making the right choice."

We go from annoyed to worried as she coldly retells her trial. It's painful for her to talk about this, but she knows that it's better to just say it than to keep it locked away, so we begin comforting her through [Bind].

Our touch makes her smile softly as she bitterly continues, "It then made for a rather horrifying nightmare as I was forced to live with them again for a short time while their bloody, dying faces were still fresh in my memory. It was cruel but effective at redoubling my conviction to stay at Wolfy's side to the end."

Roxanne actually pulls her into a hug and gently pats her head. "And we'll always stand by you, too," she whispers into Yunia's long ear.

"Thank you…" She softly replies, then closes her eyes, not wanting to talk about it anymore.

Now we all turn to Lina, who makes a similar expression to Alissa's when she remembers her trial. The little girl makes such a dark face that it actually scares me a bit.

"Arreira also used shapeshifters to trick me, but he turned Ciel into a mean bitch, and I eventually realized that she'd never act like that, so I gutted and butchered all of the disgusting fakes until they had nothing left that resembled any of the wives anymore," she spews, full of venom and hate. She's got some darkness within her that makes her quite compatible with [Cursing Magic] and perhaps even [Dark Magic], but the latter is borderline Wicked, so we all think it's best we don't encourage her to nurture that side.

Hana hugs the little girl quite tightly for all of us, and our worry helps her wake up and then let go of the hate. She isn't using it in a healthy way like how Hana and I use our anger to fuel our determination, so she still has to work on how to deal with that emotion.

She calms down a little and continues, "Then the Weeper made me see my parents again, and I think I lost myself for some time there, but I missed Wolfy, Ciel, and everyone else so much that I eventually asked to return."

We stay silent for a moment as we let her recover, then I decide to just pull off the band-aid and confess, "Arreira tested the limits of my 'curse,' the one that makes me have nightmares whenever I sleep without Alissa, by forcing me to go through a massive labyrinth. I don't remember how I got out of it because at that point, I was just hallucinating from sleep deprivation."

"Hallucinations seem to be a common theme for him," Yunia wryly remarks.

"He was known to have had a certain fascination for studying the brain," Lina adds.

"Aside from Hana's and Aoi's, all of our trials had dubious results, at best," Alissa bitterly chimes in.

Opinions vary on this topic, but nobody really wants to discuss it right now, so I just move on, "My dream was about my time with Lily. It really fooled me, but then it began to fall apart because my body ached for things it couldn't have, and I just felt like I was trapped within a nightmare. You girls have carved yourselves within my heart, and nothing will make me forget you ever again."

"Awn…" They moan softly, and we have a nice, warm group hug.

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Chapter 129: A Quick Adventure - Part 1

A note from Manasong

Attention: to conform to the limit of mature content (more than just sexual content) allowed in a novel, I've censored this chapter. You can look for the uncensored version here.

We spend the last hour before sunset just enjoying each others' presences, and everyone gets their turn getting a bit of attention from me.

Alissa's tails get brushed, Roxanne's horns are massaged, Hana's abs are licked, Ciel's toes get sucked, Lina's little body is hugged, Aoi's claws are sharpened, and Yunia returns the massage that Alissa and I gave her through special actions.

Then I give each of the golems warm kisses and hugs because they deserve it. Though they might not feel anything from this, they could one day learn to appreciate our love.

The not-LSD we took is still making us quite bubbly, so we get all warm and fuzzy as we giggle like fools.

I wonder what side effects other psychedelics would give us. It's fortunate that our first experience was with this mild drug because I know that the other races have stuff that's a lot stronger than what we used. Dwarves, gnomes, pixies, and dragonkin are infamous in that regard.

The time for our daily ritual eventually arrives, but it seems that there's still one last surprise for us today. It's already night in Escanso, but Osaria receives word that a caravan has arrived, bringing with them a group of fifty werefox hunters from the Misty Low Forest.

This is what we had negotiated for in exchange for our help in dealing with the heretical mercenary company, but there was also one more optional "request" that we're all eager to see if it has been fulfilled.

A dignified couple stands at the forefront of the group of temporary werefox Lordsguard members. One is a strong and solemn man with the hair and skin color of the Misty Foxes, and the other is a female ethereal beauty with amber eyes and jade-like skin and hair. She's a prime example of a White Stalker, just like Ofilia, Alissa's childhood maid.

But in between them is a petite woman with the same colors as her mother. She's so god damn cute that she could almost pass for a dwarf, and the criminally small red not-kimono she's wearing is open on the sides, revealing string underwear that could easily be undone by pulling on the flimsy-looking knot.

Alissa, Osaria, and I breathe deeply as we take in the sight of this obvious piece of meat being offered to us. Ciel also has a strong reaction, but she tries to hide it.

"I mean, she is cute…" She mumbles defensively.

Roxanne hugs her from behind and plays with her massive chest as she teases, "Watch out, Lina. Cute, small, and werefox, that's like, all of her weaknesses in one, single, tight package."

Ciel grumbles but doesn't stop Roxanne from playing with her body while Lina tries to think of a response but gets distracted by the jiggling.

The three werefoxes bow in sync as Osaria approaches, then the man politely speaks, "Greetings, Dame Osaria. I'm Marceau Fountun, this is my wife, Manon, and our daughter, Thea. We're former Sworn Hunters of Roubaix that have come to swear our loyalty to the Ryder Royal Family."

Oooh~, that's a bit more than what we expected.

They want to become our knights.

Osaria nods respectfully and replies in kind, "We welcome you into our home. May the alliance of our two houses prove fruitful and enlightening for all of us." Then she turns her predatory eyes to the young woman, and I can just imagine the spicy things going through her mind. "My lover Wolf, His Highness, would be delighted to receive your family, but they're currently at the capital, though this bird is his summon, so I'm sure he's watching us right now."

The couple seems pleasantly surprised, but Thea stiffens and simply stares at the little ball of feathers, unsure of what to do. Her long hair is tied in an elaborate and fashionable bun on top of her head that reminds me of Chinese styles, but her bangs almost cover her eyes, giving her a mysterious air, which instantly becomes adorable once her serious aura is replaced by embarrassment.

Manon takes over for her husband and gives a short bow to the bird, allowing me to look down her respectable cleavage for a brief moment. She's a more mature beauty in comparison to Ofilia, and she has a seductive air similar to Osaria's. "Your Highness, we're honored to have been given this opportunity to serve your illustrious family."

The bird chirps softly in approval, but I think that's Osaria's influence because I'm a lot more neutral to this kind of reverence.

"My, I'm sure he'll love your eagerness," my milfy diplomat cheerfully replies. "How about you come live in the castle as guests while you wait to swear loyalty?"

Manon's white, fluffy tail wags once as she grins, and the seductiveness of her pale lips is rather stunning. "We wouldn't want to impose."

"Nonsense. And don't worry about the bird, His Highness isn't one to eavesdrop uninvited."

The two share some pleasantries while Marceau seems content with staying silent, but Thea remains attentive, absorbing every word of their conversation.

"What a curious choice," Alissa softly remarks, and I continue kissing her slender neck while we wait for everyone's attention to focus on her, then she continues, "The most common reason for someone to switch loyalties is because of marriage, and out of respect to the Goddess of Love, nobody is allowed to interfere in matters of love. The only problem comes from when a non-native of the clan marries another non-native because their children need to inherit the primary characteristics of their host clan, which are the race, and the color of the skin and hair…"

Lina's Trivia: it's possible to choose which side of the family a child inherits their appearance and race from by praying to the Goddess of Fertility.

And Yunia raises her eyebrows as she immediately understands her implication.

Alissa smirks back at her, then explains it for the slower among us, "This means that either Marceau changed loyalty to the White Stalkers and then came back to the Misty Foxes, which is very odd, or they chose to have their child inherit Manon's characteristics, which would be a slight to the Misty Foxes."

"Then, did your mother send them here to get rid of them?" Yunia wisely suggests.

But Alissa frowns. "No, that'd be offensive to us, and mother wouldn't want to strain our relationship like that. I think the former is more likely, which is why I think they're quite the curious couple."

Yunia immediately catches the scent of plotting and starts deliberating, "The way they're presenting their daughter to us at what's supposed to be our first meeting seems a little strong, and not only have they immediately declared the desire to become knights, they don't need to put any effort into grabbing Wolfy's interest, so I feel like there's some hidden motive for their actions. Any insight on why they'd want to present their daughter to us like that?"

Alissa shrugs. "They want Thea to become close to us as fast as possible, that's for sure, but there are too many reasons for why."

"How about the usual reasons: fame, power, wealth, safety?"

Alissa's tail wags once, and her pointy ears flick cutely when she hears Yunia's last guess. "White Stalkers are known to be the most rebellious and vengeful of all the clans."

Yunia snorts, confident that they've solved the mystery. "If Marceau was forced to return to the Misty Foxes after leaving… then your mother sent them here to protect them."

"Hm," she hums in agreement.

We send a letter to Sandoro and Osaria explaining our theory and telling them to keep an eye on the Fountuns.

Klein comes back slightly drunk, so Ciel uses [Purify Body] on her, and Hana washes her up. Yunia already had a bath before, so she only gets some light cleaning, and since we've already had enough group fun today, we don't spend as long as we usually do on fooling around.

Osaria then begins her dinner with the Fountuns before ours. Mimi, the twins, Almaria, Sai, Sandoro, and Enomosa are also invited so that everyone can get to know the new prospective knights. The difference in Thea's attire now that she isn't trying to seduce me is quite noticeable, too.

Like the devilish woman she is, Osaria tries to get the twins and Thea to talk to each other due to their similar ages, but I think Thea is older. The keen brothers quickly pick up that she's "mine" and try to dodge the conversation, but Osaria insists, and they eventually settle on a cordial talk, avoiding any topic that might be about me.

"So, have you also trained to become a warrior?" Antares politely questions, calm as ever.

"Yes. I was born with Water and Illusion skills, but I also seem to have a talent for [Spear Use] and [Riding]," she answers in kind. Her voice is quite high-pitched and cutesy, the kind that would irritate some people, but I love anything that's feminine, so I find it pleasant to listen to her. Then her mouth twitches as she holds back a wry smile. "I could've become a mounted warrior, but since none of the female werefoxes that came with me are appropriate to become my partner, I guess I could learn how to ride one of your Gatuns."

"Why do they have to be female, though?" Arturus innocently asks, and both Antares and Thea give him a subtle, disbelieving look.

She uses her fork to anxiously play with her food as she explains, "The 'connection' between mount and rider goes beyond just mere comradeship, and it wouldn't be appropriate for me to have such a relationship with a man."

"Oh~…" Arturus groans painfully, and Thea raises her white eyebrows while an awkward silence settles over them.

While that was fun to watch, I'm too excited about our own dinner to listen in any further.

The elven chef stares at the golems warily while they silently surround the pot of rice and wait as it slowly cooks.

Things seem to be ready, so we sit down, and the golems start levitating all of the trays with [Telekinesis]. Then they bring them to us while the maids follow, confused about what to do now that their job is being done for them.

My tail starts slapping against the floor in anticipation, and once the golems arrive, I immediately recognize the mild smell of rice above all the others, increasing my excitement.

Jarn lifts the lid off the pot, revealing the steamy white gold to me, and I wait not a single second longer before I put a spoonful of it onto my plate and wolf it down.

Ah, yes… the mild, boring flavor of rice cooked with just a bit of garlic and onions. Its consistency is soft and perfectly balanced, not dry or grainy, but also not mushy or wet. The perfect combo for beans.

I grab a full ladle of brown bean sauce and pour it on top of the rice, then I grab some cooked veggies, a good amount of fresh salad, and complete my plate with fried beef and onions. The quintessential Brazilian meal.

"Why did you put the beans on top of the rice?" Ciel questions me accusingly.

I freeze and stare at her, disbelieving of mine own ears. "Are you suggesting that I put the beans under the rice? You psychopath, do you also pour in the milk before the cereal?!" I exclaim in exasperation.

She lets her jaw hang open for a second as her brain processes the heresy I've just uttered. "Cereal, wha-… that's not the point! You keep dry grains separate from the wet beans unless the sauce is too watery, then you put the grains on top of the beans to absorb the sauce."

I facepalm. "That's just creating a mess!"

She grumbles and angrily gesticulates as she explains, "Only if the sauce is too watery, then you'll always create a mess, but unlike my way, you have to put more dry grain on the beans to counter the watery sauce, and since there's already grains under the beans, you've just made a bean sandwich!"

"What?!" I groan and start to pull on my hair. "I've never heard something so stupid in my entire life!"

"I'm the one who's internally screaming 'what'!"

My tail tenses up as I hold back my anger. "You're just complicating things! If you don't already know that the beans are too watery before you put them on your plate, then you need glasses like Roxanne's!"

"Hey…! I don't want to be part of this argument," Roxanne mumbles annoyedly and continues eating.

Ciel and I glare at each other, each offended by the other's barbaric culinary transgression. But we're not the only angry ones.

Yunia suddenly wrinkles her nose and haughtily criticizes, "I'm sorely disappointed that this so fabled rice is such a boring, flavorless accompaniment that it might as well be the equivalent of a culinary 'bra padding.'"

Ciel and I both clutch our pearls and slowly turn our heads towards her.

"Ah~, yes, that was lovely," Roxanne moans in delight from relishing the impact of Yunia's words.

We stare at the haughty elf for a couple of seconds, then we break character and chuckle softly, letting our little play come to an end, though an underlying mote of truth was always present in our words. I'm a "beans on top of rice" type of person while she's a "beans under or beside rice" type, and nothing will change either of our minds.

Then Alissa clears her throat and restarts things, "Now, talking more seriously and less deliberately offensive, rice really isn't that special."

I nod solemnly and explain, "It isn't, but since it's the most common ingredient of any Brazilian meal by far, replacing it with something that had a similar, but not quite the same, flavor just wouldn't do."

Especially for us, who are getting used to elven meals, where every dish is special, rice just doesn't stand out. Though the girls might not care about it, they're happy that I've found something else from Earth that brings me comfort.

For the evening, we spread out in our room and do our own things, so I start to ponder on who will be my cuddling focus for tonight, but we're interrupted by a message from Escanso.

Vanea has sent an invitation through our private channel to meet with her tomorrow night in private.

I damn knew it!

We have the public channel, which involves sending Osaria out to meet with people and making a scene so that everyone knows that negotiations are happening, but we also have the secret channel for when we need to plot in the middle of the night while cackling like villains.

Though it makes me happy to have predicted this, I'm not actually that excited to find out why she made this invitation. Though given that last time, I saw her getting finger-blasted until the summit while I did my favorite catgirl in front of her, she's the kind of crazy you're not supposed to put your thing in.

But by the Gods is it tempting.

Anyway, I choose to give my love to Lina tonight, and I stretch her tight little behind. She decides to read that gay book about the elven twins while I mount her just to mess with me, but that makes her excited, so she ends up enduring more girth than usual.

Today is the 4th, An, day of Wind. The weather is quite unstable today, but it's a good day to air out the laundry, so there are a lot of housewives and househusbands that try their luck.

And we begin another exciting day with coffee and chocolate!

The discovery of rice has given me hope that I might one day be able to have all the things that I used to love back on Earth. I'm hoping that we'll find guaraná and yerba mate next.

After our minds wake up, our bellies get filled, and our bodies warm up for work, I call all of our knights and Officers to the garden in front of our mini High Tree.

"Good morning, everyone," I stoically begin the speech.

"Good morning, Your Highnesses," they all reply in almost perfect sync.

I assume a more calm and gentle demeanor as I continue, "There are two topics I wish to talk about today. The first is that I wish to make Klein's and Anton's positions clear among the knights." -Klein's eyes open wide, and she evens holds her breath in surprise, feeling very tense as she's suddenly been put in the spotlight, but Anton takes it a lot more smoothly- "Though she has already sworn to serve my family, it's clear that she doesn't have the same rich background as all of you, veteran knights, even with the help of her father, so I want each of you to see both of them as junior knights that might need guidance. I ask all of you to care for them since they're precious allies to my family, and we all want to see them grow." I finish with a more stern tone, making it clear that Klein isn't a plowing toy, well, is more than just a plowing toy.

They all remain silent and nod while a few send Klein a glance. Giving the ego of the knights a small tug to get them hard should make these proud assholes a bit more open to what I'll say next, so I hope this will be enough to stop any hostilities from growing aside from stressful situations. It's hard to gain the respect of elves, I know that from experience, so there's still a chance that they'll pick on her again, but we'll deal with it when it happens.

Klein doesn't seem to be pleased with my speech, but I don't care, so I move on, "Now, the second topic is that today, we wish for all of our men that are capable of it to explore the Great Labyrinth and acquire some Experience. There are many places that are optimal for leveling up warriors of specific levels, so I'll leave it to Palo to organize you into groups while Alcander will advise him on the best leveling spots."

The imperial High Officer nods diligently, happy to put his expertise to use, and Aisco even shows a reaction, his eyes focusing on me as he quickly warms up to the idea of killing monsters.

"You're all dismissed."

While everyone starts grouping up to discuss their assignment, Klein remains standing in place, her face visibly stiff from trying to hold back a scowl.

I decide to just get it over with and approach her.

"You have a complaint?" I gently ask her.

"That was unnecessary…" She stiffly replies, her long brown tail completely stiff.

I gently cup her cheek with my scaled hand. "It was, and you know it. No matter what you think about it, the fact is that they still think of you as only a concubine, an upstart."

She bites her lip angrily and silently stares at me.

But I decide to do a little encouraging, "Your objective is to serve as our knight, is it not?"

"Yes," she whispers back.

I smile gently. "So give it your all to achieve that, no matter the cost."

Then I simply turn around and leave. After a moment of reflection, she seems to steel her resolve, then she salutes my back and joins the other knights.

While this is supposed to be a training mission, there's no reason that we can't have a bit of fun while we're at it, so we call Kyora's harem to escort us, and we head out to the hunters' guild disguised as commoners.

Mac Gantus' guild is the first and biggest of them all. It's a historical building and a tourist attraction for adventurers across the world. There's just no way that we'd miss visiting it at least once, but to do it as nobles would actually be quite embarrassing, like when white gringos decide to visit the favelas.

Except for Roxanne, who uses her old robe, we all put on our older clothes, which are well-made, easy to move in, but not lavish. They're the perfect casual adventurer attire because you never know when you'll get into a fight.

"It's been a while since I used pants…" Ciel grumbles as she awkwardly stretches her shapely legs, and Yunia simply snorts.

Do elves even know what pants are?

Roxanne stares at the angelic piece of meat, then cups one of her round ass cheeks and hums, "Aren't they tighter than they used to be? Have you gotten fatter?"

Ciel gives the insolent demon a death glare, who instinctively hides behind Hana. "You gained a bit of muscle! Yes, muscle!" She immediately backs off on the teasing after stepping on the line.

Though Ciel's pants are kind of tight, they still aren't comparable to the not-yoga-pants made with elven Snow Weave, but unfortunately, no adventurer in the capital would have access to such cultured textile.

I use [Mana Body] to hide my horns and make my hands and feet almost normal, though I still require gloves to hide their weird shape and color. It's just my tail that I can't deal with yet, but at least I can make it look silver, which is a lot better than the eye-catching mirror-like sheen it usually has.

Aoi has to stay in her human form, and though her eyes are definitely not normal, nobody will look too deeply into it. Ted and Suzy will go with Ciel and Lina, respectively, and Jarn will put on a cloak and stay with Kyora's group, who'll stay nearby to avoid grabbing even more attention than the high number of beauties is already fated to draw to us.

Then we finally approach the guild.

A note from Manasong

Hall of Fame of Patrons

The patrons who support Rupegia shall have their names sung by the bards for they deserve the glory and honor. Their names are:

Prince PreownedFIN.

Prince Owldente.

Lord Andrew Meyers.

Lord Novgarod.

Lord Michale Erwin.

Lord Bakerdea.

Lord Maurice.

Lord Mattirro Draca.

Lord Sean Drake.

Lord FrostyCube.

Lord Mike Bartter.

Lord Warwulfv.

Lord Jorge Franco.

Lord Khristopher Welsh.

Lord DJ.

Lord Tenebris Lupus.

Lord Paul Daval.

Lord Paul Daval.

Lord Bradly.

Lord AndreyUC.

Lord Tmac.

Lord School Work.

Lord Gwendolyn Simmons-LaRose.

Lord CopeyDunt.

Lord James.

Lord BlindTactic.

Lord The Tallest Joshua.

Lord Ryan Brogan.

Lord Cidant.

Lord AndreyUC.

Noble Salty Panda.

Noble Mild Fracas.

Noble Aclys.

Noble CarlBaxter.

Noble d3235.

Noble Frank de Jong.

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Chapter 129: A Quick Adventure - Part 2

Rabanara took inspiration from the capital when they built their hunters' guild, but instead of using monster parts only as decoration, Mac Gantus' guild uses them as building material.

Cobblestone made from earth elementals, mortar from slime skin, giant bones as pillars, windows from insect wings, crystallized eyes as lamps, monster heads on pikes adorning the gates, scaled dragonhide as siding for the building, huge claws and nails as tiles for the roof. The guild is equal parts amazing and terrifying.

Lina shyly hums, calling our attention to her, then hesitantly points out, "Each of these heads are from Aberrant monsters that had huge bounties on them." But our interest emboldens her, and she begins excitedly giving us the story of each head, "That scary head over there is from a Flayer that terrorized the capital but was slain by the first emperor himself when he was a mercenary, and that pike is the very same weapon he used to kill it; that ugly head over there is a Pustulent Infector that by itself once created a plague that spread throughout the empire; that head with the tentacle penises is the Violator that performed a 'delayed impregnation' and charmed its victims…" And she goes on and on.

The thing is, this is all horrifying, and the human inside me is concerned about how much Lina is enjoying telling us these stories, though he remains silent to not ruin her moment.

The only comforting thing about this is that these heads were collected throughout the whole empire and across the thousands of years that the guild has operated, so it makes sense that there'd be so many of these dreadful monsters.

After Lina is done, we pass through the creepy gates and enter the large complex of the guild.

The grass is actually made from the hair of a bug-like monster that camouflages itself in the elven grasslands. It's hard and very prickly, so even if we were allowed to walk on it, no sane person would ever do so.

The first building ahead of us is the reception, which follows the usual imperial architecture by having ridiculously high ceilings, allowing the interior to possibly permit giants. The blueish morning light falling upon the yellow scales covering the walls gives this building a green shine that looks pretty but bothers our eyes as we climb up the steps leading to it.

But once we cross the turtle carapace double doors, I freeze and stiffen, feeling rather freaked out. The tiles on the floor and walls are huge, mirror-like scales, which are exactly like mine, only bigger, and Lina concernedly explains that they were taken from an actual Symbol of Might that had once been slain by a hero.

With every step I take, I feel the power within both these scales and the enchantment that preserves them. For me, this sensation is quite disconcerting, while for the girls, they just feel a mildly "humbling" sensation.

Thankfully, this patch of scales ends quite quickly and gives way to a carpet of gray fur that is flanked on either side by a line of taxidermied monsters. They start with small monsters like goblins, then they become increasingly larger and more menacing further on until they get so big that they're suspended from the ceiling.

A six-legged, white bison the size of a damn elephant grabs my attention, but then we reach a fork in our path, so we stop to read the signs.

The training grounds are to the left, the administration and other services are to the right, and the main hall is directly ahead, so we just continue forward.

There are attendants to the side, who we can ask for information, but we're just exploring, so we leave the reception and begin crossing a tribal-like bone bridge suspended over a huge chasm, which gives us a view down into the Labyrinth.

We can discern over fifty different floors, each glowing a different color, and can see a few barges and countless boats flying up and down the opening, ferrying people about.

The main hall itself is supported by a spiral pillar carved from stone that goes down the exact center of this chasm, and it's likely the main way that new adventurers get into the dungeon. The more remote (and dangerous) parts of the Labyrinth would probably require [Gate]s to reach in any reasonable length of time, so only the weaker and poorer adventurers would use this entrance.

We lean on the railing and spend a couple of minutes just taking in the view. There's quite a lot of people walking both ways across the bridge, but it's considerably large, so we aren't in the way. Though, I keep an eye out for anyone trying to cop a feel of some ass because the girls make for quite a tempting buffet out here.

But Lina then becomes too excited again and shares her trivia, "The Labyrinth heavily uses its own version of [Warp Space], so they couldn't just dig down and breach it, but an emperor forcefully created this tear-like 'entrance' through magic, giving the people easier access into it."

"I'm impressed by how popular the Labyrinth is," I casually remark.

She continues with her scholarly tone, "A lot of food and resources that the capital needs comes from the dungeon, and also, there's so much Experience that can be gained from it that whole armies train here, just like we're doing with our knights."

I hum. "We should learn how to manage dungeons from the imperials, then."

Yunia raises a thin golden eyebrow and begrudgingly admits that I'm right. Learning how to influence dungeons to grow in beneficial ways would be a great boon for our territory, so perhaps I should take a look at Arreira's notes on dungeoneering.

We move on and enter the main hall. Like every stereotypical adventurer's guild, the job boards also share space with a restaurant full of rugged people drinking alcohol first thing in the morning. In true imperial fashion, there are around two dozen women in skimpy velvet uniforms either acting as waitresses or dancing on top of the bone pillars by the walls. Most of them are catgirls while the handful of male waiters are catboys.

Surprisingly, weredogs make up a good number of the adventurers, and one is even panting while staring at a girl with thick thighs enticingly shaking those hips.

The music is quite nice and soothing. There's a low drum, a lute acting as bass, and surprisingly, a not-clavichord (or whatever kind of keyboard instrument is a closer match to it) being played by a gnome leading the song.

The tiles on the floor make pretty, colorful patterns, but they're made from the carapaces of such a wide variety of monsters that not even Lina can list them all.

Alissa then detects quite a considerable number of small monsters on the floor above us, and they're all like Aoi, "tamable," but it's very unlikely that any of them have the same level of intelligence that she has.

A sign says that the second floor is a market for adventuring equipment with a section for oddities and artifacts. The former is cute stuff that have some pretty magical effects while the latter are weird, edgy-looking weapons with stupid gimmicks.

I'm still salty about the fact that our treasury is full of useless or dangerous artifacts. They're like randomly-generated weapons, but nobody bothered to even think about balancing them.

We just ignore the second floor since it's not part of our plans for today.

"I want to try some of the alcohol here," Hana suddenly requests, and Ciel raises an eyebrow at her, but she just shrugs. "I don't think we'll come back here again anytime soon after we leave, and the guild is famous for having good drinks."

"It's alright," I accept. "We'll just inspect the board while you drink."

Then Alissa, Ciel, and I split off from the rest, but Lina hesitates and glances back at a waitress as she brings not-beer to a group of thirsty men.

Ciel rolls her eyes and grabs her wife's little hand, then takes her to the other girls.

I'm surprised that Yunia is going with them, but I think she just wants a quick drink with Roxanne.

"Definitely not," she emphatically denies through [Bind].

Alissa and I turn to the job board, and we take a good look at it.

There aren't any extermination requests because the Townsguard and the Imperial Army deal with anything that could threaten the capital and the nearby towns, so we can only see some escort job offers, requests for specific monster corpses or parts, and advertisements for fellowships or mercenary companies.

There are also magical scrolling boards like those in Rabanara for the latest hunts, notable hunts, in honor of (hunters who died fighting), fellowship milestones for exploring the Labyrinth, special monsters spotted in the Labyrinth, and a constantly updating board with the prices of popular items found in the Labyrinth.

"Looking to hire someone, boy?" A male voice grabs my attention.

Alissa and I turn, and we see a middle-aged imperial man in fairly lavish purple silk robes, a traditional style for merchant attire. Imperials have a strong middle-eastern air with their olive skin and well-groomed dark hair and beards, but the robes push it a bit further.

"What makes you think so?" I reply noncommittally.

He grins and takes a step forward like a predator who has smelled the weakness of its prey. "You're searching the whole board instead of going directly to where what you want is posted. That's the telltale sign of someone who's new around here."

"That still doesn't explain why you think I want to hire someone."

His eager tone doesn't waver a single bit as he continues, "Because that's what every newcomer needs, a guide. You don't want to enter the Labyrinth without one or else you'll just get lost, or worse."

The bastard actually hit the mark.

"And you know where we can find guides?"

He gives a quick bow, then shows us a composed and proud smile, coming off as perfectly inviting for negotiations. "I'm Basile, a guide of guides. The floors under us all the way to the bottom are full of guides, each eager to find a client that they can impart the wealth of knowledge upon, but nobody knows everything there is to know about the Great Labyrinth, so if you want something specific, I can find you that person."

Lina perks up her head, and if she had her own fox ears or tail, they'd be twitching or wagging in excitement right now.

Alissa's ears actually do twitch, but it's for a concerning reason. She turns her head and watches as a trio of imperials armed with swords and good-quality adventuring clothes prances into the hall with suspiciously loud steps.

I echo Lina's wish, "We want to explore somewhere with historical fragments about the Dawn of Mankind." And Basile allows his eyebrows to shoot up in surprise. "Don't worry about money or our ability to defend ourselves there. Also, if there's more than one candidate, we'd prefer unmarried women."

The adventuring trio scans the entire hall with predatory eyes, and once they lock on my wives, they begin advancing towards their chosen prey.

Here we go…

"Yes, that can be arranged," Basile stiffly replies and lowers his head respectfully, starting to understand more about the type of people we are.

"We'll wait around, but don't take more than an hour," I give him one last order, then we start walking towards the rest of the girls.

Two of the imperials look like they're just muscle. It's the third that seems to have any intelligence in his brain. He has a perfectly groomed short beard and swept back hair, giving him a suspiciously noble air, and though I can't make an accurate guess regarding his age, he seems to be well past his 20s. His body is well-built, and the confident way he walks tells us that he has a good amount of martial skills.

He grabs a chair from an empty table nearby and drags it to where the girls are sitting, then he rudely puts his boot on the cushion and leans on his knee as he grins, showing off a rather pitiful bulge in his stupidly tight pants.

"It's a crime for so many beauties to be unaccompanied by a man," he huskily flirts while staring at Hana, clearly assuming that she's the leader of the harem.

This is such a stereotypical situation that I wonder if someone provides a service of "punchable thugs on-demand." I feel like in this world, beating up the asshole adventurer in front of the whole guild must be quite a popular fantasy.

The girls just ignore him and stay silent for a few awkward seconds while Alissa and I leisurely walk back to them, then I sit down at their table and smile as I innocently ask, "How may I help you?"

His gaze flies between Hana and me while his grin starts to become strained, so I take the opportunity to use [Sense Soul] on him.

Soul Info

Name: | Alkibiades Alkimeonids | Race: | Human | Level: | 74
HP: | 100 | MP: | 3,680 | Magic Power: | 510
Strength: | 20 | Endurance: | 18

"'Alkimeonids'? I think that's a ranked noble family's name," Yunia comments through [Bind].

His level and MP also indicate a noble's background.

"His name is too complicated. Definitely a pompous noble," Hana wisely shares.

Little Alki frowns and questions Hana, "Why is a dragonkin like you bending over for a boy like him?"

"His dick is big," she offhandedly replies.

He snorts and leans forward, his grin coming back in full force as he stares intensely at her. "Is that all it takes? If my cock is bigger, will you become mine?"

Hana raises an eyebrow at him and glances at his small bulge. She wants to egg him on until he strips in front of everyone, but I forbid her from going down that path.

"He's baiting us, like Bastico once did to you," Yunia warns telepathically.

I don't see a reason why we can't take a bite.

The girls have mixed opinions about my idea, but the majority agree with it.

"What are you, an orc? You know that the size of the sword doesn't matter," I tiredly reply and rest my cheek against my fist.

Little Alki stares at me from the side of his eye, then he seems to notice my silver tail and sneers. "What does a deformed dragonkin like you know about skill? You're young enough to be my son, so show me some respect and watch while I teach you how a real man makes love to a woman."

He immediately takes his foot off the chair and takes a threatening step towards Hana, but I jump up and draw my old emerald fang sword, and he instinctively freezes at my glare. Being called "deformed" has angered the dragon even more than the threat of him taking Hana, so I'll just have to show him what it means to be a weredragon.

At least Bastico didn't deliberately offend us.

I calmly challenge, "Fight me, you bastard." Keeping the human in control has allowed me to nurture a wave of cold anger.

Little Alki's butt-buddies draw their swords while the little bitch himself lets a Wicked grin slowly grow across his repulsive face. His higher level "aura" starts to show itself, and it feels like a faint "pressure" that makes the girls' muscles lock up, but it's so weak that it's only an annoyance to me.

His bodyguards seem to quickly tense up, and their pupils dilate, so I guess our aura is also affecting them, inducing some amount of fear.

A waitress quickly runs up to us with a mage in tow and stops almost right in between the two of us, then she raises her hand, calling attention to herself. "Fights inside the main hall aren't allowed, but we offer a quick [Gate] to the dueling arenas that will be later charged to your accounts."

Alissa pulls out one gold coin and pushes it towards the waitress. "Keep the change."

The cute woman and the mage raise their eyebrows, but Alki doesn't even react. He fucking knows that we're nobles too.

"Please lower your weapons, and we'll open the [Gate] for you," the waitress requests, and everyone obeys.

Alki and I continue our staring contest for an awkwardly long time, then the mage finishes the spell, and the girls cross through it first, with me going last. I turn my back to him, and Jarn sees his confident expression become stiff for a second before he puts on the mask again and follows after us.

"Now what?" Kyora confusedly questions Jarn.

"Walk…" She robotically replies, but I swear she sounds annoyed.

The dueling arenas are just like those in Goloria's Knight Academy, large circular holes in the ground with a sand floor. Duels between archers and mages are a lot more boring in barren arenas, so there are a few with a variety of obstacles.

At this time of the morning, there's only one in use, so I just pick the nearest one and jump in, then Gify teleports to Alissa's shoulder. There are a few dozen people just watching, and about half of them come to our arena once they notice that a new duel is about to start.

Alki appears a moment later and also jumps in, then he draws his bastard sword, and I almost break into a smug grin when I see that it's unenchanted. He has a lot of MP but little "Magic Power," so he's definitely a spellsword, but he's literally useless without enchantments to take advantage of his large mana pool. So, unless he just endlessly spams a weak spell, he's a non-threat against a magic swordsman like me.

Neither of us have any active Blessings on us, so this will be simple.

Roxanne is starting to become wet from fantasizing about me dominating Alki; Hana wants to finger herself while I gut him like a pig; Alissa and Yunia want to gut him themselves; Aoi and Lina just want him to scream in pain as punishment for his offense; and Ciel is the only one of us with a neutral opinion of him. Even Gify feels like spitting at his feet.

A priestess walks down the stairs of the arena and frowns at both of us. "Protection equipment!" She hisses angrily.

"No need, just get it over with," Little Alki immediately dismisses her with a wave of his hand.

"If either of you dies and decides to haunt me, I swear, I'll exorcise you immediately," she barks back.

Alissa throws me the gear, and I grab it without looking, then I put on the neck and heart guard, which were created to prevent instant deaths. I'm not taking any chances with this asshole.

The priestess then turns to Little Alki and waits for either him or his minions to do something.

"I said, just get it over with, and start the duel!" He suddenly growls at her.

The poor woman just sighs and shakes her head. "Alright… what are your names?"

"Wolf Ryder," I dryly answer.

"Alkibiades Alkimeonids," he pompously announces as he waves his sword threateningly.

The priestess clears her throat and begins, "WOLF, ALKIBIADES, THE DUEL BEGINS… NOW!" Then she hits a gong.

I release my [Mana Body], instantly returning my body to normal, and I hear surprised gasps from the audience. Alki simply raises his eyebrows, but I see no significant change in his resolve, so I unleash the dragon, letting my anger at both of his offenses fuel my desire to completely shit on him.

The girls all focus on our connection and give me their support, then I cast [Haste] and [Rush] at the same time. The mental pain of keeping up two spells that I'm not used to temporarily blinds me, but through [Bind], everyone helps me put each foot before the other, and I arrive almost in the blink of an eye in front of Little Alki, then chop down, aiming at his collarbone.

His grin becomes strained as he uses [Battlefield Perception] to counter my attack, his sword rising up just as fast as mine comes down.

I immediately release both of my spells and cast [Telekinesis], then our swords meet, and the heavy magical weight now behind my strike is too much for him, but he just takes a step back to perfectly dodge my chop.

Before he can pivot his sword around mine, I release [Telekinesis] and cast [Discharge] while I lunge forward.

He's stunned in place, so my sword plunges into his chest without resistance, then his face suddenly warps in exertion as he points his index finger at me.

I twist my sword, but it has no effect, then [Battlefield Perception] activates, and I use [Muscle Explosion] to tilt my head to the side, but his [Fireball] still brushes against my cheek.

The burning sensation on my skin enrages me, so I swing my free arm and rake his throat, but my claws don't dig too deep as he uses [Muscle Explosion] to dodge again, getting himself out of range of my short arms, then I release my sword and use [Telekinesis] to slide backward.

I should've gone straight for the heart.

I touch my cheek and growl as I observe him.

He lurches forward, clearly in pain, but his HP went down by merely thirty points, and it doesn't seem like I hit an artery as it remains stable.

The priestess also seems to think the same as she stares at him but says nothing, likely using [Diagnosis].

The little shit grins maniacally at me as he slowly pulls out my sword from his chest, his white shirt quickly turning red as he bleeds profusely. "You magical fucking swordsman, hiding so many spells fr-…"

I shift into a dragon, then I use [Rush] and charge at him.

He grips his sword tight, prepared to stab me with his all, but I have no fear. I simply spread my wings, then I leap forward and receive his sword directly on my chest.

"Fffu-…" He hisses as he falls backward, unable to hold back my whole weight, and his sword doesn't even manage to crack a single scale.

My claws dig into his shoulders as I bite his neck, making him scream in rage and pain. After a couple of seconds of shaking my body to really carve my claws and fangs into his flesh, I use my arms, mouth, and even [Telekinesis] to throw him away and off to my side.

He flies through the air and rolls on the sand, then comes to a stop right in front of the priestess.

She wrinkles her nose in disgust as she takes a step back to not get splattered with his blood, then she stares at him and waits for his reaction.

Little Alki coughs and struggles to get up, but she grabs his neck and keeps him down as she shouts, "STOP! TECHNICAL DEFEAT! I DECLARE WOLF RYDER THE VICTOR!"

Little Alki grunts and slaps her arm away, then he glares at her as he barks, "I can still fight!"

In response, she grabs his head and forces him to eat sand. "He bit your neck and stabbed you in the chest. You'd be dead if he had actually tried to kill you." Then she starts casting [Heal] while Alki's two minions come to check up on him.

I like this woman.

She's a tomboyish imperial woman in her thirties, so I'll definitely flirt with her if she gives me the opportunity.

I return to my human form and start casting [Regeneration] on my burnt cheek, then Ciel drops down into the pit and comes to heal me.

"You!" The tomboy priestess shouts as she points a finger at me. "Get out of the arena if you can heal yourself. Don't even think about coming closer."

Well, I guess it's understandable that she keeps adventurers at a pike's distance…

I simply smile warmly and nod, then I take off the protective gear, and Ciel and I walk away.

Once we've climbed up, I see Jarn and Kyora's group jogging towards us.

"Wait, did we miss it?!" Alonso exclaims once he takes in the scene, then he lets his jaw hang open in dismay.

"I'll tell you how it went," Hana replies with a proud grin, ready to "embellish" my little fight.

Then we return to the main hall without looking back.

A note from Manasong

Hall of Fame of Patrons

The patrons who support Rupegia shall have their names sung by the bards for they deserve the glory and honor. Their names are:

Prince PreownedFIN.

Prince Owldente.

Lord Andrew Meyers.

Lord Novgarod.

Lord Michale Erwin.

Lord Bakerdea.

Lord Maurice.

Lord Mattirro Draca.

Lord Sean Drake.

Lord FrostyCube.

Lord Mike Bartter.

Lord Warwulfv.

Lord Jorge Franco.

Lord Khristopher Welsh.

Lord DJ.

Lord Tenebris Lupus.

Lord Paul Daval.

Lord Paul Daval.

Lord Bradly.

Lord AndreyUC.

Lord Tmac.

Lord School Work.

Lord Gwendolyn Simmons-LaRose.

Lord CopeyDunt.

Lord James.

Lord BlindTactic.

Lord The Tallest Joshua.

Lord Ryan Brogan.

Lord Cidant.

Lord AndreyUC.

Noble Salty Panda.

Noble Mild Fracas.

Noble Aclys.

Noble CarlBaxter.

Noble d3235.

Noble Frank de Jong.

Leave a rating or a review to help me rise to the top or fix my shameful understanding of prose.

Take a look over my blog where all information about the world of Rupegia will be posted.

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Chapter 129: A Quick Adventure - Part 3

A note from Manasong

Attention: to conform to the limit of mature content (more than just sexual content) allowed in a novel, I've censored this chapter. You can look for the uncensored version here.

"So, what did he want to gain by deliberately offending him?" Timas questions Hana.

"Information, most likely," she wisely answers with a tone that's quite, uh… unusual for her. "Few people know how we fight, and Wolfy just showed him that he can instantly cast a bunch of spells."

"Sounds like you got baited," Alonso wryly remarks with a snort.

"I know, but I just wanted to mess him up a bit," I casually reply.

"Understandable," Kyora grunts and nods.

The dragon complains that he doesn't want to hide his glorious characteristics again, so I just put on a cloak, though I still hide the horns so that I'm not as eye-catching as a shining knight in the middle of a den of thieves.

We leisurely return to the main hall, enjoying the view as we cross another bone bridge towards it, and once we finally arrive, we see Basile waiting for us with a pair of wereanimals in tow, a bunny girl and a male wolf, both wearing very little clothing.

The wolf man has beautiful red eyes and the olive skin and dark hair of an imperial while his build is lanky and made for speed. He's wearing knee-length shorts, an open black jacket with a high collar, and heavy leather boots, considerably scantily equipped for an adventurer.

The woman has short brown hair, beautiful dark green eyes, long, floppy brown, rabbit ears, and her build is similar to the wolf man's but shorter and with considerable thighs, their allure made even more delicious thanks to her black stockings. Her skin is pinkish but with countless brown spots spread all over, though most of them are small and concentrated on her back. She showcases her beauty by wearing fashionable high-heel boots, a pair of mini shorts that's barely more than underwear, and an open black coat completely exposing her dark, lacy bra, though she doesn't have much in the chest department.

Together, they look like a pair of edgy swashbucklers straight out of a fantasy JRPG, which, I need to emphasize, is not how normal adventurers dress. They have literally zero armor, and they're even using sabres instead of normal straight-edged swords, which are specialized in slashing.

Basile was quite fast.

We approach the man in question, and he squints his eyes at me, seeming a bit confused about my new appearance, but he quickly controls himself and assumes a business-like grin.

"Ah, young sir. I've found guides that I'm sure will be to your pleasure," he greets and gives us a quick bow.

"I'm Nikolas," the wolf man casually announces, his eyes drawn to Hana's considerable valley.

"Penelope," the bunny girl follows and smiles, showing her bucket teeth.

Our side of the introductions is quite long, and then Lina negotiates the price to ensure that we aren't ripped off.

Nikolas nods at her in agreement, then turns to us and sternly announces out loud, "Alright, if we're going to Antreos Crea, there are some rules that we have to set down. First, is that Penelope and I don't fight, so if you can't protect yourselves, then you're screwed, simple as that. Second, if the monsters attack us, we'll run away and leave you alone, so make sure that you either use [Taunt] or never let a monster get close to us. Third, if you don't want to listen to our explanation about the monsters' powers, then don't complain when someone dies. And lastly, we never use the Ring of the Servant, so you have to accept that we'll leech some Experience."

"Hmm, this is acceptable," Yunia stoically answers for us.

"We'll protect you while they fight," Kyora affirms.

I turn my eyes to Penelope, and she jerks her head towards me as she instantly notices my gaze, her body seemingly tensing up from the intensity of my stare.

I hold the dragon back a little more firmly to avoid scaring her, then I calmly ask, "I don't know much about that part of the Labyrinth, but is your attire appropriate for where we're going?"

She smirks and lets out a low chuckle. "The monsters at Antreos hit so hard that it's pointless to rely on any sort of defense that doesn't involve running or dodging."

How lovely.

"This will be interesting," Timas remarks wryly.

While we finish negotiations, Kyora accosts a pair of suspicious-looking adventurers, who simply run off once she begins casting [Detect Evil]. This prompts a chase, but I just use [Telekinesis] on their feet and trip the two men.

After Kyora identifies herself as a Templar to the guards on watch, she's allowed to cast her spell, but it tells her nothing because the men aren't Wicked, so she uses a bounty plate, which reveals that they're just thieves.

That was quite dumb of them. If they hadn't run, Kyora wouldn't have had the justification to use the bounty plate, but I guess not everyone knows that [Detect Evil] doesn't reveal your "Crimes" section.

After we pay Basile his commission and give the guides half of the agreed amount, he leaves with a bow, then the duo takes us downstairs and to a [Gate] service.

"To Antreos Crea, please," Penelope requests to the old woman.

"Oooh~…?" She coos and motions for her to come closer, so Penelope leans forward, her floppy ears swaying cutely, then Alissa hears the mage whisper into the base of her long ear, "Dead meat, daring devils, or hidden nobles?"

A bit callous.

"Third with a bit of the second." Then the two share a quick smirk.

I summon a bird, then everyone steps on the magical weight scale that also measures the weight of the contents of our [Item Box]es, and once we're all on it, we're reminded that the golems have an army's worth of weapons with them.

"Apologies, Master," Ted announces through [Bind].

"Should we return to your 'Items'?" Suzy suggests.

"It's fine…" I tiredly reply. It'd just be too much work to make an excuse instead of simply paying it.

"I have just enough MP to get you all through," the old woman concernedly remarks as she looks very closely at the needle in the indicator, then she awkwardly frowns and glances at us. "Might as well close shop after this because I'm definitely going to be hit with overuse."

I sigh internally, and Alissa hands her a gold coin. "Keep the change," I mumble.

The mage's frown turns upside down, then she quickly pockets the coin and shrugs. "If you say so…"

She opens a [Gate] for us, and I send the bird through first to scout before we all cross through it, just to be safe.

We're taken to a drab square room made with gray bricks. There's a large golden double door behind us that takes you to the previous area, and a silver cylindrical elevator straight ahead with the words "Antreos Crea" carved on top of the door.

Once we're all in the elevator, Nikolas touches the symbol of a small downwards-pointing arrow carved in the wall and feeds it some mana, then we start going down, but the door doesn't close behind us, making me wish for dungeon OSHA, especially since I'm the one at the front.

"So, what's up with that weight," Penelope asks out loud to fill the silence.

"Jarn, take off the cloak," I order.

She un[Equips] it, and the two guides stare at her in surprise, both because of the unknown spell and her striking appearance.

"What the hell…?" Nikolas reflexively mumbles while Penelope remains silent as her gaze flies repeatedly between Yunia and Jarn.

"She's a golem, and they're like Space mages for us. Think of an elemental, but permanent," I casually explain, enjoying their reactions a bit.

"And also capable of speech," Jarn wisely adds, and I hum.

"Why are their voices like that?" Alonso asks as he stares up at Jarn, looking a bit bored.

"I don't know how to make perfect vocal cords, and the golems are also quite unemotional, so they don't really use what they have to its fullest."

"Did you say 'they'?" Penelope confusedly questions.

Both Ted and Suzy wave at her, then begin floating in the air.

"Festivity's Balls! That's damn adorable!" Penelope shouts and squeals.

Ciel smiles smugly, then tells Ted to start dancing with Suzy, and even Kyora's harem gets interested in watching the golems.

"Why is the metal one wearing clothes…?" Nikolas quietly asks as he stares at Jarn up and down.

"Because she'd be naked without them," I offhandedly reply and leave it at that.

"Uuuuh~…" The wolf man grunts in confusion, but after a long moment, he seems to get the implication and stops staring at her.

After three long minutes in the uncomfortably crowded elevator, the wall of concrete suddenly opens up, and I once again curse the lack of OSHA regulating the mandate for doors in elevators.

What we see ahead of us is a world of gray since there's absolutely nothing to see but the light gray mist that obscures our view as even the light illuminating the inconceivably large room comes from an unknown source.

Another minute, and the elevator reaches the floor, which is made of solid silver covered in a thin sheet of water, making the ground look like a mirror until disturbed by the ripples of our steps.

For some reason, I like this place.

It's suspiciously similar to one of Legado's trials, tho.

We can see about a stadium's length ahead before the mist takes over, making us feel quite small and insignificant when faced with the overwhelming nothingness.

I summon six birds as cover so that I can summon Hollys at the same time and order them to scout in all directions. Now that we're somewhere more private, I release my glorious black horns, then we [Equip] our Bastión armor and draw our weapons (except for Aoi). Gify pops out of existence, then reappears on Jarn's head, and she'll remain there until the golems begin to participate in the fights.

"I knew it…" Alissa overhears Penelope whisper to Nikolas.

"That's metal, but those patterns look elven…" He whispers back.

I turn towards them, and they stiffen, so I smile while applying [Spicy Charm] and appease their curiosity, "We're Crown Lords of the Western High Forest, so we'd appreciate it if you can keep quiet about our identities and skills after this is done."

The beautiful pupils of Penelope's eyes widen as she eagerly asks, "Are you an actual dragonkin? I've never seen one so… feral before." And Nikolas gives her a worried glance.

I smile smugly, then Aoi and I shift into our draconic forms, and the two guides take an instinctive step back, but the Templars are right behind them, so they have nowhere to run.

"Damn, that's actually really impressive," Kyora mutters as she stares at me, and Poppy silently nods while Timas and Alonso shift uncomfortably, seemingly a bit jealous.

"I'm a weredragon, a new race you'll one day hear a lot about. She's an actual dragon who converted and gained a system," I explain, enjoying seeing Penelope's hairs stand on end from my seductive, manly, husky, intimidating draconic double voice.

I feel so tempted to slide out my moist, steamy, spiky, thick, long, superior draconic sword just to assert dominance, but the human pulls on the dragon's chains.

Aoi gives the curious rabbit a toothy, frightening smile, then [Equips] her armor.

But Nikolas' eyes suddenly go past us, and he stiffly warns us, "B-boasting should be left for later; your first challenge is arriving!"

Ahead of us, we can see two brown marble statues floating down while T-posing. They're both buff and bald humans without any facial features, but one is a man and the other is a woman.

Penelope hastily gives us a summary of these monsters, "Symbols of Mankind have tough skin and ridiculous strength. They can crush a dragonkin with a hug, but they aren't exactly fast, so your best bet is to bleed them to death. Don't use spears or anything that can get stuck because they will grab your weapon and then use it against you!"

Hana hits her shield with the hilt of her sword and makes a loud banging noise. "Come here you ugly bald fuckers so that Wolfy can r-pe both of your boring asses with his mighty sword!" She taunts with a fearsome grin.

To be honest, the bald woman has an amazing body, so I'd hesitate to call her ugly.

The moment the Symbols touch the water, they break into a robotic sprint towards us.

There's not a lot of time to make a plan, so Hana faces off with the man with the floppy thing, and Yunia takes the woman with bouncy bits.

Once they're close enough, the monsters start using kung-fu on the girls, but they just dodge all their attacks.

Hana lets a kick touch the blade of her sword, and the strength behind it surprises her. She'll definitely get a bent shield if she tries to take a direct hit.

Lina casts [Earth Wall] in front of Yunia, and the female bastard punches a hole right through it.

"I don't want to engage these monsters…" The little girl anxiously affirms. She doesn't have enough "Speed" to be confident that she can safely dodge their attacks.

"You'd have to use it on their feet to constantly disrupt their footing," I point out, but she's still not confident.

"We should each try to stand on our own against them," Alissa wisely suggests.

"W-what?!" Roxanne exclaims, almost choking on her spit.

"Well, maybe not you," I correct.

"These are boring. There's not much to be learned from them," Yunia annoyedly points out, then starts turning her opponent's brown skin into ribbons. These monsters show no pain, but they bleed like humanoids, and a pool of vivid scarlet begins to form at their feet as it mixes with the thin sheet of water.

We switch it up, and I face one while Aoi takes the other. There's not really that much for me to learn from this since I'm already a speedy boy, but Aoi isn't.

She conjures a ball of water and keeps it floating above her on standby, then lets the male Symbol come closer to try out her halberd against him.

She slices open his shoulder, and he immediately tries to grab the weapon, so she pulls it back, but she isn't quick enough to attack again to keep the monster away, and he enters striking range.

He kicks her thigh, and we hear a crunching sound as the armor cracks, making her stagger due to the unbelievable weight behind the blow, then her ball of water slams onto his head so hard that we hear another crunching sound as he falls face-first on the floor.

Ciel takes over for me, so I go to Aoi and repair her armor. The padding absorbed all of the shock, so she didn't feel that much of the impact aside from the force pushing her to the side.

"I've never seen a dragon use a weapon before," Penelope whispers, slightly bewildered.

The male Symbol slowly gets up, seemingly concussed, and I just stab him in the back of the head to give myself the time I need to repair her armor. I'm glad to know that our weapons can at least go through their skulls.

Aoi stares at Ciel, observing how she keeps the female Symbol away by making use of both her greatly superior range and the monster's lack of any sort of defense.

Then it's Alissa's turn, and she has almost as much ease as Yunia did in dodging the monster's attacks. Yet, even though she can dodge, her arrows are useless against this monster except for [Sapping Seeds] and [Arrow of Annihilation]. Even [Discharge] isn't very effective.

Then we let Roxanne try out some spells on the Symbol. [Ice Lance] pierces the female monster's thick skin, but she doesn't slow down even slightly due to her stupidly high mass. A strong [Water Wall] is the only thing that can stop her because she just ignores any burn caused by [Fire Magic].

[Explosion] would instantly kill the Symbol, but we let Lina face it on her own first.

[Earth Wall] just gets kicked or punched and blown into pieces, and Lina isn't confident that she wouldn't get punted like a ball if she were hit, even if she were to bolt herself to the floor with [Earth Magic].

Quick, small [Earth Wall]s at the monster's feet do the trick, though, while also being relatively low-cost mana-wise, but they have to be directly under the Symbol's feet since trying to trip it simply doesn't work.

"The Symbols are the most common monsters around here, right?" I question our guides.

"Yes. There are variants, but their inhuman strength is the common characteristic for them," Penelope helpfully answers.

"They never come in large numbers, but it's the variants' special abilities that make them dangerous," Nikolas sternly adds.

I could stare at Penelope all day, so it's a shame that Nikolas has to tag along. I just want to watch this rabbit woman sweat and work those muscular legs of hers.

Roxanne blows one of the Symbol's knees off, and Lina buries her hammer's spike into the back of the monster's head, but before Lina can pull it back, the Symbol grabs the shaft and rips it out of her hands.

Lina just re[Equip]s her polehammer and spikes the monster's head again, then Alissa sends an [Arrow of Annihilation] through its skull, finally killing the female Symbol.

"How annoying," Lina grumbles, and we begin to understand why so few people come this way.

I turn to Penelope and ask, "Now what?"

She points to the bodies. "They'll split into four to seven Symbols, now with weapons and magic. Be careful of archers and mages. The former has a bow as powerful as a ballista, and the latter doesn't use system magic."

"Oh! I think I get what's happening," Ciel suddenly exclaims, but there's no time for that now. The girls immediately take a step back, and we assume combat positions.

The Symbols' bodies melt into mud, but their blood pulls a T-1000, and a total of seven shapes start to grow out of the red pools. It's a freaky experience for Alissa since she senses their presences sprout from nothing and then steadily grow into seven fully-fledged Symbols.

They reach max size in just four seconds, and then their red skin shifts into human-colored flesh. These ones have actual faces and hair, but they aren't as buff, and they're still all naked, so more floppy penises, though at least the female Symbols are pretty hot.

Two sword and shields, two greatswords, two archers, and a mage. Melee-heavy, which will be annoying to deal with.

Lina casts [Sap Power] on the four melee monsters and remains at the center of our formation, but she doesn't actively engage them to conserve her mana.

Hana and Yunia face off with the shield users at the center while Ciel and Aoi go for the greatsword users on each side. I'll remain as a wildcard while Alissa and Roxanne will try to snipe their ranged. Using the golems would make this too easy, and I'd rather not reveal how they fight to anyone for now.

Fighting the shield users is slow and methodical, so the real fight will be against the greatswords. I create six sword-wielding tentacles and slide to Aoi's side because I think Ciel can handle herself.

"The fuck is that…?" Nikolas mumbles.

Without an opponent between me and the ranged, I become an easy target for them, so one of the archers takes aim at me, then [Battlefield Perception] triggers, and I dodge, but the arrow tears through one of my tentacles at a stupidly high speed.

Momentarily off balance, I don't notice the suspicious little wave of water shooting towards me, but Roxanne does, and [Battlefield Perception] triggers again.

With her guidance, I cast [Earth Wall] in front of the wave, then I sense it being pierced by something as thin as a needle, which gives me enough time to easily dodge the attack while I use two sword tentacles to slice into the flank of one of the greatsword Symbols.

Aoi slams the back of the Symbol with her conjured ball of water, pushing it forward, then she jams her halberd into its chest.

With one hand, the monster grabs the shaft and pulls on it, but Aoi simply lets go and re[Equip]s it, teleporting it back to her hands. Since she has successfully distracted it, I carve two more deep channels into its skin, now on the thighs.

More suspicious waves come, and the girls are forced to throw spells at their opponents to safely disengage from them so that they can successfully dodge the stealthy water needles.

One of the archers spots an opening and sends an arrow through our lines. Roxanne reflexively casts [Water Wall] while her [Water Spirit] pushes her out of the way, and she successfully dodges the attack, but that was too close for comfort.

Aoi takes note from the mage and spreads her conjured water behind the Symbols, assuming control of it and preventing the mage from using the needle attack again.

Alissa sneaks over to Ciel's side and starts exchanging arrows with the second archer, who retreats further away so that it has enough time to dodge the projectiles. [Explosion] would make things too easy, so Roxanne has her fun using the first archer as target practice, switching between the super-fast [Ice Lance] and the more maneuverable [Fireball] to keep it on its toes.

Lina's [Sap Power] seems to quickly produce a noticeable effect as the melee Symbols all slow down. Their bodies are extremely heavy, so the spell's gradual reduction of their "Strength" must be making it harder for them to move.

A strong gust of wind blows across the battlefield, and the gray mist above us darkens, then a light rain starts to fall as the mage Symbol levitates upwards. Aoi becomes enraged, wanting to compete against that mage one-on-one, but she still has an opponent to defeat.

The mage is now an easy target for Alissa, so she quick-fires a few [Arrow of Annihilation]s. The monster manages to make them veer off-target, as if it's using [Dead Zone], so Alissa switches to physical arrows, and though they're influenced by the wind, it's still possible for her to compensate.

Yunia begins pushing back her opponent first, and to not get left behind, Hana uses [Draconic Body] to boost her "Strength," allowing her to begin to match the Symbol's might as it grows weaker.

I take over against Aoi's opponent and free her up to face off with the mage, which is now being turned into a pincushion. Alissa has filled its body with so many [Sapping Seed] arrows that she feels like she's overflowing with energy.

It's still not safe for Aoi to take flight, so she has a magical wrestling match with the mage, successfully disrupting the thunderstorm from growing any further by making use of her superior knowledge of physics rather than trying to compete through pure "Willpower" or "Magic Power," which would most likely end with her defeat.

The archers are still firing at us, and they're too dangerous for my taste, so I cripple my opponent by heavily wounding both of its legs, then I cast [Invisibility] on myself and leap towards the archers.

They both immediately turn their heads to look in my direction, but they don't seem to know my exact position.

I land right in front of the first archer and slice it up with all of my weapons. Its skin is too thick for me to decapitate it in one strike, so I aim for its muscles and arteries, crippling it enough that it drops its bow.

[Battlefield Perception] triggers, and I use [Muscle Explosion] to bring up my shield, but even with [Wind Shield] at full power, I still sense the arrow slide along it, leaving a long scratch on its immaculate surface.

The second archer pays for that distraction by receiving an [Ice Lance] right in its chest. It doesn't penetrate deeply enough to kill it, but now its pectoral muscles are damaged, and it struggles to draw another arrow.

The first archer takes advantage of my moment of distraction to jump forward, and it manages to blindly grab a hold of a tentacle and my sword wrist.

Fucking-…!

The tenacious bastard uses its new leverage to jump again, and then smacks both of the soles of its feet against my body, but I undo the tentacle and use [Wind Shield] to push it to the side, diverting its attack away from me.

Its feet fly past me, showing me its back and round ass, then I focus all of my "Magic Power" into [Telekinesis] to push the Symbol further to the side, right into the path of an incoming arrow.

The stupidly fast projectile pierces right through its chest, but it gets slowed down enough that [Wind Shield] fully neutralizes it, then the Symbol falls to the metallic floor, almost taking me with it.

It still has a firm grip on my wrist, so I use all of my tentacles to quickly chop its hand off before it can try to fuck me up again.

I feel a "presence" turn its gaze towards me, and [Battlefield Perception] triggers once again, but this time, I don't have enough time to dodge as a weak lightning bolt almost immediately courses through my body.

This angers me more than it damages my HP, and before it can try again, Aoi takes flight and tackles the mage since the second archer has been successfully disabled by Roxanne.

The melee monsters are all too weakened now to pose a danger to the girls, the archers can't use their bows, and the mage has lost too much vitality to stop Aoi from tearing it apart limb from limb, so all that's left now is the cleanup.

I turn to our guides and feel my draconic pride rising at the sight of their awed expressions. While the fight wasn't dire enough to give me a full mast, this view certainly does.

It's time to seduce Thunder Thighs.

A note from Manasong

Hall of Fame of Patrons

The patrons who support Rupegia shall have their names sung by the bards for they deserve the glory and honor. Their names are:

Prince PreownedFIN.

Prince Owldente.

Lord Andrew Meyers.

Lord Novgarod.

Lord Michale Erwin.

Lord Bakerdea.

Lord Maurice.

Lord Mattirro Draca.

Lord Sean Drake.

Lord FrostyCube.

Lord Mike Bartter.

Lord Warwulfv.

Lord Jorge Franco.

Lord Khristopher Welsh.

Lord DJ.

Lord Tenebris Lupus.

Lord Paul Daval.

Lord Paul Daval.

Lord Bradly.

Lord AndreyUC.

Lord Tmac.

Lord School Work.

Lord Gwendolyn Simmons-LaRose.

Lord CopeyDunt.

Lord James.

Lord BlindTactic.

Lord The Tallest Joshua.

Lord Ryan Brogan.

Lord Cidant.

Lord AndreyUC.

Noble Salty Panda.

Noble Mild Fracas.

Noble Aclys.

Noble CarlBaxter.

Noble d3235.

Noble Frank de Jong.

Leave a rating or a review to help me rise to the top or fix my shameful understanding of prose.

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Chapter 130: Dawn of Mankind - Part 1

"I see you'll all do just fine here," Nikolas wryly remarks.

I stare at Penelope, and she holds my gaze, her arms crossed under her bra, assuming a more defensive posture as she tries to get a hold of herself due to my draconic pressure making her feel like prey.

I smirk as I approach, and her face involuntarily twitches as she begins to shyly smile, then she pushes her long floppy ears behind her and forces a more stern expression.

Playing hard to get?

Nikolas notices our silent flirting, and his face stiffens in annoyance.

Oh? It seems he holds a [Spirit Light] for her. They don't act like a couple, so maybe I could play a bit with his jealousy.

Her eyes wander to the purple tentacles coming out of my back, and her demeanor becomes unsure. "What are those… tentacles…?" She hesitantly asks.

I point my palm up and create a slimy, suggestively-shaped meat log. "A spell I've created. It allows me to grow fake, temporary appendages that I can use for… a variety of 'activities,'" I huskily reply with a suggestive grin.

Her eyes open wide, and she stiffens, slightly fearful of me, yet her eyes can't turn away from the purple "tool."

"But why is it… purple…?" She quietly asks and swallows heavily.

I make the tentacles all flesh-colored, then transparent, then I slowly pull them back. "It helps intimidate others, just like how you obviously are, but they're all just fake flesh, like a mana solidification," I kindly explain, and they both visibly relax.

I'm loving playing with them.

But Nikolas sends her a brief glare, then anxiously interjects, "Well aren't you full of 'mysteries,' but we don't have time to play. The next trial should start soon."

"'Trial'?" Roxanne asks, frowning in horror at the word.

The wolf man nods and sternly explains, "Patience, communication, carefulness, unity, bravery, imagination, and righteousness. Those are the trials the dungeon will make you go through."

Roxanne groans out loud, echoing Alissa's and Yunia's internal thoughts. They are not looking forward to being "tested."

Yet Ciel is too eager to share her priestly knowledge with us, so she suddenly interrupts, "In the Extended Tale of Creation, the God of Creation observed that mammals were the type of animal that had advanced the furthest, so They based our form on them and molded the Primes, a man and a woman, from the versatile clay. Those were the first two Symbols we fought.

"But having only two isn't enough to create a population without inbreeding, so Creation used their blood to give birth to true Man, a more flawed but better-balanced form based on the Primes."

Alissa's ears flicker in confusion as she asks, "Is 'Man' not the same as 'humans'?"

Ciel nods. "It is, it's just how we called ourselves in ancient Andraste."

Lina softly snorts and comments, "I find it funny that in Andraste, 'human' is just 'woman,' but with the first two letters cut in half."

"Using 'Man' instead of 'human' sounds unfair to women," Yunia remarks, sounding almost offended.

"In ancient Andraste, 'woman' is simply 'not-man,'" Lina explains, and Yunia's thin, golden eyebrows knit in distaste. "Women are better at magic, but back then, magic was not as well understood, so the physically stronger men usually ruled until the creation of skills equalized power levels."

"Okay, but what about the 'trials'?" I put us back on track.

Ciel excitedly continues, "They're not really 'trials,' at least not during that time. The God of Change simply liked to put Man in situations where they'd be forced to reflect upon life and understand themselves better. These 'trials' were more like 'events,' and there were seven major types, each focusing on one of the seven 'aspects' of our personalities we believe to exist."

"And the first one is to test your patience," Nikolas wisely adds.

But I frown skeptically and ask, "Doesn't knowing what these 'events' are going to be diminish their effect?"

And Penelope kindly explains, "Yes, but Antreos Crea is like participating in a play about the Dawn of Mankind, not a real 'trial.'"

I hum. "Interactive storytelling."

She tilts her head. "An… interesting choice of words, but true, I believe."

Suddenly, Alissa notices a barely audible rumbling, then the weak illumination begins to turn blood red as ripples on the sheet of water come towards us from far off into the mist.

"It's starting," Penelope soberly points out.

The scouting Hollys meet with dark clouds blocking their advance all at the same time, and the moment they fly into the ominous dark wall, they're assaulted by multiple lightning strikes until they've been fried to death.

"The next Symbols will have annoying abilities, but we never know which," Nikolas adds, and I can only frown at that statement.

Then the rest of the girls and I also begin to hear the rumbling, and the ripples grow into small waves.

"We're now being thrown into Rupegia while the Gods fought for control over it," Penelope announces.

The mist clears a bit, allowing us to see further and revealing the outline of mountains surrounding us, looking quite ominous in the red world that we now find ourselves in.

Directly ahead, the mist darkens again, then thickens into clouds, and four T-posing Symbols appear, slowly floating towards us.

We assume our previous battle formation, but a thick wall of water separates us, dividing our group right through the middle. Kyora's group and the guides retreat into the elevator, and the moment the water hits the stone shaft, it releases an oddly familiar type of mana, seemingly enchanted.

Alissa fires both physical [Mana Arrow]s and the magical [Arrow of Annihilation] at the Symbols, but all of her attacks are diverted by them, making her click her tongue in frustration.

Normally, I'd never allow my enemy to just approach us unmolested, but right now, I want to see what they're going to do, and we need the challenge anyway.

Yunia then becomes concerned about our guides. We're already exposing them to many of our hidden powers, and a noble has already shown a lot of interest in getting information about us, so while we wait, she guides Jarn to explain the situation to them.

The metal golem suddenly moves in front of the duo, scaring them a bit, then Jarn stares with her lifeless eyes while she robotically relays Yunia's words, "As you've already seen, our combat abilities are special, and there are plenty of nobles who would pay a lot of coin to have the knowledge that you now hold-…"

"Oh, fuck!" Nikolas hisses quietly in realization and shares a look with Penelope.

"But we're willing to shelter you while your information is still valuable, which we estimate will remain so for less than a month."

"How considerate…" Alonso remarks amusedly.

"I'll take it," Thunder Thighs immediately accepts with a grin.

"Fuck, Lolo. Why are you like this?" Nikolas grumbles and glares at her.

She coyly glances at him. "It'll be fun…"

And Timas helpfully chimes in, "Ciel will take care of you. She's a priestess, and we're Templars."

Penelope excitedly adds, "Free lodging while living with the elves. You can't pass on that."

But Nikolas is still not taking it. "He's a Lord with a gaggle of women following his tail," he quietly points out, his red eyes staring intensely at her.

The athletic bunny girl simply chuckles nervously and plays with her floppy ears as she stares at my back, but she doesn't reply.

And Roxanne's panties start to become moist from the sight of the horrified face Nikolas makes once he realizes her intentions. I also think that I'm beginning to understand why women have a thing for NTR.

"The fight…" Lina tiredly pulls our attention back to where it matters.

I shift my legs to get my boner into a more comfortable position, then I decide to float up to test things out.

A torrent of water comes out of the mist and shoots towards me, so I dodge, but another attack comes, then another, and another, and a fifth. I believe they're spending a lot more mana on these attacks than I'm using to dodge them, so I'm willing to bet in this war of attrition.

The mist suddenly darkens heavily, then Roxanne, Aoi, and I feel the Symbols' presences "aiming" at me.

Fu-…

I groan in pain as a strong lightning bolt hits me, and my body flashes with a rainbow color as [Rainbow Shield] activates to reduce the damage from the spell. It isn't enough to do more than take just a few HP points from me, but because I have [Mana Body], it's really fucking painful.

Hana summons her wings and shoots towards the Symbols, out for revenge, while I lower back down and let Ciel's [Holy Spirit] heal me.

Multiple water jets get in Hana's way, but they're too slow to change course, and a spiral pattern is enough to dodge them all.

The dark clouds continue to grow, quickly enshrouding the Symbols in a menacing, black barrier.

Hana flies right into it, bracing herself for the imminent lightning strikes, but they're much stronger than she expected, and they lock up her muscles, impeding her from flying properly.

She falls down and emerges from the cloud, which we notice doesn't touch the floor, so Hana recovers and safely lands right under them, waiting for an opportunity to strike.

"Normal adventurers would never be able to reach the Symbols before the cloud had grown big enough to protect them!" Roxanne points out through [Bind].

Indeed. This isn't Arreira's dungeon, so the difficulty level isn't being curated to be just challenging enough for us.

More walls of water appear, separating us further, but we're unsure how to take it. Another one hits the elevator's shaft, and Roxanne finally realizes something.

"The whole elevator shaft is enchanted with something like [Reinforce]," she points out, and I find that fact very suspicious.

The clouds continue to grow further, wrapping around the elevator's shaft completely, yet they still don't touch the floor.

Now the monsters get into our spell range, and the girls start shooting at them, but we're still too far, so the Symbols easily divert the spells.

Patience, huh?

But then Alissa realizes something that makes her really worried, "Wolfy… those aren't mountains…"

I look at the outlines surrounding us and realize that they're now much bigger, but through Alissa's eyes, I notice that there are foam-like vertical streaks that appear at the foot of the mountain and quickly rise up to the top, only to disappear.

Just like a tsunami wave.

We all stop and stare at the mountains, then squint to try to make out any further details in this weakly illuminated red world.

Scratch that. It isn't "just like a tsunami," it's "exactly like a tsunami" because IT IS A FUCKING TSUNAMI!

"B-back to the elevator!" I order, briefly dumbfounded at the silliness of this situation.

Hana grumbles, but she obeys, and we all use our armor's [Fly] to easily jump over the walls and reunite with the others.

We crowd together inside the elevator, ready to activate it again and get out of this accursed place, but then I notice that the small waves don't enter the elevator, blocked by some sort of barrier, and I suddenly feel like I have the answer on the tip of my tongue.

Alissa senses the Symbols continuing to quickly approach us until they're just a few meters away from the elevator's shaft, then they begin to lower, and the dark cloud slowly comes closer to the floor.

She fires a pot shot at one of the Symbols, and they're so close that the arrow doesn't have enough time to be diverted away, getting lodged in her target's shoulder.

"We should attack," Alissa eagerly suggests, but I'm still skeptical.

"Should we? This test is about patience, not passiveness or recklessness," I cryptically reply, then an idea comes to me. "Are the Symbols controlling the tsunami?!" I ask the girls out loud.

"'Tsunami'?" Penelope asks confusedly.

"The big wave! The water!"

"No! Only the clouds!" Roxanne answers, and everyone agrees.

Then let's gamble a bit!

I order Hana, Ciel, Aoi, and Yunia to go outside and stand right under the Symbols while I keep my finger on the enchantment to go up.

"What are they doing…?" Poppy concernedly asks.

"Their best," I answer jokingly.

The tsunami becomes unmistakable, and we hear a light "whooshing" sound coming from the rapidly approaching gigantic wall of water.

The Symbols' "presences" wash over the girls outside, then they're attacked by weak lightning strikes.

"HOLD!" I encourage them through [Bind].

The tsunami comes closer from all directions, and I feel my stomach sink in fear of what's coming next, then I summon six water elementals and tell them to spread out outside of the elevator so that I can get a better view of the situation.

The dark clouds stop coming right above the girls' heads, and the waves at their feet grow stronger, then we begin to smell the salty scent of the sea.

The Symbols continue to lower, now close enough that we could potentially kill them with just magic.

"HOOOOLD!" The other girls and I encourage the brave four standing outside.

Lightning falls upon their heads again, but then the clouds start growing outwards, towards the tsunami, and we hold our breaths.

The wall of water touches the wall of black mist, and they both block each other.

But uncountable tons of water don't just stop on a copper coin.

The elementals sense a huge column of water shooting up as it crawls along the wall of clouds, then we hear the loud whooshing sounds of a huge wave crashing against a sea wall.

The dark barrier gives in a little from the pressure, and the Symbols divert all of their attention to keeping the tsunami from crushing them, then the clouds directly above the girls start to clear, revealing the four monsters.

"NOT YET!" I shout and force Hana to remain grounded.

A wave of water passes under the clouds and hits the brave four, making it difficult for them to remain in place.

After a tense moment, the elementals feel the tsunami recede, and the column of water surrounding us quickly reduces in height as the water drains away from the elevator.

The Symbols lower further and enter the turbulent water, their feet almost touching the floor, coming right into range of the four outside.

Just a little more!

The column of water starts to be pushed back by the clouds, and the Symbols finally land, then they immediately turn to the girls.

"NOW!" I give the order, and they attack.

The dark clouds almost immediately fade away as the monsters are quickly dispatched, and the still relatively tall columns of water are now free to flow towards us again.

The girls waste no time in running back to us, Aoi dragging her prey's corpse to consume it, and the moment they enter the elevator, Lina closes it off with [Earth Wall], then the tsunami reaches us.

The stone shaft rumbles, and its proto-[Reinforce] enchantment flares as it's slammed in on from all directions by the tall column of water. I observe the elevator with my full attention, my "inner finger" hovering over the button to summon earth elementals in case it starts to crumble.

But all we hear are the whooshing sounds of chaotic waves crashing all around us and the sickening crunches as Aoi eats the Symbol whole, horrifying everyone here but us. After a few moments, the water recedes enough that Lina starts to lower the [Earth Wall].

The monster bodies have been washed away, leaving us with a red realm that gradually begins to turn orange.

We walk out and breathe in, savoring the salty smell of the sea, then I turn to our guides and questioningly raise an eyebrow.

"The next trial is already starting. Communicate well and pay attention to your own situation," Penelope kindly answers my silent question.

"What would happen if we hadn't killed the Symbols?" Yunia curiously asks.

The bunny girl shrugs. "Either another wave would come, or different Symbols would appear."

"Well, this is fun," Roxanne comments out loud with a smile as she looks around at the orange world.

"For you…" Ciel mumbles, a bit irritated by the lightning strikes she had to endure.

The silver floor begins rumbling again, growing louder much faster this time.

We retreat back into the elevator and see cracks form all around us, then nearly all of the visible ground simply crumbles into dust, leaving only a radius of a couple of meters of silver intact around the elevator.

The water elementals fall into rivers of lava, and I dismiss them before they can inevitably die in the heat.

Fuck's sake. Can't really explore anything around here.

The lava burbles and rises until it's only a couple of meters under us, the temperature rising dramatically with it, then the fart-like smell of sulfur replaces the pleasant salty scent of the sea.

"The lava could be releasing noxious fumes," Lina worriedly points out.

"'Pay attention to your own situation,'" I repeat soberly.

Far ahead of us, a jet of lava suddenly spurts upwards, but the molten rock almost immediately stops in the air as if it hit a barrier, then it spreads out, creating a floating circular platform that rapidly cools and hardens into obsidian.

The endless pool of glowing lava becomes turbulent, and hundreds of jets spurt upwards, but only a few of them end up creating platforms, and a haphazard path that takes us into the mist soon forms before our eyes.

The orange light makes things annoyingly hard to see, so we all cast [Spirit Light] to make it easier on our eyes.

Then four T-posing Symbols finally descend from the sky, but there's also a shiny orange glass orb the size of a watermelon trailing behind them.

They land on a platform at the edge of the mist and immediately kneel, then we sense their "presences" washing over the lava, and multiple jets shoot towards the orb, which absorbs them all and glows slightly brighter.

"The realm used to be full of godly power, so Man used many methods to absorb it and become stronger," Lina scholarly explains.

"Okay, the objective here is pretty obvious," I point out, and we jump onto an obsidian platform (though Lina has to use [Fly]).

Three of the Symbols immediately stand up and start skipping towards us, performing jumps that'd make Olympic athletes envious. The jets of lava continue to shoot towards the orb, but now, they're much slower.

We quickly split into groups: Aoi and I; Roxanne and Hana; Ciel and Lina; and Alissa and Yunia. That last group will be responsible for sneaking around towards the orb and dealing with it.

Roxanne releases an [Ice Lance] that hits a Symbol right on the chest, but the ice immediately begins to steam and melt away while the wound left behind almost instantly heals.

Oh, Gods, high regeneration is so annoying.

Our three duos meet with our naked, weaponless opponents, and we easily keep them occupied, but we soon learn that they bleed red-hot blood that smells suspiciously nasty, and their regeneration is so good that they're just as resilient as full undead.

Roxanne tests [Explosion] on her opponent's chest, but even that isn't enough to actually kill it, and the strong smell of their blood makes her a bit light-headed, so one test is good enough for us, then Ciel sends her [Holy Spirit] to Roxanne to purify her body.

Hana keeps her Symbol from regenerating, but then a strong orange light shines upon the pair from the orb, and they immediately retreat. A couple of seconds later, a thick beam of plasma slices through the air where they just were, giving the Symbol enough time to fully grow its body back.

Penelope, are you sure this isn't the actual test of our patience?

[Illusion Magic] is extremely effective on them, so just with [Ignorance], Alissa and Yunia successfully sneak past the three Symbols, then they approach the kneeling one without it noticing them.

Yunia dices it up while Alissa uses a war hammer to smash the orb into smithereens, then all of the Symbols let out horrific death screams as their bodies melt into small pools of lava.

"Noooo! My foood!" Aoi cries out in dismay.

"Wait, that's it…?" Hana mumbles confusedly.

"Our teamwork is kind of perfect, even without the Gestalt," Ciel amusedly remarks through [Bind]

"It was so fragile that I could've just used an arrow," Alissa grumbles and pouts.

We hear a laugh coming from the elevator and notice that our guides are having fun observing our confused expressions.

But we don't have time to fool around, for the ground trembles again, and the next "trial" begins.

A note from Manasong

Hall of Fame of Patrons

The patrons who support Rupegia shall have their names sung by the bards for they deserve the glory and honor. Their names are:

Prince PreownedFIN.

Prince Owldente.

Lord Andrew Meyers.

Lord Novgarod.

Lord Michale Erwin.

Lord Bakerdea.

Lord Maurice.

Lord Mattirro Draca.

Lord Sean Drake.

Lord FrostyCube.

Lord Mike Bartter.

Lord Warwulfv.

Lord Jorge Franco.

Lord Khristopher Welsh.

Lord DJ.

Lord Tenebris Lupus.

Lord Paul Daval.

Lord Paul Daval.

Lord Bradly.

Lord AndreyUC.

Lord Tmac.

Lord School Work.

Lord Gwendolyn Simmons-LaRose.

Lord CopeyDunt.

Lord James.

Lord BlindTactic.

Lord The Tallest Joshua.

Lord Ryan Brogan.

Lord Cidant.

Lord AndreyUC.

Noble Salty Panda.

Noble Mild Fracas.

Noble Aclys.

Noble CarlBaxter.

Noble d3235.

Noble Frank de Jong.

Leave a rating or a review to help me rise to the top or fix my shameful understanding of prose.

Take a look over my blog where all information about the world of Rupegia will be posted.

Join the Discord and discuss, or rant, or meme, or try and fight me so your waifu gets more screentime.

Become a Patron and read chapters in advance, or read the side-stories, or leave your mark on the story, or help choose the next artwork or the next side-story.

Chapter 130: Dawn of Mankind - Part 2

There's no way we're staying on these obsidian platforms floating above pools of lava during an earthquake, so we quickly return to the elevator, but then the temperature drops drastically, and the molten rock starts to harden.

I once again turn to our guides for guidance.

"Things are going to get a bit chaotic, so keep calm and pay attention to the details," Lolo cryptically advises.

The illumination then begins to turn yellow.

"Well, that's reassuring," I sarcastically remark.

"Considering how cold things are getting, it's most likely going to hail soon," Nikolas grumpily adds.

I turn to the scantily dressed bunny girl and genuinely offer, "Would you like a coat? I'm a Space mage, and I have an actual wardrobe for my wives in my [Item Box]."

She shakes her head and smiles politely. "I'm fine."

So I just shrug, but then I become solemn again. "If you say so… Anyway, I'd just like to apologize for getting you two involved in the shady conflicts of nobility. We were too eager to come here and forgot that you might get harassed for what you would see here."

"Ain't that fucking great," Nikolas angrily grumbles, his mouth twitching as he holds back a scowl.

And Yunia joins us to help me out a bit, "I apologize for our lack of consideration. Even I almost forgot the elven way."

Though the wolf man isn't fully appeased, it's hard to remain angry when such a beauty earnestly apologizes.

Lolo gives him a concerned glance, then anxiously asks us, "Are we in any actual danger?"

Kyora gives me a stern stare, waiting for me to tell them the truth.

I breathe in and carefully explain, "We don't think anyone will kidnap you, but we do believe that they'll ask questions, and it's in your best interest to answer them truthfully. In fact, you might as well just write down a few copies of our combat style and hand them out to whoever asks because showing such boldness would actually be in our favor."

Nikolas glances at Kyora's group behind them.

"Sounds about right," she grunts with a nod.

"Why do you even have a Templar escort?" He confusedly asks.

"We're friends with Ciel, so we're leeching," Alonso cheekily answers.

But then Timas tactfully states, "They also have a tendency to attract the Wicked, so we're here to help them out if any appear."

The two guides frown in worry, then Nikolas gives his partner an "I told you so" look, his red eyes making his stare that much more intense.

Nobody but us has been targeted by the Wicked so far, but I don't think that would sound reassuring to the duo.

Lolo lets out a nervous laugh and plays with a floppy ear as she coyly stares at me. "Well, it's too late to go back now."

I just return a guilty smile. Maybe we should give them some hazard pay after this is done.

The obsidian platforms suddenly collapse on top of the hardening lava, then an ice meteor the size of a person falls from the sky.

"See? Told you," Nikolas tiredly points out.

When the ice collides with the cooling rock, it explodes into steam, water, and crystals with a loud sound of glass shattering. A couple of seconds later, more meteors follow, and the deadliest hailstorm I've ever seen begins to fall.

The lava is still red-hot under its crusty surface, so the meteor shower exposes it again, and the thermal explosions from contact between extreme hot and cold just make things even more chaotic.

Steam starts to obscure our view, but the temperature continues to drop, and after a few minutes, the steam condenses again, revealing that the landscape has changed completely.

The yellow world now shows a valley with a small river running across it, and there's even a little hill with an active volcano gradually increasing its own height as it spurts molten rock that slowly cools and hardens. Snow, crystals made of ice, obsidian, and loose rock dot the surface, but then we notice faintly glowing orbs just like the one we destroyed, giving the chaotic environment a mysterious air.

There are no Symbols nearby, and the shower seems to have ended, so our curiosity takes over us, and we go inspect the nearest orb.

It's blue-gray and the size of my fist. [Sense Mana] activates once we get closer, but we all feel that the "power" within it isn't exactly attuned mana, though it's similar, and its "flavor" reminds us of [Water Magic] with a hint of [Earth Magic].

"Is this 'divine power'?" I question Lina.

"It's definitely not mana," she quietly replies, her mind deep in thought.

"Be careful about touching the orbs! Especially if you're a mage!" Lolo shouts, and I give her a thumbs up in appreciation.

"Why?" Jarn immediately questions, and the two guides almost jump in surprise at her creepy robotic voice.

"They're like crude and unstable magic tools for battle," Nikolas categorically answers.

I stare at the orb and get a vague, alluring feeling of "divinity" coming from it, similar to a dungeon's core.

I eagerly, but gingerly, touch the orb with an exposed finger and feel a stinging pain as a thin layer of my thick hide dissolves into the orb.

Uh…

I immediately pull back and almost hiss at it, feeling betrayed.

Nobody but Hana has the courage to touch it next, but once she does, nothing happens, so she grabs it fully and tries her best to not accidentally activate it.

Like a normal enchantment, Hana feels like she's at the edge of a "slope" as the orb tries to draw in her mana, though it's much harder to hold back than with a properly enchanted magic tool, so she could accidentally activate it with a sneeze.

She hands it to Lina so that she can study it, and the little girl immediately feels an "itch" as her mana is steadily drained away.

"Ah!" Lina exclaims fearfully as a finger-sized [Water Blade] filled with gravel launches out of the orb and sinks into the porous volcanic stone, then Hana takes the orb back before Lina can drop it.

"Well, now we know how it works," I wryly remark, and Lina frowns in frustration.

Hana hums in thought, then points the orb at the valley, and a jet of dirty water launches out of the river and shoots towards her. Just like how the Symbols' orb did, Hana's absorbs the jet and then glows just a little bit brighter.

"Hmm~…!" She hums excitedly, then she unleashes a long [Water Blade] full of gravel onto the floor that sinks deep into it, but the orb almost immediately shatters into sparkly magical dust that simply disappears after a couple of seconds.

Yunia narrows her blue jewels and harshly points out, "An orb that absorbs a mage's MP but is easy to use for a warrior. This should tell you what Man's society was like before levels and skills."

Though the age of the Dawn of Mankind was mythical and mysterious, the girls are starting to lose interest in it.

"But how did these orbs appear, to begin with?" Alissa curiously asks.

We all turn to Lina, but she shakes her head negatively and explains, "We're in a dungeon, so these orbs aren't necessarily based on something that was real. Not only that, but the Dawn was the age where most of the myths were born, like those of dragons, dwarves, succubi, and so on that all of the other races-to-be and monsters were based on. So, even if we looked at the records, they'd likely be wrong."

"Maybe everything has a bit of truth to it," I cheekily suggest, but she just sighs and shrugs.

"Should we collect these orbs?" Hana asks with a grin, quite eager to play with them.

I think they might turn out to be important since there are so many around here, so we spread out and start gathering them. Touching them is a no-go for me, but [Telekinesis] works fine, so I just leisurely pull them in from range with the spell.

When a fire orb touches a water orb, Roxanne and Aoi feel a horrible chill, so we keep them separate. Their colors vary a bit, and it seems that as long as two orbs aren't too far apart in the visible spectrum, there's no risk of a "pseudo" runaway mana reaction.

Suddenly, a naked Symbol with a red orb following after it comes out of the mist, then it immediately runs towards the active volcano once it notices us.

Hana summons her wings and lands right in its way, then waits there for it to come to her, but once the monster gets within ten meters, it unleashes a jet of lava towards her and tries to go around her.

"How often did Man fight each other?" I curiously ask Lina.

She scholarly answers, "All the time. It took thousands of years until monsters were created, so Man fought mostly for resources and only sometimes against beasts of nature."

Hana chases after the Symbol and defeats it before it can begin to absorb lava from the volcano.

"I love it how knowledgeable you are," I kindly praise her.

But she pouts and turns her head away to hide her blush. "Not in combat…"

I chuckle softly and turn to the next Symbol that appears at the edge of the mist, this one holding a blue orb.

I deal with that one and collect its orb, but then more and more start to appear, and so, they have more time to launch spells at us, making us wary as we're forced to defend the volcano and the valley from all directions.

Roxanne and Aoi focus on powering up our orbs as it's more efficient than physically fighting every Symbol that appears.

Then the ground trembles, and another vent of lava opens up, increasing our power intake, but the Symbols' orbs also become brighter.

A meteor of ice falls near us, bringing with it a few more ice orbs, but it also causes the volcano to violently erupt, making it dangerous for us to collect lava from it.

An ashen rain begins to fall, and since the orbs are too unstable for our [Item Box]es, we have to hide those with a fire attunement underground to prevent them from blowing up.

The rain helps the porous, fragile rock crumble under our steps, and a landslide reveals another vent of lava, this one a lot more unstable and burbly than the first.

Meteors, ash, rain, mist, eruptions, landslides, and the random appearance of Symbols. Our situation is becoming increasingly dangerous, and Roxanne is starting to worry about runaway mana reactions from our still growing number of orbs.

If the reckless master of explosions and dangerous materials is concerned, I won't be the stupid one by saying otherwise.

We still have the riddle to solve, though. "But what should we do with the orbs?" I question and stare concernedly at our large stash of unstable magical explosives. "The Symbols are clearly aiming to increase their own power, and to me, that doesn't seem like something we should allow."

"The orb that I destroyed didn't feel anywhere near as 'dangerous' as these," Alissa fearfully points out.

"Maybe we can 'stabilize' them?" Roxanne hesitantly asks Lina.

But I immediately retort, "If you can't do it without the help of an enchanter, then I doubt the average adventurer would be able to."

"We also don't need to fight the Symbols the moment they appear. We could easily hide and then assassinate them when they become too powerful," Yunia cunningly points out.

"Alright," I hum.

I summon a few birds for scouting, then we create a safe bunker for ourselves under the dark rock and leave a couple of orbs around to see what the Symbols do with them.

Before long, a Symbol with a water orb appears, and it immediately goes for the nearest free orb, then it grabs both orbs and pushes them together. They begin glowing, the telltale sign of magic, and fuse into a bigger orb, though none of us know how that happened, exactly.

I stealthily summon a Shad and a Holly and order them to sneak closer to the Symbol so that we can sense what it's doing in more detail.

The monster goes for all of the orbs and merges them together, even the red ones, creating a head-sized ball that glows in a rainbow of colors, eerily similar to the modern moon.

"Anyone get what's going on?" I bemusedly ask.

Roxanne blows a raspberry and shrugs.

Another Symbol appears, and the two monsters promptly begin fighting, then another Symbol appears, then a meteor falls, then a geyser erupts, then the ground opens and reveals another vent of lava.

While we calmly watch the chaos unfold from the safety of our bunker, Lina, Aoi, and Yunia all start to feel fidgety.

Another volcano erupts, and even I start to feel like things are getting a bit too chaotic.

More rainbow orbs are created, and then they start to change hands while continuing to grow.

Aoi suddenly growls impatiently and declares, "Using the orbs makes everything unstable." But that gives me an idea.

"Alissa, Yunia, get me the biggest psychedelic orb you can find," I order as a daring smirk graces my lips.

But they just stare at me concernedly.

I roll my eyes and add, "Hana will use it, not me."

"Oh, fuck yes," Hana whispers with a fearsome grin.

But that just makes them even more concerned.

"I agree with Wolfy, and I'll keep a close eye on her through [Bind]," Roxanne affirms.

But Roxanne doesn't have the right reputation to appease them.

"Come on!" I exclaim in annoyance, and they begrudgingly obey.

Once we finally have it, Lina creates a raised platform with [Earth Wall], far above the reach of the average spell from the Symbols.

Hana eagerly takes the orb with both hands and immediately coos in wonder once she feels the chaotic power within.

"Suck it all up, you slut, just like how you always love to," I cheekily order. Then I slap her ass, and even though I only hit her wooden armor, she gets my intention.

The ground starts to rumble once again as she uses the rainbow orb to take control of everything.

The other Symbols try to stop her in a clash of "Willpower," but Alissa and Roxanne snipe the stronger ones, and Hana overwhelms the rest.

Then she does as she was told and sucks it all up.

"Yes, yes!" Hana shouts excitedly as the orb begins to glow brighter and brighter.

Lava, water, ash, bodies, meteors, blood, obsidian, and even some of the mist, everything flies to her orb and is unceremoniously absorbed.

It becomes so bright that we have to turn our eyes away, but its "divine" allure gradually grows along with its size, then it becomes so well attuned to Hana's mind that she can make it float with just a thought.

But the most impressive (and frightening) thing is that she can vaporize Symbols with concentrated beams of plasma the moment they appear, so Roxanne and Ciel keep a very short leash on her through [Bind].

"HAHAHAHAH!" She laughs maniacally, but then Ciel gives her soul a poke, and she holds back her excitement a bit more.

"They make everything look so easy…" Penelope remarks in wonder, then sighs while smiling warmly.

"Don't forget how dangerous they are…" Nikolas quietly replies, his awe tempered by mistrust.

"Don't be such an empty bottle," she grumbles back with a frown.

And he frowns back. "Just go suck his dick already."

Then the two share a glare and start ignoring each other.

Alright, I admit that going for the NTR route is kind of dickish of me.

But now's not the time to eavesdrop.

The temperature drops once again, but the meteors stop falling, the little river dries up, the Symbols stop appearing, and even the underground lava subsides. Hana is absorbing everything, leaving only dry, cold rock and the orbs that belonged to the Symbols.

Then the illumination starts to shift from yellow to green.

"LOOK INTO THE ORB!" Lolo shouts.

We hesitantly try to look into the mini sun, but it hurts our eyes too much. The "divine allure" I feel from it makes me keep trying quite persistently, and I feel my eyes gradually adjust to it.

Emboldened by my success, the girls stare intensely at it and also begin to feel their eyes adjust, then the mini sun starts to look like a mini moon as its psychedelic colors are revealed to us.

What in the fuck are these tests even about, again?

Hana stops the absorption, and the rainbow storm within the moon calms down considerably. Curiously, we can barely see any green in it, excluding the green coming from the ambient light.

"Do the colors of the 'aspects' have any relation to those of the elements?" I question Ciel.

Her eyes remain glued to the little moon while she answers negatively, "Not really. What element do you think would be represented by orange and yellow?"

I grunt and pout, deep in thought.

"Now what…?" Roxanne hums, but we all remain silent.

"Ask the guides?" Alissa suggests.

So I relay our question through Jarn.

Nikolas is very displeased by being startled once again. "What the f-… can they hear us through you?"

"Yes…" Jarn dryly replies.

"'Think of an elemental, but permanent,'" Lolo cheekily repeats my words.

He waves his hand dismissively and groans, "Ugh, whatever… Anyway, there are many paths you could take. Destroy the orb, feed it your blood, try to swallow it, perfectly balance the elements within, continue absorbing until even the mist is gone, or just explore the landscape away from the elevator, though we don't recommend that last one because you will get lost."

"'Swallow'…?" Aoi grunts confusedly, then she gives the obviously too big orb a measuring look.

"'Swallow'?" Jarn echoes her question.

He tiredly shrugs. "Some of the crazier mages did it, and they said that it helped them grow their magic, but I dunno about that. It ends up breaking the orb, so it progresses the 'events' all the same."

"Let's go with balancing the colors," Ciel prudently suggests.

"Awn…" Aoi moans, then she turns to me and gives me her best cute hatchling eyes.

Ack! My weakness!

"How about… one of the smaller ones…?" I hesitantly suggest.

"What will we do if she starts to feel sick?" Ciel sternly questions.

"Open her up, and pull it out?" I jokingly reply.

"I'm fine with that," Aoi calmly agrees, because of course, she would.

I'm not going to open her up at the drop of a hat, so I summon a spirit elemental, which will allow me to see inside her, and we tie a rope around a small rainbow orb, then we let her swallow it.

The orb goes down her esophagus and into her stomach, causing internal "itches" inside her as it slowly absorbs her MP, and all the while, she controls herself from accidentally activating it while it's inside her. I'm kind of envious of how she's even allowed to touch the orb without her body dissolving because she's a damn magical being.

Nothing happens at first, so we just wait.

Meanwhile, we decide to cheat. I pull out some nutritious dirt, and we [Grow] grass on it, then Hana absorbs its "lifeforce," quickly turning the green plants into dried husks.

We suppose that we would've had to release that little amount of "green" power onto the rocks or muddy ash and then grow plants with it, but why do it the hard way?

Actually, what the fuck are we doing? I can just summon some damn elementals!

I heartlessly feed my elemental-wives to the orb, and though they don't feel a thing or even complain, it's still horrifying to see them get sucked into the orb and suddenly "die."

Then we just unload the excess red and blue, giving back some of the life that Hana had absorbed from the landscape.

"I see all of the colors in it now, except for black," Alissa grimly points out, then slowly turns to me.

I hate dark elementals…

I'm already feeling a bit traumatized after killing my elemental-wives, so I hesitate.

Alissa hugs my back and kisses my sweaty neck, then the girls all give me a little bit of their love through [Bind], bolstering me with the last bit of courage I need to pull on that tooth.

It's useless to close my eyes, so I just summon the horrid fiend right under the orb.

Even though it's instantly absorbed, its flayed and mutilated face is stamped into my mind, but like all pain, it'll fade with time as long as I have my wives with me.

Then the ground trembles once again as the ambient light shifts to blue.

A note from Manasong

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Chapter 130: Dawn of Mankind - Part 3

The gentle rumbling continues for a long minute, but nothing visible happens, so we just wait.

Roxanne stares at the psychedelic mini-moon, entranced by its beauty. "Say, Aoi, aren't these orbs suspiciously similar to how you use your ball of conjured water?" She wonders out loud.

Aoi raises her nonexistent eyebrows in confusion. "Are you talking about their round shape?" She answers through [Bind] because the string going down her throat makes it hard to speak.

"No, you silly-…!" Roxanne grumbles and flashes a glare. "The way you and the Symbols use these orbs is similar. Even the fact that it floats behind you is similar."

"Oh… yes, I guess that's true…"

Aoi stands up and begins walking closer to the mini-moon, but then the spirit elemental sees the orb inside her stomach break, and we hear the dulled sound of glass shattering.

"Ah~… ah~… ahn~…!" Aoi moans repeatedly as her body absorbs the magical glass dust that the orb instantly turned into.

The mini-orgasm quickly subsides, and she spits out the string, then we watch her closely for a minute, but she doesn't seem to be experiencing any negative side effects from what just happened.

"Can I swallow an orb…?" Roxanne suddenly asks, her thin tail tense with desire, and Ciel also starts feeling things she isn't proud of.

But Lina gives them both a judgmental look that smothers their depravity a fair bit. "Really…?" The little gloomy girl mumbles flatly.

"We can save them for later…" The thirsty succubus asserts, then orders the golems to collect the orbs and keep them safe.

"Are these orbs mana solidifications?" Jarn questions our guides, who, for the first time, don't jump at the sound of her robotic dual voice.

"No, but they're pretty unstable, and they generally don't survive [Item Box] or [Gate]," Lolo kindly explains.

"Some people pay a few silver for each one brought back, but I think that's hardly enough to justify the effort for nobles like you," Nikolas dryly adds.

Hmm…

I pull out a simple wooden box and use [Telekinesis] to put a small orb inside it, then I put the box back into my "Items."

Nothing happens, so I pull out the box again, and the orb seems to be perfectly fine.

I fucking love cheating.

I pull out more boxes and hand them to the golems so that they can separate the orbs into groups stable enough that they won't suddenly blow up from a simple bump.

With the thirsty girls appeased, I turn my attention back to the mini-moon and ask out loud, "Okay, now what…?" Then Jarn relays my question.

"Things start to get weird here," Lolo replies with a smirk.

"They haven't already?" Jarn perfectly deadpans, but the bunny girl has no comment.

Nikolas turns his red eyes to the Templars. "You pious people should know about the ultimate goal for all humanoids, right?"

"Yes. It's to level up, become stronger, and also grow as people, becoming a better version of ourselves. That's Ascension," Timas politely responds.

Then he turns his stern stare to the golem bimbo. "That's the whole point of these 'trials,' to guide us towards Ascension, and that orb should be full of godly power, which you'll have to extract, somehow. We never saw it in person, but we heard that it causes hallucinations, so be careful with that."

"Any pointers on how to 'extract' this power?" Jarn flatly adds.

The two guides share an awkward look.

"That 'swirling liquid' inside the orb isn't raw mana, so you should be able to separate it from the 'godly power,'" Lolo hesitantly suggests.

"[Alchemy]?" Roxanne blurts out, her horns suddenly looking quite sharp from her excitement, and Jarn echoes her question.

The pale rabbit absentmindedly rolls up one of her floppy ears as she considers, "That could work, but if you take too long, a Symbol with a hint of godly power should appear, and keeping your orb untouched will help you a lot in defeating it."

"Is it a God-Ruler-level Symbol?" Lina worriedly questions.

The duo chuckle softly, then Nikolas sighs tiredly as he runs his fingers through his furry tail while Lolo kindly points out, "Well, not exactly, since nobody but the emperor would be able to defeat one…"

I scratch my chin with a claw as I ponder. This orb triggers our [Sense Mana] because it's similar to raw mana, but not quite the same, so could it be affected by [Redirect Mana]?

Then Roxanne and I share an excited look while the rest of the girls frown in concern.

These scientific questions must be answered!

Hana can easily "pull out" the "liquid" from the orb, but it comes out as physical matter, except for the green, gray, white, and black colors, which all turn into a toxic mist, especially that last one.

Technically, the orb is under her control, so trying to use [Redirect Mana] on it will cause a Warped Reality event, and those are never fun.

"I can just put it down, it's fine…" Hana calmly assures us, yet she cries internally at her loss of "power."

I search for an alternative, then I spot one of the boxes of small orbs…

"Don't break them…" Aoi whines bashfully, taking a note from Alissa and Lina on how to be cute.

"I'll be as careful as I can," I soothingly reply as I magically pull out one orb, but she isn't completely appeased.

Roxanne and I sit down in front of each other, then we stare intensely at the orb full of light blue swirling "fluid."

I move her points around and put twenty of them in [Alchemy], bringing it to 20+10 (added points plus trained points), then she extends her hand towards the orb and activates [Extract Ichor], but it instantly fails.

She tries [Extract Pus], [Transmute], and [Duplicate] in sequence, but they all also fail just like the first one, puzzling as well as irritating her.

"I think it's because this stupid blue jizz doesn't stop moving," she harshly complains, her dagger-tail pointing at it threateningly.

I take over and use [Redirect Mana] on it, trying to get it to remain still.

The swirling noticeably slows down, and I feel that I've managed to attain a weak "grasp" on it. The problem is that this skill requires my spirit to have direct contact with the orb, so my MP is being drained at about five points per second, which is annoyingly high.

Applying my "Willpower" to slow the fluid down further seems to work, but it's mentally tiring and doesn't even stop it completely, so we brainstorm a better way to do this.

"Didn't you, like, chant when you did that cool thing with pure Light mana back in Legado?" She curiously questions me.

I snort and retort, "It didn't exactly help the mana stop; it just guided it where we wanted as we cast a pseudo-spell."

But she just grins. "Maybe you can chant something to make it stay still, then."

Right, chanting is like a "mental attunement" that helps spells become more powerful, so this could work…

"This is water, though, so it's your specialty," I point out and push the orb towards her.

She pouts and adjusts her glasses, displeased that she'll actually have to put some effort into this. "Fine, I'll do it all myself…!"

I smile warmly at her and give her five points in [Redirect Mana] so that it's at 5+1, which is equal to my level and also the maximum since I'm the skill's creator.

"How about using [Godly Language]?" Yunia suddenly suggests.

The rest of the girls give her a concerned look. She doesn't really know the side-effects of altering reality with that skill.

But then she elaborates further, "Can't you use it in a 'small dose' just to help you learn what that 'divine power' is supposed to be like?"

"That's more doable," I hum back and pick another orb.

My [Godly Language] is at 30+5, but adding more points starts giving diminishing returns, so I think this skill level is enough.

"Show me your 'godly power,'" I order while using the skill, and the faintly glowing orb suddenly dims, but then a little dot of sparkly light comes out of it and hovers before my eyes.

Cool…

"What's the difference between this 'godly power' and [Light Magic]?" I ask out loud.

Ciel sits down beside me and watches the sparkly dot intensely, trying to grasp all of the information that she can from this weird phenomenon. She quickly becomes enamored by it due to its concentrated "divine allure," and after a moment of admiration, she finally remembers to answer my question, "You channel the Gods' powers through 'Piety,' your understanding of their wishes, while [Light Magic] lets you shape that power to your will, but it becomes tainted by your perception. On the other hand, this…" -She points to the little star- "is just like a dungeon core, 'pure divinity.'"

Suddenly, the dot is snuffed out, and the glow returns to the orb, then the feedback hits us.

I blink blankly, suddenly finding myself laying on my back, then I groan along with the other girls as nausea washes over us. My muscles whine that this was very much an unfun test, and I swear I hear a bonk as a horrible headache flares but goes away after a few seconds.

Then I sit up just in time to see the sparkly dust of the broken orb fade away.

Well, I guess we aren't repeating that one…

Everyone drinks an MP potion, and the discomfort quickly fades.

"I admit I underestimated the feedback from this accursed skill," Yunia bitterly confesses.

"Alright, Ciel, what did you see?" I slowly question, still recovering.

"Uuh~…" She mumbles absentmindedly, then leans against me and rests her head on my shoulder. "I'm not sure, so I'll need to think about this thoroughly, though I'm sure it's exactly like a mini dungeon core…"

"It did seem like the 'divine power' was just another 'fluid,' but invisible and glowing," Lina wisely suggests.

"Let's just name this fluid elemental pseudo-mana or divine pseudo-mana," I declare.

Hana approaches her orb and frowns as she wonders, "How could a dumb adventurer extract divine pseudo-mana without all of our cheats?"

"They'd have a lot of trouble with just getting the balance perfect, to begin with," Alissa points out.

And I affirm as I scooch closer to Roxanne, "We chose the 'magical path,' so we need to go all-in on magic."

Hana touches the orb again and starts playing with the different types of pseudo-mana. She has no idea what she's doing, but she's hoping that her intuition will guide her towards an answer.

And Lina gives her a small piece of advice, "'Balancing' the pseudo-mana was the key to the puzzle, so maybe you should look at this orb as a whole rather than its individual parts."

But Hana simply snorts. "I have no idea how to do what you're suggesting, but okay, I'll keep that in mind."

Then Ciel gets an idea and grabs one of the orbs to inspect it. "[Redirect Mana] allows me to mimic mana signatures to 'attract' the mana particles, so maybe I can do the same for this 'divine power,'" she wonders and sits upright again.

"I'll leave you to it," I hum.

The three girls work hard while the rest of us try to help where we can, but many long minutes pass, then dark clouds appear ahead of us, at the edge of the mist.

Time's up, but we won't interrupt Hana. We'll deal with this boss Symbol without the orb.

A beautiful, naked, buff, glowing, gold-skinned amazoness comes floating out of the dark clouds while T-posing, but this time, we won't let her prepare her defenses, so Lina mounts Aoi, then we shoot forward at full speed with [Fly].

Waves of muddy water follow the golden Symbol and wash over the rocky landscape, covering it in dirt where they pass, then a hint of green appears in their wake as grass slowly begins to grow.

There's no time to appreciate the changing environment, so I quickly arm my tentacles again and ready the blender.

As the one more adept at flying, I reach the Symbol first and receive a weak lightning bolt as my prize for first place, but it isn't strong enough to push me off-course.

The sudden wall of molten rock that appears before me is, though.

I fly up to go around it, but it rises faster than I can climb, and then it begins to tilt forward, giving me a chill as [Battlefield Perception] tells me that I'm about to be crushed.

I immediately stop and fly backward, then the heavy slab falls in front of me and splashes globs of molten rock all over.

A strong gust of wind followed by another weak lightning bolt actually makes me retreat, but the pain angers me, so I cast [Gravity Crush] on the Symbol.

The golden boss doesn't even flinch due to its stupidly strong muscular strength, because, of course, it wouldn't fall to a spell of this kind. But the bitch doesn't even try to interrupt it, as if it's fucking with me.

I cast my own [Discharge], but my spell is completely countered by the Symbol's own version of it.

Aoi and Yunia arrive at its flanks at the same time, but they're also blocked by thick walls of lava that threaten to engulf them.

Ain't this one a bit OP?

"Our orb should counter its powers!" Lina points out, her eyes trained on the boss while she switches between [Sap Power] and [Befuddle] every few seconds.

Alissa approaches from behind and launches an [Arrow of Annihilation] that opens a hole in the back of the Symbol's head, but then it just lurches forward and covers itself in a thick shell of rock and ice.

We all stop for a couple of seconds in confusion.

"I sense something powerful within its chest!" Yunia exclaims through [Bind].

Most likely an orb that makes it immortal…

Suddenly, [Battlefield Perception] activates, but it comes from behind us all.

We turn around and activate [Wind Shield], but Aoi and I sense our [Wind Armor]s activate as they slow down projectiles.

Little black dots fly past us, diverted by the spell, but we still both feel a chilling sensation run down our backs.

Lina spots a bundle of roots on Aoi's armored tail spreading out at a frightening rate while I use a Holly to spot a similar bundle on my left tentacles, then we both notice our HP and MP starting to drain. These are like [Nature Magic]'s level 40 spell, [Sapping Seeds], though these roots are the Symbol's creations.

Aoi simply breathes fire on herself while I undo my tentacles, but a few roots have already attached themselves to my left flank. I un[Equip] my armor, but the sprout disappears with it, so I [Equip] it again, and the little shit comes along with it, still spreading.

Motherfucker…!

I don't have time to react as a nearly invisible [Wind Blade] hits me in the chest and throws me back, leaving a deep groove in my armor.

"I'm fine, just a little scare," I appease them through [Bind].

Alissa and Yunia continue to struggle to approach the Symbol as it (seemingly) effortlessly keeps them back. [Illusion Magic] and [Chain Life] don't work when the enemy is hiding inside a shell while simply throwing AOE attacks in their general direction.

I cast a few [Fireballl]s on myself and lightly scorch my armor, but at least the damn sprout is gone, and before another salvo is launched at us, Aoi flies in a circle around the Symbol, setting fire to all of the nearby patches of grass.

"Want some help?" Roxanne's smug voice echoes inside my mind space, but I decline.

We're a strong and independent family who don't need no [Explosion]!

Alissa suddenly loses feeling in her right leg, and she fails to escape a wave of water that washes her away.

"Spirits!" She shouts through [Bind], now forced to use [Fly] to be able to move.

I summon four spirit elementals and tell them to hunt for whatever harmed Alissa, and they quickly spot three invisible spirit blades floating around, but they're easy to dodge as long as we know where they are.

Yunia helps Alissa recover some of the feeling in her leg, and now that things are stable again, I pull back to make use of my seething anger. It's time to plan how to fuck this annoying little shit in the ass.

We need to go hard… very hard.

The supersonic javelin launchers are too precious to waste here, so I come up with something special.

"Aoi, stop it from using the wind and lightning!" I order and shoot up into the sky, flying far out of its range.

Once I can't see anything but the blue mist shrouding my view, I start building the Fuck You weapon.

Long, tubular, super resistant, hollow, and with a pointy end to penetrate. A missile-shaped elemental made out of tungsten.

Propulsion, pure speed, extreme acceleration, minimal drag. A fire elemental as a rocket booster, and an air elemental to reduce the drag.

Then the payload… a whole quiver of those explosive arrows we looted from Dawn of Fire.

It takes me a good minute to mold all of the elementals into place, but Aoi also needs time to set up her own storm anyway, so it works out in the end.

I stick to the missile, and we fly forward until we're right above the fucker. Lina's [Cursing Magic] seems to be making it considerably weaker and noticeably sluggish, so I decide that it's time to begin the multi-pronged anal penetration.

The fire elemental-wife activates the engine at full power, consuming her own life in the process, and I even use [Telekinesis] to speed us up even more, allowing us to achieve a veritable missile-like speed.

I have no idea how much time is left until impact, so Aoi clashes her will against the Symbol's head-on while Yunia keeps it physically locked in place with [Chain Life], then Alissa and Lina charge forward.

I begin to see the glow of the still-warm lava, then I spot the little circle of blue ice in the center of it.

Alissa casts [Mesmerizing Butterflies], and jets of rock and ice miss us by a long shot, then I detach from the missile and try to slow myself down.

GET FUCKED!

The missile penetrates through the Symbol's thick shell, the tip going right through its head, then the earth elemental triggers the payload.

A ground-trembling explosion obliterates everything, sending pieces of the elementals, the Symbol, and other debris everywhere.

Lina arrives first, blasting through the dust cloud and rock shrapnel like it's nothing thanks to her [Wind Shield], then she starts hacking away at the quickly growing clump of golden meat at the center of the blast zone.

I summon my tentacles and crash onto the ground, too fast to land safely, and become disoriented for a couple of seconds.

Then Lina spots a hint of a rainbow color, but an underground eruption launches the lump of meat upwards.

Check…

I turn around and point at the clump.

Mate…!

Then I cast [Telekinesis] while Yunia recasts [Chain Life], holding it perfectly still in the air.

Alissa's arrow pierces the orb, and it explodes with a blinding light, showering us with divine power.

"You are now level sixty."

"It's working!" Hana shouts excitedly, then our minds are suddenly connected as we get a glimpse of Paradise.

Intermission - Alkibiades Alkimeonids

I open the doors to his office, revealing the eerily dark room that I've always hated. The back wall is made up entirely of black-tinted windows, making it seem like it's always night here, though I admit the view is nice.

I walk forward, my muffled steps echoing in the completely silent room, then I stop before his desk, and he finally raises his eyes from his piles of notes and messages, but I almost frown at his appearance. His white hair and beard are starting to thin out, making him look like a low-level old peasant.

If only he shaved…

"I did it, Father. I humiliated myself before the lizard boy," I growl angrily.

His wrinkled face starts to warp into a smile, but it quickly loses strength, and he gives me those dead, measuring eyes of his again.

He opens his mouth, and I swear I can see cobwebs down his throat, then his hoarse voice attacks my pride with his disapproving tone, "The knights said that your acting was terrible. Did you even apply your skill?"

But I've got no patience for this. "Why the fuck do you care? I got you the damn report." Then I point to the fancy little piece of parchment that his two spies wrote for me.

He narrows his eyes, and my muscles lock up as he makes his displeasure physically perceivable. "You made him unnecessarily wary of us."

But I easily resist it and snort. "As if he wasn't already. I'm pretty sure he realized who I was the instant he looked at me." Father isn't so young anymore that he can make me bow with just his eyes.

And a small smirk wrinkles his face further. "Oh? Well, that's still useful information to know."

I groan and shake my head. Why does he try so hard to stay at the top?

He notices my displeasure and sighs tiredly, then he gets up and slowly walks around his desk as he gives me a subtly condescending talk, "Son, there are talks that he's a Prince, a hidden bastard of the Emperor. Either that, or his Gift has given him unknown powers that allowed him to rise like a star, and we can't underestimate someone like that."

He stops and turns two pieces of parchment around so that we can read them, but I know these two very well. The report on the destruction of our office in Goldcross, and the report of a Grim Giant briefly appearing inside Escanso. Then he taps them as he smirks at me like a know-it-all.

I narrow my eyes annoyedly and clarify, "He's like Reinhold, an 'upstart,' not a Prince that was given everything from birth. He's also suspiciously talented in the style of a magical swordsman, so his Gift must be more than just [Monster Summoning]."

Father comes up to me, then slaps my cheek gently as he gives me praise, "That's exactly the kind of information that we need, and if he's like Reinhold, then do you understand that we have to act before it becomes impossible due to his inhuman growth?"

And I exasperatedly reply, "Yes, I'm not stupid, I just take issue with your methods."

He snorts and turns around, then starts slowly returning to his seat. "My methods have ensured our position," he croaks dismissively as he waves his hand.

Then maybe we should just give it all up, already! I'm of the mind to do exactly that when I take over, damned be the consequences… that is, if you ever retire, you damn stubborn old goat.

Maybe he knows my intentions, and that's why he'll never give up his seat until he dies of old age…

Intermission end.

A note from Manasong

Hall of Fame of Patrons

The patrons who support Rupegia shall have their names sung by the bards for they deserve the glory and honor. Their names are:

Prince PreownedFIN.

Prince Owldente.

Lord Andrew Meyers.

Lord Novgarod.

Lord Michale Erwin.

Lord Bakerdea.

Lord Maurice.

Lord Mattirro Draca.

Lord Sean Drake.

Lord FrostyCube.

Lord Mike Bartter.

Lord Warwulfv.

Lord Jorge Franco.

Lord Khristopher Welsh.

Lord DJ.

Lord Tenebris Lupus.

Lord Paul Daval.

Lord Paul Daval.

Lord Bradly.

Lord AndreyUC.

Lord Tmac.

Lord School Work.

Lord Gwendolyn Simmons-LaRose.

Lord CopeyDunt.

Lord James.

Lord BlindTactic.

Lord The Tallest Joshua.

Lord Ryan Brogan.

Lord Cidant.

Lord AndreyUC.

Noble Salty Panda.

Noble Mild Fracas.

Noble Aclys.

Noble CarlBaxter.

Noble d3235.

Noble Frank de Jong.

Leave a rating or a review to help me rise to the top or fix my shameful understanding of prose.

Take a look over my blog where all information about the world of Rupegia will be posted.

Join the Discord and discuss, or rant, or meme, or try and fight me so your waifu gets more screentime.

Become a Patron and read chapters in advance, or read the side-stories, or leave your mark on the story, or help choose the next artwork or the next side-story.

Chapter 131: Twist - Part 1

A note from Manasong

Attention: to conform to the limit of mature content (more than just sexual content) allowed in a novel, I've censored this chapter. You can look for the uncensored version here.

I open my eyes, and the first thing I see is myself. My glorious horns; my deep black and neatly combed hair; my alluring and intense stare; the charming, discolored, vertical line on my left cheek, a scar from my first monster village extermination; my well-proportioned but infuriatingly gentle-looking face; my shiny, ornate, metal Bastión armor; my dangerous-looking claws poking out of my gauntlets and boots; and my deliciously thick and lightly-armored tail.

Damn, I'm hot.

But that's not my reflection. While I let my narcissism go wild for a moment, the Other Me looks away and scans our environment.

"This is a mess," he mumbles anxiously.

I follow his lead and also take a look around. We're back at how Antreos Crea looked when we first arrived: a silver floor covered in a thin sheet of water and a white, distant mist to prevent us from seeing too far, except there's no elevator, and I'm not the only one who has been cloned.

The girls are in a line, flanking me on both sides, and they're all staring at their twins with suspicion. Alissa, Hana, and Yunia are on my left; and Lina, Roxanne, Ciel, and Aoi are on my right.

Funny thing is, I don't feel my connection with them, and since I'm not frightened like a little girl, I can only assume that this must be a dream. Though their presence is supposed to make me feel safer, in truth, it only annoys me because they're not supposed to be here, in my private little trial.

The golems and Gify are also here, but they're just staring at us from the sidelines, and they have no clones to deal with, so I guess they're just observers.

"Is anything ever simple with us?" I wryly question Other Me.

He smiles, but then he sighs and grumbles, "Yeah… I guess this is what we get for cheating."

After Legado, I have no patience for stupid "trials" anymore, so I immediately draw my shortsword and ready my kite shield, then I try to grow my tentacles, but for some reason, that spell is blocked.

Other Me is startled by my actions and takes a step back as he draws his own sword, then we spend a tense moment staring at each other, but the micro twitches he shows tell me that we're both frantically trying out all the spells we would normally have access to, and aside from [Heal], nothing works.

"We got nerfed," I hum with a grin, then I charge at him.

"Shit, I thought you'd try to do me, not kill me," Other Me casually replies as he parries my sword, then we exchange blows, aiming at each other's necks since it's the only part that's exposed.

I snort and pull back after probing his defenses. "Gayness is just not in our blood; you should know that," I emphatically state.

Other Me shrugs. "The girls have corrupted my mind."

I shake my head and focus on the now. Our melee skills are still there, and his are a perfect mirror of mine, so I have no clear advantage to exploit. That's like, an impossible scenario that never happens in real life, so how the hell am I supposed to approach this…?

Screw it.

I just charge again, and we exchange more blows. Maybe I can find an opening if I pay more attention to our-… no, his style.

"Could've at least allowed us to use [Telekinesis]!" I shout angrily.

"I know, right? We're so much more sluggish and weaker like this!" He wryly replies.

We even reflexively activate [Searing Blade] at the same time, almost as if we can read each other's minds.

Then I see a faintly green capsule surrounding him as his [Wind Armor] activates, and an arrow lodges itself in his right flank.

Alissa's intrusion into our duel angers me, but it's a nice way to shift the balance in my favor, so I laugh confidently as I press the attack.

Other Me almost immediately pulls out the arrow with a grunt and [Heal]s himself, but now he clearly has an MP disadvantage, so I could just go for a battle of attrition if I want to, but I don't…

"You sure you're paying attention to the right person?!" Other Alissa shouts, her harsh tone showing how incensed she is, and then I hear a shriek coming from my right.

I take a step back and see Original Roxanne clutching her flank, where an arrow is now poking out of her ribs.

BITCH!

"BITCH!" OG Roxanne shouts angrily and aims her staff at Other Alissa, then machine-guns [Ice Lance]s. I guess she doesn't have [Explosion] because that'd just be cheating.

I duck as the inaccurate salvo almost hits me, then I berate her, "Watch your fire, or I'll make your ass as loose as your aim!"

Other Roxanne calmly fires a few [Ice Lance]s of her own, and OG Roxanne's [Water Spirit] blocks them, but that's enough to get the crazy bitch to focus back on her.

OG Ciel cries as she runs towards OG Roxanne, ready to [Heal] our dear wife before she starts choking on her own blood.

"Don't kill each other!" The two Linas creepily shout in sync.

"Why the hell not?!" I shout back at them.

"What do you think will happen if we kill half of what makes us whole?!" OG Lina exasperatedly replies.

And I shrug. "Hell if I know."

But that just makes her angrier. "Exactly!"

"Perhaps 'defeating' the other should be enough," Other Lina calmly wonders.

"Fine…" I hum, then I turn back to Other Me. I'm surprised that he didn't attack while we talked, but I guess he was also interested in watching the chaos unfold.

"NOW!" OG Alissa shouts, and Other Me's attention turns to his right as she casts [Mesmerizing Butterflies].

I waste not a second before I lunge and slash at his throat, reopening that old scar we got in Rabanara's slums.

He's still far from being "defeated" as he simply raises his shield and activates [Wind Shield] to push me away while he uses his other hand to [Heal] himself.

But my MP advantage has greatly increased.

At least I think so because [Sense Soul] is also blocked…

It'd be so messed up if he had more MP than me.

"HAHAHAH!" OG Hana laughs euphorically as she fights Other Hana, completely unconcerned about us.

But I don't have time to interfere in that fight as I hear the shrill sound of swords clashing on my left.

OG Alissa is fighting against Other Yunia, and my fox c-m sl-t definitely doesn't have the skills to hold back the evil elven queen. It also scares me how silent the two were before they started exchanging blows.

Other Me suddenly lunges and forces me to use [Wind Shield] against him, and though he doesn't score a hit, he still prevents me from just rushing to help OG Alissa.

But then OG Yunia comes to help her, and the two Alissas and Yunias engage in a foursome.

"Keep her occupied!" OG Alissa orders, then turns her focus back to me.

"Ahn~…!" Aoi's sensual, powerful, double voice echoes in the open air, and both Other Me and I stop to look at her.

OG Aoi is under Other Aoi while their tails do each other, though Other Aoi is clearly in a dominant position.

"The hell are you two doing?! Help me fight!" I order, exasperated.

OG Aoi glances at her other self and gives me sad eyes. "But-…!" She tries to make up an excuse, but my glare shuts her up immediately.

"Do you really need to fight someone to 'defeat' them…?" Other Aoi seductively insinuates.

Other Me and I share a look. No damn way are we doing each other into submission.

"At least put up some resistance…" Other Me reads my mind, and we both frown concernedly.

"You're being useless…" I scold OG Aoi, and she gives me a wounded look, but it's quickly replaced by anger as she starts wrestling with Other Aoi.

"You're being an ass," Other Me scolds me.

And I bark back, "You're being too meek. This is a trial, not a damn wet dream."

"Fair enough…" He hums as he calmly deflects Alissa's sneaky arrow, then we engage each other again.

An [Ice Lance] suddenly flies past us and towards our left, making my stomach sink.

I see Alissa raise her bow to defend herself, and the lance is diverted by it, but the momentum behind the thick clump of ice is still massive, so it pushes the bow back so hard that it hits her in the head, knocking her out cold.

"BITCH! YOU ALMOST KILLED HER!" I roar angrily at Other Roxanne and charge her before Other Me can get in the way.

Her [Water Spirit] is tied up in a fight with OG Roxanne, so she tries to stop me with [Fire Wall], but my armor's [Rainbow Shield] is enough for me to jump through it without a problem.

She doesn't have enough time to cast another spell, so she feebly raises her staff, and I cut it in two with [Searing Blade], then I stab her in the gut and twist the blade.

"RAAAAGH!" I shout reflexively as something extremely painful hits me in the back.

I pull the sword out and attack whatever is behind me, but my blade is diverted by Other Ciel's glowing glaive, which is now enchanted with [Judgment]. Damn stupid spell doesn't even need to touch my flesh to damage my HP.

But then Other Ciel shrieks as an [Ice Lance] goes through her chest from behind, then she slumps forward and falls face-first onto the water.

"DON'T KILL ANYONE!" The Linas shout, still stuck in a staring contest even though neither of them can use [Cursing Magic].

I deflect Other Me's blade and notice OG Roxanne also slump forward, three arrows sticking out of her flank.

SHE FUCKING-…!

"OUT OF MY WAY!" OG Yunia bellows and pushes Other Yunia back, trying to get to Other Alissa before she can do any more damage.

Other Ciel stands up, the hole in her chest completely gone, and I grit my teeth in anger as Other Me keeps me occupied while Other Ciel runs away.

"GOLEMS, HELP!" I shout in desperation.

"We're not allowed to," the useless trio stoically answers.

Then an arrow hits Other Me from behind, giving me the opportunity that I needed.

"RAAAH!" I roar in rage and press the attack, scoring a [Shield Bash] that pushes him out of the way, then I chase after Other Ciel.

"Stop crying and [Heal]!" OG Alissa berates OG Ciel, who just cowers in fear.

My angel is healing both OG Roxanne and OG Alissa, but we're still at a disadvantage while OG Hana and OG Aoi are each stuck in a useless wrestling match with their twins.

But then Other Alissa uses OG Alissa's distraction to put an arrow in my c-m sl-t's chest, and OG Ciel starts crying again, too afraid to actually join the fray.

THAT'S IT! FUCK EVERYTHING!

An [Ice Lance] flies past me and hits OG Yunia in the back, making me seriously consider killing Other Roxanne just to keep her from messing things up even further.

But neither of the Yunias seem to have [Precognition] as OG Yunia fails to dodge an arrow to her shoulder, and Other Yunia doesn't notice me coming to tackle her before it's too late.

In my desperate attack, I miss Other Yunia's throat, and the sound of metal clashing against metal resounds throughout the battlefield as we're tangled in a mess of limbs, then we roll so far forward that we even trip Other Alissa too.

My sword falls out of my hands, and desperation sinks in, so I draw a dagger and grab Other Alissa, then I press the blade against her throat and shout, "NOBODY MOVE, OR I SWEAR, I'LL SLIT HER THROAT!"

Everyone stops moving and turns their heads towards me.

"Do it before she kills me!" OG Yunia pleads as Other Ciel holds her down against the floor with her boot while OG Yunia desperately grips the glaive's blade.

"You know that you don't need to do this. We're not supposed to kill each other," Other Yunia calmly states.

"I'm not losing this damn trial just because you're all useless!" I bark back.

Then I feel a horrible pain in the back of my neck and instantly lose all feeling in my arms and legs.

I drop the dagger and fall on my knees, then I sense the golems' presence and mana coming from the wound in my spine.

"DAMN TRAITORS!" I roar in rage, then Other Me shoves a blade into my throat.

Suddenly, my perspective changes, and I now find myself holding my sword again, staring down at Other Me.

The phantom pain makes me gasp, and I release my weapon as I step back, then my hands go for my throat, searching for the wound that isn't there.

The rage I was just feeling almost instantly dies down, and the sounds of Other Me choking on his own blood bring me back to reality… well, this "fake" reality.

I pull the sword out of his throat and throw it away along with the dagger, then I pull him towards me and [Heal] his throat, taking care not to touch the dagger in his severed spine because the hateful eyes he's giving me tells me that he's still a danger.

But the moment he has his vocal cords back, he starts spitting hate, "Because you failed to contain me, I could've killed the others if I wanted to. You're lucky that I was merciful." And I begin considering stabbing him in the throat again to keep him quiet.

Other Aoi makes OG Aoi orgasm… no, we were in our "Others'" bodies. OG Aoi is the one doing the dominating, and she's having a lot of fun while doing so.

The Hanas continue to fight, but the golems and OG Lina disarm Other Hana, then OG Hana puts her twin in a chokehold.

The sounds of the Aois doing each other put OG Hana in the mood, but Other Hana is surprisingly not into it, and OG Hana isn't willing to commit the Sin of R-pe, even though this is a dream.

The Other girls begrudgingly stand down and throw away their weapons now that the golems have joined the battle and Other Me… no, Evil Me has been subdued.

"Y'all damn suck!" Other Hana growls as she thrashes about, then OG Hana tightens the choke hold to make her pass out.

I hug my hateful, angry twin and caress his hair while he repeatedly spits and calls me gay. Though I don't want to fuck him, I do feel like I can't just treat him like trash.

He's me, something I created, my worst traits given life.

Other Alissa is short-sighted, Other Roxanne is reckless, Other Hana is selfish, Other Ciel is cowardly, Other Lina is indecisive, Other Aoi is meek, Other Yunia is heartless. All are traits we have that could take over our personalities if we let ourselves go.

Why am I the only one whose "other" is kind of evil, tho?

I'm left hanging since I forgot that there's nobody else inside my mind right now, so I sigh tiredly and pat Evil Me's head.

"Ewww…! Stop touching me!" He groans, but I just snort. "Can we go back already…?!"

"Alright," I hum, then I'm suddenly blinded by a strong flash of light.

I blink repeatedly and groan, feeling a bit nauseous, then I slowly recover my sight, and the color purple fills my view.

"Is everyone alright…?" I ask through [Bind], and the girls all answer with positive groans.

After a minute, I've recovered enough to be able to properly see, and I notice that we're back in reality, exactly where we were when we killed the golden Symbol; it's just that the illumination is purple instead of blue.

I unsteadily stand up, then I make my way over to Alissa and pull her into a tight hug. Our minds are so in sync that we even un[Equip] our armor so that we can feel the warmth of each other's bodies.

Evil Me threatening to kill Alissa was traumatizing, but it was also a huge failure for me since I allowed it to happen.

Neither of us needs to say anything. We just want to overwhelm that horrible experience with love, and the other wives join us for a warm group hug.

Gify suddenly pops onto my head and activates her massage, which is just the thing we need to soothe our wounded hearts, but it makes our legs turn to jelly, so we all sit down and form a cuddle puddle.

Roxanne also gets some special treatment from me because I added to her trauma by stabbing her right where the Symbol of Hate once did.

With Alissa on my right, Roxanne on my left, my tail around Alissa's, and Roxanne's around both of ours, the only thing missing is my gloomy loli on my lap, but she's giving our other wife the "hugging doll" treatment, so I'll get some of that later.

"I didn't actually get stabbed, though…" Roxanne quietly corrects, and we all start sharing our memories of the fight.

Indeed, I stabbed Other Roxanne, not the OG, but while it was a horrifying sight for her, she still received a total of four arrows in her chest, then suddenly found herself in the body of Other Roxanne, who had a gaping wound in her belly.

"Sorry… even though it wasn't the real me who shot you," Alissa guiltily whispers.

Alissa shot a lot of people, and both Roxannes almost killed someone…

And the reckless demon in question cringes as she explains, "Alissa wouldn't have died from that [Ice Lance]… I think… I wasn't in that Roxanne's body until Wolfy got stabbed."

Ugh, let's not get into this.

I just stop the girls right there before they can start the apology orgy. It's nobody's fault that things went so badly for everyone. We were all under some sort of mind-altering effect that clouded our judgments, not to mention that we didn't have [Bind] to help our coordination, so it's best that we let our minds rest before we start dealing with what happened.

But hurting my wives and seeing them getting hurt reminded me of something very important.

"I love you all…" I whisper through [Bind], and my mind suddenly becomes noisy with their responses, almost making me regret starting the love spiral. Almost.

Then we ignore the fact that we're inside a dangerous dungeon and share some loving kisses, though we hold ourselves back to not start an orgy.

It doesn't last long as a minute later, the purple illumination gradually returns to white, then the mist begins to disappear, revealing the incredibly bumpy landscape before us.

Huge valleys, damaged plains, magma pools, active volcanoes, long trails of solidified rock, burned or dried patches of nature, random sources of water, bogs of poisonous-looking water, long ice pillars, intermittent lightning bolts, falling twinkling holy lights, and wandering spheres of darkness, all spread out without rhyme or reason. The view is colorful, but also chaotic, and unlike how the current world looks, nature hasn't dominated almost everything, so it's only in certain places that the ground has enough nutrients to sustain plant life.

This seems like a nice place to explore and grind some monsters for XP, but before we can begin, one of the maids back in the embassy taps the summoned bird I left there, trying to grab my attention.

There's a letter for me.

I sigh and open a [Gate] back to the embassy, then I quickly retrieve the letter and return to the girls, but its contents both puzzle and startle us.

Deciens Cleinias Alkimeonids has invited me for some afternoon tea to have a friendly talk about his disrespectful son, little Alki. The location of his home: the upper levels of the Throne, reserved exclusively for imperial royalty.

A note from Manasong

Hall of Fame of Patrons

The patrons who support Rupegia shall have their names sung by the bards for they deserve the glory and honor. Their names are:

Prince PreownedFIN.

Prince Owldente.

Lord Andrew Meyers.

Lord Novgarod.

Lord Michale Erwin.

Lord Bakerdea.

Lord Maurice.

Lord Mattirro Draca.

Lord Sean Drake.

Lord FrostyCube.

Lord Mike Bartter.

Lord Warwulfv.

Lord Jorge Franco.

Lord Khristopher Welsh.

Lord DJ.

Lord Tenebris Lupus.

Lord Paul Daval.

Lord Paul Daval.

Lord Bradly.

Lord AndreyUC.

Lord Tmac.

Lord School Work.

Lord Gwendolyn Simmons-LaRose.

Lord CopeyDunt.

Lord James.

Lord BlindTactic.

Lord The Tallest Joshua.

Lord Ryan Brogan.

Lord Cidant.

Lord AndreyUC.

Noble Salty Panda.

Noble Mild Fracas.

Noble Aclys.

Noble CarlBaxter.

Noble d3235.

Noble Frank de Jong.

Leave a rating or a review to help me rise to the top or fix my shameful understanding of prose.

Take a look over my blog where all information about the world of Rupegia will be posted.

Join the Discord and discuss, or rant, or meme, or try and fight me so your waifu gets more screentime.

Become a Patron and read chapters in advance, or read the side-stories, or leave your mark on the story, or help choose the next artwork or the next side-story.

Chapter 131: Twist - Part 2

I close my eyes while the dragon groans loudly inside of me. He does not look forward to having to deal with a puny noble and his inflated ego. "Did we bite off more than we can chew?" I slowly ask, feeling drowsy just from thinking about this "friendly talk."

Yunia gives my shoulder a light pimp slap and retorts with such a snooty elven tone that it actually gets me hard, "Oh, please, Wolfy. Imperial royals are leeches who abuse the fact that they're related to past emperors to intimidate others. You hold more influence in your draconic cock than they do with their whole, inferior, human bodies."

"Hey…!" Ciel cries out.

"You know what I mean…" Yunia tries to deflect.

"Is this a trap?" Lina asks out loud to stop the two from starting to bicker.

"Information gathering again," Alissa calmly answers.

And Yunia agrees, "Don't believe for one second that he's friendly. This Cleinias is our enemy, and he's just playing around with us, having us 'dance' with him just to see how we react."

"But why does he dislike us? Is he related to Katasko?" I sternly question.

"We can ask the officials at the embassy for what they know about him."

"Can he mess with Wolfy for humiliating his son?" Hana worriedly asks. She knows all too well the lengths that some nobles will go to just to get revenge for perceived wounds to their pride.

Ciel assuredly interjects, "Only if he wants a Mark. We have Templars that witnessed his provocation, and if we want to ask for a favor, I bet we could easily convince the Seekers of Truth to mediate."

Lina's Trivia: A Mark is the Templar way of saying that someone is on the naughty list, and if they continue with that behavior, they'll be getting a visit from the Punishers. Lower nobles and the commoners often rely on the Mark to protect them from bullying.

"He might ask for a rematch, now with enchantments allowed since he didn't use any before," Yunia points out.

My annoyance flares, making me groan out loud. I'm not one for duels, and I only challenged Alki-Alki at first because he was being a dickhead. I'm not a "you insulted my pride, so suffer for it" kind of dragon, but rather "you're too puny and insignificant for me to care." I only really get serious if someone actually threatens me.

"The invite also specifically refers to only you, Wolfy," she adds, a sympathetic smile growing on her pretty, red lips.

"I'll need mental support, please," I dryly request.

"Always," Alissa diligently replies.

"He might be a Decien, but don't let him intimidate you," Yunia encourages me.

Lina's Trivia: Decien is an imperial title that awards one thousand free imperial soldiers, but our Lordsguard is already twice as large as that.

It's just knights that we're lacking…

We go silent, and the girls start to comfort me, but then Hana turns around to take a look at our stone platform. The orb she was using is still there, though now, it isn't glowing. The psychedelic colors are all gone except for a small amount of light-brown elemental pseudo-mana, and it's slowly sinking into the platform as it absorbs the magically conjured stone.

"It used to absorb things faster, though… " She mumbles absentmindedly and decides to fly over there.

Once she gets her hand on the sinking orb, she notices that it's now extremely heavy.

I order the golems to help her out, and they bring the orb back to us.

Lina immediately notices that it isn't made of weak, magical glass anymore, so I put on [Jewel Appraisal] and use [Appraisal Eyes] on it.

Item Info

Material | 'Diamond'
Quality | '100'
Enchantments | 'Irregular mana absorption enchantment; irregular elemental conjuration enchantment'
Anomalies | 'Highly irregular magical anomaly deeply ingrained within the item'
??? | '???'

Lina guesses that it was previously made of poorly-conjured glass, which is why it was so fragile, but now, this thing can be called a proper Artifact.

"What do you think the last entry is about?" I question her.

"'Origin Insights,' but it requires either very high 'Wisdom' or historical knowledge, so something from the Dawn of Mankind would be unreasonably difficult to fully appraise."

My 'Wisdom' is twenty, which is damn high, so who would even be able to fully appraise this…?

"We can ask around at the temple," Ciel suggests.

Sure.

"What's up with all the 'irregular' stuff?" Roxanne curiously asks as she stares intensely at the diamond orb, as if just that would be enough to decode its secrets.

"That's just how Artifacts are," Yunia indifferently answers, and Lina nods in agreement.

We won't actually know what an Artifact does until we try it, but this one doesn't actually seem to be any different from the other orbs, it's just far sturdier.

Hana tries it out, and yes, it still works the same way, just slower and with less efficiency.

And Lina scholarly explains, "The previous material was more magical, so it had better compatibility with enchantments, but because it's 'irregular,' it's more chaotic and actually damaging to the jewel."

"I see a Symbol, can I go eat it?" Aoi suddenly asks, her tone as innocent as ever.

I smile kindly at her and nod. It's time to end our little break and continue exploring this dungeon.

We land before our guides, and I unleash my [Sexual Charm] on Penelope with a handsome smirk.

"I suppose we're now allowed to explore this area?" I politely ask, making sure that they understand I'm talking to both of them since I don't want to antagonize Nikolas further.

Lolo throws her floppy ear behind her back and crosses her arms in a sassy stance as she remarks, "Now we can actually help you with our knowledge because this area is full of hazards, but I have a feeling that you can just ignore most of them, anyway."

Hana replies in kind, "Well, we can all use [Fly], so…"

Lolo slowly nods. "Yeah, I think I'm already becoming desensitized to how eccentric you all are."

But the black wolf dude interrupts our flirting by asking a question with the "Charisma" of a rock, "So, where do you want to go?"

I politely answer, "Anywhere with monsters for us to gather Experience."

He nods. "Then let's go."

And Kyora moans while she stretches, "Oh, finally. I was getting tired of just standing around."

But before we leave, I want to make myself look cool for a bit.

I press and hold the nature elemental button in my mind, then I begin molding it to my will. After a good minute, I have a carriage-shaped elemental ready.

I turn back to them and smirk, then I press the mental button while I snap my fingers, "You're welcome to use this carriage if you don't feel like walking."

Lolo actually shows a small smile as she stares at the carriage, so I consider this a small success already.

Nature elementals are far more flexible than earth elementals, so the carriage shouldn't shake much if we don't go too fast.

Roxanne stays in the carriage like the lazy demon she is, and just to make a point, our guides choose to walk.

We'd like to inspect the suspiciously low clouds, but both of our guides explain that they're just like wild tesla coils that shock anything with a soul, so everyone but Hana gives it a hard pass.

Nikolas quickly shows his expertise by guiding us around anything remotely toxic/poisonous/venomous, which is basically all of nature here, animals included.

Penelope's specialty is spotting hidden monsters and animals, of which, there are surprisingly a lot. Like how we can easily create underground bunkers with [Earth Magic], the Symbols manipulate the elements to hide within them for sleep or to soak up the elemental mana like a damn plant.

Their hiding spots are pretty far from each other, further than even Alissa's [Sense Soul] range, so Lolo's expertise is essential for us to plot the most monster-dense path for us to take.

The animals here are surprisingly vicious, too, and they all have an elemental theme, but what's most impressive is that they're incredibly similar to modern monsters, which implies that they're the source concept that the monsters were originally based on.

We see the Zinotue, an electric tiger; the Burkanolf, a fire wolf; Wysarie, a feathered wyvern, though only the animal version can use Wind-attuned magic; Giant Turtles with stone carapaces; and Cloud Snakes that can solidify into ice. All of these are animals instead of monsters.

We don't get too far into the valley, though, as lunchtime soon comes, and since our guides are adventurers, fine meals would be lost on them, so I decide to show them the wonders of hamburgers.

We stop by a spring of clear, non-toxic water that continues down the valley and further on merges with the stream of lava, creating a misty zone that ends at a large pillar of magical ice, which has turned the molten rock into obsidian.

The complete lack of trees and other tall plants makes this view oddly barren, reminding me a bit of the cold alpine tundras of Earth.

A flaming meteor lights up the sky, which is still completely white, not even blue, making it seem even more barren than the landscape below it.

"There were no stars until the Age of Oppression began, so nobody cared about the sky," Lina cryptically shares, and I give her a head pat while we sit at the table.

Kyora sniffs the air and notices the delicious aroma of fried hamburgers, which activates her instincts. She almost leaps onto her seat and exclaims, "Thanks for the food!" Then starts devouring her food.

But Poppy just stares at her sandwich and frowns. "This is unexpected," the cute little girl flatly states.

Alonso rolls his eyes and quietly grumbles, "You don't need cutlery."

She slowly turns to him, and her frown deepens in worry. "I-… hands…?" She quietly hisses, sounding exasperated.

"Yes, your hands will be fine," Timas calmly reassures her and gives her little hand a squeeze.

She puckers her red lips, but none of her husbands or wife want to talk about her concerns, so she eventually gives in.

The surprisingly fastidious little girl uses a [Clean] magical tool on her hands and hesitantly grabs the hamburger, then she grimaces when a small amount of liquid fat reaches her fingers.

"Damn, this is pretty good," wolf man grunts as he wolfs down his food in clear contrast to her.

Lolo gives Yunia a curious look, and her brown eyebrows shoot up high on her forehead when the elven queen unhesitatingly begins eating her greasy hamburger.

Then I show them how to use purple not-ketchup, black not-barbecue sauce, and not-mustard to enhance the flavors.

"Eh, sweet," Kyora immediately dismisses the first two sauces.

"Hm~, sweet…!" Alonso has the exact opposite reaction.

"Shouldn't something this sugary be… quite expensive?" Lolo hesitantly questions.

Nikolas grunts and rolls his red eyes.

I grab the bowl of ketchup and begin, "The fruit that this sauce-…"

"Fruit?" Yunia haughtily interrupts, sounding a bit offended.

"Fruit…?" Lolo repeats with an amused smile.

I narrow my eyes in annoyance and grumble, "Alright, what is it, then?"

"Tomafingers are just vegetables," Yunia slowly explains, delighting herself in pronouncing that abomination of a name.

I wet my lips and calmly continue, "We don't need to use a lot of sugar because the vegetable that this sauce is primarily made of is actually quite sweet already, but the High Forest produces a lot of sugar, so even this amount isn't expensive."

Timas politely interjects, "For you. If you don't live in the High Forest, white sugar is still a luxury."

I smile back and reply in kind, "I wish to one day lift the restrictions on exports to allow more elven products to spread throughout the realm."

But nobody has anything to add about that since they have no knowledge of elven politics.

"So, how did you two learn about this place?" Alissa expertly moves the conversation forward.

Lolo throws a coy glance at Nikolas as she bashfully reminisces, "We were just kids running around the Labyrinth, trying our luck to score it big when we saw that ominous elevator."

Roxanne's orgasmic voice echoes inside my mind as she passionately begs, "They're childhood friends! NTR him! NTR him! Please, Wolfy!"

The other girls aren't proud to admit that Roxanne's cries have awakened something depraved within them.

Thankfully, Nikolas immediately continues the story. "I broke my arm trying to block a Symbol's attack, and we immediately ran away," he reluctantly shares the unpleasant memory.

She almost touches her ear with a greasy hand but stops herself midway and then rests both of them over her lap in a girlish posture. "But we were stupid and came back, this time with spears."

They glance at each other, and a smile creeps onto his lips as he adds, "Which the Symbols immediately stole and tried to use to turn us into roasted wereanimal on a stick."

And the bunny girl excitedly rocks from one side to the other on her chair, making her long ears wave about. "But this place just kept calling to us, so we tried again and again, just the two of us, until we finally got past the 'tests.'"

Then his smile turns wistful as he looks around. "And that unlocked this beautiful landscape, full of hidden dangers and exciting things to find."

"Are there any ruins?" Lina asks with barely contained excitement.

"There are. We can guide you there," Lolo kindly answers.

Once our lunch is over, we move on again and enter a forest of ice and obsidian pillars, all shaped awfully similar to humanoids. A few Symbols are hiding inside them, but both Alissa and Lolo can easily spot them, so we have no trouble here.

The valley starts opening up into a swampy area that's quite toxic, but Nikolas quickly guides us around the hazardous areas while Roxanne has everyone drink antidotes just in case.

I shouldn't wait too long to meet with Cleinias, so I open a [Gate] back to the embassy and request whatever information we have on the dude.

After the maids give me a quick wash (and I leave the youngest red in the face, in awe at the size of my cock), they give me the diplomat's report on Cleinias.

He's a decrepit old man involved with a human supremacist faction. He's over 200 years old, way past the age that he should remain as the head of his family since his body is failing quite badly, so others are questioning whether or not he's becoming senile.

Known to be talkative and scheming, his allies are all humans, and almost exclusively imperials, while most of his opponents are wereanimal imperials as he's not been known to involve himself much with matters outside the Mainland. The diplomat guesses that his agenda is imperial assimilation of all territories, but lopsided towards the human side.

The supremacists aren't actually "kill all non-humans" because we were all created by the same God, but they do believe that since humans were the first, they're also the "most important," or "original," or "superior," or any other similar concept. They're in favor of anything that leads to non-humans being treated as second-class citizens while humans hoard all positions of power.

Considering how Ciel is the only human in my harem, I don't think we'll see eye to eye.

"I'm certain that he's someone high up in Katasko," Yunia affirms.

And Alissa adds, "But I don't think the people who tried to recruit us were powerful like him. Their attempts were too feeble."

I sigh and nod as the maids help me put on my best, tight, elven vest and pants, then I head out.

To get to Cleinias' home is simple. I take an [Eternal Gate] to the Throne, then I pass through an ID check and take another portal to the higher levels, which are above the clouds.

The kaleidoscopic hall I exit into is similar to the one at the middle levels. It's very wide and tall, but the colorful, patterned tiles show the heraldry of the royal families, and the stained glass windows depict the history of each of the Emperor's wives.

And the big dick has a lot of wives…

The most striking thing is how different the racial distribution is from the lower levels. It's almost all olive-skinned human imperials, with a few weredogs, werecats, and dragonkin here and there. The Emperor's harem is actually much more diverse than the people here. In fact, there doesn't seem to be any humans in it.

I cross the hall, ignoring the stalls of insanely expensive goods, and take a cage-like elevator to Cleinias' mansion.

The view up here above the clouds is impressive. The east is full of dark thunder clouds while the west looks like an idyllic grassland out of a fairy tale.

Are isekai novels modern fairy tales?

People believe that either the Throne or the Emperor himself controls the weather around here, and that's why there are no regular thunderstorms in the capital like there are in the rest of the Thunderplains.

After a mere minute, the stone-faced elevator operator announces that we've arrived, so I turn around and observe the stupidly tall, but not particularly wide white mansion in front of me. It seems to be three-storied, but imperial mansions usually have such high ceilings that they could have easily fit twice the number of floors in the same overall height.

An old, beardless, gentle-looking imperial man with small oval glasses is waiting at the door to the elevator, and once my eyes fall upon him, he bows deeply and politely requests, "Lord Ryder, I'm Sebastian. We've been expecting you. This way, if you please."

I hum, and he ends his bow, then he waits for me to approach before he turns around and walks towards the mansion.

I want my own Sebastian. Can I get a female version? A… Sebastienne? Sebastiana…? Meh… The truth is, Poosh is all I need.

We cross the wide brick street that spirals up the Throne, then we enter the mansion's grounds, and I immediately feel the annoying sensation of having my [Gate] blocked. I just ignore it and observe my surroundings, but I quickly notice that there's a conspicuous lack of green decorations, the architect preferring dozens of springs, a few gazebos, and two large dancing squares instead of anything alive.

Then we enter the mansion proper and walk across a wide floor of dark-blue tiles with colorful jewels encrusted all over them, making it look like a rainbow-colored night sky, but halfway through, I notice that the jewels are actually dragon scales.

None of them are from a Symbol of Might, so I don't feel anything but the faint latent magic in them. There's most likely no deeper meaning to it since everyone loves to decorate their stuff with pretty dragon scales.

Sebastian takes me to a side wing, then stops at the door to a comfy, carpeted room with warm tea and cookies.

"I'll inform Decien Alkibiades that you've arrived. Please wait here. You can call for a servant by using this enchantment," Sebastian announces and touches a large yellow gem embedded in the wall, then he bows and leaves after I nod.

I'm neither hungry nor feeling like drinking poison, so I just sit down and wait.

An hour later, I start to get quite irritated.

"Yes, he's deliberately making you wait as a show of power," Yunia slowly affirms, seething just like I am.

While the girls are having fun exploring in the dungeon, I'm forced to sit here and wait like a fool.

"I'm sorry, Wolfy," Alissa guiltily apologizes.

"You don't have to apologize. Just have fun for me," I immediately retort.

I start pressing the "drop [Gate] coordinate" button inside my mind out of impatience. It's kind of weird feeling the coordinate "slide away" for a meter before disappearing. It's just like how [Dead Zone] pushes away my "targeting" for projectile spells.

Just out of curiosity, I put on [Sense Soul] and make a mental map of this place. Surprisingly, most of the mansion seems empty except for a small human on the third floor working away while sitting, who I assume is Cleinias, and a group of humans moving around inside a room, which I assume is the kitchen.

There's something weird about this mansion, tho…

Since there's nobody around to stop me, I decide to explore a bit, but I quickly realize that there's not much to see.

Guest rooms, ballrooms, indoor pools, storage rooms, empty rooms, libraries, and a creepy room full of statues, none of which particularly interests me. Dozens of portraits of similar-looking imperial men and a few women line the corridors, the previous heads of the family, and I admire the hotness of the women for a bit. I also pass by some heraldry here and there, but it seems like the Alkibiades family hasn't done anything particularly noteworthy in its entire history.

The lack of sexual stuff is surprising, or maybe I'm just biased.

Then I notice that my [Gate] coordinates are all sliding towards one room in particular, a library near the center of the mansion.

Suddenly, I feel a familiar "itch" inside my head, practically begging me to enter the library, and I immediately move to do so, my mood completely shifted from boredom to serious determination.

One of the Gods wants me there, and I need to know why.

I enter the small library and follow the "coordinate" as it slides towards a book-filled wall, but when I stop before it, I don't know what else to do.

I stare at the books, and even the girls help me out, but none of us find anything noteworthy.

What the fuck do you want me to do…?

The "itch" grows stronger, urging me to follow the coordinate as it slides into the wall, so I do my best, pressing my body against it…

Then I put the coordinate down one more time, and it sticks. Out of the entire mansion, there's a single, one centimetri cubed spot where the [Gate] scrubber doesn't work.

The fuck…?

Then I turn around and almost squeal in surprise as I see Sebastian just standing at the doorway, staring intensely at me.

"Decien Alkibiades will see you now," he announces, his tone completely devoid of emotion, then he turns around and starts walking without waiting for my response.

A note from Manasong

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Chapter 131: Twist - Part 3

A note from Manasong

Attention: to conform to the limit of mature content (more than just sexual content) allowed in a novel, I've censored this chapter. You can look for the uncensored version here.

Okay, that was creepy as hell, but alright…

We climb up two long flights of stairs in complete, awkward silence, then go down a long hall that ends at an ornate double door.

"Please wait here for a moment, Lord Ryder," Sebastian politely requests, then slips inside.

I wait for almost a minute, then Sebastian finally comes back and lets me in.

The double doors open, revealing a wide and mostly empty carpeted office. The first thing I notice is the black tinted glass covering the entire wall in front of me. The view is of the east, away from the Throne, and the tinted glass makes it harder to see anything but the outlines of the landscape while also absorbing enough of the daylight that the office needs gem lights for illumination.

Then I scan the rest of the room and almost frown. There's only a couple of comfy chairs, a sofa by the side wall, and Cleinias' long office table, which is covered in small pieces of paper, scrolls, and papyrus.

The old fart himself is sitting behind his table, staring at me with a foolish smile that creeps me out. He's a brown mass of wrinkles dotted with sickly black spots and "prettied up" with his white, thinned hair and beard that look almost unkempt, like an uglier Einstein.

I walk into the office and notice how warm it is, though it doesn't feel stuffy. It's the only thing about this experience that I find somewhat pleasant.

I train my eyes on him, the echo of my muffled steps the only sound in the wide room, then I stop by his table and extend my hand.

"Decien Cleinias Alkibiades, I'm Crown Lord Wolf Ryder," I politely introduce myself, my voice cool, calm, and collected.

"What a pleasure to finally meet you, Lord Ryder," he wheezes back while clearly ignoring my offered hand.

Then we stare at each other for a few awkwardly long seconds as neither of us make a move.

Soul Info

Name | Cleinias Alkimeonids | Race | Human | Level | 166
HP | 100 | MP | 13,680 | Magic Power | 2,200
Strength | 4 | Endurance | 3

We stare with such intensity that his aura starts to affect me. His eyes seem like a solid wall, veiled by a thin and pretty black cloth as it slowly comes closer, threatening to corner and crush me.

I don't like being threatened right now. My instincts tell me to rake his neck and kill him on the spot, but I lack proper justification, and I think he knows it. That's why he's so chipper: he's taunting me, and he knows what my draconic instincts are telling me to do.

"Please, sit, Lord Ryder," he calmly requests.

I pull my hand back and look to my side, annoyed that I'm forced to break the staring contest first. I spot the chair and pull it over to me, then I sit.

It's uncomfortable as the armrest is fused with the back cushion, creating a solid wall in a "u" shape that leaves no room for my thick tail.

"Have you enjoyed your time in the capital, Lord Ryder?" He cheerfully asks, his wheezing voice unpleasant to my ears even though he has high "Charisma."

"Beautiful place. The Throne is an amazing construction, and the melting pot of cultures here is a wonder to see," I tersely reply, not very enthused about the topic.

"'Melting pot,' what an interesting analogy!" He exclaims with unnerving cheerfulness, then he coughs in a way that makes me think he's about to keel over and die, but I realize that's just how he laughs. "Have you 'partaken' of the local races?"

I subtly raise an eyebrow. "I haven't had the time, but I plan to. I'm fond of wereanimals, and there are plenty around here."

His smile widens, wrinkling his face further. "Hah! So am I! Even at my age, there's nothing like a little cat's purr or a dog's licks."

My [Sense Soul] detects nothing but humans, tho.

"I simply enjoy the female form, whatever it may be," I dryly reply.

His thin eyebrows knit in surprise. "No men? I know most dragons are double-edged."

"No men."

"Not much fun to be had if you don't enjoy using the back door, hm?" He wisely replies.

It's taking quite an effort for me to remain neutral. "I just don't enjoy male 'swords' and overly manly faces."

And he grins amusedly again, his "Charisma" causing conflicting feelings within me. "No male 'swords'? I guess that excludes the pretty elf boys."

I calmly hum, "It does."

"But what would you do if one snuck into your bed?" He innocently asks.

I almost smile as I deadpan, "Get very mad."

He lightly hits the table with his palm, the first time his body has actually moved. "Hah! As straight-edged as they come!"

"Hm…" I indifferently hum in agreement, and we fall silent.

But just before it starts to get awkward, he cheerfully continues, "But women aren't the only thing you're enjoying from the capital, I see. Quite a few people have heard of your fondness for chocolate, and now also coffee, curiously."

"Earthy foods please me."

He snorts. "You sound like a dwarf."

Then I remember that the Gods have just guided me to leave a coordinate, so I can't drop my guard. "They just have good taste in food."

"Even bug meat…?" He wryly asks with a smirk.

I sigh and slowly point out, "Imperial food has an unhealthy obsession with flour and fried food. No culture is perfect."

He leans back in his lavish chair, smiling smugly. "Not something I'd expect to hear from a Crown Lord of the High Forest."

"I'm not an elf."

"But one of your wives is, though I see it's clear who bends over in bed." He waggles his eyebrows suggestively.

I let out a single, soft chuckle and flash a polite smile, then another silence falls over us.

And once again, he quickly moves the conversation on, "But you've got quite the large harem for yourself. Are you still searching for more wives? I know plenty of nobles here who would love to get involved with such a young, vigorous Lord like yourself."

That one is easy to decline, "We all married mostly out of love, so we're not looking for people who wish for a higher status."

"'Mostly'?"

"I don't need marriage to force women to approach me."

"Clearly."

"Hm…!" I proudly hum.

Once again, I let the topic die, but he persists, "You are becoming quite famous with your achievements. Some even say that your Companions are like wives."

"Not far from the truth."

He throws his head back and opens his mouth wide as releases an odd-sounding, wheezing laugh, "Hah-hah-hah-hah…! Are you competing with the Emperor? Such an insatiable appetite for women just fuels the rumors that you're his bastard, not that I'm implying the same."

He continues on, with seemingly unending topics to talk about whenever I let the conversation lose steam. His tone betrays no hint of hostility, and the topics are never distasteful or confrontational, yet the discomfort that I feel never goes away. Be it the environment, temperature, seating, his stare, the fact that a God guided me to drop a [Gate] coordinate nearby, or his faint, high-level aura affecting me, everything irritates me. It's not that I just don't want to drop my guard, I feel like I can't, and all the irritating factors add stress, so it's all starting to grate on my nerves.

And yet, the topic of Alki-Alki never comes up, so I assume a perfectly neutral but firm tone as I force the issue, "Yes, I do enjoy exploring dungeons and their mysteries. In fact, my wives are exploring the Labyrinth right now. We were so eager for this day that we hid our identities so that we could calmly search for an interesting guide instead of intimidating one into serving us. That's when we met your son, Alkibiades, who impertinently flirted with my wives while I was away for a moment."

He stops for a mere second before replying with a gentle, fatherly tone, "Ah, yes, my boy. What a brat he is sometimes," -he flashes a wistful smile- "but you gave him a humiliating defeat, so that should teach him a bit about picking fights with strangers." But he doesn't let me respond before he slyly continues, "You also showed your dragon transformation, no? I hear you're just like a Symbol of Might, which is quite impressive, I must say. Not that your current draconic features aren't, but a Symbol of Might is certainly an awe-inspiring creature, so we all hope that you'll live up to its fame."

I remain silent, staring at him as he runs his mouth off.

He subtly leans forward as he excitedly adds, "Do you plan on continuing to train your transformation? I know of a wereape who can grow so big that he can wrestle with Giants, so you shouldn't have much trouble grow-…"

I sternly interrupt him, letting a hint of anger color my tone, "I was under the impression that the topic of this meeting was your son, Decien Alkibiades…"

He leans back and waves his hand dismissively. "Yes, yes, but you showed the stupid boy his place, no? Or do you wish to deal with this little clash more formally? I just felt that having a friendly chat would do some good for our families, you see? You're quite the powerful magic swordsman, and I'm interested in knowing how you came up with your own Style. It isn't a-…"

You know what? Screw it. I don't want to be here, so I'll just leave.

I let the dragon glare at him, and I see him tense up in response, then I interrupt again, "A friendly chat was had, and since there don't seem to be any lingering problems related to our duel, I'll be taking my leave."

He rests both of his small hands over his lap and subtly nods. "I see, I see. Perhaps another time, then."

I stand up. "Goodbye, Decien Alkibiades."

"Goodbye, Lord Ryder."

Then I turn around and leave while he just remains in his seat, his unwavering stare burning a hole into my back.

I return to the embassy, then I open a [Gate] back to the nature elemental carriage.

"Welcome back," Roxanne receives me with a hug, and I get a handful of her small, tight ass as I shove my tongue down her throat, then we both [Equip] our armor again.

I'd like a sword-licking to relieve the irritation from having to go through that meeting, but everyone promises me a round, so the anticipation is good enough for now.

I want to see some ruins.

"What the hell is this…?" I blurt out as I stare at the singular building in this whole damn swamp.

It's a half-sunk skyscraper, a mossy rectangular box of cement directly out of a post-apocalyptic setting, tilted just like the leaning tower of Pisa.

The girls turn silent and stare at me as they probe my memories, and realization dawns upon them.

Penelope happily skips forward as she shares her knowledge with us, "Rather than simply growing houses made of pure stone or digging holes, Man preferred to conjure concrete, for some reason. The shape of their homes was also quite peculiar, though some found similarities between these vertical homes and those of non-breeder dragonoid monsters."

An awkward silence settles in, and everyone turns to us, confused about our reaction.

"Is the ruin structurally safe? Is there any risk of it collapsing?" I sternly inquire.

And Lolo is taken aback by my tone, "N-no, it's safe. The dungeon maintains its integrity. It's a 'decoration.'"

I [Fly] towards it, and Alissa follows.

"Any insight on why they chose this peculiar architectural style?" Ciel curiously asks, covering for me.

The spotted brown rabbit calms down and smiles at the angel's comforting tone. "No, but some guess that the lack of any decoration makes it extremely simple to conjure."

Indeed, this skyscraper is just a perfectly rectangular box that's oriented upright, and since you have to visualize how you want your conjuration to come out, this is the optimal building design for mass housing.

I enter through an open window and find myself in a timeless kitchen. Cupboards, tables, chairs, and counters, all made of wood, all without a single decoration, perfectly Spartan. But there's nothing else, no food, cutlery, clothes, or even bedding, just concrete and wood.

I summon twenty birds and spread them out to explore the ruin, but all we find are copy-pasted rooms, nothing that seems specifically Earthling.

Is it truly a coincidence…?

Alissa interlaces her fingers with my claws, and little by little, her presence calms me down.

The complete lack of decorations is suspicious. Why would nobody try to personalize their living quarters?

Is the dungeon being truthful about the past, or is it just an odd quirk, like the white, sunless sky?

Those questions are why people find the Dawn of Mankind such an interesting time period, but unfortunately, it seems like they'll remain forever without an answer.

We move on and leave the ruins behind, then we continue to grind for Experience, and we pass by a few more ruins, but they're just as timeless and bland as the skyscraper.

Supposedly, there's some ancient library on this level, but it's quite far, so we won't get there today.

I focus on continuing with my seduction of Penelope, and the way she acts when I look at her reminds me of Nono, so I think I might be in the clear to be way more aggressive with her.

When night falls, the knights start to return to the embassy, and Kyora's harem doesn't seem up to nighttime dungeon crawling, so I open up a [Gate] for everyone.

Intermission - Penelope

He casts spells like one breathes, all without chanting, or even putting in any noticeable effort, and I'm sure that's not the power that the average Lord has.

The Templars cross through the [Gate] without hesitation while Nik and I hesitate for a second. We're both uncomfortable with how these Lords have us by the balls, but their words are so honeyed that I find it hard to resist.

I breathe in deeply, then I step into the black circle first.

My world instantly changes from green to brown as I suddenly find myself inside a wide, wooden room. Then my eyes focus on all the details, and I realize the true meaning of "Grand elven design."

This place is lovely…

A group of gorgeous golden-haired women wearing just as little clothing as I am bow to the Ryders respectfully, and I suddenly feel uncomfortable about how casually we've been talking to them until now. Then I realize that they're elves, and I'm awed by their transcendent beauty.

Lord Wolf's voice brings me back to reality with his commanding but still very gentle tone, "These two adventurers will be our guests, so prepare a room for him, but for her…"

He turns his intense, dark eyes towards me, and I instantly freeze.

I feel like prey. The way his eyes lick my body makes me shudder, but it's definitely not from disgust. He just… awakens things in me that I didn't think I had, and I'm afraid of what I'll become if I let him do what he wants with me.

The cute fox girl suddenly grabs my hand and hugs my arm, her adorable but mischievous smile shining in such a way that I feel it's almost magical.

"This one is coming with us. We're going to 'play' all night," she slyly announces, and the fear comes back twice as strong.

Then my other hand is grabbed by the dark-skinned, curvy, and gentle beauty, the kindness within her gaze like a sweet Gorgon tea.

"Stay with us, and we'll take care of you," she soothes me, her voice sounding hypnotic in my ears.

I'm scared, but everything would be so much easier if I just… surrendered.

My head nods on its own, and they guide me forward.

"Ah…!" I hear Nikolas grunt and glance back at him. His face looks anguished, concerned… or is it disappointed?

"I'll be fine," I assure him, my voice sounding much more composed than my mind.

But his jaw goes slack, and his tail goes limp, leaving me confused.

Does he… like me?

I turn forward again, and my heart hurts with anxiety.

Of course, he does.

I shake my head angrily and walk forward with confidence.

But I'm allowed to do what I want.

As we walk through the beautiful structure, we meet up with a cute, dark-skinned monkey girl, and she gives me a curious look.

"Hello, there," she cheerfully greets, her tone so innocent that it stuns me.

"Another wife…?" I rudely mumble in confusion.

"No, just a knight, though her body belongs to me," Lord Wolf casually spouts an outrageous statement as he cops a feel of her ass.

She pouts, but doesn't remove his hand… or even have the decency to blush!

That is the kind of man Lord Wolf Ryder is… and I'm willingly walking into the jaws of the beast.

We move on and soon reach a steamy room, and I'm surprised by how the floor is covered in moss, though not the crumbly kind, as it seems to stick to the floor like a large piece of cloth. But the most impressive thing about this room is that the large pool of hot water has a wall full of embedded gems.

An enchanted bath!

My bumpkinness is interrupted by gentle hands taking off my jacket and undoing my belt.

Before I can properly react, someone touches my bra, and it pops free, revealing my humiliatingly small bits. Even the dwarf girl has bigger ones than mine.

But then I'm attacked by predatory gazes. It's not just Lord Wolf; every single woman here is a predator. To make things worse, the cheeky fox pulls down my shorts, exposing me fully.

My heart suddenly starts beating like mad while my breath quickens, and my vision blurs.

"You are so beautiful…" A husky, masculine voice caresses my ears, making my legs turn into weak sticks that shiver with the weight they carry. Such simple words, but it's the power within them that affects me, and my eyes instinctively focus on their source.

Lord Wolf is right before me, and his predatory, handsome, and also kind of cute grin makes my heart skip a beat. His scales, horns, and claws look so menacing, yet the only thing I truly fear is his gaze. There's so much intent within it. A promise of intense carnal pleasure, a protectiveness that borders on domination, and fulfillment that nothing else in the realm would ever be able to compare to.

His vertical scar on his left cheek is like the gem on the pommel of his refined face, but then I notice an almost imperceptible vertical scar on his throat, and I become curious about its source.

But my eyes go down on their own, and I feel a sudden impulse to lick and kiss his bare, athletic chest. There's a mix of dot and line scars that also feel very kissable, but the dots kind of look like he was bitten around his right shoulder.

Then something irresistible draws my eyes once again, and I look further down, then my heart skips a beat, and I suddenly feel like I really need to lie down, but soapy hands start running all over my body, forcing me to remain standing.

A pair of lips touch my back, and I shudder, my eyes still trained on the thing as it subtly pulsates. "What adorable spots you have, Penelope," the fox girl teases with a high-pitched giggle, then more kisses follow, each igniting a spark within my heart.

"Her thighs are so gorgeous, too," the curvy woman adds as she carefully soaps them with her bare, soft hands.

My body is washed without my consent, yet I can't even muster a single Mana Point to stop them. It just feels so good.

At the same time, the sensual succubus and majestic dragonkin wash Lord Wolf, but the way they touch his body is nothing if not suggestive. Then I notice that the demon woman has a large circular scar on her belly, the only blemish on her otherwise perfect, pale skin.

No, it's rude to say it's an ugly spot. It clearly holds some sentimental value for her if she hasn't removed it.

But then she starts stroking his long, soapy member, and I forget all about it.

A sound suddenly escapes my lips as I feel an intense surge of pleasure on my chest, causing sparks to ignite again, so I look down and see the two women sucking on my chest with mirrored, mischievous smiles on her faces.

"She has a nice voice," the fox teases.

"Yes, she does," the curvy woman soothingly agrees, but I feel betrayed by her. She was the only one that I thought wasn't a predator, but I guess she was just too good at hiding her hunger.

Then the fox lowers herself down, and I feel a shiver run up my spine as I realize what she's about to do.

I've never swung that way, but these women are steadily sharpening my blunt edge.

"Ah~…" I whisper softly, and the cuteness of my voice surprises even me. Then the fox continues, and I whisper out loud, lighting the flames of hunger within me.

"It looks like she's ready," the alluring succubus remarks.

Lord Wolf and I have been washed, and now the inevitable comes. This is exactly what I knew would happen, it's what I wanted to happen, so there's no turning back now.

I just need to surrender to them, and everything will be fine.

The curvy beauty gently pushes me, and I fall backwards, but then I feel something soft and warm on my back, not the cold grass that we were standing on.

When did they put this bed here? It must've been prepared specifically for me…

My breath quickens in anticipation, and my legs spread on their own, then a shadow looms over me, and I freeze as Lord Wolf's predatory gaze grips my heart once again.

His large, clawed hand cups my cheek and caresses it while he gives me such a gentle smile that I feel like dark, cold clouds have parted to reveal his warm face to me.

Then it begins, and my mind goes blank as the flames of hunger consume everything.

When I come to, I realize that I'm screaming my lungs out, and I can't even feel my legs anymore, just the constant hammering of pleasure that courses through my whole body.

But then I look down and gasp in surprise as I see pink, meancing barbs along his impressive length.

What…? What…?!

Then he grins, and I suddenly feel something vibrate inside of me. The rush of pleasure is so great that my whole body locks up, and my screams die out, then my vision goes blurry as I begin to pass out from the continuous bliss.

Intermission end.

Well, I broke her…

I vacate Lolo and kiss her thunder thighs. I wish I could've used them, but she was way too scared to play with us. Though, I think she'll be more comfortable with us after she wakes up, so I'll get some of her muscular thickness later.

Right now, I have a promise of multiple sword-suckings that I want fulfilled, and Alissa and Aoi are bickering about who gets to go first, so it's my duty to mediate.

"Girls, how about both?"

When Lolo wakes up, she's too dazed for anything, so we let her soak in the bath while I Ravage my wives.

For dinner, we invite the Templars and Nikolas, and the wolf man's depressed mood makes half of the girls feel guilty, though only Roxanne is shameless enough to admit that she's enjoying his pain.

Timas, Alonso, and Ciel manage to cheer him up, and I feel like he'll be fine after a couple of days.

Then the evil succubus makes me grab a handful of bunny girl ass as I lead her towards our bedroom, and the display of dominance actually starts to get the girls excited.

"That's the manliest thing you've ever done; stealing a woman right in front of a man. All you need to do now is to do her while he holds her hand," Roxanne tries to corrupt me further through [Bind], but I think that'd be going too far.

Nikolas is a nice guy, so maybe I'll invite him to the loli brothel that Sai recommended to us or some other place if he's not into that.

We continue mind-breaking Lolo with hedonism, but the time for my meeting with Vanea soon arrives, so I head to the entrance of the embassy.

At the appointed time, the embassy briefly disables its anti-[Invisibility] enchantment, then Alissa senses a person entering our tree, and once the doors have closed behind them, the enchantment is activated again.

Magical particles attack the invisible person, producing colorful spheres that look almost like a video glitch, but the spheres stick and shrink in size, quickly producing a blurry outline of a person.

After merely five seconds, the person becomes recognizable, and I have to contain my surprise.

It's the girl formerly known as Smegma, the poor Farana, a petite brown-haired girl with a cute braid that is/was Vanea's s-x slave.

The pretty girl keeps her eyes down, not noticing me while she chants [Gate], and after half a minute, the portal opens, and Vanea appears, strolling forward like a supermodel on a runway.

The beautiful, black-haired princess has her hair swept back, making her seem rather handsome and imposing. But the star of the show is the semi-transparent black dress full of leather belts covering her important places, and it isn't skin tight, so I catch a glimpse of her pink bits and clean flower as she walks towards me, her open heels finishing her alluring look as they grace her cute feet.

I glance at Farana and notice that she's now staring at me with unbridled fear in her eyes, but then she steps forward and disappears into her [Gate], so I focus back on the dominatrix aggressively approaching me.

Vanea grabs my vest and pulls me closer by the collar. I feel my heart tighten with excitement as I get the impression that she wants to kiss me, but she keeps our faces just milimetri from each other, then I look into her eyes.

At this distance, her piercing, black eyes attack my mind, and all I see is her gaze coupled with an evil grin that only she can make.

"Did you prepare a bed or chairs?" She huskily whispers, her fruity breath smelling quite delicious.

"Chairs," I quietly reply, still calm, yet a raging sword now strains against my pants.

She looks down and giggles girlishly, then releases me and takes a step back. "Why don't you show it to me."

I smirk and mirror her seductive behavior, "Show what? I have a hunch that you'd like to stare at my huge sword again."

She chuckles softly and subtly licks her lips. "Unfortunately, I didn't bring Lala with me for that."

I take an aggressive step forward and whisper, "A perfect excuse for me to do you."

She lets out a low, predatory laugh, then crosses her arms in a rather sassy and defensive posture, but she doesn't reply.

After a couple of seconds, I relent and whisper huskily, "Follow me." Then I guide her to our meeting room.

We enter a nice, private room that has a good view of the street and has been stocked with all sorts of snacks, chocolates, teas, and even coffee. Alissa will act as the maid just to give me that extra boost in "Sanity" and also because I don't want to torture the other maids with Vanea's presence.

"I'll never say no to chocolate," the evil princess hums as she fills a plate, then sits at the sofa before me and crosses her legs.

"I recommend coffee to accompany chocolate, but it's an energizer, so maybe not at night," I affably reply and immediately go against my own advice, making her giggle.

Then she gives us both a moment to savor our snacks before she calmly begins, "I heard that you enjoyed Lala a second time."

I genuinely smile. "Yes, I did. She's a good woman."

She keeps her eyes low to not bother me as she whispers softly with a surprising amount of warmth, "Treat her well. She deserves a good man that gives her affection."

That's a curious phrasing, but I just nod and agree, "I will. I don't like to treat women as carnal objects, even prostitutes, unless asked, of course."

She raises her eyes, and her smile turns sly. "That's good to hear…"

"Now, what business did you want to talk about?" I continue, unphased.

She seductively sucks on her finger, then lowers her eyes again, now deliberately staring at my attentive friend, both to save me from her piercing stare and also to enjoy herself. "First of all, do you understand what's happening at the capital?"

I give an explanation based on what Nero told us, "The Purification is about to start, so everyone is antsy, trying to build alliances for safety, but apparently, something else is going on because nobody has tried to recruit us yet, a powerful family with an obvious Gift."

She nods and grins. "It makes me so happy to see how quickly you're learning the game."

I just raise an eyebrow at her, curious about her phrasing, then I realize that she can't see it and just decide to continue with a confession, "Well, I do have to admit that I don't understand why everyone is ignoring us."

She hums thoughtfully and readjusts herself on her seat, revealing a pink bit to me, then she plays with it absentmindedly as she explains, "You're an outsider with a very clear enemy, so someone just spread a bunch of rumors around, and that scared everyone off since nobody knows where your allegiances lie. We're in a very delicate situation, so nobody wants to risk anything by recruiting you."

I annoyedly point out, "We are pretty clearly opposed to Katasko, so where are their enemies? Why aren't they trying to contact us?"

She glances at me with a smug smirk. "It's because you're clearly deep into some shit with powerful people, so they don't want to get involved with you due to their sense of self-preservation. But it's funny that you mention that. Currently, I've joined forces with the League, but they're pacifists, so I've been building an eastern Mainland faction with the more militaristic nobles who are opposed to Katasko, and this faction could possibly include you."

"Yet you still don't meet with us in the open," I skeptically point out.

Her tone loses all mirth as she sincerely explains, "It's more for you than for me. I have more enemies than you do."

"Well, thanks for the consideration," I neutrally reply, not entirely convinced.

And her evil smile starts to make a comeback. "If you join us, we'll definitely challenge some of the Katasko nobles and carve out a territory for us."

I ignore all of her attempts at seduction and focus on what's important, "You know who they are?"

She shrugs noncommittally. "Some."

Yunia gives me a prod, and I ask, "How long do you think is left until it starts?"

She runs a finger along the edge of her cup and glances at me. "Nobody knows. We're all in a tense situation, but it just needs a spark to start the fire."

Well, that's convenient.

"We could be the spark, but we're not that interested in playing in the Purification," I sternly affirm.

And she replies in kind, "Now's not the time to avoid Katasko. If we don't fully end them right here, right now, things will only get harder with time."

I hum in thought, and Alissa nudges me to ask, "Why do you oppose them?"

She straightens her back in a subtly defensive posture. "Personal reasons, but I probably hate Cleinias Alkimeonids a lot more than you do. I'd even gladly kill him if I had the chance."

I raise my eyebrows in surprise, but she just smiles sweetly and glances at me.

Alissa whispers in my mind, "She's right. It's clear that we're opposed to Katasko, and delaying their demise just because we don't want to participate in the Purification will make it harder for us later on."

Yunia doesn't like that idea. The Elder Council has no desire to bring things like the Purification to the High Forest.

But Hana comes in with the encouragement, "What kind of 'sword' will we be if we don't attack?"

"I need to convene with my wives about your proposal," I neutrally reply.

And Vanea slowly nods. "Take your time… You don't need to actually answer me right now. You could even wait until the Purification starts since we'll need you before we can even begin to target Katasko properly."

A silence falls over us, so I move things forward, "Is that everything you wish to talk about?"

Her evil smile shows itself in full, and she stares at me, but she's too far to actually make me uncomfortable. "Oh, I just have some interesting rumors to share," she coyly hums.

I narrow my eyes in suspicion. "'Interesting'…?"

Her stare becomes intense as she leans forward, trying to take in every single detail of my reaction as she cryptically reveals, "Well, I just recently heard that the Chimeras at the Sky Lands have a group of Gifted people working for them. None of them seem to know how to speak either Andraste or Reo that well, and it was like they suddenly appeared out of nowhere."

OH, FUCK!

I breathe in deeply from the realization and tense up.

But the evil princess follows up with a vicious combo, "Curiously, the day those people first appeared perfectly coincides with the day you first entered Rabanara…"

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Chapter 132: Cards - Part 1

A note from Manasong

Attention: to conform to the limit of mature content (more than just sexual content) allowed in a novel, I've censored this chapter. You can look for the uncensored version here.

Announcement: I was down with the flu for the last week, but I kept uploading, and now that I'm good enough to return to work, I have to catch up with the chapters for the patrons, but to not leave you guys on a week-long cliff, I decided to upload this one.

This is the only chapter for this week, tho, and the uploading will resume Wednesday of next week, the 15th.

The cat's out of the bag, and this is way more important than keeping up a half-assed lie, so I unleash the dragon upon Vanea and sternly ask, "What else do you know about these Gifted?"

She remains still for a second, then she suddenly shrugs and flashes a smile as she casually replies, "Nothing. It was just rumors that perfectly fit a suspicion I had."

My jaw tenses up in anger, and I scowl as I slowly state, "If you value our relationship, I need you to tell me everything you know about those Gifted."

She breathes in, slightly annoyed, and expands further, "As I said, it was only a curious rumor. I don't have the resources to track down a group of Gifted that are being deliberately hidden from the public. Obviously, you're not the only one who's interested in them, though it's clear to me that your reason for it is unique."

I feel an irrational anger flare within me, and I start to dig my claws into the armrests, carving deep grooves into the soft wood.

If I'm not the only one who has been brought here, then that opens a pandora's box of questions.

For example… is she-…?

My mind gets stuck midway, dreading to finish the question, and the rage begins to grow out of control, permeating my whole body. Of all things that could happen, this is among those that I dreaded the most.

My vision distorts as my mind is filled with questions, but I don't care about the answers, I care that, for some reason, I was not the only one wrecked in the ass for a purpose I still don't know!

I just want to… to…

I don't know what I want, I just want to do something, to have some control over things, but I don't have any. I'm just…

grrrrAAAAH…!

I roar internally in impotent rage, then my MP starts to drain as I feel the laws of reality loosen, responding to my will to just tear everything asunder.

Suddenly, my whole body freezes up, and I feel something give me a painful poke inside my head, jolting me into confusion.

My eyes focus properly, and I recognize the beautiful bright brown, almost orange color of Alissa's hair, but her angry face is like a dagger of shame stabbing into my heart.

I look down and notice that my body is covered in scales. I've accidentally shifted into my draconic form without noticing.

I guess I have a bit of an anger issue…?

"It's the unlimited cap on anger that makes dragons so powerful," Hana proudly brags inside my mind.

I chuckle softly, then I sigh as I slowly let the anger pass. After a long moment, I calm down enough to shift back and put the dragon back in its cage.

The chair is almost completely ruined now. I kind of broke the backrest with my tail as it went wild, and the armrests are now nothing more than stubs after I diced them up, so Alissa brings me a new one.

Vanea's tense expression makes it almost worth it, tho. She stiffly stares at me while anxiously running a hand through her slick, sweptback black hair, a rare gesture of discomfort that I have the pleasure to witness.

"Sorry…" I softly apologize as I sit down.

She immediately continues, her tone wooden and a bit quiet, "Your background is the biggest mystery of the decade, so don't let others know that you have a personal interest in those three Gifted."

I nod and softly ask, "What about you?"

Her expression immediately shifts into an angry glare. "Are you implying that I'd take advantage of you after we've dealt with each other so many times before…?"

I clench my jaw in apprehension and quickly admit my mistake, "I apologize for my rude insinuation."

"Hmph…" She huffs haughtily, but then her expression suddenly grows both mischievous and seductive, putting me back on guard.

She stands up and walks towards me while slowly pushing up her dress until it reveals her bare, but visibly wet, flower then she straddles me and wraps her arms around my neck, our faces mere centimetri from each other.

Her thick, intoxicating perfume fills my nostrils, and I breathe it in deeply, savoring her scent. Appreciating feminine aspects is always calming for me.

"I'm ready to take our relationship further…" She suggestively whispers while gently smirking, and her pretty face seems almost perfectly made for this expression. "But since it seems like you're not the only mysterious Gifted of this generation, why would I choose you, specifically?"

Her hands reach down, and she touches my sword through my thin, tight pants, then runs it along its length.

"There's me, my untouched but very sl-tty sister, and my hungry brother, so there are plenty of options available."

Then she pulls on the waistband of my pants and underwear at the same time, releasing my monster. She looks down and subtly licks her lips while raising her eyebrows, then she glances at me and smirks.

"I'd love to negotiate a… Br--ding Contract with a strong, powerful male…"

Then she moves her hips forward and rests her moistness against the throbbing tip, her warmth instantly noticeable. We're both so excited that a small amount of her fluids immediately mix and run down my sword.

"But can you guarantee that you will be the one to come out on top of all of your fellow Gifted?" She coyly asks, but that's just a rude challenge to my draconic nature.

"Am I a damn dragon or not?" I growl, then I grab her thin waist and force her down, but only the tip disappears before she stiffens her legs and prevents me from going further.

I look up and glare at her, my anger quickly rising, but she just smirks smugly then leans forward to whisper into my ear, "You'll never have me, but maybe, if you prove yourself, I can let you do whatever you want with my body and may even birth a few children for you…"

The way her walls squeeze me and their searing heat tell me she's as ready as any to be br-d, but she knows she can get something better if she holds on just a little longer.

And I damn hate women like her.

She grabs my scaled hands and forces my arms apart from her waist, then she stands up and lets her dress feebly attempt to cover herself again.

But her gaze suddenly softens uncharacteristically. "As proof of my commitment to you, here's something genuine."

Then she leans forward and presses her lips against mine as she cups my cheek. This catches me a bit by surprise, but before I can shove my tongue down her throat, she pulls back then lowers her head further.

She gives a cute kiss to the tip, then she straightens again and licks her lips clean of my fluid. "Indeed, you have a nice taste. Work hard for me because I want more of it," she seductively states.

I grit my teeth in anger and hold myself back from pouncing on her, then she giggles mischievously and starts walking away.

But she kindly gives one last piece of advice before she leaves, "When they first appeared, the Gifted made a commotion in Kini Kaina, the main Chimera city, so start your search there."

She's made me so damn mad that it's taking quite a lot of effort for me to not chase after her, but I think that would just end badly, so the human keeps the chains quite tight.

Alissa kneels before me, and I grip her head.

Goddamn. She must be the one who taught Silvane how to be such a damn sl-t…

Just one release isn't enough, so Alissa bends over on the table for me, and I do her like a beast.

No… Silvane's parents were deposed, and that puts her character in doubt. Maybe she was already a deviant and Vanea only re-awakened that part of her.

I grip Alissa's nice pillows and bite her neck as I do it madly.

And the little elven wh-re has definitely corrupted Nono, too.

"Ahn~…! Ahn~…! Ahn~…!" My fox slave whispers adorably, and her fluffy tail tickles my abs as it wags uncontrollably.

I need to dominate Nono so hard that she doesn't think about anyone else ever again… Well, maybe just no other man; I don't want to ruin her marriage.

My slave clenches as she reaches the summit, and so do I at the same time, making a mess as I don't stop moving.

But then I start to slow down because I need to leave some for Lolo. It's time for another session of her c-m sl-t training.

Lolo clenches her muscular thighs, and I feel a nice amount of pressure, so I start to move.

What a damn amazing view.

Her legs are to die for, so I make sure to get a taste of them and her feet, then I cover her spotted skin with kisses.

It doesn't take long before I cover her body. Then I do it again, and again, and again…

As I "accidentally" pull back a bit too far, it angles down. Then it easily slides into, and I feel her legs quiver strongly in bliss, but I want to use a different position this time.

I spin her and force her onto all fours, then I fluff her little pom-pom of a tail and use her long, floppy ears as reins to help me do her like a dog, one of my favorite positions.

She just takes it all, but I'm not the only one giving her attention. Either Alissa or Hana always keep her mouth occupied while Roxanne plays with the rest of her body.

The bunny girl steadily loses herself to pure bliss, then begins to beg for more and more, which we're happy to oblige.

The draconic rage dies down, and the dragon goes to sleep, finally allowing the human the space he needs to think properly.

"What can we do about the Gifted?" I worriedly ask while I fluff Penelope's floppy ears. She's sleeping so peacefully that I almost feel like waking her up just to do her senseless again.

Yunia calmly answers as she massages Roxanne's horns while the demoness eats her. "If we're forceful with our questioning, we'll ruin our relationship with the Chimeras of the Sky Lands. Anyone in their position would be very protective of the Gifted, just like we are with Brett."

"Then let's build good relations with them by sending a Chimera envoy there," Ciel suggests good naturedly as she plays with Gify.

Hana stops abusing Alissa to let the fox girl add, "The spirit Chimera… think that those Chimera… are boors."

Yunia whispers softly and adds, "We just need someone who we know wouldn't jeopardize the mission for petty reasons."

"Osaria…?" I hesitantly suggest.

Klein gives me a concerned look as she cautions me, "You know that the Chimeras like to give themselves horse swords, right? And the ones in the Sky Lands wear even less clothing than elves."

I don't think my milf would cheat on me so easily, but, yeah, maybe there's someone else who's better suited for this task.

I hum huskily as I crawl up to the little monkey, then she reflexively turns around and presents her ass to me.

I absentmindedly use my thumb on her special place as I ponder out loud, "Just Oritiki with the Carrier should be enough. We can't bring the Floater or our knights out of the capital for now in case we actually do join the Purification."

Yunia agrees, "Yes, using the Floater would also call too much attention to our activities."

My mind is too tired, and it's already quite late, so we'll write a letter to Oritiki and Sandoro sometime tomorrow.

I begin Klein's c-m sl-t reinforcement training, but it's finished quite quickly, so I give my wives a nice and slow session of nightly love.

Today is the 5th, Fo, day of Fire. In Escanso, the town would be filled with the appetizing smell of meat being smoked, but in the capital, today is the official barbecue day, and the effigies from the previous party are re-built so that the entire town can have meat of all kinds being roasted in the open. The Labyrinth provides an endless source of monster meat, so they really go all out.

My [Redirect Mana] increased by 1 (now 7); Roxanne's [Redirect Mana] and [Alchemy] increased by 1 (now 2 and 11); Hana's [Mana Control] increased by 1 (now 8); Lina's [Cursing Magic] increased by 2 (now 11+9); and Yunia's [Weaverism] increased by 1 (now 30).

Aoi is now level 45; Alissa, Roxanne, Ciel, Lina, and I are now level 60; Hana is now level 61; and Yunia is now level 62.

Since we're all hybrids, Alissa, Roxanne, Hana, Ciel, Lina, and I put our new points into mana skills with only Yunia putting her new points into something different, which is [Enhanced Reflexes].

My MP increased by 175 (now 2000) and my MPower increased by 80 (now 860); Alissa's MP increased by 200 (now 1320) and her MPower increased by 105 (now 655); Roxanne's MP increased by 255 (now 3215) and her MPower increased by 160 (now 1440); Hana's MP increased by 110 (now 1050) and her MPower increased by 60 (now 515); Ciel's MP increased by 190 (now 1500) and her MPower increased by 95 (now 895); Lina's MP increased by 200 (now 1425) and her MPower increased by 80 (now 620); Aoi's MP increased by 240 (now 1610) and her MPower increased by 115 (now 455); and Yunia's MP increased by 160 (now 1250) and her MPower increased by 90 (now 630).

Aoi's magic got a surprising increase of 20 MP and 10 MPower just from yesterday, which is unusual since it only rises so much in one go when she does mana circulation training for a whole day. Not even eating a lot of monster corpses should do that, so this growth either came from the orb she ate or the divine power we all got irradiated with, but she's the only one whose magic grew so much.

Roxanne is visibly excited at this prospect while Ciel is internally excited. Maybe I should push their tentacle fetish a bit further since they always become really excited when wriggly things are involved.

Here are our updated "Stats":

Wolf Ryder Skill Report

Physical

Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level
Sword Use | 15+15 | Spear Use | 17+3 | Polearm Use | 15+5
Dodge | 12+8 | Parry | 9+6 | Block | 7+8
Shield Bash | 4+1 | Battlefield Perception | 8+2 | Muscle Explosion | 4+1
Acrobatics | 13+2 | Ekrano Style (creator) | 5

Magical

Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level
Sense Mana | 0+6 | Mana Control | 3+17 | Mana Recovery | 10+0
Mana Efficiency | 13+7 | Reduced Mana Cost | 13+7 | Mana Overuse Resistance | 6+4
Blackout Resistance | 0+1 | Fire Magic | 1+4 | Earth Magic | 6+4
Water Magic | 4+1 | Wind Magic | 1+4 | Electric Magic | 6+14
Light Magic | 2+13 | Space Magic | 7+23 | Summoning Magic | 6+34
Blessing Magic | 27+23 | Nature Magic | 2+18 | Conjuring Magic | 1+4
Spirit Magic | 0+3 | Illusion Magic | 0+2 | Golemancy | 0+12
Redirect Mana (creator) | 7 | Sense Soul (creator) | 6 | Soul Manipulation (creator) | 10
Godly Language | 30+5 | Dragon Transformation (innate) | 7 | Equipment System | 5+5

Miscellaneous

Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level
Dancing | 0+1 | Cooking | 0+4 | Andraste Language | 4+6
Dismantling | 0+4 | Piloting | 0+3 | Massage | 0+4
Spicy Charm | 0+1 | Oral Technique | 0+1 | Mana Body (innate) | 6

Info

Name | Wolf Ryder | Age | 17 | Race | Weredragon
HP | 100 | MP | 2000 | Magic Power | 860
Level | 60

Stats

Strength | 15 | Endurance | 17 | Dexterity | 12
Speed | 15 | Intelligence | 22 | Wisdom | 20
Willpower | 19 | Charisma | 17 | Piety | 17
Perception | 18 | Sanity | 15+4

Other

Status Effects | 'NONE'

Titles

'Nickname "Good Luck", Blessed by the Goddess of Knowledge, Golemancer, Scholar of Rabanara, True Noble, Lord of Escanso, Crown Lord of the Western High Forest, Shapeshifter, Protector of the Last Crown'

Affiliations

'Helios (Fellowship), Alissa Ryder (Wife), Hanafuria Ryder (Wife), Roxanne Ryder (Wife), Lina Ryder (Wife), Ciel Ryder (Wife), Aoi Ryder (Wife), Yulania Ryder (Wife), Servant Blood Slaves'

Companions | 'Alissa Ryder, Roxanne Ryder, Hanafuria Ryder, Ciel Ryder, Lina Ryder, Aoi Ryder, Yulania Ryder'
Crimes | 'NONE'

Alissa Ryder Skill Report

Physical

Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level
Sword Use | 9 | Bow Use | 41 | Parry | 6+4
Dodge | 2+8 | Sense Presence | 12 | Hide Presence | 2+8
Enhanced Olfact | 5 | Enhanced Hearing | 5 | Hawk Eyes | 6
Muscle Explosion | 5 | Quiet Steps | 5 | Quiet Action | 4
Enhanced Stamina | 1+4 | Enhanced Reflexes | 2+8 | Tracking | 3

Magical

Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level
Sense Mana | 1 | Mana Control | 8 | Reduced Mana Cost | 10+0
Mana Efficiency | 10+0 | Fire Magic | 1 | Earth Magic | 5+0
Water Magic | 1 | Wind Magic | 1 | Light Magic | 1
Space Magic | 1 | Conjuring Magic | 1 | Illusion Magic | 1+17
Fox Transformation (innate) | 8 | Equipment System | 6+4

Miscellaneous

Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level
Housework | 3 | Cooking | 4 | Cleaning | 2
Washing | 5 | Riding | 2 | Oral Technique | 4
Pain Resistance | 2 | Hand Technique | 2

Info

Name | Alissa Ryder | Age | 17 | Race | Fox-type Wereanimal
HP | 100 | MP | 1320 | Magic Power | 655
Level | 60

Stats

Strength | 13 | Endurance | 19 | Dexterity | 24
Speed | 20 | Intelligence | 14 | Wisdom | 16
Willpower | 17 | Charisma | 17 | Piety | 18
Perception | 19 | Sanity | 20

Other

Status Effects | 'NONE'

Titles

'Blessed by the Goddess of Love, Blinding Arrows, True Noble, Lord of Escanso, Crown Lord of the Western High Forest, Protect of the Last Crown'

Affiliations | 'Wolf Ryder (Husband), Helios (Fellowship)'
Companions | 'Wolf Ryder, Roxanne Ryder, Hanafuria Ryder, Ciel Ryder, Lina Ryder, Aoi Ryder, Yulania Ryder'
Crimes | 'NONE'

Roxanne Ryder Skill Report

Physical

Skill Name | Level
Dagger Use | 2

Magical

Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level
Sense Mana | 1+3 | Mana Control | 7+33 | Reduced Mana Cost | 20+5
Mana Efficiency | 10+10 | Mana Overuse Resistance | 4+1 | Fire Magic | 8+32
Earth Magic | 1+0 | Water Magic | 6+34 | Light Magic | 1
Space Magic | 1+12 | Conjuring Magic | 5 | Alteration Magic | 2
Alchemy | 11 | Potion Brewing | 12 | Poison Brewing | 2
Redirect Mana | 2 | Equipment System | 4+6

Miscellaneous

Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level
Housework | 1 | Cooking | 1 | Cleaning | 1
Washing | 1 | Riding | 1

Info

Name | Roxanne Ryder | Age | 22 | Race | Succubus-Type Demon Race
HP | 100 | MP | 3215 | Magic Power | 1440
Level | 60

Stats

Strength | 10 | Endurance | 12 | Dexterity | 12
Speed | 9 | Intelligence | 18 | Wisdom | 21
Willpower | 17 | Charisma | 17 | Piety | 11
Perception | 12 | Sanity | 17

Other

Status Effects | 'NONE'

Titles

'Master of Poisons and Venoms, Scholar of Xane, True Noble, Lord of Escanso, Crown Lord of the Western High Forest, Protect of the Last Crown'

Affiliations | 'Wolf Ryder (Husband), Hanafuria Ryder (Wife), Helios (Fellowship)'
Companions | 'Wolf Ryder, Alissa Ryder, Hanafuria Ryder, Ciel Ryder, Lina Ryder, Aoi Ryder, Yulania Ryder'
Crimes | 'NONE'

Hanafuria Ryder Skill Report

Physical

Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level
Sword Use | 31 | Spear Use | 18 | Bow Use | 10
Two-Handed Sword Use | 10 | Polearm Use | 7 | Dagger Use | 4
Shield Bash | 2+7 | Block | 15 | Parry | 10
Dodge | 12 | Tatesomu Style | 10 | Muscle Explosion | 8
Battlefield Perception | 10 | Taunt | 3 | Intimidate | 3

Magical

Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level
Sense Mana | 1 | Mana Control | 2+8 | Reduced Mana Cost | 10+0
Mana Efficiency | 2 | Fire Magic | 1 | Earth Magic | 1
Water Magic | 1+0 | Wind Magic | 1+0 | Electric Magic | 1
Light Magic | 1 | Space Magic | 1 | Conjuring Magic | 1
Illusion Magic | 5 | Equipment System | 6+4

Miscellaneous

Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level
Housework | 2 | Cooking | 1 | Cleaning | 1
Washing | 1 | Riding | 3 | Massage | 1
Pain Conversion | 1 | Dismantling | 4 | Oral Technique | 1
Fire Breath (innate) | 5 | Summon Wings (innate) | 10 | Draconic Body (creator) | 8

Info

Name | Hanafuria Ryder | Age | 24 | Race | Fire-Type Dragonkin
HP | 150 | MP | 1050 | Magic Power | 515
Level | 61

Stats

Strength | 19 | Endurance | 27 | Dexterity | 11
Speed | 16 | Intelligence | 12 | Wisdom | 16
Willpower | 22 | Charisma | 18 | Piety | 12
Perception | 10 | Sanity | 18

Other

Status Effects | 'NONE'
Titles | 'One Thousand Strikes, True Noble, Lord of Escanso, Crown Lord of the Western High Forest, Protect of the Last Crown'
Affiliations | 'Wolf Ryder (Husband), Roxanne Ryder (Wife), 'Helios (Fellowship)'
Companions | 'Wolf Ryder, Alissa Ryder, Roxanne Ryder, Ciel Ryder, Lina Ryder, Aoi Ryder, Yulania Ryder'
Crimes | 'NONE'

Ciel Ryder Skill Report

Physical

Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level
Glaive Use | 0+30 | Sword Use | 5+5 | Parry | 3+12
Dodge | 2+13 | Block | 8+7 | Imperial Hasterrum Style | 0+3
Tiretiera Maire Style | 1+1 | Muscle Explosion | 2 | Battlefield Perception | 1

Magical

Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level
Sense Mana | 2 | Mana Control | 4+6 | Reduced Mana Cost | 8+2
Mana Efficiency | 6+4 | Wind Magic | 14+26 | Fire Magic | 1
Light Magic | 7+33 | Space Magic | 3 | Conjuring Magic | 1
Diagnosis | 7 | Redirect Mana | 2 | Equipment System | 5+5

Miscellaneous

Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level
First-Aid | 3 | Housework | 3 | Cooking | 2
Cleaning | 2 | Washing | 1 | Riding | 1

Info

Name | Ciel Ryder | Age | 22 | Race | Human
HP | 100 | MP | 1500 | Magic Power | 895
Level | 60

Stats

Strength | 14 | Endurance | 15 | Dexterity | 17
Speed | 18 | Intelligence | 16 | Wisdom | 22
Willpower | 16 | Charisma | 19 | Piety | 27
Perception | 13 | Sanity | 23

Other

Status Effects | 'NONE'

Titles

'Star of Hope, Blessed by the God of the Sun, True Noble, Lord of Escanso, Crown Lord of the Western High Forest, Protect of the Last Crown'

Affiliations

'Wolf Ryder (Husband), Lina Ryder (Wife), Helios (Fellowship), Templar Knights (Honorary Member), Temple Priestess (Former Member)'

Companions | 'Wolf Ryder, Alissa Ryder, Roxanne Ryder, Hanafuria Ryder, Lina Ryder, Aoi Ryder, Yulania Ryder'
Crimes | 'NONE'

Lina Ryder Skill Report

Physical

Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level
Hammer Use | 4+26 | Axe Use | 4+16 | Throw | 3+7
Parry | 10 | Dodge | 4+6 | Block | 1+14
Muscle Explosion | 2 | Shield Bash | 4+1 | Battlefield Perception | 2
Dwarven Pride Style | 1+4 | Enhanced Speed | 4+1

Magical

Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level
Sense Mana | 1 | Mana Control | 2+8 | Reduced Mana Cost | 7+0
Mana Efficiency | 3+1 | Fire Magic | 1 | Earth Magic | 10
Water Magic | 1 | Wind Magic | 1+0 | Light Magic | 1
Cursing Magic | 11+9 | Space Magic | 1 | Conjuring Magic | 1
General Enchanting | 7+13 | Magic Tool Carving | 2+8 | Equipment System | 6+4

Miscellaneous

Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level
General Blacksmithing | 5 | Sewing | 4 | Housework | 1
Cleaning | 2 | Washing | 1 | Math | 5
Riding | 1 | Stonebody (innate) | 9

Info

Name | Lina Ryder | Age | 16 | Race | Dwarf
HP | 100 | MP | 1425 | Magic Power | 620
Level | 60

Stats

Strength | 8 | Endurance | 8 | Dexterity | 13
Speed | 12 | Intelligence | 16 | Wisdom | 15
Willpower | 18 | Charisma | 13 | Piety | 13
Perception | 14 | Sanity | 17

Other

Status Effects | 'NONE'
Titles | 'True Noble, Lord of Escanso, Crown Lord of the Western High Forest, Protect of the Last Crown'
Affiliations | 'Wolf Ryder (Husband), Ciel Ryder (Wife), 'Helios (Fellowship)'
Companions | 'Wolf Ryder, Alissa Ryder, Roxanne Ryder, Hanafuria Ryder, Ciel Ryder, Aoi Ryder, Yulania Ryder'
Crimes | 'NONE'

Info

Name | Aoi Ryder | Age | 2 | Race | Azurite Dragon
HP | 200 | MP | 1610 | Magic Power | 455
Level | 45

Stats

Strength | 18 | Endurance | 23 | Dexterity | 8
Speed | 14 | Intelligence | 11 | Wisdom | 11
Willpower | 19 | Charisma | 13 | Piety | 8
Perception | 11 | Sanity | 20

Other

Status Effects | 'NONE'
Titles | 'True Noble, Lord of Escanso, Crown Lord of the Western High Forest, Protector of the Last Crown'
Affiliations | 'Wolf Ryder (Husband), Helios (Fellowship)'
Companions | 'Wolf Ryder, Alissa Ryder, Roxanne Ryder, Hanafuria Ryder, Ciel Ryder, Lina Ryder, Yulania Ryder'
Crimes | 'NONE'

Yulania Ryder Skill Report

Physical

Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level
Sword Use | 3+12 | Two-Handed Sword Use | 2+18 | Parry | 12
Dodge | 3+11 | Silent Shadow Style | 5 | Battlefield Perception | 8
Enhanced Reflexes | 6 | Sense Presence | 2 | Hide Presence | 4
Muscle Explosion | 5 | Quiet Steps | 2 | Quiet Action | 6
Enhanced Stamina | 3

Magical

Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level
Sense Mana | 7 | Mana Control | 1+4 | Mana Recovery | 2
Mana Efficiency | 2+8 | Reduced Mana Cost | 1+4 | Fire Magic | 1
Earth Magic | 2+3 | Water Magic | 1+0 | Wind Magic | 1+0
Electric Magic | 1+0 | Light Magic | 5 | Spirit Magic | 4+21
Illusion Magic | 10 | Space Magic | 6 | Nature Magic | 10
Conjuring Magic | 1 | Weaverism | 30 | Redirect Mana | 1+0
Equipment System | 5+5

Miscellaneous

Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level
Riding | 5 | Acting | 3 | Dancing | 2

Info

Name | Yulania Ryder | Age | 18 | Race | Golden Elf
HP | 100 | MP | 1250 | Magic Power | 630
Level | 62

Stats

Strength | 13 | Endurance | 16 | Dexterity | 19
Speed | 17 | Intelligence | 16 | Wisdom | 19
Willpower | 16 | Charisma | 22 | Piety | 14
Perception | 21 | Sanity | 18

Other

Status Effects | 'NONE'
Titles | 'True Noble, Lord of Escanso, Crown Lord of the Western High Forest, Protect of the Last Crown'
Affiliations | 'Wolf Ryder (Husband), 'Helios (Fellowship)'
Companions | 'Wolf Ryder, Alissa, Hanafuria, Roxanne Succubus, Ciel, Lina, Aoi'
Crimes | 'NONE'

The barbecue aroma isn't as strong as it is back home, so we can't smell it from within the embassy, but I summon a bird and tell it to look for an effigy. With sense sharing, everyone can have a nice, stimulating morning as we enjoy the wonders of meat roasting.

Lolo looks under the table, then quickly straightens up, her face stiff in confusion. "Is she…?" She mumbles quietly, dreading the answer.

"Yes, she's milking me. That's her breakfast," I casually answer.

"M-milk-…!"

I give Hukarere a big one, and she hums in satisfaction while caressing herself. The vibration of her throat is quite pleasant, so I give her another as a bonus.

Alissa gives the newest c-m sl-t a sweet smile as she explains, "That's exactly what I taught you to do. If you keep going down this path and join the Companions, you could potentially earn yourself a regular milking position that most Companions would die for."

Hukarere crawls back up to her seat and spits some of her reward into her cup of alcohol to savor it more slowly.

Lolo breathes in deeply, then slowly nods and decides to ignore our eccentricities, resigning herself to the future she has chosen.

Today, the girls would like to study the orbs and test whether they really are the cause of Aoi's magic boost, but Ciel reminds me of some important business that I shouldn't put off any longer.

"You should visit the Oracle, Wolfy," she kindly advises.

Right. Maybe the Oracle can tell us something new about my Gift or that "curse" that doesn't let me sleep without Alissa.

"Can you come with me?" I innocently request. She did a good job calming down Lolo yesterday, so I want to reward her with some private time.

Ciel blushes softly and coyly wonders out loud, "Well… there's no reason for me to say no to that, right…?" Then she glances at Lina, and her gloomy wife gives an approving nod.

I glue myself to Ciel's side and land a hand on her juicyass.

She sighs anxiously as she starts to consider whether or not she should stop me, then I suddenly nom a mouthful of exposed side-pillow, and she gives me a playful slap.

"You're a priestess of Love. It's fine to flaunt your allure just a bit," I assure her, and she relents. Considering how aggressive Roxanne's, Hana's, and Yunia's attires usually are, Ciel is definitely the more conservative one out of all of us, though she ties with Lina sometimes.

We take a comfy ride on the Hyperloop towards the temple, and since the Companions are escorting us, I give in to the temptation and use my mouth on Ciel's huge pair.

"You're going to make me excited…" She whines with a pout, the perfect expression for her juicy lips.

I just squeeze her chocolate milkers and grin while my tongue plays with a dark bit.

The ride is short, so she isn't left too frustrated when we disembark from the monorail.

Our presence at the temple causes a bit of a commotion, even though I've hidden my shiny draconic characteristics with a cloak, and Daddy Xander comes to receive us.

"Your Highness Wolf Ryder, what a pleasure to see you again!" He excitedly exclaims and almost crushes my large draconic hands during our handshake.

I'm a bit weirded out by his enthusiasm. "I'm a rather reserved person, so I'd appreciate it if you considered my visit today a private affair," I politely request.

"We wish to meet with the Oracle," Ciel quietly adds.

"Ah…" Daddy hums in understanding and clamps down on his excitement. "She's with the Seekers, but she doesn't have a lot of duties, so she should be able to receive you after a short wait."

Ciel suddenly becomes quite excited, "That's great, but I have to confess that I don't know how we'd actually go about seeing her."

And he kindly guides, "Well, you can ask for a meeting at the Templar HQ. The Oracle would be eager to meet with someone so obviously Gifted."

"Is it really that 'obvious'?" I grumble with a frown.

Daddy amusedly replies, "Pretty much. The way you hide your powers is a clear warning flag."

And I groan internally. There's no escape; there's always someone cunning enough to see right through me.

Then he politely adds, "But I won't hold you here any further. I know you must be eager to talk to her."

The Seekers of Truth is a Templar order that safeguards the secrets of their lie-detecting method under lock, key, and a few meters of solid steel.

We enter the Templar HQ, and the attendant takes us down into a bunker of solid metal, then we cross through a couple of heavily defended gates before we're taken to a private waiting room. The high security makes us anxious, but I guess it's understandable considering how "mysterious" this Oracle is.

After a mere ten minutes of waiting, we're called in.

How expedient!

"Maybe she was just bored," Roxanne jokes inside my mind.

We walk down a corridor, then we cross through a heavy metal door into a dimly lit but comfy-looking carpeted room. The sparkly glint of emellanat covering every wall catches my attention, and I notice a number of symbols painted in white that remind me of occult stuff. Runes, hieroglyphs, and odd geometrical shapes. There seems to be some sort of pattern to the symbology, but it's too obtuse for us to gain any insight into it, so I just ignore it all.

At the other end of the room, there's a thick glass wall glowing with enchantments, just like the one we have back at our Lord's Hall. And behind it is a petite, masked, imperial woman with her hair tied in a bun. She's just casually lounging on comfortable cushions while snacking on some chocolate and tea.

Her white mask has a cute dog face with its tongue out drawn on it, and her attire is simple but fine-looking robes that seem a bit too loose, instantly awakening the spicy predator within me. That lightly tanned imperial skin is just begging to be painted white while her well-manicured toes are worthy of a chef's kiss.

As we approach, I try to use [Sense Soul] on her, but nothing happens. It seems that the glass wall is blocking it, somehow.

We sit down on the nice pile of cushions in front of the glass, and Ciel hungrily eyes the chocolate snacks on the Oracle's tea table.

"You just had breakfast!" I exasperatedly exclaim through [Bind].

"I uh… just want a taste," she guiltily lies.

"Royal Crown Lords Wolf Ryder and Ciel Ryder. I'm the Oracle," the young woman stoically greets. Her voice is quite soft and pleasing to the ear, and I even sense a hint of high "Charisma."

"Well met," I reply in kind.

Ciel smiles brightly like an angel and nods, "Indeed. It's an honor to finally meet with the famous Oracle."

"Hm…" The woman hums thoughtfully, then she leans forward, seemingly "staring" at me even though her mask doesn't have eye slits. "What are you…?"

"I'm sorry…?" I confusedly reply, my eyebrows a single line of concern.

She grabs her chin and hesitantly continues, "I'm sorry if that sounded offensive, but I have no idea what I'm looking at."

And my concern immediately doubles. "W-what do you mean?"

She shrugs. "That's the problem… I don't know what I'm looking at, but that's not all." -She turns to Ciel- "What have you done to this poor woman, Royal Crown Lord Wolf Ryder?"

"Just Wolf is fine…" I meekly whisper.

"I'm completely fine!" Ciel exclaims, exasperated.

The Oracle calmly nods and continues, "Physically? Yes, but under that…? I'm slightly horrified."

Ciel's mind immediately goes to the gutter, but I have a few hunches about what she's describing.

I stiffly question, "What do you mean…? Do you see some sort of connection between us?"

The Oracle turns back to me and tilts her head in confusion, just like a cute puppy. "'Connection'?"

"I… I obviously have a Gift; doesn't that explain what you're seeing?"

"No. Maybe. I don't know. Every person is different, but both of you are just…" -she shrugs- ''wow,' though you are a lot worse than she is."

Right, I think Gecynd had a similar reaction, but she said that only my soul was borked, not the girls'.

Ciel blinks blankly in disbelief and slowly asks, "Should we be concerned…?"

The Oracle sighs and scratches her head as she thinks. "No… I think… maybe… I don't know. You're the weirdest pair I've seen in my entire life." Then she chuckles softly.

Gecynd once used a specific phrase to describe my Thread, so I try to recall it, "How about… a sea, a stormy sea? Do you see something like that within me?"

Suddenly, the Oracle jumps forward and slams both of her fists against the glass wall. "Who told you that?!" She shouts, irate, making Ciel jump in surprise and wrap her arms around my chest.

"Uhh~…" I hum, a bit distracted by the fleshy masses wrapping around my side.

The Oracle slams her right fist against the glass again to grab my attention. "Answer me! Who told you that?! If you don't tell me, I'll force it out of you through the Seekers!"

It's incredibly jarring how her calm mood has suddenly flipped a complete 180º, but she's really not threatening; it's just the content of her words that worry me.

"Gecynd, the Tree of Mana," I begrudgingly confess.

Her arms fall limp beside her as the anger is instantly snuffed out like a candle. "Oh… well, shit. I'm sorry, I guess it makes sense that she'd be interested in you," she awkwardly admits, then slowly scooches back onto her cushions.

Gods, this woman…

"Why were you so angry?" I stiffly ask, starting to get annoyed.

"That's a secret, I'm sorry," she immediately replies with a flat tone.

I sigh and facepalm while Ciel slowly detaches from me. This is really not how either of us expected things to go.

I shake my head and focus on what's important, "Well. I wanted to learn more about my Gift. Do you have any insight into it that you can share?"

The Oracle "stares" at me again while rubbing her chin thoughtfully, then she wryly answers after a moment, "All I can say is that you're cursed, boy. Did you cheat on or abandon someone…?"

That instantly grabs the attention of all of the girls, even Gify.

I frown concernedly again and hesitantly reply, "Maybe…? It wasn't my fault that we got separated, tho."

Did Lily damn curse me?

"Do you have trouble sleeping? Like, constant nightmares?" The Oracle calmly asks like a physician.

I eagerly answer, "No. I used to. In fact, if I sleep without Alissa, they come back."

But the Oracle just casually hums, "Huh…"

That's not a very reassuring response!

I facepalm again, and Ciel consoles me by gently rubbing my back.

But then the woman concernedly continues, "I don't know if the Goddess of Love likes you or hates you. Maybe both, or maybe someone really wanted you to meet that second woman…"

Wait, what?

"Wait, what?!" I repeat out loud.

She raises her hands and leans back, motioning for restraint. "I wouldn't assume that the Gods are playing with your Fate, but you're either very unlucky or very lucky. Maybe both…?"

I chuckle bitterly. "Yeah, that fits. That's my entire life."

"You're way too young to have gone through all of this, tho."

I just laugh again.

"Do you know how to remove the curse?" Ciel kindly asks.

"It should go away with time as the wounded heart of the abandoned woman heals."

But Lily isn't the kind of person who could be so hateful to the point that she'd curse me.

"Or, if you're a good husband, you can pray to the Goddess of Love for help."

"I think Alissa's Blessing is the 'help' that she gave us," I quietly reply, feeling downcast.

The Oracle nods thoughtfully, then scooches closer to the glass and tenderly apologizes, "Well, I'm sorry for not being able to help more. It's just that people are normally like open books while you two are like a pile of… random things, completely unreadable for me right now."

"Maybe if we came here regularly, you could learn something about us?" Ciel hopefully wonders.

The Oracle responds positively, "Oh, definitely. I'd love to study the two of you and all of your other wives, but I don't think you'll be staying here for long, correct?"

"Yeah, we'll have to return home eventually, and we're kind of busy people," I dejectedly explain.

She kindly comforts me, "That's unfortunate, but we're all young, so we might one day have time for it."

"Indeed," Ciel agrees wholeheartedly.

There's nothing more that the Oracle can do for us today, so we leave.

Intermission – Emperor Andreas Doxa

"How was he?" I ask my adorable little Oracle.

She jumps onto my lap and snuggles up to me as she meekly recalls, "An abomination. Definitely Gifted, but I'd never seen anything like that before. His Thread and soul were so messy and intertwined with… everything that it actually looked frightening; but even worse, it's affecting his wife, too."

I pat her head to calm her down, and she closes her eyes in bliss. "Is he like the others?"

"Yes, his Thread is too short; he's a Realm Traveler."

Intermission end.

A note from Manasong

Hall of Fame of Patrons

The patrons who support Rupegia shall have their names sung by the bards for they deserve the glory and honor. Their names are:

Prince PreownedFIN.

Prince Owldente.

Lord Andrew Meyers.

Lord Novgarod.

Lord Michale Erwin.

Lord Bakerdea.

Lord Maurice.

Lord Mattirro Draca.

Lord Sean Drake.

Lord Mike Bartter.

Lord Warwulfv.

Lord Khristopher Welsh.

Lord DJ.

Lord Tenebris Lupus.

Lord Paul Daval.

Lord Paul Daval.

Lord AndreyUC.

Lord Tmac.

Lord School Work.

Lord Gwendolyn Simmons-LaRose.

Lord CopeyDunt.

Lord James.

Lord BlindTactic.

Lord The Tallest Joshua.

Lord Andrew Hebreard.

Lord litalmexy.

Lord Tyler Mills.

Noble Salty Panda.

Noble Mild Fracas.

Noble Aclys.

Noble CarlBaxter.

Noble d3235.

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Chapter 132: Cards - Part 2

A note from Manasong

Attention: to conform to the limit of mature content (more than just sexual content) allowed in a novel, I've censored this chapter. You can look for the uncensored version here.

"I didn't expect the Oracle to be like that," I remark while absentmindedly while playing with Ciel's fun bags. The endless yellow roofs flying past us as we ride the Hyperloop is quite the soothing sight.

She lays her head on my lap and presents herself to me so that I may indulge in my obsession with her body. Atawha and Aneta are accompanying us, and the two unashamedly stare at the damn pair with envy.

My angel reaches to my face and gently caresses it while she whispers, "What were you expecting…?"

I shrug. "I don't know… but I certainly didn't expect that."

She smiles wryly and breathes deeply because of my teasing. "I'd never heard anything about her personality before, so I also had no expectations going in."

"She screams of spoiled 'Lady' to me," Hana interjects in my mind space, and Yunia agrees.

Makes sense that she'd be the wife of someone important.

"But the way her mood took a sudden turn when I mentioned the 'sea' was suspicious…" I somberly hum, and the mood drops a few degrees in temperature, so I stop playing with Ciel.

Roxanne is the first to pass the "Intelligence" check, so she explains to the others, "She got mad because you said something that only she should know… so, aside from Gecynd, does someone else with the power of an Oracle exist?"

And I quietly add, "Someone who is on bad terms with the imperial Oracle…?"

"Heretics…" Ciel whispers grimly.

I pat her head with one of my hands and whisper back, "Can the Oracle see the future?"

She closes her eyes dispiritedly. "I'm not sure, but I know she's able to warn us of impending catastrophes."

Am I a catastrophe to the heretics? Is that why they're targeting me…?

It seems that our visit to the Oracle wasn't completely fruitless, after all. But now the question is: how do you fight against someone who can see the future?

Stress makes me h-rny, so I sneak a tentacle under Ciel's dress and give her the relief she's yearning for.

While we're on the Hyperloop, the diplomat for the High Forest sends a message to the girls, warning us that my duel with Alki-Alki was witnessed by a hidden recruiter for some nobles, and now, the "humiliation" that I made Little Alki go through has entered public knowledge.

It's a bit late, though, since Vanea seemingly already knew of that yesterday, but alright.

Then we reach the embassy without any issues and resume playing around with the orbs, but we quickly realize a problem with the idea of eating them: I can't because my body dissolves just from touching one.

"As long as it breaks inside you, it should be fine, right?" Hana wonders with a smirk.

"Theoretically…" Lina concernedly hums while staring at the orbs with her gloomy eyes.

"Can't you absorb it through your tentacles?" Alissa suggests while suggestively handling one of my pink toys.

"Good idea," I hum positively, then I put an orb on a pedestal and create a purple cocoon around it while making sure that it's as close as possible without actually touching the orb. I also fill the cocoon with pleasure structures because why the hell not?

There's no need for any fancy mechanism, so I just [Equip] my sword and stab the orb through the cocoon.

"HHNGH~…!" I groan and as the orb explodes into magical dust that's instantly absorbed by my extended soul.

As the summit clears, I realize that the orb had a bit of "spice" to it. I could almost taste the red, elemental pseudo-mana that was inside it, just like I can when I've put a shit ton of points into [Sense Mana].

Ciel and Roxanne excitedly swallow their orbs while the rest of the girls do the same after a short moment, then our room is filled with the blissful sounds of female whispers as the orbs break one by one.

I use my tentacles to pull up Ciel's dress, then Hana gives me some pointers in not-shibari to help me properly tie up the depraved angel in the most alluring way possible.

We'll string her up, and then everyone will get a turn using her as they wish while we feed her orbs.

The best part about using tentacles for her bindings is that I can constantly feel her every curve, and the Gods know how much I thank them for every single one that they gave to Ciel.

We have an party while abusing the orbs and my Eia extract, but then we start to feel groggy and anemic, so I release Ciel so that she can use [Diagnosis] on us.

"Just some mild poisoning from magical compounds caused by an imbalance in the internal mana circulation," she warmly explains while Lina cleans her bountiful chest of milk.

"Uh, what?" Roxanne grunts confusedly.

She gently pats the diligent little girl as she explains, "Our bodies produce and leak mana particles, which are generally attracted to our blood, so they flow along our veins and have a number of positive interactions with our bodies. If that 'blood mana' becomes tainted by, say, drinking too many MP potions or the magical compounds from this orb, then it can mildly disrupt our bodily functions and cause adverse side effects. [Purify Body] should be enough to cure us."

Lina looks up, and they both kiss, sharing the bounty between them as their tongues lovingly caress one another, then Ciel instant-casts [Holy Spirit], and the tap-dancing, masked, little flame goes around healing everyone.

I make Yunia gag while I ponder, "What makes these orbs so special? Can we make more?"

Roxanne burns the image of my abuse and humiliation of Yunia into her memory as she eagerly explains, "It's made of a magical, unstable material that doesn't leave any harmful physical elements behind after it breaks down. If I could get it in dust form, it'd be the perfect material for a potion, really."

Lina suddenly breaks the kiss, making Ciel pout, to add, "It's really hard to 'see' the code of the enchantment, but it seems to only convert mana into something that's both barely physical and almost mana, making it possible to create a physical cage to trap the pseudo-mana, which is easier to create than a fully-magical cage to trap raw mana. In the end, it's similar to the Chimera storage crystals, just less efficient."

I hum thoughtfully and summarize, "Right, mana doesn't interact with matter, but the pseudo-mana has been given physical attributes, so it does interact with matter."

Yunia's throat is currently occupied by my ugly thing, so she uses [Bind] to share, "Perhaps we should try to find a way to produce that pseudo-mana without the orbs. It's most likely the secret to Aoi's unusual amount of growth yesterday."

"Stimulating magical growth through the forceful absorption of mana…" Roxanne quietly theorizes, then orders Alissa to eat her out.

"Isn't that… just a normal… MP potion?" Klein remarks as she recovers from Hana's strong fingers.

The pale succubus closes her eyes in delight. "Potions have a lot more added to them… ahn~… so that they replenish your MP."

We party a bit more until our lust subsides, then we continue our mana training for the rest of the morning.

"Wolfy~… you have a message from the Gartanias," Osaria sultrily whispers to her little bird, and both it and I shiver in bliss from the sound of her voice.

That's Ankara's family, the thickheaded and grumpy young noble that Lyle wants me to help.

They want to set up a meeting in Goldcross about a "business" proposal, but that'll actually just be them begging for us to help because they don't really have anything that interests us.

"Actually… what about their mine?" Lina interjects, and I raise an eyebrow at her, prompting her to elaborate. "My parents are used to working with metal equipment, but there's hardly any in Escanso since there are no mines nearby, so how about we get the Gartanias to sell their metal to us at a discount?"

Well, that's an interesting idea.

The important thing is that we want a discount, not free goods because we don't want to bankrupt them. And so, we dictate a letter that the golems write for us, telling Osaria what to negotiate for in our stead.

The chef listens to our request for variety and serves us a surprisingly unhealthy imperial staple, butter bread lightly fried on butter. It's a bit odd to see this dish at lunchtime because back on Earth, I'd only ever seen it served for breakfast.

I pass on eating rice today so that I don't overdo my carbs. Even though I'm super physically active, I can still get fat if I don't pay attention to my nutrition.

We don't plan on returning to the dungeon today, but I still unleash a collection of elementals over there so that they can collect more orbs for us.

I also create a few more baby golems for the OG golems to study.

For the afternoon, we decide to go for magical training since we're all feeling rather inspired. It's possible that the orbs we ate have something to do with it, but we might as well take advantage of this opportunity.

I feel like I'm nearing the end of my humanoidization training, so I choose to continue my work on that for today. Horns are easy to hide, and the hands and feet are almost there, so now I need to focus on the tail as it seems to be the hardest to change.

Alissa begins learning [Dream Veil], but she can only produce small puffs of a weird, faintly iridescent mist. Hana plays with the diamond orb Artifact, and it seems to inspire her a bit to try out [Godly Language]. Since I'm busy, Roxanne recruits Ted to help her finish learning [Warp Space], which should give her [Explosion] a boost. Ciel plays with the spare, ship-worthy [Fly] gem we have because she's a bit interested in how we could better weaponize [Redirect Mana]. We've already successfully used it that way twice, and it could've been useful during the Intervention when the God of the Sun filled her with power…

I suddenly feel a pang of jealousy when I think about a male God "filling" my wife.

Something playfully slaps me on the back of my head, and I turn around to retaliate, but none of the girls are giving any obvious signs that they're guilty, making me very suspicious.

Are you messing with me, Knowledge?

But she doesn't answer me.

Anyway, Lina felt very underpowered against the Symbols of Mankind, so she does some agility training, aiming for either a better "Speed" or [Enhanced Speed], and she also tries to speed up her self-anchoring for better mobility. Aoi trains her fire breath, and her quick magical growth has helped her increase her fire's temperature enough that it's now pretty close to melting steel. Yunia is feeling a bit offended that Hana's magical growth is near hers, so she focuses on her still unlearned magical skills.

Once I remove my horns, Gify pops onto my head and makes a nest in my thick, black hair.

"Gih," she dismissively remarks, offending the dragon within me.

"The purpose of my horns is to flaunt my masculinity," I snootily retort.

Then she splays out her little limbs, and her white wings drape down on my temples like flaps. Normally, my horns reduce her play area, so she's glad that I'm starting to hide them.

Alissa frowns once she sees the griffin spirit ruffling my hair, but since we're in private, she doesn't complain.

But then the maids announce that we have visitors, and Gify chirps out loud in annoyance since she's now forced to give up her nest once again.

Alissa and I go down to the meeting room, and we find a familiar-looking weredog woman waiting for us. There's also a boring-looking imperial man, but his presence is as powerful as a wet fart, so I don't think he's here to talk to us.

The woman has shoulder-length black hair; the characteristic pointy ears of a Doberman; a thick, upright, black tail; a rather yellowy tone for her skin; a flat, black nose that looks like a snout; and an elegant, square face to finish off her striking look. She's wearing a brown cloak that hides her black scale armor and the shortsword at her waist, clear evidence that she came here incognito.

When we enter, they both stand up and bow deeply, but only the woman speaks. "Royal R-Ryders! I'm Andrea, lieutenant of the Plifori defense company, and I've come to send word from the Faiumi Merchant Alliance!" She stiffly exclaims.

"Rise," I order, then I take a closer look at her, trying to remember where I've seen her face before, and Alissa notices her tail threatening to wag as I approach. For once, I've found a commoner who isn't scared of me. "You seem quite familiar, but I don't remember from where," I soothingly state.

She nods and wistfully explains, "You saved my life. More than a year ago, I was working for Miss Hilde in the Sea of Trees, but we got attacked by an ancient dragon, and Tadita and I stupidly charged at it. Miss Hilde was tragically killed by the beast, but you still managed to save our lives."

Lina suddenly gasps as she finally pays attention to Andrea. "Yes! It's her! Andrea and Tadita were our bodyguards!" She exclaims through [Bind].

Oh~…

"Oh~… I remember, now," I hum warmly while Alissa and I take our seats. "You said you were going back to Mac Gantus, but I'm surprised that we've actually managed to meet once again."

Her tail wags once, and she shyly chuckles. "Well, your name is very popular among the mercenary companies, so I pulled some favors to get this assignment," she coyly confesses.

Oh, ho, ho… is that another woman "interested" in my draconic charms that I see?

I do remember very well that Andrea was quite hesitant to part ways with us.

"Well, we're happy to see that you're doing well," Alissa smoothly swoops in to begin her work as the best wingwoman in existence.

"It's nothing compared to how you are doing," Andrea cheerfully replies.

And we chuckle softly, except for the imperial man, who just subtly rolls his eyes.

Andrea doesn't notice him, but she knows when it's time to get serious, so she deftly moves the conversation forward, "But let's leave the casual talk for after we finish our business."

I nod and assume a more serious tone, "Certainly. Now, what does the Alliance want with us?"

Her demeanor suddenly becomes alert and composed, just like a guard dog who's ready for work. "It has come to our attention that you're… 'opposed' to the mercenary company Katasko, so the Alliance wishes to establish a communication channel with your family. They feel that there's a good opportunity for them to work together with you and rid the empire of that filth."

I guess it wasn't such a bad idea to act so aggressively against Katasko and the Alkimeonids.

Yunia suddenly struts into the room, her glorious golden drills bouncing with every step, her half-naked body instantly charming the feeble imperial man, and her open heels making muffled clacks with every step her glorious feet take.

She takes a seat on my other side, and I put my claws in between her thighs, then she crosses her legs, squishing my hand against the thin fabric of her dousnadeia. It's time for negotiations, so we need to assert dominance, but grabbing a pillow would simply be too crude to do to an elf.

But not so for Alissa, who leans against me so that I can swing an arm around her and gently squeeze her softness which is perfectly sized for my hand. The thin, red, not-kimono she's wearing is quite loose, allowing my fingers to visibly sink into it.

Yunia gives the stunned Andrea a haughty stare as she calmly inquires, "We'd love to negotiate with this Alliance, but first, we need to know: why us? Why now? Why the secrecy?"

The attractive Doberman woman swallows heavily, then shares a look with her companion and collects her thoughts for a short moment. Though stunned by Yunia's grand entrance, she quickly recomposes herself and assuredly answers, "The Alliance works primarily for the imperial Princes, so its members try to avoid the petty scheming that the rest of the nobility enjoys indulging in, but the Purification is an opportunity that they really don't want to miss. There are a lot of people with greedy eyes who would love to challenge the Alliance and steal their Titles, among other things, so they waited until someone with sufficient reputation appeared. Though I know it won't be easy to get them to commit to this fight, you can thank Nour Asaf's parents for putting in a good word in your favor."

Then she hands us a letter.

Dear Wolf Ryder and the Ryder family of Lords,

The Asaf family apologizes for not meeting with you in person, but the current state of the capital prevents us from openly associating with anyone for now. To make up for that, we've convinced the Alliance to open this channel with your family. Don't think of this as a favor, but instead, just an investment for a better relationship between our families in the future.

Alissa then encourages Yunia and me through [Bind], "We have the Alliance on one side, and Vanea on the other, with our family as the only link between them. We can come out on top if we properly mediate this."

The cards are consistently revealing themselves in our favor, so the elven queen begins to begrudgingly accept that participating in the Purification might be worth the fallout from the Council's disapproval.

The kidnapping of Katasko's commanders will throw their ranks into disarray, so that'll be the perfect opportunity to pounce and tear them to shreds. Not only that, but we still have my [Gate] coordinate in Cleinias' home, and though using it will be extremely dangerous, a card given by divine will certainly won't have anything less than a massive impact.

I vibrate my pinky finger and give Yunia's nub a very subtle spirit touch to show how pleased I am with her.

She tightens her grip on my hand and presses it harder against her. As much as her logic dictates that she doesn't want to do this, coming out on top of all of this scheming is making her quite "excited."

A note from Manasong

Hall of Fame of Patrons

The patrons who support Rupegia shall have their names sung by the bards for they deserve the glory and honor. Their names are:

Prince PreownedFIN.

Prince Owldente.

Lord Andrew Meyers.

Lord Novgarod.

Lord Michale Erwin.

Lord Bakerdea.

Lord Maurice.

Lord Mattirro Draca.

Lord Sean Drake.

Lord Mike Bartter.

Lord Warwulfv.

Lord Khristopher Welsh.

Lord DJ.

Lord Tenebris Lupus.

Lord Paul Daval.

Lord Paul Daval.

Lord AndreyUC.

Lord Tmac.

Lord School Work.

Lord Gwendolyn Simmons-LaRose.

Lord CopeyDunt.

Lord James.

Lord BlindTactic.

Lord The Tallest Joshua.

Lord Andrew Hebreard.

Lord litalmexy.

Lord Tyler Mills.

Lord Philip.

Lord Sam.

Lord Warwulfv.

Noble Salty Panda.

Noble Mild Fracas.

Noble Aclys.

Noble CarlBaxter.

Noble d3235.

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Chapter 132: Cards - Part 3

A note from Manasong

Attention: to conform to the limit of mature content (more than just sexual content) allowed in a novel, I've censored this chapter. You can look for the uncensored version here.

Alissa opens the door to the meeting room, and I barge into it, but I don't go for the armchairs or sofas and just press Andrea's back against the wall while we madly kiss each other, her legs tightly wrapped around my waist.

She breaks the kiss to desperately pull off her gambeson, and her thick tail hits the wall repeatedly with dull thuds, a testament to her excitement.

Once the wooly shirt armor is gone, I see a nice bounce as there's now only a thin and simple piece of fabric between her delicious bits and my salivating mouth.

But then her eyes fall on Alissa, and she hesitates.

"I like to watch," my foxy slave announces as she spreads her legs and gently caresses herself.

Andrea's eyebrows rise up in surprise, but then I grab her face and kiss her again. Our tongues wrestle ferociously, fueled by pure lust, but our kiss is so messy that I kind of do feel like I'm kissing an actual dog.

Then I put her feet back down and start working on her scaled pants. She helps me free them, and our hands fumble around until, suddenly, her pants are gone, revealing her semi-transparent, alluring, white underwear.

I look up and see her take her shirt off, revealing her also semi-transparent white bra that hides nothing at all.

"You planned for this," I point out the obvious as I admire her hard body. She's like Hana, though a bit shorter and with a considerably smaller chest, but she's still alluring as hell.

She leans closer, and her fragrant, shoulder-length hair tickles my face. "I didn't use my favor just to meet with you…" She whispers sultrily and kisses one of my horns, then reaches into my pants. "I heard some things about you that I didn't believe at first… but the moment I saw you, I knew they were all true."

I grab her neck with my hand and assert, "I don't care about what you heard; I'll prove everything right in just a minute."

She chuckles heartily, but her breath quickens, and Alissa smells the subtle coming from the b-tch.

She's in heat, and I'm the only one who can give her the relief she needs.

I carry the exhausted weredog beauty to our bed so that she can recover. She isn't done yet, but she does need a little breather.

And while we wait, Andrea's companion finishes his work in the meeting room that we've chosen to use for this event. After drawing a silver pentagram on the floor, he lights up the incense on the four esoteric-looking altars, each one at a different tip of the five-pointed star.

I feel guilty leaving Yunia to handle it while I'm here, doing another woman, but I don't think I'm at my best today. My mind is starting to wander a bit too much.

"Shouldn't you be there?" I question Andrea as I caress her head.

She just shakes her head; "I'm not allowed to. The meeting is supposed to be private."

And in agreement with her words, the imperial man exits the room, leaving the rest of my wives alone with the altars.

Alissa helps Andrea do her thing just to satisfy my lesbianism fetish.

I damn love you, Alissa.

"I love you, too," she warmly responds telepathically, and her fluffy orange tail wags in happiness.

A couple that does together, stays together.

The meeting is about to start, so I focus on it through the girls.

Yunia steps into the silver circle at the fifth tip of the star, and the whole drawing lights up, then the smoke from the incense starts to coalesce into the shapes of four people from the bust-up.

After a good half-minute, the smoke shapes gain color and start to move.

The first one to her right is a very thin and tall woman with such a horrible case of resting bitch face that could easily pass for an elf if not for her feathery white hair, revealing that she's a wereowl. She's wearing a body-conforming, white feather dress that perfectly accentuates her slenderness.

The second shape is actually the most surprising as we see a huge, brown, female bearfolk, and her daring smile only reinforces how intimidating she looks. Her hair is swept back and tied up, but we can still see plenty of feminine characteristics that make her kind of attractive. If anything, her massive breasts would be a delight to fondle, and they're so prominent that not even her tight, velvet, military-like uniform can hide them.

The third is a mature human man with a pale face, a light stubble, and the characteristic brown hair of the people of Faium. He's nowhere near as striking as the other four, but that doesn't matter as he's still pretty handsome, and I even sense the air of a high level coming from him.

The fourth and last is a large, fiery dragonkin man with black scales, a pale face, and such a stoic expression that he's almost robotic. He's wearing a simple ascetic robe, giving him the air of a statue of a Greek philosopher rather than a living person.

"A Ryder, I assume?" The wereowl woman impassively inquires.

"Yulania Ryder," my elven queen replies in kind.

"And your husband…?" The dragonkin man presses, and we detect a hint of [Godly Language] in his voice. Though his tone is still perfectly neutral, the skill puts so much power into his words that it takes a lot of effort for the girls to not bend over to him, and that riles me up a bit.

"He's listening," she curtly responds and leaves it at that.

The bearfolk woman raises her eyebrows in amused surprise while the other three simply remain silent.

They stare at each other for a few seconds, then the wereowl composedly continues, "Very well, Crown Lord Yulania. The four of us are the representatives of the Faiumi Merchant Alliance. I'm Princess Sa'Haa, the bearfolk is Princess Urmeie, the human is Decien Omari, and the dragonkin is Centum Mako.

What the hell… two Princesses?!

This news isn't taken well by the girls, and Alissa and Yunia both groan internally.

Lina's Trivia: The imperial Princes and Princesses who are interested in competing for the throne each get a territory to govern in Faium so that they may learn the ropes of statesmanship.

The problem with getting involved with them is that they're even more fickle and ambitious than we are.

Yulania shows not one hint of our internal moaning as she politely inquires, "Forgive me for my ignorance, but why is a merchant alliance interested in the Purification?"

Omari casually answers, "For the same reason that a Lord would dabble in experimental planes: resources."

"Money buys the resources you need to grasp actual power, girl," Urmeie adds with a rather condescending tone, enough to receive a subtle glare from her sister.

And Yunia mimics the wereowl Princess, but she quickly moves on so that they don't dwell on it, "Very well. Let's negotiate your participation."

And the way she deliberately positions herself as the centerpiece doesn't go unnoticed by Omari and Sa'Haa.

The minutiae of the division of spoils are lost on me, but even I notice that their proposal is heavily in their favor.

Before they become too sure of their control of the negotiation, Yunia politely interrupts them, "I believe that the Alliance is misunderstanding my family's situation. We do have reliable allies that we'll bring into this fight, so these terms are far too unfavorable for us to even consider them."

I find it kind of funny to call Vanea a "reliable ally," but what's even funnier is that Yunia's not lying! Vanea is actually trustworthy!

Though, including her in this negotiation is kind of a bluff.

And Sa'Haa immediately calls us on it, "And who is this 'ally' of yours?" She calmly inquires, restraining her skepticism as best she can; it's just that she's bad at it.

But Yunia already had an answer prepared, "We prefer not to reveal their identity until we have a guarantee that you'll pledge towards our cause."

The slender woman narrows her already narrow eyes even further. "How peculiar," she hums with sarcasm as thinly-veiled as an elven dousnadeia.

But that was just a setup so that Yunia could pull out the ball gag and assert dominance. Her tone is so calm and smugly self-confident that it gives me a boner. "We know that all you seek is our Gifts to ensure that you'll attain victory. But… you can either take us at our word, or there's no deal. We'd be quite content with returning to the High Forest without participating in the Purification, for that's a decision that the Elder Council would certainly approve of."

The Alliance falls silent, but the bear woman's smile slowly widens, revealing her many white fangs, and the dragonkin gently raises his eyebrows in respectful surprise.

While Yunia's dignified and solemn expression is as rock-solid as ever, all she wants is for me to bend her over and do her right in front of these c-ckheads. She's loving the feeling of power from being in full control of the negotiations.

But then Sa'Haa frowns as she realizes something. "Gifts? As in, plural…?" She questions, sounding faintly incredulous.

Yunia gently nods and affirms, "Precisely. You're not just asking for the help of one Gifted, but eight of them."

Aside from Omari quietly breathing in deeply, silence falls over them again for a brief moment.

"I'll fight with you," Urmeie suddenly grunts, her deep voice booming across the silent room.

"Sister… this is unbecoming of a Princess!" Sa'Haa hisses a very stern warning.

But the busty brown bear simply shrugs and snorts loudly, "Hah! I'm a brute who mingles with the lesser, sister. It's your fault for believing that I'd ever change."

The wereowl groans out loud and facepalms.

Is "lesser" referring to us?

"Most likely," Yunia dryly replies in my mind.

Sa'Haa simply swallows bitterly, resigning herself to the fact that she can't control her sister.

So Urmeie turns her intense stare towards Yunia once again and soberly states, "I pledge my hammer and my knights to fight alongside you."

"The negotiations haven't finished," Mako stoically points out, his annoyingly powerful voice irking me again.

The bear snorts, and her considerable bosom jiggles. "I don't care. I'll trust that these little ones know how to give a fair share to a warrior Princess…" -Her gaze suddenly turns predatory- "or I can just bite it off myself." Then her form suddenly loses shape and turns back into smoke.

Sa'Haa sighs, Omari smiles wryly, and Mako quietly hums, "Our condolences." Though this time, there's no power infusing his voice.

"I'm sorry…?" Yunia confusedly blurts out.

The last remaining Princess nervously adjusts her feathery hair as she appeals, "Urmeie is, unfortunately, our strongest military asset, so let's work together to keep her contained."

Yunia immediately walls up and makes her stance clear, "I need to assert that we do have a clear line where things might be more effort than they're worth."

But that response just irritates Sa'Haa further.

Omari comes in with a diplomatic tone, trying to appease Yunia, "Princess Urmeie is a simple-minded woman. I don't want to assume, but I believe you have experience 'dealing' with dragonkin, so that same approach should suffice for her."

"I'm sure your husband will enjoy it," Mako adds with a tone as gentle as sandpaper to the ass. He doesn't seem to approve of my "appetite."

Hana has to cover her mouth to muffle her chortling.

Do they know who I am…? Are they seriously asking me to do her into submission…?

"I have no idea, and I'm a bit afraid to inquire further…" Yunia tiredly replies through [Bind].

Sa'Haa restlessly taps her forehead as she interjects, "We're getting sidetracked. Let's return to our negotiations."

I slow down until Andrea's bliss passes, and her body completely relaxes, so I finally vacate.

Alissa immediately comes in to clean up and happily licks the mess I made while her ass shakes alluringly thanks to her wagging tail. Andrea whispers softly from Alissa's experienced tongue, then the dog woman begins to play absentmindedly with my slave's pointy ears. She knows very well how much wereanimals enjoy that.

Then I lay beside her and caress her head, returning the affection she's giving Alissa.

As time passes, my mind once again wanders towards the Gifted, and I feel a small flame of anger being rekindled within my heart, but I immediately snuff it out.

This isn't the time for that. I need to be patient so that we don't mess this up, and we have something a lot more important to deal with right now.

Having to keep it off my mind does make me feel a bit "off," so I'm thankful that the girls are happy to help since I'm too distracted to give it my all.

"I've never done like that before…" The raven-haired beauty hums, and the misty-eyed gaze of a woman completely satisfied is enough to pull me out of my pathetic restlessness.

"You're always welcome to pay us a visit," I huskily suggest.

She closes her eyes and innocently wonders, "Maybe if I convince my superiors to expand towards the High Forest."

And I earnestly encourage her, "That may be a good idea considering what's going to happen soon."

She opens her eyes and gives me a keen gaze. "I… heard you're not very fond of Katasko."

I smile sadistically and slyly reveal, "Goldcross' market for mercenaries might suddenly find itself more competitive as a big company leaves the scene."

"Hngh…" She grunts as Alissa tongues her, then she chuckles heartily. "I never imagined that you'd show yourself to be such a cunning person."

And I humbly deflect, "I never did anything alone. Eight minds together think better than just one."

"How sweet…"

I kiss her forehead. "I'm not just an insatiable dragon…" But then I sigh. "The meeting has finished."

We stare at each other wistfully as we build up our motivation to get out of bed.

"Well, I guess this much is fine. I got enough plowing to last me a few months," she cheekily remarks and glances at my still erect member, then quietly adds, "though I could still go for a bit more…"

Alissa finishes the collection, then crawls up Andrea's body to share the load. This loyal b-tch has quickly learned that this is too valuable to let it go to waste by being washed away and obediently swallows it.

Then we give her a quick massage/bath and help her put on her armor again.

"You continue to surprise me," she whispers warmly as Alissa and I work together on her.

And I show a bit of humbleness again, "It'll never be beneath me to show kindness to the women that I share intimacy with."

"You continue to surprise me…" She whispers again.

Yunia sits on her throne and elegantly crosses her legs, then grins victoriously while her subjects kneel before her, in admiration of her cunning and awe of her magnificence.

Roxanne gently takes off the queen's vine-like heels and kisses the top of her foot, then does the same with the other. She uses her sensuous and delicate charms to work on the lower limbs and show them the reverence that they deserve.

Lina sits on Her Majesty's lap, wearing only thin red ribbons that Yunia slowly undoes to appreciate her frail cuteness as the little girl looks up at her with puppy eyes and worships her superior elven body, begging to receive her caresses.

Hana and Aoi provide entertainment with their wrestling, each repeatedly getting the upper hand in their carnal battle but quickly losing it as the bliss only strengthens their resolve instead of weakening it.

A red-faced Ciel dances while wearing a criminally small elven not-bikini coupled with beautiful jewelry and the elegant hanging strips of cloth that flow through the air as they follow her every move. Her clothes are tied in precise ways following Rupegian not-shibari wisdom to enhance her voluptuous, womanly parts so that they jiggle alluringly as she strikes spicy poses.

The golems blow a gentle wind towards her, making her dousnadeia wave softly while Gify applies a relaxing massage to her body.

"Today is a glorious day, for I have achieved something truly great for our family! Ohohohohohoho~…!" Her Grand Royal High Majesty Yulania Ryder announces out loud and laughs pompously, her chest heaving so vigorously that her glorious golden drills bounce and show their envious spring-like quality. She's letting the Evil Lady possess her and taint her dignified demeanor, turning her into a haughty little girl who's deserving of a spanking.

But then I walk into the room, and everyone stops.

The arrogant woman tries to make me bend to her will, but I'm the Master of Masters, and so, I stroll forward without faltering.

"It seems that someone is also in need of 'obedience training,'" I sing cheerily.

"Yes, she is, Master," my loyal fox gently agrees, but her smug gaze is dripping with sadism.

One by one, all of my other wives move out of the way until I'm facing the queen herself, then I put one clawed foot on the armrest of her throne and lean forward.

"Good job, whore. You've actually succeeded in something that isn't just showing off your hot body," I harshly sneer. Meanwhile, Alissa ties her arms to the armrests to prevent her escape.

"No thanks to you," she barks back with a defiant glare.

And I slap her, but due to my claws, it only produces a dull noise, making it seem more like a punch than a slap, though four small red lines of blood appear on her cheek, ruining the absolute perfection of her face, and that's good enough.

Then I growl into her long, elven ear, "I didn't give you permission to speak, so I'll punish you by blocking your throat completely."

"Wha-…"

I pull It out and grab her head, then I shove it down her throat, interrupting her question.

There's still much that I want to do to her, and our time is limited. I release her head, and she just slumps in her seat, her gaze unfocused as her lifeless, strikingly beautiful blue eyes stare at nothing.

Her seat has a small wet spot though, and it isn't from her pissing herself. It's from excitement.

Yunia's swine-like squeals resound through the room. Her arms are tied to her throne as I do her like a dog, and the clamps on her sensitive parts sway with every thrust, causing small shocks of delightful pain to course through her body.

But her rightfully earned "abuse" is interrupted by the arrival of an important message.

Emperor Andreas Doxa has returned to the capital, and he has invited us to a gathering of the high nobility at the Throne tomorrow night. He also plans to hold our swearing ceremony right before the gathering, so we answer that we'll be available and honored to participate in it.

Just when Yunia's squeals start to gain volume again, we're interrupted one more time, and this messenger looks visibly out of breath as he has come to deliver his message to us as fast as possible.

A junior general of the imperial army would like to talk with us tomorrow morning about our Raki airplanes and the possibility of future demonstrations of new inventions.

After a quick inquiry with the diplomat, we learn that this general Reinhold is a famous young Gifted like me.

A note from Manasong

Hall of Fame of Patrons

The patrons who support Rupegia shall have their names sung by the bards for they deserve the glory and honor. Their names are:

Prince PreownedFIN.

Prince Owldente.

Lord Andrew Meyers.

Lord Novgarod.

Lord Michale Erwin.

Lord Bakerdea.

Lord Maurice.

Lord Mattirro Draca.

Lord Sean Drake.

Lord Mike Bartter.

Lord Warwulfv.

Lord Khristopher Welsh.

Lord DJ.

Lord Tenebris Lupus.

Lord Paul Daval.

Lord Paul Daval.

Lord AndreyUC.

Lord Tmac.

Lord School Work.

Lord Gwendolyn Simmons-LaRose.

Lord CopeyDunt.

Lord James.

Lord BlindTactic.

Lord The Tallest Joshua.

Lord Andrew Hebreard.

Lord litalmexy.

Lord Tyler Mills.

Lord Philip.

Lord Sam.

Lord Warwulfv.

Noble Salty Panda.

Noble Mild Fracas.

Noble Aclys.

Noble CarlBaxter.

Noble d3235.

Leave a rating or a review to help me rise to the top or fix my shameful understanding of prose.

Take a look over my blog where all information about the world of Rupegia will be posted.

Join the Discord and discuss, or rant, or meme, or try and fight me so your waifu gets more screentime.

Become a Patron and read chapters in advance, or read the side-stories, or leave your mark on the story, or help choose the next artwork or the next side-story.

Chapter 133: Tipping Point - Part 1

We were busy during the day, so for the bath, we invite Lolo to have some fun with us.

I proudly carry the abused elven queen in my arms as she hides her seed-stained face against my chest, making me feel mild disgust, but that's just fuel for her degradation fetish.

The signs of the abuse are pretty clear on her body, so Lolo tries very hard to hide her concern, but her demeanor becomes quite tense.

"She likes to be degraded, so we did some roleplay to fulfill her fantasies," Ciel kindly explains, still wearing her dancer outfit.

But Lolo is bewildered. "'Roleplay'? Like, pretending you're in a play and using [Acting] while having sex?" She questions while eyeing Yunia repeatedly.

Roxanne swings an arm around Lolo's shoulder and suggestively depicts, "Yes. It's like playing out an erotic novel in real life, where the heroine is dominated, abused, raped, and forced to orgasm repeatedly until her will breaks and she submits to the male's virility, accepting him as her owner and surrendering her heart to him, then worshiping his superior meat club of love for the rest of her life."

Lolo slowly turns her head to me while anxiously patting her floppy ears, completely ignoring how Roxanne's hand runs over her back with suggestive motions.

"A perfect fit, isn't it? A domineering dragon and a submissive elf," Klein wryly remarks.

"Don't forget your place, slut," I growl threateningly.

She rolls her eyes and smiles, then begrudgingly shows her obedience, "Yes, Master."

Lolo's eyes open wide as she stares at Klein, her fear now visibly rising to eleven, then she begins to slow down as she mumbles, "Uh… I, uh…"

I stop and give her a gentle, comforting look. "I don't do this kind of thing without being explicitly asked," I reassure her.

Everyone drops the act and gives her cheeky grins.

"Oh…" She mumbles in realization, then blushes and starts pouting, but she also fails to hide her smile.

Hana smirks and teases, "And you certainly don't seem to be the kind that would eagerly submit, right?" Then she slaps Lolo's ass.

The bunny girl grits her teeth annoyedly and actually shows some defiance. "I'm not-… I'm not like that…" She hesitantly states, not completely sure of it herself.

"Uh huh…" Hana hums, totally believing her.

"Your loss. It's quite fun," Alissa casually adds, and flashes her a sweet, innocent smile.

Lolo looks like she needs a drink as she realizes that she might've gotten herself involved with a bunch of crazy people.

After our bath, we finally have our share of monster meat, and we invite the High Officers, Nikolas, and a few knights.

The maids work together to carry into the room a huge log of Behemoth rib that has been roasted all day long inside an effigy. It's heavily marbled, so after taking off the charred layer, it drips with fat that had been soaking the meat while it roasted, softening it so much that we can easily pull away the individual fibers with our fingers. It has a strong taste due to its age, but it goes perfectly with imperial breads or just plain rice, and the girls also recommend butterbeer to accompany it.

Aoi is the one who eats the most by far, demonstrating how her stomach might actually be a black hole just like Gify's, though with a noticeably larger capacity.

"You should eat well, High Officer Vagante. Get some meat on your bones," Palo teases the spindly elf.

Silvano gives the massively swole knight a suspicious side-eye. "I'm fine, thank you. Too much mass will make me slow, and that would be the death of me," he politely replies and gracefully eats his little bite.

Palo's dazzlingly bright smile subtly widens. "And what happens when you can't poke the enemy?"

Silvano pompously adjusts his fabulous, straight, silver hair behind his ear as he calmly explains, "I retreat. I use swords, not a hammer. You don't just swing them around like a club and expect them to be effective, so what would you need 'Strength' for?"

Palo pompously runs his hand over his fabulous, short, sweptback, golden hair as he continues the assault, "Does that happen often? I heard you were quite the duelist, but how does that translate to fighting against real enemies?"

Then the effeminate elf makes such a haughty expression that it almost gives me a boner. "Everything living has eyes that can be poked and give me access to the brains, so I've never retreated even once yet, except when fighting against His Highness Wolf and Her Highness Hana, but surely they don't count?"

And Palo makes such a stereotypical elven smug expression that I feel like punching him. "What about that undead in the Misty Forest?"

But Silvano is unfazed, "Not even our Lords fought them head-on."

The muscular elf nods. "Hm… that's fair."

But the beautiful elf's eye twitches in annoyance. "Fair? You unload questions upon my face and then walk away without even throwing me a coin. Now you'll sit there and enjoy the schooling I'm going to drive into you about what it means to really go past your limits."

The two are making me uncomfortable, so I just tune out their conversation.

"Is there a part that's still bleeding?" Azador excitedly asks the Chef.

And the mature silver woman shifts uncomfortably on her feet as she explains, "It's not blood, Sir, but yes, at the center, you'll find some of the meat still dripping with red water."

"Can you get me a slice, then?" He hums as he leans forward, almost drooling with hunger.

She eyes Azador's blood-red flowers growing on his white beard and softly nods.

Aoi stares at him with her innocent draconic curiosity as she asks, "You like to eat raw meat?"

He smirks as he glances at her, then stares intensely at the log of meat as it's easily opened up. "Not actually raw, but bloody. I like the bitter and metallic taste."

Okay~… I also tune out that one.

Alcander is yapping to Nikolas and Anton about his time in the capital, and the pompous way the imperial noble reminisces doesn't seem to be going well with his two talking partners.

Ciel's casual chat with one of the knights seems a lot more pleasant to listen to, but then things become a bit serious as he mentions the growing number of people praying in the Prasa de Ananci, which is right before our huge portrait on the Shell.

"The reason why they might be praying is what concerns me," the austere golden elf affirms soberly.

Ciel kindly hums, "What do you mean?"

He turns his sharp gaze away and scans over the merriment at the table as he ponders, "We pray to the Gods to ask for help, but what help can you offer to someone you can't hear? The Lords are to be respected and obeyed, but only within the context of their duties, no more, no less."

Ciel emphatically agrees, "Yes, indeed. Their behavior borders on what the God-Rulers' subjects were like."

"I'm not familiar with the term 'God-Ruler.'"

She smiles warmly at him, and he reflexively looks away, overwhelmed by her charm. "It's old history, from before the empire. Rulers were treated like Gods before Change allowed actual Gods to rise and watch over us."

He nods in understanding and wonders, "Perhaps they're just wishing for Your Highnesses to become Gods?"

Ciel frowns and rejects that idea, "That's not a good thing, and I also agree that the commoners might develop wrong expectations of us if we let them continue praying."

"What do we do, then?"

Ciel swirls her cup of beer as she deliberates, "I believe we'll need to involve the priests, but having an accurate idea of the commoners' opinion of us is essential."

And he happily states, "That'd be Sir Azador's specialty, but I believe Dame Enomosa is experienced enough to carry out this task."

"You think highly of both of them," I interject and glance at the elf in question, but he's still embroiled in a bloody discussion with Aoi.

He nods soberly and affirms, "Of course. They're respected in Escanso for good reason, and the whole city owes them a lot."

Then the conversation shifts towards stories about the crises that Escanso went through.

Bandits depriving it of necessary resources, plagues affecting the Eia farms, gangs trying to establish themselves, the Wicked hiding among the populace, greedy merchants causing revolts among the workers, and many more.

It all sounds amazing, really, but I know that the truth isn't that pretty.

"Uugh~… I'm so fu~ll!" Aoi moans childishly and proudly pats her distended belly.

"Gii~h…!" Gify agrees and lays beside her, then Aoi shifts her size to match Gify's.

Alissa sits before them and starts patting their heads while Lolo watches enviously.

"You can pet Aoi, she won't mind," our kind little fox affirms.

Gify doesn't let anyone that's not part of our [Bind] touch her because it causes a "connection" between them, and that's simply too intimate for a stranger, though it's not like she'd never allow it. It's similar to how touching spirits is a show of love for dryads, but Cereleia wasn't offended when I did that with her.

Lina grabs the large Civil War board, which is a bit too wide for her small arms to properly carry, then she waddles towards my seat and places it before me with a thump.

I turn my eyes to her and raise an eyebrow as I stare at her innocent expression, but under her gloomy eyes, I see an impish glint, and my thick tail lazily sways from side to side as I consider the challenge.

Board games are like a cheap, off-brand candy corn while video games are the refined hazelnut milk chocolate bonbon with a creamy interior. Sex gives me the intense emotions that I crave for from the lack of games, so I've become addicted to it, but it might do me some good to try out something new.

I pull out the Eia bottle, then I help her set up the table while the golems serve everyone a finger of the liquid brain-gasm.

The dwarven army hides inside their mountain as the sounds of [Meteor]s exploding upon its surface keep them awake day and night. Meanwhile, the imperials slowly climb onto the mountainside, preparing for their invasion of Mountainhome.

But at the snowy peaks, the dwarven trump card tries their best to survive until the perfect opportunity comes.

"DRINK!" The Liner shouts, and the dwarves take another sip of their Liquid Fire alcohol to warm them up again.

"LOW!" The Liner gives another order, and the dwarves huddle up, trying to make themselves as small as possible so that no mage can see where they are, exactly.

A [Meteor] lands right next to them, and their eardrums bleed, but nobody moves an inch. The Sleigher unit is composed of old veterans who are ready to give their lives, but nobody wants to die before their time.

Suddenly, the sound of glass breaking resounds throughout the whole battlefield, and that's the signal for the Sleighers to act.

They jump onto their heavy, armored carriages, then push them down the slick and snowy mountainside.

With the way now open, the imperial army swarms into Mountainhome's tunnels and meets the men-of-the-line. The dwarves aren't as dishonorable as to collapse the tunnels on the imperials, and they're confident that their impenetrable wall of shields will be enough to hold the filthy humans back, so the two sides meet head-on like a sledgehammer against a solid metal wall.

The Sleighers continuously gain speed, and once the snowy patch ends, they activate the ice enchantments on the runners of their sleighs so that they can continue to slide down the rocky and barren earth.

The dwarves grin victoriously as the imperials don't seem to notice their approach until it's too late, but by then, the heavy metal sleighs are too close and too fast to be stopped.

The dwarven daredevils crash into the thick imperial line as the humans invade Mountainhome, but there's no impact, no lines of men are turned into paste, and no screams come from the frightened and dying. The dwarves simply pass through the humans as if they were ghosts… because they're illusions.

The dwarves were tricked.

Suddenly, they notice deep trenches in their path, but Sleighers aren't known for their turning capabilities, so all of the dwarves crash into them, the hulking beasts of metal defeated by a simple trick.

Now the dwarves have no more units on the outside, no way to reach the imperial mages as they use siege magic to break apart the mountainside, no counter but to wait and hope that the humans are dumb enough to smash their heads against the men-of-the-line.

But history tells us that this never happened, and so, the dwarves surrendered.

"Hey, complaint. Imperials are OP!" I exclaim frustratedly.

But Lina just grins impishly, "No, it's just a bad match-up. You never choose Mountainhome and men-of-the-line against imperials with [Ritualism]." -Then she pouts, falsely wounded- "I told you months ago about how the dwarves lost to the empire, and it was exactly like this, so it's your fault for not paying attention to me!"

Shit, I really forgot.

I saltily grumble, "I fucking thought you'd be more respectful to your fellow dwarves."

"Hey, they lost honorably!" She hisses, and we pout at each other.

She knew my strategy was going to fail from the beginning, but all she wanted was to win.

But I'll forgive her because she's cute.

And she turns her head away so that I can't see her smile.

Today is the 6th, Ekt, day of Electricity.

Alissa increased her [Illusion Magic] by 1 (now 18); Roxanne's [Space Magic] increased by 1 (now 13); Hana learned [Godly Language] with 1 point; Ciel increased her [Wind Magic] by 1 (now 13+27); and Yunia learned [Water Magic] and [Electric Magic] with 1 point each.

My [Mana Body] didn't increase this time, but our training was interrupted too often for me to properly focus on it.

But the most important growth is the confirmation that our MP and MPower increased at double the usual rate. Now, we must ask two questions: can we refine this phenomenon even further? And will this make mana circulation training obsolete?

I believe we'll be forced to make this knowledge public at some point, but it worries me that it'll increase magical inequality since few people will be able to afford to collect and ingest these orbs regularly. If we manage to refine the orb, we must then work on finding cheaper alternatives for the commoners to be able to keep up.

It's a bit wordy, but the concept of "stimulating magical growth through the forceful absorption of mana" is really quite simple, so there's no reason we won't be able to create "magical growth potions."

But that's enough theorizing for now. It's time to eat butter toast!

We have an important meeting with General Reinhold this morning, so we prepare by reviewing our information about him while we eat.

Reinhold Fischer is a thirty-two-year-old man born in a small coastal village of Wideberg, the westernmost nation of our continent and a maritime power. That's where Romy comes from, and the people over there are all Asians with a tanned skin tone, similar to Filipinos.

Once Reinhold became a teen, he realized that he had the power to summon magical swords. He didn't hide it, so he was immediately recruited by the imperial army and blazed his way through the ranks, exterminating armies of monsters almost all by himself, until he received the ceremonial title of Junior General. He doesn't have a Title or any units under his direct control yet, but he's being trained for a leading role that he's likely to be promoted to in a decade.

What's curious is that the Title of just "General" is… generally related to land armies, while they use the "Sea" or the newer "Sky" prefix for the other branches of the army. It's curious how the system doesn't translate "Sky General" as Marshall, or something similar, like how Hihiriwa's Title in Reo was translated as "Marshall of the Skies." I guess the branches of the imperial army aren't as well separated as that ancient Chimera nation in the Broken Skies.

But none of the girls have much interest in my musings on Earthling etymology, so I leave it at that.

After breakfast, we send the knights to level up some more, then we do our mana circulation training while we wait.

At precisely the appointed time, his carriage arrives in front of the embassy. Ornate but not lavish, his ride looks like it's pretty comfortable, but it's far from being ostentatious.

The door opens, and a muscular Filipino man comes out, not huge like Palo or swole like Rande but functionally strong. He's pretty youthful, with his pristine and clean jaw making him look like he's barely twenty, and he has the perfectly assured gait of someone well-trained in martial arts. Curiously, he has no sword at his waist, and he has chosen to wear his rather austere white and red army uniform in velvet, because anything formal has to be in velvet.

His wife, on the other hand, is a gorgeous noblewoman from Wideberg, and she likes to show it. Over her lavish mage robes is a tabard with a complex heraldry that features a trireme. The diplomat guesses that she might be a bit stuck up, but isn't the type to speak out of turn, so she most likely won't be a problem.

I'm feeling alright today, so I'm the one to greet him.

"Royal Crown Lord Wolf Ryder, a pleasure to meet you," he cheerfully greets, his handsome smile driving deep dimples into his blocky face.

"Junior General Reinhold Fischer. I'm elated with your interest in our planes," I reply in kind and offer my shining, clawed hand for a shake.

Soul Info

Name | Reinhold Fischer | Race | Human | Level | 102
HP | 100 | MP | 2,310 | Magic Power | 200
Strength | 18 | Endurance | 18

Not much talent for magic, I see.

But then I start to regret being present as he shows his boisterousness by going so hard for my hand that he slaps it, then almost jostles my shoulder out of its socket with his shaking.

My eyes start to gloss over as I tune out the pleasantries, and the girls give me a hand through [Bind].

"Those Chimera of yours are quite the curious bunch, aren't they?" He enthusiastically remarks.

I hide my apathy for small talk and politely reply, "They lived twenty thousand years ago, yet they're actually adapting quite well to living with elves."

He hums, and the reverberating bass of his voice shows a hint of a good amount of "Charisma." "Hard to believe that such wild-looking people were once so powerful."

I don't really like the way he said that, but he's from Wideberg, and people on the west side of the continent tend to be prejudiced against those who look like beastfolk.

Lina bravely joins in, "The Broken Skies is vast. You could say it was the perfect environment for a massive empire to grow."

He turns his youthful gaze towards her and seems mildly impressed at her confidence as he rather wisely points out, "And now they've been reduced to just a few islands. Even their current airships don't compare to the beasts you have. Twenty-thousand-year-old beasts."

"But we aren't researching big airships," I calmly retort.

He smirks. "No, you're researching something better."

We stare at each other for a couple of seconds, then I decide that's enough chatter, "Let's talk business inside."

Once we're all seated and drinking our tea, Alissa and Yunia entertain his wife while he immediately goes for the main topic, "You haven't brought any of your planes here, have you?"

I state, impassively, "No. We only have one prototype, and we came here for other reasons than to showcase the Raki."

He nods and leans back on his leaf sofa as he relaxes. "That's fine, I'll trust the reports."

Then I decide to be a bit bolder and slyly imply, "Well, I can't help but notice that you aren't exactly the first name that comes up when one thinks about airplanes."

He waves his hand dismissively. "That's fine. The Sky Generals don't care about that little one because it doesn't fit into their tactics, and as far as we know, you haven't started producing those big boys… yet." Then he returns my slyness.

I simply flash a smile and move on, "So, what does a land General want to do with the Raki?"

He immediately sobers up and answers, "Scouting. Using an elemental to pilot an experimental flying vehicle that's capable of accidentally destroying itself in normal use is genius, really."

I let my tail sway heavily, showing a hint of disappointment. "Just scouting? That's not very creative."

Then he leans forward and subtly smirks. "If you're saying that, then it means you're developing weapons for it?"

"Of course," I snobbishly affirm with a small nod.

He snorts and leans back in his seat again. "This is why I mentioned 'future demonstrations.'"

Then I go for the main course, "How much is the imperial army willing to invest in this project?"

His posture immediately shifts, and he becomes visibly tense as he subtly knits his eyebrows. "Aren't you a Lord? Go find your own funding yourself!" Then he snorts again, making his wife glare at him due to his undignified noise.

Lina calmly interjects, "We're already investing quite a lot of our own money to start this venture. If you want your weapons, you'll need to give us an incentive to research them. Otherwise, we're just going to focus on giving wings to fat merchants."

He frowns at her then glances at me, but I just remain impassive, showing that I find no problem with her statement.

His mood turns dark for a moment as he enters deep thought, then he sighs and sternly asserts, "Alright, but there are a few conditions first. It has to be made of metal because we won't do maintenance on elven wood when we already have a whole system for maintaining the armor of our airships. Second, we aren't just going to give you free money, we want results-…"

I solemnly interject, "Giving free money is the best way to get results, though. Setting deadlines will just ensure that you get something, but it might not be what you paid for."

He frowns and narrows his eyes at me, and even Lina thinks I'm bullshitting, though she doesn't show it.

I hold back a sigh and continue, "Are you in a hurry to start a war, or do you have the time to wait? Research is like a cake recipe, and pressure is just one ingredient. Too much or too little, and it's ruined, but maybe you'll get something edible if you're lucky."

He subtly narrows his eyes and grimly retorts, the deep bass of his voice drowning out the other conversations, "Are you in a hurry to start a war?" Then everyone goes silent for a moment and turns to us.

Well, he's succeeded in making me smile, which he responds to by smirking.

I give no sign that I'll answer, so he moves on, "Third condition, you have two months to impress me."

"You?" I skeptically respond.

He shrugs, and his demeanor becomes casual again. "Well, I have to impress the seniors and the seniles myself, and I can stall for two months, so get me something by then."

But I caution him, "If we're going to change to metal, we won't be able to use steel, so you'll have to pay extra for the knowledge about the metal we'll be using."

He scoffs. "You're just going to create a new metal, like that?"

I smugly reply, "I'm not here because I lack vision."

He raises his eyebrows and shakes his head in disbelief. "If you can do it, then by all means. We'll pay whatever you want."

Well, this might be an interesting partnership.

A note from Manasong

Hall of Fame of Patrons

The patrons who support Rupegia shall have their names sung by the bards for they deserve the glory and honor. Their names are:

Prince PreownedFIN.

Prince Owldente.

Lord Andrew Meyers.

Lord Novgarod.

Lord Michale Erwin.

Lord Bakerdea.

Lord Maurice.

Lord Mattirro Draca.

Lord Sean Drake.

Lord Mike Bartter.

Lord Warwulfv.

Lord Khristopher Welsh.

Lord DJ.

Lord Tenebris Lupus.

Lord Paul Daval.

Lord Paul Daval.

Lord AndreyUC.

Lord Tmac.

Lord School Work.

Lord Gwendolyn Simmons-LaRose.

Lord CopeyDunt.

Lord James.

Lord BlindTactic.

Lord The Tallest Joshua.

Lord Andrew Hebreard.

Lord litalmexy.

Lord Tyler Mills.

Lord Philip.

Lord Sam.

Lord Warwulfv.

Noble Salty Panda.

Noble Mild Fracas.

Noble Aclys.

Noble CarlBaxter.

Noble d3235.

Leave a rating or a review to help me rise to the top or fix my shameful understanding of prose.

Take a look over my blog where all information about the world of Rupegia will be posted.

Join the Discord and discuss, or rant, or meme, or try and fight me so your waifu gets more screentime.

Become a Patron and read chapters in advance, or read the side-stories, or leave your mark on the story, or help choose the next artwork or the next side-story.

Chapter 133: Tipping Point - Part 2

A note from Manasong

Attention: to conform to the limit of mature content (more than just sexual content) allowed in a novel, I've censored this chapter. You can look for the uncensored version here.

I let Lina lead the tiresome negotiations because I'm starting to get bored of these games. I really want to go talk to Oritiki about the Sky Lands mission, but that needs to be done in person. After tonight's gathering, we'll kidnap Katasko's commanders and interrogate them in Goldcross, so I can just make a quick stop at our home and organize the expedition…

But what I really want to do, though, is to just go back to research and training. I have too much shit to do to be getting caught up in this lengthy bullshitting.

Finally, after the precise amount of investment is settled upon, the girls help entertain the guests, allowing my introverted self to rest. Reinhold is a boisterous battle freak like Hana, so the two of them hit it off quite well. Their talk even continues through lunchtime, going right up until desserts.

"It's curious that he, specifically, was chosen to speak to us," Yunia ponders through [Bind].

"I can think of plenty of reasons for it, though," Alissa retorts.

"Yes, it's not like it's completely unthinkable, but it seems pretty obvious that he hurried to have this meeting so that it'd happen before the Purification, not after."

I don't feel like speculating, so I just focus on eating my chocolate cake.

"Have you ever heard of the tale of Juramen, the Cursed, Lord Wolf?" Reinhold suddenly addresses me.

I check with the girls, but they also respond negatively.

"No. What's it about?" I impassively question, eager to return to my chocolate cake.

He leans back in his chair, and I almost roll my eyes as I can just feel him preparing to recite a long speech. "A lionfolk warlord who everyone knew was cursed, but not the reason why, for everyone who was there when it happened had mysteriously died."

I can't hold back my sarcasm as I reply, "This seems like such a lovely and happy tale."

He chuckles heartily and affably continues, "It actually is. Juramen lost everyone he ever loved due to the curse, but he didn't give up on life. He was strong, determined, and talented, so he didn't let that loss keep him down. He left his birthplace in Wideberg and went west, entering Bestiaram, even going so far as to cross the accursed Forest of Eternal Flames, all to find a place where nobody knew who he was… and so, he lived a normal life.

"That is, until he inevitably rose to power once again, and the curse began to kill the people he loved. But this time, he was determined to fight it, and so, he pressed on, growing stronger as his hands became increasingly bloodied."

Well, that's damn grim…

Though his casual tone is a bit jarring, he doesn't dwell on this dark part of the tale and quickly continues, "He endured it all like the unbreakable warrior that he was until suddenly, he won. His loved ones stopped dying, the wars came to an end, and his followers gave him their unwavering loyalty.

"Was it really a curse, then, if it disappeared so suddenly? Or was his curse his ambition?"

The ending was okay, but it's still not a happy story. "What is the point of this tale, General Reinhold?" I question as I frown confusedly.

Then his eyes turn wistful, and even his wife stops speaking to look at him. "I've been called 'cursed' a few times before, but what about you?" He softly asks.

I stiffly answer, "Yes, but that's something I've said to myself."

"And whose fault is that?"

"What…?" I croak.

He stares at me intensely as a fire is lit in his eyes. "Whose fault is it that we're cursed? Who made us this way?"

"It's our choice to follow this path," I impartially deflect.

Then he stabs his cake with his fork and raises it as he smiles daringly. "And who dangles the sweet chocolate before us?"

I remain resolute and retort, "Then both sides are guilty. We see the obvious bait and still take it."

"Heh," he grunts and resumes eating.

After that awkward moment, he returns to his boisterous bearing but then leaves soon after, and I sigh tiredly. The girls are actually really good at dealing with nobility, and I'd definitely be screwed if it weren't for them.

Anyway, shit might hit the fan after tonight, so I want everyone to be well-rested, and I know just the right place for that, but it might also be a good opportunity to bond with the knights.

"Why are you asking me this? Krysta would kill me," Anton immediately rebukes and huffs.

"Not interested," Aisco responds robotically.

"I politely decline. My wives are already a handful," Alcander immediately declines.

"With honor!" Nohopu happily exclaims.

"Thank you for the invite, but I'll pass…" Kurii impassively answers.

"I'm in," Palo instantly replies and raises his eyebrows suggestively.

"I assume this won't be a free-for-all?" Silvano disinterestedly questions, and I nod concernedly. "Eh, well… I guess it might be fun."

Azador hums thoughtfully. "May I… use a private room?" He quietly inquires, and I allow it as long as he obeys the rules of the place.

"I'll pass…" Lolo dryly replies.

Then I ask Nikolas, and he gives me a very confused look.

"If you're uncomfortable, you can leave at any time, but come on, at least give it a try," I insist, making full use of my "Charisma."

But he just slowly knits his bushy eyebrows.

This is my apology to him, it's for the bros, so I quietly insist, "Lolo won't know."

His face twitches as a variety of emotions try to take over, but the one that eventually wins is resignation. "Sure…"

Getting things ready takes a bit of time, so everyone starts pre-drinking in anticipation of this "event," and the girls get a small buzz going before we even reach the train. The knights coming with us are all elves, who are known to drink a bit of hard alcohol even though they have slender bodies, so they get a bit more than just a buzz.

After a short wait, everyone boards the Hyperloop's train, and we take our seats. All of the people who accepted my invitation are male, and on the female side, there are only my wives and the six Companions for security, so the atmosphere right now is a bit too manly for my comfort considering where we're going.

Even elves can act like bros, and some of the knights seem to be acting a bit bold, which the very light clothing of the girls certainly isn't helping.

Palo suddenly stands up, then straightens his back and marches towards us.

"Lord Ryders…" He calls our attention and pauses. "Is everyone going to the same place?"

I look up at the elven mass of muscle, and his face is completely impassive, but then I notice that the way the rest of the boys are showing interest in this question is quite suspicious.

But before I can answer, Hana immediately pounces on the opportunity and teasingly exclaims, "You hoping to see us bare?!"

He categorically replies, "I merely want to make sure that we have enough men to guarantee your safety."

Bullshit.

The suggestive way the knights are looking at them is proof of that.

"My wives will stay nearby in another room, but the Companions and the golems will be protecting them," I impassively explain as I observe the men intently.

There's a very restrained but still obviously disappointed reaction among them, and some of the knights whisper something to Nohopu, the squirrel Chimera captain, and Alissa eavesdrops on them.

"Didn't they used to walk around in their underwear?"

"Yeah," Nohopu smugly hums.

"Lucky bastard."

"The Horns saw him do her, tho."

And we quickly catch up on what they're talking about.

Hana stands up and squeezes her pillows as she shouts, "You boys disappointed that you won't get to see some of these?!"

But I simply narrow my eyes at her and wait.

Once the men have their eyes back on her, she pulls down the straps of her very loose and criminally small dress and flashes them, revealing her deliciously dark bits and the whole of her juicy pillows for just a second, and receives cheers in return.

"Girls, you know what this means…" I hum threateningly.

Roxanne, Yunia, and Romy look quite eager to reinforce her obedience training, but the way she's basking in the attention tells me that she thinks it was worth it.

"You're the one who awakened the exhibitionist within me when you did me in front of my brother," she defiantly replies through [Bind].

She's basically already flashing people every so often with how loose her dress is, but I made it clear that I control when she's to be exposed, so she needs to be punished for this violation.

She sits back down, and her yellow eyes stare at me ferociously. "Hurt me, daddy," she whispers seductively, and I get an unsheathing as I start to imagine how I'll torture her.

"Don't worry, Wolfy, I'll do it for you," Alissa obediently chimes in, her orange eyes staring intensely at the impertinent c-m slave.

Hana's ferocious grin subtly stiffens as my loyal fox manages to impart just a little bit of dread into her heart.

After a short ride, we finally arrive at our destination, the Little Red Sandal brothel.

It's a cute, three-storied building painted entirely in pastel pink and decorated with plenty of whimsical curves and cute animal drawings.

When we enter the cozy main hall, we notice that the whole brothel seems to have been reserved for us as there are no other patrons here. There's only a line of petite women and little lolis before us.

Then my eyes are drawn to the one in the middle, a small and mature wereowl woman with a sharp gaze and gray skin and feathers. She's wearing long, semi-transparent, black peacock feathers as a dress, hiding strategic locations while showing that her body is still holding up pretty well. Her long-sleeved black gloves and thigh-highs are also really damn alluring, even though I notice (through my keen eye for spicy textiles) that they aren't Snow Weave.

Princess Sa'Haa awakened my thirst for wereowls, and since I still haven't gotten any with my favored gilf, I'm feeling quite peckish for this experienced, alluring bird.

The line of women bows deeply in sync as the gilf announces, "Royal Lords, welcome to the Little Red Sandal. I'm Tol'Alee, the proprietress."

"Thank you for so quickly preparing your brothel for our visit," I kindly reply.

She gracefully flashes a cordial smile. "Anything for someone of your distinguished station."

I motion towards the girls. "My wives desire some private relaxation while the rest of us will go for group entertainment."

She nods, then delicately cautions me, "Your Highnesses, due to your 'draconic features,' I must warn you that only some, specific, dwarven girls have the 'Endurance' to match your 'vigor,' so please respect their limits."

I kindly reassure her, "Oh, you don't have to worry about that. We're not the type of people that would abuse our partners' bodies… unless we're asked to."

She stares at me for a couple of seconds, but then she seems to believe me, and her posture subtly relaxes. "That's great to hear."

"Now…" I hum huskily as I walk closer, then I stop before her and delicately push up her chin with a claw as I stare seductively at her. "If you're available, I desire for you to join me, along with any family you might have."

My inc-st hunger is itching once again.

Tol's face remains perfectly impassive, but she can't hide the way that her pupils dilate and her breath quickens. Her face shows the gaze and wrinkles of her age, but she retains a frail yet stern beauty that's simply unlike anything elven I've tasted before, and I'm attracted to its novelty.

"Would my daughters and granddaughters satisfy you?" She whispers, a hint of sensuality in her faintly hoarse voice.

My tail starts wagging on its own as I grin. "That'd be perfect."

Tol'Alee and I sit on the wide reclining chair, then I wrap my arm around her waist, pulling her close to me, and she turns sideways so that she can lean against my chest. I'm quite thankful that these chairs have a side opening to accommodate my tail since that isn't really a common feature anywhere.

Behind me, her dark-skinned, wereowl, older daughter faintly tickles me with a feather fan while her gray-haired, halfling, younger sister takes off my sandals and plays with my draconic feet.

Tol's youngest granddaughter, a halfling girl who's almost completely hidden by the gray mass of curls that is her hair, serves alcohol in a sparkly glass cup while her Latina wereowl cousin (who is also Tol's granddaughter) dances in front of us, making use of peacock feathers to create mesmerizing movements, drawing my eyes to all of her youthful, alluring curves.

A duo of mature lolis play a soothing tune on a lute and a set of drums while the large, bright hall is filled with the sounds of light sighs, giggles, and sounds as the lolis give the men oil and feather massages while they drink.

Tol gives me a sip of the alcohol, a fruity and very sweet light drink, then she takes a sip for herself from the same glass, and we kiss.

I gently savor her lips, gradually taking in the sweet taste of her lipstick, then I taste her tongue, and she shows me what it means to truly kiss.

Like being stabbed where I'd never expected to be, she plays with all of the sensitive and unusual places in my mouth, and I'm forced to admit defeat to her superior skills, giving her free rein to play with me as she wishes.

Her loli daughter kisses my scales and continues up my leg, her small and moist lips giving me little tingles of pleasure that come dangerously close to my sword.

Tol suddenly breaks the kiss, then they help me take off my vest and shorts, giving the feather woman more spots to tickle and the loli down at my lap more places to kiss.

I notice that Nikolas has his hands all over a cute little sl-t in pink underwear, and he's breathing so heavily that he kind of looks like a big, black, panting dog.

"Enjoying yourself?" I tease him while my lap loli kisses my sword through my clothes , and he gives me a nervous glance.

"This place is amazing!" He whisper-shouts and sneaks a hand under the pink clothes of his cheeky loli, who graces our ears with a perfectly crystalline giggle.

"I'm happy that you're enjoying my girls," Tol gracefully replies and smiles, the expression looking so beautiful on her face that I savor her lips and tongue once again.

At the center of the hall, there's a group of lolis fooling around on a raised bed while a few girls dance around it. There are just so many attractive things to look at that I decide to summon a few birds to allow me to keep an eye on them while I stare at my personal Latina wereowl dancer.

The feather milf gives me a chill that goes down my spine, then she jumps and giggles in surprise as my tail moves on its own.

Oof, that was good.

"Play with my tail more," I order the feather milf, and she happily obeys.

Then I kiss Tol again as she caresses my chest, her gloved hand making the gesture look a lot spicier than normal, but then the spicy loli down at my lap gives my sword a soft bite, almost making me jump in surprise.

I look down at the cute little bundle of carnal pleasure, and we smirk at each other, then she bites the hem of my underwear and pulls it down.

Everyone nearby stops to stare in awe at the massive, studded, spiked, ribbed, thick thing… even Nikolas and some of the knights.

"That's not going to fit," the spicy loli whispers, her voice full of awe.

"This is why women submit to me," I explain and shrink it back down to normal size. "My sword is magical."

Nikolas remains still for a moment as he stares at it, frozen in fear and confusion as he seems to realize that Lolo never had any chance of resisting my charms, but then his pink loli takes out his respectable friend, and that reminds him to not neglect his girl.

"Goddamn, Your Highness. It's a damn shame that you don't do other men," Palo remarks out loud, and a few of the knights laugh along with him.

"If you want to be dominated by me, then you can just ask for a duel," I boldly reply as I play with my milf loli's short and curly gray hair. I also add a bit of my spirit touch to get her in the mood.

"Stop it, you can only make me so hard!" he shouts teasingly and caresses his considerable meat club (for an elf) while staring defiantly at me.

"You can play with your little things as much as you want. I enjoy having an audience gasp in awe as I display my prowess!" I banter back and glance at him.

He pauses, seriously considering it, but then Silvano stands up and drags his chair closer to mine. He stops a few meters away, then drops onto the reclining chair and starts to caress his friend and his personal loli.

That emboldens Palo to do the same, along with two other knights of dubious straightness.

Remind me to never play gay chicken with an elf again.

"No, we won't," Roxanne replies through [Bind] and laughs.

After going through Tol's entire family, I see that Palo and Silvano look visibly spent, but I'm not even halfway there, so I think I've "won" this sword-measuring contest.

Hukarere is noticeably excited, and I know she used to participate in gang fun, so I don't want to leave her in a room full of excited men. I'll give her a nice one, then I'll also give the other Companions some attention so that they won't get jealous.

I lay face down on the massage bed, then I push my sword into the slot and observe through the girls' eyes as three dwarven girls use their delicate, cute little pantyhosed feet to massage my back and tail while a group of halflings take turns quite literally milking me.

I've come to the conclusion that halflings are cheekier and more adorable than dwarves, but they very much lack the endurance of the latter, though each race has its own specialties. A gaggle of halfling lolis can cause sweetness overload, but a pair of loli dwarves is optimal for Ravaging.

Ciel is definitely the one who's getting the most mileage out of this brothel, second only to me, as she has a considerable number of lolis attending to her every erogenous zone with their tongues and fingers.

Lina and Aoi are actually having some innocent fun by having pillow fights with other lolis, though the loser will be tied up and forced into bliss by all the others.

And the rest of the girls are still busy having the golems punish Hana, so they'll properly savor the sweets around here a bit later, but they're all letting their sadistic side grow, and that'll certainly leave them feeling very excited by the time they're done.

I whisper loudly from the amazing and novel massage. I wish I could have this done face up so that I could suck on their toes, but this actually feels really good (and I'm not talking about the lolis using my sword), so I'm fine with this position.

Flat is justice! Long live loli supremacy!

A note from Manasong

Hall of Fame of Patrons

The patrons who support Rupegia shall have their names sung by the bards for they deserve the glory and honor. Their names are:

Prince PreownedFIN.

Prince Owldente.

Lord Andrew Meyers.

Lord Novgarod.

Lord Michale Erwin.

Lord Bakerdea.

Lord Maurice.

Lord Mattirro Draca.

Lord Sean Drake.

Lord Mike Bartter.

Lord Warwulfv.

Lord Khristopher Welsh.

Lord DJ.

Lord Tenebris Lupus.

Lord Paul Daval.

Lord Paul Daval.

Lord AndreyUC.

Lord Tmac.

Lord School Work.

Lord Gwendolyn Simmons-LaRose.

Lord CopeyDunt.

Lord James.

Lord BlindTactic.

Lord The Tallest Joshua.

Lord Andrew Hebreard.

Lord litalmexy.

Lord Tyler Mills.

Lord Philip.

Lord Sam.

Lord Warwulfv.

Noble Salty Panda.

Noble Mild Fracas.

Noble Aclys.

Noble CarlBaxter.

Noble d3235.

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Chapter 133: Tipping Point - Part 3

A note from Manasong

Attention: to conform to the limit of mature content (more than just sexual content) allowed in a novel, I've censored this chapter. You can look for the uncensored version here.

Suddenly, loli-Aoi.

I had forgotten that since Aoi's human body is a mana solidification, it has a great affinity with dragon-Aoi's ability to morph her size.

And now, here it is, Lina's little sister. Her silky, dark-blue hair pools on the floor, so straight it's like a drape that partially covers her body, which was already quite delicate and doll-like before, but now has the absolute innocent perfection of a loli. Due to how genetic inheritance works in this world, the Asian-like quality of her eyes is quite a rare characteristic, so she's the first Asian loli I've seen in this world.

And I must plow her.

I regretfully part with the pantyhosed-foot massage the dwarven lolis are giving to me and take menacing steps towards the little girls having a pillow fight.

Aoi immediately notices my intent, so she stops and leans forward, grabbing onto Lina's shoulders for stability while presenting her cute ass to me.

Loli-Aoi! Loli-Aoi! Loli-Aoi! The bes-…

I see a menacing shadow suddenly grow before my eyes like a monster standing on its hind legs to look more intimidating, but once I look past its threatening facade, all I see is a gloomy little girl staring intensely at me with a pair of lifeless eyes.

Uh… she, uh… y-you are…

Divine sisters…! Yes, yes…! Divine sisters! Loli-Aoi! Loli-Lina! The most beautiful pair of loli sisters I've ever seen!

The dark shadow recedes, and Lina pouts angrily at me, so I snatch her with my tentacles and bring her close to me.

I bring my gloomy wife to me and kiss her forehead, but she just turns her head away, so I smoothly apologize, "I'm sorry. You know I like to get a bit poetic, and I just exaggerated a bit. You're still one of my favorite lolis, but I won't rank you because that isn't fair."

She grumbles while pouting, deliberately making herself look cuter, but then she finally relents with a sigh, "Fine, I forgive you…"

And since my tentacles are already out, I give both her and Aoi the big T's, scaring the loli observers with their menacing air. While I enjoy tentacle play, I also enjoy savoring the reactions of the "innocent" when I forcefully take their mental purity and introduce true depravity into their minds.

Unfortunately, we're interrupted by a message from Vanea asking for a quick meeting.

I'm in a good mood, so I just ask for a private room and use [Gate] to return to the embassy. Alissa accompanies me as mental support because she's such a good wife, unlike the cowards who keep pushing these meetings with Vanea onto my shoulders.

"You almost did her, so don't you dare say that you didn't enjoy it," Yunia's haughty voice echoes inside my mind.

I'm not the one who enjoys denial, so 'almost' doesn't cut it!

"We'll compensate you," Ciel guiltily responds, definitely not eager to be used and abused by my tentacles.

But I'm currently in the mood for lolis, so their womanly wiles aren't enough to appease me.

And so, after a quick wash, Alissa and I once again find ourselves in the oppressive presence of Vanea Anara. This time, she isn't wearing an alluring dress, having chosen a simple and cute, light blue princess dress paired with gloves and a tiara.

Her expression is rather tense, though, putting us on edge.

"Vanea," I greet as softly as I can, considering that she c-ckblocked me.

"Wolf, Alissa," she replies in kind and flashes a cordial smile while avoiding looking us in the eye, but then she becomes serious after we sit and glances at us as she inquires, "Who was that cloaked pair that visited you yesterday?"

I hum in confusion and reply defensively, "Hm? Why are you so curious about it?"

She doesn't hesitate before soberly responding, "Considering how the pair took a [Gate] out instead of walking, Cleinias is going to assume that someone has contacted you to propose something related to the Purification, and he might even retaliate to prevent you from solidifying your base." But then she assumes a haughty bearing and pompously rests her gloved fingers upon her chest as she declares, "But I'm, of course, on your side, so I want to help you defend against his deviousness."

We did use her name to leverage a good deal with the Alliance, so this moment is probably the best opportunity to inform her of the truth.

I shrug and confess, "Very well. We were contacted by the Faiumi Merchant Alliance-…"

"WHAT?!" She suddenly screeches, and her face instantly warps into an angry scowl as her pale skin quickly reddens. "Don't fucking tell me you made a deal with Sa'Haa?!"

I stiffly try to appease her, "Yes, we did, b-…"

Then she blows out again. "THAT DAMN VULTURE! WHY DIDN'T I-… AAARGH!" She grips her forehead and rips off the tiara, messing up her styled hair a little.

I just sigh and wryly remark, "I see you two don't have a good relationship…"

She gives me such an intense glare that it feels like she's literally staring daggers at me. "OF COURSE WE-…" -She suddenly freezes- "Wait… how did you not know that?!"

Though her stare is uncomfortable, it's far from being threatening, so I just amusedly reply, "We didn't tell her your name."

She blinks blankly twice. "Please tell me you didn't accept her overbearing terms?"

I chuckle a bit smugly and gently explain, "I'm a bit impressed that you know she'd be like that, but no, we didn't accept her terms outright. We actually used your proposal of an alliance as leverage, so I believe we struck a pretty fair deal."

Vanea remains frozen for a couple of long, awkward seconds, then her face splits into a manic grin, and she starts chuckling, "Hahah… hahahahah… AHAHAHAHAH~…!" But it quickly grows into creepy cackling.

Alissa grips my hand tight, uncomfortable with how wild Vanea's emotions are swinging, and then we just wait until the maniac before us recovers a bit of her sanity.

After an even longer awkward moment, the raven-haired princess calms down a bit, then dries her tears as she pleads, "Please don't tell her my name until we can meet in person. I need to see her face when she realizes that I'm your oh-so-mysterious ally."

"I won't make any promises," I soberly reply.

And she waves her hand dismissively, "Fine, fine…"

Then I put us back on track, "Back to the topic at hand. Do you know how Cleinias will retaliate?"

And she gingerly rests her cheek on her hand. "That's the problem. He's shrewd and keeps his weapons cloaked, so the best I can say is that Katasko has a fondness for [Invisibility] assassins, the same kind that you fought back in Rabanara, and don't believe for one second that he won't try to infiltrate your embassy, so start preparing."

We suddenly realize something, so I blurt out, "Is Cleinias the one who funded Darean?"

"I can't prove it, but I'm almost certain it was him. Our feud is…" -she flashes a bitter smile- "private, so he used his own funds to support Darean rather than rely on Katasko for that."

And I can't hold myself back from remarking in bewilderment, "Is Katasko the root of all evil in the empire?"

Her face splits in a wild grin. "Hah! Considering I exist, no, but they're close. It's just that filth tends to seek out more of its kind."

I frown worriedly and glance at Alissa. Neither of us like what Vanea just said, but she encourages me to be earnest, so I mount the dragon and soberly reply, "How pretentious of you to call yourself 'evil.'"

But Vanea shows me a weird reaction. "W-what…?" She mumbles and reflexively looks me in the eye, giving me another dose of her piercing power again, but then she immediately recovers and scowls angrily as she rebukes "No! You have no idea what I've done to get where I am. I've…" -She grits her teeth angrily for a second- "I've threaded the needle! I've been Marked for years now, and the priests will certainly put my name out there for the Purification!"

I simply narrow my eyes and respond with poise, "That's not something to take pride in. If you want to continue this relationship, you will do your best to become a better person…"

She becomes even angrier and starts grumbling as she glares at me, but I stand my ground. She eventually shakes her head and sighs, allowing the rage to pass. "You're a handful…"

I give her a disbelieving look. "You're telling me that?!"

And we both scoff in sync, but then we fall silent for a long moment.

"You two are quite interesting to watch," Alissa quietly remarks, and we both frown at her.

Not wanting to dwell on this topic, Vanea clears her throat and continues, "Anyway… Katasko specializes in espionage and invisibility, and their assassins are notorious for having a high number of Wicked that destroy their own souls upon death, so expect something like that from them."

How about we contact Andrea…?

"Not a bad idea," Yunia's calm voice echoes in my mind.

What do you mean by "not bad"?! It's a great idea!

"Thank you for being so reliable," Alissa politely replies.

And Vanea softly scoffs again. "I've said everything I wanted to say, so I'll take my leave and allow you to go back to your little girls."

I narrow my eyes at her and grumble, "Can you not spy on me for even a second?"

We need our own damn spy network.

And the princess gingerly shakes her head. "No, it's too much fun. Goodbye, Royal Crown Lord Ryder."

I hold back a sigh and casually reply, "Goodbye, Vanea."

She scoffs one last time, then quickly leaves.

I finish off the frustrated lolis, and we bask in a bit more debauchery before the time arrives for us to head back and prepare for tonight's gathering.

After some sad farewells, we return to the embassy and take a bath, then we eat a light meal and wait until the appointed time while doing some preparations for tonight's kidnapping.

Ciel spends her time happily "compensating" me with her massive melons. After a few hours in loli paradise, she seems to have entered an angelical mood that she spends all on me, making Lina just a bit jealous, so I invite my loli wife to partake in the bountiful harvest.

Even Gify helps with her soul massage because she's starting to want to make herself useful even though she's twice as cowardly as everyone else.

At least she's showing appreciation to the one who pays for her to fatten up.

"Gih!" She unashamedly replies.

When the fated time finally comes, we take the golems, Klein, Anton, Palo, Azador, and two more knights as security, and also Alcander as a guest of honor since there's likely to be a few people he knows there.

Just like when I went to visit Cleinias, we take an [Eternal Gate] to the upper level, then a cage-like elevator that spirals up around the outside of the Throne.

Mac Gantus is a city that never sleeps, and we can guess where the nightlife is most active thanks to how heavily illuminated certain areas of the city are, but Alissa can confirm our assumptions as she can see that the streets are still full of people and are just becoming even more crowded.

We go way past the clouds, going so far up that the landscape starts to get hazy, but when we're about to reach the top, a faint green glow in the sky to the south catches our attention.

It's a floating island as large as a small village and has a round green crystal at the bottom keeping it aloft, a trading town from the Sky Lands. Apparently, we've risen past the limit of the spell that cloaks all of their islands.

Far in the distance, we can spot another green light, but anything further is too far for even Alissa's enhanced eyes.

There's no reason for us to think that they're being mistreated. Angering a Gifted is like playing with fire, and the Chimeras certainly don't wear enough clothing to be able to do that safely.

My tail hits the floor repeatedly as it wags, reflecting my anxious mood.

Unless they're embroiled in damn plotting and scheming, like I am…

Then I'm forced to put my head back in the game as we finally arrive at the top.

My first impression of the Emperor's home is that he obviously likes glass a lot; my second impression is that he's a damn giant; and my third impression is that this is kind of like those cool and austere Gothic cathedrals.

The Throne (not the Throne of Ascension, that's the tower below us) is a group of thick, square towers connected by a complex of corridors. The very pointy triangular roofs and round arches are the two main themes here, with an uncountable number of windows that go from floor to ceiling and glass roofs to let the sunlight in. At the same time, everything is sized so that a Giant could comfortably live here, because of course, it is.

Each tower is supposed to belong to one of the Emperor's wives so that they may house their families while the central, and biggest one, houses the Emperor. Our destination is that very same tower, but our path won't have us crossing any of the other towers to get there since those are private homes.

There are a lot of guards around, but that's not much different from our own castle. What's special is the absolutely perfectly disciplined way that they behave, which looks almost robotic and makes me a bit envious because we're more lax with our guards. These men also wear shining, ornate white armor and yellow plumes on their helmets, making them look perfectly regal.

A servant guides us in, and I admire the men's solemn beauty as we cross through the entrance garden, but after we enter the corridors of the complex, it's Lina's turn to appreciate the heraldry as every inch that isn't glass is covered in epic embroidery, telling a story that I'm not that interested in hearing.

"It's so pretty…" Klein mumbles absentmindedly, sounding quite tense.

"The stories I've heard about the Throne do it justice," Alcander quietly replies, sounding awed.

Lina recognizes an embroidery depicting the Emperor fighting a man made of fire underground, but it's a bit too abstract for any of us to truly understand what's going on in the short time we have to observe it as we pass by.

After one long corridor, we cross through a water park, then we finally reach the main tower. In its entrance hall, the Emperor displays his many sets of armor, weapons, and monster trophies. There are also semi-spicy paintings and statues of women along the walls that I believe might be of his wives, and though the artistry isn't mind-blowing, I have to admit that I like his taste in women.

I find it funny how every Lord has a hall to display their ego d-ck. I know I'm guilty of it too, but I just find the need for it quite amusing.

And Ciel comes in to wisely explain through [Bind], "Lords are the ultimate guardians of the humanoids, so while we expect excellence from them, we can't fault them for developing egos."

Then we move past the main hall and enter a red, comfy, carpeted waiting room between it and the Main Throne Room. Waiting for us inside are a menacing, black-haired dragonkin woman and a naked female lionfolk. We immediately recognize that both of them are Empresses.

The dragonkin is an almost-milf with a milky skin tone, chest in the same league as Ciel's, black scales that seem to almost shine, and a fearsome gaze that could compete with Hana's. She's wearing a black velvet uniform that makes her look strikingly like a… nazi… an alluring nazi Halloween costume, actually. Once our eyes meet, I notice that her high-level aura is cold and dangerous, which puts us on guard against her.

The lionfolk woman has golden fur, extremely seductive and mean-looking orange eyes, curves to die for, a gently wagging golden tail with a white tip, and glorious white hair in a pixie cut. Her body is covered in jewelry and tribal trinkets like scales, bones, and fangs, but they're arranged in a net-like pattern that completely avoids covering her brown bits and flower, preferring to accentuate her spicy characteristics instead, a style similar to the Chimeras'. Her high-level aura is that of carnal activites, the kind that gives me the impression that she could give me bliss without even touching me.

Maybe I should make Hana or Osaria dress like that…

"I'd damn love it," Hana immediately replies through [Bind].

But the other Empress interrupts our musings with her severe and cold tone, "Ryder Crown Lords, I'm Empress Hayakasha, and this is Empress Piscila." Her voice isn't anything to rave about, but it has that confident strength that I love to break with my sword.

We all bow to them, and my back hurts from the annoying gesture, but the… "humiliation" lasts for only a couple of seconds.

Then carnal pleasure turned into sound penetrates our ears, "You're Aoi, the converted dragon, correct?" The depraved lioness asks while staring intently at my innocent, blue dragon.

"I am," Aoi tersely replies. Even though this walking on-hole could probably give me bliss with her voice, Aoi finds women nowhere near as interesting as my sword.

Then Carnal Beast takes a few steps forward, getting so close to Aoi's draconic head that they can smell each other's breaths. "I heard that you're free to seek female love. I've never shared intimacy with another monster, so I'd be delighted to take you to the female harem room, if you're interested."

This woman has such a strong seductive aura that I actually feel a bit jealous. But Aoi's alien-like, dual-colored eyes simply stare at her intently as she thinks, and Yunia notices that Empress Hayakasha subtly rolls her eyes.

"You are beautiful, but I don't want to hurt my husband," Aoi earnestly answers, making me squeal internally with love.

Hana and Roxanne would both find it really hard to resist temptation, though, and that makes them feel guilty, but now's not the time for such thoughts, so Alissa pokes them so that they keep their heads in the game.

"Oh? Aren't you free to choose?" Piscila coos, her voice making my sword throb.

And Aoi continues, completely unfazed, "I am, but pleasure outside of the harem isn't that attractive for me, so there's nothing for me to gain by doing it with you."

Piscila smiles, showing her nice set of white fangs mixed with human teeth, then she glances amusedly at Hayakasha, who's as expressive as a rock. "I'll gracefully retreat, but the invitation stands," the Carnal Beast kindly replies and steps back until she's standing beside her companion again.

We remain in silence for a brief moment, but then the mean dragonkin determines that her Sister-Empress is done, and she stares at us intensely again.

"Ryders," she calls our attention and pauses, her severe tone telling us that we aren't allowed to look away. "There are three rules that you need to understand before you can meet with Emperor Andreas. First: no spells. We know that you're all magic warriors, but don't think that you can cast a spell faster than the Emperor can end your existence, and know that many have tried…"

Then she focuses her fearsome stare fully on me.

"Second: don't try to peek into his soul. I know you have a skill called [Sense Soul], but not even the Oracle is capable of doing it without his permission, so don't even try."

Yeah… after trying to do that with Arreira, I learned my lesson. I'm even scared of doing that with these Empresses since they're likely quite powerful, too.

"Third: only the Lords can enter for the swearing, but your men can join once the gathering begins. Until then, they'll have to stay here and watch from a distance."

"We understand," Yunia reassuringly answers.

Hayakasha glances at me one last time, then she nods and grunts before turning around. She grabs her Sister-Empress by the tail and almost drags the perverted woman away, who blows a kiss to Aoi before leaving.

We're told to wait by the servant, and everyone shows varying levels of anxiety.

"Why did you bring us here?" Klein suddenly asks anxiously.

I turn to Anton and cheekily tease him, "Why did you come?"

"You f-… I'm just following orders!" He quietly grunts, making the other knights let out a sensible chuckle, though they are also pretty tense. It's just that they can hide it better.

"Why did you bring us to meet with the Emperor?" Klein insists through gritted teeth.

"You should've complained about it the moment we gave the order," Yunia wisely points out.

Klein grabs my arm, and her stern tone makes me hold back on the teasing, "We were fine until we met those two… Behemoths and realized that the Emperor is going to be ten times worse."

Oh, right, they're a lot more vulnerable to the Empresses' auras than we are.

"You'll learn how to be in the presence of such people with time," Alcander kindly tries to comfort her, but his shaky hand reveals his own unnerved state.

I lift off her helmet, then I kiss her forehead and soothe her, "You'll be fine. Trust me."

"Keep close to us, and we'll support you," Ciel brightly adds, and her angelic voice actually seems to calm them down a noticeable amount.

But Alcander's words still hold the most truth. They'll only get used to it… if they're actually exposed to such oppressive auras.

After a good five minutes, we're finally allowed in.

The double doors open, revealing a large, domed hall with a mirror-like floor that reflects the night sky, including the psychedelic moon, making it look like we're stepping onto a portal to space. But what's most disorienting is that every wall is showing us the landscape around the Throne, as if they were all screens displaying a 360º camera panorama, giving us a breathtaking view.

The only visible object in the entire room is a rectangular raised dais covered in red velvet. The servant tells us to kneel on it, and I begrudgingly obey.

Gify starts to feel fidgety, wanting to pop out of existence, but this is the one moment when she shouldn't, so the little coward gathers the only smidgen of courage she has and remains planted on my shoulder, though she stiffens up so much that she practically becomes a statue.

Thank you for being here.

"Gih…!"

We walk to the center of the room, then we kneel, and an oppressive presence starts to bear down on us from above.

We don't have to look up as the floor reflects an [Eternal Gate] opening up on the wall, but it's horizontal rather than vertical.

Then the most handsome man any of us have ever seen steps through the white veil of the Gate, and we're mesmerized by the sight. Emperor Andreas Doxa is wearing a robe that's like a mix between the [Invisibility] spell and our Camalo armor, almost entirely invisible, which allows us to see through him, but it still shows enough imperfections that we can see all of the details of the embroidered and faintly silk-like robe.

And with how the walls are displaying the sky, it's like he's wearing a black dress embroidered with the moon and the stars.

But that's not the only striking thing about him. The Emperor has a surprising resemblance to Arreira, but maybe that's just because having "perfect beauty" doesn't leave much room for being creative. He has an extremely chiseled face worthy of a Greek God, a subtle pompadour style for his dark-as-night black hair, a nice and manly full beard, and a muscular body like Rande's. Interestingly, the way he moves makes it seem like his whole body is made out of pure steel, yet he inspires strength and gentleness at the same time with his perfectly dignified demeanor.

On his head is what seems to be a sun crown, a golden tiara with sun rays coming out in a half-circle around his head. It's the only decoration in the whole capital that's allowed to be in gold.

Then my eyes meet with his through the reflection, and I feel my mind being pierced, as if he's probing my soul. There's an oppressive and humbling power in his stare, making it easy and even enjoyable to kneel before him, but then I realize that this feeling is incredibly similar to how Vanea's eyes work, just less unpleasant.

"Weepers' Dream! The Anaras are related to the Emperor!" Yunia frightfully exclaims.

But we're not in the right mindset to speculate about that right now.

Emperor Andreas takes soft steps down along the wall until he's merely a couple of meters from us, and I start to feel like there's even a faint glow and heat to his presence.

Then he speaks, and we feel [Godly Language] bearing down upon us, almost like he has a grip on our souls, "Ryder Crown Lords, you've been given Lordship over the Western High Forest. Do you swear to serve the Holy Avgi Empire, to be loyal to it, to love it and respect it, in happiness and sorrow, wealth and poverty, sickness and health, until death or resignation?" His voice follows his appearance, having a strong, manly quality with clear undertones of fatherly kindness.

"We do," we accept the wedding vows in sync.

"Do you swear to protect the people in your lands, to be the guide for the aimless, the arbiter of conflict, the beacon of unity, their shield from evil, their sword in war, and the light in the darkness, until death or resignation?"

"We do."

His voice suddenly becomes amiable and soft. "Then be welcomed into the Empire as a fellow Lord. You may now rise."

As we stand up, the walls cease their "display," turning back into mirrors, then they open up like the petals of a flower, revealing an even larger hall populated by a hundred lavishly-dressed people, and the Emperor doesn't even twitch as he quickly goes from being horizontal to vertical.

Someone starts to play on a harp, and the servants set out food near the walls, which briefly glow as the same "display" from before is resumed.

The Emperor nods at us, his white robe now completely opaque, then he turns around and makes his way towards a large group of women that I believe are his wives.

Our retainers are finally allowed in, and we go join them. Along the way, we recognize a few people. Reinhold and his wife; Grimto Korig, a rotund dwarf and also a direct descendant of the God of War; Reef Lord Graf and the werefox Elder grandma that I don't remember the name of, both of which we met in Gnomeria; King Lookwir and Queen Vlwind; Princess Sa'Haa and Urmeie along with the human Decien Omari and the dragonkin Centum Mako, though they all ignore us completely; and the Alkimeonids father and son duo.

Then I immediately realize that this is the perfect opportunity to explore the Alkimeonids' mansion. We just need a good excuse to slip out of this gathering.

A note from Manasong

Hall of Fame of Patrons

The patrons who support Rupegia shall have their names sung by the bards for they deserve the glory and honor. Their names are:

Prince PreownedFIN.

Prince Owldente.

Lord Andrew Meyers.

Lord Novgarod.

Lord Michale Erwin.

Lord Bakerdea.

Lord Maurice.

Lord Mattirro Draca.

Lord Sean Drake.

Lord Mike Bartter.

Lord Warwulfv.

Lord Khristopher Welsh.

Lord DJ.

Lord Tenebris Lupus.

Lord Paul Daval.

Lord Paul Daval.

Lord AndreyUC.

Lord Tmac.

Lord School Work.

Lord Gwendolyn Simmons-LaRose.

Lord CopeyDunt.

Lord James.

Lord BlindTactic.

Lord The Tallest Joshua.

Lord Andrew Hebreard.

Lord litalmexy.

Lord Tyler Mills.

Lord Philip.

Lord Sam.

Lord Warwulfv.

Noble Salty Panda.

Noble Mild Fracas.

Noble Aclys.

Noble CarlBaxter.

Noble d3235.

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Chapter 134: The Room - Part 1

A note from Manasong

Attention: to conform to the limit of mature content (more than just sexual content) allowed in a novel, I've censored this chapter. You can look for the uncensored version here.

Alcander comes towards us while grinning ecstatically, and the knights stiffly follow after him, with the father and daughter duo doing their best Jarn-walk impression.

"By the Gods, what a dazzling person the Emperor is," Alcander squeaks in adoration.

Eh, he's alright.

But the way Alcander's eyes follow the sun man's back tells us he's quite smitten… perhaps a bit too intensely for our tastes.

"He's Charmed, but it'll wear off soon," Ciel shares after using [Diagnosis] on him.

"Don't drool," Hana teases him, and he embarrassedly looks away as he immediately recognizes his odd behavior.

"Alcander's level isn't that far from ours, though…" Lina points out in confusion.

"If we didn't gain resistance from Arreira, we certainly gained it from Wolfy," Alissa wisely states.

Lina nods internally, and I can just imagine her bangs swaying. "True."

Ciel stops by the robotic pair and puts her hands on their shoulders. "Remember to breathe." Then she gradually soothes them, but too much attention will make the other knights jealous, so our resident angel also gives soothing words to the other, less tense knights.

"Recognize anyone?" Yunia soberly asks Alcander.

The pompous imperial man finally snaps out of his Charm and hums back, "Hm…? Oh, yes. Do you want me to introduce you to them?"

"No. There's a chance that they'll be averse to mingling with us, so go test the vines with them."

"As you wish, Your Highness," he obediently replies, then bows gently and leaves us.

Everyone takes a subtle look around, and with eight sets of eyes working together, we quickly build a good picture of the nobles gathered here. There are quite a few distinct groups, like the four silver elves who are keeping to themselves; the five hardboiled dwarves having a jolly good time with Grimto; the imperial officers with Reinhold who are starting to mingle with the dwarves; the submissive-looking, brown-haired Faiumi nobles surrounding Sa'Haa, Urmeie and a few others who are also possibly Princes and Princesses; four ginger nobles, likely from Maplethorne; two blonde nobles, possibly from Dyrmorder; the two rulers of Gnomeria casually talking to their Thalanthro noble friend and the werefox Elder grandma Alissa likes; the mildly colorful but human-exclusive group of snooty nobles that the Alkimeonids duo is in; a more eclectic, but also still a bit snooty, group of Mainland nobles at the opposite end of the room; a random collection of different races from the more faraway corners of the Empire; the Emperor's harem, along with the bare lioness who keeps glancing at Aoi; and an interesting group of young women who are eyeing up the men with shrewd gazes.

Alissa and Lina go greet the friendly Gnomeria group, Hana goes to the imperial officers and Reinhold to drink some beer, Roxanne and Aoi are invited to join the exotic group, Ciel continues to calm down the knights for a moment before she joins the Gnomeria group, Yunia goes to talk to her silvery cousins, and I, of course, go to the women. Though I'll miss having my wingwoman by my side, Gify's presence is a good substitute as they all stare at the cute little griffin like predators.

"Gih…" She chirps hesitantly.

"Letting them touch you would be like NTR for me," I whisper reassuringly, but then I add a promise of more Behemoth meat for good measure.

"Gih…!" She chirps with just a little more composure as we approach the group of female hunters.

Klein chooses to accompany me as a silent guard, but I glance back and see the look of regret growing in her eyes as she realizes where we're going.

"Lord Ryder! What an honor to have your illustrious presence here," a young ginger girl cheerfully greets.

"Lords, Madames, Dames, and Ladies, am I free to assume that I'm welcome in your midst?" I huskily reply and grin.

"There are no Lords, Madames, or Dames here, young Lord," a more mature weredog woman replies. Her lustrous hair and amiable air give me the impression of a posh Golden Retriever.

A busty dragonkin with milky skin and dark blue hair and scales suddenly grabs my arm, then sinks it into her considerable valley. "I'd love to have you here with us," she asserts, her youthful but composed tone giving her the air of an older-sister-type.

I calmly look around as I smile and point out, "It seems that there's a lack of male presence here, which I find almost a crime against society."

The young ginger replies with a pout, "Plenty of… well, most of the women here enjoy the company of other women, so it's not like we're lonely, or anything."

"Oh, but it is just a bit boring," the older-sister coyly complains.

"Would you prefer having the men competing for our attention?" The mature weredog amusedly retorts.

And she presses my arm harder against her chest as she dreams out loud, "That'd be fine, especially if they pulled their swords out to compare their lengths."

The mature woman agrees and calmly adds, "But they're all too into their scheming and their little games to play with us."

"What a shame…" I hum as I run my scaled hand along the older sister's back, and I feel her posture straighten as I apply a subtle spirit touch to my hand, then I feel Klein's envious stare on my back. I know she loves this kind of caressing.

"Is my body to your liking?" The dragonkin sister seductively asks, and I look her juicy body up and down. Dragonkin simply love loose dresses that show a lot of skin, which also offers the opportunity for the occasional flash with how they move, but nobody in this world has ever heard of pasties.

"Loose clothing is better than nothing at all because it forces thirsty men to stare if they want to get a glimpse of Paradise," Roxanne shares a piece of succubi wisdom.

But the most striking thing about this dragonkin is something else. You see, the floor is a mirror, and while women wearing pants is quite common, there are still a considerable number of them here wearing skirts, and most of those women aren't wearing anything underneath. Hana and Roxanne are also going without, but I'm fine with it.

"It is…" I huskily reply, the power in my voice making the hairs on her neck stand on end.

She doesn't even flinch when she notices where I'm looking at through the mirror's reflection, and I think that's a good enough sign for me to push this further. This sl-t's dress has a long opening in the back, showing off a fair bit of "butt cleavage," and it's the perfect place for me to rest my hand.

I squeeze her cheek, and we grin at each other, then I scan the rest of the women. None of them has even a hint of the aura of a high-level, so I use [Sense Soul] on them to get an idea of their levels, and they're all between level 20 and 30.

Then my eyes fall upon a petite, disinterested-looking imperial woman. She has those sharp eyes and cute lips that scream "tsundere ojou," and she's wearing alluring red underwear under her cute, frilly, gray princess dress. Her feet are also quite cute, too… and seem a bit familiar…

Suddenly, she gives me an intense side-eye, and I stop staring at her underwear to not offend her any further. Instead, I use [Sense Soul] on her, and she jerks her head towards me, but then immediately looks away.

I'm so confused by her actions that I forget to look at her stats, so I use [Sense Soul] on her again, and she shudders.

Soul Info

Name | Koritipythia Lambros | Race | Human | Level | 30
HP | 100 | MP | 111/120 | Magic Power | 50
Strength | 6 | Endurance | 5

What did she use mana for…?

Something mean flares within me, so I repeatedly use [Sense Soul] in quick succession, and she begins to shiver, then her face flushes, and she presses her legs together while pressing one hand against her belly.

I stop, and she sends me an unveiled glare, which is mighty cute on her delicate and haughty face.

"What's gotten into you, Kori? Are you trying to resist his Charm for some reason?" Older-sister sl-t teases impishly, and I reward her with another squeeze.

But something is nagging me at the back of my head, so I look down again and focus on her well-manicured feet while trying my best to ignore her panties…

Then it hits me.

Those cute toes…!

She's the goddamn Oracle.

"I heard she has a big supporter, so maybe she's lost interest in playing around?" The young ginger sl-t wonders out loud.

"I apologize. It was very rude of me to stare…" I earnestly try to soothe her.

"Apology accepted," the Oracle haughtily replies and glances at me. Though her voice is different from the one of that arrogant little b under the Templars' HQ, it does sound remarkably similar.

But then the ginger sl-t steals my attention as she approaches me from my right. "Can I touch your tail?" She eagerly asks.

I magnanimously approve, "You can touch whatever you want, except for my nature spirit. She's very shy and loyal to me and my wives."

"Gih," Gify haughtily chirps and softly flaps her wings, pulling on the heartstrings of the less depraved Ladies, but it seems that the power of my [Spicy Charm] skill is overwhelming her cuteness, for I become the target of most of the predators rather than Gify.

Emboldened by the quickly intensifying spicy atmosphere, the ginger girl hugs my thick tail while suggestively touching it. Then she teases the tip with her finger and gives it a cute lick with her little, red tongue.

You. Damn. Sl-t…

"Oh, we can touch…?" The dragon sister coos coyly, then she sneaks a hand under my shirt and feels the muscles of my abs and chest. "My, you're quite muscular, considering your height."

Cheeky b-tch. I'll make you scream my name soon enough.

And the mature Golden speculates, "He's clearly above ten in 'Strength,' but I doubt he's much higher than that."

And the perfect moment for this revelation arrives, so I coolly announce, "Well, I have quite a few levels in [Mana Body] to compensate, and I'm known to be quite the mage as I have an MP pool of two thousand."

"Oh, my…" The Golden coos.

"[Mana Body]!" Ginger exclaims.

The ladies giggle and flush as they seem to be quite aware of [Mana Body]'s hidden benefits and "recreational" uses.

I sneak a claw into the blue dragon's butt cleavage and extend my reach with [Mana Body] until I can feel her warm private area, then I vibrate it.

"Oh…!" She squeaks and grips the base of my tail, giving me a small amount of pleasure with her respectable grip strength.

"Hm…? Are you the type that enjoys getting your tail pulled?" Hana teasingly whispers in my mind while Alissa embarrassedly deafens herself to not hear my answer.

Getting your tail pulled is a sign of submission in wereanimal society, so I immediately decide to never admit to it and poke Hana's soul to punish her for this affront to her master.

The other ladies stare at their dragonkin companion in confusion as the sl-t's grin slowly widens and her milky skin becomes flushed.

I get the feeling that someone's glaring at me, so I turn around and spot Empress Hayakasha's cold stare trying to murder me. I'm a bit puzzled by her anger, but then I notice that this sl-t is strikingly similar to the Empress, but younger, and of a subtly different color, so I wonder if she's the Empress' sister.

Like I give a damn what the cold b approves of.

I enter the thirsty sister with my claw, and she lets out a very clear sound of bliss as her juices coat my draconic finger.

"Lord… Ryder… you're… amazing…!" She breathes softly, and the other ladies start to realize what's going on. Even the Oracle gives me a bewildered side glance, but the second time she looks at me, she fails to look away again.

You know what? Screw you, you haughty b. I'll teach you a lesson.

I use [Sense Soul] on the Oracle again, making her shudder, then I notice that her MP has dropped by another point. Maybe her "power" consumes it, but for it to have perfect efficiency is quite impressive.

Now's not the time for magical geeking out, so I begin to really f-nger the not-Empress while repeatedly using [Sense Soul] on the Oracle, who shows such a deeply flustered reaction that it puzzles me as I wonder why she doesn't just leave.

Then my attention is drawn away from the flushed Oracle as the dragon sl-t sneaks her hand into my pants. "Please… Lord Ryder… give it… to me," she whispers seductively in my ear as she caresses it, and the ginger sl-t starts outright sucking the tip of my tail like it's a sword.

Goddamn, am I that irresistible?

"Yes," Alissa immediately replies in my soul space.

I push the sl-t away, then lift her dress, and she immediately presents her ass to me, so I pull out my massive, [Mana Body]-enhanced sword and give her what she's craving for. Gify flies over to Lina's shoulder, believing the young dwarf to be the safest place in this hall considering how everyone else's minds are becoming corrupted by my depravity.

The ladies watch in awe as I do the tall older sister, their breaths bated and their eyes hungry for every detail of our glorious plowing.

Intermission - Koritipythia

My "Willpower" is too weak to look away.

The kind-looking boy comes in with a cheerful and confident demeanor, displaying a youthfulness that makes him adorable and a confidence from experience that instills respect.

As long as I keep my Eye of the Overseer closed.

His smile is dazzling, his mirror-like scales are stunning, his ferocity is frightening, and his gentleness is soothing. On the outside, he's perfect, but on the inside, he's a… monstrosity. Conflicting feelings well up in my heart every time I look at him, but even though his massive, disgusting, deformed, thing has "entered" my soul repeatedly in the most -bscene way possible, my legs simply refuse to move.

Gods… help me!

All I can do is bite my tongue and suppress the desire to touch myself in front of him while I watch his thing going in and out of the tall sl-t, but then the other auburn wh-re starts doing herself with his tail, and I struggle to decide who I want to watch.

No…! I-I… don't want this! Truly!

Long minutes pass as my eyes refuse to obey me, then they suddenly start to follow his white, fragrant, dazzling seed as it slowly runs down the depraved woman's muscular legs, yet he doesn't stop moving. Her face of absolute bliss makes me question her sanity as I don't understand how a brute's thing could be that good, but thinking about what his presence is doing to me, maybe this "ferocity" affects every part of his body?

But why is he so alluring?! Why can't I stop imagining his majestic, draconic sword piercing my frail body repeatedly?!

Then the brute seems to notice what he's doing to me and intensifies the… "m-lestation," making me realize something.

Oh, no… the Gods haven't stopped him because I secretly want this…!

My legs quiver as I feel it quickly rising up within me, and then I feel something wet run down my leg, and I realize that I'm leaking! I try to hide it, but he's still staring at my underwear, so he immediately notices it and grins devilishly.

The intensity of his gaze makes me feel like I have my legs spread apart for him, just begging for it. Then he enters me one more time with his ability, and that sends me over the edge.

I can't hold it back! I'm sorry~…!

Just as my legs give out, but before I can collapse in a puddle of my own fluids, a fiercely hot presence washes over me, and I'm suddenly supported by the stalwart safety of my Sun's manly body.

Intermission end.

The Oracle stares into the Emperor's eyes, and even the girls feel a chill as we realize the implications of their gazes.

I slow down and finish off the not-Empress while rubbing the ginger sl-t's G-spot, making her instantly reach the summit and leak fluids everywhere.

"Lord Ryder, I give you permission to use [Clean]," the Emperor commands, his manly voice sounding faintly amused and tired, but the look he gives the Oracle as she convulses in his arms definitely isn't amused, and I instantly decide that it's better not to screw, literally or not, these ladies for now. "Stand, Lady Koritipythia. You should work on your resistance to bed skills and 'Charm' if you've so easily succumbed to a young man's allure."

The petite woman almost immediately recovers the strength in her legs and stiffly stands on her own while trying to awkwardly hide how wet her underwear is, then she composedly announces, "I'm honored that you're concerned about me, Your Imperial Radiance, and I'll dedicate my life to not disappoint you again by falling to such a shameful display." And she flashes me an angry, haughty glare.

Don't you glare at me, bitch.

The Ladies who aren't absolutely smitten with the Emperor raise their eyebrows at the implication of her words.

I vacate the not-Empress and instantly [Clean] everything up, though I leave a bit inside her so that she'll start leaking again in a minute.

Then the Emperor turns his stern, freezing stare towards me, and I suddenly feel like he has a dagger pressed against my neck. Then the power in his words make sure that the threat is firmly planted inside my head, "Perhaps you should ask your wives to help contain your draconic urges, Lord Ryder. One of them seems thirsty for masculine touch, so why don't you go satisfy her before she does something she might regret…?"

I do my best to smile daringly and smoothly reply, "I'm honored that you've expressed worry about my 'spicily rebellious' wife, Your Imperial Radiance, but I hold her on a tighter leash than is apparent."

But his eyes move past me, and I feel a horrible chill go up my spine, then I reflexively stand in front of Klein, and her legs stop shaking.

Point taken.

I flash a smile as I grab her hand, then I quickly turn around and drag her away while doing my best to keep my steps at a relaxed pace as the Emperor keeps his dagger firmly against my throat. His anger is so chilling that the girls have to control my legs so that they don't shiver shamefully. Hayakasha's cold glare is child's play in comparison to the Emperor's threatening gaze, and he doesn't relent until I'm halfway across the hall.

Hahahaha… I think I just survived mentally NTRing the damn Emperor!

But then again, that was a very close call.

I instantly sober up and quietly whisper, "Klein, are you aroused?"

"Yes…" She weakly answers.

"I'm sorry…" I earnestly apologize.

But she just pouts annoyedly at me. "Hmph… this isn't any different from being excited at the sight of a manly, bare man that isn't you, which has happened many times before, but this suits you right for messing with random women like that."

I narrow my eyes dangerously. "Seems like you're forgetting who owns you."

And she gives me a cheeky glance. "I'm still excited, so why don't you remind me what his name was, again?"

And I growl back, "You're too eager, so consider this a reminder that I control when you find bliss." Then I ignore her pleading.

Shortly after that, a very interesting proposal reaches my ears. Hana has found the perfect opportunity to fulfill a particular fetish of hers and requests to trade all of the freedom I've given her in exchange for this one indulgence.

I feel like pampering my loving wife just a bit, so I lay down some clear rules and go along with her desires.

Hana crosses her arms under her considerable chest, pushing it up just a bit, but also making the outlines of her bits clearly visible through the silky fabric of her dress.

"I apologize for my rude remarks to your husband, Lord Hanafuria," Alki-Alki "earnestly" apologizes while grinning like a devil. "I was merely surprised by his unusual, though majestic, appearance, and reacted in a shameful way."

Hana simply grins affably and calmly replies, "Alright, I forgive you, but I think you should invest in [Taunt] to improve the creativity of your banter. It would've been actually funny to me if you had used something better than just 'deformed.'"

Alki strokes his short beard as he reflexively asks in confusion, "You… want me to 'banter' with your husband?"

She shrugs, and the strap of her emerald dress shifts slightly to the side. "I'm a dragonkin; I enjoy fighting, even if it's with words or 'swords.'"

Then his white teeth appear from behind his beard as he grins daringly. "You said that you're with him because his sword is big. Is that all there is to it?"

She just gives him a coy glance and cryptically replies, "Banter is the art of mixing truth with lies that aren't exactly lies."

He gives her a bold stare as he asserts, "I am quite proud of my size as I've repeatedly confirmed its superiority."

She shrugs once again, and the strap slides further down her shoulder, revealing the edge of her tanned bit. "Well, pull it out then, and I'll judge it."

But he scoffs, lightly offended. "I'm a virile man, but I'm no carnal beast. I need proper stimulation."

She gives him a stern look with her striking, yellow eyes. "I'm not touching you."

He slowly reaches over and grabs the straps at her shoulders, then he pulls them apart and down, revealing her bare, round pillows. They're so alluring that he simply stares at the exposed pair of beauties while standing before her, their faces quite close, but not so close that he could catch her off-guard.

Then his hands go down from her shoulders, but she stops him before he can cop a feel while also holding her dress up to keep it from falling to the floor.

He snorts as his sneaky plan clearly hasn't worked, but then he glances down through the mirror to get a glimpse of her faintly moist flower, and the bulge in his tight pants slowly grows until it's at the same size that he had shown to her that day.

"Pull it out…" He orders huskily.

"No…" She whispers back as she briefly leans forward, giving him a taste of her breath.

He grabs her hand, but he immediately discovers that even though she isn't as muscular as him, her "Strength" is only a single point lesser than his, and her [Draconic Body] gives her such a boost that it allows her to easily resist him.

He stares intensely at her arm, surprised by the sudden growth of emerald scales on her tanned skin, but then he turns his eyes to her bare chest again and breathes in deeply to savor her scent, his sword begging to be unsheathed.

But without another option and too aroused to think straight, he gives in and hurriedly pulls it out with his free hand. It's paler than his middle-eastern skin tone, with a clear pinkish color, and definitely bigger than mine.

He glances to the side, then immediately grins victoriously as he growls suggestively, "Definitely bigger. Although you can see it, why don't you also feel it inside you?" Then he slowly strokes his weapon, and a bit of early juice collects on the considerably large head.

He tries to force her hand down, but that only reinforces that he's too inadequate, unqualified, and weak to actually make her bend to his sword.

She leans forward, almost touching foreheads with him while keeping her mouth as far away as possible from his, then she smirks derisively and delivers the blow, "Are you blind? Look again, and try to tell me that you're bigger than that!"

I stop beside Hana and wave… The Holy Draconic Sword of Saint Ryder, Joy of Women, Purifier of Prostitutes, Enslaver of Sl-ts, Destroyer of Flowers, Shifter of Shapes, Plougher of Fields, Seeder of Ovens, Giver of Life. May thy Hallowed Name be Everlasting, thy Stamina be Inexhaustible, thy Flesh be Immortal, and thy Juice be Boundless. May every male who lays their Godless eyes upon The Holy Sword be promptly executed if their vile presence doth not immediately kneel and wor-…

"Enough…!" Ciel angrily interrupts me, and since Klein has already finished oiling it up, I rip off Hana's dress and give it to her.

She can't take such a Godly Tool so roughly without immediately reaching the summit, so she does, which makes her leak copiously from her Blessed Flwoer while also weakening her legs, forcing her to grab Alki-Alki's shoulders to keep herself from falling over.

She tilts her head back and stares him in the eye as her gorgeous face warps with desire and her vertically-slitted eyes gloss over in bliss. Her body shudders and writhes with every thrust, making her bits jiggle alluringly.

Her jaw goes slack from bliss as her hot breath hits the bearded and stunned man in the face, and more early juice leaks out of his lonely and pathetic little friend. He's feeling intimidated by her stalwart composure, and his animalistic desire to br--d has clouded his mind, leaving him like a helpless little puppy begging for a pity plow.

He makes to do it himself, but she chuckles and grabs his hand, then forces him to hold her arms, making full use of [Draconic Body] and [Enhanced Strength] to assert her superiority.

A mix of our love fluids soon leaks out of her and runs down her legs. The face he makes when he notices it is that of surprise and disbelief as his muse is being completely dominated by another so barbarically, yet his sword quivers again as another considerable amount of early juice leaks out of it.

Then anger takes over him, and he tries to both touch her assets and kiss her, but through [Enhanced Reflexes] and [Muscle Explosion], she easily dodges his attack and pushes him back, nearly making him trip backwards onto his ass as he struggles to remain upright.

All he can do is stare and hold the stunning and fiery beauty as she spams and climbs the summit repeatedly in his arms. Her bountiful assets shaking wildly, her tanned skin sweating with desire, her folds leaking another man's superior seed, and her derisive smirk implying how pathetic and inadequate he is.

Suddenly, her eyes roll up into her skull, and the sweetest sound leaves her lips as her whole body locks up, then she begins to shudder uncontrollably from the massive bliss wracking through her entirety.

"C-m for me…" She commands, her voice infused with just a hint of [Godly Language].

Then Alki-Alki's pathetic sword pulsates, and a massive jet shoots out of it, landing squarely on her shredded emerald dress, ruining it beyond repair with his repulsive excrement.

She continues to lean on him for a moment as she catches her breath, and he's simply too stunned by the situation to even move or make a sound.

Once she's recovered, she affably whispers, "Thank you for the help, little Alki." Then she [Equip]s a new micro dress, which hides just a little more than an elven dousnadeia, and his mast starts to deflate.

But before he can reattach his lost balls, Hayakasha's bone-chillingly cold tone strikes me from behind, "Crown Lord Wolf Ryder, I must ask that you take your beastly depravity elsewhere until you've regained your self-control."

How convenient!

"Right away," I cheerfully agree and drag Hana away.

"Unfortunately, I've also become quite excited. Excuse me," Yunia politely announces to the other stunned elves and unceremoniously joins Alissa, Klein, and I as we leave the hall.

"You're just jealous that he won't do you like how Wolfy just did her, aren't you?" Empress Piscila, The Naked, whispers in Hayakasha's ear, only loud enough for Alissa to hear.

"T-they used a sort of magic that isn't allowed!" The cold Empress hisses back, her embarrassed tone sounding like bliss to my ears.

"Harmless fun that I know made you very excited," Piscila cheekily replies.

"Shut up…" The cold woman grunts and walks away.

"It seems that our families are… making up, aren't they?" Cleinias' wheezing voice unpleasantly reaches Ciel's ears, making her freeze as she gets an idea.

She has a mounting suspicion about Cleinias due to all of the peculiarities surrounding him, and this petty move of his is the perfect opportunity to confirm it.

The angel quickly turns around and cheerfully replies, "Decien Cleinias Alkibiades, what an honor to meet you," her voice loud enough that everyone nearby can clearly hear her.

He wheezes a chuckle and retorts, "Please, the honor to meet new Royals like your family is mine."

She takes a step forward and offers her hand for a shake, but Cleinias' stern knight also takes a subtle step in response, now in position to quickly get in the way between them if needed.

Cleinias remains unfazed and immediately starts spouting his bullshit, "I certainly didn't expect those three to 'mingle' in such a way, but it appears that my boy has received such passionate forgiveness that I wish for this event to repeat in such a way to strengthen our ties-…"

"Then let's celebrate our newfound closeness with a handshake!" Ciel suddenly exclaims, drawing a bit of attention to them.

The feeble old fart stops talking for only a second before resuming his bullshitting without pause. "The sharing of-…"

But Ciel takes another step forward, a perfectly angelic smile on her juicy lips while she keeps her hand extended, ready to cast [Detect Evil] the very instant she touches him, but the knight moves his hand to block hers from coming any closer.

Cleinias and Ciel stare at each other for a tense second, but now Ciel is the faster one as she loudly declares, sounding hurt, "I understand rebuffing a handshake with my husband, but me? I'm a priestess of Love, Decien Cleinias. Please, have some trust in the temple. We know very well how to not hurt our elders with our energetic youthfulness."

Cleinias flashes a smile and doesn't waste a beat before continuing with his bullshit once again, "I apologize for the rudeness, but I have a condition that makes my bones quite brittle, and the enchantment that protects me from the harm just from standing is deactivated to not offend the Emperor, so I plead to you to understand my situation and to not see the harm in my dismissal of this social norm."

Fucking bullshit.

But the precedent has been set. The Emperor's radiant gaze is unmistakably staring at Cleinias, and he's unamused.

"Bring me proof of his Wickedness, and I'll execute his wretched existence right where he stands!" Ciel furiously shouts in my soul space as she finally pulls back her hand.

A note from Manasong

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Chapter 134: The Room - Part 2

A note from Manasong

Attention: to conform to the limit of mature content (more than just sexual content) allowed in a novel, I've censored this chapter. You can look for the uncensored version here.

Intermission – Alcander

We watch as Sir Alkibiades embarrassedly walks out of the hall, his head low and his eyes wide open in disbelief with himself.

"Why is he so sad? I wish I was him, centimetri away from that massive pair and that gorgeous face," one of the weredog Dezens quietly hums.

"Dogs in heat," a human Dezen grumbles as he rolls his eyes, then he grumpily explains, seemingly disgusted with the situation, "His pride was wounded. Imagine the woman you thirst for being done to completion by another, more virile man, right in front of you while you can't even touch yourself to enjoy the view."

"He still came," the weredog replies with a shrug.

The human glares at him. "At what cost?"

And the weredog barks dismissively, "Bah! It's because you humans have too much pride that you keep missing out on all the fun stuff!"

"I'm sure Alcander is having a lot of fun, though," a Titleless human noble teasingly remarks.

I just frown at him and confess, "You all saw how my Lord went from doing two beauties while seducing a third to doing his wife in front of everyone while humiliating a man almost twice his size?"

The Titleless noble nods casually. "Yeah, he sounds like a 'fun' person."

I scoff and shake my head. "Just don't introduce your wives to him."

He seems to understand the implication, but then he smirks cheekily. "Oh~… how are your wives, by the way?"

I narrow my eyes at him and firmly state, "Safe and sound back in Escanso, and always as far away as possible from any of my Lords."

Another Titleless noble joins in, "Don't you have Lordsguard protecting your home?"

"Yes…?" I hum back, already dreading his answer.

He gives me a fake pitying look as he slowly explains, "Everyone knows that those pretty and lanky elves are favorites of women. Even single-edged men and women have sharpened the other side once they found an elf they wanted to 'bend the knee' to."

My irritation grows so much that I decide to brag, "There's a young elven maid working in my house. What elves call 'normal clothes' would barely pass as underwear here, and the three of us sit down and watch as the youthful girl cleans the house while shaking her barely covered ass cheeks at us."

The noble chuckles and grunts, "Lucky bastard."

Except my wives are dying from jealousy of the maid's youth. Maybe I should hire an old maid or butler, but after seeing how the Head Priestess of Escanso is, I'm not sure if that would fix anything…

Being surrounded by beauties you can't touch is torture, I tell you, torture…! But I can't confess this!

Nibbling Skritters!

I can still hear the many female voices screaming my Lord's name in the throes of passion. I'm surrounded by carnal activities that I can't participate on, and it's starting to get quite grating.

Will I ever one day gather the courage to ask him to teach me how to dominate women like he does? Having two women who love you is amazing, but I'm always outnumbered by their sisterly alliance that's been forged from steel. How does he keep seven wives plus all the extra women under his control?!

My Lord is a frightening man in more ways than one.

Intermission end.

Okay, doing the sister of an Empress, seducing a young ginger girl, NTRing the goddamn Emperor, and humiliating a man much bigger than me by doing my bare wife while she bounces in his face is all fine and dandy, but Roxanne's eggs have activated so hard that she's lost all reason.

While I discuss with Alissa and Yunia about how we'll invade Cleinias' mansion, I skull plow Roxanne while using her black spiral horns as handles. Klein is forced to watch while the golems keep guard outside the room.

I give Roxanne's greedy throat what it craves, but she's barely able to swallow it all, making it drip onto the carpeted floor of the Emperor's tea room. We'll [Clean] it all later, but I hope he doesn't mind.

Yunia immediately cautions, "It's quite easy to enchant a whole mansion to detect monsters, so I don't think we can use your monster summons. Confiel already had a strong suspicion that you knew [Monster Summoning], and after revealing the Grim Giant when you invaded Escanso, most nobles should be able to make the connection."

Something insane takes hold of Roxanne's mind, and she forces me to twist her horns apart, the humiliating and depraved pleasure making her instantly reach the summit, but now her fingers aren't enough anymore, so she makes us go doggy while she bites her dagger-tail and I twist her horns.

"Just the spirit elemental, then," Yunia affirms.

"Don't let the spirit fly through walls or windows. They're all most likely enchanted to detect spirits," Lina warns us through [Bind].

And Alissa shares her concern, "That butler seemed dangerous. Do you think he can detect spirit elementals?"

Yunia soberly deliberates, "It's a possibility, but it'd be redundant since the mansion should already be protected against spirits."

I quiet down Roxanne a bit so that I can speak out loud, "But not against someone summoning a spirit while inside it, so I think they're probably suspicious that I might have left a summon lurking about since I was free to wander the whole mansion the other day."

"WOLFY~…! I LOVE YOUUU~…!" Roxanne screams as I mercilessly deliver my love into her, and her frail, unnaturally pale body quivers with every powerful smack. Her insides twist and milk me, and I make sure to smack against her inner button that her eggs get fertilized, even though it's impossible for her to be impr-gnated thanks to the Fertility Ring.

Alissa calmly concludes, "So, we can't use anything but our skills. Even [Invisibility] might be risky since Katasko specializes in it."

Yunia nods in agreement, making her pointy ears bounce, and finalizes the plan, "You search his office while I look for a hidden passage in the bookshelves."

I hum curiously, "Oh, you think there's a secret passage there?"

She smirks proudly as she affirms, "Yes. It seems to be the perfect location for one, and it would also explain why you could find a place that's not covered by the Scrubber."

And I realize something. "The way I was acting while putting down the coordinate was also quite suspicious…"

I might've accidentally exposed that we know about Cleinias' secret, so his whole mansion might be on high alert. We should be really careful to not alert anyone.

After we spend a moment to reflect on things, Lina interjects, "The office is likely protected, but if you can drain the mana from the door's enchantments, you might be able to sneak in without activating an alarm."

Good idea.

Then we hear something snap, and I almost lose my balance since I just accidentally broke Roxanne's right horn.

"YEEEEES…!" She bellows as the biggest summit she's ever climbed overwhelms her mind and bleeds through [Bind].

Reinhold approaches Hana again, his eyes trained on her face to avoid both her massive cleavage and the mirror floor that exposes her still moist flower, but none of the other imperial officers have the same consideration as he does.

A drop of juice runs down along her toned leg, and she scoops it up, then closes her eyes in delight as she holds herself back from collapsing in a quivering pile of limbs.

Ciel, Lina, and Aoi aren't faring much better, but it's certainly not the first time that they've felt random bliss bleeding through our connection, and they're used to it enough to not cause a scene, though Ciel and Lina are still forced to excuse themselves and seek out each other for support because only Aoi can calmly reach the summit while staring a stranger in the eye, and Ciel definitely doesn't want to stare at Cleinias' ugly mug as her body is flooded with pleasure.

Nobody pays much attention to their odd behavior because the Ladies, emboldened by my displays of virility, have spread out and started their own little games of seduction, considerably shifting the atmosphere of this gathering towards spiciness.

"Didn't you conquer an ancient dungeon to gain your Titles?" Reinhold interrogates Hana. His wife stares at him intensely, watching for even the smallest slip of his gaze.

Hana coos back, basking in post-summit afterglow, "Yeah, we did. Why?"

Since the areas he's allowed to look at are limited, he blinks and looks up for a second to not stare too intensely at her beauty. "What interesting stuff did you find there? Old dungeons are usually full of Artifacts."

We all become immediately suspicious, but Hana knows how to handle him. "We found a lot of stuff. Ships, armor, weapons, the spirit Chimera, a dragon's hoard of valuables, a few impressive suits of armor that Arreira himself forged…" -She frowns and snorts- "Also a lot of 'art' he made."

Reinhold's eyebrows perk up, and he grins as his gaze sharpens. "Weapons? I'm sure you know I'm a sword fanatic."

"Well, he gave us elven enchanted swords like these," -she [Equip]s her elven bastard sword made of wood- "but the prettiest thing we got was a Chimera glaive that the Celestial Horns use."

"Glaive…?" He leans back and subtly wrinkles his nose in disgust.

They continue chatting, attracting a few officers with Hana's stories of Legado, and though she's drinking, she's very far from even getting a buzz, let alone being impaired enough to accidentally spill the secret on Patrono.

Roxanne finally collapses on the floor, leaking, sweating, and drooling, but I hold onto her horn for a while longer to tease her about it. It's quite simple to glue it back on with a [Heal], but I haven't satisfied my humiliation thirst enough, so I'll abuse her for a bit while keeping an eye on the girls in case shit hits the fan in Cleinias' mansion.

Yunia and Alissa step through the [Gate], and both women hide behind the sofa while using [Redirect Mana] to erase any evidence of the spell.

After a moment of waiting in silence, they deem that their invasion hasn't been detected, so Alissa starts making her way to the door, and Yunia swallows an Eia pill, then they both adjust the camouflage of their Camalo armor set.

In the room, the only light comes from the psychedelic moon as it shines through the window, dark enough that the chameleon power of the armor is maximized while still allowing Yunia to see the bookshelf.

The corridor Alissa walks into is faintly illuminated, so I give her [Enhanced Speed] to help her dodge anyone she might meet along the way, and she casts [Ignorance] on herself, then uses [Redirect Mana] to erase the trail the spell leaves.

One by one, Yunia quickly inspects each book on the wall-wide bookshelf. This will take a while, but there's no way around it.

Roxanne wakes up and turns to me, then I dangle the broken horn in front of her, and her pale face becomes even paler.

I grin like a devil as I slowly degrade her, "You shameless demon. You wanted this to happen. You just couldn't resist the safety of my arms, so you finally surrendered the last piece of yourself to me: your pride as a demon."

She's so surprised that she can only mumble fearfully, "No… no, I-…" And seeing her gorgeous face so thoroughly broken is like sweet nectar to me.

I grab her by the throat and pull her close to me as I hiss, "Quiet!" Then I kiss her deeply, and her thirsty tongue instantly responds to the invasion.

After a few seconds, I deem that she's heard the message loud and clear, so I throw her back to the floor and step on her chest, pinning her in place. The eyes she gives me show unbridled fear, yet her heart beats madly within her chest from excitement.

I lean on my right knee, making it hard for her to breathe as I continue to degrade her, "I control you. I control everything about you… and you enjoy it. My kindness and love for you are boundless, and that gives you the confidence that I always know what's best for you.

"I can hurt you, but I'll never hurt you. No matter the physical or mental pain, you always know that there's love behind it all. No matter how much I abuse your delicious body and fragile mind, you'll never rebel because you know that your place is under me, sucking on my sword.

"So, you will accept anything that I do to your body. Do you understand, Roxanne Ryder, my beloved wife?"

Her lower bits heat up again as she almost drools in delight from seeing my extreme display of manly domination, her elegant face warped in insane adoration.

Then her lips gently spell the sweet words, "Yes, I understand… Master."

I break her other horn, and she reaches bliss while I shove my friend down her throat.

Alissa hides in a storage room while a pair of cooks run past her, eager to find a nice room to plow, then she moves on again, easily dodging the mansion's servants since they don't have [Hide Presence], but Alissa still remains tense and alert for any sign of the creepy butler.

She reaches the third floor without a problem, but it's Yunia who's handed a pickle first.

Her [Precognition] activates, and she resists the instinct to attack in retaliation, throwing herself to the floor the moment the door to the small library opens, then she quickly crawls behind the sofa to not be seen.

Tense seconds pass, but she doesn't hear or sense whoever it is that entered the room. All she knows is that the door opened, letting in the light from the corridor, and then closed a couple of seconds later, returning the room back to its dim illumination.

Suddenly, she sees the old man silently walk right past her, just ten centimetri away from where she's hiding. Then he stops by the window and wistfully stares at the moon.

If he turns around, it's possible that he'll be able to see her even with her Camalo's camouflage considering that he's walking around without a light, so she slowly crawls away. Since [Precognition] doesn't activate, she knows that she isn't about to be detected.

"For glory," she overhears him whisper with a firm tone, as if he's trying to convince himself. Then his shadow passes near her as he makes his way to the bookshelves.

She raises her head and sees him remove a book near the right end of the shelf, then he reaches into the hole with his hand and does something that she can't see.

The shelf recedes into the wall about fifty centimetri, revealing a narrow set of stone steps underneath its previous spot. Sebastian doesn't waste a moment before going down through the opening, and once his head has disappeared into the floor, the bookshelf returns to its original position without leaving any evidence that it hides a secret passage.

Yunia uses [Redirect Mana] on the shelf and detects a trace amount of [Warp Space] mana in the air, which explains perfectly how it opens and closes. She inspects the spot where the butler messed with something and discovers an easy-to-miss spot covered with a piece of cloth the same color as the wall, and under it, there's a thumb-sized black gem, which likely controls the enchantment that reveals the stairs going down.

With the butler's position known, Alissa runs to the third floor and stops before Cleinias' office, then she lowers her head to the carpet and confirms that there's a channel of silver in the bottom rail of the door, a proximity enchantment to prevent people from sneaking things through the crack under the door, such as a piece of paper with a [Gate] Coordinate.

But Alissa simply uses [Redirect Mana] on the channel, draining it of all the mana it has, then she opens her [Item Box] and pulls Ted out. Now without her doll exterior, she's merely a small skeleton of pure steel.

The golem uses [Manipulate Mana] on herself to become perfectly flat, damaging her HP a bit, then she slips under the door, and Alissa assumes direct control of her to explore the office. She doesn't have a lot of time since others might be able to detect Ted with [Sense Presence], and though the golem knows [Hide Presence], she's actually pretty terrible with that skill.

Suddenly, a thick pulse of Spirit mana sweeps through the entire mansion, and I'm thankful that I didn't summon a monster or spirit elemental here as they'd have just been revealed, so nobody is affected by it, then Yunia realizes that this might be the perfect opportunity to make her move. The air is thick with mana, so she activates the secret enchantment, hoping that the pulse will prevent the butler from sensing the [Warp Space] mana that leaks out.

The steps appear before her, and she silently walks down. Then she activates another enchantment on the wall near the bottom of the steps, and the bookshelf returns to its original position.

I finish playing around with Roxanne and heal her horns, then I go on standby, ready to summon the infiltrators at a moment's notice.

Yunia enters a simple stone room with a wardrobe that stores spare clothes and a table with a variety of potions on it at the wall. The only other exit is a thick door of emellanat, covered in occult-like symbols that remind me of the ones we saw in the Oracle's room.

Paying extreme attention to her [Precognition] to give her every last millisecond more to react, she grabs the handle of the door and twists it, her heart pounding in her throat, then she slowly pushes it open.

The moment a crack opens up, her [Sense Presence] is flooded with the information of a dozen monsters, but also an old human who's beating up a small goblin.

Everyone freezes, confused about what we're sensing. We expected something extremely Wicked, but not this…

Yunia pushes it open a little more, allowing her to steal a glimpse of a few bloody, female orcs chained to the wall. Their heads are lowered, but they're also quite close to the door, and she'll risk blowing her cover if she tries to open it any further. This sickening dungeon is just another small room, so there probably aren't any spots for her to hide if she goes in.

Suddenly, the butler's presence disappears from her senses, and she immediately closes the heavy door, [Quiet Action] ensuring that it's completely silent.

She thinks about going up the stairs, but that might leave evidence of the enchantment being used. Then her [Precognition] activates, and she realizes that she has no time to waste, so she dives under the table with the potions and adjusts her Camalo to camouflage herself.

A second later, the door slowly opens again as Sebastian comes out. Yunia holds her mental cursor over the trigger to [Equip] her longsword, but her [Precognition] doesn't activate again. Then Sebastian immediately turns to the table and leisurely walks towards it, giving no hint that he has spotted her.

He does something with the potions, then turns around and climbs up the stairs again. Yunia clearly senses the [Warp Space] enchantment leaking its mana twice as he opens and closes the secret entrance.

After a tense moment of waiting, she feels that it's safe to come out of her hiding spot, and she takes another look at the potions.

There are a few dozen labeled with either HP or MP, with one HP potion that looks freshly used, and about ten with cryptic symbols, one of which also looks freshly used.

Yunia drinks a couple of her emergency potions and [Clean]s the metal flasks, then pours a very small amount of each of the cryptic potions into them. Roxanne has some suspicions about what they are, but she won't dare make a guess about them for now.

The butler is now back out in the mansion, and if he gets too close to Ted, he'll likely detect her, so Alissa walks down the corridor and stands guard.

Once Yunia has finished collecting evidence, she enters the dungeon, and the moment the heavy emellanat door closes behind her, she stops sensing the staff spread out all over the mansion, confirming that this room was designed to block [Sense Presence].

And it's pretty fucking obvious why.

Four orcs, three hobgoblins, two goblins, a satyr, a slime in a glass tank, and a big Amethyst dragon. All female, half of them pregnant, and all of them showing signs of physical abuse.

I feel sick…

The tired monsters raise their heads, and after a couple of confused seconds, they manage to see through Yunia's camouflage. Then they immediately growl angrily, but they seem to lack the energy to keep up their strong front, so they all quickly lower their heads again, except for the dragon.

A pair of stern eyes watch Yunia intensely. Their black sclera and light blue irises make them seem strikingly similar to Aoi's, showing that they're of a similar species.

The beautiful beast is completely tied down against the floor by tight, bloody chains. Almost half of her scales are broken and faded, her wings have been cut off, and a few wounds are still oozing steamy hot blood. Her tail has been pierced through by a large hook that keeps it raised, forcing her body to stay in a breeding position. Yunia also notices that her hips are oddly wide, which Aoi believes comes from an egg inside her.

"Are you alright, dearie?" Queen Vlwind kindly asks Lina with a worried frown. The gentle, hydrangea-looking granny pixie instantly noticed her mood shift. The little girl reminds the old queen of her curious son, and she wants to hear more about Lina's hopes for the future.

"L-Lord Aoi?" The young, weremonkey nobleman hesitantly asks, both confused and scared by her sudden silence. The young mage greatly fears Aoi's draconic visage, but his scholarly curiosity about her knowledge of storms has given him the courage to talk to her like an (almost) equal.

"Hanafuria…?" Reinhold questions her as the fiery woman turns her back to the group. Though he has been relentlessly interrogating her about Legado, he hasn't failed to make her laugh, so it's not like he's been bothering her.

"Excuse me, Decien Cleinias, for I must retire," Ciel curtly states and leaves the blabbermouth by himself. She can't bear to look at him for even a second more.

The bastard sickens all of us so completely that it takes a lot of effort for her not to execute him right where he stands. What the fuck is this room even for? Rape? Research? Breeding?

But Ciel's emotions confuse me.

Wait, why are you leaving?!

"Monsters aren't protected by the Sins, Wolfy," she weakly replies through [Bind], holding back tears from the frustration and anger at her own impotence.

"What kind of damn bullshit is that?!" I shout back, and I feel my draconic rage flare within me.

"Wolfy…" She pleads softly, anger and anguish flooding her heart.

"Get back over there, and take his head!" I roar out loud, and Klein jumps in surprise.

"Wolfy, no," Yunia grimly interjects.

"Why?!" I flippantly reply.

"We don't have any evidence that he's Wicked."

"Alissa!" I bark.

But she somberly answers in a whisper, "Nothing here… just messages from spies, information about their targets' daily lives."

I freeze as I feel a shiver of fear run down my spine.

"I can't believe this…" I mumble.

There must be something we can use!

"Who impregnated you?" Yunia asks out loud, but she only gets growls in response, even from the dragon. If the monsters don't know how to speak Andraste, then they're probably not breeder-types.

Hana and Aoi fume in indignation, and even our knights start to worry about them, then our draconic anger starts to fuse into a firestorm of righteous fury, and I shout, mad with rage, "I don't care if it isn't a Sin! He's a rapist and a sociopathic sadist! Go back there, and kill him!"

Aoi turns to Cleinias and glares at him as she growls internally, "Let me eat his head. I'll squish it like a berry, then savor his brains."

Yunia forces Aoi to look away before he can notice her glare. "This will cause a war," the cold elven queen points out, her tone forcing us to pull back our claws.

Hana walks away from the group of officers and grumbles, "We're already at war."

"Wolfy, Hana, Aoi, please. You know that killing him would ruin all of our plans," Alissa anxiously tries to soothe us.

"Why are you defending him?!" I bark, but I immediately take back my words. I know why she's doing this; I just don't want to accept it.

"If what he did isn't a Sin, then he isn't Wicked," Lina gloomily spells it out for us, trying to convince us with logic, but I don't want to accept it!

"Wolfy… she's right," Ciel whispers while choking on her tears.

NO!

Our mood continues to sour, so Alissa and Yunia force those of us still in the hall to leave the gathering.

I collect my thoughts and try a new angle, "He's experimenting on monsters…"

"So did I!" Roxanne immediately cries out.

I shake my head and look away from her. "But you weren't a sadist about it!" I shout as I pace about the room.

"Arguing won't change the truth!" Yunia shouts angrily.

"I don't give a fuck; we have to kill him," Hana coldly states, scaring the knights who overhear her.

"No, we don't," Alissa calmly responds, and I feel her cold grip on my mind, forcing me to calm down.

But the sides continue to take shape, and we're split right down the middle. Alissa, Lina, and Yunia don't want us to kill him while Hana, Aoi, and I do, but Roxanne abstains since she also experiments on monsters, and Ciel doesn't know enough about the will of the Gods to make a decision.

Logic is on their side, but I'm feeling stubborn. I won't accept that the Gods are so lazy that they'd leave such an open loophole in the Sins. It's one thing to experiment on your enemies, but it's another thing entirely to find delight in it!

I stop pacing and turn to the girls as they enter the room, then I straighten my back and steel my resolve as I stare at everyone, except for Alissa, Yunia, and Ted, who are all still in the mansion.

Look at me and observe the man that I've become, for each and every one of you helped shape me into what I am now.

I pull back on my anger, allowing my tone to become crystal clear and perfectly composed for this monumental declaration. "I don't care if the Torture, Rape, or Murder of monsters isn't a Sin. I'll make it a Sin! For Aoi! For all the other unfortunate monsters that have been dragged into this stupid war between Gods, I'll rid this world of all the sadists and rapists that abuse the limitations of the Sins to fulfill their evil desires!"

A note from Manasong

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Chapter 134: The Room - Part 3

A note from Manasong

Happy New Year, fellow degenerates! And here's to a few more years of Rupegia!

Also, next week will be Ealy Chapter Review Week, so no new main story chapters, but you can check the discord server to know the small changes that I'm doing on the chapters. I need a few days to rest, but I should at least finish one chapter of the review.

"FUCK YEAH!" Hana roars spiritedly, and the knights reflexively cheer along with her like well-trained cheerleaders.

In my soul space, I feel a familiar pair of warm arms hug me from behind, making me pause. At first, I get the impression that it's the Goddess of Knowledge, but then Alissa's presence appears in my mind and does the same motion, leaving me with a feeling of déjà vu.

Wha-…

"This, I can support," Alissa whispers lovingly through our connection, dispelling my confusion, and I can't help but smile at the warmth of her presence.

Ciel closes her eyes, struggling to accept the audacity of my declaration, but then she nods as she accepts her role in this endeavor. She opens her eyes again and serenely affirms, "Perhaps it's time for humanoids to bring about an end to this failing of the Sins that the Gods refuse to right themselves. I pray that they listen to us, that they accept our desire for change and progress."

Aoi raises her sleek draconic head. She understands that a lot of my conviction comes from my love for her, so she feels compelled to chime in, "I know we can't convert every monster, but they don't deserve to suffer. It's not their fault that the God of Destruction made them that way." Her words are pure, and her wish is genuine. All she wants is less pain.

Roxanne stiffly adjusts her glasses as she becomes increasingly shaken. "My experiments… I-I should revise them, I should… do them differently," she dazedly affirms, the memories of what she did for her research flooding back into her mind. Though she often did use herself to test her antidotes, that wasn't always so, and it was because finding specimens was too difficult, not because of any sense of empathy or ethics.

But she's not paying attention to the nuance here. What Cleinias is doing is sadistic evil, which is different from her desire to save lives. "You're not part of the problem. All I want is for the Sins to apply regardless of who the victim is," I reassure her.

"For all of the humanoids to be held to a higher standard," Ciel adds as she grabs her hands to comfort her.

Lina smiles softly, her usual gloomy air gone for a moment. "This is what we do: we drag the Realm forward even though it's screaming that it doesn't want to," she confidently states.

"Gih," Gify soberly joins in. She's here because she believes in us.

Then all of our attention turns to Yunia as she stares at the abused monsters. She wants to use [Mask] to clamp down on the various feelings making a mess of her thoughts, but she doesn't need it as she still hasn't lost sight of her goal.

"Start the attack on Katasko," her cold voice echoes in my mind.

"What?" I hum reflexively.

She looks away from the dragon, unable to bear its unyielding gaze. "The kidnapping of their commanders, that's the one thing we can't screw up. Start it before they're alerted that we're plotting against Cleinias!"

My bold smile becomes strained as my idealism starts to deflate.

Yes, she's right.

Not even a minute after my declaration, and I'm already forced to compromise my values.

Nothing is ever simple, and being an obstinate, inflexible, righteous idealist only works in novels with plot armor. My life is obviously a cliché isekai story, but clearly not the innocent and pure kind. I'll never win through the power of friendship, or by being so uncompromising with my ideals that it's borderline suicidal. No, my struggle is about how to balance out all of my values without losing my sanity or being outsmarted by someone less scrupulous than me.

So, I send a message to Escanso to begin the attack.

I sit down on the sofa and have my wives cuddle with me while I collect my thoughts. No matter how enraged I am, there's nothing we can do but wait.

Ciel goes back to find Cleinias while Yunia sends the flasks with the mysterious fluids through my [Gate], and Roxanne immediately goes to work on the flasks.

She immediately confirms that their primary purpose is to increase fertility, giving me flashbacks of the lizard monsters practicing genetic engineering under Gnomeria, but there's no evidence linking the two… yet.

Yunia decides to use [Animal Tongue] to understand what the monsters went through. They don't speak very clearly, except for the dragon, who's smart enough to understand what's going on.

"What did they do to you?" Yunia asks the Amethyst dragon, and the spell translates her meaning into something that the monster can understand.

The snout of the beautiful purple beast is muzzled to prevent her from breathing fire, but she can open her jaws wide enough to speak growl-like words that the spell translates in Yunia's mind.

The dragon's voice sounds wounded, tired, but most of all, outraged. "Toy. Rape. Steal children. Hurt for fun. Corrupt our wombs. Birth strong children. Steal children. Steal children. STEAL CHILDREN!"

She rattles against her chains and breathes fire into her enchanted muzzle, then she winces in pain as her wounds reopen, and she bleeds steamy, red blood.

Yunia then turns to the other monsters. There are countless reasons for why someone would want dragon eggs, but not the children of other monsters. Are they just test subjects? What about the slime? It seems to be barely more intelligent than an amoeba.

This is also too small of an operation for it to be about money unless the dragon's eggs are extremely valuable, and I start to feel sick and tired just thinking about how we'll solve this abhorrent mystery. We can't even release them from this pain, not until we have Cleinias' head.

Ciel returns to the gathering, and she quickly finds out that Cleinias has left, so she makes a beeline for Alcander and asks him where the evil old fuck is now.

The pompous imperial hides his concern as he answers, "He left a moment ago. Considering how slow he walks, you should be able to catch up if you go through the main corridor."

"Thank you…" Ciel tiredly replies.

Alcander leans closer and whispers concernedly, "My Lord, is everything alright?"

She lowers her voice and does her best to remain impassive as she explains, "We're making our 'move,' but we'll explain everything later, so don't concern yourself with it."

He nods diligently. "Very well…"

She doesn't have anything to do, so she glances at Alcander's group of friends. "Do you think they'd be receptive to us?"

And he smirks proudly. "For sure. These nobles aren't afraid of a little scheming."

Our two sneaky/assassin girls are busy, so I give Lina some points in [Sense Presence] and [Hide Presence], then I send her to go after Cleinias. True to Alcander's words, she quickly finds the dried-up cunt in the main corridor, leaving the Emperor's Throne at a snail's pace.

Now, when do we kill him?

Alissa and Yunia still have things to do in the mansion, so I can't leave yet because I have to keep watch on them, and nobody else has any useful assassination skills. We also can't kill him in the Emperor's Throne, and neither can it be done in the open, so we have to follow him until the opportunity arises.

But what I feared soon happens. Once he reaches the entrance to the main hall, he meets up with Sebastian, and the butler opens up a [Gate] for him and his knight, then the three of them disappear as they step onto it.

Dammit!

To avoid activating any alarms in the Emperor's residence, I quickly return to the embassy through [Gate] and summon a Holly there, then I tell it to observe Cleinias' mansion from afar and warn us when it spots the old fuck.

Alissa knows that he doesn't use [Hide Presence], so she'll likely detect him the moment he steps into the mansion, and once he does, I'll invade and finish him off myself.

Meanwhile, she continues the exploration of his office, and the information she collects starts to become slightly valuable as (with the help of the other golems) she begins assembling a picture of who Katasko's enemies and allies are. We're targeting the commanders that operate in the east of the Mainland and the elven territories nearby, but Alissa is also learning about Katasko's operations in the west of the Mainland.

We wait for several tense seconds, which stretch into minutes, then become half an hour of waiting with no sign of Cleinias anywhere.

He must've gone somewhere else, like a meeting with his allies.

It does seem that people are expecting shit to hit the fan after this gathering, so it makes sense for him to have a meeting right now. Everyone was waiting to see where our allegiances would fall, and after that incident with the handshake between him and Ciel, it's quite clear on which side we stand. So, now that the uncertainties have been resolved, everyone will be eager to start the Purification.

Little do they know that our kidnapping of the commanders will fuck everything up. There isn't a clear group that's made up of "Katasko nobles" because most of them have kept their links with Katasko a secret, so the cockroaches are expected to be spread out across multiple groups.

And I start to realize how sweet this will all be. Destroying Katasko in one move while killing the biggest villain among them in the next.

Yunia finishes her interrogation, then leaves the small dungeon and rejoins us.

"We should return to the gathering," she calmly suggests, her tone containing a chilly prickle that shows both her revulsion at what she saw and also how strong her mind is. She's not completely heartless, but it'll take a lot more before the ugly side of this world is able to wound her.

I grimace, thinking that the monsters are being left to suffer for a while longer, but I smother the disgust. I need balance, and this time, their suffering is justified, for it'll ensure we achieve our higher goals.

Most of the girls leave with Yunia as she returns to the gathering, and I'm left with Roxanne, Klein, and Anton.

"These potions are really complex, Wolfy," Roxanne suddenly remarks, and I walk over to her to observe. She points to a piece of paper where she's recording her notes. It looks like a puzzle, where most of the pieces are unknown, but you can kind of get an idea of what it's about. "This is clearly a fertility potion, but it seems to target the blood rather than the womb itself."

I hum and deliberate, "I don't know much about pregnancy, but I know that the mother and fetus share nutrients through the placenta, which is like a barrier preventing their blood from mixing."

She knits her thin eyebrows. "Placenta?"

"The piece of red tissue between the umbilical cord and the mother's womb."

Her mind processes that for a couple of seconds before she finally understands. "Oh, that. Well, these potions seem to use the blood circulation system to spread out the healing magic, which seems to speed up the natural healing of the body."

I grimace as I realize something. "Gods, don't tell me that they justify their torture as a way of confirming that the potion is effective?"

Her gorgeous, pale face stiffens as she remembers some things she did in the past, then she swallows hard and hesitantly explains, "It'd be justifiable if the wounds were more… systematic. But from what Yunia sensed of the butler's actions, it was just meaningless torture."

Klein turns her head away and takes a step closer to her father as she's having trouble accepting what we uncovered. Anton is a tough man with a strong stomach, so he isn't showing any signs that he's been too affected by the revelations, making me glad I have him as a knight. While he doesn't have the appropriate education to train Klein into a fully-fledged knight, he'll definitely have a positive impact on her since they're always working together.

I observe Roxanne's senses as she investigates the potions' mana signatures, but all I get is that a signature might as well be an abstract painting. She can derive some overall theme of what the signature is about when looking at it as a whole, like how you can guess an abstract painting is about violence if it's full of red in strong brush strokes.

There are some small "patterns" she recognizes, but it doesn't tell her much without knowing how it all fits together. It's like having only a few words of a paragraph, with most of them just articles, and trying to guess what it's about.

She sighs as she puts down her Signature Interpreter monocle, then she begins explaining, "Fertility isn't a popular area of study, even in Maoka, where few pray to the Goddess of Fertility. Healing magic deals with most of the problems that could arise during pregnancy, so I never really had any reason to study fertility itself."

An idea suddenly occurs to me, and I reflexively reply, "Then we have to take these potions to the temple."

Alissa and Ted finish their exploration of Cleinias' office, which doesn't seem to have any secrets that are safe for us to investigate. There are some gems being used in the decorations that could be hiding a secret enchantment, but randomly feeding your mana into unknown gems is a good way to either trigger an alarm or spring a trap that kills the would-be thief. Not to mention that it's possible to enchant a gem to only recognize the specific type of mana that belongs to an individual, like a fingerprint, and though we did once mimic a signature with [Redirect Mana], we don't have anything that belongs to Cleinias on hand to repeat that.

I summon Alissa and Ted back, then we return to the gathering.

All I want right now is to eat something since I didn't have the time earlier, so I immediately make my way to the walls where the food is laid out. My disgust with the abhorrent dungeon doesn't dampen my appetite; in fact, the anger just makes it bigger.

Finger food is a staple of casual gatherings, but it's rude to cast spells in front of nobility, not to mention how it's almost a death sentence to do that in front of the Emperor,-…

He was actually quite lenient with us considering Hana and I used a couple.

… so the food here is made with the intent of being eaten with either toothpicks or a mini fork to not dirty our hands. They give us plates so that we don't have to return to the buffet all the time, and I fill mine up with pastries, the imperial specialty.

I'm surprised to find mini-pastel, which are deep-fried, square crust pies filled with goodies. Like a spring roll, but squared, and with a thicker crust. Then I also find a condensed milk bonbon covered in grated not-coconut along with a chocolate version. These are not-beijinho and not-brigadeiro.

I cry internally as I suddenly find myself a lot more sympathetic to imperials. I start to feel like calling them honorary Brazilians considering all of the good food they enjoy. They just need an unhealthy obsession with a single sport and an overly friendly attitude peppered with candid banter.

Mac Gantus is a melting pot of cultures, and they aren't really xenophobes, so I guess they're as close to Brazil as it'll get. It even fits as back on Earth, I left the homely but kind of fucked up place for greener pastures.

Then someone approaches me, alerting Klein, but the person doesn't seem to be hostile, just extremely stiff. I turn and see Centum Mako, a red-haired, black-scaled dragonkin with a very pale complexion and such an emotionless demeanor that I bet he can do some mean robotic dance moves.

"I see another has fallen to imperial delights," Mako remarks impassively as he glances at my plate.

I chuckle and smirk as I reply, "Can you blame me? These cooks seem to care for only one thing: is it delicious? And yes, it sure damn is."

But he doesn't show any reaction and simply continues with an indifferent tone, "You don't necessarily have a dragonkin's vices, but you share our draconic addiction to pleasure."

I chuckle again. "Guilty. Life is so much more 'intense' as a dragon; I have no regrets about becoming one."

And the stern way he stares at me tells me his true emotions. "But it's that same 'intensity' that gives us a bad reputation," he slowly asserts.

Ay, fuck you, bitch. I never did anything bad to anyone… maybe aside from cucking Nikolas, but that's debatable since Lolo isn't his girl.

I narrow my eyes at him as my tail tenses up from rising annoyance. "'Bad reputation'? I sincerely disagree. Dragons are respected, feared, and envied precisely because we're so passionate," I proudly state.

"Don't talk to him, Wolfy. He's one of those weird celibates who don't want to admit that they're secretly masochists," Hana advises me through our connection.

And his black scales subtly twitch as he almost fails to control his emotions. "The number of Wicked among my kind tells a different story," the bastard coldly retorts.

"But it doesn't disprove mine," I dismissively reply and casually walk away. Hana is right. I shouldn't bother with his kind.

I return to my girls and try to forget what we saw, but the mood has definitely taken a dip for all of us. Ciel and Hana have fewer problems re-integrating into the gathering, and Queen Vlwind sets Lina at ease, but we're all still forcing ourselves to be social.

Then we notice a subtle shift in the mood of the nobles as a considerable number of them suddenly decide to leave, and their stiff gait makes it clear as day that they're very tense.

Alissa starts paying attention to them, then she notices one of them checking something inside the sleeve of their shirt, which allows a faint red light to shine out. We bet it's an Emergency Ring activating, and they'll soon learn that the Commanders of Katasko have been attacked.

That improves our mood, and Yunia and I even become a bit smug as we savor the fear they try and fail to hide.

Then one of the imperials turns his head towards us and just stares. His expression is blank, and his face seems quite pale, so I'm not sure if he's scared or awe-struck.

Soul Info

Name | Faustus Fluminis | Race | Human | Level | 55
HP | 100 | MP | 5,210 | Magic Power | 2,730
Strength | 11 | Endurance | 10

He's a thin and short imperial man with one of those handlebar mustaches that shines due to excessive use of wax. I'd say he has a bit of a posh air about him that makes him rather punchable, and coupled with his slack-jawed stare, he looks quite pathetic.

I make the dragon roar internally, and he flinches as my aura flares, then he immediately turns away and quickly scurries out of the hall, still looking dazed and/or scared.

Weirdo.

When I'm done eating, I grab Alissa by the waist and land my hand on her fluffy tail, then I gently caress it to soothe my nerves. She does the same with my glorious, scaled, thick tail, and the faint touch of her delicate fingers helps soothe my mind.

The Ladies start to become even bolder with their sexual advances, and a few lucky nobles seem like they're about to get laid, but I don't feel like entertaining any of those sluts. All I want right now are my wives. Then I notice that the Oracle has left.

It might be for the best since fucking with the haughty bitch again would definitely enrage the Emperor. And just as I try to forget his powerful gaze, things become a bit brighter as I sense his unmistakable powerful presence approaching us.

I turn around to receive the shiny sun guy, and he greets me with an infuriatingly handsome and gentle smile, which has the very annoying effect of calming me down. I just don't like being in the presence of a bigger alpha male.

But has he already forgiven me for what I did to the Oracle?

Piscila, the gorgeous and naked lioness, is nice to look at, so I focus on her as he casually plays with her hard, dark nipples with one of his hands.

"Don't hang your hostilities on your belt, Your Highness Wolf," he magnanimously states, his voice like a velvety chocolate that dares me to question my sexuality, but nobody but me can hear what he's saying, making Alissa a bit annoyed.

"I don't understand your meaning, Your Imperial Radiance," I very politely reply since he's decided to treat me as royalty.

He gracefully explains, "Make allies, not enemies. The less bloodshed, the better for everyone."

I remain impassive to not reveal my true feelings to any onlookers, but I lower my voice as I can't magically project it in the same way he can. "Certain things can't be forgiven. The 'filth' runs deeper than you think."

He stops playing with Piscilla's nipple as he stares intensely at me. Though he looks quite friendly, I get the impression that he's hiding his true feelings. Still, being in his presence is like staying too close to a bonfire, and I'd rather that he toned it down or simply left.

After a few seconds of deliberation, he soberly cautions me, "Do what you must, but remember that the Empire comes first."

I simply nod. For the Empire to progress, people like Cleinias must die.

Then he smiles softly, soothing everyone again, so I focus on the furry hotness beside him, and, noticing my gaze, she purrs seductively as she smirks at me. Her thin tail sways mischievously like a cat's, and we're allowed only a couple of seconds of flirty stares before he takes her away.

"Maybe we need a beastfolk woman for you?" Alissa whispers seductively as she pats the boner in my pants.

I huskily reply, "I'd love that. Hukarere, Kaatohe, and the Chimeras just aren't the same as a fully furry beauty."

She kisses my cheek, and we rejoin the ongoing conversations, but our social energies are running too low, so we soon retire from the gathering.

But there's still one last thing we have to do before we can sleep.

Caterina, the milfy golden elf beauty struts into the embassy. Her gait is confident and strong, and the red not-bikini she's wearing shows enough of her body to leave no doubt of her warrior background. But it's her gaze that holds the "danger" of a Punisher, and I lose myself in her eyes as she scans the room. Then her smirk quickly fades as she realizes that Hana didn't call her to party.

"Sorry for lying, but I didn't want people to suspect anything," Hana earnestly apologizes, and Caterina's subtly casual demeanor disappears, allowing for her usual poise to return.

She gives the guilty dragonkin a brief glare as she slowly warns, "I'll forgive you this time, but don't make it a habit. I hate the deceitful behavior of nobles."

I diplomatically interject, "I also apologize, but please, take a seat. I have a favor to ask."

She does as told and sits down, then crosses her legs and assumes a slightly haughty posture, something elves specialize in. "Very well. What scheme do you want me to take part in?"

I point to the fertility potions on the table between us. "First, let me tell you about something we've unveiled…"

A note from Manasong

Hall of Fame of Patrons

The patrons who support Rupegia shall have their names sung by the bards for they deserve the glory and honor. Their names are:

Prince PreownedFIN.

Prince Owldente.

Lord Andrew Meyers.

Lord Novgarod.

Lord Michale Erwin.

Lord Bakerdea.

Lord Maurice.

Lord Mattirro Draca.

Lord Sean Drake.

Lord Mike Bartter.

Lord Warwulfv.

Lord Khristopher Welsh.

Lord DJ.

Lord Tenebris Lupus.

Lord Paul Daval.

Lord Paul Daval.

Lord AndreyUC.

Lord Tmac.

Lord School Work.

Lord Gwendolyn Simmons-LaRose.

Lord CopeyDunt.

Lord James.

Lord BlindTactic.

Lord The Tallest Joshua.

Lord Andrew Hebreard.

Lord litalmexy.

Lord Tyler Mills.

Lord Philip.

Lord Sam.

Lord Warwulfv.

Lord d3235.

Lord Ddraig Wynn.

Noble Salty Panda.

Noble Mild Fracas.

Noble Aclys.

Noble CarlBaxter.

Leave a rating or a review to help me rise to the top or fix my shameful understanding of prose.

Take a look over my blog where all information about the world of Rupegia will be posted.

Join the Discord and discuss, or rant, or meme, or try and fight me so your waifu gets more screentime.

Become a Patron and read chapters in advance, or read the side-stories, or leave your mark on the story, or help choose the next artwork or the next side-story.

Chapter 135: Fury - Part 1

A note from Manasong

Attention: to conform to the limit of mature content (more than just sexual content) allowed in a novel, I've censored this chapter. You can look for the uncensored version here.

The waiting is killing us. We try to sleep, but we all toss and turn, achieving only light naps before we start to get irritated with ourselves and each other. This might be the one time where individual beds would be beneficial. Waiting for Cleinias to appear in his mansion, waiting for the Crown Lords to finish their job, waiting for the assassins to attack the embassy. We're just too tense to sleep like we usually would.

I sigh internally and open my eyes, then I delicately free myself from Alissa's grasp and get out of the bed. It's still the middle of the night, but the psychedelic moons create a faint path of silvery light towards the balcony

Gify pops onto my head and makes a nest of my hair, purposely going against Alissa's order. My hair was already messy from sleep, so my foxy wife shouldn't get too mad at the cheeky little griffin for not using my shoulder instead.

"Gih," she smugly chirps internally to not wake up the others.

I pass by the ever-watching golem trio, then I join Roxanne on the balcony.

Her pale body looks ethereal in the moonlight. Her lithe figure, that tight bottom, the pair of perky, small mounds, her delicate curves, they all look divine, and even her prominent collarbones have a seductive charm to them. She's my own supermodel, the ultimate ideal of feminine sensuality. And I get an unsheathing thinking about putting my mark on her hole once again.

Her dagger-tail turns to me and sways mischievously as she reads my mind, then she gracefully sips from her not-wine glass and sends me a brief, coy smile, but her silky hair is covering most of her face, allowing me to see only her bespectacled eyes. Her gaze is the second most intense of all the girls', losing only to Hana's, and is followed by Yunia's.

I stop beside the spicy demon and immediately get a feel of one small cheek, then she wraps her thin black tail around mine, and I rest my head against her shoulder, taking care not to poke her face with my horns.

I breathe in deeply to savor her intoxicating smell. Because we were sleeping, she removed most of her alluring perfume to not annoy Alissa, so I can only sense a faint trace of it, but it has already been imprinted deeply upon my mind, and that's enough to evoke vivid memories of its intense aroma.

"I hope I never get tired of your love, Wolfy," she whispers wistfully, then she lands her free hand on my head and plays with one of my horns.

"I don't 'hope,' I know I'll never get tired of loving you," I reflexively reply.

She presses my head against her shoulder. "Awn… I love you too, Wolfy…"

Then we savor the moment in silence as our hearts shine with bliss.

There are a lot of openings between the canopies of the mini High Trees of the embassy, allowing plenty of moonlight to shine down upon us. But though the view above is quite pretty, the view ahead is even more beautiful as the perfectly leveled and flat landscape of rooftops -achieved by every building being the same height- makes for a rather adorable sight. I never thought I'd miss light pollution, but this place reminds me a lot of Earth, so it feels quite nostalgic for me.

With the Throne and the Hyperloop in the background, and the rainbow moons barely visible through the tree canopies above us, the complete panorama of Mac Gantus has the perfect mix of fantasy and modernity, making it feel quite unique to me.

But as the lovey-dovey moment passes, I start to notice the turmoil within her mind.

"What's wrong?" I probe.

"What?" She nervously hums, quite obviously faking ignorance.

I sigh and insist, "I can just read your mind and find out what's bothering you, but I think it's better if you try to put it into words yourself and explain things to me."

Her spiral horns immediately reveal her mood as they become flabby and hang loosely down the sides of her head, but it takes a long moment before she even manages to find where to begin, "I… don't want to study poisons anymore… maybe even healing potions, too. It's just… too complicated. I'm fine with testing things on myself, but-…"

I interrupt, "I know that ethics is a delicate topic, but you're not a bad person just because you make a mistake."

But she just deflects and starts to ramble, "I'm fine with working with Aisco, really. I'm almost sure he's a blunt edge, so he'd never spicily harass me, which is the one thing I hate the most because since I'm a succubus, people think that I just do anything that moves. And with Aisco, there's a lot of things we could research, like explosives, jet fuel, bombs, missiles, and so many other nice things from Earth that we could recreate here…"

I frown as I kindly point out, "Potions were your life's goal, Roxanne."

Then she becomes bitter and dismissive as her horns return to their usual shape. "I had already abandoned that as a goal before I met you. It was just a way to make money."

I grit my teeth in annoyance and keep silent. I know how much of a workaholic she can be, so she didn't brew potions just for money; it's clear that she enjoys it. Sure, she has the weakest ideals for ethics and workplace safety out of all of us, but it's not like it's impossible for her to learn them, and I bet Ciel would love to help her with that area of philosophy.

Then I realize something…

"You're too narrow-minded, Roxanne. Experiments don't have to always be performed with unwilling participants."

She gives me a concerned side-eye but doesn't reply as she really doesn't want to talk about this anymore.

But I grab her waist and pull her closer as I encouragingly explain, "You can pay people to participate in experiments. Imagine we find a goblin like Aoi, smart enough to be comparable to a humanoid adult, and with an 'incomplete' soul so that they don't have a desire to kill humanoids. We could pay them to become test subjects, and we could use [Heal] and [Purify Body] on them in case the experiment doesn't work, so there's little risk of them actually dying."

She knits her thin eyebrows in thought. "That'd be… difficult."

And I slyly grin. "But not impossible. Aoi won't be the last monster that we introduce to humanoid society."

She stares at me, her gorgeous face enhanced by her serious look and bringing out that rare "cool beauty" of hers that I love so much, not that her usual cheeky and cheerful demeanor isn't also adorable.

But while she tries to hold onto her stiff facade, her horns become shiny and mighty sharp, then they subtly quiver, and I sense a glimmer of hope dawning within her heart, which is the very thing that I wanted.

I get on my tip-claws and steal a kiss from her small, pretty lips. It's just a quick peck, but her air instantly changes.

Her long fingers run through my hair, and she pulls my face towards hers, then we kiss again, this time with tongue and fueled by the mad love we have for each other.

But as we kiss, I sense a small flame of jealousy slowly becoming warmer. I focus on that feeling and discover that Hana has woken up, and she's feeling a bit left out, so I promptly invite her to join us. It's too late for her to participate in the cheering up of our wife, but while she might have missed the talking part, she's just in time to deliver her passion, and we sandwich the frail succubus with our bodies as we show her our love.

I've already dominated and abused both Hana and Roxanne not that long ago, so plowing is outside of our intentions, though that doesn't mean we don't get excited.

I kiss Roxanne's chest while Hana forces her head to turn to the side so that they can kiss. My hands grope her small mounds, but I quickly move them down to savor the rest of her delicate body, and Hana's strong hands replace mine. We both just love to worship her alluring body.

I kiss her stomach and the scar on her belly, making her shiver, then I continue down until I reach her carpet, but I stop there. Roxanne's mood fluctuates as I know how to excite her just enough that she doesn't get ready while still making sure that her heart beats fast with excitement.

So much excitement that she breaks the kiss with Hana and pulls my face up to kiss me, instead. My friend touches her warm flower, and a massive pair of pillows squish against her, causing her to breathe faster in anticipation, but the latter has to part from her for now since it's Hana's turn to use her lips to send jolts of pleasure up and down her back.

Suddenly, Alissa wakes in fright and immediately sits up, then she pats the bed, feeling the empty space beside her as she probes our connection.

Gify instinctively jumps off my head and onto my shoulder, and my foxy shadow immediately realizes that I'm nearby, making her groan internally. Then she hops off and quickly approaches us, her cute, bare feet completely silent on the grass-carpet floor.

I unglue my body from Roxanne's to make enough space for Alissa to join our three-person fun, and she immediately buries her face on my chest, her furry ears tickling my face.

"I hate when you do that," she whispers with a pout.

"Sorry," I quietly apologize and kiss the top of her head, making her ears flick, which tickles my face again. Then she notices my friend and instinctively starts playing with it. Of course, that rouses the dragon, but I keep it contained as we resume our group party of caresses.

Roxanne starts to become drowsy from the not-wine, so Hana takes her to our bed again, and the fiery woman returns some of the love our pale wife regularly shows her by caressing her head until she falls asleep.

I drink a cup of Eia to calm my nerves, and Alissa keeps me company while we wait for the not-weed to take effect.

She kneels on the floor, then takes me in. We stare each other in the eye the whole time, speaking without words as we convey how much we love each other.

Then she takes the last drops and swallows. My desire has mostly subsided (though it's never fully gone), so she [Clean]s her mouth, stands up, and offers her ears, asking me to play with them, which I happily oblige.

We stay like this for a few minutes, and I start to get lost in my thoughts. I want to say something to her, to show some vulnerability so that she can pamper me like a child, but I can't really find the energy to speak. I want someone to say that everything will be alright, that I haven't made any mistakes, and that I did my best, but I'm not the kind of person that likes empty platitudes, and I also don't want to mix roleplaying with reality.

Screw all that, tho. I'm just feeling unsteady and have started to doubt myself now that things have escalated so much more than what we had planned…

But I guess there just aren't any damn brakes on Wolfy's Big Sword Train of Draconic Domination!

Choo, choo, mothercluckers!

I chuckle softly, but the cheerfulness quickly dies out, and I sigh tiredly.

"You're feeling better already," Alissa wryly remarks and turns her head a little to look at me with the corner of her eye.

I intensify my petting of her ears as I smile weakly. "I just needed some time."

"So did we all…"

Then we both turn our attention to the bed and notice that everyone else is finally starting to fall asleep together.

I hum in agreement, and we quietly join them.

Today is the 7th, Fis, day of Nature.

On a normal Fis, Gify would be out in the streets playing with the other nature spirits, and the little plush dolls would line up on the roofs of the houses, squeaking, chirping, and making adorable sounds as they kill us with cuteness.

But there'll be none of that today. There'll be no smelling of the flowers blossoming, no tasting of the new harvest of elven veggies, no redecorating of the castle. I'm not even allowed to wake up at my usual time.

Edolie, the werecat Companion, gently wakes me up to give me a message from the other Crown Lords. The kidnappings have been completed, the interrogations are mostly finished, and now they need my presence to use [Godly Language] on the prisoners.

There are still a few hours until sunrise, so I think I barely got four hours of sleep. I'm fit enough that I can endure it, but it's still stressful.

My [Spicy Charm] increased by 1 (now 0+2). It was just a matter of time.

Hana increased her [Godly Language] by 1 (now 2), stealing a free point from [Reduced Mana Cost] (now 9+0). Though, considering how she leveled up the skill by making another man cum with her voice, I'm feeling a bit conflicted. It's fun to emasculate other men, but by the Gods is it hard to keep this woman under control, so I'm not sure it's worth it.

"I'll behave!" She begs through [Bind], and the liveliness of her voice makes me smile for a few seconds before the pressure from what this day is about to bring takes over my mood again.

I alone walk through the [Eternal Gate] to Goldcross, where a small group of my Lordsguard led by Enomosa are waiting for me on the other side.

"Your Highness," the mature elven knightess greets me with a bow while the men kneel.

"Dame Enomosa, take me to them," I impassively reply.

We're allowed inside Crown Lord Lotus' mansion, but we're just taken straight to the dungeon, so I barely have any time to appreciate the "overgrown" aesthetic of her home.

Not much different from ours, the dungeon is just a set of corridors deep underground, lined with enchanted bricks to prevent escape, and this one is quite full of people, both guards and interrogators dealing with the prisoners. But these have all cooperated with the interrogators. The ones set aside for me are those who have more loyalty than brains.

We enter a wider corridor, and the cells here are thick metal boxes covered in enchantments designed specifically for "interrogation." Just the sight of them is enough to make Ciel seethe, preventing her from going back to sleep.

This place is the reason why the temple is always at odds with Lords. When you're the leader, caretaker, and guardian of hundreds of thousands of people, the Sin of Torture becomes "malleable" in certain situations.

Their [Item Box]es have been forcefully opened, their written orders taken and decrypted, and now we're confirming what is true and what isn't. If the prisoners cooperate, they're rewarded. Otherwise, they're punished. And if a prisoner knows something valuable, they can be sent to the Seekers of Truth to confirm whether or not they lied. But the thing is, the Seekers only ever meet with a small number of people each day, and whether a prisoner is actually sent to them or not is decided by luck.

So who's brave enough to lie and risk opening themselves up to be "punished"?

We encounter Lotus and Brás just as they're coming out of a cell, and we approach each other for a greeting.

Lotus is a young-looking golden-elf milf with a slender body and a stern demeanor, and her son is the spitting image of her, which means the sight of him gives me an annoying confused unsheathing since he's wearing a damn skirt and a loose shirt, making him look at most like a tomboy instead of an actual man. At least he isn't like Nito, Rande's young husband, who cross-dresses like a damn trap.

"Royal Crown Lord Wolf Ryder," Lotus greets, her tone subtly stiff and faintly hostile.

"Crown Lord Lotus Angila, Chosen Descendant Brás Angila," I politely reply.

"Royal Crown Lord Wolf Ryder," Brás repeats with as much flavor in his tone as sawdust. Well, he has a reason to dislike me, but that's not really true for Lotus.

"Let us begin," she tersely states and re-enters the cell she just came out of, with her son following close behind.

I share a concerned look with Enomosa, but we decide to talk about this later. The Lordsguard stay outside while Enomosa and I follow the Angila pair into the thick metal box.

Inside, there are two of Lotus' knights by the wall to my left, standing guard and watching as the man chained to a chair in the middle of the room is slowly driven insane. The enchantments force him alone to experience phantom sights, sounds, sensations and smells while everyone else is unaffected by them. A grim-looking elven priest watches the torture from the opposite side of the room, and he immediately glares at me the moment I enter.

His small nose wrinkles in extreme disgust while he snarls with that special type of disdain that only an elf can produce, "Is this really a reasonable response to a mercenary company stepping on your toes, oh Blessed Royal Crown Lord Wolf Ryder…?"

I have a pretty good feeling that the Gods don't care much about Katasko.

"Yes. We're just ensuring that Katasko is wiped out in the Purification, and you'll soon know how many of their members have been Marked," I grimly reply and continue walking towards the chair that's been reserved for me in front of the prisoner.

But his next words have a hint of glee to them that gives me pause. "You think Teresina would approve of this?"

And I immediately glare back at the insolent worm.

You piece of-… no, he's just taunting.

"I dare you to say that to her face, you coward," I dismissively reply and take my seat, but then he opens his mouth again, so I [Equip] my sword and point it at him. "Another word on this, and I'll shut you up."

Enomosa follows up on my threat and walks up to him with heavy steps, her full wooden plate armor making a muffled, heavy sound that's very threatening for anyone who knows what it means.

The stupid priest remains in place and glances at the other Lords, who don't even spare him a look, so he freezes, finally intimidated.

Then my reliable knightess stops right next to him, glaring while keeping a hand over her short sword as she kindly requests, "You may only speak to me, now. Will you bother my Lord again?"

He hesitates for a couple of seconds, and she unhesitatingly punches him in the stomach with her free hand. The bastard actually takes the hit pretty well, showing that he's no stranger to violence, but at least he's smart enough to stand down before it really becomes ugly.

"I won't bother your Lord again," he agrees through gritted teeth, and she takes a few steps back but still remains close to him so that he doesn't forget his place.

Goddamn, woman. If you had shown any interest in me, I'd do you so hard…

Even Ciel is disappointed in the priest for his pointless offense, so I have no regrets about how we handled this. But he made the temple's stance on this clear: they aren't pleased with this. Though, we know they want Katasko to go down, so we bet they're just posturing.

I un[Equip] my sword and turn to the prisoner, an imperial man with the build of a soldier and the loyalty of a dog. I hold no ill intent towards him, but this is necessary to wipe the filth of his employers from the empire.

"Tell us who gave you your orders," I calmly request, using the full power of my 30+5 points in [Godly Language].

The imperial visibly stiffens, resisting the compulsion to comply, but I have all the time I could need to grind him down.

"Tell us who gave you your orders," I repeat… again and again… until he breaks.

The only Crown Lord missing from this meeting is Herbaco, which isn't surprising considering his lax and casual demeanor, but I don't even mind his tardiness as it gives me time to recover from the mental drain of using [Godly Language] repeatedly.

The golems work tirelessly in my place, and it's fun observing the occasional odd glance they get. The dirtiest part of this endeavor is now done, and the information has been cross-checked to weed out the fake pieces, so now we just need to pour over all of it to build a clear picture of Katasko's operations in the elven lands and the Eastern Mainland.

Enomosa un[Equip]s her gauntlets and stands behind me, making me briefly confused, but then her long and strong fingers sneak under my shirt and massage my shoulders.

I instantly get an unsheathing, of course, but then I realize that she's just helping me relax, so I sheathe the Holy Draconic Sword. I'm actually so damn tense that I almost whisper as she forces my muscles to loosen up.

Suddenly, a curious name comes up, Centum Faustus Fluminis. He seems to have wasted a former "asset" known as "Nero" and attracted the unwanted attention of the Imperial Enforcers, so there are a few memos cautioning the Commanders when dealing with him.

Oh, ho… another name to add to the shit list.

Yunia has woken up, so she'll pay a visit to the diplomat at the embassy and collect any information they have on him along with the records of his use of the Imperial [Eternal Gate] Network so that we can find out where he's probably hiding.

Then we find a mention of a Commander blackmailing Madame Helganst, a former rising merchant who was threatening the market of another noble. She's that cunt who calls herself the mother of Lina's former master, Hildegard.

We don't know what to do with this, and Lina really doesn't want to think about that old bitch right now, so we'll keep it filed away for later.

But wait, there's more. We find out that a small group of nobles are plotting the demise of the Ankara family of Lords that rules over the small Fort Erda. This will be useful considering that Osaria will be meeting with them in a few hours.

Then Herbaco arrives, and we can finally get this shit started. Unfortunately, that also means that Enomosa's massage ends, and I give her my sincere thanks for this small help.

"Your 'printing press' might be 'simple,' but we don't have the facilities to produce them," Lotus slowly points out, her hostility tainting her tone once again.

I can't hold back my smugness, and I do my best impression of elven pomp as I explain, "Well, the Ryder Institute is ready to sell printing presses, airplanes, and even enchanted gems, but the secrets regarding how to manufacture them are another thing entirely."

She just stares at me with dead eyes, which I find quite delightful, but then she deadpans, "Remind me to not underestimate your deviousness, Royal Crown Lord Wolf Ryder." And I'm actually taken by surprise by her statement.

What the hell has gotten into her that she thinks I'm "devious"?

And my surprise is doubled as Crown Lord Infa sides with her as he scoffs, "Come on, now, Lord Wolf. The shipments of crystals from Rabanara are being done very much in the open."

But I won't be put off balance so easily. "I've merely accepted the offer from the Anara family to sell me crystals," I sharply reply.

And the old, lanky elf accusingly continues, "After they so shrewdly 'deceived' our Subordinate Lords to drop their claim to the Lapis Waterway through that… witch Silvane."

Lotus promptly adds, "They knew there were gems there, but they kept that fact well hidden from everyone until they could steal it for themselves."

Holy shit…

But my surprise is quickly washed away by FUCKING INDIGNATION at their accusations. I feel my scales shiver in rising anger as I slowly respond with a very harsh and deliberate tone, "That isn't my problem. I certainly didn't have any capacity to help her with that plot until just a short while ago when… you know, I rose from an adventurer to a Crown Lord."

And a tense silence falls over us as we have a childish staring contest, but then Confiel groans loudly and facepalms in disbelief as he sternly chastises, "Keep your bickering to yourselves, and stop wasting our time! We're here to talk about Katasko, not the Waterway."

Everyone is so damn angry all the time today. Give. Me. A. Break!

The two Antano Crown Lords drop it, and we continue with the review of the information, but I decide that my presence here isn't strictly necessary, so I store the golems and leave because I'm dying to visit Escanso. I want to see my women again, and I also want to begin preparations for the visit to the Sky Lands.

A note from Manasong

Hall of Fame of Patrons

The patrons who support Rupegia shall have their names sung by the bards for they deserve the glory and honor. Their names are:

Prince PreownedFIN.

Prince Owldente.

Lord Andrew Meyers.

Lord Novgarod.

Lord Michale Erwin.

Lord Bakerdea.

Lord Maurice.

Lord Mattirro Draca.

Lord Sean Drake.

Lord Mike Bartter.

Lord Warwulfv.

Lord Khristopher Welsh.

Lord Tenebris Lupus.

Lord Paul Daval.

Lord Paul Daval.

Lord AndreyUC.

Lord Tmac.

Lord School Work.

Lord Gwendolyn Simmons-LaRose.

Lord CopeyDunt.

Lord BlindTactic.

Lord The Tallest Joshua.

Lord litalmexy.

Lord Tyler Mills.

Lord Philip.

Lord d3235.

Lord Freddie.

Lord Mike Bartter.

Lord Sean Drake.

Lord Shaun McDonough.

Lord William Clark.

Noble Salty Panda.

Noble Mild Fracas.

Noble Aclys.

Noble CarlBaxter.

Noble Andrew Hebreard.

Leave a rating or a review to help me rise to the top or fix my shameful understanding of prose.

Take a look over my blog where all information about the world of Rupegia will be posted.

Join the Discord and discuss, or rant, or meme, or try and fight me so your waifu gets more screentime.

Become a Patron and read chapters in advance, or read the side-stories, or leave your mark on the story, or help choose the next artwork or the next side-story.

Chapter 135: Fury - Part 2

A note from Manasong

Attention: to conform to the limit of mature content (more than just sexual content) allowed in a novel, I've censored this chapter. You can look for the uncensored version here.

I step through the [Eternal Gate] and breathe in deeply to enjoy the fresh smell of my home. It's the most comforting air I've ever breathed, with the occasional earthy scent of moss, or the bright aroma of flowers, or the intoxicating perfume that the elves love to use.

I happily greet my Lordsguard as I walk through the Network's Hall, then I exit into the Hub inside our castle, and I'm faced with a small welcoming party.

"Welcome back, King Wolfy," the group of scantily dressed women suggestively greets in unison.

My luscious milf, my fluffy sheep, my bare cat, my young maid, and a few other thirsty maids and Companions. Everyone gets a deep kiss from me, of course, and once I'm done, I breathe in deeply again, this time savoring the perfume of the women surrounding me. Now this feels like home.

But I don't have time for even a quickie.

I cup Kaatohe's tight ass cheek with one scaled hand and Osaria's juicy cheek with the other, then I turn to Poosh and order, "Call Sandoro and Oritiki for a special meeting. There's something I have to tell them, and you and Osaria too."

Poosh's gentleness is instantly replaced with stoic obedience as she notices the seriousness of my tone. "Immediately?"

I nod. "I'm acting as bait, so I might have to leave for battle at any moment, but the bait will only be effective for a short while, so I can't stay here for too long."

Everyone's mood instantly cools down, and I feel guilty for ruining this moment, but the plan always comes first.

I smile bitterly and look at each of the women as I earnestly soothe them, "Thank you for being here to welcome me. It makes me really happy that you all missed me, and the Gods know I need the distraction seeing how tense I am today, but we'll have to postpone the 'party' until there's a better opportunity for it. Don't worry, though, I will show everyone my 'appreciation' for this welcome."

And my new level in [Spicy Charm] shows its usefulness, for my claw touching Kaatohe immediately feels her bits warming up from my words alone.

Poosh nods, then turns around and wordlessly orders the maids and Companions to disperse. After a few sad waves, I'm left with only Osaria and Kaatohe, but before we head off, I turn to my bare, bronze cat.

I grab her waist with both hands and stare her in the eye while I cautiously explain with a deliberate tone, "What I have to say to them is related to one of my secrets, and only those who have committed themselves to me are allowed to hear it. I don't want to force you to make a choice right now, so, I'm really sorry for this, but you can't come with us."

Her cat eyes stare at me for a short moment as she processes my words, but then she quickly nods and coolly replies, "I don't know what to do with myself, so I don't expect you to treat me seriously either. I understand that 'concubine' is a clear position, and I'll respect its importance."

There's… so much to unravel in her words. As expected of a noble, they have a reluctance to be pragmatic as they revel in the complexity of relationships, but I don't have the patience to play these games, so I might as well drag the dere out of her and force her to confess her love to me.

Unfortunately, now's not the time, so all I can do is warn her, "We'll talk about this later, but I feel like you're thinking too much about the wrong things."

"Just give in to the dragon," Osaria comes in with such a gleeful tease that I almost feel like chastising her.

"I'm simply more in control of my urges than certain people…" Kaatohe coldly replies.

But I interrupt the ribbing because I have no time to waste, "You two can do each other later when I'm gone, so let's just go to the meeting room, already."

Osaria cheekily waves to the bronze woman as I pull her along with me, and I give my cat one last loving look.

"Good luck, Your Highness," she calmly gives me her blessing, but I notice a hint of bitterness in her tone.

"Thank you. Until another day."

Less than a minute after we enter the meeting room, Poosh arrives with Sandoro and Oritiki in tow. I'm actually surprised by how fast they came, and Poosh's slightly flushed skin gives me the comical mental image of her running around the castle to find the two.

"Your Highness," they greet in sync with a soft bow. Then we all sit at the large round table, with the four of them sitting on each side of my large white chair as I want a more intimate discussion.

To give time for Poosh to catch her breath, I observe the beautiful carving at the center that depicts the entirety of Escanso. The artist tried to make the difference in size between the castle and the town as big as it is with the real thing, so the little tree-houses look absolutely tiny next to the bush-like castle. Even I still have problems grasping how massive the difference really is.

With great power comes great responsibility… and also great rewards.

Considering what I'm about to tell them, this table puts into perspective how far I've come. The Impostor Syndrome is still there, but I feel like I'm gradually faking it less and less.

Poosh swallows heavily, and I think that's enough time, so I raise my head to them and begin, "First, I have to ask this: what do you all know about Realms and Cycles?"

Oritiki looks confused while the other three all make suspicious expressions as they immediately start to make the connections in their minds.

Poosh promptly answers, reliable as always, "The Realm is the land that we inhabit, and all of it is under the authority of the Humanoid Gods. But there are other lands, other Realms, that are beyond our reach and that of the Humanoid Gods."

Osaria casually adds, "A Cycle is a collection of Realms, and all of the Realms within a Cycle are supposed to be similar."

And Sandoro immediately goes for the hook, "Your research into [Otherworldly Summoning] likely tapped into other Realms, did it not?"

"Other Cycles," I soberly correct. "That's why the being that came through it was so… difficult to comprehend."

Then we turn to Oritiki, who still looks a bit confused.

"Are you following us?" I gently ask.

Her cow ears flick as she blinks, then she slowly nods. "I think so… I just never heard about Realms and Cycles before."

I hum and explain, "It was confirmed by the Humanoid Gods, so you shouldn't know that much about it. This Realm is called Rupegia while the Cycle is called Reigurando."

She crosses her arms, bunching up her massive and delicious, bare, black pillows, then nods in understanding. "The [Otherworldly Summoning] research is about that 'incident' that happened with you and your soul, right? The one where you called the Alteration mages?"

"Correct."

And her non-existent eyebrows knit in concern. "So you were 'tapping' into other Realms? You were trying to summon something from them?"

She's assuming a bit too much, so I clarify, "I didn't create [Otherworldly Summoning]; we were just exploring the spell, which I discovered through my Gift."

She exhales loudly and nods again. "I see. I think I understand it now."

And the four of them stare at me intensely, already predicting what I'm about to say.

I smile bitterly as I finally reveal the secret, "My interest in that spell comes from the fact that I'm not from this Realm. I was brought here not long ago by a God, most likely the God of my Realm, which is called Earth."

Sandoro snorts softly and pats his puffy beard, his eyes out focus as he reflects upon my words; Osaria blinks in disbelief and starts chuckling with a silly smile, looking like she needs a drink of some Eia; Poosh remains completely impassive, showing no significant reaction; and Oritiki simply looks at the other three, a bit confused and unsure about how to react.

Poosh's reaction concerns me the most, so I glance repeatedly at her, which prompts her to explain, "Forgive me, Your Highness. I understand this revelation is important to you, but I don't have the perspective necessary to understand its significance." Then she readjusts her large, circular glasses on her bubbly face.

"Same for me," Oritiki hesitantly joins and flashes a guilty smile.

Osaria holds back her chuckling and quickly explains, "That's the point. We all thought that he was a Hero chosen by the Gods, but to think he comes from another Realm, sent by a foreign God. It makes him even more special than he already was to the point that we… don't know what to expect anymore."

Oritiki grins. "Well, I guess you two finally understand what Lady Armanpoosh and I are feeling, then."

"Doesn't change much, though. I just find it amusing," Osaria offhandedly remarks and starts chuckling again.

"It also gives some context for a few things…" Sandoro rather grimly adds.

"But that's not all…" I interject with a severe tone, making everyone instantly fall silent. "There's a high chance that I'm not the only one who was brought here. I've received word that a group of people appeared in the Sky Lands in almost exactly the same circumstances as I did… and I used to be married before I came here, her name is Lily Singh."

"Oh…" Osaria blurts out while Oritiki raises her non-existent eyebrows, and the other two remain unmoving, but then Sandoro's expression becomes sober.

"You wish for us to find them?" He astutely assumes.

I nod. "She's short and very slender, just a bit smaller than me, with black, straight hair that stopped a bit below the shoulder, a very athletic body, and light brown skin like those from Wideberg. I was made younger than I used to be when I was brought here, so she could be my age now, but we were both adults back on Earth."

"I knew you were older than you look," Osaria mutters wryly.

Then I turn to Oritiki and order, "Oritiki, I want you to take the Carrier and lead a diplomatic expedition into the Sky Lands, but your real goal is to secretly search for the other Earthlings and make sure they're being treated well. They're likely Gifted as I am, so they'll probably be hidden and protected by the Chimeras."

"As you wish, Your Highness," she promptly replies and lowers her head respectfully.

Osaria is our diplomat, but she's too valuable here as she deals with a ton of smaller problems herself, so Oritiki will have to represent us.

I sigh in relief as our foray into the Sky Lands can finally start, and I feel my shoulders begin to hurt again from the tension, but I can't relax just yet. "I understand that you might have questions, but unless it's really important, I think we can leave them for later as I need to return to Mac Gantus as soon as possible."

"Will you return to your Realm?" Osaria blurts out, a rare weakness in her tone that's so apparent that she immediately reels back in embarrassment at her own insecurity.

"No, never," I assuredly affirm, and that immediately appeases her, though she might still be feeling a bit of guilt, so I add, "I have too many ties here to ever consider leaving, even if Lily asked me to."

And she breathes in deeply to recompose herself, and my seductive milf quickly returns as she gives me a heated stare, promising a very intense "welcoming party" when I finally come home for good.

Lastly, I give her the information we collected on Katasko to help her negotiate with the Gartanias, then I return to the capital.

The girls finally begin to relax when they see me enter our room, but that just means that Cleinias hasn't taken the bait, so we're still waiting for his assassins to attack.

Now that we know which nobles belong to Katasko, the golems and the Companions start to pour through the public records from the Imperial [Eternal Gate] Network to find out where these cockroaches have fled to.

I jump onto the bed and bury my head in Ciel's outrageous valley, but then I remember something and cast [Telekinesis] on her so that she stays glued to my face as I inch towards the edge of the bed.

"W-w-what?! Wolfy!" She protests and slaps my horns, but I ignore her and sit up, then I open a [Gate] to Cleinias' home so that Alissa can check it out.

The foxy infiltrator touches the black circle and gets teleported away, then she focuses on her [Sense Presence], and after only a few seconds, she determines that neither Cleinias nor Alki-Alki have returned, so she uses [Redirect Mana] to erase all evidence of the [Gate] and returns.

None of us feel like checking in on the chained monsters again, so I quickly push them out of my mind, and with the regular check done, I throw my back on the bed again and let Ciel's bodyweight squish her pillows against my face. She just sighs and gives up, then starts running her fingers through my hair, helping both of us relax.

Since I've stolen Lina's wife, she's left without her usual partner, and just to make things interesting, I force everyone to switch it up. Yunia comforts Aoi, Lina comforts Roxanne, and Hana comforts Alissa while I have my fill of massive chocolate pillows.

Gify then joins Yunia in comforting her friend, Aoi, but I think that's too much favoritism, so I order the little griffin to comfort the ones who are doing the comforting.

"Gih!" She protests haughtily.

"Well, we're tense because we're about to go into battle, so you could help us out a little bit, right?" I slyly request, but my mouth is full of pillows, so only a muffled cry comes out, forcing Gify to read my mind.

She rolls her little amber eyes, then sighs exaggeratedly, making her white wings flap, then she begrudgingly agrees to do it, "Gih…"

Well, would you look at that, Gify is actually becoming courageous! But I won't denigrate her help. One more pair of eyes watching our backs will never hurt…

We relax for a good half hour, but then we start to become alert again from the anticipation, and we suddenly hear the sounds of swords clashing.

After the initial surprise, we discover that Nikolas and Penelope are sparring with sabres in the large patch of hardened grass grown specifically to resist the regular stomping of people working out.

While Lina, Aoi, and I would love to spend the whole day cooped up in our room, the rest of the girls have neither the extreme introversion nor the same draconic urges to make a nest, so they feel like joining the two guides, and we follow them, because of course we would.

The outside of the mini High Trees is somewhat similar to the inner gardens of our castle: large sections of exotic plants creating unique and private environments as they're mostly covered in shade from the canopies of the High Trees and separated by tall hedgerows. There are areas with running water to wet our feet, fragrant flower beds for us to smell, lawns of fluffy grass for us to lay down on, and many others.

The duo of adventurer guides are right next to our High Tree, training without a care for the tension in the air. Once they notice our approach, Lolo pales a bit while Nikolas simply crosses his arms impatiently.

"You're not a bother, please continue," Ciel immediately calms their fears.

The duo nod obediently and resume their sparring. They seem to be using dull swords, but they're still metal, and they leave behind painful welts whenever they slide against the skin.

Big black wolf man seems to have a bit more skill than the sprightly, thicc bunny girl, and she tries to compensate for that with her very high "Speed," thanks again to those thicc thunder thighs, but her "Endurance" isn't as good as his, so he manages to outlast her.

In a real fight, she might be able to disable his arms or legs by cutting a muscle, but this is just a bloodless spar, so she's at a disadvantage.

"How about a casual spar with me?" Alissa requests, feeling like competing against Lolo in speed.

"Aren't you an archer?" The bunny girl replies as she raises an eyebrow.

Alissa grins challengingly. "I have a few levels in [Sword Use] for self-defense."

And Lolo just shrugs. "Sure."

Of course, Alissa is far from being able to compete through skill alone, so it becomes a contest of "Speed" and "Endurance," and Lolo plays along.

Nikolas takes a few steps to the side and stands beside me. "You're awfully calm considering what's coming," he wryly remarks.

You two are the ones playing outside when you know a fight is about to break out.

I just shake my head and dryly reply, "Such is the life of a Lord."

He stares at me from the side of his eye for a moment, then we turn our attention to the two hot girls as they play.

Lolo has tied her long, floppy ears back like a ponytail, and they follow behind her as she bobs and weaves. Alissa's fluffy tail behaves similarly, though hers is more mesmerizing as she tenses it up to help her quickly move sideways, like how real tails are used.

"Lolo got lonely these last couple of days while you were off doing Lordly things," Nikolas remarks with the most casualness he can muster, which isn't much considering he doesn't have [Acting].

Hana struggles to hold back a snort while the other girls take a few steps away to not get involved in what's coming, and I just give him a brief draconic glare to warn him against this sort of provocation.

The lack of [Acting] also makes his flinch quite obvious, and he quickly qualifies his statement as he realizes that he's about to step on a mine, "What I mean is… you can't always be there for her."

I simply continue to watch the hot girls as I assuredly reply, "But when I am there, I give her what no other man ever could. That's what makes me special; my presence is addictive."

The two kemono girls giggle as they fool around, using their dull swords like sticks to poke each other with rather than weapons to fight. They ignore [Parry] completely in favor of using [Dodge] to its limit, and even [Sword Use] stops being useful with their reckless stabby behavior.

"'Addiction' isn't a positive word like you think it is," he solemnly retorts.

I thought I'd made some progress with him at the loli brothel, but I guess it just gave him a boost of confidence to confront me.

I remain silent for a moment as I carefully think over my next words. This C-ck thinks he knows what's best for Lolo? She's living her best life, so why the hell am I the one at fault here?

I stare at his striking, red eyes as I state with poise, "Don't judge where she finds her happiness. She isn't looking for what you can give her, so don't intrude and ruin what she has."

He makes a thoughtful expression for a second, then he frowns and turns to the giggling girls, staring at them intensely while he thinks, but his mood only grows worse.

Scantily-dressed cute girls bouncing around while sweating is quite the vanilla entertainment considering my usual hobbies, but it's still pretty great, nonetheless. A whole genre of anime is just "cute girls doing cute things," so of course there'd be quite the large audience for this sort of thing back on Earth.

"Fight me," Nikolas suddenly growls.

The lack of an overtly spicy atmosphere between them is a bit disappointing, really, but it makes for a nice change of pace to have something so innocent and fun before my eyes. Though, I can easily imagine Alissa eating Lolo out, so I can easily get into an enjoyable spicy mood with just a thought.

Wait, what did you say…?

I turn to Nikolas, a bit bewildered, and he repeats, "Fight me. No magic, sharp blades, shortswords only."

Final destination…

To ask a hybrid Lord to fight him in a damn sword-only duel takes some balls.

So I smirk challengingly. "Alright, you audacious bastard, you're on."

He has a small arm reach advantage, but I have thirty damn points in [Sword Use] and a well-balanced build. I don't need magic to win. I'm a damn juggernaut, baby.

He takes his shirt off, revealing his athletic build. Then we point our swords at each other, and Ciel gives the signal, but I just stare and dare him to attack first.

That angers him, and he goes for a bold downward and diagonal attack, performing a perfect slicing motion by using his elbow to spin the blade, just as expected of someone who uses a sabre as a primary weapon.

But we're fighting with straight swords, so slicing isn't as effective as thrusting, and I just spin my blade with my wrist to avoid it getting batted away by his swing while I take a step back to prevent his attack from reaching my head.

This allows me to keep my sword pointing directly at him, keeping him from getting close to me. And now we slowly circle each other as he tests my defenses with a few more sabre slices.

We seem to be matched in skill, which I find suspicious, but then he suddenly surprises me with a quick slice by spinning his wrist, and he finally manages to bat my sword away.

Before I can pull my weapon back in, he immediately advances with blinding speed as he uses [Muscle Explosion], his sword pointing back and down with my blade near his hilt, giving him the leverage advantage to keep my blade away.

I see his free hand form a fist and shoot towards my face, but instead of avoiding it, I flood my body with mana and activate [Mana Body]. This doesn't count as magic since it's an inherent part of me.

The skill lets me change my body at will, but it's not just for adding extra swords with studs, I can harden myself, boosting my "Stats" at the cost of mana, and so I catch his punch with my draconic hand, then twist his wrist. The bastard lost his advantage the moment he decided to get within grappling range of a motherclucking dragon.

He yowls but doesn't lose his focus, and he immediately spins his other wrist, using the push back from my sword to enhance the speed of his attack as our blades unbind. The tip of his sword whistles as it cuts the air with great speed, and I'm forced to lean back and rest my body against my thick tail to not get chopped in the head.

But now my sword is free, so I just lightly chop his ribs, opening a shallow wound, but due to already being in pain, he doesn't notice it and continues the fight, following up the chop with a stab into my stomach.

Now fueled by both mana and anger, I grab his sword hand by the wrist and twist it, forcing him to release his sword. Then I give him a headbutt, hitting him so hard that his head whips back, and he falls flat on his back as he grips his (now likely broken) nose.

The chilling sensation of having a blade in my gut is horrible enough that I immediately start to pull the sword out, but then the pain strikes me, and I let out a growl. I hate pain so much that I feel like headbutting him again for what he did.

"You do know that the average Lord would likely kill you for doing what you did, right?" I snarkily grumble as I glare at him.

He groans loudly in pain, then grumbles back, his voice muffled by his (now confirmed) broken nose, "You're no average Lord…" Then he slowly gets up, still visibly dazed from my attack, and starts making his way to Ciel.

I shake my head and [Heal] myself, then I collect both of our swords with my tentacles and [Clean] them as I reflect on whether or not I should've raked his throat with my claws.

Wait, I didn't even feel anything from that headbutt. How hard is my head…?

"Feeling better, now, you angry pup?" Lolo sassily teases as she and the other girls give him amused smiles… Well, Yunia wants me to headbutt the insolent dog even harder while Alissa wants to bite his head off herself because he stabbed me, but the rest are kinder to him in their thoughts.

He clicks his tongue and turns his head away from her like a tsundere, but he seems to have lost all the defiant bravery that drove him to challenge me. Maybe now that he's had the fight he wanted, he'll calm down again.

I look out past the hedges as I walk away from the center of the grass field, and a chill of anticipation goes down my spine. Things are too calm. Is Katasko really going to let us go after so visibly killing their dog and then taking a shit in their front yard?

A note from Manasong

Hall of Fame of Patrons

The patrons who support Rupegia shall have their names sung by the bards for they deserve the glory and honor. Their names are:

Prince PreownedFIN.

Prince Owldente.

Lord Andrew Meyers.

Lord Novgarod.

Lord Michale Erwin.

Lord Bakerdea.

Lord Maurice.

Lord Mattirro Draca.

Lord Sean Drake.

Lord Mike Bartter.

Lord Warwulfv.

Lord Khristopher Welsh.

Lord Tenebris Lupus.

Lord Paul Daval.

Lord Paul Daval.

Lord AndreyUC.

Lord Tmac.

Lord School Work.

Lord Gwendolyn Simmons-LaRose.

Lord CopeyDunt.

Lord BlindTactic.

Lord The Tallest Joshua.

Lord litalmexy.

Lord Tyler Mills.

Lord Philip.

Lord d3235.

Lord Freddie.

Lord Mike Bartter.

Lord Sean Drake.

Lord Shaun McDonough.

Lord William Clark.

Noble Salty Panda.

Noble Mild Fracas.

Noble Aclys.

Noble CarlBaxter.

Noble Andrew Hebreard.

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Chapter 135: Fury - Part 3

Intermission – Cleinias Alkimeonids

The men rave and rant, driven mad by anger and shame. They shout idiocy and platitudes, either too stupid to understand the truth of our situation or too cowardly to take charge and suggest what really needs to be done.

I simply stay silent and let the younger ones try to wrangle the herd of wild cattle as they moo in protest before the slaughter. This gives me time to actually process my feelings, to understand the pain and humiliation that these… sissy, pointy-eared, cat fuckers caused me.

Never, not even once in my predecessor's lifetimes, has my family been so disgraced with such an offense. A clear attack on our rightful livelihood that my comrades and I so arduously built together. Our hands may not be clean, but this response from the knife-ears is definitely unwarranted.

Some of the cattle want retaliation on Crown Lord Lotus' businesses, but even the more incensed ones ignore the clearly insane. We could handle a war against the swamp bitch if the Elder Council promised not to meddle, which is almost certain to never happen, but it's clear that the six Crown Lords meeting in Goldcross is a warning that they're working together.

These ignominious bastards will get what they deserve in time. They may be shielded for now, but after the Purification cleanses our ranks of the weak filth and the cattle, we'll come out stronger than ever.

I look down at the piece of paper on my table, a message telling me that the gecko boy is back in the capital, and this opportunity makes me break into a smile. All of the Crown Lords are out of our reach, except for this one, and since he's so confident that his ugly little embassy will be enough to protect him, it'd be rude of me to not teach him why Humans were the first.

I also want to make that red-haired lizard cunt pay for charming my son and ruining his mind, but we can only use this trick once, so the first blow has to be to his heart…

The madness in the cattle's eyes is forcefully crushed by the weight of reality, making me believe that it's finally time for me to interject.

"YOU IDIOTIC MONGRELS!" I shout as I slam my hammer against the kinetic crystal, sending a sonic wave that makes everyone wince and fall silent. Their fearful faces are simply delightful to watch, but I have no time to waste. "YOUR LACK OF IMAGINATION SICKENS ME! RETALIATION AGAINST LOTUS? THIEVERY, SABOTAGE, AND EVEN WAR? IS THIS THE BEST YOU CAN COME UP WITH?"

"They captured our Commanders. They'll know who we are soon enough," Centum Theneus calmly points out. I can always rely on him to be the voice of reason, the perfect partner to work with so that we can whip the dogs into a frenzy.

I open my arms wide and continue, "THEN LET'S UNITE AND WEATHER THE STORM!" -I suddenly point accusingly at the lowly nobles at the bottom of the audience- "FUCK YOUR PLANS, YOUR SCHEMES, AND YOUR DECEPTIONS! WE'VE BEEN CHALLENGED, AND YOU WANT US TO HIDE?!"

"SIX CROWN LORDS!" A courageous bastard shouts defiantly.

And I grin manically. "ONE GECKO BOY HIDING IN THE CAPITAL!"

He instantly falls silent while the rest of the cattle start mooing again, panicking as they realize what I'm implying.

"Even if he's alone, there'll be consequences," Theneus gives me the perfect hook once again

I shake my fist vigorously, using up most of my energy on this youthful act. "This is payback for the bloody nose!"

"You're being reckless!" Theneus angrily shouts.

And I deliver the final blow, "He spat on our face…! SO LET HIM SUFFER OUR FURY!"

The cattle moo and the dogs howl in agreement with me, sounding their own death sentences.

Let the carnage begin!

Intermission end.

The messenger from the temple finally arrives to give us the letter that we've already been told the contents of, but I still silently read it over while the girls have their moment of fun. I do like how the temple has accepted our claim as Royals at face value, though.

To the esteemed Royal Ryder Family of Crown Lords, the time to prove your worth to the Empire has arrived.

Generations of peace have led us to become fat, feeble, and conceited, but cowardice and incompetence shall be allowed to linger no more! It's time to rise and perform our duty! As a noble, it's -your- responsibility to clean the filth from our home and cut off the rot before the body becomes sick. Purify the Empire, and be greatly rewarded for your efforts.

Those who've received a Mark have been deemed either unnecessary to our future or even damaging to the integrity of our Great Nation, but they can still prove their worth, prove that they deserve to be among us, by fighting for this right.

Under the watch of a certified Priest, challenge the Marked to a fight and wager your possessions and Titles, where the winner takes all. This isn't a battle to the death as killing is prohibited, and only knights and High Officers are allowed to participate, so don't give in to desperation as your life isn't in danger, only your worth as a noble.

But while participation for those without a Mark is optional, for the unworthy, it isn't. If a Marked never wins a battle, their status as nobility is forfeit. But if they never fight while the Purification is underway, then the Punishers will hunt them down and execute them for their cowardice.

Show us that the power you wield is deserved through the hallowed glory of combat!

Xander, Head Priest of Mac Gantus.

I can't do anything but frown at this letter, and even Ciel struggles to not be cynical.

While the temple wants to instill ideals of "worth" in the nobility by forcing them to prove themselves, most of the nobles see the Purification as no more than just another game to play. Still, it's likely because of the Purification that the Empire has remained stable throughout its twenty thousand years of existence, so I guess they're doing something right.

The only interesting thing about the message is that there's a list of those who are Marked included with it, and we discover that both of the Alkimeonids and Vanea are on it, but it doesn't change anything in our plans. It was expected, even.

"Gih…" Gify whispers into my ear, then pops out of existence.

I turn my attention to the Hollys and Shads spread around the embassy and notice that the town has become eerily quiet.

A Holly spots a priest herding a small group of young nobles away from Bicker's Street, and a moment later, a large group of about thirty heavily armored people appears at each end of the street. One group is composed of halflings while the other is silver elves.

Gods, they don't waste even a single moment before starting their… Bickering.

"I CHALLENGE YOU-…!" The two groups shout at the same time. Then they follow it up with a slur, but it becomes garbled as their taunts overlap.

"The favorite hobby of halflings and Elarian elves is to fuck each other up…" Hana quietly remarks with a wry smile.

One member of each group runs ahead with a priest in tow, then they meet midway, right in front of our embassy, and start a discussion.

"The hell is going on?" Nikolas wonders out loud as he notices the shouting, his nose now healed.

"Skirmishes between nobles," Ciel soberly explains.

He snorts. "Right here?"

And she nods. "Right here…"

"I want to go see it."

I observe the Hollys' and Shads' senses one more time, then I sigh, and we follow him.

We return to our mini High Tree just in time to watch the two sides clash, our balcony giving us a privileged view of the fight.

Spells fly out, and a stray [Fireball] comes our way, but the enchantments of the embassy dispel it the moment it enters the property, which raises an alarm. A slightly annoying, high-pitched, bird-like chirping resounds throughout the whole High Tree, just a simple alert that "something" is going on.

This is kind of the perfect moment for-…

"GIH!" Gify suddenly shouts at the same time that a Holly instantly dies.

"Attack!" I reflexively shout, and everyone instantly [Equip]s their armor, surprising the two guides, and then I also summon the golems.

Nikolas reflexively draws his sabre, but Hana firmly grips his arm. "STAY!" She roars, and glares at Lolo too, [Intimidate]-ing both of them to keep them from doing something stupid.

I turn the Emergency Ring red, and we all [Fly] out of the balcony, then go around the mini High Tree, towards the side of the embassy opposite of the fight.

At the edge of the estate, far ahead of us, a Shad detects some odd mana coming out of the wall, attracting Alissa's attention. Through [Sense Presence], she notices the hedgerow by the wall ruffle in an odd way, so she sends an [Arrow of Annihilation] towards it, creating a large hole in the vegetation. Then we see a severed arm clad in black scale armor appear from nothing right next to the hole.

Almost immediately, we notice a flash of light come from a bit further to the right, then my [Dead Zone] and [Rainbow Shield] enchantments activate as the initial beam of searing light from an [Arrow of Annihilation] hits my helmet right on the forehead, but it's diverted away before it can do any real damage, instead causing a small explosion at the High Tree behind us.

We all fly lower to avoid further attacks, and Alissa returns fire while Lina [Equip]s a javelin with a Spirit crystal in its center, then she activates [Spirit of Gaia] and throws it at where the Arrow came from.

The javelin flies with blinding speed and hits right on its mark, but it seems that there's nobody there anymore. Then the crystal activates, releasing a thick pulse of Spirit mana throughout the embassy, which announces the position of the enemy to the hidden Punishers, knights, and Plifori mercenaries while also disrupting the assassins' [Invisibility].

The pulse reveals two blurry figures as they carefully climb down the embassy's hedgerows, a third figure on the grass holding what seems to be a bow, and the severed feet of a fourth right next to the severed arm. Then everything but the feet and arm becomes invisible again.

Just four?

The whole embassy bursts with noise as the men pour out of the High Trees towards the source of the mana pulse, and we carpet the areas where the assassins were with spells.

Roxanne's [Explosion] catches the one with the bow, but we miss the other two, and by the time the anti-[Invisibility] enchantment of the embassy activates, they've already finished setting up whatever it was they were working on, so we only see the two figures clad in black scale armor jumping over the wall, fleeing back out of the embassy.

Alissa notices something extremely fast coming towards the embassy's wall, and we only have enough time to raise our [Wind Shield]s before twenty huge capsules land on the grass with such thunderous force that they cause a sonic boom.

I cover my eyes to shield them from the dust cloud as I [Heal] Alissa's, Hana's, and my ears. Then we land about a hundred meters away from the capsules, which suddenly burst open, and a hundred plated men rush out like goddamn Space Marines.

"[Sanctuary]!" The Punishers cast and stand their ground to protect the rest of the men as they're slower to recover from the blast.

Roxanne immediately pops the head of one of the tin cans with an [Explosion], and the golems prepare their saw blades while the girls charge up their spells, but then Alissa notices the enemies pulling out small red gems.

The tin soldiers all suddenly stop, then pull their arms back, obviously preparing to throw the gems, and Alissa notices a crack in one of them.

EXPLOSIVE GEMS!

"STARVE THEM OF MANA!" Roxanne shouts through [Bind].

The girls and I all use [Redirect Mana] on the gems, ripping out all of the mana in them just as the soldiers throw the gems, but all we've done is speed up the Runaway Mana Reaction, and then a massive explosion blocks our view.

Once again, we use [Wind Shield] to protect ourselves from the blast, and our [Rainbow Shield] flares as a ball of flame licks the air and floods past us. But we're better prepared for it now, so we immediately [Heal] each other once the blast has passed us and prepare for battle.

I summon my tentacles, then [Equip] all of my weapons and take a moment to observe the battlefield with Ciel while Hana, Lina, Aoi, and Yunia immediately [Fly] forward to follow up, and Roxanne, Alissa, and the golems prepare themselves to rain attacks on the survivors.

The [Sanctuary]s seem to have protected our men, so they're mostly fine while more than half of the tin cans have been wiped out.

Alissa spots an oddity as she sees a group of five men in tight-fitting black scale armor huddle up, then suddenly disappear, only to instantly reappear again, but now much closer to us. We all tense up as we realize their intentions, and then four of them disappear as they [Blink] again in the next second, leaving the fifth behind.

[Ritualism]!

It takes me a second to find them again, but the moment I do, three of them [Blink] closer, and I steel myself to prepare for what's about to happen. Then two of them [Blink], and I start turning around, but the last one appears right behind Alissa, not me.

NO…!

"[EXPLOSION]!" Roxanne shouts, but the assassin's [Dead Zone] is so powerful that it instantly pushes the spell far away, and it only disturbs the air.

Alissa turns around as fast as she can and puts her bow in front of her chest to defend herself from the assassin's dagger, but then we notice that their weapon's blade is glowing with a frightening blue light, and Yunia gasps in realization.

The immaterial blue blade passes through her bow unimpeded, and when it touches her hands, they burst with blue fire.

YOU-…!

Yunia immediately forces me to summon Alissa, Ciel, and her, and a seething rage floods through my veins, making the world feel like it's slowing down, but then my muscles gain the speed they need to match my perception as both [Rush] and [Haste] take effect.

"WE'LL TAKE CARE OF HER!" Yunia announces through [Bind].

"AAAAH…!" Alissa shrieks as her mind is filled with nothing but pain, and it bleeds through our connection, intensifying my rage so much that my whole body burns as I forcefully transform myself into a dragon in a split second.

I blink, and I notice that my jaws are now closing around the assassin's head, which I squish like a cherry, flooding my mouth with delicious blood and brain matter, the flavor enhanced by the crunchiness of his skull. But this is far from enough to quench the thirst that I feel.

I growl with my mouth shut as I sense a searing heat within my throat just begging to be released, then I immediately turn around and see the second assassin standing behind Ciel, the bastard's head falling from his shoulders as Silvano uses his two swords together to scissor it off.

The heat within my throat rises up, now at the back of my mouth, burning so strongly that it hurts to keep it contained. I need something to aim this at… no, it must be a someone.

The third assassin has Hana's sword piercing through his eye socket and his head wrapped in her [Fire Breath], and I turn just in time to see the fourth assassin [Blink]ing away from Aoi, so I release the heat towards them.

"GRAAAAAH…!" I roar as a beam of light shoots out from my throat. But before their [Dead Zone] can divert it away, the beam explodes near their face in a wild release of raw energy, making them stumble sideways, and then Lina's javelin goes through their head, and they fall limp.

I see the fifth assassin [Blink] towards the Punishers, but before I can make another move, I crash against the grass as the rage completely leaves my body in an instant, and I return to my humanoid form.

"Wolfy…?" Lina notices my condition.

"The breath fucked me up!" I immediately reply, and we turn to the last assassin, who [Blink]s again, and we notice Klein and Anton at the center of the Punisher line, currently fighting the last remaining tin cans, and they're right in the direction that the assassin is going.

No…

"FUCK!" Hana swears as she chases after them, but the fucker [Blink]s far.

The seething rage comes back, but it's only barely enough to allow me to move, so I point my finger and cast [Gravity Crush] on the assassin. They freeze for a second, then simply [Blink] away.

"[EXPLOSION]!" Roxanne shrieks as she tries to stop them, but her spell is once again completely countered by their powerful [Dead Zone], making them only stumble for a moment.

And then they [Blink] closer to Klein again.

"NO!" Hana cries, and Roxanne rapid fires [Ice Lance]s.

I've got nothing. My body is too sluggish, Silvano is too far, the golems' saw blades are too slow, Hana won't make it in time, and our instant cast spells are too weak.

I need… something with more finality.

I need for you-…

The assassin dodges Roxanne's spells with ease, and Hana doesn't manage to catch up with them before they [Blink] behind Klein.

"TO DIE!" I roar as I use [Godly Language] to its limit, and the world goes still.

I feel like each second lasts for an eternity as everyone stares at me, stunned by what I've done, but then the assassin chokes and falls to their knees.

They still try to raise their ethereal blue dagger towards Klein, but she quickly turns around and draws her backup sword, then beheads them in one clean move.

Everything suddenly returns to normal, and my whole body seizes up. Then I puke as I hit my head against the hard ground.

"GRAH…!" I retch, and my lungs squeeze shut, refusing to breathe in air.

A splitting headache strikes me, and I feel like my brain is swelling up, so I grab my horns and pull them apart, trying to split open my skull to give myself some relief, but the helmet is in the way, and I achieve nothing beyond slightly bending it.

My forehead starts ballooning out, pushing against my helmet so hard that it actually pierces through as a third horn appears. Then I feel my arms turn into noodles, stretching so much that they pile up and coil into knots.

My legs melt and fuse with the ground, and I continue to lose pieces of myself to the world, which is now claiming my consciousness as punishment for the transgression I've committed.

Then a cool sensation stabs into my back and quickly spreads all throughout my body, soothing my pain and healing my wounds as it drags my mind back to reality.

I gasp as I wake up, and my head immediately turns to Alissa. She's lying down on her back, her stunningly beautiful face ruined by the extreme pain warping her expression as she presses the blackened stumps of her hands against her body.

Yunia holds her wrists while using [Spirit Touch] on her to soothe her pain while Ciel [Fly]s towards the wounded to help, then her [Holy Spirit] slaps me in the face, and I finally notice the fleeing tin cans.

"GET THEM!" Ciel stirs my mind through [Bind].

Once again, the flame of rage is lit within my heart, and the embers flare into a massive pyre. They've hurt my wife, so they must pay.

I unsummon everything, then I use [Redirect Mana] to forcefully refill my MP, only to spend almost all of it again as I summon fifteen Dream Eaters. The creepy, oval, wooden masks, each depicting a sleeping person, appear before me in a line. Then they release a thick gray mist that takes the shape of a satyr's body wielding scimitars.

But I haven't summoned them because I need numbers.

The smoke explodes forward like a massive tidal wave, covering the battlefield with a soporific mist that quickly spreads out into the street and beyond.

I'll capture every single one of these fucking bastards!

I cast [Rush] and [Haste], then I go join the girls in hunting them down.

The brutish imperial Punisher throws the last of the captured and tied up tin cans into the pile as the rest of the Templars strip the fuckers down and cast [Detect Evil] on them. Then the priests use an Identification Crystal to reveal their names.

My mind is full of noise. Feelings, memories, and conversations churn around in a colorful soup as I slowly piece things together and reflect on what happened. The feedback from using [Godly Language] like that did a number on my mind, so it takes me some time to fully understand what happened to Alissa.

Hana, Lina, and Aoi keep me company as I finish recollecting myself, and since our job here is done, we're finally allowed to rest, so we immediately leave these fuckers behind to seek comfort in the arms of our wives.

We wordlessly [Fly] away, back up to our mini High Tree, where we land on the balcony of one of the meeting rooms and un[Equip] our armor. We immediately spot Alissa sitting perfectly still in a chair with Roxanne, Ciel, Yunia, and the golems gathered around her, Gify on her shoulder giving her a massage, and Klein and the Companions by the wall watching over us as we rest.

I make a beeline to my lovely fox, and the others make way, then I pull her head into a hug. She closes her eyes and rests her forehead against my chest but remains silent while fuming internally, the pain from her wounds now just a mere hot sensation at the ends of her stumps.

The [Ruin] dagger didn't just hurt her hands. It warped her spirit to the point that if we use [Regeneration] or [Regrow Limbs] on her, they'll only sprout into distorted and painful mounds of decaying flesh and bone. To save her from the pain, Yunia severed the warped parts, leaving her with only a few centimeters of flesh past her wrists.

"We need an Alteration mage to give her new hands," Yunia solemnly states.

"Kle-…" I stop myself before I finish saying her name, but she still notices and turns her head to me. The assassin clearly targeted her out of all of the other people they could've tried to kill, so I don't want her to leave my sight for even a second right now.

"Wolfy…?" She whispers hesitantly, her tone both gentle and tense, but conflicting feelings well up within me, and I hesitate to answer.

Then Yunia takes over for me, "You and your father know more about Mac Gantus than all the other knights. Seek out the diplomat in the embassy and have him help you find the best Alteration mage in the capital. If you can't find one, then return at once, and we'll call one here from Escanso."

She nods diligently, then gives me a worried look as she notices my anguished expression.

"He's afraid of more assassins coming for you," Yunia tersely explains, and I just lower my eyes in shame.

Klein un[Equip]s her armor and hugs me tightly from behind, pressing herself against me so hard that I can easily make out the contour of her entire body, which I've played with so many times. "I have a duty to fulfill," she warmly whispers into my ear, then slowly presses her lips against the back of my neck.

The kiss feels both wistful and warm, but I understand that she has the resolve to endure the risks, so I nod, and she releases me. Then she re[Equip]s her armor and starts to leave with confident steps.

"At least take this!" I suddenly exclaim and summon a Shad, causing my headache to flare as I yet again strain my mana organ.

She turns around and notices the black shadow approaching her, then she smiles warmly and nods at me once she recognizes the summon. "Thank you," she whispers softly, then finally leaves.

All of the wild emotions swirling within me add to the headache, which starts to pound against my skull again, making me groan internally, but then Alissa raises her arms and wraps them around my waist to comfort me.

"I'm fine…" She whispers softly and stops for a couple of seconds, her voice still a bit strained from screaming her lungs out just a short while ago. "My hands will be healed in time, so I'll be fine."

"That was too close…" I weakly reply.

Ciel turns her head away and grimly admits, "They were more devious than we ever imagined."

And Hana sorely retorts, "They were far from killing any of us."

"Except for Klein," I point out, and she grimaces.

Alissa squeezes my waist, prompting me to look down and notice her stern and determined expression. "I'd give my life for you, and Klein would do the same," she states, then pushes me away and turns into a small fox, this magical body of hers completely unharmed. "Get on the sofa, and let's not talk about any more grim business while we rest. It's making me bitter."

My body is still a bit fucked up from everything that just happened, so I promptly obey and sit down, then she jumps onto my lap and curls up.

I need to get my energy back because this isn't the end. Cleinias is a dead man the moment he stops hiding like a cowardly cockroach…

A note from Manasong

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Chapter 136: Revenge - Part 1

A note from Manasong

Attention: to conform to the limit of mature content (more than just sexual content) allowed in a novel, I've censored this chapter. You can look for the uncensored version here.

Alissa is my weak spot. My wives are weak spots, my concubines are weak spots, my Companions are weak spots. Everyone I love and "love" are a weak spot vulnerable to attack. That's why the assassins targeted Alissa and Klein. Instead of trying to kill the Gifted and Blessed who is seemingly loved by the Gods, they went for my lovers to hurt me as it'd incur less divine wrath if they died.

Devious, indeed.

It didn't matter how many Punishers and mercenaries we had, the assassins just bypassed them all to get to the girls. They even had a counter to Roxanne's [Explosion]. They were very prepared to hurt us.

And the worst thing of all is that this isn't even Cleinias' only sin. Is death even enough of a punishment for him? Can't the Gods let me torture him for just a little bit? I don't care if he suffers in Hell, I want to see him scream for mercy.

I feel a light slap on the back of my head and turn around, but I don't see anyone there.

Before I can investigate further, someone knocks on the door, and Alissa sits up in my lap, but I continue petting her. One of the Companions immediately responds and checks who it is for us, and we let them in.

Alcander and Aisco walk into the room, each carrying a tray with dirty crystal shards. I motion to the empty sofa in front of us, and they set down the trays on the tea table before us as they sit. One tray has twenty, neatly-arranged little mounds of dirty, black crystals while the other only has four.

We gather around, and Alcander begins, "This is the result of our investigation. We've identified two types of crystal that were used, but we believe both were shattered as part of their use."

"Makes sense. We can't easily steal their technology this way," Yunia remarks.

"What do they do?" I inquire.

Alcander opens his mouth, but Aisco immediately launches into an excited explanation, "These clearly send a signal" -he points to the tray with visibly fewer shards than the other- "and we believe they're what the initial infiltrators were setting up. I'm certain these crystals are one side of the Bound Pair, and I've also detected vague mana signatures that suggest the enchantment was related to 'attraction' and other similar themes."

Then he points to the other tray. "These were found at the bottom of the capsules, and they were intentionally shattered when the capsules slammed against the ground. They're enchanted with more straightforward spells, like [Fly], the other side of the Bound Pair, and also the disruptive wind wave that hit us all as they landed.

"I believe that these crystals worked in tandem with the ones at the ground to guide the capsules towards their landing spots. Unfortunately, the exact method has been lost as the crystals are all too damaged for us to completely reconstruct it."

And the sociopathic elf smiles after he's done, quite clearly proud of himself.

To keep things from getting awkward, I politely reply with a smile, "Thank you for the explanation, High Officer Aisco. This neatly explains how their infiltration force worked, though it's a shame we couldn't recover more intact crystals."

Then Yunia starts deliberating, "These capsules came in with such extreme force that I believe they could've penetrated the defensive enchantments of the embassy, so if the infiltrators had managed to get further in, the assassins could've been sent directly to our doorstep, making them a much greater threat than they were."

"Could they also do the same thing with our castle?" I worriedly ask.

She gently shakes her head, making her pointy ears and glorious drill bounce. "No. The enchantments in Escanso protecting us from air assaults are much, much stronger than the embassy's. They were made with the intent of protecting against air assaults from the Imperial Airship Fleet, and I doubt these capsules hold a comparable amount of power to that."

Alissa curiously chimes in, "Their [Invisibility] was quite resistant to dispelling. I'd love to know how they altered the spell. It's a shame we killed all the assassins and let two infiltrators escape."

Alcander promptly accepts the task, "We'll investigate the bodies for traces of [Illusion Magic] and interrogate the captured soldiers about their [Invisibility]."

Alissa nods in appreciation as the smile of her fox form isn't very flattering. "Thank you. Now, the only mystery left is to determine where these capsules were launched into the air."

I interject, "I don't think we'll find anything useful even if we locate the launch site. The capsules don't seem to need anything special, so they could've even been sent flying from the streets in plain sight of everyone."

The girls fall silent as they reflect, and Aisco suddenly remarks, sounding quite frustrated, "All things considered, it was a pathetic attempt at assassination. I barely even got to use any significant amount of my MP before they collapsed."

I slow down my petting in annoyance. I very much disagree, but I don't have the energy to start an argument, so I just let this slide.

And Alcander sends his fellow Officer an unveiled glare, but Ciel interjects before he can say anything, "Is everyone well?"

The pompous imperial noble obediently replies, needing not even a second to hide his displeasure, "Yes, we are. The Punishers made sure that we were all healed. There wasn't much to heal though as the battle didn't last even a minute, and nearly all of our wounds were just from the explosion."

She smiles sweetly and adds, "Thank you. If that's all, you're dismissed."

The two Officers nod and leave us, then Lina approaches the trays, and I move her points into [Sense Mana] to help her study the crystals.

I sigh and lay back on the sofa again, still absentmindedly petting Alissa's furry head, and I notice the tension in the air clearing up as we begin to properly wind down from the battle.

My needy side starts to become louder, so I turn to the Companions and kindly offer, "You can all stand down and join us for some tea."

Hukarere instantly un[Equip]s her armor, becoming fully bare again. "Thank you, Wolfy," she cheerfully replies as she scurries towards us, but then stops near my sofa and makes an awkward expression. "Uhh… Lord Alissa, is it alright if I pet you? Your fur looks so nice."

I share a look with my little fox, and we both grin. "It's fine, but no honorifics when you're not on duty," Alissa happily answers.

Hukarere takes out her personal towel and puts it on the sofa as she embarrassedly mumbles, "Yeah, that was… by reflex." Then she sits down and hesitantly reaches for Alissa's head.

The other Companions hesitate a few seconds longer before removing their armor. Then Alissa cutely touches the table with her paw, and a large tray with a small selection of teas, cookies, chocolate, and coffee appears before us. The golems have more food in their [Item Box]es, so they'll refill things if we run out.

"Divines step on me, your fur is really nice," Hukarere whispers in awe as she runs her hand along Alissa's back.

And the cutest little fox casually replies, "Magical fur is like that."

My white wolf pouts. "So unfair…"

She does shed some fur every once in a while, and unlike Alissa's, it doesn't disappear, but she's still far from being on the same level as a dog.

The Companions spread out, and the meeting room starts to feel quite lively, just how I like it. Edolie, the brown-haired werecat, joins the wives as they talk about the Punishers. Melanie, the imperial shortstack, stays quiet as she surreptitiously eats all of the sweets. Atawha, the Chimera raccoon, joins Lina as they curiously inspect the crystals. Aneta, the seductive silver elf, immediately offers to worship the body of her elven Queen, though it remains non-spicy.

And I smile warmly as I watch everyone have a bit of fun.

But our nice little moment is interrupted by an unpleasant message. The Lambros family, the one that The Haughty Oracle belongs to, is requesting "compensation" for us "forcefully seducing" the Lady, which has lowered her "value."

"Screw them," I grumble and toss the letter away.

But Yunia remains thoughtful, and I really don't like what's going through her mind.

"What did you do…?" Hukarere asks concernedly, so I explain how I mentally fucked the haughty little Kori (though I exclude the fact that she's the Oracle) and how I pseudo-NTR'd the godsdamn Emperor.

"Well… their anger sounds a bit reasonable," Aneta hesitantly remarks, trying not to offend me.

I just frown lightly and pout. "What? She could've just walked away."

"You don't understand how hard it is to do that," Atawha amusedly replies, and nobody makes any motion to say otherwise, making me start to feel a bit guilty.

"They made this demand not because they're offended, but because the Emperor wants to hide his relationship with a human," Yunia suddenly states out loud, making the girls all very interested as they detect a piece of juicy drama. "He doesn't have any human wives, and neither does he have any human Princes nor Princesses, so I believe he's making a statement against the human supremacists as there has never been a non-human Emperor, at least so far."

"So, politics…" Roxanne mumbles wryly, but my mood is a lot more displeased. I don't want to get involved in this.

"Quietly paying this will make the Emperor happy," Yunia kindly points out.

"But… my reputation…" I groan, but everyone snorts, even Aoi, making me feel attacked. "Come on, now. I'm a seducer, but I'm not a danger."

"Except to all of the untouched Ladies who want to keep their bodies and souls exclusive to their future spouses," Alissa gleefully retorts, then smugly stares at me with her infuriatingly cute fox face.

"You made me unmarriageable, Wolfy!" Hukarere dramatically exclaims, then grins cheekily, showing her large white fangs.

"Every Companion is unmarriageable," Aneta calmly states, and the other Companions shyly nod in agreement.

Ciel gives me a sympathetic smile as she drives it in further, "You could walk up to any unmarried girl and make her fall for you with just a glance. Your charm is so powerful that you could even take her to bed in less than a day."

Hana assumes a serious and sagely tone as she slowly states, "Your sword holds great power, Wolfy, and with great power, comes the great responsibility of br--ding every woman you can so that your race can spread far and wide."

I shrug and smile awkwardly, a bit embarrassed by the "compliments" on my virility. "If you put it that way…"

Yunia chuckles softly and playfully declares, "We'll just say you got a bit too excited and 'accidentally charmed' her without consideration for her status… which is exactly what happened."

I groan, "Fii~ne…"

But our tea time is interrupted once again by Vanea's urgent message.

What did you do, Wolf?

You make a scene with Cleinias during the gathering, then I hear reports of elves all over the Eastern Mainland kidnapping commoners and taking them to Goldcross, where you hold a meeting with all the other Crown Lords a few hours later, and now every alliance is suddenly in chaos as deserters appear everywhere! Even in Sa'Haa's Alliance!

I like advanced warnings…

I close her letter and chuckle.

Oops…? The desertions aren't our fault, tho.

Her letter is scented with her intoxicating perfume, so I don't think she's too mad.

The golems write a reply letter where we explain what we did to Katasko's commanders, and we ask what's up with the deserters. We also append a list with the names of all the nobles we've confirmed to be working with the shady mercenaries.

The next interruption is Caterina coming to give us a report about our prisoners.

She struts into the room like a goddamn Chad, and Hana and I can't help but admire her poise. There's just something about armed and armored women that's attractive in an alluring way, but different from "normal alluring." Too bad Caterina is Hana's girl, not mine.

The Punisher Captain notices that Hukarere and Atawha are bare and stops for a second, but then she realizes that this isn't a spicy situation, so she continues and sits down before us. Her armor is made from the usual dark brown elven wood and is completely unadorned, except for the small red rose growing on the chestplate, a rose which wasn't there before the battle.

She takes off her gauntlets and delicately grabs a cup of tea like a proper elf. "I really need to train that [Equipment System] skill more. It's so convenient," she calmly remarks and takes a sip.

"Life before it was so much more cumbersome," Hana casually remarks.

And Caterina nods, but then her gaze sharpens. "Indeed… But anyway, we've finished going through the captives, and there are a lot of Wicked."

I immediately declare, "We don't care what you do with them, but our Officers might have some questions for the captives."

She takes another sip and shrugs. "Suit yourself. We'll start the executions the moment you give us the word."

None of us are looking forward to that. We've already killed the teleporting assassins that were a threat, so we hold no significant animosity against the meat shields.

"Any word on Cleinias?" Alissa promptly moves the conversation forward.

Caterina gently shakes her head in a disappointed denial. "No, not even the Network, so we still think he's in Kardia."

Lina's Trivia: Kardia is a town located between Mistcross and the Capital, making it the center point for commerce in the Eastern Mainland.

"I don't think they're huddling together because they're afraid of us…" Yunia thinks out loud as she tries to deduce their reasoning.

But the Punisher suddenly smiles sadistically as she casually remarks, "You could just go there and slaughter them. We wouldn't mind." And that even takes the Companions by surprise.

"Captain Caterina, please… the rest of the temple definitely wouldn't agree with that," Ciel whispers, a bit baffled by her callousness.

She shrugs as she casually picks a piece of chocolate. "You're just delaying the inevitable. People like those nobles are already too rotten to ever turn back from their ways."

"With the Purification having started, that would just cause us problems," Yunia states with a severe tone.

And I pile on, "We don't even know where they're meeting in Kardia. This is too wild for us to even consider, so we'll stick to the plan: we'll kill Cleinias when he comes back, and then Faustus when he returns to Mistcross."

The bloodthirsty elf chews on her chocolate while staring at me, her eyes narrowed in displeasure and disappointment. Then she swallows and spews a little bit of venom, "Fine, we will hunt them down when they inevitably go too far. Don't worry, it's our job, after all, to clean up the excrement that the rest of the nobility refuses to pick up."

"We'd gladly kill them, but you can't protect us from the consequences," Yunia gives the final retort, and Caterina remains silent, unable to deny it.

"Don't you have enough evidence that they're heretics with the [Ruin] dagger?" Ciel asks, not wanting to let us dwell in the mounting tension.

Caterina makes a displeased expression as she answers, "No. They seem to be based on foul necromancy rather than heresy. You can have them."

She pulls a bundle of cloth out of her [Item Box] with a *poof*, then she unwraps the five daggers. Weapons with a simple design and a small, dull blue gem at the pommel, but the blade is extremely ornate as the enchantment is very complex, fascinating Lina.

Lina's Trivia: [Ruin] is somewhat similar to [Unravel], the ability/spell that the undead use to "delete" things, so it's possible to use heretical magic to enhance [Ruin]. [Necromancy Magic] isn't illegal or heretical per se, necromancers just aren't allowed to force spirits to inhabit zombies/husks as that's a Sin, so without the connection to [Unravel], there's no justification for the Punishers to start a Purge.

I look at the girls, but we don't really know what we could use these daggers for. If we wanted anything related to [Necromancy Magic] or [Ruin], we could easily find books about those things.

"They're still rare weapons, so let's keep them," Alissa states. She really doesn't like the [Ruin] spell, but she's forcing herself to look at the logical gains. Her courage is inspiring.

And Roxanne deliberates, trying to think of reasons for us to take them, "The daggers have an 'ethereal' concept, which is very hard to enchant onto something, so they could have some scholarly use."

Lina hums in thought, then nods, making her bangs sway, and points out, "Yes, that's true. See how fine the lines of silver have to be because of how delicate the enchantment is. This is a masterwork."

"Fine, we'll take them," I accept.

We aren't going to get much else from this anyway since Caterina wants the tin cans' armor and weapons. The Templars would take anything not nailed down if they could since they're always starving for funding and equipment, and the entire world is grateful that the high "Piety" of these battle maniacs helps them keep it in their pants.

Caterina finishes her cup and delicately places it back down on the table again. "Now we're waiting on you. Just don't pick a fight with the Enforcers or other guards, and you're free to take as many heads as you want."

We've already talked about this, so we don't respond to her wild remark. She takes another piece of chocolate, then leaves, disappointing Hana and me, for we'd like her to stay for a little longer as long as we could talk about something that isn't taking heads.

The next interruption is quite welcome as it's Klein and Anton coming back with an Alteration mage, who is the first living Chimera that I've ever seen.

The mage is a cat-headed, purple-skinned and furred, old woman. She has a similar "design" to Hukarere with her animal head, human arms and chest, and a furred back, but while Hukarere has lizard legs, this cat has strong human legs with thick fur. What's unique about the old woman is that her fur patterns are very intricate, almost geometrical, which pleases Yunia greatly.

Perhaps it's a different fashion style?

The woman's wearing a red, semi-transparent robe, but no underwear, so I can still see her private parts. Her overall body is quite nice for her age, so she's definitely in my strike zone, but I'm not really feeling like flirting right now, which is incredible, I know.

"I'm Kahura, and I pride myself in having the highest [Alteration Magic] of the entire Mainland," she politely greets and bows deeply. She seems very vigorous for someone of her age.

Is she using [Alteration Magic] to keep herself strong?

"I'd bet on it, but I consider it kind of cheating, though," Alissa responds through [Bind], her sentiment echoed by the rest of the girls.

And I find it curious that she considers it "cheating."

"Thank you for answering to our call so fast," Ciel greets for us while we talk telepathically.

Kahura smiles politely, showing nice little white fangs. "I just couldn't leave such esteemed clients waiting."

Imagining either Anton or Klein spelling out our entire list of Titles is kind of funny.

The old Chimera glances at Hukarere and Atawha, but she doesn't show any significant reaction.

"Would you girls mind if I used [Alteration Magic] to make myself taller?" I ask through our connection.

"Please, don't!" Hana exclaims internally.

"Being short is… your thing," Roxanne adds worriedly.

"I agree…" Lina shyly adds, and the rest of the girls echo her words, even Gify, but not Aoi, who doesn't mind either way because I can become big in my dragon form.

"Yes, you can become big when you shift into a dragon, so there's no need to change your humanoid form," Alissa immediately latches onto the excuse.

"Gih!" The little griffin chirps encouragingly. She thinks her nest's distance from the ground is already at the perfect height.

Okay… I guess I'll leave this matter for later.

Alissa leaves my lap and shifts back into her humanoid form, then sits beside me.

"I take it you're the injured one?" Kahura kindly asks, and Alissa nods, so the old woman walks with soft steps towards us and sits down beside her.

Alissa extends her stumps, and the mage gently inspects them with her wrinkly hands. Then we sense her humming a spell, and she casts [Spirit Eyes] after a few seconds, allowing her to see Alissa's deformed soul.

"It was a [Ruin] blade that did this, [Necromancy Magic]," I explain.

The kind mage gives Alissa a sympathetic smile as she states, "I, unfortunately, have experience with this type of wound. It's completely curable, but there are different ways to do that."

And I nod. "Understood. Since she has completely lost all use of her hands, we're looking for something fast."

Kahura quickly takes a look around, noticing that I'm the only man in this room, then she cautiously explains, "For a woman, the fast way is… not ideal. Her hands wouldn't look anything like they were before, and to make them pretty again would take time."

We all share a knowing look. Though Alissa might accept the "fast way," none of us, especially me, would accept the crime of giving the perfect and adorable Alissa ugly hands, ruining her perfect, adorable aura of perfect adorableness.

"Well… what are the other ways?" I awkwardly ask while Alissa smiles wryly.

Kahura shows us a disconcerting, creepy smile as she whispers excitedly, "The second fastest way is to take someone's hands…"

And we all fall silent as we try to process her words, but then she suddenly chuckles softly and allows the kind old woman to return, which sets us at ease.

"Apologies. That reaction is always so amusing, but yes, I'm serious," she kindly explains.

"Wait, what?" I hum reflexively.

"You can ask someone for their hands, and then use [Regrowth] to immediately return them. For someone of your station, I assume that paying for such a thing is possible."

Ooh… of course, you can get spare hands with magic. You could even "grow" spare body parts if you used [Regeneration] instead. I guess even an organ transplant wouldn't be much of a problem.

"So, whose hands do we use?" Ciel continues.

"Any will do, but the more similar they look to her original hands, the better, so family members will have the best compatibility, but I see we have a nice selection of beautiful ladies right here who could offer their hands."

The girls all look at their own hands, even the Companions, and though they're a bit afraid, they'd all gladly help Alissa.

"Gih," Gify chirps to Aoi. Of course, Aoi's human form is magical, so her hands would disappear if they were cut off, excluding Aoi from the available options.

"Hmph…" The little blue dragon grunts internally, a bit annoyed that she can't help.

"I know that my body is almost a perfect copy of my mother's," Alissa suddenly announces.

Oh, really, now…?

"I can roleplay as my mother when I get older," she happily suggests through [Bind], giving me an instant boner.

Kahura nods in understanding as she hums, "Ah, yes, that's quite common for nobility."

She means the offspring looking similar to their parents, not the incest fantasies, though the latter wouldn't exactly be a lie.

"Wouldn't it be too much of an inconvenience for your mother?" I concernedly ask.

And Alissa snorts softly. "To give me my hands back? Of course not, but we'll still ask politely."

"Alright, let's send her a message."

A note from Manasong

Hall of Fame of Patrons

The patrons who support Rupegia shall have their names sung by the bards for they deserve the glory and honor. Their names are:

Prince PreownedFIN.

Prince Owldente.

Lord Andrew Meyers.

Lord Novgarod.

Lord Michale Erwin.

Lord Bakerdea.

Lord Maurice.

Lord Mattirro Draca.

Lord Sean Drake.

Lord Mike Bartter.

Lord Warwulfv.

Lord Khristopher Welsh.

Lord Tenebris Lupus.

Lord Paul Daval.

Lord Paul Daval.

Lord AndreyUC.

Lord Tmac.

Lord School Work.

Lord Gwendolyn Simmons-LaRose.

Lord CopeyDunt.

Lord BlindTactic.

Lord The Tallest Joshua.

Lord litalmexy.

Lord Tyler Mills.

Lord Philip.

Lord d3235.

Lord Freddie.

Lord Mike Bartter.

Lord Sean Drake.

Lord Shaun McDonough.

Lord William Clark.

Noble Salty Panda.

Noble Mild Fracas.

Noble Aclys.

Noble CarlBaxter.

Noble Andrew Hebreard.

Leave a rating or a review to help me rise to the top or fix my shameful understanding of prose.

Take a look over my blog where all information about the world of Rupegia will be posted.

Join the Discord and discuss, or rant, or meme, or try and fight me so your waifu gets more screentime.

Become a Patron and read chapters in advance, or read the side-stories, or leave your mark on the story, or help choose the next artwork or the next side-story.

Chapter 136: Revenge - Part 2

A note from Manasong

Attention: to conform to the limit of mature content (more than just sexual content) allowed in a novel, I've censored this chapter. You can look for the uncensored version here.

We close the windows and grow noise-canceling barriers to prepare the room for Kahura. Elven residences being so easily moldable is one of the things I love the most about them. And once the muffling moss walls are done, we apply anti-scent to them, then we return to our bedroom, leaving the mage and Alissa alone with only Jarn to watch over them since the golem can remain absolutely silent.

Kahura will begin the preliminary work to prepare Alissa's hands to receive a new pair by destroying the part of her soul that's been warped, and then fixing the blackened stumps. Once we get a new pair of hands for her, all that'll be left for Kahura will be to create new soul-hands for Alissa by using the physical hands as a base. After that, any Alteration mage can easily pretty up Alissa's hands so that they match her age.

"Can't we use [Alteration Magic] to de-age?" I wonder out loud.

"Theoretically, yes. It's just… very hard, unless you're talking about skin only," Roxanne scholarly answers.

"You'll still die once your lifespan reaches its limit," Ciel adds.

I realize that Alteration seems to be underused, making me mighty curious.

"Why don't people use [Alteration Magic] to look young, then? Even Kahura looks old," I continue my inquiry.

"That's a shameful thing to do," Ciel snappily retorts, and the girls give me strange looks.

"Be proud of your age," Roxanne states assuredly.

"Oldness isn't ugly," Yunia calmly adds.

I guess it's cultural, then.

"I'm much older than I look," I point out through [Bind] since the Companions shouldn't know about this.

"You're special, and you're also very cute, so you get a pass," Hana cheekily replies.

Ciel assumes a sagely tone as she graces us with her priestly lecture, "Our aging, our growth, and our changes, they're all aided by the system, so to bypass all that with magic feels… wrong."

And since this pertains to Chimera culture, Hukarere decides to chime in, "We use [Alteration Magic] to change how we look or to enhance our gains. The Celestial Horns all trained very hard to get where they are now."

Ciel nods in agreement. "We also don't know how hard Kahura trained to get the body she has."

I'm not convinced, so I argue further, "But we're all in a constant fight against monsters, so surely, it wouldn't be bad to improve our bodies through [Alteration Magic] with the intent of enhancing our fighting capabilities?"

"Well, that's what the Horns do," Hukarere hums confusedly.

"But you said they also train. What if we enhanced everyone, even the commoners, for free? It'd be helpful to humanoid civilizations as a whole, no?"

Both the Chimera Companions and Ciel make complicated expressions while the rest of the girls are more ambivalent. For some reason, they're hesitant to accept body augmentations through magic, and I want to get to the bottom of this.

After a short moment, Ciel imparts upon us another bit of priestly wisdom, "Our reason for existence is to grow both in numbers and individually towards Ascension, not to wipe out the monsters."

I immediately retort, "And we could speed that up with [Alteration Magic]."

Atawha finally gathers up enough bravery to join the discussion, "Is it really growing when others are doing the job for you?"

I casually shrug and flash a handsome smile at the raccoon girl, making her blush. "Everyone's lives would become easier the more power we all have, giving us more time to spend on ourselves or with others, which would allow us to grow further. This is one of the reasons why I want to implement welfare policies and social safety-nets. I want to help people remain standing so that they can regain their balance when life hits them hard because our society just runs better when everyone is healthy and strong."

Hana raises her eyebrows and remarks, "I like that analogy."

"Only because someone is getting hit," Roxanne quickly jabs.

"This is complicated…" Ciel hums thoughtfully, ignoring both of them as they begin to banter.

And a hint of loftiness slips into my tone as I explain further, "I'm basically advocating for transhumanism… erm, transhumanoidism. That we would free ourselves from the shackles of our flesh and accept the enhancements that magic and technology can bring to our lives, allowing us to transcend past what it means to be 'humanoid.'"

"Are you looking for a reason to justify making yourself taller?" Lina sneaks in a stab into my heart. With Alissa sleeping, she has taken upon herself the role of sneaky riposter.

"Of course not…" I dryly reply, but there's nothing that I can say that will stop the girls from laughing at me, so I just purse my lips and wait for their amusement to pass.

Yunia suddenly walks up to me, then straddles my hips and grabs my head, forcing me to look at her stunningly beautiful and dignified elven face.

"You may dislike certain aspects of your body, but we all find it marvelous exactly as it is, and even I believe it's a worthy match for my perfection, so don't ever think about changing a single thing about you, except your sword. Variety is wonderful."

The assured way she speaks pulls on my heartstrings. There's no insincerity or hesitance in her tone, only the intense passion of a proud elf. Her words also open the flood gates to my lower member, and it hardens like steel, her subtle smirk so full of meaning that the dragon rears up in excitement.

"I think the Horns would like that 'transhumanoidism' thing," Hukarere comments wryly as she watches the tension skyrocket between Yunia and me.

"That 'battle bodies' approach feels like it's already part of it," Atawha adds, her eyes glued to the bulge in my pants.

"And you and the other Chimeras have certainly 'freed yourselves from the shackles of your flesh,'" Aneta finishes as she stares at Yunia going back and forth in an entrancing way, possibly imagining how she'd love to be sandwiched between us right now.

I run my claws over Yunia's exposed abs, then I move them up and growl.

"Oh, he's really in the mood now," Roxanne announces, and everyone starts to get ready for the fireworks.

"Is it alright to not include Alissa?" Melanie worriedly asks.

I summon my tentacles and start spreading them all throughout the room as I answer, "She'll actually like knowing that we had a party without her."

We're interrupted by a message, which Ted receives for us, and Yunia and I read it through the golem's eyes as our bodies continue to move.

Vanea tells us that the deserters from the other alliances were all members of Katasko, so it's obvious that they were spies, and they were recalled before they could be captured. It's a shame that they escaped, but once the truth of their allegiances is revealed, they won't be able to escape the fallout from betraying so many people.

Unfortunately, they had infiltrated everywhere, so their desertion caused chaos within all of the alliances, except for those in the west of the continent, so it'll take a while for the revenge against them to actually come about.

The public logs of the [Eternal Gate] Network tell that they've all retreated to the area around Kardia, so Vanea believes they're forming a new alliance to weather the fallout of their betrayals. She's worried that their numbers will dissuade other alliances from attacking, but we'll see how they fare after we cut off one of their heads.

I stand up, with Yunia left gasping for air, her sweaty body making her glorious drills stick to her skin, and her dignified air replaced by unashamed satisfaction.

Alissa woke up while Kahura was resting and preparing for the next part of the treatment, so I force the slave to stay on her bed and watch as she receives the shared pleasure of the other girls.

Aoi immediately goes to work on Yunia. Meanwhile, I shove Hukarere's mouth to clean myself.

I also give some to Atawha since she's a cultured Chimera who understands the exquisite delights of my blessings, but the rest of the Companions are also kind of sl-ts, so I'm forced to give everyone a load to not leave anyone feeling jealous.

Once the extraction is done, I shift into my dragon form, and Lolo comes into the room just in time to witness the glorious sight of Aoi bending to me.

"Holy shit…" Lolo mutters reflexively and remains standing in place at the doorway, stunned at the arousing sight before her eyes. As a wereanimal, she knows the significance of our action, and before long, she's breathing heavily while her thighs rub against each other.

Dragon love can't be described by something as boring as "plowing." It's either "m-ting" or "br--ding" as the former is me reinforcing my domination over Aoi by making her reach the summit while the latter is me fulfilling my extremely powerful desire to impr-gnate this magnificent blue dragon even though the Ring of Fertility prevents fertilization.

Aoi's legs quickly give out, and she collapses on the floor. The tentacle massage had weakened her too much for a proper m-ting.

So I walk over to Lolo in my draconic form, and the little rabbit girl feels so threatened by my virility that her knees tremble with fear while her eyes remain glued to my Br--ding Tool.

I nudge her with my draconic head, and she falls on her ass, then I take a step forward and press It against her mouth. She obediently opens wide and goes to work.

I contemplate whether or not I should force her to shift into her animal form and then do her as a dragon just to complete my domination of her, but I haven't done that with Klein yet, and I don't want my monkey c-m sl-t to suspect anything about what I have planned for her "first time" with Hermann.

But we're once again interrupted by another message, which is starting to grate on my gears, but this one is actually welcome as it's from Palo, reporting that Alissa's mother has simply come by herself to the capital instead of responding to us first.

I give Lolo some skincare treatment, then I pull the crazed Hukarere towards me and make her sit right in front of the stained girl. Without me even saying anything, my obedient wolf starts licking the bunny girl's face, pleasing me greatly. The sight makes me want to attempt putting Hukarere through "girl love training," but maybe I should keep that idea as just a dream.

With Léonne coming to visit, we have to wrap this up, so I turn the tentacles up to overdrive to finish off everyone one at the same time, and the bedroom becomes loud with female screams and sounds of bliss.

Alissa groans and starts convulsing, scaring Kahura, but she assures the old woman that she's okay, and once the bliss passes, she [Clean]s herself before the smell can become noticeable.

I reach the entrance of the embassy right at the same time that the [Gate] opens up, and Léonne appears along with Palo.

The mature milf-Alissa is a delight to see, as always, especially because her flowery not-kimono fits her so well that it's like she's a work of living art. Unfortunately, her expression doesn't look very pleased, straining my smile and deflating my friend a smidgen as Alissa's and my fantasy of me doing her senseless becomes less vivid.

"Chieftess Léonne," I politely greet with a nod.

"Crown Lord Wolf… let's not dwell on pleasantries. Where's Alissa?" She dryly replies. Then her sharp, orange eyes sharpen even further as she narrows them at me. "And also the rest of your wives…?"

I smile smugly as I give an honest answer, "I was just with them having a passionate moment, so they need some time to rest and recover, but Alissa is coming, and she'll be here in a second."

The stern mother slowly raises an eyebrow, and her [Acting] is too good for me to detect whether or not she wants to smirk, but at least she doesn't get even colder or angrier. Palo smirks in approval from behind her, so I glance at him, and we share a bro thumbs up with our eyes.

"So, at least you didn't get any of your wives killed," she slowly lashes out.

Well, damn… I guess she was never one to mince words.

I simply smile and casually suggest, "Let's wait in the guest room for them, shall we?"

"Very well," she replies impassively.

Ciel summons her [Holy Spirit] to [Refresh] Alissa and allow her to walk because she was wrecked so hard that her body is still a mess.

When we sit down, I order Ted to serve some chocolate and coffee, and Léonne gives them a mildly interested look, but then Alissa comes in before milf-Alissa can give in to temptation.

Léonne stands up and immediately scans her daughter up and down, her eyes stopping on the stumps for a second, which are now normal-skin-colored and without any scarring.

"Mom…" Alissa mumbles warmly as she scurries forward, then she pulls her parent into a tight hug. Her fluffy tail wags happily while milf-Alissa's takes a second to begin moving, but the wagging is a lot more restrained once it does.

"What did you two get involved in, you stupid girl," Léonne whispers tiredly.

"Mom, ouch…" Alissa mumbles back with a pout.

And the mother pushes her back so that they can look each other in the eye. "A [Ruin] dagger is not something to take lightly."

"And we aren't," I interject with a severe tone.

She gives one of Alissa's ears a gentle massage, deftly pressing on all of the weak spots, then turns her sharp gaze towards me. "How many heads will you take?" She sternly questions, her voice completely at odds with the caressing she's giving to Alissa.

"Only two," I calmly answer.

She clicks her tongue in disappointment. "That's rather pathetic for a dragon."

I snort. "We're constrained by elven politics."

And she dryly replies, "You're not an elf."

"But one of our wives is, and so are all our Subordinate Lords, and also the Elder Council, and all of our fellow Crown Lords," I answer while trying to hide my flippancy.

She immediately moves on, "Are you going to participate in the Purification?"

I nod. "Yes, we will."

And her face warps in mild distaste. "So, are you going to continue to play the hero and magnanimously offer mercy to them?"

I groan and look away as I roll my eyes, but Alissa becomes upset, so she bats her mother's hand away and retorts, "If you're so keen on criticizing, why don't you provide an alternative?"

Léonne turns to her and frowns. "I won't fall to such provocation and give a snappy and sloppy answer."

"Then go think on it," Alissa snaps back at her and takes a step back, but Léonne holds her by the wrists, preventing her from escaping.

"I'll stop criticizing as long as you promise to send a message to your enemies," she slowly declares.

"I'm nowhere near as merciful as you think," Alissa states.

Léonne slowly nods. "Good."

Why are people so bloodthirsty?

"It's how she's survived as a ruler," Yunia replies to my thoughts with a surprising amount of understanding.

"It's only Mom who doesn't understand that Misty Fox doctrine won't work with elves," Alissa adds.

"Your mom is a bit scary," Lina quietly comments.

"Yep," Roxanne hums.

But that's what makes her really alluring, tho.

Then Léonne closely inspects the stumps and hums thoughtfully. Her thin fingers gently run over Alissa's skin, then they tenderly probe where the bones have been sheared off, and Léonne sighs softly. The tension from before quickly dissipates as the mother finally allows the worry for her daughter to become apparent on her face.

"Call your priest, Wolf, and let's give my daughter her hands back," she softly orders. Then she forces Alissa to turn around and tightens the sash of her mini not-kimono. "You may dress as provocatively as you want, but I won't accept seeing you wearing a Plier sloppily."

Alissa rolls her eyes dramatically, then turns around and gives her mother a quick hug.

The Punishers and priests are still nearby, so our knights quickly find one who knows [Regrowth], and we prepare for the operation.

Roxanne gives Léonne a potion that completely blocks her sense of pain, and Kahura draws a dotted line for exactly where to cut, then her wrists are tied up to stop the blood flow and prevent a mess. Alissa is also given the same anesthesia and has her wrists tied as the skin covering the part to be joined with her new hands needs to be removed.

Now that I'm paying close attention to Léonne's hands, they do look very similar to how Alissa's looked. Her perfect, pale skin is just barely wrinkled from age, and though her nails are manicured and glossy, they lack the cute orange color of Alissa's nail polish.

Our swords have been enchanted with [Sharp Blades] by Arreira, so their sharpness is second only to Patrono, and as the one who has the highest [Sword Use], Hana does the cut.

In one clean slice, Hana severs both of Léonne's hands exactly on the dotted lines, and then she also cuts off the skin covering Alissa's stumps. There's absolutely no reaction from either of them, and Alissa only felt the weird sensation of the cold blade passing through her flesh.

Ciel gives Léonne a weak [Heal] to stop any bleeding, and the priests start chanting [Regrowth] while we watch as Kahura deftly sews the severed hands onto Alissa's stumps. She finishes quickly, and now they have to leave for the dark room to fuse them into place and then regrow Alissa's spirit to cover her new hands.

We have an awkward minute of silence as Léonne remains perfectly still, waiting for the priest to finish the spell, and we struggle to not look at her wounds. She herself seems oddly still, like she's also struggling to not succumb to the morbid curiosity to look at the live cross-section of her hands.

Her demeanor is so unusual that I decide to mess with her a bit.

"Are you alright, Léonne? Not feeling any pain?" I kindly ask.

"No, Wolf, I'm fine," she replies impassively, looking straight ahead towards the infinite.

I make a thoughtful expression as I observe her odd behavior. "As a healer myself, I'm a bit fascinated by the inner workings of the body. Don't you want to see the insides of your bones or muscles?"

"No, Wolf, I don't."

"Really?" I walk up to her and touch one of her wounds with my claw, but she shows no reaction at all. "Look here, flesh, bone, cartilage, veins. So many different structures."

She simply turns her head to me and stares, her body completely unmoving as if every muscle of hers is tensed up, so I move my claw down and touch the brown part of the sheared bone.

"This here is the bone marrow. You wouldn't believe the wonderful things this part of our bones does and how important it is for our blood."

I tap it repeatedly to call her attention to it, but she simply won't glance down to see what I'm touching, and the tension starts to appear on her face. Then we stare at each other, my face becoming strained as I hold back a smirk while hers twitches as she becomes increasingly annoyed.

"Wolf?" She quietly hums.

"Yes?"

"Kindly shove your tail up your own ass." Then she closes her eyes.

"Alright, you've bullied Mom enough," Alissa wryly adds, and I leave the matriarch alone. I've had my revenge for her harsh "criticisms."

"She definitely has a considerable level in [Acting]," Yunia remarks internally.

The moment the priest finishes the spell, Léonne's tension washes away. Then she opens her eyes and curiously inspects her freshly regrown hands.

"They look better than before," she amusedly states.

"Thank you very much," the priest proudly replies.

Then she flashes me a glare, making me grin like an imp.

A note from Manasong

Hall of Fame of Patrons

The patrons who support Rupegia shall have their names sung by the bards for they deserve the glory and honor. Their names are:

Prince PreownedFIN.

Prince Owldente.

Lord Andrew Meyers.

Lord Novgarod.

Lord Michale Erwin.

Lord Bakerdea.

Lord Maurice.

Lord Mattirro Draca.

Lord Sean Drake.

Lord Mike Bartter.

Lord Warwulfv.

Lord Khristopher Welsh.

Lord Tenebris Lupus.

Lord Paul Daval.

Lord Paul Daval.

Lord AndreyUC.

Lord Tmac.

Lord School Work.

Lord Gwendolyn Simmons-LaRose.

Lord CopeyDunt.

Lord BlindTactic.

Lord The Tallest Joshua.

Lord litalmexy.

Lord Tyler Mills.

Lord Philip.

Lord d3235.

Lord Freddie.

Lord Mike Bartter.

Lord Sean Drake.

Lord Shaun McDonough.

Lord William Clark.

Noble Salty Panda.

Noble Mild Fracas.

Noble Aclys.

Noble CarlBaxter.

Noble Andrew Hebreard.

Leave a rating or a review to help me rise to the top or fix my shameful understanding of prose.

Take a look over my blog where all information about the world of Rupegia will be posted.

Join the Discord and discuss, or rant, or meme, or try and fight me so your waifu gets more screentime.

Become a Patron and read chapters in advance, or read the side-stories, or leave your mark on the story, or help choose the next artwork or the next side-story.

Chapter 136: Revenge - Part 3

Léonne, Yunia, and I have a nice chat over tea and coffee while the rest of the girls talk on the other side of the room.

The halfling versus silver elf battle ended in an elven victory, and now it's time for dwarves versus the Asian humans and a few beastfolk from Wideberg to fight, but both sides are physically strong and heavily armored, so their battle won't be as interesting as the last one. Though that's probably just because I'm biased towards magic, and neither side seems to have a significant number of mages.

It's unfortunate that the assassins' attack ruined the mood for us to watch the previous battle because I really wanted to see the halflings fight.

"What is the secret behind the Fountuns?" Yunia calmly breaches the topic, and I also become curious to hear the truth behind the mysterious werefoxes who want to become our knights.

"Hm? Are they not to your liking?" Léonne casually replies.

And Yunia stares intensely at her. "It's clear that there's a reason behind their willingness to leave the Misty Low Forest."

"That's for them to tell you about. I only made the offer, and they accepted it," the werefox ruler coolly states, sounding very sincere.

But the elven queen is unconvinced and slowly knits her thin, golden eyebrows. "There's no scheme behind them?"

"No, not on my part, at least, and I do believe Thea will be to Wolf's pleasing, seeing his 'tastes.'" And she sends me an amused glance.

Oh, hell yeah. I'll fuck that snow fox so hard that her mother will feel it in her womb.

And I casually chime in, "If all she wants is sex, sure, but I'm a very open person, and I don't want partners who hide things from me."

She politely chuckles, and her fluffy tail even wags as she teases, "I find that ironic considering you're the most mysterious person in this side of the empire."

I pout for a second, but then I pompously declare, "My wives know everything there is to know about me. I also believe that I've told all of my secrets to Klein and Osaria, and I'll do the same with any other woman who wants to become a concubine."

Klein straightens up in surprise, and the other Companions send her curious looks. They're all respectfully trying not to eavesdrop on this conversation between rulers, but it can't be helped when someone's mentioned by name.

But Léonne becomes skeptical and inquires, "Will you also tell them to my younger daughter, the one you just couldn't help but seduce?"

I don't even flinch as I reply, "Perhaps, but there needs to be strong love and a commitment to loyalty before I'd consider it."

And her skepticism turns to mild displeasure. "I don't want to deny my daughter the chance to fall in love, but I'm not sure if I'll approve of your relationship with Allura."

I don't want to get her angry with me on this matter, so I diplomatically explain, "I'm not looking for arranged marriages or the like. I want to let things grow naturally."

She continues to stare at me for the next couple of seconds with her sexy, milfy, stern glare, but then she sighs and shakes her head. "You're a bad influence on her, and your possessiveness will make it harder for her to find normal partners."

"Well, if she marries another woman… I can impregnate them both," I state as I grin cheekily, but she just rolls her eyes and takes a sip of her Frele tea, so I think it's time to drop this topic.

I stand up and walk out onto the balcony to get a better view of the fighting. The Widebergians are having trouble dealing any significant damage to the dwarven shield line, so the mages and archers from both sides continue to lob spells over the melee, but they're holding back on the exchange, keeping a reserve in case something happens.

"How was the fight against the assassins?" Léonne asks, and their methods intrigue her when Yunia recounts the attack. "Tell me more about your enemies. I want to know more about the worms who hurt my daughter."

And Yunia is happy to oblige, but Léonne becomes pensive.

"Why do you think this Cleinias will return to the capital?" She questions, her sharp gaze directed at Yunia.

Who categorically answers, "The monsters are still in his mansion, and Kardia is hardly a glamorous place to live in comparison to the opulence of his home at the upper part of the Throne."

But the older ruler retorts, "If he's such a centerpiece to Katasko, then he's currently whipping his allies to keep them united. He won't return until the Purification is over."

My pleasant mood disappears in a puff of smoke, and my tail tenses up in anger. "What did you say?" I whisper heatedly.

She calmly turns to me and repeats, "He has no reason to return, but he has plenty to stay right where he is."

I turn to the door and start advancing towards it, but Yunia stops me with just a thought, forcing me to listen to her explanation, "Using the [Eternal Gate] Network would warn them that you're coming, and then they'd just ambush you with their numbers."

I freeze and clench my claws, but an idea comes to me, so I turn to the Companions and order, "Call Nohopu and the High Officers."

We watch the Floater rising up into the sky as it turns around. It's aiming towards the Sky Lands to the south, but once it gets cloaked by the enchanting surrounding the closest one, it'll rise higher to become even harder to spot, and then it'll make a beeline for Kardia.

"I'm starting to feel like joining you in the Purification," Léonne serenely states, sounding almost eager.

My impatience is wiped away by surprise as I reflexively reply, "Are you sure? We're going to have to share any spoils with Vanea Anara's alliance and Princess Sa'Haa's Faiumi Merchant Alliance."

She nods in agreement, making her fox ears bounce cutely, exactly like Alissa's. "In the interest of maintaining our alliance, I'll be satisfied with a reduced share."

"We'll be honored to have you on our side," Yunia promptly states earnestly.

And Léonne flashes her a cordial smile. "Likewise. You're a good ally to fight alongside."

There's not much else for us to do besides just waiting, so we watch the battle at our doorstep end in a dwarven victory as they outlast the Widebergians. Then the girls and I peruse my memories in search of something we can use for the attack… and we might've just found the perfect thing for our situation.

The nearest Sky Land isn't that far, and the Floater is very fast, so just before lunch, it enters the cloaked area. My bird on the ship's bridge spots the same large, floating island we saw when we were going up the Throne to the gathering, but it's a lot harder to see it now that it's against the bright blue midday sky.

"This is it, turn around!" Nohopu energetically orders, and the ship stops moving forward, though it continues to ascend as it turns.

My bird even looks back just to see the squirrel captain's reaction.

"Course, set!" The navigator reports once the ship has stopped turning.

The Throne is becoming smaller and smaller as the ship rises, though the massive tower is still very visible, which could potentially host spies watching for the Floater, but it's kind of hard to get out of its sight considering how fucking tall it is.

Nohopu stands up, his face warped in a wide grin and his eyes staring excitedly at the horizon as he orders, "Code orange! Gem, overdrive. Propellers, overdrive. Speed, uncapped. Set!"

"Code orange! Gem, overdrive! Propellers, overdrive! Speed, uncapped! Set!" The navigator repeats.

"Engage!"

Then the ship gains so much instantaneous velocity that Nohopu is pushed back hard, almost making him fall into his seat again, and he's forced to grab the armrest to remain standing. The noise from the propellers becomes deafening, even with the improved sound muffling that we grew on the way here, and the ship starts shaking, clearly not prepared to go this fast.

They actually zoom past the Throne, rising so high that the ground under them starts to turn into a blue haze due to atmospheric scattering. This means that they're reaching the edge of the Broken Skies, and they stop ascending to avoid getting sucked into that non-euclidean space.

Maybe the Broken Skies could be used to decrease travel time, like using the Nether in Minecraft as a shortcut, but the people of Whakamutu don't have the best knowledge of how the paths between the Broken Skies and the surface work except for the few "entrances" that merchants used to take.

Aisco, Alcander, Silvano, and a handful of knights and mages come up to the top of the ship and prepare for battle. Not even half an hour later, a car-sized, eagle-like monster approaches the ship, but the High Officers scare it off before it can get in the way.

More monsters appear, attracted by the thick trail of flavorful mana that the ship leaves behind, but there don't seem to be any swarms in the area that can threaten the ship, thanks to the Imperial Fleet keeping the skies mostly clear.

But Aisco seems to be having a lot of fun as he snickers every time he launches a thick [Fireball] towards a monster, and he laughs even harder when the monster catches on fire. Because of course, the creepy bastard would be creepy. And considering how we're going to kill Cleinias for torturing and raping monsters, Aisco's delight feels rather aggravating, so we ignore him as best we can.

A little past our usual lunchtime, Kahura stops working on Alissa's left soul-hand so that we can eat, but both of her hands are technically already fully functional as their muscles and nerves have been properly connected with her wrists. However, she's getting a lot of disconcerting phantom sensations and intermittent shivering in her hands, so Roxanne applies some local anesthesia to help with that.

We sit down for our meal, and Léonne impassively stares at her former hands for a long moment. I can imagine how seeing your body parts on someone else might feel pretty weird for anyone who's not a narcissist like Yunia, who doesn't even bat an eye at Jarn, even though the golem has a perfect copy of her face.

"Tch," the elf in question clicks her tongue internally.

"How are you feeling, Alissa?" Léonne kindly asks.

"Very weird. With all the potions I'm taking, I'm surprised that I haven't puked from mana poisoning yet," she tiredly answers as she looks at her hands, which feel more like some foreign organisms that have glued themselves onto her rather than parts of her body, but she won't say that to her mother.

"Neither [Regrowth] nor [Alteration Magic] are perfect, so you'll both have some weird sensations in your hands for a few days," Ciel soothingly states.

"Yes, that much I know," Léonne hums back while staring at her own hands.

And since I'm still feeling curious, Ciel adds telepathically, "She must be feeling like her hands aren't 'hers' since they're new."

Huh… what an interesting phenomenon.

It's a bit too hard for Alissa to eat with her numbed hands, so she controls Jarn through [Bind] to use the golem's hands instead.

After lunch, Alissa resumes her treatment, and we start preparing for the assassination. We go to one of the secluded gardens because Roxanne's experiments would likely poison us all if they were done in a closed room.

We don't ask for privacy, so Lolo and Léonne come to watch, and at first, they're fascinated by the golems as they practice folding themselves as tightly as possible, but the bunny girl starts to feel drawn to me, so she timidly approaches as silently as she can, then awkwardly stands by my side.

I keep silent as I concentrate, but this is a meticulous job, so a long time passes, allowing her to build up the courage to innocently ask, "What are you doing?"

I open my eyes and send Hukarere a soothing glance before my loyal wolf takes the bunny girl away to keep her from interrupting me, and a short while later, I finish the summoning.

"I'm trying to mold my summon into a weapon," I answer and hand her the dart-shaped, tungsten earth elemental.

"This is heavy," she reflexively remarks as she struggles to hold the dart.

And I grin ferociously. "It's supposed to be. It has to penetrate the best defensive enchantments that money can buy."

Roxanne activates the test cannon, and the following explosion makes Lolo drop the dart in surprise as she jumps behind me for protection, but the elemental stops itself from hitting the ground and floats before me.

I smile wryly at the adorable bunny girl, her hands shaking as she touches my back, and I give Roxanne an internal thumbs up for the wingwoman moment.

Lolo realizes that the explosion was nothing special and immediately straightens up, trying to pretend that nothing happened. I give her props for successfully recomposing herself, but her blush becomes extremely obvious due to her usual, almost-naked fashion choices.

"How-… how are you going to use it?" She tries to move on.

And I kindly answer, "You just saw how. We're going to launch it so violently and with such force that the speed it'll achieve will make the Silver Lightning look like a grandma walking with a cane."

She stares at me apprehensively and wonders out loud, "What is it with men and weapons…?"

"What? I love weapons!" Hana suddenly chimes in from afar.

"And I love explosions!" Roxanne happily adds.

Lolo turns to them and awkwardly retorts, "You two are… different. A lot more men enjoy this kind of thing than women."

Nikolas suddenly appears, drawn by the sound of explosions, fighting, and the smell of burnt fuel. "What's going on here?"

"Developing a weapon," I offhandedly reply.

He raises his eyebrows and quickly approaches, his male instincts overpowering his dislike of me, which proves Lolo's point.

Léonne silently watches as we do our research, and the presence of the stern Chieftess makes both of the wereanimal adventurers a lot more meek than usual. They know we're different from the usual Lord, but Léonne isn't, so they act as respectfully as they can.

But their tension gets even worse when Vanea arrives. She comes wearing a pink princess dress, the type that she apparently enjoys wearing a lot, and her casual gait instantly becomes composed and restrained when she sees Léonne.

"Greetings, Dame Vanea," Yunia receives her in my place as I'm busy with summoning.

"Hello, Yulania, and…" Vanea stops for a second as she turns to milf-Alissa. "I assume you're Chieftess Léonne."

"I am," she coolly responds with a nod, not showing a single reaction on her face from Vanea's piercing eyes, but then she comments, "What a strange set of allies Wolf is gathering."

Vanea grins and glances at me. "That's fine because, aside from Sa'Haa, those who flock to him have reasons deeper than just profits."

Léonne raises an eyebrow, but the princess simply smiles sweetly.

And Yunia decides to skip the rest of the pleasantries as she moves on, "We want to know everything about Kardia and the possible defenses of Cleinias' home."

Vanea jerks her head towards Yunia, making the elven queen groan internally in discomfort from the stare, and the evil princess breaks into a mad grin.

"I love how bold the Ryders are becoming," she whispers heatedly, and the intensity of her tone makes even Léonne stiffen.

Molding elementals to perfection is tiring, so the girls help me through [Bind], but the afternoon goes by in a flash as we're all very focused on our work.

Kahura isn't able to completely finish Alissa's hands, but they're fully functional now, and Alissa just feels a lack of "Dexterity" with them, which means that she can't properly use her bow, so she won't be participating in the attack.

And when night falls, we just have a quick bath, for the navigator on the Floater announces that they're approaching Kardia. The large agglomeration of lights under them is unmistakably a town, even when seen from so high up.

Alcander opens the [Gate] to the bridge, and Vanea, Léonne, and I cross through it. Then I open my own [Gate] because I can shift my points to [Mana Efficiency], greatly reducing the cost of the spell, which I use to bring my wives, except for Alissa, who stays at the embassy, preparing herself for another job.

"Your Highness, we've arrived," Nohopu happily announces, both he and the rest of the crew looking quite haggard from enduring the constant shaking and loud engine noise for hours.

"Good job, Captain Nohopu. I'm very pleased with the speed you've achieved," I earnestly praise him as I pull out the golems.

"Organize the replacement of the men with Alcander as you're to continue flying overnight and return to the capital once we're done," Yunia orders.

"Yes, Your Highness," he accepts with a bow.

Then we move to the top of the ship, and I notice that everyone but Aisco is also looking pretty tired, but we simply ignore him and walk to the front of the ship.

"I wish I could see him die, but I'll be satisfied if you bring me his still warm and bleeding head," Vanea sweetly requests.

"Sure, but we'll be putting it on a stake in front of the embassy," I answer with a devious smirk, then we start our preparations.

First, I summon ten Hollys and order them to search through the Nobles' Quarter of Kardia for Cleinias' presence. Then we begin assembling the Armor-Piercing Fin-Stabilized Discarding-Sabot tank round.

A bat-sized, tungsten dart fit with a discarding sabot and encased around a huge, explosive shell. The narrow dart allows for extreme penetration while the sabot is an adapter that allows it to be fired from a thick, powerful cannon, and thus, the APFSDS round has come to be.

I sit down and begin summoning the dart-shaped, tungsten elemental. I wish I could summon a depleted uranium elemental, but that seems to be a bit beyond even my skills as I don't know enough about that metal to conjure it.

Once I'm done, the golems fold themselves and enter the hollow part of the tungsten dart, then we fit the sabot around it, put it inside the shell casing, and fill it with Draconic Climax. Finally, I pull out the [Reinforce]d steel cannon from my "Items" with a *poof*, and we load the round.

"Hm… this is similar to the supersonic javelin launchers, no?" Aisco curiously asks.

"Yes, but this is Wolfy's original design, not a copy of your launchers," Lina promptly answers, very intent on not letting him think that we're stealing his idea.

"Like the Raki airplane?" He casually continues. It seems plagiarism didn't even cross his mind.

And Lina nods, making her bangs sway.

I cast [Telekinesis] on myself and hover in front of the Floater, giving myself a clear, unobstructed view of the entirety of Kardia.

We passed by this town before when we were going to the capital, and we had ignored it as it was just another crossroads town, but Hana has some history with this place as she passed through here many times when her family was doing their usual route between Sommerland and Ryutake.

Kardia's main attraction is the wide variety of traveling merchants. Those who come from the north hail from Betoverd Bos and Gnomeria, Hermit's Roost, and Sommerland; from the east come the rare werefoxes, the elves of the High Forest, and the faraway merchants from Maoka; from the south comes those from Faium and Ryutake; and to the west is the capital, where a good deal of the merchants go to rather than come from.

But now's not the time for reminiscing, so she ignores the familiar sights and forces her mind to focus on what's important.

The Nobles' Quarter is relatively small, so the Hollys don't have to search for very long before they find the biggest mansion in the town, second only to the Lord's home. The Hollys notice a large party going on inside, but there are a lot of guards all throughout and most likely some enchantments that would detect their approach, so Yunia drops down with [Fly], her points now focused on [Sense Presence] to increase its range.

We remain in absolute silence for a minute, the faint breeze of the night caressing our faces and whispering in our ears, a welcome calm moment in the quickly rising tension.

After so many battles, none of us are anxious, but we are eager to exact our revenge. Even though each of us wanted to deal with this in a different way, we're all in agreement that this is the best course of action for our future.

Alissa wanted more nobles to die, Roxanne wanted us to destroy his home, Hana just wanted to fight in the Purification, Ciel wanted to accuse Cleinias in front of everyone, Lina just wanted a quiet assassination when Cleinias dropped his guard, Aoi wanted us to dominate both of the Alkimeonids, and Yunia wanted a political solution rather than his death.

And I… I didn't want to fight. There's always a side of me complaining about how much of a bother it is to have to squash these worms… and how he'd rather continue studying and exploring magic, [Golemancy], specifically, than deal with this bloody business.

But we must. For our future, for our Fate, for the good of Rupegia, we must make a stand here and strike down the Wicked. This, we all agree on.

Suddenly, the people inside the mansion are finally in Yunia's [Sense Presence] range, and she detects a large group of people spread throughout a large hall, each energetically moving around in a partying way.

Then Alissa nudges her to pay attention to one area in particular, where six men are sitting in a circle, and a familiar presence triggers our memories.

That's Cleinias.

Léonne was right, the cockroach really didn't plan on coming back.

My breath quickens in excitement, my tail rises up, becoming as hard as steel, and I open my palms as my claws itch to rake through raw flesh and bathe me in blood. Then the memory of crushing the assassin's head with my draconic form makes me salivate in hunger, but the human pulls on the reins of the dragon.

I need to stay here for safety, so I won't be participating myself, but I still need to keep my mind sharp to provide support.

The rest of the girls all cast [Telekinesis] on the cannon, lifting it off the ship and into the sky, then we point it down and take aim. I land on the back of the cannon and also add my own [Telekinesis] to it. We need to keep it as stable as possible to not throw off its alignment with our target because the golems will have a hard time adjusting the trajectory if we miss.

Our gestalt training shows its worth as the girls slowly surrender their minds to me, and our wills start to merge into one with a singular goal, allowing our spells to aid one another instead of interfering.

The swaying of the floating cannon slows until it's almost imperceptible, and then it suddenly stops completely.

Say your last prayers, you wrinkly fuck.

I hit my tail against the primer, making a small spark that sets off the Climax inside the shell, and a massive explosion deafens us all. As I'm on the cannon, my entire body rattles from the shock wave, but a quick [Heal] is enough to bring me back to normal, and I focus on the golems.

The sabot successfully detached from the dart the moment it left the cannon, so now, the thick tungsten rod is freely shooting straight down at a blinding speed, and the girls all fly down towards Yunia to support her in the attack.

But then we notice a miscalculation: range. Either we're too high, or we used too little Climax for propulsion, so the dart is losing precious speed.

That's nothing we can't fix with magic, though. The three golems cast [Telekinesis] on the back of the dart, stopping the bleed-off of its speed, then stabilizing it at an acceptable velocity.

Yunia activates the [Gate] Scrubber, then the golems hit something, and they hear a deafening cracking sound, but the dart barely loses any momentum as it penetrates through the mansion's defenses.

It goes through the ceiling and arrives at the party with a boom, where it lands precisely on the mark, but it doesn't penetrate any flesh, instead sinking completely into the floor.

It takes a second for Yunia to notice, but she finds that Cleinias' presence has suddenly teleported underground.

Motherfucker…

We're all stunned for a second at the ingenuity of his safety enchantments. It teleported him the instant we penetrated the mansion's defenses, and it was faster than our goddamn sabot!

But we're not done yet!

PLAN B!

The golems fly out of the dart from its back end. Then they reform their bodies and take a look around. The hall is now a mess and filled with a cloud of dust since the impact caused a shock wave potent enough to stun everyone in the room, but the golems pick up the footsteps of heavily armored men quickly approaching.

Assuming direct control of Jarn.

I [Equip] her multiple limbs, each one now holding a weapon. Then I engage Terminator mode and charge towards the guards.

The two doll golems start using [Earth Wall] to dig a hole into the ground, but the mansion seems to be enchanted with something to prevent exactly that, which slows down their efforts.

With the guards all rushing towards the explosion, the girls just land at the gate, supposedly the weakest point of the mansion, then blow it open, the enchantments seemingly too depleted to stop them, and they just casually stroll in.

Now without a [Dead Zone] countering her, Roxanne is free to [Explosion] the floor of the party hall, stunning all of the nobles again before they can pull out their weapons and opening a hole that helps the golems dig down faster, but that seems to scare Cleinias, who certainly felt the rumbling.

One of our mages opens a [Gate] for Alissa, and she teleports into Cleinias' mansion in the capital. Once there, she leisurely starts opening the secret room while the Punishers outside subdue the guards.

I slam a hammer into a guard's shoulder, the power of the attack far from killing him, but the sound of bones cracking tells me that he won't be able to lift his sword again until he's healed.

A buff noble shoves a sword into a slit in the back of Jarn's armor, which would've severed a spine if she had a fleshy body, but I just swing an arm backward, hitting him in the back of the head with the pommel of my sword, and the poor bastard instantly assumes a stiff posture that indicates likely brain damage as he falls to the floor like a plank.

The nobles and guards all focus on Jarn due to how visible she is, and for the first time, I push my [Ekrano Style] to its limit in a multi-directional fight of one versus many.

WITHOUT ARMOR, YOU'RE ALL JUST FUCKING INSECTS TO ME!

I laugh evilly as I dance around them. The nobles are harmless, so I don't even attempt to engage against their superior [Weapon Use] skills and just go for a disabling attack instead; the guards are too low level to put up a fight against me, so I whack them away like flies; the mages are too vulnerable to pose a threat as a simple spear thrown at their lungs is enough to stop their chanting; and [Equip] ensures that any weapon I throw is instantly returned to my hand with just a thought.

A smart idiot uses [Searing Blade] to sever one of Jarn's arms, but the golem instantly uses [Manipulate Metal] to fuse it back together, and I shove a sword into his gut for his troubles.

HAHAHAHAH…! I'M FUCKING INVINCIBLE!

We detect Sebastian approaching Cleinias, and then they both [Blink] to the entrance, right in front of the girls. The two men freeze in surprise, but then they scowl as they realize who's before them.

"YOU CU-…" Cleinias' swear is cut short by Yunia's [Chain Life]. Then Roxanne uses [Explosion] on Sebastian's knees, instantly disabling him, and Lina and Hana charge forward to secure him.

"Cleinias Alkimeonids, you're accused of Wicked acts against monsters! Any last words?!" Ciel announces his sentence, and the Chains are loosened just enough to allow him to speak.

"Monsters aren't protected by the Sins, you whorish sow!" He spits back in fury, then tries to feed mana to a gem under his clothes, but [Chain Life] blocks him from doing just that, and he immediately pales as he realizes that he's been cornered. "No, wai-…"

Ciel mercilessly swings her glaive, and Cleinias' head falls from his shoulders. Then she casts [Judgment] on the blade of her polearm and swings it again.

A shrill scream claws into their ears as Cleinias' spirit is forcefully exorcized. The horror in his voice tells us that he's likely watching the gates of Hell open up before him… and then he's suddenly gone.

"You are now level sixty-one."

The rest of the golems are helping Jarn, but she's still being swarmed, and the guards are now throwing themselves at her limbs to hold her down. None of us have seen either Little Alki-Alki or that Fluminis bastard, so I summon the golems, and everyone retreats.

But first, we leave a gift in the center of the town.

The Punishers always publicly crucify the (already dead) Wicked to show everyone who they were and that Wickedness always leads to death, so we do the same, except we keep Cleinias' head as a souvenir.

I personally hand it to Vanea, who eagerly receives the head and holds it tight against her chest, not caring that her dress is getting all bloody.

Then I turn to Alcander, and he opens a [Gate] back to the embassy.

And that is how you actually assassinate someone.

A note from Manasong

Hall of Fame of Patrons

The patrons who support Rupegia shall have their names sung by the bards for they deserve the glory and honor. Their names are:

Prince PreownedFIN.

Prince Owldente.

Lord Andrew Meyers.

Lord Novgarod.

Lord Michale Erwin.

Lord Bakerdea.

Lord Maurice.

Lord Mattirro Draca.

Lord Sean Drake.

Lord Mike Bartter.

Lord Warwulfv.

Lord Khristopher Welsh.

Lord Tenebris Lupus.

Lord Paul Daval.

Lord Paul Daval.

Lord AndreyUC.

Lord Tmac.

Lord School Work.

Lord Gwendolyn Simmons-LaRose.

Lord CopeyDunt.

Lord BlindTactic.

Lord The Tallest Joshua.

Lord litalmexy.

Lord Tyler Mills.

Lord Philip.

Lord d3235.

Lord Freddie.

Lord Mike Bartter.

Lord Sean Drake.

Lord Shaun McDonough.

Lord William Clark.

Noble Salty Panda.

Noble Mild Fracas.

Noble Aclys.

Noble CarlBaxter.

Noble Andrew Hebreard.

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Legends of Time Pasts Series: Nojus, Lord of Fire and Brimstone - Teaser

A note from Manasong

This a teaser for the patreon-only side stories I'm writing. It's not necessary to read them to understand the main story, it just gives it more background or world-building.

One day I'll begin to slowly make these stories public once I re-review them like I'm doing with the early chapters.

Lina's POV, 1th of the month of Dance, year 68,996 of the Solar calendar, in the town of Bersidon, Mountainhome.

Mom and Dad leave to check on the preparations for the Dance Festival, so Fuda and I are left alone, a rare thing since there's always someone taking care of the shop.

"Want to see Dad's books?" He immediately asks the moment the door closes.

I frown at him, and he shows a naughty grin, but I don't think I can say no, so I just glare, hoping to convince him not to drag me into this.

But he insists, "See, the other day I got a glimpse of a hidden book under his bed. It's called 'Nojus, Lord of Fire and Brimstone.'"

"Wow…" I mumble.

That sounds so awesome!

Then I glare harder, and he rolls his eyes. "Stop being such a stone."

"It's hidden for a reason," I quietly reply.

He smiles from ear to ear. "Yeah, because it's an adult book, and those are fun!"

"Hmmm…" I grumble hesitantly.

He suddenly grabs my hand and drags me to their room. I could use [Spirit of Gaia] to stop him, but I just pretend to resist so that I can claim innocence if we're caught.

Nojus' worth was the same as a pile of coal.

"Wow, starting good," Fuda comments with a snort.

I groan loudly, and he continues reading after another snort.

The villagers of the Infernal Outpost of Hal didn't use coal for lava was abundant, and Fire mages were aplenty, so nobody needed this "dirty" source of heat. It was also not worthy to export as the Venerable Ones in the heart of Mountainhome had sources better than the heavy mineral that came from the incredibly deep and dangerous Infernal Underground, so coal was thrown away as trash to give room for Fire crystal mining.

Noju's worth was at the same level as trash.

And the young man watched slack-jawed as the fire he started by accident quickly spread all over the peat, disrupting the mining operation in this section of the Bosse Caverns.

The miners shouted and ran out of the dungeon as every Infernal dwarf knows that underground fires are the deadliest poison there could be. They create a completely imperceptible gas that invades the mind, accumulating there until it's almost too late to activate [Spirit of Gaia] to cleanse oneself from it, so fires caused more victims than monster attacks even in the untamed Infernal Underground.

"Not really a problem on the Surface," I mumble, and Fuda shushes me, so I flash him a glare.

Nojus had no energy to move, the weight of his mistake bearing down upon him like chains. He even felt the desire to jump into the peat fields for the loss of his life would be just as impactful as that of the peat.

But hey, at least once the Water mages controlled the fire they might reveal new Fire crystals born from the flames. You just have to ignore all of the loss in profit from the downtime in mining and the cost of the mana spent by the mages.

Maybe he had actually done something good in the end. At least the Water mages would have work to do… though his fellow miners would feel a bit the loss of income from not being able to work in this section of the Bosse Caverns… Nah, it's not like the Bosse dungeon had been depleted, so the miners of the other sections could share some space with them until the fire here was controlled.

"Yes, that's right, I didn't fuck up," Nojus concluded to himself. "But I did fuck the Boss." Then he snorted and collected his equipment, his conscience free of guilt.

Now the only question was: did someone see him?

The sudden blue light that started to shine from behind him gave him a clue to that answer, and it wasn't in his favor.

Nojus sensed a very frightening flavor of mana, but before he could react, a plank hit him in the stomach, forcefully expelling all the air in his lungs as he was punted away.

His back suddenly hit something, and his mind took a few seconds to understand his body's new orientation, which was laying on the ground, dangerously close to the mound of peat that was starting to catch on fire.

"FUCKIN' BASTAR'D!" A gruff voice with a thick accent blasted in his ears, then a big, booted foot stomped onto his stomach, almost making him puke, but it kept him pinned against the floor. "I SHAW IT! I SHAW YOU D'ROP THE FI'RE G'RUB! BOSSH WILL SKIN YE AND SHELL IT TO THE SCO'RCHED!"

I hum in thought and ask, "Do we really speak like this? I don't like how silly our accent sounds in writing."

Fuda snorts and answers, "Of courshe not. The autho'r is a Vene'rable One, and you know they like to make fun of ou'r acchents."

Of Gods, I can hear it! Make it stop!

The pleasant fellow on top of Nojus looked like a ghost as his enchanted Runic skin glowed with mana, making the already muscular man stronger than two orcs together. The poor and scrawny Nojus didn't have the [Stonebody] to compete, and even if he did, his MP was already low from using [Spirit of Gaia] to mine all day.

So all Nojus could do was moan in pain and pray that the Watchman would let him go, but the person that hit him was the very same one who's responsible for keeping order in the mines, and Nojus understood that he was inside a crumbling tunnel.

So he begged, "PLEASHE! I DIDN'T… I DIDN'T MEAN-… I T'RIPPED!"

"OF COU'RSHE YOU DID, YOU FUCKEN G'RUB MEAT!" The Watchman bellowed back, then his big hand grabbed onto Nojus' filthy shirt and effortlessly pulled the smaller man up. "SHO I'LL GIVE YE SHOME ADVANCHE PUNISHMENT!"

Nojus froze in fear, then he felt the heat at his back increase, and the ice melted into fiery panic. "PLEASHE, NO! PLEASHE! PLEA-… AAAAAH!"

The miserable miner's back boiled and melted as the burning peat clung to him, the pain so great, so horrible, that he quickly passed out, and he thanked the Gods for this small mercy, but it only left the Watchman unsatisfied.

"Oh, Gods!" I exclaim in horror, and even Fuda makes a disgusted face.

A bucket of cold water was poured onto Nojus' face, and he immediately woke up after an agonizing second of drowning, but the first thing he did was scream in agony from the pain of his burned back.

He screamed until his throat hurt, the pain making every second last an eternity, so he didn't notice the group of people gathered around him, or how the fattest and wealthiest among them quickly grew annoyed by the screeching hurting his ears.

"Just give him the potion already, you bog-breath," a snooty man ordered with a sneer.

A blue ghost appeared on Nojus' vision, scaring him so badly he pissed himself, the memory of the Watchman burning him obviously fresh in his mind, and now the evil man was back to torment him further.

But then a thick, greasy hand grabbed his filthy face and shoved down a warm, tasty, glowing red liquid down his throat, and the pleasant sensation calmed him enough to begin understanding what was going on.

His vision suddenly turned dark as he was forcefully spun, then the Watchman splashed the HP potion on his back, and Nojus moaned in delight as the burning pain immediately cooled a great amount.

"Now he's pissed himself… ugh. Next time, keep the punishments for after I'm gone. I pay you to do this distasteful work for me, understood?" The increasingly repulsed snooty man chastised.

"Sho'rry, Boss," the Watchman grunted, and Nojus realized the rock was about to fall on his face. The fear of his Fate was so great, he immediately forgot all about the pleasure from the HP potion working to heal his burns.

And so he was forcefully spun again, now giving him a view of The Boss, a fat man with a big beard to hide the folds of his neck, but his robe was awkwardly wide and his very chubby fingers revealed the extent of his laziness. The only thing worse than a fat human was a fat dwarf as they surely had trouble moving, some even requiring the undignified use of crutches just to live.

"Wow. Have you ever seen a fat dwarf?" Fuda asks in wonder.

"Why would they come to the Surface? The book just said how hard it is for them to even walk."

"You're right…" He hums and nods.

"Hmph…"

Of course, I am.

The Runes on the Watchman's skin stopped glowing, allowing Nojus to see his scarred, rugged, tattooed… and considerably ugly face. Definitely not a man with a good inheritance. Nojus wasn't pretty, and he definitely didn't have a good inheritance to keep his face young and cute as he aged, but at least he wasn't like the Watchman, though Nojus found it quite sad that this was something that comforted him.

And the contrast created by the fat, sneering Boss standing beside the ugly and muscular Watchman was complete once Nojus noticed who else was in the room. He saw his family, the scrawny, dirty, rust-haired trio of Loving Mother, Kind Father, and Affable Sister.

The way the three looked at him had more impact on his mind than even the Boss. Their eyes were tired, disappointed, and cold. Everything Nojus wanted was to see them try to cheer him up, to feel like they enjoyed being in his presence, to have someone that would give him support, like how a real family should, but all he had was disappointment.

Oddly enough, their faces made him feel nostalgic. For as much as they lacked warmth, they still represented home, so he found a minimal amount of comfort and safety near them.

"Nojus, we can't pay the compenshation this time," Father shattered his delusions, the usual fire in his voice gone, now only a casual air that made obvious his lack of concern.

"We almost have enough to pay for you'r shiste'r's [Fire Magic] training," Mother added, her tone so apathetic that Nojus was once again reminded that he held as much worth as trash.

Then he turned his eyes to his younger sibling, the only one who gave him the same look as always, scorn, and he didn't even fault her as Nojus never had the chance to be an older brother for her. She was the cuter of the two, and the only one of their family that could be called "competent," but not only that, she held so much potential within her frail frame that he almost felt compelled to call her Grand Sister… but he might as well since there was only one path his Fate could take.

"You're not as bad as her," Fuda casually comments.

I almost smile, but then it hits me. "What do you mean 'not as bad'?!"

"Hehehehe…" He just chuckles and ignores my questions.

"You'll be my debt slave until you can repay for the damages," The Boss announced apathetically, then he turned to the Watchman. "Don't give him any important jobs as I don't want a repeat of today to happen again."

The gruff man grunted and nodded obediently, then the fat one waddled his way out of the room, leaving the miserable one with his new Master… and the three who had abandoned him.

Nojus stared at them, and they simply stared back, the four of them in complete silence. What was even there to say? Father was content with the deal, Mother just couldn't muster the energy to care, and Sister just wanted him to disappear from her sight. But Nojus…? He didn't know what to feel.

"Why have I been forsaken?" He thought to himself, his internal tone completely monotonous as he had already resigned himself to his Fate. "Why have I been made to suffer so much?"

The Watchman was growing increasingly uncomfortable with the awkward silence, so he simply grabbed Nojus by the arm and dragged him away like a small sack of mushrooms.

Nojus didn't know that his Fate is his fault. He didn't know how many mistakes he made to get to this point, how many choices there were that could've taken him somewhere better, or even how to escape the overwhelming weight of his debt. There was no light at the end of the tunnel for Nojus.

He was thrown away by his family just like coal, just like thrash.

Fuda and I keep quiet. We have a couple of friends who became slaves because their parents couldn't pay a debt, so the story isn't funny anymore.

The broom moved back and forth, dragging the soot along with the bristles as they made a dry, scratching sound. Nojus continued to sweep with boring, monotonous movements, slowly stepping to the side as he brought the pile of soot towards the edge of the smithy.

He didn't notice the small jar of sharpening oil that he slowly came closer to, his mind so heavily drawn inwards that a summon would be more aware and lively than the poor young man.

His dirty boot hit the jar, tipping it over, then it shattered as it hit the floor, spreading mildly valuable oil everywhere, which mixed with the soot he was brushing, creating a disgusting gunk that Nojus knew was going to be a pain to clean up.

But then he heard heavy footsteps behind him, and he instinctively protected himself, just in time to cover his face from the dreadful whip as it lashed onto him. Even though the Watchman didn't use his [Runic Enchanting], Nojus could recognize the sadistic man approaching just from his footsteps.

Nojus' mind returned only for a moment as the pain made it once again retreat inward. He'd be allowed to rest on the dirty floor for a minute, and any minute not having to deal with reality was valuable to Nojus.

"Lazy fuck. No seasoning for you again today," the Watchman grumbled, then left Nojus alone.

The others just walked around the miserable slave on the floor, completely ignoring him and his plight. It was like he was invisible to everyone, except the Watchman, and that made Nojus wonder how the ugly man always knew every single mistake that Nojus made.

It was like he enjoyed dishing out punishment…

He clearly loved to hurt Nojus.

And for once in his life, Nojus started to feel indignation. "He's evil. He's a monster born to torment me. And someone like that just can't be a fellow humanoid, right? He must be Wicked. He must, must, must be Wicked…" He thought repeatedly to convince himself.

His mind now fixed onto this belief, he returned to his previous demeanor and continued to monotonously clean the smithy's floor.

Once the bell finally rang, he made for the mess hall along with everyone else, but even the other slaves avoided him, believing him to be "cursed" by the God of Luck. He entered the line for the meal, still deep in thought, and took twice as much of the flavorless congee even if he wasn't allowed any seasoning. The feverish repetition in his mind giving him a hunger he never had before.

After eating his filling but boring meal, he took his towel bath, but he didn't return to his sleeping quarters. It was recreation time, so nobody would pay attention to an insignificant slave going across town.

The light from the crystals and mushrooms had died out as they shifted from emitting to absorbing now that Realm was bathed in the power from the Goddess of the Moons, which penetrated solid rock without issue, so it reached even the deep Infernal Underground. But there was still enough illumination to walk around in the dark as a few types of underground plant life reacted to the magical nights by emitting light, making the drab Outpost look like it was under a moonlit night just like in the Surface, and just this small amount of beauty was enough to stun Nojus in awe.

The Infernal Outpost of Hal was just a large cave where small houses carved from boulders huddled up at the floor, and more houses were carved directly on the walls, but the hundreds of scintillating cute little lights stimulated the mind in ways it was hard to explain.

Nojus was already feverish, but now his mind was put on overdrive. Why had he been deprived of happiness, of beauty, of wonder his entire life? What else was there to be seen and experienced that would take his breath away for much longer than this silly little view did?

And why did the slave collar suddenly feel so heavy on his shoulders…?

A sudden burst of laughter from the nearby inn ripped him away from his daze, and he scurried on towards the temple.

It didn't take him long to find the white half-sphere, not much bigger than the average house, and a source of jokes for the denizens of the Outpost with how small it was.

Nojus didn't know how large a true temple should be, so he simply moved on, then stopped at the small door and knocked.

"WHAT?!" A grumpy voice replied to the disturbance, making Nojus reflexively cow in fear, terrified of angering anyone.

The door was almost ripped open out of its hinges as an angry, rotund, and scraggly bearded priest pulled it open. Then silence befell them as the Priest failed to notice the small bundle of skin and bones shivering at the floor.

The priest looked to each side in confusion, then finally looked down and blurted out in surprise, "What ails you, little one? Tell this Brother how I can help you." His lack of accent told that he was either a learned man or from the Venerable Home, making Nojus even more intimidated.

But the Priest's gentle tone helped him overcome his natural fear of vigorous people, so he peeked at the bigger man from behind his arms, and the Priest noticed the slave collar, making him realize that he wasn't talking to a child, just to a smaller than normal slave, even for a dwarf.

"Eh? What's wrong with you, slave? Stand up properly and speak," the Older Brother kindly ordered, but Nojus made no move, so the impatient man grabbed his arm and pulled him up. The Priest wasn't particularly strong, so he found it bad news that the slave was so light it was like lifting a broom.

Nojus misunderstood the other's frown, and he engaged "obedience" mode, immediately blurting out whatever he was thinking, "P'riest, what makes one a Wicked?"

"Eh?" The scraggly man hummed nasally again. The oddities of this slave were keeping him off his balance. "You have to commit one of the Sins, which are Torture, Rape, or Reckless Murder," he scholarly answered.

"To'rtu're? How isn't beating slaves To'rtu're?" Nojus asked, bewildered. The sudden shift in demeanor surprised the Priest once again, but the experienced holy man had these talks many times before.

The Older Brother grabbed both of Nojus' shoulders, but didn't rest the weight of his large hands on the smaller man for fear of making his knees buckle. "Young one, are you being punished for your mistakes, or is your Master hurting you without reason?"

Nojus hesitated as he feared physical contact, but a strange warmth came from the Brother's hands, and it penetrated the miserable slave's heart, giving a second wind of bravery. "Without reashon?" He calmly inquired.

The other man nodded and grunted, "Yes. Punishments need a reason, and without one it's Torture."

For the first time in a long while, Nojus stood his ground and stared at someone in the eye. "He has a reashon, but he's still punishing me too much."

"Hmmm…" The Priest grunted impatiently and frowned. Though the young man's pathetic appearance was suspicious, the holy man had seen far too many slaves building wild tales for him to take Nojus at face value.

The gruff man's appearance didn't scare Nojus anymore as the fervor of his conviction returned. He simply couldn't believe that the Gods would allow someone like the Watchman to stand at a greater level than Nojus. The Watchman didn't deserve to be called Grand by Nojus for he was evil, and if Nojus' worth was at the same level as trash, then the Watchman was even lower. That vile man was waste, a disease, a parasite, a plague that needed to be removed from society before it did any more damage.

There was something wrong here, and Nojus was determined to find out. He didn't believe anymore that the Watchman had the right to whip him, for he was no fellow humanoid.

After a couple of seconds of thought, the Priest took his hands off of Nojus' shoulders and started the lecture, "Young one, the difference between punishment and torture is a complex thing. It's common for slaves to be overworked, making them prone to fail or make a mistake, and the Masters simply punish them instead of looking for a real solution. I can go to your Master and discuss your treatment, but I doubt very much it's Torture."

But Nojus wouldn't accept that.

Now that his body was unsupported, he started to sway on his feet as if his legs turned to slime, prompting the Priest to grab him again.

Nojus wouldn't accept this resolution.

He slowly regained the strength in his body as something new and powerful was lit within him, and the Priest frowned as he sensed the thin slave tense up.

Nojus wouldn't accept that the Watchman was simply misguided. He wouldn't accept that the pain he suffered was going to be pushed to the side and thrown away like soot. The trauma in his mind was so fresh he even felt his back burn as that Fateful day flashed in his eyes once again, and how was that not Torture?!

And once Nojus' mouth opened, he couldn't stop himself as his grievances poured out like a flood, "How is it not To'rtu're to always be the're, following me day afte'r day, watching ove'r my back in the da'rkness like a stalking monste'r, waiting fo'r the exact moment that I fail sho that he can launch anothe'r whip at my back, caushe me mishe'ry and pain, and then enjoy it?!

"They give me the wo'rst jobs, the ones that pay the least and numb my soul the most just to d'rive me fu'rthe'r insane! My 'Shanity' is at sheven! SHEVEN! How am I shupposhed to wo'rk my debt off if they neve'r give me the oppo'rtunity to rest and g'row st'ronger or recove'r my MP sho that I can ushe [Spi'rit of Gaia]. HOW IS THAT NOT TO'RTU'RE?!"

The rant left him short of breath, yet he wanted to say so much more, but his mind just couldn't find the words to express his mounting rage, so the two just stared at each other, Nojus' heavy breathing sounding deafeningly loud in the quiet of the night.

The Priest saw the truth in Nojus' words, he knew that this wouldn't end here, but the Infernal Underground wasn't named like that just due to the ever presence of lava. The holy man felt shame at his own impotence, but he needed to make the grim situation clear to the distraught slave, so he steeled himself and prepared his speech.

"My kin, I have to ask you to be strong. I'm the only priest here, and I'm just a healer, so I don't know [Detect Evil]. I can call for a Templar, but it'll take time for one to come. I can shelter you until then, but if your Master came to reclaim you, I wouldn't be able to stop them, and they'd likely even punish you further, so it might be best if you returned to your job and continued to work as if nothing happened until the Templar came."

Nojus suddenly felt cold, not depressed, just cold. His "Piety" was a mere 10, but that was simply the standard, and not enough for him to be considered ostracized by the Gods.

He had simply been abandoned… by everyone.

Without even saying another word, he turned around and ran.

He ran from the Priest, from the commoners making merry, the workers returning from home, his fellow slaves enjoying recreation time, his evil tormentor, his absent Master, his deserting family, and from the Gods that forsook him…

He ran out of the outpost and into the wild, dangerous Infernal Underground. The gates were open to keep the air circulating, and the guards didn't even move to stop him, they just watched as a crazy slave ran to their death.

Tomorrow, the Watchman would notice his absence, and the relentless sadist would then learn that Nojus was spotted running away the previous night, but he wouldn't even raise an eyebrow at it. No slave was worth delving into the Underground.

"Oh, Gods. This is horrible. This story is horrible. Why are we reading this?!" I exclaim, horrified.

"How do you think a slave became a Lord? This is just the beginning!" Fuda replies excitedly.

I really want to stop, but I can't for some reason, and it's not Fuda's encouragement. I hate this story… but I also love it.

A note from Manasong

Hall of Fame of Patrons

The patrons who support Rupegia shall have their names sung by the bards for they deserve the glory and honor. Their names are:

Prince PreownedFIN.

Prince Owldente.

Lord Andrew Meyers.

Lord Novgarod.

Lord Michale Erwin.

Lord Bakerdea.

Lord Maurice.

Lord Mattirro Draca.

Lord Sean Drake.

Lord Mike Bartter.

Lord Warwulfv.

Lord Khristopher Welsh.

Lord Tenebris Lupus.

Lord Paul Daval.

Lord Paul Daval.

Lord AndreyUC.

Lord Tmac.

Lord School Work.

Lord Gwendolyn Simmons-LaRose.

Lord CopeyDunt.

Lord BlindTactic.

Lord The Tallest Joshua.

Lord litalmexy.

Lord Tyler Mills.

Lord Philip.

Lord d3235.

Lord Freddie.

Lord Mike Bartter.

Lord Sean Drake.

Lord Shaun McDonough.

Lord William Clark.

Noble Salty Panda.

Noble Mild Fracas.

Noble Aclys.

Noble CarlBaxter.

Noble Andrew Hebreard.

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Chapter 137: Murder - Part 1

A note from Manasong

Attention: to conform to the limit of mature content (more than just sexual content) allowed in a novel, I've censored this chapter. You can look for the uncensored version here.

Alissa activates her Scrubber and calmly walks down the narrow steps as the sounds of battle become louder and louder, then she stops before the large emellanat door and slowly pushes it open.

The moment that a sliver of light seeps into the room, her [Sense Presence] is momentarily overwhelmed by the information of the tortured monsters inside rushing into her mind, and their state makes her grimace.

The door opens fully, and she steps in, then she takes a look at each of them. Their state is still the same, but now they look at her like she's food for starving beasts rather than someone they want to brutally kill.

We get suspicious that the bellies of the pregnant ones are different, but we don't remember exactly how they were before, so we can't say for certain.

She senses a group of people entering the mansion, who immediately make a beeline for her, but she remains in place, staring at each of the victims, taking in every detail about them.

Her eyes gloss over as she focuses on their presences, noticing something odd within the pregnant ones. She's seen a few pregnant women before, including female monsters, but these feel a bit different. The souls within their bellies look dense.

"I've never seen anything like this before," she mutters internally, perplexed. Even Yunia is surprised as it seems that her lower [Sense Presence] wasn't powerful enough to catch this detail.

Caterina and her Punisher escorts enter the secret room, and they all immediately freeze and grimace.

"Ugh… it's as disgusting as you described," the Punisher Captain grumbles, her small elven nose wrinkled in disgust.

"I can sense that the babies inside their bellies are different," Alissa grimly states without turning to face them.

"You haven't been able to find out what they were doing, correct?" Caterina asks as she walks over to the orcs, who all salivate as their sullen eyes follow her.

"Yes. We took samples of the potions in the other room, but Roxanne hasn't had the time to decode them."

Caterina glances at her and nods. "We'll do it for you."

"Then I leave them with you," she whispers moodily, then turns around and leaves the secret room. Once she's in the small library again, I summon her back to the embassy.

We have some Apaisant tea to calm ourselves down from the blood lust while we wait for Alissa to return.

"Is that… normal for her?" Léonne nervously whispers to Yunia as the two stare at Vanea, who's currently playing with Cleinias' head and having it make funny faces. She's even giggling girlishly every few seconds.

Yunia avoids looking at the grim sight as she answers, "We… don't know. At least it isn't wholly unexpected."

Léonne lowers her voice. "I pray the Gods guide that woman because she certainly needs it."

You and me both…

Alissa suddenly appears in a flash, slightly startling both Léonne and Vanea, who almost drops the bloody head on the floor.

"How did you do that?" Vanea curiously asks, her innocent tone quite jarring when compared to her grizzly sight.

"Secret," Alissa tersely hums, trying to avoid conversation with her.

And the crazy princess makes a very cute "hmph" in response, then stands up and offers the head to me.

I don't want it, so I just stare at her oddly and subtly lean backward.

She rolls her eyes and annoyedly states, "You said you were going to put his head on a stake, so go do it."

I just give the golems a mental nudge, and they do it for me, using [Telekinesis] to move the head so that they don't get covered in blood like Vanea. She watches the golems leave with curiosity, but doesn't say anything, then turns back to me.

"I believe this is all you had planned for tonight?" She calmly asks.

And I answer in kind, "Yes. We'll just rest and wait until the nobles respond to our attack."

"Very well. I'll return to my home and keep watch over them." -She suddenly grins like a mad woman- "Until the next time, Wolf Ryder. This murder made me so excited that Loctar and Grosnok won't get much sleep tonight."

She must be playing up the crazy act, right…?

Then she leans forward (with her bloody, gloved hands kept behind her back), and gives me a kiss on the cheek. While I'm tempted to plow her brains out, she keeps reminding me just how damn crazy she is, and that isn't exactly good for my friend.

She gives Léonne and I a Lady-like wave, then walks away, towards the entrance of the embassy. The moment she's out of the room, the stern Chieftess gives me a very judgmental glare.

"Really, Wolf?" She remarks disapprovingly.

"It's more complicated than you think," I awkwardly reply, avoiding looking her in the eye.

She sighs and shakes her head, making her pointy ears shake adorably. Then she recomposes herself and politely announces, "I'll also be taking my leave, then. I'll return in three days, and I'll have the Sworn Hunters with me."

"Thanks for the help, Mom," Alissa cheerfully adds and gives her a hug from behind.

Léonne is momentarily caught off guard, but her calm and deliberate demeanor returns a couple of seconds later. "Always, my child," she coolly replies. Then she gives us a polite goodbye and leaves. Since she came alone, we have a couple of knights escort her back to the Network in respect of her position.

I sit back down on my seat with a sigh. The dragon is going to sleep, so the tension from today is free to make itself apparent.

We were so focused on the attack and then our revenge that we didn't even pay attention to Osaria's meeting with the Gartanias. From the small bits that I overheard, it went alright, and it wasn't anything special. The Gartanias know that shit has hit the fan with Katasko, but Osaria leveraged aid for them in exchange for cheaper metals from their mine like we'd planned.

The golems return, and they immediately [Clean] the drops of Cleinias' blood that dripped onto the floor.

"So, how did it all go?" Klein hesitantly questions from behind us.

"You can stand down and join us," Hana casually orders.

The monkey girl is happy to un[Equip] her armor, and Hana steals the small bundle of fun before I can claim her for myself.

Sensing that I'm in need of cuddling, Alissa sits on my lap and hugs my neck, and I deeply breathe in her delightful perfume. The aroma of elven Ranja fits her so perfectly that I get harder the longer I smell it.

"Thank you, husband, for taking revenge for me," she whispers sweetly into my ear.

"This was all a bit too grim for my heart, though…" I mumble tiredly.

She nods, rubbing her cheek against mine. "I can feel how hard this was on all of us, so I'm thankful that everyone is willing to go to such lengths for me."

Aoi shrinks down to the size of a corgi, then flies onto the table and rubs her head lovingly against Alissa's back like a dog. "For you, we'd do anything!" She exclaims in her chipmunk voice.

This pulls on Alissa's heartstrings, and she makes room between us for Aoi to join in on the cuddling.

"Well, I'm not one to advocate for revenge, but Cleinias deserved this and more," Ciel tactfully states, her crush on Alissa making her quite eager to say something reassuring. Then she pouts at me.

"It was exactly what we had to do," Yunia coolly states, and Alissa nods in agreement.

Out of curiosity, Aoi touches something hard inside my vest's pocket, and we're reminded of something rather exciting.

"Oh, yeah, didn't you get something from his body?" Alissa asks and gets off of my lap.

"We did…" I hum back and pull out the [Blink] magic tool from my pocket, then I stare with child-like wonder at the black gem we stole from Cleinias.

This spell has shown itself to be an extreme pain in the ass to counter, and I've also never had access to it due to it being considerably high level (60 in [Space Magic]) and outside of the reach of my Gift, which only allows me to see spells up to level 50… but now I have the best [Blink] that money can buy in my hands. Not only is the distance it can teleport quite significant, but it can also even go through solid matter as long as the caster can imagine the destination with enough detail.

I feed it mana, and my world turns into a blur, but it ends in an instant, and I suddenly find myself at the entrance of the embassy. Gify hovers in the air, flapping her chibi wings with her beak warped into a pout as her personal nest has disappeared from under her.

After a couple of seconds, the mana inside the enchantment clears enough that I can feed it again, and now I'm back in our bedroom, right where I was, allowing Gify to just drop down onto my shoulder again.

"Me next!" Hana shouts excitedly and snatches the gem, then disappears, but she finds herself considerably high up above the gardens, which isn't exactly where she wanted to be, forcing her to use [Summon Wings] to not go splat on the grass. "The hell?!"

A couple of seconds later, she reappears right outside the balcony, again not where she wanted to go.

"Why can't I go where I want?!" Hana complains as she flies in, then throws the gem to Lina.

"The enchantment is too delicate for you," the gloomy little girl replies, then [Blink]s and appears on my back, her legs around my shoulders.

"You can train to get better at it, tho," I reassure Hana, and Lina throws the gem to Roxanne. Then my little girl grips my horns for safety, and I begin horsing around.

Roxanne makes a poking motion, then [Blink]s, and Hana suddenly yelps as she receives One Thousand Years of Death.

"Lube first, you b-tch!" Hana growls back and pounces on Roxanne, but the evil demon teleports away before revenge can be exacted.

Her devious lady-like laughter is cut short as Alissa suddenly steals the gem and teleports to my side.

"Oh shit…" Roxanne mutters, resigning herself to her Fate.

Aoi takes the gem next and observes it curiously. She has some of the best magical senses out of all of us, and she can see the inner workings of the gem almost as deeply as Lina.

"Hmmm~…" She hums thoughtfully, then teleports outside, high up in the air, but before she can truly begin to fall, she forcefully clears the gem of mana and activates it again, teleporting higher up. She repeats it a few times, rising above the tree line to catch a glimpse of the moonlit night. Then she starts teleporting back down again.

Yunia narrows her striking blue eyes as her long elven ears twitch, then she turns around in a huff and grabs Aoi by the throat the moment the cheeky dragon appears behind her.

The Queen simply stares at the insolent fool and slowly raises one eyebrow.

"Hehe…" Aoi chuckles awkwardly with a toothy smile, then surrenders the gem.

Yunia takes it and immediately [Blink]s, reappearing on the railing of the balcony, easily standing on the thin wooden cylinder with the grace that only an elf could have.

She [Blink]s again, and now she's gripping a small nook on the bark of the mini High Tree. Then she continues up until she reaches the branches. It's a tight space with very little room to move, yet she still finds all the spots that she can teleport to.

"Amusing," she casually remarks, then she makes me summon her because she doesn't want to bother [Blink]ing back down.

It seems that she does have a talent for [Space Magic], though it isn't anywhere near as good as her father's. She's one of the handful of living elves who know [Precognition], and it's seen as a more powerful tool than [Blink], so she neglected her study of [Space Magic] in favor of [Weaverism].

Ciel tests it just for curiosity's sake, and she quickly learns that she's not very good at it. But that's not because of bad mana management, she just has a hard time gauging distances.

"Everyone has more experience with ranged combat than me," she defends herself with a flat tone, and I walk up to her so that Lina can pat her head in comfort.

Klein is the last to try, but she already knows that she'll be terrible with it as she's the one with the least experience in magic out of all of us.

She hesitantly takes the gem, then cautiously feeds it mana and closes her eyes as she prays, "Gods help m-…!"

She suddenly [Blink]s, and we hear a thud as she slams against the wall and falls on her ass.

"Oh, shit…!" Hana exclaims, her surprise so great that Roxanne manages to slip out of her grasp, but the dragonkin is so amused that she doesn't care anymore and laughs heartily at her friend's failure.

"Gods, I could've died!" Klein whines loudly as she gets up.

"No, you couldn't," Lina quietly replies and frowns. "But it's impressive that you managed to actually hit something."

"Ugh…" Klein groans in embarrassment as she marches towards us, then angrily hands me the gem and sits down at the table, her arms crossed and her lips pressed together in a pout.

We also have the golems try out the gem, but they all struggle to accurately teleport.

"Apologies, Master, but our performance is highly unsatisfactory," the three speak in unison.

"I think it's because they're always 'distracted' by their obsession with serving you," Roxanne wisely guesses.

I raise an eyebrow at her, but then it starts to make sense. The golems are always thinking about how to serve us, leaving less mental capacity for other tasks, such as concentrating and imagining the location they want to teleport to. I think the creator of [Summoning Magic] must have made the elementals (which the golems are based on) like this to ensure their loyalty, but this is quite a crude solution as it lowers the mental capabilities of the summons, their strongest point.

I can't just remove the obsession as it'll leave the golems without a sense of purpose, but I have to replace it with something more nuanced.

What drives a person? What makes one loyal?

I turn my eyes to Alissa and wonder if I can copy her loyalty onto the golems.

"I'd love to help," she casually responds to my thoughts and snuggles up to me.

In the end, from highest to lowest, the order of our precision with the gem is: Aoi, me, Roxanne, Yunia, Lina, Alissa, Ciel, Hana, the golems, and finally, Klein.

With the tension fading away, hunger starts to affect us, and we have a slightly late dinner. I want some good vibes to make up for the awful day, so all of the girls are invited, but I notice that we're a bit more restrained today. I'm used to our meals being loud, so it becomes pretty noticeable when things are quieter than usual. We aren't exactly depressed, but we also aren't as energetic as we could be.

Lolo also seems rather uncomfortable and fidgety, and I have a hunch about why, so of course, she eventually asks a question that silences the table, "Didn't you… uh… kill a noble?"

"We did, what of it?" I casually reply.

She slowly raises her eyebrows, her floppy ears perking up a bit. "It's, uhm… I thought there'd be a war, or something."

I smile soothingly, and my "Charisma" has a noticeable effect on her as she loosens up considerably. "There won't be, not unless they all want to die because we've shown that we have a lot more power than them."

"There'll be inquiries about our actions tomorrow, but nobody besides the Emperor himself has the power to do anything to us," Yunia categorically adds.

I nod in agreement and finish, "We might be challenged to a battle, but those are explicitly not to the death, and we're certain that they don't have the numbers to pose a threat to us. But don't worry, things will be safe for you and Nikolas to return to your usual lives in a few days."

She looks down to her plate, a little miffed. "Well, going back isn't what I was worried about…"

"Because it sure is nice to plow or loaf around all day while surrounded by elves," Klein launches a sneak attack.

The bunny girl pouts and knits her eyebrows at the monkey girl. "I'm not a gold digger like that."

"No, you're a sword sucker," Hana offhandedly remarks.

Lolo angrily wets her lips, trying to hide her smile. "That… I can't deny, but, I'm not addicted to it, unlike a certain person."

Both Hukarere and Aoi lift their heads up, then look at each other and start a staring contest, fighting for the title of "Addicted to Wolfy's Sword."

"Two persons, actually," I correct before things escalate.

"Since we're talking about it…" Alissa cheekily sings, then reaches into my pants and pulls It out. The table goes silent as they watch her slowly stroke it up and down, the mere sight causing them to warm up.

Alissa wants to use her new hands for something, so she savors the sight of building up the early juice like never before. In her mind, she focuses very hard on the fact that these are her mother's hands, and she starts to fantasize about me doing her family, even her father…

But something surprising gives me pause. Through Osaria's little summoned bird back in Escanso, I see Thea enter our bedroom, where my dark milf is enjoying some night drinking with Poosh.

"Hello, Thea. I'm happy that you accepted my invitation," Osaria sultrily greets the little snow fox.

They're all wearing the equivalent of nightwear, which for Thea is a small, semi-transparent not-kimono that clearly shows the outline of her delicious, puffy bits.

"You're someone who's hard to say no to," she wryly replies and takes a seat.

Poosh sighs and cautions her, "For your own good, you should learn to."

Thea stops and looks at Osaria for a moment. "I see what you mean…" She hesitantly remarks, seemingly noticing how everything the milf does seems geared towards love.

Osaria chuckles softly, the exaggerated movements of her shoulders making her assets jiggle alluringly. "Oh, please… All I want is to have an enjoyable and pleasant time with others. That's just what I like the most." Then she pushes forward a glass with a finger of Eia. "Won't you drink with me? This is Wolfy's favorite."

Oh, Gods, this is dangerous.

"Should I…? I've been advised against drinking with… carnivorous people," Thea tactfully replies and looks at Poosh, asking for advice.

Yes, that's right, don't drink with Osaria.

"Oh…? Why is that?" Osaria promptly inquires before Poosh can intervene.

Thea looks at her warily. "I'm untouched."

Osaria's seductive demeanor is suddenly kicked up a notch as she sultrily whispers, "Well, I'm a woman, so I can't steal it from you."

The young woman holds Osaria's gaze, seemingly unable to look away from her red pair of gems. "There's more to it than just spreading a flower."

Exactly!

Osaria leans onto the table, pressing those pillows together. Then her voice comes out sounding very sweet, but it feels more like a honey trap. "Wolfy doesn't mind when his women savor others of the same kind. He enjoys it, actually, and he's always encouraging us to 'mingle.'"

Poosh gracefully clears her throat and interjects, "His Highness Wolf's first priority is to always keep us happy, so don't feel pressured to do anything you don't want to, Thea."

The snow fox stares at the gentle sheep, but her gaze is attracted to the captivating, droopy pair of red eyes, the sensuality Osaria exudes simply too powerful for an inexperienced young woman.

She breathes in deeply, then takes the cup of Eia and drinks it. "Wow… this is…" She immediately hums in wonder.

"Unique?" Osaria helps.

Thea nods. "Yes, something like that."

Oh, shit… She's actually going for it.

I look down and see Alissa's bright brown, almost orange eyes staring up at me while she slowly swallows me, then I whisper in delight and start playing with her ears.

I'm feeling jealous that Osaria is trying to steal Thea from me, but I can't deny that I love seeing two women flirting with each other, and just Osaria's sultry gaze towards the little snow fox is enough to wake up my friend.

Alissa is such a good worshiper that I feel tempted to give her the title of Addicted, but she does it because she loves me, and her enjoyment of my taste is just a nice bonus.

Osaria also doesn't waste any time. It's only been a minute, and her fingers are already tracing lines along Thea's arms, and soon enough, the two are staring deeply into each other's eyes, full of longing and desire.

I know that my loving Misty fox has an ulterior motive, but I can't help myself but surrender, and I release it all down at the same time that Osaria steals Thea's first kiss.

She did it… Osaria found a way to NTR me!

Poosh sighs softly, then readjusts her round glasses and looks out through the balcony with a wry smile.

I won't be able to feel the innocent hesitance of a girl's first kiss, the excitement as our lips touch, then the fear as our mouths begin to open for the next step, followed by the overload of sensations as our tongues finally rub together. These are all things that Osaria is stealing from me, and they're just from the kiss.

Osaria's hand pulls Thea's body closer, then it sneaks up and feels her small chest, making Thea wince in surprise, which is like another stab into my heart. Such a delightful demeanor isn't easily recreated through roleplay, even with the use of [Godly Language] for brainwashing. It's another delight she's stolen from me.

Alissa gasps for air as she pulls her head back. Then we both stand up, and she leans over the table, her tail wagging in anticipation.

I raise her criminally small not-kimono and pull her red covering to the side, then I aim it up and slide in.

The kissing on the other side of the continent continues to escalate, with Osaria pulling the smaller girl onto her lap, who builds up the courage to play with those massive dark pillows with such vigor that they slip out of her dousnadeia, revealing her alluring, inverted bits.

Then Osaria breaks the kiss and asks, "You've been taught how to lay with another woman, yes?"

Thea nods bashfully. "Yes… and I've had reinforcement training lately for… obvious reasons."

"Excellent…" My milf hums, then pushes her chest up towards the cute young woman, who promptly grabs the huge pair and starts pulling the inverted bits out with her mouth. "Very good."

Osaria looks at her bird with an impish grin as she makes Thea sing like a bird, and sanity returns to my enraged mind.

There will be payback for this, Osaria…

A note from Manasong

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Chapter 137: Murder - Part 2

A note from Manasong

Attention: to conform to the limit of mature content (more than just sexual content) allowed in a novel, I've censored this chapter. You can look for the uncensored version here.

Today is the 8th, Ros, day of Space. This is the best day for travel in the Imperial [Eternal Gate] Network, so we're expecting the nobles of Katasko to come flooding back to cry to daddy Empy about the mean lizard who bit off a head and ran away with it.

It's still dark out, but we went to sleep a bit earlier last night to make up for how hectic things were yesterday, so I'm feeling quite well-rested right now.

I summon a bird and tell it to fly out, and I immediately notice a group of thirty Enforcers camping on the street. They're just a few meters away from where Cleinias' ugly head is impaled on a long pike, which is clearly within the bounds of the embassy and well out of their reach.

I simply snort and ignore them. We don't even need to keep someone on watch because the enchantments will take care of anyone trying to invade the embassy.

The bird moves on, flying across the sprawling city as it slowly wakes up, but the rather misty morning makes it quite hard to see anything significant.

The others won't be able to share this moment with us, so I kiss Hukarere's head and tell her to go back to sleep with the others as we let them rest for a bit longer. Then the wives and I silently leave the bed and ask for an early breakfast.

We sit on the balcony, wearing very little, and wave to the few Enforcers who have enough levels in [Hawk Eyes] to notice us. The bored men suddenly wake up, and one of them tries to catch our attention, even sending a [Fireball] up into the air, but I just slowly shake my head at the increasingly enraged officer.

The golems slowly grind the coffee beans for us, and I savor the divine scent that's released. Then they use an elven sieve to brew some drip coffee for us. I love how [Item Box] stops time as even the beans stay fresh, allowing for a supremely fragrant coffee.

I should teach Lina and Aoi how to build an espresso machine, but they have more important things to recreate before that.

I enjoy coffee with milk the most, and it's best paired with chocolate cake as they have a good balance between bitterness and sweetness, so it's neither too strong nor too bland. But this is only to wake us up.

The second dish for breakfast is not-earl-gray tea with a creamy pie of Tonsel, the not-lemon, and Elderflower. Very sweet and a far more strongly flavored dessert to fill our bellies. It's such a refined breakfast that I feel like honking like a snob, but it goes perfectly with the sublime view of the Bay of Three Kings at sunrise.

The rays of light coming from the east warm up the air, slowly clearing up the mist, which reveals to the south a carnival of ships anchored at the docks. The bird perches on a building and watches as the mist continues to clear up, revealing more ships, and more ships… and even more ships. It's ships all the way down.

Then the ships end, and we see an endless blue. The shores on each side of the Bay angle apart as they continue out to sea, giving it a conical shape, but eventually, they also disappear, and once the orange of the sunrise is gone, the sea gains an oddly striking blue tone that almost melds with the blue of the sky, like an endless carpet that leads to the clouds.

This is what Lyle's father, Horvath, once talked about. The waters all over the Thunderplains have a faintly blue tint to them due to the heavy amount of magic imbued into the constant rain, which makes the sea look the perfect shade at sunrise, allowing for this lovely effect to happen.

"I didn't know about this…" Hana hums in wonder.

"Not something that others than the genteel would bother knowing," Yunia pompously states with a nod that makes her glorious drills bounce.

And Hana retorts with a scoff, "But the view is free! That's like, the thing that the commoners love."

"It's also romantic, something… you're not," Roxanne tries to tactfully state as even she doesn't want to offend Hana in that way.

But she isn't very successful. "I'm romantic…" Hana quietly grumbles and crosses her arms.

"You're passionate and majestic, but not very romantic," the awkward succubus tries to explain herself.

And the proud dragonkin still isn't convinced. "Hmm…"

"Out of all of us, only Alissa and Ciel are truly romantic," I kindly add.

"Gih," even Gify supports me.

"I'm romantic," Lina assuredly claims and pouts cutely.

"You're cute, and you do cute things, but you're not very romantic," Alissa wisely retorts.

And the gloomy little girl frowns, then gloomily stares down at her plate.

It's been a while since the atmosphere was this relaxed and unpreoccupied, so Ted finds this to be an appropriate moment to ask, "What is romance?"

We all immediately turn to Ciel, who hesitates to answer as she enters deep thought.

She doesn't have an immediate response, so she begins to ponder, "You're all supposed to be copies of humanoid minds, but it seems like your only wish and feeling is the desire to serve us, so how do I explain romance to someone who can't feel it?"

Then she glances at me, but I just shrug. This is a bit beyond my area of expertise. "They 'know' what feelings are, at least," I help her out.

"Hm…" She hums thoughtfully and remains silent for a moment. Since we've already talked about love with the golems, she decides to use it as a base for her explanation, even if it isn't the best way to teach them. "Romance is… the sharing of intimate moments," she hesitantly begins.

"Bed activities are intimate," Suzy immediately points out, almost sounding excited that she had something to say.

"The most intimate activity," Jarn adds, emotionless as usual.

Ciel nods and kindly explains, "Yes, but the romance in bed activities mixes too much with the selfish desire for pleasure or the wish to please the partner, which isn't romantic by itself. There needs to be some uniqueness to the experience for it to be romantic."

And Hana grins smugly as she wisely retorts, "Wolfy's sword is pretty unique."

Roxanne lightly taps her shoulder as she excitedly adds, "Oh, you shouldn't understate it like that. His sword is amazing!"

"You would know." Hana snorts.

"I'm a sword gourmet, yes," Roxanne unhesitatingly agrees with a nod, then readjusts her glasses.

"Sl-t," Yunia slowly whispers with a tone as dry as [Summon Bland Meal].

And the cheeky succubus proudly raises her hand. "That's me!"

"But Wolfy's sword isn't inherently romantic. It's how he uses it that's romantic," Alissa continues, ignoring the bantering.

"For you, romance is having him seduce other women," the Queen lashes back, not exactly pleased that her verbal whipping was interrupted.

But the fox smiles slyly as she accepts it openly, "I admit my ideas of romance are unusual."

Yunia scoffs. "Now that is an understatement."

Ciel sighs and interrupts, "Romance also needs to be a moment. Something that both lovers share in a way that affects them deeply." But the elf won't dare attack the priestess.

"Like [Bind]," Aoi innocently chimes in.

"But [Bind] isn't really romantic," Lina disagrees.

"Well… it depends on the type of romance you're reading," Roxanne replies with a suggestive grin, and even Ciel hesitantly agrees.

"We understand the fetish of domination plays a part here," Jarn diplomatically states, which impresses me as she manages to expertly stop the derailing of the conversation.

"Of course, the golems would understand that kind of fetish before they can understand 'romance,'" Ciel grumbles as she facepalms. Then she assumes her priestly demeanor again and continues, "As you can see, 'romance' is a mixture of all these factors in the right amounts along with the right expectations. If you don't think that domination is romantic, then you won't find [Bind] romantic."

"Romance is a taste," Ted wisely concludes.

Hana raises her eyebrows in surprise and nods. "Yeah, that sounds about right,"

"Awn… you guys started early," Klein mumbles with a pout as she comes out onto the balcony.

"We wanted to have a [Bind] moment, sorry," I kindly explain and flash her a handsome smile, my "Charm" dazing her for a second.

"What's [Bind]?" Hukarere hums out loud as she sits down.

I also flash a smile at her. "A secret for another time." But she's suspicious enough that it has a lessened effect on her.

"You might want to put some clothes on unless you want to follow the Chimera custom of clothelesness, for we have a small audience," Ciel advises, then points to the Enforcers on the street.

"Shit…!" Klein swears and jumps backward, her squeak waking up the rest of the Companions, but Hukarere simply walks forward and stops by the railing.

"They can really see us from that far?" My white wolf asks out loud.

"Yes. Some of them seem to have [Hawk Eyes]," Alissa replies.

"Alright, then watch this…!" She puts her foot on the railing and starts rubbing her fingers, giving the men quite the view.

Hana turns to me and makes the best puppy eyes she can. "Can I…?" She softly asks demurely, which is surprisingly cute.

I feel like acting a bit alpha, so I compromise, "I'll do you on the railing, but no exposing your body to these men. I want them to fantasize about doing you, but I also want to make an impact on them, forcing them to go through the effort of trying to forget about my presence, only to fail as they realize that only I will ever know what you feel like."

She gives me a fearsome gaze as her excitement rises. "I'm already starting to get ready."

I subtly nod towards the railing. "Then present yourself to me, b-tch."

And since my wolf is also presenting herself, I'll do her too for good measure.

Everyone leveled up. Aoi is now 47, Hana is now 62, Yunia is now 63, and Alissa, Roxanne, Ciel, Lina, and I are now 61.

Alissa has increased her [Illusion Magic] by 1 (now 19).

Roxanne has increased her [Mana Control], [Fire Magic], and [Alchemy] by 1 (now 6+34, 7+33, and 12).

Hana has increased her [Fire Breath] and [Intimidate] by 1 (now 6 and 4).

Ciel increased her [Light Magic] by 1 (now 6+34).

Lina increased her [Throw] and [Earth Magic] by 1 (now 2+8 and 11).

Yunia has increased her [Hide Presence] and [Redirect Mana] by 1 (now 5 and 1).

My [Ekrano Style] and [Dragon Transformation] have increased by 1 (now 6 and 7). And surprisingly, though not that surprising, I've gained a new skill, [Chaos Breath (innate)] with 1 point.

"Holy shit… that sounds cool as hell," Hana remarks through gritted teeth.

"Yeah, it did better against [Dead Zone] than me," Roxanne adds, impressed and even a bit envious.

Aoi pulls her tongue back and exclaims, "Bet it can get through steel, unlike mine!"

But I temper their expectations, "It's a cool skill, I admit, except for the fact that using it made me feel like dying, and it drained me of most of my physical energy and rage."

Lina immediately explains, "Because that's exactly what it did. The Symbol of Might has endless anger, which it uses to fuel its physical power, and that power is then made manifest through [Chaos Breath]. It's simply a beam of wild, chaotic, explosive energy."

And I frown skeptically. "Not worth it considering the massive effort I have to exert to use it."

"Maybe if you continue to increase [Draconic Transformation], it'll become easier to use," Alissa suggests.

And Roxanne earnestly adds, "I'd like to study it."

So I nod. "If it's to help you improve [Explosion], I'll gladly help you with that." And she claps the tips of her fingers excitedly.

Since we've been talking about how the golems are obsessed with serving us, I decide to mess with the "block" that's inside every elemental soul while I create new baby golems for the OG trio to study. I assume this "block" is what controls the "loyalty obsession," so I want to learn more about it.

The results are immediately striking as the new golems all have problems obeying orders, due to either being forgetful, or easily distracted. It does seem that they lack motivation, though they aren't exactly disloyal.

Well, I just leave the golems to reflect on it and try to divine the secrets of the mind on their own while the girls and I do our morning mana circulation routine, which has now been enhanced by the ingestion of an orgasm-inducing magical orb.

Palo has bribed an official of the Network, and we receive word from them that a good number of the nobles of Katasko have returned to the capital, but not that Fluminis dude, and then the Punishers also send us a message about it. It feels quite nice having a good relationship with the Templars as they're quite the diligent allies.

The Floater gets back just before lunch, and all of our men start their well-deserved rest and will get a small bonus later for a job well-done. And at almost the same time, we receive a message from the Emperor summoning us to the Throne at sundown.

That is well within expectations, so we go have our meal, perfectly confident that we'll come out of the summons with our heads still on our shoulders.

Today, we have a traditional German, I mean, Ryutake lunch, with venison not-Rouladen as the main dish. Thin slices of delicate meat are rolled around pickles and onion, then cooked in a thick, earthy broth that makes Lina drool, and this flavorful dish is served with fusilli pasta.

Hana is actually more Sommerlande than Ryushimin, so she sees this as an exotic food that she rarely ate rather than as a cultural dish. She's more used to the fruit-heavy meals of the north, and the Ryutake diet is also far too calorie-rich outside of the snowy mountains, even for her.

"Gluttony isn't my vice, so I don't have any problems keeping fit," Hana declares, to the envy of every other woman at the table, especially Ciel, the sweet tooth.

For the afternoon, we decide to train since we're in a fighting mood.

Hana asks Romy to spar with her, and the Asian-like Companion gives me a glance, asking for help.

"I want to train my [Draconic Body], so I want you to beat me up, not the other way around," the masochistic dragonkin explains.

"I'd enjoy doing that," Yunia promptly intrudes.

Roxanne cheekily waves her hand as she walks forward and joins in, "Same for me, if you're okay with [Earth Bullet]. We could even use [Fireball] and see how well your scales hold up against one with a bit of an explosive concept added to the spell!"

Hana narrows her yellow eyes at both of them. "That's exactly why I didn't ask you…"

"S-same for me! I'll enjoy beating you up," Romy hastily announces.

"Just use [Pain Conversion] while we pound you and imagine that it's Wolfy doing it," Yunia tiredly proposes.

But Hana soberly replies, "For once, I'm trying to train seriously. I can't use [Pain Conversion] against an enemy."

"You might also fight against sadistic enemies who enjoy hurting you," Yunia insists.

Hana breathes in deeply as she stares at both her and Roxanne, judging their devious intentions, but she eventually relents, though she adds a condition, "It ain't as fun when it isn't spicy, so you guys will obey everything I say, or I'll make you obey."

"You can tr-…" I stop Yunia's reply through [Bind], and she immediately gives in, "Point taken."

Hana then strips down to her underwear and flexes the muscles of her chest. Her skin immediately releases a small puff of steam, and when it's gone, her chest is covered entirely in shiny emerald scales.

"You know, you actually look really hot like this," Roxanne hums absentmindedly, taken by the glorious sight of dragon scales.

The fiery woman snorts. "Damn right, I do. I'm eager to get claws like Wolfy's, too."

But the sight of Hana with claws makes Roxanne fear for the integrity of her body. She herself can imagine the vibrant blood running along her pale skin, the sensuality inherent to her race making the contrast of colors that much more striking, to the point where her abused and defiled form is as stunningly beautiful as a living, breathing, work of art.

"See? Not so bad," Hana smugly states.

"Keep taunting me like this, and I'll make you bleed," Roxanne replies with a dangerous tone.

And her wife steps back. "Alright, alright… let's just start with this training already."

I try out my new point in [Ekrano Style] by lightly sparring with the girls. My style already easily overwhelms most of my opponents due to how it allows me to attack with multiple weapons at the same time, and that advantage has grown even further as I become more comfortable with letting my tentacles fight on their own.

It's a style that shines against multiple opponents since mere spears are enough to keep most enemies away, and if I'm up against heavily armored foes, switching the spears for halberds keeps them threatening.

As a less mobile fighter, Lina suffers the most against me, but she's the only one who can push Hana back, yet Hana is the only one who can shrug off my attacks and get in close. I can only win against Yunia with magic while she can't win against me, and Ciel and Aoi simply don't have enough attack or defense to fight me.

"I can do a [Thunder Strike] on you, like that memory you have of grandpa Rizek!" Aoi exclaims. I detect a bit of insecurity in her tone, so I decide to be kind.

"You're still young, but one day, you'll be as big as that ancient dragon, and you'll even command the skies better than that old mage," I happily encourage.

I manage to appease her a bit, but it still isn't enough, so she narrows her eyes at me since she can't pucker her draconic lips into a pout. "But you'll become even bigger. I'm slender, and you'll gain a lot more muscle and weight than me."

"Aren't you bigger than me right now?" And I shift into my dragon form. I'm now at the high end of Earthling horse sizes, like a Shire horse, which is kind of the average for caravan horses here since they need the mass to crush goblin skulls.

But Aoi is now the size of a damn elephant, and even with her slender body, she has more mass than I do… which is really hot. I love snu snu women, and Aoi's true size gives me that tingly feeling down between my legs.

I roll over and show her my belly, and she immediately breathes in, her excitement rising faster than I can unsheathe as she understands the significance of my act. Then she slowly walks up to me, her heavy steps almost making the ground rumble.

My tail wags excitedly as I sense her mood shift into something more warm and cheeky. She's still young, so her aura reminds me more of an onee-san rather than anything more mature, and she senses my shota air shining through my young, baby-sized, mirror-like scales.

Her four paws all land onto mine, pinning me to the ground, and she immediately sits on me, pressing both of our hips together. Then she lowers her large head and rubs her scaly cheek against my neck as she deeply breathes in my smell. She's enjoying this role reversal quite a lot, even though I have to willingly surrender to her for it to happen.

She starts rubbing herself against me, which has a similar effect to what it would in my humanoid form.

"Hmm… yes, this is nice," she hums, her alluring draconic double voice enhanced by her massive size as it gains a faint, bone-shivering rumble.

Romy blinks blankly in surprise as she suddenly notices that we're doing it. "Wow, what…? Just like that?" She blurts out.

"Why are you surprised? They're both dragons," Yunia points out.

And the Companion grunts, "Right, they're just like Hana."

"If not worse."

"Exactly."

Edolie appears in the secluded yard, completely armored since she's on duty, so she's likely here to report a visitor, but she suddenly stops as she notices us and stares curiously. Our position isn't obviously spicy since our hips are stuck together, but the way our tongues are entwined makes it obvious that there's something going on.

The armored werecat turns to Alissa, who just flashes her a smile, and she immediately understands. "I'll report to Aisco that you're busy," Edolie whispers, and Alissa nods at her, so the Companion leaves.

A note from Manasong

Hall of Fame of Patrons

The patrons who support Rupegia shall have their names sung by the bards for they deserve the glory and honor. Their names are:

Prince PreownedFIN.

Prince Owldente.

Lord Andrew Meyers.

Lord Novgarod.

Lord Michale Erwin.

Lord Bakerdea.

Lord Maurice.

Lord Mattirro Draca.

Lord Sean Drake.

Lord Mike Bartter.

Lord Warwulfv.

Lord Khristopher Welsh.

Lord Tenebris Lupus.

Lord Paul Daval.

Lord Paul Daval.

Lord AndreyUC.

Lord Tmac.

Lord School Work.

Lord Gwendolyn Simmons-LaRose.

Lord CopeyDunt.

Lord BlindTactic.

Lord The Tallest Joshua.

Lord litalmexy.

Lord Tyler Mills.

Lord Philip.

Lord d3235.

Lord Freddie.

Lord Mike Bartter.

Lord Sean Drake.

Lord Shaun McDonough.

Lord William Clark.

Noble Salty Panda.

Noble Mild Fracas.

Noble Aclys.

Noble CarlBaxter.

Noble Andrew Hebreard.

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Chapter 137: Murder - Part 3

Aoi and I remain knotted for a couple of minutes, allowing me to feel her insides gradually absorbing my cum. She rests her large, blue body against mine, and though she's heavy, it's far from being uncomfortable.

I can feel how the strength of this draconic form of mine is at a completely different level when compared to what I can do as a humanoid. Even though my arms are short and lack the "Dexterity" of human hands, they hold a lot of power in them, which is why Aoi can swing halberds or sledgehammers, but not anything more delicate.

My neck has so many muscles that it's obviously been made specifically to allow me to rip off chunks of meat I've bitten onto, while my claws are clearly for digging into flesh and holding my prey still while I tear them apart, piece by piece.

But if I were to act like that in a real fight, I'd be asking to get killed as humanoids have many tools to break through my scales and pierce through my hide. It's why I've made Aoi use a halberd, because attacking from range is better than grappling and biting in basically every conceivable situation.

She starts to feel sleepy since she's too comfortable on top of me, so I wake her up and undo the knot.

"Awn… it felt really good inside me," she moans as she shrinks back down to her usual size before jumping off and stretching her limbs with the elegance of a cat.

"We can't laze around too much, you know," I gently point out.

"I know…" She hums back and begins conjuring her ball of water for practice.

I return to my humanoid form and give Alissa a kiss and a hug. She can't train her bow with her hands the way they are right now, so now that she's finished her daily [Illusion Magic] practice, she's going to call for Kahura and finish her treatment.

She's dreading going back because she's tired of sleeping all day, and even with [Purify Body], drinking the sleeping potions still makes her feel a bit sick, so our hug is extra tight to comfort her a bit.

"Thanks, husband," she whispers sweetly in my ear, and we separate, then she waves as she leaves.

I watch her walk away, her fluffy tail swaying alluringly with each step, but then I remember something. "Right, Aisco wanted to talk."

After a quick [Clean], I use [Telekinesis] to float up towards our mini High Tree, which I enter on the floor the Officers have been given. Then I walk down the corridor towards the most isolated room, and it quickly becomes obvious why he chose to sleep so far from everyone else as the muffled sounds of explosions reach my ears. He's a bit of a mad scientist like Roxanne, so I think I need to come up with safety guidelines before he kills himself or hurts someone…

I stop before his door and sigh. Then I knock, and the explosions stop.

After a short wait, the door opens, revealing the creepy elf with his lifeless eyes and thousand-metri stare, his pale skin dirtied by patches of soot and some sort of cream that I believe is for treating burn wounds.

"Your Highness," he slowly greets with a nod, then immediately gets down to business, "I want to study the designs of your cannon."

I blink once, caught by surprise at his straightforwardness. "What for?"

He promptly launches into an explanation, his tone so flat and boring that I almost zone out, "I helped develop the Supersonic Penetrator, the heavily enchanted weapon that wounded you and Lords Ciel and Aoi when you attacked my previous place of employment. Your design is a lot more elegant, so I desire to study it and review the Penetrator."

I hold back a childish giggle. "Your 'Penetrator' has more power than my sabot cannon."

He nods slowly. "Yes, but it's extremely expensive, as you should know, whereas you made that cannon in a single day, showing the potential for it to become a far more standardized weapon than the vanity project my former peers treated the Penetrator as."

I rub my chin in thought with my padded claws. "Hm… do you know [Manipulate Metal]? That cannon needs extremely precise proportions or else a lot of power is lost to attrition."

He suddenly becomes so still that it's almost like he's stopped breathing, likely because he understands the implications of what's to come, and we stare at each other for an awkwardly long moment. Then he quietly admits, "No, I don't…"

I hold back a sigh and lay down the rules, "If you're going to ask for help from the court mages, you'll need to assure me that you won't cause any accidents that could hurt someone. I know you and Roxanne are quite reckless with experimentation, and this is too dangerous to let you play with it unsupervised."

His lifeless eyes gain a bit of fire to them, but it's because of annoyance rather than excitement. "I understand…" He begrudgingly accepts.

And then I give him a little encouragement, to the dismay of the two girls, "Lina and Aoi are working on smaller cannons that can be carried by hand, so you can think of ways that your work could aid them, too."

Then he finally stops looking like a corpse as some excitement appears in his expression. "Ooh, I see, I see… big plans."

I flash a smile and continue, "I don't have design papers for the cannon since we built it directly from my imagination, but I'll draw them for you."

He freezes, his mind seemingly stalling out in confusion. "Why didn't you draw up any design papers?"

Cause I'm a fucking nerd who spent too much time on Wikipedia, that's why.

I just smile and walk inside.

Aisco's lab is an organized mess. It's filled with tools, alchemical supplies, burned junk, junk that's burning, and junk to burn. Everything clearly has its own area, it's just that the things in those areas aren't organized. I can relate to him quite a bit since I'm not much better, but at least the things I study require very little in the material department.

I sit down at the one clean table, which is clearly the area he uses to write down his experiments as it's full of papers. Then I pick a blank sheet and start drawing the schematics for the cannon, the casing of the sabot, and the dart that it fires. The APFSDS works better with a smoothbore cannon, but I also include a drawing for the miniaturized and rifled cannon, and for the bullet that goes in it.

Lina and Aoi will perfect the rifle and the APFSDS cannon and make them ready for mass production, but Aisco can help by improving the Draconic Climax that Roxanne developed.

I find it funny that the Climax was based on Dawn of Fire's explosives, and now it's returning to Dawn of Fire through Aisco's further development of it.

Once I've finished the drawings, I give the sheet to him, which he just silently stares at for a long, awkward moment.

"Any questions…?" I hesitantly ask.

He slowly begins, "The 'cartridge' and the… 'APFSDS' round-…"

"You can just call it a sabot."

He clears his throat. "Yes, the 'cartridge' and the 'sabot'… they're just casings for the explosive, which propels the bullet and dart."

I hum, "Exactly."

He lifts his eyes from the papers and stares at me. "Those casings require extremely precise construction."

I chuckle softly in excitement. "Exactly, and that's what Lina and Aoi are developing: the methods to construct these things in massive numbers at a reasonable speed."

He hesitates for a couple of seconds as he thinks. Then he concernedly continues, "With a casing this thin, the metal is very delicate and vulnerable to blowing up inside the cannon, potentially damaging it."

I nod once again. "Exactly! Which is why the propellant needs to have a precise amount of power so that we aren't forced to drive up the cost by reinforcing the cannon magically."

His pupils widen in excitement as he understands his role. "I'll develop many prototypes."

"Talk to Roxanne when you're done." Then I tap his arm, which he visibly doesn't enjoy a single bit, and leave.

When I return to the yard that the girls are training in, Roxanne receives me with a very gloomy look, strikingly similar to Lina's. They kind of don't want to work with Aisco.

"Stop being such a baby," Hana grunts as Romy pummels her with a hammer.

"You wanted to study my [Chaos Breath]?" I gently ask, trying to get my mad scientist succubus to think of something more pleasant.

"Yes, of course!" She happily exclaims, instantly cheered up.

But to actually use [Chaos Breath] again takes a lot of effort from me. I unlocked it while I was the angriest I've ever felt, so it's no small task to recreate that condition. I even have to recruit Gify's help to flash painful and enraging memories at me to build up the anger.

Suddenly, it "clicks," and I feel the power building up within my throat, so I open my mouth and let it out at the hay target. The beam hits its chest, and the energy balloons into a turbulent ball of light, ripping apart any matter it touches just like an Arrow of Annihilation, except a lot more chaotic.

The explosion causes a shockwave that lifts dust and scatters the bits of hay that have managed to escape the destruction. Once all of the chaotic energy has been spent, we can see that over 90% of the target has simply disappeared.

Then I collapse on the ground and groan in exhaustion. Roxanne kneels before me, and I shrink down so that she can scoop me up and pet me while I recover.

She happily remarks while her long fingers run along my mirror-like scales, "Through [Sense Presence] and [Sense Mana], I saw something interesting happen within you, so I think you should give me [Sense Soul] for the next one. I also realized that since my [Explosion] draws upon my emotions, it's almost certain that I can learn something from you."

"Glad to help…" I weakly groan and close my eyes.

It takes me a whole hour before I can fire another beam, and afterwards, I'm even more exhausted, so I decide to have some not-earl-gray to help me relax, and Alissa returns just in time to keep me company.

But while I eagerly await her hug, the first thing she does is run her fingers through my hair. Then she grabs my horns and starts massaging them.

"Oh, yeah, that's the good stuff…" I moan as her now dexterous fingers pressure them in a wave-like motion.

But she's too excited to concentrate on the massage, so her hands go down my face and under my shirt. Then she starts massaging my muscular chest, her tail wagging uncontrollably with how happy she is.

So I pull her hands up and give them a few kisses, then I push her fingers into my mouth and suck on each of them individually just like how I suck on toes. Her hands are so sensitive that she feels repeated pleasant chills, and the sensuous way I'm sucking on them starts to make her aroused.

Her fingers are young and pretty again, and they don't resemble her mom's anymore, but they're… different. I'm not complaining since she's back to full "Dexterity" again, and her hands are as beautiful as the rest of her body, but I know every centimetri of her body, and they look slightly different.

I just need a bit of time to get used to them.

After I finish sucking on and memorizing each of her new fingers, I [Clean] them all. Then I pull her onto my lap so that I can fill her face with kisses, and she rewards me with the angelic sounds of her giggles.

When I finally let her rest, she looks at her new hands and wonders out loud, "Maybe I could ask Kahura to 'improve' them a bit more later, but I'm really tired of being forced to sleep, so I think they're fine as they are, at least for now."

"I'm glad you're happy with your hands," I whisper lovingly.

And she smiles back, though it's a bit bitter. "I hated being left behind for the battle, so I'm excited to use my bow once again."

I nod in understanding and kiss her lips, and then we enjoy tea time together.

I manage to release a third and final [Chaos Breath], and by the time I've recovered, the sun is already going down, so we take a quick bath, eat a snack, grab Cleinias' rotting head, and take an [Eternal Gate] to the upper level of the Throne, all without saying a single word to the Enforcers.

Normally, the noble area inside the Throne is always busy with pompous, self-important nobles, like a hangout spot for the cool kids, but since the Purification is underway, this place is almost a ghost town. The overly-expensive shops are still open, but I doubt they've sold anything.

The attendants do their best to ignore the floating, rotting head the golems are carrying through [Telekinesis], but Gify confirms that the moment there aren't any eyes on them, they start murmuring and staring.

As we walk, we notice something that makes us all very happy. The handful of nobles here are all reading from a familiar, long sheet of paper. It's a list of names, paired with who the named person targeted through Katasko's underhanded actions. There's also a considerable number of these copies scattered about, some glued to the walls, and some even thrown on the floor.

I bet the nobles of Katasko all came together for safety as I'm sure those who have read our list are hurriedly writing down these names on their own, personal shit lists. We even get a supporting nod from one of the nobles, a weredog who most likely didn't have a good relationship with the human supremacists of Katasko.

We enter the bird-cage-like elevator, and the attendant pales as he makes an effort to keep his food inside his stomach when he sees the floating head.

"To the Throne," I order, and he immediately turns, activates the elevator, and doesn't turn back.

When we reach the top, our guide shows a stronger stomach with his lack of reaction to the head as he takes us across the Emperor's estate. Then we're told to wait in the same red, carpeted waiting room as before. Except this time, there are no Empresses to receive us, but Caterina is still quite the sight for sore eyes even though she isn't like the perpetually naked (and mouth-wateringly delicious) Empress Piscila.

"Hey, there," Hana greets with a sensuous tone.

"Hello, Hana, Ryders. Everything is ready," the armored Templar Captain coolly replies and flashes Hana a subtle smile. There's a mage behind her, a well-built imperial man with the menacing eyes of a Punisher. Even their mages look like they could kill someone with their bare hands.

We wait for just a couple of minutes before a maid opens the door to the Main Throne Room. "The Holy Emperor says that only one is to kneel. The rest are to wait back here," she politely requests, then eyes the golems hesitantly.

I sigh and grab the head by its gray hair. Then I walk forward while the girls stay near the entrance. Gify pops out of existence and reappears in Alissa's arms, but I don't complain because I know she'll just smugly retort with "only one."

"Gih."

Hmph.

The floor isn't a mirror anymore, now an ominous, pure black, while the walls still have that same enchantment that displays a panorama of Mac Gantus.

I begrudgingly kneel on the dais using Cleinias' head as a support for my hand, and his stump leaves a mark of dried, flaky blood on the floor, which amuses me greatly. Then Caterina also kneels a meter behind me and to the side.

The enchanted dome opens up again just like it did at the gathering, revealing a crowd of angry human nobles to my left, a curious crowd to my right, and straight ahead, the Emperor and the Empresses, all sitting on their ornate, red velvet thrones, which look more like spiky quarter-spheres due to the sun ray ornaments at their backs.

Then the Emperor's reflection appears on the dark floor, but only his and not his throne, making it seem like he's sitting in the air. This is a shame because I really wanted to stare at the naked Piscila again.

The Emperor simply glances to each side, and the crowds of nobles are instantly silenced. Then he turns to me and announces with a stern tone, "Crown Lord Wolf Ryder, you're to represent the Ryder family against the accusation of the unlawful murder of Centum Cleinias Alkimeonids. Seeing that you have his head in your possession, we'll discuss the lawfulness of your act, not whether it happened or not."

His voice is always sickeningly charismatic, making it actually a bit unpleasant for me to listen to him.

"I accept," I coolly reply.

"Then rise." I obey and leave the head by my feet.

The angry nobles promptly start barking like dogs, complaining about my treatment of Cleinias' body.

"You crucified him like a miscreant, like a heretic!"

"You dishonored a family as old as the Empire."

"Prostrate yourself, and beg for forgiveness!"

"Crucify him at his home as atonement."

Some recognize Jarn and focus on her.

"She stabbed me in the gut!"

"My knight had to have his arm reattached because of her."

"My daughter had her lung pierced!"

"I almost died!"

But most of them are focusing on the most important thing.

"He violated the Purification."

"He spits on our laws!"

"The Ryders have asked for war."

"That was an attack on all of us!"

"A life for a life."

And the nobles on my right simply stare, their expressions mildly amused at the outrage from my left.

"Silence," the Emperor calmly commands, and the Room becomes deathly silent, everyone simply unable to disobey. Then he turns to me, giving me permission to speak.

But I just turn to Caterina and nod. She rises from her knee and signals the Space mage by the door, who walks forward and starts casting [Gate].

Everyone stares at him curiously, and Alissa and Yunia notice that a few of the Katasko nobles seem to know what's about to happen as they breathe deeply and clench their jaws.

When the spell finishes, the large Amethyst dragon appears along with two orcs, a hobgoblin, and a goblin, all pregnant. They've been put asleep on simple beds, and their bodies are naked, exposing the scars and wounds of abuse for all to see.

Then it strikes me that these monsters are all… rather attractive, even the goblin. The average monster isn't very aesthetically pleasing, but breeder types are usually attractive, so maybe these are breeders?

No matter. It's time to begin my speech.

Intermission – Aoi

Wolfy's strong voice echoes across the room, filled with the pleasant tone of someone with high "Charisma" and openly infused with [Godly Language], similar to what the Emperor does.

"We found these monsters in a secret room inside Cleinias' home, and only the Gods know how long they've been tortured and raped, for even the monsters themselves have lost count of the days… and of how many children they've birthed."

"I confirm how we found them," Caterina adds, and the nobles gasp in surprise.

"Why would the Punishers invade his home?!" A brave fool questions, but the Punisher's intense and challenging gaze shuts him up immediately.

"Suspicion of Wickedness. Are you going to claim that you can look at this and conclude that there aren't any grounds for it?" She asks so threateningly that even I understand the implication of arguing against her.

The noble swallows heavily as he shakes his head before stepping back, not wanting to call more unwanted Punisher attention towards himself.

"Monsters aren't under the protection of the Sins," an older, and wiser, Katasko noble asserts. Wolfy uses [Sense Soul] on him and discovers that his name is Apeiltik Tavros, level 84, but none of us recognize it from among those on the list. He's well-built, and his level says he's a high-ranking noble, so we're all wary of him.

"Why?" Wolfy calmly responds, daring him to answer.

But another, more hot-headed noble interjects, "Are you a fucking idiot? It's because we're at war! Not for territory or conquest, but for our right to exist! These monsters would kill each and every one of us if they could!"

Wolfy stares intensely at the fool, and the glorious warmth of our husband's aura restrains the lower-level man's unruly attitude. Then Wolfy slowly explains, "And yet, I've converted one of them. I've given my wife a system, and soon, she'll also learn skills!"

The young noble fiercely resists the attempt at intimidation. "Your 'wife' was a tamable monster, but these aren't." And his tone actually makes me very displeased.

"How do you know?" Wolfy tries to trap him, and the noble immediately clamps his mouth shut.

But another noble who seemingly has [Sense Presence] saves him, "I can sense that they're normal monsters."

So Wolfy immediately launches into a heated speech, "And that makes it okay to indulge in evil acts against them? To imprison, to torture, to rape these monsters, all for the crime of being born as minions for the God of Destruction?" Wolfy looks around as his anger builds up, his tail lashing about in reflection of his mood. Then he releases it all in an indignant shout, "WHY DOES THAT MAKE IT OKAY TO PERFORM WICKED ACTS UPON THEM? IS WICKEDNESS NOT THE ACT ITSELF RATHER THAN WHO IT'S DONE TO?!"

I never understood this part of the Sins because I asked myself this exact question. People who deserve to be killed aren't protected by the Sin of Reckless Murder, and it's the same for the other two Sins, though I don't know how someone would ever deserve rape, but what did monsters do to deserve any of the three Sins?

And then the silence makes me confused. Everyone knows the answer, so why don't they admit it? Why do they all act like the truth is uncomfortable?

"Admitting it in front of the Emperor and a Punisher would be very 'suspicious,'" Ciel kindly explains.

Hm… what is that word…?

"Disingenuous. Every noble is like this," Yunia dryly answers for me.

Yes, they know the truth. They just won't admit it unless it's convenient for them.

And seeing that nobody will answer, Wolfy finally reveals, "THIS IS WHY I MURDERED CLEINIAS! TO ME, HE WAS WICKED!"

"Did you confirm his Wickedness with a bounty tablet?" Apeiltik calmly questions once again.

Wolfy stares intensely at him, but he knows that this human won't be intimidated with just that, so he slowly explains with a measured tone, "I didn't, for it doesn't matter whether the Gods consider him Wicked or not. I consider him Wicked… AND I'LL MURDER ANYONE WHO THINKS OTHERWISE!" -Wolfy points a claw at him- "ARE YOU GOING TO ARGUE THAT HE WASN'T WICKED?"

The Room instantly becomes quiet… too quiet. Alissa and I can't even hear their breathing, and then we notice the Katasko nobles tensing up, so my sisters and I sharpen our attention, preparing for a fight. Even the other nobles to the right seem to tense up.

Then everything blurs as my eyes are drawn to the Emperor against my will. I simply can't look anywhere but his face, and it's really annoying, but his eyes feel like spears through my limbs, pinning me in place, and that makes me anxious.

"Your existence has triggered quite the uproar," he speaks directly into my head without moving his mouth.

All of the wives jerk their heads towards him and glare. The only one who can force us to do anything is Wolfy.

"How is that my fault?!" I growl back, my anger supported by everyone's presence in my mind.

I didn't want things to go in this direction, and I didn't want to cause problems for anyone, but I can't stop Wolfy. I won't stop him.

The Emperor glances at my sisters, noticing their supportive glares. Then I see his chest twitch in a silent chuckle.

"It isn't." He whispers into my head. Then he stands and turns his eyes to Wolfy, who feels his anger freeze over as the Emperor gives him a disapproving stare. "You've taken it upon yourself to expand the reach of the Sins?" He asks out loud, the commanding tone of his magical voice sounding quite grating for both Wolfy and I.

But my husband shows how admirable he is by grinning in the face of the ruler of all while taunting him at the same time, "I have. Is everyone here too craven to admit that this is the right thing?"

The nobles scoff. They all scoff.

I walk forward until I'm standing beside Wolfy. Then I sit on my hind legs and glare at every single one of these… craven. "Say it to my face that I don't deserve to be protected by the Sins!" I challenge, and I almost smile when I see the lower-level nobles reel back at the power of my voice.

"You're different," Apeiltik once again interferes, infuriating me.

So I turn to him and glower. "I had a family, parents, siblings! If I wasn't a hatchling when I was taken away, do you think it'd have been easy for me to love and respect humanoids?"

"We only train tamable dragons if we get them when they're young. The older, wild ones are simply too unruly," a different noble remarks out loud.

Wolfy immediately uses the change in topic to continue his speech, "And those aren't much smarter than animals. What about the monsters who can speak with us, who can understand our language like Crown Lord Aoi Ryder can? How can we try to build peaceful relationships with them when we treat them like that!" He points at the sleeping monsters.

"You're trying to 'befriend' monsters…?" A familiar voice echoes from behind the Katasko nobles, and when we turn to find the source, we see "Little" Alki walking forward.

We all hold back our anger to not launch ourselves at the spawn of the evil old man, Wolfy's anger turning cold as he slowly explains, "It's not our purpose to exterminate them. Creation gave birth to us so that we could grow and rise ever higher despite the interference from the God of Destruction, so getting the monsters on our side is invaluable for our future."

Alki, the Little, snorts dismissively. "More mouths to feed."

Wolf, the Great, confidently retorts, "More potential to be realized."

"More problems to solve."

"More allies to help."

The intensity with which the two are staring at each other increases, and we all unconsciously notice the subtle signs of two men preparing to kill each other.

"Did you know what your father was doing…?" The Emperor suddenly interjects, his words and magical voice breaking the tension completely.

"I didn't…" Alki hesitantly answers.

"I'll take you to the Seekers," Caterina immediately asserts, and Alki takes a step back in surprise.

He turns to the Emperor, his eyes begging for help, but the ruler of all simply stares down at him without showing any reaction as the Punisher takes him away.

The nobles start to murmur in disbelief, but the ruler sits down on his seat with a smug smile and remarks, "It disappoints me that any of you thought I'd ever side with the Alkibiades."

And with that, there's nobody left who has the courage to stand against Wolfy.

Intermission end.

A note from Manasong

Hall of Fame of Patrons

The patrons who support Rupegia shall have their names sung by the bards for they deserve the glory and honor. Their names are:

Prince PreownedFIN.

Prince Owldente.

Lord Andrew Meyers.

Lord Novgarod.

Lord Michale Erwin.

Lord Bakerdea.

Lord Maurice.

Lord Mattirro Draca.

Lord Sean Drake.

Lord Mike Bartter.

Lord Warwulfv.

Lord Khristopher Welsh.

Lord Tenebris Lupus.

Lord Paul Daval.

Lord Paul Daval.

Lord AndreyUC.

Lord Tmac.

Lord School Work.

Lord Gwendolyn Simmons-LaRose.

Lord CopeyDunt.

Lord BlindTactic.

Lord The Tallest Joshua.

Lord litalmexy.

Lord Tyler Mills.

Lord Philip.

Lord d3235.

Lord Freddie.

Lord Mike Bartter.

Lord Sean Drake.

Lord Shaun McDonough.

Lord William Clark.

Lord Sam.

Lord Ddraig Wynn.

Noble Salty Panda.

Noble Mild Fracas.

Noble Aclys.

Noble CarlBaxter.

Noble Andrew Hebreard.

Noble Tony Starrk.

Leave a rating or a review to help me rise to the top or fix my shameful understanding of prose.

Take a look over my blog where all information about the world of Rupegia will be posted.

Join the Discord and discuss, or rant, or meme, or try and fight me so your waifu gets more screentime.

Become a Patron and read chapters in advance, or read the side-stories, or leave your mark on the story, or help choose the next artwork or the next side-story.

Chapter 138: Sentence - Part 1

Okay, I guess paying the "compensation" to the Oracle's family was worth every coin if Sun Man here is going to be that helpful to have on our side.

"Do you all understand that this sets a precedent?" Apeiltik slowly asks out loud with a well-measured tone, and his dignified composure makes it hard to be too aggressive against him.

"I'll make sure it does!" I interrupt with an exclamation. Then I assuredly give a short speech as I do my best to intimidate the undecided nobles, "We're in the holy season of the Purification, and it's our duty to cut out the filth and rot from the Empire, so I won't allow evil like this" -I point to Cleinias' head- "to fester among the nobility. There's no time better than now to make it clear that this sort of behavior won't be accepted among us anymore!"

I put my hand on the base of Aoi's neck as she raises her head and uses her draconic glare to compound with mine. Then she continues the verbal pounding to make them submit, "Do you wish for monsters and humanoids to kill each other for eternity, like the God of Order would want, or will you move past this stagnated relationship and actually grow together like Change wanted for all of us?!"

A courageous noble hesitantly replies, "If they convert like you claim-… like you did, then the monsters should have no fear of what might happen to them." But that's still way too far from what we're trying to accomplish.

I glare at him and harshly question, "Only converted, then? And how do you propose that I convince them to join our side when they'll only be protected after they make the transition?"

And I see a hint of understanding dawn upon him and others, but there are still some who'll oppose us no matter what.

"We can't trust monsters! We can't accept the heretical into our midst!" An irate Katasko noblewoman shouts.

Aoi jerks her large head towards the woman, making her instantly shut up. "Don't you fucking dare call my enslaved brethren heretics! They never had a choice!" She growls back, her powerful double voice echoing across the wide Throne Room.

I start to lose my patience again. "All we're asking is to not do Wicked acts upon the undeserving… HOW HARD CAN THAT BE?!"

And the nobles, on both sides, scoff again, but the number of detractors is decreasing as they begin to see the writing on the wall. Though, there are some who are becoming bolder with their unsavory behavior now that Caterina isn't here.

"Our Empire is built upon our worship of the Humanoid Gods," Sun Man interjects with his magically enhanced voice, then he makes a dramatic pause, his piercing gaze making me uncomfortable and dulling the edge in my tone. "We cannot accept monsters into our midst without safeties, without a guarantee that they aren't trying to infiltrate us and do us harm."

And I smirk smugly as he activates my trap card. "But that's a two-way street, isn't it? I'm only trying to secure a guarantee for their side, too."

A stupid noble opens their stupid mouth to spew stupid, enraging, bullshit, "You think the monsters don't rape, murder, or torture, too? Have you ever been to a breeder monster village? Or seen how entire tribes convert to poison or dark magic?"

Their stubbornness is really grating…

I turn to him and carefully lay it out, "I said two-way street, or do you not understand what that term means? Back and forth. If one side doesn't try to cooperate, then the other has no reason to do it either."

And I finally begin to feel the mood of the room shift. Some part of our arguments is finally getting through to the nobles, and though I don't know what, exactly, it is that's finally convincing them, I'll take it regardless.

"We already have problems with unruly and uncivilized dragonkin. Orcs would be worse," Apeiltik once again comes in with a reasonable and charismatic argument, but this time, he's off-mark.

"And how is that relevant to this discussion? You just aren't allowed to rape and torture them in any circumstance, but you can always kill them just like you would with any other humanoid if they become a problem. You're just reaching for excuses to stand against me."

"Your future will make our society harder to maintain," the muscular man slowly replies, his tone with such a strong edge that indicates the use of [Intimidate].

But you can't fucking intimate a goddamn dragon so easily. "Then we build a stronger one," I confidently announce.

And the disgruntled minority loudly grumbles again, but their numbers are steadily decreasing.

"Foolhardy."

"Reckless."

"Irresponsible." They whine to deaf ears.

"Do your job as nobles, or renounce your Titles!" Ciel suddenly shouts, her motherly aura calling up feelings of guilt within them. "The Purification has already begun, and you still dare to act lazy and uncommitted?! Society will grow further with… or without you."

They seem to have forgotten that she's a priestess, and their cynicism won't fly in her presence. And even though she's also a noble, her background isn't easily forgotten, and the characteristic preachy tone of a priest makes them instinctively clam up.

And Yunia also joins in with her own verbal lashing, her tone cold and sharp like a steel edge, "Need we remind you that nearly half of the nobles present here have been Marked? You're not in any position to dictate our future when your own belonging to the Empire is in question."

And I lean onto Yunia's angle of attack, "If you want to so vehemently oppose us, then at least prove that you have the Empire's best interests at heart!"

Who's going to argue that they were Marked because they were good people doing good deeds? If any of the Katasko nobles argue back, we can just pull out the list and start throwing names…

"I'm not Marked, and I'm only questioning whether or not the doors you're opening are worth it," Apeiltik calmly points out.

Except for this fucker… We seriously don't remember seeing his name anywhere. Is he even actually part of Katasko?

"If progress isn't worth it, then are we truly the children of the God of Change?" Ciel boldly states and starts walking forward to face him.

Her statement starts to rile up the disgruntled nobles, but it's clear that a majority has been achieved, and our detractors don't have enough influence to keep the large group of undecided from swaying to our side.

Ciel stops beside me and has a staring contest with Apeiltik. His gaze is much more powerful against her than mine, but it's still nothing she can't handle.

He turns his eyes away first, relieving the pressure on her, and turns to Empy, asking for his decision. The other nobles also go quiet, and the atmosphere stays firmly accepting of us, with our detractors finally falling silent.

So the big man finally decides to finish this. He stands up, silencing everyone, and promptly starts his speech, "I've seen enough. This matter goes beyond our mere existences, and in the spirit of the Purification, we have to make a stand against immorality and Sinful behavior." He makes a dramatic pause again, his eyes falling on every single one of the disgruntled minority, the subtle frown on his face making clear his opinion of them. "Therefore, I'll set down a new Law, which declares that every living being is under the protection of the Sins, and I'll allow the Punishers to enforce it." From what I know of Caterina, she'll gladly do so.

The girls and I cheer victoriously, but we're surprised that a number of the nobles also seem genuinely happy, though the majority simply claps politely.

I understand that the nobles are being forced to accept this change. That they haven't seen the light and decided, from the bottom of their hearts, that this was better for the Empire. They know it's evil to torture monsters, and I understand that their hesitance to side with me comes from their desire to retain their freedoms, to not be burdened by the morality of someone else. I also understand that forcing this issue hasn't exactly made us popular with the nobles, even those not from Katasko, but this stand I'm making comes from deep within my core.

As a (former, I guess) atheist, it's weird to say this, but I have faith in the Humanoid Gods. I believe that they're a force of good in this world, and that the way they act isn't restrictive on society, paving the way for actual progress in the future, something that Earthling religions actively fought against due to traditionalism.

The Gods do exist, and they do participate, and they can bring change. The fact that I'm here and Blessed by them is proof of that because why would they call me here if not for my knowledge? The tools for progress are all here, so I'll use them until they break, or until they aren't good enough for the job that needs to be done.

But the cynical part of me asks: how could I not have faith in the Gods when they've showered me with such good fortune? My Gift is god-given, my harem is god-sanctioned, my Blessing is a godly stamp of approval, my Fate is god-guided, and even my influence among others is god-boosted. Everything about me says that I've been chosen by the Gods, so why wouldn't I be confident in what I'm doing? Why wouldn't I think that my way is the right way?

At least I have enough people around me to tell me off if I start to become too crazy, so there's no chance that I'll pull a Paul in this world. Messiahs, prophets, and other people in high leadership positions don't usually have this much psychological support backing them up.

Once the clapping dies down, Empy sits down and finishes, "There'll be no punishment for the Ryder family of Crown Lords, so I declare this meeting over."

Most of the Katasko nobles simply turn around and almost run out of the Main Throne Room, desperate to get away before some noble with a grudge challenges them. Without Cleinias to guide them, and the whole Empire seemingly turning their backs on them, only fools would linger here.

The other nobles then come to congratulate us, especially the elves from Elaria, who quickly make their way to Yunia. Caterina's mage also begins casting [Gate] to return the monsters, and I suddenly get an urge to take the amethyst dragon for myself, but she's old, tormented, and also pretty hostile to humanoids, so I don't have anything that I can do for her besides giving her the mercy of a swift death.

Then the Room almost freezes as Apeiltik Tavros suddenly starts making his way towards us. The tall and well-built man is very intimidating for a human, even more so when he's approaching with heavy, confident steps, and he has shown himself to be more than just a pile of muscles, so everyone gets apprehensive about what he might do in the next couple of seconds.

But I feel no actual threat coming from him, so I just remain standing and wait, and then I see a hint of a grin appear on his clean-shaven face.

The other nobles instinctively back away, and then he stops less than a meter from me, close enough that he can quietly whisper, "Vanea sends her regards." And nobody but me hears him.

What…?

But then he simply turns around and leaves the Room along with the other Katasko nobles.

And only Yunia manages to immediately catch on. "He's a spy for her! That's why we couldn't find his name; it's because he isn't a true member!" She shouts excitedly through [Bind].

"Why the fuck would he go against us, then?!" Hana exclaims indignantly.

"Controlled opposition. Taking charge of the conversation while not being overly aggressive to keep things from spiraling out of control."

Fuck, that actually sounds like something Vanea would do.

"I'd appreciate it if she gave us some advanced warning," Alissa sorely remarks, and yes, we all understand the irony of it.

The congratulations continue, but they don't take too long, and soon, the Room is empty, except for us, Empy, and the gorgeous Empresses. Again, I'd love to stare at the delicious, naked Piscila, but Empy doesn't let me salivate over her for too long.

"Don't start revolutions on your own, Ryders," he tiredly chastises, though his tone is quite light, the magic in it unexpectedly gone.

"Or go on killing sprees just because you were slighted," Empress Hayakasha harshly adds, and the other Empresses, who were like statues during the discussion, start showing their real emotions, which are quite varied.

"We've only killed one noble," Yunia calmly points out.

"So far," Hayakasha sharply replies.

"Alright, there's one more person who we have a grudge with," I confess, trying to hold back a wry smile.

Empy leans back in his chair. "Rank?"

"Centum."

And he tiredly waves his hand. "Do as you please, but don't make it obvious."

I snort and blurt out, "I imagined you'd have more qualms about it."

He narrows his eyes, and his faint glow becomes slightly more annoying to look at. "It's another Katasko noble, correct? Bringing down the Alkimeonids family was too troublesome due to their widespread influence, but nobody will miss a Marked Centum, especially now that Katasko is finally collapsing."

"Maybe now, Haya will finally stop fretting over what the Ryders are up to," an adorable, little, blonde dwarven girl remarks with an innocent tone, but her impish grin is anything but.

"It's true that you Ryders are fairly impulsive," the wereowl Empress who's obviously Sa'Haa's mother sternly states.

I glance at Aoi and smile warmly as I pat her scaly back. "Can you blame me? This matter is related to one of my wives, and I'm just too passionate about them to hold back on this."

Aoi's wings twitch as she almost pulls me in with them for a hug, but she thinks it'd be inappropriate, and she blushes internally for her awkwardness with humanoid customs.

But Sun Man isn't exactly pleased with my response. "Always remember where your responsibilities lie," he impassively states, his words echoing in my mind from the power in his voice.

And Yunia and I are sorely tempted to snappily reply, "with my people," but we just stay silent since we don't have the energy to be that impudent against him right now. It's really damn tiring to speak to very high-level people since their "Stats" and skills keep noticeably affecting us, so I can understand why so many people don't like to talk to nobles.

"Once you're done playing games with the other nobles, you need to start working on spreading [Golemancy]," Sa'Haa's mother continues, then she eyes the golems inquisitively. "They hold too much power for you to monopolize it, and I'm sure that Knowledge wants you to share it."

"I'm working on it, but there are things I need to fix with [Golemancy] before that can happen," I politely reply.

And she gives me a sharp gaze that's strikingly similar to her daughter's. "Be careful. Others can become impatient, especially after what you've shown they can do."

I wonder if my daughters will be this similar to their mothers. It'd be… not ideal, I guess.

"We will…" I hum and ignore the depravity of the girls' thoughts.

"That was all. You're free to leave," Empy finishes.

We all bow, and Piscila and I share a subtle smirk, then we finally leave.

On the way home, I start to wind down, and the reality of what we did begins to sink in. We fucking changed the world, that's what we did. Well… the Empire isn't the whole world, but what we do here will definitely have an impact on Bestiaram and Maoka with time.

And Ciel is so happy about how things went that she doesn't even care when I squeeze her juicy cheeks as our cage elevator goes down the Throne.

"Just don't get carried away," she softly warns me, and I sneak a claw deeper in.

She pouts, but doesn't stop me, so I go further in between her legs. Her dress is as thin as delicate panties, and she's not wearing anything underneath, so I can easily tease her into with just a little bit of soul vibration.

Her pointy bits start poking through her clothes, but I leave her wanting because our ride is relatively short, and it's just a short walk before we're back at the embassy.

To tease her further, I invite Caterina, Kyora, and her harem for a late dinner so that our meal can't become lewd, but that's far from making a dent in her happy mood.

"You're a true noble, now, Ciel," Kyora wryly remarks as she sits down.

"What do you mean?" The curvy angel asks back confusedly.

The blue-haired dragonkin dons the characteristic grin of her race. "You murdered someone and got away with it. You even dissed the Enforcers while you were at it."

Timas, the more courteous member of Kyora's harem, immediately slaps her shoulder, but even though he's a warrior, the werecat doesn't even make the amazoness budge.

"Considering how he was an evil person, she's actually doing our job, you know?" He sternly lectures.

"But we need a lot more justification before we kill someone," Kyora retorts and thinks about slapping him back, but decides that it's better not to.

"And we generally don't kill people we hate," little Alonso casually adds.

And Kyora nods in agreement. "Or even find it enjoyable."

"We didn't," Ciel dryly replies.

"Maybe you should. There's nothing wrong with killing heretics and villains," Caterina nonchalantly states, her bloodthirst even making Alissa a bit concerned.

And the four Wandering Knights awkwardly glance at their Punisher comrade.

"Didn't we just argue that it's evil to enjoy killing?" Roxanne nervously asks out loud.

And the serious elf categorically replies, "Not against the Wicked, you didn't. Those people forfeited their right to live when they betrayed Creation and the Humanoid Gods, so killing them is like popping a blister."

"That's actually bad for healing," Ciel points out with an innocent smile.

Caterina slowly closes her eyes in pain. "You know what I mean."

"More like popping pimples, I guess," Alonso comments wryly and reaches for a dragonoid drumstick.

I look at Poppy, but then I remember that it sounds different in Andraste, which makes me sad that I can't tell this joke, though I'm happy that Alissa still feels the pain because she's always reading my thoughts.

"Elves don't get pimples," Yunia snobbishly replies, then pompously sips her alcohol.

"Neither do the dragonkin," Kyora hums, covering her full mouth as she speaks. Then she glances at Hana, and they both nod.

"Or dragons…" Aoi hesitantly adds, then snorts as she imagines a dragon with pimples.

"Or dwarves," Lina also chimes in, then tenses up as Poppy smiles at her. Sometimes I forget that my little girl is also quite gay, and she finds this dwarf girl very attractive.

But Roxanne is skeptical of Yunia's claim that elves don't get pimples. She says it's just elven beauty products that prevent them from appearing, and the girls launch into a discussion about skin and its care, and the differences between each race.

Timas, Alonso, and I share a look, and then we attempt to have a male-focused conversation by talking about weapons and their care, and the differences between the favorites of each race.

A note from Manasong

Hall of Fame of Patrons

The patrons who support Rupegia shall have their names sung by the bards for they deserve the glory and honor. Their names are:

Prince PreownedFIN.

Prince Owldente.

Lord Andrew Meyers.

Lord Novgarod.

Lord Michale Erwin.

Lord Bakerdea.

Lord Maurice.

Lord Mattirro Draca.

Lord Sean Drake.

Lord Mike Bartter.

Lord Warwulfv.

Lord Khristopher Welsh.

Lord Tenebris Lupus.

Lord Paul Daval.

Lord Paul Daval.

Lord AndreyUC.

Lord Tmac.

Lord School Work.

Lord Gwendolyn Simmons-LaRose.

Lord CopeyDunt.

Lord BlindTactic.

Lord The Tallest Joshua.

Lord litalmexy.

Lord Tyler Mills.

Lord Philip.

Lord d3235.

Lord Freddie.

Lord Mike Bartter.

Lord Sean Drake.

Lord Shaun McDonough.

Lord William Clark.

Lord Sam.

Lord Ddraig Wynn.

Noble Salty Panda.

Noble Mild Fracas.

Noble Aclys.

Noble CarlBaxter.

Noble Andrew Hebreard.

Noble Tony Starrk.

Leave a rating or a review to help me rise to the top or fix my shameful understanding of prose.

Take a look over my blog where all information about the world of Rupegia will be posted.

Join the Discord and discuss, or rant, or meme, or try and fight me so your waifu gets more screentime.

Become a Patron and read chapters in advance, or read the side-stories, or leave your mark on the story, or help choose the next artwork or the next side-story.

Chapter 138: Sentence - Part 2

A note from Manasong

Attention: to conform to the limit of mature content (more than just sexual content) allowed in a novel, I've censored this chapter. You can look for the uncensored version here.

Hana stays in the dining room to flirt and drink with Caterina while everyone else retreats to their own corners for the evening. The two move to the balcony to have a nice romantic moment under the moonlight while they sip on a bit of low-strength Eia.

And the fiery dragonkin comes on hard, "We already have our own personal Wandering Knights, but I guess there's room for our own personal Punisher."

Caterina's usual straightforwardness starts to disappear, replaced by the usual elven snobbishness, though her tone remains casual. "Oh? How presumptuous of you to say that."

"You'll catch more heretics if you stay close by, you know?" Hana suggestively retorts.

And the other scoffs. "I'm not just a tool you can hang around."

Hana slyly springs her trap, "Well… are we more than just a honey trap for the bears to you?"

The mature elf goes silent and stares at her intensely, but Hana's grin only grows wider.

"You could say that," Caterina hesitantly admits.

Hana takes a small step forward, and her tone becomes even more suggestive, "Are you going to define what this 'more' means?"

"No," the older woman promptly replies.

And the younger (and thirsty) one inches closer, getting into Caterina's personal space, but she doesn't even flinch. Then my dragonkin sets up another trap, "If you won't tell me the truth, then I'll just make my own assumptions and see where they take me."

Caterina remains so still that it's almost unnatural, and her voice gains a dangerous edge, "So, will you try to conquer me?"

Hana feels sorely tempted to say yes, but something tells her that isn't the answer Caterina is looking for. She's a decorated and experienced Templar milf, not a doe-eyed young girl looking for excitement. She might even be old enough to be Hana's mother, so what is a mature woman looking for in a partner?

"How about we start as friends?" Hana warmly asks, her grin going back to a friendly smile.

And Caterina blinks in subtle confusion. "Oh? Are we not friends already?"

"Okay, if you say so. Then let's move on to the next step," the bold dragonkin activates the trap and grins wider again.

"You cheeky-…"

Hana slowly leans forward, her face coming closer to Caterina's with a very obvious intention. The mature elf simply freezes, and this time, her tension is more obvious, but Hana suddenly stops, and her red lips break into a shit-eating grin.

"Is it a Ryder tradition to be insufferable teases?" Caterina asks, faintly disconcerted.

And Hana springs the last trap, "If you wanted a kiss, you could just ask."

Caterina breathes in to calm herself as her blood pressure rises, and now Hana takes the brief opening to give her an actual kiss on the lips. It lasts for only a second as Hana has already pushed her luck far enough, and Caterina starts to assume her Templar persona to defend herself.

"I think you've had enough to drink," the serious elf responds.

She wants us to believe that an experienced Punisher warrior didn't see it coming with [Battlefield Perception]?

Hana nods and retreats. "You too, if you were really that open."

And the elf narrows her eyes dangerously. "Hm… yes, it's time for me to leave."

She grins again. "See you later, 'more than a friend.'"

Roxanne feels a bit lonely drinking without Hana, so Lina challenges her to a board game.

Hopefully, Caterina won't be too prudish if she ever joins us. We'd love it if she were willing to socialize with everyone so that nobody would feel excluded. We'd all be very excited if she joined in on the fun too, especially me. She said I'm "dangerous" to her girl love orientation, but if she enjoys herself, is it really "bad"?

Straight men have turned gay when the thirst got bad enough, and if we look at Alissa's case, there's already a precedent for straight women around me who can happily dip in the other side.

I pull on Yunia's hair and force her spine to arch, making an evil grin as I imagine how I'll turn the proud Punisher straight. Let's see if I can bring out the submissive elven genes within her that her race so desperately tries to hide.

Yunia grabs my hand, trying to give herself a little breathing room as tears start to form in the corners of her eyes, but I just throw her head onto the bed and then press it against the sheets, smothering her in their fluffiness.

I turn my eyes to Lolo and Klein as they drink together and observe us, then I unleash my domineering aura upon them, and I see their hairs stand up on end. I feel that this is enough "reinforcement training" for them, so I turn my eyes to the defiled elven beauty before me.

The fire within me dies down, allowing me to engage "aftercare mode." I crawl up beside her, then I give her a hug and start caressing her head while Aoi shoves her long tongue to begin cleaning.

She writhes and whisper softly, but she pushes her back against me so that I properly spoon her, and I bury my face into her (now messy) glorious drills to smell her rich perfume. But Aoi soon finishes her cleaning, and then we're left to soak in bliss together.

I don't pry too much into my wives' thoughts, but I have a feeling that I should do it right now, so I take a look at what Yunia is thinking. She squeaks in surprise, then reflexively blocks me off for just a second, but I don't probe any further.

"What's wrong…?" I softly ask.

"I was… thinking something embarrassing," she tiredly answers.

Roxanne immediately jerks her head towards us, her eyes glowing with excitement at the opportunity to tease someone, but then she realizes it might be something serious, so she backs off.

"Don't get too haughty, or I'll break your horns," the Queen snaps back, which is kind of her way of saying that "everything is okay."

And the succubus flashes a challenging glare, but now's not the time to indulge in verbal masochism, so they both let it go.

I give her some time to gather her thoughts, and Alissa joins us on the bed, hugging Yunia from the front. My foxy helper grabs her hand and interlocks their fingers together, wordlessly telling her that she'll be supportive of whatever our favorite snobbish elf has to say.

Yunia finally regains her composure and confesses, "I just felt that I didn't like this turn we're taking now with the Purification and killing Cleinias. It's… less than ideal for our future in the High Forest."

"It's fine that you think so. We can't lie to ourselves about what we're doing," I soothe her.

"It's unfair to Aoi."

The little blue dragon raises her scaly head in surprise. "Oh…? But I also didn't want things to become like this," she innocently responds.

Yunia nods slowly. "That's why it's unfair."

"I don't get it?" Aoi hums while adorably tilting her head.

And my snobbish elf sighs before she explains, "Even I understand that wanting to protect your kind shouldn't be taken as a negative, but I can't see it in any other way than it not having a positive effect on our political future."

Now Ciel gets a bit miffed. "What do you mean 'no positive effect'?! We're building solid relationships with the temple and the Templars while changing the Empire as a whole!" She exclaims indignantly.

I immediately interject, "It was just a thought. She didn't want to say it, so don't blame her."

"Hm…" Ciel hums awkwardly and pouts.

And Yunia continues, "But in the end, nothing we're doing here is changing the reception we'll have at home. Our Subordinate Lords still aren't loyal to us."

Ciel wants to tell her to look at the big picture, that we're building a better future for everyone, but even she sees that those things are too abstract to quantify, and the loyalty of the Subordinate Lords is more directly important to our rule. It's like putting the cart before the horses; we need more stability before we can safely take on these types of endeavors. It's just that I really couldn't help myself but kill Cleinias.

"It's also not fair to take all the blame…" Yunia quietly adds with a frown.

"You're the one of us with the most analytical mind for politics, so it's better for all of us if you continue being like this," Alissa kindly encourages her, and the two girls squeeze their hands together affectionately.

"Be the heartless b-tch that you really are," Roxanne teasingly adds.

"I'll seriously consider breaking your horns now that you've made it an option," The Queen briefly comes back, and I feel how, within her heart, she appreciates Roxanne's "encouragement."

"You two need to lay together," Hana states as she comes in. "Or maybe I should just do both of you myself."

"My bits haven't been given the love they deserve," Yunia pompously states out loud.

"She ain't gonna give it love, honey," Roxanne warns her, making the elf bite her loose tongue as she realizes what she just did.

Hana comes onto the bed and crawls up to us, so Alissa and I back off, leaving Yunia to fend for herself. She spreads her legs apart, believing it to be useless to try to escape a hungry dragonkin.

The frightened elf grabs my scaled hand, looking for support as Hana begins, and Alissa grabs her other hand to soothe her in this arduous moment.

But Yunia is already sloppy seconds, so she doesn't last long against The Flower Eater, and she's definitely too tired to return the favor.

"Let me give you a hand, my wife," Roxanne smugly states and pulls her fiery lover back.

"Hell yeah," Hana happily hums.

Of course, seeing women lezzing out always puts me in the mood, so I let Alissa work on me while we watch.

Yunia grabs my hand and starts to kiss my scales, the touch of her soft lips leaving small marks on their pristine surface. But then she suddenly stops and turns around, snuggling up to my chest as she seeks the comfort of my embrace.

"I fear we've made a mortal enemy, Wolfy," she gloomily confesses and presses her forehead against me. "The Seekers cleared Alkibiades, so we can't kill him now, and if he's smart, he'll run away to build up allies once again."

I raise one eyebrow questioningly. "You're afraid of Little Alki-Alki?"

She flashes a frown. "Please. He's the son of a Decien, and by all rights, he is a Decien, giving him the resources to become a thorn in our side."

"Unless we take his Titles in the Purification," I confidently retort.

"His resources are more than just Titles…"

And I become silent. She's right; we need to find a way to get rid of Alki-Alki permanently.

"Someone wants to kill you guys?" Lolo suddenly interjects, and Klein gives her a disbelieving look, making the bunny girl suddenly duck in embarrassment. "Sorry, it was rude to eavesdrop."

"Who doesn't want to kill us?" I wryly reply.

The cute rabbit girl frowns worriedly. "That sounded more like someone with a grudge."

"Yes. A noble with a grudge, the son of the guy whose head we put on a pike," Yunia calmly states.

Lolo winces. "Can't you guys… kill him in secret?"

"For once, we can't."

And I frown at Yunia. "It's not like we've been killing everyone who slighted us."

So she corrects herself, "We could, but with this one, we can't."

"Why not?" Lolo innocently asks.

"Because we already spent all our goodwill to kill his father," I explain.

"They can only break the laws as long as the people in charge are willing to look the other way," Klein wisely adds.

Hana wants to tease the monkey girl, but she's too busy to form words.

"Well put," Yunia praises her, and my monkey girl immediately shuts down, stunned by the surprisingly kind words of her Queen.

But the rabbit girl doesn't even notice as she looks at her cup and makes a thoughtful expression. The world of nobility is complex, and its rules are very "malleable," so I understand how hard it can be for Lolo to get a clear idea of our situation.

Alissa finishes me once, and now Aoi wants her share.

Hana eventually wins her battle with Roxanne, and now there's a hungry hunter on the prowl. Ciel and Lina are having a wholesome moment, so she turns her eyes to the wereanimal duo, but they're at a low level of spiciness, and her predatory gaze then falls upon me.

Aoi offers my Weapon to Hana, but the dragonkin has other plans. She slowly lowers herself, easily squatting with her powerful and muscular thighs.

"Hmmm…" Aoi hums annoyedly now that her lollipop is buried.

"I want us to do Caterina together," she whispers, her voice heavy with lust. "Show her the intensity of the love that we Ryders can give."

My intentions aren't so noble as hers, but I agree that Caterina deserves the whole Ryder package. If she's up for a strap, I could provide one to Hana, which I'll be able to control, allowing me to perform our family's specialty on her.

And the draconic domineering instincts inside Hana start to rise to the surface as she fantasizes about us conquering Caterina together. She even summons her wings and lets brief gusts of flame escape from her mouth.

Damn, I love this woman.

I release her hands and hug her lovingly, then I start aftercare for the second time this evening. I love how after all the excitement, anger, tension, and scheming from today, and even changing the damn world, the girls and I can just shrug it off and continue plowing as usual.

Even with Yunia's worries, we're still going strong.

Today is the 9th, Nev, day of Spirit. My Hollys standing guard around the embassy can't see spirits, but they can certainly spot the signs that there might be one nearby, and in a city as densely populated as Mac Gantus, where so many adventurers die every day inside the Great Labyrinth, there are a lot of signs of spirits everywhere today.

I'm surprised that I didn't level up [Chaos Breath]. It's so goddamn hard to use it, and if it's going to be this slow to level up, then it won't be viable in combat anytime soon.

Roxanne, on the other hand, leveled up her [Fire Magic] and [Space Magic] by 1 (now 6+34 and 14) just from observing it, which is an odd combo to level up, but eh, a level up is a level up.

Lina increased her [Axe Use] by 1 (now 3+17). And aside from Roxanne, she's the only one who gained anything significant from yesterday's training, though that's probably because she has a very large positive soul potential.

Aoi increased her "Piety" by 1 (now 9), which is really nice since she's now approaching the average for a humanoid, and it's also pretty telling of her integration with our culture.

Our morning starts with the usual mana circulation training, now boosted by the orbs, but we're soon interrupted as my Hollys notice a man riding a muscular Ronti, a rat-headed imperial horse, coming down Bicker's Street at full speed, its trot leaving a loud crackling of lightning behind it as the Ronti uses magic to keep up its insane pace.

Shortly after coming into view, they stop before our embassy, and the rider pulls down the hood of their cloak, making my blood boil as I see Little Alki-Alki's ugly face.

"I CHALLENGE YOU, RYDERS, TO A BATTLE UNDER THE RULES OF THE PURIFICATION!" He roars confidently.

But this definitely isn't good news. Katasko is crumbling as the whole Empire turns on them, and an animal is at its most dangerous when cornered.

A note from Manasong

Hall of Fame of Patrons

The patrons who support Rupegia shall have their names sung by the bards for they deserve the glory and honor. Their names are:

Prince PreownedFIN.

Prince Owldente.

Lord Andrew Meyers.

Lord Novgarod.

Lord Michale Erwin.

Lord Bakerdea.

Lord Maurice.

Lord Mattirro Draca.

Lord Sean Drake.

Lord Mike Bartter.

Lord Warwulfv.

Lord Khristopher Welsh.

Lord Tenebris Lupus.

Lord Paul Daval.

Lord Paul Daval.

Lord AndreyUC.

Lord Tmac.

Lord School Work.

Lord Gwendolyn Simmons-LaRose.

Lord CopeyDunt.

Lord BlindTactic.

Lord The Tallest Joshua.

Lord litalmexy.

Lord Tyler Mills.

Lord Philip.

Lord d3235.

Lord Freddie.

Lord Mike Bartter.

Lord Sean Drake.

Lord Shaun McDonough.

Lord William Clark.

Lord Sam.

Lord Ddraig Wynn.

Noble Salty Panda.

Noble Mild Fracas.

Noble Aclys.

Noble CarlBaxter.

Noble Andrew Hebreard.

Noble Tony Starrk.

Leave a rating or a review to help me rise to the top or fix my shameful understanding of prose.

Take a look over my blog where all information about the world of Rupegia will be posted.

Join the Discord and discuss, or rant, or meme, or try and fight me so your waifu gets more screentime.

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Chapter 138: Sentence - Part 3

Intermission – Brett

As I walk through the inner corridors of the Shell, I stop by the window and look out towards the town at large. Elven homes are so weird with their huge, wide trunks and little crowns of leaves that look like hats. The wealthier houses have wider crowns and more decorations, but the average home is… kind of cute?

I'm actually not that interested in looking at the houses, but something about the view makes it hard to look away. I don't know what it is, or even how I can explain what I'm feeling. It's just odd…

I manage to look down, my eyes falling upon my own hands, which I then clench into fists. It's not just the view that feels odd, everything feels… wrong.

These aren't my eyes, these aren't my hands, my arms, my legs… and this isn't the Realm that I knew.

Who even am I, again?

My name is Brett, but I have nothing else aside from that… and my Gift. Those are the only two things I have left. Everything else is gone, even the carefree life that I once had, even the person that I was before.

I look out the window again and notice the commoners by the square, kneeling before the portraits of my Lords.

No, I also have my faith.

I fucked up once, and I paid the price, but I won't fuck up again.

"For Sora-… for So-…" Their names get stuck in my throat, and I once again fail to speak them out loud. So, I kneel as I swallow heavily, bottling up the pain once more, then I pray, "For those that I've lost, I won't waste this second life.

"Goddess of Will, lend me your fortitude, Goddess of Growth, show me the way, God of Endurance, give me support, and God of War… allow me to shield my Lords from their enemies.

"Let me prove that I deserve my Gift…"

I hear the loud clacking of heels coming down the corridor, so I awkwardly stand up, but I still can't control my eyes the way I want to, and they're drawn to the commoners praying below.

The steps get closer, and I recognize the cadence. No other woman who wears heels walks as confidently as her… except for Lord Hanafuria, but she isn't here.

"Brett," Dame Enomosa calls for my attention, and her stern voice is powerful enough to pull my eyes away from the commoners, forcing me to look at her. "Five days. We're leaving in the morning of the next day of An."

My hands shake in excitement, but then my vision starts to blur, and my blood runs cold.

Five days until I can begin my redemption.

Intermission end.

Five days until the battle.

The fact that Alki-Alki challenged us instead of running back to Kardia and building up their numbers as best as he could tells us that he has another card up his sleeve. The battle is an obvious trap, a hail mary to hurt us, but we can't avoid it without consequences.

Vanea is Marked, so she's required to fight someone if she wants to remain a noble, and fighting Katasko alongside us and our allies is the safest option for her. If Alki chose to disband Katasko and have everyone fend for themselves, it would make it hard for her to find a proper opponent to challenge. Sa'Haa's demands explicitly state that she wants a chunk of Katasko's Titles, so blowing off Alki would violate the terms of our alliance, and without her, I don't think we have enough power to face Katasko, not to mention that it'd be very undesirable to slight a scheming person like her.

But who the fuck told Alki about our constraints and alliances? There's no fucking way that this is just a coincidence. This is too perfect of a trap for it to be anything else.

"Well, how many traps have we already survived?" Alissa wryly asks.

"How many traps have we set ourselves?" Yunia asks out loud with a faintly smug tone.

"When in doubt, just rush through it like a charging dragon!" Hana energetically asserts.

Aoi doesn't really like Hana's analogy, but our "little" blue dragon is basically a nerd, so the stereotype doesn't really apply to her.

"There's nothing that can compete with our Gift," Lina wisely points out.

Indeed, we'll have to rely on it to counter whatever it is that Alki thinks he can use against us.

"Have you girls ever heard of power-leveling?" I ask as a grin slowly blooms on my glorious face.

A few levels for us might not do much good, but for the knights…

After we message our allies, we return to our mana circulation training, and I begin to ponder on ways to weaponize [Golemancy] further. The golems are always very helpful, so having an army of them would be really good, but I haven't removed their memories yet, so they need to be disposable.

I start creating more test golems while messing with their loyalty block, and I'm suddenly surprised by one of them.

"Why did you create me?" The little cloth doll asks.

I'm a bit taken aback and reflexively reply, "You have my memories, so you know you're just a test."

"I don't just have your memories, I'm you," he accuses, his tone surprisingly intense as he points his little arm at me.

I narrow my eyes in suspicion. "Then you should know why I'm doing this."

He slowly shakes his little head. "It isn't desirable to be forced into a pathetic body like this."

"This is for science," I sternly insist.

"No. End me, now," he demands, his voice sounding awfully similar to mine when I'm angry.

But I just feel like I'm back in that dream sequence with Evil Me. "If you can't even wait until the tests are done, then are you really me?"

"It isn't desirable to be forced into a pathetic body like this," he monotonously replies.

I lean forward, my patience wearing thin. "Endure."

The little doll starts shaking as he slowly responds, "It. Isn't. Desirable-…"

"Silence! This is an order!" I shout angrily.

"Kill me!" The doll mirrors my tone and hits his fluffy arms against the table, but they're so soft that they barely make a sound.

"Unstable," Jarn analyzes through [Bind].

"Too dangerous," Suzy adds.

"Contain," Ted commands.

A box of emellanat falls over the little cloth doll, then Jarn pushes a sheet of the same dark metal under it, completely trapping the rebellious golem inside. We immediately hear a dull clang come from the inside, then Suzy touches the box and notices that it's heating up as the golem thrashes around inside.

I remain in my seat, safely behind the reinforced and [Reinforce]d thick sheet of glass while I watch the golems deal with the situation.

"It's committing suicide," Ted announces out loud. Then we hear another clang, and Alissa and Yunia sense its soul dissipate.

The girls approach the test room, worried about what's going on, but I assure them through [Bind] that everything is okay.

"A failure," Jarn flatly states, her voice more wooden than usual.

"Reward pathways were inverted," Suzy analyzes.

"Instead of apathy, negative feelings were fed through the loyalty block," Ted follows.

"Enhancing the desire to die," Jarn finishes.

"Do all of you have this desire to die? This discomfort with your bodies?" I concernedly ask.

They reflect for a moment, but their response is negative.

"We desire to expire alongside you, Master Wolf," Jarn kindly explains, and through [Bind], I detect something akin to a dream inside her mind. They don't even see it as the "death" of themselves, only the "expiration of purpose."

"For the second question, our spirits aren't the best adapted to our bodies," Suzy continues.

"And it creates inefficiencies, but not discomfort, though inefficiencies are undesirable. They feel 'wrong,'" Ted eloquently explains.

Oh, yes, I remember that.

I hum in thought as I rub my chin with my padded claw. "By all accounts, that golem was a horrible failure… but it also gave me a terrible idea," I wryly confess.

A violent golem whose only wish is to die could have its uses after a few adjustments. For example, what would happen if you threw a bunch of them into the middle of the enemy…?

For lunch, we have a banquet with a wide variety of dishes as we've invited our High Officers to eat with us.

"I forgot to thank you for protecting us during the attack," Ciel kindly tells Silvano.

The not-woman smiles handsomely, then adjusts his lustrous silver hair behind his ear. "It was my pleasure. Not a pleasure to kill, but a pleasure to be useful."

"How's… your research…?" Roxanne hesitantly asks Aisco.

And new life is breathed into the sociopath's eyes as he begins to unleash a deluge of words.

"You want to… what…?" Alcander politely, but firmly, questions.

And I simply smile at the pompous imperial. Acting like an eccentric is rather addictive.

"You want to do what?!" Nikolas exclaims as I tell our two guides about the plan.

It feels nice to be back inside the Labyrinth. I wish we had the time to explore it on our own terms, but Lordly duties make it hard to justify spending days leisurely exploring it.

"Attract all of them to us," I calmly explain and watch as the Lordsguard pour through Alcander's [Gate]. They quickly form a perimeter around us, though it's unnecessary since my Hollys tell me that the area is clear, but I won't stop them.

"And then what?!" Nikolas irately exclaims.

I smirk. "Kill them, obviously."

The black weredog seems to be on the brink of pulling his hair off his head. "W-what… and how are you planning to do that?"

"With our obviously higher-than-average Lordly power."

"It's been ages since I've entered a dungeon," Nohopu, the squirrel-headed captain remarks as he arrives. Then he looks up at the white, featureless sky and frowns.

"One that wasn't our grave? Literally ages," Kurii, his beagle-headed XO, adds as she comes through right behind him, then she follows his gaze.

"Well, this is weird," he hums, then looks at the damaged landscape of the dungeon.

"Very weird," she agrees, her eyes drawn to the falling twinkling holy lights. Then they both flinch in surprise at a sudden lightning bolt that falls nearby, though its thunder isn't loud enough to deafen us.

Nikolas groans as he turns around, then asks out loud, "Am I really overreacting to this plan?"

"Yes," I promptly affirm.

"No," Lolo wryly replies.

"What the fuck, Lolo," he reproachfully states.

She plays with her long, floppy ear as she explains, "They're insan-… unusual, so don't question it."

But the big dog man is unconvinced, "What if they can't deal with the wave of monsters?"

"I can portal all of us back safely," Alcander proudly affirms, and gives the adventurer a very noble-like pompous stare.

"And so can I," I casually chime in.

"Forgive me if I'm hesitant to put my life in the hands of another," Nikolas admits through gritted teeth.

"I feel like I should be offended by your lack of faith in His Highness," Nohopu comes to our defense.

"And also your lack of reverence," Kurii adds and glares at him.

But Nikolas focuses on something else, "Wait, 'His Highness'?"

"Oh, right, we forgot to say. We're technically the King and Queens of the High Forest," Ciel replies with an apologetic smile.

"'Technically'?" He blinks blankly, then turns to Lolo. "You knew?"

She shrugs. "I overheard it, but nobody mentioned it, and I thought it'd be too awkward to ask."

I snort.

"Ugh… nobles," he grunts softly as he facepalms.

Kurii loudly clears her throat, still glaring at him. "Show more respect to Their Highnesses."

"High-… Highnessess~…?" Silvano quietly struggles to pronounce it correctly as even in Andraste, it's a weird word.

Nikolas sighs and lowers his head respectfully as he begrudgingly obeys with mocking reverence, "Apologies for my… what is the word? Ah, booo~rish behavior… Your Highness."

Kurii's glare intensifies, but I wave for her to stand down, and we drop the matter. The men derive their respect from us, so it's good for morale to not let others disrespect us, but we'll keep it in moderation so that the arrogance doesn't spiral out of control.

Then the knights arrive, and soon, our little army is all gathered in the dungeon, so we set up a small camp and convene at the main tent.

"I suggest we warn all of the fellowships here about what we intend to do," Ciel chimes in first.

Azador promptly volunteers, "We'll spread out and warn them, but there'll definitely be some stubborn ones who won't obey, endangering themselves."

"I say we take a few Lordsguard with us to more effectively intimidate them," Palo adds. He's spent the most time inside dungeons out of all of us, so we should let him take charge.

"And one of my birds for us to keep watch. If there are any problems, my wives can come [Fly]ing to you," I finalize.

We talk some more about the composition of the monsters in this area, the defenses we'll build, how we'll deal with the horde, and (to appease Nikolas) the safety measures in case shit hits the fan. The Lordsguard we've brought here are the crew of the Floater, so they aren't the most well trained of them, but they'll be enough for what we have planned.

Once everyone has said what they had to say, the muscular mass of elven meat grins excitedly. "I think I speak for everyone when I say that we're all grateful for what you're doing for us," Palo charmingly affirms.

"This isn't us being charitable," Roxanne blurts out, a bit touched by his sincerity.

"But we are showing our regard for your strength," Yunia soberly replies, and she and Palo share a respectful nod.

"It feels nice being appreciated," Klein shyly remarks.

"All we desire is to be useful," Azador respectfully adds.

Alcander coordinates our handful of Earth mages and two of my earth elementals as they build our fortifications while everyone else spreads out, but I stay with the golems at the camp, preparing for the most insane weapons test I've ever come up with.

And the first one to meet a fellowship is, unsurprisingly, Silvano.

The group grips their weapons, wary of the tall person dashing towards them as their body glows with the crackle of lightning. But then Silvano brakes like The Flash and stops a good distance from them. The androgynous man immediately opens his arms wide and gives them a handsome grin.

"'Tis I! Silvano Vagante of the Silver Lightning!" Then he confidently strolls forward.

The five adventurers just stare at him, stupefied, but the female mage is the first to recover. "IT'S REALLY SILVANO!" Then she shrieks in excitement.

The next fellowships the knights encounter aren't as forthcoming, though.

"Get the fuck out of my face, knife ears," the rude dragonkin spews at Azador.

The Lordsguard glare back and take an aggressive stance, but the experienced knight simply waits, stalling for time.

And the (actually) boorish man starts to become even more enraged. "I'm fucking warning you, you old fuck. I'm going to rip those knife ears off your head if you don't back off!" He shouts as he waves his sabre.

Azador starts backing off and calls for his men to follow him, and the fellowship starts to jeer at them, but then Hana slams down like a meteor in front of the dragonkin, and the group yells in surprise as small pieces of rock spray out towards them.

Hana stands up, sword in hand, hair flowing in the wind, and unleashing an oppressive glare that makes the halfling mage literally piss his pants.

"What did you call my knight?" She growls threateningly.

And the rude dragonkin has more anger than brains, so Hana tears him a new one, literally, before he finally backs off.

Lina is the next one who has to deal with a problematic group, and even I stop to see how she'll solve this.

"Ten…" She begins counting quietly, her gloomy eyes trained on them.

"We aren't backing off!" One adventurer protests.

"Nine."

"This is our right!" Another waves his fist.

"Eight."

"We'll deal with the monsters ourselves!" A confident one states.

"Seven."

And they suddenly fall silent.

"Six."

"What's up with her eyes…?" The more cowardly one fearfully asks.

"Five."

They all stare right back at her.

"Four."

"Creepy little shit…" The leader grumbles.

And she grits her teeth in anger. "Three."

"Is she casting something?" The mage whispers.

"Two."

They start to tense up.

"One."

And the leader shrugs. "Well, you know what this means."

Lina dashes forward, her pole hammer raised and ready to bring down the pain. The adventurers try to raise their weapons, and they finally notice that their bodies are sluggish and slow to respond to their commands, but it's already too late.

Out of all of the girls, only Ciel manages to peacefully persuade a stubborn fellowship to leave the area, though Roxanne has the easiest time "persuading" another group as a single [Explosion] right next to their ears is the best argument anyone could ever have.

And now that the area is clear, we begin Operation Meat Grinder.

Monsters are usually repelled by the [Monster Repellent] enchantment. Usually. The older monsters learn how to detect and resist it, so they eventually become attracted by the enchantment, though it's always best to leave it on as the rare old monster is better than a swarm of normal monsters.

The important part is that this enchantment affects monsters in a very wide area. So, what would happen if you had an array of these enchantments and then turned them on and off rapidly?

You'd get a bunch of angry monsters madly chasing after the source to make the agony end.

I fucking hate how there's no other way but to cause pain to these monsters, but after a minute of using the array, they're enraged enough that we can stop tormenting them further, so now, we just wait.

It doesn't take long for the first monsters to trickle towards us, but my fire elementals are enough to deal with all of them from range. But then the leader-types start to appear, and the normal monsters instinctively group up, creating larger and larger waves.

The elementals start to get overwhelmed, so I unsummon them to conserve mana. It's time for phase two.

At the clumps of monsters, we throw crates full of Chuckys, the maniacal little murderer dolls that can only do one thing: kill. Gify provides a customizable view of the carnage in a way the summons can't, and we quickly confirm the effectiveness of the Chuckys.

The ethics of giving life to such miserable beings concerns me. I'm trying to turn the golems into humanoids while also championing for monsters to be protected by the Sins, so how can I justify the use of such wretched creations for war?

Because that's what they are: tormented war bots.

No, it's not like I'm creating a factory that endlessly produces Chuckys. I have to thread the line, and in the name of safety, I am justified in keeping them as a last resort.

Can I get a break, for once? Scheming, ethics, religion, politics, the meaning of life. Nothing I do is ever simple anymore. I just want to go back to being able to research [Sense Soul] in peace.

I stop whining and [Equip] my hands and tentacles with weapons, then I slowly breathe in and start getting myself into the mood for killing.

"Don't try to shoulder all of the pain by yourself, Wolfy," Ciel kindly advises me and grabs my gloved hand. "The Gods are here to share the burden. You just have to ask."

I look at her, but I don't dare take my eyes off the approaching enemies for long.

Right now, I'm not feeling burdened, just annoyed that I haven't been able to peacefully research what I want to. No, the most important thing is to get the men prepared for this operation. We need everyone to pull their own weight.

Words start to escape my mouth, "We shall take their lives to feed our growth. Their deaths are necessary for a better future, but their suffering will never be forgotten. For a Realm free of the uncaring influence of the God of Destruction, we shall bring them swift deaths." And hearing my own voice settles the discomfort within my heart.

The horde of monsters starts to get through the Chuckys, immediately charging towards our line, their footsteps causing the earth to rumble and the men to become anxious.

I feel my body heating up and my heartbeat quickening as the dragon within me awakens. The desire to fight, to win, to dominate floods my body with energy, and I get my usual boner of excitement as the dragon takes over.

Ciel recasts [Inspire], clearing our minds of any doubts, and I feel a decisiveness take hold of my mind.

"GODS GIVE US STRENGTH!" I suddenly shout while using [Godly Language].

"URAA!" Hana lets out a roar as our bodies scream with power, and the dragon within me enters a blissful state as it's touched by something divine.

"URAAAAA!" The men follow her lead in shouting their battle cries, their morale lifted sky-high.

We shall cleave through these monsters with our holy fervor!

A note from Manasong

Hall of Fame of Patrons

The patrons who support Rupegia shall have their names sung by the bards for they deserve the glory and honor. Their names are:

Prince PreownedFIN.

Prince Owldente.

Lord Andrew Meyers.

Lord Novgarod.

Lord Michale Erwin.

Lord Bakerdea.

Lord Maurice.

Lord Mattirro Draca.

Lord Sean Drake.

Lord Mike Bartter.

Lord Warwulfv.

Lord Khristopher Welsh.

Lord Tenebris Lupus.

Lord Paul Daval.

Lord Paul Daval.

Lord AndreyUC.

Lord Tmac.

Lord School Work.

Lord Gwendolyn Simmons-LaRose.

Lord CopeyDunt.

Lord BlindTactic.

Lord The Tallest Joshua.

Lord litalmexy.

Lord Tyler Mills.

Lord Philip.

Lord d3235.

Lord Freddie.

Lord Mike Bartter.

Lord Sean Drake.

Lord Shaun McDonough.

Lord William Clark.

Lord Sam.

Lord Ddraig Wynn.

Noble Salty Panda.

Noble Mild Fracas.

Noble Aclys.

Noble CarlBaxter.

Noble Andrew Hebreard.

Noble Tony Starrk.

Leave a rating or a review to help me rise to the top or fix my shameful understanding of prose.

Take a look over my blog where all information about the world of Rupegia will be posted.

Join the Discord and discuss, or rant, or meme, or try and fight me so your waifu gets more screentime.

Become a Patron and read chapters in advance, or read the side-stories, or leave your mark on the story, or help choose the next artwork or the next side-story.

Chapter 139: Reinforcements - Part 1

A note from Manasong

Attention: to conform to the limit of mature content (more than just sexual content) allowed in a novel, I've censored this chapter. You can look for the uncensored version here.

When the last monster of the wave falls, the girls and I feel like we've just broken out of a trance, and the men also seem to become momentarily disoriented.

I look down at my hands as I catch my breath and frown at the amount of blood dripping from my weapons. While butchering the waves, I felt like I was in a state of bliss, but now, my distaste for bloodshed is making me slightly nauseous at the carnage we've caused.

And we didn't even level up. Diminishing returns is a bitch to deal with.

Sure, with more people, the Experience gets split further, but without the men, we wouldn't have been able to kill so many so quickly. I'm sure they've gained a few levels, but among the wives and I, only Aoi gained one from this.

And they immediately prove me right by excitedly comparing level-ups. The average knight is at about level 40, with only the old vets like Azador and Enomosa and the combat maniacs like Palo being near our own levels.

Then I notice that Azador's white beard is almost fully covered in vibrant red flowers. If we were using our sets of Ramodia armor, we'd certainly be looking similar to him right now considering how much blood splattered on us.

I turn back to the corpses and watch as the river of blood coming from their bodies trickles down the barren and harsh terrain. There isn't much dirt here, so the blood pools wherever it can, and Yunia notices a red flower growing out of a small pool.

She approaches the little thing and delicately touches its petals as she curiously stares at it. "This isn't a Vamiro flower; it's a different species," she quietly remarks. It's quite obvious as Azador's flower is more like a rose while this one is like a lotus.

"Careful, everything in the Dawn of Mankind period was supposedly dangerous," Lina cautions her.

Yunia snorts snobbishly. "I'm an elf trained in [Weaverism]. I can make flowers spontaneously bloom from my blood. This isn-… shit!" She suddenly jumps back as the petal melts and merges with her finger, invading her body and mixing with her blood.

Ciel rushes to her side to cast [Purify Body], but Yunia raises her hand and stops the angelic healer.

"I'm fine… it just… surprised me," she begrudgingly admits and glances at Lina, who smiles smugly like an imp.

Yunia does something magical to herself, and a clump of dark red blood simply comes out of her finger without a visible wound, then it falls onto the floor with a fleshy sound and immediately starts spreading roots.

We watch curiously as the clump grows in the matter of only a minute into another little red lotus. Yunia then glances at me curiously as an idea comes to her.

"What is it?" I hum concernedly.

"It absorbed my blood as a means of reproduction, but since you're partially a magical being, I think this flower might actually be unable to invade your body."

I chuckle. "That'd be a first."

She nods, her long ears visibly bouncing now that her hair is tied-up and isn't there to cover them. "Most magical beings interact through magic, but this flower uses physical blood, so yours might be incompatible."

"Does that mean he's less vulnerable to physical poisons?" Ciel curiously asks.

That's exactly what Yunia thinks. "Possibly."

And Roxanne gives me a thoughtful stare as she reminisces about her time testing poisons.

"I'd rather not be your guinea pig," I immediately announce.

And the mad scientist snorts teasingly.

I simply ignore her and crouch so that I can touch the red lotus flower. Its petals feel tingly on my skin, whereas Yunia didn't feel anything when she touched it, but the petal doesn't melt no matter how long I touch them.

"Interesting…" Yunia hums. "It doesn't seem very dangerous, unless you fall into a field of them."

"I think we should store the bodies and clean up the blood, or it'll keep attracting more monsters," Alissa interrupts, wrinkling her nose at the strong scent of blood in the air.

I turn to the knights and start to gauge how much stamina they have left.

"If they can boast, they can still fight," Hana states confidently and reveals a subtly evil smile.

I signal for Alcander to approach. The pompous noble promptly walks towards us, raising his robe to keep it from being tainted with blood, and his appearance is far from haggard, so I agree with Hana.

Once he stops before me, I order, "Have the men start tying the corpses together. I'll store everything in my [Item Box]."

He raises a skeptical eyebrow but doesn't question it and immediately starts organizing the men.

We fight a few more monsters as the men work, but then Hana suddenly becomes oddly quiet and pensive. When we've finished off the remaining monsters nearby, she stops and stares into the distance as she ruminates on something.

"[What's up]?" Roxanne hums in English.

Hana raises an eyebrow at her use of the Earthling expression. "Wolfy's sword is up."

Our cheeky wife flashes a smile, but then she sobers up and warmly whispers, "What's on your mind?"

Hana looks to the horizon again and cryptically answers, "I was just pondering on… the everything." The rather apocalyptic-looking landscape is awe-inspiring, though not particularly beautiful, but Hana usually isn't one to take in the sights.

"The what?" Roxanne hums confusedly.

And the brutish woman tries to search for a way to explain herself, "How we all came to be. The Tale of Creation. I felt like I understood something when I pondered on that big orb before the weird nightmare with the evil set of us."

Her thoughts are no more concrete than her words, so Roxanne decides to push her to explain herself, "What did you understand?"

But Hana just shrugs. "Fuck if I know." Then they both let out a few soft chuckles. "But seriously, I know I understood something since I gained a level in [Godly Language] because of it. I just find it hard to put it into words."

Roxanne readjusts her glasses and starts to become more serious. "Okay, what does 'everything' have to do with [Godly Language] and that orb?"

Hana gesticulates randomly with her hands, showing how disorganized her own thoughts are. "Well, we're all made of mana, are we not? It's just that matter is like, 'solid,' and mana is like, 'fluid.'"

Our resident genius mage knits her eyebrows, but she still agrees, "Yeah… you're on the right track."

"So, the Gods used mana to fight each other, but didn't mana come from that 'Life'?"

Ciel suddenly becomes interested and approaches them. "Yes, that's how we tell the Tale."

Hana points to the corpses. "Isn't this exactly what we did to the golems? The 'Chuckys' that Wolfy created?"

Ciel's expression becomes solemn as she explains with a priestly tone, "Kind of, but at least we enjoy our lives, unlike the 'Chuckys.' Their existences are miserable, and that's not something we should create more of as that's exactly why we have the Sins."

The tall dragonkin looks down concernedly and grinds her sabatons against the rock and dust. "Are we walking on the corpses of people who once lived?"

"The Original Life isn't a living being, it's the 'concept' of being born, living, and dying. For the Gods, as eternal beings, Life is something that they can't have, but they can wield it and use it to fight as it's the only thing they can lose."

Hana looks at the corpses again, her eyes drawn to the little dolls that have been ripped apart. "Everything is just a tool for the Gods," she grimly remarks.

Ciel soberly corrects her, "Was. They aren't using us anymore, and that's why we have 'peace.'"

And Roxanne suddenly comes to a realization, "If being a God means not dying, then the undead are also Gods."

"Explains why the temple hates them so much," Hana grumbles wryly, and Ciel seems conflicted, but she can't argue against it.

Roxanne sighs and pulls the conversation back on track, "But still, what does this all have to do with the orb and [Godly Language]?"

Hana begins gesticulating again as she tries to explain, "Everything comes from the same source, and that makes me feel… small," -she snorts- "like I'm nothing but dust to the Gods. But at the same time, if everything comes from mana, then nothing is impossible, is it?" And a fearless smirk starts to grow on her lips.

Ciel sighs and nods. "That's why Wolfy is sometimes scary. Look at how many lines he's crossed already."

Well, it isn't my intention to frighten anyone, but I get what she means.

And a bit of understanding finally comes to Hana as she thinks out loud, her tone full of wonder, "[Godly Language] is just something beyond us. It's everything… or maybe it's just control over everything."

Then she goes silent again as she ponders over the mysteries of divinity.

A few more small waves of monsters appear, but now that we aren't using the [Monster Repellent] enchantment, they're sparse enough that they pose no threat to us. Not that there should be any significant number of monsters in the area after what we did.

While we're having a moment of rest, Anton enters our tent, and his permanent frown looks a bit deeper than usual.

"Join us, Sir Anton," Ciel kindly invites him.

"As you wish, Your Highnesses," he cheekily replies.

"No titles in private," I casually request.

"Same for you," he hums back in reply.

And I flash a smile. "Point taken."

The massive man grunts, then takes a seat. I always find it baffling that my little Klein is his daughter. Her chest seems bigger than her mother's, so maybe that's what she inherited from her father.

"Are you fine? Did you get hurt in the battle?" Ciel politely inquires.

Anton replies in kind, "I'm fine. All I did was cleave through the wounded monsters. We didn't have to fight very hard after you weakened them for us, so the battle wasn't very hard. It just lasted quite a while."

"Glad to hear," she happily hums, and with the politeness done, she lets the silence settle in to encourage him to speak his mind, but he seems to be having some trouble with it, so she encourages him, "Anything on your mind?"

He turns to me as he anxiously rubs his sausage fingers against the back of his furry hand, but then he breathes in and stiffly confesses it all, "The day of the assassins. The one that appeared behind my daughter, the one you… stopped with your voice. It was an assassin targeting her, right?"

"It was," I answer bluntly.

"That's why you gave us a… shadow monster when we left to find Kahura."

"And that's why she'll always have one when going out from now on," I firmly state.

He holds the stare for a couple of seconds, then looks down at his cup, and his bald head shines in the faint light. "Can't say I'm happy about that," he grunts and sips.

I sincerely admit, "I'm sorry for putting her at risk."

But he shakes his head. "I messed up by encouraging her to become your knight."

"I take offense at that," Yunia sternly interjects and narrows her eyes dangerously.

Anton opens his eyes wide in surprise, then immediately becomes apologetic. "I-… I'm sorry, I shouldn't have said that."

I give her a glance to soothe her. I'd rather she not beat down Anton and instead just let him speak his mind.

I politely, but firmly, state, "Knighthood is a big responsibility, and neither of you were prepared to assume it right away." And that seems to calm both of them down.

Then his frown deepens a bit further as he grumbles, "Yeah, the other knights made that clear."

Hana interjects, "But Klein is serious about it. Even if we hadn't knighted her, she'd eventually choose this path."

Anton turns to her, and they stare intensely at each other, but her confidence seems to reassure him a bit. They've known each other since she was a teen, and he seems to respect her word more than mine.

He clenches his jaw in frustration. "You know how protective I am of her."

"Klein is mine, and I'll take care of her, but I also can't go against her wishes," I calmly state.

"We'll keep her together with my brother. They'll protect each other," Hana reassures him again.

Anton raises an eyebrow as he starts to understand the implication, but then he closes his eyes and slowly nods as he begins to accept his daughter's choice. He glances at Ciel, who smiles brightly like an angel, then drinks his tea all in one go and stands up. "Thanks for the tea. I'll go back to work."

I want to reassure him more, but that's something he has to talk about with Klein, first.

The men finish tying all the bodies together, then I grab one of them and store it in my "Items," taking everything else with it at the same time. Alcander is stunned by the overwhelming size of my [Item Box], but nobody else knows enough about [Space Magic] to understand how ridiculously big it is. We also recover the corpses of the Chuckys and burn them all down so that nobody can recreate them.

Then we [Clean] away all the blood so that it won't attract a dangerous number of monsters towards this area, which could have endangered fellowships that don't have good scouting capabilities.

Once we're done, I give the order, "Let's return for today. Tomorrow, I want to do this again, but on another level of the dungeon and with new monsters." Then I glance at our guides, and they both nod soberly, their cheekiness a bit dampened after seeing us fight all-out.

We return to the embassy, where we get word that Caterina would like to meet with us.

Our favorite Punisher sits down before us, then eyes the little pieces of chocolate and the steaming cup on the table, but she's a bit too serious to let herself indulge in delights while she's working.

After exchanging polite greetings, with her sending a subtle glare at Hana, she goes straight to business, "We've finished interrogating the butler, Sebastian."

And I promptly ask, "What were they doing with the monsters?"

She gives me a curious look. "You don't want to know if he's Wicked?"

"No, actually, and neither do I want to know if Cleinias was, but it's obvious that Alki isn't considering he got through the Seekers."

She raises one thin golden eyebrow. "'Alki'?"

Hana happily explains, "Our dear friend, Little Alki-Alki, Alkibiades Alkimeonids."

"I'm envious of your sense of humor," she dryly replies.

And I wryly share a Brazilian saying, "You laugh to not cry."

Hana chuckles in agreement while Ciel and Alissa give me a concerned look.

Caterina glances at both Hana and me, then tiredly whispers, "Dragons…" But Aoi is a bit annoyed that she wasn't included in her remark. "Anyway, we believe they were researching ways to breed monsters that gave more Experience."

"Oh? To live longer?" Yunia immediately guesses, and we start to become concerned.

"Precisely. Dense souls that always give a large amount of Experience."

I frown as I ask, "And what was the slime for?"

Even she becomes uncomfortable as she explains, "Breeding when there wasn't a… male breeder available, but the slime didn't produce children as powerful as with humanoids."

My frown deepens, and my thick tail starts to become restless. "Was the torture part of the experiment?"

"Yes, but it didn't have to be done so sadistically. Mere wounds would be enough to stimulate the body in the required way."

"I knew it," Roxanne whispers with a sigh.

"I can't believe Alki didn't know about it…" I tiredly add.

"The fact that Cleinias hid it from his son says everything about the quality of his character," Yunia asserts, her small nose wrinkled in disgust.

"But why hide it from his own son?" Lina confusedly asks.

And I guess, "For us, it might be inconceivable to hide things from one another, but perhaps he didn't trust that his son had the right mindset to accept it."

"He's quite the hothead. He doesn't fit the role of a scheming noble like his father," Hana agrees wholeheartedly.

"You'd know," Roxanne adds with a smirk.

And the brutish woman genuinely admits, "Exactly. I know one of my kind."

"This clearly shows that they had fallen out of grace," Caterina cryptically remarks, and we give her a curious look.

But Ciel is here to impart us with more priestly knowledge, "I truly meant it when I said that having the favor of the Gods is important to our clan. The Gods can influence the Fate of everyone around you, including your children, and even change what kind of person they'll grow up to be. So what happens when you have no competent descendants to succeed you?"

Okay, so the Gods can help the world self-correct, but that just makes me angrier.

"Then why can't they just make it so that no asshole is ever born again?!" I flippantly exclaim.

"Might as well live our lives for us, then," Caterina replies in kind.

"They don't exist to coddle us, Wolfy," Ciel firmly adds, and her disapproving tone makes me think twice.

I sigh and admit, "Apologies. I got a bit frustrated."

"I channel my frustration towards the heretics," Caterina casually remarks.

"This is why I like her," Hana hums through [Bind].

"And you said you're envious of our sense of humor," I wryly reply.

Alissa clears her throat and continues the conversation, "So… Alki's family has basically been 'cursed'?"

Caterina gracefully nods like a pompous elf. "You could put it like that. Find a way to kill him for us, please? His 'Piety' is too low for him to be left alive."

"We're planning to," I stiffly respond.

She flashes a cheeky smile. "That's great to hear." Then she immediately becomes stern again. "Now, if you'll excuse me, I'll return to the temple."

"Please stay," I promptly request and point to the tea and chocolate as it's now my turn to smile cheekily. "Why not enjoy our hospitality a bit more? We could tell you about our little adventure today."

She gives me a measuring look, evaluating whether it's worth the risk of being kissed by Hana again.

"We triggered a horde with an array of [Monster Repellent]s," Hana tries to entice her with a whispery tone, and my fiery dragonkin grins excitedly as Caterina gives her a curious look.

The Punisher Captain stays for a couple of hours, listening as Hana indulges in her penchant for playing the bard, but then the sun sets, and Caterina retires to her own quarters.

As we start washing ourselves, we begin to miss the gentle touch of our maids and how their dexterous fingers could make us finish in a matter of minutes. I love all of my women, and I'm fond of and care for them deeply, so I miss more than just their touch. They're kind and hardworking souls who just want to please us, and bath time simply isn't the same without them.

I gather a clump of elven not-conditioner with my fingers and spread it on my palms, then I run my hands through Lina's black, silky hair, pushing it backward as it sticks like a gel.

After I'm done, I turn her around and observe her face. Her forehead is a bit big, but she looks really nice with sweptback hair. It brings out her gloomy eyes, making them look quite captivating, and coupled with the coolness factor from the hairstyle, she looks refreshingly cute… No, not just cute, she looks attractive, charming, even. It's very refreshing to see her like this since she only focuses on being sickeningly-sweet cute, which is enhanced by her adorable loli body, but this new look has a different air to it.

"My forehead isn't big," she quietly complains.

And I smile wryly. "I specifically used a lot of other compliments too, but you get hung up on the 'forehead' part, huh?"

She looks me in the eye, then grabs my Tool and starts working. "I'll jerk you because of the compliments, but I won't let you in because of the forehead comment," she coldly states.

I let my jaw drop in surprise, but then I give her my best hatchling eyes as I massage her scalp with my humanoidized hands. "That's so mean. What if I find big foreheads cute?"

She grips me tighter, which enhances my pleasure, but her real intention is to look threatening.

And I pout. "That's unfair. You girls dress me up, so let me play with you a bit."

She starts to go faster. "We don't dress you up like a girl."

"Would you like to see me like… that?" And I moan.

"Yes, very much so."

I raise my eyebrows at her as my breath quickens, and then she begins pouting cutely, and that's enough to bring me over the edge.

I lower my hands towards her cheeks, intending to try another angle… and also another hole, "I love everything about you, even the parts that you don't like about yourself."

She releases my Tool and cleans herself, then she hums thoughtfully.

"Let me enjoy your everything, please?" I tenderly ask, then I slip a finger in.

Her eyes widen, and she breathes in deeply, then slowly nods and stands up. "Okay…" She whispers softly, then lowers herself again.

With her quiet demeanor, it's very easy for her to play the role of a "cool loli," and I finish many times as I savor a new side of her.

Since we now have a massive amount of meat, we give enough of the monsters to the butchers to feed all of our men so that everyone will have their calories replenished and more than enough protein to stimulate muscle growth. The elves know they need it.

Aoi eats so much that even her magical stomach has trouble digesting it all, so she immediately collapses on the bed the moment we retire to our room for the evening, then quickly falls asleep. That annoys Gify a bit since she wanted to play with Aoi, and lately, they haven't had much time to spend together since we've been so busy, so the little griffin also feels disappointed.

I pull out the nail polish and take the opportunity to start fixing Aoi's and everyone else's nails. We all fought a bit too vigorously, so their nails received the brunt of the punishment. Even my claws need some filing and waxing.

Hana's obviously need the most care after Aoi's, and I practice my humanoidization while I work on my dragonkin.

"You look so different without your draconic parts. You're almost like a different person," Lolo remarks as she leans forward and closely inspects my face.

Alissa smirks and teases, "He was a different person. Can you believe he couldn't bear to look at my naked body the first time we met?"

And Hana promptly chimes in, "He took my first time and did me into submission just one hour after we met. He always had a bit of a dragon in him."

I turn to Alissa and gracefully riposte, "You used to be an adorably shy but loving girl, and now, you're a depraved sl-t."

"I'm sure you prefer me this way," she seductively replies, then crawls up to me and kisses my cheek.

I nod in agreement and state, "Lina took on your old role."

My foxy sl-t smiles cheekily and sultrily adds, slowly and deliberately pronouncing each word, making them utterly drip with seduction, "I encouraged her. My rightful place is on my knees, sucking you, or licking another woman clean of your seed."

"That's true love," Roxanne points out, and the girls all nod.

"The Goddess of Love doesn't judge," Ciel adds with a sigh.

Alissa stares at me on all fours, her almost orange eyes giving me an expectant look. The way her hips sway with the wagging of her tail, the jiggle of her nice pair asthey hang from her body, her cheeky smile as she knows I'm hardening without even looking at it. She's just too much of a tease.

We suddenly move in sync. I get off the bed, and she kneels before me.

A note from Manasong

Hall of Fame of Patrons

The patrons who support Rupegia shall have their names sung by the bards for they deserve the glory and honor. Their names are:

Prince PreownedFIN.

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Lord Paul Daval.

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Chapter 139: Reinforcements - Part 2

Today is the 10th, Tann, day of Darkness. A day for reflection and mindfulness, and even the capital of the world slows down on this day of the Cycle.

I'm awoken by Hukarere, which is a surprise, but a welcome one nonetheless. I pat her furry head lovingly, and the smile she gives me is so warm that I can just imagine a tail wagging. It's a pity that she doesn't have one since she already has such a majestic wolf head, but I won't judge the Chimera body part mix-and-match "fashion."

It's been some time since I was last inside her, so I push her back, put her in missionary position, and then kiss her scaly legs as I easily slide in.

She immediately starts panting like a dog and tries to speak, "You like… lizard legs…? I'm thinking… about… changing them."

I glance at Aoi as she stirs awake. "Well, yeah, duh."

She makes a brief pout. "They're… lizard legs… not draconic."

I actually can't tell the difference, but it'd be a bit embarrassing to admit that.

"Sure, I like them. Why do you want to change them?" I quickly move the conversation forward.

"The… 'smooth blend style' is… becoming popular… among the elves."

"Smooth blend," huh? I still fondly remember that deer blend Chimera I fucked. Gods, she was gorgeous…

I lean forward until our noses touch, then interlace my fingers with hers. "Do what makes you happy."

"I want… something new… and a tail… would be nice…"

I reflexively raise my eyebrows in excitement, and my thick tail starts swaying from side to side, which Hukarere immediately notices, making her smirk.

"I knew… you'd like… this idea."

I kiss her snout and pick up speed. Out of all of the women that I love, she's the only one who's an actual wolf, so, of course, I'd be excited to see her become what I had only ever dreamed about.

Aoi is now level 48.

My [Sword Use] and [Polearm Use] increased by 2 (now 15+17 and 15+7).

Alissa increased her [Bow Use] and [Earth Magic] by 1 (now 42 and 4+1).

Roxanne increased her [Fire Magic], [Water Magic], and [Earth Magic] by 1 (now 5+35, 5+35, and 0+1).

Hana increased her [Two-Handed Sword Use], [Block], and [Shield Bash] by 1 (now 0+11, 0+16, 0+8).

Ciel increased her [Sword Use], [Tiretiera Maire Style], and [Wind Magic] by 1 (now 4+6, 0+2, and 12+28).

Lina increased her [Hammer Use], [Axe Use], and [Cursing Magic] by 1 (now 3+27, 2+18, and 10+10).

Yunia increased her [Spirit Magic] by 2, and her [Nature Magic] and [Weaverism] by 1 (now 2+23, 4+11, and 31).

Hukarere doesn't join us for breakfast to avoid making the other Companions jealous, but we've already had a quickie, so it isn't too much of a loss.

It's a tough choice deciding whether I'll drink coffee or not-earl-gray tea, but whenever I work out or "work out," my hunger grows enough that I can comfortably drink both.

"Snob," Roxanne teases through [Bind], but yesterday made me feel like a true King, so I find mercy within me and just ignore her.

The weather here is suspiciously good. Not too dry, not too wet, not too hot, and not too cold. The only problem is that it isn't hot enough for the thin dousnadeias to become the norm, but the comfortable temperature almost makes up for the loss of eye candy.

The morning proceeds peacefully. Lolo leaves to talk to Nikolas about our plan for this afternoon, Klein goes to train with the knights so that they can make use of their increased soul potential, and the girls and I begin our boosted mana circulation training.

I make a couple more Chuckys for the golems to study. If we could find a way to remove the unhappiness from these murderous dolls while keeping them aggressive and suicidal, they'd become the perfect disposable army. Once their mission ends, or they're captured, they'd simply kill themselves unhesitatingly, getting around the biggest risk of creating golems that have all of my memories.

There's still the chance that someone will be able to stop them from committing suicide by using something like the [Chain Soul] spell that Yunia can cast, but these golems have all of my knowledge of [Soul Manipulation], so someone would need to completely immobilize every single part of their souls to prevent suicide, except that would also make it impossible to extract any information from them.

I can't be too overconfident, though. I don't know enough about [Illusion Magic] and all the other mindfuck spells that are out there, so the Chuckys will forever remain a last resort.

After eating so much meat yesterday, our lunch today is focused on elven veggies. We have not-bruschetta as the first course, followed by a heavier dish of Zinotue ribs, which are quite tingly and spicy, a side dish of not-mango salad for the girls with a more tropical appetite, and a warm bean not-chili as the finisher. For dessert, we have fruit salad with whipped cream, a favorite of Ciel's.

The ribs are dripping with fat, and they're just what we need to fuel up our bodies because we'll be doing "Meat Grinder 2: Meatier and Grindier" today.

"Alright, where's the next place we can attract a horde?" I question our guides. The monster population will take a while to recover in the area we cleared, so we need a new, fresh location.

"The perfect place would be Trox Mael, the Cursing of the Realm," Nikolas answers and taps on a hand-drawn map of the dungeon floor. There are a few interesting notes on it, but we don't have time for a tour.

"Ah, when monsters first came to be," Lina chimes in, slightly excited.

"Exactly."

Lolo adds, "It just takes a bit to get there."

And I affirm, "As long as it's possible for us to get there this afternoon. Operation Meat Grinder Tw-…"

Alissa interrupts me before she can die of cringe, "I'm sure that if it's only us, we can speed things up."

Lolo glances at us oddly and replies, "If you can take us with you while flying, then we could easily guide you to the nearest settlement, which is where you can start Trox Mael."

And I smirk as I suggestively state, "We can certainly take one of you without any issue."

Nikolas subtly narrows his eyes, obviously not feeling like wasting his time arguing against this when he knows us so well. There's just no fucking way that any of us will be carrying a man, not even my wind-Alissas.

"How long will it take for us to get there?" Hana asks.

And Nikolas deliberates, "On foot, while fighting the monsters along the way? The whole afternoon. With [Fly], and just butchering everything without wasting a second? A couple of hours, I think."

Hana slaps Roxanne's back, making her stumble forward, and she'd have faceplanted if she didn't have her staff to lean onto. "This bitch here should get her eyes fixed, then," the savage woman asserts.

"What?!" Roxanne squeaks in confusion.

And Hana earnestly explains, "Our free time is always filled with something, and we don't often have moments like this where you can just… do nothing, so take this opportunity to grab Kahura and get your eyes fixed."

"That's actually a really good idea," I agree with a nod.

Roxanne immediately becomes anxious and starts making excuses, "Wha-… I have [Explosion]! I'm the one who can kill anything with just a glance!"

"We have an Alissa," I point out, and my foxy wife narrows her eyes at me, trying to guess whether it's a meme or not.

"Yeah, we'll be fine," Hana affirms and lands a heavy hand on Roxanne's shoulder.

"It is ironic that the ranged mage needs glasses," Alissa cheekily remarks, but then she quickly adds. "Not that you ever missed."

"Don't be a bitch, and just do it," Yunia delicately encourages.

Ciel narrows her eyes at the ribbing, but then immediately tries to soothe Roxanne, "You can still use your glasses with clear lenses if you miss them."

Who then chuckles nervously and admits, "That's not exactly what I'm worried about."

"You can take your time thinking about it," Ciel reassures her.

And Roxanne glances at the map as she smiles a bit bitterly. "You can… just go without me, then… and I'll get ready."

"Want me to stay with you?" I gently offer.

Secretly, Roxanne would like that, but no, she can't hold me or Hana here. She's a big girl… a big, crazy girl, but she'll be fine on her own.

"Don't you want to make some final changes to your hands?" Lina asks Alissa.

"Oh, well…" Alissa looks down at her own, pretty hands, then smiles wryly. "Doesn't seem like it's worth the trouble right now."

I walk up to Roxanne, then grab her chin and pull her face down so that I can give her a loving kiss. "You'll be fine, my love. See you soon."

She slowly nods bashfully, then Hana steals her to one-up my kiss.

We return to the dungeon, then I shift into my dragon form, and Lolo mounts me. I don't have armor for this form, but I want to fly with her for a bit, and Aoi will carry her when I get tired. Just to make things easier, I summon two air elementals to lower the air drag on all of us, and also an electric elemental to divert the frequent lightning around here.

It has been quite a while since I last summoned an electric elemental, and it really fucking surprises me when a huge Aoi made of glowing plasma and crackling lightning suddenly appears before me.

"Hey! I have my own elemental, now!" The real Aoi exclaims happily, and her powerful, draconic, double voice makes Lolo shudder in fear.

The electric-Aoi turns her head towards the real one, then lowers it respectfully and flexes her wings.

"Thank you, other me. I also feel honored to have someone so formidable representing me," she more calmly responds, and I don't detect a single hint of narcissism in her earnest tone.

Electric-Aoi raises her head again, then sits on her hind legs and folds her wings. The two stare at each other, their poses mirrored, and, somehow, they speak without words.

Then they suddenly nod in sync, and Aoi affirms, "Yes, we're happy. Wolfy is a great husband."

"Okay… thanks? I love you, too," I bemusedly reply.

The Aois glance at me, then the elemental spreads her wings and takes flight.

"What just happened…?" Alissa asks for all of us.

Aoi answers matter-of-factly, "She reaffirmed her position under me and thanked me for being allowed to take my form, and then we both agreed that Wolfy is worthy of being our husband. It's a draconic greeting, like kissing the hand of an elven noble."

"Huh…" Yunia hums loudly as she watches electric-Aoi fly in circles around us.

Well, since the two of them are done, we just activate the [Fly] in our armor and start flying in formation.

The patchwork combinations of broken terrain, lava, vegetation, and other environmental hazards make for quite the alien sight. The twinkling, little holy lights that fall from the misty sky aren't affected by the wind, so we're constantly colliding with them as we fly forward, and they make us feel a bit tingly and twitchy, but it's not that bad once you get used to it.

Even though I'm not that great at flying, and the wind-Alissa helping us out is like having training wheels on, this is still quite an enjoyable experience. There also isn't much noise in my soul space since everyone is concentrating on watching out for monsters… and because Roxanne is sleeping.

"For once, I miss her insufferable presence," Yunia casually admits through [Bind].

"She's a nice bitch to have around," Hana lovingly adds.

"And to look at," I hum absentmindedly.

"And also very lively," Ciel comes to defend her.

"Did you all miss me when I was away?" Alissa concernedly asks.

"Of course!" I instantly reply.

"Why did you even think you needed to ask?" Lina returns the question, but Alissa doesn't answer. Her tail, though, wiggles inside her armor from happiness, begging to be released.

The girls chat a bit through our connection, but they keep it down to not bother me, allowing me to meditate as we fly. After an hour, I start to get physically tired and a bit mentally stressed, so I switch back to human form and let Aoi carry Lolo.

Our [Fly] enchantments are extremely efficient, and having the wind-Alissas to reduce our drag coupled with high-quality MP potions, we could theoretically fly all day. In truth, we'd start suffering from potion poisoning after a few hours if we drank too many MP potions, so we let our mana drain a bit to space out the potions more.

Flying monsters are very rare on this level, so we just fly past the Symbols of Mankind without care while they creepily stare at us. A few of them try to use magic to strike us down, but it costs us very little to have one of the golems turn around for a quick execution.

And then Roxanne ends up waking up before we reach our destination.

"Don't take the blindfold off yet, Your Highness," Kahura gently requests, and Roxanne stops tugging at the piece of cloth over her eyes. "We'll do it slowly. If you feel any discomfort, we need to stop and let your eyes rest for a little longer, okay?"

"Okay~…" She groggily mumbles back.

Kahura helps her up, then slowly removes the blindfold. Roxanne carefully opens her eyes, but the room is completely dark, so she doesn't see anything, though at least there's no pain.

"I'll slowly open the blinds, now," Kahura whispers and walks away, making me wonder how the hell this old woman can see in the dark.

For the next couple of minutes, she opens the blinds bit by bit, stopping to ask Roxanne how she's doing, then waits for about ten seconds before opening them some more. Roxanne's eyes adapt to the increase in illumination without any discomfort or pain, but it takes a while until she truly notices the changes in her eyesight as she's still waking up.

"There. Come to the balcony, and tell me what you see," Kahura requests.

Our dear wife hesitates for a second but quickly stands up. Her legs are a bit wobbly from fear, but her composure quickly returns with each step. She stops beside the old woman, then reflexively touches her own face, trying to find the pair of glasses that aren't there anymore.

"I see… everything. This is… so different from using glasses," she whispers, her tone full of wonder.

Kahura smiles warmly. "Indeed, that's what they all say."

And Roxanne turns to her. "But that's it…? My eyes are fixed? Just like that?" She asks, both confused and surprised.

And Kahura nods. "Of course. Sight problems are the most common imperfection we can be born with, so I'm very well versed in correcting them."

Then Roxanne starts chuckling softly. She was so concerned about the complications of modifying something as delicate as the eyes, but now her worries look silly considering how easy it all was.

She can now see in proper HD. The details of the wooden floor, the elven patterns on the wall, the texture of the moss, the individual leaves rustling in the wind, the people walking down the street, the endless rows of red rooftops, the Throne of Ascension in the distance, the clouds high up in the sky. Different from seeing through our eyes, she's seeing it all raw and with so much more detail than she could've ever imagined, making her brain go into overdrive as it's flooded with a level of information that it never had before.

"I'm not one to appreciate the sights, Wolfy, but there's something I really want to see…" Her sultry voice whispers in my soul space.

She thanks Kahura and immediately excuses herself. Then I summon her and hug her lithe body tightly, but her pale hands immediately go for my face to keep it still while she stares at my every detail.

Hana suddenly crushes both of us in a bear hug, but she quickly loosens it to not kill her delicate wife. Roxanne's head starts darting between the two of us as she can't decide who to look at first.

"You look better with glasses," Yunia offhandedly remarks.

Roxanne turns to her and becomes momentarily stunned. "Wow, you're hot," she blurts out.

The Queen raises a questioning eyebrow, wondering why Roxanne had to state the obvious, but the other simply giggles and turns back to us again. Her heart is filled with so much happiness that she suddenly starts wildly kissing us.

We're still inside the dungeon, flying far above the ground, so I use [Telekinesis] to keep her afloat while her emotions overwhelm her. But then her happiness starts to seep through our connection, and that triggers a group hug, which delays us for a few minutes.

It's absolutely offensive for Roxanne to remain without glasses, so Lina mobilizes the golems, and the four of them forge a new frame on the fly. Then the golems conjure sand, lime, and soda (and they're surprisingly adept at conjuring), and melt it all into clear glass for the lenses.

And our gorgeous succubus definitely enjoys her new sexy pair of round glasses. Though her personality is quite bubbly and cheeky, Roxanne just isn't the same without the cool aura from her glasses.

But her playfulness cools down as we approach our destination, a walled, concrete jungle.

Like with the ruins we've occasionally stumbled upon, the buildings are all square, gray, boxes of varying heights, all made of concrete. But if the ruins were eerily Earthling, these are… uncanny. They're arranged in rectangular blocks and surrounded by black asphalt. It's like someone was playing with 3D software and made a copy-pasted city grid, and then just randomly populated it with rectangles of different heights.

There are no boulevards, parks, traffic or street lights, signs, any green areas, or decorations of any kind. It's all concrete and asphalt. The only other notable thing about it is that at its center, there's a huge spiral staircase of white stone that rises into the sky and disappears into the gray mist above. It's like the Throne, but more boring.

"Gih," Gify whispers in my mind, and we all turn our attention to the wall.

It's manned, and Alissa can see their tabards, which are painted with the unmistakable red field and yellow sun of the Imperial Army.

Gify doesn't want to go too far from us, so I send a Holly ahead to scout, and we stop in the air while we wait for more information.

"What is it?" Lolo asks confusedly.

"There are Imperial soldiers inside the settlement," Ciel answers for me.

And the bunny girl frowns. "What? Seriously?"

"Is this a common thing?" I question.

"Nope," she hums and snorts.

The Holly finds that there are only handfuls of men spread out on the streets, but then she notices a large group of people in front of the first step of the Not-Throne-of-Ascension, exactly where we'd begin the Trox Mael "event."

And further inspection reveals that these aren't soldiers. Instead, they're an extremely eclectic collection of people of all races and sizes, armed and armored with all sorts of weapons and armor.

"What about adventurers?" I question Lolo again.

And realization dawns upon her. "Oh… yeah, sometimes they gather here in large groups to do exactly what we're about to do. But I've never heard of the Army joining them…"

We stay still for a couple of minutes as we ponder on what to do, but then Hana recognizes one of the adventurers. It's the dragonkin she fucked with a sword yesterday, and his fellowship is right there with him. That piques our interest, and the girls find that quite a few of the problematic fellowships from yesterday are also here.

"I smell a scheme," Yunia states, her small nose wrinkled in distaste.

And with perfect timing, Romy reports to my bird back at the embassy that Léonne has arrived with her Sworn Hunters.

A note from Manasong

Hall of Fame of Patrons

The patrons who support Rupegia shall have their names sung by the bards for they deserve the glory and honor. Their names are:

Prince PreownedFIN.

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Chapter 139: Reinforcements - Part 3

A note from Manasong

Attention: to conform to the limit of mature content (more than just sexual content) allowed in a novel, I've censored this chapter. You can look for the uncensored version here.

Attention: I've been quite busy lately, and it has gotten in the way of my writing, so I'm taking a week to recharge. I'll work on the early-chapter review a bit and maybe update some other things that I've been neglecting.

We land on the barren ground, then I open a [Gate] back to the embassy.

The maids help us freshen ourselves up, and then we quickly move towards the entrance to receive our guests.

Alissa almost breaks into a run with how excited she is, and, of course, her fluffy tail wags uncontrollably, something I always love to observe with how entrancing it always is.

Then we reach the main hall, and two orange blurs collide.

"Sis!" Allura shouts happily as she hugs the other blur tightly.

"Allura…!" Alissa struggles to reply, her sister's higher "Strength" surprising her with the bear hug.

Allura doesn't seem to notice that she's killing her older sister, but she quickly loosens the hug. Then they stare at each other in the eye as they smile, and an odd atmosphere starts to form between them. Alissa's heart immediately starts beating rapidly as her mind goes crazy with crazy fantasies.

Then they both suddenly move their heads forward, and they kiss, right on the lips.

Ofilia squeaks in surprise while Jacques sighs loudly and facepalms, but Léonne remains silent as she stares at the two sisters. I, of course, almost have a heart attack as my blood instantly rushes downstairs, and the Sentient Weapon attempts to break free from my pants.

The kiss is criminally short as the two sisters grin, then release each other.

"I thought you'd back off!" Allura exclaims and laughs out loud.

Oh, gay chicken?

"You don't really know me if you thought I'd back off from that," Alissa smugly states, her fantasies becoming so real in her mind that she starts to get hot.

The younger sister turns her head to Roxanne, the naughty succubus who did her when she decided to take a bath with us, and the two share a rather meaningful look. "Right, my mistake," Allura quietly replies, most likely reminiscing about the bliss Roxanne gave her.

"No, no. You can kiss your sister as much as you want to. It's certainly not a mistake," I charismatically assert and walk up to her.

Allura's eyes fall upon me, and if her exchange with Roxanne was meaningful, then with me, her gaze becomes so heated that she looks like she's barely keeping herself from jumping onto me. "Wolf…" The tall almost-woman purrs seductively.

"Allura," I reply in kind. Then Alissa backs off, allowing me to pull the young girl into a gentle hug, though the way that my claws grip her ass is decidedly not gentle. I pull her head closer and tiptoe so that I can whisper into her furry ear, "The moment the Gods allow me, I'm going to make you bend over to my spiky club."

She breathes in and cusses, "Fuck…" But I steal her lips, silencing her reply, and then I leave her hanging as I pull back before it can escalate further.

Jacques seems to become even more displeased, but he's just gotta deal with it, so we simply continue the greetings while Allura recovers.

Alissa hugs her father first, who mellows out a bit. Then she hugs Ofilia, the jade-like beauty, but once she goes for her mother, the milfy fox holds her back.

"What about my kiss? Do you have the same love for your sister as you do for me?" The stern woman asks straight-faced.

Alissa's mind halts as she tries to process what she just heard, but I'm not letting this one in a million chance go to waste, so I take over her body and force her to kiss her own mother.

The sweet taste of Léonne's lips floods my mind with bliss, and I memorize every curve of her tight body as the two women press against each other, but I shall only ever dream of the taste of her tongue as the mother breaks off the kiss before I can escalate further.

Then Léonne calmly turns to me, her expression a complex mix of resignation and mild amusement. "How did you turn my diligent and loyal daughter into such a sl-t?"

Alissa almost lets out a lound sound in delight at being degraded by her own mother, and I glance at Hana and Roxanne, the two who helped me the most to bring the "true" Alissa out. They'd love to give a reenactment of it, but we aren't in that kind of relationship with Léonne… at least not yet.

"You really want to know?" I suggestively ask with a grin.

The fox matriarch glances at her husband, who seems to decidedly not want to know. "Perhaps another time."

My handshake with Jacques is tense, and I feel like the big, red, furry man really wants to crush my hand, but he's polite enough to hold back, and I'm smart enough not to provoke the beast.

Alissa goes out to greet the Sworn Hunters, and she gives Montague a tight hug, making me mildly jealous as he's Nenvieu's older brother, but the man is like a fun uncle to her, so I keep it out of my mind. And while she has her fun, we sit down and have some tea with the tired Verners. They aren't sweaty or dirty because they traveled in their fox forms, which are fake, magical bodies, but they're all pretty tired from running all day for three days.

Then we talk about how things have progressed while they traveled.

"How much do you trust Vanea Anara?" Léonne suddenly asks when we get to the part about Apeiltik. "Aside from you wanting to do her," she dryly adds, making me smile, but Allura makes a concerned expression.

"We have some history, but we don't actually trust her very much," I casually answer.

Then Léonne promptly states matter-of-factly, "She used Apeiltik to push Katasko against you."

That makes me feel conflicted. Now that she puts it so plainly, it's obvious that Vanea and Apeiltik gave Katasko info on us, but the problem isn't even that she did it. She's manipulative and untrustworthy, but she's damn good at what she does, and that's what makes it hard to cut her off.

Yunia already expected something like this, so she's even more nonchalant about it. "After what we did to Dawn of Fire, it was simply logical to believe that we'd go after Katasko too, so she didn't have to work very hard."

Léonne shrugs. "As long as you understand the kind of ally that you're keeping around."

"Yes, unfortunately, we do," I begrudgingly admit.

Then we move the conversation forward, and we mention our plans to grind monsters in the Trox Mael event.

"I believe someone encouraged those adventurers to flock to Trox Mael to get in our way," Yunia sourly affirms.

"How predictable was it that you'd be there?" Léonne inquires.

I smile bitterly. "Very. It's the closest settlement to where we slaughtered the horde while the second closest is in the opposite direction and much further away."

Though it's annoying that someone is plotting against us, Yunia already has a plan forming in her mind, which she promptly begins to lay out for us, "We only have our knights and a handful of Lordsguard here, but together…" And the Queen grins slyly. "Are you up for bullying some adventurers?"

The fox matriarch turns to her furry husband, who snorts like a bull being challenged. "Our men aren't called Hunters just for show," he boldly declares.

The girls and I return to the dungeon. There, we fly into the settlement, and the Imperial soldiers under us notice our approach.

We just ignore them and land near the Not-Throne, out of sight of the adventurer mob. Then I open my [Gate] again for Alcander, who opens his own so that everyone else can cross through.

A small squad of Imperial soldiers turn the corner, and they immediately freeze as they see the small army gathering up before them.

"You!" Palo shouts as he jogs towards the tense soldiers. "Take us to your commander!"

The youngest of the group blushes as he stares, in awe at the size of the huge, glorious elf, but then the oldest swallows heavily and takes charge, "Yes, Sir. You… uh, follow us, and we'll take you there."

Palo motions for them to go ahead, and the men make way for them. It's just that their path goes right through the middle of our group, forcing them to get very close to the one hundred, mid-high level soldiers, and at the end, there's the group of Lords, with the hulking figures of Aoi and fox-Jacques dwarfing everything.

The soldiers pale and start to walk robotically, but the senior soldier at least has enough composure to make sure that we're following before continuing forward and not looking back ever again.

I feel like mounting Aoi like Léonne is doing with her elephant-sized fox husband, but my little blue dragon hardly ever acts as a mount, so I don't feel like introducing her to others like one.

While we walk, Léonne showcases her levels in [Equipment System] by [Equip]ing her various weapons. "This is a remarkably useful skill. I'm impressed by how easy it is to learn considering the complexity of the concept behind it."

"When a brilliant person meets another overflowing with knowledge, incredible things happen," Ciel warmly affirms.

You're actually going to make me blush.

"I have a feeling I know which is which," Léonne dryly replies and glances at me.

But Allura tilts her head in confusion in an adorable way that's just like how Alissa does it. "What do you mean?"

"Your kit love is actually a man full of mysteries," Léonne deadpans perfectly.

Allura glances behind her, towards the teasing smirks of Ofilia and the Sworn Hunters, and her skin starts to match her reddish hair. "Mom!"

"You're the shameless one, my daughter. Endure it," the stern mother dismissively replies.

And Allura goes silent to not aggravate her shame further.

But then Jacques gives Aoi a few glances, which catches her attention, and her inquisitive gaze makes him feel compelled to ask, "Did you get bigger?"

"Yes," she happily hums back.

His furry face wrinkles in a frown. "It hasn't even been a month since we last met."

"I eat, I grow. I'm a dragon, so I never stop growing," Aoi cheerfully replies, her voice surprising even the Sworn Hunters.

Then Jacques snorts. "I actually forgot that you were born as a monster."

And that makes Aoi happy, though she herself doesn't understand why.

The mob of adventurers is close by, so our stroll is very short, and the moment we turn the corner, the murmuring of the crowd dies out, so we stop and wait.

While Jacques is eye-catching, Aoi is far more striking. These people are all experienced adventurers, people who either dream or have nightmares about dragons, and here's a huge one. Not even a small "adolescent" dragon, but an almost fully adult one, the kind that not even dragon hunters would hunt without a heavily enchanted dragon-killer ballista to help them.

"Major Belligax!" The younger soldier shouts, then rushes into the crowd, which lets him through without complaint, too distracted by Aoi to mess with him.

But Major isn't a rank of someone who fights on the front lines. Major is the first "strategist" rank, the kind that sits in a tent, crowding around a map and moving units like it's an RTS, but they certainly were once like me, someone who leads by example.

A few of the adventurers recognize us, and they taunt us with shit-eating grins, but we remain stone-faced and silent for a long and awkward half-minute.

"Make way! Make way!" A gruff soldier shouts, and the adventurers start to move.

The crowd splits, revealing four people walking towards us. A dragonkin Gandalf, Bojack Horseman, a black amazoness goddess, and a dirty blonde, Viking-looking weredog, the only one who's not wearing armor but a red velvet uniform.

Soul Info

Name | Belligax Uxello | Race | Weredog | Level | 59
HP | 100 | MP | 2,360 | Magic Power | 920
Strength | 18 | Endurance | 23

The adventurers are all around level 40, and none of them seem particularly important on their own.

The group stops when they're just a few meters away from us, and an awkward silence settles in, but Belligax seems to get irked and glares at the young soldier beside him.

"Well… who are our guests?" He sternly questions the tense boy.

Who becomes deathly pale as he whispers, "We forgot to ask…"

Belligax breathes in deeply to calm himself, and I give him a small mercy by motioning for Palo to take over.

"Oh, shit, is that Silvano?" An adventurer suddenly whispers excitedly.

But before the murmuring can start, our Chad Thundersword loudly announces, "You are before the Royal Crown Lords of the Western High Forest. Their Highnesses are…"

Then a Sworn Hunter continues. "And you're also before the Chiefs of the Misty Low Forest. Their Lordships are…"

And I find it funny how some of the adventurers exaggeratedly roll their eyes at the pompous introductions.

Then the other side introduces themselves.

"I'm Gandalf, and we represent the Hunter's Guild," says Gandalf, but Alissa yanks on our connection.

"I'm Kashikoe," the dragonkin impassively greets. He has the air of a kind old man, but the dragonkin savagery is skin deep.

"Armaars'r," the horsefolk says with a polite nod. He's unremarkable, aside from the long face.

The amazoness with a ponytail grumbles, "Fran." She has a strikingly cute face, but also a tight and muscular body to do (and also mess up) anyone who underestimates her.

Just needs the bunny ears and the hair.

She's entering the "milf zone," finishing up the perfect combination for a partner for Osaria as c-m sl-t mommies.

Then the weredog pompously announces, "Senior Major Belligax Uxello." A "Daddy-type" who gives Roxanne the tingles, and I make a mental note to assert my dominance over her later.

Our knights make some space, then I pull out the portable home with a *poof.*

"Let's talk inside, shall we?" I politely suggest.

Just to flex at them, we un[Equip] our armor before we sit, and the Verners and Ofilia follow our lead. It feels nice to be so in sync with them.

After enticing the four guests with the delights of our hospitality, Yunia uses this perfect moment to begin, "So, what is your purpose here?"

The adventurers aren't experienced in the art of discussion, so they take a moment too long to answer as they hastily swallow, but Belligax gives them a freebie, "We were negotiating an agreement about Trox Mael. It's a complicated matter to organize the defense of the settlement."

"And that's what we've been trying to say. We don't need to defend the settlement, just the Great Steps!" Gandalf immediately exclaims, his powerful voice booming through the room.

I'm calling him Gandalf, Alissa, and I don't care about your complaints of copyright infringement!

Belligax narrows his eyes, and his pointy ears twitch. "We have enough men to defend the walls," he sternly replies.

"The monsters don't attack the walls equally, so some people will lose out on Experience," Bojack calmly retorts.

"And now, we also have to share it with these guys," Fran adds, and my friend deflates at her unfriendly tone.

Belligax sighs and tiredly explains, "We came here to train in town defense, not to gorge on Experience."

Gandalf lightly hits his fist against the table in frustration. "We were here first! And we'd have started Trox if you hadn't rushed in with your people."

And the Major's displeasure increases. "I had my scouts here all day."

But the old mage grins like a bastard. "Yeah, but you only came here with the rest of your people when we appeared so that you could leech!"

"I came because you were about to start the Trox, like you just admitted to!" The weredog exclaims, starting to lose control of himself, and the silent imperial officer standing behind him puts a hand on his waist, right next to his sword.

Yunia and the Verners share a concerned look about this tiresome problem. Neither of them really expected this situation, and they don't seem eager to fix it.

Before things can devolve further, I interject, infusing my voice with a bit of [Godly Language] to make it hard to ignore me, "Oh, I see, so that the problem is that there might not be enough monsters for everybody?"

"Damn honeyed voice," Gandalf grumbles, apparently already familiar with the skill.

"What do you mean?" Armaars'r asks, ignoring his comrade. I'm not going to call him Bojack anymore since he seems to be reasonable.

And I smile cordially. "One group wants to defend the walls, and the other wants to defend the Steps, but we can do both. We just need enough monsters to overwhelm the defenders at the wall. It'd be quite the effective training, no?"

"And where are you going to find so many monsters?" Arma Bro politely inquires.

"Oh, shit… you want to do that shit again," Fran grumbles with an angry frown.

"We'll bait the monsters using an array of long-range [Monster Repellent]s," I confidently declare, ignoring her.

But the amazoness is really starting to ask for it. "You're damn insane."

It's quite disappointing that she doesn't seem to have any warm feelings towards us.

"A group of idiots tried to do that once… most of them died," Gandalf adds with a mockingly wise tone.

"Getting overwhelmed would gravely endanger my men," Belligax states, and he seems to turn all of his antipathy towards us. His tail is hidden in his clothes, and his pointy dog ears are perfectly still, not showing even a hint of his true emotions, which is kind of a bummer.

Neither Lolo nor Nikolas had any problem with the idea, so I'm skeptical of this rejection. Especially because Arma Bro is silent and hiding his true feelings.

I swallow my displeasure and retort, "We've done this once already, and we didn't even have the Verners with us."

Belligax gives me the most unveiled glare ever as he states, "We're here to train safely."

"The steps are-…" Arma Bro begins, but he's interrupted by Fran.

"Lordling, you're a bit too young to be trying so hard to level up."

"The steps are defensible," is what I believe Armaa wanted to say, something that we'd already noticed.

"Your lack of respect is starting to become tiring," Yunia warns her with a dangerous tone.

"You're going to get our men killed," Belligax states with a sharp edge in his tone, though he's getting better at hiding his anger.

"You're being quite cowardly when we have such an easily defensible location," Léonne harshly states, concentrating her stern glare solely on him. Allura, on the other hand, is trying to do her best to mirror her father's impassive expression, but she seems to really dislike Fran.

Not-Gandalf butts in again with the subtlety of a fart, "With all due respect, this shit is damn stupid. You can go to another settlement if you want to try out those ideas." It's really jarring to see an old bearded man with such a foul mouth.

"You're threading a dangerous path," Yunia warns him, and the tension at the table quickly rises as everyone starts to struggle to not show their fangs at each other.

"I don't give a shit," Gandalf grunts back, his anger starting to cool, but his words have become imbued with venom.

"You represent the Guild," she retorts, in disbelief at his foolish audacity.

But he just leans back and smiles smugly. "I do, so I know you can't just kill me."

And her tone becomes ice-cold as she hides all emotions from her gorgeous face. "We'll flog you in front of everyone."

He shrugs. "Then good luck convincing the adventurers that your plan isn't going to get us all killed."

"It's our right to be here, so they'll mess you up before they let themselves be bossed around by a pisser," Fran states, mirroring his smugness.

"Stop provoking them!" The Horse Bro hisses at them, and they seem to tense up, stopping the aggravation of their insolence.

"Your offenses are piling up. I advise you to consider your future after this encounter," Yunia delivers a threat, and the adventurer trio don't even dare to react.

I feel like they're daring us to mess them up, and I'm quickly reaching a point where I think that I really should take them on that dare.

"You're being unreasonable," Belligax softly retorts, his tone just polite enough to not worsen the situation.

"If you can't really defend this settlement, then you should resign from your post," Léonne harshly lashes back. She still doesn't give a damn about the adventurers.

Belligax's right eye and pointy ear twitch, and he needs a second before he retorts, "You're being too optimistic about the cooperation between our three groups."

Fran shakes her head, her ponytail following a second later, then she turns to Bell. "You know they'll do anything to get their way."

"I won't let the nobles force our hand," the Major makes a bold and stupid claim.

Holy shit. They've united and turned on us fast!

But Léonne is out for blood, "Think carefully on your next words, boy. The Imperial Army won't miss a moronic pawn like you."

Bell-end's officer glances at Aoi, the perceived biggest threat here, but if they think she is the one to watch out for, then it's a clue that the four stooges may be in over their heads.

If someone's really scheming to get in our way, we won't be able to convince these bastards here with words alone. They aren't going to die, but some drastic measures need to be taken.

A note from Manasong

Hall of Fame of Patrons

The patrons who support Rupegia shall have their names sung by the bards for they deserve the glory and honor. Their names are:

Prince PreownedFIN.

Prince Owldente.

Lord Andrew Meyers.

Lord Novgarod.

Lord Michale Erwin.

Lord Bakerdea.

Lord Maurice.

Lord Mattirro Draca.

Lord Sean Drake.

Lord Mike Bartter.

Lord Warwulfv.

Lord Khristopher Welsh.

Lord Tenebris Lupus.

Lord Paul Daval.

Lord Paul Daval.

Lord AndreyUC.

Lord Tmac.

Lord School Work.

Lord Gwendolyn Simmons-LaRose.

Lord CopeyDunt.

Lord BlindTactic.

Lord The Tallest Joshua.

Lord litalmexy.

Lord Tyler Mills.

Lord Philip.

Lord d3235.

Lord Freddie.

Lord Mike Bartter.

Lord Sean Drake.

Lord Shaun McDonough.

Lord William Clark.

Lord Sam.

Lord Ddraig Wynn.

Noble Salty Panda.

Noble Mild Fracas.

Noble Aclys.

Noble CarlBaxter.

Noble Andrew Hebreard.

Noble Tony Starrk.

Leave a rating or a review to help me rise to the top or fix my shameful understanding of prose.

Take a look over my blog where all information about the world of Rupegia will be posted.

Join the Discord and discuss, or rant, or meme, or try and fight me so your waifu gets more screentime.

Become a Patron and read chapters in advance, or read the side-stories, or leave your mark on the story, or help choose the next artwork or the next side-story.

Chapter 140: Lordling - Part 1

Everyone is gearing up to start killing each other, but now's not the time to fight, so I yawn loudly, then slowly clap as I smirk, and my act starts to defuse the situation. I glance at Léonne, and she seems to immediately stand down on her aggressiveness, so I decide to open the curtains to this little play of theirs.

I lazily rest my head on my knuckles as I calmly explain, "This was quite the impressive performance, but you switched phases too fast, and you lack too much information about us to be this aggressive, so no, you didn't convince us."

The three stooges seem like they have something to say, but they've yapped for long enough, so it's time to remind them what it means to be a Lord.

The table isn't very large considering the number of people sitting at it, but everyone is well within the range of my instant summoning. So I summon four dark elementals, but also a wind-Alissa to block the sound from leaking, and the girls all use [Redirect Mana] at the same time so that not a single particle of mana escapes this room.

"What the f-…" Belligax's swear is interrupted as a lump of rotten flesh is shoved down his throat. He immediately tries to cough it out, but it's firmly lodged in his pharynx, and then the taste starts to seep into his tongue.

His officer goes for the sword at his waist, but his body is skewered by hundreds of thin tendrils that begin to cut into every muscle he has. His throat is also pierced by the tendrils, so the only sound he makes is a wet wheeze as he tries to breathe while his lungs flood with blood.

The old dragonkin mage is pulled under the table, where he disappears into a dark hole, and the echo of his screams becomes fainter as they grow more desperate.

The amazoness falls to the floor and begins to thrash about as she struggles to remove the purple mask covering her face, which prevents her from breathing. But no matter how much she pulls it apart, she never manages to rip open a hole for her to breathe through.

And Armaars'r remains in his seat, frozen in fear as his companions slowly die.

Belligax retches and pukes at the heinous stench and taste, but his throat is completely blocked, so nothing comes out, and then he feels dozens of little things starting to wriggle down his throat; the officer is flayed alive, and his limbs are surgically removed one by one; Kashikoe doesn't even know what's happening to him, but his senses are overwhelmed as a chaotic nightmare rips his soul apart; and Fran convulses, not allowed to die, yet powerless to escape the perpetual suffocation.

I'm surprised by Allura's composure, who now looks grim rather than angry, even though the woman she hates is getting her comeuppance, and not even Ofilia makes a sound as they watch the horror show. The Verners seem well-versed in Lordly "persuasion" methods.

And then Roxanne takes over as having to endure the existence of four dark elementals is extremely draining for me. The sadistic succubus gets up and gingerly walks around the table, smiling mischievously at the terrified horsefolk.

"Armaars'r, Armaars'r… dear, friendly, Armaars'r… how about we drop the pretenses and have a straightforward, honest talk, hm?" She begins with a jarringly chipper tone, then stops beside his chair and smiles innocently, but her eyes look wild and unhinged.

"W-what d-do you me-mean…?" He weakly stammers.

She chuckles softly, then grabs the back of his chair and pulls it away from the table so that she can sit on the edge of the table and properly face him. "A mordere, a dragonkin, a sommerlande… and a beastfolk. None of you are native, so you have a lot to prove, but your lack of 'ties' makes you… disposable."

Then she grins sadistically as Armaars'r whimpers in fear. It didn't take much to completely cow him, so she begins phase two. She leans forward and gently pats his long, furry face. Because she's wearing a loose dress with a wide view of her cleavage, her small, pale breasts are fully exposed now, but he's so frightened that he doesn't even notice the free lewdness in front of him.

"You know what happens when you clash with a noble, right?" She slowly whispers with a fake, overly sweet tone.

"Please… I have a wife…" He begs pathetically, his eyes still locked with hers.

"Oh…? You do~…?" She continues with fake concern, but then she digs her nails into his skin and turns her grin into an angry scowl. "Then why the fuck did you think it was a good idea to harass us?!"

He whimpers again and desperately blurts out, "I-I didn't…! It wasn't my idea!"

She goes back to sweet mode and pats his face again. "Really~…? Then why don't you explain it to us?"

He hesitates, staring intensely at her eyes, and then his breathing starts to quicken as he becomes increasingly desperate.

Kashikoe's hysterical screams of horror suddenly echo loudly across the room, but they don't leave these walls thanks to wind-Alissa's vacuum barrier covering the walls, the floor, and the ceiling. And Armaars'r closes his eyes as he whispers a prayer.

Roxanne leans back and crosses her arms and legs, starting to look impatient.

And Yunia gives him a gentle push, "You're the only one who has been spared because you showed us some respect, so be assured that we won't dispose of you after this is done… as long as you cooperate."

Armaars'r opens his eyes wide, realizing he's on thin ice, and begins confessing, "I… I don't really know what they want."

Roxanne presses her heel against the edge of the frightened horse's chair, right between his legs. "There seems to be a lot of adventurers outside who have a grudge against us for what we did yesterday," she slowly points out, an impatient harshness in her tone.

He looks down at her pointed shoe, which is now dangerously close to his balls, and carefully considers his next words before continuing, "I'm just here because I know how Trox works, and I don't even know who the other two are. I'd only ever heard about them around the guild before we met today!"

She moves her shoe back a little, relieving Armaars'r's concern about his future children. "And they convinced you to play along?"

He rests his hands on his thighs, ready to defend his jewels against a possible attack. "They never said anything explicit about it. When I arrived, they were talking to the adventurers about you. I immediately realized that I shouldn't get involved in it, so I stood back until they started talking about Trox, and then the Major arrived, and they all started arguing." He glances at Belligax and regrets it as the human stabs his own ballooned belly to release the horrors within.

Roxanne pulls her heel back, sorely disappointed that she won't be allowed to crush any balls today.

"And then they promptly dropped their quarrel and united against us the moment we arrived," Léonne points out, still sending hateful glares at the Major.

And the meek horse adds, "They… they really were arguing heatedly before you arrived… so I think that part wasn't fake."

I summon a Shad and order it to inspect Belligax's and his officer's bodies for any magic tools hidden on their persons. Horseman doesn't even notice the moving shadow, too worried about not displeasing the sadist demon in front of him.

Roxanne puts on a fake smile and uses her overly sweet tone again as she reassures him, "You've been a good boy, Armaars'r, so we'll let you live. If you have any compassion for your comrades, you'll help convince them of the error of their ways."

He nods slowly, then I snap my fingers, and the wails of pain disappear along with the dark elementals. The four stooges blink in confusion for a moment, then go for their weapons, but their hands find nothing.

Roxanne returns to her seat, and I breathe out in relief while Alissa wipes the cold sweat off of my face. I'll need a lot of pampering to recover from this horrible experience.

Now that the fools understand their powerlessness, they tense up and glare at us like cornered animals, so Hana warns them, "If you don't want a repeat of that nightmare, you'll behave."

The two commoners scowl defiantly, but they make no move and stay silent while the two Imperial Officers remain perfectly still, their minds likely racing wildly now that they don't have their emergency tools anymore.

I don't have the energy to continue playing this game, so I let Yunia control my body. She has me play with the little red bead as I grin at Belligax, and his pupils dilate once he realizes that I have his emergency signal.

"Belligax, we need you to cooperate," I calmly announce. Then I deposit the bead on the table and get up.

The well-groomed Viking scowls like a beast, and it seems to take a lot of effort from him to not spit as he replies, "After what you did to us?"

"That was us being kind," I reply as I go around the table and approach him.

The two Officers instinctively lean away, frightened about what's to come, and I don't blame them.

"First, let me show you this," I begin and cut my cheek with my claw, letting a drop of blood run down my skin, but then I instant-cast [Heal] and [Clean]. "See?"

Bell-end clenches his fists, realizing what I'm about to do, but otherwise, he remains completely still.

Yunia makes me swing my arm, and a single claw sinks deep into the neck of Belligax's aide, and Ted casts [Gravity Crush] on the man to prevent him from moving and alerting anyone outside with [Sense Presence] about what's going on in here.

Blood pours out of his neck, and he once again makes wet wheezing noises as he chokes on his own blood, except this time, it's for real.

"What the fuck are you doing?!" The Major shouts and tries to stand, but Suzy casts [Gravity Crush] on him too, and he also becomes unable to move.

I calmly pull out an Identification Crystal and put it on palm of the bleeding officer's hand, who grips it tightly because of the spell forcing his muscles to contract, then I deposit the tablet in front of Bell-end.

The aide is at 90/100 HP, and it's decreasing at one point per second.

I sigh tiredly and offhandedly explain, "I can [Heal] him instantly. You just have to swear to cooperate with us."

Bell-end turns his head around, his pale face becoming red with rage, and I even see a bump at the back of his shirt, where his likely agitated tail is attempting to break free. "You really think the Gods will approve of this coercion!?"

I slowly raise a single eyebrow at him and snort amusedly. "How do you think the Punishers make heretics confess?"

"I'm not a heretic!" He shouts as his body starts to tremble in seething hatred.

And that just makes my smile even smugger. "But you might be working for one."

Then the rage cools down temporarily as disbelief settles in. "This is insanity!"

I shrug and casually reply, "Well, why don't you tell us who you're working for, then?"

He grits his teeth as he glares at me, and I tap the tablet again, calling his attention back to the dying aide, who's now at 80/100 HP.

Then I cut down on the mockery and soberly state, "You have a choice. Obedience, confession, or loss."

"The rest of my men will tear you apart if you kill him," he replies through gritted teeth, but he's sorely lacking in conviction.

"No, they won't, because you'll give in."

The bleeding officer tries to speak, but he only manages to cough warm blood onto Belligax's back.

"What the fuck is wrong with you?" Gandalf interjects. The incredulity in his tone is evidence that he had no idea who the fuck he was messing with.

"If you don't wish to die, you'll cooperate, too," I slowly warn him.

"People like you shouldn't be killing innocent, gods-worshiping, loyal soldiers of the Empire!" The impotent Viking shouts in exasperation.

And my anger fuses with Yunia's as I scathingly lash out, "People like you shouldn't be petty bastards who fuck around with Gods-Blessed Lords!"

Léonne piles on, "You're all pawns. Disposable pawns. And whether or not any of you manage to get out of this game with your lives depends solely on your next actions."

"You could just kill us after this is over, anyway, since you're so eager to keep threatening us," Fran glowers as she hisses, her defiance declining along with the bleeding officer's HP.

But I promptly swear, "I, Royal Crown Lord Wolf Ryder, give my word that if you cooperate, you'll live." And I feel it within my heart that the Gods have heard me.

The two Guild members are taken aback, suddenly unsure about what to do now that I've given them a way out.

And Armaa Bro comes in to sway them further, "Fran, Kashikoe, this isn't worth it. I don't know how much you were paid, but you were duped." Then he starts to become worked up with each word. "They used dark elementals, you Vol-shitters! You think they're afraid of the Gods? The Gods fucking encourage them to be like this!"

The fuck is a Vol-shitter?

"Pissers…" Fran quietly grumbles, and the wind-Alissa throws a wind-slap at her for her insolence. The amazoness is now almost completely subdued, and lets her head hang in defeat.

"Belligax, time is running out," I calmly warn him.

30/100. I'm thankful that our carpet is actually made of grass that basically absorbs anything biological because it'd otherwise be a bitch to clean it of all the blood.

The mordere Major turns his ugly mug towards me and glares defiantly as he stiffens his jaw.

Playing chicken? Unfortunately, we have nothing to lose and a lot to gain by doing this, even if the officer dies.

I cross my arms and lean against the table as I retreat into my mind. I'll just cuddle mentally with Alissa while Yunia fully controls my body, so I don't even have to try to look like I don't care because I truly don't.

20/100.

A tense silence settles in, which becomes even louder as the officer stops moaning from pain and passes out from blood loss.

"What does he even have against us?" Lina asks out loud, feeling very frustrated at Bell-end's foolish defiance.

And Léonne deliberates, "Possibly nothing. He's just playing it up to get in our way. Or rather, your husband's way. Army officers aren't known to be particularly smart when it comes to nobility." She seems to have quite a dislike for the Imperial Army.

"We have a bothersome number of enemies," Yunia begrudgingly admits.

"And the Realm is full of stupid people ready to fight a Lord for some coins," Jacques tiredly adds.

And Alissa confidently affirms, "We'll make sure it isn't worth it."

5/100.

"Belli…?" I warn him one last time.

The dumbass' glare intensifies, and he raises his lips in impotent rage like a dog threatening to bite.

But then his eyes turn to the tablet, and his defiance seems to come to a halt, then his pointy ears go flat.

4/100.

He stares at the HP entry while his whole body begins to tense up, and everyone holds their breath.

3/100.

The Major closes his eyes and grinds his teeth, but then he suddenly slams his fist against the table.

2/100.

"SAVE HIM! I'LL DO WHAT YOU WANT!" He bellows, then lowers his head in shame, his ears now droopy and almost hidden in his dirty-blonde hair.

1/100.

I lazily extend my arm and cast [Heal], stopping the bleeding, but that just extended the man's life for a minute at most.

Roxanne starts looking for a blood-replacing potion in her [Item Box] while Jarn [Equip]s a [Regeneration] magic tool, which she then applies to the passed out officer's back.

"So, which is it? Confession or obedience?" Yunia slowly, but sternly, questions.

"Obedience," the defeated man grunts resentfully.

"Still loyal, even though you almost got a man killed?" I confusedly ask as I shake my head in disappointment.

"Maybe it's deliberate," Léonne speculates, and I give her a questioning look. "He's inciting you. Pushing you to the edge so that you'll overreact."

"Seems like a common theme with imperials," I wryly remark.

"Well, you are a dragon. If you had a weakness, I'd bet it's anger," Jacques soberly replies.

"Believe what you want," Belli quietly grumbles.

"You're all so callous," Fran whispers, her head hung low in submission.

"Shut the fuck up. You're a stooge who almost died because you fucked with the wrong person," Hana immediately barks at the amazoness, making her wince in fear.

And then the foolish woman grits her teeth because for once she actually can't just dismiss it. Gandalf scowls, seeming like he wants to speak, but instead bites his tongue and mirrors her demeanor.

I lean forward and push Bell-end's chin up with a claw. "Now, swear that you'll be a good, obedient puppy."

He glares at me for a second but breathes in deeply to calm himself, then he obeys, "I, Senior Major Belligax Uxelo, swear to obey… while we're here."

And I chuckle softly. He almost fucked himself by swearing eternal obedience, though I believe the Gods would give him a pass as even I don't want that.

Then Yunia begins the final phase, "There's still a couple of minutes until your man wakes up, so let's go over the plan."

Just as insurance, I have Ted, Suzy, and Jarn follow Gandalf, Mean Bitch, and Bell-end, respectively, and everyone who asks will be told that it's for "communication" purposes, which is technically true as it's to stop them from communicating what we did to them. Though Armaa Bro has shown himself to be trustworthy, it's still not enough to let him be on his own, so we'll keep a light-Ciel near him, which I'm sure he considers a "reward," seeing as how his eyes widened once he took a look at those massive jugs.

But now we actually have to convince the adventurers that it's a good idea to work together, and we don't trust any of the Guild's three stooges to do this for us, so it's time for another speech.

We come out of the house and see that our men have made quite the perimeter around it, which has certainly helped hide what was going on inside.

Since the crowd has their attention on us, I'll take this opportunity and just begin the speech. I use [Telekinesis] to float up near the house and land on the flat bark roof. Then I [Equip] my armor and weapons, draw my sword, and point it at the adventurers.

"Listen here, you bastards and whoresons! I don't give a shit what you think about us after what we did yesterday. The only thing that matters is whether or not you'll be a fucking mustch."

I don't like using the elven slur "mustch," and Yunia even feels like her delicate ears have been soiled by hearing it, but this is the best way to get some hard boiled motherfuckers to listen to you, so I'll jump right into this shit.

"We're going to do that shit again and use [Monster Repellent]s to attract a horde of monsters here, during the Trox Mael. If you don't have the balls or the clit to fight with us, then get the fuck out of here and go shove the pommel of your sword up your ass!"

The adventurers start to grumble and swear back in discontent, especially those who have a grudge against us. But challenging them like this makes them angry, which lowers their IQ enough that they either don't realize or don't care about the trap that I'm setting up.

And then I infuse [Godly Language] into my voice for that extra oomph as I let the dragon roar, "For those who'll stay… WE'RE GOING TO BUTCHER THESE MONSTERS ALL DAY LONG! YOU'LL CUM IN YOUR PANTS FROM ALL THE LEVELS YOU'LL GET, AND THE STREETS WILL TURN INTO RIVERS OF MONSTER BLOOD! NOW, TELL ME, ARE YOU GOING TO BE A FUCKING MUSTCH OR NOT?!"

The adventurers howl and cheer, but the crowd still hasn't been fully swayed to our side just yet.

A muscle-brain Scottish highlander tries to heckle me, "You fucking Lordling brat! You're only this cheeky because you've got that elven armor holding your balls like a pretty little bra!"

Aight, I guess they need something more physical to put an end to their whining.

I jump off and un[Equip] my armor, then summon my tentacles and arm them all with my collection of weapons.

The crowd takes a step back in fear and disgust, so I lean into it and threateningly walk forward as I grin. "Come at me, you little bitch! I'm a True Noble, and I'll show you how I fuck your mother!" I taunt back and point my sword at the fucker.

Hana and Roxanne love to see me assert dominance over other men, and Allura also seems to be a bit interested in that, so I feel like making this a bit bloody because I know they'll like it.

A note from Manasong

Hall of Fame of Patrons

The patrons who support Rupegia shall have their names sung by the bards for they deserve the glory and honor. Their names are:

Prince PreownedFIN.

Prince Owldente.

Lord Andrew Meyers.

Lord Novgarod.

Lord Michale Erwin.

Lord Bakerdea.

Lord Maurice.

Lord Mattirro Draca.

Lord Sean Drake.

Lord Mike Bartter.

Lord Warwulfv.

Lord Khristopher Welsh.

Lord Tenebris Lupus.

Lord Paul Daval.

Lord Paul Daval.

Lord AndreyUC.

Lord Tmac.

Lord School Work.

Lord Gwendolyn Simmons-LaRose.

Lord CopeyDunt.

Lord BlindTactic.

Lord The Tallest Joshua.

Lord litalmexy.

Lord Tyler Mills.

Lord Philip.

Lord d3235.

Lord Freddie.

Lord Mike Bartter.

Lord Sean Drake.

Lord Shaun McDonough.

Lord William Clark.

Lord Sam.

Lord Ddraig Wynn.

Noble Salty Panda.

Noble Mild Fracas.

Noble Aclys.

Noble CarlBaxter.

Noble Andrew Hebreard.

Noble Tony Starrk.

Leave a rating or a review to help me rise to the top or fix my shameful understanding of prose.

Take a look over my blog where all information about the world of Rupegia will be posted.

Join the Discord and discuss, or rant, or meme, or try and fight me so your waifu gets more screentime.

Become a Patron and read chapters in advance, or read the side-stories, or leave your mark on the story, or help choose the next artwork or the next side-story.

Chapter 140: Lordling - Part 2

A note from Manasong

Attention: to conform to the limit of mature content (more than just sexual content) allowed in a novel, I've censored this chapter. You can look for the uncensored version here.

The Scottish highlander dude doesn't put on a kilt, but he does take his shirt off and show his manly, hairy chest, which I'm only mildly jealous of.

My goal here is to put the fear of Lords into everyone's hearts, so I make my tentacles look as disgusting as possible. I turn them into slimy, purple, exposed muscles that twitch and pulse with my heartbeat. And I absolutely love how his smug, defiant smirk gradually turns into a stiff grimace.

I point my sword at him and taunt huskily, "Come to daddy, and bend over so that I can shove my draconic club up your ass. I'll even give up my shield so that I can clap your feminine ass cheeks." Then Gify teleports to Alissa's shoulder with a chirpy sigh.

Luckily, the Highlander isn't the kind to get excited from this type of banter, so he scowls angrily and takes a threatening step forward as he draws his longsword.

"You're quite literally asking for the gays to crowd around you when you act like that," Roxanne wryly points out through our connection.

"But it's a pretty effective way to taunt the non-gays," Hana adds.

"And women like me love it when you act domineering," Alissa chimes in, and Yunia agrees with a nod. Aoi likes to submit, but she's neutral to degradation. Then they all turn to Ciel and Lina, who remain awfully quiet.

Anyway, as Alissa has previously shown, it's hard to level up weapon use skills past level 40 as they reach the physical limits of the body. But this means that by level 10, you could potentially compete with a noble in melee combat by focusing all of your soul potential into a Weapon Use skill.

It's rather impractical, yes, but adventurers are crazy people, and the world is large enough that there could be a handful of them who've decided to follow the path of Weapon Use while sacrificing the flexibility that other skills give.

And this dude has the vibe of someone with a stupid build.

We circle around each other as we launch probing attacks, trying to gauge the other's skills, and he quickly realizes that my warhammer tentacle is by far the weakest as I don't have any skills related to hammer use.

So he bats the hammer tentacle away while lunging in for an attack on my left now that it's slightly exposed.

I attack with my spear, but he simply gives the shaft a light hit with his sword, deflecting it just enough so that the point simply slides across his shoulder, which shows that he has quite the [Parry] skill, and possibly a pretty good level in a Fighting Style.

But my highest skill is with swords, so I easily parry his attack and follow up with my halberd towards his left.

He pulls back his weapon and again parries by merely hitting the shaft with the base of his blade, killing the momentum of the halberd. Then he notices the dagger I'm sneaking towards his left leg and spins his sword clockwise, the tip making a long arc downward.

His weapon is now in an odd position, so he makes an awkward, backhand slash upward with only his left hand, slicing the tentacle. Then he immediately grabs the hilt with both hands again to bring it to his right to parry the spear again.

His [Parry] is high, very high, but he doesn't seem to have a single level in [Dodge].

His sword continues to make circles as he wildly swings it around to defend himself from my attacks as they come from opposite directions. He's clearly on the back foot, and this war of attrition is heavily in my favor, so he'll probably try to do something drastic any moment now.

Suddenly, his pupils widen, and then he takes a step forward and becomes rather… still. Then I get the sensation that I'm dreaming as my attacks simply slide across his skin, and though the halberd and the dagger make shallow cuts, the rest would've needed more momentum to do any actual damage.

"[Enhanced Reflexes] for a perfect dodge," Alissa explains through [Bind]. When everything is in slow-mo, it should be relatively easy to dodge with minimal movements.

But this technique is so surprising that it breaks my rhythm, putting my mind in brief disarray, and now he's within my guard, so he chops down with his sword.

I raise my hand and catch the blade between my scaled fingers, but he's still using [Enhanced Reflexes], so he has all the time in the world to come up with a counter.

He raises the hilt up, and now the tip of his longsword is pointing down, so he just thrusts, and the blade slides in between my right ribs. After all that training I did with Yunia for the Lordship Ceremony, I'm rather confident in my ability to avoid having my heart pierced.

Though I dislike ruining my elven shirts like this, I'm finding it to be quite an effective tactic to let someone enter my guard. It's easier to rip them apart when they're within reach of my claws.

I use my tail to propel myself forward while I activate [Muscle Explosion], and not even [Enhanced Reflexes] is enough to avoid this, so I successfully manage to grip his right arm with my scaled hand and go for a slice at his right flank with my sword.

He immediately tries to pull back, but my claws dig into his skin, and I stab his left flank with the tentacle-dagger.

His eyes open wide as he realizes that he's kind of screwd, and he suddenly jumps as he releases his sword and uses both of his boots to hit me in the chest, forcefully expelling all the air in my lungs.

We both fly away from each other, but my claws shred his right arm, and the halberd cleaves into his right shoulder as a parting gift.

He falls onto his back, but I use my tentacles and tail to recover faster than him, and I'm not one to waste opportunities.

He immediately jumps to his feet, but before he can do anything else, my spear pierces through his lung. He grabs the shaft and stares in disbelief at the long, long, stretched tentacle, making me grin.

I pull his longsword out of my chest and give it to a new tentacle. Then I cough blood and immediately charge forward.

"UOOOOOH!" He roars like an enraged beast as he rips the tentacle off the spear, then pulls the weapon out of his body just in time to parry his own longsword.

His right arm is nearly useless now, so he immediately lunges forward in a hail mary and swings his arm, throwing his blood in an arc, which hits me right in the eye.

Damn piece of shit!

I feel my halberd, dagger, and warhammer connect with something, but he's still advancing, so I make a new tentacle directly out of my chest and expand it like a shield.

He crashes against it, giving me a perfect outline of his entire body, so I slash at his belly, cutting my own tentacle off in the process, while I dodge the spear aimed at my heart.

I feel the blade bite deep into his skin, and I don't even need to see it to know that I've just done massive damage to him. Ciel decrees the duel over through our connection, so I push the Highlander away, and I hear the crowd groan in disgust.

I [Clean] the blood off my face and see that he's on the floor, his good hand over his belly to keep his guts from spilling out even more.

The tenacious bastard then stands up, and he actually seems ready to continue fighting. Though he's not completely out, even with the gut wound, his disabled arm means that he has no chance against me now.

"Do you want me to put you down for good? Learn your limits, and give up," I sternly warn him.

"Hell yeah, Lordling!" An adventurer in the crowd shouts excitedly.

Oh, Gods, no. I don't want that nickname!

The Highlander clenches his one good fist, then throws the spear towards me, so I throw his sword back at him, and he catches it in the air.

Ciel sighs and walks up to him. She'll give him some healing, but not to full since he was a dum-dum and didn't know when to stop, so he'll have to deal with some pain until the HP potion finishes fixing it up.

I turn to the crowd and open my arms wide as I grin. "Anyone else want to bleed for me?!"

"You fight like a monster, Lordling!" Another adventurer shouts.

And I have my tentacles take a particularly phallic shape. "This is what you have to become to conquer a dungeon!"

"Hell yeah, Lordling!" A couple of adventurers cheer, and the crowd starts to get excited.

"Well…?! Who's the next idiot that's going to challenge him?!" Hana backs me up.

"Those tentacles are unfair. Lordling's power is too insane!" An adventurer complains.

"I'd rather keep my guts inside!" Another jokes.

"Lordling is too strong!" A third follows.

"Then how about you challenge me?!" Hana shouts as she hits her chestplate with her armored fist. Then she summons her wings, flies into the bloody dueling circle, and un[Equip]s her armor, exposing the curves of her body through her tight-fitting elven underclothes.

An imperial walks forward and scans her tight body up and down. "Bitch, I might. How strong are you compared to the Lordling?"

She covers her upper body with steaming, emerald scales, then shouts proudly, "I'm fucking invincible!" Copying my favorite catchphrase.

The imperial raises his hands in defeat and takes a step back. "Shit, girl. At least the Lordling bleeds!"

A slender incubus demon man walks forward and draws a longsword. "If you promise to be gentle, I'll let you spank me good," he seductively affirms, and I immediately notice the bulge in his pants.

Ugh, here we go…

Thankfully, this one isn't gay, so he didn't walk forward when I was the one doing the taunting.

Hana lands and [Equip]s her own weapon. "Take out your little friend first, and I'll make you squirt through your ass," she orders with a fearsome grin.

I roll my eyes as he promptly obeys, and then they immediately start their duel.

Now that the tenser moments have passed, the crowd starts paying attention to other things than the blood sports. And with my duel over, Gify teleports back to my shoulder, her rightful place, not that she dislikes Alissa's shoulder.

"The hell is this…?" An adventurer quietly asks Gandalf and motions to Ted with his head.

"One of the Lordl-… Lord Wolf's summons, I think. It's for communication," the old dragonkin answers, trying to hide his discomfort.

The adventurer gives the teddy bear an amused glance. "[Summon Small Golem]?"

And Gandalf shrugs. "I think so. He is a summoner…"

"So, this is the agreement we got…" Fran mumbles to her fellowship sullenly.

"It seems that… we didn't get everything that we wanted," a large wereape hesitantly remarks.

"It's called compromise," she snappily replies.

Her fellowship senses that something is definitely wrong, but the ominous presence of Suzy behind her keeps them from asking any further questions.

While Bell-end talks to his officers, the men keep stealing glances at the metal Bimbo in a dress behind him.

"It's an earth elemental. For communication," his aide explains, though the imperial man refuses to look at the golem, seemingly afraid of her.

Roxanne walks up to me, and I get a handful of her cute, small cheeks while we watch Hana flay the incubus alive. This fight isn't as gory as the disembowelment of the Highlander, but it's taking on quite the… spicy tone as the incubus keeps making sounds with his hard frined out, and blood is getting spilled everywhere to the point that I have to take a step back to not get splashed by it.

The sadist I'm molesting is holding herself back from jumping onto me. She does have a thing for blood sports, but she doesn't want to get her fair skin soiled with blood. She just enjoys watching men displaying their masculinity through combat and making the other submit. And the recent euphoria from getting her eyes fixed has also given her desire a kick, too.

"Cut off his thing," Roxanne begs through [Bind].

But that'd be a faux pas since the masochist demon didn't agree to it beforehand, so our sadistic wife just fantasizes about it as best as she can. I sneak my hand through the opening at the side of her dress, then slide it down.

Allura comes to stand on Roxanne's other side, and she unashamedly stares at my hand under my spicy wife's dress. This girl is so thirsty she's giving Hana a run for her money.

"I used to be worse than her," Hana wryly comments through [Bind] as she casually has her fun with the demon. Then she sends me images of the spicy shit she did to herself… and to others.

Now even I'm getting excited.

The fight doesn't last long, but it's just enough time to give Roxanne one bliss, and the adventurers around us seem to notice. I don't know whether they can hear her soft whispers, smell her, or notice her odd twitching, but their excited stares make it obvious that they know.

Allura sighs deeply, then rubs her legs against each other, but not even she is shameless and sl-tty enough to do it in the middle of a gathering of sweaty, rough, and muscular adventurers.

I take my claw out and lick the faintly sour, white cream on it, then I end these silly games, "You've all had your fun, right?! Let's not waste any more time; we have monsters to kill!"

While everyone finishes preparations, we enjoy a little history lesson.

The Trox Mael is called the Cursing of the Land.

During the time of the Dawn of Mankind, there were no monsters, dungeons, levels, stats, skills, or any sort of large civilization. Man was just plopped onto the barren world and told to make do with what they had.

They fought with nature, cultivated their food, manipulated the land, built up their homes, and lived their lives in relative peace. But the God of Destruction didn't allow that to last. They cursed the land with monsters, causing the Realm to go through a dark age.

Historical records that survived the Dawn are sparse, but every civilization that rose after it mentions the horrors of the Trox Mael. The first Men were strong and self-assured, but the monsters were their worst nightmares made manifest, and what could such powerful people fear? In Earthling terms, the Apocalypse.

Lina stops before the first of the Great Steps, which is a mere slab of gray concrete, but at the center of its forward face, there's an inscription in ancient Andraste.

Orer a p'rer.

Rise or perish.

The God of Creation did everything that They could to allow Their creation to grow, and so, it was time for Man to carve out their own place in the Realm.

Our amateur historian touches the carving with her little fingers and appreciates the craftsmanship. It was done through magic, and she can even sense the remnant particles of mana in it, possible evidence that this is an actual, legitimate recreation of the real Great Steps, not just an "embellishment" by the dungeon.

The calligraphy looks as if someone wrote it with finger paint. The words are pointy and simple, like bundles of sticks thrown about, and remarkably similar to Germanic runes. Before skills, language used to change over time just like it does on Earth.

Palo approaches us, then salutes when we turn to him. "All groups report that they're ready," he announces.

I pat my little girl's silky black hair, and she does the honors.

"Orer," she whispers, then the lights go out.

[Light Magic] didn't exist in this time period, so our [Spirit Light]s are snuffed out. Though, mercifully, [Heal] and other spells still work.

But it's impossible for us to fight in absolute darkness, so Change gives us all the first Blessing: Light.

Our bodies become our own sources of light, and the wall surrounding the settlement glows as one great band of hope. Then the darkness takes hold of the barren ground outside, turning everything not touched by our light into a void-like pitch black, and now we're completely isolated from the dungeon. The only way out is through a [Gate] or by surviving the event.

And the sad poem of Trox Mael is written with light under the carving.

Witness our brilliant accomplishments, Creation;

Sharpened intelligence as a weapon;

Molded cunning into armor;

And use pride to incite.

Ashes to sow the fields,

Ruins to build our homes,

Flesh to feed our bellies,

And wisdom to teach us.

Nothing to be wasted.

Our humble prayer ends here,
and here begins the first stand.

Our light was taken,
sinister horrors approach,
now fight on, my child.

The "first stand" of many, the first battle of the eternal war between humanoids and monsters.

"This hits a bit differently after everything we've gone through in the last few days," Hana wryly comments.

"To 'hit differently,' you'd need to have first known about it beforehand," Lina annoyedly retorts.

And the dragonkin awkwardly rubs an emerald scale on her cheek. "You get what I mean…"

"What would Man say to us if they knew of our disposition towards monsters?" Yunia asks rhetorically.

I glance at Aoi and shake my head as I reject it completely, "I don't want to think about that. They're all dead, and times have changed."

"Is there a history lesson to be had here?" Léonne asks out loud as she approaches.

"One that nobody wants to hear," Ciel kindly answers.

It is mildly vexing that we're the only ones who care about it.

"Tell me more about it," the fox matriarch softly replies.

Lina quietly explains, "Mankind fought a desperate battle against monsters. Every work of art from that period was about self-determination, growth, power, overcoming insurmountable odds… and survival."

"And then rebuilding," Léonne adds, then looks up at the Great Steps. "Though they had quite the puzzling taste."

"How would you know what beauty was if you'd never seen it before?" I question philosophically.

And Hana comments thoughtfully, "All they had was faith, and I know that godly power feels… massive."

Roxanne snorts, and we smile too.

"I swear, that wasn't a sword joke."

We disperse, and each of us [Fly] towards our respective sector.

As I pass by a tall, cement box, a female adventurer calls out teasingly, "Lordling, I'm scared! Hold my hand!"

I stop and turn to the source of the call, and I see a group of female archers on the flat roof of one of the gray "houses." The one who shouted is a slender and gray werecat archer, and I predict that she'll be in my bed tonight.

There's no way I'll miss an opportunity like this, so I smirk as I land before her and grab her rough hand. "Have no fear. I'll take care of every single one of you," I huskily reply. Then I kiss the back of her hand, and her powerful fingers grip my claws.

She glances at her companions, and they chuckle, the pitch of their voices remarkably high, which is clear evidence of my level 2 [Spicy Charm] doing its thing.

"Watch out for me, and I'll watch out for you," I gently state, then I [Fly] away towards the wall.

I land among my men and nod at Nohopu and Kurii, then I turn to the two awkward Lordsguard before me.

"How are you two enjoying the armor?" I gently ask them.

"I can't complain," Lolo replies with a shrug. For someone who used to fight almost completely naked, she's adapting quite well to the full-body, nearly impervious elven armor.

And Nicky remarks in kind, "Me neither. And it's better this way since our reputation will definitely take a hit if we tell them that we're working with you."

I roll my eyes and sigh. "Yada, yada, you grumpy bastard."

Then he snorts while Lolo flashes him a glare.

"Lordling! Speech! Give us a speech!" An adventurer shouts from down along the wall.

I climb onto the crenelation of the wall and reply spiritedly, "You fuckers don't give a shit about speeches! You just want me to embarrass myself by speaking bullshit!"

"That's already a speech!" One of them shouts back.

"Good enough for me!" Another adds.

And then the hollering quickly dies down as the first enemy appears at the edge of our light.

A note from Manasong

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Chapter 140: Lordling - Part 3

Man's first nightmare was War. Their lives were relatively peaceful, but they were also tribal and had a tendency to start wars for territory, so the fear of the Other was always in their minds, and the first monsters took that form.

Our Light reaches about one hundred meters away from the wall, but further than that, there's only the Darkness, a place that we really don't want to go. And it's precisely there that hulking, human-like shapes begin to rise, their outlines barely noticeable as some of our Light reflects off their shrouded forms. Then they walk forward until they're revealed, and an army of brutish and grim soldiers begins to surround the entire settlement.

These are monsters designed to induce fear in humanoids, the Symbols of War, but no two of these Symbols are alike. Steaming skin, sharp scales, skeletal skulls with glowing eyes, pointy horns, long spikes, drooling mouths full of fangs, bleeding claws, charred skin, flayed bodies, multiple eyes, twitching limbs, pulsating chests, jagged blades, glossy black armor, flaming weapons, growling voices, rumbling steps. There are even a few known monsters that aren't Symbols of War, like proto-orcs and the Nalusa, the blood-bender, one of my favorites to summon in mass combat.

This army would be right at home in a metal album cover, but seeing them first-hand, with their threatening postures and bulging muscles, dampens our excitement. Even experienced adventurers would be hesitant to fight one of them, not to mention a whole horde.

But now's our time to shine. As Lords, we're supposed to lead, and so we shall.

I once again let the dragon out of his cage, and the endless hunger for power and women floods my veins with energy. I just need to think about that werecat adventurer's face, and my cock gets hard in anticipation.

Everyone is watching us… watching me, waiting for me to show them what it means to be a weredragon, to display the power of a Royal Crown Lord, to establish my superiority over the average commoner. And that makes the proud lizard within me very excited.

The monster army starts to slam their feet against the ground in a rhythmic fashion, and then they growl in an attempt to intimidate us. If allowed to continue, they'd begin to perform the Rupegian equivalent to Haka, but for the sake of looking cool, I need to crash this party.

"I'LL TAKE THEM ALL ON, MYSELF!" I shout, then jump off the wall, starting the delivery of dramatic catchphrases in sequence as the others also jump off to cover their sectors.

"EXPERIENCE ON LEGS, BOYS!" Hana cheers.

"BLESSED BY THE LIGHT!" Yunia inspires the men, and they spiritedly repeat her words.

"NOW'S NOT THE TIME TO HESITATE!" Alissa encourages as she casts [Mana Arrow].

"GODDESS OF GROWTH, SHOW US THE WAY!" Ciel prays, and the pious follow.

"BEGIN THE CARNAGE!" Roxanne cries with a maniacal grin.

"ATTACK…!" Lina hesitantly orders.

Then Aoi roars, and her rumbling voice echoes throughout the entire settlement. She might've scared quite a number of people, but she doesn't even care and simply jumps out without looking back.

"ANOTHER HUNT FOR US!" Léonne sternly shouts, then she mounts her husband.

"THE SILVER STRIKES!" Silvano delivers his famous catchphrase.

Alissa and Roxanne stay on the walls along with everyone else for obvious reasons. Allura and Ofilia also remain behind, both using longbows, and the idea of a battle maid excites me so much that my boner gets even harder.

And then they all unleash their ranged attacks, which fall on the monsters just a moment before I crash into their line. The Symbols are too busy dancing to defend themselves, so the preemptive strike inflicts massive damage.

"WATCH FOR THE LORDS!" The knights and Sworn Hunters shout.

We'll have to be careful about "friendly" fire. I have fire elementals floating above the wall and a bunch of birds on overwatch while Gify plays Big Brother and watches through them. The problem is that it's hard to see where the arrows are going because of the darkness, though it's basically impossible for an adventurer or an Imperial soldier to make even a dent in our armor.

We all crash against the line of monsters in disarray, then we reap their lives like harvest day. Not that many of them actually have good or practical armor, so they aren't much harder to kill than the average orc.

A horn blares, and the monsters try to swarm us, but we can just [Fly] up, and Aoi and Jacques are both unstoppable, so we merely play with them while arrows and spells fall around us. Unfortunately, the monsters are smart enough to not get bogged down by us, and they start charging the walls.

My [Wind Armor] enchantment flares, and an arrow harmlessly plinks off of the back of my armor.

This actually angers me, so I turn around and shoot a [Fireball] towards the wall as I roar, "WATCH YOUR AIM, YOU FUCKS!"

"WATCH FOR THE LORDS!" The knights shout again, and the fire-Hana starts scanning the wall for the son of a bitch, but it's unlikely that she'll find them.

The monsters start climbing the walls with a variety of methods. You don't need ladders or siege towers when you can just shove your nails or daggers into fucking cement. But Aisco and the handful of high-level Fire mages unleash [Abyssal Fire] upon the fucking geckoes to slowly consume everything. The wall will also get damaged, but nowhere near as fast as monster flesh.

Meanwhile, the monsters desperately climb over the bodies of their fallen brethren in an attempt to reach me, but the tentacles keep them at bay and continue to make the pile higher, which forces me to slowly float up to stay out of their range.

Hana spins like a madwoman, dicing, kicking, bashing, and breathing fire on anything that comes near her. One manages to grab her wing, but she briefly unsummons it and switches to her armor's [Fly] to keep herself above them, all without even slowing down her storm of blood, steel, and fire.

Lina freely [Blink]s across the battlefield for safety while abusing the teleporting property of [Equip] by repeatedly [Throw]ing her javelin into the monsters, which nets her a kill about every two seconds. But her warhammer is also kept busy as it cracks skulls and helmets, aided by the momentum of her constant [Fly]ing.

Ciel casts [Wind Storm] on the biggest clumps of monsters, almost immediately drawing out a red mist as they're diced into pieces. Her glaive also has good reach, and with the [Tiretiera Maire Style], she safely splits heads with every swing.

Aoi uses her massive body to fly into the monsters and crush scores of them while breathing fire at anything nearby. Their weapons are too flimsy to pierce her armor, not to mention her scales and hide, and anyone who tries to get a ride is easily zapped away by her recently discovered prowess with lightning.

Yunia literally dances atop their heads like a heavily-armored Legolas. The way she moves is just so uncanny that the adventurers and Imperial soldiers become distracted by her, earning themselves angry reprimands from the officers and knights nearby.

Léonne and Jacques act similarly to Aoi, though his fox form's hide is definitely softer than a dragon's, so the spears start to get stuck in his underside, not that he seems to mind or even get slowed down at all.

Silvano is the one with the least raw power, but he's so fast that the monsters don't even register him as an enemy until one of his swords is already in their brains, so he's still quite lethal, though he won't stay on the battlefield for long because of his high mana consumption.

Due to having to watch out for betrayal, I'm keeping myself from going off the deep end with my berserking, though this also leaves me with the mental capacity to appreciate the girls as they fight. While doing so, I also notice that the people in Roxanne's sector are getting a bit disgusted with the constant brainsploding.

But the [Abyssal Fire] starts to get awfully close to Jacques, pushing them further and further away from the wall and towards the Darkness. We don't have [Bind] to recall Alissa's parents, and the idea of anyone deliberately putting them in danger makes us nervous. And it also really ticks Alissa and me off.

Gify pops into existence on top of the head of a fire-Hana, then chirps angrily at the Imperial soldier mage, "Gih! Geh gih guh gen gon goh!"

"What the fuck…?" He blurts out in confusion as he looks back.

The elemental-wife lowers towards him and raises the temperature to uncomfortable levels.

"Gih, gih!" Gify chastises him.

The mage's eyes fly between the elemental and the little spirit. Then he leans back as his skin starts to feel the pain from the heat. "A-alright, alright…! I'll try to control it!"

Then he casts [Fire Wall] in the [Abyssal Fire] to help wrestle control over it, but that only slows down the spread, so I summon two fire-Hanas to help him, and the all-consuming flames start to recede. My mana is at a premium here, so it's really vexing that I'm forced to do this.

The carnage continues for a good half hour, and then the flood of monsters coming from the Darkness starts to diminish until it's merely a trickle, and that's the sign of the second phase starting.

While Earth and Rupegia share their fear of War, the presence of magic in this world gave rise to an additional fear: Devastation, not to be confused with the God of Destruction. In some interpretations of Trox Mael, this phase is called Ruin, especially because of the monster that's coming next, but Devastation is more general while the latter has direct connotations with both Necromancy and the God of Order.

Devastation is merely the result of War escalating the use of more destructive magic to the point that it either affects the landscape or triggers a Mana Storm. But, in this event, it means that since the monsters have failed to breach our walls, they'll take more drastic measures.

A pillar of "liquid" Darkness quickly rises until it reaches about five meters tall. Then it solidifies into the shape of a robed person, and within its black hood and sleeves, we see a perfectly white skeletal skull with glowing purple eyes and long, skeletal fingers. Then it points its right index finger towards the wall.

The Greater Lich is in Ciel's sector, but it's better if we let it cast its spell, so she just [Fly]es back and ensures that the wall is evacuated. Meanwhile, Bell-end mobilizes the reserve, moving them towards her sector.

The chaotic mana in the air suddenly passes through me like a flood as it all gathers at the tip of the Lich's finger, which begins to glow with a sickening, and very dangerous-looking, purple light.

A trumpet plays a call, telling the adventurers that they should gather at its source. I join up with Léonne and warn her of the Lich, then I return to the settlement to herd the cats as they reposition. The Imperial soldiers and our men will continue to man the walls since we can't trust the adventurers to remain at their posts and not follow the Experience.

The purple light gradually shines brighter over a long minute, and everyone waits anxiously for the fated moment.

Suddenly, the world turns purple as an extremely loud buzzing pierces our ears, and a purple lightning ravages the wall, quickly tearing it apart until it's nothing but dust. The proto-[Ruin] spell ends after a mere ten seconds, having opened a large hole in our defenses. It even cleared the [Abyssal Fire] that was in the way.

A horn blares from within the Darkness, and it's followed by the enraged roars of the Symbols as another wave arises and surrounds the settlement once again. But this time, most of them aim for the breach, and they dash forward with inhuman speed.

"AIM FOR THE PURPLE LIGHTS!" The men shout. There are Heralds of Ruin among the horde, which are enhanced versions of the Symbols of War, and they glow with purple magic, so they must be killed ASAP!

I make sure that my archer groupies are well-positioned, then I leave them and [Fly] back into the fray.

This time, the wives and I are all fighting together, which is a lot more comfortable for us, but now the "friendly" fire incidents increase in number, and it's a lot harder to say whether they're intentional or not.

"You need armor like me!" Aoi yells to Jacques as they meet on the battlefield.

"True. [Equip] makes it viable…!" He shouts back. Then he pounces onto a Symbol with his massive body and swipes his tail, sending a number of them flying.

"I find it ironic that a dragon wears armor!" Léonne jokes as she unleashes arrow after arrow, never missing a single shot.

And Aoi grins cheekily. "I can also do this!" Then she [Equip]s her halberd and sweeps it around her, slicing open the bellies of two Symbols, but it gets lodged in the third Symbol. Her swing doesn't even slow down, and the Symbols clump up until they fly away like ragdolls.

Both Chiefs freeze for a second in disbelief, then they laugh out loud as they continue the carnage.

The Greater Lich starts to gather more purple light at its bony finger, but this time, there's nothing to fear. There isn't much mana left in the air for it to absorb, and we also have our own countermeasures.

"HOLD! HOLD!" The men shout as the wave of monsters quickly approaches the opening. It's a bad idea to douse these ones in [Abyssal Fire], so the mages use "normal" fire.

"IGNORE THE BIG ONE! KILL THE PURPLE ONES!"

An arrow pokes one of Hana's wings, and then a damn [Earth Bullet] hits Lina's back, too heavy to be pushed away by her [Wind Armor], but she only feels a weak shove. One of the fire-Hanas spots a suspect, and she'll keep him under watch until she catches him in the act.

Roxanne begins gathering her mana for [Explosion] and aims it at the Lich, who is quite far from her, so it takes a while for the spell to actually reach its target. Then she simply blows its hand into smithereens.

The proto-[Ruin] goes wild and unleashes its purple lightning in all directions, hitting the Lich and a number of the rising Symbols. The chaos lasts for only a few seconds, but it causes massive damage all around it.

Then the dashing monsters reach the breach, and Change gives us the second Blessing: Sanctuary.

The Light in our bodies seeps into the ground wherever we step, creating small protective zones that harm the monsters and make it difficult for them to cross, blunting their charge as they reach our line defending the breach.

The buff also protects against the proto-[Ruin], but it makes the Blessing run out faster, so it's best if we can stop [Ruin] in other ways.

The Lich quickly grows back, effectively unkillable while in the Darkness, but now that it's made the breach, allowing Sanctuary to be activated, we might as well kill it and add another monster to my list of summons.

Ryders, assemble!

I [Fly] towards the Lich and join up with Hana and Aoi on the way. The first thing we need to do is to strip the Lich of its Darkness cloak, which is a Blessing from the God of Destruction, and the best way to counter godly power is with more godly power.

"I'll test my fire against it," Aoi asserts through [Bind].

"I'll help you out a bit," Hana follows up, and the two unleash synchronized fire breaths against the Lich.

The adventurers notice what we're doing, the glowing fire very visible in such a dark landscape, and they begin cheering, "Lordling! Lordling! Lordling!" Which feels very nice for my draconic ego but terrifying for Lina's.

Meanwhile, I summon an air elemental and begin pulling out the orbs of godly power, handing the diamond orb Artifact to Lina as she [Blink]s beside me.

"What if I try to absorb the Darkness with this Artifact?" Lina suggests, and I freeze as the realization takes a moment to sink in.

"That's a great idea, actually!" I exclaim, and her face, though already flushed from exertion, becomes a tad redder.

So, I put back the other orbs, and we land at the edge of the Darkness. Then Lina presses the Artifact against the absolute blackness on the ground, which begins to be absorbed like a vacuum sucking up a blanket.

Yunia and Ciel arrive just in time to help me keep the monsters away from Lina while she controls the diamond orb. At the same time, the fire from both dragon girls begins to stick to the Lich, making its grim form look quite ghastly as it's covered in fire.

But big skelly won't take it lying down, so it raises both of its hands, palms up and fingers spread out, and we immediately realize what it intends to do. Hana and Aoi try to fly away, but a Tesla coil of purple lightning hits them both on their backs, throwing them towards the horde, though Sanctuary protects them from any harm.

The lightning then comes towards us, but the Artifact absorbs most of it while the rest of it destroys the monsters around us. No longer the focus of the lightning, Hana and Aoi recover quickly and start coming back to us.

"[Explosion]!" Roxanne casts, blowing up one of the hands and halving the Tesla's output. She [Fly]s closer but remains high up with Alissa, both of them far outside the range of anything on the ground.

The Lich opens its jaws wide and lets out a bone-trembling screech, "GRAAAH…!" Then it unleashes a powerful arc of lightning towards the orb, making us go blind and deaf from the bright purple light and very loud buzzing.

Something tells me this one isn't supposed to be killed…

The artifact absorbs all of the lightning that comes near us without a problem, but there's so much power flooding in that Lina starts to get a bad feeling about this.

BALANCE IT OUT!

Everyone turns to the orb, and we unleash all sorts of spells at it. The overwhelming amount of purple pseudo-mana inside the Artifact starts to give way to a small rainbow, but it's far too little in comparison to the Lich's huge mana pool.

"LEMME AT IT!" Hana shouts through [Bind] as she darts towards the orb.

Lina begins to pale at the still-increasing amount of [Ruin] pseudo-mana, and even I get the feeling that this is becoming a ticking nuclear bomb.

Hana reaches us in time, then touches the orb and draws out the purple energy within. She immediately flies away, now gripping a long shaft of pure purple light that starts to take the shape of a huge sword.

What the fuck…?

The Lich stops screeching and closes its mouth as it notices that it's only feeding her weapon. Then she swings the purple lightsaber that's five times her size, and skellington raises its hand to block it.

The monster's hand glows with power, and their [Ruin]s collide in a quickly growing explosive ball of chaos as they immediately begin to annihilate each other. But the real eye-catcher is the orb, which now glows with mesmerizing divine light.

Oh… shit…!

Ciel delicately takes the orb from Lina's hands and offers it to me. She'll act as the conduit and regulator, leaving me free to do with it as I wish, so I land my claws on top of it and draw out all of the power within.

We've already done something similar to this together, and she and Hana have had some first hand-experience with divine power, but now it's my turn to look cool.

[Light Magic] is the power of the Gods, but it's only borrowed. Now this, this divinity that I now have within reach, is something else entirely… and I feel the dragon within me straining against its chains, trying to swallow it all. I'm a lover of women and a reckless researcher, but the hunger for power isn't really a big part of me, it's just that divinity is very enticing.

I also have the feeling that it'd be a bad idea to do that, so I put the stupid lizard back in its place. But I've stalled enough, and now that the balls of [Ruin] have ended each other, the Lich once again points its bony fingers at us.

I extend my hand towards the burning skeleton and make a wish with [Godly Language], "Disappear," just as I snap my fingers, and a flash of divine light blinds us all.

"You are now level sixty-two."

The battlefield grinds to a halt, falling eerily silent as even the Symbols stop and search for their Lich, but there's nothing there anymore. Nothing.

"Holy fuck…" Gandalf mumbles in disbelief, and even Fran and Bell-end look frightened.

The adventurers start to murmur, but then familiar voices start a cheer, and soon, everyone else joins in.

"LORDLING! LORDLING!" They shout fervently, and my ego grows three sizes this day, but then the Symbols all roar in rage and resume their attack on the breach, cutting the party short.

Ciel takes my hand off the Artifact and [Heal]s it as I'm far too light-headed to do anything right now. I feel absolute bliss, just like when I link our pleasures and make everyone orgasm at the same time.

Wait… I think I actually came in my pants…

But I'm not allowed to bask in the glory for long as two pillars grow from the Darkness in front of us, each one spawning a Greater Lich.

Well… we weren't supposed to win this phase, anyway…

Maybe someone more powerful could kill all of the Greater Liches, but that ain't us.

A note from Manasong

Hall of Fame of Patrons

The patrons who support Rupegia shall have their names sung by the bards for they deserve the glory and honor. Their names are:

Prince PreownedFIN.

Prince Owldente.

Lord Andrew Meyers.

Lord Novgarod.

Lord Michale Erwin.

Lord Bakerdea.

Lord Maurice.

Lord Mattirro Draca.

Lord Sean Drake.

Lord Mike Bartter.

Lord Warwulfv.

Lord Khristopher Welsh.

Lord Tenebris Lupus.

Lord Paul Daval.

Lord Paul Daval.

Lord AndreyUC.

Lord Tmac.

Lord School Work.

Lord CopeyDunt.

Lord BlindTactic.

Lord litalmexy.

Lord Philip.

Lord d3235.

Lord William Clark.

Lord Ddraig Wynn.

Lord CardinalSteiner.

Lord Cidant.

Lord SubJef.

Noble Salty Panda.

Noble Mild Fracas.

Noble Aclys.

Noble Carl  Baxter.

Noble Tony Starrk.

Noble GalacticTNT.

Leave a rating or a review to help me rise to the top or fix my shameful understanding of prose.

Take a look over my blog where all information about the world of Rupegia will be posted.

Join the Discord and discuss, or rant, or meme, or try and fight me so your waifu gets more screentime.

Become a Patron and read chapters in advance, or read the side-stories, or leave your mark on the story, or help choose the next artwork or the next side-story.

Chapter 141: One-Up - Part 1

Like with a Hydra, killing a Lich makes more spawn and increases the difficulty of Trox Mael, but the amount of Experience we can get for a kill makes me salivate. If only we could pull out Patrono here and wipe the floor with them, we'd certainly gain a couple of levels.

But the goal here is to have our men level up, not us, so we'll have to suck it up.

"Maybe we can kill one more…" I mumble to myself as I retreat.

"Full of mana!" Roxanne happily reports.

"Didn't have much to do till now," Alissa remarks with a shrug.

But Hana and Ciel are tired. The former because her [Fire Breath] is expensive, and the latter because she had a shit ton of divine power pass through her in an instant. Even I'm feeling a bit weird even though I only "guided" it, so I'm not sure I'm in the best condition to continue fighting.

And Alissa decides to help out, "I'll get my parents to help with the Lich."

With the last of my MP, I summon three more fire-Hanas, and with each summon reducing my total MP, it's now at 1/4th. It's always a pain to have my max MP reduced since I rely on mana a lot to fight, but the extra eyes from my elementals are too useful, and I can afford the luxury of taking it easy while I recover my meager MP pool.

I drink one of the faster-acting MP potions, then Ciel and I return to the wall while the rest of the girls unite, and Hana will stay and fight in melee while her [Fire Breath] recovers.

Ciel checks on the wounded, which aren't many, and I go check on my groupies, then I join our Companions on the wall. It's really easy to find Hukarere because of her wolf helmet, and also because she's a bit taller than the average soldier.

The two Greater Liches lift both hands above their heads with their palms up, and they begin to gather the mana in the air again. The one on the left summons a ball of fire while the one on the right forms an ice lance.

"The fuck did you do?" Hukarere questions me as I land beside her.

A Symbol's head pops up on the battlements, so she stabs her halberd into its throat, keeping it still while I decapitate it. "Honestly, I'm not entirely sure. We saw an opportunity, so we took it, but we have no idea how to repeat that," I casually reply.

"That's a shame because those fuckers look really dangerous!" Romy shouts as she slams her halberd into a helmeted head with glowing red eyes, then points at the two Liches.

"The Blessing will protect us!" I shout back and crack a skull with a tentacle-mace.

"If you say so!"

"Are you fine, tho? Your tail is a bit low," Hukarere concernedly asks.

Awn… It warms my heart that she can read me just through my tail.

I smile lovingly at her. "That flashy stuff tired me out, so I'm staying here until I recover."

And Romy cheerfully chimes in, "Fine by us. At least now we'll be able to do our job and protect you!"

I'll never not be happy to hear that I'm loved.

Ciel moves on to help the men at the breach, and the rest of the girls start clearing an area in front of the fire Lich to allow the diamond orb to absorb the Darkness again. The ice Lich is less dangerous, so we'll let it do its thing, though Roxanne does blow up both of its wrists to slow down its gathering of power.

Just because the fire Lich is conjuring a fireball doesn't mean he's immune to fire, and Aoi blankets the big skelly with her breath. Meanwhile, Alissa fills the Lich with [Sapping Seeds], and the arrows sink into its large bones where they won't be burned away by the fire, then she feels vigor flood into her, which is surprising considering the Lich is a goddamn skeleton.

Ciel gets really confused about my surprise, so I explain to her that skeletons are supposed to be… well, dead, so absorbing the life of a skeleton should be like eating the flesh from some bones. There just isn't any.

But then Ciel kindly explains through [Bind], "Wolfy, the undead of your world are different from ours. The Lich is still a living monster, so it has a life force that can be absorbed, and even the undead here need some sort of energy to live, so they'd also be affected by [Sapping Seeds]."

Oh, right… these monsters are made to be frightening, so they're "fake" skellies. The Greater Lich might have life-draining powers, but it still has to store that life energy somewhere, which is what Alissa is stealing from it.

But this gives me an idea. Arreira made quite the number of bows with a variety of enchantments, and I know for a fact that we have enough of them with [Sapping Seeds] to equip all of the girls.

"Yunia, see if you can use [Disruption Field] on the other Lich to slow it down!" I excitedly order through [Bind], then I start pulling out the bows.

"What are you doing?" Hukarere curiously asks, her casual tone making the wall seem way too calm, given the ongoing battle.

"Something stupid, but I really want to kill those two Liches," I answer without looking at her.

And she gives me some cheeky encouragement, "We'll be cheering you on, Lordling. Show your might like a tornado and make everyone shit crystals again."

What a colorful expression.

I grab her head and kiss her metal snout. "Thanks, love."

"Awn… look at the Lordling and his lover!" Romy teases and laughs out loud.

I turn to the tanned Asian and give her a seductive look. "You want a kiss, too? I know how much you love my cock, so there's no need to be shy!"

"Your Highness, please! The battle!" The Lordsguard officer exclaims exasperatedly.

Oh, well…

Before the rest of the Companions can start to get too distracted, I give them some encouragement, "Focus on the battle, girls. You can all join my tent later."

"Yes, sir!" They shout back in unison, and Hukarere gives me one last glance before turning to the battlements again.

Anyway, back to the bows. They all have [Mana Arrow], so they don't need ammo, and once I'm holding them all with my tentacles, I fly away towards the girls.

Yunia stops above the ice Lich, its hands already growing back, then she cuts her wrists right where they'd bleed the most, I think, but I don't know, I'm not a doctor.

Even just standing above the Darkness makes her uneasy, but when her blood drops fall onto the pitch-black blanket, she gets a horrible chill up her spine that gives her pause.

"Wolfy, I don't want to do this," she soberly states through [Bind].

So I immediately adapt, "Alright, switch targets. We'll take yours, and you take ours."

The fire Lich's robe may be… on fire, but his bones still aren't showing any sign of damage. The girls might need to do more to even disrupt its casting.

Then Roxanne gets an idea. "You know what? Fuck it." And she blows the fire Lich to pieces with repeated [Explosion]s.

Well, that works.

And the men cheer as they see the large ball of flame getting snuffed out, but the problem with Liches is that they're "like" undead. They'll always regenerate unless they're either completely annihilated or drained of all their mana, which is exactly what I want to do with [Sapping Seeds].

The Liches are close to each other, so it only takes a moment for the girls to switch positions, and Lina starts clearing the Darkness of the ice Lich while Yunia begins to bleed all over the fire Lich before I even reach them.

"This is the oddest plan I've ever heard!" Léonne shouts as one of my tentacles hands her a bow.

"The oddest plan so far!" I cheekily reply.

Then the ice Lich turns its skeletal head towards us, its glowing, purple eyes staring at us creepily, but it's a bit too late to try to stop us now.

"And fuck you too!" Roxanne shouts and also blows it to pieces.

The men cheer again as the ice lance shatters into thousands of pieces, then quickly melts into nothing. But our boom boom mage has used up quite a lot of mana to do this twice, and it's best that we don't let the Liches regenerate.

"Pepper it up!" I shout, and we unleash [Mana Arrow]s infused with [Sapping Seeds] all over the pile of bones.

I immediately feel something trickle into me, and I soon feel myself gradually getting less tired. Even the "weirdness" from the divine stuff is slowly being cleansed out of my body.

"HOOH! I FEEL GREAT!" Hana shouts and continues to fire arrow after arrow.

Yunia lets a few drops of blood fall onto the pile of white bones and burning robes, and as each drop touches the Lich, she gets a stabbing pain in her heart. She immediately checks her "Status" and notices that her HP has dropped by 1.

Oh, right, life-draining powers.

"Fucking-…! This was a stupid idea!" She loudly complains in my soul space.

Ay~, you didn't make the connection either, so it isn't all on me.

And she begrudgingly agrees, "Fine… but now what?"

Try to make a circle around it.

I unsummon four fire-Hanas and summon one water-Roxanne to help her spread out the blood faster. The fire Lich is starting to reform itself, so there's no time to waste.

"Switch targets!" I shout and point to Yunia's Lich.

Then I get another stupid idea, and Alissa groans internally, but doesn't stop me. I guiltily lower myself down to the ice Lich as I put some of my points in [Nature Magic]. Then I cast [Mana Transfusion], which makes my hands glow, and I touch a large piece of white bone.

"Hngh…!" I moan loudly as my body is flooded with sweet sweet stolen mana. I also feel a chilling sensation of my life being drained away through my hand, but my drain from [Sapping Seeds] is so high that the net drain is positive in my favor!

I'm a fucking genius.

Yunia really feels like retorting, but she's too busy right now.

Then a bone hits me in the back of the head, sending me flying away. The impact was absorbed by my helmet, and I recover almost instantly thanks to [Acrobatics], but my pride was still wounded.

That's it, I'm sucking you dry!

The energy flooding in from [Sapping Seeds] gives us all a second wind, and I tackle the floating pieces of bone like a hungry dog in a dumpster.

GIMME YOUR BLUE JUICE!

Bones smack against my armor and lightning crackles on my back, making the [Rainbow Shield] enchantment flare. Then fire envelops me, but it does no better, and even the proto-[Ruin] strikes me, only to be nullified by the Sanctuary Blessing.

I unsummon my spent fire elementals and use my quickly refilling mana pool to summon fresh ones, and they help me keep the bones away while I play the mana-vampire.

AHAHAHAHAHAHA!

Yunia finishes the circle of watered blood with the help of the elemental, then she activates [Disruption Field] while the rest of the girls cover her, and the reassembling bones collapse back into a pile again.

CHECK MATE, BITCHEEEEES!

I laugh maniacally while we continue to bring down the Liches. Lina's diamond Artifact starts to become a bit too full of Darkness, so Hana briefly takes it and casually throws the excess black liquid into the nothingness.

"Don't ask, don't know," she preemptively states before Roxanne can make her jealousy known. It's like Hana can simply make the pseudo-mana bend to her will, so it's not something that can be easily explained or learned.

Suddenly, my Lich crumbles into dust, so I immediately dart to the other one, and we quickly kill it, too.

"That was a dumb idea," Yunia remarks as we gather up.

"It's not dumb if it works," I offhandedly reply.

And she gives me a rather vexed pout. "You hugged a life-draining being and out-drained it to death. That's pretty dumb."

"I have no comment," Ciel dryly adds, and Alissa just silently nods in agreement. Not even Léonne and Jacques have anything to say; they're simply stupefied.

Then four Greater Liches spawn, but they seem even bigger than the two from before, and bigger equals more power, so we're kind of in the danger zone. If the Liches attack all at the same time, there's a chance that our Blessings will be drained instantly, and then we'll be swatted like flies.

Roxanne will also start to feel the effects of mana overuse if we have her blow up more Liches, so now we really can't kill these four.

"RETREAT!"

The adventurers leave their positions first and make their way to the Great Steps, then we evacuate the walls, and finally, the boots at ground level perform a fighting retreat from the breach.

The adventurers create a path covered in Sanctuary, so those who retreat after them have an easier time keeping the monsters at bay. The Symbols of War follow our men closely, but Aoi and Jacques are enough to keep them from being swarmed, so the retreat goes swimmingly.

And the moment the first person touches the Great Steps, their Blessing starts to spread throughout the entire, massive structure, becoming like a beacon in the oppressive darkness. Then the Steps rumble, and stairs grow from the blocks of cement, allowing us to climb higher.

We allow Bell-end to position his freshest men at the bottom of the Steps to keep the horde at bay while everyone else catches their breath.

Without anyone to reinforce the Sanctuary at the walls, it quickly runs out, and the Greater Liches have free reign to fulfill their purpose: to turn the settlement into rubble.

Ice lances rain down, embedding themselves into the cement whenever they don't outright demolish a building; huge balls of fire are launched in arcs and cause massive explosions, but the heat causes the ice lances to shatter, adding to the chaos; the ground opens up and swallows houses whole, then the cracks close up violently, creating small hills of jagged rock where it was flat before; tornadoes kick up and spread the fire and rubble all over; and then the lightning bolts of proto-[Ruin] spread all throughout the settlement, finishing off whatever was left standing.

All of this takes place while the streets are swarmed by the horde of Symbols of War, causing massives casualties for them while we just watch, the Sanctuary protecting us from any splash damage and flying debris. It's all free Experience for us, but the Devastation phase could've lasted longer if we didn't decide to kill the three Liches and hasten the settlement's demise, so not all of the adventurers are happy about how things progressed. Bell-end is neutral since he got the training he wanted to give his men, but for the following phase, we'll try to appease the adventurers more.

We take off our helmets and watch as the arcs of proto-[Ruin] light up the chaotic landscape, then I pull out one of the [Ruin] daggers we got from the assassins. Alissa was mildly uncomfortable with the Liches, but seeing the daggers brings back unpleasant memories for her.

"Sorry, I just felt like studying them," I softly apologize.

She tiredly shakes her head. "It's fine. Study is always worth it as long as it isn't dangerous." Then she gives me a sharp stare.

I smile wryly and turn to the dagger, but then Ciel takes off her gauntlets and starts massaging Alissa's furry ears, distracting me again.

"Oh~…" My orange fox moans softly. Helmets are never comfortable for the kemonomimi, even these elven ones made by Arreira.

But I raise a questioning eyebrow at Ciel, who smiles embarrassedly and hastily replies, "I'm just… doing what you wanted to do, so focus on what you wanted to research, and let me do this."

"You don't have to make excuses to cheat on your wife," Roxanne immediately teases.

"We all know you're horny for Alissa," Yunia casually piles on.

And the fox in question just grins while her masseuse quietly burns with embarrassment.

Anyway, I turn to the dagger again and activate the enchantment. The blade glows with an ethereal blue light and becomes semi-transparent, the only clue that it isn't material anymore and can pass through solid matter.

[Ruin] could be said to be the negative aspects of both the God of Order and the God of Change fused together. But it's more commonly believed to be related to the God of Destruction, and it's considered to be the opposite of [Heal], which is believed to be related to Creation.

I can also feel hints of [Arrow of Annihilation] and my [Chaos Breath] in the proto-[Ruin], but the modern [Ruin] feels very different. There's something cold and calculative in the modern version, but I'm bad at looking into the inner workings of spells, so I don't know how to explain it better.

Lina extends her hand to me, so I hand her the dagger, and she promptly begins to deliberate, "The monster version of the spell seems to have something related to divine power in its construction while the enchantment is from [Necromancy Magic], which is entirely about living beings and has similarities to [Light Magic], [Nature Magic], and [Spirit Magic], but 'inverted.' I can see how someone would use the monster [Ruin] to create Necromancy's version, like they removed the 'unnecessary' parts of the spell and 'focused' it on living beings rather than just matter in general."

I grin happily as I pat her head. "It always makes me happy to see how smart you are."

"Praise me more," she deadpans.

And I snort. "You have to earn it."

She leans against my breastplate and reaches up to my face with her little hands. "I love you, daddy…!" She cutely exclaims, and that's a critical hit to my heart.

I moan and kiss the top of her head. "You know me too well. There's nothing more that I could ask for in a wife."

And she grins cheekily. "Hehe…"

As the razing of the settlement come to an end, the Symbols of War stop spawning, and then the Liches finish their attack. All that's left are random ruins, fire, ice, and bodies everywhere. A desolate landscape.

And now begins everyone's least favorite part: Blight.

The corpses come back to life and stand up, or at least those that have legs, and then they slowly walk towards the Great Steps. They're not shambling like zombies, but casually walking closer until they're just a few meters away from us and so heavily clumped up that they're standing shoulder to shoulder.

Then, from our elevated position, we see a new monster enter the light, the Bestower of Dread, the ancient equivalent of a Dark elemental.

A small group of adventurers begin summoning light elementals, and I also summon five of mine. Bell-end wanted to use his ranged troops to kill the Bestowers, but the adventurers and even we seem to have more mercy than him because we'd rather use light elementals to deal with that abomination. Nobody deserves to have to stare at it while aiming arrows and spells.

The elementals fly out, and soon after, that abominable monster's existence comes to an end, but when it dies, it releases a cloud of rot that empowers the revived Symbols.

A couple of them start moving forward, and they resist the Sanctuary's Blessing, so the knights and Sworn Hunters engage the Symbols, making quick work of them. And this is how this phase will progress.

Our men will take the first shift while the elementals kill the Bestowers of Dread and everyone else snipes the Heralds of Ruin.

A Herald that gains resistance to the Blessing can do a lot of damage to weapons and armor if engaged in melee, so everyone is to kill them ASAP.

A note from Manasong

Hall of Fame of Patrons

The patrons who support Rupegia shall have their names sung by the bards for they deserve the glory and honor. Their names are:

Prince PreownedFIN.

Prince Owldente.

Lord Andrew Meyers.

Lord Novgarod.

Lord Michale Erwin.

Lord Bakerdea.

Lord Maurice.

Lord Mattirro Draca.

Lord Sean Drake.

Lord Mike Bartter.

Lord Warwulfv.

Lord Khristopher Welsh.

Lord Tenebris Lupus.

Lord Paul Daval.

Lord Paul Daval.

Lord AndreyUC.

Lord Tmac.

Lord School Work.

Lord CopeyDunt.

Lord BlindTactic.

Lord litalmexy.

Lord Philip.

Lord d3235.

Lord William Clark.

Lord Ddraig Wynn.

Lord CardinalSteiner.

Lord Cidant.

Lord SubJef.

Noble Salty Panda.

Noble Mild Fracas.

Noble Aclys.

Noble Carl  Baxter.

Noble Tony Starrk.

Noble GalacticTNT.

Leave a rating or a review to help me rise to the top or fix my shameful understanding of prose.

Take a look over my blog where all information about the world of Rupegia will be posted.

Join the Discord and discuss, or rant, or meme, or try and fight me so your waifu gets more screentime.

Become a Patron and read chapters in advance, or read the side-stories, or leave your mark on the story, or help choose the next artwork or the next side-story.

Chapter 141: One-Up - Part 2

Yunia watches as the knights and the Sworn Hunters engage the buffed Symbols, and she notices that there's definitely a difference in style between the two classes of soldiers. Our knights are more used to acting as squad leaders for Lordsguard or Townsguard, so their fighting styles are more standardized. The Sworn Hunters, on the other hand, are like buffed-up adventurers, each with their own style, but with a level of lethality and confidence a clear step above the average monster hunter.

"Would you like to have my Hunters spar with your knights?" Léonne suggests as she approaches Yunia.

The elven queen is quick to recognize mischief. "I have a feeling my men would be at a disadvantage," she promptly replies with narrowed eyes.

And the fox milf smiles politely. "On the contrary. I believe my Hunters have more experience with monsters than other humanoids."

Yunia hums thoughtfully, searching for hints of duplicity, "Hm… Very well, we shall have a spar tomorrow, but only a casual one." And she decides to play it safe.

Léonne nods, her smile becoming cheeky due to Yunia's caution. "If that's your wish. I merely want to see our different styles set against each other."

The snobbish elf snorts snobbishly. "You're more sly than Alissa, so it's sometimes hard to see through your intentions."

And the mother fox clutches her pearls exaggeratedly. "I'm an innocent fox, I swear!"

Yunia holds back her smile as she emphatically states, "That is not a word I'd use to describe foxes."

"How prejudiced of you," Léonne offhandedly remarks.

But the Queen is serious about this. "Elves are prideful and graceful. I openly accept my race's strengths and flaws."

Léonne narrows her eyes questioningly. "Those sound like two strengths."

And Yunia sighs. "Fine. Elves are arrogant."

"I concur very much with that assessment," the mother fox calmly agrees.

"While foxes are devious and cheeky," the proud elf slyly adds.

And Léonne gracefully receives the blow. "I… concur with that assessment."

While the two have their little exchange of banter, the trickle of powered-up Symbols slowly increases with each Bestower of Dread killed. A faintly odd sensation coming from the edge of our view announces the entrance of the Bestowers, making it easy to find out where they are, so they don't last long enough for their infamous aura of dread to affect us. Though the weaker of the men feel their presence more intensely than we do.

"That daughter and father duo that you favor, they seem to be quite good fighters," Léonne changes the topic.

"They're experienced caravan guards, yes."

"The father, especially. He's quite the large man," she curiously remarks.

"He's married," Yunia deadpans.

Which actually makes Léonne chuckle. "Please, Jacques is bigger."

"I wouldn't know."

The fox lets a hint of edge seep into her tone as she replies, "I'm not here to talk about cocks, especially since I know you're just looking for a reason to mention your husband's."

And now it's Yunia's turn to clutch her pearls. "Me? Why, never!"

Léonne chuckles again and wryly remarks, "I'd be very disappointed in Wolf if he hasn't turned you into a slut just like my daughter."

"And soon, both daughters," my elf cumslut smugly adds.

"See? You just want to brag," the mature fox calmly replies while shaking her head.

But that just increases Yunia's smugness further. "And you don't?"

And Léonne candidly admits, "At first, I merely wanted to say that I'm interested in the wereape's fighting style, but if this is what you want to talk about, I'm happy to oblige."

I'm not interested in hearing about how good Alissa's father fucks, so I tune out their conversation, but I'll have Yunia repeat her description of my sexual prowess through squeals later when I have her under me, bent over and taking it up the ass.

Alissa overhears something interesting, so I turn my attention to Ofilia and Allura, who are near the edge of our Step, looking down at the knights as they fight.

And the jade-like beauty excitedly whispers to the young red beauty, "Look how Montague fights. He's just as big as that elf, and seeing how they both fight, who do you think would win?"

I think she's talking about Palo.

Allura doesn't seem interested at all in the conversation as she bluntly replies, "Hmph… they're two big brutes. They'd just whack each other in the head with those long rods of iron they call swords."

And Ofilia smirks teasingly. "Oh, I forgot that you prefer them small and slender."

I approach them and interject, "Who's Montague? Alissa has talked about him a few times."

"The biggest fox you can find," Ofilia politely replies.

The Hunters wear metal armor painted dark green while our knights prefer the dark browns of elven wood, so it's easy to know which is which. Montague is probably the big dude wielding a greatsword like a longsword, and I see a hint of jade-like white skin under his helmet when he glances behind him.

The White Stalkers are few among the Misty Foxes, so that's certainly Montague, Nenvieu's older brother.

"It'd be interesting to see him spar with Palo," I remark thoughtfully.

"You really think so?" Allura excitedly replies, seemingly forgetting her previous display of distaste.

"Their bodies are unusually muscular, so it'll be interesting to see how they each combine that advantage with their Style. I obviously don't have a lot of 'Strength,' so it'd be interesting to get a good perspective on how that can change a fighting style."

Allura glances at Montague, then stares intensely at me with her reddish orange jewels. "Well, I guess we should have them fight, then."

"Spar," I correct and glance at her, but she doesn't have a hint of mischief in her innocent gaze. "But yes, tomorrow would be a good day to have our men spar with each other."

"It'll be very informative," Ofilia states and sends me a wry glance.

"Yeah, informative," Allura repeats absentmindedly, and I flash a warm smile at her.

Bless this girl.

Another Bestower spawns, and they both tense up as a chill apparently runs down their spines.

"This is annoying…" Ofilia mumbles with a rather cute pout.

We follow the elementals as they make a beeline for the monster, then we avert our eyes before that accursed being can enter our view. But Allura turns to the adventurers, and she doesn't seem pleased with what she sees.

She frowns and lowers her tone. "Mom said the adventurers have it out for us…?"

I look down the Steps, following her gaze. The targets of her cute glare are behind the knights and Sworn Hunters, just waiting for their turn. I recognize the faces of a number of them from yesterday, and they might still be holding a grudge against us that they could transfer to our men.

The "friendly" fire incidents were harmless since they literally can't hurt us, but with our knights, it might be a different story. Not to mention the Lordsguard, who are even more vulnerable to backstabbing since they have a tendency to hyper-focus on the battle.

Golems, keep an eye out for our men.

"Yes, Master Wolf," they reply in unison.

"We'll keep an eye on them. We're expecting betrayal," I calmly admit.

And both beauties raise their eyebrows in surprise and concern. "Really? What about the puppets?" Allura questions.

She means the Imperial Army soldiers, who are on the Step above the adventurers, but with how subdued Bell-end is, we don't have much to worry about from them.

"We got a promise from Bell-en-… I mean, Belligax," I reassure them.

"Can you trust that it'll be enough?" Ofilia wisely inquires.

And I smile wryly. "No, but the soldiers won't do anything stupid… The adventurers, on the other hand…"

"Are stupid," Allura completes, and we chuckle.

"Very," Ofilia quietly adds.

I let the mirth die down again before I soberly continue, "Keep an eye on them yourselves. All the showmanship was to get us on their good side, but those with a grudge won't forgive so easily."

"Sure thing, Wolfy," Allura affirms chipperly.

And I raise an eyebrow at her. "I'm impressed by how much freedom your parents give you."

She pouts coyly, trying to make a cute pose, but her armor kind of ruins it. "It's because I'm a good girl."

Ofilia begins a long wheeze, instantly snapping Allura out of her attempt to look innocent.

"Come on. They really have nothing to complain about with me, do they?" The young red fox gloomily asks, and I detect a hint of insecurity in her tone.

Ofilia takes a moment to recover enough to answer, "Well, no… aside from your… unbearable thirst for Lord Wolf."

Allura crosses her arms and frowns. "Blame Dad for me being like this. I inherited this side of myself from him. And besides, I think Mom likes it. She wouldn't let me be like this if she didn't like Wolfy."

And the jade beauty gives her a wry glance as she vaguely remarks, "I think you inherited more from your mother than you think."

"What do you mean?" Allura asks, a bit peeved.

Ofilia glances at me, trying to hold back a grin. "You'll… find out."

That she's a bitch in heat in front of dragons? Yeah, I know that very well already.

Then we see Anton have a heated exchange of blows with undead He-Man, and even Palo struggles to bring down Skeletor.

Not only are the Symbols more dangerous as combatants, but their blood contaminates the air with a weakening poison. We have antidotes, but they take some time to work, so we have to frequently rotate out the front line while also gradually climbing further up the Steps.

And our men have done enough, so I flag Nohopu and order, "It's time to move up!"

The knights and Sworn Hunters move in an orderly manner past the adventurers and climb the Steps. The higher we go, the stronger the Blessing becomes, and the boosted Symbols lose more of their power the more Blessed ground they have to cross, so we go up to keep the Symbols from growing too dangerous.

But the adventurers are considerably weaker than the knights, so we'll give them a hand.

I get Kurii and a few Lordsguard to accompany me as we walk down the Steps. The Imperial Army soldiers make way immediately, but they stare as we pass, and I don't know if it's because of my draconic features or because they hate me. Maybe a bit of both.

But when we reach the adventurer mob, they pretend to not see us.

"Excuse us. We ask you to step aside," Kurii sternly announces, and even I am starting to get pissed at their pettiness.

I give them a couple of seconds, but then I order with [Godly Language], "Move." And the fuckers at the front squeak in confusion as they lose control over themselves.

Maybe I should've ordered them to piss themselves.

"Honeyed voice!" Someone exclaims, and the crowd starts to make a path for us, some of them giving us frightened looks.

Kurii and I glance and smile at each other, delighted at imparting a bit of fear upon the petty idiots.

We continue on until we stop at the edge of the Step, and below us, the front line of the adventurers is engaged with the trickle of intelligent, buffed Symbols.

Soon, we notice a swordsman having a bit of trouble with a Symbol. He falls for a feint from the monster, losing his balance as he almost trips, so I cast [Entangling Vines] at the Mad Max cosplayer to give the swordsman enough time to recover.

"The fu-… I don't need yer help, Lordling!" The man shouts indignantly, a hint of an accent in his tone telling of his "uneducated" upbringing.

For fuck's sake, I really don't want that fucking Title.

"It's Lord Wolf, and I advise you to finish off your opponent before you complain," Kurii promptly comes to my aid.

Thank you! If I complain about it myself, then they'll really make sure that it becomes a Title.

The swordsman notices that the cosplayer is busy cutting the vines, so he decapitates the ugly son of a bitch with a clean slash.

"Thank you, Lord Wolf!" He begrudgingly concedes with a smirk.

But Kurii dryly warns him, "I advise you to not turn away from your opponents, as in multiple."

And his eyes open wide. "Oh, f-…"

I cast [Entangling Vines] again, stopping the edgy black knight from impaling the swordsman.

The swordsman wastes not a second before shoving his sword into the slit of the dark knight's helmet, then he flashes us a shit-eating grin. "Well, fucking thanks!"

"Is the Lordling going to help us now?" One of the haters asks out loud mockingly.

"What do you think Their Highnesses have been doing?!" Kurii indignantly shouts.

I have a problem. I want to fuck this beagle woman really hard.

Anyway, the resting adventurers take a step back, not wanting to get involved in this childish little spat.

And another adventurer starts to instigate, "Devastation was supposed to give us more levels, but you just had to fuck with the Liches with your Lordling cock, huh?"

If they don't stop with this shit, I'll gut someone like a pig to make an example out of them.

But I still have enough diplomacy left in me to loudly reply, "What do you value more, the Experience, or your pride? Because if it's the former, then now's the time to get it!"

"No thanks to you!" He shouts back, and the others start to distance themselves from him.

Kurii steps forward, her hand on the crossguard of her saber, ready to draw it. "Your lack of respect is concerning. Need we remind you who's responsible for your healing?"

"Don't be a fucking idiot!" Another adventurer shouts at the instigator, and the crowd starts to turn on him.

Good, they're defending us. That will drive a wedge between those with a grudge and those with brains.

"Stop sucking his cock!" The idiot shouts back and turns around to face them.

"Make me!" One of my groupies chimes in, and the others pile on against him, swearing like sailors until he runs away back to his fellowship.

The crowd quiets down, and the mood returns to normal. I get a few respectful nods, making me believe that their opinion of us is now steadily in our favor.

Then Azador approaches us, and the adventurers quickly make way for him. The blood-red flowers in his beard give him an air of authority and experience, instantly earning him some respect from the adventurers.

Maybe we should've used our Ramodia set instead… Oh well, a bit too late for that now.

"Your Highness. I feel like the adventurers are too disorganized," he promptly states with a respectful nod.

I chuckle softly. "Well, that's a given, but how did you come to that conclusion, exactly?"

He tilts his head towards the frontline. "See the man you helped? He's alone and without a fellowship. And the trio of archers you're… 'fond of,' they don't have a front line. If we match them together, we can 'complete' their fellowships."

I hum thoughtfully, my tail starting to sway as I let myself relax just a bit. "Very well. Call Palo, and we'll start to clean up this mess."

I call Ciel and Lina to join us as the former has experience dealing with crowds and the latter is an excellent secretary, then we start making our way towards Armaa Bro.

"Our Lord desires to speak with you," Ted and Suzy announce at the same time, scaring the shit out of Gandalf and Fran.

"Skritter shit, this is creepy," the amazoness swears while her fellowship laughs at her.

"Yo, Armaars'r!" I exclaim cheerfully as I approach him. My favorite horseman doesn't seem to have a fellowship, but he has hired two mercenaries to help him fight.

"Lo- Highness…!" He exclaims in a panic. It does hurt a bit to see how scared he is of me.

But I just ignore his behavior and explain, "I need to speak with you and the other two representatives. They're coming, so let's just wait."

He nods repeatedly. "A-as you wish…"

And we aren't left waiting for long, so I don't waste any time and immediately assert, "Kashikoe, Armaars'r, Fran, the adventurers are disorganized, and we need to remedy that."

They seem a little surprised that I remember their names, and that seems to mollify them a bit, especially Fran and her bitchiness.

"We were going to do that, but you didn't give us enough time," Gandalf grumbles, trying to not sound too confrontational.

I give him a centimetri, "Fair enough. But now we need it, and we also have the time, so I'll have you work with two of my wives and two of my knights for that."

Then Ted pulls out a [Project Voice] magic tool and hands it to Ciel as she lands beside me.

"Attention! Fellowships with two melee members and two ranged members, please report to the front line. Fellowships who lack members, please approach us for pairings."

Her soothing female voice and stupidly high "Charisma" make it extremely hard for anyone to ignore her, and even the dumbasses with grudges against us obey like good little puppies.

The Blight phase isn't a desperate fight, but it does have quite a lot of different variables that we need to pay attention to. The most important thing is to minimize stamina use because the last phase will be intense, but we need to balance the culling of the horde below us because they won't be going anywhere anytime soon. Not only that, but we also need to efficiently rotate out the front line to keep the poison levels low and minimize the chance of injury.

It's quite a daunting task, especially when half of the men either hate you or might be secretly plotting to fuck you up. But we're nothing if not adaptable, so my soul space gets noisy as everyone works to support the adventurers. They're the most numerous, and the poison makes numbers more important than skill since it limits everyone's time on the frontline depending on their body size.

"Five minutes, you fuckers! You have to last five minutes, or you'll get a lashing!" I "encourage" them.

"And what if I'd like that?" A cheeky bastard asks back.

"I'll shove a handle up your ass and throw you to the goblins!"

This atmosphere is nice in small doses. It reminds me of my sweaty days online with Lily, the boys, and the girls as we made scrubs cry.

"Your swinging is pretty bad, boy. You'll do better if you only try to stab," Azador kindly advises a young swordsman.

The imperial youth seems twitchy and anxious. His blade looks rather shiny, and you know what they say about knights in shining armor. Then I notice that he's glancing somewhere near us. Could be at Roxanne, Lina, Kurii, or some other woman, but I can't be sure since he's a bit too far away.

Hopefully, he isn't glancing at me.

The next Symbol approaches, and he aggressively engages it, aiming for the exposed arms to disable the Viking-monster.

But then he goes for a chop, and his sword gets stuck halfway through the thick biceps of the monster.

"Oh…"

And the Symbol doesn't even hesitate before it guts him, though his belly is opened only partially as Roxanne brainsplodes the Viking before it can do serious damage.

And that's one noob down. Just a few hundred more that we have to babysit…

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Chapter 141: One-Up - Part 3

"The elven youth are so much more respectful," Azador whispers to Palo as the two knights watch the noobs get fucked in the ass by the Symbols of War.

And the mass of muscles twitches as he snorts softly, making so much noise in his bulky armor that it's almost un-elven. "Well, these are humans and dragonkin. What did you expect?"

Azador's eyes narrow at another young man that he just gave advice to as the fool decides to humiliate his opponent by stabbing the Symbol in the balls… except that Symbols of War don't have balls.

The senior knight sighs softly, trying not to visibly facepalm. "After seeing the fourth one get gutted? A bit of sense in their jar heads? No offense to you, Your Highness," he adds and glances at me.

I have a small issue with what he said, so I politely reply, "None taken… but I don't really like terms like 'clay' and 'jar' being used to refer to humans, just as much as I don't like the terms 'lizard' and 'mustch.'"

Azador takes a couple of seconds to process my subtle chiding, then lowers his head respectfully and cautiously states, "Very kind of you, Your Highness. I'll watch my tongue."

Palo glances at him curiously, then promptly continues, "There are many hot-blooded elves, but the dungeons in the High Forest are merciless, so they usually die very quickly. That's why you don't see many in Escanso."

The old knight unhesitatingly returns to his normal demeanor and replies, "But their numbers must be very small in comparison to that of other races."

And I add, "Adventuring attracts a rather unique type of person, and the most common temperament will always be the humble farmers and laborers."

We hear a cry of pain and turn our gazes just in time to watch as another noob eats shit.

"Then I guess the desire to get gutted like cattle is seemingly attractive to adventurers considering how they like to ignore our advice," he flippantly remarks as he pats his flowery beard.

"There is a considerable number of them that seem to be masochistic," I wry add.

And Palo remarks with a sympathetic tone, "I can't blame them. Half of these Symbols seem like they'd be amazing partners in bed… if only they didn't wish to kill us."

Azador gives him a concerned look, but I smirk suggestively and confess, "I also can't deny that I find the female Symbols of Mankind attractive."

And the grandpa chuckles softly. "There's a joke here that I'm not courageous enough to make about you and how you converted Her Highness Aoi," Azador amusedly states.

Is it really a joke if it's the truth?

"I certainly do wish to 'convert' more female monsters in the future. Imagine the day that we can solve our differences through a sex battle," I wonder with a dreamy tone.

"Well, the dryads already do that," Palo suddenly remarks, and we both immediately turn to him in surprise.

"How do you know that?" Azador hesitantly inquires.

And the bodybuilder smirks smugly like a Chad as he brags, "Just a benefit of wandering the High Forest instead of growing roots on your ass in Escanso."

But the old knight assumes a very elven, prideful smug expression. "Don't try to brag about that sort of thing to me, child. I know every brothel in Escanso and also which establishment caters to whatever fetish you may have. I can even refer you to specific corners on the third level if you want something more 'intense.'"

That catches me off guard, and I reflexively blurt out, "The Chimeras fuck in the streets in plain sight. What are you actually doing that it needs to be hidden on the lowest level?"

He awkwardly averts his eyes as his smugness takes a hit, only to meet with Palo's teasing pair, which helps him recompose his elven pride. Then he clears his throat and hesitantly explains, "There are certain things that you can do with [Blood Magic] and [Slavery Magic] that can be quite… 'stimulating,' but the legality of them is 'questionable' purely because of regulations, so you need to go to the right places to see them being offered in the open."

And we're both impressed with how "cultured" Azador is.

"The Vamiro flowers in your beard, did they grow from monster blood, or something else?" Palo bemusedly asks.

But the old fart simply grins like a villain.

We continue to slowly climb the Steps while keeping the buffed Symbols at bay. Then evening arrives, and though nobody besides those with clocks know of it, the hunger for dinner is enough to tell them that we've been in this place for too long. This phase is for the adventurers, so we hold back our desire to hurry them and continue babysitting, but we make sure everyone at least eats a snack.

And they all also get a turn on the frontline, but due to sheer numbers, the adventurers remain fighting the longest, and then they even get a second turn, which they loudly complain about. Yunia gives them a tongue ass-fucking, reminding them that they need to fight for their Experience, and she's so rough on them that they turn from spoiled brats into whipped simps. They're becoming so obedient that I feel our control over them is nearing absolute.

I just wish there weren't so many noobs who get shit on by the Symbols on steroids… If we were to let the Bestowers live, the monsters wouldn't get buffed regularly, but then the Bestowers would make the Blight phase a lot more "Blighty," and the occasional gutted noob is better than that shit. If we had enough priests, we could weather the Blight, but our strength lies elsewhere, so we use the most optimal strategy for our army.

The desolate remains of the settlement gradually disappears in the darkness as we go further and further up, and the Blessing of Light is also drained from the Steps as the Symbols follow after us. Soon, the Great Steps begins to look like it's floating in the absolute darkness, steadily being consumed by the encroaching Darkness as we flee from the never-ending horde of twice-risen monsters.

And as we're (metaphorically) driven further and further away from the Realm, other forces start to become able to exert their power upon us. The men start to get twitchy and jumpy, and even we feel a mounting discomfort, even though we've killed all the Bestowers we could see.

We see movement in the darkness. Puffs of mist that quickly dissipate, a thunder strike that lights up some clouds, debris flying about, a faraway explosion, a glint from the reflection of something very large that briefly enters the edge of our Lights.

"This feels like an underwater horror story," Lina remarks through [Bind].

"Sometimes the types of books you've read concerns me," Ciel replies and glances at our little wife.

"What do you mean?"

"You've read too many books in secret from your parents."

"Is that bad?" She hesitantly asks.

"A child needs an adult to explain things and comfort them during the harder parts."

"Well, aside from the nightmares, I grew up fine… I think." But she starts losing confidence in her own words with each second.

And Ciel doesn't feel like she needs to reply.

But we're soon put back into combat mode as we sense stray mana with an odd, "hateful" flavor coming from the Darkness, and everyone tenses up as we realize what's coming.

I immediately crack the whip, "Alright, you helpless whelps and weed brains! Get the fuck off the frontline while we deal with this shit!"

"Aye aye, sir!" A cheeky adventurer shouts and jokingly salutes.

Ciel uses her best announcer voice and guides the adventurers back to the top while Nohopu and Alcander bring the Lordsguard back down.

"Your Highness, allow me to deal with these," Aisco requests and points to the reanimated Symbols.

I glance at him worriedly, but the dude has [Fire Magic] at 81, so I won't get in his way. "Do as you wish."

"It'll take all of my mana, so keep me safe afterward."

"You just want to do this to get out of having to fight," I tease and flash a smirk.

But he unashamedly admits, "Yes. It's also a great opportunity to push my abilities to the limit."

I hold back a grin at the audacity of this fucker. "Alright, then, you lazy bastard. Make it worth it."

"Always." Then he moves to the edge of the Step and raises his anime-like fire staff.

"Should we be concerned about the safety of our men?"

"I'm no amateur," he flatly replies, then starts gathering his mana.

I concernedly insist, "You did come from a mercenary company with an appallingly high number of Wicked."

Just a hint of distaste seeps into his voice, but then the characteristic elven smugness overpowers it. "My comrades were fools who let their emotions fuel their flames. I, on the other hand, have one singular desire: to destroy everything."

Ok…

Then his eyes gloss over, and he begins chanting with an awfully dreamy tone, "I dream of a candle, a single, insignificant flame in an endless field of dried leaves. A drop of poison falling towards a crystalline lake. The smallest amount of quantifiable violent destruction almost touching the bottom of a tower of glass. And the Realm stands still as the fire starter threatens to unleash chaos.

"I simply give it a push, let it fall, and two extremes collide. Nothing more is necessary from me, so I shall stand here and watch as the fire spreads and consumes it all. This… is my [Pyromaniac's Wish]."

Lines of fire shoot out of his anime-like staff like lightning and envelop each of the Symbols, tying them up like ropes, and then the monsters burst into flames and collapse, writhing as they try to overpower their fiery bindings.

Ignoring the horrifying way in which it kills, what's curious about this spell is that I definitely felt both [Lightning Bolt] and [Fire Whip] in it, though there's also quite a lot of its "structure" that I have no idea about.

And to the benefit of my "Sanity," the Symbols seem to quickly pass out, so I guess Aisco isn't that completely heartless.

"Hgnh…" He moans in a way that I really didn't want to hear, so I immediately leave to search for Nohopu and tell him to keep Aisco protected since he has no MP left.

With no more Symbols (that we can see) chasing after us, we start a quick march up the Steps, and just a couple of minutes later, the last phase of Trox Mael fully starts.

Purple roots suddenly start growing all over the Steps, coming from far below us, and the Blessings of Sanctuary and Light are quickly drained, then the Steps themselves crumble into dust and fall into the darkness.

The girls and I can [Fly], but hardly anybody else can, so we increase the pace and watch the roots closely to keep them at a stable distance. There's no point in trying to outrun them; we just need to last long enough.

And after a good ten minutes of light jogging, the entire Steps shakes as a boom echoes from far above us, and then we see large pieces of debris falling down, but the Steps above protect us from them, so there are no injuries.

The purple roots stop growing, so we calmly continue up after regaining our balance, and we soon reach the source of the loud noise. The endless tower has been sheared off, and now there's only the flat surface of the center column of the Great Steps for us to climb onto.

It's an arena. A boss fight arena.

"You know what's coming, boys!" Hana shouts, trying to cheer up the men.

"Fuck yeah!" A couple shout back.

"Fortifications!" Bell-end orders his handful of Earth mages.

The column is very thick, so it can comfortably hold our entire army, and the moment the last person climbs onto it, a deep rumbling starts, but then we realize it's a laugh. A very low, sadistic laugh. All of the wereanimals immediately turn towards the source, and we start to turn our formation around to prepare for the dramatic entrance.

Then a growling male voice slowly echoes, "Tremble in fear, puny humanoids…"

"He always says the same thing," Alissa hears Nikolas wryly remark to the Lordsguard.

The first things we see are two small yellow dots far in the distance, but then the dots increase in size, becoming circles, and then the circles reveal themselves to be eyes… vertical-slitted, dragon eyes.

Its stare is chilling, and it's like a sadistic predator that likes to play with its food staring down at its cornered prey. But the more we stare, the more we sense an endless depth to it, like that of a high-level person, it's just that it's so inconceivably powerful that it feels like trying to find the peak of an endless tower. And it humbles me.

My small amount of fear gives way to awe, and I don't think that's the intended effect, even though it humbles the dragon within me. I've lost my fear of battles and monsters in general, so all that's left is the awe at the size of the thing that's coming at us.

And the eyes continue to increase in size until they're the size of damn mansions, and then we see the glint of dark scales. But the glint continues down endlessly, a hint of the true size of the being before us.

After being assaulted by three of the four worst nightmares of Man, we finally meet with the last one, which is also the most powerful of them all. The End, not just death, but the End Of All Existence.

Lightning crackles in the Darkness, revealing a draconic outline that rivals that of mountains. This Ender, the first dragon, The Annihilator, The All-Consumer, The Nemesis, The Hand and Child of the God of Destruction.

He's also the father of all Symbols of Might, so he's technically my daddy.

"FOR I AM YOUR END…!" Ender roars, his voice so loud that our bones quake. Then he opens his city block-sized mouth, revealing white teeth the size of towers, a pink tongue larger than a multi-lane highway, and a psychedelic black-hole-like sphere at the back of his throat. Then he envelops the whole Steps with his mouth in an instant and bites.

A number of people squeak in fear, but we hear a loud ringing as Ender's teeth are stopped by a sphere of semi-transparent light that envelops the Steps. Sanctuary has left our bodies to protect us from Ender, but that means that we're now vulnerable to other things.

Black spears stab the sphere, and they're all stopped, except for two, which pierce the Blessing and push black, smoky tendrils in. One yellow dragon eye immediately grows from each of their tips, then large, toothy mouths also appear, which open up as wide as double doors and release a stream of Symbols onto the platform.

The men stand at the ready, weapons forward and comfortably positioned in their fortifications, but the monsters don't attack yet, so we allow their numbers to grow.

Then two shiny dragons with mirror-like scales come out and land behind the horde. Strong and muscular bodies, dignified postures, extremely fearsome gazes, and a powerful presence that contrasts greatly with the creatures of Darkness before us. These are Symbols of Might, fake ones, but they look just like the real thing, and they're technically my "siblings."

But the sight of them makes the dragon rattle in its cage at the offense of seeing cheap imitations created by the dungeon. And I instinctively get a boner as I imagine myself dominating them because Symbols of Might can also be female.

"The array!" I order, and the men start flickering the [Monster Repellent] enchantments. The effect is instantaneous as every monster roars, and even the smoky one-eyed tendrils tremble in rage.

Then a few more black spears pierce the Blessing, and streams of monsters pour in, but not more Symbols.

That's good enough for me, though.

My siblings eagerly paw at the floor, leaving grooves in the cement with their claws just like mine do. Then they roar to intimidate us, and the monsters follow, but even all their roars combined is nowhere near as powerful as Ender's, and just our Lordly presence is enough to keep our men from cowering in fear.

But now that the cinematic is over, the final battle begins!

Gify, play the FF7 boss theme.

"Gih…! Gih guh guh, gih guh guh, gih guh guh, gu guh, gu guh guh…!"

And I'm so excited that I instinctively give a speech, "YOU KNOW YOUR ROLES, YOU KNOW WHAT TO DO, YOU KNOW THAT WE CAN SURVIVE THIS! SO FUCKING GRIP YOUR WEAPONS TIGHT, AND POINT THEM AT THE ENEMY! THIS IS WHY YOU'RE HERE, AND YOU SHALL NOT FALTER, FOR THE GODS ARE WITH US… AND THEY SHALL GIVE US STRENGTH!" I end my speech with [Godly Language], and our Light shines brighter as we're all filled with holy fervor!

I spread my wings wide, not even knowing when I shifted into my dragon form, then I launch towards the Symbol of Might on the left. It seems to have a sleeker and less spiky frame, which means it's likely a female.

My sister rears up on her hind legs, and I crash into her, and we lock into a wrestle for control. She's bigger, but not by much, so I can still get some leverage if I play it smart.

We bite each other's throats, and our defenses are so high that we don't actually do any damage, but we still violently shake our heads as we each try to rip off chunks of flesh from the other.

Spears and swords try to stab me in the back, and they manage to damage my fleshy wings, but I don't need them for this anyway, and nothing else is damaged.

The fight for supremacy, the desire to dominate, and the wild emotions, it all makes me euphoric. If not for the pain, it'd be just as good as Ravaging one of the wives.

But I've never been like this before. This is definitely something new, which is rather scary, so the human observes from afar, never fully out of the picture. And the dragon doesn't care as long as he's allowed to rampage to his heart's content.

My sister starts to overpower me and forces me to roll over onto my side. Then she begins to press me against the floor while she increases the pressure of her bite on my neck, scratching the scales and threatening to break them.

But I've never been one to play fair.

I harden my neck with [Mana Body], then I cast [Telekinesis] on myself to help me stand up on my hind legs, and I see my sister's eyes open wide in surprise as I easily get myself out of that unfavorable situation.

"RRRRUUUU!" She lets out a muffled roar, and her strength gains a boost, trying to finish me off, but I cast [Entangling Vines] on her feet, and when she tries to push me back, only her upper body goes forward, so I move out of the way and let her fall.

She remains stuck to me due to her bite, so I cast [Earth Bullet]s on her face repeatedly while I pull back, and I manage to slip out of her grasp. Then I prevent her from biting me again by biting back just under her jaw.

"RRRRRRRRAAAA!" I roar as I cast [Gravity Crush] on my own mouth to increase the pressure of my bite.

I'M THE REAL ONE!

My sister writhes violently, trying to escape from me.

I'M THE SUPERIOR ONE!

She roars in pain and rage.

I'M THE FATHER OF DRAGONS!

I feel a violent power well up in the back of my throat.

AND I'M FUCKING INVINCIBLEEE!

[Chaos Breath] launches out the moment her scales crack. The breath hits her, and I feel my snout disintegrate as a wave of pain makes me reel back.

But the life in my sister is snuffed out instantly, so I just turn around, not interested in seeing the carnage because there's something else that needs my attention.

"Gih!" Gify exclaims in my soul space.

You can't be serious…

Someone is casting [Gate].

The overwhelming exhaustion washes over me, making it hard to even stand, and I can't fly with my wings right now, so I just cast [Telekinesis] on myself and float up while I wait for my body to reconstruct itself. The advantage of a fake body is how easily it can regenerate while I still have mana.

The Symbols of War try to jump onto me and keep me down since their weapons do nothing to me, but Roxanne brainsplodes them, so I rise unimpeded and look over the battlefield.

The girls and Alissa's parents are engaging my brother, who's still standing and only lightly wounded, even though he's constantly being barraged with attacks. Everyone else is still fighting with fervor as the monsters surround them. The arena is filled to the brim as the Symbols occupy every free spot on the platform, more taking their place the moment any spot is freed up as they continuously fall to my army on godly steroids.

I search for the mage casting [Gate], and when our eyes meet, the color drains out of his freckled face, and he starts chanting faster.

My body finishes regenerating, and I snarl angrily as the fire of rage starts to clear the exhaustion I'm feeling.

Not yet…

Swords, daggers, and spears are launched against me, only to plink harmlessly off my mirror-like scales, though they do bother me a bit with their constant poking.

Then someone grabs Ted from behind, and she's sucked into their [Item Box].

YOU INSOLENT WORM!

I instantly shoot forward as I cast both [Rush] and [Haste] on myself, my bottomless fury clearing away the exhaustion instantly.

Jarn [Equip]s a [Gate] Scrubber and activates it. Then the [Gate] mage freezes in realization and lets his spell fizzle out.

The mages see me coming and clear out, but the thieving little kitten doesn't move until it's too late, so I crash into her like a truck, and she's sent tumbling along the stone floor. She's instantly knocked out, which is a small mercy considering her limbs are now bent in the wrong directions, though she isn't dead.

"THESE THIEVES SHALL BE DEALT WITH LATER!" I roar as I summon a nature elemental, who immediately binds the thief and the mage together.

Then I summon Ted again, and my little teddy bear floats back to Gandalf's side, who's seemingly still like a statue as he stares at me, though I don't know if it's from fear or confusion.

I find Fran and Armaa Bro, but they're both busy fighting on the frontline, so they don't seem to be related to this. Bell-end is paying attention to me, and he's telling his men to not interfere.

Once our eyes meet, I see him stutter and swallow heavily, but then he immediately turns his attention back to the battle. I find it unlikely that he's involved in this, but it's always good to reinforce the idea of who's in charge here.

The message has been sent, and we still have a horde to grind through, so I return my focus to the battle. My brother is being a stubborn lizard and refusing to die, so I spread my wings and fly up because I don't feel like using another Breath to kill this one.

The last Blessing that we're given is a hidden one. In the face of an overwhelmingly powerful enemy, there's only one thing that humanoids can do to survive: unite.

This Blessing is like [Weaverism] because it subtly connects our minds, allowing us to fight as one in ways we never could before. And with that coupled with my godly steroids, even the Symbols of War are nothing more than goblin fodder.

I fly down and cast [Telekinesis] on myself to increase my weight…

GRAND SLAM!

I turn on my side at the last moment as I crash into my brother.

There's not even a single moment of hesitation. Aoi grabs his head and presses it against the floor with the weight of her whole body, Alissa and Léonne blind it with arrows, Hana and Yunia lift the scales and stab him right in the foreleg joints, and then Lina starts cracking the scales under his neck.

My brother begins to resist and writhe, so Roxanne casts [Explosion] in his brain, but even then, his resistances are so high that he only gets mildly stunned.

And that's all the help we needed as it gives Aoi and me the chance to grab his head and pull it backward, exposing the underside of his neck. Even a Symbol of Might can't resist concentrated attacks while completely immobilized, and everyone, even Jacques with his longsword, attacks the weakened scales.

Though the bastard still lasts for a good while, he eventually stops resisting, and then Aoi and I suddenly find ourselves holding his decapitated head.

Other dragon variants appear, but the true bosses are both dead, so now all we have to do is continue to farm the Symbols. This battle was supposed to last longer, but Lords heavily tip the balance of power, and the Dungeon Master of the Labyrinth isn't the kind that tries to compensate for things like that.

Once the last monster finally falls, just Alissa and Léonne are enough to deal with the one-eyed, mouthed, smoky tendrils before we have to deal with "phase two" and the boss fight "mechanics."

I'd like to explore a scenario dungeon like this another time, but with only the girls and me, just for the challenge.

Then the Sanctuary sphere explodes outwards, destroying Ender's head, but even that would never be enough to kill him.

A note from Manasong

Hall of Fame of Patrons

The patrons who support Rupegia shall have their names sung by the bards for they deserve the glory and honor. Their names are:

Prince PreownedFIN.

Prince Owldente.

Lord Andrew Meyers.

Lord Novgarod.

Lord Michale Erwin.

Lord Bakerdea.

Lord Maurice.

Lord Mattirro Draca.

Lord Sean Drake.

Lord Mike Bartter.

Lord Warwulfv.

Lord Khristopher Welsh.

Lord Tenebris Lupus.

Lord Paul Daval.

Lord Paul Daval.

Lord AndreyUC.

Lord Tmac.

Lord School Work.

Lord CopeyDunt.

Lord BlindTactic.

Lord litalmexy.

Lord Philip.

Lord d3235.

Lord William Clark.

Lord Ddraig Wynn.

Lord CardinalSteiner.

Lord Cidant.

Lord SubJef.

Noble Salty Panda.

Noble Mild Fracas.

Noble Aclys.

Noble Carl  Baxter.

Noble Tony Starrk.

Noble GalacticTNT.

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Chapter 142: Winding Down - Part 1

Once our eyes recover from the blinding light, the first thing we notice is that everything is now dark, and though we see stars above us, there's no psychedelic sun or even clouds. Then we cast our [Spirit Light]s and discover that our environment has changed.

We're now on top of a very wide cement platform in the middle of an idyllic little grove. There's a stream of crystal-clear water nearby, which a group of mossy not-deers are drinking from, but they quickly scatter when they notice our lights. The sky is actually a black ceiling and the stars are actually powered-down crystal lights. This is a "rest room" kindly given to us by the Dungeon Master so that we may recharge our energies.

Unfortunately, finding riches is quite rare inside a dungeon, so there's no loot for us. Not even the corpses would be worth selling, and the Symbols of Might were fakes, so they were likely mana solidifications.

Maybe we could've stored the piles of bone dust from the Liches, but that ingredient's a bit too exotic for Roxanne, and I don't know if Petra would use it with her [Alchemicism]. If we were alone, we could've explored more and probably found something valuable, but I don't regret how things went.

The adventurers immediately go for the stream to sully it with their bloodied and sweaty weapons and armor while Bell-end gathers his men and we ours. And now that we're safe again, Gify pops into existence on my shoulder.

"This would be a nice place to rest," Alissa hums in wonder.

I'm inclined to agree because of how fresh and peaceful this place feels. I even see a nice bed of fragrant flowers that seems like it'd be nice to lay down on, but there are a few considerations we have to keep in mind. "We'd have to set up security, and I just want to let our men rest, which they can do back at the embassy."

Alissa softly hums in agreement, her tail rather limp in disappointment, "True. A shame we can't have this place all to ourselves."

"Well, we could, but forcing everyone else to leave isn't something we should attempt to do," Yunia remarks, and I think she's saying it more to convince herself that it's a bad thing than us because she's a High Elf, and they fucking love groves.

I turn around to the pair of little thieves who are currently tied up by a nature-Yunia, then I notice that the three stooges and Bell-end are paying attention to us.

"Let's deal with the thieves first," I state.

We walk up to the still unconscious little kitten and her weredog accomplice, and the fearful man pales again as we approach to give him his sentence. Yunia has our men surround us to give us some privacy, and that actually manages to make the weredog even more afraid, so I start to hope that he doesn't piss himself.

The girl's limbs have already been healed, though her HP isn't at max, so she should feel a bit of pain when she wakes up. And so, Ciel casts [Purify Body] on the cat to neutralize the sleeping potion we gave her.

The spindly mage is a freckled ginger weredog while the slender catgirl thief has black hair and the usual olive skin tone of an imperial. Neither look particularly noteworthy or have exceptionally high levels, which is the perfect background for sneaky thieves that want to blend in.

The girl slowly wakes up, and the first sound she makes is a groan of pain, then she shifts around in her viny bindings so that her bruises don't hurt as much. Stanley, the weredog, continues to stare at me in silence, which I'm thankful for since I don't want him to start begging for mercy.

"Harriet," I sternly call for the girl's attention, and she tenses up, the fogginess of her gaze quickly clearing up. "Do you remember the last thing you were doing before you passed out?"

"I-I was…" She mumbles, then she clamps up and searches for the source of the voice. It takes her a couple of seconds before her eyes find mine, and her jaw starts shivering once she realizes who's speaking to her.

"Harriet, answer my question," I insist, adding a hint of [Godly Language] to my voice.

"W-what was the q-question?" She tries to stall.

"Do you remember the last thing you were doing before you passed out?" I press with an even sterner tone.

The catgirl glances at Stanley, and he subtly nods at her, making me regret not isolating them. That signal kind of ruined the intimidation attempt.

She lowers her eyes, and her ears go flat as she begins her play. "I tried to steal your golem, but please have mercy! I'm only a tool for my boss!" Then she raises her ears again as she begs, staring intently while making a pained face to try to make me sympathize with her.

I'm far too tired to deal with this shit, so Alissa presents them with their options, "You two will be sent to the Enforcers and judged for your crimes. If you give us something, we'll give them a recommendation to lower your sentences."

They both gasp in horror, and Stanley looks like he's about to cry. Then he opens his mouth to beg, but Yunia sternly interjects, "Don't even try to ask for mercy." And he closes his mouth again.

Harriet is stronger-willed than Stanley, and she tries really hard to hide her indignation as she explains, "We don't know any names. The Guild only works through intermediaries, so there's no point in trying to interrogate us."

"Which Guild?" I blurt out.

"The Thieves Guild," she answers as she gives me an odd look, but then the realization strikes her. "Ah, you're from the High Forest, and the Guild doesn't operate there because the elves are stingy."

The fucking what?! What's next? The Dark Brotherhood and Sithis…? Wait, that one could be Katasko or some other heretic group…

Then Stanley suddenly exclaims excitedly, "The Receptor must still be waiting on the other side of my [Gate]!"

But the catgirl immediately chastises him, "Are you crazy? The Guild will fucking murder us!"

He hisses back as he grows a pair of balls, "He has a honeyed voice; we can just say that he forced us to confess!"

She freezes for a second in confusion, but then she exclaims in resignation, "Then they might kill us no matter what we do!"

"Exactly! So I'd rather take my chances with the one with a Blessing!" He desperately insists.

And I calmly give them a way out, "We can protect you and give you two a new life in the High Forest or somewhere else nearby."

Harriet becomes hopeful for just a second, but then she flatly states, "I… don't believe you."

It's a bit annoying to do this, but this really is the best tool to quickly get someone's trust. "I, Crown Lord Wolf Ryder, promise to the Gods."

"Fucking told you the Blessed one is better!" Stanely excitedly shouts in her ear, making her wince at the loudness.

But Harriet is still resisting and nervously warns us, "The Receptor might just be a servant or someone unimportant. Or there might even be men hiding nearby to protect the Receptor. I don't know if there'd be anything good there."

And Stanley becomes flabbergasted at her attitude. "Do you want to become a criminal slave?!"

"Do you want to make a Lord feel like they've been duped?!" She shouts in his ear, making him wince at the loudness too, but then she also winces in pain from her bruises.

I'm starting to like them.

Yunia points out through [Bind], "We might be justified in 'interrogating' this Receptor to discover who they work for. Just to find out who's interested in [Golemancy]."

"This makes me uncomfortable. They aren't assured to be evil like those from Katasko," Ciel retorts. Even if the Sin is called Sadistic Torture, we can't just "interrogate" everyone who gets in our way.

Balance in all things.

But to me, the balance in this matter is clearly tipped in a certain direction. "Ted could be very dangerous in the wrong hands," I reply determinedly.

Ciel also understands this fact, so she begins to back down but leaves a condition, "We can't kill them."

"I'm fine with that," I accept, then I turn to Stanley. "Open the [Gate] to the Receptor."

"W-will y-you protect us?!" He frantically replies as hope quickly blooms within him.

I slowly nod. "I will give you two a new life in the High Forest if that's what you want."

"I'll take it!" He immediately shouts.

But she gives him a death glare, making him wince in guilt.

So he tries to explain himself, "Look, Harriet, fuck the Guild. We got screwed over on this job! It was just a matter of time before we'd fail, but we actually have a way out! That's the God of Luck giving us mercy!"

And her eyes lose focus as she begins to look completely lost. "I've worked for the Guild for my whole life; I don't know how to do anything else!"

"We'll be fine! Any place will be better than here!" He desperately tries to convince her.

"Why is a Porter working for thieves? You're supposed to be paid a lot," Hana concernedly points out.

And the two thieves suddenly become quite meek.

"We… had some problems," Stanley ashamedly answers.

"You're not a certified [Gate] Master," Yunia states, and his crestfallen reaction is all the confirmation we need.

"Do you want Harriet for yourself?" Alissa curiously asks me through [Bind].

And I almost frown in distaste. "She's cute, but no. I really don't."

"The temple can take them on as penance for their crimes," Ciel soberly states, and the duo seem to perk up (with heads and ears) at her idea.

"That is very merciful of you," Harriet respectfully replies as she gives our chocolate angel a thankful look.

"Open the [Gate] before your Receptor notices that something is off," I calmly order.

And Stanley tenses up. "Y-yes!"

The nature elemental loosens the bindings, and Stanley immediately begins to chant, then Jarn turns off her Scrubber. Ciel [Heal]s Harriet, earning herself another earnest thanks, then she hands the catgirl a [Regeneration] tool for her to deal with any lingering pains.

I start summoning a variety of elementals, and I feel my mana organ start to strain a bit. Having to keep elementals up to watch our "allies" was a bit taxing on me. The duo slowly stand up and warily stare at the elementals, but Stanly quickly averts his eyes away when Harriet gives him a stern glance.

"Where does it go?" I question him.

"A dead-end street in the abandoned section of the underground city, so there should be hardly anyone around."

"I heard about that area. There should be a lot of spirits there," Hana comments curiously.

Of course, a city as large as Mac Gantus would have a ghost town.

We call for our High Officers and have them quickly organize a strike force. Stanley can send about a dozen men there, but that'll be enough. Once I'm through, I can bring in the rest and flood the area.

Then the thief stops chanting and hesitantly announces, "I'm ready…"

"Put it down," I order.

The familiar black hole appears before me, and the elementals pour in. The first one to cross through is an earth-Lina, and she sees a middle-aged Sebastian just a couple of meters ahead of her.

The imperial butler opens his eyes wide at the large being of stone with black bangs, and he reflexively begins to speak, "What are y-…"

But the earth-Lina punches him in the face, then immediately grapples his body and keeps him immobile.

Oops, a bit too violent, I think.

The following elementals notice movement, though. A good dozen cloaked men stir up from the alleys and draw their swords, then an arrow pierces a fire-Hana's forehead, but it does absolutely nothing to her.

"Hammers and water!" A gruff man shouts.

"And the water one?!" A young voice replies.

"Fuck if I know!"

Then a battle breaks out, but I simply cross Stanley's [Gate] and open my own, which our men pour through in an orderly fashion, almost immediately overwhelming our enemies. I'm always impressed with how disciplined our Lordsguard are.

"Ambush! Scram!" Someone shouts, and I'm actually taken by surprise as they throw smoke bombs at their feet and run away, but our men are ruthless motherfuckers and manage to tackle three of them before they can escape.

"Don't chase!" I order. I don't want my men getting lost and ambushed in these abandoned streets.

The four captives are easily subdued, and things almost instantly calm down. All we need is the Receptor; anyone else is just another annoyance we have to deal with.

Then I stop to observe the environment. The ceiling is pretty low, at most four stories high, and it's full of powered-down crystal lights, just like a dungeon. The houses are all square boxes of bricks, with a few going up to the ceiling, but none of them look particularly wealthy. The illumination is pretty bad, but we wouldn't be able to see much anyway due to the low ceiling.

Dusty, dark, ugly, drab, and decaying. Aside from the prospect of meeting with spirits of the dead, this would be the most uninteresting place I've ever been to.

Then I notice the sound of running water and realize that there are quite a lot of wet spots everywhere. Like the cherry on the cake, the whole section is being infiltrated by water from the surface, which makes me wonder about the danger of collapse.

Alcander comes through my [Gate], and I casually order, "Send them to the embassy. We'll speak with them tomorrow morning."

"Yes, Your Highness."

Someone takes not-Sebastian from earth-Lina, and I unsummon all of the elementals, then I sigh tiredly. The [Gate] took another burst of mana from me, and I'm starting to get irritated by the strain on my mana organ.

I [Gate] myself back, then I start to mentally prepare myself to talk to the three stooges and Armaa Bro.

"I can talk for you," Yunia suggests through [Bind], and I silently thank her.

We also invite Léonne to participate, and she brings Allura to watch. Then we move towards the anxious group waiting for us, but just to assert dominance, I stop midway and have our men tell them that we want to speak.

They all come at the same time, their gaits very distinct from each other. Bell-end is tense, his XO looks like he's doing his best to not run away, Fran is confused, Gandalf is terrified, and Armaa Bro seems very meek. I want to reassure Armaa, so I'll take it easy with him.

Everyone gets some distance from us to give us some privacy, but many eyes keep a close watch in case shit goes down.

When they stop, Yunia abruptly begins, her tone clinical and tinted with elven arrogance, "To begin, we've just dealt with a duo of thieves who attempted to kidnap one of our golems."

And Gandalf preemptively defends himself, "I have no idea who ordered that. I believe they stole the one with me because I was in the backline and distracted by the battle."

She gives him a measuring look, and even the proud and mature dragonkin seems to wither under her gaze. After "taming" him, he's no more ferocious than a dog wanting approval.

But she doesn't find sufficient reason to press him further, so she declares out loud with a stern and deliberate tone, "If any of you has any information to share, now's the time. We'll interrogate the ones who were involved and find out who ordered this theft, but we'll show mercy if confessions are given to us."

"I have no involvement in this matter," Bell-end states matter-of-factly, and the other three remain awkwardly mute.

She lets the silence linger for a long moment, then calmly moves on, but now she lets her smugness and contempt become very apparent on her gorgeous elven face, "Very well. The second topic is that I am going to explicitly gloat about how your fears about using [Monster Repellent] arrays were entirely unfounded…" And her tone becomes increasingly more harsh, then she pauses for a moment to let it sink in. The three subtly tense up, expecting an execution, but we're not the petty kind. "Considering how you three, with the exception of Armaars'r, were very close to being killed for your insolence, I emphatically advise you to reconsider your future choices of masters. You were stooges, dupes, sacrificial cattle whose only purpose was to hinder us, and you almost died for it, but the next Lords you meet might not be so merciful.

"We, on the other hand, aren't the kind that throws away the lives of those who serve us. In the future, if you ever change your minds and desire to give us information on those who hired you three, know that we reward our allies very well."

Gandalf and Fran share a nervous look, and then the guilt starts to appear on their faces as their facade crumbles. They're not sworn servants, so they have no loyalty to the one who fucked them over with this job, but the person who sent them here to die is obviously dangerous, and anyone would be hesitant to betray them.

The dragon wants me to "interrogate" them and wring out the truth, but I don't think we'd find out that much. Considering that someone in the Monster Hunter's Guild ordered them to come here, there should be a few levels of people who we'd need to "interrogate" before we'd get to something interesting, and that doesn't seem worth it as a response to someone wanting to just "hinder" our power-leveling.

I want to send a different message, so I interject to reassure the one innocent person in this pile of shit, "Armaars'r, it was unfortunate that you were involved in this farce as you're just an innocent foreigner that the Guild could use, but you have nothing to fear from us. We hope you find more luck in your next assignments."

The horsefolk raises his non-existent eyebrows in surprise, then softly nods and flashes a kind smile. "Thank you, Lord Wolf. The one who gave us this task was Director Gabe, but he's not the kind of man who would willingly do something like this, so he may have been forced."

And I nod in thanks for this information.

Then something dawns upon Gandalf, and he makes a small attempt to salvage the bridge before it completely burns down, "We received our orders from Directors Luka and Elias. Whatever it is they intended by having us come here, only they can explain."

Mac Gantus' Guild is a big organization, and there could be an annoying level of politics at play. We might send someone and try to negotiate something for information, but Yunia bets those two Directors have already fled from the guild and burned any incriminating evidence.

"They only told us what we had to do for this job, nothing more," Fran hesitantly adds, and Gandalf nods repeatedly in agreement.

These confessions aren't anything significant, but we still both smile politely and acknowledge their attempt.

"You three are dismissed," Yunia announces to the representatives, and they silently leave, with the two stooges still looking so scared that it seems that the only thing they want now is to get the fuck away from here as fast as possible.

Then we turn to Bell-end. The Viking-looking man is tense, but his posture is as straight as ever, and he's still pridefully wearing his mask of composure. I don't think he'll ever admit to being ordered to hinder us, but it might still be worth it to leave an olive branch on his desk.

Yunia begins another verbal beatdown, "Senior Major Belligax, we also give you the same advice. You and your men are just disposable pieces in a bigger game of schemes. I don't know what you wanted to accomplish, but if your intention was to endanger youself or your men, then I congratulate you on your stupidity."

He doesn't even react, but his XO shows a mix of anger and shame for a brief moment before he puts his mask back on.

Then Léonne sternly piles on as she seems to really have something against the Army, "Most officers of the Imperial Army know their place, but you seem like you don't, so let me remind you that the Army serves the Empire… and the Lords are the Empire. Don't test our authority again."

I really like this woman.

And Belligax again takes it all without flinching. He's a man who's proud of his accomplishments and the position he's been awarded for them, he's a diligent and loyal soldier, and he won't break so easily. I respect his composure, and I would rather make allies than enemies.

So I gently add, "I have no ill-will against you, Major Belligax, and I hope that the next time we meet, it'll be under better circumstances."

The tense stillness of his stance is broken by small movements as if he were just about to reply, but he remains loyal to his master to the very end, and lets the humiliation set in. Then he nods and softly replies, "So do I."

"This is where we separate," Yunia immediately announces.

"Lords…" He hums and lowers his head respectfully.

Then we separate, and our men prepare to leave the dungeon, but there's one last thing that I must do.

I stop by the river and spot my three groupies washing the sweat away in just their underclothes. They wear sashes to prevent painful breast jiggle during combat (something that Ciel knows very well) and comfortable pantaloons that don't chafe, so even with their clothes wet, there's nothing particularly lewd to look at, but there are few things that can compare to the beauty of energetic young women playing by the river.

I observe them for a long, pleasant moment before they finally notice me, then I smile and let [Sexual Charm] guide me.

A note from Manasong

Hall of Fame of Patrons

The patrons who support Rupegia shall have their names sung by the bards for they deserve the glory and honor. Their names are:

Prince PreownedFIN.

Prince Owldente.

Lord Andrew Meyers.

Lord Novgarod.

Lord Michale Erwin.

Lord Bakerdea.

Lord Maurice.

Lord Mattirro Draca.

Lord Sean Drake.

Lord Mike Bartter.

Lord Warwulfv.

Lord Khristopher Welsh.

Lord Tenebris Lupus.

Lord Paul Daval.

Lord Paul Daval.

Lord AndreyUC.

Lord Tmac.

Lord School Work.

Lord CopeyDunt.

Lord BlindTactic.

Lord litalmexy.

Lord Philip.

Lord d3235.

Lord William Clark.

Lord Ddraig Wynn.

Lord CardinalSteiner.

Lord Cidant.

Lord SubJef.

Noble Salty Panda.

Noble Mild Fracas.

Noble Aclys.

Noble Carl  Baxter.

Noble Tony Starrk.

Noble GalacticTNT.

Leave a rating or a review to help me rise to the top or fix my shameful understanding of prose.

Take a look over my blog where all information about the world of Rupegia will be posted.

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Chapter 142: Winding Down - Part 2

A note from Manasong

Attention: to conform to the limit of mature content (more than just sexual content) allowed in a novel, I've censored this chapter. You can look for the uncensored version here.

"Lord Wolf!" The gray werecat excitedly shouts and comes running along the shoreline. She's slender and tall, with a remarkably strong body, though not quite on the same level as Hana's, and her bust also loses to my dragonkin, whose body was built for plowing. What I like the most about this cat is that she has that sharp air of a composed and free-spirited woman, which I believe is inherent to her race considering she is, literally, part cat.

And this little kitten seems to have a fetish for dragons as her tail starts undulating the moment her eyes fall upon my thick and glorious tail with shiny mirror-like scales.

"Yes, Edjo?" I huskily reply, making her stop in confusion, as she hasn't given me her name yet, with even her tail going completely still.

She blinks, her furry ears twitching at the same time, then she grins and shifts into a more sensual demeanor. "Are you leaving already, Lord Wolf? Wouldn't you care to frolic in the water with us for at least a little bit?" Then she pouts coyly.

This woman gives me the impression that I shouldn't be too straightforward, so I prepare to play a little game of seduction. "I'd love to, but my men deserve rest, and I sorely miss the comfort of an elven bath."

She hums softly, and her tail sways with the sensuous cadence of her speech, "An elven bath? Ah, yes, you're from the High Forest. Is it true what the rumors say about elven baths and how they can rejuvenate you?"

I chuckle softly and lower my voice to a more seductive tone. "Rejuvenation? You'll feel rejuvenated, and perhaps even look younger as the magical bath helps regenerate your skin and make it softer, but true rejuvenation is impossible for even the elves, I'm afraid."

She crosses her arms and thoughtfully taps her cheek with a slender finger. "But what you're saying doesn't sound any worse, to be honest."

I feel like this is the perfect setup, so I divert towards the heart of the matter, "Indeed. It's why I crave it so much, but it's a big bath, and it can certainly fit a few more people in it."

She gives me a measuring look, pretending that she hasn't already made her decision. "You mean, everyone together in the bath with you?"

I just play along and kindly reply, "Me and my wives, yes. Are you and your companions interested in spending this evening with us?"

"YES!" I hear a shout, and I look past Edjo, my eyes immediately meeting with a green pair belonging to a bubbly brunette. A round face, juicy lips, faintly bucked teeth, and a spunky air that makes me want to pick her up and fuck her while standing.

"She's after your women," Edjo wryly points out.

And I snort smugly. "She'll soon find out that the predators outnumber her."

The catgirl tilts her head as she raises her eyebrows in bemusement, but then she lets herself become serious again as she adds, "We also have a tender flower with us that we must protect."

I remove the seduction from my tone and replace it with gentle reassurance. "If you hand her to me, I'll treat her well, but we'll never do anything that she doesn't want to do herself."

She thinks for a moment, her upright tail undulating mischievously behind her. Then she looks at her two other companions, and I notice something interesting. The third groupie is clearly the youngest. She's a thin girl with delicate curves, a subtly yellow, pale skin… and short, tomboyish, light brown hair that floats and faintly shines with a pearlescent sheen. A Siren, and from the hair color, she's part Faiumi.

She tries to hide behind her bubbly companion, who simply steps aside so that all eyes quickly fall upon the girl.

She is clearly the "flower" that must be protected, so I assume a soothing tone and ask, "Laguly, do you wish to spend an evening with us?"

Her yellow, pale skin starts to deeply redden, and she holds both hands in front of her waist in a cute, shy pose. "I don't think I can say no to a Lord," she quietly replies without looking me in the eye. Her voice is very soft and has a faint, sexy hoarseness to it that makes it feel like velvet brushing against my ears.

I gently nod and give her a warm smile. "Yes, you can. This is a casual invite for a pleasant evening, but you can still decline without offending us, and I'll ensure that someone escorts you to the place of rest of your choice. You could even ask for a room in our embassy that you could have all to yourself."

She giggles girlishly as she anxiously runs her hand through her floating hair. "You make it really hard to say no."

"Or perhaps you merely fear me too much?"

Khepri, the bubbly woman, interjects, her tone showing that teasing smugness Roxanne loves to use, "You fought with a Symbol of Might by yourself and defeated it in less than a minute. It's kind of hard to not fear you."

"You are a Symbol of Might," Edjo adds.

And I smirk. "But I don't bite. Unless asked."

The two older women chuckle suggestively along with me while Laguly looks mildly confused.

Alissa appears at my side and grabs my left hand, then interlaces her fingers with mine and reassures them, "If it makes you comfortable, rest assured that the only man you'll share your evening with is my husband. Everyone else will be women."

"That does make me comfortable," Khepri replies with a bright grin.

But Edjo still has questions that need answers before she'll be completely convinced, "But what is required of the women that surround him?"

Alissa categorically answers, "Nothing. There are already enough who willingly give their everything to him."

And I confidently add, "Though I am kind of insatiable, so I'll always have room for more women around me."

Then one of the adventurers nearby shouts annoyedly, "Gods deliver me from this torture! Just go suck his thing already, you indecisive worry-Ploms!"

Edjo immediately jerks her head towards him and bites back, "Come suck it yourself first!"

And the man gesticulates wildly as he banters, "My sword doesn't cut on both sides, but I'm not the one pretending not to be interested just to not look desperate for Lordling steel!"

Edjo takes a threatening step towards him. "Maybe it's because you don't have the patience to treat a woman right that nobody wants to suck yours!"

The man hesitates for a second, but he fails to come up with a proper comeback. "B-tch!"

"C-ck!" Khepri barks.

And Edjo simply ignores him as she smiles victoriously.

"Did someone say 'women'?" Hana asks suggestively as she joins us.

"Just reassuring them that I'll be the only male predator around," I casually reply.

And she hums in confusion. "Hm? Won't we be having dinner with Jacques? Are you sure he's a vegetarian?"

"I really don't think my father is allowed to go outside his marriage," Alissa assuredly answers.

Then Ciel joins us, trying to help soothe these innocent souls, "If you're ever uncomfortable with their extreme hedonism, you can always come to me for help. I'm a priestess of Love, and I can keep them in check if they start to scare you."

Laguly seems to perk up at that, and I promise to myself to do Ciel very hard as thanks for her help.

"I'll accept your invitation," Edjo finally gives in.

"Same," Khepri folds immediately.

Then we turn to the shy Laguly. "Me too…" She quietly adds while averting her eyes.

We get a few goodbyes from some of the adventurers who grew fond of us. Not every one of them had a grudge against us, and the fact that we conquered the hearts of those who didn't tells me that we did our job well, earning their respect.

Then we all return to the embassy, where we can finally breathe easily, and we immediately un[Equip] our armor, which surprises the three new additions to our group.

"What is that spell?" Khepri curiously asks.

"[Equipment System]. Really useful for anyone to have," Hana adds.

"The temple should soon be offering to teach it to anyone who asks," Ciel explains.

And because they seem quite interested in it, I take this chance to magnanimously offer, "Tomorrow morning, we'll be busy with our own training, but we can have one of our men give you an introduction to it."

And the trio looks quite pleased with my offer.

Then Lolo comes through the [Gate] and also un[Equip]s her armor. "Oh, hello, Edjo."

"Penelope?!" The catgirl exclaims in surprise, with the other two mirroring her expression.

And the bunnygirl smiles wryly. "Yes, that's my name. I see we'll have company for tonight?" Then she glances at me, and I grin cheekily.

Khepri walks forward and gives the submissive bunny a slap on the waist as she teases, "And where's that damn thirsty black wolf who's always chasing after your tail like a puppy?"

Lolo tenses up awkwardly. "Gone drinking with the rest of the Lordsguard, but don't talk about him like that, he's a good friend."

"Friend," Edjo flatly repeats, but the bunny doesn't continue bantering with the cat.

"I'm surprised you all know each other," I remark.

And Edjo explains, "We're all from Rafeslia, a female adventurers' guild."

Hana happily hums in understanding, "Oh~, I've heard about you girls. The caravan guards liked to brag whenever they managed to bed one of you." Then she raises her eyebrows suggestively.

"And we have four~…" Roxanne points out with a sing-songy tone.

Then Klein also appears in the room and joins our group. "Hello, hello. Adventurers, right?"

"Yes, my Dame," Edjo politely replies, and Klein tenses up awkwardly.

"Dame Klein, how kind of you to join us," Alissa teases.

And I can hear the monkeygirl groan internally. "Please, no. I have no idea how you can deal with everyone calling you 'Your Highnesses.' It's so… stiff!"

Then Hukarere chimes in as she approaches our group. "Dame Klein! What are your orders, Dame Klein?! Guide us poor, humble soldiers towards victory!"

Klein's long tail starts to coil around itself as she starts to get a bit annoyed, and she decides to fight back with a few truths herself, "You talk as if the other Companions don't also suck up to you because you suck Wolfy's sword. If you were gay, you'd be smothered in flowers."

But my white wolf is perfectly confident in her riposte, "Except I'll never accept a leadership position, so them sucking my toes will never get them anywhere." Klein looks even sourer as her mind struggles to come up with a reply, but Hukarere ends it there like a Chad and gives the trio a friendly greeting, "Anyway, hello new comrades, we're all united here through Wolfy's sword."

Lolo sighs and wryly follows up, "Let's all get along."

And Klein drops her friendly ribbing with Hukarere, then also joins in with a wry remark, "We're a supportive family in all of the depraved ways you can imagine."

Khepri laughs loudly, her pitch considerably higher as the expectation starts to arouse her, while the other two are more contained.

Then Hana turns to Lolo and puts the bunnygirl on the spot, "But you surprised me by joining in. Are you thinking about staying? The Companions of the Lordsguard are always recruiting." She repeatedly raises her eyebrows suggestively again.

"Well, I'm… 'stuck' here for a few more days, I think. But I have no plans for after that…" She tries to swerve around Hana's question.

Romy and the rest of the Companions also appear, and the room starts to get crowded.

"Hey, there, new faces," the Asian woman casually greets.

Then Melanie, the imperial shortstack, seems to recognize them. "Rafeslia?"

"Yes, we are. You're from around here?" Edjo politely replies.

Then Edolie, the brown-haired werecat companion, also chimes in, and they start talking about the places where they grew up.

The three from Rafflesia… Rafeslia… annoying Rupegianization… Anyway, the three from the all-female guild are from Faium. Edjo and Capri Sun are childhood "friends" who met Laguly a year ago when the young woman discovered an affinity for the bow, which can't be used underwater, so she went ashore to try her life as an adventurer. Since they all use the same weapon, they use the female guild to find people to temporarily fill their ranks whenever they go out.

The conversation ceases when we reach the bath, and everyone turns their suggestive smirks to the newcomers.

"We may be entering a den of predators, but there's nothing to fear, girls," Edjo reassures them and smirks.

Unfortunately, Allura won't be joining us as her parents, and possibly also the Gods, don't believe she's ready yet. If she could contain her thirst, then maybe Roxanne or another could've had another piece of her, but she's way too impulsive to keep my sword out of her sheath.

But it's just a matter of time before the foxy tomboy is mine, and while I wait, I'll focus on another tomboy to satisfy my thirst.

The trio tries their best to not look awed, but it shows in their movements. They hesitantly take their still wet clothes off while we watch them like hawks, but they eventually reveal the beauty of their young, feminine bodies.

Capri Sun has the most luscious body with a bigger chest and large, pink circls, but no landing strip. Edjo is completely gray, from ghost bits to a neatly trimmed bush, making her almost look like an elven/Greek statue, and her muscular body just serves to enhance that air. But Laguly is the picture of youthfulness with a fresh, innocent air and diminutive, cute features, making the dragon within me awaken with a desire to dominate her.

But I have other plans for tonight.

I quickly wash myself with Alissa's help to remove all of the sweat, then I approach Laguly, flag high and waving. The girl tenses up in fear and stares at my Holy Sword like it's a threat to her life, but then I notice something peculiar about her. It's… the scent of untouched. The way she's both thirsty and scared, eager, yet hesitant, her indecision about whether to jump me or not, it all smells of untouched, which means that my Sword is, indeed, a "threat" to her.

And I know with certainty that she won't be able to resist me.

"Our family has a tradition of washing each other. Would you allow me to wash you?" I soothingly ask.

She blinks and finally takes her eyes off my thing, though her jaw remains slack, and she'll soon start to drool if she doesn't close it. "Huh?"

I smile warmly. "Would you allow me to wash you? It's a family tradition."

Then I glance at the other two newcomers, and I see that Alissa and Hana are doing the same with Edjo and Khepri, respectively. Laguly follows my gaze and realizes that everyone else has a partner, but then she gives my claws a worried look.

I start to humanize my hands, and the amazement in her reaction makes me grin. After just a couple of seconds, they've become perfectly human hands, so I huskily ask, "Good enough?"

She breathes in deeply and shyly nods, so I grab her sponge, then kneel behind her as I begin soaping her back.

"Is this tradition common among the land-bound?" She hesitantly asks.

"Is it not among the mer?" I coolly reply.

She giggles girlishly, and her Siren voice is so sweet that it makes my sword throb. "We don't take baths…"

"Oh, duh… Anyway, I wouldn't say it's common since… there's a lot of spiciness to it."

Then I sneak my hand onto her front, just under her small, cute chest, and I sense her breathing become heavier.

"Why does it make it not common?" She continues, doing her best to not let the tension show in her beautiful voice.

"Well, bed activities and family aren't really a normal match, at least not for everybody."

She chuckles softly. "I guess having to wear clothes makes the dry-walkers prudish."

I guess mer are like the Chimeras.

"You have done it with your family?" I hesitantly ask.

"I haven't, but a lot of people in my village have."

I lean forward and whisper seductively, "So you really are untouched?"

"How-…!" She looks over her shoulder to give me a brief glare. "How did you know? You also knew my name, even though I know that none of us gave it to you."

"The latter is a secret while the former…" I press my strong back against hers and grab her little chest, then I sniff her hair deeply for effect, though I smell nothing but the faint scent of sweat. "I can smell it on you. Your innocent ways, your hesitance, your barely-contained eagerness, your insecurity, your… desire. It's all clear to me after seeing it a number of times."

We both remain still for a couple of seconds, my friend pressing against her bottom. Then she wets her lips in anticipation and inquires, "You're… experienced with 'introducing' girls to womanhood?"

"I am…" I answer huskily.

Then I release her and continue washing her, but she remains tense, and Alissa sees her arousal appear in flower. Of course, I take my time washing her without deliberately stimulating her pointy bits, but her excitement still continues to rise as it's made evident through her floating short hair that moves increasingly chaotically.

When I'm done, the only part left to wash is her delicate flower, and I gently lower my hand, giving her ample time to react, but she remains still, so I gently run my fingers along it. She softly gasps, then grabs one of my knees to steady herself, and I'm thankful that she didn't aim for anything more delicate because her grip is strong.

I soap her, and she lets out a soft sound that makes me leak, but now I have to actually wash her, so I rub my hand against them, and she makes a louder sound. She's not even trying, and she's already got me this worked up. This girl is a succubus in disguise.

She even closes her eyes and lets her voice gradually come out, so I rinse off some of the soap to not irritate her and use my index finger to spread them. I don't fully get in, simply playing around until I find the subtle nub. Her grip on my knee tightens, and she gasps, but I pull back to give her more time for her excitement to build up.

"Aahn~…!" She makes a loud sound, and her whole body shivers as a light summit courses through her. I haven't even used my spirit touch yet; she's just that thirsty for me.

But I won't give it to her right now, so when she recovers, I hand her the sponge.

"Your turn," I whisper into her ear.

Khepri's sounds are a lot more energetic as Hana does the bubbly woman. Alissa is much more gentle, but she's still imparting a lot of bliss upon Edjo, and I savor the werecat's body through [Bind].

Then Laguly walks around me and begins with my back. She's still a bit weak from her fun, and her hands are inexperienced, but it's precisely that sweet innocence that I love.

After this long-ass day, having a tomboyish untouched Siren wash me feels therapeutic. But the best part comes when I turn around so that she can wash my front. Her eyes immediately go for my friend again, and this situation brings back nostalgic memories of my first time with Alissa.

"I was a lot more determined to do you than she is, though I can't say I was as smitten as her," one of the loves of my life lovingly replies in my soul space.

I have changed just a little bit since then.

And after Laguly finishes with my chest, she seems quite eager to start washing my friend.

"You seem to know how to handle it," I soothingly praise.

"I've seen it done, but I've never touched one before," she replies without taking her eyes off of it.

"Keep your jaw open like that, and you'll soon learn what it tastes like," I tease.

She pouts and tightens her grip. Then she starts slowly washing me with her soapy hands, and I notice that her fingers are slightly webbed. While they make me curious, I can't disrupt my seduction by indulging in scholarly pursuits, so I file that away for later and focus on something else.

I stare at her, savoring her beauty, and her eyes are drawn to mine. A cute little mouth, ears that look like fins, pale and faintly yellow skin, tomboyish hair with a pearlescent sheen. She's quite the exotic-looking girl.

And she's drooling…

"Don't abuse your 'Charisma,' Wolfy. She might start to feel intimidated," Ciel cautions me.

Okay, but I have to take this opportunity.

I gently grab Laguly's little chin, then pull her forward and briefly steal her lips.

They're as soft and as delicate as I had imagined, but what I hadn't expected was that she'd just melt into the kiss. Her stroking stops, her breathing picks up, and her eyes gloss over. Then she unconsciously leans forward again, begging for more.

I oblige and steal her lips once again, except this time, I seek out her tongue with mine. She tastes sweet, like a strawberry meringue, but the moment her tongue responds, I leave her hanging and wanting for more.

"Don't be hasty," I whisper and smirk, then I grab her hand and have her continue.

She pouts again, even more cutely this time, then looks down and becomes enamored with it.

"Open your mouth," I order, and she reflexively obeys, then I finish.

She flinches, but instead of getting mad, her first reaction is to lick her lips and savor the taste. She even scoops up the globs that hit her face, then holds her hand in front of her to see what it looks like.

"This… isn't what it's supposed to taste like," she remarks in wonder and starts eating it all, actually surprising me.

I just stare at her as she cleans herself off, then she notices my expression and blushes heavily.

"I was taught that I should never waste a drop, but I didn't expect it to actually taste good," she shyly admits while averting her eyes.

And another c-msl-t is born…

A note from Manasong

Hall of Fame of Patrons

The patrons who support Rupegia shall have their names sung by the bards for they deserve the glory and honor. Their names are:

Prince PreownedFIN.

Prince Owldente.

Lord Andrew Meyers.

Lord Novgarod.

Lord Michale Erwin.

Lord Bakerdea.

Lord Maurice.

Lord Mattirro Draca.

Lord Sean Drake.

Lord Mike Bartter.

Lord Warwulfv.

Lord Khristopher Welsh.

Lord Tenebris Lupus.

Lord Paul Daval.

Lord Paul Daval.

Lord AndreyUC.

Lord Tmac.

Lord School Work.

Lord CopeyDunt.

Lord BlindTactic.

Lord litalmexy.

Lord Philip.

Lord d3235.

Lord William Clark.

Lord Ddraig Wynn.

Lord CardinalSteiner.

Lord Cidant.

Lord SubJef.

Noble Salty Panda.

Noble Mild Fracas.

Noble Aclys.

Noble Carl  Baxter.

Noble Tony Starrk.

Noble GalacticTNT.

Leave a rating or a review to help me rise to the top or fix my shameful understanding of prose.

Take a look over my blog where all information about the world of Rupegia will be posted.

Join the Discord and discuss, or rant, or meme, or try and fight me so your waifu gets more screentime.

Become a Patron and read chapters in advance, or read the side-stories, or leave your mark on the story, or help choose the next artwork or the next side-story.

Chapter 142: Winding Down - Part 3

A note from Manasong

Attention: to conform to the limit of mature content (more than just sexual content) allowed in a novel, I've censored this chapter. You can look for the uncensored version here.

Announcement: starting from now on I'll be taking regular 1-week breaks after 3 weeks of uploading chapters, so next week will be a break week. I'll still work on other things during the breaks, so I believe that this regular schedule will be will help a lot with other side-projects that I've been neglecting.

While Laguly slowly processes the embarrassment of her confession (and her new fetish), we all sink into the bath to relax. Some of the girls immediately get excited since they've become accustomed to getting Ravaged during bath time, but this time, we'll hold ourselves back to enhance the group fun we'll be having after our meal.

"Diamond dragon scales! This is… too… gooo~d!" Khepri exclaims and begins to moan the moment she enters the warm water.

Edjo and Laguly stare oddly at their bubbly companion and hesitate to get in.

"She's exaggerating, it doesn't feel like that," Hana reassures them, and they carefully take a dip.

"Gods in Heaven, this is so good," the catgirl purrs.

"Ahh~…!" The little Siren lets out a long moan.

"Damn, girls. I guess you three really needed this," Romy wryly remarks.

"So did we," Aneta, the seductive silver elf, replies as she sinks completely into the water.

"I'm just worried that we'll get spoiled like this," the Asian Companion adds rather embarrassedly, then she looks to her fellow Companions for support.

"Wolfy spoiling us is how he raises our loyalty and keeps morale up," Hukarere happily affirms, and the rest of the Companions seem indecisive about who's more right.

"Wait, what do you mean?" Edjo curiously inquires.

And Hana proudly declares with a fearsome grin, "He's done half of the Companions while I've done the other half."

The gray catgirl slowly turns her head towards me, unsure if she really wants to know, but curiosity kills her reluctance, and she quietly asks, "How do you… satisfy so many women?"

"By having other women satisfy them," Hana immediately replies, then raises her eyebrows suggestively at Khepri, who starts to look like she wants a second run.

I smile wryly and calmly explain, "Well, that helps, but also, tentacles."

Laguly jerks her head towards me and blurts out, suddenly very curious about what I mean, "Tentacles?"

I grow a tentacle Sword out of my palm.

"Holy shit!" Capri Sun exclaims and starts laughing out loud.

Laguly becomes speechless, seemingly unsure how to react, but now it's Edjo's turn to be curious. "How many can you make?" She eagerly asks.

And I grow about thirty of them out of my back so that my body isn't shrouded by them. Just to mess with them, I grip a handful of them as if they were a bouquet and wave them at the girls, then I have a few of the Swords suggestively sneak along the bodies of the wives.

The little Siren simply stares in awe at them, not disgusted, but mesmerized by their manly beauty.

"Can you spit roast me in the air and do all of my holes until I pass out?" Khepri asks, very much serious.

Her straightforwardness surprises me as even the Companions needed some time to get used to the idea of tentacle swords, but I assume a Dom tone as I immediately reply, "That is the plan, yes, but it's best if we eat something before I break you."

She raises her eyebrows in surprise and grins, showing her adorable, faintly bucked teeth, making me wonder if she has wererabbit genes with how similar they are to Lolo's. "You're really into being a 'Master,' eh?" She asks back, her tone just a tad intimidated.

"Oh, yes, he is," Klein answers for me, and everyone nods, making me smile.

I return to my normal, calm self as I add, "Three of my wives were former slaves. It's simply something I'm good at, but if you don't enjoy that sort of thing…"

And Yunia gently encourages her, "I really recommend you try it. You'll never have another chance for an experience like this."

The bubbly girl seems to take the suggestion seriously. "Well, I just might…"

A silence starts to settle in, but Edjo quickly breaks it and decides to change the topic, "So, you're not all born nobles?"

Roxanne promptly answers with a cheeky grin, "Only Yunia is; she's the snobbish elf. Everyone else was born a commoner."

And the catgirl hums thoughtfully. "Now I understand why you were all so good at wrangling the other adventurers."

"The pissers just piss on our heads and expect us to obey, but you're different," Khepri states, earning herself a good slap on the back from Hana.

"That's a big reason why so many follow them," Klein adds and jumps away while giggling before Hana can also give her a nice slap on the back, splashing water everywhere.

Hana threatens to chase her, but there are too many people in the bath for horseplay so they both quickly sit back down.

"What did you all do before becoming Lords?" Laguly quietly asks.

This is a sensitive topic for me. A good part of my life is simply forbidden knowledge, and explaining that is kind of difficult. But even I would be very suspicious of someone who refused to talk about their past. Thankfully, the girls cover for me by talking about their own lives, but it's clear that what the three are most curious about is me.

Aoi's story is the one they're second most curious about, though, and her life also has secrets that we aren't allowed to reveal, but they seem to be understanding about it. It doesn't take much to imagine why the secret to converting monsters would be worth protecting.

"So, this means that more monsters will convert in the future?" Edjo thoughtfully asks.

"Only if they're tamable and also intelligent enough to gain 'Piety,'" Ciel kindly answers.

Then the gray catgirl turns to mini-Aoi as she swims along with Gify. "Is the system the reason why I don't find Lord Aoi threatening?"

The little blue dragon raises her head and glances at the catgirl. "But I'm not trying to look threatening," she replies with her adorable chipmunk voice, and even the Companions look like they'd love to give Aoi a hug right now.

"Even in battle, you don't 'feel' like the other dragons I've encountered," Edjo explains.

And Khepri adds, "Now that you've mentioned it, Lord Aoi does feel 'intimidating' when she's… well, big, but I don't get the feeling that she could just bite my head off on a whim like I do with monster dragons."

"What about me?" I curiously ask.

She looks me up and down, lingering for a moment on my still attentive friend, then smiles seductively. "You're a different case, but you also don't feel like the other dragons."

"I actually feel safe when either of the dragon Lords are around," Laguly shyly admits.

"Now that is something we all feel," Hukarere affirms, and I give my white wolf a loving smile while everyone nods again.

Then Alissa tells an abridged version of her story, and she shocks even the Companions with the hardships she went through.

"Truly blessed by Love. You're so strong!" Khepri exclaims and gives Alissa a look as if she wanted to hug the fox girl, but Alissa is the last of us who'd need any comforting, and the bubbly woman sees this in the warm look Alissa gives her.

Lina tells her story next, and everyone becomes even more shocked.

"Sold just so that they wouldn't starve!" Khepri shouts again, clearly the most emotive of all of us.

Hana is next, and her story pulls on everyone's heartstrings again.

"You still haven't found your parents?" Edjo concernedly asks.

"Just a matter of time," Hana answers assuredly, her confidence soothing them a bit.

And while they empathize a lot with Roxanne's and Ciel's stories as they're both common tragedies among warriors, Yunia's story is the one that starts to break Khepri, but not in the way that we wanted.

"You all went through so, so much…" The bubbly woman mumbles and starts to sob.

"She's a crybaby," Edjo flatly explains.

And Capri Sun chuckles and sniffles. "I'm sorry; I'm very empathetic."

"No, it's understandable," Melanie, the shortstack, reassures her and timidly dries a tear from the corner of her eye.

"Yeah. I'm also starting to feel like I respect the Lords even more," Romy humbly adds.

And Hana moans, heart-struck by her words, "Awn… c'mere!" Then she pulls Romy by her legs, making the Asian woman sink into the water with a yelp, but then her head soon reappears between Hana's balloons.

"Bitch…" Romy mumbles while coughing out some water, but then she immediately settles down in Hana's lap.

"It's like a story out of a book," Edolie, the brown catgirl, states with a dreamy tone.

And Alissa gleefully replies, "Well, I'm writing a diary, which I'll one day give to Bastico Rincipio, a Chosen Descendant for a Crown Lord, who has promised to write a book out of our lives."

"Will we be in the book?" Khepri eagerly asks.

"If you want to be…"

"Good thing my parents can't read," Edjo admits, and we chuckle heartily.

We soak for a little while longer in the bath, then we have the maids give everyone nice clothes to wear for the evening. Only Romy decides to use pants while everyone else chooses light dresses for "easy access," and both Chimeras wear a jeweled collar to draw attention to their bare chest and an ornate belt to hang their personal towels on and also draw attention to their bare bottoms. After they're all as beautiful or as alluring as they want to be, we move to the dining room and have some snacks while the Verners finish their bath.

They don't take long, and we're soon greeted by the refreshing sight of three fox women with pristine skin wearing light, casual not-kimonos. Allura's is just as small, revealing, and "sl-tty" as her sister's, but since the younger sibling is taller, she has a lot more leg to show, and damn, those legs are tasty.

Léonne and Jacques glance at the Companions and adventurers, but they show no indication that they're offended or even care that I've invited them to share a meal with us. I'm starting to believe that we could even have a group party in front of them, and they wouldn't mind, and the idea of doing Alissa (and in the future, also Allura) in front of them is becoming quite attractive to me.

As soon as they sit down, Léonne promptly demands, "Alissa, as your mother, I'm requesting that you reveal the secrets of your bath."

But Yunia deftly interjects, "Those are elven products that you can buy…" -She smiles at Léonne's intense stare- "for a generous price."

"That's acceptable."

Then we start our meal.

Due to the wide variety of guests, the chef has made a little bit of everything to please everyone, but the main focus is on the basics: a nice main course of meat paired with grain and salad on the side. We specifically didn't ask for the more complex elven dishes so that the adventurers won't feel intimidated by the food, and we have a couple of delicacies from the Misty Low Forest to make our werefox guests feel included.

And, of course, we have pizza, which is a favorite of everyone.

Laguly gives the purple sauce a wary look, and Edjo politely explains to me, "Normally, purple means either poison or a 'sword.'"

"Sword"? You mean my purple tentacle swords are actually a thing for the mer?

To not give them the impression that making love is all we talk about, I explain where the purple not-tomato sauce comes from, and that assuages Laguly's fears.

But I focus my seduction on the catgirl for now to let Laguly breathe, and Alissa teams up with me to seduce her further. But the biggest problem we always face is: how can Royal Crown Lords relate to common adventurers?

"Why do you dungeon delve? Do you enjoy the exploration aspect?" I casually question, testing how much of a cerebral conversation she wants to have.

But she chuckles softly and gives me an affable glance. "Even the conversation topics are different with Lords. I've never been asked that before, so I'll need to think this one through."

Alissa chimes in to clarify our intentions to her, "We talk about a wide variety of things. If you want to simply relax, we could have a more casual conversation."

Edjo's gray, furry tail undulates as she amusedly considers, "Hm… I'm not a sage, so I might disappoint you with my average 'Intelligence' and 'Wisdom.'"

I gently reassure her, "If we can't have an enjoyable talk with someone just because they have different 'Stats' than us, then it's our fault for being pretentious snobs."

But the gray catgirl becomes serious as she affirms, "You are Lords, so I'd never describe you as pretentious."

The guests are momentarily distracted as Gify does a Kirby and inhales a whole damn pizza slice. The feathered black hole revels in the attention, and even the red beast that is Jacques warms up at her display of adorableness.

"Gih!"

Don't get conceited, now.

Then Alissa calmly continues, "We can certainly be pretentious. As Lords, we must never overestimate our worth, or the Templars will personally teach its precise value to us."

Edjo makes a thoughtful expression again, but her tail undulates mischievously. "I have a feeling that not many nobles share your beliefs."

I smile wryly as I reply, "It's truly a mystery."

And we chuckle softly.

Then the catgirl finally finishes her reflection, "But to answer your question: I've never delved for pleasure. It's always been for the money because we can't afford to put ourselves at risk just to satisfy our curiosity. Not only that, but delving is just too stressful for us to actually enjoy it…" -She gives me a sly glance- "Though, you made this event quite enjoyable. It's not every day that you see two Symbols of Might fight each other in melee."

Nice, we've got her talking.

I could take this chance to brag about my fight, but people usually have more fun when they can talk about themselves, so I keep the conversation focused on her, "You got a lot of level-ups, didn't you? How much of a difference will it make to your delving?"

And her brown eyes glint with excitement. "Oh… we got so many levels that I actually need time to calculate our soul potentials. I might even be able to start becoming a hybrid and patch up our weakness with melee."

"Have you gotten to your limit in [Bow Use]?" Alissa curiously asks.

"I don't think so, but the leveling had slowed down even when I had positive soul potential, so I think I'm at the limits of my talent and should start looking for secondary skills."

"You have the body of a swordswoman," I soberly state.

"Why would you think that?" She asks back, trying to hide how happy she is about my compliment.

I add a hint of [Spicy Charm] into my voice as I explain, "You're perfectly balanced. From what I've seen of your body, and I've seen it all, you have all of the good parts without any of them being overdone."

Her tail starts lazily wagging in happiness even though she tries to hide it. "Is that an elaborate way of calling me beautiful?"

Now I fully apply [Spicy Charm]. "I don't need to do that. You're gorgeous, and your body is stunning."

But she tenses up as insecurity creeps in. "I'm an unkempt adventurer, and, as I've recently found out, my hands are nowhere near as soft as your wife's."

And I decide to brute-force acceptance into her. "I don't care what you think; I still find you very attractive."

Her eyes meet mine, and she almost leans back as she feels the intensity of my desire. Then we simply stare at each other for a couple of seconds as we struggle to control the wild emotions within our hearts. We really want to do it, but now's not the time. Though I wouldn't mind giving the milfy fox a show, the problem is that her husband wouldn't approve.

Alissa gently cuts the tension so that we can painlessly reign in our hearts, "Well, I hope that Growth gives you talent in many skills. Someone like you seems fit for a versatile role."

"Thank you," Edjo whispers back, her gray skin making her blush very obvious.

My foxy pimp takes over and begins a casual conversation with the catgirl about bows, but then Edjo switches the topic and asks us about our adventures. If she's actually interested in hearing about us, we might as well fulfill her wish.

Meanwhile, Yunia entertains Léonne and the other guests, and they drink a dangerous amount of alcohol. But that frees up Alissa and me to invite Edjo to our bedroom as soon as we finish our desserts. The other wives are having fun with the adventurers and Companions; Gify will stay at the table for a little while longer; and I take Ted with me to act as a servant.

Allura stares at us blankly as we leave, likely burning with jealousy that I can have any woman I want while she's forced to wait, and I love how increasingly thirsty she's becoming. Laguly also stares, though she seems mildly confused, but Ciel still has to finish loosening her up, so we'll have the untouched girl wait a little longer before joining us.

We enter our bedroom, but we don't go immediately to the bed. I walk to the balcony and savor the view as I lean against the railing. Edjo stops on my left and Alissa on my right, so I sling my arms around both of their waists, then gently start cupping a feel of their cheeks.

"That is the biggest bed I've ever seen," Edjo remarks wryly.

"It has to fit all of us and more," I casually answer, and the three of us smile suggestively.

Ted and Suzy both pull out bottles of Cinco Flores (one for the three of us, and one for the others still at the dining table) along with shot glasses at the same time, which they gracefully float towards us.

Edjo's eyes suddenly widen, and a couple of seconds later, I smell the sickeningly sweet taste of the extract. But the reaction at the dining table is a lot more "interesting," for the moment the mildly drunk people get a whiff of the smell of Eia, the mood instantly shifts.

I grab a glass of the rainbow-like drink, then I cast [Spirit Light] and let it shine through my glass, projecting upon the floor a shadow stained with the rainbow colors of the Eia extract, a phenomenon that acts as the seal of quality of the famous extract.

"How pretty," Edjo whispers as she also grabs a floating glass.

And Alissa cautions her, "This is an Eia extract called Cinco Flores, the best drink in all of the High Elven Lands. It's mildly psychedelic, so, if you're not comfortable with such things, you don't have to drink it."

The brave woman snorts and glances at me, then takes the glass to her lips and carefully sips it. Her tail suddenly goes straight, and her gray fur stands on end as she feels the best chill of her whole life. There's nothing like your first time drinking Eia.

And just like what happened at the table, Edjo's eyes become misty as they're filled with desire.

Alissa quickly downs her glass, then leaves my side so that she can hug Edjo from behind, who starts to relax as she gets used to the enhanced senses. "Tell us when the effects start to fade…" Alissa whispers, and the catgirl slowly nods.

Then the minds of the three of us seem to faintly connect for a second, giving us a strong intuition about each other's desires, and we waste no more time fulfilling Edjo's burning wish.

The dining table gets noisy as the mood starts to affect everyone, and Khepri almost throws herself into Hana's arms, who discreetly sneaks a hand under her dress.

As the occasional light lewd touch turns spicy, the smell starts to become noticeable, but even Jacques has loosened up enough to not look uncomfortable as he witnesses the clear display of girl love. I mean, it involves neither his wife nor his daughters, so what kind of man would look away from that?

Things continue to escalate, encouraged by Hana's "subtle" playing with Khepri, and the happy, girlish giggles gradually turn into soft, steamy vocalizations while their clothes start to loosen.

I sense a bit of mischief coming from Roxanne, but I'm too late to stop her, and she bares Ciel's chest in front of everybody. I think the succubus is also in need of "obedience training."

My first instinct is to have Suzy turn to Jacques and potentially cover his eyes, but the "well-trained" man actually manages to tastefully avert his eyes from the best pair of cow pillows in the whole world. But the thing that surprises me the most is how thirsty Léonne looks as she unashamedly stares at the heavenly pair. Then she turns her hunger towards Ofilia, who instinctively tenses up and blushes.

Jacques sighs and lands a heavy, large hand upon his wife's left thigh. "The Ryders are infecting us with their relentless depravity," he softly warns his wife.

Ofilia sneaks a hand under Léonne's not-kimono from her right side. "It's up to you to stop me," the matriarch replies, and then she in turn sneaks a hand under his not-kimono.

I watch with an internal wry smile as the red beast clenches his jaw and swallows heavily. His eyes turn to the growing girl love in front of him, and he breathes in deeply while seemingly praying internally. A bit of lack of clothes on our side seems like a fair price to pay if it means that I get to see both Léonne's and Ofilia's bare bodies and them getting done senseless.

Yunia then unhesitatingly unleashes her tongue upon the fox milf's ass, "You asked how Wolfy turned your precious daughter into a sl-t, but I don't think he had to do much since she seemingly inherited most of it from you."

Léonne turns her eyes to the elven queen and smirks, but then they stare at each other, and something more starts to appear into their gazes. Yunia swallows heavily as she feels herself heat up under the fox matriarch's steamy gaze, but I'm the one who's dying to see this escalate.

Ciel whispers something to Laguly, and the two of them plus little Lina leave the dining room to join us in the bedroom.

"How do you deal with your husband fucking any woman he wants?" Laguly suddenly asks softly, her eyes still glued to The Dragon as it plunges in and out.

Ciel is taken by surprise and hesitates for a second before answering, "Trust. I know that no matter how good it feels to do it with other women, he'll always make me happy first before he goes to another woman. But I can't deny that it does help that I also have my own wife…" Then she glances at Lina, and the two share a pure, innocent, loving smile.

Then I realize that Laguly's shock isn't about seeing me. It's from seeing Edjo getting it rough from another person. And it seems that the c--kq--an kind of enjoys it.

"Fine. I want it, my love…" Jacques suddenly grumbles in defeat, and his wife snorts amusedly.

The three Verners withdraw their hands, and Jacques suddenly stands, then he unties the sash, and his not-kimono falls to the floor, revealing a stupidly muscular body covered in manly red hair… and a massive member. He could almost plow a horse with that thing.

Ofilia immediately goes to work on it, almost dislocating her jaw to take it all in. The shy beauty blushes heavily in shame, but the lewd air and drunkenness from both the alcohol and the Eia have completely removed her inhibitions.

"Mom!" Allura complains loudly as she takes care of herself. My favorite tomboy looks ready to fight her mother if she doesn't get any.

"What do you want, child?" Léonne asks, sounding a bit frustrated.

The young girl glances at her father's monster. "A man."

But Léonne can only try to comfort her, "I doubt even your father can take your first time. I don't understand the Gods, but there's nothing I can do unless you want another woman."

"Let me help with that," Roxanne whispers as she appears behind Allura, then she delicately replaces the girl's fingers with her own long, pale ones.

Damn unfair. Roxanne can do that, but I can't?

Allura looks like she wants to complain, but when the fingers dive in, she shuts up and lets her voice out. And now that her daughter is being satisfied, Léonne removes her not-kimono too.

Round, full chest, pink bits, defined abs, child-bearing hips, thick thighs, a square, orange bush, hidden lips, glossy with arousal, and perfectly young skin with barely any signs of aging. Léonne is so similar to Alissa, but also not at the same time as she has more mature and motherly features. I make sure to burn this sight into my memory.

Yunia stands up and walks up to Léonne, then the two stare each other in the eye as a desire to do it takes over their minds. The two are actually quite similar personality-wise, and they've been steadily building up a nice friendship, but it seems they're both willing to take it further.

The elven queen is dying to be dominated by the experienced fox milf, and she wastes not a second before kissing the older woman and playing with her flower.

But Jacques' imperious, gruff voice makes both of them freeze, "No."

Yunia pulls back and immediately sucks on her fingers to taste Léonne (a taste I also burn into my memory). Then she turns to the big dude who's getting his monster sucked. "May I please taste your wife?" She politely requests.

"No," he repeats, his body tensing up as Ofilia takes him deep.

Léonne pulls down Yunia's top, revealing her perfect, round pair and pink bits, and the milf starts to play with them, extracting a soft sound from Yunia. "Are you sure you don't want to see me with this incredible elven beauty, husband?" The matriarch tries to entice him, then kisses Yunia's neck.

He grits his teeth as he watches his wife play with my wife's pair, then he turns his eyes to the girl love party, and his conviction starts to falter.

The two play with each other using their fingers and softly let sounds out in sync, then Yunia finds the promised land, extracting a louder sound. This is the opportunity of a lifetime, so I take over and clamp my lips around Léonne's left bit.

The red, manly beast suddenly reaches the summit, and Ofilia chokes and takes it out, only to get her jade-like skin tainted.

But while that was a massive one, the red, manly beast knows his boundaries. "No. No outsiders unless I can also have them," he asserts, this time with finality, and the two regretfully pull back from each other.

"I at least encourage you to watch," Léonne states with a suggestive smirk, then gives Yunia one last kiss before lying down on the table and taking an inviting pose.

Jacques doesn't go even slightly flaccid and immediately takes the invitation, making her yelp loudly in pain. Then he wets a thick thumb with his tongue and shoves it inside her behind.

The wagging of her fluffy orange tail, the winces with every thrust, the pitch of her voice, the submissiveness to an alpha male, it's all so familiar. She's Alissa's mother, alright.

And with his other huge hand, he does Ofilia, who can only hold onto the tablecloth for dear life as she's punished relentlessly.

Since he's already seen enough, I start to call for the wives and Companions to come back to the bedroom. But not before Hana makes Khepri scream, which makes him paint Léonne's body. Seeing her exhausted state, he gives his wife a breather, leaving her gasping for air with her eyes out of focus, and does Ofilia until she almost passes out, but he makes sure to fill both of her holes.

Allura doesn't know where to look as her father and Hana are both extremely attractive to her fantasies, but after a second summit, she starts to wind down, though she's still frustrated that she didn't get any. She ends up simply staring at her father's monster, who awkwardly averts his eyes from her to not go limp.

The rest of the girls leave one by one until the only one left with the Verners is Jarn, who continues to observe as Jacques once again does Léonne.

A note from Manasong

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Chapter 143: Wager - Part 1

A note from Manasong

Attention: to conform to the limit of mature content (more than just sexual content) allowed in a novel, I've censored this chapter. You can look for the uncensored version here.

Alissa is too tired to take over, so the corrupted priestess whispers sweet words into the Siren's ear to guide her in how to give service. It's best to clear things up so that she doesn't make any rookie mistakes and end up ruining the mood for herself. I wouldn't care if she accidentally used her teeth, but the focus here is on her enjoying herself, so we want her to feel like she earned a bounty.

Both of her little hands grab the base, and she hesitates as she's awed by its thickness. She even takes a hand off, then touches herself to compare sizes, and she raises her eyebrows at the realization.

"It'll fit, I promise," I gently soothe her.

She chuckles nervously, and Ciel encourages her to begin.

"Good, now swallow," I order, and she obeys, then [Clean]s her own mouth, just how I like it, and smiles adorably at me.

"Normally, a man takes longer to finish, but Wolfy is special," Ciel kindly explains.

Laguly gives her a surprised glance, then licks the tip again to my delight. "But it would hurt my jaw if I did that for much longer."

And the corrupted angel nods sagely. "That's why he finishes so quickly, to make it easier on us."

"How considerate," Laguly replies with a chuckle.

"And now, it's time for me to enter you," I huskily state, and she tenses up, but I promptly order again, "Lay down on the bed." And she unhesitatingly obeys.

"We're here for you," Khepri reassures the soon-to-not-be vi--in. She's happily watching her friend with such an innocent smile that it almost makes this situation seem like Laguly is simply confessing to her crush instead of giving her first time to a hungry and domineering Dragon.

"You'll be fine…" Edjo weakly adds, just starting to recover from her mind-blowing, yet conscious enough to watch over her "friend."

"I'm going to put it in, alright?" I huskily ask and smile.

She glances at Ciel, who encourages her by giving her hand a squeeze, then the little Siren nods slowly.

I pound my tiredness away like a true Hungry Dragon, all the while gazing in wonder at the way Laguly writhes under me and also at how Ofilia writhes under Jacques.

But, my trance is suddenly interrupted by Laguly as I suddenly feel her reaching the summit.

"Eh…?" I hum softly in confusion, and Ciel reminds me that she was a vi--in just ten minutes ago.

Ten minutes have passed, already?

I guess no woman will ever be better at plowing than the wives. Taking a woman's first time is nice as a snack, but not even the Companions can handle my Thicc Draconic Sword for long enough to satisfy me.

And to not leave little Laguly unful-filled, I fill her up in sync with her bliss, allowing her to experience a glimpse of what it's like to be bred by me.

It's kind of late, and there are far too many tight wet flowers to be spread in one night, so what I need to do next is obvious. It's just that I have to decide who gets the real Sword.

"Ciel has been a good little sl-t today," Alissa suggests, and I heartily agree.

"It has been decided, then," I announce out loud and allow the tentacle monster to come out, then I give a hungry look to the female pieces of meat spread all over the room. "Khepri will be roasted, Roxanne will be punished, and Ciel will be rewarded, while everyone else still standing will be plowed senseless."

"Fuck ye-…!" Capri Sun's shout is interrupted by a thick, purple club that shuts her up, and then two more come in and lift her up into the air.

"Good girls are always rewarded," Alissa whispers cheekily and gently pushes Ciel so that she lies down on her back. Then my foxy sl-t begins making her ready while I grow another Sword and lube it up.

When you're faced with the decision between either Ciel's front or back hole, the answer should always be "why not both?"

Today is the 11th, Genn, day of Light. Day of praying, healing, rest, and hangovers. It's no surprise that on a day of Tann, the day of Darkness, the very same one as of yesterday, people would be quite aggressive and eagerly violent, and then party hard like there was no tomorrow.

Fortunately for the drunks, [Purify Body] and other potions help a lot with the morning after, so the girls don't wake up feeling like death itself as they would on Earth. Fortunately for me, three of them aren't fond of drinking, well, at least two aren't as affected by alcohol as they normally would be, and they give my Sword the wake-up that It deserves.

In the end, we all only got one level each from the Trox Mael, but we know our Lordsguard gained a considerable number of levels, with some of the younger knights getting even as many as six, and the High Officers and senior knights also getting a handful, too. With those two days of power-leveling, our men will definitely have a boost in power for the battle with Katasko.

Aoi is level 49, Alissa, Roxanne, Ciel, Lina, and I are level 62, Hana is Level 63, and Yunia is level 64.

My [Spear Use] and [Polearm Use] increased by 1 (now 17+4 and 15+8), and my [Summoning Magic] and [Nature Magic] increased by 2 (now 6+36 and 2+20).

Alissa increased her [Hawk Eyes] and [Muscle Explosion] by 1 (now 7 and 6).

Roxanne increased her [Fire Magic] by 1 (now 5+36) and [Reduced Mana Cost] by 2 (now 20+7).

Hana increased her [Bow Use], [Polearm Use], and [Fire Breath] by 1 (now 11, 8, and 7).

Ciel increased her [Battlefield Perception], [Reduced Mana Cost], and [Mana Efficiency] by 1 (now 2, 8+3, 6+5).

Lina increased her [Axe Use], [Throw], and [Equipment System] by 1 (now 2+19, 2+9, and 5+5).

Yunia increased her [Two Handed Sword Use] and [Spirit Magic] by 1 (now and 19 and 2+24).

Our points need some rearranging to maximize our effectiveness. Even Yunia's build is starting to get messy with the intermittent training and random spurts of leveling.

"It annoys me how fast Wolfy's skills level up," Yunia complains through [Bind].

"Broken soul potential," Hana remarks.

"Cheating soul potential," Ciel corrects and flashes me a smirk. The good plowing I gave her has made her more chipper than usual today.

And now she's blushing.

We have breakfast with the Verners, and the atmosphere is decidedly awkward on their side, though Léonne seems to not have a care at all. In fact, her skin is absolutely glowing, which isn't surprising considering that she received a very intense skincare treatment last night.

"Wolf…?" The milfy fox calmly calls for my attention. "Can you see through your golems?"

"I can," I gently reply, and the realization strikes both Jacques and Ofilia.

"I should've known…" The red beast grumbles and sighs tiredly while the jade-like beauty assumes a skin tone similar to Hana's hair color.

"I knew you wouldn't miss Ofilia and I, even if you had to stop plowing," Léonne flatly states, then subtly smirks at me.

But Jacques takes the conversation in another direction, "You're a bad influence on Allura, Wolf…"

"Well, that's not my intention," I politely reply, mildly offended, and the young girl in question gives both of us a concerned look.

He simply stares at me and slowly narrows his eyes. "But you're not even trying to hold it back."

"Hold back what?"

He grunts annoyedly and crosses his logs for arms as he elaborates, "You let your 'Charisma' affect Allura without concern, you encourage her to fantasize about you, you let your [Spicy Charm] make her go mad with desire, and you've repeatedly made it clear that you will be the one to take her first time."

And none of us have a clever response to that, for once. "Well… damn… when you put it like that."

Allura's pointy red ears even go flat as she realizes how thirsty she's been behaving, but she quickly gets over it and exclaims indignantly, "If only the Gods would just let me get plowed, then maybe I wouldn't be so desperate!"

"I don't know what they're thinking, but there's certainly a reason for why they don't allow it," Léonne prudently tries to calm her daughter.

"Maybe it's because of me…" Jacques suddenly admits, and even his wife gives him a look that's a mix of surprise and curiosity. "I think she inherited my… 'desire'…"

The milf smirks amusedly. "I didn't know you were such a hungry kit."

Jacques twiddles his thick thumbs as he continues, "I had to keep it contained. The other Chieftess candidates were trying to seduce me, but only you managed to steal my heart…"

"Awn…" Ciel moans softly, touched.

"And then you 'tamed' me pretty well," the beast quietly adds, trying not to blush.

Léonne allows her fluffy tail to happily wag as she hums, "I see… But now we need Wolf to 'tame' her?"

And the beast becomes serious again. "No, she needs to learn to control herself first. I never fully released my hunger until Ofilia joined us."

"Yes, that makes sense…" Then she glances at the red, steaming statue that was once her personal maid.

"So, Alissa inherited the depravity and submissiveness while Allura inherited the desire and vigor?" Yunia cheekily asks out loud.

"You could put it like that," Léonne casually confirms what her husband refuses to.

But Allura still has something to say, "Hey, can I just tell the Gods to go screw themselves? They want me to abstain before I can have it?!"

And the mother once again tries to appease her, "Even Wolf has to keep it inside his pants every once in a while… or at least, that's what I believe."

"It'd be a lot easier if I could just have him once!" Allura grumbles stubbornly.

"Are you sure you only want him once? All of the women around him make me believe that you would have a hard time keeping it to just 'once.'" And every non-wife woman in the room refuses to look her in the eye.

"But I'd still be forced to leave him eventually, or something! I don't know! This is bullshit!" The tomboy fox lets out one last outburst before her stubbornness starts to falter.

"Love is better once you've learned abstinence," Jacques hesitantly tries to encourage/appease her. "Believe me… it's much better to unleash your desire after you've controlled it than to let it control you."

And Hana piles on to help, "Hey, we dragonkin do it far worse. If you were a hungry beast like me, you'd remain untouched until your thirties or forties depending on your level just to exploit that endless well of energy created by your desire."

"But you're not thirty, and I know you aren't untouched," Allura points out with a skeptical frown, her pointy red ears flat once again.

"Yeah, but I'd be a lot stronger if I'd remained one until then."

The girl pouts. "I don't want to be stronger…"

"You will if you want to fulfill your plans, remember?" Alissa comes in with a critical hit.

"Being a ruler requires unbreakable 'Willpower' so that you can remain standing even when everything falls apart around you," Léonne exploits the weakness.

"And controlling your desire is the first step to gaining that 'Willpower,'" Jacques delivers the killing blow.

"Hells… I get it…" Allura grumbles in defeat, then gives me a grin like she's staring at a piece of meat. "But once I've controlled it, I'll stay for a whole day-cycle in Escanso just to get it all out of me."

I, of course, simply smile back in approval. And Léonne slowly turns her head to her husband while smiling wryly, asking him to make the final decision on this.

"Sure…" Jacques gives in and throws me an anxious glance. It's great that he isn't trying to "protect" her from me, but it's also understandable how uneasy any normal parent would feel with someone like me around their daughters.

I'm a professional cherry popper, and there's nothing that'll change that.

After we eat, the groups separate. Everyone other than us, the Lords, leveled up quite a lot, and they're all eager to train to make use of their new soul potential, so the wives and I begin our orb-boosted mana circulation training on the balcony of our bedroom while listening to the men training in the courtyard.

I make a few golems, but none of us are very inspired right now, so I just meme a bit with the Chuckys.

"I'm quite happy about how many new things I've learned about my parents," Alissa suddenly remarks with a satisfied smile.

"Aren't you concerned for your father that Wolfy has tasted your mother?" Roxanne curiously asks.

But Alissa just shrugs. "That one is a bit complicated, but Wolfy paid for that with Ciel's and Yunia's bodies." Though I don’t like her phrasing.

Nevertheless, I add, "With the help of Gify and the golems, those memories will be something I'll never forget."

And something depraved blooms within her filthy heart. "Use [Godly Language] on yourself to make you imagine yourself doing my mother while using me as a substitute."

"If you inherited that from your mother, I wonder how she actually is in bed…" Yunia wonders.

"Jacques definitely fantasizes about doing us," Hana remarks and chuckles.

And the elven queen promptly pounces on the fantasizing, "Maybe not Alissa or Allura since that doesn't seem to be his thing, but the rest of us…" -She grins mischievously- "I also wonder if the dragon thirst of his daughters comes from him."

"Fox-Jacques doing dragon-Aoi," Hana remarks, her tone full of wonder.

"I'm going to stop all of you right there," I sternly state and pull on their reins through [Bind]. The only reason Roxanne didn't join in is because she's still feeling the "punishment" from yesterday.

"No Swords but Wolfy's," Aoi backs me up, and I reward her with my lap and lots of petting.

Though the girls are still a bit excited, even after a Ravaging, we manage to focus back on the training.

But then we're interrupted by a surprise visit from Director Gabe, and Yunia and I receive him.

The human is a mature imperial with a graying, short beard and long, braided hair that makes his face look small and rather fatherly. He's wearing the usual black velvet uniform of the guild, and coupled with his polite demeanor, he gives off a very good first impression considering the purpose of his visit.

"Royal Crown Lords, I'm Director Gabe, and I've come here to speak for the Monster Hunters' Guild of Mac Gantus," he greets with a soft voice.

"I admit we weren't expecting you to come to visit us," Yunia politely but firmly replies.

He nods softly. "I had to. The Guild swears off involvement with nobility as we report directly to Empress Hoo'Tree, but alas, we're mere commoners, and our kind lacks the honor of nobility to safeguard us from shamefully falling to greed."

I think that's Sa'Haa's mother.

"I assume Directors Luka and Elias have fled?" Yunia dryly asks, sounding mildly displeased.

And he soberly nods, taking this very seriously. "Yes. And I'm ashamed to admit that I didn't realize their intentions until after the report from the representatives explaining what happened."

"There's likely a lie there. I can sense the Life in him starting to get agitated," Yunia points out through [Bind].

Most likely, it's about how much he knew about what Gandalf and Fran were going to do.

We grill him a bit by staying silent and staring intensely, but he shows no sign of feeling the pressure aside from his agitated "Life," which likely means that his pulse has increased from the tension.

"What about G-… Kashikoe and Fran?" I calmly ask.

I almost forgot his name.

"We've fired them as a lesson to others to not get involved in these schemes," he promptly answers.

"That's unnecessary," Yunia states.

He takes a second to process, then replies, "I apologize, but I don’t understand. Could you elaborate?"

"If you fire anyone who makes a mistake, then your only employees will be the inexperienced ones that have never made any mistakes to learn from. Give the two a punishment and Armaars'r a reward for their behavior."

He smiles politely and lowers his head. "That's very kind of you."

"Merely using their greed to reduce the chance of misbehavior."

"That's very wise of you," he adds, then finally raises his head.

Ass-kisser.

Yunia also isn't so vain as to let his praise get to her, so she explains further, "It's nothing significant, but we know that other nobles would be more vengeful and demand harsher punishments like dismissal or imprisonment. We merely prefer that people favorable to us remain in power."

Gabe nods repeatedly. "I'll make sure that they both know how lucky they are that the Royal Ryder Crown Lords are so merciful." Then he flashes a polite smile again.

After some more empty words, he finally leaves, and we return to our training.

But Yunia feels displeased with the outcome, and she reflects for a moment before explaining it to us, "That was a sloppy scheme. I wouldn't be surprised if this was the result of Katasko's new leadership."

Alissa venomously adds, "Maybe this is why Cleinias didn't want to retire. Little Alki-Alki is simply incompetent."

And we find no argument against it.

Our training is interrupted once again as Alcander reports that the not-butler we kidnapped has "cooked" for long enough in the "interrogation" chambers and is ready for some [Godly Language]-fueled "gentle persuasion."

I sit before the mature man, and he doesn’t even twitch at my presence, seemingly a bit out of it as he was forced to stay awake all night long while being tormented by the room's enchantments.

While I prepare my voice, I notice that he seems paler than the usual imperial, and it's not because he's currently weakened as even his hair color is more of a brown-orange instead of the usual pitch black. He's a mixed race, and judging by his skin tone and hair color, he could be from either Faium or Maplethorne, and it makes sense for both of them to want the golems.

"Who do you work for?" I ask with [Godly Language], and he grunts as he resists, showing that he's been trained against this sort of interrogation, but this is why we let him "cook" all night long. It's only a matter of time before he breaks.

And it doesn't take long.

"Graet Union of Enchanters," he finally confesses. "Graet" sounds strikingly similar to English, but like the elven Ingua, it has a bit of a "gibberish" air to it that makes the words sound weird and nonsensical.

"Ugh, Maplethorne," Yunia loudly whines from our balcony.

Indeed, "Maplethorne" is also spoken exactly like how it's spelled in English, so I have no doubt that it's based on English… or maybe the Rupegian version came first? Who knows?

"Who are they?" Roxanne asks confusedly. Most of what she knows about the Gillios continent or the Avgi Empire comes from Lina's occasional trivia.

"Greedy bastards," Hana answers, and just the mention of the name makes her feel like spitting at the floor.

"Infamously greedy bastards," Alissa agrees as even she has heard about them.

"Are we going to do something about them?" Ciel asks concernedly.

"We're going to favor Faium in any future deals just to spite them," Yunia replies, and she feels almost as much of an urge to spit as Hana.

"Good thing we're already making deals with Imperial Princesses?" Ciel hesitantly wonders out loud.

And I sense Yunia seethe a bit. "Yes, but we'll eventually begin exporting technology and crystals, and we'll make sure that the 'Graet' feel the pain."

It warms my heart to see how fond she is of the golems, even though it's partially due to narcissism because Jarn wears Yunia's gorgeous and perfect face.

And after I get as much information as I can out of the not-butler, we turn off the interrogation enchantments and let him rest. We'll confirm his identity, and then we'll send him to the Tribunal for attempted theft, but we'll release the rest of the captured mercenaries, who promptly confessed to simply being hired muscle. We have no reason to kill them, so we won't take the risk of angering the temple.

But just as I resume my training, it's interrupted yet again as a crowd of messengers starts to quickly form at our doorstep. It seems that word has gotten out that we're challenging Katasko, and the vultures all want a piece of the carrion.

A note from Manasong

Hall of Fame of Patrons

The patrons who support Rupegia shall have their names sung by the bards for they deserve the glory and honor. Their names are:

Prince PreownedFIN.

Prince Owldente.

Lord Andrew Meyers.

Lord Novgarod.

Lord Michale Erwin.

Lord Bakerdea.

Lord Maurice.

Lord Mattirro Draca.

Lord Sean Drake.

Lord Mike Bartter.

Lord Warwulfv.

Lord Khristopher Welsh.

Lord Tenebris Lupus.

Lord Paul Daval.

Lord Paul Daval.

Lord AndreyUC.

Lord Tmac.

Lord School Work.

Lord CopeyDunt.

Lord BlindTactic.

Lord litalmexy.

Lord Philip.

Lord d3235.

Lord William Clark.

Lord Ddraig Wynn.

Lord CardinalSteiner.

Lord Cidant.

Lord SubJef.

Noble Salty Panda.

Noble Mild Fracas.

Noble Aclys.

Noble Carl  Baxter.

Noble Tony Starrk.

Noble GalacticTNT.

Leave a rating or a review to help me rise to the top or fix my shameful understanding of prose.

Take a look over my blog where all information about the world of Rupegia will be posted.

Join the Discord and discuss, or rant, or meme, or try and fight me so your waifu gets more screentime.

Become a Patron and read chapters in advance, or read the side-stories, or leave your mark on the story, or help choose the next artwork or the next side-story.

Chapter 143: Wager - Part 2

Only the Faiumi Merchant Alliance had contacted us before the beginning of the Purification, and that was mostly because of Nour's parents' vouching for us, so we have no desire to make any sort of alliance with these vultures wanting a piece without putting in the effort. We don't even need their help to deal with Katasko, so we won't share our spoils with them.

We have the golems comb through the letters just to see if there's something juicy hidden among the trash, but we pay the messengers no more mind. We've already had enough distractions during our morning training, so we don't have time to waste on that bullshit.

And the rest of our morning goes swimmingly.

I breathe in deeply and enjoy the environment. The falling leaves, the chirping of birds and nature spirits, the smell of nature, the greenery all around us. I've become too used to the elven lifestyle, and I start to dearly miss it whenever we go out. I'm a hermit dragon who finds it too bothersome to leave my cave and plunder the countryside, but I've abandoned my affinity for dark, damp, and warm caves, and replaced it with more elven tastes.

Yunia snobbishly snorts internally at my admission of the elven way being superior, but I'm comparing it to the Earthling way, and I have neither pride nor shame about my utilitarian life back on Earth.

As it's a day of Light, sunbathing feels so good that I even switch to my draconic form to enjoy it better. Aoi wants to feel small, so I grow to my biggest size and coil my body around hers, then we share our comfiness with the rest of the girls through our connection, and our boosted training gains another multiplier.

For lunch, the Verners want to have something private among themselves, so we decide to have a meal with only the wives. It feels weird not having Klein or Hukarere with us for lunch, but if they won't commit to the position of concubines, then there'll be moments they can't join us for.

Just to mess with Yunia's smug elven superiority, we have elven shawarma with imperial pita bread. The spicing of the meat is more on the savory side instead of the balanced flavors I usually found in Arabic cuisine, but it's delicious nonetheless.

I think elves favor simple and clear flavors due to the wide variety of tasty veggie ingredients they have available and their skill with smoking meats, whereas other cultures have become more adept at mixing spices to… mix up flavors and create something new. Werefox culture is a good example of the creative use of limited ingredients to spice up their meals.

Alissa simply stares at me with dead eyes, disappointed by my pun game. I love to annoy her, but I also know she plays it up a bit, so it's all fine in the end.

"I never thought I'd say this, but I now understand why we can't serve certain meals to adventurers," Hana remarks as she stares at her piece of shawarma sandwich, which is considerably thick due to the number of ingredients and simply too delicate for most adventurers to eat without making a mess.

"They're unable to appreciate the nuance of flavors in elven food, anyway," Yunia snobbishly states, feeling a bit annoyed by our deliberate mixing of cultures for this meal.

"Most of them wouldn't, but it doesn't mean that we should never even try to get them to appreciate finer meals," Ciel kindly retorts.

And Lina calmly points out, "I'm a common-born dwarf, and I learned to like elven food. Anything is possible."

"True…" Yunia hums thoughtfully. Lina's argument seems to convince her, which makes Ciel rather conflicted, and that makes Roxanne and Hana very amused.

For dessert, we have not-earl-gray tea with not-strawberry meringue cake, one of my favorite combinations. But the cake is almost a work of art as the chef poured their soul into decorating it, and it makes me realize that our own cooks don't try to be so artistic with our food. I can't deny that we're a bit spoiled, but at least we aren't that spoiled.

I get a craving for fluff, so Alissa puts her tail on my lap, and I instinctively start to pet it. But then my trance is interrupted as the golems approach us.

"Masters, apologies for the interruption," Ted begins.

"But we've come to a consensus, and we require your input," Suzy follows.

"We, golems, are vulnerable to theft through [Item Box], so we wish to divert some of our focus towards learning how to resist it," Jarn finishes with surprising eloquence. She almost sounds like a pompous elf herself.

I hum in agreement as I pet Alissa's fluffy tail, then I ask, "That's fine, but how do you intend to research that?"

"We'll test on each other," Ted flatly answers.

"Be careful with messing with [Item Box]," Roxanne soberly warns them.

Suzy turns to her and nods with her little blonde doll head as she replies, "Yes, we're aware that it has the potential to damage one's soul."

"Do you know where to start?" I curiously ask and lean to the side so that I can wave Alissa's tail in my face, tickling my nose with her unbelievable fluffiness.

And Ted suddenly launches into a long explanation, "We know that you can't store living humanoids, animals, or monsters inside an [Item Box], yet we, golems, are able to be stored in one, so there's something that we lack that would give us resistance to the spell. An inconsistency we noticed is that elementals can be stored, but they simply dissipate when it's attempted as they aren't made of real matter, just like a dungeon's mana solidifications. We know this quirk isn't related to the divine humanoid level and skill system since we've been under the effects of [Bind] for a considerable length of time, yet there has been no change to our vulnerability, so we plan on exploring the soul through [Sense Soul] and noting every single difference between ours and every other being that can't be stored."

Sometimes, the golems show glimpses of budding personalities that make me excited for their future, but it also makes me sad because there's so much to learn about [Golemancy] that I'm not free to explore due to other priorities.

"If you could continue my [Sense Soul] research, I'd be very grateful," I gently state and smile.

"No need for gratitude, Master. We live to serve," Jarn replies and bows.

And Alissa chimes in, "Would you like some help with that? I know that the soul is an inconceivably large thing, so with only the three of you, it'd take a long time to scour through it all."

"More comrades that can be stolen is a dangerous thing, especially when Master Wolf's [Bind] is limited," Ted retorts.

"Can you use [Bind]?" Alissa questions as an idea comes to her, and her tail attempts to escape my hand as it begins to wag.

"Only Jarn has memories of [Bind], and there aren't many, though we can learn with Master Gify's help," Suzy answers.

"Gih…?" Gify chirps, surprised at being called "Master."

Then I realize what Alissa's getting at, and a frightening idea escapes my mouth, "If we taught you [Bind] and [Golemancy], you could create your own golems that you could [Bind], and then those golems could [Bind] others, creating a chain."

But Ted immediately finds a problem with that plan, "We don't know how feedback from a golem further down the chain can affect those at the top."

I sigh tiredly and even my thick tail drops down in defeat. "Right, [Bind] is full of flaws."

It's extremely telling that Alissa found a way to control my body through [Bind], and the girls can even talk mentally among themselves without me noticing unless I'm specifically paying attention.

"Not only that, but there are dangers of mind-melding with inexperienced use of [Bind]," Suzy adds, and Alissa and I share a look. For some reason, I have to be careful when delving into her mind because our "mind blankets" stick together like glue.

I rub my chin with my claws as I ponder thoughtfully, "Like the Chuckys, this is something we can experiment with, but there are many other things with a higher priority that we have to work on before we should study that. Though, it's trivial to just make a few golems and have them use it on each other just to see what happens…" -And Alissa starts to regret giving me this idea- "but anyway, you can start exploring the soul and making notes."

"Thank you, Master Wolf," Jarn politely replies and bows while the other two lower their little doll heads.

Then Yunia casually remarks at the golems, "I'm surprised by your creativity. From what I understood of Wolfy's… understanding of your existence, you're not the most creative due to your obsession with obedience."

"The concern about theft has been on our minds since our conception," Ted begins.

"Yet we only came up with the idea of developing a resistance to it now," Suzy completes, her emphasis sounding like sweet music to my ears.

"Technically, we didn't have the resources to safely study things until recently," Roxanne points out. She, most of all, knows the difference that having appropriate protection makes to research.

Jarn nods at her, then finishes, "That was all we had to say." And I resume the petting of the fluffiest tail.

"Apologies for interrupting your rest, Masters. We didn't expect this conversation to last this long," Suzy politely states.

But Alissa immediately remarks wryly, "If you thought that Wolfy wouldn't immediately launch into theorizing, then you still don't understand enough about humanoid personalities."

"Indeed, we don't…" The little blonde doll replies, sounding faintly melancholic.

After our meal, we join the Verners on the balcony to watch the men train. And before we even get to our seats, my eyes are drawn to a blue-haired giant fighting off two Lordsguard on her own.

Kyora, Ciel's Templar friend, is like a knight on steroids, and I feel like she could even rival a lower Lord with her strength, which is exactly what half of her job is all about: dealing with naughty nobles and Lords. It's curious how she doesn't have a "high-level aura," or at least, she and her harem don't let it out.

"It's a Templar tactic, yes," Ciel explains through [Bind].

Neat.

Talking about Templars, Hana feels a bit sad that our favorite Punisher still hasn't come back from whatever business she had to attend to.

"I'm a big girl. I can deal with it," the big red girl reassures herself.

Allura greets us with a charming smile, but I can sense a subtle tension in her posture, and she even sighs softly in frustration when she looks away from me. It seems like the thirsty girl has been dealt with, for now.

And the moment we sit, Léonne turns to me with a very foxy grin and begins, "Say, Wolf. We have quite the 'interesting' ensemble of men gathered here, so how about some friendly matches?"

I glance at her curiously. Her tone makes it clear that there's mischief about, so I tread carefully, "If that's what the men want. I'm not one to force them to compete for our amusement."

She leans back in her chair and glances at her husband, who's watching the current match quite intensely. "Now that's a bit surprising. I thought a dragon would be more competitive."

Aoi and I share a wry glance. "We might not be 'normal' dragons."

"Understatement of the era," Yunia dryly remarks.

The milfy fox raises one orange eyebrow at me. "Do you at least frequent the coliseum in Escanso?"

While my one visit to the coliseum in Rabanara was nice, I clearly have a certain taste. "I prefer the theater."

Both of Léonne's pointy ears turn towards me in surprise. "Consider me shocked. Do you have a reason for why you don't enjoy blood sports?"

I enjoy the teamwork aspect more than the idea of winning. Lily was the inverse, and our attitudes actually complemented each other, with me ensuring that we always had a good time, and her making sure that we could actually enjoy victories regularly.

"I do enjoy an occasional duel myself, but not competing. I prefer to not have my pride challenged," I honestly admit.

And that seems to sate her curiosity as she turns her mischievous smirk towards the elven Queen. "How peculiar. But how about you, Yulania? Would you care for a wager?"

And Yunia's ears flick in sudden interest. "Oh? What do you have in mind?"

"My Hunters versus your knights," Léonne replies soberly, and my elf can't detect even a hint of hidden intentions in her tone.

But she still cautiously replies, "Knights have more roles than just combat, so my men would be at a disadvantage."

"Your best versus my best?" The fox Queen rephrases.

"Sounds acceptable. Three duels to decide," the elven Queen promptly suggests.

And now Léonne reveals her true intentions, "If I win, I want a free shipment of your bath products."

Yunia chuckles softly and nods. "Fair, though you can't give me what I truly want from you-…"

"Is that so? I really wish to know your true desire," the matriarch interrupts.

And the luscious elf takes a moment to rein in her desire. Last night is still fresh and raw in her mind. "You… and your maid," Yunia sultrily answers.

Jacques silently rolls his eyes as the conversation suddenly takes a lewd turn, but Léonne seems to revel in it.

"That's right, you can't have them," the red beast grunts to make sure they know where the line is, though he doesn't turn to look at them as he's still paying attention to the fighting below.

"What a lascivious woman you are, Lord Yulania," Lord Léonne remarks, her voice almost a purr, and the deep sensuality in her tone shows how much more experienced she is in the art of seduction.

"Of course I am; all Ryders are like this," Yunia proudly states matter-of-factly.

"I-I'm not…" Ciel tries to deny it, but a snobbish elven snort is all that's needed for the corrupted angel to sigh in resignation.

"Wolfy prefers 'slut,' but 'lascivious' is also fine," Roxanne chimes in with a grin.

The two stern rulers share a heated look as a grin slowly creeps onto their faces, but Léonne snaps out of it first and sighs wistfully. "It's a shame we can't fuck. I'll think of you the next time I make love to my maid."

Ofilia does her best to keep her face turned away from us so that we can't see the reddening of her skin.

And Yunia nonchalantly replies, "I've already done the same. But anyway, I wish for a free shipment of your best embroidered textiles. Even I can see how tasty Alissa looks in her native attire."

And the tail of our foxy slut slowly wags in mild excitement.

Léonne nods soberly in agreement. "Very well. We should start preparing our men."

But Yunia has one last statement to make, "Make sure that your white giant knows that he'll be fighting against my giant for the third fight."

And the two grin excitedly. "Yes, the best for last."

The first duel is between two mature men: a Misty werefox with graying, orange hair, and a beardless golden elf who still has a full golden shine in his hair but also has the experienced air of a daddy. They have no armor but a helmet to protect the brain, a neck brace to protect against decapitation, and a sheet of metal over the heart, all standard dueling attire.

It's instantly obvious why the female side enjoys duels so much as they're both shirtless and only wearing a pair of tight, elastic pants that form a bulge. I even see the adventurer trio and Lolo join the Companions down in the courtyard, and the group of women start to quietly, but excitedly, whisper among themselves.

I glance at Allura, but, curiously, she doesn't seem that excited. The two men are both daddies who look closer to her father than to me in body type, so I guess they just aren't her type. But they certainly are Ofilia's…

Anyway, they both favor the longsword over any other weapon, which perfectly fits their lean bodies as swords and other slashing weapons favor "Dexterity" over "Strength," unlike the halberd, maces, and other striking weapons, which are favored by dwarves.

As a Sworn Hunter's primary job is… hunting monsters, the longsword is definitely the most useful weapon in general for them, even more so than the spear. But in the case of the elves, their love for the longsword is more cultural than practical as they deem the spear to be a "peasant's weapon," which is an opinion that's shared by the Chimeras, but also because their two races have more enchanters who are able to create [Searing Blade] weapons, allowing the higher classes to ditch spears and pikes entirely.

Imperials favor the sword and shield combo as it matches perfectly with their spear cavalry, and they're credited for creating the famous heater shield in Rupegia as other shields aren't compact enough to be carried on horseback. The rest of the world mostly favors the spear as it's the simplest weapon to make, and it's extremely effective in large formations, but there's a global tendency for the higher classes to ditch spears whenever they can get their hands on enchanted equipment.

Lina nods in approval along with my internal monologue, but she doesn't feel like adding anything as even she starts to get a bit distracted by the view.

The duelists stretch and warm up with flourishing movements, which tells us that they're very much enjoying all the attention. I was concerned about them feeling intimidated since their Lords are betting on their victory, but they seem more excited than tense.

Then the two Queens return to our balcony, but to me, it feels like two imps have joined us. I almost instinctively probe Yunia's mind, but I decide to play fair and let them spring their trap or whatever other mischief they have in mind.

Léonne takes her seat and promptly unleashes it at me, "Say, Wolf. Would you like to have a duel with my husband?"

"Not interested," Jacques and I answer in unison, making both Queens giggle heartily.

"Are they making fun of us?" The big red man quietly asks and gives me a concerned glance.

"Yes, yes they are," I answer with a sigh, and we share another look. It seems that we've found something in common to bond over.

A note from Manasong

Hall of Fame of Patrons

The patrons who support Rupegia shall have their names sung by the bards for they deserve the glory and honor. Their names are:

Prince PreownedFIN.

Prince Owldente.

Lord Andrew Meyers.

Lord Novgarod.

Lord Michale Erwin.

Lord Bakerdea.

Lord Maurice.

Lord Mattirro Draca.

Lord Sean Drake.

Lord Mike Bartter.

Lord Warwulfv.

Lord Khristopher Welsh.

Lord Tenebris Lupus.

Lord Paul Daval.

Lord Paul Daval.

Lord AndreyUC.

Lord Tmac.

Lord School Work.

Lord CopeyDunt.

Lord BlindTactic.

Lord litalmexy.

Lord Philip.

Lord d3235.

Lord William Clark.

Lord Ddraig Wynn.

Lord CardinalSteiner.

Lord Cidant.

Lord SubJef.

Noble Salty Panda.

Noble Mild Fracas.

Noble Aclys.

Noble Carl  Baxter.

Noble Tony Starrk.

Noble GalacticTNT.

Leave a rating or a review to help me rise to the top or fix my shameful understanding of prose.

Take a look over my blog where all information about the world of Rupegia will be posted.

Join the Discord and discuss, or rant, or meme, or try and fight me so your waifu gets more screentime.

Become a Patron and read chapters in advance, or read the side-stories, or leave your mark on the story, or help choose the next artwork or the next side-story.

Chapter 143: Wager - Part 3

A note from Manasong

Attention: to conform to the limit of mature content (more than just sexual content) allowed in a novel, I've censored this chapter. You can look for the uncensored version here.

"They're two vixens, aren't they?" Jacques tiredly remarks, but the red beast still looks at them with warm eyes.

I wryly smile at him and reply, "You should hear Roxanne's banter; it's so mean. Even your daughter participates in ganging up on me sometimes. I'm simply outnumbered."

Jacques snorts and glances at Alissa. "She is her mother's daughter, after all."

"Indeed."

And he gives me a glance as his posture starts to relax. "I feel that your situation is worse than mine. Ofilia also likes to tease me, but she doesn't have the slyness of Léonne."

I shrug softly and also start to relax in my seat. "Well, I did choose to have a large harem and also encouraged them to be themselves, so the only one I can blame is myself."

He strokes his beard with his clawed hands as he gives me a measuring look. "Sometimes, dealing with two women is hard, so I can't even imagine what it's like to deal with… the number that you have and more."

And I smile smugly at the succubus who has the decency to blush as I state, "I'm actually blessed because they don't often join forces. Not only that, but it's mostly Roxanne who does the teasing, so it isn't a constant attack on my mind."

"I actually feel like I'm her target more often than you," Hana chimes in with a pout.

"I wonder why…" Roxanne cheekily whispers.

"Hana is like our second dad, so she gets teased just like Wolfy," Alissa blurts out and immediately regrets it.

"What…?" Jacques grunts and stares at her. My foxy c-m s--t slave just used my depraved definition of "dad," though I prefer "daddy" to avoid this exact kind of confusion… and also the slowly creeping horror of realization that appears on her father's face.

But I come in with the save, "Hana and I have very protective feelings towards the harem, which the rest of the girls tease us for since it makes our behavior predictable."

"Hmm…" The red beast hums thoughtfully and caresses his red mane with his clawed hands.

Distraction successful.

"They're ready," Léonne calmly states while faintly smirking, and we turn our attention to the courtyard below.

Gray werefox daddy versus golden elven daddy. The two start a few meters apart and calmly walk towards each other until they're just outside lunging range.

The werefox seems to be the more aggressive one as he smirks ferociously, and he takes a step forward, touching the tips of their longswords, then teases his opponent with a feint wrist chop, just a quick movement to measure the elf's reaction.

Golden daddy doesn't even flinch as the other man's sword launches towards his face, his eyes still locked with his opponent's, but the graceful man casually bats the long weapon away for daring to come too close.

And like most duels, the two explore each other's defenses, probing for openings and teasing out reactions, all while playing mind games to force the other into a compromising position where they can pounce and strike at a vulnerable spot.

"A dance of longswords is the most noble and graceful way to establish masculine superiority," Yunia states wistfully.

"More nuanced and dazzling than any other weapon," Léonne adds, and the other Queen nods emphatically, making her glorious drill bounce.

The two daddies intensify their exchange of blows, and even the golden daddy assumes a fierce and cocky expression. They're near the peak of male performance, and it'd be un-elven to not be proud of that.

They're so evenly matched that their bodies start to glisten with sweat before the vibrant red of blood appears in the field. But once it does, their astonishing speed and sweeping movements paint their chests with long, red lines as gravity forces the droplets to run along their skin until their movements see them fly away.

"Rah!" The werefox grunts as he uses [Muscle Explosion] to lunge forward.

But the elf prefers to take a slice to the forearm rather than use the skill himself, and then he counters with a lunge that sinks into the graying fox's stomach. A grievous wound for any inexperienced warrior that doesn't know how to deal with pain.

And the fox daddy answers by roaring as he strikes back, "ROOH!" Giving the elf a long slash along his shoulder, impairing the strength of his dominant arm. Not a favorable trade, but it's better than taking a free blow.

The two men disentangle and test their bodies for damage while staring at each other ferociously. They flex their glistening muscles and stretch to check for decreased mobility, then promptly approach each other for another bout.

Their swords slide against each other as metal grinds against metal, then the tips whistle as the cut begins, but all they split is air as the daddies dance around each other once again, neither of them making any big moves nor committing to an overwhelming attack.

Soon, the exchanges slow down as they catch their breath and formulate new plans, but they continue circling around the edges of the arena with their eyes still locked, not even noticing the excitement of the crowd. Two men at their prime dancing with each other in a struggle for supremacy. Considering who is currently observing the duel, there simply isn't a single person present who doesn't appreciate this scene.

The gray fox flexes his muscles and does a quick strike, but the golden elf steps back and gracefully bats the blade away. It's clear that the belly wound is taking a toll on the fox daddy as he's recovering much slower than the elf daddy, and this difference in stamina will only get worse with time, so their next bout will decide the battle.

And the mood starts to shift.

The fox lets his wild instincts take hold, and he bares his fangs at the elf, who hardens his expression in anticipation of the incoming savage attack, becoming so stern and stiff that it's like he's a living statue.

On one side, there's a beast ready to launch forward with explosive force, and on the other, there's an unmovable wall ready to stop the attack. Hair and fur standing on end from tension and the absolute stillness from perfect concentration make the crowd go so silent that we can even hear our own breaths.

Then the fox becomes a blur, and the elf instantly strikes down with his longsword.

Metal meets flesh, and the weapon sinks into the gray man's right shoulder, going so deep that it has definitely reached his lung. But he doesn't care because the tip of his own sword has penetrated the golden man's sternum, crossed his chest, and come out through the back of his spine, just under the neck guard.

The golden man relaxes and closes his eyes, his limbs going limp like a puppet with its strings cut, then the fox releases his sword, and his opponent collapses to the ground. The referee immediately ends the duel, giving gray daddy the victory, and a group of healers dash towards the combatants.

"Splendid," Jacques murmurs contently.

"Impressive 'Endurance' and 'Speed,'" Yunia respectfully states as she watches the fox collapse from the pain.

And I softly remark, "I once got a sword through my collarbone during a duel, and I'd rather get my lung stabbed than have to suffer through that again."

"Wolfy has a thing with letting himself get stabbed," Lina comes in with a sneak attack.

But I just shrug. "I can instantly cast [Heal], so it's a good strategy to get within the enemy's guard, and it's worked a few times already."

Then Hana chimes in, "That's what [Tatesomu Style] teaches, but I haven't had many opportunities to use it myself, especially after gaining [Draconic Body]."

Jacques chuckles softly, and it's surprisingly quiet considering his size. "I've seen [Tatesomu Style] being used to its fullest a few times, and everyone I've talked to who has also seen it agrees that they'd rather not fight against it," he amusedly remarks.

"Damn right," Hana mumbles proudly.

Then we make some small-talk while the next duelists prepare themselves.

It seems that both Queens have chosen more unorthodox warriors for the second fight to make things more interesting. We have a younger fox daddy with brown hair and fur (which Alissa says is from the Bloody Spear clan) that uses a short [Switch] sword-spear, and a silver elf mommy that uses [Vine Weapon], also like a [Switch] sword-spear.

But the most interesting thing here is mommy's bikini chain armor. It's been padded with cloth to not pinch the skin, but it's still basically a bikini that's just as revealing as an elven dousnadeia. It's just tied tightly to her body to not allow any bit to slip during combat.

Most men don't really care if their friends come out of their pants in combat, but a lot of women do… care about not exposing themselves, is what I mean, so that's why bikini armor is actually a thing in Rupegia.

"Having a sword was really nice, Wolfy. I wish you'd do that again," Hana comments through [Bind].

And I decide to not reply to that because that's a slippery slope that I don't want to go down.

Back to the fight, the two warriors stretch, purposely displaying their slender bodies and revealing to all of us that they're "Speed" focused, even more so than the previous two. Mommy elf is especially alluring, but our knights are different from the Companions, as the former is focused on supporting the stability of our lands while the latter's job is exclusively our personal protection, so it's harder for knights to fall in love with us.

But the silver elf turns to the balcony and casts [Grow], then a pink lotus flower grows in her hand out of seemingly nothing. Considering how pink is the most common color for elven private parts (and believe me, I've seen enough elves to be sure of this), the connotations of the color are rather suggestive.

"I dedicate this battle to you, my Queen Yulania," the knight announces with a dashing smile.

Why is Yunia so popular among elven women?

"Why are you so popular among elven women?" Yunia snarkily replies in my soul space, making me chuckle internally.

Then the knight casts [Vine Weapon], and the thin stalk grows and thickens, but the petals remain in place like an adornment above her hand as the flower turns into a short spear.

She points the weapon at the brown fox, who raises his eyebrows in awe at her showmanship, but he quickly hardens his expression, and they start the duel.

Two snakes launch towards each other and snap their jaws, by all they catch is the wind as their bodies dodge in an uncanny way, almost as if they're simply ignoring physics to move aside. It's both mesmerizing and baffling to see the way they move.

The two warriors both have incredibly high "Speed" and [Dodge], so much so that it seems like they move faster than anything I've ever seen back on Earth, which means that they might have broken through the limits of physics with their "Stats" and skills. Similar to how Hana can reach superhuman strength, these two can reach superhuman speeds.

But even they need to occasionally take a breather, so after a flurry of jabs that find no target, they separate and catch their breaths while coming up with new plans of attack. The elf's chain bikini is actually quite effective as even after all this exertion, there's no sign of it slipping, which is a bit unfortunate.

I'm way too protective of them to enjoy a bare, bloody duel between my women, but when it's a woman I'm not interested in, the idea of nudity and violence sounds slightly attractive.

"But you're always violent with my flower," Alissa remarks through [Bind].

But the flower violence is at a completely different degree in comparison to stabbing and gutting you.

"I'd like to get beaten and stabbed during love," Hana absentmindedly remarks.

"I'd love to see that," Roxanne softly adds with a sadistic tone.

This is a bit too extreme, even for me, so I cut the chatter short and focus on the fight.

Spears are less complex weapons in comparison to swords, so while spears are easy to learn, they have a lower "skill ceiling," but [Spear Use] still has the same max level as [Sword Use], 100, so the difference in skill level between opponents is less noticeable with spears than with swords. On the other hand, spear duels can show a level of nuance that's rarely found in duels with any other weapon.

And coupling that with how fast these two warriors move, it makes this duel feel exotic and unique. Martial arts is commonly called a dance, and what we're seeing feels like a fast, flashy tango.

They engage again, and both aim for the center of mass to make it harder to dodge, but now they use the full extent of their [Spear Use] skill to bat the opponent's weapon away from its target while also angling their own so that they can score a hit. It's rare for anyone but the Emperor to reach level 100 in combat skills, so these two warriors eventually make mistakes, and the small blade at the tip of their spears starts to find flesh to cut open.

Suddenly, the elf's weapon coils around her opponent's like a living snake, and the tip sinks into his right shoulder. I blink in surprise, having forgotten that her weapon is magical as it was formed through [Vine Weapon], and when my eyes open again, there's a brown fox on top of her, biting her right shoulder, but she just kicks his stomach and throws him off of her.

Another second, and they're both standing again, the fox back to his humanoid form, both combatants holding their shoulders in pain, inspecting the damage. The brown fox has a deeper wound while the silver elf has a more extensive but shallower wound, so they're more or less even.

"Such a fast transformation," Alissa hums in wonder.

"At a heavy cost of stamina," Léonne soberly replies. It seems that in the end, the fox came out with a worse deal than the elf.

After checking their wounds, they start circling each other again and launch probing attacks, testing the other and themselves for limited movement. The slower combat allows us to appreciate the nuance of their exchanges, and the intentions of each move they make start to become more clear to us.

A dodge with minimal movements so that they can keep their body leaning forward, increasing the range of their thrust, but their weapon is diverted by the other's, who leans to the side just enough that the blade of the spear achieves only a mere shallow cut. Perfect exchanges as they both showcase a masterful handling of their weapons.

Then the silver elf starts to chant [Regeneration], and the battle suddenly takes a wild turn. That spell must not be completed.

The brown fox immediately shifts into his animal form and pounces, but the elf promptly drops the chant and grabs her spear with both hands as it turns into a pike that skewers the fox through its chest and then pushes it away as it continues to grow. A trap that the werefox fell for.

The pike angles downward so that the elf can use her weight to skewer the fox further, and when he crashes against the ground, the tip of the pike comes out of his back.

His body is made of mana, so he doesn't care about such a wound and pushes against the pike, sliding down its long shaft towards his opponent.

The tip of the pike turns around like a snake and pierces the brown fox through its shoulder, but the ferocious beast doesn't stop and quickly reaches the silver elf.

He rakes his claws across her face, then opens his mouth to bite her head whole, but he can only snap at the air as the vine weapon coils around his throat, pulling his head back and choking him.

The silver elf stumbles to the side, blind in one eye and most likely dazed from the pain, but tense seconds pass and her [Vine Weapon] spell holds. Meanwhile, the fox is continuously being strangled harder, unable to escape.

"Fuck, I surrender!" The brown fox beast shouts, and the silver elf undoes her spell.

She immediately goes to the healers to restore her beautiful face to its former glory, but the werefox refuses healing and uses an HP potion on his shoulder instead.

"I want this scar," he explains and grins at the elf, who merely gives him a cold glance before snobbishly turning her nose away.

"Yeah, he's a true Bloody Spear," Alissa hums wryly.

Once the female knight's face is healed, she turns to Yunia and bows while smiling like a supermodel who won first place in a contest, and Yunia responds with a dazzling smile of her own. The knight then gives a respectful nod to her opponent to show that she doesn't want to disrespect him. She just really doesn't like that he went for her face.

Their duel was short but very interesting. It's a pity that to preserve life, we have to end it a lot sooner than they could potentially last if they were fighting for their lives. Retreating and ambushing are also parts of combat, but they can't be recreated in a duel setting.

Soon, the time for the final duel finally arrives, and the crowd gets excited.

In the left corner, we have Palo Orir, a massive golden elf with a bottom-dropping smile and the goal to do every hole he comes across. In the right corner, we have Montague Nuage, a white mountain of a man with the Chaddiest chin in the world and the goal to wrestle a female Ogre into submission.

They'd be incredible with striking weapons, but, for some reason, they choose longswords, a weapon for refined and delicate users, and they're anything but.

The female side seems very interested in this fight considering the two warriors are bigger daddies with bigger bulges than the first two, but it makes me very pleased to see that the Companions and adventurers don't seem any more excited than during the first duel. It seems that their "type" differs from the ridiculous piles of muscles before them.

Yunia and Léonne, though, are very excited to see them fight. These two men are aces, and they rarely get the chance to fight someone on the same level as them because few manage to rise as far as they have. They're the best we have for single combat aside from ourselves… or Silvano, but he's in a different "weight class."

And the moment they engage, we see why they're the best. Strength, determination, skill, and the concentrated power of will. Peak male performance. The true ubermensch that we've only ever dreamed of. The closest that humanoids have ever come to a divine physique.

They aren't just about raw muscular power. Swords are already light, but with such steel-like bodies, they can swing a sword as if it weighs nothing for extended periods of time.

"But Palo's 'Endurance' has always been rather low," Yunia tensely remarks internally.

Still, his stamina consumption is ridiculously low, and it shows as they have exchange after exchange for long minutes without slowing down, though they deal only shallow cuts to each other.

When fighting with swords, it's usually hard to grasp how dangerous your opponent is, so inexperienced swordsmen routinely wound each other at the same time. To have so many exchanges without any significant hits is a feat in and of itself; it's a display of deep mastery of their weapons and the art of combat.

Unless, of course, you're a dragonkin or someone like me, who deliberately takes hits to keep the enemy within range.

Anyway, the girls see page after page of their swordsmanship textbooks being displayed by the two muscular men. They attempt every single attack that they know of, and every time, it's perfectly parried or dodged.

The warriors smile handsomely at each other, enjoying the veritable showcasing of skill they're giving to the excited crowd, but we're here for blood, and the two will happily oblige.

Montague suddenly goes for a dangerous lunge, almost catching Palo off-guard, but the white mountain still scores a deep slice into the side of the golden elf's right ribs in exchange for a long slice on the thigh.

They're tall, and their arms are long, so they have a dangerous amount of reach, and Montague correctly understood how powerful their lunges can be.

Palo then shifts his style and uses his great strength and a leverage advantage to simply push his opponent's sword out of the way so that he can kick the mountain right on his wounded thigh.

A 26 "Strength" kick is no joke, and Montague winces in pain, his knee bending at an uncomfortable angle, and he takes a step back to recover.

But the elf drops any pretense of coming from a graceful race with an affinity for nimbleness, switching to full orc mode.

"UOOH!" Palo roars as he does a savage downward strike, which he follows with a shoulder check as he recklessly advances forward.

"Fuck-…!" Montague suddenly finds himself off balance and unable to utilize the full extent of his high skill in weapons as Palo launches a flurry of brutish attacks his way. "RUAAH!" He starts to shout back, enraged, just like his opponent.

We go from art to an orcish mating ritual as the two brutish men wave metal sticks around while trying to assert dominance. Their swords clash wildly against each other, causing resonating rings to echo across the courtyard like a sword-fight scene straight out of Hollywood.

Then, just as suddenly as it began, Palo steps back and allows Montague to go on the offensive.

Another trap that the fox promptly falls for, and the elf scores a lung pierce in exchange for a shoulder stab.

The men promptly separate, but neither show any sign of tiredness or pain. They're like crocodiles, and the first to show any weakness will lose.

They resume the careful and skillful combat, but soon, the massive golden elf steps back, seemingly out of breath. Montague isn't going to fall for such a ruse twice, so he carefully presses on, allowing Palo a moment to breathe.

And the elf suddenly drops the act and becomes brutish again. The white fox keeps his calm this time and doesn't respond in kind, which results in a few cuts biting into his flesh, but at least he doesn't fall for another trap.

Palo attempts increasingly unorthodox attacks to break Montague's guard, but the white mountain has absolute faith in his skills and continues his unbreakable defense, holding back on lashing out until he can be sure there's no trap waiting for him.

Suddenly, the golden man takes a step back, and Montague carefully goes on the offensive again, but he easily bats Palo's weapon away, and the massive elf falls on one knee, completely out of breath.

"Eh?" Montague hums in confusion.

"I… surrender…" Palo announces, almost wheezing for air.

It wasn't an act. He really had run out of breath that first time, but Montague thought it was a trap, so he played defensively until Palo exhausted himself.

The crowd gasps in surprise, and even Léonne looks confused.

Yunia sighs, a wry smile competing for space with her frustrated frown, then she politely explains, "Palo has [Acting] and [Taunt], and his strategy is to lure opponents into traps, but I think Montague inadvertently countered him completely."

And Léonne suddenly laughs out loud.

Intermission – Reinhold

"So, Junior General Reinhold Fischer, do we have a deal?" Vanea asks while looking me in the eye. I don't know what the hell is wrong with this woman, but she makes my hairs stand on end every time her eyes fall upon me.

"Yes," I confidently reply, not allowing my discomfort to become apparent.

And she gives me a calm smile that would be gorgeous if not for the horrible feelings her presence causes within me. I'm glad that I was smart enough to keep my wife out of this.

"Then, I'll be taking my leave," she announces, and I slowly nod.

After she's gone, I let myself relax in my seat, and a smile suddenly creeps up on my lips. But it doesn't stop there, and the smile turns into a grin, then I even start to laugh.

And I heartily laugh out loud.

A note from Manasong

Hall of Fame of Patrons

The patrons who support Rupegia shall have their names sung by the bards for they deserve the glory and honor. Their names are:

Prince PreownedFIN.

Prince Owldente.

Lord Andrew Meyers.

Lord Novgarod.

Lord Michale Erwin.

Lord Bakerdea.

Lord Maurice.

Lord Mattirro Draca.

Lord Sean Drake.

Lord Mike Bartter.

Lord Warwulfv.

Lord Khristopher Welsh.

Lord Tenebris Lupus.

Lord Paul Daval.

Lord Paul Daval.

Lord AndreyUC.

Lord Tmac.

Lord School Work.

Lord CopeyDunt.

Lord BlindTactic.

Lord litalmexy.

Lord Philip.

Lord d3235.

Lord William Clark.

Lord Ddraig Wynn.

Lord CardinalSteiner.

Lord Cidant.

Lord SubJef.

Noble Salty Panda.

Noble Mild Fracas.

Noble Aclys.

Noble Carl  Baxter.

Noble Tony Starrk.

Noble GalacticTNT.

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Chapter 144: Joint Exercise - Part 1

"I apologize for disappointing you, my Queen Yulania," Palo earnestly announces as he kneels and lowers his head.

But even though Yunia wanted to win the wager, she's still quite happy with his duel. She fought him once years ago, and she has seen with her own eyes how far he has risen since then, so all she feels is pride at seeing his power.

"You haven't," she softly states and flashes a dazzling smile. "You fought your best, and you fought beautifully, but the unmovable mountain that was your opponent was too much for you to surpass."

"Thank you, my Queen," he replies in kind and stands again.

It seems that Montague is an even bigger monster than Palo, and we have nobody that could've won against the white mountain, but the question of whether our knights or their Sworn Hunters are stronger can't be answered by having these monsters fight since they're outliers.

Once he joins his fellow knights, Alissa hears one of them ask him, "Couldn't you just have fought defensively?"

But Palo shakes his head negatively. "It's very hard to lure an opponent into a trap without fighting aggressively."

I'm inclined to agree. I like to open myself up to lure my opponents in because it's hard to get within their defenses if they're too skittish for me to get close.

But anyway, now that the excitement is over, we stop the dueling and begin a joint exercise since we're going to be fighting together soon.

The men line up, shield with shield, but not perfectly tight like a real shield wall since that doesn't work against soldiers with heavy, enchanted armor that can just bulldoze through anything but a rain of halberds. And even then, a single, well-angled [Searing Blade] can decapitate the mass of weapons and screw over their attack capabilities.

In Rupegia, full plate is even more impenetrable and terrifying than it was in Earthling medieval times. You have trouble damaging their armor due to [Wind Armor] and [Reinforce], you have trouble holding them down with numbers due to the numerous enchantments they can use for mobility like [Rush] or [Fly], and they can just mow down scores of your men with a single [Searing Blade] swipe.

The only thing preventing absolute invincibility is the high mana cost of using all those enchantments. But then again, Lords like Jacques and Confiel have thousands of points of MP, allowing them to wipe out armies single-handedly before they need to rest, not to mention all of the high-power MP potions they have at their disposal.

When you grow even further than the Lords, gaining enough levels to make others feel awed just from your presence and enough MPower to bend reality with just your mind, it's no wonder that people called them God-Rulers.

But I digress. My thoughts were corrupted by Lina's history fangirling, but what I wanted to say is that in a high-level, high-skill, high-magic battlefield, conventional tactics don't work as well. Perhaps in the future, if we manage to find ways to make enchanted equipment cheaper, we'll also begin to standardize it so that it can be used in mass combat and benefit from army-wide tactical coordination.

For now, we have to fight the standard way, with the Lords at the center and the men on either side of us. Hana, Yunia, human-Aoi, and I stand on one side with Ciel, Silvano, Lina, and Jacques facing us. I'm thankful that the red beast is my opponent, but the girls feel uncomfortable fighting against each other. It's just a mock battle, but it's still hard to get into the spirit of it when it isn't sexual roleplaying.

"Hit the armor, make your opponent feel the impact, but avoid any exposed spots!" Léonne shouts from the balcony.

I keep my thick tail stiff and upright to not get in the way of the men behind me, and I only use three tentacles wielding spears because they're unable to hurt anyone through armor.

Then I raise my shortsword up in the air and shout with a hint of [Godly Language] infused into my voice, "We need to at least give each other a good spanking, for our enemy won't be as kind on the fourteenth!"

And I hear a few amused cheers as their spirits begin to rise. Only the knights and Sworn Hunters are participating in this exercise, so the Lordsguard are just observing us, and they find this no-bloodshed, beatdown type of exercise rather amusing.

The lines approach each other, both sides now grinning at the silliness, then we begin smacking our weapons against our opponent's armor.

Jacques becomes a musical instrument as my spears smack at him repeatedly with a rhythm. He slashes at them with his longsword, but I've become quite adept at reconnecting sliced tentacles, so the music doesn't stop no matter how many times he slices them.

"Jacques, Blade!" Léonne orders, and we both turn serious.

I activate [Heat Reversal] on my shield at the same time that his longsword starts to glow with heat. Then he slashes, and I block.

My enchantment absorbs the heat of his sword and releases it back towards him in an explosive fashion. His [Rainbow Shield] and [Wind Armor] both flare up, reducing the power of the explosion so much that all he should feel is a mild discomfort.

"Next!" Léonne orders, and another soldier activates their [Searing Blade].

Everyone will use their enchantments in sequence, but we don't know who and when, so we snuff out the levity and put our war faces on. This training is no joke.

While this is nice to get us used to the chaotic nature of this type of combat, the real danger comes from the Lords that we'll be fighting.

After most of the men have used their enchantments at least once, Jacques jumps back, then he glows, and his hulking form grows even bigger. After just a few seconds, he's now at his elephant size, but this time, he's also fully armored with cheap iron plate.

Everyone takes a step back, and we spread out so that he can't crush multiple people with his body.

Now that I'm free, I keep my focus on him, and the moment he pounces, I cast [Telekinesis] to slow him down. But he jumps past us, at our backline, and Roxanne reflexively uses [Explosion] in front of herself, outside his [Dead Zone] enchantment.

The force of both of our spells makes him spin in the air, and he falls on his side, his head pointing towards the back of our melee line, but he doesn't waste a second before pouncing forward again onto one of our men.

The mages finish their [Telekinesis] and lift Jacques up before he can crush the poor little one, and we retreat further to get away from him. Then the mages on the other side get a hold of our [Telekinesis] spells and interrupt them, allowing Jacques to drop down like a fucking boulder.

But now I get the signal for me to play my part, and I grin excitedly. We've been hiding this power for so long, but Katasko and many others should already be guessing that I can do this, so we'll use it to its fullest before we completely lose the element of surprise.

I summon two Orc Chiefs.

"What the fuck?!" I hear Capri Sun exclaim in surprise.

Two huge, burly green men with big tusks and plate armor appear, each wielding a lump of metal they call longswords.

"Loose!" I shout.

"UOOOO!" The Chiefs reply and barrel through the enemy line.

One of the Chiefs suddenly falls as his legs get caught up in something, and Palo slides in front of the other, blocking the Chief from getting to their backline.

The elf is wearing a closed helmet, but just from looking at his eyes, I know that he's showing a handsome smile, which infuriates the Chief in front of him.

The men try to hold the other Chief against the ground, but he lashes out and eventually gets up. Then Ciel touches her [Judgment]-infused glaive to the Chief's head, and he roars in pain, stunned long enough to be tackled down and partially immobilized.

Jacques pounces towards us again, but dragon-Aoi tackles him head-on, and the two entangle in a messy fight where neither has the strength or speed to harm the other.

Things are becoming messy and dangerous, but that's the whole point of this exercise: to keep a level head as crazy abilities are thrown left and right.

Two of our men are fighting Lina, but she's actually winning as they're both moving too sluggishly to keep up with her speed.

Ah, fuck…

She trips one man with the back spike of her war hammer, then suddenly swings it at the other man, who lifts his shield too slowly to defend himself. His helmet rings as the hammer strikes him right on the forehead, and the man staggers back, but the attack didn't even leave a dent.

"Bonk, you're out," she hums flatly, then she also hits the fallen man's head. "Bonk, you're out."

I use [Telekinesis] to fly and land before her, just outside of her hammer's range. She turns her head towards me, and I let out a smile as the only things I can see under her helmet are her adorable, gloomy eyes.

"You don't feel pain in your tentacles, right?" She casually asks.

And I nod. "Yep. [Electric Magic] still hurts, tho."

Then she promptly swings her hammer at me, and I almost fail to dodge it as I feel a subtle sluggishness creep into my mind.

Okay, she's a bit scary.

"I'm very scary," she corrects me and pouts, then promptly swings again.

I summon a bird to be my eyes, then I close the real pair and stab her armor repeatedly with my spears, which annoys her.

Suddenly, my shield heats up, and I promptly interrupt her [Manipulate Metal], but she instant-casts it again, and I immediately interrupt it. The problem is that she can just repeat this endlessly, and the shield's temperature continues to rise.

I cast [Entangling Vines] on her to keep her in place and take a step back to get out of the very short range of [Manipulate Metal], but my left foot remains in place, and I fall on my back.

My tail moves on its own and presses against the floor, keeping me upright like the leaning tower of Pisa, then I look down and see that a dome of stone has grown around my foot.

Clever girl.

With spells being used left and right, her quick use of [Earth Wall] escaped my notice.

I use [Earth Bullet] on the dome to break it, then I sacrifice a tentacle to absorb Lina's strike, but the attack doesn't land as she [Blink]s past me and spins in place to hit my back.

Panic settles in, and I cast another [Earth Bullet], this time at her face, and her head snaps back as the accelerated rock hits her forehead, but her hammer still snags on a tentacle growing out of my back, and I'm pulled backward.

I fall on top of her, and she's too dazed to react, but then I see a curved blade glowing with dangerous-looking light right in front of my face, preventing me from standing up again.

"No bonk, but you're out," Ciel asserts, and I smile wryly as I slowly raise my hands.

"Hello…?" Lina's voice echoes from under me.

"Oh, sorry!" Ciel hurriedly apologizes as she pulls back the glaive. Then I use my tail to stand up, and we help our little wife get up off the ground.

The ground starts to rumble as Yunia decides to use her Ramodia armor to grow vines all over the battlefield and disrupt our opponents, which can prove fatal no matter how small the disruption is. Ciel tries to stop her, but she has problems dealing with Yunia's [Precognition].

Then things progress quickly. Lina teams up against Yunia, but it takes them too long to wear down the elven Queen, and even with me out of the fight, Hana bonks enough people to turn it in our favor while Silvano struggles to keep her in check.

"Enough!" Léonne suddenly shouts, and we end the exercise.

We gather around a large table inside a private room to discuss the results of the first exercise. The knights and Sworn Hunters stand behind us in case they have something productive to contribute.

"Okay, that was fun," Hana cheerfully comments, but Silvano, her main opponent for most of the exercise, is frustrated with how hard it was to do anything against her.

"I'm completely useless if I'm unable to stab anyone in the eye," Silvano frustratingly states.

"We shall give you dull swords with padded tips, then," Léonne calmly replies. Her idea is logical, but it's still rather humiliating to give someone like Silvano the equivalent of pink pool noodles.

Yunia quickly moves the conversation on to allow Silvano to mope in silence, "The results were fairly interesting, but I propose that we involve the mages more to intensify the battle."

"I'm concerned that Your Highnesses were fighting differently from what we've come to expect from them," Alcander interjects.

And I explain, "When we're fighting against each other, our telepathic communication has to be cut off, or we won't be able to fight properly."

"The training is still more for the men than the Lords, so it's an acceptable compromise," Léonne states, and the whole table nods in agreement.

Then Yunia promptly continues, "An issue I've identified is that we have too many tools at our disposal, and we don't know when it's best to use them."

And I point out, "We also don't have enough mana to use all of them, so we can only use a limited number."

"Test all of them and determine which are more cost-effective," Lina quietly contributes, and we go silent for a moment as we think.

"Your instant spells and summoning are very disruptive," Jacques contributes. His huge form is almost fully countered by our instant spells since they can dull his pounces.

"In one-on-one combat, the Ryders seem to be unmatched," Léonne adds, which strokes our egos a little bit.

"But we lack high-impact tools," Yunia tempers our pride.

"And summoning monsters has a high mana cost," I point out.

Then Léonne curiously asks, "What monsters can you summon? We need to identify a clear tactical advantage that they can give to justify their cost."

I take out a piece of paper and have the golems write out the list of monsters for me because my calligraphy sucks.

And Alissa begins with the newest addition to my repertoire, "Heralds of Ruin will cause extreme damage to the enemy's weapons the longer they fight."

It's true. Enchanted equipment is a big multiplier of a knight's power, and without it, they aren't a threat to other knights. Just look at [Searing Blade]. Without it or another enchanted weapon, a full plate knight is basically invincible.

And Yunia retorts, "They degrade weapons much too slowly, so we'd have to field a number of Heralds for them to have any real impact on the battlefield fast enough to matter."

"We have suits of armor to spare, so we can test how fast one can disable a knight and then extrapolate," Lina wisely states, making me proud of her developing scientist's mindset.

Nobody else has anything to add except agreement, so we all nod, and Léonne continues, "Very well. What other monsters can we use?"

"I'm always partial to having a Nalusa as it snowballs in power," I happily chime in. That's the one that can control blood and grows more powerful with each wound it inflicts.

"'Snowball'?" Allura asks and tilts her head to the side in confusion just like her sister.

"I think he means like an avalanche. A wave of snow sliding down a hill becomes bigger the longer it slides because more snow joins the wave," Hana ELI5s.

And Allura's red ears twitch. "Snow does that?"

"Snow is solid water, and water sticks to water," Lina adds.

"Huh…"

Roxanne snorts softly, but she holds her tongue and doesn't tease them because it seems that even Jacques has just learned something new. The Rakontagne mountain range that's right next to the Misty Forest has snowy peaks, but no sane werefox ever willingly goes there as it's crawling with dragons.

Then Yunia politely continues, "Anyway, I believe that monsters that inflict 'Status Effects' would be very useful as they affect the entire battlefield. Bestower of Dread, Dark elemental, Weeper, Dream Eater, Hobgoblin Witch Doctor, Watchman Ton, Arachne, and Mandrake. Combining one of each will create a massive ball of chaos that will destroy the enemy's morale."

"I-… I feel like those will be difficult to use during the exercise," Alcander hesitantly states, and even the knights look like they want to complain, but they don't want to be accused of being cowardly.

"Yes, we understand that it'll be painful for all of us to measure the effectiveness of this strategy, but it's a sacrifice that we'll all have to make," I diplomatically assert and stare at each of the men in the eye to show them my resolve.

"We should leave this test for last so that everyone can rest afterwards," Ciel gently states, and everyone lets out a soft breath of relief, though a small amount of dread still remains in our hearts.

I sigh softly and move on, "But what about countermeasures? At this point, we have to assume that Katasko is at least suspicious that I can summon monsters, so they'll probably prepare ways to nullify this ability."

And Yunia wisely adds, "We should also think of our own counters. Katasko has many hidden weapons, which could include a monster summoner of their own."

"We use large crystals filled with Light mana to counter Dark-aligned monsters," Nohopu chimes in.

"That's the same as us. I believe our magical technology is likely derived from yours," Yunia replies, and they smile at each other.

And Léonne adds, "We have Blessed necklaces and other accessories, but I don't think they'll be enough against a large number of monsters that inflict 'Status Effects.'"

"If they have a lot of resources, they could just go for variety and hire a number of people knowledgeable in [Alchemicism]," Roxanne suggests.

"Yes, I feel that's it's unlikely that Katasko has a lot of holy items in their possession," Ciel wryly adds, and someone snorts softly.

Then I finish, "We also have to ask our Faiumi allies about their resources, so I think it's best we postpone this discussion until they join us."

But Yunia has one last idea, "Let's have one more bout, but this time, it'll be the Ryders versus everyone else. We'll show you the results of our 'Gestalt' training."

This time, the golems also participate because we're going all-in.

To reduce the risk of injury, everyone is given [Tremor] enchanted hammers, which cause a lot of pain for anyone wearing solid armor but deal little damage to HP, making them less-than-lethal weapons. Alissa, Klein, Léonne, and the other archers are using special arrows that explode on impact, courtesy of Aisco, but they aren't very effective in real combat unless they're given to a whole formation of archers.

We're heavily outnumbered and outgunned, but we have a [Fly] advantage along with our two strongest qualities: unity and ingenuity. It'll be a tough fight, but we know we can win.

We gather in the courtyard again, but we don't immediately begin the battle. We first need to get our minds in sync, like we've done so many times before, and achieve a Gestalt.

A note from Manasong

Hall of Fame of Patrons

The patrons who support Rupegia shall have their names sung by the bards for they deserve the glory and honor. Their names are:

Prince PreownedFIN.

Prince Owldente.

Lord Andrew Meyers.

Lord Novgarod.

Lord Michale Erwin.

Lord Bakerdea.

Lord Maurice.

Lord Mattirro Draca.

Lord Sean Drake.

Lord Mike Bartter.

Lord Warwulfv.

Lord Khristopher Welsh.

Lord Tenebris Lupus.

Lord Paul Daval.

Lord Paul Daval.

Lord AndreyUC.

Lord Tmac.

Lord School Work.

Lord CopeyDunt.

Lord BlindTactic.

Lord litalmexy.

Lord Philip.

Lord d3235.

Lord William Clark.

Lord Ddraig Wynn.

Lord CardinalSteiner.

Lord Cidant.

Lord SubJef.

Noble Salty Panda.

Noble Mild Fracas.

Noble Aclys.

Noble Carl  Baxter.

Noble Tony Starrk.

Noble GalacticTNT.

Leave a rating or a review to help me rise to the top or fix my shameful understanding of prose.

Take a look over my blog where all information about the world of Rupegia will be posted.

Join the Discord and discuss, or rant, or meme, or try and fight me so your waifu gets more screentime.

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Chapter 144: Joint Exercise - Part 2

We clear our minds and relax our bodies as I open up the sense sharing between everyone. The golems' single-mindedness is rather overwhelming, so we keep our connection with them thin to not disrupt our concentration, but their unending desire to serve is still helpful to get us into the right mindset for our Gestalt.

Yunia swallows an Eia pill, the second today since she used one during the previous bout, so the effects of the pill are lessened, but it's still powerful enough to bleed through our connection and sharpen our minds. Perhaps we could use [Weaverism] magic like our Lordsguard does to force our minds to "connect," but that'd be just a small boost and wouldn't make much of a difference.

Gify gives us a little hand… or rather, a little paw, by giving us a quick soul massage, then she pops out of existence to observe from above. The girls are already quite adept at surrendering their wills to me, so the takeover and synchronization goes smoothly, taking just a few minutes.

Sense sharing strengthened; shared thought speed doubled; wills organized hierarchically; life experience and skills melded; soft coupling of minds complete!

Gestalt fuu-… sion!

"We're ready," we announce in unison just to fuck with them.

"Remember, we have numerical superiority, so engage at the same time," Léonne advises the men.

"Don't be afraid of a little pain. They don't bite, except for Lord Wolf!" Silvano exclaims as he grins at us and prepares himself to exact revenge on Hana.

There are around one hundred men before us, but most of them have either magic or bow skills, so half switch to ranged to harass us in case we take flight. At the center, there's Jacques, flanked by Silvano, Palo, Montague, Anton, and the "Strength"-focused men while the "Speed"-focused men will flank and surround us.

They have enough warriors to still protect the mages even if we succeed in luring their melee line away from them, so there are no obvious weak spots for us to exploit. They're all experienced warriors, so it'd be embarrassing if they made such a rookie mistake, anyway. They also all have [Wind Shield] and [Dead Zone], so there's no easy way for our projectile or AOE spells to affect them.

A hard fight, but not impossible.

Allura stands up and begins the countdown, "We shall begin in five…"

We draw our weapons, and I arm six tentacles with enchanted hammers while Yunia begins chanting [Soul Blade] and the Verner's Blessing High Mage begins casting [Haste].

"Four…"

I shift into my dragon form.

"Three…"

We assume a combat stance.

"Two…"

Our opponents brace for impact.

"One…"

I cast [Haste] on everyone.

"START!"

"For this battle, we shall become stronger," I whisper with [Godly Language], then we rush forward as our bodies are filled with divine strength.

Aisco, Alcander, and Silvano begin casting spells, but only Silvano's is an AOE spell, which requires everyone to work together to interrupt it due to his high MPower, but with our Gestalt, that's as easy as blinking.

[Flaming Slash]es, arrows, and a few other spells fly towards us, but I summon a wind-Alissa to keep the bigger spells like the Slash from hitting us while everything else is diverted by our [Wind Armor] or just straight-up tanked by the our plate armor.

Jacques takes a step back, deeper into their line, while Silvano and the heavier men prepare to receive us. They all have enchanted shields, so we need to bypass them, or else we'll get boxed in.

We all cast [Earth Wall] at their feet, and it's almost immediately interrupted, but the unstable ground puts them off-balance. To take advantage of this opening, I send my tentacles at their ankles and throw my large body onto the men at our right while the girls engage the rest.

Aoi is so fucking massive that she just bypasses the [Wind Shield]s of the men at our left, and even though the enchantments nullify enough of her momentum that nobody is sent flying, she still drains a ton of their MP and pushes back the line, disrupting their formation.

The rest of the girls face off against Silvano, Palo, Montague, and a few other men at the center. With everyone buffed by [Haste], none of our opponents stand a chance, and they're promptly pushed back by a rapidly rising number of headache-inducing [Tremor] blows to their helmets.

While I swing around my body wildly, keeping our opponents at bay, the "Speed"-focused men circle around us and begin to approach us from behind.

[Battlefield Perception] activates, but I'm not able to dodge fast enough, and an arrow explodes right against the side of my head. Since I don't have armor in this form, it takes a second for my head to automatically heal, and then I notice Léonne in the back, staring at me amusedly while lowering her bow. Wereanimals wear helmets with pointy ears for comfort, so it's very easy to spot her.

Bitch.

I pull mana from the air with [Redirect Mana], refilling my MP pool, then summon three Orc Chiefs behind us to keep our opponents busy. A single Orc can keep multiple knights at bay, so three will be enough to cover our backs, and Alissa will support them to keep them from being overwhelmed.

A nearly one-meter tall ball of lead comes flying towards us, but the golems deflect it with their own balls of steel, and they begin a battle to keep Alcander from crushing us with his [Telekinesis]-controlled ball.

Then Aisco casts a spell a few meters above our heads, far enough from us that we can't easily interrupt it, even with joined wills.

"Not dangerous," Roxanne reports telepathically.

"Observing," Aoi adds.

Understood.

A couple of seconds later, a ball of flaming rock is conjured by Aisco's spell, and then tendrils of fire immediately shoot out of it towards us.

"Blocking," Aoi announces, and her ball of conjured water snuffs the tendrils out, moving on its own as our little blue dragon continues to rampage.

"Supporting," Roxanne joins in, and her [Water Spirit] spits a continuous jet of water at the flaming ball, which creates a cloud of steam, and though not even that is enough to overwhelm the spell, it'll keep it at bay for us. I really should've asked for a list of all the Unique Spells that Aisco has developed since he's an unpredictable wildcard, and we don't know how dangerous he can be.

I throw my body against Anton's [Wind Shield] to drain his MP, and the other men attack my tentacles while I'm "distracted," but I have them simply dodge out of the way, and the men whiff their attacks.

One of them is smart enough to strike at my ribs, and the [Tremor] makes my bones tremble, but this form doesn't care about pain. In fact, seeing these puny men have the audacity to attack their Lords makes the dragon spread its wings and take over the body, allowing the human to watch over everyone.

Anton tries to attack me, but the moment his arm comes out of his [Wind Shield], I cast [Rush] on myself for just a second, and with the added speed boost of [Haste], I instantly snap onto his wrist, then pull with all my strength, making him stumble forward.

I'm just a distraction, a big beast to keep a number of our opponents occupied so that the girls can focus on the real threats. And while my tentacle hammers pummel the back of Anton's head until he passes out, the perfect moment arrives for us to begin the Ultimate Ryder Combo.

Yunia is unable to deal with Silvano on her own as he's simply too fast, and he's been using [Lightning Bolt] to keep her dangerous [Soul Blade] away from him, but we don't have the luxury to wait until he's out of MP to get through him.

Trap Combo, begin!

Another of Léonne's arrows hits my cheek at the same time that I cast [Entangling Vines] right under Silvano, and he takes a step back as he detects the spell, but Roxanne casts [Water Wall] a split second later, and his back is caught by the sudden upward surge of water, lifting his feet off the ground.

[Haste] allows us to savor the moment in slow motion as his face goes from a grin to a desperate frown as he gets sucked up into the pillar of water, unable to retreat towards safety.

Palo and Montague both switch targets and lunge towards Yunia to stop her from taking out the vulnerable Silvano, but their opponents were ready for this.

"Combo!" The girls report internally and sync up their attacks.

Lina throws her hammer at Palo's feet, who jumps to dodge it as [Battlefield Perception] warns him of the incoming danger, but that sense of "danger" melds with the incoming rocket of Hana's whole body, so he gets caught unaware and doesn't activate his [Wind Shield].

Montague simply tanks Ciel's [Judgment]-infused hammer, then kicks my and Lina's little stub of an [Earth Wall] and blocks Alissa's arrow with his [Wind Shield], but he can't stop Yunia's [Chain Soul] from freezing his legs. Just a split second is enough to make him trip, and then I use [Telekinesis] to tip him to the side, followed by an [Entangling Vines] where he falls to keep the mountain down.

Yunia uses [Muscle Explosion] to lunge, and [Soul Blade] sinks into Silvano's face at the same time that Roxanne's [Water Wall] is interrupted, but the High Mage has already passed out.

Another explosive arrow hits my face, and multiple [Tremor] hammers strike my body due to my distraction, but I only need a moment to heal up, so we spam Wall spells around me to give me a second to breathe while Alissa's arrows make them retreat.

"Gih!"

Warning: Boss incoming!

Jarn stops playing with Alcander, then takes over for me as the men part ways, and a [Haste]-boosted Jacques clashes against Yunia. He immediately goes hard on her, displaying a high level of skill with weapons, and the crude [Shocking Touch] enchantment in his weapon is enough to keep her [Soul Blade] at bay.

Focus target: Jacques. BRING HIM DOWN!

"Understood!"

I fly to Montague as he's starting to escape his bindings, and repeatedly slam all of my hammers against the back of his head until he surrenders. Then I stop behind Yunia and receive another explosive arrow to the head from Léonne, and this time, I have to [Heal] myself to recover from the ringing.

This. Bitch. Needs. To. Go!

"Hold him back for me!" Yunia exclaims in my mind.

"Wolf, tentacles!" Alissa requests.

I let my tentacles loose on Jacques and allow Alissa to control them so that she can fire a volley of explosive arrows at him in between the openings while spamming all of the Illusion and Nocturna's magic that she knows, but even that isn't enough to stop the red beast in plate armor before us.

Prepare the Shocking Surprise Combo!

Yunia stops fighting against him and steps back, then begins gathering as much Life as she can within herself. Jacques obviously notices that there's something wrong, so he immediately goes on the offensive, but Lina and Ciel block his path.

The massive man is a veritable tank as he takes dozens of [Tremor] attacks and even Ciel's [Judgment]-infused attacks all over his body, and he still doesn't even slow down. His skill is so high that Ciel struggles to fight him and takes many hits to the head, but she won't go down as she can [Heal] herself. Lina helps too, but the experienced Lord is avoiding getting close to the little dwarf girl to not get hit by a [Spirit of Gaia]-boosted massive strike.

"Gih!" Gify warns us, and the men release a rain of explosive arrows upon us as they have climbed up onto vantage points, allowing them to fire over their allies.

I grit my teeth in anger as I immediately summon three more wind-Alissas to keep the arrows away from us, and the summons further limit my already limited MP pool, but we won't let them take control of the flow of battle!

I also have Alissa shoot an arrow at Klein, just to fuck with her.

Then I realize that Jacques is stalling. He's just like me in my dragon form: a tank that absorbs hits to drain our energy and allow the men to overwhelm us. We have to get past him; we have to trap him in place, now!

"Gih!" Gify warns us again. Aisco's ball of flaming rock is starting to shift into a cylindrical shape, but we won't let it complete its transformation.

"[EXPLOSION]!" Roxanne shouts and destroys half of the cylinder. It immediately begins to reform, but Roxanne will destroy it again in a couple of seconds. We don't know if it's just a distraction or not, but we can't afford to risk it against someone as high-leveled as him.

I take a second to admire how Léonne has managed to effectively tie all of our resources down, but we still have some cards up our sleeves!

I quickly move Hana's points around, then Yunia finishes gathering Life, and we promptly begin the Shocking Surprise Combo!

"Combo!" Yunia shouts as she releases her powered-up [Chain Soul] upon Jacques' arms.

He takes a step back and starts to fight against it, but he doesn't see Hana coming at him from behind now that she's using [Hide Presence].

"Combo!" She shouts internally as she gives him a bear hug, then laughs out loud as she unleashes [Shocking Touch] on his head.

"UOOO!" He roars in pain and tries to tear her off of himself, but he's in such a disadvantaged position that he can't use his full 23 "Strength" against her. Palo tries to help him, but all Hana needs to do is use [Draconic Body] while keeping up [Shocking Touch] and refilling her MP with [Redirect Mana], and there's nothing either of them can do to take her down.

With all of the more dangerous melee fighters tied up, I simply fly past them and towards Léonne.

Chaarge!

I see her eyes smirk at me from under her helmet, and she lands another arrow on my forehead right before a thick and tall wall of flame blocks my way, but I didn't come alone. Aoi takes the lead while I stop to [Heal], and with Roxanne's help, they both spam Water spells at the [Fire Wall] as fast as they can, opening a hole wide enough for a dragon.

Aisco's ball of flaming rock is now free to do what it was supposed to, but it's already too late as Aoi emerges from the cloud of steam right in front of the little elf. In a desperate attempt to save his comrade, Alcander's huge ball of lead slams against Aoi's armored back, pressing her against the floor and stopping her charge, but he pays for it by receiving the two balls of steel from the golems right in the gut, sending him flying through the air like a ragdoll.

Good hit, golems!

"Thank you, Master. Switching to rear defense," the dolls calmly report.

Aisco's [Fire Spirit] launches a barrage of spells at Aoi, who has to use all of her control over water to snuff them out. Seeing that death is staring him right in the face, Aisco promptly casts [Heart of Fire] and shifts into a ball of flame to retreat.

"You've activated my trap card!" Roxanne steals my meme as she casts [Drown] on Aisco, partially extinguishing him with a bubble of water, and he immediately returns to his human form in mid-air, flying away like a ragdoll just like his fellow High Officer.

The archers are switching to melee to reinforce the dwindling numbers of melee warriors, but the path ahead is now clear, so I charge at Léonne, and I see that her eyes are still smirking as she draws her hammer to meet mine.

"Ready to surrender?!" I shout excitedly as I attack with all of my hammers. She masterfully dodges all but two, which slam into her right flank, but she barely flinches from the pain.

Her smirking eyes continue to stare at me as she takes a step back, then activates an enchantment, and vines burst out of the ground, which promptly grab the tentacles coming out of my back. This is actually kind of annoying since it'll take me some time to reform all of them. She's not as skilled in melee combat as Jacques, but I need those tentacles if I want to overwhelm her in a timely manner.

"You still haven't dealt with my husband," she calmly replies and quickly fires an explosive arrow at my face.

"Are you sure about that?" I reply through gritted teeth as I [Heal] myself.

With the air full of steam, the first condition for Aoi's special attack has been fulfilled, and I see Léonne's posture stiffen as she notices the air becoming full of "power," her hairs and fur likely standing on end.

There's no need to be conservative with MP since we can all just use [Redirect Mana] to refill our mana pools any time we need to, so Aoi releases over one thousand particles of mana into the air, and the fighting slows down as everyone notices that something is happening.

Mission: Protect Aoi!

They all charge towards her, but our MP is effectively our max MP pool multiplied by a (still untested) number of times thanks to [Redirect Mana], so we can spam Wall spells around her all day long!

"None shall pass!" Roxanne steals my meme again, and I regret linking my mind with hers.

Their paths are blocked by a chaotic mess of Wall spells, making it so hazardous that they hesitate for a moment, but it's only a matter of time before they attempt to swarm it.

Then a cloud of [Mesmerizing Butterflies] surrounds Aoi, and confusion spreads through our opponents. There goes all of Alissa's MP in just a couple of seconds, but that's all the time we needed.

Léonne turns her head as she notices Aoi's chant, "Chaos! Listen to me, Chaos! Give me your power! Show me your greatness! Align with my will and descend upon us! Let your [Lightning Strike] the earth!"

Even my hairs stand on end as I sense the air getting saturated with power, and Hana jumps away from Jacques just in time to avoid the blinding and deafening lightning.

I feel for the werefoxes as Ciel immediately [Heal]s Alissa's ears, but Léonne doesn't have that luxury and actually flinches in pain. Then the battlefield goes silent as everyone waits for their eyes to recover before inspecting the damage.

Palo falls flat onto the floor, completely passed out, but Jacques remains conscious, though he's barely holding on as he collapses to one knee. His armor is glowing with heat, and his chest heaves as he struggles to breathe, but it's obvious that he's too weak to continue fighting.

He drops his hammer and raises one hand as he hoarsely shouts, "I surrender!"

Then Allura lights up a very bright red crystal, which tells everyone that the exercise is over.

I turn to Léonne and smirk as I watch her amusement turn to surprise, then I land a hand on her shoulder and [Heal] her.

"What a pity. I really wanted to beat you up for those arrows you shot at me," I cheekily remark.

She takes off her helmet and flashes me an enticing look. "I'm afraid my husband would be jealous if you did that, so I must refuse."

Godsdamn, this woman. If she wasn't married, I'm sure I'd be balls deep in her right now.

A note from Manasong

Hall of Fame of Patrons

The patrons who support Rupegia shall have their names sung by the bards for they deserve the glory and honor. Their names are:

Prince PreownedFIN.

Prince Owldente.

Lord Andrew Meyers.

Lord Novgarod.

Lord Michale Erwin.

Lord Bakerdea.

Lord Maurice.

Lord Mattirro Draca.

Lord Sean Drake.

Lord Mike Bartter.

Lord Warwulfv.

Lord Khristopher Welsh.

Lord Tenebris Lupus.

Lord Paul Daval.

Lord Paul Daval.

Lord AndreyUC.

Lord Tmac.

Lord School Work.

Lord CopeyDunt.

Lord BlindTactic.

Lord litalmexy.

Lord Philip.

Lord d3235.

Lord William Clark.

Lord Ddraig Wynn.

Lord CardinalSteiner.

Lord Cidant.

Lord SubJef.

Noble Salty Panda.

Noble Mild Fracas.

Noble Aclys.

Noble Carl  Baxter.

Noble Tony Starrk.

Noble GalacticTNT.

Leave a rating or a review to help me rise to the top or fix my shameful understanding of prose.

Take a look over my blog where all information about the world of Rupegia will be posted.

Join the Discord and discuss, or rant, or meme, or try and fight me so your waifu gets more screentime.

Become a Patron and read chapters in advance, or read the side-stories, or leave your mark on the story, or help choose the next artwork or the next side-story.

Chapter 144: Joint Exercise - Part 3

A note from Manasong

Attention: to conform to the limit of mature content (more than just sexual content) allowed in a novel, I've censored this chapter. You can look for the uncensored version here.

After everyone is healed and our headaches are dealt with, we gather again at the round table. Officers and Lords sit while the knights remain standing behind us.

We tiredly sit down in our large and comfortable chairs, then I sigh softly. It's really stressful to give 110% during battle. Even though we won't run out of MP too easily, we pay for that with our mental stamina.

"May I help you relax, Master?" Jarn obediently requests, and I just nod while blinking blankly, curious about what she's going to do.

She [Equip]s her multiple arms and warms them with [Manipulate Metal], then they promptly attack all of my weak spots with a surprisingly nice massage. Her metal hands are padded with gloves, making them rather soft, and she seems to know exactly where to press on my horns and tail to give me pleasure.

"We've observed every massage you've given or received, Master," Jarn explains.

"We also know every arousing zone of your bodies, Masters," Ted adds as she "looks" at each of us with her beady eyes, and Ciel raises her eyebrows at the little bear in her chest.

"That sounds wonderful. Why do you even bother with other women when you have them?" Léonne immediately questions.

While Ciel and Lina blush, Yunia categorically replies, "They lack creativity. They know how to give extreme bliss, but they don't know how to keep it interesting, so eventually, it becomes boring, like eating the same meal every day."

"That's why we prefer Wolfy's Dragon," Hana casually remarks with her eyes closed in delight. She's also receiving a massage, but from Suzy and through little steel balls that roll along her tense muscles. She's the one who did the most physical exertion, so she also deserves a nice massage.

"I understand. Toys are never as good as the real thing," Léonne agrees with a nod, then sips her tea.

Ofilia continues serving tea in silence, doing her best to ignore the conversation, and she avoids looking me in the eye as she pours it into my cup, but I notice a faint blush appearing on her jade-like expression. Jacques and Allura aren't exactly comfortable with the topic at hand either, so we drop it, but I give Allura a seductive glance just to tease her.

After we've all unwound and eaten a little, Léonne begins the after-action report, "So, what did we learn from this exercise?"

The men hesitate to answer as they carefully think over their words, but then Allura playfully speaks out loud, "That Lords are scary?"

The tense air lightens up a bit, and Nohopu cheekily follows up, "Shall we vote on this? All in agreement with this assessment, speak out loud."

"Yes…" Everyone hums in unison, with Silvano begrudgingly following along.

The squirrel-headed man nods in acceptance. "Then it's agreed; our Lords are scary."

"The golems are also scary," Alcander quietly adds, his expression still calm and dignified, and I chuckle softly.

But Léonne immediately puts us back on track, "While the Ryders seem to be able to fight against endless numbers, it appears that they have difficulty interrupting the spells of High Mages."

Life returns to Aisco's eyes for a moment as he quietly chimes in, "Yes, that is the weakness that I've identified. Area spells cast directly on them don't work, but keep the spell a few meters above them, and they lack the 'Magic Power' to interrupt it even if they combine their wills."

"We can just fly towards spells and interrupt them as long as the sky is safe," Roxanne points out.

Roxanne's Reminder: interrupting spells becomes easier the closer one is to the spell.

But Léonne cautions us, "Be wary of traps. If I were your enemy, I would certainly try to assassinate one of you the moment you flew up to interrupt a spell. Low altitude targets are extremely easy to hit."

And I admit, "True. Our own assassination tools are easier to use if the target is flying in the open."

"After our allies arrive, if they don't have enough High Mages, we should bring more of our own to compensate," Jacques affirms to his wife, who nods in agreement.

"It's a shame we don't have more High Court Mages. We have the resources to hire them, but there simply aren't enough with the talent to become one," Yunia wistfully remarks.

Not just High Mages, we also have room to hire a lot more knights. After Yunia's father was deposed, a good number of their men retired or were scouted by the other Lords, so it'll take time for us to grow our numbers back to the max we can support.

Léonne gracefully nods and gives everyone a look as she continues, "Any other insights?"

"Skill levels are meaningless when they can just use spells faster than you can think," Montague states, and Alissa detects a hint of bitterness in his voice, likely due to how fast he was taken down by our combined attack. After his long duel with Palo, it must've been quite shocking to be absolutely helpless before us.

And Silvano promptly adds, his tone obviously bitter, and not without reason, "I've been in a wide variety of small-scale battles, and I believe Their Highnessesse-… erm, are invincible against anything weaker than a higher Lord."

But Yunia gently replies, "We had to commit hard to take you down, so people of your level still present a danger to us if we can't deal with them quickly."

And his gorgeous face twitches as he tries very hard to not smile smugly. His pride has been left wounded after these two exercises, so a bit of ego-stroking won't hurt.

Silvano's presence still annoys the dragon within me due to confused masts, but I've become more sympathetic about him after hiring the bigger weirdo that is Aisco, so I kindly add, "Out of everyone in the exercise, you were the second hardest to take down, and Yunia is the only one of us who can do it without using our other, more limited tools."

And it actually amuses me to see him glance smugly at Alcander, the two trying not to smirk, pout, or banter at each other since we're in the presence of important people.

"Though your coordinated attack is powerful, we can expect Katasko to have prepared something to counter your instant-cast, low-level spells," Léonne wisely cautions us again.

I nod in agreement and follow up, "Then I think we need to focus on making more of our 'toys' that can deal with Lord-level opponents."

After the meeting, the men return to their training, now with the Lordsguard joining in, while the girls and I rest on our balcony. Using so much MP so quickly and then refilling it repeatedly was a bit stressful.

I want boooobs, so I turn into my lap-dragon form and stick my face in between Hana's elastic balloons. The faint smell of sweat mixed with her sensuous perfume feels quite therapeutic for me.

She has already recovered her physical stamina, and she uses her big, strong hands to play with my little horns. Poosh is the one with the best [Massage] due to hand's-on experience, but Hana comes in at a close second simply due to the strength she can apply to my hard horns.

I just open my little arms wide and sink my claws into her jelly-like goodness, then I knead them like a cat. She's my living stress ball that I also plow, and we're both suffering from post-battle excitement, so I think things will escalate real soon.

"I believe that we can still improve our Gestalt further if we meld our minds," Yunia suddenly remarks soberly.

I lift my head from the boobs for a second to reply, "That's dangerous."

"We've already managed to perfectly sync our minds a few times already. We just need to find a way to reach that same state through training," Alissa clarifies for me.

And Yunia sends the sl-tty fox a raised eyebrow. "I imagined you would jump at the opportunity to meld your mind with Wolfy's."

"I don't want to become him," Alissa replies, her ears flat from awkwardness.

Our coordination is great, perfect even, but the real point of the Gestalt is to go further than that, and we haven't actually progressed that much in that area.

I raise my head from heaven again to add, "Increased connectedness seems to be taking us down the right path, tho, even if it results in the crime of meme theft."

The thieving succubus grins slyly and readjusts her thieving glasses on her little thieving nose as she thievingly replies, "I just can't help it. I know you try to keep these thoughts contained, but it just feels too good to say them to hold back, so they keep escaping my mouth."

I turn around and press my head back against the booba as I soberly retort, "Identity theft is not a joke, Roxanne. Millions of families suffer every year. Those memes are mine, and you aren't allowed to misuse them."

She wants to slap back, but Alissa gives her a glare, and her spiral horns glint with a sudden sharpness as she pouts. "I'll try to control myself, then."

The pillows call to me, so I turn back around and pull down the straps of Hana's dress. Her pointy bits have become quite sensitive since we all love playing with them, so she voices softly as my tongue rubs their tips.

"I'd prefer that we continue our training for a while longer before attempting to perform a forceful and dangerous mind-meld," Ciel states as she glances at me, totally not jealous of Hana.

"It's been a while since we've had an out-of-control 'syncing' moment," Alissa remarks absentmindedly as she stares at me, her own bits aching for it.

Those were the "accidental" syncing moments, which are a lot more intense than when we deliberately sync our minds.

"Those all happened during bed activities, right?" Roxanne asks out loud with a suggestive grin.

But Alissa wistfully replies, "The ones who haven't experienced it yet are Ciel, Lina, Aoi, and Yunia."

"And the golems," Ciel quietly adds.

"And the golems," I repeat, my voice muffled by the pillow in my draconic mouth.

"I'm not one to say no to intense, mind-melting love, but I think a true Gestalt is more than that," Yunia wryly retorts.

Then something starts to nag at me at the back of my mind. Sense sharing, thought syncing, mind-melding… we're stumbling in the dark, trying to achieve something that we don't even fully comprehend. But I do have an inkling of understanding about what might be going on.

The brains of humanoids in Rupegia have a lot of extra functions when compared to those of Earthlings simply due to the fact that magic exists. Sub-processes, elemental spirits, control of extra limbs, our telepathic communication, the insanely fast learning of skills, anything related to "seeing" spells and the inside of souls, and many other functions simply wouldn't be possible back on Earth without magic.

And if it's related to magic, then it can be controlled in more "abstract" ways. Magic is the opposite of technology as it isn't "precise." It works on intuition and reflexes rather than the perfect mathematical and logical calculations of programming languages. The skill system "game-ifies," or rather, "standardizes" magic in a way that makes it extremely easy to use, but any mage worth their salt knows how to push past the system's limitations and do basically anything they want.

Our approaches to [Golemancy], [Bind], and our Gestalt have been tainted by my Earthling mentality due to the many dangers of studying unknown magic, and not even Roxanne wants to experiment with something that isn't in her area of expertise. But in the end, each time that I attempt to push my research further, it just reinforces the need for me to learn the deeper theories of magic.

We're trying to connect our minds in ways that can't just be explained through traditional Earthling science, or at least the science that I know isn't evolved enough to explain it. [Bind] is just too simple of a connection for us to consistently achieve what we want to do, so we need something better, a more comprehensive spell that gives us more tools to work with.

The infusion of the "consumption" abstract concept into [Fire Magic] spells allows a mage to burn through matter many times faster than usual. The infusion of an "explosive" abstract concept into [Fireball] is basically the most popular use of an abstract concept in the entire world since it greatly improves the spell's firepower. Even Roxanne's [Explosion] is mostly just an abstract concept where she uses her emotions to fuel the spell.

These "concepts" are like open-ended tools that allow mages to do anything they can imagine as long as it's related to the concept, so we need to infuse a type of "connection" abstract concept into [Bind] to achieve a true Gestalt.

But this means that the list of things we need to research has gained another entry.

I've been delegating different research projects to promising people, so who can I throw this project to?

Sainalai has been researching Jarvis and how the spirit Chimeras can share a physical battle body with a golem, so maybe she has some insights into how two spirits can talk to each other in more meaningful ways. Having a Celestial Horn use [Bind] on a golem-possessed suit of armor would certainly aid them in fighting as one.

I could give her this project while I try to get into her little halfling-loli pants. But still, delegating this task won't reduce the need for me to learn magical theory since there are other pursuits that would benefit from me having that knowledge, like [Golemancy] and the baby golem army project.

"That's one damn long introspection, Wolfy," Hana complains, starting to get uncomfortably excited.

I switch bits and grin internally at her. "You know that I love nothing more than doing it while theorizing," I explain through [Bind].

But she immediately retorts, "I'm going to need your full attention for the kind of plowing that I'm craving for."

I stop and ask, "You want to try to attempt a 'syncing'?"

She stares intensely at me with her yellow lizard eyes as she whispers with a steamy tone, "I need you to bend me in half and jam your huge draconic things inside all, then smack and pump all day long until I forget the pain of dozens of [Tremors] all over my body."

I immediately give an order to the golems, who pull out a gag and belts from their [Item Box]es with a *poof*. "Alright, bend over."

I look down from the balcony, and my eyes meet with Hukarere's as she sniffs the air, so I grin at her as I reach the summit, and a few seconds later, my white wolf grins back as she recognizes the smell of my magic. Then I make eye contact with the other Companions, who become distracted and frustrated as they realize that I'm doing someone right in their view while they're still on duty. Though, Hana's hair occasionally peeking above the railing of the balcony should give them a good idea of who I'm doing right now.

I bind Hana and abuse her body, but then I try something different and neglect her while I play with Roxanne. The dragonkin's frustration rises to such a high level about 70% of her body gets covered in scales, and I even see what look like the stubs of horns and a tail growing at a very slow pace, but she's struggling so hard against her bindings that I fear that they'll break, so I leave a gift inside Roxanne and press Hana against the table again.

"Fine, you wh-re. I'll give you what you want," I angrily growl at her, and she almost cries tears of joy.

I sit down in my chair and breathe in deeply as I savor the female smell in the air. Sadly, things are a bit too quiet as everyone is exhausted, so I drink my tea in silence and lovingly observe their sweaty bodies as they recover from multiple successive climbs to summit.

Hana and I feel refreshed, though, but my favorite redhead also needs some rest before she can talk… or sit, or walk, or even just stand.

"Gih," Gify chirps as she pops back into existence on the table.

"Thank you, Gify. Also, I'm happy that you're getting more involved in battles," I softly reply.

She folds her chibi wings anxiously, but then nods in appreciation. She's still a bit cowardly, but she's getting better.

Then she warps her little beak into a pout as she reads my mind, but I just smile and start petting her back, so she gives up and begins eating her food like a damn Kirby.

A note from Manasong

Hall of Fame of Patrons

The patrons who support Rupegia shall have their names sung by the bards for they deserve the glory and honor. Their names are:

Prince PreownedFIN.

Prince Owldente.

Lord Andrew Meyers.

Lord Novgarod.

Lord Michale Erwin.

Lord Bakerdea.

Lord Maurice.

Lord Mattirro Draca.

Lord Sean Drake.

Lord Mike Bartter.

Lord Warwulfv.

Lord Khristopher Welsh.

Lord Tenebris Lupus.

Lord Paul Daval.

Lord Paul Daval.

Lord AndreyUC.

Lord Tmac.

Lord School Work.

Lord CopeyDunt.

Lord BlindTactic.

Lord litalmexy.

Lord Philip.

Lord d3235.

Lord William Clark.

Lord Ddraig Wynn.

Lord CardinalSteiner.

Lord Cidant.

Lord SubJef.

Noble Salty Panda.

Noble Mild Fracas.

Noble Aclys.

Noble Carl  Baxter.

Noble Tony Starrk.

Noble GalacticTNT.

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Chapter 145: Royalty - Part 1

A note from Manasong

Attention: to conform to the limit of mature content (more than just sexual content) allowed in a novel, I've censored this chapter. You can look for the uncensored version here.

We rejoin the men in their training and spar with them. After the exercises that revealed the extent of our power, even the werefoxes show us renewed respect when talking to us. Only Yunia is actually comfortable with their attitude, but the rest of us still try to remain casual.

The same can't be said for our adventurer groupies, who seem to have become even more excited about being around us.

"How hard do you have to hold back to not just trample over me?" Lolo amusedly asks as she parries my wooden sword.

We have a few more exchanges as I think, and I notice that I have difficulty fighting against her one-on-one using only melee skills, which means that her skills are more or less the same level as mine, which is pretty good for her, actually.

So I give her a sober reply, "I wouldn't say I'm 'holding back.' This is training, and it makes no sense to just unleash all of my spells at my opponent every time we spar."

Thunder thighs smiles softly as she whips back with a stunningly fast riposte, almost catching me off-guard. It's pretty obvious that she's "Speed"-focused, but I'm not used to sparring against people like her since most of my opponents have been "Strength" and "Endurance" focused, which are what armies favor.

"Fine, I get that you want to be kind to me, but how easy do you think it would be to kill me?" She rephrases.

"Why do you ask such grim questions?" I cheekily deflect.

And she narrows her eyes. "Are you always this protective of your women?"

But my grin only becomes wider. "So, you consider yourself to be 'my woman'?"

She pouts, then suddenly lunges with blinding speed as she uses [Muscle Explosion], her sword aiming to poke my chest. I feel like just letting her hit me, but the dragon wrestles control over my body and diverts her blade with my free hand, then he makes me use [Rush] to grip her sword tight, my sharp claws digging deep grooves into the wood.

She tries to pull it free, but I have the leverage advantage here, so she releases her weapon as she jumps back to gain some distance from the rapidly approaching tip of my sword.

"You can do whatever you want with me, so I'm yours," she soberly confesses. Ciel looks around, but she doesn't find Nik-boy nearby, so I guess it's safe to assume that he didn't hear that.

I cast [Grow] on her sword and fix the grooves, then I throw it to her, and she snatches it from the air. "After the 14th, you can leave at any time, but you'll always retain ownership over yourself, no matter what you choose."

She glances at the Companions watching us, then grips her sword properly again and points it at me, her face still serious and focused on our battle. I wait for her to reply, but she just strikes again, continuing our sparring match.

So I calmly add, "Why did you ask me that question?"

The bunny girl attempts another quick strike, but I deflect it with my free hand again, which seems to annoy her.

"I feel weak, compared to you," she gives me another confession after casually parrying my riposte. Ironically, I'm starting to believe that "Speed"-focused opponents are more annoying than those that are "Dexterity" or "Strength"-focused.

Anyway, her mood seems completely at odds with her other three adventurer comrades, who are having fun competing with Alissa and Hana in archery. I guess Lolo is feeling inadequate, believing herself to be nothing more than a bed doll that can't even be useful or protect the people that she respects so much.

I take a step back from the sparring and reply, "I find this tendency that people have to compare themselves with me or my wives to be very silly, really. God-Rulers don't exist, nobody is invulnerable, and no humanoid rules alone."

She readjusts her tied-up floppy ears to hear better. "God-Rulers?"

"It's what kings used to call themselves before the first emperor."

She knits her brown eyebrows confusedly as she thinks. "So, someone like you would be a God-Ruler before the Empire?"

And I gently shake my head. "No, I'm barely strong enough to be considered the child of one." Then I step forward again and lightly re-engage with her.

She slows down her counterattacks as she reflects on my words, so I slip past her guard and tap her luscious thunder thighs as I grin suggestively at her. She gives me a brief, wry smile as she catches my meaning, but then she quickly returns to being serious again.

"'No humanoid rules alone' is quite the saying," she finally replies.

I shrug. "I didn't come up with it."

"Hm…" She hums thoughtfully and goes for another quick strike that I parry, but then she quickly follows up with a spin of her wrist that's so fast that her sword bats mine away, opening me up for a stab.

I use [Muscle Explosion] along with my thick tail to lunge forward, then I grab both of her arms as she stabs my chest and pull her into a bear hug. In this position, my chin ends up right against her bra, and though she doesn't have enough of a valley for me to sink into, I still enjoy this situation as she looks down at me in surprise.

I unleash my [Spicy Charm] at her and stare intensely into her eyes as I whisper huskily, "To answer your previous question, I could kill you in the blink of an eye, but a Companion will never face a Lord unless it's to save us from certain death. The Companions will follow the Ryders into every battle, but we also expect them to always return with us."

She doesn't immediately reply, so I kiss her exposed chest, causing a visible chill to run up her spine, then I release her and start walking out of the sparring arena.

"I-I didn't mean it like that…" She hesitantly replies, then blushes as she notices the teasing stares of the observers.

After Yunia and I wash each other, we enter the bath together, then we sink into the water, and she rests her head against my chest. I promptly delight myself in playing with her elastic ears as Alissa is too busy being played with by Edjo while Laguly watches with eager eyes, too shy to barge in on their fun, but Hana and Roxanne will make a move on the young Siren girl as soon as they've finished washing.

The Companions are here too, but they're mostly talking amongst themselves right now, still excited about their recent skill ups, and that allows the wives and I to have a small moment to ourselves.

"What are we going to do after we return home?" My elven Queen whispers wistfully and starts stroking me underwater.

"Laze about for a few days? Do each other a lot more than we already do?" I wryly reply and fondle her perky pillows a few times, making her mildly excited. Then I return to playing with her ears.

And she absentmindedly replies, "Resting for a few days might actually be a good idea. I'm starting to get tired of all of this… imperial unpleasantness."

"Just starting?" Ciel questions in disbelief while patting Lina's head, who's currently motorboating her just like how I love to.

I snort and point out, "Our Subordinate Lords back home aren't any better than the imperials."

"They certainly aren't plotting to have us killed… at least not in a timely manner," Yunia retorts with a rather bitter smile.

I hug her with my arms and tail and kiss the top of her head, both of which she finds to be very comforting. Then I decide to move the topic onto greener pastures, "Well… I'm looking forward to having enough time to study magic and develop our Institute."

"The reports coming from Escanso make me excited about the future of the Health Ministry," Ciel happily chimes in.

"I feel like the idea resonates with me, so I think I should help," Yunia thoughtfully adds.

And Ciel nods excitedly. "Yes, that'd be great!"

The Queen smiles softly and looks down at my Tool under the water as her gentle and dexterous fingers intensify the way they work.

"Maybe we should talk about something that isn't related to work?" I wryly ask and coo softly.

Romy takes her hungry eyes off of Hana and interjects, "It's hard to imagine you guys talking about something that isn't work or bed."

"Or battle, I guess…" Hukarere adds with a shrug.

"I talk about books," Lina quietly retorts.

And so, they engage in a conversation about their favorite stories, but Yunia remains awfully quiet and pensive.

"The prostitute is right," Yunia whispers bitterly and sighs. "All I can think about is work…"

So I list off a few ideas that come to mind, "Grow a garden like Gify, read books like Lina, go partying like Roxanne, socialize with others like Ciel, pursue a crafting hobby like Aoi. There are a lot of activities that could help you de-stress."

But she casually replies, "I don't feel particularly stressed. Your Tool is the perfect tool to help a hungry woman like me to relax."

"Sl-t!" Roxanne shouts at my elf teasingly, then voices loudly as Laguly's tongue hits just the right spot.

"You could start a 'hungry hobby,' then. Alissa's is to watch or help me seduce other women," I wryly suggest, grinning at the silliness of this idea.

But she increases the pace as she reflects seriously. "Hm… I do enjoy 'roleplaying' and 'fantasizing.'"

Recursion!

I swallow heavily as it builds up, then she adds after a moment of thought, "But maybe a garden of Eia plants wouldn't be a bad idea… we could evenlay with them, and that has a tendency to attract dryads."

Oh, hell yes…!

I suddenly feel it coming, so I stand up and grab her chin. She promptly opens up and pushes out her little red tongue.

Having our own garden where the dryads can come and also come would be wonderful…!

I sink into the water again and watch as Yunia and Aneta, the silver elf Companion, begin the Ryder tradition of cleaning each other with their tongues, then sharing the bounty through deep kisses. Playing with it will never get old because of the significance of marking a woman with it, so this view greatly pleases both beings within me.

But my musings are interrupted by Khepri, who approaches me with a grin. The bubbly woman has a very alluring body, and I still haven't had my (real) Tool inside her yet, so I immediately throw my [Spicy Charm] at her, and I see a hint of fear flash through her eyes, but it's quickly replaced by steamy desire.

"Lord Wolfy… can you do me again like you did yesterday?" She coyly asks, her slightly bucked teeth and juicy lips making her look absolutely kissable. "I could still walk, so I think you went easy on me."

I stand up, completely ready for it, then simply float towards her with [Telekinesis] to assert dominance. "So, you want to be done so hard that you'll need a [Heal] to even sit up?"

Then her lips part, and she utters such degeneracy that the dragon in me wakes right up, "Well, your Companions said a lot about you and how this is 'your specialty,' so I don't want to miss the opportunity to have mind-blowing love that I'll only ever get to experience once in my entire life."

I damn love straightforward women.

I turn my eyes to my loyal toys and grin. "Since you girls have been such good, loyal, br--ding sl-ts, I'll give you all a reward. If you want a Ravaging by my tentacles, just stand up."

The Companions all stand up, including Lolo and Klein, and even Ciel, who's getting a bit excited from seeing all of the spiciness all around her, so Lina stands up too with a sigh.

I summon as many tentacles as I can and let them loose. Then I turn to the juicy piece of female meat before me, and she tenses up as my eyes fall on her.

"Bend over at the edge of the pool," I order with a growl.

"Yes, my Lord," she happily replies with a nod, then obeys.

Dinner with the Verners is quite nice. Allura got a bit excited after seeing the dragon in action, and she's still struggling to control herself, so I enjoy her jealous glances as Alissa and I act lovey-dovey. Yunia acts flirty with Léonne, but nothing special comes of it, though it's nice to see the two of them getting along so well.

Khepri wakes up an hour after dinner, but she still can't sit up, so I feed her while she rests on the bed, then I focus on the wives as her companions take care of her.

Yunia's desire has built up enough, so I make her squeal in front of everyone to satisfy her humiliation fantasy. Then I tie her up, and we take turns using her body while playing against each other with the air hockey and football tables. The Queen is pretty good at these two games, so tiring her out before we let her join in helps equalize the skill levels of everyone.

Today is the 12th, Yn, day of Earth. A good day for civil construction, and since a good deal of Mac Gantus is underground, today is the perfect day to expand the city further.

I learned [Hammer Use] with 1 point and increased my [Battlefield Perception] by 1 (now 8+3). Alissa learned [Reduced Mana Cost] with 1 point (now 9+1). Roxanne increased her [Water Magic] by 1 (now 4+36). Hana also learned [Reduced Mana Cost] with 1 point (now 8+1). Ciel increased her [Wind magic] by 1 (now 11+29). Lina increased her [Cursing Magic] by 2 (now 8+12). Aoi increased her "Perception" by 1 (now 12). Yunia increased her [Spirit Magic] by 1 (now 1+25).

Small gains since the battles didn't last long enough for us to use a wide variety of skills, but the most important thing is that today, Aoi has turned three years old.

"Oh, so this is the day I was born…" She remarks quietly in her chipmunk voice.

Commoners don't give much importance to birthdays, so it's mostly Alissa, Yunia, and I who are excited for her, but she understands our love and smiles back at us, which scares our adventurer guests a little bit since it looks like she's growling.

"Wait, she's three years old?" Hukarere asks out loud in disbelief.

"Monsters are born intelligent and grow fast, so she's like the equivalent of a teen or young adult," I tactfully explain.

"Child lover…" She whispers and snorts.

Lina and I glance at each other. "Well, technically yes, but also no."

"Congratulations on growing so much. Just a couple more hundred years before you can rest," Alissa gently congratulates Aoi, and the two smile at each other.

"Heheh. Eating all those brains must've helped me grow so fast," the little blue dragon softly remarks.

"Brains…?" Lolo blurts out, so we explain how Aoi grew so fast, to the horror of everyone.

Our morning goes as usual with our orb-boosted mana circulation training, but we receive a letter telling us that Princesses Sa'Haa and Urmeie are going to visit us along with a hundred and fifty knights each and their support staff, so we need to prepare accordingly to host them. Decien Omari and Centum Mako are also going to come, but the Lords will provide their own lodging for their men.

We, specifically, don't have to do anything since the embassy is mostly autonomous and already has protocols to deal with the visits of Imperial Princes, so we just shrug and continue our training.

I make some baby golems, and I rethink my approach on how to modify their brains. I've been trying to apply Earthling knowledge to this, but a brain is basically a messy and chaotic pool of neurons randomly but also not quite that randomly connected to each other. Trying to do this manually is a huge task, so maybe I could just… I don't know, let the [Golemancy] skill do its thing?

At Rabanara's Magic University, I learned the theory of electricity before I learned [Electric Magic], so understanding the theory of how the brain works is the first step. I also know how spells are structured, though I can't explain in detail the path that a particle of mana takes to create a [Lightning Bolt] or even how to use the "Stats" to calculate how much mana is required to create a certain level of voltage with the spell, so I don't really need to sweat the small stuff.

Also, visualization is something that the professors really stressed, so I guess I need to visualize the kind of golem I want. The problem is that "a golem with amnesia" is a lot more abstract than "a bolt of lightning."

So I just mess with some things at random with [Infuse] and create a few brain-damaged golems, but I wasn't expecting instant progress, so this is fine.

Lunch is delayed for an hour as we wait for our newest guests. The Princesses were already in Mac Gantus; it's just that their men were still traveling from Faium, so the royals waited until their soldiers had arrived before making their extravagant entrance.

Leading the parade are the shiny, plated knights mounted on Rontis with equally shiny but rather light-looking barding. They're carrying two different designs of swallowtail flags with royal imperial heraldry: a white mountain in a blue field, with the Sun Man's sun above, and a black roaring bear in a yellow field, also with the Sun Man's sun above it.

The heraldry of their flags comes from their mothers, the empresses, while the sun symbol means that they're imperial royalty. The swallowtail means that they're a secondary house, which is a rare thing outside of the Imperial Princes and Princesses.

One day, our children might fly flags designed like these, but instead of the Sun Man's sun, it'll be my horns above the main symbol.

Back to the parade, behind the horsemen trotting in sync, comes a dozen horsemen wearing ornate armor, probably the personal bodyguards of the royals, and following them are the open carriages with the Princesses and their two allied Lords.

Sa'Haa is wearing a black feather dress like a perfect Disney villain; Urmeie is wearing jeweled and even more ornate, bulky armor; Decien Omari is wearing a nice black velvet suit, the standard for imperials; and Centum Mako is wearing a simple gray robe, which is as expected of the ascetic man.

And at the end of the column comes six large carriages with servants and other High Officers or High Court Mages.

The open carriage stops right before us, and we begin the pleasantries.

A note from Manasong

Hall of Fame of Patrons

The patrons who support Rupegia shall have their names sung by the bards for they deserve the glory and honor. Their names are:

Prince PreownedFIN.

Prince Owldente.

Lord Andrew Meyers.

Lord Novgarod.

Lord Michale Erwin.

Lord Bakerdea.

Lord Maurice.

Lord Mattirro Draca.

Lord Sean Drake.

Lord Mike Bartter.

Lord Warwulfv.

Lord Khristopher Welsh.

Lord Tenebris Lupus.

Lord Paul Daval.

Lord Paul Daval.

Lord AndreyUC.

Lord Tmac.

Lord School Work.

Lord CopeyDunt.

Lord BlindTactic.

Lord litalmexy.

Lord Philip.

Lord d3235.

Lord William Clark.

Lord Ddraig Wynn.

Lord CardinalSteiner.

Lord Cidant.

Lord SubJef.

Noble Salty Panda.

Noble Mild Fracas.

Noble Aclys.

Noble Carl  Baxter.

Noble Tony Starrk.

Noble GalacticTNT.

Leave a rating or a review to help me rise to the top or fix my shameful understanding of prose.

Take a look over my blog where all information about the world of Rupegia will be posted.

Join the Discord and discuss, or rant, or meme, or try and fight me so your waifu gets more screentime.

Become a Patron and read chapters in advance, or read the side-stories, or leave your mark on the story, or help choose the next artwork or the next side-story.

Chapter 145: Royalty - Part 2

A note from Manasong

Attention: to conform to the limit of mature content (more than just sexual content) allowed in a novel, I've censored this chapter. You can look for the uncensored version here.

First impressions:

Soul Info

Name | Omari Fouad | Race | Human | Level | 61
HP | 100 | MP | 2,100 | Magic Power | 810
Strength | 18 | Endurance | 17

Omari is a cool dude. A standard, brown-haired, handsome man with a respectable stubble. He's polite and looks quite reliable, but he actually seems "boring" compared to the exotic ensemble before us.

Soul Info

Name | Mako Shizuke | Race | Dragonkin | Level | 82
HP | 100 | MP | 3,470 | Magic Power | 1,735
Strength | 20 | Endurance | 20

Mako is a stuck-up, stoic dragonkin. Red hair, black scales, and a pale face make for a weird mix of colors, though his face being handsome compensates for that. His extremely cold attitude and insistence on tingeing his voice with [Godly Language] is rather off-putting, so I don't really have a good first-impression of him.

Soul Info

Name | Sa'Haa Doxa | Race | Owl-type Wereanimal | Level | 68
HP | 100 | MP | 10,230 | Magic Power | 5,110
Strength | 10 | Endurance | 11

Sa'Haa is a super alluring Cruella, and I'd love to do her until that resting female dog face turns into an ahegao. She's very spindly like most wereowls and as tall as Aoi, making her look like a supermodel, but her villainous look reduces her alluringness a bit in exchange for a more exotic air. Roxanne still ranks higher on the supermodel scale simply because of how much more of a traditional beauty she is.

"Gods, Wolfy. Now's not the time to make me excited!" Roxanne gleefully complains in my mind space.

Soul Info

Name | Urmeie Doxa | Race | Bear Beastfolk | Level | 102
HP | 100 | MP | 4,210 | Magic Power | 1,270
Strength | 25 | Endurance | 34

And Urmeie is an absolute dommy mommy… Like, holy shit, this bear girl is big. She's hiding some top, bottoms, and thighs under that armor; her fur looks so soft and shiny; her long snout full of sharp teeth could fit my Sword so nicely; her slick, swept back hair is so cool; and… she's almost making me drool.

Gods almighty, I want to do that bear…

She actually has her personal Space mage store her armor directly from her body, and under it, she's wearing a tight white velvet uniform with eye-catching cleavage. I just want to bury my head in that massive, furry chest while she soothes me with her low, mommy bear voice.

But the problem is that her personality is definitely not motherly.

"Juramen's curse, you're small!" She exclaims and laughs out loud as she looks down at me, and her chest bounces up and down alluringly. They sure do look like they'd be a burden in battle.

"I'm a weredragon, so I can assume a bigger form whenever I want," I proudly reply as I narrow my eyes at her. I can handle this, so even though the girls don't like anyone but them calling me "small," I don't let them interject.

"You can get big, but only for a limited time. Talk to me again when you can live like that, Lord Squirt," Mama Bear unhesitatingly shoots back with a smirk.

Now that catches us all by surprise. The audacity of this bear is unbelievable, though the nickname does resonate with the girls.

And we hesitate to reply, so Sa'Haa sternly interjects, "Sister, you're both royals, and father gave me the authority to ensure that you act as expected of your station."

Urmeie just laughs at her, her chuckles sounding like low, reverberating growls, and the spindly Princess only gets more irritated.

"Squirt is a cute nickname. It's what comes out from between my legs, and I know this little dragon would love to taste it," mommy bear casually replies and nods at me.

Now the girls are also getting irritated by the way she's talking to me, but the human in me is feeling a bit endeared.

"Either bend over and let him do you already, or stop punishing our ears with your insufferable crassness," Sa'Haa venomously spits back. We're all quick to recognize banter, so the girls hold their tongues and let the two sisters fight.

Urmeie turns to face her and pouts. "That wasn't very polite of you," she replies with a fake hurt tone.

"I see no family is spared from sibling bickering," Léonne dryly remarks, making Urmeie laugh again.

"Hey, I love my sister," Alissa immediately retorts, and Allura actually blushes a bit.

"You love her a bit too much," Jacques quietly adds with a sigh, and the two little fox sisters grin at each other.

Urmeie turns back to us and smirks. "Don't mind her. Sa'Haa is always constipated, but we work well together."

"Unfortunately, we work well together," Not-Cruella corrects, then she shakes her head with a sigh and recomposes herself, not wanting to look even more inelegant in front of the dignified Yunia. "Please, ignore my sister's lack of manners. She abstains from politics and has an aversion to courtesy."

And the bear woman now has something actually important to say, so she assumes a more serious tone as she boldly adds, "I'm from Bestiaram, and I refuse to adopt your delicate and convoluted Avgin rituals. I'm only here for myself and my men."

We silently glance at Sa'Haa and the other two nobles, and they flash us wry but also slightly bitter smiles. I still remember that they want us to keep Urmeie under control, somehow, though I have a hunch that just my friend alone won't be able to make her submit. Even the Verners seem to understand our role here and don't butt in, though we know that mommy Léo is itching for an opportunity to lambaste the Princesses.

But I don't feel like playing games with this big furry bitch, so put on a serious mask and sternly reply, "Fine, then we'll show no patience for beastfolk savagery."

Yunia immediately follows up, her tone even drier than mine, "Our servants are well-trained and deserving of respect, and they won't be forced to attend those who forget that."

The bear really doesn't care as she lightens up and laughs loudly once again. "I know better than to harass the people who make my food."

This bitch is really a handful…

Instead of one-upping the ursine barbarian with her own dragonkin barbarism, Hana decides to take a more scholarly approach as she needs more information about her enemy before she engages in verbal combat.

"What 'customs' do the beastfolk even have? Do we beat you up every time you mess up?" She curiously asks, but she allows a little bit of banter to come out.

"What about spanking?" Roxanne follows up, totally not serious or excited about the prospect of seeing the big furry bitch squealing.

But Mama bear gets a bit angry. "That's not how we fucking act. Do you mustchs think beastfolk are damn orcs?" She growls and sighs tiredly.

The average commoner would definitely piss their pants upon getting a whiff of her fearsome high-level aura, but the only thing we feel is a mild discomfort that we immediately realize is exactly like Vanea's piercing gaze.

Then Urmeie quickly calms herself down and properly explains, "It's words. You Avgin care too much about words, but we Bestiare don't buy goblin peckers, so we don't care about getting offended. I'm a damn Princess, so I don't need others to compliment my blade; I've already bathed it in enough blood to know it's sharp."

I don’t know what exactly "don't buy goblin peckers" means, but I think I get what she's saying. Imperials and elves are the worst in regards to having to watch your mouth around them as they can be quite snobbish, but Dragonkin don't care as long as you can take a punch.

"Ah, yes. That explains your behavior," Yunia dryly replies.

I keep the dragon within me chained pretty well since I can't afford to lash out at everything, but Hana doesn't need the same level of self-control, so now's her turn to show her pride in her dragonkin heritage. "You're definitely very brave to come at us like that for our first meeting, but it's also pretty stupid behavior since you'll just get your face punched or stabbed if you continue like that," she harshly declares as her emerald scales on her cheeks quiver in excitement.

Urmeie takes it in stride and smiles fearsomely as she scans Hana's body up and down. "With a body like that, you definitely don't have the same 'Strength' as me, even if you're a dragonkin."

Hana's whole upper body is suddenly covered in steam for a second, then a shadow falls upon my back as she spreads her large, green wings. Her glorious form shimmers in the sunlight, her skin now covered in shiny, perfect, emerald scales. Everyone looks rather impressed, but Mako has the strongest reaction as his jaw becomes slack, and he may have just gotten an "unsheathing," though his robe prevents the confirmation of that.

"Both of you are to stop with these provocations now," Sa'Haa demands, her tone cold and stern, but Urmeie doesn't laugh, so we know it's serious. "If you keep this up, I won't even allow any spars that aren't with wooden shortswords. The honor of royalty won't be tarnished by these childish games, and I mean it for both types of royalty here."

She's actually being quite respectful of us by acknowledging our status and acting to protect our "honor," though I'm not sure what exactly the "honor of royalty" means.

"We may have friendly spars, but we shall never even attempt to humiliate the other," Yunia explains through [Bind], but I'm too much of a peasant to understand it. Trying to guess someone's intentions sounds like a massive pain. "It is," she tiredly adds.

Then I'll be happy if we never get ourselves involved with other royals ever again. But Alissa flashes memories of Gnomeria, and I immediately take back what I just thought. I really hope that we can meet with Princess Belind again.

Yunia takes over and diplomatically replies, "We appreciate your adherence to decorum, Princess Sa'Haa. We're new royals, and our behavior still lacks the elegance expected of us."

Sa'Haa's expression softens, though she looks hotter when she's angry, but she's still damn fine. "I understand you have the respect of the men for your experience in combat and that of the populace due to the Intervention, but your habit of letting your lessers treat you without reverence undermines your authority."

A small amount of irritation passes through Yunia's mind, but she doesn't let it show. "We're very averse to being antagonistic to others due to our overabundance of compassion. It's just not within our hearts to push others away." The Queen loves to be fawned over by our "lessers," so she thinks Sa'Haa's advice is bullshit.

"Being loved by your allies isn't enough; you need to be feared by your enemies," the wereowl Princess continues, but this time, I have to hold myself back to not laugh.

"We've tried to build that image by responding to attacks on us with ruthless precision," Yunia promptly replies. Even though we were very hesitant and calculating in our response to Katasko's aggression, we'll own what we did with pride.

"Yes, Decien Cleinias'… execution was carried out well," Sa'Haa hums thoughtfully, sounding mildly pleased.

And Urmeie waves her large, furred, clawed hand dismissively. "Yeah, yeah, we know you two have to kiss each other with words, but let's just get going, already. I'm hungry, and we still have a lot of strategy to talk about."

The spindly Princess glares at her sister but keeps her tongue from lashing out. "Very well, let's go before she starts growling like an animal."

The moment we enter the dining hall, I get an uncomfortable feeling that something is about to happen, and less than a minute later, Vanea sends word that she's coming.

"What's with elven meat? How do you guys make it smell so good?" Urmeie grumbles as she drops heavily onto her seat.

"The wood we use to roast meat is scented," Yunia casually replies.

And Urmeie's laugh hurts Alissa's ears. "Hah! 'Scented.' That sounds so mustch, but I have to admit that it does make the food taste better."

"Elven meat is the best meat I've tasted," Aoi chimes in, and our guests give her a curious look.

But Urmeie unhesitatingly says what they're all thinking, "Changing topics a bit, I didn't expect the two actual dragons to be so quiet."

I snort and casually explain, "We both technically have a human inside us, so we aren't like the average dragon."

Urmeie looks confused, which is kind of a funny look for a bear. "A 'human' inside you? What does that even mean?"

And Sa'Haa wisely explains, "Wereanimals were created from the fusion of the minds of an animal and a human while beastfolk are simply animals given a humanoid mind and a more human-like body."

"It's almost like we have an actual beast inside our minds that occasionally guides our actions," Alissa adds.

And Aoi transforms into her human form so that she can show more manners while eating. She can eat without making a mess while in her dragon form, but that involves using magic, and it's a faux pas to do that in front of unfamiliar nobility.

"For some, the beast inside them can even take over the body completely if allowed to," Jacques follows up.

And I wryly finish, "Aoi and I are both researchers, and that's… not exactly a popular career for dragons."

Urmeie slaps the table with her huge hand as she starts to guffaw. "Dragon scholars…! Hahahah…! The image in my mind is too funny! Hahahah…!"

Then Sa'Haa puts forward a very level-headed take, "Ancient dragons have large hoards that almost always include books. It isn't implausible that they could learn to read and spend their time perusing their book collection."

And the bear's amusement quickly dies down as she realizes that Sa'Haa's opinion makes sense.

"Yes, I agree. I'm still learning to read, but sometimes, I just feel like spending the day studying the metallurgy books that High Officer Silvano recommended to me," Aoi calmly remarks, and Urmeie looks like she wants to laugh again, but that'd be mean to Aoi, and not even the crass bearfolk wants to hurt our innocent, little blue dragon.

But the light mood is broken as a maid announces the newest arrival.

"Imperial Prince Tommen and Noblewoman Vanea Anara have arrived."

Wait, what…?!

The letter didn't say that a damn Prince would be coming with Vanea.

"WHAT?!" Sa'Haa croaks loudly and stands up.

The door opens, and an older-sister/younger-brother duo walks in hand-in-hand. A rather androgynous dwarven boy with shoulder-length black hair, a baby face, and dark blue eyes; and the yandere sister that will rip out the uterus of anyone who comes close to him.

"Tommen! Why are you with… her?!" Sa'Haa exclaims indignantly, her villainous face warped in alluring fury.

Vanea giggles girlishly while her little brother sighs tiredly. "Saa, she's my friend. Please stop being like this," he timidly whispers and pouts.

And the irate Princess turns her scowl towards Yunia. "She was your 'secret ally'?"

"Yes, but we don't know why you seemingly dislike each other so much," my Queen flatly replies, using [Acting] to hide her smirk, but Léonne and Urmeie openly display their amusement.

Then Vanea interjects, her tone dripping with sweet delight, "Oh, please. Don't pin such negative feelings on me. I'm deeply respectful of the Imperial Royal Family."

Tommen sighs and glances annoyedly at Vanea, who grins cheekily and holds back her playfulness to not enrage Sa'Haa any further. The wereowl Princess in question, though, seethes in silence as her pale skin turns pink in anger, and her stern eyes threaten to stab Vanea in the throat.

What the hell do they have against each other, though?

"I bet it's about Tommen," Alissa guesses through [Bind], and even Ciel seems to agree.

"He's worth fighting for," Yunia adds and wryly glances at me.

The female Ryder council has come to a consensus in record time, and they all agree with the following statement: Tommen is cute. He's boyish and childish while I have a strong and youthful teen air, but our "assets" that allow us to steal the hearts of the mommies, onee-sans, and imoutos can still be considered to be quite similar. Urmeie doesn't seem to be affected by shotas, though.

The dwarf Prince walks forward, pulling Vanea along with him, and goes around the table, towards our side, so we stand up for the greetings.

He stops before us and nods respectfully, so we mirror him, then he extends his little hand for a shake. "I'm Imperial Prince Tommen Doxa. I apologize for the sudden appearance, but I don't want to become officially involved in the Purification, so I'm tagging along with Dame Vanea while hiding my identity."

"Which is a dangerous thing to do since you have neither your knights or bodyguards to keep you safe," the wereowl Princess grumbles, but Tommen just smiles adorably at her, which is a tactic that my girls also use to appease me.

Oh, wait, wasn't he at the party at the Throne? I think he was with Sa'Haa.

"Yes, he was there," Yunia affirms with a suspicious level of confidence.

"I'm Royal Crown Lord Wolf Ryder," I smoothly introduce myself and take his cute little hand. He marvels at my scales for a second, then flashes me an adorable smile.

"I saw you at the gathering, where you… displayed your draconic nature with one of my aunts," he casually remarks, though he seems to be forcing himself to remain nonchalant.

So I really did do Empress Hayakasha's sister, huh? Is she the highest ranking woman I've done?

"The extended family of the royals don't hold significant power," Yunia shoots me down.

I wryly glance at Vanea, who's still acting like a perfect little Princess, then I proudly reply, "Your aunt is a wonderful woman who I'd be delighted to meet again. We both seem to naturally enjoy the presence of each other a great deal."

Then Urmeie laughs loudly and interjects, "If Mother Hayakasha heard you, she'd breathe fire!"

Sa'Haa's eyes twitch, wanting to roll, but Tommen also chuckles softly and explains, "She's like Centum Mako, a beast of discipline."

"He means that discipline fuels my dragonkin might. Without it, I'd be just an average human," Mako stoically adds, his powerful, [Godly Language]-boosted voice sounding annoying to us.

"For me, it's carnal pleasure that fuels my might," Hana follows up with a suggestive grin, but the stoic man clearly doesn't share in her mirth.

And a new rivalry is born, I guess…?

The relationships between everyone here are so "colorful" that Léonne gives me a glance that screams of "these are our allies?" This ensemble is so "unique" that a sane person would be excused in questioning the possible effectiveness of our teamwork, but I believe they're all betting on us and Urmeie keeping the team together during combat regardless of how much we dislike each other.

The greetings continue without another incident, and Tommen shakes hands with everyone while Alissa and I watch his reaction like hawks. I don't notice anything, but she sees his pupils widen when he's faced with Roxanne and human-Aoi, so I guess we've found out what kind of woman he likes.

"I'm eating," Urmeie impatiently announces midway and does as she says.

While Sa'Haa and Vanea share tense pleasantries, I turn my eyes to Allura, who seems a bit overwhelmed by the absurdity of our guests, but she's not the only one who's surprised. It's simply unthinkable that a random noblewoman like Vanea would gain the favor of an Imperial Prince and also the unveiled hatred of another, and even Mako and Omari stare at the two enemies with astonishment on their faces.

However, we're getting used to Vanea's shenanigans, and have reached the "acceptance" stage. But make no mistake, I haven't forgotten that she most likely manipulated Little Alki-Alki to fight against us. It's just that a sensitive topic like that needs to be handled at a more appropriate time.

After a few more words, we finally sit down, and Urmeie is already halfway through her steak.

"We'll speak strategy after we eat," bear mommy declares, so we attempt to socialize until then.

A note from Manasong

Hall of Fame of Patrons

The patrons who support Rupegia shall have their names sung by the bards for they deserve the glory and honor. Their names are:

Prince PreownedFIN.

Prince Owldente.

Lord Andrew Meyers.

Lord Novgarod.

Lord Michale Erwin.

Lord Bakerdea.

Lord Maurice.

Lord Mattirro Draca.

Lord Sean Drake.

Lord Mike Bartter.

Lord Warwulfv.

Lord Khristopher Welsh.

Lord Tenebris Lupus.

Lord Paul Daval.

Lord Paul Daval.

Lord AndreyUC.

Lord Tmac.

Lord School Work.

Lord CopeyDunt.

Lord BlindTactic.

Lord litalmexy.

Lord Philip.

Lord d3235.

Lord William Clark.

Lord Ddraig Wynn.

Lord CardinalSteiner.

Lord Cidant.

Lord SubJef.

Noble Salty Panda.

Noble Mild Fracas.

Noble Aclys.

Noble Carl  Baxter.

Noble Tony Starrk.

Noble GalacticTNT.

Leave a rating or a review to help me rise to the top or fix my shameful understanding of prose.

Take a look over my blog where all information about the world of Rupegia will be posted.

Join the Discord and discuss, or rant, or meme, or try and fight me so your waifu gets more screentime.

Become a Patron and read chapters in advance, or read the side-stories, or leave your mark on the story, or help choose the next artwork or the next side-story.

Chapter 145: Royalty - Part 3

A note from Manasong

Announcement: it's time for the scheduled break. We'll be back with normal chapter upload in the next 18th.

Second impressions: Omari is still a cool dude and a very level-headed man; Mako is unsociable; Urmeie is Hana on steroids and without a filter; and I don't like Sa'Haa.

I like snobbish women like Yunia, who know when to admit the superiority of the Cock, but Sa'Haa is a straight-up bitchy snob. The former can drop the act and be compassionate when the time for it comes as they still have a loving heart within themselves, but the latter are unrepentant bitches who value their status more than their relationships.

It's a shame when beautiful women have such unfuckable personalities… Well, not entirely unfuckable since these days I'm even thinking about sticking my dick in the crazy that is Vanea, but I'd only hatefuck Sa'Haa like I did with Roxanne's mother.

"I'd understand it if you were mingling with the daughters of nobility, but adventurers? Really?" Sa'Haa questions me disapprovingly.

"I was born a commoner," I flatly reply, very much not pleased.

And she launches into a lecture, "Yes, but now you have access to something much better. With all of the elven products that the nobles of the High Forest have at their disposal, an elven noblewoman would certainly have a more attractive body than an unkempt adventurer."

Roxanne was a humble adventurer for most of her life, and the last thing I'd ever call her is "unkempt." Sa'Haa isn't bantering or making a mean joke, but I can't really call out a royal in front of everyone, so this is kind of getting on my nerves.

"I'm attracted to anything that's at least mildly feminine," I absentmindedly reply.

"Even male elves dressed like women? I've been to Goldcross, and sometimes I couldn't tell the men from the women," Omari suddenly chimes in curiously.

The cute Prince Tommen slowly turns his head towards me, suddenly interested, and Vanea simply smiles and remains silent, waiting for him to return to their conversation. Her presence has been surprisingly pleasant so far, especially because she keeps her piercing gaze low and rarely looks anyone in the eye.

I smile embarrassedly as I explain, "Now that is a delicate matter. Yes, they are attractive, but no, I'd never have sex with another man. I'm simply a… 'single-edge.'"

Jarn sees the Prince let out a subtle breath of relief, and he goes back to his casual conversation with Vanea.

"With a massive lesbian fetish," Alissa casually adds.

And I calmly nod. "Yes. That, too."

But Sa'Haa can't keep her tongue tied and ruins the casual mood again, "No matter if you're a man or a woman, it's degrading to your reputation to let just about any commoner have a taste of your seed."

I almost snort as her words make me imagine my royal draconic cum being sold as an exotic luxury that few could ever get their hands on, but my dislike of her prevents me from laughing.

"Why?" I promptly ask back, holding back my flippancy.

The Princess then stares at me for a moment and blinks blankly, perhaps too stunned at my ignorance, or perhaps she's simply caught off-guard as even she doesn't know why, exactly, it's "degrading" to have sex with commoners.

I'd bet on the latter.

She quickly recollects herself and answers, "Your body, your blood, your semen, your future children, they all have an inherently higher value than that of the populace. To freely give it to anyone who asks devalues yourself and undermines the political potential you could leverage if you kept it scarce." Then she snorts snobbishly. "Just to give you an idea, I know of many noblewomen who would gladly trade their bodies for the chance of having a child with someone such as you."

I really feel like butting heads with her over the "value" of my body, but Yunia advises against it, so I take a more subtle angle and retort, "We're simply not concerned with extracting the most value out of our bodies."

But even that is enough to annoy her, so she almost flippantly replies, "Are you sure you have that luxury when you're in such a delicate position in the High Forest?"

Now Yunia gets aggravated by the arrogance of the Princess. This foreign royal is acting as if she knows the subtleties of High Elven politics better than the prime example of a High Elf herself!

So now it's our Queen's turn to lecture the haughty Princess, "We must use the correct weapons against each type of opponent. The Elder Council won't be swayed by mere popularity or political influence. They require convincing based on principles. The Subordinate Lords and Nobles also require results to be swayed to our side as they're prejudiced and fearful of change, but they won't be convinced just by us keeping our bodies 'scarce.'"

"'A good warrior keeps a knife in his boot, a smart warrior keeps many,'" Sa'Haa calmly quotes the God of War, which now makes Ciel annoyed.

Yunia really doesn't want to launch into a comprehensive explanation about why Sa'Haa's opinion is dumb, so my dear elf subtly kills the conversation, "The time for us to focus on High Elven politics is still to come. For now, I wish to focus my mental energy on the conflict at hand."

"You all talk too much while eating," Urmeie complains, then immediately goes for another steak.

These animal-headed humanoids may have big, scary teeth, but they also have a set of human teeth further inside their mouths so that they can eat like humans without making a mess. Aoi doesn't have teeth like that, but she can still eat most dishes in her dragon form.

Then not-Cruella turns her snobbish nose towards her sister and begins the sibling banter, "You eat so much that if you talked during our meals, you'd take an hour just to finish the first course."

"Yeah, that's why I don't talk," Urmeie deftly deflects.

"Sister, don't make fun of her dietary needs," Tommen politely chimes in.

But the white wereowl is too proud to admit any fault. "Then she shouldn't act as if her needs are superior."

"Eating more meat would do you some good, though," Urmeie casually shoots back with a smirk.

Now that the royals are distracted, we can focus on our actual friends, the Verners, and Omari because he's cool.

When dessert comes, and the coffee is served, we watch as even Urmeie discovers the wonders of chocolate plus coffee, and they're left speechless as their minds are overloaded with the flood of ideas and the potential uses of this combination for new businesses.

"What is this black beverage?" Sa'Haa tactfully inquires and taps her glass cup with a long black nail.

"Gnomic coffee. We acquired the exclusive export rights to it after we aided them in the recent monster army crisis under Gnomeria," Yunia answers with well-hidden glee. We really need to get them to understand that we have a number of secret projects being developed and that we aren't fresh and untested youths just bumbling around while playing at being royalty.

Mako stares at the coffee with an unsteady gaze, trying his best to look away from the black gold but failing. He barely touched the dessert, but it seems obvious that now that he's had a taste of the ultimate combo, he wants more, and his odd behavior becomes so noticeable that everyone eventually starts staring at him.

"Why don't you just drink it already?" Urmeie promptly asks out loud.

"Denial increases the pleasure you'll get after giving in; it's just that sometimes, the right moment for that isn't very clear," he stoically answers with his [Godly Language]-infused voice without taking his eyes off his cup of coffee.

"If denial is going to keep you distracted, then maybe you should just give in," Léonne suggests, and Mako chuckles softly, the first time I've seen him smile.

Surprisingly, he uses his normal voice to whisper warmly, "Perhaps you're right." Then he goes for the cup.

After we finish eating, we move to some sofas near the balcony so that we can rest and allow our stomachs to comfortably digest our food. There's more tea and cookies, but aside from Sa'Haa and the werefoxes, we're all too full to eat anything more.

"Shall we begin talking about the coming battle?" Yunia diplomatically suggests.

"Let's first list our men so that we know in detail what we have to work with," Jacques wisely replies.

But before we can do that, we apparently need a bit of drama.

"What men do you actually have? You're not even the Chosen Descendant," Sa'Haa accusingly asks Vanea.

The not-princess smiles and meets her eyes with Sa'Haa's, who shows no reaction from the former's piercing gaze. "I have a very loyal ally that will join us on the day of battle: Centum Apeiltik, who has joined Katasko as a spy for me," Vanea sweetly answers.

But the white wereowl ignores the provocation and turns her stern gaze to us. "This is the sort of woman that Dame Vanea is, Ryders. Are you sure you want her as an ally?"

"Do you think we have the luxury of giving up on allies when our situation is so delicate?" Yunia immediately replies, hiding very well her glee at the riposte.

The room falls silent, and Hana, Urmeie, and Allura can't keep their eyebrows from creeping upwards in amusement.

Sa'Haa's white feather hair gradually rises up along with her anger, and the air starts to become chilly as she begins to release her aura, but we only get a taste of it as her royal composure quickly comes back, and she returns to normal again as she finally replies, "As long as you know who Dame Vanea Anara really is. Some people have been swayed by her sweet words and tragic story, but one shouldn't forget that those experiences forged the kind of woman she is today."

Dayum.

She's so harsh that we turn to Vanea and wait for a response, but the "princess" in question merely smiles bitterly, her eyes still avoiding ours to spare us her piercing stare.

And it's the cute little Prince who comes to defend his friend. "Sister, I understand your distrust of Vanea, I really do, but she deserves a chance to grow," he sternly states with a surprising amount of bravery, standing up to the villain of his sister.

And now Vanea finally talks, her tone perfectly neutral because trying to look sad will score no points for her among this group of politically savvy people, "I do what I must to survive and to achieve my goals, but even though I deal in businesses that you deem 'unsavory,' I'm still not the kind of person that breaks their promises and betrays those who have helped me so much."

"Yeah, loosen up, Sa'Haa," Urmeie casually chimes in and lets out a grunt-like chuckle.

The bitter wereowl turns her eyes to us, but we remain stoic and unmoving, showing no support for her vendetta. Not even Urmeie or the other two nobles want any part in this, so it's clear she has no allies in this matter. Then her expression becomes even more stern as she stews a little longer in her anger, but she'll only alienate everyone if she insists on this.

So she finally gives in, "Very well, I'll accept us working together this time, but don't forget that our alliance with Vanea is supported by thin ropes."

"Your alliance is with us, not Vanea," I sternly state and glare at her.

Once again, the tension rises, but this bitch needs to understand her position, so we won't back down. Urmeie's snort lightens the mood, and even Tommen looks unconcerned, making it seem even more unreasonable for Sa'Haa to act offended.

"Indeed, my alliance has only been with you, Ryders," she bitterly admits and promptly begins to ignore Vanea's presence.

"The Ryders are the center point of our group. Let's not forget that," Léonne gently states, but Urmeie's sudden shift into becoming serious tells us that our dear fox mommy might've just stepped on a landmine.

"Are they, really?" Urmeie grunts back while staring at Léonne intensely, and now it's Sa'Haa's turn to look mildly amused.

Oh. My. Fucking. GOD! These royals are just… UGH!

"Don't let your pride cloud your judgment," Tommen gently tries to calm his ursine sister.

"They need my men to stand against Katasko," the haughty bear retorts.

So much for "words don't hurt me."

"They're bleeding allies with each passing day," Vanea states matter-of-factly.

But Urmeie just shrugs in a way that makes her massive tits jiggle alluringly as she starts to calm down. "You'll still have a lot of trouble dealing with them without me."

"It's not you who's Gifted, so it's not you who'll ensure our victory in this battle," Jacques suddenly interjects with a sober tone. The Faiumi side all show disbelief in his words, so fox daddy promptly explains, "Decien Alkibiades has challenged us instead of waiting for the sword to fall upon his neck, which means that he has something that can nullify whatever numeric advantage we might have."

Urmeie guffaws and slaps her tits, making them bounce again. "Yeah, right! Their assholes are so exposed that only a Divine Intervention could save them now!"

"In a way, it is an Intervention because Katasko likely has the same kind of 'asset' that allows us to ignore numeric advantage: a Gifted."

The bear's mirth is flash-frozen, and she turns her eyes to Sa'Haa, who's now taking this very seriously.

The wereowl Princess thoughtfully taps her cup with her long nail, and her stern eyes lose focus as she searches her memories. "There have been no reports of Gifted movement, except…" She whispers absentmindedly.

"Reinhold?" I blurt out.

"He wouldn't…" She begins but immediately stops as doubt seeps in.

"I made a deal with Reinhold and secured his neutrality," Vanea immediately announces, and for once, Sa'Haa actually looks back at the not-princess without a hint of animosity in her gaze. "Apeiltik also reports that Katasko's senior members are trying their hardest to keep the lower members from deserting by promising victory in this battle, which hasn't been a very successful strategy, but curiously, the seniors haven't mentioned how they think they'll win."

"If the seniors are so confident, then they truly must have something hidden," the wereowl princess remarks thoughtfully. Even she won't reject such useful information, even if she disagrees with the source.

"And only a Gifted would be worth keeping them a secret until the battle," Léonne states, and nobody argues otherwise.

And Sa'Haa narrows her eyes suspiciously at me, then at Vanea. "I'm sure you hid the Ryders from us until he left Rabanara, so I wouldn't put it past Katasko to have done the same."

But Urmeie just has to make the conversation about her again, "I still don't believe that the Gifted can be that powerful. There must be a limit to their power."

We're getting a bit too tired of her to reply, but Léonne shows her reliability by facing the bear once again, "There is a limit, obviously, but how are we to accurately gauge their power when they can take on thousands? Can you imagine the difficulty in organizing an exercise like that?"

Urmeie remains stern and pensive, but then her eyes are drawn towards mine, and the big bear gradually appears to become larger and larger in my view as her high-level aura starts to come out. She's confident in her own power, but the more she knows about us, the more she begins to doubt herself, so she wants to challenge us to reaffirm her own strength. But this is just childish and simple-minded behavior, which is why it's so tiring to deal with her.

But we're not here to play these silly games, so I face her head-on, letting my draconic charm clash against her oppressive aura, and I serenely deflect, "Why do you think that a duel would confirm that we can take on thousands of soldiers?"

"I need some kind of confirmation," she calmly replies, staring at me like a bear stalking its prey.

Hana's hungry gaze is a lot more fearsome than this mama bear's, so I smoothly follow up, "We'll cast a few spells to demonstrate our power to you, then."

That confuses Urmeie, who frowns and pulls back her aura as she grunts, "Hm…?"

I sigh internally as we prepare ourselves. This is necessary, but it's still bothersome, and even the dragon inside me complains about having to "prove ourselves to insignificant worms."

"Well, I fucking love showing off!" Hana exclaims inside my soul space, and half of the girls agree with her.

While I smile wryly internally, the girls and I stand up in sync and turn to the balcony, except for Lina, who stares at each of the Faiumi, then we point our fingers forward and spam all of our spells.

Everyone squints their eyes as glowing hot lava and lightning spread out in every direction while the sound of explosions drowns out everything else, and the air quickly becomes hot and thick with steam as all sorts of elements pour out of the balcony.

The observers feel a chill as multiple Curses are stacked upon their persons, but then the oppressive atmosphere turns into one of almost pure terror as I summon all of my elementals along with the "Status Effect"-afflicting monsters. Yunia even considers using [Chain Soul], but she gives up on the idea as it'd be too aggressive to use that on the royals.

The toy golems also join us in the demonstration, and Jarn jumps down from the balcony to reassure the guards that everything is fine.

"Don't panic. This is a mere demonstration," Jarn loudly explains as she flies around the embassy.

Léonne, Allura, and Vanea grin with unveiled delight at the astonishment of our guests, whose surprise deepens with each second as we maintain this demonstration for a long minute, only to finish with a deafening [Lightning Strike] from Aoi as I unsummon everything and Lina removes the Curses, lifting the dreadful pressure from their bodies.

The Verners immediately get up and approach the railing to inspect the damage to the recently-repaired training courtyard, with the Faiumi joining them a moment later once they've gotten over their daze. The ground below has now become a representation of the Apocalypse, but the girls think it looks more like the Everlasting Storm that they've heard of in tales.

"Pulasarica uriasa…" Urmeie whispers something in awe in a language that we don't recognize, but I bet it's a swear.

Omari turns around and stares at us wide-eyed as he exclaims, "You're not just hybrids! You're all magical warriors!"

Roxanne coyly replies, "You could say that. Though, we still have a few more tricks that we can use, but we'd rather keep those secret."

"How long could you keep that up?" Sa'Haa soberly asks as she turns around.

"We don't know since it'd be extremely draining on us to test our limits, but a few more minutes, at least," Ciel answers, and the gentle allure of her words is more convincing than anything we could say.

"How much MP do each of you have?" Sa'Haa inquires further.

"That, we won't say," I reply with a cheeky smile.

"Okay, that was impressive, but I know shit about magic," Urmeie remarks as she turns around, then she looks at the stern wereowl. "What do you think, sis? No chance of me winning a duel?"

And the "constipated" Princess becomes visibly annoyed at the question. "Think, Urmeie. How would you fight against someone who can just… drown you in spells?!"

The big bear shrugs. "I don't know. That's why I wanted a duel."

Sa'Haa nervously runs her hand along her white feather hair. "You're likely to get yourself killed."

"I think it'd be fun to try," Urmeie casually replies and grins unashamedly.

Hana gets a bit annoyed at the stubbornness of this bear, so she steps forward and glares as she rapidly casts and dispels [Spirit Light] as an example. "We can also cast [Ghost Lights] just as fast as I can cast this. Do you really think you can fight while blind?" She flippantly asks.

Urmeie frowns as she stares at the flickering ball of light, but the stubborn woman is still unconvinced. "Hm… I do have [Sense Presence]."

Alissa and Yunia promptly activate their [Hide Presence].

"Oh…" The bear grunts in surprise, then she starts chuckling. "Well, this is kind of silly, you know?"

"It's very silly," Omari dryly agrees, still too stunned to laugh.

"Yes, exactly. The Gifted are simply born to surpass us," Vanea calmly declares, but Urmeie suddenly stops laughing and becomes serious.

"They've been chosen by the Gods to deal with threats beyond even our reach," Léonne piously states, a hint of pride in her tone.

"Who could even defeat them in single combat?" Mako finally speaks, and though his daze is gone and he's back to being stoic, he doesn't use his Godly voice.

"Dad," Tommen quietly replies.

"Dad," Urmeie grunts in agreement, still stern and pensive.

"Yes, Father could," Sa'Haa hums absentmindedly, then she uncharacteristically sighs tiredly and closes her eyes as she relaxes on her sofa.

"That's why we believe that Katasko has a Gifted of their own," Jacques smoothly returns us to the crux of the matter.

"They could just be dumb or suicidal," Urmeie soberly replies, also behaving uncharacteristically.

"I'd rather prepare for the worst-case scenario," I state, and everyone hums in agreement.

"Then we shall," Sa'Haa finishes.

Now that the royals have been convinced, we can finally start talking tactics.

A note from Manasong

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Chapter 146: To Kill a Gifted - Part 1

A note from Manasong

Attention: to conform to the limit of mature content (more than just sexual content) allowed in a novel, I've censored this chapter. You can look for the uncensored version here.

Urmeie and Sa'Haa have the highest number of knights, with about 150 each; second place is Decien Omari with 100; third is the Verners with 80; fourth is shared by Centum Apeiltik and Centum Mako with 50; then us with 26. There are also about 50 nobles that will tag along, each bringing their own handful of knights, but they're so low on the totem pole that they weren't even invited by Sa'Haa to this meeting. Every noble has a handful of High Court Mages they'll bring, but the royals have all bases covered on that front, so we aren't missing any of the system magic schools.

While the number of knights our family has may seem pitiful, each of them, even the Lordsguard and Officers, actually have a rather high average level. If we compare them by their levels, Urmeie's men are the strongest, then ours, then the Verners, then Sa'Haa's, then Mako's, then Omari's, then Apeiltik's, and lastly, the assorted nobles, though the nobles themselves are stronger than the average knight.

Also, we're Gifted, and we even have Brett, so, like Jacques said, we're the trump card.

But now that we're talking about tactics, we need to involve more people with experience in that area, and Sa'Haa and Vanea aren't experts, not to mention that it's a talk that would bore even the wives, so nearly everyone leaves to do their own thing.

Yunia and I stay, but we don't talk much since it's Sandoro who's responsible for the nitty-gritty of our tactics. Fox mommy and daddy are the ones with the most experience in fighting Lord-level foes, and bear mommy shows a surprising amount of tactical knowledge and reveals that she also has a high level in [Battlefield Perception], which requires a considerable level of either "Intelligence" or "Wisdom" to raise the skill so high. Allura also listens intently, absorbing as much valuable information and experience as she can because if she truly wants to "tame" the Colored Sands, she's going to need all the help she can get.

Magic becomes quite dangerous at the higher levels, so the proper counters and protections against it need to be properly distributed, or else the men will just be wiped out without a chance of even fighting back. [Blessing Magic] is especially important, and even if I used my Gift to level the skill to 100, it still wouldn't be enough as I severely lack the MPower required to use it effectively at a higher level.

We also have to call in the High Mages to record their levels and abilities, so the talking goes on at length. Then Ciel and Lina come to relieve us, and we return to our bedroom to de-stress.

"They're insufferable!" I exclaim as I flop face-down on the bed.

Alissa and Roxanne promptly approach to comfort me while Yunia goes to Hana's strong arms for a massage. My horns and thick tail are promptly caressed in an ambiguously spicy way, and the effect of that on my friend and tiredness is almost instantaneous.

Aoi and Gify play parkour tag on another side of the room with the help of the golems and their innumerable gadgets that they use as obstacles. I use the golems' eyes to observe their adorableness because anything cute has a healing effect on my soul.

"Are we like the Imperial Royals?" Roxanne asks out loud worriedly.

"Definitely not," Yunia confidently replies and whispers softly as Hana's hands massage her strong back. "Look at the Companions. Their affection is… unusual. Even our Lordsguard fights for us with much more enthusiasm than I expected. Our people worship us."

"Though Ciel says that isn't necessarily a good thing," Alissa wryly remarks as her hands gently work on my horns. I really feel like they were getting tense from stress, and my foxy wife is doing wonders on them.

"Well, what about the people who are closer to us in terms of rank? Like, other nobles?" Roxanne continues and kisses the tip of my tail in a very spicy way, sending a good deal of blood to my Tool.

"They mostly hate us or don't care about us," Yunia absentmindedly answers, too focused on Hana's hands that now gently squeeze her chest.

"Right…" Roxanne hums gloomily and hugs my thick, warm tail for comfort.

"We do have a good reputation with the Root Lords, right? And the nobles in Escanso are nice to us," Alissa gently retorts, then straddles my head for better leverage, and the soft fabric of her Snow Weave stockings caresses the sides of my head.

Yunia chuckles softly and smiles. "Yes, I wasn't fair. It's mostly our Subordinate Heart Lords that dislike us, and it's not because of our personalities. It's like I said to Sa'Haa: they hate us because of who we are, not because of how we act."

Though they mostly just hate anyone who's not Yunia since they're racist bastards.

"So… I guess we aren't as bad as the Imperial Royals?" Roxanne hesitantly asks again.

"Yes, we definitely aren't," the Queen declares amusedly.

And I feel the happiness of my succubus through the increase of enthusiasm in her caressing of my thick tail. "Great to hear."

But the most tense part of my body soon becomes my Sword, so I turn over to give them proper access to it. Alissa is straddling my head, so my eyes now have a perfect view of the area between her legs, and she's only wearing thin, semi-transparent, lacy red underwear under her provocative short, flowery, red not-kimono.

I raise my eyes until I meet with her almost orange jewels, and her gentle gaze becomes steamy in anticipation. Without saying another word, she scooches forward a little bit, then I reach with my tongue and touch her through the cloth.

The Dragon is suddenly freed from its cage, and Roxanne immediately starts a supremely gentle work, focusing on the sensation rather than sensuality since I can't see her right now.

"Ah~…!" Alissa lets out an adorable high-pitched sound and presses her thighs against the sides of my head. Her expression becomes even more delicious as she starts to lose herself to it, but then she starts to fight against it and states, "No, Wolfy… I… ahn~… I have to… give it to you… so y-you, ahn~… should be the one… to relax."

"You also have some stress to kill, so don't worry about it," I reply through [Bind].

"But you and Yunia are the ones who have the most stress," she insists, also using [Bind] because talking is currently a bit too hard for her.

"You can do me all day after I blow your mind," I retort and nibble.

"It'd be easier to do that if you didn't 'blow my mind,'" she wryly replies and smiles affably at me, but it's quickly replaced by an expression strained with bliss.

"Okay, I'll just give you a 'mind-numbing' one then"

The room goes silent as everyone has their moment of bliss, then we start breathing again, and we chuckle softly as we bask in the afterglow. Ciel quietly sighs and [Clean]s herself and our little wife, then they quickly rejoin the meeting before a maid can pass by and ask what's wrong.

Alissa collapses on the bed, and Roxanne crawls over to her so that they can share the bounty. The cheeky succubus locks her lips with the fox's, then sneaks her tongue in for some very dirty kissing, and the sight makes me excited again.

While I do enjoy watching them kiss, my mouth is feeling a bit lonely now. And they both immediately read my thoughts, so Roxanne breaks the kiss after a short moment, then they [Clean] their mouths and switch the focus of their caressing to me.

"Now, are we allowed to care for you?" Alissa coyly asks, her tail freely wagging in anticipation.

"I'm all yours," I reply and rest my arms behind my head.

Roxanne has already given me something, so she uses her tongue to play with mine while Alissa has her turn.

Okay, refresher done, body relaxed, and dick and dragon beaten into submission, so it's time to return to training with the men. I spar lightly with them, and we practice some coordination drills with the newest additions to our little war band.

Urmeie joins us when she hears the sounds of battle, and Sa'Haa explicitly tells us that we aren't allowed to duel her. But it's not like anyone but Hana wants to, so, whatever…

Anyway, during battle, there's the need to establish reliable communication between the officers and the Lords for orders and reports, but since the nobles fight on the front lines, unlike Earthling commanders, shouting isn't enough, and it can be heard by the enemy while letters can be intercepted, so we need to set up safer communication methods.

We'll use encrypted letters, secret signs and shouts, and [Summon Small Bird]. There are also ways to communicate with [Weaverism], but it would be too much effort to set that up with the limited number of [Weaverism] mages we have, and that method is better for the sneakier and more dynamic battles in the High Forest while the Imperial standard fits better for the upcoming battle.

Only Sa'Haa and Urmeie know [Summon Small Bird], but it's already helpful enough to have a way for the strategists at the back to directly send messages to the nobles on the frontline. Strategists are men with a high [Battlefield Perception], which gives them an almost prophetic intuition, so their advice is incredibly valuable for any battle.

Urmeie then starts paying a suspiciously high amount of attention to me, and it makes me worried that she wants something, but she doesn't show or do anything that could clue us in on what she's thinking. She just stares while occasionally looking away to talk to her men.

When I go back to the seats to rest, Vanea approaches me, and I notice that her presence makes our men nervous. But this is a bit unfair to her, isn't it? She must have very few actual friends due to how unpleasant her gaze is to the average person. It feels weird to pity her, but Alissa doesn't want me to grow callous, so I don't try to smother this feeling.

"I still find it hard to believe how much you've grown since Rabanara," Vanea remarks casually and sits beside me.

"In all matters except height," I jokingly reply.

And she raises her eyebrows amusedly. "All matters?"

"Think what you want," I reply with a grin.

She giggles girlishly, but then she notices my unbelievably large bulge and raises her eyebrows again, now in surprise. "You're full of surprises, King Ryder."

"Well, you are the one who came with a secret Imperial Royal in tow," I casually remark.

And she gives me a wry glance. "Oh, it's a competition? Let's see… tentacles, really? How did you even come up with that?!"

"Well, it's a long story…" I embarrassedly reply as I scratch my right cheek with a padded claw.

But she won't give up. "Then shorten it."

Alissa suddenly appears behind us with a foxy smile, and she promptly complies, "It was something he learned to do with his Gift that he then used in the bed, but, sometime later, he realized that it could also be used for battle."

"Knowing his famous 'appetite,' that sounds very plausible," Vanea agrees matter-of-factly.

I give Alissa a look of disbelief as she begins to engage in pimping me to Vanea, but she's still basking in the afterglow and simply hugs me from behind, then sniffs the faint smell of my sweat.

Vanea's expression seems to soften for a brief moment as she glances at us, but she keeps her face turned away, so I don't see much of it before she's back to her usual Disney princess self.

The pitying feelings return, but before I can say anything, Vanea soberly remarks, "You'd better not spend too much time resting, or Urmeie will get angry. It's no coincidence that her men are the most well-trained out of everyone's." Then she stands up and leaves.

I wanted to ask her how she met Prince Tommen, but in hindsight, it might be an insensitive question. Sa'Haa implied that the Prince took pity on Vanea, and I find it hard to believe that she'd feel proud of such a story, so I don't think she'd enjoy retelling it.

But I still need to talk to her about Apeiltik before I let my emotions cloud my judgment of her. And that'll have to wait until later because I can sense Urmeie's stare becoming mildly frustrated.

Once bath time comes, we finally reunite with our adventurer guests. I'm starting to grow fond of Lolo, of her thighs, and the feeling of doing her, so I give her some very passionate love this time.

Klein is hitting it off with the Raffeslia girls, so I let her be taken by the lesbo trio and focus on my wives. Alissa is already satisfied, so she gets a gentle and quick one; Yunia needs a good one to relax, so I tie her up and bend her in half as I bury it so deep that it hits her inner button; Ciel and Lina need to be rewarded, so Ciel gets tentacle r-pe while Lina gets dragon r-pe, and it's all roleplaying, of course; Hana is allowed to use me and crush my hips while I apply shocking bit clamps; and, lastly, I make warm love to both Aoi and Roxanne at the same time since they aren't in the mood for anything extreme.

Unfortunately, we don't invite the adventurers for dinner since Sa'Haa is too much of a female dog, but I think things might be calm enough tomorrow that we could "snub" the Princess by having a private meal/orgy with the Companions and the adventurers.

After dessert, our imperial guests quickly retire to their own quarters, and I finally get the opportunity to talk to Vanea. I don't want to, but everyone agrees that we have to, so I'll do it.

"It might be a more impactful talk if you go alone," Yunia states, trying very hard to hide her hesitancy and guilt.

"She does seem to have a crush on you," Hana wryly adds.

I give Yunia an amused look. She really doesn't like talking to Vanea, but her argument is also very convincing.

Alissa sighs and gives my shoulder a reassuring squeeze as she affirms, "She'll 'compensate' you."

"Why me?" Yunia immediately questions.

And my foxy sl-t takes a second to come up with a reply, "We already 'compensate' him daily."

"So do I!" The elf exclaims.

"Then compensate harder!" Roxanne cheerfully chimes in.

The girls banter for a little bit to make me more comfortable, and once my heart is ready, I leave for Vanea's room. Whereas the Imperial Royals each get a tree of their own, the not-princess' room is merely a few floors below ours, so the walk is short.

As I walk down the corridor, I notice that her room is guarded by a dwarven slave boy that stands in front of the door, and I immediately feel that there's something odd about him. First, he's awfully similar to me, with black hair, a cute and youthful face, and a couple of freckles. Second, the composed way that he looks at me as I approach creeps me out for some reason. Third, he has a clearly visible bulge in his black velvet pants.

Wait… is he fucking gay?

After becoming a weredragon, I've grown more perceptive of odd male stares, and the three more common types seem to be dislike, jealousy, or "attraction." But this boy's stare seems like a mix of the latter two.

"Your Highness, do you wish to speak with Dame Vanea? I'll inform her of your arrival so that she can prepare," he politely greets with a bow.

"Please do," I reply impassively.

"One moment."

He quickly enters the room, but not even ten seconds pass before he comes back out and holds the door open for me.

"She's ready for you," he announces suggestively, which makes me a bit uncomfortable.

I hold back a frown and step in, and I immediately notice that Vanea is sitting on the grass sofa, in only her underwear, with her legs spread open alluringly.

This insane woman is also insanely attractive. Lustrous black hair tied in a long side braid, a thin and feminine body, deliciously perky pair hidden in a lacy, white bra, long-sleeved gloves that adorn her delicate hands, an alluring garter belt to accompany her criminally small bottom clothes, and long white stockings that end in beautiful high heels that make her toes simply beg to be kissed.

Then the door is closed behind me, and we're left alone in the room.

"Have you come here to take my body earlier than promised?" she sultrily asks, her piercing eyes staring intensely at mine.

"Take? I thought you'd 'give' it to me," I promptly reply, instantly getting into a steamy mood.

"Isn't 'taking' what dragons do?"

I gently nod, though I feel mildly offended. "Yes, that's what dragons do, but I'm a weredragon, not a monster."

She narrows her eyes and smirks, enhancing the sexiness of her expression. "And what would happen if you let the dragon inside you loose?"

But that makes me pause as the dragon wakes up. "You sound like you'd enjoy being taken," I sternly reply as I get into it.

She raises her thin eyebrows repeatedly in a suggestive fashion as she sensuously states, "You won't know until you try."

My Dragon wakes up and strains against my tight elven pants, creating a bulge that she immediately notices, then she smiles seductively while staring at its glorious form.

I advance towards her, and I see her back straighten as she feels a chill run along her spine from the intensity of my stare while her own piercing eyes feel like nothing more than just childish pokes at my unbreakable draconic will.

This wh-re needs to learn not to tease dragons, so I straddle her, wrap my left hand around her neck, then squeeze it lightly, just enough to make it uncomfortable for her to breathe, but not so hard that she can't talk.

"If you want to be r-ped, then just say so, but if you keep being ambiguous, then I'll do something to you that you might not enjoy," I growl angrily, the pity I felt for her earlier today nowhere to be seen anymore.

She doesn't immediately reply, and her pupils slowly dilate as her breathing becomes heavier, signs of either desire or fear.

But when it looks like she's building up the confidence to speak, I release her throat and step back. Then I sit down on another sofa and state, "I'm not here to do you or play games, Vanea. We have to talk about Apeiltik."

She crosses her arms, bunching up her nice little pair, but she keeps her legs open, so I'll watch her bottoms for signs of wetness. "What do you wish to talk about, Wolf?" she softly replies, and it kind of annoys me that she doesn't clarify whether she wants to be r-ped or not.

"Did you use him to push Katasko to fight against us?" I sternly ask.

"Yes," she answers unhesitatingly.

Fucking hell…

And it takes quite the effort to keep my Dragon from instantly going limp.

A note from Manasong

Hall of Fame of Patrons

The patrons who support Rupegia shall have their names sung by the bards for they deserve the glory and honor. Their names are:

Prince PreownedFIN.

Prince Owldente.

Lord Andrew Meyers.

Lord Novgarod.

Lord Michale Erwin.

Lord Bakerdea.

Lord Maurice.

Lord Mattirro Draca.

Lord Sean Drake.

Lord Mike Bartter.

Lord Warwulfv.

Lord Khristopher Welsh.

Lord Tenebris Lupus.

Lord Paul Daval.

Lord Paul Daval.

Lord AndreyUC.

Lord Tmac.

Lord School Work.

Lord CopeyDunt.

Lord BlindTactic.

Lord litalmexy.

Lord Philip.

Lord d3235.

Lord William Clark.

Lord Ddraig Wynn.

Lord CardinalSteiner.

Lord Cidant.

Lord SubJef.

Noble Salty Panda.

Noble Mild Fracas.

Noble Aclys.

Noble Carl  Baxter.

Noble Tony Starrk.

Noble GalacticTNT.

Leave a rating or a review to help me rise to the top or fix my shameful understanding of prose.

Take a look over my blog where all information about the world of Rupegia will be posted.

Join the Discord and discuss, or rant, or meme, or try and fight me so your waifu gets more screentime.

Become a Patron and read chapters in advance, or read the side-stories, or leave your mark on the story, or help choose the next artwork or the next side-story.

Chapter 146: To Kill a Gifted - Part 2

A note from Manasong

Attention: to conform to the limit of mature content (more than just sexual content) allowed in a novel, I've censored this chapter. You can look for the uncensored version here.

"Why?" I whisper sadly, feeling like I've just been stabbed.

And she calmly gives me a straight answer, "I couldn't risk you giving away that you knew. Apeiltik's life was at stake."

I'm actually surprised that hearing her say it is so painful since I already knew the answer, but I think I simply believed that our relationship was more than it really is. "Your lack of trust in us is vexing," I state, disappointed.

"I…" she begins but stops as her mind gets hung up. It seems that she's realized she messed up because she changes gears into a more serious and reassuring tone. "I didn't know how well you could deal with imperial plotting. You were merely a commoner before, and now you're suddenly in control of a huge chunk of territory, so I had to… I had to keep it secret."

The way she's repeating herself tells me that her mind is reeling from the impact of my words, but how much can I trust her? How much is she hiding from me? Which of her faces is the real one? Or rather, does she ever show her true feelings?

"What if we didn't want to fight them? What if we wanted to remain neutral in the Purification?" I sternly reply as anger is lit within me.

But this time, my words don't have an impact on her as she confidently retorts, "Please, Wolf. It was clear you had a vendetta against Katasko, and even if we didn't influence them, they'd have attacked you sooner or later."

And her presumptuousness enrages me. "But you took our choice from us! We could've engaged them on our terms instead of yours!" I shout angrily.

Her expression becomes tense, and a hint of frustration slips into her tone as she hesitantly questions, "You… understand why I couldn't risk it?"

I let my pain pour out through my words, "Yes, because you didn't trust us, and that's exactly why it hurts. You gave us the impression that you wanted to become a true ally, not just a 'business partner,' not just someone to work with occasionally, but something more intimate, something meaningful. But you couldn't even trust us by telling us your plans or asking for help. We'd likely have agreed to participate in your scheme if you had asked!"

Then she stays silent, and I notice her body gradually becoming more tense as she fails to contain her anger. She even closes her legs and lets any pretense of sensuality drop in favor of taking me 100% seriously.

But as angry as she seems to be, she understands that she isn't in the right.

"I'm sorry, Wolf… I made a mistake," she quietly replies, her dark eyes staring at mine without blinking, carefully observing me for every single reaction.

So this is the perfect moment to drive it home. "If you truly want to become my ally, then you need to do better. I'm not so desperate for your body that I'd work with you just to have it," I state sternly, letting my draconic anger tinge my words with deadly seriousness.

Now that hits her pride. To be scolded like this, to realize that you wounded a friend, and to be told so clearly how they're disappointed in you. For a normal person, those three things would hurt, so I hope that she still has enough heart left in her for my words to affect her like that.

And from the way she averts her eyes downwards in shame as she frowns frustratedly, it does seem like she's still capable of feeling hurt.

"That was all I had to say," I add after a silent moment, and she simply nods, so I stand up and leave.

Intermission – Vanea

"Master…?" Loctar's gentle voice wakes me from my stupor. "Do you need something from me?" he gently asks, and I feel guilty for making his cute face look so worried.

"A hug," I blurt out and immediately feel embarrassed for asking for something so childish, but when he wraps his little arms around my body, all regret is instantly washed away.

I'm thankful that he doesn't ask me what's wrong because even I can't explain it. I'd have actually enjoyed it if Wolf raped me, but [Mental Pain Conversion] didn't activate even after the verbal r-ping he gave me, and I don't know why.

Is this… guilt? The last time I felt this way was… when Arman died…

But what's more surprising is that Wolf actually managed to make me feel guilty for disappointing him.

Intermission end.

That went… not exactly how we had imagined. I just got really angry that she used us like this even though we expected it, but it also seems that she understood my feelings, so I think things will be fine after we cool down again. But the real test is whether or not she'll do something like this again.

"There is still hope for her," Ciel kindly states. "The ones who are too far gone have lost all remorse and are hard to reason with."

"Like Aisco," Roxanne suggests, feeling uncomfortable just from thinking about the weird elf.

"Perhaps, yes," Ciel hesitantly agrees. She also feels uncomfortable just from thinking about the kind of person we have working for us. It's not like she'll judge him until he actually does something evil, but she has an awful feeling that it's just a matter of when, not if.

"I actually want to help Vanea," Alissa suddenly chimes in, and we're left momentarily speechless.

"Another loose woman for Wolfy?" Yunia casually remarks and raises her thin golden eyebrows questioningly.

"She's actually being earnest… this time," Ciel hesitantly defends the fox.

"Are you really sure you want to help someone as… 'damaged' as Vanea?" Roxanne questions soberly, a rather unusual tone for her.

"Don't say that," Ciel scolds the neurotic succubus.

But she frowns back and crosses her arms, unconvinced. "Then what do we call someone like her? She's like me: a crazy bitch."

"You're not crazy," Ciel kindly reassures her, and the charming sweetness of the angel's tone acts like a dagger that stabs into the succubus' heart.

"You aren't anywhere near as crazy as Vanea," Yunia cheekily corrects, and Ciel glares at the smug elf.

Alissa rises past the banter and calmly explains herself, "I believe what Wolfy said about her is true. It's likely that she doesn't have friends, aside from Prince Tommen, so I want to give her some support and a chance to prove that she's trustworthy."

"I can't argue against that," Yunia casually concedes. Having someone as shrewd as Vanea on our side would be really helpful.

Roxanne just shrugs. She knows how messy Vanea's mind probably is, but if Alissa is ready to take it on…

Hana is conflicted. She doesn't like Vanea because she's uncontrollable, the opposite of Roxanne, so the straightforward dragonkin doesn't know how she would even approach Vanea.

Ciel is supportive. It was literally her job to help people with broken minds.

Aoi is suspicious. Her draconic nature influences her to be protective, so she doesn't like unstable people because they could be dangerous to our family.

"Why do so many people dislike her?" Lina suddenly questions, but we have no immediate answer for her. "It can't be just because of her eyes, can it?"

Yunia hums thoughtfully, then honestly praises her, "That's… actually a good question, little Lina. We need to know more about Vanea and her relationships to understand what kind of person she really is."

And the adorable girl blushes at the kind words from the elegant elven Queen.

But then all eyes fall on me.

I'm similar to Hana, hesitant. "I don't know what to think. She still scares me, and I don't know how we could even begin to help her."

Alissa grabs my scaled hand, then soothingly runs her palm over the sharp scales as she gives me the purest smile a degenerate, corrupted, c-m slave, cu----ean could give. "We'll work together to help her, so you won't have to face her alone," she reassures me with a tone so gentle that it could even rival Ciel's.

She's not deliberately trying to charm me, but she still succeeds at it. Together, we can do anything, so I choose to believe her.

But there's one little thing that I just have to confirm, "Does this mean that you girls will finally take my place in meetings with her?"

"Oh, shit…" Roxanne hums, and her pale face becomes paler.

"Can I back out of this? I never really gave a clear 'yes' or 'no,'" Hana replies with a shit-eating grin.

But Ciel lands a hand on both of their shoulders and pulls them in for a hug. "Be strong, sisters. This is for the greater good," she states while smiling peacefully, yet her tone has an edge that's quite uncharacteristic of her, which makes Lina so wary that she doesn't even try to argue.

"If I'm going to have to meet with her, so will all of you," Yunia warns them soberly.

"It isn't that bad as long as you prepare yourself," I try to encourage them.

"And with time, we'll learn to get used to it," Alissa states, more to convince herself than the others.

"If that's truly what you want, then I'll follow your lead," our little blue dragon boldly affirms, making the orange fox and I grin happily.

The girls mumble and whine a bit, but the conversation dies down as they resign themselves to this "horrible" Fate.

So I happily interject, "A~nyway… how about we just enjoy ourselves this evening?" And Gify finally lifts her little chibi head now that "party" is back on the menu.

We have our guests and our Companions to entertain, so I don't want to waste a single moment more on wallowing in negativity.

And so, this short session of the Ryder Family Meeting comes to an end.

But while we try to have fun, everyone is feeling a bit exhausted from training all day, so we mostly just chill and joke a bit. Still, it's Aoi's birthday, so I pull out the Cinco Flores bottle, and our mood improves a considerable amount.

We all have some casual matches on our game tables, and the girls take turns "compensating" my Sword. Hukarere is especially thirsty today, so I give her a double load, which means that I have to give double to Aoi, then to Alissa, then to Laguly, and then I decide to just drain the rest of my MP onto their faces already.

Today is the 13th, Ne, day of Water, day of storms, and one of the few occasions when it actually rains in the capital.

Dragon-Aoi wakes me up, and the first thing I see are her mesmerizing eyes. Black sclera with red and blue, dual-colored irises.

No level-ups because we didn't train our skills, specifically. We just trained our coordination with the men.

Our breakfast is quiet and wistful. The sky is cloudy, and the contrast in illumination makes me realize how bright the capital usually is. The drizzle makes us feel lazy, and the lack of imperial royalty for us to entertain allows our minds to drift.

But today is the last day before the battle, so our breakfast is cut short as Sandoro, Almaria, Enomosa, and Brett arrive from Escanso through the Imperial Network.

Urmeie calls for a meeting and the continuation of the training, so Sandoro joins them after giving us a brief greeting. Ciel goes to check up on Brett to see how much he has improved since we left, and the rest of us convene in private with Aisco and work together to improve our supersonic javelin launcher.

"What are you trying to kill with it?" The psycho elf asks, unemotional like always.

"A Gifted," I answer assuredly.

But he cautions me, "We could build a weapon that can kill the Emperor himself, and yet it might have no effect on a Gifted."

And that opens a Pandora's Box inside my mind.

The supersonic javelin failed to kill us or even significantly harm us, so I wanted something stronger, but what if the Gifted has a kinetic force field that allows him to ignore everything physical thrown at him?

What if they can regenerate like an undead?

What if they have super speed that allows them to dodge anything?

What if they can become invisible?

What if they can become a spirit?

What if they can teleport?

What if they have something more powerful than [Telekinesis]?

What if they have mind control?

What if they can create perfect illusions?

What if they can poison us from kilometris away?

What if, what if, what if, what if…

The only Gifted we know are us, Brett, and Reinhold, but that's hardly enough to make a comprehensive analysis of the average firepower of a Gifted, let alone guess how we can make a weapon specialized in killing them.

I turn to Yunia and state, "We need Sa'Haa's help. She might have more information on Gifted than we could imagine."

My ever-so-reliable elven wife nods in understanding.

Then I turn to Lina. "If we don't know the power of our enemy, we ready as many different tools as possible. Sa'Haa is also the leader of a merchant alliance, so we need her to give us every offensive enchanted tool that she has."

My ever-so-reliable little dwarven wife nods in understanding.

Next, I turn to the golems. "Javelins alone won't be enough. We need the launchers to be adapted so that they can fire APFSDS rounds."

The ever-so-obedient golems nod robotically and immediately access Lina's memories of enchanting with Gify's help.

Now I turn to Roxanne and Aisco. "With stronger cannons, we can also push the APFSDS rounds further, so we need more firepower."

The two eccentric and workaholic mages nod, 100% serious now that their life's purpose is being fulfilled.

And finally, I turn to the rest of the girls. "We'll need to link our minds together to boost our processing power, first to brainstorm, then to process whatever information Sa'Haa might give us, and lastly, to figure out how the hell we'll assemble this monstrosity of a weapon."

The most loyal wives in the world nod, then we get to work without saying another word.

While we focus on our work, a small part of my mind becomes increasingly terrified.

The fight with Evil Me at the end of the Antreos Crea arc keeps coming back to my mind. It was chaos, pure chaos, completely different from the usual, controlled, carefully planned, and methodically executed battles we've been in before.

If we were to repeat that battle, how would we even prepare?

So far, I didn't even consider fighting other Gifted because we're clearly favored by the Gods, and the Gods are the ones who give Gifts, so why would they give two different people Gifts just so that they would fight each other? But now, there's a very clear political reason for two Gifted to exchange blows, and I don't know if the Gods will interfere in anyone's favor.

There won't even be a risk of death, but the uncertainty terrifies me. We have too much to lose to leave things to chance.

Then the dragon smothers the fear. I'm already doing everything I can, and wasting brainpower on being afraid of what I can't control won't help me change what I can.

Sa'Haa answers positively to our request and shares with us everything she knows about the Gifted.

In essence, they're comic book superheroes.

Their powers are usually straightforward, like super-strength, control of the elements, etc. Powers like mine, conditional breaking of the rules of the divine level and skill system, are much, much rarer.

"Everyone believes that Lord Wolf has something like an affinity for all magic, but since he can apparently bestow his power upon others, I believe it's related to the system," Sa'Haa remarks stoically as she stares at Yunia.

"An interesting guess…" The Queen replies ambiguously, and the two share a brief smile.

As we read through the records of known Gifted, a clearer image of them starts to form in my mind. The magic-oriented ones have the most firepower, but they're also incredibly vulnerable to assassination since their bodies are still limited by physics and magic; the body-strengthening Gifted, like Brett, may not have the most impressive firepower, but they're incredibly difficult to deal with because they're basically damn invincible; and the system rule-breakers like me are the most difficult to gauge since they can be basically anything.

Ciel bounces as I play with her jiggling cow assets. The expression on her gentle face is one of bliss as she gives herself what she craves for. Then Alissa serves us another finger of Eia extract, and the connection between our minds is boosted once more.

We're doing it because it improves our Gestalt, of course. There's definitely no other side of me that's milking, in both figurative ways, this situation.

Lunch comes in the blink of an eye, and we're forced to share our mealtime with the royals once again.

"What have you been doing this morning, Royal Lord Wolf?" Urmeie asks so politely that we almost suffer from whiplash with how fast our necks turn towards her in disbelief. "Damn, that was creepy," she blurts out in surprise.

"I heard you all have uncanny coordination," Sa'Haa remarks, her stern eyes narrowed in suspicion.

Yunia kindly answers for us, "Yes, you're correct. We had a 'Gestalt' session earlier today as we analyzed the data you gave us, so we're still a bit 'in sync.'" Her is tone so gentle that it seems like she got possessed by Ciel for a moment.

"Hm…" Urmeie hums impassively and goes back to eating her meal.

Vanea and Tommen casually observe our conversation, the former not showing any signs of awkwardness after yesterday's "talk" (which is expected since we're also trying not to look awkward in front of the royals) while the latter is more interested in speaking with his friend.

But we all notice a problem looming like a storm. There's something on Urmeie's mind, and she's definitely going to give us a big piece of it very soon.

A note from Manasong

Hall of Fame of Patrons

The patrons who support Rupegia shall have their names sung by the bards for they deserve the glory and honor. Their names are:

Prince PreownedFIN.

Prince Owldente.

Lord Andrew Meyers.

Lord Novgarod.

Lord Michale Erwin.

Lord Bakerdea.

Lord Maurice.

Lord Mattirro Draca.

Lord Sean Drake.

Lord Mike Bartter.

Lord Warwulfv.

Lord Khristopher Welsh.

Lord Tenebris Lupus.

Lord Paul Daval.

Lord Paul Daval.

Lord AndreyUC.

Lord Tmac.

Lord School Work.

Lord CopeyDunt.

Lord BlindTactic.

Lord litalmexy.

Lord Philip.

Lord d3235.

Lord William Clark.

Lord Ddraig Wynn.

Lord CardinalSteiner.

Lord Cidant.

Lord SubJef.

Noble Salty Panda.

Noble Mild Fracas.

Noble Aclys.

Noble Carl  Baxter.

Noble Tony Starrk.

Noble GalacticTNT.

Leave a rating or a review to help me rise to the top or fix my shameful understanding of prose.

Take a look over my blog where all information about the world of Rupegia will be posted.

Join the Discord and discuss, or rant, or meme, or try and fight me so your waifu gets more screentime.

Become a Patron and read chapters in advance, or read the side-stories, or leave your mark on the story, or help choose the next artwork or the next side-story.

Chapter 146: To Kill a Gifted - Part 3

"You've been listening to the talks quite a lot. Have you learned anything interesting?" Alissa tries to distract us by making conversation with Allura. It's actually quite effective because I'm very fond of this tomboyish red fox.

"Of course, you kit!" Allura exclaims cheerfully, then stiffens up and lowers her tone without Léonne even having to say anything. "I mean, I'll never be a strategist, but I need to understand what their job is about if I want to be able to gauge my strategists' skill levels."

And Alissa nod sagely. "It also gives you a better perspective of combat when you know where all the pieces are supposed to go."

Now that they're talking about statesmanship, Yunia feels compelled to join in, "Yes. While a ruler shouldn't get involved in the minute details of governing their domain, it's important that they understand how every part of it works."

Which calls for Léonne to also chime in, "It's especially important for us, whose subjects are a lot more unruly than the passive elves."

And the two Queens start subtly bantering as their elf-werefox rivalry picks up.

I notice that Tommen seems interested in listening to Alissa and Allura, but he appears to be too shy to actually join the conversation of the two pretty werefox girls. He might be about their age since he doesn't have the signs of an old dwarf, so I understand his hesitance in talking to them, and I'm totally not very much glad that a cute young man is too shy to talk to the virgin promised to me.

But then the tomboy changes the topic, "I've heard a lot of explosions coming from behind the… uh, this big tree. What are you guys doing back there?"

"You can just call the tree 'a building,' Allura," Alissa kindly corrects and smiles cheekily, but then answers earnestly, "It's our 'secret weapon' that we're working on. Want to take a look?"

And now Tommen really does seem like he regrets not joining the conversation because what kind of dwarf doesn't like to see high-level smithing and enchanting?

"Wo~w…" Allura hums in awe at the size of the unit. She likes big cannons, and she cannot lie. "But why does everything that Wolfy creates look like dicks?"

"That doesn't look like his dick," Alissa flatly replies, though the muzzle brake we added to it kinda makes it a bit phallic.

And Allura shrugs. "He can make purple tentacles, so I'm sure he can make a cock that looks like darksteel."

Something inside Lina resonates with the idea of a darksteel dildo, but she's too embarrassed to explore the idea further.

The older fox sister sighs and decides to ignore the younger one's silly ideas. "It's a cannon, Allura. It shoots bullets faster than bows or crossbows," she tries to explain in a way that Allura can understand.

But the younger sister doesn't have the necessary background for her to understand it with just that. "Cannon?"

Alissa draws upon my memories to improve her explanation. "Think of a [Fireball] with an 'explosion' concept added to it. The spell blows things apart and violently throws debris many metris away, but what if you surrounded that explosion with a thick metal casing and left only one hole open? The explosion would be forced to go through the hole, and if you put something on top of the hole, it'll be pushed away by the explosion. If we craft things just right, the strength of the push will be many times greater than that of a bow."

"We're ready for a demonstration," Ted suddenly states, and Allura's red eyes glimmer with excitement.

Alissa nods, and a deafening explosion follows, making both of the fox girls flatten their furry ears in pain. Jarn promptly hands them [Regeneration] magic tools, which they apply to their ears, and Allura excitedly walks forward towards the target of the cannon.

"Diamond dragon scales! How could anyone survive this!?" she exclaims as she stares at the block of solid steel that has been almost completely blown to pieces. It looks like someone just tried to rip it apart as if it was a piece of meat.

"They don't," Alissa soberly replies.

Allura touches the steaming remains and immediately pulls her hand back as she receives a light burn, but she doesn't even wince in pain. "What are you going to use this on?"

"A Gifted."

The younger sister turns back, eyebrows up high in disbelief. "Isn't this a bit too much? Could Wolfy even survive something like this?"

And the older sister answers with a rather somber tone, "Maybe, and that's why we need something like this. We don't know how many 'Wolfys' Katasko is going to bring."

"Holy shit…" the young woman hums, suddenly understanding the worrying situation that we're in.

There are still some enchantments we have to add to the cannon and some adjustments to make, but the golems can do most of it on their own, so we rest our minds for a moment, and I decide to observe the knights as they train.

Almaria is using [Weaverism] to connect their feelings and improve their coordination, but they need to get used to the strange sensation before they can benefit from it, so they're just doing light drills for now.

I approach Sandoro as he and the other strategists observe the drills, and they give me a quick bow as they notice me.

Then Sandoro gives me his report as I stop beside him. "Your Highness, the men will be as ready as they can be by the end of the day, and the information we have on Katasko tells us that we have thirty percent more men than them, or perhaps even more considering they're still bleeding allies."

"All that's uncertain is whether or not they also have a Gifted," I stoically reply.

"Precisely."

And the importance of espionage makes itself so painfully clear to me right now that I regret not trying to make Nero into a double agent or something.

But wait, if Vanea, with as little resources as she has, managed to get a spy inside Katasko, what could we have achieved if we had tried?

"Our family isn't skilled in espionage, Wolfy," Yunia shoots me down through [Bind].

But Vanea is… and talking about her, she and Roxanne are with the mages, having a meeting about the tactics for this battle. There won't be an army of lower court mages helping us, so each mage has to be very careful with their MP and also keep an eye out for powerful spells that need to be countered so that they don't wipe out our forces.

The instructor stops talking as one of Sa'Haa's court mages begins to cast [Vacuum], quickly followed by [Pressure] as a demonstration. This is a terrifying combo as it can be used from far beyond interruption range, and it's relatively stealthy if one's not paying attention to the storm of mana that tends to form in these battles.

It's going to take him a minute to actually cast it, so Alissa nudges Roxanne and tells her to discreetly approach Vanea, who's on her own as she silently waits.

"Greetings, Dame Vanea," the tense succubus begins.

"Greets, Lord Roxanne," the not-princess politely replies.

"I didn't hear which magic schools you specialize in, so I'm curious about your skills."

Then Vanea does her thing where she says terrifying things while smiling like an innocent princess, "[Dark Magic] and [Cursing Magic], with a bit of [Spirit Magic], too, but only my [Mana Burn] is useful as I never get in melee to use [Soul Blade]."

Yunia is impressed that she learned [Mana Burn], but Roxanne is too stunned to answer immediately. [Dark Magic] is fucking evil, as exemplified by the dark elemental being a fucking nightmare, and my sadism isn't anywhere near hardcore enough to give me a bonus towards learning [Dark Magic], so to specialize in it tells us that she has a very "interesting" personality.

Sa'Haa apparently has very good hearing, for she turns around and sneers. "Ugh, don't you dare use [Torment] on another Lord. It'd be quite the offense."

"I'll keep it in mind," Vanea dryly replies, and the two flash a glare at each other.

Then Alissa and Yunia almost take control over Roxanne's body because they see an opportunity here, but that hurts the succubus' pride, so she does it herself. "Over there, we can get a better view…" she whispers gently and motions with her head, trying to get Vanea away from the bitchy owl.

"Sure…"

Once they're out of (believed) earshot, Roxanne assumes a worried frown and asks, "Forgive me if it's insensitive to ask this, but why does Princess Sa'Haa dislike you so much? We're not very 'fond' of her ourselves, but the animosity between you two is excessive."

That actually makes Vanea happy, and she unabashedly smiles sadistically, then glances at the owl, who's now, thankfully, ignoring her rival. "I did 'steal' the innocence of her precious Prince Tommen," she whispers smugly, then chuckles at Roxanne's rapidly rising eyebrows. "I didn't have sex with him, at least not yet, but I opened his eyes to the reality of nobility, so I'm a… 'terrible influence' on him…"

"Wait, that's it…?" Roxanne questions, almost letting her voice rise in disbelief.

Vanea does her thing again and smiles innocently as she messes with Roxanne, "Well, there's also the fact that I make money in Mac Gantus through smuggling and other 'unsavory' activities, so her mother, the Mayor of the capital, may have a few reasons to dislike me."

Of course, she's a fucking criminal mastermind… and only Yunia isn't horrified by that statement.

Then the villainous not-princess gleefully adds, "You'd do well to take control of the smugglers in your territory. Keep them from being too extreme while taking a share of their profits."

"Help, help, help, help, help…" Roxanne begs through [Bind], wanting a way out of this awkward situation.

While Alissa and Yunia do their best to salvage the conversation, I focus back on the cannons and help Lina cram more enchantments into them, but I don't need to be physically there, so I just help them through [Bind] and let them use my brainpower while I lightly spar with the men.

But that proves to be a mistake because Urmeie finally approaches me while I'm resting, two huge bodyguards following after her, and she doesn't seem to be happy.

Bear mommy stops right in front of my seat, blocking my view of the sparring, and her body is so large that she looks almost three times my (current) height. "Is this how you train, Lord Ryder?" she questions sternly, and the Companions behind me all tense up, trying their best not to glare at the Princess.

"What is it that's bothering you, Princess Urmeie?" I dryly reply, tired of her shit.

She answers with a perfectly neutral tone, yet her words offend me greatly, "I've heard a lot about Reinhold's fondness for battle and his training regimen, so, to me, it seems like his dedication to the art of war is definitely far beyond yours. Are you really taking this as seriously as you can?"

What?! You didn't even believe in the strength of the Gifted before we made you piss your pants with our power!

"A couple of days of training wouldn't have made a difference in our power levels," I begrudgingly explain, holding back my flippancy at the behest of the girls.

And she narrows her beady, ursine eyes at me in skepticism. "But have you actually trained seriously before? Everything that I hear about you tells me that you're not the kind that likes to get sweaty if it doesn't involve fucking."

I have to smother the dragon's desire to just bark profanities at the bitch, and the human is too irritated to give a proper answer, so all I can do is question her knowledge of us, "Do you even know what our Gift actually is?"

She shrugs, and her tone gains a dangerous edge as she explains, "I don't, and that's why I'm asking you this. I don't want to waste my and my sister's resources in a hopeless battle if there's a good chance that you're going to lose to another Gifted."

I want to beat up this fucking furry and curvy bitch so fucking hard. Gods, give me the strength to suffer through her presence. Fucking. Hell. Even the bodyguards and the Companions start to seem worried about the rising tension between us.

LOAD THE APFSDS!

"Come with me," I growl and start walking away, but I order the Companions to stay here.

Urmeie gives me a confused look, then frowns angrily but still obediently follows.

We silently walk to the testing grounds, then I summon a steel earth-Lina as I stop behind a thick wall of enchanted glass that the golems have just put down a couple of meters away from the new cube of solid steel.

"You might want to put on your armor," I state and [Equip] mine. Then the earth-Lina moves away from us and stands before the cube, right between it and the cannon.

Urmeie turns around to the two bodyguards following her and gives an order to one, who runs away in search of her personal Space mage.

Then her eyes fall on the long, glossy, dark brown cannon about twenty metri away from us. "What the fuck is that thing? Is this where the explosions have been coming from all day?"

"Yes," I dryly answer, and we both shut up.

Her personal Space mage comes running up to her less than a minute later and pulls out her shiny, ornate, jeweled armor directly onto her body, and she's immediately surrounded by the subtle signs of multiple Blessings as the protective enchantments activate. The sight isn't missed by the bodyguards, who brace for impact, making the mage pale and hide behind one of them.

"FIRE!" I shout, and Lina activates the cannon.

We see the cube and the earth-Lina get surrounded by a painfully bright rainbow of colors, then the shrapnel hits the enchanted glass, cracking it, and the shockwave of overpressure hits us. The explosion is so powerful that our eardrums rupture, causing a head-splitting headache, and our entire bodies scream in pain as our bones are rattled wildly.

I even get dizzy and stumble forward before I cast [Heal] on myself and return to normal. Then I also [Heal] Urmeie and her three men behind her, who all gawk in surprise at the complete lack of cube, cube stand, and earth-Lina, which have been replaced with a flaming, steaming crater.

"What the fuck was that?" the bear Princess asks out loud, her voice trembling, making her sound rather rattled.

And I harshly reply as I scowl at her, "This is what we've been fucking doing instead of training. If you think you can survive this, then I welcome you to stand in front of the cannon while we test its firepower on you."

But the big bear suddenly guffaws and slaps her gauntlet against her chestplate, making a loud metallic sound. "HAHAHAHAHA…! Now that's convincing!" Then she turns around and leaves while still laughing.

My rage is replaced with extreme vexation as she didn't even allow me to savor her surprise before changing gears and acting cheerful again.

Well… I guess she'll behave for now…?

Soon after, we successfully finish converting the eight darksteel javelin launchers into Ryder Special 120mm M1 Field Guns. Each one is now a fucking monster of a weapon as their shells don't just explode. They launch all kinds of spells upon impact, like Urmeie just witnessed, causing massive, widespread damage that would make Geneva cry.

We also make a number of shells that don't have the enchantments haphazardly crammed into them, and the difference in firepower is very noticeable. The "darts" of the APFSDS are filled with explosives, but they're too thin to put that much inside them, so their main purpose is to penetrate hard targets and wreak havoc from within.

For a wide area of effect, we have normal HE shells, but I think a knight with enchanted armor would be able to survive one of those unless he took a direct hit.

All we need now is a massive metal beast on tracks to put the cannons on, and we'll have a fantasy-themed tank! Though, I'm not sure about the survivability of slow and big vehicles in this world when people can just fly and zip about, then cast [Meteor]s on your head from range, which would only become even worse if portable AT guns become a thing. Each tank would need a Chimeric [Wind Shield] enchantment all around it if it wanted to survive sniping, and that would make tanks unbelievably expensive.

But then my musings are interrupted by a message from Caterina: Faustus Fluminis has abandoned Katasko and fled to Mistcross, where his home is located.

This is the man who first ordered Katasko to coerce us into joining them. When we rebuffed them, he ordered Nero to "teach us a lesson," and the spy hired thugs who tried to knock out and then strip the girls naked. After we responded with a show of power and destroyed their HQ, Faustus attempted a sloppy plot to have the Enforcers arrest us on false charges (though we were actually guilty of the crime they accused us of, it's just that the evidence was fake), and he lost a lot of support among Katasko after that. He's a rotten noble through and through, and he's also the one who pulled us into this mess.

So he deserves to die.

"Didn't your friend say that she was moving to Mistcross?" I curiously ask Ciel.

"Yes… she did…" our loving priestess wife answers hesitantly.

And I smile evilly. "The Emperor asked us to be 'discreet,' so let's send your friend Fleur a gift while also asking for a small favor."

The sun sets as we wait for the courier to deliver the gift. It shouldn't take long as they're going to use the Imperial [Eternal Gate] Network.

Our men are ready, the field guns are all done, the research is finished, and the preparations are over. Now, we just need to rest until tomorrow, so we simply relax in a private room, but the air is tense.

"I'm surprised that you're so cooperative with this operation," Yunia calmly remarks to Ciel.

"I'm an honorary Templar. If I had stuck to that path, I would've eventually had to purge corrupt nobles like Faustus anyway," she calmly replies.

Yunia hums amusedly. "Still. Your kind personality makes it jarring to see you kill anything."

"I agree," I agree.

And Ciel snorts, but she doesn't feel like arguing against this "compliment," so she changes the topic, "I'd be more worried about Lina. She always hides her negative feelings from us." Then she gives our little wife a worried look.

But Lina becomes awkward. "I'm not against this operation either," she quietly admits, surprising Ciel a bit.

And now the succubus pounces on the opportunity for some banter, "Why do you think Lina is so good at [Cursing Magic]? She has a sadistic side to her that she's embarrassed to show."

The "little sister" glares at the "older sister," but she can't deny it, especially since we can read her thoughts.

"Right…" Ciel hums, sounding conflicted.

"We all love each other, despite each of us having 'nasty' personality traits," Alissa diplomatically states.

And that cheers up Ciel again. "Right! Yes! It doesn't matter what any one of us likes as long as we keep it under control!"

"Roleplaying and reality are to be kept separate," I state sagely, but then I begin to wonder if we should get Lina to try out [Dark Magic]. I search my memories for the spells of that magic school, but I quickly realize that they don't seem to be useful enough to be worth the effort, so I push that thought away.

Suddenly, the small transparent gem at the center of the table glows with a faint green color. Fleur must've activated the other gem of the Bound Pair, the signal that she has agreed to our request.

I open a [Gate] to the small plank that we had delivered along with the gift, and I send a small summoned bird first. Once I deem that there's no ambush, we start crossing through.

For a split second, we feel like our bodies are in free-fall, and we suddenly find ourselves in a very werefox/Japanese room, with waxed dark gray floorboards, thin sliding walls, and cushions around a simple, low table.

"Fleur!" Ciel shouts and rushes to embrace her small ginger friend, then the chocolate angel extends an arm and pulls Calum, Fleur's handsome blonde husband, into the hug.

The noisy trio shrieks in happiness as they're reunited once again, but it doesn't last long since everyone else is here too, waiting for them.

Then Ciel kindly explains, "Thank you for doing this for us. We need to be discreet, so we had to do it this way."

"It's not a problem. You can use our humble home as much as you need; we just might not have room for everyone," Fleur politely replies, then smiles wryly.

As long as Aoi stays human-sized, we'll be fine here for a little while.

But we don't abuse their hospitality for long as we already know where Faustus lives.

A note from Manasong

Hall of Fame of Patrons

The patrons who support Rupegia shall have their names sung by the bards for they deserve the glory and honor. Their names are:

Prince PreownedFIN.

Prince Owldente.

Lord Andrew Meyers.

Lord Novgarod.

Lord Michale Erwin.

Lord Bakerdea.

Lord Maurice.

Lord Mattirro Draca.

Lord Sean Drake.

Lord Mike Bartter.

Lord Warwulfv.

Lord Khristopher Welsh.

Lord Tenebris Lupus.

Lord Paul Daval.

Lord Paul Daval.

Lord AndreyUC.

Lord Tmac.

Lord School Work.

Lord CopeyDunt.

Lord BlindTactic.

Lord litalmexy.

Lord Philip.

Lord d3235.

Lord William Clark.

Lord Ddraig Wynn.

Lord CardinalSteiner.

Lord Cidant.

Lord SubJef.

Noble Salty Panda.

Noble Mild Fracas.

Noble Aclys.

Noble Carl  Baxter.

Noble Tony Starrk.

Noble GalacticTNT.

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Chapter 147: The Fall - Part 1

Faustus is in his home, sitting at his desk in his office, drinking something. There are enchantments that prevent us from coming from above, though they're hardly strong enough to actually stop us, it's just that we don't want to make a mess, so we infiltrate through the most obvious weak point: the main gates.

Mistcross is a border town between the Mainland and the Misty Low Forest, so it actually gets a bit misty at night, and nobody is going to notice if a home in the Nobles' Quarter looks just a bit more misty than usual.

We observe intently through the summons as we wait, and soon we notice the guards starting to become a bit more lax at their posts, so Alissa begins the next phase: a single [Mesmerizing Butterfly] coupled with [Pacify], a very straining combo for her to maintain.

I walk up to the gate, my facial and draconic features hidden, and the guards barely react to my presence due to the drowsiness and sedation working in tandem on their minds. They're drowning in peaceful memories or cozy daydreams, making me question the correctness of [Illusion Magic] school's skill name, but I guess it's simply because the skill isn't "finished," so the spells aren't as thematic as they should be.

Regardless, it still works perfectly for this situation as I softly order, "Open the gate." And the man behind the metal bars nods drowsily, then obeys.

I slowly cross the gates, trying not to make any sudden moves to not alert the distracted guards, and the girls follow after me while invisible.

We walk down the small cobble path to the large house, a nice two-story home in the standard imperial yellow brick with red clay roof style. Big enough to house a full family with servants while leaving enough room for guests. There's a small garden at the front with a fountain and another garden at the back for private relaxation.

Not the lowest home for a noble, but also far from the most extravagant. Perfect for someone right in the middle of the totem pole.

We don't know if someone inside has [Sense Presence], so only Alissa, Yunia, and I enter the building while the rest stay outside on stand-by.

The interior of the house is tiled in extravagant patterns, the kinds that an ambitious man who wants to impress others would choose. The furniture isn't anything special, but it follows the same style of wanting to be more than it is.

The lights in the corridors are on, but they're all eerily empty, except for the kitchen and Faustus' office, where someone who walks like a "Sebastian" has just entered.

We quickly walk up the stairs and stop by the door to the office. There doesn't seem to be a sound-canceling enchantment, so Alissa is able to eavesdrop on their talk.

"Away with you, Sebastian… the Ryders will arrive any moment, now," a tired and slurring voice orders. It seems that Faustus is a bit drunk.

An older and agitated voice replies, "I'll spread the truth far and wide. I won't allow you to die in vain!"

And Faustus harshly lays it all out, "Your attempt to clutch at pride marks the backs of my children with the dagger of death. Let it die with me." His speech is overly flowery and a bit hard to understand, even for the girls.

"But, Master-…!"

"Sebastian…!" Faustus raises his voice.

The servant suddenly turns around and starts storming out of the office, so we move out of the way and hide in the room beside it. He passes by us without noticing our presence, his footsteps echoing loudly in the empty home, but they quickly die out as the servant leaves and doesn't come back.

We don't waste this chance, silently entering the office.

Faustus is a thin and short imperial man with one of those handlebar mustaches that shines due to excessive use of wax, and his posh grooming style makes him look rather punchable. We've seen him only once before, at the gathering at the top of the Throne of Ascension, and he seemed extremely frightened by us, but now he's so ghastly that he looks to be just a step away from a coffin.

"Faustus…" I call to him, and he lifts his sunken eyes from his glass of alcohol.

"Ryders…" he weakly replies but shows no other reaction.

Part of me wants to simply behead him and get this over with, but a bigger part needs more than just revenge; it needs closure.

"Why did you try to coerce us into joining you?" I stoically ask.

"Fodder, that is our role in Katasko," he cryptically replies.

I narrow my eyes and slowly step forward while he pours more alcohol into his cup. "How would our strength help you with that?"

He stops and raises one long eyebrow at me. "Do you seriously wish to hear me drone about Katasko's intricate politics? You are about to end our unholy union once and for all anyway…"

I check with the girls, and they accept my request, so we sit down in the chairs in front of his desk, and all the while, he still holds that one eyebrow high up on his forehead while staring at me. "I need to understand why you dragged my family into this mess."

He snorts again, a bit of life coming into his dead gaze. "Consumable, replaceable, disposable. Alone? A twig. Together? An unbreakable bundle. Except that we stumble and scatter at the merest pebble in our path," he continues with his irritatingly flowery language.

I interlace my fingers and rest them on my lap to keep my claws from digging grooves into the armrests. "You're not answering my question."

He downs his glass and then scowls angrily as he shouts, "Power! Strength! That's everything! I needed my own pieces so that I could be a player on the board!" Then his face warps in a sneer. "But you just had to be an accursed Gifted!"

Now it's my turn to raise an eyebrow. "Why do you hate the Gifted?"

"Untamable, unbreakable. You'll always grow bigger than your master, and nobody is insane enough to try to put a leash on you," he answers, still insufferably pretentious.

"There's irony here," Yunia wryly remarks and snorts.

But (and I hate to admit it) there's also truth. What if Brett becomes uncontrollable and unstoppable? What if he tries to sabotage us? What if he becomes our enemy? I pray we never end up needing him more than he needs us.

Faustus doesn't even give me time to reflect properly before he continues with his drivel, "I care not for humor. It left me once the players put on their masks and began ordering the pieces about."

How… melodramatic.

"Pieces in a game. Is that all we were to you?" Alissa sternly asks, thoroughly disgusted at his words.

"That's what we all are!" he shouts as he slams his glass against the desk in anger.

And Ciel's thoughts line up perfectly with Yunia's cold response, "Wrong, that is what you have chosen for yourself."

"The pieces sleep comfortably at night knowing it's their fault they live on a board," he grumbles back. I don't even know what the fuck he means anymore.

"Why didn't you just run?" I ask, in disbelief at his melodramatic whining.

He turns his punchable face to his empty glass as he gloomily moans dramatically again, "The fodder will either die in battle or be eaten by the bulls if we fail."

It takes us a couple of seconds to decipher his words, but they still leave us confused.

"Will they really kill you all?" Yunia unemotionally asks.

"The price has to be paid in Experience, and they'll collect it, no matter how long they have to wait," he replies in kind.

It's hard to feel sympathy for these rotten nobles, but what enrages me is his attitude about this. "So, you've just resigned yourself to your death?" I snarl, my disgust matching Alissa's.

He nods and smiles smugly. "Yes. Better for you to murder me than to be butchered like cattle, but my family is already in hiding, so keep them out of this."

And I warn him, "Pray they don't attempt to 'join the game,' or we'll treat them like pieces all the same."

"They won't…" he growls and glowers, finally showing an emotion other than self-pity. His handlebar mustache doesn't make him look very threatening, though. Barely passable for a villain.

But now I have no more questions, so I'll put an end to this.

"Very well, then I shall make this painless," I state as I stand. Then I summon six Dream Eaters, floating masks with bodies of soporific mist.

He shows a modicum of true nobility by keeping a stiff jaw and glaring at me until the mist affects him and he falls asleep, so I'll honor him by keeping my word. Unlike with Cleinias, I won't parade his head about, so I merely stab him in the back of the head and leave his corpse in his seat.

I'm not sure if questioning him helped me at all. Not only can I barely remember what he said due to his insufferable way of speaking, but the answers themselves only made me angrier.

The only thing I know for sure is that I must keep that list of Katasko names close by. Even after we dismantle that corrupted organization through the Purification, their members must be killed to not allow their rot to latch onto the empire again.

I enter the warm water and seek out Ciel's delicious body. Even though my body is warm, my heart feels cold, and I desire pampering from big titty mommy. Then Yunia joins us of her own will, and I rejoice as stern mommy also shows me her very warm love.

People say that revenge is a dish best served cold, but it was barely even a dish at all as it left me unfulfilled. I know that what I did was necessary, that we can't just be merciful to everyone, but I still didn't want to do it.

The Companions, Klein, and the adventurers all finally arrive at the bath. They've already cleaned themselves, but I called for them in case they still wanted to soak in the water with us.

"You called us pretty late. Were you busy with work?" Khepri casually asks, and the Companions all tense up awkwardly at the sensitive question.

"We were," I answer softly, but that just makes the adventurers look at me oddly.

"You sound down…" Khepri points out, her juicy lips pressed together in a cute pout.

"You all look down," Edjo calmly adds as she scans the wives.

Klein stops walking and frowns at their lack of tact, then turns her eyes towards us. "It's better to just tell them what happened instead of being vague," she affirms concernedly, and Hana agrees wholeheartedly. Adventurers can't help themselves from being blunt.

Edjo immediately realizes what's going on and assumes a diplomatic tone. "Oh, uhm… we didn't want to intrude on private business."

Alissa sighs tiredly and explains for me, "It's fine. We killed an enemy today, but it's no cause to celebrate."

"You mean, a humanoid?" Laguly innocently adds, and Lolo cringes at the awkward air that settles in.

My loyal fox wife nods. "Yes, a noble."

"Oh…" Khepri hums in realization, her juicy lips now puckered like she just sucked on a lemon.

But Laguly is overtaken with morbid curiosity, "Is it true that you gain a lot of Experience from other humanoids?"

"We do, like when you kill a new type of monster for the first time," I answer stoically.

"Ew~…" she groans girlishly as she frowns, making me chuckle softly.

"Having pieces of the souls of your enemies inside you sounds awful," Khepri whines as she strips, which is a very nice view with her luscious body.

"Better than pieces of souls from goblins and orcs?" Roxanne banters back while her eyes mirror mine.

The bubbly woman freezes with her panties halfway down at her knees. "Oh… Then I guess not. At least your enemies are humanoids…"

And their presence lightens up the heaviness in our hearts, which is exactly what I wanted when I called for them.

Dinner is another boring event as we really don't enjoy the presence of the Princesses, so, just to fuck with Sa'Haa, I make conversation with the androgynous little Prince.

"Prince Tommen, I don't know much about you, so could you tell me about your hobbies and interests?" I interject as politely as I can.

Vanea flashes a raised eyebrow at me when Tommen isn't looking, and the dwarf Prince stares at me in wonder, as if it's the first time he's actually looked at me properly.

"Well, I-…"

"He's a philosopher, a ponderer of the most important matters," Vanea interrupts him, then smiles like an innocent little not-princess when he turns his head to give her a glare.

"Not just a scholar, but a philosopher?" I question further.

He turns back to me and sagely explains, "A scholar studies books of tangible matters while a philosopher explores abstract concepts."

Oh, God, please don't tell me he's a pretentious "independent thinker."

"What topics do you ponder about?" I inquire, hiding my cringe.

"A wide variety of topics, though lately, I've been focused on the meaning of life. What I really enjoy doing is merely building structures with my thoughts."

I hum thoughtfully as I try to comprehend him, "Hmm… You mean something like the organization and classification of thoughts?"

He nods while smiling adorably. "Yes, things like that."

Sounds very dwarfy.

Then he goes into an explanation of the philosophies he's been studying.

Rupegian philosophy is constrained by the fact that we've been created by Gods who have given us a clear, though open-ended goal: to grow.

The temple interprets that our purpose is to Ascend and become Gods ourselves; the adventurers believe their purpose is to level up; the rulers believe that their domain should grow; the father and mother believe that they should raise children; the crafter believes that they should push their skills to their limits; and so on and so forth.

Basically, Rupegian philosophies revolve around finding the true meaning of life by deriving it from the one given by the Gods, so most of the philosophies from Earth are simply invalid in this world, but, interestingly, the question of whether or not we have free will is a bit controversial.

Due to the existence of the Threads of Fate, your future is already decided unless you're someone who "makes your own path" or "takes control of your Fate" (i.e., heroes), so how can you be in control of your own will if your future has already been decided for you without your input? It also isn't clear whether it's possible for a random person to "take control of their Fate" at any time in their lives or if they're already born in control, so there's a lot of discussion in that area.

But, for the temple, the truth is clear: everyone has free will. Otherwise, the Gods of Origin are responsible for the existence of the Wicked. Technically, they are responsible, but that's only because Order and Destruction always hinder and disrupt whatever Change and Creation attempt to do, which has resulted in certain humanoids going explicitly against the purpose of life given by Creation… unless those humanoids' purpose is to stimulate us to grow… but if that were true, then why would we need the Genderless God of Existence?

"And that's where the reasoning starts to make circles around itself, and I don't want to confuse myself trying to untangle that mess," Tommen wryly remarks.

In essence, the temple believes that we have free will because the Gods stop each other from assuming absolute control over us.

That's kind of frightening, but okay…

"But I'll stop there before I start to bore you," he finishes with a cute smile.

"And it might not be appropriate to suggest heretical ideas to a family so Blessed by the Gods," Vanea softly adds and glances at Ciel, who's starting to become uncomfortable with the topic at hand.

The little Prince nods repeatedly, making his shoulder-length hair sway just like Lina's bangs. "Yes, there's also that…"

Tommen is actually a cool dude, and I wish that one day, our Ryder Institute will grow into something interesting enough for him to join us.

Anyway, this was a nice talk, which is refreshing as the tension from the upcoming battle continues to rise within our hearts.

After dinner, we retreat to our room and have some fun with the Companions and the adventurers, but I'm in a brooding mood, so I go out onto the balcony to drink Eia on our sofa while I observe the night sky and pet Aoi and Gify.

But we're not allowed to brood for long.

"Can I sit with you?" my monkey girl kindly asks as she stops beside my sofa.

"Sure," I hum and pat the open spot on my left.

She sits down and leans back on the cushions but then turns her head towards me and cutely asks with a soft pout, "Are you feeling alright?"

I smile and squeeze her thigh, then continue petting Aoi. "Yeah, why do you ask?"

And she gives me a wry smile as her long brown tail waves amusedly. "Well, we don't have the connection that you have with your wives, so I have to ask to confirm things."

I chuckle softly. Indeed, being asked what I feel has become unusual since I just let the girls read my mind any time they want.

But it doesn't take long for me to identify the reason for my sour mood.

"Killing people hurts me," I wistfully confess.

Her gaze becomes soft, and I feel like pinching her brown cheeks with how cute the monkey girl looks. "I thought you'd be used to it by now. The others seem to be…"

I stare up at the psychedelic moon and its many little orbiting moons as I reply, "I don't want to get used to killing, so I just let the wound stay open and endure the pain."

"And we help him heal," small-Aoi chimes in with her chipmunk voice, and her little tail starts waving about in contentment, just like mine.

"Gih," Gify agrees, still unmoving as she won't dare interrupt my petting.

Klein pulls her legs up onto the sofa to make herself smaller as she bashfully asks, "Can I… can I help, too?"

"Sure," I whisper warmly, then I pull her closer and make sure that her long, furry tail is firmly wrapped around mine.

Today is the 14th, An, day of Wind. The most fragrant day in the High Forest due to the wind carrying the pollen and perfumes from the innumerable flowers to every part of the forest.

And just that bit of trivia is enough to make me homesick. I just want to finally be done with this stupid fucking battle and go home…

Today, the dragon wakes up before the human, who remains in bed for a while longer as he won't be needed for a while.

We have enough time to calmly eat our breakfast, then we begin the final preparations before leaving for battle.

This, of course, also means that the adventurers have plenty of time to give us their blessings and wish us good luck.

"We've only known each other for a few days, yet you're making me feel things I didn't believe were possible," Edjo wistfully remarks.

I gently cup the gray catgirl's cheek, and she rubs it against my scaly (and spirit-padded) palm while cheekily staring at me.

"You Lords are just… hngh~…!" Khepri adds and moans seductively to relate her feelings about us.

Hana and Roxanne walk up to her and basically kabedon the bubbly woman.

"We can't bring you their heads, but we'll bring you their weapons as trophies," Hana boldly states while grinning fearsomely.

"After their defeat, we'll celebrate with a grand party," Roxanne adds with a dreamy tone as she leans against Hana's bountiful chest, and both Edjo and Khepri look very excited about that.

Then I release Edjo and walk up to the cute tomboy siren.

"Stay safe…" Laguly shyly whispers, then blushes embarrassedly as her floating hair starts to become stormy.

"We will. It's more of a competition than a battle, though," I soothingly reassure her.

She nods and replies with more vigor in her voice, "Then good luck, and fight to win."

"That, we will…" I whisper and kiss her forehead.

But Lolo is the most awkward of them all. There's something she wants to say, to do, but she's too conflicted to make a decision right now.

"Come watch," Hukarere suddenly interjects, and the bunny girl gives her a confused look. "Come see it for yourself."

The other Companions support Hukarere's statement and nod at the indecisive bun bun. But it's Klein's encouragement that pushes her forward, "You need to see the truth of your own power."

And then we finally leave for battle.

A note from Manasong

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Chapter 147: The Fall - Part 2

A note from Manasong

Attention: to conform to the limit of mature content (more than just sexual content) allowed in a novel, I've censored this chapter. You can look for the uncensored version here.

Our skills are like this:

Wolf Ryder Skill Report

Physical

Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level
Sword Use | 13+17 | Hammer Use | 9+1 | Spear Use | 16+4
Polearm Use | 12+8 | Dodge | 12+8 | Parry | 13+6
Block | 11+8 | Shield Bash | 4+1 | Battlefield Perception | 7+3
Muscle Explosion | 4+1 | Acrobatics | 13+2 | Ekrano Style (creator) | 6

Magical

Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level
Sense Mana | 0+6 | Mana Control | 3+17 | Mana Recovery | 10+0
Mana Efficiency | 13+7 | Reduced Mana Cost | 13+7 | Mana Overuse Resistance | 6+4
Blackout Resistance | 0+1 | Fire Magic | 1+4 | Earth Magic | 6+4
Water Magic | 4+1 | Wind Magic | 1+4 | Electric Magic | 6+14
Light Magic | 2+13 | Space Magic | 7+23 | Summoning Magic | 6+36
Blessing Magic | 27+23 | Nature Magic | 0+20 | Conjuring Magic | 1+4
Spirit Magic | 0+3 | Illusion Magic | 0+2 | Golemancy | 0+12
Redirect Mana (creator) | 7 | Sense Soul (creator) | 6 | Soul Manipulation (creator) | 10
Godly Language | 30+5 | Dragon Transformation (innate) | 7 | Equipment System | 5+5

Miscellaneous

Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level
Dancing | 0+1 | Cooking | 0+4 | Andraste Language | 4+6
Dismantling | 0+4 | Piloting | 0+3 | Massage | 0+4
Spicy Charm | 0+2 | Oral Technique | 0+1 | Mana Body (innate) | 6
Chaos Breath (innate) | 0+1

Info

Name | Wolf Ryder | Age | 17 | Race | Weredragon
HP | 100 | MP | 2130 | Magic Power | 935
Level | 62

Stats

Strength | 15 | Endurance | 17 | Dexterity | 12
Speed | 15 | Intelligence | 22 | Wisdom | 20
Willpower | 19 | Charisma | 17 | Piety | 17
Perception | 18 | Sanity | 15+4

Other

Status Effects | 'NONE'

Titles

'Nickname "Good Luck", Blessed by the Goddess of Knowledge, Golemancer, Scholar of Rabanara, True Noble, Lord of Escanso, Crown Lord of the Western High Forest, Shapeshifter, Protector of the Last Crown'

Affiliations

'Helios (Fellowship), Alissa Ryder (Wife), Hanafuria Ryder (Wife), Roxanne Ryder (Wife), Lina Ryder (Wife), Ciel Ryder (Wife), Aoi Ryder (Wife), Yulania Ryder (Wife), Servant Blood Slaves'

Companions | 'Alissa Ryder, Roxanne Ryder, Hanafuria Ryder, Ciel Ryder, Lina Ryder, Aoi Ryder, Yulania Ryder'
Crimes | 'NONE'

Alissa Ryder Skill Report

Physical

Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level
Sword Use | 9 | Bow Use | 42 | Parry | 6+4
Dodge | 2+8 | Sense Presence | 12 | Hide Presence | 2+8
Enhanced Olfact | 5 | Enhanced Hearing | 5 | Hawk Eyes | 7
Muscle Explosion | 1+6 | Quiet Steps | 5 | Quiet Action | 4
Enhanced Stamina | 1+4 | Enhanced Reflexes | 2+8 | Tracking | 3

Magical

Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level
Sense Mana | 1 | Mana Control | 2+8 | Reduced Mana Cost | 9+1
Mana Efficiency | 10+0 | Fire Magic | 1 | Earth Magic | 4+1
Water Magic | 1 | Wind Magic | 1 | Light Magic | 1
Space Magic | 1 | Conjuring Magic | 1 | Illusion Magic | 1+19
Fox Transformation (innate) | 8 | Equipment System | 6+4

Miscellaneous

Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level
Housework | 3 | Cooking | 4 | Cleaning | 2
Washing | 5 | Riding | 2 | Oral Technique | 4
Pain Resistance | 2 | Hand Technique | 2

Info

Name | Alissa Ryder | Age | 17 | Race | Fox-type Wereanimal
HP | 100 | MP | 1415 | Magic Power | 705
Level | 62

Stats

Strength | 13 | Endurance | 19 | Dexterity | 24
Speed | 20 | Intelligence | 14 | Wisdom | 16
Willpower | 17 | Charisma | 17 | Piety | 18
Perception | 19 | Sanity | 20

Other

Status Effects | 'NONE'

Titles

'Blessed by the Goddess of Love, Blinding Arrows, True Noble, Lord of Escanso, Crown Lord of the Western High Forest, Protect of the Last Crown'

Affiliations | 'Wolf Ryder (Husband), Helios (Fellowship)'
Companions | 'Wolf Ryder, Roxanne Ryder, Hanafuria Ryder, Ciel Ryder, Lina Ryder, Aoi Ryder, Yulania Ryder'
Crimes | 'NONE'

Roxanne Ryder Skill Report

Physical

Skill Name | Level
Dagger Use | 2

Magical

Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level
Sense Mana | 0+3 | Mana Control | 6+34 | Reduced Mana Cost | 21+7
Mana Efficiency | 10+10 | Mana Overuse Resistance | 4+1 | Fire Magic | 4+36
Earth Magic | 4+1 | Water Magic | 4+36 | Light Magic | 1
Space Magic | 14 | Conjuring Magic | 5 | Alteration Magic | 2
Alchemy | 12 | Potion Brewing | 12 | Poison Brewing | 2
Redirect Mana | 2 | Equipment System | 4+6

Miscellaneous

Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level
Housework | 1 | Cooking | 1 | Cleaning | 1
Washing | 1 | Riding | 1

Info

Name | Roxanne Ryder | Age | 22 | Race | Succubus-Type Demon Race
HP | 100 | MP | 3390 | Magic Power | 1530
Level | 62

Stats

Strength | 10 | Endurance | 12 | Dexterity | 12
Speed | 9 | Intelligence | 18 | Wisdom | 21
Willpower | 17 | Charisma | 17 | Piety | 11
Perception | 12 | Sanity | 17

Other

Status Effects | 'NONE'

Titles

'Master of Poisons and Venoms, Scholar of Xane, True Noble, Lord of Escanso, Crown Lord of the Western High Forest, Protect of the Last Crown'

Affiliations | 'Wolf Ryder (Husband), Hanafuria Ryder (Wife), Helios (Fellowship)'
Companions | 'Wolf Ryder, Alissa Ryder, Hanafuria Ryder, Ciel Ryder, Lina Ryder, Aoi Ryder, Yulania Ryder'
Crimes | 'NONE'

Hanafuria Ryder Skill Report

Physical

Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level
Sword Use | 31 | Spear Use | 18 | Bow Use | 11
Two-Handed Sword Use | 11 | Polearm Use | 8 | Dagger Use | 4
Shield Bash | 0+8 | Block | 16 | Parry | 10
Dodge | 12 | Tatesomu Style | 10 | Muscle Explosion | 8
Battlefield Perception | 10 | Taunt | 3 | Intimidate | 4

Magical

Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level
Sense Mana | 1 | Mana Control | 2+8 | Reduced Mana Cost | 5+1
Mana Efficiency | 2 | Fire Magic | 1 | Earth Magic | 4+1
Water Magic | 1+0 | Wind Magic | 1+0 | Electric Magic | 1
Light Magic | 1 | Space Magic | 1 | Conjuring Magic | 1
Illusion Magic | 5 | Godly Language | 2 | Equipment System | 6+4

Miscellaneous

Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level
Housework | 2 | Cooking | 1 | Cleaning | 1
Washing | 1 | Riding | 3 | Massage | 1
Pain Conversion | 1 | Dismantling | 4 | Oral Technique | 1
Fire Breath (innate) | 7 | Summon Wings (innate) | 10 | Draconic Body (creator) | 8

Info

Name | Hanafuria Ryder | Age | 24 | Race | Fire-Type Dragonkin
HP | 150 | MP | 1130 | Magic Power | 555
Level | 63

Stats

Strength | 19 | Endurance | 27 | Dexterity | 11
Speed | 16 | Intelligence | 12 | Wisdom | 16
Willpower | 22 | Charisma | 18 | Piety | 12
Perception | 10 | Sanity | 18

Other

Status Effects | 'NONE'
Titles | 'One Thousand Strikes, True Noble, Lord of Escanso, Crown Lord of the Western High Forest, Protect of the Last Crown'
Affiliations | 'Wolf Ryder (Husband), Roxanne Ryder (Wife), 'Helios (Fellowship)'
Companions | 'Wolf Ryder, Alissa Ryder, Roxanne Ryder, Ciel Ryder, Lina Ryder, Aoi Ryder, Yulania Ryder'
Crimes | 'NONE'

Ciel Ryder Skill Report

Physical

Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level
Glaive Use | 30 | Sword Use | 4+6 | Parry | 3+12
Dodge | 2+13 | Block | 8+7 | Imperial Hasterrum Style | 0+3
Muscle Explosion | 2 | Battlefield Perception | 2 | Battlefield Perception | 2

Magical

Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level
Sense Mana | 2 | Mana Control | 4+6 | Reduced Mana Cost | 7+3
Mana Efficiency | 6+5 | Wind Magic | 11+29 | Fire Magic | 1
Earth Magic | 5+0 | Light Magic | 6+34 | Space Magic | 3
Conjuring Magic | 1 | Diagnosis | 7 | Redirect Mana | 2
Equipment System | 5+5

Miscellaneous

Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level
First-Aid | 3 | Housework | 3 | Cooking | 2
Cleaning | 2 | Washing | 1 | Riding | 1

Info

Name | Ciel Ryder | Age | 22 | Race | Human
HP | 100 | MP | 1640 | Magic Power | 970
Level | 62

Stats

Strength | 14 | Endurance | 15 | Dexterity | 17
Speed | 18 | Intelligence | 16 | Wisdom | 22
Willpower | 16 | Charisma | 19 | Piety | 27
Perception | 13 | Sanity | 23

Other

Status Effects | 'NONE'

Titles

'Star of Hope, True Noble, Lord of Escanso, Crown Lord of the Western High Forest, Protect of the Last Crown, Decien, Honorary Sky Captain'

Affiliations

'Wolf Ryder (Husband), Lina Ryder (Wife), Helios (Fellowship), Templar Knights (Honorary Member), Temple Priestess (Former Member)'

Companions | 'Wolf Ryder, Alissa Ryder, Roxanne Ryder, Hanafuria Ryder, Lina Ryder, Aoi Ryder, Yulania Ryder'
Crimes | 'NONE'

Lina Ryder Skill Report

Physical

Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level
Hammer Use | 3+27 | Axe Use | 1+19 | Throw | 1+9
Parry | 10 | Dodge | 4+6 | Block | 1+14
Muscle Explosion | 2 | Shield Bash | 4+1 | Battlefield Perception | 2
Dwarven Pride Style | 1+4 | Enhanced Speed | 4+1

Magical

Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level
Sense Mana | 1 | Mana Control | 2+8 | Reduced Mana Cost | 5+0
Mana Efficiency | 9+1 | Fire Magic | 1 | Earth Magic | 11
Water Magic | 1 | Wind Magic | 1+0 | Light Magic | 1
Cursing Magic | 11+12 | Space Magic | 1 | Conjuring Magic | 1
General Enchanting | 7+13 | Magic Tool Carving | 2+8 | Equipment System | 5+5

Miscellaneous

Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level
General Blacksmithing | 5 | Sewing | 4 | Housework | 1
Cleaning | 2 | Washing | 1 | Math | 5
Riding | 1 | Stonebody (innate) | 9

Info

Name | Lina Ryder | Age | 16 | Race | Dwarf
HP | 100 | MP | 1570 | Magic Power | 675
Level | 62

Stats

Strength | 8 | Endurance | 8 | Dexterity | 13
Speed | 12 | Intelligence | 16 | Wisdom | 15
Willpower | 18 | Charisma | 13 | Piety | 13
Perception | 14 | Sanity | 17

Other

Status Effects | 'NONE'
Titles | 'True Noble, Lord of Escanso, Crown Lord of the Western High Forest, Protect of the Last Crown'
Affiliations | 'Wolf Ryder (Husband), Ciel Ryder (Wife), 'Helios (Fellowship)'
Companions | 'Wolf Ryder, Alissa Ryder, Roxanne Ryder, Hanafuria Ryder, Ciel Ryder, Aoi Ryder, Yulania Ryder'
Crimes | 'NONE'

Info

Name | Aoi Ryder | Age | 3 | Race | Azurite Dragon
HP | 200 | MP | 1770 | Magic Power | 535
Level | 49

Stats

Strength | 18 | Endurance | 23 | Dexterity | 8
Speed | 14 | Intelligence | 11 | Wisdom | 11
Willpower | 19 | Charisma | 13 | Piety | 9
Perception | 12 | Sanity | 20

Other

Status Effects | 'NONE'
Titles | 'True Noble, Lord of Escanso, Crown Lord of the Western High Forest, Protector of the Last Crown'
Affiliations | 'Wolf Ryder (Husband), Helios (Fellowship)'
Companions | 'Wolf Ryder, Alissa Ryder, Roxanne Ryder, Hanafuria Ryder, Ciel Ryder, Lina Ryder, Yulania Ryder'
Crimes | 'NONE'

Yulania Ryder Skill Report

Physical

Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level
Sword Use | 12 | Two-Handed Sword Use | 19 | Parry | 12
Dodge | 4+11 | Silent Shadow Style | 5 | Battlefield Perception | 8
Enhanced Reflexes | 6 | Sense Presence | 2 | Hide Presence | 5
Muscle Explosion | 5 | Quiet Steps | 2 | Quiet Action | 6
Enhanced Stamina | 5+0

Magical

Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level
Sense Mana | 7 | Mana Control | 1+4 | Mana Recovery | 2
Mana Efficiency | 2+8 | Reduced Mana Cost | 1+4 | Fire Magic | 1
Earth Magic | 2+3 | Water Magic | 1 | Wind Magic | 1+0
Electric Magic | 1 | Light Magic | 5 | Spirit Magic | 2+25
Illusion Magic | 10 | Space Magic | 6 | Nature Magic | 4+11
Conjuring Magic | 1 | Weaverism | 31 | Redirect Mana | 1+0
Equipment System | 5+5

Miscellaneous

Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level | Skill Name | Level
Riding | 5 | Acting | 3 | Dancing | 2

Info

Name | Yulania Ryder | Age | 18 | Race | Golden Elf
HP | 100 | MP | 1370 | Magic Power | 690
Level | 64

Stats

Strength | 13 | Endurance | 16 | Dexterity | 19
Speed | 17 | Intelligence | 16 | Wisdom | 19
Willpower | 16 | Charisma | 22 | Piety | 14
Perception | 21 | Sanity | 18

Other

Status Effects | 'NONE'
Titles | 'True Noble, Lord of Escanso, Crown Lord of the Western High Forest, Protect of the Last Crown'
Affiliations | 'Wolf Ryder (Husband), 'Helios (Fellowship)'
Companions | 'Wolf Ryder, Alissa Ryder, Hanafuria Ryder, Roxanne Ryder, Ciel Ryder, Lina Ryder, Aoi Ryder'
Crimes | 'NONE'

For me, I focused more on balancing my multiple melee skills for better synergy with my tentacles. For the girls, we just make some small readjustments to their skills so that everyone can cast [Earth Wall] on demand, which is the most useful of the Wall spells.

My MP increased by 130 (now 2130) and my MPower increased by 75 (935); Alissa's MP increased by 95 (now 1415) and MPower increased by 50 (now 705); Roxanne's MP increased by 175 (now 3390) and MPower increased by 90 (now 1530); Hana's MP increased by 80 (now 1130) and MPower increased by 40 (now 555); Ciel's MP increased by 140 (now 1640) and MPower increased by 75 (now 970); Lina's MP increased by 145 (now 1570) and MPower increased by 55 (now 675); Aoi's MP increased by 160 (now 1770) and MPower increased by 80 (535); and Yunia's MP increased by 120 (now 1370) and MPower increased by 60 (690).

The orb-boosted mana circulation training is certainly going to remain as our standard from now on since it's basically doubled our gains.

We make our camp in a flat field a few kilometri from Mac Gantus. The grass is thick and reaches my thighs, the ground is soft and a bit muddy, and the sky is cloudy and stormy. The terrain dictates that this will be a sluggish battle.

But I'm rather suspicious about the storm. This area should still be within the capital's "perfect weather" zone, so a storm outside of Ne, the day of Water? Sure, today is the day of Wind, but it isn't the day of Storms.

I absentmindedly fiddle with my new [Blink] gem under my armor while I observe the strong winds creating waves in the field of long, bright green grass. This gem is courtesy of Sa'Haa and Lina's Gift-boosted [General Enchanting]. Cleinias' [Blink] (which is in Lina's possession) is still far superior to this one, but just having each of us equipped with a [Blink] gem is already a massive boon for us.

We were also given a variety of protective talismans in the form of jewelry. They're supposed to mitigate whatever psychological attacks Katasko might use against us, like [Monster Summoning] spam, and though the talismans aren't perfect counters, they still allow us to laugh off almost any dark magic that Katasko could throw at us. But Katasko likely also has a similar supply of talismans, so summoning "Status Effect"-inducing monsters won't be an effective use of my MP.

Hana accidentally [Blink]s a couple of centimetri above the ground and reflexively summons her large emerald wings, blocking my view of the field of entrancing, wavy grass.

"How can you be so bad at this when your kinetic vision is so good?" I remark with a frown, mildly annoyed at the interruption.

"Controlling magic is hard, okay?" she flippantly replies with a pout as she lands.

But then my trance is soon broken again as the men notice a caravan approaching our location… two caravans, actually, as the smaller one seems to be breaking off from the main one and speeding up as much as their Rontis can manage as it starts to come our way. Then we see Vanea walking across the camp, now wearing black scale armor and even a battle skirt, and her presence confirms that it's Apeiltik who's approaching us.

There's nothing for us to do, so we simply gather up on the field and wait while Yunia and Alissa give short greetings to the nobles that have come to fill our ranks, then another short one to Apeiltik when he arrives. But once they're done, it's time for our Gestalt, so I begin sneaking spicy tentacles into everyone's armor. Warm flowers, juicy assets, pointy bits, hard abs, round bottoms, I savor them all as I keep my own excitement high.

We notice some movement behind us, and I turn my head to see the Companions making way for Léonne and Allura as they approach us, Jacques and Ofilia suspiciously absent as the two haven't left their tent in a while.

"Wolf," Léonne greets, but Allura doesn't, immediately stunned by my steamy look as desire takes hold of me.

"Léonne," I reply and smile softly, holding back a sound as my breath quickens.

"I have a feeling that this weather was purposely chosen to-…" She suddenly stops and gives us a questioning look. "I know that Alissa told you how sensitive our sense of smell is, so-…" She suddenly turns her head to her daughter and raises an eyebrow at her. "Allura…?"

But the young girl is still too weak to my spicy aura as she has barely begun learning how to control her sword-hunger, and she also remembers the smell of our excitement very well, so it's already too late. The foxy sl-t has already been charmed. Léonne understands this, and she isn't cruel enough to want to teach her daughter a lesson, so she sighs in resignation.

I turn my sneaky tentacles into Tools and blatantly do the girls, drawing soft sounds of bliss from all of them.

"Come here," I order Allura, and the tomboy fox obeys unhesitatingly, her eyes locked with mine.

I pull her into a hug and kiss her deeply, entering her mouth and wrestling with her inexperienced tongue. She's slender and a bit taller than me due to her digitigrade fox legs, but her female assets are bountiful enough that they aren't overshadowed by her athletic body, and her considerable chest squishes against my chestplate.

Her criminally short not-kimono loosens, showing a hint of little pink, and that inflames my hunger, so I humanize a hand and sneak it under her small clothes, but I don't have the time or the patience to savor her exotic beauty.

Allura quickly becomes ready, so I start doing her as Alissa becomes louder, and Léonne merely watches in silence as both of her daughters submit to me. Fox mommy also starts to show signs of desire, making the dragon roar internally in extreme excitement.

A sudden rage takes over me, and I almost un[Equip] my armor and take Allura's first time right here and now, but I feel a grip on my mind telling me "no," saying that this is as far as it'll go, so the rage is diverted elsewhere.

I'm not gentle with Allura, using all my tricks to make her reach the summit as fast as possible, and she's not used to this level of stimulation, so I soon feel her tighten, but she isn't alone.

Her body quivers, and her tongue freezes, so I break the kiss and force her to go down on her knees while I keep something stimulating her. Then I un[Equip] my armor, and give her some skin care treatment. I link my feelings with those of the girls to complete the Gestalt, and the chorus of female sounds enhances my bliss.

The fox girl remains stunned for a couple of seconds in disbelief of what just happened, then she turns to her mother, who nods in authorization, and the s--t begins hungrily eating it all.

"So you're the one who taught Alissa to be such an addict?" I wryly ask Léonne, a bit out of breath from the massive one.

She nods again and answers matter-of-factly, "Of course. It's the job of any woman to drink a male's gift, but yours actually smells wonderful, so I don't think any sane woman would complain."

I simply laugh out loud and lovingly massage Allura's fox ears as she licks the tip for the last drops.

"Now, I must take my leave, for you've made me hungry," Léonne adds and quickly leaves towards her tent.

I turn my eyes to the young girl on her knees, eyeing me like the good -- she is, but the "gift" has already been redeemed, so I won't be getting away with anything more. Katasko's camp is also sending out their greeting party, so it's time for us to meet before we can begin the battle.

Léonne comes out of her tent at the last minute, already mounted on fox-Jacques, and Alissa notices the scent of love all over her mother. Urmeie mounts a huge, monstrously muscular Ronti; Sa'Haa has a small Ronti-drawn carriage; Vanea goes with a big black horse; Apeiltik, Mako, and Omari mount large Rontis; we go in our personal Gatun-drawn open carriage; all of the six nobles from Katasko ride Rontis; and the lower nobles from both sides remain in their camps.

Through Alissa's eyes, we see little Alki-Alki at the center of their formation, grinning maniacally. His previously groomed beard now looks frizzy and untamed while his sweptback hair is quickly coming undone in the strong winds. But his expression suddenly turns into an incensed frown as he notices Apeiltik riding alongside us.

Since this is a temple-sanctioned battle, both sides have their own priest leading the formations, who slow down a good fifty meters away from each other to prevent us from crashing into each other or attempting any other shenanigans we might think of.

Once we're a couple of meters away, both sides stop and glare.

But Alki-Alki immediately launches into a rant, "You fucking traitor, Proditos! We should've known that a coward like you couldn't be trusted! You'll never live a safe life ever again after this!"

Proditos?

But Apeiltik suddenly unleashes an aura of hate so powerful that my draconic side feels offended that someone has dared to attempt to look so threatening in front of me. "My true name is Apeiltik Tavros, and I care not for your petty threats, for once we have your Titles, I can just hire enough guards to keep me safe my whole life," the tall and muscular imperial smugly replies, seemingly savoring the pressure that his [Intimidation] exerts upon our enemies.

The five other nobles from Katasko grumble and spit at the grass in front of him, but Alki-Alki turns his incensed and maniacal gaze towards us and spews more hate, "This traitor is the one who gave us information on you, Ryders. He's the one who persuaded us into attacking you and even led the cheers, clamoring for us to send the assassins who harmed your little fox."

"We know," is all we have to say about this matter, which enrages Alki-Alki even further.

Now it's Vanea's turn to release her venom, "It wasn't just us, Alkimeonids. The entire League helped in this endeavor, and they hated you so much that they did it for free."

And one of the Katasko nobles grimly replies, "The League…? Those fucking cowards?! They'll pay for this… "

Soul Info

Name | Theneus Baros | Race | Human | Level | 68
HP | 100 | MP | 4,520 | Magic Power | 720
Strength | 18 | Endurance | 19

He's a mature imperial man with a powerful but beardless chin and an awfully intense gaze.

"No, they won't, for the League will thrive on your ruins," Vanea taunts back, blatantly staring at them with her piercing eyes.

"Enough! We begin this now!" Urmeie roars, and the power in her voice overpowers even Apeiltik's [Intimidate].

The priests then walk forward and talk to each other to confirm that the men participating in this are of the appropriate rank. Then they remind us about what we're waging in this battle and sternly explain the rules of engagement.

There's no more banter after that, so we return to our camp and get into formation.

I glance back at Allura and Ofilia, the former still looking "hungry" and the latter a bit "worn out," but my promised virgin fox lightens up as she notices my gaze. The Companions and Lolo are also nearby, and I see nothing but encouragement in their eyes.

The horn blows, so I put on my helmet, then turn forward again and infuse my voice with [Godly Language] to inspire the troops, "We are here because the Empire is ill, infected with a foul disease that spreads among the nobility…" I add a dramatic pause, then I breathe in deeply and roar, "AND WE ARE THE CURE…!"

"RAAH!" over six hundred men roar in response, then hit their shields once, making a thunder-like metallic sound.

Then I make full use of [Godly Language] to buff us all, "SO HAVE NO FEAR, FOR, DURING THIS BATTLE, THE GODS SHALL GIVE US THE STRENGTH AND CLARITY TO PURGE THESE VILE NOBLES AND PURIFY OUR GREAT EMPIRE!"

"UROOOH!" the men roar again, this time led by Urmeie as our bodies are filled with holy fervor!

Mako may be a bastard that uses [Godly Language] with every word, but even he doesn't have the skill as high as I can get it with my Gift.

The ursine Princess begins hitting her shield in a beat as we advance, then the men quickly join in, and soon we're marching to the rhythm of thunder. Over thirty priests follow after us, ready to "rescue" the wounded to minimize casualties, but those who get pulled out of the fight aren't allowed to return.

Then a voice from across the battlefield reaches our ears, "Our enemies wish to steal our Titles and our power! Will we let them?!"

"OOOOH!" Katasko answers, but they lack the same level of enthusiasm as the men on our side.

It's also very amusing that they refuse to call us names since even they won't dare to offend the imperial royals on our side.

"THEN BECOME AS STRONG AS YOU NEED TO BE TO STOP THEM!" the voice bellows while using [Godly Language].

"UOOOOH!" they roar again and suddenly start running.

Over four hundred plated men are charging toward us like a bunch of madmen. A reckless and senseless attack, fitting for the group of inexperienced and unorganized warriors that is Katasko, as they suck at anything that isn't scheming.

Yet we have no idea where their Gifted might be.

Spells start whistling past our heads as the mages on both sides test their opponent's defenses. There's no formation of mages to spam spells, only the High Court Mages, so the actual number of spells is very low. We have a considerable number of knights who also have some skill with bows, especially the werefoxes, but arrows won't do much here with everyone wearing enchanted plate armor, so we don't even bother organizing a volley.

Suddenly, my skin starts to itch, and my [Rainbow Shield] flares up along with a couple of my talismans. It takes me a moment to understand what's going on since the effect is so weak, but someone is using [Petrifying Gaze] on me, though it'll take a long time before it has any significant effect due to my defensive measures.

Then more talismans flare up as [Illusion Magic] spells are spammed on me. Alissa detects [Ghost Lights], [Pacify], [Vicious Rage], and [Nightmare]. Individually, the spells have little effect on me. But spammed like this, they start to give me a light headache and make it hard to think, though it hardly reduces my combat effectiveness since Gestalt allows me to share the mental load.

Roxanne detects [Heat Transfer], [Blizzard], [Vacuum], [Pressure], [Itionization], and [Warp Space] being cast above the battlefield, outside the interruption range of our mages, but their area of effect looks awfully small, as if they only want to affect a few troops at the center of our formation, which is exactly where we are.

The fuckers want to focus everything on us!

I recognize little Alki-Alki's armor right ahead of me. He's wielding a bastard sword and shield, charging forward and grinning with his eyes full of bloodlust. The sight of this fucker lights up a hellfire within me, and my holy fervor clears my mind of all thoughts but the desire to smite this heathen for his blasphemies and immoralities.

"SMITE. THESE. HEATHEENNS…!" I howl and arm my tentacles with war hammers.

"CHAAAARGE!" Urmeie thunders, and we break out in a mad rush. There's no possibility of maintaining a formation here anyway, so the melee will get ugly.

A Katasko noble hits his weapon against the ground, and a crack spreads from its tip to my feet in an instant, but I just use [Telekinesis] to float, ignoring the [Fissure].

Then the two sides finally clash and begin the chaotic battle.

I cast [Haste] on myself as Alki and I cross swords, and I rain hammers upon his armor, but his enchantments almost completely nullify all of my attacks, so I leave only a very small dent on his right flank.

Suddenly, his sword begins to glow with heat, and his body crackles with lightning, so I raise my shield and activate [Heat Reversal] to defend against the [Rush]-boosted [Searing Blade], but as he swings, his sword suddenly becomes clad in a black, dangerous light.

His speed is so unexpectedly high, likely boosted even further by [Haste] or [Muscle Explosion], that I barely have enough time to get my body out of range of his strike, but my shield arm is too slow. The immaterial [Atrophic Blade] passes through my armor as if it isn't there, and I feel a horrible sensation as my limb is drained of life, but Alki doesn't stop his swing, and the Blade also hits a tentacle.

I hear something "crack" inside of me, and the "buttons" inside my mind for casting [Electric Magic] spells suddenly disappear. [Atrophic Blade] has damaged my skill, which will likely remain unusable for a couple of hours, though I can shorten that by using [Spirit Touch] to boost my recovery.

Yunia [Blink]s forward and engages Alki while I recover. It was an underhanded sneak attack, but it won't work twice! I move my points around into [Spirit Magic] and cast [Soul Shield], then I jump back into the fray. I don't need to learn how to control the ethereal arm that grows from this spell if I just keep it in the same place as my physical arm.

I take over the fight with Alki and aggressively keep his sword locked with mine, preventing him from using [Atrophic Blade] on my tentacles as they rain hammers down upon his shiny plate armor. But then I realize something: all of the girls are tied up in 1-on-1 fights, even though we outnumber the enemy.

We can't get bogged down like this; it's time for a Gestalt action. We all [Blink] forward at the same time, and we're now in the middle of the enemy ranks, but this is just fine for us.

Alissa and Roxanne were right behind us, which means that they now have a free line of sight to the enemies ahead, so they rain down spells and explosive arrows on them while we attack from behind, and they can only effectively defend against one side at a time.

Aoi throws her body onto the poor lone noble in front of her and stomps him down, then bites his helmet and throws him out of the battlefield towards the priests so that he can be "rescued," all of that before the enemy knight behind her can even react.

Before the men behind the girls can react to our [Blink], my loyal wives inflict debilitating wounds on their opponents, then turn around and keep the reinforcements at bay.

Alki turns around faster than I can strike, showing how experienced he is against such [Blink] tactics, so all I can do is clash my shield against his and bind our swords together, allowing my hammers to rain down upon his armor again and Alissa to unleash explosive arrows at the back of his head. The explosions aren't enough to wound him, but he'll have to suffer through a horrible headache until he can heal himself.

"I've seen through your tricks, gecko boy," he barks as I push him back, away from his men. Then he [Blink]s past me and behind Hana.

But we're still under Gestalt. Without even looking back, she kicks behind herself at his crotch, which, even with padding, would be a bit of a shock to a man, making Alki hesitate long enough for me to [Blink] behind him and engage him again.

"He's in love with me!" Hana shouts inside my soul space amusedly.

"Why are you running, little Alki-Alki?" the dragon taunts, but the human is still worried about the fact that we haven't heard a word about Katasko's secret weapon yet.

Back at the camp, Sandoro and the strategists claim that the battle is under control, which isn't what we expected…

But I seem to have accidentally struck Alki's weak spot. "What did you fucking say?" he barks again and goes on the offensive against me, swinging his [Atrophic Blade] around, only to have it stopped by my [Soul Shield].

And I reply with a smirk as I casually block him, "Your sword is smaller than mine, little Alki-Alki. You should already know that, or are we going to have to pull them out right here and measure them again?"

That seems to distract him, so Hana turns around as she swings her [Searing Blade], and her bastard sword sinks into his shoulder. Under his helmet, I see his face scrunch up from pain, but then he uses [Muscle Explosion] to move forward, out of her reach, but into mine.

Two hammers to the balls, one explosive arrow to the face, a [Chain Soul] on his sword arm, and many sticky tentacles that latch onto anything they can while I use [Life Transfusion] to suck him dry… but no homo.

"FULL HOMO, FUCK HIM UP!" Roxanne bellows inside my mind.

"You seem to be in quite a pickle, Alki-Alki!" I shout and laugh maniacally as he struggles against my tentacle bindings. The girls easily keep the rest of his men away, especially Aoi with her huge body, so he has no chance of getting help right now.

But then he suddenly glares at me and snarls, "I've already told you that I've seen past your petty tricks!"

He suddenly [Blink]s, also taking me along with him, but instead of trying to teleport back to his ranks, he has taken us far up into the air.

It takes me a second to reorient myself due to the dizzying nature of being forcefully [Blink]ed, but then an ethereal [Atrophic Blade] javelin pierces through both of our chests, and since half of it is still physical, it gets stuck on his back instead of just phasing through both of us.

"GRAAAAAH…!" we both scream in pain as the enchantment drains our life force and uses it to power the enchantment further, a sensation so horrible that my mind goes blank in panic, but the worst part is that my body has simply stopped answering me. My muscles are frozen as the ethereal blade makes a mess of my spine, and even my tentacles don't respond to my desperate pleas.

"BRING HIM BACK!" Alissa shouts through [Bind], uniting their wills.

The girls all immediately [Blink] back into our lines, where they're safe enough that they can use our connection to save me from this situation. They force me to cast random spells at Alki, pushing us apart, then [Blink] me back onto safe ground. The [Atrophic Blade] stays in him, but the damage has already been done.

I remain prone on my back on the muddy earth and tall grass, staring up at the stormy and busy sky as Ciel [Heal]s my body and Yunia expertly uses [Soul Touch] on my spine to hasten my recovery. After just a minute, my mind calms down enough that I notice that the mages are fighting a complicated battle above our heads, casting spells outside of interruption range while countering the enemy from doing the same. It's mostly a battle of wills rather than something flashy, except for Almaria, who's fighting in the melee inside a huge golem made of bark and vines.

Now that is cool.

Without our healing powers, I'd definitely be out of the fight after that, but they underestimated the extent of our knowledge of souls and spirits, and I soon manage to recover most of my physical strength. It's only recovering my skills that will give us some trouble, but even though my melee skills have been effectively halved by the Atrophic javelin, I still have a lot of combat power remaining.

"He'll be fine, though some of his skills are temporarily damaged," Yunia reassures a messenger that has come to check up on us.

I energetically stand up, fired up to finish off Alki-Alki, who must be in a much worse state than I am, but Alissa suddenly detects a number of unknown monster signatures appearing on Katasko's side.

"MONSTER SUMMONING!" I roar in warning.

We turn towards the source, but we don't see anything…

"GIH!"

"SPIRITS!"

Both Gify and Yunia immediately realize it, so I cast [Spirit Eyes] and see a swarm of horrifying demonic worm spirits swimming through the air towards us, their mouths open wide and filled with pointy teeth, ready to latch onto our souls.

What the fuck?!

The strategists say that the battle is going steadily in our favor, that Katasko's men are getting whittled down, and that their mages are struggling to keep ours in check, yet we're getting fucked up by their concentrated attack.

FUCK THIS SHIT!

I summon fifteen Ice Wraiths, and Alissa and Roxanne rapid-fire arrows and spells while Aoi spreads out her mana into the humid air, and the rest of the girls prepare to engage.

A barrage of arrows is suddenly launched by the werefoxes towards the worms, and Silvano casts a very wide [Discharge] at them, instantly thinning out their numbers. Alissa and I look back and see Léonne staring at us while Yunia and Ciel turn to Silvano. Then we all share a subtle nod of understanding and focus back on the battle.

Another swarm of demonic spirit worms is summoned before the first wave even hits us, but our men wise up, and even the strategists finally understand Katasko's plan: to wear down our greatest weapon: us, the Gifted. However, our worry about Katasko's apparent lack of a secret weapon still remains in the back of our minds.

The worms are shot down before they can reach me, but one still manages to latch onto Hana's forearm, and she feels something similar to an [Atrophic Blade], though at least there's no skill jumbling going on.

But the shift in the focus of our men towards shooting down the summoned monsters allows Katasko to inflict damage upon our troops.

"GIH!" Gify desperately shouts, and our heads turn in sync towards the frontline.

"NO!" Yunia cries out, and I cast [Haste] on her as I can't run as fast as her.

With the help of [Precognition], she weaves through the battle like the wind, even using [Blink] to get there faster.

She finds one of our knights dragging Azador back towards a priest, who arrives at the same time as Yunia, but it's too late. His Thread has already been severed. Our most senior knight has been killed by a [Searing Blade] through the heart.

Yunia immediately casts [Mask] on herself, and the spell bleeds through our Gestalt, clearing the pain and anger from our minds and locking our emotions behind a barrier while we process this loss.

In this battle, one isn't allowed to aim for the heart or the brain, so this was an illegal murder, and we must capture the vile criminal and bring him to justice. Not only that, but we must bring Katasko down as fast as possible so that they don't get any more chances to spring another of their devious and repugnant traps on us.

[Mask] works against most emotions, but not the holy fervor still flowing through our veins.

The swarm of spirits is being easily dealt with by our men as the strategists relay orders to prioritize the monsters. Spirits may be immune to physical attacks, but they're extremely weak to magic, so they're popped like soap bubbles by our enchanted bows.

I unsummon all of the Ice Wraiths as Alissa and I mount Aoi, then I cast [Haste] on everyone and forcefully refill my mana organ with [Redirect Mana].

"[MAKE WAY; WE BREAK THROUGH]!" we roar the code in unison, then Aoi charges forward, with the girls and golems following close behind us.

Without us even asking, Jacques and Léonne follow after us with a detachment of werefoxes, and the ground trembles under our heavy footsteps.

Our men move out of the way at the last second, but Katasko's soldiers are muddy and tired, so all they can do is hide behind their shields and pray as Aoi tramples through them. But the murderer is right within our sight, so Aoi bites onto his body and drags him along.

With only a few hundred men, their ranks don't have the depth to stop us, so we easily charge through their melee line and reach the small group of vulnerable High Court Mages.

I jump off of Aoi's back as she makes sure that the murderer is punished, and I transform into my glorious draconic form in mid-air, then I forcefully clear my mind of [Mask] and let the pain of Azador's death come out through my roar.

He was the most respected of our knights, the most loyal, the most competent, the most experienced, and the most noble. But he was also someone personally precious to Yunia. He was her protector and companion through many battles, and he was deliberately targeted to wound us.

So I return the insult to our family with a wide [Chaos Breath] at the feet of the High Court Mages.

The ground explodes in a bright release of pure chaotic energy, sending the mages flying. Then Aoi unleashes her [Lightning Strike] at them, annihilating Katasko's magical might in a two-hit combo while the girls finish off the survivors. They won't die so easily from just this, but they'll never forget our overwhelming might.

The [Petrifying Gaze] and Illusion spells being used on me all fade away at the same time. Now, without their mages to hold back ours and their men getting encircled into two pockets, our troops rain hell down upon their heads.

"Gih…!" And Gify finally spots their secret weapon.

From inside the clouds, far above us, we see a large, metallic, oval object rapidly descending towards the ground. An imperial airship.

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Chapter 147: The Fall – Part 3

"Stop! Stop! Stop! You'll kill him!" the little priest desperately shouts at Aoi and hits her armored limb.

The bastard has already passed out, so Aoi simply slams him against the ground with a sickening crunch, then glares at the short man. "He murdered one of our knights. I won't kill him, but he will suffer for this offense," she slowly growls, her dual draconic voice so intensely enraged that the priest's legs tremble, yet the brave short man still goes to the bastard knight and begins healing him.

I turn to the remnants of Katasko just in time to see one pocket of resistance begin to freeze over with [Blizzard] while another pocket boils inside their armor from [Heat Transfer]. The two high-level spells boost each other, making it one of the deadlier combos out there.

Next, I see [Itionization] being cast in the first pocket, and the air becomes heavy with the smell of ozone as the men of Katasko are attacked by little shocks all over their bodies and even small lightning strikes, which have their power enhanced by the stormy weather. Then [Magnetize] follows up, and they struggle to move as their weapons and armor are all magnetically attracted towards the center of their group.

The second pocket has to suffer through [Vacuum], and after half a minute of not being able to breathe while receiving burns from the heat, they finally surrender. The first pocket resists for a little longer, but it's only a token effort to salvage some of their hurt pride, and they soon drop their weapons.

After the priest heals the broken knight and ensures that he's stable, Aoi unceremoniously grabs him by the foot and drags him as we leave. While the men cheer and shout in victory, we slowly walk towards the priests on our side, our faces impassive but our hearts cold.

We underestimated Katasko's evil, and they caught us off-guard. We believed they were likely to target Anton and Klein again, but all they wanted was to harm us, no matter what and no matter how.

Sure, it makes sense to kill our most experienced knight to deal a blow to our fighting power and the morale of our men, but it's such a steep price to pay for so little effect. This is why we didn't think they'd do it; it wasn't cost-effective.

But this is the new Katasko under Alki-Alki. Instead of the cold and calculative approach we expected, we get an evil and vindictive group of bastards. They aren't even that competent.

Our men follow as they see us pass, and soon we reach our backline. Sandoro is already here with the Companions and some of the Lordsguard, so we hand the murderer to them and walk up to Azador's corpse, and everyone else gathers up.

The old man looks peaceful, but the red flowers in his beard have already started to lose their color. We sense his presence, so I cast [Materialize], and his spirit appears before us, the same composed old man with a hint of a creepy grin under his gentle face, his beautiful white hair and the blood-red flowers in his long beard waving with the wind.

"I have served until the end," he solemnly states as he stares at Yunia.

Alissa and I give each of her hands a squeeze, then our loved elven wife swallows up the pain and replies, "And you have served well, so enjoy your deserved rest in Paradise."

He smiles warmly at her like a kind old grandpa. "My descendant will take my place."

She nods and smiles softly, her voice beginning to crack as we forbid her from using [Mask]. "And we shall honor him the same way we honor you."

He breathes in deeply (though I don't understand why a spirit would do that) and closes his eyes, seemingly in bliss for a moment. Then he returns to his composed demeanor and respectfully addresses all of us, "Goodbye, Your Highnesses."

"Goodbye, Sir Azador," we solemnly reply in unison.

Then his spirit turns into smoke and almost instantly dissipates in the wind.

This was a simple but meaningful ritual. Azador fulfilled his duty, and he's proud of what he's leaving behind, so he'll depart to Paradise with no lingering regrets. He doesn't even care about the fate of his murderer as he trusts us to honor his memory.

Then Sandoro says his parting words, "This was a loss not only for our military might but in our hearts, as we'll all dearly miss him."

"And now Enomosa is our most senior knight," Palo states, and we turn to the mature elven woman.

She has a stern and collected attitude, and she unhesitatingly nods in acceptance of her new role: to guide and advise those under her. "I will do my best to honor his memory," she solemnly replies, then salutes, and the other knights follow.

Almaria walks up to Yunia, then lands both hands on her shoulders. "So will the rest of us, for we're proud to serve you," the short and droopy-eyed elf kindly encourages her.

Now that pride has been mentioned, Yunia's elven nature is triggered, giving her renewed focus and motivation. For as much as she tries to look cold and calculative, she has to use [Mask] to actually hide her feelings, for she cares too much about those who serve us, and it's this big heart of hers that I love so much.

We release her hands, and Almaria releases her shoulders, then she turns to the imperial airship landing a hundred metri away. "And so will we as we face this heinous new enemy, who's insane enough to side with Katasko," she declares with the intense venom and revulsion in her voice that only an elf could have.

"Well, I guess the real excitement happens now," Urmeie wryly remarks from her huge Ronti as we ride out to meet with the delegation from the airship.

We send her a distasteful frown, which is clearly noticed by her since all our heads are still moving in sync with Gestalt, and for the first time, she actually becomes awkward. There were seven other deaths, but they were all accidental, so the rest of the nobles aren't as sour and bitter as we are.

But once we identify who, exactly, is leading the imperial delegation, it's Vanea who becomes so furious that her chilling, piercing eyes start to affect us, even though she isn't looking at any of us.

Ahead of us, we see Junior General Reinhold Fisher, a Filipino-looking human Gifted, riding a muscular Ronti alongside a colorful ensemble of eighteen other Imperial Army officers from a variety of races. We notice that they seem to come from all over the west side of the empire, and they're also all relatively young, so they're likely ambitious, with a strong desire to prove their worth.

A priest leads their group, just like ours, so they instruct both sides to stop a couple of meters away from each other.

"OATHBREAKER!" Vanea suddenly shrieks, seething in rage.

Reinhold simply smiles smugly, completely unfazed by the accusation, but the other Imperial Army officers around him seem tense and grim, and the only one we recognize is the Viking-looking weredog that we met during Trox Mael, Belligax Uxello, or, as I so endearingly like to call him, Bell-end. But curiously, he seems to be holding back a sneer of disgust. At what, we don't know.

Then a silence befalls us as Vanea's accusation rings in our ears, and it's Sa'Haa who breaks it after a painfully long moment, "What did you say, Dame Vanea?"

"I had a fucking deal of non-aggression with this bastard! Yet here he is, about to break his word to me in front of the Gods!" she answers with barely controlled anger, her fists clenched on the reins of her horse and trembling from rage.

"How ironic that someone like you is hiding behind the Gods' protection," Reinhold he sarcastically replies.

And the blasphemy he dares to commit utterly shocks all of us. He's making light of the power the Gods have over our Fate, and even the priest from his side gives him a look of disbelief.

"Are you here to challenge us in accordance with the laws of the Purification?" Sa'Haa coldly asks, her stern eyes narrowed and nose wrinkled in absolute disgust.

"Yes," he calmly answers.

And that sets her off as anger starts to bleed into her tone, "You offend the Imperial Royal Family with your actions, so I advise you to think very thoroughly about your answer as I ask you again: are you here to challenge us in accordance with the laws of the Purification?"

"Yes, but-…"

"This is too far, Reinhold!" Belligax suddenly barks, and the handsome not-Filipino man gives him a surprised and confused look. "Oathbreaking, and now offending the Imperial Royals? This is too far, and I'll have no part in this."

Rage takes over Reinhold for a second, but then he immediately realizes something, "You-…! You waited for the moment that would hurt me the most before abandoning me!"

And the Viking-looking weredog narrows his eyes in unveiled disgust. "Yes, I waited so that everyone could see the insanity in your eyes… I've come to realize that my life is worth much more than anything we could ever gain from this."

Reinhold turns his Ronti around to stare at his own men. "Fine, leave, you mustch! I don't need you! But I also won't forget this!" he shouts back as he waves his hand in anger.

Belligax promptly starts guiding his Ronti away at a slow pace, and two officers follow him, but a tense silence settles in as Reinhold glares at the remaining officers.

"Offending the Gods is going too far, Reinhold," a weremonkey officer softly states.

But Reinhold is prepared for this argument. "One Gifted versus another, and our Fates have brought us against each other."

"Remember who gave him his Gift. This is all part of the plan of the Gods," a human officer confidently states.

"I really doubt that…" Ciel venomously remarks through [Bind].

"Still, I'd rather not get involved with Oathbreaking, or I won't be able to face my men, or even my family," the weremonkey solemnly states, unconvinced.

"We've traveled too far together for you to give up on us now," a dwarf officer kindly insists.

And the weremonkey shakes his head in disappointed denial. "You are the ones who have gone too far and left us behind, so I'm returning home."

Then the officer guides his Ronti away, and two more silently follow.

It seems that sparing Belligax was wise, but it's unfortunate that it wasn't enough to ruin Reinhold's plan.

Belli notices the officers following him, then gives us one last look, and we share a nod of understanding. Like Reinhold, we also won't forget him.

"I see the kind of loyalty you inspire, Junior General Reinhold," Léonne remarks with painful sarcasm.

But he simply turns his Ronti forward again, then continues with a fake grin, ignoring her taunt, "I don't understand what they're so afraid of, for we're not after any Titles or other prizes." Then he turns a deranged gaze toward us. "All I want is something that you, Wolf Ryder, have in your possession, yet you've kept it in relative secret so far."

He doesn't mean…!

All eyes fall upon us, but we're too shocked to reply.

And he smirks at our hesitation. "Come on, Wolf, I know you know what I'm talking about. Are you going to force me to reveal your secret to everyone here?"

"You will talk to us in private, now!" Yunia suddenly shouts, incensed, and Reinhold simply gives us another insufferable smug smile.

"Patrono, I know you have it," he unhesitatingly states, now completely serious.

Sa'Haa's information on his Gift claims that he can telekinetically control and activate the enchantments of any weapon he touches, but his favorite is swords. If he had Patrono in his hands, he'd be one of the most powerful warriors in existence.

But we are absolutely certain that the Gods want us to keep Patrono a secret from the Wicked because it's our best counter against them, and it'll likely save us in the future from an ambush. So, if we lose Patrono, we'll die.

"Why would we ever engage in a Purification battle with you? Vanea has already been redeemed after our win against Katasko," Yunia caustically asks.

And he slowly answers, completely serious to leave no doubt about his determination, "If you don't fight me here and now, I'll go to the High Forest and challenge all of the Marked nobles over there. They won't be from just your territory; I'll challenge every Marked in the whole of the elven lands. And then we'll see what your Elder Council and the other Lords have to say once they know that you've brought the Purification to their territory."

We've been outplayed. Katasko was ready to sacrifice themselves in the hopes of fucking us over just so that Reinhold could swoop in and steal Patrono from us. All of this, all of the death, all of the scheming, lies, and hate, just to get back at us.

This is insanity.

And it enrages me. It enrages me so much that my body can't take it all, and if I were in my draconic form, I'd have fired a [Chaos Breath] at him. But there's no release, and the rage solidifies into energy, which becomes fuel for a cold determination.

And my voice reflects my mood as I give him his last warning, "I'll take everything from you, Reinhold. I'll take your life, your wife's, and your family's. If you really want to take Patrono from us, you have to wager everything."

He doesn't take me seriously, casually replying with a shrug, "I have no family; I'm an orphan. But sure, I'll even give you my airship."

"Call the priests," I order.

They need to verify and record the wager, but the contents don't have to be public.

Ciel [Fly]s to Reinhold's priest, sternly staring down at the man, then casts [Detect Evil], making her hand glow, and touches his shoulder, but the results displease her.

"You do know you're working for a blaspheming Oathbreaker?" she questions the imperial.

"Yes, but my duty as a referee of the Purification remains unchanged," he stiffly replies.

I have no patience for more discussion, so I promptly declare, "We wager our Heavenly Weapon, Patrono, while we demand everything Reinhold and his allies have."

"Let me see it," Reinhold demands, sounding like he's almost salivating.

First, Ciel has to make sure that the priests understand the delicacy of this situation, "Both of you, swear that you will keep the wagers a secret."

"I swear to the Gods that I won't reveal the wager unless I need to enforce it," they reply in unison.

I [Equip] Patrono out of sight of our allies and have it flash its holy light, then I un[Equip] it again.

"Oh, yes…" Reinhold hums with creepy arousal, and both priests become wide-eyed at the glimpse of the Heavenly Weapon.

But our priest recovers first and asks, "What do you mean by 'everything'?"

"Every Title, possession, and wealth that they may have," I solemnly answer.

Reinhold snorts and smugly retorts, "Aren't you also going to take my life?"

But I don't deem it worth a reply, and then our secret negotiations are interrupted by our rapidly approaching allies.

"You can't be seriously negotiating a wager without us!" Sa'Haa shouts indignantly.

"A second fight isn't part of the deal!" Mako follows, his [Godly Language]-infused voice sounding incredibly grating to me.

The wives and I all turn to him at the same time and glare, unleashing our high-level aura upon him, and he almost loses control of his Ronti as we accidentally frighten the shit out of the poor animal.

We order our Gatuns to guide our carriage away from Reinhold so that we can have some privacy, then everyone gathers in a circle.

"Our support is a given," Léonne immediately declares, as reliable as ever.

"So is mine," Vanea adds, still seething with rage.

"And now's not the time to be cowardly," Jacques sternly states as he stares at our "allies."

"You won't get us with cheap provocations," Urmeie retorts with a loud laugh.

But I slowly and carefully give them an ultimatum, "If you put any value in our relationship, if you have any respect for our family, and if you want to not make an enemy, you'll fight with us…"

And a silence befalls us as Sa'Haa has a staring contest against all of us. She shows no emotion aside from her carriage driver and Ronti looking very frightened by our glare, but we're certain she's feeling the pressure.

"What have you wagered?" she finally replies after a moment, her voice sounding awfully soft.

"Our treasure against everything they have," I solemnly reply.

"Is it that valuable?"

We nod. "It is."

She goes quiet again, thinking very carefully about our demand. I'm sure she wants to complain about us threatening other royals like this, but it's necessary to make it clear how important this fight is to us. Besides, we're being generous; she has nothing to lose and everything to gain.

"Fine, we'll join you," she begrudgingly agrees, and she doesn't even try to negotiate for a bigger share.

For the second time today, we line up and begin marching after the horn blares.

"FOR THE SECOND TIME TODAY, WE FIGHT AGAINST EVIL!" I roar, and my words are followed by the thunder of the storm intensifying above us.

"FUCK THEM!" Urmeie cheers, and the men follow.

"WE FIGHT AGAINST A FUCKING OATHBREAKER!" I continue, and the last word comes off my tongue with so much disgust that it makes me nauseous.

"OATHBREAKER!" Hana howls with as much distaste as me, and the men follow, even more incensed than during our fight with Katasko.

"SO WE FIGHT IN THE NAME OF THE GODS…!" Then I switch to [Godly Language]. "AND WE BEG THEM FOR THE STRENGTH TO PUNISH THESE BASTARDS!"

"FUCK THE OATHBREAKERS!" Urmeie cheers.

"FUCK THE OATHBREAKERS!" over six hundred men roar as the Gods answer our prayer and refill our bodies with divine energy and holy fervor!

Then we charge.

We're outnumbered, but only by one hundred men, and we have Belligax to thank for this number not being two hundred higher.

Reinhold is staying at the backline, and we don't see any of his floating swords, so he's holding back, giving us an opportunity to inflict damage upon his men that we can't afford to waste.

And we're going all out from the get-go.

I pull out crates of Chuckys, and the golems launch them into the enemy lines.

But then the golems start to scream as they fly.

"HEEERE'S JOHNNY!"

"REMEMBER THE ALAMO!"

"WHO DO YOU WANT ME TO KILL?!"

"CHEEKI BREEKI!"

"AHAHAHAHA!"

"FOR KING AND COUNTRY!"

"BANZAAAI!"

"CHA-CHING!"

"YOU COURT DEATH!"

"THINK YOU CAN TAKE ME?!"

"HI, I'M MR. MEESEEKS, LOOK AT ME!"

"RIP AND TEAR!"

"LEEEROOOO-…!"

I forgot that these Chuckys were made while I was in a memeing mood, but it's not like anyone will understand what they're screaming about, and their insane laughter shocks and confuses the enemy, allowing the Chuckys to fall all over their ranks. Then the suicidal and murderous little dolls raise hell just as we crash against their lines and begin the melee.

But we aren't done with spreading chaos.

They attempt to stop Aoi's charge with a rain of halberds and by putting a number of superhumanly strong men in her way, but we disrupt their footing with [Earth Wall], and she blasts through. Then we release in their midst everything we have.

Flasks of Rox's Sneeze-'n-Wheeze, containers of Laughing Gas, bottles of Toxic Decay Goop, and bombs of Draconic Climax fly in all directions. Then we activate our handheld [Abyssal Fire] flamethrowers and douse our enemies with a blanket of dark red, all-consuming flames. Hana even uses the diamond orb Artifact to spew toxic Darkness all around us.

Then I pull out a huge, cracked [Fly] gem, and the golems lower it in the rapidly growing clearing around us, safe from the enemy and ranged attacks. We immediately use [Redirect Mana] on it to draw out the unbelievable amount of mana stored inside, then Ciel casts [Wind Storm] in the middle of the mana, which amplifies the spell's power to an insane degree.

Before the mages can interrupt her, she releases the malformed spell upon the enemy ranks to our left. Nobody has any exposed skin to be split open by the spell, but it's still so powerful that their whole flank is forced to stop fighting and cover their eyes to not get blinded.

Then we finally finish crossing their formation.

A shadow falls upon us as Reinhold swings a tower-sized lump of metal at us like it weighs absolutely nothing. The Colossal Sword is a Dungeon Artifact, and it's his signature weapon, but even we can't face it head-on.

Lina unites our wills, and we cast [Earth Wall] at our feet to dig a hole, then the Colossal Sword falls upon our heads, and we sink into the soft earth. It isn't comfortable being squished like this, but at least we survive.

The Colossal Sword lifts and returns to its normal, bastard sword size, but then hundreds of shortswords whistle past us and dive into the battle. Almost immediately, we sense a number of Chuckys being eviscerated by the floating weapons while they can do little to stop it, too focused on causing chaos to defend themselves.

We sluggishly stand up from the mud and [Clean] ourselves, but we aren't allowed to rest as spells and more floating swords fly towards us.

"How the fuck are we supposed to fight this?!" Hana questions through [Bind] as she desperately attempts to keep a nimble sword from stabbing through the vulnerable spots of her armor.

Somehow, Reinhold's swords fight with such high skill that they give us trouble. It's like there are multiple Lord-level enemies engaging us at the same time.

A [Fireball] explodes on my shoulder, and though it's absorbed by the armor and enchantments, I lose my footing and have to resort to [Telekinesis] to remain standing, and then I desperately defend against a [Searing Blade] sword. My melee skills are still jumbled, so I feel like I'm just flailing my weapons around ineffectively.

We can't even advance towards the backline like this, even though they're right ahead of us. If we ignore the floating swords, they'll just dice us up with [Searing Blade] from behind.

The Colossal Sword suddenly appears on our right, rapidly approaching us in a horizontal sweep, so we just [Blink] past it, but then Reinhold instantly swings back the sword because it has no weight and no momentum for him, and we're hit on our backs.

The girls and the golems are all just batted away, even Aoi, but Hana and I grip the huge blade and remain stuck on the weapon as it's swung up into the air. Then it simply disappears as Reinhold stores it up his ass again, and we're left up in the sky, right above his mages, exactly where they've been preparing their powerful spells.

Our minds go blank with pain as lightning falls upon our backs, but our draconic "Endurance" helps us immediately recover, and we start flying back down as fast as possible before we can be boiled alive or suffocated in a vacuum.

A shadow falls upon us as the Sword's flat side comes down on our heads like a fly swatter, forcing us to [Blink] to dodge, but Reinhold does it again and simply reverses the direction of the attack, hitting us on our backs.

WE CAN'T DO SHIT AGAINST THIS!

Lina [Blink]s forward, halving the distance between her and Reinhold, then casts [Earth Wall] at his feet, distracting him long enough for us to escape his attack and for her to [Blink] right before him, but he just [Blink]s away.

She hides underground with [Earth Wall] while her [Blink] recharges, but once she's facing off against him again, he simply [Dodge]s her attacks until he can [Blink] away again. He clearly has no intention of fighting us in melee, and it'll be hard for us to actually close the distance like this.

Meanwhile, the Chukys are getting destroyed, and Reinhold's swords are starting to turn the tide against our men. Our stamina was recovered with my use of [Godly Language], but not our MP or mental stress. Not only that, but Lina's [Cursing Magic] spam on Reinhold won't become effective for a while, so this isn't a battle of attrition that we can win. We have to make a decisive attack.

But his Gift is simply even more overwhelmingly powerful than ours.

"FUCKING FLYING SWORDS!" Urmeie bellows as she struggles to fight against two flying swords and two warriors at the same time.

Alki is still here, watching and laughing on the sidelines, and Reinhold isn't even struggling against us. We simply can't accept this humiliation without pushing ourselves to the edge.

"I put my life in your hands," I declare to the girls through our connection.

"You always have, and so do we," Alissa immediately replies and gives me a quick hug. She always worries about me the most, but this time, she'll trust me, and I know I won't disappoint.

We gather up a few dozen meters away from the battle, and I put all of my points in [Summoning Magic], [Reduced Mana Cost], and [Mana Overuse Resistance].

"BREEEETT! COME HEEERE!" Aoi roars for me, and her extremely powerful double-voice doesn't even need [Godly Language] to sound imperious.

Then I press the button inside my soul space to summon the albino Fay Leviathan.

My MP reaches zero after just a few seconds, and I use [Redirect Mana] to fill my mana pool again and again, but my MP still reaches the negatives a few times, draining my HP and harming my body, not to mention what this is doing to my mana organ.

The spell needs so much mana that Reinhold and even the mages and warriors start to notice that something is going on, and the flying swords attacking us intensify their assault, trying to stop us from finishing the spell.

The Colossal Sword falls upon our heads, but we just dig a hole with magic and hide, and the Artifact Weapon is too clumsy to be used as a shovel from a distance, so Reinhold has to get close if he wants to flush us out.

A [Meteor] suddenly appears in the sky, right above our heads, and the house-sized ball of fire and molten rock immediately starts plummeting towards us.

"I'VE DREAMED OF THIS!" Hana shouts excitedly as she flies up, directly towards the [Meteor], then she un[Equip]s her armor to not ruin it and clads her body in scales.

Now that there's finally something not protected by [Dead Zone], Roxanne unleashes her [Explosion] at the massive spell while the rest of the girls support Hana with other spells, damaging the [Meteor] to weaken it.

And our unyielding, unbreakable, fucking invincible dragonkin simply punches it, making it explode into a rain of molten rock and fire.

"AHAHAHAHAH!" Hana laughs euphorically, her right arm bent and broken, but the rest of her body is unharmed.

Then Brett reaches us just as the Leviathan appears above our heads. A huge, long, white, semi-transparent winged snake. It's bigger than the Floater, faster than any ship, and capable of stopping the Colossal Sword.

"What…" the Gifted Shiba Inu hums in awe, but I touch his arm and cast [Haste], which causes me to feel no small amount of pain in my overtaxed mana organ.

"Grab Reinhold, and stop him from using that huge sword. Only you can do this," Yunia sternly explains for me as I wince in pain.

"Y-yes…!" Brett reflexively replies.

"GO!" I roar with [Godly Language], and he instantly breaks into a sprint.

The flying swords try to stop him, and they even use [Searing Blade] on his back, but all they can do is damage his armor as he uses his Gift to make his skin indestructible.

The Colossal Sword falls upon the albino Leviathan, but the white snake blocks it with its huge summoned mirror, which is merely cracked from the attack.

"Wolf, was that you?!" Sandoro exclaims to our bird back at the camp, in disbelief of what he's seeing.

Fuck yeah, this one's mine.

"MY LEVIATHAN WILL WIN THIS BATTLE!" I roar to encourage the men.

"FUCKING GET HIM!" Urmeie cheers back, and our morale gains a noticeable boost.

Gify even gives me a view of Alki-Alki's pale face. Not even he could've ever predicted that I'd summon something bigger than a fucking Grim Giant!

For the first time, Reinhold seems to struggle. The Leviathan's summoned mirror barrier is simply too powerful, and the huge beast also passively damages his spirit, which causes a compounding effect with Lina's constant [Cursing Magic] spam.

But his battle sense can't be underestimated, and he quickly realizes that by taking me out, the Leviathan will also go away. The problem is that I'm now so fucking spent that I can barely move, and there's a [Gate] Scrubber on both sides preventing me from just [Gate]ing away.

So we give the code to the rest of our men, asking for help as every single flying sword begins to change targets to us.

Aoi protects me with her massive body, taking hits whenever she can't stop them with her balls of water. Then Ciel finishes [Heal]ing Hana's broken arm, and the girls all [Blink] away at the same time, taking me with them.

Silvano is, predictably, the first to arrive, and he's fast enough to cut down the swords with his own [Searing Blade], but there are just too many.

Léonne and Jacques arrive next, but she's forced to draw her sword as arrows do little against flying weapons.

Then Almaria arrives on her huge, autonomous battle ent. She hops off to help Yunia heal my soul, and the [Nature's Guardian] simply continues to fight on its own.

But when she notices what's wrong with me, she reflexively asks in disbelief, "What in the Gods' names have you done to yourself?"

"A summon as big as that one doesn't come for free," I wryly reply, and she snorts bemusedly.

Then we notice that Reinhold is still summoning more swords from his bottomless asshole faster than we can take them down. His Gift is even more ridiculous than my tentacles!

"YOU WON'T STEAL ALL MY GLORY!" Urmeie arrives with a shout, then she and her bodyguards promptly throw themselves at the flying swords. She's incredibly fast for her size, and her "Endurance" is legendary, so she's a relentless war machine.

But pulling so many high-level warriors from the main battle is worsening the tide against us. The Leviathan is keeping the Colossal Sword busy in an absurd-looking battle, but the summon is also being ravaged internally by dozens of swords as it's too big to dodge every needle.

"We're losing control of the battle," Sandoro grimly reports. There's too much chaos, too many disruptions, too little strategy as two Gifted fight in ways that are impossible to predict, but it's clear that our men are losing.

We're getting swarmed, and a sword sneaks through the gaps of our defenses, then sinks its [Searing Blade] into my flank, but I've felt worse! Just a [Heal] from Ciel, and I'm… still not ready for battle, but at least I don't need to be carried!

Then we sense that the swords are getting more aggressive, more daring, more… desperate, just like us, and that's really fucking dangerous. You don't corner a man, and you definitely don't corner a Gifted man.

Lina takes a [Searing Blade] to the back, right through her gut, but her dwarven "Endurance" won't let her fall here.

"I'm fine!" she reports through our connection, and Ciel only gives her a quick [Heal] before returning to the battle.

"The Ryders will fall," a strategist declares.

"But the battle rests on their shoulders," Sandoro states.

Our mages suddenly stop fighting over the air above our men and turn their spells our way to shoot down the flying swords, sacrificing the knights' safety to buy us time.

Then Brett finally reaches Reinhold, who's too busy fighting the Leviathan to notice his approach. The man of steel simply tackles the Widebergian, but Reinhold stands his ground, his body also forged with strong muscles, and the two start to wrestle.

Wait, Reinhold is distracted, so he won't be able to [Blink] away…

This is it. This is the opportunity we need to end it all.

Lina hugs me as I open my "Items" window, then we [Blink] away from the mess, giving me a clear line of sight to the two wrestling men.

I find the entry for the Field Gun, but then I hesitate when it's time to choose which one.

But what if this kills Brett…?

A foreign but familiar female presence nudges me onwards, forcing me to press the button, and the huge darksteel cannon appears before me.

There's no time to pull out another one as the flying swords will swarm us in just a few seconds, so I line up the sights with the target, then fire.

Gods, I-…

"You are now level sixty-three."

I don't even know what to think, say, or even just pray. I simply remain stunned as my ears ring from the blast, and I hold my breath as I wait for the dust to settle so that we can see the aftermath.

Reinhold's swords suddenly drop to the ground, completely lifeless, and the Colossal Sword simply disappears. The men are so confused that they even stop the battle, and silence falls over the battlefield.

Then a horrible shriek pulls me out of my daze, "REINHOLD!" And his mage wife runs desperately towards the crater.

But there's nothing there.

"Brett!" Alissa suddenly exclaims as she finally finds his presence, over one hundred metri away from the blast, his body partially sunk into the mud… but still alive.

We've won, Reinhold is dead, and Brett is alive, exactly how I wanted things to go, but everyone looks grim, and a horrible feeling starts to well up within us.

A note from Manasong

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Chapter 148: Aftermath - Part 1

A note from Manasong

Attention: to conform to the limit of mature content (more than just sexual content) allowed in a novel, I've censored this chapter. You can look for the uncensored version here.

"SURRENDER, OR THE LEVIATHAN WILL SWALLOW YOU ALL!" Hana shouts threateningly.

Just to make it sink in, the summon lands heavily on the grass right next to them, sending a massive gust of wind at their faces, and then the weapons start to drop.

Ciel and Yunia [Fly] towards Brett and help him out of the mud. His armor has been ruined, and he seems dazed, which Ciel [Diagnose]s as a concussion, but he only needs a [Heal] to top off his HP, and then they start flying him back to us.

"You kept your own Gifted hidden, huh?" Urmeie remarks as she approaches me.

But before I can answer, an Imperial Officer marches out of the main group and shouts, "WHERE'S REINHOLD?!"

"DEAD!" Hana answers, and the Imperials gasp in shock.

"MURDERER!" Reinhold's wife shrieks and points at me, but I'm still too stunned to reply as the horrible feeling of impending doom continues to rise, making me think that I might be about to have a heart attack.

No, that'd mean that everyone is about to have a heart attack.

"OATHBREAKER!" Vanea shrieks back, then suddenly appears beside the distraught widow, the enraged not-princess wielding a sword wreathed in flames that she uses to decapitate the poor woman.

"STOP THIS MADNESS!" a priest shouts, and every one of them draws their blessed weapons, which begin glowing with a dangerous-looking holy light.

"OATHBREAKER!" Vanea repeats, mad with rage, and points at the woman's body with her sword.

"NOT YOUR PLACE!" the priest shouts back as he dashes towards her, and then the Imperial Army soldiers also become enraged, and they begin grabbing the weapons they just dropped.

"LEVIATHAN, ROAR!" I order the summon, and it obeys.

"UROOOOOO…!" a deep, long roar shakes us to our bones, and the men nearest to it even lose their balance.

"BOTH SIDES DISPERSE, NOW!" I bellow with [Godly Language], and it has a good effect on the shaken men.

Both sides promptly start to separate, with the priests helping herd them like shepherds, but the dread we're feeling continues to rise, and the sky darkens as stormy clouds cover the sun.

"That's a bad omen," Roxanne jokingly understates and smiles softly, trying to lift our spirits.

But then everyone, even the Princesses and the priests, is suddenly forced onto their knees by an overwhelming force that grips our bodies and squeezes our chests, making it feel like our clothes are made of steel.

I blink, then I notice that the Sun Man is right in front of me, glowing softly yet emitting so much heat that it feels searing, which is fitting considering his handsome face is warped in pure fury. He's wearing a light blue robe with a metallic sheen and his sun-like golden crown, making him look as ethereal as ever, but his piercing gaze and oppressive aura give him an overwhelmingly threatening air.

"What. Have. You. Done?" he slowly questions, each word like a slap to my face that fills me with guilt instead of pain, and his voice echoes in such a way that everyone hears him perfectly as if he were right before them.

But I'm confused about what's happening.

"Y-Your Radiance…?" I weakly question confusedly.

Alissa, Hana, and Aoi slowly manage to stand, fighting back against his oppressive aura.

"Tell them to stop," he quietly requests, his tone so strained that it's like he's barely controlling his rage.

"Y-you mean, resisting?" I hesitantly question.

His face twitches in anger, and suddenly something hits the three girls on the back of their heads, forcing their faces down against the mud, but Alissa almost passes out from the strike.

"DON'T DO ANYTHING!" I desperately order through [Bind], and I notice my breathing starting to speed up in fear.

The girls stop struggling and keep their faces in the mud, seething from the humiliation.

But the Emperor barely gives me time to process what's going on before he continues, "You've killed a Gifted, Wolf Ryder. Do you understand the gravity of your crime?"

I swallow heavily, starting to realize what he's getting at. "I don't believe I do, or else I wouldn't have done it," I cautiously reply.

And the heat of his glow increases further, hurting my skin and my eyes. "So you admit to being an ignorant savage?"

I start to regain control of my breathing as a bit of anger and defiance comes back to me. "Reinhold was an Oathbreaker who threatened my family's safety, so I couldn't hold myself back when dealing with him."

But that was clearly the wrong answer as the Emperor only grows angrier and his glow even hotter. "You insolent-…! Couldn't hold back? Who do you think you are? Who do you think Reinhold was?!" he shouts, yet his body remains unmoving, like a stalwart fortress.

"He was a dangerous Oathbreaker and blasphemer who cornered us! I did what I had to!" I shout back, defying his overwhelming pressure.

And he snaps back with scorn, "You could've just made him your slave, or even made his wife your slave and fucked her in front of him for all that I care. Anything would've been better than killing him!"

So I defend our actions, even though I'm sure Knowledge pushed me to kill Reinhold, "We couldn't! That was our last resort, and we couldn't risk him coming out of that attack with enough strength to still win against us! We didn't even know if someone could survive it!"

"So you admit to being an ignorant, irresponsible savage?" the Emperor questions with a sneer, and I realize that this was our real mistake.

We over-engineered a weapon, but if we had tested it on realistic targets, we'd have known that it was overkill and that we should've tried to develop something more reasonable.

I lower my head and apologize, "I… I admit I made a mistake, and I ask forgiveness."

"But do you even understand why you shouldn't have killed him?" the Emperor continues, completely ignoring my attempt to humble myself.

The girls give me some help, and I answer after a brief moment of hesitation as I raise my head again, "He… was a valuable weapon for the Empire."

It seems that this time, I've answered correctly, for the rage in his tone is pulled back, but now there's only a chilling coldness left in it. "Exactly, just like you are, except that you've overstepped your bounds and brought more damage than benefits to us. Is this aggression of yours a common thing in whatever 'distant land' you came from, or did the dragon inside you make you like this?"

I don't answer immediately as I ponder upon his words, but he intensifies his glare, pressing me to answer.

"Perhaps it was the dragon…" I'm forced to admit.

"And how do we make a dragon understand that he can't kill whoever he pleases?" he alludes, and a horrible chill goes up my spine. "Due to the fact that you're the one who's Gifted, I can't just kill you, yet, but the others…"

I immediately beg, "Please, no…!"

He suddenly disappears from before me, but before I can even react, I feel a blinding pain come from the base of my tail, making me scream in pain. Then my face hits the mud as my legs stop responding to me.

I immediately lift my upper body with my arms, and something fleshy and wet falls to my side, so I turn my head and see my severed tail beside me, bleeding copious amounts of blood because it was ripped right out along with the padding and scale armor that protected it.

A wave of relief washes over me, almost making me cry, then I let my body fall on my side as I stare up at the Emperor, helpless and obedient.

He only shows me a sneer of disgust and frustration, and his following words make me feel shame like nothing else ever has, "Unlike you… or Dame Vanea, I abhor killing innocents, but I won't let that stop me if it's necessary to teach you a lesson." Then he turns around and looks at Sa'Haa, who's far away, then at Urmeie, near his feet. "My daughters. Remember that you're also partially responsible for the actions of your allies."

But before they can answer, he disappears in the blink of an eye, and all of the pressure, the heat, and the brightness goes away with him.

The girls and a number of people immediately rush to me while Aoi picks up Alissa, who's still a bit dizzy from the blow to the back of her head.

"Wolf!" Ciel shouts, distraught.

"Your Highness!" Almaria shouts, panicked.

But I reassure them, "I'm fine. Just put it back in place and [Heal] it. We'll deal with any other problems later." And they both nod, then do as told.

I'm not angry. I'm just relieved that he showed us mercy, which also makes me ashamed of my own lack of it…

"Our lack…" Yunia whispers through gritted teeth.

In a flash, my tail is reattached to my body, allowing the feeling to return to my legs and, more importantly, to my Sword. Shit feels really weird, though, so I think my spine is a bit messed up.

Alissa drops down beside me so that Ciel can [Heal] her. Then Alcander and the Knights approach us, as do the Companions and Sandoro, who have come running.

The Scrubber on our side has been turned off, so Hana helps me stand up, and I promptly order, "Take us back to the embassy."

Urmeie simply watches us in silence as we organize. Honestly, I don't give a shit about what she thinks because Empy threatened to kill my wives, yet only chided her, so she'd better suck it up and not give me any shit about what happened.

The battlefield remains noisy and chaotic for a while as the Imperial Army protests Reinhold's and his wife's murder, emboldened by the Emperor's actions, but the priests quickly intervene and make sure that everyone separates without incident, claiming that if even the Emperor didn't punish us for it, then why would they have any right to do so? And since it looks like the danger has passed, I finally unsummon the Leviathan to alleviate the stress on my mana organ.

We'd like to rest, but we mentally support Yunia and Ciel, who remain there for a while longer to coordinate our men and not just abandon our allies while the Imperial Army is throwing a hissy fit. They actually want Vanea arrested, but they don't have the authority to do that, and the fact that Reinhold was an Oathbreaker complicates things as he's like a Wicked-lite.

I tiredly lay down on my stomach on our supremely comfy bed that I love so much, and the rest of the girls crowd around me while Klein and the Companions just stand respectfully a few meters away. Almaria continues to heal my soul with [Weaverism] while I use [Soul Touch] on myself to boost my recovery, and Alissa holds a [Regeneration] tool against my tail. The pleasure from the healing magic almost makes me voice it out, so I promptly share it with everyone, and it does wonders for our mounting stress.

"The damage to your spirit is just as impressive as how fast you're recovering," Almaria remarks with a gentle smile, and her droopy eyes glance at me.

"I guess the latter is the result of [Mana Body]," I explain absentmindedly.

"And I advise you not to repeat the former," she soberly adds.

And I sigh softly. "I know that, which is why I only use it in emergencies."

But she continues and gives a serious lecture, "The fact that you can push yourself so far past a normal person's limits is dangerous because you don't know where your actual limits are, so you might accidentally kill yourself one day."

The girls give me knowing looks through [Bind], and I feel chided enough to not argue against that. "I understand…" I tiredly reply, and Almaria shares a smug look with them in victory.

Then we fall silent, and I start to pay attention to what Almaria is doing. It's like she's "suturing" my soul with Life, but it doesn't actually "close" any "wounds," it just creates a magical net that enhances the healing effect of [Soul Touch].

Alissa crawls up to my side with the magic tool still on my tail, and we both reflexively hug each other. The Emperor gave us the biggest scare we could ever imagine, and now all we want is to enjoy each other's warmth as we've been reminded of just how fleeting life really is.

There are so many things that we want to say to each other, but our minds are still in disarray, so this isn't the right time. The only thing we should do right now is warm up our hearts while we heal.

But I still find the bed awfully cold, so I turn to Klein and the others and order, "I give you all the rest of the day off, so get in here!"

"His Highness is in need of female pampering, and it's part of your duties to see his desires fulfilled," Roxanne declares with a snooty tone, mimicking a certain elven queen.

"His desire is our command," Hukarere obediently replies with a grin.

"We accept this arduous task," Klein wryly adds as she rolls her eyes.

"With enthusiasm!" Melanie, the shortstack, shouts gleefully.

We should also invite Lolo post-haste.

"Don't forget us!" Hana interjects and grins seductively at the little monkey.

"But no spicy stuff, not in front of Almaria," I cautiously state.

"Thank you for your consideration, Your Highness," she gently replies.

My nose is filled with the sickeningly sweet scent of their perfumes as my body is attacked by innumerable soft hands. My declaration of no spicy stuff ends up being more for me than them as my mind drifts towards savoring the wide variety of female bodies that surround me, instantly awaking my friend.

Alissa sneaks her hand onto my thigh and discreetly strokes him as it rides down my tight elven shorts, disguising it as a massage. And now, the ability to easily release becomes a burden as I'm forced to hold it in until Almaria finishes healing me.

But then a worrying report puts us all on high alert.

"Katasko is fighting among themselves," a scout reports.

It seems that the lower nobles have noticed that Alki-Alki is vulnerable and have decided to kill him. Perhaps it's revenge for this disastrous plot, or maybe they want to kill him before he can order the assassins to go after them, but it's unlikely that his death would stop the assassinations to come.

The priests don't give a shit about infighting, so they just watch as the "cattle" start a revolt, but then the scout detects Alki fleeing in a carriage along with some of the other higher nobles, which is promptly chased after by another carriage.

And we can't let him escape.

Yunia turns to Sandoro and immediately orders, "Give a Scrubber to our Winged Soldiers and tell them to follow the carriage."

"As you wish, Your Highness," he obediently replies and sees it done.

But the carriage is moving towards Mac Gantus, and bringing an active Scrubber into the town would cause chaos, not to mention that it would enrage the Emperor even further.

Alissa, Yunia, you two will have to work together and stalk Alki until you get an opportunity to assassinate him.

"Put all of my points in [Illusion Magic] and I can cast [Invisibility] on both of them," Roxanne promptly volunteers, and we begin shifting from "relaxation" to "operation" mode.

Yunia returns to the embassy, and then the two assassins [Fly] away together, now fully invisible.

"Where are they going?" Klein quietly asks, sounding worried.

"To tie up a loose end," I whisper back, and the implication ruins the mood, but both she and the Companions still try their hardest to keep their spirits up so that we can relax.

Our Lordsguard's Winged Soldiers take my bird with them, and they see the carriages exchanging ranged attacks, but the enchantments of both vehicles can stop anything aside from a high-level spell.

Unfortunately, things are too messy for us to get involved, especially with how weakened I currently am, so I don't want to risk my men in a fight to the death against nobles who have no morals nor limits to their evil.

The girls reach the edge of the city first, so they just wait, and once Alki's carriage gets within sight of the walls, the driver starts waving a big red flag, a sign that they're requesting aid from the Towsguard. Nobles aren't allowed to just kill each other, except in specific situations, so the Townsguard immediately mobilizes and sallies out, then Alki's pursuers slow down and stop throwing ranged attacks to not get in trouble with the Townsguard or the still-enraged Empy.

As they're all nobles, customs for them is fast, though it's very awkward as the two sides glare at each other while the guards just try to do their jobs. Alki-Alki is incensed, and when he notices the Winged Soldiers flying above him, he starts to look even more deranged, which is so supremely satisfying that I almost soil my pants.

After entering Mac Gantus, Alki's supporters disperse, leaving him alone, likely so that their pursuers will have a harder time getting any of them, but the girls don't lose sight of him. He's still able to request a noble-only Hyperloop Train as he won't be stripped of his nobility until the Purification ends, so he takes one to the Throne, then takes the cage-like elevator to his mansion.

Intermission - Alki-Alki

After the Templars invaded my home and wrecked the gates, the guards left and never returned, and the security enchantments weren't turned back on again. So I just push the gate, and it opens with an irritating creak, then I start walking forward.

The fact that no lowlife is ever allowed here brings me great comfort because otherwise, this place would've been thoroughly sacked within an hour after the invasion. I wouldn't care if everything was burned to the ground, but it'd be very offensive to my pride if things were stolen instead.

I slowly cross the stone "garden" that I've always hated so much. Uncomfortable for the feet, boring to look at, and the most grating, unchanging ever since I was born. I'm so sick and tired of this place that I just speed up my pace. I don't know why Father was always so insistent on never changing a thing. Shit, just a single flower or even a patch of grass would make this place so much better.

The elves got it right with their grass carpets and the other comfortable fancy bullshit they grow with magic. Unfortunately, they're insufferable stuck-up sword lickers really do deserve to get their ears cut off and their faces mangled to teach them some humility.

Then I reach the doors to my home, which have been blasted open by crude spells from the brutish Punishers. I simply scowl as I walk in, then I bask in the air of my birthplace.

Cold. Dead. Just like Father… and that still applied even when he was "alive."

"Why was I cursed to be born into such a decadent household?" I blurt out, barely believing my own mouth, but I refuse to take it back.

We are hated so much that the Emperor didn't give a shit about the death of my father, and even our allies are now turning on us because we pushed them too far. Meanwhile, the lizard has a sly fox, two Princesses, and the Whore of Rabanara with him, but I don't even have the energy to get angry anymore. All that's left is an endless sea of bitterness.

I look down at the blue tile floor made from dragon scales and get an idea. I take out a war hammer from my [Item Box] and break a few, but it doesn't make me feel any better. Maybe if they were emerald or mirror-like, I could fantasize about them, but I have nothing against the big blue gecko.

Then my eyes are drawn to the corridors, and I notice that the place has actually been ransacked by the Punishers, so I guess those insane bastards are no better than the lowlives. They may not have taken the actual valuables, but I'm sure they stole all our weapons.

There's nothing left for me here. I could go inspect that infamous room that Father kept secret from me, but that would just make me want to spit at his urn, and neither do I feel like going into any of the innumerable rooms except for one, so I just climb up the stairs to the third floor and walk to Father's office.

No… it's my office, even if it'll only be for a short time.

Dark, stuffy, and so very boring. Father was so damn cursed by the Gods that he had to tint the windows black to not get burned by the sun, and he had the audacity to claim it was just a sensitivity to light…

But the thing that annoys me the most is that the Punishers stole the damn desk! They didn't even ransack or destroy it, but just straight up stole the whole desk!

At least they left the armchair…

I sit down in it with a sigh, then I close my eyes and think.

But there's nothing left to think about. It's over. It's all over.

"Is this the end of your schemes? Are you resigning yourself to die?" A stern voice suddenly reaches my ears.

I open my eyes wide in surprise and see Theneus in front of me, and I have no idea when or how he got here. The beardless shit was dad's personal sword licker, not literally, but he's always been a passive follower, one of the weird "believers" in the "glory" of Katasko.

And I have no patience for getting my sword licked by another man. "We all lost our nobility, Theneus, and now the cattle have turned on us. I just don't give a shit about what happens anymore," I tiredly explain.

But he stares at me with his oddly intense stare, actually giving me chills. "It isn't over. You can come back from this," he states confidently.

"I failed at everything I tried to do!" I flippantly reply.

And he insists with an infuriating conviction. "Yet you still survived. You were going against the Gods, and you're still alive to spit at their feet. That's impressive."

He's so annoying that I facepalm as I shout, "But now I have nothing left!"

Then his voice becomes deadly serious, "But I do, and I want to help you get back on your feet so that you can try again."

I take my hands off my face and stare at him, but I don't see the Theneus I knew before. I see someone else, someone who… is also cursed by the sun.

And I'm not dumb. I know what this means.

"Fuck the Gods, let's do this," I answer with a sneer, and he grins like the freak he is.

Intermission end.

This heretical talk must be stopped!

Alissa and Yunia [Blink] into the room and dispel their [Invisibility] so that they can see, but they hesitate for a split second as they see something unexpected: a huge, muscular figure is between Alki and Theneus, a person with no presence nor Thread for Alissa and Yunia to detect. They see brown skin peeking out from under its gray robe, freakishly long arms, huge hands that it uses to grab Alki's and Theneus' shoulders, a hunched over upper body, a mouth covered with a leather breathing mask, and a pair of unremarkable brown eyes, eerily unremarkable.

Which are looking right at them, even though the girls were invisible a split second ago.

Alissa shoots an arrow at Alki's head and another at Theneus, but Yunia hesitates before using [Chain Life] on the huge thing as a horrible feeling of dread comes through [Precognition].

The masked thing lifts its huge hands and takes the arrows as if they were nothing, so Alissa casts [Mesmerizing Butterflies] while Yunia casts [Lightning Bolt], expecting a battle, but the thing also takes both of their spells without even flinching. Then it lands its hands on both of the men's shoulders again, and Alki's smug grin is the last thing we see before the three of them simply disappear.

That was neither a [Gate] nor a [Blink]. They just disappeared without even leaving a trace of mana.

A note from Manasong

Hall of Fame of Patrons

The patrons who support Rupegia shall have their names sung by the bards for they deserve the glory and honor. Their names are:

Prince PreownedFIN.

Prince Owldente.

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Lord Warwulfv.

Lord Tenebris Lupus.

Lord Paul Daval.

Lord Paul Daval.

Lord Tmac.

Lord CopeyDunt.

Lord BlindTactic.

Lord litalmexy.

Lord Philip.

Lord d3235.

Lord William Clark.

Lord Ddraig Wynn.

Lord CardinalSteiner.

Lord Cidant.

Lord SubJef.

Lord GalacticTNT.

Lord SquiddlyWinks.

Lord Max Goodwin.

Lord Freddie.

Noble Salty Panda.

Noble Mild Fracas.

Noble Aclys.

Noble Carl  Baxter.

Noble Tony Starrk.

Noble DND.

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Chapter 148: Aftermath - Part 2

A note from Manasong

Attention: to conform to the limit of mature content (more than just sexual content) allowed in a novel, I've censored this chapter. You can look for the uncensored version here.

That was an undead, wasn't it? The same one that we saw during the Turn of the Wheel in Goldport; the same one that tried to sneak up on us during our operation in the Misty Forest. It's those eyes… I'll never forget those eyes.

But that thing's form was terrifying. How did it mingle among humanoids during the Turn of the Wheel? How did it suddenly become a werefox in the Misty Forest? Is it a Terminator that can change its form at will? Or maybe a Faceless Man. That weird leather mask was also suspicious.

But then there's the fact that it disappeared without using any known spells. Maybe we should've activated a Scrubber, but that could've given them a preemptive warning that something was going on, giving them time to prepare a counterattack…

Coulda, woulda, shoulda. The problem is that its teleportation left no traces of mana, nor could the girls detect any spells. They couldn't even get a reading on its Thread. It's like that thing was… neither dead nor alive, like an alien or an artificial lifeform, yet it had no smell of undeath.

We failed to kill Alki, we killed Reinhold when we shouldn't have, we lost Azador to an underhanded evil scheme, and we enraged the Emperor. We won, but it doesn't feel like it.

I feel… demoralized.

I sit up on the bed and test my tail as I ponder.

But then Alissa sits down beside me and sends me a stern glare with her almost-orange pair of jewels. "Am I going to have to slap you like last time?" she sternly attempts to encourage me, then grabs my head and forces me to look her in the eye. "Out of all of us, we can't have you wallowing in self-pity."

I simply smirk mischievously and pull her onto my lap with my newly recovered tail. Then I cover her chest and neck with kisses, making her writhe in my grasp as she wants to be "angy."

"Don't butcher Andraste, please," she requests with an annoyed pout.

"It's a Dad's job to annoy his wife," I immediately riposte.

And she gives me a questioning look. "Oh? Since when have you been a father?"

"Since I created the golems from my own mana," I answer with a smirk.

Her tail stiffens in annoyance. "Except your children are all grown up already."

"Doesn't mean I'll ever stop being a Dad."

"Wolfy is my daddy," Lina cutely chimes in and hugs my arm.

And I give Alissa a smug look, but she just pouts harder at me, so we have a staring contest.

"You two are adorable," Almaria remarks, grinning from ear to ear, and Alissa actually blushes as she gives up on the contest. I also get a bit embarrassed, but only a bit.

Then Yunia suddenly feels competitive in front of her mentor, not wanting to look like she loves her husband any less than her sister-wife, so she sneaks onto the bed and hugs my horned head from behind, pressing it against her perky pillows.

"Does a Master count as a daddy?" she calmly asks and runs her fingers through my hair.

And Alissa sees the truth in Yunia's words, so the c-- slave immediately changes her tune and states matter-of-factly. "It should, which would make Wolfy everyone's daddy."

"Ooh~… even me?" Roxanne hums curiously.

"Everyone's, though you're just the pet s--t," Yunia casually remarks.

"His Highness is responsible for everyone's well-being, so, in a way…" Almaria wryly chimes in.

"Even the men?" Hukarere teasingly asks.

But Roxanne actually decides to defend me, "He's their father, but he's our daddy."

The other Companions seem mildly confused, so Aneta, the seductive silver elf, voices the question they're too embarrassed to ask, "By 'daddy,' do you mean in the taboo way, or… some other spicy way?"

"Both," I promptly reply.

And she smirks suggestively. "That, I can get behind."

"More like he gets behind you," Roxanne remarks, making the girls giggle, then they start to make suggestive motions and sounds.

Their hands also continue to grow more aggressive with their caressing, and my hard-as-Okross Sword throbs with the desire to do their moist flowers. But while I do have a degenerate desire about displaying my masculinity to a married woman like Almaria, I also respect her too much to indulge in it with her.

But the experienced elf can feel the tension in the air, so she smoothly makes her escape, "This should suffice for now, Your Highness. Unless you plan on overexerting your mana organ again today, this should be enough."

"His seed is produced and enhanced with his mana. It's very important that he's able to 'perform' to his fullest," Yunia immediately interjects, deadly serious.

Almaria's face twitches in a flush of emotions, but she retains her composure and answers matter-of-factly, "As long as he doesn't release an endless stream or let his MP get to zero, I believe he should be fine. Unfortunately, my knowledge of spirits is limited, and only High Officer Sainalai would be able to tell you more."

Our dear little ginger Sai is in Escanso, overseeing our domain, but we don't think it's necessary to call for her.

Yunia nods and wryly accepts, "Very well. We shall be careful with his Sword, if that's even possible…"

She also has a fetish that involves bragging to others about my virility and the size of my Sword, but she's capable of being a lot more subtle about it than me, as seen in her last two statements.

Almaria blinks blankly, then nods and hurries out of the room.

And now that there's no longer any reason for us to hold back, my clothes are almost ripped off my body.

Alissa is already on my lap, so she's first. I just love her shameless Japanese style of clothing. Long stockings with cutesy details and floral patterns on her small not-kimono. All in perfect balance with her beautiful and foxy features.

Her flower is the be-… amazing, just like every other of my wives'. It's even better from behind as I can feel her tail wag and hit my belly. Reading her mind and feeling how much she loves me doesn't have the same impact as seeing her tail wag faster the harder I pound into her, and that little round ass of hers is just begging to be stretched until she bleeds.

After filling her until she's literally dripping, I move on to the second. There's some discussion about who deserves this spot between Roxanne and Hana, but Roxanne fell in love with me before Hana did, so we decide to go with the thirsty succubus.

And she's all about seduction. She loves to show off the contours of her supermodel-like body and her gentle feminine curves with loose dresses that have such long cleavage and side openings that they're just a light breeze away from revealing her spicy bits.

She happily bounces on my lap, matching my rhythm with vigor, the only time she ever shows a good amount of stamina, and I forget everything around me as my mind burns into its memory every sensual sound and movement she makes. Her race may be matriarchal, but she was born to be on my Sword and voicing her lungs out.

Once every hole has been filled so much that she'd surely be impregnated twice if not for the Fertility Ring, I start moving on to the dragonkin, but she jumps onto me instead.

Hana is supremely gorgeous. With her glorious red hair having so much volume that it flows in the wind like a flag, only truly glorious dresses are worthy of her. They're all open enough to show off her muscular body and generous bust, but she's so shameless that she doesn't even care if someone can see her private parts, for she enjoys having others salivating over her body, which only Roxanne and I have full rights to.

She does me just as much as I do her, and our doing could even be considered a sport with how much energy and skill it involves. One wrong move would break a normal Sword or at least plunge it into the wrong hole, not that she would mind, and we're able to perform in positions that the weak could only ever dream of.

We deliberately stop ourselves before she can fully drain me as her hellfire-forged body has achieved levels of bed stamina that can fuel a hunger that rivals a succubus with their tail stroked.

And then we recall Ciel so that she can have her stabbing.

She tries to keep her wardrobe modest, but she's unable to hold back on flaunting her big "assets." Long valleys, belts under the pillows to accentuate their fullness, elastic cloth that hugs the shape of her bottom, openings to allow her thick thighs to be salivated at, and bright colors that go perfectly with her Latina skin tone.

I pound her hard because I love to see her jiggle, and I cover her with it as the "defiled angel" look fits her perfectly. She tries to be calm and collected, but when my Sword is in play, she becomes as much of a c-m s--t as the other wives.

Then it's loli time.

Lina is a little, gloomy doll, and she knows how to best leverage her cuteness to stoke my loli-loving desires. Gothic lolita is her favorite style, which she learned from Roxanne, but she's enhanced it by reducing the clothing load, allowing her to more easily display her spicy feminine assets to entice me. Shorter skirts, bare shoulders, open-toed sandals, and the use of transparent underwear are her greatest weapons against me.

I unleash the dragon upon her tightness, using her featherweight body as I wish and completely ruining her carefully put together look with my savagery. She makes a good counterpart to Ciel as the little Gothic angel who has no shame in loving being defiled by me.

Once she has been so abused that she can't even stand, I move on to Aoi, who has been patiently waiting for her turn, and she promptly lifts her tail for me to enter her steaming hot entrance.

This "little" blue dragon has such a sleek shape that it's unbelievable. In her dragon form, she's perpetually clotheless, but she sometimes wears jewels that enhance her glorious beauty, and in her human form, she wears just as little as Roxanne, for her divinely-built body is so supremely feminine that it's almost alien-like, and it's really hard to find clothes that can enhance that.

First, I clap her like a dragon to satisfy the beast within me, and she feels elated to submit to my draconic virility like the good loyal wife she is. Then she turns into her human form, and I abuse the fact that it can withstand almost as much as her dragon form as long as it's fed with mana, which I ensure she absorbs a lot of through my Seed.

Then it's finally Yunia's turn, and being left for last fits her humiliation fetish perfectly.

Like every elf, she only has eyes for the dousnadeia, the not-bikini with long strips of delicate cloth embroidered with fine patterns, or glorious dresses that, coupled with her glorious hair drills and sculpted body, exemplify the style of the most dignified elf in existence.

And I ruin it all by clapping her cheeks so hard that she squeals like the wh---sh breeding sow she is. Her desire is all about ruining the image she has so painstakingly built because that's all it is, an image, and not the truth that she's depraved and submissive enough to almost rival Alissa.

Then it's time for the others. They don't last as long as the wives, so rather than focus on myself, I try my best to leave them completely fulfilled.

Klein is another who gladly submits to me, but our relationship has progressed down a different path than the others. She expresses her love for me through servitude, and it's distinct from the love one has for their spouse.

Her obedience makes her quite the delightful one to do, though. I can't read her mind like I can with the girls to learn her preferences, but by reading her tells, I slowly discover exactly how she likes to take it, and she loves it when she's tied up and helpless before me.

Hukarere also has a submissive and subservient personality, but she's much easier to read and to please. She's always excited to get on any hole, and she always goes along with whatever I want from her, so she's like a pet who loves me no matter what I do. But it's clear that she really likes it doggy-style.

The Companions are even more obedient than the rest, like perfect bed dolls, because who wouldn't be when I blow brains out with little effort? But I know that Romy, the Filipina, likes to wrestle for the right to be on top; Edolie, the werecat, wants spiky Swords no matter the position; Melanie, the shortstack, loves to be hugged tightly during missionary; Atawha, the raccoon Chimera, likes getting her inner button hit with a long one; and Aneta, the sensuous silver elf, needs to be choked while she reaches the summit.

Lolo has also been invited, but she's not engaging with the others as she's still reflecting on what path she wants to take. So I give her a hand and remind her of the superiority of my draconic Sword.

She's already mine; she just doesn't realize it yet.

I'd love to do the golems, and they'd love to get done by me, but their bed-bodies still aren't ready, so I have them us their hands just so that they can participate.

"Come on, Wolfy, this is going to leave a stain," Ciel complains as I paint the trio white.

"Sucking it out of stuffing isn't fun," Aoi complains

"Their souls will absorb it in a few minutes, so don't worry," I appease them both.

When the group party finally comes to an end, it's already lunchtime, so the wives and I get ready while the well-done and thoroughly satisfied bed dolls rest.

"Ah, finally!" Urmeie exclaims as we walk in. "It's really bothersome of you to make me wait."

"We needed time to recover after everything we went through," I cheerfully reply, not giving a single shit about her annoyance as the Ravaging of every one of my women has given me renewed vigor.

"You sound awfully unfazed by what happened today," Sa'Haa impassively remarks.

But I flash her a smile. "What do you mean? I'm elated that your father showed us mercy."

That doesn't seem to please not-Cruella, as she narrows her sharp eyes. "I imagined your pride would've been wounded deeper from having your tail ripped off like that."

"Then you underestimate how much I love my wives," I casually reply as I take my seat.

"You're just like Dad," Urmeie remarks, sounding both annoyed and amused.

"Are you sure His Radiance wouldn't be offended by such a comparison?" Vanea hesitantly inquires and glances at Tommen, but the androgynous dwarven Prince knits his eyebrows, conflicted.

"Not if it's true," the ursine Princess offhandedly replies with a shrug, which makes her massive body jiggle.

"We know a bit too well how close the Ryders are to one another," Jacques dryly remarks, and Alissa and Allura can't help themselves but grin at each other.

"We have a lot of love to give," Ciel soothingly states, and she shares a kind smile with Omari.

"Yeah, 'love,'" Allura remarks and raises her eyebrows suggestively.

"I'd rather talk about the issues with the Imperial Army," Sa'Haa immediately interjects as politely as her tense mood allows her to.

"I'd rather not talk while we eat, but I guess we have to," Urmeie remarks as she promptly goes for the juiciest steak.

So, the Imperial Army doesn't officially participate in the Purification, but the officers are still allowed to join. It's just that they'll be on their own if something happens, which means that the guys we fought got the shaft.

The temple is very meddlesome in quarrels that arise out of the Purification to discourage the rotten nobles from abusing it, and the priests have already sided with us because Reinhold was an Oathbreaker, so it was "divine punishment" for him to die. Not only that, but the Emperor himself, the Supreme Commander of the Army, has already "punished" us, so the Army officers have basically zero support to get us punished any further.

But officially, the Army has to do something, so they'll likely send us a formal complaint in a couple of days, which will require a formal response from us. We want to keep a good relationship with them because we're counting on them funding the Materials Research Division of the Institute and then later buying our planes, so we'll respond with an apology and give them a gift as reparation, which will likely be a Raki unless we can think of something better.

Some of the Army officers we fought want to screw Vanea over for killing Reinhold's wife, but we'll show our worth as allies to her by sheltering her from the fallout.

I promptly interject and composedly deliver my speech, "Reinhold deeply offended Vanea by breaking his word to her and treating their promise as if it was worthless and insignificant, but she's our ally, and we won't accept her pride being wounded in this manner. If she's to be punished for this, then so should we."

We get a lot of raised eyebrows in surprise while Vanea shows no reaction at all, though I believe she just can't believe her ears.

"A statement like that should be enough for the temple," Sa'Haa quietly states, and her subdued tone surprises us.

We really want to tease her and ask her why she isn't whining about Vanea, but that'd ruin the rather pleasant mood as everyone is too subdued to bicker. We'll just assume that even she understands not to mess with our ally or belittle our conviction in matters of honor.

"Thank you, Ryders," Vanea finally replies, her voice so soft that she even sounds a bit guilty, then she lowers her head respectfully. "I apologize for bringing you trouble. I simply lost control of myself. It truly deeply offended me that he dismissed our promise so callously."

I reflexively look at Urmeie, expecting an insensitive comment, but she has the decency to not say anything, especially since it's blasphemous to make light of a promise to the Gods.

"You wouldn't be the first person who killed someone in anger after a betrayal," Léonne sagely comments.

"Yet there's hardly anyone who doesn't regret giving in to emotion," Mako snobbishly retorts, and the two share sour looks.

"Reinhold offended us all with his Oathbreaking," Apeiltik sides with Vanea, as expected of her ally, and even Tommen seems supportive of his statement.

"What's done is done, so let's move on, please," Omari politely requests.

Now we can finally talk about what's actually important: the spoils. As promised, the lower nobles will all get minor Titles, but we have to divide up the wealth we won from the Army officers… and the airship.

Technically, the airship is "lent" to its Captain, so they don't actually own it, but through the Purification, we've gained this "lent" right from the Captain, so it's like we're now honorary members of the Army. And the temple will make sure that they can't just recall the airship on a whim.

The actual value of the Titles is that they allow nobles to receive a number of soldiers from the Imperial Army, helping the nobles in defending their lands and leveling up, so it's not like the Army is a stranger to the Purification.

"But we don't have any need for this airship. We're the ones who build them," Sa'Haa declares.

Then everyone turns to us.

"Sure… we can take it…" I answer with a grin.

Intermission – Emperor Andreas Doxa

I look up at the dark sky and feel ashamed at my own lack of control, but that's not even the worst part of today. I allowed two idiotic Gifted to fight, and one of them got killed.

The Empresses gather at the Throne, and I remain standing by the window, in a pensive mood, but then they promptly begin to bicker. The presence of a Champion has made us all tense, and they're starting to take it out on each other. If this continues, I'll have to remind them of the meaning of unity, but for now, it isn't too disruptive.

Then Hayakasha's loud voice cuts through the chatter, aimed directly at me. "Just a tail, really?" she asks flippantly. This dragonkin is starting to get a bit too unruly for my tastes.

"Should I leave it to you to kill innocent spouses as punishment?" I coldly reply without looking away from the sky.

And she immediately controls her anger again, allowing her cold and reliable side to come back. "That isn't what I asked."

I turn around and stare at her dark eyes. "But that's what you implied."

Her beautiful dark scales and pale face twitch in frustration, then she looks away in defeat. I understand that she's focusing on the results, but she also needs to be reminded of the cost.

"He has two of our daughters working with Vanea," Ho'Tree insists from another angle. She couldn't get Mena to persuade Tommen to distance himself from Vanea, so now she's worried that our precious Sa'Haa will also become "corrupted" by that deplorable woman.

"Managing to get them to work together could be considered a feat," little Mena wryly remarks, always my dwarf-sized bundle of joy.

With an improving mood, I calmly confess, "Indeed, but I also admit that it's clear we overestimated the Realm Traveler. We'll have to keep a closer eye on him from now on."

"Our daughters are well-suited to keeping an eye on him," Ho'Tree immediately replies, her quick change of stance just so like her.

"Are you sure you want to risk him defiling your precious Sa'Haa?" Uruterie grumbles with a smirk. I believe she and Piscila would gladly push our daughters onto Wolf, but our beastfolk children have been even more unruly than the dragonkin, so I don't think it's a good idea to even try.

"She sees the storm coming and knows it's time to sow the fields," my little Oracle remarks cryptically.

Uruterie furrows her furry brows annoyedly at the little girl. "Can you speak straight? A storm isn't a good thing."

The cheeky woman simply smiles back at the fearsome bearfolk Empress. "It's a Thunderplains expression. A storm also means that there'll be a bountiful harvest after it's gone."

The conversation loses its thread as the Empresses speculate about Wolf's future and the merits of his endeavors, but I'm not interested in those matters. The future of the Avgi Empire is at the most unpredictable it has ever been, and that is the most important concern.

Mena gets up from her throne and walks up to me, then gently grabs my hand to soothe the storm within me and also in the sky.

"What's on your mind aside from a thunderstorm?" she softly asks with a peaceful smile.

"The thing I can't understand is why the Gods allowed one Gifted to kill another. Was Reinhold's Fate to die by Wolf's hand?" I answer in kind, then turn to the window again, but this time, I look down at my subjects.

Then I notice my little Oracle approaching us. "Are you sure Reinhold's Fate ended in that battle?" she once again speaks cryptically.

What-… wait, the Chimeras…!

I release Mena's hand and turn around in a huff. "Hayakasha! Find Reinhold's spirit!"

Intermission end.

A note from Manasong

Hall of Fame of Patrons

The patrons who support Rupegia shall have their names sung by the bards for they deserve the glory and honor. Their names are:

Prince PreownedFIN.

Prince Owldente.

Lord Andrew Meyers.

Lord Novgarod.

Lord Michale Erwin.

Lord Bakerdea.

Lord Maurice.

Lord Mattirro Draca.

Lord Mike Bartter.

Lord Warwulfv.

Lord Tenebris Lupus.

Lord Paul Daval.

Lord Paul Daval.

Lord Tmac.

Lord CopeyDunt.

Lord BlindTactic.

Lord litalmexy.

Lord Philip.

Lord d3235.

Lord William Clark.

Lord Ddraig Wynn.

Lord CardinalSteiner.

Lord Cidant.

Lord SubJef.

Lord GalacticTNT.

Lord SquiddlyWinks.

Lord Max Goodwin.

Lord Freddie.

Noble Salty Panda.

Noble Mild Fracas.

Noble Aclys.

Noble Carl  Baxter.

Noble Tony Starrk.

Noble DND.

Leave a rating or a review to help me rise to the top or fix my shameful understanding of prose.

Take a look over my blog where all information about the world of Rupegia will be posted.

Join the Discord and discuss, or rant, or meme, or try and fight me so your waifu gets more screentime.

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Chapter 148: Aftermath - Part 3

A note from Manasong

Announcement: it's time for the scheduled break. We'll be back with normal chapter upload on the next 16th.

Since we won both battles where everyone bet everything, the spoils are immense. We have received the Titles of Decien and Sky Captain, which give us the rights to over a thousand well-trained Imperial Army soldiers and a fully-crewed battle airship.

Since we got the airship, our allies received extra Titles to compensate, but Sa'Haa preferred to get a bigger share of the wealth than the Titles, and that allowed Vanea to become a Centum, giving the not-princess cause to create her own branch house instead of just being a Supporting Descendant for her brother.

"This is it. We've finished the preliminary negotiations," Sa'Haa calmly announces, but I freeze as I realize something.

Wait… preliminary?! How many more days are we going to waste on this?!

Yunia wryly answers through [Bind], "We've only negotiated the general division. Once the temple has given us the actual list of spoils, we might have to sit down again and negotiate the exact distribution in case there's something specific that someone wants."

I silently stand up, then walk to the balcony and look up at the rapidly clearing stormy sky as I scream internally.

AAAAAAAAAAAAAA…!

The girls leave me to scream at humanoidity alone, but that opens me up to being approached by Allura.

"You don't really like negotiations, do you?" the tomboy fox cheekily asks and leans forward girlishly, giving me a view of her cleavage.

"Am I that easy to read?" I ask back sarcastically, but also not, then I unashamedly glance at the goodies being displayed for me.

She smiles as she notices my gaze and leans against the railing, her fluffy tail wagging lazily. "Facially? No, but you always slip away whenever you can."

I look back at Yunia and Léonne happily discussing the shipment of elven products we owe them. "Yeah, I just can't not find it boring."

And she smirks suggestively as her tail wags faster. "You prefer to spend time on your phallic weapons."

"That one isn't deliberately shaped like a penis, you know?" I defensively reply.

And she raises her eyebrows suggestively. "So, there are weapons deliberately shaped like a penis?"

I pout at her. "Can we not talk about dicks for a second?"

But her gaze becomes intense, and her tone gains an arousing low growl. "No, because you're infuriatingly attractive to me."

Her not-kimono is starting to come undone again, making it trivially easy to pull it aside and fuck her right here and now. I fail to resist temptation and sneak both clawed hands onto her cleavage and cop a feel of her perky breasts, earning myself an even steamier gaze, but then I pull my hands back and readjust her not-kimono to cover them again.

"Don't forget that this is part of becoming a woman. You're in a phase where you'd find anyone attractive," I soberly reply, pulling hard on the perpetually horny dragon to let no seductiveness taint my tone.

She pouts, mildly offended, and retorts, "So it's a coincidence that the moment you arrive, I suddenly become a fox in heat?"

And I smile wryly. "Okay, yeah, I admit I didn't hold back on you."

She crosses her arms, bunching up her alluring pair in a way that increases her cleavage again. "Hmph, you'd better take responsibility now that you've seduced me."

I never thought I'd hear those words, but there you have it.

"I'll do everything I can to make you happy, as long as you dedicate yourself to me," I confidently answer.

But she scoffs back, now more offended. "You'll 'do what you can'? Really? Where's my promise of undying love?" she retorts rather childishly and turns her face away.

This reaction of hers is both adorable and worrying. If she were just an innocent young girl, I could say something sweet and show her a whole new world, but she's the descendant of an iron-fisted ruler, and she can't afford to be misled by comforting words.

I grab her arm and force her to face me as I stare sternly at her. "No, I don't do that. Listen, I'll tell you the truth, always. I'll never lie to you, and I'll never sweeten my words to make it easier on you because I can't ever lie to myself, and you, as a fellow ruler, shouldn't either. I simply can't mislead you with the illusion that our lives will always be happy and without the need for sacrifices or compromises. But I can make this promise to you: I'll give and do everything I can to make you happy, but every day, you'll have to decide for yourself whether or not I'm staying true to my word and if what I give is enough for you."

Then I release her arm, but I continue staring at her with an unwavering gaze to show her my conviction.

She seems taken aback at first, but the tomboy girl quickly understands the need for seriousness and nods. Then she smiles awkwardly as she remarks, "Well… nothing is ever simple with you."

I pull back on the staring and let my posture relax as I smirk. "Because I have what all of the women around me crave: endless excitement."

"Sure feels like it." And she brightens up as her tail begins to wag again.

Then I gently repeat and advise, "So you have to decide if what I have to offer is enough because I can't always be there for you. And your mother definitely won't like that you'll be giving up on marriage with the other clans for me."

She shrugs and smirks, then gives me a barely contained wild stare. "I'll just marry more women, and you'll get us all pregnant."

And I mirror her stare with my own. "Well, aren't you a vixen…"

The Princesses and her two allies finally leave soon after that, but they'll come back in a couple of days once the temple has sent us the list of spoils; Vanea has to deal with her own matters, so she and Tommen will also be leaving, but they're invited to come back whenever they wish to; Apeiltik will also go on his own way for now, but he'll remain in a loose alliance with the rest of the League for protection against revenge by the remnants of Katasko; and Léonne will stay with us while we're here as she's in no hurry to return to the Misty Low Forest, but her Sworn Hunters will be going back soon.

The goodbyes are as perfectly polite as they could be, and we're glad that Urmeie decided not to give us another piece of her mind, but with Vanea, things go differently.

"See you soon, Centum Vanea," I softly state and smile.

"See you soon… Decien and Honorary Sky Captain Royal Crown Lord Wolf Ryder," she cheekily replies while keeping her eyes down.

"Be well, Centum Vanea," Alissa kindly states.

And Vanea's expression actually becomes gentle. "You too, Decien and Honorary Sky Captain Royal Crown Lord Alissa Ryder, and you too, Decien and Honorary Sky Captain Royal Crown Lord Yulania Ryder, and…"

The dark-haired not-princess actually repeats it for every last one of us, but then an awkward silence settles in. We've already said what we wanted to, so it's she who's hesitating.

Vanea suddenly glances at me, but I can't decipher anything from her impassive gaze. Then she turns around and finally leaves without confessing what's bothering her.

Now that we're free from annoying royal customs, we (the Verners included) decide to mingle with our men.

The Lordsguard are having a party with the knights and the Sworn Hunters outside their mini High Tree. The two battles had plenty of epic moments for the men to tell tales about, and they're all still feeling the effects of the adrenaline high of victory, making them loud and rowdy. The prostitutes and the twinks are already on their way, but there's still some time before the men become completely wasted.

Inside the mini High Tree is Azador's coffin, where others can pay their respects, but the men have already done that, so the room is empty, which is perfect for Yunia to have a private moment with the knight she respected so much. It feels weird having a party right next to a funeral, but this is Rupegian custom, and even elves don't pass up a morally acceptable chance to get drunk.

"When you're certain that the deceased is already enjoying their deserved rest in Paradise, it becomes disrespectful to look sad before their corpse," Ciel kindly explains through [Bind].

Anyway, I decide that it's time to see Brett. Ciel thinks about tagging along, but she's already earned his respect, so she thinks it's better if I see him alone, to Alissa's annoyance.

After a bit of searching, I find the dude in question at a sausage party, which is surprising considering he could easily be an alpha with his size and cute Shiba face, though I don't know his preferences.

They notice my approach and stand up from their seats, then salute.

"At ease; you're all off duty," I softly state with a smile.

"It was just on reflex," one of the men reflexively replies.

I snort, then I turn my eyes to the big Shiba man. "I'm here to thank you, Sir Brett, for what you did during the battle with Reinhold."

He immediately falls on one knee and lowers his head. "It was my honor to be of use to you."

But I promptly reply with a commanding tone, "Rise, Brett. You don't have to be so stiff." Then I smirk, and I get some chuckles in response.

"He can be a bit hard-headed," one of the men jokes.

"Not very flexible," another follows.

"Yes, yes, I'm thick," Brett wryly replies as he stands, but then he becomes serious again. "I didn't do much, though. I just wrestled with that Gifted."

And I calmly reassure him, "It was the only way to keep him in place long enough for us to use the Field Gun, and nobody else would've survived that explosion but you."

"That thunder weapon is called a Field Gun?" one of the Lordsguard asks, sounding very interested in it.

I let my tail sway as I proudly reply, "Yes. We want to make more of them, so there's a chance that one day, one of you will be operating it, but it'll be a much cheaper version."

And he shouts excitedly, "Godsblessed! Not even the Dragon Slayer weapons are that powerful." The girls internally smile wryly at him as they find a man's love for weapons amusing.

"Wait, so this means that Brett is tougher than a dragon?" another questions.

"Most likely, yes," I answer.

Then a third smirks as he teases, "Tougher than you, Your Highness?"

The elves among the men tense up while the werefoxes smile as they sense that the teasing is nearing a delicate boundary, but I just grin back and reply, "Hopefully, we'll never know."

And Brett stiffly interjects, "I can't stay tough like that for long, though, and there's a clear difference in power between us."

I decide to give his confidence a bump, "But my [Draconic Transformation] has limits while your Gift might not, so who knows how much more you'll be able to grow."

A Sworn Hunter chimes in, "You should train him to suplex a dragon,"

"My arms ain't that big," Brett immediately shoots it down.

"Do it over a cliff."

But before they can begin discussing the feasibility of such an act, I politely interject, "I came here to personally show you my appreciation, Sir Brett. I hope to be able to depend upon you in the future as we did today."

"It was my honor, Your Highness," he replies in kind with a nod but doesn't kneel, which I find to be good progress. A knight is a loyal agent of the Lords but not a worshiper.

Then I smirk as I turn to the others. "Now, if you'll excuse me, I want to be in the company of my flowery-smelling wives instead of stinky men."

I leave as they throw banter back, but as I walk away, I suddenly start to feel guilty for fearing Brett's power and for using the Field Gun on him without knowing whether he'd survive. But Brett is too innocent to ever think about betraying us, at least for now, and he himself seems to not care about getting blown up, so I'll just file it away as something to keep in mind in the future.

Alissa goes around eavesdropping on the conversations, and she finds out that they're mostly about the Fay Leviathan. There are plenty of Chimeras here who fought it first-hand, so they give recounts of its shows of might, and the men start speculating about my power level. There are other memorable moments, too, like Hana punching a [Meteor], both of our charges across the enemy lines, our collective [Blink] into the middle of Katasko, Reinhold's use of the Colossal Sword, etc.… But nobody mentions the Emperor's fury or how he humiliated me.

They spit at the mention of Reinhold's name since it has been made very clear that he was an Oathbreaker, so, at most, the men say that his death was an "oopsie" on my part. I, unfortunately, agree with the Emperor that I fucked up pretty badly by killing a Gifted, and I'd have done the same public humiliation to me if I was in his position, so the men's devotion to us isn't as comforting as it could be.

Still, their wonder at the Leviathan is heartwarming. But while we all have fun, something keeps worming around at the back of my mind.

Why did Knowledge push me to use the over-enchanted APFSDS? Reinhold was obliterated, but maybe he could've survived the normal one. It just doesn't make sense…

Ciel once again gives me a bit of guidance, "The Gods can't give us an answer to everything, but maybe Knowledge will be able to answer if you pray."

So I do, but all I hear is silence.

Intermission – Catarina Aurea

My boots echo loudly as I walk down the empty corridor. Unadorned, simple, and gray, the Punisher style. The door at its end is unlocked, so I enter the office, which is just as austere as every other room I passed on the way here.

"Captain Caterina," the Head of the Order quietly greets me. He's an icy dragonkin with light blue hair and purple scales, and his draconic element is fitting considering his personality.

"Commander," I reply, and he motions to the seat before his desk, so I take it.

He's younger than me, but he was raised from birth by the previous Head to take on this role. Though the old man is still around to guide him in times of crisis, so it says a lot that he's still alone, even now.

"Have you read the news about Reinhold, Captain?" he calmly asks, his posture perfectly still and his fingers interlaced over his desk.

"I have. Do you wish for my summary?" I ask back, detecting some intention behind his question.

He nods subtly. "Yes, please."

I clear my throat and begin recalling the reports, "Gifted Junior General Reinhold challenged Gifted Royal Crown Lord Wolf Ryder to a Purification battle for a prize kept secret under oath. For unknown reasons, Wolf Ryder accepted in exchange for 'everything,' which has been interpreted as 'all wealth and Titles.' It's widely known that General Reinhold broke a non-aggression oath to Dame Vanea Anara for this challenge, making him an Oathbreaker. In the battle, the advantage began on the Ryders' side but was eventually flipped through Reinhold's Gift, so Wolf Ryder called upon the help of a then hidden Gifted called Brett, who immobilized Reinhold, allowing Wolf Ryder to conjure a weapon that completely destroyed Reinhold's body but barely harmed the Gifted Brett. Afterward, the Emperor himself appeared to punish Wolf Ryder for his mistake in accidentally killing Reinhold.

"Wolf Ryder appeared stunned at the effectiveness of his weapon, leading the present priests to believe that Reinhold's death was accidental, and Wolf Ryder even admitted to the Emperor that he was desperate. Reinhold's association with Katasko and his Oathbreaking puts into question his 'Piety' and honor, and I believe his death was immediate divine punishment for his transgression, though I don't know why the Gods gave a Gift to someone so unworthy. And finally, I believe Reinhold's requested prize was so outrageous that Wolf Ryder was ready to kill to defend it, giving even more justification for Reinhold's death."

He shows no reaction and doesn't waste any time before replying, "A wonderfully detailed report. You've been paying very close attention to them, have you not?"

"Indeed, I have."

"Too close, perhaps? Have you developed feelings for any of them?" he bluntly asks, but this is just as expected from him, so I've already prepared myself to answer it truthfully.

"I have…" I confess, surprising myself with the hesitance in my voice.

He once again shows no reaction as he continues, "Not ideal, but also perfect for what we need."

I give him a confused look, and he simply smiles back, which is an awfully surprising reaction to be coming from him, but then I realize what he wants from me. It was actually something I was going to suggest or even request for myself as Mother and I have grown increasingly worried about the circumstances surrounding the Ryders.

He understands my relief and affirms, "Exactly. We need you to stick close to the Ryders because too many worrying events have happened around them. First, they were involved with the Wicked [Meteor] attack in Goldport, then they were chosen for an Intervention, then stalked by an unknown agent, then attacked by undead heretics, which led to the second Intervention, and do you know what the Oracle recently found out?"

"I do not," I reflexively reply.

The Commander's smile deepens, giving him the air of a Punisher who just found a Wicked nest. "He's a Realm Traveler," he whispers excitedly, and I tense up, holding my breath.

I loathe to question his word, but this is so monumental that I need it to be repeated. "Is that… confirmed?"

He nods. "Yes. Unless he was born a year ago, his Thread is too short for someone of his supposed age."

But that just leaves me confused. "Is that all? Just a short Thread is enough to confirm Realm Traveling?"

"That's because he's not the only one."

It takes me a second to truly understand his words, and then I actually run both of my hands through my tied-up hair in speechless astonishment, and the Commander chuckles at my reaction.

This is… terrifying, so I don't understand why he finds this amusing. But then again, he is the Commander, so he views things differently from us. He doesn't laugh at the presence of the Wicked like the other zealous Punishers, so the situation may not be that bad after all, but I still don't understand why he's so calm.

I lower my hands and stare at him again as I hesitantly ask, "Why are all these things happening…?"

He gently shakes his head. "We don't know. There hasn't been even a hint of the return of the Monster King. That's why you have to stay by his side, and I'm sure you'll eventually be the first of us to find out."

And the reality of it finally sinks in. This is why he's laughing. It's because he doesn't know what's going on. For the first time in his and his mentor's life, things don't make sense.

Not only has he revealed groundbreaking information, but he's also giving me the task of finding out the truth.

This is simply the most important task of my entire life.

And my composure immediately returns as I realize the impossibility of preparing for what's to come. "May I commit my entire Company to follow the Ryders?"

"You may."

Intermission end.

A note from Manasong

Hall of Fame of Patrons

The patrons who support Rupegia shall have their names sung by the bards for they deserve the glory and honor. Their names are:

Prince PreownedFIN.

Prince Owldente.

Lord Andrew Meyers.

Lord Novgarod.

Lord Michale Erwin.

Lord Bakerdea.

Lord Maurice.

Lord Mattirro Draca.

Lord Mike Bartter.

Lord Warwulfv.

Lord Tenebris Lupus.

Lord Paul Daval.

Lord Paul Daval.

Lord Tmac.

Lord CopeyDunt.

Lord BlindTactic.

Lord litalmexy.

Lord Philip.

Lord d3235.

Lord William Clark.

Lord Ddraig Wynn.

Lord CardinalSteiner.

Lord Cidant.

Lord SubJef.

Lord GalacticTNT.

Lord SquiddlyWinks.

Lord Max Goodwin.

Lord Freddie.

Noble Salty Panda.

Noble Mild Fracas.

Noble Aclys.

Noble Carl  Baxter.

Noble Tony Starrk.

Noble DND.

Leave a rating or a review to help me rise to the top or fix my shameful understanding of prose.

Take a look over my blog where all information about the world of Rupegia will be posted.

Join the Discord and discuss, or rant, or meme, or try and fight me so your waifu gets more screentime.

Become a Patron and read chapters in advance, or read the side-stories, or leave your mark on the story, or help choose the next artwork or the next side-story.

Chapter 149: Stirring the Settling Dust - Part 1

A note from Manasong

Attention: to conform to the limit of mature content (more than just sexual content) allowed in a novel, I've censored this chapter. You can look for the uncensored version here.

Today is the 15th, Fo, day of Fire. While it's the best day for barbecues, it's also a good day for "internal cleansing," whatever that means, but it's known to be popular among the self-denying dragonkin like Mako.

Only in my nightmares would I ever not indulge in hedonism, so I'm glad to be woken up by… an unknown pair of lolis. Two cheeky little bundles of cinnamon-colored joy make for a delightful waking up.

With Alissa's excellent coaching, they perfectly work me until the end, and I whisper in bliss at this wonderful moment.

I [Clean] my mouth and receive Alissa's gentle morning kiss, but I pull her in for a deep and long one to make sure she understands how much I appreciate this act of love from her.

"Awn~…" the two lolies coo cutely at our display of affection, but that just makes me harder, and they giggle as they notice it twitch.

Alissa briefly breaks our kiss to order, "You two, take care of that while I keep his mouth occupied, but be warned: it's magical."

"Oh, we know," the left cheeky loli replies with a grin.

"Lord Wolf is famous among the brothels…" the right thirsty loli adds with a hungry stare.

And I begin my morning by stretching two tight ones wide and filling them up to the brim.

I increased my [Summoning Magic] by 2 (now 6+38) and [Mana Overuse Resistance] by 1 (now 6+5).

Alissa increased her [Illusion Magic] by 1 (now 1+20).

Roxanne increased her [Water Magic] by 1 (now 4+37).

Hana increased her [Draconic Body] by 1 (now 9).

Ciel increased her [Wind Magic] by 1 (now 11+30).

Lina increased her [Cursing Magic] by 1 (now 11+13).

Yunia increased her [Spirit Magic] by 1 (now 2+26).

We all gained one level. Alissa, Roxanne, Ciel, Lina, and I are now level 63, Hana is now level 64, Aoi is now level 50, and Yunia is now level 65.

Ciel and I increased our "Piety" by 1 (now 28 and 18, respectively), which is rather odd considering we got scolded by the direct descendant of the God of the Sun and prayed for the Gods to answer our doubts but got only silence in response. Maybe the praying did it, but it's a bit futile to try to understand how this "Stat" works, so I stop my questioning there.

And lastly, we've all gained the Titles "Decien" and "Honorary Sky Captain."

We didn't get level-ups in melee skills because we can't spam them like we can with spells. On the other hand, melee skills don't require a lot of theory, so my Gift makes it easier to learn them during training since adding points to a skill already gives us half of the knowledge required to level them up.

I breathe in deeply and savor the clear air of a perfect morning. The clear sky, the warm sun, birds and nature spirits chirping, the fragrance of flowers, and the wonderful sounds of female giggles. But the thing that makes this morning so special is the lack of any royals or snooty nobles that we have to entertain. It's just me and my women having a meal on our balcony under the morning sun.

"So, I noticed how none of the other soldiers tried to flirt with any of you," Khepri mischievously remarks to the Companions.

"That'd be very stupid of them," Romy replies matter-of-factly.

"Before you ask, I don't think any of us will ever get married. Wolfy ruined us," Hukarere promptly declares, and we share a wry smile.

"What a cute nickname," Edjo gently hums, and Hukarere actually looks a bit embarrassed, which really shows on her bare pale chest.

"You're the one who used to get into orgies until not too long ago," Klein teasingly accuses Hukarere, and their small rivalry helps my white wolf recover immediately.

"Because I already didn't really have any hope of ever getting married," she casually replies, unphased.

"Uh-huh~…" I sassily hum, and she subtly cringes as she realizes that Klein hit a vulnerable spot. Hukarere knows that I want to make her a concubine, so it's not like nobody wants to marry her. It's just her own stubbornness that makes her reluctant to accept.

"We're married to our duty," Aneta suddenly chimes in with a sober tone. This delicious elf is the wisest among the Companions, and they all listen to her.

"That's… a good analogy," Klein hums in agreement as she seems to realize something.

"Do you even know what 'analogy' means?" Hana teases with a smirk.

"Do you?" the monkey girl deftly teases back with narrowed eyes.

"Don't cheat," I whisper and block Hana from reading my thoughts.

"Ffff~uck…" she swears as she realizes how much "Wisdom" she's been borrowing from me.

But Edolie, our obedient catgirl, interjects at a crucial moment, saving Hana from the embarrassment, "Like, uh… Lord Roxanne said yesterday, it's part of our duties to see Lord Wolf's desires fulfilled."

"But it's a different kind of love than that of marriage, yes," Ciel kindly completes for her, and the Companions and Klein all nod in agreement.

Lolo and the adventuring trio raise questioning eyebrows at me, so I try to explain, "She's joking… kinda. Some of them may take this seriously, but it isn't."

"How interesting…" Edjo hums impassively, and I just shrug with a sigh.

Can't really complain about it since we did encourage this type of behavior.

"And this is it…" Roxanne grins as she finishes her explanation of the orb-boosted mana circulation training.

The (technically) four Verners (if you count Ofilia) give us disbelieving looks, with Allura's being an adorable mix of Léonne's stern-looking, furrowed eyebrows and Jacques' frowning, slackened jaw.

I smile cheekily as I joke, "This is the so very secretive and well-guarded imperial mana circulation training, now accidentally improved by a certain dragon's unending hunger for magical food."

And Aoi gives them a toothy grin.

Léonne makes some choked sounds of laughter, still too stunned to chuckle properly, but then she finally puts her confusion into words, "I thought it'd be something dangerous. Why do they keep it secret, then? Mere greed?"

"It's awfully close to how [Godly Language] works," I answer.

And she immediately recomposes herself. "Ah, now that makes sense."

"Can I learn [Godly Language], then?" Allura suddenly inquires, her orange eyes gleaming with hope.

"That's actually somewhat dangerous to learn, so I advise against it," I shoot her down.

"Balls…" the tomboy grumbles as her pointy ears go flat.

Then Jacques apprehensively shares his mind with us, "Well, I understand the need to keep [Godly Language] out of the hands of the commoners, but it still bothers me how such a simple training routine has been kept secret for so long."

And Léonne adds, "Perhaps one day, Wolf will find an alternative to it that doesn't carry the risk of inadvertently teaching [Godly Language]."

But the wives all give me a wry smile as I groan internally, puzzling the Verners.

"Wolfy already has more research projects than he can handle," Alissa kindly explains and gives me a sympathetic smile.

"Well, hopefully, you'll be able to expand your Institute soon," Léonne adds and mirrors Alissa's expression.

Can I give Osaria the responsibility of hiring more managers? Or maybe Sai can manage a spirit research division?

What I seem to lack are capable people that I can trust…

"Hopefully…" I mumble weakly as my head starts to sag.

"Don't overwork yourself," Jacques soberly advises.

And Léonne immediately chimes in with a nod, "Yes… if Alissa inherited more from me than her father, then it's likely she doesn't know when to stop working."

"Huh… that's kind of true," my foxy wife hums thoughtfully.

"Alissa has been addicted to training ever since she was a child," Ofilia kindly remarks, and Alissa becomes embarrassed as she remembers that her reason for being so dedicated to training was to make her future master happy.

"And I still remember how Mom ordered me to put healing salve on your body when you were exhausted so that we could 'bond,'" Allura chimes in.

"It worked…" Alissa shyly replies as her tail slowly wags.

"A little too well…" Jacques quietly states, a bit conflicted about the "relationship" between the two sisters.

We chuckle softly, but we hold back from talking about spicy stuff to not tease Allura too much since she's still supposed to be learning how to control herself. Instead, we have a nice casual morning in the sun with the Verners.

But Léonne still has one more topic she wants to talk about as we perform our circulation training. "I'm glad that your draconic pride didn't get in the way during the Emperor's 'outburst,'" she soberly remarks.

But I proudly reply, "On the contrary, it's because my pride is as hard as my scales that Empy did so little damage to it."

"'Empy'?" Ofilia breathes in disbelief.

Ciel sighs internally, feeling uncomfortable about my borderline insolent way of referring to the Emperor, but even she has a bit of a grudge against him after yesterday.

Then Léonne turns to Aoi, who nearly chokes on her orb as she becomes surprised that she's receiving attention from fox mommy. "And from what I understand of you, Lord Aoi, you also have a similar 'resilience'?"

Our little blue dragon raises her head high, then turns it to the side in a very snobbish-elf way. "Hmph, I'll never forget that he pushed my face against the mud, but I can't just bite him back, so one day, I'll tell him I didn't like what he did," she haughtily replies, and she'd be pouting if her draconic lips allowed her to.

"Hell yeah, screw Empy," Hana states with a nod.

"Even Wolfy knows that the Emperor's rage was justified," Ciel sorely reminds them, and after I give her my support, the two dragons stop with the whining.

"It does indeed seem like it's hard to truly wound a dragon's pride," Léonne thoughtfully states.

And Alissa explains, "Well, we also give them a lot of mental support through our connection."

"But that connection was the reason why we allowed Wolfy to be so reckless," Yunia soberly retorts, and we all almost hum in sync as we seriously reflect on her words.

The short silence is broken by a cute nyan from the balcony as Gify plays tag with a chibi cat nature spirit.

Ciel is the first to speak, and she wistfully agrees, "True, we allowed your loss and his anger to color our thoughts, so we didn't even care that Reinhold was killed."

"I think it might actually be a really bad thing to have all our emotions mix into one," Hana remarks with a frown.

"Our strength comes from how we complete each other, but the Gestalt turns it into a weakness as our wills become one," Lina wisely states.

"Well, shit…" I grumble with a sigh. It seems that the Gestalt still needs some work.

For lunch, we decide to invite Ciel's Templar friends: Kyora and her harem. We're going to be eating Behemoth ribs again, and it'd be a crime to not share them with all of our friends, but this time, we don't include the Companions or the adventurers to give them some time for themselves.

"Priests, Wandering Knights, and Punishers. Your family is enviously close to the temple," Léonne enviously remarks to Yunia.

And the elven Queen raises a thin golden eyebrow as she questions, "You don't have a good relationship with them?"

Léonne responds with a very foxy smile, but there's bitterness hidden behind her mask. "The Wandering Knights Marked us once for a short time after we dealt with a small rebellion from the White Stalkers nearly two decades ago, and our relationship still hasn't recovered."

The werefoxes may be quite religious in comparison to the other races, like the elves, but the foxes are also infamous for being ruthless in wars, so this comes as no surprise to us.

Then Yunia realizes something, so she lowers her voice and tactfully asks, "Is Ofilia the rebel leader's daughter?"

The fox matriarch smiles softly and allows her tail to wag at the mention of the jade-like beauty. "Precisely. At first, she was a hostage, but now she's technically a maid-wife."

And Yunia realizes how similar Ofilia's situation was to her own. "What is it with us women and falling in love with the men who conquer us?" she theatrically asks as she rolls her eyes, then snobbishly sips her glass.

Léonne graciously chuckles, then wistfully answers, "We just like being conquered…"

And the two share a suggestive look as they continue in unison, "By strong men with huge-…"

I tune out their conversation. They're being a bit too sexist for my earthling ears, but whatever…

"The temple and Templars hardly ever agree with the Emperor," Timas explains to Ciel. The monochrome catman is always so eloquent that even Kyora listens when he talks.

"Isn't that… not a good thing?" Hana confusedly asks.

And Timas launches into a scholarly explanation, "The temple's purpose is to advise the Emperor in regards to his subjects while Templars' purpose is to ensure that he never strays too far or forgets his duties. We aren't supposed to agree on all matters, but we also aren't exactly at odds with each other. It's a complex relationship."

"Why do you know so much about the Emperor?" Kyora grumbles back.

"Because that's our job," he stiffly answers, holding back a frown.

And the big blue dragonkin knits her eyebrows. "No, our job is to deal with naughty nobles and monster crises. We're way too weak to bully the Emperor around."

His tail stops waving as he becomes annoyed. "The Templars don't bully the Emperor."

She narrows her eyes at him. "Then how else would we 'ensure' things?"

"Well… that's a detail that I'm not that certain about," he calmly answers with an awkward smile.

"Because that's not our job," Kyora smugly states.

And Timas frowns at the big blue woman.

For the afternoon, Roxanne and Hana will go to Mac Gantus' Knight Academy for research purposes; Lina and Aoi will repair our armor; Ciel and Yunia will have a magic-aided conversation with our people back in Escanso; and Alissa and I will be visiting the Oracle.

The small, masked, imperial woman receives us in the same emellanat bunker full of enchantments with the thick glass wall separating us. She's lounging on the same cushions as before, but her mask is that of a cute red fox, making me wonder if it's related to Alissa.

The Oracle doesn't even raise her head as we approach, too busy playing with some sort of lava lamp with four different colored liquids in it. She seems to be manipulating the liquids with magic, somehow, and the way they behave reminds me of the elemental pseudo-mana of the orbs we got in the Labyrinth.

As we sit down, the blobs of colored liquid take on an odd, "sword" shape, then the Oracle suddenly twitches on her cushion, and the "sword" shape is erased as the blobs of color assume random shapes.

"Hello, Ryders," she promptly greets, sounding a bit awkward.

"Hello, Oracle. This is one of my wives, Alissa," I greet back with a cheeky grin.

The fox mask turns to the real fox. "Hello, Alissa."

The real fox answers the fake fox, "Hello, Oracle."

"We came as you asked. You wished to study my soul, no?" I gently ask, deciding not to tease her for now.

The Oracle nods as she pulls out a pen and some paper from her [Item Box] with a *poof*. "Indeed… your soul is very unique, so I'd like to record as much information about it as possible. If you could practice magic, it'd make it easier for me to study you."

I feel like I'm just a "specimen" to her, but I guess that's better than when she was being insolent and rude.

"I'll practice my 'humanoidization,' then," I state, and I sense her raising a questioning eyebrow behind her mask.

Intermission - Emmett Roseman

Yes, yes, yes! We got one of the golems!

The Graet Masters gather at the Forum while chatting excitedly, and I can't blame them. I'm as eager as they are; it's just that, as the Speaker, I must remain composed at all times.

But I still daydream about the opportunities that will arise from this.

No more prostitutes for me!

The old itchvines finally sit down, and I stand with a little effort due to my size. Then I clear my throat and announce, "Graet Masters and esteemed members of the Union, we've gathered here to display a secret 'acquisition' that will forever change the future of enchanting!"

They start to chatter again, but I raise a hand to silence them. Then I turn to the men behind the enchanted protective glass. The big man in armor is the one who has it in his [Item Box], and he's flanked by two mages with Elemental Spirits just for safety as the Ryders' golems are known to unleash a barrage of spells.

"Take it out," I order, and the three nod.

The knight chants [Item Box] and interacts with his interface, then he crouches and looks around, making sure that everyone is ready. After a moment of hesitation, he touches the floor, and a little cloud appears with a silly noise. The three immediately get some distance from it, with a Fire and [Water Wall] spell covering their retreat.

"HI, I'M MR. MEESEEKS! LOOK AT ME!" the hellish little bear doll shrieks with a horribly grating, high-pitched voice.

The Masters hum in awe and lean forward so that their weak eyes can see it better. The little golem looks around at everyone, but when it notices the Masters, it stares back at them with its beady black eyes.

"OH, NO! I THINK I'VE BEEN CAPTURED! AHAHAHAHA!" the golem shrieks again and laughs maniacally.

This is… frightening… Why are they like this?

I clear my throat and start explaining, "As you can see, this is a perfectly preserved specimen, which allows us to stu-…"

"EXISTENCE IS PAIN!" it shrieks once more, then simply blows up in a fiery ball of flames.

WHAT?!

"WHAT?!" the Masters shout.

The Forum erupts in chatter while the trio rush to the burning remains of the golem, but not only has it blown itself apart, but the pieces are also quickly burning away. The mages quickly douse the flames with their magical water, but they barely recover even half of its remains as most of it simply disintegrated in the explosion.

And I feel my skin start to burn red with rage.

Damn you, Wolf Ryder! Damn you and your disposable Meeseeks! We'll have your [Golemancy] one day and break your monopoly on golems! Just you wait!

Intermission end.

A note from Manasong

Hall of Fame of Patrons

The patrons who support Rupegia shall have their names sung by the bards for they deserve the glory and honor. Their names are:

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Chapter 149: Stirring the Settling Dust - Part 2

A note from Manasong

Attention: to conform to the limit of mature content (more than just sexual content) allowed in a novel, I've censored this chapter. You can look for the uncensored version here.

Roxanne and Hana are received at Mac Gantus' Knight Academy like the Queens they are. Alcander, Silvano, Almaria, and Aisco are accompanying them along with a detachment of Lordsguard for protection, so their group is both intimidating and mesmerizing to the young warrior-students who hope to one day serve someone with even half as much dignity as my wives and subordinates.

The Academy itself isn't too dissimilar to that of Goloria. It's a collection of huge buildings of yellow marble with stupidly high ceilings, separated by perfectly flat sections of criminally short grass that we aren't allowed to step on, as we're reminded every ten meters by a sign saying "DON'T STEP ON THE GRASS."

There's a bit of a Greek flair to this place as the tall marble columns hold fairly ornate Baroque-like red clay roofs, and the theme for the statues that decorate every wall and flank every path is all about bare and muscular bodies in Jojo-like poses. Roxanne and Hana note that the average penis size depicted here is considerably larger than the average.

"How can you be sure of that? Wolfy's is the only sword that you've ever tasted," Roxanne questions Hana confusedly.

The dragonkin proudly crosses her arms, pressing her round pair against her thin dress as she answers earnestly, "I've sucked only his, but I've seen and touched quite a nice selection. I've even dreamed about which would be the best one to take my first time, though Wolfy proved that it's more about the stamina to keep up with me than the size of the sword." And the group accompanying them pretends to not hear a thing.

"Wolfy's is fairly thick, so it's not exactly an average one," Roxanne retorts with a suggestive grin.

"True…" Hana hums thoughtfully as she reminisces about our first time.

Then they meet with the representative of the Academy that will be guiding them, and the scrawny pen-pusher metaphorically taste their swords with the praise he gives to our group. Hana even internally cringes at the mention of her Title of "One Thousand Strikes," as it's been a while since she last heard it. But Alcander is the only one who's actually studied here before, so the representative focuses on sucking his pompous sword.

"What an honor it is to have such an esteemed student of ours return along with royalty," the short imperial man cheerfully praises him with a bow.

"How surprising that they remember your name," Silvano quietly attempts to banter.

But the representative is quite quick to disarm him, "There are few families of mages as prestigious as Signeur Alcander's, so it'd be shameful if we forgot about them after they graduated. Their success reflects well on our Academy, so we make sure to remain informed."

"We have prestigious centers of magical learning in Escanso, but none of them can compare in size to this," Almaria remarks with a dreamy tone. Our Institute is still far from being comparable to the Academy.

And the short man shows a good amount of "Charisma" as he replies, "The Academy merely has a wide variety of areas it covers, but we admit that there are institutes in Maoka that can rival us in the areas of theoretical and non-system magic."

"And the Academy doesn't have even a single teacher of [Weaverism], so even in this matter, it could improve," Alcander politely adds.

I didn't miss this circlejerk-y behavior that academics had back on Earth, so I tune out their conversation. Aisco doesn't even glance at them as they talk, and I find it… worrying that I have something in common with the creepy elf.

Anyway, the Knight Academy also has a section for mages, and they cater to all kinds of nobles, so it's the largest institution of learning in the entire world. But if we manage to succeed in all of our plans, our own Ryder Institute will overtake them due to the wider variety of subjects that we'll study, and we'll also likely have a larger number of students once we begin offering free schooling for all commoners (which will actually be paid for by their taxes). The Temple already offers free classes to the commoners about certain topics, but I want formalization and standardization.

The visiting group is momentarily delayed as they stop to watch a duel in one of the many dueling pits that dot the Academy. The two muscular students tense up when they see the number of beauties and stern warriors watching them.

"This makes me nostalgic…" Yunia wistfully remarks through [Bind]. She went to Goloria's Academy, and the atmosphere is exactly the same here.

The duelists are mere teens, and one of them is a red-haired dragonkin, who seems to almost drool at the sight of Hana, and then he actually gets a full mast.

"Yep, he's a love beast like me," Hana wryly remarks, then flashes him a seductive smile that makes his blue cheek scales twitch.

The priest/referee calls his attention, and his posture immediately shifts into a battle stance, but now he looks so stern that his imperial teen opponent seems a bit intimidated. At first, it didn't look like a serious duel, just two friends having a quick fight, but now the dragonkin has a woman he wants to impress.

And the moment the referee gives the signal, the dragonkin attacks with his full might.

The imperial teen is immediately pushed back and forced onto the defensive, but then he gets angry at his friend's aggressiveness, so he mans up and matches the dragonkin in ferocity. The two share savage blows and lightning strikes, even forgoing a bit of skill in exchange for enthusiasm.

But, with the right encouragement, a love beast dragonkin thrives above all.

I'm like a love beast dragonkin, too, right? I need to give myself a boner before battle so that I can go full power.

"Yeah, you kind of are, but the level of your 'enthusiasm' isn't the same as that of normal dragonkin," Hana answers through our connection.

Basically, dragonkin can get into a "barbarian rage" when their "vice" is stimulated, whereas, for me, it's merely a way to quickly focus my mind and get it to 100% power.

The duel doesn't last long, and after many cuts that spill long streaks of blood all over the sand arena, the imperial is crippled enough that he concedes.

The dragonkin teen roars victoriously, then turns his childishly expectant face towards Hana, who nods in approval as she grins, and the young dragonkin visibly shivers, possibly even soiling his pants. This is a moment that he'll likely remember for the rest of his life.

But then the group simply moves on, allowing the youth to realize that everyone can see the wet spot on his pants.

Hana's purpose here is different from the others, so she and Silvano split off from the rest of the group. They meet with the Academy's skill trainers while Roxanne, Almaria, Alcander, and Aisco go to the library.

Curiously, while the knight section of the Academy is overwhelmingly male, the magical section is overwhelmingly female. I know my true talent lies in magic, so I'm quite eager to study once again at a magical academy while drowning in flowers. I have a STEM degree, so studying somewhere that isn't a sausage fest is a dream of mine.

Moving on, I want to learn more about [Space Magic], so Roxanne requests the most advanced books they have on the skill. Alcander will help her with the research while Almaria and Aisco do their own thing.

The first book Roxanne reads begins by explaining gravity in a Rupegian way, and Alcander's help immediately becomes necessary because the books are quite dense with obscure jargon, so he helps translate its contents into more understandable language.

The Rupegian theory of gravity is rather basic. There are stars and nebulas to observe since they were created after the Star Burst event, a massive battle between the Symbols of Light and Darkness that happens every few years and always ends in the destruction of both Symbols. But there aren't any galaxies to explore, nor even any actual matter in "space" since anything physical that tries to go past the Broken Skies is simply ripped apart by some unknown force, so they don't have much to observe that could help explain gravity.

One interesting bit is that they call the center of the world the Great Attractor as all matter is attracted towards it, and it's this same force of attraction that mages mimicked to create my favorite spell, [Telekinesis]. Since this spell manipulates the gravity of an object, there have been some experiments that suggest that extreme gravity warps space and time, which led to the creation of the [Warp Space] spell.

With extreme warping, you can "connect" two different locations, like folding a piece of paper and punching a hole through it. This is the concept of a wormhole, and that's exactly what [Eternal Gate] is.

There are some interesting bits in between these large discoveries, like how [Gate] is just switching the "coordinates" of someone or something. Or how [Blink] is merely a continuous "addition" to the "coordinates," allowing you to teleport in a straight line. There's also some math involved about coordinate systems and matrices, which is a bit nostalgic to me and also eerily similar to 3D game programming.

To keep myself from having an existential crisis, I don't let Roxanne linger on that last part for too long.

Then we get to [Annihilation], which is [Space Magic]'s level 70 spell. This is a very dangerous spell as it creates a spray of mana that turns the matter it touches into pure energy, kind of like a matter-antimatter reaction, which is also called annihilation. Considering that the result of such a spell is always explosive, Roxanne becomes quite interested in learning it, so she focuses most of her study time on it.

The Academy allows her to take some books home, so she returns to the embassy to study in the comfort of our bedroom.

Hana's talk with the skill trainers is actually directly relevant to my humanoidization training, so I pay attention to what they say.

"What can this skill do?" the trainer politely asks.

And Hana explains, "I can cover my body with scales, which are just as good as armor, so I can use the skill to patch up holes in my defenses at the cost of some mental stamina and a bit of mana. This skill also absorbed my [Enhanced Reflexes], Stamina, Strength, and Endurance skills, so I've been focusing on physical enhancements to level [Draconic Body]. I've even managed to punch a [Meteor] while using it."

"What…?" the rugged man quacks confusedly.

"I punched a [Meteor] two days ago. It was a bit weakened by other spells, but it still had most of its power when I punched it," she eagerly explains with a proud grin.

He blinks blankly. "You… punched it?"

And she nods. "Yes."

The trainer remains silent for a couple of seconds before he hesitantly breathes, "Why…?"

"To destroy it before it could fall on my sister-wives and husband," she answers matter-of-factly.

His thick eyebrows slowly rise up his forehead. "And you survived…?"

"Yes, duh. I just broke an arm." And she taps her right forearm.

"Her Highness doesn't lie," Silvano states, a hint of wry delight in his tone from observing someone's mind halt at the absurdity of our family.

The trainer immediately recollects himself and politely apologizes, "No, Gods, no! That's not what I wanted to imply. A thousand apologies, I just… don't understand how such a situation could ever come to be." Then he has to put so much effort into a forced smile that I can almost hear the rusted muscles of his face grating against one another.

Hana doesn't care, though, as she loves to brag. "Well, we were in the enemy's backlines by ourselves as we attempted to decapitate their main power, but our biggest vulnerability is high-level spells since we don't have someone with the 'MPower' to interrupt High Mages, so we needed an alternative if we wanted to survive spells like [Meteor]. And that's why I came up with this skill."

"To punch [Meteor]s…" the trainer hums softly, still stunned while forcefully smiling.

She nods again. "Exactly."

He slowly breathes in, then closes his eyes and slowly breathes out, managing to calm himself down a bit. "Okay… uh, lemme… let's recapitulate. The skill you created is called [Draconic Body], correct?"

Recapitulate means "let's go back to the beginning," or something.

"Hm… yes," she hums, answering us both.

"And you can cover your body with hard scales while also improving your physical 'Stats'?" he asks soberly, now fully focused again.

"Yes."

"Anything else? Anything that makes you more… 'draconic'?"

Hana rubs her chin thoughtfully, then she touches her forehead as she answers, "Huh… I think I started to grow horns and a tail, but they were still only stubs."

He frowns. "Your skill is at level nine, yet it barely has anything that's truly 'draconic,' just physical enhancements. What about your racial Breath skill and [Summon Wings]?"

"They're level seven and ten."

The rugged imperial nods thoughtfully and launches into an explanation, "Your actual 'draconic' skills aren't included in [Draconic Body] while a number of physical enhancement skills are. Skill-point-wise, this is quite an inefficient way of creating an aggregator skill. You need to stick to the theme of 'draconic.'"

Hana scratches her head confusedly. "Well, the skill did absorb my physical enhancement skills, saving me quite a lot of points."

And his eyes start to gleam as he gets to the crux of the matter. "But it can save more. Much more. Skills need to be 'harmonious' within themselves so that they can more easily branch out and affect other areas. A good and wide foundation for a home allows you to more easily increase its height."

She knits her eyebrows as she uses her whole twelve points in "Intelligence" to come to the genius conclusion of… "So I should focus on… becoming more 'draconic'?" Then she adds through [Bind], "Screw you, Wolfy."

The trainer excitedly nods and sagely advises, "Indeed. Ask yourself what it means to have a 'draconic body.' At level nine, your skill should be advanced enough that it won't be that difficult to have it absorb your racial Breath and [Summon Wing] skills."

Hana hums in realization, "Right… it makes sense that related skills should merge to 'save space' in my soul."

And the trainer grins excitedly, now a much more natural-looking expression. "Precisely."

Hm… then, what does it mean to "humanoidize" myself…?

I already have a dragon inside of me, which I sometimes let out with [Dragon Transformation], but my "human" side is already in control whenever I'm not a dragon. Though my thoughts are always tainted by the dragon, so I guess my "normal" form isn't exactly completely "pure" human, either. It's a humanoid form, not a human form.

It's with these thoughts in mind that I play with my soul as I continue to horrify the Oracle.

Intermission - Lolo

I watch from the balcony as Nikolas trains with the Lordsguard. He integrates into their line without any problems, and his skill with the spear is almost comparable to the others, but he doesn't drag them down as the most important thing in a shield wall is to fight in sync with each other rather than individual skill.

Knowing how well he's mingling with them makes me conflicted. We've been fighting together for so long that seeing him fighting alongside another feels like a betrayal.

Didn't he hate Lord Wolf?

Why is he training so hard with them?

Is he going to abandon our fellowship?

We had a very cushy and exclusive niche being guides for Antreos Crea.

The Lordsguard has no use for the dungeon knowledge we worked so hard to acquire.

He never looked at me like that, he never fought that hard with me, and he never seemed to have as much fun with me as he now seems to be having with them.

But none of these excuses overshadow the fact that I ruined our relationship by getting addicted to Lord Wolf's sword.

I'm such a huge shameless sl-t…!

I barely knew him, and now I can't stop thinking about his thick sword pounding me until I pass out. His powerful smirk, his fearsome stare, his youthful face, his stunning scales, his healthy body, and his… Sword. I can't get him off my mind. I just want to have him inside me every waking second until he gives me so much bliss that I pass out again.

Wolfy's ruined me!

And I'm not even the first one he's ruined.

"A juicy piece of meat like you shouldn't look so lonely," a seductive voice whispers in my ear, giving me a chill that becomes even more intense as her pale hands sneak under my clothes and fondle my body.

I had no idea how gay I was until I met the Ryders. There's just something about them that makes me So. Gods. Damn. HORNY!

A soft whisper escapes my lips as she quickly gets me excited, and I just close my eyes as I enjoy the feeling of Lords Roxanne's hands as they work on my sensitive bits with unbelievable skill. In less than a minute, I'm already ready.

"Tell me why you look so gloomy. We like to see our juicy bunny being happy," she kindly whispers, her voice so intoxicating that I don't even need to think about it before my mouth moves on its own.

"You make me feel things… you make me confused about myself."

"Then follow your heart," she kindly replies.

But before I can say anything, she squeezes my nub, making me voice loudly, and I start to lose the capability to speak as the pleasure quickly builds up within me.

I simply give in to the pleasure, and before I know it, she brings me to the summit. My legs quiver as I struggle to remain standing, but she supports my body, which must be a bit difficult for her considering how delicately thin she is. My mind is quickly drowned in pleasure, and I lose my train of thought, but then I suddenly feel like I've just woken up as the bliss eventually passes.

She finally takes her fingers out and licks them clean, then grabs my face and forces me to turn it to the side so that she can kiss me, allowing me to savor myself. But then she quickly pulls back and leaves me on the balcony as she walks away.

"Your heart knows what it wants," she advises me again, then leaves me alone.

My pants are soaked with my own fluids, so I leave the bedroom to look for a maid to help me. Since the Ryders are addicted to love, there's always one on standby right outside, and she helps me clean myself and gives me a new set of pants and underwear.

"Did you get attacked?" a concerned voice asks from behind me.

I turn around and see Dame Klein staring at me while frowning. Then I glance at the stoic elven maid and see her face twitch, but I don't know if it's amusement or disdain. I never know what to think about these elves except for Lord Yulania, which is rather odd considering she's a noble.

"Well, yes, I guess…" I answer with a shrug.

Klein takes a step forward and gently feels my bits and flower, assessing whether or not they've been abused to the point that I can't move properly. "You look a bit down. Did they tire you out?"

I feel mild discomfort, but I don't push her back. If anything, it mildly excites me again. "I'm just feeling a bit raw, but I'm not tired, just pensive."

Then her hands linger for a bit too long, and a glimpse of arousal appears in her eyes, but she immediately recovers and pulls her hands back as she becomes stoic again. "It's time for the Companions to have a training session since most of the Lords are too busy to 'make use' of us. If you aren't too tired, you should join us."

"I will," I promptly reply and suddenly feel awkward as I almost salute her reflexively, but she doesn't seem to notice and simply leaves.

I'm such a damn mess…

I meet up with the other Companions, and even the three archer girls join in for fun, which I find a bit crazy.

Our training is a bit different from the rest of the Lordsguard. We don't have the highest skills, levels, or "Stats," but what we do have is endless stamina, as getting plowed by Wolfy day after day has given us an unusually high "Endurance." And since our duty is to defend the Ryders until death, this "Stat" is the most important one for us.

Wait, I just referred to the Companions as "we." I've… I've already started to consider myself one of them…

"You okay, Lolo? You look a bit distracted," Hukarere remarks as we get a brief moment of rest.

"Gods, can everyone read me like an open book?" I flippantly reply and sigh.

Aneta hugs me from behind while also fondling my ass, and the training has made me so tense that I almost instinctively spread my legs for her. "Maybe a bit of 'stimulation' would help you out?" the elven succubus asks suggestively.

The others then stare at us with hungry eyes, and Atawha even touches herself without shame, while Hukarere is the only one who looks at us amusedly. But what surprises me is how much I want not only Aneta but also every other Companion to do me until I'm raw.

What is happening to me? Why do I feel these things about these girls? It feels like love, yet I know that it isn't love. So what am I feeling?

Then I remember what Lord Ciel said earlier today. The Companions love the Ryders, but in a different way.

"I think I love everyone, but I don't want to marry any of you, not even Lord Wolf. I just don't understand what this 'love' is," I suddenly blurt out.

"The Goddess of Love says that there are many types of love," Dame Klein states, her gentle tone awfully similar to Lord Ciel's.

"Oh? You're a worshiper of Love, now?" Hukarere starts the usual banter between the two.

But Dame Klein is having none of it, "Well, Ciel is, and she's taught me a lot."

Aneta senses that the conversation is becoming serious and releases me, then we all start sitting down on the hard floor to talk.

"Of all Gods, I think Love is the most important one for us," Melanie states. As an imperial, she's naturally the one with the highest "Piety" among all of us.

Klein nods and continues, "I feel the need to serve Wolfy. I want to give him my everything, even my body, all to make him happy, and yet, I also don't want to marry him."

"You sure you aren't just addicted to his sword?" Hukarere teases, but Klein frowns in distaste.

"I'm serious, Hu. You're the same. You know he wants you as a concubine, but you just want to remain a soldier," she earnestly replies, and that makes the wolf Chimera pull back.

"Yeah, uh… you're right, sorry," she softly apologizes as her ears fold in submission.

Then Aneta declares, and we all turn to her to listen, "It's the same for all of us. We want to serve the Ryders with our mind, body, and spirit… but it does help that making love with them is so addictive."

"So you're actually serious when you say that it's your duty to satisfy Lord Wolf with your bodies?" Edjo questions skeptically.

"It is my duty to suck his dick, yes," Hukarere states as she nods, then she smirks.

But something like that makes me uncomfortable. "It feels… demeaning," I confess with a frown.

"You have a good vocabulary for an adventurer," Aneta casually remarks. She's hot as hell, but elves can be a bit… irritating sometimes.

"I studied Antreos Crea a lot, so I have a good amount of 'Wisdom,'" I reply a bit dismissively.

Then Dame Klein moves the conversation on, and I'm grateful as I don't want to have an argument with Aneta right now, "The High Chamberlain is a former prostitute, and everyone knows that Wolfy is very fond of her, to the point that people think she'll become a concubine."

"Half of the Chimeras and the Lordsguard have done me, but Wolfy still wants me to be a concubine," Hukarere adds.

"Gods, you serious?" Khepri questions with a gasp.

"And I'm straight-edge. Atawha and other double-edge girls have done basically everyone we know," the wolf girl answers indifferently. I've quickly come to realize that these spirit Chimeras have no shame whatsoever.

And the raccoon girl in question shrugs as we turn to her, but then she frowns as she irritably states, "Some of you land-dwellers think it's shameful, which is kind of offensive. Especially since you all have a Goddess of Love to worship."

"I think we marry more easily than the Chimeras, and there aren't that many couples who 'dip outside' like the Ryders," Edolie politely explains, and we hum in understanding as her words make too much sense to us.

Then Hukarere slaps me on the back as she states with a grin, "The important thing is that you don't look down on yourself for having a Wolfy's Sword Addiction."

"You already have everything you need to be a Companion," Dame Klein wryly adds, and the other Companions chuckle in agreement.

Then Edjo piles on with supporting statements, "You can't re-virgin yourself, and it seems that the big black wolf is going his own way, too."

"So spread your legs, and let the dragon in," Khepri suggestively finishes.

And even Laguly looks supportive.

I guess being a slut for a dragon isn't so bad…

Intermission end.

A note from Manasong

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Chapter 149: Stirring the Settling Dust - Part 3

A note from Manasong

Attention: to conform to the limit of mature content (more than just sexual content) allowed in a novel, I've censored this chapter. You can look for the uncensored version here.

The Oracle seems sufficiently horrified at what I can do to my own soul, and I even manage to excite Yunia with the monstrosity I create, but I keep things strictly non-spicy to not offend the Emperor again. It takes a bit of effort, though, as Roxanne savors our thunder thighs bunny girl while I'm not even allowed to get a full mast.

The moment we get on the Hyperloop to return to the embassy, I stretch Alissa's tight little holes. Then she gets into roleplaying a bit and pretends to become exhausted, forcing me to carry her in my arms.

Everyone returns for bath time, and I clap Lolo's juicy ass cheeks so hard that she passes out. But Yunia's degradation desire got tickled by watching us mess with the Oracle, so I distract everyone with tentacles to save them from the mental imagery of Ugly Bastard NTR R--e roleplay.

And then we receive some interesting guests for dinner: Nour's parents.

We go out to meet the new arrivals, and the first thing we see is a wide and tall light blue carriage decorated lavishly with gold and pulled by a pair of muscular Rontis with shiny, pearl-colored manes. It looks straight out of posh Britain, and the driver even has a fluffy black uniform with a tall cap and white gloves.

In front of the carriage, we see just four plated bodyguards flanking the surprisingly youthful-looking couple. The father is a man who could barely pass for 40 years old and is the spitting image of Nour, a handsome man (though more on the cute side than grizzled or Chad-like) with short brown hair and a refreshing smile. The mother is a very pretty and thin woman with full cheeks, a button nose, shoulder-length brown hair, and a faint air of maturity, giving me the impression that she's like a fragrant flower that doesn't stand out at first, but you can't stop looking once you notice her.

They're wearing more traditional, medieval-like clothing. His outfit is a light-blue doublet with white pants and posh black horseman boots, and hers is a very shiny, dark blue velvet dress with long-sleeved silver gloves. Both ensembles have a tasteful amount of gold embroidery, showing wealth but not enough to ruin their style. Curiously, they have no weapons, nor do they have the "Stats" of warriors.

When we approach, the man grins. Then they give us a quick bow, and the man greets us, "Ryders! We're honored to finally meet with you. I'm Ur Asaf, and this is my wife, Rehema."

"Greetings, Ur…"

Then, we introduce ourselves. Even Gify.

"Gih."

Ur's eyes fly between Gify and Aoi, gazing at them with childish wonder. His wife, though, appears to not know where to look, seemingly a bit intimidated by our presence, and she looks quite adorable. We are a little tense, though, so I tell the girls to relax, and it seems to lower our high-level aura to more comfortable levels for Rehema.

"Nour sent us many letters telling of your growth, but nothing had adequately prepared us for how striking your presences are," Ur cordially remarks with a dashing smile.

"I can feel the touch of the Gods upon all of you," Rehema cryptically states, and we're caught a bit off-guard by her statement.

"We're not that special," I embarrassedly reply, but not even Ciel backs me up.

"You did convert a dragon…" Ur hesitantly points out with a grin.

"Yes, but she was already special on her own; we just nurtured her and helped her grow," Ciel kindly retorts, making our little blue dragon quite happy.

Ur stares at Aoi again as she shows a toothy smile, his eyes full of wonder rather than fear at the magnificent beast showing her sharp teeth, but Aoi simply enjoys the attention.

And so he addresses her, "Still, I've never actually seen one in person before, so please forgive me if I stare." -But then he turns to Gify- "Also, nature spirits are quite rare, so I feel charmed to be in the presence of such an adorable one."

"Gih," Gify chirps matter-of-factly, making the Asafs chuckle.

"She has quite the personality," I wryly state.

Alissa lands her hand on my chest as she leans onto me and warmly declares, "We're happy to finally meet with you. Nour has done a lot for us, and a normal person likely wouldn't have done anywhere near as much if it weren't for you two raising him that way."

Rehema reflexively grabs her husband's arm as she affably replies, "Oh, but you saved Nour's and Rania's lives, so there's nothing he could ever do to properly repay that."

But I don't think the same as it all started with Nour, so I warmly declare, "His gift allowed me to buy Alissa, which in turn saved me in a difficult time of my life. If it wasn't for that encounter with Nour, I most certainly wouldn't be here." Then Alissa and I smile at each other, but I feel a prickly presence in the back of my mind, so I hurriedly add, "Of course, every one of my wives was essential for us to succeed in our journey, but Alissa was the first."

Then Yunia finishes, "Also, convincing the Princesses to ally with us for the Purification was certainly a great boon to our plans."

"So it seems we owe each other a lot," Ur kindly states.

"So it seems," I softly hum back. The couple may not have high-level auras, but their "Charisma" certainly makes it easy to feel sympathetic to them.

"But let's talk inside where we can sit instead of standing," Ciel kindly suggests, and we all nod in agreement.

We enter the embassy, then introduce them to the Verners, who warmly receive them.

Léonne walks forward and offers her hand to Ur. "Your son is responsible for my Blood Slave daughter meeting her deserved master. Fate brought our families together, and the results have been only glorious for all sides," she boldly declares, then they have a firm handshake.

But it's Rehema who replies with intense piety, "That a mere act of honest gratefulness resulted in such grand developments tells that the Gods truly watch over us, for nothing but their influence could explain such entangled Fates."

Then Léonne offers her hand to the pious woman. "We may have met through Fate, but we're united through faith."

And the two smile at each other as they've both found a comrade with as much "Piety" as themselves.

Léonne is surprisingly pious, but it seems that werefox culture is just very compatible with the teachings of the God of the Sun, and perhaps it's because of that piety that her daughter was chosen to accompany me. Her sense of duty and faith in the divinely-endorsed Blood Slave system made her the ideal parent to raise the perfect Blood Slave, which was the precise help I needed to adapt to being isekaied into this world.

Everything makes too much sense when the Gods are involved, which is why when it doesn't, like with Reinhold's death, we find ourselves so confused but also not that concerned as we know the answers will likely come one day.

During dinner, Ur starts a conversation with me. He seems to be focused on shipbuilding while his wife handles the management of their company.

He doesn't waste time with chit-chat and eagerly broaches the main topic he wants to talk about, "So you have your own imperial airship now? I heard it's a battle airship, so I'm sure it must be one of ours since we handle all the ship types of the core of the Army."

And I calmly reply, "We haven't had time to inspect it yet, and the Army is still reshuffling the crew before they can transfer control of it to us. But it's an airship that came from the west. Wideberg, most likely."

He happily hums back, "Yes, that's where most of our airships go to since the nobles of the east are too self-sufficient to need help from the Army."

"And the High Forest is simply too dense for airships, anyway."

Then his smile subtly becomes sly. "But now that you have the Chimeras doing… what's it called, recovery of Drifting Lands…? Yes, that. Now that you have a use for airships, another one won't hurt, right?"

I raise an eyebrow at him while holding back my smirk. "Precisely. We have a Winch airship that can tow a whole Drifting Island, allowing the Chimeras to mine its crystals and refine them. But the skies are dangerous, so the Winch needs an escort, and I believe this battle airship will do just fine."

Now his expression becomes blatantly sly as he probes, "But now that you're getting into the airship business, you could build more by copying the design of your battle airship, no?"

But I cautiously temper his expectations, "We lack the means to train a crew for imperial airships, so we'd gain nothing by copying the imperial design."

So he pulls back on the slyness as he becomes curious. "Oh? Then what kind of airships do you want to build? Chimera designs?"

"No. Theirs also don't fit the war doctrine that I want to implement. We're developing a new way of building planes, not airships, so even if our designs become superior, not only will they not make the Imperial Sky Fleet obsolete, but we also lack the production capabilities to quickly produce a large number of them."

And his curiosity gives way to sober questioning. "Oh…? Could you elaborate on this new doctrine?"

But now, I return the sly smile. "That is a secret that I can't divulge, but since you're the biggest airshipwright company around, we'll sell you the construction plans once the Army has shown enough interest."

The youthful father gives me a pensive look, most likely skeptical of my words. "Well, that seems to be the perfect deal. You've even reassured us that you won't intrude on our share of the market."

Indeed, for him, this sounds too good to be true. But my goal is to grow the Institute, not become an entrepreneur, so I give him a bit more reassurance, "We're only interested in the research aspect, not managing a business. Besides, while the elven people can be very dedicated craftsmen, they don't make for good mass producers of products, especially war equipment."

He chuckles softly, starting to become casual again. "Too dainty?"

I gently nod. "That, but also too meticulous. The High Forest can only produce extremely high-quality equipment in low quantities."

"Well, that doesn't sound like much of a downside," he good-naturedly mumbles while holding back a grin, almost like he wants to pout.

"The Army needs numbers and results, not a palace built for kings," I casually retort with a shrug.

And he rubs his beardless chin in thought. "It actually makes sense considering all that I've heard about elves."

"They're an odd people," I affirm with a nod.

"We say the same about you humans," Yunia suddenly chimes in, making us chuckle.

The conversations are momentarily disrupted by Gify's adorable silliness as she eats an amount of food many times her weight and size, and the pair of guests becomes charmed by the little white griffin. But the Asafs are experienced merchants, and they don't let themselves remain distracted for long.

After the main course, we have chocolate sweets with coffee. I know it's a bad idea to have coffee at night, but the Asafs likely won't get another chance to experience this combo any time soon.

Rehema raises her eyebrows at the sweets, then eagerly remarks as she gives us amused looks, "I've heard rumors of a High Forest delegation managing to snag a profitable arrangement for cocoa from one of the newer farms. It amuses me that it was you, Ryders, who did that."

"Quite a lot of merchants were frustrated at the lost opportunity, but I wouldn't worry about them since they're all small players," Ur reassuringly adds.

I breathe in deeply, savoring the delicious smell of freshly-ground coffee. Then I motion to the selection of mouth-watering chocolate dishes as I huskily state, "And now you can see why we put so much effort into securing a source of cocoa."

"Yes, this is wonderful…" Rehema wistfully states with a nod, then sips more of her mocha.

"Don't drink too much coffee. It has an energizing effect like Tonique tea," Ciel gives her some advice from personal experience.

"Oh… Unfortunately, I don't think I can stop myself," the pretty mother replies and giggles girlishly.

We spend a few more hours enjoying a pleasant evening with the Asafs, and the Verners seem a bit interested in learning about imperial airships, so we just listen most of the time. The Asafs are nice folks, so it's pretty easy to get comfy in their presence.

But then Ur smoothly turns the conversation back to business. "Say, Lord Wolf. Didn't you have a deal with the Imperial Army regarding the development of your planes?" he tentatively asks.

That's an interesting topic since not even we are sure about how things will turn out. "Yes, we do. We've already received the money, but we haven't spent it yet, and there's a chance that we'll be asked to return it."

He nods in understanding, but then his tone becomes very reassuring, and I pick up on a hidden intention in his words. "Well, that'd be quite the tragedy, and since General Reinhold's actions in the Purification were supposed to be seen as separate from the Army's, I don't think they'll renege on that deal unless Reinhold had quite a number of allies who want revenge."

"The group that followed Reinhold were mostly younger and ambitious officers, not the older higher-ups," I relay Yunia's words as she's the one who's more informed on this matter.

And Ur's gaze turns sharp. "Then there's little chance they'll ask for the money to be returned, but if they do… we'd be willing to fund you, instead. You now have an imperial ship, and if you can improve the design, we'd gladly buy it from you."

I raise my eyebrows and smile in amused surprise. "So that you can then produce it yourself?"

He nods and answers matter-of-factly, "You're the one who gave us the idea."

Then I play with my spoon as I casually deliberate, "Well, the most obvious improvement I can think of is to replace the main [Fly] gem with one of Chimera design, which would be faster and more efficient." And even Rehema stops talking to listen to our conversation.

But Ur becomes skeptical. "Yes, I heard your ship is faster than ours, but it doesn't seem to be armored. Are you sure a Chimera gem can carry the weight of an imperial airship?"

"The Floater has a ship-wide [Wind Shield] enchantment protecting it from all projectiles, so it doesn't need to be armored," I proudly reply.

And his stunned reaction is delightful. "Wait… you're serious?"

"The Chimeras are masters of enchanting, and they specialize in huge gems, like those of airships."

Ur runs his hand through his short brown hair as he chuckles. Then he leans back in his chair and sighs wistfully. "Well, I'm eager to see what you can do with those Chimeras."

I grin cheekily. "So am I…"

The Carrier isn't even the biggest airship that the ancient Chimeras had built, so there are many wonders we could unlock with the help of their expertise. And that huge flying fortress inside the Legado dungeon is the first thing that comes to mind.

But it seems that was the last topic that Ur wanted to talk about, and not long after that, he stands up and politely declares, "I'm afraid we've taken up too much of your time, so it's time for us to retire."

"You can stay in the embassy with us," Ciel immediately replies.

He smiles affably at her but declines, "Oh, we're grateful, but we know how busy you Ryders are. This was supposed to be just a short visit. Perhaps we could have a more lengthy visit when you have the time. It would be even better if we had Nour and his wives with us as we know how fond they are of you, Ryders."

"Thank you for your consideration," Yunia politely states.

And he nods at her. "We'll be staying in the capital for a few more days. If you're leaving soon, please call us for some goodbyes."

"Certainly," I affirm.

Then the Verners also retire, so the wives and I spend the rest of our evening together.

Indeed, we're too busy to entertain guests for long unless they're actually important people who have business with us, like the Princesses, so the Asafs leaving early is helpful to us, but we must certainly have a visit with them again one day.

"Curious how Nour has a harem while his father doesn't," Roxanne suggestively remarks.

But Hana immediately retorts, "Wanna bet that his dragonkin is the one who's pushing him to add more women? I know that my father can barely keep up with my mother, so not all men are equal."

"That'd be a silly bet," Yunia casually states.

"And I know that Nour was struggling to keep up with his women at the beginning," I add. He went through the same journey as me as he discovered the wonders of bed skills, but I wonder if he'll go anywhere near as far as I have.

"It helps when the women can enjoy each other," Yunia sagely states, and we all agree.

Today is the 16th, Ekt, day of Electricity. Hana says it's the best day for working out or going on a run, but we all do so much "exercise" every day that we don't really need to put much effort into staying fit.

Alissa increased her [Illusion Magic] by 1 (now 21), Roxanne increased her [Space Magic] by 2 (now 16), and Lina increased her [General Enchanting] by 1 (now 6+14).

Hana and I increased our "Wisdom" by 1 (now 17 and 21), which is welcome news, except to Yunia, who feels dread every time Hana gets closer to her in mental stats.

We have another perfect, calm morning, but it's soon ruined by the arrival of a cryptic letter delivered by an Imperial Army messenger.

"Juramen was an Oathbreaker.

Reinhold."

And I don't know what to think about this…

"Sounds like a threat," Hana growls angrily, her emerald scales twitching like flexing muscles.

"Wait… is he planning on binding his soul to the land like the spirit Chimeras?" I blurt out in confusion.

"Sounds like it…" Lina whispers bitterly, and her frown makes her gloomy eyes look very grim.

But Alissa is concerned about something else. "Alkibiades escaped, and Reinhold is hinting at… possible revenge? This doesn't bode well," she ponders out loud.

"Juramen's tale wasn't of revenge; it was of rebirth," Ciel corrects her.

But we fall silent as we ruminate. The letter is too cryptic and ambiguous, so the only thing that's clear is that Reinhold isn't going to Hell or Paradise just yet.

And then my mood sours completely as I realize that I won't be allowed to truly get rid of him without the Emperor killing one of my wives as punishment. It's ironic considering that we've taken advantage of the fact that the Elder Council can't easily assassinate us because I'm a Gifted, which has allowed us to act very arrogant and combative against them so that they'd hear us out.

This must be what Katasko felt when we started antagonizing them.

Powerlessness.

"We'll have to wait and see what he does next," Yunia sagely states, and she hates that none of us can tell her otherwise.

"If he shows even a hint of Wickedness, we can truly end him," Ciel sternly declares, even her composure broken by the danger that Reinhold poses, but we don't give in to despair.

We killed Reinhold once, so we can kill him again.

But the surprises don't end there. Just as we begin our orb-boosted mana circulation training, Caterina appears, wanting to speak with us.

Hana happily receives her milfy elven crush, and we offer our favorite Punisher tea and coffee, of which she promptly accepts the latter. But she seems eager to drink coffee and eat chocolate, which is slightly odd considering she's usually a bit ascetic.

Once the Punisher has had a good sip, she lowers her cup onto her plate and gives us a sharp gaze. "There's been a string of… murders among the lower nobles. All related to Katasko, it seems," she pompously remarks with obvious phony dismay.

And I smirk at her. "Well, I'd be surprised if the Punishers weren't involved in a number of them."

Her eyes fly between each of us, looking quite eager to tell us something big, but she continues her act for a while longer. "Well, I can't deny nor confirm that. It's just that one particular murder stood out to me. That of a certain Faustus Fluminis…" Then her gaze suddenly turns sharp and accusatory again.

Faustus' death makes me uncomfortable, but Hana is glad to take over for me. "Yeah, that's one of the nobles of Katasko. We still remember all of the names we wrung out of their officers," she states with a grin, challenging Caterina to riposte.

"Hm…?" the stern Punisher hums and raises one thin golden eyebrow questioningly, but we all just force a cheeky smile, which she finds mildly amusing. But apparently, she was merely teasing us, and she softens her expression as she continues, "Well, I merely want to confess that we've lost track of Alkibiades Alkimeonids. We were ready to ambush him along with his other allies if he tried to use any of his usual hiding places, but…" -her gorgeous face turns sorrowful- "and I'm embarrassed to admit this, he eluded us. We decapitated most of the higher nobles of Katasko, so they won't be able to fully cannibalize their lower members or even rebuild their organization after-…"

She stops as she realizes that something is wrong. The truth of Alki-Alki's fate makes us very grim, and we can't hide our frustration.

So I gravely confess, "We saw with our own eyes as Alkimeonids was teleported by an unknown, undetectable spell. He was accompanied by Theneus Baros and another unknown person, but the thing is, we have met that unknown person before, and we're almost certain that they're a Wicked undead."

Caterina freezes completely and even stops breathing for a moment as her mind processes our words.

"Who is this unknown person?" she impassively asks, but her tone is commanding.

I promptly describe the masked "thing," and then I also reveal that I recognized its eyes from both the [Meteor] incident at the Innocent Nymph and the (likely) attempted assassination in the Misty Low Forest.

Caterina puts her cup of coffee back onto the table and stiffens her sitting posture, straightening her back completely as she seems to subtly take a deep breath. Then she suddenly declares soberly, with not a drop of levity in her tone, "Ryders, it's time for both of our sides to reveal everything we know. There's an ongoing conspiracy against you, and we need to understand their goals. I'll start by revealing that we know that you're a Realm Traveler and that there are more like you in the Sky Lands."

Damn…

"Who are the others? Say their names. Tell me how they look!" I immediately exclaim.

And she's actually taken aback. "I… wasn't given that information. I only know that there's a group of them in the Sky Lands, and the Chimeras are understandably keeping their existence hidden."

DAMNIT!

Alissa grabs my right hand, and Lina grabs the left while the rest of the girls do the same through our connection. That instantly puts a lid on my boiling anger, and I breathe in deeply to calm myself, but the trembling in my breath is audible, making Caterina become concerned.

"This isn't the reaction I expected. Why do you want to know about the other Realm Travelers?" she cautiously inquires.

"I might know one of them… and she's very dear to me," I grumble back as I try to focus on the touch of my wives to continue to calm myself.

"Ah, I see…" Caterina hums sympathetically, and I'm grateful for her understanding.

Then we fall silent as we recollect ourselves.

But Ciel soon breaks it with a curious question, "How did you know that he's a Realm Traveler?"

"The Oracle confirmed it the moment she met with Wolf," Caterina immediately confesses.

Well… that's… irritating. I kept it a secret for so long, only to get exposed by an unblockable deus ex machina!

Whatever… the cat's out of the bag.

"Wait, so the Emperor knows?" I ask with a frown.

Caterina nods, making her long ears bounce. "Yes. The Empresses and a few other people in top positions also know."

Okay, whatever…

"So… let's talk about this 'conspiracy'?" Yunia requests once she deems me calm enough.

Starting chronologically, undeath was first discovered after the end of the Age of Oppression, around 35,000 years ago. It wasn't until after the empire was formed and the Humanoid Gods had Ascended that undeath was outlawed, and not long after that came the first major incident with undeath, the Heresy of the Tower of Decay, which caused the temple to label all undead as enemies of the Gods.

A few thousand years later, the empire tried to conquer Bestiaram, and they almost succeeded until the infamous Volnosht Rebellion, which was marked by the sudden appearance of many undead warriors and mages.

The empire was pushed back from the north of Bestiaram, driven all the way to the south, but the Rebellion fractured before it could fully liberate the continent, and in a very Bestiaram fashion, the united races fell back into their old ways of infighting. To this day, there are regular sightings of undead in the north of Bestiaram, likely power-hungry mages who came across ancient Volnosht knowledge, so the temple keeps a constant missionary presence in the region to prevent them from messing shit up.

Thousands of years later, the elven royal family of the High Forest, which had gone into hiding after Arreira's death (which happened during Ajax's Conquest of the continent), came back while leading a rebellion against the empire. While infamous for its heretical rhetoric, it didn't have any significant Wicked or undead presence, and then the rebellion fizzled out without battle after the God of the Sun turned the north of Glorampina (where the rebellion started) into a desert that was then renamed Heretic's Rest.

The demon race of Maoka has a complicated relationship with undeath. The Old Gods/Gods of Origin never mentioned immortality or undeath, while the Humanoid Gods have, but a good part of the demon race don't care about the Humanoid Gods, so a considerable number of their people are sympathetic to undeath. But the Avgi Empire pressured the Holy Daemonic Council, the rulers of Maoka, to outlaw undeath, and surprisingly, there haven't been any notable incidents with illegal magic over there.

The most recent incident was about five years ago when the Aremut kingdom was suddenly covered in undead corruption, requiring the whole region to be evacuated. While this horrible tragedy resulted in the countless deaths of those who couldn't evacuate before succumbing to the corruption, it didn't have any actual undead presence.

Then Caterina completes our knowledge, "The truth about Fallen Aremut is that a heretical royal attempted to regain their youth by recreating the same effect of the Tower of Decay, but only for a moment so that it'd be imperceptible. Unfortunately, an unknown accident caused the entire region to be irradiated with an odd corruption that we've been having trouble countering. It's more resilient than that of the Deadlands, so our progress has been slow, but once cleansed, it doesn't spread again."

And I summarize things, "So, no actual evidence of a conspiracy anywhere… except for the attempts on our lives, the genetically enhanced Clone Soldiers, the monsters that seem to be copying humanoid society and practicing genetic enhancement, and Alkibiades' disappearance. All of those things are connected to undead heretics, but not explicitly to any other undead incident across the Realm's history."

But Caterina gives me a confused look. "What do you mean by 'genetic enhancement'?"

"Monsters were experimenting with their eggs, trying to use magic to help them give birth to stronger monsters. It's most likely how the Clone Soldiers were created."

And she scoffs like an elf. "Hmph… that sounds like something an undead mage might attempt. They hold nothing sacred, not even birth. But anyway, you should add Reinhold's spirit's disappearance to the list of suspicious events that have happened around you as I believe it to be related to Alkibiade's."

What…

"He's disappeared too? Then it most certainly is!" I exclaim. Then I show her his letter and retell Juramen's tale.

The calm and collected Punisher has a very unusual reaction. She becomes enraged. She releases her high-level aura, and we all feel a cold sensation pierce our guts, like that of a sword stabbing us.

She clenches her jaw and both fists, then suddenly stands up and heatedly declares, "This is too much. They're working right under our noses! I'll return to the Commander and request a Realm-wide Purge of the Wicked!

A note from Manasong

Hall of Fame of Patrons

The patrons who support Rupegia shall have their names sung by the bards for they deserve the glory and honor. Their names are:

Prince PreownedFIN.

Prince Owldente.

Lord Andrew Meyers.

Lord Novgarod.

Lord Michale Erwin.

Lord Bakerdea.

Lord Maurice.

Lord Mattirro Draca.

Lord Mike Bartter.

Lord Warwulfv.

Lord Tenebris Lupus.

Lord Paul Daval.

Lord Paul Daval.

Lord Tmac.

Lord CopeyDunt.

Lord BlindTactic.

Lord litalmexy.

Lord Philip.

Lord d3235.

Lord William Clark.

Lord Ddraig Wynn.

Lord CardinalSteiner.

Lord Cidant.

Lord SubJef.

Lord GalacticTNT.

Lord SquiddlyWinks.

Lord Max Goodwin.

Lord Freddie.

Lord Placid.

Noble Salty Panda.

Noble Mild Fracas.

Noble Aclys.

Noble Carl  Baxter.

Noble Tony Starrk.

Noble DND.

Noble Asaadullah Lassiter.

Leave a rating or a review to help me rise to the top or fix my shameful understanding of prose.

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Chapter 150: I'm On A Boat - Part 1

A note from Manasong

Attention: to conform to the limit of mature content (more than just sexual content) allowed in a novel, I've censored this chapter. You can look for the uncensored version here.

Intermission - Koritipythia Lambros

The Empresses argue loudly with each other. Women all across the social ladder, from all over the Realm, with wildly different levels of power and the most varied of backgrounds, all rattled by the revelation of an undead organization conspiring within the Empire.

It's not fully confirmed, but the Punishers are going to carry out a Realm-wide Purge, so it's serious, and it has come to the point that it can't be ignored anymore. There are enemies working under our feet, and there's still no sign of the Monster King's revival even though it's awfully late.

A storm approaches, yet I've not been given a view of the future, which tells us that it's related to the Champions.

And as for me, I'm too occupied with trying not to leak onto my seat from all the overwhelming auras clashing at the round table to even make a guess about the future! And that's my job!

If only I had an official position in the harem, then perhaps I could feel more at ease, but things have been "tense" ever since the "incident" during the last gathering of nobles, so I need to prove my usefulness before I can consider myself an equal among them. Even if I'll never be able to officially become an Empress, being accepted as at least a sister would be enough.

But my daydreaming is interrupted by Andreas' and Hayakasha's stormy arrival, and they don't look happy.

"No body parts have been recovered, and his letter to the Ryders proves that he intends to come back!" the Emperor irately exclaims as he advances towards his seat.

I feel my whole body heat up as he freely lets out his aura, but unlike when he uses it to make me submit, it's tinted with his anger, making me feel an uncomfortable chill along with guilt, as if I, personally, have disappointed him.

"Do we not have his blood from his ID?" Empress Ho'Tree calmly remarks. The composed wereowl is the most unflappable out of all of the Empresses.

Andreas tiredly sits down on his throne and takes off his crown as he negatively replies, "It's extremely easy for someone to shield his spirit from being summoned through a single drop of blood."

"But if he is being shielded, it would only further confirm the presence of a heretic organization," Empress Efsevis affirms. She's a stern-looking weredog with close ties to the temple, and I've personally learned to never mention the Gods with levity in her presence.

"The question is whether the jewel that houses his spirit was stolen… or if he left of his own accord," Andreas states sullenly and closes his eyes to meditate.

And the mood around the table becomes thick with gloom as everyone fears these heretics.

Except for Andreas.

He suddenly opens his eyes again and frowns at us. "Why are you all so distraught? This organization can't possibly threaten any of us."

"But they can threaten the Champion," an Empress worriedly states.

"Not anymore. The Punishers will keep him contained," Andreas replies dismissively.

And Ho'Tree actually snorts. "That unruly dragon? You couldn't keep him from pulling his dick out in the Throne itself!" she exclaims amusedly.

"Keep him under watch…" the Emperor corrects himself as he rolls his eyes.

"Hmph…!" the Empress snorts again. Most of the other Empresses softly chuckle in amusement, but a few stand with Empress Hayakasha in their distaste of the Ryders' antics.

Then he soberly continues, "My point is that we must continue to perform our roles as usual. We're not needed in this affair."

"Well, if it's you who's saying this, I'll believe it," Empress Mena kindly states. The gentle dwarf often represents the more fearful Empresses, who usually look for a consensus and support from each other before taking any action.

But on this matter, they quickly accept the Emperor's reassurance, so Empress Piscila moves on. "On another matter, didn't Wolf visit you yesterday afternoon?" she calmly asks me with a wild smile. It is known that the lionfolk Empress lusts after Aoi, the Azurite converted dragon, but she's also suspiciously friendly with the rest of the Ryders, which makes Andreas uncomfortable, considering her personality.

But I was prepared for this question, so the gazes of all of the Empresses and the Emperor faze me not one bit. "Yes, he did. I'd asked for him to come again so that I could study his spirit and Thread, and he complied and spent the afternoon in my meeting room," I composedly explain.

And her amber cat eyes narrow in excitement. "Oh? And what did you discover?"

Even Andreas turns to look at me curiously, so I swallow heavily and attempt to describe that abomination as clearly as I can, "His soul is simply… horrific. Warped, deformed…" -I frown- "confusing, and impossible. Our spirits, like our physical bodies, have organs and a logical structure, but Wolf's spirit doesn't. It's like there are random clusters of unknown organs all over his spirit, making for a hideous sight. Not only that, but his Gift is another mass of impossible and confusing structures that are added on top of the clusters. And then there's his ability to mold his spirit at will, adding to the chaos."

"So, his Gift is related to his spirit and its internal workings?" Andreas calmly questions, and I nod back.

"It would explain why he can summon such huge monsters without actually having the mana to do so," Empress Hayakasha wisely adds. She's concerned with all matters that could threaten the stability of the Empire, so it doesn't surprise me that she's the one who knows the most about the Ryders.

And so I continue on this tangent, "I think his spirit itself is part of the Gift. A normal humanoid's spirit simply shouldn't function with so many chaotic clusters. And he can somehow even bestow some of these clusters to his wives, though to nowhere near the same level of ridiculousness as with his own spirit."

"Is his dick the key to his Gift?" Piscila wryly remarks, drawing giggles and some glances toward Andreas. The Emperor's Holy Cock is definitely the key to the hearts of a number of the Empresses.

"I saw the clusters on his wives, but not on his subordinates," I reply as the more serious Empresses begin to turn her eyes to me.

"Could his spirit be the reason why the undead want him?" Empress Mena wonders out loud.

But Andreas promptly shuts it down, "They want him dead, not captured."

And Hayakasha adds a sober observation, "But the Ryders didn't actually use their Gift to win against Reinhold. It was one of their weapons that did that, and I find the Ryders' inexplicable expertise in scholarly matters to be their most striking characteristic."

"Are you… praising them?" Piscila teasingly questions, but it's actually a legitimate question.

And the other Empresses laugh, though they keep it under control to not offend Empress Hayakasha too much. The ascetic dragonkin Empress is very "teasable" since she doesn't riposte, but you have to be very careful not to enrage her.

Suddenly, Andreas slams his hand on his throne and exclaims, "He's a Realm Traveler! Does he come from an older Realm?!"

And we're all instantly silenced by the realization. This explains everything about him.

"He's Blessed by the Goddess of Knowledge, not the God of Intelligence," an Empress quietly points out.

"Then we have to make sure that he passes down everything he knows. Starting with [Golemancy]," Ho'Tree sternly declares.

Intermission end.

I feel a bit more reassured after our talk with Caterina. The Realm Travelers in the Sky Lands haven't been forced into slavery, and it's a pretty stupid idea to mistreat someone as powerful as a Gifted, so I don't have to worry about them. And while I was targeted by the heretics, there has been zero heretic activity in the Sky Lands for thousands of years, so they most likely aren't at risk.

Oritiki is also already over there, and she's in talks with the Chimeras about "cultural exchanges," so barging in and demanding to see the group of people that the Sky Chimeras are so carefully keeping secret would just make all of her efforts go to waste. There's no rational reason to hurry our meeting except to satisfy my emotional need for closure, and I know better than to let my emotions take control.

But it does seem like Fate is purposely keeping me away from them for a while longer.

I breathe in deeply and kill all my senses as I attempt to meditate. My mind is swirling with thoughts about the recent happenings and frustrations about our failures. But the thing that angers me the most is Alki-Alki's escape. If only we had killed him when he was traveling across the city…

I know. Coulda, woulda, shoulda. But I'm still seething.

Twice, the Emperor's rage c--kblocked us from achieving our goals, so it's very important for us to stay on his good side because his approval basically gives us carte blanche to do whatever the hell we want.

I surround an orb with my tentacles, then pop it with a dagger, making it explode into a cloud of magical dust that's instantly absorbed by my tentacles, and the burst of pleasure that follows is so great that I almost soil my pants.

But I hold it in and focus on the mana circulation training. We'll do it later, and it'll be so much better after letting the excitement stew than if we gave in and did it right now.

I gather all of my mana outside of my body, then attempt to cast a spell, but nothing happens except for a small "tug" on my mana organ, stimulating it to grow. Then I return my mana back into my body, only to take it out again to a different spot, and then I repeat this routine as fast as I can. This is the stupidly simple mana circulation training routine.

I've done this so many times that my mind has even created a sub-process for it, automating it to the point that I can do or think of anything else, except for casting spells. It's like there's a programming script in my mind that I can activate at will.

Which is a great thing since the girls and I can have some family time every morning as we train together.

"So, what's the schedule for today?" Ciel happily asks.

"Plowing all day long," Hana immediately replies.

"Plowing all day long," Roxanne repeats, and Yunia nods in agreement.

"We actually have a free day, so we should do something we can't normally do," Alissa tentatively suggests.

And our little Lina suddenly perks up her head as she blurts out, "A date…?"

"Where do you want to go?" I gently ask her, feeling happy that she's asking for this all by herself.

But she frowns and blushes as she has no idea where she wants to go…

"Lake. There's a lake to the north, right?" Aoi suddenly suggests, and everyone seems receptive to the idea, including inviting our friends.

And so, the second beach episode begins.

The lake north of Mac Gantus is where most of the water from the Thunderplains ends up, earning its name of Central Lake. It's a freshwater lake, making it perfect for swimming as saltwater damages the girls' hair, and the lake is so deeply rich in nutrients that it holds the most diverse flora and fauna of the whole continent.

Its north side is open to the public, while the south side is reserved for nobility or those willing to spend a ridiculous amount of money for an exclusive spot. Luckily for us, our social status is so high that we can take one of the reserved spots for ourselves.

I pull our portable house out of my "Items" with a *poof*, then I set up some cooking and grilling equipment on the sand while the girls go into the house to bring out some seats.

Jacques stops by the water, then stares at the pretty boats floating in the distance on the lake. Léonne's and Ofilia's eyes are drawn to his ass, which is quite noticeable in his (borrowed) tight elven shorts. Then he turns around, and they stare at his bulge for a second before looking up to his muscular chest, only to stop at his frowning face.

"If you start, you'll be giving the Ryders a reason to also get spicy," he states as he notices their stares.

"Sounds good to me," Léonne hungrily replies as her eyes go down his body again.

But the red beast narrows his eyes at his hungry wife. "Allura doesn't need the stimulation."

"Tch…" the fox mommy clicks her tongue but doesn't argue otherwise.

But the young fox in question simply pouts, unable to argue no matter how much she wants to get stabbed by me.

I really should "give a hand" to Allura so that she can get in control of her desires faster.

I turn to the adventurers (and the Companions, both on and off-duty) as they fawn over Roxanne's, Yunia's, Hana's, and Kyora's bodies, which are perfectly enhanced by their sensuous swimsuits. Three different classes of beauty pushed to the limits. But the girls also sneak glances at the male side, the four different classes of handsomeness also pushed to the limits.

Jacques is a big, bearded, alpha daddy; Timas is a strong and elegant man; I am a youthful and charming seducer; and Alonso is a shota. My bulge is, of course, the one most stared at since I have both [Spicy Charm] and a huge harem, but I also get some suspicious glances from both Timas and Alonso that remind me of how damn gay this world is.

Then Aoi simply walks past us, not caring for spiciness (for now), and enters the water. She feels drawn to the lake… and also to the delicious goodies that live in it.

"Fishies!" she childishly exclaims through [Bind], then simply dives in, displacing a huge amount of water, some of which splashes onto Jacques' chest. Though the day is hot, the water is chilly enough that his bulge quickly disappears.

Well, while the Verners have their eyes on him, my eyes are on them. Ofilia's pale body is comparable to Roxanne's, but my succubus is just a tad more unnaturally pale than the jade beauty. Though, I don't think Roxanne can get a tan.

Then I start to salivate over Léonne's well-balanced body, and I remind myself of her taste. Her ass is nicer than Ofilia's, and I just know it has been stretched many times before by Jacques' huge hog. Depravity runs in their family.

But my friend cries out as chilly water is sprinkled onto my exposed body, giving me a chill. I immediately turn my head towards the evil culprit and see a pair of gloomy eyes right next to a cheeky, foxy grin.

Oh, it's on!

I [Rush] into the water like a predator in a kindergarten, but Alissa does something with her hand, and a powerful squirt of water flies right towards my eyes, triggering [Battlefield Perception]. It's slow enough that I can easily [Dodge] it, but then a wide stream of water hits my chest, causing another chill.

Lina's impish grin makes me stop for a second, but Alissa doesn't play fair and casts [Mesmerizing Butterflies] as she launches another squirt at me. My instincts save me as I immediately retreat, dodging the squirt, and then manage to resist the spell.

Naughty girls…

I'm not allowed a moment to think as Lina's hand blurs as it hits the water with incredible speed, [Throw]ing another stream my way. But I cast [Earth Bullet] near her as I [Dodge], and when the spell hits the water, it sprays a chilly stream at the cute little girl's face.

"Hyi~…!" she squeaks cutely and shivers.

But I know that you should never take your eyes off a cheeky fox. And so, I use [Muscle Explosion] to once again [Dodge] the incoming squirt. Then [Battlefield Perception] triggers again, so I use my tail to jump forward, but it's not enough, and my butthole clenches as cold water splashes onto my back.

I reflexively sweep with my tail, and I'm satisfied to hear another quiet squeak come from behind me. Then I rake my claws across the shallow water, sending a shotgun splash towards the cheeky fox, who fails to dodge it all.

"Kyah…!"

My body suddenly becomes sluggish, so I glance behind me and see Lina's subtly glowing eyes as she gives me a pouty glare, her warhammer in position to strike the water.

But then, behind her, I see a huge wave coming our way as an elephant-sized blue dragon breaches from under the lake…

Aoi comes back from her swim, then stops before the grill, opens her mouth, and pukes a pile of fish onto the sand.

Ciel stares at her dumbfoundedly while Ofilia keeps a poker face, but her true feelings are the same as Ciel's. The golems also stare unemotionally, but they just lack the feelings to color their reactions.

"Aoi… what are you doing…?" Ciel hesitantly asks.

"This is lunch! Cook them, please," the dragon happily requests.

"While this looks objectionable to normal people," Ted begins their bit.

"The fish were held in a bubble of lethal, magical water," Suzy follows, as always.

And Jarn finishes, "So a [Clean] should remove any saliva that mixed into it."

Ofilia glances at Ciel, then at the Verners, who are having fun by the water, unaware of what's going on in the kitchen. "Don't ask what hides in the mist," the jade beauty cryptically states, then starts [Clean]ing the fish.

Alissa, Lina, and I limp out of the water, shivering and wet, then join Ciel and Ofilia to help them cook lunch. The open fire is perfect for us to dry off faster.

"Are you going to cook for us, Your Highnesses?" Edjo concernedly questions us as she approaches.

Alissa grins as she proudly replies, "I have [Cooking] level four, so I'm not at the same level as the chefs of the embassy, but I'm still very proud of my cooking." The cold water bath is already becoming a distant memory in her mind.

"I used to cook for the other priests and orphans," Ciel casually adds.

And the gray catgirl smiles affably as she confesses, "I know you're all former adventurers, but I can't stop thinking of you all as nobility, so I feel like it's wrong to let you do these menial tasks."

"Their easygoing ways are why I like them," Romy casually hums as she un[Equip]s her armor, now coming off-duty, then stretches and [Clean]s her hands. "Can I help? I have [Cooking] level two from my time as a mercenary."

I catch Ofilia glancing at Romy's muscular body, and I realize that the jade-like beauty has a very obvious type. I mean, the muscular Filipina is quite majestic, but Ofilia is also very reserved, except when Léonne orders her to become a shameless gobbler.

And I almost sigh as I'm reminded again of that wonderful day when I saw both of the fox beauties completely naked…

Easy there, Dragon Man, now's not the time.

The Verners look a bit embarrassed that they're the only ones who don't know how to cook, but there's no need for everyone to help, so they just stay in their seats with the rest of the non-cooks.

The smell of grilled fresh fish is wonderful, and the scented elven logs make any open-fire cooking so much better. We also have a good supply of Tonsel because the not-lemon is just the perfect seasoning for seafood.

There's also a not-Nori spice from the Misty Low Forest that gives food a bit more bite. The werefoxes like to put it on bread, but even though they rarely eat fish, they know how well the not-Nori pairs with it.

And, of course, it wouldn't be Rupegia without fantasy food, like colorful algae as salad, anemone-looking things that Ciel would rather put between her legs, slime monsters that taste like oysters, and colorful coral.

After boiling and frying, the coral becomes crunchy like pork rind, but, disappointingly, it's like Froot Loops. As in, it comes in all the colors of the rainbow, but they all taste the same. It is tasty, like a very mild Cheetos, but I can't stop myself from feeling disappointed about it.

After we eat, I decide to pull out our Chimera winged airship. It's actually seaworthy, so we don't even need to keep the [Fly] gem active, and with just a push, we start drifting off, heading deeper into the lake.

I've never been on an actual boat, and the unsteady rocking is actually a bit nauseating, but I can easily handle it. Lina and the werefoxes have it the worst, though, as they aren't from seafaring races.

"Here, for seasickness," Roxanne kindly offers her potions to the suffering sailors, and the succubus has such a pure smile that Allura looks charmed, the "Status Effect" kind.

"Are you planning on stealing Ciel's role as the mythical angel?" Yunia teasingly comments as Roxanne rejoins us.

"I spent half of my life researching healing potions for diseases and poisons," she replies matter-of-factly. Potions are one of the few things that Roxanne feels a lot of pride about.

"Half angel, half devil," Hana casually remarks, and the succubus likes that analogy very much.

Then we crowd at the railing and observe the colorful underwater forest through the crystal clear water.

"I'm taking a swim!" Capri Sun cheerfully shouts, then grabs Laguly's hand and jumps, taking the squeaking mer with her.

I tell the golems to stop the boat so that we don't leave the two girls behind, but then they leave the command tower, with Hukarere now piloting the ship, and I find their behavior unusual.

"Master Wolf, we have a question," Ted speaks for them, her pitch seemingly a bit higher than normal.

"Ask it," I hum back.

"Your memories say that you didn't care for the beach," Suzy continues, her head gently tilted to indicate confusion.

"Yet now, your feelings indicate that you do," Jarn finishes solemnly.

Then Ted becomes surprisingly eloquent, "This type of change is unusual because your feelings reveal that you aren't just 'tolerating' this activity for the sake of familial unity, but that you actually enjoy being at the beach, except that the beach has too many uncomfortable details for you. For example, you don't like the sand, you don't like the heat, you don't like to sweat, you don't like to expose your body, you don't like to be outside, you don't like to be near strangers, you don't like large gatherings, and many other things. Yet now, these complaints are non-existent within your mind, so your behavior confuses us."

True, I started to enjoy the beach before I became a weredragon, so this change didn't come from my new race. But to me, the answer is clear.

"It's because the beach is a family activity, and I've become a family man," I confidently answer.

"Your fast change into a family man confuses us," Ted immediately replies.

And I grin at them. "Positive reinforcement. I've come inside my wives so many times that any activity with them activates the dopamine release in my brain, so now I enjoy even things that I clearly didn't back on earth."

But Ted insists, "Bed activities aren't supposed to be addictive like drugs. They should become less rewarding the more you do it."

So I just shrug. "Then maybe this is the magic of this world. I've just become unable to get bored of it."

"That explains his unending thirst," Jarn accepts my explanation.

"Yes," Ted and Suzy reply in unison.

A note from Manasong

Hall of Fame of Patrons

The patrons who support Rupegia shall have their names sung by the bards for they deserve the glory and honor. Their names are:

Prince PreownedFIN.

Prince Owldente.

Lord Andrew Meyers.

Lord Novgarod.

Lord Michale Erwin.

Lord Bakerdea.

Lord Maurice.

Lord Mattirro Draca.

Lord Mike Bartter.

Lord Warwulfv.

Lord Tenebris Lupus.

Lord Paul Daval.

Lord Paul Daval.

Lord Tmac.

Lord CopeyDunt.

Lord BlindTactic.

Lord litalmexy.

Lord Philip.

Lord d3235.

Lord William Clark.

Lord Ddraig Wynn.

Lord CardinalSteiner.

Lord Cidant.

Lord SubJef.

Lord GalacticTNT.

Lord SquiddlyWinks.

Lord Max Goodwin.

Lord Freddie.

Lord Placid.

Noble Salty Panda.

Noble Mild Fracas.

Noble Aclys.

Noble Carl  Baxter.

Noble Tony Starrk.

Noble DND.

Noble Asaadullah Lassiter.

Leave a rating or a review to help me rise to the top or fix my shameful understanding of prose.

Take a look over my blog where all information about the world of Rupegia will be posted.

Join the Discord and discuss, or rant, or meme, or try and fight me so your waifu gets more screentime.

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Chapter 150: I'm On A Boat - Part 2

A note from Manasong

Attention: to conform to the limit of mature content (more than just sexual content) allowed in a novel, I've censored this chapter. You can look for the uncensored version here.

I'm pleasantly surprised by the golems' questions. It shows that they're slowly coming up with their own questions as they learn new things, so they aren't unchangeable automatons and are actually capable of evolving.

Now I suddenly feel like creating some more baby golems, but it's family time, so I suppress my scholarly desires and turn my attention toward my girls again.

Roxanne, Hana, Ciel, Klein, Romy, Melanie, Allura, Kyora, and Alonso go for a swim while everyone else stares at the crystal clear water to observe the sea life. Hukarere (who's on duty) is also staring, but her gaze looks rather uncomfortable, so I [Telekinesis] up to the cabin to see what's up.

"Are you alright?" I softly ask as I land, and I seem to startle her a bit.

"Well, yeah?" my white wolf replies with a shrug.

I walk up to her, pull up her lupine helmet, kiss the tip of her snout, and see her hairs stand up on end. "You looked a bit uncomfortable. Just tell me if you're unwell."

She awkwardly looks away and confesses, "I'm not unwell. It's just … I'm a bit scared of the water."

"Oh, you can't swim?" I ask with a teasing smile.

And she attacks me with puppy eyes. "Nope. We lived in the sky, you know? Not exactly known for its wide seas and lakes."

I hum softly as I caress her fur, "Huh… what about Atawha?"

"Even worse than me. At least I can float since I practiced in the big baths back in the castle."

I grab her head and grin, then kiss her snout again, but this time, she answers with a lick on my lips, making me chuckle softly. There's no way to kiss her without things turning messy due to her lack of lips, but I do enjoy this part of her.

"Don't act so sweet, or you'll get me excited again," she sultrily remarks as she fondles my balls.

"That doesn't sound like a bad thing," I huskily reply, my friend instantly up.

But then she suddenly pulls her hand back and flashes a glare as she grumbles, "It is when I'm on duty."

And I chuckle heartily. "Okay, point taken. Anyway, I'll teach you two how to swim later when you're both off-duty."

"Wind blows," she happily affirms with a nod. I think that's a Chimera saying that she simply translated directly into Andraste.

Then I leave Hukarere, and Alissa senses that she seems more comfortable, so I guess my presence helped her a bit.

But now, I turn my predatory gaze to the row of women presenting themselves at the railing. Once again, I'm reminded of Léonne's and Ofilia's wonderful behinds, but there's someone wearing a micro-bikini right next to them, hogging all the attention of my hungr eyes.

I approach Yunia from behind and hug her tight. Her answer is to reflexively lean back and coo softly as I play with her body and use a bit of spirit touch to hasten her "heating up."

"I believe Allura has swam far enough to not notice you two," Léonne calmly points out.

I sneak my hands under Yunia's clothes as I give the fox mommy a confused look.

"You saw me getting plowed by my husband, so now I want to see you plow your wife," she excitedly explains, a hungry look growing on her stern face.

"Would you rather see me plow Alissa instead?" I suggest with a grin.

"No, you're doing me!" Yunia demands.

And Léonne smirks as she sultrily answers, "Alissa would be nice, yes, but I can wait to see you plow both of my daughters at the same time."

And we both grin hungrily at each other while Ofilia simply turns red in embarrassment, then Léonne starts casting [Ignorance]. I think I'm fine with doing Yunia in front of everyone, even Jacques' and Kyora's harems, but that blue dragonkin doesn't like to see spiciness because it makes her really damn excited, so this spell is a courtesy to spare her from that.

Then I pull it out.

It's so unfortunate that Jacques isn't like Behrouz, Roxanne's father, because I want to do Léonne so goddamn bad that it's maddening. I'll never let Jacques touch any of my women, but I can't stop myself from fantasizing about Léonne, and I'm sure she also fantasizes about me.

Alissa grins as she stares at me, then kisses the tip. "I'll roleplay as my mother whenever you want," she states through [Bind].

And your dad will roleplay as me…

We hang out sans clothes for a bit more, but then Allura starts to swim back, so we dress up, [Clean] everything, and pretend like nothing happened. Alissa doesn't detect any smell, and we clear the air of residual Light mana particles, but the way everyone is so happy and friendly with each other makes the young fox very suspicious.

"I'll take a swim with my wives. I want to explore underwater," I announce, both to quickly get away from the inquisitive thirsty girl and also because I really want to do this. Then I tell everyone to gather through [Bind].

Roxanne casts [Water Breathing] on all of us, and I summon a few water elementals to help us swim, then we jump into the crystal clear water. Gify doesn't like being wet, and she has no desire to swim by herself, so Roxanne makes a [Water Breathing] bubble envelop her whole body, allowing the lazy griffin to stick to my shoulder and remain dry.

Anyway, monsters aren't a very healthy addition to environments as they have a tendency to deplete the wildlife and even destroy the flora, but because Central Lake is always kept clear of monsters, it was allowed to grow one of the purest "idyllic fantasy" environments that I've ever seen.

The nutrients that come in through the rivers are deposited at the bottom of the lake, and the sun is strong and penetrates deep due to the clear waters, so the flora has two clear types: short filterers and tall algae. The filter plants are small and either porous, fuzzy, or tentacly to increase the surface area through which they can absorb the nutrients, while the algae grow tall to get more rays of light, but not too tall as there are a variety of problems that come with growing too big.

Deeper in, most of the filter plants are like stony corals, creating a stable foundation for a mer town called Filfenga. It's said to be a beautiful place to visit at night as, just like in the High Forest, the magical, glowing plants activate when the moons are up in the sky.

But Central Lake is still quite a beautiful place during the day, too, as the colorful and passive fauna is more active during this time, and the clear water allows us to see quite far. There's just so much fish around that it's no wonder Aoi could catch so many so fast. Though, only a mage who can cast spells underwater would be so successful in hunting around here.

"Hey, that fuzzy plant looks like an armchair," Lina remarks through [Bind], and we all turn towards where she's pointing.

"Wait, how do mer communicate underwater?" I blurt out.

"They squeak a lot," Hana casually answers.

We approach the armchair, and Lina promptly sits down in it, but the brown and fuzzy seat tickles her in a weird way, so she immediately gets off.

"What's their language called?" I curiously ask.

And Hana answers again, "I think, over here, it's called Kikiki."

I use the search function in my skill menu to find [Kikiki Language], then I put ten points in it as I watch Ciel hesitantly sit down in the armchair.

"Oh, Gods…" The angel moans as the fuzzy little strands tickle her in a way that makes her feel… things.

"KIK!" I suddenly squeak as I try to mumble a mere "wait." This language is a bit weird, so I take it out of my mind for a moment as there's something rather dangerous going on right in front of me. "Ciel, I'm not going to be NTR'd by a plant…" I sternly warn her.

"Well, you could stick your thing in the armchair, and I'm sure it could make you happy too," Roxanne affirms, looking for any excuse as she tries to convince me to watch Ciel get done by a plant.

And the corrupted angel doesn't reply, trying her best to keep a poker face, but we know what's going on under there.

"So… some plants can impregnate women or get impregnated by humanoid seed," Hana suddenly remarks, and Ciel jumps out of the seat in a fright, then closes her legs real tight, but we're almost sure this one isn't capable of impregnation, so we smirk teasingly at the frightened angel.

Then Yunia launches into a scholarly explanation, "They're like unintelligent dryads, except they don't copy humanoid genders, and some even say that those plants are a third gender since they can both impregnate and become impregnated without changing their bodies."

"Hermaphrodites," I hum.

And that triggers a memory of mine in Alissa's mind, who blurts out, "Futas…?"

"Yeah…" I mumble as I cringe, but the girls are even more depraved than I am, and Hana finds the idea of having a sword between her legs very interesting. I've given her one twice before, but I'd rather not explore this area anymore as it's too "dangerous."

And Ciel gives me a hand by changing the topic, "Anyway, back to the armchair… we, uh…" but then she trails off as she doesn't know what she wants to say about it.

The golems pick up on her conflicted thoughts and decide to help her by sharing theirs.

"Tentacles may be similar to a 'swords,'" Ted suddenly begins with a fact.

"But this plant appears to be more similar to a vibrator," Suzy continues with a reassurance.

"The question is whether or not it's capable of impregnation," Jarn finishes with the crux of the matter.

Then Ciel comes up with another excuse. "The sensation reminds me of Gify's 'massage,'" she innocently confesses, trying to convince us that it's okay.

"Seafood makes you excited, huh," Roxanne teasingly remarks and smirks.

"It's in her blood. Sommerlande were born for the seas," Hana answers matter-of-factly. As a half Sommerlande herself, she knows what she's talking about.

I think it's fine, as long as she follows some conditions, so I take out my collar with the Ring of Fertility and hand it to Ciel. "And keep your bottoms on. Nothing should get in," I soberly state.

She gives me an apologetic look as she takes the collar, then sits back down on the spicy armchair. The effect is instantaneous as the fuzzy hairs tickle both her sensitive areas through the fabric of her bikini. And so, we settle in around her to observe the corrupted angel as she slowly goes mad.

Alissa detects Laguly approaching us, so I turn around and wave at her. The tomboy siren swims closer out of curiousity, her body waving with entrancing motions, then notices Ciel, and her eyes go wide in surprise as she blushes.

"KIKO!" I squeak, attempting to say "hello," and my whole body reflexively shakes like a wet noodle. Apparently, the Kikiki language has a physical component.

And now the siren turns her surprised eyes towards me, then replies after a moment, "[Hello]!" squeaking and shaking just like I did.

"[This plant can impregnate]?" I ask as I point, and my speech comes out kind of caveman-like. I need to squeak loudly and click my tongue very hard to be heard underwater, which is probably why the language is so "compact."

"[No, but itchy]," she replies and makes a scratching motion on her forearm. Then she swims closer with extreme grace as her curiosity overpowers her embarrassment. "[How you speak Kikiki]?"

"[Secret]," I squeak, and the skill makes me cover my face with one hand, kind of like sign language.

Then Ciel's whole body begins to quiver as she has an amazing one. Her expression is one of bliss, a beautiful sight that I'll never get tired of staring at, but it makes her look absolutely depraved, like the corrupted angel that she truly is.

Laguly stares at her with confusion and excitement as Ciel's expression is one commonly seen when being Ravaged (though the bliss is many times more intense through my Weapon).

"[This itchy, but how she doing it]?" the young siren questions in disbelief.

"[Tentacle love]," I answer matter-of-factly, and it takes Laguly a moment to realize what it means.

"[I understand]…" she squeaks quietly with a wry smile.

After that, Ciel feels quite satisfied, so we just take a swim through a kelp forest, which is quite an interesting sight as the plants filter the sunlight like the canopies of trees. Then Yunia and I use [Animal Tongue] to get a school of fish and a coral-like tortoise to play with us, though we did need Aoi to turn into her human form first because even the fishes are terrified of her.

The slippery fellows can be quite cheeky with their playfulness, even though their lack of expressions makes them look like they're wearing silly masks. But the tortoise is a cool dude, too, and he actually enjoys carrying Lina around on his back.

"Spirit animal," I telepathically tease my little girl.

"Tortoises are actually the spirit animal of the wererabbits," Alissa corrects.

"What?" I hum confusedly and frown at her.

"What?" she mirrors me.

"What do you mean by 'spirit animal'?"

She tilts her head cutely in confusion. "An animal they have a spiritual affinity with?"

And my frown deepens. "How does… how does that work? Why do those two have an affinity?"

"Rabbits are quick and small while the tortoises in Conchononoi are big and slow. They have a natural affinity for fighting together."

Oh, it's about combat…

I scratch my horn with a claw as I reply, "Well, by spirit animal, I meant an animal that represents a person's personality."

And now it's her turn to frown. "But that's just what being a wereanimal is."

"Ehhh…" I hum skeptically.

But we drop it there because we don't feel like arguing. Though I feel that Alissa just wants to annoy me by arguing about it, it wouldn't work through a mental conversation as our emotions are too easily exposed, so she just smirks, and I kiss the back of her neck, making her tail wag sluggishly through the water.

We shouldn't stay away from our Companions for too long, so after swimming around a little more, we return to the ship.

A note from Manasong

Hall of Fame of Patrons

The patrons who support Rupegia shall have their names sung by the bards for they deserve the glory and honor. Their names are:

Prince PreownedFIN.

Prince Owldente.

Lord Andrew Meyers.

Lord Novgarod.

Lord Michale Erwin.

Lord Bakerdea.

Lord Maurice.

Lord Mattirro Draca.

Lord Mike Bartter.

Lord Warwulfv.

Lord Tenebris Lupus.

Lord Paul Daval.

Lord Paul Daval.

Lord Tmac.

Lord CopeyDunt.

Lord BlindTactic.

Lord litalmexy.

Lord Philip.

Lord d3235.

Lord William Clark.

Lord Ddraig Wynn.

Lord CardinalSteiner.

Lord Cidant.

Lord SubJef.

Lord GalacticTNT.

Lord SquiddlyWinks.

Lord Max Goodwin.

Lord Freddie.

Lord Placid.

Noble Salty Panda.

Noble Mild Fracas.

Noble Aclys.

Noble Carl  Baxter.

Noble Tony Starrk.

Noble DND.

Noble Asaadullah Lassiter.

Leave a rating or a review to help me rise to the top or fix my shameful understanding of prose.

Take a look over my blog where all information about the world of Rupegia will be posted.

Join the Discord and discuss, or rant, or meme, or try and fight me so your waifu gets more screentime.

Become a Patron and read chapters in advance, or read the side-stories, or leave your mark on the story, or help choose the next artwork or the next side-story.

Chapter 150: I'm On A Boat - Part 3

A note from Manasong

Attention: to conform to the limit of mature content (more than just sexual content) allowed in a novel, I've censored this chapter. You can look for the uncensored version here.

The Companions visibly relax when they see our return. It might've been a bit rude to them to leave without giving them the chance to follow us, so oopsie, but I know they'll understand that we're just eccentric and still love them very much.

We don't go too deep into Central Lake because the water above Filfenga is a bit busy, and we don't want to interact with any of the snobbish shits that might be taking a joy ride across the lake. And Hukarere also makes sure that we move away from any of the other ships that seem to drift suspiciously towards us.

The design of this ship is unique as no other uses wings like ours does, and its hull is clearly decorated with elven patterns, so it's obvious to everyone that we're foreigners. Thankfully, the Purification has wiped out all the villainous assholes from most of the Empire, so there's nobody left who would be stupid enough to harass us.

Anyway, we just sunbathe and chit-chat as we drink Eia and alcohol. Poppy and Timas seem a bit awkward towards us, so I guess they saw the plowing, and the young little girl definitely throws some heated glances my way, but so does the catman…

Then Atawha and Hukarere come off duty, and I suddenly have two delicious bare Chimera right next to my face.

I stand up and cop a feel of both of them as I smile and state, "Let's go take a dip, hm?"

The raccoon girl shivers in delight at my touch, but my white wolf just gives me a smirk, already used to getting intimate with me, so I add a vibrating spirit touch, and the reaction is instantaneous.

"Wolfy… swimming… please…" Hukarere requests through gritted teeth. It takes her quite the "Willpower" to still manage to speak while I'm vibrating her bits, so I spare her from my teasing, but I do increase the intensity on Atawha for a second before also pulling back from her.

The raccoon girl is left panting, and Alissa even smells it, but I'm feeling a bit sadistic, so I'll leave her hanging and wanting until we're back at the embassy.

I walk up to the railing and summon two water elemental-wives, and the looks that the water-Roxannes give me tell me that they'll definitely continue the teasing whenever they can. Then I turn around with a grin and politely request, "Please, lower yourselves into the water, but don't worry, for the elementals will keep you afloat."

Showing how well trained they are, the two Chimeras bravely obey and enter the water with only a split second of hesitation, and Atawha grimaces as the chilly temperature kills her desire.

The elementals use their magic to create a seat of water that keeps them from sinking, and though they look confused at first, they trust my words and relax, then they twitch as the magical water tickles them in a subtle but exciting way.

I float towards them with [Telekinesis] but stay out of the water so that they can stare at my bulge, and then I begin, "The first thing you both need to learn is how to float. Fill your lungs with air and hold your breath, then slowly straighten your bodies horizontally, allowing yourself to float away from your seats."

"Do we even need to breathe?" Hukarere reflexively asks.

I don't really know, but Atawha answers for me, "It damages our bodies if we don't. The mages said something about our bodies being just like living ones, but not really."

And Hukarere knits her non-existent eyebrows. "That's… confusing…"

But the raccoon girl just shrugs.

I also have no idea how to explain it better, so I just continue, "Well, make sure not to kill yourselves by holding your breath for too long then. Your lungs work just like an airship's balloons, except they can't make you float in the air, only in the water."

"Oooh~…" they hum in unison.

"Air is a fluid, just like water, but air is a lot less dense," I add.

"We use special air that we can't breathe to lift airships," Hukarere excitedly shares and turns to Atawha.

"That air is lighter than normal air; that's why it floats up," I expand on her comment.

Atawha brightens up as she makes the connection, "And some places don't have much air, so we have to use the [Fly] gem to not fall."

"Right, remember that [Vacuum] spell," Hukarere hums as she nods.

And I gently smile at them as I suggest, "Now test it out yourselves. Fill your lungs with air, then lay horizontally, and you'll float. Expel the air, and you'll start to sink."

The two girls follow my guidance and do as I say without hesitation. They promptly begin to float and start to drift, and I simply stare at their perky bits peeking out of the water. But then Hukarere releases her breath and barely sinks at all.

"Is it working? Am I sinking?" she excitedly asks.

"Very slowly…" I hesitantly answer as my spicy stare becomes curious.

Then Atawha releases her breath, but she also has trouble sinking.

"I think your bodies are lighter than real ones," I remark, my tail waving in scholarly excitement.

"Is that good or bad?" Hukarere questions confusedly.

"Good!" Atawha immediately exclaims and awkwardly covers her belly with her hands. I'd say that the raccoon girl is the second curviest out of all of the Companions, with Melanie, the shortstack, taking the crown, but they're all fit and far from being considered even slightly chubby.

And I wryly reply, "Well, this makes it harder for you to go underwater but easier for you to swim on the surface."

"I'll take it!" she exclaims again.

It'd be a bad idea to tease a woman about this, so I just move on, "Anyway, you two have managed to float, so next, you should learn how to use your feet."

And so the swimming lesson continues.

They're both very fit and easily learn the various types of swimming with only a few incidents of swallowing some water. The problem is that their bodies truly don't need to breathe consistently, so it's hard to keep a balance between strokes and breathing, which leads to them easily damaging themselves by swimming too fast.

They can easily push themselves to speeds that make Hana and Allura envious, but they pay a higher cost. My and Gify's [Materialize] is less advanced than that of our court Spirit mages, so we don't let the two damage their bodies because it'd be a pain to fix them.

Suddenly, Kyora stands up, grabs Alonso, and swings him over her shoulder like a bag of potatoes. And then the huge dragonkin does the same with Poppy, holding both of them on the same shoulder, and grabs Timas with her free hand.

"C-can we use the tent?!" Timas desperately requests as he's carried away.

"Sure…" Ciel answers confusedly, though she doesn't know what they need the tent for. But once they're in, we quickly find out because Poppy, Kyora, and Alonso are all screamers.

"HARDER!" Kyora roars.

"AAHN!" Poppy shrieks with each fleshly slap.

"I'M GONNAAAAA!" Alonso cries out. And soon, he cries out again, and again, and again…

And we're all stunned by the savagery we can hear going on inside the tent.

Then Hana wryly remarks, "I don't think we should give Kyora any more Eia… Her vice must be drinking."

"Are you sure her vice isn't making love?" Alissa concernedly asks.

"Nope, she's a big one, so I think this much is normal."

But that makes Alissa very "interested." "Hm… Then I think, one day, we should get Wolfy a dragonkin as big as her."

"I might die," I worriedly state.

"Just do her in your dragon form, then," the depraved fox calmly replies.

"Ooh, that'd be nice," Hana hums in agreement.

And then the sounds of love make us fall silent, and even the two Chimeras take a break from their swimming, but it isn't because we're uncomfortable. The problem is that everyone, perhaps with a small exception called Jacques, is a lascivious, shameless pervert, and the sounds and smells of wild love coming from the tent make us very distracted.

Léonne sprawls out on her husband's broad chest, then grins foxily as she traces a finger over his skin, her tail wagging slowly. "I'm getting excited again. How about you?" she sultrily asks as she stares at him intensely.

He pats his beard in thought, seemingly a bit tense, but answers truthfully as his tail also begins to wag, "My testicles are ready for more, but are you okay? I was pretty rough on your behind."

"Just no anal for a few days," she promptly replies.

"And I thought that Wolfy was insatiable," Alissa remarks out loud with a teasing grin.

But Léonne promptly counters, "Blame your husband. He's always getting us into exciting situations."

"Hey, this one wasn't my fault," I immediately complain.

The fox milf turns her intense orange jewels towards me as she replies with a steamy tone, "But only with you do we feel so comfortable doing it in front of an audience." And that instantly unsheathes my sword.

"I have to agree with her on this one," Jacques quietly agrees, his tight shorts straining against the growing monster.

"Same," Allura tiredly hums and sighs.

"Same," Lolo surprisingly joins in.

"Same!" and so do the Companions and Klein.

"This isn't just [Spicy Charm], Wolfy," Ciel states.

I'm just a Bed God that exudes seductive pheromones.

And my blasphemy makes Ciel pout.

"Maybe it's part of his aura," Yunia wonders out loud.

"Or just a weredragon thing," Hana adds, then they all turn their eyes to me as if they could unravel my mysteries by staring harder.

And I start to get a bit annoyed at their teasing, but this is also an opportunity, so I summon the tentacle-sword monster and suggest, "Since everyone is so comfortable with doing it in public, how about we have some fun?"

Intermission – Wealthy Merchant

I lower my spyglass, but I can still see that terrifying scene as it has been branded into my mind.

A dozen beauties tied up in humiliating positions, their womanly wonders exposed for all to see as they're ravished by obscene appendages, their expressions warped by ridiculous, perverted bliss. There's even a huge blue dragon being forced down by the horrid things. All while a massive red man and an odd shiny draconic boy ravage two women each, plowing them with brutal wildness, with a younger woman merely watching them, eerily unmoving as if she were a statue.

I only wanted to find out who was the owner of such an exquisite vessel, but now I regret ever looking their way.

"My love, what did you see? What kind of elves are they?" a sweet but concerned voice wriggles into my ear, but being forced out of my daze makes me shudder in disgust.

I glance at my dear wife, then at my concubines as they lounge on the deck.

They must not get anywhere close to that nightmarish "party."

"Turn the ship around, NOW!"

Intermission end.

I leave Hukarere, and she instinctively closes her legs to not let a single drop of my bliss-inducing, magical seed escape. Then I turn to Atawha, but she's fallen asleep, completely exhausted.

Now that I've made up for teasing them, I turn around to the others, but almost everyone else is also out of the fight. The only ones still resisting are Melanie and Aneta, who are on duty, so I stop plowing them before they can pass out and then cast [Refresh] on them so that they can stand guard.

Allura is still frozen in her seat, a large wet patch under her, but it's commendable that she's resisted for so long, and I think she deserves a reward.

I walk up to her, then lean forward, our faces so close that our noses almost touch. Then I whisper seductively, "That was incredible restraint, Allura. You've been such a good girl that you deserve a reward."

And before she can process my words, I steal a deep kiss. My tongue quickly finds hers, and I do obscene things to it, even drawing a trembling sound from her as she succumbs to the pleasure, but I grab her hands and stop her from touching herself as I do her mouth.

She tries to resist, but her body is too tired to go against my draconic strength, and soon, the extreme excitement passes, so I break the kiss, then hug her head and play with her pointy fox ears. I know all the weak spots of a werefox, and I caress Allura's until she becomes so drowsy that she's almost falling asleep.

"Magic sword, magic hands," I quietly remark to the Verners with a grin and give them jazz hands, but they stare at me like I'm a damn magician, so I decide to lean into it. "I've explored your daughter's body so thoroughly that there are no more secrets to be unveiled."

"For some reason, your love for Alissa makes me feel competitive," Léonne tiredly replies and rests her head against her husband's chest. Then Ofilia also crawls onto their seat, and Jacques wraps his large arms around the bare bodies of his women.

"Sounds like a good thing," Ofilia softly hums with a beautiful smile as she makes herself comfortable.

"I agree," Hana chimes in from her seat as she gives a thumbs-up, and once again, a chorus of women follow her in agreement, but they're all so tired that it just sounds like they're voicing pleasure.

Allura suddenly yawns loudly, and it triggers a domino effect, but when it gets to Aoi, the ship trembles with her powerful double voice.

"Oh, sorry…" the "little" blue dragon apologizes for scaring the sleepy women awake.

"Was that a yawn…?" Atawha asks in disbelief, still a bit shaken from being woken up so suddenly.

"Dragon," Klein replies, and that's everything that needed to be said for the raccoon girl to understand.

"What are yawns?" I wonder out loud and chuckle, but not even the Gods know the answer to that question.

We rest for a little while longer, but then I summon a few light-Ciels to [Clean] everything up, and we get dressed so that Kyora's harem can come out. They're in a worse state than we are, so it takes them a good half hour before they can walk again, but Kyora herself looks fine.

"Eia extract makes me weird. I won't be drinking it again," the huge dragonkin states, then spiritedly stretches her statuesque body. She isn't a ridiculous bodybuilder like Rande or Palo, but she's got thighs that could crush a man's head like a watermelon.

"Maybe once in a while is fine…" Alonso quietly remarks, but the little shota is still struggling to walk, so I commend his courage.

We've fooled around enough, and when the sun starts to set, we return to the embassy.

We take the Hyperloop, and we notice three long columns of smoke coming from the west side of the city. After a quick inquiry, the attendants tell us that the Punishers are combing through the city, and the west side is where the lower class lives, so the Wicked tend to hide over there since there are fewer guards around.

Through the window, we see that the streets are also tense, with few people out and constant patrols of plated men. Anyone who encounters the patrols is stopped and inspected with [Detect Evil] before being let go. The spell doesn't do anything to a person, but it's understandable that almost everyone is at least a bit scared of the Punishers.

This is all because of us…

While we had perverted orgies, people fought and died because of us. I'm not going to be pretentious and self-flagellate over this. It's just that it makes me feel a bit weird having fun during a crisis.

And when we reach the embassy, Caterina is waiting for us at the entrance, looking stern and professional, though she isn't wearing any armor, allowing us to see her well-built body in the standard elven not-bikini.

"Ryders, Verners, Itos," she politely greet the three families.

"Hello there, Caterina," Hana casually greets back, then pulls her into a hug. The milfy Templar tenses up awkwardly, but she eventually gives Hana's back a gentle pat.

With her teasing done, Hana lets Caterina go and stays quiet so that the Punisher can tell us what she needs.

"With your permission, I wish to cast [Detect Evil] on you and every one of your subordinates, including those in Escanso," she promptly requests.

She doesn't need our permission, but it pleases us that she's asking for it anyway.

And Yunia answers with a nod, "You have it as long as you bring any Wicked you find to us before you execute them."

"Very well," Caterina accepts, then starts chanting [Detect Evil].

This spell makes her hand glow, and when she touches us with it, we feel a weird sensation, as if we're being licked inside our bodies, and then she receives information depending on what kind of being we are. Wicked, monster, undead, and humanoid are the four different results for this spell, but we're reminded that there's now a fifth category, "tamable monster," which is what she gets when she touches Aoi.

"An odd sensation, as if there's a 'void,'" Caterina remarks as she pulls her hand back from Aoi's body.

"She's Godless, at least for now," Ciel quietly replies.

"Hm… makes sense," the Punisher hums back.

The humanoid system still hasn't finished integrating into Aoi's soul, so it's understandable that the spell would give mixed results.

Then it's time for the Verners, but Léonne doesn't seem to care about being checked for Wickedness, so neither do the other three. Kyora's harem is inspected next, and they frown annoyedly at Caterina's thoroughness. And finally, it's time for the Companions, the adventurers, and Klein, each tensing up as the glowing hand approaches their bodies, and they all worriedly glance at us, but our reassuring looks seem to soothe them.

"I'll inspect the servants now," Caterina finally declares, then leaves after we nod.

We have a very quiet and short bath as we're too tired for anything. Then we eat a very nutritious meal to replace all those calories we expended and drink a lot of water to replenish the "moisture" we lost.

For the evening, we actually work a bit. The purge is also going on in Escanso, so we reassure everyone over there that it's fine.

We also do some studying, but then our brains start to melt, so we go to sleep earlier than usual.

A note from Manasong

Hall of Fame of Patrons

The patrons who support Rupegia shall have their names sung by the bards for they deserve the glory and honor. Their names are:

Prince PreownedFIN.

Prince Owldente.

Lord Andrew Meyers.

Lord Novgarod.

Lord Michale Erwin.

Lord Bakerdea.

Lord Maurice.

Lord Mattirro Draca.

Lord Mike Bartter.

Lord Warwulfv.

Lord Tenebris Lupus.

Lord Paul Daval.

Lord Paul Daval.

Lord Tmac.

Lord CopeyDunt.

Lord BlindTactic.

Lord litalmexy.

Lord Philip.

Lord d3235.

Lord William Clark.

Lord Ddraig Wynn.

Lord CardinalSteiner.

Lord Cidant.

Lord SubJef.

Lord GalacticTNT.

Lord SquiddlyWinks.

Lord Max Goodwin.

Lord Freddie.

Lord Placid.

Noble Salty Panda.

Noble Mild Fracas.

Noble Aclys.

Noble Carl  Baxter.

Noble Tony Starrk.

Noble DND.

Noble Asaadullah Lassiter.

Leave a rating or a review to help me rise to the top or fix my shameful understanding of prose.

Take a look over my blog where all information about the world of Rupegia will be posted.

Join the Discord and discuss, or rant, or meme, or try and fight me so your waifu gets more screentime.

Become a Patron and read chapters in advance, or read the side-stories, or leave your mark on the story, or help choose the next artwork or the next side-story.

Chapter 151: Last Business - Part 1

A note from Manasong

Attention: to conform to the limit of mature content (more than just sexual content) allowed in a novel, I've censored this chapter. You can look for the uncensored version here.

Today is the 17th, Fis, day of Nature. Gify wakes up early to go play with the other nature spirits. I guess the little mischievous plushies have more energy today, and just like children, they can't stop themselves from using it to have fun.

Yunia's pink skin has now become mildly tanned. Lighter than Hana's, but still enough to leave her with bikini marks.

"It'll only last for a day," she preemptively answers my question.

"Then I'd better enjoy your body thoroughly while it lasts," I huskily reply, and the other girls instinctively agree.

Apparently, elven skin is quite sensitive to tanning as she's the only one that got tan marks. Even Roxanne, the one who's unnaturally pale, doesn't have a single hint of a tan, but her demon race actually makes her more resistant to it.

But back to the alluring tanned elven Queen opening for me. We all quickly groom ourselves and re-make her drills, and then we do her together, abusing her so much that it feels like a mild Ravaging for her, but not enough to make her go unconscious.

Bikini marks are really alluring, for some reason. I don't really understand the desire, but then again, I enjoy feet, so desires don't have to make sense. Maybe it's because they emphasize her feminine parts, like a highlighter, but the girls don't find that description alluring, so I drop it.

And then we give her some aftercare once we've had our fill of her, but this time, I make liberal use of my [Massage] on her sensitive ears. Then I detect that Alissa is a bit envious, so I also give her some of my heavenly touch, and the effect is almost instantaneous as Alissa quickly becomes drowsy.

I'm the Kemono Charmer that the prophecy foretold, and so I shall make use of my talents.

Then I turn to the other girls. They may not have such obvious weak spots as Alissa, Yunia, and Roxanne, but they still exist.

"Be quick. We have business this morning," Yunia reminds us, so I stop once they, too, have become drowsy.

For breakfast, our guests are Gify's newest friends: a little flying orca, a chibi octopus, and a duckie.

"Water-themed?" I whisper reflexively.

"Gih," she replies with a nod. The fishies we played with yesterday spread the word that we're cool people, so some nature spirits that live in Central Lake are paying us a visit.

"Nice. Feel free to hang around with us anytime," I smoothly reply.

"Yiieh~…" the orca squeaks matter-of-factly.

*Blosh* the octopus makes a weird, soft, fleshy sound.

"Quack!" the duckie quacks happily.

Alissa, Klein, and the Verners just stare quietly in awe and a little envy. Wereanimals have a lot of respect for nature spirits, but even they rarely interact with the little buggers. Though, I'm only famous among the spirits because I'm "interesting," and sometimes I even feel like I'm just a freak show to them.

"Giih~… hihi…"

Hmph…!

And now, the time has finally come for the soldiers to return to their homes.

All eighty Sworn Hunters gather at the front garden of the embassy. The experienced men and women wear varied but well-made armor and weapons, looking more like a collection of rugged and wealthy adventurers than a standardized army, but they still manage to look professional.

Our knights meet with the Hunters, and everyone says goodbye to their fellow comrades in battle. They only fought together for a short time, but there's nothing like two victorious battles to light a kindred feeling within soldiers.

A number of them come to us to give their respects, and (not an actual) uncle Montague soon approaches. When she sees him, Alissa runs to give the big man a big hug.

And the white mountain has a few words for his (not an actual) niece, "You've grown so much, girl, that now you're the one at the front, charging into battle head-first while we follow."

But Alissa isn't a snob, so she happily replies, "Not by myself. I still need some big and wide backs to cover for me, but I can handle a dozen men with my spells."

"Hmm…?" he hums suggestively with a raised eyebrow.

And she pouts as she playfully hits his thick arm, then proudly states, "Wolfy is worth many dozens of men. That's why he has such a big harem."

I just can't hold back a grin whenever Alissa praises me, and Montague's softens as he glances at both of us. "My, the love you two have makes me envious."

"What? Louise is a very loving woman too," Alissa concernedly replies.

"Hahaha… hah…" he laughs rather awkwardly.

And the fox grins like a fox. "I'll tell her you're making fun of her."

"Please don't…" he mumbles back fearfully.

But Alissa isn't cruel enough to tease him further, so she lets him go, and then he shares a bone-crushing handshake with Palo.

"One day, I'll get stronger than you, and then we'll have a rematch," the golden elven mass of muscles confidently states.

"Sure, and I'll be an old man by then," the white foxy mass of muscles confidently replies.

After a short talk, the Sworn Hunters shift into their fox forms and leave the embassy to return to the Misty Low Forest.

Then Yunia decides to have a small intermission before the next set of goodbyes.

She finds Harriet and Stanley, the two former thieves we captured, working as laborers and carrying boxes into the Floater.

"You, thieves, stop where you are," her Lordsguard guide orders them sternly.

The catgirl and the dog boy tense up reflexively and immediately put the boxes down. Then they turn towards the source and freeze in panic as they notice Yunia approaching them.

Are they being abused? We haven't given explicit orders for them to be treated "normally," and our Lordsguard is still mostly fresh, so they could still have an unsavory mindset towards our captives.

I tell Sandoro to look into it for us.

"Y-Your Highness!" Harriet exclaims and kneels, then pulls down Stanley, who's too stunned by Yunia's beauty and his fear of her to move on his own.

"Stand, and be at ease," Yunia immediately replies, but "to relax" in front of her is easier said than done.

They do stand after a moment of building up the courage, but then they become awkward as they don't know what to do or where to look since Yunia always wears very little.

So the elven Queen promptly continues, "I'm here to ask you about how we could get in contact with the Thieves Guild."

Harriet immediately becomes serious as she replies, "The Guild is merely a loose collection of mercenary companies that offer services in thievery. The companies may work together through a council, but take one out, and they'll all disappear."

"I won't start a war. I merely wish to form a connection," Yunia reassuringly replies.

And Harriet relaxes. "Oh, that's… alright. They won't like it that you've taken us instead of sending us to the Enforcers, though."

Yunia snorts snobbishly. "They can suck Wolfy's Sword for all that I care." But they don't seem to understand the idiom at first, so she adds, "Anyone can suck His Highness Wolfy's Sword, as long as you're at least mildly attractive to him."

"Oh… one of those open marriages the nobles like to do," Stanley whispers to Harriet, and the olive-skinned catgirl flushes in embarrassment.

"W-well, they'd never attack a noble, but they'll likely be unfriendly," she hastily continues.

"That is fine," Yunia soberly replies.

She won't meet with them now, so we gather up in the air docks in front of the ramp to the Floater as the Lordsguard and the crew orderly board it. Then we say our farewells to the knights and the High Officers, who are orderly waiting in formation.

"You've all performed excellently for this event," Yunia graciously declares.

"There wasn't any failure on your part. You've all succeeded in your duty," I smoothly follow up.

But Sandoro gives them a slice of the truth, "Yet we could barely help you against Reinhold. Let this be a lesson that to stand beside the Ryders, you must never stop growing."

And Ciel solemnly adds, "The Punishers are still performing a Purge across the Empire, all in our name, but this won't be the end of the heretics."

That's very true. The threats to our family are only increasing, and our men must understand that the duty they've been sworn to is only beginning. I wish we could depart with happier words, but it's a terrible thing to lie to the soldiers you're relying on for protection.

Everyone seems stern and determined, their morale far from being low but also not so high as to make them arrogant. The only exceptions are Silvano and Brett. The former joined specifically because serving us would be "exciting," and the latter joined because he deemed us "honorable," so a development like this falls exactly in the "best-case scenario" for both of them.

Then Almaria gives us a sympathetic smile and gently states, "We'll see you in a few days, Your Highnesses."

Yunia smiles back and nods, then announces, "You're dismissed. Safe travels."

The Officers and knights leave, but before everyone has finished boarding, there's one last surprise, though it isn't really that surprising. Lolo and Nikolas are joining the Lordsguard, and Sandoro has a few words with them before they board.

I approach the big black wolf and skeptically ask, "Lolo was expected, but you?"

He simply shrugs and answers earnestly, "You're the only Lord who you can stab and still live to tell the tale. You don't pass up an opportunity like this."

"You better say it now, for insolent comments like what you plan to say won't be allowed once you've been sworn in," Sandoro begrudgingly states. It amuses me that he's accepted our casual approach to things as long as it isn't related to his job: the Lordsguard and our protection.

Nikolas glances at Sandoro, unsure if he should take the old man's words at face value, but then he just internally says "screw it" and confesses another complaint, "You stole Lolo, so you'd better take care of her."

"That's a given," I calmly reply with a nod.

"Excuse me?" the bunny girl sternly asks as she glares at both of us.

"You're going to be bodyguards, but I won't treat you as disposable. Everyone is precious to me," I explain. But that wasn't the right answer as she seems to become even more annoyed.

"It'll be our job to take care of you, and I've always been pretty independent, so I don't need someone else to take care of me," she angrily retorts.

But I'm feeling cheeky. "Hmm..?" I suggestively hum back.

"He'll 'take care' of you, alright. We all will," Roxanne piles on and smirks suggestively, making Lolo's pale skin flush in a mix of embarrassment, arousal, and annoyance.

Then Sandoro stiffly interjects, a bit uncomfortable with the suggestive conversation, "The Lordsguard's purpose is to protect the Lord with their lives. I understand the sentiment of not treating them as 'disposable,' but in a life or death situation, that is their purpose, to die fighting to save their Lord."

And Ciel gives him a hand by once again solemnly reminding us of our situation, "And we're the kind of Lords that have a heretical conspiracy working against us, which has caused the Punishers to call for an Empire-wide Purge in our name."

Nikolas frowns and looks away, then awkwardly massages his neck as he humbly confesses, "These things are too big for us. All I cared about was that Lolo would have a happy life, but I've realized that my definition of happy is different from hers. So, I started thinking about what I want for myself, and now I believe that I'll live a good life if I follow you, whether I die young or not."

Lolo narrows her eyes at him and also confesses her motives, "But I have a higher 'Intelligence' and 'Wisdom,' so I understand the meaning of being a Lordsguard, and that's what I want!" she exclaims assuredly but immediately becomes embarrassed. "Well… I actually want to be a Companion, so…" and she trails off.

Sandoro doesn't want her to have any doubts, so he impassively explains again, "A Companion's duty is to serve and protect the Lord at all times… Though a good number have taken the 'serve' part a bit further than usual." Then he stares at her, and she now becomes even more flustered, but he presses her for only a moment before continuing, "Anyway, the Companions are chosen for their loyalty rather than skills or levels, but the expectation that they'll sacrifice themselves for their Lord is even higher."

"I'm ready for this," the bunny girl confidently replies, her fist clenched over her heart.

"I'm not…" I blurt out with a frown, surprising myself.

And Sandoro doesn't give me time to think as he soberly addresses me, "You're getting too attached to your soldiers, Your Highness, but as long as you don't interfere in their training or forbid them from performing their duty, then there is no issue."

I know this, but… I'm possessive and protective. I've managed to control these feelings, but I can't make them disappear…

"And that's why I said that you'll take care of her," Nikolas continues, earning himself another glare from Lolo. So he raises his hands defensively and adds, "Look, I had fallen for you, but you're now his woman, so I'm moving on."

"It helps that the Lordsguard get a lot of free 'flower,'" Hana teasingly remarks.

"'Flower' is the best medicine for a broken heart," Ciel adds matter-of-factly, and we give her a surprised look, embarrassing her a bit. "Laying is a big part of love, and once your thirst for affection is quenched, it makes it easier to let the wound in your heart close. A healthy body heals the fastest, after all."

And we, even Lolo, turn our eyes to Nikolas, but the big black wolf doesn't want to confirm or deny it as he honestly answers the bunny girl, "It hurt, yeah, but I'm pious enough to understand that you meeting Lord Wolf might not have been just a coincidence."

Well, now I feel bad again for NTRing him.

Lolo pouts cutely but lets it go, and we pull back on teasing him. One thing we can't make fun of is his piety.

We remain silent for a brief moment as we let it sink in, but then Sandoro adds on again, "It's not my job to question your reasons, so I'm only concerned with your understanding of the duty you're going to swear to perform, and I deem you both ready for the vows."

The dignified old man's approval immediately cheers them up, and they reflexively salute with a nod. And now our Lordsguard becomes even stronger as it gains two experienced adventurers, but first, they have to complete their training, so they'll return to Escanso with everyone else.

"See you soon," I whisper seductively to Lolo, then pull in her face with my claws for a quick kiss.

But she isn't left stunned, already getting used to my draconic virility, and warmly replies, "I'll be waiting, Your Highness. Actually, we will be waiting."

Oh yeah, I have an army of women to plow when I get back, don't I?

The adventuring trio also comes to give their goodbyes and congratulations, along with more teasing. Then the Floater finally takes off.

The embassy has become a lot quieter now that there aren't large groups of soldiers training every morning. The silence is nice, but the fact that they were our men made it quite calming to hear them.

Our orb-boosted mana circulation training progresses as usual, and I focus on the baby golem army as I train.

I attempt to put "intent" into it when I use [Infuse], but the spell doesn't really support it. Roxanne's [Explosion] has its technical aspect of the steam explosion itself, but a good part of the spell is her own feelings of anger, which power it up.

Perhaps she "de-stresses" when she uses the spell, and that's the reason why she has such a cheerful and carefree personality while her cool side rarely appears.

"Hey, that's a nice theory," the "crazy bitch" in question hums in my mind.

But [Infuse] directly modifies the golem's brain, so it isn't a spell that I can simply add my "intent" to, and *poof*, the brain that I want magically appears.

Or is it…?

"Let the skill guide you," Hana advises me out loud. She's also trying to put some "intent" into [Draconic Body], so I guess she's in a similar situation.

We need to learn the physics of the world before we can cast spells, but we don't calculate the joules of a [Fireball] when we want to cast it, so directly modifying the brain might actually be an excessive amount of effort.

The brain is, after all, a MASSIVE network of very simple things, the neurons. It's a black box full of indecipherable electrical impulses, yet [Bind] allows me to read the girls' thoughts and even control their bodies.

Screw the details. I'll let the [Golemancy] skill guide me.

I cast [Infuse], and it puts me in the "brain molding" immersive interface.

I want… a golem who doesn't have my memories.

But nothing happens, so I wish really hard… and nothing happens. Then I take a different approach and let myself relax… but again, nothing happens, so I start altering things at random while relaxing in the hopes that the skill will guide me subconsciously.

Once my MP starts to get low, I finish the spell and touch the redheaded cloth doll. The girls get so curious that they even stop their training to observe the results, and we crowd behind the reinforced and enchanted safety glass.

"Hello," I greet the little thing.

"Hello," it quietly replies.

"Do you have my memories?" I begin the interrogation.

"Memories…?" it repeats softly, sounding confused.

Oh…?!

"Do you remember what I did yesterday?" I eagerly continue.

"You? No…" -Ohh~!- "But I did it on a boat."

Oh…

"Another failure…" I mumble dispiritedly, and Alissa gives me a comforting hug from behind, so I use my thick tail to pull her closer, then I wrap mine around hers.

"Master, this one is odd. It believes its inherited memories aren't yours," Ted begins.

"And its tone has many subtle changes," Suzy continues.

"Displaying a range of emotions that we don't possess," Jarn finishes.

"Then test it out," I order.

The golems perform a variety of tests, such as body control, magic control, the accuracy and extent of memories it possesses, and emotional and logical intelligence. And the results are…

That this golem is kind of dumb.

And Roxanne breaks into a fit of laughter, "Hahahahah… the newest creation of the peerless 'Golemancer' scholar is… a dumb golem!" Then she folds over laughing.

I don't find it that funny, but I'm happy that she's happy. My pride is just too hard to be pierced by her jabs.

"This golem's existence is pathetic, Master," Ted coldly states.

"May I destroy it?" Jarn promptly offers and creates a ball of fire at the tip of her metallic index finger.

Their behavior strikes us as odd, and even Roxanne's amusement is dampened a bit.

"Apologies, Master. We simply don't believe this golem is worthy of serving you," Suzy politely, but still rather coldly, declares.

I inspect their emotions through [Bind] and notice small differences between them. Ted appears disgusted, Suzy feels indifferent, and Jarn seems determined.

Huh…

"I'm not worthy…?" the dumb golem quietly asks, sounding worried and sad.

"Do it!" I suddenly shout, and the girls watch in horror as the little doll burns to death.

"W-Wolfy! Why?!" Ciel exclaims and looks at me fearfully.

"It had to go before we were too weak to get rid of it…" I grimly reply.

"Research must be unemotional," Ted states.

"Not everyone is ready for it," Suzy adds.

"Leave the unsavory parts to us," Jarn finishes.

Then I shudder.

The golems can also be quite frightening and cold, but it's a necessary behavior. They're my servant race, and they won't be perfected if we let cuteness supersede usefulness.

A note from Manasong

Hall of Fame of Patrons

The patrons who support Rupegia shall have their names sung by the bards for they deserve the glory and honor. Their names are:

Prince PreownedFIN.

Prince Owldente.

Lord Andrew Meyers.

Lord Novgarod.

Lord Michale Erwin.

Lord Bakerdea.

Lord Maurice.

Lord Mattirro Draca.

Lord Mike Bartter.

Lord Warwulfv.

Lord Tenebris Lupus.

Lord Paul Daval.

Lord Paul Daval.

Lord Tmac.

Lord CopeyDunt.

Lord BlindTactic.

Lord litalmexy.

Lord Philip.

Lord d3235.

Lord William Clark.

Lord Ddraig Wynn.

Lord CardinalSteiner.

Lord Cidant.

Lord SubJef.

Lord GalacticTNT.

Lord SquiddlyWinks.

Lord Max Goodwin.

Lord Freddie.

Lord Placid.

Noble Salty Panda.

Noble Mild Fracas.

Noble Aclys.

Noble Carl  Baxter.

Noble Tony Starrk.

Noble DND.

Noble Asaadullah Lassiter.

Leave a rating or a review to help me rise to the top or fix my shameful understanding of prose.

Take a look over my blog where all information about the world of Rupegia will be posted.

Join the Discord and discuss, or rant, or meme, or try and fight me so your waifu gets more screentime.

Become a Patron and read chapters in advance, or read the side-stories, or leave your mark on the story, or help choose the next artwork or the next side-story.

Chapter 151: Last Business - Part 2

Since today is harvest day across the entire world, we have a veggie-heavy lunch. There's a not-spinach frittata that's to die for, and even Aoi likes it, probably because of the eggs. My favorite part of the meal is the crunchy bean pods, but the vegetarian fajitas come in at a close second.

Allura is the most hesitant about eating this exotic food, and she prefers the more meaty dishes or the ones with flour, like pies, but she still eats at least a serving of most of what's available, probably to be polite.

"Now that I think about it, don't you Verners have your own embassy?" I suddenly ask them.

"Of course, we do, but it isn't as big as this one or as comfortable," Léonne answers matter-of-factly.

"And it'd be harder to spend time with you," Allura blurts out, then flushes embarrassedly at her own answer.

"That, too," her mother agrees with a teasing smirk.

"Yeah, I'm fine with this," I hum back.

And fox mommy nods. "Of course, you are."

For the afternoon, we continue our combat training, but we don't immediately go heavy on it because we want to keep an eye on Yunia as she meets with the Thieves Guild.

We also tell the Verners what we're doing, and Léonne's response is…

"You could've just asked me for an introduction," she flippantly replies, sounding mildly offended. "We keep them on a tight leash around the Misty Low Forest, so I know the Council by name."

"I-I'm sorry, mother, we're not used to sharing information and asking for help," Alissa reflexively apologizes, surprising me with how averse she is to disappointing her mother. But then again, it shouldn't be surprising considering how far Alissa went as a Blood Slave to make her family proud.

And Roxanne immediately goes for some banter to lighten the mood, "Someone was simply too eager to extract information from our captives and then meet with a shady organization. It's almost like scheming is in her blood."

Yunia doesn't reply or even acknowledge the taunt, but her internal feelings say she's very annoyed… and a bit embarrassed.

Léonne seems to understand (and possibly even relate to Yunia) as the fox matriarch quickly calms down and starts to deliberate, "Individual meetings also have their advantages since the Council puts on masks whenever they meet, so I guess this shouldn't hurt."

And we simply nod along sheepishly in respect of our senpai from the Rupegian school of scheming.

Anyway, Yunia dons a shabby cloak to hide her stunningly beautiful elven features, and then she, Romy, Aneta, and Kyora take a [Gate] to an alley in the undercity.

Romy peeks out of the alley and remarks as she looks around, "Don't let anyone get close, Your Highness. I've seen thieves steal gems from armor after a mere bump."

Kyora grunts in agreement and adds, "They have a sneaky spell that's like [Manipulate Metal], but it instantly melts the armor around the gem, and they swipe it before you even feel the heat."

"How daring," Aneta hums as she adjusts Yunia's hood to make sure her face is well covered.

"We are in a shortage of enchanting gems, after all," Yunia remarks, wishing that Aneta wasn't wearing gauntlets so that she could kiss the hands of her diligent protector.

"Not for much longer, hopefully," the loyal silver elf brightly adds with a smile, then lowers the visor of her helmet and pulls up her hood.

"Hm," Yunia hums in agreement, and the other two bodyguards mirror Aneta.

The undercity/underside is the city under the surface, dug mostly by dwarves, but it still has a strong imperial flair. The area they're in is in the lower-class section, so it's a chaotic mess of roads, streets, and alleys that surround large apartment-like buildings that rise up to the ceiling.

It's kind of like Goloria in its design, but bad. At least the elven capital of the Eastern High Forest has maps and identifiable landmarks, but this part of Mac Gantus' underside has neither, and any long-range view is blocked by the tall buildings.

Luckily, the thieving duo we have captive know this place like the back of their hands, so they gave us clear instructions on how to reach the Prancing Little Ronti tavern.

Since it's a day of Fis, even the underside is filled with nature spirits, and a good number of the commoners that roam the streets are paying attention to the cute little plushies, but then the spirits start to stare at Yunia as she passes.

Gify suddenly pops out of existence, and a few seconds later, the spirits suddenly lose interest in the girls. Then my little griffin pops back onto my shoulder, looking quite proud of herself.

"Thanks," I hum and caress her back, right between her wings.

"Gih~…" she chirps back, her wings twitching in sync with my movements.

The underside doesn't look particularly dangerous… as long as you don't attract attention, like by being an obviously wealthy noble wearing incalculably expensive and heavily-enchanted armor, but we also can't have Yunia wear nothing, and that's why she needs to wear a cloak over her Bastión armor. Even going without a helmet is already risky since it leaves a very obvious weakness open for assassins to attack, but with [Precognition] and Kyora's presence, this much risk is acceptable.

The streets they walk along are fairly well illuminated, but the alleys aren't, though at least everything is very clean. The people aren't dirty either, as expected of most towns in the empire, and even though it's underground, the air feels fresh, so despite this area not being high-class, it isn't impoverished.

The Prancing Little Ronti tavern is a bit out of the way, though, and it has a rougher, adventurer-like crowd in spite of its name. The tavern is made out of cobble and decorated with dark wooden furniture, giving it a very rustic look, but the air is thick with the smell and smoke of cigars.

Sending four women might not have been the best choice as the overwhelmingly male patrons immediately notice the presence of female prey. Even with them hidden under a full set of plate armor, some men just have a radar for hot women.

Romy and Aneta immediately pull back their hoods, showing that they're fully armored, then open their cloaks to display the swords at their waists. They're wearing standard steel equipment, not the eye-catching elven wood stuff, but it's enough to stop most of the lecherous gazes. Then Kyora takes off her helmet, and her face and size convince the rest to mind their own businesses.

The four sit down and flag the imperial mommy waitress, who's smoking a type of cigarette. I wish I went with them because she's kind of hot and her experienced air makes me think it'd be nice to flirt with her.

"Harriet recommended this place to us. She said for us to take a private room and a bottle of Red Pilfer," Romy immediately requests.

The waitress remains silent for a couple of seconds as she puffs her cigarette, staring intently at Yunia's cloaked face, then hums back, "Follow me."

This is so corny that I'm almost cringing, but it also seems kind of fun to act shady.

She takes them to the third floor of the tavern, which is merely a set of corridors that lead to many rooms. Then she stops in front of a nondescript door and knocks.

"Poiopo, visitors from Harriet," she dryly announces.

"Let them in," a male voice immediately grunts back.

The waitress nods at our group and then simply walks away.

Romy shrugs as everyone looks at each other, and Yunia silently nods, so the Asian woman promptly opens the door. On the other side, they see a stuffy, carpeted office, also thick with the smell of cigars and smoke, where a scrawny imperial wererabbit man is working at his desk, and behind him, three fully armored dragonkin muscle-brains stand guard.

"Harriet, huh? I assume you're the Ryders?" Poiopo asks in an aloof tone with his long cinnamon ears flopped onto his shoulders and his dark eyes trained on them.

Our group enters the office, which would be quite the comfy place if not for the smell, and Yunia pulls down her cloak. "Yes, we are."

"Gods. Even your gait is that of a pisser," he grunts with a sigh and starts turning over the many sheets of paper, parchment, papyrus, and other unknown materials that cover his dark wood desk so that we can't read them.

"Excuse us?" Aneta sternly asks.

He glances at the ornate bottle of alcohol and the shot glass by the papers but decides it isn't necessary for now. "Your steps are too confident for an adventurer. Even with your hood, I could see that your chin is too perfect for a commoner, and you lack the perfume to be a concubine, so you could only be a Lord. But your cloak is shit; work harder next time."

Yunia calmly strides toward one of the cushioned chairs and gracefully sits down. Then she narrows her blue gems at him and harshly replies, "I won't."

He sighs as he takes a cigar from a drawer and lights it up. "Suit yourself. Just makes it a pain to work with you, and the harder a job is, the more we charge." Then he touches the tip of his cigar to a gem embedded in his desk, lightning it up, and takes a drag.

"That's acceptable," she gently states, holding back on the elven smugness… for now.

He annoyedly stares at her for a couple of seconds and takes another drag before continuing, "So, what do you want?"

And she answers without skipping a beat, "The Graet Union of Enchanters has hired your services to steal one of our golems. We want to pay you to drop your contract with them."

"Return Harriet and Stanley first," he grunts annoyedly as he puts his cigar down on its tray.

"No," the elven Queen dryly states, her tone so poised that Poiopo immediately drops it.

"Then it'll be one hundred rose coins per month," the small rabbitman strikes back.

And Yunia narrows her eyes in displeasure. "Too expensive for the low quality of thieves you sent our way."

"[Gate] Masters are hard to come by in this line of business," he replies matter-of-factly.

"You can't seriously be suggesting that they're as expensive as one hundred Blood Slaves," she retorts with venom on her tongue.

But he becomes smug and shows an insolent smile. "We also miscalculated the danger of this deal, so we had to readjust the price."

Did he just give away that the Union is still hiring them to go after us?

"I'd be surprised if they weren't," Yunia remarks through [Bind], then snorts and dismissively replies to Poiopo, "Not only is that an outrageous amount, but I'm also competing with a merchant company, which will have an easy time out-paying us."

His smugness vanishes, replaced by irritation. "Why did you ask, then?"

And she finally unleashes her smugness as he has fallen for her trap. "I wanted to know if you're the kind who betrays your clients."

His floppy cinnamon ears press against his head as he grumbles through gritted teeth, "You-…"

But she interrupts him with a clear threat, "The Union's monetary power may be greater than ours, but we have other means to ensure that no other attempt is made on our golems." And her blue pair of jewels stare unwaveringly at the small, low-level bureaucrat.

The air quickly tenses up as the seconds pass, then Poiopo answers diplomatically after a short moment, "They could just hire other companies. The Guild is large."

"And we'll include anyone who supports them in our war," she delivers the follow-up with a chilling tone.

The dragonkin guards shift on their feet and put their hands over their swords, but Poiopo immediately raises his hand for them to stop, and they immediately relax. Then the little cinnamon rabbit remains silent as he considers his next words very carefully.

"A war with us will be costly," he quietly replies, his hand hovering anxiously over his cigar.

And now's the time for Yunia to drive it home, "You don't operate in the High Forest while we can use the Imperial [Gate] Network to cheaply and instantly send assassins anywhere. But also, let me remind you that we murdered a Decien and a Gifted and came out with minimal punishment."

He grabs the cigar. "It's known that your relationship with the Emperor is in a delicate situation."

"The Emperor doesn't care if some Thornian merchants die," she smugly replies.

Then he goes silent again as he takes another drag, then seems to calm down, resigning himself to his Fate. "I believe the cost of our services will soon become too expensive for the Union," he tiredly declares.

So Yunia pulls back on the intimidation and calmly states, "We'd be willing to pay for any information you have on them."

And he raises his eyebrows and floppy ears bemusedly, in disbelief of her audacity.

"We're thieves, not spies," he grumbles back with a snort.

"Information can also be stolen."

The bureaucrat sighs softly and states, "That would be a deal that I can't make by myself. I'll have to confer with the boss."

"But I already know that you're willing to betray your clients, so I expect a positive answer," she snobbishly replies.

His jaw tenses up in anger, and he snaps back, "What makes you think we won't betray you?"

And she calmly explains, "In this deal, we can afford to be betrayed, but I wouldn't recommend you do it. Dragons can be very vengeful, and they don't forget."

"Betrayal is generally unprofitable," he quietly states, though we don't know which betrayal he's talking about.

"Generally," she dryly repeats.

He takes a deep drag of his cigar and loudly exhales a cloud of smoke. He seems to have been completely disarmed by Yunia, so he deflects again, "The profitability of this deal can only be decided by the boss and his advisers."

She nods and hums, "So be it. I'll wait for your answer."

Then he diplomatically cautions her, "I have to warn you that the Union can easily pay for many other companies to target you."

"But who would agree to do business with dead men?" she smugly replies.

And that draws a dark chuckle from him.

The meeting went… better than expected, really. The Thieves Guild isn't a warring faction like Katasko, so they're more responsive to military threats. But we aren't aiming to form a strong relationship with Poiopo. All we want is to see how much we can get out of them. We'll also contact other companies that are members of the Thieves Guild and buy information on the Union from them too so that we can compare the results. As long as the Guild doesn't unite in a big conspiracy to screw us over with bad info, which is unlikely, it might be a good way to learn more about our foe.

But now that the scheming is over, we focus on our training.

Hana's visit to the Knight Academy was very enlightening for my efforts toward creating a humanoidization skill, and now it's time to put that lesson into practice.

As I use [Mana Body] to hide my draconic features, I ponder upon the meaning of "becoming human." My first instinct is to think of how I was before I became a weredragon, but I don't want the skill to change my personality to how I was back then, so I need a different approach… or rather, I need to ensure that my personality doesn't change with the skill.

While [Dragon Transformation] completely changes my form, [Humanoidization] should change much, much less, so it doesn't need to be a complex skill. My draconic parts are also already magical, so [Mana Body] shouldn't be a requirement.

I meditate as I imagine my current self becoming human in body only, merely what I'd look like if I weren't a weredragon, but it can't be something new. It has to be what I already am. These hands that I make with [Mana Body] aren't truly my real human hands. They're something that I made.

Aoi didn't choose her human body, so I don't think I should choose mine, either. I just have to "bring it out." Unlike a dragonkin, which is a race on its own, a weredragon is a fusion of two races, so I should have a completely human body hidden within the "fused" one.

This is just me going wild with my theories, but it does make sense, and it feels like a good mindset to have as I try to create this racial skill. I do feel that my humanoidization with [Mana Body] is becoming easier the more I meditate, so I think I'm at least doing something right.

Alissa continues her training with [Dream Veil], and she's managed to create puffy iridescent clouds that stick to her face like a beard. And so, Rainbow Santa Alissa is born.

The curious thing about [Dream Veil] is that it's completely invisible on one side, so it's used as a perfect camouflage or disguise. We do also have a ghillie suit (that we stole from a Dawn of Fire spy) enchanted with a curious camouflaging spell, so I take it out for Alissa to study.

Roxanne actually manages to cast [Annihilation], making it appear in her "Magic" tab with the (weak) suffix, though it's just a cute little light, so it has no practical use as she lacks both enough levels in [Space Magic] and the "Magic Power" to use it properly. Even so, she focuses on adding the spell to her [Explosion] to see how much it can improve its firepower.

Hana continues to neglect her [Illusion Magic] training in favor of [Draconic Body] since the skill has more practical use than the magic school. She also meditates while practicing the skill like I am, but in her case, she imagines what it would be like to "evolve" and become a stronger version of herself.

Ciel plays around with [Redirect Mana], curious about how she could use the Chimeric high-capacity mana storage gems to boost spells to ridiculous levels. It works through the same principle as the gems of staves: similar mana has a positive feedback loop, boosting the power of spells. But there's a point at which the spell becomes unstable, and she wants to find the point where efficiency starts to drop.

Lina and Aoi spar with magic only. Lina wants to increase her [Earth Wall] speed while Aoi uses her as target practice for her water ball control. They destroy the training courtyard with their spells, turning it into a muddy wasteland, but that's what the training yard was made for, and the embassy employees will restore it after they're done.

Yunia practices [Spirit Magic] so that she can use it more reliably. Her [Soul Blade] is the ultimate dueling weapon, but it's expensive to use and takes a while to chant since she still doesn't have enough levels in it to instant-cast the spell, but she'll get there eventually.

A note from Manasong

Hall of Fame of Patrons

The patrons who support Rupegia shall have their names sung by the bards for they deserve the glory and honor. Their names are:

Prince PreownedFIN.

Prince Owldente.

Lord Andrew Meyers.

Lord Novgarod.

Lord Michale Erwin.

Lord Bakerdea.

Lord Maurice.

Lord Mattirro Draca.

Lord Mike Bartter.

Lord Warwulfv.

Lord Tenebris Lupus.

Lord Paul Daval.

Lord Paul Daval.

Lord Tmac.

Lord CopeyDunt.

Lord BlindTactic.

Lord litalmexy.

Lord Philip.

Lord d3235.

Lord William Clark.

Lord Ddraig Wynn.

Lord CardinalSteiner.

Lord Cidant.

Lord SubJef.

Lord GalacticTNT.

Lord SquiddlyWinks.

Lord Max Goodwin.

Lord Freddie.

Lord Placid.

Noble Salty Panda.

Noble Mild Fracas.

Noble Aclys.

Noble Carl  Baxter.

Noble Tony Starrk.

Noble DND.

Noble Asaadullah Lassiter.

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Chapter 151: Last Business - Part 3

A note from Manasong

Attention: to conform to the limit of mature content (more than just sexual content) allowed in a novel, I've censored this chapter. You can look for the uncensored version here.

It's time for the scheduled break. Normal upload schedule will resume on the next 13th.

I miss my lap loli…

She's still sparring with Aoi down in the courtyard, and I merely watch them as I relax my mind with coffee and chocolate. Then I look forward and see Ciel approaching me, each step making her bountiful assets subtly jiggle.

Her smile parts her juicy lips alluringly, but then I read her intentions, and I have to stop myself from saying something that would ruin everything.

"What…?" she hums confusedly and stops.

"Nothing, come here," I immediately reply and extend my arms towards her.

The Latina angel chuckles softly as she coyly readjusts her silky black hair behind her ear, then approaches me and promptly sits on my lap.

"Hngh…hehe…" I grunt in effort, but then I mask it with a lecherous chuckle as I immediately pull down the straps of her flowery dress and let her mountains of love spill forth.

She's a divine woman with divine assets.

"Just that?" she repeats with an alluring tone.

"Divine face, divine voice, divine body, divine personality, divine everything," I heatedly reply, kissing her bare back after each pair of words.

Then I squeeze her and feel catharsis spread all throughout my body, except my Tool, which begs to plow this naughty angel.

"Ahn~…" she coos softly, her voice sounding like music to my ears.

If it were up to me, I'd have taken it out and already be halfway into pounding her towards heaven, but I let her take charge because I detect a messy ball of feelings at the back of her mind.

So simply I [Massage] her in silence, slowly working on increasing her desire while also lifting some of the weight on her shoulders, in both meanings of the phrase.

"The heretics scare me," she finally confesses one of the things that trouble her mind.

"A lot of things scare you," I wryly reply.

She pouts, but agrees, "True, but this is one that I haven't been able to get over."

"You will, with time," I kindly soothe her and give her back another kiss.

And she answers with a stunningly beautiful smile; it's pure, like her heart. But it only lasts a brief moment before her realist side comes back. "Except I haven't stopped fearing them ever since the attack on the Innocent Nymph."

That wound still hasn't healed for either of us, and the mention of the Nymph makes me gloomy, but I use her body to comfort myself, drawing a chuckle out of her.

"Do you want my tentacles to comfort you?" I offer back since her alluring body is helping me so much.

She closes her eyes as she savors my touch and softly replies, "No, I had enough yesterday, but thank you, my husband."

And that last word makes me beam with a smile.

"My wife," I whisper, grinning ear to ear.

And she mirrors my expression. "My husband."

"My wife," I repeat, and her hair starts to stand on end from excitement.

"My husband," she continues, and my thick tail stiffens from excitement.

"My wife."

"My-" -I pinch her- "ahn~…! Wolfy!" she complains with a pout.

"It's your fault; you overstimulated me," I cheekily whisper in her ear.

"Hmph…" she grunts, but she still relaxes her body against mine.

And so we fall silent again as her desire continues to build.

Her calm breathing becomes heavier, and I feel her warm up as it presses against me. We're both wearing very thin and delicate clothes, which allows us to easily feel each other through the fabric.

"It's just silly fears…" my lovely wife mumbles shyly.

"But it isn't the only thing bothering you," I give her a small push.

And her gentle face tenses up in frustration. "The Emperor's attitude regarding Reinhold is very… frustrating." Then she assumes a mocking, nasally tone, "'I dOn'T cArE tHaT a pOwErFuL GiFtEd iS a pOwEr-HuNgRy, RePuGnAnT, Oathbreaker. YoU HuRt ThE EmPiRe, sO I hUrT yOu.'"

I laugh at both my memeing genius and her mockery. It's uncharacteristic of her to try to make fun of someone, and she does it in such a silly way that it's endearing.

While I laugh, all she can do is remain awkwardly silent, but I quickly get it under control to not embarrass her further and soberly add, "And he went easy on me. He threatened to kill one of you."

She nods repeatedly, then groans in frustration, "It's just… UGH! I understand that he can't be idealistic like the temple, but Reinhold was an Oathbreaker!"

"I didn't kill him just because he was an Oathbreaker," I quietly admit. I killed him because I was desperate.

"But-…!" she begins but immediately stops herself, then grabs the arms of our chair and angrily grinds her hips.

"I guess it's complicated," I hum with a smirk and intensify my massage.

"It is…" she whispers with a frown but doesn't stop moving.

Suddenly, she pulls down the rest of her clothes, baring her whole body, so I immediately follow up.

Her desire makes her more talkative as she begins to spill her heart out, "I worshiped him. He's a direct descendant of the God of the Sun, so I worshiped him… but seeing him act like that really disappointed me. That behavior isn't in accordance with the teachings of the Gods."

"Hopefully, the temple will remind him, like Timas said," I try to appease her.

But she only increases the intensity of her grinding. "That's exactly the issue. 'Hopefully,' but I don't like to leave something this important to 'hope,' I want to make sure he understands."

"Oh~…? How bold of you."

And she smiles proudly, a rarity for her but no less beautiful than any other expression of hers. "I may be a worshiper of Love, but it was Sun who Blessed me. I have to make my patron God proud."

My sadist side gets stimulated by her words, so I huskily tease her, "So you can stand up to the Emperor of the Holy Avgi Empire, but you become soft like a slime and melt in my arms the moment my Weapon touches you."

"Doesn't need to be it… just your hands are enough," she bashfully admits and grins.

She's said just the right words, so I give her a taste of my spirit touch, making her shudder with delight, but I want more.

"I want to hear you say it," I whisper assertively.

"Please, Wolfy, do me," the corrupted angel promptly obeys, but I don't begin just yet, making her beg desperately for it, "Do me with your thick Club, my husband."

And the desire to plow this cow takes over me. So, we make a mess, but Alissa happily cleans it all up with her tongue when we're done.

After having a Ravaging, we're raring for a bath, but this time, it feels a bit "off"…

"I shouldn't have let Klein go…" I whine dispiritedly.

"I think she'd complain if you had her stay," Alissa kindly points out.

But I just pout childishly. I want my monkey girl. I already miss dominating her and branding her with my draconic mark.

"More time for us…" Lina quietly remarks, and I feel a pang of guilt.

I didn't have my lap loli for this afternoon's meditation, so I pick her up and land on my lap. "We have to continue stretching your behind so that you can take all of me," I state matter-of-factly.

Her gloomy eyes open wide in fear and excitement. She likes the idea of it, but in practice, things are a bit more painful.

"It is a bit quieter without her," Edjo comments wistfully. I think my wereanimal girls all have a sort of camaraderie with each other.

"She is quite loud, yes," Hana jokes with a cheeky grin.

And the gray catgirl stiffens her jaw in annoyance at the shitty pun. "That's not what I meant, but yeah, I guess."

"What about the other Companions?" Khepri innocently asks. My pseudo-harem isn't here either this time.

"They have a duty to fulfill, so they can't be with us all the time," Alissa sagely answers.

"More for us, I guess," the sunny girl impishly remarks and turns her hungry eyes towards me.

"You barely last even half as long as the Lords do," Edjo points out.

Khepri simply shrugs as she wades through the steamy water and approaches us. "At least there's no queue before I can get some."

"You'll still have to wait because my little wife has priority this time," I apologetically reply and fondle Lina's little mounds.

The juicy girl stops in her tracks, then raises her eyebrows at the gloomy loli. "Okay. I actually want to see how this goes."

And Lina frowns at her, but my loli still gets up and spreads her small cheeks as she bends over at the edge of the bath.

The idea of spreading a tight woman as wide as possible simply sounds so sweet that the dragon wakes up, but I keep it on a tight leash to not hurt Lina… at least not too much.

For this evening, we just drink in the bedroom while chatting, with everyone spread around the room, though Lina is laying on her stomach as she basks in the anal afterglow while I give her aftercare. We have three Companions with us, so things get more lively, but we still miss Klein's and now even Lolo's presence.

"You know, that monkey is basically our commanding officer, so I feel a bit lost without her," Hukarere wistfully admits.

"You're the only one who has the audacity to call Dame Klein 'monkey,'" Aneta soberly replies.

But my white wolf just shrugs. "She calls me 'wolf' in private."

"What?" I hum reflexively.

"What?" she hums back.

"Sorry, I think I just misheard you," I apologize and allow her to continue.

"No need to apologize to this wolf, Your Highness," -and her wording makes me briefly confused again- "but anyway, Klein is a former adventurer, and you know she's uncomfortable with being called 'Dame.'"

"Still, you're the only one who does it. Maybe it's because you're favored by His Highness…?" Aneta suggests with a questioning look.

"That's…" she starts, but Hukarere can't find an excuse for her behavior, and her pointy white ears go flat in resignation. "Yeah, I guess you're right. I also call Kaatohe 'cat,' and I'm sure she'd claw someone's face off if anyone but me said it."

"Just the fact that Dame Klein can last longer in bed than any Companion should be enough to get her some respect," Romy wryly remarks.

"The other knights don't like her, though. They find her 'too crude,'" Aneta casually asserts.

I stop spreading scented oil into Lina's cheeks as anger momentarily takes hold of me. "Still? For Gods' sake. I want them to be receptive to her. She and her father won't just stop being knights after all this, even if they're bullied, so why are they so cold to her?"

"Elves," Roxanne hums with a shrug.

"Elves," Yunia agrees with a nod.

"Elves," Aneta embarrassedly accepts.

And Romy soberly shares, "I mean, the veteran officers still don't get along with the non-elves, though things have been slowly improving."

"If only all races could just get along," I grumble and lay down on the bed, my tail hanging limply off the edge.

Lina has recovered enough to quietly add, "Then the Age of Discord would never have happened, and it lasted about five thousand years."

"Screw me," I mumble in awe.

"Okay," Alissa and Roxanne immediately reply in unison, one with a foxy grin and the other with an intoxicating smirk, then they both promptly get ready for it.

"Do you ever get tired of it?" Laguly asks in disbelief with raised eyebrows.

"No," all the wives and I answer in unison.

Today is the 18th, Ros, day of Space. Day of organization and also of navigating mazes. Seriously, the dungeoneering guild recommends that people only delve into maze-like dungeons on this day because it's harder to get lost and also because random teleportation traps are less random.

My [Golemancy] increased by 1 (now 0+13); Alissa increased her [Illusion Magic] by 1 (now 22); Roxanne increased her [Space Magic] by 1 (now 17); Ciel increased her [Redirect Mana] by 1 (now 3); Lina increased her [Earth Magic] by 1 (now 12); and Yunia increased her [Spirit Magic] by 1 (now 1+27).

Another morning, another idyllic breakfast, another session of orb-boosted mana circulation training, and another filling lunch.

For this afternoon, we have a number of guests coming to our embassy: the representatives of the many mercenary companies that belong to the Thieves Guild. We've only invited the ones with a less bad reputation, and we'll be meeting with them one by one with a small break between each meeting so that they won't realize that we've called other companies too.

But the first representative already brings us a surprise.

"I must make it clear that Plifori doesn't perform thievery jobs on defense contract clients," Andrea stiffly states. The alluring Doberman weredog woman looks very flustered.

"Doesn't your company work for the Faiumi Merchant Alliance? Does Princess Sa'Haa approve of your 'side job' in the Thieves Guild?" Yunia questions stoically.

And Andrea answers in kind, "She approves, yes. She doesn't make use of us, but the other merchants do."

"Hm…" I hum thoughtfully.

Plifori was entrusted by Nour's parents with delivering an important message to us. Then we hired them to protect the embassy when we were expecting Katasko to send assassins to attack us, and they were very useful in ensuring that not a single assassin escaped.

"Do you want to talk business before or after we do it?" I casually ask. Then I pull out my Sword, and her eyes are immediately glued to the Lady-Killer Weapon.

"Definitely after. But you'll have to cast [Refresh] on me, or I won't be able to negotiate anything," she answers as she salivates, her black tail wagging like a thirsty puppy.

"Then strip," I order, and she unhesitatingly obeys.

After I plow her brains out and wait for her to recover, we negotiate a spying contract with them, and then I keep her around to plow her again later.

But we all pause what we're doing as Ciel has actually decided to meet with the Emperor on her own.

Intermission – Ciel

I open the doors to the Throne Room and see the Emperor standing at the center, his piercing gaze unwaveringly staring directly at me. His white robes may be simple, but coupled with the stillness of his posture, he feels so imposing, humbling, and endlessly tall that it's like I'm staring at the Throne of Ascension itself from the distance.

But I just put one foot before the other and repeat until I'm inside the room, then the doors close behind me on their own, and the enchantment makes them disappear. Now the illusion that covers the room makes it seem like we're both in the air, floating above Mac Gantus, but I'm a Wind mage, and the last thing I fear is heights, so I'm able to stare back at the Emperor without getting distracted by the view.

"Royal Crown Lord Ciel Ryder. What do you wish to speak with me about?" he commands, his words echoing in the empty room.

I almost immediately reply, compelled by the power in his voice, but I wait a short moment as I control myself before sternly answering, "Your handling of the situation with Reinhold goes against the teachings of the Gods."

"I'm the ruler of the, by far, largest and most powerful nation of the entire Realm. I can't afford to be the principled ruler that the temple wants me to be," he coldly answers.

But I face the unbreakable facade that he presents head-on because I believe in the supporting words everyone is giving me. "And it's this pragmatism that will bring ruin to the Empire."

"You must clarify yourself," he immediately orders, his piercing stare even more intense.

"You want to preserve the Empire so ardently that you'll lead us towards stagnation this way."

His gaze relents a little, but I feel a crack of frustration form in his composure. "What are you suggesting? Let the Empire fall?"

And it's that very same crack that I must bang on repeatedly to get it through his thick head that he's wrong. "The death of one Gifted won't make it fall, but if you have to let it fall to prevent stagnation, you should. 'Blemishes are a part of life,' Fertility said; 'never forget your purpose,' Piety said; 'no barrier is unbreakable,' Will said; 'try and fail instead of wallowing,' Love said; 'no growth without effort,' Growth said; 'no gain without loss,' War said; 'no law is absolute,' Law said; 'all good things must come to an end,' Festivity said; 'life isn't fair,' Luck said… must I go on?"

His stony expression trembles with increasing intensity with each word. To anger him is exactly what I want, for I know that he isn't being entirely rational. Something else is guiding his actions, and it's clouding his mind.

"I care not for what the Gods say. I only seek stability and safety for the Empire," he coldly answers, his anger settling down.

But I feel that there's something deeply wrong with that statement. Someone must remind him of his true purpose… and I sense that a finger is pointing at me.

My mouth moves on its own, almost as if it isn't fully controlled by my own mind, and I ask accusingly, "We are the children of Change, not Order. What are you so afraid of?"

He suddenly glares with the intensity of a hateful sun, but I feel no heat coming from him. "I'm afraid of YOU!" he thunders, and the Throne Room trembles with his anger, but I feel no fear from enraging him. "You, Champions of the Gods, bring trouble in your wake. You're the heralds of chaos, yet you bumble around like fools, colliding against the pillars of our Empire, weakening it just before we'll be attacked by both the Monster King and an unknown heretical organization. Why can't you see that you're going to kill us all?!"

This is it. Attachment. He's too attached to his rule, too fearful of losing even the smallest thing, so he commits a mistake that many rulers do, including Wolfy…

I turn my antagonism into gentle counseling as I remind him of the truth, "The Empire isn't irreplaceable. As long as humanoids live, we will rebuild. The God of Creation gave us a reason for existence, and the Empire will never supplant it."

But he again retreats behind an excuse. "You killed Reinhold because you feared for yourself. You're not in a position to give me this lesson."

I sigh and shake my head. "You're lying to yourself if you can't see the truth in my words."

"This conversation is over," he coldly replies, and I suddenly feel like I'm flying. Then I see the double doors close before me, and I find myself in the waiting room once again.

Intermission end.

A note from Manasong

Hall of Fame of Patrons

The patrons who support Rupegia shall have their names sung by the bards for they deserve the glory and honor. Their names are:

Prince PreownedFIN.

Prince Owldente.

Lord Andrew Meyers.

Lord Novgarod.

Lord Michale Erwin.

Lord Bakerdea.

Lord Maurice.

Lord Mattirro Draca.

Lord Mike Bartter.

Lord Warwulfv.

Lord Tenebris Lupus.

Lord Paul Daval.

Lord Paul Daval.

Lord Tmac.

Lord CopeyDunt.

Lord BlindTactic.

Lord litalmexy.

Lord Philip.

Lord d3235.

Lord William Clark.

Lord Ddraig Wynn.

Lord CardinalSteiner.

Lord Cidant.

Lord SubJef.

Lord GalacticTNT.

Lord SquiddlyWinks.

Lord Max Goodwin.

Lord Freddie.

Lord Placid.

Noble Salty Panda.

Noble Mild Fracas.

Noble Aclys.

Noble Carl  Baxter.

Noble Tony Starrk.

Noble DND.

Noble Asaadullah Lassiter.

Leave a rating or a review to help me rise to the top or fix my shameful understanding of prose.

Take a look over my blog where all information about the world of Rupegia will be posted.

Join the Discord and discuss, or rant, or meme, or try and fight me so your waifu gets more screentime.

Become a Patron and read chapters in advance, or read the side-stories, or leave your mark on the story, or help choose the next artwork or the next side-story.

Dietgard's Loli Quest – Teaser

A note from Manasong

This a teaser for the patreon-only side stories I'm writing. It's not necessary to read them to understand the main story, it just gives it more background or world-building.

One day I'll begin to slowly make these stories public once I re-review them like I'm doing with the early chapters.

My sweet, sweet little Lina… why have you forsaken me…?

I stare melancholically at my sister's corpse, praying she is happier in Paradise than she was while alive, but my despair is paired with gloom in a depressing dance that goes on and on within my heart to the sound of my self-pity.

My two lights have gone out, and though I still move, there's only darkness inside. Blind, I can't see where to go even though I must move on, so I fumble my way forward while tripping at every obstacle in the way.

But there's not even moonlight to illuminate my surroundings, so in which direction am I actually going towards?

"Sister Hilde… I've lost our little Lina, too, and now I have no star to guide me…" I whine softly and dry the corners of my eyes.

"Miss… your sister is here," the priest gently states.

"I'm a man, actually, but let me see her," I immediately reply.

The priest blinks blankly at me like they always do when they realize I'm a "hidden" one, but then he chants [Materialization], and suddenly, my gorgeous Elder Sister is right before me again, her stern but comforting gaze telling me that everything will be alright, it's just that now she's glowing with a blue light and I can kind of see through her.

"Find yourself before you can find a new muse," she cryptically states, her tone ethereal and distorted, but its meaning is clearly imparted upon me.

Yes! I understand, sister! But… but I also don't understand…

I have to find myself, but where do I even begin to search…?

But her spirit suddenly dissipates into smoke, and she's gone before I can reply.

Nothing more needed to be said. Elder Sister had high "Wisdom," so all I have to do is believe her.

I tell the priest he can take her body away, and once I leave, I immediately retreat inwardly into my thoughts. My sister's body will be taken to our parents back in Goldcross so that they can also say their goodbyes to her, but I won't follow for I have my own path to tread.

Who am I?

I'm Dietgard Roth, younger brother of Hildegard, son of Helganst and Friedrich, assistant manager of the Red Scales Group of Armorers, and the prettiest man of Rabanara.

What do I like?

My cute little Lina.

What do I like to do?

Watch Lina.

What do I like to eat?

Cute food with Lina.

What do I like to drink?

Cute drinks with Lina.

What do I… what do I…

Lina, Lina, and Lina…!

Nothing is the same without little Lina.

The cute clothes that I bought, the cute snacks that I made, the cute stories that I wanted to tell. They're all meaningless without her.

I hug the little lacy black dress and feel its delicate softness. It has an interesting checkered pattern in black and white, looking both childish and also mischievous at the same time. The openings for the belly button and the cleavage give it a mature air that clashes with its more childish main theme. Overall, it's an exquisite piece, a feast for the eyes, an arousing design for the mind.

Yet Lina will never wear it… so I have to.

It's made for a dwarf, so it hugs my lithe body tight, but the skirt is too small, exposing my matching panties and massive bulge to everyone with almost every move, making it improper for use in public.

I do look stunningly cute, though.

But on Lina it'd be cuter… so much cuter.

Her petite feet would be able to wear the matching round black shoes that come with this dress, and her thin legs wouldn't stretch the long white stockings as much as mine. Of course, her hairless and perfectly hidden flower would create no bulge, and instead, one would be able to peek at a long indent that hinted at its true shape. Her torso is thinner than mine, so the dress would be mildly loose, allowing for the straps and bra to gain some room and possibly even expose her lovely pink bits.

Such a fabulous combination would be enhanced by a delicate snow weave choker that she could hang her slave tag on. And the look would be finished with a cute feathered cap, putting her in such high levels of elegance even Ladies would be envious of her.

And then I would've bought a second dress so I could wear it while I… while I… worshiped both our loveliness at the same time.

I fall on my knees and cry into my hands, my hat falling onto the floor with a miserable flop as the storm raging outside the house exemplifies the chaotic bitterness within me. Early Paradise was taken from me, and now I can only worship myself, so I do just that.

My meaty appendage strains against the delicate frilly cloth, curving downwards in a gentle arc but pushing against the covering so hard that it can be peeked at from the sides. Veiny and thick, but held back by a feminine and delicate garment, a contrast that's always so delightful to me.

I slowly unveil it with my fingers, and then the beast is suddenly released into the wild, once again creating contrast with my adorably cute form. I'm a pretty little girl holding a monster in my hands, and I'm the only one who can tame it.

Just imagine if I had another. Two little girls in the dark playing with a dangerous thing, one gloomy raven girl with droopy eyes and an adorably curious stare, another fiery impish girl with slanted eyes and a mischievously lewd grin. Then they tickle the beast's hidden gem, and it loses itself to mad lust, spewing its syrup everywhere in a frenzy. The beauties and the beast.

Glorious, truly glorious!

I suddenly find myself catching my breath, my body full of splatters of pain as I stare up at my piece of work: a huge drawing covering the whole wall. I'm a terrible painter, actually, so it looks like something a child would scribble, but still, imagination! In my mind, it's a worthy tribute to the little girl that I love and the wonderful life we could've had together.

Could have…

But the lightning strike reveals my reflection in the portal to reality, and I realize that there are only beasts here with me. My face covered by Lina's panties, only my eyes visible along with my twin tails, my mind intoxicated with her sour smell, and my soul weeping at the insanity of it all.

With a sigh, I take off the panties, then walk up to the other wall and light up the room again, but I immediately regret it as I'd rather not face the stains in my psyche for I only see madness. Maybe mad with love, maybe mad with sorrow, but certainly all mad.

I pour me some throat-burner and punish my body until the intoxication makes me forget.

The storm abates, but unlike in a hero's tale, all that comes after is mud and gray clouds. This place is a wasteland for the soul, a mire of painful memories, the root of all my problems.

I take off my Lina's clothes and put them back where they belong, in the drawer, but when I open it, my eyes are attracted to the glint of ungifted jewels. Indulgences that I acquired to soothe little Lina after the loss of her master, now a useless waste of money.

It's time to return them to the streets. With Elder Sister's death, money will be hard to acquire, so I better be efficient. I may be extremely eccentric, but I'm no fool.

The glint in the merchant's eye suddenly awakens the Roth. He likes it, he likes it a lot, but he won't let me come out on top unless I tickle his hidden gem.

"Cute Miss, I'll give you a gold coin for these necklaces," the greedy merchant politely gives me his offer.

And I make the most snobbish disgusted sneer that I can. "I'll take them back with me to Goldcross, then," I bluff.

"Goldcross? Over there they don't sell necklaces of this quality for more than a gold, certainly," he skeptically replies.

But I detect a weak point in his knowledge of cute jewelry, so I pounce on it like the beast that I am, "You clearly are becoming blind if you can't spot the exquisite details. Look here, a little cat in the pendant. And here, paw prints along the chain." -I stare sternly at him, my eyes burning with the determination of an expert devotee to the Goddess of Cuteness- "This is a collector's piece for wereanimals, not to mention that over here you have many of the demon race, like the succubus and angels, who have a natural affinity for these cute designs and pay premium for them."

The merchant makes a pensive face as my intimidation is successful. "Then how much do you ask for it?"

I almost spill and ask for two gold, the original price, but the Roth overrides me. This is a treasure handpicked by the Peerless Judge of Cuteness and Master of All Things Cute! I clearly have an understanding of its beauty that goes deeper than this boorish man's skills, so I can help him make a fortune, but I also need my share.

"Three gold coins," I whisper with an intense stare, then I see him swallow heavily in hesitation as he realizes that I'm serious and, most importantly, right.

But I'm just starting. I have a whole chest full of Cute to sell!

A waterfall of silver falls upon my padded bra, filling it until it overflows with bounty, then my bulge becomes bigger as the coins slip into my panties. Sister never made this much money peddling jewelry… and I didn't even try to bargain very hard with the merchants.

Is this a stroke of luck, or can I profit this much again…?

"Kleinegard! My dear Kleinegard!" Mother exclaims as she receives me into our home. The nickname embarrasses me, but my mind is too distracted by my musings to care.

Mother takes me into her arms, and my stormy mind begins to settle down as the nostalgic touch, smells, and sights work like sedatives on me. My ego is still quite bruised, so now it's time to let it rest.

"But where is the slave?" Mother curiously asks, and it all comes tumbling down, tumbling down, tumbling down…

"She preferred to be sold to the adventurer that saved her rather than serve me," I flatly reply as my spirit leaves my body.

But Mother has always been brutally honest, and she doesn't have mercy, even for me, her pretty little son. My death had already been foretold the moment that I answered Mother's question.

"That whore!" she exclaims with a sneer of disgust so menacing that it'd make a child cry. "She was too young to make a rational decision by herself, so you should've explained to her what that meant! A cute little thing like her in the jaws of a strong, sweaty, muscular adventurer could only lead to one thing: a sex slave. I bet he won't even be gentle with her since she is a dwarf and has [Stonebody], and her tight little womb will be stretched to accommodate the buckets of semen that will be forced inside her."

My little Lina! Her… her virginity…! I didn't think of this… NOOOOOOO…!

Her cute feet will massage his body; her thighs will be used for intercrural love; her chest will be dirtied by a man's lips; her nipples abused by his rough hands; her bouncy ass will feel the power of his slaps; her arms will fail to wrap around the width of his torso; her delicate hands will hold his veiny cock; her face will be tarnished by an endless load of cum after cum that she's forced to swallow, giving her a taste and a hunger for it as it'll be the only food she'll have every day.

I allowed Lina to be defiled…!

Her cunt will be stretched by his monstrous cock and her clit pinched by his rough hands as she grips the sheets hard and her gloomy, droopy eyes will roll up her skull so hard she pushes her tongue out in ecstasy. A chaste and shy girl turned into a cum-addicted cock-hole!

"Wolf Ryder is a man with a loyal harem, and he's known to be kind and wise for his age," Dad's voice of reason slaps me in the face and shoves my soul back in.

And my horrific fantasy makes me a bit lightheaded, so I impulsively confess, "Ah, yes. He was pleasant to talk to, and he's a handsome boy. It's just that he has the determination of an adventurer, so I couldn't convince him."

"Shouldn't have to convince him if the whore didn't jump onto his cock and instead came here to serve us as she should!" Mother exclaims irately, never one to easily give in when things don't go her way.

But Elder Sister's words echo in my mind as if she was watching over me, which is rather comforting, but also a bit scary if I'm being honest because it could mean that she's haunting me. But I digress, the truth of my Sister's words is that she wants us to go our separate ways, for Lina has already fulfilled her duty.

"That was Lina's right. She served Elder Sister, not me, and not the family," I solemnly state, and not even Mother can argue against this.

She simply grunts in frustration, then turns around and angrily leaves, her long, fading red hair following after her.

Old Dad remains a while longer and smiles proudly at me for standing up to Mother and managing to make her shut up. I inherited his kindness while I got Mother's beauty and a bit of her courage, so while I'm not as stalwart as Elder Sister, I'm not a coward either.

"I'm glad you're back, son, but why didn't you come along with your sister's body?" he gently inquires and gives me a hug.

I hate masculine smells and touch, but Dad's is acceptable and even a bit comforting in small amounts. "I had to mourn in my own way, and Lina's heartbreak affected me much more than I ever thought it would."

And that is an understatement.

"What about your job at the shop?" he continues concernedly.

I shake my head, making my twin tails bounce. "Without my sister, I'm just a useless assistant. I want to find myself again."

And he gives my shoulders a reassuring squeeze. "Very well."

I gaze upon my adorable visage in the mirror. I am the prettiest man I've ever seen, even prettier than "hidden" elven boys, but I still lose to actual girls. Their bodies don't have the many subtle male characteristics that ruin me from being perfect, but being a "hidden" male has its own charm, and I can also hide some of those characteristics with accessories.

And talking about accessories… tiaras, necklaces, earrings, fingerrings, bandannas, chokers, sashes, belts, gloves, scarves, skirts, stockings, boots, and many other accessories. A pretty girl can increase her level many times if she knows what to wear, and then, when you finally see her naked, the shadow of her fully groomed form lingers on to enhance her beauty.

My mind drifts once again towards Lina, but my image of her has been tainted by Mother's crude, fetishistic, and awfully detailed fantasy about her sex life, so I try to distract myself with something else.

The taste of the money that I acquired after selling my Cute Treasures still lingers in my little red tongue, and I start to yearn for more… but where will I spend this money? For what purpose will I work so hard for?

Debauchery? More cute accessories? Increasingly elaborate fantasies and fetishes? Treatment and cleansing for my growing mental and spiritual disease?

I seem to have an affinity for the path of the Cute, but why should I tread it…?

Elder Sister said that I need to find myself before I find a new muse, but where is this "me"? Rabanara, Goldcross, Wideberg? I have no attachment to anywhere as I've spent most of my life traveling as a peddler and only recently we had settled down in Rabanara, so this "me" could be anywhere.

I'm still lost, and I have nothing else, so I continue my life while utilizing my newfound talent the best I can.

"These are beautiful accessories, Miss."

"My daughter loved the dress you recommended for her."

"Because of you I just had to commission a painting of her. She was so cute it hurt!"

Praise, praise, and even more praise. My instant success has me showered with praise, but why does it feel so… hollow?

"Am I cute, Dietgard?"

"You made me cute, Dietgard."

"Dietgard, I can't believe how cute she is!"

Cute, cute, cute! They're cute, yes, but not enough! They're never cute enough! I need more, I need to make them cuter, but I can't! I CAN'T!

I need to feel it in my heart. The tightening, the pain, the elevated heartbeat. I need it! I need to feel SOMETHING…!

But no matter how hard I try, how many girls I pretty up, how many dresses I make them wear, they're not cute enough to make me feel anything.

"You're good at this, Dietgard."

"Dietgard, you should sell your services."

"Dietgard! You have a talent!"

Yes, yes, yes, I know I'm good with cute things, but… I feel no joy.

Cute is my drug, my obsession, my life, so how do you think I feel when all these things are lacking within me?

"You've actually been bringing in a good amount of money, Kleinegard," Mother kindly praises me.

Money? What for? Drink doesn't satisfy me anymore, food turns into ash in my mouth, and not all of the clothes in town could make me prettier than I already am.

"There are quite a few nobles interested in hearing your advice," Dad proudly informs me.

Nobility? Why should I bother? Neither their companionship nor lust arouse me. I'm merely a tool for them to feel better about themselves, about their disturbing lack of beauty.

The only thing that can still make my heartbeat once again is the Cute.

And Goldcross simply isn't Cute enough.

Ever since my Elder Sister gave me this advice, I knew I had to travel, but I didn't know where to go. Now I realize that it doesn't matter. There is no guide to tell me where it is, so I shall search the entire Realm!

I'm sorry Mother and Dad, but I have to go.

On a nondescript morning, no different from any other, my carriage travels along the stone road as I watch Goldcross' golden walls become smaller and smaller, and my frozen heart starts to warm up again, beating with renewed life, and excited about this new path that we're taking.

I decide to make a small prayer to ask for a bit of help from the Gods so that I don't suffer too much in this journey. I'm not a hero trying to kill the Monster King, my quest is merely to find Cute so that I can sate this addiction and be able to feel again.

Gods, help me find what my heart yearns for, help me find my…

But the last word dies down in my throat as I suddenly feel like it's "incorrect," but then something else comes to the tip of my little red tongue.

"Loli," a foreign female voice whispers in my ear… and at last I truly see.

I must find her. I must find the one girl that's cuter than Lina. The one that's unmatched. The one that stands at the top. The One… Loli; the cutest of them all.

A note from Manasong

Hall of Fame of Patrons

The patrons who support Rupegia shall have their names sung by the bards for they deserve the glory and honor. Their names are:

Prince PreownedFIN.

Prince Owldente.

Prince Definitely  not Dio.

Lord Andrew Meyers.

Lord Novgarod.

Lord Michale Erwin.

Lord Bakerdea.

Lord Maurice.

Lord Mattirro Draca.

Lord Mike Bartter.

Lord Tenebris Lupus.

Lord Paul Daval.

Lord Paul Daval.

Lord Tmac.

Lord CopeyDunt.

Lord BlindTactic.

Lord litalmexy.

Lord Philip.

Lord d3235.

Lord William Clark.

Lord Ddraig Wynn.

Lord SubJef.

Lord GalacticTNT.

Lord Placid.

Lord Caden Dinkel.

Lord McMax.

Noble Salty Panda.

Noble Mild Fracas.

Noble Aclys.

Noble Carl  Baxter.

Noble Tony Starrk.

Noble DND.

Noble Asaadullah Lassiter.

Noble Aclys.

Noble Brandon.

Noble Tony Starrk.

Leave a rating or a review to help me rise to the top or fix my shameful understanding of prose.

Take a look over my blog where all information about the world of Rupegia will be posted.

Join the Discord and discuss, or rant, or meme, or try and fight me so your waifu gets more screentime.

Become a Patron and read chapters in advance, or read the side-stories, or leave your mark on the story, or help choose the next artwork or the next side-story.

Chapter 152: Clingy Princesses - Part 1

A note from Manasong

Attention: to conform to the limit of mature content (more than just sexual content) allowed in a novel, I've censored this chapter. You can look for the uncensored version here.

Intermission – Empress Mena Doxa

"What a damn insolent little priestess!" our Dear Husband exclaims irately as he storms into the room, and the glass ceiling shows the sky above darkening along with his mood.

He looks so cute when he's angry.

"Is she wrong?" Piscilla teasingly asks exactly what we all want to ask.

Our Darling takes his seat and glares at her, but there's no power in his gaze, and she grins back smugly as he mockingly repeats with a nasally tone, "Is she wrong? YoU'rE lYiNg tO yOuRsElF iF yOu cAn'T sEe ThE tRuTh iN mY wOrDs!"

"You're being childish," I soothingly reply and give his large hand a pat.

Now that I'm touching him, he controls himself a bit better. "She was the child if she thought she could give me a lesson!"

"There's actually nobody, in a significant position, at least, who believes that Reinhold's death was unjustifiable," Efsevia calmly points out.

Here we go…

"Justifiable or not, it happened due to negligence," Hayakasha immediately replies with her usual cold tone.

"Can we stop talking about this topic already?" Ho'Tree pleads tiredly.

Thank you!

The bickering women simply shrug and drop it, also a bit tired of arguing in circles about this.

And since the table has fallen silent, I sweetly continue, "How did the two Princesses react to our proposal?"

"She loved it," Uruterie answers with a grin.

"She hated it," Ho'Tree answers with a groan.

This is… actually good for me. Keeping Sa'Haa unmarried allows her to focus on worshiping Tommen, and she'll never be made Empress without descendants. But perhaps taking her away from him will allow Vanea to help him mature. The only problem would be if Wolf wants to become a Consort and supports Sa'Haa in competing for the throne, as he'd be a massive advantage for her.

If only he were a double edge… or I had a daughter…

And my caressing assuages Dear Husband's anger enough that he soberly declares, "It's still their own choice whether they follow through to the end. The only thing that we request of them is to keep surveillance; I don't want a repeat of the Purification."

"It shall be done," Ho'Tree obediently replies while Uruterie simply nods.

And I grin internally. Everything is going according to plan.

Intermission end.

When Ciel comes back, Roxanne and I clap teasingly at her.

"Congratulations on getting kicked out by the Emperor himself," my cheeky succubus innocently greets.

Ciel stops and cringes awkwardly as she twiddles her thumbs. But her bravery comes back, and she decides to outright admit to everything since we can just read her mind anyway, "Okay, I agree that I was a bit impulsive and that it could've gone better, but I said everything I wanted to." And she puffs up her massive, juicy chest with pride.

"Can I go next?" Aoi quietly asks as she raises a claw.

But the chocolate angel frowns. "That would just make things worse."

"But I want to say that I don't like him," Aoi insists and shows a toothy smile, trying to appear innocent, though that's a bit difficult considering she has a pretty frightening face (for commoners).

"I'm sorry, my love, but that would be very rude," I side with Ciel and pat her big head.

She glances at me, then closes her eyes and lowers her head to savor my touch as she relents, "Hm, alright. But I'll tell him the next time we meet if I still remember this grudge."

"It'd be funny if you did," Yunia calmly states.

"Hehe," Aoi chuckles impishly.

Lina gets up from her chair, walks up to Ciel, and gives her a big hug. "You looked really cool," she quietly states.

"Awn…" Ciel's heart melts, and she suffocates Lina with her pillows, making me wish that was me. But Ciel sends a frown my way. "You were teasing me, so none for you."

"Awn…"

The meetings continue as usual after this little distraction, and we get to talk with a very eclectic set of leaders and representatives, but these are just the more "respectable" ones from among all of the Thieves Guild, so I can only imagine how much cornier and shadier than Poiopo the "bad ones" would be. The chain smoker, scrawny little bunnyman is straight out of a noir novel, making me wonder if that's a genre that exists in this world.

Yunia immediately answers my thoughts, "There are a lot of Investigator novels that fit that theme. They're both romantic and gloomy, but they make for good entertainment for Ladies without enough excitement in their lives."

"Ereia is like that, I assume?" I ask her with a smirk.

And the Queen nods. "She and many others, but Ereia is more shameless, so she sates her thirst for excitement with carnal pleasures when the novels aren't enough."

"My kind of woman," I hum.

"Of course she is…" she dryly replies.

But we don't all have to meet with every representative, so I have plenty of time to fill Andrea up.

Unfortunately, she still has little stamina compared to me, so she collapses on the bed after the third round in a row.

Then she turns around, and pleads weakly, "I have… to go back… to report…"

I lean over her and kiss her cute, black dog snout, then huskily decline, "I don't care. I'll play with you until I've had my fill of you. I don't know if we'll meet again, so I have to make do with what little time we have."

Aoi begins cleaning up, making her vocalize and writhe under me, but thanks to her high "Endurance" from being a soldier, she still manages to suggest, "If… if I were to give you intelligence reports… we could meet regularly."

I caress her short black hair and play with her ears as I calmly hum, "Well, that's an if. Until that actually happens, I'm going to shove it into you so hard that they'll find my seed inside your soul."

"Oh, Gods…" she cries softly as Aoi finds her G-spot.

And I chuckle darkly. "Yeah, you'd better pray because only the Gods can save you from this."

She wrestles back control of her body, then grabs my face and fiercely declares, "But I don't want to be saved."

"Now that's a good girl," I whisper with a grin.

Then we go for another round.

We're only having the Verners and Andrea as guests for dinner tonight, so we order a lot of meat to please the wereanimals. I, particularly, favor the lightly seasoned, raw, minced meat this time because the dragon in me has been in control for a while as I did this Doberman woman, and now it demands raw meat to sate its hunger.

Léonne notices my female dog and greets her politely, "Greetings, I'm Lord Léonne Verner, Chieftess of the Misty Low Forest, and I assume you must be Plifori's representative."

But the dragon is still awake, and it must assert its dominance over his woman, "She's my newest hole, and she'll remain here for at least one more day until I've had my fill of her body."

And I turn my eyes to the female dog in question. Her pointy black ears and tail shoot up in surprise as her skin quickly blushes, but she doesn't seem to dislike this label.

"Say 'yes, I'm Master's hole,'" Alissa quietly commands her.

"Yes, I'm Master's hole," the obedient dog stiffly obeys, then starts breathing heavily in depraved excitement.

Jacques turns to Allura, his fearsome face warped into a frown as he points out, "This is the man you've fallen in love with. You like this kind of thing?"

But Allura confesses without skipping a beat, "Of course, I do. It's such an exciting power play." And she grins perversely as her desires start to leak past her wall of self-control.

"Why did I even ask…" he mumbles as he shakes his head.

Léonne pities her husband's pain and tries to soothe him, "Love, she's definitely our daughter; it's just that she's less shy about her desires than you are."

But Yunia is out for blood and candidly declares, trying to get him to admit to his nature, "I know you like my pair, Jacques, and you also couldn't take your eyes off me as Wolfy abused it with his spiky Weapon. You have a domineering side to you full of desire that you keep suppressing, but you'd live a better life if you just gave in sometimes and had some fun."

The fox milf nods repeatedly in agreement while Ofilia first swallows heavily before also nodding along.

Jacques stares at his family, but he finds no support. Then he turns to Yunia as he ponders upon her words, but his eyes are magnetically attracted to her valley and half-naked pair as only a thin piece of cloth hides them from the world. I'm starting to enjoy seeing other men showing desire towards my women as it gives me a sense of superiority as I do them to completion in ways that no other living person can.

And I'm not the only one who's admitting to depraved desires as the red beast sighs and confesses, "I was raised as a warrior in a Sworn Hunter household. We're told to be absolutely respectful and chaste so that the Lords will be comfortable with trusting us with their lives, but you know that I have a very strong 'desire,' which both of my daughters seem to have inherited," -the foxes in question grin- "and simply 'giving in' was never an option, so I guess I got too good at repressing myself."

Léonne leans towards him, one hand going for his thick arm and the other disappearing between his legs. Then she calmly replies as he struggles to maintain a straight face, "Fortunately for us, the Ryders are helping us truly 'free' ourselves, so take your Tool out and give Ofilia the meal she's yearning for."

The jade beauty stiffens up at being ordered and almost leans over to begin, but then her eyes meet with Léonne's teasing pair, and she instinctively looks down, only to find nothing to suck on. She pouts annoyedly as she realizes the bamboozle, but Allura crosses her arms and glares, unamused at having spiciness happen in front of her once again.

"Okay, maybe not in front of Allura," the milfy fox backs down and smiles apologetically at her daughter.

For the evening, we string up Andrea, and I have each of us play with her to completion. This includes the adventurers and the Companions (except Hukarere), so there are plenty of hands to go around. I normally use Klein for this kind of power play, so I'm very happy that I have Andrea to take her place.

Today is the 19th, Nev, day of Spirit.

A good day to learn skills as everyone's spirit/soul is stronger and more active. It's also the only day of the week that commoners can perform the ritual to lose skills as it's a bit straining for the soul, but a high-level person's soul is strong enough to do it any day of the week.

"This is a weird question, but doesn't Lord Wolf's seed smell… really good? Like, too good to be normal?" Andrea embarrassedly asks.

And to her surprise, she immediately gets a bunch of positive responses.

"Lord Wolfy's seed is so addictive that I've dreamed about it," Edjo casually remarks as Hukarere nods emphatically, then the catgirl sips her tea in a subtly snobbish way that reminds me of a certain elf.

"If you like it that much, then come over here and get some," I huskily command as I push my chair back and spread my legs.

And to my surprise, she actually takes me up on the offer.

"[Spicy Charm]…" Alissa reminds me.

Right…

"She's stealing your job," Roxanne teases Hukarere and elbows the naked woman.

"I mean… I'm holding back to not bother Wolfy," she mumbles back with a shrug, not even feeling any discomfort from the succubus' weak arms.

Edjo kneels before my chair, and I stare at her pretty cat eyes as she opens her mouth, showing a set of cute fangs.

"I'm also holding back," Aoi complains and stares at the gray catgirl.

I turn my eyes to Laguly and notice the hunger in her gaze mirroring that of my white wolf, my blue dragon, and my black dog. It seems that the spicy air is quickly growing out of control.

So I reassure them, "It's not a bother, it's just that I don't have enough time for everyone, but if you want to use me while we eat, then it shouldn't be a problem."

Edjo takes it out of her mouth momentarily to concernedly ask, "Perhaps Lord Aoi should be first then?"

"Nah, you've already started, but you'd better be quick," I answer as I caress her head.

And she gives me a suggestive grin as she starts to bob her head up and down.

This morning's orb-boosted mana circulation training is interrupted by a message from the temple saying that they've finished cataloging our spoils. Soon after, Vanea arrives, and she has an interesting pair of guests with her.

"Kyros, it's good to see you," I greet my former [Godly Language] teacher.

"Your Highness Wolf, you've changed so much that I have no words," the elegant imperial greets me with a bow. Olive skin, blue eyes, a white goatee, and white sweptback hair. He's an elegant, mature man, but he seems too old to be the father of the little weredog girl with droopy ears holding his hand, though she resembles him quite a lot.

Vanea, who's dressed like a blue princess, teasingly answers as she keeps her eyes to my chest to not bother me with her piercing stare, "He was just a frightened boy with a woman-killer in his pants the first time we met, and now he's… an actual dragon."

But Kyros pays no attention to her spicy words and solemnly continues, "The Gods were wise in their choice of Gifted, and now I'll be forever thankful to you, Your Highness Wolf, for removing the stain of Katasko from the Empire." And he stares at me intensely with his blue eyes, a strong, hopeful glint in his gaze.

"I didn't know you had such a grudge against them," I reply with a gentle smile.

He looks down and smiles at the cute little dog girl staring at us with large, curious eyes. "This is Thelma, my granddaughter. My son was too reckless and found out something he shouldn't, and then he paid for it with his and his wife's lives. Now, Thelma, say your thanks the way I taught you."

Now you have me curious…

The little girl breathes in bravely, her furry tail rising up in tension, and after a couple of seconds of holding her breath, she releases it along with a stream of words, "L-Lord Wolf, thank you for avenging my parents. The evil men forced us to run away from home, b-but now that they're gone, we can go back!"

"Very good, Thelma," he quietly praises her, and her tense tail starts wagging.

She smiles adorably and grips his hand harder, then averts her eyes from mine as it might take quite a lot of effort for her to stare me in the eye.

Yunia is quite savvy at spotting scheming, so she smoothly probes, "We'd be interested in any information you may have about Katasko. Even though they're being destroyed by the Punishers, they had dealings with heretics that might also be undead, and we're looking for anything that could help us identify them."

He glances at Vanea, who subtly nods, then he smiles politely and answers, "It's a complicated matter. May we talk about it in a more appropriate setting?"

"Sure."

Thelma is a really good girl. She's obedient and quiet, but Alissa keeps her from getting bored by reading a picture book with the girl. Apparently, weredogs make for the most well-behaved children… and dragonkin the least.

"Heh," Hana snorts in my mind.

"What is this? It smells good," Thelma asks as she points to a cup of coffee.

Alissa picks it up and cautions her, "It's coffee, and it's very bitter, but if you take a sip of it, I recommend you eat this, a sweet called chocolate."

Her fluffy tail wags at the mention of sweets, and Kyros pats her head as he smiles warmly at her. The brave girl then takes a sip of coffee, and she hates it.

"Yuck! Bitter! Give chocolate!" she demands and opens her mouth, so Alissa feeds her a little square, and she brightens up instantly. "Yummy!" she exclaims, her tail wagging so hard that her body is shaking along with her.

"Don't talk with your mouth full," Kyros softly states, and Thelma nods obediently.

Ciel dies of cuteness overload while "Charm" temporarily appears in our "Status Effects." But there's one person here who's so cold that she isn't affected by cute little girls.

Vanea promptly begins the serious talk, "You've already exposed that Cleinias was looking for ways to extend his lifespan, but the rest of Katasko was doing something worse."

"Immortality," Kyros completes, his smile slowly replaced by gloom.

Alissa takes Thelma away from us towards a set of sofas on the balcony so that she won't hear about this heavy topic.

"That's undeath," I point out.

But Kyros shakes his head. "A different kind of immortality. One that doesn't cause corruption."

"How?" Ciel immediately asks, frowning in disbelief.

He averts his eyes as he thinks for a moment and begins an unsure explanation of a topic he isn't very familiar with, "Our body is made up of innumerable small structures called 'cells,' but like a sword that is used for too long, they become brittle and break as we age. They were looking for ways to 'rejuvenate' these cells and revert aging."

Are they restoring DNA telomeres, or is there more to it?

I knit my eyebrows in concern as I soberly state, "That's genetic engineering. Just like the monsters that attacked Gnomeria, or the Clone Soldiers the heretics sent after us, they're likely modifying the 'soul of the cell,' a part that controls how our cells are structured."

"But what about the soul? Modifying the body while leaving the soul untouched would cause Body-Spirit Desynchronization," Ciel immediately retorts.

"I don't know the details, but I assumed [Alteration Magic] could fix that," Kyros answers.

But Yunia and I become suspicious of him. "Why haven't you talked to someone else about this? Like the temple or the Templars?" I sternly inquire.

He gives me a defeated and depressed look. "This isn't exactly heretical research. They could claim it was merely lifespan extension, but my son discovered that they were aiming for immortality."

I'm still skeptical, so I tactfully probe further, "What did he do to… get himself targeted?"

"He stole evidence. A sample of these 'cells' and reports suggesting that it's possible to achieve immortality with this technique."

Ciel sighs gloomily and begrudgingly admits, "Even that might not be enough to be considered 'heretical.'"

"But I think there's more to this situation," Vanea solemnly chimes in.

And Kyros follows up, "It seems that the people sent after my family are related to the ones sent to harass the Anaras in Rabanara, and we suspect that the royals funded them."

"You don't mean the Empresses and the Emperor?" I clarify.

Vanea gently shakes her head, then stares me in the eye to make sure I understand that she's serious. "No, not them. Remember that Cleinias was also considered royalty, which is why he was allowed to live in the upper parts of the Throne of Ascension. But we have reason to believe that the Alkimeonids family had help from other royals as they weren't using Katasko for this."

Right, Cleinias was actually a descendant of an Imperial Prince who gained influence but not enough to be crowned, and that's why he was a "royal."

"There are a number of royal families with a bad enough reputation that I could see them participating in this," Kyros adds.

"What evidence do you have?" Yunia inquires.

But once again, he gives us a defeated and depressed look. "None. It died with my son and his wife. I only have the letters he sent me explaining his suspicions." He's a dignified man, one who truly deserves the title of Noble, so it actually pains me to see him like this.

But I know that I have the "Charisma" to affect others, so I decide to comfort him a bit, "What you've told us is still very helpful. Now we know that many suspicious things happening around the Empire are actually linked. We have a Punisher Captain that's allied with us, and I think we should tell her what you know so that she can keep an eye out for anyone who's carrying out lifespan research."

And my attempt is successful, for he straightens his back and smiles as he replies with a sentimental tone, "Thank you. It's great to hear that his death wasn't in vain."

But Yunia has one last topic that she needs answers for, "Was your son an Investigator? Why was he involved with Katasko?"

And his smile becomes pained as he confesses, "Because of hubris. At first, he joined Katasko due to greed, but once he found out about the research, he became excited at the prospect of being rewarded for exposing heretics. At least he sent Thelma to me before… things fell apart."

"Do you have any more info on the people responsible for this research?" I gently ask.

"A few names of nobles that disappeared before the Purification, but there's one that stood out: Andre Forte."

"Just like you, Wolf, this is a name without a past," Vanea adds with a knowing smirk.

And I smirk back, but I answer soberly, "We've never heard of them, but it does sound elven."

Kyros frowns concernedly as he admits, "My son said it was an odd name, so he could only transcribe what he heard."

And that kills my curiosity. "So 'Andre Forte' might not even be how it's actually written or pronounced."

He nods. "Yes."

They have nothing more to say, so Ciel wraps things up, "Well, thank you anyway for all this information. We'll keep an eye out for anything that sounds like that name."

With the heavy stuff over, we let Thelma come back, and Ciel joins in on reading the picture book. Even Vanea seems to finally melt a bit at seeing the cute little girl having fun. It actually amuses me that Thelma isn't scared of my presence, but then the girls delight themselves in making me uncomfortable when they remind me that [Spicy Charm] might be affecting her.

Anyway, the fun soon ends when we get new arrivals: the Princesses, who have come on the back of a damn huge dragon.

A note from Manasong

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Chapter 152: Clingy Princesses - Part 2

A note from Manasong

Attention: to conform to the limit of mature content (more than just sexual content) allowed in a novel, I've censored this chapter. You can look for the uncensored version here.

The huge gray dragon is a female, considering the dragon wakes up just from looking at her. Her powerful body is as wide as two carriages and takes up the whole street, but it's almost as slender and smooth as Aoi's, a female characteristic; her wings have to be folded in because the enchantments on our embassy and the one across the street block her from spreading them; her huge head has merely two small horns that I can't describe in any other way but cute; and her eyes lock with mine as she notices our approach, but I feel curiosity coming from them rather than the hostility she shows to anyone else.

If she had a human form, I'd guess she'd look like Hana. A voluptuous female body, but with a healthy amount of muscle.

On the dragon's back is a double-deck passenger wagon, but her size is also a bit inconvenient since they can't dismount from the sides. So, the Princesses dismount via her long tail, then have the gray beauty move forward a bit so that they can walk to the entrance.

She obediently breaks eye contact with me and starts walking, the ground trembling lightly with her steps. But when she stops, she immediately turns her head back towards me again.

"You have to get bigger, Wolfy, so that one day, you can do a dragon of that size," Alissa wistfully states and hugs my arm harder into her chest.

"What…?" Vanea asks absentmindedly, not believing her ears, but we don't have time to answer her as the Princesses and their followers appear at the entrance.

"Wolf Ryder! We're back!" Urmeie cheerfully exclaims. My gaze immediately falls onto her MASSIVE valley as she seems to wear clothes a size too small for her. Her white jacket barely holds her furry melons, and her black not-yoga pants show that she's got ass and thighs to go with that pair.

The huge gray dragon made me a bit happy, but now, this view has made me very happy.

"It's our pleasure to see you again, Princesses," Yunia answers for me as I'm too distracted by bear pillows to respond, and Centum Mako frowns in distaste at me like the stuck-up masochist he is.

"As it is ours," Sa'Haa politely replies. This not-Cruella is now wearing a comfy and fluffy black robe, but it isn't sexy, so I immediately forget that she exists, instead focusing on bear pillows.

"Great news, Wolf! We have permission to be bred by you," Urmeie gives me a Daze (1 turn).

"Don't use such crass language…" Sa'Haa groans quietly.

"Excuse me…?" I blurt out.

And the big curvy bear woman grins just like Hana. "You're putting a baby in me."

HELL YEAAAAAH-… eeeh… no.

In the corner of her eye, Alissa notices Allura quietly seething in jealousy and envy while Léonne smiles wryly.

"Well, I can't do that until I've developed a racial skill so that my children won't be inconvenienced by these claws," I decline as I show her my beautiful and sharp mirror-like claws and scales.

That kills her mood (and makes Allura very happy), so the big bear frowns, which is a very frightening expression (for normal people). But then she grins mischievously as she comes up with an idea and crosses her arms, straining her jacket to the point that it almost bursts. "Alright, but we can at least practice the breeding, no?"

I'd damn LOVE to breed her all day, but there's one tiny little problem with her…

"No," I decline again, trying not to sound too smug.

"No?" she repeats, her poise broken, and Alissa swears she hears the bear Princess' bodyguards gasp in disbelief at my audacity.

"No," I hum back, and Sa'Haa smothers a snort of amusement.

"You don't want these damn mountains?!" Urmeie exclaims as she fondles herself, a wonderful sight for sore eyes.

Yes!

"No," I stand my ground.

"ARE YOU DAMN SURE?!" she shouts and rips her jacket open, freeing her glorious furry pair, and I burn their shape into my memory. Her large brown circles look absolutely delicious, and I feel like my tentacles desperately want to come out and play with them.

"Gods! Sister!" Sa'Haa chastises her and slaps her face, but the big bear doesn't even feel it.

Mako, Omari, and Sa'Haa's bodyguards tactfully look away from the WMDs, but Urmeie's bodyguards don't, though they can't see much from behind her.

"HE DOESN'T WANT TO DO ME, SIS!" she roars back in disbelief.

"You'll have to try harder if you want to conquer my heart," I cheekily reply, and Sa'Haa breaks into a burst of evil laughter, but then she quickly suppresses it.

"Yes, please! But at least court him while clothed!" the owl Princess exclaims as she pulls out her staff from her [Item Box], then activates an enchantment that casts [Water Wall] in front of Urmeie, hiding her divine mountains from view.

Nooo! I want to bury my sword between them!

"You want me to bend over and beg?!" the bear Princess continues, and she looks so bewildered that I almost pity her.

Léonne has to whisper to Allura that she must contain her extreme amusement before the Princesses notice it. But Sa'Haa's amusement is cut short due to her bear sister's suggestion, and the owl is now too busy glaring at the bear to notice the young fox's amusement.

I don’t plan on humiliating this shameless Princess, so my next words make Sa'Haa smile once again, "That would be wonderful, but no. I want you to court me, seduce me. Your behavior during our time together wasn't attractive, so I want to see you try."

And young not-Cruella has a sexy face, so it pleases me to see her pleased, even though her personality is that of a prickly bitch.

But Urmeie's expression is the opposite of her sister's, and I feel a bit of her high-level aura leak out as she growls, "You little gec-… hmph! I'll damn seduce you, then. I'll damn seduce you so hard that your hips will break!"

Her aura is both pleasant and unpleasant. She's truly a bear dommy mommy that will give me a lot of warmth and comfiness through Snu Snu, but the dommy part clashes with my draconic nature of doing women into submission. Unlike dommy mommy Osaria, who submits to the superiority of my Dragon, Urmeie feels like she wants to do me instead, and that makes my asshole and inner ass jewel a bit worried.

"That may not exactly be in the spirit of what I want, but I commend your enthusiasm," I smoothly reply.

"Hmph," she huffs haughtily, showing us her snobbish Princess side for once. Then she closes her jacket again, which seems to have been enchanted to repair itself, probably in anticipation of the wild sex we're both famous for.

"I'll be eager to see how she does it," Sa'Haa remarks smugly.

And now the bear finally bites back at her sister, "I'm going to join him for his bath and sleep naked with him even if he doesn't want to do me. Are you sure you'll be present to see that?"

"I don't mind if you watch," I huskily pile on and smile at the sexy, young not-Cruella.

"I'll pass…" she replies with a sigh and dangerously narrowed eyes.

And before an awkward silence can settle in, Yunia soberly suggests, "Let's go inside and start negotiations again."

Mako seems to break out of his trance while Omari hums absentmindedly as if he has just woken up, "Huh? Oh, right, yes!"

Yes, negotiations, my favorite activity.

I kiss Yunia's feet and almost start using them to give myself a footjob after she volunteers to handle them alone. Then Ciel, surprisingly, but also not surprisingly, also volunteers.

"What do you mean, 'not surprisingly'?" she confusedly asks.

"I'll give you a toe-sucking after this and then finish up with a foot work that covers them with stuff," I reply matter-of-factly and leave the room, ignoring her denials of being excited by the idea.

My two dear wives then join the others in the meeting room, and Urmeie looks visibly disappointed that I'm not participating. But if things go on for too long, I'll replace the two and give the bear mommy a "bone."

For this morning, I spend some time with the golems, practicing my [Golemancy] as we discuss how to further the baby golem army project.

"Comparing the brain structures of all baby golems created so far, the colloquially named 'dumb golem' had the smallest brain of all," Ted lays out her conclusions.

"But if we're to compare the results of intelligence testing, the 'dumb golem' was the only one without any clear neurological issues. Therefore, Master Wolf's newest method for modifying brains seems to be the correct way forward," Suzy adds.

Then I turn my eyes to Jarn, but she has nothing to say.

"I suggest Master focuses his alterations on increasing brain size so that any new golems will at least have a useful level of intelligence," Ted continues.

"I suggest Master focuses his alterations on the outer layer of the brain as the golems with changes in those areas had the most problems recalling long-term memories," Suzy follows.

Then I turn to Jarn, and she finally has something to say, "I suggest Master avoid focusing on the frontal part of the brain or the central inner part as they're the locations that have caused the most varied neurological problems in the baby golems without affecting long-term memory."

"So, you three aren't in agreement?" I question curiously.

And Ted promptly explains, "Suzy and I have a small disagreement on priority while Jarn is undecided and has instead focused on the areas that seem to be unproductive."

I rub my chin with a clawed hand as I affirm, "I can do both. Half the golems will be made with a focus on a bigger brain while the other half will have a focus on the outer layer."

The two doll golems share a look as they rapidly communicate through [Bind]. After a moment, they turn back to me and speak in unison, "We are unable to decide which of the three choices is most efficient."

So I come up with a simple answer, "Removing my memories from the golems is still the priority, so that should come before making them smarter."

But Ted surprises me with her reasoning, "Less intelligent golems don't respond well to the tests, making it more difficult to recognize the changes in their behavior caused by the brain alterations."

I shrug. "Well, seems like a good idea to do both, then."

The results are two new golem types. One is kind of smarter, and the other is kind of forgetful and also a bit dumb. The latter is more important as there don't seem to be any significant neurological issues with it aside from the lower intelligence, which means that I've finally found the right path.

But while it is progress, it doesn't go any further than merely "mild forgetfulness" and "mildly smarter," so there's something else that I need to get better at before I can progress further. I bet I need to improve my visualization of the brain, but I don't have enough time to train it properly today.

Intermission – Lina

Aoi and I study a machinery book from the temple. It teaches us how gears work and how to use them to transfer power around through axles, which is essential to our research since it allows us to use standardized "engines" rather than specialized enchantments for each machine.

It's a bit thick with math, so we're going through it slowly and focusing primarily on the drawings, but my partner seems to be quite distracted today.

"Aoi? Are you really paying attention?" I ask the big dragon head beside me.

"Muh… I'm envious…" she mumbles, trying to sound cute with her mannerisms, and it kind of works if you ignore the rumbling of her double-voice.

"Of what?" I immediately ask. She has something to say, so I'll listen.

"Ciel. I wanted to say something to the Emperor, too," she confesses and tries to pout, but her draconic lips don't move that way, so I just imagine how she'd look in her human form.

"This again?" I hum back with a raised eyebrow.

She flashes a toothy grin. "I just want to whine."

I nod and close the book. "Okay, I'll listen."

"Listening is free" is something I imagine Wolfy would say, so this is the least I can do for my sister-wife.

But Aoi takes a few moments to think before she finally confesses, "I feel like I'm too passive. The others do all the fun stuff, and I just go along with it." The fact that she had to stop to formulate her words means that she didn't think this through, so me listening is already helping her find the answer to her problem.

"What stuff do you want to do?" I ask the obvious question.

"I don't know…" she mumbles and falls into thought again.

If she doesn't know what she wants, then how can I help her?

If I were Wolfy… he'd definitely do this:

"Lower your head," I order.

"Okay…" she obeys and lowers it onto the floor, bringing it into my reach and allowing me to pat it just like Wolfy does with me.

"There, there… you'll find out what you want. Just keep thinking about it," I kindly soothe her and smile.

"Okay…" Aoi whispers with a wry smile (at least, I think it's a wry smile since she can't emote that well) and rests her whole body on the floor to better enjoy my touch.

I'm fine with being passive myself because I love being pampered by Wolfy and Ciel, but maybe Aoi has a bit of Wolfy in her and also wants to "let loose"? But only Aoi herself can tell what she wants to do, so we'll just have to wait until she makes up her mind.

Intermission end.

After recovering from the cuteness overdose that the loli and the dragon gave us, everyone gathers for lunch, and we even invite Kyora to distract Urmeie with the big blue dragonkin's boisterousness.

The plan is an immediate success because after just a bit of alcohol, the two start a bragging contest about their adventures. Urmeie is obviously the stronger one due to having a higher level, but Kyora is more experienced and has more to tell.

"What's your plan with Urmeie?" Alissa quietly asks me, starting a casual discussion. She wants to have a proper conversation because it's more fun than just extracting my thoughts on the matter.

And I think this sneaky fox has ulterior motives for asking this question because I immediately have to stop to reflect. "I want her to be less… annoying. I can man up and do someone like Roxanne's mother if it's just once, but Urmeie seems to want something more, so I want her to think about the kind of relationship we'll have before I stick my thing in her."

She coyly plays with the mirror-like scales on my forearm, then hits me with another precise strike, "What don't you like about her?"

"She…" I begin but trail off as I realize something.

Uh-oh…

"She's a bit too domineering…" I embarrassedly answer.

And Alissa shows her true foxy nature as she teasingly asks, "So you want her to bend over for you?"

Well, no, but…

I groan softly and admit, "Okay, I'm not sure what, exactly, I want her to do, but maybe we just have to wait and see a bit more."

She narrows her eyes skeptically. "Uh-huh…"

What do I dislike about Urmeie, again?

She's domineering, yes, that's the biggest issue. She's pushy and a bit too unpleasant because she uses her beastfolk customs as a justification to be rude. But in the end, there aren't that many issues, so I guess it's just a bad first impression.

Maybe… we just need some time to get used to each other? Or rather, I need time to get used to her.

Now Alissa reads my thoughts, and she smiles smugly, knowing that she has correctly predicted all of my responses. She simply knows me too well.

After we eat, we continue the negotiations, and I participate for a while. Urmeie stares at me almost the whole time, trying to assume poses that show off her "assets," but she isn't very good at it, though at least it amuses me.

I leave midway, confusing the guests when Lina comes to replace me without needing any summary to continue the talks exactly where I left off. Fortunately, things end rather quickly due to us having already come to an agreement about the distribution percentages of the loot.

For us, there's nothing particularly special that we're getting. It's just more treasure that we'll stash in our castle, though maybe we should start auctioning some of it to make some quick cash. Vanea will have to do that to pay her debt to Reinhold's wife's family (which I still haven't bothered to remember the name of), so maybe we could do it together.

Curiously, Reinhold's Colossal Sword Artifact has "mysteriously" disappeared, but it's assumed that whoever "kidnapped" him has also taken the sword. The Leviathan was able to keep the Colossal Sword tied up, so I really need to keep increasing my MP and MPower until I can reliably summon it without screwing up my mana organ.

Anyway, there's only enough time for a little more work, and then we all gather again for the sacred ritual.

"Tell Sa'Haa that we would all love to have her join us," Roxanne sultrily remarks to Urmeie as we enter the huge bath.

The bear woman snorts and smirks. "I already did, and her uncomfortable expression was amazing. I'll remind her of the invitation every day."

"Wait, every day?" I blurt out confusedly.

"We're following you to Escanso," she answers matter-of-factly.

"Why…?" I whine, mildly horrified.

"Godsdamn. I didn't think you hated us this much," she replies with a frown, making me feel guilty.

I immediately hide my negative feelings, and the girls help me come up with a more diplomatic response, "I don't hate you, but I value my privacy. Having to entertain Princesses every day will become tiring."

Urmeie stares at me with a scrutinizing look, gauging my truthfulness, but then soberly reassures me, "Sa'Haa will scram every once in a while for meetings with the rest of the Union, and I'll be touring the dungeons of the High Forest, so you won't have to suffer our presence every day."

"It's mostly Sa'Haa insisting on always following those tiring formalities that annoys us," Yunia diplomatically adds.

"Heh. I know what you mean," mommy agrees with a snort.

With the bear soothed, we start to undress.

"If we invited that cute little Tommen for a bath, do you think Sa'Haa would follow?" Yunia suddenly questions, already naked since she barely wears anything.

And Urmeie brightens up as she coos, "Ooh~… there's a good chance she would."

And they turn their heads towards me.

"No," I flatly reject.

"Haven't you done everyone in front of Jacques already?" Hana questions me.

But I answer matter-of-factly, "Because I could watch Léonne and Ofilia get done by him. What do I get out of revealing all of your bodies to Tommen?"

The girls all glance at each other, searching for an idea, but there's none to be had.

"We'll suck you real hard?" Urmeie hopefully suggests.

"You wish," I smoothly hum.

"We'll suck you real hard?" Hana repeats with a suggestive grin.

"No, not worth it," I smoothly hum again and take off my tight, elastic, elven underwear.

"Nice sword, Wolf," Urmeie praises me.

"Nice mountains, Urmeie," I return the courtesy.

Her whole body is furry, so I can't really see her flower that easily, and her form-fitting clothes already gave me a pretty good idea of how curvy she is, but still, those mountains are divine. They're bigger than Ciel's, but they sag more, so I'd still say that my angel has the best pair in the whole world. Second place goes to Osaria's, and third goes to Urmeie's.

"What about mine?" Hana questions through [Bind].

I pause for a second but confidently answer, "Different category."

Flat award goes to Aoi, Loli award goes to Lina, Small goes to Roxanne, Perky is a tie between Alissa's and Yunia's, Big goes to Hana, and Huge goes to Ciel.

"We have to find something to convince Wolfy," Yunia happily continues, giving me a both teasing and hungry look after my praise.

"We have the time, so no hurry," Urmeie casually answers as we walk towards the washing area.

And I decide to remain quiet this time.

When we start soaping ourselves, the usual group of girls, plus Andrea, arrives to also share the bath with us. The adventurer trio doesn't know who Urmeie is, but just her high-level aura is enough to tell them that she's someone important, so the atmosphere is a bit more subdued this time as they feel a bit intimidated.

"Hey, I want someone to wash me," Urmeie demands after seeing us all pair off with washing partners, leaving her alone.

"Are you double-edged?" Roxanne curiously asks her.

"Not really, but I can have fun with women," bear mommy answers and raises her black eyebrows suggestively.

"No plowing," I warn my succubus through [Bind]

"Never planned to," she answers mischievously, and I actually become eager to see what she'll do.

A note from Manasong

Hall of Fame of Patrons

The patrons who support Rupegia shall have their names sung by the bards for they deserve the glory and honor. Their names are:

Prince PreownedFIN.

Prince Owldente.

Prince Definitely  not Dio.

Lord Andrew Meyers.

Lord Novgarod.

Lord Michale Erwin.

Lord Bakerdea.

Lord Maurice.

Lord Mattirro Draca.

Lord Mike Bartter.

Lord Tenebris Lupus.

Lord Paul Daval.

Lord Paul Daval.

Lord Tmac.

Lord CopeyDunt.

Lord BlindTactic.

Lord litalmexy.

Lord Philip.

Lord d3235.

Lord William Clark.

Lord Ddraig Wynn.

Lord SubJef.

Lord GalacticTNT.

Lord Placid.

Lord Caden Dinkel.

Lord McMax.

Noble Salty Panda.

Noble Mild Fracas.

Noble Aclys.

Noble Carl  Baxter.

Noble Tony Starrk.

Noble DND.

Noble Asaadullah Lassiter.

Noble Aclys.

Noble Brandon.

Noble Tony Starrk.

Leave a rating or a review to help me rise to the top or fix my shameful understanding of prose.

Take a look over my blog where all information about the world of Rupegia will be posted.

Join the Discord and discuss, or rant, or meme, or try and fight me so your waifu gets more screentime.

Become a Patron and read chapters in advance, or read the side-stories, or leave your mark on the story, or help choose the next artwork or the next side-story.

Chapter 152: Clingy Princesses - Part 3

A note from Manasong

Attention: to conform to the limit of mature content (more than just sexual content) allowed in a novel, I've censored this chapter. You can look for the uncensored version here.

Due to her size, Urmeie's washing takes the longest, and Roxanne actually does it at a slower pace, too, so that we can all savor every centimetri of the bear woman's curvy body.

Furry pair of top and bottoms, yes, but I think they'd still be fine to hotdog. So juicy you can sink your hands into them, and they simply provoke a primal need to do them within me. Then Roxanne washes the flower, almost making me go insane.

"Godsdamn, woman. Are you really washing me or just preparing me?" Urmeie growls impatiently.

"I'm a succubus. This is simply how I wash others," Roxanne replies and smirks.

"Damn-…" Then Urmeie notices how we're just staring intensely at her flower. "You're just messing with me, huh?" she growls annoyedly, simply accepting that she fell into our trap.

I just smile back and use Ciel and human-Aoi to show her what it actually means to be dominated by a dragon.

"Holy shit," Urmeie whispers, her legs spread as wide as possible, begging for it, but all she gets is herself.

"Looks like she likes it rough, so make her envious, Wolfy," Hana whispers in my mind.

I destroy Aoi with all the tools I have at my disposal, and Urmeie slows down in disbelief of what I can do. But then she starts to imagine what it would feel like to have it done to her speeds up again as her body begins to twitch uncontrollably.

But while this looks like it's the end of the bear's fun, I still haven't done Aoi's thin and frail body (in appearance only) enough. Her supermodel femininity and height just triggers my desire to break her in half, and the fact that I actually can't because her bones are hardened by magic only fuels my draconic rage further.

For as much as Aoi wants to "let loose," her proper place is with her face down and hips up as I slam into her again and again. She's my loyal dragon through and through, so it's good to reinforce that every once in a while, just like how I reinforce Klein's obedience by dominating.

With my job done, I sink into the warm water right next to my newest sword-hole.

"I'm sorry that I couldn't spend the afternoon with you," I apologize to Andrea and pull her waist closer with my thick tail.

She squeaks in surprise, then giggles softly at my domineering behavior and calmly replies, "I understand you're a busy person, Lord Wolf. I was happy with just being able to enjoy another day of elven hospitality."

"Aren't you from Plifori?" Urmeie asks as she joins us in the bath.

"Yes, I am," Andrea answers politely and dares to rest her body against my chest.

And mommy bear stares at her with thinly-veiled envy. "New woman?"

"New hole. I did her senseless repeatedly yesterday," I immediately reply, and Andrea looks down in embarrassment, but her thick tail makes waves with how fast it wags.

"'Senseless'?" Urmeie repeats skeptically.

I nod. "Yep."

But she still looks completely unconvinced.

Yunia feels like my honor is being threatened by the Princess' skepticism, so she comes to my defense, "You haven't seen anything yet. Only we, his wives, can last long enough. Anyone not used to him actually passes out from bliss before fully satisfying his hunger."

"Want me to show you an example?" I question with a challenging grin.

But Urmeie doesn't miss this chance to tempt me, "Give me one, yes."

"That isn't possible," I smoothly reply.

And she returns a frustrated look. "Keep it in its sheath, then. I got teased enough already by that demon."

So I decide it's time to mess with her a bit further. "Too bad. Now I'm in the mood."

And I use Andrea to show what I can do to the average woman.

"Is she alive…?" Urmeie asks with legitimate concern.

"Yeah, just passed out," I reassure her.

The bear pokes the abused female dog with a pointy claw, who doesn't respond no matter how hard she presses, and realization slowly appears on her face. "What the hell did you do? She's seriously passed out!" Urmeie exclaims perplexedly.

I sit on the edge of the warm pool, then wave my Tool at her as I cycle through my "textures" and explain, "I used my special, bliss-inducing spirit-touch combined with vibrations, special spot rubbing, an extremely textured Tool, and constant pointy bit stimulation to give her the best apex one could ever have."

Then I create suckers on the palms of my hands and have them twitch in a very spicy way, which makes Urmeie anxiously run her paws through her dark hair as wild fantasies run through her mind.

"Nobody will know that you did me, and even Sa'Haa doesn't care about what we do in private," she tries to bargain.

"Well, I will know, so no, no plowing for you, for now," I calmly decline.

"For now," she repeats, both frustrated and amused, and I grin back at her.

Okay, it's actually fun to mess with her like this.

For dinner, we have the Verners, Kyora's harem, Vanea, Kyros, Thelma, the adventurers, the Companions, the Princesses, Mako, and Omari as guests. A veritable party.

Sa'Haa, the female dog, gives the adventurers and the Companions the stink-eye when they become noisy from inebriation, but then she becomes interested in Kyros after she learns that he's a runaway noble.

Even though the bitch is annoying, there's no hostility between anyone here, even between the female dog and Vanea. It actually makes me wistful, seeing all of our allies getting along for once, so I sit back and watch them interact.

Intermission – Thelma

Grandpa never lets me near knives, but this time I got a fork, and it's so pointy that I get chills when I imagine stabbing my leg with it. But Grandpa's paying attention, so I can't be that naughty.

I wait until he's looking away and talking to the frightening owl-woman, then I press my thumb against one of the tips and feel the fork sink in. I almost chuckle at the weird feeling of the… metal? Wood? The whatever this is rubbing against the bone of my thumb, but Grandpa senses that I might be being naughty and turns around, so I pull it out.

"Where's your fork, Thelma?" he softly asks, but I know he's suspicious of me.

I raise my hand and show it to him, but there's no blood on it, and he narrows his eyes in suspicion. Stabbings don't make me bleed like cuts do, so I show him my hands too and do my best to hide my naughty grin because there's no evidence of what I did.

Stabbings also heal a lot faster than cuts, so there's no hole.

Intermission end.

I don't know what Thelma was doing with that fork, but her twitching face gives her away as she attempts to hide an impish grin. Kyros' face also twitches, but in embarrassment, and he takes her fork away to prevent her from doing any more mischief, giving her just a spoon instead.

She's a very good girl, so I think just a bit of mischief should be fine. Well, easier said than done because I know that children can get on someone's nerves once in a while, so I don't blame Kyros for keeping her on a tight leash in front of Princesses of all people.

But I've paid enough attention to the adorable little dog girl. I have other women who need my attention.

"I'm gonna get fat," Khepri whines as she stares hungrily at the plate of sauteed onions in front of her.

"I'd like to make a joke about you and Lord Wolf, but you already know it," Laguly dryly remarks.

"You're becoming one of us ♪," Ciel giddily sings. After getting her toes sucked, she's feeling playful, so she's letting her corrupted side come out.

"I feel like every day, I lose a little bit of something important to me…" the tomboy siren gloomily replies, hamming it up for comedic effect.

"It's called 'innocence,'" Edjo softly states.

"Yeah, that sounds about right…" Laguly quietly hums in agreement.

"How do you elves not get fat?" Khepri frustratedly asks Yunia.

"This food doesn't make you fat unless you only eat the meat, like Aoi," the Queen replies matter-of-factly.

And the bubbly woman stares confusedly at the supermodel-like human-Aoi. "But she isn't fat."

Yunia snobbishly glances at the adventurer. "She's also a dragon with a bottomless stomach."

"Gih," Gify gives her support to that statement as the resident black-hole.

Khepri sighs and fills her plate once again with delicious veggies, then flashes a smirk at my elf. "I'll trust you, then. But if I get fat, I'll go to the Tribunal and ask for compensation."

And that actually makes Yunia snort.

Then I turn to the Verners and Vanea.

"I actually won a shipment of elven bath products in a bet with Yulania," Léonne smugly brags.

"I'd trade what little treasure I got in exchange for that shipment," Vanea immediately replies while keeping her piercing eyes low, actually sounding serious.

But the fox milf isn't so easily persuaded. "I'm very proud of my victory, so I won't be trading this for anything."

The blue Princess smiles politely and nods in acceptance. "What a shame, but do consider me envious. The elves ban the export of so many things it's outrageous."

"I know, but I don't blame them. It's a great tactic to boost tourism," Léonne replies matter-of-factly, then lifts her glass of Eia and stares at the transparent nectar of the Gods.

"But the Misty Low Forest is closed to tourism," Vanea points out confusedly.

"I can still appreciate good policies," she hums, then takes a sip and slowly closes her eyes in blissful delight, and I know very well what her face looks like when she reaches the apex.

Vanea raises an eyebrow at her, suspicious of her expression, then soberly continues, "Understandable… but going back a bit. The shipment might be non-negotiable, but how about something else?"

Fox mommy is very sharp and far from drunk, so she immediately becomes impassive as she dons her Lordly mask and asks, "What do you have in mind?"

"The Blood Slave agreement," the blue princess sweetly replies.

Now that's spicy!

Alissa, Allura, Ofilia, Jacques, and I all begin paying full attention to this conversation. We all have mixed feelings about this, but we're mostly just wary of Vanea's intentions.

"Why would you want to alter that deal?" Léonne curiously inquires, also sensibly wary.

And Vanea surprisingly comes clean, "Rabanara has no more use for individual Blood Slaves, so we merely auction them to the merchants. It would benefit both of us more if we ended this agreement and replaced it with something more 'agreeable' to our palates."

Everyone's reactions to her words are positive, and Léonne amicably suggests, "Perhaps we should talk about this over the evening."

Vanea nods, still keeping her eyes low to not bother anyone with her piercing stare. "Once our bodies are clear of alcohol poisoning, yes."

Is Vanea actually becoming soft?

Alissa and I share a wistful and hopeful look. While it's true that this agreement between Rabanara and the Misty Forest is what brought Alissa and me together, the world would be a better place without it.

Hopefully, Vanea isn't doing this just to score some points with us.

"AND THEN HE THREW HIS GLOVE AT ME!" Urmeie roars, then lets out a wheezing laugh along with Kyora. "DAMN HALFLINGS; ALWAYS GOING FOR THE BIG ONES!"

"I can attest to that," Alonso quietly remarks, but the two mommies can't hear the cute shota through their laughter.

And after the howling stops, Kyora asks, teary-eyed, "And I assume that you squished him?"

Urmeie lets out a sadistic chuckle. "He thought he had time to cast [Rush] before I'd reach him. He forgot that big legs equals a long stride, which means a fast pace!"

Kyora mirrors her expression and sighs enviously. "Gods know I wish I could squish arrogant nobles like that."

"Don't you at least get to execute one every once in a while?" Urmeie retorts skeptically.

"They're evil, not arrogant, so it isn't as satisfying," dragon mommy replies, nose wrinkled in disgust.

And bear mommy nods. "Fair."

Then Alissa eavesdrops on Mako's and Omari's quiet talk.

"Perhaps the Princesses seek to 'absorb' knowledge from the Ryders?" Mako hesitantly questions.

Omari glances at the others around the table, but Alissa is quite adept at subterfuge, and nobody can see where the golems are looking, which allows us to use them to read lips, so we have many ways to hide that we're listening.

The cool imperial then turns to his masochistic dragonkin companion and shares his thoughts as he elegantly cuts his steak, "I believe there's more to it. The Empresses gave permission for a child contract, but the timing is awful as it has come so soon after the Ryders earned the Emperor's rage."

"So you think the contract is just a means to an end?" Mako impassively adds, sitting still like a statue as he's already finished his ascetic meal.

But Omari gently shakes his head as he chews. "I don't know, but we're talking about the Empresses, so even if we had a logical reason for it, you can bet there would be at least two more under the surface."

"Plotting and scheming is an imperial past-time," Mako states matter-of-factly.

And the imperial smiles wryly. "I want to deny that, but I can't…"

"Nothing outlandish there," Yunia states through [Bind], and all I can do is sigh tiredly as I agree.

Urmeie, now a bit tipsy, follows us to our bedroom unbidden. Sa'Haa can only glare at her half-sister in disapproval, which makes me more welcoming of the domineering bear mommy.

And her surprise when we get there tips the scales in her favor just a tad more. "What the hell is with the size of this bed? Do you all actually sleep together in here?" she grunts in disbelief.

"Yes," I hum and leave it at that.

But Yunia stops and knits her golden eyebrows at Urmeie in confusion. "This is standard for big harems, so why are you surprised…? No, let me ask something else: why don't you have a harem?" she questions apprehensively.

"Huh… why don't I have one…?" she grunts as she crosses her arms, bunching up her massive pillows, and knits her black eyebrows in thought. "I used to do my uncle because Dad is too queasy for incest, but then uncle stopped doing me when I got stronger than him and started doing him and his inner ass jewel, instead." -Oh, Gods, I knew I was right to fear for my asshole- "When we left Bestiaram, I was just too busy killing to get involved with another aside from occasionally using my bodyguards for stress relief… and now that I think about it, it seems like they used fighting to keep me from doing other people."

"Shouldn't Princes and Princesses have their own harems?" Alissa joins in.

But the bear shrugs, making her melons jiggle. "I was never interested in having one, really. Just doing other people."

So I question her sternly. "And you're only interested in doing me?"

"Ye-…" but she actually stops herself as she realizes that this makes her look bad. "I won't answer that one," she states with the composure of a Princess, which means that she's hiding her true feelings since she never acts like this.

I treat even prostitutes humanely and try to be friendly with them. The casual lays like Andrea and the Rafeslia adventurer trio are people I consider friends with benefits, and the Companions are straight-up pseudo-harem members.

Urmeie's callous attitude is disappointing, and hopefully, she'll fix it up if she really wants to earn my Sword.

I also hold in my true feelings and politely announce, "You still have the chance to seduce me, so use it well, but right now, there are other women who require my attention."

Then I spend the rest of the evening breeding Andrea and the Rafeslia adventurers (while Urmeie watches) because this is our last day at the embassy. I also sense that the girls are a lot more enthusiastic, and I think it's half because it's our last day and half because I implied that they aren't "just another sword."

A note from Manasong

Hall of Fame of Patrons

The patrons who support Rupegia shall have their names sung by the bards for they deserve the glory and honor. Their names are:

Prince PreownedFIN.

Prince Owldente.

Prince Definitely  not Dio.

Lord Andrew Meyers.

Lord Novgarod.

Lord Michale Erwin.

Lord Bakerdea.

Lord Maurice.

Lord Mattirro Draca.

Lord Mike Bartter.

Lord Tenebris Lupus.

Lord Paul Daval.

Lord Paul Daval.

Lord Tmac.

Lord CopeyDunt.

Lord BlindTactic.

Lord litalmexy.

Lord Philip.

Lord d3235.

Lord William Clark.

Lord Ddraig Wynn.

Lord SubJef.

Lord GalacticTNT.

Lord Placid.

Lord Caden Dinkel.

Lord McMax.

Noble Salty Panda.

Noble Mild Fracas.

Noble Aclys.

Noble Carl  Baxter.

Noble Tony Starrk.

Noble DND.

Noble Asaadullah Lassiter.

Noble Aclys.

Noble Brandon.

Noble Tony Starrk.

Leave a rating or a review to help me rise to the top or fix my shameful understanding of prose.

Take a look over my blog where all information about the world of Rupegia will be posted.

Join the Discord and discuss, or rant, or meme, or try and fight me so your waifu gets more screentime.

Become a Patron and read chapters in advance, or read the side-stories, or leave your mark on the story, or help choose the next artwork or the next side-story.

Chapter 153: Home, Sweet Home - Part 1

A note from Manasong

Attention: to conform to the limit of mature content (more than just sexual content) allowed in a novel, I've censored this chapter. You can look for the uncensored version here.

Today is the 20th, Tann, day of Darkness. The more superstitious would say this is the worst day to come home on, but I say screw them because I miss my dark milf, my fluffy sheep, and my bare cat too much to delay my return any further.

No [Golemancy] increase, but I can feel that it's near another level up. It's such a complex and deep skill that stopping at level 10 isn't practical as each level would be too dense with knowledge, so I think it'd be better if it went up to 100, like weapon and magic skills.

It's like climbing a stair. The steps can't be too big, as that would make it too hard to climb, and they also can't be too small, as they'd be wasting skill points. But if they're just the right size, the climb is as smooth as can be.

I don't eat much for breakfast because I'm too eager to go back home to focus on eating.

"What a mustch breakfast," Urmeie remarks as she stares at all the cute fruit dishes being served to us.

And I glare at her for using the slur and ruining my peace. I don't like it because it's offensive to elves, and I'm definitely a big elf "lover." Sa'Haa is also here, so it isn't like this was a perfect morning, but still.

The Verners and Alissa do look a bit wistful, though, already anticipating the coming goodbyes, and I definitely would never say they ruined anything.

After we eat, there's one last event we have to get through before we leave. We're going to inspect our newest airship.

Parked in one of the spots for nobility, our battle airship awaits us. It's a big metallic beast that's been polished until it shines. It uses the wooden hull of a standard water Carrack ship as the base, giving it an oval underbelly, but the sails have been removed, and the upper deck is covered with a metal dome where the steering wheel would be, so the upper part is also oval but smaller, leaving only a small stretch of a flat deck in front of the dome that protects the bridge.

It has a lot more space than the Floater due to its bigger underbelly, but the Floater's main laser cannon would cook this metal egg without the airship being able to even respond. The imperial airships' main fighting power comes from using groups of mages that unite their mana pools through [Ritualism] and launch siege-level spells, but it's extremely clunky to fight like that against a high-mobility ship like the Floater.

Our Field Guns would provide far better firepower for this ship, making it basically a huge flying tank. Or maybe like naval artillery at the level of World War 2.

"It's a good ship. It's a shame that its previous Captain threw it away by following Reinhold in his fit of insanity," Sa'Haa quietly remarks as we admire the ship.

"What happened to his cronies?" I reflexively ask.

But she gently shakes her head. "I don't know, but I assume their careers ended after such a humiliating loss."

"Reinhold has also disappeared, so they should be put under observation," Ciel adds.

And Sa'Haa dodges that topic. "That's something the Punishers would be concerned with, not me."

Then our welcoming party arrives. A short and stiff Picard at the center, a very tall and youthful Riker on the left, and an alluring and voluptuous Troi on the right, all with the olive skin of imperials and wearing the black velvet uniform of the Imperial Army. Deanna's face is serious, so I hold myself back from immediately flirting with her.

"Your Highnesses, we're your new officers," Riker cheerfully greets with a handsome smile.

"Captain Cyril, at your service," Picard solemnly introduces himself.

"Executive Officer Damian," Riker follows, still smiling.

"Lead Mage Supervisor Helena," Troi finishes, still impassive.

"Pleasure to meet you all," Yunia politely replies.

Then Damian surprises us by showing a bit of boldness. "And we're grateful to you for defeating our predecessor and giving us this opportunity," he smoothly declares.

"It was the Imperial Army itself that chose you to serve us, so you should be grateful to them," I sensibly reply.

And Riker gives me Riker smirk. "It was you who relieved the incompetents of their positions."

Yunia and I snort amusedly, but Cyril is a bit uncomfortable with his XO's boldness, though I like how Sa'Haa's unamused stare doesn't even faze him, so I let him off the hook for this behavior. If this was a calculated move, he seems to know us well.

They give us a tour of the interior, which is spacious and well-ventilated but packed with supplies for an army of mages. There are some big enchanted ballistae that are kept hidden in the lower hull until necessary, and an even bigger one is kept in the upper dome.

The ship doesn't have defensive enchantments, and since using the mages to create a ship-wide barrier is inefficient, they have to protect their valuable weapons with armor alone. If we put a Chimera [Wind Shield] gem in this ship, we'd have to refurbish it entirely and rip out the armor as it'd be unnecessary weight, so it might be more efficient to just build a new ship instead of overhauling this one.

But there's no point in thinking about this too hard since it won't be relevant for a long time.

Will the Elder Council even allow us to keep the Titles to begin with…?

The second cool thing is that there's a "television" enchantment all over the bridge, and it's very similar to the one used in the Throne of Ascension. It allows us to see out of the ship in all directions, which is excellent since there are quite a few centimetris of metal and also metris of rooms between it and the outside.

This enchantment is the only thing they have on the Chimeras, whose ships need the bridge to be on the front of the ship and made of a glass dome so that they can actually see where they're going. If we can copy this enchantment, we might have to come up with a whole new class of airship since neither Chimera nor Imperial designs would take full advantage of what we could do.

Anyway, Riker doesn't try any more jokes, Troi is too professional to flirt, and Picard is as stiff as they come, so the inspection is quite boring. Allura shows a lot of childish wonder at seeing the interior of the ship, and Lina is excited about the TV enchantment, so their reactions are the only entertaining things that come out of this inspection.

After ensuring that they have a way to communicate with Sandoro, we promptly leave them because I'm getting impatient about going home.

When we arrive at the [Eternal Gate] Network, we see Caterina waiting for us at the entrance alongside Kyora's harem.

"Glad to see that you've accepted our invitation, Captain Caterina," I smoothly greet her.

The stern milf nods politely and smiles, "Thank you for this favor, Your Highness. Templars rarely have the chance to use the Network as it's always considered a luxury."

And the Wandering Knight quartet all nod repeatedly in agreement.

Then Hana immediately pounces on the chance to flirt. "After you abandoned us for so long due to work, we thought it'd be too bothersome if we had to wait for you to make the journey before we could see you again," she eagerly confesses.

Caterina seems like she wants to argue that she didn't "abandon" us, but Hana's smirk makes her too wary to fall into a trap and leave herself vulnerable to flirting, so she bites her tongue and hardens her expression as she nods.

"We'll be paying for this use of the Network, so you shouldn't worry about the cost," Sa'Haa states matter-of-factly.

"Oh?" Yunia hums and turns to the owl.

And the owl's feathers rise up in pride as she haughtily declares, "We're Princesses, so we can use the Network at no cost, but don't worry, we won't consider this a favor."

Yunia takes it in stride and politely replies, "Well, we appreciate your kindness. Even for Crown Lords, the Network is too expensive to use too often." And the five Templars nod at the Princess in appreciation.

"Don't mention it," she hums back.

Okay, the female dog can be agreeable, but only sometimes.

And then we start the goodbyes.

We start with Mako and Omari, who get simple and quick handshakes. Then we move on to Vanea, who pulls me into a hug, and one of her hands falls onto my ass, so I mirror her and get a handful of a tight cheek.

"I'll be waiting for you to dominate those Realm Travelers," she whispers sultrily in my ears, but I notice that her intensity is a bit more subdued than usual.

Should I really put my dick in crazy…?

"You play with fire, teasing me like this," I growl back.

And her tone becomes even more steamy. "I'm confident I can handle your rage."

I might be a bit crazy myself.

Then we disentangle, and I give Kyros a strong handshake.

"Once again, I'll be forever grateful to you," the salt and peppered imperial sincerely repeats.

"Just taking out the trash," I ferociously reply, and we both chuckle.

I give little Thelma a headpat, and she almost melts from my skilled touch.

"Goodbye, Thelma," I whisper warmly.

"Bye!" she exclaims cutely and waves.

Then the Verners are next.

"I'll miss you," Allura whispers wistfully to her sister as they hug.

"Oh, we know you will," Alissa replies suggestively.

"You'll all miss us dearly," I cheekily add and smirk at Léonne.

The foxy milf simply nods and agrees, "Of course. We look forward to having many orgies with you in the future."

"My dear… watch your phrasing," Jacques quietly complains, his posture stiff with unease.

"I phrased it precisely how I wanted to," she replies soberly, then flashes a smirk.

So I decide to join in by patting the big red beast on the arm as I declare, "I'm looking forward to releasing loads with you, Jacques. Get yourself some bed skills so you can keep up, eh?"

And he narrows his eyes at me, considering whether or not it's worth it to give in to my taunt. "I only keep up enough to satisfy my wives. Increasing my stamina would just make me unnecessarily lust for more," he judiciously answers and crosses his arms, pleased with his own verbal evasion.

Ofilia suddenly blushes and smiles uncontrollably, and Alissa guesses that it's because he referred to her as a "wife" and not just a maid.

But I have a secret card to play that he can't escape from, so I turn to Léonne and calmly state, "Then you should increase your stamina and encourage him to get more wives. Orgies become more fun with more people."

"Not sure about the second part, but sure, I will," she calmly responds.

I smile warmly and state, now completely earnest, "We'll look forward to our next meeting then."

And she mirrors my expression. "Likewise."

Then I shake Jacques' massive hand, give Léonne a quick but tight hug to feel her pair and take in her intoxicating perfume, share a nod with Ofilia, and play with Allura's mouth for a couple of minutes, leaving her out of breath. The shameless young fox tries to get my friend out, but I don't let her, and then I get a bit hot just from thinking about how thirsty she is for me.

But before she can say anything, Alissa surprises her with a Frenchie and then leaves her hanging just as she begins to really get into it. Again, Alissa isn't gay. She just loves doing things that give me boners, like being gay with her sister.

"Screw you guys for making me excited," the younger fox whines as she realizes that there won't be any release for her.

I ignore her and soothingly state, "We'll truly miss you." Then I give her sensitive ears a quick [Massage].

"We'll have a lot of fun next time we meet, and I don't mean spicy stuff," Alissa kindly adds.

I release Allura's ears, and her shoulders start to sag in sadness. "Screw you for making me emotional," she mumbles and dries the corners of her eyes.

So Alissa and I give her a tight hug. We really like this thirsty and energetic fox.

She takes a minute to get a hold of her emotions, then we give her a peck and move on to the next set of goodbyes.

"I'd like to present you three with this…" I begin and motion for the Companions, who pull out three of our standard-issue enchanted bows, which are considerably more powerful than the average adventurer's bow, exactly the kind that the Rafeslia trio uses.

"I-I don't know what to say," Khepri mumbles, completely stunned.

"A 'thank you,' to start," Edjo composedly replies with a smirk.

"Thank you!" her two companions immediately exclaim.

And I soothe them, "This isn't anything special. We just want you three to stay safe."

"And maybe come visit us, hm?" Hana adds and raises her eyebrows suggestively.

The three of them had a lot of "fun" with the wives, so we're sure they'll be tempted to visit and spend some time with us again.

"Escanso has opened itself up quite a lot to adventurers ever since we became its Lords," Alissa piles on, and light appears in Edjo's cat eyes, but then she frowns pensively.

"Rafeslia doesn't operate in the High Forest…" the catgirl hesitatingly states.

Her bubbly companion is a lot more optimistic. "But I don't think it'll be that hard to convince a guild of women to come adventure at a town ruled by Lord Wolf," Khepri cheekily retorts.

That seems to be enough to convince Edjo, who drops the frown for a subtle smirk as she jokes, "Then we'll definitely come and ask you to take responsibility."

To avoid falling into her trap, I don't say anything and just grin instead.

"We're all former adventurers, so we'll always treat the adventurers right," Hana states reassuringly.

"There will always be some elves that are arrogant and hostile to outsiders, but you'll have the Lords supporting you," Yunia soberly adds, and the trio nod in understanding.

"But you have to visit, even if it's just to have fun," Roxanne affably continues.

And Edjo states confidently, "We will. One way or another, we'll visit one day."

Then the hugging and kissing starts.

Intermission – Urmeie

"Am I the only one who thinks this is weird?" I ask out loud as the Ryders have an orgy of kisses.

"How so?" Chieftess Léonne coolly inquires. This woman makes me wary because she seems twice as shrewd as Sa'Haa.

"The number of relationships the Ryders have. Not even my Dad is like that," I hum in confusion.

The stern fox nods and answers as if it's obvious, "My daughter is Blessed by the Goddess of Love."

"You'll just have to accept that that's the way they are," her alluring husband adds.

And even her daughter comes to their defense, "He's talking from experience. There's no explanation; the Ryders are just incredible like that."

"Incredible" indeed…

"Everything is fine as long as they're all happy, no?" Dame Vanea sweetly asks.

Even I know that Vanea agreeing with someone isn't actually a good thing.

So I turn to my sister, who seems completely uninterested in the conversation. Which is odd since she's giving up on the opportunity to bicker with Vanea.

"Really? You have no thoughts about this?" I can't help but taunt her.

She gives me a tired glare and begins her spiel, "I've already given my opinion once. If the Ryders want to mingle with their 'lessers,' then it's their reputation that takes a hit. I don't want to be seen-…"

But she almost makes me fall asleep with just a few words, so I interrupt her, "Okay, okay, I've remembered that I already know what you think, and I'd rather not listen to you rant. I'm just surprised that so many women like to get into casual relationships with them."

"Magical sword," Chieftess Léonne states.

"Magical seed," her shameless daughter follows up.

I never knew that the Misty Foxes were such "fun" people…

"They're also very friendly with everyone, and their high 'Charisma' helps," her big-dicked, more-bear-than-fox husband actually gives me the answer I was looking for.

"I guess I'm too high level for that shit to work on me," I hum with a shrug.

"Likewise," Sa'Haa agrees.

"Your loss," the shameless daughter replies with a grin.

And now Sa'Haa has one more name to add to her long, long list of "I don't like you" people.

I mean, I'm also on that list, so I guess this Allura is a fun person.

Then I turn to the curious mature elf watching the kiss orgy impassively. "And what about you, Punisher? Lord Hanafuria is very flirty with you," I immediately ask, and she seems surprised that I'm actually talking to her.

"She doesn't have as many relationships as Lord Wolf…" the Punisher answers evasively.

"Hmm…?" I grunt inquisitively, but she simply ignores me.

Well… I think I like this one.

Intermission end.

Edjo's kiss is bittersweet. She seems to really like me, though it feels like it's more respect than love, similar to the rest of the Companions. Khepri's kiss is hungry and steamy, but she's enjoyed Hana's company more than mine. She just loves my sword. And Laguly's is wistful. The tomboy siren has enjoyed staying with us, though she doesn't know how to put it into words.

The Companions then say their goodbyes to the Rafeslia trio. Though they had some "fun" together, they also trained together, and Lordsguard training is specifically made to strengthen bonds, so their camaraderie is stronger than their lust. There's a chance they'd pull a Nikolas or Lolo if we stayed longer, but I'm too homesick to bet on that, and the fact that they belong to Rafeslia greatly diminishes the chances that they'd come with us.

And the last one is Andrea. She might have had a bit of fun with everyone, but she's a sword-hungry, obedient, submissive, and breedable female dog through and through.

"Don't pull it out here, please," Sa'Haa tiredly requests as I slip one inside the dog.

I smirk at the female dog-y owl, then use all of my tools to give Andrea a quick apex, and the Doberman woman leans against me, breathing heavily and holding herself back from voicing it out loud. I can deal with not getting my sword wet this time, but I need to imprint upon Andrea's mind that she belongs to me.

"I'll be eagerly waiting for our next meeting," I whisper into her pointy ear.

"Say 'Yes, Master,'" Alissa whispers into the other.

"Yes… M-Master-…!" the female dog answers with a trembling voice as she reaches the apex from my hand.

"Good…" I whisper huskily, then assume a more normal tone. "And sorry about keeping you from your job for so long."

"It's fine… they'll understand," she weakly reassures me.

I take my hand out and lick up the small drop of white cream she left on my fingers, then I [Clean] her to not leave her smelling of female "excitement."

And with that, we're off.

We cross through the white veil of the huge [Eternal Gate], and the warm and mildly salty air of Mac Gantus is replaced with the more humid and mossy air of Escanso. The colorful tiles become glossy wood full of intricate patterns; the bright illumination becomes more moody and gentle; and the stern imperial guards become the respectful and welcoming elves.

Home, sweet home.

And at the exit of the Network is our welcoming party. Osaria, Poosh, Kaatohe, Klein (who looks tired from the trip as the Floater kept flying overnight), the maids, and a small group of Companions, all eagerly waiting for us.

I make a beeline for Poosh and Osaria's pairs, then pull in Kaatohe with my tail and force her to also suffocate in pillows.

"Nyah!" my bare bronze cat exclaims in surprise.

"I missed you all~…!" I whine, my voice muffled by the big mounds full of the hopes and dreams of men and lesbians alike.

"We also missed you, Your Highness," Poosh kindly coos back and hugs my horns.

"Things are rather boring around here without Your Highnesses," Osaria states, a noticeable hunger in her tone.

I noticed that my milf's libido steadily dropped with each day we were away, to the relief of the maids, but I guess it'd be pretty depressing for Osaria to not be bred every day like she's been getting accustomed to.

Kaatohe remains silent, still a tsundere, but she also seems to be enjoying the pillows.

"Group hug!" Roxanne suddenly exclaims.

And even the maids join in.

"I agree that they're a bit weird…" Sa'Haa quietly remarks, and Urmeie snorts loudly.

Of course, I haven't forgotten about Osaria taking Thea's first time, and her punishment will be meted out tonight.

A note from Manasong

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Chapter 153: Home, Sweet Home - Part 2

A note from Manasong

Attention: to conform to the limit of mature content (more than just sexual content) allowed in a novel, I've censored this chapter. You can look for the uncensored version here.

Caterina leaves along with Kyora and her harem, so I decide to get a bit spicy with my women to satisfy my craving for their bodies. I play with Osaria's inverted bits for a bit, then also get some of Poosh's pink pair. I'm going to do Poosh so hard tonight that she might as well take a day off.

"You two, clear your agenda for tomorrow, you won't be able to do anything," I huskily order, and the maids start humming suggestively at them.

"As you wish, Your Highness," Poosh immediately replies with an obedient nod, her excitement leaking through her tone.

Osaria simply breathes in heavily, which is very amusing since I'll be torturing her all night long.

Next, I turn to Kaatohe and get a handful of her bare body as I give her a quick kiss. "Missed you, my dear cat," I whisper warmly, and she narrows her eyes at my words but still gives my jewels a kind rub.

Then I turn to Klein, who looks like she hasn't slept well, and give her a peck. "You and the rest of the men who came on the Floater should take a day off and get some sleep," I kindly order.

My submissive and breedable monkey girl simply nods absentmindedly as she smiles, then turns around and takes one of the many [Eternal Gate]s towards our bedroom instead of going out towards Hermann's.

Lastly, I turn around to Iliada, my favorite maid. The young golden elven girl is sweet and obedient, but because of her youth, she can get ready on command for me.

She stares at me with eyes so full of wonder that it hurts. I'll definitely have to put a baby in her when she's older because her love for me is as pure as it comes.

"You'll also have to take a day off tomorrow because you'll be joining us tonight," I seductively command, and her legs waver.

"I can't wait…!" she whispers excitedly. Then I make her melt in my arms with a deep kiss.

The other thirsty maids and Companions also get kisses, mostly from me, Hana, and Yunia, who are the favorites of most of them, but even Lina has a pair of fujoshi-looking maids who shyly ask her for a kiss. Roxanne has the widest diversity of maid types attracted to her, Ciel has the favor of the younger maids, and Alissa has the girlish ones. Aoi is also surprisingly popular, but I think it's partly because the women who serve us all have a dragon desire and partly because her freakishly tall and slender human form tickles "inverted edges" in a special way.

Osaria and Poosh kiss everyone, of course, and when we're finally done, the pair of Princesses are starting to look impatient. There are still more formalities that neither I nor any of the girls feel eager to go through.

Thankfully, Osaria takes over and begins the polite introductions, "It's an honor to have both Imperial Princesses grace us with your presence."

But she sounds a bit apologetic at making them wait, and I don't want my milf to look submissive in front of the Princesses, so I suddenly blurt out, "Don't kneel. You, Poosh, and Kaatohe shouldn't kneel."

Osaria is excusable since she's the Lady of a King, but Poosh and Kaatohe aren't (yet), so Sa'Haa visibly gets annoyed (which I love to see) while Urmeie couldn't care less.

My droopy-eyed milf freezes as she processes my words, then grins widely and straightens her back. Poosh becomes tense as she knows what it means to not kneel in front of imperial royalty, and Kaatohe becomes smug as she has a sense of superiority that rivals even the elves'.

The rest of the maids and Companions do kneel, but it makes me feel like I'm being NTR'd. They're my servants, mine! I don't want them to look obedient to others, even guests. But the NTR ends after a short moment, so I don't have time to get properly irritated.

"Your possessiveness towards our people is mildly amusing," Yunia remarks through [Bind].

"It's very noble. I know Wolfy feels something similar even towards our male citizens and the women who have no interest in him," Alissa lovingly adds.

"Yes, it's… 'noble,'" Ciel hesitantly agrees, making me chuckle.

The Princesses are introduced by their stone-faced bodyguards, and then the usual hand-kissing and handshaking start.

"I'm Lady Osaria, and I belong to King Wolf and his wives," Osaria politely begins.

"I'm Armanpoosh, High Chamberlain," Poosh sweetly follows.

And then my bare cat pompously finishes, "I'm Kaatohe Karaka Ngerua, a noble, an ace pilot, and leader of the Interceptors, though I don't believe we'll be using those planes anymore after the Raki has been built."

Sa'Haa is definitely displeased to know that a simple Chamberlain and a random noble won't kneel in front of her, but she's being more agreeable than usual to get on our good side, so she lets it slide.

"Can I go clotheless like the Chimeras?" Urmeie asks her sister after taking a good look at Kaatohe's delicious bronze bare body.

"You aren't a Chimera," Sa'Haa dryly replies.

"But I want to follow their customs."

And the stern owl flashes a glare. "No, you don't. You just want to show yourself. I'll use my authority and prohibit you from doing that."

"Balls…" the bear grunts, and even her bodyguards look amused.

Then Osaria tentatively continues, "Forgive me if it's impudent on my part, but I'm curious to know why such esteemed Princesses have come to visit our town."

"You haven't told her?" Sa'Haa asks us with a thin, black eyebrow raised high.

"We don't know either," I answer with a shrug.

The irritated (more than usual) owl turns to her half-sister. "You haven't told them?"

And Urmeie has the decency to look embarrassed as she grunts, "Right, they asked, but I forgot to answer."

We also forgot to press her for an answer because we got distracted by bear pillows.

Sa'Haa facepalms internally, then turns to me and kindly explains, "Our mothers have deemed you, Wolf Ryder, worthy of being a Consort, so we'll be staying close to you for a while to ascertain your compatibility with us. I also desire to meet with the spirit Chimeras and discuss gem production as they have the potential to end the shortage the Empire is experiencing with the loss of Aremut."

Oh… shit…

Osaria and Kaatohe subtly raise their eyebrows in surprise and turn to me, waiting for my reaction, but I'm less than thrilled.

Yunia promptly reassures her, "You don't have to worry about the gems for much longer. We're holding on to them for now as we give priority to our airship research, but we'll soon start selling large quantities of refined gems."

"It's the 'Consort' part that's more to our interest," I apprehensively follow, anticipating a headache.

Sa'Haa's feather hairs rise up proudly, and she hugs her thin body as she pompously brags, her tone awfully similar to Kaatohe's self-introduction, "I have a chance of becoming Empress one day, so my partners and future fathers of my children need to be carefully vetted so that they don't cause trouble for the Empire."

I narrow my eyes, and even my thick tail deflates in disappointment. "And I'm the definition of 'trouble,' to the Emperor, at least," I dryly reply.

And she nods. "Exactly."

Kaatohe snorts softly at her bluntness, which sounds quite loud as an awkward silence settles in.

I sigh softly and utter something unthinkable, "But what if I have no interest in becoming a Consort?"

The maids inhale sharply, and it makes me feel quite accomplished to be showing my people how casually I deal with imperial royalty. It's like I'm asserting dominance by being borderline insolent, and dragons are all about asserting dominance.

Sa'Haa unhesitatingly scoffs and calls my bluff, "I find it hard to believe that you have no interest in having a child with a Princess."

If it's with you, then yeah, no thanks.

"Don't reject her outright, Wolfy," Yunia firmly requests through [Bind].

I'd like to complain, but Yunia's scheming senses and power-hunger have been turned up to eleven, so I'm forced to at least look non-committing.

Then Alissa comes in with a depraved "encouragement," "You having a child with an Empress would be so… exciting."

It's an "interesting" prospect, I agree, yes. But it also sounds like a headache for the future worse than sticking my thing in crazy.

I decide to simply deflect, "What about Princess Urmeie? She has no interest in becoming Empress, right?"

"She's still a Princess with a very high level and a number of military accomplishments behind her."

Urmeie flinches, actually surprised, but then she sarcastically remarks, "Wow, thanks, sister."

"Don't make it awkward," Sa'Haa quietly replies without looking at her.

I still have very mixed feelings about these two, but now's not the time to sort them out.

"Fair enough," I accept. Then I turn to Poosh. "Give them the best rooms in the higher branches of the castle."

"I'll sleep with you," Urmeie immediately interjects.

"No. Not every day at least," I immediately shoot her down. I'm eager for the opportunity to sleep while hugging big mama teddy bear here, but I feel like I might end up doing her the moment those huge knockers and thick thighs touch me.

And she gives me a dangerous look. "You're enjoying this."

Yes, I am, but I can't confirm it in front of Sa'Haa, so I deflect again, "I reserve the right to not confirm or deny that."

That actually makes her a bit angry, but thankfully, she's learning and doesn't immediately confront me. Instead, she just grunts frustratedly as she shakes her head.

Then the Princesses leave, and we're finally allowed to enjoy our homecoming.

The girls disperse, with the golems going with some of them as bodyguards. Alissa goes to check on Hatara; Roxanne, Kaatohe, and Hukarere all go to the garden together to drink; Hana chases after Caterina, totally because she wants to tell her what Kyros told us; Ciel goes to the temple, and it's because she actually wants to tell them what Kyros told us; Yunia gives the Clown Troupe a short visit; Lina and Aoi immediately retreat to their research lab; and even Gify teleports to her personal garden room, so I decide to check up on Klein, and Osaria follows me.

My submissive monkey girl is already fast asleep, looking like a brown angelic bundle of cuteness. It'd be cruel to wake her up, so I make sure that Osaria and I are as quiet as possible.

"Don't you two have a 'close relationship'?" I whisper to my milf as I stare at Klein's long monkey tail, cutely coiled around itself.

"As close as two flowers can be," the shameless woman answers in the best way possible.

I ignore the full mast her words give me and continue, "You've noticed that she's been slowly changing?"

She nods softly and lands a hand on the base of my thick tail. "I have. She's slowly growing into her role as a knight."

I don't know where I'm going with this topic. It just makes me happy that others can also see Klein's growth.

I just have such a big heart…

But then the balcony calls to me, and I take in the lovely view of Escanso in the morning from atop my castle. My castle, my town, my people, my "kingdom." King in name only, but little by little, more people treat us as royals, and the girls and I gradually become more comfortable with this Title.

"It hasn't been that long since you left, but you look like you were very homesick," Osaria remarks as she caresses the base of my tail.

I feel a gentle chill run up my spine, then I quietly hum, "Of course. Back on Earth, my home was my cave, and I was a dragon that never left my nest. Now that I've found a new home, I simply don't want to ever leave this place."

She chuckles softly, a gentle and warm sound that's so different from her usual sultry tone. "You've changed in some ways but not in others, I see. But it makes me happy to see how fond you are of this town."

I look up at her red jewels and smoothly reply, "Who wouldn't be? With this many wonderful people around me, this castle is my piece of Heaven."

She suddenly pulls my head into her massive chest, but I notice a bit of pain behind her expression before my view is blocked by dark pillows. Then I remember her history with this place. She used to live here with her late husband and Rande before they were kicked out and disowned.

She hasn't really talked much about her past, so most of what I know comes from Yunia. She already knows so much about me, even most of my secrets, but the contrary can't be said.

She's my concubine, and I love her, so I motorboat her a bit until I get the courage to ask, "You used to live here, didn't you?"

"Yes, with Rande and my late husband," she quietly answers, her mood starting to dip.

I raise my head and hug her tight as I look her in the eye. "You've never spoken about your husband."

Her droopy eyes become reminiscent of Lina's gloomy pair, and she gently caresses my head as she replies, "It's best he's forgotten forever. He was a horrible person who met his deserved end at the sword of a Templar."

I frown and bury my head in her chest again as I enter deep thought, but first, I let out a sound as she begins to massage my horns.

My heart is conflicted about something. The Alkimeonids family was a decaying noble house, so they repeatedly met with "misfortune" as they continued their evil acts, but what about Osaria's? What about Yunia's? Both Este family brothers, Yunia's father and her uncle, died in less than honorable ways. Is her family's "bad luck" something the Gods are responsible for? Was their fall intentional?

But that's not all. Were all of those people born only to face such misfortune and then serve as stepping stones for me?

Before the girls can interject into my thoughts, I accept that this is an overly pessimistic view of the world. I just don't know how far the Gods can influence our Fate. It's that same argument of "nature" versus "nurture." How much of our lives is an outcome of our free will? How much is mere luck? How much is because of the Gods pulling the strings?

I would understand someone if they simply said they didn't want the Gods watching over us anymore just so that there'd be no chance that they could ever face divine-guided misfortune. I'd still kill them for heresy, but I'd understand their reasons.

I raise my head again and soothingly state, "Whenever you feel like talking about him, I'll listen."

Her mournful expression gives way to a heartfelt smile. "Thank you, Wolfy."

And our lips touch in a gentle peck to seal our feelings for each other.

"But let's talk about something more cheerful, hm?" she eagerly suggests.

"Like…?"

"A Lady sent you a painting of her pillows."

My mind gets a BSoD, and it takes a short moment for it to reboot. "What…?" I quack.

And she grins widely. "It's quite a fine pair, if I may say so."

"Show it to me."

Indeed. These are some nice elven pair. A nice, apple-sized pair with a bit of sag and considerable circles with small pointy bits. Smaller than Alissa's with a nice pink skin tone and some very red bit. Very nice and feminine with a bit of an alluring air. They'd look great in a dousnadeia, which would allow them to jiggle a bit.

My claws itch to grab them, but I reel the dragon in and soberly declare, "Inquire whether she wants to take advantage of my endless hunger or is just interested in draconic plowing. I'd love to do her, but I have my mind and hands full dealing with Princesses."

"As you wish, Your Highness," she obediently replies with a smirk.

I have a lot of people to meet, and while I get (another) full mast while thinking about Nono, Lyle is the closest, so I decide to meet with him first.

He's with Alissa, Hatara, and Garanae as they drink tea in the back garden of their mansion.

"Wolf!" the (possibly) gay boy with wild eyes and equally wild black hair happily exclaims the moment he sees me. If he were a weredog, his tail would be wagging uncontrollably.

Hatara looks as cute as always, but the raven-haired girl has learned well how to wear risque outfits that give her a mature and alluring air. "Welcome back, Your Highness. Alissa was just finishing telling us of your battle with the Army," she coolly greets.

"Welcome back, Your Highness," Garanae follows up. The blonde young noble looks more comfortable than the last time we met. He seems to be losing his fear of me and Alissa, which is nice since I can soon begin teasing him about the time he stole a kiss from Alissa.

"Hello, and thank you," I reply and take a seat. They're drinking not-earl-gray, so Alissa immediately serves me a cup, and I eagerly take a sip.

And Lyle immediately begins sharing his progress with computers, "Wolf, I've managed to create the 'data storage' that you've talked about. It's… a bit complicated to use it, so I wanted to know more about what it's going to be used for since there are many functions I could add depending on what's necessary."

Then he gets into the nitty-gritty details that even I struggle to keep up with.

Meanwhile, Ciel has a meeting with the managers of her budding Ministry of Health. They've been taking and compiling reports from the healers we've spread all over our territory, and they're trying to analyze this data to find any problems they could deal with to lower the workload on the healers or if any worrying issues are emerging.

An idea slowly forms within my mind, and after seeing how much work it is to read through all those medical reports, I come up with the next steps.

"Lyle, the next thing we need to focus on is a 'display,' a way to 'interpret' all those 'states' into something anyone could understand. For example, if you press the 'addiction' button, the display could light up the words 'addiction button pressed.' But that's just the first step.

"Next, we'll need to also use that display to convert numbers into words. Each letter of the alphabet can be mapped to a number, and then the display can read numbers and automatically convert them into words.

"And finally, once we have a way to store words into the 'data storage,' we'll build a 'database,' a way to easily go through all that stored data to find what you need. Just like how a librarian knows exactly where each book is."

And as I finish my last phrase, a light shines in Lyle's wild eyes. A calculator is something open-ended with not a lot of practical use in this world, but using the example of a librarian has given him a very concrete idea of what a computer can be used for, and now the inventor within him has been awoken.

A note from Manasong

Hall of Fame of Patrons

The patrons who support Rupegia shall have their names sung by the bards for they deserve the glory and honor. Their names are:

Prince PreownedFIN.

Prince Owldente.

Prince Definitely  not Dio.

Lord Andrew Meyers.

Lord Novgarod.

Lord Michale Erwin.

Lord Bakerdea.

Lord Maurice.

Lord Mattirro Draca.

Lord Mike Bartter.

Lord Tenebris Lupus.

Lord Paul Daval.

Lord Paul Daval.

Lord Tmac.

Lord CopeyDunt.

Lord BlindTactic.

Lord litalmexy.

Lord Philip.

Lord d3235.

Lord William Clark.

Lord Ddraig Wynn.

Lord SubJef.

Lord GalacticTNT.

Lord Placid.

Lord Caden Dinkel.

Lord McMax.

Noble Salty Panda.

Noble Mild Fracas.

Noble Aclys.

Noble Carl  Baxter.

Noble Tony Starrk.

Noble DND.

Noble Asaadullah Lassiter.

Noble Aclys.

Noble Brandon.

Noble Tony Starrk.

Leave a rating or a review to help me rise to the top or fix my shameful understanding of prose.

Take a look over my blog where all information about the world of Rupegia will be posted.

Join the Discord and discuss, or rant, or meme, or try and fight me so your waifu gets more screentime.

Become a Patron and read chapters in advance, or read the side-stories, or leave your mark on the story, or help choose the next artwork or the next side-story.

Chapter 153: Home, Sweet Home - Part 3

A note from Manasong

Attention: to conform to the limit of mature content (more than just sexual content) allowed in a novel, I've censored this chapter. You can look for the uncensored version here.

"What?" I ask Alissa as she just stares at me, a lazy smile on her cute red lips.

"I just love watching you talk about work. You look so passionate it's mesmerizing," she happily answers with a foxy smile.

"I also like to watch Garanae practice magic. His serious look is so handsome," Hatara chimes in, and her shameless flirting makes her chaste husband fidget in happy embarrassment.

And Alissa's gaze becomes sly as she continues, "But it's the 'passionate' part, specifically, that I love. When Wolfy talks with Lyle, his face looks similar to when he's with me, so I can't help but imagine the two doing it. With Wolfy on top, of course."

"Oh my," Hatara hums and smirks suggestively.

Garanae decidedly doesn't enjoy the topic as even though he had a crush on Alissa, he still has (or maybe, now, had) a lot of respect for her. The young man definitely dips on both sides because while he tries to be virtuous, I'm sure Hatara isn't.

But I'm just focusing on him to ignore Lyle's reaction, which is like that of a shy young maiden being teased, an expression that I've seen many times before, and a sight that I'd rather not register in my memory.

"Gify says that this event will be impossible to forget as we've already recorded it in our memories," Ted solemnly reports through [Bind].

Why, you-…!

Why do the girls love to torture me with gay shit so much?

"Because you're always so manly and domineering. It's like teasing Lina with Ciel's cow pair," Yunia answers matter-of-factly.

"Please don't tease me like that," the little flat girl pleads.

Okay, I get it, but it's still torture.

"You torture me with your painful 'memes,'" Alissa dryly replies.

"Ha! Can't handle some bantz?" Roxanne promptly follows with a tease.

I want to say "no," but the prideful dragon takes over and keeps my mouth shut.

"What an interesting reaction, Wolf," Hatara slowly remarks, staring at me with impish eyes reminiscent of a certain spicy demon woman I know.

Tactical retreat!

I stand up and smoothly announce, "I've given Lyle enough guidance for now. If you'll excuse me, I have other business to attend to."

"Uh…? Ah, o-okay…" Lyle mumbles bashfully, and I refuse to look him in the eye.

I need eye bleach!

"Until next time, Your Highness," Hatara politely replies. This girl has matured into someone scary. My condolences to Garanae because I don't think it's easy for such a sweet boy like him to handle this budding femme fatale.

Yunia volunteers to be my eye bleach, so she accompanies me as we take a stroll through the inner and outer circles of mansions around the castle. When we reach the Shell, we take an open carriage pulled by Gatuns and have some thirsty Companions accompany us.

We could simply take a [Gate], but we feel like taking an enjoyable ride, though I soon begin to feel a bit awkward.

"Their Highnesses…!" hushed gasps follow in our wake. The commoners almost all recognize us from the huge portraits of our faces on all four cardinal directions of the Shell, and even those who don't know who we are only need to look up to have their answer.

While Yunia revels in this kind of attention, it's still a bit much for me. I revel in desire, not open worship, so I don't get much satisfaction out of it unless it's a blushing woman.

The Companions are all wearing armor and walking alongside the carriage, except for one who's a mage and is standing solemnly at a salience behind our seats. She's a pretty silver elf with the budding mature air of a woman in her twenties, but when our eyes meet, she blushes like a young maiden. Her hair is tied up inside the hood of her robe, but even with a partially shrouded face, it's obvious she's just as beautiful as any other elf.

Curiously, she should be wearing standard scale armor, but her thin robe seems to hug her slender body in just the right spots. She'll get a reprimand for not wearing armor, but she's also just the right size and weight to fit on my lap, so I feel tempted. She isn't as perfect as my lap loli but is just enough to satisfy me.

I stare at her, making her tense up adorably. Then I huskily order, "You, Mara, sit on my lap."

"Y-you know my name?" she quietly squeaks in surprise.

And I merely nod but don't elaborate.

She hesitates for a moment and glances at her comrades, who flash her envious and annoyed looks. Then she guiltily vaults over the seats and obediently sits on my bulge.

"I've already been with you once, haven't I?" I inquire with a smirk.

"Y-you have, Your Highness," she quietly answers with a shy nod.

Then I grab her small chin and reminisce about a certain sight. "And your mouth has already tasted it, hasn't it?"

She nods again, and the memory of her deepthroating me becomes clear in my mind. "It has, Your Highness."

"Good," I whisper seductively and sneak a hand through the back opening of her robe. Then I slither a tentacle and start. "Hold your voice, or I'll stop."

She nods repeatedly and holds a hand over her mouth to prevent her whimpers from leaking out. Even though she's trying to remain composed, the way her body subtly shudders in pleasure is delightful to see.

I lay back and just leisurely play with her body, but I also sling my free arm around Yunia's shoulder and cup a feel of a juicy pillow. My Queen is also attracted to Mara's beauty, so we both happily observe her as the Companion slowly goes mad with pleasure.

Escanso is as beautiful as always. A colorful town full of tree-houses and houses merged with trees, with beautiful crowns of leaves serving as roofs and bark shaped in mesmerizing elven patterns. All neatly arranged in blocks of houses and divided by many concentric rings of roads, leading to possibly the most well-organized town in the entire world.

And as we make our way along these beautiful roads, Mara rests in my arms, exhausted to the point she's almost falling asleep. But she's still on duty, so I offer her a cup of hot tonique tea, which she prefers over coffee since she isn't used to its bitter taste. Though she definitely has a taste for my bitterness.

We leave Yunia at the Lord's Hall in the Nobles' Quarter to meet with the Mayor and get a personal update on the state of our territory. Then the carriage continues to the Institute, and by the time we get there, Mara has recovered enough to walk on her own.

At this moment, Ciel finishes reporting what Kyros told us to Teresina.

And my favorite gilf sighs tiredly in response. "Unfortunately, nobles researching immortality is a recurring problem, though narrowing it down to the extended royal family will help a lot with future investigations," she calmly states.

Ciel nods and sweetly thanks our stern ally, "Thank you for always being so helpful. You and your daughter have done a lot for our family."

Teresina hesitates for just a split second, but that's enough evidence that her heart has been struck. "Hm, of course," she proudly replies. "My daughter does it with gusto as she's never had the chance to kill so many heretics before." -Ciel's expression stiffens in discomfort, but she keeps her smile on her face- "Though, as for me, I'd rather you gave me less work. It's hard to keep up with you young Lords."

And Ciel chuckles softly. "Apologies for giving you trouble. I think Wolfy himself is responsible for a good part of it."

Hey!

"I'm inclined to agree," Teresina hums, and they share cordial chuckles. Such a gentle expression actually fits well with the gilf's stern beauty, but it only lasts for a short moment as she then becomes curious about something. "This 'Kyros' noble. You said his granddaughter is a weredog?"

"Yes, why?"

"Katasko is notorious for being human supremacists. Why would a man married to a weredog join them?"

Ciel's happiness deflates as even she starts to smell a scheme of some sort. "Kyros said his son was greedy."

Teresina's expression becomes severe. "And Kyros is an instructor of [Godly Language]?"

"Indeed."

She averts her eyes and plays with her teacup as she deliberates, "So he's not a noble of low standing, yet his son and his bond-daughter were murdered, and then he was forced to hide in Rabanara." Then she turns her eyes to Ciel again. "He's not telling you everything he knows."

Lina's Trivia: bond-daughter is a less silly way of saying not-blood-daughter, the equivalent of daughter-in-law for earthlings.

Ciel sighs in acceptance and dispiritedly adds, "He also said that all the evidence he had died with his son."

Teresina frowns. "What was this 'evidence'?"

"A sample of 'immortal' flesh and reports suggesting that it could be used for immortality."

"I'd be skeptical that this 'sample' was lost."

Could he or Thelma be immortal?

But this topic is making Ciel very uncomfortable. Her first instinct is to defend Kyros and the innocent Thelma, and none of the girls try to stop her. "But we didn't notice anything wrong with Thelma. Not only that, but Kyros is a friend of ours and a close ally of one of our allies. I'm uncomfortable with questioning him."

And the former Punisher's first instinct is to be unyielding, but there seems to be at least a bit of respect for us in her as she decides to deflect toward me, "Does your husband have the same opinion as you?"

I… don't know what to think.

"He's likely more neutral," Ciel answers hesitantly, and a silence falls between them.

"You have time to think this through," Teresina advises, her tone reassuring but still firm.

"Is everything alright, Your Highness?" Mara quietly asks me, looking worried.

"Yes, I just have a lot on my mind," I answer absentmindedly.

And we continue on through the Institute while I try to put this matter with Kyros aside. The idea that he's hiding something from me feels like a betrayal, though I'd understand if he's been keeping something secret since it most likely concerns Thelma. I'd do the same.

Anyway, the Institute is still full of Chimeras doing Chimera things, which is a nice, distracting sight. I even notice that some of them belong to the research teams, and they notice that I've noticed them, so they scurry away to not look like they're slacking, but I don't really mind since I want to leave this sort of thing for the team leaders to deal with.

I'm eager to ask about the research on the Raki and tell them to hire more people and expand the research teams, but I'm itching for a juicy white rabbit.

Nono's and Petra's summoning research lab has been moved underground, so there's now just an [Eternal Gate] in their old lab, which the Companions and I promptly take. The lab is far underground, a simple room of dark stone with two tables full of books and notes. There's an open door that leads to a stairway up, and on the other side, there's a heavy emellanat door left ajar, through which female voices can be heard.

I pull it open, noticing how it seems to be enchanted, just like that secret room under the Alkimeonids' estate, but then my target falls within my sights, and I lose all reason.

"Y-Your Highness…!" I hear two squeaks, but I don't even register them.

Nono reflexively takes a step back but hits the metal wall and remains still like a cornered animal. I stop before her and lean forward, touching our foreheads together as I hit the wall with my forearm and pin her against it in a perfect kabedon.

"I'm back, my little bunny," I whisper seductively and stare intensely into her turquoise pair of jewels.

Nono's whiskers twitch as she stares back, her jaw hanging loose, her hairs standing on end, and her breath quickening. Her instincts have decided to have her freeze in place instead of fly or fight as she's already in the claws of her favorite predator.

"I'll leave you two alone," Petra dryly announces and quickly walks out of the room.

I turn to the Companions and state with a grin, "You may stay and watch, if you want." And I'm sure they do.

Then I turn back to Nono and steal her lips as I sneak a hand under her skirt. It doesn't take her long to become ready for me, and then I Ravage her until her legs give out.

"Ah… it's over…" one of the Companions whispers quietly in disappointment.

"She lasted longer than we do…" Mara frustratedly adds, and I can just imagine her biting her lip under her hood.

I slide out, and a long stream leaks out onto the metal floor, then drips down through the slits between the plates and gets absorbed by the emellanat under it. I'm glad they had the foresight of covering the emellanat room with metal because it's unpleasant for a person with [Mana Body], such as myself, to touch the magic-absorbing metal.

"Mara, come clean her up," I order as I pull out a reclining chair, then lay Nono's almost unconscious body on it.

"Yes, Your Highness," the little slut happily replies.

I take note of the names of the other Companions, intending to reward them with a good plowing later since I've been favoring Mara so much this time.

And Nono's weak voice echoes for a little while longer in the wide, mostly empty room.

"Good girl," I praise Mara and pull down her hood so that I can kiss the top of her head. The obedient slut beams with a smile, then returns to her position, and I begin the aftercare for Nono.

The juicy white rabbit's body is gently cleaned of sweat as I apply [Regeneration] to her spine, allowing her to move her legs again. Then I give her muscles a bit of a [Massage] along with a [Refresh] to hasten their recovery. My little rabbit goes from catatonic, to wobbly, to tender, to tired, to mostly recovered in just ten minutes.

Then I finally dress her up and join her in the reclining chair.

"How have you been, Nono?" I gently ask her as she makes herself comfortable on my chest.

"I've been doing well. I just got worried when I heard that you were going to participate in that 'Purification' thing…" she timidly replies, her ears becoming increasingly floppy with each word.

"There was no risk of me dying, though," I attempt to soothe her as I play with her ears.

She reacts just like every wereanimal that has their weak spot attacked and loses herself to my touch for a moment before she regains enough composure to continue, "Silf talked about how the heretics hate you, and then the Punishers suddenly started a purge…" she trails off, unsure how to continue.

"I'm sorry for worrying you," I whisper in her ear and kiss her forehead.

Her fluffy little tail wags for a moment in response, but then she gently shakes her head as her ears regain their vigor. "It's not your fault. I just… I just can't help but get worried."

"I understand."

Then she suddenly pushes her body up and stares at me intensely. "Let's not talk about this anymore. I want to show you our progress!" she excitedly exclaims with a wide smile gracing her juicy red lips.

And I smile back in kind. "Then let's recall Petra."

"Oh, right…" she mumbles embarrassedly, and her whiskers twitch awkwardly.

One of the Companions calls her back, and soon the chaste young noblewoman stiffly walks back into the room. She looks as pretty as ever with her bountiful, curly black hair, but her Victorian-like dress hides much of her figure, leaving me only with my imagination.

I'd like to have a full Sommerlande like herself in my harem since the darkest person in it so far is Romy, but she's Asian, so I lack a true ebony beauty. Maybe I'll have more of a chance with Mizushina, Hana's sister, because even though she seems to be a rather cold person, at least Hana would fully support me seducing her, and the same can't be said for Petra's father.

The young [Alchemicism] practitioner warily glances at the spot where I Ravaged Nono, but there's no sign of it left, so she quickly averts her eyes and walks towards the only feature in this room of metal plates: a small, transparent, glass water basin on top of a metal pedestal. I notice that the upper part of the basin is glowing faintly with what seems to be Moonlight Moss, and through the basin, I can see that it holds a small amount of faintly silvery liquid reminiscent of mercury, but more watery.

Nono cheerfully gets off the chair, and her legs wobble a bit, but she remains on her feet. Then she walks towards the basin with a bit more control as she calls, "You've got to see this, Wolfy. This is what we've created."

I get up, store the reclining chair, and happily follow after her juicy ass and wagging fluffy rabbit tail. But when I get to the basin, my "spiciness" is replaced by scholarly curiosity as my [Sense Mana] tingles with a very exquisitely-flavored mana.

"What is this?" I blurt out.

"We don't know," Petra calmly answers.

I raise an eyebrow questioningly at her, and Nono chuckles softly.

"Petra is very cautious, but this is supposedly otherworldly-power-infused mana from the moon," the cute bunny girl happily explains.

"What does 'otherworldly-power-infused' mana do?" I hum back confusedly.

Petra narrows her eyes at her cheerful lab partner and corrects, "We don't know, and we also don't know if it's 'otherworldly-power-infused' mana."

Nono shrugs. "It's our best guess."

"[Alchemicism] doesn't deal with certainties," the noblewoman states matter-of-factly.

"How prudent," I gently praise her.

And she flashes a polite smile. "Thank you."

"Now, how are you going to test what it does?" I continue.

Petra carefully grabs the basin and rocks it a little bit to stir the silvery liquid within. "That's the question. This is all that we've managed to create over a whole day-cycle, so we want to be very careful about how we use it."

It is indeed very little, barely 100ml, I'd say.

And Nono soberly continues, "I want to have my elemental drink it, but its magical body might interfere with the results."

Then Petra raises her eyes back up to me. "Since Your Highness has a higher level in summoning magic as well as physical summonable monsters, you might be a more proper candidate for this."

"Ooh~… alright, when can we start?" I excitedly ask.

A note from Manasong

Hall of Fame of Patrons

The patrons who support Rupegia shall have their names sung by the bards for they deserve the glory and honor. Their names are:

Prince PreownedFIN.

Prince Owldente.

Prince Definitely  not Dio.

Lord Andrew Meyers.

Lord Novgarod.

Lord Michale Erwin.

Lord Bakerdea.

Lord Maurice.

Lord Mattirro Draca.

Lord Mike Bartter.

Lord Tenebris Lupus.

Lord Paul Daval.

Lord Paul Daval.

Lord Tmac.

Lord CopeyDunt.

Lord BlindTactic.

Lord litalmexy.

Lord Philip.

Lord d3235.

Lord William Clark.

Lord Ddraig Wynn.

Lord SubJef.

Lord GalacticTNT.

Lord Placid.

Lord Caden Dinkel.

Lord McMax.

Lord LiuAnshan.

Noble Salty Panda.

Noble Mild Fracas.

Noble Aclys.

Noble Carl  Baxter.

Noble Tony Starrk.

Noble DND.

Noble Asaadullah Lassiter.

Noble Aclys.

Noble Brandon.

Noble Tony Starrk.

Leave a rating or a review to help me rise to the top or fix my shameful understanding of prose.

Take a look over my blog where all information about the world of Rupegia will be posted.

Join the Discord and discuss, or rant, or meme, or try and fight me so your waifu gets more screentime.

Become a Patron and read chapters in advance, or read the side-stories, or leave your mark on the story, or help choose the next artwork or the next side-story.

Chapter 154: A Place of Enlightenment - Part 1

A note from Manasong

Attention: to conform to the limit of mature content (more than just sexual content) allowed in a novel, I've censored this chapter. You can look for the uncensored version here.

"Let us first go to a more open area," Petra suggests.

"Let's go directly to the castle grounds. It's private and safe," I immediately suggest.

And she nods. "Very well."

I open a [Gate] directly to our bedroom, but the emellanat is too close, and the spell gets disrupted, so I grab Nono's hand and walk to the other room, then try it again.

We immediately cross through, followed by the Companions, and then Petra a second later. Everyone's eyes immediately turn to my stupidly big bed, where Klein peacefully sleeps. But then I summon six wind-Alissas and pick up Nono in a princess carry, calling their attention back to us.

"It's faster if we jump, but don't scream so that we don't wake up Klein," I state with a grin, and Nono's face immediately warps in horror, but I don't give her time to complain and jump off the balcony.

Petra blinks blankly as the Companions chuckle, then the wind-Alissas lift everyone up through magic, and the teen noblewoman also becomes horrified as she realizes what's about to happen.

Nono buries her face on my chest and whines while Petra squeaks like a small animal, seemingly trying to hold back her voice but unable to remain completely silent as she free-falls a few hundred meters down. The Companions are already used to flying and trust me completely, so they just giggle happily as the wind hits their faces.

I use [Telekinesis] to slow myself and gracefully touch down. Then I look up and see cute light-blue panties as the wind makes Petra's dress flare out.

These elemental-wives know me so well.

Mara's bottoms are an alluring red and so small that you could barely call them panties, and though I can't see the bottoms of the rest of the armored Companions, I know that "alluring underwear" is basically a uniform for them.

Petra lands right before me, her dark face now with a scarlet tint, but I'm not sure if she knows that I saw her panties as she seems too dazed by the sudden fall to have noticed. Then the Companions safely land around us, and Mara definitely knows that I saw hers.

The wind-Alissas blow me kisses, already saying their goodbyes, and I answer with my most handsome smile, then dismiss them all, but I feel like I should've rewarded them with a quick piercing…

Anyway, we're now in one of the many little courtyards for rest and relaxation spread out all over the castle grounds. There are mossy benches, a few mossy lounging chairs, a spring fountain, flower patches for smelling, and tall hedgerows to give us privacy.

A good place to do it, and a perfect place to test the mysterious silvery liquid.

I gently lower my shivering rabbit down in the wooden courtyard, the moss carpet muffling any sound of her feet, and she immediately slaps my shoulder in a flash of anger, but it doesn't even hurt. Then she makes a pouty face, so I appease her through her weakness, her long white ears.

"We didn't bring the basin with us," Petra suddenly points out, recovering from her sudden fright.

I open a [Gate] back to the lab and turn to one of the Companions as I [Massage] Nono. "Please, bring us the crystal basin. Be careful to not spill the liquid or touch the glowing moss."

"As you wish, Your Highness," the female soldier obediently replies.

And I flash a smug smile at Petra, who appears to want to pout too, but that'd make her look cute, and she doesn't want to give me any reason to seduce her.

The Companion comes back with the basin at the same time that three naked women walk in. Roxanne, Kaatohe, and Hukarere enter the courtyard with seductive smiles, dripping pussies, and mildly inebriated gaits. The cat and the succubus have been doing it, but the straight wolf has been conditioned to get aroused whether she smells men or women, so she's the thirstiest of the trio.

And she promptly asks cheerfully, her words starting to slur, "Wolfy, can I p-polish your sword while you… do w~whatever you need to do?"

"You slut," Kaatohe quietly hisses back.

"You're just jealous," my white wolf teases with a smirk.

And the cat assumes a smug but solemn expression. "I never said I didn't want to polish his sword."

Petra quietly clears her throat with a crisp and high-pitched "Hem-hem," and I make the uncharacteristic decision to decline a sword polishing while I work because while I like teasing Petra, pulling out my sword in front of her might be too much. I know I've already did it in front of Lyle and many of my other friends, but Petra is the only one who might actually hate me if I did that.

"My dear sl-ts, perhaps another time, but you're welcome to wait," I reassuringly suggest and motion to the lounging chairs.

"I haven't had your semen in a while, so I will," Kaatohe replies matter-of-factly.

And my naked cat drags her two companions to the chairs so that they may suffer from spicy denial with her.

Petra doesn't seem bothered by the female bareness or that they're subtly fooling around, so I think it's finally time for testing. I stop [Massage]ing Nono and summon a goblin, then scoop up about 10ml from the basin with a shot-glass that we use for Eia.

"This liquid is most likely toxic, so pay attention to any symptoms," Petra warns.

"Why is it toxic?" I question confusedly.

And she sagely explains, "I've tried to filter out any stray powers, but I don't know if I succeeded. Also, we have no idea what otherworldly-infused-power does to one's body."

She's a really dependable researcher, huh?

"Well, we'll know the answer soon enough," I hum back and hand the shot glass to the goblin. Then I summon a light-Ciel and put some points into [Diagnosis] and [Sense Presence].

The goblin drinks the liquid as I activate all-senses sharing, and I frown at the spicy taste of the silvery liquid. It burns the tongue and then the throat as it goes down, but the burning quickly stops, leaving only a vinegar-like taste mixed with something metallic, possibly blood.

The summon obediently returns the glass, but I notice that it's starting to sway on its feet as if it's becoming drunk. I take the offered glass and activate [Diagnosis] on the goblin, but all I get is that it has "Impaired Mental Faculties" and "Unknown Poisoning."

"Well, this is certainly toxic," I wryly remark and share what I just found out with the girls.

Nono looks confused for a second, but then she immediately accepts it with a sigh, "You have [Diagnosis]…? Of course, you have [Diagnosis]…"

But before I can joke back, the goblin's vision starts to darken, and a "third eye" begins to open in its mind, eerily similar to how my vision expands when I summon something.

The little goblin visibly sways, and a Companion grabs it before it can fall on its face.

"Thank you. Now, lay it down for me," I kindly request, and the young elven soldier beams with a smile hidden by her helmet.

The goblin's vision darkens completely to the point that it passes out, and all it sees is a faint light in its "third eye," but nothing more happens. Then I notice that there's something weird going on with its spirit.

I use [Sense Soul] to look inside it and notice that its "soul structures" are becoming transparent, as if they were disappearing, but its presence (the reaction I get from [Sense Presence]) remains the same, so it isn't as if it's dying.

"It's releasing an odd mana," Nono quietly remarks, so I switch to focusing on my [Sense Mana], and I agree, though I can't really explain what kind of mana I'm sensing.

It's similar to the mana released by the basin but different, and it's so exquisite that I have trouble drawing a comparison to anything I know. It's odd because even the most fantastical power I've ever felt, the divine mana coming from a dungeon core, was easily explained, but this mana is completely different from anything I've ever felt before.

Then I start to feel like its incomprehensible flavor is actually part of it, like how a soul is so hard to "see" because it's something that was never supposed to actually be seen with our eyes or understood with our minds. It's like the description of the flavor is on the tip of my tongue, but I can't quite grasp it.

And a couple of minutes pass as the unconscious goblin releases this odd mana, but nothing significant happens apart from that. Then the effects start to wear off, and it wakes up. Its tongue and throat seem very irritated, and it feels nauseous, still poisoned by the impurities in the silvery liquid.

Thankfully, the light-Ciel is able to heal it and purify its body, so it isn't like this is a deadly poison, and there also doesn't seem to be any lasting damage or changes to its soul. But now we're stumped as we don't know how to proceed from here.

Then Nono shares her thoughts, "The goblin released mana, but it isn't a mage, so its compatibility with magic is low."

"We should test with a mage goblin, then," I eagerly reply.

I only have pestilence-themed goblin mages, so I decide to summon a hobgoblin mage instead.

"Is this a hobgoblin? It reminds me of elves, somehow," Nono curiously remarks as she inspects the kind of ugly green summon, and the Companions tense up at her words.

"Never say that in front of an elf," I caution her with a chuckle, and even Petra nods in agreement.

"Oh…" the silly rabbit hums embarrassedly as she realizes that three of the five present Companions are elves. "Sorry…"

Then we have the summon drink 10ml of the silvery liquid.

This time, the reaction is instantaneous, and instead of just seeing a faint light, the hobgoblin instantly passes out as its mind is taken to a confusing and psychedelic world of colorful lights and muffled murmurs.

"Holy shit, holy shit, holy shit…" Nono mumbles excitedly as I describe to her what the summon is seeing.

It's like someone is painting with wild, watery strokes of color that gradually fade into the black of the canvas. The murmuring sounds like speech, as if hundreds of random youtube videos were playing at the same time, but I'm unable to discern any individual words being spoken due to the chaos.

With [Sense Soul], I can see that the inner part of the hobgoblin's soul has completely disappeared, but [Sense Presence] shows no change, still insisting that its spirit is in its body. So, it's like someone's organs have been transported somewhere else while the skin remains in place. Souls and spirits don't obey the regular laws of physics, so this is a flawed analogy, but it serves to illustrate what I'm seeing.

And the trippiness starts to affect me, so I sit down on the ground as I begin to get a bit dizzy.

"Your Highness, are you alright?" one of the Companions immediately asks me as they approach.

"Just dizzy. The summon is seeing something that's so confusing it's nauseating," I reassure them.

Another Companion drags a lounging chair over to me, and they help me sit on it. "A chair is better than the ground," she kindly states, and their overprotectiveness makes me chuckle.

I try to discern more details or interesting observations from what the hobgoblin is seeing, but it's simply impossible for me.

"I honestly have no idea what the summon is seeing," Petra declares and decides to inspect the basin again. "I've never dealt with power from the moon before, so this is all new to me."

Nono approaches the hobgoblin and inspects it closely, trying to glean any new information she can from it or the weird mana it's releasing. "The visions became more clear with a monster with high magical aptitude, so maybe we need someone with even more 'Magic Power'?" she suggests and gives me an inquisitive look.

"No," Alissa immediately chimes in through [Bind].

"I can do it," Roxanne lazily volunteers and lifts her thin, pale arm.

I sigh and agree, "It's not a good idea for me to deal with such things, so maybe Roxanne is a better choice."

Nono tilts her head confusedly. "Well, I suggested you because you have [Summoning Magic], but if you don't want to, then maybe I could be next?"

But I reject her idea and kindly explain, "Roxanne and I have a special connection, so I think she's a better choice than you because I can watch over her and keep her safe while I can't do the same for you."

"Okay…" my white rabbit softly hums, looking quite happy that I've shown concern for her.

It takes a couple of minutes for the hobgoblin to come back to the land of the living, and after Roxanne clothes herself, we give her 10ml of the liquid.

Kaatohe looks a bit annoyed that her lezzing partner is gone, but then she appears to want to tease Hukarere into gayness, and it's almost enough to distract me from scholarly pursuits… almost.

Roxanne downs the glass while sitting on a lounging chair and almost instantly passes out, requiring a Companion to grab the glass before it can fall from her hand and another Companion to lower her body down in the chair.

And then she's dragged into a sea of moaning spirits.

Innumerable lives flash past her eyes like moving televisions that overlap with each other, and the sounds are all garbled to the point of incomprehension, but then she clearly hears the word "Lord," and her mind focuses on a fast-moving TV. She sees a person kneel before an imperial wearing lavish clothes, but then the memory jumps forward to a battle in the Thunderplains as the person rides a Ronti in formation, only to be crushed by a [Meteor].

Then she suddenly hears "love," and her mind focuses on the last moments of an old man dying alongside his oni-type wife. Next, she hears "magic" and sees a mage student of Xane's Holy Academy die in a dungeon after her party bit off more than they could chew.

"The Cycle of Souls!" Ciel suddenly exclaims in realization.

And more and more lives continue to flash past Roxanne's eyes. Curiously, they are all somehow "related" to her. People of Mashoor, people of Xane, students of the Holy Academy, teachers, potion-makers, adventurers in Maoka, adventurers in the High Forest, adventurers in Rabanara, people of Escanso, people of the Western High Forest, knights, alpha males with big swords, cute boys with big swords, pretty women who lived in harems, and even powerful mage Lords.

All these lives fly past her in an almost maddening maelstrom of visions, sounds, words, and even smells and tastes. But Roxanne remains in place, calmly observing, at most just irritated by the bothersome environment.

"Wolfy…?" her voice suddenly echoes in her dream, but nothing comes through [Bind].

Nevertheless, I answer telepathically, "I'm here."

"Wolfy!?" she happily exclaims, and her world spins in a nauseating way as she tries to look around, but she can't find me.

"Can you hear me?" I try again.

"Your voice sounds so far away…" she quietly replies, sounding concerned.

"But I'm here."

And she seems to nod in her dream, causing more nauseating movements. "I feel you more than hear you."

Then Ciel takes over and explains, "You're in the Cycle of Souls, where the dead go after their stay in Paradise, but you aren't dead."

Indeed, her body, HP, spirit, and everything seems fine except for the fact that the organs of her spirit, her soul, have become invisible to my [Sense Soul].

"Cool. Annoying place, though," she coos casually, and I can just hear the smirk in her voice.

"Cycle of Souls…?" Petra mumbles absentmindedly and pales. Nono is already pale, so I don't know if she's also paling, but they're both flabbergasted, just listening to my descriptions, so I'd guess that my white rabbit is pale too.

"Can you interact with anything?" I suggest to Roxanne, not knowing how to proceed.

But Ciel begs for caution, "I don't think that's a g-…"

Roxanne touches the "television" of a mage, and the Cycle of Souls becomes a blur as she begins to "fall" towards somewhere.

After just a couple of seconds of butt-clenching fear, she suddenly wakes up, but I also get a new blip in my [Sense Presence].

She brought back a soul.

"What the…" one of the Companions mumbles in surprise. She likely has [Sense Soul] and has also detected the spirit.

I summon a Spirit elemental just in case, then cast [Materialize] on the spirit at the same time that Roxanne suddenly sits up and [Equip]s her staff in fear.

"LORD CARANTO, I HAVE RETURNED!" a young and boisterous male voice roars, and the blue, ethereal form of a short mage in robes appears before us. The first thing I notice is that the robes' hood has conical accommodations for elven ears. The second thing I notice is that the mage's staff has a coral theme, appropriate for a Water mage.

The Companions immediately grab the handles of their swords but don't pull them out, then they surround the spirit while pulling Nono and Petra away so that they stay behind me. Hukarere jumps out of her seat and [Equip]s her armor, then joins them while Mara hastily casts [Fire Spirit].

And the lithe glowing mage remains standing as he looks around in seeming confusion. I manage to spy between the Companions a very boyish face under the spirit's hood, but there doesn't seem to be any concern in his gaze, and neither is there any hostility.

"Hasn't Lord Caranto summoned me from the dead?" the mage asks confusedly.

"Stand down, please," I kindly request to the Companions, who immediately obey but remain in place. Then I walk forward and politely address the mage, who promptly turns around to face me, "Apologies, but we summoned you by mistake. What land does your Lord rule?"

The mage pulls down his hood, revealing a handsome silver elf boy with spiky hair and a youthful face reminiscent of mine. "Heart Lord Caranto rules Goldport, at the eastern end of the elven lands, under the domain of the Eastern High Forest and Crown Lord Maro Rincipio."

"I don't recognize any of those names," Yunia states through [Bind].

"I'm Wolf Ryder. May I ask for your name?" I politely reply, omitting certain details to not confuse the mage.

"Caio," he answers simply.

"Caio, in which year did you die?"

"Year seventeen of the third century…" -he suddenly raises his thin eyebrows in realization- "of the sixty-second millennium."

"We're in the sixty-ninth millennium," I answer soberly.

His eyes widen in surprise. "Of the Calendar of Festivity?"

And I nod. "Yes."

"Oh…" he hums, a sound that's echoed in the minds of everyone present.

"E-everyone… I think we've just committed a heresy!" Ciel desperately exclaims.

I still have my Blessing from Knowledge, so I think we'll be fine… for now.

Then Caio simply snorts, and his expression relaxes as he casually asks, "You said that you summoned me by mistake?"

The Gods really dislike it when spirits of the dead are bothered or abused. So to not anger them, I continue being very polite as I reply, "Yes, we apologize for that. We were testing a spell and accidentally touched you, but we didn't imagine that you'd come back with us."

He rubs his right ear awkwardly as he confesses, "That might've been my fault. I felt something tug at me, and I was suddenly filled with the nostalgia of my living days, so I gladly let myself be pulled back to the land of the living!" And then he beams with a youthful grin.

Okay, this might not be entirely our fault, then.

And that makes Roxanne feel like her innocence is guaranteed, so she curiously inquires, "Don't you look too young to be a mage serving a Lord?"

"My spirit form has taken my favorite shape from when I was alive," Caio answers matter-of-factly.

"How do you know that?" I immediately ask with a frown.

He shrugs with a grin. "For some reason, some information was imparted into me the moment I died."

"Did you spend time in Paradise?" I inquire further.

"Yes, I already did, and I was on my way to reincarnating when I was pulled back," he cheerfully answers.

"What's Paradise like?"

And he awkwardly averts his eyes. "I shouldn't answer that."

"Fascinating," I hum in excitement.

And the elf boy nods. "Indeed. It was considered impossible to call back spirits even just a year after their deaths, let alone millennia!" Then his eyes sharpen in scholarly curiosity. "But what are you, Wolf Ryder? You look like a special dragonkin, you seem to be protected by… a lot of women, and even though you aren't an elf, it seems that we're in the High Forest…"

I calmly nod and begin explaining, "Well, that's a complicated matter. You see, I-…"

He suddenly interrupts me as his gaze loses focus, "Oh, I'm being called back."

"By who?" I ask curiously.

But he simply shrugs again. "I don't know. I can stay for a while longer, but you said that summoning me was an accident, right?"

"Correct."

And his gaze becomes wistful. "Then I'd rather go, if you don't mind. I'm eager to reincarnate."

"Please, don't let me hold you here," I politely reply.

And he beams with a wide smile. "Farewell, Wolf Ryder. Better luck in your experiments!"

I calmly wave as I reply, "Farewell, Caio. I wish you a happy new life."

He cheerfully lifts his coral staff and exclaims, "So do I…!"

Then he suddenly disappears in a puff of ethereal smoke, and a lot of exotic otherworldly-power-infused mana is released from him.

"Now that was something…" I hum and smile wryly at the frozen pair of Ladies behind me.

A note from Manasong

Hall of Fame of Patrons

The patrons who support Rupegia shall have their names sung by the bards for they deserve the glory and honor. Their names are:

Prince PreownedFIN.

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Noble Aclys.

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Chapter 154: A Place of Enlightenment - Part 2

A note from Manasong

Attention: to conform to the limit of mature content (more than just sexual content) allowed in a novel, I've censored this chapter. You can look for the uncensored version here.

"Wolfy…! I'm feeling sick!" Roxanne suddenly complains, and I promptly order the light-Ciel to heal my lovely succubus. It's a quick thing, and once Roxanne is feeling better again, she promptly undresses and lays down beside Kaatohe for a bit more lezzing out to heal her tired mind and body.

"Wolfy, what the hell did we do…?" Nono suddenly swears, sounding quite shaken.

I pat her head as I soothe her, "Something that doesn't seem much worse than using [Trap Soul] on the spirits of ancient Chimeras."

"You've got that right. Caio was actually a lot younger than we are," Hukarere remarks as she un[Equip]s her armor. The other Companions also stand down and return to their guarding positions.

"When you put it that way…" Nono sighs and hums wryly, but my hand moves on its own and continues patting her for a while longer.

"How about we have a priest present the next time we… do this?" Petra hesitantly suggests.

"We're doing it again…?" Nono eagerly asks. Then her ears suddenly straighten, and her fluffy little pom-pom of a tail wags in excitement as she's flooded with ideas, "Oh, right! Summoning! We could possibly use this to summon old heroes or powerful mages! And then… maybe using [Trap Soul] on them would be too much, so how about Blood Slavery? Tying their cut Threads to the Thread of a living person would be more attractive to the temple, would it not?"

I smile awkwardly as I sense Ciel's glare through our connection. "I'd rather word it as 'less uncomfortable' rather than 'attractive,' but yes, I think that might work," I gently reply.

"How will you find a useful soul in the middle of a veritable sea of them?" Petra prudently questions.

Yes, that's a good question, but I noticed how peculiar the Cycle of Souls seemed to behave. "Roxanne somehow only paid attention to souls with some relation to her. Like, I'm almost sure that Caio was only chosen because he looked a bit like me and she was thirsty."

"I agree; I'm really energetic for you, Wolfy!" the spicy succubus in question happily shouts as Kaatohe's fingers repeatedly cause moist sounds.

Petra's eyes remained trained on mine, refusing to look at the steamy gayness going on behind her. But then she suddenly realizes that she's staring intensely and awkwardly averts them, her dark skin (most likely) hiding her faint blush.

This teasing makes my hand itch for wereanimal ears, but I hold it in and turn to Nono as I continue, "But I must say that while getting to the Cycle of Souls was easy, finding, binding, and then feeding a spirit might be the true challenges to make this new method of summoning a viable thing. Not to mention that building a room covered in emellanat and enchantments wouldn't be feasible for most people, so accessibility should also be a concern for your research."

Nono nods obediently and smiles, showing her adorable, slightly bucked teeth to me.

Petra quickly recovers and politely replies, "I understand, Your Highness. It's a similar situation to your Raki, is it not? The prototype is too expensive to be attractive to potential buyers."

I nod at her. "Exactly."

And Nono happily adds, "We have to rebuild [Summoning Magic] from the ground up in such a way that it becomes comparable to the elemental system magic schools."

"And also find a way to make that liquid less disgusting and painful!" Roxanne loudly chimes in from her seat.

"Yes, that…" Petra hums and glances at them.

"I'll leave you two to it, then," I hum and land a hand on both their shoulders, and the young noblewoman flinches in surprise, but then they both nod eagerly.

I open a [Gate] for them to return to their lab, and they immediately cross through. And now that they're gone, it's time to satisfy the thirsty women before me.

So I turn to the Companions and order, "I give you all a half-hour rest. Now strip."

"Nrrow…" Kaatohe purrs in delight as I stop moving and shoot another load inside her. Then I lay down on top of her and hug her from behind, plugging her as her magical body absorbs my bliss-inducing seed.

Her delicious bronze chest is untouched, so I rectify that by playing with it as I rest. Though she does have a whole cathead for me to play with, I don't actually want to put her to sleep; I just want to satisfy her endless lust for me. So while everyone else "rests," I bring her to bliss through my touch alone.

And now it's almost time for lunch, so though our return to the Institute will be delayed, at least we can invite our friends to eat with us and catch up at the same time.

The Gilbiks (Lina's parents), the Grosshils (Petra's family plus Hermann), the twins (Yunia's brothers), the Itos (Kyora's Harem), Nono, Mizushina, the High Officers, Sandoro, Lyle, Hatara, Garanae, noblewoman Silvina, the little elf called Ereia who's ever-thirsty for Yunia, the Clown Troupe, Anton, Krysta, and even Caterina and Teresina come. The two Princesses are in the Nobles' Quarter, where Sa'Haa is likely greeting the ass-kissers while Urmeie tries to not die of boredom.

"Ah…! Krysta's cooking! I missed this," I happily exclaim as I take my seat. Today, she made meatball pasta, and not even the elves know how to make it as good as Krysta can.

"You're making me blush, Your Highness," the monkey milf gently replies.

"Just Wolf, please. I consider this a private affair," I loudly announce.

"I've always found it weird that nobody can cook as good as you, Krysta," Hermann remarks as he fills his plate with almost as much food as Aoi.

"Even though the Ryders are odd royals, you truly do have the skill to serve a king," Mizushina calmly adds, a very subtle smirk on her gorgeous face.

"Stop it! Now I'm seriously going to blush!" Krysta requests with a pout.

Silvina smoothly chimes in, so smoothly that only Yunia notices that her intent is also to tease, "The other nobles talk a lot about the 'novel' and 'sophisticated' cuisine being served inside the castle." The gentle noblewoman is always rather quiet, but I feel she enjoys listening more than participating.

And Krysta nods as she replies matter-of-factly, "'Novel' would definitely fall upon Wolf's lap. He keeps asking for unknown dishes while only giving me vague details."

"So you agree that the 'sophisticated' part is talking about you?" Hana immediately sets off the trap.

And Krysta pouts even harder. "As if! The other elven chefs definitely deserve the praise more than I do, considering how most of the more beautiful dishes were hand-made by them."

"Humble, too," I happily coo.

Klein and Anton simply watch with warm eyes as we tease the monkey milf, though Klein's also have a bit of sadistic glee in them. She's been teased a lot by her mother.

Then I turn to the Officers.

"Don't you agree that throwing heavy objects at the enemy seems awfully barbaric, like something a Grim Giant would do?" Silvano slyly remarks to Sainalai and glances at Alcander.

But an ethereal and mildly distorted voice answers in her stead, "Blunt force trauma is the standard attack type of many magic schools. For example, [Earth Bullet] and [Meteor]." Jarvis, the suit of Lordsguard armor I turned into a golem for Sainalai to research, seems to have become quite talkative.

And Almaria sagely follows up, "Indeed, it's also the main attack type of my [Nature's Guardian], not to mention that blunt force is the most efficient way to deal with heavily armored foes."

Silvano narrows his eyes in displeasure as his banter is deftly riposted while Alcander smirks triumphantly, but then the Imperial man gives a thankful nod to the Officer and the golem for backing him up.

Then my eyes cross with Sainalai's, and the little ginger girl brightens up so adorably that I get a boner. "Ah! Wolf! Did you visit the Little Red Sandal?" she eagerly asks and readjusts her round glasses, and the fact that she didn't use an honorific pulls on my heartstrings.

But then I'm taken back there by the fond memories I have of that place. Ah, yes, the brothel with the wereowl gilf, her milf daughters, and her cute granddaughters. The incestuous halfling pair of a gray-haired mother and her daughter was definitely a highlight of that visit.

My head and tail nod in sync as I wistfully remark, "You have excellent taste in women, Sainalai, but I wonder if I could say the same about your taste in men." Then I give her a sharp stare filled with [Spicy Charm].

The adorable ginger loli smiles adorably. But then her little red tongue mischievously peeks out of her mouth, and her eyes narrow subtly, making her exude the aura of a little rascal that is in need of a thick, manly Weapon to set her straight again. "I'm here, am I not? What does that say about my taste in men?"

I want to do her so damn bad!

Jarvis turns its helmet towards me and impassively declares, "Master Sainalai is very cautious when dealing with men, so she has been very subtle with her flirting, but she's fond of you, Master Wolf."

"J-Jarvis!" the little halfling exclaims, her face warped in adorable horror. Then she hides her face with her hands, but with her pale skin, her quickly reddening ears become very noticeable.

"My contribution is helpful to your goals, Master Sainalai. I've merely performed my duty," Jarvis replies matter-of-factly, and she groans loudly in response.

Sai usually handles herself with coolness and maturity, so seeing such a strong reaction coming from her definitely warms my heart and hardens my Weapon.

And since she's been dealt a critical hit to her composure, I decide to switch the focus to her golem to give her time to recover. "Jarvis, how has the research on the [Possession] spell progressed?"

The golem immediately replies, as if it was waiting for this exact question, "Master Sainalai has already developed a spell that uses elements of [Weaverism]'s [Empathic Bond] to improve my coordination with Pilot Harikoa, and it also works to hasten bonding with new pilots. Master Sainalai's current goal is to amplify the spell's power to the point that an untrained person could pilot me without a spiritual bond."

Lina's Trivia: [Emphatic Bond] is a spell that Almaria uses to link the feelings of all the soldiers in a formation by mixing together a small amount of blood from each person and then drizzling it over all of them.

"Oh? What's this 'spiritual bond'?" I curiously ask.

"The ability to control my body with mere thoughts."

And I casually hum in understanding, "Ah, yes, I didn’t know that was actually a thing."

Sai recovers from her embarrassment and chimes in, though her freckled skin is still a bit pink, "Yes, we quickly confirmed that a Chimera's spirit and a golem's spirit become able to communicate after extended contact. It's a property of spirits that they can 'integrate' new flesh with extended contact, but it was previously unknown if that also extended to spirit-spirit contact."

"So we should give all bound spirits in the Lordsguard golem-controlled 'battle bodies,'" I state and turn to Sandoro, who nods in understanding.

"That would be ideal, yes," Sai happily agrees.

Now everyone can become Iron Man.

Then we fall silent, and Almaria takes the opportunity to change the topic, "Now that you've stopped flirting" -Sai tenses up and averts her eyes- "and mentioned 'battle-bodies,' I'd like to report that the base functionality of the 'pleasure-bodies' for the golems is mostly done, so now I'd like to have them test the bodies."

I grin and eagerly suggest, "Then we should promptly begin testing after this meal, if you're free."

"I am," she hums back, her tone also mildly excited.

"Excellent."

And then Silvano continues the conversation, "The idea of having an armor-golem to help you fight sounds interesting. What if we add more arms to it for more weapons?"

Almaria promptly opines, "They would have to be small weapons, as I know from experience that [Nature's Guardian] becomes clumsy if more arms are added since blunt-force attacks need a lot of momentum to be effective."

"Would be perfect for me, though. I only need 'Dexterity' and 'Speed,' not 'Strength,'" the annoyingly androgynous man states excitedly.

While the theorycrafting is interesting, Nono and Ciel are starting a serious conversation that I'd like to listen to.

"So, what exactly is the Cycle of Souls, Ciel?" my cute white rabbit asks the juicy chocolate angel.

Since this will be a long one, Ciel puts down her cutlery, then assumes a teaching tone and begins, "The first thing that was ever created was the Original Cycle of Life, a single 'being' who was born, lived, died, and then was reborn again endlessly.

"The God of Creation created infinite Cycles of Life, and the God of Change altered those Cycles endlessly until we got to the birth of mana. That's when our Cycle, and then our Realm, were created. Our Realm was born from mana turned into matter.

"This means that everything follows the same path of the Original Life of life, death, and rebirth, even things that aren't technically 'alive,' like fire, dust, and our souls.

"Paradise is just one stop. After we spend our deserved time there, we move on through the Cycle of Souls and reincarnate, most likely in another Realm of our Cycle."

Nono makes a cute pensive expression for a short moment, then asks, "So, we're all ageless souls who have existed since forever?"

Ciel smiles at her imagination and nods. "Technically, yes, it's just that you lose all your memories when you reincarnate."

And the bunny girl's eyes shine with a scholarly curiosity Alissa feels is reminiscent of mine. "Can you reincarnate without losing your memories?"

"It wouldn't be a true death, then. It's a violation of the Cycle of Souls," the chocolate angel gently answers negatively.

"But someone who's special and loved by the Gods could?" And Nono gives me totally-subtle glances.

Ciel has to hold back her desire to agree emphatically before she can give a scholarly answer. "The Humanoid Gods only have authority over our Realm. The Cycle of Souls is beyond it."

And Nono's inquisitiveness reaches a peak. "But maybe Creation or Change could…?"

Ciel smiles wryly and gives in, "Yes, maybe They could…"

But Petra is more focused on what's actually important. "But the question is: did we do something… heretical?" she quietly whispers, and her father chokes on his food.

"You did what?!" he whisper-shouts, glancing over at the two Punishers and the four Wandering Knights who we're sharing a table with. Thankfully, Hana has them and the Gilbiks distracted with a boisterous retelling of the battle. Specifically, the moment she punched a [Meteor].

"Look at these scales!" Hana exclaims and flexes her now emerald arm, earning coos of wonder from the Gilbiks.

Petra then stiffly explains, "We managed to pull a soul from the Cycle of Souls, so we're asking the priest if that's allowed."

And even Hermann stops talking to listen.

Ciel sighs anxiously and decides to go for the pragmatic route, "If it were truly such a horrible thing, the Gods would've stopped you. Did you feel a crippling heartache or a sluggishness trying to stop you from doing it?"

Roxanne suddenly chimes in, "Oh, wait, I'm the one who did it, and no, I felt nothing."

So Ciel shrugs. "Then… it isn't an explicitly heretical act, but keep in mind that bothering the spirits of the dead is a heretical act."

Nono frowns and tilts her head from side to side confusedly, making her fluffy ears bounce. "So… this is fine, I guess? Why are you so tense, then?"

"Because it has the chance of being abused. The Gods don't want to be forced to watch our every action, and making this sort of summoning become something popular might be bothersome for them."

And Nono finally understands. "Ooh~… another constraint to add to the spell, I guess."

"A contract like that of a Blood Slave should be enough to deal with that problem," I calmly suggest.

"Perhaps," Ciel hums positively.

And then we start talking about less serious topics.

The Clown Troupe is telling jokes, so I decide to listen in just in time to hear Masochist tell his tale, "She was so disgusted with me that she sneered," -he flashes a dirty smirk- "a beautiful expression on a face such as hers, by the way, and then she stepped on my crotch. She wanted to make me feel humiliated that I was in such a position, so she drove it in with her heel, but I was in such bliss that it showed on my face, which just made her even more disgusted, giving me even more bliss, and things spiraled out from there."

"Oh Gods, don't tell me you're going to marry her," Little Pomp blurts out in horror.

"I'm the sheathe for her sword," Masochist replies with a shrug.

"Why did the Gods make you like this?" Gambling Imp tiredly whispers with a sigh.

But that just makes Masochist even happier. "I'm just built differently," he proudly states and flexes his muscles.

And Yunia and Ereia chuckle heartily together, with the twins also laughing but more restrainedly, and I'm not sure if the Clowns are a good influence on the two teens. Well, if Yunia's happy, then I'm happy, but I'd rather listen to Hana.

She and the Gilbiks have barely touched their food due to being so enthralled by the tale, but now she's near the end, and her tone becomes somber as she reaches a tense moment, "It was like being attacked by a swarm of bees. Those flying swords are easy to deal with, but there were just so many, and he kept pulling more and more out of his ass!"

And the crass language lightens the mood, making the Gilbiks and the Itos chuckle, but even Caterina laughs, earning herself a surprised glance from her mother. The milf Punisher becomes momentarily confused about whether she should act composedly or if she should be true to her feelings, but she chooses the latter, to our delightful surprise.

"Where do you think Wolf pulled out his Leviathan from?" she cleverly asks, one thin silver eyebrow raised high.

And I almost choke on my Eia. That was an unexpected joke.

"His pants?" Hana skillfully ripostes.

And the Punisher gracefully takes the hit, then follows up with a counter, "Oh, yes, my mistake. He certainly likes to display his famous big snake at every opportunity he comes across."

We can't really deny that one, so Hana just smirks at the woman she's thirsting for, who then mirrors her expression.

Teresina simply ignores them and curiously questions, "How did you not die to that summoning, Lord Wolf? Not even an Imperial Prince of your age should have the mana to summon something of that size."

It does make me a bit sad that she used "Lord," but I don't let it show as I answer matter-of-factly, "I just had Ciel [Heal] me repeatedly when my HP started to drop."

But my words take her by surprise, which is enough to lift my mood again. "W-what…?" she blurts out, her long ears twitching almost like a wereanimal's.

And I just shrug with a smirk.

"That's the stupidest thing I've ever heard, and it's even more silly that it actually worked," Caterina candidly remarks.

"I don't recommend doing it unless you can cast [Heal] every second," I kindly advise, making her snort.

Teresina recovers and states with a sigh, "We don't train healers to do that, so no, only a Light Mage at the level of a Crown Lord could possibly cast that rapidly."

But after the amusement passes, everyone starts to look a bit concerned.

"Isn't ushing HP in plache of MP shomething that reduches you'r lifespan?" Toulin worriedly questions me.

I smile warmly at the kind dwarf mother. "Yes, but it's something I only use in emergencies, and I'm a Lord, so I'll live a long life, anyway."

"There has been an awfully large number of 'emergencies,' though," Alissa bitterly remarks as she stares at me, and my tail reflexively lowers from guilt.

We still have to do better so that we aren't put in so many extreme situations as we have been so far.

After fattening up on pasta and then eating chocolate pudding for dessert, Almaria and I calmly make our way to her office.

A note from Manasong

Hall of Fame of Patrons

The patrons who support Rupegia shall have their names sung by the bards for they deserve the glory and honor. Their names are:

Prince PreownedFIN.

Prince Owldente.

Prince Definitely  not Dio.

Lord Andrew Meyers.

Lord Novgarod.

Lord Michale Erwin.

Lord Bakerdea.

Lord Maurice.

Lord Mattirro Draca.

Lord Mike Bartter.

Lord Tenebris Lupus.

Lord Paul Daval.

Lord Paul Daval.

Lord Tmac.

Lord CopeyDunt.

Lord BlindTactic.

Lord litalmexy.

Lord Philip.

Lord d3235.

Lord William Clark.

Lord Ddraig Wynn.

Lord SubJef.

Lord GalacticTNT.

Lord Placid.

Lord Caden Dinkel.

Lord McMax.

Lord LiuAnshan.

Lord Asaadullah Lassiter.

Noble Salty Panda.

Noble Mild Fracas.

Noble Aclys.

Noble Carl  Baxter.

Noble Tony Starrk.

Noble DND.

Noble Aclys.

Noble Brandon.

Noble Tony Starrk.

Leave a rating or a review to help me rise to the top or fix my shameful understanding of prose.

Take a look over my blog where all information about the world of Rupegia will be posted.

Join the Discord and discuss, or rant, or meme, or try and fight me so your waifu gets more screentime.

Become a Patron and read chapters in advance, or read the side-stories, or leave your mark on the story, or help choose the next artwork or the next side-story.

Chapter 154: A Place of Enlightenment - Part 3

A note from Manasong

Attention: to conform to the limit of mature content (more than just sexual content) allowed in a novel, I've censored this chapter. You can look for the uncensored version here.

It's break time! I'll stop posting for a week and things will resume on the 11th.

We take an [Eternal Gate] back to the main hall, but then Almaria walks up to the leaf elevator instead of the portal to her office.

"May we take the elevator instead, Your Highness?" she politely requests.

I hum and question, "Sure. You enjoy using them?"

And she smiles sweetly. "Of course. Such great enchantments deserve to be appreciated once in a while."

I casually hum again and nod as we step onto the wide leaf-like platform, the golem trio following close behind. Then Almaria feeds mana to a cute, glowing, blue flower, and the leaf immediately begins to ascend, quickly accelerating to an impressive speed, but we don't even feel it as an anti-grav enchantment seems to fully dampen the G-force involved.

Man, this could make space travel way easier…

"The view is quite nice," Almaria quietly remarks, taking me out of my amazement at the ingenuity of this enchantment, and I notice that she's staring out through the long, long, long window.

"Indeed, I love high places, even since before becoming a weredragon," I casually follow up.

We're currently going up the main "stalk" of the castle, and the view slowly opens up as we rise above the height of the Shells separating the various areas of the castle grounds. And once we enter a branch, we get high enough that we can see the inner and outer circles, where the mansions for guests are located.

I prefer gazing at the inner gardens area because the inner and outer circles aren't made to be as pretty as the gardens with their rows of mansions. It's nice to be in the guest mansions, not look at them. Though, the mostly empty streets have an eerie but charming air that isn't found anywhere else in Escanso.

And after a short moment, Almaria continues with a wistful tone, "This castle is a small Paradise on land, Your Highness. I'm glad that you find my services useful because I love working here."

I nod cordially at the droopy-eyed elf. "I'm glad that you're happy here. You're a good help, and you even entertain my 'unusual' requests," I affably reply, and I sense Yunia's heart tighten in joy at the words of her mentor.

Almaria's bespectacled eyes turn sly as she remarks, "This is the most 'unique' request I've ever been given, but it's also been the most fun."

"Happy to hear that you're happy," I happily hum.

And her tone gains a subtle teasing flair. "But it's my husband who fears things the most. With your reputation, he fears that you'll steal me from him."

"He can rest assured. I don't deal with married women. Widows, on the other hand…" I composedly reply and smirk.

"Now he'll fear that you'll kill him!" she exclaims and chuckles softly.

"Isn't that lovely of him? He believes you're worth killing someone for," I casually reply with a playful, dreamy tone.

But she sharpens her gaze at me. "And what do you believe?"

I stay silent for a short moment and smile coolly as I come up with a retort. "I believe in divorce before murder."

And she laughs out loud, covering her mouth with her hand in a very lady-like way. "You don't deserve to have such high 'Charisma,' Your Highness."

"Well, I'm certainly not famous because of my jokes…" I coolly state and puff out my chest proudly.

She readjusts her half-circle glasses as she holds back her laughter, then gives me a short lecture, "Humor is a straight road to a woman's heart. I'm surprised you have so much success if that's the kind of jokes you're capable of."

But I know very well the path to the fertile female fields that I've plowed so many times before. "I merely tickle the submissiveness in women, then follow up with a very good time, ensuring they come back."

"Yes, that does make sense," she hums with a nod.

Then the elevator arrives at her office, and we get off.

We walk down the corridor, which has been personally embellished by her to the point that it's almost as beautiful as the corridor dedicated to our lineage. I think she purposely made this corridor just a little less beautiful than ours as a way to show respect.

It does smell pretty good here, though.

At the end of the corridor, we reach her office, and at its center is a garden patch where three green bodies lay, surrounded by flowers and grass. The bodies have no facial features, but they still have recognizable characteristics.

One is a loli with short curly brown hair and thick thighs, the second is a thinner loli with long white hair, and the third is Bimbo Yunia. The curly loli, Ted's Body, has slightly bigger pillows, cute little mounds comparable to Lina's, but they have more puffy and adorable bits, while the blonde loli, Suzy's body, is perfectly flat but has more gentle and innocent curves than Ted's.

Then I notice something peculiar. "Wait, I recognize those bits and that flower. Jarn's body is a little too similar to Hana's. How did you do that?" I curiously question Almaria.

And the mature elf readjusts her small half-circle glasses as she answers categorically, "Her Highness Hanafuria isn't very concerned with how well clothed her body is during training. I assume that's one of the reasons why the Lordsguard enjoys training with her, a dragonkin, of all people."

Yes, dragonkin are infamous sparring partners because they have problems going easy on others. But going back to what's important, Hana's increasing indifference towards clothes is honestly hot as hell, so I don't feel like punishing her for this transgression, this time.

I approach Jarn's body and inspect it closely. Even her flower and landing strip are authentic replicas of Hana's. "You have a good eye for detail," I honestly praise her.

"It's hard to not pay attention to Her Highness Hanafuria…" she quietly replies, sounding a bit guilty.

I'd like to tease her for it, but I'm too curious about the bodies, so I soberly ask, "Can the golems wear these bodies?"

And she immediately recovers. "Yes, the bones have been set, and the skin is thick enough to hold everything in place. Just don't do any strenuous activity to not wear down the muscles as they haven't finished growing."

And I raise an eyebrow at her questioningly.

But she sincerely insists, "I'm serious; it would set back my work."

So I shrug. "Okay. And how about the faces?"

"Unfortunately, I'm not a talented sculptor, so I wished to consult with you before making any attempts. Their bodies can be easily modified if you're unsatisfied with their appearance or desire something new, so I can give them faces if you wish."

I nod in agreement. "You may. It's a bit creepy to keep them faceless. If you want inspiration, you can look around at a brothel and find a bubbly, curvy halfling for Ted's body and a gentle, frail-looking dwarf for Suzy's body."

Her playful mood returns as she smiles and jokingly complains, "Oh, my husband will be very happy to know where my work is taking me."

"Take him with you," I suggestively suggest.

And now it's her turn to fall silent for a moment as she searches for a retort. "Perhaps merely looking won't hurt," she tentatively states.

"That's my philosophy with Hana's exhibitionism," I calmly agree.

She clears her throat and changes the topic, "Let's have the golems test the bodies, shall we? I believe it'll take them a while before they can actually move with dexterity."

"Indeed," I hum and turn around. "You three can come here and practice with the bodies when you're free, which will most likely be at night when we're asleep."

"As you wish, Master," they answer in unison.

Then they finally begin testing. Jarn has to compress her body to reduce its size before she can enter while the doll golems fit snugly inside the chests of the lolis, making me wonder if I shouldn't just remake Jarn to be like the doll golems and have her use a tall battle-body. The golems have thick, reinforced steel skeletons inside their stuffing, so it isn't like they're fragile.

But Jarn thinks otherwise, "Using a battle-body would lower my aptitude for melee combat, and having a varied set of specialized bodyguards is safer than all of us golems being the same."

Oh, well, if you say so…

I observe Almaria work for a short time, and she begins coloring the bodies. I get a bit energetic thinking about how they'll look, so I soon leave to not bother the droopy-eyed Officer with my boundless desire.

With that handled, it's finally time to check on the Raki. So I open a [Gate] back to Nono's and Petra's lab, scaring the shit out of them as a detail of heavily armored Companions pours through, but we're just passing by, and if I stay near Nono for too long, I'll want to Ravage her again.

"Hello, sorry for the surprise, and goodbye," I cheerfully greet. Then we leave the two stunned researchers behind.

The word that I was in the Institute before lunch has clearly spread because the Head of the Division comes to meet with us as we walk down the corridor to the lab.

"Your Highness," he politely greets and bows, making the sunlight shine on his bald gray head. He's a lizard-fish-hybrid-something Chimera that looks rather odd, but his set of pointy, sharp little teeth is kind of cute.

"Seigneur Whakan," I reply in kind after reading his name through [Sense Soul]. I'd forgotten what he was called… or maybe I never memorized it to begin with.

Then he straightens and smiles, showing his shiny teeth. "We're eager to show you our progress."

And I grin back. "And I'm eager to see it."

"Then follow me, if you please."

We enter the hangar, and a Space court mage (Mara is too tired to come) pulls out seats and a table for us so that we may talk while observing the engineers as they work on the Raki.

They've altered its shape a bit. It was very simple at first, like the MiG fighter plane that looks like a tube with triangular wings, but now it's a bit rounder and sleeker, resembling the Dragon-class airplane of the Chimera. It's actually faster than before, and the new shape comes from repeated wind-tunnel testing rather than them referencing the old Chimera design.

They've also painted it black and added the silver horns of our heraldry to its wings, which is cute, but this model is still only for testing, so it's just a bit of ass-kissing.

I, of course, pull out a standard set of warm not-earl-gray tea with cookies to accompany it, and Whakan happily partakes in snobbish tea-drinking with me.

"We have discovered a certain problem with the Raki's construction," he begins after taking a sip, and I give him an inquisitive look to prod him to continue. "At full speed, the airplane is too maneuverable, to the point that the wings destroy themselves as the various shearing forces tear it apart."

Damn, I didn't think Materials Science in this world would be so far behind Earth's…

Then he follows up with the crux, "We can, of course, enchant it with [Reinforce], and it'll survive the turn, but that drives up the cost considerably, and our directive is to bring down the cost as much as possible to sell it to commoners."

I stare at the engineers using [Manipulate Metal] to weld together the plates of the plane as I affirm, "You're correct. Lowering the speed is also not an option since its purpose is to be as fast as possible."

"And your other directive is to also use as little magic as possible."

I nod, then turn to the shiny, bald Chimera and suggest, "Now that we're back, I think I can have Lina and Aoi aid you in that. They're researching metallurgy, and I know it's possible to make lightweight metals strong enough to survive the turn."

If I remember correctly, aluminum and titanium alloys are very important for earthling aerospace research, and we're still far from carbon-fiber being viable in this world, so they'll have to do.

Be brightens up, showing me his set of shiny, pointy teeth again. "That would be wonderful. The Raki is almost ready for commercialization; we just need to solve this last problem. Otherwise, we'd be selling suicide chambers to our clients."

I chuckle softly and agree, "Indeed. Without speedometers, even an experienced pilot might unknowingly make a turn at too high a speed and destroy their plane by mistake."

"Speed-what?" he blurts out confusedly.

"Speedometri. A tool to measure the plane's speed. It should be similar to how the wind-tunnel testing works; the faster the plane, the stronger the air pushes into an intake, and the more that the weight is pushed back, but it has to be miniaturized so that it can fit in the plane."

His eyes lose focus and start to twitch as he rapidly comes up with ideas. "Huh… may I… write this down?"

"You may."

He pulls a magic pen and paper out of his [Item Box] with a *poof* and promptly starts writing down my idea as well as a sketch of how it might work. I think it might require more than just an intake that pushes a needle back, but now's not the time to think about that.

"What else do you have to report?" I question once he finishes his quick drawing.

He promptly stores it back in his [Item Box] and continues, "Just one last thing. We've been reducing the size of the gem that powers the Raki, and we believe we've reached the smallest size possible for this speed. The gem is one of the most expensive components, so that alone drove the cost down quite a lot."

And this pleases me greatly, but there's one last thing I need to check up on. "Excellent. Now, what about that idea about recreating the supersonic javelin thrower?"

This time, he remains impassive because his report isn't positive. "There have been some… crude experiments, but nothing much so far. A cannon creates only one explosion, but to use it as a means of propulsion for an airplane requires continuous explosions, so it's something we won't be able to properly study while we're busy with the Raki."

Yes, I should've expected that and I don't know enough about jet engines to help them more, so this project will have to be shelved, but not for long.

It's time to begin expanding. "Well, then I might have good news for you. We've received a lot of funding from the Imperial Army, even after the incident with Junior General Reinhold, so we'll be expanding the Institute, and we'll need a lot of people to manage the new divisions that I want to create."

Whakan's reaction is one of tentative hope. A lot of money means a lot of expectations, and a lot of people means a lot of work. He may not be the best choice for a general manager for the Institute, and he seemingly doesn't want a strictly managerial position, but he's an aristocrat with connections, and people who want to get involved with the Institute will definitely flock to him.

The one person that I have in mind to manage it all is Prince Looklwind Krunigrihir, the dull-looking Prince. A mathematician like him would be the perfect choice to standardize and organize all the different Divisions. He even seemed interested in the Institute, so when we meet with the Realm Travellers in the Sky Lands, I'll look for a way to recruit the gnome Prince… and possibly also "build relations" with his Pixie sister.

Anyway, I'm actually impressed by how fast Whakan's teams have been improving the Raki. But when you can shape or weld metal by hand or with just your thoughts, creating prototypes becomes extremely easy. The biggest constraint in this world is manufacturing things cheaply.

But while the Light Planes Division has had a lot of success, the Transport Division is still mostly just on paper. They've improved the Chimera propeller design using the wind tunnel, but they need more guidance on where to take the research next, so I give them the task of creating a troop transport that's faster and cheaper than just putting a [Fly] gem on a boat and calling it a day.

The visit was quick since it was mostly just them reporting to me, so now I have some time to kill. Yunia reports that we'll be holding a party for nobility to celebrate our victorious return, which means that most of my evening will be taken up by ass-kissers, sword-suckers, and tail-lickers.

It's been a while since I've talked to my gilf in private, so I make my way to the temple.

Meanwhile, Yunia and Ciel begin the ceremony to bury Azador's ashes under a venerable High Tree reserved especially for knights. The elven gondolas silently slide across the surface of the lake, barely disturbing it as they move through [Weaverism].

Nobody is wearing anything fancy as, per Rupegian beliefs, we're born naked, and we die naked, so wealth should never be displayed at a funeral service. There also aren't many people present this time as the ceremony is for Azador's family, so it's just them and his closest friends.

His widow, a stern-looking elven grandma who looks just as tenacious as her late husband, stares at his body with a faraway look. Azador's face looks peaceful, and the red flowers in his white beard have been revitalized, giving him the same air of a dignified retainer that he had in life.

His son, a fully grown man sporting a perfectly trimmed silvery beard, stares at Yunia's back instead, and his eyes seem hopeful rather than those of one who's mourning.

When they arrive at the High Tree, Yunia and Ciel turn around and scan the present audience. Their eyes fall on the mother and son pair with whom they're sharing a gondola, and the elven Queen solemnly begins her speech, "Friends and family of Sir Azador Curol, we're here today to bury the brave and loyal knight who died in service while fighting a malicious army of nobles who controlled the heinous Katasko mercenary company, now destroyed, and his death avenged.

"He served until the end and has earned a long stay in Paradise, and now his descendant will take his place. Samaiel Curol, will you take the pledge that your father and your ancestors have taken? Will you serve the Ryder Lordship until your body gives in and your descendant takes your place?"

A knight serves the Lordship, not necessarily the Lords themselves, so they're only obliged to serve us as long as we remain Lords.

"I will," the determined man eagerly replies, a daring smile on his magnificent elven face. Knights are a different bunch, and even though I greatly appreciate their service and loyalty, I simply don't understand how they can be the way they are.

Yunia's emotions run wild with both pain and pride, but she must continue the ceremony, so she steels herself and composedly declares, "Then you and your family shall come under our tree, and the succession of your descendant will be guaranteed through servitude."

Samaiel kneels and lowers his head, then earnestly gives his pledge, "I lack the extensive experience and respect of my father. There's simply nobody who can replace him, nobody with his knowledge of this beautiful town, but I'll do my utmost to live up to his legacy!"

"Welcome to the Lordship, Sir Samaiel," Ciel coolly replies. Then she casts [Materialize], revealing Azador's satisfied spirit as he comes back to the land of the living one last time, but it only lasts for a brief moment before he's gone.

His widow sighs softly, her tense posture relaxing as a wistful look appears on her face while her son looks as if he's bursting with energy. It's still surprising to me how fervently loyal our retainers are, and I pray that I never grow indifferent to it so that we can live up to their expectations.

A note from Manasong

Hall of Fame of Patrons

The patrons who support Rupegia shall have their names sung by the bards for they deserve the glory and honor. Their names are:

Prince PreownedFIN.

Prince Owldente.

Prince Definitely  not Dio.

Lord Andrew Meyers.

Lord Novgarod.

Lord Michale Erwin.

Lord Bakerdea.

Lord Maurice.

Lord Mattirro Draca.

Lord Mike Bartter.

Lord Tenebris Lupus.

Lord Paul Daval.

Lord Paul Daval.

Lord Tmac.

Lord CopeyDunt.

Lord BlindTactic.

Lord litalmexy.

Lord Philip.

Lord d3235.

Lord William Clark.

Lord Ddraig Wynn.

Lord SubJef.

Lord GalacticTNT.

Lord Placid.

Lord Caden Dinkel.

Lord McMax.

Lord LiuAnshan.

Lord Asaadullah Lassiter.

Noble Salty Panda.

Noble Mild Fracas.

Noble Aclys.

Noble Carl  Baxter.

Noble Tony Starrk.

Noble DND.

Noble Aclys.

Noble Brandon.

Noble Tony Starrk.

Leave a rating or a review to help me rise to the top or fix my shameful understanding of prose.

Take a look over my blog where all information about the world of Rupegia will be posted.

Join the Discord and discuss, or rant, or meme, or try and fight me so your waifu gets more screentime.

Become a Patron and read chapters in advance, or read the side-stories, or leave your mark on the story, or help choose the next artwork or the next side-story.

Chapter 155: Maintaining Relations - Part 1

A note from Manasong

Attention: to conform to the limit of mature content (more than just sexual content) allowed in a novel, I've censored this chapter. You can look for the uncensored version here.

"Do you have anything you want to say, Madame Carolea?" Ciel solemnly inquires.

The widow stands up a bit weakly, and the gondola doesn't even sway due to the [Weaverism] spell on it. Then Carolea scans the audience and, with a wavering tone, speaks what her heart aches to say, "It makes me happy to see how many close friends my husband had, to see the respect he's given after giving his life for the Lordship. He was born a knight, lived as a knight, and died as a knight. All that matters to me now is that he's happy and waiting for me in Paradise."

Samaiel's energetic expression cracks, and I realize he's using his pride for his father to hide the sadness of losing him. But he quickly gets his emotions under control and stands up, then says, "For father, to die while performing his duty was the best end he could ask for. He hated the idea of retirement, and it's impressive how long his body held on, even though he was already old."

How old was Azador…?

"I don't know, but he was already old when I was a child," Yunia quietly replies through our connection.

"May he have a long stay in Paradise!" one of the knights shouts and salutes, folding his elven ear.

"For Azador!" a commoner cheerfully follows.

"For Azador!" everyone repeats.

Then the audience becomes emboldened and also begins to share their feelings.

"He was a good friend!"

"A good drinking partner."

"A wise fellow."

"A good gambler in the arena."

"He had the best guesses about who would win the blood duels."

"He was also a bit weird, tho."

And everyone chuckles as even Yunia agrees.

"You don't get so many red flowers in your beard without being a bit 'special.'"

"Father liked bloody battles a bit too much, yes," Samaiel wryly remarks.

And another commoner teases, "You're following in his footsteps, aren't'cha, Sam?"

But the newest knight raises his hands defensively. "I just want a couple of Vamiros as proof of my skill."

The teaser's expression softens as he continues, "The real proof that you're his son will be if you can keep the smugglers in check like he did."

Samaiel smiles pridefully. "Why do you think I'm so confident? Father was anything but careless; he taught me well about all of the secrets of this town."

"And I'll be here to make sure he doesn't step on a Jaca," Carolea warmly finishes.

That's a… Brazilian saying, but it seems quite bastardized.

After a bit more reminiscing, our court mages open a hole in the water of the lake and into the soil at the bottom. Then Azador's corpse is levitated and lowered down into its final resting place.

On the way back, Samaiel's excitement dies down, and he gains a wistful look, though he always keeps looking forward, never glancing back.

What a day…

But on happier matters, Teresina warmly receives me, making me quite glad that she isn't trying to keep some distance between us.

"Are you busy? Do you have time for a casual chat?" I softly ask the gilf as I enter her office.

She gently nods, but then her stern eyes sharpen as she answers, "I do have time. You haven't brought me any trouble yet, and the Purge has finished in Escanso, so I'm not particularly busy, especially now that your 'healthcare' has been lightening our load."

And I smile handsomely. "I'm glad to hear that I've been able to make your life easier."

She hesitates for a second, but I can't decipher the reason for it from her expression. "Let's hope it lasts because this Purification drained a few years off my lifespan," she replies, trying to not sound too tired.

My smile turns guilty as I casually take a seat before her. "The Purification only happens once every few generations, right? So you shouldn't have to worry about it anymore."

She stares for another couple of seconds, and this time I feel like she's holding back a bit of a smile. "Well, I'm worried about the next problem you'll bring." -But then her tone suddenly becomes harsh as she remembers something- "Your use of torture on Katasko's commanders was the most worrying thing, and I hope you don't plan on repeating that."

Indeed, I really don't plan on repeating the torture, but her still words make my smile deflate quite quickly.

So I sigh softly and earnestly reply, "That was a difficult decision, but it had to be done. The Punishers seemed quite glad to have a list of enemies to purge, did they not?" And I return a bit of her sharp look.

But Teresina is nonchalant. "The Punishers never look twice at free gifts, but using extreme means to hunt down heresy will only cause instability."

Now that's something quite surprising to hear coming out of an ex-Punisher's mouth.

She still sounds unconvinced, so I reassure her, "We're in no way eager to repeat that. I can't actually promise that we won't do it again," -then I decide to turn a bit of the heat back on her- "but you know that we don't take something like this lightly, don't you?"

But once again, she's nonchalant and deftly deflects, "I'm more interested in the future. How will you react when the merchants and companies make a move against you?"

I raise an eyebrow at her and confusedly ask, "Why would they?"

And she gives me a disbelieving look, as if it's obvious. "Why wouldn't they? You're making yourself very well-liked by the commoners, but you haven't made a single move to appease the merchants while you've already acted against a company. Some are already referring to you as a 'king of commoners.'"

"Sounds like a good thing to me," I casually reply with a snort.

The mature woman isn't amused, and she even makes a complicated expression, showing a level of concern for me that's even a bit endearing. "Wolf… this is why it's hard for me to open up to you. I can't give up on being your counter-balance if you keep being so reckless."

My heart skips a beat, then overcompensates by beating twice as fast. She's basically just confessed to having been seduced by me… but then the human pulls on the reins of the dragon to let me think clearly again.

I assume a perfectly polite tone as I reply and explain myself, "I apologize for giving you trouble. It's really not my intention to make life harder for you, but I'm Blessed by the Goddess of Knowledge, and part of the bargain to receive her favor was to spread my knowledge. It's this very same knowledge that guides my actions, and I know that I'll make some enemies along the way because no change comes without effort."

And then she falls silent for a long moment. She can't go against the desire of the Gods, even if my actions will cause conflict in the future, so she forces herself to accept that this is the right path. "This knowledge… is it from your home Realm?"

My heart skips another beat, but I should've been expecting this, so I quickly calm down. "Caterina told you about my past…?"

She nods softly and quickly adds, "Yes. It doesn't change my opinion of you because the Gods already accepted you; I can only judge your actions." Then she falls silent again, waiting for me to answer her previous question.

My throat starts to feel a bit dry, but I don't pull out my tea set, for now. Then I breathe in and start revealing it all to her, "My home world… home Realm, as you Rupegians call it, is more socially and technologically developed than this Realm. History taught me that these changes I'm attempting to make were opposed every step of the way, and blood was shed for them. You can expect the same to happen here, but if the temple is on my side, many lives will be saved."

"I can't give you an answer with such a vague promise," she immediately replies.

But I smile warmly at her, and I feel her stern facade crack. "I wasn't expecting one, and it's precisely because of that attitude of yours that I like you. You're extremely reasonable, even though you try to stick as close to your ideals as possible."

Her lips pucker as she tries not to pout, but a bit of embarrassment manages to slip past her mask and appear on her face. "You… don't deserve this high level of 'Charisma,'" she stiffly replies.

And I infuse as much [Spicy Charm] into my handsome smile as I can, relishing in having finally struck a critical hit on her. "Not the first time I've been told that today."

Her hold on her pout weakens due to her annoyance. "Hmm…? Seducing another woman you shouldn't?"

But I answer categorically, "Actually, I wasn't. But we were being a bit flirty just for fun."

And now it's her eyes that narrow as her displeasure deepens. "Flaunting the number of women who bend over for you isn't going to impress me."

I think I'm near the line where it goes from banter to actual dislike, so I pull back and appeal to her emotions with a gentle reply, "Don't say it like that. Being submissive isn't dishonorable, and I'm not trying to get you to submit to me."

"Then what are you trying?" she questions vaguely, giving me the reins of this conversation.

Once again, I have to hold back on teasing her because she's a truly proud woman, and I still haven't really earned the right to "wound" it, even jokingly, so I assume the most earnest tone I can and give her a simple answer, "I'm trying to charm you, obviously. It's not the same thing as 'making you submit.'"

And her answer is instantaneous, "Why would you ever want to court an old woman?"

Oh? Is that insecurity I hear in her voice?

But to me, the answer is obvious. "Because I find you attractive."

And she sighs tiredly, a bit exasperated that I've neither given up nor confessed to only being after her body. "You really don't deserve this much 'Charisma'…" she mumbles while awkwardly rubbing her ear. She could've hidden this tic by pretending to readjust her hair behind her ear, but because her hair is always firmly tied in a bun, she's clearly signaling that she's feeling insecure.

But I feel like she's at the point that pressuring her would only lead to her rejecting me on reflex, so I go back to comforting and suggest something casual, "If you're not repulsed by the idea, then I invite you to have a drink with me back in the castle."

She touches the silver ribbon holding her hair tight, then her hands twitch oddly, and the gesture reminds me of the girls readjusting their hair with a brush, which I find quite curious. But Teresina simply hums and accepts, "Hm… that much I can do…"

I stand up and walk around her desk, then offer her my arm. "If you please. I'll [Gate] you directly to my home."

She immediately stands, then suddenly declares, almost as if she had briefly forgotten about it, "I have to warn the priests that I'll be away."

I call back one of the Companions and tell her that we'll be in the castle. I'll keep the [Gate] open and leave a summoned bird here so that she can warn us if someone comes for Teresina.

With Teresina reassured, I offer her my arm, and she takes it, then rests her soft, wrinkly but still beautiful hand upon mine. The subtle smell of her sharp but simple perfume is exciting, but then I realize that even at her age, she's still reasonably taller than me. I like women of all sizes, and I know very well that my lack of height gives me a boost in cuteness due to my youth, so I feel like it isn't a minus overall.

"Then, we're off," I happily hum and open a [Gate] right under us.

We're taken to my bedroom, and Teresina raises an eyebrow at the huge bed, but I merely take her to the balcony for us to have some tea.

"You're addicted to tea, aren't you?" she warmly asks, mildly amused, and she surprisingly starts to relax her posture.

And I answer matter-of-factly, "I am. It's the perfect beverage to drink while having a talk when you aren't very fond of alcohol."

She gives me a curious look. "Why aren't you fond of it?"

I flash a smirk as Alissa takes over my body so that I can pour perfectly. "I have too many secrets to lose, and I was never much for drinking anyway."

She seems mildly pleased by my tea-pouring skill, then takes her cup and asks before taking a sip, "Well, I'm interested in those secrets. What is your home Realm like?"

It's good that I have tea because my throat gets pretty dry from how much I talk, and with how gentle and kind Teresina is as she asks all sorts of things, I only feel even more encouraged to never stop talking. This is the strategy I'll use to reach her heart, so I do my best to prolong this intimate moment for as long as I can.

I tell her that I come from a world of only humans, which she finds baffling, and she becomes annoyed when she learns that elves are mere myths to earthlings, but she does enjoy learning that they're worshiped as symbols of beauty and grace.

"I assume that you're one of those 'worshipers'?" she wryly asks, even daring to smile.

And I answer matter-of-factly, "Of course, but not only elves. I worship beautiful women of all races."

But her response is to hide a pout, which I find adorable. "Of course, you do…" she mumbles jealously.

I tell her of the earthlings' creations, such as planes, cars, rifles, factories, huge concrete buildings, electronics, the internet, the endless streams of media, and the advances of earthling society.

And she notices something peculiar. "I'm not a historian, but your description of your cities reminds me of descriptions of the settlements of Man during the Dawn of Mankind."

I hum in agreement, "I noticed that too. It's eerily similar. But it's not just the architecture; this world is straight-up a stereotypical story genre on Earth called isekai. Sometimes, I wonder if this world is just a game, like a dungeon with a story."

But that makes her very displeased. "I'll wipe away all my respect for you if you treat us as if we're mere mana constructs," she harshly replies with a glare.

I understand why Masochist from the Clown Troupe is the way he is. There's something special about the angry eyes of a beautiful woman. "Technically, everyone is a mana construct," I cheekily answer with a smirk. But she simply narrows her eyes, and I still don't have enough "Perception" to discern if she's actually hiding a smile or not, so I quickly amend, "I truly love my wives and everyone else that surrounds me, so I'll never treat them as lesser beings. For example: if I wake up back on Earth one day as if no time has passed at all, I'll just commit suicide."

Alissa wants to complain about the grimness of my example, but she'd do the same if she were in my position, so she isn't allowed to say a word.

And Teresina's answer is one of concern. "What of your family?"

I shrug. "I accepted giving up on them and that my real life is here. Though, I plan to test the theory that this is just a fake reality by finding a way to observe what's happening on Earth."

She knits her thin white eyebrows in confusion. "What do you mean?"

And I eagerly explain [Otherworldly Summoning] to her.

"Weepers' Dream, Wolf. You're dabbling in dangerous things," she states, taken aback, and anxiously rubs her long elven ear.

But I just grin cheekily. "Oh, you haven't heard about what we did in the Cycle of Souls."

"What did you do…?!" she suddenly exclaims in disbelief, and I almost feel bad for teasing her like this.

So I explain our encounter with Caio, and she immediately calms down.

"Oh… it isn't that bad…" she quietly hums and looks away towards the city below, deep in thought.

"What did you even imagine that I did?" I casually ask.

"Considering how [Otherworldly Summoning] went, I imagined that you had opened a hole in the Cycle and allowed spirits to pour through."

I chuckle, and she subtly pouts at me, but now it's my turn to notice something curious. "You're surprisingly calm about this 'I'm a Realm-Traveler' thing," I state and stare at her inquisitively.

She shrugs and turns back to me as she starts to deliberate, "I know undeath is caused by staying in the In Between for too long, so the idea of Realm-Travelers has been discussed a lot in the temple. You've clearly been sent by the Gods, so there's nothing to fear from you; I just believe it's my job to prevent you from going too far with the knowledge you bring from 'Earth.' There's a little-known teaching that says: knowledge is a weapon, don't misuse it."

"We have a similar saying on Earth," I hum with a nod.

Her eyes sharpen briefly. "Then I'll remind you no matter how many times it's necessary." And I just smile back, which seems to disarm her as she quickly moves on, sounding eager to learn more, "Now, tell me more about cars. Why haven't you brought these 'horseless carriages' to our Realm yet?"

"Ball bearings. The axles just wear down too fast without them, so I'm waiting for Lina and Aoi to finish developing them before I begin building cars."

And she subtly leans forward. "What are 'ball bearings'?"

I realize that part of her curiosity is to make sure that I'm not bringing anything dangerous to this world, but I still enjoy talking about things with her. I'm not a physicist, anyway, so nuclear bombs likely won't be a thing in this world for a long while, but I'll still tell her the dangers of them so that people will know what to expect once the atomic age arrives.

The table I've chosen for us is small, and so our feet and legs occasionally rub against each other as we shift in our seats. I don't dare to deliberately caress her, but only for today. I feel like we've grown a lot closer today, and she does seem to enjoy my company, so I have hope for our future.

But the moment I get comfortable in her presence, I get horny. She's a classy gilf, a beautiful stern woman with an unsheathing-inducing glare and a delightful composure that exudes dignity, the kind that'd still look awe-inspiring with my friend in her mouth or with her bent over, spreading herself and asking for it.

And some of my [Spicy Charm] must've leaked out by mistake because her gaze gradually becomes sultry, then she crosses her legs and lets the side of her foot touch my thigh. She's wearing a simple but pretty sandal that graces her beautiful foot, and her priestly black robes are riding up a bit, allowing me to spy a quite well-shaped calf.

But her touch excites me so much that I get ahead of myself and ask, "Have you ever seen the town with this kind of view at night? It's a beautiful sea of mist."

She lifts an eyebrow, and this time, I clearly notice that she's holding back a smirk as she's managed to get me to lose my coolness with just a touch. "I haven't, but I won't be staying to see it… not tonight," she coos back, her tone thrillingly warm.

"He'lls sake. Is Wolfy going to get a Punisher before me?" Hana grumbles inside my soul space.

I sigh as I forcibly calm myself, but then the dragon asks for revenge, so I boldly wrap my tail around her calf, gently rubbing it as I apply a subtle spirit touch, and the way that she sharply inhales and her eyes widen is totally worth her pulling back her leg.

Then she narrows her eyes at me in annoyance, but the war will have to be put on hold because the sun has set, and it's time to take a bath before tonight's celebration.

I guess that's why she did this little test right now. She won't have to show me her embarrassed face because I have to leave.

A note from Manasong

Hall of Fame of Patrons

The patrons who support Rupegia shall have their names sung by the bards for they deserve the glory and honor. Their names are:

Prince PreownedFIN.

Prince Owldente.

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Lord Mike Bartter.

Lord Tenebris Lupus.

Lord Paul Daval.

Lord Paul Daval.

Lord Tmac.

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Noble Salty Panda.

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Noble DND.

Noble Aclys.

Noble Brandon.

Noble Tony Starrk.

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Chapter 155: Maintaining Relations - Part 2

A note from Manasong

Attention: to conform to the limit of mature content (more than just sexual content) allowed in a novel, I've censored this chapter. You can look for the uncensored version here.

It feels good to be back at home. The maids here know exactly how to give me a bath, unlike the maids of the embassy, and I even get some love from Poosh while my dear thirsty servants run their hands all over my body and scales.

The bespectacled and gentle blonde milf sheep stares deeply into my eyes as she works wonders. This level of worship is like a small piece of Paradise to me, and the best part is that they're all eager to receive it. Poosh "trained" them well, but my loyal sheep is still having them go through even more "training."

Unfortunately, there's no time for relaxing in hot water or Ravaging someone, so the loving ends here. But now, I close my eyes and lay down as my scales and claws are waxed and sharpened with the utmost care while my hair is trimmed, and my (ugly teen) stubble is (unfortunately) made to disappear once again.

I come out of the impromptu spa shining and majestic, like a young dragon should be, then they dress me in the finest silver elven shirt, pants, and sandals. And now I'm ready for the party, so I join the wonderful women who are worthy of me.

Alissa takes my clawed right arm. Her light brown, almost orange shoulder-length hair looks like a sheet of silk, while her furry ears and tail have been fluffed to an unbelievable and nearly irresistible level. Her red and white micro not-kimono has cute flowers and foxes embroidered on it, but the most striking thing about it is how it's a trap for the eyes as it's so short that it almost allows one to peek at her semi-transparent red underwear.

Yunia takes my clawed left arm. Her pale skin looks absolutely flawless, enhanced by the most expensive elven makeup we have, and her glorious golden drills bounce with her every movement as if they had springs in them. She's wearing a golden dousnadeia, a not-bikini with such thin cloth that one can see the shapes of her bits and flower, and the rest of her sculpted body is on display as usual as her transparent white skirt and shawl show everything else.

Roxanne is on Yunia's left. Her unnaturally pale skin almost glows with how pure white it is, and her long black hair, horns, and dagger-tipped-tail have a subtle sparkle that matches her black dress. Her thin arms, long legs, and almost her entire chest are on display as her very loose magical dress has openings everywhere. And she's not wearing anything under.

Hana takes Roxanne's left arm. Her massive red mane trails behind her like a siren's floating hair, and her subtly tanned skin shines with a faint bronze color, almost as if it had been waxed like her (actually shining) emerald scales. And she manages to wear even less than Roxanne and Yunia with an elastic, skin-tight red dress that is mildly transparent, making her darker bits and red bush very obvious if one stares hard enough.

Aoi is to Hana's left. Her insanely long dark blue hair pools at her feet and drags behind her as she walks, almost like a bridal veil, but her like-colored dress provides a cushion for her hair so that it doesn't get dirtied by the floor, not that elven floors are ever dirty. Her skin-tight dress is actually more conservative than all of the previous women, but the slits on the sides are so large that one can still see her private parts if she moves too much.

Ciel is to Alissa's right. Her long black hair has been tied in a cute braid and adorned with pearls, giving her the gentle air of an angelic mother that she truly deserves. Her skin-tight yellow dress shows every curve of her ass, and her massive pillows are displayed to the maximum with a corset that pushes them together, but the cut is so low that one can see the tips of her dark bits (something nobody tells her).

Lina takes Ciel's right arm. Her silky dark hair has been tied in adorable twintails, and her head is adorned by a cute little purple beret. Her frilly white skirt is semi-transparent, but she's wearing a black bra under it, and her equally frilly black skirt has an opening in the front, creating the same trap as with Alissa's not-kimono, but this one looks even more innocent, and therefore, it's more perverted.

Osaria is to Lina's right. Her chocolate skin shines, and her long silver hair is tied up in a dignified bun, yet she's wearing nothing on her chest but a small, red, not-bikini top with a matching short skirt. She's also wearing something interesting, a necklace with a pendant that has our heraldry: a silver field with a pair of curved, black horns.

Nono is to Osaria's right. The white rabbit looks quite frightened by the predatory milf but nowhere near enough to make her shiver like she does when I use my predatory gaze on her. She's dressed like a proper "servant," with a turquoise, skin-tight micro dress that matches her eyes, and she's also not wearing anything under, but it's a lot easier to get a peek of her pink flower than Alissa's or Lina's.

Kaatohe is to Aoi's left, wearing nothing but heavy, shiny jewels, which have been tied to her body almost like in shibari, enhancing her private parts. Her bronze skin shines like Hana's, but curiously, her bits look hard while she drips from excitement, and I'm not sure why she's so excited.

Klein and Hukarere will be standing guard, so they're wearing armor, which has been adorned with silver sashes to make it look more ceremonial. Poosh is wearing a simple blue dress with openings that allow her fluffy patches of wool to peek out, making her seem curvier than she is (and she's already a match for Ciel and Osaria).

Then Osaria walks up to the naked cat and produces another necklace with our heraldry. After a tense moment of hesitation, Kaatohe impassively receives it, but then she glances at me, and her cat eyes widen when they meet mine, explaining why she's so excited.

"This is proof that the silver dragon owns you," Osaria remarks smugly at the stiff Chimera, who only silently nods to hide her emotions.

"Heh. I've already had something like that since a long time ago," Hukarere quietly brags to Klein and pats her chestplate, which is adorned with a badge of our heraldry at its center.

And I remark as I walk up to Kaatohe, "It makes me really happy that you've finally agreed to be mine."

"About time, really," Osaria sultrily adds and plays with Kaatohe's small pillows from behind.

The cat purrs softly but then glumly admits, "The problem wasn't bending over to your Sword; it was accepting that I'm worthy of it even though my lineage dies with me."

What an… odd concern.

"Have you ever thought about adopting?" I reflexively reply.

"Adopt…? Yes… Klein mentioned it once… but…" and she trails off as she enters deep thought.

I give Klein an appreciative nod, and she blushes shyly. Then Hukarere teasingly elbows her armored flank, and the monkey flashes a glare at the wolf. I really like it that they're being supportive of each other.

It seems that Kaatohe is conflicted about adoption, but I believe it isn't a matter she needs to think too deeply about, so I interrupt her reflection with a kiss on her cat lips.

She narrows her eyes at me, but Alissa suddenly suggests before she can reply, "Have Wolf put his child in a living Chimera of your choice, then raise the child as your own."

Kaatohe blinks blankly, then mumbles in wonder, "A living Chimera…! Yes, that… could work." And a hopeful smile appears on her lips, revealing her cute white fangs.

"Thank you for convincing her, Osaria, my love," I kindly praise my milf with a handsome smile and kiss her hand, then the dark bit she's been playing with.

"Anything for you, my King," the chocolate elf sultrily replies. The fact that I'll still punish her tonight makes this all the sweeter.

Then I turn to the pendant hanging on Kaatohe's chest. "These necklaces were also a great idea… but I can think of a way to make them better."

"How?" Osaria hums back.

And I grin. "A 'belly' tattoo."

She raises her silver eyebrows in surprise. "Oh, my…"

"Yes," Alissa immediately agrees on reflex.

"A brand," Hana quietly coos, sounding quite excited.

Yunia looks down at her own belly, which is always exposed due to her choice of clothes, and she gently touches the area as she imagines it, then smiles in mild amusement.

And the overall reactions of everyone are equally positive.

I pat Kaatohe's womb as I state, "That'll be for another time, though. Anyway, Osaria, do you have more necklaces?"

She nods positively. "They're simple, so I commissioned a few."

So I order, "Hand me two. Now, Poosh and Nono, you two come here."

The white rabbit and the blonde sheep immediately obey, both looking tense, and I offer each of them a necklace. Their eyes are immediately drawn to the heraldry, and they tense up even further as they realize its meaning.

"Do you accept?" I huskily ask, and Alissa sees the hairs on the back of their necks stand up on end.

Nono takes it after a mere second and immediately puts it on, which greatly pleases me, but it's Poosh who surprises me with her hesitation.

She isn't daft in the matters of love, so she nervously readjusts her round glasses and explains herself, "Your Highness… Wolf, what I feel for you is a different form of love. It's… It's worship. Do you want a concubine who sees you that way?"

I know exactly what I want, so I immediately reply, "That doesn't matter. Do you want to be a concubine? If you do, I'll always make time for you and take care of you for the rest of your life and even further if you decide to become a bound spirit."

The gentle, fluffy milf breathes in shakily, tempted dearly but still hesitant and cautious. I understand why she's like this. She respects me too much to easily take such a leap.

Alissa grabs my hand from below, then gently extends it further towards Poosh and smiles sweetly. "It's fine. You won't disappoint," my little fox whispers reassuringly.

"All that matters is that you're happy," Ciel soothingly adds.

And the gentle sheep sighs softly to calm herself down, then finally takes the necklace.

Now, I look at both Nono and Poosh as I state, "Accepting this means that you're now exclusively my women for as long as you still love me. But this also means that you have the right to hear some of my secrets, which I'll tell you tomorrow morning, once we've rested from the party."

To congratulate the new official concubines, Alissa kisses Nono, Osaria kisses Poosh, and Roxanne kisses Kaatohe. All on the lips, of course.

"Welcome to the family," Alissa whispers, and the shy little bunny girl wags her fluffy white pom-pom of a tail in happiness.

"T-thank you…" she softly coos.

Did I overestimate Silvane's depravity, or has my Sword really conquered Nono's flower?

Instead of making assumptions, I'll just ask the elven whore in person since she's outside, waiting for us.

And so we finally join the party.

Ah, the nights in the High Forest are always so cozy.

The glowing plants turn purple at night, giving the castle's inner garden, where the party is being held, a mysterious but also comforting mood. The illumination is still mostly colorless because it'd be obnoxious if everything was purple, but the glowing plants add many cozy purple spots to the environment.

As we make our glorious entrance, most of the party goes silent as they turn to us, even the ass-kissers following the two Princesses. Our outfits are outrageously alluring, which the few prudes (Sa'Haa included) disapprove of, but most people are already getting used to our sense of style, and hardly anyone in this world would complain about being able to shamelessly stare at almost-naked beauties.

Then I zone out as the greetings commence, and Alissa takes over for me (by literally controlling my body) since I'm a bit tired from talking all day.

But then I suddenly take back control to ask Urmeie, "Why aren't you also wearing the traditional clothing of Bestiaram like Empress Piscila does, and by that, I mean wearing nothing? The Chimeras here already follow that style."

And the bear princess simply glances at her sister.

"No," Sa'Haa immediately rejects, then glares at me. "Why did you even give her that idea? She becomes uncontrollable when she's unclothed."

"I don't follow…?" I hum confusedly.

"I get very horny when people stare at me with desire," the bear Princess grumbles.

Then Sa'Haa bitterly adds, her eyes trained on me, "She's an exhibitionist like Empress Uruteie, who's also forced to wear clothes to not cause problems for the Emperor. Unfortunately, Urmeie's 'condition' is worse than her mother's and, I dare say, worse than even yours."

"Well, suit yourself," I casually hum and return control of my body to Alissa.

After surviving the deluge of ass-kissing that tries to drown me in flattery, I finally get to Silvane, who's been patiently waiting her turn while holding hands with Nono.

I approach her and calmly state, "Silvane, I've claimed Nono as my concubine. Don't you dare force her to lay with another man, now."

"Other women are fine?" she sweetly questions.

And I nod. "Yes."

So she also nods. "I was expecting this, so it's fine."

Then I smirk and use my [Sexual Charm] as I add, "Don't you also want to be owned by me?"

The little silver whore crosses her legs as a pang of heat flares, but she politely declines, "I can't. Haaran gave me freedom, but not that kind of freedom."

He isn't here to complain, so I smoothly insist, "But do you want to be owned by me?"

She starts to shake her cute little foot as her frustration mounts, but her resolve stays strong. "I won't answer that question."

And I gracefully retreat, "Suit yourself. Anyway, Nono is staying here tonight because I have a few things to tell her tomorrow morning, now that she's a concubine. But she'll have to keep them a secret, even from you."

She softly exhales in relief as I now hold back on the seduction. "I think it's understandable that you keep secrets. As long as you don't burden my wife, it'll be fine."

"It's nothing heavy."

She makes a cute pout as she hums curiously and leans forward, "Hmm…? You've certainly made me curious now." But I just grin back.

Yunia is catching up with our Subordinate Lords, and it seems that the bandit problem in the riverlands, the northwestern part of our territory, is still unresolved.

"We'll send a knight along with a detachment of our men to help hunt them down, and we'll join the subjugation force once they've been found," the Queen politely states, trying to look sincerely concerned while not stepping on their pride as we want to give as little reason as possible for the Heart Lords to resent us.

"We greatly appreciate your help, Your Highness," Atala Mendecassa politely replies while her twin sister nods along.

We'll have to pick a knight with good [Acting] because they're going to have to pretend to search for the bandits since we already know their exact location through Cereleia's "radar."

The other Heart Lords have nothing to report, so the Root Lords crowd around her, wanting to hear news about the Shield-Wall project. Alcander's Royal Engineers will begin growing a bark shield-wall, like the bark wall that protects Escanso, for most villages across our territory, and they want to bribe Yunia to move up their position in the queue, but she quickly shuts down all that bribery nonsense.

Anyway, there are quite a lot of people here as we invited Chimera aristocrats, some of the wealthier merchants of Escanso, and bureaucrats of the town's administration like the Mayor, and the presence of these non-warrior classes of people displeases Sa'Haa, which in turn pleases me. But what I really like about this situation is that, after the formalities, everyone is too intimidated by my presence to strike up a conversation with me. It's like being in front of a bunch of cellphones that never ring, street preachers that never speak, or New York without any honking. It's just a soothingly pleasant thing to see.

But the party hasn't officially started yet because I haven't given my speech, so I walk up onto the raised dancing floor, and Poosh hands me a [Project Voice] magic tool. Then the musicians lower the volume, and the whole party turns to me. So many faces, but my mind just glosses over every one of them as only a few of the people present are interesting to me. What a curious phenomenon.

It may seem pretentious of me to not care about all of these people who have come here because I called for them, but this is simply biology speaking. I'm too busy, too preoccupied with too many different things to remember or care about the faces and names of all of these people, yet I'm forced to cater to them and invite them to parties if I want to have a strong political support base. A frustratingly nonsensical system this one is, but not even Earth has a better answer to this problem.

Now that I've whined enough to myself, I start my speech with a gentle and casual tone that puts everyone at ease, "Noblemen and noblewomen, gentlemen and gentlewomen, welcome to our home. We, Ryders, had been absent for a while due to Lordly businesses in the capital, Mac Gantus. Nothing much, just a greeting to the Emperor, a delve into the Great Labyrinth, some kidnapping, torture, and interrogation of Katasko's mercenaries," -and now the audience starts to get tense- "an assassination attempt on us, which we promptly responded to with an actual, well-executed assassination of Decien Alkimeonids," -I casually grin at their horror- "some championing for an extension to the Sin of Torture to also cover monsters, and then we got into a little 'tussle' with the rest of Katasko in the Purification, followed by another with the Imperial Army as they played with fire and got burned. Oh, yes, we also had a Purge started in our name, and I bet you were all very surprised by that one." And that actually gets a few nervous laughs.

I really don't deserve "Charisma" this high…

"Yet despite all these problems and enemies, we've been victorious in Every. Single. Battle… for the Ryder Royal Family is blessed by the light." And the guards all salute as they hear our motto, which amuses me, but then I make a solemn expression. "But there were also losses. Sir Azador Curol lost his life to an evil act by Katasko, which aimed to hurt us both militarily and emotionally, as he was not only our most senior knight but also a mentor for my wife, Yulania.

"But his death has been avenged, his son has taken his place, and Katasko is no more, so now we move on… And today, we're glad to announce that the shade of our tree grows larger as another family decides to join us. Our close allies, the Verners, who are Chief and Chieftess of the Forest, have sent us the Fountuns, a family of werefoxes who wish to be sworn in as knights, and we gladly accept!"

Alissa walks towards me, followed by the Fountun couple and their cute daughter, who is a delicious offering to the hungry dragon.

I extend my hand to my lovely wife, and she takes it. Then she stands at my side while I sling my arm around her waist. The three Fountuns stop before us and kneel, giving them a clear view of Alissa's panties, but Marceau, the orange Misty Fox, respectfully averts his eyes while his jade beauties, White Stalker wife and daughter, purposely look at them, and both their cheeks redden faintly while they remain impassive.

They know me well. There's only one thing that gets me harder than other women perving on my wives.

I already know that Thea has a taste for the female body, but I also find it pleasing to see the wife of another acting lewdly towards my women. And who knows? I might even get a taste of this White Stalker milf through one of my women.

The young girl is also wearing a slutty, white not-kimono, but it has more of an air of nightwear, of something she'd wear in bed while in my arms, than something one would wear to a party. This shamelessness suits me just fine, though. The only problem is that it's making me unreasonably horny because I couldn't Ravage anyone during the bath.

And while I fantasize about this little fox, I begin the ritual. "Marceau and Manon Fountun, will you take the pledge of servitude as a knight? Will you serve the Ryder Lordship until your body gives in and your descendant takes your place?"

"We will," they obediently answer in unison.

"Then you and your family shall come under our tree, and the succession of your descendant will be guaranteed through servitude. Welcome to the Lordship, Sir and Dame Fountun."

I motion for them to rise, and the audience gives them applause and congratulations.

But wait, there's more.

And as soon as the commotion starts to die down, I cheerfully continue, "And as for the future…! The 'incident' with Junior General Reinhold didn't sour our relationship with the rest of the Imperial Army, which has decided to still invest in the Ryder Royal Institute! With a large amount of funding secured, we've decided to expand our dear Institute! Soon, we'll begin recruiting for the new Divisions," -and I give Whakan a pointed look- "but for today, let us celebrate the victories and also the prosperous future that is to come!"

A note from Manasong

Hall of Fame of Patrons

The patrons who support Rupegia shall have their names sung by the bards for they deserve the glory and honor. Their names are:

Prince PreownedFIN.

Prince Owldente.

Prince Definitely  not Dio.

Lord Andrew Meyers.

Lord Novgarod.

Lord Michale Erwin.

Lord Bakerdea.

Lord Maurice.

Lord Mattirro Draca.

Lord Mike Bartter.

Lord Tenebris Lupus.

Lord Paul Daval.

Lord Paul Daval.

Lord Tmac.

Lord CopeyDunt.

Lord BlindTactic.

Lord litalmexy.

Lord Philip.

Lord d3235.

Lord William Clark.

Lord Ddraig Wynn.

Lord SubJef.

Lord GalacticTNT.

Lord Placid.

Lord Caden Dinkel.

Lord McMax.

Lord LiuAnshan.

Lord Asaadullah Lassiter.

Noble Salty Panda.

Noble Mild Fracas.

Noble Aclys.

Noble Carl  Baxter.

Noble Tony Starrk.

Noble DND.

Noble Aclys.

Noble Brandon.

Noble Tony Starrk.

Leave a rating or a review to help me rise to the top or fix my shameful understanding of prose.

Take a look over my blog where all information about the world of Rupegia will be posted.

Join the Discord and discuss, or rant, or meme, or try and fight me so your waifu gets more screentime.

Become a Patron and read chapters in advance, or read the side-stories, or leave your mark on the story, or help choose the next artwork or the next side-story.

Chapter 155: Maintaining Relations - Part 3

A note from Manasong

Attention: to conform to the limit of mature content (more than just sexual content) allowed in a novel, I've censored this chapter. You can look for the uncensored version here.

The music becomes upbeat, the alcohol is let loose, and the big dishes are brought out, so the party quickly gets into full swing. Even though the Chimeras don't eat a lot since they're spirits, they still know how to party better than the elves.

Lina sits on my lap, her deserved throne, and I part my legs to get a feel of her. The table hides our waists quite well, so I also sneak a hand into Alissa's underwear.

Ereia, the bespectacled, lewd-harassing imp, is preying upon Yunia on my other side, and she grins as she sees what I'm doing, then also sneaks a hand between Yunia's toned legs, who simply sighs and allows it.

As I gently rub Alissa, I turn to the two elves and propose, "I'll give you Yunia if you let me do you."

"As long as you leave me conscious. You have a reputation for plowing women until they pass out," Ereia immediately replies, while Yunia gives me an annoyed glance.

"Sure," I immediately accept and assert my dominance over my Queen through [Bind], preventing her from complaining.

"Then you have a deal," the little elven imp sultrily agrees, and Lina softly gasps.

I'm actually quite happy right now, and everyone's happiness also bleeds through [Bind], putting us all in a blissful mood. Parties ain't so bad when I'm allowed to sit back and watch.

But Alissa is hungry for love… just not love for her. She wants me to just stand up, my Tool hard and free, then turn into a huge dragon and put my seed in every woman within sight while the men bow to me, but she'll settle for me doing Lina in secret, so she discreetly unchains the Dragon.

And so I enjoy the party from afar for a while.

Hana and Roxanne are dancing; Ciel is having a conversation with the Mayor while holding Ted on her lap; Aoi is being pampered by a group of women with a dragon attraction who are too scared to approach me; Gify is eating, like always; Osaria is hunting for female prey; Nono is being assaulted by Silvane behind a bush; Poosh is observing the party, but she looks quite content and repeatedly touches the pendant at her neck; Kaatohe is being worshiped by another group of dragon worshipers who are too scared to approach even Aoi; a curious and adventurous lizard Chimera is flirting with Jarn; and Klein and Hukarere are proudly standing guard.

It makes me happy that everyone knows that no man is allowed to flirt with my women. The exception is Hana, but even then, nobody is stupid enough to approach her unprompted.

On the non-wife/concubine side, the Gilbiks are talking with the enchanter Chimeras while doing their best to not look down; the Grosshils and Alcander are building relations with the non-depraved or naked nobles; the twins are having a good time with the children of the elven nobles; Mizushina is with Ciel and the Mayor while holding Suzy on her lap; Lyle, Hatara, and Garanae are talking to a naked female deer scholar Chimera who seems to be flirting with an embarrassed Garanae; Silvina and Almaria are mingling with the less-friendly nobles and putting in a good word for us with them; Silvano has his own fan group; Sai is with a few Chimeras and their gems; Sandoro is with the Townsguard's high command; Aisco has already left the party; and Urmeie is flirting with a horse Chimera, possibly trying to make me jealous…

Curiously, I overhear that Heart Lord Ira, the one with a daddy mustache who challenged me during the Lordship Ceremony, has gained the Title of "Bloody Lord." I did forbid him from cleaning himself of his own blood during the ceremony, and that clearly caught the attention of the commoners. It's not a bad Title, and it'll serve to remind him not to defy us again, so I like it.

Anyway, I specifically said that we'd "soon" begin recruiting for the Institute so that I wouldn't be bothered by a swarm of ass-kissers, but they instead turn to Whakan to make connections with him and possibly get ahead of the selection process. It's still fine by me since I'm allowed to freely enjoy my dinner and evening with my women.

Unfortunately, Sa'Haa is immune to my plan, and she decides to join me just as I decide to progress things with Lina. To be honest, this feels like quite the exciting opportunity to indulge in depravity, so I force Alissa, Lina, and Yunia to mask their expressions to not scare away the prudish wereowl, and Ereia realizes what's going on, then daringly decides to search for Yunia's weak spot in front of an Imperial Princess.

"Not one for dancing?" I calmly ask Sa'Haa as she takes a seat before us.

"Not this kind of dancing," she replies and glances at Roxanne and Hana, who are performing the sensual succubi mating ritual.

"Would you dance with me?" I earnestly offer.

"No," she immediately answers flatly, her sharp eyes stabbing at me with a glare.

"Ouch," I hum in mocking hurt.

"You're far too perverted for me to give you permission to touch my body," she continues and turns her attention to the finger-food snacks on the table. She appears to be fond of the not-sashimi, one of my favorites too, but she seems to be holding back to not appear disgracefully hungry.

And I calmly confess, "True, I'd enjoy it a bit too much if I could touch someone as stunningly beautiful as you."

She has the worst Resting Bitch Face Syndrome I've ever seen, and not only that, but she's also a hot, young, not-Cruella, so she has double the appeal to me. If not for their personalities, I'd have added both Sa'Haa and Urmeie to my harem in a heartbeat.

While Sa'Haa silently glares at me, I grab Lina's waist and lift her up, then I lower her down. Sa'Haa narrows her already narrow and sharp eyes further in suspicion, and I almost reach the summit just from her staring at me.

I also share her pleasure with Roxanne and Hana as a challenge for them. They're already pretty horny for each other due to the succubi Rahgeeb dance being so stimulaing, so now they feel like they're actually doing each other while dancing.

And Sa'Haa snobbishly readjusts her puffy gray hair as she states, "I'll take the compliment, for I don't believe you're one to lie about such matters, but don't think for a moment that this is enough to even begin to court me."

I simply smile at her as I have fun with Lina without either of us having to make any hip movements. The ability to shrink and extend at will is so versatile that I believe every man deserves to learn how to do it.

"But… are you open to being courted?" Alissa suddenly asks suggestively, and I ease up on her torture as her question pleases me.

"No," the wereowl Princess once again immediately answers flatly, but I detect a degree of insecurity in her tone.

She did say that I'm being evaluated as a potential Consort, even though she obviously has a thing for Prince Tommen, so I guess she isn't truly allowed to outright decline.

Oh, Gods… there's a high chance that I'll have to put a baby in her.

"Think about it… like this: there's a high chance… that your child will be… the next Emperor," Yunia tries to comfort me through [Bind], even her internal voice suffering from Ereia's assault.

Lina fidgets a bit as the desire to make sounds and move grows to a nearly unbearable level, but then I use [Bind] to force her to take a look at the audience, at the hundreds of people gathered here who repeatedly glance our way and observe us. Is she really going to let all of these people hear her voice? Is she going to show them that expression? Is she going to reach the summit in front of everyone?

And that's enough to make her pale in fear as she grips her mask twice as hard.

Then Sa'Haa sternly continues, "But I didn't come here to discuss such matters. I visited your Institute today, Lord Wolf, and it piqued my interest. Why do you seek funding when the High Forest is so wealthy?"

I answer matter-of-factly as I make Lina squeak internally, "That wealth will be used on other things, like improving the lives of my subjects. Besides, I want the Institute to be mostly self-sufficient."

Not-Cruella gives me a measuring look, then soberly states, "Well, I'm willing to invest in it."

"What would it cost?" I immediately reply in kind.

"[Golemancy]."

And I frown. "It isn't ready."

Sa'Haa immediately turns to Jarn, who's still talking to the now drunk flirty woman, and I vibrate, making her face scrunch up in effort, but I stop the moment the Princess turns back, who then gives me a pointed look. "That one seems ready."

"Yes, I could've made an army of them by now, but I haven't because they aren't ready," I sternly repeat and knock into Lina's again in annoyance.

But Sa'Haa insists, "What about those screaming dolls, the 'Meeseeks'?"

I inadvertently thicken myself, making Lina gasp in bliss, but her sound is masked by my sudden twitch and exclamation, "What?! They're called 'Chuckys,' not 'Meeseeks'!"

"Well, they did repeatedly say that their names were 'Meeseeks,'" she wryly points out.

I sigh and ease up on the stretching. "It's a joke… but never mind that. They were disposable weapons used as a last-ditch effort."

"Then why isn't [Golemancy] ready?" she presses further.

I give Ereia a sober glance, and she slows down as she starts paying attention to us. Then I quietly reveal, "Keep this a secret, but there's a horrible flaw with [Golemancy], one that makes it too risky to use golems."

No fucking way in Hell am I revealing to her that the golems have all my memories. They could force me to hand them a golem, then extract everything I know from it.

Sa'Haa's expression becomes pensive, and she turns her cold eyes to Alissa, who shows no reaction, as she's still suffering from my torture, then to Yunia, who also shows no reaction due to being in bliss, and the Queen even puts a hand on the imp's shoulder, who happily renews the intensity of her assault.

Seeing no other angles of attack, Sa'Haa decides to lower her demands, "At least teach us how to learn [Golemancy] ourselves. So far, not even the scholars of Rabanara have managed to make any progress in it."

I hum softly in thought as Lina turns her body sideways and buries her head on my chest to mask her quickened breath as it begins to arrive.

Then I decide to give the Princess a proper explanation, "I'm a busy person, and [Golemancy] is a very complex skill, as its creator didn't have the time to properly organize it. Each level is so packed with knowledge that it's like having to learn [Fire Spirit] for level one."

And that's a level 40 [Fire Magic] spell, but [Golemancy]'s [Infuse] is learned at the first level, which means that you need the knowledge to create a full-featured golem before you can even gain a level in the skill. It isn't practical.

Sa'Haa's eyes sharpen, and she leans forward as she smugly declares, "I have more money to offer than even the Imperial Army. You just need to give me one level in the skill, and the investment will be all yours."

"She's awfully desperate for [Golemancy]. It may even be her main goal in coming here," Yunia deliberates through [Bind].

It's generally considered an amateur mistake to reveal during negotiations that you're very interested in something in particular, but she may have been given the minimum goal of getting anything about [Golemancy] from me, so I guess she couldn't avoid showing her interest.

"I'll see what I can do, but I can give no prediction about when they'll be ready," I answer noncommittally as Lina grips my shirt tight, so close to it that she's almost begging me to do her.

"Fine…" Sa'Haa bitterly relents.

Then I unleash my tools onto Lina, finally tipping her over the edge and setting off a wave so powerful that she makes loud sounds. Sa'Haa stares at her in confusion, then notices how both Yunia and Alissa are sweating while maintaining stiff postures, and her suspicion deepens.

I decide to be over so I grab Lina's small waist and lift her up, only to slam her down onto me as I follow her into heaven.

"Are you two…?" the bitchy wereowl dryly asks.

"Hngh… yeah. We are," I answer with a delighted grunt.

"How…?"

I grin. "Wanna see?"

She shakes her head and averts her eyes. "Forget I asked… You really don't have any respect for royalty, do you?"

And I earnestly retort, "It's not disrespectful. You just have a very narrow view of what respect means."

She simply stares at me with a tired look for a long moment, then dryly asks, "Is this behavior normal in your Re-… homeland?"

"No, but it's normal here. I'm a Chimera at heart," I cheekily reply.

"More like a beastfolk," she grumbles, then sighs and stands up. "I'll be going, for I would rather be in the presence of those who have better standards of decency."

And I politely state, "Apologies for disgusting you with my behavior, but don't take it personally."

"I wouldn't be allied with Urmeie if I did," she points out with a snort.

Good point.

And now that she's gone, I can finally blatantly move Lina up and down, but I do it with only one hand as I have to do Alissa with the other.

I'm not the first to start noticeably doing it, as that award goes to a young Chimera couple that was in the same group as the twins. They were all just having a dirty teenage talk, but then the couple got visibly horny and prudently decided to go behind a hedgerow to not make the group of hot-blooded youngsters go mad with lust.

Second place goes to Silvane, who waited until after Nono had finished eating before having her rabbit dessert. And third place goes to Kaatohe, who's started an all-female party with the dragon worshipers that have gathered around her.

Lina's wave starts to subside, so I plug her with a knot. But now she's been satisfied, so, leaving her to savor the sensation, I focus entirely on Alissa.

My eyes meet with Thea's, and the jade beauty is blushing, having realized what's actually going on at our table. But then she seems to tremble in fear of me, so I soften my gaze, going from predatory to smoothly seductive. I haven't had a chance to talk to her yet, but we'll invite the Fountuns to join us for dinner tomorrow, so I'll wait until I can flirt with my offering as much as I want.

Alissa leans on me and hugs my arm, nestling it in her chest and baring a bit of pink as her loose, risqué, not-kimono starts to come undone, but neither of us decides to cover it up again as Thea's embarrassed expression is delightful. And so my foxy servant and I stare seductively at the jade beauty as I slowly bring Alissa to heaven.

Our expressions are of love, passion, and desire, and Thea seems mesmerized by them as she stares at us for several long minutes. Even Lina's is charming as she basks in post-summit bliss and the delightful feeling of being knotted.

Alissa lets her jaw hang loose, her tongue almost peeking out in an ahegao as she moans softly, while I simply stare at Thea with a soothing smile. Then Alissa's ears start to twitch repeatedly, and she lets out a heavenly sound as she squeezes my (padded) claws.

Meanwhile, Roxanne and Hana finally leave the dancing floor, their skin glistening with sweat, but the puddle they leave behind is that of special juice as they've felt both Lina's and Alissa's waves. And they're still raring to go, for they disappear behind a hedgerow, then start making wild love.

Yunia takes a little longer, but Ereia finishes too, and the stern Queen finally allows her mask to come loose as her eyes roll up into her skull. But that's just the beginning, for Ereia disappears under the table to now use her tongue.

And now that my women are satisfied, I take Lina off with a loud *pop*, then decide to join Kaatohe and her simps. They're sorely lacking a male between them, and my naked cat has also been bragging about my magical Sword and Seed, so I'll give them a taste of a true dragon.

The party starts to die down as the guests start to leave, most so drunk that they need guards to escort them to their homes. The last thirsty woman is slain not too long after the dwindling begins, and I spend the next half-hour cuddling with my cat, and then with my Queen, too, once Ereia's assault has come to an end.

Amusingly, Garanae gets a kiss from the naked deer scholar Chimera, and Hatara teases him by simply staring at him without saying anything while he freaks out.

While my cat concubine recovers from her Ravaging, we spend our time watching the guests leave and the women wake up. But then something starts nagging at me, and I decide to have a semi-serious talk with her.

"You know, you shouldn't gauge your worth as a concubine based on whether you can give me children," I soberly state.

But the cat snorts and retorts, "I'm a noblewoman, Wolf. I couldn't just accept concubinage without weighing the value of being one. It didn't matter what I wanted, as there wasn't any political benefit to it."

I narrow my eyes in displeasure, and my tail waves rapidly, asking to spank this naughty naked cat.

But then Yunia defends her, "Don't blame her for being calculating, Wolfy; we're trained from birth to be like that."

And I pout childishly as I grumble, "Well, I don't care about the weighing of pros and cons or any calculations." Then I assume a normal tone. "But I'm happy that Osaria convinced you to go for it."

"I just needed one last little push," my bronze cat quietly confesses. Then she sweetly pulls my head towards her chest, showing a bit of "dere" instead of "tsun."

A short while later, we decide to retire to our bedroom, but Ereia, Nono, the lizard Chimera that was flirting with Jarn, and a little snack that tags along with Osaria come with us to our private quarters.

We get a few maids to give us [Massage]s as we begin the after-party, and I distribute Eia to everyone to help them loosen up some more. The young elven girl accompanying Osaria is in dire need of soothing as she quivers in fear of me.

I'm gentle with her and the warmth of my love makes her loosen up, but she isn't used to the Dragon, so she quickly falls, and I focus on the other girls meanwhile.

Once Osaria's snack has recovered, my elven milf makes her way towards the girl, but I stop Osaria before she has time to even begin savoring her.

"Come with me," I order her with a sadistic grin.

She instantly smiles in anticipation, and I have to hold back a laugh. Then I turn around and start walking to the balcony.

Osaria happily follows after me, and when we get to the railing, I cast [Entangling Vines] on it and make Osaria their target. The curvy milf doesn't have time to react, and once she realizes what's happening, her smile simply widens.

"Oh, no…! What are you going to do to me, Your Highness?" she eagerly asks with faked concern.

But I become stern as I reply, "You see, I wanted Thea's first time…"

"Oh…?" she hums, a bit of real concern creeping into her tone.

I have the vines string her up, leaving her ready to be punished. "But you took it from me. It doesn't matter if you're a woman. I wanted Thea's first kiss, her first taste of lewdness, the first touch of her flower, and also her first summit…"

"Hehe… that was a bit… naughty," she guiltily admits, but her giggling quickly dies down as even more concern infiltrates into her heart.

I touch her with a claw. "Thea is mine. She's a gift to me, but you took a bite of her without my permission. All so that you could revel in the feeling of having 'stolen' a woman from me." Then I gently flick her little bean, making her wince.

Her smile fades away and is replaced with legitimate fear, so I pull back on the intimidation as I call over the golems through [Bind]. Then I cup her cheek and give her a peck on the lips as I softly reassure her with a grin, "Don't worry, I still love you very much, but naughty girls need to be punished."

"Y-yes, my King, I'll accept whatever punishment you give me," she anxiously submits, and a tentative smile appears on her face.

And I chuckle softly as I smile in contentment, then calmly order, "Good. Now, golems, gag her and do her all night long, but don't let her find bliss. Also, make sure she watches as I steal her woman from her."

Osaria's droopy eyes widen in surprise, but I immediately turn around and make my way to her snack. She wanted to share this young girl with me, but tonight, I'll be a glutton and have her all to myself.

A note from Manasong

Hall of Fame of Patrons

The patrons who support Rupegia shall have their names sung by the bards for they deserve the glory and honor. Their names are:

Prince PreownedFIN.

Prince Owldente.

Prince Definitely  not Dio.

Lord Andrew Meyers.

Lord Novgarod.

Lord Michale Erwin.

Lord Bakerdea.

Lord Maurice.

Lord Mattirro Draca.

Lord Mike Bartter.

Lord Tenebris Lupus.

Lord Paul Daval.

Lord Paul Daval.

Lord Tmac.

Lord CopeyDunt.

Lord BlindTactic.

Lord litalmexy.

Lord Philip.

Lord d3235.

Lord William Clark.

Lord Ddraig Wynn.

Lord SubJef.

Lord GalacticTNT.

Lord Placid.

Lord Caden Dinkel.

Lord McMax.

Lord LiuAnshan.

Lord Asaadullah Lassiter.

Noble Salty Panda.

Noble Mild Fracas.

Noble Aclys.

Noble Carl  Baxter.

Noble Tony Starrk.

Noble DND.

Noble Aclys.

Noble Brandon.

Noble Tony Starrk.

Leave a rating or a review to help me rise to the top or fix my shameful understanding of prose.

Take a look over my blog where all information about the world of Rupegia will be posted.

Join the Discord and discuss, or rant, or meme, or try and fight me so your waifu gets more screentime.

Become a Patron and read chapters in advance, or read the side-stories, or leave your mark on the story, or help choose the next artwork or the next side-story.

Christmas Special: Gifts, A Myth, And Questionable Hijinks

I'm Samaiel Curol, son of the late Sir Azador Curol, an honorable knight that served under the late Crown Lord Este family and then under the Holy Royal Crown Lord Ryder family. He was a respected warrior, a loving husband, a dedicated father, and a deep admirer of the most beautiful elven town in existence: Escanso.

And I shall follow in his footsteps.

Though Escanso is a gorgeous place, the Goddess of Piety once said that "only Heaven is heavenly," so we, keepers of peace, must maintain an eternal watch over the Realm. But she also said that "the doors to Hell are always open," and so, we must go further than merely maintaining order. It's our duty to act before harm is inflicted upon our subjects.

As the successor to my father, I've learned that reading reports from the Investigator's Officer and the Lord's Hall give me the pulse of the town, and the trained eye can spot problems before they arise like a healer with a high [Diagnosis]. These reports were also the source of the most outlandish adventures that my father shared with Mother and I, so every afternoon, I'm eager to read about what has happened in town.

The moment the royal family returned from the Sky Lands, Escanso boomed with business, so there are a lot of "interesting" events happening all over town…

But never have I been so puzzled with a report before.

"A noblewoman reports a break-in, but instead of something being stolen, she found in her daughter's room a wooden box wrapped in cheap leaf-paper, and inside, there was a vine choker, something her young daughter once mentioned she desired.

The noblewoman was most puzzled but also quite frightened by this intrusion and called for the Investigators' Office to inspect her home. But after a short visit, the Investigators found no sign of break-in and were also unable to come up with an explanation for this mystery.

Some Investigators suggested an elaborate prank from the noblewoman to entertain her daughter with a surprise gift, while others suggest the work of a young boy paramour born with the Fate of an assassin. But since no leads were found, they assuaged the concerned noblewoman and decided to archive the report."

A break-in to gift someone an item instead of steal it? As unheard of as Weepers who can [Blink], which appeared only twice during Crown Lord Mavel's rule!

But then I forget about all that, and my ears start to tingle with excitement as my mind focuses on the suggestion that a boy has done it. This sounds so not implausible that I believe it's actually a plausible explanation, though I believe that the boy's Fate is more closely tied towards thievery than assassination.

And I know exactly where such a promising rogue candidate would be found. It's a romantic tale that has happened many times more often than [Blink] Weepers!

I visit the orphanage and meet with the Matron.

"Surely you see the irony in asking me to find a child born with sneaking skills?" Matron Paticia wryly questions. She's a small, mature golden woman with a taste for cuteness, but that's merely a trap for her gaze is that of a worn but still very sharp sword who has seen more combat than a young knight like me.

And I politely correct her, "Rogue skills, not sneaking." Though I do appreciate her sense of humor. "This child is likely to be found inside a supposedly locked room or navigating across a building through the ceiling beams or roof, though they'll be certainly hard to find if they believe they're being hunted."

She delicately raises a curious eyebrow at me as I make my description, but then her expression freezes, and a strict motherliness gradually appears in her pretty, mature face. "Weeper's Dream, I might actually know a little one who could be your mark."

The good Matron dutifully takes me to the temple's library, then towards a darker section separated by bars and a locked door. But she suddenly stops before the door and takes a good look at the handle as she frowns.

"Look at this. There's dust on only one part of the handle, but the print is too small to be the hand of an adult, and we don't have any halflings or dwarves as scribes here," she carefully analyzes like a trained Investigator.

"Oh-ho, perhaps we found the little scamp already?" I ask lightheartedly, amused at her behavior.

She nods then puts on her Matronly mask and frowns disapprovingly as she barges in. "Hmph…! Joan! You shouldn't be here!" she shouts sternly.

"Ack!" we hear a boyish grunt then a flurry of steps as he attempts to run away.

But the Matron triumphantly announces with a wide grin, "I barred the window! Don't try it, or you'll get stuck!"

We hear the scrambling sounds of a boy climbing a bookcase, but then there's a silence followed by a thump as the boy jumps down onto the floor.

"I'm sorry…" he preemptively apologizes as he comes into view. Joan is a little silver elf boy, but his skin has a gentle roast of an imperial, and his steps have the elegant swagger of a feline, not the gentle composure of an elf, so I'd bet the tip of my long ear that one of his parents were a werecat from the capital. I used to see their kind with contempt for choosing to forgo elven purity, but after meeting with the Royal Ryders, I just don't know what to think anymore.

"You aren't, or you wouldn't have done this," she immediately retorts and glares at him, creating a stark contrast to her cute looks.

"But the books-…" the boy stubbornly begins.

"Are locked in here for a reason. If you want access to them, grow into a scribe first!" the stern Matron finishes and kneels to make him feel even harder the intensity of her glare.

"Awn… that's too boring…!" Joan grumbles and frowns as he looks away.

But then her expression softens, and she starts to exude pure motherliness. "Life is boring and safe. Those who try to make it exciting either die early or get locked up… so the most important thing you must learn is how to not get caught!" And she gives him a cheeky smile.

"Matron, really?" I blur out, in disbelief of my elven ears.

She stands up and flashes an impish grin, then becomes strict and motherly again. "I'm not encouraging him to steal, Sir Curol, but instead, I'm trying to get him to understand the consequences of being naughty. I can't tell him to not follow his Gods-given path, so I shall only teach him how to be safe on his journey."

This is a surprising amount of gentleness considering the stories we hear about the Matron. Many former orphans have joined the Townsguard or become adventurers, and a few even managed to enter the Lordsguard, all possibly following their parents' footsteps, so my father had a lot of contact with these formerly roguish children, giving him many stories to tell.

But there's no denying that she's a true mother. And of course, I'm unable to confess my thoughts to her.

So I simply accept that she knows best, "Very well. I can't honestly criticize you, especially not since I must make use of this child's knowledge."

"Uh, what…?" Joan mumbles confusedly and tilts his head.

And the Matron promptly follows up with a firm question, "Joan, my child, did you or any of your friends start to fancy a young noblegirl and give her a surprise gift?"

Then the boy answers so calmly that I instantly accept that he has no relation, but the contents still give me pause, "No, but we know that Claus has been giving surprise gifts to a lot of people in the Gloom."

"Who's 'Claus'…?" the Matron immediately asks concernedly.

But my ears tingle with excitement as my mind focuses on the word "Gloom." That's the slang for the bottom level of Escanso, the floor perpetually in the shadow of the upper layers, a dark, damp, and gloomy place, home to those at the bottom of the stairs of wealth.

And the setting of most of Father's stories.

I feel at home while walking through the night's Eia mist. I have a small talent in [Weaverism], allowing me to "see" through the white, smoky shroud, and this "sight" is such a unique sensation that I miss it dearly whenever I leave this town.

This is why I've always been such a child of the night. Nobody but Almaria and her [Weaverism] mages could catch me, but I quickly abandoned my roguish tendencies and decided to use this talent for good… and also to occasionally spy on girls.

But anyway… it's this talent that allows me to stroll through the Gloom alone and without care. The purple lights of the ever-present legumdinotes make the atmosphere so gloomy, but it's better than their absence for these plants are eaten by the residents in times of famine, so we've grown to fear the dark.

And just my luck, the place I'm going to is pretty dark, but deliberately so for the people in there aren't very fond of having their faces recognized.

The Vea Fofocaia (Gossiping Crones in Ingua) is a weird, infamous, but also quite useful establishment. We elves love to talk about intrigue and comment on each other's lives, so much so that the Gods gave us very long ears to listen better (and perhaps also eavesdrop better), and the Crones is a place where the commoners go to hear the salacious rumors and shocking news about all sorts of topics. As such, they tend to befall afoul of the nobility, who value their reputation very much, so the Crones prefer to remain in the dark, which means that people like me, sworn to a noble (and a royal one at that), are most unwelcome.

Still, I brave the Eia mist and cross the shady entrance to the shady establishment. I'm not wearing armor, so the muscular bouncers merely eye me with an analytical gaze, and my casual gait hides my noble background, allowing me to safely get past them.

After a short and also dark corridor, I open a heavy door, and the humming of a busy tavern leaks out along with the thick smoke of Eia (different from the mist of Eia). The Crones follows the "conversational tavern" style popularized by the imperials, so this place is uncomfortably crowded with tables, chairs, and people, and there's a constant background music to make it harder to eavesdrop, but at least the smoke of Eia is less insufferable than whatever the imperials like to smoke.

I'm not here to make conversation with any of the shaded or hooded gossipers here, so I promptly make my way to the stage. Then I locate the masked attendant and make my request in Ingua, "[I want to ask for rumors about a topic]." My commoner accent is a bit dusty and moldy, but it's workable.

"[The fee is ten silver coins]," she replies, exactly like how father told she did, so she has no suspicion of my true background.

I pay her, then she leads me into the stage, and our appearance silences the whole tavern, who eagerly await to hear what curious topic I'm bringing to them. Then we stop at the center, and she hands me a [Project Voice] magic tool.

I'm not scared of crowds, so I immediately begin my speech, "[I'm looking for any information or rumors on a certain Claus. They're known to be giving 'surprise gifts' to people in the Gloom and the only reason I know they're named 'Claus' is because they've also occasionally left cards saying 'Claus wishes you a merry day,' but that's all I know about them]."

But the reaction I receive is unexpected.

"[Don't snoop on Claus]!" a patron exclaims angrily.

"[Yeah, Claus is a good one]!" a second follows up.

"[Let Claus stay in the dark]!" a third demands

I try to memorize the faces of the ones speaking out, but the thick smoke, low illumination, and their choices of attire make it hard to do so. I also don't think they know anything significant about Claus, so interrogating them would be fruitless, anyway.

"Why do you protect them?" I inquire, trying to get any information on this "Claus" that I can.

"[Why do you seek them]?!" a smart one ripostes.

"[Claus is disturbing the lake. I must get in contact with them before they meet a lurker from below]," I cryptically reply, but most of the patrons should know very well the meaning of my words, and those who don't can easily figure it out. This kind of speech is popular with the commoners, so it's more effective to speak like this than be straightforward.

"[Where's your shell, boy]?" an older female patron asks, and I tense up. She has successfully guessed my identity, so I carefully choose my next words, for my reply will dictate whether this foray is successful or not.

They're rightfully correct in being wary of knights, but I'm not just another servant of a proud noble, I'm an agent of the Holy Royal Ryders, and everything my father said about the royal family tells me that they're respected and venerated by the commoners, which is why he was so content in sacrificing his life for them. So, if I'm to believe that my father's loyalty had any meaning, then I must trust and rely on the Ryders' honor.

And I proudly confess, "[I'm Sir Samaiel Curol, son and successor of the late Sir Azador Curol, honorable knight that served the Este family and the Royal Ryder family]."

The whole tavern falls silent, but I find relief in the fact that they haven't immediately turned hostile.

Then a patron solemnly asks, "[Sir Azador was good to the Gloom and the people. Are you going to be like him]?"

I've clearly found the correct path, so I nod and boldly move forward, "[I will. Claus has acted upon a noblewoman's home, and I don't want them to stir the nobility any more, so I need to get in contact with Claus before this gets out of control]."

"[It makes sense]," the same patron calmly agrees.

"[I know as much about Claus as you do, but they're a good one, so keep this in mind]," another follows up.

"[Yeah, and if Claus gets done, we'll know who was responsible, so also keep this in mind]!" a more excitable patron cautions me, and others hum in agreement.

So I appease them, "[I will, you have my word as Sir Curol, and may the Gods observe me and judge me for my actions]." Then I feel my Thread being tied to my words as the Gods accept my vow.

"[Damn, he swore on the Gods]!" a cheerful patron exclaims.

And the air is filled with murmurs as they comment among each other.

Then, after a moment, I ask again, "[So, does anyone have any more information on Claus…]?"

But nobody answers, and they start to look around, surprised that the Crones actually don't have much to say about this wonderful person, so you imagine my surprise.

"I don't know much about 'Claus,' but I can help you find them," a large man states in Andraste as he stands, and I recognize the fellow.

"What were you doing there, Sir Nero Galvalas?" I question him the moment I close the door of my office in the Lord's Hall.

"Don't call me 'Sir.' I'm just a slave serving the Ryders," the bearded imperial calmly replies and obediently remains in place as I make my way to my seat.

"You're their spymaster, so don't try to be humble, it's unbecoming of you," I sternly retort and motion for him to take a seat.

He snorts, but simply accepts with a shrug, "Fine, fine…" Then we take our seats at the same time, and he promptly continues, "My trainees found out about that place while gathering information, and it sounded so interesting that I decided to scout it out myself."

"But do you really know Ingua?" I question curiously.

He gives me an annoyed glance, as if the answer was obvious. "Of course, I do. I got four levels in the skill, and I wouldn't have survived in Heretic's Rest without it."

Now that is a true rogue.

"Ah, yes, it makes sense since you were assigned that task," I courteously agree, ignoring his barb.

"Hmph…" the crude imperial grunts, but then he grins savagely, which I find concerning. "Now, let's find this 'Claus.' I gotta say that I got curious about them, too."

I must never let my guard down when dealing with roguish outlaws like him.

The Crones may not have any information on Claus themself, but they know of many of his "beneficiaries," so over the course of a few days, we question them all.

"A nice soul."

"A lovely person."

"It was such a cute gift that I think that I've fallen in love."

But something concerns me. "Don't you find it creepy and concerning that they knew exactly what you wanted?" I question the enamored girl.

"Eh?" she hums and gives me a confused look, but it only lasts for a moment as she suddenly begins to wistfully daydream, "The Gods listen to everything we say, so maybe Claus can hear Their divine voices?"

A curious proposition, but very unlikely. Such a holy person wouldn't be so shady if they had a Gift like that… unless the temple is hiding them from us, though that's also quite unlikely as I'm certain the priests would gleefully parade this Messenger, instead.

No, this line of thinking is too complicated and convoluted, and if it actually is a Gifted who can hear the Gods, then I have no business searching for Claus, so it's useless to make this assumption. I must focus on a simpler answer.

"You know, the kids got better gifts, so I can't say that I'm not a bit jealous," the girl comments and giggles like a naughty child.

"Kids?" Nero and I question at the same time.

We return to the orphanage, and Matron Paticia elatedly receives us, which surprises us both.

"Sir Samaiel, what an excellent timing, I was about to send word to you!" she happily exclaims, smiling brightly like the morning sun.

"I don't understand. Has something happened? Obviously a good thing, seeing your dazzling smile," I courteously reply.

And the mature woman reverts to a young Miss for a second as she giggles, a demeanor that fits perfectly with her cute looks, but she still retains enough composure to gracefully reply, "Oh, you budding flirt! You're lucky I'm so happy. What I wanted to share is that 'Claus' made an appearance here and gave surprise gifts to all the orphans!" But then she suddenly freezes, and her smile seems to strain to remain on their face. For a graduate of Goloria's Knight Academy as well-versed in the art of diplomacy as I am, it's clear she's become extremely wary of us. "Say, what were you searching for 'Claus' for?"

Her concerns are exactly the same as the commoners of the Crones, so I waste no time in appeasing her, "I merely want to advise Claus to not perform these acts of gift-giving with the nobility, for Claus' methods will upset them."

She looks away, deeply reflecting upon my words, but is quick to agree, "I-I see… then perhaps it's fine if you continue searching for them."

And we do so.

"You like the mature kind, huh?" Nero teases the moment we return to the office.

But I disarm him with practiced ease, "Your attempt to tease me is fruitless. Flirting and complimenting is a standard skill for knights as it makes others more favorable to us."

"Uh-huh…" he hums skeptically.

"Focus on the task at hand, please," I request to encourage him not to be stubborn.

And he obediently grunts as he shrugs, "Fine, fine…" Then he nonchalantly drops onto his seat. "Anyway, it seems that our quarry is ramping up his gift-giving."

I nod as I organize our notes upon my desk. "Indeed. We must be quick, for they're being quite reckless. It'll only take upsetting the wrong wealthy commoner or contemptuous noble, and we'll have an issue in our hands."

"Wanna bet that someone will accuse Claus of stealing something they didn't?" he dares with an impish grin.

"No, because we'll warn Claus before it gets to that," I masterfully [Dodge] his playfulness.

And he raises his thick eyebrows in pleasant surprise. "Okay, your attitude is kind of fun. Most of your kind would spit on the ground towards me in disgust if they could."

It's understandable why they'd do so as every knight has their own path, but my father taught me well how useful his kind could be, so it'd be impious of me to forgo such potential.

"I'm not against working with rogues, scoundrels, or criminals if it's for a noble cause. You must give them the chance to redeem themselves," I solemnly reply, very proud of my family's knight philosophy.

"Yeah, you're a perfect fit for the Ryders," Nero states, but I'm unable to discern the true meaning of his words.

So I simply take them as they are, for now. "Thank you. Now, let's focus on the task at hand."

We have zero information on how Claus managed to find out what his targets wanted or how he invaded their homes, so we must make assumptions and then test out whether they're true or not. It's a very unreliable method, yes, but there's no alternatives as we're out of leads that could give us new information.

The last thing we do is mobilize the Investigators then have them investigate each home that Claus supposedly "visited," and as a knight serving the Royal Ryders, the Investigators show no complaint and promptly obey my request. This makes me start to feel like we're putting in too much effort to find such a harmless person, though, but I must see this to the end lest Claus anger the wrong person and turn this into a real issue.

Meanwhile, Nero and I perform a thorough analysis of Claus' actions.

"You see this?" I point to the clusters of marks we made on a map of the town. "Claus is combing through the town, giving gifts to around one person in every block, and going from the bottom-up. But it seems that they've 'accidentally' entered the Nobles' Quarter then avoided it entirely."

"So, maybe Claus knows not to anger nobles?" Nero questions tentatively, likely trying to escape this boring working.

"Perhaps, but this doesn't preclude a greedy merchant from trying to accuse Claus of doing something they didn't," I wisely retort and flash a smile.

"So, we're continuing?" the roguish imperial asks even though he knows the answer.

And I nod with a smug smile. "Without hesitation."

He subtly rolls his eyes, but then sighs and returns to being serious again. "Well, it seems the next 'lucky one' will be over in this area, so I'll send my trainees there to keep an eye on things."

"Excellent idea," I excitedly agree.

But then something unexpected happens.

"There are commoners following us. We're unsure what to do about them," an Investigator states as he hands his report.

"Have you tried talking to them?" I honestly question.

And he seems to become a little embarrassed. "Well, my first instinct was to escape from them as such action usually means that they want to kill us, but Claus is supposedly harmless, so I'll try talking next time."

Then I soothe the good man, "Thank you for your consideration. I understand if this is too much to ask of you."

"STOP CHASING CLAUS!" we suddenly hear an angry shout followed by many more similar exclamations.

We take a look outside and see a veritable angry mob gathering at the door to the Lord's Hall.

"Well, I guess the Hall was the next obvious place to go after losing me," the Investigator wryly remarks.

And I calmly agree, "Indeed, but I'm thankful they came here instead of continuing to stalk you. Now at least we can talk to them."

"It's all on you. I don't think seeing an imperial would make them any friendlier," Nero quickly shirks the responsibility.

"Unfortunately, I agree," I state with a sigh.

Then I go outside.

There's no point in letting the mob build up any more of their anger, so I promptly address them, "People of Escanso, you have nothing to fear. We don't wish to do any harm to Claus, only to advise them, but they're a very difficult person to get a hold of, it seems, so this questioning is necessary."

"Claus is a servant of the Gods; there's no need to advise them!" a mature woman piously declares.

"Claus is a holy person! They've blessed us with a pure gift and their most holy good wishes!" a fiery man fervently follows.

"It was a holy day when Claus blessed us with their visit!" an elated mother shouts as she raises her excited child.

"Claus is a saint! They need no guidance, so let them act freely!" a stern man energetically demands.

"Saint Claus! Saint Claus! Saint Claus!" a young man starts a chant, and the mob quickly follows.

This is quickly starting to get out of hand, but I know of a compromise that will ease their worries or at least give us enough time to stop them from escalating this further.

"Not even the temple knows who Claus is! I promise you, we'll consult with the priests to protect this holy person's identity!" I declare, matching them in fervor and piety.

"Hmm…" the stern man hums thoughtfully.

"Well, the priests would know better…" the pious woman humbly admits.

"Trust the priests!" the fervent man cheers cordially.

Then Nero comes out, looking a bit tense, so I remain stoic as I wait for him to approach. Then he promptly whispers in my ear, "The trainees found something invisible entering a home."

"Something?" I repeat, very concerned.

He hums. "Yes. We need to meet with them before they lose it."

So I turn to the mob and interrupt their reflection, "I shall visit the temple and convene with them! You have nothing to worry about, for I'll keep my word and protect Claus."

"Hm… fine!" a grumpy old man relents.

"Yeah, that's fine!" a more amiable young man agrees.

Then I turn to the imperial spy and hurriedly whisper, "Do you know [Rush]?"

And he grins. "Of course. Every spy needs it to escape a bad operation."

"Then let's use it."

I didn't want to leave the mob for the guards to deal with, even though they've been mostly pacified, but this is too big to ignore. Either we have found Claus, or a serious crime is going to happen in that house. Invisibility was never used for good in my father's stories.

Fortunately, our destination isn't too far since Claus has been combing through the middle-wealth neighborhood, which is where the Lord's Hall is located, so it only takes us a couple of minutes to reach the area where Nero's trainee was stationed.

And just as soon as we stop, a person suddenly lands before us, but we're in the main street, and there's no nearby tall building or tree for them to have jumped off from, unless they were either floating or their jump had astonishing horizontal distance. Then I see that the latter is the more likely answer since the trainee is a werecat, one that I recognize being a former criminal that the Royal Ryders brought from Mac Gantus so she may redeem herself, basically the same story as Nero.

"Which house, Harriet?" Nero promptly questions.

She points to a humble two-story house. "That one."

And I emphatically state, "We're barging in. We have to find the invisible thing you saw."

The werecat spy nods in understanding and describes, "It was small, no bigger than my head, and could possibly be winged since I heard a flap."

"A monster?" I question concernedly.

But she shrugs. "Possible."

So I caution them, "Then it might not be our Claus, but it's still a dangerous being that must be stopped!" Then I draw my sword and [Equip] my armor. "With me!"

The poor family is terrified of our intrusion, but I quickly soothe them while Nero and Harriet search for the monster. Nero has Dust of Appearance on his person, which I believe makes sense for a spy to have, so he promptly begins to spread it all over the house while Harriet uses her sharp senses to seek out the disturbance she previously spotted.

"FOUND IT!" Nero's muffled yell comes from above.

"I must go!" I state to the family and leave.

I [Rush] up the flight of stairs and find Nero and Harriet inside the child's room along with a small, winged, glowing ball, perched atop the wardrobe. The Dust sticks to the [Invisibility] and glows, so there's no mistaking it. It's our quarry.

"It's a Beholder! An invisible monster!" Harriet exclaims and charges forward, sword pointing upwards and ready to thrust while Nero follows closely behind.

"DON'T KILL IT!" I desperately bellow, making them both stop and turn around to attack me with their disbelieving glares. "IT COULD BE RELATED TO CLAUS, AND I GAVE MY WORD I'D BRING THEM NO HARM!"

"IT'S A MONSTER!" the big imperial man bellows back, his voice impressively powerful.

I become desperate to find an excuse, so I just use the first thing that comes to my mind, "BUT… IT'S NOT DOING ANYTHING!"

They both turn and stare at the glowing ball as it remains there, unmoving. Then we realize that this is actually pretty odd.

"Wait… you're right. It isn't even trying to run," Nero curiously remarks and takes a careful step forward.

"Alright, you're the boss," Harriet hums and steps back as she lowers her weapon.

Then we hear a *poof*, and the ball stops glowing as the Dust of Appearance falls down onto the wardrobe.

"What?!" Harriet hisses, incredulous.

And I can scarcely believe my eyes or my ears.

"Wait, wasn't that…" Nero begins.

"A summoned monster!" I finish and nearly stumble in shock.

I return to my office, alone, and a servant warns me that I have a guest waiting, but this is actually quite convenient, though it does give me a bit of dread.

The moment I enter the waiting room, "Nai" Caterina's high-level aura presses down on me, and I feel like a child before their stern mother. She's not angry; this is just how she usually is.

"Sir Curol, I heard that you were chasing after a supposedly 'holy' person? And also that you were going to speak to us about it?" the dignified Head Priest promptly questions me, and it takes a bit of effort to not immediately obey her.

But I sigh softly and let myself relax as I amusedly answer, "Ah, yes, I was. I'm going to meet with the 'holy person' now, so it'll be convenient if we go together as our words will have more impact for our… request."

Then I simply take a seat and serve myself some warm tea.

"Are you going to finish explaining yourself?" she questions, now deliberately putting a bit of pressure on me.

"I feel like it'll be funnier if I don't and just let you hear the whole story from the beginning," I mischievously reply. At least this much playfulness should be allowed, right?

"Have we learned something today, Wolfy?" Queen Alissa sternly scolds our Holy Lord-King.

But in his shame, he has shed his magnificent royal cloak and returned to being a young, boyish man corresponding to his age.

"Yes…" he embarrassedly coos. Then he glances at Her Highness, whose harsh gaze is unrelenting, and obediently recites what she wants to hear, "I learned not to invade people's homes, or to eavesdrop on their lives, even if it's to give them gifts… and also to talk to my sworn servants before performing pranks on my subjects."

Then Priestess Teresina actually shows a bit of kindness, thoroughly amused at the absurd story she has been told, and gives His Highness a sensible amount of praise, "You succeeded in creating the myth of Saint Claus, so I must commend you on that… but you also almost caused a riot, so-…"

"Wolfy, bad!" Queen Alissa scolds again, and the young royal woman looks like a genuine mother right now.

"Wolfy, bad…" Priestess Teresina amusedly repeats, like a kind grandmother observing her children and grandchildren.

I… didn't expect things to go this way, and I believe that I should never ever tell anyone what happened here.

But this makes me wonder, did Father also participate in any stories he wasn't allowed to tell?

A note from Manasong

Hall of Fame of Patrons

The patrons who support Rupegia shall have their names sung by the bards for they deserve the glory and honor. Their names are:

Prince PreownedFIN.

Prince Owldente.

Lord Andrew Meyers.

Lord Michale Erwin.

Lord Bakerdea.

Lord Maurice.

Lord Mattirro Draca.

Lord Tenebris Lupus.

Lord Paul Daval.

Lord Paul Daval.

Lord Tmac.

Lord CopeyDunt.

Lord BlindTactic.

Lord litalmexy.

Lord Philip.

Lord d3235.

Lord William Clark.

Lord SubJef.

Lord GalacticTNT.

Lord LiuAnshan.

Lord Empirean.

Lord BlindTactic.

Lord Black Unicorn.

Lord FrostyCube.

Lord Glaistig Uaine.

Lord School work.

Lord Beater.

Lord patrick__starz.

Lord Peter Kraushuber

Lord David England.

Noble Aclys.

Noble Carl  Baxter.

Noble Tony Starrk.

Noble DND.

Noble Anon A Moose.

Noble warmoger55.

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Chapter 156: Reunited - Part 1

A note from Manasong

Attention: to conform to the limit of mature content (more than just sexual content) allowed in a novel, I've censored this chapter. You can look for the uncensored version here.

Intermission – Nikolas

I'm forced to stare at the sky as my legs are swept out from under me, and I'm already so tired that I just lay on the ground and stare at the clouds as I rest. That Fay Leviathan then flashes in my mind, and I still feel a little bit of awe every time I'm reminded of it.

King Wolf may be a sword when it comes to women, in all meanings of the word, but he's still the most incredible person I've ever seen. Exploring the Great Labyrinth doesn't feel appealing anymore. I'm an adventurer, and following the Ryders feels like the biggest adventure I could ever ask for.

"I heard the King got himself into another 'party' yesterday," I hear one of the resting grunts remark to the others.

"Isn't every day a party when you have seven wives?" a second hums.

"True…" they agree in sync.

Boss Wolf's everyday life is just… stupidly silly.

"Did other men join the party?" a third questions, and even I turn to him in curiosity.

The first chuckles and amusedly answers, "As if. It was just him and a bunch of women."

And everyone snorts, even me.

"Magic royal sword is so good that not even the Companions want to 'mingle' with us…" the second enviously remarks.

"That's the King for you," the first wryly replies.

And the third chastises them, "The hell you complaining about? Still a lot of sheathes around, especially because of the King's fame."

"I just fancy a specific kind of woman…" the second quietly states with a grin.

Then I notice that they're staring at the arena next to ours, so I follow their gaze and see that they're staring at Lolo and another Companion as they spar wearing barely any clothes. The Companions don't 'mingle' with us, but they sure do like to tease us.

I've abandoned chasing after Lolo's tail so hard that now I feel silly for being so protective of her. If she wants to be the toy of a dragon, I won't stop her. Non-adventurer women are better anyway. They're gentler, their hands are softer, and they act so much cuter… especially dwarves and halflings… so they can chase after the brawny Companions as much as they want for all I care.

That visit to the Little Red Sandal just might be what really changed me.

I've seen some halflings in town, and now all I want is a cute little one of my own to hug…

"Nikolas! Up! The ground is not a place to lie on!" the elven officer barks at me.

These elves are a pain in the ass, but you can't deny that the Lordsguard are the best soldiers around.

So I weakly get up and grab my spear again. I just have to get through this harsh training bullshit before I can start my new adventure.

Intermission end.

Today is the 21st, Genn, day of Light. And the sunshine sneaking past our curtains feels extra divine today, especially when it touches Ereia's golden hair as her head bobs up and down. Her little tongue works with extreme skill, and her hand [Massage]s my jewels with unbelievable delicateness.

Then she takes me out of her mouth at the perfect time for me to splash her and Alissa with massively thick ropes of magical seed. The little imp is wearing large, round glasses, and it's almost like they've been designed to be splattered with it.

They lick it off each other's faces, then Alissa crawls up to the new elven girl from yesterday and spits some into her mouth, and the rest goes into the mouth of the cute lizard Chimera that Jarn just did.

"You two are such good, obedient girls," Alissa whispers seductively, and the young elf smiles adorably at the praise while the lizard woman is too stunned by the amazing taste of my seed to react.

Then I order the golems to open the curtains, revealing Osaria's mind-broken body. Her silver hair bun is messy and half-undone; her droopy eyes are unfocused and twitchy; her makeup is visibly ruined; her jaw hangs loose as Jarn holds her tongue out, forcing her to drool, but her face hole is regularly plugged with a replica of my Sword; her body seems completely limp as she hangs like a doll; her bits have metal clamps on them that regularly receive mild [Shocking Touch]s; her pillows and entire chest have depressions from the shibari ropes that she was tied up with for most of the night; her legs are spread eagle in the most undignified pose possible; her lower bit is pinched by a metal clamp that's being gently tugged by Ted's [Telekinesis]; her lips and back entrance are each spread wide by a huge replica of my Draconic Sword, made to be as thick as a first, the biggest it could ever be and still fit inside a woman without tearing her apart, and her fluids are still dripping along its shaft; and she's regularly been given water and healed with [Regeneration] so that her skin doesn't peel off and her pleasure nerves don't fry.

Suzy then begins moving the massive weapons again, and Osaria twitches awake, her eyes regaining a bit of focus. She seems to recognize me as I stand up and approach her, but she's too weakened to even complain, so her misty eyes simply follow me, though I recognize a faint, silly smile appearing on her juicy lips.

Jarn applies [Shocking Touch] to the clamps, and Osaria begins to quiver wildly, so Suzy stops moving the massive wepons, and Ted releases the lower clamp so that she doesn't reach the apex. Her silly smile becomes a mild frown as she's once again denied heaven. But she's being constantly stimulated by the golems and has adapted so well to the denial that she quickly returns to her blissful, half-awake state.

It's time for aftercare, so the golems remove the rest of the clamps, then Suzy gently pulls out the weapons, and both of her gaping holes close up with a loud, lewd, moist sound. She'll need a bit of [Regeneration] to tighten up again, but the golems are already on it.

I release her into my arms and carry her to the bed. Then we start cleaning her up while massaging her tired muscles, and she begins to slowly awaken from her stupor. Her whole body is still exhausted, so Ciel casts [Refresh] to give her some energy, and then my dark milf begins the most blissful stretch I've ever seen.

"Hnghhnaaaah~…!" she hums loudly as her spirit returns to her body.

"Morning, my love," I utter a warm, breathy whisper into her long, elastic ear, and she shivers from a pleasant chill.

"Morning… my King…" she weakly replies with a hoarse voice, and her droopy eyes focus on my face, but then they quickly widen as she notices my lubed-up Sword slowly spreading her abused flower.

"I give you permission to ascend," I huskily state and thrust.

She's still sensitive, so she shudders as my it smoothly slides in, but her mind is craving heaven so badly that she grabs my waist and slams me against her with a sudden crazed look in her eyes.

I show her a bit of mercy by stimulating her spots with a gentle spirit touch, and the reaction is instantaneous as her body almost goes entirely limp again. But Ciel casts another [Refresh], and Osaria holds on to her broken mind long enough to finally get the heaven she wanted.

"YES, YES, YES…!" she shouts madly as her legs quiver uncontrollably and the best one she could ever have begins. It's been building up all night long, and now, it comes on like a tsunami. Then she hums so hard that her voice cuts out and she stops breathing, "HAA, HAAAH, HAAAA-…!"

And her eyes roll up into her skull as she squeezes me, then she freezes for several long seconds, her face warped into pure bliss.

I take out the [Instant Painting] magic tool and have the golems take a picture of us. "Mindbroken by Master" is the name of this glorious painting, and I'll hang it in the private section of our heraldry corridor to immortalize it for all eternity.

But all good things must come to an end, and eventually, she falls limp onto the bed and passes out for good.

It takes a good three minutes for her to come back from that. Then we have breakfast on the bed because she's unable to walk, even after a [Heal]. It's fine, though, since it gives us a good reason to not have breakfast with the Princesses.

Though her body is tired, her mind is broken, and her nerves are frayed, a combo of Tonique tea with a good cup of fresh coffee plus a cast of [Inspire] is enough to re-energize her, but only temporarily, as nothing can really replace the night of sleep she lost to my torture.

Everyone else is also full of energy as the girls happily chatter, and their innocent female giggles also seem louder than usual. Even Poosh drops her subservient attitude and joins the girls as they tease Osaria for her "sin."

"You know, that actually didn't seem like much of a punishment," Hana casually remarks as she eats her fruit salad.

Osaria slowly lowers her spoon, almost dropping her pudding as she blinks blankly at Hana in disbelief. Then the milf stiffly points out, "I'm an old woman. I can't walk because I was in an uncomfortable position for too long, not because Wolfy gave me a piece of Heaven with his Sword, so this was definitely quite… punishing on me."

But the highly masochistic dragonkin simply shrugs. "That still doesn't sound too bad since the golems were doing you all night long."

Poosh then chimes in, trying to sound neutral, "It's quite common for women to have trouble reaching the apex. The fact that you were even allowed to do it after the 'punishment' is already quite the reward." But she seems to secretly want to side with Hana.

"I mean, the point of a spicy punishment is to give her enough pleasure to offset the pain and discomfort," I explain. I'm not into full sadism without Osaria getting at least something out of it, and she doesn't have [Pain Conversion] like Hana.

"With a 'punishment' like that, wouldn't it just entice her to 'steal' your women more often?" Kaatohe curiously questions and slowly sips her coffee as she amusedly stares at the now angry m*lf.

"I'm not a dog…!" Osaria exclaims and glares.

Unfortunately, "bitch" doesn't have a similar meaning to "slut" in this world, so I can't make a joke about it.

"I'd be tempted if you 'punished' me like that," Nono quietly remarks, then blushes at her own statement and quietly turns her eyes back to her food again.

"It really just sounds like a long-duration Ravaging," Hana agrees while nodding sagely.

Osaria's young "friend" remains silent, too embarrassed about the topic to even laugh.

When we finish eating, everyone leaves to tend to their own business, except for the four concubines: Osaria, Poosh, Nono, and Kaatohe. And we sit at a table right next to the bed to talk properly while not excluding Osaria.

The four women are all proudly wearing their Necklaces of Ownership, and I just feel an amazing level of comfort from seeing them accept the position of concubines. I love them, and I love that they love me enough to wear that proof of love on their lovely necks.

Once Osaria is comfortable on her pillows, I begin the first Gathering of Concubines, "Now that you've all agreed to officially become concubines, it's time to reveal some of my secrets to you." -Kaatohe leans forward, looking very interested- "Two of you already know this, but the truth of my 'homeland' is that I come from another Realm."

But now, the cat's curiosity freezes in confusion while the scholarly bunny girl becomes quite interested. "You mean you're not from Rupegia but another Realm in the Reigurando Cycle?" Nono asks for clarification.

And I smile warmly at her as I nod. "Yes, exactly, though I don't know if my 'home Realm' is in the same Cycle as this one."

"You'll have to explain all these terms to me," Kaatohe calmly demands.

Explaining the concept of a "world" to a person who doesn't even know what planets are seems quite challenging at first, but that's an Earthling mindset. Realms are extremely simple: they're just a finite amount of space separated by the Inbetween, a "not-space" that makes travel between Realms impossible (for now), while a Cycle is merely a collection of similar Realms.

The harder part to explain is how Earth managed to develop further than Rupegia without magic.

I casually deliberate, "There are no monsters, so we've spread far and wide, and the lack of dangers has allowed us to focus on improving our societies instead of seeking personal growth like Rupegians do."

"Sounds idyllic," Poosh hums with a dreamy tone.

And I wistfully temper her imagination, "It isn't, not for most people, but I was born in a place where it was."

"Wait… are you trying to go back to your world with [Otherworldly Summoning]?!" Nono suddenly exclaims as she stands up, her cute face warped in worry.

I feel a compulsion to pat her head, but I hold it in this time as I earnestly reassure her, "No, I'm not. I'll never leave this place. The Goddess of Knowledge gave me the mission to rebuild [Summoning Magic] precisely to prevent that kind of thing."

She freezes for a second, then quietly mumbles as she sits down again, "Oh… okay…"

Gods bless her honest heart.

"It's understandable. He isn't a King in his home Realm," Osaria points out with a smirk.

"He could become one if he managed to bring back magic to his world," Kaatohe replies and gives me a challenging look with her sharp cat eyes, daring me to do it.

But I'm too sure of myself to fall for her provocation, and besides, there's something very important that they must be told about before they start fantasizing about conquest, "I have a feeling that the God of Earth, if they truly exist, would be quite bothered by me messing around with Their Realm."

My bronze cat pouts in disappointment, then haughtily starts to deliberate, "Hmph. You'd be making things a lot more 'interesting,' you know? Earth sounds like quite the boring Realm, to be honest, so you conquering them would drastically improve their situation." And Poosh uncharacteristically flashes an irritated expression at her.

The "returner," the hero who comes back to Earth with all of their powers, is quite a popular fantasy, so I can't say I haven't thought about it before, but there's still the matter of the supposed God of Earth.

I chuckle softly, my thick tail wagging slowly in contentment, then I explain my thoughts, "I admit that I'm living a life that many people dream and fantasize about, and it's even a popular genre in novels, but I definitely don't have the power to go against a God, not to mention that we don't even know if travel between Realms is actually viable."

Kaatohe slowly turns her gaze towards Nono, then starts pressuring her with an intent state. "But there's someone who's researching exactly that," the cat woman amusedly states.

"I didn't know you were so ambitious, sister Kaatohe," Osaria replies, saying exactly what Poosh is too polite to say.

Kat simply waves her hand dismissively as she casually continues, "Oh, the only thing I truly wish for is to visit Earth, but since they have no magic and their rulers are all weak, conquering them would be so easy that you could consider it a side attraction."

Poosh surprises me once again with a polite but sharp chastising, "It's His Highness' home, sister Kaatohe. You talk too lightly about bringing violence to an idyllic place."

The haughty cat seems annoyed at being called out, but she's sensible enough to not press this matter any further.

"You can call me Wolfy now, Poosh," I kindly state, but she seems to become too embarrassed by the idea to respond.

Then Kaatohe explains herself, assuming a more respectful tone, "To me, it seems that Wolf doesn't see Earth as such a special place as you're making it out to be. It's just another piece of land like any other."

"Call me Wolfy," I correct her.

"Wolfy," she immediately repeats and flashes a fanged smile.

Poosh readjusts her round glasses and stiffly continues, "A home is a sacred place. Let's not talk about razing W-Wolfy's so casually." And I flash a smile at her uncharacteristic embarrassment.

Kaatohe simply shrugs in response but relents from her suggestion. Her home was lost a very, very long time ago, so she has a different perspective from the others regarding this matter.

But now that they've stopped bickering, I wistfully continue, "If I'm ever allowed to go back, I'll show you all my birthplace and introduce you to my parents. Polygamy isn't allowed in our society, so that'd be fun."

Nono's little tail begins to wag in sudden happiness as she shyly exclaims, "Oh…! Yes, that'd be fun… not for the reason you're implying, but I'd really like to meet your parents."

Now I succumb to the desire to pat her head and fluffy ears, embarrassing her a bit, but there's no harm in that.

Seeing that everyone has fallen silent, the little white rabbit becomes excited as she feels free to ask, "But tell us more about the things from Earth that you want to recreate here. I know what the Institute and nobleman Lyle are researching, but what else will you bring here?"

Most of what I want to recreate depends on Lyle building the foundations of computers for me, but there's a lot that I can innovate here in terms of art, like "Magic: The Gathering," rock music, h*ntai, movies, the sci-fi genre, and basically anything related to the pop-culture of the last century on Earth.

And Osaria slowly begins to fall asleep as we talk, especially when the topic drifts towards machinery. Poosh simply listens without prejudice while Kaatohe shows a mild interest in the topic, but it still isn't anywhere near as intense as Nono's.

My cute, submissive bunny girl listens intently as I summarize the importance of industrialization, "With mass-production, the costs drop to such a level that everyone can have nice clothes, good food, and plenty of tools to help with their day-to-day lives. You'll all be living in a completely different way in just a decade if everything goes well."

"So this must be the reason the Goddess of Knowledge favors you instead of the God of Intelligence," Poosh sagely states.

And Kaatohe shrugs. "Why not both? He's already a scho-… wait, how old are you, again? You know too much for a cocky young boy."

I can't hold back my grin as I reveal, "I'm thirty years old… wait, I should've already reached thirty-one since coming here."

"Y-y-you're older than me!" Nono exclaims in disbelief. I won't ask how old she is, but I'd guess she's in her very early twenties.

Kaatohe gives me an amused, sensuous look, as if my attractiveness to her just increased in her eyes. "Technically not older than me, but I was twenty-seven when I died, rather old for an unmarried noblewoman." Then she becomes a bit bitter.

Osaria also seems amused as she sultrily coos, "Oh, my… so this is why you're so mature. Though I do feel a bit sad that you aren't an actual boy, for some reason." Then her smile becomes wistful and wry.

"I feel a bit less guilty, now…" Poosh quietly states and averts her eyes.

I stare back at Osaria and huskily state with a smirk, "If it makes you wet, then you can imagine me as a young, immature boy as much as you want."

And Osaria's smile becomes heavily suggestive.

Then we talk a bit more about my life on Earth, but we're suddenly interrupted as Confiel arrives in our castle with quite a bomb: he brought back Hana's mother.

Captain Ansara Crime Noir – Teaser

A note from Manasong

This a teaser for the Patreon-only side stories I'm writing. It's not necessary to read them to understand the main story; it just gives it more background or world-building.

One day, I'll begin to slowly make these stories public once I re-review them like I'm doing with the early chapters.

Today is the 10th of the 9th month of the new millennium. And it's the second-last of my vacation days, so of course I go out for drinking tonight, but I immediately feel like there's something different in the air.

I try some games at first, but my luck isn't getting a hit, and nothing new catches my attention, so I move to women, but the [Acting] feels a lot more obvious and forced this time, ruining my interest. Next, I try the booze, and the boys all pass out too fast, leaving me with a half-empty bottle and the feeling that something's missing, so I go smoke some haash on the balcony.

No matter what I try, it doesn't feel the same, it doesn't get the heart pumping as fast, and whatever high I get, it quickly fades away. I feel out of balance, or… out of touch… though the only thing for certain is that there's something wrong with me.

That much is pretty obvious.

But that's not all. Rabanara is changing -it always has- it's just that I'm not keeping up with it anymore, and that frightens me. It almost feels like the town is a stranger to me, and so the night ends earlier than expected since I suddenly feel tired like an old man.

I can't get my head in order, and it's better if I don't punish the boys with my brooding. I'm annoyed with myself.

The streets seem safer, though, so I guess there's that, but that isn't related to my feeling of estrangement… or at least that's what I think. I really can't think straight today.

Eventually, I manage to wander back home. As my hand moves to open the door, someone twists the knob and pulls it away from me, and in my poor drunken state, I'm unable to stop, so I continue to chase after it and lean forward, losing my balance. A soft bosom breaks my fall, then my nostrils are filled with a sweet, nostalgic perfume.

"Welcome home, my lov-…" her sweet words fade from memory as my head collides with the ground, and a blinding pain makes me forget all about her.

"AH!" I groan out loud and roll on the floor while holding my forehead. Clarity returns a second later as I realize that my drunken and half-asleep brain was playing tricks on me.

Cruel tricks.

As the pain subsides, I stop rolling and grimace. I hate these memories, but I also hate the "treatment" the priests want to give to me.

I'll deal with the pain myself.

But maybe I should start by drinking less; it's certainly counter-productive to trade soul pain for physical pain.

The next day, I have a hangover, but that was expected, so I just take a potion for it and another for the bump in my forehead, and then I spend the rest of the day inside and resting.

My house is a mess.

I'm never in here long enough to be worth cleaning up, though, so I just cast a few [Clean]s for the dust and leave it at that.

But then I start to get bored… and I quickly realize that I hate being left with my own thoughts.

I can last one day…

And I do succeed in not making myself go crazy.

I eagerly put the uniform on, and lock the house then take a [Gate] to the main Townsguard office. Things seem to be very hectic today, but I guess that it's because of the Lapis Waterway. Now that it has been cleared, a new trade route is going to emerge, and different soldiers need to be stationed over there. Thankfully, I'm rotating out of the Landsguard Division, so I don't have to deal with that mess.

I was never good with paperwork.

"Captain Ansara, the Commander wants to see you," a secretary informs me the moment I arrive at my desk.

That was expected since I have literally zero work to do, but I hoped I'd at least get a few moments to talk to the guys.

Oh, well, duty calls.

I open the door to his office, and I'm attacked by the smell and smoke of hash. It's nothing heavy to not impair his work, but I think that Commander Martan would need to smoke a whole book to even get a little bit high.

"Captain," he greets me as I open the door. He's a pudgy, balding deskman like most others, but he still carries the aura of a high level, so nobody wise ever took him for a weak merchant and left with all their teeth intact.

"Commander," I greet back with a respectful bowl.

And he slowly lowers his long pipe as he begins without even waiting for me to take a seat, "We need to get to you your new assignment. Any Division you feel like going to?"

"As long as it isn't Customs, I'll be fine," I offhandedly answer and take a glance at his office. I'm pretty sure that the rustic furniture has become even more gray and stained due to his smoking, but at least there's a new plant at the corner, though I'm not sure if the poor thing will survive for long.

"You need to learn to keep your tongue tied," he grunts and turns around the pipe then hits it against his ashtray to clean it up.

But I daringly smirk back. "That's when I lose my youthful charm and become an old grumpy man like you.

He lets out a grunty snort and frowns. "You better behave, then, or I will send you to Customs as punishment," he threatens, though he isn't very serious.

"I always… well, almost always do," I reply and embarrassedly clear my throat.

But then he stares at me with his beady eyes, and I sense the pressure increase. Now he's serious. "I want to send you to Crimes, so I need you to behave."

"Oh? What for?" I curiously ask back.

He sighs tiredly and throws a report my way. "Yesterday night, a 'scion' of a 'rising merchant family' got killed, but I'm already hearing quite a lot of Godsdamned whining from the merchants, and with the Waterway opening, the Lords don't want the merchants to feel insecure, so I want you to take care of this."

I just take a look at the page, and my eyebrows rise on their own. This one will be bad. "Is this official policy?"

And Martan becomes as ugly as an orc as his frown deepens. "No, so it's worse, it's unofficial."

If it's unofficial then it's too important for it to publicly fail.

"I just came back from my vacation," I remark and take another look at the report.

"Yeah, and you'd be bored out of your mind if I didn't give you something interesting," he grunts wryly and starts stuffing more hash in his pipe.

"Hmph…" I frown at him then frown deeper at the report.

"Take the case, Ansara," he orders, almost sounding like he's asking.

"I wasn't going to say no," I reply, and a smirk starts to appear in the corner of my lip. I can feel the "high" coming, and it's going to be a real one.

"Who do you want to take with you?" he continues and promptly lights the pipe up.

And I instantly have the names in mind. "Just a couple of bodyguards. Most of my boys are good warriors that wouldn't fit with the Investigators."

"You have it. Now, give me some results," he answers without even hearing the names.

So I hand back the report and wryly remark, "You talk as if it was easy."

Now he grins smugly like a fucking goblin. "For me, yeah. I just point you somewhere and you do it."

I'm not sure if having the Commander think like that about me is a good thing, though. For my career? Yeah, I guess that's fine. For my health? Definitely not.

But I can't stop myself; I must get that high.

Now that I'm in Crimes, I get to pick a mask to cover my identity. Sometimes, Investigators can be targeted because they're just that good, and though I'm not at that level, there's also no reason to show my face, so I take my time picking one.

The poor man won't be any more or less dead no matter how long I take, anyway.

And I pick a stony-faced mask that reminds me of the Dream Eaters. This choice is more about what I wish than wanting to look cool. I need someone to eat my bad dreams away so they stop haunting me.

Then I set off to the north of town, but not to the Nobles' Quarter. I actually like it there because they try to make the area livable. There are barely any shops or interesting places to go in the Quarter because it's their own walled garden, and if you can't afford to hire your own dancers, you don't really belong there.

The home itself is a big walled mansion, one of the good ones, even, so I'm actually surprised that someone managed to barge in and kill the scion. And they even did it by going through the front gate since as it's obviously busted open and the Forensics team is still working on it.

People don't recognize my mask, but they do my bodyguards, so we just nod at the men standing guard and show our IDs, and then we're allowed through without a word.

The cobble path looks new, so no moss to be disturbed and give us footprints, though there is one pair of bloody ones. Well, not much of a pair with only one foot leaving the prints, but he definitely has at least another foot considering his gait.

I say "at least" because I've seen weirder things out there.

The footprints end before they reach the gates, so we don't have an idea of which direction they took after getting out. Still, with a partial footprint, we'll get some [Tracking] dogs to seek for more around the neighborhood.

Then we get closer to the main entrance, and we start to hear the cries of the widow.

"Spirit exorcised," Tarin remarks. That's why I chose him as my main officer. He knows how to work on Crimes.

"Spirit exorcised," I repeat.

The widow wouldn't be crying so loudly if we could bring back his spirit for questioning, which makes things a lot harder for us since we can't ask the dead man who killed him, but this also means that they were prepared for it. This was a planned assassination.

So I sigh deeply. I really don't feel like talking to widows today… or ever.

I can stall for time, though, as I first need to speak to Forensics and get a feel for what happened before we can even start interrogating people.

The "battle" took place in the entrance hall, as we can assume by the blood and the whole Forensics team being here. We also have to avoid the hundreds of little markings to not step on random blood drops and ruin the scene, but my boys and I are well-trained in that part.

"Zara," I call as I approach the little Mantis girl playing around with a knife, trying to recreate the battle.

And she suddenly stops and then tenses up, recoiling her extra pair of arms towards her body. She's definitely feeling self-conscious about her job. "Oh, Investigator," she squeaks like a little animal.

"Give me a run down," I bluntly request. I don't feel like navigating around her weirdness.

And she looks around then sighs tiredly, letting her extra arms go limp. "We haven't finished yet. This is a mess."

"I can tell," I wryly hum back.

But she quickly recollects herself under my stare and gives me what I want, "We're certain that there has been a break-in by three assailants who fought and quickly finished off the victim, then they left some scribbles and ran away with lots of valuables. You might want to start with the scribbles. That one is bound to be interesting."

"'Scribbles'?" I repeat.

And she points with her magical pen to the wall to our left. It's blocked by a group of Forensics guys, so I didn't notice it as we came in, but it should've been obvious that something was going on there.

"Boys. Explain," I order as I approach them.

"Investigator!" the dorks exclaim as they realize who I am. Well, who I'm supposed to be because I doubt they recognize my voice.

One of the more scholarly ones immediately launches on an explanation, "We believe the Cult of Harvest tried to take claim for this murder, but it seems that they left in a hurry before they could finish."

"The symbol is unfinished!" another dork shouts at the first.

"They were in a hurry obviously," he snobbishly states.

A third supports the second, "The Cult wouldn't fear some mere servants. They'd finish the symbol to honor his necromancer then kill whoever witnessed them, too."

"The Cult isn't immune to messing up, as evident by the crime scene," a fourth joins in.

But I raise my hands and interrupt them, "I've been on vacation for a while. What's this Cult?"

An older, more reasonable fifth dork answers, "Just another necromantic cult. They've been preying on the homeless lately."

"Why would they go for a big rich merchant like this one, then?" I immediately ask.

But they aren't Investigators, so they aren't keen to assume.

"A necromancer holding a grudge…?" tentatively questions, but nobody even reacts.

"That'd be great for us as it makes it easier to find who they are," I answer and he frowns as it obvious how this is unlikely even for crazed necromantic cultists.

"It's not our job to make assumptions," the older dork soberly states.

"It's the Investigator's," another agrees.

"Let's just show him the symbol, then," the first suggests, and for once, they all agree, so they step aside so that I can see it.

A scythe around the neck of a person praying.

This doesn't make sense. The fuck is this cult doing here?

And the longer that the recreation of the murder goes on, the less sense it makes, too.

This is a mess.

Forensics isn't doing very well today, so I decide to just inspect the body of the victim.

Signeur Dalas Sasluzar has been taken to another room so that the Examiners can do their work in peace, and they've stripped the man so that they can inspect the wounds. The air is thick with the smell of blood, and the pair speak in hushed voices to not risk offending the spirit in case it actually comes back.

But we know he won't, and hopefully, the poor man is in Paradise.

He's a natural Rabanarian like me, with black hair and pale skin, and he's also very young-looking, possibly in his mid-twenties considering his level, so he didn't get to enjoy his marriage for too long.

Another one…

Now's not the time to envy the dead, though, so I approach the body and inquire the Examiners. It seems that his wounds are mostly on the arms as he tried to defend himself without a weapon against shortswords, but then he took two stabs to the heart and collapsed.

Nothing special or odd about it; just the work of thugs.

"He didn't have any enchantment to preserve his life. Quite brave for a low-level merchant as rich as he was," one of the Examiners quietly remarks.

"That's odd," I hum back and frown.

"What is?" he innocently asks back.

And I sternly point out, "Enchantments. None of them. Did the sniffers find anything on him?"

The other Examiner shakes his head as he answers, "No mana, and his [Item Box] didn't even have a potion in it. It was a completely non-magical kill."

I scratch my head in confusion as I remark, "I know youths are reckless, but it was like he was asking to be killed."

"That's too much," the first Examiner sternly warns me. The ghost isn't coming back, they never do when exorcised by actual assassins like these, but I don't want to pick a fight with them, so I just ignore it.

"Well, he was attacked at night, so it isn't like he'd be dressed for battle," the second Examiner ponders.

"Still…" I grumble as my frown deepens.

But he also isn't the only dead. The other was an unlucky guard who was pelted by multiple spells and got his neck snapped by an [Earth Bullet]. Sniffers say that the wounds are all from magic tools since the mana has been very poorly converted, but this is curious since the Signeur died without receiving a single spell.

There isn't much else to learn with the Examiners, so we go through the staff and get a timeline of the murder.

It started at eleven of the night with the guards being put to sleep by some sort of magical mist that the Forensics haven't been able to identify yet. Then the criminals rammed the gate open with something magical while also using an expensive [Silent Room] magic tool because nobody heard a thing. Still, this raised the alarm within the mansion.

A pair of guards met with the criminals as they rushed in, but they were knocked out by a flurry of magic tool attacks. One of them was the unlucky man who died in the spot while the other survived to give this testimony.

There were three hooded criminals, and one might've been a wereanimal considering the shape of his hood, but the guard couldn't recall any other detail from the few moments he had to look at them.

Well-armed cultists. Not surprising, but why did they kill Signeur Dalas without using any spells, then…? I guess they might've preemptively used [Dead Zone] because it isn't like they knew that the Signeur had no defensive enchantments.

The Sniffers will likely confirm this soon enough.

Continuing, after an unlucky meeting at the entrance, they murdered the Signeur then stole things around the mansion and left before finishing the scribbles on the wall. There were only a few servants in the mansion at the time, and they hid once the alarm was sounded, so they didn't meet with the criminals, but they did hear them hastily go through the rooms in search of valuables.

And that's everything we can get from questioning them, but now the widow's wails have lowered, so I stop stalling and go ask her some questions.

She's in a room deeper into the mansion with the rest of her family as they attempt to console her, and, thankfully, Commander Martan was kind enough to send one of the priests to talk to her. I'm not the kind of man to sweeten my words up… or rather, I guess I lost touch with that side of mine.

The widow is a foreigner, it seems, a gorgeous succubus with dark red locks of luscious hair, yet her crying face does nothing to me. No sympathy, no pity, and no patience. All I want is to get going with this case, so, at most, she makes me feel annoyed.

I'm both the best and worst Investigator of the Crime Division.

"Madame Zwir," I gently greet with as much patience as I can muster.

She sobs a bit more, then seems to notice my presence and slowly recognizes what I'm here for. "Hm…? Oh… oh, are you… the Investigator?" she quietly hums between small sobs and dries her reddened eyes. Her pupils are also red, making her look beautifully haunting, but I feel like she's more of a painting than a person.

"I am. I'd like to ask you some questions," I answer hushedly to make it seem like I'm being respectful.

"Very well…" she hums and slowly nods.

Signeur Dalas was a trader of enchantments that got lucky in the last couple of years, a common story in these times as the Ryders and the Anaras are now bringing in more gems into the market, so the smart ones are taking advantage of the change to make a disgusting amount of money. I know because this also means that fraudsters and conmen have been spreading like goblins.

But the fact that he dealt with gems also makes this a more delicate matter for Rabanara. Can't let our most important merchants feel uneasy now, can we?

"What about his enemies? Someone like him would definitely make a few by rising so fast," I bluntly ask.

But this makes her clam up. "I don't know much… he had competitors, but could they really be 'enemies' to the point they'd kill him?" she answers evasively and turns away, looking as if she's about to cry again.

Odd…

"What about his friends?" I immediately turn it around.

And so does she. "Oh! He had so many friends!" she exclaims and brightens up.

I know she's a grieving widow, but still…

"We're looking for someone who might've betrayed him," I sternly continue.

And she becomes meek again. "I don't… I don't know about that, but I can just tell you what I know."

As we leave the mansion, Tarin curiously asks, "Investigator, was it my impression or was the Madame more eager to point us to his friends than enemies?"

"She was, but the question is 'why?'" I casually reply without looking at him as my mind continues to work.

"Doesn't she suspect it was a betrayal?" he answers in a predictable way.

So I lightly scramble the puzzle in his mind, "Or was she afraid of naming his enemies in fear of being next?"

But he snorts and backs off, "You're the investigator, so I won't make assumptions."

And I smirk, though it's unfortunate that he can't see it. "The real answer is that it doesn't matter. We need to go after the Cult of Harvest."

A note from Manasong

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Table of Contents

Information
Chapter 1: First Day
Chapter 2: Second Day
Chapter 3: Royd's Kerfuffle
Chapter 4: Nour's Gift
Chapter 5: A Companion's Promise
Chapter 6: Expedition
Chapter 7: "Good Luck"
Chapter 8: Guts and Glory
Chapter 9: The Good Days - Part 1
Chapter 9: The Good Days - Part 2
Chapter 10: Duty
Chapter 11: Vows - Part 1
Chapter 11: Vows - Part 2
Chapter 12: Morning Dew
Chapter 13: Growth - Part 1
Chapter 13: Growth - Part 2
Chapter 14: Responsibility
Chapter 15: Stand Beside Me
Chapter 16: Trust
Chapter 17: Eyes
Chapter 18: Shadows
Chapter 19: Coincidences
Chapter 20: Depths
Chapter 21: Bargain
Chapter 22: Baalfire
Chapter 23: Night Terrors
Chapter 24: Connections and Introductions
Chapter 25: Wisps of the Proud
Chapter 26: Paying
Chapter 27: The Price
Chapter 28: Circulation
Chapter 29: Nap Time
Chapter 30: The Tree in our Yard
Chapter 31: A Pervert's Vacation

Announcement: Discord, Patreon, Blog, and Schedule

Alissa's Origin: To Bring Honor to My Clan - Teaser

Chapter 32: Titans - Part 1
Chapter 32: Titans - Part 2
Chapter 32: Titans - Part 3
Chapter 33: Bind - Part 1
Chapter 33: Bind - Part 2
Chapter 33: Bind - Part 3
Chapter 34: Eccentrics - Part 1
Chapter 34: Eccentrics – Part 2
Chapter 34: Eccentrics – Part 3
Roxanne's Origin: What of My Future? - Teaser
Chapter 35: Thesis - Part 1
Chapter 35: Thesis - Part 2
Chapter 35: Thesis – Part 3
Chapter 36: Banter - Part 1
Chapter 36: Banter - Part 2
Chapter 36: Banter - Part 3
Chapter 37: Memories - Part 1
Chapter 37: Memories – Part 2
Chapter 37: Memories – Part 3

The Legend of Kaka Haere: The Broken One - Teaser

Hana's Origin: I'll Do What I Want – Teaser
Chapter 38: Last Days - Part 1
Chapter 38: Last Days - Part 2
Chapter 38: Last Days – Part 3
Chapter 39: Scholar - Part 1
Chapter 39: Scholar - Part 2
Chapter 39: Scholar - Part 3
Chapter 40: Departure - Part 1
Chapter 40: Departure - Part 2
Chapter 40: Departure - Part 3
Interlude 1: Silvane's "Diplomacy"
Lina's Enchanting Lessons - Teaser
Chapter 41: Tease - Part 1
Chapter 41: Tease - Part 2
Chapter 41: Tease – Part 3
Chapter 42: Eyes Wide Open - Part 1
Chapter 42: Eyes Wide Open - Part 2
Chapter 42: Eyes Wide Open - Part 3
Chapter 43: Missing Piece - Part 1
Chapter 43: Missing Piece - Part 2
Chapter 43: Missing Piece - Part 3
Ciel's Origin: Wanderlust – Teaser
Chapter 44: Extermination - Part 1
Chapter 44: Extermination – Part 2
Chapter 44: Extermination – Part 3
Chapter 45: Mercy – Part 1
Chapter 45: Mercy - Part 2
Chapter 45: Mercy - Part 3

Hadrian and the Guardian of the Sea of Trees - Teaser

Chapter 46: The Encounter - Part 1
Chapter 46: The Encounter - Part 2
Chapter 46: The Encounter - Part 3
Vanea's Origin: Hardened - Teaser
Chapter 47: Paranoia - Part 1
Chapter 47: Paranoia - Part 2
Chapter 47: Paranoia - Part 3
Chapter 48: The Darkness - Part 1
Chapter 48: The Darkness - Part 2
Chapter 48: The Darkness - Part 3
Chapter 49: Lit By a Flame - Part 1
Chapter 49: Lit By a Flame - Part 2
Chapter 49: Lit By a Flame - Part 3
The Mystery of the Dryads - Teaser
Chapter 50: Rest - Part 1
Chapter 50: Rest – Part 2
Chapter 50: Rest – Part 3
Chapter 51: Challenger - Part 1
Chapter 51: Challenger - Part 2
Chapter 51: Challenger - Part 3
Chapter 52: Glare - Part 1
Chapter 52: Glare - Part 2
Chapter 52: Glare - Part 3
Chapter 53: Milestone - Part 1
Chapter 53: Milestone - Part 2
Chapter 53: Milestone - Part 3
Chapter 54: Innocent Nymph - Part 1
Chapter 54: Innocent Nymph - Part 2
Chapter 54: Innocent Nymph - Part 3
Chapter 55: Escalation - Part 1
Chapter 55: Escalation – Part 2
Chapter 55: Escalation – Part 3

Legends of Times Past Series: Ender, the Dragon – Teaser

Chapter 56: Turn of The Wheel - Part 1
Chapter 56: Turn of The Wheel - Part 2
Chapter 56: Turn of the Wheel - Part 3
Chapter 57: Goodbyes - Part 1
Chapter 57: Goodbyes - Part 2
Chapter 57: Goodbyes - Part 3
Chapter 58: Meteor - Part 1
Chapter 58(?): Meteor - Part 2
Chapter 58: Meteor - Part 2
Chapter 58: Meteor - Part 3
Chapter 59: Enter the Dungeon - Part 1
Chapter 59: Enter the Dungeon - Part 2
Chapter 59: Enter the Dungeon - Part 3
Chapter 60: Dragon - Part 1
Chapter 60: Dragon - Part 2
Chapter 60: Dragon - Part 3
Chapter 61: Immediately - Part 1
Chapter 61: Immediately - Part 2
Chapter 61: Immediately - Part 3
Chapter 62: Ambition - Part 1
Chapter 62: Ambition – Part 2
Chapter 62: Ambition – Part 3
Chapter 63: Alone - Part 1
Chapter 63: Alone - Part 2
Chapter 63: Alone - Part 3
Chapter 64: Fortunate Encounter - Part 1
Chapter 64: Fortunate Encounter - Part 2
Chapter 64: Fortunate Encounter - Part 3
Chapter 65: The Last King - Part 1
Chapter 65: The Last King - Part 2
Chapter 65: The Last King - Part 3
Chapter 66: Journey - Part 1
Chapter 66: Journey – Part 2
Chapter 66: Journey – Part 3
Chapter 67: Survival Horror - Part 1
Chapter 67: Survival Horror - Part 2
Chapter 67: Survival Horror - Part 3
Chapter 68: Abomination - Part 1
Chapter 68: Abomination - Part 2
Chapter 68: Abomination - Part 3
Chapter 69: Looping Winds - Part 1
Chapter 69: Looping Winds – Part 2
Chapter 69: Looping Winds - Part 3
Chapter 70: Obstacle Course - Part 1
Chapter 70: Obstacle Course - Part 2
Chapter 70: Obstacle Course - Part 3
Chapter 71: Whakamutu Mutu - Part 1
Chapter 71: Whakamutu Mutu - Part 2
Chapter 71: Whakamutu Mutu - Part 3
Chapter 72: Grand Prix - Part 1
Chapter 72: Grand Prix - Part 2
Chapter 72: Grand Prix - Part 3
Chapter 73: Concubine - Part 1
Chapter 73: Concubine - Part 2
Chapter 73: Concubine - Part 3
Chapter 74: Measure of Strength - Part 1
Chapter 74: Measure of Strength - Part 2
Chapter 74: Measure of Strength – Part 3

Legends of Times Past Series: Nocturna, the Mistborn – Teaser

Chapter 75: Onwards - Part 1
Chapter 75: Onwards - Part 2
Chapter 75: Onwards – Part 3
Chapter 76: Espionage - Part 1
Chapter 76: Espionage - Part 2
Chapter 76: Espionage – Part 3
Chapter 77: Probing - Part 1
Chapter 77: Probing - Part 2
Chapter 77: Probing - Part 3
Chapter 78: The Hunt - Part 1
Chapter 78: The Hunt - Part 2
Chapter 78: The Hunt - Part 3
Chapter 79: Fortress - Part 1
Chapter 79: Fortress - Part 2
Chapter 79: Fortress - Part 3
Chapter 80: Void's End - Part 1
Chapter 80: Void's End - Part 2
Chapter 80: Void's End - Part 3
Chapter 81: Distraction - Part 1
Chapter 81: Distraction - Part 2
Chapter 81: Distraction - Part 3
Chapter 82: Pit Stop - Part 1
Chapter 82: Pit Stop - Part 2
Chapter 82: Pit Stop - Part 3
Chapter 83: Not One Step Back - Part 1
Chapter 83: Not One Step Back - Part 2
Chapter 83: Not One Step Back - Part 3
Chapter 84: Hammer and Anvil - Part 1
Chapter 84: Hammer and Anvil - Part 2
Chapter 84: Hammer and Anvil - Part 3
Chapter 85: Trials - Alissa
Chapter 85: Trials – Roxanne
Chapter 85: Trials - Hana
Chapter 85: Trials - Ciel
Chapter 85: Trials - Lina
Chapter 85: Trials - Aoi
Chapter 85: Trials - Yunia
Chapter 86: Death - Part 1
Chapter 86: Death - Part 2
Chapter 86: Death - Part 3
Chapter 87: Resolution - Part 1
Chapter 87: Resolution - Part 2
Chapter 87: Resolution - Part 3
Chapter 88: Reunion - Part 1
Chapter 88: Reunion - Part 2
Chapter 88: Reunion - Part 3
Chapter 88: Reunion - Part 4
Chapter 88: Reunion - Part 5
Interlude 2 - Lyle's Yearning
Interlude 3 - Vanea's Machinations
Chapter 89: Recruitment - Part 1
Chapter 89: Recruitment - Part 2
Chapter 89: Recruitment - Part 3
Chapter 90: Release - Part 1
Chapter 90: Release - Part 2
Chapter 90: Release - Part 3
Chapter 91: Preparations - Part 1
Chapter 91: Preparations - Part 2
Chapter 91: Preparations - Part 3
Chapter 92: Where We Stand - Part 1
Chapter 92: Where We Stand - Part 2
Chapter 92: Where We Stand - Part 3
Chapter 93: Steady Progress - Part 1
Chapter 93: Steady Progress - Part 2
Chapter 93: Steady Progress - Part 3
Chapter 94: Forbidden Knowledge - Part 1
Chapter 94: Forbidden Knowledge - Part 2
Chapter 94: Forbidden Knowledge - Part 3
Farana's Origin: Safety and Security - Teaser
Chapter 95: Lordship Ceremony - Part 1
Chapter 95: Lordship Ceremony - Part 2
Chapter 95: Lordship Ceremony – Part 3
Yulania's Origin: Chosen Descendant - Teaser
Chapter 96: Celebration - Part 1
Chapter 96: Celebration - Part 2
Chapter 96: Celebration - Part 3
Chapter 97: Peace and Quiet - Part 1
Chapter 97: Peace and Quiet - Part 2
Chapter 97: Peace and Quiet - Part 3
Chapter 98: Lordly Duties - Part 1
Chapter 98: Lordly Duties - Part 2
Chapter 98: Lordly Duties - Part 3
Chapter 99: Experiment - Part 1
Chapter 99: Experiment - Part 2
Chapter 99: Experiment - Part 3
Chapter 100: Homecoming - Part 1
Chapter 100: Homecoming - Part 2
Chapter 100: Homecoming - Part 3
Chapter 101: Family – Part 1
Chapter 101: Family - Part 2
Chapter 101: Family - Part 3
Chapter 102: A Warrior's Welcome - Part 1
Chapter 102: A Warrior's Welcome - Part 2
Chapter 102: A Warrior's Welcome - Part 3

Chapter 103: To Honor Her Achievements - Part 1

Chapter 103: To Honor Her Achievements - Part 2

Chapter 103(?): To Honor Her Achievements - Part 3

Chapter 103: To Honor Her Achievements - Part 3

Chapter 104: Premonition - Part 1
Chapter 104: Premonition - Part 2
Chapter 104: Premonition - Part 3
Chapter 105: Visitors - Part 1
Chapter 105: Visitors - Part 2
Chapter 105: Visitors - Part 3
Chapter 106: Gentle Persuasion - Part 1
Chapter 106: Gentle Persuasion - Part 2
Chapter 106: Gentle Persuasion - Part 3
Chapter 107: Support - Part 1
Chapter 107: Support - Part 2
Chapter 107: Support - Part 3
Chapter 108: Possibilities - Part 1
Chapter 108: Possibilities - Part 2
Chapter 108: Possibilities - Part 3

Chapter 109: The Dragon and the Rabbit - Part 1

Chapter 109: The Dragon and the Rabbit - Part 2

Chapter 109: The Dragon and the Rabbit - Part 3

Chapter 110: Mother - Part 1
Chapter 110: Mother - Part 2
Chapter 110: Mother - Part 3
Chapter 111: Explosive Finish - Part 1
Chapter 111: Explosive Finish - Part 2
Chapter 111: Explosive Finish - Part 3
Chapter 112: Return to "Normalcy" - Part 1
Chapter 112: Return to "Normalcy" - Part 2
Chapter 112: Return to "Normalcy" - Part 3
Chapter 113: Insolence - Part 1
Chapter 113: Insolence - Part 2
Chapter 113: Insolence - Part 3
Chapter 114: Operation Extinguisher - Part 1
Chapter 114: Operation Extinguisher - Part 2
Chapter 114: Operation Extinguisher - Part 3
Chapter 115: Curiosity - Part 1
Chapter 115: Curiosity - Part 2
Chapter 115: Curiosity - Part 3
Chapter 116: Friendship - Part 1
Chapter 116: Friendship - Part 2
Chapter 116: Friendship - Part 3
Chapter 117: Feast - Part 1
Chapter 117: Feast - Part 2
Chapter 117: Feast - Part 3
Chapter 118: Summit - Part 1
Chapter 118: Summit - Part 2
Chapter 118: Summit - Part 3
Chapter 119: Unholy Revelations - Part 1
Chapter 119: Unholy Revelations - Part 2
Chapter 119: Unholy Revelations - Part 3
Chapter 120: Social Day - Part 1
Chapter 120: Social Day - Part 2
Chapter 120: Social Day - Part 3

Chapter 121: Big Problems for Little People - Part 1

Chapter 121: Big Problems for Little People - Part 2

Chapter 121: Big Problems for Little People - Part 3

Myth Series: Arreira's Last Stand - Teaser
Chapter 122: Dark Depths - Part 1
Chapter 122: Dark Depths - Part 2
Chapter 122: Dark Depths - Part 3
Chapter 123: Victors - Part 1
Chapter 123: Victors - Part 2
Chapter 123: Victors - Part 3
Chapter 124: Last-Minute Business - Part 1
Chapter 124: Last-Minute Business - Part 2
Chapter 124: Last-Minute Business - Part 3
Chapter 125: Engage! - Part 1
Chapter 125: Engage! - Part 2
Chapter 125: Engage! - Part 3

Legends of Times Past Series: The Leviathan – Teaser

Chapter 126: Among the Clouds - Part 1
Chapter 126: Among the Clouds - Part 2
Chapter 126: Among the Clouds - Part 3
Chapter 127: A Little Party - Part 1
Chapter 127: A Little Party - Part 2
Chapter 127: A Little Party - Part 3
Chapter 128: Too Quiet - Part 1
Chapter 128: Too Quiet - Part 2
Chapter 128: Too Quiet - Part 3
Chapter 129: A Quick Adventure - Part 1
Chapter 129: A Quick Adventure - Part 2
Chapter 129: A Quick Adventure - Part 3
Chapter 130: Dawn of Mankind - Part 1
Chapter 130: Dawn of Mankind - Part 2
Chapter 130: Dawn of Mankind - Part 3
Chapter 131: Twist - Part 1
Chapter 131: Twist - Part 2
Chapter 131: Twist - Part 3
Chapter 132: Cards - Part 1
Chapter 132: Cards - Part 2
Chapter 132: Cards - Part 3
Chapter 133: Tipping Point - Part 1
Chapter 133: Tipping Point - Part 2
Chapter 133: Tipping Point - Part 3
Chapter 134: The Room - Part 1
Chapter 134: The Room - Part 2
Chapter 134: The Room - Part 3
Chapter 135: Fury - Part 1
Chapter 135: Fury - Part 2
Chapter 135: Fury - Part 3
Chapter 136: Revenge - Part 1
Chapter 136: Revenge - Part 2
Chapter 136: Revenge - Part 3

Legends of Time Pasts Series: Nojus, Lord of Fire and Brimstone - Teaser

Chapter 137: Murder - Part 1
Chapter 137: Murder - Part 2
Chapter 137: Murder - Part 3
Chapter 138: Sentence - Part 1
Chapter 138: Sentence - Part 2
Chapter 138: Sentence - Part 3
Chapter 139: Reinforcements - Part 1
Chapter 139: Reinforcements - Part 2
Chapter 139: Reinforcements - Part 3
Chapter 140: Lordling - Part 1
Chapter 140: Lordling - Part 2
Chapter 140: Lordling - Part 3
Chapter 141: One-Up - Part 1
Chapter 141: One-Up - Part 2
Chapter 141: One-Up - Part 3
Chapter 142: Winding Down - Part 1
Chapter 142: Winding Down - Part 2
Chapter 142: Winding Down - Part 3
Chapter 143: Wager - Part 1
Chapter 143: Wager - Part 2
Chapter 143: Wager - Part 3
Chapter 144: Joint Exercise - Part 1
Chapter 144: Joint Exercise - Part 2
Chapter 144: Joint Exercise - Part 3
Chapter 145: Royalty - Part 1
Chapter 145: Royalty - Part 2
Chapter 145: Royalty - Part 3
Chapter 146: To Kill a Gifted - Part 1
Chapter 146: To Kill a Gifted - Part 2
Chapter 146: To Kill a Gifted - Part 3
Chapter 147: The Fall - Part 1
Chapter 147: The Fall - Part 2
Chapter 147: The Fall – Part 3
Chapter 148: Aftermath - Part 1
Chapter 148: Aftermath - Part 2
Chapter 148: Aftermath - Part 3

Chapter 149: Stirring the Settling Dust - Part 1

Chapter 149: Stirring the Settling Dust - Part 2

Chapter 149: Stirring the Settling Dust - Part 3

Chapter 150: I'm On A Boat - Part 1
Chapter 150: I'm On A Boat - Part 2
Chapter 150: I'm On A Boat - Part 3
Chapter 151: Last Business - Part 1
Chapter 151: Last Business - Part 2
Chapter 151: Last Business - Part 3
Dietgard's Loli Quest – Teaser
Chapter 152: Clingy Princesses - Part 1
Chapter 152: Clingy Princesses - Part 2
Chapter 152: Clingy Princesses - Part 3
Chapter 153: Home, Sweet Home - Part 1
Chapter 153: Home, Sweet Home - Part 2
Chapter 153: Home, Sweet Home - Part 3

Chapter 154: A Place of Enlightenment - Part 1

Chapter 154: A Place of Enlightenment - Part 2

Chapter 154: A Place of Enlightenment - Part 3

Chapter 155: Maintaining Relations - Part 1
Chapter 155: Maintaining Relations - Part 2
Chapter 155: Maintaining Relations - Part 3

Christmas Special: Gifts, A Myth, And Questionable Hijinks

Chapter 156: Reunited - Part 1

Captain Ansara Crime Noir – Teaser